Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer: I like musicals but as a Dickens fan I HATE this one. **MILD SPOILERS** Starving boys who have enough energy to sing and dance in the workhouse? The poor of London coming out to sing? Fagin and Dodger walking off into the sunset? Not exactly faithful to the novel. As I recall, Dodger was publicly hanged and Fagin went crazy in prison. **END OF SPOILERS**

Oliver Reed is very weak as Sykes, doing little more than growling to indicate his evil. Worst however, is Mark Lester as Oliver, who often comes across so awkward and passive you wonder if he's really the main character. His portrayal is in no way helped by the fact that the best they could do when he sings is dub in the voice of a girl. Guess they didn't realize that boy trebles can be found in almost every church in England.

Self-respecting Dickens fans: stick to David Lean's amazing 1948 film or the BBC 6-hour adaptation from the mid-80's. Avoid this bloated whitewash of a musical.

Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer: Loony Tunes have ventured (at least) twice into the future. The first time was with the brilliantly funny "Duck Dodgers". The latter time was with this um effort. "Loonatics Unleashed" isn't without merit, and might be considered a good product were it not that it isn't up to Warner Brothers quality. WB cartoons are noted for their cheeky humor, appealing at least as much to adults as to children. These pedestrian superhero episodes, on the other hand, cannot fail to convince adults to pass them up.

The premise of the series is that 6 ordinary individuals (2 bunnies, a Tasmanian devil, a duck, a roadrunner, and a coyote) live on the "city-planet" of Acmetropolis and acquire super powers when a meteor strikes the planet in 2772. What's confusing is that the titles section features these individuals with a count-up to 2772 from the 21st Century. Cute, but frelling stupid.

In each episode, the super sextet amid mildly amusing but essentially banal banter fight various super villains. For the most part, these are types that appear in every mediocre superhero adventure series and even some of the better ones. Like many mediocre superhero series, this one takes its villains far too seriously for the context. And of course these guys are the only characters that laugh the usual evil laugh, of course. Why is it that villains in predictable superhero adventures always ALWAYS laugh evilly at every opportunity? Animated material of this sort seems to leave laughter exclusively in the province of villains and (occasionally) their henchpeople and/or henchthings.

In point of fact, the makers of this series missed their best bets right from the get-go. The superpowers of the characters are sometimes based on their previous normal abilities, but sometimes not. The problem here is that we don't see enough WB looniness. Lexi and Ace have fairly ordinary biologically generated energy weapons and have virtually no personality traits one could describe as "Bugs-like". What we have here is basically the silly and drekish "Teen Titans", including its overly "modern" animation "look", but with animals. Feh.

The other misstep by the program's creators is (or are) the villains. As noted before, these are not terribly imaginative and do the evil-laugh bit excessively. Amazingly, the writers totally missed the obvious technique of making villains from stock WB characters as well as the protagonists. Adding to the fun could have been, say, Jupiter Sam as well as The Fudd, still hunting wabbits as well as Tech E. Coyote converted into a really neurotic villain and so on. Ah, the sadness of missed opportunities.

Sadly, this whole production has gone into too much overtime (that is, a 2nd season). Nevertheless, we can rejoice that there's something new out there for the 14-going-on-9 crowd. The rest of us can hope for a 3rd season of Duck Dodgers.

Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer:
This is a bit of a first for me, the first time I have ever been disappointed in a Tim Burton film. POTA isn't a bad film (great sets, costumes and the odd great performance) but it could have been made by any off-the-shelf hollywood director. The pacing was very odd, the last third was just spent waiting for the film to end, by myself and the cast. Tim Roth was excellent, probably the only pleasure in the film. Come back Tim.