spenrh Reviews

Family Guy: Take a Letter (2016) Season 14, Episode 17

Not a bad episode actually

[7/10 · 26 August 2022]

It was a good plot with Lois working at post office with Cleveland, Peter finding a letter to a woman he went out with before Lois, him meeting up with her, and a good wrap up at the end between her, Peter, and Lois. I like how Lois threw her off guard, was understanding about the letter, and how Peter and Lois recounsled in the last scene.

Funny outcome to Stewie's pretending-to-be-rich party when the real owners of the mansion showed up.

Family Guy: Send in Stewie, Please (2018) Season 16, Episode 12

A few interesting bits but not all good

[5/10 · 23 August 2022]

Family Guy can be very funny sometimes, but not always. This episode had a few good things in it, but also a few things I didn't care for.

One interesting moment was when the therapist said how he didn't hear Stewie's accent, Stewie corrects him and says that "Others hear it, the ones who can understand me at all", which is a fun reference to the long running controversy on how some FG characters hear and understand his speaking and others can't.

Another part of the episode centers on Stewie's long description of his interpretation of the photo of him and his (maybe homosexual) partner, who's clearly 20-25 years younger than him (which Stewie points out). I (and probably other viewers) was waiting for the therapist to correct Stewie and say that it's his son with him in the photo (such a correction has been done before in other movies/shows during similar photo assumptions). To those expecting that correction, it makes it a bit of a twist when it turns out here that the guy with him in the picture is actually his younger gay partner. Stewie goes into a long description on what he thinks every detail in the photo means, and the therapist hardly corrects him on any of it. It's not fully clear whether that means that Stewie's assumptions are actually correct or that the therapist just lets him prattle on because he's wanting to get to know what Stewie's like (which he mentions during the session anyway).

Also interesting was when Stewie starts talking in an American accent and the therapist says that he hears no difference between then and how he'd been talking all along. I'm sure that this just makes viewers wonder even more how Stewie really talks (especially since only some can hear him).

There were parts of this episode that I did not like, such as bit where Stewie goes into another monolog where snot starts dripping all over his face and he leaves it there, and just I really don't like that gross out humor.

SPOILERS BELOW

Also, the ending is too dark where the therapist has a heart attack, asks Stewie to get his heart medication for him, but he refuses and lets him die while telling him "I can't let anybody know too much about me and now you do". The therapist did want to know what Stewie was like. After that, Stewie wakes up and we're hit with the "It was all a dream" scenario. That' been done before in "Stewie kills Lois" where much of that episode turned out to be a simulation. I know that some people consider the "It was all a dream/simulation" reveals to be copouts. I think those reveals don't matter if the story leading up to it was great, but this one wasn't.

Another thought, right after Stewie lets his therapist die, his partner calls and leaves a message saying "I want a divorce". That leads to the possibility of whoever sees that he died will assume that he had his fatal heart attack because of his partner's message. I guess that doesn't matter though since it was all Stewie's dream.

The Twilight Zone: The Big Tall Wish (1960) Season 1, Episode 27

Very good 1st season episode

[8/10 · 18 August 2022]

This is another episode based on magical wishes and characters disputing their existence, and then those characters discovering their skepticism was wrong, a common TZ plot. The TZ wasn't even always a series where the settings were removed from the real world (some episodes were), but rather a series of real world characters having fantastic things happen to them (fantastic being a common term then for unbelievable/sci-fi only).

Boxer Foley is dating (or just good friends with) a lady who he's neighbors with and has also developed a friendship with her 7 or 8 year old son, who idolizes him as both a father figure type and a tough hero who's won many boxing matches. He's got neighbors rooting for him too.

Foley loses the match, yet temporarily he wins it due to an alternate plane of existence or whatever it is the kid wishes him into. During this supernatural visit, Foley and the kid who made the wish are the only one in this other world who knows that he was really knocked down and lost. His boxing manager never saw that happen, and also knew nothing about him breaking his hand before the fight when he punched a wall due to his thought-to-be friend dissed him and bet on his opponent. Oh, and Foley's boxing manager was played by the little old guy in "National Lampoon's Christmas vacation", alot younger here.

Foley is still skeptical of the kid's wish, inspite of everything he's seen happen, and tells the kid that there's no magic in the world. This in turn brings him back to reality where he was knocked down after all.

It could be argued here that there was no magical wish, that in fact Foley dreamed his entire experience of winning during the few moments he was knocked out and on the ground.

After losing the fight, Foley gets very little support from his neighbors as he makes his way into his apartment building. In his alternate world, or his dream, his neighbors cheered him on as he returned from the fight. He lived in another one of those common NY apartment buildings of the times where the building's residents and neighbors enjoy hanging out around the front stoop socializing and hanging out.

I like how many older films and TV shows in NYC take place in those older style NYC walk-up apartment buildings, with the street-lined front stoops. Back in the 1950s, these townhouse style structures were the main types of apartment buildings along with the taller brick buildings with the smaller apartments and iconic outside metal fire escape stairs. This was in a time in NYC before many of the modern high-rise buildings of apartments, lofts, and penthouses were built.

Anyway, this was a good and interesting TZ episode. Like I said, you can take what happened to Foley as either him taking a trip to an temporary alternate reality or just a dream he had while knocked out in the ring. I guess that that part is up to the viewer to decide.

The Twilight Zone: The Silence (1961) Season 2, Episode 25

Good episode, semi-realistic

[8/10 · 5 August 2022]

By semi-realistic, I mean that even though there's no sci-fi material, it's still a situation that isn't that likely to happen in real life. There's no supernatural elements such as time travel or eternal life plots, but the actions taken by the main characters are still things most people would probably have chosen not to do.

Tennyson is another blabber-mouthed character, like McNulty in "A kind of stopwatch" but not quite as bad as him because at least Tennyson knew how to halt his blabbing and try to talk and think rationally once a plot situation was brought to his attention. McNulty couldn't even do that. Tennyson was yapping non-stop the first few minutes of the episode, but he stopped and tried to act rational once elderly club member Archie brought his proposal to his attention.

When Archie proposes his wager to Tennyson, you can already see that he might screw him over when he tells him that he'll just have to take his word that he'll come through with the $500K when Tennyson's year of not talking is up. Archie basically tells him straight out that he hates him and that he'll win to some extent just by having Tennyson attempt the wager just so he can have enough quiet to hear himself think for a couple of months. During these early parts of the episode it seems that more members of the club favor Archie's side of things due to also being tired of Tennyson, and are also willing to trust Archie's word. Either that or that they too are more concerned at the time being of just having a break from Tennyson's yapping than worrying if Archie will really pay up in a year. Of course, none of them really believe that he'll be able to do it.

SPOILERS

Archie and other club members are taken by surprise that he ends up doing it, and they are even seeing what they didn't expect to see after the first couple of months. The tide slowly turns on who's side the other club members appear to favor when not only Tennyson does what they didn't expect him to do, but also seeing revelations of Archie not being the honored gentleman they thought he was. Archie didn't just start showing signs that he didn't have the money, but also made unnecessary efforts to break Tennyson with gossip on his wife.

Tennyson's wife, a talked about but unseen character, was apparently a gold-digger, and she supposedly handled her husband's absence by pursuing other flings. And even though it wasn't made clear, his wife had no issues with what he was doing because $500K would come at the end of it. It would've been a curiosity to know what Tennyson's wife's reaction would've been when finding out that he was screwed over with the money.

Would Tennyson had even gotten the money even if Archie did have it? Technically, Tennyson cheated, his year of silence was actually not an act of courage because he couldn't talk now even if he really wanted to. You can't make a sound with severed vocal chords even if you try to. Archie probably would've torn the check up even if he had it once seeing what he did, and he would see. Everyone would see because Tennyson couldn't just keep writing things down and not talking forever.

Anyway, a pretty good interesting episode.

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

"Not quite what I hoped it would be" was my initial reaction in 1991

[5/10 · 9 June 2022]

I remember watching the trailer for this movie a few times in movie theaters right before it was released and I saw it. The trailer made it seem that the babysitter would be a larger part of this movie. We already knew from the title that she would die and part of the movie would be about the kids trying to cover it up. But alot of the trailer showed us the old wretch's tyrannical behavior towards the kids. What it didn't tell us was that almost every second of her still alive was in that trailer. Basically the script decided to have the minder drop dead less than 10 minutes after her being introduced to the movie.

It's not as if the writers couldn't think of enough ideas for the babysitter scenes because there were numerous starts to a scene that would've had an interesting outcome, but they then dropped the scene and we never heard any more of it. One example was the old wretch shutting the tv off whining that tv rots your brain and ordered the kid to write a book report on the aardvark. There could've been several outcomes to that one alone, but nothing else came of it. Also, Kenny, the oldest son, never even met the babysitter! She died before he ever came home from hanging out with his buddies! Well, at least one fairly good joke came from that bit though when Kenny replies "Yep, she was a great babysitter", lol, which was funny because he never saw her alive, and she was anything but great. But still, she died way too soon, and I think that the writers did that because they wanted to make most of the movie about the yuppie office plot. Doing that may've been ok, IF the movie had a different title, and trailer.

