my fave

...I will give him credit for his performance in "Born on the 4th of July."

Looking foward to seeing "Tropic Thunder." My first reaction to seeing the commercial for it was "Blackface? Really?" But I'm glad to hear the movie is good.

This movie here might be one worth coughin' up the cash.

not Alpha, according to the IMDB and other reviews I've read.

alpha makes more sense

Okay, first if you don't get the incredibly pathetic pun of "Alpa Chino" (Al Pacino), please take a film appreciation course. No. Wait. DON'T take a film appreciation course. Start watching every film you can possibly find before 1995. I mean every film especially black and white and all the genres and sub-genres you never watched and consider too stupid like musicals, screwball comedies and Depression-era flicks. Yes, even Shirley Temple. And catch the silents, too and I don't mean just Charlie Chaplin. Start with "All's Quiet on the Western Front" and then see if you can laugh or get pumped by today's war movies.

Now about this review...

I actually went to all the trouble of registering to finally say something I've been wanting to say for the last year: Dear Ms. Zacharek, if you can't bring yourself to take seriously a Doris Day comedy, then please read "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" and pay close attention to the character of the critic. Then go back and read your first year of reviews and then read this last year. Please don't make me have to steal the abandoned screenplay in your file cabinet...

"...comedy demands that we relinquish our sense of orderliness, sometimes even our better judgment"

Where was this thought when you were watching "Mamma Mia!"? Your perfectly willing to suspend disbelief for Shock Schlock. It's cool. It shows how hip and open you are. As opposed to those squares who might, just might perhaps find heavy-handed, laid on with the shovel, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, aren't-I-a-bad-little-boy-for-doing-something-that-violates-social-mores in poor taste and childish.

Possibly it's because I've lived through all this before. (Yes, I'm old enough to remember the late 60's to late 70's period of "shocking new cinema" like the graphic bullet-riddled death of Bonnie and Clyde and explicit language and depiction of ghetto life in blaxploitation flicks. I even remember when they used the word "ghetto" in the films. I'm old enough to remember when great actors were praised most for appearing in great films that were lauded for Not being obviously manipulative. And I'm old enough to remember when the goal was to be classy, not cheap.)

But frankly, enough. Enough pandering, enough prostituting, enough attempt to be shocking when it's just bad taste, insensitivity and rudeness —

In films, in reviews, in Salon.

A friend saw this a few weeks ago. He said he laughed so hard that he pulled some rib muscles and was in pain the next day.

I haven't seen the movie but "this isn't a mimicry of black speech but a mimicry of white people's idea of black speech" makes me uneasy. Just like Madonna was being 'ironic' right? in her Sex book?

I don't think we've had enough genuine drama or comedy with heart that stars intellectually or otherwise disabled people, or black people for that matter, to be ready to move on to sending up intellectually abled/white people's IDEA of intellectually disabled/black people's behaviour/speech/whatever.

I really like Ben Stiller, I really like Robert Downey Jnr. Usually I would go along to anything they made, secure in the knokwledge that I would have a good time. This makes me uneasy though.

thank you so much for enlightening the rest of us who didn't realize alpa chino was al pacino. your film appreciation courses are really paying off!

it's alpha chino and who really cares anyway? gyad. alpha chino is a play on words, as in alpha male, a twist on the types of characters pacino plays. Alpa is not a common-use word and so alpa chino is just a play on the name al pacino, and not a terribly clever one at all. apparently i care too much about this subject and am leaving now

I agree! How dare people not think exactly the way you think. Obviously your point of view is the only correct one. There should be, some sort of standard imposed on films, a CODE maybe, so that we don't offend or prostitute anyone. How about this Nell?:

http://www.mutoworld.com/HaysCode.htm

Nell, I am SO on board with this. There are too many contradicting voices in cinema today. Me hate complexity! Me want to SMASH complexity! Give me Doris Day wrapped in the flag frolicking in a field of daisies! Shirley Temple as a tap dancing warrior for all that is good and classy! ABBA could be our background music as we clean up all the filth and obscenity. Maybe we could bring back the blacklist too! What do ya think?

I know this crippled gimp is going to.. :D

Sheesh, get over the word retard already, it is what it is.

why does NC think we need to be told what movies to watch and that she is the one to tell us? She must be a movie genius. A movie genius who prefers rock hudson and doris day to warren beatty and faye dunaway. By the way, I'm old enough to remember Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me, a fine old film with a fine old actor, James Cagney. It occurs to me that Ms. Day was injured during the filming of a rape scene during this particularly classy film. How ironic that she clings to the days of film when the goal was "to be classy." It seems to me that the point of this very informative review is lost on our movie genius, totally over her head.

John Malkovich was brilliant in "Of Mice and Men."

Stephanie actually liked something!

It figures it's a Ben Stiller movie. If she's a Stiller fan it actually goes a long way to explain her shitty taste in other movies.