DVD reviews: '21,' 'The Mummy Returns,' 'Earth: The Biography,' 'Spaced'

A few things you will not learn while watching 21: You will not learn how to play blackjack, despite the fact that the movie is, um, titled 21 and is about a group of MIT students who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars playing said card game. What you will learn is that Hollywood has an uncanny knack for taking potentially provocative material and dumbing it down to the point of complete irrelevancy. Had director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) and the screenwriters respected the audience’s intelligence, they might have used this story as the springboard for a rich and gripping procedural. Instead, 21 serves up a harebrained back story, a hackneyed central conflict and an utterly ludicrous subplot. Little of this, of course, appears in Ben Mezrich’s original book, which seems to have been filtered through a computer program designed to create generic Hollywood potboilers. Along the way, an attractive young cast — including Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo and Jacob Pitts — is wasted.

Extras include three behind-the-scenes mini-features and director’s commentary on the single-disc DVD, two-disc DVD and single-disc Blu-ray releases. Also, the two-disc package features a digital copy of the film for computers and portable video players.

— Christopher Kelly

The Mummy Returns (Blu-ray Edition)

**

(2008, PG-13, $29.98)

This is a wholly mediocre sequel to 1999’s hugely successful (but just as mediocre) The Mummy and is the quintessence of critic-proof cinema. Besides, what else is there to say — other than that writer-director Stephen Sommers essentially delivered the goods? The Mummy Returns bounces along in much the same manner as the original: It features an outlandish ancient-bad-guy-mummy-rises-from-dead plot, deliberately corny dialogue, frenzied action sequences and wall-to-wall, state-of-the-art digital effects. Also released this week are Blu-ray versions of The Mummy and the third movie in the chain, The Scorpion King.

— Christopher Kelly

Earth: The Biography

****

(2008, not rated, $29.98)

High-def TV was made for the likes of Earth: The Biography, a five-hour-plus homage to our world that aired on National Geographic Channel. But it’s about more than pretty pictures. Earth explains how our planet’s natural wonders might be in danger. Hosted by scientist Iain Stewart and filmed on all seven continents, Earth is nothing if not ambitious. And it’s all in service of a larger point: The Earth, which has gone through at least two cataclysms, is not in stasis. There are no guarantees that man will be around to see how the future plays out. To paraphrase the title of a classic apocalyptic novel, Earth abides but man might not.

— Cary Darling

Spaced

*****

(2008, not rated, $59.98)

This marvelous British comedy TV series has such fans as Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt and Diablo Cody, who all do commentary on the DVD set. Spaced, starring Simon Pegg, revolves around a pair of 20-something slackers who barely know each other but pose as a "professional" couple in order to get an apartment. If Seinfeld was about nothing, then Spaced was about doing nothing, only with cooler and funnier references. The three-DVD set has loads of fun extras that will help you sort out those movie references. Included are a reunion Q&A, a feature-length documentary, outtakes and deleted scenes.

— Los Angeles Daily News