6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
David Basner fled an unhappy home for a successful life in advertising, but he has remained a perpetual child. Then one day his father calls to announce that his mother has left him. Suddenly David finds himself pulled back into his parents' lives, only now it's David who has to be the grown-up. And these responsibilities couldn't come at a worse time, as David struggles to land the most important deal of his career.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Jackie Gleason, Eva Marie Saint, Sela Ward, Bess ArmstrongRomance | 100% |
Comedy | 68% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Nothing in Common should be better known than it is. Among other things, it was Jackie Gleason's last film, and the Great One (as he was nicknamed, supposedly by Orson Welles) ended his career with a flourish. Best remembered for the comedic gifts that blazed in The Honeymooners and various incarnations of The Jackie Gleason Show, the Brooklyn native was also a superb dramatic actor, as anyone who's ever seen his Minnesota Fats in The Hustler can attest. (Here's hoping Columbia soon releases Requiem for a Heavyweight, which contains another great Gleason performance.) In his portrayal of Max Basner, a small-time salesman and a failed husband and father surveying the wreckage of his life, Gleason deployed an entire career's worth of acting technique and a lifetime's experience as a human being to create an indelible portrait of rage, frustration and regret. Gleason was well-matched by Tom Hanks, a future movie star who was just then making the turn from comedy to drama. Looking back and knowing what we know now, it's easy to say, "Well, of course!" But at the time, Hanks had done none of the work that would win him accolades; Big, his first Oscar nomination, was two years in the future, and no one knew Hanks as anything more than a light comedic actor who could be pleasant in fluff like Splash and Bachelor Party. David Basner, the lead character of Nothing in Common, begins in that happy-go-lucky vein, but very quickly finds himself dragged, kicking and screaming, into darker territory. Without an actor who could make that transition convincing, the film wouldn't have worked. That Hanks pulled it off opposite as formidable a presence as Gleason signaled a turning point in his career—and I say this with the confidence of someone who saw the film when it first appeared and knew I was seeing something unusual. (I've seen it at least a dozen times in the twenty-five years since then.) The director of this odd couple was Garry Marshall, who used to be able to make movies without smothering them in sentiment (though Nothing in Common has its share) and without tying them to a national holiday (New Year's Eve being the latest victim). Marshall made the film at the beginning of his feature career, when he was still working within the richly diverse subject of family relations, which is where he'd enjoyed success as a TV producer. His most profitable films may have been about romance, but his best have been about troubled family relationships.
The late John A. Alonzo (Chinatown and Scarface) shot Nothing in Common, which made extensive use of locations in and around downtown Chicago and Northwestern University, and Alonzo successfully captured a realistic sense of these locations (many of which I know) without making them look like they were shot for a documentary. He also did full justice to the atrocious clothing worn by the ad and clothing industry people, who are walking cautionary tales for the excesses of Eighties fashion. It's these fashions that are the only point where Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray meets its match. A few of the patterns, especially one particularly busy jacket of David Basner's with colors woven into it that are almost certainly not found in nature, generate minor aliasing and video noise. It's startling to encounter this phenomenon on Blu-ray, because it takes a truly outrageous pattern to exceed the limits of 1080p resolution, but that's the Eighties for you. With this exception (and it's a minor flaw), the Blu-ray handles Alonzo's images with aplomb, resolving fine detail in actor's expressions, indoor and outdoor scenery and the various bad hairpieces that Hector Elizondo's Charlie tries and can never get comfortable with. Black levels and contrast are correctly set, and colors appear natural and neither over- nor under-saturated. As is typically the case with Image/Sony titles, there is no indication of high frequency filtering or artificial sharpening, nor did I spot any compression artifacts. One additional note: Alonzo was well-known for his "minimalist" style of lighting, which means that in the film's darker scenes (e.g., in Max Basner's apartment) the image is softer and the film grain more evident. But even though this pioneering DP was an early proponent of hi-def video, he also understood that film grain was a friend, not an enemy, and he knew how to use it to capture detail. Grainophobes may complain about this image, but it's faithful and first-rate.
The original mono soundtrack is presented as PCM 2.0. When played through a good set of stereo speakers in "direct" mode, the track should provide a wide soundstage, much like a typical theatrical array. When played through a matrix decoder, the two identical channels should collapse to the center speaker of a typical home theater array. Either way, the dialogue is very clear, and the musical track has surprisingly broad dynamic range and fidelity, though one might have wished for somewhat deeper bass extension. Director Marshall was already beginning to use pop tunes to comment on the action (a technique that would work especially well in his most successful film, Pretty Woman), and the soundtrack for Nothing in Common makes effective use of songs by Christopher Cross, Carly Simon and Richard Marx, among others. The longing title song by The Thompson Twins is heard briefly in the local bar where David Basner and his colleagues hang out after work and plays again over the closing credits. The film's underscoring was provided by Patrick Leonard, another key Eighties figure who was Madonna's preferred producer in the first phase of her career.
Sony's 2002 DVD release of Nothing in Common contained the film's trailer and no other extras. In what is becoming an unfortunate trend for Image's Sony catalog releases, the Blu-ray omits that scant supplement.
After Nothing in Common, Marshall's films took a distinct turn toward fairy tales and sentimentality. The results were sometimes phenomenally successful (not just Pretty Woman, but also The Princess Diaries and Beaches) and even entertaining, but the escapist element took over, eventually crowding out all semblance of recognizable humanity. The Marshall who made Nothing in Common is nowhere to be found in the holiday anthologies being cranked out by today's purveyor of cinematic junk food. Nothing in Common has memorable comic bits, but it's filled with sadness for things that have been broken and time that's been lost. Still, the saddest thing of all is that Marshall never again made a film of this calibre. Highly recommended.
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