Reviews

I don't know if he was in the USMC, but he did hate this show. And he was not a flag-waving patriot, he wished we never were in Vietnam to begin with. As for the show itself, it was a "fish-out-of- water" trope, namely a sweet bumpkin from Mayberry, originally an auto mechanic, somehow got into the United States Marines. (The real Jim Nabors was never in the military.) The humor of the show depended on his interaction mainly with his sergeant, though with other people as well. Though a bumbler, oftentimes he DID win out, such as using a captured skunk to punish another sergeant who did Carter wrong or winning an exercise maneuver contest by doing various crazy things.

The irony is that the basis for this show was the novel "No Time For Sergeants", about a bumpkin who has knowledge about the countryside which made him more knowledgeable about things than other military people, such as how to interpret an aerial photograph properly or how to survive in the wilderness. But the same principle alas is not part of this show.

Other than that, the movie works. Some space aliens are harvesting small plants in a wooded area. Some people arrive and they are scared off, flying back to their mothership. But one gets left behind and finds a boy who befriends him. The boy lives with an older brother and their mother, and the boy reveals his new friend first to his brother, then several other skeptical people. It turns out this alien can heal wounds and make bicycles fly. Two problems emerge-the alien's physiognomy isn't too suited for living on Earth and he wants to rejoin his own people, and Uncle Sam eventually finds out about the new arrival.

There are crass product placements for Reese's Pieces candy and the phone company, yet the movie is still amusing and charming, such as the scene where E. T. and the boy are mentally linked together and the embarrassing ways this results for him in school. Also, as humorist Dave Barry put it, he couldn't hold his beer. Still, this movie is more for older children than little ones.

I saw this movie on television where the blood and guts were censored, but the spirit of the movie remained intact. This is a deliberately campy movie about a dystopian future in the year 2000, where the dictatorial President holds an annual cross-country race of five cars travelling from one coast to another, the idea being that the cars not only have to complete the race but to run down pedestrians for points.

The contestants for 2000 include Calamity Jane, Matilda the Hun, Nero the Hero, Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone) and Frankenstein (David Carradine), each with a navigator and decorated car with a theme, such as Nero's car decorated to look like a lion. Frankenstein is the favored contestant, having been the sole survivor of the previous years' races. But there is a resistance movement led by Thomasine Paine, descendant of Thomas Paine, whose intentions are to scuttle the race and discredit the President.

An all-around dark satire of politics, repression, revolution, violence, themed entertainment, and it does its job.

I never even heard of that show and turned it on by accident. My late father used to watch ridiculous old movies for laughs, and MST3K was a show with a human and three puppet characters doing the same thing, where they make snide comments about the stupid things in whatever movie they happen to be watching, usually cheap grade Z movies.

And this movie has plenty of ridiculousness. Ator, our barbarian hero, with several companions fight "invisible" enemies, somehow is able to make a hang glider from primitive materials and fly it, somehow can make hand grenades, and the big enemy somehow has nuclear weapons. (None of this I am making up.) And the puppet characters point out ridiculous elements that made it to the movie, such as one character caught wearing sunglasses, and tire tracks on one field. If you're into that sort of entertainment, you might enjoy it.

TV shows converted into movies, or vice versa, don't always work. The idea here is that now you see the various Muppet characters, instead of behind a stage as on the TV show, with whole bodies instead. This takes some special effects beyond what you saw every week on the small screen, but they got it right. I loved Kermit riding the bicycle at the beginning, for example.

But it takes more than special effects to make a good movie. The story is basically standard, Kermit singing and getting the idea he could make it in Hollywood. Then travelling there, meeting Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, and other Muppet characters along the way and having them join him on his journey. There is also a villainous restauranter who wants Kermit to do advertisements for his frog legs restaurant chain, which Kermit refuses on principle to do, but the restauranter doesn't give up easily.

The story itself is nothing special, but that is not the point. You enjoy seeing the Muppets doing their thing, all outside their traditional TV theater setting. Good family fun.

