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This one's a cliched, plothole ridden, unsentimental and unamusing little romantic comedy about a disgruntled process server, a Texas millionaire playboy, and the sexy wife he's trying to divorce. The comedy here is so forced upon the viewer with such a relentless myriad of terrible jokes and supposed comical situations that it is almost unbearable. (You will get a sensation of nausea within the first fifteen minutes of this movie, I guarantee it.) I actually wanted to enjoy Serving Sara, as it was the next film after Ladies' Man from director Reginald Hudlin, but to no avail. It seems originality escapes him and his writers here, to such a degree that you can predict the entire film from the opening credits. Now, Hudlin did us right by House Party, Boomerang and perhaps even Ladies' Man, but this one will be an unfortunate F on his otherwise decent report card.

As for the cast, some may not (hopefully) recover. Elizabeth Hurley has overstayed her comedic welcome in my opinion - Ms. Kensington has been dropping off bomb after bomb since the first Austin Powers. Matthew Perry shouldn't quit his TV day job just yet, as he has yet to prove himself as a true cinematic attraction. (It seems to take a naked Amanda Peet for Perry to gain mild success with moviegoing America.) Then there's Bruce Campbell, who typically can do no wrong. However, this movie should have sent up some sort of red flag. He's actually pretty good in this flick, but there is absolutely no reason you should even consider renting it if you are just looking for a Bruce Campbell fix.

Serving Sara managed to wrangle almost $17 million out of some poor saps at the box office, so now is your chance to just say no to the stankola Hollywood tries to pass off as worthy these days. Yes, it's that bad.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Serving Sara's theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is preserved here, and it's anamorphic to boot. The results are quite good. Colors are usually quite vibrant, well saturated and never exhibit any smearing or noise. Detailed textures and small objects are displayed with excellent results throughout. Black level is above average with nice and smooth contrast, which delivers nice shadow delineation. Typical of Paramount's work lately, there is almost no edge enhancement and I didn't notice any compression artifacts. It figures a film this bad would end up with such an excellent transfer.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

There are three audio options available here: Dolby Digital 5.1, and English and French Dolby 2.0 surround tracks. The 5.1 mix was recorded at 448 kbps, and contains fairly active surrounds when it comes to the loud soundtrack, but not much in the way of truly clever uses of anything else. The .1 LFE thumps with typical modern music authority, but nothing in the film truly requires great bass response. Dialogue presents a little bit of a problem with the occasional canned ADR. Despite this drawback, it is firmly placed in the center channel and the front soundstage displays excellent separation. Not bad for a bad movie.

There are also English subtitles and Closed Captions included.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

There are only a fair amount of extras included on this release, but unfortunately what is here is just as painful as the film.

First we have a new screen-specific audio commentary by director Reginald Hudlin. You can tell that he really digs making films and that he truly believed he was going to make a good one here. He's quite knowledgeable about even the smallest details, and certainly keeps the pace lively throughout. Too bad it is all in service of a crappy movie.
Next is the featurette Serving Sara - A Look Inside the Process. This 19-minute short again features Hudlin talking about putting the movie together. There are some brief interview segments with the main cast including Perry and Hurley, but mostly it's Hudlin and probably too many clips from the movie.

On this disc are a variety of cut materials. All of these include optional director's commentary and are presented in non- anamorphic widescreen. In the outtakes section (which strongly resemble deleted scenes) you get three selections: The first two are rather humorous, especially the one with Bruce Campbell. Next are two actual Deleted scenes, plus three Extended/Alternate Scenes. All of these are skippable.

Rounding it out is the film's theatrical trailer in non-anamorphic widescreen and 5.1.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

There are no ROM extras included.

Parting Thoughts