Casper Van Dien joins a long list of actors/athletes to essay the part of Edgar Rice Burroughs famous man of the jungle. As far as looks go he certainly fits the role, loincloth and all.

Tarzan is as eternal on the screen in his history as Sherlock Holmes. Both of them if you remember were brought up to date during World War II to aid the Allied effort. And Tarzan had several modern adventures through his many films and television roles right up through the nineties.

But on the cusp of a new millennium the Ape Man is returned to the period in time where Edgar Rice Burroughs set him in, clearly in British colonial Africa. Tarzan in fact has returned home to claim the title of the Earl of Greystoke and he's going to marry Jane March as Jane Porter.

But Van Dien gets one of those instinctive feelings, the kind that Chuck Norris gets when his Cherokee people are in trouble on Walker, Texas Ranger. He postpones the wedding to an exasperated Jane and heads to Africa.

Some of his native friends are indeed in trouble. A scientist who's hired a bunch of what would be called trailer park trash now is on the verge of discovering a lost city with untold wealth. It will make things worse than ever for the natives under colonialism if this archaeological Holy Grail is discovered.

Casper tries to reason with the scientist and then takes the more Tarzan like approach to the problem. But things do get real complicated when Jane follows him to Africa.

Tarzan and the Lost City is an old style adventure story with the benefit of 90s computer graphics. It's also politically sensitive, not portraying the natives as they were in those old Tarzan films from the studio days. And of course it's filmed entirely in Africa, certainly not done by MGM or RKO back in the day.

In the jungle Casper's great to look at and a wonder to behold. But why did he try to adopt that English accent. He sounded silly when he used it. You notice Johnny Weissmuller never even attempted one. Of course they did keep his dialog to a minimum.

Despite the accent, this latest big screen Tarzan is a good film and Casper Van Dien is a worthy successor to Johnny Weissmuller, Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, etc.


Since there was so much comment on the "fake gorillas," I think it is worth pointing out that these were not in fact intended to be gorillas but rather the fictional race of "great apes" that raised Tarzan in the Burroughs novels. They were supposed to be something closer to humans, with a language developed enough that it could be translated into English - in fact Tarzan was a word in the great ape language meaning "white skin." You can quibble about how successful the movie portrayal of these creatures was, but any Burroughs fan will recognize what they were trying to do. In any case, it was a brief sequence.

I thought this movie was surprisingly good and came closer to capturing the flavor of Burroughs' later Tarzan novels than anything else I have seen. Burroughs, after all, was primarily a fantasy writer and there is no point in holding his fiction to any "realistic" standard. The production standards were quite good and I liked the principal actors. In fact, Van Dien may be my second favorite Tarzan, after Gordon Scott.


Casper Van Dien, the hot young actor who starred in Paul Verhoeven's hit, "Starship Troopers," is Tarzan, who, on the eve of the wedding to his beautiful fiancée, Jane (Jane March), is confronted by a vision of the destruction of his childhood home. Torn between staying in England with Jane and returning at once to Africa, Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, returns to his adopted home, where he squares off against European soldiers of fortune, led by the Oxford-educated Nigel Ravens (Steven Waddington), bent on discovering and looting the legendary and mythic city of Opar.

When Jane decides to follow her fiancé Tarzan (Casper Van Dien) into dangerous territory, not only Tarzan must protect the city of Opar but must protect Jane also, while trying to stop Nigel Ravens and his men.


This film was quite mediocre, which is okay, because I didn't expect much from it and so could not be disappointed. I have certainly seen worse movies, but I've certainly seen movies a lot better too.

Problems with this film include: 1) Incredibly fake-looking gorillas. They looked about as real as the gorilla in Murders in the Rue Morgue, and in that film, the gorilla was supposed to be a guy in a suit. 2) Lame acting. I've seen worse, but I've seen a lot better too. 3) Jane March. Please go put on some weight, and make sure some of it goes into your head. You have the dreaded face pull. Women of the early 20th century may have worn corsets, but they were not that thin. 4) Too much magic. As another reviewer pointed out, if the witch doctor guy can make soldiers and turn himself into a giant snake that's immune to bullets, why on earth does he need Tarzan's help? 5) Fake gorillas. 6) Lame computerized special effects. Come on, I know people who can make graphics that good, and they could never get hired at a place like ILM. 7) Fake gorillas. 8) Tarzan making that stupid yell all the time. We know you're Tarzan; please just run around in your loin cloth and shut up. 9) Fake gorillas. 10) Tarzan's changing accent. Is he British? Is he American? It reminded me of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. 11) Fake gorillas.

I don't know how the book goes, so I won't complain about the storyline or characters too much, though I have to say those bad guys were incredibly lame and paperthin.

In relation to the ads for the film, you can tell how big a star is when they have to refer to him as "Casper Van Dien from Starship Troopers". I can say I actually knew who he was anyway, because he was on One Life to Live and Beverly Hills 90210, although perhaps I should not admit that I ever watched those shows.

Good things about this movie? Well, the credits are really easy to read, and are clear even on a 14 inch television screen. They scroll nice and slow too. The scenery was also nice, and the single real chimp they used in the film was a better actor than many of the humans were. Casper Van Dien also had a nice body, which is always a bonus; it unfortunately does not make a movie good.

In short, this was a predictably bad movie, okay to watch if you're having problems sleeping like I was, but don't waste your money.


I'm definitely a die-hard Casper fan. He cracks me up and i quite enjoy his own very unique and personal Casper-style of "acting".

But jeez, this movie was difficult even for me to get through. I seriously considered stopping it several times, but i soldiered on all the way to the end credits just because it was a Casper movie.

It was just one cliché after another, after another, after another. Even the dialog was all clichés. The production values were alright, but the screenplay seriously needed about a million less clichés.

I did like the scene where the witch-doctor guy could turn himself into bees, but the rest of the movie was pretty much meh-h-h.

In his own sort of way, Casper can be very entertaining. Every once in a while he does have his shining moments, but usually his thespian abilities aren't very good. And Tarzan he definitely ain't. Not by a very, very, very long shot. For those who have a fetish for bare Casper nipples, this is the movie for you. But i was bored out of my bare equine skull. What makes Casper entertaining is him being his own unique self. And with his own self being buried too much under the Tarzan persona, well, this just wasn't much of a Casper movie.

I've watched "Meltdown", one of the most ridiculous sci-fi movies ever made, a bunch of times because he, in some sort of bizarre way, makes it very enjoyable. But i seriously doubt if i'll ever watch this particular movie again. Sorry, Casper, even i have my limits. You're very gifted at being you, but you're terrible at being Tarzan.


Anyone who voted 1 for this must have missed the Bo Derek strip-a-thon "Tarzan the Ape Man". In Tarzan and the Lost City the producers made an attempt to give their story a sense of innocence - which is the very thing that made the Weismuller, Barker, Scott, etc. films work. The action scenes are decent but too often the makers fall back on special effects and magic to solve the hero's latest problem. I kept asking myself, with all the magic that the Medicine Man can do, why does he need Tarzan to take out these inept bozos? This film is a good alternative to the nightly dose of sit-coms and an OK selection if you went to the video store only to find that all the copies of Bug's Life are out.


THANK YOU,Tarzan for ruining my 13 year streak of never seeing a bad movie in the theatre. Wow..this one just SUCKED. With the exception of a few well done action sequences this one had no hope of being good at all. Awful acting and just a generally dumb plot really ruined the name of Tarzan for me..


This movie tries to be too many things at once. It tries to be a romance and really fails. It tries to be mystical, but manages cheesy. Some of the animal scenes are okay, but most appear too contrived.


Right after I saw this movie, I was thinking "NOW WHAT IN

DARNATION DID THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TARZAN?????" It seemed more

like a very corny Indy rip-off. But apperantly it was made after

an original Tarzan-book.

Anyway, of course this movie is bad. The acting totally sucks,

the special effects are bollocks, Casper van Dien is in it

(which would make any movie drop a few rates), the much pointed

out fake gorilla's, cheap storyline etc etc etc etc. And I

enjoyed it all!!! This movie is so lame it turns fun again. And

the ending is not that bad, the "Dead warriors coming to life"

bit is kinda cool and looks pretty good. And of course we've got

lovely Jane March, a girl you Americans obviously are not very

fond of, but I think looking at her for 1,5 hours isn't a

punishment. Here's my advise: rent this movie for your 11 year old kid

brother. he'll probably like it a lot. Watch it together. In

this way, if you hate it, you can still tell your friends about

it and tell them how much you HATED it, but you do have an

excuse for having ac


** HERE BE SPOILERS **

Recap: So called explorers threaten to plunder and pillage the land were John Clayton, aka Tarxan, once was raised. He is summoned by a vision, leaves his fiancé and returns to save his "home". The prize that everyone searches for are the lost legendary city of Opra. Now the explorer Nigel Ravens believe he has found the way. But Tarzan is determined to stop him. Matters become more complicated as Ravens has the technological edge and Jane Porter, Clayton's girlfriend, suddenly turns up.

Comment: Boring and uneventful story. For the most part the most exciting event is Tarzan's trademark and ridiculous shout. At the end however the movie goes from dull and boring to pathetic, turning the story in another silly way using really bad computer graphics. Evidently some violence has been cut, the movie appears like a family movie, but there still are some violent moments, were people are killed (mostly off-screen though). Hmm... anything else? Nope, don't think so. You could probably find something better to watch or do...

3/10


At least someone, somewhere, involved in this disposable Ape Man entry bothered to read the famous Edgar Rice Burroughs books on which the character is based. What was done with that information, unfortunately, amounts to nothing. Tarzan (vacantly handsome Casper Van Dien) and Jane (nondescript Jane March) head back to the jungle homeland and encounter pillaging baddies led by Steven Waddington (used better as a more complex nasty in The Last of the Mohicans). Director Carl Schenkel's film gives Tarzan back his long-absent status as an articulate gentleman, and it contains elements of Burroughs's feverish imagination, but it dully ticks off the "adventures" without any thrilling sense of fun. Schenkel is so inattentive to detail that he would have us believe no one raises an eyebrow at the sight of a man morphing into a humongous cobra (not that the Xena-level effects help). It's blandly amusing watching Van Dien plug away ineptly at both his heroics and English accent, though this is ultimately an empty diversion for completest only.


