The Muppets Take Manhattan--Movies that I've Half-Watched

We were visiting my parents' place, and my kids started going through their DVD collection to try to find something they were interested in watching.  When they saw this movie, they decided to check it out.  (They've not seen a lot of original Muppet content, but they are fans of Disney's Muppet Babies).

I had seen this movie once before as a kid.  It came out in 1984.  I think I saw it on TV once in the late 1980s.  I remember it being funny only intermittently, and having a lot of boring slow songs in it.

My kids watched the DVD in the TV room, and I was working on my computer in the neighboring room.  As such, even though I wasn't actually watching the movie, I heard much of it coming through the open door.  So I'm going to count this as a movie I half-watched.

From what I could hear, the movie was just as boring as I remembered it.  And there were a lot of boring songs.  

I know this movie got a lot of good reviews when it was released, and is considered a classic nowadays, but to me, this movie is always the epitome of "kids movies that are made to impress the parents, and not the actual kids themselves."

But, you know, to give it a proper review, I'd have to actually sit down and properly watch the whole thing. Until I do that, you'll have to take my opinion with a grain of salt.  But from what I could hear through the doorway, it sounded like there were a lot of boring parts in this movie.

My kids didn't actually make it through the whole movie.  They got bored and stopped watching halfway through.

****************

I consider myself a Muppet's fan.  (Most people of my generation are).  But as I wrote in my 2013 review of The Muppets movie: 

 Actually truth be told, I enter into any Muppet movie with low expectations.  Although I have a lot of fond childhood memories of the Muppets, I’ve also been disappointed by them a number of times.  They’ve done some good movies over the years, but they’ve also done a lot of bad movies.

            Even back in their golden age, their original TV show could be very hit or miss.  Some of their best sketches could be wildly imaginative, bizarre, or, delightfully subversive.  But the show could just as easily suddenly swing into saccharine sweet mode, with an over-reliance on sentimentality and clichéd life lessons.  The movies have continued and amplified these flaws.

The Muppets Take Manhattan is for me a classic example of this.

The Day the Earth Blew Up--Movies that I've Half-Watched

A few days ago, my kids came into my room and saw me on the computer while I was reading Freddie Deboer's substack, and they were immediately attracted to the Daffy Duck gif.

They wanted to see more of it, so I indulged them by showing them the full cartoon on Youtube.  And since then, they've asked to see that cartoon again every time they come into my room and see me on the computer.

My kids haven't been exposed to Looney Tunes yet (something that was often on TV when I was a boy) so I thought it might be nice to show them some Looney Tunes on the big TV screen downstairs.

Unfortunately, as I already knew from Vince Mancini's complaining about it, Looney Tunes are not available on any streaming service now after having been pulled from HBO Max.  

Okay, so we can't find the Looney Tunes cartoon shows on HBO Max anymore, but maybe there would be a Looney Tunes movie, I thought.  So I set about searching.  

Bugs Bunny: Superstar?  Nope, turns out that one isn't available.

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie?  Nope, not that one either.  

...and right on down the list.  Turns out they've only got a couple of Looney Tunes movies available, one of which is The Day the Earth Blew Up, which I had never heard of before, but it looks like this came out last year.  

Since both I and the kids were in the mood for some Looney Tunes, I was already predisposed to give this a try, but I checked the reviews section on Wikipedia first just to make sure I wasn't wasting my time:  

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 111 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Restoring much of Looney Tunes' quintessential charm with a daffy dose of high energy and inventive gags, The Day the Earth Blew Up goes to show that these iconic characters remain evergreen fun."^[43] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[44] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an 89% overall positive score, with 72% saying they would "definitely recommend" it.^[41]

Peter Debruge of Variety praised the film for its comedy and emotional core, and felt that the entire project was "crafted with love and a genuine respect for the franchise".^[5] Rafael Motomayor of IGN awarded the film a 9 out of 10-star rating. He praised its comedy, emotional core, animation and Bauza's voice performances, and referred to it as "one of the funniest movies of the year".^[45]

Yeah, okay, sounds like this could be good.

...and, it was not good.  I made it 15 minutes through the movie before I decided I was out.  I told my kids to enjoy the rest of the movie, but that I was going back upstairs to read my book.

