Reviews

This movie was 100% fantastic. I'm mystified by the bad reviews and people saying it was boring, a money grab, and the music was lousy. I cried three times, that's got to be worth something. It features several huge production numbers, if you think that's boring then you shouldn't be going to see a musical. Meryl Streep got a full song with a big production and it was fantastic and a fun new addition to the Mary Poppins myth, something along the lines of Aunt Clara from "Bewitched." Also her segment had references to her movie "Death Becomes Her." Given that we know Meryl is a great singer (from her stunning turn in "Mamma Mia,") her performance is part character and part watching a Hollywood legend perform. She's a star.

I can tell from what I saw on the screen that this was a big budget movie, which by definition precludes it from being a money grab. Let me look it up now....$130,000,000. That seems like a loooot of money.

The style was exactly like the original. Similar song and dance, similar acting, similar dialog, similar sentiments, similar animated sections. I agree with others that if you liked the original you will like this one. This one just took the original and amped it up more.

Song and dance might not be enough for some people any more. Nowadays enerything has to be so dark and loud and sinister. A song and performance like " Over the rainbow" might not work for a lot of audience now, but this movie features that kind of classic songwriting. That might account for some of the negativity in the reviews. The songs were great with beautiful melodies. Some songs were quiet and wistful, which worked great for me but might leave some people flat if they are expecting every song to be a showstopper.

It felt like an old tradition movie, with the title giving a sense of expectation and an overture. The title promised to recreatefor us all the magic of Mary Poppins and then the movie delivered just that.

Emily Blunt was perfect as Mary Poppins and really captured the "prim and perfect" character created by Julie Andrews. along with some mischief and love for fun.

The big stars of Dick Van Dyke, Meryl Streep, and Angela Lansbury were icing that pushed the movie that much more over the top. Angela's singing sounded clear and pure, with another intricate, well crafted and beautiful melody. Mr. Van Dyke has so much star power and charisma, of course we all know that from his 60+ year career. His turn here packs the expected wallop. He could have easily stolen the movie and they probably didn't want that so his number is short.

New Year's Eve style partiers are enjoying an evening of magic at The Magic Castle as our butler, a distinguished gentleman in tails introduces each act. Tom Hanks' old partner from "Bosom Buddies," Peter Scolari comes off well as an invisible ghost haunting The Magic Castle and serving as our co-host and comedy relief. He wants to show us some magic tricks but bungles them all, alternately dousing himself with vanished milk or setting himself on fire while in a straight-jacket and turning himself into "barbecued meat on nails." The magic is all legit.

FOLKS, IT'S GONNA GET HOT IN HERE! Exclaims Paul Kozak while tossing a giant fireball into the air. Keeping up a stream of wisecracks, mysterious fire burns like a fuse, giant fireballs appear from thin air, his torch instantly transforms into a cane, streamers fly from his hands, he holds fire in the palms of his hands. All done with silky smooth, lightning fast and skillful movements. This guy's good, and he demands the applause that he deserves. "C'mon folks, I'm WORKIN' here." Torn paper is placed into an empty wine goblet where it visually and gradually transforms into an egg which is then broken. Perrier water is poured into a Styrofoam cup only to find that the water has vanished and the cup is pierced with a switchblade to show it empty. An endless stream of paper falls from his fist, and finally a giant snowstorm erupts from his empty hand including beautiful flecks of artsy embellishments. The egg is done with difficult to get prestidigitation paraphernalia from a former meticulously handcrafted era, it's a privilege to see this fine effect in action. One of my favorite magic acts ever.

Rudy Kobe does his signature four legged creature act. I've seen this act in person at Astroworld in Houston. He struts on stage to techno music and does a magical quick change into his lab coat. Walking behind his magic table he sprouts two extra legs and does hip-hop around the stage. After starting and holding a cloth in front of it, the chainsaw magically begins to fly around on its own and, what's this? Cuts off one of Rudy's four legs!!!! Rudy then repeats his hip-hop dance but with only three legs it's a little lame, hahaha, see what I did there? Returning to his table the chain saw again magically levitates and, oh no! Cuts off another one of Rudy's three remaining legs! Rudy puts down the cloth but then for reasons known only to him he picks it up again - will he lose one more of his two remaining legs??? No! Instead the chain saw appears to have cut his torso in two because while Rudy's two legs continue to dance to the new wave music and his two hands continue to hold the cloth, his head now magically levitates high above the stage while peering down on us from over the cloth with a stoic expression (how much emotion would your face show if your head was cut off?). Youtube it and you will see that someone back in the 60s was already doing this act.

