There was a phase in the back half of the seventh season where it got a little too dry for me as a kid and some of these (e.g. Bart the Fink, Lisa the Iconaclast) are still not my favourites. I think the second half of Homerpalooza is pretty bad. Might have been the start of celebrity guest appearances on the show being really cringe-inducing.

posted 4 years ago in The Simpsons (1989)

As a huge fan of the classic WB cartoons I found this very disappointing when it came out. In the UK we had just about heard of Michael Jordan, but our interest in Basketball was and is low to non-existent, so I don't think all the NBA stuff figured much in the marketing. I was expecting a full-on Looney Tunes romp, kind of felt I'd been gypped from the first scene of Michael Jordan as a kid, and it never quite recovered for me. I always kind of thought of this as "my Phantom Menace". Now I understand that this was made more for people who were NBA fans and have a degree of fondness for or had fond memories of the WB characters, or perhaps just bought the occasional shirt or mug from the WB Studio Store. Almost all of the characters are boiled down to the most basic elements (Pepe Le Pew stinks! Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam shoot guns!) that this audience would recognise. On this terms I think this movie did what it set out to do. I've learned to appreciate this a bit more, although I'm not sure I was "wrong" about it per say.

posted 4 years ago in Space Jam (1996)

I saw this at the ABC in Norwich (UK), Saturday of the Opening Weekend. I was 10 at the time. I had also seen Batman Forever there, among other films. It closed down about 5 years later, and the building has been a Nightclub for the last 15 or so years. My only really clear memories of seeing it there are: 1) Robin's "please say you're here for me" line when Barbara turns up got a good laugh 2) The Bat Credit-card gag got no laughs. At the time I was aware of the concept of "jokes for the parents" in kid's films (which this kind of was) and I remember looking at a dad in the row in front of me expecting him to laugh or at least react. He didn't. I think quite a few of the other gags didn't get much of a reaction either but couldn't swear to it. I think I quite enjoyed it at the time, but kind of felt even then that it was the weakest of the Batman films (ironically these days I prefer it to Batman Returns). I did ask for the Special Edition VHS (which was Widescreen and came with the "Making of" Book) for my birthday that winter, but I think that was mostly because I was going through a general Batman phase at the time. I do think I enjoyed it more than Space Jam, which was the other film I had been really excited for that year, but felt very nothing when I saw it.

posted 4 years ago in Batman & Robin (1997)