Year:  1995
Genre:  Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:   English
Starring:   Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Elisa Donovan, Breckin Meyer, Wallace Shawn, Jeremy Sisto, Dan Hedaya
Director:  Amy Heckerling
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Clueless until I saw the Blu-Ray release, out May 1^st from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I had even forgotten that Alicia Silverstone was once really hot and a pretty decent actress.  Although I will say that putting out a video of her spitting chewed up food into her baby’s mouth was a pretty poor way to get her back into the public eye, and a weak promotional idea for the Clueless Blu-Ray.  I think a Playboy spread or something might have generated more interest and less cringing.  Just a thought, remember that when Excess Baggage gets the Blu-Ray upgrade.

     I had also forgotten that Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd co-starred in Clueless before they went on to bigger and better things.  (Or – in Murphy’s case – sadder and more tragic things.)  The weirdest thing about the movie though, is that the REASON I couldn’t remember liking it in 1995 was that I didn’t really remember anything at all about the movie.  Because it isn’t memorable. 

     It’s vapid, and empty, (and that’s the point), and it is genuinely a LOT of fun.  But the empty kind of fun, like eating a whole tub of cookie dough ice cream or spending two hours and three hundred bucks at a strip club.  You come out of it knowing you had a good time, but four hours later you can’t for the life of you put your finger on exactly why.

Years:  1992, 1993
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bob Newhart, Carlene Watkins, Cynthia Stevenson, Jere Burns
Guest appearances:  Lisa Kudrow, Betty White, Dick Martin, Tom Poston  
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Did you know that after Newhart, Bob Newhart had another show, cleverly named Bob?  It’s true, he did – I just saw it!  It ran in 1993 for 33 episodes, all of which are on the Complete Series DVD out April 10th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

      Newhart plays Bob McKay, a cartoonist who works on a comic book called Mad Dog.  He has a wife and a daughter and a bunch of very. Quirky. Co-workers.  Now, I LOVE Newhart.  And I think Bob Newhart is one of the funniest people of all time.  But watching him in Bob is like watching Terrell Owens struggling to make the cut in the Indoor Football League.  It’s depressing. 

     See, this is how it works.  Bob will make a long speech about how his daughter is the calmest, most rational human being he has ever known and that nothing can make her freak out.  And THEN, the elevator door opens right behind him, where his daughter is FREAKING OUT!  Which makes his previous speech hilarious because of its proximity to Trisha’s meltdown!

     And that’s it.  Some of the Newhart gang make appearances here and there.  A very young Lisa Kudrow guest stars as a very boring girl very reminiscent of Phoebe on Friends.  And the omnipresent Betty White shows up for the second season as Bob’s boss.  Actually, a whole new cast shows up around Bob Newhart for the second season.  It just didn’t help.  Maybe replacing all the writers would have worked much better than replacing all the actors.  Cause Bob, sadly, for all 33 episodes, really and truly sucked.

     P.S. Here’s a great way to tell that a series is dated, from the pre-internet days. When it has a title that is clearly not google-conscious. In order to get any information at all about Bob, the series starring Bob Newhart about the comic book and then the greeting card company from the early 90s, you pretty much have to type ALL of that in google, and then it’s still the ninth search result.  If only they had seen google coming!  If only they had seen their cancellation coming!

Years:  1979, 1980
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams, Michael McKean, David L. Lander
Guest appearances:  Henry Winkler, Ron Howard
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Happy Days was famous for many things, one of which being the phrase “jumping the shark”.  A 1977 episode where Fonzie jumped over a shark in the water on skis was the definitive moment in the series, where it became abundantly clear that they were out of ideas and that the show would suck forever more.  Now.  The fifth season of Laverne & Shirley comes to DVD April 10^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  It opens with a special feature, a Happy Days crossover episode where Fonzie and Richie have to marry Laverne and Shirley at the point of a farmer’s shotgun.

     See, the Happy Days episode is one big, long, tired farmer’s daughter joke.  Fonzie and Richie have disguised themselves in one of those two-person cow costumes where Fonzie is the head and Richie is the ass.  They sneak onto a farm in the cow costume so they can have sex with two super hot daughters whose father is a gun wielding homicidal maniac.  And they get busted and Laverne and Shirley have to get them out of their predicament.  Now, by the time this crossover episode aired, it had been two full years since Happy Days had jumped the shark.  This crossover episode with the farmer’s daughter and the cow might be the moment they took Laverne and Shirley down with them.

