Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Monday, August 31st, 2026
It’s not that high of praise to say COYOTE VS. ACME is the best Looney Tunes movie. So how about the only Looney Tunes movie they should make?
I mean I think SPACE JAM is kind of funny, they’re not all DAFFY DUCK’S MOVIE: FANTASY ISLAND, but these characters were made for shorts. The feature length HOW THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE really couldn’t match the energy of the brilliant show by the same people, and it’s even worse when they pretend all these characters are friends and have them standing around together like The Muppets. But this new one is different. Instead of setting out to come up with a new Bugs Bunny movie or whatever it comes from a 1990 New Yorker article by Ian Frazier about what would happen if Wile E. Coyote tried to sue the Acme Corporation over all the defective products he’s bought from them.
It’s a rock solid concept combining the joke conventions of the Road Runner cartoons with the format of a court room thriller, or an ERIN BROCKOVICH type whistleblower drama. I knew the idea going in but I still got such a good, deep laugh from the way it’s laid out: Wile E. (as everyone calls him), fresh from another day of catastrophically failing to catch the Road Runner using various contraptions, returns to his cave, where an ad on the TV catches his attention. The questionable attorney Kevin Avery (Will Forte, LIFE OF CRIME), who specializes in cartoon law, is asking if you’ve ever experienced things like pushing a detonator but the detonator blows up, or pulling a ripcord and only silverware comes out – things we see in flashes of classic Wile E. Coyote shorts. If so, you could be entitled to compensation.
The trouble is Kevin isn’t ready for a case like Wile E.’s. He believes he can quickly settle for $300 over faulty rocket skates, but Wile E. – who communicates through gestures and “a limited number” of signs – has a literal mountain of other failed Acme products. When, to Kevin’s horror, the petition goes to Acme’s intimidating head counsel Buddy Crane (John Cena, 12 ROUNDS), he’s offered what would be his biggest settlement ever… but Wile E. literally tears it up and sets it on fire. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: court room drama, Dave Green, James Gunn, Jeremy Slater, John Cena, Lana Condor, Looney Tunes, Luis Guzman, Martha Kelly, Tone Bell, Will Forte
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs | 3 Comments »
Thursday, August 27th, 2026
TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA is the third movie from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun. I haven’t seen WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (2021), but I did see I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024), which was released by A24 to great acclaim and adulation.
I confess I didn’t get that one. Didn’t even feel qualified to review it. I love its look, and I was impressed by its creation of a ‘90s tv show called The Pink Opaque that its characters are obsessed with. It’s like the show Videodrome would make in response to the popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I struggled with watching Justice Smith, who was so charismatic on The Get Down, play such a charmless, passive lead. I’ve read that’s because it’s a trans allegory and the character is repressed, and that’s another thing: there is no way on earth that I would know this was a trans allegory without reading about it. It’s interesting to read about, and it’s a movie that means so much to so many (including plenty of cis people I know), but I simply can’t decode it. I can appreciate the vibes, but in that case it wasn’t enough.
CAMP MIASMA is another trans allegory, but it’s more on my frequency. Maybe some of the very specialized things it’s about are also more universal, or maybe it’s just that it’s funnier. But it sure doesn’t hurt that it’s about slasher movies. Up and coming young indie director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder, Hacks) has been hired to reboot a long-running, now moribund summer camp slasher series called CAMP MIASMA. The opening credits have a very detailed montage of franchise history, with 14 movies that mostly line up with the FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels, except there’s a Christmas one and an ARMY OF DARKNESS one and I think a HALLOWEEN 6 thorn cult reference. The most important inspiration, though, is SLEEPAWAY CAMP, with the killer’s psychosis attributed to being raised as both a boy and a girl. Kris says they hired her, a known lesbian, in a cynical attempt to launder the problematicness out of the i.p. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dylan Baker, Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, Jack Haven, Jane Schoenbrun, Jasmin Savoy Brown, meta-slashers
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 14 Comments »
Monday, August 24th, 2026
July 26, 1996
You know I love THE CABLE GUY, and there’s another favorite coming up, but to me there’s no doubt that KINGPIN is the comedy of 1996. In fact, I think it’s somewhere in my personal top ten comedies of all time, somewhere beneath PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, THE BIG LEBOWSKI and TALLADEGA NIGHTS.
