I liked That Thing You Do, the 1996 movie that Tom Hanks wrote, Tom Hanks directed, Tom Hanks wrote some of the songs for, Tom Hanks appeared in and Tom Hanks was probably the guy at the movie theater who made your popcorn and didn't put enough of that phony butter on it. In case you don't remember, it told the story of a short-lived rock band, its one hit record and why they neither stayed together nor recorded another record. Recently, I got to thinking about the film and thought it might be fun to watch again…
…whereupon I learned something that you may already have known. A few years ago, an "extended" version was released of the film restoring quite a bit of footage that didn't make what was, in 1996, the "final cut." The 1996 release was 1 hour and 47 minutes. The new one is 2 hours and 27 minutes. What's been added back in? Mainly scenes and dialogue that deepen what we know about the characters. Some of the lines from the shorter version take on new meaning in light of events that were cut or speeches that were trimmed.
A friend of mine and I watched the extended version last night and we enjoyed it a lot. All the characters are more fleshed-out and the role played by Liv Tyler (Faye) especially benefits from the added-back footage. The story arc where she moves her affections from Jimmy to Guy is more credible because of the new inclusion of earlier exchanges between Faye and Guy. The only major story change from the original release is a new reason why Guy elects to remain in Hollywood when all the other band members don't. It seemed a bit forced to me but it also gave the film a little more sense of closure.
One could argue that some of the restored footage was best left in the cutting room but some of it does make a good film better. If I were teaching filmmaking, I'd assign my students to watch both versions and discuss which scenes they'd put back in and which they'd omit. I'll bet most would opt to add back about half of the resurrected 40 minutes but you'd probably have some interesting discussions about which 20 minutes.
Some folks I've known would tell you shorter is always better…and from a commercial standpoint when That Thing You Do was first exhibited, that's probably so. But the nice thing about a release like this is that length doesn't have to matter, especially when you have your choice of either version.
Both versions are available for streaming on Amazon and there are a couple of different options for Blu-ray and DVD. See here and here and here and here and here and probably other places. And read the fine print to make sure you get the version(s) you want.