comedy

This teen comedy TV series was years ahead of its time and unappreciated when it aired in 1982-83, cancelled before the full first season could be finished. It’s a shame because it’s so smart and funny and different from anything else on TV at the time. It probably would have done better 15 or 20 years later, but it’s so endearingly ‘80s, I can’t imagine it at any other time and being so charming. 

The premise is this: two best friends are freshmen at a typical suburban American high school. Patty is a sweet, shy nerd who is too smart for her own good (played by a young Sarah Jessica Parker

July 21st, 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of “UHF.” To celebrate the occasion (and its recent addtion to the JCL catalog), I wrote about my lifelong love of the film.

When I was around four or five years old, there were a handful of films I watched over and over again. Oliver!, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Beetlejuice were in very heavy rotation in my family room, along with several Disney animated films that we regularly threw on in the afternoon. I remember watching those films as a kid and being in awe of them. They felt so exotic, and I was completely captivated by the

I am sometimes late to the party. I saw The Good Place getting rave reviews pretty much as soon as it started, but it wasn't until it was more than halfway through season two that I began watching season one. I should have realized that because it was created by Michael Shur, who co-created two of my favorite shows (Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine), I would adore it. And I do. By the time I got to the amazing plot twist of the season finale (which I will not spoil for you, because I don't want to go to the Bad Place), I was desperate to watch season two--which had just finished

Why must movie trailers be so misleading? There have been many a movie where the finished product seems completely different from what the trailer hyped it to be. Like a comedy that is not that funny because the trailer gave away the only two humorous parts of the entire film.

After viewing the trailer of Table 19, I popped in the DVD expecting a romantic comedy. A girl meets a guy while at the wedding of her ex-boyfriend’s sister. She’s seated at the worst table but it’s filled with quirky characters who have laugh out loud hijinks. That’s not the movie I got.

Anna Kendrick’s Eloise has

Lindy West’s Shrill is cataloged in the humor section of the library and three of its five subject headings use the word “humor.” So it’s no surprise that while reading chapter 1 I scared my own dog. He looked at me sideways while West describes the role models who looked like her young self: Lady Kluck, Baloo dressed as a sexy fortune teller, and Miss Piggy to name a few.

She then spends a chapter or two talking about her early awareness that she is too big, and pondering what to “do when you’re too big, in a world where bigness is cast not only as aesthetically objectionable, but also as a

Furiously Happy is a second memoir by Jenny Lawson, and she's just as outspoken, insightful and full of profanity as in the hysterically funny Let's Pretend This Never Happened (a Mostly True Memoir).

In this edition of Jenny Lawson’s life, she talks about her smart and normal daughter, and more looks into her life with her long-suffering husband, Victor, who truly loves her no matter what.

Jenny's anecdotal tale also gives us some insight into her many phobias: a fear of people and of going out in public which can be very hard for a writer out on a book tour. Jenny also talks about her love

Yes Please gives readers insight into the crazy, hilarious, sweet and caring mind and life of Amy Poehler. She discusses everything from the day she was born, to the first time she realized she wanted to be an actress, to learning improv in Chicago. She talks at length about the hysterical workings of Saturday Night Live and how much she thoroughly enjoyed herself and working with her fabulous co-workers. Toward the end of the book she describes how wonderful her experience was working on Parks and Recreation and gives little anecdotes about each one of her colleagues and includes information

Redshirts is a thoroughly engaging read, with interesting characters, snappy dialogue, and a plot that transports from comedic to thought-provoking at will. The story follows the adventures of a group of "Redshirts" as they fight for survival and try to unravel the mystery of a curse that plagues their ship. Will they figure it all out, or will they suffer the same grim fate so many "Redshirts" have before?  If you are a fan of Star Trek, or science-fiction in general, do yourself a favor and check this one out! The three codas at the end of the novel take a little bit to warm up to, but add

