DVD Reviews of Futurama, Persepolis and more…
Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs (Fox, $29.98)
One of my favorite things about the late, great cartoons series Futurama was its wild imagination, not to mention the willingness to completely upend the laws of reality and logic in pursuit of a great gag. This resulted in some spectacularly funny (and absolutely insane) half-hours of television, like the episode where giant brains conquered Earth and dunderheaded delivery boy Fry had to save the day or the episode where borderline psychotic ‘bot Bender went to robot hell. One always got the sense that the suits at Fox were never happy with the show’s wild flights of fancy though, which explains why they let it languish for four seasons without a lot of promotion before dumping it without fanfare or even a series finale. But thanks to the power of Adult Swim and DVD sales, Futurama is back in production with four direct-to-DVD movies, the first of which (Bender’s Big Score) came out earlier this year. The Beast with a Billion Backs is the second installment in this new quartet and it’s by far the strangest story the Futurama writers have ever spun. See if you can follow this: an interdimensional rift has opened up in the skies above Earth leading to a brief bout of panic before people go back to their normal lives. For the crew of Planet Express, “normal life” means attending the long-awaited wedding of Amy and her green alien boyfriend Kif. Meanwhile, Fry finds new love with a female cope who has five other lovers and Bender joins a super-secret society known as the League of Robots. Just when everyone seems to have forgotten about that rift in space, giant tentacles suddenly emerge from the void and latch themselves onto the necks of every person on Earth. But these aren’t evil tentacles—instead they belong to a lonely alien (voiced by David Cross) who, like everyone in the galaxy, is just looking for a little love and affection. Things only get weirder from there and not always in a good way. Whenever the series took a turn towards the bizarre, I always trusted that the writers understood where the plot and characters were going. I didn’t feel that way in Beast with a Billion Backs—the screenplay is oddly disjointed, as if the scribes were making it up as they went along. The final half-hour is particularly uneven as the film rushes to wrap up a narrative that doesn’t make a lot of sense to begin with. Let’s hope the third Futurama film, Bender’s Game, turns out better. A trailer for that holiday release is included here along with a commentary track from the filmmakers, deleted scenes and, best of all, a “lost episode” of the series that’s actually all the cut-scenes from the old Futurama video game edited together. Anyone want to do that with the Metal Gear Solid series?
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Genius Products, $29.99)
From Knocked Up to Juno, 2007 was a banner year for comedies about unwanted pregnancies. Interestingly though, neither film was all that eager to discuss abortion, which makes sense as few subjects are less funny than that emotional minefield. Still, Hollywood’s continued reluctance to engage with this issue is disappointing, especially since abortion rights seem more and more at peril these days thanks to the Supreme Court’s current conservative bent. Instead, we have to look overseas to find movies that attempt to deal with abortion in an honest, dramatic way. Movies like this intense, devastatingly effective Romanian drama, which won the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Set in 1987, when the country was still under the iron rule of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the film is told through the eyes of a college student who is trying to secure an abortion for her roommate. Because the procedure is illegal—thus making a hospital visit impossible—they have to arrange what amounts to a back-alley procedure with a man who is most definitely not a doctor. Taking place over the span of a single day, the movie is paced like a thriller, even though the tasks the main character has to complete (booking a hotel room, going to her boyfriend’s house for dinner) are wholly mundane. An art-house hit when it was released in America earlier this year, 4 Months has yet to be seen by a wide audience in its home country, largely because there are less than a hundred cinemas scattered throughout Romania. In a fascinating fifteen-minute documentary included on the DVD, we watch a small crew take the movie on the road, setting up impromptu screenings in small towns where cinelexes are non-existent. It’s an eye-opening short, particularly for those of us who live in places like New York or L.A., where it often seems like there’s a movie theater located on every single block. Other extras include an interesting half-hour interview with 4 Months‘ director Cristian Mungiu and a six-minute chat with the cinematographer, Oleg Mutu.
Persepolis (Sony, $29.95)
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel is brought to vivid life in this black-and-white animated film that received an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature earlier this year (it wound up losing to the more popular, but less deserving Ratatouille). Released on DVD in both the original French version with English subtitles and a more American-friendly dubbed cut featuring the voices of Sean Penn, Catherine Deneuve and Gena Rowlands, Persepolis provides a fascinating look into life in Iran, a country that looms large in our daily newspapers, but a sizeable chunk of the population still knows next to nothing about. It’s also yet another example of how animation can be used to tell more mature, complex stories than ones involving cute talking animals or surly green ogres. Other extras on this single-disc release include video from the press conference at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival (where the movie premiered), a behind-the-scenes documentary and commentary by Satrapi and her co-director Vincent Paronnaud.
Also on DVD:
A modest hit when it arrived in theaters in February, the Nickelodeon produced family fantasy adventure The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount, $39.99) arrives in a kid-friendly two-disc edition with lots of DVD-based games, colorful field guides and informative featurettes. Harry Potter it ain’t, but Spiderwick should tide youngsters over until The Half Blood Prince bows in November. The indie comedy Charlie Bartlett (Fox, $27.98) is clearly shooting for a slightly age group, namely teenagers who have never seen Rushmore or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Those folks would be wise to head straight to Blockbuster or Netflix and rent both of those movies instead of wasting time with this one, which is smarmy when it should be smart and annoying when it should be addictive. Director Jon Poll and the two young stars Anton Yelchin and Kat Dennings rave about the film on an overly peppy commentary track, the only significant extra included on this single-disc release. Speaking of annoying, I normally find ex-Man Show host Adam Carolla about as appealing as having my teeth cleaned, but his indie star vehicle The Hammer (Genius Products, $19.98) has a certain low-key charm. A close cousin of Rocky Balboa, the film finds Carolla playing a lazy, past-his-prime boxer who is convinced to step back into the ring in a longshot attempt to qualify for the Olympics. As unlikely as this premise sounds, it’s far more plausible than the film’s romantic subplot, which finds this schlub romancing a pretty lawyer (Heather Juergensen). As long as The Hammer stays in the ring, it’s an agreeble triumph-of-the-underdog story–just make sure you fast-forward through the schmoopy love stuff. If you are in the mood for schmoopy love stuff though, your best option is the new rom-com Definitely, Maybe (Universal, $29.98), which stars Ryan Reynolds as a single dad who regales his daughter (Abigail Breslin) with the tale of how he met one of her three possible mothers. The film received surprisingly strong reviews when it was released in theaters in February and should do well on DVD, where romantic comedies thrive. Extras include a commentary track with Reynolds and the film’s director Adam Brooks, a featurette about the production design and a behind-the-scenes documentary sponsored by the good folks at Volkswagen. Because nothing says “romantic comedy” like one of those little love bugs. Finally, the South Korean horror film The Wig (The Weinstein Company, $24.95) sounds like a cross between The Eye and an episode of that Bravo series Shear Genius. When car accident survivor Ji-Heyon buys a beautiful black wig to perk up the spirits of her cancer-stricken sister, little does she suspect that the hairpiece actually houses an evil spirit eager to wreak blood vengeance. What’s next–a possessed ankle bracelet?
