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.
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A sequence only in the extended cut.
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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.
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?
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| 1998 fullscreen DVD. |
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| 1998 widescreen DVD. |
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| 2005 DVD. |
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| 2005 extended DVD. |
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| 2021 BD. |
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| 2021 extended BD. |
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2021 UHD.
|
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| 2021 extended UHD. |
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| 2021 TV BD. |
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| 1998 fullscreen DVD. |
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| 1998 widescreen DVD. |
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| 2005 DVD. |
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| 2005 extended DVD. |
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| 2021 BD. |
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| 2021 extended BD. |
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| 2021 UHD. |
 |
| 2021 extended UHD. |
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| 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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