American Pie (1999) Movie Review

Final Thoughts and Rating: I'm giving American Pie 0/10 st...I'm just kidding, I actually have some things to say about American Pie and I don't actually hate it. I just thought it'd be funny to give a bad rating as my review. American Pie is a pretty stupid movie though. 

I remember when this movie came out. I was twelve years old and was starting grade 7 at a new school two months later. It being the summer of 1999, there was no internet. At least not the way we have it now. So I had no idea how big this movie was that summer. I just saw commercials for it on TV and knew that I wasn't allowed to watch it. Also, I wasn't in touch with any of my friends from school so I had no clue. It wasn't until I went back to school in the fall that I heard kids talking about it. They were thrilled with the raunchiness of the humour, because they were all 11 and 12 year olds and at that age dick jokes are hugely hilarious. And because American Pie is basically one big dick joke, kids my age loved it even though we weren't supposed to be able to see it. But the parents of my classmates weren't always the most vigilant when it came to what their kids watched it seemed like, because my classmates saw it anyway.

In the intervening 21 years since the movie came out and I was just a 12 year old kid starting middle school, I continued to not see American Pie or it's three direct sequels and four spin-off sequels (the American Pie Presents series). I saw other raunchy comedies like Superbad and Napoleon Dynamite, but the American Pie franchise just didn't grab my attention. Even the sequels, which came out throughout the 2000s, didn't get as much attention as the original 1999 movie did. Four of the sequels were direct-to-video, but even the three theatrical sequels got less and less attention from the media as the 2000s went on as other movies garnered more attention such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and reboots like Casino Royale (2005) and Star Trek (2009). By the time the fourth film in the main series, American Reunion came out in 2012, the world had moved on from this franchise. At least my generation did, since we were the original fans for it and we were adults now and realized that dick jokes weren't enough to sustain a movie series. Especially not the same tired dick jokes that were thirteen years old by that point. 

Did I like anything about this movie? Of course. I really enjoyed Oz and Heather's storyline. Maybe that's because I really like Chris Klein as an actor. He was great as Orlin Dwyer, a.k.a. Cicada in season 5 of The Flash, and I really enjoyed that character because Klein is a great actor. And while American Pie was only his second acting job, Klein brings a maturity to the character of Oz that the other characters lack. And Mena Suvari is great as Heather. I also like Jason Biggs, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Tara Reid, and Alyson Hannigan as actors too. The others are okay too, but the one I really cannot stand at all is Stifler, played by Sean William Scott.

I have never liked Sean William Scott's work. He played Bo Duke in the 2005 remake of The Dukes of Hazzard and he was super obnoxious in that movie. In fact he's super obnoxious in pretty much every movie he seems to be in, like Road Trip and Dude, Where's My Car?. It's characters like that that I can't stand. Normally I'd say that it isn't actually the fault of the actors, but in this case it kinda is, because the actor is the one who chooses the roles he or she plays, so if he or she goes out of their way to play obnoxious characters then it's hard for me to like that actor's work.

Shannon Elizabeth, who plays Nadia in the movie, was a huge actress around the time this movie came out. She was in Scary Movie and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and played Brooke, the mother of Kelso's kid on That '70s Show for two seasons between 2003 and 2005. Like I said, she was everywhere back then.  

There isn't actually that much comedy in this movie. Which helps a little bit because I can connect to some of the characters in some way. What there is though I didn't find to be all that funny. I realize that humour is subjective so I'm not going to knock points off because of the comedy that I didn't find funny. The thing is though, if I'd seen this movie as a teenager or in my early twenties, I probably would've thought that the humour in it was hilarious. Funny how that happens isn't it?

