by Peter Sobczynski
No long review this week--I was just too delirious with joy over the death of bad televised film criticism to get around to it.
Sadly, you won’t be getting much criticism of any kind in this column as the DVD pickings this week are mighty slim. Also, if you are looking to me to suggest any John Hughes films to watch in tribute to his sudden passing, this probably isn’t the best place to be because I was never that much of a fan of his work despite being a middle-class white American who spent his teen years in the suburbs of Chicago pining over Molly Ringwald. However, if you must check some out, I would recommend “Sixteen Candles” (at least the stuff involving Ringwald), “Planes Trains and Automobiles” and the underrated “She’s Having a Baby.”
NEW AND NOTABLE
THE CHAOS EXPERIMENT (Genius Products. $19.95): Combining elements of, believe it or not, “Saw” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” this bizarre direct-to-video item stars Val Kilmer as a disgruntled professor who locks six strangers in an abandoned steam room and threatens to crank up the heat and kill them unless the local newspaper published his article about the dangers of global warming. Once again, I would like to stress to all of you that I merely report these films--I don’t make them up.
DAFFY DUCK QUACKBUSTERS (Warner Home Video. $14.98): In the last (and certainly the least) of the ersatz feature films that Warner Brothers released in the 70’s and 80’s consisting of chunks of their classic cartoons linked together with cheaply-done bits of new animation, Daffy Duck winds up inheriting a bunch of money and uses it to go into business as a ghostbus--as a duck who captures malevolent spirits. It is cute in spots but since nearly all of the old cartoons seen here are available on DVD and the new stuff is notable only for including the final vocal performances from the legendary Mel Blanc, the whole thing just comes across as kind of pointless.
DELGO (Fox Home Entertainment. $22.98): Speaking of pointless animation--when this low-rent animated feature--some fantasy nonsense in which a young hero must unite two warring lands in order to fight off a common enemy voiced by the likes of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Burt Reynolds, Kelly Ripa, Val Kilmer, Anne Bancroft (in her last role) and John Vernon (in his last role)--was released in theaters last winter, it became infamous for having the worst opening weekend of any widely released film of all time, a $237 per-screen average. Of course, not going to see it in the theater can be time-consuming so now, thanks to the miracle of DVD, you can not see it in the privacy of your own home.
DOLLHOUSE: SEASON ONE (Fox Home Entertainment. $49.98): In this latest television project from Joss Whedon, the man behind the genius that was “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Eliza Dushku stars as an agent for a mysterious organization that programs people that allows them to be whatever their rich clients want them to be (sexy burglars, sexy assassins, sexy spies. . .you get the general idea) and then erases all memories of those activities once the job is done. Granted, the logic behind the premise is a tad shaky, to say the least, and the first few of the 12 episodes (plus an exceptionally wild 13th that Fox chose not to air) are a bit clunky--most likely the result of some well-publicized studio interference--but it does get better as it goes along and winds up being a more-than-passable bit of action-fantasy that will hopefully continue to grow and improve in its second season. If you are curious as to how the show began before the network started getting all noodgy, the set includes the original pilot episode as part of a set of bonus features that also include some audio commentaries, deleted scenes and a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes. Other TV-related DVDs hitting stores this week include “Agatha Christie’s Marple: Series 4” (Acorn Media. $39.98), “The Love Boat--Season 2, Volume 2” (CBS DVD. $$36.98), “Project Runway: Season 5” (Genius Products. $27.95) and “You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story” (Warner Home Video. $29.98).br]  [br]
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ELVIS PRESELY--THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW PERFORMANCES (Image Entertainment. $14.95): If you are a true fan of Elvis Presley, you no doubt already have the 15 songs that he performed during his three legendary 1956 appearances on the equally famous variety show and unless you want to have all of them on one DVD or the special features (including a home movie of an early 1955 Elvis performance, clips from the Sullivan show hyping Presley’s upcoming appearances and the like), there is no real reason to pick up this particular DVD. However, if you don’t already have them and consider yourself to be a rock music fan, this is a must-own as these are some of the most gripping and essential performances in the history of both Presley and rock-and-roll.
