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“Give us a kiss, a-holes!” Joe’s Apartment receives a first Blu-Ray remaster that will make you shake your groove thing with a funky towel.
If you are one of those kids of the 90s, you probably were able to catch MTV, and some of the original programming, including Beavis and Butthead (19931998) and Total Request Live (1998-2008) or The Real World (1992-2008). These are just a few of the many programs that MTV was able to pioneer, but older folks will remember Donal Logue’s Jimmy the Cab Driver TV commercials, Liquid Television (1991-1995), MTV’s Oddities (1994-1996), and Joe’s Apt (1992). A short film that later spawned a feature-length movie in 1996. The musical (or a comedy with very few songs) would get seared into this reviewer’s brain in such a way that some terrible cloth or an off-tap will make me sing. Almost 28 years after the film animated my childhood, Warner Archive now puts out Joe’s Apartment from director John Payson for the first time on Blu-ray, alongside WB’s original cartoons with a 4k digital remaster from the original negative.
Straight off the bus from Iowa, Joe (Jerry O’Connell) learns pretty quickly that being a positive recent college grad doesn’t carry any benefits in New York City. After being mugged three times and running low on money, Joe is slowly coming to the realization that big city life is not as glamorous as it seems. However, after a stroke of good luck, he meets a girl named Lily (Megan Ward) who is interested in him and he also gets a chance at a $50 rent-controlled apartment. While many of Joe’s problems appear to be getting solved, he still has one very large issue to deal with – a local crime boss Alberto Bianco (Don Ho) who is ready to do anything to place his hands on Joe’s apartment. With Alberto ready to serve Joe some death wishes, Joe is ready for a new host of problems, including cockroach creatures that love to sing, dance, and most importantly, help Joe reach his dreams.
If you find this review puzzling, chances are you are like me and you are equally pumped as you are perplexed about this new release. So without any further ado, let’s dive deeper.
As stated in the Warner Archive press release, the video features are said to be a 1080p HD remaster from a 4K scan of an original camera negative. In contrast, no details on the steps taken or who oversaw/approved the work were included in the press release and no further information was given with the review copy sent to us. That is, there is no missing what this release features compared to any other version you may have witnessed, and the very first frame serves to illustrate this point perfectly – an unidentified roach buzzes over New York City. To better understand what this shift entails, let me pull out my 1999 edition DVD to compare it with the new Blu-ray released remastered version. And, yes, it goes beyond the screen ratio. Indeed, the Blu-ray now fills the entire screen and unlike the old version, the low-quality haze is absent. The colors are sharper, the roaches are closer, and their exoskeletons are more realistic with cleaner browns and golds. Also, the dazzling golds and browns of the roaches are less masking than what was previously done. Moreover, now the remaster provides better blending to the real world with animation, meaning the stop motion and CGI blend more seamlessly so that the illusion of this ridiculous world is maintained.
Admittedly, the visual decadence that MTV was infamous for, along with Set Design during the 90s, made NYC appear gross, but even if the sets have more detail which makes them less disguised, this still does not redeem the film. It was made on a budget and the protagonist was a self-destructive hoarder. This means the supporting characters had to come from a culture that idolized filth.
A huge setback with “The Roach in My Apartment” is that the bonus features are not release-specific. That means there is absolutely no feature commentary from the film principals. No look-back excerpts, no inclusion of the original short, and so on. There is a laundry list of exclusions that are The northeast equivalent of ‘The Shining’ in which all that is added to the new version is a theatrical trailer and three cartoon shorts of various lunacies. While “The Lady in Red” focuses on the roaches and both “From Hare to Eternity” and “Superior Duck” are fine Looney Tunes cartoons, viewers do feel a tad disappointed, to say the least, that roach voice actors like Billy West, Tim Blake Nelson, B. D. Wong, and Academy Award-winning composer Carter Burwell do not contribute to the movie. And yes, you read all of that right. Those are simply some of the voices that comprise the insect menagerie that Joe’s new apartment is rich in but do not feel subsisted. Certainly, this isn’t a deal breaker. But it does prevent the lay of the land from being fully realized, especially for audiences who love and reminisce about the film.
Honestly, I have heard the song “Funky Towel” so many times that it completely overshadows the number of times I have watched the movie in the past twenty years. The song is a hit and gets a lot of playtime on my iPod which is the reason for the imbalance. While revisiting the movie to review it, I am happy to say that the movie for the most part is still great. The film, like everything else in life, has its own stamp of time and comes packed with specific era lingo that, without having watched MTV, would make no sense. The sort of rebellious teenage energy that was synonymous with supporting obscure forms of art was rampant. A movie that follows the “odd couple” storyline, where one of the couples is a thousand cockroaches, absolutely fits that Perception. Having lived in that Era and understood the language does make the jokes funny, with the help of course from O’Donnel and Ward and the rest of the cast who understood what the ter the film was making and took it seriously.
You don’t start this job off feeling “What am I doing here” for the most part, however, some parts might be slightly confusing. One of the things that may not translate well for most people is Lily’s father, Robert Vaughn’s Senator Dougherty, who has several bizarre habits most notably his obsession with cross-dressing. Those scenes attempt to fetishize him to a ridiculous extent, such as a politically unobtrusive, neatly suited politician, wearing a spiked bracelet (in short, everyone is supportive of him). No one denies him all these ridiculous apparel choices. However, it is obvious that the three moments in which we, the viewers, observe Dougherty being preoccupied with feminine clothing are meant to elicit laughter. With such a representation, one would think Jim Turner’s anti-establishment conceptual artist and ex-hero Walter Shit is the outcast of society that we wish we could admire because he embodies New York for Joe. For us, the portrayal of Senator Dougherty should be sympathetic a figure who proclaims, “We all have little secrets so let’s hope it makes us brave enough to be different”, but one is looked down upon and the other is not.
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