Girls Trip Blu-ray delivers stunning video and audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
The film tells the story of four lifelong friends who travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Music Festival, where sisterhoods are rekindled and wild sides are rediscovered.
For more about Girls Trip and the Girls Trip Blu-ray release, see Girls Trip Blu-ray Review published by Martin Liebman on October 12, 2017 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.0 out of 5.
From a very crude structural perspective, Comedies like Girls Trip are a dime-a-dozen. Plop a few friends into a crowd where lots of colors
shine, loud music blares, alcohol flows, chaos ensues, truths are revealed, relationships are tested, and friends ultimately grow stronger than ever
before, and it's pretty much the top-to-bottom bullet point guideline for a contemporary Comedy.
Girls Trip is practically a journey through that list; its basic structure is so familiar that one could be forgiven for believing the movie came
out two,
three, five, ten years ago. But it has a few things going for it that so many others of its kind cannot achieve, at least not to this level: a carefully
constructed roster of largely likable characters with a believable history together and a quartet of leading ladies whose chemistry is off-the-charts
kinds of wonderful. The film overcomes core point-to-point scene and shenanigan cliché with not just spunk and spirit but a perfectly cast ensemble
that's completely committed to shaping the story, the characters, and entertaining the audience.
Four longtime friends -- Ryan (Regina Hall), Sasha (Queen Latifah), Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Dina (Tiffany Haddish) -- collectively known as
the
"Flossy Posse" haven't entirely drifted apart, but they're no longer the inseparable foursome they once were. They've taken their own paths which
have seen them find varying degrees of personal and financial success. Ryan has become a star. She's already rich and famous and she's on the
fast-track to super fame and fortune,
and she and her man Stewart (Mike Colter) are a couple with limitless potential. When Ryan is invited to address the Essence Music Festival in
New Orleans, she gathers her friends together to make the trip by her side and turn a business trip into an unforgettable vacation. But as they
settle in and let loose, they find that their individual and collective actions have consequences, and with more personal truths revealed along the
way, none of them will leave New Orleans the same.
Girls Trip tightropes a very fine line between agreeable and obnoxious. The movie veers towards the latter at almost every turn but
wrangles
its way solidly back to the former, even as it celebrates comic excess in practically every scene. Its secret isn't balance. The film is full-frontal
insanity,
indulging in a near endless string of gratuitous language, sex jokes, alcohol abuse, and general hard partying. None of that is new, none of that is
particularly interesting. What makes it work is the cast's commitment to it, the total absorption into character and the antics that propel the
experience throughout, from the mundane details of their lives on through to the chaos they experience and the eventual realities they face and
the
tough decisions they're forced to make. The film rounds the characters nicely, never leaving them as simply props to propel humor. For all of them,
there's always a greater underlying component at play, some that are known off the bat, some that are revealed and dealt with as the film
progresses. Girls Trip parties hard, but it works its characters hard, too, contextualizing their antics and their relationships and rounding
them
into real people, never content to simply make them comedy-propelling props.
But no matter how crude or shrewd the script may be in places -- it's always one or the other, often both, and in some state of harmony between
the two -- it's the
cast that shines and makes the movie stand well above many of the like-minded and mostly mindless films out there. Yes they're foul-mouthed,
they party extra-hard, they flop and flail when Absinthe makes its way through their system, but when it comes to who they are, the relationships
they've built, the struggles they've endured, the place in life they find themselves today, they're all over the more intimate details that given them
shape and give the movie a purpose beyond just another recycled drunk getaway movie. Chemistry is off-the-charts high. It is their ally,
the movie's major saving grace, the quality that separates it from others. That they are longtime friends is established in the script, but that sense
of camaraderie, that closeness, that deep understanding of themselves, of one another, and of the collective quartet sees the roster, and by
extension the movie, rise well above the low-bar baseline for these sorts of films. As their stories evolve throughout their vacation, and as things
are resolved by the end, the audience never flinches, not at the most frivolous moment, not at the most serious character crossroads. They're all
impressively believable at their core, beyond the shenanigans that might make the audience laugh but cannot make the audience care without
these ladies leading the way.
