This week, we ask which was more of a let-down: Doom or Elizabethtown?
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The feature debut of claymation stars Wallace & Gromit. Worth it for the floating bunnies alone. Treat yourself to the Cracking Collector's Set, which includes the three hilarious shorts that put the pair on the map.
Elizabethtown
In one of last year's most disappointing films, Cameron Crowe pilfers his other work to come up with shreds of what made it so entertaining. The ubiquitous use of music, comparitively judicious in his earlier work, is numbingly non-stop here. The sense of authenticity he brought to even the smallest moments in such films as Say Anything... and Almost Famous is virtually absent here. It's like someone tried to make a Cameron Crowe film and fell short.
Extras include extended scenes, but Crowe cut this film down between its Toronto premiere and its domestic release for a reason.
Just Like Heaven
Upon accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy this year, Reese Witherspoon made a joke about the Hollywood Foreign Press liking at least one of the films she'd made in 2005. This is the other one. Not based, unfortunately, on the classic Cure song, this follows the romantic comedy exploits of a spirit (Witherspoon) inhabiting the new tenant (Mark Ruffalo) of her old apartment. Jon Heder and Donal Logue, apparently with nothing better to do, show up as well.
All the usual extras are here, including a gag reel, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and cast featurette.
Doom
If you ever want to see Jon Stewart geek out, watch him interview The Rock about the upcoming release of Doom. That smile on Jon's face was probably the best thing to come out of this debacle, because when the movie arrived, no one was really impressed. We should have known something was up when it was helmed by the director of Cradle 2 the Grave.
Okay, one other good thing comes out of this release. The featurette title "Rock Formation." That's good.
Bambi 2: Thumper's Revenge
Okay, it's not actually called Thumper's Revenge. This is probably the most sacred fodder for the Disney straight-to-DVD sequel machine thus far. Surprisingly, the early reception has not been acerbic. Not unlike The Lion King 1.5, this takes the narrative tack of telling us what happened in the middle of the original. Extras include a making-of featurette and games for kids none of which, sadly, are called Thumper's Revenge.
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