Word: comicly
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...travelogues and social listings, in which every sort of occupation, from pit sawing to innkeeping, gets its allotted description. This scrutiny of lower-class life would never have held so much interest to an earlier Japan. Manga, images of common life, are the direct ancestors of the modern Japanese comic strip...
...other hand, you have to admit that there is something brave about moving this character from the place where he usually lurks in the movies--on the comic-relief fringe of a teen-age gang--to the center of the action. You also have to admire the creepy arrogance of Schwartzman's performance. We can see that it covers loneliness, social ineptitude, even a certain amount of duplicity. His father is not the neurosurgeon he claims he is, but a barber. Yet the actor never once sues us for sympathy, and it comes as a nice surprise when we find...
Throughout, O'Donnell paints a subtly poignant picture of a young man struggling with a dual identity: as the child of a modest Irish-Catholic background and as a well-connected graduate of prestigious "Hale University." Ask yourself how many contemporary comic novels have dealt with the issue of class, and you will come up with a short list. Moreover, ask yourself how many manage to skewer Swedish cinema, performance art, silly doctoral theses and the "Poverty Barn" along the way, and you'll begin to see why this one is such a treat...
...anthem, Stephen Schwartz's tunes mostly bring not buoyancy but ballast to the proceedings. While Jeff Goldblum is good as a fretful Aaron, the rest of an exemplary vocal cast (Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Patrick Stewart) can't add much shading or power. Steve Martin is here for muted comic relief, but don't expect to hear him sing King Tut. Any sort of irreverence would be out of place in this by-the-Book rendition. Nonetheless, it is missed...
Clearly, any change in how kids perceive the future will influence how they prepare for it. In fact, the current shortage of engineers is sometimes blamed on me. According to some pundits, kids read the Dilbert comic strip and decide they don't want to spend their life confined to cubicles and being menaced by pointy-haired bosses. I don't know if that's true, but it does pass the sniff test. According to the parents who e-mail me, a lot of family conversations are beginning with the question, "Mommy, what's a mission statement?" and ending with...