Final Thoughts and Rating (for real this time): Overall, American Pie isn't a great movie. There are good things about it, like some of the characters and the music in the movie, but as a whole it doesn't work for me as an almost 34 year old as it would've if I were in my late teens or early twenties. Which is by no means the fault of the movie. It was just meant to be an audience who is younger than I am. Which is perfectly okay. I'm giving American Pie 4/10 stars for having some good moments and some good characters, as well as a mostly decent cast.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163651/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 

Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020) Season 1, Episode 1 "Second Contact" TV Review

 

When I finished watching "Second Contact", the series premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks I honestly did not know how I felt about it. It was weird, stupid and everything that Star Trek has never been at any point in my almost 34 years of life. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't like it either. I was indifferent to it. But it's been fourteen hours since the episode ended and after thinking about it a lot since then, I actually like it. I don't love it though. Yet. There's potential for me to grow to love it, but after one episode, I don't. Yet. And here's the reason. It's Star Trek. Without the limits of a budget to try and realize everything you want to realize on screen, with more aliens that actually look like aliens and not just people in rubber and makeup and without the limitations of animation that Star Trek: The Animated Series faced back in 1973. As a result it frees the writers to come up with anything they want and only be limited by their imaginations.

The problem that I have with this episode is a problem I knew I was going to have with the series as a whole and that's the humour undermining any dramatic tension the writers might be trying to create as well as hampering any sort of character development. However, I accept the fact that maybe they just want to make a completely comedic animated series. Which is great. I can understand that. It could work if they can commit to the premise of this show and not try to alter course mid-season just because critics don't like the comedy. That's a problem that Star Trek has had since the third season of TOS back in the '60s. For example, Star Trek: Voyager didn't commit to the Maquis/Starfleet dynamic when that was like half of the show's premise, the two crews needing to learn to work together in order to get home again. Also, Star Trek: Enterprise didn't commit to the Temporal Cold War idea that they introduced in the pilot episode, "Broken Bow". Even Discovery hasn't really committed to a single tone or idea, with each season feeling different than the previous one. So I can see that being a problem with Lower Decks at some point. But right now, it seems like McMahan is fully committed to this idea, so hopefully he stays the course on that conviction.

The show's runtime is a little weird with the episode clocking in at 26 minutes, which hasn't happened to a Star Trek series, aside for Star Trek: Short Treks, since TAS aired in the '70s. But they aren't trying to cram a 60 minute story into a 30 minute one, which was actually my concern because ever since Star Trek (2009) came out CBS and Paramount have been trying to make Star Trek big and bombastic, when most episodes, unless they were a mid-season or season finale, were small stories designed to be told in a single episode and could be done on a small budget. Which makes this series the perfect one for that kind of thing.

None of the characters really stood out for me. Most of the Ensigns that are the main characters are annoying and I don't really like any of them. Though T'Ana, the Caitian Chief Medical Officer, reminds me of a mix of Doctor Pulaski from TNG season 2, and Jett Reno from season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery. T'Ana is this crusty, cantankerous character that I actually like quite a bit. She's not a main character, but she's actually funny and I love her interactions with the crew. The only character that I actually liked quite a bit is Ensign Rutherford, the cyborg, who kind of looks like what Geordi La Forge might had he been assimilated by the Borg instead of Picard, but with hair and no other implants aside from the gear on his head. Of course his design also reminds me of Cyborg/Victor Stone from Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! but that's just because he's a cyborg and looks like Cyborg. 

Aside from the humour, I think the most ridiculous thing about this episode for me is the Galardonians, the alien race of the week. They look like a cross between a Care Bear, Piglet from Winnie the Pooh and a Rodian from Star Wars. I know, that's kind of hard to imagine, but that's the best way to describe them. But that's why animation works so well for Star Trek. To give us true alien lifeforms that we could never have in the live action shows.

Something that I really appreciate about this show over the more recent live action shows, is how well it uses the entire cast of characters. To me Star Trek has always been an ensemble show, and neither Discovery or Picard have utilized their supporting characters very well, with half the bridge crew on Discovery not getting names until the beginning of the second season. But here, everybody is introduced well, and their relationships are established pretty well too. Again it's something that recent Trek has had problems with. 

The thing I didn't like about this episode, and hopefully it's not indicative of the series as a whole, is the laziness in what the virus the crew contracts from the pompous and incompetent first officer, Ransom, who is described by McMahan as being this show's Commander Riker. The virus turns the crew into Zombies. Really? You couldn't've come up with something a little more creative for your pilot episode than Zombies? I'm hoping this isn't going to be the start of the show being nothing but Horror cliches and tropes whenever the show needs a virus to overtake the crew, or things like that, because that was the stupidest thing about this episode and I don't want to ever see it again.

