Reviews

There are two types of comedy - shenanigans-based and humanity-based. It's basically all very simple: You either need to invent elaborate plot contrivances, or have very relatable, lifelike characters. Or BOTH.

The first 4 seasons of Modern Family used to combine these two elements beautifully, in ideal proportions. It was, perhaps, not very hard to do, though, because all the kids on the show were cute and cuddly, all the middle-aged adults were in their prime, and Jay the Patriarch was still an intimidating presence.

Now, almost ten years later, all of this is not the case. The boys are not cuddly anymore. The Dunphy girls still are, but Haley is an ADULT now, which the show has been refusing to acknowledge for two years now. Alex, meanwhile, has grown up to become pure chunky hotness, but the show treats her as neither chunky nor hot. As far as the screenwriters are concerned, she's just a nerd. (Yeah, you know, that's our Alex, just another plain ole geek - boobless, buttless, buck-toothed, mouse-haired, bandy-legged, acne-faced thing. Boys sure don't dig girls like that.) The adults are nearing 50, yet their characters are exactly the same as in season 1 (when they were all under forty), except without the freshness and zest.

Jay is, ahem, old. Little Joe still has that robotic voice. About Lily, it's still to early to make a judgement. Her daddies are as annoying as usual.

To SUMMARISE: We demand more shenanigans and more character likability! As simple as that.

P.S. Dear screenwriters, rely more heavily on Haley, Alex and Manny - give them interesting friends and non-bland private lives. Flesh them out. The kids' story lines may easily take care of 50% of this season's entire running time. That stuff will write itself: sleepovers, parties, virginity loss, good-natured pranks, camping trips, That's what life is all about, isn't it? But it's also about: peer pressure, academic challenges and insecurity. (For some reason, Mitch was always assigned to man these latter three departments. Mitch, and not kids. Yeah, our insecure little Mitch, afraid of everything. Even though he was supposedly assertive enough to endure law school, come out, marry another dude and even adopt a foreign child of different race. Real insecure. Ugh-huh.)

For the rest of the cast, get PRIME MATERIAL. Maybe an online writing contest with a big prize (like, a 100 grand) will get you some P.M.? You know: plots like clockwork, jokes that double you over, emotions like a good semi-indie movie. You yourselves used to be able to do all this, but after the wedding, the spirit just fizzed out. We want it back. We want to be inebriated with MF goodness.

Also: Dub Joe over. Make Lily-Aubrey take speech lessons and don't hesitate to shoot multiple takes until you get her voice to sound right, not wheezy, nasal, choky or clipped. Why do I care? You see, since it was revealed last season that Cam and Mitch don't have much of a sex life anymore, Lily is, therefore, pretty much the main reason for their couple's existence as a couple. That makes Lily pretty pivotal. Yet with that voice of her, it's hard for the girl to project pivotalness.

With love,

Bоris.

It's hard to make a good by-the-numbers film, but Courteney Cox rose to the challenge. I'm not being sarcastic. If anyone claims it's possible to make a BETTER film out this stuff, don't believe them. It's as perfect as it could hope to get.

This movie was probably inspired by the Robert DeNiro flick titled "Everybody's Fine" (2009), in which an old father decides to visit all his four children - whose lives are all mildly messed-up. DeNiro learns that his son #1 is not the big-league musician he pretended to be, and the other son is a drug addict; that his daughter #1, who is sort of a high-powered business-lady, has been dumped by her husband, and the other daughter is a lesbian.

As you can see, it's pretty much the same material, same territory. The key difference is that "Everybody's Fine" is soporific, while this new movie is mostly brisk and fun to watch.

As for originality, well, there's no hope for originality in a movie that tries its best to stay within the confines of realism. There just isn't. Blue-skinned aliens? A pointy-eared cape-wearer? A magic princess singing and creating a huge castle out of thin air in 12 seconds? Oh man, looks like none of these brilliant, Oscar-proved things will fit into out little suburban melodrama.

Here are some minor nitpicks I have for the movie:

1) Is Elisha Cuthbert the only girlfriend that our hero has has since moving out of his home town? How so? He's a handsome guy with a nice voice and even nicer personality. The moment he arrived "home", at least three chicks wanted to jump his bones right away. But not back in LA?

2) At his Dad's funeral (opening scenes), his mother is played by an actress in her early thirties. The boys are like 10 or 12. Which means that the mother is older than the kids by roughly 20 years - precisely the age difference one would expect, I guess.

Yet when Ted returns home 30 years later, his mother is played by Connie Stevens, who is 76 years old. Sean William the actor is 38. Which means that now Ted's mother is roughly 40 years older than him. You could say that maybe they tried to pass Connie for a 60-year-old, but no - Connie's lesbian girlfriend is played by Diane Ladd - who is EIGHTY. So why is the mom so old? Did she bear her boys at age 40, or something?

I suspect that the only reason why the mother aged so mysteriously was because Courtney Cox just really wanted to put the old girls (Stevens and Ladd) into her picture - to make the movie more chic and maybe to give the ladies a bit of work.

But for me, this considerably undermined the realism of the film. The mother is supposed to be the pivotal character in stories like this - in this movie, however, the character got all sorts of shortchanged. Maybe if Ms. Cox the director played the boys' mother herself (in the childhood scenes), then it would at least have been consistent. (Cox is 50 and gave birth to her daughter at 40. Would have fit the movie sweetly, age-wise.)

Overall, I enjoyed the film. I wish more screen time had been spent on the cruel math teacher (not enough of her cruelty is shown), and on Ted's high-school days in general - the bullies, the sweet blonde girl, his brother, their mother. Also the movie would probably have benefited from not having the gay-boy storyline at all - it's not bad per se, but makes the whole movie feel kind of trite and tired - "same old, same old."

Some people here have a problem with this movie's premise itself - that the two heroines would ever become friends. Me, I see nothing wrong with this set-up: Cameron is tough, Leslie is needy, they were both lied to by the same guy, so it doesn't seem impossible that they should actually find themselves feeling "united against the same enemy".

The beginning was decent. I have little to object to in most of this movie's first half. While none of it is fresh/original (literally everything can be found in earlier movies), it's not too hackneyed either, and compellingly acted by both female leads.

The second half, however, is a mess. Juvenility sets in: potty jokes, bad dialogue, poor interaction, useless new characters. Don Johnson is scenery, Leslie's hot brother is too hot and young for Cameron (ten years her junior). Kate Upton… well, her appearance simply takes 40 IQ-points out of this movie's intelligence.

But being moderately impressed by the first half, I kept hoping that it'd still get better by finale, that maybe Melissa Stack stacked the deck in order to impress us in the end, and there's an ace up her sleeve.

By no. A silly, easily predictable and anticlimactic ending instead.

Here are some things I think the scriptwriter and the director did wrong: 1) none of the characters are presented with enough depth and lifelikeness - a minute should have been spent to present each principal (girls, cheater, brother, Nash) as a flesh-and-blood person: the daily domestic routines, the job specifics, hobbies, concerns. I guess Melissa tried to do that in her clumsy way, but the "brain camp" rant is not what I mean by "lifelike".

2) no one is either likable enough nor hateworthy enough in this movie. The girls are one-dimensional and paper-thin, and all have traits that many viewers will find detestable (Leslie is "ditzy", Kate is a "bimbo", Cameron is a never-been-married 42-year-old lawyer who blithely dates a married guy); conversely, the husband character is so demeaned by the diarrhea, the hair-loss and the pregnant nipples that many viewers will stop seeing him as an diabolical slick schemer, and some will even sympathize with him a bit. In other words, the good guys here are not good enough, and the villain is not villainous.

3) the finale is abysmal; none of it works - not the dialogue, not the acting, not the set/interior, not the visual composition of the shot. (Upton's presence feels silly and redundant in that scene.) And why even have a stupid Nuremberg-trial showdown for a finale? Why not just write him a letter or record a sarcastic video message, informing him that he's now broke? Way more effective. And even if the producers felt it was absolutely necessary to have a stand-off, why not at least make a show of it - with the girls appearing one by one in some striking, fascinating manner (smoke, mirrors, creepy music), and the villain slowly piecing the girls' plan together, bit-by-bit.

4) when you make a film about people in their forties (whose age is accentuated by the presence of 20ish and 30ish hotties of both genders), never miss a chance to fill your movie with beautiful stuff such as epic landscapes, pretty buildings, antiques. Otherwise it'll feel as if your not-too-young characters participate in some kind of rat race, never stopping to enjoy the beauty of the world.

5) Leslie's brother Phil should have been played by an actor in mid-forties, and perhaps not too hunky - like a Hugh Laurie type or something.

6) If Kate is supposed to be dumb, a lot of attention needed to have been paid to her dumbness - which for writer & director means creating plenty of silly situations, instances of ignorance, mispronunciations. If, on the other hand, she's not inveterately dumb, why make her dumb at all? Why not, instead, give the girl good lines and something to contribute?

But I'm a guy, and maybe only a woman can truly appreciate this movie - maybe when cheated on, wives do want their hubbies to shitt pants, shed hair, grow nipples, lose fortunes. Maybe that's why this movie is a "6", and not the "5.3" it deserves.

First Wives Club, which I watched five years ago, was also a bit of a disappointment. It didn't deliver on the same good premise either, and generally had the same weaknesses as "The Other Woman".

One decent storyline in this one – Jay and Phil buying a car as a gift for Haley's birthday – but the rest was unimpressive. The fine acting from some of the cast doesn't save it.

The plot (a sitcom's second biggest strength, after glib repartee) was not tightly constructed, so it all ends up being less than hilarious.

I wrote a review of an earlier episode of here on IMDb. What I say below is a bit of a rehashing of the same thoughts.

First the good stuff: 1) They made Jay manly again, at least in the latest episode.

2) They made Phil less of joke. In the episodes 6 through 10 he's been a pretty nuanced, funny and interesting character.

3) In 6x09 (the previous one), they finally broke Alex out of her reclusion and gave her a shot at a relationship.

4) In another (6x07, I'm not sure), they - at long last - furnished Haley with a job.

5) On Halloween, they gave Mitch an ordeal to endure - and to make us laugh in the process.

Now the bad:

1) Claire keeps getting more caricature-ish as time progresses. Now her acting style is something out of a Three Stooges/Chaplin feature.

2) Gloria's accent is still out of control. I recently rewatched a few episodes from last year – in some of them, Gloria speaks a pretty smooth, pleasant English. What's the deal with this "loud, kooky gal from Colombia" brogue? (Listen to Vergara speak in 2014's "Chef").

3) Haley still has no sex life nor friends, but that doesn't stop everyone (including herself) from considering her "hot and popular".

4) After Haley had been hired several shows prior, no mention's been made of her job since.

5) Though Haley was kicked out of college for drunk misconduct, everyone at the party seems surprised she's no novice to alcohol. Even Mitch, who was her "lawyer" back at the college hearings.

6) In the very previous episode (last week), Alex finally woke up to her teenagehood and started to look for a relationship. Two consecutive guys interested in her show up, and both get referred to as "Alex's boyfriends" by the characters present. But a week later, Alex is alone and lonely again – boning up instead of getting boned (or a least smooched).

During the show's six years run, I honestly believe that more guys were shown interested in Alex than in Haley. What happened to all of them? The Italian boy at the pool as early as Season Two; the boy whose sports team was eavesdropping behind the door; the geeks who were in awe of Alex in the Uncle Cam's Truck Debacle episode; the guy at the university campus; the guy from the Crazy Neighbors family next door; two guys from last week's installment.

All these gentlemen appeared for exactly one episode each and were "never brought to mind" again. Did they all find Alex to be "not girlfriend material"? Did she, like, puke on them accidentally during a date? Or did she suddenly start eating insects while walking in a park? Why else would Alex get dumped so consistently?

A good solution to this issue would have been to make Alex wear braces. Why not? In the last few years, as many as 60% of American highschoolers wear braces. (It's insane, but it's true.) Braces effectively ruin any prettiness for as long as they're worn. Also add some terrible glasses, pad the cheeks a bit (Godfather-style) complete with the lisp, deck her out in stained, tattered sweatshirts and baggy corduroy pants. An ugly Alex with yellow teeth, dressed and behaving like Quasimodo, would have been a lot more justifiably undeserving of a boyfriend. (Note that I mean Quasimodo in the period-accurate attire, not the Disney version – because Alex occasionally dresses exactly like Disney's hunchback. Literally. The green sweater and all.)

But I'm guessing they just want to keep Alex's chastity until her 17th birthday arrives – that is, until February. Let's hope she'll not continue to be treated as a hapless nerd even after that.

7) Manny and Luke still have no girlfriends either, even though both have been interested in getting one for over a year now. What prevents them? Both are handsome, funny, resourceful, and involved in various girlfriend-friendly activities (musical theater and sports). True, Luke is a bit dumb and Manny is somewhat chunky, but then again, most girls are not Shelley Hennig either.

Why is Manny interested in Haley, but not in Alex - not even passingly? They're the same age, both supersmart, both stocky. Why not just pair up? I know it's opposites that attract, but still.

And boy, is America's suburbia rich or what! In a family of five, the only person earning an income is Phil, yet this money is enough to support a two-story house, raise three kids, buy three cars, and have enough left to be able to afford dining in restaurants, buy fitness-club memberships and all that. In the place where I live, you need to be a boss in charge of at least 50 people to have such salary, or be an intrepid embezzler, or a corrupt official taking huge bribes. There's certainly no way for a freelancer of any kind here to earn that amount of money legally, other than win a lottery, maybe, or get elected President. And I live not in some banana republic, but a G8 country. The Dunphies are rich.

But I guess we all remember an American sitcom wherein a shoe salesman also had a two-story house, in which he lived with an unemployed couch-potato wife and two nogoodnik kids (them getting employed only intermittently and mostly by mistake). What did they pay him in the shoe shop? I wonder who earns more – him or Phil?

A teenage American hottie arrives for a visit to the UK and fall in love with a 38-year-old English military man. For some unclear reason he falls for her as well, so they get married.

The teen wife, however, soon learns that her perfecto husband is in fact a Soviet spy. How does she learn it? Well, she finds in his pocket a typed letter saying – and I quote almost verbatim – "In view of my success in obtaining secret information for the USSR, I'd like to have a personal interview with the head of Soviet intelligence." I'm not kidding – the letter was not coded in any way, and it had the word "Soviet" printed in plain language. Poor Liz, finding and reading it, literally blanches. Her hubby is a Russian spy! He's a traitor! It's unclear, however, as to why the word "traitor" should have any strong meaning for her – she's not from the UK, but from another country altogether, so she's basically a traitor herself – betraying her motherland on a whim of romance.

Ah, traitors… This word features prominently in an earlier scene where a bunch of guys discuss intelligence matters. "They are criminals!" an older dude proclaims angrily. I wonder why such strong emotion concerning treason, seeing as England has not been in a serious defensive war since 1760s. (The only exceptions are Napoleon 1812 and Hitler 1940 – and in both those cases it was Russia who saved the British ass from becoming enslaved by France and Germany.) There were tons of AGGRESSIVE wars of course – but is it appropriate to talk about criminal behavior when your country's been slaughtering innocent folks all over the globe for centuries? Poor Russia in this movie is presented as a Sort-of-Enemy, while America's presented as an ally. Weird considering that Russia never ever fought England nor betrayed it crassly, while the Americans both fought it and betrayed it - by signing the Declaration of Independence.

The Founding Fathers of America are doubtless the biggest English traitors ever. Biggest. Traitors. Ever. Because of them, Britain lost millions of miles of fabulous land, trillions of pounds in money, incalculable amounts of mineral resources, and had its military and geopolitical prestige undermined forever. But let bygones be bygones, I guess.

In a conversation with friends where both husbands and wife were present, Liz says contemptuously : "My husbands decided to give up his career – he's gonna be a Communist instead." Everybody present thinks it's a joke on her part, of course, but Liz is full of venom. Those terrible commies! It doesn't bother her that she, an 18-year-old girl, is served around the house by a lady in her mid-fifties – she never for a moment questions the justice of it. "No one is, like, forcing her to serve me, right? Let her eat cake or whatever." Yeah, servants are great; commies suck.

But on the whole, taking into account the time and historical circumstances when this movie was made, it's a pretty decent picture with a number of effective scenes and a passable performance from ET – something that not all her movies can boast.

(Someone told me that as of now, 12 episodes of this season have already been filmed. Well, three episodes out of the five already aired have been pretty mediocre - not a very promising start. I sure hope this review gets the attention of someone related to the actual show.

...

This episode - 6x02 - perfectly exemplifies everything that is wrong with Seasons 5 & 6.

The show's problem lately can be best stated as "trying to have its cake and eat it". All the characters are affected by this.

For example: Jay: He is supposed to be the strong, silent macho type. And yet he has this "sensitive side".

Manny: he's a nerd. But he's remarkably self-confident, even participates in the drama club. Recently he's also an athlete.

Gloria: she's a rich glamorous housewife. But she's also this forthright girl from a poor foreign village.

Haley: she's a hot heartbreaker. Yet she's also a college dropout stay-at-home loser

Alex: she's a nerd. The character is supposedly plain-looking, yet she's played by a very pretty actress. Alex is also quite secure (like Manny), even though she's a friendless social pariah.

The writers keep their characters so loosely defined that over time all sorts of mutually exclusive characteristics have piled up, with no attempt to address this issue. Well, this sorry arrangement can't possibly work for much longer.

The solution that I propose is: Return to the Roots. Bring the actors and their characters back into harmony.

Jay: Make him manly again. Let him do African safari, a fist-fight, a gun shooting, get him drunk on pure ethanol, have him have an affair, let him get into a serious all-out confrontation with one of his children or their spouses.

Phil and Claire: redefine or re-define their characters. Make them less of a joke. Give them new occupations they'll be good at, new hobbies. They both need to become more important to the household. Let Claire have a dramatic change in her life – pregnancy or world travel or a political career.

Alex: Make Alex less arrogant and sarcastic. Give her some friends. Let her finally have a beautiful relationship with an interesting guy. Acknowledge, on screen, that Ariel Winter is a) very pretty b) 40 pounds overweight. (Turn her plumpness into a plot point.) Define her character better – what she listens to, watches, reads, likes. Show her interacting with classmates at school.

Gloria: Let Gloria shed her accent little by little. Six years in America, immersed in the English language 24/7, will surely affect one's speech, won't they? (I know, I know - in real life Vergara speaks exactly like Gloria, but she can also speak a much better, less accented English when she tries.) Gradually make Gloria speak in accordance with the way she lives. It'll be less jarring.

Haley: either intensify her on-screen sex life, or have her become an actual fulltime loser. The "ephemeral sluttiness" thing is no longer working, as she's no high-schooler anymore. We need to get to know her better. Settle down or saddle up – make Haley decide. Also, have her and Alex have an adventure together and, in an unrelated episode, a serious falling-out.

Mitchell: let him have some more job-related ordeals, spiderman-suit-style. Mitch is only interesting when he's doubting his professional value and social skills.

Cam: make him less annoying, more endearing, less of a joke. Have some uproariously funny gay-related stuff happen to him.

Manny: define the character better. Spell out the source of his cocksureness. Show him doing something impressive – in sports, in theatrics, in a relationship.

Luke: make him interesting again. And don't give him any dramatic lines – only mischievous and silly ones. The guy also has a fantastic singing voice, if I remember correctly. (As do Haley and Alex. Let them all sing!)

Maybe there's a way for the show to return to perfection without using any of the ideas listed above. I'd be quite intrigued to see that, actually.