COTTAGE, THE - DVD review

I'm at a loss as to why more directors aren't beating down Andy Serkis' door for their film projects. Most people are familiar with the British actor that made cinematic history by bringing the digital character Sméagol (Gollum for pessimists) to life in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Serkis didn't just lend his vocal talents for the role, but also bodily motions and facial expressions through state-of-the-art technology. The unprecedented portrayal earned numerous nominations and awards including a #10 spot on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, an amazing feat for a relatively unknown character actor. At least writer-director Paul Andrew Williams saw the light when he dusted off the former hobbit and brought him aboard for his dark comedy, "The Cottage."

The film opens with slapstick "Beetlejuice"-style music as two men pull into the drive of an English countryside cottage in the middle of the night. From the way the men keep looking over their shoulders and scope out the place, it becomes clear that they are definitely up to something. What, exactly, is unknown, until they decide to make some tea and head back to the car to get some milk. Lying next to the dairy product is an unconscious blonde woman tied up in the trunk.

One of the two men is David (Andy Serkis), a tough, no-nonsense thug with a shady past that is only alluded to in the film. David longs for severing all ties to his underworld lifestyle, and has his heart set on the purchase of a boat to sail around the world. Unfortunately for David, he doesn't have the funds to fulfill his dream, so he devises a kidnapping ploy to net a quick £100,000 in ransom booty. A scheme that may have been solid on paper, but in application ends up having more holes than a convention of body piercing enthusiasts.

David's first mistake was luring his brother, Peter (Reece Shearsmith), into his criminal endeavor. While David tries to be cool, calm, and collected, Peter is the complete opposite. He's a worrywart that spooks easily, and when his nerves are jittery, he tends to be clumsy. Shearsmith is terrific at balancing innocence with incompetence, and his bumbling fool of a character clashes with David's straight-shooter persona creating tension as well as comic relief.

The choice for the hostage was David's second calculated error. Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) is the daughter of Arnie, a notorious London gangster. Arnie has the dough for the ransom, but being a mob boss with a couple of cleaver-wielding Asian hit men on the payroll, he's not the type of guy you really want to cross. Furthermore, when Tracey comes to, she becomes a handful herself. The spoiled brat takes every opportunity she can to insult the two amateur kidnappers using more f-sharps and c-flats than Chef Gordon Ramsay of "Hell's Kitchen," and literally manhandles Peter with both hands tied behind her back. Ellison creates a vile character that viewers will love to hate, and as the film moves on you start to feel sorry for the kidnappers and lose all respect for the kidnappee.

David continues on his winning streak when he arranges for Andrew (Steve O'Donnell), Arnie's son and Tracey's stepbrother, to deliver the loot. Andrew is even more of a moron than Peter, and his idiocy adds fuel to the long list of unfortunate events as the film progresses. I don't want to spoil it by touching on every little thing that goes wrong, as each additional fly in the ointment tests David's sanity and is part of the humor. Let's just say that the whole thing plays out like a how-to manual of what not to do for potential would-be kidnappers, or to put it another way, "Kidnapping for Dummies on Bizarro World."

At the midway point of the movie, the film takes a sudden left turn into a completely different genre, which makes choosing the harmless looking cottage to lay low for a while David's biggest mistake of all. The plot evolves into a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a psychotic disfigured farmer shows up with an axe to grind. It's cleverly done that in one way it's sort of a spoof on slasher movies, but ends up being a pretty graphic gore fest on its own full of suspense and surprises.

Back to Serkis, his performance is what bumped an average film up a notch for me. Half the time he didn't need to say anything, everything he was feeling was clear as day in his eyes alone. As more things went wrong and the whole kidnapping started falling apart all around him, you could see him slowly start to simmer until he finally came to a boil with smoke coming out of his ears. Simply put, the look on his face was priceless.

One of the things that I didn't care for initially were some of the predictable jokes used in the film. I knew exactly what was coming when the camera panned to a close-up shot of a rake lying in the farmyard when Andrew was stumbling around nearby. Honestly, how much longer can people milk the gag of stepping on the business end of this garden tool to whack themselves with the handle right between the eyes? Been there, done that. But then I started thinking about how a good number of scenes had the illusion of going one way, only to completely surprise me. In a strange way, predictable scenes like this actually helped keep viewers on their toes.

The farmer's past was only touched on briefly through a scene with newspaper clippings, and personally I would have liked to see more on what happened to him and his family. Williams did leave a window open for a sequel, though.

Video:
Sony Pictures presents "The Cottage" in an anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Scenes with decent lighting weren't too bad, but a few of the darker shots had some mild grain and a tinted sheath of fuzzy haze. I didn't notice this all the time, either, so it was as if one or two of the cameras weren't designed for night shooting or didn't have proper lighting.

Audio:
The disc uses Dolby Digital 5.1 as the primary audio option with English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese language options and subtitles. My only real complaint was that it seemed that the dialogue and music tracks throughout the picture could have been balanced a bit better.

Extras:
The bonus features for "The Cottage" start with nine deleted scenes that can be watched individually or altogether using the "Play All" option. They are: "Smoking Joe" (2:50), "Pursuit" (0:59), "Village Arrival" (2:45), "Scaring Andrew" (1:06), "Pheasants" (1:39), "Muk and Chun Get the Chop" (1:19), "Gammy Leg, Part 1" (0:28), "Gammy Leg, Part 2" (0:36), and "Funeral Montage" (1:24). Most are pretty self-explanatory, and the few that require some background information come with text explaining the significance of the clip.

There are also roughly five minutes of outtakes containing the usual bloopers that occur during filming. During one scene, Serkis drops his lighter and nearly catches a prop on fire, which was pretty funny.

A "Storyboard Gallery" shows two of the scenes still in their concept sketch drawing form. The first is "Peter and Tracey Meet the Farmer" and the second is "Peter and Tracey Fight the Farmer." The templates for the scenes are in the style of comic book panels, and can be flipped through using the remote.

"The Cottage" includes digital copy versions of the film for easy transfer to a PC and/or PSP devices. Just pop in the disc and it automatically brings up the instructions on how to access the files.

Lastly, as with most Sony releases, there are a ton of trailers: "Blu-ray Disc is High-Definition!" "Starship Troopers 3: Marauder," "88 Minutes," "Zombie Strippers," "Outpost," "Loch Ness Terror," "April Fools' Day," "Revolver," "Pistol Whipped," "Cleaner," "The Tattooist," and "Diamond Dogs."

The Final Cut:
Looking at the big picture for "The Cottage," it made me laugh, it made me jump, and I even cringed a few times from the explicit gore. While the film definitely isn't as witty as "Shaun of the Dead" and certainly isn't as stylish as "From Dusk Till Dawn," its still a goofy little popcorn flick that's solely meant to entertain.