Tina Lennert does an incredible mime/magic act. She plays a cleaning lady as she glumly reflects upon her lonely life suddenly her coat and mop come to life and turn into an imaginary debonair gentleman! He cheers her up by fixing her hair, transforming fire to a beautiful bracelet, and dressing her up with a beautiful magically produced scarf. She ends up blissfully hugging her coat and mop, a bittersweet and moving dramatic piece and I'd like to see someone show me any other magic act that is done with only one real hand.

Kevin James pulls out of a box a dismembered hand that looks like "Thing" from the Addam's Family. After putting the living hand away back in the box, Kevin segues into his centerpiece, a custom one-of-a-kind magic trick that is truly astonishing. It's hard to feel bad about spoiling a 25 year old magic show but I won't reveal this one, but it's worth the trouble of locating and viewing this show.

Lance Burton closes the show with the act that made him famous. This is a young and gorgeous Lance Burton. Suddenly a flash of fire and a dove appears. He produces fire and doves with a variety of super smooth moves. After about ten doves and bemusedly watching them fly around the theater he rolls up his sleeves and gets down to some serious magic. He magically produces a white silk handkerchief and flops it around uselessly when, hold on, suddenly a tall white candle appears from nowhere, with his sleeves rolled up? He magically produces a lit match and lights the candle, only to wrap the silk loosely around it and it vanishes. He continues producing and vanishing candles at will until he's left with three lit candles and a silk around his neck. Lance blows out the candles by one and deposits them into a waste container at the foot of a Paris inspired gas lamp where he apparently expected to find his "escort" for the evening. Too bad, she must have been "busy," so he'll just have to entertain us with excellent magic. Lance brings out his centerpiece and cements the suspicion that he is destined for stardom. He holds up a birdcage. Lance removes his hands and it floats. With mystical gestures Lance causes it to float around. Finally Lance tosses the ball far away from him and motions for it to return to him, whereupon the ball floats lazily back to him and Lance removes a wire hoop from around his neck and the ball floats right through it to Lance's waiting hand. Lance gives us about a 3 million dollar smile, or probably much more than that, and accepts his applause, although there really isn't any because we are totally mesmerized by his smile.

We walked out of this movie at the 3/4 mark because it was just the same old thing the entire movie. Cute cubs get eaten by hyenas. Old noble lioness can't keep up with pride & she & cub are left to die. Old lioness abandons cub & dies alone. Cheetah mom has to fight male lions. Male lions gang up on cute cheetah cubs. Male lions gang up on old male & drive him to his lonely death. Cheetah kills adorable gazelle. Crocs threaten lions. Just on and on. The fabricated script is laser focused on death, dying, injury, pain, suffering, and fighting.

Remember when Bambi's mother got killed? Well in this movie it's more like mother, father, aunt, Thumper, & a few assorted birds & rodents all get killed.

The writers concocted a simplistic dramatic story that's focused on death & struggle, & the movie strictly follows that, ignoring other aspects of feline life that might have been explored. You don't get much insight into cat behavior other than fighting, hunting, & dying. In spite of the "Cats" in the title, there are not many cats in the movie. 1 cheetah, 5 cheetah cubs, 5 male lions, 4 female lions, & 10 or so lion cubs, & that's it. No puma, jaguar, lynx, tiger, cougar, mountain lion, or any other cat.

Great photography of cats, animals, landscape, & weather, but u can't enjoy it. How can you enjoy great photography of an African thunderstorm when they carefully point out t you the cold, wet, shivering cheetah & cubs?

It's not really a documentary. There isn't much educational content. It's more a creative effort of storytelling. They needed to balance it. Maybe 70% cute cubs playing & exploring cat behavior & thought with only 30% harsh reality. Instead it's 90% depressing.

The movie starts off great but then runs out of gas about halfway through and never comes back. That, coupled with a weak ending makes a disappointing final product. The first half is funny with a lot of funny dialog. The plot is a little one-dimensional and that's OK as long as the script is working, but in the second half the straightforward plot starts to get tiresome.

Watch for many cameos and bit parts from actors you know...that helps to carry the movie. Arte Johnson succeeds in making an impression with just one minute of screen time and only a few lines, they should have given him more. Donald O'Conner has a large part but it's unsatisfying. He's too much bluster all the way through, his role is too much a single note. He does play a role in the plot it's not important enough and his character is too thin. He has one great joke ("teach her to walk") but other than that his presence fails to gel. He's so talented but you don't see that here. I think it would have been better if his part had been sillier, but of course I realize that it's a fine line between too straight and too silly.

