I finally got my DVD and for the movie itself, it was totally worth the wait! The movie has a bangin' soundtrack, and Jake is the same smart-mouthed pimp we all know and love! A couple of funny "guest" appearances too, from Master Vanilla Puff Pastry and S*** (A.K.A Dre and Eminem haha) This thing is pretty well off the hook! For the detailed review, info on how NL have seriously dropped the ball on this release and (as always) a little extra, Read More!
King Slaban Manaba: "Look, it is Siton's destiny to become king, not yours. You must accept your destiny"
Lickapon Manaba: "I may have to accept it, but I don't have to like it!"
King Slaban Manaba: "*sigh*, kids.. I need a stress release.. Blowjooooob!!"
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Now Playing: "Keep It Jumping" - Written and performed by Casey Golden & Printz Board.
Well you all know the basic story from any other review you have read online. Prince Siton Manaba is trying to learn the art of the jedi, and once Jake hears he has a private jet and a yacht he is totally down with helping him out, naturally. Siton has no game whatsoever, unless of course he's trying to get himself kicked in the nads or something. Slowly he starts to get the idea and gets his mack on. They travel the world to places like (good old) Jamaica, Japan and Brazil- where Dillsac Unchin, a mercenary working for Siton's younger brother Lickapon makes several attempts at assasinating the soon to be king of Bangasloid. The movie itself I was very satisfied with. I could easily kick back and watch this thing all day long. Plenty of classic lines, and a few that probably just never had the opportunity to be used in the series.
How on Earth could National Lampoon do such a poor job on the release after having about a decade to prepare?? Read on...
How It Should Look vs. How It Does Look
The DVD itself and cover art are very sloppy for a start. As you can see above, the cover isn't what you may have seen on their website. Cheaper picture, cheaper font and an ugly yellow blob that reads "Over 30,000,000 Downloads!". Considering the movie looks so much better than the flash series, I was very surprised! They had a perfectly good DVD menu available (The Jakes Booty Call Movie Information flash) but instead chose to use something totally bland and unimpressive. As far as extras go, the disc has some of the original black and white sketches done to plot out how the movie was gonna run, which was kinda cool. It's got a few deleted scenes, one of which I would have liked to see finished and in the movie, as I was downright confused at the point it would have been used! (I won't tell you where and why, you will no doubt know what I'm talking about once you see it) The "Gallery Of Babes" is terrible quality- the text almost unreadable. A very weak effort there. The so called "Easter Egg" mentioned on the back cover (when you click on Marylin's earring within Bonus Features), is the song "Jake's Back" which anyone hittin' up the site has already heard ages ago. That was disappointing too.
Possibly most confusing and disappointing of all though, the back cover says there is a "Behind-the-scenes", which is nowhere to be found on the disc! WTF Lampoon? It's not like any of the other stuff on there could constitute a behind the scenes at all.. Maybe the sketches, but they're already mentioned seperately. Considering the semi-flash cartoon style of the content, a fullscreen version would have been nice too. Sif use widescreen only!
Emailing National Lampoon got me absolutely nathan- I got totally ignored. I even tried a few times calling the head of distribution in LA (Tom Daniels) on both his extension at National Lampoon (3104745252 ext. 119) and cell phone (8186065300). After a while I got a message on my machine saying "I haven't seen any problems with any of the "extra value content". I've held back this review forever to try and get a better explaination, but it looks like that's all I'm gonna get. Somewhat unimpressive all round to say the least, on the part of National Lampoon. On the plus side though, I tried emailing Amazon.com to ask them why the behind-the-scenes was missing, and they refunded my full purchase price including postage! I didn't ask for a refund- I only asked if I had received a cheap forgery or something, but you know what this means don't you? ;)
Anyway, all in all this movie was still totally awesome and I would definately recommend snapping up a copy for a mere 14 bucks. I see a couple of second hand copies already available from Amazon.com which is great news since brand new they're only $13.99 - how much can they expect to get for a second hand one? You may be able to get one even cheaper than $13.99. I give the movie 5 stars, and the DVD production 2 stars. I am still hoping for an explaination from Lampoon one of these days and I will, as always keep you all posted.
