Netflix TV pick: Scrubs

For whatever reason, I didn't watch Scrubs when it first aired. The long-running and highly successful ABC series premiered in the fall of 2001 and ran until 2010. I can't help wondering what the hell I was doing from 2001 to 2010 that I wasn't watching this show. Probably gaming, I suppose.

It's not like I'd never seen an episode of the Scrubs. My friends watched it, and we would occasionally sit through an episode while waiting for our gaming buddies to show up for a board game session. But seeing a single installment in isolation doesn't give you a complete sense of what the show is about.

And so it was that I recently discovered Scrubs on Netflix and decided to give it a try. Having exhausted every episode of The IT Crowd, I was hungry for another good comedy series, one with the same kind of outrageous, laugh-out-loud moments I enjoyed with Roy, Moss and Jen. The first series to come to mind was Scrubs. Having seen a few scattered episodes of it in the past, I knew it was a good bet.

I have not been disappointed. I've been watching at least two episodes a night for the past week. While I don't find it as absurd and hilarious as The IT Crowd, I've become addicted to Scrubs largely because you just can't help loving these characters and seeing their relationships evolve.

Lately, I find myself contemplating my preconceived notions about the show from the few chapters I watched before. Primarily, I realized that you tend to judge the characters in certain ways based on out-of-context scenes. So here's my rundown of my character judgments prior to actually watching the first season:

JD: Duh. He's the main character, so you love him as the good-hearted underdog.

Turk: JD's wingman. A little on the cocky side, so I don't like him as much as I do JD.

Elliot: The token hottie. JD likes her; she's not into him. Yadda, yadda.

Carla: The hottie nurse, Turk's woman.

Dr. Cox: Total asshole. Takes every opportunity to gut JD of any sense of self worth and dignity.

Dr. Kelso: Satan incarnate.

Janitor: Weird, scary dude.

Jordan: The former Mrs. Cox, probably left him because he's a total asshole. Obviously, she deserved better.

Todd: A brainless, annoying jock.

And after watching one season of the program, my conceptions have changed to:

JD: Duh. He's the main character. I like him even more now that I've seen the show.

Turk: Still kind of cocky, but in a lovable and funny way.

Elliot: A very sympathetic character, full of vulnerabilities. I sometimes get angry at her for not being stronger.

Carla: The mercurial hottie. Don't piss her off. But she's got her vulnerable side too. Love her.

Dr. Cox: Dammit. I wanted to hate this bastard, but they went and showed how totally messed up the dude is and I can't help feeling sorry for him. He's a jerk, but he's a jerk with a heart who genuinely cares about his patients.

Todd: A lovable manchild.

Dr. Kelso: Satan incarnate.

Janitor: Still weird, still scary, and a major pain to JD. But after seeing how his father treats him and understanding his defensiveness and self-esteem issues, yeah, he's a sympathetic character too.

Jordan: Mrs. Satan Incarnate. I thought Cox was the asshole, but she obviously wrecked the man. I already know from watching isolated episodes that they temporarily get back together, but I'm on Cox's side in this battle.

Scrubs is one of those sitcoms that goes for a lot of the daydreamer humor that often gives it a surreal quality. The funniest and most outrageous moments are those in which JD creates daydream metaphors for the real-life conflicts he faces. I especially loved the episode in which he saw Dr. Cox as the superhero who could save a leukemia victim (who just happened to be Cox's former brother-in-law). The a capella band headed by hospital attorney Ted's rendition of the Underdog theme song was hilarious in this one.

Ultimately, though, these daydream moments of JD's are true metaphors representing his interpretation of events and his personal growth. In spite of all the verbal abuse he's suffered from Cox, he comes to idolize him because he sees through the craggy exterior to the vulnerable man beyond, a man steeped in emotional torment yet determined to do right by his patients. It is, after all, Cox who helps JD overcome many of his own personal fears to not only succeed in the hospital, but to also follow a moral path. In a world where money and politics grease the wheels of the machine, it is Cox who teaches JD how to game the system to do the right thing.

At its heart, Scrubs is a serious drama that tackles real issues. I'm in love with this person, but I have to work with her professionally every day and not let it interfere with my job. This person has no health insurance; how can we get him the surgery he needs? I'm afraid of death, but I have to live with it every day.

