I Love You to Death (1990)
Film:
DVD:

Written by John Kostmayer
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Starring Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright, River Phoenix, William Hurt, Keanu Reeves

Features:

• Trailers for Manhattan Murder Mystery, Murder by Death, & So I Married an Axe Murderer
  

Released by Columbia-Tristar
Rating: R
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Rent it; a better version would be worth owning though.

Joey Boca's (Kline) a great guy. He runs a pizza place and acts as super on some properties. Trouble is, he's fixing more than just the female tenants' pipes, as his wife, Rosalie (Ullman), discovers. Divorce is not an option because of the troubling fact they're Catholic. So Rosalie and her mother (Plowright), decide that Joey's just going to have to be killed. Trouble is, they're not very good at killing, even with the help of Devo (Phoenix), the pizza parlor's busboy (who has a huge thing for Rosalie). Still not having success, they enlist the help of drug-numbed Harlan and Marlon (Hurt and Reeves), and things just get more inefficient from there.

First of all, this is a black comedy that will warm your heart. Why? Because the ensemble cast is just perfect. Not only do they all perform admirably--with Ullman providing an incredible scene of suicide contemplation that is just heartbreaking--but they (and the script) are just funny as all holy hell. But still, what really marks this film in my mind is that Hurt and Reeves play opposite each other--and steal the movie from Kline. We're talking Kevin Kline here, so that's not an easy task. But they're so ridiculously stoned out of their minds that they're brilliant. Who knew that this would be the pinnacle of Reeves' acting career?

The film is a keeper of a comedy, but it's a shame the DVD itself didn't do more to convince you to keep it. You get...nothing, really. Which is a shame. A commentary from Kasdan would have been nice, or even a featurette--the film is based on a true story, after all, so the background would have been nice to have. Even a ten minute job with some brief interviews with the cast would have been nice, but alas, we get nothing. We get three trailers for other films that just happen to have "murder" somewhere in their titles but we don't even get the trailer for this film. Personally, I'm just glad they released it in widescreen, so I'm counting my blessings.

If you like this film as much as I do, you'll probably want to buy it--because it really is that choice. However, if you're waffling on the prospect at all, then your best bet is to wait for some Kevin Kline Collector's Edition series and snag it then. We can hope, anyway.