06-27-2005

478) The Mod Squad. Having never seen an episode of the TV series, I can't really be certain if they were going for the same sort of feeling and atmosphere of it or not, but I have to suspect they were. Which works and doesn't. See, I hated Starsky and Hutch because it was made solely for the purpose of making fun of the TV show. Yeah, from what I've seen the show was kind of silly, but the actors and people behind the scenes that worked on the show and tried to make good TV don't really deserve that kind of disrespect just because Ben Stiller thinks he is oh so funny and can do whatever he wants and you'll like it because he's Ben Stiller and he's oh so funny. I'm also fearful that this is the kind of treatment the Duke Boys will get and I'm not sure if I'm even going to bother seeing it or not since I lived and breathed The Dukes of Hazard as a kid and would probably be thrown out of the theater for causing a scene. So it's for those reasons that I liked that the creators assumed a certain knowledge of the show and we were just sort of dropped into the action without a lot of exposition and followed along from there. But it kind of doesn't work also because, at least in my case, there isn't a certain knowledge of the show and even though I could follow along and view the movie on it's own merits it felt like I was watching a sequel without having seen it's predecessor and was missing something. So yeah, it was okay, but I still felt a little weird about it.

479) The Ninth Gate. Typical Polanski creep-fest, all lurking evil and menacing atmosphere, except this time with an inexplicably jaunty score that I swear was ripped off from Ghostbusters. Weird.