Dude, Where's My Car? (Blu-ray)

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Video:

I´m assuming that "Dude, Where´s My Car?" was released to capitalize on the release of "What Happens In Vegas" that also stars Ashton Kutcher. However, this film gets next to no love with its Blu-ray release and the MPEG-2 (24.8 MBPS) transfer is one hint that Fox was looking to make this a very inexpensive endeavor. The film looks decent enough, but the level of detail and coloring is at best average for a film that is only eight years old. Nothing stands out as being poor, but some posterization does happen and I wonder if it is not a result of the MPEG-2 compression. Black levels are a little on the grey side as the darker scenes in the film look far more dated than those with sufficient lighting. The film does appear to be a high definition transfer, but it is near the bottom of the barrel from Fox.

Audio:

The audio has a better stat line than the video. The DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio mix sounds good on paper, but in practice it is a limited soundtrack that hardly moves beyond the front channels and never gets too lively. The front channels handle a very high percentage of the load and exhibit decent imaging as audio pans from one channel to the next. However, the rear channels are largely ignored and find most of their work during the odd climax and couple of the musical selections contained in the film. The .1 LFE channel has a little life to it, but it too is not used too heavily by this comedy. Dialogue would typically be considered the highest priority and while it is crystal clear, the film doesn´t present too many lines worth hearing. This is a very limited mix that doesn´t need half the technology provided to it.

Extras:

I´ll mention that the film has additional Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks in French and Spanish and subtitles in English, Spanish, Cantonese and Korean in this section because if I threw them in with the audio discussion I would have next to nothing to write about in the "Extras" section. Fox definitely went on the heap with this release and besides the additional language support, only the films Original Theatrical Trailer is thrown in to make the sting hurt a little less if you purchased this title for full price. I´m sure some bonus materials existed out there to make this a worthwhile upgrade over the previous DVD release, but nothing worth mentioning was included on the disc.

Closing:

"Dude, Where´s My Car?" finds itself dumped to Blu-ray with a bare bones release that uses an old and outdated codec, contains limited sound information and provides only a theatrical trailer as value added content. Add in the fact that the Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott film is remarkably unfunny and you have a very limited reason to upgrade from the previous DVD release. For those without the DVD that may be interested in the film, I´d almost feel dirty recommending that you seek out the Blu-ray and not the far cheaper DVD release of the film. This is a minimal step up and any good upconvert player could deliver a similar experience for far less the cost of this release. I hate to be so negative, but there isn´t much good to say about this Blu-ray title.

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