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You Again
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Buena Vista Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (12th February 2011). |
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The Film
 A little over a half-decade ago I fell in love with the short-lived but critically acclaimed “Veronica Mars” (2004-2007). A large part of my deep, deep affection for Rob Thomas’ tale about the titular teenage super sleuth from the costal town of Neptune, California came from a connection with the character herself. Strong, smart, but hardly infallible, and with a bit of a complex, vindictive mean-steak, Ms. Mars is, in my opinion, the finest female protagonist to ever grace the small screen – this side of Buffy Summers anyway – and I think that’s the case for two reasons. Thomas’ creation of a character as well written as few others is one; the casting of Kristen Bell is the other. But, like all good things, it eventually came crashing down and my love affair met an abrupt end in 2007 with the cancellation of “Veronica Mars”. And while I had high hopes for what would become of Bell’s career post-UPN – or, technically, post-The CW (“Mars” moved networks in its final year when UPN and WB were combined to make a broadcaster that was ironically not worth the sum of it’s individual parts; but that neither here nor there) – the truth is I liked the idea of Bell as an actress more than I actually like her as one. Maybe this is because, as Bell has proven with her last few roles, she’s really only good when teamed up with a strong character. Something that – for reasons I can’t quite figure out – Bell has yet to land in the past four years. Now, I concede that she was probably the best thing about the worst season of “Heroes” (2006-2010); then again, saying that Bell was the best thing about the second season of Tim Kring’s utterly abortive television show is like saying that Herpes is the best venereal disease. Just face it; at the end of the day you still have an STD. Since the cancellation of “Mars” – “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (2008) not withstanding (I like the film, I like her character, but Bell’s still far from the best thing about it. Jason Siegel’s puppet-based Dracula Musical is the best thing to come from “Sarah Marshall”) – Bell has spent her time starring in some truly dreadful romantic comedies. And I mean awful stuff; film’s that have consistently topped my personal “worst of the year” lists within their perspective release-windows. And films and roles that seem to be exponentially increasingly in their crude atrociousness. First it was the double header of the consistently disastrous “Serious Moonlight” (2009) and the utterly terrible Vince Vaughn vehicle “Couple’s Retreat” (2009). Then, last year she unleashed a trifecta of deadly dreadfulness – “When in Rome” (2010), taking a smaller role in “Burlesque” (2010), and, yes, as some might have guessed, the film herein reviewed: “You Again” (see, I was going to get to the point eventually.) In “You Again” (which was directed by Andy Fickman; the man behind the camera of questionable but not abysmal Disney productions like “The Game Plan” (2007) and “Race to Witch Mountain” (2009)), the should-be-better Kristen Bell is Marni Olivia Olsen, better known as “Moo” to her less-than-friendly peers in High School (yep, Moo. That’s the sort of thing that this movie thinks is funny). The young PR executive with a nickname fit for a farm animal’s vocal expulsion, is flying home for her brother’s sudden wedding to a reportedly lovely fiancé whom she has never met. The said wife-to-be is none other than Joanna – or, as Marni knew her, JJ – an old High School nemesis of Marni’s. JJ was the ultimate mean girl, who made sure that our protagonist’s teen years were a living hell. (That Moo thing; yeah that was something JJ made sure to exploit.) Odette Yustman – from “Cloverfield” (2008) and “The Unborn” (2009) – plays Joanna. I’d just like to note that she’s very, very pretty but a terrible, truly terrible actress and especially so in “You Again” where she plays alongside people who have proven themselves more than competent time and again (even if they're not exactly at the top of their game in this film). Because “You Again” is the sort of comedy that could have all of its situational funnies and resulting misunderstandings solved with the utterance of a simple phrase – which for reasons only the plot knows, goes unsaid for most of the runtime – Mom (Jamie Lee Curtis, briefly stepping away from her lucrative Activia yogurt commercials), Dad (a useless Victor Garber) and her brother Will (James Wolk) know nothing about the terrible things that the future member of the Olsen family did to one of their own. At least, not to the fullest extent; Marni does attempt to tell her mother the truth, only to be advised to move on by a woman who obviously wasn’t actually listening to anything they just discussed. Mom simply asks her daughter to approach her soon-to-be sister-in-law with an open mind. The past is the past, and Joanna has obviously changed for the better. But has she? Marni has a