Strange Wilderness (Blu-ray)

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I mentioned Kevin Heffernan. He's one of the Broken Lizard comedy team ("Super Troopers," "Club Dread," "Beerfest"), and I couldn't help thinking as I watched "Strange Wilderness" how much the script sounded like something the Broken Lizard gang would have rejected. It's that bad.

The gags in "Strange Wilderness" come flying fast, yet not a single one of them except for the deadpan delivery by Robert Patrick is at all humorous. Most of the jokes are simply gross or inappropriate, like our having to watch a man burn to death at a peace rally. I guess if you find that kind of thing funny, you find it funny; I didn't. Then there's an episode involving Peter relieving himself in the wilderness and being attacked by a wild turkey. Uh-huh; use your imagination. The turkey episode is supposedly the high point of the film's humor because among the disc's extras we get an entire behind-the-scenes segment on it. Yet I found it too obscene, too ridiculous, and too juvenile even to consider amusing.

Need I also tell you the movie is racist and sexist? You already guessed? On the back cover we read, "Rated R for non-stop language, drug use, crude and sexual humor." The only thing they got wrong was the "humor." The movie starts out unfunny and gets unfunnier as it goes along. The best parts are the closing credits. They couldn't come fast enough.

Video:
Paramount use a single-layer BD25 and an MPEG-4/AVC encode to present the picture in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The transfer is decent enough, but.... On the plus side, the screen is clear, and the colors are deep and sparkling. On the negative side, the high-definition image looks somewhat smeared for HD and often dark, making some scenes look a little murky. Moreover, the image usually looks too bright and glassy for real life, with exaggerated contrast levels. Like the comedy itself, which the filmmakers intentionally overstated, the picture quality is also inflated. Maybe it's what the director intended, too, in order to point up the farcical nature of the story; I don't know.

Audio:
Like the standard-definition DVD's Dolby Digital 5.1, the Blu-ray's Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack has a limited multichannel response, sounding more like two-channel stereo most of time. Occasionally, the rear speakers show some signs of life, like when the crew is in the jungle, but mainly we get dialogue and sounds only from the center channel. There is a good clarity, though, a quiet background, and an appropriately dynamic acoustic. Oddly, about the time it really comes to life and shows off lossless TrueHD's capabilities is right at the end of the movie with a big musical blast. So, at least it shows its potential.

Extras:
Most of the special features on the disc are on the same level as the movie, meaning if you didn't care for the film, you won't care for the extras, either. A further concern is that they are in standard definition. First up, there's "Cooker's Song" in which the viewer must suffer through five more minutes of a ridiculous song from the movie. Next up, we find a six-minute bit on the infamous turkey sequence, followed by six minutes of behind-the-scenes giggling in "What Do We Do?" After that is a twenty-odd-minute "Reel Comedy: Strange Wilderness" segment, followed by thirteen deleted scenes, about twenty-two minutes' worth, that are really no worse than anything in the film. Come to think of it, you could just check out the deleted scenes and save yourself the trouble of watching the movie.

The extras conclude with eleven scene selections; bookmarks; English and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
After watching "Strange Wilderness," you may want to soak your feet in a tub of live piranhas, just for laughs. You'll find it a lot more fun than anything in this movie, which is not merely dumb but downright depressing. As I say, in its favor, it's brief. Regrettably, those few minutes go by like days. By comparison, "Strange Wilderness" makes "Dude, Where's My Car?" seem like something by Oscar Wilde. Don't say nobody warned you.

Final note: The first time I watched "Strange Wilderness" (on DVD), I had not only never seen it before, I had never even heard of it. This second time I watched the film (on Blu-ray), I was curious to see what other critics thought of it, so I checked at Rotten Tomatoes. It turned out to be the first movie in my experience to get a zero rating. Not a single reviewer posting at Rotten Tomatoes liked it. That's a distinction of sorts.

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