Word: smugness
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Created by the wife-husband team of Diane English and Joel Shukovsky (who have parlayed the show's success into a four-series development deal with cbs), Murphy Brown is cleverly written, but in a smug, soulless, metallic way. The characters are all Johnny one-notes, the satire of TV news obvious and unoriginal. Pompous anchorman, shallow news bimbo, ratings-obsessed station executives -- once it all might have been daring, but such TV navel gazing is now painfully commonplace...
...Sorrentino). Other good actors are strewn along the winding story line like road kill; the only exception is Marisa Tomei as Vinny's wondrously sardonic fiance. Tomei's pauses in her derision -- "Oh. Yeah. You blend." -- can melt even a critic's reserve. The rest of the proceeding is smug and labored, stretching jokes about mistaken identity and prison rape into endless tropes. So go ahead. Enjoy the rabble- truckling comedy of My Cousin Vinny. Just don't feel good about...
...Finally, the film breaks faith with the most inviolable convention of the whodunit -- refusing to state firmly which of the two women dunit (notwithstanding gay activists' confident naming of one of them, in a publicity campaign aimed at undermining the movie). This reflects its fundamental flaw of arrogance, a smug faith in the ability of its own speed, smartness and luxe to wow the yokels. It is its attitude, not its morality, that ultimately undoes Basic Instinct...
...does not even fulfill the reader's appetite for lurid details since each woman's tale of woe is told in the third person by Chellis' squeaky clean narration. As a result, the portrayals are bland and devoid of detail. Each woman's personal voice is lost amidst Chellis' smug and patronizing commentary...
...Petrenko capitalized on difficult jumps to take top honors, though his stiff finale offered more stumbles than magic. He didn't win the gold medal so much as he didn't lose it. Far more satisfying were the performances of the runners-up. Defying smug expectations, two lyrical skaters -- Paul Wylie of the U.S. and Czechoslovakia's Petr Barna -- claimed the silver and the bronze, respectively...