Blind Date [Blu-Ray]

Director: Blake Edwards

Cast: Kim Basinger, Bruce Willis, John Larroquette

Release Date: Now Available on Blu-Ray For The First Time

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Film Rating: 7.5/10

Disc Rating: 7/10

Plot Summary:

Walter Davis is a workaholic. His attention is all to his work and very little to his personal life or appearance. Now he needs a date to take to his company’s business dinner with a new important Japanese client. His brother sets him up with his wife’s cousin Nadia, who is new in town and wants to socialize, but he was warned that if she gets drunk, she loses control and becomes wild. How will the date turn out – especially when they encounter Nadia’s ex-boyfriend David?

Having never seen ‘Blind Date’ (it appears to be yet just another movie from the 80s and 90s that I missed somehow) it was a nice treat to have the pleasure of first viewing the film in High Definition via its first ever Blu-Ray release. It’s a pretty fun romantic comedy that takes a simple and real concept that often has disastrous results, and takes those possibly disastrous results to the most extreme places imaginable and at the same time, the most hilarious ways possible too.

It’s crazy just how young Bruce Willis looks (I believe ‘Blind Date’ was his first lead role in a theatrical film to the best of my knowledge) and Kim Basinger looks amazing. There were a number of other familiar faces present here, including John Larroquette in a hilarious portrayal of Basinger’s psychotic ex-boyfriend who stalks the two throughout the city on their date, in addition to William Daniels, who many will likely remember best for his portrayal of Mr. Feeny on the TV series ‘Boy Meets World’, the late Phil Hartman as well a few others.  The film is directed by Blake Edwards (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther) who does a great job in the director’s chair maintaining the perfect balance of chaos, comedy and just flat out silliness.

‘Blind Date’ is a fun, hilarious and heartwarming romantic comedy featuring a great cast in their earlier years. Fans of the film will definitely want to pick up a copy of the Blu-Ray so that they can finally own this classic film in High Definition, and others such as me who have yet to have the pleasure of this movie should give it a shot, chances are you will be pleasantly surprised.

VIDEO:

The Blu-Ray release of ‘Blind Date’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation utilizing a 2.40:1 Cinemascope Aspect Ratio. For a film that is over 2 and one half decades old, this video transfer looks pretty on par. It is fortunately not too overdone and glimmered with DNR to the point of being nearly unrecognizable and the minor irregularities are left intact for the most part in order to keep it looking as close to possible as one would imagine the source does. I think it’s a safe bet to say that fans of the film, as well as those such as me who have the pleasure of enjoying this movie for the first time on Blu-Ray should certainly be pleased with the high definition video presentation on this release.

AUDIO:

While we are not treated to a multichannel audio track on this release, we do luckily get an uncompressed 2.0 channel DTS-HD Master Audio track which sounds pretty great for a film over 2 and a half decades old. The dialogue, effects, music and most all elements of the soundtrack are quite sharp and detailed without colliding into each other. Aside from being a stereo track and not multichannel, this is a very satisfactory lossless soundtrack for an older film that should leave most satisfied for the most part.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

As per usual with the Image catalog releases of these older Sony titles, this is a bare bones Blu-Ray release and there are no special features included within. One should bear in mind that this is simply a basic catalog title for an older film being released on Blu-Ray and the more than reasonable price certainly makes up for the lack of features. It’s wonderful to see these older classics continuing to see the light of day on Blu-Ray at all and hopefully there are a number more on the way.

Film Rating: 7.5/10

Disc Rating: 7/10

‘Blind Date’ is now available to own for the first time on Blu-Ray from IMAGE/RLJ Entertainment.