metatron-9 Reviews

Tristram Shandy (2005)

Read the book.

[1/10 · 13 August 2007]

When I was a kid, back during the Cleveland administration (second term), whenever a particularly thick, or particularly challenging, book crossed the required-reading list, there was always at least one kid who'd stand up and give a report not on the book but on the difficulties of writing a report on the book.

The strategy itself was doomed by its own design, and its result was neither a good introduction to the book nor a good book report in itself.

This movie adopts the same strategy, with the same result. Some of the people involved in the production seem to have thought that this was the whole joke of it--but then that may have been a last-ditch attempt at salvage by Stephen Fry, who with Gillian Anderson and the curator who shows us around the real Shandy Hall is the only person who seems to have heard of the book before.

And, anyway, Tristram Shandy does make sense: on its own terms, of course, but then what great work of art does not make sense on its own terms.

Read the book. It is Mozart in print; so don't worry if at first you cannot follow the plot. By the time you get through it, by the time you get all of the jokes on all of their levels, on all of their levels intertwined, you'll be an educated person. And a very funny one.

George of the Jungle 2 (2003 Video)

Top-quality entertainment for kids--and adults with a sense of humor

[10/10 · 31 October 2005]

The kids, aged 7 to 14, got such a huge kick out of this film that we gave a copy to all of the other kids on our birthday list this year. They all loved it! Kids from 2 to 7 watch it repeatedly and frequently, and we get a kick out of watching it with them.

It's rare that a film entertains the kids for so long, and offers laughs for the adults, too. Most enjoy it more than the first.

Top-quality production and an excellent cast, led by Christopher Showerman as a superior George--athletic, energetic, and wholly credible, with a lovable innocence and a particular knack of taking a tree in the face--well supported by the inimitable Christina Pickles as the evil mother-in-law, Thomas Haden Church as the evil jerk rival, and everybody else. This is fun.

Eversmile New Jersey (1989)

One of the funniest movies ever made.

[31 May 2004]

Played with a deadpan sincerity, this charming, gentle, dreamlike film may not strike the casual viewer as anything special at first. But Fergus O'Connell stands in the great picaresque tradition of Don Quijote: a man intensely focussed on doing good in a world that urgently needs it, baffled by that world's failure to acknowledge the need, and so devoted to his cause that he ignores that world's reality in favor of the surreal world that we see here through his idealistic eyes. Witty, sophisticated in its understanding of its literary roots, and brilliantly played by a perfect cast, this is one that you shouldn't miss. Unfortunate problems with the sound--from the endless winds in Patagonia--and other troubles kept it from theatrical release in the U.S. But Day-Lewis, as always, deserves an Oscar for this characterization. At least.