Cynical Cinema

One of the best movies coming out on DVD today is Sabrina. This is an absolutely classic film. Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing the special edition of Sabrina on November 11th, and it is the best movie of Audrey Hepburn’s career. The main reason for this is that it isn’t, really, an Audrey Hepburn movie. It’s a Humphrey Bogart movie, where Hepburn is the catalyst for Bogart. This is the best cast of any Hepburn movie, and William Holden is magnificent as the third corner of the Hepburn-Bogart love triangle. Much like other Audrey Hepburn movies, Sabrina is very much a fairy tale. Not a Disney-type fairy tale, but rather a Billy Wilder-style fairy tale, which is much better. This one makes no effort to hide the fairy tale roots, and actually begins with the words “Once Upon A Time”.

Once Upon A Time, you see, Audrey Hepburn was the best-looking woman in the world. Not only was she totally hot, she was also an accomplished actress who exuded charm, innocence and a remarkable capacity for fun. Perhaps the toughest thing for a really great actress is to be beautiful, funny, and convincing in the lead role of a romantic comedy. And in Sabrina, Hepburn has never been better. Few actresses, in any romantic comedy, have ever been better. At around the same time that Audrey Hepburn was the greatest actress in the world, Humphrey Bogart was the biggest star in the world, winding down his incredible career. The role he took in Sabrina was originally intended for Cary Grant, and Bogart certainly took something of a risk with this movie, playing entirely against type. Further, at the same time, William Holden was a young, rising star who had just come off stellar turns in two all-time classics, Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17.

The three of them came together at the exact right time for Sabrina. It’s a lighthearted comedic movie based on a stage play by Samuel A. Taylor. Hepburn plays the titular Sabrina, the daughter of the chauffeur at the Larrabee estate. Daughter of a chauffeur - fairy tale much? Sabrina is infatuated with William Holden’s character, David Larrabee, the son of the wealthy estate owner Oliver Larrabee (Walter Hampden). But David has grown up with Sabrina hanging around, and thinks of her as just a kid. When she goes away to Paris for chef school, and returns a woman. A woman who looks like Audrey Hepburn. Now David is as infatuated with her as she is with him, despite the fact that he is already engaged to be married to someone else. In order to prevent an incident that would threaten the family business, David’s brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) attempts to keep the two apart by pretending to court her himself. Of course, this being a lighthearted 1954 comedy-fairy-tale, we know that Bogart and Hepburn will be the two who end up together, but it is the resolution of that romance that makes Sabrina so totally worthwhile.

Like I said, this is really a Humphrey Bogart film, and not an Audrey Hepburn film. Holden does a great job as David, the debonnaire playboy. But his character is, for the most part, one-dimensional. Audrey Hepburn is radiant and wonderful, but she doesn’t change a whole lot during the movie, and her radiance exists mostly as a catalyst for the change in Bogart. When Sabrina begins, Linus is a serious, almost dour number-cruncher, a man who has tunnel-vision when it comes to the family business. Of course, by the end of the movie he discovers that love can actually matter more than finance, and so on and so forth. It’s a fairy tale and it’s Audrey Hepburn. Many critics have suggested that the chemistry between Hepburn and Bogart doesn’t compare to that between Bogart and Lauren Bacall. And this is true. But when Bogart and Bacall appeared in movies together, she was the bad-girl femme fatale and he was the tough-guy private investigator. Put Bacall in the role of Sabrina and the chemistry would have been about the same.

The second disc of the Paramount Centennial Collection DVD set of Sabrina contains a ton of Paramount-specific special features, many of which are worthwhile. The Sabrina Documentary segment is the same one you could have found on the Audrey Hepburn Collection DVD from several years ago, and it is pretty interesting. More in-depth is the feature on William Holden, William Holden: The Paramount Years, which deals only briefly with his personal life but takes us through many of his classic Paramount movies, including one of my personal favourites, The Bridges At Toko-Ri. There is a booklet included with the set that contains some interesting information, but nothing you can’t get from the special features. It talks about the fact that whether it was Billy Wilder or Audrey Hepburn who suggested it, the rights to Sabrina were purchased as a vehicle for Hepburn. Which makes it even more impressive that Wilder decided in the end to turn this into a Bogart movie. Hepburn still shines through, but Bogart owns Sabrina.

