travinitrav

Its your modern standard wacky workplace comedy. Which means its loaded with incredibly lazy ideas and wall-to-wall cliches. There's the usual assortment of misfits, which is to say everyone is an arch-type. You've got the world weary older guy who just wants to lay low and retire. You've got the snarky horny one who's about to be fired for multiple forms of harassment. You've got the neurotic overreactor. There's the new manager who's full of insecurity and desperate to impress everyone, she also makes loads of heartfelt speeches nobody cares about. There's the sexy, cool one who mostly just makes the neurotic one nervous. There's zany wacky antics that haven't been funny for over 20 years. Hostile customers. Weird customers. Sweet customers who are actually nightmares. (Are they even called customers at the DMV?) Anyway, its just a big mashup of sitcom cliches, including old tools like weird musical cues that tell you how you're supposed to be feeling. I will say I'm grateful they did not try this in the old fashioned multi-camera, laugh-track format. Nor did they do the weird shaky-cam, pseudo-documentary style. But none of the lines are funny, none of these characters are "cute" which is clearly what the writing staff wants you to believe. This feels like an incredibly lazy project somebody green-lit just to fill air time, and it has one real star so they can put a name in the ads and maybe get a few people watching. I admit, I only checked this out because of Tim Meadows. And I am not impressed. How sad to think this talented man made a name for himself on SNL and then never got another hit.

Oh, and its got that annoying narration by one of the main characters which is supposed to come across as quirky but really just reminds me constantly this show is filled with old, worn out sitcom tropes. I hope other viewers realize it too and it gets cancelled before the 2nd episode.

This will make me sound like a jerk but I don't care: Anyone who says nice things about this show or leaves positive reviews is either a paid shill, OR has friends or family connected with the show. DMV stinks. Don't waste your time. Don't encourage networks to keep this kind of garbage in the schedule.

Giving it 2 stars because its not completely loaded with all the worst ideas modern TV has to offer.

Its almost entirely style and little substance. Its a visual feast but the story just feels hollow and there's no emotion or warmth. Actually I think Ebert said the same thing. Good or bad, it lost tons of money, and it took a few years before anyone trusted the Coens with another big project.

None of the characters have any real depth. All the actors put on a fine display, but none of them feel real or relatable. All this might have worked better as a half hour Marx brothers routine. Except its also not funny. I suspect it has the kind of dialog and method acting which other film makers watch and then laugh uproariously. But as a layman I just wanna be entertained. At no point did I care about or like any of the people in this whole film. They all feel distant, shallow, and even empty. Like when Jennifer Jason Leigh (I forget the characters name) goes on a sassy rant, almost attacking John Mahoney and his bullheadedness. It was amusing, but not funny, and it didn't feel anything like a person. Through the entire running time I was keenly aware I am watching actors read lines. Well written lines, but just lines. In a movie. Ideally a story is told so well I do not know I'm watching a movie, I'm just lost in the experience for a short while I almost believe this is really happening. Just about every other Coen brothers movie has that quality. Not Hudsucker Proxy. Shame. Cuz another director or team could have made a similar story and it would have been really interesting, even heartfelt and poignant, if they tried. They also commit the cardinal sin of including pointless scenes where characters wax poetic or discuss their feelings, but not in a manner which is believable or adds any depth. All such scenes come across as forced, fake, and slow down the pace of the story telling.

The Coens were merely trying to make a spectacle. And to prove how little the film impressed me, a mere five minutes after finishing I could not remember a single characters name. Except Hudsucker, and that's only because his name is in the title. I forgot who played him.

Radioland Murders made a similar attempt a couple years earlier, it also failed to impress most critics and viewers, but it was genuinely funny and I did laugh.

I assume this was a special feature DVD thing but I actually saw it as a full length one-piece documentary, on Youtube while searching for unrelated teen comedies.

The American Pie documentary is long but loaded with tons of great stories from the writers and producers (all high school friends) and the directors, some of the production crew, almost all of the actors including the Man Himself, Eugene Levy. All of the included stories are great and reveal a lot about the production itself but also the people involved. Like the deleted Stiflers Dad scenes where Chris Penn plays basically Stifler but middle aged and a real jerk. Some of the interviews are genuinely funny like Jason Biggs talking about how he coped with being the subject of most of the weirder material. Eventually we find out almost all of Jims adventures were inspired by real life events from the producers and writers.

There's also plenty of good interviews from all the ladies, including Stiflers Mom and how they coped with the awkwardness of sitting down next to their parents at the premier screening. Jennifer Coolidge has a great story about smoking a pack of cigarettes in 25 minutes and then barfing all over a car. Then she cleans up, gets right back in, and propositions Finch.

Overall very entertaining. True fans definitely need to watch this but also casual fans will have plenty to learn and they will enjoy it.

My ONLY complaint with this friggen thing is that in 3 and a half hours they never actually tell us WHERE the term milf originated. Was it a new term made by the writers specifically for the movie? Or was it something they said as teenagers and decided years later to integrate into the movie? And in all my searches I never once got a solid answer. Was hoping it had been here. It was not.

10/10 Anyway. It does what a documentary should do, provide insight and entertainment.