Dr.Horribles Sing-Along Blog (2008)

"Sweetly satirical...stylishly scrappy...insanely tuneful...far from horrible, it's terrific...  TV Guide
"A toe-tapping good time...  Variety

Editor's Note In his internet-distributed miniseries DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG, Joss Whedon puts his chorus where his comic books are, uniting once and for all his loves of sci-fi and musical theater. Broadway vet Neil Patrick Harris stars as the title's cut rate supervillain, a wannabe who's always one step behind his preening nemesis, Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion). The hero thwarts Dr. Horrible's schemes and courts his dulcet-voiced, do-gooder crush, Penny (Felicia Day), a sad fate the evil doctor laments via blogs and hilarious, brokenhearted ballads. Written by Whedon with his brother, Jed, the show's universally catchy track list strikes the director's trademark balance of snark and earnestness, most notably in Harris's yearning opener "My Freeze Ray" and Fillion's third act show-stopper, "Everyone's a Hero," a spot-on parody of vaunted superhero icons.

	Nathan Fillion
	Neil Patrick Harris
	Felicia Day
	Jed Whedon - Music
	Lisa Lassek - Editor
	Ryan Green - Director of Photography
	John Whedon - Music
	Joss Whedon - Director

The Onion A.V. Club 9 of 10
A good part of the charm of Joss Whedon's 42-minute "Internet miniseries event" Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is that its small scale, low-fi stunts, cheap props, and enthusiastic tone capture the aesthetic of something a bunch of teenagers cobbled together and put up on YouTube, hoping their peers would love it. Which is about what happened, except the teenagers were industry professionals, and their peers were anyone they could lure in for an experiment in DIY production and distribution...Whedon's legion of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly fans spread the word and helped make the mini-movie an online sensation, though Harris' nuanced performance, Day's sweetness, Fillion's glorious swaggering, and the insinuatingly catchy songs certainly didn't hurt...But how to sell fans a short film that's still available free online? With a package of giddily geeky extras that reflect their love of the project back at them. Chief among them is "Commentary: The Musical," a commentary track that gets off to a rocky start as a stiff audio play, then becomes winningly random as Fillion sings about how he's better than Harris, Day worries that she's thinking about trivia instead of art when she acts, minor characters jostle for attention, Joss glumly sings about how commentary tracks pick art to death, and Zack raps about how he hates musicals...And like the disc's other bonuses--an overcrowded but often hilarious "normal" commentary track, a standard making-of featurette, and a series of surprisingly engaging, mostly musical fan-submitted "supervillain auditions"--"Commentary" neatly expands the experience while letting viewers feel like a neat thing has been crafted just for them. Whedon has always embraced his fans and encouraged them to feel like one big family; DIY crafting and selling directly to them is the logical next step. Maybe the networks will treat him better once they see how readily he can cut them out of the profits. - Tasha Robinson