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Get a Life - Vol. 1Rating:
Release Date: 21 March, 2000 Retail Price: $19.95 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (9 total) |
Get a Life - Vol. 1 Reviews
This isn't funny
The best part of my DVD is the FBI warning at the beginning and the theme song. I am 4 episodes into to the first dvd and I have not laughed even once. The humor is not clever. It is Chris Elliot falling down and hurting himself over and over again, or exposing himself to radiation, and then someone cranks up the laugh track. I liked Chris okay on David Letterman; he wasn't the main attraction, but his skits there were okay, and I appreciated them. Unfortunately, so far in this first season, this series sucks. It isn't funny; it isn't clever. The idea behind the series, a loser who still lives with his parents and has a paper route has promise. The execution is pathetic.
Let me give you an example of one of the most clever things on the show. Chris falls in love with a gal in the 4th episode and he confides in Gus that everywhere he looks, he sees this girl's face. Gus points out that he has pictures of her put up all over his room. And the camera shows lots of pictures of this girl all over his wall. Big laughs from the "audience." Now, if that sounds funny to you and put a smile on your face, you will love this series. Later on, this gal throws a rock from her window and hits Chris in the head. Again, the laugh track is cranked up. For me, I don't know if I will watch past this 4th episode.
There are many good reviews here, which are an absolute mystery to me. Maybe the key is, if "Married With Children" is your idea of high comedy, then "Get a Life" maybe right down your alley.
Notice on several reviews, people recall how great this series was when they were 11 or 13; but when they see it again, they are suprised as to how bad it is now. Maybe this would appeal to your 12 year old kid; and maybe if your intellect level is that of a 12 year old, this could be the show for you. "Friends," which is not my idea of a great show by the way, is probably too subtle for you.
The greatest Anti-Sitcom ever!
It's safe to say that without Chris Elliott's GET A LIFE, we probably would never have seen the success of the Farrelly Brothers or ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. GET A LIFE set new frontiers in TV comedy by taking the standard sitcom format and turning it on its head.
The premise was simple: a 30-year-old paperboy still lived at home with his rather less-than-concerned parents (played by Elinor Donahue and Chris' real-life father, Bob Elliott) who tolerated him as best they could while he got into one mess after another.
But this was no LEAVE IT TO BEAVER. Whereas most sitcoms would take such a premise and turn it into a formulaic, feel-good giggle-fest, GET A LIFE dared to make its lead character into a bizarre man-child who could never see how truly ridiculous his inane behavior was to others. He lived in his own self-contained world where he was the coolest and hippest guy on the planet. What saved the character from being either a creep or the butt of everyone's joke was his underlying naivete and childlike innocence, which, in the end, was often enough to help him (barely) triumph over the evil forces in his neighborhood.
Embodied perfectly by Chris Elliott, the indestructible "Chris Peterson" was a brilliant sitcom creation who managed to last two seasons on Fox. But that was only half the story. The other great thing about GET A LIFE was how the series took standard-issue sitcom plots and twisted them into deranged new forms. This was like the TWIN PEAKS of sitcoms in the way it constantly challenged the boundaries of both good taste and common sense in order to get a reaction from its stunned audience. The humor ran the gamut from low-brow to madcap to surreal. In the 2nd Season, almost every episode ended with Chris getting killed.
The GET A LIFE VOL. 1 DVD collects four great episodes from the first season, including the hysterical "The Prettiest Week of My Life," in which Chris trains to be a runway model. One of the funniest bits is a takeoff on the infamous Irene Cara scene from FAME.
It's a shame that Rhino never got around to releasing the entire series on DVD, but at least the 8 episodes available on VOL. 1 and 2 are enough to give viewers a sizable appreciation of this short-lived but memorably off-beat sitcom.
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