Five Feet Apart Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Five Feet Apart Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 11, 2019

From Camille to Love Story, films featuring star-crossed love affairs doomed due to illness have been a staple of films, but, hoo boy, the past few years have certainly seen an uptick in this kind of curious subgenre. Into a field already littered with the cinematic graves (so to speak) of entries like The Fault in Our Stars comes Five Feet Apart, and it may be instructive to compare the key art for the two films, as evidenced by their Blu-ray covers: The Fault in Our Stars features the character played by Shailene Woodley hooked up to a portable oxygen unit, with the telltale hoses snaked around her face and under her nose, while Five Feet Apart ostensibly “improves” (?) on that by having both focal characters similarly adorned.

The “disease du jour” afflicting several characters in this film is cystic fibrosis, and there’s a feeling that the film wants to “educate” its audience while at the same time providing plenty of “three hankie” content as well. It’s probably a noble effort, but this film is so rife with clichés that it can never quite escape what may well be a kind of cheeky question like, “Haven’t we all seen someone die of this before?” In any case the doomed romance this time is between Stella Grant (Haley Lu Richardson) and Will Newman (Cole Sprouse). Some of the quieter scenes in the story are actually quite effective, but a late play for some really melodramatic plot developments struck me as downright exploitative. Needless to say, have at least three hankies available for the tearjerking finale.

Five Feet Apart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Five Feet Apart is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Captured with Arri Amiras and finished at a 2K DI (both datapoints courtesy of the IMDb), this is a generally sharp and well detailed looking transfer, though as can tend to be the case with digital capture, lighting conditions can materially alter fine detail. A lot of the film takes place inside (and in fact, in a hospital), and some of the dimmer, sometimes blue graded, material, can look a bit softer than other, more brightly lit moments. A social media aspect plays into things, and there are some moments that are supposedly "live streamed" that look considerably less precise than the bulk of the presentation. One late outdoor moment is probably intentionally hazy looking due to shooting conditions. The palette is not especially vibrant, again probably by design, but looks natural. There are no compression issues of any note.

Five Feet Apart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Five Feet Apart features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which attains some decent surround activity even within the cloistered confines of the hospital where Stella and Will are patients. There's good placement of background ambient effects, even when the film tends to anchor "main" dialogue front and center a lot of the time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film is stuffed to its veritable gills with source cues, and those tend to spill into the side and rear channels quite effectively. Fidelity is fine throughout the presentation.

Five Feet Apart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Justin Baldoni


• Crossing it Off: Making Five Feet Apart (1080p; 14:15) is a standard issue EPK.


• On the Set of Five Feet Apart (1080p; 6:29) has some decent candid footage which may appeal to fans.


• Attention to Detail (1080p; 5:55) is more EPK material, albeit focusing on the supposed technical accuracy of some of the depictions in the film.


• An Artist's Eye (1080p; 6:01) looks at the character of Will and his talents.


• Theatrical Fan Event (1080p; 18:52) seems to have been included in some kind of screening event and has more making of data.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 8:05)


• Alternate Ending (1080p; 1:59)

Five Feet Apart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're not overly sick and tired of films like this, Five Feet Apart offers some good performances (especially by Richardson, who is outstanding), even if it traffics in material that at this point seems stale and perhaps overly exploitative. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.