Review: THE BEATLES -- A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (MIRAMAX COLLECTOR'S SERIES)

By Steve Marinucci

THE BEATLES -- A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (MIRAMAX COLLECTOR'S SERIES): The last few years have certainly been a hard day's night for DVD fans of the Beatles' first film, which has gone beyond a simple "day in the life" film to its status nowadays as a classic. 

The previously available MPI version was taken out of print a couple of years back in advance of a scheduled theatrical re-release that ended up being delayed. (One can often find the MPI disc auctioned on eBay, often for inflated prices.) 

When the film finally did make it in and out of theaters last year, no DVD release was announced and word was producers were still working on it. Finally, after too long a delay, to paraphrase the Fabs in the film, it's out, but not, it would seem, without complaints about various aspects of the set. Most of the problems can be traced to the fact that Apple, who surprisingly doesn't own the rights to the film, didn't cooperate with this project. Definitely, it's their loss, because this could have been even better had they done so. 

It's absolutely mind-boggling that they would choose to ignore this reissue of one of the Beatles' most celebrated projects. (Notice how Paul McCartney is already touting the upcoming "Let It Be" project that they do own, but has said little about the AHDN DVD.)

But let's go through it step-by-step:

First, the packaging: It looks darn good, much better than the simple MPI version. The pictures inset on the front look quite nice. Opening the inside reveals a cool fold-out display. In short, it's a class act.

The DVD video image: It's a lot warmer looking than the MPI (and even last year's theatrical release) and looks the best it's ever been, especially in any home video version. And the aspect ratio has been corrected from the MPI version, another plus, though one should remember aspect ratios were different in '64 than they are today. But it's not the square version the MPI was.

The movie itself: It's noticeably missing the re-release trailer, but having first seen the movie in 1964, we always felt the trailer wasn't a big deal. In other words, we don't really miss it here.

The sound: The biggest grumbles about this set are in the sound mix, a 5.1 mono with bleedthrough that allows for somewhat of a surround sound effect. We really liked the stereo mix of the MPI and previous home video versions, but if the stereo wasn't available, what was the best alternative? Granted, not this one, but to our ears, this one's not awful, just unfortunate. With various adjustments on your stereo, one can tone down the bleedthrough and make it more palitable, but I doubt we'll even do that when we play it.

The extras: This set takes a different approach to a "behind the scenes" look at the film than the MPI version did. MPI's consisted of a shallow documentary, "The Making of 'A Hard Day's Night,' " in which the sole redeeming quality was the "lost" clip of "You Can't Do That." (The Phil Collins factor was nice, but really, no big deal. It certainly didn't merit his hosting the MPI documentary.) Otherwise, it was worthless. The Miramax set features interviews with everyone from actors to technicians, all discussing their roles in the creation of this classic. You can view two versions of the script. The Miramax release website is contained on the DVD. And there's even more pictures and interviews on a newly created (for this release) additional website. The set contains no alternate commentaries, either by director Dick Lester (more likely) or either of the two surviving Beatles (quite unlikely). This might be the biggest minus of the set, but there's enough background info on it to keep anyone interested in the historic aspects of ADHN pleased. Finally, we've seen some negative comments about the "outtake" of the Ringo tire scene that's actually a spoof with actor David Janson. We took it as a moment of fun, hardly anything to get hung about.

Navigation: Viewing it on a PC, we found the menus are hard to navigate and the click-in spots take some maneuvering. There are no such problems viewing it on a stand-alone player.

Conclusion: Overall, we're pretty happy with this disc. Maybe some of the extras don't hold up to repeat viewing, but it's the movie that counts. So buy this disc and enjoy the Beatles' best movie and one of the projects that will forever loom large in their legend. That's the key word: enjoy.That's what this movie was always all about: enjoyment.