Review of Beautiful Joe

Introduction

Beautiful Joe stars Sharon Stone and Billy Connolly and basically tells the story of a man who has been told by doctors that he is suffering from a brain tumour and decides to go on an "adventure" before he goes under the surgeon`s knife for the dangerous operation.

Despite being described on the box as a "hilarious comedy", Beautiful Joe is more of a drama.

Billy Connolly is quite possibly the funniest man on earth. He is also one of an elite band of people who can say "f*** off" in front of just about anyone and not cause offence. Being a fan of Connolly`s stand up show however gives me a big problem when watching him star in a film - I just can`t take him seriously! Don`t get me wrong, he is a very good actor, it`s just that Billy Connolly to me is someone who talks about dogs s***ting snooker balls, or standing in the North Sea with the cold waves lapping at the underside of your scrotum etc!

Video

Video comes in 16x9 anamorphic widescreen. Quality wise it`s above average rather than exceptional - well above the standard of a VHS picture, but not as sharp as DVD can achieve.

Visually, the movie is entirely character based and has no special effects.

Audio

The disc carries a soundtrack in Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0. Like the picture, the sound is above average rather than exceptional - obviously a 5.1 mix would have been preferable.

Being a dialogue based movie however, there`s no real need for multichannel sound, and the speech is clear throughout with occasional music thrown in for good measure.

Features

A trailer and cast/crew bios is all that is on offer I`m afraid...

Conclusion

Overall, Beautiful Joe is a difficult film to slot into a particular category. It has a serious element - Joe`s illness, a comic element - George the Geek and his bunch of goons chasing Joe and Hush, and a romantic element - Joe and Hush falling for each other as the movie progresses.

This possibly where the film falls down - there`s not enough humour to make the film a comedy, but what there is makes it difficult to treat it seriously.

Connolly and Stone both play their parts well, but it`s difficult to see what Joe would have found attractive about Hush in the first place - she looks and acts like a brainless tart for most of the movie and appears to have no redeeming qualities.

And finally, the end of the film is over sentimental - have a sick-bag to hand as Joe leaves Hush and the children to go for his operation.

Overall then, the video and sound are above average rather than exceptional, the film is watchable but not exceptional and there are no extra features of any interest.