They made it another 10 minutes after I left.

Superman (2025 film)--Movies that I've Half-Watched

As you fellow Michiganders know, schools are closed and we're stuck at home because of cold weather.

My wife and I judged it too cold to try to take the kids out to play, so it seemed like a perfect winter afternoon to settle down for a movie.

My daughter really had it in her head that she wanted to watch Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.  I don't know how she heard about it--she must have just seen it pop up when we were searching through movies on HBO Max.

Now, I'm a huge DC comics nerd, but I didn't particularly want to spend an afternoon watching one of DCs direct-to-video low-budget animated movies.  After all, we were all settled down to spend the afternoon watching a movie as a family.  Why not choose something a bit more special?

[Sidenote: My wife knows that I was disappointed by my kids utter lack of interest in Star Wars, but my wife told me that I should be happy that the kids at least shared my interest in superheroes.  And she's right.  I mean, you can't win them all, but I'm happy my kids have been taking an interest in DC superheroes lately.]

So, with that in mind, I decided maybe a suitable compromise would be the new James Gunn Superman movie.  It would satisfy my kids interest in superheroes, and it would also be something that would be interesting for me and my wife as well.  

The new Superman movie is rated PG-13, but consensus on the Internet seemed to be that it wasn't too bad for kids to watch, so we decided to give it a try.  

We made it through the first 22 minutes before I had to turn it off.  Not because there was anything traumatizing for the kids, but just because my kids were so bored. 

The new Superman movie looked like it was exploring some interesting themes about government, superheroes, and the new international order.  There was an interesting conversation going on at about the 20 minute mark between Superman and Lois Lane about whether or not it was appropriate for Superman to interfere in foreign wars, which I think could have been interesting, but I couldn't pay attention to it because my 4 year old was squirming so much and climbing all over me.  So I just stopped the movie and said to my family, "You know what, this was a mistake.  Let's find something else to watch."

And so (sigh) we watched Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.  Which is about as awful as you would expect it to be.  But I'll deal with that more fully in a video review, which I hope to post soon.

Heathers--Movies that I've Half-Watched

I was stuck in a doctor's waiting room this morning, and this was playing on the TV.  So I saw about 10 or 15 minutes of it.

Way back when I was in high school, I had seen parts of this movie on TV.  I remember thinking it seemed very strange, but somewhat intriguing.

I had the same impression watching parts of it again this morning.

One of these days, I may have to sit down and watch the whole thing.

Star Wars--Movies that I've Half-Watched

Every man of my generation thinks about the day he'll introduce his children to Star Wars.  (Or at least, they used to.  I had kids a bit late in life, so most of my generation has already been through this.  But anyway...)

I was 5 years old the first time I saw Star Wars, and I was completely enthralled by it from beginning to end.

My kids are now 4 and 7, so I figured it was time to introduce them to it. 

They were interested in the action scenes at the beginning.  They were unsure about whether or not it would be too scary, but they decided to stick it out.  ("At least it's not as scary as Dr. Strange," my daughter said to herself.)

But then we got to Tatooine, and all the talking parts, and they completely lost interest.  Eventually they started asking me how much longer the movie was.  I made the mistake of indulging this question the first time.  "It looks like we've got an hour and thirty minutes left," I said.  But then, they asked the same question 2 minutes later.  "I just answered that," I said.  By the 4th time they asked me, I lost patience.  "I told you, I'm not answering that question."

At 42 minutes into the movie (right at the scene that Luke comes back to find his home destroyed), they were completely done with the movie and went upstairs.   (Just out of sheer boredom, not because they were at all concerned about Uncle Owen or Aunt Beru.)

I tried my best to convince them to stay longer.  "Come back down, there's more exciting things that will happen later in the movie.  I promise."  But they were just done with it.

To be fair, when I first saw Star Wars at 5 years old, I didn't understand all the talky parts either.  I didn't know what an Imperial Senate was, or why it mattered that it was dissolved.  But I had the feeling throughout that I was watching some sort of epic story, and I was just thrilled to be along for the ride, whether I understood all the dialogue or not.  

But not so my kids.  