There should've been a different aftermath to the babysitter dying. I (and others I'm sure) expected funny Home Alone-style hyjinks. But instead the writers turned the movie into the yuppie office politics plot with Christine Applegate's character, Sue Ellen or Swell, dealing with a bitchy co-worker, a sleazy sex fiend, an office manager with a heart of gold, and Swell's faked resume getting her an executive assistant position at the clothing company. This all belonged in a different movie.

Why in modern times a large clothing company, in L. A. no less, would be mass producing school uniforms rather than designer clothes, is beyond my understanding, especially when Swell wisely tells Rose (the nice but not-so-wise office manager) that kids aren't going to go for that. And sure enough she later tells Swell how kids protested and burned unifirms, and greatly risked the entire company. How they stayed afloat til then is a big question. Was this the first time they ever dealt with customers' reactions to their products? How long have they been in business?

SPOILER ALERT

Swell helps to turn the entire company around by switching from uniforms to designer fashion. She has the entire factory floor now use all the factory sewing machines to construct fashionable clothes, which young people will love and therefore cause business to skyrocket. Then comes the fashion show at Swell's house to get the district executives' attention, which works, even with the predictable embarrassing reveal scene where Swell reveals she's only 17 and lied her way into the company. Rose tells her afterwards that the execs didn't care about that and still loved Swell's fashion ideas, and that she still saved the company.

Of course, all of the kids in the family completely become responsible by that point, they all cleaned and fixed up the house to it being professional looking, all in one or two days. Unbelievable? Of course. And right up until then, the kids were running amok, stealing large amount of money from the company's petty cash box, buying home entertainment centers and such. Then in a ridiculous bit, Swell's boyfriend, outside their house during the party which he could easily see, cries over the loud speaker of his delivery van pleading to take her back. It's laughable (they had an earlier argument because Swell found out that he's the brother of her bitchy co-worker). Then of course Mom comes home and says "You're in big trouble young lady!" in front of eveyone at the party, forcing her to confess in front of everyone that she lied about her position and that she's only 17. Also, she just graduated highschool, why is she 17 and not 18? Just to make her reveal confession a bigger deal since she's also revealing she's still a minor? That entire last part of the movie in numerous ways just totally exceeded reality. And then Mom's last question, one over the topic that had been completely forgotten since way earlier in the movie, "Where's the babysitter?". Haha. And a funny last bit back at the mortuary, reminding us of a funnier film that this could've been, but wasn't.

The Twilight Zone: The Bewitchin' Pool (1964) Season 5, Episode 36

TZ did not exit the series very well

[4/10 · 6 February 2021]

Not a very good last episode. The last 8 or so TZ episodes were not very good, with the 2 exceptions being "Stopover in a quiet town" which had alot of the great surreal mystery style to it that many early episodes had with two decent yet bewildered characters trapped in a strange and erie world. And "Mr Garrity and the graves" had a great old timey style with its plot taken place in a quaint town at the turn of the 20th century, and was about raising the dead. I quite enjoy plots revolved around time travel, raising the dead, the afterlife, and other mystic plots.

But "The bewitching pool" didn't have a great plot, and did not have the most likable characters. The kids parents were caring but arrogant and snobbish, and their kids were stupid. The girl for some strange reason, her voice was dubbed over by the voice of a grown woman, I mean what was the deal with that? It was a weird and stupid thing to do. And they were bratty as well. But what was even worse was while the parents were arrogant, they still were shown to care about their kids. When the kids disappeared for the third time into that gateway to the other world with Aunt T, their mother was genuinely concerned about them, and the kids didn't even care! Like they could still hear their parents from the world on the other side of the gateway. And when the kids heard their mother's genuinely concerned voice about their disappearance, the girl just ignored it, smiled, and asked Aunt T for a piece of cake! Not ok.

I can understand kids wanting to escape to another world with a caring foster parent, which Aunt T seemed to be. But doing so for real without emotions being involved is less expected, particularly in the case of this episode. It's much more understandable for kids to enter a new family without missing the old one if they were dealing with abusive parents, like physically abusive, and should be away from them. But in this episode, their parents were not abusive at all and they cared about them.

The one thing that made this episode interesting was in the sequence in which it was played out. I honestly thought that the second scene of the episode was the second scene of the story time-line. The first scene of the episode was when the parents called their kids, who jumped into the pool and then seemingly disappeared. Then in the second scene, the kids were sitting by the pool while one of them was telling the other to stop holding their breath. That made me think that the "first" scene of them jumping in the pool caused something strange and TZ-like to happen where the kids were then sitting by the pool but still holding their breath as if they were still underwater like in the "first" scene. Of course that turned out to not be the case when finding out that the "first" scene of the episode was actually a scene later in the story time-line. And like I said before, I did't like several things about the episode. I wish that such a great series like the Twilight zone ended better than it did.

The Twilight Zone: Come Wander with Me (1964) Season 5, Episode 34

Not the best of TZ

[5/10 · 6 February 2021]

The last 7 or 8 episodes of Twilight zone season 5 were not really that good, with the 2 exceptions being "Mr Garrity and the graves" and "Stopover in a quiet town". Those 2 were quite good and with the great magic that alot of the series contained. The rest were below par including this one. "Bewitching pool" was ridiculous, "The fear" was laughably stupid, "Brain center at Mr Whipples" was too one dimensional, "The encounter" was horrible and racist, and this episode had annoying things about it wasn't all clear in where it was taking us. But it had some ok points, so that's why I've rated it a 5/10.

There were several things in this episode that made it annoying, alot of it being the annoying arrogance of the lead character Floyd Bernie, talking in that jive beatnik way and not even making sense half the time. And he was a total arrogant jerk. With the type of character he was supposed to be to the story, him being a jerk just wasn't nessesary. And him slugging that old man near the end and killing him, after he already threw him to the ground, why? That doesn't mean that I liked the old man's character, mind you. He was annoying in a creepy way himself. Why did he just keep standing there not talking except in occasional monosyllabic ways that didn't make sense?

Some reviewers have called the folk song annoying, but that I don't so much agree with, I think it had a mystical quality to it. The girl was pretty and semi-charming. And there were a few likable moments when Floyd first hears her singing the "Come wander with me" folk song, and then when they play it back on the tape recorder that Floyd recorded it on.

The story has an interesting plot, even though parts of it aren't clear. Apparently, Floyd gets stuck in some sort of time loop where things happen seemingly to him for the first time, but in the little world that he stepped into, they already happened. When Floyd kills a hillbilly character who pointed a shotgun at Floyd first, a song on Floyd's tape recorder plays a new verse of the folk song with lyrics stating that Floyd killed that man. How those lyrics got onto the tape can only be explained by someone around there who's living through this little time period for a second time and already knows what's going to happen. It's never explained though how this time repeating phenomena happened. Everyone there except Floyd seems to be reliving all of this, even the main female character tells Floyd "you always run, and they always catch you". This would've been more entertaining if they just made the story clearer. And who's that mysterious woman in black? Is she somehow connected to the time repeating loop?

SPOILER BELOW

Early in the episode, we see Floyd's tombstone. I think though that it would've been better if Floyd saw his tombstone and we got to see his bewildered reaction to it. But like I said, this episode didn't make everything clear, and Floyd's arrogant character and his fast talking beatnik-style "daddio" way of talking definitely hurt this episode. It is, I'm afraid, one of the late TZ clunkers.

Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992 TV Movie)

Terrible

[1/10 · 3 February 2021]

What a dreadful embarrassment of a movie! Why do they make such horrible sequels to movies that were corny to begin with and just weren't meant to have more than 1 sequel, and have different characters from the first two!? They did the same stupid mistake with "Beethoven 3", I saw it years ago but remember how dreadful it was, how it didn't have the original characters from the first two like Charles Grodin as the dad, it had Judge Reinhold completely embarrassing himself in a role that put him to shame! How could he take such a turn for the worse after his much better earlier 80s movies of "Beverly Hills cop 1" and "2" and "Ruthless people"?

"Revenge of the nerds 3" has a whole new cast of characters doing a halfassed display of the same quirks and events that the original characters had in the first two "Nerds" movies. The original characters like Booger are in it but only had secondary roles, since the movie wasn't even about them besides them having a reunion, and not even all of them were there, and a couple of the characters that were there were played by different actors. And, the main characters who play the college nerds in this movie act in ways and give us scenes that are so painfully stupid! They copy the acts from the first movie but in such a dumbed down way, and they were nerds in the first movie to begin with! That should say enough. Like "Beethoven 1" and "2", "Revenge of the nerds 1" and "2" aren't even the types of movies I'm really into anymore, but at least they were movies I sorta enjoyed the corniness of when I was younger. "Nerds 3" was stupid, awful, and embarrassing the very first time I watched it. I didn't even watch it recently, I just sometimes think of horrible movies I've seen in the past and realize that they need another reviewer stating how terrible they were so as few people as possible will waste a couple hours of their lives watching it, like I did.

