Today's Stripes Wants to Join You

There were a couple films I couldn't wait to get the new Columbia Classics set for: Taxi Driver, Sense & Sensibility... The unrated debut of Fincher's The Social Network.  And a couple I didn't really care about that just happened to be in the set: Oliver, those animated shorts.  Stripes was somewhere in the middle.  A nice comedy I'd be happy enough to revisit when the set arrived.  The extras were possibly more compelling to me than the film itself, since I've seen Stripes enough times in my life already.  It raised the value of the box for me a bit, but it's not something I would've bought on its own.  I wasn't expecting just how impressive this would be.
The truth about Stripes is that it's an okay comedy.  This is the film Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray made together before Ghostbusters, but it ain't no Ghostbusters.  It's not nearly as inventive and clever.  It's a star vehicle at the right place and time, riding almost purely on the likability of its stars, who were just bursting with newfound popularity at the time.  And it is an amazing cast.  Besides the leads, we get supporting roles from John Candy, Warren Oates, John Larroquette, PJ Soles, Sean Young and Joe Flaherty, not to mention cameos/ pre-fame bit parts by Dave Thomas, Judge Reinhold, Timothy Busfield... apparently Bill Paxton's even floating around in there as an extra somewhere.  But the script doesn't really deserve them.  It has some solid lines (improved or not), but it also has long patches without any good gags, which it tries to coast through purely on the actors' charisma.  And "beloved comic joins the army" comedies like these are a dime a dozen, from Pauly Shore's In the Army Now or Ernest In the Army to Pvt. Benjamin, which was filming the very same year as Stripes.  Heck, Laurel and Hardy alone did it in Air Raid Wardens, The Flying Deuces and Great Guns (technically, one of those was the French Foreign Legion, but it's the same "acting goofy in basic training" trope).  It's safe, well worn territory.  And in fact, Reitman tells us in the special features that this film was originally written as Cheech & Chong Join the Army.  Just imagine.
But to be fair, Reitman did more to earn his cast than just strike rising star casting oil.  The production values are truly impressive; they were able to film on a real army base, and Reitman uses this to create a very real, grounded military environment.  Murray isn't just standing next to two or three green-shirted extras in a tiny sound-stage, the whole cast is sleeping on top of real tanks and marching alongside hundred of actual soldiers doing quite real maneuvers.  Warren Oates brings so much weight to his sergeant role he could be mistaken for Full Metal Jacket's legendary R. Lee Ermey.  All the silliness and ribbing plays twice as well just for being situated in an authentic setting... at least until the film goes completely off the rails in its wildly unnecessary third act where they invade Russia to impress their girlfriends.  They basically just needed one more script rewrite to fully excise the Cheech and Chong stuff.  If only they'd taken more time to flesh out their charming characters (in the extras, Reitman keeps saying how Reinhold was a repository for all the drug humor from the original script... but even in the extended cut, that amounts to just one 20-second scene!) and dreamt up a few more smart jokes instead of just relying on Murray mugging during drills.  Oh, and the sexual politics have aged just a little bit better than the blackface number in A Day At the Races.  At the end of the day, it's a bemusing comedy to catch on TV some evening, but it's always on the frustrating cusp of being great.
A sequence only in the extended cut.
Oh, did I mention an extended cut?  Yeah, it was originally created for the 2005 DVD re-release. To be clear, this is not a director's cut; in fact, Reitman and his editor comment sound off repeatedly in their audio commentary about how the film is better with almost all of the footage out.  And they're right.  The extended cut is over-long and repetitive, most notably featuring a bizarre seven-minute long segment where Murray and Ramis are captured by some kind of South American rebels (the film doesn't really specify) that would've probably made more sense for Cheech & Chong (the joke is basically that Ramis gets high, and then everybody gets high with him), but is wildly discordant here.  There are a few nice touches, though.  Amusing gags, and the crazy super-powered Winnebago in the third act plays a little bit better when you see the extended opening scene where Murray reveals his life-long dream is to cruise in a Winnebago.  But it mostly drags down a film that already struggles in the pacing department, and the best way to enjoy it is to watch the theatrical version and then see the extra footage as deleted scenes, which they were always intended to be.
Stripes was originally released on DVD all the way back in 1998.  It was a barebones flipper disc, with fullscreen on one side and widescreen on the other.  In 2005, it was upgraded to a special edition.  It dumped the fullscreen crap and replaced it with the extended cut (in addition to the theatrical widescreen version, not instead of it) and a great special features.  Stripes has been repacked multiple times, including in a bunch of bundles like the 80's 5-Film Collection and the Laugh Out Loud 3-Movie Collection, but in the US at least, it's pretty much always this 2005 disc, essentially the definitive DVD edition.

