Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (Fox, $29.98 for DVD, $34.98 for two-disc DVD, $39.99 for Blu-ray) - Critics complained that this sequel to the 2006 surprise blockbuster “Night at the Museum” was a superficial special-effects extravaganza without a soul. That might be true - but it probably looks and sounds so good on Blu-ray, you won’t notice problems with the plot.
Ben Stiller returns as Larry Daley, the put-upon security guard who corrals the exhibits that come to life at night. This time, they’ve moved from New York’s American Museum of Natural History and ended up in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution here in Washington. Plenty of returning actors have fun in this film - the year’s 10th-highest-grossing movie - including Owen Wilson as the tiny cowboy Jedediah Smith, Robin Williams as Theodore Roosevelt and Steve Coogan as Gaius Octavius. Amy Adams gives the film a fresh spark as Amelia Earhart, a spunky redhead Larry just can’t help loving.
The single-disc version of the film contains no extras. The double-disc edition includes more than a half-hour of bonuses, including cast and crew commentary, six deleted scenes with an alternate ending and a gag reel. The Blu-ray edition doubles the extras, with a dozen deleted-scene featurettes, including “Phinding Pharaoh With Hank Azaria,” the actor who plays the film’s main villain, and an interactive museum scavenger-hunt game. The Blu-ray edition also includes a standard DVD copy of the movie and a digital copy downloadable to your computer or portable device.
Mental: Season One (Fox, $49.98) - It’s a given that television doctors usually are as messed up as their patients, and Dr. Jack Gallagher is no exception. The psychiatrist on this series (which aired on Fox earlier this year) is played by “Prison Break’s” Chris Vance and sometimes seems as confused and confusing as the people he treats at a Los Angeles hospital.
Like television’s most popular doc - his Fox colleague Dr. Gregory House - Dr. Gallagher is working against the clock: Most of his patients are under a 72-hours-only hold. Annabella Sciorra co-stars as the necessary boss who plays by the-books … and this one is his ex-girlfriend.
Extras include an unrated alternate pilot episode and a “Paging Dr. Gallagher” featurette.
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Choo-Choo Express (Disney, $26.99) - Children love Mickey Mouse, and they also love trains, so this episode of the Disney Channel series aimed at preschoolers should be popular. But this movie-length episode is also special in another way. It is dedicated to Wayne Allwine, the voice artist who gave life to Mickey and died this past spring.
In “Choo-Choo Express,” Mickey and friends build a train to transport a professor’s never-melting snow back to their clubhouse - where they can have snowball fights and make snow angels well into the summer.
They Might Be Giants wrote the theme to the series, and the band also is heard in the closing credits with a song the group wrote especially for this episode and gave the same title. Extras include another installment of the series, “Mickey’s Big Job,” and two levels of interactive watching in which children answer questions about shapes, sizes and colors: There’s one for 2- and 3-year-olds and another for 4- to 6-year-olds.
-Kelly Jane Torrance
Terminator: Salvation (Warner, $35.99 Blu-ray, $28.98 DVD) - Warner Bros. must think fans of the “Terminator” series have stepped into the future, given the release strategy for “Terminator: Salvation.”
The DVD is the barest of bare bones, available in widescreen and full-screen formats. There’s the movie and nothing else.
The Blu-ray release, meanwhile, is heavy with special features. Along with the theatrical version of the film, the Blu-ray contains director McG’s original, R-rated cut; 40-minutes of picture-in-picture commentary with cast and crew; an interactive “maximum movie mode” with McG running the audience through key portions of the film; and several making-of featurettes related to the movie’s technology.
Blu-ray releases typically have included a few extra bonus features as an inducement to spend a little more on the high-def format, but this is the first time I can remember such a stark contrast between the DVD and Blu-ray disc release. Don’t be surprised to see more of this as studios grow anxious over low-adoption rates of the next generation of high-definition home-video format. Perhaps they feel those on the fence regarding Blu-ray need a little nudge going forward.
-Sonny Bunch
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