I think much of the difference is that when I was 5, it was a real rarity to be allowed to watch a movie, so I was enthralled by pretty much whatever my parents put in front of me.  But my kids have been exposed to a lot more screens from a much younger age, and are consequently a lot harder to impress than when I was their age.  (We do try to limit their screen time, but it's a constant struggle, and screens are just everywhere now--but that's a different subject for a different post.)

It's always dangerous to extrapolate from my kids to their whole generation, but I suspect it's a generational thing.  The original Star Wars probably just isn't thrilling enough for kids nowadays.

At any rate, once my kids had bailed on Star Wars, I decided to just turn it off at 42 minutes.  I have seen the original Star Wars so very many times in my life that I had no need to watch it again by myself.

Addendum: Although maybe I should have just stuck it out, because Star Wars is actually on my to-do list for my favorite movies of all time review list.  Well, I'll sit through the whole thing another time I guess.  When I'm more in the mood.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000 film)--Movies I've Half Watched

My kids have recently taken an interest in The Grinch.  They've been seeing his face everywhere on Christmas decorations.  And Home Alone (which we recently watched as a family) featured clips from The Grinch cartoon.  So they keep asking to watch the Grinch cartoon.

And I would love to show them the original 1966 cartoon (W).  Except that it turns out that cartoon is apparently very hard to get ahold of.  It doesn't seem to be available on any of the streaming services that we have access to--at least not without paying an extra fee.  (If anyone knows how to watch the original Grinch, let me know in the comments.)

Anyway, we were turning on the TV today, and they saw this movie listed as available.  (It's on Amazon Prime streaming service.)  I told them that this was not the original Grinch, but they wanted to watch it anyway.  So I figured, why not?

I'd never seen the 2000 version.  (It had gotten bad reviews when it came out, so I never bothered to watch it.)  But I thought I might watch it with my kids.  I could spend some quality time with them, and also get more material for my movie review project.  

...except, I got 12 minutes in, and I thought, "I really don't need to watch 105 minutes of this."

It wasn't so much that it was offensive or anything, it was just boring.  And charmless.  And not funny.  

I paused the movie to make sure my kids wanted to keep watching it.  They said that they did, but I decided I had had enough after the first 12 minutes.

Hoot--Movies I've Half Watched

This is another movie that I half-saw because of substitute teaching.  In this case, the first 52 minutes had been shown to the kids the day before, so I only got to see the last 40 minutes.  But that was more than enough to get the flavor of this movie.

I'd never heard of this movie before, but it was immediately recognizable as a type.  There's a greedy developer who wants to bulldoze a natural habitat.  There's a bunch of kids who want to stop him.  Hijinks ensue.  You know the type of movie.

These types of movies are not designed to be good, so it's a bit pointless to critique them.  It's cheesy and corny, but then it was meant to be cheesy and corny, so what can you say?

I guess you could say that, at their best, these movies are at least meant to deliver a lot of slapstick humor as the greedy adults get their comeuppance in a humerous manner, but this movie doesn't really have any good slapstick scenes, so I guess it fails on that account.

It's also obvious from watching it that this movie was made on the cheap.  (There's a couple chase scenes in the last 40 minutes, but they're very badly filmed.)

As always, take my opinion with a grain of salt, because I only saw half the movie.  Maybe the first 52 minutes were absolutely brilliant.

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4m0sgR9        (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

P.S.  If you haven't heard of this movie before, this trailer will give you an idea of exactly what to expect:

The Truman Show--Movies I've Half Watched

Once again, you can blame substitute teaching for this one.  I was substitute teaching today, and the lesson plan was to resume playing this movie.  The students had already seen the first 12 minutes yesterday, so I played it from 12 minutes to the 48 minute marker.  And I had to do this 4 times in 4 classes today, so by the end of the day I was well acquainted with those 40 minutes.

This is a movie I've already seen.  (I saw it in the theaters when it originally came out.)  So it was another rewatch, or half-rewatch.

Although I didn't rewatch the whole thing (I missed the first 12 minutes, and the whole second half of the movie), it did strike me that the movie is operating on a few different levels.

1) It's a philosophical movie--the old "What if our reality was just a simulation?" hypothetical

2) It's a commentary on reality TV

3) It's a comedy

4) It's a suspense movie--as Truman keeps trying to escape his reality, and as he keeps getting thwarted, you get sucked into the suspense of "Will he be able to get out this time?"