But DVDs are outmoded, and in 2011 it was released on blu for the first time (originally as a Best Buy exclusive, and then more broadly)... but only the extended cut - yikes!  That got them a lot of blow back, naturally, and in 2016 they eventually released the theatrical cut on blu... as a barebones MOD BDR in their Choice Collection - yikes!  Why can't they just give us Stripes properly like they did on DVD?  Well, they finally have... and on UHD with all new features to boot!  But it is only available as a part of their 2021 Columbia Classics Volume 2 14-disc boxed set.  So let's make sure it's worth it, shall we?
1998 fullscreen DVD.
1998 widescreen DVD.
2005 DVD.
2005 extended DVD.
2021 BD.
2021 extended BD.
2021 UHD.
2021 extended UHD.
2021 TV BD.
1998 fullscreen DVD.
1998 widescreen DVD.
2005 DVD.
2005 extended DVD.
2021 BD.
2021 extended BD.
2021 UHD.
2021 extended UHD.
2021 TV BD.
That's a lot of comparisons, but it's not that complicated.  I'm including the theatrical cuts and extended cuts to be completist, but each disc that includes the extended cut uses the same transfer as the theatrical.  So for all intents and purposes, they're essentially identical and redundant.  The original 1998 disc actually holds up fairly well, the fullscreen version is 1.32:1 and mostly open matte, and the widescreen version is almost the exact right AR (1.81:1 and just slightly window-boxed in the overscan area).  It's not interlaced and it is anamorphic.  Still, the 2005 is clearly taken from a new and improved master, with corrected colors, and more accurate (1.84:1) framing without the windowboxing.  I've read reports of it struggling to branch between the two cuts smoothly, but I didn't have any problem with that on my Samsung in 2021.

I never picked up the 2011 BD, but anyone who did and was disappointed will be glad to hear that this new Columbia Classics release is based on an all new 4k scan of the OCN.  It's exactly 1.85:1 and oh boy, even on the BD, the film grain is so natural and thoroughly captured.  The colors are much less stark; giving a much deeper, more photo realistic image.  And then the extra resolution of the UHD makes edges smooth and natural even on super huge screens, and the HDR is beautiful without betraying its authentic early 80s filmic roots.  Sony has really gotten it right.

And wrong.  Like with Halloween's latest UHD set, we've for some reason (novelty value, I guess, or just to show off how far they've come) circled around to the worst edition in the comparison with another TV version.  It's back to fullscreen (1.34:1, cropping just a little more than the 1998 fullscreen version), washed out and interlaced, plus it's SD despite being included on the BD, and the audio's lossy.  But hey, if you ever wanted to see this with the nudity clumsily edited out, well, now's your chance.  Anyway, it's pointless but painless so long as the other editions are available, as they are, so there's nothing to complain about.  It's just a silly bonus feature.
In the audio department, the original DVD did it right giving us the original mono track with optional English subtitles, plus a bonus French dub and subs.  Then the 2005 DVD replaced the original mono track (that the 2011 BD also left off, of course) with a new 5.1 mix.  It even dumped that French dub.  Thankfully, the new 2021 releases restores the original mono track, though it also preserves that 5.1 mix if you liked it, both in lossless DTS-HD.  And they created an all new Atmos mix, too.  There are optional English subtitles, plus a ton of foreign dubs and subs.  And yes, this is all for both cuts.  Perfect!

One slight caveat: I found on my player that whenever I paused and then un-paused the film, it would go out of sync.  And I would have to power off and on to re-sync it.  Further playing with the discs (both the BD and UHD) on my PC, it was reporting weird sync issues.  So something's going on there.  But it all plays perfectly in sync except when you've paused it, so I don't think it's a serious problem where we need to demand a replacement program or anything.  But it's a quirk.
So again, the 1998 DVD was virtually barebones.  It had an insert with brief notes and the trailer; that's it.  But the 2005 DVD introduced what are still the majority of Stripes' excellent special features package, starting with the aforementioned commentary by Reitman and his editor.  They do lag at points, but overall, it's a very informative track.  Possibly even better, though, is a roughly hour-long retrospective documentary that rounds up pretty much all of the key players for enthusiastic interviews.  The 2005 DVD also included the extra extended cut footage as separate deleted scenes, plus they slapped on a couple bonus trailers.

Thankfully, the 2021 set includes all of that, but there's more.  There's a fun reunion with Reitman and Murray (plus a short appearance by DP Bill Butler, which is a real highlight), which is a good 45 minutes long.  One drawback, though, is that multiple anecdotes are repeated, almost verbatim, in the commentary, the documentary and this new feature.  You're going to be sick of hearing their story of the time Ivan asked the cast to push Warren Oates into the obstacle course mud by the third time around.  But there are some good exclusive thoughts in here, too.  Better still is a feature that I think many people are overlooking, because Stripes has included the deleted scenes since the 2005 disc.  But this release includes more, newly recovered deleted scenes, not from the extended cut and that have never been released before.  This is must-see content for Stripes fans.  And I should add that its case, like all the other five features in the Classics box, comes in a stylish slipcover.  And that the set's impressive, hardcover full-color book includes a substantial section devoted just to Stripes.
So is it worth it?  Well, I don't know what kind of budget you're working with, but I can say that this new Stripes release is a master-class from Sony.  They get it all right.  Gorgeous new transfer from the OCN, both cuts of the film, the original mono is back and lossless plus a fancy new Atmos track, all the legacy extras and some very exciting new ones.  It's not just the best and definitive release, it makes everything that came before it look like junk.  And it's not like Stripes has been neglected on home video.  But wow, they nailed it.  I'm loving this frickin' set!

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