Perhaps the most interesting special feature is called Audrey Hepburn: Fashion Icon. The other 10-or-15-minute features skim the surface on many things, but this 20-minute documentary tells you everything you need to know about Hepburn and her ties to the fashion world. Of course she had a very famous relationship with Givenchy, and the two of them made stars of each other. I’m not much of a fashion guy, and I will admit to being a little bored with this feature, but my girlfriend was fascinated and sat in rapt attention the whole time. Hepburn was already a style icon by the time Sabrina was filmed, thanks entirely to Roman Holiday, but this movie cemented her reputation and led to a lifetime where she was inextricably linked to the fashion world. All I got out of this documentary was the idea that perhaps the trend toward toothpick models began with Audrey Hepburn, and that depressed me a little, but my girlfriend watched it three times. And took notes. I suspect that tomorrow she will show up with the same haircut and a little black dress. And I’ll be cool with that.

Sabrina was a great movie in a great era of movies, it featured three of the greatest stars ever to hit the silver screen, and the history behind the movie itself is absolutely fascinating. But more than that, it actually stands the test of time, and is as watchable and interesting and funny today as it was in 1954. If you’re going to pick up only one of the Paramount Centennial Collection movies being released today, make it Sunset Boulevard. But if you are going to pick up two, the second should be Sabrina. Frankly, you should pick up all three. Every DVD collection should have copies of Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, and Roman Holiday.

Roman Holiday was the movie that introduced Audrey Hepburn to the world in 1953. With any luck, Paramount Home Entertainment’s new edition of Roman Holiday on DVD, out November 11th, will be the film that re-introduces her to a whole new generation of movie watchers. Because everyone should see Audrey Hepburn do her thing. And her thing is at its best in Roman Holiday. Hepburn plays a princess, Princess Anne, who gets tired of protocol and royal customs and propriety and so forth, and runs off on her handlers during a diplomatic trip to Rome. She meets American journalist Joe Bradley, played by Gregory Peck, and he recognizes her. Of course, being the conniving journalist that he is, he pretends not to know who she is, in the hopes of getting an exclusive interview. But he gets more…a lot more…da-da-daaaaaaa. Of course, the two of them fall in love. It’s Audrey Hepburn, and it’s the 1950s.

Audrey Hepburn existed in movies in the 50s mainly to be the woman with whom charming men could fall in love. Sometimes inexplicably, like in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, where she plays one of the most irritatingly flaky screen characters in history. But in Roman Holiday, it does actually make sense. Not only is she the most gorgeous woman ever to appear on a movie screen, she is also charming and innocent in that princess-sheltered-from-the-world sort of way. This character had appeared in movies before, and today this character shows up in at least forty movies a year, but she has never been better than Audrey Hepburn. And rarely in a movie has her male love interest made more sense than the incredibly charming Gregory Peck does here. Think about My Fair Lady, where Hepburn ends up totally in love with the cruel, capricious, self-obsessed tyrant played by Rex Harrison, and for the life of me I can’t imagine why. In Roman Holiday, the central romance makes sense. Perhaps only Sabrina sees Audrey Hepburn make an equally sensible choice in a man, while still being an appealing female love interest. More on Sabrina later today.

The impact of Roman Holiday is extensive. First of all, it made a star of Audrey Hepburn, who remains one of the best-known actresses in history. Secondly, it created what would now be known as the Audrey Hepburn “look” - which, my girlfriend the hairdresser assures me, is basically “simple yet slick”. It is an extension of her own personality, in this movie and in many others - wide-eyed, and yet sophisticated. It also changed the way people saw settings in movies, as it serves in more ways than one as a travel brochure for Rome. Movies like even In Bruges today owe, in a small way at least, a debt to Roman Holiday. It was nominated for ten Oscars, and won two - Best Actress for Audrey Hepburn, and Best Screenplay for Ian McLellan Hunter. Although it should be noted that although Hunter was given the credit for the screenplay, it was co-written by the wonderful Dalton Trumbo, a man who was blacklisted in Hollywood at the time. Roman Holiday lost out on the Best Picture award in 1953, but deservedly so. From Here To Eternity WAS a better picture. In point of fact, the REAL best picture of 1953 was Shane, but it’s a little late to quibble.

