Excess Baggage is one of those forgettable, borderline entertaining films from the 1990s though at least Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro displayed some charm, but not nearly enough to overcome a lame story.
Excess Baggage
(1997)
Genre(s): Adventure, Romance, Thriller
Mill Creek | PG13 – 101 min. – $14.98 | June 4, 2019
Date Published: 05/31/2019 | Author: The Movieman
|
|
|||||||||||
Mill Creek Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
THE MOVIE — 2.75/5 |
|
Plot Synopsis: A spoiled young woman, desperate for attention from her millionaire father (JACK THOMPSON), Emily Hope (ALICIA SILVERSTONE) fakes her own abduction to shift his focus her way. The so-called kidnapping turns real, however, when auto thief Vincent Roche (BENICIO DEL TORO) makes off with a car and discovers Emily, who had locked herself inside the trunk. As Vincent tries to figure out what to do with his unexpected guest, Emily begins to fall for the charming felon. On their trail is Emily’s sinister ex-CIA “uncle” (CHRISTOPHER WALKEN).
Quick Hit Review: This is only my second viewing of Excess Baggage and although it’s hardly a great movie, I did enjoy it a bit more this go around than the last. Both Benicio Del Toro, who I don’t think many would find to be a suitable love interest in a quirky rom-com, had some fine chemistry opposite Alicia Silverstone who probably was at the height of her career coming off of the massively successful Clueless, only to come crashing down with this film’s financial failure ($14.5M against a $20M budget) not to mention the massive critical failure of Batman & Robin, released only a couple months prior. Thanks to her success on Clueless, Columbia Pictures had signed Silverstone to a two-year production deal, Excess Baggage being her first (and only) with the studio through her Kiss Productions company (which would only go on to produce a TV movie in 2006). So her foray into something beyond acting didn’t exactly land, not hard to see why considering the poor reviews, though Siskel and Ebert gave it a “Two Thumbs Up”.
The movie was directed by Marco Brambilla whose most notable work, and one and only other feature-length film, was the 1993 science fiction-actioner Demolition Man, so interesting choice to make a crime-romance film his follow-up (and to note, according to IMDb has no other feature films outside of an anthology film from 2006). As for this film, there were moments that were fine intermixed with others that kind of dragged. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 0/5 |
|
As part of Mill Creek’s “I Heart 90s” collection, this does come with a retro VHS slip cover but no features were included, not even a chapter stop submenu. |
VIDEO – 2.75/5 |
| Excess Baggage debuts on Blu-ray after spending years on DVD via the old Sony flipper disc and while this is presented in the original 1.85 widescreen aspect ratio and a 1080p high-definition transfer. Sadly, this is not a very good looking picture. Artifacting and aliasing permeates just about every shot, colors are at least decent (like Silverstone’s yellow jacket has a bit of pop to it) but otherwise the whites have more of a gray tinge to it and blacks show off a bit of noise. |
AUDIO – 3.5/5 |
| The disc comes with the standard, and likely the same, Dolby Digital 5.1 track which I found to be serviceable enough providing clear enough dialogue levels via the center channel and some modest depth with the front and rear channels outputting John Lurie’s score. |
OVERALL – 2.5/5 |
|
Excess Baggage is one of those forgettable, borderline entertaining films from the 1990s though at least Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro displayed some charm, but not nearly enough to overcome a lame story. The Blu-ray release from Mill Creek has a flawed video, okay audio and absolutely no features, not even the theatrical trailer. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.