Word: comical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...even stand-up comic Yakov Smirnoff could exaggerate the absurd reality of flying Aeroflot, the Soviet airline. Passengers must endure dismissive ticket agents, brusque cabin crews, delays as long as three days and white-knuckle flights on ancient jets. As a monopoly, Aeroflot nonetheless carried 120 million travelers last year, making it the world's largest carrier...
With such a proposition, who could lose? Take Jackie Mason, the veteran Borscht Belt comic. Put him in a sitcom produced by the same people who created hits for Bill Cosby and Roseanne Barr. Give it the surefire time period following No. 1-rated Roseanne. Almost every TV prognosticator in the business picked Chicken Soup as the season's big hit. But Mason had a troubled autumn. He got bad reviews, both for his acting and for making racially inflammatory remarks during the New York City mayoral race. More dismaying to ABC, Chicken Soup -- though the highest-rated...
...could anyone think it helpful to impose upon the behavior of a long-lost era and a vanished social class the wisdom of modern Pop psychology? It prevents the actors from tearing into their roles with the black comic gusto that Glenn Close and John Malkovich brought to their feverish performances in Dangerous Liaisons last year. But besides spoiling the fun, this approach / blurs the work's value as a cautionary tale, capable of reminding us that motiveless malignity is a potent force in every age and one that not even Freud -- let alone humanistically inclined moviemakers -- can explain away...
...form and story that any animated film takes for granted. Problem is, real life gets in the way. Location shooting is at the whim of weather; special effects can look chintzy onscreen. And actors! They cost the moon, and their bodies aren't elastic enough to perform the comic contortions that Daffy Duck can give you with the wave of an animator's pen. So here's a tip for the '90s, Hollywood: junk the live-action movie. Just make cartoons...
THREE of Hoss' buddies give terrific back-up performances. David " 'Vid" Buttaro and Randal Jean Baptiste provide moments of refreshing comic relief as astrologer and general space cadet Starman and hip deejay Galactic Jack. In addition, Glenn Kiser's clever portrayal of Hoss' doctor, a cowboy-boot-wearing drug supplier, leaves the audience wishing Shepard had given this character more lines...