Jacob's Ladder (I) (1990)

Intense film but very memorable

[9/10 · 2 February 2021]

Very good, powerful, and unforgettable film. It's best of course the first time watching it when you truly don't know what'll happen next. And I even felt the same seeing it again for the first time in years, since I'd forgotten some of the film by then. However, I still enjoy watching it because it's one heck of a ride even when you know what's coming.

The film starts with Jacob in Vietnam, where some crazy things start happening to members of his platoon. Jake is brutally stabbed, but then we see him wake up on a NY subway. I'm sure that many first time viewers (me as well) thought that Jake being in Vietnam and getting stabbed was just a bad dream he had while falling asleep on the subway.

But spooky things begin to happen to Jake in NY, starting with a creepy looking woman staring at him and someone/something sleeping under a blanket with a strange looking tail hanging out. These are only the beginning of Jake's nightmare visions he sees which only keep getting worse, eventually leading to fast vibrating heads, razor-tooth birds, and more creatures with long tails, including one dancing with Jesse (Elizabeth Pena), Jake's then girlfriend, at a party.

Jake and his ex-platoon members realize that they're all suffering from the same delusions, and that something connected with them and the army has happened. Jake almost gets run over, his Vietnam war buddy Paul is blown up in a car explosion (who also saw frightening visions), and after he and his platoon goes to a lawyer (Sienfeld's Jason Alexander) about the suspected drugs the army may've slipped them through experimentation, army thugs grab him into a car and threaten his life if he talks to anyone else about suspected army experiments. His buddies also back out of going to the lawyer but won't be clear with him why, and they tell Jake not to bother them about it again. You can figure out that it's because those same thugs went to all of them also threatening them too not to talk anymore (even though we didn't see that. But we can see hands on a steering wheel when the whole group of them walk out of the building where they spoke to the lawyer).

What makes this film so fascinating the first times seeing it is you really don't know which is Jake's dreams or realities. We see him in Vietnam, we see him living with Jesse and working for the post office, and then we see him waking up with his (ex?)wife Sarah and his sons where he mentions that living with Jesse was all a dream, so we're led to temporarily believe that none of the scenes with Jesse really happened. However, the movie continues to throw us around on what's real or not. When we see Jake living with Jesse, we see what appears to be Jake getting flashbacks from when he was stabbed in Vietnam, leading us to temporarily think how that's the real scenerio. We also see a very poignant scene of Jake reviving in the bathtub next to Jesse after we saw the scenes with him and Sarah and his kids. Jake himself is in shock seemingly because he just found out what he thought was real with Sarah and his kids really wasn't. This was also where Jake previously was running a 106° fever and was thrown in the tub with lots of bags of ice by Jesse and his neighbors. Jesse then reveals to Jake that while he was in the tub he was "talking to Sarah and his kids, including the dead one". In this "reality" with Jesse, one of his sons (played by Maculy Culkin) was killed in an accident before he went to Vietnam.

SPOILERS BELOW

Shifting through his different "realities", Jake has seemingly found a soulmate/guardian angel through his chiropractor Danny Iallo, who offers him more momentary solace than most anyone else he encounters (next to Sarah and his kids). Danny's advice to Jake is beautiful, and in a sense sums up the main plot: "When you're scared of dying, you'll see demons tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, the demons are really angels freeing your soul". Basically that's what's happening to Jake throughout the movie. All of Jake's "realities" are experiences going through his mind and soul while his body is dying from his stab wound in Vietnam. Vietnam was basically his only actual reality. The rest of Jake's experiences throughout the movie were memories of his life with his ex Sarah and kids including his deceased kid, his various future possibilities if he'd survived past Vietnam (some which entailed Jesse), and the rest of his experiences were visions of the frightning demons which were really to be angels if Jake would just make his peace. And, Jake eventually does and reconciles his deceased son (since it becomes revealed that his son dying really happened and wasn't just in his future vision with Jesse).

In the last segment of the movie, Jake is "taken home" in a taxi. We see him walk into his home where he lived with Sarah and his sons, we see leftover food on the table and all of the other things he always saw at his home, but no one was there except him and his deceased son at the foot of a stairway he then ascended up with. I wasn't clear why this was at first, but this is what I figured: Jake wasn't really at his home, he was at a domain which represented his home and his memory of it, a special domain between his life and heaven. Sarah and his other two sons weren't there because they were still alive, back on earth. Only Jake and his son were there because they were the only ones who've now crossed over. Jake was now passed on and meeting with his deceased son, and they both together ascended up to heaven.

The Twilight Zone: Hocus-Pocus and Frisby (1962) Season 3, Episode 30

Cheesy but comical

[7/10 · 28 January 2021]

There are definitely worse TZ episodes. This one is semi-delightfully funny so it's not just some annoyingly cheesy episode, even though it is as cheesy as a 6-cheese pizza with added extra cheese and then parmesan poured on top. But, it's still a good natured humor which really wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

First of all, when I first saw the episode's title before first time watching this episode, I thought there'd be a dog Frisby. I pictured 2 leads similar to the man and his dog in TZ ep "The front", Hyde Simpson and his dog Rip, except here it would be a man Hocus Pocus and his dog Frisby. Either that, or the dog's name would be Frisby and the "Hocus pocus" part of the title was just something related to the plot, such as this being another plot about black magic. Anyway, in this episode, Hocus Pocus isn't anyone's name and it is related to magic in the plot. But Frisby is in fact the name of a person, he's an ample sized country gentleman who owns a gas station in the sticks. He's also an ample sized fibber who constantly tells tall tales to his fellow bumpkins who always disbelieve him yet still enjoy the humor of his whoppers.

Frisby's tales include him saying that he invaded the French during the war and that he saved the life of the US President and his staff. The real wacky humor begins when he starts to close up shop for the night ("Well it's 5pm, sounds like a reasonable time to close up", lol). He shortly earlier had a couple customers for gas who appeared just to be out of town city folk in suits who Frisby also decided to tell a couple of his fibs to. One of the guys also appeared as the father in TZ ep "The masks", his character in that episode was better.

When closing up the store, Frisby hears a voice who then literally lifts him up into the air and over to a flying saucer, where he encounters aliens, one of them being the customer from the gas station earlier (the guy from "The masks"). The aliens intend on bringing Frisby back to their home planet because they believed his far out lies and now think he is one of the most brilliant specimens they've ever seen. These aliens believe everything they're told because they don't know what lies are. They refuse to let him go, so Frisby then knocks them out cold by playing his harmonica. Like I said, none of this is meant to be taken seriously.

But anyway, it's all played out in a pretty funny humorous way. And we do get a "boy that cried wolf" message at the end. But even though there are TZ episodes I like better, this one isn't too bad.

Indecent Proposal (1993)

This isn't a very good movie

[3/10 · 20 January 2021]

I'm curious on why Robert Redford accepted a role in this movie. I wonder if the producers offered him $1 million to appear in it (lol).

He's a real slimeball in this role who unhealthily obsesses over a woman he just saw for the first time. It doesn't matter how rich or successful you are, when you offer a stranger $1 million dollar for sex and totally drool and obsess over her, you are a scumbag, particularly if the woman makes it clear from the start how uncomfortable he's making her, which Demi Moore certainly does right off. "The dress is for sale, I'm not" is one of the first lines from her to Redford after his first of many persues at her when he offered to buy her a $5,000 dress.

Demi and Woody Harrelson, on a Vegas trip in order to try to rack up some much needed dough to try and get themselves out of deep debt, encounter Redford at a card table (and Demi's 2nd encounter with him). From there, he offers to "borrow" her from Woody as a "good luck charm" to make his card bets, he then sends them an invitation to his private party in his penthouse, and then at the party makes his $1 million offer to Demi. Redford tries to make the excuse that he's only asking hypothetically, but Woody and Demi aren't stupid.

They weren't stupid enough to fall for Redford's antics anyways, but they were kinda stupid in other ways. Woody and Demi have fairly understandable and down to earth reactions to their problems early on in the movie, but they then begin acting stupid numerous times as the movie progresses. And the plot gets dumber too. After Redford's offer about the one night for one million, Demi starts considering maybe going for it, and Woody does also. They then get their lawyer involved who makes up a formal legal contract for them each to sign, which would make the ordeal assuring enough so that Demi would return back to Woody after that night, they would get their $1 million, and the whole ordeal would officially be done with. Woody kisses Demi goodbye for the night, leaving us seeing that he understands the situation and it's all settled.

But next is when things get stupider, just a short time later while having a drink with his lawyer, Woody suddenly freaks out hysterically and runs frantically up to the hotel roof screaming after Demi, and runs up onto the roof screaming after their departing helicopter! Where the hell was this reaction when he agreed on this with Demi, discussed it with his lawyer, and signed the legal papers!? I'd understand a husband reacting like that if he felt that way all along or if he found out something like this was done deceptively behind his back. But this here with Woody suddenly turning 180 out of nowhere was just plain stupid!