It works realitively well on all of these levels.  The suspense scenes work great.  The humor is good.

It is, however, a bit repetitive, especially in the beginning.  The first 50 minutes of the movie are essentially Truman discovering that his reality is manufactured.  And then discovering it again.  And then discovering it again.  (He seems to realize fairly early on in the movie what is going on, but then the movie just has scene after scene of him rediscovering this.)

The movie is also completely unrealistic, even if you grant its premise.  (Even if you grant that society would tolerate a TV show making a prisoner of someone like this, and even if you grant that the show has the budget to do all the things that they do, there were still a lot of scenes were I didn't believe that this is a realistic portrayal of how people would actually act in this situation.)  So as you're watching this movie, you have to constantly shut down that voice in your head that keeps saying, "But real people wouldn't act like that."

This was one of Jim Carrey's first serious roles, and he plays it mostly well, but he's still a little bit over the top in some scenes.  Would this movie have been better served with a different lead actor?

It also occured to me (on the 3rd time watching) that this movie might also be operating as a commentary about how difficult it is sometimes to escape from your hometown and get out into the wider world.

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4i4vvUK        (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

The Founder--Movies I've Half Watched

This is yet another movie I half-watched because I was substitute teaching, and the teacher let this movie as the lesson plan.

I showed the first 55 minutes of this movie 3 times to 3 different classes.  I never saw the second half of this movie.

I had actually been familiar with this movie before.  I'd been vaguely interested in the history of McDonalds ever since I learned in high school that the franchise started out as just one hamburger restaurant opened by the McDonald Brothers.  

After this movie came out, I watched a few Youtube reviews of it--one by History Buffs, and one by The Cynical Historian.  So I was familiar with the general premise.

My thoughts after half-watching it: the story is vaguely interesting, but not compelling interesting.  (I suspect the second half of the movie, in which Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers come into more conflict, was probably more interesting than the first half, which is just setting up that conflict.  But I'd have to watch the entire movie before I said for certain.)

Furthermore, the movie moves at a very slow pace.  To be fair, the movie is intentionally designed to be a slow-burn, so you can't really fault it for doing what it sets out to do.  Although when I watched the first 55 minutes for the 2nd and 3rd time, I had the opportunity to observe that the editing is not very tight.  The camera lingers on the scene 2 or 3 seconds after the dialogue finishes.  The pacing of the movie could easily have been tightened up without really losing any of the story if someone had wanted to, but I guess the director didn't want to.

Between the story being only mildly interesting, and the film moving at a slow pace, it was a hard sell for the 8th grade students, and all 3 classes of 8th graders that I showed this movie to were visibly bored.  Still, it was mildly interesting.  I wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing one day.

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3G3ZSx2        (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Darby O'Gill and the Little People--Movies I've Half Watched

I've seen this movie once before (in its entirety) back when I was young, so this is actually a rewatch.  (Or rather a half-rewatch).

I saw this movie when I was around 10 years old, on the Disney channel.  (Back in the 1980s, the Disney Channel reran a lot of old Disney movies.)  I remember I really wanted to like it, because the commercials for it (which ran on the Disney channel) made it look really fun--a fantasy story about Leprechauns and Ireland--but the actual movie itself was very slow paced and hard to sit through.

Recently, however, my children have become obsessed with leprechauns after learning about them during their first Saint Patrick's Day here in the U.S.  And so I was trying to think what children's movies contain leprechauns, and this is the only one I could think of.

My kids lasted only 30 minutes before they got bored.  Which was about what I expected, quite frankly.

Although I don't remember the plot of the movie in detail, the feel of the movie (or at least the first 30 minute of it) was pretty much as I remembered it.  It's got great scenery, a good looking cast, great acting, and you really want to like this movie, but... the plot just moves too slowly to be interesting.

The movie is also notable for starring Sean Connery before he became famous for being James Bond.

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/42ui7ob        (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs--Movies I've Half Watched

The school I was substituting at today had indoor recess due to rain, and another teacher put this on for the kids to watch during recess.  I saw the first 20 minutes of it.  It looked pretty silly, but also it looked like it had a lot of extended slapstick sequences, that made me think it would be great for my kids.  I may put this on for my kids to watch someday.

