Small Wonder Season 1 DVD Review

I am constantly in search of family friendly TV shows that I can watch with my kids, and if I can find something that isn’t animated, I consider that a major bonus. To be honest, there aren’t a ton of current shows that fit the bill so with all of the “classic” TV shows now showing up on DVD, I’ve picked a couple on Netflix and we’ve watched them together. We worked our way through 5 seasons of “Charles in Charge” which proves that we aren’t looking for award winners here, just something that is mildly entertaining and keeps the kid‘s interest. Hence, when “Small Wonder” came up on the recently released list, it was a must have. First of all, “Small Wonder” was what my group of friends and I considered a very obscure sitcom reference. I didn’t think anyone besides us had seen it, let alone recall plot lines and characters. The poor, height-challenged, gal down at Arby’s that waits on us regularly has been labeled Small Wonder for years now and I am sure she would have no clue what we were talking about.

 Plot wise, this series is about a small family who’s father figure works at a robotics lab. He brings home his latest invention, Vici, a little girl/family helper robot. Vici stands for “voice input child identikit”, yeah, they struggled with acronyms in the 80’s. The dad has a whole closet full of flashing lights and Commodore 64-esque computer equipment which is reminiscent of no-budget shows of the 80’s. He also programs her with a ribbon cable using computer commands like “wiggle your nose”. So technically, this sitcom was light years ahead of its time. There is a nosy neighbor, of course, and the whole point is to see if this “smart” robot can learn human emotions. The show is very family friendly although the mother often wears the super sexy one-piece, shoulder-padded, jump suits that leave plenty to the imagination. Humor-wise, my kids find it mildly amusing, but make no mistake, she is no “Punky Brewster”. Everything is very cutesy and their little life lessons are absolutely cliché, but if you look, the darker undertones are there. The question on everyone’s mind throughout the series has got to be, how would Vici do in battle? I think a direct comparison with robots of her time is the only way to really answer that.

She does possess somewhat super human strength but still doesn’t really measure up to the T800 model of terminator in any other way, although she does sound like a lot like Arnold using mostly mimicry and single syllable words. Catch phrase-wise, it is a toss up. The Terminator is an infiltration unit, part man-part machine. Underneath it's a hyper-alloy combat chassis, microprocessor controlled, fully armored, very tough. But outside it's living human tissue. Flesh, skin, hair, blood, grown for the cyborgs. Vici is composed of mannequin rubber over a moderately complex series of pullies and levers. She can lift a vacuum with one hand, and even the little Lawson boy, but I seriously doubt she could punch a hole in anyone’s chest.

As for ED-209 or even Robocop himself, I think she is a little lacking in the firepower department. Sure, she lacks human emotion, so she could kill easy enough, but she wasn’t ever programmed with a malicious instinct. For instance, ED-209 gives you a menacing growl before unloading 60 rounds into your chest. Even if Vici was handed an automatic weapon, hearing her say “You have 20 seconds to comply” just doesn’t evoke the same kind of fear.

Robocop was part man, part machine….all cop. His human flash-backs and “directive 4” made him vulnerable and almost cost him a sequel. Vici is all robot, so I give here a slight edge over Murphy here. He is also programmed to uphold the law which can really get in the way during crunch-time. I can totally envision Vici shooting first, asking questions later. Miranda rights would never cross her mind. She also comes in a cute package, which means her ability to infiltrate the rebel’s base (and heart) is much better assuming no scanning technology is used.

I can’t really say that this sitcom has stood the test of time, but it keeps the kid’s interest… unlike Star Wars. My 10 year old daughter has even asked if we can watch more episodes, and since they are only 20 min. long, it isn’t too painful for me either. As for Vici’s usefulness as a cybernetic killing machine, I just don’t think she has what it takes. Maybe she could get some unsuspecting mother figure to take her in and then, while inside the hideout, open fire and wipe out the resistance. But other than that one, far-fetched scenario, I don’t think she would offer much more than the element of surprise, and against a worthy adversary like ED-209, Robocop, or the T800, Vici just better go back and hide in her cupboard.

