Region 4 Winners and Losers

     I’m afraid I must inform you of an extremely unfortunate event. I’m very very sorry to tell you this but we have been well and truly stiffed in the extras department here in Region 4. Perhaps this is why Dreamworks/Universal never sent out a review disc! The Region 1 DVD is available in two versions – a 1-Disc version which appears almost identical to ours and a 2-Disc Special Collector’s Edition. The 2-Disc set contains a substantial number of additional features not found in Region 4. Compared to the Region 1 2-Disc version we miss out on the following:

• Documentary – A Woeful World (54:30)
• Featurette – Costumes and Other Suspicious Disguises (16:42)
• Featurette – Violet’s Functional Designs (10:40)
• Featurette – Caution! Incredibly Deadly Vipers (8:48)
• Featurette – The Sad Score (13:35)
• Featurette – The Unsound Sound Designer (30:01)
• Interactive Featurette – You Probably Shouldn’t Listen To These
• Featurette – An Alarming Conspiracy Involving Sunny (6:20)
• Featurette – An Even More Alarming Conspiracy Involving Sunny (20:20)
• Featurette – The Terrible Fire (5:51)
• Featurette – Trains, Leaches and Hurricanes (9:20)
• Stills Galleries (x3)

     Well I think it should be obvious from the above list which is the version of choice. Dreamworks have some serious explaining to do because it would appear that despite the trailer the film did extremely well in Australia yet Dreamworks are being greedy and not springing the cash for the extra features. I dearly hope they’re not planning to do what they did with Shrek – that is, releasing a truncated 1-Disc version, then once everybody has bought it releasing a 2-Disc version (containing all the extras the first one should have had) with a view to having fans to buy it again. It is truly insulting that Dreamworks think we’re so stupid that we can’t see the game they’re playing. And just in case any of them may be reading this – I rented this disc for $1.95 to do this review – I bought the Region 1 disc!