Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer DVD review

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer hit DVD this last week, and with it comes several special features. We'll get to the movie later, but first here's a quick DVD review:

The first of two discs contains two separate feature commentaries, one of which by director Tim Story and the other by the producers and writers of the film. While I don't have the patience to sit through the film two more times, it would be interesting to hear how they justify the embarrassing product placements and geographic inconsistencies in the film.

Also included in the 2-disc set are some deleted scenes (none of which are overly exciting, as you might expect), several production featurettes and one very long documentary about the pre-production and production aspects of the movie (conveniently split into two chapters). This documentary is one of the better ones I've seen, although I still set the Pirates of the Caribbean pre-production documentary as the standard. Fantastic Four 2 didn't have nearly as many problems involved (nor is it as complicated), but it's fun to see some of the elements that go into the film and see the actors off camera.

Overall, if you were a fan of the movie, there are some good special features here, but that requires you to be a fan of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - and those may be hard to come by. The movie was actually better than I expected and it was mildly entertainment (perhaps due to very, very low expectations after the disaster that was the first Fantastic Four), but it is so poorly done at times (and overdone at other times) that it is hard to thoroughly enjoy.

You can read my full Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer movie review here.