The last thing I want to talk about is the show's opening credits. The music and the opening sequence is very reminiscent of '90s Star Trek, from the musical cues, without outright reusing them, and the shots of the ship is a funnier version of the opening title sequence from Star Trek: Voyager complete with the classic jump to warp at the end. The title cards for the credits are the blue colour and font that was used for TNG, which is awesome. Oh, and the episode title appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen like it used to on TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. 

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, while "Second Contact" wasn't the best series premiere ever, it was better than I thought it might be given the premise, the tone and the switch to animation from live action. The humour doesn't work for me, and there isn't much to really latch onto, but, I'm willing to keep watching it. It's an acquired taste though, so if this isn't your kind of humour then you're not going to like this show if you decide to watch it. It's not unwatchable though and I love the premise of a Second Contact ship coming in to follow up from starships like the Enterprise and Voyager, that conduct the First Contact missions. So I'm giving "Second Contact" 5/10 stars.

Memory Alpha: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Second_Contact_(episode) 

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) S01E07 "Lonely Among Us" TV Episode Review

"Lonely Among Us" is one of the most ridiculous episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season. It's also one of my favourites. Not of the series, because trust me, there are plenty of episodes that are way better than this one is, but I had this episode on VHS when I was a kid, along with most of TNG season 1 and I watched it all of the time growing up. I even remember either taking the tape with me when I had to go to the hospital for an extended stay, or I asked my parents to bring it in for me. Along with the Collector's Edition VHS tapes for "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Naked Now"/"Code of Honor". And then there were the numerous viewings of the tape at home too.

Of all of the first season episodes, this one is the one that I feel is the most like an episode of TOS rather than a TNG episode. A) because the way they use the Transporter to recover Captain Picard at the end is the way they would've used it on TOS in a few of the earliest episodes of TOS before they'd established the definitive way for the Transporter to operate, and B) transporting two sets of delegates amidst a shipboard crisis is also a TOS thing that they did a couple of times. Oh and the captain being invaded by some alien being is also something that has happened on TOS at least once.

Which brings me to the first thing that I wanted to bring up in this quick trip down memory lane. Why did the energy entity attack Worf and kill Engineer Singh but only invade Doctor Crusher and Picard? Was there something about Worf that made it attack him? At least when it inhabited Captain Picard, it expressed it's sorrow at having accidentally killed Singh during it's speech to the bridge crew, but made no apologies for attacking Worf. Hm, it must not like Klingons very much.

When I was a kid and it got to the few scenes in the corridors of the Enterprise, I assumed that the lights were out because of the random systems malfunctions that were occurring, because even as Picard was escaping, the lights in the corridor outside the Transporter Room were off though they were on when the Selay beamed aboard at the beginning of the episode. But as I grew older I realized that the lights were off in the corridors in the areas where the Selay and the Anticans were located, which makes sense, because the quarters that the Anticans were in, were also darkened and the corridor scenes happened to include the Selay and the Anticans in them. So that would make a little more sense than my thoughts as to why the lights were off in the corridors, but not in places like the bridge, sickbay, engineering and Riker's quarters in a scene that I'm going to be talking about momentarily. It was just the corridors and the quarters of the delegates.

So when the senior staff was planning their possible mutiny should Picard prove to be dangerous due to his sudden change in behaviour and demeaner, why wasn't Yar there? She's the ship's chief of security and ship's safety is her job. I know why Worf wasn't there, but I'll get into that in a bit, but it's weird to me that Yar wasn't there. Especially since La Forge is a lower rank than Yar is, but he was there, as were Troi and Crusher, even though neither of them are part of the ship's command structure at this point. It makes sense for Crusher to be there though since she is Chief Medical Officer.

This is the first episode where it's established that Worf, despite his position being backup bridge officer, isn't actually a member of Picard's senior staff as he's considered to be a junior officer at the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade). Yet, La Forge is also a Lieutenant (junior grade) is considered to be a senior officer. Which is strange to me, because despite Geordi's seniority in rank, when they're chatting in the sensor maintenance room, Worf calls him by his first name instead of calling him "sir" as he does any superior officer that he is talking to. So naturally, as a kid I just assumed both La Forge and Worf were junior officers. But nope, that is not the case at all.

One of the things that I found interesting about this episode is that during one of his briefing sessions with Picard, Riker mentions that there's a saboteur aboard the Enterprise and that all it would take is for the Ferengi to bribe a member of one of the delegations to sabotage the ship and that would be it. Both in production order and airdate order this episode takes place after "The Last Outpost" which is the first appearance of the Ferengi, where Picard had beaten them and so it would make sense for them to want to take out the Enterprise. This is also when the Ferengi were being written as being more of a threat than they would be portrayed as later on in TNG and on DS9. Which is something they'd been building on since "Encounter at Farpoint".

Final Thoughts and Rating: "Lonely Among Us" is never going to be the greatest episode of any Star Trek show ever. However it is one that I grew up watching on VHS all the time. I'm going to give "Lonely Among Us" 5/10 stars. It's not great, it's not horrible, but it is pretty bad, which is kind of how I'd describe most episodes in the first season of TNG.

Memory Alpha: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Lonely_Among_Us_(episode) 

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2 (2017) Comic Book Review

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2 is where things really start to heat up for the Power Rangers. Luckily for the sake of my sanity the unnecessary personal drama finally dies down in the second or third chapter of the book and switches to the drama of the Rangers figuring out how Rita managed to beat them so easily, when, up until this point, the only thing she's managed to accomplish is losing a bunch of monsters and doing some property damage. But it's not until the final chapter that Zack and Tommy make up, which is kind of annoying.

This volume begins a trend where every fifth issue, a standalone story is told about a particular character. Issue #5, which is the first chapter of this volume, focuses on Zack. But while it focuses on Zack, it doesn't explain Zack's behaviour towards Tommy in the previous volume. What I like about this issue though is that it shows that Rita isn't stupidly just attacking Angel Grove all the time like it looked like she was doing in the TV show. The Megazord fight that happens in this issue takes place in Italy. That's right, Rita attacks somewhere other than North America, or Japan in the case of the Sentai footage used in the show. Lol. 

This is the reason that I think Power Rangers as a comic book is a good idea. The TV show always felt so small in scope in terms of what the Rangers, their Zords, and the villains could do. Not just because fight scenes, particularly in the first season, were mainly limited to the Sentai footage, but because on the shoe-string TV budget that they have to work with on that show, both when Saban was working on it, and when Disney was in control, they just didn't have the money to do many of the cool things they wanted to with the Zords or the monsters. But comic books is where Power Rangers can, and should, thrive. In comic books the only thing you need to worry about is whether the artist can draw the thing you call for in the script. Movies are getting better with this, but, the problem with movies is that movies are more for a mass audience, and Power Rangers has never done well in that medium even back in 2017 after superheroes had become popular thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Which brings me to a few things they've done in both this volume and the previous one that would never have been done on the TV show.

Like Rita attacking Italy in this volume, in the previous one, Scorpina attacks Tommy at his house, putting his mom in danger. That would never have happened on the TV show. Especially in the first season, with the exception of "Return of an Old Friend" when Rita captured the Rangers's parents and held them for ransom against the Power Coins. And even then, she just left them in another dimension until the Rangers, backed up by the newly restored Green Ranger, were able to destroy the Dramole monster. Here though, she sends Scorpina in for a surgical strike against the Green Ranger.

What was really surprising though was when the Green Chaos Crystal finally detonated, taking out half the Command Center, including both Zordon and Alpha, and then after the Rangers evacuated, nearly losing to the Black Dragon, Rita takes over the Command Center and places her throne where Zordon's plasma tube had been. The first time I read these issues, in single form, I was like, "Um what? Rita is being smart about this?". As if I couldn't believe that Rita Repulsa, a villain who did nothing on the TV show, except send down useless monsters and henchmen, and hatch lame schemes to destroy the Power Rangers and conquer Earth, could come up with this massive of a plan that actually works so effectively.

Issue #5 is the only part of this book where the artwork doesn't work for me very well. It's not really cartoony, but it also isn't as realistic looking as the artwork in the other issues does. And that's just because it's not Hendry Prasetya as the artist on this issue. And it isn't that oddly disturbing cartoony look that the original Hamilton Comics Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had either. This is more of an actual animated series look that feels out of place in this series. The rest of the artwork is solid though.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, this volume wasn't as much of a CW teen drama series as the previous volume was. It still felt like that a little bit, particularly in the first few issues that are contained in the book, but definitely not to the extent that Volume 1 felt like. It's still a pretty great book though and I definitely enjoyed it. Again, Power Rangers works so much better as a comic book than it does as a TV show or a movie. The scope of the universe is so much larger than it ever could be on the TV show, and while movies are able to do a bit more since they have that larger budget, it's still a medium for the masses in a way that TV and comic books aren't. Because there's less unnecessary personal drama than there was in the previous volume, and because the artwork in issue #5 isn't as good I'm going to give Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2 9.5/10 stars.

Blog Update (August 3rd, 2020)

Hey guys! How's it going? I'm actually doing great today. Thanks to all of you who read my latest blog post, it's now officially my most viewed post on here, surpassing my review of The World of Teddy Ruxpin: Teddy Outsmarts M.A.V.O. (Volume 6) by two views. Which is totally awesome and gives me hope for the new series of posts I'm going to be doing, which I talked about in my previous post (if you haven't read it yet, please do so here: https://reviewbasement.blogspot.com/2020/08/living-with-disabilities-typical-day-in.html). Not knowing if anyone would read it is mostly what has prevented me from writing about my disabilities beyond mentioning that I have them. Don't worry though I'll try to make them as entertaining as possible. Though I suspect that some of my stories will be more entertaining for me than they will be for anyone reading them. Lol. In the meantime though let's get to what you really came here for: Me, waxing poetic about what reviews I'm going to be posting on the blog this week.

I've got a crazy week for you here at the Review Basement this week. Including a little something special for you on Friday. Which I'll get into a little later, since I'm really trying to go in chronological order with this update.

Tomorrow is going to be my review of the second trade paperback volume of the BOOM! Studios Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic. My volume 1 review did pretty well in terms of views, which is awesome that more than five people actually read that review, given that it's Power Rangers, and that doesn't seem to do quite as well as reviews I do of DC or Marvel books. This is based solely on my numbers for the reviews of the first two issues of the Power Rangers/Ninja Turtles crossover and the first issue of the original 1994 Hamilton Comics Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic book series. Anyway I digress.

I'm not going to have a post for you on Wednesday because I have a phone appointment with my new Urologist that day so I'm planning on taking that day off from posting anything on the blog. I'm not sure if I'm going to post anything on Thursday either. I'm not going to be done reading book 4 in the Odd Thomas series, Odd Hours, by Thursday since I'm taking a break from the series to read the two books by Shane Burcaw that I got last week. I finished the first book, Laughing at My Nightmare before I went to sleep last night and I started the second one, Strangers Assume My Girlfriend is My Nurse right after that, so I MIGHT do something on those books on Thursday, depending on if I get done the second one by then, but it won't be a review. I bought them to read for personal enjoyment, not to review on this blog. But you know how I am. If I enjoy something I have to talk about it on the blog, even if I don't do a full review on the thing I enjoyed. Lol.

Thursday night is the premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which I did a review/overview of the trailer on at the end of July, which you can read here: https://reviewbasement.blogspot.com/2020/07/star-trek-lower-decks-2020-trailer.html (I can't believe I shamelessly plugged two of my own blog posts in a blog post). So on Friday I'll be posting a review of the pilot episode. Depending on how much I like the pilot I might actually review the show week to week, which I've never been good at keeping up with any time I've ever tried to do episode by episode reviews of a season of Television in the past. So that will definitely depend on if I like the pilot enough that I 1) want to keep watching the series and 2) have enough to say about each episode to write a full review of it. They'll all be spoiler free because it's a new show, but that means I may not have enough to say about the show week to week. I'll definitely be doing a review of the pilot episode this week though and then a full season 1 review when the season is over. So stay tuned for that on Friday.

My movie review this week is going to be a first for me. It's the first time I will have ever seen American Pie. That's right, I have never seen American Pie or any of it's sequels or spin-offs. I was 12 years old when the first movie came out and so you can imagine how that conversation would've gone if I had asked my mom if I could rent it after it had come out on VHS and DVD. And there was no way I was gonna be going to see it in theatres even if I'd wanted to. Which I didn't. Then as the other movies in the series came out throughout the 2000s and the early 2010s I just wasn't interested in watching them. So this should be interesting to see how I like a 21 year old teen comedy movie. Which is actually why I decided to just stop my whining and sit down to watch it this week for my review. Lol.

I think that's pretty much all I wanted to say today. Well, except that I will be doing my first Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS review in a week from today. So that will be fun. Which brings me to one more thing. Because I'll be doing these reviews on Mondays, I'm trying to decide what day to put out my Living with Disabilities posts on. I don't necessarily need to put them out on the same day all the time, but considering Fridays will most likely be reviews of Star Trek: Lower Decks episodes, Saturdays are my movie reviews, Tuesdays are my comic book reviews, and Wednesdays and Thursdays are usually reserved for extra reviews like an extra comic book review or a novel review, depending on when I finish reading a book and on whether or not I just feel like doing two comic book reviews in a week. But as of right now, Sundays are completely open as are Fridays unless I decide to do weekly Star Trek: Lower Decks Reviews, so it'll definitely be one of those two days.

Okay, now I'm actually done for today. But I will be back tomorrow for my review of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2 and other posts throughout the week. So stay tuned for all of that, coming to you very very soon. Later. 

Living with Disabilities: A Typical Day in My Life

Hey guys! How's everyone's weekend going? Mine's been pretty quiet. You know, the usual way things have been lately. It's raining like crazy today and I tried going out to sit on the front step twice this morning. Both times I was only outside for barely fifteen minutes before it began pouring outside. Now, normally I'd be fine since our front step is enclosed, but the direction the rain was coming down from was enough that I got a little wet sitting out there. So I came in. And then I decided to do this post. Actually, I've been thinking about doing this post for a couple of days, but finally got my butt in gear. I just wanted to talk about what a typical day is for me. Because I'm sure some of you are wondering how I manage to get blog posts out consistently. 

Depending on the time of year I usually wake up and get out of bed between 6:30 and 7am. Because it's been so hot and humid this summer I've started getting up at 6:30 so I can get outside that much earlier in the morning before it gets too hot for me to be out there. But ordinarily I get up at 7am. After showering and getting dressed I go down for breakfast and to turn on my laptop to check e-mails and Facebook messages/notifications as well as my blog. After a breakfast of some hot cereal (either oatmeal or cream of wheat), an egg, and either some fresh fruit or frozen fruit, I go outside to either sit in the backyard with a book and some music or on the front step to get some fresh air and a little bit of exercise by walking around the backyard or walking up and down the driveway a few times.

I try to be outside for at least two hours every day, but some mornings I only end up out there for an hour, depending on how hot it ends up being. When I come in I return to the basement and get on my laptop to start typing away at a blog post. For comic book reviews, particularly if I'm reviewing a collected edition (trade paperback or hardcover), I take the comic outside with me to read while I'm sitting out there. But if I'm writing a movie review or a book review, then I'll start typing away at it immediately since I will have finished the book the night before (most of the time) and I will have watched the movie the night before too. 

I also take breaks during the day too. If a friend messages me on Facebook or texts me, I'll take a break for a bit and have a chat with them. Since I've been in protective isolation due to COVID-19 this was my way of keeping in touch with the people that I love since I couldn't just have them over for dinner or go out with them. In recent weeks though, I've had people over for outdoor visits. Brad has Mondays off so he's dropped by sometime after lunch to hang out on my front step for a bit. Though the last time he did this, he showed up unannounced and unexpectedly, as he usually did before the pandemic hit. Katie's been by once as well. 