This wasn't a very good movie. The special effects were really bad. Pay me twenty bucks and i'll watch it again.


Casper in a loin cloth can't save this turkey from its inept

script and terrible acting


Now when this movie first came out, no one really saw it. Critics gave it bad reviews. Part of the issue was the original Terms of Endearment was made back in 1983. So when some of the cast came back 13 years later, it can lose some of its box office draw. However, the time that passed actually made this movie more believable as the characters had also aged. Shirley MacLaine reprises her role and does a nice job, trying to raise her dead daughter's children. The movie stays grounded by dealing with everyday issues as well as getting older and the trials of a non-traditional family. Paxton plays a nice role in this film adding a little flare to the shadowing plot of Shirley MacLaine's character getting older. Nicholson's return, although brief, helped this film round itself out. See this one only if you see Terms of Endearment first.

Best Scene: Nicholson and MacLaine re-living the past on the beach.


Robert Harling took the liberties of directing this very good but sometimes misunderstood follow-up to the 1983 classic.

Shirley Maclaine reprises her role as Aurora and in my view is just as good and sometimes better in this performance then she was in the first movie. Juliette Lewis takes the role of Melanie and in my opinion, I thought she played the best character next to Aurora because we have to remember that Melanie is the only child that has never really known her mother so you can automatically feel the pain of the character. George Newborn plays Tommy, and the character of Tommy is in prison, for what, we don't really know. Mackenzie Astin plays Teddy and is really the only child that is slightly happy and normal of the three.

This is 13 years after the first and the storyline is pretty much that amount of time later, maybe a little more because Melanie is pretty much grown up as well. It goes through what each of Emma's kids have been through in those years and where they ended up. Aurora's stress level with these kids is a record high, she has one in jail, one is pretty much a teenager who hates her guts and one is doing slightly well for himself but that doesn't help with the other two (lol).

I also loved the story with Aurora and Rosie. I thought that was beautiful because even though Rosie was the maid, her and Aurora were like family and when Aurora was carrying Rosie in the rain to take her home for the final moments of her life, that was truly beautiful.

The story lines with Jerry (Bill Paxton) and Patsy (Miranda Richardson) is just purely for entertainment and laughter, i especially like the airplane fight, people are mixed reviewed on that fight but i laughed so hard.

But the emotion of the film, like Aurora making the photo albums, her spreading Rosie's ashes on the beach (my favorite), Jack Nicholson also makes a nice appearance, and finally Aurora's death. All of these elements make for a great movie and succeed.

People who write bad reviews or even mixed reviews, probably don't understand the story good enough. This sequel was really not meant to be an exact copy of what the original was 13 years before this, which is why i think people looked at it differently. This is also why it went under a different name, because it was the same characters but a completely different plot and story.

Overall, a movie that should be given more credit because it is just as good as the original.


While Shirley McLaine remains ever the strong willed Aurora, what makes this film wonderful is the fact that she continues her relationship with her grand children much as she did with her daughter, and somewhere along the way in both movies the children come to realize that while she may make you want to bang you head against a wall, there isn't anyone that loves and supports you more! I have an even greater respect for my mother and the education she gave me.

Yet Aurora still manages to make the same mistakes we all make. Love is not an easy road traveled.

This movie brings humor to that road, tears just like the original movie. I will agree the airplane scene was over the top, but I loved the scene with Jack Nicholson on the beach with the car going through the surf.

I have never read the books, but now I really want to.

One interesting fact - almost every star in this movie is a daughter or son of someone in Hollywood - Teddy was Patty Duke and John Astin's son. Tommy's wife is Cary Grant and Diane Cannon's daughter, Teddy's wife is someone from Jefferson Airplane's daughter. Even Lewis has an acting father - although she has made her own name in the business.


"The Evening Star" is one of those movies that you can watch many times. It contains more laughs then "Terms of Endearment" and also less depth. But if you watch this movie in the observation that it is solely entertainment, and not to be taken seriously, it's a lot of fun.

Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine- reprising her Oscar winning role) is now dealing with her three grown Grandchildren. One is a saint, Teddy, who is already married with child. Tommy, the "problem child" of the original film, is in prison. And Melanie (Juliette Lewis), the youngest, is struggling through college because she's going through a rebellious phase and likes hanging out with her sleazy boyfriend, or mooching off Patsie (Miranda Richardson), the now very rich divorcée. There's also the loyal housekeeper Rosie (Marion Ross), who despite always being on her duties and quick to have a sarcastic comeback, is falling in love with the next door neighbor Arthur (Ben Johnson- in his last screen performance).

All of this is a little hokey, but the performances more then make up for it. When Aurora starts seeing a therapist (Bill Paxton) and then sleeping with him, people start whispering about her reputation. And when Melanie keeps going back and forth between her relationship, she finally finds peace with Aurora, who she at first despised.

"The Evening Star" is by no means superior to "Terms of Endearment". That movie is a landmark in it's own right. But it is more fun- in my opinion. MacLaine, in a funny performance, seems more lively and witty here then her original time around. And the most fun of all is to watch her and Miranda Richardson go at it - almost like "Grumpy Old Men"- but FUNNIER. A scene in an airplane perfectly displays their hatred for one another- but in a way, they are best friends- since they're always around each other, competing, gossiping or nagging.

To wrap it up, it's a long movie with a lot of unnecessary subplots (the death toll was ridiculous), but keep in mind this is also based on the book, so do we blame the filmmakers or the author? "The Evening Star" is a movie that should be watched for a good laugh. You don't have to have seen the first one to understand it. True, Debra Winger is missing (but if you saw the first film you'd know why), but I am rating this solely on how well it entertained me.


I liked it. I love McMurtry and I think the movie does a good job recreating his whacky characters. Although the teenage year crises are exaggerated, anyone with teenagers can appreciate the trials and tribulations of those years. The way in which all the children turn out to be good people proves that the early years of development can help young people (and parents and grandparents) to survive the difficult teens.


I was kind of disappointed. I was expected the same from the sequel with the role of Aurora Greenway played by Academy Award Winner Shirley Maclaine again. Of course, Jack Nicholson won his second Oscar for his role as her lover. In this film, Aurora deals with troubled grandchildren who she helped raise because the father was absentee. One grandson is in prison and her granddaughter is as stubborn as her daughter Emma played by Debra Winger was. Also Miranda Richardson plays a Texan friend that wanted to raise Emma. Also Marion Ross is cast in the role as Rosie Dunlop, Aurora's maid or housekeeper. There were some changes like ROsie lived at the house but Marion Ross earned a Golden Globe nomination and probably would have earned her Academy Award nomination if the film got better reviews. Marion does an excellent job in making us care so much for Rosie.


Well, a quite good sequel to a brilliant evergreen. A movie filled with emotions and passion that is picturing the story of Aurora Greenway and her family and friend circle. Further more, the movie presents a story of live and death, something like a homage. A blend of comedy and drama. The appearance of J. Nicholson really boosts- up the atmosphere in the right moment, and aloud the whole picture is a little bit long it is entertaining. I recommend to see this movie before the first ( "Terms of Endearment, if you haven't seen it jet),because it isn't much related to the first. Naturally, the plot and the whole story starts where the first movie ended, but the atmosphere, the action and the characters are very different. It is that homoristic and ironic spirit of James L. Brooks that is missing...


This movie was disappointing to say the least. 'Terms of Endearment' is such a wonderful movie that I can imagine that it was difficult trying to create a sequel, but in this movie it is all too obvious that the writers were trying way too hard. Everything about this movie seems contrived and hopelessly devoid of the real emotion of the first. 'Terms' was more subtle and real, and I just felt like this movie was in your face trying to make you cry at every turn. It was actually difficult for me to sit through the whole thing.


By the time Jack Nicholson shows up for about five minutes of screen time as Garrett Breedlove, this turgid 1996 sequel to 1983's "Terms of Endearment" has already slogged through two deaths, a psychotherapist with an Oedipal complex, and a lot of scrapbooks. The problems with this shamelessly manipulative movie are many, and they all begin with the inevitable premise that tough Texas matron Aurora Greenway can carry on without being challenged by her feisty daughter Emma. However, without Debra Winger's earthy grit counterbalancing Shirley MacLaine's flamboyant disapproval, the story seems to work in a vacuum. Much of the appeal and resonance of the first film was how these characters dealt with life's unpredictable course and how James L. Brooks captured their idiosyncrasies with a refreshing level of honesty for a mainstream film.

That point is completely missed as Robert Harling takes over for Brooks and takes the episodic approach that seemed to work for his screenplay for 1989's "Steel Magnolias". Based on Larry McMurtry's sequel novel, the story picks up Aurora's story fifteen years after Emma's death as we see true to her daughter's final wishes, that the grandiose older woman has raised Emma's three children. Now adults, oldest son Tommy is in prison for drug dealing, while youngest son Teddy has become standard white trash who wants only to own a tow truck. That leaves granddaughter Melanie who has inherited her mother's independent streak as she struggles in a bad relationship with an aspiring underwear model. Without Emma, Melanie picks up the slack and so do two minor characters from the first film - Emma's best friend Patsy, who has become a wealthy divorcée constantly competing with Aurora, and Aurora's salt-of-the-earth maid Rosie.

The movie becomes a virtual traffic jam of personal problems orbiting around Aurora with the second half an endless series of dramatic climaxes. MacLaine does the best she can under the circumstances, but the rest of the cast is set adrift. Bill Paxton looks particularly lost as the psychotherapist in love with Aurora. Juliette Lewis uses her familiar off-kilter mannerisms as Melanie, while Miranda Richardson is forced to play Patsy on two notes - petulant jealousy and benign resignation. Nicholson's appearance is welcome, but he understandably looks like he wants to leave the minute he arrives to remind Aurora of her enduring appeal. Only Marion Ross and Ben Johnson acquit themselves respectably as Rosie and her husband-to-be Arthur. Except for MacLaine's work, this overlong slog is really unbearable to watch. The 2001 DVD offers no significant extras.


