Mitchell Stein- Get ready to do it all again! Muppets Most Wanted is finally available wherever DVDs/Blu-Rays are sold, and you should be nothing but thrilled. When it was released back in March, we had no shortage of positive things to say about the film in both my own review and Ryan's review posted at our sister site, The Muppet Mindset. The film is a brilliant crime caper set which takes the Muppets on a world tour through Eurpoe only to get caught up in the nefarious plans of the World's Most Dangerous Frog and Number One Criminal, Constantine and his assistant, Dominic. It's filled with brilliant gags, incredible songs, tremendous and hilarious acting, and a really fun story. If you haven't seen the film yet, it's worth it to pick it up on Blu-Ray for the bare film on it's own.
Luckily there's even more to be offered on this home release, titled The Unnecessarily Extended Edition including nearly fifteen minutes of extra footage that was cut from the original theatrical film! All of the songs are the original extended versions that you can hear on the soundtrack but were sadly cut from the final version. There's a whole bunch more gags and cameos that also appear, and it's perfect. I'm so glad we can finally see some of these scenes, but there's still a few missing out there which I wish would get onto the Blu-Ray and you can see just a bit of it in the B-Roll footage.
Sadly, the Statler and Waldorf Cut was just a mere two-minutes and not a commentary throughout the whole film as most fans were hoping for. There's not really much in this feature and it's easily overlooked. "Rizzo's Biggest Fan" is a hilarious short video with features Rizzo the Rat writing an angry anonymous letter to the crew of Muppets Most Wanted for the lack of Rizzo. "The Longer, Longest Blooper Reel Ever in Muppet History (We Think)" is hilarious, and features nine minutes of wacky blunders and mistakes. I love seeing the Muppet performers ad-lib hilarious lines after they mess up on a scene. It's hilarious, but it doesn't add much to the Blu-Ray itself. It also has the "I'll Get You Anything You Want" music video starring songwriter Bret McKenzie.. In short, the bonus features are short and delightful but highly lacks what could have been even greater, especially after the amount of features that were on The Muppets Blu-Ray release.Ending off, Muppets Most Wanted is a fantastic new release from Disney, but follows Disney's recent pattern of lacking bonus features. I do hope Disney gets back on track soon and delivers every one of their new releases with a larger amount of more original bonus features. Muppets Most Wanted certainly deserves your time and money, but could surely do better with some more features.
BEARS REVIEW:
Mitchell Stein- Disneynatures' Bears tells the incredible true-story of Skye, a brown Grizzly bear and her two-born cubs survival through weather, animals, and other obstacles that get in their way after heading back into the world after a winter of hibernating. John C. Reily is stationed as the narrator, giving over the story and hilarious content through the journey bringing so much fun comedy relief to the film. The movie manages to speak to it's audience on an emotional level and it's by far more touching than the previous Disneynature movies.
The shots and scenes in this movie are breathtaking, whether the bears are walking through a forest, an Alaskan mountain, or taking a swim, the filmmakers set up each scene from a new angle and make you wonder how they even filmed that. The end credits sequence show just a bit of the filming process but barely scratches the surface. Luckily, a feature called How Did They Film That? is included on the release and gives a great background on the process the filmmakers go through to film these scenes.
The other features are not just entertaining, but educational as well. A Guide to Living With Bears allows us a look at the team interacting with the animals and share a bit of info about them too. The Future for the Bears is a feature which reminds us the importance of protecting the wilderness to ensure the survival of the animals and humans alike. Plus, there's Welcome to Alaska which is also a feature showing the team heading to the Alaskan mountains to follow Skye and her cubs on their journey and finally a music video of Carry On by Olivia Holt.This release is great on many levels. There's five great packed bonus features to go with this absolutely tremendous movie, and it's all fantastic, leaving the music video to be the only one easily overlooked. I highly recommend you make sure to give this release a look. It's very much worth your time as well.
Bears is now available wherever DVDs and Blu-Rays are sold.
