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Kentucky Fried Movie
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
How do I summarize a collection of comedy sketches? I guess the simple answer would be "I don't".
Video: Both anamorphic widescreen and full-frame versions of "Kentucky Fried Movie" are on this disc, and...
Ha! Had you going there, didn't I? No? Regardless, I'll provide a better introduction. Hmmm...take an average episode of "Saturday Night Live", project it on th' big screen, and you wouldn't have "Kentucky Fried Movie". You'd have something reasonably close, though, I guess. "Kentucky Fried Movie", from the creators of the "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" series, is a pop-culture spoof that manages to be tasteless but intelligent. The featured segment is the "Enter The Dragon" parody, "Fistful of Yen", which contains one line that's gone onto fame as my answering machine message. There are parodies of board game commercials, health advocacy groups, movie fads like 'Sensurround', beer commercials...everything. Obviously one problem with pop culture references is that they become dated pretty quickly, but even though "Kentucky Fried Movie" is 23 years old, making it a year older than me, it holds up rather well. In the "Naked Gun" series, the jokes are presented in such a rapid fire fashion that even if only 20% of the jokes made me laugh, I'd still be laughing for almost the entire length of the movie. With a sketch-based film, a sketch either works or it doesn't, so some viewers may find a lot of the movie boring. There are enough chapter stops to skip through the sketches that fall flat, although which sketches succeed will depend on the person...but anyway, it's funny! It's good! It's tasteless! It's everything current comedies that try to be tasteless and funny aren't!
Video: Both anamorphic widescreen and full-frame versions of "Kentucky Fried Movie" are on this disc, and they're a definite improvement over my old roommate's VHS copy. The few shot-on-video segments look extremely soft, but the filmed bits look like a typical Anchor Bay job, which is hardly a damning comment. The image is sharp and extremely colorful, and the light grain throughout is easily ignored. The video isn't perfect, but this is an older, largely unappreciated film, and I can't realistically imagine "Kentucky Fried Movie" ever looking any better. Great job.
Audio: Mono. I always feel like I'm letting down my readers (I could probably end this sentence here, right?) when I review a mono track because there's never really anything to say. No hiss, no distortion, and it sounds entirely, completely average. Nothing particularly bad, and nothing particularly good. (wistful sigh)
Supplements: Widescreen-enhanced extras always ring well with me, and yes, Anchor Bay has a 16x9-enhanced trailer, and in a rare turn, the trailer actually looks about as good as the film itself. There's also more to it than the usual clips+narration used nowadays, and seeing the courtroom stuff in color is a nice treat. "Kentucky Fried Movie" also has my second favorite still gallery, usually where a bunch of boring promotional photos are slopped together by a studio. (My top pick, if you're somehow curious, is another Anchor Bay release, "Halloween: Limited Edition".) There are a surprising number of photos with nudity, but that's not the reason why I liked this collection of photos, which really do seem candid and provide a peek into the process. There are also some 8mm home movies which are fun to look through once, but kind of boring. Still, a very nice inclusion, and the zany hijinks in those home movies are just a hint of the brilliance of the commentary track with John Landis, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and Robert K. Weiss. It's manic...it's non-stop...and it's funnier than the movie. Occassionally the commentary is a little hard to follow because of the number of people, but it's still worth a listen, and it's one of the few commentaries that have a lot replay value. There are also cast/crew bios, but who cares about those?
Conclusion: The sketches in "Kentucky Fried Movie" are hit-or-miss, and the ratio is probably a little more heavily tilted towards the misses. Still, the better bits of "Kentucky Fried Movie" make this an easy recommendation, along with the hilarious commentary. I don't think I'd go so far as to highly recommend it at the MSRP of twenty-five bucks, but I definitely recommend "Kentucky Fried Movie" as a purchase and very highly recommend it as a rental. 800.com, by the way, has the disc for under $16.00 shipped, and at that price, which is significantly lower than anywhere else, I'd bump it up to "highly recommended".
