Chromium_5

First of all, I think series creator David Shore has done something very cool here. He's taken Sherlock Holmes and plopped him right into a high-stress job in the 21st century. Shore has said House is modeled strongly after Holmes, and this is definitely clear in a lot of House's dialog and mannerisms (especially in his conversations with Dr. Wilson). He and Hugh Laurie have done a better job creating a modern, believable version of the character than most other attempts I've seen ("Law and Order: Criminal Intent" comes to mind).

Also, although I love Laurie's performance, it could get annoying if it was just a one-man show (again: "LAO: CI"), and Shore has wisely surrounded him with a large cast of characters to make things more interesting. Each character adds something to the show, and it's very entertaining to see all the different personalities bouncing off each other (and ultimately, bouncing off House). My one complaint is that character development has been a little slow (especially with Chase), and if they don't branch out in that area, things could get stale.

Finally, I've heard some people criticize this show for being too unrealistic, but all I can say to that is, it's not supposed to be (what mystery show is!?). Yeah, the diseases patients come in with are totally off-the-wall, and House diagnoses and cures them in unrealistic ways, but if they were coming in with commonplace diseases, they'd get cured in 5 minutes and there wouldn't be a show! If you can manage to suspend your disbelief and think of it as a character-based mystery show (and can handle some of the graphic surgery scenes), you're bound to enjoy it.

Except people apparently buy into this garbage! As shows like "Moral Orel" have shown, even if you tried to make the most outrageous, over-the-top parody of evangelism you could possibly think of, it wouldn't come close to the hilarity of this show. It's hard to tell what's even going on when you're watching it. Is it a news show? A talk show? Who knows!? They start out by reporting on various international news stories, but at seemingly random points, the news is interrupted by this odd, troll-like little man with a forehead bigger than his entire face, mumbling and laughing and generally being creepy.

Pat Robertson doesn't even seem like such a bad guy at first glance. He just seems like a senile, yet harmless old coot stuck in his archaic beliefs (like most of our grandparents). But this is a man who has called for an assassination, who has befriended and offered aid to not one, but TWO murderous dictators, who has illegally used donation money to run diamond mines, who has SUPPORTED forced abortions in China, and who regularly implies that Caucasians (straight American male Caucasians in particular) are superior to all other races.

Still, this would all be funny, except that he apparently has a large enough fan base to keep his little show on the air 40 years later (either that, or enough money to bribe some TV executives who don't give a damn what they show). The idiocy of the show becomes alarming when you realize that some people, somewhere, must be watching it and hanging onto every word. Even when Robertson has repeatedly shown how corrupt he is, people still listen to him. I don't know if it's funny or scary. I guess a healthy mixture of both.

There is maybe a glimmer of a good concept here. An inkling. A particle. A klutzy idiot ruins the house of a famous, upper-class gigolo, and has to raise the money to fix it by prostituting himself. With weeks of tweaking and rewrites, and a much better actor, this could possibly have been funny (maybe, for example, if Deuce had to actually assume the identity of the gigolo). But that obviously didn't happen.

Instead, it's just a series of stupid scenes involving women who have some weird problem. Haha, this woman is fat. Haha, this woman has Tourette's (swearing = funny). Haha, this woman has a prosthetic leg. Oh, haha, now they are parodying The Matrix for no reason at all. I can't imagine the amount of alcohol it would take for any of this crap to be considered funny.

There is ONE scene that's at least smirk-worthy, with an aquarium salesman who for some reason speaks only in sexual innuendos. Normally that would be pretty stupid, but it's like comic gold compared to the rest of this movie.

I'm actually ashamed of myself for watching this. For those users going, "But it's not supposed to be taken seriously; it's just mindless entertainment," you people are the reason garbage like this keeps being made. Stop laughing, you idiots. Movies like this are not funny.