DVD Round-Up: September 16, 2008

Movie reviews of The High School Flashback Collection, Speed Racer, The Love Guru, 88 minutes

The High School Flashback Collection (Universal, $39.98)
Risky Business (Warner Bros, $19.97)

The calendar may say “2008″ but you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d somehow time-traveled back to 1985 based on this week’s new-to-DVD line-up. Take Universal’s new box set The High School Flashback Collection, which packages special editions of three decade-defining teen flicks—1984’s Sixteen Candles and 1985’s The Breakfast Club and Weird Science—in a nifty tin box that resembles a high-school locker. (All three are also available individually for $20 a pop.) Warner Bros., meanwhile, is putting out an anniversary edition of 1983’s Risky Business, the movie that launched then-19-year-old Tom Cruise on the road to superstardom. What’s striking about all four of these films is that they still feel contemporary, dated fashion choices and synth-heavy soundtracks aside. The Breakfast Club remains the best of the lot and is easily the gold standard when it comes to high-school dramas. John Hughes captured lightning in a bottle with that cast and script and (despite my deep love for Ferris Bueller’s Day Office) it may just be his masterpiece. Sixteen Candles and Weird Science are far less emotionally affecting, but they hold up as sweet and funny comedies. As for Risky Business, I have to confess that I’ve never been a huge fan of this ordinary-boy-hooks-up-with-hot-call-girl flick, but I appreciate the intelligence and low-key satire that writer/director Paul Brickman brings to his directorial debut. That his career never exploded the way his leading man’s did is a damn shame.

Extras: Each of the “Flashback Editions” come with multi-part making-of featurettes, although The Breakfast Club is the only one that features a commentary track (with Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall…apparently Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and Molly Ringwald all had better things to do). Tom Cruise talks over Risky Business with the film’s director and producer and appears in a half-hour retrospective documentary. Also included is a the director’s preferred version of the final scene and footage from Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay’s first screen test.

Speed Racer (Warner Bros., $28.98)

Hello, my name is Ethan Alter and I freakin’ love Speed Racer. Now, I’m not talking about the ’60s animated series, although that’s pretty fun too. I mean the Wachowski Brothers mega-flop that was savaged by critics and ignored by audiences when it hit theaters back in May. I actually didn’t get a chance to see it until its final week of release in a deserted theater in Times Square. Maybe it was just relief at not having to put up with the behavior of the usual 42nd Street crowd, but Speed captured my imagination five minutes in and never let go. It wasn’t just the incredible visuals that transfixed me; I loved the world that the Wachowskis were creating, a candy-colored dreamscape where racing had evolved from boring NASCAR style drag races to elaborate, gravity-defying automotive ballets. As with the eternally underappreciated Matrix sequels, the Wachowskis weren’t given proper credit for developing such a lived-in universe. The cast, which includes John Goodman, Emil Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Susan Sarandon, all do an excellent job playing this material straight and not camping it up for those folks in the audience who expected Speed Racer to be a goofy big-screen version of a goofy cartoon. To the Wachowskis credit, they try and bring some drama to this story and if they do one thing wrong, it’s that they don’t always trust their material enough. It was a mistake, for example, to devote so much screen time to Spirtle, the youngest member of the Racer clan, and his troublemaking pet chimp Chim Chim. These scenes are obviously designed to make the movie more kid-friendly, but honestly most kids that I know be much happier watching more of the fantastic racing sequences. This sounds like heresy to admit, but of all this summer’s blockbusters, Speed Racer was the only one that actually took my breath away. Hellboy II had stronger characters, The Dark Knight had a richer story and Iron Man was funnier. But for pure spectacle, you can consider me a Speed demon.

Extras: A measly pair of short featurettes. Here’s hoping the movie turns into a DVD hit so it can score a much-deserved deluxe special edition a la The Matrix.

The Love Guru (Paramount, $34.98)

I’ve made some bad calls before when it comes to box-office predictions, but I must have really been drinking the spiked Kool-Aid when I said that The Love Guru, Mike Myers’ first live-action feature since 2002’s Austin Powers: Goldmember, would bank $140 million during its theatrical run. In my defense, I hadn’t seen any footage from the movie at the time I made that call; I was going on the love affair audiences (particularly young guys) seemed to have with Myers and, specifically, his Austin Powers routine. I was sure that the same crowd of moviegoers would follow him anywhere, even to a movie where he played a vaguely Indian relationship guru. Then the film came out and laid a big, stinky egg, garnering some of the worst reviews of the year and grossed a pitiful $30 million. I bypassed Guru in theaters after hearing the awful word of mouth, but figured that I had to see it on DVD as penance for my terrible prediction. And boy, is it a terrible movie. I mean, really terrible. 80 unfunny minutes of juvenile penis jokes, bad cover versions of classic rock songs and Myers prancing around like a loon. The film has no story and never even tries to pretend like it should. I felt sorry for everyone involved, but particularly Jessica Alba, who is forced to bat her eyes at Myers like she actually finds the guy attractive. Casting a twentysomething starlet as your love interest is just one of the many signs of an out-of-control ego. Writing, producing and acting in a bomb like this is another.

Extras: Mike Myers attempts to explain why Guru is funny in three uninspired making-of featurettes, while 11 deleted scenes and a gag reel prove that the scenes that were dropped from the film were even lamer than the ones that made it into the final cut.