The Paramount Centennial Collection edition DVD of this wonderful film has a second disc crammed full of special features. There is a featurette called Paramount in the 50s, an interesting little look back at the classic Paramount films of that era, and this same special feature is included on the Centennial Collection DVDs of Sabrina and Sunset Boulevard, also released today. There is a 15-minute feature called Remembering Audrey, which is a little bit interesting and features interviews with her adult son and her boyfriend from later in her life. There is also a more in-depth, half-hour look at Hepburn in Audrey Hepburn: The Paramount Years, which focuses, like so many others, on her relationships with designers like Givenchy and her husband, Mel Ferrer. And there is a featurette on the costumes of Paramount in the 50s.

But the best special feature on the disc is a fifteen-minute look at a forgotten man. Dalton Trumbo: From A-List To Blacklist is a look at Trumbo, the writer of Roman Holiday, who was shunned by the Hollywood establishment during the communist witch-hunt of the 1950s. Of course, there were many others who suffered the same fate. Trumbo basically won the Oscar for his screenplay for Roman Holiday, but that Oscar was presented to, and accepted by, Ian McLellan Hunter, a man who had never written a word and existed only as a front for Trumbo. This is as fascinating as a documentary can be in fifteen minutes, and it’s a great look back at a dark period in American history. For people who are really interested in this man and the House Un-American Activities Committee, there are some solid full-length documentaries out there which are of course more complete. But one of the best is The Hollywood Ten, another 15-minute documentary available as a special feature on the Criterion Collection DVD of Spartacus.

Also incredible in Roman Holiday is Rome itself. As Peck takes Hepburn on a tour around Rome, the city is shot in an incredibly vivid style that makes the rest of the movie as visually appealing as Hepburn herself. Well, almost. Rarely, in 1953, were movies actually shot on location. Just about anyone else would have shot this film on a Hollywood sound stage. Director William Wyler chose not to do so, and it was the third-best decision he made in the film. Next to, of course, the casting choices of Hepburn and Peck. Although the impact of the film has been the main reason it is remembered today, it stands the test of time simply for being a great film. Although it was the first Audrey Hepburn starring vehicle, it was also one of her best.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing another Carlos Mencia DVD today. A couple of weeks ago, they released a DVD of his stand-up, Carlos Mencia: Performance Enhanced. At the time, I said that it sucked. And that Carlos Mencia sucks. Now, a few weeks later, with the release of Mind of Mencia, Season Four, I can put an exclamation point on my earlier statements. Carlos Mencia is terrible. He is probably not the worst comic working today, but he is certainly the worst comic with his own TV show. He makes Dane Cook look like Jerry Seinfeld. How bad is he? Let’s examine the fourth season of his show to find out.

Who is the comic most people mock, more often than any other, the world over? I am going to go out on a very short limb in saying that it is Carrot-Top. Carrot-Top has become the standard punch-line in every non-comic’s jokes about bad comics. There is a moment, in the fourth episode of Season Four of Mind Of Mencia, where Carlos Mencia does a bit involving a briefcase that looks like a muffler, and other props, that really made me think I would rather be watching Carrot-Top. It’s one thing to do a “crazy John McCain” bit that smacks of lazy and terrible Jon Stewart. Or a “who has it worse” bit that is like a crappy, unclever, lazy Bill Maher. The stupid alien-ass-probe bit that was done way better by South Park, the unfunny Indiana Jones bit that was done far better by The Simpsons, and dozens of others. It is quite another thing to do a bit that makes CARROT-TOP look good. That is unfortunate.

What I think this show needs, more than anything else, is some co-stars. Every stand-up bit, every skit, every spoof, stars Carlos Mencia. Since Carlos Mencia is not funny, this is way too much Carlos Mencia. And maybe, just maybe, Mencia could find a co-star who is actually funny, and that would improve this show immeasurably. However, I think the problem may be that Carlos Mencia has no friends. During the stand-up portions of his sketch comedy show, he is constantly mentioning other people. Like, he’ll say “people are always coming up to me and saying ‘Carlos, my life is rough’”. Or some such thing. Now, this seems suspect to me. No one has ever come up to me and said anything like that. Not strangers, not acquaintances, and certainly not friends. I’m not a stand-up comic, so perhaps people approach me with different questions or statements than they do Carlos Mencia. But I find this unlikely.

