Hootie & the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Hootie & the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 1, 2024

There was a famous old Elvis greatest hits album which proclaimed 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong, to which I may have impertinently asked at some point, "Why not?" While I of course appreciate Elvis' contributions to music and other media, I'm just not that big of an actual fan, and I have to say I'm kind of in somewhat the same boat with regard to Hootie and the Blowfish, whose debut album offered here on audio Blu-ray may not have made it to the 50,000,000 mark, but sold well enough that it's still included in the list of all time best selling albums in the United States. The album spawned three charting singles and quickly established the band as A list attractions, and while not exactly innovative in any major way, provides a really affable and enjoyable listening experience within an arguably somewhat unambitious context.

The album's track list can be seen in the screenshots of the disc menu accompanying this review.

Hootie & the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The disc's AVC encoded video content is simply a static menu, and this is one of those "column A" releases from Rhino / Warner Music Group where they've authored things so that the color buttons on your remote allow you to toggled through codecs, so you may not actually need to have your monitor or display even on.

Hootie & the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Hootie and the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Mirror features Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options. It's been really interesting to delve into the generally fantastic sounding glut of audio Blu-rays Rhino in particular has been releasing lately, because the difference in some of the Atmos mixes in particular is quite striking. This is another release where the Atmos track is perfectly immersive and rather nicely spacious, but where I frankly preferred the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, which is noticeably brighter and I'd argue just flat out louder. Both of the surround tracks offer excellent engagement of the side and rear channels, and occasionally you can hear some height from the Atmos speakers as in the guitar opening of "Only Want to Be With You", but, again, the differences between the two surround tracks may not be as dramatic as some may expect.

Hootie & the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no on disc supplements. An insert booklet has brief statements from the band members (statements which are frankly a bit hard to read, in a tiny font in red placed against largely black backgrounds), along with credits.

Hootie & the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Darius Rucker has a great, distinctive voice, and the band arrangements are almost always nicely done, but I find a lot of the writing on this album to be kind of standard issue. Audio is great sounding, but I personally enjoyed the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 version even more than the Dolby Atmos version. One way or the other, at least for fans of Hootie, the Blowfish and/or this album, this audio Blu-ray comes Recommended.