It’s the second film from Peter & Bobby Farrelly (now a team directing a script by Golden Girls writers Barry Fanaro & Mort Nathan), and definitely my favorite of theirs. I think of them as a little cheesy now, but the filmmaking in this one is strong, and that’s part of why it works. It’s stuffed with broad, rapid fire jokes, but it looks and feels like A Real Movie. It’s way funnier and sillier than the average comedy, but at the end when it acts like I care about the characters mending their relationships and getting what they want, it’s not being presumptuous. I really do! It’s a very precise tone that I rarely see pulled off this successfully.
I gotta give some credit to cinematographer Mark Irwin (SCANNERS, NIGHT SCHOOL, THE PROTECTOR, THE BLOB) and also to costume designer Mary Zophres (PCU), who did FARGO the same year and later returned to bowling wear for THE BIG LEBOWSKI. She creates such a world out of polyester and dagger collars, riding the exact line between sort of cool ‘70s swagger and completely out of touch loser. This is a movie where you can have a combover that almost counts as a separate character, yet feel confident putting Elvis Presley or Evel Knievel style showmanship in your outfit.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, bowling, Farrelly Brothers, Lin Shaye, Randy Quaid, Rob Moran, Vanessa Angel, Woody Harrelson
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Sport | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2026
July 26, 1996
I talked earlier in this series about HARRIET THE SPY and how it was a Nickelodeon production that sort of had its roots in an interstitial-turned-special-turned show made by quirky, creative people with vision. A major cable network farm-teaming artists and giving them opportunities. Now we have JOE’S APARTMENT, the first theatrical film from Nick’s older-sister network MTV, expanded from a CableACE Award-winning 2-minute short they’d used as filler. Writer/director John Payson had worked on the animated intros to MTV shows including Remote Control, The Big Picture and Just Say Julie, plus been a producer on Liquid Television and the Henry Selick short Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions. That’s great work and an incredibly cool world to come out of, but does it translate to knowing how to write and direct a mostly live action feature film?
In this case no. Maybe yes in other cases, I don’t know.
In the feature version the titular Joe is played by Jerry O’Connell (STAND BY ME) in only his fifth movie, even including “uncredited kid at beach” in POLICE ACADEMY 5: ASSIGNMENT MIAMI BEACH. He’s a hapless dork who takes the bus from Iowa to New York City and has kind of the “Living For the City” experience.There’s a joke that he’s narrating his trip as a letter to his mother but he gets interrupted by three different muggings.
The movie is premised not only on the city’s reputation as a crime-ridden hellscape, but also as a refuge for art weirdos thanks to rent control. Joe meets a guy named Walter Shit (Randee of the Redwoods himself, Jim Turner) of the band Shit by being the only person to check on him laying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood (as an art project). It’s Walter who finds Joe the titular apartment because they happen to be walking by when an old lady is thrown to her death out of her window and Walter pushes Joe to pretend he’s her son. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bam Bam Bigelow, BD Wong, Billy West, Blue Sky, Carol Spier, Carter Burwell, Chris Wedge, Don Ho, Jerry O'Connell, John Payson, Megan Ward, MTV Productions, Nick Zedd, Pepa, Peter Deming, Rick Aviles, Robert Vaughn, Tim Blake Nelson
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 6 Comments »
Thursday, July 30th, 2026
July 17, 1996
MULTIPLICITY is the Michael Keaton clone movie. I remembered it being okay at best, but Keaton being very good at playing multiple characters who are distinguishable from each other just based on his mannerisms. Yes, I was correct about all that.
It’s directed by Harold Ramis, who I hold in high regard because of GROUNDHOG DAY, but I don’t think any of his other movies reach those heights. Certainly not this one.
Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton the year before JACKIE BROWN) is some kind of manager at an L.A. construction company, he’s forced to work long hours, doesn’t see the family enough, all that. I was impressed that at least he misses his daughter’s Campfire Girls graduation instead of the standard Little League game or piano recital. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andie MacDowell, Anne Cusack, Babaloo Mandel, Brian Doyle-Murray, Eugene Levy, Glenn Shadix, Harold Ramis, Harris Yulin, John de Lancie, Julie Bowen, Lowell Ganz, Michael Keaton, Richard Edlund, Richard Masur
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2026
KAZAAM is one of those movies we all know as a punchline because “Shaquille O’Neal as a rapping genie” sounds more like a fake movie inside another movie than an actual thing that exists. The only one that’s guaranteed less existent is the other genie movie starring Sinbad that somehow became a shared delusion of millennials? I don’t even want to think about that shit.
