Reviews

I generally don't care for cartoons with moralizing, and more than any other cartoon, Family Guy steals from other shows and movies. The "Don't Mess With Mr. Booze" song by Sammy Cahn (also famous for "Love & Marriage" used as the theme of "Married With Children") is lifted straight from "Robin & the 7 Hoods," but this version is arranged by Mark Mothersbaugh (formerly of Devo), and the performance by MacFarlane & company is actually better than the original!

In addition, the script is by Brian Scully, the shows best writer (he wrote "I Dream of Jesus"), AND it makes fun of AA for being boring, so I'm all in on this episode.

The worst Family Guy episodes are those which borrow heavily from other shows, and the originals were always better.

As an earlier reviewer pointed out, the theme of Lois wanting to fight in the ring is because she thinks of what a jerk Peter usually is, comes from Marge seething over her oafish fat husband in "The Simpsons" Season 8. But Lois becoming a boxer is obviously stolen from "Boxing Luanne," Season 7, Episode 11 of "King of the Hill," in which Luanne, an amateur, also fights a professional: George Foreman's daughter, Freeda.

The "King of the Hill" version is funnier, because it has a sub-plot featuring the actual voice of George Foreman, who is offended when Hank calls Foreman's grill "A novelty grill," because it doesn't use propane.

This episode is also short of jokes, and much of it is just cartoon boxing scenes. Are we supposed to cheer for Lois as if it were an actual boxing match? Held on the edge of our seats to see if Lois will win?

I wonder if the writers debated over the outcome.

Imagine that you and your friends somehow got a copy of the script for "April in Quahog," and began reading it with each of you taking a part. Would you laugh at any of the jokes? If you picked up a phone and pretended to call Meghan Fox and threaten her, but nothing related to that then happens, would you all burst into laughter?

The main story of the world improbably coming to an end doesn't really go anywhere, and in itself isn't at all funny. Writer John Viener is credited with writing this mess, but it seems more like a collage of random scenes that make no sense, let alone being funny.

I see that in 2023, someone left a 10/10 rave review of this episode with a detailed description of the script. If you've read it, did anything it lists seem hilarious? "Quagmire and Cleveland went out to dinner"? Does that seem like a wacky premise?

It seems like, more than any other show, Family Guy has extremes of quality. When the writer is inspired, the cast is at their best, and the result is something that you'll remember with a smile, and it's why you'll tune in to watch the show after that. But when the writer turns in a half-finished script, and the other writers try and patch it up under a deadline, the result is "April in Quahog."

There is no arguing that the best episodes of "Family Guy" have been written by Brian Scully; "I Dream of Jesus" from Season 7 was another high point written by him.

This is despite that Dr. Scully has written for other shows, such as the "Drew Carey Show" and "The Simpsons." It's as if the style of "Family Guy" helped Scully release his inner . . . Uh . . . Stool. MacFarlane apparently lets Scully get away with anything.

Of course, since Scully is also the show's producer, he can calla all the snots. The result is something that would likely make Lee De Forest and Philo Farnsworth aghast at what was done with their inventions, but we gross guys get our laughs from it.

There seems to be many reviews filled with howls of anguish after some gentle mocking of their Bronze Age beliefs, but Seth MacFarlane cannot be blamed for this heresy. The episode was written by Danny Smith, who has written scripts for many shows, including "Third Rock from the Sun," so perhaps The Anointed should boycott those shows too!

I thought that the episode was hilarious, particularly the mocking of Star Dreck (another religion). Considering that Seth MacFarlane's biggest project thus far was The Orville series, he seems to be remarkably tolerant of the parody, or maybe he was inspired by it!

The best episodes of this or any other show are written by one guy who sells the script to the producers. An example is "I Dream of Jesus" from Season 7, which was written by Brian Scully.

This Poor Fish (which should've been the title) seems to have been written by committee: Seth MacFarlane and the cast. You can imagine them sitting around a table with a case of beer, throwing out ideas, none of which work. The "Jaws" take-off is especially weak and obvious, and the Spring Break sub-plot is a good idea, but it goes nowhere. It all smells like they were desperate to come up with an episode quick, and the result is what you would see in the week's trash.

Every show has good and bad episodes, but this entire episode lacks in laughs or anything original, and as everyone knows, the only good thing made by a committee is the giraffe.

A buddy of mine got a job as a Best Boy on the Chicago P. D. production crew. He never got a look at the scripts, but he saw enough of the filming to know what the stories of the 2024-25 season will be. I promised not to reveal his name, but this is what he he told me about each episode:

There's a series of robberies at banks/loan companies/pawn shops. The robbery crew wear masks, but Torres recognizes a tattoo on one that means he knows the guy, an old friend of the family. This puts him in a moral quandary.

