LOOKIN' TO GET OUT - DVD review

Critics were not kind to director Hal Ashby's 1982 comedy "Lookin' to Get Out," and that's putting it mildly. Some called it a turkey, others a bomb. The thing is, Ashby never had final cut on the movie, leaving it in the hands of the studio and others to edit almost twenty minutes from his version. The result appears to have been a disaster, although, to be fair, I never saw the movie. Anyway, twenty-seven years after the film's release, Ashby's original edit of the film turned up in the UCLA archives, excised material and all (Ashby had donated it to the school before he died), the Ashby edit having never been seen by anyone outside of Ashby and the editors until now.

The question, of course, is whether Ashby's version (called the "Extended Edition" or the "Director's Cut") is really any better than the theatrical version, something, as I said, I couldn't tell you, having never watched the theatrical version. However, judging just by what I see in this newly discovered edition, while it is certainly no turkey or bomb, it's still far from the world's funniest or most-engaging motion picture.

Apparently, Ashby made a cryptic remark about the film several years after its release, saying it was a lot better than people thought. One assumes he was referring to his own cut of the film and not the edited theatrical release. He died in 1988 and never had a chance to do anything further with the film himself. Jon Voight, who helped co-write and develop the original movie, said about the newly found version, "For various reasons, the film we released didn't really represent Hal's best work. I knew every version of the script and every cut, so I was understandably excited when I heard about this, yet I also didn't want to be disappointed. But when I saw it, I knew instantly it had Hal's touch.... When Hal Ashby (an Oscar-winning editor) cut his films himself, it was magic." One can understand this line of reasoning, considering that Ashby made some distinguished pictures, like "Harold and Maude," "Shampoo," "The Last Detail," "Bound for Glory," "Coming Home," and "Being There." It's just that "Lookin' to Get Out" is not in the same league as Ashby's better films. Put it this way: If "Being There" is the NFL, then "Lookin' to Get Out" is Pop Warner.

It appears that what Ashby, co-writers Al Schwartz and Jon Voight, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and composer Johnny Mandel were trying to make was a sort of zany, screwball-type comedy, and certainly one can see the potential there. Unfortunately, the direction falls flat, the script is implausible even by the whimsical standards of screwball comedy, and the acting is either forced and unnatural or disinterested and dull.

The plot involves the hijinks of a fast-talking, happy-go-lucky, compulsive gambler named Alex Kovac (Voight). At the beginning of the story, he has just won $6,000, which he promptly loses in a poker game to a hood named Harry (Jude Farese), along with another $10,000 that he doesn't have. Harry and his pal Joey (Allen Keller) give Alex until the next day to come up with the ten grand, or else. What Alex does is skip town and head for Vegas, dragging his poor-schmuck best friend Jerry (Burt Young) along with him, with the hoods in hot pursuit.

In Vegas, Alex and Jerry finagle their way into the best suite, the "Doctor Zhivago Suite," of a luxury hotel-casino, and from there they proceed to hustle up the ten big ones. Along the way, Alex meets an old flame, Patti Warner (Ann-Margret), Patti's five-year-old daughter, Tosh (Angelina Jolie in her film debut), an old gambler friend, Smitty (Bert Remsen), and the owner of the hotel-casino, Bernie Gold (Richard Bradford).

So, what goes wrong with the movie that makes it little more than run-of-the-mill? Ashby's comedies were usually low-key affairs. Here, he's unrestrained and often frenetic. People run amuck in all directions, at one point literally chasing around the hotel as though in a Keystone Kops caper. It isn't funny, just tiring. Worse, the script never develops any of the characters well enough for the viewer to care about them. They are all of them, to the person, unsympathetic, with the lead character, Alex, the biggest loser of all. The screenplay never shows him as anything but a selfish, conniving, manipulative scoundrel who listens to no one but his own inner voice, which is always wrong. Moreover, the only thing Wexler gets to photograph is the inside of a hotel-casino (the MGM Grand), and Mandell's music sounds like almost all the rest of those generic jazzy scores of the '70s and early '80s.

That brings us to the biggest shortcoming of all: Voight's comedic trials. The man is a brilliant dramatic actor, but he is not another Cary Grant, Burt Reynolds, or Paul Newman, fellows who could do straight dramatic roles and then change gears with comfort into charming, lovable, comedy roles. Voight shows no such ability in "Lookin' to Get Out." Instead, he seems always ill at ease, his character's constant laughing and joking, which the character uses to disguise his vulnerabilities, being more rueful than amusing. It's hard to find a guy funny who is so obviously straining to make the characters around him like him.

As for Ann-Margret, she almost never smiles, as though she's mystified by what's going on around her. Likewise Burt Young, whose Poor Soul of a friend looks as though he would rather just lie down and take a nap somewhere. And, needless to say, the hoods are merely stereotypes who get little screen time. About the only character who shows any life in the movie is Bert Remsen as Smitty. At least he seems to know he's in a comedy.

Oddly, given the attention spent on the script and direction, much of "Lookin' to Get Out" appears improvised, with the actors appearing as though they're having a better time than the audience. Even in its new, longer, supposedly original form, the movie doesn't generate much interest beyond the ordinary.

Video:
Warner engineers use an anamorphic transfer to present the film in its theatrical aspect ratio, 1.85:1 (although as is WB's wont, they actually present it in a 1.78:1 ratio that fits a widescreen TV). It is a film almost three decades old, and Warners probably did little to clarify it up beyond a modest scrubbing of obvious age marks, scratches, and deterioration. As a result, we see a good deal of grain and noise, particularly in darker scenes, and a series of specks that haunt mostly the right side of the screen from time to time. The definition ranges from reasonably sharp to fairly soft and blurred, depending on the scene. Colors are a bit on the dark side, even in daylight shots, and the overall picture can look a tad glossy. Black levels are strong, however, and when colors are good, they are very, very good.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 1.0 monaural audio reproduction probably does what it can with the soundtrack, but that isn't saying much. The sound is rather hollow, metallic, and nasal most of the time, as though the actors were miked in a tunnel. Dynamics are decent, though, and the track is free of background noise.

Extras:
There's not much here in the way of extras beyond our getting the extended version of the movie. The only other thing is a fifteen-minute featurette, "Lookin' to Get Out: The Cast Looks Back," wherein Jon Voight, Ann-Margret, Burt Young, and co-screenwriter Al Schwartz reminisce about making the movie. However, I'm afraid they don't add a lot to our understanding of the film that we couldn't gather from the film itself or from the keep-case comments.

In addition, the disc contains twenty-five scene selections; a full-screen theatrical trailer; English as the only spoken language; French subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
If you're a fan of Hal Ashby's movies and haven't already seen "Lookin' to Get Out," the movie may disappoint you. I know it disappointed me. Even in its new extended version, it seems haphazard and frantic, the actors and director trying too hard to be casually comical and too often coming off as simply obvious and histrionic. It might have been better for all concerned that the cast and crew had stuck to doing what they do best and not what seems here too forced and stilted.