Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie helped animated films maintain their dominance on the DVD sales charts for the third straight week. In its first week of release Bee Movie sold an estimated 1.4 million units and beat out a fellow newcomer, the Best Picture Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, which sold over 900,000 units and earned over 21% of its total domestic box office gross in just its first week on DVD.
Last week's leader, the Disney classic 101 Dalmatians, slipped to third place, selling 450,000 units and raising its total sold to over 1.8 million DVDs. The graphic novel-based 30 Days of Night, which is in its third week of release, has now sold nearly a million units, while Beowulf has pushed its tally past 1.5 million.
The first disc in the two-disc Bee Movie DVD set contains an excellent transfer of the film along with some hilarious alternate endings and lost scenes and a special feature, "Inside the Hive: The Cast of the Bee Movie." The second disc is filled with extras that should appeal to kids including a music video, a "pollination practice" video game and a host of other features. While all the extras are nice, it's the movie itself that proved to be a pleasant surprise. As long as viewers can forget whatever they actually know about the social lives of bees (except for the fact that they are an agricultural necessity), Bee Movie proves to be a charming allegory that illustrates some important social messages about the importance and worth of individuals without hitting the audience over the head with them. Seinfeld's verbal wit is on display throughout and though the kids might not get all the jokes, this is a DVD that has a broad appeal.
While the extra-filled Bee Movie DVD has an air of finality, the No Country for Old Men DVD has a paucity of extras about it that fairly screams "A Special Edition is coming." Not that the reclusive Coen brothers are likely to do commentary tracks anyway, but in today's world of fully-loaded DVDs, the No Country for Old Men DVD, which has no deleted scenes or alternate endings, appears surprisingly bare bones. Extras are nice, but they are what Al McGuire used to called "pastry" -- the fancy dribbling and behind-the-back passes that are just for show and don't have any real impact on the outcome of the game. The No Country for Old Men DVD is all about the movie itself with a gorgeous transfer and superb sound. While some may fault the ending (which is taken directly from Cormac McCarthy's novel), few would question the uniformly strong performances or the Coen brothers' masterful, no-nonsense direction that produces more sustained suspense-laden scenes than any movie since Psycho.
