6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A screwball heist comedy about a flighty, bored, kleptomaniac wife (Natalite Wood) who robs her husband's bank of sixty thousand dollars.
Starring: Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Jonathan WintersCrime | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Arthur Hiller's Penelope is a lightweight caper and screwball comedy starring Natalie Wood as the titular bombshell, a restless young woman whose kleptomania will soon catch up with her. As the wife of prominent banker James Elcott (Ian Bannen), there is no shortage of temptations right in front of Penelope -- and since he seems to be paying more attention to his work, she decides to rob his newest branch and gets away with $60,000 easily. Penelope's recent heist (not to mention all the other valuables she's stolen over the last several years) is a secret that has only been revealed to her psychiatrist Gregory (Dick Shawn), who would probably call the cops if he weren't so madly in love.
Nonetheless, Penelope was mostly rejected by critics at the time and did relatively poor business at the box office, enough so that Natalie
Wood did not return to the big screen until 1969's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. (She even turned down the lead role in Bonnie and Clyde during her brief
hiatus.) It's often mentioned as a footnote in the late actress' largely solid career as a leading lady, and was never even released on home video in
America -- no VHS, no DVD, no nothing. Luckily, that's all changed thanks to Warner Archives' new Blu-ray, which includes an absolutely
gorgeous 4K-sourced restoration and lossless audio, as well as a pair of short but appreciated bonus features. It's not exactly a lost treasure or
"sleeper disc of the year" material, but Penelope is still pretty fun. Those who have been waiting for this on home video for years
(decades?) will be overjoyed, and even curious newcomers should consider a blind buy.
Warner Archive Collection routinely serves up some of the best-looking catalog Blu-rays in the business, and Penelepe is no different: this film absolutely sparkles like new, thanks to their recent restoration sourced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative. Shot on Kodak Eastmancolor film and beautifully framed at 2.35:1, Penelope looks very appealing from start to finish with warm and well-saturated colors that create a lot of visual interest. From era-specific interior decorations to beautiful urban storefronts and dozens of attractive outfits for our title character by costume designer Edith Head, hardly a scene goes by where our eyes aren't searching the frame for something nice to look at. The overall image is extremely clean and consistent with a pleasing amount of natural grain, and WAC's typically excellent disc encoding and high bitrate ensure a smooth, film-like appearance from start to finish. Considering this also marks Penelope's debut on domestic home video, die-hard fans will fall head over heels in love.
Penelope's DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio mix stays true to the film's one-channel roots, with cleanly-recorded dialogue that often takes a backseat to the sprightly original score by "Johnny Williams" -- yes, that John Williams. Moderate depth is achieved but, considering most of the film revolves around overlapping indoor conversations, there's not a whole lot to get excited about. Still, this is a perfectly solid effort with absolutely no glaring defects. The only variance in quality I could detect was actually for the better: a stray line or two, spoken by our title character right around the 70-minute mark, sounds like it was looped with much better equipment than whatever was used on-set.
English (SDH) subtitles are included during the film; they're formatted perfectly with no sync issues and fit within the 2.35:1 frame. Nice to see that WAC might be finally moving away from the ugly yellow ALL CAPS variety.
Penelope is packaged in a standard keepcase with revealing poster-themed cover artwork that does a horrible job of advertising the film's actual name (and no, it's not She's Public Entertainment #1). On-disc extras are minimal...but considering this is Penelope's domestic home video debut, they're better than nothing.
As bright and alluring as its magnetic leading lady, Penelope is a featherweight and fun little romp that fans of classic screwball comedy should enjoy. Although it occasionally has trouble maintaining its balance and a number of elements haven't aged very well, those who saw and fell in love with this film decades ago will absolutely adore Warner Archive Collection's new Blu-ray; newcomers might enjoy it too, especially those who are fans of the cast. The 4K-sourced A/V presentation is absolutely outstanding, even if those bonus features leave something to be desired.
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