     From then on, throughout the fifth season, Laverne and Shirley is a series of dream sequences, talent shows, joining the army, flashbacks and every other cliché that was already tired in 1979.  They were simply out of ideas, and the decline appears to be as abrupt and precipitous as that of their parent show Happy Days.  It might be worth picking up though, if you have a morbid curiosity about the sudden decline of a decent show, and to see the exact moment where Laverne and Shirley “married the cow”.

     JB Smoove is a comedian who will be most recognizable to most people as Leon Black from the magnificent Curb Your Enthusiasm.  And if you’re familiar with Larry David’s incredibly funny TV show, and the character of Leon, you might believe that JB Smoove will be equally funny when performing stand-up comedy.

     If this is what you believe, you would be wrong.  Oh, there are a few funny moments in his new stand-up DVD, That’s How I Dooz It, out April 3^rd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I thought his bit about cops running with a bunch of stuff on their belts was very good.  But most of his act is physical humour that goes on way too long.  In the whole 60 minutes, there appear to be only seven actual jokes, each one beaten to death by an overly long physical demonstration of the joke itself.  There’s a chair on stage, but he never sits down, instead using the chair to represent his girlfriend when he describes their sexual intercourse.  He uses the mic cable to represent his sperm, which is actually a lot LESS funny than it sounds.

     During the whole DVD, I laughed for about two minutes.  And two minutes out of sixty is a three percent success rate.  So I am giving JB Smoove That’s How I Dooz It a three percent recommendation (even though at one star, it LOOKS like ten percent).  If you only buy 98 stand-up comedy special DVDs this year, this ought to be one of them!

     On April 3^rd, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing a stand-up DVD called Lights Out, featuring Filipino stand-up comic Jo Koy.  It’s Koy’s second stand-up special DVD after Don’t Make Him Angry, which came out three years ago, in 2009.  At that time, I predicted that Jo Koy would not be remembered very long, and would be off our radar by 2011.  I was clearly wrong.

     I said that then because I didn’t like Don’t Make Him Angry.  It was all ethnic jokes about being Filipino, and lame attempts at edginess with reference to his kid.  Lights Out is a lot of the same stuff, but it IS (marginally) better.  This time, he riffs on his mother a lot, and some of the edgy stuff is good in that he no longer seems to be trying too hard.  His bit about his mom grabbing his wiener when he was a kid feels real, and a bit about her standing at the foot of his bed monitoring his sleep patterns is very funny.

     I’m still not a big Jo Koy fan.  The really funny bits in this particular routine were few and far between.  And I still find him more tepid than terrific.  But Lights Out is better than Don’t Make Him Angry, so I feel like three years from NOW, I might actually find that Jo Koy has become decent.

Years:  1965, 1971  
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Werner Klemperer, John Banner
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Until I got the Fan Favorites DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment, out March 6^th, I had never seen an episode of Hogan’s Heroes.  I always thought it was a sort of comedic army show, like Sgt. Bilko, and that everyone would be sort of cartoonish.

     And I was (sort of) right.  Everyone IS sort of cartoonish, except for Hogan himself.  Ben Crane played Hogan as a serious, faintly bemused prisoner of war in the centre of a bonkers world.  HE is pretty well normal.  Colonel Klink is a cartoon, the pompous, vain and stupid overseer of the Nazi war camp.  Even more of a cartoon is Sgt. Schulz, the totally moronic captain of the guard who has very little to offer outside his catchphrase, “I see nothing!”

     What really surprised me, though, is that (at least in the eight episodes chosen for this DVD) the prisoners were actually DOING stuff.  Smuggling a high value spy out of the country.  Helping distract the German high command on the eve of the D-Day invasion.  And in one episode, they actually KILL a whole bunch of Nazis themselves when they replace their fake ammunition with live stuff for their war games.

     At its heart though, Hogan’s Heroes is really another cartoonish war sitcom, showcasing the hilarious side of being captured and kept prisoner by the Nazis.  And after all, if you can`t laugh about a camp set up by Nazis, then what CAN you find funny!

