Janeane Garofalo

Much of the group responsible for MTV's The State -- including director/actor David Wain and performers Ken Marino, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Joe Lo Truglio -- reunite for this outrageous, irreverent, and raunchy sketch comedy, which skewers the Ten Commandments. In the framing sequences, comedian Paul Rudd (who collaborated with much of the cast on Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter) stands on a black stage with giant Biblical tablets projected behind him and promises to deliver ten mini-stories, each loosely based on one of the commandments, from "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me" through "Thou Shalt Not Covet." For all of the storyteller's efforts, however, he is constantly, comically distracted by interferences, particularly those emanating from intrusions by his multiple girlfriends. The stories are nonetheless told one by one in short-film form, beginning with a sketch in which Stephen (Adam Brody) goes skydiving with his intended, Kelly (Winona Ryder), but forgets to wear his parachute and gets stuck in the mud, waist-deep, which draws gawkers, media, and in time, worshipers. Several of the subsequent stories consist of raunchy, jet-black riffs on sexual perversion, including one about a virginal librarian (Gretchen Mol) entangled in a sultry and messy affair with a Mexican, and another memorable bit about a nutty surgeon who plays a prank by burying a pair of scissors in a patient's stomach and is then sent to prison -- where he experiences brutal sexual abuse at the hands of other men. As an added bonus, the picture packs in a fully animated sequence, narrated by several crack-smokers, entitled "The Lying Rhino." ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A scrawny rat named Remy (voice of Patton Oswalt) finds his dreams of culinary superstardom stirring up sizable controversy in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant in director Brad Bird's madcap computer-animated comedy. It's hard being a rat with culinary aspirations, but Remy is convinced he has what it takes to break the stereotypes and follow in the footsteps of star chef Auguste Gusteau (voice of Brad Garrett). As fate would have it, Remy is currently situated in the sewers directly beneath Gusteau's elegant restaurant. Soon Remy teams up with a young chef with little talent named Linguini (voice of Lou Romano). Together they are able to create some fabulous dishes, but they live in fear that someone will discover their secret and object strenuously to a rat being in a kitchen. When Remy's passion for cooking turns the haughty world of French cuisine upside down, the rat who would be king of the kitchen learns important lessons about life, friends, and family while questioning whether he should pursue his culinary calling or simply go back underground and return to his life as a sewer rat. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A not-unexpectedly raunchy and iconoclastic animated series from the Comedy Central mills, the half-hour Freak Show chronicled the adventures of "The Freak Squad", a superhero aggregation consisting of deformed and misshapen sideshow performers. Sent out on low-priority missions by the Pentagon, the Freak Squad hoped thereby to save the world, but usually succeeded only in living up (?) to their motto: "Failure is not an Option. It's a Guarantee." The main characters included Tuck and Benny, Siamese twins with the ability to separate ("up to 40 years at a time"), who wasted a lot of their time bickering pointlessly; The Bearded Clam, the female spawn of eco-terrorists and the author of "The Anarchist's Guide to the NFL", whose specialty was spitting lethal "bitch juice"; Primi the Premature Baby, a red-hued aberration still attached to its umbilical cord, who was scared of "loud noises and Jews" and whose weapon of choice was strategic projectile vomiting; The World's Tallest Nebraskan, aka Orlando Jones Wilson, whose talents included shrinking to six inches, performing unusual sex acts, and spewing dull, xenophobic homilies; and Log Cabin Republican, a gay GOP member who periodically transformed into Burly Bear, a leather freak with awesome powers in his carefully manicured hands. Created by Arrested Development veteran David Cross and Home Movies alumnus H. Jon Benjamin, both of whom also provided character voices, Freak Show was unveiled on October 4, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Experience the turbulent rise of America's first all-liberal radio network firsthand as documentary filmmakers Patrick Farrelly and Kate O'Callaghan follow the progression of Air America Radio from conception to the airwaves through interviews with such key figures as Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, Mark Walsh, and Evan Cohen. When a group of investors chose to challenge the conservative standards of talk radio by launching a liberal radio network in early 2004, few could see the monumental struggles that lay ahead. Despite the financial, creative, and logistical challenges that nearly sunk the entire endeavor, Air America Radio beat the odds by going live on March 31, 2004. As the presidential race between George W. Bush and John Kerry heated up, the struggle to sustain Air America Radio in the middle of a political firestorm gave testament to the tenacity and undying vision of those willing to put their livelihood on the line to ensure the public a quality alternative to the conservative viewpoints of such outspoken Republican media figures as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O"Reilly. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The documentary When Stand Up Stood Out charts the stand-up comedy boom and then decline that took place in Boston during the late seventies and eighties. Consisting of both vintage footage from the era and interviews with the people who were a part of the scene, the film showcases how this fertile comedic territory produced such famous names as Steven Wright, enis Leary, Bobcat Goldthwait, Colin Quinn, and Paula Pundstone. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

