Chasing Amy (Blu-ray) Official AVSForum Review

( Max score: 100 )

71

Film Synopsis:

Cult comic-book artist Holden (Ben Affleck) falls in love with fellow artist Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), only to be thwarted by her sexuality, the disdain of his best friend Banky (Jason Lee), and his own misgivings about himself. Filled with writer/director Kevin Smith's unique ear for dialogue and insight into relationships, Chasing Amy offers a thoughtful, funny look at how perceptions alter lives, and how obsession and self-doubt skew reality.

My Take:

Kevin Smith cemented his reputation as a major voice in American comedy filmmaking with Chasing Amy. This rather frank and edgy comedy about sex and love nineties style holds up quite nicely. Holden, considering himself a ladies man, unknowingly finds himself falling for the ultimate in unavailable women: a lesbian comic book artist named Alyssa. After discovery of her sexuality Holden makes attempts to keep their affiliation strictly platonic and the two become best friends and enjoy each others company immensely. Unfortunately Holden completely falls head over heals for Alyssa and decides to tell her. Her reaction and the series of events that follow offers a thoughtful, complex and fresh take on modern relationships. The script exudes Kevin Smith's brand of clever dialogue, darkly honest humor and features heartfelt performances from Affleck and Adams as well as strong supporting turns by Jason Lee and Dwight Ewell. Jay and Silent Bob make an appearance to interject their unique perspective which includes Silent Bob's chasing Amy defining monologue. That along with Hooper's (Dwight Ewell) long winded but perfectly executed narrative making the distinction between Star Wars/Darth Vader relative to the black experience are priceless and in and of themselves make this film worth seeing. Chasing Amy is considered one of Smith's best films and I would certainly agree.

Parental Guide:

The rating is for strong graphic sex-related dialogue, language, sexuality and drug content.

Audio: 70

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Video: 72

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Chasing Amy comes to Blu-ray Disc from Miramax/Buena Vista featuring 1080p VC-1 encoded video that has an average bitrate of 15 mbps and lossless DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio sound that has an average bitrate of 3.2 mbps.

Having never seen Chasing Amy on film or home video I had no frame of reference for how it would look in high definition. It was obvious that the elements present don't lend themselves to razor sharpness, or vivid imagery. The image was generally soft and lacking in resolute definition and sharpness. Colors were not particularly vibrant and appeared a tad faded. Skintones were fairly delineated with complexions that leaned a bit toward pinkish. Blacks were not very deep and shadow detail appeared crushed at times. Grain was present but not evenly layered which may suggest evidence of digital manipulation (but I couldnt say for certain). I didn't notice any overt signs of artifacts related to bit starvation or compression. The DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack didn't have the high quality aural presence and depth associated with the better lossless mixes I have heard from films from this era on Blu-ray disc. However I would surmise that this can be attributed more to the film's budget than to the quality of this encoding. Dialogue was intelligible with fair intonation and vocal distinction among the cast. The front three channels delivered the majority of the sound, never felt compressed but lacked appreciable room penetration. Dynamics range was fair and bass response was appropriate but far from laudable. The surround channels were used to convey some sound effects and mild ambience but the integration of the front and rear sound fields didn't create a very enveloping atmosphere.

Bonus Features:

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• (HD) Tracing Amy: The Chasing Amy Doc - 72 minute documentary film
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• (HD) Was it something I said?: A conversation with Kevin and Joey - 18 minutes
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• 10 years later Q&A with the director/cast - 29 minutes
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• Audio commentary
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• 10 deleted scenes
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• Outtakes
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• Theatrical trailer
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• (HD) Sneak peeks: Everybodys fine, Extract, and Surrogates

Final Thoughts:

This being my first experience with Chasing Amy I must say that I really enjoyed it. Writer/director Kevin Smith was on top of his game with this entertaining and unique perspective on romance and how we sometimes let it define who we are. Its high definition debut on Blu-ray from Buena Vista/Miramax may leave fans a little disappointed however my guess would be that regardless it represents an improvement over any previous version found on home video. If you haven't seen it it's definitely worth checking out so throw it in the queue and take it for a spin.