After the night with Redford and Demi is over, and her and Woody reunite, many other stupid things happen. In spite of all the legal papers, etc., Redford then slyly takes Demi and Woody's house away from them?? How would he have even pulled that off, or had the time?? Demi and Woody went back home immediately after her night with Redford, and she was with him right up til then!

Then numerous times throughout the rest of the movie, Redford basically keeps stalking Demi! He shows up at her work, he shows up at a Spanish English class she teaches, he lures her to his elaborate mansion. His obsession with her is so creepy and stalky.

And then there's alot of drivel with Woody suddenly getting suspicious out of nowhere accusing Demi thinking about him, wanting to get back with him. He starts going through her purse, and yelling at her saying he doesn't trust her anymore, with no prior scenes, other than the ending of the act itself which they BOTH agreed on legally, causing him to suddenly start acting this way.

And then the ending of this movie doesn't even totally make sense. Hollywood would sometimes throw any drivel together to give you standard "they happily reunite" ending. Don't get me wrong, I love those endings if the story is compelling on how it gets you there. This just wasn't one of those times.

I thought this was an interesting idea for a movie when it first came out when I was in highschool (but only saw the trailers for it then). But after later seeing the whole movie, I found out it's just not a good movie.

The Twilight Zone: Dust (1961) Season 2, Episode 12

Had some good interesting parts

[7/10 · 17 January 2021]

This is another Twilight zone western centered around a man due for a hanging, like "Execution", except this one does away with the time travel plot. It also has similarities to "I am night, color me black" with the bloodthirsty mob standing around very eager to see the condenmed man get his due punishment, except this one doesn't focus on racism so much.

The man to be hung in this episode was drunk and ran over a kid accidentally with his horse and carriage and killed him. He's getting hung for it, and the townfolk and parents of the deceased kid are more than eager to watch. The father of the offender, however, is devestated to see that his son will be hung and is desperate to see a change of heart in the town eager to see him hanged.

Enter the ample sized swindler who decides to throw dirt into a bag and sell it to the devestated father claiming it to be magic dust, then laughing evilly (the laughing, the father doesn't see). The father truly believes the dust is magic and runs in front of the people watching the hanging and tosses it over everyone crying "It's magic dust! It'll make you love again! It's magic!". The townspeople only laugh at him.

What's interesting is that then the rope breaks, sparing the condemned man from being hung. Then, the townspeople and even in the parents of the kid that was killed, where even though they're understandably grieving and heartbroken, they ultimately decide that enough is enough with any more violence. They all agree to tell the sheriff to let the man go and give him another chance. The sheriff agrees too and lets him go. The father of the now free man ends up continuing to believe that the dust was really magic and it worked, he never knows that the swindler swindled him and only sold him dirt. Before that outcome, I thought that the father would find out that the dust wasn't magic and that he'd been had, but the episode chose not to take that more expected formula and instead chose the semi-original route.

I don't know, this being the Twilight zone, maybe the fat swindler threw dirt that actually had magic dust in it into the bag, but he didn't know. Maybe another unexplained force blew into the air in the town. Or maybe, once the townspeople spent a couple moments seeing the father's desperation and despair of being about to lose his son, they then started to feel for him. The latter doesn't explain the rope breaking though. I don't know, you decide on that.

But the end result is the same, the condemned man was spared, the townfolk lost some of their hate and anger, and the father throughout the whole episode continued to believe that the dust really was magic.

The Twilight Zone: The Rip Van Winkle Caper (1961) Season 2, Episode 24

I agree with other reviewers calling these characters dumb

[5/10 · 13 January 2021]

This would've been a better episode if these characters didn't do such idiotic things that only greatly hurt themselves. And there was some far fetched unbelievability (I don't mean the science fiction TZ style elements such as the time travel itself).

One reviewer questioned why these men would steal gold and become wanted by the law when they could've made a fortune with their suspended animation devices. You could argue, perhaps, that they constructed them after their gold heist, soley for the purpose of escaping the trouble they were in to go to a time where their activities were long forgotten. But, there's no implications of them having done that, so they most likely already had them before their heist, thus the heist being a stupid move.

Putting aside the time traveling concept itself, I found it unbelievable that their suspended animation devices would transfer them exactly 100 years into the future since the lead guy could only guess how long it would be. However, he then said that they would be taken to "exactly 100 years from today's date", in spite of there being no mechanisms on their devices to actually set specific dates of their time travel (such as in the "Back to the future" Delorian).

The devices worked with a released gas that would make them sleep yet not grow or age one day until they woke up. When they did, they found the fourth of their party dead due to a falling rock that cracked open his device thus allowing the gas to escape that was keeping these guys asleep but alive and not aging. I wondered though why the gas escaping didn't wake the guy back up. Was the gas designed to not allow them to wake up for 100 years even after it escaped, yet the body preserving substances of the gas were no longer effective once it went away? So he'd still remain asleep for the same period of time while now simultaneously aging and dying of old age. All in all, it was an interesting concept though.

Then, there were the really moronic moves of the guys. After they woke up, they suddenly become so greedy and suspicious of each other that they would make the most rash moves without the slightest ounce of thought. The dumbest move of all was suddenly driving the van so recklessly and crashing it, when they knew it was their only ride out of there. And he did that just to kill one of the other guys, just because of his newfound suspicious nature. Nevermind that it's also a wonder how that van started up after 100 years. Now the remaining 2 men had to tread on foot through the sweltering desert, and it was their own fault for being so stupid.

Then came the "1 drink for 1 bar of gold" routine due to one of them (brilliantly) leaving his water canteen behind on one of their rest stops. And the guy insisting on that deal was shown to be having alot of fun doing it at the other guy's expense. Was he no longer more concerned at just finding a town already? These guys just kept losing more and more of their common sense.

I do like the final twist about how gold was now of low value. But, they should've kept the last guy alive until after that revelation so we could've seen his reaction to that. But he died before the futeristic guy that found him revealed it to us.

The Twilight Zone: Spur of the Moment (1964) Season 5, Episode 21

Interesting episode, but with a few flaws

[6/10 · 4 August 2020]

There are some interesting moments in this Twilight zone episode, such as the wealthy family of spoiled 18 year old woman Ann who has been cottled and protected by her seemingly loving mother and strong willed father who won't hesitate to point a gun at any unwanted guests in their big fancy estate. It's a country estate with family members' horses saddled outside it and rural countryside and meadows surrounding the area where 18 year old ann encounters the strange screaming woman in black who chases her back to her mother's arms and father's unyeilding protection. The strange woman shown at the episode's start is its first flaw, we get a close-up view of her right then and there and we can clearly see that she's an older version of Ann as she's chasing her younger self. That in itself ruins the mystery and would-be twist that shouldn't have been revealed until later in the ep.

18 year old Ann's father had a suiter to his liking that he wanted her to marry and really didn't like Brian, the headstrong and not too stable guy who Ann really loved. We then cut to 25 years later where it's revealed that Brian is who she ended up with, and now has serious regrets about as he's angry and miserable, and Ann is now also that way, and a bitter alcoholic. Ann's mother is also now more bitter, and it is revealed that her father has now passed away. It's also revealed how she is angry that her father cottled her so much and never let her become independent and able to make her own decisions. However though, she did. She married the guy that her dad didn't want her to be with, and now regrets it. So I'm not really sure why she's so upset about how her dad controlled her. She didn't marry the guy her dad wanted her to be with, and she may have ended up much happier if she did.

Another flaw is how we're given no explanation on how 43 year old Ann managed to travel back in time 25 years to try and warn her younger self who not to marry. There were no shown mechanisms on how she did it, and no scenes with her arriving back in 1939 and showing us her intrigued emotions of her experience of doing so. Also, if Ann wanted so badly to change her destiny, why did she scream so maniacally and scare the life out of her younger counterpart, especially now that she had memories of how much that frightened her? I realize that she was drunk and angry so that may be down to that she was unable to control herself at that moment no matter how hard she hadn't previously wanted to do so. She might've simply just been destined to act that way at that moment, I don't know.

Some of this ep was still interesting enough, and mildly enjoyable in parts. It just wasn't my favorite TZ ep though.

The War of the Roses (1989)

Kathleen Turner's the more cruel of the two

[6/10 · 5 May 2020]

Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas's battle in "War of the roses" is not completely an even two sided battle like some people's reviews have said. Douglas isn't a saint, but Turner's character is worse. Her character is so vile and mean, and what makes her meaner is that she won't give enough explanations for it.

After Douglas had what he though at the time was a fatal heart attack in process, which later turned out to be an esophagus tear. That evening Turner confides that after the initial call about his situation, she suddenly felt very happy and relieved, like "a huge weight has been lifted off her", and decided to not go to the hospital. She then says she wants a divorce. Douglas asks her why, but she soullessly says "I don't want to tell you why!". Then Douglas understandably replies that he deserves a reason for this after 13 years of what he thought was a happy marriage, and Turner's only response is that everytime she sees him, she just wants to punch his face in (and then she does). But, she won't tell him why she feels that way! This all just makes her character not a very good person.

