Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Making Mr. Right Blu-ray Movie Review

Even Androids Get the Blues

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 27, 2016

Director Susan Seidelman had a surprise hit with 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan, but none of her films since then has achieved a similar success. Susan benefitted from the prescence (in a supporting role) of an up-and-coming singer named Madonna, who, by the time the film hit theaters, had exploded into a superstar. Filmmakers dream of such lucky timing, and Seidelman may have been hoping for a similar boost when she cast performance artist Ann Magnuson as the lead in her next film, Making Mr. Right. Like Madonna, Magnuson was well-known in Manhattan's downtown club scene as a singer, songwriter and performance artist. She appeared briefly in Susan as a cigarette girl, but her most visible role at the time was in Tony Scott's The Hunger, where she played one half of a couple seduced and ravaged by Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie.

Making Mr. Right features Magnuson's only leading role, and it's too bad the film isn't better than it is. The script by Floyd Byars (Masterminds) and Laurie Frank (an occasional director for SNL) posits the intriguing notion of an android becoming the perfect man, but then fails to explore the idea with the kind of ingenuity that would become a familiar theme on Star Trek: The Next Generation just a few years later. Seidelman seems content to skim the idea's surface, relying on slapstick comedy and romantic cliches to carry the narrative. A talented cast led by Magnuson and John Malkovich (in a dual role) do their best to lend substance to the film, but they just don't have enough to work with.

Frankie Stone (Magnuson) is a Miami-based publicist, whose professional success is offset by a chaotic personal life. Her pushy mother (Polly Bergen) routinely reminds Frankie that she isn't married, and the pressure is all the greater now that Frankie's sister, Ivy (Susan Berman), is planning her own wedding. Mom disapproves of the groom, but at least there's a ceremony and bridemaids (in comically hideous outfits).

Frankie's latest heartbreak is one of her clients, a candidate for Congress named Steve Marcus (Ben Masters), whom she drops both professionally and personally after Steve appears in news footage canoodling with a "supporter". Instead, she accepts an assignment from NASA and a company called Chemtec, which has been developing an android pilot for a solo mission into deep space. Faced with funding cuts, the space agency and Chemtec want Frankie to "rebrand" the android, dubbed Ulysses, into a national hero so popular that the politicians in Washington will be delighted to pay for him.

The wrinkle is that the android's inventor, Dr. Jeff Peters (Malkovich), who created Ulysses in his own image, doesn't want him to learn any of the human traits that Frankie plans to teach him. Dr. Peters considers emotions a detriment to the skills required for long periods of isolation in space, but he also tries to avoid them in his own life, because they're a distraction from science. After Frankie is hired to give Ulysses a makeover, Chemtec's smarmy CEO, Dr. Ramdas (Harsh Nayyar), finds that keeping the peace between scientist and publicist is a full time job. (Nayyar, a familiar face from numerous bit parts, gets a rare chance here to create an actual character.)

The fine line between humanity and artificial intelligence is a rich theme that continues to be explored in such TV dramas as the 21st Century version of Battlestar Galactica and feature films ranging from Blade Runner to The Machine. But Making Mr. Right squanders the opportunity in favor of traditional rom-com motifs, with Ulysses and Frankie forced to enact the cliché of the couple that has to overcome obstacles in order to find each other (the chief impediments being that Ulysses isn't alive and is about to be rocketed toward a distant galaxy). Seidelman attempts to liven the proceedings with slapstick routines, which Malkovich gamely performs as Ulysses gradually overcomes his awkwardness, and with fish-out-of-water adventures, as the fresh-faced android ventures into a brave new world of shopping malls and dating. Unfortunately, having opted for broad comedy, Seidelman fails to achieve an appropriately nimble and antic tone. Even a sprightly turn by Laurie Metcalfe (Malkovich's former Steppenwolf Theater colleague) as a co-worker with a desperate crush on Dr. Peters, who inadvertently ends up on a date with Ulysses, is deflated by flat-footed pacing and choppy editing. The result plays more like a collection of sketches than a drama.

An incongruous subplot involves Trish (Glenne Headly, another Steppenwolf alum), Frankie's best friend who arrives on her doorstep broken-hearted from her latest falling out with Don (Hart Bochner), a handsome but shallow actor currently experiencing his big break as a studly gardener on a soap called New Jersey. The show's soft core couplings, periodically seen on TV screens in the background, and its promotional slogan—"It isn't just a state; it's a state of mind!"—are funny stuff, but they belong in a different movie.

Making Mr. Right Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Making Mr. Right was shot by Edward Lachmann, an East Coast indie specialist best known for his collaborations with Todd Haynes (e.g., Mildred Pierce and Carol). Both the production design and Lachmann's lighting favor a candy-colored pastel palette designed both to reflect the Miami locations and to create the sensation that the film is occurring in an alternate universe, whether of science (at Chemtec) or PR spin (in Frankie's world). The transfer used by Olive Films for this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray does not appear to be recent. Blacks are washed out, and detail is inconsistent. Both densities and color saturation are lacking, depriving the colors of any "pop" and often rendering the locations dull. Although some of this effect is attributable to the film's visual style, the consistently flat image doesn't do justice to either the production design or the women's clothing, much of which has been deliberately chosen to look bizarre (Frankie's wardrobe is memorably unbusinesslike). The visuals of Making Mr. Right should have the hothouse artificiality that is the hallmark of its show-within-a-show, New Jersey, but Olive's Blu-ray delivers something that more closely resembles an old TV sitcom.

With its usual barebones approach, Olive has saved all of the digital real estate for the feature, resulting in an average bitrate of 27.98 Mbps. Compression has been capably performed.

Making Mr. Right Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

According to its credits, Making Mr. Right was released in Dolby Stereo, but there's no separation to be heard in the lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 track on Olive's Blu-ray. Played through a surround decoder, the track collapses to the center speaker, which typically indicates that the left and right tracks are identical. Within that caveat, however, the track features good fidelity, clear dialogue and an absence of noise, hiss or distortion. The light-hearted score by Chaz Jankel (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) is effectively reproduced, as are various pop songs used for comic effect, notably "So Happy Together" by the Turtles.

Making Mr. Right Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 2:00). MGM's 2003 DVD was similarly bare.

Making Mr. Right Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Since Making Mr. Right, Magnuson has played numerous supporting roles, including a Justice Department secretary seduced for information in Clear and Present Danger, Mel Gibson's ex-wife in Tequila Sunrise and a real estate agent in Panic Room, but she was never cast in another starring role. No director has ever figured out how to harness the diminutive redhead's unique gifts, which have found their best expression in solo shows like Made for Television, part of the PBS series Alive from Off-Center, which was subsequently picked up by HBO, or the performance film Vandemonium Plus, shot before a live audience. On paper, Magnuson and Seidelman should have been a good match, but the director's films since Desperately Seeking Susan have consistently fallen short, even when Seidelman had the likes of Meryl Streep (in 1989's She-Devil). As a long-time Magnuson fan, I must confess a lingering fondness for Making Mr. Right, but I'm not blind to its flaws. Olive's treatment of the film isn't anything special, but it's something of a miracle that the film has made it to Blu-ray at all. Recommended for fans.