DrWorm

Critics have just torn this movie apart, but I have to say I liked it. Sure, it could have been more clever, but it's nowhere near being the worst movie of the year as some have claimed. Brenda Fraser is great as usual, and the Downtown scenes look freaking great. Those scenes are the ones where Henry Selick does his best directing. All the actors do their parts well, and the puppets and animation are quite good. Really the only flaws are in the script, which doesn't always exploit the great ideas of its premise. Some of the humor is on the lowbrow side, but that's to be expected, especially considering how the cartoonist character gave Monkeybone his name. It may have been universally panned and opened in 11th place, but I was entertained and I'm not ashamed of it, dadgummit!

Since the 70s or so, there haven't been many musicals at all, so it's a great thing that this movie got made. "Little Shop of Horrors" has it all: musical numbers, Steve Martin, and a singing plant. This was director/Muppet performer Frank Oz's first non-Henson movie, and he did a darn good job. A lot of it is blocked as a stage musical would be, to give it that musical feel. The acting is all good & funny, the script is good, the songs are catchy, and the effects are terrific. A lot of the plant effects would today be done by CGI, but the puppetry they use here looks so much more real. I haven't seen the original Roger Corman movie that this is based on and satirizes, but I'm sure it would be interesting to compare the two. It's just too bad they had to go with the "Hollywood" ending rather than the original intended ending. Hopefully someday soon there'll be a rerelease of the DVD with the footage from the original ending.

I happened to see this movie on cable TV. I was surprised I had never heard of it, and it turned out to be quite funny. It's a parody of "Backdraft" in the tradition of "Airplane" and similar spoofs, and though it doesn't quite reach the levels of excellence of "Airplane," it does have several genuinely laugh-inducing moments. So see it if you get the chance.