Jordan Young Movies
Two strong-willed women wield their influence on a shy teenaged boy in this coming-of-age comedy from the United Kingdom. Seventeen-year-old Ben (Rupert Grint) is the son of a soft-spoken vicar (Nicholas Farrell), but it's his mother, Laura (Laura Linney), who rules the household, and she has put Ben cheerfully under her thumb, keeping him busy with a variety of good-will errands for the church and numerous local charity causes. With summer vacation looming before him, Ben is looking forward to learning to drive, but Laura is more interested in spending time with one of the more charming members of the church staff than helping Ben learn how to operate the family automobile. Wanting to earn some pocket money, Ben starts looking for a part-time job and ends up working for Evie Walton (Julie Walters), an elderly and slightly eccentric actress who needs help keeping her garden in shape. Laura believes Evie isn't an especially good influence on her son, though Ben is happy to find someone who encourages his interest in poetry and the larger world (especially girls). One day, Evie announces that she needs to ride to Edinburgh, where she is supposed to give a reading as part of the city's massive music and arts festival. While Ben doesn't have his license, he volunteers to take the wheel, and soon he's confronted with various forms of decadence that his mother has frequently warned him to avoid. Driving Lessons received its North American premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julie Walters, Rupert Grint, (more)
- 2004
The weekly animated series Drawn Together was a double-barrelled satire: a devastating lampoon of live-action reality shows and a broad takeoff of several familiar cartoon stereotypes. The premise dictated that a group of B-list cartoon celebrities was forced to live under the same roof, with their every move filmed for the entertainment of the viewing audience. Naturally, these diverse characters got on each other's nerves with frightening regularity -- and this being a cable show, the language and the activities were as raw and uninhibited as traffic would allow. The principal performers were Xandir P. Whifflebottom, the hero of a Legend of Zelda-type videotape, who despite his avowed crusade to rescue his girlfriend eventually revealed himself to be gay; Toot Braunstein, an overweight spoof of '30s cartoon star Betty Boop, who appeared only in black-and-white; Captain Hero, a stiff-necked, empty-headed parody of cartoon caped crusaders, who was under the mistaken impression that there was a huge cash award awaiting whoever "survived" to the end of the series; Ling-Ling, an androgynous knock-off of Pokémon's Pikachu; Spanky Ham, an obscene prankster reminiscent of the iconoclastic, Robert Crumb-style animal characters indigenous to Internet cartoon sites; Foxxy Love, a trash-talking black chick designed to evoke memories of the impossibly curvaceous and long-legged female characters on such Hanna-Barbera efforts as Josie & the Pussycats; Princess Clara, a Disneyesque simpery-sweet heroine (and closet racist!); and Wooldor Sockbat, an amorphous, easily led jerk who bore a marked resemblance to SpongeBob Squarepants. Not only were characters sublimely typical of the cartoon world, but each one was also a readily recognizable reality show archetype: Spanky was the hygienically-challenged party dude, Toot was the scheming bitch, Princess Clara the spoiled wealthy blonde, Foxxy the token "angry black character," Xandir the house homosexual, and so on. With all this in mind, it should be no surprise that every episode of the series was chock full of knowing pop-cultural references pertaining to both of the TV genres it so mercilessly skewered. Debuting October 1, 2004, Drawn Together remained on cable's Comedy Central for eight lively weeks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The initial season of the animated reality-show spoof Drawn Together consists of eight episodes, each one savagely parodying the clichés and stereotypes of both the "reality" and "cartoon" genres within the context of several washed-up animated celebrities forced to live together under the same roof. In the opening episode, "Hot Tub," Disneyesque Princess Clara manages to lay a racist slur upon Hanna-Barbera-esque Foxxy Love, while video-game hero Xandir reveals himself to be a closet gay. In "Clara's Dirty Little Secret," it is revealed that the titular heroine has been cursed by her wicked stepmother to suffer from tentacled monster living in her -- uh -- privates. Xandir finally comes out in "Gay Bash," while foulmouthed prankster Spanky Ham exploits the Pokémon-derived