David Mirkin Movies

They've kept television viewers laughing for nearly 20 years, and now the most popular animated family on the small screen makes the leap into theaters as Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, ad Maggie embark on their first-ever feature-length adventure. Directed by David Silverman and written by a whole host of Simpsons veterans including Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, The Simpsons Movie also features special guest appearances by Albert Brooks among others. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

When shady network suit Kenny Mitchell (Josh Malina) is appointed "Creative Liaison" and begins to implement drastic changes in the show's format, Larry (Garry Shandling) starts to sweat, but when his agent, Stevie (Bob Odenkirk), appears to be avoiding contract negotiations and ends up having lunch with Jon Stewart, Larry really starts to feel the heat. It seems that Kenny has been dropping increasingly frequent hints that the show could get better ratings with Stewart at the helm, and it's not long before he and a frustrated Artie (Rip Torn) nearly come to blows. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

During the tragically brief run of Get a Life, the show often transcended mere sitcom parody brilliance and became something unique and wonderful in the world of television -- a truly surreal comic masterpiece. That is certainly the case with the bizarrely named "1977 2000" episode (show episodes were frequently given the title "Something 2000," -- such as "Terror on the Hell Loop 2000," the series premiere, or "Meat Locker 2000" from season two -- in an apparent effort to highlight the show's ahead-of-the-curve, millennial bent). This episode finds Chris (Chris Elliott) sadly pondering the fate of Gus (Brian Doyle-Murray), his beloved abusive landlord. Gus reminisces about his glory days beating up jaywalking suspects, and laments getting sacked for drunkenly urinating on his captain at a party after being passed over for a promotion. Assessing the state of his friend's life, Chris tells Gus the painful truth as only he could see it: "You're ugly and you're doughy and you're bursting with love like some kind of rancid wedding cake that was left out in a terrible rainstorm by a drifter who's smelly named Hank who lives in a storm drain and he wears five pairs of pants, even though it's summertime and he'd be much more comfortable wearing five pairs of shorts." Despite a stern warning from Gus about the dangers of time travel, Chris boldly decides to travel back to 1977 and save his friend's law enforcement career. Things don't go as planned, and Chris inadvertently and repeatedly alters the future in terrible ways. As Gus warns him, having seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know, "You mess with the past, you get screwed over." This cornucopia of darkly comic goodness was written by Charlie Kaufman, who would later go on to write the equally surreal and hilarious Being John Malkovich. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Season two of the blithely surrealistic Fox sitcom Get a Life begins as over-aged paperboy Chris Peterson (Chris Elliott) celebrates his 31st birthday by moving out of the apartment over his parents' garage -- and moving into the apartment over the garage of his grumpy neighbor, police officer Gus Borden (Brian Doyle-Murray). The defection of series regular Sam Robards is amusingly addressed in the next episode, wherein Robards' character, Chris' best friend Larry Potter, runs out on his wife, forcing Chris to launch a search...for a new best friend. As for Larry's wife Sharon (Robin Riker), her hatred of Chris reaches epic proportions in the episode which finds them both trapped in a meat locker. In other episodes, Chris becomes a food inspector after finding a dead rat in a milk carton, belatedly has his tonsils removed, is held hostage by his prison inmate pen pal (A crisis that does not seem to faze Chris' parents -- played by Bob Elliott and Elinor Donahue -- in the least!), becomes a male escort to meet rich and sexy young girls (only to end up with a poor and elderly old bag), "stalks" an attractive doctor (Emma Samms) while simultaneously being stalked by a love-starved drugstore clerk (Amy Yasbeck), becomes a genius when exposed to toxic waste, misguidedly tries to adopt an obnoxious space alien named Spewey, and screws up the time-space continuum while attempting to save Gus' job. Just the sort of mishaps that could happen to anyone, right? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Chris Peterson (Chris Elliott) undergoes the sort of bizarre, surrealistic life experiences that are all too typical for 30-year-old paperboys who still live above their parents' garage as Get a Life enters its first season. In the series opener, Chris persuades his best friend Larry Potter (Sam Robards) to join him for the world premiere of the treacherous Hell Loop 2000 roller coaster (the first of the series' many whimsical invocations of the year 2000) -- only to become stuck upside-down when the coaster stalls. In later adventures, Chris becomes a male model, talks his phlegmatic father Fred (played by Chris Elliott's real-life father, Bob Elliott) into participating in the newspaper boys' annual picnic, endeavors to set a rather pointless world record, is replaced on the job by a paper-delivering robot, applies for his first-ever driver's license in order to impress a pretty waitress, and wins a weekend with his favorite talk show host (played by Fred Willard), who proves to be an even bigger waste of humanity than Chris! Also: Chris has a brief romantic fling with the sister of Larry's wife Sharon (Robin Riker), much to Sharon's dismay (to say she doesn't like Chris is like saying a rattlesnake doesn't like a mongoose); he experiences a full married life within a single day with his new-found "soulmate"; he stars in the very off-Broadway musical "Zoo Animals on Wheels," he briefly switches bodies with Larry after falling victim to an ancient curse; and, after 20 years, he finally receives the toy submarine kit which he'd paid for by becoming a paperboy in the first place. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi