The Cable Guy DVD: Review By SpaceCowboy

This is going to be a real quick one. This set has absolutely no special features and since that's the whole reason I review sets the only thing that really holds any value for this DVD is a glitch I experienced with the disc long ago and the presentation.

The Cable Guy was released in theatres June 14, 1996. According to IMDb, anyway. I personally had no recollection of this ever being released in the cinema and I wouldn't be surprised if most had forgotten about its release as well. This was right around the time where movies were being remastered digitally and ported on discs. The picture and sound quality was promised to be revolutionary and miles ahead of what VHS offered.

The Cable Guy had to wait its turn before seeing the light of day on DVD. Most of the first line of movies transferred were owned by Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema. Remember those obnoxious snap cases that were nothing but a plastic bracket and folded sheet of cardboard? I'd thank the manufactures later for the vast improvement in packaging. However, now we've been set back a notch with eco-cases, cardboard box sets, SteelBooks and DigiBooks. I don't hold any heat against the "Books." They're just more for collecting purposes.

In 2000, The Cable Guy finally gets a home digital release... and it was very bare bones. Those past 3 or so years introduced more interactive and animated menus with bonus content. More than a preview of Columbia DVD releases could have been included. Guess there just wasn't anything worth adding to this. If I had watched it in theatres or even rented this for a view I would have saved myself from a set that takes up one space on the shelf that could have belonged to a far more deserving movie. I suppose I could have used it as a Frisbee -- would have gotten my money's worth.

The problems with scarce productivity were quite common in 1997 are those same problems present themselves here. Including the infamous dual-layered disc aka double-sided disc. Even the menu was poorly designed; one solid blue background with four panels (Chapter Selections, Spoken Languages, Subtitles, RESUME), "Main Menu" typed out on the top left hand corner, very uninspired font, Columbia logo in the top right hand corner, and a distorted thumbnail of the movie's poster.

As for the "glitch" I referred to earlier...

First time I put this DVD in I sat through two and half minutes of previews for the movie to start instantly after, bypassing the menu. Not a bad start. Just press the skip button on the remote and the movie starts right up. However, once the movie started and the first line of dialog was spoken, Spanish subtitles appeared at the bottom of the scream. I'm not quite sure the disc was supposed to do this, but it kept on doing this each time I would take the disc out and put it back in. Each time this happened I had to go to the vomit-inducing turn off subs. No matter which side of the disc was reading - Widescreen or Fullscreen - the disc would go ahead and assume I could read in Spanish. For the sake of reviewing this set I put the disc in one more time and it was miraculously fixed! No more subs! Weird...

All bashing aside, I didn't find The Cable Guy as bad as everyone did back in 1996. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it and many - and I mean MANY - viewings later I left it as a guilty pleasure that was really only kind of fun a few times. I wouldn't call it a bad movie or even a good one. It's not for every one, that's for sure. I still enjoyed it though. Heck, even Gene Siskel enjoyed the movie and with the Rotten Tomato meter creeping up in the 50's (previously in the 40s) who knows. It could win over enough critics today to become a Fresh flick.

A Blu-ray with a few extras came out last year that I've been meaning to get. I figured I might as well put in my two cents before trading up. Hope you enjoyed my review. Thumbs it up if you liked it and please leave me a comment below telling me what you thought or if you have any questions. Thanks for reading!

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Johnny D. - the Space Cowboy