manxman-1

Thank God for a movie that is hilariously different! So many movies today are special effects and explosions -- all aimed at the teen audience eager for the same old, same old. Sam Rockwell is fantastically funny as a hit-man who kills the people who hire him, rather than the people he is hired to kill. When he falls in love with the lovelorn Anna Kendrick you don't see how it can possibly work but the charm and quirkiness of Rockwell's character inevitably wins her over. A series of assassination attempts on Rockwell's life are ruthlessly snuffed out in bloodiest fashion that is so way over the top as to keep the audience laughing. A terrific script by Max Landis (son of John Landis of Animal House fame) makes you want to seek out more films scripted by the same hand. Most critics hated this movie -- which doesn't mean a damn thing considering the garbage they praise all too often. If you want something that is plain daffy and funny as Hell then this comes highly recommended.

Lesley Mann is always a delight as an actress and she battles it out as a betrayed wife in this tasteless piece of dreck aimed at the feminist audience. Cameron Diaz, looking like a stick insect put together with silicone and play dough, scorched with a blowtorch and bleached to distraction, goofballs her way through the story with a manic charm and perseverance that is more than this vile, untalented script deserves. One wants to weep at the depths to which screen writing has sunk when a witless piece of garbage like this that depends on vomit and diarrhea jokes for its laughs -- and judging by reading other postings -- succeeds in entertaining the female viewers. By all means let's see a movie about wives and mistresses taking revenge on an unfaithful mate but let's see it done with wit and style, not with unpleasant bodily functions and scenes in which the man develops breasts due to being unknowingly plied with female hormone pills. (Would a movie in which a man slips male hormone pills to a woman be funny if she developed balls and a beard? Maybe in America, nowhere else.) What a HUGE condemnation on the taste -- or lack of it -- that permeates Hollywood today. The fact that audiences have applauded this movie only indicates the depths to which film-making has sunk. That this script was greenlit at all is saddening beyond belief. Mars and Jupiter are planets other than Earth, and the fact that this movie has attained the success it has makes one wonder what planet the viewer who applauds this dreck is from. Where is the wit? Where is the intelligence? Is lavatory humor the wave of the future? Yes, there are movies around that have scatological humor in them and yes, they were written by men, but they succeed because they have solid wit and smarts behind them. The Other Woman has a basic idea that rapidly descends into the gutter and chooses not to raise its head again. For all the battles that women have had to be accepted as individuals in their own right, this movie hurls them right back down into the pit. I would love to see Lesley Mann, Cameron Diaz et al in a movie about women taking revenge on an unfaithful mate (see the 1959 Alain Delon movie Women Are Weak or the 1968 Three In The Attic for tips on how to write such a movie) but The Other Woman is a tasteless stinker of a movie that fails to understand how scriptwriting works. Obviously the only thing that matters in Hollywood today is the box-office count and the fact that this movie has scored big can only be attributed to the pull of its stars, who deserve one hell of a lot better. Let's hope in future that they get it.

I would LOVE to see this show again -- though by the sound of it, it's gone forever. One episode had Milo O'Shea bringing home a pregnant girlfriend and announcing to his mammy that he intended to marry her, much to her dismay -- which was instantly replaced by outrage when the mammy discovered that the girl was pregnant by another man and Milo didn't mind. The mammy took the girl out shopping, the girl announced that she had to "go to the lavvy" and the mammy sent her "all the way down, all the way down" to the bottom of the stairs to the underground trains and the mammy took off running, knowing the girl had no idea where they lived. A very funny show with great supporting characters.