Harry Potter and the Horns of Dilemma.

Soon after the mysterious death of his girlfriend, Ig Perrish wakes to find two horns growing out of his forehead. He realizes people are revealing their innermost secrets to him, and Ig figures it must be due to the horns, which no one gives any undue notice. He realizes he can use this bizarre power to hunt down his girlfriend’s killer.

A supernatural murder mystery, with lots of red herrings and lots of red devils, HORNS is a sui generis black comedy from the mind of Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King. Taken from Hill’s novel of the same name, screenwriter Kevin Bunin and director Alexandre Aja craft a compelling tale of intrigue in a small logging town, but cannot sustain the film’s original tone into the third act, which gets caught up in questionable special effects that temper the unique storytelling and well-constructed pacing.

Movie opens with Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) and his girl Merrin (Juno Temple) sharing a romantic moment under a tree. Next thing he knows, Ig is waking up at his place, groggy drunk, with an angry mob outside blaming him for the murder of Merrin.

After Ig spends a bitter night with a barmaid (Kelli Garner), he wakes to find he has sprouted small devil-like horns. Suddenly the barmaid is pigging out on a box of donuts, telling him she’d like to get really fat because people think she’s trash and have to get drunk to sleep with her. Ooookay… we can chalk that one up to chicks being chicks, but then…

When Ig visits a doctor’s office to see about the horns, a waiting patient tells him she’d like to “kick my daughter right in her spoiled ass, and divorce my husband so I could fuck my golf pro again. I’ve never been with a jigaboo before!” Now that’s deeper than chick crazy. The nurse and doctor are no better, confessing deep-rooted fantasies to Ig. In a fit of desperation, Ig tells the doctor to saw off the horns – and wakes from his anesthetic to find the doctor and nurse having sex, with the saw stuck mid-cut through one of his horns! And they’re getting bigger.

While under anesthetic, Ig flashbacks to when he was a little boy meeting Merrin for the first time – but we already know what Daniel Radcliffe looks like as a little boy – and young Ig doesn’t look one bit like Harry Potter!

As Ig’s quest progresses, snakes now drape themselves around him. The priest tells Ig to kill himself, the bartender wants to burn his bar down for the insurance, his own mother (Kathleen Quinlan) spews vitriol at Ig blaming him for the murder, and Merrin’s father (the great David Morse) wants to shoot Ig. The only person who seems sane and unaffected is Ig’s lawyer friend Lee (Max Minghella), who can’t see the horns: “Maybe the horns don’t work on good people…”

When a feather boa is REALLY a boa.

Underscored by a great rock soundtrack (Bowie’s Heroes, Pixies’ Where Is My Mind, Manson’s Personal Jesus, Wanton Bishops’ Sleep With The Lights On), movie is filled with flashbacks that explore Ig’s and Merrin’s relationship and how it might have led to her death. The breakup scene is so real it’s uncomfortable. Fellas, watch carefully: this is how every woman you are madly in love with is going to come at you – suddenly, irrationally, and when you think everything is going swimmingly; there will be a moment when you wonder exactly who you are talking to and how this person got into your girlfriend’s body and mind. But there is another compelling layer here, that Ig (and we the viewers) will find out too late.

Climax finds Ig turning into a giant red devil, rendered so poorly that Hogwarts called and said they’d lend the movie an Expecto Patronus. Final scene repeats the opening scene, showing Ig and Merrin under that tree together, implying this was the final scene all along; implying they are together in death… implying that if devils exist, then so do ghosts reuniting, wearing ghost clothes lying on ghost grass, ending in ghost sex. (Does this make – ghost babies?)

In his quest to break away from Harry, Daniel Radcliffe does a commendable job. (Remember, the last POTTER film was a mere two years ago, 2011. Radcliffe accepted THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012) directly after THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 (2011) in a blatant attempt to re-cast his goodboy image – although choosing that film about ghosts thankfully didn’t backfire). The whole cast are ensconced in their tragic roles – except for Max Minghella, who seems miscast and oddly detached, as Ig’s friend and as an actor in the movie.

Movie is so enjoyable because it doesn’t explore anything deeper than Ig’s revenge quest and the power of suggestion and confession that the horns seem to convey. There is no moral questioning of whether Ig is doing the right thing using his powers to make two officers have homo sex, or whether he should kill the real killer of Merrin. That is, movie is devoid of that weary pondering: Just because someone CAN do something, SHOULD they?

That’s what makes HORNS a devil of a film!

