The Bodyguard [Blu-Ray]

When Whitney Houston passed away, I made a joke to some friends― really, the equivalent of a Facebook status update ― about some insipid, spray-tanned E! Talk reporter or dilettante corporate blogger making a news story out of how Whitney Houston's "Bodyguard," Kevin Costner, took the news. Imagine my horror when my twisted joke about modern cultural vulgarity actually became reality. I guess that's in part how I feel about the timing of this Blu-Ray release, set to essentially cash in on the death of a woman that had become little more than a tabloid joke in her final years. It seems everyone wanted to cash in ― check out the Whitney Houston and Jordin Sparks film, Sparkle, set to hit theatres in August ― and/or make her death about them and how seemingly devastated they were about someone that wasn't even on their radar a week prior. And fantastically enough, those very people can run out and buy this standard issue Blu-Ray upgrade of The Bodyguard, which, in addition to a half-hour "making of" that talks about getting the film made and casting Houston (instead of Janet Jackson, Madonna, Dolly Parton or Pat Benatar), focuses on the Dolly Parton, er, Whitney Houston ditty "I Will Always Love You" in a supplemental capacity. Revisiting the film 20 years later is a bit of a joke, since the actual central love story, where a bodyguard (Costner), who is amusingly compared to a Samurai, puts his life on the line for a bitchy pop star and winds up falling in love, is superficial at best. It might have been more substantial before the dramatic post-production edits, which were made to cover up Houston's terrible performance, much like the plotline itself. Some of the plot points, such as the bombing of a boat and the entire Academy Awards assassination sequence, make little sense, but there are several musical numbers to detract from petty quibbles like narrative logic. Ostensibly, this was a '90s film with a '70s script written for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen, but it didn't quite take into account the many cinematic and cultural changes that occurred in-between those decades.