Reviews

There's been more than enough said about Midnight Cowboy being that it's high up on the AFI list and been in the National Film Registry since 1994. And I don't think I could say anything better about it than Pauline Kael or Stanley Kaufmann ever could so I'll just focus on the theme of friendship in the movie and give my own little subjective opinion on that.

Many people have and do believe that the relationship in this movie between the two men in the lead roles is a gay relationship, or at least a clandestine kind of gay or perhaps homosocial relationship. But I don't think this is necessarily so, or at least doesn't necessarily have to be interpreted that way.

I think it can read as simply a film about friends, straight friends. Yes I know the book on which the screenplay is based was written by a gay person (James Leo Herlihy) and I know the director (the great John Schlesinger) is also gay. But the screenplay itself, written by a fierce heterosexual named Waldo Salt who married four times, doesn't seem to have to be perceived this way. The movie has a gay subtext that is hard to ignore it's true, but there can be multiple of such subtexts. There can also be a subtext of what one may call now a "heterosexual life partner" subtext, ie, a bromance.

And I think that's essentially what this movie is, a bromance. Not a movie about a subtly gay relationship between two gay men. For one thing, it's fairly clear Joe Buck, the male prostitute protagonist to which the title refers (played awesomely by Jon Voight), is not a gay man, bisexual at best but probably not even that. Nothing in the film definitely points to him being gay. As for the Rico "Ratso" Rizzo character, played insanely awesomely by Dustin Hoffman, there is some minor suggestion of him being perhaps bisexual but there's just as much of a suggestion of him being asexual, when Joe alludes to the real possibility that Ratso never had sex and Ratso doesn't seem to argue it.

No, rather I think the relationship is a platonic one based on mutual desperation and need. Ratso is literally dirty, literally sick, and always scheming and thieving like an overgrown modern day Artful Dodger. He is the reluctant new buddy of Joe's when Joe gets to New York fleeing a nightmare existence back home in Yokel-land, Texas. Apparently Joe was so desperate crazy to leave that he was willing to take up working the streets as a male prostitute in New York's then burgeoning red light district. Just a corn-fed, beef cattle raised kid from Texas. But the cruel circumstances that happened to him while there made it mandatory for him to do so (he and his girlfriend were gang raped and he was falsely accused of raping her). Not to mention he was abandoned by both his parents and forced to live with his paedophilic, degenerate, prostitute grandmother. Likewise Rizzo was in very desperate circumstances himself, basically dying of some very bad and advanced bronchial disease (it's not made clear in the movie what exactly it is) who's also physically disabled (a severely disfigured foot that causes him to stumble and wobble when he walks), who never caught even a remote break in life who lives in poverty in a collapsing and condemned housing project hovel, in other words he's about to be homeless and in ill health on the street.

It's these ridiculously desperate circumstances that draw Joe and Ratso together, certainly not physical attraction or even a meeting of minds. Being desperate sometimes I suppose is reason enough to befriend someone. When you begin to see it this way it's very easy to view the film as a basic friendship between two straight men, or even if Rizzo or Joe are bisexual this is still not the factor that draws them together. It's just not sexuality, which is somewhat ironic in a movie that is full of other sexual themes, symbols, and images. However this need not be the cause for their relationship. Sex turns up in a lot of other places in the movie, but not between them.

This has made the film enjoyable to me on a different level than before. As a straight person I appreciate seeing this kind of straight male friendship in a movie. A straight male friendship based on something other than brothers in arms in war (extend that also to police), or a comedy film, or men working in criminal consort (yes they do commit crimes together, but it's for their survival in desperate circumstances). It's really kind of rare to see a male relationship like the one in this movie. I can think of only Shawshank Redemption right now. And even if the film is predominantly about a straight friendship it's no loss to gay representation in film. There's plenty of better films about gay relationships anyway. Boys In The Band, released just a year after Midnight Cowboy, is a much better example (or rather I should say would be a much better example) of a movie with complex gay relationships.

So don't worry, Queer Cinema will surely survive without Midnight Cowboy being in its catalogue. Truth is, a gay director made one of the most profound films about a (predominantly) straight male relationship in movie history. For that I think John Schlesinger should be applauded.

