There are seven Deleted Scenes covering five minutes and presented
in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen. One of them (Walken going up the elevator into
the shop) was in the film too, but the rest could easily be left out.
The B-Roll is five minutes of work in progress footage - 16 brief bits
of it altogether including multiple takes of some scenes.
Finally, the package is rounded off with two Trailers, an International
one and a Domestic one. However, once you've seen these extras you won't really
want to go back to them.
Note that the back cover states the inclusion of a Love Meter in the
extras, but it's not there at all. However, I've seen it on the American DVD
and it's just a random-event game. Press START and a 'love meter' attempts to
check your passion rating - or some such nonsense - but it's just random as
to what rating you get, so quite pointless.
Menu :
The main menu is nicely animated and scored, with a sixties style,
with options to start the film, watch the extras, choose the language options
(variations on English?) and select a scene.
Overall, when I first saw clips of this film on TV I dismissed it out of
hand by being the worst kind of teen-romance style of film I've ever seen.
Then I saw the trailer and it was literally laugh-a-second, making me really
want to see the film. Then I watched it and... while it does have its good
parts, they don't come often enough with more misses than hits.
None of the laughs come until 25 minutes into the film anyway once all the
necessary preamble, charting the first 35 years, has gone by. They could also
have done with losing the stereotypical gay friend of Eve, Troy (Dave
Foley) who has nothing original to do here, as well as the brief occurence
in the present day when Christopher Walken's character has a heart attack
because things get on top of him. After that, he takes a nap and spends most
of the rest of the film offscreen. Same goes for Sissy Spacek - we have two
top-class actors on show here but once Brendan climbs out of the bunker for
the first time, their lives take a back-seat.
Definitely one for the rental market here. If you like it, it may be worth
a purchase. However, I wish Entertainment in Video would get the info
on the back correct, since the ratio is often quoted as "16:9" but that's
meaningless. For those who've looked at many of their discs as I have, it
usually means an anamorphic print in its original ratio (sometimes wider than
16:9), but at other times it's been used for a non-anamorphic film.
Similarly, as described above, there's no Love Meter game to be found,
but it's no great loss anyway if you're choosing between region-encoded DVDs
and the Region 1's only other extra is a fullscreen version of the film.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
