The Film
I know what a lot of you must be thinking right now -- "Oh, no, not another spoof movie!" because that's exactly what I was thinking when I sat down to view this, especially coming so shortly after I had to review Superhero Movie. Thankfully Disaster Movie is not as painfully dull and unoriginal as that. There is at least the semblance of a plot that isn't completely copped from another film.
This one involves something about asteroids hurtling towards the planet and the main characters having to get a crystal skull back to a museum to avert imminent doom (hey, I did say not completely copped from another film, I didn't say wholly original). It is a spoof after all, so the concept of "originality" has to be a bit malleable.
In fact, Disaster Movie lampoons just about everything in popular culture from the last three years or so, from No Country for Old Men, Superbad, Jessica Simpson, Amy Winehouse and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to 10,000 B.C., High School Musical, Iron Man and Hannah Montana. Some of the jokes work better than others, but the end result is fairly entertaining.
Still, you can pretty much run down a spoof-movie checklist as it pertains to Disaster Movie:
The Picture
One thing you can surely count on with these sorts of films is that their production values are going to look rather low budget, therefore don't expect spectacular picture quality with dramatic lighting and intricate details. Surprisingly enough, however, Disaster Movie's 1.78:1 AVC/MPEG-4 video transfer is quite well done and shows once again that even a bad film can look really good on Blu-ray. The picture is clean, sharp and detailed in both foreground and background imaging. Colors are vibrant and the transfer displays a good, bright level of contrast, but not too strong that it blooms. Unfortunately the high level of detail in the 1080p/24 presentation does expose the low budget special effects used throughout the film which makes it even more ridiculous to watch.
The Sound
At first it seems a little insane to give a movie of this caliber the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless treatment, but Disaster Movie has a surprisingly active mix that truly benefits from the 7.1 lossless codec. The constant boom of asteroids crashing into Earth, screaming crowds in the street, and traffic noise all provide for an entertaining and engulfing soundstage with a very extended low frequency range. The High School Musical spoof during the 25-year-old Will's Sweet 16 party shows some particularly wonderful use of all 8 channels with full sounding bass notes, smooth high frequencies and lush ambience. Dialogue throughout the film is also well balanced, clear, intelligible and lifelike. Disaster Movie is one of the better sounding and most unusual comedy sound mixes available on Blu-ray.
The Extras
Disaster Movie on Blu-ray comes with a host of high definition supplemental materials offering a look into the film's production and some more time with the cast members. There is more subtle humor to be found in some of these extras, including a surprisingly more humorous G-Thang; too bad they didn't take advantage of his comedic skills in the actual film.
The extras available on this release are:
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