Tony Walker (Adam Arkin, there are actually three Arkins in this film, which is a whole lot of Arkin) is the star high-school quarterback at Full Moon High. On a trip to Romania, he is bitten by a werewolf and is cursed to wander the Earth until he returns to his hometown thirty years later, posing as his own son, to go back to high school. This is a send up of films like ‘I Was a Teenage Werewolf’ and looks like it was influenced by contemporary spoofs like ‘Airplane’. There’s a lot of talent but it’s not especially funny; recommended for existing fans of the film and Scream Factory completionists. The disc contains almost no extras beyond the theatrical trailer and a pretty good audio commentary by director Larry Cohen. I imagine there’s not a lot of surplus material out there for this one but still it makes for a pretty slim release.
Brie Larson (filmed before the Oscar win but released after) plays a singing scientist who develops a new form of rice with her scientist father (played by Scott Bakula). She is sent to India to sell the rice to rural farmers for some reason (she’s a scientist turned sales rep?) by her boss (played by Donald Sutherland). While there, she falls for a man named Rajit (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and together they learn that her rice will actually be bad for the farmers.
The film’s a partial musical, every so often Brie breaks out into song (along with several other bizarre numbers), but the rest of the time it’s a standard romantic comedy. Uneven and bordering on culturally tone deaf, Basmati Blues uses rural India as set dressing for a film that never rises above the normal romantic genre trappings.
Special Features include:
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Dan Baron, producers Monique Caulfield and Jeffrey Soros, and actor Utkarsh Ambudkar
- Behind-The-Scenes Featurette
- Theatrical Trailer
- Deleted Scenes
- Photo Gallery
From the Press Release ‘With an interminable case of writer’s block and a personal family crisis, playwright Nate (Jermaine Clement, Flight of the Concords) is forced to move into his father’s (Elliott Gould, Ocean’s Eleven) retirement community. But a chance encounter with the local community theatre group may help turn his life around … or signal the end of his once promising career for good.’
Humor Me is surprisingly funny and poignant, with a script full of rich characters and amusing dialogue. Jermaine Clement and Elliott Gould have good chemistry as father and son roommates thrown back into the mix together. Worth picking up as a pretty good Friday night date night movie.
Special Features include:
- Audio Commentary
- Deleted Scenes
- Theatrical trailer
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.