Waiting… appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.78:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. What a mess of a presentation!
The biggest culprit came from the excessive use of noise reduction. This stripped away any shot at fine detail and made the image look oddly smooth and plastic.
Sharpness seemed passable in closeups but that was about it. Anything wider looked soft and bland.
No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects materialized, but I saw moderate edge haloes. No print flaws interfered, at least.
Colors seemed less than vibrant, but they felt reasonably well-reproduced. The movie opted for a fairly natural palette, albeit one that leaned a little blue. The hues didn’t excel but they worked better than most of the rest of the image.
Blacks felt inky and crushed, while shadows were off because the image seemed a little too bright. The main issue remained the awful overuse of noise reduction, though, as that made this a problematic image.
The Uncompressed PCM 7.1 soundtrack of Waiting… also wasn’t anything special, though it worked fine for this sort of movie. Music dominated the film, as it presented a never-ceasing assortment of pop/rock tunes.
These showed good stereo imaging, and the flick also boasted pretty decent delineation of effects. Not surprisingly, these stayed with general restaurant atmosphere.
The forward speakers heavily dominated, though the surrounds occasionally a bit of atmosphere as well. The soundfield stayed modest, and that was fine.
For the most part, audio quality seemed good. I thought speech was less than stellar, however, as the lines often sounded somewhat distant and wooden. No problems with intelligibility or edginess occurred, however, so I didn’t have any major complaints.
Music appeared pretty lively and dynamic, and decent bass response came along with those tracks. The effects did absolutely nothing to tax the track, but they were clean and accurate. This was a perfectly adequate soundtrack for a comedy.
How did the Blu-ray compare to the DVD version? The lossless audio offered a bit more range, but both mixes came with similarly restricted soundfields.
As for visuals, the Blu-ray felt a bit more appealing than the mediocre DVD, mainly due to the format’s abilities. Contrast worked better here, as the DVD seemed way too bright. However, I couldn’t view this as an actual upgrade due to the many problems found on the BD.
A slew of extras – some from the DVD, some exclusive to the BD - appear on the disc, and we find an audio commentary recorded explicitly for the Blu-ray. It features writer/director Rob McKittrick, co-producer Dean Shull, and actors Vanessa Lengies, John Francis Daley, Andy Milonakis, Rob Benedict and Anna Faris.
All sit together for this running, screen-specific look at characters and performances as well as experiences during the shoot. Which sounds good but in reality, the track offers little of interest.
While we get the occasional nugget of insight, most of the commentary mixes the participants as the laugh at the movie or they joke with each other. In particular, Milonakis tosses out his stabs at humor a lot of the time.
How did this man enjoy a successful career as a comedian? His shtick appeared to revolve around the fact he looked/sounded like an adolescent despite the fact he was almost 30 during the movie’s shoot.
Milonakis shows no cleverness in his “humor”. He just throws out crass remarks, most of which are either homophobic or misogynistic.
Oh man, do we get a lot of both here! Of course, the movie itself is relentlessly homophobic, so this comes as no surprise.
But I didn’t expect the commentary to follow that path, and the inane nature of Milonakis’s “jokes” adds insult to injury. For instance, when someone refers to the Blu-ray, Milonakis responds with this gem: “more like Blu-gay!”
Milonakis’s material is so relentlessly moronic that I wondered if he offers “performance art” – ie, he make intentionally stupid remarks to make fun of that style of humor. And maybe that’s the case, but I don’t get the impression of that kind of nuance, as his wisecracks just become dopey and offensive.
No one else compensates for Milonakis. This leads to a tedious and obnoxious commentary.
Also found on the DVD, we get an Expanded Telestrator Commentary with McKittrick and producer Jeff Balis. They sit together for a running, screen-specific chat.
Actually, it’s too damned screen-specific, largely due to the telestrator gimmick. I don’t like visual commentaries in general because they add almost nothing to the experience.
Telestrator commentaries are worse because they turn into a distraction. The participants worry more about scribbling onscreen than about giving us good notes, and that becomes a nuisance here.
Note that they also pause and even rewind the film at times. This means that the commentary runs longer than the movie’s 94 minutes. The commentary ultimately fills 2:10:24, so expect a lot of times when they pause the movie’s action.
The quality of the material they provide doesn’t do much to redeem the track. We hear about how McKittrick’s experiences influenced the movie, the cast and performances, sets, and various behind the scenes tidbits.
Much of the time the guys do little more than tell us what parts of the movie they love, and since the answer is pretty much all of it, that gets old.
Occasionally we find nice tidbits, especially when we learn the inspirations for various gags. I also like the long discussion of nudity in the film and its portrayal of the female nether regions.
I will admit the commentary improves as it progresses. McKittrick and Balis eventually adapt to the format and they start to offer greater insights. They also bicker a lot, and that adds some amusement.