Video: Both anamorphic widescreen and full-frame versions of "Kentucky Fried Movie" are on this disc, and...
Ha! Had you going there, didn't I? No? Regardless, I'll provide a better introduction. Hmmm...take an average episode of "Saturday Night Live", project it on th' big screen, and you wouldn't have "Kentucky Fried Movie". You'd have something reasonably close, though, I guess. "Kentucky Fried Movie", from the creators of the "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" series, is a pop-culture spoof that manages to be tasteless but intelligent. The featured segment is the "Enter The Dragon" parody, "Fistful of Yen", which contains one line that's gone onto fame as my answering machine message. There are parodies of board game commercials, health advocacy groups, movie fads like 'Sensurround', beer commercials...everything. Obviously one problem with pop culture references is that they become dated pretty quickly, but even though "Kentucky Fried Movie" is 23 years old, making it a year older than me, it holds up rather well. In the "Naked Gun" series, the jokes are presented in such a rapid fire fashion that even if only 20% of the jokes made me laugh, I'd still be laughing for almost the entire length of the movie. With a sketch-based film, a sketch either works or it doesn't, so some viewers may find a lot of the movie boring. There are enough chapter stops to skip through the sketches that fall flat, although which sketches succeed will depend on the person...but anyway, it's funny! It's good! It's tasteless! It's everything current comedies that try to be tasteless and funny aren't!
Video: Both anamorphic widescreen and full-frame versions of "Kentucky Fried Movie" are on this disc, and they're a definite improvement over my old roommate's VHS copy. The few shot-on-video segments look extremely soft, but the filmed bits look like a typical Anchor Bay job, which is hardly a damning comment. The image is sharp and extremely colorful, and the light grain throughout is easily ignored. The video isn't perfect, but this is an older, largely unappreciated film, and I can't realistically imagine "Kentucky Fried Movie" ever looking any better. Great job.
Audio: Mono. I always feel like I'm letting down my readers (I could probably end this sentence here, right?) when I review a mono track because there's never really anything to say. No hiss, no distortion, and it sounds entirely, completely average. Nothing particularly bad, and nothing particularly good. (wistful sigh)
Supplements: Widescreen-enhanced extras always ring well with me, and yes, Anchor Bay has a 16x9-enhanced trailer, and in a rare turn, the trailer actually looks about as good as the film itself. There's also more to it than the usual clips+narration used nowadays, and seeing the courtroom stuff in color is a nice treat. "Kentucky Fried Movie" also has my second favorite still gallery, usually where a bunch of boring promotional photos are slopped together by a studio. (My top pick, if you're somehow curious, is another Anchor Bay release, "Halloween: Limited Edition".) There are a surprising number of photos with nudity, but that's not the reason why I liked this collection of photos, which really do seem candid and provide a peek into the process. There are also some 8mm home movies which are fun to look through once, but kind of boring. Still, a very nice inclusion, and the zany hijinks in those home movies are just a hint of the brilliance of the commentary track with John Landis, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and Robert K. Weiss. It's manic...it's non-stop...and it's funnier than the movie. Occassionally the commentary is a little hard to follow because of the number of people, but it's still worth a listen, and it's one of the few commentaries that have a lot replay value. There are also cast/crew bios, but who cares about those?
Conclusion: The sketches in "Kentucky Fried Movie" are hit-or-miss, and the ratio is probably a little more heavily tilted towards the misses. Still, the better bits of "Kentucky Fried Movie" make this an easy recommendation, along with the hilarious commentary. I don't think I'd go so far as to highly recommend it at the MSRP of twenty-five bucks, but I definitely recommend "Kentucky Fried Movie" as a purchase and very highly recommend it as a rental. 800.com, by the way, has the disc for under $16.00 shipped, and at that price, which is significantly lower than anywhere else, I'd bump it up to "highly recommended".
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