kurisu-4 Reviews

Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (1998–2001)

One of the worst TV shows I've seen in years

[2/10 · 25 May 2007]

I only saw one episode of this train wreck, and never seeing it again will not be enough to erase it from my memory.

I could not believe how poorly written this show was. Some shows have a feel that they were produced on the first draft of a script; this one felt like the scripts were taken from rejected ideas.

The plot of the episode I saw involved one of the guys and his nervousness of getting committed to his girlfriend. As tired and worn out as this cliché is, the climax of this plot was the girlfriend surprising him by moving into his apartment building in order to strengthen their commitment. Not his apartment, mind you -- his apartment BUILDING. Has this actually happened to anybody you know? I was aghast at how stupidly the dialog played out. I could write better stuff half asleep under the influence of pain medication.

Aside from this lame story, nothing in the show made any real sense. Why a pizza place? It added no comedy to the show and was a pretty mundane idea. With Seinfeld they always met in an ordinary coffee shop. But the background there was irrelevant; the acting and dialog were superb. Here the pizza place was a distraction from the horrible lines being said, only, there was nothing noteworthy about the pizza place.

Notice the years this show ran, from 1998 - 2001. This is when reality shows started to take off. Shows like this made viewers switch.

Flight 93 (2006 TV Movie)

Disappointing ending

[5/10 · 3 April 2006]

This movie depicted a lot of the tension people must have felt on Flight 93. For a TV movie, A&E's "Flight 93" had a subtle horror about it; it wasn't Earth shatteringly fearsome, but as we all know how it ends it had an ominous feel to it. Then the final scenes came. This is where the film went south.

The last scenes of this film played this event like a natural disaster. Flight 93 wasn't Hurricane Katrina where there was no way to prevent it; people were murdered on 9/11. None of the anger that was felt nationwide was depicted. It was played as though this was nothing more than a tragic plane crash. The fact is that people weren't just angry about this blatant act of terrorism; they were floored like no other event in US history.

The film didn't need to show people taking to the streets in anger per se, but the depressing music at the end and the families crying made it seem as though they were just mourning their loved ones. That's not what happened. Those families were justifiably more furious than anybody, and to not show that is to show a watered down version of the events.

Close, but no cigar

Doom (2005)

Pretty poor showing, even for a game movie

[2/10 · 27 October 2005]

When I first saw the preview, I had pretty low expectations. I'm a big fan of the game, but I'm a bigger fan of great action movies. This one doesn't stack up. It's sad when you have low expectations of a film and it doesn't even live up to them.

The film begins with the Rock leading his crew of Marines into a research facility (with everything from archeology to heavy artillery) to contain a situation. Right off the bat you see a troop of the most un-Marine like Marines I've ever seen. They're undisciplined, nonthreatening, have no instinct and even look ratty. Aliens (1986) had perhaps the best crew of Marines for a film like this; Doom didn't put any thought into this at all.

There's also a lot less action in this film than expected. When there are action scenes, they're relatively short and unsuspenseful. There's a few "gotcha" moments where things jump out at you, but the scenes involving the aliens and zombies are pretty routine. The game packs a lot more action in its download-able demo than there is in the entire film.

It's clear that once Aliens and Predator (1987) came out this genre has been spent. Since those two films, there hasn't been a noteworthy film of the soldiers-versus-aliens type worth mentioning. Doom clearly comes up way short.