Drillbit Taylor

Drillbit Taylor comes from Paramount, one of the bigger players in the UK Film Industry. They release around 20 films per year – and some of the best of the Hollywood fare. So with Drillbit, we get some cracking trailers; Iron Man (see this film if you haven’t already); Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (makes the film look so much better than it is); and Spiderwick Chronicles (the most underrated kids’ film out recently - totally scuppered by Horton Hears A Who back in March).

Picture and sound are both fine,while extras of note include commentary over the film, by the director Steven Brill, the less famous of the two writers, Kristofer Brown, and the kids - Nate Hartley (Wade), Troy Gentile (Ryan), and David Dorfman (Emmit). It is quite amusing to hear them make a joke at the start about not having Owen Wilson commenting, as that’s probably the one star you would want to hear!

There is also a section in which the ‘writers have their say,’ and this is basically a telephone conversation between Kristofer Brown, and the famous writer, Seth Rogen. The sound isn’t brilliant and the screen shows only film stills, so it reeks of trying desperately to fill up the extras to give the DVD a unique selling point. The conversation ambles around difficulties they had with the production, and things they had wanted to do but couldn’t.

Line-O-Rama is a montage of the films funniest one-liners patched together, but out of context, it’s not so funny. By far the best of the extras is the Gag Reel which is a good five minutes of muck-ups, falling over, and forgotten lines. Why did they stop putting these at the end of films as the credits roll? So entertaining. This alone is worth buying the DVD for, watching to see the character of Troy Gentile (who plays Ryan) as he makes foul-ups. He is one hell of an actor for such a young 'un – look out for his genius ‘steering’ improvisation. Classic.