Hi, I'm Archie. I like moonlit walks on the beach sharing slop buckets with that special someone and soulful sounds of the Backstreet Boys.
You're very weird.
And that's Lisa Kudrow as Ava's voice. Dr. Do-Little-Two also has a plot involving the courtship habits in the doctor's own family.
He's nervous because his daughter, played by Raven Simone, has started to date.
Dr. D, what's going on?
Excuse me? Remember me, Eric, Domino's Pizza, extra cheese, anchovies, tomatoes, guacamole?
You're the pizza guy.
Yeah, I'll deliver that.
Oh, thanks a lot. I mean, what, I forget to give you a tip? I'm sorry.
No, no, no, no. That's cool. You gave me something a little better than a tip.
I'm gonna take care of you, man, because you know it's nice to have a little...
What's up, baby?
What's going on? Are you ready?
Uh-huh.
But the best scenes are in the woods and the best laughs come from the circus bear as voiced by Steve Zahn, who's about as happy to camp out overnight as Woody Allen would be.
Once again, Eddie Murphy shows, as in the Nutty Professor movies, his genius at interacting with special effects.
Dr. Doolittle is aimed at younger audiences, I'd say grade school, and it works at that level.
I'd recommend it for kids up to about 12, but older audiences, I think, are gonna find it pretty cornball.
Yeah, and that's why I'm giving it thumbs down.
If you have a nine-year-old, drop the kid off at the theater and pick her up in an hour and a half.
Don't go in yourself, because it's just, it's too cute, it's too clawing, and there are a couple of laughs, but it just seemed to me like they're just kind of going through the pages.
But now listen, if they're making a movie for kids, and it works for kids, then don't you have to give it thumbs up?
No.
They're not making it for you.
No, because there are more people in the world than just kids, and they outnumber the kids.
But the bear is kind of fun.
I'm not a nine-year-old girl, as I think you could probably tell, so for me, did I enjoy it enough to recommend it? No, I didn't.
Okay, okay, although you would recommend it enough to recommend it to nine-year-old girls.
Just the nine-year-old girls, not their parents and not their 14-year-old brothers either, okay?
Okay. All right, our next movie is The Princess and the Warrior, the story of some deeply disturbed misfits whose paths keep crossing because of coincidence and because the script is kind of lazy.
This is German director Tom Tickber's follow-up to the kinetic run, Lola Run, and he again taps the intriguing Franka Potenta to star.
This time she plays Sissy, a nurse in a downscale mental ward whose fate is altered one day as she's taking a walk with a blind patient.
After a miraculous recovery, Sissy returns to the scene of the accident looking for clues to the identity of the man who saved her life.
Can you help me?
And then?
Batman is Bodo, played by Ben O'Furman. He's a brain-fried petty criminal who lives with his brother in a cabin that looks like it was built by the Unabomber.
Tickber is a gifted stylist and the cast is really strong, but The Princess and the Warrior is self-conscious and self-congratulatory and with a running time of two hours and 15 minutes, it's just too long.
The gimmick of chance encounters is amusing at first, but it quickly becomes predictable.
And the scenes in the mental ward were grimly misogynistic. Sissy provides sexual release to one patient and is literally a punching bag for another as if she's a twisted porn version of a nurse in a psychiatric ward. Thumbs down.
Whoa, we're way apart on this. I think Tickber really does a great job here. I like this movie a lot better than Run, Lola, Run. And I think you're unfair to blame him for taking joy in the fact that his structure is so complex and takes so much delight in folding back on itself and coming back around again. It's sort of like what he did in Run, Lola, Run, but it's, in my opinion, a lot better. I think this movie is really amazingly entertaining.
I don't know why you're saying that this plot is complicated and clever. I mean, it's okay. She walks into the bank while they're robbing the bank because it's pure chance. And that happens so many times. And I understand that he's aware of that. What I'm saying is he's showing us how gifted a stylist he is.
Why not? Why not? Why not show us how gifted a stylist he is?
