Reviews

Wow. I caught this show by chance one day and was so impressed I had to look it up to watch it again. What a wonderful and fun way to teach spelling! In this computed-animated show, all of the animal friends, main scenery, and "props" are made out of the letters of their word. You have to see it to truly appreciate it. There is a dog made out of the letters d-o-g, a house formed from the letters for house, etc. Heck, during a camping episode if you look closely you will see that the flames of the fire are made out of f-i-r-e. The adventures of these animal friends center around building items from the letters that form their word. For example, when the pig is "baking" a birthday cake, he grabs the letters c, a, k and e then when he puts them together, the word animates to form a cake (with frosting!) out of the letters. In another episode, the frog and dog are building a tent, and the tent won't go up until, after several tries, they finally sound out the word and put the letters in the correct order. The animated adventures are split into roughly 10 minute segments, perfect for the very young age group that is obviously targeted.

If the quality of the show stays the same as the few episodes I've seen, I'd buy this series on DVD in a second.

I didn't like this movie. While slapstick comedies involving embarrassing situations and bodily fluids do work (see American Pie,) this one just falls flat. What really made it not work for me from the very beginning was that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are just way too old to be crashing weddings. Maybe that's the point, and there is a moment when a character comments that Owen Wilson's character is "not that young" - an understatement in this particular situation. Anyone over the age of 25 should not be behaving in this manner, never mind men pushing 40. They're too old for their behavior; they're too old for the women they end up with (well, maybe not by Hollywood standards... ick!); they're too old to be funny with this premise. Too, too much.

I must admit that a friend picked out this movie at the video store. Having seen the preview, I was not at all interested in a movie I thought was going to be a ridiculous slapstick comedy. Imagine my surprise when what I saw was actually a pretty good movie that explores the nature of intimate relationships, romantic and otherwise. The trailer would have you believe this movie focuses on a therapist (Meryl Streep) finding out that her patient's younger lover, about whom the patient (Uma Thurman) shares extremely intimate details, is in fact the therapist's son, and madcap comedy situations would ensue – the therapist hiding behind potted plants in stores to catch glimpses of this woman and her son together, etc. That's not what this movie is at all. The major scene in the preview with the therapist hiding etc. is only one tiny little piece of this movie. Instead, this movie focuses on the relationship between Rafi (the "older woman" at 37) and her new boyfriend David (the "younger man" at 23), the relationship between Rafi and her therapist Lisa (who, unbeknownst to Rafi, happens to be David's mother), the mother-son relationship between David and Lisa, and the complications that can come from having multiple intimate roles in someone's life.

The movie explores the pitfalls of a relationship between people who are at different stages in their lives – Rafi at 37 is ready to start a family, whereas David at 23 may not be so ready to settle down and have kids; Rafi's friends have nice weekend houses in the Hamptons while David's friends still go to underground clubs. The movie also explores the hypocrisy of saying one thing (Lisa as the therapist telling Rafi to "go for it" while Lisa is still unaware the younger man is her own son) and your actual expectations (Lisa as the mother at one point insisting to her son the relationship with Rafi is pointless because he needs to eventually marry a young, Jewish woman), as well as the boundaries of intimacy (can Lisa the mother hear the details from Rafi that Lisa the therapist would normally have no problem hearing; can Lisa become a friend of her son's girlfriend having been her therapist.)

There is quite a bit of soul-searching on everyone's part; Lisa the therapist questions staying with a patient she knows is dating her son as well as her ongoing criticisms of her son's life; David is searching for his own identity, what he wants to do with his life, and his reasons for being with Rafi; while Rafi is struggling with asserting herself for what she wants and as well as questioning her relationship with a younger man. This movie is a pretty honest exploration of the question "is love enough?" This is not earth-shattering by any means, but it's actually interesting and well-thought. It's worth a $4 or $5 rental, although I wouldn't buy it. Think of this as a thinking person's romantic comedy.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I picked up this movie at the video store the other day. I had vague recollections that it was somehow an "important" movie of the late 60s. I was hesitant to watch it because I thought that meant it would consist of those weird psychedelic jump cuts and hand-held camera work that make watching some late 60s/early 70s movies a completely unpleasant experience. What I saw instead was a sweet little movie whose gags were all just on the real side of outrageous, and a main character with whom I sympathized greatly. I know I've made a gaffe or two […or three…] at a gathering, and I was laughing with recognition while cringing at his predicaments. If you looking for a fun time to lift your spirits, this is the movie.

