Rubin and Ed Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Rubin and Ed Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 1, 2020

Performing even a perfunctory Internet search on the oddball 1991 Comedy Rubin and Ed pulls up a peculiar incident in which star Crispin Glover appeared on Late Night with David Letterman and, mimicking a scene from the movie while dressed in character, attempted to kick Letterman, who plays it cool but seems obviously concerned, walks off the set to "check on the top ten list," and returns to have a chuckle about it moments later, with Glover nowhere to be found (here's a clip of the incident for anyone curious). It was a bizarre moment promoting an eccentric film about a couple of disparate personalities -- a struggling salesman and a directionless man-child -- on a road trip to bury a dead cat.

Ed (Howard Hesseman) works for “The Organization,” a pyramid scheme masquerading as a business with the charismatic Mr. Busta (Michael Greene) rallying the troops and reaping the rewards at the top. Ed’s divorced and his outlook on life isn’t all roses; making a move in The Organizaiton and impressing Mr. Busta is his only hope of reaching the top. Meanwhile, Rubin (Crispin Glover), a local weirdo, is forced out of his motel room when his mother (who manages the motel) demands he leave, tired of his music and laziness, and insists he find a friend. Fates collide when Ed, out trying to make connections with potential clients, runs into Rubin who seems willing to allow an excited Ed to put his newfound business tactics to work and invite him back to a seminar. Rubin is just excited that he has a “friend.” When Ed comes over to Rubin’s place ahead of the meeting, he finds Rubin’s dead cat in the freezer, the frigid feline staying in long term cold storage until Rubin can find a proper burial spot. Desperate to keep Rubin happy enough to use him to work his way up the chain, Ed suggests he put the cat in a cooler and the two set out to bury the animal so he can get Rubin to the seminar and turn his life around.

Rubin and Ed is one of the stranger and quirkier films one is going to stumble across, at least within its mostly mainstream sensibilities. Here's the story of two completely disparate, and in many ways desperate, individuals who come together through the accidental meeting of circumstance, of perhaps even fate, tied together by a mutual need for direction as pushed upon them by someone else. For Ed, someone else is his ex-wife Rula (Karen Black) and for Rubin it's his mother (Anna Louise Daniels). Ed's working to make a go of it, but his ex sees him as lazy and incapable. Rubin doesn't really want to make a go of it; he prefers fantasizing and listening to his music, but his mother has had enough. They intersect on their own crossroads, brought together to bond over a dead cat, of all things, and the journey they take in an effort to find purpose, a journey that takes them to the same physical location and, perhaps by story's end, to a similar emotional state. It's oddball to the max and its seemingly wayward sensibilities dominate the story, but there's a satisfying undercurrent for anyone willing to look a bit beyond the eccentricities that give the movie its broadest shape and appeal.

The film's reliance on its, perhaps best said, unique character constructions and general approach to narrative development might see it alienate audiences looking for a more traditionally aligned buddy/road trip movie more in the traditions of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, which released prior to Rubin and Ed, or Tommy Boy, which debuted several years later. The films lacks the sharp writing and perfect performances that made the former a classic and the side-splitting humor and perfect lead chemistry that made the latter a popular film in its time, but there's something to be said for quirk, and here quirk done well without all of the baggage that bogs down today's supposedly similar romps. In the film, Rubin hallucinates about girls, deadpans his general approach to life ("raise your hand," he tells Ed when their group is asked who the biggest loser in the room is), and while in the desert wrings out his shoe's rubber insole for some hydration.

Rubin and Ed Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony may have cut just about every corner imaginable in the disc's production, but the studio didn't hamstring Rubin and Ed's 1080p video transfer, which delivers slightly inconsistent imagery but overall presents the material with a good, watchable quality. Grain is fashionable for this release, at least much of the time. It's a little sharp and dense but it's complimentary, helping to yield a high value transfer that is organically filmic and impressively sharp and in-command for much of the runtime. Granted, some of the scenes out in the desert look a little smoother and flatter, less organic, but still hold an acceptable level of detail without appearing artificially smoothed over. At its best, it looks rather good. Facial textures are a highlight, and most of the image's attributes appear firm and refined, more than capably defined and texturally adept, whether in The Organization's meeting room or around an out-of-the-way gas station or a dilapidated trailer seen midway through the film. Colors are pleasantly natural. Good, even contrast brings plenty of vitality to blue skies, natural greens, red spray paint, and an assortment of clothes. Some of the brown and beige desert locales appear a little light and black levels occasionally veer towards appearing pale and overly bright, but generally the picture's tonal output is even and pleasant. There are no major print blemishes or encode artifacts of note.

Rubin and Ed Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rubin and Ed features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The track is generally competent but occasionally flawed. Dialogue is sometimes -- rarely, really -- a little too sharp but for the most part it presents naturally in a center imaged area and delivers good lifelike clarity and stability. Modest ambience out in the desert -- birds, some light winds -- help to bring some audible life to the otherwise barren locale. The track offers several moments of more intensive and interesting effects that take full advantage of the limited channel selection. At the 44-minute mark Rubin imagines his cat's meows which present with some airy spread. Echoing reverb inside a mountainside cave in the 49-minute mark offers enough depth that one might mistake the surrounds for being active. Blaring police sirens at the 64-minute mark present with good clarity, volume, and stage traversal right to left in one of the better audio moments in the movie. It's a fairly straightforward listen but it's of a good essential quality at its core.

Rubin and Ed Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Not only does this Blu-ray release of Rubin and Ed contain no extras, it doesn't even offer top- or pop-up menus. With no audio or subtitle options to toggle, either, this is truly as bare-bones as it gets. Pop it in and the movie plays. No DVD or digital copies are included, either. Unsurprisingly, this release does not ship with a slipcover.

Rubin and Ed Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In Rubin and Ed, the title characters' journeys take them to the middle of nowhere, literally and figuratively, but it is there that they seem to find themselves, even if "finding themselves" means escaping from the negativity that has driven them there in the first place. The film's script is quirky at best and downright bizarre at worst, but the actors, and Glover in particular, make it work. It's an oddball film to say the least, and it can't match it superior "unlikely pairing road trip" counterparts for humor or acting excellence, but it's a solid little escape that genre fans should enjoy. Sony's Blu-ray is as barren as the desert in which Rubin and Ed find themselves through much of the movie, but at least the 1080p video and two-channel lossless audio presentations are largely solid. Recommended.