END

Falling into a dying star is no time to play Follow The Sexy Leader.

Lost In Act Three.

LOST IN SPACE blasts off as a well-produced science fiction adventure, then gets lost loster than its lostest characters.

Brought to the big screen from the 1965 TV series, LOST IN SPACE captures much of the dynamics between all the characters originally created by Irwin Allen; it updates the tech, the spaceship, the production value; it gives nods and winks to the original’s aged and ageless fans; it adds dimensions to the interaction between the characters we’ve known and loved for decades – and then it goes and puts them in a story so dull and effects-laden, we want to do to the movie what Don wants to do to Judy while she’s in cryo-sleep.

Movie opens quite abruptly at an orbiting construction site (the “hypergate”), in the year 2058, accompanied by useless and silly narration, as William Hurt tells us “warring nations had forgotten their differences and The United Global Space Force was constructing this hypergate to colonize space.” Firstly, the phrase “forgotten their differences” should really bug anyone even mildly aware of the nuances behind geopolitical alliances and hostilities; but in the very next breath, Hurt tells us terrorists are preparing to strike— So there goes all that dumb talk about peace! And we see that narration itself as a geopolitical tactic: the filmmakers want international screenings and no boycotts by naming any hostile nations. (It’s what the ’65 original did in its own way, by claiming, “other countries sabotaging the mission.”)

Then we open on a space dogfight around the hypergate, featuring rugged, principled fighter pilot Don West (Matt LeBlanc) – movie already gambling with its credibility by introducing this mannequin-faced non-actor on loan from FRIENDS in its first scenes – repelling some of those aforementioned terrorists. Movie also gambles that the thoughtful, intriguing concept of interstellar colonization should come with an appetizer of Pretty Orange Explosions and pew-pew lasers. And Joey Tribbiani.

At last we arrive at the meat: a press conference for the mission to Alpha Prime (We presume, from prior knowledge, it’s the name of a planet in the Alpha Centauri triple-star system, although this is never mentioned. Matter of fact, LOST IN SPACE 1965 was where I first heard of the concept and name of Alpha Centauri being the closest star to Earth – I’m sure I was not the first ten-year-old to learn this!)

William Hurt is Professor John Robinson, the staid, preoccupied patriarch of the first family in space, the Robinsons (Hurt is brilliant, his underplaying just beautiful; he’s a walking, talking Actor’s Guide to Acting!).

Mimi Rogers (AUSTIN POWERS) is John’s biochemist wife, an understanding mother and loving partner; unafraid to take a strong hand to keep him in check when he and Don are “hosing down the deck with testosterone” (i.e. arguing over who’s in command of the mission).

Heather Graham (who would appear in AUSTIN POWERS 2) is mouthwatering Judy – no wonder Don wants her so bad! – eldest daughter and ship’s doctor; she tamps down Don’s libido at their first meeting, “Those who can’t think, fight.” That doesn’t stop him from thinking – about her deep space.

Lacey Chaubert is Penny, with the type of annoying squeezetoy voice that will only attract pedophiles and wife-beaters. She’s the teen demo: hooker mascara, rad clothes, doesn’t want to leave her friends on Earth, makes video diaries, is brought home frequently by cops for misbehavin’ – what-EVeeeer! It’s amusing that even in the 2018 LOST IN SPACE Netflix reboot, Penny’s character is crafted for the same teen demo (which has morphed to Angsty Millennial), yet Original Penny was just an innocent pre-teen (although she did get froozy in that episode where they went to that teen planet – hey! Maybe Penny was a Bad Girl after all!).

Expressionless Jack Johnson is Will, youngest child, smartest geek. Not a great actor, but then, surround him with tech and hope for the best. Thus it is Will who becomes closest to the Robot, only because he has the technical knowledge on how to control him. And the Robot—

He-hey! That voice! We’d recognize it from the sands of Saudi Arabia to the deserts of Alpha Prime – it’s Dick Tufeld, original voice of the 1965 Robot! And yes, he gets in a coupla solid “Danger, Will Robinson”s to make us tumescent. Designed to look like he has an evil twin growing out of his lower body, only later would he be redesigned by Will to minimally resemble our beloved bubble-headed booby!

The absent father, the strong mother, the too-busy daughter, the vogue daughter, the brilliant son, the egotistic pilot, the Robot helper, and – the saboteur, Dr. Zachary Smith!

