irishm

My rating is based on my opinion of the first four or five seasons. The show starts, as many shows do, better than it finishes up, but the first few seasons are excellent. Patrick Warburton is the stand-out here, and his reparte with David Spade is the reason I tuned into the show in the first place. They both do their absolute best from the first episode to the last.

The younger couple... well, mixed reviews from me. They were more entertaining early on, but then Jen got kind of a superiority complex, and Adam went from naive to just plain stupid. Maybe that justifies Jen's constant eye-rolling, but it's not fun to watch. There are also several episodes later on that appear to have been written with the sole requirement "find a reason to put Oliver Hudson in Spandex".

Supporting characters who were brought in during the series' run are of two basic types: outstanding (Timmy) and blah (everyone else). Timmy infused the show with new vitality and served as a very clever and entertaining foil for Spade's character of Russell Dunbar. The others (Timmy's thankfully brief office girlfriend, and the gear-grinding Liz) didn't fit in and didn't add enough to justify being there.

All in all, I'd recommend it to those who enjoy sitcoms. It's cleverly written and the performances by Warburton and Spade are excellent from start to finish.

I saw this in the theater as a child, and although it was okay, it didn't impress me as a favorite. I had a picture book of the movie that I really enjoyed and read often, and I'm pretty sure I still have a small figure of the Doctor with Polynesia on his shoulder somewhere, but the movie itself was over-long and stuffed with some pretty forgettable songs. I recently gave it another watch to see if maybe I'd change my mind, but I didn't... if anything, the sheer length of the thing weighed me down even more than it had in the theater, maybe just because I knew the story was going to change settings and I was waiting for the next "thing" to happen.

So what can I say that's positive? The opening in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is beautifully filmed, colorful, and really makes you want to go there. The Pushme-Pulyu, although obviously fake, is a cute idea and imaginatively used. The Sea Star Island resolution is pretty cool (although does anyone know how there could possibly be an active volcano on that island if it's drifting?). Rex Harrison is charming in a rather misanthropic way. Anthony Newly has some amusing dialogue, and handles most of the better songs.

In short, I probably wouldn't recommend this to a child, because I don't think it's likely that most would have the attention span for it.

I was really interested in seeing this just on the basis of the actors, and also because I've seen it twice onstage, once with a TV-oriented cast (Jonathan Frid, Gary Sandy, Jean Stapleton, Marion Ross, Larry Storch). This 1969 version has its moments, and Bob Crane and Fred Gwynne are both noteworthy and hold up their end of the bargain, but it's still more or less lukewarm as a production. I see that there's yet another TV version with Tony Randall as Mortimer and Boris Karloff(!) as Jonathan... I'd love to get my hands on that one, if only to compare it against the other versions. In short, this 1969 version is a curiosity and mildly entertaining, but nothing to toast with a glass of elderberry wine.