LET’S KILL WARD’S WIFE is an odd dark comedy about a group of attractive young L.A. suburbanites getting away with murder – to be more specific: killing Ward’s wife. Ward’s wife has a name – it’s Stacy (she’s played by Dagmara Dominczyk), and she (according to this movie) deserves to die because she is one horribly domineering battle-ax. She won’t let her husband (Donald Faison) play golf with his three best buddies; personal trainer Ronnie (James Carpinello), writer Tom (Scott Foley), or struggling actor David (Patrick Wilson), who keeps getting cast in shows only to see his character promptly killed off. Stacy also won’t let Ward touch her, make a sound, or even breathe too loudly. Everyone hates her. Ward’s trio of pals joke about killing Amy so their friend can have his life back, but David also goes as far as researching ways to dispose of a body. After Amy actually is killed (kinda sorta accidently) by Tom, the four men and two of their wives (Amy Acker and Marika Dominczyk) spend the rest of the film cutting up and hiding the pieces of her corpse, but not before Ward memorializes his wife’s death by peeing in the bathtub that contains her chopped-up remains. No one seems particularly freaked out about the fact that they’re all accessories to murder, but they are careful not to let Ward’s cop neighbor (Greg Gunberg) in on their secret. LET’S KILL WARD’S WIFE has a happy ending: Ward gets to hang out with his pals again, and the guys get to rekindle the relationships with their own wives. If you think all of this sounds horribly misogynistic and mean-spirited, you’d be right (did I mention Amy has a baby!?), but if taken for what it is – an earnest lesson about how the death of an obnoxious, negative person can improve the lives of those who they touched, LET’S KILL WARD’S WIFE is a fun and sometimes even sweet little comedy that flies by at just 82 minutes. The entire cast plays it at just the right absurdist level (Patrick Wilson is especially pitch perfect), and there are some very funny moments involving the mutilation of Amy’s body.
LET’S KILL WARD’S WIFE is written and directed by Scott Foley with some all-in-the-family casting. In real life, Foley is married to Marika Dominczyk (she plays David’s wife in the movie) who is also the real life sister of Dagmara Dominczyk (Ward’s wife) who is the real life wife of Patrick Wilson. James Carpinello’s real life wife is Amy Acker (she plays Tom’s wife), and also onboard is the real life daughter of Carpinello/Acker and the real life son of Foley/Marika … plus the younger sister of Marika and Dagmara.
LET’S KILL WARD’S WIFE received a brief theatrical run in a couple of cities and the Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment hits stores on March 3rd. We Are Movie Geeks has had a peek.
LET’S KILL WARD’S WIFE isn’t exactly a stunner in the image department with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1, mostly because of the cheap-looking “TV comedy movie” lighting, which tends to be flat and often overly bright. The sense of clarity is usually quite strong, though, with visible fine detail almost always visible in the actors’ faces, hair, and clothing. The contrast is stable, saturation is good, and skin tones balanced, so overall a decent MPEG-4 AVC Blu-ray presentation of a visually uninteresting movie.
Likewise, the audio here is solid but strictly functional, with bare-bones sound design that does what it needs to do and not much more, but the disc’s lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is mostly sharp and clear.
The only extras are a trailer and about five worthless minutes of outtakes.
