Word: smug
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...back talk, a keen sense of irony and an indomitable lust for survival. Cartoon heroes, if you think about it, tend to be victims. Either that or insufferable, like Mickey Mouse. Only Bugs Bunny managed to triumph in his struggles against an assortment of splenetic aggressors without ever getting smug...
...more properly, these people are remaking the small-town life-style that American writers since Sinclair Lewis have been excoriating. Prudish and bigoted, they have everything their smug little hearts could desire - except the power to reproduce themselves (probably because they lack fresh air and real sunshine). They must send sirens up to lure studs down, and that is where the boy - despite his dog's warning - goes wrong, precipitating one of the year's better chase adventures...
...Everybody's budget is tight," Hire said, "any university with large chunks of land has to look at similar options. You can't afford to be smug," he said...
...originally the kind of cop that would yank people out of phone booths and throw them out on their ear if he wanted to call headquarters. And while we were supposed to like him, his temper--the man pounding furiously on the expressionless subway door with his prey smug inside, and his brash lack of cool was supposed to make things more subtle. But it never really worked. When anti-heroin crusader Doyle busts a bellboy for a joint in his back pocket the filmmakers are testing the audience's sympathies too much. And all was subservient to the immortal...
...marked similarities to Elaine May's first feature, A New Leaf (1971), and the difference in the two movies reveals something about Nichols and his former partner. A New Leaf was dark, crazy and exhilaratingly wacky. The Fortune, which also becomes a comedy of murders, is safe and smug. When the boys first try to kill the girl, they dump her in a tiny fountain in two inches of water and creep away, expecting her to drown. The gag does not work because it is clear that the girl is in no peril. Elaine May put her heroine directly...