Clue: The Movie – The 4K Blu-ray You Didn't Expect
One of the best black comedies of the '80s gets a barebones UHD edition
Directed by Jonathan Lynn and released in 1985, Clue: The Movie is a black comedy that transforms a simple board game into a film with a lively and unpredictable pace. Inspired by the famous Cluedo, it takes classic mystery clichés and subverts them with irony and a taste for the absurd.
The action unfolds in an isolated mansion, where six strangers are invited to dinner by a mysterious host. From that moment on, the evening turns into a series of increasingly hilarious murders and suspicions. Jonathan Lynn skillfully directs a brilliant cast: Tim Curry is irresistible as the butler Wadsworth, while Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, and Christopher Lloyd deliver performances perfectly balanced between the grotesque and the caricatural.
An '80s Pop Culture Classic
Despite being an eighties film, it retains an intact charm thanks to the writing by Lynn and John Landis, which blends British humor with the pace of American comedies of the era. The jokes come thick and fast, but behind the comedy, there's a sincere homage to the detective genre.
The stroke of genius remains the presence of three alternative endings, which transform the viewing into a small interactive experiment. Clue: The Movie is a gem of black comedy, a film that doesn't age and continues to entertain.
35mm negative (400 ASA), original image format 1.85:1 (3840 x 2160/23.97p), HEVC encoding on a BD-66 dual-layer disc. The cinematography by the great cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (...And Justice for All, Dog Day Afternoon, Coma among many others) for the first time has the opportunity to shine brighter than in the past, also thanks to Dolby Vision and the new 4K scan of the negative. The emphasis on background details, color fidelity, and lighting is improved, for a spectacle that will not fail to please. There's a feeling that the grain has also been better preserved.
The Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 track (224 kbps) is sufficient, the same as the DVD, which at least favors dialogue, though with some lip-sync uncertainty. A couple of steps above is the original English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (24 bit), with more space for ambient sound elements and music.
Lacking the interesting extras of about 30 minutes from the USA edition + trailer, the film is offered with all three solutions together without the random viewing option that would have made re-experiencing the story even more intriguing. This steelbook edition includes the 4K disc only.