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3R1933F        (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Movies that I've Half-Watched (Index)

Ever since 2007, I've had a nice simple system for keeping track of the all the movies I've watched.  If I see a movie, I do a review.  Pretty simple, right?

The only problem is, what to do about movies I have only half-watched?  That kind of mucks up my simple little system.

Now, for precisely this reason, ever since I started reviewing movies in 2007, I've tried to make it a rule not to half-watch any movies.  If I'm already halfway through a movie, and I get the urge to turn it off, I force myself to finish the movie so that I can give it a complete review.  And if I anticipate that I won't be able to finish a whole movie, I try to avoid starting it.

But, some times I end up watching half-a-movie for circumstances outside of my control.  For example, recently I've been substitute teaching, and occasionally the lesson plan is just to show the kids a movie.  (This actually doesn't happen often.  But it happens occasionally.  Maybe once every two weeks or so, the lesson plan will be to put on a movie.)  

The class periods are typically about 50 minutes long, so we can't finish the movie in that time.  So we only watch half the movie.  And despite my policy of not half-watching movies, I'm pretty much stuck, because it's my job to stay in the classroom and supervise the kids while they watch the movie.  So, here's a short list of the movies I've half-watched over this past month.  (All Amazon links below are are Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through those link, I get a commission.)

Coco (2017):  I watched the first half of this movie a couple weeks ago at one of the schools I was substituting at.  I had never seen it before. (I stopped keeping up with the Disney animated films years ago, and this was a Disney animated film that came out a few years ago.)  I only saw the first hour of it, but based on the first hour, I thought it was mildly interesting, but not a must-see.  The plot of the film revolves around the Day of the Dead and the afterlife.  It was, I thought, an interesting choice to make mortality the focus of a Disney animated film.  (Usually when we watch Disney animated films, we want to retreat into a fairy tale world where everyone lives happily ever after, right?  Do we want to be constantly reminded of our own mortality when we watch a Disney cartoon?)  The themes of the movie also struck me as being heavy handed. This movie is not subtle about it's theme of following your passions even in the face of obstacles.  Which makes it very easy to predict how it's going to turn out in the end, even if I didn't see the ending.  I mean, I don't know how it's going to happen exactly, but I know that the boy is definitely going to end up pursuing his dream of becoming a musician at the end.  https://amzn.to/4i2Oz5L

Soul (2020): Another recent Disney animated film that I hadn't seen.   (And really don't remember hearing much about for that matter.)  This movie is yet another Disney animated film that is about mortality and the afterlife. (What is going on?  Is this some sort of trend now?)  This movie starts out really slow and boring, but it picks up eventually.  It has a number of twists and turns that keep you guessing as to where the plot is going.  I saw the first half of this movie 5 times last week.  (The lesson plans was to show it to every class.)  But as of this writing, I don't know how it ends yet.  I may make it a point to watch this movie in full someday, though.  By the time I got to the midpoint, I was hooked. https://amzn.to/42cDCZo

The Killers (1946)  This movie is based on a Hemingway short story, which is why it was assigned viewing for the high school literature class I was substitute teaching.  In this case, they had seen the first half of the movie the previous day, so I saw the second half of this movie, but not the beginning.  In spite of this, I was eventually able to figure out what was going on and follow the plot.  I really liked this movie.  Now, granted I've always liked old movies, so someone who doesn't like old movies might have a different opinion.  But it had really good acting, really good dialogue, some interesting camera angles, and a lot of twists and turns in the plot.  As I watched it, I thought to myself, "This seems like it must be a film noir classic.  I'm surprised I've never heard of it before.  I thought I knew all the classic film noirs."  Well, goes to show I don't know as much as I thought I did.

If I ever get the chance to sit down and watch this movie in full, I will. https://amzn.to/4jgmkBl

...and that's the list, as of now.  But I plan to keep this index active going forward.  In the future, whenever I half watch a movie (for whatever reason), I'll make a short note of it on this blog, and add it to this index.

* Darby O'Gill and the Little People

* Heathers

* Hoot

* How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000 film)

* Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

* Star Wars

* Superman (2025)

* The Day the Earth Blew Up

* The Founder

* The Muppets Take Manhattan

* The Truman Show