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The Good Guy - book on tape review

Before you get any crazy ideas, let me clear the air. I am not over the age of 60 and no I don't need 4 inch bifocals to read crossword puzzles. But lately I have been getting into books on tape. (Is it still ok to say "on tape?" even when they're on cd?)

I have exhausted all of my music collection and believe it or not, actually got tired of listening to talk radio. I was looking for an actual book at the library the other week and saw a section I had previously disregarded - The Book on Tape aisle. To tell you the honest truth you're not going to find gold in this section. You're not even going to find silver. At best you might find a bronze. If you're a fan of the crime novels; D is for Deceit, M is for Murder, C is for Cookie, then you're gonna eat that section up.

I think of it this way, if I find a book that I consider a classic or modern classic I will buy and read the actual novel. There is something rewarding about tackling and completing a great book. But if I see a book on tape that I would probably never read or admit to reading, then it doesn't hurt to get it. So far my choices have been Duma Key by Stephen King, Emma by Jane Austen, and The Good Guy by Dean Koontz.

Is it wrong that Dean Koontz is my guilty pleasure. His books aren't the smartest, most original, or deep by any stretch, but man I can really get sucked into them! He is the book equivalent to popcorn movies. If you do choose to read any Koontz, go for Velocity or the Odd Thomas series.

The Good Guy is Tim Carrier. He is in the right place at the wrong time. While drinking it up at his buddy's bar a strange man sits next to him with a heavy envelope asking if Tim is "the guy." Tim plays along and this guy gives him the envelope and runs off. Tim looks in the envelope and there is $10,000 cash and a picture of a girl and address. Before Tim knows what to do, the actual hired hit-man sits next to him and asks for the envelope. Tim takes out the picture and the address and tells the guy to take the money and his assistance is no longer required.

Wow, did I just write one of those enticing descriptions that are place on the inside of the book jacket? I think I did.

Anyways, Tim finds the girl and the rest of the book becomes an exciting cat and mouse (mice) chase.

The villain in the book is very cold. Nearly half of the book is told from his perspective and his pursuit. This is a good thing for the pacing of the book to remain quick. You would almost like this "big bad" if it weren't that he was kind of a freak. The main character Tim is likable but sadly you never quite feel anything towards the girl he's trying to save.

Koontz's writing style is very quick. Though he has this weird knack of going into deep description about the age of wood or the color of the sky at the beginning of every chapter. After embellishing he gets right back into the simple action.

At only 8 discs, it doesn't take much time at all to listen to The Good Guy. That is, when compared to Emma's 15 discs which felt like an eternity. Though let's be honest, anything to do with Jane Austen feels like torment.

The audio-book for The Good Guy is a good listen, maybe even a good book. Imagine if Koontz had called it The Great Guy. This "Book on Tape CD" deserves an average score of 3 stars.

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Mountain House Freeze-dried Meals Review

While spending time backpacking in the wilderness, you have relatively few options for fine dining.
You can go the Bear Grylls method, and live off the land.  I however do not consider grubs and rabbit carcass a delicacy.
You can haul 10-15 cans of Stagg Chili in your pack, but you'd probably forget a can opener...not to mention the weight of each can.
Cannibalism is always an option if you have a chubby buddy along on the hike.  (Poof...is the sound of 90% of the readers bailing on this page after a cannibalism joke.  I'll see your taboo joke, and raise you a a child abuse quip if you don't stick around.)

The above options do not appear appetizing or practical by any means while back-country hiking.  So what to do when traveling the peaks of the Tetons?  Mountain House comes to your rescue!
Mountain House is a market "leader" in freeze-dried meals.  What's a freeze-dried meal?  Is this different than dehydrated meals?  I don't know.  What I do know, is that you only need to add hot water to the food, and you'll end up with an "appetizing" meal.

I'll be honest with you...I've never like dehydrated meals.  Ever since Gremlins, I've avoided things that say "Just add water."

