Crazy for You (Vision Quest) (1985)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	102:51
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Harold Becker
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Matthew Modine Linda Fiorentino Michael Schoeffling
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$14.95	Music	Tangerine Dream

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Matthew Modine is one of those actors you either like or don't like. There is simply no middle ground when it comes to him. But who cares when Linda Fiorentino is also on the bill (it's her film debut), looking as sexy as she ever has? Okay, I admit to being a bit of a fan of the lady, a criminally underused talent in my view, so this was always one of those DVDs on the dud list that I dithered over selecting for months. So with the Easter break coming up, a list of eight titles was drawn up for selection from the dud list and Crazy For You (or Vision Quest as it is more properly known just about everywhere else) was number one on that list. Ah, the things we do to save a few bucks on a budget price DVD!

    I have seen the film more than a few times thanks to the presence of Linda Fiorentino and I have always found it one of those films that certainly is not a classic but one that would always find a place in my collection. The fact that the Region 1 release never made the collection was due to the fact that it was a blasted Pan and Scan abomination, an instant turn off as far as I am concerned for DVD. So I had to endure the wait for a widescreen release and lo and behold, what do we get in Region 4? A widescreen release at a budget price. Actually, I am starting to really like these budget price releases from Warner Home Video. Most of the films are hardly classics, and of course the extras freaks out there get nothing to quench their thirst, but they seem to be turning out some solidly reliable transfers of films that can have their moments and are fair ways with which to while away ninety minutes or so with mindless entertainment. I can't help but think that that is the entire purpose of film...

    High school wrestler Louden Swain (Matthew Bodine), just past his eighteenth birthday, is determined to follow up his pretty darn good debut year in the sport by shedding 20 pounds and dropping two divisions in order to tackle the meanest dude around, Brian Shute (Frank Jasper) who is current state champion and on a major winning streak. No biggie, except the weight has to be shed pretty darn quickly, and focus-distracting twenty-one year old Carla (Linda Fiorentino) is about to walk into his life. After an altercation at the dealership where she has bought a car in order to complete her journey from New Jersey to San Francisco, Louden's old man (Ronny Cox) loses his job but since Carla has no money and nowhere to stay, she is offered a bed at the Swain residence whilst her car is fixed. With this gorgeous lady hanging around, inevitably Louden's focus moves away from the wrestling and more towards the impact Carla is having on his hormones. Naturally enough, his esteem amongst his hormonally-charged teammates is raised more than a notch...

    That is pretty much the story. The title comes from an American Indian concept of a journey to seek one's place in the world, which is what all the wrestling is about - Louden is trying to make his mark and the best way he can think of is to mix it with the very best. The story is pretty much obvious, which is a great shame. I'll give you the tip - if it was up to me, the wrestling would have gone the way of the dodo quicker than greased lightning. How the heck could wrestling have more of a hold over a young man than the gorgeous Linda Fiorentino? It would perhaps have made a better film if the story did not continue to the inevitable conclusion. You could hardly call the acting here top notch and the characterisations are a little on the shallow side at times. But the film does have its moments - aside from Linda. Much is made of the fact that this is Madonna's debut on film, and it is of course at a time in her career when her endless pursuit of the media and self-promotion had not yet kicked in. As such, this is Madonna at the best point of her career - musically way better than the depths she later plumbed and without all the media girl crap she craved so much later on.

    Those lazy Sunday afternoons when brain activity is low and the need for neuron stimulation is hours upon hours away, a bit of half-decent mindless entertainment is all that we need. Mindless entertainment is pretty much all this film has to offer but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

    In case you were wondering, the film got a change of name here in Oz thanks to the emergence of Madonna as a big act around the time, and her song Crazy For You features strongly in the film, so... or at least that is the popular urban legend.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and it is 16x9 enhanced. The theatrical aspect ratio of the film is 1.85:1 so the difference is hardly of great concern. If it is you should always remember the Pan and Scan abomination that Region 1 have got.

    This is a solid transfer in all respects, not excelling at anything. There is a slight softness to the image that is just a little robbing to the detail but nothing too bad. Shadow detail is average, hardly surprising as the transfer is a little dark in all respects. There is a fair degree of grain to be seen, especially early in the transfer, but nothing really ugly. Add all those factors together and you can guess that clarity is not terrific. Thankfully there is no low level noise to be found in the image.

    The colours are reasonably handled, as indicated by the slightly dark nature of the image. Colours are quite natural though, even if the blacks are a little too dominant. Skin tones are well handled. There are no issues with oversaturation or colour bleed in the transfer.

    The source material is inherently rather soft in resolution during most shots involving movement. Thankfully, no other issues were introduced in the MPEG coding. Film-to-video artefacts mainly comprise rather minor aliasing that rarely draws much attention to itself: the plates in the kitchen such as at 5:28 are perhaps the most obvious instances of aliasing. Film artefacts are present but they are mainly of the small speck variety so they really don't become much of an issue.

    This is a single sided, single layered DVD so there is no layer change to worry about.

    There are just two subtitle options on the DVD, both of them being English efforts. There is nothing much wrong with them as far as I could tell, although on occasions they do run behind the actual dialogue quite noticeably such as around the 10:00 mark.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The only available soundtrack on the DVD is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 effort.

    Dialogue comes up fairly well in the transfer and is generally easy to understand. There are no apparent audio sync problems with the transfer.

    The original music was composed by Tangerine Dream, which means if you know the band you pretty well know the style of music here. This is of course all subservient to the songs included in the soundtrack which are one of the high points of the film, with plenty of fine songs from the likes of Foreigner, Madonna, Quarterflash, REO Speedwagon and Berlin that even today makes this a really good soundtrack to listen to.

    You are not exactly going to be experiencing a massively interesting soundtrack here. It is reasonable enough but lacks any distinction. It could really have done with a dose of dynamics during some of the wrestling action but other than that you really don't miss the lack of surround activity that much.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Another Warner Home Video budget price DVD and well up to the standards set by that price range - nothing extras-wise.

Menu

    Basic stuff with the highlight suffering somewhat from dot crawl.

    The equivalent Region 1 release was released over five years ago and is the same as the Region 4 except in one rather important respect: as has been mentioned several times it is a Pan and Scan presentation. Instant avoidance! Add into the fact that it has a snapper case and in all ways the Region 4 release is the preferred version.

    Vision Quest (or rather Crazy For You) is by no means a masterpiece, but it does feature Linda Fiorentino who always lifts a film no end (well, except maybe Charlie's Ghost Story). The story is very predictable, the characters a little too flat and the ending is way too predictable for its own good. Technically the transfers are not exactly masterpieces either but at least they are reasonable enough. All up this is not too bad an effort and could be worthwhile checking out at the sub-$10 price I have seen it for around the traps. Once again the M rating is something of an overstatement - the only obvious, even remotely close to a visible sex scene portion of the film is done silhouette style and nothing can be seen.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall