Serial

This is an underrated classic that doesn't get near the credit it deserves. We recommend it to friends and they add it to all-time favorite lists every time. Hilarious spoofs on California lifestyles of the seventies that are still funny today. This movie should be made on DVD for all the many fans waiting for it!! Who can I call?? Martin Mull gives his perfect, sarcastic every-man, Sally Kellerman is hilarious especially in her wedding vows (You-ness, me-ness, we-ness, us-ness) to which Mull whispers to Tuesday Weld, "Sickness." Bill Macy is the greatest mid-life crisis ever put on film and Tommy Smothers as Spike, the Preacher is one of the funniest characters he has ever done.

Hilarious send-up of the PC tyranny of the late 70's, though this movie seems to work even better now than it did then. This film is a much more three dimensional criticism of American culture than Mull's hilarious TV shows, America and Fernwood Tonight. This is indeed Martin Mull at his best. Also a plus is all the great vintage 1979 character actors we all saw on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

SERIAL takes aim at the late 1970's SoCal lifestyle and hits it. It perfectly lampoons -harpoons!- the empty, faddish idiocy embraced as "culture" by a stoned, zombie-like citizenry.

Martin Mull is superb as Harold, one of the only rational, cynical characters in the movie, spending most of his time astonished by the rampant absurdity unfolding around him.

If you've ever smiled when someone mentioned the "new age", "pyramid power", or "healing crystals", then you'll howl at this!

INCLUDES: #1- A guru played by Tom Smothers! #2- A cult complete with purple-clad love bombers! #3- Gay bikers with a mysterious leader! #4- An orgy! #5- Intense therapy! #6- Lentil loaf! #7- A wedding / joining of two beings into oneness!

Watch immediately!...

I was always curious about this film. I had always figured that it would be a throwaway heavy-handed hit-and-miss increasingly dated piece about the 70s. Having spent the past 20 years in the SF Bay area, and "encountered" much of the new age mentality that still thrives there, I knew I'd have to at least give it a shot.

Well, Serial turned out to be a treat -- a brilliant, unexpected satire. It had me smiling or laughing from beginning to end, a few "pansy" comments notwithstanding. Sure, the pre-AIDS sexual situations are exaggerated and from another time. But nearly every target -- self-actualization, meditation, medication, cult groups, fad therapy, relationships, etc. -- is hit. Martin Mull plays the central character in the midst of all the mumbo jumbo with perfect subtlety.

Maybe some of the low votes come from people who think that people couldn't possibly talk and act the way these characters do. Well, they did and still do.

Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld prove to be a terrific comedic match as a married couple in fad-crazy Northern California who decide to separate yet can't seem to get into the swinging lifestyles of their too-groovy friends. Colorful supporting performances, lots of fast, brash talk, bitchy humor and funny set-pieces, yet "Serial" works only intermittently. It's structured like a naughty TV-sitcom, with wacky episodes, some of which hit and several which don't (the daughter's involvement with a religious cult was maybe good for one or two scenes, not an entire reel). Still, it's a pleasure watching Mull and Weld work so easily together, and theirs is a believable union which holds the morass together. A fitfully fun time. **1/2 from ****