Elvis & Annabelle (2007/Vivendi DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Feature: C-
Several
comedies about a relationship that survived because one person saved the other
person from beyond the grave have been made, but this has never worked beyond a
concept or as a joke. Usually it is
linked to Halloween, maybe a hit record and always to the Horror genre, but
Will Geiger’s Elvis & Annabelle
(2007) tries to do it without most of the semantic trappings of the past. It also is not an outright comedy, but the
script by Geiger (who did a Free Willy
sequel a few years later for home video) can’t pull it off; thus its long trip
to home video.
Blake
Lively (Gossip Girl) is Annabelle, a
local beauty queen supported by her successful parents to have a nice life and
future, but when she apparently dies, young morgue attendant Elvis (Max
Minghella of The Social Network) kisses
her and suddenly, she comes back to life!
From there, they fall for each other, but from there, they start to
become doomed and the film quickly looses its grounding despite a supporting
cast that includes Joe Mantegna, Mary Steenburgen and Keith Carradine.
The title
characters are lite nods to southern stereotypes and the approach of doing a
never-say-horror-film-horror-film does not work out, but at least Geiger tried
something different, but in the end, it feels like a bad 1980s film minus any
of the phoniness or fun. Except for the
actors, there is nothing much worth seeing here.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot in the Super 35mm format by
Director of Photography Conrad W. Hall (Panic
Room, The Punisher (2002)) and
it has some good shots, but this transfer is soft and may not be representative
of Hall’s work at its best here. The
look did not stay with me, but I would like to see this again on film and/or
Blu-ray to compare. The Dolby Digital
5.1 mix is subtle and dialogue-based, with the surrounds (and a serious
soundfield) ever kicking in. A trailer
is the only extra.
- Nicholas Sheffo