Remarkably, there are dozens of different flavors of meals.  Based on previous experience eating dehydrated meals, I expected to purchase such freeze-dried titles such as:

Unrecognizable Goulash
Rice and Gravy-type substance
Also can be used as cat food

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised at the variation of meals.  For the sake of this review, I picked Vegetarian Lasagna, Beef Stroganoff with noodles, and Chicken and Rice.  They came in "pouches" like a bag of shredded cheese.

Preparation is very simple.  You rip off the top portion of the pouch, and add boiling water to the mix.  Stir vigourously, and then use the built-in zipper pouch to seal in the heat/steam.  In a matter of minutes, you have yourself a meal.  In fact, you can eat right out of the pouch, and then seal up your mess with the zipper seal.  If you're interested in "no-trace" camping, this is very beneficial.  You can haul out your trash without week-old Stroganoff sauce dripping into your pack.  The pouch might also work as a human waste transporter.  It depends on how well your aim is while crouching in the woods. (Poof....the sound of the remaining readers leaving the site after a poop joke...ironically, this is a very real scenario if you want to be a true no-trace camper.)

The Lasagna was actually very good.  I figured that a no-meat dish would work out well.  The sauce was tasty, and the noodles were not soggy as I expected.  The Stroganoff was decent.  I'm not a huge Stroganoff fan, but was surpised at how well the beef bits turned out.  They were not grainy or mushy as I thought, but actually meat-like.  No worse than Taco Bell's quasi-meat mix.
The Chicken and Rice was good, but needed more flavor.  Kind of bland.

Let me recap the postives and negatives with these products to end this review.

Negatives:
In comparison to restaurant quality food or a good home-cooked meal, the taste and freshness is definitely lacking.

If you don't stir your food good enough in the preparation phase, you'll end up with a grainy meal mush at the bottom of the pouch.  Yuck.
Not super cheap---$8 for a pouch that will fill your belly. (Note..I said your belly.  My belly requires 2 pouches as I am the chubby buddy listed previously in this review)

Positives:
You get to eat out of a pouch.
The weight of the pre-cooked meal is next to nothing.  You could stick 10-15 of these pouches in your pack with very little notice of weight change.
Ease of preparation.
Cleanup--seal the pouch and you're finished.

Mountain House freeze-dried entrees are fairly tasty, easy to prepare, and perfect for camping.  If nuclear winter was approaching and I was down to my last 2 cups of water, I'd be perfectly happy to have one of these as my last meal.  4 meaty stars!!

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Walmart Review

Damn you Walmart and your low prices and products people can afford. If not for that, there would never be any reason to step foot in your establishment. My personally gathered data covers many states and many different stores, so I’ll say it is probably happening everywhere. With the risk of being called a Target snob, I’d have to say that next to the Nascar track and a “My Name is Earl” reunion show, there is no larger congregation or concentration of trailer trash anywhere on earth.

This store has technically been “off my list” for quite some time, but I seem to end up there at least once a month whether I want to or not. Their problems extend far beyond the shoppers though. The workers can be equally vile. (Now before you get angry with me and start a nasty comment about how I am a poor person bigot or that your brother is a great guy and has been working for Walmart for years, give me a few more paragraphs, I’m going to talk about fat people too. Note: I was raised with absolutely no cash, in a small rural town, double fisting mac and cheese and Raman Noodles as almost sole sources of nourishment for most of my life. I was the very definition of poor white trash, mullet clad and all. I’m also not exactly what you would call slim and trim either so I know of what I speak on all of these fronts. Hence, I will speak candidly in this review.)

