Reviews

Except there's no murder mystery, just sick patients with diseases that only one doctor can cure. At least, that's how it will probably play out week after week. It has identical graphics to CSI showing all the little buggies in our bodies, and more to come, I assume. And the main character is an eccentric, brilliant, iconoclast, who puts together minute details with his vast grasp of trivia to solve the mysteries of the human body. Just like CSI, his ethnically diverse team includes one white man, one African American man, one white woman, all very loyal and slightly confounded by his genius. And like the old Diagnosis Murder, it takes place mostly in the confines of a hospital. Except DM had a loyal two person ethnically diverse team.

I've seen Hugh Laurie in his English productions and he can submerge himself into a role, he's funny and charismatic. The only Hollywood movie I've seen him in is Stuart Little, where he stuck to the middle class husband act, but was quite appealing and charming in that role. Here, he's gruff and unshaven, with a limp (shades of Dead Zone) and an American accent from...somewhere. Puzzling since as someone else noted, his loyal white employee gets to keep his Aussie accent.

It's a pity the writing is clichéd so far, but for Mr. Laurie's sake, I hope it works out.

Someone else said if you hate this, you were born too late. I totally agree. This is a light-hearted 80s teen comedy. They were all like that!--their worst worries were getting girls, being popular. I liked the visual gags, where the camera cuts to the boys in shorts in the shower. I liked the scene where Anthony Michael Hall is bragging about his rough life to the old blues musicians. This is as much a classic as Ferris Bueller or 16 Candles. I like it much better than Breakfast Club. The only things that date it are the polite parent-child relationships, the tame sexual innuendos and the Mad Max references towards the end. LOVE those old clothes big hair and the Madonna-inspired outfits. Enjoy!

I'm no fan of reality shows but I have friends who think they can learn something about human nature from them. Well, it turns out they are frequently setups: they lie to the contestants about the point of the show (Joe Millionaire contestants were not even told they were competing to marry a rich guy--they thought it was just a vacation); they take shots out of context and put them in other scenes; they redub dialogue; they reshot scenes that they didn't like (okay for fiction, not "reality"--especially when the reshoots are in Griffith Park near LA, not a pacific island); they manipulate players against each other (in one survivor episode, they insisted a woman stop helping a fellow player and do an impromptu interview, then they encouraged teammates to vote her off because she didn't come to his rescue).

Several of the producers justify themselves in the documentary, saying, "Americans KNOW this isn't real, that it's faked. They don't care, they just like to be entertained." Is this true? Decide for yourself.

So of course, I expect it to be cancelled, and am taping episodes already. I have been a loooong time fan of Law and Order, and rarely miss a show, but I have blown it off for Kid Notorious.

This show is bold and daring and that's one reason I love it. They aren't afraid to make fun of anyone--actresses, agents, singers, rappers. Maybe their "peeps" have put out the bad press.

One naysayer on IMDB praised the unfunny Crank Yankers. Well, what can I say to that? "A chacun son gout." So don't spoil this for us.

Several people said that it has inside jokes. I DISAGREE! Who needs to be a Hollywood insider to know that Hollywood churns out garbage because of agent-engineered deals and box-office perception? Who needs to be a Hollywood insider to know that actresses have everything lifted and tucked and collagened? Or that said actresses drop and pick up projects on a whim? Aren't such stories the entire contents of People Magazine and Entertainment Weekly?

In the first episode, the "mafia" come after Kid to get back their investment in a movie. He reinvests it in a musical version of The Godfather, featuring rappers Kid meets in jail. Who doesn't know that turning perfectly good movies into musicals is the rage these days, or that these adaptations are sometimes ridiculous? Isn't the idea of The Godfather as a musical with rappers funny? I think it's hilarious. Maybe you just have to really enjoy movies, or maybe you have to have a good sense of irony.

One person mentioned a joke, "This is one of the most remote villages in the world...hey, look, I got full bars on my cell phone!" Now, what's wrong with that? It's exactly the type of joke you'd find on The Simpsons, about the omnipresence of technology and/or the importance people place on having it that way.

I laughed at this show as much as a good Simpons episode (unfortunately, not as frequent as they used to be). It's a really funny show. It makes me laugh out loud. The pacing is fast and the jokes are funny. I hope it makes it to syndication.

I know that network tv listens to the whims of viewers, but Comedy Central usually knows better.

I read this book in 1998 and this adaptation is disappointing. I thought it would be difficult to translate the store's neighborhood, the socio economic status of the various ex's and the guys from the store, into American terms. And they missed the mark.

If you liked the movie, you'll love the book. The work buddies are pretty close--Dick is surprisingly good. John Cusack is just okay, not really showing all the neurosis and passion of Rob. He seems too good looking and superficial to be really as miserable as the character in the book is. I disagree with most of the female casting choices. His mother, for instance, looks only about 10 years older, whereas in the book, you get the feeling that she's old enough that he feels guilty about disappointing her--30-35 years older. Sad to say, I couldn't watch it long enough to see if the scene where he goes to the movies with his parents is included--in the book, it's both funny and poignant. If you like this author, About a Boy is a much better adaptation of one of his books, which captures all the nuances of personality and self-deprecating sarcasm of the main character.

