Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The Best Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Finishing "Unfinished Business"

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 17, 2013

Writer/director Malcolm D. Lee has now twice demonstrated that studios can make money with the kind of modestly budgeted dramedies they no longer like to make. The most recent example is The Best Man Holiday, released on November 15, 2013, which grossed $69 million at the box office on a production budget of $17 million, a shoestring by contemporary standards (and home video and other ancillary revenues are still to come). That film is a sequel to Lee's first surprise hit, 1999's The Best Man, which did $34.5 million on a production budget of $9 million. The real question is why it took Universal so long to greenlight the sequel. Having learned its lesson, the studio has already announced a third installment.

Lee has said that he was inspired by films like The Big Chill, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Diner: stories about a group of friends who maintain a special kind of closeness, even as they navigate separate paths through life. But Lee wrote about himself and the people he knew at a time when films with primarily African-American casts were just breaking out of the crime genre into mainstream appeal with features such as Love Jones (1997) and Soul Food (1997). As often happens, though, by writing specific, believable characters, Lee touched on universal themes. The Best Man is set in a recognizably middle class world of upwardly mobile African-Americans, but the predicaments they encounter raise familiar issues of fidelity and commitment, as well as the balance between personal life and career that can be as much a challenge for men as for women. Then, of course, there's that recurring and pesky question of whether complete honesty among friends is really such a good thing.

The occasion that reunites the old college gang is the New York wedding of long-time couple Lance Sullivan (Morris Chestnut) and Mia Morgan (Monica Calhoun). They met when Lance was a college football star and Mia worked on the school newspaper. Lance turned pro and became a media darling with a multi-million dollar contract and a huge new house in the suburbs that he expects Mia to fill with children. Like many successful athletes, he's had women all over the country, and sometimes came close to losing Mia, but now he's ready to settle down (or so he claims).

The best man of the title is Harper Stewart (Taye Diggs), the school newspaper editor and Lance's best friend, who introduced the bride and groom. Now living in Chicago, Harper is on the cusp of success with the imminent publication of his first novel entitled Unfinished Business, but he's glad it won't be out until after the wedding. The book is a thinly fictionalized account of Harper's college years, and all his friends appear as characters, including Lance and Mia. For anyone who knows how to penetrate the fictional veneer, the book contains potentially explosive revelations.

For now, though, Harper prefers to concentrate on his personal reunion with the maid of honor, Jordan Armstrong (Nia Long), the most ambitious of their group, who kept him at arm's length throughout college and for whom he has carried a torch ever since. Harper's fixation on Jordan is the likely reason for his serial monogamy, because no woman lives up to Jordan's idealized memory. It's also why he leaves his current girlfriend, a caterer named Robin (Sanaa Lathan), behind in Chicago while he flies out a few days early to see what happens when he and Jordan meet again. For her part, Jordan, now a junior TV producer at BET, is beginning to feel the loneliness that comes with non-stop work, and she regrets pushing Harper away all those years ago.

But Harper's and Jordan's issues are superceded by a more serious problem, because the ambitious TV producer has snagged an advance copy of her would-be swain's book. Like a suspense director following a bomb, Lee tracks Harper's novel as it gradually makes the rounds of the group until it reaches the one person who really should not read it—and the fireworks ignite. (By that point, flashbacks and private confessions have brought the audience up to speed.)

The last act of The Best Man has tense moments and some surprisingly serious drama, but Lee never forgets that he's making a comedy. A firm comic support is the reliable Harold Perrineau, a regular on the HBO prison series Oz (and later Lost) and one of the best things about the Matrix sequels. He plays Julian Murch, another member of the old gang who earned a law degree but would rather teach disadvantaged kids than make big money at a firm, to the eternal (and vocal) disappointment of his girlfriend, Shelby (Melissa De Sousa). Every group has a victim, and it's Julian's lot to be the eternal object of ridicule: about how he can't keep a secret, about how Shelby pulls his strings, about his poker-playing skills, about the pathetic nature of his life in general. But Julian has the last laugh. Before the wedding weekend is over, his life is completely changed by events so contrived that viewers should howl in protest, but Lee slips them in quietly by the side door while matters of greater import are happening on the main stage.

The film's scene-stealer, though, is Terence Howard, who broke out in The Best Man as lothario Quentin Spivey (or, as Jordan sums him up with grudging respect: "Charming motherf***er!"). Howard's performance is deceptively complex, as he conveys hidden depths beneath Quentin's casual surface. He may appear supremely indifferent to the professional progress of Lance, Harper and Julian, but part of him burns with resentment that they've found their focus in life, while he's still flitting from job to job and lady to lady. It's this envy, coupled with an instinctive feel for people's weaknesses, that makes Quentin unable to restrain himself from jabbing at his friends' sore spots, even when doing so risks real damage. At the point where fists are flying and someone is dangling over a balcony, Quentin's face has a stricken look that says he knows he's gone too far.

