Quantum Leap
was a show that could always serve as a common-ground point of bonding
for my girlfriend at the time and I. It was the facile entertainment
value of the series that was its initial draw, but I suppose if I had
to examine it deeper, there was something oddly comforting about its
correlative juxtaposition with a long distance, phone-driven
relationship.

Running from 1989 to ’93, Quantum Leap
centered around the time-traveling adventures of Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott
Bakula) and his striking chin and handsome coif. Having put his six
doctorates to good use in postulating that time travel within one’s own
lifetime was possible, and having built a contraption to test those
theories, the story goes, Beckett was forced to prematurely step into
said time machine or face losing important funding. He then awoke to
find himself trapped in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and
ping-ponging randomly from one period to another. His only contact with
the “present” comes in the form of a holographic apparition of project
observer Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell), and in turn his oft-befuddled
interactions with a handheld computer named Ziggy (voiced by Deborah
Pratt).

Trapped in the past, Beckett would in each episode leap from one
life to another, putting right simple things that once went wrong and
hoping that each next leap would be his leap home. Apart from the
inherently beautiful structure this fantastical “mission-based”
storyline provided (and the manner the end of each show could thus
tease the following week’s episode), Quantum Leap also did a
great job mixing poignancy with frivolity. As the series wore on, there
were some fascinatingly mind-bending episodes (including Beckett’s jump
back into his own body as a teen), but Bakula always struck just the
right blend of mind-racing, adroit charm and occasional pathos to make
things interesting.

Highlights from this set include “It’s a Wonderful Leap,” in which
Beckett leaps into a cabbie who accidentally hits a woman who claims to
be his guardian angel; “Raped,” in which Beckett leaps into a date-rape
victim; “Hurricane,” which tests Beckett’s powers of persuasion as a
small town sheriff in the path of an incoming storm; and the Bermuda
Triangle-focused “Ghost Ship.” The season finale, meanwhile, finds
Beckett leaping into the body of a younger Al, as a Navy pilot, and on
trial for the murder of the wife of his commanding officer.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Quantum Leap is presented in
1.33 fullscreen, with an English Dolby digital 2.0 audio track and
optional subtitles in English and Spanish. The transfer is only so-so,
with stock footage noticeably different and scratches and grain
persistent throughout. The first season of the show on DVD included a
20-minute retrospective documentary with all-new interviews and
episodic introductions by Bakula. Unfortunately, none of the principals
return here for anything of that nature, and the only true supplemental
extra is the inclusion of the catch-all, half-hour special The Great ’80s TV Flashback, which collects interviews with The Hollywood Reporter’s
Ray Richmond, producer Stephen J. Cannell, reporter Alex Ben Block and
many others. As a bonus, though, there is a fifth season episode,
“Liberation,” in which Beckett leaps into the body of a housewife
during the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment. B+ (Show) C (Disc)

Billing Date Movie as “from two of the six writers of Scary Movie,”
complete with a mock-scrawled caret, is on the surface ridiculous, but
actually a piece of deft marketing, wisely pointing up the flick’s
satirical street cred to the same audience that drove that latter spoof
series to the top of the box-office charts.

Directed by Aaron Seltzer, a co-writer on the film with Jason Friedberg, Date Movie name-checks all manner of comedy hits (Bridget Jones’ Diary, Shallow Hal, Wedding Crashers), both romantic and not, but takes as main tentpoles for its spoof My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Meet the Parents and Hitch.
The story centers around Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan), an obese,
lovelorn waitress in a “Greek-Indian-Japanese-Jewish” family run by her
well-meaning but overbearing father (Eddie Griffin, apparently having
stolen Dan Hedaya’s eyebrows). After getting a truly extreme
makeover, she finds love with Grant Fockyerdoder (Adam Campbell), an
amalgamation of every foppish, generic, B-list leading man in these
types of movies. There’s trouble in the gathering of Julia’s parents
and Grant’s mom and dad (Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard), but the
real romantic obstacle is Grant’s randy bombshell ex, Andy (Sophie
Monk), who makes it her slutty mission to win back her fiancé of only a
week before.

The similarly pitched Not Another Teen Movie is probably the better and more consistent satire of the two, but Date Movie
does have at least a few inspired bits, including a send-up of Paris Hilton’s
slithery Carl’s Jr. carwash commercial, and a terse send-up of Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s
therapy sequence. There’s also a few lines of brilliantly winking
dialogue, such as when we first meet a bikini-clad Andy in the
aforementioned carwash bit and Julia asks, “Why is she in slow motion?”
to which Grant blithely responds, “She likes to make an entrance.”

The film’s blind eye with regards to race in its casting is nice —
Griffin and Hannigan share some amusing scenes together simply by
virtue of their offbeat pairing — and it also has fun with some
obviously fake body doubles for Willard and Hannigan. Far too many
bits, however, seem forced and/or stale — I could have done without the
nonsensical Lord of the Rings parody, another Michael Jackson joke and an abundance of feline gross-out humor meant to be a send-up of Meet the Parents’ Jinx. Many other bits, meanwhile, seem awkwardly shoehorned in only because they share Date Movie’s
distributor, 20th Century Fox. If the filmmakers had gone further back
into the canon of popular rom-coms (as they do with one bit in a nod to
When Harry Met Sally…), the movie would perhaps have felt a
little more grounded. As such, it’s a hit-and-miss collection of
sketches, with an emphasis on the latter.

Where this unrated version of Date Movie really grades out,
though, is in its vast slate of extras. The film is presented in 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen, with a dozen excised, extended or otherwise
alternate scenes. A production featurette, audition tapes,
screensavers, forthrightly billed extra footage of Monk cavorting about
poolside and a set-top game are also included, as are three audio
commentary tracks. The first is from writers Seltzer and Friedberg; the
second features stars Hannigan, Campbell and Monk; and the third, a
real hoot, is from critics Scott Foundas and Bob Strauss. While Strauss
defends the movie on its own to-scale terms, Foundas quotes from his
review in which he confesses jealousy at the random bit player who
takes a nail gun to his head in the movie’s first two minutes. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)