Because then it's not about the story, Roger, and then I don't care about these people. And, you know, the sissy character, like I said in the mental ward, I don't know what's going on in that place because nobody seems to be running. The inmates are literally running that asylum. And she's nuttier than anybody.
So that's, you're describing the movie. That's not a criticism. And I'm not finding it appealing to me. It's only a description. And I don't care about the characters. And what happens to them is so much arbitrary and so much dependent on those coincidences that it becomes a tired gimmick.
Well, this is a movie about arbitrary things. It's a movie about coincidences. It's a movie about things you can't believe. It's a movie about how weird it all is. That's what it's about. And it's a movie about a half hour too long.
Oh, no, come on. It is. It is. It's a good movie. Well, I didn't think so. Okay. Coming up, sure, she's married to the director, but she should be a star anyway. My video spotlight is next.
Because it's about purity.
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In this week's video spotlight, Rebecca Pigeon. There's a long tradition of directors casting their lovers in one film after another until the breakup, that is.
Mia Farrow and even Mia Farrow's furniture used to star in Woody Allen's movies, but these days Helen Hayes has a better shot at a role in an Allen film and she's dead.
Lindsay Krauss was once David Mamet's leading lady of choice on and off screen, but now his muse is his second wife, the tremendously talented Rebecca Pigeon. Mamet's light but hilarious state in Maine marks their ninth collaboration.
I wrote my play on it. You wrote a play on it? What play is that? You never heard of it. What's it called? Anguish.
Anguish by Joseph Turner White? You're Joseph Turner White? That's Philip Seymour Hoffman as a screenwriter on location in Vermont. In a twist that somewhat mirrors her own life, Pigeon plays a witty iconoclast who becomes the screenwriter's muse.
Well how do I, how do I do a film called The Old Mill when I don't have an old mill? Well first you gotta change the title. That Pigeon is so good here as the lovely Anne and was so effective as a coldly efficient con artist in The Spanish Prisoner is a tribute to her range and to Mamet's skills.
His writing is up to her acting and vice versa. Rebecca Pigeon has the chops to become a star on her own, but she's lucky and we're lucky that her personal life has yielded a rich bounty of film work. If they stay together for decades, it'll be our good fortune as evidenced by the wonderful video spotlight selection this week, state in Maine.
When we come back, the movie Answer Man wonders if The Wizard of Oz is really a thriller.
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OnStar, how can I help you, Batman?
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The Movie Answer Man is heard from Troylene Ladner of New Jersey, who was surprised to find The Wizard of Oz on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest thrillers of all time, along with E.T., the extraterrestrial, since she doesn't think either one of them is a thriller.
Mike Sperns of Newfoundland wrote in to say he was surprised by Raging Bull. I myself was a little startled to find 2001 A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia on the list. Funny, too, how Casablanca was number two on the AFI's list of the 100 greatest films of all time, but only number 42 on the list of greatest thrillers.
But all this proves is that all lists of movies are meaningless and silly and exist only so that we can share our enthusiasm and so the AFI can raise money with a TV special. Since the AFI does good work, the Movie Answer Man has nothing against their lists, just so long as no one thinks they really prove anything.
Of course, the most thrilling moment in motion picture history is Phoebe Cates getting out of the pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but that wasn't on the list either.
Okay, recapping this week's movies, two thumbs up for Steven Spielberg's AI, it opens next week, but a split vote on The Fast and the Furious, another split on Dr. Dolittle 2, and finally, one more difference of opinion on The Princess and the Warrior.
Remember, you can hear our reviews at Ebert-Roper-Movies.com and read us and print at SunTimes.com. Next week we'll be back with a review of Piper Parabot in Lost and Delirious, and until then, the balcony is closed.
Now, Haley Joel Osmond in AI, I think he's the lead. Do you think he deserves an Oscar nomination?
I think so, you know, he is so good. This kid is gonna go directly into adult roles, he's not gonna have any glitch at all, he's just a great little actor.