Ling-Ling. Bitchy Betty Boop sound-alike Toot Braunstein grows more obese than ever, stiff-necked Captain Hero finds out that he enjoys bondage, and the SpongeBob-ish Wooldor Sockbat is bullied into helping Spanky capture Princess Clara's timid woodland friends in "Requiem for a Reality Show." Next, "The Other Cousin" finds Clara's well-named relative Bleh paying a visit. In "Terms of Endearment," Captain Hero's X-ray vision gives Foxxy a brain tumor. The whimsical Spanky finally goes too far when he takes a dump on a pizza in "Dirty Pranking Number 2." And in the finale, subtly titled "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist," Drawn Together meets The Apprentice as Machiavellian billionaire Bucky Bucks plays one roommate against the other. Through the season are sprinkled innumerable "inside" references to cartoon history, a plethora of gratuitous sex gags, and even guest appearances by the likes of Elmer Fudd and Snagglepuss. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adam Carolla, Jess Harnell, (more)
The story of an intelligent, heroic collie and his young owner, previously featured in numerous films and a successful 1950s television series, was updated for the 1990s in this family feature. This time, Lassie is determined to help a cynical city boy named Matt (Thomas Guiry), who turns even more resentful when his family relocates to a small town in rural Virginia. Soon after this move, a bright collie enters the family's life and winds up with the name Lassie because of the television show, which Matt's younger sister (Brittany Boyd) watches passionately. Lassie sets out to cheer Matt up and introduce him to the wonders of nature, while also helping the family stand its ground against rich, unpleasant neighbors. There are also run-ins with vicious wild animals and a daring rescue over river rapids, but the main focus remains on the emotional relationship between Matt and the dog, a story that will seem old-fashioned and charming to some viewers while familiar and sentimental to others. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Guiry, Helen Slater, (more)
Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) is the perfect suburban housewife and mother. She likes to cook, her home is immaculately clean, she's always well-groomed and cheerful, and she loves her husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and her two children, Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard). There's just one problem with Beverly -- if you do anything to make someone in her family feel bad, you're dead meat on a stick. While she does a great job of hiding it, Beverly has a vicious and vengeful streak, and when she's not making obscene prank calls to the neighbors or bribing her garbagemen to save embarrassing items from her neighbors' trash, she's mowing down whoever would be so rude as to make her husband go into his office on a Saturday, break up with her daughter, or suggest that her son watches too many horror movies. Taking John Waters back to R-rated territory after the relatively sedate Hairspray and Cry Baby, Serial Mom captures a comfortable middle ground between Hollywood professionalism and Waters' subversive sense of humor, and Kathleen Turner has a field day as the sweet-on-the-outside, evil-on-the-inside Beverly. The supporting cast includes such Waters favorites as Patty Hearst, Traci Lords, Mink Stole, and Susan Lowe; Joan Rivers and Suzanne Somers appear as themselves, and all-female grunge-metal band L7 plays the all-female grunge-metal band Camel Toe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, (more)
The third of director Barry Levinson's autobiographical "Baltimore Trilogy" (the first two entries were Diner and Tin Men), Avalon covers nearly forty years in the lives of an immigrant Jewish family. Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) emigrates to Baltimore in 1914, where Sam's brothers Gabriel (Lou Jacobi), Hymie (Leo L. Fuchs), and Nathan (Israel Rubinek) are awaiting his arrival. By and by, Sam meets his future wife, Eva (Joan Plowright). With the introduction of the Krichinsky's grown son Jules (Aidan Quinn), the film ventures into culture-clash country. Unwilling to become a manual laborer like his dad, Jules opts for the life of a door-to-door salesman. Eventually, he teams with his cousin Izzy (Kevin Pollak) to open the first TV store in Baltimore. Thereafter, the disintegration of the Krichinsky family is paralleled by the rise of TV's omnipresence in the American home. Avalon's elegiac and melancholy effect is underlined by Randy Newman's soulful musical score. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn, (more)
