Grumpy Old Men (Blu-ray)

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Lemmon and Matthau were always serious dramatic actors as well as comic actors, and the movie displays their diverse talents well, with Lemmon getting the juicier dramatic moments. Nevertheless, it's hard for even these two seasoned pros to carry a picture that has so little substance to it. Needless to say, everything gets resolved in the story's final few minutes, leading one to question why the dilemmas seemed so important in the first place.

Besides the work of Lemmon and Matthau, "Grumpy Old Men" boasts an appealing musical score by Alan Silvestri, reminiscent of the one by Neal Hefti for "The Odd Couple," and a very funny set of outtakes during the closing credits. Indeed, the outtakes made me laugh more than anything in the actual movie.

Video:
As we might have expected with a fairly short movie and practically no extras, WB easily accommodate it in on a single-layer BD25, using VC-1 encoding to reproduce the movie's 1.85:1 aspect ratio. It does the trick. Black levels are very deep, and the whites of snow glisten. The high definition is sharp, and colors remain generally true, although the overall appearance of things is on the dark side. There is a hint of normal print grain to provide texture and a welcome amount of detailing in every object on screen. In all, it's an excellent Blu-ray transfer.

Audio:
The disc offers the choice of Dolby TrueHD 2.0 or Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. I was a little surprised that the disc provided no 5.1, but discreet 5.1 was in its infancy in 1993, and Warners probably felt the cost of remixing it in 5.1 today was prohibitive. The 2.0 exhibits no surround activity of its own, meaning that your receiver (depending on its settings) will have to simulate a rear-channel signal (in Pro Logic IIx, "Movie," it sounds fines); what's more, there are limited bass and dynamic responses. Its strong suit, though, is a smooth, warm, and entirely natural midrange, which is what the soundtrack is all about, anyway, so it does exactly what it needs to do.

Extras:
There is not much available in the way of extras on the disc. You get a theatrical trailer in standard definition, and that's about it. I think WB missed a bet in not providing a trailer for the movie's sequel, "Grumpier Old Men," too, but what do I know. There are thirty-three scene selections; pop-up menus; English as the only spoken language; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. Nothing more.

Parting Thoughts:
"Grumpy Old Men" is sort of a one-note picture, but luckily that one note is often pretty humorous. Now, if only it didn't have to impose a plot on the two main characters' relationship, it might have been even more persuasive.

Although Lemmon and Matthau made several more films before they died, including "Grumpier Old Men" (1995) and "The Odd Couple II" (1998), "Grumpy Old Men" was the best of their late work. It would win few awards but many a fan. Whether we really needed it in high definition is debatable, but it's certainly nice to have it in any case.

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