Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Reese Witherspoon is Tracy Flick, a straight "A" go-getter who's determined to be president of Carver High's student body. But when popular teacher Jim McAllister observes the zealous political locomotive that is Tracy, he decides to derail her obsessive overachieving by recruiting an opposition candidate - with disastrous results!

Election previewed as a somewhat silly comedy during its theatrical run but ended up being a great dark comedy with great characters. The film is just over the top enough to distinguish it from the rest of cookie cutter comedies we see so often and the performances across the board are great. If you haven’t had the chance to see this one and you like dark humor, give it a look.

Paramount delivers a decent HD presentation for this one but it is a bit inconsistent in overall quality. The condition of the source print wavers considerably from scene to scene. This affects the overall image quality with some scenes looking clean and detailed and others looking a bit flat with obvious nicks and noise in the print. Overall resolution is affected as well. At times the image looks a bit soft in focus only to look nearly pristine moments later. Colors are all natural and medium details are solid but the back and forth in overall quality can be a bit distracting at times.

The TrueHD soundtrack is good but this genre doesn’t lend to a dynamic soundstage. The track is on the front heavy side with limited use of the surround soundstage and the only thing that ever opens the mix up is the film’s music selections, which are few and far between. Dialogue sounds very natural though with good tonal balance and imaging.

Paramount has included an audio commentary with the film’s director.

This is a comedy catalog classic with great performances and outstanding darker humor. Witherspoon did a phenomenal job with the part and honestly this is one of my favorite performances from the actress. The A/V presentation is a bit hit or miss but a slight upgrade from the DVD.