Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Flypaper Blu-ray Movie Review

The Art of Getting Unstuck

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 7, 2012

Rob Minkoff is not a filmmaker who leaps to mind when someone mentions heist films, which may be one reason why the director of Stuart Little (I and II)and The Lion King (with Roger Allers) was attracted to this twisty script by the screenwriters of The Hangover. It was a chance for Minkoff to do something different. But Minkoff wasn't stepping too far outside his comfort zone, because writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore had created a story that, like The Hangover, often resembles a live-action cartoon: an outlandish situation peopled by bizarre caricatures, except that the setting is a bank not a bachelor party. Flypaper may be populated by criminals, but they're the kind with roots in Tarantino-land and the Coen Brothers. Indeed, director of photography Steven Poster says in the disc's extras that he and Minkoff used the Coens' films (among others) as a visual reference. Poster calls the film a screwball comedy—except that people get killed.

Lucas and Moore were clearly riffing on certain prior films, but it would give away too much to say which ones. Since they assume a sophisticated viewer who will be looking for clues and twists, they have people behave strangely right from the start, so that when you try to spot the person who doesn't fit, there are too many candidates to choose from. Minkoff and his talented cast obviously had fun with these loopy characters, and while the result bears little relation to reality, it's pleasantly entertaining if you're willing to play along.

Flypaper is set almost entirely inside a bank in an unnamed city in Illinois. The manager, Gordon Blythe (Jeffrey Tambor), happens to be a diabetic, which normally would be manageable, but it's about to become an issue. The security guard, Mr. Clean (Adrian Martinez), is a pervy fellow who wasn't entirely truthful on his employee application. One of the tellers, Kaitlin (Ashley Judd), is constantly talking about her upcoming wedding and even has wedding gifts stacked behind her station. A friend and fellow teller, Madge (recent Oscar winner Octavia Spencer), offers advice and support. On this particular day, the bank is also host to a security specialist who is upgrading their system; his name is Mitchell Wolf (Curtis Armstrong, who, for some of us, will always be Booger from Revenge of the Nerds and Charles de Mar in Better Off Dead).

Just before closing time, Tripp Kennedy (Patrick Dempsey) enters the bank and approaches Kaitlin's window. A sort of pest savant, Tripp asks to change a $100 bill into coins, but keeps altering the mix of quarters, dimes and nickels. He chatters at Kaitlin like a composite personality created by someone who'd read the DSM-IV like a Chinese menu, choosing random symptoms from each column: some autism to start, some schizophrenia for a main course, some OCD for dessert. Then a watch alarm goes off, and Tripp asks Kaitlin if there's a pharmacy nearby where he can refill his prescriptions.

Sounds suspicious, doesn't it? It gets worse. Tripp suddenly announces that the bank's about to be robbed just ast two competing groups of bank robbers burst in. The first gang is masked, professional and well-equipped, including automatic weapons. The two main members are long-time partners, Darrien and Weinstein (Mekhi Phifer, most recently a CIA agent on Torchwood: Miracle Day, and John Ventimiglia, restaurateur Artie Bucco on The Sopranos). For this job they've added a safecracker to handle the vault named Gates (Matt Ryan), who's turns out to be a little too trigger-happy for their tastes.

The second gang wouldn't know how to crack a vault if you gave them written instructions. In his interview in the disc's extra, Jeffrey Tambor compares them to "your aunt and uncle" robbing a bank, but the comparison is unfair to aunts and uncles everywhere. The gang of "Peanut Butter and Jelly", as they call themselves, hail from Alabama, don't wear masks, love to flash their tattoos, carry pistols and shotguns, and think "hi-tech" is using gray market C4 explosive to blow open an ATM machine. They're played by Tim Blake Nelson and Pruitt Taylor Vince, both of whom are specialists in Gothic satire (Southern or otherwise) and make the most of every opportunity here. (Even Phifer and Ventimiglia, who are very funny making small talk about kids' braces and how orthodontists are the real thieves, can't keep up with these two.)