For being an attempt at a corporate cash-grab for the various sponsors and moneyed interests involved, it would seem the mentally disordered neurotics who made this porky pigwash have forgotten one of the golden rules for making a movie a cash-grab: sex.

Space Jam 2 doesn't even provide this (along with any other enjoyable entertainment) as they've, in a paranoid rush to avoid any Weinstein associations perhaps, completely de-sexualized Lola Bunny to the point where she could just as well be some 13 year old boy bunny. Taking a body away from a cartoon bunny is really psychologically overcompensating for real or perceived sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood, like to a pathological extent. I love how the makers of this pat themselves on the back as if they are doing a great social good.

They didn't even make sensible changes to the Lola Bunny character's appearance. For example an actual smart change would have been to make her fitter, with some muscle tone. I mean she is supposed to be an athlete, right? That together with slightly smaller breasts, not a flat chest, would have been ok. But instead she looks like underdeveloped muck. Her face even looks disgraceful. This Lola is just Lo, without the La.

Lola Bunny was one of the few good things about the first Space Jam, and now this one doesn't even have that going for it. Old media like Hollywood seem to know this kind of thing annoys people, yet they do it anyway. Which then begs the question why are people still supporting these weak, brain-disordered invalids who just want to mess with you?

In a time when social media is crawling with real life Lola Bunnys and Jessica Rabbits, and dressing up as Furries is a phenomenon, Hollywood goes ahead and keeps demonstrating its irrelevance and apparent lack of market sense. Do they really think women are so depressed about their bodies that they can't handle seeing hot female characters, even if they are cartoon bunnies? Not expecting an answer to that, I'll just go to where the actual hot bunnies are, thanks.

Yet another remake of a classic movie embarrassed and ruined by an idiotic man vs woman feminist worldview. All the male characters are villains or at best wimps. Gee great representation of half the population, composed of many diverse races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, on and on.

The movie tries to twist the actual reality of modern day university environments and university policies. Women are in no way, shape, or form disadvantaged in modern universities. In fact, it is men who are usually the minority in modern universities both in terms of student body and in much of the faculty. If anything, the systemic abuse is directed at males as harassment and abuse accusations don't need evidence other than a woman's word thus leading to innocent people getting expelled, fired, or imprisoned for false accusations, which universities accommodate to the nines with their stupid policies like "preponderance of evidence". There's people being fired and put in jail because of the uncritical cow-towing cowardice that university officials give to hatemongering feminists and the toxic anti-legal rights and anti-due process policies they follow.

Yet this movie makes it seem as though they're poor little darlings being constantly victimized by a patriarchal system-itself a yawn inducing concept. Just another by the numbers woman-as-victim revenge film, basically. It's a shame that the original movie was an innovator in the horror genre while this remake is just another follower, and a follower of an extremely tired out formula at that, which might have worked better 30-40 years ago but not now. Obviously women can get abused by rogue individuals, as can men, just that it's now more often men at universities who also receive the systemic and structural abuse in addition to what any rogue, sociopathic individuals (ie, a rapist) could do to you.

Making a movie villainizing men (a large group of people composed of many diverse individuals) is not criticizing sexism, it's promoting it. Maybe when the filmmakers realize this they can get their act together and actually make a work with some degree of sophistication or nuance. But with these kinds of people I wouldn't count on it.

So when does Bullock take off her top in the movie, the other idiot (I forget his name) did, and who wants to see that? Gross. Then again, who wants to see the equally irrelevant Bullock's sagging top anyway. Also gross.

What can I say, yet another nail in the coffin of Hollywood. And another nail in the coffins of all the goners who still get herded in to see irritable bowel like this.

I tried to give this series a chance because, as an amateur comic myself, I thought I might relate to the experiences of a show about one. But no, expecting that any show today from old media would be actually relatable was a shortsighted gesture.

In truth, this show had me disbelieving in it from the moment the protagonist, a wimpy childish doughboy that apparently we're supposed to root for, catches his wife cheating on him and instead of tossing her useless butt to the curb, HE leaves, like the simpering doughboy wimp that he is. This is who we're supposed to follow throughout the series? :\

From that point on it was pretty awful. You see a host of tired old comics (Lange, Silverman), cliched writing, storylines, and jokes, annoying and unfunny newer comics (Ali), all while you're expected to relate to this cucky protagonist who instead of throwing his wife into a dumpster where she belongs he only tries to get back with this cheating a hole (the person who plays his wife is also not funny, nor is the person whom she's cheats with).

