Word: hokey
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...there's more going on here than a critique of My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch and the like. The movie starts out with a montage of sounds and images from present-day TV, an unappealing hodgepodge; by contrast, the landscape of Pleasantville, however artificial and hokey, is cute, and at times beautiful. There's a deep affection for the old golly-gee school of American television, even though the film sets out to make the point that reality, however ugly, is better than the monotonous trap of sitcom life. Freedom and color, we learn, are better than Pleasantville...
...Stuart is, as hokey as it may sound,necessarily honest to the reader and to herself.From this self-awareness stems her charming wit,uproariously deadpan delivery of madcap WASPmaneuverings and an impeccable sense of comictiming, matched with a poet's (or at leastrelated-to-a-poet's) awareness and a mother'stenderness. She is quick to admit to the bigoted,petty and, yes, manic shortcomings of hermuch-institutionalized family, but just as quickto admit her own shortcomings and accept them all.As this first cousin knows, being neurotic isgood, but knowing you're neurotic is even better
...afternoon of skating includes a rousing game of Hokey-Pokey, the ever popular Macarena and, according to general manager Paula Nieves, "everyone's favorite," the Chickie Dance. After the children partake in these games it is time to skate freely...as long, of course, as everyone abides by the rules. Two surprisingly crusty geriatric referees in black-and-white striped jerseys circulate the skating rink, taking care that the children are "listening, following the rules and skating at a moderate pace." In fact, children have been known to get kicked out for "rowdy skating and wise guy behavior...
...Frasier, with its forced repartee about boutonnieres, is an excruciating experience in midcult hell. For us, the apotheosis of Frasier is not a great cause for celebration. What are we going to do on Thursdays at 9? The alternatives aren't terrible: we could watch Diagnosis Murder, the sublimely hokey CBS drama. We could read Wallace Stevens. But is it possible that there is another option? Could it be that even someone most resistant to Frasier's charms could learn to love it? Well, maybe...
...imagination. It also doesn't matter much that Private Ryan, played by Matt Damon, appears too late in the film to develop as a character, thus making the story's framing device--an elder Private Ryan saluting the grave of his savior--seem a bit forced and hokey. What matters most is that the story is merely a vehicle for transporting the viewer from one spectacular, eerily realistic battle scene to another. A great part of the movie's near-three hour length consists of guns, tanks, limp bodies, bloodshed and explosions--all of which, though accurately and emotionally depicted...