Short Circuit Blu-ray Review

2nd Nov 2012

“Something wonderful has happened….Number 5 is alive!”

As I write this, the clocks in the UK are due to go back an hour, signifying the official end of British Summertime (something the British Summer weather ended for us some time ago). In keeping with this backward winding of clocks, let’s momentarily wind them back a lot further. It’s 1986, and movie-land is enjoying a rather purple patch. Of course, in general, Hollywood has never really struggled to make money. This purple patch was more mood or attitude orientated then, than simply financial. There was a certain joys de vivre in the 1980s that one felt had been missing in much of 1970s cinema. Perhaps George Lucas and Steven Spielberg collectively had something to do with it, but either way, we all felt it. Movies were generally more fun again.

For those of us who currently languish in our thirties and forties, the good old greedy 1980s; while continuing to endure scorn and ridicule for much of its fashions and music; often holds a particularly dear place in our hearts when it comes to the movies. The subjective impression is that of an almost never ending smorgasbord of family friendly fantasy/sci-fi edged entertainment throughout the entire decade, and never a dull moment. Whether it was the tail end of Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy, or Spielberg’s ET and Indiana Jones offerings. There was copious output. We had Back To The Future, The Goonies, InnerSpace and Flight Of The Navigator. There was Legend, Labyrinth, The Never Ending Story and The Dark Crystal. There was Tron, The Last Starfighter and Cocoon. The list seems endless, movie after movie. From Batteries Not Included, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, and Weird Science, to Willow, Ghostbusters, and Gremlins. In fact, even when considering just the aforementioned beards (Spielberg and Lucas), the 1980s saw an almost continuous shepherding of family fantasy movies either helmed or produced by one or other (or both) of them. It was a marvellous time to be growing up and going to the movies (although, maybe most people think that about their childhood years).

Unto this most fertile of landscapes was sown an unassuming little gem of a film, which became something of a mouse that roared. From the acclaimed director of Saturday Night Fever, War Games, Blue Thunder, and ermmm… American Flyers, John Badham, came the enchanting sci-fi comedy adventure Short Circuit. The film took a very simple high concept premise (an advanced military robot gets struck by lightning and becomes sentient, and life loving), and used it to capture people’s hearts the world over. Number 5’s quest to learn, survive and avoid his creator’s wishes to “Disassemble” him, was a big hit with touchy feely 1986 audiences.

Short Circuit has maintained a modest but steady appeal for the interceding 25+ years, and today; this reviewer has the pleasure of checking out a newly restored version/print; presented for the first time on Blu-Ray HD. It has certainly been a very long time, so let’s see if it still has the power to enchant.

Starring the (then) ubiquitous man of a million Police Academy movies; Steve Guttenberg, and everyone’s most popular oddball gal Ally Sheedy, the film opens with a corporate demonstration of the advanced weaponry and tactical capabilities of 5 semi-anthropomorphic robots. To cut a long story short (this is an old movie folks, I’m sure there’s no need to fully synopsis the plot here), robot number 5 get’s struck by lightning (although not in the way the video jacket and movie posters always suggested). This event triggers the robot’s emergent sentience (although quite ‘how’ this happens is never really explained), and he blunders off in to the world; and eventually into the wacky, dysfunctional but sweet natured company of Stephanie (Ally Sheedy). There he begins to learn at a geometric rate, and absorbs all the ‘input’ she can give him. Encyclopaedias, Magazines, and junk TV, all are scanned and absorbed at lightning speed (pardon the pun). The TV in particular helping to shape his uniquely comic personality and communication approach. Meanwhile Number 5’s creators and their corporate financiers are running around like headless chickens trying to find him, determine what’s gone wrong, and avoid any of the possible problems associated with a heavily armed tactical combat robot on the fritz, coming in to contact with the general public. Newton Crosby (Guttenberg), along with assistant Ben Jabituya (Fisher Stevens in a breakout performance), are non military, sympathetic, and eventually become convinced that Number 5 really is alive. They set about helping Stephanie and Number 5, evade the military types intent on capturing and neutralising him.

Fun ensues, and thanks to an El DeBarge song, Number 5 decides to call himself Johnny…..Oh, and Fisher Stevens gets most of the best lines.

OK, so the film is great, and the dialogue snappy, but the first thing you will notice when you hit the play button on the Blu, is how terribly grainy the Tristar animated logo thingy is. It is quite noticeably bad, and does not set the viewer up for much in the way of expectation of quality. It’s bad enough in fact, to set your mind thinking that this is going to be one of those terrible Blu-Ray releases that does not even try to improve on the standard DVD one iota (and sadly, there are plenty of those). However, the good news is that, the film itself is much better, so I don’t know why the ident has to be so bad. Once past that Tristar logo screen, and into the movie, I had to tweak my TV settings around a little to get the best result, but even fresh out of the box, the image quality was perfectly decent. It’s not quite up to the current ‘classic film’ HD benchmarks which for me, are the likes of Jaws, and Blade Runner, but as 1986 movies go, it looks sharp, vibrant, detailed and clean. It’s also great to see it in full 235:1 scope. I don’t recall seeing the movie at the fix in ’86, so would most definitely have only seen this in horrid VHS TV Pan & Scan format back in the day. This full format edition is a pleasure (although I believe the standard DVD was also presented in full 235:1 so the Blu is not offering anything new here).

