Apparently, Larry the Cable Guy and Bill Envall (Blue Collar Comedy Tour) made a movie. Who knew? No offense to their fans, but I’ve never quite appreciated their “comedy” so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to viewing this release. Before I’m called a biased yank, let me say I grew up in southern Tennessee and my family lives in Georgia. Also another bit of education: a “hillbilly” was originally a term used to describe a group of farmers who settled in lower Michigan. Guess where I spent my high-school years? So I think I’m quite qualified to make a judgement on this movie. So there you go. And guess what, this movie ain’t half bad neither.

That’s not to say this is by any means a GOOD movie, but I did get a few laughs out of it. While it has been compared unfavorably to Stripes, I found it much more akin to The Three Amigos, which I’ll admit is a childhood favorite of mine. I could see myself thinking Delta Farce is a comedy classic if I was still 10 years old. But I think that’s OK.

The basic premise of the film is that Larry, Bill, and Everett (DJ Qualls) are self-proclaimed “weekend warriors”. They dress up in camo, hang-out, and shoot at stuff once a month at the army reserve base. When recruited for active duty, they have a mishap that lands them in Mexico instead of Iraq. Our heroes are too dense to realize the mistake initially, so they defend a village from bandits thinking they are freeing persecuted Iraqis. Once they do realize they are in Mexico, the guys decide to help our the villagers by defending it from the gang of bandits let by Carlos Santana (yes, that is intentional and supposed to be funny) played by Danny Trejo. Sound dumb, yep, it is. But the “actors” have enough charm most of the time to keep the momentum going. Trejo and Qualls (check out the porn-stache) give the movie at least a small piece of credibility, and really ham-up their roles. Larry and Bill stick with the one-liners as is their apparent calling in life. All in all, again, it’s dumb, but it’s kinda fun. I’d still take it over In the Army Now, but that’s not saying much either, is it?

Now why someone decided this release was due for the full next-gen Blu-ray treatment is a mystery to me. I can’t imagine that many Blu-ray early adopters were crossing their fingers that this would be released on their high-def format of choice. But hey, the more, the merrier, I guess. And Lionsgate didn’t pull any punches with this release.

Video

Believe it or not, this film, which was likely shot with a TV movie sized budget (and probably should have just been a TV movie) looks very good. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but it’s on par with the average 1080p/VC-1 Blu-ray disc. The picture and colors are generally quite vibrant. Detail and depth are good, but not jaw-dropping. I’ve definetely seen worse Blu-ray Discs than this.

On the downside, there still were a few issues. Outdoor shots of the sky seemed excessively noisy, and for some reason, I swear there is dirt that pops up frequently on the print. Also, there was a strange fluctuation in contrast in a few shots that were slightly annoying. But I wasn’t expecting demo material, so overall I was happy. My wife even walked in and commented, “hey, that picture looks good”. What do you know?

Audio

Kudos to Lionsgate! Prepare for what you’re about to read: Delta Farcehas a 7.1 PCM uncompressed audio track. Why on this film? Who knows? But we’ll take it! At 6.1mps the track is a very nice effort. Unfortunately, it is completely unnecessary for this movie. There just weren’t enough cool audio moments during the film to experience a nice 5.1 PCM track let alone 7.1. Besides the dialog, and some gunshots, there wasn’t much else to the audio. It was completely underwhelming. That being said, so far, PCM uncompressed has been my audio track of choice. I find it a bit punchier than Dolby TrueHD, and have yet to experience DTS-HD MA due to player limitations, so still I’m very happy that Lionsgate has given us this track and have graded it according to the effort and not necessarily the soundtrack itself.

Features

There’s quite a bit here too, and some of the features are even in high-def, so again, Lionsgate gets an “A” for effort. Nothing was really notable of all of the features. There is a director’s commentary, which didn’t really offer much to the experience, as well as some on-set interviews with the cast. Also included are

• All the Way to L.A.
• The Queen of Mean Gets the Last Word
• The Man Behind Carlos Santana
• Hacienda Confidential
• Deletes Scenes
• Mr. Chili: Too Hot for TV
• The Men of ‘Delta Farce’ Support the Troops

While this might look like a decent set of features, most of these are very short. Only the die-hard fan would find anything very interesting here.

Final Thoughts

So I wasn’t expecting a lot, and I didn’t get a lot. However, Delta Farce wasn’t the total piece of garbage I expected. For fans of the film, this is a very nice Blu-ray presentation. For non-fans like myself, catch it on cable, you might get a few laughs. Audophiles, don’t waste your money just because of the 7.1 PCM. Lionsgate, thanks for a great effort, please keep up the standards for future releases.