Monday Morning Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.0

Monday Morning Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 30, 2022

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona (where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which but their children’s end nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

That famous prologue from Romeo and Juliet may have been William Shakespeare's own private precursor to the fluttering Marvel Comics frames that precede some MCU films, summarizing what's about to come and whetting the audience's appetite with basic plot pronouncements and some putative "backstory". But it also introduced or at least popularized the idea of "star crossed lovers", supposed paramours whose "astrological incompatibility" at least contributes to their downfall, though the fact that these kinds of would be couples are almost always depicted as having come from "different sides of the tracks", so to speak, also plays into events, even if that particular metaphor would have been foreign to Shakespeare himself. Monday Morning has at least some aspects akin to Romeo and Juliet at play in a plot focusing on peripatetic high schooler Bobby Parker (Noah Blake), who has moved so much that maybe he doesn't even know anymore what side of the tracks he's from, or at least currently on.

Kind of hilariously given my reference to tracks, the back cover verbiage on this release explicitly defines Bobby as "a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks", which probably only plays into Bobby's sense of himself as a perpetual outsider, something his family's near constant moving has probably only exacerbated. His attempt to get along with the "mean boys" at Oceania High is complicated by the fact that his main nemesis, rich kid James Hedges (Brandon Hooper) isn't just the son of the town's mayor, he's also the brother of Noreen (Julianne McNamara), a girl with whom Bobby has been "getting serious" (and as your resident piano playing reviewer, I kind of have to love that it's Bobby's tickling of the ivories that helps cement things with Noreen).

Now here is where the plot of Monday Morning may be too provocative for some, especially given some recent highly publicized events. James decides to "teach Bobby a lesson" by scaring him with a gun he brings to school, which is when tragedy ensues, and Bobby is thrust into a kind of dual role as potential suspect and hero. The unsettling aspect of a gun in school may have been disturbing but probably not debilitating in 1990 in the same way it would become in about a decade with the advent of such horrors as Columbine, not to mention others considerably more recent. While not especially germane to the actual plot dynamics that Murphy seems to want to explore, the "situational awareness" of contemporary audiences seeing this development probably can't be avoided, for better or worse.

Don Murphy has gone on to a really impressive producing career ( Natural Born Killers, Transformers), but as of the writing of this review, this remains his only outing as a director. The film has some definite ebbs and flows in its performing acumen, but technically Murphy comes off as a competent director, even if his writing can be a little clunky. Trivia fans may find the cast here alluring, and it includes a young Lisa Rinna as one of the high school students.

Monday Morning Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Monday Morning is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The back cover states this was transferred from the original camera negative. Several online sites, including some news postings here, state there was a 4K restoration, though I'd note that the release itself does not state that and there's no information in that regard that I could find on MVD's website. This is a nicely organic looking presentation for the most part, with a naturally resolved grain field which can be quite thick at times but has no "clumpiness" or other oddities. The palette is beautifully suffused for the vast bulk of the film, with some really deep primaries and good accountings of the various colors in the classroom. Detail levels are typically quite good throughout, and can be excellent in close-ups. There are some variances in densities (things get a bit desaturated and cooler about two thirds of the way through), and there's also persistent if minor damage that can be spotted in several of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. I'd probably be rating this at the 4.0 level were it not for some really strange anomalies that I've documented in screenshots 18 and 19. The only way I could capture these fleeting nanoseconds was to actually frame advance with my player and keep it on pause for a single frame, which is why you'll see the pause icon in the lower left (the screencapture technology we use wasn't quick enough to actually get the frames I needed without me employing the player's pause button). I also left the display information on so that those interested could go to those exact timecodes to see, but as you'll clearly be able to notice in these screenshots, there are totally weird "interpolations" in horizontal "strips" of other scenes suddenly inserted in the center of the frame. How or why this could have happened is frankly beyond me. This is the only time I've had to include screenshots taken under these circumstances, but I thought the weirdness of the situation required it. I will say that these are most definitely fleeting, almost at the subliminal level, and so may not cause much concern for some.

Monday Morning Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Monday Morning features a nice sounding LPCM 2.0 Mono track that offers good support for a film that kind of surprisingly is not chock full of circa 1990 pop tunes (my hunch is a less than fulsome budget may have prevented licensing any "hits"). Bill Johnson's score reverberates with sufficient energy, and all dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Monday Morning Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original VHS Version Class of Fear (SD; 1:37:34)


• Interview with Writer and Director Don Murphy (HD; 52:51) is fun and informative, and provides some interesting information on how various USC alums have matriculated into professional careers.


• Don Murphy: Portrait of a Producer (HD; 24:01) looks like an archival piece tied to the release of Double Dragon.

Additionally, the keepcase houses a folded mini poster, the sleeve has reversible artwork, and packaging features a slipcover.

Monday Morning Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Absolutely hilariously (to me, anyway), I was watching the interview with writer and director Don Murphy on this disc before watching the actual film, and my wife walked in and immediately said, "Hey, I know that guy, he went to USC with my brother!" As Don continued to talk, my wife continued to recognize names and events, and so she texted her brother about it, who then had the temerity to suggest we actually look at the credits for the film (helpfully printed on the back cover of this release), which disclosed that he was the editor on the project (he didn't let us know he has a cameo late in the film as a sharpshooter who ostensibly takes out a major character). In order to facilitate any future family reunions, let me just state that the editing of this feature is impeccable, and the moment with the sharpshooter is the undeniable dramatic highlight of the story. All joking aside, there's some actually interesting content here, especially in terms of an "outsider" trying to find his foothold in a challenging situation, though this has a somewhat slapdash feeling at times that probably keeps it from being completely successful. Video has some "unexplained mysteries" as documented in both my comments and screenshots, but for those who can ignore them, provides a generally solid account of the gritty, lo-fi look of the film. Audio and supplements are fine, for those who may be considering making a purchase.