Bodies, Rest & Motion (1993)

Director Michael Steinberg's Bodies, Rest & Motion mostly succeeds at being both a screwball comedy and a zeitgeist-defining youth culture flick. Unfortunately for this deluxe laserdisc edition, Steinberg, screenwriter Roger Hedden, and actor-coproducer Eric Stoltz won't let the movie's quirkiness speak for itself. As much as one admires the stunning wide-screen transfer and spectacular stereo here, the trio's second audio-track commentary is so full of guff like ''This is about human beings in desperate need'' that most human beings listening would need (pace Oscar Wilde) a heart of stone not to laugh. Bodies, Rest & Motion is an interesting movie; as a laserdisc, however, it seems to support the observation that too many of today's young auteurs have gone from film school to moviemaking without ever having passed through life. B-