Daddy
Daughter Trip (2022/Mill
Creek DVD)/Hail Caesar
(1994/MVD Blu-ray)/The
Holdovers
(2023/Focus/Universal Blu-ray w/DVD)/Journey
To Bethlehem (2023/Sony
Blu-ray)/Rover Dangerfield
(1991/Warner Archive Blu-ray)
Picture:
C/B-/B- & C/B-/B- Sound: C+/B-/B & C+/B-/B- Extras:
D/C/C/C-/C Films: C-/C+/C+/C-/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Rover
Dangerfield
Blu-ray is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Now
for the most bizarre grouping of comedies we have posted to date,
including two comedy actors directing projects they think will help
keep their careers going...
Rob
Schneider's Daddy Daughter Trip
(2022) is the first of those projects, a lowest-level-humor tale of
an investor (Schneider) in a rut who is determined, no matter
the lack of resources, to take his 8-year-old daughter on a field
trip. Unfortunately, we a forced to go with them!
In
real life, once every few years, Schneider can actually show
that he can sometimes give a comic acting performance and even more
rarely, even be funny like a few Saturday Night Live
performances way back in the day. Otherwise, all he does is wallow
in one-note, dumb, gross, goofy humor that is way too predictable and
pointless. He goes whole hog here on it and SURPRISE, we get nothing
new. The supporting cats looks bored and even John Cleese cannot
save this disaster. Trip is a lame trap for your time and
money and should b avoided, unless you really, really, really like
this kind of really bad pseudo humor.
There
are unsurprisingly no extras.
Anthony
Michael Hall's Hail Caesar
(1994) has the actor trying to take more control of his career and
make the transition from child actor to adult. He made it in real
life, but not from this film. Here, he tries to change his look and
its like a semi-New Wave look of some sort. As the crazed lead
singer of the Rock band of the film's title, he wants to have the
lifestyle and live large, even if the talent is not there. Instead,
he falls for the daughter of the man he works for at a plant that
makes erasers, a job that machines and maybe robots have replaced if
the jobs were not sent overseas by 2024.
Robert
Downey Jr. steals his scenes as the head of the record company our
would-be superstar wants to sign with, but will it happen. If
anything, Hall can think of it as a transitional work after his
Vacation
films, John Hughes films and other on screen to the long career he
had. Had this been a better film and much more commercially
successful one, it would not have hurt him of course, but he left the
1980s behind to survive and that was that.
Cheers
to the rest of the supporting cast including Frank Gorshin, Judd
Nelson, Nicholas Pryor, Bobbie Phillips, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert
Downey, Sr. They bring some fun to this and everyone was working
hard to give this some energy, something we rarely see in any feature
film releases these days, so it is a nice indie time capsule of how
good risk-taking independent films with commercial hopes used to be.
Too bad these are so rare now, but it is a curio those interested
should definitely check out.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer and Mini Poster inside the
Blu-ray case, with our copy including a slipcase.
Alexander
Payne's The Holdovers
(2023) is an awards season contender, taking place in 1970 and
reuniting the director with his Sideways
lead actor Paul Giamatti, playing a strict school teacher at a
lesser-known boys school for the privileged. Christmas, et al, has
arrived, but some of the students will be there for a while and Angus
(Dominic Sessa, in what might launch a serious acting career) is
going to be there longer than he imagined.
They
do not get along, though Hunham (Giamatti) is abrasive with all of
them. As the film started, I was shocked at how bad and sloppy it
was, trying way too hard to emulate its time period in odd ways and
it was getting so bad, I thought we were getting some kind of horrid
rehash of the already overrated and awful Dead
Poets Society.
Eventually, the film picks up, but about twenty minutes of it could
have been cut and it would have helped the film get to the point.
Those mostly early scenes belong in the also lame deleted clips in
the extras.
Vietnam
is touched upon, but probably not enough and though it does a good
job of mostly convincing us it is period, there are more errors and
mistakes here than there should be, especially for a director as
savvy as Payne. Thus, it is not as strong as Citizen
Ruth, About
Schmidt, Sideways,
The Descendants
or even Election,
but it is still worth a look for the performances and the latter
parts that do work. Longtime actor Tate Donovan leads the rest of
the supporting cast, some of whom have been around for a while and
others that are new faces. That does nto hurt the film one bit.
Extras
include Digital Code copy, while both discs include Deleted Scenes
and three Behind The Scenes featurettes.
Adam
Anders' Journey To
Bethlehem (2023) looked
at first to be another dull, formula, preachy, holiday religious
project like the hundreds of endless Hallmark TV movies that have the
same dippy music and essentially use slight variations of the same
teleplay. What we get here instead is a comedy with no laughs, sort
of a Monty Python/Mel Brooks-style mess that is trying to be funny
with zero ironic distance, new ideas or a single laugh or giggle.