sneaking suspicion that Joanna is still the same evil witch that she always was; Moo just has to prove it. Mommy dearest soon forgets her own words of wisdom – that whole live and let live thing, she totally ignores that – when Joanna’s aunt Mona (a shockingly bad Sigourney Weaver) comes to visit and reveals herself as Mom’s old enemy from school too. Yep, the film’s title comes from a simple and sort-of-clever premise: what if your past came back to haunt you in human form? If only “You Again” delivered on that promise. It doesn’t; not satisfyingly anyway. Instead, the resulting 90-minutes feel like one bad dream after the other; the film is neither funny nor entertaining and is often more uncomfortably cringe-inducing than anything else. “You Again” could have probably been something halfway decent – maybe even an out-and-out good film with a great story – if it were handled correctly, by people not named Fickman or Moe Jelline (who wrote the screenplay). If the film were a “Mean Girls”-ish (2004) tale of dark, bitter and near-sadistic evil, I could see it working reasonably well. It’d be dark; the blackest of comedy, but it could work. It’s just that the film isn’t, so it doesn’t. Instead, “You Again” turns out to be an exercise in watching actresses that should know better flail around in stupid slack-sticky situations that are one record scratch away from being wrist-slittingly unbearable. Add in a painful turn by the over-exposed Betty White as an uncomfortably batty grandma (who was originally written and shot as a crazed old woman suffering from dementia) and a forced romantic subplot for Bell’s character – which only exists so that Disney could market the film as a romantic comedy – and you’ve got a recipe for one disastrous film. Plainly “You Again” is a bad movie. Equal parts painful, unfunny, cliché, and stupid, it’s certainly a shame that the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis – hell, even Kristen Bell, who I hold out hope turns her career around – have had their reputations sullied by the mediocre, trite, blandness of this piece of garbage known as “You Again”. I’m almost tempted to just give this an “F” because it’s so shamefully appalling considering the cast (seriously what did Weaver and Curtis see in this thing?), but, no, it isn’t the worst film I’ve ever seen. “You Again” is just a pointlessly uninteresting film that should have been better, simple as that. Do yourself a favor and skip it. Especially because the third act – which ties everything up in neat little package with a big bright bow – turns the film into a schmaltzy, sweet, and phony cheese-fest that completely lacks any of the promised mean-streak that might have actually existed had someone other than Disney produced it.
Video
Visually, “You Again” is a typical romantic comedy. It has bright colors, plenty of pop, quite a bit of detail (with occasionally soft, diffused close ups) and the sort of perfectly spotless sheen that you’d expect from a sanitized, “crowd pleasing” feature meant for mass consumption. And, like most romantic comedies, that translates to – technically – a great looking Blu-ray. Colors are bright and bold, the brand-new digital source is immaculate, and resolution and texture is usually rich with excellent clarity. The 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p AVC MPEG-4 24/fps transfer exports the sort of proficient, but bland and clinical aesthetic we’d expect from a production that was shot digitally in high definition with the Panavision Genesis. Skintones are a little on the flushed sides, and contrast runs a tiny bit hot – none of which, as far as I can tell, is a problem of the blu-ray and instead comes from the source material – but on a large scale there’s little that’s problematic about this transfer. As you’d imagine, close ups on Weaver, Curtis, White – basically the entire aging cast, including Victor Garber – are shot soft focus thus killing the available detail in their would-be-rough faces. Whites are frequently blown out, and it often seems that colors so saturated that they’re on the very verge of bleeding, but again, these are aesthetic choices that largely don’t negatively impact the viewing experience. Exteriors fair best, with impossibly detailed (and eye-scorching) green grass, the individual blades of which are each visible in most medium and tight(er) two-shots. Fabrics are well preserved too, with intricate stitching – along with some of that Cheeto dust – on the wedding dress appearing finely rendered. Because “You Again” was produced entirely in the digital domain (shot, edited, and mastered via high def video) there’s no film grain to speak of – although a few of the night scenes do showcase some source “noise” which might be mistaken for a peppering of grain, I guess – and at times the film looks just a tad artificial, although not manipulated by DNR or edge enhancement. As is typical for the distributor, this Disney release has been afforded a vast BD-50, allowing the 100-minute feature to stretch out comfortably onto the second layer without a single issue of compression artifacts or banding. “You Again” looks, I begrudgingly admit, just about perfect.