Let me give you a couple of examples of why I have such distain for Walmart, mind you, these are but a few of my many encounters. Around Christmas time I told my wife I would return something to Walmart. So I head to the store in at about 10am on a Thursday hoping there wouldn’t be many people there as I thought most people worked during the day. It was an anomaly that I had some time off myself. Though, I should have known, there are plenty of people unencumbered by the work process who do nothing but spend a major portion of their day at Walmart. To my dismay, fifteen such people were ahead of me in the return line. I glance down the line and see an inordinate amount of sleevelessness, undersized skin-tight clothing, flip-flops, and panty lines. Not a soul was under 350lbs so I got the pleasure of unearthing another naked, meaty fold with every dip and bend of the people in front of me. My reverie of disgust and loathing was interrupted when I heard a hacking, phlegmy cough that one could only associate with Pneumonia if not full blown Tuberculosis. Surprise, surprise, the “carrier” was the sole worker at the return counter. I watched her help four or so people, wiping her nose on her sleeve and covering everything within a 20 foot radius with a cloud of disease and mucus. I had been in line 20 min. at this point but I had to bail. I walked out enraged that they hadn’t sent her home.

A few weeks later I was back in action getting groceries. Again, at my wife’s request because of the low prices, I headed into no-man’s-land. Everything went well to start, I mean I still had the normal bumps and bruises from my fellow dazed shoppers clipping my heals with their cart and occasionally getting knocked into a freezer by a someone with four foot wide hips trying to pass me in a five foot wide isle. That was, until I got to the check stand. The woman there had a black t-shirt on that was beyond disgusting. I know I am prone to hyperbole, but please know, that in this case, it is impossible to overstate how filthy this woman was. She actually had food on her face and in her unkempt fright-wig….and it wasn’t only one meal old. The shirt was a conglomeration of food and muck unlike anything I’ve ever seen and must have taken several Tide-free months to get to such a state. Forensics would have a hell of a job defining that cornucopia of filth and fluids. I let her check me out, all the while trying to get up the gumption to just walk away. I totally wimped out and took my groceries but I washed every item in that bag when I got home vigorously with soap, veggies just hit the trash.

As a final example, I’ll describe my most recent visit, and the one that spurred this review. I didn’t have a chance to do the grocery shopping for Mother’s Day until late Sat. night. Since my options were limited, and breakfast in bed needed to happen in a few short hours, I headed to Walmart. Now if you think that the day crowd is bad, just stroll in sometime after 10pm and your eyes will be opened. The place was packed with last minute shoppers and there were guys wearing wife-beaters as far as the eye could see. I’ll skip the commentary on the number of draw string pants I saw or home-made tank tops that really just have the entire sides cut out of 80’s hair-band concert t-shirts, and get to my point. I purchased a small package of blueberries for a granola, yogurt parfait on the morning‘s menu. As I got to the check stand, I was delighted that nobody was ahead of me and the cashier was normal looking. To my horror, when I started to put items on the conveyor belt, the blueberry package slipped and fell into the cart exploding all over. Clean up, check stand one please. I apologized profusely and asked for a broom. The lady was very nice and turned off her check stand light so that no one would follow me stepping on the berries before she got them cleaned up. I headed back to get some more blueberries, because I was only 20 feet away, when I saw two-ton Tilly and her herd of 3 heading down that isle. They were just heading for the door and hadn’t bought anything. Must have been late night window shopping. Anyhow, they walked right through the berries crushing them into a huge mess. All three of these monsters never felt a thing or ever looked down. I even yelled at them to watch out, yet they didn’t stir. They must have been distracted by the candy display, but they made an absolute mess and had no idea. If you are so fat that you can’t feel yourself crushing produce, or have such an umbrella of fat at your waistline that you can’t see the floor for 20 feet around you, enough with the Big-Macs.

The cashier just shook her head and started around the counter with the broom when something even more amazing happened. A girl that was probably 10 years old, and again, 250lbs scurried up and started scooping these off the floor and shoveling them into her mouth. Now this kid was obviously not starving, or I would have thought this very sad. Instead, I yelled “Come on, that’s ridiculous!” and apologized again to the clerk. She said “wow, didn’t see that coming”. The kid looked up when I yelled, grabbed one for the road, and waddled off. Yup, only at Walmart.

I hate this place, so if you can afford it, shop somewhere else. If not, follow a couple of rules and you should be ok. Never go there after dark, never go to the pharmacy (the new $4 prescriptions have brought the circus freaks out of the woodwork), and if you drop something on the floor…just run away.

