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After 30 years, The Little Rascals finds renewed success on Netflix, ranking as the 10th most-watched movie in the US. Its resurgence indicates a renewed interest despite its poor reviews and age, competing with classics like Matilda. The film's unique story, memorable characters, and child actors' later careers contribute to its rewatchability and potential climb in rankings.

The poorly-reviewed 1994 movie adaptation of the classic comedy shorts The Little Rascals became a hit on Netflix in the United States 30 years later. Directed by Penelope Spheeris, the film acts as an updated version of Hal Roach's Our Gang series of shorts, many of which were originally broadcast under the name the movie would later use. In the movie, The Little Rascals characters discover a member of their anti-girl club has a secret girlfriend, leading to a series of event all stemming from Spanky (Travis Tedford) and Buckwheat (Ross Elliot Bagley) trying to break them up.

Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp is a standalone sequel with little narrative ties to the 2017 film, making it watchable on its own. Different filmmakers, cast, and characters in the sequel contribute to the confusion of viewers recognizing it as a follow-up to the original. The change in distributors between the two movies, with the sequel being exclusively on Netflix, further disconnects the two films, leading to confusion among viewers.

Premiering on the platform on April 12, 2024, Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp is a Netflix Original movie that most fans are unaware is a sequel to 2017's Woody Woodpecker. There are several reasons for the confusion, but first, a synopsis is in order. Directed by Jonathan A. Rosenbaum, Woody Woodpecker Goes To Camp finds Woody evicted from his natural forest habitat. Upon arriving at Camp Woo Hoo, Woody befriends a group of children and helps them save their beloved summer camp from...

Stars: Vince Swann, Barry Bostwick, Michael Jai White, Laila Odom, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lindsay Lamb, Melanie Loren, Gary Owen, Affion Crockett, Brandon Hirsch, Tyler Crumley, Zac Zedalis, Steven Lee Johnson | Written by Ian Edwards, Stephen Mazur | Directed by Leslie Small

Universal 1440 Entertainment, Universal’s direct to DVD production arm, mine old film franchises once again for a sequel to the Eddie Griffin 2002 blaxploitation comedy Undercover Brother… and you thought a sequel to Benchwarmers was unexpected! Though given we’ve already had new sequels to Kindergarten Cop, Daddy Day Care, the aforementioned Benchwarmers, Cop and a Half, Honey, Bring it On and – get this – even Backdraft; a sequel to Undercover Brother, something of a minor hit back in the day, isn’t that much a surprise. Hell, it beats getting yet Another sequel to The Scorpion King!

This time round Michael Jai White stars as the titular brother and Vince...

Greg Kinnear is a likeable actor who gravitates towards playing feckless and unlikeable people — the kind of simpering people whose lives are just waiting to be flattened by a steamroller, or already have. The only difference with “Phil,” his cloying and contrived directorial debut, is that Kinnear is both in front of the camera and behind the wheel; it’s like a slow-motion hit-and-run where the victim and the suspect are somehow the same man. As a feat of masochism, “Phil” is an impressive trick. As a movie, it’s a ghastly mess.

It’s immediately apparent why Kinnear was drawn to Stephen Mazur’s (“Liar Liar”) script, which hinges on a humdinger of a mistaken-identity premise that feels like it was hatched sometime in the mid-’90s. The first time that we meet Phil, a morose Portland dentist who Kinnear plays with his signature quiver and sigh, he’s...

Whenever an actor steps behind the camera, one can’t help but wonder why they chose the material that they chose for their debut. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Bradley Cooper remaking A Star Is Born last year or Greg Kinnear this week with Phil. You just are inherently curious. It’s especially the case here, as Kinnear proves a capable filmmaker, though one in need of a stronger script. Yes, while Kinnear’s acting and directing here are solid, the writing isn’t up to snuff. The end result is a dramedy that is at times inane and at times moving, though unfortunately more so the former than the latter. At the movie’s start, Dr. Phil Maguire (Kinnear) is a dentist on the verge of suicide. In fact, he’s planning to do it, but just sort of chickens out. Then, a colleague refers a patient over to him.

