Still Crazy

I'm sure you've all done it. Once in a while you take a punt on a film you know nothing about, just to see what it's like. Maybe a cover grabs your attention, or you like a certain actor. Or maybe you're offered a bunch of unpromising-sounding discs to review and you say, "Okay, give me the one with Billy Connolly in it." Sometimes you luck out big time and discover a little happy nugget. Happy nuggets are Good Things.

As it turned out, Connolly's role in this modest British comedy is quite small, and his character is quite undeveloped. He plays an ex-roadie from a fictional dried up 70s band called Strange Fruit. 20 years after they disintegrated, their keyboardist, Tony (well played by Oscar nominee Stephen Rea) manages to land them a chance at a reunion tour. Problem is, he has no idea where the other members are. He contacts Karen, an old groupie who still has some contact numbers, and tracks the rest of the group down. The second problem arises when old insecurities, egos and conflicts fire up again.

Sure, it's a familiar story, but you may be more interested when you find out it was written by two of the writers of The Commitments. On the musical side, the band's songs were produced by the famous Langer/Winstanley duo (who've made hits for Elvis Costello, Madness and They Might Be Giants to name just a few), and cowritten by Mick Jones of Foreigner, which adds a very authentic 70s pomp touch! The frightening thing is that the music is actually very good, or maybe I just romanticise my adolescence rather too much... wait, I'm not that old!

The Sony Pictures DVD Centre is continuing their run of excellent transfers. Anamorphically-enhanced and presented in a 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, the wonderful picture quality combined with typically fine British cinematography makes it very easy to become absorbed in the film. Colour is very natural, detail is excellent and blacks are deep and rich. I noticed very few film artifacts and no MPEG artifacts.

Nothing to complain about here. The music tracks are presented as well as you can expect from bit-reduced Dolby Digital and the dialogue is nicely recorded and presented. A very nice touch is that (like The Commitments) the actors actually sing their parts, although the music is played by a studio group. ADR work is generally well integrated, and when it stands out in places, it's not annoying.

The mix is basically restricted to the front three channels, with some reverb in the rear when the music kicks in, but the mixers missed opportunities to fill out the soundstage with ambient effects.

There's not much in the way of extras here. You get filmographies of the director and the excellent cast (who've been in everything from Evita to Secrets and Lies), the US theatrical trailer, which draws comparisons to The Full Monty (of course) and a featurette which is a little better than you expect from these things, but hardly a font of information.

The cover doesn't look promising, the subject matter doesn't immediately scream "WATCH ME!", but this film is really very good indeed. The cast are uniformly excellent, the humour is warm and I ended up really caring for the characters after 92 minutes, something all too rare in American films. If you enjoyed The Commitments or Spinal Tap you'll most likely have a fine time with this disc. Light on extras, but still recommended.