The first feature-length romantic comedy produced exclusively for the Oxygen cable network, Nadine in Date Land stars Janeane Garofalo as the title character, who though her own love life is in a shambles somehow believes that she can run a successful dating service. Having borrowed heavily from her mother (Swoosie Kurtz) to get the business started, Nadine must now prove to Mom that she herself can have a lasting romance, lest every penny be withdrawn. Thus, when her old flame Adam (Brad Rowe), comes back to town, Nadine vows to literally force him to fall in love with her. Unfortunately, our heroine faces two formidable obstacles: Adam's erstwhile fashion-expert girlfriend Magda (Julie Claire), and Nadine's own incredible gift for stumbling over herself and inserting foot in mouth at all the wrong times. Essentially a contemporary screwball comedy with a generous supply of Bringing Up Baby-style slapstick, Nadine in Date Land was written and directed by Amie Steir, whose short comic films had been an Oxygen channel mainstay for years. The movie was given several video-on-demand previews before its official debut date of June 25, 2005. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A sad sack has to come to term with his own demons after a long run of bad luck in this downbeat comedy drama from writer and director Matt Mulhern. Duane Hopwood (David Schwimmer) lives and works in Atlantic City, where he's a pit boss on the night shift at one of the city's resort hotels, and has a wife, Linda (Janeane Garofalo), and two young daughters, Mary (Ramya Pratt) and Kate (Rachel Covey). Duane also has a drinking problem, and while Linda loves him very much, she's begin to wonder if he's still capable of living up to his responsibilities as a father. The final straw comes when Duane gets arrested for drunk driving while Kate is in the car with him; Linda files for divorce, and the court opts not to give Duane visitation rights. With Duane struggling to hold on to his family, he gets more bad news when he loses his job after he's caught giving money to an argumentative customer to shut him up. With only his friends from work to keep him company -- Anthony (Judah Friedlander), a maintenance man who wants to be a comedian, and Gina (Susan Lynch), a kind-hearted bartender -- Duane realizes he's come to a crossroads where he has to get his life back on track before he loses what little he still has left. Duane Hopwood also features supporting performances from Dick Cavett and Jerry Grayson. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

After Stonewall director John Scagliotti approaches the issue of international gay rights in the documentary Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World. With the 2001 police raid on an Egyptian disco at its center, the film explores several global instances of mistreatment against homosexuals. Through interviews and personal accounts, Scagliotti finds human rights violations and other dire conditions in Honduras, Samoa, India, Namibia, Pakistan, and Vietnam. This film also includes a discussion of pop culture images, the Internet, and the progression of changing attitudes in some countries. Narrated by Janeane Garofalo, Dangerous Living was screened at the 2003 San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

When Jill (Janeane Garofalo), the sister of reformed womanizer and former high-profile fashion photographer Jack (Nestor Carbonell), leaves her 17-year-old son with his uncle in an unstable bid to find herself, her brother and sister face an increasingly uncertain future in this dark drama from director Bobby Roth. Bored of working an endless string of weddings and bar mitzvahs and longing to return to the success he experienced before his luck took a nosedive, Jack attempts to connect with both his teenage son and nephew while pulling his life into focus. To make matters even more complicated, Jill's jobless ex-husband, Eli (John Ritter), has also decided to move in with Jack. Will the hapless photographer be able to keep his sanity as his dysfunctional family forces itself into virtually every aspect of his increasingly chaotic life? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Barry Sonnenfeld directs this kissing cousin of his own 1995 hit Get Shorty, a comic caper adapted by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone from the novel by newspaper humorist Dave Barry. When two New Jersey hitmen (Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler) show up in Miami to whack crooked businessman Arthur Herk (Stanley Tucci), they happen to creep into his backyard at the same time as Matt (Ben Foster), a high school kid with his own assassination plans. Only, Matt plans to use nothing heavier than a squirt gun on Jenny (Zooey Deschanel), Arthur's daughter, as part of a school-wide game of "killer." When the plans collide, mayhem ensues, and Matt's struggling ex-columnist dad (Tim Allen, loosely modeled on Barry), Arthur's bored wife (Rene Russo), and two confused police officers (Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton) are also called to the scene. Shift to the next day and there's more craziness to follow. Two dimwitted petty criminals (Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville) choose the exact moment Arthur is transacting a nuclear arms deal to hold up the dive bar where they're regulars, which is actually a front for the Russian mob. Soon the whole motley cast -- including an agreeable drifter (Jason Lee), a buxom maid (Sofia Vergara), and a pair of ruthless FBI agents (Heavy D and Omar Epps) -- are caught up in a hostage scenario in which the weapon accidentally gets brought aboard a hijacked plan. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

Laramie, WY, is a small town which became infamous overnight in the fall of 1998, when Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was found tied to a fence after being brutally beaten and left to die, setting off a nationwide debate about hate crimes and homophobia. A month after the crime, Moises Kaufman, a writer and director with the New York City theater troupe the Tectonic Theater Project, traveled to Laramie with a handful of actors to interview people who lived in and around Laramie in preparation for an upcoming production; Kaufman's goal was to create a play that focused not on the assault on Matthew Shepard, but on the community where such an attack could happen, and how many of the citizens reacted to the crime. The result was The Laramie Project, which was first performed in early 2000, and was performed in Laramie in the fall of that year, two years after Kaufman and his associates first arrived in the city. The Laramie Project is a film adaptation of Kaufman's play, in which the thoughts and opinions of Laramie residents from all points of the political spectrum are presented alongside re-enacted excerpts from the trials of the two men who attacked Matthew Shepard. Produced for the premium cable network HBO, The Laramie Project was adapted for the screen by Moises Kaufman, who served as both writer and director. The distinguished cast includes Dylan Baker, Steve Buscemi, Peter Fonda, Janeane Garofolo, Laura Linney, Amy Madigan, Camryn Manheim, Christina Ricci, and Frances Sternhagen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide