Movie Reviews: "The Crew"

[Ron Turner]

I see a new movie format on the horizon. Take old, chronically unemployed
actors and dump them in a buddy comedy.

IMDB News.

Crew, The (2000) is the second film this month to feature older actors, a fact
that virtually every reviewer notes today. (The first film was Clint Eastwood's
Space Cowboys.) "This is a great summer for geezers," writes Jack Mathews in
the New York Daily News. He, along with most of his colleagues, figures that
the performances (by Richard Dreyfuss, Seymour Cassel, Dan Hedaya and Burt
Reynolds playing retired gangsters) and direction (by Michael Dinner) in this
film surmount a sitcommy script by sitcom writer Barry Fanaro (Benson, The
Golden Girls). Writes Mike Clark in USA Today: "The Crew often livens up stale
material with disarming loopiness and zest. ... Moviegoers can do worse, and,
come to think, they have all year." But Steve Murray in the Atlanta Journal
Constitution suggests that no amount of acting talent can overcome the film's
script. "When Reynolds yells, 'We would have been better off dead,'" he writes,
"you can't help thinking it's an ad lib, that he's speaking for the whole
cast." A.O. Scott in the New York Times has this recommendation to those
thinking about taking the movie in this weekend: "Just forget about it, O.
.K.?"

**************************************************
Doing research on hypophosphatasia

Reading "First Son: George W. Bush" by Bill Minutaglio