GoUSN

I find Friends insufferable. The characters are human one-liners. I find only Lisa Kudrow to be funny, but she's the same kind of funny in everything she does - the kind that appeals to me.

The Big Bang Theory is a Friends upgrade in every regard. The characters have more depth, even if each one may have a few one-note elements. Even with those, however, the characters remain far more relatable, even though probably very few of us know scientists and their friend the Cheesecake Factory waitress. While many of us know the Friends type of friend, none of us know them to behave like that group. Self-indulgent. Uncaring. Not self-aware.

The Big Bang Theory gives us cerebral jokes, down-market jokes, sight gags, and wit. I've had many a "laugh out loud" moments.

With there being so few children's movies out, the pickings are slim when it comes to family fare. This being the case, it became necessary to see Paddington Bear a second time.

I must say that, with the second viewing, I gained an appreciation for the film that I didn't have the first time around. Though it was certainly removed from its London setting, and taken all the way to Peru, several of the individual performances are really quite remarkable - plus a musical number with nuns, and if that doesn't remind you of The Sound of Music, the Reverend Mother singing and swirling on a meadowy mountaintop certainly will.

We see a little more of Paddington's depth. We meet a nun who seems pitch perfect. And we meet Antonio Banderas playing more than one role, hilariously.

So go! But go twice.

This is Lucy and Ricky without Fred and Ethel, and boy does it show. It's actually Tacy and Nicky, but who cares. The point is that Lucy/Tacy and Ricky/Nicky needed two side-kick wise-crackers named Fred and Ethel. Oh, and make sure Fred was played by William Frawley and Ethel by Vivian Vance.

This film is one long slog. We see every set-up and know the joke it's setting up, beginning with the trailer itself. Yes, we could have predicted driving antics and impossible turns. Yes, we could have expected food prep in a moving trailer. Yes, we could have expected steep mountain grades in a car that could have used a bit more power.

It's all predictable, formula, with no new ground trod. No character development, no interesting interactions between anyone. And the complete unfamiliarity of renaming Lucy and Ricky to become Tacy and Nicky completed defeated the purpose of renaming them - since the new names were distractingly like the ones people already knew so well. If you're going to rename Ricky and force people to forget they're watching him, then something like Ferdinand or Xavier would have done the trick. Same with Lucy. Why not Annabelle or something entirely different. But Tacy? Just replace the L and the U with a T and an A, leaving just the CY?

Not a good film. Expect nothing except the novelty value of seeing folks you think you know, except their names are slightly different and their trusty side-kicks are absence.