----------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Cranky savages "You've Got Mail" ----------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Cranky's other new movie reviews this week include:
The Prince of Egypt........................(2 bombs)
A Simple Plan..............................(1 bomb)
Mr. Cranky's new rental reviews this week include:
Halloween H2O..............................(4 bombs)
Lethal Weapon 4............................(Dynamite)
Madeline...................................(3 bombs)
You'll find them at the Mr. Cranky site:
Please come visit and CLICK ON THE DAMN ADS! -----------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Cranky is sponsored this week by:
XOR Internet Technologies
Growing like a weed and HIRING!
Work at a company as smart as you are:
http://www.xor.com/jobs/ -----------------------------------------------------------
"You've Got Mail" Mr. Cranky's rating: 3 bombs
The conjunction "you've" is the combination of the words "you" and "have," making the title of this film "You Have Got Mail," which is redundant enough to creep out the Olsen twins. Undoubtedly, this was the product of the grammatically-challenged losers over at America Online, which is basically Internet for the mentally handicapped anyway.
Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) portray members of America Online who get involved in an email romance, but have never met. Who ever would have guessed that a woman who spends her Friday nights trading misspelled missives in online chat rooms would look more like Meg Ryan than Jabba the Hutt in sweat pants? Or that her mystery correspondent would be a clean-cut Tom Hanks type with -- get this -- nary a single human head in his freezer?
Although each knows the other lives in New York, Kathleen, owner of a small children's bookstore, is unaware that Joe is actually her arch-rival, the "Fox" of the Fox Books Superstore (a thinly-veiled reference to Barnes & Noble, the bookseller's equivalent to the Death Star) opening up down the street. The last part of this film consists of twenty minutes of utterly wasted material and reminded me of "Meet Joe Black" in that, once again, I begged somebody to jam a nail gun into my ear and end the agony by firing away like Charlton Heston at a Barney Frank fund-raiser.
As in real life, the big superstore devours the little independent store, proving that even the most loyal of customers will bury a hatchet in your forehead for 30% off. Of course, Kathleen learns that Joe is an okay person after all, implying that once we get to know and love these big chain stores, it won't matter that we're all making minimum wage and getting our health care from some guy named Buck who hangs out in the alley.
----------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Cranky's Rating Scale: One bomb........Almost tolerable. Two bombs.......Consistently annoying. Three bombs.....Will require therapy after viewing. Four bombs......As good as a poke in the eye with a sharp
stick. Dynamite........So godawful that it ruptured the very
fabric of space and time with the sheer
overpowering force of its mediocrity
(special instances only). ----------------------------------------------------------- YO GENIUS: This mailing is sent exclusively to those sage souls who have chosen to subscribe to the Mr. Cranky mailing list. If you want to unsubscribe, please follow the below directions before flying into a rage and soiling your Depends: Simply e-mail mrcranky-list-request at mrcranky.com and include the word "unsubscribe" as the text of your message.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)