Interesting that NBC put Debra Messing into nearly the same role, while trading in a very witty sitcom for a mediocre one.

Ned is not gay, just ambitious and self-involved, and even in its last days, the show never fell to the level of hooking up the main m/f antagonists. Greg Germann (later on Allie McBeal) and Nadia Dajian are very funny as Ned's best friends.

It's too bad that interesting, complex characters (ambitious Ned, young and confused Stacey, wacky but very happy Amanda and Eric) are replaced by the easier-to-understand stereotypes: cute-gay Will, not-so-cute-gay Jack and the so common it's boring strident-oversexed-single female-"best friend". And I don't recall a laugh track on Ned and Stacey.

Anyway, if there's any way of seeing this show, you'll see what I mean. I'd love to see Thomas Haden Church in a big role. He's extremely talented.

edward norton is an incredibly great actor, but not a good director of comedies (not yet). the movie is silly and heavy handed at the same time. very cliched story: "30-something career girl" meets "30-something career rabbi" and "30-something career priest". then there's the 60-something jewish mother who pressures her son (do such women really exist anymore?) the priest couldn't leave the church? the girl couldn't convert?

norton is an interesting actor and gets as close as looking like maybe he wants to play a priest, stiller is totally unbelievable as a leather clad rabbi and elfman is one dimensional as a super achieving career girl madly in love with stiller (a huge stretch of the imagination).

no pungent religious jokes, just a silly love triangle.

I was a kid when it came out, but it was really funny, corny with low budget props similar to Dr. Who. The only actor was Marshall Efron (who often appeared on PBS's Great American Dream Machine). Each weekly half hour showed two bible stories--one from the Old Testament, one from the New. I remember he was Noah, wearing striped pj's with cutout animals walking onto the ark. He also was Daniel in the Lion's Den, fighting off a giant stuffed lion obviously thrown at him, intercut with footage of a lion attacking a man. At the time it was pretty funny stuff, Marshall always sporting a big handlebar moustache. When he did the Tower of Babel, he went to the UN and showed a list of all current recognized languages, nearly 200 of them, making funny asides and puns. I loved it, but I don't remember that it was on regularly.

So many critics raving about it. What a waste of time. Maybe it was my own expectations about how great it would be, based on so many positive, glowing reviews. But it left me flat.

My expectations: the flashbacks would reveal the true sinuous plot, the entire mystery, a mystery that would be enigmatic even if played forward. I thought it would cover the time from his wife's death until now. Some people said they needed to see it again to understand it.

What it was: flashbacks that cover just the last couple days, very obviously connected, neither confusing nor evocative. The real mystery is revealed in a clumsy last minute exposition spilled by Pantolino. The only interesting seconds, with some resonance of the frailty of human memory, were when Pearce misremembered his touch to his wife's thigh.

Pearce was rigid, Pantolino was adequate, Moss was brittle but okay. The whole movie is one boring gimmick. I feel no need to see it again to figure it all out; once was more than enough.

I really enjoy this show. I've been watching it for 1 and a half seasons now and I keep expecting it to repeat itself, but it hasn't! Each episode is unique and interesting, yet not like any other episode. In addition to changing the various catastrophes Parker goes back to avoid (nuclear annihilation, assassination, terrorist bombings, leaks of biological warfare, etc.), the writers actually vary something about the going-back process. Once it was multiple backsteps when Frank tried to get it all perfect; once it was a trip into an alternate universe when a test backstep coincides with a power surge (and this had characters in very different roles, if you were familiar with them before); once it was a voodoo practitioner summoning the white god "Shakazulu" and getting Frank through an odd series of coincidences--and he really does help her friend. It's clever but not in an in-your-face kind of way.

There is ongoing tension in the old animosity-hiding-intense-attraction department between Olga and Frank, and this gets resolved very satisfactorily. Sometimes she declares her love for him, so we get to see them "together", but usually he has to backstep, so it's all back to normal and he's the only one who remembers what was and what could have been. This is true of all the relationships on the show. So the balance never gets destroyed, but we get the satisfaction of seeing what's been suggested for so long.

Anyway, I highly recommend this show. I started watching it because Wednesdays are usually dead before 9:00 (I could not get into Dark Angel), but now I actually go out of my way to catch it. The main character is not the typical leading man but I like that, less formulaic. The ensemble acting and writing are really very good. And there's plenty of explosions and car chases to go around.

Jeff Bridges' character, the president, has at least one often parodied Clintonesque attribute: an undisciplined appetite (for food). He's so thrilled that he can get a shark sandwich or hazelnut pudding on a moment's notice that he seems more buffoonish than presidential. This schtick is just played out too much, too often. The same way, Allen's character, Laine Hanson, is also too long-suffering and tight-lipped, for too long. Since it was written for Ms Allen, the writer might have been so in love with everything she does that he was blind to how repetitious such a performance could be. I don't know whether it's the script or the director (wait! the director wrote it!) that imposed such one-dimensionality on these characters. However, all the actors do a great job in spite of it. Gary Oldman especially breaks out of the box he's put in.

