Any movie critic can tell you what a newly released DVD is about & spoil the ending for you. I plan to ruin your entire DVD watching experience by highlighting it's flaws, it's missteps, it's examples of poor editing, casting, and point out the ridiculous holes in the plot. If you're cynical, you'll appreciate this valuable service I'm providing. If you're easily impressed, then don't say I didn't warn you.  - Mean Jean

I'll start with the best first:

Lemony Snicket

Click on the link on this page & buy this baby new, even if you have to pay shipping & you'll soon be the proud owner of a Bentley of a movie that you'll love & watch many times, even if you don't have a single kid to watch it with. If you do have scores of kids, this is one of those rare treats that kids of every age in your house will like, unashamedly, too. There's enough action & age appropriate humor to hold wee ones captive combined with a flawless script remarkably absent of contrivances, holes & clichés that will keep older ones spell bound as well.

The better a movie is, the fewer notes I take while I'm watching it. Aside from the who is in it notes, all I could write about this flick was 'clever humor, hilarious & clever, clever & funny.'

Jim Carey stars in it perfectly as the evil distant relative out to steal the Baudelair orphan's massive inheritance after their parents die in a tragic house fire. The movie follows their repeated placements in the homes of various obscure relatives, all the while followed & hunted through their *roller coaster thrill ride® by Uncle Whatshisface. This flick manages to make the tragic comic, cleverly, of course.

Jude Law has a cameo in shaded profile as the narrator, Lemony Snicket, who recounts the tale as though reading from the book on the subject.  Girlies tempted to run out & buy it for that reason should buy it even though you'll only know it's Jude Law if you are able to recognize his voice, or if you read the credits on the back of the DVD case.

There's bunches of famous people in  it, like Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, that Billy guy from <Muppet Treasure Island, come to think of it, maybe that's why it was so well acted. The script is so stand-alone dandy that even if a buncha actors from some summer playhouse theater starred in it, I'd still want you to run out & buy it.

I didn't pay much attention to who the three kidlets in this are, but they did a fine job too, acting like pros & not being dwarfed by the mega famous acting royalty of above while sharing screen time with them. That fact is worth mention. Now you can stop reading, buy this flick & skip over the next review, entirely, for it a review of a movie that was oddly horrible, in spite of having a brilliant concept for a movie & wonderful actors in it.

Buy this one new, today, so in a week you will have seen it seven times.
 

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Racing Stripes

I hope I am not too late! When your kids beg you to buy or rent this for them, get down to their level so you can look them in the eyes & repeat after me: "Honey, I love you far too much to allow you to watch a movie this horrible. I'll getcha Lemony Snicket instead, now leave me alone; I'm busy resting my eyes..."

This movie was, as I said above, stupid in spite of itself. What a great idea for a flick! Could a zebra, that's used to running for its life on the savannah, beat a horse in a race? Now I am not going to Ask Jeeves such a thing, because I really don't care. But if you care about such things, I'd advise you to take the 'Ask Jeeves' route, because at least then you won't have your intelligence insulted. 

Apparently, all it takes to utterly shipwreck a movie with many positives going for it is clichés from every racing movie ever made, and holes huge enough to drive a stable of horses through. I don't mean the repeated attempts at cultural relevance this movie fought to maintain by inserting funny bits form other movies on purpose, I mean the far more evil & insidious lifting of conflicts, climaxes & resolutions to form an amalgam of racing movie clichés. 

Have you ever seen a movie with a race in it? Then I just betcha you can perfectly plot out the script of this flop. No racing cliché was neglected; all the tried & true elements are here, bar none. If you want your kids to see a dandy horse race movie about a kid & the beast he rides to victory, get "The Black Stallion". At least that doesn't show such parental irresponsibility & theft like Racing Stripes daddy who happens upon a left behind zebra in a basket on his way home from the little country store & he decides to keep it. Now as commonplace an event as that is in real life, unfortunately the taxes in this little town are so high that not only are there no police departments he can call & report his find to, the sheriff's office has also been eliminated due to the depressed economy (I suppose). 

Fortunately, this dad has a palatial barn, with exactly the right thing to feed a growing zebra, and plenty of cute & surprisingly clean barnyard critters to keep it company & conspire with each other to reach their far-fetched goal. If your kids want a cute movie about barnyard animals that talk to each other & plot kooky things, get them "Babe" or "Chicken Run". At least those animal conspiracies are more believable.

As though the coincidental accommodations for a young zebra aren't enough, you'll never in a trillion years guess what the dad used to do for a living before a tragic wife accident disillusioned him enough to become a subsistence farmer rather than remaining in his former lucrative line of work. Oh, wait, I forgot- it probably didn't even take you a trillionth of a nanosecond to blurt out "I bet he used to train horses to race & they probably live right next door to a race track & high tech training facility, too!" At this point in the plot development, I began to feel very sorry for the people sitting in front of me at this free matinee. Those poor souls and their five blonde daughters had to put up with my obvious & loud snorts of disgust & exclamations of disbelief every ten seconds. My kids are so used to such a thing they don't even hear them anymore. To their credit, though, no one turned around to glare at me, probably because they were thinking what I was vocalizing. 

Now how would this movie look like if it took place in real life? Well, I know if I was one day fortunate enough to discover a zebra abandoned on some wet road, & if I took it home to feed it & care for it till it could make me rich & put me on the horse racing trainers map, I would quickly get busted & have "my" zebra seized. For when Asking Jeeves 'what to feed a baby zebra that's soaked by a thunderstorm & about to
die of exposure' turned up no results, I'd have to place several frantic phone calls to zoos, farm feed stores & pet stores. 

Me: What do you feed a baby zebra that is probably going to die of exposure?

them: (long silence) Why do you want to know? 

Me: Sorry, wrong number, (click!)

Continuing on the real life version of the roller coaster thrill ride ®, the rest of the movie would concern the Savage family hiding the zebra in a wet basement while Area Plan sniffed around seeking evidence that an exotic animal lived on the premises while the vast majority of the kids dodged kicks & struggled to keep his distinctive whoo-whooing from tipping off the Area Plan troll that toads were not the only exotic species on our non farm.

Next would come the squabble of the kids who didn't want the zebra to spend the night in their room because what if nature calls during the night? Obviously tying it to the garage wouldn't be a viable solution, etc. Now if this had been the script, holes & clichés would have been as absent as in the case of the much finer Lemony Snicket & I'd highly recommend it to you. 

One final disappointment. While the actors you could see were just fine, the 'actors' you could hear were just horrible. It sounded like Snoop Dogg was maybe the hound dog, good thing he's not relying on revenue from voice overs to put food on his table, and many of the other animals had a hard time convincing me that they were what they were supposed to be, a mark of truly horrific voice 'talent'. Oh, well, I guess the Summer Theatuh Troop has to eat, too. Good thing they weren't given roles in Lem Snick.

Given the fact that a movie this lame & horrible & stupid & transparently bad is clearly geared for kids, I was surprised at the many crude & almost vulgar jokes that a kid might get his mouth soaped for repeating.

Mean Jean sez, don't even bother watching this one, you'll thank me someday if it ever makes it to TV. 

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