The style is the same type of sex comedy we know so well, everything seems innocent on the surface but the script is constantly spinning out suggestive jokes that can be interpreted in a sexual way. Since it's hard for any 1960s era movie to shock me, this style of script doesn't work very well and I usually find them juvenile, boring, and trite. But this one works better for at least two reasons: 1: it's funny stuff and B: it's pretty x-rated, helping it to retain its shock value.

The first part of the script is full of great jokes and ambitious scenes with crowds of people, but at the half way mark that just stops. The funny dialog stops, the silly and ambitious scenes stop and the straight-forward plot is allowed to just run its course. Then there is one more huge joke (the phone booth) and that's it, the rest of the movie is flat. Then they do a big ambitious production piece for the climax but they don't do much with it and then the final climax is weak. Of course in any romantic film you need that final climactic kiss. It's usually boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl get back together, climactic kiss...we all cry and go home fulfilled. In this movie they choose not to do that. They don't build the movie up to that final climactic kiss and in fact there is no kiss there. That's an odd choice and what they have there instead is weak.

WARNING - SPOILERS HERE WILL REDUCE YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE SURPRISES THIS EPISODE HAS TO OFFER!

This is a fantastic episode. Two con-men recruit Herman to be the victim in a fake accident so they can collect the insurance payment. They do this under the guise of filming Herman in a movie, planning to injure him as he's doing a stunt.

It features several great lines, a great sight gag (Herman dressed as a big movie star), one long and funny scene (where the scammers try to get Herman to jump out of a 4th story door), some stunts and location footage.

Some great stuff: Herman comes out dressed as a big movie star. Lily and Grandpa fret about Herman's safety and Spot lets out a burst of flame prompting Lily to deliver this great line: "Don't panic, Spot. Turn down your burner, give us a chance to think!" Herman reads a book on acting and then starts arguing with his supposed movie directors over motivations and contrived plot lines. When Herman starts go get wise to the con, he delivers this great line while towering over one of the con-men in a menacing manner: "I think you guys are trying to hurt me. I might get very angry! I might just call the Better Business Buerau on you....so there!" When a stunt backfires and buries one of the "movie directors" in bricks (similar to the way John Belushi and Dan Akroyd get buried in bricks when Carrie Fisher torches their apartment with a rocket propelled grenade (RPG)), Herman looks on sympathetically and muses: "I never knew making pictures was so hard on writers and directors."

A sleazy real estate salesman targets Mrs. Brown and seduces her into listing her house for sale by tempting her to squander the proceeds on an expensive vacation. Tim and Uncle Martin must scramble to avoid being evicted and also to prevent Mrs. Brown from making a foolish financial decision.

Another average episode, which means pretty good. This series is very consistent. 26 episodes in and we have only one boner, two classics, and the rest of similar (pretty good) quality. This episode features Mrs. Brown in a bigger role than usual, a good guest star (Allan Melvin, whom you may remember from several episodes of Gomer Pyle and The Brady Bunch), and two production pieces including a climax built, yet again, around the sound track.

Mrs. Brown gets a big role this time, with lot of lines and screen time and we learn for the first time that her name is Lorelei. She plays a pivotal role in the story and the series begins to build a love tension between her and Uncle Martin, greatly increasing the importance of the Mrs. Brown character.

In the first production piece Uncle Martin must hide his spaceship while prospective buyers are viewing the house. He hides it by levitating it with his magic finger. The special effect of the ship levitating out into the atmosphere is neat and they repeat it several times but it doesn't get old. There is some silly Marx brothers style content of the buyers bumbling around the area while Uncle Martin gets more and more tired of holding up his finger. The end result is just OK. In the big climactic production piece Uncle Martin uses his magic to make the house seem as if it is in poor repair while the prospective buyers are viewing it. He causes the faucets to drip and in this segment is the main point of the episode. The film editor, music composer, and music conductor work together to deliver a music video of various faucets dripping in time to the amusing symphonic music. Viewed at this late date the end result is not all that impressive, but it seems ambitious for a sitcom, let alone a sitcom from 1964. Because neither of the production pieces come off very well the episode just reaches a little above average because of the ambitious musical score.

The director of this episode takes care to frame a lot of reaction shots from the characters. Some actors in the cast are better at this than others with, of course, Bixby and Walston being the best. Reaction shots can be great fun, however the director makes a critical mistake and usually includes the reacting actor in the shot after the reaction shot. The actors fail to match their expressions between shots and the result is an embarrassing and distracting lack of continuity.