For a 6,9'' tall Dutchguy I had to cry many times, great humor and plot, great movie I love Shirley and Jack. I really love the music , it makes my flesh creep, great..


A previous comment indicated that "Terms of Endearment" (1983) ended present-day for that time and that with this one picking up in 1988, why was Melanie so grown? Well, what I understood was that dates were not necessarily expressed in "Terms" and that Debra Winger's character had actually died in 1973 - with fifteen years added to Melanie's age of three when her mother died, that would account for her being a college freshman in 1988. Marion Ross was NOT in the original movie - another actress had played Rosie. Nor was Miranda Richardson. But I was annoyed that Ms. Ross was not even nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal in this film - she deserved it and then some!


This movie was pretty well done for a sequel.It has tons of drama, and romance. It felt at times like it was made for a TV movie. But if you like dramas or even a update on the people from "Terms of Endearment". This movie is a update of that movie. It was one of the best dramas I saw that year. The only problem with the movie is this, I wish it was a little bit longer. If you want to spend some time with old movie friends ,s ee this movie!!The cast is great especially Bill Paxton!!!


A sequel is an admirable intention. You loved characters from a certain film and wanted to see them again, or the original film left some open ends you'd like to see tied up. These marketing tools very rarely live up to a real film, never mind surpassing it, like in Christopher Reeve's version of "Superman". Most of the time, they're unnecessary at best, and vomitous at worst. Yes, dear readers, The Evening Star is Cinematic Ipecak. If queasy film-goers think they're made to vomit at horror films, just wait until they see this one. It's not a horror movie in the traditional sense, it's a horror OF a move in every sense.

I did mention this contains spoilers, but viewers' appetites don't count here No, really, I remember so little of this except for three scenes which I thought were just hilarious: 1- Melanie, played by the never-to-be-Oscar-winning Juliette Lewis (who I understand was a much worse mental case than Debra Winger), spouts off at Aurora (during a fight the two have about her latest boyfriend) "I love him - I HATE YOU!" 2- The fact that Tommy's been in prison all this time and LIVED TO BE RELEASED! If he acted the way he acted in the first film, he'd have been Bruno's special friend in the pokey, not to mention deserving the death penalty for being such a....such a....AAAHH I can't even find the right adjective. Oh, he was just a pig.

3- Aurora's stroke while sitting at the piano with some kid. I needn't add anything else to it. 'Nuff said! James L. Brooks was NOT associated with this. Larry Mc Murtry's actual follow-up novel was NOT the basis for this. Lisa Hart Carroll was NOT Patsy. Yes, the great Miranda Richardson was NOT so great in this.

Bill Paxton (wherever HE is these days - Twister II, anyone?) was okay in this, and it's always nice to see Jack, but it wasn't long enough. Now that I think of it, Paxton resembles Jack a little. Maybe there was a missing subplot about him being Garrett's and Aurora's son who was put away in an institution because post menopausal ladies usually give birth to children with severe birth defects. Paxton's choice in acting in this piece of schlock was truly a defective one and he should be institutionalized. HEY WAIT A MINUTE - MAYBE HE WAS (heh-heh).

This sits very prettily on the perch of the four very worst sequels ever made: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC - Blatty didn't write - Friedkin didn't direct. Blair didn't act. Yeah, she's in it, but she still doesn't act.

ARTHUR II ON THE ROCKS - Come on, guys! Romantic fantasies are supposed to have the couple living happily ever after. An amusing fairy tale was turned into a soap opera by an individual in his/her first week of literacy classes in hopes of obtaining a GED.

STAYING ALIVE - As could be said in Johnny Dangerously, I saw this ONCE! Sequel to Saturday Night Fever - fevers usually make you feel sick and can sometimes kill you, even robbing you of your powers of either sight, hearing, or speech, as in the case of Helen Keller.

YEP - this'll do it!


Shirley MacLaine, a canny actress of unqualified breadth of cleverness, intuitiveness and sheer heart, has said repeatedly she has no idea if a picture is going to work or not work while she's making it. Yet, certainly the script for this continuation of "Terms of Endearment" sounded an alarm, as it is incredibly dull. Writer-director Robert Harling, working from another novel by Larry McMurtry, probably bears most of the blame, but were audiences even eager to embrace a follow-up to "Terms" 13 years later? Returning to her Oscar-winning role as feisty Texan Aurora Greenway, MacLaine can't possibly be expected to have the same chemistry with a new troupe of actors as she had in the first film (we "grew up" with those characters in the course of the picture, and here everyone is dropped on us unceremoniously, with little intros of who's-who). MacLaine, playing grandmother to her deceased daughter's three now-grown children, is in full Aurora mode, but tellingly the only two sequences that work are the ones MacLaine shares with former co-star Jack Nicholson. Otherwise, it's a completely uninspired venture that leaves one cold. *1/2 from ****


Ok, I knew it was going to be no "Terms Of Endearment". I remember this movie got panned when it came out, I read what reviewers here said about it, so I wasn't expecting much. But 6 years after "The Evening Star"'s release, my curiosity got the best of me, besides I got it for free from the library.

This is a horrible movie, with horrible characters, and horrible acting.

It is so bad, I don't know if I'll be able to watch "Terms Of Endearment" again, and that is one of my all time favorite movies. The only redeeming feature this movie had was the music from the original.

I had very low expectations, but this movie still missed them by a mile. Do yourself a favor, if "Terms Of Endearment" meant anything to you, don't see this sequel.


What a piece of crap, very disappointing should never have been made. Where are the original actors there's no jeff Daniels, no Danny DE Vito, the character of patsy was slim and pretty and smart and sophisticated in the first film but now shes replaced by some heavier actress who just acts dumb all the way through. Terms of endearment was one of the best films i ever saw but this one makes it look really bad. Too long and drawn out and what a shame that all the children turned out bad and that there father isn't in the picture. In the first he seemed to be there a lot but, how can he just never see them again after his wife dies how does that happen.


"Terms of Endearment" is engrained in my brain. I know the entire movie by heart, text and all. I don't know how many times I have seen it but suffice to say its plenty.

So when the opportunity to see the sequel arose, I must admit I was curious and hopeful. However, after ten minutes watching this became an ordeal. MacLaine brings none of Aurora's charm to this outing and all the actors around her are just as flat. A scene on an airplane between Aurora and Patsy (Miranda Richardson, inexplicably) is a total embarrassment and I can't believe MacLaine allowed it. Marion Ross as the housekeeper seems to be channeling Agnes Moorehead in "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", and not very well, at that. There is a moment between Nicholson and MacLaine that suggests the magic of "Terms", but that's only one moment.

The movie has value as Ben Johnson's last appearance, but little else.


Could be summed up by that sentence. There are some funny moments in it. Classic Aurora control scenes and blow-off lines. but it'a mess... The title could have been "Terms of Endearment 2: Return to the Cash Cow."

What could possibly be more unnecessary than a sequel to Terms of Endearment? Because the pivotal relationship was eliminated by Wingers exit in the first film, this sequel has no focus. What had been an amusing take on the funny and sad moments in an erratic mother-daughter relationship, has become a plot less holding pattern. There is no central emotional relationship to care about and the characters have little to do. They have not found a suitable foil for Aurora here. The relationship between Patsy and Aurora which had been quietly disagreeable, is now full-on antagonism. And that's a familiar, unsatisfying device to duct-tape a story onto.

If you were wondering what happens next after Terms ended, the answer is that the characters continued living. Whoopee. "Star" tries to milk tender emotions from you, but those feelings are given no foundation. It just moves on to some new unrelated emotional "payload" every ten minutes or so. Whether this went on for an hour or three (which it feels like) it just wears you down. The creators fail to understand that extraneous undeveloped characters (who've barely been introduced) can only deliver phony emotional epiphanies. It's so overwritten that superfluous sub-plots are M.I.A. for an hour at a time.

It has so many false endings, that I gave up shortly after Nicholsons odd, special-guest-star appearance. He arrives to spout some tender inexplicable pseudo-Oprah drivel. It's like it was written by Edna Ferber. It goes on and on and on...


For a made for TV movie I thought that it was a great popcorn movie - don't expect anything to be very accurate and don't expect any award winners in this bunch but I do recommend this for a TV type version somewhat like "The Replacements". Look for cameos from real NFL players & officials.


In the year 2000 (keep in mind, this is two years ago, not four), two men had the motivation to create the most miraculous piece of art on this side of the Mississippi.

Thanks to Jere Cunningham and Tom Flynn, the world can now enjoy Second String, a delicious TV movie depicting a tale of a rag-tag gang of second stringers (thus the title) who are thrust into the position of starters due to an order of bad oysters.

Because of the motivational direction of both the director Robert Lieberman and the Buffalo Bills' last minute QB, Dan "Give 'em hell" Heller (portrayed by Canadian actor, Gil Bellows) the oft Super Bowl snake-bitten Bills find themselves in the ultimate position.

With an intriguing mix of internal and external conflict, a love story, comraderie that only the fine sport of football can bring, and an overall theory that the underdog can compete, Second String is an excellent movie worthy of viewing every possible moment that it appears on TNT.

The only thing potentially bad about this production is the spelling of the Costume Designer's first name, Jenifur Jarvis.


Being a Bills fan, I originally found it annoying that they made a movie about the Bills and the losing of four superbowls. But once I began to watch, I felt really connected. It was actually nice to see the "Bills" win the superbowl, and I must say, that for a TV movie it was actually very well done. Gil Bellows as the QB, and Jon Voight as the old-school Coach did a very fine job. 8 out of 10


Wow, this movie was horrible. As a Bills fan I was really looking forward to it, but this was bad. They should have left it on the shelf it was on for 4 years. I can't believe a guy like Jon Voight would sign on for something like this.


So forgive the *really* lame game-play scene, cardboard background and studio like stadium. For this part I should have give the movie 5 instead of 7, but read on...

From the premise to plot there is a lot similarities with "The Replacements". Some say this movie rip off "The Replacements", while some say this script wrote before it.

