Word: joe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Clocking in at less than 90 minutes in length, "Joe's Apartment" should easily fall within range of MTV-era attention spans, but predictably delivers nothing more substantial than its premise promises. Based upon a short film and presented as MTV's first feature presentation, the movie eventually wears thin, revolving as it does around what is ultimately a sight gag that updates "Alvin and the Chipmunks...
...Joe (Jerry O'Connell) who lends his name to the increasingly inaccurate title is an Iowa boy trying to make it in a decidedly bad New York City, where violence is so rampant that the population number falls before our eyes. In perhaps the most implausible sequence even of this movie, he lands a rent-controlled--and roach-controlled--apartment. Joe then spends his time split unevenly between getting a job and fighting off his militant, singing infestation. Then the country-folk-meets-city-folk story quickly gets on an even simpler track when Joe sees his dream girl, Lily...
...both computer-animated and real roaches--none of whom, unfortunately, were harmed in the making of the film--director John Payson zips us quickly from one six-legged musical number to another. In between, comedy both broad and cynical provides filler of wildly varying quality: both toilet humor (literally: Joe works for a urinal cake company and woos Lily with fertilizer) and toilet humor with a difference (a musical band named for what it sounds like...
...Date night. One other roach public television show, "Charlie Roach," shows a glimpse at the movie's higher comic potential, as does some poking fun at the weird-artist stereotype. Otherwise, the jokes simply aren't consistently good enough to hold up the pillowy filler between Joe's episodic job-hunting and Lily-hunting troubles...
...roaches therefore spend their time making often incomprehensible wise-cracks from under any object in Joe's nightmarishly filthy apartment that could be animated: false teeth, toast, lampshades etc. Payson's philosophy seems to have been to keep things moving, literally, at any cost...