A military satellite has crashed in a small Arizona town, and of course the military goes to retrieve it. But when they arrive, they find the town intact, but most of its inhabitants dead, save a crying infant and an old souse. They determine an alien virus has infected the satellite, and it is brought to a top secret secure laboratory for some scientists to determine what this virus is and how to stop it from doing more harm.

Except for a disappointing silly ending, the movie shows a proper scientific procedural, following the Michael Crichton novel it was based on. The scientists are normal and not superhuman, nor do they have magic equipment besides the equipment and tools of the era. Certainly a lot better than other sci-fi movies of the era.

An awful professional clown has a pet golden retriever he treats cruelly and ends up losing. The dog meets a boy who has just moved into town and the boy fosters then keeps him, and it turns out that the dog is able to "play" basketball, or rather can knock basketballs into the basket utilizing his snout. (The credits for the movie say that the dog did it for real.) The boy joins his new school's basketball team, and so does the dog, first as a mascot, then he is called in to play when several human players are injured

Basically a cookie-cutter "boy and his dog triumphs" story, though suspension of disbelief is required, namely the fact that the dog can put basketballs into a basket but cannot genuinely play basketball, as he can only carry the basketball in his mouth rather than dribble it as basketball players are supposed to do during a game. One former basketball player in the movie gives a decent performance, but everyone else just goes through the motions. Even the villainous clown is so inept he isn't even minimally scary. Some more movies were made using a golden retriever playing various sports, but this movie failed to make me want to watch them.

A scenario modelled on the variety shows of the era, with Kermit the Frog from "Sesame Street" hosting episodes with a group of other puppet/marionette characters (where the name "Muppet" came from), both human and animal, and a different human guest each week, major stars of the day such as Jim Nabors, Randy Newman, Diana Ross, Sylvester Stallone and others.

The idea was undoubtedly considered crazy when it was taken up, as this was a show more for older people rather than small children a la "Sesame Street". Yet all the guest actors worked well enough with the Muppet characters, and clever writing kept the show amusing without degenerating into ridiculousness. Perhaps a period piece, but it was fun when I and my family watched it.

The movie was said to have been made on a Hollywood soundstage, but it is the performances that count. Using major stars of the day, the story is about a spoiled rich boy who is taken by his father from his boarding school onto an ocean liner where he is expected to learn more about life. But the boy sticks to his old mentality until he happens to fall off the liner into the ocean, then being picked up by a fishing trawler full of poor sailors. And the boy finally learns how he cannot compel people to obey him anymore but has to follow what the crew of the trawler tells him to do.

Basically predictable, but interesting for the kiddiewinks. Hopefully I can find the book someday.

The basic plot is about a man and a woman who are fellow clerks in a gift shop who dislike each other when they are together in person but who are in love with each other as pen pals, and neither of whom who know who the other one is in person.

But there is more than that to the story. There are other clerks and a delivery boy, with conflicts among them, including one clerk who is unlikable and possibly worse. The proprietor of the store is friendly with the male pen pal, but there is something bothering him greatly, and nobody knows what or why. Also, there is the Christmas shopping season about to arrive.

The story has a predictable ending, but it is not all sweetness and light, especially when you find out what was bothering the proprietor. Still good as a story.

I saw this movie as a teenager, when my church's youth group was taken to a movie theater to see it. The story is based on a novel about an upper-middle-class family in turmoil after a tragedy. There is the weak father, the furious and stone-hearted mother, and the surviving teen son, the older one having died in a boating accident. The surviving son is secretly seeing a psychiatrist, and not one in a fancy office either.

I would find out this was Robert Redford's directorial debut, but this seems, as other reviewers have pointed out, more like a TV movie than a big screen accomplishment. The mother hates the younger son and has the feeling the wrong one died, though the reason why is not explored. There are arguments when the grandparents come to visit and on a golf course, where the family cannot even temporarily stop fighting. The real problem is that we never learn why the mother feels as she does about everyone else, making this movie unsatisfying.