Both movies require some sort of "suspension of disbelief on the basic premise, and this is especially difficult for "Second String" since it has NFL license team and all the history behind it. Food poison excuse may sound too lame for some people, and not to mention in "Second String" Bills has to overcome big scores again and again, with the limit budget in shooting the game play scene, this make it look even bad.

In "Replacements", the premise and the league is fictional yet you know it happen in real life. I believe it is easier to accept fictional story and setting with real event ("OH yeah, this happen before!", rather than real setting/background with fictional scenario ("There is no way Bill can win a Superbowl!"; Some of the scene were actually shoot in pre season game of Raven games, real stadium, real audience and some NFL match alike shooting angle.

But let say both movies came out on the same day, and we erase the budget factor (thus forgive the game play action scene): Overall, I like "Second String" over "Replacements", not by much, but I like this more.

It has "relatively better" character development. In "Replacements", Keanu character is too "out sync with the world", and all he care is maybe, get a girl? In Second String you see the struggle of the QB from getting the job back, and deal with his past with coach. Or the fumble guy problem. This "hold the ball all day long" solution of course is not new, but we see progression in fixing it.

How about those trick play? I think it is "relatively realistic" than "Replacements". The "Dan Marino" like fake knee pass, flea-flicker, wild cat full back rush, all real, except sometimes this look a bit too easy. But for me it is better than "Replacement"'s center catch and rushing for 50 yards call, or how a 60 yards field goal look too easy. OH BTW, I am glad they didn't force the TE kicker made his shot....

Of course ---if you objectively review this movie over other football movies all there, this could easily be a 5 out of 10 movie. But some say this is the worse football movie? Try "The Comebacks".


All y'all hatin' on the fact you'd probably neva make the cut for "Second String" need to save it. If more guys out there took their sorry behinds to the gym for once...maybe y'all have a chance....well,...maybe. Take Shawn Woods' "HOOK" physique for a "perfect" example...and I stress the word "perfect" Put that in your pipe and smoke it...!!! You couldn't look better Sha-Shawn


I don't normally write reviews, but this "film" was special. I couldn't turn it off. I don't believe I've ever seen a worse movie, but there I sat, watching. It was like a horrible car wreck with blood flowing all over the highway. It was disgusting, but I couldn't turn away. Where do I start? The movie seems to think it's a sports thriller, but it's so utterly ridiculous, it can only be a comedy, but it's not funny, not even in a dumb/silly way. It's like watching your cousins try to act out a skit on family get-togethers. It's painful to watch, but at least it's only for a minute or two. Second String went on for over an hour.

Whoever was involved with making this movie should not work again. The writing, directing, acting, and everything was just terrible. The problem is I can't describe how bad it was; you just had to see it. And I'm sure this will NEVER be shown again, so unless you saw it, you're out of luck. I mean it was almost worth seeing just for the fact that it gave me some appreciation for every other "bad" film I've seen over my lifetime. And for every film I see in the future that I can't stand, I will think to myself, well, at least it wasn't bad as the Second String.


What some of the people commenting on this series don't seem to understand is that this is not a sketch show.

The fact that none of the characters are particularly memorable, the fact that the news stories are not particularly surreal and the fact that each "channel" starts to feel repetitive even before the end of the episode are all deliberate.

As with "People like us", John Morton is able to avoid focusing on the superficial humour (the "jokes") at the expense of the deep humour (satire).

And that is all there. The bad grammar, the lack of scientific knowledge and basic research of the average journalist, the milking of non-events to fill hours of airtime, the patronising xenophobia of some US networks, the obsession with "live" coverage for the sake of it, the overly dramatic music, the distortion of facts so the reporter can end his story with a "witty" catchphrases or cliché. It's all there.

There are also plenty of jokes and nonsense, but I suspect most of those are just there so you won't mistake the show for a real news network. It's their way of saying "unlike the 'real' news networks, we are still sane enough to realise that this whole thing is ludicrous".

Some of the references will only make sense to people working in the field, but anyone who has spent 10 minutes zapping between different "news" networks will be able to relate.

Be warned, though: there are no pauses to let you laugh and no punchlines telling you when to laugh (a lot of people can't seem to understand humour without the latter). If you laugh, you miss something. In fact, even if you don't laugh, it's hard not to miss something (another obvious reference to the information overload - or "noise" - in modern news broadcasts).

To be watched with a progressively widening mental grin.


This is much better than some of the IMDb reviewers have claimed. Its parody of the reporting styles of news channels is spot-on. I particularly like "Look Out East". I presume many of those responsible for the main channels and programmes must have seen this show. That being so, it's a mystery to me that they nevertheless carry on in the same hackneyed and repetitious manner. I can only conclude that they simply cannot do any better. What a depressing state of affairs.

The show has its faults. Ironically, it is itself needlessly repetitious. The writers seem to have had the same problem as the channels they lampoon: too much time to fill and too little material to fill it. There is a series of six programmes, but to see two of them (any two will do) is probably enough. The rest is just more of the same.

Also, the guy doing the Hollywood news is way, way, way over the top and out of kilter with the carefully measured performances of everyone else.


A number of reviewers here feel that "Broken News" is somehow a shallow rip-off of Chris Morris's work on "Brass Eye" and "The Day Today". I couldn't disagree more.

There's no bigger fan than me when it comes to Chris Morris's brilliantly scabrous spoof news work from the 80s and 90s, but come on folks! Just because a new generation of writers and performers wants to explore a similar strand of comedy/satire, that doesn't make them rip-off merchants. Nobody's pretending that they're the first people to have ploughed this particular comic furrow (and actually, neither was Chris Morris: he was very much following in the footsteps of arch prankster Victor Lewis-Smith). I'm sure the writers of "Broken News" would be the first to acknowledge the debt they owe to such pioneers.

In fact, what the BN team have created is something deliciously sophisticated and different. Unlike Morris, whose news parody tended toward an exaggerated, cartoonish style, BN's chief strength is in subtlety of detail: it looks and sounds so utterly (and hilariously) like the real thing!

Anyone who enjoyed "Broken News" as much as I did should also check out the same team's BBC radio show, "The Sunday Format", which uses similar techniques to parody the content of British Sunday newspaper supplements. Brilliant stuff.


i loved LaChappelle's movie... the dancing (both 'clowin' and 'krumpin') was great.

i loved "lil mama"... she was so cute.

the 'stripper dance' was funny. a few of my friends do a little bit of that mixed in w/their dances... we didn't know they called it the 'stripper dance' and 'stripper booty'.. we laughed at that.

it inspired me n my friends so much so that as soon as we got into the parking lot we started 'krumpin' rite there on the spot!!

needless to say, police got involved because it was after curfew and i had my little sis w/us.. so we went home w/those feelings and 'clowned' and 'krumped'... it was "ahh" ::sighs.w/relief::


"Rize" rises above anthropological curiosity to be an exhilarating paean to the human spirit.

It is parallel to "Bastards of the Party" in noting how devastating gang violence, drugs and poverty have been to the social structure of African-Americans living in South Central Los Angeles and how young people desperately seek alternative families for emotional support. But debut director David LaChapelle (and a graduate and proponent of arts education programs) documents the power of artistic expression in literally saving souls and lives, here through a spontaneously indigenous, organized form of hip hop dancing.

It is "Amazing Grace" acted out before our eyes as this is self-help, bootstraps up through specifically African-American Christian culture that grew out of birthday party celebrations, going from clown dancing to crumping.

I was thinking of "A Chorus Line"'s refrain of "Everything was beautiful at the ballet" of girls escaping dysfunctional families even before these hyper-articulate entertainers point out that there are no ballet classes available to them, or any after-school activities for kids not interested in football or basketball so they made the choice to dance with organized groups, first in informal than structured competitions.

No white talking head experts are needed in this film, though it is not clear how much influence LaChapelle had over the participants' self-awareness over the three years he was making the film, as we only hear his voice a couple of times asking questions, usually of their mothers. For example, L'il C says such dancing is "in our blood" -- but is that after LaChapelle showed them the footage of African ritual dancing that they had never seen before -- and it is a bit disconcerting that of all the footage he could have selected he uses material from the Leni Riefenstahl archives. Ethnomusicologist Nick Spitzer of Public Radio's American Routes show could certainly teach them all something about the recurring phenomenon in the African diaspora of similar competitive "families" created around dancing and costumes or make-up, including the samba clubs in Brazil, the Mardi Gras "Indians" of New Orleans and the carnival crews of the Caribbean.

LaChappelle carefully introduces us to the participants as dancers and individuals before we know more about their difficult pasts and home lives, as these are young people who had to grow up too fast and are lucky to have survived, even as they can't avoid the neighborhood's random violence. We also see that these are the kind of individuals who are naturally nurturing and mentor-seeking, as one explanation of how they sought out the arts and why dance speaks to them as a mechanism to work out their emotions.

The sound track assiduously avoids degrading commercial hip hop selections for songs that reflect the spirit of the dancing, as the participants resoundingly note the independence of their culture from corporate forces.

While the story line wanders a bit after the climactic Battle Zone, LaChappelle forcefully links the the dancing to Pentecostal and Baptist gospel traditions for the life affirming conclusion. The closing shots of how it has spread outside the African-American community aren't entirely convincing.

LaChappelle can't resist some artsy music video type shots of beautiful, glistening bodies by the ocean, but that does serve to emphasize their dancing as an aesthetic form, even as the film does go on a bit too long and repetitively.

The interviews on "Charlie Rose" should be included with the DVD as there is no concluding update to learn that some of the participants are now employed professionally as dancers, though we did get a glimpse that Miss Prissy is taking some formal dance training.

Regardless, you do walk out uplifted and feelingly thrillingly positive about life.


I saw this on T.V. and was fascinated by it. I'm not a fan of "hip hop" because I think it is a degenerate art form created by an oppressed people. However this offshoot, Rize, I think is culturally deep and relevant. It's a dance expression (along with the "tribal" markings)from black folks African ancestral memory. It's a dance that is similar to the continental African ethnic expression of their connection to Nature, but Rize is more angry and rightly so. Rize is the Black Americans expression of its connection to the ills of white supremacy and their disconnection from Nature. The dance is their angry reaction to it both.