On the whole, it's a very good political movie, with an interesting surprise. In my opinion, it went on a bit too long with the insistence to not discuss the accusations, until the surprise. If it had been 20 minutes shorter, it would have been easier to take. And it's really hard to believe that any candidate in our current political climate either would, or could even survive without directly addressing such defamations. And, surely, after the testimony of Mariel Hemingway, the senator's boat would have been sunk if it were "real".

The DVD shows some scenes that were cut, legitimately. Since they didn't show her father's press conference, it makes me wonder why he was in the movie at all. Likewise, I would have cut out everything with Runyon's wife since they don't affect the plot. But I would have re-included the scene where Jerry got fired for suggesting they would back Hathaway. I was surprised, while watching the film, that this wasn't addressed.

I loved the speech the president gives at the end, not because it fits the movie all that well, but the sentiments expressed, especially the quote by Napoleon.

Anyway, it's not perfect, but a good movie with very good performances.

It was hard for me to believe that a fat (Logue must have worn a prosthetic belly) slacker could actually bed so many pretty women and then have them all meet at various points. Or that the female lead could really go for him. He expounds on `The Tao of Steve', of cool role models, guys who were so cool that women chased them. His love interest challenges him with the example of Don Juan, who was afraid to love and trust (okay, a group of all guys will probably not want to see this talky movie. I hate to say it, but this is a `chick flick'. Or for fat slackers who want to see one get the girl.) It's entertaining (and instructional?) to see the tricks that Dex pulls on various women. A pleasant romantic comedy.

This movie couldn't seem to decide whether it was funny or dark. Mostly it's funny and charming, not too dark. Once it settles into the preposterous idea that these young amateurs could succeed in kidnapping this ex `capo di tutti capi', it has to go into the realm of comedy. Here Christopher Walken is no longer outwardly angry with them, but chatty, sort of enjoying himself. Other reviews say that J. Galecki's character is badly done, but I disagree. The other characters straddle the edge between comedy and seriousness, while Ira is a flat out caricature of the wimp of the group. Between him and a very amused Walken, it morphs firmly into a comedy with interesting plot twists.

The chosen ending (you see two others on the DVD) was, in my opinion, too dark for the rest of the movie. Barrett seems like a quite reasonable guy by the end. Guess why they chose it? It tested best for the under 25 demographic. (After testing, it's too bad the marketing group didn't have enough money to spend on actual advertising.) I thought it left a bad taste to an otherwise lighthearted movie. Wonder how the original short story ended...There are other flaws, like the unnecessary flashback with Laura San Giacomo, but seeing Walken in a 70s outfit and long wig is more than worth it!

I rented this thinking `oh, another Tarantino-like noirish pseudo-hip guy-movie', but it was MUCH better than that--a very funny movie with great lines. Walken and Leary are both very likable. Leary's character is very close to the one he played on the very funny, short-lived TV show "The Job". (Whatever happened to that, ABC?)

Although a funny, only slightly scary meditation on the nature of film-making is not everyone's cup of tea, this is a wonderfully crafted, funny, intelligent perfect movie.

Willem DaFoe is marvelous as the exhibitionist, horny (feeding on a beautiful woman is erotic for him), alternately menacing and petulant real vampire Schreck, who has agreed to star in Murnau's Nosferatu. There are shades of Christopher Walken's campy haminess in his performance, but he brings his own flavor of humor to a rather profound, poignant portrait. It makes me want to see his prior works again. John Malkovich plays the exact same cold prissy control freak he *always* plays, and it works perfectly. The rest of the cast is wonderful. Nice to see Eddie Izzard onscreen. No need to go into more details--prior reviews have captured all the important points. This film inspires confidence that there really are some intelligent filmmakers (producers, actors, directors, writers) in Hollywood.

Apparently, this is quite difficult to see in theatres. I managed to, but it is on video. I imagine that on video, the subtitles are as difficult to read as the ones in "A Chinese Ghost Story" (Another Hark title). Many of the fight scenes are, like the other title, shot on a set in near total darkness with some artificial light as "moonlight". Again, on a screen, beautiful, but on video, a bit hard to see. There is A LOT of fighting, chopped arms legs and heads. (What do you expect, with the action centered around a knife/sword factory?) It's so violent that after a while I found myself laughing to relieve the tension. And the spewing blood can be comical. Like many of these movies, even the "good" guys have questionable motives.

I was interested in this because I'd read that Hark stopped production in the middle because of one of the actress's complaints and rewrote it from a woman's perspective. Still, the main female character is whiny, silly and sheltered, little more than a typical HK plot device to get fights going. I found her character very annoying.

Plot: 4 of 10, fight scenes 8 of 10 IF you can see them on a large screen. Subtitles are lousy, but not really necessary.