Never before has a show made me laugh so much and cry so much at the same time. Every episode is funny and moving and thoughtful. I walk away from each feeling a little sad and a little hopeful, but always I am moved. Very few TV programs have the ability to affect me so deeply. To dismiss Scrubs as comedy is to fail to fundamentally understand it and its characters.

Bye-bye cable, hello streaming

So I ditched cable some months back. The family still hates me for it, but it was a financial necessity. We just plain couldn't afford it any more. I purchased a couple of indoor antennae (antennas?) to pick up air signals, but, yeah, the number of channels is greatly limited and the signals tend to be unreliable. The plan was to purchase a good outdoor antenna and split the signal out to all of the TVs in the house—just three of them, really, but that hasn't happened yet.

As a replacement, I've turned to subscribing to three streaming services: Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime. Netflix has a pretty large library of TV shows and movies, but quality can be spotty. Some of the movie offerings I could do without, but I do like many of the TV shows, including "The IT Crowd," "Dexter," and "Breaking Bad." The problem with the TV offerings is that they tend to be older series. Since I often want to watch recently aired programs, I also subscribe to Hulu Plus, which streams a number of programs I like a day or two after the network air date.

I also have an Amazon Prime membership, which affords me access to a number of TV and movie offerings included in the subscription fee, with rentals and purchases available for many more titles.

Streaming programs can save you money over that bloated cable subscription, but it's a decidedly mixed bag for a number of reasons.

First, you won't have immediate access to the all of the new episodes you like, and some seasons aren't made available to streaming services for up to a year after the original air dates. A number of really good programs are still available, and some of the older offerings are classics or ought to be considered classics. You also have access to many hidden gems you didn't even know existed, especially programs from the other side of the pond.

Network performance can be another issue. Even if your ISP isn't throttling bandwidth for some services, you have to put up with occasional buffering. I pay a premium for faster internet service, so I don't expect to have problem streaming video. I play online games without a problem, but sometimes I do experience lag and buffering while trying to watch video. Believe it or not, your hardware can be the source of streaming issues. I learned this firsthand while using an internet-ready Sony Blu-Ray player. I almost always had an issue with Netflix. At certain times in the evening I was just plain unable to watch a movie or TV program because the stream would buffer every few minutes and would sometimes never resume. It got so bad that I finally just cancelled Netflix. I didn't have the same problem with Vudu, a digital rental and purchase service, so I decided it must be an issue with Netflix's service.

Sometime later I purchased a Roku for my streaming needs, and, lo and behold, my buffering issues went away. A little research on the internet revealed that this was a common problem among users of the same Blu-Ray player I owned.

After I started streaming programs on the Roku, I saw a significant decline in the number of network and buffering issues. And by "significant", I mean they went from an everyday occurrence to almost never. And if you do like to stream movies and TV, I highly recommend the Roku. I consider it the best $100 I've ever spent on a video/network device.

Aside from challenges like these, I can't say that I really miss cable that much. For regular broadcast TV, I'm doing okay with the antennae, but I will certainly install an outdoor antenna as a long-term solution. The craziest part is, I still end up channel surfing. How's that? you wonder. Well, I often find myself spending hours paging through Netflix or Hulu or Amazon programs trying to find something to watch. Yes, there are tons of options—perhaps too many sometimes, but I still find myself pondering, "What am I in the mood for?"

When it comes to comedy, I have frankly been spoiled by "The IT Crowd." While I enjoy many comedies, including "Community," "Scrubs" and "Psych," few have given me the same kind of laughs as "The IT Crowd."

Which service is best? Well, it's hard to say, really; it depends on what exactly you're looking for. I would break it down like this:

• Netflix: Tons and tons of movies and TV programs to watch. Generally good quality video. The new navigation interface is terrible, however. It's fine for when you're looking for a specific program, but if you're just browsing, like when I'm channel surfing, it's horrendous. Netflix needs to get a clue and offer a better browsing experience, for example, by specific channel or genre. The genre categories are really bad too. It's like they hired a 12-year-old to make some arbitrary labels. I'm telling you, it's gawdawful, and I often switch to another streaming service simply because I get frustrated with Netflix browsing.
• Hulu Plus: Great for TV, especially current programs, and offers some decent original content. Hulu Plus is my go-to service for watching the most recent episodes of programs I like, such as "Community," "Bob's Burgers," and "Agents of Shield" (yes, dammit, I'm watching it). Movie offerings aren't great, but that's not really its niche. The browsing experience is much, much better than Netflix's.
• Amazon Prime: Not nearly as big a collection as Netflix and no new content like Hulu Plus, but the Prime membership does give you access to some great programs, including "Justified," "Whitechapel," "Sherlock" and others. I've had almost zero network problems with Amazon.
• Vudu: My favorite services for renting movies and for purchasing programs digitally. The video quality is great, and I almost never have any network issues streaming programs. If you've never used Vudu, I highly recommend it for movie rentals. Since it's a rental service, there's no monthly fee like the streaming services. I've purchased a number of program seasons on Vudu and love to browse the Collections list.

