Meatballs (1979)

Update: Just received mine last week (6/14/07) and it is ONE disc, not two. Picture quality is BEAUTIFUL! The night scenes are actually not one big black blob!

Just an update on the 2007 2-disc Special Edition of Meatballs, since Amazon is not providing any information and all the reviews on this page deal with the less than stellar previous dvd release. The 2007 Special Edition is digitally remastered in Widescreen 1.85:1 Color (Anamorphic). It is in 5.1 Dolby Digital Stereo [CC] and it features subtitles in English, Spanish and French.

DVD Features:

Commentary with Director Ivan Reitman

"Summer Camp: The Making of Meatballs" Featurette

Amazingly, no theatrical trailer is included. Also available in Blu-Ray.

Technical Specs:

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Digitally Re-mastered

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

This is one of my favorite movies from childhood, and I still love it (I'm now 27).

Bill Murray is terrific as head counselor Tripper Harrison in this warm and funny feel-great movie. All of the players in the ensemble cast are good, and the music is also really effective. If you like summer, good times, goofy humor, if you were born in the seventies (or even if you weren't) check out "Meatballs". It's a great way to spend a Friday evening--make something strange for a midnight snack and put on "Meatballs".

As for the DVD transfer, here are a couple of comments:

1. It does include the trailer. 2. It's a "matted" widescreen version, which means you actually see less than you do on the full-screen VHS version, because they simply lay black bars across the top and bottom of the full-screen image (I compared the two versions scene-to-scene). 3. For some reason, some of the music has been changed in the DVD version. I found this unfortunate, because the music is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Whenever the song "Meatballs" plays, for instance, an alternate version is played. Also, the "Makin' It" song at the "big social" scene is cut differently.

Aside from these few complaints, I'll still give the disc five stars, because I love the movie so much.

Buy Meatballs (1979) Now

As a person who spent many of my summers at camp I found this movie to be excellent. It also doesn't hurt that this movie stars Bill Murray...one of my favorites. I've owned this movie on VHS for many years now and have watched it numerous times. I just bought the DVD and noticed that the actual song titled "Meatballs" (originally written and performed by Rick Dees) is different than it is on the VHS version. The DVD version is actually sung (or more like halfway spoken/rapped) by Bill Murray himself. There is also about ten seconds of footage added at the end of the cafeteria scene that isn't on the VHS. Not much, but to a fan of the movie it's kind of cool. I wish the DVD had more features on it (like deleted scenes), but none the less this is still probably the best camp movie you could ask for.

Read Best Reviews of Meatballs (1979) Here

Ivan Reitman's 1979 comedy hit stars Bill Murray, who effortlessly parades around campgrounds and cliches found in many a kids' outdoor comedy, in this warm and satisfying summer-camp classic, packed with all the genre hallmarks one would anticipate.

You may have seen other movies like it, but "Meatballs" is still the seminal camp movie, with its semi-raunchy humor (you'd never see a PG rated kids comedy now with as much adult material as this), fun mix of Elmer Bernstein score and songs (many written by Elmer and Norman Gimbel), and steady stream of laughs making for a good time for one and all.

Surprisingly, "Meatballs" had something of a turbulent post-production process. Reitman's original version of the film focused mostly on the adventures of the various camp counselors, but when the director went to cut the film down, taking out nearly an hour of footage, he found himself with a 70 minute feature that needed "more." The director then decided to develop more material around the relationship between Murray's counselor and young Chris Makepeace, resulting in an enhanced emotional center at the heart of the picture (those scenes also stand out since Makepeace looks noticeably older).

An independent production that's bounced around various video labels over the years, "Meatballs" was last issued by Sony in a Special Edition DVD that included a decent retrospective documentary. That edition was supposed to be released on Blu-Ray but never happened, leaving fans to wait until this excellent new Lionsgate HD package materialized. While the BD lacks the Sony documentary and other extras (it does retain a fascinating commentary track with Reitman and co-writer Dan Goldberg), the 1080p transfer is spectacular: crisp, colorful, and freed of DNR. The DTS MA stereo audio is likewise fine, and the original Paramount logo is retained (Paramount beat Fox and Universal for the rights to distribute the film theatrically in 1979). For Murray fanatics and comedy fans, this is a terrific catalog release that comes highly recommended.

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Murray's interactions with the boy are so good that I used excerpts from the film for a final exam on basic counseling I taught at a graduate school the students had to identify the techniques used by Tripper and suggest alternatives. This may be a far more educational portrayal of counseling than any of the wierd therapist-involved movies Hollywood has produced over the past decade.

Beyond all that, this is a film of good-natured humor that has sympathy for its characters. Among the very best things that Bill Murray ever did.

And where is Tripper today when we need him?

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