Billy Madison - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Billy (Adam Sandler) is… let’s just say he’s a unique boy. He’s spoiled, he’s rich, he’s a directionless layabout. He spends his days getting drunk with his two buddies by his family’s pool at their mansion, stays too long in the sun, and hallucinates giant penguins. But, he’s about to inherit the company his dad worked so hard to turn into a success. And if he’s going to step into the role, he’s going to have to prove that he’s responsible. The only reason Billy graduated from high school, his father says, is because he paid the school staff off. So, Billy suggests, he’ll go back to school, repeat every grade two weeks at a time, and pass each grade with flying colors to prove he’s capable of responsibility.

As Billy makes his way from kindergarten all the way up through the 12^th grade, he makes some friends along the way. Not everyone is impressed, namely Ms. Vaughn (Bridgette Wilson), the third-grade teacher who finds his fast track to growth to be a gross gimmick at best. But as she sees him mature and protect the young kids in his class, she realizes that the big goof has an equally big heart, too.

Billy Madison is one of those movies I can’t quite defend from haters, but I love all the same. If someone scoffs and groans, saying what an unbelievably stupid and grating movie it is, sure, I’ll agree. It is. But it’s also very, very funny, and your overall reaction to Billy Madison is going to depend a lot on what your tolerance is for this specific era of Adam Sandler, with his silly faces, voices, and gibberish that he screams at the top of his lungs. You either get it and you laugh, or you don’t get it, and you spend the next hour and twenty-eight minutes in sheer hell.

Many times, while traveling, I’ve been in a hotel room flipping through the channels, and I find Billy Madison on TV, cut to shreds for content and truncated to make room for commercial breaks. But I watch it all the same, because there’s a comfort to a movie so confident in its stupidity. There’s a sweet, innocent nature to it, in which the film gets to exist on a plane specifically for enjoyment. Of course, there are the cursory story beats where dear Billy learns a thing or two, grows up, and the bad guys are punished for ever doubting him, but it gets away with being as surface-level as it is because it wants, more than anything, to make its audience laugh. It earns this by having a number of classic gags and quotable interactions from a talented cast, including SNL alums Chris Farley and Norm MacDonald. If you’re going to have such a threadbare, admittedly shallow plot, you have to make up for it by delivering the goods, and Billy Madison passes that class with an A+.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Billy Madison goes back to school, back to school on 4K, to prove to dad he’s not a fool in a two-disc release from Kino Lorber. The film is available in both 4K UHD and 1080p high-definition on each respective disc, housed in a standard case with removable slipcover, displaying classic poster artwork from its original theatrical release and subsequent home video releases.

As is Kino Lorber’s wont, Billy Madison was scanned in 4K from its original film negative and color graded in Dolby Vision HDR. Someone recently asked me, after I told them how excited I was to get the opportunity to review this movie in 4K, since it’s one of my favorite comedies, “What’s the point of having a movie like Billy Madison get that kind of deluxe treatment? Is it even worth it?” For A/V nerds, collectors, and fans of the movie, it’s an easy answer: Yes. But, for the average consumer, it’s a bit more nuanced: Billy Madison isn’t going to blow anyone away or test the limits of their home theater setup. Owning a movie like this allows you to see it in a format closest to its original theatrical release, and there are subtle differences that allow a kind of beauty to the film you never realized it had before. It helps you appreciate the cinematography and the set design of even the silliest of movies. Take, for example, the scenes that take place in Billy’s kindergarten chapter. The windows of the classroom are painted in various colors. On DVD, you wouldn’t really be able to tell much, but when graded in Dolby Vision from a team of professionals dedicated to pristine restoration, and played through a decent TV, you notice the shades of the light cast across the room. They silhouette the actors’ faces, and bathe these sequences in primary reds, yellows, and blues. It’s these kinds of attentions given to detail that allow you to get swept up in, and appreciate the craft of, even the most inconsequential entertainment.

Viewers have the option between a 2.0 stereo track and a 5.1 surround track, both encoded in DTS-HD MA. I toggled back and forth between the two, and both are going to be a fine option, depending on your preference and your equipment. Billy Madison was originally mixed in stereo, so audio purists will likely favor that option, and it does a fantastic job of juggling dialogue clarity, Randy Edelman’s zany score, and some other goofy sound effects, like blood trickling from a concussed clown’s mouth. The surround mix doesn’t see a lot of rear speaker activity outside of the musical score, but some atmospheric effects do make their way to the back of the soundstage, like screaming children during the dodgeball scene.

The amount of supplemental features included with this release of Billy Madison may seem small in number, but they’re quite mighty, including a pair of informative audio commentaries (one from director Tamra Davis) and over 30 minutes worth of deleted scenes. The sole new feature here is the audio commentary from Bryan Connolly and Wilson Smith; the rest are archival features from previous releases.

4K UHD Disc

• Audio Commentary - Author and Filmmaker Bryan Connolly and The Billy Gilmore Podcast Host Wilson Smith
• Audio Commentary - Director Tamra Davis

Blu-ray Disc

• Audio Commentary - Author and Filmmaker Bryan Connolly and The Billy Gilmore Podcast Host Wilson Smith
• Audio Commentary - Director Tamra Davis
• Deleted Scenes (SD 32:56)
• Outtakes (SD 3:44)
• Trailers

Movies like Billy Madison are junk food, and I mean that as a compliment. We watch some movies to have our ideas challenged, to see the world in a new light, to experience infinite empathy by living in someone else’s shoes. And, well, some movies allow us to turn off our brains for a glorious hour and a half, while we laugh and grin like idiots. Billy Madison is expertly designed to do just that, and it helped kickstart Adam Sandler’s film career. Kino Lorber’s release looks and sounds great, with a few nice supplements that dive into its production history. Billy Madison on 4K UHD from Kino Lorber is Recommended.