One caveat I should add about each service's interface is that it will vary from one device to the next. I got very used to the interface on the Roku, so navigating on my Vizio TV is sometimes frustrating.

No one service is a complete solution, in my opinion, but if I were forced to choose just one, I'd probably go with Netflix simply because of the size of its library. And I am convinced that the only way to stream anything is on a Roku. Not only do I highly recommend the Roku, I'm strongly considering purchasing additional units for the other rooms in the house.

TV pick of the month, hell, the past year: The IT Crowd

Many a time when I was browsing my streaming services--primarily Netflix--I would stumble across the title "The IT Crowd" and never clicked the button because I just didn't think I'd be interested. I've worked in the software industry side-by-side with the "IT crowd" for over a decade now. Any "in" jokes about it would just seem stale and lame, I felt, especially since all of the end-user ignorance bit has been passé for years now.

So it wasn't until my daughter nudged me that I decided to give "The IT Crowd" a try. After all, I've been watching a lot British comedy and drama lately and finding it a good deal more satisfying than most of the American fare I've grown up with.

I was not disappointed. After the first episode I was hooked. "The IT Crowd" is one of the most outrageously hilarious comedies I've ever enjoyed. Richard Ayoade is a treat as the socially inept electronics genius Maurice Moss; Chris O'Dowd is a perfect fit as the perpetually disgruntled slacker Roy Trenneman; and Katherine Parkinson creates an empathetic figure in the hapless Jen Barber. They are the IT department at Reynholm Industries, a family-run business that does who knows what but seems to be important enough to attract Japanese partners.

The initial shtick is that Jen is hired to head the IT department though she knows nothing about computers. Roy and Moss know this and find a way to expose her--well, at least to themselves--but she continues to represent the ne'er-do-well department to the rest of the company.

The primary reason I resisted the show for so long was because I assumed it would be a litany of one IT or computer-related joke after another. Instead, it's more of the kind of madcap character comedy you see in programs like "Psych" or perhaps even "The Catherine Tate Show." Roy and Moss manage to get themselves into absurd predicaments that require complicated resolutions.

For example, in one episode Roy decides to use the restroom reserved for handicapped patrons because the wait was too long for the regular restroom. He gets caught and resorts to pretending to be disabled while Moss finds himself suddenly tending bar after he is mistaken for an employee of the establishment. Jen would surely feel she's the parent to a couple of grown-up ten-year-olds if not for her own mishaps.

The program is full of surprises. Just when you think you've seen just about every ludicrous thing that could happen in Reynholm Industries, the most head-slappingly preposterous will occur. I don't want to divulge too many details about this, lest you decide to give it a try, but one example is the discovery Jen makes about what lies behind a mysterious door in the IT offices. Let's just say there's more than servers in there.

My favorite episode is "The Work Outing" in which Jen, Roy and Moss go out to the theater. It was supposed to be Jen's date with a co-worker whose sexual orientation remains ambiguous or evasive and is a mystery Jen must solve. I will say no more about it, but it is decidedly the most hilarious TV I have enjoyed in a long, long time.

In another episode, Roy and Moss fall in with the wrong crowd when they decide to fake being sports fans after Moss finds a web site specifically for geeks that helps them make conversation with, well, "normal" folk. As you might imagine, it does not end well. It seldom does in this program.

It doesn't take long to fall in love with all of the characters in the show, even the unsavory ones like Douglas Reynholm. He's one of the most enjoyable scalawags ever to grace the small screen. Roy, Moss and Jen will quickly become like family. You cannot help but feel for them as the luckless but well-meaning IT department.

The most disappointing thing about "The IT Crowd" is that it only ran four full seasons. It came back for a farewell episode later, but that final episode is not yet available on streaming services--as far as I can tell, anyway, and I've been searching for it. It's over all too quickly for me. I want more. One day I'll find that elusive final episode, and that will, sadly, be that. Until then I may have to watch the whole series all over again. I cannot recommend "The IT Crowd" highly enough. No matter what kind of show you enjoy, you'll find "The IT Crowd" a laugh-out-loud experience.

