Reviews

Overrated, clichéd and irritatingly phony and contrived attempt at 'indie edgy', redeemed only by the quality of its cast. Horny, foulmouthed oldster and sullen, nihilist teenager? Wow, that's sure some cutting-edge stuff there, though it's such a relief that the little girl always has headphones on when grampa starts throwing f-bombs. The suicidal brother who's a Proust scholar and gay because...well, no good reason really, it's just FUNNIER that way. A cop who misses the body in the trunk because, well, no good reason really, he's just more into the porn mags he finds there. And oh, man, that scene where he Dad drives a van on the sidewalk!! Move over Mr. Keaton, this is slapstick gold! Wacky people doing wacky stuff, you gotta love it, even the twentieth time around....right? I'm so hoping 'Little Miss Sunshine's rapturous reception is just some sort of cry for 'something, anything else' in an age of blander cartoon comedies and that eventually this film's deeply minor achievement will be seen for what it is.

Wow, fanboy mania here! Lookit all those tens! Don't get me wrong. Office Space's take on cubicle culture is dead-on hilarious, and the actors are all likable (or hate-able) enough, with Gary Cole fully deserving all the praise he's gotten for his supremely odious 'Bill Lumbergh'. But it's hard to ignore that the niceties of plotting seem to have been severely neglected, even allowing for the more lax standards of modern comedy. The romantic subplot involving Livingston and Aniston's characters seems at best tacked-on, which is bad enough, but worse is the inexcusably lame mistaken-identity twist in the last act. And Judge really *should* have used the darker ending too, where Lumbergh lives on...