Gorm

I should have paid more attention when a little girl walked over to me in the theatre and asked: "mister, why didn't anyone else come to see Kangaroo Jack?". Out of the mouths of babes...

This film is embarassingly bad. I had hoped for a reasonably decent attempt at a fantasy/children's film. This film never really decided what it wanted to be. Worse, (sigh), it's unfunny and desperately overacted, with forced humor(several scenes end with grating bouts of seemingly unending laughter). Everyone either...um...acts like they're anxious to be somewhere else (Christopher Walken's performance-woefully underused-he CAN be funny) or they're constantly struggling to actually get some depth and purpose to their characters.

The Australian actors all appeared to be grimly determined to see this through but were obviously not happy. Jerry O'Connell-an apparent cum laude graduate of the Steve Guttenberg School of Ham Acting, could have made more of an impact if he hadn't indulged in so many astonished looks of admiration and reckless "fighting" grins. Estella Warren was a nice piece of eye candy, and as another reviewer stated, didn't really have much to do, but her token resistance to O'Connell in the gratuitious bathing scene was just too much. Laura Cox would have far more plausible in the role and seemed just as attractive-plus she's Australian. The Black Sidekick-Anthony Anderson (never heard of him) was just...embarassing.

Special effects/animation-the primary reason I attend kid's movies-were both excellent and dated. The "Roo's" were very well done, but the landscapes were screamingly obvious. Rotoscoping has it's place, but viewers are far too used to CGI, now.

Whoever wrote this film could also use a few Australian geography lessons. Like the inference that Coober Pedy and Alice Springs are just a few miles outside of Sydney.

Did you ever notice how the losers; the baddies and the incompetents always have thinning hair or are outright baldies in the movies?

Talk about typecasting: Jeff Bridges as the Prez. Full head of hair, high energy, masculine, physically fit and pretty funny, too. Pretty cool, even for a Democrat. Golly, gee whiz, are there supposed to be any similarities drawn between him and Clinton?(I think he stole this movie, BTW).

Gary Oldman as Shelly Runyon, Thinning hair (to be charitable), four-eyed geeky tubercular physique, and quivering jaw, with mean little spitting cobra-like malevolence that only Gary can portray. Oh yes, he plays the EVIL Republican.

Joan Allen...uh, who? What a wussy. Was this the best they could do for a representative of Yearning American Womanhood straining at the Chains of Inequality? For most of the movie, she does nothing to move beyond precisely those reasons that are put forth as Bridge's motivation for nominating her in the first place-namely that he wants a Woman named to the V.P. slot as a part of his "legacy". Not once does he or his chief aide (well played by Sam Eliott) discuss her politics nor is she shown to be any sort of a leader. Mostly, she is so self-effacing; so in awe of all these Big Strong Men, that she makes one ill (snif!). Only towards the end, do you get an idea that maybe she is substantive and that she actually has an opinion on something. They might as well have been picking a S,F and D housefrau out of the phonebook.

Bridges and Eliott seem to regard political investigations as something shameful and dirty and only reluctantly, when they had no other choice, do they finally, reluctantly, (sighing all the way) take advantage of information provided by a plucky (and cute) (OW! take that! sexist pig!) FBI agent. But only in the interest of the American People, you understand...

One last: the ambitious little weasel turncoat representative played by Christian Slater. Does he ever show any emotion besides barely held in eagerness? He seems forever on the verge of anticipating some impending event, like the water bucket above the half-open door trick.

The music was way too loud and way too epic. Way too obvious that this was meant to be a Big Event.

A live teleplay based on the novel by Pat Frank about the ultimate horror coming to your neighborhood. Don Murray is a lawyer in a small town in rural Florida. Life is simple; slow and idyllic, until the unthinkable happens one afternoon. Done at a time when most people had black and white TV's and the Cold War was very real and very, very close,it had a stark documentary style and feel to it that terrified people. A truly remarkable event in TV history, that probably should be in the Smithsonian and/or on the AFI's preservation list if it isn't there already.