Reviews

The praise this show receives frustrates me, not so much because it's a terrible show (although I think with a particularly critical eye that could be argued), but because it could be so much more than it has become. My experience with Heroes is one good idea after another that always falls short or just fizzles out of existence due to the writers' inability to find this show's potential. Plot lines are constantly introduced that seem intriguing and exciting, but then are either cycled out of the show after a few episodes as if the writers just want us to forget about them (e.g. save the cheerleader, save the world . . . where did that tagline lead us?!) or are brought to an anti-climactic and unsatisfying resolution. When I heard the premise of season 3, being that a bunch of new villains escape and have to be rounded up, I thought that sounded so cool. Then, reality set in and it was clear the writers had no clue what to actually do with that plot line, so the escaped villains quickly took second seat to an even dumber plot line about Mr. Petrelli and how the entire Petrelli family is a bunch of genetically engineered super-beings.

I'm sorry if I sound overly-critical. I don't think that people who like this show are all morons, but I do think they don't realize how much potential is wasted. Or maybe they do and don't care; kudos if that's the case. In any event, I would relish the chance to get behind the wheel for one episode and have some real fun with the characters and the story.

p.s. Will someone please kill Mohinder already! Find another narrator, or just cut out the narration entirely because every monologue is such a pathetically failed attempt to sound profound.

I had an entirely different review for this movie written and posted, but after hearing more and more people comment on this "mystical, haunted wonderland of a movie", I had to re-write my comment, more out of anger than anything else. First, let me set some guidelines. This is a great movie. It was made with a lot of skill and talent, it is a different approach to story telling and there is a lot to be admired. However, one thing that I simply cannot stand anymore is how exponentially increasing masses of people keep calling this "one of the best fantasy's ever", "a dark and horrific, yet wonderfully creative trip down the rabbit hole". People, if this is one of the best fantasy's ever, or even of recent times, then all that means is our expectations of what a fantasy should be are sorely lacking. Throughout the entire movie, there are two, count them, TWO scenes that are pure fantasy, and neither one lasts more than perhaps four minutes. The rest of the fantasy takes place in real life situations with subtle hints of fantasy or one or two fantasy characters appearing to talk to the girl. Again, don't jump down my throat too quickly, these scenes are interesting to watch and for light touches of fantasy I think it was very well done, but by no means whatsoever can a movie that is 75% war drama and 25% fantasy, if that, be considered an "enchanting and mysterious fairy tale". If anything, it is a dark war drama with innovative and well crafted flairs of fantasy interwoven, but stop reviewing this movie in ways that are going to mislead people into thinking they are going to see a flood of creative and magical imagery!

Possible Spoilers

As a final point, I think the biggest flaw in this movie is that I couldn't help but feel all the mystical elements of the story were, in the end, pointless. They in no way connect to the real world and are more like interesting side notes into the delusions of a little girl while the real world ticks on around her. Say what you will about the themes about losing one's innocence, and how the fantasy might have been real, either way there is a feeling of disappointment when the girl drops dead at the end and we think, "why did she do all this again? What does this have to do with ANYTHING else we've seen in the movie?" I was looking for a greater sense of importance to the girl's story. Perhaps the writers weren't going for that, which is fine, but it would have made the movie more enjoyable for me.

I did not think the plot was confusing or ridiculous. There are a lot of bedtime story rules, like "only A if B" and "you can only do C if D", and I can see how someone could laugh as the odd fairytale words and names (like Scrunt and Tartutic and Madame Narf) keep building up, but personally I didn't think it ever got out of control. You just have to take a deep breath and go with it, if anything, for the sake of enjoyment.

I also did not think MNS casting himself was egotistical. If I were a director, I'd do the same thing, provided I could act. It would be fun to be part of your own creation and I think the director and writer has a right to participate on both sides of the camera.

What I didn't like here is the execution. The plot revolves around the idea that certain members of the apartment complex have roles to play and jobs to do, but nobody knows who is who or who will have what important purpose. I really like that idea, but the execution was poor.

SPOILERS The kid reads cereal boxes. CEREAL BOXES!! I mean I thought the symbolist would be someone who noticed certain goings ons or picked up on subtle details that nobody else could, but the idea of staring at Captain Crunch to decipher an age old ritual was just too much in outer space.

The guild of sisters didn't do anything. I would say they couldn't be more worthless, but they could have had the role of the 2 "witnesses", which was the very definition of pointless. And by the end you knew who the guardian was because there was only one character left.

Other than Cleveland Heep (the healer) none of the other characters really do much (the guardian was somewhat important, but even he was boringly executed because he comes out of nowhere and fends off the scrunt for about eight seconds). This was a let down because I was excited to see how everyone would contribute in their own important way to the goal of saving Story. However it turns out that everyone's purpose is either anti-climatic or poorly manifested.

END SPOILERS THe idea is not bad, in fact it could have been great. Many people are nagging on this movie for a lot of reasons I don't agree with, but in the end I do agree that MNS lost his touch with this movie.

I cannot believe I'm going to say this, but I enjoyed this movie. Take it from me, I did not want to like this movie, but it was, as another reviewer put it, just a guilty pleasure. To me, the plot of this movie sounded ridiculous, and the title even more so, but I recommend giving it a shot. No movie about a killer doll and his killer doll girlfriend is going to be a masterpiece, but the people who made this film actually did about as good a job as anyone could have with it, and the end product wasn't too shabby. This movie is more of a comedy than anything, and as far as B-horror movies go, it actually has one of the better scripts out there, I kid you not. There were a few moments when I caught myself laughing out loud and rewinding scenes. Now don't go me wrong, some parts are silly, some stupid. However, in the end, I feel confident you will be surprised with how much effort went into this movie to actually make it entertaining and not a complete, retarded mess. Sometimes movies with low expectations that end up being a fun ride are the best rides of all.

The days of Airplane and Naked Gun are over. Nowadays, we have the Scary Movies, Spy Hard, Date Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, etc....of all of these, Teen Movie is quite easily the best one. The point of spoofs and satires, to me, are not just to take familiar scenes and do something retarded and gross with them, but instead to actually make fun of all the things in the original movies that, while watching them, we all turned to our friends and said "wait a minute, thats kind of stupid". Teen Movie does this extremely well. How many of us lucky movie fans who saw She's All That had trouble seeing why everyone in the movie thought the lead actress was ugly just because she had glasses and a ponytail? She was still a babe! How many of these teen movies give the main lead actress a friend who is clearly into her, but she always seems to ignore any possibility of romance between them, instead pursuing another character and asking for her friend's help/advice? How many people thought the characters in Cruel Intentions were just sexually over the top to the point of being absurd? Teen Movie pokes great fun at all of these flaws. It is, unlike many other movies that attempt to be like it, a true satire, taking characters and not just doing stupid things with them, but exaggerating the traits of their serious counterparts and, when it comes down to it, just making fun of them. It has surprisingly good plot cohesion while still making fun of a variety of teen movies. I suppose the best way to distinguish this movie from all other modern spoofs is that this one is truly intelligent. Sure it has some stupid jokes, and toilet humor (that I admit I chuckled at in disgust like the diarrhea scene and the lesbian kiss with the old woman), but it also has some very clever jokes, like when is it appropriate to start a slow clap, why do these teen movies seem to only have one black character, and how silly is it that things slow down for emphasis when the beautiful female lead enters the room. Please, give this one a chance. If you've seen the other modern spoofs, I'm confident you will appreciate the noticeable and subtle differences between them and Teen Movie that make the latter much more enjoyable and palatable to watch.

I am starting to believe that Peter Jackson could film himself taking a dump in a bag for four hours and it would be precisely number 177 on the IMDb top 250. I'm not saying King Kong was a steaming pile of dung. Quite the contrary, it is a solid film and much better than most of what Hollywood churns out lately. Still, it is by no means whatsoever one of the best films ever made in the history of cinema. Sure, special effects can make a movie landmark. Star Wars, for example. And while The Matrix had a great plot and script, that movie created a new wave in visual effects that solidified the film's place in history. Since King Kong has basically no script (on account of most of the movie involves stare contests between the monkey and Watts), and the acting is nothing to write home about (again with the stare contests), the visuals are the only thing that could possibly explain everyone having their mind blown away by this movie, and as far as I'm concerned, that is a poor explanation. Again, not because visual effects can't make a movie a classic, but with King Kong, the visuals, while magnificent in most places, are really nothing we haven't seen before. The CGI creatures look pretty close to real, just like they do in almost every movie nowadays that have CGI creatures (or anything for that matter). Let it be noted, however, that there are some scenes that do just look dumb, like the Brontosaurus stampede. Furthermore, there is so much CGI that it actually gets annoying and then boring! There is nothing tactical about the action sequences, they come at such a rapid and repetitive rate that you'll feel as if Peter Jackson is sitting next to you beating you over the head with a shovel. Despite what many other people have said about this movie, you DO notice that you have been sitting there for two hours plus and they haven't even gotten back to NYC yet. I normally wouldn't be so critical of an otherwise satisfactory movie if everyone wasn't just going stark raving mad about how "magnificant" and "groundbreaking" this film is. The T-Rex fight is very fun to watch, and about as good as anything CGI I have seen, but it doesn't ratchet movie effects up to a different plane. Its exactly what I was expecting from the previews. So in summary, King Kong is not a bad film, but it will come and go without leaving much of a mark and is not as fantastic as everyone else says it is.

american beauty is my favorite movie of all time. i basically registered on this site so i could add this comment and address some of the negative stuff people to throw at this film. Its so hard to explain why i love this film. so many times a person can walk away from a movie and take much more out of it than others, and it often comes down to personal taste. This however is a unique case. I dare say that i believe the people who didn't like this movie, at least most of them, simply didn't get it. Or didn't get all of it. If someone actually walked away feeling the message of the movie, its hard to disagree or not like it becuase the message is how we should not take anything in life for granted, and that theres is beauty in even some of the worst parts of life; the key word there being life. Life is an amazing, mysterious, crazy and difficult thing, but something that usually, if we don't enjoy, its our fault. So much of it is state of mind, the same thing can happen to two different peoeple but they can each be effected differently becuase of their outlook on life. This movie tried to suggest maybe we should change the way we look at things. Maybe we should realize that, in the end, and no matter how far away it seems the end ALWAYS eventually will come, so much of the crap we let get in the way just doesn't matter. We don't need to arrive at the end to finally learn this lesson. Enjoy life as you live it, look at the big picture and see life as a good thing, even though individual cases may not at first seem that way. I watch movies to enjoy them, not to find the meaning to the universe. After american beauty, however, i actually took something with me after the credits rolled. It helped me realize that life isn't always beautiful in the sense of happy-go-lucky disney type cheerfulness. It is often stressful, unfair, sad, (and for those of you out there who write that they've never encountered such dysfunctional families in real life...consider yourself the lucky minority, or maybe you just haven't looked around hard enough) but beauty doesn't always have to be so obvious. Look for it, and its there, because life itself is the most beautiful thing. Well...after reading this over i realize i may sound like a wierdo to anyone who doesn't agree with or follow what i'm trying to say, but the bottom line is american beauty has a very important message. If you don't feel that way, watch it again. It may be a bit more cinematic than real life, but it gets the point across.