Guest House Blu-ray Review

It says something when the funniest material in Guest House happens when Pauly Shore is off-screen. That’s most of the final act, letting the raucous comedy finally breathe, beginning with a rabid possum attack. Then, marriage troubles and more reasonable chaos.

Unfortunately, Guest House spends a lot of time on Shore. He’s a 50-year-old mega-stoner holed up in a new couple’s backyard, refusing to leave. He smokes and snorts and injects whatever is in his reach. So too do those he invites to party, leading to inevitable tumult and a legal system siding with Shore. It’s a lot. It’s also not particularly funny, just awkward.

Cameos don’t lift Guest House any higher. Steve-O plays his usual part, smashing through windows and such. Lou Ferrigno’s charm is lost as Guest House employs grueling prison rape gags.

That’s another reason the final act works – Guest House tells a consistent story

There’s humor in fighting the system that allows Shore to stick around. Mike Castle’s slow descent into insanity when no one will help rid his property of Shore recalls Chevy Chase’s grand meltdowns in the ‘80s. His on-screen wife Aimee Teegarden’s rational role creates the needed balance, a bit of grounding in a movie that has so little.

On one side, there’s a fun exploration of adulthood. “You’re supposed to be miserable!” laments Castle as he discusses leaving behind his college years. Shore never grew up, Castle has an opportunity to settle down, and there’s a tug-of-war between them. The set-up works, and on occasion, Shore scores a winner, especially during a pool party where the penises seem endless. Everything else suffers though, infinitely forced to create an implausible extreme and bedlam. Much of it seems executed without a script, just a series of skits lacking in cohesion. That’s another reason the final act works – Guest House tells a consistent story, derivative in twists as it is.

Guest House is less about rooting for the couple to win as much as rooting for them to hog the screen a little while longer because that means Shore isn’t around. It’s not a disdain for Shore – who at times in his Hollywood career was/is legitimately hilarious – rather this character who exists outside of any reality. The methods keeping him around can’t justify themselves either.

Ignoring the stock footage filling in exteriors (including a police station shot seemingly pulled from ‘90s TV), the plainly textured digital source is competent. Nothing spectacular, rudimentary, and akin to broadcast television in fidelity. It’s possible this is a 1080p source and nothing more.

Overall clarity stays high. Slight noise doesn’t create any issues and is barely noticeable. Encoding doesn’t bother anything either. Intense contrast teeters on clipping, just avoiding those extremes, keeping Guest House attractively bright. Where needed, black levels play nice, notably in Shore’s dimly lit domain.

Saturated color creates a lively image, always rich in primaries. Grading doesn’t dampen things, only intensifying them. Accurate flesh tones play nicely, and some extremes (particularly some intense red lighting during a drug binge) nicely complement the overall palette.

It’s music driving this DTS-HD track. Range stretches into the lows effectively, dense in its support of rock and pop tunes. Party scenes certainly bring a thump.

Budget-restrained surround use listlessly fills in rear channels during crowded moments. It’s minimal. At one point, Shore’s yelling discretely reaches the left rear, an anomaly in a mostly front-loaded track.

Seven deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes EPK, and trailers. Meh.

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