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Reviews
McHale's Navy (1997)
A Painful Memory
I had warned my then-boyfriend that McHale's Navy was going to be an awful film. There were many signs. One was that it was based on a TV show nobody my age (20) really ever watched, not even as syndicated reruns. Another was the cast, which lit up plenty of warning lights: Tom Arnold as the lead? Tim Curry as the villain? French Stewart as the "funny" guy? Ack! But we went anyway.
I remember that, even though it was a rather short film, I was very bored. I don't even recall any salient plot details apart from vaguely clever and falsely emotional bit about helping out some troubled islanders from the wicked schemes of Tim Curry. I also remember cracking up laughing when Curry's character grabbed a child character, snarling "Come here, boy!" because somebody behind me said "Peter Pan the Pirates," referring to the cartoon where Curry did voice acting as Captain Hook. It did seem like Curry was putting on his generic "bad guy with bad foreign accent" performance. And the less said about Tom Arnold, the better.
Now, whenever I talk to my ex, he'll sometimes joke, "You know, you were SO RIGHT about the McHale's Navy movie. You told me it was going to suck, but I refused to listen."
The Postman (1997)
Okay for its genre, dull otherwise
I guess this film has plenty of vocal defenders, but I'm not one of them. It's not the worst film I've ever seen, but it's not a film I particularly liked. To sum up: it's boring, it's treacly, and I couldn't force myself to care for any of the characters. Then again, compared to a number of post-apocalyptic films, The Postman is far better done than, say, Damnation Valley or Year of the Comet. But I'm not a big fan of post-apocalyptic Earth films, overall I find that pretty much all of them lean heavily on the same few cliches and they're all populated by rugged loners in brownish-gray tattered coats with a resistance to both radiation and pessimism.