Nick Zbu

In hindsight, the '90s trend of giving stand-up comedians their own TV shows really didn't work. While you had a lot of successes, you had even more failures. Corporations were so desperate for the next 'Seinfeld' that they were making a lot of odd choices. Disney/ABC gave Drew Carey so many seasons of his own show in advance that they ended up airing the last two seasons over the summers of 2003/2004 so they could get rid of them. And in the same vein of baffling decisions, we have this 'finale' that really is an exercise in poor taste.

Framed as a change in the show's status quo, we have another character played by Julia Duffy being introduced to possibly take over or prop up the original star who was dealing with a lot of stuff at this point. Viewers could probably figure that out since her hair was now a greasy jet black and she was mumbling her way through scenes to canned laughter. And this is where this becomes nineteen minutes of the weirdest TV that has ever possibly aired: it's a setup that goes nowhere. The show ends unceremoniously at this point. It looks like the show is having a change. But in reality, this is just an experiment to see if the show can finish out the season or possibly be saved. It can't, honestly, and bringing in a new actor to lead comes off as simply insane. What was anybody thinking at this point? Was anybody thinking at this point? Was it some sort of punishment by ABC to make sure that if this show ever found life in syndication it would be some immortal slam?

It's hard to say, honestly. But the reality is that at this point in the show's run it had 111 episodes, so syndication was already realized. This episode runs a good three minutes shorter than your normal 22 minute episode, meaning that there wasn't really enough material to push it out to fill a normal length episode. And honestly, one has to wonder if it's a contract issue so it was pushed out the door as soon and quick as possible and left to forget about. It resolves nothing. It's not funny. And it serves as an odd curio to a network TV trend when the medium was on the cusp of being being replaced by the rich lands of cable TV.

Why ten stars? Because I honestly doubt you'll find this funny except in possibly the biggest trainwreck way. It exists. Go out and watch it. If you've seen the show before then this will be quite a unique experience. Don't expect an ending. Just expect a really bizarre attempt to pull up as the airplane goes screaming into the ground at full speed. It truly is one of the strangest moments in all of TV history.

Rarely is a TV show aired that fires on all cylinders. Every show in its first few seasons grows and become what it really be. For Married With Children, the episode that really begins what the show really will become and known for is their very first Christmas episode.

The festive nature of the season is mined for humor and the jet-black acid mentioned by a previous reviewer is full on display. Gone are the pretensions of the first season pretending that this was a normal family being shorn of Cosby Show conventions: the family is poor, Christmas is a particularly dark time due to their poverty, the knives are out despite the holiday, and the backstabbing and pizza dinner for Christmas Eve already traditions already rooted in the madness. Santa splattering all over the backyard is a change because that would be the first time he ever showed up at the Bundy household, which really says it all. The neighbors would be in a state of horror regardless of the smashed corpse outside.

And in the end, it's by plain luck that Christmas is 'saved' via gift certificates. The Bundys don't come together as a family as much as they're a roving pack of beasts looking for the American Dream of spending too much and pure mindless hedonism and self-interest. No lessons are learned, nothing is gained, and the only part of the holiday that involves giving is the corpse losing a shoe to a grateful Buck. The Cosby Show is rotting on the noose and the Bundys are there roaming the post-'80s nuclear family glut like Mad Max Wastelanders looking something to ease the anomie. Merry Christmas.

One of their best episodes ever, and what really began the glory days of the show.

Comedy is an odd beast, reflective of the times it was made. Censorship is an even funnier one as it reflects the times of which it wasn't made in some cases. I bring this up because the infamous Lost Episode was made shortly after this one but yet one feels that maybe Fox made an error in raising a fuss. The Lost Episode, sadly, is just a normal-to-maybe-lesser episode that gained infamy due to censorship. This episode, however, really becomes a lesson in poor taste.