Years:  1955, 1956  
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, Art Carney, Joyce Randolph
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I have seen only a handful of episodes of The Honeymooners in my life.  You know, when it comes on TV in reruns and I happen across it.  And I’m pretty sure that the only five episodes I have ever seen are included on the Honeymooners Fan Favorites DVD out March 6^th from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

     There’s one where Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton share a TV set and hilarity ensues.  Another where Ralph finds a suitcase full of money on the bus, the one where Norton keeps sleepwalking, a show where Ralph and Ed make an infomercial to sell a do-it-all kitchen gadget, and the one where Ralph goes on a game show and embarrasses himself.  Now, apparently, the fans who voted for their favorite episodes on facebook have seen all the same episodes I have.  In fact, I’m starting to think that there ARE only eight or ten episodes that show up in re-runs.

     It’s neat though to see Ralph Kramden’s progression from the beginning of the show to a few episodes after the beginning of the show.  At first, he threatens Alice with a punch that will send her right to the moon.  By the end, he’s just using hand gestures to show her how quickly she will get there.  What a character arc he had, that Kramden!

Years:  1972, 1973, 1974 
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jack Klugman, Tony Randall, Betty White
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I love the old Odd Couple TV show.  It’s a little dated now, since we’ve seen so many TV shows based on the same basic premise since then.  Frasier and Two and a Half Men and countless other shows owe a big debt to Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.  Their chemistry was fantastic, and it’s showcased admirably in the new DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment, The Odd Couple Fan Favorites, out March 6th.

     There are eight great episodes on the best-of DVD, my favorite being the one where Oscar and Felix team up to go on the game show Password.  Which I guess was pretty big in the 70s.  The show was hosted by Alan Ludden, who guest stars on the episode with his wife at the time, Betty White. 

     What I found hilarious was that they made fun of Betty White’s age.  Her AGE!  Haha, she’s an old woman!  Remember, this episode was from 1972!  That’s right, Betty White was hilariously old FORTY years ago.  Ah, some things never change!

     There are some other guest appearances on the disc, including Bubba Smith who was playing for the Raiders at the time.  The best thing about the Fan Favorites DVD set though, is that at eight episodes, it is all the Odd Couple that you need.

Years:  1974, 1975
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, Tom Bosley, Marion Ross, Erin Moran, Anson Williams, Donny Most
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I was really hoping that the Happy Days Fan Favorites DVD, out March 6^th from Paramount Home Entertainment, would include the jumping the shark episode.  But it doesn’t.  One of the most iconic moments in television history, and just because it was STUPID, and it RUINED THE SHOW, they left it off the best of list.

     Then again, there was an awful lot of stuff left off that list.  Like, the final eight seasons of the show.  All eight episodes are from the first two seasons, when Fonzie was a secondary character and Ralph Malph and Potsie had a lot of screen time. 

     The first episode on the disc is the first ever episode of the show, where Richie Cunningham gets a date with a girl who has the reputation of putting out.  But then she doesn’t.  There’s a Hallowe’en episode involving a party at a haunted house, and a Christmas episode where Fonzie pretends he’s going to his aunt’s house out of town but the Cunninghams know he is going to be alone and conspire to get him over to their house for Christmas dinner.

     This is all fine, they’re good episodes and I like Happy Days, but are these really the fan favorites?  The pilot, the Hallowe’en episode, the Christmas episode?  It feels like this is a best-of chosen by a focus group rather than actual fans.  Maybe that’s because the fan poll was taken on facebook, and there are only nine people on all of facebook who actually remember the original run of Happy Days.

Years:  1982, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1992
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger, Kirstie Alley, Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth, Nicholas Colasanto
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

                So, there’s a facebook poll to choose the episodes of Cheers that are the “Fan Favorites”.  And fans vote, and the eight top episodes are put onto a DVD called Fan Favorites, out March 6^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Eight episodes of Cheers (well, nine if you count the two-part episode about Woody and Kelly’s wedding).  And there is only ONE episode with Rebecca Howe. 

                I guess fans really liked Shelley Long as Diane, much more than Kirstie Alley as Rebecca.  I get that, I much preferred Diane too.  What’s funny here though, is that while there is just one episode with Rebecca in it, there are TWO that centre around Frasier’s relationship with Lilith.  The one where she and Frasier get together after a TV appearance together, and the one where they move in with each other and invite Sam and Diane over for dinner.  Then there’s the pilot episode, the Thanksgiving episode at Carla’s house, the one where Sam fixes Diane up on a date with a murderer, and the one where Harry the con man helps Coach get back some money that was scammed from him.

