Breakfast Club - original vs. High School Reunion DVD - differences?
 

I rented the "High School Reunion Edition" of The Breakfast Club and compared it to my original DVD. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the selling point of the HSR version is that it restores the original music. However, the music soundtracks appear to be identical on BOTH DVDs - Simple Minds, Wang Chung, Karla DeVito, it's all there!

So why is everyone touting this "special feature" when in fact no changes were made?

Don't forget it's anamorphic also. That's kind of a major difference in my book.

Plus DTS

If I recall correctly, Breakfast Club never had it's music replaced when Universal first released it. The DVDs with the replaced music were Sixteen Candles and Weird Science which were originally put out on DVD via Image Entertainment.

The High School Reunion releases fixed them and added Anamorphic transfers and DTS to the mix.

Andrew

...and forced trailers :D

That was my selling point.

Feh. You widescreeners. :p I'm stuck with a 4:3 TV for now, so anamorphic is meaningless to me. Actually, I thought the old version looked better, the colors were much brighter. But maybe that's individual taste.

I'm p*ssed that the so-called "extras", scant as they were on the 1st release, didn't even make the transition. I'm one of those geeks who loves extras almost more than the movies themselves :brickwl: and while Production Notes barely qualify as an extra, they were actually kinda interesting. Why did Universal choose to save 1/1000th of a penny and not port the Notes over? That might have sold me. But if all they give is a trailer and the music is 100% the same (not to mention that they lied about that part) well, screw 'em.

Hopefully by the time I can afford a widescreen TV and a DTS system, there'll be a Gazillionth Anniversary Edition that's actually worth double-dipping on!

Even if you don't have a widescreen TV an anamorphic 16X9 enhanced image will look better in general.

An anamorphic 16x9 enhanced image will NOT look better on a 4x3 display that is incapable of showing it. However, it is wise to go ahead and get the anamorphic version for the day that JerVL/kg WILL have a widescreen tv, and then will no longer want to play his old version of The Breakfast Club.

They often do, actually...mostly by virtue of the fact that non-anamorphic transfers are generally older, and the anamorphic transfers benefit from all the advancements in telecine tech over the past few years.

I never had the original Universal disc, but when I bought the High School Reunion version, I did notice music that I didn't remember hearing on cable when I was younger. I'm particularly thinking of the song during the pot smoking-goofing around scene and the second song during the end credits. Liked that music, btw.

For years, I generally avoided buying non-anamorphic transfers altogether, while having owned a 4x3 TV without any kind of 16x9 mode. I always knew that eventually I'd own a widescreen TV, and I wanted to "future-proof" myself for that day. So when my 4x3 TV suddenly bit the dust a few months ago and I replaced it with a 16x9 model, it was really nice to already have a bunch of anamorphic titles, even though I couldn't take advantage of the extra resolution at the time of the original purchase.

The answer to that is simple: it's Universal - the single most asinine home video department on the planet.