The Parole Officer

Filmed in standard flat widescreen, the 1.78:1 anamorphic picture looks great with warm colours, accurate fleshtones and hardly a scratch, or blemish, to be had. Definitely a crowd-pleaser.

The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack isn't going to deliver a Pearl Harbor style sonic attack for a comedy, but the stereo sound is quite forceful with dialogue and sound effects. The surround speakers kick in with music and the occasional ambience, or separation effects..1LFE aren't frequent, but sound cool anyway.

The commentary isn't too amazing and sounds like it was recorded in a broom cupboard. Coogan and Co talk about the non-fun of making movies, or, at least, make them out to be a bit repetitive and difficult - it took 12 hours and 10,000 feet of film before the wasp would crawl into Coogan's nose.

The Making Of featurette runs for 22 minutes and is quite interesting. There are some outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage. Interviews with the cast reveal that they were fans of Coogan before reading the script. And Coogan claims that if they hadn't let him play the lead, which he wrote for himself, he wouldn't have agreed to go ahead with the film. Usually, I would interpret this as arrogance, but Coogan knows that only he could do this role.

John Duigan claims that the six deleted scenes, totalling seven minutes, were cut for pacing reasons. But they really wouldn't have hurt the movie at all and are very funny. However, the swearing might have upped the certificate to a 15.

A trailer is included, with an Atomic Kitten music video.