Men in White

This film was a complete waste of time, totally unfunny and just about everything in the movie has been seen before ( ok I know that's the point up to a degree but Spaceballs managed to show us a load of stuff we'd seen before in an original and entertaining manner ). Obviously the only reason anyone decided to slap National Lampoons onto the title is because no-one would otherwise touch this pile of cack with a barge pole. I know Tom Wilson is deserving of better than this sorry effort and although he does well with the really naff dialogue he gets it's still not enough to save this turkey......AVOID!!! On the plus side though my kids (3, 5 & 6) thought it was quite amusing.

I saw this film back in 99 when it was first on in the UK, and here I am writing about it in 2004. Since then I consider myself a little bit older, a little bit wiser but one thing still remains the same- This film is one of the worst ever to grace (or is that disgrace?) celluloid. I understand a few of the gags more, most notably since I watched the likes of 2001 and that but they are still absolutely abysmal. Gags should appeal to everyone of the target audience (bit of advice for you Mr writer) but jokes about smoking aren't really going to make the kids laugh are they? So what else is terrible in this film? Well I only have a 1000 word limit on the IMDb so I will keep it brief so let us start with the dreadful plotting.

One previous writer is correct, a dead cat could write something better. Then we have the characters, two idiotic morons which worked well in Dumb and Dumber because they had the dialogue but in this film I won't even go there, OK then I will as you insist..."We've been saving the Earth from alien invasion", "I hope you don't expect any extra bonus for this..." you get the picture in this dire picture. Another previous writer was correct also, Tom Wilson is a decent actor as he showed us in Back to the Future, but since then work has kind of dried up. He shouldn't be getting this guff at all, but the question we need to ask ourselves is WHY Mr Wilson decided to do this film in the first place? If you haven't seen this diabolical mess of a film, then I have a surprise for you...watch it! Seriously, watch this film, I kid you not. And why? Well if you are a budding screenwriter it is truly a lesson of how NOT to make a film.

I think of the title of "National Lampoons" and i think of a hilarious insight into popular culture and the "cult" things of our times. I had expected something close to "Spaceballs" but was reminded instead of why i grew up! Do not view this movie unless you are grafting your child onto the realm of "Star Wars"....

Please step lightly!

The only other National Lampoon movies I've seen are the Vacation and Christmas Vacation movies. Those are good and this can't hold a candle to them. Maybe I'm being too hard on a TV movie. No, TV movies have given us great things like "Temple Grandin". This is an awful movie no matter how you look at it. This movie is a supposed parody of "Men In Black", but it feels a lot more like a knockoff product. The film has virtually nothing to do with "Men In Black" at all. Instead, it mostly just features two garbage men and a bunch of aliens they fight.

It might just be because "Dr. Strangelove" is such a great movie that I particularly hated this. There's a Dr. Strangelove parody in this and again, that has nothing to do with "Men In Black" or even alien movies in general. It's great how those few minutes he was on screen were infinitely better than all the screen time this guy was on. The special effects in this are terrible. It might have been okay if they had just used costumes, but instead they used horrendous CGI. It's the worst I've seen in a long time.

I know this was 1998, but "Jurassic Park" was 1993 for crying out loud! This throws in a bunch of "Star Wars" stuff. There's even a scene where all the bad guys are running out of the ship that seems like a ripoff of a scene in "Spaceballs". This wasn't for theaters, TV, video or anything else. Some of these jokes I can see coming from a mile away. I guess even on TV, spoof movies were becoming awful at this time. *

The world is in trouble – alien abductions are on the rise as they prepare for a full invasion and the President's main adviser, Dr Strangemeister, is part of the conspiracy to facilitate it. When two dumb bin men escape the aliens, Dr Strangemeister figures he can meet the demands of the President to put people on the case and the demands of the aliens to keep it all quiet by putting Ed and Roy on the job as special agents. Whether they know it or not, Ed and Roy take on the aliens to prevent invasion.

When I watched this film I knew that it would not be that great but I had hoped it would be a reasonable spoof but I was not prepared for just how stupid, unfunny and cheap the whole thing would be. For me to waste my time and your time discussing a plot that is little more than a very basic frame of this stupid live-action cartoon would be to give it more credit than it even deserves. Suffice to say that this film has no real story other than a very spoof aping of other films. This wouldn't be a problem if the film was even funny once or twice but it really isn't at all – not even once. Not only that but the tone is just unrelentingly silly and is simply only suitable for those under-ten. At one point even one of the characters remarks that 'our target audience will be in bed in an hour' at which point it was only 1630 – but I still thought he was right!

The writing is very poor and the jokes are lame from start to finish – I'm sure some of them worked on paper but none of them were funny on screen and the hyper delivery a la Tom & Jerry just made it feel even less enjoyable. And if you think the writing makes the film cheap then wait until you see the 'special' effects – they are dire, even for a television movie they are laughable inept and not helped by the casts' total inability to convincingly interaction with any of the computer stuff! In fact generally the whole cast are rubbish, partly due to the material but also partly due to their inability to deliver even average lines well. That Wilson and Prince are awful will be no surprise after you see them mugging like mad in the opening scene – and they continue this throughout. However what was a surprise was how poor people like Bostwick, Kennedy and Walsh were – I can only assume they were short of cash because they were rubbish even when given average lines (some of Bostwick's lines could have been worth a laugh or two if the delivery hadn't been so bad).

Overall this is awful and I add my voice to the long list of those imploring you to listen to our cry of 'stay away'! The jokes are rubbish, the delivery awful, the plot woeful and the whole film is only suitable for the under 10's. The special effects are visibly cheap and nasty but the whole film smacks of the same standard and I actually gave up on it with 20 minutes to go. The lowest point for me is a brutally unfunny running gag based on one of the funniest films ever – Dr Strangelove – can we have no sense of respect for greatness?