TygerBug

Most of the landmarks of 90s comedy can be seen somewhere in this little movie, from Michael Richards to Chris Farley to Beavis and Butthead. If you haven't picked this one up yet, you should, it's a funny little gem and I remember enjoying it immensely.

I grew up with "Animaniacs" at a time when I was already supposed to be grown-up, and still have a soft spot for it. But please, rent "Mostly In Toon" or "The Warners Escape" or ANYTHING, ANYTHING but this disgusting dreck apparently recycled from the ruins of some [god help us] DISNEY DTV FLICK -- it feels the same, anyway. Very few laughs, most involving Pinky and the Brain --- constant stream of pointless cast cameos, great animation from Tokyo Movie Shinsha which makes the unspeakably bad script all that more painful, because it does LOOK good onscreen. The plot? There's Tom Bodett, and at the end.... Major ouch.

Fans of Monty Python will have a sense of deja vu watching "Rutland Weekend," since Python Eric Idle carted over the same mindset and writing style to the tiny studio in BBC2 where all 14 episodes of Rutland Weekend were recorded. This is probably Eric's best work. Even though many of the sketches fail, the easy wit of Eric's writing sees the audience through. You kind of have to retrain your ear to deal without the laugh track, more like watching a feature than a sitcom. It's not a show that insults the intelligence. It insults, certainly, and gets away with murder -- much of what's done in series 2 would have to be cut for American TV -- but it still works. Basically the show consists of Eric talking a whole lot, as a sketch comedy budget doesn't allow for much else. But that's what he did on Python too. The supporting cast, especially David Battley, Henry Woolf, Neil Innes, Gwen Taylor and Terence Bayler, are great, and Python fans will regard this as a rare treat. However, they're not likely to ever see it. As of this writing, these shows are almost impossible to find ...