EW Review: DVD has 'Incredible' extras
By Dalton Ross
Entertainment Weekly
(Entertainment Weekly) -- Seeing hordes of parents bringing their preschoolers to "The Incredibles" always amazed me.
Not because the movie was bad. On the contrary -- it was one of the most inventive, exciting films of the year (hence the Animated Feature Oscar). But it was full of guns, fistfights, explosions and suspicions of marital infidelity. That's a bit heavy for a 3-year-old.
Maybe parents didn't notice the PG rating. Or maybe they assumed anything from Pixar was appropriate for all ages. Or maybe I've just been unmasked as a major-league prude. (Probably all three.)
Thankfully for us older fans, the extras on this two-disc set don't cater to the pre-K crowd.
Unlike the games and karaoke features that populate most kids' DVDs, "The Incredibles" offers more than an hour of making-of footage, deleted scenes -- including a hilarious alternate-opening BBQ scene in which Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) must fake an injury to maintain his secret identity -- two short films ("Jack-Jack Attack" shows exactly what happened to Kari the babysitter), and ''secret'' files on all 21 superheroes (plus amusing audio snippets).
But the coolest extra by far has to be the cheesy, purposely poorly animated "Mr. Incredible & Pals" cartoon. (Imagine those inept Saturday-morning "Beatles" 'toons from the 1960s.) The accompanying commentary by Mr. Incredible and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) is the funniest thing in the entire package -- and that includes the movie.
''They made me a white guy!'' complains Frozone upon seeing his lightened likeness. ''Are you kidding me?'' Now, try explaining that one to the tots.
EW Grade: A
'La Femme Nikita: The Complete Second Season'
Reviewed by Jennifer Armstrong
Alberta Watson hones her ice-queen act as Uberspy boss Madeline. Nikita negotiates a sexy star-crossed romance with co-worker Michael. And suddenly it's startlingly clear how much Jack Bauer and Sydney Bristow owe USA's cult fave about a woman who was recruited from jail (after being wrongly accused of stabbing a cop) for secret government group Section One.
In "La Femme Nikita," you never know who's bad or who's good, and in the delicious "La Femme Nikita: The Complete Second Season," that goes for the heroine herself: She starts off pretending to be a kidnapping victim and ends the season in cahoots with an ex-agent out to destroy the agency.
Extras: Nikita's masterminds (executive consultant Joel Surnow, director Jon Cassar and story editor Michael Loceff) offer cool, candid commentary, waxing rhapsodic about the love story one moment and mocking their own credibility-stretching plot liberties the next.
And the deleted scenes are actually worth it, thanks to Cassar's explanatory intros -- especially the episode 1 action sequence that was axed when everyone realized that the bad guys' silvery suits looked silly.
'Alfie'
Reviewed by Jeff Labrecque
Lackluster box office of late has decreed that Jude Law is not a movie star, and Chris Rock did him no favors at the Oscars. But as the eponymous character in "Alfie," the metrosexual Brit with an eye for the ''superficial things that really matter,'' Law emanates a "Hud"-like heat that's lethal even beneath a dweebish driving cap, and the ladies are helpless in the glare of his panty-peeling grin.
So it's not entirely fair to blame Law for this film's theatrical impotence. The original "Alfie" (with Michael Caine) was truly a product of the swingin' '60s, and this update retains a sensibility that has lost its appeal (unless it's played for laughs by Austin Powers).
''Maybe it was just the wrong timing for the movie,'' laments director Charles Shyer. Maybe they just didn't update "Alfie" enough.
Eight deleted scenes highlight some impressive extras, which also include two commentaries and a short featurette about Mick Jagger's music. In one sadly axed scene, "Alfie" spits some of his roguish venom at us: Speaking to the camera, as he does throughout the movie, he says smugly, ''I don't owe you an explanation. You don't like me? Leave.''
Take that, Chris.
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