I was disappointed in the previous "Yogi's Gang" series, but this successor cartoon, a parody of the 1976 Olympic Games, makes up for it. Again many Hanna-Barbera characters are brought back and new ones added, and they are divided into three competing sports teams, the Yogi Yahooies, the Scoobie-Doobies, and the Really Rottens, the latter composed of villainous characters who try to win by cheating.

This is not a morality play, but simply a comedy with the various teams competing in various Olympic-type events. The Really Rottens, invariably jeered by the audience, try to cheat every time, and usually fail, but sometimes they get away with it. Basically a period piece for the tykes, but still enjoyable.

I was a tyke when this came out but had already seen plenty of old cartoons and was intrigued with the idea of so many characters from older Hanna-Barbera cartoons gathered into one show, namely taking place on an ark-like helicopter traveling to different places. But this is not a travel show, but a situation where they travel to different places and meet a new villain each time, supposedly a good person but secretly representing an evil (dishonesty, sloppiness, wastefulness, etc.); and Yogi and crew are initially taken in by these people then realize the consequences.

While there is fun in how the villains trick Yogi and crew into misbehaving and rationalizing such behavior, the problem with the show is that you would think Yogi and company would be wise enough not to be tricked so easily in many instances, and even little kids are aware that sometimes the villains win and the good guys fail. And the cartoons Yogi and company originally appeared in were not morality plays themselves.

So how did this cartoon even come about as it did? Another reviewer pointed out that the group Action For Children's Television was formed in 1968 to lobby the television industry to move commercial television from entertainment to educational, and it had some success in the 1970's, though that would change when television would become deregulated. Even those who hate Ronald Reagan should thank him for making cartoons entertaining again.

This is supposed to be a period piece satire, how one news anchor is very upset about how terrible television news has become, and screams about it on the air, and how every other performer in the movie is also shouting when they say anything. It got to be too much and I had to turn it off.

I get the idea, but it is done in such an over-the-top way it gets more ridiculous and the intended message is lost. Yet this movie gets high praise and even got Oscars. For what, criticizing television, which is a competitor to Hollywood movies for entertainment? Overacting can be funny, but not when it is meant to be taken seriously. This would have been perfect fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000 if they had dared to do it.

The movie opens with police detective John Ferguson on a rooftop and literally clinging by his fingers to stop from falling to death. Then another policeman comes to his aid-and tragedy occurs, finally causing Ferguson to have to retire due to emotional damage.

But a rich businessman friend of his tells him of his wife behaving strangely, evidently having her own psychological problems, and he hires Ferguson to be by her side to find out what is happening and if anything can be done about it. A quasi-romance develops between her and Ferguson, but complications ensue...

The beginning of the movie does a great job in depicting how frightening heights can be, though most of it is about how Ferguson's psychology is affected and how he tries to heal himself. But many strange but logical twists occur before the movie ends-in an unexpected but credible way.

The Simpsons were originally a set of cartoon shorts on the Tracy Ullman Show, with essentially a standard family sitcom scenario of a dense husband, the smarter wife, and two kids who are meant to be smarter than the adults, as has been repeated in other comedies over the decades. What does this have to do with I Love Lucy? Homer Simpson, the husband, would end up becoming TOO stupid and alienating the fans. Similarly, Lucy Ricardo would become too much herself.

The show had the original scenario of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, the latter a Cuban immigrant who runs a musical band for a living, living in an apartment building next to their elderly neighbors the Mertzes. Lucy would get into a number of scrapes and would end up being bailed out by the others, often to their consternation. Later on in the series, Lucy and Ricky would end up having a baby son.

The show started well enough, but as time went on, Lucy would get into more and more ridiculous scrapes causing more and more headaches for everyone else, even making her husband think she was in mortal danger and causing him to panic, or trying to join his band as a singer when she couldn't sing. Lucy would evolve from being comical to becoming genuinely annoying. No shock that my elder sister did not love Lucy.

