August 18, 2002.

"I want my two dollars!"

Starring John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Diane Franklin and Kim Darby.  Executive producers, Gil Friesen and Andrew Meyer.  Original score by Rupert Hine.  Produced by Michael Jaffe.  Written and directed by Savage Steve Holland.  Released by Paramount in 1985.

Lane Myer is a typical mid-eighties teenager living in a far-from-typical yet still boring suburban Northern California town.  Within his own family, his father is truly out of touch with modern times, his ditzy mother's cooking is usually green and tries to run away, and his younger brother tends to build destructive models and pursue more "adult" activities.  Outside the home, his best friend dreams of living in a town that has real drug dealers with real drugs, his neighbors are a crazy mother who brings in female foreign exchange students for her overweight son, and the local paperboy punk will do everything to get his two dollars.  And Beth?  His girlfriend for six months now?  Well, she just dumped him for the school's intolerable ski jock.

Considering Lane's excessive obsession towards his now ex-girlfriend, that last item hit him pretty hard -- so hard that he even contemplates attempting suicide.  Later on, he realizes the only way he'll win back his girlfriend is to impress her by skiing down the K12 run, a highly dangerous ski hill that only the ski jock has successfully mastered.  So with the help of his friends, they all try to extract the top-gun skier out of Lane.

This movie started out with the best of intentions: an excellent cast, decent directing, an intriguing story...  Unfortunately, the movie turned out fragmented at all ends.  It's like a comedy club which promises you laughs, but throws in a bunch of comedians with vastly different talents in the mix.  There are some pretty funny scenes, but they seem to be widely detached from each other.  Also, the flow of the movie was like riding a badly designed roller coaster: full of ups and downs at inappropriate times.  The movie was also quite predictable with key plot points actually being somewhat revealed right at the beginning of the story.

The movie had plenty of potential to push ahead the career of first-time director and writer Savage Steve Holland.  Unfortunately, his first attempt hasn't turned out as well as I would have hoped for.  I wasn't angry with the outcome, I was more disappointed with it.

Picture

1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.  The only complaints I have are some excessive film grain and some dull blacks in the night time scenes.  The rest of the elements in this transfer are just right, giving us well balanced colors, decent detail, and no obvious edge enhancement.   Paramount has been producing some decent transfers among their library titles these days.  Granted they may not be perfect, but they're not riddled with obvious mistakes either.  And for lesser-known but still popular titles such as "Better Off Dead", that suits me just fine.

Sound/Subtitles

Dolby Digital 2.0.  The packaging indicates stereo sound and not surround sound, and that's pretty much how the soundtrack sounded during the whole movie; an ordinary mono presentation with the stereo effects reserved for the two musical numbers.  The vocals sounded reasonable in the outdoor scenes, but they sounded rather echoic in the indoor shots.  All in all, a reasonably noiseless soundtrack which sounded very bland.

Also included are English subtitles.  No other language options are available.

Features

Again, nothing!  Not even the trailer!  This is the second Paramount DVD in a row that I've reviewed which totally bombs in the features department.  I'm pretty happy with the decent transfers and all.  But how difficult is it to add the movie's trailer on the disc?

Final verdict

Before writing any DVD review, I normally check out the movie's entry at The Internet Movie Database just to see if I've missed anything obvious such as the movie quote I always add at the beginning of my reviews.  But based on the user comments posted on the IMDb, it appears that this time around I've completely missed the entertainment value of this movie.  This doesn't mean I'll be changing my opinion any time soon.  I can understand why so many people may be inclined to love this movie what with the multitude of visual gags and funny situations in it.  But this movie is simply too fragmented for me to fully enjoy it.

One quick note about this DVD release.  This version contains the two scenes that were added for the HBO broadcast, but were left out of the original video release.  Also, the sound is now properly synchronized within these two sequences.

Picture		Video	1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
Sound		Audio	ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 2.0 (stereo)
Story		Subtitles	English (captions)
Features		Features	None
Value		Final word	The movie had potential with good directing and a decent cast.  Unfortunately, the final result was way too fragmented for me to enjoy it.