7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
A Pennsylvania band scores a hit in 1964 and rides the star-making machinery as long as it can, with lots of help from its manager.
Starring: Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Ethan EmbryComedy | 100% |
Music | 56% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
I watched That Thing You Do! yesterday for the first time since, oh, the late 1990s—I remember renting it from Family
Video on VHS—and for the past twenty-four hours, I've had the bubble-gummy title song on a loop in my brain, making me
absentmindedly hum the chorus and drum the beat on my thighs and wonder, why hasn't the cast of Glee
covered this yet? Written by Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger, it's a pitch-perfect imitation of an early 1960s
rock song, an ode to "She Loves You"-era Beatles with an earworm of a hook and sugar-coated harmonies. It's a good thing
the song is so great; not only does it have to be believable as a Billboard chart-climbing single, but we also have to hear it
about a dozen times in the movie, which follows a small-town rock group from garage practice sessions to national
superstardom to sudden flame-out, all within a few short months.
Making his narrative feature debut, the film was written and directed by Tom Hanks—he also has a substantial but non-central
role as the group's manager—whose vision of the pre-psychedelic 1960s rock scene is somewhat Norman Rockwell-ized,
removing sex and drugs from the picture to focus on the dreams of the four fresh-faced bandmates. When That Thing You
Do!'s theatrical cut came out in 1996, the critical consensus was that it was charming but dramatically thin, a charge
Hanks countered a decade later by releasing his substantially longer director's cut on home video. Via seamless branching,
both versions are available on 20th Century Fox's new Blu-ray release, which is unfortunately hampered by a high definition
transfer that's rife with compression and other picture quality issues. But more on that down in the "Video Quality" section.
A slight exaggeration of what the film looks like on Blu-ray.
Get ready for disappointment. That Thing You Do! makes its Blu-ray debut with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that appears to be a bad recycling of a now-ancient DVD-era master, sourced from what looks like a thrice-duped internegative. Shot on 35mm with spherical lenses—which almost always create a slightly less resolved image than anamorphic glass—you might reasonably expect the film to look a little soft, but sometimes the picture here is outright blurry, with no discernible fine detail whatsoever. Worse, from the first frames the image looks rough, with specks on the print and busy patches of noise intensifying the already heavy grain structure, making highlights—which can sometime appear a little overexposed—look seriously blotchy. It's distracting, especially in closeups of the actors' faces, and I can't imagine how Fox would think it's acceptable to re-release the film looking like this. Color fares better, but only marginally; black levels often crush shadow detail in darker scenes, and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto's tones can seem either wimpy or oversaturated, with occasionally wonky skin tones. I don't know what happened here, entirely, but I'm sure That Thing You Do! can and should look better. I'm probably being a bit generous with the 2.5/5 score.
The shoddy picture quality is probably reason enough to pass on this disc—particularly if you already own the 2007 DVD set— but if you're still interested, you can at least rest assured that there are no similar issues with the film's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. This is a functional, music-focused mix that never really wows but does get all the essentials right. Most importantly, dialogue is always clear and easily understood, sitting at the top of the mix. Below this is the general ambience, which is often bled over quietly into the rear speakers, letting us hear applause and cheering from all directions, along with a few rare cross-channel effects. The track is at its best, though, when The Wonders let loose with "That Thing You Do," which sounds more polished—and bigger, especially the drums—as the film goes on. The disc also includes Spanish and French dubs, and English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
All of the extras from the 2007 DVD release have been ported over here, with no new additions:
It's short on drama and it whitewashes some of the grimy realities of early 1960s rock and roll, but That Thing You Do! is fun, funny, and as catchy as its title song. Unfortunately, while Tom Hanks' directorial debut has withstood the test of time, the film's picture quality has not. 20th Century Fox's Blu-ray transfer looks to be a slipshod reappropriation of an old DVD-era master, with a blotchy, noisy, dingy picture. It really is disappointing, so much so that I hesitate to recommend the film at all. Those who own the 2007 DVD release should probably just hold onto it—there are no new extras here—and those thinking of a blind buy should perhaps rent the disc on Netflix before committing to a purchase. I'm 100% positive That Thing You Do! could look drastically better.
2-Disc Unrated Edition
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