sddavis63

I want to say right off the top that I thought this was a very funny movie - a sort of old-fashioned slapstick kind of movie that didn't seem to have any agenda at all except to be funny and silly and that actually made me laugh from time to time, which a lot of supposed comedies don't do. Jerry Seinfeld was the lead actor and director (and one of the writing team) and I thought he did well. For the most part I enjoyed the rest of the cast and most of the characters and even the story line.

Ah. The storyline. Perhaps that's what confuses some people and leads to a somewhat lower rating than I think this deserves. Yes, at first, I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie. Was it going to be a serious and yet comedic look at the very real rivalry between cereal giants Post and Kellogg's in the 1960's, or was it going to be a spoof of that rivalry? I honestly wasn't sure going in. As it turns out it's definitely a spoof about how Pop Tarts were invented - not to be taken seriously at all, but still very funny. (I would put this in the same genre as Airplane or The Naked Gun.)

I think the best way to sum this up might be to share what I liked most about the movie and what I liked least about the movie.

What did I like most? Without doubt - Hugh Grant! He was hilarious as Thurl Ravenscroft - a wannabe and frustrated Shakespearian actor who's been reduced to playing Kellogg's mascot Tony the Tiger. Grant played the role so seriously, and by doing so he made it so funny. The best part of the movie by far was when Thurl organizes all the mascots to protest their working conditions and leads them in a storming of the Kellogg's building, in a clear spoof of the January 6 riots at the US capital and even with a nod to the Q-Anon Shaman!

What did I like least? The two kids who were used over and over to push the story forward - two kids who spend their time dumpster diving in the cereal companies' garbage and throwing together various discarded foods, leading to, first, Post Country Squares and then to Kellogg's Pop Tarts. I didn't like those kids. I found them irritating and they grated on me every time they appeared on camera, which was far too regularly. The laughs ended every time I saw them, and a kind of "yuck" factor took over thanks to the whole dumpster diving idea.

Everything between the highlight and the lowlight worked very well. I enjoyed the movie immensely. It's truly one of the funnier movies I've seen in recent years. (8/10)

I can't honestly say that I was blown away by this movie. It's the fourth of five installemtns in the "Jack Ryan" series and it's Ben Affleck's only opportunity to play the part. I've only seen one of the other Ryan movies - the first ("The Hunt For Red October.") That one didn't blow me away either, which is probably why I hadn't watched any of the others until I decided to turn this on.

What's to say about it? I guess it's a decent enough story that sounds as if it should be exciting and suspenseful. A rogue Russian general has got his hands on a nuclear bomb that had been buried in Middle Eastern sands for years. Eventually there's an attack on the United States (Baltimore, to be precise.) The Americans believe it was the Russians; the Russians know it wasn't, but now they feel under threat from the US and think they'll have to respond. It's a classic portrayal of the nuclear powers spiraling totally and accidentally out of control based on a misunderstanding - and it should have kept me on the edge of my seat. But it just didn't. There wasn't anything here (to me at least) that differentiated this (in any major way) from any other major action thriller about the same subject. I just spent my entire time watching it having a "deja vu" feeling - like I had seen it before, even though I hadn't.

The cast (including Affleck, Morgan Freeman and James Cromwell) were all fine. The story itself just didn't grab hold of me. It felt too familiar to make a major impression. I give it 5/10 - which, ironically, is the same rating I gave "The Hunt For Red October" after I watched it many years ago.