I got through the first season and that's about all I can manage. Glad it's done. One more nail in the coffin for this aging kind of material in an aging media.

A formulaic, clichéd, boring, and extremely annoying show that nonetheless gets passed off by some "professional critics" (ie, propagandists) as great and original. Sure it is. Anything with a woman in the lead who suddenly becomes "empowered" (especially if it's set in the - mythical - past) pretty much automatically, without thought, gets good reviews by the identity politics pushing, critical establishment circle jerks. What a grand delusion the entertainment industry, together with its crony critics, has become.

What makes this show so unpleasant as to make it unwatchable is the moldy old male/female duelism in it. You've seen it all many times before for decades now: whenever there's a man and woman depicted as a couple, the man is always the bad one, and the woman is always the good one. The man always the stupid one, the woman the smart one. The woman, always right; the man, always wrong, etc. A man fails at something (her husband's dream comic career) while the woman succeeds at it. Well...surprise surprise.

Where haven't you seen this in every sitcom about a woman since Mary Tyler Moore and in every movie about a couple since Scenes From a Marriage? What an obnoxious yawn it all is.

The pressures and so-called oppression women endured in the era is typically exaggerated, which is a mark of propaganda. The frequent use of f-words is also uncharacteristic of the era. In many places it was still illegal for men to swear in front of women and children - oh but men had such freedom compared to women, just ask Lenny Bruce!

I don't understand why they want to alienate a lot of people with this kind of material. Whenever I see something that starts to push feminist themes, I'm outta there faster than you can blink and I'm far from the only one, liberal or conservative, who does so. In an era when feminism is increasingly resisted and when more women seem to rather aspire to be instagram models or internet porn stars or sugar babies (one poll reveals that over 60 percent of young women wish to do something sex-industry related for a career), shows and movies like this seem to be desperate attempts from feminists and other political ideologues, delusion spreaders, neurotics, narcissists - and not to mention femdom fetishists - in the industry to make it seem like feminism is still relevant.

This might actually be somewhat enjoyable material if it didn't go through feminist filters and push a sexist gender dichotomy. It seems to have its niche audience anyway. Well they can have their niche, no one else does.

And that' s not a spoiler, as anyone with a brain could predict that the moment they saw the lead female character whose name is "Rocky" (ugh *face palms*). I guess the director/writer didn't get the memo that giving female characters male names is one of the most tired, overdone, cliched things you could do. Once you hear that, that pretty much foreshadows how tired, overdone, and cliched this movie is in general, finally culminating in the ultimate "Last Girl" and damsel in distress cliches

First off, what an enlightened depiction of the blind. I guess the person who directed this (his name is not really worth mentioning) didn't receive any funding from the American Foundation for the Blind. And the one black character has barely any screentime and dies first. Hey look, yet even more innovation and originality. You basically can't get anymore clichéd than that. And this is a movie set in Detroit (with its large black population), which makes that doubly insulting and stupid. I can tell this director is really progressive. Not sure if the sarcasm is coming off here. The other characters are mostly stock types too, and obnoxious to boot (which is what I wanted to do to "Rocky" especially).

I suppose in another great act of innovation and originality, there's a failed attempt to make the lead (surprise!) female character the most sympathetic by contriving an abusive background for her and trying to justify her robbing a huge amount of money from a blind person in order to save her (surprise!) little sister from said abusive background. But it really very much feels like she's only out to save herself. Does the director/writer actually think we're supposed to root for this scum chick who was trying to rob a blind man who had just lost his daughter (oop! Another female! Surprise! ) And this was before they even knew, btw, that he captured the woman (Yet another female...surprise...) who gave him the money. I guess having a male captive and expect people to feel sympathy for him would be just too innovative and original for them to handle.