There’s a feeling I always have when I’m watching Greg Kinnear in a movie. He can be a terrific actor. Yet even when he’s just okay, Kinnear seems like such a nice guy that I want him to succeed — I feel almost protective of him, as if he were my little brother. That more-than-skin-deep geniality is the source of Kinnear’s appeal, going all the way back to his hosting gig on “Talk Soup,” where he had the weird ability to invest even pure snark with good vibes.

Given that, when I watched “Phil,” the first movie Kinnear has directed (he also stars in it), you can bet that the protective impulse was in high gear. Yet “Phil,” I have to report, is one of those precious indie nothings that hits you like dandelion fluff. It’s the sort of film that still has its original, now-changed...

We meet Phil McGuire (Greg Kinnear) exiting his parked car while still in traffic to climb up a bridge railing. It’s a one hundred-plus foot drop into the water and he imagines taking the plunge before a group of teens with cellphones outstretched jolt him from the morbid sensation with excitable demands that he jump so they can enjoy the carnage. That’s a bold tonal mood on behalf of screenwriter Stephen Mazur and director Kinnear (his debut) because there’s actual dejection on their faces upon realizing Phil won’t comply with their Faces of Death desire to go viral. Here’s a man in obvious psychological pain and we’re asked to shrug the situation off for the first of many cheap laughs in a film that otherwise attempts heartfelt empathy.

I do believe Phil means well, but its script constantly undercuts that desire so its situational...

Stars: Chris Klein, Chelsey Reist, Jon Lovitz, Jonathan Silverman, Liam Hughes, Zak Santiago, Lochlyn Munro, Garfield Wilson, Elizabeth Bowen, Lisa Durupt, Chris Gauthier, Peter Graham-Gaudreau, Zachary Gulka, Benita Ha, Crystal Lowe, Lee Majdoub | Written by Stephen Mazur | Directed by Jonathan A. Rosenbaum

Ben McGrath (Chris Klein) had major league potential playing professional baseball, but his hopes to play ball literally get crushed. Down on his luck, Ben gets another swing at redemption as a new attorney for Schmood & Associates. His unorthodox boss, Mel (Jon Lovitz), convinces him to manage their eclectic softball team full of misfits and strikeouts. Together, will they have enough spirit to rally and win it all?

Ok, so The Benchwarmers didn’t set the world on fire but I did enjoy the ridiculous underdog film for what it was – a stupid, laugh out loud comedy product from the “Happy Gilmore” factory of filmmaking. In the grand...

Plus: Academy announces scientific and technical achievements; and more

Greg Kinnear’s dark comedy is based on a screenplay by Stephen Mazur about a dentist who tries to take control of his life after a patient commits suicide.

Kinnear stars alongside stars Emily Mortimer. Jay Duplass, Robert Forster, Taylor Schilling, Bradley Whitford and Luke Wilson round out the ensemble cast.

The Bron Studios production is in association with Single Cell Pictures, Imperative Entertainment and CW Media Finance. Aaron L Gilbert and Sandy Stern produce with Bradley Thomas. Jason Cloth, Andy Pollack and Ron McLeod serve as executive producers. Wme represents Us rights.

The Academy announced on Friday that it will honour 10 scientific and technical achievements represented by 33 individual award recipients at its annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation in Beverly Hills on February 13. In addition the Society Of Motion Picture And Television Engineers will receive a special award recognising “a century of fundamental contributions to the advancement...

It may be a formulaic knockabout comedy, but beneath the surface of this early Jim Carrey outing lurks a compelling honesty and an important life lesson

Courtrooms and curses: two anchoring Hollywood notions. Audiences love a courtroom drama. And they'll buy in to a curse any curse, from a body swap to a distasteful compulsion or an unwanted power as long as there's an adorable kid involved in its conception or application.

I like to think that when screenwriters Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur first sketched out Liar Liar, they'd just emerged from back-to-back screenings of To Kill a Mockingbird and Big, or maybe Twelve Angry Men and Vice Versa (a film from 1988, should you be unfamiliar with it, in which Fred Savage, with the help of a magical Buddhist skull, curses Judge Reinhold to spend a week as a preteen). Guay and Mazur saw a curse and a courtroom...

