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Review Network / Watching - Series 2 - Complete
Actors & Directors
  • Patsy Byrne
  • Paul Bown
  • Emma Wray
  • Liza Tarbuck
Release date: 2008-03-17
Run time: 175 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.69

Review Watching - Series 2 - Complete / Network:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Thoroughly Modern Millie [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Mary Tyler Moore
  • Carol Channing
  • James Fox
  • Julie Andrews
  • John Gavin
  • George Roy Hill
Release date: 2004-07-26
Run time: 138 min.
Creator: Richard Morris
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.49

Review Thoroughly Modern Millie [1967] / Universal Pictures UK:

Julie Andrews is at her peak of adorability in this enjoyable (and surprisingly sarcastic) spoof of the 1920s. It has every trick: occasional silent-movie intertitles, flapper lingo ("Oh, banana oil"), and a laughable plot about women being sold into white slavery by the scheming manageress (splendid Beatrice Lillie) of a Hotel for Ladies, aided by a cabal of wicked Chinese. (The stereotypes are bearable only if you remember this is a spoof of silent movie melodrama. ) Even with able support from Mary Tyler Moore and James Fox, this is Julie's show; she plays to the camera with the collusion of director George Roy Hill, who's clearly smitten with her silly streak. The movie has an annoying tendency to spend time on musical numbers-a Jewish wedding, a vaudeville act-that don't serve the plot. A future Broadway musical would create a new score, except for the delightfully catchy title tune. -Robert Horton.

Review Universal Pictures UK / K-9/K-911/K-9 - P.I.
Actors & Directors
  • Charles T. Kanganis
  • Richard J. Lewis
  • James Belushi
  • Kevin Tighe
  • Rod Daniel
  • James Handel
  • Mel Harris
  • Christine Tucci
Release date: 2007-04-09
Run time: 279 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £7.25

Review K-9/K-911/K-9 - P.I. / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Warner Home Video / The Thin Man Collection : The Thin Man / Shadow Of The Thin Man / The Thin Man Goes Home / After The Thin Man / Another Thin Man / The Song Of The Thin Man (6 Disc Box Set) [1934]
Actors & Directors
  • Minna Gombell
  • Nat Pendleton
  • W.S. Van Dyke
  • William Powell
  • Myrna Loy
  • Maureen O'Sullivan
Release date: 2005-09-19
Run time: 589 min.
Creator: Frances Goodrich
RRP: £45.99
Price: £17.97

Review The Thin Man Collection : The Thin Man / Shadow Of The Thin Man / The Thin Man Goes Home / After The Thin Man / Another Thin Man / The Song Of The Thin Man (6 Disc Box Set) [1934] / Warner Home Video:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / M*A*S*H [1970]
Actors & Directors
  • Elliott Gould
  • Tom Skerritt
  • Robert Altman
  • Robert Duvall
  • Sally Kellerman
  • Donald Sutherland
Release date: 2002-04-29
Run time: 111 min.
Creator: Ring Lardner Jr.
RRP: £22.99
Price: £3.98

Review M*A*S*H [1970] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

It's set during the Korean War, in a mobile army surgical hospital. But no one seeing MASH in 1970 confused the film for anything but a caustic comment on the Vietnam War; this is one of the counterculture movies that exploded into the mainstream at the end of the 1960s. Director Robert Altman had laboured for years in television and sporadic feature work when this smash-hit comedy made his name (and allowed him to create an astonishing string of offbeat pictures, culminating in the masterpiece Nashville). Altman's style of cruel humour, overlapping dialogue, and densely textured visuals brought the material to life in an all-new kind of war movie (or, more precisely, antiwar movie). Audiences had never seen anything like it: vaudeville routines played against spurting blood, fuelled with open ridicule of authority. The cast is led by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, as the outrageous surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, with Robert Duvall as the uptight Major Burns and Sally Kellerman in an Oscar-nominated role as nurse "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The film's huge success spawned the long-running TV series, a considerably softer take on the material; of the film's cast, only Gary Burghoff repeated his role on the small screen, as the slightly clairvoyant Radar O'Reilly. -Robert Horton MASH-a 1970 comedy-drama set among surgeons drafted into the Korean war-was a breakthrough not just for director Robert Altman but for movie-making in general. Although set in the 50s, there are few who did not realise that the film's anti-war messages were directed at the US involvement in Vietnam. Indeed, the Pentagon banned US servicemen from seeing the film. [+]
Starring Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce and Elliot Gould as Trapper John McIntyre, two hip young surgeons drafted against their will. Their general attitude-while never corroding either their humanity or their professionalism as surgeons-is one of insolence towards military authority and the arbitrary structures and regulations continually droning from the tannoy system. The film, too, thrives on a lack of attention to conventional order, with its cross-dialogue and random, episodic style reflecting the vivacious and unbuttoned feel of the content. However, MASH has dated and much of what seemed like "liberating" high jinks, today smacks of sexist, frathouse boorishness and harassment, especially at the expense of Major "Hotlips" Hoolihan (Sally Kellerman), while the episode in which "Painless" plans a suicide out of a fear of being gay reflects the persistence of homophobia even in 60s counterculture. Despite this MASH feels ahead of its time and certainly sharper and blacker than the too-cute sitcom it spawned. On the DVD: this is an excellent restoration, overseen by Altman himself, in which any obfuscation from the original have been cleaned up, especially the sound quality. As well as a commentary from Altman, there are three separate documentaries, featuring interviews with Altman, the cast and screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr, who had been blacklisted during the anti-Communist witch-hunt which swept through Hollywood in the 1950s. We learn he was initially appalled at how little of his script Altman actually used but was mollified by the Academy Award he received. Altman is candid about the making of the movie ("It wasn't released by Fox, it escaped from Fox"). There's an abundance of similarly rich, anecdotal material here. -David Stubbs.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Me, Myself and Irene [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Mongo Brownlee
  • Bobby Farrelly
  • Kate Forster
  • Anthony Anderson
  • Renée Zellweger
  • Jim Carrey
  • Peter Farrelly
Release date: 2001-06-18
Run time: 112 min.
Creator: Charles B. Wessler
RRP: £19.99
Price: £1.37

Review Me, Myself and Irene [2000] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

In Me, Myself & Irene, Jim Carrey plays Charlie Baileygates, a cop for the finest police force in the world (Rhode Island's). In denial about his wife's affair, he's a nice guy who goes around trying to do the right thing but is taken advantage of every step of the way. Instead of confronting people, he takes the abuse, balls it up and hides it in the pit of his stomach. His psyche can only take so much, though and soon his alter-ego Hank pops out to do every libidinous thing Charlie would never do. It's a great premise for a Jim Carrey film. Unfortunately, it's not a great Jim Carrey film. Famous for the lowbrow, shock comedies like Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There's Something About Mary, here the Farrelly brothers get lost in a series of lazy gags and an even lazier plot about some evil golf development and the woman, Irene (Renée Zellweger), who needs to be protected because she knows something about it. Some of the jokes hit (there's a bathroom scene that's 10 times funnier than the hair-gel gag in There's Something About Mary), but many more miss. There are some great concepts (his three sons are hip-hop geniuses) that don't go anywhere (they swear a lot). It's like the movie itself has a split personality-funny ideas trapped in a less-than-funny film. [+]
-Andy Spletzer, Amazon. com.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / My Cousin Vinny [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Jonathan Lynn
  • Joe Pesci
  • Fred Gwynne
  • Marisa Tomei
  • Ralph Macchio
  • Mitchell Whitfield
Release date: 2002-03-04
Run time: 114 min.
Creator: Paul Schiff
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.95

Review My Cousin Vinny [1992] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

1992's My Cousin Vinny is a delightful comedy-cum-courtroom drama set in Alabama. Joe Pesci stars as Vinny, the garage mechanic recently turned lawyer, who finds himself straight in at the deep end when his young cousin is unjustly arrested, along with his buddy, for the murder of a store clerk. From the opening scenes in which the hapless arrestees labour under the impression they've been booked for stealing a can of tuna, My Cousin Vinny's comedic pace never slackens, even as the drama builds. Much of the fun derives from raw, Brooklyn native Vinny's coping with the cultural backwaters of the Deep South, from its lardy grits to the 5. 30 am "alarm call" of the factory horn. There's a good running gag involving retrieving $200 from a recalcitrant local redneck, while his clashes with the court judge, played by the late Fred Gwynne are priceless. Pesci goads this stickler for procedures by mumbling expletives in court, turning up in a leather jacket, then a mauve frock coat and arousing the judge's suspicions as to his bona fides. However, it's Marisa Tomei who surprisingly, but justly, took an Academy Award for her performance as tomboyish Lisa, Vinny's girlfriend. Tart rather than tarty, she more than matches Pesci for Noo Yoik sass and mechanical knowledge, delivering a court lecture on limited slip differential and independent rear suspension that oozes improbable sexiness. On the DVD: a decent presentation in 1. [+]
85:1 aspect ratio, though it's only Tomei's bizarrely eye-catching costumes which especially merit DVD enhancement. There's also a commentary by director (and co-creator of Yes Minister) Jonathan Lynn, in which-though at times seeming to struggle for interesting things to say-he reminisces on the fear in shooting the film's prison scenes adjacent to Death Row in a maximum security prison. -David Stubbs.