And he will then, on stage, have a conversation with himself in the guise of “other people”. He will respond to this anonymous “other person”, as Carlos Mencia, and then respond again as the “other person”. This creates a bizarre, schizophrenic-style dialogue that really appears as though it never took place. And when he finishes his bit, very often he laughs way too hard at his own jokes. Which makes me feel like I’m watching an unfunny and vaguely creepy wannabe comic rehearsing his own routine in front of his bathroom mirror while he is off his meds. At the end of an episode, he says “that’s the show, and if you don’t like it, you can choose not to watch”. This is about the most insightful thing he has ever said on his program. But what he really means is “if you are offended, change the channel”. I am not offended, I am bored. I don’t like his show. And I choose not to watch.

Alliance Films is releasing Asterix At the Olympic Games today, November 11th. This DVD is a little different than the earlier Asterix DVDs, in that it is available with English subtitles and, should you want it, English dubbing. The first two Asterix et Obelix DVDs were in French only, but this one gets the English additions for the Canadian market. Also new is the guy playing Asterix himself. Gone is Christian Clavier, who played the character in the first two films, replaced by Clovis Cornillac. Perhaps they already had the dressing room for the actor playing Asterix outfitted with monogrammed towels, and they needed to find someone with the same initials to save some money. Because frankly, Cornillac is not the Asterix I have come to expect. Clavier was expressive, with a twitchy moustache and wide-eyed excitement. Cornillac is more of a preener, striking poses and looking bemused at his would-be opponents, like a French version of Cary Elwes. Not the same. Not cool.

Gerard Depardieu, however, returns in the role of Obelix, the beachball-shaped strongman who usually plays second-fiddle to Asterix. Although in this film, Asterix is given very little to actually do, and Obelix gets more face time. The real star of the film, however, is Stephane Rousseau as Alafolix, a Gaul who is in love with Princess Irina. She is portrayed, as is often the case in these movies, by a supermodel. This time the supermodel is the mouthwatering Vanessa Hessler, who has little to do except look extremely hot. And she does that very well. Once again, there is a new actor playing the druid Panoramix - this time it is Jean-Pierre Cassel, in his final film role. For the third time there is a new Julius Caesar, this time played by Alain Delon.

The basic plot of the film is that Princess Irina has decided she will marry the Winner Of The Olympics. How one guy can win the Olympics, and by extension the hand of Vanessa Hessler, is never clearly explained. Asterix and Obelix, with their super-strength and magic potion, are clearly winning all the events, which would lead me to believe that were the princess to honour her commitment, she would have to enter into a three-way relationship with the small mustachioed guy in the Viking helmet and the big fat hungry guy with Pippi Longstocking braids. I think I saw that in an adult film once, but how it would work here is unclear. It seems that everyone involved here has accepted the fact that if the Gauls win, Alafolix by extension wins, and he gets to marry the hot chick. However, if the Romans win, she will be forced to marry the unpleasant, devious and idiotic Brutus, son of Julius Caesar.

There are, as usual, some strange subplots. One involves Brutus constantly trying to knock off his old man, Caesar, which is a series of plots that meet with a Wile-E-Coyote level success rate. Another involves the Romans’ star athlete, a guy named (I think) Gluteus Maximus. Near the beginning of the movie, there is a rather unsettling scene where this big, muscular, athletic guy is sprinting through the forest and runs past Asterix and Obelix. Curious, the Gauls chase after him to find out why he is running so fast. They never really find out why, but still end up crushing him with a tree and then they beat the hell out of him. He wasn’t hurting anyone - this poor guy’s just out training. For the Olympics! They could have left him alone, you would think. I mean, sure, he bumped into Obelix a little bit as he sprinted by, but isn’t this reaction a little extreme? This makes Asterix and Obelix look like those muscle-guys in the bar who are looking for a fight every time someone jostles their elbow. Not cool, guys.

Also a little unsettling is the use of the magic strength potion to win the Olympics. After all, what kind of message does this send to kids? This movie is clearly created for children, then suggests that steroids are not such a bad idea? They call attention to this, administering a breathalyser test to the athletes and disqualifying Asterix and Obelix. But they are the heroes of the piece, and they laugh at the idea that the Romans have to cheat by banning them. But - they are using the potion! They are the cheaters! They should be banned! The Olympics appear to be held in Greece, which is historically accurate. Greece appears to be a part of the Roman Empire. Which is not historically accurate. They are clearly making a reference to the rock band Rolling Stones, but they say “Les Pierres Qui Roulent”. A lot of this doesn’t make sense.