                It’s all great, of course, because Cheers is great.  But TWO episodes about Lilith, who was a tertiary character at best, and only one featuring Rebecca, who was on the show for more than half its run?  Take that, Kirstie Alley!  Facebook doesn’t like YOU at all!

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comedy, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Creator:  Mike Judge
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Beavis And Butthead Volume Four hits DVD February 21^st from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I’ve always thought the funniest thing about Beavis and Butthead was their commentary on music videos.  But today, there are precious few music videos for them to skewer.  You can watch MTV for an entire day now, and see no music videos at all.

     But then, MTV has an awful lot of shows.  And if there was one reason to bring back Beavis and Butthead (and I will say that I am still not sure there WAS any good reason to bring them back), it’s Jersey Shore.  Oh, sure, it’s funny when they watch Teen Cribs or True Life, or comment on 16 and Pregnant.  But it’s Jersey Shore that really brings out the comic genius in Beavis and Butthead. 

     Even the seemingly innocuous clips from the show, like J-Wow talking about how cool it is that she gets to make pizza in Florence Italy, become absolutely hilarious when seen through the eyes of two high school losers.  Sure, there are still some music videos.  Apparently, MTV still does that.  Sometimes. 

     And there are of course Beavis and Butthead episodes, with plots and everything, like the one where the boys discover that they still get paid while taking bathroom breaks so they spend their entire shift in the bathroom.  But the only really funny stuff comes from Jersey Shore.

     It makes me wish, in a way, the Beavis and Butthead revival had happened a few years earlier, during the time of The Hills and A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila.  The thing is, they don’t watch Jersey Shore every episode.  Sometimes they watch The Ultimate Fighter instead.  Which is fine, but not nearly as good.  So I don’t know if I would recommend sitting through the entire two disc collection.  I can get just as much of a belly laugh from the reality show commentary on The Soup.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, Comedy, Kung-fu
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring (Voices):  Jack Black, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, David Cross, Michelle Yeoh, James Hong, Danny McBride, Dennis Haysbert, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Victor Garber
Director:  Jennifer Yuh
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The first Kung-Fu Panda worked because it was as much a kung-fu movie as it was a kids’ comedy.  The voice casting was superb, and the kung-fu staples weren’t (badly) dumbed-down.  It was as good a kung-fu movie as I’ve seen in a decade, and a gerat kids’ film as a result.

     The second Kung-Fu Panda, out on DVD and Blu-Ray December 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment, is even more a kung-fu movie than the first one.  There are some wonderfully animated kung-fu scenes, including a great chase through a Chinese city on rickshaws, which I think is the highlight of the movie. 

     There is much deference to kung-fu movies of the past.  And it’s not just the involvement of Michelle Yeoh and James Hong.  The central concept is that an evil peacock has invented the Ultimate Weapon, one that cannot be beaten no matter how good one’s kung-fu is.  This is a classic plot line to countless films, like Flying Guillotine.  And…Flying Guillotine 2.  And many others that don’t spring to mind right away.

     The weapon this peacock has devised is a cannon.  The advent of firearms was a plot device used in many classic films, as it signified the end to a way of life.  It was used in samurai movies as well as kung-fu flicks, the most famous probably being The Seven Samurai.  Similar themes sprang up in westerns with the advent of machine guns.

     Then there are the masters.  So many kung-fu movies have multiple masters, each one usually the master of a different discipline.  In this case, there is Master Rhino (Victor Garber), Master Ox (Dennis Haysbert), and Master Croc (the wonderfully cast Jean-Claude Van Damme, who says distressingly little throughout the movie).

     It works magnificently as a kung-fu movie.  Now for the bad news – it isn’t even close to the first film as a kids’ cartoon comedy.  Sure, it’s still funny in places, and charming and cute in others.  But Kung Fu Panda 2 lacks the charm of its predecessor, and it’s childlike sense of wonder.  Now that Po IS a member of the kung-fu elite, he no longer idolizes the Furious Five the way he did in the first film, so much of the magic that created is gone.

     I still like Kung Fu Panda 2 a lot.  I will definitely be watching it again, probably many times, with the kids (and by myself).  Just because it doesn’t live up to the magical humour and throwback genius of the first one doesn’t mean that this movie isn’t also very good.  Kung Fu Panda 2 is very good.