FRAGMENTS (Sony Home Entertainment. $24.96): Apparently bummed out that they weren’t invited to participate in “Crash” a few years ago, Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Forest Whitaker, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Hudson and Jeanne Tripplehorn all got together to make a similar movie about a group of disparate people whose lives are changed forever by a sudden act of violence. Sure, it never actually a theatrical release but according to the review quote on the package, it is “Like “Crash,” but better”--well it couldn’t possibly be worse, could it?
HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29 (Kino Video. $26.95): In one of the more intriguing documentaries to emerge this year, the landmark 1968 college football game between the undefeated teams from Yale (led by undefeated quarterback Brian Dowling, the inspiration for the character of “B.D.” in “Doonesbury”) and Harvard (whose lineup included a lineman by the name of Tommy Lee Jones) is examined in detail through archival footage and contemporary interviews with many of the participants. However, this isn’t merely a film about a long-ago sports event--it also effectively captures the turbulent times of the era in ways that most straightforward documentaries about “The Sixties” never quite manage. In addition, it is also fun to discover how many soon-to-be-famous people had connections to what was going on out on the field.
ICONS OF SCREWBALL COMEDY--VOLUME ONE/VOLUME TWO (Sony Home Entertainment. $24.96 each): Sony digs deep into their Columbia Pictures vaults and comes up with two collections of relatively obscure screwball comedies (a genre they helped pioneer with the success of “It Happened One Night”) from the 1930’s and 1940’s featuring some of the top Hollywood stars of the day cutting up. Volume One includes 1935’s “If You Could Only Cook” (through a strange set of circumstances, auto executive Herbert Marshall finds himself working as a cook as part of a husband/wife team with someone who isn’t his wife), 1940’s “Too Many Husbands” (after being shipwrecked on a remote island for years, Fred McMurray finally returns home to wife Jean Arthur, only to discover that she is now married to Melvyn Douglas), 1942’s “My Sister Eileen” (in which Rosalind Russell plays an aspiring writer who moves from Ohio to New York to pursue her dream but winds up having to bring her younger and prettier sister along as well--look out for a Three Stooges cameo at the end) and 1945’s “She Wouldn’t Say Yes” (a weird thing in which Russell returns as an Army psychologist who is convinced that shell-shock doesn’t exist and who is swept off her feet by a cartoonist). Volume 2 kicks off with the classic 1936 film “Theodora Goes Wild” (in which Irene Dunne plays a proper young woman who writes a scandalously steamy novel under a pen name and Melvyn Douglas plays a guy who figures out that she is the author and that she actually does pine to be released from her straight-laced existence) and continues on with 1940’s “The Doctor Takes a Wife” (featuring Loretta Young and Ray Milland play, respectively, a feminist author and a college professor who pretend to be married in order to advance their careers and wind up falling in love as a result), 1943’s “A Night to Remember” (in which Young rents a creepy Greenwich Village apartment in order to help inspire her novelist husband on his latest project and discover that it comes complete with a corpse) and 1944’s “Together Again” (hunky sculptor Charles Boyer begins working out of the garage of widow Irene Dunne and the expected romantic complications soon kick in).
LABOR PAINS (First Look Films. $28.98): Originally designed to serve as a potential comeback vehicle for troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan, this limp comedy, in which she plays a screw-up who saves her job by claiming to be pregnant and then has to continue with the charade--wound up premiering on cable (basic cable, no less) instead. I’m not sure how this happened but I suspect the fact that it isn’t nearly as funny as “I Know Who Killed Me” may have had something to do with it.
