Video:

Getting Out of Rhode Island is presented in a matted widescreen format (though the box says that the film is in 1.33:1 full frame). It's hard to judge a film like this in a technical sense. This was clearly a film shot on no budget, and the picture reflects that. Everything is grainy, to the point in some scenes of being unwatchable. Director Christian de Rezendes stuck to most tenets of the Dogme95 (or "Dogma," as the film's official site calls it) manifesto, including artificial lighting; it takes ideal conditions to pull that off and a 100-minute movie shot fully indoors (except for one outdoor night scene) are not said conditions.

Sound:

Sound for the film is done with one shotgun microphone on top of the camera and wireless lavalier mics on the main characters. Therefore, when there is dialogue from anyone who isn't a main character, it is muffled, as the shotgun mic picked up too much sound from the rest of the party to be particularly useful.

Extras:

There is a full-length commentary track with de Rezendes, film critic Jeremiah Kipp and David Malsch, the founder of the Black Point Film Festival (Getting Out of Rhode Island won the Best Feature and Best Director awards there in 2003). Most of the commentary is Kipp asking de Rezendes questions, and the director responding in cliché moviespeak. For instance, after the title card there is a flash, probably no longer than a second, of a point-of-view shot of driving down a road. De Rezendes' reasoning? "I just wanted a flash of something to force the audience to start asking questions." It does, of course – "What was that supposed to be?" would be one. "Did the editor screw up?" would be another. But none of the "questions" would be actually drawing the audience into the film. It would be, in fact, keeping them out.

Another gem from later in the commentary from de Rezendes: "We wanted to give the impression that this was half-assed, and we threw it together at the last minute." So, you wanted the viewer to not be involved in the movie, and instead sit above it and wonder about the filming process?

There's a 30-minute segment on the disc of the entire cast and crew getting together back in the house where the film was shot and congratulating themselves. There also a three-minute ad for the film's soundtrack with the musicians, cast and crew bios, and trailers for this film and Larry's Home Video.

Final Thoughts:

In fairness to Getting Out of Rhode Island, it did find its way into some film festivals, including winning major awards at Black Point. Clearly there is something here worth seeing, and it is refreshing to see a film that tries to be this original. But originality in this situation comes at the expense of quality, leaving Getting Out of Rhode Island to become a failed experiment.