Alien Opponent (2011/Shout! Factory DVD)/National
Lampoon’s The Legend Of Awesomest Maximus (2011/Image Blu-ray)/Tooth Fairy 2 (2011/Fox Blu-ray)
Picture: C/B-/B- Sound: C+/B-/C+ Extras: D Features: D
Now for
the latest bad comedies to avoid and WOW are they bad…
Roddy
Piper co-stars in the inept Colin Theys’ vehicle Alien Opponent (2011) with Jeremy London of Mallrats fame as a
flying saucer wrecks into a barn and everyone freaks out to go on the kill, but
thinks get worse (how could they?) when $100,000 is offered to capture the
killer creature. Add all the gore and
blood in this uncut version and you get a gigantic bore that looks like effects
make-up school grads decided no script was needed top make this mess and it is
that. It is weak, lame and pointless in
ways a new production should not be.
Extras include Deleted Scenes very similar to the content kept, a
feature length audio commentary (???), stills, trailer and outtakes that are
hard to discern from what they settled for.
Beating a
dead horse to death and somehow topping all previously awful spoofs of the
played-out Zack Snyder film 300, National
Lampoon’s The Legend Of Awesomest Maximus (2011) is embarrassing all the
way with every bad joke, cliché and sex/toilet joke and unfunny funny name
(connected to said humor) you could think of if you wanted to be really,
really, really, really stupid. No one
looks like they are having fun (save when they are thinking of getting their
paycheck) and lasts a horrendous 91 minutes.
After a few minutes, you will get what they are doing then cringe if you
can stand the rest of it. Be warned:
this is a painful experience. Thank God
there are no extras!
Last and
also least is one of the most unnecessary sequels of all time… again! If you lived the first one (get help
fast!!!), Tooth Fairy 2 (2011)
replaces previous lead Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson with a very slightly better
actor: Larry The Cable Guy, who helped make Cars 2 such an acclaimed hit, but this sequel is definitely
worse. Guess who shows up with wings and
acts like an idiot, then treats the audience as such? It’s enough to make NASCAR go into
revolt. A big yawner, being in a
speedway car wreck has more entertainment value. Extras six useless featurettes, plus Deleted
Scenes and Alternate Takes that make you wonder how they ever finished. Break out the Tylenol!!!
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Opponent
is weak with plenty of motion blur, detail issues and bad color. The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image
transfer on Maximus and same AVC @
21 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Tooth look cheap and an embarrassment to the Blu-ray format, as
well as anything else visual you can think of.
You get noise, bad editing, phony color and it all looks rushed.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on Opponent and Maximus are also weak and barely have
anything one would consider a serious soundfield, while Tooth remarkably gets DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless sound that makes it sound a little better by default,
but shows how badly this was recorded.
How desperate all around!
- Nicholas Sheffo