Acting megalith Gary Oldman (AIR FORCE ONE) plays Dr. Smith as a hybrid of Saboteur Jonathan Harris (from the first few episodes of Season 1, 1965) and Effete Jonathan Harris (Seasons 2 and 3). Only Oldman could pull off such a subtle, dangerous, funny, lethal role, from his aversion to facing danger, to his epithets for the Robot (“You mechanical moron!”); at times we can’t tell where Jonathan Harris ends and Oldman begins.

Five original cast members cameo: June Lockhart (aka Maureen), Marta Kristen (aka Judy), Angela Cartwright (aka Penny), Mark Goddard (aka Don West), with quite a meaty role as the General who introduces Professor Robinson to this movie’s Don West. And Dick Tufeld, still stuck inside the Robot. (Bill Mumy wanted to appear as the Older Will, which would have made for a great meta twist, but obviously his agent wasn’t shark enough.)

In retrospect, this is probably Matt LeBlanc’s best acting role of his career. Not kidding or being sarcastic. In between taping FRIENDS episodes, he flies back and forth to this film set to play it straighter than any straight man, as a hotshot pilot who’s loyal to Robinson, hot for Judy, got a hardon for Smith and pilots the Jupiter 2 like a Harley in space. Unfortunately, he’s completely overshadowed like a planet being eclipsed by a thousand suns, by appearing alongside two of the greatest actors of any generation: when he’s not interacting with Hurt, he’s facing down Oldman! Poor, poor boy! It’s ludicrous seeing LeBlanc’s le blank expressions up against either of these thespian giants.

Well, this movie did one thing right by failing: It stopped Matt LeBlanc from going on to become an action hero. I don’t think I could live in a society with Matt LeBlanc in place of Bruce Willis.

The opening plot is homage to 1965’s Season 1 Episode 1 “The Reluctant Stowaway,” where Dr. Smith programs the Robot to destroy the ship in flight, and is then stuck onboard. There is a better-written dilemma here, where Smith is double-crossed by his bosses (Edward Fox) and left to die in the Jupiter 2 to eradicate evidence of their sabotage.

There is an outer covering on the Jupiter 2, called – appropriately – Jupiter 1. These space agency scenes are pretty legit during launch, although I don’t know why they would launch a vehicle into space in that flat saucer position, causing maximum drag. Anyway, Jupiter 1 cracks open in orbit and Jupiter 2 emerges, shaped like three bubbles squashed together.

It is when the Robinsons reach deep space that the bad decisions really start to pile up – not from the crew on the ship, but the crew on the film. Akiva Goldsman screenplays, trying to make up for his abortion BATMAN & ROBIN (1997) from the year before, and Stephen Hopkins (THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS) directs, and together they turn a grand adventure into so much trope and cliché and stupidity.

The process by which the Robinsons reach deep space is good writing: the Robot starts destroying the ship, and Smith desperately wakes the hibernating family, who discover the Jupiter is caught in the Sun’s gravitational pull (a nod to one of the plots in the original series). They use the new “hyperdrive” to shoot through the Sun – and without a hypergate on the other end, they know it will shoot them into unchartered space. Which happens.

The Robinsons encounter a ghost ship, whose records show it is from Earth’s future, on a rescue mission of the Jupiter and its crew! The filmmakers then turn this cerebral plot development into – CGI spiders chasing the family, and stupid CGI helmets and war masks. So they escape and can circle back to exploring that time-warp plot—nope, it’s Pretty Orange Explosion time as Don blows up the ghost ship for no reason other than to excite ten-year-olds who were falling asleep with the wormhole-to-the-future plot.

I HATE CGI INSECTOIDS! This film was probably one of the first to use them, but they’ve become a staple in many futuristic films; I guess they’re easy to render. The only role they fulfill is creating more runtime for the movie, and are NEVER necessary to move the plot forward. A spider bites Smith, who will turn into an insectoid in the final act – but we don’t need a swarm of spiders for that plot point – it only takes one, if at all.

The Jupiter immediately crash-lands on a planet (with breathable air, mind you! – the original series taught us well!), and the adventure seems to stall.