So, the picture quality in general is great, but it’s not all good news on the definition front.

There is a perennial bugbear with these ‘low to mid level’ Blu-Ray releases, and I’ve mentioned it before. Shots that either contain mattes, rotoscoping or other traditional optical FX processes, really suffer when presented in HD. Particularly if minimal or no further restoration is applied to the print. This is due to the definition of the HD format showing up how grainy and ‘generationally degraded’ all composite FX shots are. This is particularly bad when compared to a straight forward single layer ‘non FX’ shot from the same movie. Sorry to get a bit technical for a moment. This quality discrepancy was always there on the original print, so we can’t be too harsh in our assessment. It’s just that the extra clarity afforded by the HD medium now shows them up so much more readily. There’s just no way around it, or at least not one available to a movie with the kind of restoration budget Short Circuit might have had afforded to it. Luckily, the movie is not super fat on those kinds of multi-pass composite FX shots. After all, the setting is semi-rural present day Earth (well 1986 present day), and features mostly ‘in camera’ work and practical effects to create all the magic. As a result, truly nasty grain shots are minimal. There are a few though, and when they occur, it’s quite the quality clash. I’m sure most folks would notice the dramatic drop in clarity between each type of shot, and the effect is somewhat jarring. Incidentally, compounding the issue; post production zooms also look bad. Anyone who has ever noticed the difference in grain/quality between digital and optical zoom shots on modern digital cameras, will know what I’m blathering on about. It amounts to the same thing in movies i.e. blowing up a portion of a medium shot to fill the entire frame in a movie causes the grainy look too. Naturally, the increased definition of Blu-ray enhances this as well.

You see, it’s not all fun and games, this Blu Ray malarkey!

Speaking of practical effects, the realisation of Johnny 5 on-screen still works really well. The great Syd Mead proved once again, that even on a small side job like this, he is a class act, and his design philosophy is always thoroughly grounded in the realities of engineering and construction. Couple that with Eric Allard’s excellent and ingenious practical realisation of Mead’s design, and of course the voice talent of MiB’s Frank The Pug himself, Tim Blaney, and you have a winning ticket. This movie worked at the time, and still works today, but only if you can suspend your disbelief and accept that the robot can really do all the things he does in the movie. Every trick in the book was used to bring life to Johnny 5, and I take my hat of to the cast and crew for a job very well done. No CG cheating here ladies and gents. No, In 1986, If you want something to happen, you had to make it happen pretty much right there in camera. Minimal ‘fixing’ in post-production was available or even possible. Props then to Mead, Allard, Badham, and the actors (particularly Sheedy), for making us love Johnny 5 so unassumingly.

It’s always a risk, and reminds me of the chance that George Lucas took when he created Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. If you think about that for a moment, you soon realise that if Yoda hadn’t worked, the movie would have suffered terribly, and possibly even fallen over completely. However, thoughtful design, excellent puppeteering, great voice talent, a sincere and invested performance from Mark Hamill, and intelligent shot design and framing; meant that no-one ever had a problem with Luke getting trained as a Jedi by a little green muppet. That’s how it’s done boy, take notes.

And so it is with Short Circuit, Johnny 5 endears, and entertains, and the movie very easily allows the viewer to just go with the flow and accept him. Great stuff.

Extras on the disc

Extras on the Blu are OK, but not scintillating.

Top of the heap is a full commentary from John Badham, and writers Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson, which is great to see included.

Next are a small group of talking head interviews (which, frustratingly seem like clips of longer interviews), with the main cast and crew. We get Guttenberg, and Sheedy, as well as Badham, Mead and Allard. Be warned, these are short. The Mead and Allard interviews are substantially longer than the others, but none are in any way extensive.

Next up is (again), a short featurette on the construction of the Johnny 5 practical prop, some of which seems to repeat parts of the Mead and Allard interviews.

A very short and ultimately pointless ‘behind the scenes ‘micro-featurette’, and trailer rounds out the extras.

It is worth noting that all of the bonus content included on this release is vintage i.e. it was not created for this release. I suspect then, that much if not all of it has probably appeared on previous standard DVD releases of the movie. This is a shame, as it means that anyone who already has the DVD edition may think twice before upgrading.

I would have liked to see some kind of all new feature length retrospective documentary commissioned for this release. Imagine Guttenberg, Sheedy, Stevens, Badham et al all brought back to contribute. Even if all you could get was a new commentary, it would be great to hear, and would add a fascinating dimension to any doc about the film.

I mean, wouldn’t you like to know what they all think of Johnny 5’s undoubted influence on the design of a certain Pixar created, trash compacting droid? I know I would. But sadly, everything on offer here feels a tad long in the tooth.

Despite all this, I would say that considering this release is carrying a more affordable price tag on pre-order than some; the enhanced picture quality of the Blu (FX shots notwithstanding), is still going to be worth the outlay.

The question I always ask myself at these moments is this: Is this Blu-Ray edition going to be the best one currently available? The simple answer in this case seems to be ‘yes’.

So we’ll end on a quote I had always mistakenly attributed to Apu from the Simpsons, but actually comes from Ben: “I don’t know about you, but I am planning to scream……and run”

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