Though best-known for the anticlimactic—though hilarious—finale to the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" cliffhanger, The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season (Fox) contains a large number of the series' best episodes, such as "Radioactive Man" (in which Milhouse gets the role of Fallout Boy in a Hollywood movie), "King-Size Homer" (in which Homer gains weight to go on disability), "Lisa The Iconoclast" (in which Lisa reveals the truth about Springfield's founder), "Bart On The Road" (in which Bart heads to Knoxville and visits The Wigsphere), and the downright avant-garde "22 Short Films About Springfield." But for all that, the season's highlight may well be the sweet Christmas episode "Marge Be Not Proud," in which Marge finds out that Bart has been shoplifting videogames. What makes this episode so great? Four words: Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. And one more word: THRILLHO…
Sex comedies always promise more than they deliver: The comedy is usually shamefully lowbrow, and the sex is either embarrassing or voyeuristic. But that didn't stop adolescents from willingly enduring Fraternity Vacation or The Malibu Bikini Shop, hoping for cheap titillation. Finally, Freaks & Geeks creator Judd Apatow and writer-star Steve Carell have made the perfect sex comedy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Universal), an appropriately raunchy yet disarmingly sweet portrayal of the ultimate late bloomer…
Kids and sports: a favored combination for generations of pratfall-loving filmmakers. But the best ones know how to put their own spin on it. Richard Linklater's remake of Michael Ritchie's loveable-losers Little League favorite Bad News Bears (Paramount) stays eerily faithful to the original and doesn't really improve on it. But the material still works, and star Billy Bob Thornton is particularly amusing, operating in full Bad Santa mode. For some reason, most viewers gave it a miss. Same with Roll Bounce (Fox), the completely winning story of some '70s-era South Side Chicago kids who enter a roller-skating contest. It's funny, sweet, and loaded with skating action. Sounds like a double feature…
With The Island (Dreamworks), Michael Bay proved he was capable of making loud, obnoxious, overblown crap without longtime producer Jerry Bruckheimer, but he apparently can't make a hit without him. This summer's most richly deserved box-office disappointment stranded the formidable likes of Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, and Steve Buscemi in a shrill science-fiction dud that plays like Brave New World as re-imagined by Maxim's marketing department.