BikeBill

Mythbusters used to be a very interesting show, up until Discovery Channel turned into a shill for Warner Brothers... which means that a lot of the 'myths' were thinly-disguised advertisements for WB movies and projects, and this was one of them. Another thing that was starting to become apparent was how adamant the producers were to not provide any advertisement or recognition to anything they did not have direct control of, and a prime example occurs in this episode when the Mythbusters build crew (Kari, Tory, and Grant) took the half-car to a dirt track, and the production crew did a half-hearted job of masking a race car painted to look like Dale Earnhardt's old #3 Chevy Monte Carlo ... using black tape to mask off part of the ersatz sponsor logo and identifying mark on the front air dam, as well as using WHITE tape to do a sloppy job of changing the original '3' on the door and roof to an '8'.

If there was ever an episode to which you can point and say, "Here's where they jumped the shark", this is probably as good an example as any.

While I suppose "Hook" could, if one wanted to stand on semantics, be considered a sequel to any and all of the existing versions of 'Peter Pan' storty already out there, this movie deserves high marks if for no other reason than the fact that this movie took an existing story and went off in an entirely different direction. Such a refreshing change from an industry already over-run with producers, writers, directors, and studios whose only intent seems to be to either create a cash-cow 'franchise' upon which to build an empire (think "Star Wars", the Bond franchise, or the Marvel universe, just to name a few) or to crank out sequel after sequel (like "Jaws". "Friday the 13th", or the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies) until the viewing public themselves finally say 'enough'. And of course, there's always the fact that Spielberg, even at his worst (and this wasn't his worst; "1941" will forever retain that 'honor') , when supported with music by John Williams, is still better than a helluvalot of other directors at their best.

I can deal with the 'women are equal (and in some cases superior) to men' bias that seems to permeate this sequel, and most of the scenes with Jack-Jack and his powers (both controlled and uncontrolled) brought actual laughter, but it just seemed too far-fetched in its initial premise to begin with.... someone with a Bruce Wayne/Peter Parker backstory decides to single-handedly reverse the anti-supers sentiment and bring the supers out of the closet and back tio prominence, and Mr. Incredible and Elasti-Girl accept it at face value?

And the plot, such as it was, started going downhill from there, picking up speed as it went. Only the last fifteen minutes or so saved this movie from crashing and burning completely.