Batten down the hatches for unstoppable hilarity that takes 200 years of naval tradition...and throws it overboard! Veteran skipper John Dodge (Grammer) will never be a textbook officer but he's a brilliant seaman who's always wanted to command a nuclear submarine. Unfortunately Dodge is given the helm of a diesel powered WWII sub crewed by a collection of maladjusted and mistake-prone misfits. When he's tagged 'the enemy' in a crucial war game Dodge is ordered to take on the U.
A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a recent college grad who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.
After the technical achievement of Babe, it was almost inevitable that "talking animal" effects would be applied to the serious themes of George Orwell's Animal Farm. A bitterly satirical indictment of Stalinist Russia and the failure of Communism, Orwell's 1945 novel is a time-honoured classic, so it's only fitting that this TNT production remains largely faithful to Orwell's potent narrative. A showcase for the impressive creations of Jim Henson's Creature Shop (where director John Stephenson was a veteran supervisor), the film employs animatronic creatures and computer animation to tell the story of uprising, unity, and tragic rebellion among the farm animals.The politics of "Animalism" are initially effective, ousting enemy humans according to rules ordained by Old Major, the barnyard pig whose death sets the stage for the corruptive influence of the pig Napoleon, who cites superior intelligence as his right to dominance. This tyrannical reign destroys the farm's stability, and the film--decidedly not for young children--preserves Orwell's dark, cynical view of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Particularly effective is a propaganda film shown to the barnyard collective, and certain scenes--while not as impressive as the Babe films--powerfully convey the force of Orwell's story through animal "performance". Animal Farm occasionally falters in its emotional impact (the fate of the horse Boxer should be heart-rending, and it isn't), but it's certainly blessed with an elite voice cast, including Peter Ustinov, Patrick Stewart, Pete Postlethwaite, Julia Ormond, Kelsey Grammer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Paul Scofield, and Ian Holm. Not the masterpiece it might've been, this is nevertheless a worthy representation of Orwell's novel. --Jeff Shannon
Greg Mottola, the man behind "Superbad", directs this coming-of-age comedy about a young man who finds himself working a dead-end job at a local amusement park
A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a recent college grad who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.
Greg Mottola, the man behind "Superbad", directs this coming-of-age comedy about young man who finds himself working a dead-end job at a local amusement park
Kelsey Grammer stars in this seasonal family comedy as Santa Claus' pleasure seeking son. Rather than taking his duties seriously he thinks that being Santa junior is a day at the beach!
A sweet and slap-happy mix of indie coming-of-age drama and Judd Apatows scatological but heartfelt manchild comedies, Greg Mottolas Adventureland is a winning look at the pleasures and frustrations of dead-end jobs and teenage kicks as viewed through a filter of mid-80s pop culture. The underutilized and always watchable Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) is a sheltered, introspective New York college grad who discovers that his parents' financial woes will not only quash his dream of a summer in Europe (to enjoy its more "sexually permissive" nations) but require a move to Pittsburgh, where he lands a job at a dilapidated amusement park. There, hes thrown in with a motley crew of eccentrics, small-town types and a few genuine free spirits, most notably co-worker Em (Kristen Stewart), whose complicated past proves irresistible to his repressed psyche. Mottola, who directed Superbad, and once worked in a similar park as a teen, doesnt shy from the crude laughs that make Apatows features so popular, but he tempers it with a wistful tone and layered characters that hew closer to his earliest work, The Daytrippers. Though ill-matched at first, Eisenberg and Stewart make a likable on-screen couple, and theyre well-supported by a terrific cast that includes such die-hard scene-stealers as Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as the parks offbeat owners, Martin Starr as a Russian lit aficionado, and Ryan Reynolds as a former town tamer, now reduced to working as the parks handyman. A soundtrack performed by underground faves Yo La Tengo and filled with a smart mix of hip cuts (Hüsker Dü, the New York Dolls, the Replacements) and period faves (Falcos "Rock Me Amadeus") underscores the films blend of tentative emotions and broad laughs. -- Paul Gaita
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