Cavemen Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Cavemen Blu-ray Movie Review

They're gonna make it after all.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 4, 2014

Along with the ebbing and flowing of the tides, the procession of the seasons, and death and taxes, there’s probably no more predictable element in our lives (or at least in our entertainment) than some new rom-com stumbling down the pike attempting to illuminate the lives of improbably good looking and equally improbably verbally facile twentysomethings caught in that awkward age of romantic yearning and careers that haven’t quite fully blossomed yet. If you’ve seen any film or television series that even faintly resembles that description, chances are you’ve already seen Cavemen before the opening production company credits even begin rolling. Written and directed by one Herschel Faber, who by the looks of some online photos seems to be considerably older than his focal subjects (and therefore perhaps should have known better), Cavemen traipses through a laundry list of formula conventions that offers a few sweet moments along the way but which is ultimately merely an amalgamation of clichés and predictable plot points. Cavemen is centered on a group of young guys who live in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles which they have partitioned off with curtains and which they have nicknamed The Cave. There’s a certain lack of privacy (“If one of us is having sex, all of us are having sex,” one character proclaims to a shocked date at one point), but there’s also an inevitable camaraderie. The main focus is on Dean (Skylar Astin, not one of those Astins), an aspiring screenwriter who is in fact attempting to craft his first screenplay about a bunch of friends living in a warehouse nicknamed The Cave. That’s about as “meta” as Cavemen gets, for the rest of this film is decidedly earthbound, with an almost obsessive devotion to the standard practices of this particular genre.

Faber wastes little time in giving us a grabbag of types surrounding Dean. There’s Jay (Chad Michael Murray), the horndog raconteur who anecdotes about his sexual conquests are thought (by Jay, if by no one else) to be providing grist for Dean’s screenwriting mill. And there’s Andre (Dayo Okeniyi, who bears a rather amazing resemblance to a young Malcolm Jamal-Warner), a guy with a wandering eye who is nonetheless able to charm his hot tempered girlfriend merely by calling her “baby”. Similarly, Pete (Kenny Wormald) is urged by his girlfriend to finish a story about a long ago hookup, only to have her storm out of a club in anger (only to have her return moments later). But the most singular group member is also Cavemen’s most obvious prognosticator of exactly where this film is going, literally from the first scene. Dean’s best friend is a female, a gorgeous woman named Tess (Camille Belle) whom Dean dated once a long, long time ago. Dean is searching for love, if only to finish his screenplay which is ostensibly about finding love, but even with Tess’ languid eyes staring him in the face, he continues to look elsewhere. Hmmm—wonder how that plot point will work out.

Cavemen lumbers through its various predictable plot points, which include everything from a completely derivative montage of horrid first dates (would the unbelievably articulate and smart Dean really be so crass as to use the term “retard”, thereby offending a woman with a developmentally disabled sister?) to Jay and Tess briefly hooking up to Dean learning valuable life lessons from his precocious nine year old nephew. The film has a few flashes of originality, including Dean’s regular hook-ups with a free spirit named Sara (Megan Stevenson), and some relatively amusing (relatively being a relative term, no to put too fine a point on it) messages delivered by the subway’s speaker system which tell Dean what a loser he is. But these are brief oases in what is otherwise a resolutely conventional enterprise.

Astin, who made such an impression on stage in the glorious Spring Awakening and then did nice work in Pitch Perfect, is suitably sweet as Dean, though Faber’s screenplay gives him precious little to build his character on. Belle is certainly one of the more glamorously beautiful young actresses working in films today, but even she struggles to make Tess much more than the inevitable pot of gold at the end of a very long rainbow. Murray is really kind of fun (if quite smarmy) as Jay. Perhaps the film’s biggest surprise is a cameo by Jason Patrick as an alcohol fueled agent who takes an interest in Dean (yet another completely rote plot point). (One has to assume Faber has compromising photos of some sort of Patric, whose appearance in this film is otherwise inexplicable.)

The one ostensible plus in Cavemen is its relative brevity. Don’t have the patience to sit through, say, seven seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Mary admittedly being a thirtysomething when the show started) or perhaps more appropriately ten seasons of Friends, you’ll get a lot of the same flavor, if very little of the concomitant comedy, in about 90 or so minutes. You’ve seen this all before for the most part, and unfortunately an attractive cast can only serve as so much of a distraction when the film is ultimately so hackneyed.

Cavemen Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cavemen is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Digitally shot with the Arri Alexa system (sorry, I'm old school—I just can not get used to seeing "captured with the Alexa" in the closing credits roll), Cavemen generally looks great in high definition. The Alexa is able to (yikes) capture a fairly wide spectrum of light, and with strong contrast also entering the mix, the film looks equally sharp in both brightly lit outdoor sequences and some of the more dimly lit segments like several scenes which take place inside various bars and clubs. There is a very slight sprinkling of noise in a few isolated scenes (see screenshot 16) that mars what is otherwise a crisp and appealing presentation that features excellent clarity and an accurate looking palette.

Cavemen Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

What would a proto-indie bromance or rom-com be without lots of alternative source cues? Just like it follows virtually every other trope in these genres, Cavemen also trundles down an expected path with its lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, and it's the music that generally provides the most consistent surround activity. When the film ventures outdoors, or even in some of the subway scenes, there's good attention paid to ambient environmental effects, and dialogue is also directional at times as well (a recurring gag has Dean watching a Dating Game type television show, and the separation and ambient differences in these scenes is very well handled). Fidelity is excellent and the track sports no issues of any kind to warrant concern.

Cavemen Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:39)

Cavemen Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While there's nothing patently horrible about Cavemen, and in fact the cast is attractive and committed, the story is so incredibly cliché ridden that it's hard to work up much more than a middling "meh" for the resulting film. Anyone who's ever seen anything remotely like Cavemen is going to know exactly where this thing is headed within about 30 seconds of its opening scene. Maybe Faber should have stayed in his cave a little longer to come up with something more innovative. For those with an interest in the cast, this Blu-ray's technical merits are generally excellent.