Married with Children has always been a show that wasn't afraid to showcase its characters as flawed. Al is a good symbol of this: a man who never really grew out of his glory days, he now hates his life and what it has become and wishes he knew what had happened that reduced him to this. He holds onto things that keep up the illusion of him as a prime athlete in high school much to his own detriment: overt masculinity, honor, pride, and he immerses himself in the idea of masculinity which is really pathetic and sad and one of the major reasons he never really grew beyond high school. But the main thrust of this episode doesn't mock that as it usually does but sides with him as he punches down and basically makes stereotypes out of gay people.

Yeah, the '80s were not kind to gay people to say the very least. And we can't really expect shows of this time to showcase viewpoints made nearly forty years later. But this episode seems especially cruel in many regards. Yes, masculinity itself is a very fragile thing despite the illusion it tries to present. But a lot of it this seems like very low-hanging fruit that really comes off as infantile and just mean for its own sake. And if you're going to be mean, be funny about it, don't just prop up stereotypes. Dig deep, comedy has that power.

But in the long run, this is a very unique episode that showcases the attitudes of its time even if they seem quite unfair. This particular episode should not be censored by any stretch of the imagination. But you might want to go into this one a bit more prepared than most. Especially when Al thinks that homosexuality can be cured by sticking one's head in an open fire hydrant.

You can't see how this episode went wrong until you remember Season Six and how the pregnancy subplot that dominated the first half of that season had to be retconned in the middle of the season (with a very good episode) due to personal tragedy. The thrust of making Season 6 revolve around pregnancy was an idea by the producers to make Al's life even more difficult by having another mouth to feed as his other two kids were leaving high school and going to fend for themselves.

On one hand, the producers did identify their problem correctly: having the kids leave high school was a very bad idea for the show as Al was the sort of parent to kick them out once they were of age and then the show was over. No more children, no more show. And this indeed become a very big issue for the show going onward from this point as the show did start the trend of trying to introduce subtle changes to promote more story ideas for their characters only to drop them or drop them and reset back to a status quo which meant the characters basically stopped growing outright. But why they stuck with the idea of adding a small child to the cast really was their downfall. It burned them once, why did they think they should try it again?

The answer? They shouldn't have. They probably should have done anything else besides this. The show, at its heart, is one of teenagers and adults on the teenager mindset: people stuck in perpetual adolescence that they can never recover from. You really can't stick a child in this mix and make it work. And as the rest of the season shows, you can't.

Kudos to the creative staff to trying to make something work to keep up the energy from Seasons 2 to 5. But in all honesty, maybe the solution was to keep the kids in school somehow instead of playing the Cousin Oliver card. Sadly, this lesson would not be learned, and one of the bigger flaws of the show going forward was trying to find more ways to introduce a high school/college sort of element to the proceedings and dropping those without a thought over and over again.

You don't need to dig far to see how Married With Children had to have a massive rethink regarding their plans for their sixth season. They went in with an idea of how they wanted the overarching story arc of the season to go -- another way to add more hell to Al's life -- and real life got in the way. So, they had to pull the ejection lever and do what could have been nearly impossible: keep everything they wanted from the first half of the season yet reset the Status Quo and make an interesting episode out of it. And it works.

And it's funny. Most episodes that have to revamp the season or reset it are usually dreary affairs that put continuity first for the show to continue and make it funny as an afterthought. But this episode goes into a whole new territory with Al Bundy and manages to be a classic while resetting the season outright. It's a gem to behold. Al Bundy as a hapless detective who manages to edge out a win is really one of the finer moments of the show and easily one of the best episodes of this part of the show's run even if it was written to gracefully back out of an abandoned storyline.

It's still a real shame that Married With Children never got a true series finale. Cancelled after the Eleventh Season wrapped, the show tried to make it look like the substandard two-parter 'Desperate Half-Hour' and 'How to Marry a Moron' was the way the show would go out, leaving the actual season ender as a 'special' episode that was aired a month later.

But honestly, Fox should have just used this episode as the true finale: everybody dies and goes to hell, only to group together as they always do in really dire circumstances and then come back to reality which is truly their own version of hell itself. It's poetic and fits the series perfectly well in a way that marrying Kelly off really couldn't. The show never handled itself well when the kids left high school (much like Al himself), and many of the cast admitted when asked that the only true finale to the show would involve the entire cast being killed off.