Larry Brown

My Favorite Martian: The Atom Misers (#1.11)" (1963)

Decent episode pushed into outer space by a phenomenal soundtrack

This review includes an important spoiler. If you are going to watch this episode in the near future, I suggest that you skip my review, or at least skip the end of it.

This is a cute episode with a few funny moments and at least two laugh out louds for me. Further fun is provided by Tim putting his hands all over a babe that he barely knows. In my viewing I've got one classic, one boner, and the rest average, with average for this series being a pretty good show. This episode again falls in the average range, but it's got an ace in hole.

That ace is an incredible soundtrack! The main portion of this episode is an extended exercise in Uncle Martin's levitation, with the accompanying signature theremin sound. The music during this entire segment is like listening to a concert. It's really good and the synchronization between the on-screen action and the music is great. You get treated to a long, extended theremin (actually electro-theremin) performance. I've noticed previously that the music for this series is custom written to each episode, with various on-screen actions happening in sync to musical prompts. Several previous episodes feature this type of interplay, but this one takes it to a new level. This earns this episode a 10 rating for me, in comparison only with other episodes of this series.

Trivia: The theremin is an electronic instrument that provides the sliding sounds when Uncle Martin's antenna go up and down, as well as when he levitates objects. It's also heard during the closing theme song. It's played by waving your hand closer or further from an antenna to raise or lower the pitch, that's why the sound slides around. You don't actually touch the instrument, you just hold your hands near it and it picks up your motions with a type of capacitance field. A theremin is intensely difficult to play well because you have no way of judging where to hold your hands. It's similar to the slide on a trombone, but the trombonist has two reference points, one being the slide's home position and one being the bell of the trombone, making it possible (but still challenging) to judge where to place the slide. The theremin has no such reference points. To partially solve this problem, trombonist Paul Tanner invented the "Electro-Theremin," aka "The Tannerin" which was then used on "My Favorite Martian" as well as other TV shows. This instrument uses a pointer that slides over a diagram of a keyboard, making it easier to hit desired pitches.

************************************* ************************************* SPOILER HERE************************* ************************************* ************************************* The big laugh out loud moment for me came when the clarinet comes on screen. As the music is going along, at a certain point a beautiful clarinet enters the score. It starts playing along. You don't notice it, you don't think anything of it. Then the camera cuts to a guy practicing clarinet at the university and you realize that the clarinet you have been hearing is not part of the score but rather part of the on-screen action, or somewhere between the two, really. It's a laugh out moment and a clever break of the dramatic fourth wall in an unusual way.

This episode is concerned with matchmaking between a dog and the dog next door. There are a few subplots thrown in, but the bulk of the story really is about the dogs. The dog is sad and won't eat. The dog is happy and eats. The dog is sad again and won't eat. Too many scenes return to Tim pleading with the dog to eat. The final impression is that the entire episode was about dog romance and that's just too silly to swallow.

Couple that with too much lame, generic dialog, none or only a few laughs, and way too much dog licking of face, and you have a really lousy episode.

I'll admit that I was expecting a lot from this movie. I had heard about the huge budget and effort required to create it and had heard that it was a landmark movie that was going to take the movie business to a new level. I didn't like the movie at all. It was a trite straightforward drama with colorless characters, recycled elements, WOW factors we've seen before and a weak "showdown" climax.

Ground breaking CGI: Big deal. I don't know about 10 year old kids, but I've seen so much CGI, for so long, that it's simply boring. Yes the glowing flowers and such were beautiful (even if the dandelion seeds were overused), but so what? Movies are best about things in our real world, like courage, loyalty and friendship. Glowing flowers are nice but can't carry a movie.

Too many recycled elements from Aliens, Terminator, Star Wars, and Transformers: Weaver, cybersleep, the loaders, the veloci-copters, the gunship, the flight deck, the pilot, the sarge, the combat drop, the walkers (Star Wars). Even the guy that can't walk now being able to walk is from "Lost."

Trite, straightforward and pretty ham-handed drama of the military guy against the ethical soldier against the scientists against the natives...Universal Soldier (Van Damme), Soldier (Kurt Russell).

Avatar concept is old, and even more so now that that concept is recycled into the virtual reality gimmick: Sargon controlling Kirk, Kirk exchanging minds with that crazy lady that wanted to be Captain, Spock's Brain (where his body was controlled by a remote control), The Matrix.

