Superbad

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

One of my very favorites of the year. Got this for Christmas, and Shenan, Andy and I watched it that night.

This is the unrated, extended version, and I think thus far the Apatow team has done a pretty good job with these DVDs. The fear is, as sometimes happens, they will make the movie too long, and maybe swap out some of your favorite scenes for raunchier but less funny alternate scenes. Superbad only really adds back in a few extra, smaller moments, and I think that's the right way to go. Knocked Up went a similar route.

So far, The 40 Year Old Virgin is the unrated DVD with the most reinserted material. I think all the new stuff is great, and that it made one of my all-time favorite comedies even funnier. Still, it's a bit of a tightrope walk going on, and there was a considerable risk that the new material would just feel unnecessary and bloat the movie.

The worst offenders have been some of the unrated horror DVDs of the past few years. As much as I love gore, I think a lot of these DVDs have been shams... just inserting extraneous material so they can call it "unrated." I ended up buying the R rated version of Wolf Creek because I read somewhere that all that was added was a poorly formatted, poor quality deleted scene that isn't violent and doesn't add anything to the rest of the movie. They basically took a DVD extra feature, and added it to the film. Lame.

Sometimes the added gore is a bad thing. I bought an unrated copy of the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, and I have to say I actually thought the R rated cut was slightly better. It was already a pretty violent movie, and I think the re-instated gore distracts from some of the more intense/exciting scenes. I'm not usually in agreement with the "less is more, use your imagination" gore argument, but this is a major exception.

Then again, I didn't even notice a difference in the unrated Hostel DVDs. Might just be a matter of a few extra frames. I haven't had a chance to watch my unrated The Descent yet, but I'm hoping the original ending has been put back in. That's what these kinds of DVDs are for.