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Reviews
Night Court (1984)
Still Funny
I remember this show from when I was little, watching it with my mom, dad, sisters and brother. All of us liked it a lot and laughed a lot but I wondered if I would actually enjoy it today if I watched it again, but when I did it actually holds up.
Harry Anderson stars as a wacky "night court" judge, stuck on the graveyard shift at a New York City courtroom. He's silly, tells a lot of bad "dad jokes" and does a lot of magic tricks (in real life he is a comedy magician, which he also had showed off in his guest roles on another great eighties sitcom, Cheers). So at first obviously he is dismissed as a goof but he's also actually got a lot of heart and wisdom and knowledge of the law, which is why he got to be a judge so young (and when he's so goofy) in the first place.
The defense attorney is a bleeding heart and very attractive young lady, who becomes Harry's romantic interest but also is the target of the lecherous, selfish, stop at nothing to win, heartless D.A. Dan Fielding, played by the hilarious John Larroquette who won many awards for this role. All of these characters are still likable and hold up today, as well as Mac the no nonsense court manager, the gigantic, dopey bald bailiff Bull (Richard Moll), and a succession of female bailiffs (two older, gruff talking, smoking bailiffs actually passed away in real life, and then Roz, the sassy black lady who takes no nonsense from anyone, particularly Dan). The supporting characters are also fantastic. Whoever cast this show, I hope they won a lot of awards.
The writing also holds up with a lot of great jokes. You can kind of tell where most of the stories are going, just like with any older sitcom, but it's still a lot of fun to get there when the characters are this likable and the jokes are still funny.
Silent But Deadly (2011)
Awful Movie, Awful Writing, Awful Cast, Awful Effects
This movie is awful.
The actors are all awful. Especially Jason Mewes who is probably just there for a quick pay check.
The writing is awful. The story doesn't even make sense but worse than that all the characters are unlikable and stupid. Logic flies out the window. And even worse than that it's not even funny with zero laugh out loud moments in the whole movie.
There's nothing good about this movie. They even stoop to doing littler person jokes like we are supposed to just laugh because the sheriff is a little person? How is that funny?
The hero of the story is a camera man who just seems like a d-bag and who also is not funny.
I thought I recognized the stupid bimbo from the nude slasher shoot scene so I looked her up and it is Nicole Arbour who did that fat shaming video and that was her 15 minutes of fame where everyone hated her and she got blasted on The View then never heard from again. It's nice to see her in this getting two lines to say and shaking her boobs around for the few people who actually will see this movie, guess she'll be doing porn movies soon. She's actually pretty good looking. Then again this movie is from 7 years ago so who knows now.
One last thing the CGI and effects in this movie are a total disaster. With the few slasher scenes they had why not just do practical effects that aren't super expensive in small scenes like this? The CGI is so clumsy and cheap looking it is literally like they did it in a high school's A/V club room with whatever software it is that comes with most computers.
All this could be forgiven if the movie was at least funny accidentally, you know like other movies that are so bad they're good because at least you can laugh at them (like Troll 2 etc), but this is never funny that way, it's just a sad movie that has no real point existing.
Storage Wars Canada (2013)
Another Remake That Falls Flat
I thought the original Storage Wars was an OK enough show. Obviously like most "reality shows" a lot of the action was staged and the characters on it were real people who weren't the best actors but at least they were interesting and funny on occasion.
Just lifting that formula that worked should have been easy enough you would think but Storage Wars Canada fails in every way. Worst of all are the stories they have and the writing. The rummaging cast are not given anything really interesting or funny to do or even just lines to say, and they are 100 times worse at acting than the original show's cast. They didn't find anything interesting or funny, the people finding it weren't interesting or funny, the experts they took their finds to weren't interesting or funny, the conflicts and stories they were given weren't interesting or funny.... were the writers asleep at the wheel the entire season? Seriously a middle school drama class could have come up with better stuff and funnier lines.
I'm surprised this show was even put on television it was so bad, but luckily the plug was pulled. Mercifully I would say.
Schitt$ Creek (2015)
Painful
I watched this show because I am a huge fan of basically every SCTV cast member. Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are comedy legends and Canadian legends and they alone should make a show worth watching. Unfortunately everything and I mean everything else about this show is so cringe worthy I couldn't watch it any more, even for them.
Levy and O'Hara are still good. The few times I smiled in seasons one and two were because of them. But not even they can milk funny out of the garbage they are given to say and do by the writers. All the jokes are repetitive and the unfunny, over the top situations just get amped up more and more in a constant effort to try to one up themselves.
Everything is predictable and nothing is funny. None of the characters are remotely believable. None of their actions are believable or funny. There is no logic and the continuity is even flawed before they even get done the first season.
