That Man from Rio / Up to His Ears Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

That Man from Rio / Up to His Ears Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 8, 2015

Note: The scores above are approximate averages for the two films put together. Please see the individual reviews (linked below) for scores for each separate film.

The James Bond craze was just reaching mass hysteria proportions when an unlikely upstart managed to steal a bit of the international cinematic spotlight from good old 007. Director Philippe de Broca had been toiling in the somewhat rickety post World War II French film industry since the early fifties, cranking out a regular supply of fairly successful and critically acclaimed films like 1960’s Les Jeux de l'amour, which captured the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize at that year’s Berlin Film Festival, and the interesting 1962 portmanteau Les Sept péchés capitaux, where de Broca directed a segment alongside other contributors like Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy, Roger Vadim and Jean-Luc Godard (I’ve sometimes wondered if this film was at least partially the inspiration for Vittorio De Sica’s study of just one mortal sin—adultery—in the similarly heptagon titled Woman Times Seven). For whatever reason, though, de Broca never seemed to penetrate into the top echelon of French directors like Godard or Demy, at least that is until That Man from Rio (L’homme de Rio) became an international sensation in 1964. The success of that film was so outsized (and probably unexpected) that of course de Broca was almost immediately approached about shooting a sequel, which turned out to be (more or less, anyway) Up to His Ears, a decidedly more hyperbolic and (therefore?) less successful follow-up featuring that man from Rio himself, Jean-Paul Belmondo. Cohen has collected these two linked films together, reportedly sourced from new 2K restorations, along with a generous supplemental package which should appeal to Francophiles and cineastes in general.

Please click on the following links for reviews of the two individual films included on this release:

That Man from Rio Blu-ray review

Up to His Ears Blu-ray review

That Man from Rio / Up to His Ears Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Video quality (along with additional screenshots) of each release is discussed in the individual reviews, linked above.

That Man from Rio / Up to His Ears Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio quality of each film is addressed in the above linked reviews.

That Man from Rio / Up to His Ears Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Supplementary material for each film is detailed in the above linked reviews.

That Man from Rio / Up to His Ears Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This double feature offers one home run (That Man from Rio) and what is probably a "double" at best, the somewhat lackluster and too frenetic follow up Up to His Ears. Even the second film's problems are offset by an excellent supplemental package and largely beautiful restoration work done on both of these titles. Breezy and fun if occasionally a bit too manic for their own good (especially in the case of Up to His Ears), this double feature comes Highly recommended.