So, if you're watching the entire show, here's a thought: skip over this episode, watch the last three of the season, and then watch this one. It's a more fitting end with all things considered and serves an fine finale to one of the better sitcoms of all time.

One of the reasons people watched the old Jerry Springer show is because it was a clean way of dealing with dirty people. It's the same kind of reason Fail Videos and World Star Hip Hop are successful: you get to gawk at some freaks doing something dangerous, scandalous, or filthy and indulge while keeping a very respectful distance. And this seems to be a human trait to watch these actions while wanting to keep our hands clean. And within this, there stands the potential for a good movie that examines this while indulging in the utter exploitation of it.

But this isn't that movie. At best this movie doesn't get what it is trying to do. The writing is poor, the direction is worse, and it falls into stereotypes so hard that it doesn't really get what it is doing. And while most people will see this as the ultimate result of dealing with the types that would go on the Springer show, it's really a shame. There's a lot of social commentary that could go on that the Springer Show represented. Instead, it's broad stereotypes playacting on a meager budget that wastes everybody's time. No, we're not seeing some part of Americana that needs respect, we're watching the filmmakers ignore any sort of social commentary because they can't dig past the spectacle, and the world is lesser for that.

This is easily the best of the three parts of this special TV event: the Iris subplot starts off great, her menace is established very well, and there's a general feeling that everything is falling apart. People are frustrated by various systemic breakdowns -- school becoming a war zone, a community deals with a criminal element and a lack of power to defend themselves -- and you got Robert Vaughn doing a guest turn as someone who wants to take on this 'City Under Siege.' All and all, it works wonderfully.

Sadly, the rest of the event doesn't live up with it, but this first episode is really fun in a very '80s way. It even ends on a pretty nice cliffhanger as well. But enjoy it while it lasts, because the other two parts really don't continue this sense of menace and decay.

While the City Under Siege three-parter has its problems -- a lack of the city being under siege and three different episodes being meshed together for a sweeps event -- one of the more interesting subplots that takes up most of this episode is the idea of vigilantism. While usually most '80s programs would see this as unabashedly a good thing, this episode takes a very progressive attitude by asking some important questions: what is the purpose of the system if not to reform criminals? Is the point of vigilantes to really solve problems or a simple power grab? And what happens when the circle of violence comes right around and a vigilante is killed, leaving his family to grieve?

So kudos to an episode of Hunter of all places to give some room to these questions. While these questions aren't answered, the fact that they come up at all in the middle of the violence-glorifying '80s is quite remarkable. Even if the way it does is the typical 'grand speech stating you suck' method of writing.

That said, not much happens here with the whole Iris Subplot. Oh well.

Way back when network TV ruled, there was such a thing as 'sweeps' in which networks set advertising rates based on ratings. So occasionally the networks would pull stunts to boost viewership so they could charge advertisers more. And it seems this entire three-parter's reason for existence is based on this.

Put the three subplots into their own episodes, and they work really well: a battle against corruption and blackmail, a school being run by a teenage blackmailer, and an old score to settle showing back up and executing random people setting up for an epic showdown. Not bad. But putting them together makes for a baffling three-parter that has some weird instances of crossover that never really pay off as a full three-part event. When watched over the course of three weeks, this may work. Watching it all on Amazon Prime just results in confusion as two major subplots -- ironically, the Iris one that bookends the event is the weakest which is really a shame -- end normally with a decent resolution while the Hunter/Iris one seems to be given the short shrift with a sudden ending and a baffling on-screen caption about violent crime rates falling. Huh? Was this cut for time?

Either way, if you dig Hunter -- and who doesn't, it's a decent enough cop show -- you'll like this for the most part. I didn't find myself bored. But some of the choices made in one subplot are really unfortunate as one gets the feeling the whole Iris Revenge subplot had more fuel in it that ended up being cut for time. In hindsight, maybe the whole thing should have been three episodes that stood on their own and been three fairly good episodes instead of one strange three-parter.

Also, not to ruin anything, the whole city is NOT under siege. A bit of an exaggeration there.

