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Reviews
Ira & Abby (2006)
Abysmal
This film is about as contrived and pretentious as a movie can get. If you picked random lines out of a hat and handed them to the actors you would have a better script. Not even a decent cast can help this atrocity. The only good thing I can say is that it is a cure for insomnia. Very few details about this film are authentic. For example, Abby (Westfeldt, who is also the writer and producer, which should give you an idea of how self-indulgent this film is), who is supposed to be a gym instructor, is seen munching on McDonald's french fries, and never even pretends to actually work. Ira, an annoyingly self-pitying specimen (why do so many recent films set in Manhattan include such nonentities?), suddenly says he feels fat and goes to her gym, whereupon Abby instantly asks him to marry him and have sex. If you think this is plausible, then you will probably like this film, and you also believe that George Bush will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This is another of those "independent" films where absolutely none of the characters bears any resemblance to a human being, and where you feel you have wasted 90 minutes of your life. Beware of movies where the writers, actors, and the producers are the same people.
School Days (1932)
OK, But No "School Days" Song
This cartoon was amusing, but it definitely does not feature Gus Edwards or his famous song "School Days" as indicated in most search engines and the online descriptions of the restored DVD. The quality of the restoration is very good, and I found it amazing that the sound is often excellent, especially the music soundtrack. There is some singing, and teachers may find it amusing to see how cartoonists viewed school more than 70 years ago. I did find a few sexual innuendos, although the cartoon is tame compared with some of the older Betty Boop cartoons, for example. Regarding the rest of the DVD featuring "School Days," once you have seen a few Flip the Frog cartoons, you realize that there are always the same characters: Flip, his dog, a hag, a Betty-Boop-type character always on the verge of losing her clothes, a rat who sometimes appears as a skunk (as in "School Days"), and a few others not featured in "School Days." Unfortunately, most of these characters do not always retain their individual personalities in the other cartoons featured in this DVD. On a positive note, those who are knowledgeable in classical music will be amused by the music soundtrack, which often features bizarre arrangements of familiar music such as the overture to Flotow's opera "Martha," Figaro's aria "Non piu andrai" from Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro," and appropriately a quote from Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture" in the final cartoon about a college football game. The animation, while amazing compared with more modern cartoons, is not as good as many contemporary cartoons. Nearly all cartoons are in black and white, and often feature looped background scans and even looped actions of background characters. One curious note. A recurring word throughout this series is "Nertz" and a man named "O. Nertz." In the football episode, the underdog team is "Nertz U." and features numerous bespectacled, non-athletic types. I wonder if Dr. Suess came up with his word "nerd" after watching these cartoons.