The Squid and the Whale / Running with Scissors Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Squid and the Whale / Running with Scissors Blu-ray Movie Review

Take My Parents—Please!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 3, 2013

So much happens in the course of writer-director Noah Baumbach's 2005 independent triumph, The Squid and the Whale, that it's hard to believe Baumbach fit so much into a mere 81 minutes. But the events register with such impact—by turns funny, painful, excruciating, sometimes all three at once—that prolonging the experience any longer would be too much. Although the film remains one of the most powerful American portrayals of how children react to divorce, Baumbach also manages to encompass a frank depiction of the insecurities of male sexual awakening and the even greater terror that accompanies the discovery, which everyone makes sooner or later, that those omnipotent parental figures protecting us from everything frightening in the world can barely hold it together themselves.

Because Running with Scissors is, at least in part, a child's story about divorced and dysfunctional parents, someone thought it would make a good double bill with The Squid and the Whale. Thus, the two have been released on a single disc by Mill Creek Entertainment. Scissors was an early release by Sony in 2007, but it has been remastered for this two-film release. This review is limited to an audio and video evaluation. As far as the film is concerned, I defer to the comments of my colleague, Casey Broadwater, in his review of the Sony disc. There are few movies that I have not finished by choice, but Running with Scissors was one of them. I completed it on this Blu-ray solely for the sake of an audio/video evaluation.

For a discussion of The Squid and the Whale, see The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray review.

For a discussion of Running with Scissors, see the Running with Scissors Blu-ray review (2007 release).

The Squid and the Whale / Running with Scissors Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For a discussion of The Squid and the Whale, see The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray review.

For a discussion of Running with Scissors, see the Running with Scissors Blu-ray review.

The Squid and the Whale / Running with Scissors Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For a discussion of The Squid and the Whale, see The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray review.

For a discussion of Running with Scissors, see the Running with Scissors Blu-ray review.

The Squid and the Whale / Running with Scissors Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This disc contains no extras for either film.

The Squid and the Whale / Running with Scissors Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The likely purchasers of this double feature are fans of The Squid and the Whale, because true fans of Running with Scissors will want the original Sony disc for its extras. Despite the superficial similarity in subject matter, the two films are worlds apart in style, attitude, tone, temperament and (I would argue) quality. Squid and its fans would have been better served with a single-film release featuring, at the very least, a new transfer, but for reasons suggested in the separate review of that film, that course was deemed not economically advantageous. I recommend The Squid and the Whale as a film, and this appears likely to be the only Blu-ray version we will see anytime soon.