Audio
I wouldn’t exactly call the main English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (48 kHz / 24-bit) impressive, but it certainly is an adept mix for a romantic comedy. The track is front-focused and primarily concerned with dialogue, but it extends into the surrounds quite often – more often than you’d expect anyway – mostly with music. Some weak effects are funneled rearward too, usually during the flashbacks. The choice of music in the soundtrack is awful – with “hits” from Britney Spears, Hall & Oates and a terrible rap by Odette Yustman in the third act – but it’s clear and prioritized in the mix just fine. The film has adequate bass response, and great dialogue reproduction. Does “You Again” sport a reference quality mix? Hardly. But it is slightly above average, and scores accordingly. Other mixes include: French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. Disney has also included optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
I’ll be frank – this two-disc release isn’t exactly brimming with worthwhile supplements. “You Again” includes a number of bonus trailers, near a dozen deleted scenes, three brief featurettes, an obligatory blooper reel, and – on the second disc – a bonus DVD containing the film (and some special features) in standard definition. DISC ONE: BLU-RAY Before we dive into this largely unsuccessful collection of extras, it should be noted that, at least all of the video-based content on the Blu-ray is encoded in sharp looking high definition, which is certainly welcomed. With that backhanded compliment out of the way lets dig into the so-called “good stuff”, which isn’t so much “good” as it is just “stuff”. In Bonus Features section of the menu we find five options – “Following Fickman: On Set with the Director”, “Blooper Dance Party”, “Ask the Cast”, “Funny or Die” and some Betty White heavy “Deleted Scenes.” “Following Fickman: On Set with the Director” (1080p, 7 minutes 3 seconds) is a pretty typical promo featurette fit for the EPK with a bunch of fluffy interviews from the cast and crew talking up director Andy Fickman, intersected with a bunch of nonsensical BTS footage and some blooper material. There are a couple of notable moments here including a set visit from Dwayne Johnson (who has a cameo in the film as an US Marshal) and, hands down the best thing to come from this entire piece, a quip in which Odette Yustman quizzically asks, “Randy Flickman, is that who were talking about?” with such sincerity that I’d swear she’s being completely genuine and actually didn’t know the directors name. Seriously, she probably doesn’t – and that is just delightful. “Blooper Dance Party” (1080p, 5 minutes 18 seconds) is as excruciating a blooper reel as you’d imagine. At a little over five minutes of pure hell, be sure to skip this crap – there’s not a single truly funny gag in the bunch. “Ask the Cast” (1080p, 1 minute 22 seconds) is a brief featurette with Jamie Lee Curtis, Betty White, Sigourney Weaver and Kristen Bell. Bell reads three fan-created questions about various topics – like how to prepare for a job interview (what that has to do with the film…) – and asks her costars for their input. Everyone’s favorite golden girl does her thing, taking the most off-color approach compared to the other three. Yawn. It’s a shame that the best extra here is just a joke featurette with the cast –minus Jamie Lee Curtis – called “Funny or Die” (1080p, 3 minutes 2 seconds). Worse yet is that it isn’t even new, having originally appeared as an online exclusive at Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s humor-themed website of the same name (in fact you can view it here). The actresses pretend to promote their film in a send up to the sort of promotional crap that usually accompanies these films – except the interview goes horribly, horribly wrong. Admit it, it’s funny. Especially Sigourney Weaver spouting off her highest grossing movies to prove that she’s the biggest star in the room – “AVATAR! Aliens! Ghostbusters! AVATAR!” There are also 11 Deleted Scenes (1080p, 27 minutes 22 seconds total runtime) included on this disc. Eight of these excised scenes are exclusive to Blu-ray and many focus on the (confusingly) ever-popular Betty White. Note that all of these scenes feature optional intros by director Andy Fickman in which he talks about why each scene was cut. The 11 scenes are as follows: - “Sharing a Room” is an extended version of the confrontation between Marni and Joanna when the latter moves into Marni’s bedroom. - “Good Morning Sunshine” is an extended version of a scene from the film-proper. A rough night sleeping in the family tree house leaves Marni flustered and bumbling the next morning; she tells the family that she just got home from an all-nighter with Madonna. - “Photo Album Memories” is yet another scene extension (according to the director most of these extended scenes were trimmed for pacing and timing; the typical excuse) elongating an uncomfortable look back at high school through Marni’s yearbook. - “Grandma Bunny’s House” isn’t so much a deletion (nor is it exactly an extension); in fact it’s just sort of odd. Apparently Betty White’s Bunny was originally intended to be a spacey old women suffering from dementia, a subplot that was apparently ripped from the negative after various test audiences stated that it was kind of a downer (no shit). The original version of one of these scenes is included here. - “Meet Georgia King” is an introduction to Kristin Chenoweth’s southern-n-sweet wedding planner character, which was apparently all improv on her part. Still, not worth your time. - “Gail’s Shower” slows down the action and is basically nonsense. Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis (drenched from head to toe from a malfunctioning sink) engage in a sparring of words in the hotel. - “Ramona’s Dress” is another plot-halting scene in the same vein as the last one. Gail walks through the halls of the hotel still sopping wet, while people look on. Ramona gets a face full of water from a broken sink and uses her priceless dress as a towel. - “The Compost Heap” is a last minute deletion, but a superficial one all the same. Marni’s day goes from bad too much, much worse. - “Covered in Lard” features Kristen Bell completely covered in some disgusting prop lard. Seems like a terrible scene to shoot and it got cut (save for a few seconds) at the last minute. - “Riding the Silk” has the near-entire cast doing a dance number with Kristin Chenoweth. - “Bridal Shower” is a collection of odds and ends from a subplot that was ultimately shut down for running far too long. Gifts, gifts, gifts – gags, jokes, more Betty White; this set of scenes amounts to a whopping 8-minutes of removed material that focused on Joanna’s bridal shower and some of the gifts that she gave and received. All of it was rightfully cut. We also find the expected – and thankfully skippable – barrage of pre-menu bonus trailers and promos including a promo spot for “Disney 3D Blu-ray” (1080p, 1 minute 25 seconds) that hints at a few as-yet-unannounced 3D BD releases like “Bolt” and “A Nightmare Before Christmas.” A theatrical trailer for DJ Caruso’s stupidly titled “I Am Number Four” (1080p, 2 minutes 5 seconds) precedes a pair of trailers for the recently released “Secretariat” (1080p, 1 minute 11 seconds) and the soon-to-be-released “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure” both on Disney Blu-ray and DVD. A second set of trailers can be found under the “Sneak Peeks” tab, including a theatrical trailer for “Gnomeo and Juliet” (1080p, 2 minutes 32 seconds), a spot for Walt Disney’s animated masterpiece “Bambi” (4x3 1080p, 1 minute 15 seconds) coming to Blu-ray in a new Diamond Edition this spring, a brief promo for the ABC Family series “Pretty Little Liars” (1080p, 32 seconds), a Blu-ray and DVD trailer for “Tangled” (1080p, 1 minute 26 seconds) and – as proof that there is no God – a trailer for the blu-ray and DVD release of “Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2” (1080p, 2 minutes 10 seconds). Yes, they made a sequel to a movie that should have never, ever, been made in the first place. DISC TWO: DVD The standard def disc features a serviceable 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation and palatable English, Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mixes with subtitles in English, Spanish and French. Supplements include the three featurettes from the Blu-ray – “Following Fickman: On Set with the Director”, “Ask the Cast” and “Funny or Die” – and three of the deleted scenes: “Sharing a Room”, “Photo Album Memories” and “Riding the Silk”. Most of the same bonus trailers appear before the menu or in a similar “Sneak Peeks” submenu. All supplemental material is presented in 16x9-enhanced anamorphic widescreen. Disney gets some points for including a second copy of the film on DVD, but not many.
Packaging
As you might expect for a day-and-date Blu-ray release from Disney, “You Again” makes it’s way onto the format in a 2-disc Blu-ray + DVD combo pack from Walt Disney Home Entertainment via their more adult oriented Touchstone label. The film is packaged matter-of-factly in a Vortex eco-case with a cardboard slipcover that replicates the bland case art. This dual-disc release includes both a Region Free dual layer BD-50 and a Region 1 locked dual layered DVD-9.
Overall
“You Again” is predictable, safe and cliché. But most criminally, it’s a trite film with talented cast who are completely wasted and do nothing but stand around looking pretty and playing with groan-inducing slapstick humor. Someone could have probably made a very funny black comedy out of this premise – and done wonders with the cast – but, as it stands this Disney-fied production is too schmaltzy and sweet in it’s final act to really deliver on the nastiness promised in the first half hour. And, frankly, the film is such a waste of time, talent, money and, well, everything imaginable, that it actually made me like every single one of the people involved a little less. Oh well, the blu-ray release delivers in the technical aspects with impressive high def video and slightly above average sound (which is actually saying something for a dull romantic comedy), but provides only the bare essentials in terms of extras. “You Again” is a rental at best, and, really, not even that. Skip it and save yourself from the soul-crushing mediocrity within.
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