Apparently it never occurred to this director or writer that making only female characters the ones we're expected to care about and have sympathy for is sexist. But with the way, as I've mentioned, this mediocre hack no-talent depicts the blind and black people, I guess we all already knew he's not the most enlightened person (in addition to being untalented and unoriginal, to boot). This movie actually might have been somewhat redeemed if the ending was different and the formulaic Rocky character finally got hers after all by the blind man in some clever and inventive way or something. It would also have been much more horror-like to do so - although not for me. I guess that wouldn't have been a scary ending for me because I was actually rooting for her to die. I would have just cheered. But for others it could have been much scarier and more effective since this is supposed to be a scary movie....isn't it?

What's with the overhype and uncritical critical reviews so many sub-par and mediocre horror movies, and lame movies in general, these days get? I know pervasive collective mental illness, poisonous ideology, and general brain fugue from a desperate and depressed population who probably couldn't handle anything that's actually original, innovative, and truly terrifying has something to do with it, but can that explain it all away?

Then again, when I see the rather mediocre (and much more deserving) 7.1 this movie now has here, I guess alls not wrong with the world after all. This kind of thing tends to happen after the original false hype dissipates and people generally forget about it and move on to another piece of nose tissue, which they will no doubt just as quickly blow their nose on, and just as quickly throw away and forget about just as they had the previous one. And so on.

1 out of 10 stars. And it can be happy and lucky it got that.

There's nothing here but the same formula, with a few tweaks for the mentally ill simpletons to think it's something different. To say it's "different" or a "change of pace" (which some people are) is just stupid . The fact that this is a superhero movie alone negates all possibility that there is anything remotely refreshing or different about it.

The attempts at constant "jokes" are just obnoxious. Besides, I don't think that a movie that is in fact one big joke would be able to swallow that irony.

As for the actors there's the always annoying, uninteresting, no-count lead actor who plays thor-what's his name again? lol, yeah, like that matters. A plank of wood would have more character than this no-count, who in this movie looks like he just freshly pulled his head out of some guy's crevice.

As for the other ones, they could have gotten a more attractive actress to play Valkyrine (did I misspell that?), so then at least there would be something fun to look at despite the obnoxiousness of the character. All the hot musclegirls there are these days and yet they couldn't get one for this role? No excuse for that really.

Same goes for Cate Blanchett who plays Hela for that matter. Hey Cate, they're called implants, look them up some time, hit the thick glutes training while you're at it. Might have made this character remotely interesting....but probably still not. Hopefully at least she'll die horribly at some point.

I used to respect Jeff Goldblum more, mostly for his older roles and that respect will dissipate quickly if he keeps taking roles like the one here. Maybe he's starting to think he should have stuck with his jazz piano playing.

How do these movies even make money in an age of peer-to-peer downloading or get any good reviews? I know a lot of people are basically either paid off or obliged to make fake good reviews, and I suppose the big studio and finance system takes full advantage out of the special interest group of depressed, lost, and thor-oughly butt-stuck idiocrats out there, apparently before they kill themselves, too depressed and too in a mental fugue to know what they're doing with what's left of their lives, exposing themselves to things that's probably just making them even more unhappy. Although the lack of choice presented to these poor people has much to do with all this of course. And the suicide and mass shooting rate continues to rise....

Anyway, this is yet another marvel/comic book movie that would truly sully any landfill site. Another nail in the coffin for superhero movies no doubt. Another completely irrelevant movie (even irrelevant to entertainment) that already feels very old and done for.

Baywatch seems to function as some kind of attempt at propaganda for the idiocracy, but it's probably just that the producers in Hollywood at this point are sooooo out of it and out of touch that they actually thought this would go over well.

For some bizarre reason (as if "reason" has anything to do with any of this) they choose the grotesquely overmuscled "The Rock", a mediocre actor at best who looks like the toll-taking troll who lives under a bridge (ie, he is one ugly mofo), to fill the shoes of David Hassellhoff, talk about a miscast. It's almost as if someone out there wants to deliberately humiliate Mr The Rock and destroy his career, though it's probably just those drug-addled, sex addicted producers again thinking it would be a great idea.

Then there's Zac Effron, another mediocre actor who looks like a male Barbie doll and plays a character who is someone you would just like to kill with great satisfaction.

What a perfect pair: two mediocre actors who have a great future lined up in gay porn. One a top and the other a bottom.

Then there's the bevy of bimbos, some of which are fun to look at sometimes, although there's more attractive women out there these days they could have gotten, not to mention probably more talented too. I heard one of them is a big Indian star. Well whatever, not like her performance or presence could save this doomed stinkhole of a movie.