Like the other two films in this series, Asterix at the Olympic Games features numerous references to other movies. Star Wars, Ben-Hur, and so forth. Most of these are distracting and pointless, but one stands out. There is a moment where Gerard Depardieu, as Obelix, whispers love poems to the love-struck Alafolix as he stands under Princess Irina’s window. It’s an obvious reference to Cyrano De Bergerac, a movie in which Depardieu plays the icon of unrequited love who whispers love poems from the bushes. Then he does the same for his dog Idefix, who falls in love with the princess’ dog. And that gets pretty stupid.

I like the way these movies are shot. I like the fact that they are colourful, the costumes are terrific, and yet you never forget you are watching a cartoon brought to live-action on the screen. But I think the biggest problem with the movies is the fact that (for France) they are big-budget. And when a film has a budget this big, film makers seem to think that the only way to truly justify that is to throw in as much stuff as they can, using up their resources and money. Which leads to subplots about dogs in love, inventions to kill Caesar, and a half-hour of unnecessary crap between the announcement of the climactic chariot race and the beginning of that race itself. Asterix At The Olympic Games is almost two hours long, but it should be about 80 minutes. That’s all the real content there is. We get it. Obelix is strong, Princess Irina is hot, the Roman guy is evil and stupid, now get on with the movie.

The best thing about the movie (other than the hotness of Vanessa Hessler) is actually the English dubbing and the English subtitles. How the English could be so strange and badly done here, I have no idea. But it’s hilarious! The hero of the story, Alafolix, gets his name changed to “Lovesix”. The king of Greece is named Samagas. In the English dubbing, this translates to something that sounds like “Boogerpus”. And the English subtitles to the scene call him “Obnoxious”. As though that is his name. Wouldn’t the single easiest thing to translate in a movie be the names of the characters? Even changing their names to things like “Jim”, or “Ted” would make SOME sense, if you wanted English audiences to see names they recognized. But why change a Latin name to something more incomprehensible? It’s pretty strange. And pretty funny.

There are some things that make Asterix At The Olympic Games worthwhile. The always-amusing Depardieu, the colourful, vibrant filming and set design, the gorgeous Vanessa Hessler. And of course the hilarious subtitles and some fun cartoon violence. But there are an equal number of things that make this film sag. The useless subplots, the overly long interludes between the action, and the questionable messages for children - steroid use, bar-brawl bullying, and attempted patricide. I’ll leave it up to you and split the difference in my review. With one extra half-star for the fact that it’s a great way to help your kids learn French, and another extra half-star for the cameos by famous sports figures - Tony Parker, Amelie Mauresmo, Michael Schumacher and Zinedine Zidane.

Last year, at about this time, Alliance Films released a box set called the Original Christmas Classics. It contained Christmas shows and movies with which we are all, I’m sure, familiar. The claymation stuff - Rudolph, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, the Frosty movies. It was a really nice nostalgic set. This year, Alliance is releasing The New Christmas Classics on a similar box set on November 4th. This time, the content of the box is decidedly less familiar. George of the Jungle, Casper The Friendly Ghost, Gumby, and Fat Albert are not generally thought of as Christmas Classics. At least, not that I’m aware.

The first series in the box is Gumby. This is the first time I have ever seen Gumby, a show from the 1960s about a weird little dude made out of clay with a pointy head who travels into books with his weird little clay horse friend. In this manner, the two manage to travel through history, observing the events as they take place and in some cases affecting the outcome. The books they enter are sometimes classics, like A Christmas Carol, and other times they are books that have never existed. Like The Big Snow Hill. The first episode appears to have nothing to do with Christmas at all, it is about Thanksgiving and the Mayflower. The second episode sees the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. This episode features some 1960s-style questionable history and attitudes toward Indians, and the theft of a bunch of corn.

Then there are episodes with no dialogue, that just see Gumby running around and falling into toasters and cement mixers and then putting himself back together. He and Pokey the horse visit fairy tales involving poor kings and princes and the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is an episode called In a Fix that involves a bunch of strange bird-like clay creatures that hop around. It is a genuinely bizarre collection of Gumby episodes, and of the 12 that are featured on this set, only three are even tangentially related to Christmas. The main theme of the Christmas episodes is Ebeneezer Scrooge, who keeps escaping from A Christmas Carol to wreak havoc on Christmas. Apparently the Grinch wasn’t yet the anti-Christmas villain yet in 1967, so Scrooge became the bad guy. He keeps trying to kidnap Santa, or at the very least discredit him. In one particularly memorable episode, Scrooge uses the word “humbug” as a verb, a noun, a preposition, an adverb, an adjective, and an epithet. Sometimes within the same sentence. Another great one involves a couple of little clay building blocks who drive a tank that shoots lasers. And then there are nine other bizarre episodes of Gumby that may appeal to stoners in some way.

