Highball Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		1.5

Highball Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 24, 2022

Frugality is generally thought to be an at least somewhat admirable trait, at least if not taken to extremes, but in the filmmaking business, it can be virtually nonexistent. Some may feel that's actually a good thing, at least should they ever stumble across Highball, a decidedly odd effort from Noah Baumbach that owes its existence to the fact that he wrapped Mr. Jealousy early and with a little cash still in hand, and decided more or less on the fly to retain some of the cast for a few days and to try to fashion a new production with his remaining funds. A cast party for Mr. Jealousy may have frankly been a better use of the monies, since Highball, which Baumbach kind of understandably later disowned, is, as Baumbach himself is on record as stating, pretty much a "mess", though it has the same sort of "eclectic" cast that made Mr. Jealousy kind of interesting.

Like a number of Baumbach entries, Highball is in essence a take on material covered in sitcoms like Friends in particular, with a gaggle of 20- or 30-something folks who gather and interact, in this case not at a coffee shop but at an apartment and during festivities around three separate holidays. "Jesse Carter" gets the screenplay credit (as mentioned above, Baumbach had his name removed from the film), and if there was a screenplay, Mr. "Carter" may have wanted to work on it a bit more diligently. This has a loosey-goosey improvisational feel that occasionally pays (arguably minor) dividends, but which often comes off here as incredibly labored and self indulgent.

The cast may be a calling card for some, as it includes Baumbach himself in addition to Eric Stoltz, Annabella Sciorra, Peter Bogdanovich, Justine Bateman, Rae Dawn Chong, and Ally Sheedy, among others.

Highball Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Highball is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the MVD Marquee Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. MVD tends not to include a ton of technical information with their releases, and that's once again the situation here, so I'm at a bit of a loss to know exactly what the workflow of this transfer was, but I'm kind of wondering if there was some telecine involved, since this has a kind of old video quality, for want of a better description. While the palette is reasonably robust, it's skewed pretty noticeably toward blues a lot of the time, and in fact there's kind of an unusual occurrence of (no pun intended) blue crush at times, when blues are on blues. Clarity and detail levels are both pretty widely variable (and there are moments that look positively out of focus, which considering the production issues later discussed by Baumbach and which are covered in the featurette on this disc as well may not be that surprising). There is occasional slight age related wear and tear to be seen. Grain is quite heavy and doesn't resolve particularly naturally (look at the white shirt in screenshot 3).

Highball Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Highball features LPCM 2.0 audio which supports this talky film well enough. The sound design is not especially ambitious, and as such there's not a ton to report here in terms of any "wow" moments, but dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

Highball Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Highball (HD; 1:13:45) is perhaps unintentionally insightful as to what may have gone wrong with this and includes some good interviews with producer Joel Kastelberg among others.


• Trailers includes Highball (SD; 2:01) along with trailers for other releases from MVD.

Highball Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Baumbach completists may want to check this out, but the fact that Baumbach himself doesn't want to really be associated with this effort may tell you all you need to know about Highball. Audio is fine and the making of featurette really rather interesting, but video has some issues, for those who may be considering making a purchase.