Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Excess Baggage Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 18, 2019

In 1997, Alicia Silverstone was one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. She was coming off great success in the hit 1995 Comedy Clueless and was a key player in the admittedly disastrous but nevertheless financially successful and heavily advertised Batman & Robin, in which she played "Batgirl," niece to Bruce Wayne's Butler, Alfred. Excess Baggage, produced by her company "First Kiss," released just over two months following Batman. The film was not a financial success, earning back less than its $20,000,000 production costs, but did pair Silverstone with another hot up-and-comer, Benicio del Toro, whose appearance in 1995's The Usual Suspects put the star on the map and paved the way for a healthy career on the screen.

Emily Hope (Alicia Silverstone), heiress to a fortune of millions, stages her own kidnapping to secure her father’s ransom money. The film begins with the scheme nearly at its end. She places the final phone call, tapes her ankles together and her mouth closed, handcuffs her wrists, and locks herself in the trunk of a green BMW in a parking garage, the coup de grâce of a plan executed to perfection. But before her father can come rescue her, the vehicle is stolen by a longtime car thief named Vincent Roche (Benicio del Toro). The two ultimately find themselves entangled in various schemes while evading pursuers on the road. Emily's uncle Ray (Christopher Walken) is amongst those hot on their trail.

Excess Baggage exists in no-man’s land. It’s not particularly funny, it’s not particularly exciting, the characters aren’t particularly engaging, the acting isn’t particularly of note. Nothing about the movie stands apart, nothing about it draws the audience in, but nothing overly pushes the audience away. It’s a quintessential example of movie purgatory, a film that’s perfectly watchable but entirely forgettable. Director Marco Brambilla, who follows up his debut, and best, film, Demolition Man, with Excess Baggage, does little to visually heighten awareness or engagement. The film is a fairly large falloff from Demolition Man, which is obviously a very different kind of film, but in that picture as with Excess Baggage, Brambilla oversaw several top performers in memorable roles. His cast in Excess Baggage includes the venerable Christopher Walken, but there’s just nothing of interest and no tonal balance to make the movie go beyond. It’s a solid enough time waster but there’s no reason to keep the movie in mind for any future engagements.

Excess Baggage Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Almost the entirety of Excess Baggage appears heavily processed. Grain is frozen in place, and to make matters worse, jagged edges abound and edge enhancement appears sporadically (1:09:40 being the most egregious example). Spotting and speckling are not major shortcomings but several scenes do suffer from such. The most egregious offender is persistent macroblocking which is in high supply throughout. The image is by-and-large a compression and processing disaster. The silver lining is that close-ups occasionally showcase fair detail. Pores and other skin textures are fine, for the most part. City details, interior and exterior alike, are fairly sharp. A diner scene around the one-hour mark is about the best movie looks for relative clarity, detail, and lack of extreme compression maladies, but such still remain here. But for the most part, the image is a mess. Skin appears pasty, details hopelessly flat, and every shot is in some way less than anything approaching perfect. There is a decent feel for color: orange and yellow jackets, automobiles, neon signs, some natural greenery, and black levels are not atrocious. But there's major room for improvement.

Excess Baggage Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Excess Baggage features a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Music finds adequate width out to the sides but clarity is definitely left wanting. There's not much feel for low end support to score or popular beats, either. The track features some decent sound traversal, such as a chopper flying by (as heard from inside a building) around the nine-minute mark or a semi truck rolling past at highway speed around the 64-minute mark. There is poorly resolved, but baseline effective, dialogue reverb in chapter four. An explosion in chapter five offers fair stage involvement but little feel for rich, deep bass or elemental clarity. Voices amplify around the stage in the same chapter a few minutes later, but again to only modest effect. The track is primarily defined by front-center dialogue which is well prioritized and enjoys adequate definition.

Excess Baggage Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Excess Baggage contains no supplemental content. The main menu screen contains only a "Play" button and a subtitle toggle. The menu image is a zoomed-in version of the same one seen on the Blu-ray case (not the slipcover). Sadly, the still photo on the menu screen is the best looking component on the entire disc.

The release is perhaps most notable as being amongst the first in Mill Creek's line of "I Love the 90s" Blu-rays to ship with updated, and more colorful, "Retro VHS" slipcovers. From a base layout perspective, it's similar to Mill Creek's 80s-style slipcovers. Aesthetically, it's more colorful. The front image is at least different than the artwork on the Blu-ray case proper. A "comedy" sticker is affixed to the front, right over del Toro's chest, and Mill Creek's "I love 90s" labeling appears top-left. The box includes a Siskel & Ebert quote at the bottom. The VHS tape, which is sliding out the right side of the case, is a bright yellow color. It looks fresh and relatively new. There's no real handling wear on it or any of the stickers, including the title sticker in the middle or either of the two off to the sides: a "please be kind, remember to rewind" notice on the left (in blue and yellow Blockbuster color) and a PG-13 ratings sticker on the right. The right hand spine continues the illusion with the film's title appearing on a red sticker along the VHS tape's spine, humorously with a Blu-ray logo at the bottom. Of note is that the little tab that allows or prevents recording over a tape is intact. The slip's rear side shows the bottom of the VHS tape sticking out from a fairly standard back cover layout that caters to the Blu-ray, not a VHS box.

Excess Baggage Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Excess Baggage is not a particularly great film, but neither is it a particularly horrendous film. It's stymied by a barrage of bland, from the scriptwriting to the performances, from the story ebbs and flows to the locations. It's the definition of cinema mediocrity. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Mill Creek's Blu-ray; "mediocrity" would be a vast improvement. While the 5.1 lossy audio is decent enough, the 1080p picture quality is in shambles and there are no supplements. Skip it.