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High Road
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Millennium Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Anthony Arrigo (23rd March 2013). |
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The Film
 Improvisation has always, to varying degrees, been a part of comedic films. Some directors let their actors throw in a line or two to see how it changes the beat, whereas others (like Judd Apatow) give their actors free reign to riff as long as they’d like in hopes of catching some gold. “High Road” (2011) takes a different approach by actually letting the actors improvise the entire script, although I would still assume the basic skeleton of the plot has been adhered to in some fashion. It’s a bit of a novel concept. Usually there’s some script that the actors will at least work with, then the improv comes on top of that. But here, you can clearly tell that these actors are just winging it as they go along. The results vary – some guys just know how to hit the mark, while others stumble enough that you can almost hear the wheels furiously turning in their brains searching for a good line to spout out. While I didn’t totally dislike the film, it served as a clear reminder of why you should always have a good script to pull from. Fitz (James Pumphrey) is a mega stoner with few ambitions in life outside of playing with his band, slinging weed to his friends, and loafing around the house he shares with his girlfriend, Monica (Abby Elliott). After one of his buyers gets busted with a large quantity of the devil’s weed he’d sold to him, Fitz has a stereotypical paranoid stoner fantasy and assumes the cops will be after him next. So, he does what any irrational moron would do: he decides, on the spot, to immediately drive to Oakland so he can hide out with his estranged father. Only he doesn’t have a car. Lucky for him, his buddy Jimmy (Dylan O’Brien) stops by with his overbearing father (Rob Riggle) in tow. Jimmy convinces Fitz his dad is abusive, so Fitz conks him on the head with a bottle and they steal his car for their trip. Mildly amusing misadventures ensue, as expected. The all-improv style works until it doesn’t. What I mean by that is the loose feel that unwritten dialogue allows does lend a more authentic feel to the proceedings, but when the actors start stretching for their words things start to quickly unravel. Keen-eared viewers will be able to spot the numerous occasions in which an actor, lost for a moment, begins to repeat words or lines as a means of stalling until something workable pops into their grey matter. And it isn’t the kind of time-wasting verbosity that could’ve been cut out to give the dialogue a little more finesse. That quibble aside, I thought everyone did a commendable job. Even Pumphrey, who I’ve never heard of before this film, held his own against veterans of improvisation like Rob Riggle (who seriously KILLS it here) and Joe Lo Truglio (fans of MTV’s long-defunct “The State” (1993-1995) know he’s got the chops). Surprisingly, the worst performer wound up being Ed Helms, he of “The Hangover” (2009) fame. Helms was a fan favorite in those films, but he tends to flounder here. It isn’t so much that he has a hard time coming up with what to say so much as it’s exactly what he chooses to say that’s questionable. I felt like he was trying to be bizarrely humorous a bit too hard. Conversely, Abby Elliott, who shares a number of scenes with Helms, wiped the floor with him. Hell, she was the top performer here outside of Riggle. I can only assume the Elliott genes, inherited from her father, Chris, imbued her with the necessary skills to nail it. I’m also sure her tenure at “Saturday Night Live” (1975-present) didn’t hurt, either. With a threadbare plot and not much of a script, the film relies heavily on the misadventures Fitz and Jimmy have on their way to Oakland. Run-ins with weird folks (such as Tenacious D’s very own Kyle Gass), car accidents, strange doctors… It’s one odd encounter after another, but none of them are very memorable until we hit the climax, where Fitz reunites with his estranged father. An estranged father who dresses in drag to perform musical numbers at a local dive bar with practically no audience. And he’s obsessed with sandwiches. This guy should’ve shown up halfway through the movie instead, then maybe they’d be on to something. The film is a fun experiment in comedy, nothing to be taken too seriously; I only wish they’d attempted to tighten things up a bit while filming so it didn’t feel as improvised as it was.
Video
“High Road” hits Blu-ray with a 1.78:1 1080p 24/fps AVC MPEG-4 encoded image that’s very standard for HD. It looks to have been shot digitally, so expect little to no grain, good clarity, and a defined color palette that has a natural appearance. It has no pop or gloss to the picture; this is a simple, unprocessed image that looks perfectly satisfactory for the film.
Audio
Was the sound guy toking up during post? The English
Extras
Not much to peruse here. Cast & crew interviews (1080p) run for 15 minutes and 13 seconds. They spend an inordinate amount of time with Horatio Sanz (whose role lasts for half as long as his interview), and he’s basically just joking around the entire time. There’s some information to be found in here, but not enough that it’s worth watching. Bonus trailers (1080p) are included for the following: - “Puncture” runs for 1 minute and 42 seconds. - “Trespass” runs for 1 minute and 53 seconds. - “Fake” runs for 1 minute and 2 seconds. - “Faces in the Crowd” runs for 2 minutes and 17 seconds.
Packaging
The single disc comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keep case. The cover art features a lot of floating heads.
Overall
“High Road” might’ve been a great idea to whoever got high enough to pitch it, but the end result is a mixed bad that ultimately doesn’t work well enough to warrant a single viewing, let alone repeats.
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