While not a really bad movie, 'Babysitter' has a few issues that make me wonder if anybody making it knew what a depressing film they were making. The idea of a woman having to work to support her overpriviliged brat siblings is an interesting one, but really doesn't mesh with the way this film is promoted. And the promoted version seems a lot more fun than what turns out to be a very stupid Afterschool Special mixed with an abandoned whodunit combined with a coming-of-age story that really falls flat.

What was the original point of this film? Did anybody really think that making a film aimed at teenagers in 1991 wanted to see someone from Married with Children slowly turn into Al Bundy live on the screen? Or that changing your stoner brother was the way to live life? I can understand what the movie wants to say--that you change into adulthood in ways you never thought possible--but it does so badly. The movie works when it's about the family dealing with their own issues. It fails when it tries to be Kelly Bundy's Smarter Twin Being All Career Woman.

A quick look at the Trivia section of this fine website shows that this movie once had the loaded title 'The Real World.' Was this even supposed to be a comedy? Regardless, everybody in it does a good job. But I wonder what kind of movie they would have made if they tossed the preachy blue-collar indoctrination out the window and just had fun with it. The movie, as it stands, really seems like it's talking down to you right before it goes on about the four touchdowns it made in a single game. And it's quite sad to see what could have been.

This is possibly one of the most engrossing love films I have ever seen. I won't attempt to deny the detractors who say it's mostly about Genesis, but it is his/her story and it is a fascinating and engrossing one about the power of love, art, and how they are essentially one and the same. I call it a love film, but it really captures the feelings of connection and loss that Genesis dealt with. It's a fascinating look at two fascinating individuals who took life by the balls and yanked.

It made me smile, it made me laugh, and it made me feel how love can conquer death. The only complaint was that the behind-the-scenes footage was inserted to pump up the running time. But I can't complain because it shows Genesis as she truly is: fun-loving, full of mischief, and someone who is mourning for a loss that translates very well. It's a surprising powerful film, and I'm very glad I had the chance to see it.

The worst thing a movie can be is uninteresting and long. And this movie has that in spades. There isn't really any plot or reason to care. You want to be beaten over the head with how the characters you don't care about are 'suffering?' Welcome to it. You'll get that impression over and over and over again. And over.

The movie is over two hours long, and could have been forty-five minutes long without losing absolutely anything. Narrated by Black's character because the studio suddenly had doubts about people caring, it keeps going on and on about bird sightings. Couldn't someone cheat? Yes. Does this change anything about the movie? No, you still won't care. This is watching paint dry. I wish I were joking.

The only reason this was labeled 'dramedy' or 'drama/comedy' is because it wasn't as funny to anybody besides those getting paid to make it. Avoid like the plague. Don't even bother with a rental. A good movie will make you care about the characters, or relate to them, or at least draw you along with the story. There is absolutely no story here. You. Will. Be. Bored.

Ignoring M. Night's reputation for throwing subtlety out the window, the movie still fails on many levels. The writing is pathetically awful, the plot fits perfectly with the 'what a twist' that M. Night can never escape, and the acting and direction turn this into amateur hour. In the end, you don't see a movie, you see how bad writing can be masked with production value. This movie is what happens when you take a professional crew and have them make a direct-to-video movie from the '90s: it won't distract you with obvious production flaws, but the real pain comes from what they're filming.

M. Night simply does not know how to make a movie. We can safely say that his fame from 'The Sixth Sense' comes from the audience suddenly remembering they like the Twilight Zone. He could have had a better career if 'Unbreakable' was better made, but in the end we all have 'Devil' to show exactly how much of a filmmaker M. Night isn't. This movie isn't 'Beast of Yucca Flats' bad, but it shows that M. Night's fame and talent is vastly overrated. This film might make a taut episode of a horror anthology if it was fifteen minutes long. But as a real movie, it comes off as stagey, stupid, and full of horrid plotting that shows M. Night's talent is vastly, vastly overrated.

I didn't expect much going into this film--mostly because it was direct to video--but I was pleasantly surprised. Broken Lizard always put on a good show and this was no different. Michael Clarke Duncan is the standout of this movie, and his confused malapropisms and general insanity is the brightest point of the film.