But until now I hadn’t actually seen KAZAAM. It’s as ridiculous as I imagined and no higher in quality, but I suppose kind of different in some ways, so I found that mildly interesting. What I didn’t know from the reputation and the poster is that it follows in the tradition of some of the ‘80s comedies where it’s ostensibly a kids movie about baby shit but also it has crime and violence treated seriously, like an action movie of the time. Or at least the criminals are treated seriously. There’s a fight scene with genie Shaq throwing people through walls and it’s obviously pretty cartoony, but I noticed the stunt coordinator was Jeff Imada (RAPID FIRE, THE CROW) and stunt performers in the movie include Billy Blanks, James Lew and Jeannie Epper (seen earlier in the summer in the re-release of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ally Walker, Da Brat, Fawn Reed, Francis Capra, James Acheson, Jeff Imada, John Costelloe, Marshall Manesh, Paul Michael Glaser, Shaquille O'Neal, Spinderella
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Family, Fantasy/Swords | 14 Comments »
Monday, July 27th, 2026
July 17, 1996
WALKING AND TALKING is the debut film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener (the warden in MI VIDA LOCA). Like the last movie I reviewed, DON’T LOOK BACK, it opens with its protagonists as little kid best friends, but this is a much more female perspective of the world, so instead of establishing their life long friendship with playing swords and becoming blood brothers the two girls are sneaking a peek at The Joy of Sex, giggling and calling it disgusting. Unspecified years later they’re still best friends, but at different places in their other relationships, which will create a strain.
Amelia (Catherine Keener, SURVIVAL QUEST) is the most outwardly messy of the pair. A while back she broke up with Andrew (Liev Schreiber right before SCREAM; this was released by Miramax, and they were really pushing him as their new product at the time). They’re still friends and co-workers, they even grocery shop together, but I don’t know, the smile she gives after telling her therapist (Joseph Siravo, CARLITO’S WAY) she’s totally over him made me think she’s really not. Either way, things fall apart when she finds out Laura (Anne Heche, MILK MONEY) got engaged to Frank (Todd Field, EYE OF THE EAGLE 2: INSIDE THE ENEMY). I mean they seem to have been together forever, they already live together, they’re all close and it’s great. But making it official like that makes Amelia panic. And right after she decided to quit therapy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anne Heche, Catherine Keener, Kevin Corrigan, Liev Schreiber, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Field, video stores, Vincent Pastore
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026
JACKASS: BEST AND LAST is the name of this year’s JACKASS motion picture event (currently leaving theaters), because it’s a reunion mixed with a “best of” compilation as a finale to the series. New sequences are mixed with highlights and previously unseen footage from more than a quarter century of Johnny Knoxville and pals doing stupid and dangerous shit for laughs.
As usual there is a lot of stuff where things are stuck up butts or shit comes out of butts. I am personally not a fan of those aspects of butts, but these guys are made different, and I can accept that. It’s funny that they can be accurately described as stunt men (they get fired on rockets, punched in the face, butted by an angry ram, launched on slingshots, electrocuted, etc.) but the most horrifying stuff is usually poop related. At long last there is an escape room where someone has to reach into a hole not knowing that they are also reaching into their colleague’s butthole.
The two most memorable new sequences are inspired by the original cast’s present status as men over 50. One has them playing Twister in transparent jumpsuits after downing colonoscopy prep. It doesn’t take long for one of them to spring a diarrhea leak and get everyone on set puking. The entertainment value is multi-layered: being too grossed out to keep my eyes on what the camera is pointed at, marveling at the ludicrousness of coming up and going through with an idea like this, and most of all enjoying the enthusiasm by the boys (or, in many cases, the amusement of the boys at one of their co-stars being very unenthused). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, Lance Bangs, Paul Walter Hauser, Spike Jonze, Steve-O
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Documentary | 10 Comments »
Monday, July 6th, 2026
June 28, 1996
While the recently-minted superstar Jim Carrey was challenging himself (and getting paid well) with THE CABLE GUY, his ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE director was remaking Jerry Lewis’s 1963 movie THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. A challenge of a different sort, I guess, because it’s a big special effects movie. It was a huge hit (biggest comedy of 1996, and #5 movie overall), a comeback for Eddie Murphy, and even won an Oscar (best makeup for the legendary Rick Baker). Murphy is quite good in it. I always hated it though.
