The problem with big screen adaptations of big television shows is that the commercials can sometimes save a tanking episode. Commercials can break the monotony and sometimes give the audience a chance to regroup. While “Impractical Jokers: The Movie” can benefit from an ad break or two, struggling to keep the energy well in to the hour mark, it’s a very good extension of the hit TV show.
Even if it’s niche cinematic affair for the fans like me that watch the series religiously.
A couple looking to get their first house walks into a real estate office with an over-eager agent who wants to bring them to the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, at the perfect price, to raise the perfect family. Getting to the house is only the start of something bizarre and surreal where they learn a lot and go a little mad.
Everyone loves the small screen Lucille Ball, but the zany redhead’s long career in films is often overshadowed by her TV celebrity. On this episode of “The Online Movie Show,” actor-writer-comic Kevin Dolan returns to consider Lucille Ball’s film work and the versatility she brought to her cinematic roles.
I love “April Fool’s Day,” and I say that as someone that originally hated it. It took years for me to come around on it, mainly because in a decade where we got nothing but slasher movies, we were given one. But we also weren’t given one, either. In either case, if you’re going in to “April Fool’s Day,” it embraces its inherent silliness and mounts tension to be a pretty good statement about the slasher sub-genre while also having a good old time with the audience. It’s become a favorite of the sub-genre, and indicates a point where studios were beginning to satirize the tropes of the sub-genre.
As mid-life takes them into its arms, two friends are over being mistreated at the restaurant where they work by a boss who cuts every corner possible. When the opportunity arises, they both follow a dream they’ve had and make a very important career move with a closed bowling alley in their small town.
For a movie that’s almost as old as I am and features many a flat tops and pastel vests, “House Party” is a movie that’s barely aged. In fact, it’s a movie that so many studios have tried to duplicate but never quite have captured the same magic and enthusiasm. There’s just something about “House Party” that’s kept it a vessel of pop culture, hip hop, and comedy that was shifting from the eighties and in to the nineties. Not even the sequels lived up to what is basically the perfect party movie when all is said and done. The movie advertises itself in the title, but while the movie is centered almost completely on a party, it’s also a pretty excellent coming of age comedy.
Charley Chase was a reigning star of the silent comedy world, but he also carried on well into the sound film era as both an inventive performer and a versatile director. In this episode of “The Online Movie Show,” we explore Charley Chase’s sound films with James L. Neibaur, author of “The Charley Chase Talkies: 1929-1940.”