Worst of all are the other actors. One woman and Chris Elliott are OK (again they don't exactly have much to work with) but the entire rest of the supporting cast is awful, just awful. One of the guys is so bad you can tell by watching that he must be the producer's son, and he is (Dan Levy), so I guess it's obvious that really is how he got his job. His over the top screeching and ham-fisted and ham-faced acting are enough to drag this show down to a negative 10 rating. Luckily for him the stars of the show are all class.
Avoid this show like the plague or end up angry and bitter about the wasted time like me. Also I have to point out it is kind of suspicious that this show is so highly rated by so may new accounts and that thousands of ratings popped up in a 24 hour period. It's possible they are all genuine but I'm not sure it passes the smell test so I hope IMDb will look into it.
Final verdict: Not funny, good stars but awful supporting characters, some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a TV series, nothing interesting enough and nobody likable or funny enough to keep watching. I give this one an F.
Men with Brooms (2010)
Men with Brooms... Why?
I didn't like this show (it would appear most people certainly did not like it) but worse than that I didn't even understand it. I still can't figure out why this show was made... how did this happen?
Men with Brooms was a harmless, not very good but still much better than this TV version, movie. That movie came out in 2001 or 2002 and did OK for a Canadian film. By that I mean it actually got released in theatres and some ho-hum reviews and word of mouth but overall didn't make much at the box office and probably lost money. Nobody raved about it and it's not like people were still talking about it months let alone years later.
So why make a TV version almost a decade later? Especially when you don't even have the good, talented, relatively famous cast they had in the movie?
A bunch of no name actors doing a watered down, stretched out, poorly written imitation of a riddled with plot holes movie than wasn't even successful when it first came out like 9 years before. How could they be surprised it flopped? Maybe a movie sequel would have made more sense.
Anyway hopefully they don't repeat the same mistake again any time soon. Avoid this show like the plague because it's not even funny, and the movie's not very good either so not worth watching unless you're a huge Paul Gross or Leslie Nielsen fan.
Gerry Dee: The Substitute (2014)
Utterly Incomprehensible
This show isn't just bad, every single thing about it is bad. It is as if every decision they had to make about the show they made a mistake, so what they ended up with is just one big mess of a show that's so awful it's funny but so awful beyond that that's it's not even funny any more.
The costume is stupid and unnecessary because this guy isn't famous or anything, so why does he need a disguise? Let alone that stupid fake accent, was that supposed to be funny?
Most hidden camera shows do short things for a reason and this one is a FULL HOUR LONG and gets boring right around the 15 second mark. Once the guy starts talking in the fake accent, that's pretty much the only joke in the whole show.
There are parts where you can see where the cameras are hidden and we are supposed to believe the kids didn't know they were there?
In the final scene where he reveals he is actually a "famous actor" and pulls off the silly wig and stops using the fake accent either nobody is surprised because they did know all along it was fake, or just nobody cares, or maybe both.
None of the jokes they try work. Pretty sad when you can spend all day with kids, not fool them and not get them to go along with anything funny. How is asking different kids what basketball teams to bet on funny? They're just picking random cities and we never find out who wins anyway so who cares?
The joke they build up for like 50 minutes of him telling his ugly girlfriend on the phone to get out of his house because it's over, where she shows up at school and is actually good looking, is very predictable and not funny anyway.
He doesn't once do anything funny in the entire show and doesn't get the kids to do anything funny either. Why did they make this last a whole hour? It wouldn't be a funny half hour or 15 minute show either but if there is nothing funny or entertaining at least have it be over faster.
I can't believe this was put on television. It would actually be funny if they made it this bad on purpose and it was actually like a double agent style hidden camera show where the real joke is that the hidden camera show is a disaster, but that's not what this is, it is actually supposed to be a real hidden camera show. These people obviously just had no idea what they were doing.
Pitiful television.
Match Game (2012)
This show would be better if you just let the contestants ask each other questions.
Match Game sucks. I watch the original game show (it is currently airing on cable and is called Match Game 73) and it is very dated but it's still an amusing show. The premise for a game show is very good where you have professional comedians as a panel trying to "help" the contestants by giving answers to the same questions and if the answers match they get points. The original show has the comedians giving funny answers but never dirty, and usually they give a real answer and just say funny things about it. This new show just has comedians who give the worst answers trying to be funny and failing. So why should the contestants even bother playing when the comedians just keep giving stupid answers which are also usually filthy? Gave his dog a what? A penis. She keeps a what in her cupboard? A penis. I could give better answers than that and also funnier answers than that and I am an accountant, probably the least funny kind of person in the world. Please stop making horrible shows like this. Whoever at your network thinks that anything sexual is automatically funny needs to be fired. Have you guys ever made one single good show? Every person on the panel is not funny and the host is also not funny. Seriously is this the best we can do?