Change Your Image
jimtindell
Reviews
Life on a Stick (2005)
Stuck in the 90's
One could say that the show has "doomed" written all over it after already having an abruptly changed time slot for the season premiere. In the ads for the upcoming show, you saw unfunny little bits of working in fast food (a hot dog stand... who'da thought?), but the show surprisingly didn't have as many scenes in the food joint as the title suggests.
This kid lives with his parents after graduating High School, and his parents are leaning towards kicking him out. Sound familiar? Yeah, a bunch of shows have done this before a long time ago. Nevertheless, the re-married couple agree to have him stay in the house as long as he "hangs out" with his step-sister. Sounds like a deal to me. Wasn't this supposed to take place at a Hotdog stand? He has a buddy too... and you can guess how he is. Yup, the kid probably has less brains than the hot dogs he serves, and it's not funny at all. Think "Bill & Ted" after 12 years of Special Education curriculum. Mixed in with the Apu of Fast Food management and a love-interest and you've got yourself a TELEVISION SHOW! Rock on! Other than that.. between the 4-minute commercial breaks, we're left with about 18 minutes of laugh-tracks and all-around "meh" television. This will leave you wishing American Idol Result Night was an hour long again. This show MIGHT have worked in the early-/mid-90's, but not today in the land of giant elimination/reality shows and teeth-gritting dramas. Even among those genres, I've always wondered if a genuine 30-minute sitcom could still stand tall. I was wrong.
Ong-Bak (2003)
Fit for a "Martial Arts marathon" on cable TV. That's it.
I decided to give this movie a watch after reading the rave reviews on numerous websites. Being a martial arts fan, I was confident that this would be the movie I've been waiting for. The United States hasn't seen a good import for awhile, minus the cure for insomnia "Hero." Good beat'em-up flicks are hard to come by in the new millennium, so I was looking forward to Ong-Bak.
The movie starts off confusing enough: we get to watch a bunch of dirty people climbing up a huge tree, racing for a flag or something. I'm sure this is easily understandable in Thailand, but it just did not translate well for an opening scene for the States. Shortly after, we get to meet Ting (or as my subtitles read, "Tim") played by newcomer Tony Jaa. Ting is apparently the go-to guy of the village when trouble starts, for we soon find a thief stealing the head of statue Ong-Bak, and immediately Ting puts it on himself to recapture the stolen head. Ting grabs money from the whole village, and decides to blindly search for the guy in Bangkok. He meets up with a former villager Humlae who is a little down on his luck with gambling, and his partner in crime, a girl named Muay. After agreeing to let Ting stay at his house, Humlae takes Ting's money to a boxing bar to ante up. Ting follows Humlae to the strangely diverse bar, and gets suckered into fighting. Naturally, Ting has little trouble grounding the "champion." This does not go over well with the crowd, or with a mob-leader, who loses a ton of money from a bet made on the fight. This brings Ting to keep fighting one ridiculous baddie after another, concluding with a guy who seems to be more focused on destroying everything in sight than fighting Ting. Interesting scenes follow, with Ting and Humlae still searching for Ong-Bak. Yadda yadda yadda.
After watching the movie, I had mixed feelings. The action scenes were really good, but they came off just too reminiscent of a Van Damme flick from the early-90's. An impressive kick from Ting was met with an instant-replay or two, adding to the cheese factor and kind of ruining the moment. The rest of the movie has every requisite scene for an action flick: a foot chase throughout town, a car chase, a bad sub-plot involving drug lords, etc. Even with the impressive fighting scenes, the movie still seemed to drag on. The humor doesn't translate well, and the rest of the dialogue just leaves us nodding our head waiting for the next fight scene. For having such little plot, they sure pile on the dialogue and storytelling, especially in the first half of the film.
It seems the director of the movie is a little behind the times. This is easily something that would have went over well in 1997, but watching it now just feels redundant. We've seen this before. Tony Jaa is a fresh face, and I am looking forward to seeing some more work from him, even in something produced in the States (he will have to work on his English and get rid of that horrid accent, though). But Ong-Bak is really just a made-for-TV movie in disguise. It will fit in nicely during a Martial Arts marathon on the USA network, and that's about it.