Still, it’s not a terribly good track overall. Despite some good moments, too much of the commentary seems tedious and not very informative.
Also new to the Blu-ray, an Introducton from Rob McKittrick goes for two minutes, 23 seconds. He gives us an overview of changes made for this release. He doesn’t tell us much but he offers some amusement.
We get a collection of 13 Deleted Scenes/Alternate Takes. These fill a total of seven minutes, eight seconds. I’m sure you can do the math and figure out that none of them last very long.
The most significant one shows the other waiters as they tell Dean it’s okay for him to take the management job. Otherwise, we find small gags and tidbits that fail to add much.
19 Outtakes run a total of 14 minutes, 57 seconds. This domain offers exactly what the title describes, as we see lots of raw and unused footage. It’s fun for fans of the movie who want to check out different versions of the bits.
A program called That Little Extra goes for 19 minutes, four seconds. We hear from director Rob McKittrick, co-producer Dean Shull, producer Jeff Balis, production designer Devorah Herbert, and actors Anna Faris, Ryan Reynolds, Alanna Ubach, Andy Milonakis, Dane Cook, Vanessa Lengies, Luis Guzman, David Koechner, Justin Long, John Francis Daley, Kaitlin Doubleday, and Robert Patrick Benedict.
“Extra” runs through the project’s origins and development, how McKittrick landed the gig as director and all the problems faced along the path, casting, designing the restaurant, cinematography, the dick-showing game, and the cast’s impressions of McKittrick as a director.
To go with a goofy movie, we get a pretty goofy documentary. Though parts of “Extra” don’t take things particularly seriously, we do learn some nice details about the production.
It rushes through the pre-production hurdles, though; I’d have liked more background there. We also don’t get much detail about casting or the other areas. “Extra” does serve as a moderately informative and entertaining overview, though.
The Works. It runs a massive one hour, 25 minutes, 25 seconds, and it also includes many branching segments. These are optional, but if you hit “enter” when an icon appears onscreen to check out additional tidbits.
We find 22 of these, and they add another one hour,, 25 seconds of footage. (Note that you can access these separately in the area of the disc called “Side Dishes”.)
“The Works” includes interviews with McKittrick, Shull, Balis, Herbert, casting director Annie McCarthy, cinematographer Matthew Irving, composer Adam Gorgoni, and actors Dane Cook, John Francis Daley, Andy Milonakis, David Koechner, Justin Long, Jordan Ladd, Max Kasch, Skyler Stone, Robert Patrick Benedict, Kaitlin Doubleday, Alanna Ubach, and Vanessa Lengies.
The show covers the origins of the story and how it made its way to the screen, casting and performances, the film’s visual style and cinematography, set design, shooting the kitchen scenes, the flick’s music and its ending rap, relationships among the castmembers and various anecdotes from the shoot, and final thoughts about the movie.
“Works” features some joking around but still gets into plenty of good information. The best parts deal with cast and characters, as it includes lots of fun notes about those areas. The actors definitely come to the forefront here, though it’s too bad folks like Ryan Reynolds and Luis Guzman don’t appear.
“Works” also develops just enough about the rest of the production to be informative. The show doesn’t offer a complete recap of the film’s creation, but it gives us a lot of enjoyable and entertaining material.
What do we find in the branching components? These mostly offer tidbits of commentary from various participants.
We get remarks from Justin Long, Matthew Irving, Devorah Herbert, Kaitlin Doubleday, Robert Patrick Benedict, Alanna Ubach, Jordan Ladd, Adam Gorgoni, Andy Milonakis, Max Kasch, John Francis Daley, Vanessa Lengies, David Koechner, Dane Cook and Skyler Stone. We also find screentests for Benedict, Ubach, Milonakis, Kasch, John Francis Daley, Stone, Lengies, David Koechner, Dane Cook and “Katelan” Doubleday.
Most of the commentaries play it straight, though Long, Milonakis, Koechner and Cook go for a comedic bent. The different tracks occasionally provide some decent details, but I can’t recall many truly informative notes. The screen tests are much more interesting, as they give us lots of interesting footage.
New to the Blu-ray, A Night At the Movies runs 13 minutes, three seconds. It features McKittrick and Milonakis.
They comment as they watch footage from the film’s premiere. This adds up to more attempted comedy and little real information, though it can be amusing at times.
The disc opens with ads for Crank, Employee of the Month, The Invincible Iron Man and Lord of War. We also get a trailer for Waiting… itself.
Note that the Blu-ray loses a featurette about the experiences of actual restaurant employees. It wasn’t special, but it still seems odd it got the boot.
Despite occasional gags that aptly recreate the experience of restaurant work, most of Waiting… focuses on cheesy toilet humor. There’s a lot of crassness and little actual inspiration. The Blu-ray offers a wealth of supplements but audio seems average and visuals look way too soft. Skip this atrocious movie.
To rate this film, visit the prior review of WAITING