When the old king dies, son Edward is supposed to take the throne. Trouble is, he has his love affair with American Wallis Simpson, and though that could be kept out of sight as his advisors tell him, he refuses the throne and has his brother George take it instead. Problem is, George has a stammering problem and he is supposed to make speeches in his new job. What to do?

This historical drama works because the audience is told all that is going on, and you could understand what was happening and what was at stake even if you were a layman with little understanding of the period or of the British Royal Family. The performances are good and so are the costumes and decor. But the movie did remind me of a tour of Britain and Scotland I went on in 1999, which included seeing the Tower of London and the royal jewels. The tour guide said that each generation of the royal family wants an heir and a spare, and it was fortunate that there was a spare in this generation. My late aunt thought that Edward did not really refuse the throne out of romance but simply never wanted the job to begin with. The movie implies as much.

I did hear about King George III went insane during his reign, but no details about that. I assumed this movie was going to tell us they story and how it affected history. But this movie simply confused us at first and we turned it off.

I would later learn that this was based on a comic play, and this would work if you were expecting farce and not real history. But we were expecting to learn the story of King George and what happened to him and what was at stake. Instead, the movie began with the king being attacked by a supposed assassin, only for it to be a madwoman with a dull knife. And then we couldn't make heads or tails of what happened next. This material doesn't work if the territory it covers is completely unfamiliar to the viewer.

Reading the biography "Ball Of Fire", Desi Arnaz, now divorced from Lucille Ball but still managing her, recommended she turn down the part of Mame in this movie, but Lucy went ahead anyway. Too bad, because she couldn't sing and was already too old for the part of the title character, as well as not fitting due to her long-established typecasting of being a childish clown.

Mame is the story of a rich woman who is given her young nephew to raise, and she decides to show him the different aspects of life. But things happen such as the Great Depression wiping her out financially and how her nephew gets older, and she has to deal with his changing personality over the years.

The movie never really works, and I though a local stage production I saw years ago was much better. If you want to see the Mame story, pick a different movie or stage production.

Based in a novel by Clinton Twiss about a married couple who travel for a year in a trailer home to see the USA, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball play a newly married couple where hubby is a civil engineer, a job requiring him to travel throughout the country. To save the trouble of having to keep moving to new houses as part of the job, hubby makes the decision to buy a trailer home and new car that can pull it. Trouble is that the wife falls in love with an extra-long trailer home and hubby has to buy it.

As might be expected, all sorts of trouble occurs, in part due to the trailer's length making it hard to handle, but also because of Wifey's childish behavior. She wants to do impractical things and collects items to represent her travels to different places, clogging up the trailer. If this sounds like the "I Love Lucy" TV show in movie form, you are right. If you like the one, you should like the other.

In 1931, Sullivan is a mob enforcer living in Rock Island, Illinois, with a wife and two young boys, the children unaware of what their father does. Sullivan gets into a harsh dispute with Connor, the son of his boss, and it turns bloody, with Sullivan's wife and younger son murdered, but Sullivan manages to escape with the older son. Sullivan flees with his son in the family car to Chicago to meet with boss Frank Nitti, offering to work for him in exchange for permission to kill Connor. Nitti refuses and the battle begins.

The performers all do well, but the movie's real power is the period cinematography, alternating between light and dark but always grim. Based on a Max Allen Collins comic of the same name, the movie is different from it but still packs a punch.

Harry is a corpse who is found lying down on a hill in a small town. He was the estranged husband of a woman of the town, and the body is found by a local boy, a huntsman, a doctor, an artist, a vagrant, and an obnoxious local sheriff at different times of the day. Foul play is suspected, though nobody is certain why, and as the day goes on, the body ends up being buried and dug up several times, and even winding up in his widow's bathtub.

Black comedy works when it isn't too black; the character of Harry was somebody nobody liked, and other comic events in the story make it both tense and funny. We actually saw this in an old theater; this is a movie best enjoyed by a group of people rather than by oneself.