But the script is a bit hazy, to say the least. The script needed a few more rewrites because the plot just isn't there. It's a big jumbled and changes randomly that, while it doesn't really matter at the end of the movie, it just ends up being strange for the sake of setting up the various bits. They are funny bits, but the plot holding them together (is this really a movie about some manager finally taking a stand? Really??) is worthless. A few rewrites could resolve this with no issue, and could have helped immensely. I'm not asking for a taut plot, but I am asking for one that compliments the funny bits a little more.

But the funny bits are classic Broken Lizard. You will not be disappointed at the humor in this film. You need to watch it. Right now.

There are mountains of praise for Dirty Harry, and all of them are deserved. But one thing that gets me is the justification of freeing Scorpio for the third act that comes off as pure propaganda: would any police department really free someone in a mask who shot at them so freely? The story swerves into a bit of disbelief when Scorpio, after injuring a few police officers and is in turn injured, is suddenly let go after being shot in the leg. To add insult to injury, the whole thing is turned into a right-wing nonsensefest where Harry goes on about victim's right (a valid concern) but is shot down by the personification of a smug liberal (from Berkeley, no less!) simply to get us to the third act. Even then, it's a bit hard to take seriously since they did have something to hang Scorpio on: shooting a police officer.

This is a classic movie that deserves its fame. But the one flaw is that instead of writing a segue into the third act, they decided to go into an unrealistic rant that demonizes one half of the political spectrum for absolutely no real reason. It just seems a bit silly, but don't let this ruin the movie for you. Eastwood's always good, Siegel is at the top of his game, and maybe you can get a chuckle out of seeing their attempts to push the movie to the end by pathetic political doublethink.

Having over fifteen years of space away from this film, watching it again makes me realize how utterly disconnected from reality this film is. The characters are stereotypes, the college campus is nothing like reality, and the whole affair screams 'Do the Right Thing' but without any real understanding about what that really entails. Spike Lee's film had a lot of valid points and understood the nature of racism and portrayed it brilliantly. This film just takes pleasure in reducing everybody to stereotypes, tossing in an education spiel that would make Bill Cosby roll his eyes, and basically just waste the audience's time and money.

But it does have value. The movie attempts to portray America as a land seething with anxiety and bitterness over social norms breaking and bursting. But it's a childish movie in that it wants to be revolutionary without really knowing what it's trying to do. Why does rape equal becoming a lesbian? How does being dismissed by a bunch of black men immediately follow into racism? Huh? What is going on in this movie? And we'll never know. Higher Learning is a product of the '90s. If anything, it shows how we cannot judge history while we are living it. It's a bad clone of Do The Right Thing and is ultimately pointless and meaningless. If anything, it serves as a very good warning about moralizing in cinema: you better be damn sure you make something that, even if proved wrong, proves a point. If not, you're just making Sid Davis films with better stock.

Robert DeNiro IS Robert DeNiro playing Al Bundy. Seriously: right down to the brown slacks and jacket, DeNiro channels Al Bundy as he hunts down his four grown children to ask them why they didn't bother living up to high standards. In their place he finds several depressed people, several depressing situations, and a lot of acting that would be outclassed by anybody at an amateur acting troupe with far more subtlety and grace. This movie doesn't just give you the jest of the situations, it's amateurish and trite. It's a budgeted version of a student film where the professor stresses 'use the scenery to show isolation. And be overly aware of it.' A good film does things without being apparent. But this film is so overt with its themes of isolation and failure that it becomes ridiculous. It's hard to watch not only because it's depressing, slow, and odiously obvious, but because there's no real point to it. You see DeNiro becoming a parody of himself, you see Beckinsale mentally deciding to do Underworld 4, and you see a bunch of secondary characters excited to be meeting THE DeNiro and trying to be quirky so they can stand out. In short, you have a film that was made cheaply and looks it. It tries to be a slice of life and turns out to be a slice of film school. The bad slice, the slice that ends up working at a Target.