Douglas's attitude did worsen on her after that night though. After words with their lawyers, the two of them battled for ownership of the house. They started battling the afformentioned war of the Roses, the part of the movie that gave the movie its title. The two of them tried to outdo each other with their own various attacks. Not enough to make it a really good movie though. Douglas ran over Turner's cat, Turner tried to lock Douglas into their sauna, Douglas deliberately acted terrible to her and a group of her clients from work at a dinner party she hosted, and then she tried to run over his prized sports car with her pick-up, and in fact arguably tried to kill him since he was still in the car that she ran over.

Turner and Douglas's earlier days together were very passionate and romantic, and showed some nod to their romantic chemistry in "Romancing the stone" and "Jewel of the Nile". Danny DeVito played third bill character again here as extra homage to those movies. He was both Douglas's lawyer during their divorce and narrator to the story, giving the movie the framework of Danny telling Turner and Douglas's story to a future client of his.

The first night they met, the couple jumped into bed very quickly after finding themselves very attracted to each other at an auction bidding. The couple certainly seemed to have a love for each other that was a million miles away from how things were between them years later. Because of how things were early on, I still wonder what exactly caused Turner to hate him so much since, like I said before, he didn't start doing awful things himself until after she told him she hated him so much she wished he was dead.

Some sort of tension had built for awhile though, after a dinner party (like 6 or 7 years into their marriage), they had an uneasy exchange of words. After Douglas' thought heart attack, he asked DeVito why she didn't come to the hospital, and DeVito replied "I'm sure that she had a good reason". And she did, she became totally sick of him and hated him now. It wasn't a nice reason, but it's a good reason.

Douglas though actually confided later numerous times to Turner how much he still loved her intensely, in spite of how horrible she treated him, which was frustrating to see because I can't see how he could still tell her that and say that he wants to stay with her after all that has happened, and that unsurprisingly she responds by telling him again how badly she doesn't want him, but he still won't stop expressing his love for her. I just don't understand that. It made him look like such a sucker doormat. If I remember clearly, during their fierce battling near the end of the movie, Turner stubs her foot while throwing hard objects at him, and he still goes up to her saying "are you alright, honey?". Now, he did after that display one move near the end of the movie which was way out of bounds on his part, he forces himself onto her sexually, and he was then deserving of what she did to him in return.

I won't completely give away the ending, but it's something I didn't expect in a movie like this and it's definitely not a happy ending. I guess though that this ended was bound to happen because of how far off the rails Turner and Douglas went. If DeVeto hadn't gone back to smoking after his earlier visit from Turner, he definitely would've after that. And, Turner at the end of the final event at the very end of the movie makes one more quick and nonverbal move showing how she still feels about him.

Saving Silverman (2001)

A few funny bits, but much of it's gotten too lowbrow

[5/10 · 15 March 2020]

I found this movie quite funny 10-15 years ago. I still find a few things in this movie kinda funny, but as I'm getting older, I'm just don't like lowbrow and sex humor as much anymore. There are a few exceptions to sex humor that I still find funny, such as in "Naked gun" the scene with Frank Drebin outside the top of the building ledge with those naked concrete statues. And there's a funny moment in this movie I mention further down the page with someone standing next to a particular sign. Sex humor, I guess, is generally funnier when the jokes are done with a catchy funny wit and aren't too crude. And, I don't like toilet humor, which the crude types are more related to.

This movie tries to make kidnapping funny, but at least it makes the woman that the guys kidnap a strong assertive b****y woman. Making it a sweet woman like Sandy (Amanda Detmer) would've been less acceptable. The b****y woman is Judith (Amanda Peat), and she's kidnapped by Wayne (Steve Zhan) and Jack Black (J.D.). What was even more far out was one of the two reasons they kidnapped Judith, it was because their buddy Darren Silverman was spending more time with her than with them. Yeah, that's right. Judith tells Wayne at one point that he must be in love with Darren. Wayne denies it, but I think that many people will agree with him being gay if he's going so far as to kidnap Judith just because she's taking some of his time to spend with Darren away from him. The guys' other reason for kidnapping her is due to her being so controlling and being such a rude b****.

There are other things I also don't understand in this movie, such as why Darren is so in love with Judith and why he thinks she's so wonderful when she's always such a snippy b****, always so intensely controlling of him, she won't let him see his two friends he's known since childhood (and that was before the kidnapping too), and she won't let him play in his music band he loves. Darren's band is called "Diamonds in the rough" and they sing Neil Diamond songs. Judith hates Neil too.

I'd previously wondered why Neil Diamond had such a part in a movie like this. I get why the main characters love him, because Wayne's mother went into labor with him while at a Neil Diamond concert. Something like that would give someone a special liking to someone. If I my mother went into labor with me during a Beegees concert, I'd have a special lifelong fondness of the Beegees. Darren and J.D. loving Neil was probably because of them being good friends who shared common interests. I also like Neil Diamond, which helped me like this movie more. "Coming to America" was always one of my favorites of his. I really like the pun connected to that song said by Diamond himself in Wayne's van when reaching America ave.

Wayne and J.D. also tried to get Darren with Sandy, since she's just a nicer person than Judith, looked like a much more suitable match for Darren to me also. Sandy's actually training to be a nun. There is one funny moment that I'm not sure everyone caught: right when Sandy was standing outside telling Wayne about being a nun and telling him "I'm taking my final vows Sunday" we see her standing right next to a sign saying "See xxx nasty women" (of an adult store). Her saying those particular words right next to that sign was quite funny, and probably not everyone caught that. I wonder if the producers of this movie made that joke intentional or if it's just a funny coincidence that none of the makers of this movie intended. There's another scene with Darren and Sandy where she lifts him over her head but accidentally drops him into the water, and then jumps in and saves him from drowning since he couldn't swim. Back in the days when I watched this movie more, I always saw a missed opportunity with this scene: right after Sandy saved Darren from drowning, there should've been a newspaper headline on screen saying "Nun saves wimp's life". That would've been hilarious. And that joke would've really worked since she as a nun lifted him up and then saved him from drowning, and that Darren was a skinny and meek weak character.

Lee Ermy stars in a role here that I don't think he would've dreamed of doing back in the time around his great role in "Full metal jacket", he plays the former highschool football coach of Wayne and J.D., and he turns out to not just be gay, but he french kisses J.D. on stage at a Neil Diamond concert at the end of the movie. J.D. also reveals he's gay in a semi-funny scene with Judith. But seeing the two guys kiss was unsettling for me, especially with one of them being Lee Ermy.

I've found Jack Black to be kind of a Chris Farley of the 2000s, a big overweight goofball who's immature and makes many dumb careless mistakes. I've not seen many movies before with Steve Zahn, but he was kind of funny some of the time here. I could've really done without seeing him try to do some naked yoga move (and it was after J. D. told Wayne he tried it when telling him he's gay). Like I said before, this movie had a few funny moments, but it's just not the kind of movie that I really love watching these days, even though I found it funnier a decade ago.

Getting Even with Dad (1994)

Sort of amusing once in while, but dumb more of the time

[5/10 · 10 March 2020]

There are numerous dumb things about this movie. First of all are the dumb bumbling crooks, which were in numerous 1990s movies. The idiot bad guys, by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, were semi amusing in "Home Alone" 1990, but then directors decided to start using the idiot crooks style characters in countless other 90s movies including "Houseguest", "The jerky boys", "Cop and a half", etc., and here in "Getting even with Dad". Macculy Culkan stars again, like in "Home Alone", as the smart alec kid who outsmarts the crooks, which is also something which quickly grew tiresome.

Macculy here decides he wants to blackmail his Dad (Ted Danson) and idiot crook croneys over a bag of valuable coins worth millions, that Danson and his croneys highjacked from a couple of armoured car men. Mac is upset over not seeing his dad for years, who had been in prison, and is upset over finding out what his dad is really up to. So Mac decides to take the coins and hide them from the 3 men and will only tell them where it is if his dad starts taking him sightseeing around San Francisco, which is not ok. First of all, a kid should understand things such as maybe the dad not being able to afford to suddenly take him sightseeing, understanding that his dad needs to go to work some of the time, etc. And the kid taking something valuable and stolen and deciding on his own terms what to do with it such as what he did here, I'm not even sure is legal even though he threatened dad to eventually go to the cops if he didn't do what he wanted. This all took part in helping to make this look like an inept movie.

Mac had been living with Danson's sister (his aunt) and her new jerk*** husband, even though it seems somewhat understandable his feelings towards the kid if he acted the same way with them as he did with his dad. But like the idiot crooks, the husband was another unlikable character in this movie, even though Mac has an unacceptable level of entitlement here. Mac should've contacted his aunt and tell her what's really going on with her ex-con brother. I'm not totally sure what a kid should do if finding out that his dad is engaging in criminal activity, but I'm sure that it's not to do what Mac did here with his hiding the coins/blackmailing/sightseeing game.

