The Movie:

You can't get more 80s than this if you combined leg warmers with Gorbachev and Reagan signing the INF Treaty. A standard 80s rom-com with a screenplay that's far too cramped with sometimes useless, sometimes baffling sub-plots, Desperately Seeking Susan is merely known these days as "The movie that kick-started Madonna's acting career and therefore should be blamed for all of the problems in the world".

For some reason, 80s romantic comedies couldn't just settle with a simple story about two characters falling in love and had to raise the stakes to near-camp levels as most of the lesser examples of the genre shoddily incorporated action or crime elements for the sole reason of packing the third act with everything and the kitchen sink.

How many bad comedies have you seen from the 80s that showcased our protagonists struggling to come to terms with their feelings for each other while running away from the all-too-conveniently manufactured bad guys as the gaudy upbeat saxophone and drum machine score raped your ears?

It's not enough to tell a character-driven story about an unappreciated housewife who pretends to be a free-thinking pop chick in order to discover a new side of herself, the screenplay has to be clumsily packed with amnesia, two cases of mistaken identity that would have been resolved in two minutes in the real world, and even a criminal conspiracy surrounding the whereabouts of Nefertiti's earrings.

Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is a typical bored suburban housewife who lives vicariously through the relationship a mysterious woman named Susan (Madonna, who looks like bad cosplay of early 80s Madonna) conducts with a musician named Jim (Robert Joy) through personal ads on the newspaper.

For our millennial readers, a newspaper can be best described as the retro analog version of an iPad and the personal ads within them were kind of like the Tinder of their time. A person who wanted to copulate with a possible mate had to actually go to the newspaper office and pay a fee to post their innermost desires, instead of swiping left to bone the hottie next door. I don't know if you swipe left to accept or to ignore. I'm happily married and have never used a dating app, therefore I have no idea what you kids are up to these days with your Pac-Mans and your hippidy-hoppidy music.

Knowing where Susan will hook up with Jim through the personal ad, Roberta decides to dress up like Susan and show up at the meeting spot. Through a series of insanely convoluted coincidences and the magic of Hollywood science, Roberta loses her memory after bumping her head and thinks she actually is Susan. The dreamy Dez (Aidan Quinn), a bohemian projector at a grindhouse, takes Roberta in out of pity and wouldn't you know it, the two gradually fall in love.

Arquette and Quinn actually have an adequate amount of chemistry that could have carried the film if the screenplay focused mostly on the story of a woman supposedly living the 80s American dream struggling with an identity crisis. Unfortunately, the many tone-deaf and sometimes even goofy subplots muddy the waters and result in a mess of a film. The wisecracking relationship between Rosetta's clueless husband Gary (Mark Blum) and the real Susan borderlines on farce, and did I mention there's a crime element revolving around Nefertiti's earrings? Yeah, I wasn't joking about that.

The Blu-Ray:

Video:

In perfect 80s fashion, Desperately Seeking Susan sports a gaudy cinematography that over-utilizes a pastel color scheme. That's why it's weird that the 1080p presentation feels flat and somewhat lifeless. The colors don't necessarily pop and the overall transfer looks faded. It's also full of scratches, even though it's devoid of any video noise. Some clean-up work could have helped, since some of the sequences are so full of scratches that I half-expected cigarette burns to appear at end of each reel. All in all, it's far from a great transfer, but I'm pretty certain this is the best home video presentation of this film.

Audio:

The DTS-HD 2.0 track is the only one that's provided, aside from the commentary. The Blu-ray cover doesn't specify the details of the track, but I could swear that this is in fact a mono presentation, since I couldn't sense any separation or panning between the channels. The dialogue is clear and the pop music that permeates the soundtrack sounds quite well despite the limitations of the non-surround track.

Extras:

Producers' Commentary: This commentary is not necessarily advertised correctly since it also contains director Susan Seidelman as well as three producers from the film. It's a sloppy commentary as the ladies constantly talk over each other and were recorded in widely differing levels. They mostly talk about how they could pull this project off for a small budget and the many casting choices. It's only for the hardcore fans.

Alternate Ending: A six-minute ending that expands the one that's already in the film. It also goes a bit further to showcase a ridiculous finale involving a vacation to a 1940s B-movie version of The Middle East.

We also get a Trailer.

Final Thoughts:

Full of big hair and fashion that looks like an Urban Outfitters threw up, Desperately Seeking Susan is a sloppily written sit-com that feels entirely too dated nowadays. It might provide some audiences who saw it when it first came out with some warm nostalgia. Otherwise, it can be easily forgotten.

Oktay Ege Kozak is a film critic and screenwriter based in Portland, Oregon. He also writes for The Playlist, The Oregon Herald, and Beyazperde.com