Weaver's character was a waste - she did not play a big part in the story and the part that she did play was sketchy. Weaver had been there how many years? Teaching them English? And she's still there leading the team even though the military is there moving? And the natives still accept her? Weaver is all hostile to the new guy right up until she puts him in the mind link chamber. Then they meet up on the other side and she's all smiles and charm towards him. Huh? The climactic battle was a lot like the Ewoks against the Empire in "Return of the Jedi," right down to the grenades in the engines.

The big revelation in the movie of the neural network of the trees fell totally flat. That was supposed to be a big dramatic moment but I think everyone in the audience, just like those on the command deck were like: "So what? Is that supposed to mean something?" There were only a few lines in the movie that supported that plot line and after the big revelation it was pretty much dropped.

Characters were not colorful and well differentiated like in Aliens (All the characters were colorless: The wheelchair guy, his buddy, Weaver, the traitorous pilot, the native mother and father had extremely small parts, the native prince was colorless, even the princess was pretty colorless, the pencil pusher heartless bureaucrat, the Colonel was the only character that was almost good), there was no sparkling dialog like all throughout Aliens.

It seems that some of the "Wow factor" of the movie was contained in the computer displays in the lab, especially the ones that could be swiped off the wall and onto a tablet PC. If they thought that would impress me....oh please. Spielberg already tried all that exact same stuff in "Minority Report" to equally unimpressive results and Cameron, of all people, should know that no matter how impressive your production is, it's useless without a great drama with all of the elements needed to make drama great.

Totally useless. Vulgar and not funny. Not a single commercial worth saving.

My comment applies not only to the 2009 version of this show, but to all previous years as well.

This show is consistently vulgar and useless. The commercials featured are almost never funny or otherwise worthwhile. It's odd that so many of the spots are foreign, like British or French. That fails to capitalize on a valuable double market where the viewers will not only be entertained by great ads, but they might also be enticed to buy some Bud Light. That can't happen when the products advertised are only available in France. I love commercials and use my DVR to record and edit down all sorts of commercials, all the time. However when I watch this show I usually don't save not even a single commercial out of the entire show. That's useless.

A much, much, much better show is "Firebrand." On a one hour show of that I save almost every commercial. They are excellent and outstanding, real works of art. This show was on the "Ion" channel but unfortunately the show failed and is no longer aired and also the "Firebrand.com" web site has gone offline. That's unfortunate but if you like commercials it may be worth digging to find copies of this show on youtube or whatever.

As for vulgar, the editors of "World's Funniest Commercials" are partial to spots that feature sex, homosexuality, farting, or other vulgar themes. A great and dramatic example of this partiality is the "from your brother" spot. In this spot a man and woman are shown undressed in bed at the end of a love making session. The man turns to the woman and says "That was incredible! Where did you learn that?" She says "From your brother." Now that might be slightly funny, I'll admit. However, this spot was featured on the show at least two years in a row, in 2006 and 2007. Not only that, but the punchline was used as a teaser to advertise the show, and as such it was played over and over and over and over, including repeatedly before and after commercial breaks. Obviously the producers think this is a very very funny spot. Thankfully in 2008 this spot was not featured.

In the 2009 show there is a spot of a squirrel chewing a breath mint and then making an epic frosty fart that puts out a forest fire. It's not funny, it's just juvenile, crude, vulgar, and stupid. To make matters worse, after this spot we cut to a live action skit with host Kevin Nealon and his "dad" wherein his dad farts in his face. Unless this show is targeted at 6 year olds, this material is in patently poor taste and is simply the lowest form of "humor" possible. I turned the show off at this point and won't ever be tuning in again.

Another crude spot in the 2009 edition shows an empty condom wrapper (see a pattern here?) floating through a cityscape. It passes within sight of a young teenage couple who are inspired to begin making love. It then passes within site of an elderly couple, who are inspired to make love on the dining room table. At this point I said out loud to my wife: "homosexual." The condom wrapper then floats within sight of an attractive woman who is inspired to draw the curtains and instigate a threesome. Finally the punchline is that it floats within sight of two male policeman in their police car on the street, with an obvious conclusion. Oh yeah, and the spot before this one is about Viagra.

Well if that's the type of material that you enjoy than fine, tune in, but if the above sounds distasteful to you then don't bother with this show, vulgarity is a pervasive theme. Vulgarity aside, the spots simply aren't funny.

