Category: External Movie DVDs (Page 26 of 74)

What Else Ya Got? “17 Again”

It’s been awhile since we’ve done one of these here on Premium Hollywood (recently, they’ve been combined into my sometimes-weekly Blu-ray column), but with the DVD version of “17 Again” disappointing fans with, as Edwin Starr would say, absolutely nothing, it seemed like a good idea to break down just what exactly HD fanatics will be getting for the seven dollar upcharge.

“Zac Goes Back”

Your standard EPK-style production featurette, this 12-minute collection of interviews features the cast and crew talking about what it was like to work with one another on set. Along with explaining how Zac Efron became attached to the project to begin with, the interviews also expose Efron’s attempts at mimicking Matthew Perry’s various acting habits in order to properly portray him as a youngster.

Going Back to 17

Cut from the same set of interviews, this brief collection of footage asks the cast and crew about their own high school memories (complete with childhood photos), as well as whether or not they would accept the chance to experience it all over again. You can probably guess what the unanimous answer is.

Way Cool Tell-All Trivia Track

Certainly not as way cool as its title suggests, this pop-up track features trivia from the making of the film and general facts about the 80s. It’s probably the most interesting extra on the disc, but it’s only something that diehard fans will want to sit through the whole thing. Thankfully, the pop-ups aren’t at all distracting, so you can actually enjoy the movie while learning a few things along the way.

Breakin’ Character Outtakes

No surprise here, as Thomas Lennon steals the show with a series of funny adlibs and cast crack-ups – especially Zac Efron, who can’t seem to keep a straight face when working opposite the improv veteran.

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The Mutant Chronicles

Movies like “The Mutant Chronicles” are difficult to critique, because even though they may not be very good, you still have to respect their ability to create something from nothing. Shot on a shoestring budget with some of the best B-movie actors in the business, the film takes place in 2707 as corporations wage battle over the planet’s dwindling resources. When a mutant army is accidentally released during the heat of battle, however, a monk named Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman) enlists the help of seven soldiers (including Thomas Jane and Devon Aoki) to travel into the core of the Earth and destroy the machine responsible for creating the mutants. It’s essentially “Lord of the Rings” for the steampunk set, right down to the fellowship of nine and the orc-like mutants they battle along the way. Unfortunately, though the story sets up some cool action sequences, the experience is marred by D-grade special effects. You can almost always tell when the actors are working in front of a green screen, and the CG blood looks like it was added using Paint Shop Pro. Fans of campy sci-movies will no doubt appreciate the low production values and so-cheesy-it’s-funny dialogue (“I don’t get paid to believe. I get paid to fuck shit up.”), but for everyone else, “The Mutant Chronicles” is probably best ignored.

Click to buy “The Mutant Chronicles”

Is the “Funny People” box office take half full or half empty?

Like so many things in life, the meaning of the weekend gross for the Judd Apatow/Adam Sandler “serious comedy,” “Funny People,” is a matter of perspective. On the more cheerful side, we have the trades, which typically enough are accentuating the positive, noting that the somewhat risky project, at least by modern mainstream film standards, was actually #1 at the box office, even if the amount it took the lead by was less than mega-spectacular.

The Hollywood Reporter (actually the AP as carried by THR) thinks that Judd Apatow is living in the best of all possible box office worlds:

Movie audiences have taken a liking to Adam Sandler’s more serious side…[“Funny People”] grabbed the top spot at the weekend boxoffice with a $23.4 million debut.

Variety takes a more measured, but still somewhat upbeat, tone:

Adam Sandler’s “Funny People” has topped a moderate weekend box office with $23.4 million at 3,008 playdates.

Nikki Finke, however, has a different way of seeing things. Here’s her headline:

‘Funny People’ No Laughing Matter; Opens To Lousy $8.6M Fri And Worse $7.4M Sat For Disappointing $23.4M Weekend

La Finke goes on to point out that Universal has been lowering expectations from Sandler’s usual $30-$40 million openers to a more modest $25 million, and fell a bit short of that.

Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, and Adam Sandler kvetch over turkey It really does come down to your frame of reference. In my weekend preview post, I mentioned the Sally Field/Tom Hanks starring “Punchline,” which I think is a better point of comparison than any particular Apatow or Adam Sandler film, including 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” simply because of the subject matter, the more-serious-than-you-might-expect approach, and the level of star power. That movie got similarly mixed reviews but was one of 1988’s lowest grossing films, despite the presence of two bankable stars. Two small differences: one had laughs, the other doesn’t, and Sally Field was not ever thought of as a great comedian, “The Flying Nun” notwithstanding.

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Labor Pains

After failing to make the jump from kid star to adult actress (not to mention her two-year stint as every gossip magazines’ favorite drunken/slutty/anorexic/lesbian celebrity), “Labor Pains” was supposed to be Lindsay Lohan’s grand return to the big screen. Things didn’t go quite the way they were supposed to, however, and instead of getting a proper theatrical release, the film was dumped onto ABC Family as their movie of the week. Granted, “Labor Pains” is very much movie-of-the-week material, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. Lohan stars as Thea, a twentysomething college drop-up working as a secretary at a small-time publishing company. When her boss (Chris Parnell) threatens to fire her after she accidentally harms his canine companion, Thea pretends to be pregnant in order to keep her job. What follows is exactly the kind of formulaic comedy that you’d expect just from looking at the poster, but despite its shortcomings, it’s still far more entertaining than your average made-for-TV movie. Her messy private life aside, Lohan is always fun to watch, and this time around, she gets invaluable support from comedy vets like Parnell and Cheryl Hines. It might not be for everyone, but “Labor Pains” is sure to find an audience as a great alternative to “America’s Next Top Model” reruns.

Click to buy “Labor Pains”

Tunnel Rats

As this generation’s Ed Wood, Uwe Boll has made some truly terrible films. So how does the German director fare when he’s not making a movie based on a video game? A little better, but not as much as you’d hope. With “Tunnel Rats,” a Vietnam War flick about a group of U.S. soldiers sent to kill Viet Cong resistance fighters hiding in the jungles and tunnels of Cu Chi, Boll has proven that he isn’t quite as clueless behind the camera as he appears. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his screenwriting skills. I’m not exactly sure who this movie is supposed to be meant for, but the Vietnamese are depicted as bloodthirsty savages and the Americans as scared morons. They act like morons, too, as they’re all systematically killed off like a bunch of teenagers in a slasher flick. I mean, if the tunnels were causing the U.S. Army so much trouble, why didn’t they just drop a couple of grenades down them instead of sending soldiers in one at a time to be brutally murdered? Boll is clearly a fan of the genre – he crams as many Vietnam War clichés into the first 20 minutes as humanely possible – but that doesn’t make him any more qualified for the job. “Tunnel Rats” may have sounded great on paper (it’s certainly an original idea for an overdone topic), but with Boll in charge, it never had a chance to succeed.

Click to buy “Tunnel Rats”

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