The last act is a dichotomy of good ideas coupled with bad execution, as the filmmakers explore the wormhole plot to a poignant conclusion.

the big mistakes:

• LOST IN SPACE boasts some of the worst CGI you will ever see in a tentpole movie. It seems like Irwin Allen Productions went forward with the movie even though they knew the technology couldn’t handle the filmmakers’ vision. Though there are reportedly over 900 CGI shots (the most in any film at the time), the first time we notice the lackluster computer graphics is during the cryo-sleep sequence, where fully-CGI restraints and eye-shades magically appear over each Robinson.
• The execrable CGI baby-ape-thing called “Blarp” that Penny befriends (a nod to the chimp called Bloop in the original series, which was just as idiotic a character). This special effects animal is utterly separate from its real life environment; a precursor to Jar Jar Binks, it’s not fooling anyone that it’s really in the scene with the actors. And when it is in the background of so many scenes, it ruins the suspension of disbelief, even if the scene is important. No one is wondering “How did they do that?” as with Gollum in THE TWO TOWERS. It literally looks like a Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny cartoon. They bring that terrible special effect onboard the Jupiter without any thought of quarantine. Or rendering apparently.
• The CGI spiders that look so artificial I thought they were robots, but they were meant to be organic. I think. I still can’t tell.
• Penny’s voice, Penny’s vogue, Penny’s hooker mascara, Penny’s acting, Penny calling Will “kiddo.”
• The Robot redesign: Don’t fix what ain’t broke!
• The family doing a “Goodnight, John Boy” homage, which should have had the funders running for the hills.
• The “LS” logo: As if Alpha Control had printed caps with “LS” on it, as in “We’re gonna get this family LOST like a mo’fo.”
  
• Ending titles trying to be too hip: They incorporate John Williams’s soaring theme into a rap beat. Wrong!
• Matt LeBlanc: Though he does a good job… he’s Matt LeBlanc.

the biggest mistakes:

• Dr. Smith becoming an insectoid: a full-CGI joke of a cartoon. Not only that, he’s got an eggsac hanging off his butt— Euuw, gross! Does this mean he’s a hermaphrodite? They had the greatest actor in the world, who could do poignant, funny, menacing, ominous, evil – any emotion you want, or a combination thereof – and they plop his rendered face on a cartoon scorpion-thing. The wasteful idiocy of the filmmakers in throwing away Oldman’s expertise for a goony cartoony, is almost as high as their audacity in thinking their scheme worked.
• Time-Travel Mumy: In the third act, Older Will appears, played by Jared Harris. This movie might have been saved – on a psychological level at least – if they had cast Bill Mumy as Older Will. At the time, he was a perfect 44 years old (and they could have used makeup to render him any age required), and he would have slammed home the poignant nostalgia for all existing classic LOST IN SPACE fans. The ruining of Oldman’s performance and the miscasting of Older Will are the movie’s two biggest mistakes, and its ultimate downfall.

The potential for LOST IN SPACE was always high. It’s obvious Irwin Allen Productions and New Line Cinema wanted this movie to be the “pilot” for a trail of sequels ad infinitum. Writer Goldsman even started with a sincere idea – to reboot the camp ’65 series with ‘90’s grit, which was enough of a pitch to get Oldman onboard as the first powerful cast member, which induced other stars to join. Where did it all go wrong? I’m blaming the ambition of the filmmakers, which outpaced the technology of the day, and a little blame to casting for even putting forward LeBlanc’s name as the action hero stereotype played against Hurt’s intellectual. LOST IN SPACE came at us like it knew what needed fixing from the original series. And ends up fixing many elements and then breaking them again worse than before.

Blarp!

END

Waking from Itself.

THE HANGOVER PART III wipes the slate clean. A brand new comedy with the same beloved characters; focus shifted, personalities disordered, breasts augmented.

Sexpot, Dork and Clueless on another wild ride, with Evil Sprite in tow. Except this time, the evil sprite, Mr. Chow, is inadvertently the leading man! And the least likely of the “Wolf Pack” – man-child Alan – finds his arc of redemption!

The Wolf Pack – sexpot Phil (Bradley Cooper), dork Stu (Ed Helms) and clueless Alan (Zach Galifianakis), along with Wolf Pack-adjacent member, Doug (Justin Bartha) – are thankfully not dragged through the same “day-after-bender” situation, as they were in THE HANGOVER PART 2, but rather find themselves pawns caught in a game between two underworld sociopaths. In Vegas. Stu: “Someone needs to burn this place to the ground…”

One of the sociopaths is the squiggly Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong, who appeared as a B-gangster in the first HANGOVER film, then as a jagged plot disintegrator in PART 2; here, driving the plot and involved in all its twists); the other is bellicose kingpin Marshall (John Goodman, from whom Chow stole 11 million in gold, and who may keel over at any moment from ingesting 11 million in hamburgers).