Kevin Nealon as a host is also totally useless. In none of the shows is his hosting even remotely funny. It's the most boring, trite material you've ever seen. In the 2009 edition he abandons the "host" approach and instead walks us through the commercials by pretending to show them to his ad-agency president dad via live action skits. The skits are intentionally unfunny, as they show the dad's ideas for funny commercials that are such lame and unfunny ideas that we are supposed to be entertained by their badness. Unfortunately showing us ideas that are unfunny results in footage that is unfunny. It seems that any producer could have seen that coming.

Nealon informs his dad this year that he doesn't pick the spots in the show, he only hosts the show. I doubt that. The ads chosen show a vulgar and juvenile taste and I have always blamed Nealon for that bad taste. If it's not Nealon, than it's some single person on the production staff responsible. If the spots were selected by committee there's no way such bad taste would show so clearly.

My comment applies not only to the 2009 version of this show, but to all previous years as well.

This show is consistently vulgar and useless. The commercials featured are almost never funny or otherwise worthwhile. It's odd that so many of the spots are foreign, like British or French. That fails to capitalize on a valuable double market where the viewers will not only be entertained by great ads, but they might also be enticed to buy some Bud Light. That can't happen when the products advertised are only available in France. I love commercials and use my DVR to record and edit down all sorts of commercials, all the time. However when I watch this show I usually don't save not even a single commercial out of the entire show. That's useless.

A much, much, much better show is "Firebrand." On a one hour show of that I save almost every commercial. They are excellent and outstanding, real works of art. This show was on the "Ion" channel but unfortunately the show failed and is no longer aired and also the "Firebrand.com" web site has gone offline. That's unfortunate but if you like commercials it may be worth digging to find copies of this show on youtube or whatever.

As for vulgar, the editors of "World's Funniest Commercials" are partial to spots that feature sex, homosexuality, farting, or other vulgar themes. A great and dramatic example of this partiality is the "from your brother" spot. In this spot a man and woman are shown undressed in bed at the end of a love making session. The man turns to the woman and says "That was incredible! Where did you learn that?" She says "From your brother." Now that might be slightly funny, I'll admit. However, this spot was featured on the show at least two years in a row, in 2006 and 2007. Not only that, but the punchline was used as a teaser to advertise the show, and as such it was played over and over and over and over, including repeatedly before and after commercial breaks. Obviously the producers think this is a very very funny spot. Thankfully in 2008 this spot was not featured.

In the 2009 show there is a spot of a squirrel chewing a breath mint and then making an epic frosty fart that puts out a forest fire. It's not funny, it's just juvenile, crude, vulgar, and stupid. To make matters worse, after this spot we cut to a live action skit with host Kevin Nealon and his "dad" wherein his dad farts in his face. Unless this show is targeted at 6 year olds, this material is in patently poor taste and is simply the lowest form of "humor" possible. I turned the show off at this point and won't ever be tuning in again.

Another crude spot in the 2009 edition shows an empty condom wrapper (see a pattern here?) floating through a cityscape. It passes within sight of a young teenage couple who are inspired to begin making love. It then passes within site of an elderly couple, who are inspired to make love on the dining room table. At this point I said out loud to my wife: "homosexual." The condom wrapper then floats within sight of an attractive woman who is inspired to draw the curtains and instigate a threesome. Finally the punchline is that it floats within sight of two male policeman in their police car on the street, with an obvious conclusion. Oh yeah, and the spot before this one is about Viagra.

Well if that's the type of material that you enjoy than fine, tune in, but if the above sounds distasteful to you then don't bother with this show, vulgarity is a pervasive theme. Vulgarity aside, the spots simply aren't funny.

Kevin Nealon as a host is also totally useless. In none of the shows is his hosting even remotely funny. It's the most boring, trite material you've ever seen. In the 2009 edition he abandons the "host" approach and instead walks us through the commercials by pretending to show them to his ad-agency president dad via live action skits. The skits are intentionally unfunny, as they show the dad's ideas for funny commercials that are such lame and unfunny ideas that we are supposed to be entertained by their badness. Unfortunately showing us ideas that are unfunny results in footage that is unfunny. It seems that any producer could have seen that coming.

Nealon informs his dad this year that he doesn't pick the spots in the show, he only hosts the show. I doubt that. The ads chosen show a vulgar and juvenile taste and I have always blamed Nealon for that bad taste. If it's not Nealon, than it's some single person on the production staff responsible. If the spots were selected by committee there's no way such bad taste would show so clearly.

Overall, great, I'll give it an 8. It's certainly worth watching. Sadly a few strategic mistakes on the part of the director and writer watered the movie down.

