Mahatma Reviews

The Lion and the Mouse (1943)

another retelling of an Aesop fable

[5/10 · 17 January 2002]

This is yet another retelling of the Aesop fable about Timaeus and Androclese: the Lion with the Thorn, and the mouse who saves him. Paul Terry gives a typically adept adaptation of it, involving some humerous drunkeness, and a Mighty Mouse cameo. It's not fall down hilarious, but it is funny, and, frankly, all of Paul Terry's hundreds (really!) of Cartoons are well worth seeing, though, unfortunately, they're very hard to come by these days. Seldom shown on TV, and few compilation videos exist.

Beanstalk Jack (1946)

a nice, forgotten short

[7/10 · 17 January 2002]

Like most all of Paul Terry's Terry Tunes, this one delivers. It's about seven minutes long, and is a liberal merging/retelling of "The Little Old Lady Who Lived In A Shoe" and "Jack And The Beanstalk." This is actually better than it sounds, and it has several cute late 1940s surealistic touches, but it doesn't play them up too much. Cute without being cloying, and funny, though not particularly hilarious, it's well worth the time to watch, assuming you can find it anywhere. As with all of the 800-odd Terry Tunes, it's seldom shown and hard to come by.

Blue City (1986)

Above and beyond the call of apathy

[13 December 2001]

I saw this movie in the theaters in 1986 as a freshman in college when I was really in to bad movies. "Good movies are a dime a dozen, but bad movies are forever" I used to say. This film changed my mind. It's poorly acted, and directed, and written, and utterly unlikable. It is not, however, bad enough to be truly remarkable (like, say, "Crush Groove"), nor bad enough to serve as a cautionary example (Like, say, "Psycho Girls") it's simply a vanity piece with two over-paid, under-talented stars phoning in a "Performance" to get money to spend on coke. Judd and Ally were a couple during the filming of this movie, and yet have less onscreen chemistry than Adam West and Max Gail pretending to be gay in a recent episode of Drew Carey. In the end, this movie set out to leave a dead 90 minutes in my memory, and it succeded. This is not a movie for watching, it is a movie for lying down and avoiding.

The Aliens Are Coming (1980 TV Movie)

Barneby Alien: A Quinn martin Production

[13 December 2001]

I was thirteen when this aired, and even at that young age, I felt insulted. I don't think this counts as a spoiler, but just in case, I'm throwing out there a SPOILER WARNING: Aliens want to invade the earth, for inadequately defined reasons. They possess the bodies of people who may be helpful in this endevour, in no adequately defined process. They are opposed by a Doctor, who functions as a detective, and is "The Only One Who Knows What's Really Going On." There's an extended sequence on the proper way to construct a hamburger - I kid you not - and then, after about an hour and a half, for no adequately defined reason, the movie ends. This was actually intended as a "Back Door Pilot" - that is, a 'made for TV movie' that, if successful, would launch it's own series. Clearly the premise for this series would have been a sort of cross between "Barnaby Jones" and "The Invaders." Mercifully, it appears I was the only one watching in twenty-one years ago, and the show never materialized.