Blu-ray DVD review: Brit hits 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz'
Who are the funniest guys working in film today? Is it Adam Sandler? Jim Carrey? What about Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill and the Judd Apatow posse?
Forget all those guys because the best comedy team is from Britain. Director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have formed the new holy trinity of indie cool, delivering two of the funniest and freshest comedies this decade.
You might know Pegg from his small role in “Mission: Impossible 3” and as a young, irreverent Scotty in the 2009 big-screen back-story version of “Star Trek.”
Wright and Frost might be new to you, but you owe it to yourself to check them out. Thus far, the three have made big waves in the cult/independent film circuit and their films “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” were the darlings of the hipster and slacker set.
There’s just something magic about the pairing of a skinny guy and a fat guy. The thin and lanky Pegg is the straight man and he is perfectly offset by the rotund Frost. Think of them as a Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello for the 21st century. Pegg and Frost’s style is politically incorrect, rude, crude, but downright hilarious, often mixing comedy with a bit of drama and heart as well.
Shaun of the Dead
After collaborating on a British sit-com, writer/director Edgar Wright and writer/actor Simon Pegg decided to make a romantic comedy, wrapped within a zombie film.
The result was “Shaun of the Dead” a romantic comedy perfectly mixing the travails of aimless slackers with a good amount of comedy and gore. Mixing genres is always difficult but Wright, Pegg and co-star Nick Frost pull it off beautifully.
Shaun is a slacker with problems. All he likes to do is pal around with his loser roommate Ed (Frost) and spend time with his girlfriend Liz down at his favorite pub, “The Winchester.” Liz, however, wants more from life and unless Shaun gets serious, she’s heading for the door. For a guy like Shaun, this is an enormous problem; big enough to distract his attention from the strange behavior and deaths happening all around him.
The film certainly appeals to the horror crowd, but “Shaun of the Dead” is really a relationship film between Shaun, Liz, and his best buddy Ed. The zombie carnage is great, but it’s just the backdrop to the story of a simple man whose life is falling apart around him. The fact that he must rescue his girl and mum from a growing horde of flesh-eating ghouls is just a complication to a much bigger problem.
Director Edgar Wright paces the film well and “Shaun” is one of the few films I’ve ever seen to successfully use CGI for horror and gore. The movie is full of pop culture references, mainly to George Romero’s zombie series, but also makes sly in nods to Quentin Tarantino and others. “Shaun” gets off to a bit of a slow start, but once the train gets moving, look out.
“Shaun” is new to the Blu-ray format and if you’re curious, the movie looks great. The 2.35:1 widescreen presentation is fantastic and the audio is equally crisp. The Blu-ray carries over the same bonus features found on the old DVD, but that’s ok. That disc was so jam packed full of bonus features, I can’t imagine what else could be included. The features are comprehensive and cover all aspects of the film’s production. There’s a lot of fun for fans and it’ll take you a while to weed through everything.
Included is the following:
4 commentary tracks – Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright, young actor commentary (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Kate Ashfield and Lucy Davis), old actor commentary (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton) and even a track by “the zombies.”
Universal’s U-Control – This function allows you to watch the film with a pop-up storyboard track, showing how the action was preconceived or a pop-up trivia track giving lots of interesting tidbits about the film.
15 extended scenes
10 minutes of outtakes
Video diaries, casting tapes, FX and make-up tests, pre-production charts
Extended footage featuring British talk show host Trisha and pop band Coldplay
Photo galleries
Storyboards
Trailers
Film
4 out of 5
Bonus Features
5 out of 5
Hot Fuzz
Nick Angel (Simon Pegg) is London’s supercop. The problem is he’s so good he makes the other cops look bad, so they ship him out of town to a little village in the country. The intense Angel is paired up with the bumbling Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) and the two could not be any more different. No one in the small town police force gets or respects Angel’s intense commitment to duty, but things start to change when the big city crimefighter starts to uncover an insidious conspiracy and a number of mysterious deaths taking place in the sleepy town.
After a fresh spin on the zombie film, Wright and Pegg decided to riff on the cop genre and “Hot Fuzz” spoofs Hollywood mainstays such as “Die Hard,” “Lethal Weapon” and “Bad Boys.” I’ll admit “Hot Fuzz” gets off to a slow start but once you start to get into it, it turns into a non-stop wave of action, comedy, and comic violence.
Once again, Pegg and Frost are fantastic. Pegg is even more straight-laced as Angel, while Frost ditches the crudeness he exhibited in “Shaun” for a more innocent and childlike turn as the small-town cop with big city fantasies. They are joined by what is truly an all-star cast of British actors. As goofy and ridiculous as “Hot Fuzz” is, it’s amazing to see participation from British film stars Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Paddy Considine, Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan, Edward Woodwarm and Anne Reid. That’s a pretty impressive cast of heavyweights and it all works incredibly well.
Like I said, be patient with the start of the film. You’ll be exhausted and busting a gut with the outrageous and hilarious action taking place during the finale. “Hot Fuzz” is another triumph for Wright, Pegg and Frost and this one is actually a lot better and a more confident effort than “Shaun of the Dead.” I can’t wait to see what they have in store for 2010’s “The World’s End,” the end of Wright and Pegg’s “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.”
Universal presents “Hot Fuzz – Ultimate Edition” for the first time on high definition. The “Hot Fuzz – Ultimate Edition” DVD flew in under the radar without a lot of fanfare but this new edition is the one to own if you’re looking to upgrade your films to high definition.
Of couse, the 1080p presentation is flawless and while “Hot Fuzz” isn’t a particularly colorful film, it looks very nice. The selling point here, besides the marked improvement in picture quality, is the plethora of bonus features available. Simple put, this disc is out of control. You could spend an entire day poring through the bonus features and it’s almost overkill.
Again, Universal offers the U-Control feature, allowing you to toggle on or off storyboards and the “Fuzz-O-Meter” pop-up trivia track. In addition, there are five commentary tracks featuring Wright & Pegg, the “Sandford Police Service” (Pegg, Frost, Broadbent and others), Wright and guest Quentin Tarantino, the “Sandford Village People (including Dalton and Woodward) and more.
If that wasn’t enough, there’s a half-hour documentary, 20 minutes of deleted scenes, 30 minutes of video blogs, 45 minutes of production featurettes, storyboards, FX tests, photo galleries, 10 minutes of outtakes, a 70-minute press tour documentary, trailers, comedy outtakes, internet promotional blogs and even a 40-minute amateur film made by Edgar Wright as a teen (with two commentary tracks and a 10-minute documentary). Yikes!!!!
There is absolutely nothing else you could ever want to see or learn about the making of this movie. It’s one of the most comprehensive sets of bonus features I’ve ever seen and it’s enough to give this Blu-ray disc a perfect rating. The only thing that could have been improved was to have this gargantuan set of bonus features presented in high definition.
Movie
4.5 out of 5
Blu-ray
5 out of 5
Tony Robinson is a past host of KATU's Movie Guys film review segment and currently reviews movies exclusively for KATU.com. He lives in Portland with his wife, son and action figure collection. He can be reached at tonerobe@hotmail.com.