When I caught this movie on TV the other day, I kept watching it because I could tell the points they were trying to make, but somehow the filmmakers kept missing the mark. I really wanted to like this movie. I just kept getting distracted by its disjointedness and low production values. Case in point: Because I missed the opening, I had no idea what movie this was while I was watching it, but I could tell right away it had been made in the 80s even though it was obviously set in the 60s. The wardrobe and hair look like something a bunch of kids would do for a 60s theme dance with the help the their parents and 80s clothes out of their own closet. Every look was just enough off that it didn't look at all authentic.

I could almost follow the story line, and I did want the main character to succeed. BUT almost every line of dialogue was mumbled, and every scene rang false, as if I could see a map outlining that the actors needed to get from from A to B in a particular scene, but they don't actually ever get there. Yet the next scene continues on as if they did. It took me almost the whole movie to really get what was going on, and a lot of time it felt as if there were entire chunks of the movie missing. Overall it's a mediocre movie. Not terribly bad, just not terribly good. I can't quite explain why I kept watching - maybe I just kept hoping a scene would succeed. It looks as if they point they were trying to make was that time in your life when you know everything is changing. It's just been done much better elsewhere. By the way, the dancing is kinda' cool, but boy some of the moves look like 80s break dancing instead of 60s jive.

This is the sort of movie that has probably done well on word-of-mouth alone. I liked it enough to recommend it to at least 2 different friends. Like Shakespeare in Love before it, this movie is definitely not historically accurate. If you can look past some of the more glaring inaccuracies (if you've ever taken a history of theater class you'll know instantly what I mean), you will be rewarded with a pretty gripping story. If you like Shakepearen-era theater and like stories that are well-written, you'll like this one. While I had certainly known there was a time in theater when men played women's parts, I had never before thought about what might have happened to them when women were finally allowed on the stage. This is an interesting and thought-provoking movie and probably best for adults and mature teens.

I have to say from the outset that I am a Suze Orman fan. This video is true-to-form in the sense that it is advice for the everyperson, on pretty much any budget. She's full of practical advice and realistic answers to the financial questions of a real person with credit card debt, student loans, and an average income. Why the 6? The video was a little on the boring side. She's a good speaker but needs to break it up a little bit with more audience interactions (there are some audience questions included in the Special Features part of the DVD, although the fact that she had graphics ready to answer some of the questions left me wondering if the questions were planted.) I do recommend this for the advice it gives but don't expect to be hugely entertained.

Wow. Why is it that I've heard of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, yet it has taken a very uneven 2004 made-for-TV HBO movie to make me aware of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns? I caught this movie about 10 minutes in, and stuck with it because I kept getting angrier and angrier that I hadn't heard this story before. I've since looked into a few biographies about these historical figures, and it seems one of the reasons the movie is so uneven is because they wanted to try to cram as many details into the movie at once. In general, this movie seems to be accurate, although many of the events seem to be compressed, altered, etc. for dramatic effect. For example, apparently the telegram to one of the Senator's from his mother did not arrive in the Senate chambers during a critical vote, but the news of it came out after he was accused of receiving "special favors" from the suffragists for his change of vote.

Overall, this movie is just OK. The acting is OK. The soundtrack is actually quite annoying and overused. The slow-motion swivel effects are overused. I also was unimpressed with the seemingly gratuitous bathtub scene (if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean) and slight nudity obviously geared toward keeping the interest of potential males in the audience. I do know that if I weren't so intrigued by the story itself, I probably would have given up on this movie about 3/4 of the way through. Kudos to the makers of this movie for actually getting this story out and into the eyes of the modern public, at least.

I don't care about seeing Sara Foster in a bikini or similarly scanty outfits again and again and again... I think the producers and directors remade the 1969 film just to audition girls for the part of Nancy. This movie was TERRIBLE! Bad camera work, too many cuts between medium-wide-close-ups (you could almost hear the director repeating "wide shot to medium shot, back to wide shot, close-up of hands on gun, now cut in a segue shot of surfers or that beautiful Hawaiian scenery." The script wandered all over the place. I didn't care about the characters. One can see the plot twists coming from a mile away. The only reason I watched this film to the end was because I was with a group of guy friends who wanted to keep seeing Sara Foster in a bikini. Ugh. THEN they wanted to watch the DVD extras! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I had just wasted 82 minutes of my life on this crap; there was no way I would waste anymore time than that. If you like girls, you'll probably watch this for the casting of the cute blond--which is exactly why a character like that is included in this sort of terrible movie. If you like guys, well, Owen Wilson is cute, but not 82 minutes of my life watching total drivel cute. Don't bother.

