Word: blandings
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...movie, a travelogue comedy in the mold of the Olsen video capers Passport to Paris and When in Rome, has the tone of bland chaos: much movement, no energy. The wacky visuals suggest that the film's editor was asked to spank this baby back to life; thus there are segments in split screen, multiscreen and, for a brief John Woo tribute, slow motion as doves flutter around a thug. In addition to cameos by Drew Pinsky (MTV's Dr. Drew) and Bob Saget (the girls' dad on Full House), we get to observe the mortification of some fine comic...
With Monday's release of the report on the Harvard College curricular review, administrators seem to have outdone what they often do best, penning 60 pages of stunningly bland and half-baked recommendations that straddle the line between unspecific and impossible. Perhaps the most stunning suggestion to come out of the document is—gasp—that Harvard should make its curriculum better. What exactly that means and how that might be done is, evidently, left as an exercise to the reader...
...draws audience empathy like iron filings to a magnet. But there’s more to Dewis’ turn than that; he hinted at a talent for understatement in Roberto Zucco earlier this season, and here he makes good on that promise. His performance is restrained, but neither bland nor mannered; it’s unpredictable and insightful, but never unrealistic or ill-defined. He did have a habit of swallowing his lines when I saw him on opening night, but he may improve as the run goes...
Friends, on the other hand, is simply about being a pleasant sitcom. The bland, it-is-what-it-is title, the innocuous theme song I'll Be There for You--everything about it screams that it would rather be liked than respected. Its comments about the outside world are kept to the background. (Literally. After 9/11 rocked New York City, the Magna Doodle board on Joey's apartment door had the initials "FDNY" written on it.) What do people talk about when they talk about Friends? Jennifer Aniston's hair. Jennifer Aniston's husband. The Ugly Naked Guy across...
...rebuttal to your statement about undeserved post-summer doldrums acclaim, I present to you Entertainment Weekly’s largely respectable critic Lisa Schwarzbaum and her take on last year’s rigid, bland-as-glue Seabiscuit: “A rare pedigreed entrant in a summer of mules.” It seems many critics (79 percent of them, according to rottentomatoes.com) are not as capable as you think of keeping their cool after a summer of roasted, bloated turkeys...