The only reason why I even saw this was because I have a dear friend who's unfortunately into a lot of bad movies. The weed helped, what can I say? I played with my phone as much as possible through it, for some salvation for myself. Seems like the big studio system evacuates movies out of factory a-holes these days deliberately manufactured so that you have an excuse to play with your phone.

The only good about this movie is that maybe the people who actually like Lame Johnson see how lame he actually is. Why this guy is, supposedly, the highest paid movie star is too nonsensical to comprehend or compute. Unless you can chalk it up to his fans being such a lowest common denominator lot that they haven't figured out how to use the internet yet, or their own brains.

-10 out of 10 stars, if that were possible.

Effusing from the bottom of a toilet reeks another braindead simplistic dichotomy of woman=good/man=bad gender feminist nonsense, which at this point is fast getting stale.

The male and female characters are simply poured into a pre-made mold and are scraped out without any trimming along the edges (though this movie and its lame characters have no edge whatsoever). The male protagonist is, of course, depicted as an insensitive and egotistical boar, while the female characters are, of course, (almost) flawless and infallible little angels, keeping with the now 30-some year long tradition in movies of presenting this mindnumbingly dumb, and destructive, false dichotomy. Apparently though, this dichotomy flies over the empty heads of the director, writers, and probably most of the (gracefully) few viewers of this movie. If the people who watched this actually knew better, they'd be insulted by this assault on their intelligence and dignity, especially male viewers but any female viewer too who dislikes mindlessly simplistic reductions of who she is as a woman, or maybe just maybe might have an ounce of respect for the men and boys in her life and what the culture is telling them (to hate themselves and regard women as better).

Ironic that a movie thinking it's fighting sexism and doing a good thing to, yet again, prioritize women over men and show the poor little ladies as both the victims and victors of the of big bad men, utterly and miserably fails to see its own sexism in presenting this peabrained sexist duelism of man=bad/woman=good. It also fails utterly and miserably in its own total lack of creative bravery, intelligence, and invention.

Truly great movies of the present and in the future will end this misandric outlook, and movies will not have to be either anti-woman or anti-man.

I'm surprised to see this isn't a little more popular and that this is the first review. One big reason is probably because of how short the epies are. At one whole minute an ep, maybe it seems like something not to be bothered with or you don't really catch it on TV it goes by so fast (although you'll find it on youtube now).

But in a way that's what's cool about it, there really isn't many shows with that kind of a structure on TV or even really on the web. It's almost like hardcore punk for adult animation, fast and short and loud and it does have that raw, physical, punk rock aspect to it, there's lots of violent humour and other bad ass type stuff (hammer roulette is one of my favourites). A lot of viscous and grotesque body humour too, or whatever, gross-out stuff.

It's a current that runs back through the likes of Rowen Atkinson, through Spitting Image, through the alternative comedians of the 80s and 90s esp the Young Ones and so on, and it's sometimes just stupid and pointess (at the end of one short after his father hits him one last time with his newspaper for saying a string of swear words he starts to cry and even sheds tears, I mean what's the creators trying to tell us here because I'm not exactly sure if it's funny or not) but most of the time you can find something amusing to this show.

Some might even get intrigued by just the weird, ugly mofo face of Angry Kid and all the different expressions his face does, which are each different masks that need to be made for each expression. This odd creature is usually placed in a real word live action kind of environment, making a unique or at least not often seen contrast.

It's a good show. You'll probably find something amusing in this simple, juvenile adult animatated comedy and it's kinda unique presentation.

Of course this is not a Hollywood film at all, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best from the New Hollywood era anyway. But unfortunately it seems like really one of the only truly decent movies that director Donald Shebib made, though he went to the same film school as some of the greatest directors of that era: UCLA, with fellow students Scorsese and Coppola among others. And like how Scorsese examined the minutiae of young Italian American life in New York in the early '70s in Mean Streets, Shebib gives the same microscopic examination of Atlantic Canadians living in Toronto circa 1970.

It's strange how he says in the director's commentary of the DVD release of this movie that Heartaches was his best dramatic movie. My question is: How's that? Is that why no one talks about or remembers Heartaches and Going*(see note below) Down the Road is an all time classic? Is it because Going Down the Road is more of a comedy-drama than straight up drama? It doesn't matter because even if he may be a one-hit wonder (unfortunately even the follow-up Down the Road Again was pretty mediocre), it is a good hit, and one for the ages. It's a story that's obviously particularly appealing to Atlantic Canadians (such as myself) because it is rare to see our depiction in film at all never mind in such a true to life, and well known, presentation as this. But it's also a story for simply anyone who ever wanted to break out of some nowheresville, who refused to lay down and accept their oakie-dokie so-called fate—and it doesn't sentimentalize it or make any apologies in saying that doesn't always succeed.

Some say it's the Canadian Citizen Kane. I don't know if that's supposed to be some kind of typically self-effacing hoser humour or what, but I would say in earnest that it could very well be the Canadian Midnight Cowboy in terms of its trailblazing North American film realism and grit, as well as having the similar theme of small-towner(s) coming to the big city with high hopes and dreams that come crashing down yet continue to persist anyway. It does stand up to those two films, yes even Kane in some ways, and it definitely was worthy enough to win the Oscar for best foreign film of 1970 like those two films one for best picture. But it really doesn't belong in any other film's shadow. It's one of a kind.

It's definitely not just a generational film, relevant only for that time period. It's easily as relevant now as it was then; the phenomenon of Maritimers moving west (anywhere west) is going as strong as ever (I live here, I know), and you can bet that many of them are not going to find any gold at the end of the rainbow. I may be of a younger generation, but this movie relates to me and speaks to me more than about over 95% of anything that comes out today, especially mainstream stuff, and that's bitterly disappointing and desperately needs to change, and I think the time is ripe now for such a change. Anyone I've ever talked to about this movie around my age or otherwise have noted how true to life it is, still is.

*note: The IMDb's spell corrector won't seem to allow me to correct "Going" to the form it's supposed to be in the title, which is inexplicable and extremely annoying but please be aware that I'm aware of that.

Ever see the review for this movie written over at allmovie? It goes on far too long for this very culturally insignificant movie. It sounds like it is written by an overly enthusiastic fan here on the IMDb. Seriously they treat it like it a Proust novel--in fact, the review is as long as a Proust novel. It is totally absurd.

The movie is just not that important. Not nearly so.

I don't detect any social or cultural intelligence from the director when I watched this film. If the movie is supposed to be connected to the torturing going on involving the wars in West Asia and so forth, then it does a poor job addressing it. If this movie is actually supposed to be reflecting that, then you would think it would do a better job with the socio-political commentary that one would expect such reflections would entail. There is no hint that it is doing any more than attempting to produce the greatest jolt from the audience--nothing more. And its attempts failed on this viewer; I think the movie is insipid and boring celluloid garbage--pretty much on the low level of low grade cult classic splatter movies like Maniac. allmovie waaaay overblows it on presenting it as some kind of great social statement on the level of Tobe Hopper and Wes Craven's films of the seventies. I don't detect anything more than an attempt at rattling people's senses. In other words, it is not worthwhile art--at best it is art fart.

Another thing that is bad about the movie and not often addressed is the misandry presented in this and the first Hostel movie. Men are shown in an unrelentingly negative light. In fact, about the only thing I found unrelenting and horrific about these films are the "hostile" depictions of men. There are only female characters to be written as good, heroic and sympathetic, even if they are psychotic torturers and killers. Of course women are shown being brutally tortured too. But this is precisely to add more shock value: people don't care as much if it happens to men, and movies like this perpetuate that carelessness. The scenes of the women being tortored are meant to be viewed as the most horrific; scenes of men being tortured are just as often made into comedic jokes. It's a scummy and disgusting message--way more disgusting than any gore or disturbing image shown. Oh btw, what great awareness and concern Roth shows by bringing attention to the nasty realities of our world including torture when the people being denigrated in the movie are for the most part men yet most of the people actually being tortured in reality are men (not to mention almost all the ones dying in the battle fields are men too). Yeah....what great and perceptive social commentary.