The destruction scenes are awe-inspiring. I actually got goose-bumps watching some of it, a first for this 50 year old viewer. The scope, complexity, imagination, and excellence. I'm an expert viewer but to me it looked really realistic, I didn't see anything I could recognize as computer animation even though I know that's mostly what it was. Had I been the producer and the creative team came to me with a plan for what they wanted to do I would have thrown them out of my office: "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? Stop wasting time and put something down that we actually have a chance of completing in less than 10 years." Also at least one of the destruction scenes (the one were they drove through a sky-scraper) featured various sight-gags and funny content that I enjoyed and laughed out loud. However this came at the expense of lightening the tone of a scene in which thousands of people are supposedly dying.

The soundtrack was awesomely detailed, at least at first. During the scene were Cusack showed up at his ex-wife's house and then an earthquake hit, there were all sorts of interesting sounds happening and they sounded good and clear. One neat sound was timber creaking as the house gave way. In later scenes I did not notice that detail.

A surprise was the many big stars. Danny Glover, John Cusack (with less and even no (!) guy-liner this time), Oliver Platt, and Woody Harrelson.

Woody Harrelson's character provided the comic relief and it was good. It came across well and also funny, but they avoided the mistake of making him annoying or too silly, also he moved the plot along. It was good but it could have been funnier. It would not have been as much fun with an unknown actor, so Woody carried the character more than the dialog.

The drama was good but not good enough so that this movie could have ever made it to 10 status. A little trite and pedantic during the speech section near the end.

No, I repeat NO Mayan content. Only a brief mention and one watermarked shot of the Mayan city of Tikal. They mangled the word "Quiché." It's pronounced key-TCHAY (like touché but it's a hard ch like tch, not a soft one like sh), they pronounced it "quiche" as in "I'll have the quiche Lorraine, please." That was unbelievable. They also mispronounced Tikal, which is pronounced Tee-KAHL. I forget what they said but it was something ridiculous like "tickle." Anyway it doesn't matter because other than that one line of dialog you could watch the entire movie and never realize that Mayans were involved. I think this was an odd and poor choice. Other movies like "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Star Gate," "The Da Vinci Code," and "National Treasure" make good drama with quasi-factual archaeological content. In this case there was some real and really interesting factual content on which to draw but they passed. The movie would have been a large notch more worthwhile had they thrown in some tidbits. A little hieroglyphics here, a little pyramid skulking there, a few fascinating facts about "El Gran Jaguar" (the main pyramid in Tikal) or "El Mirador" (possibly the world's largest pyramid, located in Northern Guatemala), it could have been done without bogging the movie down.

The tone was too light. I mean the world is ending, millions of people are dying, but the overall tone was light and a little upbeat, focusing on the few that were making it out alive. In particular, the scenes in the plane were way too light, especially Cusack's ex-wife. They would just barley make it out with their lives with the world crumbling right beneath them and entire cities sinking into the ocean, and then once air-born she would look up almost smiling and just go on with her dialog like nothing had happened. It was almost like "Oh wow, I'm glad that's over. We made it! Is my hair mussed? Oh well, what's next? Is it lunch time yet?" For me those lines were so misplaced that it was a distraction.

The biggest strategic mistake of the director was evenly spacing the action out over the entire movie. It was like drama-action-drama-action-drama-action. The voltage varied constantly throughout from high voltage action back to low-voltage talking heads. The early action scenes had major impact on me, later ones had a "more-of-the-same" effect and my reaction was "Oh, we have to do more action now? Ho-hum, OK, let's get it over with." The movie would have been much better if they had adopted a more conventional pacing, put most of the drama and character development up front, then launch into the action and continually build to the climax. Had they done it this way the movie might have been a 9, but without a better dramatic story it still would not have been a 10.

Larry Brown

SPOILER ALERT Many reviewers here complained about the ridiculous plot holes and I agree. It's full of holes.

I see a lot of movies and I will walk if it looks lousy. There's 20+ movies to choose from, why waste time on a lousy one? If I hear lame dialog, a trite or cliché script, if I roll my eyes more than twice, I'm outta there. If the writer and director are lousy, they're not going to get any better. An exception to this is when they hire another writer or director after firing the lame one. An example of this is "The Muppets Take Manhattan," where the first half is lousy, but the second half is good and even great in some parts.

I walked on "Signs" after about 40 minutes and didn't look back. However, a family member insisted that it was good and all came together in the end, so I went back and watched the entire movie, start to end. Boy was I sorry, I should have stayed away.