Then
they actually add music and it gets worse with each song, then they
still try to say they are honoring the events of the Nativity in a
serious, loving way. Maybe they think they are, but I bet more than
a few more serious, conservative, and (yes) humorless people of faith
would find this dumb, possibly offensive and a few might even say
sacrilegious. I just found it a bizarre waste of time I never bought
once and even Antonio Banderas suddenly showing up cannot save it or
the way-off-kilter acting. It also shows how dead Musicals really
are. Oh well.
Extras
include Digital Movies version, while
the disc adds:
Meet
Mary and Joseph
The
Heart of The Journey to Bethlehem
Meet
Fig
Meet
Mary's Sisters
Meet
Antipater
Deleted
Scenes: A Great Navigator
Deleted
Scenes: Travel Montage
and
Deleted Scenes: Joseph's Catapult.
Lastly,
we have Jim
George and Bob Seeley's animated Rover
Dangerfield
(1991) with the late, great Rodney Dangerfield as a dog with some
wit, but wit restricted by a G rating. Intended as something with a
higher rating, the home of Looney Tunes thought maybe they could go
for something different and family fun, but this one has so-so
musical numbers (the titles are funnier than the songs are good) and
Harold Ramis even co-wrote the story with Dangerfield. It just does
not gel.
Our
title character starts in Las Vegas having the time of his life, give
or take some minor issues one would expect there, but he lands up on
a farm (???) where he is forced to figure out what to do with his
life next, then he might just fall in love with a female counterpart.
I
always thought Dangerfield was one of the funniest comics of all time
and remains a giant, so much so at the time that you can see why a
major movie studio would even bankroll such a project. He was very
big, selling comedy records, selling out comedy venues, jumping up
ratings on any show he appeared on and he had a few hit films with
even the live action disappointments becoming curios. Warner even
used their now sadly defunct warner stores chain to sell tie-ins to
the film, but they landed up in the cut-out section.
Warner
Archive has finally issued the film on Blu-ray for everyone to see
and though it has no new extras or any extras tied to the film
itself, now you can judge for yourself. Made at a time when adult
humor animation was still not more common, it makes one wonder what
might have been had a vision of the film had been clearer from the
start.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer and two classic warner
animated Technicolor classics in HD: well done Dog Daze and
charming, funny Porky Pig short Dog Collared.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p playback on all four Blu-rays
are a little bit different, but oddly have about the same level of
qualities and flaws. The 1.78 X 1 image on Hail Caesar had
its lab work done by FotoKem and it is pretty good for its age, but
there is also some softness and a little more grain than usual,
suggesting an older HD master and/or that the original camera
materials have some slight issues. It still has good color and an
consistent look. The PCM 2.0 Stereo is not bad, might play better on
your system with Pro Logic-like surrounds,but was not issued in
theaters with any kind of noise reduction system. Skipping cheaper
Ultra Stereo probably helped.
The
1.66 X 1 image on Holdovers
goes a little overboard trying to recreate the look of an early 1970s
color movie, which includes some intentional softness (the HD with
some of its own limits too) and very, very slightly faded colors.
Nice try, but not 100% convincing, though fine for the most part.
The DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 3.0 (yes, you read that correctly) Stereo lossless
mix is not like any sound format of that time, but does hold the film
back from being too modern sounding to match its image. The
anamorphically enhanced 1.66 X 1 image on the DVD version is much
softer than it should be and the lossy Dolby Digital 3.0 Stereo
definitely looses warmth.
The
same can be said for the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on
the Trip DVD, which is a flat HD shoot with no style, albeit
consistent by default and the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 (oddly listed
as 'Dolby Audio' on the back of the case, which is not the name of
one of their formats) is barely better and the dullest sound on the
list despite being one of the newest recordings.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Journey is an
HD shoot that has more softness than its styling should offer and the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1
lossless mix is competent at best, but sounds slightly more forward
than it should. That does not help the humor or make it more clear
either.
Finally,
the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Rover
Dangerfield
is consistent, but has much more grain than expected and to be
honest, the color is a little flat and off. The early tech and work
of the digital visual opening is fine, then the quality drops in the
next analog, hand-drawn animated shot and never improves for the rest
of the film. Checking on stills and images of the film on-line, my
memory was strongly confirmed, so fans will be a little disappointed.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mix was issued in
Dolby's old A-type analog Dolby System format and offers some Pro
Logic surrounds, though you can try variants on your system to see if
it makes the sound even better. One of the last animated feature
films in the old format, its not bad.
To
order either of the Warner Archive Rover
Dangerfield
Blu-ray, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo
