53 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
53 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
some movies i should just skip .
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my daughter and i had a really vile time at my favorite martian a few weeks back , and here comes another disney effects-filled live-action flick based on an old tv program .
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true , the probgram is only 15 years old this time , and it's a cartoon .
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but it's a cartoon i liked , and i was understandably reluctant to see what disney had done to it on the big screen .
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but my daughter really wanted to go , and how bad could it be ?
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turns out i was right , mostly .
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inspector gadget , oddly enough , follows almost exactly the same format as my favorite martian , down to the jive-talking side-kick .
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at first i thought it was done by the same people , but imdb informs me that ig was directed by david kellogg and written by dana olsen and kerry ehrin , where mfm was directed by donald petrie and written by sherri stoner and deanna oliver .
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this odd similarity between the two movies may best be explained by the studio that produced it , where " formula " isn't just business , it's a way of life .
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the producers who obviously micromanaged the two projects should get prominant screen credits .
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in some parts you can just hear them saying " more zany !
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i want more zany here -- and -- here . "
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" let's have a really painful sexual reference for no reason right here -- make it really painful .
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i want the audience squirming in their seats . "
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" ok , that's fine , but i want you to add bug guts . "
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" what does this scene do ?
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character depth ?
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but where's the zaniness ?
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i don't see zany here .
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if you can't make it zany , cut it ! "
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the latter is the only explanation i can come up with for the absence of the thoroughly charming michelle trachtenberg for most of the movie .
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michelle ( who plays penny , gadget's niece ) shines in every scene she's in , but unfortunately she only gets about nine minutes of screen time .
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my guess is that the rest is on the cutting room floor .
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dabney coleman's comedic talents are utterly wasted as chief quimby .
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i kept expecting him to say or do something really funny and somehow save the film , but instead , he does the best he can with some really poor lines in a few unexceptional scenes .
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he is thoroughly upstaged by cheri oteri as the " gidget bitch from hell " town mayor .
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oteri's overly enthusiastic and continually self-congratulatory speech patterns and mannerisms were so much like portland , oregon's own manic mayor vera katz that i had to wonder if the studio wasn't poking fun at our fair town .
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or , maybe all career politicians are like that .
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i must say , matthew broderick does not stroll through inspector gadget as he did godzilla .
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he appears to have some fun with the film , especially as the evil gadget .
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rupert everett is entertaining as the maniacle claw .
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joely fisher does fine as the zany scientist and even better as the zany carbon copy of herself .
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her performance is one of the few things worth watching in the film .
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d . l . hughley plays the shuckin'-and-jivin' vehicular side-kick , in a role that firmly sets emancipation back 20 years .
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the dialog is . . . let's face it , it's pretty bad .
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the tag-line after a major set-piece battle is a faux pas that makes no sense in context .
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a lot of the lines ( especially hughley's ) appear to be made up as they go along , by people with little gift for ad-lib .
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about three-quarters of the film is a somewhat unnecessary origin story for both gadget and claw .
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gadget then spends the latter third of the movie trying to locate claw and having various altercations ( not really " battles " ) with the evil gadget .
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penny does about a minute and a half of the detective work her character did every week in the cartoon .
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let me rage here just for a minute .
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michelle trachtenberg was an excellent choice for the penny character .
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she's utterly charming , and has excellent experience ( harriet the spy ) for the part of the pint-size detective .
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why she is so underutilized in this film is a real mystery .
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the film loses a star for casting brilliance coupled with scripting ( or editing ) stupidity .
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inspector gadget is missing the long , long stretches of potty humor that ( among other things ) made my favorite martian so unbearable , but it's a very short movie , so perhaps something was cut at the last moment .
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probably the best scenes in the film occur during the end credits .
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the " evil sidekick support group " is especially worth seeing , and has an amazing number of cameo appearances for the few seconds it's onscreen .
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all in all , another bad live action film from the premere studio for bad live action films .
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i wonder if disney uses the revenues for it's generally money-making cartoons to produce these losers .
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but if true , why ?
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if they're trying for another mary poppins , they need to find a team that can produce one , and then give them a chance to do it .
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