The Best Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Best Man was shot by Frank Prinzi, who knew from his work with independent filmmakers like Ed Burns and Tom DiCillo how to create a professional look on a tight budget. (Prinzi has switched to TV, where he is currently working on The Black List.) The opening title sequence, which is animated to accompany "What You Want" by The Roots and Jaguar, looks a little shaky on Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, but this appears to be part of the animation, since the image stabilizes as soon as the animation is replaced by shots of Harper arriving at his Chicago apartment. These shots are rough and grainy, because the credits are optically superimposed, which accentuates grain and locks in any defects in the source. The true nature of the Blu-ray master doesn't reveal itself until the credits end.

The Best Man's picture is consistent with Universal's general approach to catalog titles in recent years, especially comedies, which is to make them look more like HD video than film. Detail is plentiful, blacks are deep and accurate (though not every tuxedo is black), contrast is appropriately set and colors are varied and well-saturated. However, the grain pattern is neither natural nor film-like. In many portions of the frame, there is little grain to be seen, even though any de-graining that's been performed doesn't appear to have come at the expense of detail or the imposition of the "wax dummy" syndrome. (Contrary to popular belief, not all de-graining software is subsumed under the heading of "DNR".)

At other times, grain is visible, but it's what I call "dirty" grain, which is to say that it's coarse and overemphasized. This is a sure sign of electronic sharpening, which is the Blu-ray master's most notable flaw. Fortunately, the phenomenon is not so severe as to create noticeable edge halos. It does, though, rob the image of depth and texture, although the effect is difficult to appreciate in still frames. The flaw is most pronounced in long shots, a minor annoyance in medium shots and barely noticeable in close-ups.

Universal has placed the film on a BD-50 and opted for minimal compression with a generous average bitrate of 32.99 Mbps. This is ironic, because that kind of bandwidth could have easily accommodated a more film-like treatment of The Best Man.

The Best Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 mix is presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA. It's a lively track dominated by the selections that make up the best-selling soundtrack CD (plus a few that were not included on the CD) and Stanley Clarke's energetic and occasionally emotional underscoring. In the "big" moments where one might expect elaborate sound effects—big crowd scenes, a bachelor party, a church gathering—the surround array is usually filled with a musical element, sometimes because the scene requires it (notably, "Candy" by Cameo at the bachelor party and "As" by Stevie Wonder during a critical flashback) or simply because director Lee has chosen music as his principal audio element. All of the music sounds terrific, and the dialogue is clear and natural-sounding.

The Best Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Universal's 2000 DVD. Missing are the production notes, cast and filmmaker credits, six bonus trailers for additional Universal films and DVD-ROM features.

• Spotlight on Location (480i; 1.33:1; 17:54): An EPK from Universal's old "Spotlight" series, this installment features informative interviews with writer/director Lee and the principal cast members, plus comments from producers Bill Carraro and Sam Kitt. Some of the interviews were recorded on set, while others clearly come from press tours.



• Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrack Presentation (480i; 1.33:1; 9:36): As a promotion for the successful soundtrack album, this selection offers back-to-back music videos for Maxwell, "Let's Not Play the Game", and Ginuwine, R.L., Tyrese and Case, "The Best Man I Can Be". One minor annoyance is that the two songs are not separated by chapter stops.



• Trailer (480i; 1.85:1, non-enhanced; 2:19). The most interesting element in the trailer is footage from Harper's and Jordan's walk through Central Park that isn't in the film. If Universal ever does a deluxe edition, it would be great to see what other scenes were deleted from the final cut.

The Best Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Universal's edition of The Best Man may have seemed sufficient when it was first planned to accompany the release of a sequel with uncertain prospects, but now that the film anchors what can only be called a franchise, the disc has quickly become inadequate. The studio's home video division should begin planning now for a new edition to accompany release of the third film that will provide the kind of extras worthy of the first film in a trilogy, including, at the very least, a commentary and deleted scenes. Universal should also consider retransferring the film (or at least remastering, if the previous scan is adequate in its raw form) for a more film-like presentation. Comedies deserve as much respect as dramas, and Universal has shown that it can treat its catalog dramas like film when it wants to (see the recent release of Slap Shot for an example). In the meantime, this Blu-ray version of The Best Man is sufficiently serviceable to recommend for fans eager to improve on the DVD presentation.