I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry Blu-ray Review

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry comes to Blu-ray with a 1080p High Definition video presentation in the movie's original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen. Detail is generally good, but the picture is far from crystal clear. I know that this type of movie does not always offer the kind of material required to make for a glowing home cinema presentation but here we have a really sporadic mixed bag of pictorial problems. Daytime exterior sequences survive, for the most part, intact but the fire-fighting moments early on, and many of the indoor scenes, often present with a light sheen of grain. The fires themselves are bright and realistic, the fire engines deep red and the uniforms fairly solid and black, and the colour scheme is generally quite vivid - especially the insanely camp fancy dress party. Overall this is a distinct improvement over anything SD-DVD can offer, and the defects are never likely to impinge upon or distract from your enjoyment of this comedy, but it really could have looked a lot better than it does.

The DTS-HD track that accompanies the movie is almost overkill for this kind of affair. Sure the early-on actions scenes offer up some collapsing roofs and the angry bellowing of the blazing infernos but for the rest of the comedy affair there is little in the way of significant effects to spark some life into the track. Dialogue is much more important, and gets top billing, presented clearly and coherently, largely dominating the frontal array. The parties, protest lines and the parade all provide the required background hubbub to light up the surrounds and make up somewhat for the distinct lack of effects. Some ambient noises are noticeable, the shower scene is quite atmospheric, despite being pretty lame in terms of amusement factor. Bass is extremely limited, often only coming about through the decent enough song tracks that round off this disc. It is superior presentation for this kind of material, almost better than it deserves.

In rather a shock, this new Blu-ray release appears to have been stripped of most of the good extras that you would look forward to checking out on a comedy release - most notably the blooper track. It could almost be forgivable were this the only release of the movie but, back in 2007, the HD DVD came with not only bloopers, but also some deleted scenes (also welcome for this kind of release, because they are normally quite funny) and production featurettes. All of them are missing from this purportedly superior Blu-ray re-release, which instead only sports the two Commentary tracks from the prior editions. Admittedly it is quite nice to have the track featuring the two comedic stars, Sandler and Kevin James, overwhelming the director with their boisterous antics, but the director's solo effort is much less necessary, offering only a little trivia amidst a lot of technical material. Finally there is a U-Control facility offering a silly interactive 'Friendship Test' which is utterly worthless.
I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry is a marginally disappointing Adam Sandler film, seeing him paired up with fellow comedian Kevin James for some vaguely amusing and borderline offensive 'gay' antics, in an unnecessary, and unnecessarily altered, remake. The Blu-ray release is similarly disappointing, the video pretty mediocre, the audio decent enough, but both offering up nothing to show off the capabilities of the format. The extras area is the worst part, coming with even less here than there was two years ago on the dead HD DVD format release of the movie. Disappointing.