DVD Review: strongbad_email.exe: the first hundred strong bad emails

So, I've decided to start doing DVD reviews on here as well, just to broaden the reviewing palate a little. Notice that I try like mad not to review the film or series (or, in this case, web toon) in question (I assume you know that, if I've gone out of my way to buy the thing, you can guess I like it), unless it is a Director's Cut with added footage, so that a comparison must be made between the two. Rather, my goal is to review the DVD itself - even if you like the original, is it worth buying the DVD? The commentaries good? The extra features interesting? And so on.

In this case, our first review is a monster, the newly released 3-disc set of the first 100 Strong Bad e-mails from HomestarRunner.com. To steal a line, for those of you familiar with HR, no explanation is necessary, and for those of you who aren't, no explanation will do. So let's just get to work on the DVD set itself.

Da Flick and How It Looks: So, this DVD is made up almost completely with Flash cartoons originally posted to the web. Not unreasonably, I assumed they'd look like cr*p translated to a normal television screen. Well, color me not only shocked, but amazed at how good the cartoons look. I mean, this puts a LOT of the regular animated series you see on TV to shame. The colors are bright and vibrant, the movements relatively crisp (if jumpy, but come on, it's HR), the image is sharp and clear as a bell. I mean, I don't know if they re-did the cartoons for the DVD or what, but they look WAY better than they ever did on my computer, at least. Mega-kudos for an excellent transfer, especially given the source material.

The amazing transfer extends to each e-mail's original easter eggs and features, which you'd assume would be difficult if not impossible to capture on DVD. Well, you'd be wrong, as almost everything you could find on the web versions of these toons is indeed preserved here for posterity. Everything that was accessible after the cartoon was over is easy as pie to get to...when the paper prints out at the end of each toon, just hit the down button three times while on one of the menu choices (typically "next"), and a Strong Bad mask will pop up. Click it, and the Easter Egg will play for ya. In the case of multiple eggs, just hit the down button on another menu option, and that'll pop up, too.

But what about the smaller eggs, the ones that you can click on during the toon? Again, they've got it covered. Simply hit the "angle" button on your remote when you usually would click on those words or images, and the original egg will pop up as it did on the Web. This is truly an ingenious solution to what I thought would be an impossible problem. Now, granted, not EVERYTHING is here - none of the games can be played on a DVD player, obviously, as well as the downloadable songs and whatnot. But that's picking nits - how much of the original material IS on here is truly remarkable, and demonstrates just how much of a labor of love this set really was.

As far as sound...what are you expecting, a Dolby 5.1 mix or something? Sounds are sharp and crisp, but nothing special, and the commentaries are noticeably quieter than the cartoons, which is a little odd, but otherwise everything is just fine.

Da Commentaries and Are They Worth Hearing: Considering that we've got 100 short 'toons to deal with, you can't expect commentary on every one of them, but Matt and Mike Chapman, the brains behind this operation, give it the old college try, recording commentary tracks for (by my count) 44 of 'em! These are called "hidden" commentaries, since they're not listed on the main menu, but they're not hard to get to at all - just click the "audio" button on your remote and there they are. To save you time (and to demonstrate what a geek I really am), here are all the toons that (as far as I know) have commentary on them:

Some Kinda Robot, Homestar Hair, Depressio, Halloweener, I Rule, Stand-Up, Cartoon, CGNU, Superhero Name, 12:00, Sugarbob, Flag Day, Guitar, Invisibility, Lures and Jigs, Techno, Your Friends, New Hands, Ghosts, Island, Comic, Japanese Cartoon, Dragon, Marzipan, Monster Truck, Fingers, The Show, Caper, Personal Favorites, Crazy Cartoon, Funny, Suntan, Anything, Stunt Double, Date, Kids' Book, No Loafing, Mile, Local News, Army, Video Games, The Bet, Different Town, Flashback.

For the most part, though, the commentaries are just kinda there. Some interesting facts about the history of the site and the toons aside, seems like a lot of the time the guys just can't think of anything to say, and then when they do, the toon's almost over and they have to rush to get it in. The monotony is broken up by visits from the characters via Matt, and a cool bit where they play the original TMBG sound file from "Different Town," but on the whole, the commentaries don't add too much.

Da Extras and How Many Do You Get: Coming from the guys who can't seem to do anything half-way, you'd expect this to be a packed DVD set, extras-wise, and you'd be right. We start right away with the wicked-cool 3-D computer animated menus, which cannot help but bring a smile to any fan's face. Strong Bad and company never looked so good. (And make sure you wait a while before selecting anything - each menu has some extra funny animation if you wait long enough!)

Disc 1 features not one, not two, but THREE unreleased e-mails, and truth be told, they're not too bad at all, though in most cases elements from them contributed to better e-mails down the road. "Greeting Cards," from the early days judging by the computer, is Strong Bad introducing a series of cards to sympathetically express to someone hard-to-bring-up topics, like how bad a filmmaker they are. Pretty funny. "E-mail Birds" is SB answering a buncha e-mails in rapid fashion (which later became the classic "Spring Cleaning"), then treating himself to a game of his favorite text-based adventure (which naturally became Dungeonman in "Video Games"). In "Videro Games," Strong Bad argues for all the good things video games have brought to out society, including bad grammar. Again, pretty funny, but similar ideas were examined later. Next in the extras we get "Intros," a montage of pretty much every e-mail intro song SB has ever done, and "Scroll Button Songs," which does the same for the E-mail menu songs, including ones which are well past the 100th e-mail.

Disc 2 keeps it up with 4 different Karaoke videos of popular HR songs, "Trogdor," "Nite Mamas" (by Limozeen), "Dangeresque,"and "Fhqwhgads," each accompanied by traditional Karaoke cheesy background footage and generic-sounding instrumentals. Then you get a pair of music videos from the Strong Bad Sings album - "Secret Song" (which if you didn't know was a few minutes after the end of the last song on the CD), as performed by the Homestar puppet, and "Moving Very Slowly," by Taranchula. Good stuff.

Disc 3 has most of what you'd call "Behind the Scenes" material, though there's not much that actually gets into how the toons are made. First you get "Some Puppet Stuff," a screen-test with the HR puppet chatting with Mike. "Making of Email 100" is just what it sounds like, a fast-motion video of the making of the toon, which condenses all the work into about 3 minutes. Again, pretty cool, but I woulda liked something more in-depth. Then it's "Sample of Style," the title of which has no relation to the content of the video - it's a doc on how Matt does the voices. According to this, they have secret tubes (looking uncannily like paper towel tubes) which Matt talks into and the voice comes out. Really funny. "The Cheatar" is another fast-motion video, documenting the construction of the oversized guitar that was displayed at the R&R HOF this year. "Sketchbook" is a 7-minute piece where they show off some more of the ideas which didn't quite make it, and then you get "3-D Menu Tests," early footage of the DVD's menus, complete with SB commentary. Just really cool stuff all around.

Final Words and Should You Buy It: What, are you kidding? Strong Bad never looked or sounded so good as it does on here, and for those of us with less-than-stellar net connections, it's an amazing upgrade. This is an incredible set, filled to the brim with stuff (both original and brand new), and at only 29.95 before shipping, it's an absolute steal, to boot. The guys at the site have been working on this for a long time, and kept saying "we're adding more to it so you'll like it more," and in the end, they succeeded. Boy howdy, did they succeed. Highest recommendation.

Buy it where? Riiiiiiight....here!