This is a great example of the ancestral spirit of Black Americans and why an African centered view will serve us well in the United States.


As a documentary, this film isn't much. It just shows footage of people doing this clowning business and some short interviews during make up sessions or whatever. But it does portray the subject well.

The subject is clowning and krumping, extreme forms of dance born from hip-hop, made famous by the Chemical Brothers video "Galvanize". What it looked to me is a hip-hop mime, with violent overtones. At first I thought "What the hell is that?" There were black people shaking every body part as violently as they can, throwing hands up and down, left and right, like monkeys touching a high voltage line. But then I got it. It was language, body language, and it was art, as each kid there brought his own message.

Immediately the film started showing how this type of dance is keeping children off the streets, doing something positive, etc., etc. That dancing didn't look too positive to me. It expressed a lot of frustration and violence, but it sure beats shooting people, and I was shocked to see what the life for people in South L.A. is like, where the only other option of expression is joining a gang and hurting or killing people.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The same thing was said of rap and hip-hop a time ago, and they all turned out to be easily hijacked by commercial interests or corrupted towards the "gangsta" side. And it's so easy. These people have no education, no money, they can be easily swayed either way, if someone puts resources into it.

Bottom line: this is like a documentary about the rise of hip-hop or boogie before it, only it's about some other form of spontaneous urban expression. I don't think the film or the dance style are very special or well done, but they do show in one quick swoop the situation and subculture of these people and also their emotions, basically expressed in dancing. It's also pretty depressing, since it shows how desperate people lift their spirits through something that doesn't really does anything else for them. Like the music of the slaves. They were still slaves, only they could cope with it because they sang a lot.


This film should go down in history as a "what the heck was the audience thinking?" kind of film. It is positively awful. I heard all about the Sundance award, the good reviews etc and like most people, went to see it thinking it would be great. It starts off okay but within about 10 minutes it turns into this music video that just never stops. The story is totally unclear, it's impossible to connect with the characters and the constant use of MTV techniques gets very tedious and boring very quickly. It's good to see filmmakers using different styles and modes of storytelling but the key words here are "tell a story". There is no story to this film, just a bunch of kids who crump to cool music and then talk about themselves for a few seconds and then crump again. It's relentless and annoying. A really poorly-made documentary.


It was already clear that dancing is a great substitute for self-hating activities like smoking, overeating or filling up an ex's voice mail. It should follow that dancing can replace hate itself. The makers of RIZE have given us an infinite gift demonstrating this. What a rare and beautiful way to spend two hours. It makes you want to turn to the person next to you, and just take care of them. The dancing and sheer creativity and heart in this movie are something to behold. There are stars born, and people to fall in love with. Keaton Simons & Morgan Simons let me know about Dave LaChapelle's photography years ago. The only way to describe the visuals in LaChapelle's videos and films is sheerly courageous. Don't just see RIZE. Live by it.


Perfectly acceptable Irwin Allen drama, with some funny special effects - I particularly like it when they put a water tank in front of the lens, trying to simulate a high-water mark for a "dry shot" scene - and some even funnier acting. Culp is most amusing, still acting with more swagger than his career deserves, and Milner seems grouchy. Good location work doesn't always mix well with the stock footage.


Well, I recently got a hold of a used VHS tape, very cheap, with 2 disaster-of-nature flicks on it. I stumbled upon them on a flea-market and just took it home because of the cool cover-art (paintings of water/fire-disasters, not shown here on IMDb). So I sat down this afternoon and watched the first one on the tape, FLOOD! And I can say right away that the most exciting thing about this movie indeed was... the cover-art! And, yes, I know this is a 1976 made-for-TV movie, but still I expected quite a lot more from it and I feel like the film-makers could have done a lot better. The first 45 minutes of the movie are just too tedious. Sure, a lot of different characters are introduced, but they say or do nothing interesting at all. And what's even worse: Roddy Mcdowall's character gets introduced during the first scenes (apparantly he's a wealthy tourist on a fishing holiday), and after that, he never re-appears in the movie! The other main characters, basically just couples (husbands & wives and soon-to-be-married folks) have nothing else to do than to basically grab every opportunity to say "I love you" to one and other (over the phone, while meeting in a hospital,...). And naturally, there's this Brannigan-character (played by Robert Culp) running around warning everybody about the dam that's about to break, and of course nobody, especially the mayor (what did you expect?), believes him. I got somewhat excited when Barbara Hershey's name came up on the opening credits, but boy, did she portray one of the most disappointing female characters of the movie!

And when the dam finally breaks, it's just pretty pathetic. All you see, is some sort of wall of mud crumbling down. It doesn't even look like a dam. The one thing I really hoped for, was seeing some well-crafted miniatures of town-buildings getting flooded with river water. But nope. Nothing like that at all. One or two shots have some water running through a street (with easy-to-figure-out not-so-special-effects), some living rooms with water in them and a kid floating in a river holding on to a tree. And on top of that, we get several stock footage of real floods (mostly air-shots) which poorly match the main look of the film.

So, this really is a rather uneventful film, and the only thing you can say about it is that it's not particularly badly made and features OK acting. It's one of those movies you just might end up watching when it comes up on TV while you're 'zapping' channels and have absolutely nothing else to do. On the other hand, you might also keep on changing channels.

I suppose there are fans of disaster-movies out there, and they just might dig FLOOD! on some levels. I just got nothing out of it. I sure hope the other movie (FIRE!) on the tape is better.


I discovered this show by chance on a trip to Ireland and was exhilarated by its comic freshness and unexpected poignancy. The three lead actresses and one lead actor had terrific chemistry, and the writing could make you belly laugh and sob almost simultaneously. It is a mystery to me that "After Henry" has not made its way to these shores, where I'm confident it would join the top ranks of most beloved Britcoms. Are the programmers at PBS all dead in their offices at this point? They would do well to retire their endless reruns of jukebox "specials" and seek out savvy, unfamiliar programs like "After Henry." (If I hear "Amazing Grace" warbled just one more time, there will be havoc in Mudville.)


György Pálfi's second feature length movie is Taxidermia, which is about three generation of a family, and all of them has something very peculiar about them: the first one is a horny officer, his son is a very big sport-eater, and his job is very important of him. The third isn't special in any ways, but wants to be. He's very skinny, and there is nothing important about him. His relationship with his father is not very balanced: they diverge from each other in every possible way. But he's secretly planning something, from what he will be famous of... Nothing in Hungarian cinema's history can be compared to this. Not a single Hungarian movie was as violent as this one is sometimes. In some scene it reminded me of Pasolini's Salo. But the disgusting and the violent scenes are all meaningful; probably they are a perverse, misshapen mirror of the society. We can't say, that the leading characters are perverted, because everybody is as much perverted, as the ones we see. Fortunately this unique movie is presented by a big amount of humor - and we simply can't take the characters totally seriously. Taxidermia is a milestone in Hungarian film-making, and was worth every single cent of the Sundance money, from which it was made.


Oh my god! I just got out from seeing Taxidermia at MIFF 2006 and I was literally speechless. As I was one of the first to leave the theatre, I took it upon myself to stand out the front and watch the expressions on the faces of other patrons as they exited. Most were laughing in disbelief at what they had just seen, some were white as ghosts and some looked plain baffled. Whatever way you look at it, Taxidermia will certainly make a strong impact on you.

I saw Gyorgy Palfi's "Hukkle" a few years ago at MIFF and although that was an interesting film, he's really excelled himself with Taxidermia. One thing's for sure, you'll need a strong stomach to watch Taxidermia a) for the gore & b) cause you're gonna laugh your head off! Outstanding cinema! 10/10


Beginning in World War II-era Hungary, two soldiers stay at a remote country home. The sexually frustrated soldier Vendel (Csaba Czene) concerns himself with myriad masturbation techniques while watching his commanding officer's wife and daughters. The product of his frequent seed spillage, Kálmán (Gergo Trócsányi), grows to comfort his country as a champion eater. While the International Olympic Committee refuses to recognize his sport, Kalman remains stolid and captures the heart of Gizella (Adél Stanczel), a fellow female champion. Their heir, Lajos (Marc Bischoff), has not inherited an ounce of his parents' impressive girth. This sickly lad lives a life of quiet desperation as a taxidermist. A disappointment to his corpulent father, Lajos finds a few lucky solutions to solve his problems.

Following these three generations of fairly twisted fellows, TAXIDERMIA is light on plot but heavy on visuals. Visceral often to the point of being gross, few bodily fluids and orifices go unseen in Palfi's sophomore feature effort. Recommended.


This movie follows three generations of some odd men in Hungary. The first is a sexually frustrated soldier in the second world war, who dreams sexually of his comrade's wife and kids. constantly masturbating and fantasizing ends up with a baby being born. The child grows up and ends up being a champion of speed-eating, he marries a woman (wich is also fat) and thus the next generation is born. A taxidermist.

This is a movie about the ugliest places and human beings on earth. It plays around and explores this ugliness, and the result is a gross, twisted and extremely dark humorous movie, with a side of some surrealistic plot devices. The cinematography is excellent . Acting is all good, so no mistakes on that. Overall, this is a very well done movie, and the director shows talent. I'm looking forward to see more of his twisted movies.


A soldier with a rich sexual fantasy and lots of time on his hands (or better said, with his hands). An obese man competing in eating contests. A taxidermist. What do they have in common? Well.. Quite simply put.. Part of their genes. They are, respectively, the grandfather, the father and the son. Welcome to Taxidermia, perversity grand central.

The film plays out in three parts. Starting with the soldier, followed by the obese man, followed by the taxidermist. At the end of each part the connection to the next is worked out, and it all makes sense, in a twisted way.Each of the parts is a barrel of laughs, dark and grim in its own. Often disgusting and revolting but most of the time just hilariously cynical.

Effects used are mediocre at best but that doesn't harm the film too much - it is mostly the comedy value that is to be appreciated. Way of filming is off the beaten track, but not so far that it becomes disturbing or genuinely brilliant.

