Better Living Through Chemistry Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Better Living Through Chemistry Blu-ray Movie Review

Try better living through better movies instead...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown May 25, 2014

I wanted to love Better Living Through Chemistry. Scratch that. I needed to love Better Living Through Chemistry. A dark comedy starring Sam Rockwell as a small-town pharmacist caught in the throes of a self-medicated haze, an overbearing wife and the object of all his lustful desires? What could possibly go wrong? A lot apparently. Directors Geoff Moore and David Posamentier indulge in tired cliché after tired cliché, introducing very little that hasn't been done before, and been done with a far more nuanced touch. The troop of quirky, fatally flawed characters. The comically nightmarish descent into middle class hell. The sad-sack, self-destructive everyman emerging from his lifelong coma only to find himself on the verge of losing everything. Sex as a weapon. Love as a shaky punchline. Infidelity played for laughs. The desperation, the bad decisions, the excess, and the realization that happiness isn't a manufactured commodity or a substance-induced high. Better Living grows weirdly familiar and predictable almost from the start, yet rarely does anything memorable, Xeroxing dozens of smarter, funnier, edgier genre pics without grasping the essence of what makes a truly great dark comedy truly great. By film's end, I was ready to pop a few Excedrin Migraine, if only to quiet the dull roar of mediocrity that was causing me such pain.

Meet Doug Varney (Rockwell), a mild-mannered pharmacist with a browbeating, fitness-obsessed, control freak of a wife (Michelle Monaghan) and an angsty, overweight preteen son (Harrison Holzer). Trapped behind the counter of a local drugstore purchased from his unbearable father-in-law (Ken Howard), Doug is a slave to his wife, his circumstances and even one of his own employees (Ben Schwartz); a weary man meandering through life wondering if this is as good as it's ever going to get. Enter gorgeous femme Elizabeth Roberts (Olivia Wilde), a lovelorn trophy wife that makes a habit of drowning her troubles -- troubles like her husband, Jack (Ray Liotta) -- rather than dealing with them head on. Soon Doug forges a drug and alcohol-addled affair with the new woman of his dreams, begins to taste the air of freedom, and considers whether murder might be the solution to all his problems. The only question that remains: is Elizabeth Doug's salvation or damnation?

Better Living Through Chemistry is a film of frantically shifting pieces that never settle into a satisfying whole. Rockwell hits all the right notes but doesn't have the script necessary to shine. Monaghan grunts, screams and slaps on a pair of crazy eyes, all to commendable but equally unremarkable ends. Wilde boozes up and has a blast drunkenly manipulating Rockwell but... you guessed it, there just isn't enough quality material informing or driving her character, much like everyone else on screen. Moore and Posamentier's screenplay is the weak link in almost every regard. The film is competently shot and cast, no issues there. The tone strikes a perfect nerve, so nothing at fault there either. It all comes down to just how frightfully dull and weakly penned Doug's misadventures turn out to be. The laughs fall flat. The dialogue flatter. The third act, flatter still. Every saving grace is infected the moment it promises to deliver; every hint at something special reveals itself to be as painfully ordinary as the rest of the film. Redbox this dreary, exhausting dud if you must. But bypass it altogether if you can resist the temptation of a Rockwell movie with a killer premise.

Better Living Through Chemistry Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Blu-ray edition of Better Living Through Chemistry features a capable 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer that dutifully represents Moore and Posamentier's intentions without incident. Contrast is a bit lackluster by design, but skintones are nicely saturated, colors are natural and lifelike on the whole, and black levels are suitably deep and well-resolved. Detail is rather good too, with precisely defined edges and refined textures. Ringing is apparent on occasion, as is crush, but neither is very serious. Macroblocking, banding, aliasing and other eyesores are kept to a minimum, and nothing interferes with the integrity of the encode. All told, the film fares as well as it could.

Better Living Through Chemistry Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The same could be said of Better Living Through Chemistry's perfectly decent DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. The film's sound design doesn't afford the lossless mix much in the way of punch, power or presence, but there isn't much in the way of distractions or problems at all. Dialogue is clean, clear and intelligible at all times, prioritization is solid and dynamics don't disappoint. None of it stands out all that much either, mind you, but so it goes. The rear speakers are playful enough I suppose, particularly during the film's bike race, and the LFE channel gets the job done (even though the soundscape really doesn't call for much low-end support). Ultimately, it's a fine track. You just won't remember much about it an hour after the fact.

Better Living Through Chemistry Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Blu-ray edition of Better Living Through Chemistry doesn't include any special features.

Better Living Through Chemistry Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It isn't often that a film nearly puts me to sleep, but Better Living Through Chemistry was akin to an overdose of Ambien. Heavy eyes, groggy mind and all. It has a handful of moments -- moments that suggest it could have been so much more -- but those are fleeting, not to mention few and far between. Rockwell, Monaghan, Wilde and Liotta are wasted, the script is its own worst enemy, and almost everything about the production is either generic or derivative. The Blu-ray edition is better but still isn't all that remarkable. A solid but understated AV presentation is the highlight of the barebones disc. Proceed with caution.