6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
To inherit his mother-in-law's colossal fortune, a hard living, gambling addict must change his unhealthy ways before it gets the best of him.
Starring: Rodney Dangerfield, Joe Pesci, Geraldine Fitzgerald (I), Tom Noonan, Jennifer Jason LeighComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 1.5 | |
Audio | 2.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
Note: 'Easy Money' is currently only available in a two-film bundle with 'Men at Work.'
Before broke baseball player Monty Brewster inherited a tidy sum of money which he had to spend without
having anything to show for it in order to inherit much more, Monty Capuletti (Rodney Dangerfield) and his family stood to inherit a fortune -- but only
if he could clean up his act. What is it with guys named Monty, big inheritances, and life-changing stipulations? Director James Signorelli's Easy
Money released two years before Brewster's Millions but both share a few basic plot similarities. The 1985 Richard Pryor film is the
superior of the two -- it's funnier and more dramatically fruitful -- but here Rodney Dangerfield does what he does best, living it up as a foul-mouthed
nobody who must change his ways en route to changing his life.
Easy Money's Blu-ray release is hard on the eyes. It is painfully obvious from the opening moments that Shout! Factory has utilized an old master that is in no way fit for Blu-ray. The picture appears processed and pasty, flat and inorganic. Grain has been scrubbed and textures have been rendered lifeless and lacking anything resembling natural complexity. Facial textures have been erased of all but the most cursory details and environments are likewise hopelessly devoid of more than crude detailing. Colors fare well enough, particularly the most punchy tones (Monty's red pajamas on Christmas morning midway through the film), but there's little that otherwise appears fully saturated and brilliantly buoyant. Black crush is in evidence in darker scenes and skin tones are pasty. Adding insult to injury are a number of splotches and speckles, some popping up randomly, others baked onto full shots. Videophiles will certainly balk, but those just looking for the movie in high definition will find the presentation at least a little more fruitful than older standard definition releases.
Easy Money's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack doesn't fare much better in the quality department against its video counterpart. It is frequently uneven in pitch; the wedding dress scene around the seven-minute mark struggles to find any sense of organic detail when the dress is ruffled, instead crumpling with a manufactured, hard-edged sound that simply betrays any sense of ambient reality. The same is true for support sounds at the race track at the 17-minute mark. Everything in these scenes just comes across as mushy and disheveled, which is also again the case at a key scene at the 88 minute mark where the various elements never come together with any sort of audible coherence or fluidity. On the plus side, basic musical clarity satisfies and it pushes well enough out to the left and right edges. Meanwhile, dialogue images we'll towards the middle and delivery is clear and well prioritized. Like the video, this track will get listeners through the movie, but expect some obvious shortcomings and downright failures at certain points.
As it ships as part of the double feature with Men at Work, Easy Money contains only the film's Trailer (1080i, 2:14).
Easy Money never puts everything together with the same charm and flow as Brewster's Millions. The cast is excellent and does all it can to prop up uneven material but it's never quite enough to allow the movie to gel. When it's on it's quite a bit of fun, but the side story gets in the way and the script is otherwise too uneven to work in feature length. Shout! Factory's Blu-ray is quite the disappointment. Borderline rotten video and subpar audio are supported by a practically absentee selection of extra content. For the film's biggest fans only.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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