I have to hand it to these guys -- they actually managed to bring a whole dimension of sex and a plot to what otherwise would be a straightforward interview-the-experts discussion of quantum physics and its interplay with spirituality and the physical body. Filled with great ideas for disguising educational material, it's in the end a little over done. The animations were obviously costly (despite being done by a company in South Africa) and thus are repeated over...and over...and over... by the fifth or sixth time, you're wanting to scream at them to just make the movie shorter. And that's the thing: this movie could have been about 20 minutes shorter and been a lot tighter. It really ends two or three times (if you include the footage in the credits) and hits us over the head with its conclusions.

Overall, though, it's pretty good. The acting in the "storyline" segments was well done, particularly by Marlee and the kid. The movie definitely got me thinking about life, the universe and everything (to borrow a phrase from the late great Douglas Adams.)

The message of this movie seems to be that most of the "staid, middle aged" people living nowadays have had varying degrees of a secret rock n' roll past, and the key to getting your life back in hand is to embrace your inner rock n' roll rebel. OK. Not bad.

Not really much new here. It's a made-for-TV version of The Banger Sisters in a lot of ways, although, dare I say, actually better done. The plot twists in this one are a lot more organic and the movie moves along at a nice pace. If you've seen the promos or have even read the plot, you know what you're in for--an enjoyable couple of hours (with commercials.) Gary Cole is great. The supporting cast is great. My significant other commented, "Oh, my god, Sherilyn Fenn is playing a middle-aged mom?!? I used to think she was SUCH a hottie. Although she's still pretty hot..." I guess that says it all. Embrace your inner rock and roll rebel and go along for the ride.

This a good movie for inspiration. Girl quarterback wins over not only her school, but also the whole town. She proves she can play a "boys" sport well yet still be a feminine girl. It's definitely a message to girls about them being able to do anything. Some of the dialogue is very much stilted, though, especially that it's obviously designed to get across an empowering message. There is a touching but poorly written scene in which Tami and her mother are talking about the differences in choice their generations have, the mother saying she herself has no regrets choosing a marriage and family even though she had few other choices. She makes a statement that I think sums up the message we girls were given growing up in the 80s: "You can do ANYTHING. You can have EVERYTHING." yet the saddest part of all is that over 20 years later this movie could be remade practically verbatim and still be relevant. I'm sure girls in tackle football would still be fought against in the average American town.

Probably the best but most unrealistic part is that, despite almost the entire town being against Tami playing football, none of the boys on the team have any objections. They're all very supportive of her. That's great for fiction, but I doubt that was entirely true in the real story. Good overall, if you can ignore some of the more uneven parts and some of the mediocre acting.

Wow. There were only 2 things that kept me from falling asleep during this movie -- the most important was trying not to embarrass my friends who dragged me to see this and the other was a few shots of a nearly naked, buff Brad Pitt. Really. That's it. I know the purpose of these movies are the big, spectacular battle scenes, but come on -- the acting was TERRIBLE. There were WAY too many soap opera moments. The deliveries were positively wooden. And if someone said to Achilles "You do this so your name with live forever" ONE MORE TIME, I was going to throw my bucket o' popcorn at the screen. And, Hollywood, PLEASE would you give the women in these movies more to do than look young, hot, and sadly off into the distance. Gag me.

Those of us who were not around in the 1950's are vaguely skeptical at the thought that the media and these sort of school movies could possibly be SO laden with gender stereotypes and that weird force of conformity... but here it is. Yikes. It's hard to believe these sorts of movies were ever even produced -- Mother and Sister change into their best dresses to be pleasant to look at for their men... and, of course, Mother and Sister are doing all the cooking and other dinner preparations while Brother does his homework [I guess Sister doesn't need good grades to land that husband someday] and Junior is off having fun... then Father comes home from a hard day at the office to enjoy some "pleasant" conversation with Brother and Junior... gag me! Glad I watched this on MST3K. That made it a little less terrifying that this sort of crap passed for education at one point in our history. Joel -- "'Dad, I had an emotion today' 'Well, stop that, Son'"

First of all, I liked this movie. I liked that the theme was centered around rediscovering fun in your life [we all could do with a little of that] and about not comprising your values for what it is you THINK you want [Be careful what you wish for...]. This is not a life-changing movie, but it was a well-spent hour and a half. However... It looks like other people have also noticed that in 1987 this girl would have been more in love with Jon Bon Jovi than Rick Springfield, unless they're trying to show just how out of it she is. But it appears that this script was written 5 or 6 years ago and they just never updated it from 1981, or Rick Springfield was the biggest 80s star they could afford... who knows. BUT even if the girl had a crush on Rick Springfield held over from being 7, this is NO WAY Mtv would have been playing a Rick Springfield video in 1987! I was there... I also would have liked to have seen them spend a little more time on her adapting to 2004 from 1987, but I guess you can only concentrate on so much in a movie.

