Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 12, 2020

It's the end of the world...as she knows it! Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, follows the life and times of a young woman who was led to believe that life and times were all but a thing of the past but who suddenly finds herself thrust in the thriving modern world. The show is certainly funny and builds up from a strongly devised premise, but its also imperfect, failing to dig more deeply into the title character's psyche, often favoring more shallow and superficial pursuits in her journey to rebuilding her life than truly dig deep into her mind. That's not to say the show is devoid of more purposeful content, but it's a sitcom and follows those rules and guidelines, upping the laughs and downplaying the drama, generally.

Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) “lives” -- if it can be called “living” -- with three other women in an off-the-grid bunker where they’ve long been held in the well-stocked underground tube by a man known as Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm) who is apparently keeping them safe from the nuclear apocalypse outside. They’re the last people left alive, they have been told, but their realities are one day shattered when SWAT officers raid the facility and free them back into the world. They are instant celebrities and enjoy the royal New York treatment. But rather than live a life of fame, Kimmy chooses to take her own life back -- to discover who she is on her own time and on her own dime -- rather than live the life of a helpless victim. But she has no higher education and, perhaps more damaging, no real understanding of how the world -- a world she thought to be nothing but ash, death, and decay -- really works all these years later. She reverts to a childlike sense of wonder as she explores her newfound freedom. She eats candy for dinner, plays on swing sets, and has no care in the world until she finally realizes she needs to find a place to live.

She meets a landlady, Lillian (Carol Kane), who is none too pleased with her current tenant, Titus (Tituss Burgess), a cash-strapped aspiring actor. Kimmy prefers to have a roommate, and Tiutus seems as good a choice as anyone else. But to pay her rent, she’ll need a job. When she catches a young boy, Buckley (Tanner Flood), in the act of stealing a candy bar, she hauls him back to his mother, a pampered socialite named Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) who hires Kimmy on to be the family nanny. Kimmy gets her room and roommate and dreams of being “a normal person.” She’s ill-prepared for the realities of big city and modern life, Titus warns her, but Kimmy is determined to make her new life work: whatever it takes, ten seconds at a time.

Premise, premise, premise. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt works on the strength of its premise, which pits a woman who is familiar with the world -- she knows it well, at least at its most essential, fundamental, level, its basic inner workings, as it was before the bunker -- but who is just distant enough from it for it to be fairly alien to her, and she to it. Far less zany and far-fetched than the Encino Man plot but a bit more stretched out in its character's absence than, say, the partial population five-year disappearing act as a result of The Snap, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt finds a Goldilocks timeframe for displaced persons humor. Kimmy is able to function at near full capacity in the world. She knows who she is, more or less how to fit in, and what she needs to do to plant her flag to transform into the "normal person" she wants to be. That her approach to normalcy comes from a fairly naive, somewhat uneducated, and partially disconnected mindset is what makes it funny. There's just enough off-kilter dynamics to see her everyday situations and scenarios turn into a laugh riot. “That’s going to be a fascinating transition,” a kooky character says over the show’s open. Indeed.

But none of it matters without a tour-de-force performance in the lead. Ellie Kemper delivers just that, hitting that stride of well intentioned naiveté right out of the gate and growing just enough throughout the series to keep things believable but to also keep that humor rolling at its fresh, flavorful pacing that's established from the get-go. Kemper's challenge is great. She cannot be so out of the loop as to prove nonfunctional, nor can she be too close to it for the show to lose its edge. She's a master of understanding time, both in the show and in her delivery of every line, the broad humor in particular but also those moments of dramatic growth (which are too infrequent for this reviewer's taste but coming with enough frequency to, again, keep the audience engaged, the characters on their toes, and the plot more or less believable). She's supported by a fantastic supporting cast that runs with the quirkiness that defines the primary supports and begs the question of who's the most out-of-place, anyway?

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series emerges onto Blu-ray with a generally effective 1080p, 1.78:1-framed transfer. The presentation offers high yield sharpness and clarity throughout the series. Details border on exacting, revealing complex facial textures with ease across a wide gamut of character appearances, including freckles, pores, wrinkles, and other distinguishing characteristics. Dense city locations enjoy firm location command, showcasing challenging details with efficient command that pulls the audience into the show's New York world. Clothes are likewise crisp and revealing, capturing garment complexities, across a wide range of casual and classy attire and costumes, with ease. Speaking of clothes, colors are bold and brilliant, extremely well saturated, loud but not too aggressive. Clothes are one of the highlights; there are almost always examples of splashy attire on the screen, and even when costumes are more subdued the intense city tones certainly take over to keep the screen filled with wondrous splashes of color. Skin tones appear perfectly locked in and black levels are nice and deep. The image does suffer from some modest to moderate compression issues; right out of the gate, when the "mole women" are pulled from the bunker, macroblocking dances through the sky. Compression artifacts are regularly occurring but do not usually rise to a level that reaches "distraction." More breathing room and encode efficiency would have certainly alleviated many of these issues, but that's the trade-off for a relatively low priced full series outing. Fortunately, no other major issues, like noise or banding, are particularly bothersome. This is a good image in the aggregate, but the compression issues do get in the way of an otherwise excellent presentation.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The presentation delivers a good listen, generally, though there are moments when it leaves audiences wanting a little more, such as when music at a dance club in one of the early episodes fails to really ignite the soundstage, to totally immerse the listener into the sort of intense din one would expect to hear. There's enough information in play but it's not engineered to fruitful excellence. The track does recover in other areas and even under somewhat similar circumstances. Though not inside a dance club, the end of episode one features several characters out on city streets. A symphony of familiar city sounds create a detailed, immersive din that spreads throughout the listening area and perfectly draws the audience into the location. It's lively and energetic and perfectly detailed. Music enjoys nicely robust spacing and clarity with some impressively enveloping surround details. Dialogue drives the show beyond its other elements, of course, and presents with a solid front-center foundation. Prioritization and clarity are excellent.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series contains no extras. The set ships in a thick Amaray case with most of the discs housed on folding leaves. The set ships inside a basic slip box of modest quality.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a good show that works well within its comedy-first approach. It could stand a little more depth but the laughs usually hit and the quick pace often leaves the audience wanting more. Ellie Kemper shines as the title character and there are some well written and strongly performed support characters, too. It would be interesting to see the show reworked with a more grounded and dramatic approach, just to see the story from a different perspective, but it certainly works pretty well as a humor-heavy sitcom. Mill Creek's Blu-ray release of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series is unfortunately devoid of bonus content but the video and audio presentations are fairly good, though certainly flawed upon closer inspection. Recommended.