wednesbury Reviews

Monk (2002–2009)

One of the best US exports

[30 March 2006]

As a viewer in England, Monk is, in my opinion,one of the best US series exported TV programmes. Compared to other US series that have been screened in prime time slots in the UK this series is truly brilliant. Mr Monk, suffering with OCD, generates sympathy as well as humour. Currently I am watching the series on the BBC who are repeating each episode in the afternoon. For some reason Monk has never been aired in a UK prime time slot despite being far superior to the current dross and reality TV programmes that are filling our TV channels on most evenings. My solution is to record the afternoon episodes and they then become my evenings viewing highlight. Forget other current US series such as Invasion (yawn), Lost (lost the plot) Surface, etc. they pale in comparison. All the roles in Monk are well acted and each of the characters have their own identities. I love the inept Lieutenant Randy who tries to emulate the archetypal portrayed TV cop. Long may the series run.

War of the Worlds (2005)

Take a huge amount of money, an Oscar winning director, famous actors and churn out CRAP

[1/10 · 27 August 2005]

Words can't describe how awful this movie is. Its only saving grace was the sound effects. I suggest this film goes straight to DVD bundled with Artificial Intelligence AI and Hook as a package entitled 'Spielberg - The Ultimate Crap Collection'. What ever drove Spielberg to release such a badly conceived and poorly assembled movie? The plot was full of holes, the ending was ludicrous and at best the characters were hollow and unsympathetic. Especially annoying was Dakota Fanning's character. With so much screaming I started to wish she would be vapourised by the aliens early in the movie. It is reported that filming started as late as last November and the the movie was rushed through for a summer 2005 release. Judging on the final result I would suggest that at most, a week would have been more than enough time to churn out this appalling excuse for what should have been a great movie. How many more other authors 'classic' works can Spielberg maul to death with his lame re-workings of truly great stories? First J.M Barrie's Peter Pan (Hook) and now H.G.Wells' War of The Worlds. Who is his next victim going to be? I see he is currently working on an Abraham Lincoln Project, perhaps in Spielbergs' reworking of this factual story Lincoln only gets slightly wounded instead of assassinated, and goes on to become Emperor of America with John Wilkes Booth as his life long friend for another happy ending.

Freaky Friday (2003)

Suprised

[7/10 · 3 February 2004]

I was pleasantly suprised when I was taking a 10 year old to see this film. I expected to have to sit through 90 minutes of childish entertainment but I was pleasantly surprised. The film had quite a few endearing qualities that made it fun to watch even for adults. There were a couple of times I spotted a guest appearance by Mike who dropped in unexpectedly (microphone seen at to of screen in the hallway of the house)which for a Disney film is unforgivable.

On the whole good entertaining family fun.