Serial

This is an underrated classic that doesn't get near the credit it deserves. We recommend it to friends and they add it to all-time favorite lists every time. Hilarious spoofs on California lifestyles of the seventies that are still funny today. This movie should be made on DVD for all the many fans waiting for it!! Who can I call?? Martin Mull gives his perfect, sarcastic every-man, Sally Kellerman is hilarious especially in her wedding vows (You-ness, me-ness, we-ness, us-ness) to which Mull whispers to Tuesday Weld, "Sickness." Bill Macy is the greatest mid-life crisis ever put on film and Tommy Smothers as Spike, the Preacher is one of the funniest characters he has ever done.

Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld prove to be a terrific comedic match as a married couple in fad-crazy Northern California who decide to separate yet can't seem to get into the swinging lifestyles of their too-groovy friends. Colorful supporting performances, lots of fast, brash talk, bitchy humor and funny set-pieces, yet "Serial" works only intermittently. It's structured like a naughty TV-sitcom, with wacky episodes, some of which hit and several which don't (the daughter's involvement with a religious cult was maybe good for one or two scenes, not an entire reel). Still, it's a pleasure watching Mull and Weld work so easily together, and theirs is a believable union which holds the morass together. A fitfully fun time. **1/2 from ****

Hilarious send-up of the PC tyranny of the late 70's, though this movie seems to work even better now than it did then. This film is a much more three dimensional criticism of American culture than Mull's hilarious TV shows, America and Fernwood Tonight. This is indeed Martin Mull at his best. Also a plus is all the great vintage 1979 character actors we all saw on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

Y'know how sometimes a movie gets absorbed into your life? You quote from it, you think about it, you occasionally have real-life experiences that jog your memory of a particular scene. For a lot of people, this movie is "Casablanca," or perhaps "When Harry Met Sally." For me it's "Serial."

In 1980 I was 15 years old and going to High School in Marin County, California, the same time and place as "Serial." My formative-to-rebellious years were spent at ground zero of the birth of the new age and PC movements (some might argue that this was actually Boulder, Colorado or Sedona, Arizona, but let's not split hairs).

Natch, I grew up hating these attitudes. Like the protagonist Harvey Holroyd, I would listen to the pablum puke coming out of peoples' mouths and (figuratively) weep for the future.

It's only gotten worse.

"Serial" is a hilarious and sharply observed comedy which can easily strike the casual viewer as dated and arcane, but listen, really *listen* to the minor characters in this movie: - The bearded hippie who wants to help Kate carry things up the stairs but demurs because, "like, that would be sexist." In 2002, is not chivalry truly dead? - The flighty and annoying trend-hopper Carol, who by the end of the film has decided she's gay, even though according to Kate she's "still a c***." Ever know a LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation)? - The young checkout girl with whom Harvey has a fling, who from the get-go stands Nazi-like over Harvey's eating habits, rigidly attempting to control what Harvey puts in his "one and only body." Ever know someone who deals with the chaos and vagaries of life through their eating disorder?

So, is "Serial" merely a dated light comedy? To me, it's much more: it's an open-handed slap to the face of the now-prevalent ideas that started in this time and place. Two years after this film came out, I became an angry young punk rocker, and left this film for a few years, but it never left me.

P.S.: My laserdisc copy looks and sounds terrible. I want a DVD!!

This is in my top ten of all time favourite films.

Harvey Holroyd can't understand what's happening around him. His wife has started to raise her consciousness, his daughter is concerned about her rights, his best friend who has a preoccupation with the Johnny Carson show is bombed out on pills and he's been a loser for 5 years!

I can sum this fantastic film up in two quotes from it: "Reality is watching a pair of self proclaimed assholes getting pair-bonded by a priest from the gong show". "Are they hell's angels?" "No they're gay. On weekdays they're regular guys with regular jobs but at weekends they dress up like hell's angels and listen to a lot of Judy Garland record". Priceless!