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jstrewth
Reviews
Year of the Comet (1992)
Death, Death, Death
In his book "Which Lie Did I Tell?", screenwriter William (The Princess Bride) Goldman talked in detail about how this film became doomed after a sneak preview screening ended with nearly the entire audience fleeing the theater by the half-hour mark (or so I remember reading).
While this film isn't as bad as it sounded, I still gave up on it halfway through.
To paraphrase The Unknown Movies website, it's rather hard to tell whether Goldman wanted to ape Romancing the Stone (a much better film, of course), especially considering he has long criticized Hollywood for avoiding original stories. On the other hand, the finished film seemed unbelievably rushed; it's as if I was watching a movie on television that had already joined in progress following a baseball game, or something.
So yeah, don't bother, unless you're really curious. I'll leave you with one amusing thing, however: when I turned off the tape, it was during the scene where Penelope Ann Miller and Tim Daly were in the helicopter as it was spiraling down to its doom; I just turned it off and quipped, "And the helicopter crashed and they both died. The end."
Duck Soup (1933)
"Join the Army and see the Navy"
What is there to say about Duck Soup that hasn't been said already? Well, here's what I'm wondering right now: what kind of world do we live in where an absolute piece of crap like Meet the Spartans opens at number one at the box office? Seriously, today's teenagers can't understand good, anarchic humor (with the obvious exception of South Park).
And this film is 68 minutes of anarchy. The Marx Brothers have never been better, and there are so many hilarious moments (the lemonade stand, the mirror routine, the war scenes) one would probably die of laughter. Tell that to Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer the next time they do one of their spoofs.
Happy Feet (2006)
Time is not on this film's side (at least for me)
Ever have one of those moments when you see a movie that's been getting a lot of attention and you're overwhelmed by it, only to revisit it on video and realize it's not all that great? Well, Happy Feet is one of those movies. When I saw it in theaters three weeks after it opened, I loved it. I thought the inclusion of the environmental stuff was as genius as the music and dancing.
I just finished watching the movie in its entirety for the first time since then, and time hasn't been kind to it. Not that I'm saying it's dated, since we're still dealing with global warming and stuff. I'm saying that this film could have used less of the environmentalism and more of the fairy tale whimsy that was prevalent during the first third. Hell, as I was watching the damn thing, I was imagining this story done in the style of Leo Lionni and his brilliant, albeit sadly overlooked, book Tico and the Golden Wings. (Maybe they should have had a wishingpenguin?) Don't get me completely wrong, it still has great music and terrific dancing, but George (Mad Max) Miller really missed the mark here. That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.