Sick, gruesome and deviant. I love it.

9 out of 10 kilograms of lard eaten


Gyorgy Palfi's second feature Taxidermia is definitely a milestone in Hungarian film-making, it is a truly astonishing experience and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to broaden their taste for cinema. I found the film to be a deep black comedy with some stomach churning, twisted scenes intermixed with beautiful artwork and sophomore characters.

Through chronicling the lives of three generations of one family (a soldier from the Second World War, a sportsman and a taxidermist) each is shown to have their own perverse and distorted lifestyle which is cleverly exhibited through (among other approaches), myriad masturbation, excessive gluttony, deformation, dismemberment and taxidermy. In this film Palfi has created a deviant and anomalous world and, via his own talented cinema techniques, has managed to depict it in a shrewdly reflective manner i.e. he holds a mirror up to our own. Those familiar with European cinema will be able to reminisce with the many influences on show, with some scenes even harking back to Pasolini's epic, Salo - this is also combined with many other surreal influences. Some would argue that Taxidermia is a gory, violent and unnecessarily eccentric film but it is all necessary in serving its narrative and is not present for titillation purposes - as is so often found in some of the more contemporary European cinema.

Generally I feel that Taxidermia tells of a society in which defect, sleaze and dishonesty serves its creators own personal vision or goal to further themselves and that this search justifies everything, regardless of how twisted or harmful. In addition to this journey Taxidermia presents the audience with some of the ugliest and darkest places of the human mind. Without saying anymore, I would even go so far to say that Taxidermia is one of the greatest feats of 21st century movie-making.


Taxidermia is the goriest, most disturbing and most disgusting film I have ever seen, yet is one of the greatest feats in 21st century movie-making. It is dark and repugnant, but very deliberately so. It is not at all self-indulgent, although it might seem that at first glance. One cannot help but realize that all this gore is meant with purpose, that this sickening texture of coherence is what gives this satire its peculiar authenticity. L'art pour l'art gruesomeness really gets my goat, but in this case everything falls into its right place. Although I got physically sick watching it, I have to admit I am an admirer of Taxidermia.

We see three generations of men from a strange family: an army orderly obsessed with one-sided sex, his son, an acclaimed speed-eater, and an animal preparator. They are all peculiarly abnormal in their own ways but so is everybody else in the twisted world Gyorgy Palfi has created. But we all know that however deviant a world is on screen it merely is a reflection of our even more deviant everyday life. What Palfi tries to put across is that in our society sick is not even sick any more, dementia is not dementia any more, and we are ready to accept any defect or corruption of mind as long as they serve the self right in his quest for creating something new, something with which he can stand out from the crowd even more. Search for the inner genius justifies everything.


"Taxidermia" is one of the biggest surprises I've had with recent films. It has a blend of disgusting and shocking acts rendered poetic with absolutely beautiful camera-work and style. Even at its grossest, one isn't nearly as repulsed as they should be. And trust me, there's a lot of deviant behavior (including bestiality, masturbation, feederism, and vomit) on display here. Its all credit to director György Pálfi, who has crafted one of the most original visions in recent cinema. Its far from a perfect film, but its sheer audacity is refreshing compared to the safe and sterile cinema coming from all over the world today. Its a throw back to the 70s, when filmmakers had the guts to load the screen with offensive and politically incorrect imagery to force the viewer to think.

Don't mistake this as being merely a shock value fest. There's a good amount of subtext and depth to the film in a manner similar to Takashi Miike's finest work. The acting is very good, and the performers manage to make their deviant characters oddly human and sympathetic despite the increasingly surreal nature of the film. The film is flawed (the middle section in particular lags pretty badly), but I'd rather watch an interesting if imperfect film any day than successful tripe. "Taxidermia" is a film I feel will become a cult classic in the years to come. Not for all tastes, but those interested will love it. (8/10)


I thought this was a true original and it made me break out in a sweat at certain points. Not many films have a physical effect on their audience.

There were some astonishing moments and scene transitions that were literally breathtaking. I didn't believe the director had put certain things in to solely shock as some people have suggested. The film looks very lush in style and there were some stunning compositions. My favourite story was the final one with the sickly grandson of the original character. I am trying to source 'Hukkle' now as I want to see more by this director. I have not seen anything this interesting for some time. This film lingers in my mind.


The first part/story is about a soldier/peasant/whoever who gets erections looking at just about anything. He spies on peasant women bathing, and masturbates in his shed. Later on, he observes them clandestinely and lustily from his super-shed as they muck about in the snow. He notices a small hole in the wooden wall of the house and decides to stick his proud and filthy member inside it. The masturbation starts (or is it house-screwing? now there's a real intelligent philosophical dilemma that presents itself for all ye pompous/deluded film students). However, the poor schluck doesn't get very far with his sexual shenanigan because a rather bored but grim-looking rooster sees what looks like a worm-like animal to him, and pecks it very hard. (A rare funny moment.) The chronic masturbator emits a loud yowl.

But there are more perversions! I've barely even started listing them. Our peasant is apparently also a pedophile, as we watch him lose himself in a fanciful fantasy world that involves a fairy-tale-like house and a girl barely 8 years old. Guess what happens next? Exactly: the peasant takes the girl's hand and tells her to "put it down there". Cut to Hare-Lippy inside his shed: he masturbates to this imagined girl, and the director is even kind enough to show us not only his erect penis but also the semen that shoots out of it - all the way towards the night-sky, towards one of Earth's nearest stars. (Proxima Centauri? Perhaps his semen will start off a whole new world/civilization of filthy-minded attention-seeking Hungarian directors there...) Was this Art? Symbolism? Alienation? A metaphor for something similarly stupid and irrelevant? Nah... Just a perverse Hungarian director who probably believes that porn is artistic and belongs in mainstream movies. No wonder, of course: Hungary is the Metropolis of Europe's porn industry, so I guess the least we can expect in any modern Hungarian movie is erections, vaginas, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. Oh, come on, we have to be open-minded about such things!

The next scene shows the graphic depiction of the butchering of a pig. You might have guessed it already (as I had): our anti-hero is sexually drawn towards all of that freshly slaughtered bloody dripping flesh, so later that evening he decides to lie on what's left of the porker and - but what else? - fantasizes/masturbates to various peasant women who so constantly provoke him with their large breasts and happy smiling faces. At first it isn't entirely clear whether he is actually having (gasp!) normal sex with a consenting adult from the same species and of the opposite sex, because it appears as if the fat middle-aged woman is really there - making her moves on him. But then it becomes clear that it's yet another fantasy, i.e. that this movie's director would never stoop so low as to show us too much of sex between mere two humans (That'd be too square, right? After all, the director feels compelled to compete with Greenaway, Miike, and the like.)

The next morning, the fat woman's husband enters the peasant's shed and blasts his head off with one clean shot to the head. The head dissolves into bits of flying debris, some of it perhaps hitting the camera-lens. Not sure about that one. Either way, the director had already managed to fulfill his Extreme Sex&Violence Quota - only 20 minutes into the movie. From here on, any further filth is merely a bonus for the movie's drooling fans.

And more filth there is. What follows is that the fat woman gives birth to a baby-boy who has a ha-ha-funny anomaly attached to his derrière: a pig's tail. Daddy doesn't seem to be too keen on having a semi-porker for a child, so he rushes to get a pair of pliers and cuts off the piggy-tail with boredom almost, as if he'd been doing that sort of thing for years.

Cut to around 20 years later; the second story begins. There is a food-stuffing competition going on, in what seems to be a satire of Communist lust for sports glory. One of the morbidly obese competitors we easily recognize as the baby boy from the previous scene, on account of the remnants of a small pig-tail still bulging out just beneath his lower back. We're somewhere in the early or mid-60s. The second part mostly ignores sexual deviation, but there's still plenty of vomiting and retarded behaviour as to please even the most jaded fans of so-called "shock-cinema". As our half-piggy hero lies in bed, his fiancée's very hairy armpit hangs over him, dripping sweat - right onto his face. He licks it off, having obviously been sexually stimulated by it. Later on, there is more competitive food-munching, some brief doggy-style sex, etc. It's all very stylishly shot, but quite unfunny and mostly infantile.

The third story features Half-Piggy, much older and by now weighing around two tons, looking distinctly like a Euro-trash version of Jabba The Hutt. He is immobile, spending his time in a dark, depressing flat where he stuffs three large cats with food, and reminisces of his food-stuffing glory days. He is taken care of by his disappointingly skinny son, a taxidermist. In his spare time Junior flirts unsuccessfully with female cashiers and makes plans for turning himself into a stuffed statue. The film fittingly ends with its most disgusting, extreme, and absurd scene in which Junior taxidermizes himself into oblivion. His empty head gets lopped off, the right arm is severed, and some time later he is discovered by one of his customers who then proceeds to display this "work of art" in some trendy museum. He gives a philosophical speech about Junior, and this soliloquy is supposed to be very very "deep" and "meaningful". The End.


I'd like to give this 10 stars for sheer inventiveness and audacity not to mention a brilliant eye, but for me it didn't quite work totally as a film, falling apart slightly towards the end.

That said I'd recommend doing whatever you have to to catch this film, it's certainly one of the most original offerings I've seen in a long while and hopefully it's only the second of many to come. Looking at the release dates, sadly it doesn't seem to be getting much exposure outside the festival circuit in many territories. Hopefully it will at least get a (well) publicized DVD release.

Watching it caused me to seek out Hukkle (the first feature) and that proves easily that Taxidermia is certainly no fluke, Hungary is surely producing a major talent here.


A beautifully disturbed film by Hungarian director, Gyorgy Palfi. I will warn you all now, this film is not for the faint hearted, you do see graphic sexual images, you do see people vomiting, close up, on many occasions and you do see what is meant by self-surgery with about 2 mins of entrails, blood and guts. This film is not for the ordinary film going public, more for the people who like artistic films that are just completely barmy, hence why I love this film. The film is in three parts, each part, a newer generation of the same (in a way) family. each of the generations have it's own story, plot lacks a bit in this film, however, the cinematography is amazing, and I think that if I was to watch this film with no subtitle's and understand nothing, I would still enjoy the cinematography with the soundtrack by Amon Tobin complementing this film to a "T". If you like family films, documentaries, thrillers, suspense, comedies, DON'T WATCH THIS FILM, if you like the likes of "la cité des enfants perdu's", "Das Boot", "delicatesson" and possibly even "guinea pig", then you will marvel in this film.