Girls Trip delivers an abundantly colorful and extraordinarily clean 1080p image, sourced from a digital shoot. Universal's presentation is nearly
spot-on perfect, with only occasional bouts of modest noise really interfering with the picture. Colors are the most obvious highlight; the palette
delivers an endless barrage of deeply saturated, showy, and diverse colors. Whether multicolored clothes, New Orleans locations, or any number of
critical support elements, like fruit that drives a few of the film's key comedic scenes, the palette never struggles to deliver intense bursts of color that
rival any other film on the format. Detailing is solid. The image is crisp and very well defined, with no smudgy edges or unattractive textural qualities.
Facial textures are intimately complex even at medium distance. Clothes are remarkably sharp and precise. Environments are clean and finely detailed.
Black levels hold firm and skin tones are rich and pleasing. Blu-ray new releases don't come a whole lot better than this.
Girls Trip features a boisterous and engaging DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Universal's presentation delivers quality music,
offering the film's robust and diverse soundtrack with engaging details, wide spacing, hearty surround and subwoofer engagement, a total package of
sonic bliss, no matter the style, location in film, or mood that need be set. Street-level city din offers impressive immersion and precision detail across
the board, effortlessly pulling the listener into the often raucous locations. Dialogue features top-tier clarity, positioning, and prioritization.
Girls Trip contains a handful of extras, including a commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes, and a music video. A DVD copy of the film and
a
voucher for a UV/iTunes digital copy is included with purchase.
Deleted Scenes (1080p, 10:12): Baby App, Sasha Gets Lewd Proposition, PTA, Ryan's Words Come
Back, Ryan and Stewart Again, Sasha Keeps it Real, and Flossy Posse in Turmoil. With optional Director Malcolm D. Lee
commentary.
Outtakes (1080p, 25:17).
Planning the Trip (1080p, 10:12): Making a vacation comedy with women in the lead roles, the ensemble cast, performances, Malcolm
D. Lee's
direction, crafting various scenes, shooting in New Orleans, and more.
Outrageous Moments (1080p, 5:35): A closer look at a few of the film's key scenes.
The Essence of NOLA (1080p, 5:45): Another round of discussions about shooting in New Orleans.
Music Video/Movie Music Scene (1080p, 2:58): Extended Performance of "Because of You" by Ne-Yo.
Audio Commentary: Director Malcolm D. Lee offers a substantial and informative commentary track that covers project specifics, story
details, cast and characters, shooting locations, and plenty more.
Girls Trip would have been a disaster of repetitiveness, of follow-the-leader crude humor Comedy were it not for its cast. The script has some
depth, but it's the cast, that coveted chemistry and the ability to individually and collectively sell the stories, that makes the movie rise above the
muck it otherwise wades through. The movie is unquestionably crude at face value, but it's pretty solid below the surface, where the heart beats and
the soul resides. Universal's Blu-ray is sure to satisfy fans, boasting top-tier video and audio along with a healthy allotment of bonus content.
Recommended.
Use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons to agree or disagree that the title is similar to Girls Trip. You can also suggest completely new similar titles to Girls Trip in the search box below.
For the week that ended on October 21st, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's Spider-Man: Homecoming debuted at the top of the Blu-ray-only and overall package-media charts. Homecoming proved a reliable critical and commercial success for both Sony and its partner ...
Blu-ray.com and Universal Home Entertainment are offering five members the opportunity to win
a Blu-ray copy of director Malcolm D Lee 's Girls Trip (2017). The film stars Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Deborah Ayorinde, and ...
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has officially announced that it will release on Blu-ray director Malcolm D Lee's comedy Girls Trip (2017), starring Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Regina Hall, Deborah Ayorinde, and Larenz Tate. The release will be available ...