Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Meatballs Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 11, 2012

Of all the Saturday Night Live performers who went on to forge big screen careers, perhaps the most unlikely is that of Bill Murray, at least insofar as he has over time become recognized not simply for being a light comedian, but as an Actor (capital A). In another way, though, it’s really not that surprising, because Murray’s innate sweetness, which strangely enough was also combined with a certain amount of smarminess, somehow made him accessible and appealing in a way that those—like Chevy Chase, for example—who may have started out of the gate stronger weren’t able to sustain. Murray’s first starring vehicle was 1979’s Meatballs, a film made in the wake of Animal House which brought much of that film’s controlled chaos feeling to a story of kids and counselors at a less than prestigious summer camp. Murray portrays head counselor Tripper, a big goof of a guy who nonetheless has the sense to recognize that a young boy named Rudy (Chris Makepeace) is not adjusting well to camp life. Tripper begins mentoring Rudy in his own anachronistic way, and the frankly cloying emotionalism of that relationship plays out against an almost vaudeville-esque assortment of various sight gags and quasi-blackout skits where a huge gamut of jokes comes flying at the viewer in one of those “let’s throw everything we can at the wall and see what sticks” approaches to comedy filmmaking. Director Ivan Reitman, who had produced Animal House and was extremely disappointed he hadn’t been able to direct as well, is on record in this release’s really interesting commentary track that Meatballs was made on the fly and had copious reshoots done (very quickly and on the cheap) to try to achieve a balance between the Tripper – Rudy storyline and the cascading series of punchlines. Looking back now from the vantage point of over thirty years (wow!), Meatballs is ingratiating enough, but it’s also insanely frenetic a lot of the time, with a tendency to offer noise and busy-ness rather than anything approaching nuanced humor. Still, it’s a frequently very funny film and the central relationship between Tripper and Rudy, while a bit saccharine at times, gives the film some real heart.

Meatballs is like the filmic equivalent of a crazy quilt, a cobbled together piece that has undeniable charm and even quaintness, but which suffers from a structure that shows way too many seams for its own good. Reitman, according to his commentary, actually had assembled a rough cut of the picture which focused mostly on Trippers’ acolytes, the so called Counselors in Training (CITs), with next to no interaction between Tripper and Rudy. In fact, as Reitman discusses, Tripper himself was kind of an auxiliary character who wandered in and out of the proceedings but who had an only minimally larger role than the rest of the large ensemble cast. After the rough cut was assembled, Reitman immediately realized the film needed some sort of central focus to anchor all of the shtick that otherwise populated the film. While his solution—giving Tripper and Rudy an erstwhile father-son relationship—certainly works to the film’s benefit, it also by its very nature emphasizes the cut and paste ethos of Meatballs, which ends up playing like a series of brief skits with heartstring tugging interludes interpolated in between them.

The film is breezy and well intentioned which helps it overcome its haphazard ambience. There’s a large supporting cast, all of whom have their (brief) moments in the sun. Chief among these players are Morty (Harvey Atkin), the camp director whose penchant for heavy sleeping means he gets to wake up in some unusual locations, courtesy of Tripper and his crew; and Spaz (Jack Blum), a nerdy CIT who nonetheless learns to blossom (at least relatively speaking), much like Rudy in fact, under Tripper’s careful tutelage. There are a number of running gags that never really pick up steam as the film goes along, but which provide momentary guffaws nonetheless. One of the film’s nicest touches is providing a putative love interest for Tripper, fellow counselor Roxanne (Kate Lynch), who is as Reitman and writer Dan Goldberg mention in the commentary quite far removed from the typical buxom, blonde and brainless approach that so many raunchy comedies like this tend to indulge in. Roxanne is a spunky jouster with Tripper and their interplay provides some nice counterpoint to the more cartoonish elements of the film.

Murray himself provides a nice bridge between those very cartoonish elements and the film’s attempt to deliver a little bit more of a realistic emotional story. While few would accuse Tripper of being a brilliantly written character, Murray manages to invest him with a decent humanity as well as a “wild and crazy” side. There’s a gentleness to Murray’s performance that really makes his mentoring of Rudy and Spaz touching, in its own kind of Tex Avery-esque way. The film itself is kind of hit and miss, as befits its cobbled together structure, but one thing is consistently clear from the get go: Bill Murray had star power and his film career was off to a strong start.

Meatballs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Meatballs is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of those "glass half full, glass half empty" transfers whose appeal will depend on viewer expectations as well as a realistic assessment of what the source elements had to offer to begin with. Meatballs was shot on a shoestring budget and its previous home video releases have never looked very good. While there's a reasonable uptick in clarity and especially color saturation here, the simple fact is. . .Meatballs still doesn't look very good. Midrange and far range shots tend to be extremely soft and are literally out of focus some of the time (oddly, in a couple of wide shots in the mess hall, focus is inconsistent throughout the frame). The overall image is in fact fairly soft, though a number of close- ups are really rather nicely sharp with pleasing fine object detail. The best thing about this transfer is the color, which pops really nicely, though reds tend to bloom on occasion, adding to a fuzzy quality. Artifacting is at a minimum, though the film is hampered by low contrast in some of the dimly lit and nighttime scenes, with resultant crush and minimal to nonexistent shadow detail, and the very apparent grain, so redolent of this era of low budgeted film, gets dangerously close to noise levels on occasion. This presentation is certainly not going to set anyone's videophile heart on fire, but it's also not a disaster.

Meatballs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Meatballs' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix (delivered via DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0) isn't anything to write home about, either, but it's sufficient to render the film's goofy dialogue well enough, and Elmer Bernstein's sweet score also sounds fine (according to the commentary, Bernstein agreed to do the score on spec for a piece of the profits, and considered it one of the best deals he had ever made in his long Hollywood history). The soundtrack has just a tinge of boxiness, especially in some of the voiceovers, courtesy of Tripper's "announcements", which may have been recorded in a different environment than the bulk of the film. Fidelity is fine, if never really commanding, and dynamic range is acceptably wide and varied.

Meatballs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Ivan Reitman and Co-Writer and Co-Producer Dan Goldberg. As referenced above in the main body of the review, this is an exceptionally interesting and informative commentary. Reitman takes the lead here, but Goldberg has his share of contributions as well. The two discuss quite openly the "fly by the seat of your pants" filming of Meatballs, Murray's reticence to be in the project to begin with, and the hurriedly assembled reshoots to get the Tripper – Rudy storyline developed. Nicely conversational but never pointless, this is what good commentaries really should be.

Meatballs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Meatballs never quite attains the manic brilliance of Animal House, but it has sweetness and big heartedness in abundance. As might be expected, about as many comedy bits fall flat here as find their target, but the good news is Reitman wisely just keeps the gags coming, never overstaying his welcome on any given shtick, and that at least gives the film the benefit of good pacing, if not consistency. The film isn't particularly well structured for all of the reasons detailed above, but Murray's presence manages to hold it together better than might have been expected. This Blu-ray isn't especially overwhelming in either the video or the audio departments, but it probably will provide enough to recommend it to the film's diehard fans, if they come with appropriate expectations.