Barry Munday Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Barry Munday Blu-ray Movie Review

Brings new meaning to the phrase “bust a nut.”

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater December 13, 2010

Does anyone else think it’s completely bizarre and possibly beyond coincidence that Barry Munday is now the third film starring Patrick Wilson —of Watchmen fame—to feature castration? In 2005’s Hard Candy, he plays a sexual predator who gets duped by a potential victim into thinking his testicles have been removed, and the following year’s Little Children, in which Wilson is a depressed stay-at-home dad, ends with one of the characters lopping off his own downstairs junk. Here, as the titular Barry Munday, Wilson gets his nuts irreparably bludgeoned by the tooting end of a trumpet. And this is how the movie starts. The film, which premiered at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, is an indie comedy in the Mike Judge mold, about a sex-obsessed, 30-something-but-still-dependent-on-mom shlub who eventually accepts responsibility and grows up. Like its eponymous character, the film is crass, unlovable, and unfunny. It leaves you only with the dull, nauseating ache of having been kicked in the crotch.

Barry Munday, deep in thought.

Patrick Wilson is a good-looking guy, but boy can he play dorky when it’s required of him. His Barry Munday is a goateed, ill-dressed, soon-to-be- middle-aged loser whose every waking hour is seemingly spent thinking about or pursuing sex. The horn dog can’t even sit down to eat a slice of pizza without ogling the cleavage of a nearby janitor and slipping into a lecherous daydream. “Until that day,” he says in dry narration, “I couldn’t imagine living for anything except women.” The day in question, of course, is the fateful day his, um, fruit basket was utterly pulped by the trumpet- wielding father of a potential conquest, resulting in the involuntary removal of his testes. Shortly thereafter—and out of the blue—he’s served a paternity suit from Ginger Farely (Judy Greer), a frazzle-haired, implausibly dowdy frump with whom Barry once shared a drunkenly unremembered tryst outside a dive bar. She’s definitely not his type—although her sister (Chloë Sevigny), a sexy student and part-time stripper, is—but the loss of his family jewels and subsequent drop in testosterone has set sex aside and forefronted certain long-term concerns. Namely, he knows that this is his last chance to ever father a child. It’s now or never. He decides to take an active role in the pregnancy—taking Ginger for awkward visits to her ob-gyn, and getting to know her family—and in the process (surprise!), he begins to grow up and fall in love. Despite his lack of testicles, by the end, he’s more of a man than he ever was.

Yes, the film more than superficially resembles Knocked Up—which is also about impending fatherhood as a catalyst for maturity—but it’s much, much less funny. Writer/director Chris D’Arienzo, adapting Frank Turner Hollon’s novel Life is a Strange Place, simply tries too hard to reach an unnecessary level of indie comedy quirkiness. As if having a sex fiend get busted in the nards with a horn isn’t kooky enough, D’Arienzo adorns the film with unsupportable, nearly Napoleon Dynamite-trumping amounts of kitsch. The tackiness of motivational posters and the sad classless squalor of chintzy interior design are exploited for the sake of sheer oddity. Subsidiary characters are unbelievably wacky for no real reason—like Boardwalk Empire’s Shea Whigham, who plays Barry’s competitive air guitarist best friend—and there’s a distastefully uncomfortable scene where Barry attends a support group for men with mutilated genitals. Fellow sufferers include a man with a severed penis (“the end pokes out like a turtle”), a dude with a 16” trouser snake (“as thin as a rope”), and a poor guy with no genitals at all (“I pee through my anus.”) While Barry smirks and cracks up, we check our watches to see how much longer is left until his inevitable transformation into an adult. It can’t come soon enough.

