blue_jean

I have seen each of the View Askew movies to date, and consider myself to be a fan of Kevin Smith's work. Consequently, this movie cracked me up... I sat and laughed out loud through the whole thing, which is something that doesn't happen to me very often.

I do have to say, however, that the movie is; self referential, and that if you haven't seen the previous movies, you'll miss a fair number of subtle jokes.

As much as anything, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back remind me of the movies Burt Reynolds used to do, things like "Cannonball Run," where he got together a bunch of his Hollywood friends, and said, "Hey, let's have a party and make a movie."

Except that Kevin's version of it is miles and miles funnier than Burt's.

I have two opinions of this movie.

The first one is that it's an excellent movie; an excellent retelling of my favorite story, Cyrano de Bergerac. Janeane and Uma do an amazing job of being (respectively) Cyrano and Christian, the brains and the body.

The second opinion is rather less flattering to the movie. While it's true that just about anyone would be overshadowed by Uma Thurman, the idea of Janeane G. being 'dumpy' or 'unattractive' is... Hollywood fantasy.

Those of us who really are unattractive would love to look as good as she does, and it's mildly ironic that a movie which talks about the beauty myth at the same time plays into it.

See the movie... but think about it.

If you read through the comments already posted (and there are many), you'll see that most people are very strongly polarized... people either love this show or hate it.

I, for one, am somewhere in the middle of the road about it.

It is heavy-handed. It takes an 'issue of the week', and involves each member of the family in some aspect of that issue... fidelity, drug use, abstinence from sex before marriage... then wraps everything up in a nice neat package before the end of the episode.

The way the issues are dealt with are both shallow and heavy-handed. You never have any doubt in your mind what issue the writers are bringing up this week; you never have any doubt what they thing the "right" thing to do is.

At the same time...

We're looking inside of a family that seems to genuinely care about each other. There's a father who's involved with his children, siblings who look after each other, and a mother who obviously loves her children... and her husband, even after seven children.

Yes, Matt needs a punch in the nose. Mary could stand a valium perscription. Lucy needs a little more maturity. And so on. But...

But I keep watching this show, episode after episode.

And I'm not entirely sure why.