Some Kind of Wonderful DVD: Review By Mushy

Some Kind of Wonderful tells the story of Keith Nelson (Eric Stoltz), an outsider who longs to be in the arms of school hottie Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson). The only problem is that Jones has a meathead boyfriend (Craig Sheffer) and Nelson doesn't even realize that the person he should be with, drum playing tomboy Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) is right under his nose. After Amanda leaves her man, she decides to date Keith only to have Watts, Keith, her meathead boyfriend and herself realize something really important in the process.

While there are certain aspects of this late 1980s film that may not play as well today, there is a reason why Some Kind of Wonderful is considered the classic that it is. It mixes the music, the look, and the ideals of the time into a film that still stands up quite well in this wags opinion.

No extras came with this release.

Widescreen Version enhanced for 16:9 TVs. This movie looked good. The problem in my home is that I have an HDTV but not a Blu-ray player. So when I review a movie like Some Kind of Wonderful I am only able to watch it in the standard format. This is fine but my eyes are getting trained to see the difference in standard and high definition programming. This movie doesn't have any really amazing shots so it's not like the standard vs. HD argument really needs to happen here.

English 6.1 DTS Surround. Dolby Digital: English 5.1/ English 2.0 Surround/ French 2.0 Surround. Subtitled in English and Spanish. The audio for this release was good but I probably should have tested it out on a better system. So much of this release feels like a rehash that it was really hard to get excited about it.

The classic image of Stoltz, Thompson and Masterson is present on this front cover with all the requisite "I love the 80's" colors on the front this release. The back features images from this film, a small description of what Some Kind of Wonderful is about, a cast list and technical specs.

Billed simply as Skinhead in the credits on IMDB.COM, the performance that seems to never be mentioned when people talk about this movie is that of Elias Koteas. In fact, if one were too look at him in this film and then look at him know I don't know that they would even recognize the actor. This actor plays the Skinhead role of Duncan in such a different way than any of the other actors play their roles he can't help but stand out. It isn't just the cadence he uses when he delivers his lines, it isn't simply his presence on screen, and it isn't only because he shows that all skinheads aren't mindless, racist idiots. It's the fact that he is truly awesome in this movie and every moment that he's on screen he uses it to good effect to get the point of his character across.

So, if you want to have another reason to own or see this new version of Some Kind of Wonderful the performance of the hugely underrated Elias Koteas should more than suffice.