Paramount Pictures has picked up an untitled comedy based on an idea by producer Robert Kosberg with Stephen Mazur on board to pen the screenplay for studio-based Carsey-Werner-Mandabach Films to produce. The project is described as a wedding comedy. Kosberg pitched the concept to CWM Films and helped develop it there before bringing Mazur on board. CWM Films toppers Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach will produce, with Kosberg and CWM Films production head Carr D'Angelo taking executive producer credits. D'Angelo also is overseeing at his company. The project will be co-financed by Paramount and CWM. Kosberg, who is based at Bungalow 78 Prods. with Barry Kemp at Paramount, also is at work on Hardy Man at Fox with Ben Stiller and Surrender Dorothy with Drew Barrymore for her Flower Films at Warner Bros. Pictures. Mazur's credits include Liar Liar, Heartbreakers and The Little Rascals. He was repped in the deal by Summit Talent & Literary's Sandy Weinberg.

Jim Carrey has reconnected his comedy wire with "Liar Liar", an electric, warm-spirited merriment that melds Carrey's hyperkinetic talents with a heart-tugging story. Sagely directed by Tom Shadyac, "Liar Liar" should chart higher and higher at the boxoffice for Universal. In truth, "Liar" will be a colossal hit, appealing to kids on spring break as well as every species of Carrey's wide and nutty following.

In "Liar Liar", Carrey plays Fletcher, a trial lawyer so smooth, brazen and utterly unencumbered by notions of fair play that one suspects that O.J. will use the role as a yardstick in selecting his appeals attorney. Outrageously successful in his professional life, Fletcher has drawn a hung jury in his personal life. His ex-wife (Maura Tierney) is on the verge of remarrying while his 5-year-old son, Max (Justin Cooper), whom he adores, has reached an age in which workaholic Dad's absence is noted. Making partner is Fletcher's top priority, and professional white lies are a day-to-day necessity for the attorney.

While white lies are considered largely innocuous in the hard, adult world, to his young son they are tantamount to betrayal. When Fletcher misses Max's birthday because of a heavy workload (banging a horny partner), Max makes a wish: that Daddy will not utter an untruth for 24 hours.

In Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur's slyly subversive scenario, the glad-handing, unctuous lawyer, whose prior mouthings consisted solely of self-serving deceptions, now can only tell the truth.

And, as we all know, a little truth can go a long way, especially in Fletcher's case, as he immediately gets himself into hot water with a candid assessment of his boss' performance in the sack. While dishing out a devilishly delirious series of quicky sillies, having Fletcher speak the truth to assorted panhandlers and barristers, Guay and Mazur have wrapped these instant hilarities around a larger theme, that honesty is the best policy, and, best of all, have tied it to Fletcher's genuine love for his child.

What truly makes "Liar Liar" work, however, is Shadyac's inspired sense of comic proportion. While torquing the hilarities to the max, he never loses sight of the story's important human side. His blend of farce with heart is perfect.

With his protean pyrotechnical prowess coming out both sides of his mouth and form, Carrey has never been better - that is to say funnier, or more controlled. He's reached a higher performance plateau here, playing a real human being we care about rather than a goon figure. Credit to the supporting cast, particularly young Cooper, who wins our affection as the irrepressible Max.

Other players are similarly well-cast, including Amanda Donohoe as the predatory law partner and Anne Haney as Fletcher's no-nonsense secretary.

Tierney conveys warm level-headedness as Fletcher's ex-wife, while Jennifer Tilly ditzes it up perfectly as a modern-day gold digger.

Technical contributions are finer and finer, particularly cinematographer Russell Boyd's homey hues and costume designer Judy L. Ruskin's tangy threads.

LIAR LIAR

Universal Pictures

Imagine Entertainment presents

A Brian Grazer production

A Tom Shadyac film

Director Tom Shadyac

Producer Brian Grazer

Executive producers James D. Brubaker,

Michael Bostick

Screenwriters Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur

Director of photography Russell Boyd

Production designer Linda DeScenna

Editor Don Zimmerman

Costume designer Judy L. Ruskin

Music John Debney

Casting Junie Lowry Johnson, Ron Surma

Color/stereo

Cast:

Fletcher Reede Jim Carrey

Audrey Reede Maura Tierney

Max Reede Justin Cooper

Jerry Cary Elwes

Greta Anne Haney

Samantha Cole Jennifer Tilly

Miranda Amanda Donohoe

Running time -- 86 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13...