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STUDIO: Warner Bros.
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 196 min.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Mini-documentaries on The Fun Bunch, John Riggins, Doug Williams, Joe Gibbs
Read my review of the Green Bay Packers disc here.
The Pitch
"Think mediocrity meets greed, but less Shakespearian."
The Humans
Men of extraordinary prowess, including John Riggins, Doug Williams, and His Nibs Joe Gibbs.
The Nutshell
Assuming you’re a fan, your favorite moments in the history of the Redskins are compiled here for your amusement, and so that you might pass along the scripture of Holy Gibbs, yea, unto the seventh generation. Assuming you’re not a fan, these are essentially two pieces of mirrored plastic that you may want to keep ahold of in case you are ever snapped back through time to the Dark Ages. Y’know, so you can startle the natives. There’s no effort made to bridge the gap between fan and non-fan, unless brevity counts as an effort, since it makes the experience more bearable for the uninitiated.
With militant atheism on the rise, Mexican evangelist "El Way"
found himself persecuted even in the temple of his beloved Redskins.
The Package
As with the other sets in this series, here you get two discs with sparse features. Disc numero uno features a highlight reel covering the season leading up to and including Superbowl XVII (Redskins v. Dolphins), which emphasizes the Redskins’ underdog display in the fourth quarter, but is edited too spastically to build at all emotionally. The disc also contains a brief featurette on star player John Riggins, and a similarly abbreviated featurette about touchdown antics, their recent excising from the NFL, and the Redskins teammates dubbed "The Fun Bunch" who created several memorable and somewhat emasculating scoring routines.
The second disc contains two of the lengthier season highlight reels, covering the Redskins’ other two Superbowl victories, those of XXII and XXVI.
(A quick aside: I’m sure you’ve heard the bald comparison that American football is tantamount to gladiatorial combat. I can’t help but wonder if the Roman numeral name scheme is a subtle jab at those who hold such an opinion. Hell, I’ll chuckle even if I’m making it all up.)
Both of these longer features are of the same quality as that on the first disc. They are put together like temporary housing, i.e. shoddily and with beer. The disc also features two more micro-featurettes, one on Doug Williams, and the other on Joe Gibbs, who isn’t nearly as interesting as his name sounds.
Magritte would later capture this scene in his classic "The Sight of Blood".
The Lowdown
Much of what I wrote in my review for Superbowl Champions – Green Bay Packers holds true for this set. There’s very little effort to appeal to a broader audience as much as the hardcore fan, and even those fans who paint their faces and commit suicide at halftime will be disappointed with the shallow coverage of their team.
The quality of the editing and pacing of the primary features, that is the Superbowl highlights, is too poor to draw in the disinterested, making the set’s target audience entirely too obvious. For the amount of content, the poor audio quality, the recycled video content, the $20 price tag is entirely too steep.
4 out of 10