Word: comical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...early scenes, fastidious viewers may be wearied by a glut of comic references - to movies of the '50s (The Thing from Another World) and the '70s (Apocalypse Now) - that should probably be deleted from the anything-for-a-joke book. The movie also briefly and unnecessarily invokes the voices of Henry Kissinger and JFK. But ransacking pop culture is what cartoons do, and not just the gag-strewn Shrek movies. Clampett's Horton Hatches the Egg has a Katharine Hepburn bird, a Peter Lorre fish (that commits suicide!) and the Horace Heidt novelty hit "The Hut Sut Song." Even...
...unapologetically feel-good movie is the work of stand-up comic and native Ch'ti Danny Boon, who plays the role of Bailleul. Boon has made no secret that his motive was to dismantle and mock French prejudices about the north and its inhabitants. As the box office figures show, French cinema lovers are lapping that effort up. But there's more at work than simple entertainment. "This movie is doing what [author Marcel] Pagnol did for the Provençals: showing that people broadly considered buffoonish and stupid are actually very interesting, alluring, and deeply human," says Patrice Languetif...
...redundancies. However, the structure is marred by several characters who are introduced but whose paths through the book never really resolve or interact with the central motion of the plot in any meaningful way. Though a great deal of effort is made to construct the character of Bing Beiderbixxe, comic book artist and nerd extraordinaire, he’s never able to take shape as a character in himself or to contribute meaningfully to the story; he remains a bit part of Bock’s overlarge collage of Las Vegas personalities.Of these personalities, it’s notable that...
...category is Colbert’s “The Heart is a Choking Hazard.” Colbert, one of the book’s headliners and the winner of the Associated Press’s 2007 “Celebrity of the Year” for his comic genius, writes a surprisingly disappointing chapter. His piece works on one gag only: at the beginning of the chapter he has an author’s note saying that his wife blacked out any words that were too revealing or defamatory. Thus, Colbert sets up the reader to fill...
...there has been any foul play. The drama is streamlined, and the shifting allegiance of Sister James is mirrored by the audience’s confusion over which account to believe. After the intensity of the dialogue, Sister Aloysius’ exaggerated sense of decorum infuses a bit of comic relief into the script. Wright’s production succeeds as a worthy representation of a grave parable...