So Danson, along with his croneys, take the smart alec black mailing kid to the science museum, the San Francisco aquarium, the baseball game, the amusement park, and miniature golfing. Glen Hadley, a police detective (and not a believable one), and her captain (Hector Elonzo, playing the same type of tempermental captain seen in many other movies) start suspecting Danson and his croneys as being behind the coin robbery. So Hadley begins tailing the 3 guys and Mac, and follows them everywhere they go watching them. Eventually, Hadley begins conversing with Mac and Danson, after Mac almost gets hit by a bus while chasing a basketball. Neither of them know that she's a cop and has been following them, even though us viewers could clearly see her in every previous location the guys went (aquarium, stadium, fun park, etc.). The guys don't recognize her and just focus on wanting to ask her out. So Mac decides to be a little smooth talker (after a little advice on the basketball court) and he asks Hadley out for Dad. She's soon joining them for dinner, and Hadley and Danson even kiss. I guess that we're supposed to be charmed by all this, but to me it just didn't quite make those scenes charming. I felt a little bit more like Hadley's partner questioning why she's suddenly dating and kissing the possible suspects that they were only supposed to follow and watch. I've however liked Glen Hadley in other movies (movies I like better than this one) such as in "Dirty rotten scoundrels" and "Mr. Holland's opus", but she was just too sweet and sensitive natured and soft talking to be believable as a cop.

Anyway, yes, this is far from my favorite movie, but I did like a couple of bits such as the main characters learning that a squid is a septapod and not a fish, Dad showing Mac how to eat clams at an Italian restaurant, and Danson showing signs towards the latter part of the movie that he did have more decent underlying qualities and was ready to show them and ditch his not-so-good old self.

Date with an Angel (1987)

Has overacting, but also amusing 1980s humor

[7/10 · 7 March 2020]

The 1980s had these types of movies that had a certain style of wacky humor that I think only appealed to the generation which grew up in the 1980s, like I did. That's why some people totally dismiss this movie. Some people would definitely find the "love bug" scene annoying, yet I found it sort of funny. However, I don't like annoying overacting from stupid more modern movies, "Date movie", "Epic movie" come to mind. Those two dreadful movies also had horrible toilet humor which thankfully these wacky 1980s movies lack.

There were definitely some overactors here, particularly from the hero Jim's (Michael Knight's) fiance Patty (Phoebe Cates) and her father Ed (the late David Dukes). Ed had comical levels of rage numerous times throughout the film including after Jim's rowdy goofball friends pulled a terrorist prank on his home during Patty's engagement party (although that was the one thing that's understandable to get angry about). Patty also had comical anger once Jim started nursing an angel that crashed into his back yard, since she insisted on thinking he was cheating on her with another woman, and she continued screaming hysterically and refusing to even hear Jim out.

Jim tried to show Patty he wasn't cheating on her and that she's a real angel, but Jim's stupidity didn't allow her to see the angel's wings. For some reason, when Jim decided to bring the angel up in front of Patty's house to show her the truth, he had a long trenchcoat over her hiding her wings. Why would he do that right then and there other then to create another movie scene where Patty will keep thinking Jim's cheating on her, and she can continue to break out in her comical rage? Jim had the same stupidity again when he brought the angel to a church and at just the moment where the priest walks out in front of them, Jim has wrapped a blanket over her wings so the priest thinks nothing more than them being two kids playing a prank. That old priest was an over the top character also, including while Jim was in the confessional booth with him.

However, not everyone saw the angel as just some woman, and some of them did see that she's an angel. Some of them got strangely mesmerized by this ethereal stare she gave people, including Jim's friends and a guy in the church (not the priest) who while mesmerized accidentally caught his sleeve on fire. Ed, who initially came over to tear Jim a new so-and-so, also got mesmerized into a complete trance when looking into the angel's ethereal eyes, and changed in an instant from his comical rage to floating in a pleasant glowing happiness, to changing back to his rage when she was gone (and then being attacked by Jim's neighbor's vicious dog). Ed hadn't forgotten his couple of pleasant moments seeing her and spent the rest of the movie obsessively tracking her down so he could bring her into his life on a full time basis, and he wanted to make her an international model for his cosmetics company. As for Ed's rage, us viewers are not the only ones who noticed it, note a scene where his employees during a board meeting seemed to view him as an ogre and were afraid of his temper while speaking up their business ideas.

Jim's buddy's sometimes crossed the line of being a little too much to watch, with them seeming to have college rowdiness and immaturity that hadn't quite left them yet. And them pretending to be terrorists at a civilized party, the kind of thing that could give the elderly guests a heart attack, was not something that I look at as a prank I'd just laugh off. I would immediately disown friends who did anything like that. They then basically spent the rest of the movie trying to exploit the angel and getting the news crew to her.

But overall, much of this movie still had alot of that goofy 1980s charm which I enjoyed, and some of the overacting scenes were pretty funny such as Patty screaming in her car when the song "Angel baby" played and her radio knob broke off so she couldn't turn the song off.

I also liked the bonding between Jim and the angel in the forrest, the angel flying, her mingling with the animals (plus a weird looking bear looking up at her as she flew), and there was the very 1980s music, which yes I like because I grew up in the 1980s

Bedazzled (2000)

Some stupid, but a few funny parts

[6/10 · 27 February 2020]

The idea of being granted wishes in exchange for your soul is not a new idea. The idea was almost copied from the 1960s version of "Bedazzled". This idea was also used in several "Twilight zone" episodes, one being the TZ ep where the character Walter Bediker starts off as a hypochondriac with health concerns, then the devil appears in his bedroom and offers him the wish of permanent perfect health, invincibility, and eternal life, in exchange for his soul. Walter: "My soul!!?" Devil: "You won't even know it's gone". A near parallel exchange is said here in "Bedazzled" between Brendan Frazier's Elliott and Elizabeth Hurley's devil.

Elliott is an annoying overlydesperate character who has no clue that his co-workers despise him, and he keeps pestering them desperately clinging on to them like a leech. And the way he continues to desperately leech onto them at the club made me cringe. I could feel how those people were feeling so overwhelmed and annoyed by him. And the way he hopelessly longed for Allison was also overly desperate.

The movie got interesting with Elizabeth Hurley's introduction to the movie, but it sure didn't escape stupidity when getting into the 7 wishes and the whole devil/wishes/her wanting his soul parts. Alot of the lines exchanged have definitely been heard before in similar themed movies, as well as the types of wishes Elliott asked for from her. When is the first wish not to be very rich in these types of plots? And every wish then being ruined in some way by the devil? In another Twilight zone episode with the genie in the bottle, the elderly store owner couple wishes for a load of money, and that wish is ruined due to them finding out that the taxes they have to pay leaves them with almost no money again.

Elliott as the Colombian drug Lord was a semi new idea, even though him wishing to be rich wasn't. The special effects team did a pretty good job of altering Elliot's appearances according to each wish of his. As the Hispanic drug lord, they made him look taller, more tanned and with a longer different shaped nose. The twist was that even though he wished to be married to Allison, the devil made her absolutely hate him so much that she was yelling at him to get out of his life and throwing things at him (it was sort of funny the way she simultaneously threw like 10 small light bulbs at him and seeing them all hit the door as he quickly closed it on them). Raul, the guy that she actually wanted, then decided to take the drug business from Elliot and have himself and his new crew try to kill him. So, this was the first sign that the devil wanted to ruin Elliott's wishes so horribly that she'd be able to claim his soul as quickly as possible (which really wasn't difficult to find out).

Elliot's second wish was pretty funny actually, him wishing to be a very sensitive guy and then being so sensitive that he cried just from looking at the sunset (the way he cried the last time looking at it before leaving that wish was the funniest). Allison found him to be so freakishly sensitive that she jumped at the bully kicking sand at him and thanked him so dearly for taking her away from Elliot. And she expressed her enourmous relief to now be with a guy who would ignore him just to get in his pants, rather than to continue sitting there listening to Elliot's nonstop ultra sensitive poetry and sugary praising. And the way Elliot looked here, as this little whiny red haired kid looking about 10 years younger than the normal Elliott. That whole wish was comical

The basketball wish was very stupid. The movie crossed over to being so ridiculous, even for a movie like this, when making him unrealistically tall, showing him jump literally 40 feet into the air to slam dunk a basket, and ridiculous levels of disgusting excessive sweating literally pouring from his hair (it was a little bit funny though the way he screamed when not being able to push 666 on his pager to change wishes). Then there was his wish to be intelligent, charming, and articulate, and of course, gay. The last part of that wish made me cringe again, not so much because he realized he was gay, but because of the stupid stereotypical gay partner and the way it played out. Then was Elliot's wish to be a powerful leader, and you'll never guess, Lincoln on the night of his assassination? Nooooo. That wish did parallel the same above mentioned genie Twilight zone episode where the store owner wished to be a powerful leader, and was then Hitler on the night of his death.

The part of Elliott walking into the church beared similarity to the 1980s film "Oh God, you devil" where he asked to actually speak to "the person God" and then got branded as crazy.

The same actors/actresses who were Elliot's dismissive co workers in his real world appeared as side characters in many of his wishes, which showed how this movie did have a cast which could convincingly play different types of characters (although not all of them in every wish were that enjoyable of a character). And, I liked the way Elliott finally stood up to one of his scorning co workers when back in his real world later in the movie. And some of the movie's special effects were good. But there were just too many stupid things that kept it from being a really good movie.