Tempers flare, and so does a shootout, before Tripp manages to negotiate a truce by pointing out that each gang is targeting a different area of the bank. But someone has died during the hail of gunfire, and eventually Tripp figures out that the fatal bullet didn't come from the direction of either gang. Something else is going on, but what? Focusing on that question helps Tripp deal with the side effects of coming off his meds (or so it seems). When he's not focusing on the robbers, Tripp tries to persuade Kaitlin that she doesn't really want to marry her fiancé but would rather get involved with him.

Despite the body count, Flypaper is primarily a comedy, which is why Peanut Butter and Jelly are able to sustain injuries (entirely self-inflicted) that would have killed anyone else. They're Wile E. Coyote with Southern accents. At one point, Gates looks up an FBI list ranking bank robbers in order of most wanted. Darrien and Weinstein are number 12, while he's number 68 (but number 4 in cybercrimes). Peanut Butter and Jelly are number 674. On their most recent job, they were picked up because their car broke down after they'd robbed a Jiffy Lube store. "It's not that ironic to us", observes Jelly.

Flypaper Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Flypaper was shot digitally on the Red One system by Steven Poster, who worked with director Minkoff on the Stuart Little films. Poster's flair for crafting the visual element of off-beat stories is evident in his long association with writer-director Richard Kelly, for whom Poster shot Donnie Darko, Southland Tales and The Box.

For Flypaper, Poster created a simple, unobtrusive camera style that makes the most of the practical location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the film was made. The 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from IFC and MPI Media provides a clean, noiseless and detailed image that showcases all the familiar advantages of the Red One. Post-production on a digital intermediate has been handled with care to take out the harshness that sometimes plagues digitally originated productions, and the colors have been "warmed up" and re-tinted to a more natural, film-like appearance. All of this has been achieved without compromising black or contrast levels or introducing artifacts. In the latter regard, it helps that MPI has used a BD-50, because the extras are nearly twice as long as the feature, and they're all in HD. Other publishers, please take note. (Image Entertainment, I'm talking to you.)

Flypaper Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Flypaper's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track provides some unusually aggressive audio sequences involving gunfire, shattering glass and explosions. These have been effectively mixed with significant rear channel activity and bass extension. The rear channels also provide noticeable ambient noise in environments like the vault room and various passageways that one crew (the competent one) uses to infiltrate the bank. Dialogue is clear and centered, except for an occasional word off-camera. The mock-serious score by John Swihart (Youth in Revolt) plays at just the right level to enhance the comedy without interfering with it.

Flypaper Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews: The voice of the interviewer is barely audible off-camera, and it's clear that he's reading from the same set of questions in each interview. Minor editing has cleaned up pauses and breaks in the Q&A, but there's not enough substance here to justify over two and a half hours of running time. With judicious editing, the best of the interviews could have been organized into a good "behind the scenes" featurette. All of the interviews are 1080i and have a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.
• Patrick Dempsey (18:35)
• Ashley Judd (9:11)
• Mehki Phifer (7:23)
• Jeffrey Tambor (10:51)
• Tim Blake Nelson (14:58)
• Pruitt Taylor Vince (15:45)
• John Ventimiglia (13:25)
• Matt Ryan (9:01)
• Robb Minkoff (13:52)
• Peter Safran (13:54)
• Scott Moore (20:48)
• Steven Poster (10:32)


• Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 2:07): Some minor spoilers, but not bad as trailers go.


• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Love Wedding Marriage, The Trip, Brighton Rock and the remake of Burke and Hare. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Flypaper Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lucas and Moore wrote Flypaper before The Hangover, but it took them twelve years to get it made. Still, the two scripts have much in common. Just as in Flypaper, the characters in The Hangover are trying to solve a mystery (i.e., what happened to the groom?), and they have to suffer through a lot of strange (for them) and funny (for us) experiences to do so. Flypaper isn't as laugh-out-loud hilarious, in part because the ratio of mystery to comedy is higher, and in part because the stakes are greater—if the characters don't solve the mystery, they're likely to wind up dead. One's enjoyment of the film depends on one's willingness to accept the high- concept artificiality of it all. You'll know if the film's for you within minutes after Tripp starts blabbering to Kaitlin. I enjoyed it, but to each their own.