Harvey (BLU-RAY)

I’d been informed by my in-laws that Harvey was a film that had to be seen. It wasn’t until recently where I found it really had to be due to it being an assignment in my work pile that I finally sat down to watch the James Stewart starring film in which he plays a drunk with an imaginary rabbit friend. Not really being a huge fan of Stewart other then his staple holiday classic, in which his overacting is pardoned by the general heart and loveliness of the story, direction, music, and the support of the rest of the cast, I was weary. Fortunately Harvey turned out to be a film that was at odds with Stewart’s usual performance making him the best actor for the role and simply unfolding in its old fashioned charming way of Hollywood yesteryear. So how did it look on Blu-Ray?

PICTURE QUALITY:
Harvey comes at you with a surprisingly good looking Blu-Ray transfer. Black levels look pretty good, rich and dark, while white levels for the most part keep a solid state. There is some grain throughout but more so in the whites then anywhere else, but minutely. Definition is sharp and there is a lack of aliasing, haloing, and some of the other annoying discrepancies that plague this particular studio’s releases. I definitely see a change in the way Universal is treating their back catalogue though. This along with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Jaws are some reference quality pieces that have their flaws but overall are extremely pleasing to the eye.

Audio could be better. It’s as usual a throwback sound, though gifted with a DT-HD MA quality under the 2.0 sound sphere. Not a whole lot of immersion, not that there would be in a film that is mostly physical comedy and dialogue. Still, it gets the job done.

BONUS FEATURES:
~Introduction by star James Stewart with a photo montage that runs a little over seven minutes long.
~Trailer
~Two 100 Years of Universal segments we’ve seen before. The Carl Laemmele Era and The Lew Wasserman Era.

DVD Images

Cover: 

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Pictures: 

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