Saturday, January 13, 2007

Movie Review: Get A Life (TV) 4 Stars

You either get Chris Elliot or you don’t. If you don’t, you really don’t. If you do, you probably think Cabin Boy is “misunderstood.”

Elliot’s short-lived television series Get A Life is a perfect example of this diametric opposition. There’s a reason why the show was short-lived: not many people watched it, and of those who did, not many people liked it. But those rare birds who both watched and liked Get A Life consider it to be one of the best comedies ever on TV. Agreed.

In Get A Life, Elliot plays a 30-year-old paperboy, the quintessence of loser. In fact, Elliot is such a loser, he is absolutely unaware of how much losing goes on in his life. His monumental failures are perceived as mighty successes; his life is a string of bizarre circumstances that don’t seem odd to him at all. Get A Life is an incredibly dumb show and remarkably clever.

The geniuses at Rhino Home Video have packaged Get A Life in a two-volume set that includes 4 uncut episodes of the show: “The Prettiest Week of My Life,” “Spewey and Me,” “Bored Straight” and “Girlfriend 2000.”

In “The Prettiest Week of My Life,” Chris enrolls in the Handsome Boy Modeling School, gets into a slap fight with male model Sapphire and is forced to model topless.

“Spewey and Me” chronicles Chris’ misadventures with an alien that crashlands in his backyard. While Chris maintains that Spewey is a hyperintelligent alien being who has come to Earth to teach us about love, Spewey is, in fact, a vomitus, angry, stinky slime creature that beats up the Pope.

In “Bored Straight,” Chris is punched by a gang of thugs. In retaliation, Chris attempts to rehabilitate the toughs with a trip to the supermarket. In kind, they tie up rob Chris’ parents. Chris submits to a gang initiation, jumping off a thirty story building, setting himself on fire and apple-bobbing in a cauldron of toxic sludge.

The best of the bunch is “Girlfriend 2000.” Chris gets run over twice by the same car in a span of minutes, and thinking this kismet, decides the driver, Tricia, is the woman for him. So he stalks her. Simultaneously, Chris himself is being stalked by another girl who stabs Chris to death just as Tricia is beginning to shine to him.

Get A Life isn’t for everyone, but rabid fans in the cult of Chris will be in anti-humor heaven with this wonderful set.

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