Comic Book reminded me of a DVD bonus item that might be included with a disc's main attraction.
But the funniest cameos, a relative term if can call anything in this film funny, are reserved for Sid Caesar and Jonathan Winters. They play a pair of old friends of the late originator of Commander Courage and reminisce about him. Winters, an old hand at improvising, having practically invented it, gets off a couple of cute lines. But their bit together lasts all of two minutes, and then it's on to more tedium.
By the time the film reaches its climax, with a heartfelt appeal by Swan to the convention audience to return to their roots and not allow their comic-book heroes to be sold out to Hollywood, we don't know if the story has suddenly taken a turn toward heavy-handed earnestness or if it's a part of a put-on. Frankly, I don't think the filmmakers knew what they were doing with the film, either, because, as I've said, it never makes up its mind if it wants to be a satire of the comic-book industry or a statement truly supportive of the comic-book milieu.
Basically, satire is supposed to make us do two things: First, laugh, and then think about what we're laughing at. Laugh and think. Simple formula. But satire must have a legitimate folly to laugh at, and while there is certainly enough to ridicule in the excesses of the comic-book industry, this film so gingerly skirts around most of them that there is little edge to any of it. Without a sharp edge, satire can be very dull, indeed. All of which leads me to believe that "Comic Book: The Movie" is not a satire at all but a straightforward documentary on the comic-book world disguised as something more provocative. Just what it's trying to be that's more provocative, though, I'm sure I don't know.
In all, "Comic Book" reminded me of a DVD bonus item that might be included with a disc's main attraction to help sell the feature. As a thirty-minute short, it could have had possibilities. As it is, well, there's a reason things are released straight to video.
Video:
To emulate a low-budget, home-movie type of documentary production, "Comic Book" is offered in a 1.33:1 ratio standard-screen presentation only, and it appears to have been filmed with the same handheld digital camera we see the documentarian within the film using. The result is intentionally clumsy, herky-jerky, and slightly blurry, bright enough in color but jagged around the edges, with lots of moiré effects to distract the eye. Nothing helps.
Audio:
The sound is reproduced via Dolby Digital 5.1, but most of the time you wouldn't know it. For all practical purposes, the audio is monaural because ninety percent of the soundtrack is dialogue. Occasional rear-channel sounds do creep in, mostly musical ambiance reinforcement, a voice or two, a few odd noises. The audio does its job and little more. It's mainly flat and dry and somewhat muffled, like the home movie production it's supposed to be following. Seems a cheap way out.
Extras:
For reasons less than accountable to me, the Buena Vista folks decided to lavish a two-disc treatment on this film. I can only suppose they were hoping people would notice it better this way and think it was something special. Or they figured they had some big names they could put on the cover. Disc one contains the movie itself; an audio commentary with Mark Hamill and members of the cast; a list of the cameos in the film and some comments about them; an art gallery; thirteen deleted scenes; some cast and crew biographies; a couple of Miramax Sneak Peeks; and sixteen scene selections. English is the only spoken language available, but there are English captions for the hearing impaired.
For the viewer seriously interested in comic books and the comic-book culture, disc two of the set is probably of more value than the feature presentation. Here we find "Behind the Voices," a fifty-minute segment with the stars of the film, all of them top voices in animation. Then, there's "Four Color Frenzy," seventeen minutes on the making of "Comic Book: The Movie"; an extended, twenty-minute interview with Kevin Smith; a seven-minute "Commander Courage" radio show, written by Hamill and read by the cast; nine minutes of Stan Lee on comic books and the movies; a generous forty minutes with Hugh Hefner on comics and women; two text sections, "Behind-the-Voices" bios and "About Comic-Con"; and more interviews with Mark Evanier, Scott Shaw, Billy Mumy, Peter David, and Paul Dini.
Parting Shots:
Defenders of "Comic Book: The Movie" would undoubtedly say that anyone who doesn't like the film just doesn't "get it." It's an accusation to which I must plead guilty. If there was anything in the movie to get, it eluded me. I'm sure Hamill had his heart in the right place when he made "Comic Book" because it displays high hope and earnest intentions. But hope and intention do not necessarily translate into the making of a good film.
I suspect that in order to appreciate the subject matter of "Comic Book," one needs to be a dedicated comic-book fan, which I am not. But then again, I'm not sure the dedicated comic-book fan would think that too much of the film was very funny, either, given that it's meant in some measure to poke fun at them, their hobby, and their movies. The rest of us are left out of the equation. Seems to me the film misses on all counts. It missed me by a mile.
