Blu-ray Review: Bruce Almighty - Page 2

I wonder if Bruce will end up learning a lesson or something?

Video / Audio

Bruce Almighty receives a token, and arguably unattended, autopilot transfer to high definition. Although a definite step up from the DVD, it suffers from dull color, and contrast and noise issues are intermittent throughout the film. Things aren't helped by some shockingly poor special effects that act as a guided laser for your eyes to observe still other clarity problems, but that isn't necessarily Blu-ray's fault. As the bonus materials are a straight port from the previous DVD version, it's obvious that this was a quickie catalog reissue, so perhaps in the future a double-dip release will see fit to clean up and fix some of the video issues.

The audio holds its own, with an upgrade to a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track; although things still stay more or less focused on the front sound field. There are environment effects that mainly creep into the rear channels, but their inclusion seems haphazard at times. The audio throughout is on the positive side of unimpressive; it delivers what's there solidly, but the track wasn't really initially built to showcase itself.

Bonus Materials

The first supplemental item is a collection of outtakes from the film (SD, 6:37), because as we all know, continually messing up your lines can be some pretty funny stuff. It often isn't here, but in general it can be... Also, director Tom Shadyac hosts a short item entitled "The Process Of Jim" (SD, 5:54), a rather bland piece which simply entails three scenes where Jim improvises and goofs around.

On to the more interesting stuff, we have half an hour of deleted and extended scenes (SD, 30:30), which you can choose to watch plain or with commentary by Shadyac. The scenes are all pretty self-explanatory, and generally the commentary just states the obvious, but some of them are entertaining and show some different plot lines that got cut from the film in the interest of time. Given the previous commentary effort, I wasn't expecting much with Shadyac's commentary track for the film, but it turned out to be surprisingly interesting. In addition to the evolution of the script and some behind-the-scenes tidbits relevant to the onscreen action, he spends a fair amount of time on the spiritual aspect of the film, of trying to make the subject as universal as possible while also trying to stay faithful to the key subject matters. It's a worthwhile listen, and along with the uncommentated deleted scenes make for the only bonus items worth paying attention to.

Article Author: David R Perry

Lost somewhere in the rolling hills of Tennessee, David R Perry can occasionally be found doing dark, unspeakable things to words. Printed words, spoken words, electronically mangled words... really any kind but twittered words.

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