Writing-wise, it's under-cooked too, and feels like it's pulling against the thrust of the main story. Like, we have to keep stopping examining Martin's relationship with LA every time the screenplay takes a pit-stop at Tennant's B-story. Really, she should be tied to the A-story. I think the five-pointed love pentagram is over-complicated, since this film's already packed with so much great stuff already. They probably should've aged up Sarah Jessica Parker's character (who manages to breathe a lot of humanity into an otherwise one-joke character), and have her been the final love interest. So instead of Martin falling for this quirky journalist who just flew in from London, he'd be falling for this quirky shop girl (wink), whose eccentricities as an LA local would be part and parcel with Martin's love for LA, so every scene is on-theme. Marilu Henner could be the outsider, a NY woman whose misunderstanding and lack of appreciation for LA's spirit would dovetail with them realizing they're wrong for each other. Maybe that's too on the nose? That's how I would fix it, but even if you don't like that, the point is that there is a major problem that needed fixing here.
But thankfully - dare I say magically? - Martin's homage to LA is so good, that you can easily get past the problem. The film is packed with so many great jokes it starts out playing more like a classic Zucker Brothers' romp (or perhaps more significantly, like Martin's early classic films with Carl Reiner), but then Martin and director Mick Jackson manage to bump enough sincerity into it that you can't help being touched by the film's heart, even if it is misguided and rickety. When the music swells and Martin and Tennant turn into small children, it really is an effective moment... helped by the fact that it's possibly the one moment where their relationship stays on-message with the rest of the film: LA celebrates and nurtures the residents' youthful ambitions. The fact that it's dated (car phone jokes in the age of the smartphone, yadda yadda), doesn't even work against it, because you sense that it's perfectly capturing, and occasionally skewering, a very specific time and place in our history and culture in need of preserving... and a particularly silly one at that.
L.A. Story debuted on DVD all the way back in 1998 as a non-anamorphic disc in an Artisan snapper, which was reissued three years later with a proper amaray case. They sowed some confusion as to whether these were actually the same discs (oh, we're going to get into that in a bit), but yes, they were. We got updated discs in 2006, though, for Lions Gate's 15th Anniversary Edition (itself reissued in 2010 with a new cover and identical disc), which boasted a healthy, anamorphic remaster and all new extras. And that's a good thing, because that's as good as it ever got, at least here in the USA. In other parts of the world, it's actually been issued on blu plenty of times. Personally, I went with the recent 2020 German release from Koch Media.
![]() |
2001 Artisan DVD top; 2006 Lions Gate DVD mid; 2020 Koch BD bottom. |
The original DVD includes the film's stereo surround mix with optional English and Spanish subtitles. The 15th Anniversary DVD keeps all of that, but gets a bit showy by adding in a new 5.1 mix as well. Well, happily, Koch has preserved both tracks in now lossless formats (PCM for the stereo and DTS-HD for the 5.1), as well as a PCM German dub. The only downside is that they dumped the English (and Spanish) subs, replacing them with (naturally) German ones.
![]() |
1998 US DVD top; 2001 US DVD bottom. |
![]() |
deleted scene... yes, John Lithgow is flying through LA in a jetpack |
The 15th Anniversary was more of a special edition. It still had the promo featurette, although in a slightly shorter form, cutting out about a minute of material including a clip from Roxanne, and a scene + interview clip with Sarah Jessica Parker. But it adds higher quality stuff, including a detailed interview with the producer and an "interactive map," which basically amounts to an exploration of the film's shooting locations across thirteen video clips with the film's production manager. These are both made with care and quite interesting. But the jewel in the crown is the collection of over 20 minutes worth of deleted scenes, which includes a lot of great stuff. There are whole subplots with John Lithgow and Scott Bakula who were completely cut out of the movie (though featured in the trailers), clearly just for time because they're great. We also get an additional teaser, some bonus trailers, and a slipcover.
![]() |
a brief, German-exclusive interview with Grant |
So this blu is a strong recommend. It looks better than I expected, with lossless audio and even some new extras. But still no commentary. I sometimes wonder if the session was planned but nobody got the memo that it had fallen through at the last minute, or if a commentary really was recorded and is still sitting in Artisan's vaults. Maybe Jackson let it all hang out and the studio refused to release it, or maybe he was silent for more than half the picture, leaving the producers with a track full of dead air. We'll probably never know. But at least we finally have a home video edition that's worthy of this little gem.
No comments:
Post a Comment