Taxidermia 3/10

Taxidermia is by far the most disappointing film of the year, but then again maybe our anticipation and hopes were just to high. There's allot the hype going around about it being the most shocking film of all time (believe me it does not even come close) it does have it's sick and gross moments, (and it might be advised that the too squeamish pass on this one) but most people will just be bored. The film lacks action and any smart or meaningful dialogues, there is no political or social conscience or message, and it is simply not sick or shocking enough to truly qualify as an Exploitation film. Which is a shame because the film has the right settings to be politically meaningful and also the casting couldn't be more superb. finally bravo to the director of photography, who truly knows his work. For those who have no clue what the film is about; Taxidermia is the second full length film by Hungarian film-director György Pálfi (I have not seen his first film Hukkle) and is based on the short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy. It follows the lives of three Hungarian men (during fascism, communism and finally post soviet Hungary) the plot runs often thin and there are holes and unexplained lose ends in the tales. The first story is about Morosgoványi; a horny soldier who works and lives at the farm of his lieutenant. the film starts with him burning himself with a candle just before shooting fire out of his penis (most likely his fantasy as he ejaculates, believe me this guy does not make the appearance of having any magical powers) the middle aged soldier spends most of his days pleasuring himself (while looking at fairy tale books, cleaning bath tubs, or spying on the daughters of his lieutenant.) He finally even pokes away on a pig carcass, with bad consequences. The second story focuses on a fat speed eating champion who was born with a tail (and could either be the son of the lieutenant or the son of Morosgoványi; which it is not to clearly explained and therefore up to our imagination) and is by far the most boring story out of all three, his character stays undeveloped, we learn little about him, he just eats and pukes, finally he falls in love with a fat woman and together they have a child, so begins the third and last story, as the child grows up to be a skinny and kind of creepy Taxidermist, who lives alone with his now even fatter and bed ridden father and his large mutant cats. The end is the worst 'surprise ending' I have ever seen.

Like said, it has it's few good and truly sick moments, I give it three stars (mainly for excellent cast and acting on most part) I'd really like to read the original stories to by Nagy to see if they are just as pointless or of the director just missed out on the meaning of it all. Salem K.


Taxidermia is a beautiful film in many respects, and it never ceases to amaze me that this is only György Pálfi's second film. Having seen his first feature Hukkle previously, it is clear that Pálfi pays great attention to detail, and perhaps places the greatest importance on sound design. A great example of this would be the scene wherein Lajos (played by Marc Bischoff) extracts his own organs  the visceral image of each individual organ sliding out of the body becomes infinitely more repulsive accompanied by the appropriate Foley sounds, deliberately amplified to draw us closer to the 'action'. Amon Tobin's skulking score helps to identify the tone as dark and sinister.

Though I haven't read Lajos Parti Nagy's short stories, the source material from which each character originates, I loved the theme of animalism and the deadly sins. Each member of the Balatony family seemed to exhibit the physical and spiritual traits of an animal  Morosgoványi as the lustful rabbit (compare his hare-lip), Kálmán as the gluttonous pig (complete with truncated tail), and Lajos as the vainglorious bird (his gaunt face also brings to mind the skull traditionally seen in vanitas paintings). Pálfi enriches this theme by having each character physically deconstruct real animals - Morosgoványi has sex in the corpse of a pig, Kálmán gorges on various animals, and Lajos stuffs animals for a living. As each man dies as a result of his sin, one could suggest that Pálfi is criticising man's hypocrisy for judging others without recognising his own flaws.


I never write about movies, but this is the one movie that has truly made me feel sick. I credit it as a work of art, it is brilliant in that sense, but on a personal level, I am left more disturbed than thrilled.

I gave it a 4... and I was being generous. I cannot fathom why someone would want to watch this movie more than once. I watched it knowing what I was getting myself into, and out of curiosity but I was not expecting what came up on screen. I don't recommend this film to anyone... even though it is beautifully filmed and at the highest quality... you have to have the stomach to watch it.

I don't think that it was funny at all either... some people have said so.. but i honestly didn't think any of it was funny.


there are some films that you watch and recognize that it is good, but your insides are screaming - this is horrible. that pretty much sums up the entire experience of this film. if you truly enjoy yourself watching the film, really love it in the moment, then i think you missed the point (and probably are kinda scary and desensitized). but after your stomach stops turning, you are left with a film that has pushed past the regular or expected, into a space of unique social and political commentary. As disgusting as this film is, and it is by far the most disgusting thing i've ever seen, it absolutely has to go that far to shake people up.


Many expat Hungarians were in the audience at the viewing I attended, probably thinking that they were going to see something on the order of "the history of taxidermy," or a movie that featured rooms in a museum full of trophy fowl. By mid-way through the first vomiting scene, these lovely cultured people were excusing themselves from their seats, never to return. They seemed to feel somewhat embarrassed, sharing a common nationality with the filmmaker. I tried, yes I tried, to find merit in this concoction, but the final scenes completely lost me with the grotesque makeup of a 300+lb. man, immobile, and having to rely on his son to remove the waste products from his continual and deliberate slothfulness. Just when I thought the son would show us some humanity by leaving his gross father and gloomy taxidermy shop, perhaps becoming a Hermes model or something meaningful like that, he ends it all by taxidermying himself! I realize he was rejected by the female grocery clerk repeatedly, but the loser kept retrieving his money from that pelt of a pouch he had made, leaving the tiny paws of his victim still attached. Now, seriously, THAT is a turn-off right there! Go and see it if you want, but I did warn you. P.S. There is no one in this movie that looks even remotely like Audrey Hepburn. The overweight are celebrated.


Told in three parts, TAXIDERMIA is about the last three generations of Balatony males, a trio of men each weirder than the next.

The film begins with the grandfather, a lonely, sex-starved soldier with cleft lip and a fire fetish. In his spare time, which is rather often, he daydreams and masturbates, visualizing shooting stars into space and using his penis like a blowtorch. Somewhere along the way, he screws his commanding officer's fat wife, gets his head blown off, and bares a son with a tail, which is promptly snipped off. Thus his chapter ends and his sons begins.

The father is a competitive eater for Hungaria, a national hero of sorts with a huge belly, a patented vomit technique, and a lovely and equally fat and talented competitive-eating wife. Their love is initially tested, but they eventually fall for each other and have a child.

Skeletal and insecure, the last of the Balatony's owns a taxidermy shop and takes care of his now divorced and shut-in father, who has nearly tripled in girth. At his father's request, the son tends to a trio of house cats the father has devised to enlarge in order to reclaim his long lost celebrity...of course, their relationship is very strained, and they have a heated argument. The son leaves, unknowingly leaving the cat's cage door open, and returns to find his father dead and a trail of intestine leading to the growling felines. In an artful turn of events, the son stuffs his deceased father, straps himself into an ingeniously made surgical chair, removes his organs, sews himself up, and kills himself.

TAXIDERMIA is extremely well-made; great camera angles, style, acting, music, and effects. It is pretty disturbing however, and it's variety of extreme close-ups include genitalia, self-surgery, barfing, masturbation, and yes, taxidermia.

One of the more unique and creative films I've seen in a while. Really good stuff if you like your films stylish and disturbing.


Taxidermia will shock, upset, disturb and make nauseous all but the most sturdy and unflappable cinema viewer. However, it will also make you laugh, smirk, and smile. It does the whole spectrum of emotions as you are taken from through three generations of a family with varying degrees of humanity and all with a similar obsessions over flesh (be it sexual, personal, that of others, etc).

I cannot vouch that it will be a revelation to all, and some will see it as very base cinema, but I think you need to look beyond the excess, and take it with a pinch of salt.

It is superb production, it is at the very height of tastefulness and tastelessness, but pulled together so effortlessly and seamlessly.

More please!!!


I was privileged to watch this film days before its final run in Singapore at The Picturehouse. And what a treat it was. Taxidermia, from start to finish, is outrageous and carnal, but never vulgar in its approach and execution. The word "Taxidermia" in itself refers to the stuffing and preserving of living things, in a bid to achieve "temporary immortality".

The cinematography of the film stays true to the different eras the three generations of men experienced individually. The bizarre, off-the-wall characteristics of the three underscore their hunger for the very same ambitions  to gain acceptance and fulfillment.

The scurrilous and brutal imagery in the film are certainly not without meaning; this redeeming feature alone sets it apart from the far too common gross-out functions we've come to accept from bigger titles.

Besides being blemished by the handful of niggling inconsistencies in its character portrayal and plot, my biggest beef with this film is that the representation of the three men is sometimes too distinct; you get a feeling that you're watching three separate films, mashed together into one. But of course, I'm nitpicking here.

Taxidermia is a stellar effort that is definitely worth your money. The world has not seen enough of the brilliance that is György Pálfi. Just remember to leave all food at the door!


Definitely it's not a movie for everyone! You need to have a strong stomach to see this film until the end!

The plot is about a Hungarian family and the way it develops over three generations; and what crazy family I must say! From the first to the last generation all we see is a bunch of foolish people doing foolish things! The guy from the first generation is a sexual maniac soldier that even does a sexual act with a dead pig imagining he's doing it with a fat old lady The guy of the second generation is a fat (but a really big one!) champion of food contests that eats kilos of food in few minutes to throw up it all a bit later in order to eat some more kilos again! The third guy, son of the last one, irony of destiny, doesn't seems at all to his father (and his mother too), because he's thin as a bone... He works as an embalmer and he's the only person who keeps seeing his father, now a vegetative mount of fat flesh

We can see by these short examples that this movie is actually a little bit mad, but that's exactly its most valuable feature! We can feel the irony since the first to the last minute of the movie, and its dark humour mixed with some gore scenes makes it a really dark comedy! It's almost unique by its madness since we can't find many movies with this kind of roughness. One in which we can find some similarity, about the dysfunctional family's feature, is probably "Amarcord", but there aren't too many we can compare to this one!