Thor: The dark ring around my tub

Marvel Studios has come up with a solid formula to keep its film franchises chugging along as money-printing juggernauts bulldozing presidential portraits into their coffers. The formula calls for equal parts action, humor and romance. The "equal parts" statement could be arguable at this point. They found with the original Iron-Man (2008) that an ample dose of quips is good enough to make the audience forget about the nonsensical parts of any cinematic offering. The only problem is, formulas get tired. You can only go to the well so often before it just becomes lame and tired.

And that's how I'm starting to feel about it after being subjected to one hour and fifty-two minutes of one-liners, inanity and superhero beatdowns in "Thor: The Dark World" (2013). Alan Taylor's sequel to 2011's "Thor" is certainly a funny film and, at times at least, entertaining. The jokes, however, are becoming a bit predictable. If the current trend continues, my 12-year-old son will be coming up with better one-liners than "Thor 3" can offer.

But, really, that's not what bothers me most about "The Dark World." What bothers me most is that I cannot take any of it, not one ounce, with any level of seriousness. Most superhero films succeed because they allow you to immerse yourself in the fiction of the worlds they've created. You don't have to wonder how it is Thor flies or whether it's reasonable for a lightning-wielding demigod to be infatuated with a mere mortal down here in good old Midgard. When I first heard about plans to do the original Thor film, I thought it just wouldn't work. I frankly never much liked Thor as a Marvel superhero. I feared the movie would be lame and silly, but they made it work. The plot was tight and self contained. The romance between Thor and Jane seemed contrived and lacked chemistry, but the story worked and the action was satisfying.

In "The Dark World" we must accept the idea of dimension-jumping, spaceship-flying Dark Elves as a dire threat to Asgard and Earth. There's too much about the battle scenes--especially those involving the spacecraft--that just doesn't seem to fit. The whole bit about the ancient Dark Elf threat to Asgard is easy enough to swallow, but then it just gets weird. And they overcomplicate things with the world alignment business that will allow Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) to use the Aether as a weapon to destroy Asgard. The bigger problems arise back on Earth where scientists who run around with Galaxy Note-like devices try to explain what's happening in sciencey-sounding terms. I'm sure it all looks and sounds really cool--to third graders, but it's just plain insipid to anyone over the age of 12.

I'm honestly not sure whether it was supposed to be absurd or whether they thought it would be appropriate for comic book fare to not really make any sense. It felt almost as if the actors were ad-libbing the silliness that escaped their lips during the scenes in which they discussed the alignments and portals and vortexes.

Frankly, I had a lot of trouble caring about anything that happened in this film. At least in the first one I felt empathy for Thor when he was tossed out of Asgard and left to walk the mortal plane as a regular guy. In this sequel there's very little vested interest in the characters. Most of them are endearing and amusing, but it's hard to really make it work in less than two hours. If this were a TV sitcom, I'd grow to love some of the characters, including Darcy whose lines are often lame and contrived.

There's a YouTube joke about it involving Chris O'Dowd, who is underused and misused in this film, employing his standard line from "The IT Crowd." The YouTube parody is hilarious, but it also makes me think how much better this film would have been if it were itself a parody of Thor. It dances around that line enough that it would take but a slight breeze to push it over the edge. I could easily imagine seeing Richard Ayoade step into the scene with O'Dowd when Jane calls him on a cell phone from the other side of one of those portals. No, dammit, I am not making that up. It actually happens in the movie. Instead of Richard, O'Dowd should actually be playing Roy, and Moss's entrance into the film would have elicited nothing but floor-rumbling belly laughs from me.

At least then I could have said I thoroughly enjoyed the film. As it stands, I paid way too much money to purchase a digital title.

Community: Ass Crack Bandit

Community's "Ass Crack Bandit" song is one of the funniest damned things I've heard in a long time.