While transporting Alan to a therapy center, the Wolf Pack is accosted by Marshall’s men and brought before Marshall, who orders them to find Mr. Chow (having just escaped from a maximum security prison, SHAWSHANK style), to retrieve his gold bars. Marshall holds Doug as collateral, effectively excluding Justin Bartha from the body of the script again, relegating him to damsel-in-distress once more. But it doesn’t matter in the least, because while the “action” plot revolves around Chow, the “redemption” subplot seeks to make a man of Alan. That’s why there seems to be nothing at stake in holding Doug. The same goes for Mike Epps, reprising his role as Black Doug, Marshall’s henchman, so when Marshall shoots him offhandedly, it makes not one ripple in our sentiments, or in the pool that Black Doug falls into.

Ken Jeong proves he can hold the camera’s gaze compellingly with a devious, deranged performance as Chow, a perfect mix of venom and pathos, playing the other characters like the bitches he terms them: killing his fighting chickens that he feeds only cocaine… and chicken, conning the Wolf Pack into stealing even more of Marshall’s money, partying like Caligula and killing like a hitman. It’s a powerful jumping off point for leading man roles.

And Galifianakis imbues his Alan with an aggressive innocence/ignorance that overshadows the seemingly well-adjusted characters of Phil and Stu. He starts the movie in the worst immature, baby-man condition he has ever been in – buying a giraffe and killing it accidentally. Alan’s father (Jeffrey Tambor) dies of a stress-related heart attack over him, and Alan gives a distracted eulogy where he wishes his mom had died instead. Alan’s family request the boys accompany Alan to therapy, and Alan only agrees to go because of Phil, with whom he has an unrequited ambiguously gay/hero worship relationship. Phil, in a throwaway line, calls the situation: “He just needs to lose weight and find a girl.” And it is this last happy accident (in the form of a trailer trash Melissa McCarthy) that prompts Alan to grow into adulthood.

Heather Graham cameos as Jade, the stripper that Stu married in Vegas, raising her little boy, who is… Grant Holmquist – the same little boy who was the main baby that Alan carted around in THE HANGOVER. A touching scene when Alan comes face to face with this boy – a serious young actor with a great screen presence – and a part of Alan’s growth as a man.

Co-written by Todd Phillips (who directed all three) and Craig Mazin (who co-wrote PART 2), it is quite surprising how THE HANGOVER PART 3 sneaks up on us, amongst the shooting and screaming and sharing of lollipops (ooweh!). An original story that gives nods and winks to its predecessors, but as homage, rather than desperation. In keeping with tradition, this movie ends with a wedding – Alan’s! – and a post-credits scene that is the best hangover awakening of the trilogy. And the most amazing thing to me is… why this movie is so maligned. Every third movie in a trilogy does not have to perfunctorily occupy the same headspace as THE GODFATHER PART III.

People on computers in 2015 are losing their minds. The world is coming apart at the social media seams. So many recent movies released to groans and griping – THE HOBBIT, FANTASTIC FOUR 2015, BATMAN V SUPERMAN, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2… None of these movies has anything substantially wrong with them, the most vitriol coming from know-nothings who think that typing is tantamount to educated opinion.

As Phil says, “It all ends tonight,” meaning their predicament trying to capture Chow in exchange for Doug, but also in the meta sense that the last remaining member of the Wolf Pack has now been married off – their dynamic will never be the same, even if there is another sequel. But what do you social media twits care? Take a picture of your lunch, follow another meme, and text an emoji in lieu of words. That oughta prove how important your uninformed opinion is…

END

Vegas Knights (without amor).

What happens in Vegas… uhhh, what happened in Vegas?…

It’s not exactly BACHELOR PARTY (1984), but THE HANGOVER is a raunchy surprising stab at lewd, crude, nude immortality.

Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are three friends who wake up in a Vegas hotel room the night after throwing their pal Doug (Justin Bartha) a bachelor party. The room looks like it was just visited by Hunter S. Thompson: a couch is still smoking from being on fire, a hen wanders the premises, Stu is missing a tooth, Alan is missing his pants, there is a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet and they can’t find the groom.

THE HANGOVER reeks of two writers (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) getting hammered one night and trying to talk their way out of getting bitchbeaten by Chinese gangsters. Which is kinda what THE HANGOVER is – one long excuse, wrapped in a rationalization and pinched on the bottom of ludicrous. Todd Phillips (co-writer BORAT) directs this descent into surrealism.

Justin Bartha, who had nothing to do in those Nicolas Cage movies, here finds that even in a movie where he’s got something to do, they can’t find anything for him to do, as he disappears for most of the movie.

