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Great Buck Howard (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Magnolia Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen (14th September 2009). |
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The Film
 Sometimes a movie comes along that you like as much as you respect it’s message. Also, sometimes a movie comes along in which your respect its message much more than you like the film. "The Great Buck Howard", written and directed by Sean McGinly, falls square on the latter. The film’s message is something I’m very sympathetic towards, and I feel bad not enjoying the movie, but in the end, "The Great Buck Howard" was just an incredibly bland film. The story follows Troy (Colin Hanks), a law school drop-out, who’s looking for his purpose in life. He’s unhappy in his current situation, and wants ultimately to write some sort of fiction. The quickest way to this he sees is by becoming the assistant to Buck Howard (John Malkovich), a has-been mentalist who is way past his prime, and looking for a come back. The movie follows the pair on a road trip, hitting up small venues, leading up to Buck’s big trick. Along the way, a press agent (Emily Blunt) arrives to sweep Troy off his feet, some wacky antics ensue, and Buck finds himself rising to the top once again through a mishap at his show, all leading to a moral telling the audience to "just be yourself". Here’s my main problem with the film: I’ve seen this before. The story felt very straightforward in terms of what was going to happen. As soon as the press agent character was introduced, I said to myself “If her and Troy get together, I’m going to be pissed”. And surely, they did. The film is just far too predictable to enjoy. While a part of me questioned whether or not this was intentional, making a corny film about a corny magician, but I decided that the other departments of the film seemed so armature, that I quickly threw that thought out. The acting isn’t amazing, which is sad to say coming from the usually great John Malkovich and Colin Hanks, who recently had an amazing stint as a priest on the second season of AMC's "Mad Men" (2007-Present). The talent feels squandered here. Everything else about the movie was as plain as cheese pizza or vanilla ice cream. The comedy fell flat, with either numerous jokes that I’ve seen in other films being played out, or repeated gags that didn’t get a laugh from me the first time resurface literally 15 or so times throughout the film. The directing was normal. The music was boring. The conclusion was half assed. In the end, I just didn’t feel like there was any heart or soul to "The Great Buck Howard". Perhaps the greatest irony is that such a complaint is lobbied against a film that spouts messages that even the corniest stage magician can be a brilliant artist as long as he cares about his craft. I just wish that href=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003152/>Sean McGinly cared as much about his film.
Video
"The Great Buck Howard" is presented in a 1080p 24/fps High-Definition 1.85:1 transfer, mastered in AVC MPEG-4 compression. The picture quality here seemed very inconsistent. Some scenes seemed to have no problems, with little to no grain appearing, and some scenes just look terrible, as though they were shot on a Hi-8 camera at night. Blu-ray technology seemed to be ahead of whatever was used to film the movie. This was somewhat of a shame, as there film contains a smidge of visual flair, with Howard’s eccentric suits and other character costumes.
Audio
"The Great Buck Howard" is presented with and English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, and there’s little to complain about, but at the same time, there’s not much to celebrate either. All the sound levels were fine, as I could hear all the dialogue clearly through the sleep-inducing soundtrack. The film is a talky one, and in such a case, it doesn’t need to have the same sound mix that Star Wars got. The sound is clear, and in the case of people talking, that’s all I need. Optional subtitles are included in both English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
"The Great Buck Howard" showcases numerous special features, including an audio commentary, deleted and extended scenes, a few making-of featurettes, and some bonus trailers. They are detailed below: First up is the feature-length audio commentary with writer/director Sean McGinly and star Colin Hanks. This is the sort of commentary that offers more brevity than insight into the film, but that’s the way I usually like it. However, I wasn’t too engaged in the topics at hand just because I was already bummed out that I was watching the movie for a second time, and I really didn’t care to. It’s always hard to watch a movie with people talking about how good it is. Next is a deleted scenes reel, which runs for 3 minutes and 2 seconds. The scenes don’t really add too much to the film, and are definitely the sort of stuff left on the cutting room floor. The scenes include Buck and Troy talking about Troy’s father (Tom Hanks), and one where they are picked up by an over excited woman in Florida. Next is some extended scenes in a reel, which run for 9 minutes and 44 seconds. During Buck’s comeback, there is a montage of talk show appearances by the titular character. The entirety of theses extended scenes are from suck talk shows such as "Late Night with Conan O’Brien" (1993-2009), "The Daily Show" (1996-Present), "Live with Regis and Kelly" (2001-2009), "TRL" (1998-2008), and so on and so forth. I was sort of bummed to see some people I respect lumped into the montage, but wasn’t surprised to see the "Regis" and "TRL" footage. Overall, this stuff was not too interesting, and if anything, it just made me want to watch Conan O’Brien and Jon Stewart’s real shows. Also offered are some outtakes, which run for 3 minutes and 39 seconds. These scenes are alternate takes on some lines that were improved, in which Buck offers his opinion of Jay Leno, tries to pronounce “Jerry Springer”, and deals with Tom Arnold. Again, the improved lines are pretty much the same jokes left in the movie, so this was pretty unentertaining. "Behind the Scenes" featurette, which runs for 9 minutes and 35 seconds, serves as the making-of for "The Great Buck Howard". This is your typical featurette, in which the cast pick apart the other actors, talk about what the movie means, and producers talk about why it’s so great. Much in the same as with the commentary, I just didn’t want to hear people talk about how the movie was so great when I didn’t think it was. I would like to have been convinced, but this feature just reinforced my initial thought that the film lacks major heart and soul. Also is an HDNet featurette, “A Look at the Great Buck Howard” which runs for 4 minutes and 27 seconds, which acts more as a trailer spliced with interview footage, some of which already appeared in the making-of segment on the disc. Lastly is "The Amazing Kreskin" featurette, which runs for 5 minutes and 47 seconds. Here, the inspiration for the movies talks about his life, and it just made me wish that a biopic had been made about the real man, instead of a cartoon caricature. Kreskin is charming and funny, and honestly comes off as nothing like the fictional Buck Howard. I just personally think the world of magicians makes for fascinating films, and Kreskin shows what the audience was missing. There are bonus trailers for: - "Two Lovers" which runs for 2 minutes and 5 seconds. - "What Just Happened" which runs for 2 minutes and 33 seconds. - "The Life Before Her Eyes" which runs for 3 minutes and 27 seconds. - "Mutant Chronicles" which runs for 1 minute and 44 seconds. - "HDnet" promo spot which runs for 1 minute and 1 second.
Overall
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