Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Easy Money Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 9, 2020

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.

Monty Capuletti is a baby photographer by day and a degenerate...by day, too. He’s happily married to Rose (Candy Azzara) with whom he has two daughters, one of whom is about to tie the knot. He doesn’t like the guy, and dislike runs in the family. His wealthy mother-in-law Kathleen (Geraldine Fitzgerald) has a strong disliking for Monty, or perhaps better said his bad habits. He smokes, he drinks, he gorges himself on junk food, he gambles, and he hangs out with a bad crowd, including his best buddy Nicky (Joe Pesci). She finds him a disgusting, slovenly human being. Monty receives a late-night phone call from his mother-in-law’s lawyer. She’s died in a plane crash and in her will she bequeaths her department store -- worth about ten million dollars -- to Monty and his family, but only if he can get his life under control under her rules in one year’s time. That means no smoking, no drinking, no gambling, no philandering...nothing that makes Monty Monty. Suddenly, Monty’s life is turned upside down. Can he make the necessary lifestyle changes, and stick with them, for 365 days? And if he does succeed in cleaning up his act, will Monty suddenly revert back to his old ways after one year and blow all of that money at the track and at the bar?

A first-rate cast does its best to carry second-rate material that is often bogged down by its far less interesting side story that follows Monty's daughter's wedding night jitters and subsequent feud with her new husband. Those scenes can't help but feel like filler and prove disruptive to Dangerfield's schtick, which when center focus is quite good as he lives up his degenerate lifestyle and then suddenly turns around when he's forced to eat lettuce and exercise to humorous result. He's supported by a quality effort from a fast-living Joe Pesci and good work from the reliable Jeffrey Jones who stands to gain from his failure.

Easy Money Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Easy Money Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.