The desolation of Tolkien

After suffering through the travesty that was Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" I was disinclined to "treat" myself to the subsequent installments I knew were coming. But I live in a family of geeks who live for epic fantasy both high and low, so I was compelled to drag myself and said family into the theater for "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug." I had made up my mind before the reel started rolling (We don't really have reels any more, do we?) that I was just going to sit back, remain calm and try to enjoy what would no doubt be a rollicking, action-packed adventure. Unfortunately, chapter two in the film trilogy is no better than the first. In fact, it's worse. Even if you haven't read The Hobbit it's difficult not to find this adaptation tiresomely hyperbolic. In spite of some additions that add emotional appeal, "The Desolation of Smaug" is another groan-worthy exercise that takes every charming element from Tolkien's beloved classic and turns it into something infuriatingly over the top.

As I sat glumly enduring action sequences aimed squarely at Red Bull chuggers, I couldn't help wondering whether Jackson was attempting to set some kind of onscreen record for creative beheadings. Seriously, does he have a quota he has to meet?

"No, I'm sorry, Mr. Jackson, you're three beheadings short. Why don't you have Legolas come in and do that thing where he crosses his short swords and scissor cuts some goblin's head off."

"But, but, but Legolas wasn't even in The Hobbit."

"Write him in. We need more stabbings and slashings and beheadings and body surfings."

"Body surfings?"

"Yeah, you know, have Legolas jump on some goblin or orc or something and surf down a hill on the body while shooting arrows like a machine gun at hordes of enemies. Good stuff, right?"

"If you say so."

"Oh, and have him shoot things with his bow at close range. You know, give him that feat from D&D; Point Blank Shot, I think it's called. Yeah, yeah. Have him shoot goblins that are standing right in front of him."

"Um, I think a lot of this is kind of defying the laws of physics, isn't it?"

"Physics? Physics? This is Middle-Earth, for crying out loud! We can do whatever we want!"

It was obvious to me from the trailers for "The Desolation from Smaug" that Jackson isn't even attempting to follow the book. In his defense, however, he was given the task of turning the The Hobbit into a trilogy of films, so he had to do something to fill up those empty hours. And it couldn't have been with scenes of dwarves sitting around a campfire swapping stories about the good old days. This whole enterprise seems to have devolved into that time-honored Hollywood tradition of milking as much gold out of a franchise as possible until everyone becomes positively fatigued with it. A certain SF franchise involving lightsaber-wielding Jedi knights springs to mind.

My biggest gripe about the many embellishments (and they're piling up so much now that's becoming difficult to discern the source material) is that he takes so many elements from the book that are simple and charming and elegant and explodes them into overblown melodrama. In my review of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," I mentioned how he ruined the scene with trolls in which Gandalf tricked them into bickering with one another until the sun came up. In "The Desolation of Smaug" a similar butchering of one of the story's best scenes also occurs when the audience is robbed of subtlety of Bilbo's riddle game with Smaug. Time and again Jackson ruins moments like these with big-screen hyperbole.

Let's pretend for just a moment that we've never read any of Tolkien's books. Let's pretend that this is all stuff that Peter Jackson just made up. Even if we do that, there's an awful lot of silliness in this movie that we're expected to take at face value, including the close-up arrow shots to the eyeball, the arrow shots that pin to heads together, the surfing down hills on the bodies of fallen orcs, the beheadings, the beheadings, the beheadings. This kind of stuff in and of itself wouldn't be so bad--if this were intended to be a rollicking comedy. But it's not. It's juxtaposed with plot elements that are supposed to be quite serious. The one thing Jackson does well with his adaptation is remind the viewers that these events include foreshadowing of what is to come. One nit I must pick with these constant reminders is that the audience is continually bludgeoned with links to Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.  From an auteurist perspective this may seem necessary to ensure both trilogies cohere when they are eventually sold as a six-film box set.

Thus, we are treated to segments involving Gandalf's adventures away from the party he assembled. He does tend to disappear a lot in the books, and the only way the reader knows anything about what he's been up to is through Gandalf's own explanations to his traveling companions. Of course, because sinister plots are being hatched and prophecies are drawing nigh, Gandalf must be about some Very Serious Wizard Business. He's battling dark forces, mind you, so it's important that Jackson fill in those gaps of what he's been up to. The audience is thus treated to flashy Wizard Battles that remind me too much of video games. I did find myself wondering if much of what was included in the film was present as fodder for video game licensing. The thing about video games is that they must have very clearly defined boundaries for what exactly a character's powers are. Watching The Desolation of Smaug often felt like a video yanked straight from a video game--although it would have to be the best-looking video game ever created.