After a morning of enjoying the weather and starting on whatever blog post I'm working on that day, I'll break for lunch between noon and 1pm, depending on when I start to feel hungry. After lunch, which consists of a sandwich of some sort, yogurt, and some kind of vegetables, I'll get back to my computer and finish working on my blog post of the day. Once that's posted I spend the afternoon watching YouTube videos, reading, writing, or grabbing images for the next day's blog post if I'm doing a review. 

I live with my parents so I eat with them most nights. When I do eat with them, my mom makes dinner between 5 and 6pm. On the nights where I'm eating on my own, I'll start making my dinner closer to 5pm. Finally, after dinner several things end up happening, depending on the weather and what I feel like doing. Some nights I'll go sit on the front step for an hour or so if it's not super hot out after dinner. I'm usually back in the house by 8:30pm because by then it's getting dark enough that trying to read is pointless. After that I'm usually talking to friends on Facebook or watching more YouTube videos or watching a movie or a TV show episode. I try to be in bed by 11 at the latest, but on the nights where I'm talking to Aaron or Katie, I usually don't end up in bed until almost 1 in the morning. Especially if I haven't talked to them for a week. But most of the time 11pm is the latest I go to before I go up to get ready for bed. After all, I do have to get up either at 6:30 or 7am the next morning and do the whole routine over again.

Now, you might've noticed that I left out certain details, like the kinds of things I have to do to stay healthy, like taking medications, having snacks, going to the bathroom and all that fun stuff. Well, they are important, but I decided not to tackle them here so that I have material for my new blog series, which I decided to call Living with Disabilities. It's going to be a long series and it's something I've been wanting to do ever since I started my first blog over on Word Press back in 2015. 

I'm not changing the blog and the focus is still reviews that I'm doing. But I've been blogging for 5 years now and everyone is so busy talking about other social issues of the day that nobody is talking about how difficult the world is for people such as myself, who have physical disabilities as well as mental disabilities. There's still so much ignorance surrounding people with disabilities and I kind of want to help with that discussion because it does affect me and my way of life. So in between the reviews, I'll be posting about what my life is like as a person with disabilities. I'll be talking about how I've adapted to the way I have to live in order to stay healthy and out of danger, how I handle everyday things that other people don't have to worry about, my friends and my family, and how we've impacted each other's lives, as that is a two-way street in so many cases, and things of that nature. 

I'll be doing this through stories from my life and some of the funny stuff I've experienced with friends and family. Thing like that. Occasionally I'll also talk about what it was like being the only kid who used a wheelchair at most of the schools I went to as a kid, and some of the struggles I went through to get to where I am today. So I hope you'll join me on this journey. I'll be back on Tuesday with this week's comic book review, where I'll be reviewing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2. Bye guys.  

Casper (1995) Movie Review

Casper is a movie that, until I popped the tape into the VCR last night, I hadn't seen in about 24 or 25 years. We never owned it on any home media platforms when I was a kid, but we rented it at some point. To be honest I don't remember when we rented or how many times we watched it. I just remember watching it with my family in the family room of whatever house we were living in at the time we watched it. I also don't remember much about the movie aside from the theme song (unsurprisingly sung by Little Richard), Casper being brought back to life for an hour, and Dan Akroyd running out of Whipstaff Manor dressed as Ray Stantz in full Ghostbusters gear saying, "Who are you going to call? Somebody else!" before running off screen. That was the extent of my memory of the movie before sitting down to watch it last night for this review.

Casper, the Friendly Ghost is a character that I was quite familiar with growing up. I had a couple of issues of the comic that was being published in the early '90s, I watched Casper and Friends on TV, I saw this movie, and I watched the Fox Kids cartoon based on this movie, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper as it was on before Power Rangers Zeo on Saturday mornings and it was also on weekday afternoons. I also had a VHS tape that contained two of the original 1940s Casper theatrical cartoon shorts and All's Well, which was a Gabby cartoon. Gabby was a character created by Max Fleischer but was unrelated to Casper. But I digress.

