That Thing You Do! - DVD Review

MOVIE
VIDEO
AUDIO
EXTRAS
OVERALL

One Disc
1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
English Dolby Digital 5.0
English & French Dolby Digital 2.0
English & Spanish Subtitles
Many Theatrical Trailers
TV Spots
Featurette
Music Videos
Run Time: 108 Minutes
Keep Case

MOVIE
Rated PG for, I don't know, adult situations. All in all, fun for the whole family.

Man, Tom. I mean really. For the eighties and some of the nineties you were a goofball! You brought us Bosom Buddies, then starred in a series of not terribly well received critically movies like Bachelor Party and Volunteers and The Money Pit and Nothing in Common. Then, out of the blue came Big. And you were nominated for an Oscar, and so was the movie. And the nation collectively went, Hmmmm. Then you were back in wacky form for The 'burbs and Turner and Hooch and Joe VS The Volcano. But then, the wacky got a bit more subdued and we got more heart again, flashes of Big came back to us with Sleepless in Seattle and A League of Their Own. Then you smacked us. Collectively as a country, you smacked us. Philadelphia. We didn't see that one coming. Bam! Academy Award. You followed it up with a sucker punch, Forrest Gump, promising wacky hijinks, albeit in a more restrained form. BAM! Academy Award 2. Then came Apollo 13, and the country got it. We understood that our wacky friend had decided to grow up. We mourned his passing, but we delighted in the new SERIOUS Tom Hanks acting up storms on movie screens before us. And you threw us for another loop. First you did Toy Story, which, while only voice acting, was still a throwback to your wacky past. Then, you made That Thing You Do! And not just acted in it. Wrote it, acted in it, directed it. And it was goofy. A throwback to your earlier career, though you weren't the one being goofy this time. Like Woody Allen before you, you supplanted a younger version of you, capturing your likeness almost completely. Tom Everett Scott IS Tom Hanks in this film. He has your nutty quirks, your funny hair (and we all know what Hanks looks like when he's going to be funny, big ole curls) and your flair for the beat of comedy. And we, the fans, rejoiced.
That Thing You Do! is delightful. Guy "Skitch" Patterson (Tom Everett Scott), described as Erie, Pennsylvania's only beatnik works at his father's appliance store while at night playing drums along with jazz albums. Meanwhile, there's a band in search of a name, Jimmy (Jonathon Schaech), the songwriter and lead singer is pushing The Heardsmen and enjoys any suggestion that plays with the spelling of words a la the Beatles. One of his awful suggestions is the Chordvettes. Next is Lenny, (Steve Zahn), lead guitar, backup vocals. He's an upbeat guy who would rather just be called "The Band You're About To Hear" than worry about it. The Bass Player (Ethan Embry) (and no, he's not mentioned by name anywhere in the film) and Chad (Giovanni Ribisi) the Drummer don't have any suggestions and would rather play at jumping over parking meters, a game that quickly breaks Chad's arm. Desperate, the still unnamed band goes to Guy, asking him to back them up on drums for a college talent competition with the promise of a cut of the hundred-dollar prize. He agrees and quickly masters the ballad That Thing You Do. While rehearsing, Faye (Liv Tyler), Jimmy's girlfriend comes up with the name for the band, The One-Ders (Wonders.) At the talent competition, the O-NEED-ers perform, but Guy starts the beat too fast and they're forced to speed up the song, delighting the crowd and gaining them a gig at a pizza joint by the airport. The rest of the film follows the then renamed Wonders through the rise to fame and hopefully fortune as That Thing You Do climbs the charts. Problems within the band, Guy's developing love for Faye in Jimmy's neglect and Jimmy's growing suspicion that Mr. White (Tom Hanks) their manager has no intention of ever letting him record his ballads, unheard due to That Thing You Do's runaway success.
That Thing You Do! is one of those films that are so light and airy that watching them is a refreshing change. Just watched Requiem For a Dream and Dancer in the Dark, feel like killing yourself, pop on That Thing You Do! to make it all better. Hanks manages, with his script, to capture the innocence of youth and the strangeness of sudden popularity almost completely summed up in the scene where the screaming Wonders first hear their song on the radio and dance around Patterson's Appliances to the beat of the music. At the same time, the characters are terribly well drawn, even though they're a bit cartooney in and of themselves. The Bass Player isn't even given a name. But, somehow, you believe it all. Maybe because, for someone who didn't even get a glimpse of the fifties and sixties, I have to live vicariously through film, tending to believe that this might be how things really were. I get the same giddy call to just suspend my damned disbelief for Hairspray and American Graffiti. Hanks' direction is steady and sure, you can sense that he learned a lot from his directorial mentors Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis and Jonathan Demme. His script is subtle at the right times and blaringly silly at the right times and the cast is note perfect, even singing their own songs and playing their own instruments. All this and a plot paying vague homage to the rise of The Beatles, how can a viewer go wrong?

VIDEO QUALITY
The pastel colors of the sixties are very well reproduced here. However, the film is oddly dark, with shadows covering faces often and black levels creeping up. Unfortunately, those very black levels hinder an otherwise fine transfer. The blacks get muddy and washed out occasionally, bringing other colors down. That being said, the dark colors were what Hanks had in mind and when the movie gets bright, it really shines. This film is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 remastered in anamorphic widescreen.

AUDIO QUALITY
As with most music movies, the surround speakers are fairly active, just not for discreet sound. Instead the rear two channels of this 5.0 setup get a lot of action simply filling out the front two channels songs. This isn't a bad thing. Heavy use of surround would seem out of place here and the .1 bass track isn't necessary either. The mix is good, great for what it is, just not impressive for a man who's watched Saving Private Ryan in DTS and knows what surround sound could be.

EXTRAS
Well, this DVD certainly has an overabundance of Trailers with two theatrical trailers, several TV spots and, something I've never seen before, a handful of Spanish and French trailers. These are quite strange and make the movie seem very different as, especially the Spanish announcer, they downplay the wackiness of the film. Then there's a featurette running at just under fifteen minutes that, while it falls victim to the standard EPK method of making the movie seem like God Himself decreed that it be made and it is the best thing since sliced bread, still manages to provide some insight into the filmmaking process and showing us the rehearsal and preproduction in detail.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
I never grow tired of this film. Even after many viewings, it's still funny to me and enjoyable, largely due to the cast and the insane catchiness of that main tune. I'd love to see what happened if Hanks ever again put pen to paper, but he's vowed never to direct again, at least. Who knows if we'll ever again see the credit "Written by Tom Hanks" because, Mr. Hanks, we salute your effort and we love you just for being you.