One embellishment that I couldn't resist was the relationship between Tauriel and Fili. No, it's not even close to anything that ever happened in any of Tolkien's books, but it nonetheless provided a nice distraction from the goblin-battling inanity that populates most of the film. The characters in Tolkien's books are fairly flat. We know a lot about their history and their brave deeds, but not much is shown about what they feel and think and dream. Jackson's films have done much to turn Tolkien's characters into multi-dimensional people. So even though it's a wide departure from The Hobbit, I was taken in by the charm of the dwarf with a crush on an elf and the elf with a soft spot for the injured dwarf.

My review of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" was a passionately negative one, decrying Peter Jackson's thievery because he has, in fact, stolen from his audience any possibility of enjoying the true delight of the work on which these films are based. "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" continues this larceny, albeit on an even larger scale. I cannot be as passionate in my dislike of "The Desolation of Smaug" because it's such a huge departure from its source material that it scarcely warrants the effort.

Jackson has utterly missed the point of Tolkien's works and has completely misunderstood what makes The Hobbit such a joy to read. My advice to anyone who is inclined to watch any of "The Hobbit" films is just to skip it and read the book instead. I promise you, it's much more satisfying and enjoyable.

Lone Ranger (2013)

When I first saw trailers for Gore Verbinski's "The Lone Ranger," I found myself wondering, "Why is Johnny Depp playing Tonto?" After recently streaming the movie through Vudu, I'm still wondering. This was one of those films I just plain had no desire to see when it was released in theaters. The casting of Depp as Tonto spoke volumes about how Verbinski would be interpreting the classic story of the Texas Ranger-turned-vigilante. While this choice isn't the single biggest issue I have with "The Lone Ranger," it's one that stands out as simply inexplicable and points to the flaw that just plain sinks it--the movie just isn't quite sure what it wants to be, and the result is a mess that really isn't very entertaining.

There can be little doubt that "The Lone Ranger" is a comedy, but exactly what kind of comedy is it? And that's where the problem lies. It's too over-the-top to fall into the genre of the typical adventure comedy. In typical adventure comedy you have to be able to suspend disbelief at least to some level for any of it to be funny. Take the buddy cop movie "The Heat," for example. It's an outrageous affair, but you accept Sandra Bullock's Ashburn as the straight-laced FBI agent and Melissa McCarthy's Mullins as the tough, independent street detective. Though "The Lone Ranger" is a western, I argue that it clearly falls into the buddy cop formula. The two are always reluctant partners who are forced to learn how to work together and then form a bond of friendship. But it's too much of a leap to see Depp as Tonto unless this is a buddy cop formula more in line with Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg's "The Other Guys." At least "The Other Guys" makes no pretense about its outrageousness, which is clearly established when Highsmith and Jansen jump off the top of the building.

If you're going to cast Depp as Tonto, then you need to go all-in with the absurd because that's ultimately what this movie is--just plain absurd. It fails because it doesn't understand the level of its absurdity and doesn't throw itself wholeheartedly into that mode.

It's got plenty of the formulaic elements for a hilarious western parody: the over-the-top villain who cuts out and eats the hearts of his victims, the sidekick who is more competent than the initially inept titular hero, neckbearded henchmen who vacillate between cruel and foolish, a good-hearted hero who just isn't very heroic. So why isn't this movie funny? I think I'd rather just queue up Don Knotts in "Shakiest Gun in the West." That movie understands what it wants to be, and it's funny, genuinely funny.

Most of the jokes just come off as lame and contrived. It's obvious "The Lone Ranger" doesn't take its subject or source material seriously. The action sequences are too hyperbolically impossible to be seen as anything other than cartoonish, but it's presented as if the audience is expected to accept it in the same way that certain absurd events occur in the Indiana Jones films, particularly in "Temple of Doom." For scenes such as the train wreck to be hilarious, some part of it must be accepted at face value, but it just doesn't work. It's always the contrast between the serious and the absurd that makes action movies funny and enjoyable. If you don't believe me, just go back and watch any of the Indiana Jones films or, for that matter, even "Romancing the Stone," the poor man's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

I confess that I didn't watch all of "The Lone Ranger." I just didn't see any point in it. If they'd attempted to do an honest big screen treatment of the radio and TV character, it would have been one thing. If they'd attempted to do an utterly over-the-top parody, that would be another. I'd watch either of those movies no matter how bad they were. I can't watch this one because it's straddling the fence too much between the two. That just plain makes for a flat experience worthy of little more than background noise for a good nap.