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The Pretender: Movie Edition DVD Review
By Brian Tallerico
The adventures of Jarod, the man who could take on any task great or small, ended in the Spring of 2000 with many questions still unanswered. The creators of The Pretender knew they'd have to go back and tie up the loose ends for fans and they were lucky enough to be able to do so with two feature-length movies that aired on NBC. The first came only 8 months after the show went off the air, in January of 2001, and was called, creatively enough, The Pretender 2001. Rather than wrap everything up, The Pretender 2001 left enough doors open that the creators actually had to come back again at the end of the year for the final word on their hero and the Centre, The Pretender: The Island of the Haunted. Over five years later, with all of the seasons previously available, Fox has now released the two movies in one edition. Your Pretender collection can now be complete. Plan the marathon.
The DVD for The Pretender movies is a simple enough affair - a two-sided disc with pretty much the bare minimum when it comes to the home market. The second film, shot in widescreen, looks and sounds better, but neither are going to be used to show off your home theater. There's also nary an extra to be found on this Pretender island, which is kind of a shame considering that this will likely be the last word on Jarod on DVD. Fans certainly will be happy to be able to complete their collection but it would have been nice if some cast or crew could have come back to explain how the movies came to be and dissect how they turned out. The Pretender is one of those odd shows that doesn't seem to be going away. There are still message boards and sites where fans discuss what seems to be turning into a cult classic show. Some even claim that Jarod could come back for another movie or special, although that's more hope than speculation. But, who knows? Maybe we haven't completed our Pretender collection after all.
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