When Beca’s father drops her off at Barden University, she already knows that she hates it.  She doesn’t want to waste her time studying when she could be getting her foot in the door in the music industry in Los Angeles.  After she starts skipping classes to mix music in her room instead, her father makes her a deal: if she gets involved in the college by joining a group and still wants to leave after the year ends, then he’ll personally pay for her to move to California. Beca reluctantly joins the Barden Bellas, a disgraced a cappella group run by the uptight Aubrey and populated by an

What a fun, fun movie! I missed Pitch Perfect when it came out in the theaters, but I'm so glad I caught it on DVD! It's quirky and offbeat (but never off-key) (ha ha, see what I did there!), sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes gross-out funny, and sometimes the kind of funny that leaves a quiet smirk on your face and a twinkle in your eyes. Pitch Perfect is the story of Beca (Anna Kendrick), who goes off to college to please her father, but really just wants to be a DJ and music producer. Her roommate ignores her, her boss is apathetic to her, and she can't find the right group to hang

Let’s talk about germs! Whether you think about them or not, they’re everywhere! But what if you could see them with your naked eye? Tadayasu Sawaki has had the ability ever since he was little to see microorganisms as small playful creatures that talk and interact with him. The son of a family of koji mold growers, an art that provides starters for fermented foods such as sake and miso, Sawaki is now a freshman entering university in Tokyo. Accompanied by his friend Kei Yuki, son of a sake brewer, Sawaki finds that although they might have left the countryside behind, life at an agricultural

The world will end in thirty-one days, and only Jack the Ripper can save it.

No, really.  Jack and his loyal dog Snuff are the last guards against the Elder Gods’ incursion into our world.  They have a month to prepare against attempts to open the way for the eldritch monsters, as well as keep control of the various Things they guard in their home.

Unnamed pastiches of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, Sherlock Holmes, Rasputin, Dracula, and several others create a fun little parody of a horror novel.  Snuff’s narration is deliciously dry, and the illustrations provide a fun touch for Roger

A group of college kids head up to the woods for a weekend campout, only to fall into the murderous plot of a couple of backwoods hicks.

VS

A couple of friends head out to their cabin in the woods to make repairs on their vacation home-to-be, only to run into some paranoid college kids who seem bent on their destruction.

Comic misunderstandings wreak a massive death toll in this campy (ha!) comedy/horror film.  If you liked Shaun of the Dead, odds are good you’ll like Tucker & Dale vs Evil.

When Chris Rock’s little girl runs to him crying, “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?” he tries to find out what’s wrong with this question.  He travels to India; witnessing people with straight hair shave it in a religious ceremony, unaware that people across the world without straight hair will adorn their heads with it.  The sacrificed hair is washed and picked free of lice, and then turned into weaves which are flown to the US and sold for thousands of dollars.  A piece.  Yes.  At a visit to a beauty shop the staff jokes around that some women will forgo paying the rent to pay for their

This enjoyable Czech comedy concerns an aging man named Fanda, retired from the theater, and his sidekick, who refuse to become emeritus vegetables, living corpses. To stay involved in the world they cook up harebrained schemes that dig them deeper into trouble. By contrast, Fanda’s wife nourishes a petty bourgeois death cult, devoting their pension to saving for a respectable funeral and burial plot. Their spoiled rich son wants to take over his parents’ apartment to house his harem.  The movie features several Czech notable contemporary actors and the plot reflects contemporary life in the

Directed by Doris Dörrie

Doris Dörrie is Germany’s most popular contemporary movie director. Her movie Enlightenment Guaranteed belongs among my favorite movies. I consider it interesting on three levels: it is a very funny comedy, has beautiful scenery of the Japanese countryside, and has a philosophical undertone. The plot starts simply. Two brothers find themselves on an airplane bound for Japan, one of them with an idea of vacationing in a Buddhist monastery, while the second brother got on the airplane by mistake. The story takes many twists and turns before the brothers finally reach