Through tiny successive clues – a hospital bracelet, the fact that they’ve got a police car instead of their own car, receipts from various vendors, the name of a wedding chapel – the three friends work their way backwards, revealing their night of debauchery piece by piece. The purposeful story construction wonderfully holds together and never flags, each vignette adding a new comedic element and also another piece to the puzzle.

The friends discover they were victims of the date-rape drug “roofies” – which their doctor calls “Ruphalyn” (upon looking it up, it is called Rohypnol or Flunitrazepam) – which accounts for their lack of memory.

Poffy’s hangover

The three friends share such a tight dynamic we feel we’ve seen them before – and we have. The Three Stooges. Bradley Cooper is the smart, nominal leader, obviously the Moe of the bunch (I’ve not seen him in a more funny, more likeable role, proving he’s got the A-List chops to carry a movie), Galifianakis is the Curly, a wacky cuddly pudding bear using every ounce of his over-weight to milk the hilarity, also shooting his star into A-List territory), and the middle one – er, whatsisname? – is whatsisname here– uh, Ed Helms, the redheaded child of the bunch, proxy for literal redhead Larry. And like Larry, Helms does nothing special except bridge the other two. And his feature song (which describes the gang’s antics) is kinda stupid. But he does marry Heather Graham. She’s the stripper who owns the baby in the closet. (And guys, she gets her knox out for mammary purposes.)

Mike Tyson cameos and shows us why he’s still not an actor.

In a laugh out loud movie reference, when they need to buy back the groom from Chinese gangsters (Chinese kingpin played ever so scrotumly by Ken Jeong), Alan convinces them to gamble for the money, so descends to the casino dressed like Rain Man. (To bring it full circle, Justin Bartha did play a retarded guy in GIGLI. Now the world makes sense again!)

Rob Riggle (THE DAILY SHOW) as a taser-happy cop with the best line, as he calls for a “volunteer” from our friends, “Come here, handsome,” and chubby, bearded Alan steps forward – “No, not you fat Jesus! Slide on back there.”

Shot in and around sunny Las Vegas, with its spanky dialogue and breezy, insouciant verve THE HANGOVER exudes a heady excitement and an overall feeling of blissful meaningless fun – we all relate the Vegas skyline to good times; few of us work there, and even if we had bad experiences there, the boundless possibilities of Vegas still stir our blood to boiling.

And thankfully, as the friends drive into Vegas, with perfunctory aerial establishing shot, the source music is NOT Elvis’s obligatory A Little Less Conversation; instead Can’t Tell Me Nothing by Kanye West. Someone alert Nicolas Cage. The Elvis song, awesome and apropos though it is, has become such a cliché, that for this original departure alone, THE HANGOVER can date-rape me any night.

END

Why?

Driving around Los Angeles in late 2005, I was as victimized as the next motorist in seeing the rash of billboards advertising the ABC sitcom EMILY’S REASONS WHY NOT, starring Heather Graham. Though I waited passively to catch an accidental glimpse of this pap-outa-the-gate commercial malformity whilst channel-surfing (in order to warn viewers off it, as I knew would be my duty), I was not to get the chance, as I heard one night on the Tim Conway/Brian Whitman radio show that it had been cancelled within a week of its pilot episode airing.

So there is a god.

But I’ll only start sacrificing fatted calves to Him if He continues along this sane trajectory and makes EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND go away as well…

This program’s extinction, of course, made it nigh impossible to pen a review of a show which I’d never seen and – thankfully – would never see. But let’s face it – if you’ve seen one unfunny American sitcom in the last decade (sorry – that’s tautologous, as there are no “funny” American sitcoms to act as “controls”), you’ve seen this one.

Aww! The woman so beautiful that she doesn’t have to learn a trade to get by in the world having troubly-wubbly wiv her boyfriendy? She’s coquettishly neurotic? Aggravatingly coy? Perfectly coiffured with a “10” body, yet thinks she is hideous? She’s got her little system of criteria that informs her on when to date, whom to date, and how far to go on a date?

We’ve all known women in this mental state of depravity. They’re called “high maintenance.” Another word would be psychotic. another word would be, uh, just “women”…

Thus, to discourage any further treatment or resurrection of this conceptual dungswill, I pen this Open Letter To Emily:

Dear Spoiled Byoch,
Y’know, guys don’t want to hear your reasons why not. Matter of fact, guys don’t even want to know your reasons WHY. If you want to talk, get out. And if you want to make excuses about “why not” – don’t even bother calling!

END