In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.
Showing posts with label Andy Griffith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andy Griffith. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 August 2025

Spy Hard (1996)


A spoof of the spy genre (particularly James Bond/007), which also jam-packs other popular films of the time, like Speed, Sister Act, Home Alone, Rambo, etc. Leslie Nielsen portrays Special Agent Dick Steele, aka WD-40, while Nicollette Sheridan does a serviceable job as second banana Agent 3.14. Directed by Rick Friedberg, and written by nepo baby Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, who are credited with the demise of the spoof genre and gave them a bad name during the 2000s stretch of parody films. The movie was famously meddled with by Disney, who dumbed it down for audiences to try and (poorly) imitate the ZAZ style and hacked it apart by about 20 minutes. The latter half suffers for it and we're denied a proper denouement, but you can tell the potential is there and there are a lot of fun visual gags that are still memorable to me 30 years later. As usual, Nielsen carries the entire thing on his shoulders. I still enjoy it more than all the other films Friedberg & Seltzer became associated with later on.

2½ unlucky joggers out of 5

Sunday, 22 December 2024

Frosty's Winter Wonderland (1976)


It turns out Frosty gets more pussy than I do. He's given a snow wife named Crystal in this one, while mean ol' Jack Frost tries to spoil their fun. It attempts to squeeze as much material left out of the original song as it can, but that well was already scraped dry by the end of the first one. It's nothing special, but kids of a certain age will probably enjoy it.

2½ parsons out of 5