We sense the movie's love/hate relationship with all things flesh very soon. It's bodily fluids, food, animals, the dead and repeat. To any of these the film applies a perversity, and a fascination in their spectacle if carried out disgustingly. The film is a presentation, albeit an occasionally funny one, of human's ugliest and basest instincts  so much so that maybe even the humor is part of that cycle.

All of it gets old very fast. The concept is just a creepy fetish, saying about human existence as much as flower power kitsch. It can be argued that the film is directed with a certain style but to me the mise en scéne seemed self-serving, a signpost of this being art. More importantly though, the film is constantly condescending towards its characters and though the purpose was probably to blame all the ugliness on our existence or on Communist states, finally the condescension and bestiality is all Palfi's.


I loved this film! Finally a movie with gay characters that's thought provoking and funny without featuring vapid pretty boys coming out of the closet and finding true love. These characters are crazy and so deeply unsettling that I couldn't take my eyes off them. They're enchanting and flawed and I just wanted to give each one of them a hug! The dialogue is witty and brutally honest. The movie is like a warped after school special. It's sentimental but at the same time totally bizarre and crass. It reminded me of the TV show Strangers With Candy. This

movie is unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's surprising, heartwarming, disturbing, twisted and utterly original. I can't wait to see what this director can do when he has a bigger budget.


I'll be brief, though the length of this video film is everything but short. The director announced that he was influenced by the works of fassbinder, Solondz and Waters. Now I love Fassbinder, I also admire the work of Solondz, About Waters who's not one of my favourits I can say he's naughty, wickedly naughty(in a way I guess it's a compliment as well). But I didn't see a trace of these in Spencer's film. It's far from being sharp as Solondz' work, It's far from being daring, amazing, heart breaking and visually stunning as any of the Fassbinder films. It's an ugly film, most of the time written and acted badly, photographed poorly and I'm not talking on video problems. The ugliest Dogma film looks better then this. It's a waste of time and the composer had a nerve to try to create emotion with his music. I wish I could say something about the story, the characters, anything-good or bad but I can't, nothing left. I find bad films much more interesting then good ones, because u can understand what the director meant and see were he got lost. But here-absolutely nothing.

on the other hand this film won 3 awards ! So I guess it's either my problem or someone else's Sorry, but being daring I guess is far from doin' good.


Okay, I'm going out on a limb here, but the opening scene of the mystifyingly titled SUMMER STORM reminded me of THE MUDGE BOY (and it's short predecessor, FISH BELLY WHITE): An awkward young farm boy bites the head off a chicken. Except here the farm boy is a former porn star now reduced to being a fluffer (if you don't know what that is, put your player on 'pause' now and rent the film THE FLUFFER), the 'chicken' is actually not poultry but the human variety, and the 'head' is...well, I think you get the idea.

This film is inexplicably repulsive, with awful videography, unattractive performers speaking stilted and unmotivated dialogue. The plot is surreal and unbelievable. Somehow I thought this was a comedy - but the only thing funny here is just how demented some writer/director/editors can be in the name of independent film making. If this is SUMMER THUNDER, give me a winter blizzard any day.


I just saw this movie at the Pioneer Theatre in NYC, and LOVED it. It's shot on digital video which takes a few minutes to get used to, but the story is definitely original and the ending is not-so-happy. The characters are 3-dimensional and interesting (and not your typical muscleboy lunkheads that you see in most gay movies!). There's also a really pointed sense of humor throughout, as you get to see how some people are just destined to be exploited and can never quite escape the vicious circle. I was surprised at how tight and cohesive the story was, too -- most indies aren't so well-put-together.

Definitely catch a screening of this if you can, or rent the DVD!


If you like old-fashioned corny humor you'll love this. I'm hesitant to give a movie this silly, corny and stupid eight stars but I had to because overall it was fun to watch and provided a number of genuine laughs. In fact, some of the scenes were downright hilarious. A lot of it is innocent old-time slapstick and, if it entertains, it did its job.

This was my first look at early Red Skelton films (I had only known him through his TV show) and it reminded of some Bob Hope films except this one had more slapstick and action.

It inspired me to go out and buy other Skelton comedies on VHS but, unfortunately, none ever measured up to this one. The real star of film might not have been Skelton, anyway, as Rags Ragland, playing the chauffeur, had perhaps the highest percentage of funny lines. The baseball scene in here also was very good.

Yes, this is stupid, generally-speaking, but it's really entertaining. If only two people have reviewed it (as of my review) then apparently a lot of people haven't seen this. That's too bad, especially with the older crowd, because they've missed a funny movie.


This is the third and funniest of Red Skelton's "Whistling" movies about the murderous misadventures of Wally Benton, actor, who plays most of the roles on radio's mystery show, "The Fox". It is a breakneck farce. Skelton, and a horde of comedians race their ways through a tale about how Wally is mistaken for a suspected serial murderer when all he wants to do is go on his honeymoon with Anne Rutherford -- and who could blame him?

S. Sylvan Simon, one of MGM's terrific B talents, directed. His specialty was high speed farce, and he pulls things off here at a terrific pace. Simon is largely forgotten. He had just produced the movie version of BORN YESTERDAY when he died suddenly at age 41 in 1951. He directed Skelton in four of his movies and knew how to get a good comic performance out of that talented clown.

Skelton had a successful career in the movies, simultaneously with his radio and television gigs from the late 1930s through the mid-50s. His movies are unfamiliar to most people because his contract called for extra fees to him when his movies played on television! Fortunately, they play fairly often now on Turner Classic movies. Do yourself a favor and see this one.


The man of many talents, Red Skelton, has some of his funniest moments on screen in this third and final installment of his amateur radio detective, Wally 'The Fox' Benton, series. Keeping up with him most of the way are the marvelous Rags Ragland as Chester the chauffeur, aka press agent, and the vivaciously funny dippy blonde, Jean Rogers, as a dumber than Rags (would you believe?) reporter. Two "dolls" are better than one in a comedy gangster flick. So the viewer is treated to the curvaceous Ann Rutherford as Wally's bride-to-be, Carol Lambert, who has fewer funny lines than the others, but is still delicious icing on the cake.

There are several scenes that are as fresh today as they were sixty-three years ago. One displays the comedic ability of Rags Ragland, who left us way too soon, to illustrate what perfect timing he could bring to a humorous sketch. He is attempting to use the telephone to assist his new client, Wally, when he is driven to anger by an aloof operator. Ma Bell would not receive such a lampooning again until the equally brilliant Lily Tomlin appeared as Ernestine, the telephone operator, nearly thirty years later. Watch too when the comic quartet is trapped in an elevator shaft. All four are dangling in the air, holding on to a precarious cable. Rags exclaims, "I didn't know I weighed so much." It's also a pleasure to see the Brooklyn Dodgers participating in all the shenanigans at the ball park, with Leo Durocher in the limelight. Then there's the final slapstick-filled sequence that ties the loose ends together.

There may be a few clinkers here and there, such as Wally's jibe,"You'll live the life of Riley...that is, if Riley don't come home," a joke that was already stale in 1943. But when a comic is on a roll, there are bound to be a few stale puns. Even Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy fall flat sometimes.

Enjoying the antics of these four clowns may cause the viewer to forget what the plot is about. Which is OK since it's nothing new. The story deals with the mob getting even, police corruption, and a popular radio personality, Wally "The Fox," being mistaken for a hit-man, The Constant Reader. All poor Wally wants to do is get married, honeymoon at Niagra Falls, and take a break from his job. Before he can do that, he must clear himself of the murders he is accused of committing.

Red Skelton's many fans will love this film. Those unfamiliar with Red's humor may miss many of the inside jokes, such as "I dood it," but should enjoy the rest, especially if fans of old-time radio and lovers of slapstick.


Whistling in Brooklyn was the last of three films that Red Skelton did as Wally 'The Fox' Benton, radio criminologist who keeps getting drawn into these real life mysteries via his reputation. Why he didn't just say that he was just an actor playing a role would have saved him a whole lot of trouble. Then again we wouldn't Skelton's Fox films, made at MGM, and they're pretty funny.

Among other things he never quite gets around to is marrying gal pal Ann Rutherford. If another Fox film had been done I'm sure they'll have not done the deed yet again.

There are some murders going on in Brooklyn, the last one being that of a police detective and after each one someone sends the Brooklyn Standard (Eagle) a note as to where the body is and signs it 'Constant Reader'.

At the same time Skelton and his lunkhead man Friday Rag Ragland whom he picked up from the last Fox movie Whistling in Dixie decide that he ought to give out with the publicity stunt that Skelton is really the Constant Reader. That sets up one long chase where Skelton, Ragland, Rutherford, and snoopy reporter Jean Rogers get to solve it all literally on the fly.

Whistling in Brooklyn is a fast paced comedy that is nice and personal for me and for the aging fans of the former Brooklyn Dodgers. There is an extended sequence where Skelton has escaped from both cops and bad guys and has disguised himself as a member of the semi-pro team the Beavers who are playing an exhibition with the Dodgers and they all wear beards. There was a team called the House of David where the players were just like that, they all looked like Hassidic Jews. It was their gimmick and they were an attraction.

MGM did some location work in Brooklyn and such Dodgers as manager Leo Durocher and players like Arky Vaughn, Joe Medwick, Mickey Owen, Billy Herman and Dolph Camilli played themselves. Skelton disguised himself as the Beavers pitcher and took his place on the mound against these guys and retired the side after hitting the first three batters. You've got to see how he does it.

Later on when he's up pitcher Bobo Newsom administers some chin music to Skelton at the plate. Newsom was almost as natural born a performer as Durocher who with this film started hanging around with show business types the rest of his life. Newsom had some right-handed sidearm delivery as you'll see. Those shots of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field are definite treasures that any baseball fan must see.

To tell the truth, the plot is kind of dopey, but the laughs are real enough. For Skelton and baseball fans, a must.