WAKING UP IN RENO - DVD review

Maybe it's just the teacher in me but I like to think of every movie as a learning experience. Take the 2002 box-office bust "Waking Up in Reno," for instance. Now, you'd fancy there wasn't a reason in the world for giving this picture a second thought, but I say no. It does, in fact, satisfy the perennial question that's been plaguing moviegoing audiences for over a decade; namely, whatever happened to Patrick Swayze? The answer, unfortunately, isn't worth the bother. But if you really want to know, he's been making nonsense like this.

Another worthy question is why not only Swayze is mired in this dreck but Billy Bob Thornton, Charlize Theron, and Natasha Richardson, too? How could this happen? I mean, a person can readily picture Thornton and Swayze as the yahoos they play here, but Theron is a stretch as an Arkansas yokel, and Richardson is out of the question, despite a credible accent. She's much too classy an actor for this kind of stereotyped material. It's bum stuff all the way around.

As it goes, Thornton and Swayze are boyhood buddies, Lonnie Earl Dodd and Roy Kirkendall, a pair of immature, small-town Arkansians married respectively to Darlene (Richardson) and Candy (Theron). Lonnie Earl is a snake--literally dressing in snakeskin apparel, long sideburns, and goatee--who owns a car dealership and is having an affair with his dim-witted friend's wife, Candy. The reason, we're lead shortly to believe, is because his own wife, Darlene, doesn't understand his needs, is uptight and frigid. Why Candy is carrying on with the snake when she's got Swayze at home is another good question.

But the big Monster Truck Jam is taking place in Reno, Nevada, and the two couples decide to head out on a road trip together to cement their lifelong friendship. The plot plays out along the trek to Reno and a few days after their arrival, with much beer consumed along the way. It's a wearisome journey to say the least.

They leave Millsberg, AK, population 9872, and head on out in a spanking new SUV that Lonnie Earl intends to sell as new when they get back. He's a stickler for schedules, which means they can't stop to look at anything, and his idea of a good time when they do stop long enough for dinner is eating a seventy-two ounce steak in one hour or less at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in order to win a bet. He gets sick. If their behavior seems peculiar, Roy explains that "sometimes when people are away from home, they do things they might not normally do." Like performing in movies like this. Anyway, Roy's line sets the stage for the foursome's upcoming activities.

Along the way they bypass the Grand Canyon since, as Lonnie Earl explains, it's "just a big ol' hole in the ground." Meanwhile, Roy and Candy are trying to have a baby so they make it in the back seat of the SUV while Lonnie Earl and Darlene sit idly by. Whenever they get a chance, the two good ol' boys wrestle and roughhouse and horse around in their motel room, which the two couples share, including the king-size bed because Lonnie Earl is a cheapskate as well as a two-timer. These people are mental midgets and generally carry on like infantile teenagers. Why the filmmakers thought audiences would want to pay good money to look in on these proceedings is anybody's guess.

When the four finally reach Reno, Darlene is overjoyed to see that Tony Orlando is in town. Furthermore, it's intended to be evidence of their narrow thinking that on a trip all the way from Arkansas to Nevada, their destination is Reno ("The Biggest Little Town in the West") and not Vegas. But there is that Monster Truck Jam to consider. Besides, one look out their scenic-view hotel room window at beautiful downtown Reno, and they proclaim it "romantic." So romantic, in fact, it inspires Candy to want to renew her vows with Roy by getting re-married at a nearby "theme" chapel. That and her growing guilt feelings, presumably.

A not-so-surprising turn of events occurring at the film's climax sets all four of them at one another's throats, leading to a melodramatic screaming, kicking, and punching match that in turn leads to something masquerading as a new, sensitive, mutual understanding among them. Phony baloney.

I can't begin to tell you how tedious, how resolutely unamusing, how thoroughly unrewarding all of this is, and what a reckless squandering of four fine acting talents it is, to boot. Billy Bob Thornton should have known better, at the very least; he's got several Academy Awards to his credit. The others may have just been conned into thinking the film could turn out funnier and more meaningfully than the script promised. It doesn't. It's "The Beverly Hillbillies" meet "Family Feud." The people of Arkansas should prosecute for defamation of character.

Video:
The video quality is about what you'd expect from a new, major-studio film on DVD. It comes from Miramax Films and Buena Vista Home Entertainment, and together they produce a picture that's very clear and bright most of the time in an enhanced widescreen ratio measuring about 1.77:1 across a normal TV. Overall definition is only about average as far as these things go and a little glossy, but the transfer is pretty much free of grain or other digital artifacts.

Audio:
The sound, Dolby Digital 5.1, impresses one from the outset with its strong transient impact and balanced reproduction. Regardless of voices remaining firmly planted in the center speaker, there is otherwise good left-to-right stereo imaging in the front channels. Rear-channel surround is disappointing, though; some applause in a night club and some ambient musical pickups. That's about it.

Extras:
There are three major bonus items on the disc that don't amount to much. The first is a full-feature audio commentary with director Jordan Brady and screenwriters Brent Briscoe and Mark Fauser. The second is a series of five widescreen deleted scenes with optional commentary by the director and screenwriters. The third is a five-minute featurette, "The Making of Waking Up in Reno," with comments by various members of the cast and crew. In this featurette, director Brady says in all seriousness that he thinks the film is funny and has "substance" and "integrity." He says it with a straight face. Swayze says the film is the "Arkansas redneck hick version of 'Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.'" Well, he got the first half right. Sorry, no trailer for this film, but there are pan-and-scan trailers for other Buena Vista titles. How could there not be a trailer available for this film, and why wouldn't BV include it? A puny fourteen scene selections accompany the movie, with English and French spoken languages and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
The year 2003 saw the DVD release of two films on similar subjects, this one and "Sordid Lives." Both movies ridicule small-town Southern folk and their hayseed attitudes, and the combined total of both movies' entertainment ratings don't add up to a single decent recommendation. I don't know; maybe it's the Southern dialect that so intrigues Hollywood and tempts them to demean anyone who doesn't sound as cultured as they suppose themselves to be.

I might remind these filmmakers, however, that in the last fifty years a majority of U.S. Presidents came from the South: Truman from Missouri, Eisenhower and Johnson from Texas, Carter from Georgia, Clinton from Arkansas. Even the Bushes reside in Texas. Well, that last item may or may not strengthen my case, but you get my drift that not all Southerners are bumpkins.

No matter how you look at it, "Waking Up in Reno" is dumb and degrading, unfunny, unromantic, unsexy, undramatic, un-most everything that might mark it as a good motion picture. At the end of the movie, one of the characters mentions that their experience might make an appropriate subject for "The Jerry Springer Show." Springer's show is about the level of this film's sophistication.

A waste of talent. A waste of money. A waste of time.