The next series in the set is Fat Albert. And because every single cartoon, ever, does a Christmas episode that rips off A Christmas Carol, this one is no exception. The boys are trying to put together a Christmas pageant at their clubhouse, a shack in the junkyard. The mean old Scroogey owner of the junkyard wants to bulldoze the shack, and hates the kids, and is miserly with money, and is generally a nuisance. A young couple with no job and no money end up in the shack to have their new baby, because there is nowhere else for them to go. There is a Tiny Tim character named Marshall, the son of the downtrodden couple, and there are some standard Fat Albert style cheesy lines. “You remind me of school at vacation time - no class!” Of course, in the end, the old Scrooge sees the error of his ways, and all is mended. There are two other Fat Albert episodes on the DVD, neither of which has anything to do with Christmas. One is about a girl who is embarrassed about her poverty and her rundown house, and the other is about Fat Albert’s friends helping him with his chores so he can go to the zoo and feed an elephant.

Then there is George of the Jungle. This show is reasonably funny, for a kids’ cartoon, and the six episodes here are pretty good. But again, only two of them have anything to do with Christmas. Again, we get the Christmas Carol cartoon cop-out, as George is visited by three goats. Get it? Goats? The Goat of Christmas Presents? You see, he has tried to make Christmas happen for some irritating city girl who lives in the jungle. Not being familiar with Christmas, he gets overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit, and makes every day a Christmas celebration, much to the chagrin of his friends. He is visited by three ghosts. Three ghost goats. Who show him the error of his ways, blah blah blah, and everything turns out fine.

The other George of the Jungle episodes involve a crazy rash George can’t scratch, and a weird baboon who hogs George’s heroism for himself. Although he calls himself a marmoset, he’s clearly a mandril. He has the coloured nose and all. There’s one about a magical bathroom that gets stolen, and all the apes begin disappearing from the jungle. And then there is the George’s Birthday Present episode where George has his first birthday ever. A premise which is virtually identical to the one in the episode where he tries to provide Ursula, the annoying city girl, with her Christmas.

And that brings us to the final series in the box set, Casper. Not the TV series, but a made-for-TV movie called Casper’s Haunted Christmas. This is an 80-minute movie with the computer-generated Casper and his computer-generated uncles taking up residence in Kriss, Massachusetts. Get it? Kriss, Mass? Anyway, after a Randy Travis theme song and the appearance of a ghost who is clearly Slimer from Ghostbusters, we get into the movie. Apparently, some giant green ghost god will revoke the ghost licenses of the uncles if Casper doesn’t scare someone by Christmas. You see, ghosts have to scare people, and blah blah blah. At the very least, in this movie they make the point - Casper does, indeed, scare people all the time when they discover he’s a ghost. But in this case, it is scaring people on purpose that matters. He has until Christmas to do so, or the four of them will be banished to some dark-space purgatory for eternity.

This set-up takes about seven minutes. Which means that the next 73 minutes need to be filled with something. And that something is cheesy, awful jokes. Like the kind I used to see on Hallowe’en cards when we were forced to exchange them with our classmates in the second grade. See if these phrases make you laugh - smellular phone! Shocking days until Christmas! No? Yeah, me either. There is an incredibly painful few minutes of dialogue about “scare mail”, the “ghost office”, and the dead letter department. Basically, it is the same show that Casper used to be when it was a cartoon, years ago, only much worse. And with slightly better animation.

Overall, with a total of 22 episodes of various series in this box set, only 7 of them actually have anything to do with Christmas. Of the seven Christmas episodes, five of them are takes on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. If you count the Casper movie, six of the seven involve three ghosts. And very few are worthwhile. But the box set could, conceivably, keep your kids entertained from December 1st all the way until Christmas.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Shrek The Halls on DVD November 4th. I sort of get it - it’s Christmas soon, and all these things are hitting the shelves a couple of months early because there are some crazy Christmas fanatics who want to load up on Elmo’s Christmas and Fat Albert’s Christmas and Shrek’s Christmas so they can watch a new one every day between now and December 25th. I guess. I don’t really understand the Christmas fanatics, and I also don’t understand most Christmas DVDs. Like this one. Shrek The Halls is a 22-minute made-for-TV episode that is, I suppose, a spin-off of the successful series of Shrek movies. It isn’t the Star Wars Holiday Special, in terms of being truly awful, but it certainly seems equally pointless.

It was pointless to make this episode. The main joke here, as it was with the last Shrek movie, is the lame “ogres fart and burp and eat gross stuff” joke. He’s farting. Get it? The baby ogres eat slime that smells gross. Get it? And then there is the same plot as there is in every Shrek movie. Christmas gets chaotic, Shrek gets angry, he fights with everyone, Donkey gets sad, Fiona admonishes her husband, Shrek feels bad, everyone makes up and everyone comes together in one big ball of happy. So…why was this even made? More to the point, why is this on DVD? It’s 22 minutes long. Why wasn’t this a special feature on the DVD for Shrek 3? Or thrown into the New Christmas Classics DVD alongside Casper, Fat Albert, Gumby and George Of The Jungle? How did this 22-minute clip merit it’s own DVD?

Frankly, I can’t understand how this even got approved for television. Here is a sample of the wittiness of this show - the song to close it all out:

“Shrek the halls with Puss and Donkey,
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Christmas time can be so wonky
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

If you couldn’t have written something like this when you were eleven, then you were a pretty slow eleven-year-old. And that means that even the slowest of eleven-year-olds will find this DVD unfunny, because they will recognize that it could have been written by a classmate. Or by some Hollywood writer with forty seconds to spare between takes on the set of Cavemen.

I am getting pretty sick of reviewing Madagascar. I reviewed it when it first came out on DVD, and I said it was “meh”. It then came out on Blu-Ray September 23rd, and I said it was “meh” with nicer pictures and a few more special features. And now, Madagascar, Holiday Edition is coming out November 4th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. What makes it a “holiday edition”? Well…there is a cardboard sleeve over the DVD with a red border, and what look to be Christmas lights. There is also a special feature called The Penguins In A Christmas Caper. So…Christmas edition, then?

No. Here’s the deal - that Christmas Caper short? It’s on the original DVD. And on the Blu-Ray. In fact, there are no new special features at all. Everything on this DVD was on the original DVD. Except for that red border and the Christmas lights. That’s the only new thing in this entire package. So why bother? Well, it puts it in a better location on store shelves in time for Christmas, and people might pick it up, but more than that - it calls attention to Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa, which hits theatres this Friday. So consider this a success, Paramount - Madaagascar 2: Escape From Africa is in theatres Friday. Tell your kids!

Call me jaded. I probably am. But most of the time, I have a very easy time suspending my disbelief when movies get into out-of-this-world, totally-impossible territory. But it’s up to the movie to pull you in. And if you’re going to make, say, Spy Kids, you need to make this otherwordly scene so entertaining and captivating that people forget easily how implausible it is. Journey To The Center of the Earth is not one of those movies. I mean, if you’re going to create a world, at the center of the Earth, and have glow-in-the-dark birds and tyrannosaurs and gigantic sea monsters inhabit that world, that’s fine. But you must, in doing so, acknowledge that this is all scientifically impossible. I mean, the falling six thousand, four hundred kilometres to the center of the earth and surviving. The idea that being at the centre of the earth would not, in itself, kill you. And the idea that you could survive the trip back to the surface riding on a geyser. All of this is, I think we can all agree, scientifically impossible.

And that’s fine. Movies do not have to make scientific sense, or even attempt to be plausible. They are made for kids. And kids watch Space Chimps. But here’s the thing - if you’re the one making this film, you NEED to, at the very least, acknowledge that you are making something far, far outside the realm of realistic science. And in order to make that acknowledgement, ALL you have to do - ALL - is not call attention to it. Like, make your protagonist a kid, who falls down a really, really deep six thousand kilometre hole, into the centre of the Earth, and lands on…I don’t know…a marshmallow tree, and somehow survives. And then there is this massive world. That would be really, really easy to do.

The thing NOT to do is to make your protagonist a scientist. Or Brendan Fraser. In this case, Journey To The Center Of The Earth has made both mistakes at once. The protagonist IS Brendan Fraser. Playing a scientist. Who is constantly figuring out scientific things. Like, the walls are made of magnesium, and if you light magnesium with a match, it burns. This could come in handy. The geothermal winds are more powerful and strong than the surface winds, so we need to put our boat-kite way up in the air. The ground is made of tungsten calcite, and therefore is in imminent danger of collapsing. (I’m making up most of these words. I don’t remember the movie well enough and I don’t care enough about it to look them up.)

But the point I’m making is that if you’re going to make one of your characters a genius, you can only do so if your movie is also going to be smart. And if you are going to make one of your characters a scientist, your movie should at the very least be scientifically plausible. Make Brendan Fraser a crane operator, or a Wendy’s manager, and I would have much, much less of a problem with this movie.

Now, I must give the DVD some credit here - it comes with 3-D glasses, so if you wish you can put on those glasses and watch this movie in 3-D.  And some of that is pretty cool.  But even if those special effects were the greatest in movie history, I wouldn’t be willing to sit through this story, this script and this acting in order to find out. Skip this one, either way. Journey To The Centre of the Earth comes out October 28th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Carlos Mencia is just not that funny. I tried to like him through his entire stand-up performance Carlos Mencia: Performance Enhanced, out October 28th from Paramount Home Entertainment. I really tried. But this man does not make me laugh. At all. I believe I laughed once through his entire performance. And I know that he tries to make people either laugh or cringe, but I didn’t cringe either. I just sat there, bored out of my mind, for sixty-six minutes. Mencia’s style of comedy is the kind that pushes boundaries, makes people squirm, and offends people. He makes fun of every race, and people laugh, and he says the N-word, and people laugh, and that’s about it.

He seems to think he’s redeeming himself when he breaks out of the stand-up routine to say something nice and intense about the soldiers in Iraq. But he isn’t. It comes off as platitudes that he spouts because the nice stuff then gives him license to offend everyone on the planet. But it isn’t nice stuff. It’s bland, obvious stuff. And the offensive stuff isn’t offensive either. Just saying racial stuff isn’t in itself naughty or crude, it’s boring. And sadly, so is Carlos Mencia.

Paramount Home Entertainment releases the fifth season of Girlfriends on October 28th. As I said about the fourth season, the four stars in this sit-com are all terrible people. They are obnoxious, and irritating, and gold-digging and crazy and self-centred and stupid and lazy and conniving and backstabbing. Watching an entire season’s worth of women trying to one-up each other and screaming about their own needs could take a toll on one’s nerves. And mine are shot right now, as I write this review. The “girl” part of Girlfriends I understand. After all, the show is about four girls. The “friends” part confuses me. How these women can remain friends while being so LOUDLY into themselves is beyond me.

Season five of this show sees one of the girls trying to get back together with her husband, because she is pregnant. Why this man would even consider taking her back is beyond me. This woman is awful. Another woman struggles with the fact that she is in love with a man who confessed his love to her, but now he’s with another woman…straight out of Friends, I suppose. Another woman is publishing a book, and fighting with everyone around her because she is so powerfully self-centred and stupid. In fact, she appears to be much too stupid to write a book at all. I would suggest that most of the people in this show are too dumb and self-aggrandizing to accomplish most of the things that they do on the show.

Then there’s the laugh track. The reason sit-coms have a laugh track is that they need to tell you when things are funny, and it’s time to laugh. If you find yourself hearing the background laughter, and you didn’t laugh, and you’re not sure why, then you can know the people who made the show think that moment was funny. But you don’t. And you didn’t laugh, which means it actually wasn’t funny. In the first episode of Season Five of Girlfriends, there is a recurring joke about a lesbian chasing one of the main characters. And she keeps stopping the chase to take off her shoes. And the laugh track rolls. But then, you can tell that even the laugh track is half-hearted. Like, it’s a slow, quiet, rumbling of half-chuckle laughter in the background. One that gets quieter and quieter each time the gag is repeated. And deservedly so.

Girlfriends was cancelled after five seasons, so this was going to be the last one. But apparently it has, mystifyingly, just been renewed for several more seasons. At noon on Tuesdays somewhere in the states. Half-assed laugh tracks, self-centred, awful characters, and few compelling stories make this series one to skip. So skip it.