Years:  1966, 1967
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball
Directors:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  11 hours, 59 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The official fifth season of The Lucy Show comes to DVD December 6th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  This is, for those of you born after 1970, or those who haven’t heard or read my reviews of the first four seasons, that show Lucille Ball did after I Love Lucy, the one that wasn’t quite as funny or as classic or as well received as her first sitcom.

     In the fifth season, there are some really great moments.  Most of them involving other actors.  In the first episode, George Burns shows up and asks Lucy to be his partner for his new routine.  For some reason she turns him down and decides to stay where she is, for the sake of her boss at the bank Mr. Mooney.  I guess because the whole show was predicated on Lucy annoying Mr. Mooney.  At the bank, on a submarine for some reason, at the zoo, at a golf tournament, everywhere he goes. 

     If only there were some episodes that DIDN’T involve that same exact premise, that would be super!  Well, there are a couple.  Like one with ventriloquist Paul Winchell.  And a couple with Carol Burnett and Vivian Vance.  There’s even an amazing episode featuring John Wayne, the Duke himself, which for me almost makes the entire DVD set worthwhile.  But the episodes with the guest stars are too few and far between, and I got tired of Lucy and Mr. Mooney long before I got to John Wayne.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Clancy Brown
Director:  Paul Tibbitt
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Paramount Home Entertainment releases a 3-disc gift set called Holidays With Spongebob on November 8^th.  Awfully early for Christmas, awfully late for Hallowe’en. 

     Of course there’s a Christmas disc, which contains only one true Christmas episode, where Santa doesn’t show up on Christmas morning and Spongebob goes all crazy, (as Spongebob tends to do).  The rest of the disc uses winter as a substitute for Christmas, and it’s full of snowball fights and Sandy the squirrel hibernating and things of that nature. 

     The Hallowe’en DVD has, similarly, only ONE actual Hallowe’en episode, then fills up the rest of the disc with Plankton wearing disguises, Squidward’s ghost, and Spongebob turning into a snail and taming a seahorse.  Among other, even-less-related-to-Hallowe’en episodes.

     The third DVD has nothing to do with Christmas or Hallowe’en.  Or any other holiday for that matter.  I guess that for some reason they felt like they needed three discs to make this a real box set.  The third disc is called To Love A Patty, and contains seven random episodes including the one where Spongebob crafts the perfect crabby patty then refuses to part with it.

     And that’s it – that’s what you get in the Holidays With Spongebob gift set.  Exactly TWO holiday related episodes, and twenty-four randomly selected episodes with tenuous connections, (if they exist at all), to those holidays.  I think the biggest problem with the box set is the name.  If, instead of calling it Holidays With Spongebob, they had called it Spongebobès Latest Cash Grab, it would have at least made sense.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Kids, Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Victoria Justice, Leon Thomas III, Matt Bennett, Elizabeth Gillies, Ariana Grande, Avan Jogia, Daniella Monet, Eric Lange
Creator:  Dan Schneider
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

The DVD cover of Season One Volume Two of VicTorious advertises FOUR HOURS of content, including the crossover episode of iCarly called iParty with VicTorious.  That’s fine, but had they released the first season in just one volume, it could have been EIGHT hours of content and I wouldn’t have to buy two different box sets.  You know…for my kids…

At least both volumes feature the magnificent Victoria Justice, who I think will be the next huge star when she leaves behind the kiddy shows and Nickelodeon and starts doing movies and grown-up TV.  I like VicTorious, it’s one of those well-packaged shows starring a bunch of triple-threat kids who sing and dance and act and have clearly been groomed since birth to do all three.

Of course, it’s all sanitized for kids, no real issues are tackled, and the show has a polished gleam that prevents it from being deep, or powerful, or great.  But the kids are likeable, the songs are pretty good, and I can look past all the ironic plots – like the episode where the kids do a show for kids dressed up as hamburgers and pizza slices, and complain because they’re above all this kiddy music.  Umm…are you being self-referential and intentionally ironic, or have you just missed the point here?  Or the one where they get cast in a reality show only to discover that it’s not really REALITY at all, and they are simply pawns being groomed for stardom at the whims of producers.  The SHOCK of it all!

The best thing about the DVD IS the iCarly crossover episode (song included above), where all these talented kids get together and seem to be having a really good time.  And both shows are the same exact template really – sanitized, shiny stories starring sanitized shiny children, and despite the lack of substance it proves to be entertaining.  And sometimes that’s good enough.  In this case, I think it is.