6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Sex, murder and revenge were never this funny. A spoof of the late 80s and early 90s suspense thrillers and murder mysteries, including Basic Instinct, Sleeping With The Enemy, Cape Fear and others. A cop/attorney (yes he's both) is seduced by a woman while his wife is having an affair with a mechanic. Lots of other subplots and visual gags in the style of Naked Gun.
Starring: Sean Young, Armand Assante, Sherilyn Fenn, Kate Nelligan, Christopher McDonaldThriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
William Goldman is one of the most celebrated screenwriters of his generation (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, The Princess Bride), but even Goldman has not been immune to the knowledge that part of his celebrity has been the result of the vagaries of critics, always a questionable lot. In Goldman’s fascinating account of the 1967-68 year on Broadway, The Season, Goldman talks quite a bit about critics and their influence on that particular avenue (and/or Way) of show business, at one point discussing his thesis of the so-called “charm show”, a perhaps quieter, gentler entertainment that on its face may not have any knock your socks off moments, but which generates enough, well, charm to merit being produced. Goldman talks about how timing can affect whether a charm show succeeds or fails, often depending on whether the critics are frankly in the mood for that kind of outing at the time they have to review it. Goldman makes the case that the critics were primed for My Fair Lady (in its Broadway incarnation), his paradigm of a charm show, turning it into a massive hit. Years later (during the 1967-68 season) they weren’t quite in the same mood for a show that Goldman (whether rightly or wrongly) relegates to the same charm show genre as My Fair Lady, a musical called The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, which opened and closed quickly in the spring of 1968 (and which starred future Mr. C from Happy Days, Tom Bosley) after failing to ignite the same critical rapture that the Lerner and Loewe Pygmalion musical had the previous decade. Maybe something at least somewhat analogous afflicted Fatal Instinct, for if one were to read the sometimes scabrous reviews this film endured when it was released in 1993, one might come to the conclusion that it’s a lame and unfunny send up of noir films and erotic thrillers in the same way that Airplane! skewered disaster films. Well, guess what? This particular critic laughed—and laughed a lot—at the, yes, juvenile and sometimes patently stupid goings-on in Fatal Instinct, perhaps proving that critical taste is questionable one way or the other. Perhaps critics back in the day had seen one too many "Zucker lite" entries to warrant cutting Fatal Instinct much slack. But the fact is, Fatal Instinct doesn't really require much slack cutting if one simply accepts it on its own patently silly terms.
Fatal Instinct is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Culled from the Metro Goldwyn Mayer catalog, Fatal Instinct shows a slight bit of fade at times, but generally speaking the palette is rather fresh and even sporadically quite vivid. Detail pops best in the most brightly lit scenes, though Reiner and DP Gabriel Baristain opt for "old school" techniques like soft focus for at least some close-ups of Young, something that tends to diminish fine detail. The transfer has a generally organic look, albeit one that's a bit soft quite a bit of the time.
Fatal Instinct's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 supports the film's goofy dialogue and sound effects effortlessly, though some fans of the film may be distressed that some of the original source cues have evidently been replaced here due to licensing issues (one of which completely kills a joke which directly references the original song utilized). Fidelity is fine, with no age related damage of any kind to warrant concern.
Those who steered far clear of Fatal Instinct back in the day due to the critical drubbing it endured may want to revisit the film again, for it's actually goofily enjoyable if taken on its own juvenile, unabashedly stupid terms. This is one of those films that, like Airplane! itself, just keeps throwing gags at the audience, hoping that something sticks. It turns out more than just the gum Lola keeps stepping on does stick, and Fatal Instinct comes Recommended.
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