Change Your Image
jeffhowardmeade
Reviews
Make a Wish (1971)
Those Darned Studio Vaults!
I met Tom last year while he was putting on a children's concert. I was working backstage security and ran into him. I asked him about "Fly High." He said he does a whole show of his brother's stuff once a year. Turns out Harry wrote a song called "Fly High" and the theme song for "Make a Wish" is actually titled "Make a Wish." Anyway, the shows are now owned by ABC and are locked away in a vault, as they say. He wishes they would release them but said he has had no indication they plan to do so. He did a quick word association riff a-la "Make a Wish" for me, and instantly a 40-something, 250 pound cop was transformed into a starry-eyed ten year old again. It was positively magical.
Doogal (2006)
The key to comedy is timing
Warning: No Spoilers ahead. You can't spoil what is already totally rotten.
The key to comedy is timing, folks. You can't take what might have been a funny line (we'll never know now, will we?), and cram it together so it fits (loosely) with the vague movements of the character's mouths. It's painful to watch, really. I would have walked out, but my boys (2 and 4) were being quiet, which doesn't happen often. They weren't enthralled, mind you, they were BORED. I kept hoping for them to start acting up, so I could have an excuse to take them out of the theater! I wonder, if we HAD walked out, would they have bothered to continue showing the film, considering we were the only ones watching? The timing of the humor is so badly botched, that even the producers of the teaser trailer edited it to make it work better. Just some examples: "Sorry, the brave knight couldn't make it." It made me think Jon Stewart's voice would be given to the title character, but it wasn't. The real voice of the pooch is a kid. Why change this? Because if trailer audiences heard the voice they really gave the dog, they would stay away. Oh, wait, they seem to be staying away anyway. Another example: The rabbit picks up a gem stone and says "my preciousss... The trailer cut away from the bunny, caught a glimpse of the rest of the group gasping, then back to the rabbit, who says "just kidding." In the film version, the rabbit says something like "mypreciousjustkidding." It was as bad, if not worse, than the time the smurf movie used one voice for all those little blue rodents, rather than the various ones already being used for the TV series. What a cheat! It was like a mystery-science-theater-3000 version, only I didn't see anyone sitting in the front row of our theater. Oh, yeah, and it wasn't funny. Really, folks, I'm a movie lover, and I HATED this. I loved Hoodwinked, even when nobody else did, so that tells you something. I'm actually going to wait for the DVD and hope it has the original language track with subtitles. But even without subtitles, even if it's in a language I don't speak, it'll probably be more enjoyable to watch. SHAME ON YOU, WEINSTEINS!