The movie is ridiculous on various levels, but besides that, it has nothing worthwhile to offer.

As soon as the aliens came into the story, I was able to accurately predict the entire story: Aliens may or may not be here. As the movie progresses, the evidence of the aliens becomes more pronounced until we begin to see glimpses of them. From there we will go into the climax where we have a showdown with the aliens and win. That's a synopsis of the plot and who, I mean who, is going to say there is anything at all original about that? No one over the age of 13.

The movie plays out just as I predicted. But there's some quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo thrown in there that's really the point of the story. Fine, the only problem is that the mumbo-jumbo is so utterly ridiculous that it's laughable.

Unless I'm missing something (unlikely), the plot is this: God causes Gibson's wife to get horribly injured in an accident where she suffers in agony until Gibson can get there, whereupon she delivers a coded message from God to Gibson, without Gibson realizing it, and then she dies. This accident causes Gibson to lose his faith in God. Meanwhile, God has caused another family member that is a budding baseball star to suffer an injury and his career and life are ruined. Then, God causes the kid to have an irrational preoccupation with water, resulting in half glasses of water being left all over the house. Then, God causes all these circumstances to work together during an alien invasion of earth such that the coded message, the water, and the sports career work together to defeat the aliens in the house and save lives. Gibson sees how God has wrought all of this and regains his faith. If that's it, that's the most utterly ridiculous, blasphemous, lame, contrived, etc story I've ever heard of.

So I'm wondering two things: 1: Is my understanding of the story complete and my laughter is justified, or did I miss something? And 2: How on earth did the guy that wrote the brilliant "The 6th Sense" write this load of tripe? It would seem that his contract with the movie studio includes a "right of subcontract" and he subcontracted his swimming pool cleaning guy to write this.

I'm an adult seeing this for the first time, and I have an adult viewpoint. Simply not good. Animation is primitive, music is bad and tedious, not funny at all, and the weak climax does not make up for two hours of painful situations. Charlie, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, and Schroeder are decently colorful characters. The rest don't even make it to cartoon quality. I did grow up reading Charlie Brown comic strips in paperback form, and I liked it. But it loses its charm in this format.

2 hours is way too long, forcing time killing extended sequences. Overuse of the "Linus and Lucy" theme gets tedious and shows a lack of diligence. Overuse of the minor key "Linus and Lucy" theme got annoying. It's not funny at all. There is one funny opening joke, and then Snoopy gets just a few funny bits, and that's it. You're in severe pain for 90+% of the movie. That's not entertainment.

Way too mean with name calling and ridicule. Personally I find name calling and ridicule very offensive in any situation, even more so when it's this extensive. I just don't see the payoff in this movie. CB is a loser, a dumb, dull, unliked, untalented kid that ends up losing and "the world doesn't end." I don't see how that's a worthwhile lesson to anyone. The lesson is: no matter how much people call you names, ridicule you, no matter how much you lose in life or no matter that you can't seem to do anything right, somehow it's OK. There may be a nugget of truth in there, but basically having the movie makers essentially preach to me for two hours that I share those qualities - that's a little condescending, isn't it? But anyway, even if the message were worthwhile, the ending message is so weak and watered down that it doesn't give me a good feeling and erase all the misery I've experienced in the last two hours.

It always felt like they were killing time with extended animation exercises. Extended segments: spelling rules, Linus looks for blanket, Snoopy ice-skating, and the Beethoven segment. Except for the spelling rules segment, the other extended segments did not move the story along, with Snoopy and Beethoven completely superfluous. These segments also came across like animation experiments, "Let's see how realistically we can make Snoopy appear to glide over the ice." "Let's make an extended high art collage set to Beethoven's music." That said: The Beethoven segment was very good and was the highlight of the movie. In fact, it's the only portion I saved for repeated viewing. As a short animation segment it's great, but as far as moving the story of a 2 hour movie along, especially for kids, no.

I can't see anyone learning spelling rules from this movie - so educational value is not much. Show this movie to any kid and then see if he can recite even the I before E rule, I don't think so. Music was no good - the spelling bee song was not good.

I know it's apples to oranges, but this 1969 movie compared to the work and storytelling that Disney was doing as far back as 1937 (Snow White)? Like Rembrandt vs. kids with crayons.

Climax did not even come close to paying off, or making up for all the setup. The climax is two lines: "The World didn't end," and "Welcome home Charlie Brown." That simply doesn't cut it.