SPOILER

The ending of the movie wasn't too bad. Allison still wasn't interested in Elliott, but he then met his real girl of interest, a new nextdoor neighbor who looked like Allison but personality-wise she was an almost complete female version of himself.

Ladybugs (1992)

The worst of Rodney Dangerfield's movies

[4/10 · 26 February 2020]

I saw this movie because I find Rodney Dangerfield funny, and have liked him in "Back to school", "Caddyshack", and "Easy money". However, even though he repeats some of his funny quirks here, those other movies of his were just alot better.

The opening of the movie was sort of amusing. We see a self help seminar that gradually brings Rodney into the picture as the seminar speaker gets everyone including him to keep saying "I am great. I am wonderful. Everybody likes me.". The last time of everyone saying that has us looking straight at Rodney's reflection in a mirror he's holding doing his known wide-eyed leer.

The worst thing about this movie was Rodney (as Chester) insisting on dressing his stepson-to-be in drag to help his company girls soccer team to win the championship, which were all awkward 13 and 14 year olds. Chester's boss and company president Mr. Mullen (Tom Parks, who reminded me of John Heard) for some reason, thinks that if Chester could become coach of this soccer team and lead them to victory, then he's convinced him that he's worth the promotion that he's wanting. First of all, Rodney looked (and was) too old here to be a full time office worker reaching for a goal of becoming vice president. Second, Chester dressing a 15 year old in drag was totally unacceptable, he should've found some other way to coach the team to victory (I totally understood Chester's fiancee's (Ilean Graff) reaction when she found out what he did later in the movie). Third, Chester's stepson (Johnathan Brandi's) while in drag looked and talked so obviously like a boy in drag, so we're also making alot of the characters look like morons for not noticing that.

There were a few semi-amusing moments between Chester and his co-worker Jackee Harry, who became Chester's assistant coach. I found sort of funny a scene in the elevator with Chester, Jackee, and Ilean when they told another woman in the elevator that they're getting married, and her mistakingly thinking that it was Chester and Jackee (who's black) getting married, and Jackee then reacting in surprise "I wonder what our kids would've looked like".

The funniest scene in the movie was when Chester and Ilean were looking at a house that they were considering buying, and Chester not liking it and saying the few funniest comments of the movie, such as "look at this landscape, it looks like all the trees threw up" and the comment of the neighbors hearing Chester and Ilean screaming.

But, there was just too much of this movie I didn't care for, and next time I want to see Rodney Dangerfield, I'll watch "Back to school", "Easy money", or "Caddyshack". One other note, since Rodney was rumored to be someone who in real didn't feel like he got any respect, his bringing comments related to that into his movies makes it seem like he's not having to practice acting those lines since he's probably saying how he really felt. One example was at one point him looking up and yelling "Why me!? Why me!?", and the look of anguish on his face the second after yelling that seemed probably a look of real anguish which was not acted.

Also, a couple of other sort of interesting things in this movie were Rodney himself singing "Great balls of fire", and a rap song during the closing credits with both Rodney and Tom Parks' last line of the movie being intertwined into the song, Tom's "You're on top of the world", and Rodney's "I finally got some respect".

The Money Pit (1986)

Great comedy remembered from 1986

[9/10 · 22 February 2020]

I have always loved this film. I love the various comical scenes of the new very nice house which turns out to be a lemon with Tom Hanks from his pre-Forrest Gump/Philadelphia/Cast away comedy days, and Shelly Long, who is very charming here as Hank's wife. I never understood why some people have said how much they don't like her, she's a sweet charming 1980s actress. I also liked her in the underrated 1980s film "Hello again"

Long island wasn't mentioned in the movie for where their new house is, it was just said to be an hour from Manhattan, but parts of Long Island are about an hour away, and that actual house from this movie really is in Long Island.

There are many great moments with Hanks and Shelly dealing with so many issues with the house. The staircase literally falls to pieces, their bathtub falls through the floor (and Hank's crazy laughing at it, one of the only things in this movie I didn't like), there was the whole front door frame falling over, a kitchen with an electrical fire starting from just turning the light on (small gag: look what's on tv the second before it exploded), and there's the water which apparently got major leakage from the sewer. And, there's one of the funniest doorbells I ever heard, I wish that we heard it more than once in this movie

The repair crew are equally funny. The carpenter (Joe Mantegna) automatically thinks that a woman calling a carpenter means that she wants to have sex. The plumber (Carmine Caridi) comes over and immediately demands some scotch and a $5,000 check while refusing to even look at the plumbing. The first crew for the house is a truck and biker gang who just tear their house up even further. And just about every repair person in the movie keeps saying that the house will take 2 weeks to fix, even though the boss (Phillip Bosco) of the second and more helpful crew still says that it'll take 2 weeks to finish the job 4 months later after they began.

The early parts of the film before moving also have some funny moments. Hanks is a laywer, and apparently a showbusiness attorney who's representing a rock band, a spoiled brat rich kid celebrity, and a drag queen act (led by Harvey Fienstien) who want to change their name to Meryl Streep. Shelly plays violin for the New York symphony, who's ex husband Max (Alex Godenov) is the very concieded conductor and another very funny character, who still is pining for her wanting her back. Max has an especially funny moment later in the film while coming to the work crew filled house after a bad fight between Shelly and Hanks, and has 2 funny lines there, the first one being to Hanks saying how he threw his fiance away, will suffer terrible anguish from it, and how it's now "turning out to be a pretty good day". Then Max's funny line to a painter and taking his cigarette. He has several other funny lines throughout other parts of the film, with his conciededness making them even funnier.

Hank's dad and stepmom buy a big tropical South American house at the end of the movie from the same lady (Maurine Stapleton) that Hanks and Long bought the Long Island house from. And, that house is actually in real life a museum in Miami.

Great funny film, I have thought so for 34 years now, and will always think so

City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994)

Funny and comical, but too much copying from first film

[8/10 · 21 February 2020]

I liked the constant light hearted comedy of "City slickers 2, the legend of Curly's gold", which was similar to the many great comical moments of "City slickers". Bruno Kirby was rumored to have had some kind of big falling out with Billy Crystal, which was why he didn't come back for this sequel. They starred together in "City slickers" and "When Harry met Sally", and apparently had enough differences of opinions to where they just couldn't work together for a third movie. So we instead got Jon Lovitz joining Crystal back as Mitch and Daniel Stern back as unstable yet goofball Phil. While Kirby was Mitch's buddy with daredevil tendencies, Lovitz stars as his autistic brother Glen who spends long periods of time not being around (and that character idea helped make it more feasible of his character never being mentioned in the first movie).

Mitch's wife hates Glen, who has a reputation for using and leeching off various family members and refusing to find any real jobs. The closest to real jobs he's apparently had were borrowing money from other family members while doing halfassed chores for them (like trying to milk Mitch's cow), and seeing random supposedly lost cats and dogs and charging money for finding and returning them to the owners (some people said he was asking for ransom, he must've been picking up pets that weren't really lost and then not letting the owners have them without paying up). Glen also has the typical "movie autistic" qualities such as quickly remembering details of a map and split secondly seeing how many letters are in long words (Mitch even called Glen "Rain man" at one point, and Glen then did a pretty good impression of Dustin Hoffman from that movie saying "11, yeah, definitely 11").

The second wild west adventure here entails a lost treasure map instead of a cattle drive. The earlier New York scenes of this movie are pretty good with Mitch discovering the map in Curly's old hat and thinking that Curly came back from the dead to follow him, which turned out to be Curly's twin Duke who badly wanted the map for the gold. Mitch himself had definitely moved up in his company in this film and was now advertising director. In the first film, Mitch was slipping off the rails a bit and his then boss and advertising director (Jeffery Tambor) put him on temporary warning. Mitch told his family at the end of the first film that he was going to start doing his job much better, and the results really showed here. Phil was another story, and he was still struggling in his life (and even thought that the clothes in his closet talked to him).

When Mitch finds the map in Curly's hat, he and Phil get very excited about how there's 4 million dollars in gold. We also get the "Mitch screaming as the scene ends and we don't see anyone's reaction" bit twice in the New York section of this movie. First it was in Mitch's bedroom after seeing "Curly" outside the window, while is wife is waiting for him to get intimate. The second one is at the library where they're excitedly looking up info on treasure hunting, and it's after they've already been told to quiet down. I wonder how the librarian acted after him screaming.

After that, the out west treasure hunting part begins. Some of it is sort of copying the first, yet some of it is new kinds of scenes also. Overall, it's really not a bad movie.