88 Minutes (Sony, $28.96)

Now that I’ve seen 88 Minutes, I can honestly say that Righteous Kill is Al Pacino’s second-worst film of 2008. Because as boring as Kill is, at least its not as deeply stupid as this preposterous, would-be thriller, which asks us to believe, among other things, that a capital punishment case would depend solely on the testimony of a forensic psychologist and that the septuagenarian Pacino would have the stamina to run all over Seattle without needing some downtime to take a nap. After twenty dull minutes of exposition, the silly plot kicks into gear when Pacino’s character receives a cell phone call informing him he only has 88 minutes to live. The reason? Well, he’s being blamed by defenders of convicted criminal Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) for influencing the court’s decision through his heavily hypothetical testimony. Forster is being executed later that afternoon and in a last-ditch effort to save himself, he’s gotten one of his acolytes to threaten Pacino into recanting his statements. But who is this mystery person? Could it be someone in his office? One of his students? The random stranger he slept with the night before? Who knows? And, to be more accurate, who cares? Screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson (the “genius” behind NBC’s recently cancelled Las Vegas and the new Knight Rider reboot) has concocted a narrative that’s as pointless as it is ridiculous. The movie’s worst sin though, is that it actually goes on for much longer than its title implies. I could have handled 88 minutes of 88 Minutes—107 minutes, on the other hand, could be legally considered torture.
Extras: An alternate ending that’s even sillier than the theatrical version; two overly enthusiastic making-of featurettes and a snooze-inducing commentary track.

Also on DVD
Made of Honor (Sony, $28.96) a.k.a. My Best Friend’s Wedding 2: Wait…The Maid of Honor’s a Dude?! took a solid box-office thrashing when it opened opposite Iron Man last May. But the rom-com bounced back, grossing a respectable $50 million during its run and stand poised to make a whole lot more on DVD as Patrick Dempsey’s legion of admirers run out to repeatedly rent and/or purchase the film. Extras are sparse—just a director’s commentary—so those viewers hoping for more Dempsey will have to get their McDreamy fix with the new season of Grey’s Anatomy. Once upon a time, Matthew Broderick was also a sex symbol, but those days are long gone. Now the former Ferris Bueller primarily plays frustrated, sexless middle-aged mensches like the one in Finding Amanda (Magnolia, $26.98). After discovering that his niece may be entering into a career as a Las Vegas prostitute, Broderick heads off to the desert capital of sin to bring her back into the family fold. Good luck with that Ferris. The death of Ismail Merchant in 2005 put the kibosh on those hoping for a sequel to Howard’s End, but the company he owned with longtime producing and life partner James Ivory is still funding movies like Before the Rains (Lionsgate, $27.98), an India-set period romance about a wealthy English spice importer who falls in love with a married woman from a small village. In considerably lower-brow news, Lionsgate is also releasing Class of 1999 (Lionsgate, $14.98) a loose sequel to the cult ’80s flick Class of 1984 (which—trivia alert—starred a young Michael J. Fox). Released in 1990, 1999 is just your average high-school punks vs. cyborg teachers sci-fi action flick starring folks like Stacy Keach, Pam Grier and Malcolm McDowell all cashing a paycheck.

A handful of indie films make their way to DVD this week, beginning with Tortured (Sony, $24.96), which stars newly installed CSI lead Laurence Fishburne as a mob accountant who helps a dedicated FBI agent (B-movie staple Cole Hauser) take down his boss. Or is the meek numbers cruncher really setting up the Fed for a fall? Don’t be confused by the title—The Rape of Europa (Menemsha, $29.95) is actually a fascinating documentary about the Nazi’s theft of numerous works of art from European museums during World War II. Several art historians have devoted their lives to tracking these missing paintings and sculptures down and the film, which is based on the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, examines several cases where the objects were successfully recovered. The small-town comedy Kabluey (Sony, $24.96) stars Lisa Kudrow as an army wife who invites her n’er-do-well brother in law to live in her house and help pay off the bills while her husband is deployed in the Middle East. With few other jobs available, the slacker takes a low-end gig as an Internet company’s big blue mascot. Saturday Night Live’s Chris Parnell and Christine Taylor a.k.a. Mrs. Ben Stiller co-star.

It’s dalmatian city over in Walt Disney land this week, as the studio releases the new direct-to-DVD animated feature 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure ($29.99), which finds Patch, one of the titular 101 doggies, tasked with the mission of saving his siblings from the clutches of the badder-than-ever Cruella. The Mouse House is also taking this opportunity to re-release both live-action dalmatian features, 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians ($29.99 each).

In TV news, the three-disc set Star Trek: Alternate Realities (Paramount, $39.98) collects episodes from all five Star Trek shows—from the original series to Enterprise—that find the crews encountering parallel worlds or alternate timelines. You know, in my personal alternate reality, Voyager and Enterprise never existed. The Best of What’s Left Of Not Only But Also (BBC, $18.99) collects what little remains of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s hilarious ’60s sketch comedy series. The bulk of the show was lost by the Beeb (along with the early years of their signature sci-fi series Doctor Who) but some gems remain, most notably a dead-on spoof of the marionette show Thunderbirds called Superthunderstingcar. If you’re at all a fan of British comedy, this disc is a must-own, not only for the sketches but also for the half-hour doc about this unheralded comedy duo. Finally, the ABC onslaught continues as two of the network’s 2007 freshman shows Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, $39.99) and Private Practice: Season 1 (ABC, $39.99) hit DVD. From what I understand, Dirty Sexy Money will be significantly different this year, so don’t get too attached to some of the characters (such as Samaire Armstrong’s Paris Hilton-type heiress). Private Practice, on the other hand, will continue Shonda Rhimes’ formula of hot medical professionals having hot sex in between solving crazy heath problems.