Word: groan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...joke. And although The Marriage makes no pretensions to be more than a simple comedy, it won't bore those who have graduated from fairy tale. The play is genuinely funny; the humor never drags, and only one or two bad puns seem more deserving of a groan than a laugh. There may be much to explain, but there's plenty to enjoy...
Several of the scenes seem to exist only to reinforce a brutal, Lord-of-the-Files sense of the school. In one, a group of kids in a classroom groan an incomprehensible ditty about teeny-weeny-twirly-spirals. Yet, the movie gets the benefit of the doubt in this case, since the translation is probably to blame for taking away the meaning of the scene. Some of the lines and gestures, though, can only be schmaltz in any language. At one point, Dini is at a bar with an old con; after explaining his feelings, the con mutters...
...nightly monologue has evolved into a sequence of snappy asides that is virtually fail-safe. If the jokes hit home, fine. Carson will smile and bob his head and smooth his tie while the audience laughs. If the joke flies wide or falls flat, the audience will groan and Carson will look wounded, then drop some self-deprecating aside that, like a slow fuse, will finally ignite the gag. Dick Cavett, who worked for Carson as a writer, recalls that Carson "made a point of bombing and making it funny. Sometimes you'd write strictly for that...
...there specific ways to come nearer to achieving these goals? The most obvious is money. Good teachers cost money; libraries cost money; so do remedial classes for those who were short-changed in earlier years. Only mediocrity comes cheap. Those who groan at the rising price of college tuition (up as much as $7,000 since 1972) may not realize that overall, taking enrollment growth into
...Prentice Women's Hospital, in Chicago, twelve couples are learning a procedure called effleurage, part of the Lamaze method of "prepared" child delivery. Husbands stroke the swollen stomachs of their wives, who pant, groan and breathe deeply. The average age of the students: early 30s. Even the 35-year-old instructor is expecting her first child...