Then again, it is what is. But what it is is fairly insignificant and forgettable. And if it indeed does actually attempt to say something about today's harsher and bleak realities (of the wars, Bush's blind eye to victims of torture, etc), it makes the case poorly and if anything it's just a part of the whole problem of today. It seems Roth and the audience that likes this junk is as bad and complacent of torture--at least when it's happening to men--as Bush is. Does anyone with a working mind really think that people are going to leave this movie with some kind of enlightened awareness of the horrific reality of torture? Do you think they are going to say anything other than mention how 'cool' and 'gross' some of the scenes are? Pfff...speaking of awareness and reality....

Sorry, but I'm not as easily tricked as some people over at allmovie seem to be. Perhaps they should get someone to re-write the review. Cut it down by a few pages and get someone who isn't like a rabid Hansen fan from 1998. *Btw, I know that this review is kind of long too--so I'm kind of a hypocrite, but I felt it was necessary in order to supply criticism where it is due and to make something that matches up against the glowy review by allmovie. Also, I'm discussing the BAD (ie, crap) things about the movie, not imagined good things, so obviously that's going to make it longer ; )--Hope that explains it.

Too much unconvincing hype for this often unconvincingly "groundbreaking" show. It seems like a set of spasmodically rabid fans have too hurriedly coughed out chimerical accolades in something like a prescripted attempt to revere something, anything, but that just isn't worth revering.

Truly, the show is capable of evoking laughter from time to time, such as from the hip hop dance instructor in the gold jump suit's seeming preoccupation with people's dads, and from some good recurring characters such as Dr. Steve Brule and the Skylars. But this quasi-critic doesn't really buy the notion that this show is "actually incredibly complex", you know, despite seeming simplistic and rag-tag on the surface. While it is true that watching scenes over again a few more times one may pick up a few things that one didn't see or realize before, but this does not qualify as "incredibly complex". If many comedy fans accept this as incredibly complex, then they have accepted a very low standard of "excellence" in comedy. I think we deserve, and can in fact get, much better than this.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job is just the latest among a long line of po-mo comedy shows compared to Monty Python's Flying Circus (I still think the show the came the closest to Monty Python's excellence is Kids in the Hall, which Tim and Eric can't hold a candle too), and if you've seen all that's come since then, or have a good knowledge of absurdist comedy of all types extending back to the Goons in the1950s/60s, then Tim and Eric become a lot less great, unfortunately for you fans (check out Frank Zappa's albums, for instance, if you like Tim and Eric's surreal humour). It's nonsequiter, absurdist, and surreal nature is at this point actually getting played out. If it is at all new terrain in sketch comedy, the possible innovation would seem to me to be a kind of traumatic element to some of the bits that isn't really comedic at all (unless very darkly comedic). That's the most interesting thing I find about Tim and Eric (beyond the somewhat unusual name of the show). Then again, Wonder Showzen contains that element too, but the styles of comedy in the two shows were both conceived around the same time, I'm guessing. I sense that Tim and Eric might be attempting an evolution in conceptual comedy (think Tom Green or Andy Kaufman). They don't quite succeed in doing this, but they don't exactly fail either.

I'm sometimes forced to wonder if people can tell what is actually trail blazing these days. Whatever is, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job just doesn't seem to fit-for the most part, anyway. And too many ringing accolades from fans too eager for the next big thing doesn't convince me. Just be patient and don't just pelter into a misinformed consensus by a few that has somehow established it as the next big thing. But one can tell this show makes some efforts and attempts to be different. And again, there are some truly funny moments.

This is an underrated and unrecognized breakthrough performance for Carlin. This was the beginning of the transformation to the angry old man of the nineties (this transformation is not complete until Jammin' in New York), tapping into the palpitations released from assault comedians of old (Lenny Bruce) and new (Bill Hicks), pelting out more provocative material together with a far more acerbic delivery. His often hilarious comments about language, cancer, feminism and politics in general, and the general state of modern society are jarring when compared to the "7 words you can't say on television" and "a place for my stuff" routines of old. His thoughts on language are particularly thought provoking, at least for a stand-up comedian.

Interestingly he's even beginning to grow his hair long again, maybe symbolizing his return to the maverick boldness (for the time)of his 70s material--only more aggressive, and updated.

This should keep you smiling--if that's what you like to do. If you don't, then watch this, it might be beneficial, to you. --of course, unless you're offended by what's being said.