Get Out of My Room (Cheech & Chong) (1985)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	52:16
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Cheech Marin
Studio Distributor	Koo Koo Banana, Inc. Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Cheech Marin Tommy Chong
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Cheech Marin Tommy Chong

    Few relics of the 1980s are as funny or ridiculous as the comedy team of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong. Always depicted as a pair of hopeless stoners with IQs that match their hat sizes, the two made a series of albums that took up some chart space in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then, the "Just Say No" campaign led by the likes of Nancy Reagan took off, leaving Cheech and Chong out in the cold. Myself, I always thought that Cheech Marin's solo effort Born In East L.A. was a hilarious stab at Ronald Reagan's immigration policies, but I have to admit that the humour in these films is dating quite badly. Get Out Of My Room is a video documentary of the making of the album of the same name, from which Born In East L.A. was originally taken.

    This documentary, such as it is, concerns itself with the making of four music videos for singles from the Get Out Of My Room album. Each one parodies some aspect of American or English-speaking culture that just seemed to Cheech or Chong like a good idea to parody at the time. The Get Out Of My Room segment features a rather strange attempt to parody punk rock, complete with Cheech attempting to impersonate a British punk vocalist (this is funnier than it sounds). The I'm Not Home Right Now segment seems to revolve around Cheech avoiding bill collectors while Chong flies to Hawaii to judge a beauty contest. The Love Is Strange segment is definitely the most odd segment of this collection, with eyeball dancers dominating the video and bringing images of The Residents to mind.

    However, by far the funniest segment of this video collection is Born In East L.A., which was apparently also intended as a parody of Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A.. Featuring a deportation-happy policeman and footage of Cheech trying to cross the border, it certainly resembles a test run for the feature film that followed in 1987.

    The overall compilation also features interview segments and footage of Cheech and Chong just doing what they do, which is generally very little other than acting like complete idiots.

    Honestly, you're either going to like this sort of thing or not, but it is funny enough to keep people amused for almost all of its running length. It's definitely a relic of the time it was made in, so sit back and take a quick journey through history.

Video

    Get Out Of My Room is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced. Given the nature of the content and the vintage of this compilation, I'm inclined to believe it was intended to be shown in this aspect ratio.

    This is not a sharp transfer - objects that are distant from the camera are pretty blurry, and even some close-up shots during the interviews seem a little soft and out of focus. The shadow detail, when required, is pretty average, but there does not appear to be any noise in the black segments of the picture.

    The colours are pretty dull and muted, as one would expect from a low-budget music video from the mid-1980s. There did not appear to be any composite artefacts.

    MPEG artefacts are not in this picture. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of frequent aliasing on just about every solid object imaginable, with vans at 15:22 and 18:36 posing the biggest problems. The worst aliasing is in the clearly visible matte lines in the introduction to the Love Is Strange music video at 34:27. Film artefacts were not found in this transfer.

    There are no subtitles present on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is one soundtrack on this DVD: the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 224 kilobits per second.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times. There are some minor lip-syncing errors in the music videos, as well as some major ones in the Get Out Of My Room video that were intentional. The rest of the footage is perfectly in sync, however.

    The music in this compilation is composed by Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong. Some of it is downright hilarious, some of it is just plain odd, but it is all amusing to see how it is put together and turned into a video. The footage when Cheech and Chong are experimenting with different musical styles for Get Out Of My Room in particular is quite amusing. I can just picture the two of them trying a style that is more in line with my record collection now, and the results would probably bring tears to one's eyes.

    The surround channels are not used in this soundtrack. They weren't particularly missed.

    The subwoofer is not used by this soundtrack, either. It could have been used to add more definition to the bass tracks in the songs, but there would be very little else for it to do in this programme, so it is not really missed.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. It is not 16x9 Enhanced.

    There does not appear to be a Region 1 version of this title as yet. Searches on several sites indicated that this title is only available on VHS in all of the other major countries.

    Get Out Of My Room has a few things to chuckle at, but I doubt it will stand up to repeat viewings. It is worth taking a look at in order to see the rough form of what would eventually become Born In East L.A., but you'd have to be a mad fan to get anything else of value here.

    The video transfer is average.

    The audio transfer is average.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall