Paramount Home Entertainment announced this past week that director Michael Showalter’s action/comedy romp, The Lovebirds, will be available on DVD on June 8 in two viewing options.
This is one of those films that got caught up in the Covid-19 theatrical shutdown. A wide theatrical opening was planned for April of last year, but with theatres closed up across the country The Lovebirds was pulled. It turned into a Netflix release last May and then disappeared.
In a normal year, The Lovebirds would have played out theatrically, pulled in a nice chunk of change and then made an orderly transition to the home entertainment packaged media marketplace sometime in July or August of last year. Of course, that didn’t happen.
Leilani (Issa Rae — The Photograph, Little and Emmy-nominated for her performance as Issa Dee on the Insecure sitcom on HBO) and Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani — Oscar nominated for his The Big Sick screenplay, a film in which he also starred, plus such films as Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, The Late Bloomer, Stuber) have been a couple for going on four years and as the action kicks in they have reached something of a crisis in their relationship. Maybe it is time to call it quits and move on.
It is during this moment, while driving and arguing, that Jibran fails to see a red light and smacks down a guy on a bike. Oh wow, but the joker gets up and peddles off, refusing help.
No harm, no foul, the couple can go back to whatever they were discussing, but before Jibran can even take a breath, a complete stranger (Paul Sparks — as Mickey Doyle in Broadwalk Empire; as Thomas Yates in House of Cards), who we will come to know as “Moustache,” races up waving a gun, claims he’s a cop and commandeers their car and sets off after the guy on the bike.
Whomp! Not dead yet, backs over him! Still moving, ka-thump, he’s run over again!! Moustache takes off and the pair are left with their car in shambles and idiot witnesses wander on to the scene of the carnage and call the police … Jibran and Leilani take it on the lamb, fugitives from the law.
At this point, The Lovebirds turns into a comedy nightmare as the pair decide the only way to clear their names is to solve the murder of the guy on the bike themselves!! That comedy set-up leads to a series of bizarre encounters as Jibran and Leilani get deeper and deeper and deeper — with more bodies piling up along the way — into a web of crime and the inner-workings of a deadly “secret social society.” It is one long night!!
Bonus features begin with the two viewing options. Since this was planned as a big theatrical rollout, necessary edits were made to get a date-night PG-13 rating, that theatrical-cut is one viewing option, while the second is the “uncut” presentation of the film.
Also included are a gag reel, deleted scenes, the “Line-O-Rama” feature (selected comedy scenes in rapid-fire order), and a trio of featurettes — “The Art of Compromise with Issa & Kumail,” “The Lovebirds Quiz” and “Lovebirds on the Spot.”
In other release news from Paramount Home Entertainment, Aug. 17 has been set as the street date for the four-disc DVD collection of Blue Bloods: The Eleventh Season. All 16 episodes are included here.
And, on the same mid-August date, NCIS: The Eighteenth Season will also be available on DVD.
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