On a stakeout, looking for a suspect in a dope-trafficking gang, Ruzek and Atwater spot the perp exiting a building over a block away. They jump out of their SUV and immediately holler for the kid to stop! Freeze! But the 15-year-old black kid ignores them and take off running. Miraculously, 41-year-old Ruzek gives chase, and after thirty seconds, he catches the kid, tackles him, and instantly puts the cuffs on him.

Upton is jumped, taken hostage and tortured. Stripped of her phone and radio, the team has no way of locating her, but in her cleverness, she finds a way to alert them.

While in a wild car chase after a drug lord, the patrol vehicle of Upton and Ruzek rams the luxury SUV of the drug lord head on, but somehow, the air bags of neither vehicle deploy.

A gun running gang has a purloined shipment of M5 fully-automatic carbines with extended magazines. Twelve of the gang get into a shootout with the Intelligence team and spray them with a thousand 5.56 bullets, but the cops safely shelter behind trash cans and fenders and doors of their cars, and none are hit. They then take down the gang one-by-one.

The team pressures a small-time crook to wear a concealed wire in a meeting with the arch-villain in hopes of getting the villain to incriminate himself on a recording. They meet in Grant Park, and despite Intelligence having plain-clothes surveillance all around the area, the villain realizes what is going on and takes off running. As the team closes in on him, he grabs a passing civilian woman and holds a gun to her head. Despite repeated calls for him to let the terrified woman go and talk things over, he refuses and threatens to put a bullet in her head. The team is at a loss to resolve this standoff, but they do not lower their arms. Cut to commercial.

Sgt. Trudy Platt confronts the newly-appointed, pompous Chief of Police and calls him a "bedwetter" in front of dignitaries. He fires her on the spot, but she is soon reinstated, as Platt knows an old guy who ran a video store and has a record of all the porn the Chief had rented.

Burgess is shot and badly wounded, but two weeks later, she is back at work. During her absence, a new character is added to the team, but no one likes them, and they are summarily dismissed by Voight.

Voight decides to handle a problem by "doing things his own way." Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) disapproves, and in a gripping display of her acting skills, wrinkles her brow and makes a sour face. Voight replies by arching his eyebrows and shouting. Drama ensues.

There was an attempt to revive the short comic segments with Burgess or Platt on patrol, but they were discontinued in favor of more closing sex scenes and drinking shots at a bar.

Upton is again taken hostage, but this time, in a room with a single captor, she runs a serious guilt trip on him. She makes him feel ashamed for what he has done, so he releases her.

Three more episodes will show scantily-clad young women held in bondage by a maniac kidnapper. None of them will cooperate with the police. Dr. Daniel Charles diagnoses them all as having anorexia.

I see that most of the negative reviews here are unhappy that this is not just another good guys vs. Bad guys story where the cops gun down the villain in the end. Instead, this is a realistic depiction of life in America today. None of the characters are particularly likable or worthy of rooting for, nor is the situation cut-and-dried right-and-wrong. Everything about this 45 minutes is unpleasant, but that's a realistic program. Deal with it.

If this series persists in reruns years from now, as long as Charlie's Angels has, it will present future generations with an accurate account of the world situation in 2024. If you want heroes vs. Villains, go watch Batman.

Until now, most movies with CGI effects have been one disappointment after another. What good are impossible sights on the screen if you have a dumb story and lame acting? "Avatar" ($237mil) was nothing but Cowboys and Indians again, but naturally with the Indians as the good guys. In "Inception" ($160mil), the journey into multiple dream worlds merely shows us more car chases and shootouts. "Iron Man 3" ($200mil) listed 3,700 compositors and 24 effects companies listed in the credits. Each of those popular extravaganzas will be regarded by future generations as quaint and idiotic as we might regard "Ramar of the Jungle" or "Attack of the 50-Foot Woman" today.

It seems that the Hollywood industry is too concerned with easy money to make anything artistic and thoughtful. They should stick to making cartoons for children.

Now here, for a fraction of the cost ($35mil), comes "Poor Things," a period movie from Europe, filmed at Origo Studios in Budapest with a Greek director, based on a Scottish fantasy novel, and it is much better and more satisfying to watch than any of the Hollywood franchises. The special effects don't dominate the movie, they add to it.

The story begins in humor as a spoof of a Victorian comedy of errors by Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw - in a Steampunk staging. But is so beautifully portrayed that it becomes serious. What exactly does it mean to be of mature character? None of the males seem to have achieved it. Has old Dr. Baxter succeeded in improving humans?

The actors are among the finest performing today, and their performances here are flawless. Most Hollywood actors have no ability to assume the persona of different characters. Just as with John Wayne or James Stewart, Morgan Freeman can play only one character: Morgan Freeman. Same with Nicholas Cage - mouth agape and knitting his brow; that's his one thing.

