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Disorderlies
Warner Bros. // PG // February 15, 2005
List Price: $14.96 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
I have to write a plot synopsis of Disorderlies? Really? Weasely gambling addict Winslow Lowry (Anthony Geary) owes a group of gangsters hundreds of thousands of dollars. He's good for it, though...or at least he will be when his rich uncle Albert (Ralph Bellamy) keels over. The old man's determined to stick around, so to help beef up his bank account as quickly as possible, Winslow seeks out the worst orderlies ever. After a trip to the Bronx, Winslow returns to his uncle's stately manor with...The Fat Boys! So, yeah, you see where this is going. The incompetent Fat Boys and Uncle Albert quickly butt heads but learn all sorts of mid-'80s life lessons, and they get stuck in the middle of Winslow's plot to seize the family fortune.
There are two reasons you might want to pick up Disorderlies.
Say what you will about The Fat Boys and Disorderlies, but they're trailblazers! Breaking new ground! Blazing trails onto freshly-broken ground! Rappers are a mainstay in movies now -- LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, DMX, Tupac (one love), Ice Cube, Ice T, Eminem, Master P, Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe -- but The Fat Boys did it first. I can't actually back up that statement, but at least off the top of my head, I can't think of another widely-released movie that was a vehicle for one rapper or rap group before this. Not that Disorderlies had much of anything to do with those roles that would follow for rappers years later or anything. The Fat Boys are pretty uniformly awful actors -- for such big guys, they have very little screen presence, they don't have any sense of comic timing, and they struggle with what little lightweight dialogue they have. Their personalities don't make it into the movie at all. Prince Markie Dee gets a subplot where he tries to get wit' the family maid (who's bangin'!), but other than that, all three of them are pretty much interchangable. They might not be able to act, but they can...and do!...rap, tossing a couple of their hits (their takes on "Wipeout" with the Beach Boys, who also have a cameo in the movie, and "The Twist") in with a full performance of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", continuing with that theme of mining vintage pop charts for inspiration.
Disorderlies is a pretty dumb movie, but if you grew up with The Fat Boys, it's a nostalgic, mildly fun kind of dumb. If not, then...yeah, you should probably stay far, far away.
Video: The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen video looks kind of rough in the first few minutes, and although the speckles quickly disappear, a tinge of softness sticks around. There are a couple of close-up shots that I thought looked surprisingly nice, but outside of those, detail seems pretty uninspired throughout. Disorderlies' fairly vibrant palette comes through pretty well, though. The movie looks okay, but Warner didn't exactly pull out all the stops for this budget title.
Audio: Disorderlies sports a Dolby Digital mono track encoded at a bitrate of 192Kbps. The movie sounds alright -- a couple of parts get kind of crackly, especially the reverse getaway near the climax, and some of the mouth-breathen dialogue can be kind of hard to understand.
The mid-'80s hip-hop scattered around throughout has a little bit of kick to it, but not nearly as much bass as there should've been. The roller doiby is the only part where there's much of a hefty thump. Pretty mediocre, but still listenable. Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish are available if you need 'em, along with closed captions.
Supplements: What? No audio commentary? No music videos? No loving tribute to Buffy the Human Beat Box? Nope, no extras at all -- just a set of static 16x9 menus and a grand total of twenty-two chapter stops.
Conclusion: Even with a sticker price that puts it under ten bucks at a few different online stores, I wouldn't recommend buying Disorderlies until you can fish it out of the $5.88 bin at Wal-Mart. If you didn't grow up with The Fat Boys, you really shouldn't bother. Those of you who did catch this movie during its relentless run on cable eighteen years ago (and if you had HBO in the late '80s, Dr. Statistics sez you probably did), seeing this DVD once will probably be enough to tide you over for another couple of decades. Better off as a rental if you're determined to see it.
 |
| The Fat Boys eat a lot 'cause they're fat!!! |
- You're a child of the '80s with vivid memories of Prince Markie Dee, Kool Rock Ski, and The Human Beat Box, and you made it a point to watch Disorderlies back in the days when it aired on HBO every twenty minutes.
- ...
 |
| Oh no, Fat Boys!!! |
Disorderlies is a pretty dumb movie, but if you grew up with The Fat Boys, it's a nostalgic, mildly fun kind of dumb. If not, then...yeah, you should probably stay far, far away.
 |
| Thank you, Fat Boys, for teaching us to laugh at love...again. |
Audio: Disorderlies sports a Dolby Digital mono track encoded at a bitrate of 192Kbps. The movie sounds alright -- a couple of parts get kind of crackly, especially the reverse getaway near the climax, and some of the mouth-breathen dialogue can be kind of hard to understand.
 |
| [insert witty caption about The Fat Boys here] |
Supplements: What? No audio commentary? No music videos? No loving tribute to Buffy the Human Beat Box? Nope, no extras at all -- just a set of static 16x9 menus and a grand total of twenty-two chapter stops.
Conclusion: Even with a sticker price that puts it under ten bucks at a few different online stores, I wouldn't recommend buying Disorderlies until you can fish it out of the $5.88 bin at Wal-Mart. If you didn't grow up with The Fat Boys, you really shouldn't bother. Those of you who did catch this movie during its relentless run on cable eighteen years ago (and if you had HBO in the late '80s, Dr. Statistics sez you probably did), seeing this DVD once will probably be enough to tide you over for another couple of decades. Better off as a rental if you're determined to see it.
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