Clifford (1994)

Weird and creepy movie

[3/10 · 17 February 2020]

This movie is like my title says, and also is another one of those 80s - 90s movies where characters overact their tempers with unnessesary straining yelling. Then again, with them having to deal with a character like Clifford, I partially understand their overreacting behaviors. Clifford is a very weird and creepy character who is freakishly obsessed with having to go to Dinosaur world in L. A.. He acts more pestering and mischiefy than that awful annoying kid in "Problem child" (another terrible movie from the same time period with strainingly overacting yelling characters), and Clifford is a horrible plotting scheming character too (he tries to frame his Uncle Martin (Charles Groden) for planting a bomb at City Hall)). Another weird thing is that he's supposed to be 10, but he looks 40 to us viewers (he's Martin Short), but he looks 10 to all the other characters in the movie. That's just so weirdly stupid.

Clifford's parents (his dad is Richard Kind) are freaking out and near nervous breakdown level with Clifford on a plane enroute to Hawaii. Then, Clifford's makes his first insane move of the movie, shutting off the plane's engines to get the pilot to land in L. A., just so he can go to Dinosaur world. Any 10 year old in real life to do such a thing would be locked up in Juvenile detention for the rest of his youth, possibly longer. If Uncle Martin would've let the police know about Clifford shutting the plane off while he was arrested for suspected of planting a bomb at City Hall, he would've had an easier time convincing the police that Clifford set up the "bomb under City Hall" scheme. Realistically, Martin would've known about Clifford endangering a plane full of passengers when picking him up from the airport, and the police would've known too and not let him wait for Martin in the airport by himself. But, there are so many unrealistic inane things about this movie that it doesn't really matter. When handing him over to Martin, Clifford's parents are extremely relieved to get rid of his insane freak of a son. Eventually Martin starts feeling exactly the same way about him.

The rest of this stupid movie revolves around Clifford continuing to scheme plots and make as much trouble as possible, and he continues to blame his actions on not going to Dinosaur world. Clifford acts really creepy with Martin's wife (Mary Steenburg), while she adores him and doesn't see all the crazy things that he's doing to Martin. Martin's boss (Dabney Coleman) is another one of those jerka** bosses who constantly tries to make life hard for him while simultaneously trying to woo his wife (and also takes her to San Francisco and wines and dines her).

Clifford sings very embarrisingly out loud "San Francisco, open your Golden gate" at the train station, and the way he runs singing "Ahhhhhhhh!!" with his arms wide open made me cringe and shutter, literally! And him freaking out yelling "I want a whole gang of chocolate!!" while freaking out about not going to Dinosaur world also was awful! And Clifford kept saying things with the word "bestest" like "You are the bestest Aunt in the whole world" to Martin's wife or "That is the bestest looking wig I've ever seen" when pointing out Dabney's hairpiece in front of Martin. Sigh. And he says other things even worse than that. He took things to heavy cringe level.

SPOILER

Clifford finally goes to Dinosaur world near the end of the movie, getting an ironic punishment there on one of their rides. And there was where the one funny joke of the movie happened when Martin says that if he saves Clifford from the now malfunctioned ride, Clifford may then get his hands on plutonium, and Martin then mocks Clifford's voice saying "I just made the bestest nuclear bomb in the whole world!!" That one amusing bit there was the one thing that improved this movie a little, while the rest was horrible.

One other note, when Uncle Martin tells Clifford about an amusement park called Riverview in Chicago that he never got to go to as a kid, that really was an amusement park in Chicago til 1967.

Kandyland (1988)

Trashy, very lowbrow 1980s

[2/10 · 13 February 2020]

A brother of a friend of mine handed me a few videos that he asked if I'd like to borrow; The Terminator, Mad Max beyond Thunderdome, and Kandyland. He obviously likes 80s movies. I like them too, I really like many 80s movies actually, but this one is way near the bottom of my list. The other two he lent me are definitely much preferred 80s movies for me.

I never saw Kandyland until now, and I do not want to see it again. It is the bottom of the barrel 80s trash. As lowbrow as the 80s could go. A movie about women trying to make it in a strip club with constantly dealing with lowdown scum "audience" such as doing sick perverted things like dropping their pants for the strippers, them getting on stage and grabbing them, the strippers dealing with abusive boyfriends outside of work, dealing with abusive male staff at the club, getting assaulted, there's a rape scene, and a few other attempted rape scenes. And these women at the club, they just freaking stick around and continue to just put up with getting treated that way! This movie portrays men as it being acceptable for them to act this way and to keep getting away with it!

At least the star woman of the movie was making attempts to get away from all of that, getting away from her abusive boyfriend, and she started staying with an understanding friend at her place, the one redeeming quality of this movie which took my rating from a 1 to a 2.

And another scene where one of the crazy lowlifes in the movie (some overmuscled crazy blonde hair jerka**) attempted to rape one of the girls, and the other guy with the thick hair walks into the room and tries to tell him to back off the girl. The blonde guy tells him to get lost and to let him do "his thing", and the thick haired guy just walks back into the other room saying nothing. I do wish though that he continued saying nothing a couple of scenes later when doing some painfully stupid unfunny act on stage with two puppets.

And, a scene later, the girlfriend of the abusive blonde guy says how he gets all crazy when smoking this drug. She didn't know that it was called crack? And yes, it did help in making some people act crazy. And some guys mixed crack with boozing up, and that combination made them very crazy, similar to the way numerous guys in this movie acted.

I finally had enough of this trash and turned the movie off about halfway through.

King Ralph (1991)

Funny in parts

[7/10 · 12 February 2020]

This is a highly unrealistic movie, but I also know that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Even if the highly unlikely event of every possible heir to the throne was electrocuted and killed in a freak accident, there would still be many other full English possibilities for the throne before chosing an American so disconnected from the knowledge of any Royal history in his family, that he knew absolutely nothing about any possibility of him becoming king until after the freak accident (nevermind that no one who works for photographing the entire Royal family would be thick enough to leave loads of wires and electrical equipment sitting in pools of water). There was Jon Hurt's character from the House of Steward who was officially a possibility for the throne, which in real life would be chozen without hesitation over an American who knew nothing about royalty and never even been to England.

Anyway, I do realize though that this movie wasn't meant to be taken seriously, and was placed in an entirely fictional world, which is also why maybe it's a good idea that none of the real life members of the Royal family (Queen Elizabeth II, Charles, Diana, etc.) were portrayed as the former members before the accident in this movie.

John Goodman does has some funny scenes as a Fish Out Of Water (FOW) role. I feel though that it would've been even better as a comedy to have made his character more of a common regular blue-collar middle-American than a Vegas lounge singer, and it would've been great if they made his character here even more similar to his character Dan on "Roseanne". However, I did find it kind of funny the way he half watched the football game while playing ("and he's in there") piano at the lounge, that was sort of Dan in his character him doing that. And there was alot of Dan in the way Ralph looked and dressed when first introduced to Sir Cedric Willingham (Peter O'Toole) upon arrival at Buckingham Palace. They did get it right by having Ralph disbelieving Royalty messenger (Richard Griffith) when first coming to Vegas to present the news.

There are some funny scenes with Ralph having difficulty adjusting to the noble eloquent ways of imperial sovereignty which is the norm to most members of Royalty. His lack of refinement was quite funny such as the scenes with his mannerisms when being shown how to dress, walk, pour tea, etc., and when meeting the King of Zambezi (after rehearsing with Sir Cedric the proper way to introduce himself, then blurting out "Yo, whaz happinin holmes?"). And then the king of Zambezi enjoying his time with Ralph. Also funny was Ralph playing cricket more like baseball.

I also liked the sweet romantic interest of Ralph and Miranda, they had a nice chemistry, and the scenes of Ralph having trouble dealing with being told how he wasn't supposed to be getting involved with her, when he was used to living a life where he was free to get involved with anyone where he and her would feel the right chemistry together.

John Hurt as Lord Graves trying to sabatoge Ralph (including the scene with him deliberately encouraging Ralph to make an a** of himself at the Royal ball (and Ralph doing it by acting like a common American just because he innocently thought that it was ok to do it because he was told to)). I still, however, found the scene of Ralph playing "Good golly miss Molly" to be too much, and he should've known better at that point in the movie. The conversation about fox hunting made Ralph look dumb for not realizing that they were talking about the animaI, just because the movie became desperate for a cheap double meaning joke. And the glasses of wine domino effect spilling down the table was also kind of ridiculous.

Sort of a funny moment in this movie was Ralph's would-be future Royal wife turning out to have a deep masculine voice after initially looking quite alluring to Ralph and looking quite pretty. And her also revealing to Ralph a sleazy fantasy of hers, in spite of her Royal parents disliking Ralph for HIS gross lack of refinement.

I did understand the scene of Ralph threatening to quit due to being forced to marry a woman he never met, and Sir Cedric making a point on how Ralph has been quitting things his entire life and that it was time to take a stand and stick something out for a change and that showing that in his Royal duties would be the perfect way to redeem himself.

One other thing that made this movie better was the way Ralph redeemed himself in the scenes following the disasterous ball, with noticable improvements in his behavior and refinement while stumbling upon Lord Graves' deception and in his scene addressing Parliament. However, the very last scene of the movie where the credits began rolling was quite cheesy.

Anyway, I was wanting to give this movie a 6, but because it was meant to be a goofy silly movie, I'll give it a 7.