Sherman Klump (Murphy between VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN and MULAN) is a professor at Wellman College who is also heading the lab’s groundbreaking DNA experiments on hamsters. He happens to be quite obese, but he gets by, and he’s very good natured. I think people like him, with the exception of his less-than-one-dimensionally uptight boss, Dean Richmond (Larry Miller, RADIOLAND MURDERS), who hates his fucking guts and always stands around and/or hides in his classroom, making various outraged expressions at his activities.
The first joke in the movie (if you’re charitable enough to count it as a joke) is about Richard Simmons. In 1996 you couldn’t really address the topic of weight loss without the observation “Can you believe that Richard Simmons!?” So Murphy plays “Lance Perkins,” not so much a parody as an imitation of Simmons. That makeup is a disturbing image to open on.
I think a joke in the next scene will give you a better idea of the strength and quality of wackiness in this picture. A couple are sitting on the grass at the college when a hamster somehow crawls up the leg of the man’s pants. The woman sees the bulge it creates, apparently believes he has a large boner wagging back and forth, and is very pleased by this. This is only the first of many hijinks involving the unlikely number of hamsters roaming free on campus due to Sherman not noticing that his ass bumped the “for some reason this lever opens all of the cages at the same time” lever on the way out of the lab. Whoops. When he goes into the dean’s office to be dressed down for it he notices, but is stopped from pointing out, that a hamster dangling from the light fixture takes a shit right into the dean’s coffee.
Friends, welcome to COMEDY! Comedy is illegal today, but in 1996 it was a way of life! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry W. Blaustein, Dave Chappelle, David Newman, Def Jam, Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jamal Mixon, John Ales, Larry Miller, Montell Jordan, Rick Baker, Steve Oedekerk, Tom Shadyac
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 23 Comments »
Friday, July 3rd, 2026
June 28, 1996
STRIPTEASE was one of the most derided movies of 1996, and the winner of six Razzies including Worst Picture. There is no question in my mind that that particular distinction can be attributed to the Razzie’s usual misogynistic and puritanical hatred of sexuality. The winners of the previous three years were INDECENT PROPOSAL, COLOR OF NIGHT and SHOWGIRLS. Hollywood could have listened to them, but instead here was Demi Moore briefly nude and showing off her body in tame but sexually provocative dances – this could not stand. She had to be punished. That’s what those fuckers were like back then, and much of society went along with it. (In fact, it also won top honors at the competing “Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.”)
I think when you look at Moore’s performance with today’s eyes it’s impressive: she clearly put alot of work into getting into ridiculous shape and learning to dance, similar to the dedication she would show a year later for a very different but also physically challenging role in G.I. JANE. (which the Razzies would also give her Worst Actress for, the absolute clowns). And she makes the character grounded and sincere. I like her in it. Unfortunately, the worst guy you know sometimes makes a good point, and I have to concede that STRIPTEASE is not a good movie.
Moore plays Erin Grant, who started working as an exotic dancer at the Eager Beaver in Miami after she was fired from her job as a secretary at the FBI. She’s trying to save up the money to appeal her child custody case because her ex Darrell (Robert Patrick, DOUBLE DRAGON) has their 7-year-old Angela (Rumer Willis in her second movie) and uses her as bait for his scam of stealing and reselling wheelchairs. But then some unrelated trouble falls into Erin’s lap. (I would make some kind of lapdance reference here, but I’m too proud. So forget it.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Bergman, Anne V. Coates, Armand Assante, Burt Reynolds, Carl Hiaasen, Demi Moore, Florida, Howard Shore, Pandora Peaks, Robert Patrick, Rumer Willis, strippers, Stuart Pankin, Ving Rhames
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 13 Comments »