I would rank Willem Dafoe as equal to the great Gary Oldman in versatility of assuming a persona. He can do it all. Brits often complain about how awful American actors are at performing with a British, Scottish or Irish accent, but here it took a few scenes before I recognized Dafoe's voice in not quite the Glaswegian accent that is called for - likely because such a genuine brogue would be incomprehensible to Western audiences. Not authentic, but a fine accent nonetheless. His extreme makeup maintains Willem Dafoe's appearance, but in cubist perspective.

Applause also, to Emma Stone whose character must constantly and significantly change throughout the movie. How many actresses could do that? And here, I must concede that the movie is notorious for its graphic depiction of venery. Once again, this could not have been done in the Untied States, where the Christian Taliban is now in control, and we have returned to a time when the reproductive arts are forbidden to be displayed or even mentioned, unless in euphemisms. Here, it's all shown as natural as it should be, both the pleasant and unpleasant.

In short, this film (actually shot on film, not digital, by an Irishman), returns to the neglected concept of cinema as art, not mere entertainment. It has been years since anything this unusual has been shown, and it is devoid of the typical movie clichés such as good guys vs. Bad guys.

Incidentally, one of the clever uses of CGI in the movie shows the bizarre surgical creations of Dr. Godwin Baxter. There's a bulldog with its head replaced by the neck and head of a goose, then the remaining parts of the animals are also joined together, walking around happily. This cuts to the neck and head of a horse mounted on the front of a carriage, but the vehicle is revealed to be propelled by steam. In fact, during the early twentieth century, taxidermists actually did sell horse's necks and heads to be mounted on the fronts of horseless carriages, so as to keep the other horses on the road from being frightened by a carriage magically moving with no horse.

By the time this movie was made in 1961, the theaters were empty and closing, because people chose television for their leisure hours. What were studios to do? Producer Scott R. Dunlap's B-movie company (previously known for westerns), made an imitation of what was popular on television at the time, and bought a script from a TV writer, Frank Gruber, who got his start writing pulp fiction novels and stories sold to detective magazines (at a time when writers were paid by the word!), but switched to the lucrative new TV market. At the time, TV was changing from unrealistic westerns to unrealistic detective shows, but Frank Gruber had written plenty in both genres.

Dunlap then got a cast of TV stars. Movie stars were too expensive, so they got David Janssen who had success starring in TV's "Richard Diamond: Private Detective," Jacques Aubuchon, who was familiar from frequent appearances on "Perry Mason" and "McHale's Navy," as well as other faces familiar on TV.

The result is a movie as good as any 1950s TV show that you can find on the back-channels of your TV.

Although this is one of the most beautifully and perfectly photographed movies I have ever seen, and although the period scenes are perfect (I wondered how it could be done until I read it was shot mostly in Malaysia), and although acting is superb, "Lust, Caution" is undeniably slow. As the first hour drags on, it is obvious what will happen: they will be attracted to each other. More happens during the second hour, but there are no surprises. You know that things will not end well. Actually, you knew that during the first hour, but it just becomes more obvious.

Perhaps American movies have spoiled us with car chases and shoot-outs, but spending two-and-a-half hours speculating on why, if she is a freedom fighter, she is attracted to the villain, is not interesting, let alone entertaining.

It would be a better movie, and still just as successful at making its point, if it were half the length.

This is a movie so fine that American should be forced to watch it, because it's about reality. Not today's reality, of course, but the reality of our ancestors. (My Grandpa Louie was born seventeen years after the year in which the story is set.)

Today, everyone wants something for nothing. They want to be as rich as Croesus just by buying Bitcoin. Everyone wants guns. They see a new gun on TV, they want that one, too. Everything else they see on TV, they covet that as well. They want the biggest, most powerful SUV ever made, but they want free gasoline and higher octane. They want to eat constantly, yet not get fat. They want marble countertops in all roooms. They want 75 degrees in the winter and 65 degrees in the summer.

They have a lot of that, yet no one is happy.

The gummint's not treating them right. The rules are for the other guy, not them. They want freedom. Freedom: with the emphasis on FREE. Something bad happens to them, they deserve to collect millions - don't matter who from, they got it coming as soon as they call Saul.

But not too long ago, many people came to America with nothing. But they worked as hard as they could, 365-days-a-year with no vacation, no sick time, no minimum wage, no time-and-a-half, no workman's comp, but still, they barely survived. Many didn't. Some couldn't take it and went insane from the misery.

To my knowledge, this is the first movie about what the Old West was really like. PBS should get rid of Ken Burns and hire Tommy Lee Jones. I suspect that Mr. Jones may have gone hungry at some time during his long life. If you spend some time hungry, you don't forget it. That's why he included hunger in this movie.

This is a generally glum movie, but it has funny moments. It's educational, but it doesn't explain how Americans went from being people who could survive having nothing, to a bunch of spoiled and tantrum-prone kids.