DVD is must-see for filmmaking aspirees

Rating: 2/10 (4 July 2003)

Let me say up front that before exploring the DVD goodies, I watched the movie straight up with no preformed prejudice. And yea, it was painful. I might say that the plot/script was done by a fifth-grader, but that would be unfair: no, there are plenty of fifth-graders that could come up with plots that blow this away. Ouch! (Disclaimer: I am a critical filmwatching adult, which probably counts one one-thousandth of the teenage money this film soaked in.)
That said, I endured the entire length and proceeded to the DVD treasures. And yea, they pay off handsomely, if you have a bug for the moviemaking process. Extensive attention is given to items such as score, lighting, blue-screen, makeup, sound(foley), puppeteering, and CG interplay. And for me the big payoff was the Sonnenfeld director's commentary, with nonstop narration of every second of the film. You'd think that this would grow old after a while, but at least for me, I found something interesting and educational in everything he discussed, from start of film to finish. (You will have to get past his whiny voice, though it's not as bad as the guy on Alf :))
Stuff like this can yield a true appreciation of the awesome breadth and complexity of successfully producing a Hollywood feature film. Though not really demonstrated on this DVD, there is also a hint of the chaos and insanity in making it all work. If you are not a director or producer but intend to ever be one, the DVD goodies have stuff you really ought to know.
After taking it all in, I have a greater respect for MIB II, in that they pulled off what they did. It's a shame that such a tremendous amount of work and investment was applied to making the film, while the script/plot was just some garbage thrown together to fit the pre-established motif from the first film. I would hope that lessons were learned in the biz from MIB, about throwing massive resources into a stupid story -- but nay, conventional Hollywood wisdom will prevail: "Thou shalt produceth CRAP for sequels to blockbusters ... and thou shalt becometh rich. And this is Good."
P.S. There is a cute animation short on disk 1 called "The Chubb Chubbs" that might be worth investing a couple of minutes in; and if you have a DVD reader on your PC, I'm told that the video game on the DVD is pretty cool.