Save your time, money, and effort. If you rented it, go back to the store and tell them it won't play on your machine and get something worthwhile.

There are several ingredients in this film that should work but don't. The casting is pretty good but nothing about the movie really says 'comedy' as much as 'action comedy.' I'm not splitting hairs, but it seems this movie's main problem was its marketing.

When the movie isn't being suspenseful or dramatic (the main idea of a married couple being bored with their lives is one of the few things the movie portrays well), it then falls to comedy. A couple steals a reservation and gets caught up in a pseudo-Hitchcockian plot that defies explanation. Honestly, the plot is the MacGuffin in this movie that presumably allows Tina Fey and Steve Carell to lay down the comedy. But the true tragedy is that the outtakes are funnier than the rest of the movie, showing the film's main flaw.

This isn't really a comedy. It has the insight but none of the outright humor. The plot doesn't really exist and it's insane how this movie attempts to tie together. The movie needed a few more rewrites and a decision if it was going to be an action-comedy, an action-drama about married life, or if it was going to be an outright comedy. Something failed to click here and it's easy to see that even at its fairly short running time that the movie was too long as it was. That's a sign that you're running on fumes and need something else to make the movie go.

In short? Misfire. The movie has some serious problems that should have been ironed out before it went into production. The movie doesn't know what it is at heart and neither does the audience. To see everybody having a blast at the end of the film (spliced between a baffling make out session in the front yard of a suburban New Jersey home that really makes the audience wonder if anybody directing this film had a clue) is insult upon injury.

Honestly? It may be worth a rental, but not if you're expecting to laugh. The moral has to be 'make sure you know what kind of movie you're making.' It's a drama that works at being a comedy and almost works as a fairly decent thriller. It's nothing to anybody, and it needs more work. The only thing it ends up being is a confusing mix set pieces and improv bits. Sad.

I'm sure Jack Warner was a good man, but why he let Ayn Rand have carte blanche over this film defies logic. Her writing--essentially a linear series of dialogue that supposedly makes sense when seen in order--is so hamfisted that it staggers belief. The only way to describe it is to imagine a badly-made parody of a popular film that a younger relative has made and spent time on that you're forced to watch, only with some real Hollywood actors. This isn't a movie as much as it's philosophy porn for dummies.

And it's hard to excuse Rand for this since she was handed an obscene amount of power to bring this to film. King Vidor, the actors....no, this falls at the feet of Rand. Many other reviewers here will go on about her philosophy but the only thing I see when I see this movie is how badly it is written. 'Romantic Realism?' Give me a break. Rand's writing is Harlequin posing as actual literature. Rod Serling has a lighter touch. Yes, Rod freaking Serling. Rand beats him by a clear country mile.

I wish there was something redeeming about this film but I fear the only thing I can come up with is a possible Rifftrax. Dramatically this is stilted so far that it's damn near horizontal. And the blame falls on the writer who had enough power to get her words onto the screen. Pity that a woman who pushed a philosophy of elites being held down by the mass ends up showing everybody in the world just how elite she isn't. With one horrifically bad movie, Rand could be shown to show how utterly silly her philosophy is: she may have been good in some respects that I'm unaware of, but as a screenwriter she ranks below Ed Wood. And Ed Wood was entertaining.

The problem with Zombieland is that the movie has nothing really to offer. The beginning promises a lot of gore, humor, and action that the movie never lives up to. What we have here is a coming-of-age movie that has nothing to offer except some occasional gore, a few good half-crafted ideas, and a lot of filler that's interrupted by an amusing cameo by Bill Murray. The cameo's appeal is how it comes completely out of nowhere and works, but you have to slog through a lot of exposition about the characters that is occasionally interrupted by zombies.

And that's the problem: this movie attempts to do Shaun of the Dead but replaces the characterization within that with one-dimensional Hollywood cutouts. This is the fatal flaw: we are then stuck with these characters driving through massive areas of empty space interacting with each other and the audience yawning, kicking back, and trying to stay awake towards some sort of action-packed finale. The pacing is awful in this film and the movie could be cut by half an hour and not miss anything. Also, the lead character is essentially worthless and annoying. The last thing a zombie movie needs is a nebbishy loser type who claims some experience as a zombie fighter yet wields the worst sort of weapon to fight legions of zombies with. The ironic attempt to speak to the audience is possibly one of the most annoying things I've ever seen in film and should have been cut out of the script immediately.