First of all, I love musicals, but I like to know beforehand that that's what I'm getting myself into. Ummm... we were enjoying this one as a fun romantic comedy when all of a sudden the male lead breaks out into song and a bunch of dancers appear out of no where!?! Not that it's bad, it's just that, well, NOTHING was mentioned about it on the packaging [again,do the people who write the blurbs actually watch the movies??]... The songs are in keeping with the overall tone of the film, and the dancing quite funny [hopefully intentionally so], but it's just that when you're not expecting them it can be one of those "Oh...my... we've rented a musical!?!?" It's a fun and funny movie, just be warned.

This plays like a French Woody Allen movie. Even the music is reminiscent of a New York scene. And, of course, they talk and talk and talk and talk and flirt and talk and talk and talk and make love and talk and talk and talk and jerk off at the office and talk and talk...

You get the idea. Heck, you can even hear their inner dialogue and see the fantasies they're picturing in their heads at any given moment. By the first 10 minutes, though, you wish they would just get it over with. I only lasted through about half of the movie, then I just got too bored.

AND, for about a quarter of the movie, all this talking is unintelligible if you don't understand French because the **(@#(*$ white subtitles get lost in the white tablecloth, in the white dresses, etc. But this is just another reason to not bother with this one.

From the picture on the cover (see the picture on the main details page!) and reading the back of the video jacket for this movie, I expected this to be a film about suburban wives sleeping with the hired help. Nope. It's a movie about a slightly sick [in the mental and physical sense] young girl [about 10 or 11 years old?] who befriends one of the guys hired to mow the lawns in her gated community. While the guy is reluctant at first, the friendship that forms between them is actually fun to watch. That's what makes the movie interesting. But while the end has to do with the class system talked about on the video jacket, this is a story about the girl and her "lawn dog" friend, with the parents and their repressive lifestyle being almost incidental to the story until the end. This is an interesting movie to watch, but I wish the people who write the blurbs on the video jackets would actually WATCH the movies once in a while.

We rented this under the title "Dracula's Curse"... WOW is it BAD!! Where to I begin? It sounds and looks dubbed, but the actors are obviously speaking English [someone has posted that a few of the actors had their English lines dubbed in, so maybe that's why]. There are some scenes that are obviously supposed to be scary/sexy/exotic, but the actors come off like college students in Halloween costumes at a cheap haunted house. The acting is TERRIBLE!! Maybe it's because the actors are speaking English and don't understand their lines? Anyway, if Mystery Science Theater were still around, this really, really bad movie would be a prime candidate for some great commentary. If you're so inclined, this is the perfect movie for a home MST treatment. Otherwise, don't waste your time or money.

This was a very soap opera-ish production, complete with every requisite trauma scene for a child star turned adult actress. I have to admit to watching almost the whole thing, but it felt like vignettes strung together with no other real plot besides the whole mother/daughter struggle. I was thinking it would try to shed some light on the circumstances of her death, but there really wasn't much more to the end than what I've heard rumored. Side note -- if you look closely, this was obviously filmed in Australia, even though it was supposed to be the California coast--an Australia friend of mine immediately recognized one of the house views as Sydney harbor [and there was an "Australian casting" credit at the end of the movie].

Was this supposed to be intriguing? All I remember from being stuck in the same house as someone who rented this movie is that I found it really boring. It just seemed to try REALLY hard to be cutting edge, disturbing, etc. All it succeeded in being was dumb. I couldn't even sit through it. Don't bother.

Choppy with only a few funny moments. I wanted to like this movie, I really did... but it's just not that good. Wait to see this on tv or rent it from the bargain bin. Don't waste new release prices on this one. Mike Myers is just not funny, and watching him try so hard makes you feel really sorry for him. I did like that Candice Bergen got to be nice in this one. You get the impression from the cover that she's going to be out to get the main character (a la Miss Congeniality), but she gets to champion the underdog in this one.