Change Your Image
GuasdualitoMan
Reviews
Stark Raving Mad (1999)
Dark comedy at its finest, funniest.
This sitcom was by far the funniest to come out on TV in the last 10 years. Its dark humor it was brilliantly written and impeccably delivered by a wonderful cast.
For all its virtues, the show did the one thing shows are not allowed to do these days: they dared to be different; they were original, and brilliant, and were not afraid to look at difficult subjects (including sexual fetishes, physical disabilities and, in general, the pain of being different.) That they were able to do so without taking themselves too seriously and remaining genuinely funny seems to have escaped audiences and NBC executives alike.
I guess, funny or not, the show proved a little too grown up for mainstream audiences - those who prefer to sit down in front of the TV and disengage their brains. A show that makes you laugh and think at the same time cannot possibly be successful with those who cannot walk and chew gum at the same time...
The show was funny without having to resort to slapstick and - more importantly - it was a very welcome contrast to the usually bland, politically correct, completely predictable comedy that is so prevalent these days. Too bad it became a victim of its own quality.
Timeline (2003)
A mediocre execution of a good idea
Simply put, the only thing that saves this movie from being a total flop is Michael Crichton's original story. This movie is clearly geared to a very young (early teens?) audience, which is more interested in medieval battle sequences than in why those battles are taking place or whether they are historically accurate.
Movies that explore time travel have an excellent opportunity to create tension by playing with time-related paradoxes, something this movie does so clumsily that it actually interferes with the suspension of disbelief.
Additionally, characters are paper thin. Things happen simply because someone wrote them into a script, but there is no logical threading of events, and no time is used to explore why characters act the way they do. Saturday morning cartoon villains have clearer motivation than this movie's bad guys, or good guys for that matter.
The plot is no help - the movie spends so much time in gratuitous slaughter that important events - such as when key characters make decisions that place them in circumstances central to the story - are missed completely.
As a consolation, the action sequences in the last 20 minutes or so are visually appealing, which makes the movie's end look good by comparison to the rest.
If you are a fanatical Michael Crichton fan or if you are into movies with lots of medieval sword fighting action, this flick is worth watching; otherwise you will do better spending your time elsewhere.