We had the good fortune of being sent the 20 Film Collection Musicals from Warner Home Video recently. It was a large DVD collection of 20 of the best musicals that came through Warner Brothers over the last 90 years. Any musical fan of WB films will be in heaven to see what they’ve got packed into this single box set.
Now, with that said, approaching this review was something that had to be unique. This review will tell you what you should expect to ‘get’ with this release and how that compares to what you may already have at home. For a large collection like this, it’s definitely the best approach.
So, here we go.
What movies are packed in?
Honestly, this really does represent the best-of-the-best when it comes to Warner Brothers musicals. WHV has started at the beginning with the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer and ended with 1988’s Hairspray. Yes, it spans that amount of time. Here’s a complete list:
The Jazz Singer (1927)
The Broadway Melody (1929)
42nd Street (1933)
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
An American in Paris (1951)
Show Boat (1951)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
A Star is Born (1954)
The Music Man (1962)
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Camelot (1967)
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)
Cabaret (1972)
“That’s Entertainment!” (1974)
Victor Victoria (1982)
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Hairspray (1988)
Unlike most collections, all of these films are quality. I’ve seen quite a few WHV releases, specifically their DVD four packs, that might have 1-2 movies that are worth their weight in gold, but the other movies packed in might not have been as good or well known. It’s impressive to get this much ‘greatness’ into one gigantic pack. Again, this is a musical lover’s dream collection, and by the title it won’t be the last collection that we see WHV release in the near future (well, hopefully).
Each DVD comes packed in a large cases (three in all) that are broken up into years (1927 – 1951, 1951 – 1964 and 1967 – 1988). Very nicely packed, though I would take issue with the last disc in each case, as the last disc was running wild from its holder when I received it. I’m a stickler for perfect discs, so pardon me for knocking the collection a bit. In my defense, the last disc in each case is placed on the back instead of like the rest, which are in ‘flip-book’ type holders.
Anyway, with all of this greatness in one set, what could be the caveat? Well, it’s not the price. The price is $98.92, which is cheap if you consider each disc inside. If you have 20 really great films at $10 or even $7 a piece, then it’s still comes out to a scream of a deal. The problem I have with this set is in the individual discs themselves.
Individuals or conforming?
After watching a few of these in the last day (I obtained the set yesterday, so I’m still going through quite a bit), the first thing I noticed is that each disc is basically the same disc you would purchase in individual DVD sales. Literally, it’s the same discs that are sold in the stand alone sets. There are a few single discs, like Singin’ in the Rain, that have ‘disc one’ still on the label. Of course, there is no ‘disc two’ in the set, so you may feel a bit cheated in a sense. You begin to ask yourself, ‘Is there more here that I didn’t get with this film?’, and the answer is quite possibly yes.
Of course, at the end of the day you come back to price and the fact that the set is still cheap enough to warrant the lost disc. I can buy that, but I still feel a little shorted.
One major complaint, and this is more cosmetic than anything else, is that WHV needed to uniform each disc to make it conform with the look/feel of the box set. Again, I know that I’m a minority when it comes to these things, but it looks and feels like they had extra discs laying around from a bunch of their musicals, and just decided to pack them all in together. It might have cost more money in the long run and that might have hurt the return just a bit, but it would have been worth it to feel like this collection was in fact a solid, conformed collection that separates itself from the individual packs. It also would have alleviated the ‘disc one’ logos and made it feel less thrown together.
Getting back to the goods
One huge positive to take away from this set, outside of the fact that you own some of the greatest musicals ever produced, is that WHV did a great job with including special features with nearly every disc. So, everything that originally came with the latest DVD versions of the films are included with this version (sans a few ‘disc two’). You get commentary on some of the musicals, like Victor/Victoria, Hairspray and/or Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (the commentary on this one is GOLD!). You also get a variety of vintage featurettes on some of the older films like The Wizard of Oz, The Great Ziegfeld and Viva Las Vegas.
The only movie that has absolutely nothing on it of extra value is “That’s Entertainment!” (not even a trailer to fall back on).
Having said all this, it’s impressive to see featurettes included. While I would have loved to see some ‘disc two’ material for some of these, it’s still nice to get some added value to the mix through special features. Almost full kudos to Warner Home Video for including more content, which extends your dollar on this set.
As for the video quality and what not, you get the latest transfers of these films on the DVD format. While I would have loved to see maybe a Blu-ray version of this release made available, I understand why WB chose not to go that route, it might not have been entirely possible to keep down the costs. Again, this goes back to the ‘conforming’ section of this review, where more money would have had to be spent to not only repackage and relabel some of these, but also do the transfer to HD (as some of these films haven’t made it to HD yet). Still, there’s some fantastic musical sweetness to be had on a format that looks to improve both audio/visuals.
I digress. What you do get is more than solid and each movie is presented in good DVD format, both visually and audibly (though some movies fluctuate between mono and 5.1).
Overall
Going into this, you should prepare yourself for the repackaging of these movies. While I don’t fully love the collection because the discs were straight from their individual releases, I do love the fact that there are musical movie lovers out there who don’t already own these films and who will fall in love with this set. There’s nothing like seeing every really great musical from Warner Brothers in one solid, well priced set ($98 isn’t bad at all). I know quite a few people who will absolutely die to own this, and I know they own 5-6 of the films already.
In the future, I would like to see Warner Home Video keep everything conformed a bit more, get rid of the ‘disc one’ labels and replace them with something uniform. I would also like them to consider possibly going the Blu-ray route, despite the cost (it worked for Bond 50 — and I know not all of those films were good), and make two different versions for the consumer. People who love these musicals would buy either at a price that would work for WB.
Anywho, the set is darn good for the asking price, and there’s just something about having all these great movies in one set. It makes you want to break out in song a bit.
