The Incredible Shrinking Woman

Pieced together footage brings 5 stars down to 2.
I've always been a huge fan of this movie and can't understand why it has been treated so badly. It has a knockout cast with Charles Grodin and Ned Beatty. This "restored" version is pieced together from the tapes television studios received and not from the original film. You can see the size of the grain change throughout the film and the beginning is so bad it's not even VHS quality. Most scenes are VHS quality.

The kicker is that Edith Ann has been completely removed from the film. What you will receive here is a butchered version of the film. That said, it's great to be able to see this movie again since I don't have a VCR. I have never had to give a 5 star movie 2 stars and this is the only case I have ever seen where the DVD is actually worse than the VHS tape.

Not as bad as the critics say
The Incredible Shrinking Woman came out in 1981 and the movie actually more or less reflected the consumerist attitudes of the time, the dawning of the Reagan administration. The movie wasn't too well liked by the critics, they thought that Lily Tomlin didn't give it her full here and that the script was simply so-so, but actually I thought the movie makes perfect sense. Here Lily Tomlin plays a housewife named Pat Kramer who starts to shink thanks to an intolerance of chemicals in her household items. What was really silly of the film was the gorilla, because it wasn't a real gorilla at all but a person in a gorilla suit. Anyway, this movie is basically a satire on Reagan-era American consumerism and materialism, and I think they did a good job at getting that message across, regardless what the movie critics said of it. Lily Tomlin might be a fine comedienne, but it's too bad that her movie output has been rather inconsistent, ranging from critically acclaimed and well liked films...

Superb transfer, but no Edith-Ann...
I too was delighted when I discovered that this great film was finally getting a DVD release. Like one other reviewer has stated, it is widescreen, and the quality of the picture and sound is worlds better than any previous home video release. Unfortunately, this release, like all previous ones, does NOT include any of the scenes with Edith-Ann. I was hoping for the complete movie, with ALL scenes intact.
Nonetheless, this is still an excellent addition to anyone's library and a brilliant film as well.

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