By the time the film reaches its climax, with a heartfelt appeal by Swan to the convention audience to return to their roots and not allow their comic-book heroes to be sold out to Hollywood, we don't know if the story has suddenly taken a turn toward heavy-handed earnestness or if it's a part of a put-on. Frankly, I don't think the filmmakers knew what they were doing with the film, either, because, as I've said, it never makes up its mind if it wants to be a satire of the comic-book industry or a statement truly supportive of the comic-book milieu.
Basically, satire is supposed to make us do two things: First, laugh, and then think about what we're laughing at. Laugh and think. Simple formula. But satire must have a legitimate folly to laugh at, and while there is certainly enough to ridicule in the excesses of the comic-book industry, this film so gingerly skirts around most of them that there is little edge to any of it. Without a sharp edge, satire can be very dull, indeed. All of which leads me to believe that "Comic Book: The Movie" is not a satire at all but a straightforward documentary on the comic-book world disguised as something more provocative. Just what it's trying to be that's more provocative, though, I'm sure I don't know.
In all, "Comic Book" reminded me of a DVD bonus item that might be included with a disc's main attraction to help sell the feature. As a thirty-minute short, it could have had possibilities. As it is, well, there's a reason things are released straight to video.
Video:
To emulate a low-budget, home-movie type of documentary production, "Comic Book" is offered in a 1.33:1 ratio standard-screen presentation only, and it appears to have been filmed with the same handheld digital camera we see the documentarian within the film using. The result is intentionally clumsy, herky-jerky, and slightly blurry, bright enough in color but jagged around the edges, with lots of moiré effects to distract the eye. Nothing helps.
Audio:
The sound is reproduced via Dolby Digital 5.1, but most of the time you wouldn't know it. For all practical purposes, the audio is monaural because ninety percent of the soundtrack is dialogue. Occasional rear-channel sounds do creep in, mostly musical ambiance reinforcement, a voice or two, a few odd noises. The audio does its job and little more. It's mainly flat and dry and somewhat muffled, like the home movie production it's supposed to be following. Seems a cheap way out.
Extras:
For reasons less than accountable to me, the Buena Vista folks decided to lavish a two-disc treatment on this film. I can only suppose they were hoping people would notice it better this way and think it was something special. Or they figured they had some big names they could put on the cover. Disc one contains the movie itself; an audio commentary with Mark Hamill and members of the cast; a list of the cameos in the film and some comments about them; an art gallery; thirteen deleted scenes; some cast and crew biographies; a couple of Miramax Sneak Peeks; and sixteen scene selections. English is the only spoken language available, but there are English captions for the hearing impaired.
For the viewer seriously interested in comic books and the comic-book culture, disc two of the set is probably of more value than the feature presentation. Here we find "Behind the Voices," a fifty-minute segment with the stars of the film, all of them top voices in animation. Then, there's "Four Color Frenzy," seventeen minutes on the making of "Comic Book: The Movie"; an extended, twenty-minute interview with Kevin Smith; a seven-minute "Commander Courage" radio show, written by Hamill and read by the cast; nine minutes of Stan Lee on comic books and the movies; a generous forty minutes with Hugh Hefner on comics and women; two text sections, "Behind-the-Voices" bios and "About Comic-Con"; and more interviews with Mark Evanier, Scott Shaw, Billy Mumy, Peter David, and Paul Dini.
Parting Shots:
Defenders of "Comic Book: The Movie" would undoubtedly say that anyone who doesn't like the film just doesn't "get it." It's an accusation to which I must plead guilty. If there was anything in the movie to get, it eluded me. I'm sure Hamill had his heart in the right place when he made "Comic Book" because it displays high hope and earnest intentions. But hope and intention do not necessarily translate into the making of a good film.
I suspect that in order to appreciate the subject matter of "Comic Book," one needs to be a dedicated comic-book fan, which I am not. But then again, I'm not sure the dedicated comic-book fan would think that too much of the film was very funny, either, given that it's meant in some measure to poke fun at them, their hobby, and their movies. The rest of us are left out of the equation. Seems to me the film misses on all counts. It missed me by a mile.
Average user rating (1-5):
Not yet rated.
Not yet rated.
[release]11675[/release]