THE MUTANT CHRONICLES (Magnolia Home Entertainment. $26.98): In this exceptionally silly bit of gory sci-fi/horror nonsense set in the year 2707, an ongoing war between the last four major corporations on Earth inadvertently causes the return of a long-buried mutant bearing a plague that threatens to turn the rest of mankind into slobbering monsters if a crack team of soldiers can’t stop them. The DVD has plenty of bonus features--commentaries, deleted scenes, making-of documentaries, webisodes and the like--but none of them appear to explain why reputable actors like Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman and John Malkovich are doing in the kind of low-rent project that the likes of Michael Pare and Antonio Sabato Jr. would consign to the reject pile.
THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH (Phase 4. $29.99): With a novel from acclaimed writer Michael Chabon as its source and a cast including such notables as Nick Nolte, Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard, you would think that this coming-of-age tale, in which a confused young man (Jon Foster) spends his post-grad summer in the thrall of a wild and sexy couple (Sarsgaard and Miller) who change his life forever, would have something to it worth recommending. However, this is pretty much a disaster on every level--the combination of an uninteresting story (much altered from Chabon’s original, I understand), unlikable characters and shoddy direction (from “Dodgeball” auteur Rawson Marshall Thurber) is so awful that the only real mystery is how it managed to earn even the token theatrical release that it received before hitting DVD.
OBSESSED (Sony Home Entertainment. $28.96): If you ever wondered what “Fatal Attraction” might have been like in the hand of Tyler Perry, then you will probably get a kick out of this ridiculous melodrama in which Idris Elba plays a successful businessman whose perfect job and perfect marriage to Beyonce Knowles are thrown into jeopardy when seemingly perfect temp Ali Larter becomes erotically fixated on him (though in a PG-13 manner) and threatens to destroy anyone and anything that gets in the way of her having him all to herself. Of course, there is only way for a conflict like this to be resolved--an extended catfight between Knowles and Larter that was presumably the driving force between the film’s success at the box-office and which is the focus of the DVD’s central bonus feature.
RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN (Buena Vista Home Entertainment. $39.99): In this extremely loose and extremely pointless remake of the hugely entertaining 1975 Disney film “Escape to Witch Mountain” (one of the few good films made during their otherwise weak period between the death of Walt Disney and the studio’s revival in the mid-80’s), Dwayne Johnson plays a cabbie who picks up a couple of strange kids (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) who turn out to be aliens and tries to get them to their lost spaceship while protecting them from both government and alien forces that don’t want them to escape. Although the film includes numerous references to the original scattered about (a guide to them can be found on the Blu-ray edition), it sadly doesn’t include any of the genuine excitement and tension that made the original so memorable. It does, however, include Carla Gugino as an alien expert who apparently believes that the best way to greet an alien is with a plunging neckline--that helps a little, but not quite enough to make it worth watching the whole thing.
THE SOLOIST (Paramount Home Video. $29.95): In a bit of Oscar bait gone slightly bad, Robert Downey Jr. plays a journalist who stumbles upon a homeless street musician (Jamie Foxx) whose promising career was derailed by mental illness and begins to write about him in an effort to help him pull his life together. Downey and Foxx are good, to be sure, but while the rest of the film isn’t exactly awful, it is impossible to shake the feeling that you have seen everything that it has to offer at least a dozen times before.
THE TIGGER MOVIE 10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Buena Vista Home Entertainment. $29.99): Even though I have been an enormous fan of Winnie the Pooh and his neighbors in the Hundred Acre Wood since I was a wee lad, I have nothing but contempt for this poorly made and deeply depressing rip-off in which Tigger, after being ostracized by his pals for his excessive bouncing, goes off in search of other tiggers to play with and learns some crashingly obvious lessons about family. Yes, I understand that this is aimed specifically at young audiences but even they deserve better than this--a set of A.A. Milne’s original Pooh books would be a good place to start.
Also on
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (Fox Home Entertainment. $29.99)
MY COUSIN VINNY (Fox Home Entertainment. $34.98)
SLING BLADE (Miramax Home Entertainment. $34.99)
THE WATERBOY (Touchstone Home Entertainment. $39.99)
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originally posted: 08/07/09 12:40:56
last updated: 08/10/09 06:52:06
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