But when it does come, the from-one-end-of-the-spectrum-to-the-other shift in tone seems too drastic. Can a movie where the main character chortles when asking a doctor if it’s true that women sometimes poop during childbirth really earn a “heartwarming” happy ending? Trust me, you won’t want to stick around past act two to find out. Barry Munday has a few early funny moments, but as the film wears on (and on), the forced eccentricity begins to chafe. I know this is a comedy, but the way the characters act and interact bears little resemblance at all to actual human behavior. Worse, the film squanders a potentially fantastic cast, leaving Malcolm McDowell, Cybill Shepherd, Billy Dean Williams, and Jean Smart in the proverbial lurch, with ill-defined and poorly written roles. Chloë Sevigny comes closest to having an actual subplot of her own— she’s a successful student by day, pole dancer by night—but this ultimately has no bearing whatsoever on the story’s outcome. The two leads, then, struggle to carry the entire film, a challenge since their characters are so inherently unlikable at first. Judy Greer’s Ginger—a redhead, of course—is both a physical and emotional ugly duckling, with a wardrobe and attitude that are equally terrible. She never seems even remotely “real.” Patrick Wilson is more convincing—he’s the kind of fashionless goofball you might spot at Chili’s on a Friday night—but his talents are wasted on weak material. By the end, Barry Munday may have grown a pair, metaphorically speaking, to replace the set he lost, but as a comedy, the film is completely impotent.

Barry Munday Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

You shouldn't expect any high definition eye candy from this indie comedy, but Magnolia's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer of Barry Munday is, if not perfect, at least perfectly acceptable. The movie was shot on film, and while the grain structure is a bit chunky at times, it's clear there's been no excess DNR, edge enhancement, or other digital tinkering. The film's overall clarity can't compete with its big-studio comedy counterparts—which are often filmed with sharper lenses and better lighting—but there's adequate detail in the high definition image if you look at telltale indicators like facial and clothing texture. Likewise, color is restrained and realistic, with warm skin tones and occasional splashes of vividness, like the lights at the strip club. Black levels are decent, but the image, as a whole, looks somewhat flat and lifeless. Though the film sits on a 25 GB single-layer disc, I didn't spot any obtrusive compression artifacts. Imagine "low budget comedy" and you'll have a good idea how Barry Munday looks.

Barry Munday Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In the same vein, the film's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track gets the job done, even if it lacks punch and aural panache. This is a talkie comedy, after all, so you shouldn't expect whiz-bang cross-channel effects, pin-drop precision, or throaty dynamics, but Barry Munday makes due with what it has. The rear channels see limited—but appreciated—use, giving the film's barrooms, dining rooms, strip clubs, and restaurants appropriate soundfield-filling ambience. The film's idiosyncratic song selections are also panned into the surround speakers, and the music has satisfactory presence, especially Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again," which plays while Chloë Sevigny does her sultry pole dance. (I'd be lying if I said this wasn't the best part of the movie. Not necessarily because it's sexy, but just because it isn't dull. Plus, Sevigny actually is a great dancer.) The dialogue, at risk of sounding like a commercial for zit cream, is clean, clear, and under control.

Barry Munday Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Chris D'Arienzo, Patrick Wilson, and Judy Greer: The director and stars sit down for a laugh-filled track that's far more entertaining than the film itself.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 24:00 ): Includes twelve cut scenes, with optional commentary.
• Outtakes: Can't Stop Laughing (SD, 4:13): Unfortunately, I couldn't start laughing. Okay, kidding. There are some funny alternate takes here.
• Gag Reel (SD, 6:23): The usual assortment of bust-ups. It goes on for about five minutes too long.
• Your Penis and You (SD, 3:21): A fake video about coping with genital mutilation.
• HDNet: A Look at Barry Munday (1080i, 4:08): A typical HDNet promo, with clips from the film and sound bytes from Patrick Wilson and director Chris D'Arienzo.
• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment (1080p, 7:27): Trailers for current and upcoming Magnolia releases, and a promo for HDNet.

Barry Munday Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Barry Munday is yet another case of an indie comedy trying much too hard to be charmingly offbeat, only to end up off-puttingly charmless. Think of it as Mike Judge-lite, diet-Apatow, a watered-down Knocked Up. On the plus side, the technical specs on this Blu-ray are decent, and the included audio commentary is more fun than the film itself, but unless you're completely starved for low-brow comedy, I wouldn't even consider this one for a rental.