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Transforming notable athletes and musicians into movie stars isn’t a novel idea. For years, Hollywood has sought to do this to names such as The Rock, O.J. Simpson, John Cena, Mark Wahlberg (good ole Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch), and back in the 80’s they tried making Madonna a movie star. With her being one of the hottest pop stars after Michael Jackson and having innovative Lady Gaga style quirks, she seemed like the perfect candidate for the big screen, right? More than a few attempts fell flat at the box office, including her worst performing film “Who’s That Girl?” in 1987. Although Madonna has acted in a few movies, she never created a mark for herself as a movie actress, and most of her leading roles have gathered dust with the passing of time. Thankfully, Shout! Studios have stepped in to provide their alternate take on this movie by releasing it on Blu-Ray alongside some cult flick bonuses that were sorely lacking.
Like most comedies from the 80s, Who’s That Girl takes an absurdist and slapstick approach to an action comedy. The story revolves around a tax lawyer who is getting ready to marry his boss’s daughter Wendy, but must transport a convict named Nikki Finn, played by Madonna, to her bus. Loudon, played by Griffin Dunne, wants to impress his vastly powerful father to be, but does not realize that his soon to be father-in law has given him a ludicrous task that is way Out of his league. Little does he know, Nikki is much more than a simple jailbird: she has her own plans in place, and is borderline psychotic. Hijacking Loudon’s goodwill leads her on a path to achieve her goal: getting her name cleared from a wrongful imprisonment, even if it means using unorthodox methods such as destroying New York City in the process.
Who’s That Girl is a blundering comedic piece of work that bombed at cinemas in 1987. I don’t know if it was the timing, the script or anything of the sort, but for some reason, the slapstick comedy of the 80s always seemed to fail. Madonna plays herself (and wears her stage costume), and somehow, she’s quite charming. Most of the film is absurd to say the least, with mustache twirling villains, bad action sequences, and jokes of Loudon’s fiancee basically promiscuously sleeping with all the taxi drivers in NYC. The film shines with Loudon and Nikki; they are at their best when they are together. Madonna is adorable if she stops being rude and Loudon is sweet once she stops being uptight.
With that in mind, the rest of the movie is somewhat disheveled, having sections that are genuinely funny, or exciting, and others that feel like they were ripped from a bad 70s comedy -even if it was 1986, many of the gags and set pieces felt like late 80s. The movie does not have much of a breather, as the first half’s momentum of Nikki and Loudon going on their trip just fizzes out in the last act which goes full on “Peter Sellers” on us. The scripted jokes are all pretty mediocre and only have a few redeeming qualities that stem from Madonna’s “Marilyn Monroe” blonde bombshell routine.
Like most of Shout! Studio’s releases, they claimed this was yet another 2K scan from a 35mm interpositive, so I expected it to turn out well. And it did. I haven’t watched Who’s That Girl in the DVD days, and before then, I would estimate I haven’t watched it in around 15 years, so I unfortunately do not have anything to compare it to. In any case, I expect this to be a great upgrade from the 480p disc. The skin tones are warm and revealing, while the image is still solid, however colors do not appear to be spectacular. Overall, the colors are bright and vivid, but do seem to have an emphasis on black pleather, boneless white, and a tad overly reddish (which is quite common for films made in the 80s). The disc did not seem to have much artifacting, having only a few seconds of banding when the dynamic duo unlocks the safe deposit box, and what appears to be some excessive grain.
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