The Dog Days of August don’t typically see the release of great films on disc, and this week is no exception with three of the summer of 2017’s many box office duds getting home entertainment releases including a frenetic Arthurian fantasy from Guy Ritchie, a rare comic misfire from Amy Schumer, and a failed “reboot” of the Wimpy Kid series, though this week’s lineup is leavened a bit by new seasons of Portlandia and Blindspot as well as the disc debut of Tokyo Ravens.

Theatrical Films

They don’t release the DVDs for hit movies in early August—they will start rolling out in a few more weeks, but this week we get one of the certified “bombs” of 2017, Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Warner Bros., “PG-13,” 115 min., $29.98, BD $35.98, 3D $44.98), which cost $175 million to make (and millions more to market), but only made $140 million worldwide, meaning that Warner Bros. took a loss in the neighborhood of $150 million.  In this revisionist fantasy Ritchie attempts to do with the Arthurian legends what he did with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, except this time he didn’t have the charm and charisma of Robert Downey, Jr. in a leading role, or the popularity of Victorian steampunk to attract audiences to this frenetic, meth-addled mishmash.

Although it was not a failure on such a grand scale, Snatched (Fox, “R,” 90 min., $29.98, BD $34.98, 4K $39.99), lost money, earning just $59 million against a production cost of $42 million, one of a string of R-rated comedy failures during the summer of 2017 that was only broken by the success of Girls Trip.  Snatched stars rising star Amy Schumer and comedy vet Goldie Hawn as a mother and daughter who are kidnapped while on a trip to Ecuador.  In spite of the considerable talents of the two leads, neither critics, who gave the film just a 35% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, nor audiences, who gave the film a mediocre “B” CinemaScore, found much to like in the film’s clichéd plotline that lurches uneasily between comedy and violence.

The third box office dud due out on Tuesday is Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (Fox, “PG,” 91 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), the fourth film in the series based on the semi-illustrated “diaries” penned by Jeff Kinney.  Though the studio insisted it was not a “reboot,” The Long Haul featured an all-new cast that neither fans nor critics (20% positive on RT) appeared to like.

TV on DVD

There are only three releases in this category this week led by the NBC crime drama Blindspot: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros., 880 min., $39.99, BD $44.98), which stars Jamie Alexander as a memory-less tattooed woman whose skin art contains clues to her mysterious past. This intriguing series has been renewed for a third season.

The only other contemporary series is the hipster slice-of-life comedy Portlandia: Season Seven (VSC, 215 min., $19.95) which remains one of the best satirical series on television thanks to the efforts of Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, and Jonathan Kisel. 

The only vintage release is the 2007 Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: The Complete Series (Shout Factory, 690 min., $19.97), the fifteenth season of the American kids’ series, which used footage from the Japanese Super Sentai series GoGo Sentai Boukenger.

Anime

This week’s top release is Tokyo Ravens: The Complete Series (Funimation, 600 min., BD/DVD Combo $69.98), which contains all 24 episodes of the 2013-2014 series from 8-Bit that is based on the action-packed light novel series by Kohei Azano set in a magic-infused version of contemporary society.

The only other anime release on Tuesday is HIdamari Sketch x Honeycomb: Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., Subtitles Only, BD $59.98, which contains all 12 episodes of the fourth season of the anime based on the 4-panel comedy manga by Ume Aoki.