If you want a good zombie action movie, you won't find it here but you'll find some good gore effects and Woody Harrelson actually works on a good level here. It might make for a good intermission in a zombie marathon, but the movie won't stick with you. Outside of the Murray cameo and the gore effects, the movie is essentially forgettable and that's really a shame.

Despite the somewhat misleading title, this show is probably one of the best shows ever made in the late '80s syndicated TV boom. The story of two cursed cousins and their late uncle's adventurer friend still holds a great impact twenty years later. The rest of the comments here will fill you into the premise, the effective gore effects, and the dynamite stories. But it must be restated: this is a show you must watch. It stands up, far beyond its spiritual cousins 'Freddy's Nightmares' and 'Tales from the Darkside/Monsters' both in cinematography, plot, budget, and action. This is what all horror shows should aspire to.

You are missing out if you don't have these on DVD. They are well worth the money.

Most movies about ghosts are pretty lame and without drama. While 'Haunting' could fall easily into this, it does have its moments but doesn't know what to do with them. It's a very boring film that starts off with sound-based jumpscares but then leans into its story a whole forty-eight minutes in.

The acting isn't horrible, and the movie itself could have been something interesting with a bigger budget and better editing. Instead, we get a movie that only seems half there. We get some idea on interfamily strife, but we barely know who is who and why this family with a cancer-ridden son be supporting three children who are not their own. Or if they even rent or buy their Connecticut home.

And, truth be told, some of the effects at the very end reveal the cheapness of the production. While impressive enough to destroy a house, there are some moments that are unintentionally funny and should have been edited better.

But it's worth your time to watch. Compared to its brethren, it's not a horrifically bad film, but it is lacking. And the cover art featuring a zero-gravity loogie should have been better thought out despite being a graphic image. The CGI in this movie is restrained for the most part and effective.

Trite. Clichéd. Awful. And this ignores the film is written as some wish fulfillment fantasy. Ignoring the strangeness of the main character as some bland and psychotic looking teenager who decides to get drunk and travel anywhere--literally, anywhere--after his failed wedding (to lose his virginity, nevertheless), the audience is subjected to a pointless movie that flip-flops between numerous clichés and blatant ripoff of more superior films.

The acting is poor, the script is poor, and the film work is done completely on digital video which makes it look even cheesier than it is. There's no idea of a plot, dramatic elements, or anything to keep your interest. On top of that, the film actually ends twenty minutes before the movie stops. The jokes fall flat (especially the ending one), and it's simply a waste of time. This will be the longest hour and a half of your life, and you will not get it back.

Previous arguments about the main character being an irresponsible man-child is dead-on accurate. I suspect the movie was financed so the director and actors could have an 'adventurous' vacation and make a movie while they were at it. I hope they had a good time because the 'movie' they made is more boring than a fistful of slides narrated by your monotone aunt. No wonder it went direct-to-DVD.

This has been regarded as Sam Raimi's triumphant return to horror, but the only thing that this movie has in spades is a high degree of ripping off Raimi's previous hits and using the sound system to create cheap scares. While the movie has a lot of Raimi's classic camera work and a few good performances (ignoring Justin Long, who seems grossly miscast), the movie itself seems like it should be more but isn't. Raimi can and should do better than this, and should focus his trademark dark humor on a project that has more to offer than a combination of 'Thinner' and a standard EC Comic tale.

All and all, I wanted to go in and be impressed. I came out partially deaf and wondering where Sam Raimi had gone wrong with the film. The conclusion I came to is that the script was just not up to snuff. The boasting of Raimi's name alongside of the film makes me wonder if the movie's uneven tone and execution was a cunning way to disguise a bad film.

A real shame. Hopefully next time he'll get it right. But right now, I just feel cheated out of a ticket and a lack of faith in a good director.