Even before I saw the movie, I was excited for it, because it was Casper in live action. Of course I shouldn't've been so surprised when I first saw the trailer for it on TV because this was in the '90s when pretty much every cartoon was either being turned into a live action movie or getting a theatrical feature film. Or at the very least a direct to video feature film. The Jetsons had had an animated feature film in 1990, the Flintstones got a live action movie in 1994, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was based on Batman: The Animated Series, Dennis the Menace had a live action movie in 1993 and Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin was based on The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. And those are just the ones that I know of. I'm sure there are more of them that I don't know about too. That's also not taking into account some of the live action movies coming out of old live action TV shows either like The Addams Family, Leave It to Beaver and The Little Rascals. Yet I was surprised and positively excited that Casper was going to be the star of a live action movie. C'mon guys I was eight years old when this movie came out, of course I was going to be excited for it and not care if it was good or not.

Casper is not a great movie. It's not even a good movie. But I quite enjoyed revisiting it 20+ years after seeing it for the first and only time. Like I said, I didn't necessarily remember a whole lot about the movie before I sat down to watch it last night before bed. For example, I completely forgot about the pointless subplot of Kat's jerk classmates Amber and Vic or that the Halloween party at Whipstaff was Kat's idea, or that there was a Halloween party in the movie. But even if I had remembered the entire movie from start to finish, I don't think I would've enjoyed it any less than I did. It's a harmless film that is actually entertaining and not boring or vomit inducing. 

The cast in this movie is pretty great though. I totally forgot that Bill Pullman played Dr. Harvey, only a year before he would play the United States President in Independence Day (1996) and only eight years after he played Lone Starr in Spaceballs (1987). He was also in a bunch of other movies that I've never even heard of throughout the '90s. Christina Ricci was in a bunch of stuff in the '90s as well. Besides playing Kat in Casper and Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), she also voiced the Gwendy dolls in Small Soldiers (1998) and was in a movie called Now and Then (1995) as a character named Roberta. I've never seen this movie but Christina and her fellow cast members were interviewed in an issue of Disney Adventures. That issue was my first one ever of that magazine and I still own my original copy today. Also how did I not know/remember that Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame, and Brad Garrett, who would go on to play Ray Romano's brother on Everybody Loves Raymond, were in this movie? Eric Idle plays Dibs, the assistant to the "villain" of the movie, Carrigan (Cathy Moriarty) and Brad Garrett is the voice of Fatso, one of Casper's uncles. 

Speaking of the "villains" they don't actually do much. Carrigan and Dibs are both greedy, but aside from trying to get to a treasure that is supposedly being hidden at Whipstaff, they don't do anything, except kill each other. I'm not even kidding, they kill each other so that Carrigan can become a ghost and enter the vault that Casper's "treasure" is kept in. Yeah, you can probably guess how that goes considering it's a '90s kids movie. Carrigan is probably the worst part of the movie for me because she makes Tweeg, Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa look competent in their respective shows. At least those three are actual villains, Carrigan is just in this movie because it's a '90s kids movie and apparently '90s kids movies need villains. That's pretty much it. Dibs is funny, dumber than Goldar and L.B., but is tolerable as a villain. Well, more tolerable than Carrigan is anyway.

I like the music in this movie. Again, because it's a '90s kids movie it has that cute sounding incidental score that isn't scary or ominous in any way, but it works for the film because Casper, despite being a ghost, isn't supposed to be scary or ominous and that's the whole point of the character. To act as a little bit of a balance against the more scary Ghostly Trio, Stinkie, Stretch and Fatso. The movie reflects that tone extremely well. Even though I remembered that Casper came back to life for an hour in this movie, I didn't remember the song that played while Casper and Kat danced. The song is called "Remember Me This Way" and it's sung by Jordan Hill, who I only know from her duet with Jim Brickman from 1999 called "Destiny". 

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, Casper is not a great movie. But it's an entertaining movie with lots of nods to other shows and movies like Ghostbusters and Casper at one point is shown watching an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on the TV in his bedroom. It's not a movie that I would buy a copy of on DVD or Blu-ray though. It's definitely one of those movies that is perfectly fine to watch on VHS and just enjoy as a stupid '90s kids movie. For that reason alone I am giving Casper 9/10 stars. It's not a great story and it doesn't need to be. It set out to entertain people and it succeeded. At least for me.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112642/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3