THE MOVIE

Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) and Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) are life long enemies. Helen is about to marry Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) when Madeline steals him out from under her nose. Helen doesn’t cope very well with this, puts on a tonne of weight and ends up in a mental hospital with an obsession about Madeline. Ernest and Madeline marry and end up years later mere shadows of their former selves. Madeline is a has-been B grade actress that would attend the opening of an envelope and Ernest has gone from plastic surgeon to alcoholic mortician. Years pass and Helen resurfaces, trim, taught and terrific with a new book and a plan to get even with Madeline for all her years of suffering. At this point things become dark and twisted with “…greed, vanity, sex, immortality, life…and death.”

Robert Zemekis created undoubtedly the most original film of 1992. The story of rivalry and the things we do to keep ourselves looking attractive to others is taken to extremes in Death Becomes Her. Characters are cast for their beauty, yet asked to send themselves up and virtually all of their self serving, beauty obsessed, liposucking, face-lifting, body-tucking, butt-shaping, anti-wrinkling, immortality-seeking country. And boy, do they ever. They cast all look to have enjoyed making a mockery of all they are, putting all their hang-ups on screen. Bruce Willis is wonderfully cast as a hen-pecked loser that goes from helping to make the living stop aging to making the dead look alive. Streep and Hawn are particularly vicious when they sharpen their claws for a duel to the eternally beautiful death.

The whole movie has a grand overblown feel to it-from the set design to the comedic use of thunder and lightning to punctuate the story. The special effects were revolutionary for the time and still look good today (or at least as good as the average transfer will let them) considering their age. The ageless humour is sarcastic and warped, with a good blend of sight gags and sharp satirical insults. In all, a great story that did very well on original release that deserves to do well with the release on DVD, but as we’ll see, this probably won’t be the case.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

And so the problems begin. Unfortunately, this is a disappointing transfer for a good film. This suffers from lack of 16x9 enhancement with poor detail resolution. Considering the attention that had been shown to the set design in the movie, this seems like a big oversight. You will notice distinct examples of this lack of detail in Goldie Hawn’s hair, which tends to make the strands look clumped together, resembling spaghetti rather than hair. Also, for film that is all about vanity, skin doesn’t come off very well either with the noise/grain/compression problems playing havoc on some wider angle shots. This video is riddled with grain and compression induced softness and reduced dynamic range in an occasionally high contrast picture. Colours, though are fairly evenly saturated and vivid, holding up fairly well. All in all, not a very impressive transfer, to say the least.

Audio:

This soundtrack really could have utilized a DD5.1 transfer. All you get is DD2.0, though. This is at least better than the visual quality, but still lacking oomph. Dialogue is clean and distinct, perhaps a little too flat at times. The effects and surround channels are used nicely to enhance the thunder and lightning at appropriate moments. They put in a good effort when reproducing the echo of footsteps through the mansions, creating a broad soundstage. Directional cues are used sparingly but to good effect within the confines of the separation. Overall, a relatively good soundtrack with no real problems other than lacking some real life.

THE EXTRAS

Your standard effort here, also. Theatrical trailer(with glimpses of scenes not in the movie), production notes and cast and crew bio’s. The only real extra is the behind the scenes featurette which is as useful as any other featurette-that is to say not very useful at all. It starts to go into a little bit of info about the effects used on Goldie and Meryl, which whets your appetite. In fact, these featurettes are starting to get on my nerves. At around 6 minutes long, they are just long enough to get you watching and interested before they stop dead in their tracks, leaving you with a sense of being cheated out of a full documentary. Hmmm, sounds suspiciously like something else…

SUMMARY

A very funny movie that has a lot to say about the vanity of the people that are involved in the industry. Dark and warped style that is enjoyable, but not given the treatment that it deserves. This needs to be remastered with more attention paid to detail, but it probably isn’t going to happen. I laughed a lot, had an entertaining night in front of the tele, but walked away with a bad taste in mouth because of the quality of the transfer.