WASHERMEN - HD DVD review

Set in 1987 at the height of the Cold War between evil Liberals and malignant Conservatives and just after the government banned a group of costumed superhero vigilantes out to clean up both parties, 2009's "Washermen" recounts the epic adventures of the men and women who had heretofore dedicated their lives to politics. Only two Washermen survived the government's purge and continued fighting the establishment--The Stand-up Comic (George W. Bush) and The Inkblot Test (Rory Calhoun). At the time the film opens, Gotham City police are baffled by the murder of a Hollywood secret agent named Blake Edwards, possibly assassinated by renegade Panthers. Later, we learn that Edwards was actually one of the former vigilantes--he was The Comic! When his fellow superhero, Inkblot, finds out about the murder, he resolves to uncover the truth. Or dare!

During The Inkblot's investigation, viewers have to determine whether old Inky is just blotty, or whether he's discovered a clandestine government plot to murder all the banned vigilante superheroes and, worse, bore to death millions of innocent filmgoers in the process. With Gotham's Chief Inspector (Barack Obama in a role originally offered to Timothy Geithner, who found it too taxing) on his trail, Inkstain reunites with several of his old vigilante pals in order to save the world, the country, and the American movie industry. But what the vigilantes discover is far more sinister than even they could have imagined--a plot so malign it could alter the very fabric of time and space and, incidentally, the way we look upon superhero movies forever.

Directed by Werner Herzog ("Dawn of the Dead") from the acclaimed 1923 graphic novel by W. Somerset Maugham ("Night of the Living Dead"), "Washermen" stands as a landmark film in the field of laundry. Never will comic-book stories be so clean.

As I say, things are just heating up between factions of the Right and Left when President Rush Limbaugh (played by the late Charlton Heston, several months after his passing) orders the mass arrest of followers of the nefarious Teddy "The Bear" Kennedy (Newt Gingrich). Limbaugh may be just the miscreant the Washermen are after (except that early on in the picture, a masked terrorist calling himself by the unlikely name of "Jon Daily" assassinates him, sort of eliminating the President as a suspect. Unless one recalls "And Then There Were None." Or "Ten Little Indians." Or "Ten Wee Little Tiny....," but I digress).

Of course, it wouldn't be a genuine superhero tale without a bevy of peripheral characters, many of them scantily clad and most of them unnecessary. So, things start off with The Birdman II (Robin Williams) contacting, first, his old mentor, The Birdman I (Senator Robert Byrd), both in their knickers, and then his old flame, the shapely Irene Cicely Uranus, alias the Cottonmouth Bass (Tom Cruise), and her equally curvaceous daughter, I.C. Uranus II, alias the Cottonmouth Mouse (Brad Pitt). Did I mention that the special effects in this film are sometimes amazing? This is not one of them.

Things go along swimmingly, with people dying in all directions, heads exploding, and lips falling off from the sheer excess of the film's dialogue, when out of nowhere we meet the Wizard of Oz (John McCain, reprising his role as a right-wing elf) and the Wicked Witch of the West (Sarah Palin), who single-handedly steal the show. Or at least several film canisters, which go missing about three quarters of the way through the movie, making the ending almost wholly incomprehensible. I think Stanley Kubrick (Steven Spielberg) blows up the world or something. It's hard to tell.

Video:
In order to achieve a maximum level of realism, director Terrence Malick used a single, handheld Casio Exilim EX-Z600 camera to shoot the film, blowing up his prints to a 2.75:1 aspect ratio. This results in some slight motion blur, but with enough edge enhancement and DNR filtering the video isn't entirely unwatchable, especially if you use the polarized 3-D glasses that come free with every HD-DVD purchase. Without the glasses, the image tends to be a mite clouded by pixilation, shimmering, banding, grain, dirt, noise, dust, rain, wind, hail, ice, snow, and several household appliances. With the 3-D glasses, you can't see a thing, which improves the picture considerably.

Audio:
I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about the disc's AQ as I was its PQ. Or its QT. To say nothing of its PDQ, PAT ASAP, or ASPCA. The Uncompressed PCM-DTS TrueBS 1.7 soundtrack is a little weak in the midrange but rocks in the bass. Using a sound-pressure meter at a normal listening level, I measured a relative SPL of 75.3 dB for the center channel and 142.9 db for the seven bass woofers. This tended to obscure dialogue to some degree (and break every window in my house and in three condos several blocks away), so viewers might consider using the Danish subtitles for some respite.

Extras:
Yes.

But wait. If you call within the next three minutes, we'll double the offer! That's right; you'll get two HD DVD editions of "Sham-Wow" and a warrant for our arrest. All at the remarkably low price of only $14.95, plus shipping and handling ($129.95). If you don't mind being handled.

Finis:
Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.