PunchLine (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Trailer-Sleepless In Seattle; Philadelphia Trailer-Multiplicity; Nothing In Common
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	117:34
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (69:30)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	David Seltzer
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Sally Field Tom Hanks John Goodman Kim Greist Paul Mazursky Mark Rydell
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	Charles Gross

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Every film I've ever seen that looks behind the scenes at stand-up comics is maudlin, making them out as tragic people. Perhaps this is because of the serious jealousy we feel towards those who can make us laugh? Perhaps this is because only tragic people feel a need to perform as stand-up comics? Perhaps both?

    This film is no exception — it focuses on two of the stand-up comedians performing at The Gas Station, a comedy club: Steven Gold (Tom Hanks) and Lilah Krytsick (Sally Field).

    Steven Gold is a medical school drop-out with serious personality problems. He can be funny on stage, but his off-stage life is a disaster.

    Lilah is wife to an insurance salesman (John Goodman), and mother to three girls. She is keen to be a success as a stand-up comedian. The first performance of hers that we see is truly dreadful. Her husband isn't impressed. He would much rather she stayed home and looked after the family. One of the funniest, and yet saddest, sequences in this film is her performance of "instant dinner for guests at home".

    It's rather amusing seeing John Goodman playing straight, and Sally Field playing comedian. Tom Hanks is too versatile to play against type. They work well together, each turning in an excellent performance.

    In fact, we do see quite a few fragments of stand-up performances, and there are some major crash-and-burn cases amongst them. One of Tom Hanks' efforts is very sad. Oh, there are some very funny performances, too — you will find yourself laughing out loud at times. But there's some real pathos too. Don't approach this film expecting it to be hysterically funny from one end to the other. You'll be disappointed. This is a drama about the people who make the laughs, rather than the laughs themselves.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. As far as I can ascertain, this is the correct aspect ratio.

    The picture is just a little soft for most of the film, with one noticeably less focussed patch for a few seconds around 51:00. Shadow detail is not fabulous. There's significant grain in some of the low-light shots, such as around 46:59. There's no appreciable low level noise.

    Colour is adequate, but it's mostly drawn from a fairly dull palette. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are a variety of light-weight film artefacts, and a few nastier ones, like the bright blue scratches on the film at 9:19. There is frequent aliasing, but it is very low-level. There's a tiny amount of moire, and some background shimmer.

    There are subtitles in many languages, including English. I watched the English subtitles. They are quite accurate, easy to read (fairly small), and perfectly timed.

    The disc is single sided and RSDL-formatted; the layer change is at 69:30. It comes in the middle of a scene, but it is surprisingly smooth, and not especially obvious. I'm a bit surprised, really, because this transfer looks like it has been compressed a bit too far — that's my opinion as to the reason for the softness of the picture.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are five soundtracks, including English in Dolby Digital 2.0, surround-encoded. I listened to the English soundtrack.

    The dialogue is easy to understand. There are no audio sync problems.

    The score, from Charles Gross, has some ironic moments, and generally does a good job of supporting the events of the film.

    Your surrounds get next to nothing to do with this soundtrack. They do add a little bit of depth to the sound, but that's all. No signal is directed to the subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The only extras on this disc are four fairly irrelevant trailers.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent.

Trailers

• Sleepless in Seattle (2:30)
• Philadelphia (2:56)
• Multiplicity (2:29)
• Nothing in Common (2:51)

    About all these trailers have in common is that Tom Hanks is in three of them.

    The Region 1 version of this film includes both full-screen and widescreen versions of the film, which suggests that they will be even more compressed than ours. It has no additional extras. I'd suggest the Region 4 disc is likely to be better, even though it's not fabulous.

    A film about the lives of a couple of aspiring stand-up comics, on a less-than-perfect DVD.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are nothing to do with the film.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall