DVD Reviews

The Hangover
Todd Phillips
Warner Home Video
Available Now - £19.99 (DVD) & £27.99 (Extended Cut Blu-ray)
Review by Brad Harmer

Doug is about to be married to Tracy and his friends — Phil, Stu, and soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan - take him to Las Vegas for a stag-night he’ll never forget...or will he?

Tracy's father lends them his car, a vintage Mercedes convertible. Taking villa at Caesars Palace hotel and casino, the guys sneak onto the roof and toast to the night ahead. The next morning, the three groomsmen wake up in the suite with no memory of the previous night, and discover that Doug is missing. Clues abound: the suite is in severe disorder, a tiger is in the bathroom, a baby is in the closet, Stu is missing a tooth, one of the suite's mattresses is impaled on a statue outside, Phil is wearing a hospital bracelet, Stu has an $800 ATM receipt, and a valet brings them a stolen police cruiser they dropped off the night before.

A word of warning: Don’t go in expecting this to be anything other than a gross-out frat-boy comedy. That’s the best advice I can give you. It tries very hard to straddle the gulf between gross-out frat-boy comedy and clever indie film, but fails at being either.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a few good chuckles in The Hangover. They are, however, very few and far between – with the majority of the laughs coming from the bizarre situations the cast find themselves in, rather than the dialogue or gags in them. Mr Chow, the effeminate Triad is awesome, as is Mike Tyson in a great cameo – but a lot of the toilet humour and “lol thats wierd” style surrealism will leave unimpressed.

The set-pieces tend to either fall flat or knock them out of the park, which sadly averages out to, well...average.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Some blood and comedy violence.
Sex/Nudity: Some female and male nudity, but little to no explicit sexual content.
Swearing: Near constant.
Summary: A mildly-amusing aged-frat-boy comedy. They laughs, when they arrive, are big – but they are way too few and far between. 6/10

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love
John Putch
Universal Pictures
Available Now - £15.99 (DVD)
Review by Brad Harmer

Has it really been ten years since the first American Pie movie? Apparently it has, a fact I made aware of by this film being set...ten years after the first one. The new protagonists of this movie are three brand new hapless virgins: Rob, Nathan and Lube. One night Rob accidentally sets fire to the school library, and finds “The Bible” (the sex guide from the first movie)...Mr. Levenstein's creation. Unfortunately for them, the book is ruined. The book had incomplete advice, and embarks them on a helpless journey to lose their virginity. After trying and failing for most of time, they pledge to restore the book, and to do this, they must find the original author of the book (Levenstein) and all the other people who wrote on the book, and start the restoration.

What the movie consists of is what I can best describe as Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Increasingly Random and Totally Inconsequential Events. A series of comedy scenes ensues, but for all the effect they have on the narrative, it might as well have been a sketch show. There’s no big laughs, and the whole thing just seems very ill advised.

By the way, this movie also features a character called Stifler who acts exactly like Sean William Scott in every way, despite the fact that this doesn’t make even 4cc worth of sense.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: None.
Sex/Nudity: A seemingly never-ending parade of tits and comedy hand-jobs. So it’s not all bad.
Swearing: A lot.
Summary: An “okay...ish” high school comedy that probably would have benefitted from not begin part of the franchise. There are much better uses of your time and money. 3/10

Robsessed
Revolver Entertainment
Available Now - £15.99 (DVD Box Set)
Review by Charlotte Barnes

Voted Sexiest Man on the Planet by Heat magazine, R-Patz, as the press has affectionately named him, became an international heartthrob after starring as Edward Cullen in the chart-topping blockbuster, Twilight. Now, Robsessed offers an exclusive, insider s look into the world of R-Patz, following his path from a young schoolboy, to his early modelling and acting jobs, all the way through to landing his dazzling role in the Twilight saga. The Robsessed boxset also includes the movie adventure The Haunted Airman.

Robsessed is the most shameful, badly put together piece of PR trash I have ever seen in my entire life. This is just over an hour of my life that I will never get back, after having watched it on my way to work I immediately projectile vomited on all of the passengers (all seven carriages of them) on the 07:58 to London Victoria.

At twenty-four years of age I shamefully admit I am one of those women that have read all of the Twilight books, own the DVD and follow most of the cast on Twitter. I also have a massive soft spot for Robert Pattinson... this documentary should have been right up my street. So where did it all go wrong for this film? HOW ABOUT THE FACT THAT THERE ISN’T EVEN ONE FUCKING INTERVIEW WITH THE MAN THE FILM IS ABOUT!

What could have been a really interesting insight into the obsession with Pattinson and how it has not only affected him but also a view into the various types of people that have fallen under his spell and the lengths they will go to satisfy their addiction, just turned out to be a really poor piece of journalism to promote a TV series that no one has ever heard of. No members of his family sat for an interview, the best they could do was a random model that he worked with in his teens, a few editors of various gossip magazines and the writer of his unofficial biography. My favourite moment is when they got an amateur presenter to interview random people from where he used to live in London to see if they ever met him.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating
Violence: Only me hitting my head repeatedly against the table in front of me, whilst watching this piece of shash.
Sex/Nudity: Not even a topless shot of the man himself to relieve the agony of watching this piece of crap.
Swearing: Only the ones coming out of my mouth.
Summary: This film is so bad it made me want to put rock salt on my eyeballs to relieve me from the torture of this utter balls film. 1/10