HITCH - Blu-ray review

Director Andy Tennant cut his comedy teeth on the Mary-Kate and Ashley vehicle "It Takes Two" (1995), and a gentle, cute/sweet tone has been part of his comic repertoire ever since—whether it was Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek trying to make marriage work after a whirlwind courtship ("Fools Rush In," 1997), Drew Barrymore hoping to grab the glass shoe and a charming prince ("Ever After," 1998"), or Reese Witherspoon finding out that you can go home again, though you'll have to choose between two loves and two lifestyles ("Sweet Home Alabama," 2002). It's all about optimism, and the inherent belief that, somewhere, there's someone for everyone.

That's the message in "Hitch," too. Will Smith plays Alex Hitchens, the legendary Date Doctor who has no office, no business phone, and no yellow pages listing. What he does is CIA secret, and his clients come to him only through word-of-mouth. But the Date Doctor won't take just anybody. There's one big requirement: the guy has to really love the woman before Hitch will take the case and help coach the guy so he can win the woman of his dreams. Sexist? Sure. But it's also a fun, sweet comedy that produces more "aws" than belly laughs.

The comedian formerly known as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air joins forces with Kevin James, the King of Queens, who plays the matchmaker's biggest challenge. It seems that Albert Brennaman (James) isn't just a nerdy overweight accountant who has a hopeless crush on his firm's biggest client, society heiress Allegra Cole (played by supermodel Amber Valletta). The guy also dances like a geek, eats like a klutz, and talks like someone you'd run from instead of toward. But he's basically a nice guy and he's sincere about his love for Allegra, so Hitch agrees to show him the way to her heart. As with all Hitch's clients, this involves equal amounts of coaching and staged coincidences. Whether it's helping his client save his fair lady's dog or something less dramatic, the Date Doctor is an expert in giving fate a nudge.

You'd expect some Robin Williams-style antics from these two, but Tennant seems to have reined them in so that it plays out like an understated comedy rather than a broad one. The screenplay is the thing, and the two comics work well within the structure. They seem to get the tone, and stick with it. There are comedic moments, of course, where each man goes off, but those moments are short and never feel overdone.

As Albert and Allegra continue to warm to each other, things heat up for Hitch when a turkey he refuses to help reveals his identity to the rag that gossip columnist Sara Melas (Eva Mendes) works for. That's doubly bad, because Hitch had been attracted to her and had been trying to save some of the Date Doctor magic for himself. Kevin Bisch's screenplay follows the romantic comedy formula to last drop of love potion: boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, and gets the girl in the end. You can see it coming a mile away, but it's the struggle that makes these films fun to watch, and the four principal actors have a natural charisma that makes each of their characters not just believable, but engaging. If you like the actors, you'll like this film. Even the minor characters are worth watching—especially Julie Ann Emery as Sara's best friend. For me, it's always the hallmark of a decent film when the minor characters impress you.

Video: "Hitch" is presented in High Definition widescreen (2.40:1), 1920x1080p. Rating the video on the first wave of Blu-ray discs is going to be tricky. You almost start to feel like an Olympic judge, hesitant to give high marks early and leave no room at the top for future releases that are clearer. It goes without saying that 1080p (or in the case of my TV, 1080i or 720p) is going to be sharper than a 480p standard disc. But how much sharper will it look when the SD-DVD was mastered in High Definition?

I gave the SD-DVD version of this film a 9 on video, because compared to other SD-DVDs it looked sharp. I wrote at the time of my review that the colors were vibrant, but when you see this print alongside the new Blu-ray disc, the whole notion of color (and picture quality) starts to blur. The first thing you notice is that the Blu-ray version has less color saturation and less visual intensity. Is that bad? Well, it appears to have been deliberate for this release, because other Blu-ray discs come closer to the original SD-DVD release. Does the Blu-ray color look more natural? Yes. Does it also look as if it borders on being washed-out? Some people might think so, but in terms of color modulation I actually prefer the new Blu-ray print after watching both versions several times. So how come it scores less? Well, because of the comparison base. Now we're comparing Blu-ray to the highest quality High Definition discs we've seen on SD-DVD, and to other Blu-ray transfers (which are yet to come). And frankly, it took me a while to decide that it was a sharper picture.

