Nadine Blu-ray

Ten years before winning the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for L.A. Confidential, Kim Basinger co-starred with fellow future Oscar winner Jeff Bridges in Nadine, a romantic comedy caper that was coolly received by moviegoers and critics late in the summer of 1987.

Buy Nadine Retro VHS Blu-ray
at Amazon.com

At the time, Basinger was testing the waters as a mainstream movie star, having recently filled supporting roles in the likes of the 1983 James Bond movie Never Say Never Again and the 1984 Robert Redford baseball drama The Natural and starred with Mickey Rourke in 1986’s steamy 9½ Weeks. Batman was two years away. Bridges had been around in movies for nearly twenty years (and twice that long if we go back to his uncredited work as an infant) and was already a three-time Oscar nominee at 37 although his presence did not yet inspire the confidence it now does, following a string of midrange movies with erratic box office performances.

The two actors had reason to put faith in Nadine‘s writer-director Robert Benton, the Bonnie and Clyde and What’s Up, Doc? screenwriter who had evolved into a premier auteur with Oscar-winning dramas like Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Places in the Heart (1984). But Nadine would have little impact on any of their careers and none of it positive.

It is 1954 in Austin, Texas and Nadine Hightower (Basinger) is secretly pregnant with the child of her soon-to-be ex-husband Vernon (Bridges). Wracked with guilt over “an art study” she participated in with Playboy aspirations, Nadine pleads with the local man who took those risque photographs (Jerry Stiller) to return them to her. She’ll return the $22 she was paid or give his wife a lifetime of free manicures. But before they can agree on a return, the photographer ends up stabbed to death and Nadine walks off with some secret highway development plans instead of her nudie pics.

Of course, those highway plans serve as a MacGuffin here and put Nadine and Vernon on the run from dangerous, influential people, namely real estate mogul Buford Pope (Rip Torn) and his armed henchmen.

Brisk, light, and sparkless, Nadine is a definite outlier in Benton’s career, particularly as it was thriving back then. The movie seemed to cool Benton off. He would only direct one other movie in the next seven years and that was the critically scorched 1991 bomb Billy Bathgate. Benton would eventually recover with a pair of Paul Newman flicks, the first and better of which (Nobody’s Fool) brought Newman the final Oscar nomination of his long, illustrious career. But Benton himself never commanded the respect and admiration that he deserved as a writer-director.

Nadine carries a PG rating three years after the PG-13 rating was introduced. That’s not unusual for Benton, but is kind of strange given the narrative here and presumed audience for this picture. While I can’t imagine many or any family outings to see Nadine, the lack of profanity, violence, and nudity here sort of betray this plot of peril we’re supposed to buy into.

Nadine opened in twelfth place at the box office and ended up grossing $5.7 million domestically, a disappointing sum given its $12 M reported budget. Basinger had much more success earlier in the year when Blind Date, a comparable caper with Bruce Willis of even lesser quality than this, managed to earn nearly $40 M in the spring.

More than twenty years after first reaching DVD in a disc that has long been discontinued, Nadine returns to print and finally makes the jump to Blu-ray this month in a VHS-style slipcovered release from Alliance Entertainment.

BLU-RAY DISC SPECIFICATIONS:
1.78:1 Widescreen
DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (English)
Subtitles: English for Hearing Impaired
Release Date: September 29, 2026
Single-sided, single-layered disc (BD-25)
Blue Keepcase in Cardboard Slipcover
Suggested Retail Price: $27.99

VIDEO and AUDIO

Nadine may not be rarefied cinema and it isn’t among a single Letterboxd user’s top four, but Alliance still treats the film with the care and respect one expects of them. The film looks great on Blu-ray, showcasing the right amount of fine film grain, vibrant colors, and lovely detail in its 1.78:1 Blu-ray presentation. Unless you expected a 5.1-channel remix, the fine but simple 2.0 DTS-HD mix and English SDH subtitles will not disappoint you.

BONUS FEATURES, MENUS and PACKAGING

To no one’s surprise, Nadine hits high definition with nary a bonus feature in sight, unless you want to count the modern “Sony Pictures Television” logo that unsurprisingly is attached to the end of its end credits for purposes beyond this. This is not a movie that is ever getting reevaluated or upgraded, although of course it would have been nice to get the original trailer in a better state than what has been uploaded to YouTube.

Kudos to Alliance for upping the collectability factor of their catalogue Blu-rays with the retro slipcover that looks a cassette peeking out of an old rental case, complete with video store “stickers.” It’s especially nice that the keepcase artwork below offers an entirely different (and more modern) art scheme that has been adapted from the 2005 DVD release.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Robert Benton, Jeff Bridges, and Kim Basinger have all been part of some big time movies worth celebrating and revisiting, but their one shared collaboration, Nadine, isn’t one of them. If you’re as fond as the makers and era as I am, this weirdly dull late-’80s caper may hold your interest for its brief runtime. Just don’t expect it to entertain or stay with you in any way.

Alliance’s Blu-ray offers a highly satisfactory feature presentation and a cool slipcover.

Buy Nadine Retro VHS Blu-ray
at Amazon.com