Review ITV DVD / Royle Family - The Queen Of Sheba
Actors & Directors
  • Ricky Tomlinson
  • Ralf Little
  • Craig Cash
  • Sue Johnston
  • Caroline Aherne
Release date: 2006-10-30
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.99

Review Royle Family - The Queen Of Sheba / ITV DVD:


Review Momentum Pictures / A Room For Romeo Brass [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Shane Meadows
  • Shane Meadows
  • Martin Arrowsmith
  • Darren O. Campbell
  • Paddy Considine
  • Dave Blant
Release date: 2002-03-25
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: Paul Fraser
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.08

Review A Room For Romeo Brass [2000] / Momentum Pictures:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Two Ronnies - Series 1
Release date: 2007-04-30
Run time: 355 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.63

Review Two Ronnies - Series 1 / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Walt Disney Home Video / The Lion King [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Jonathan Taylor Thomas
  • Roger Allers
  • Jeremy Irons
  • Rob Minkoff
  • James Earl Jones
  • Whoopi Goldberg
  • Matthew Broderick
Release date: 1995-09-20
Run time: 84 min.
Creator: Chris Sanders
RRP: £16.99
Price: £10.94

Review The Lion King [1994] / Walt Disney Home Video:

Disney's 1994 animated feature, The Lion King, was a huge smash in cinemas and continues to enjoy life in an acclaimed stage production. The story finds a lion cub, son of a king, sent into exile after his father is deposed by a jealous uncle. The little hero finds his way into the "circle of life" with some new friends and eventually comes back to reclaim his proper place. Characters are very strong, vocal performances by the likes of Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg are terrific, the jokes are aimed as much (if not more) at adults than kids, the animation is sometimes breathtaking and the songs from Tim Rice and Elton John, accompanied by a colourful score, are more palatable than in many recent Disney features. -Tom Keogh On the DVD: The Lion King Special Edition is a superb restoration: take a look at the serviceable but dull film clips incorporated in the plethora of extras and compare them to the vivid gorgeousness of the film presentation. This special edition also adds a 90-second song ("Morning Report") that originated in the lavish stage musical. To Disney's credit, the original theatrical version is also included, both restored and featuring two 5. 1 soundtracks: Dolby Digital and a new Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix, which does sound brighter. As with the Disney Platinum line, everything is thrown into the discs, except an outsider's voice (the rah-rahs of Disney grow tiresome at times). The excellent commentary from the directors and producer, originally on the laser disc, is hidden under the audio set-up menu. [+]
The second disc is organised by 20-minute-ish "journeys" tackling the elements of story, music and so on, including good background on the awkward Shakespearean origins at Disney where it was referred as "Bamlet". The most interesting journey follows the landmark stage production, and the kids should be transfixed by shots of the real African wildlife in the animal journey. Three deleted segments are real curios, including an opening lyric for "Hakuna Matata". Most set-top DVD games are usually pretty thin (DVD-ROM is where it's at), but the Safari game is an exception-the kids should love the roaring animals (in 5. 1 Surround, no less). One serious demerit is the needless and complicated second navigation system that is listed by continent but just shows the same features reordered. -Doug Thomas.

Review Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm / One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing
Actors & Directors
  • Derek Nimmo
  • Helen Hayes
  • Robert Stevenson
  • Joan Sims
  • Peter Ustinov
  • Clive Revill
Release date: 2004-05-03
Run time: 90 min.
Creator: David Forrest
RRP: £14.99
Price: £4.83

Review One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Just My Luck [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Tovah Feldshuh
  • Donald Petrie
  • Samaire Armstrong
  • Chris Pine
  • Lindsay Lohan
Release date: 2006-11-13
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.97

Review Just My Luck [2006] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Vision Video Ltd. / How High [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Redman
  • Obba Babatundé
  • Mike Epps
  • Anna Maria Horsford
  • Method Man
  • Jesse Dylan
Release date: 2003-07-28
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Dustin Abraham
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.00

Review How High [2001] / Vision Video Ltd.:

Grab your favourite munchies: Red and Meth, that dope-addled dynamic duo, are going to Harvard. And while it's not exactly demanding viewing, How High is destined to become a guilty pleasure of the cannabis crowd. The plot's a familiar one-take the basic selling points of any Cheech & Chong movie (a pair of shambolic protagonists who smoke lots of weed and drive funky 70s-style cars), graft them onto a generic "raising hell on campus" teen movie scenario and shake vigorously. The result is a prosaic effort that does contain some all-too-brief moments of genuine humour. Red and Meth, aka Redman and Method Man, may look like the world's oldest freshmen, but both offer genial performances, especially Method Man, who imbues the character of Silas with a dog-eared gentleness that raises him above the film's leaden script and plastic directing. -Rebecca Levine.

Review Pathe Distribution / Millions [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Daisy Donovan
  • Alex Etel
  • Lewis Owen McGibbon
  • Christopher Fulford
  • Danny Boyle
  • James Nesbitt
Release date: 2005-11-21
Run time: 94 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £3.94

Review Millions [2004] / Pathe Distribution:

Millions wears its heart on its sleeve, and it wears it well. Two boys, still grieving the death of their mother, find themselves the unwitting benefactors of a bag of bank robbery loot in the week before the United Kingdom switches its official currency to the Euro. What's a kid to do? Director Danny Boyle takes a simple premise and, with the help of Frank Cottrell Boyce's sweet, smart script, finds something special to say about the hopes everyone has for the future of a changing world. Brothers Anthony and Damian have vastly different agendas for the stash, and then have to deal not only with the money's original thief but with the disarming woman who seems to be stealing their widowed father. The film is full of quirks that work-seven-year-old Damian (an endearing Alex Etel) has private conversations with a collection of eclectic religious saints-and a technically spirited way of commingling both the scary realities and fanciful imaginings of young minds. -Steve Wiecking, Amazon. com.

Review Universal Pictures UK / The Office - An American Workplace: Complete Season 1
Actors & Directors
  • Rainn Wilson
  • Steve Carell
  • Jenna Fischer
  • John Krasinski
  • B.J. Novak
  • Victor Nelli Jr.
Release date: 2006-04-10
RRP: £19.99
Price: £7.54

Review The Office - An American Workplace: Complete Season 1 / Universal Pictures UK:

Office manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell, The Daily Show, The 40 Year-Old Virgin) believes he's the beloved leader of the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of a paper products company-but his relentless and painfully forced efforts at comedy creep out everyone around him, including paranoid Dwight (Rainn Wilson, who had a memorable recurring role on Six Feet Under), nervous receptionist Pam (Jenna Fischer, LolliLove), and aimless salesman Jim (John Krasinski, A New Wave), who's smitten with the already engaged Pam. The pilot episode suffers from closely replicating the British pilot, but after that The Office finds its own footing, turning diversity training, an office birthday party, and a basketball game into excruciating yet hypnotically funny rituals of humiliation. Carell, though clearly talented, can't match Ricky Gervais' unique performance as the aggressively needy British manager (it's hard to imagine that anyone could); as a result, the supporting roles become more prominent, and Wilson, Fischer, and Krasinski quickly create a rapport that matches and may even exceed that of their British counterparts. Be sure to watch the deleted scenes; remarkably, they're as good as the material that made it on the air in this six-episode season. -Bret Fetzer.

Review Revelation Films / Goodnight Sweetheart - Series 1 [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicholas Lyndhurst
  • Victor McGuire
  • Christopher Ettridge
  • Elizabeth Carling
  • Emma Amos
  • Robin Nash
Release date: 2008-02-04
Run time: 230 min.
Creator: Maurice Gran
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.79

Review Goodnight Sweetheart - Series 1 [1993] / Revelation Films:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Red Dwarf: Series 4
Actors & Directors
  • Chris Barrie
  • Craig Charles
  • Hattie Hayridge
  • Ed Bye
  • Robert Llewelyn
  • Danny John-Jules
Release date: 2004-02-16
Run time: 180 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.89

Review Red Dwarf: Series 4 / 2 Entertain Video:

By the end of this fourth year, Red Dwarf had completed its metamorphosis from a modest studio-bound sitcom with a futuristic premise to a full-blown science-fiction series, complete with a relatively lavish (by BBC standards) special-effects budget, more impressive sets and more location shooting. Despite the heavier emphasis on SF, the character-based comedy remained as sharp as ever. Witness the Cat's reaction to Lister's pus-filled exploding head; Kryten's devastatingly sarcastic defence of Rimmer; or, the classic scene that opens the series, Lister teaching Kryten to lie. In "Camille", Robert Llewellyn's real-life wife plays a female mechanoid who transforms into something else entirely, as does the episode, which by the end becomes a delightful skit on Casablanca. "DNA" comes over all SF, with lots of techno-speak about a matter transmogrifier and a RoboCop homage-but in typical Dwarf fashion, turns out to be all about curry. "Justice" sees Rimmer on trial for the murder of the entire crew, while Lister attempts to evade a psychotic cyborg. Holly gets her IQ back in "White Hole", but wastes time debating bread products with the toaster. "Dimension Jump" introduces dashing doppelganger Ace Rimmer for the first time-he was to return in later series, with diminishingly funny results. Here his appearance is all the better for its apparent improbability. Finally, "Meltdown" goes on location (to a park in North London) where waxdroids of historical characters (played by a miscellaneous selection of cheesy lookalikes) are at war. [+]
Only intermittently successful, this episode is really memorable for Chris Barrie's tour-de-force performance, as Rimmer becomes a crazed, Patton-esque general. On the DVD: Red Dwarf, Series 4, like its predecessors, comes as a two-disc set complete with full cast commentary for every episode, an extensive retrospective documentary (mostly featuring the cast reminiscing), deleted scenes and lots of other fun bits of trivia. -Mark Walker.

Review 2 Entertain Video / The Young Ones - Series One [1982]
Actors & Directors
  • Rik Mayall
  • Nigel Planer
  • Geoff Posner
  • Paul Jackson (II)
  • Alexei Sayle
  • Ade Edmondson
  • Christopher Ryan
Release date: 2002-08-05
Run time: 200 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.14

Review The Young Ones - Series One [1982] / 2 Entertain Video:

"A horrible, vile, disgusting sitcom about four students who live in the most revolting house in Britain", The Young Ones became an instant BBC comedy landmark in 1982 by launching an all-out assault on the moribund sitcom, mixing Monty Python-esque madness with post-punk anarchy. There are no real stories, only a succession of often hysterically funny scenes as ingenious gags collide with deliberately corny lines, cartoon-like ultra-violence, pop music breaks, surreal interludes with characters ranging from the Three Bears to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and gross-out moments based on various bodily functions and substances. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Christopher Ryan are the four housemates: Rick (Cliff Richard-worshipping radical sociology student), Vyvan (violence-loving punk medical student), Neil (put-upon suicidal hippie) and Mike (self-styled cool guy). Alexei Sayle appears regularly playing various mad Russians. Taking a cue from National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) the show now seems to anticipate the teen gross-out flicks of the late 1990s but to far more amusing effect. In retrospect The Young Ones is cheerfully un-politically correct in a way which may shock more now than 20 years ago; certainly some of the insults and drug-taking would have trouble getting on TV today. The first series was followed by a second equally hilarious series; Mayall and Edmondson played essentially similar characters in Filthy, Rich and Catflap (1987) and Bottom (1991-5). On the DVD: The Young Ones on disc has disappointingly no extra features except optional English subtitles. The sound is full, clear mono and the 4:3 picture is as good as can be expected from a 1980s BBC comedy shot on video and certainly far better than the show appeared when it was broadcast. -Gary S Dalkin.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Only Fools and Horses - Dates [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • David Jason
  • Roger Lloyd-Pack
  • Tessa Peake-Jones
  • Nicholas Lyndhurst
  • Buster Merryfield
Release date: 2002-05-06
Run time: 79 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.37

Review Only Fools and Horses - Dates [1981] / 2 Entertain Video:


Browse Comedy:

Models & Brands:
Watching - Series 2 - Complete, Thoroughly Modern Millie [1967], K-9/K-911/K-9 - P.I., The Thin Man Collection : The Thin Man / Shadow Of The Thin Man / The Thin Man Goes Home / After The Thin Man / Another Thin Man / The Song Of The Thin Man (6 Disc Box Set) [1934], M*A*S*H [1970], Me, Myself and Irene [2000], My Cousin Vinny [1992], Royle Family - The Queen Of Sheba, A Room For Romeo Brass [2000], Two Ronnies - Series 1, The Lion King [1994], One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, Just My Luck [2006], How High [2001], Millions [2004], The Office - An American Workplace: Complete Season 1, Goodnight Sweetheart - Series 1 [1993], Red Dwarf: Series 4, The Young Ones - Series One [1982], Only Fools and Horses - Dates [1981]

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