To gauge sharpness, I did a frame-by-frame comparison for about 20-30 minutes and kept thinking to myself, yes, the Blu-ray is sharper and shows more detail. But it wasn't so clearly superior that I could tell right away. As my wife said, if you have to keep looking at it over and over again, doesn't that mean the difference isn't significant? To my eyes and hers, maybe. To a videophile who lives and breathes bit-rates and pixels, maybe that person could tell more of a difference. The original got the SD/Hi-Def treatment, and so that may have made the gap seem less. What we're left with, ultimately, is the condition of the master. The title credits have blemishes and flecks of dirt even on the Blu-ray version, and some of the soft-focus scenes in Blu-ray are noticeably grainy (yes, they're supposed to be slightly blurry, but the Blu-ray makes the grain even more noticeable).

As with other Sony discs I've looked at, the quality varies throughout the film and there are several "hiccups" where there's a noticeable gap, the kind you get when a dual-layered SD-DVD switches from the first to the second layer. Unfortunately, at least one gap comes at a crucial moment, when Hitch is giving his big, sincere, win-her-back speech. Come on, tech people, can we work a little harder to bury those moments in scene transitions?

Audio: The 16 bit, 48kHz main audio is English PCM 5.1 (uncompressed), with additional options of English 5.1 (compressed), and French (compressed) 5.1. So far, at least on the Sony Blu-ray products, the audio has been more consistently stronger than the video quality, which can vary significantly not just from disc to disc but also within a film. But the sound on this one (and presumbably other discs) will vary with your connection, I've discovered. Using the 5.1 analogue connection, the sound is rich and full, but with more center speaker emphasis and de-emphasized rear speakers that will force you to make adjustments. With the optical connection the sound is brighter and livelier—more dynamic, to my ears—which is one reason I prefer the optical connection on my Blu-ray player so far.

Extras: The SD release was surprisingly bare bones, and these Blu-ray bones have even less meat. The SD release had five featurettes: one that focused on the dance lesson that Hitch gives Albert, with previously unseen footage and on-screen comments by the director and his two stars. In "Love in New York City," we learn how romantic Tennant and his crew think NYC is, and see several of the 75 locations that were used as on-location sets—including Ellis Island. Pop-ups give romantic trivia about the city (e.g., dinner and a movie in NYC costs $135, highest in the nation, and there were 170 Central Park weddings in 2004). In "Hitch Style," the costume designer talks about Smith's wardrobe and the NYC look they were trying to achieve. "Dating Experts" trots out all sorts of folks employed in the dating business, including a psychiatrist/therapist who was brought onboard to confirm that the males and females in the film were conforming to typical behavior. Confidence is the most attractive attribute an individual can have, they all agree, and Hitch's quotes are used as springboards for discussion and lead-ins to talking heads' remarks. In "Will Smith's Red Carpet Race," the shortest of the featurettes, we see Smith cover some quick ground in England as he shoots for the Guinness World Record for most public appearances in 12 hours by a film star.

Now, the glitch in the Blu-ray "Hitch" is that you only get two of those five short features: the dance segment and the dating experts segment. Haven't studios figured out what collectors want by now? I have to say that I'm not going to get rid of my SD-DVD version of "Hitch" precisely because of the extra extras. But how many cabinets do these movie moguls think we have in our houses? And while we're on that topic, the industry had a chance for a fresh new packaging start that would speak to the people who buy tons of DVDs every year. Space is a problem, as you collectors know, which is why I was hoping that the new format would inspire a compact case on the same order of CDs. While the Blu-ray cases are sexy (if you ask me), with their slimmer and slightly shorter clear blue plastic cases, or else they look like video rental cases (if you ask my wife), the industry could have done us all a favor had they made it easier to store these things. Now, because of a disappointing number of features on the first round of discs, not only do we still have bigger cases, but we also have the dilemma of whether we keep both versions and clog up those cabinets with duplicates. This is no way to win a format war, people, no matter how many studios (currently 160+) have backed Blu-ray.

Three deleted scenes and an Amerie music video are also MIA on this disc, but we do get the short, tightly edited blooper reel that appeared on the original release.

Bottom Line: Tennant said he wanted to make "a glossy, good-looking, fun movie," and it looks even glossier and is just as fun in Blu-ray. I prefer the natural look of the Blu-ray to the original release, but I'll be keeping the SD-DVD because it has more extras that help you appreciate the film.