As for advise for the mountain trash that may be reading this, I have some plenty for you.

1) In order to see if a shirt fits, bend your waste slightly forward (if possible) and if more than 6” of ass crack becomes exposed, buy something bigger. Nobody wants to see your “whale tail”.

2) If you are wearing sweatpants and when standing upright the rear seam is more that 6” deep into your ass crack, buy something bigger.

3) Sleeve-less and side-less are not the same thing and you probably shouldn’t be wearing either.

4) I know you like shorty-shorts but if you are hemming those jeans yourself, the inside pockets shouldn't extend down past the hem line.

5) Spandex is a privilege, not a right.

6) Ladies, if you weigh over 300lbs, a bra is a must, even if you consider yourself an A-cup.

7) Just take a quick glance in the mirror before heading out of the house. Just because you are poor, doesn’t mean you have to be filthy. Just because you are obese, doesn’t mean you can’t find clothes that fit. Just because you’ve heard the stereotypes doesn‘t mean you have to perpetuate them all.

I give Walmart 1-star because they are dirt cheap. I just wish they would get rid of some of the dirt.

Here is a website dedicated to The People of Walmart.

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Iron Man 2 review

When I ask people what their favorite superhero flick is, (and yes I do this often) a large majority say Iron Man. When I ask them why, they say "It was just so funny!" Now I don't disagree with that statement, it was a very entertaining movie, but i want explosions, villains, and a great showdown in my superhero movies.

Jon Favreau, the director of the two Iron Man movies has done an incredible job of taking a B-list superhero and making him Marvel's big gun. I would say, after the bad aftertaste of Spiderman 3, he is the movie franchise to beat.

It might sound like I'm beating up on Iron Man. I didn't hate the movie at all, I just want a comic movie to feel larger than life and epic.

Iron Man 2 picks up a few months after Tony Stark proudly declared he was Iron Man. We see through newspaper clippings that in the past 6 months, Iron Man has made the world a better place. Lazy move. Come on, give the audience what it wants - a music montage of Iron Man saving kittens in trees, crushing white-panel pedophile vans, stopping gang wars, and throwing nuclear weapons into the sun.(Oh wait, wrong hero)
Apparently they have thrown in some plot about a drunk russian pissed off that his dad was kicked out of the Stark business years before. They repeat that the theme of this movie is "Legacy." I would say instead it's all about "Daddy Issues."

So it's the Wrestler(Mickey Rourke) vs. Iron Man. I have always said that the strength of a hero depends largely on how good the villain is. The two main villains, Rourke and Sam Rockwell, as a wannabe Tony Stark, are likable. That is just the problem. I don't need to see these two wisecrack to each other. To truly hate these people I need to see them do extremely terrible things. Instead they banter about attaining a Russian parrot. As much as I hate loud birds, this does not make me hate them.

This movie had so many characters that Downey didn't really get a chance to shine as he did in the first movie. Gwyneth Paltrow came off this movie as a nag. Don Cheadle replaced Terence Howard from the first. He was fine but largely an unlikeable character. Scarlett Johannsen is trying to be hot again for the first time in 3 years. She succeeds, even if her character is mostly unnecessary. Also, to tie this movie into the future Avengers movie, Samuel "L" Jackson returns as Nick Fury. This role makes it hard to believe that he used to be an actor and not just a caricature of Samuel L Jackson.

This film really wants to be as funny as the first, but comes off a bit smug. The only part I really guffawed at was at Sam Rockwell's jig at the Stark Expo. There are some decent action scenes, such as the Monaco race and the drone chase before the end. But like the first, the action left me wanting. The final showdown between the Wrestler and Iron Man/War Machine was pretty weak.

I did like Robert Downey Jr. It's hard not to like him. His arrogance actually is endearing. I just hope the third movie isn't more of the same. Not everyone needs lights in their chests.

Iron Man 2 is a fun, popcorn movie that is sure to please the masses. I'm happy to watch it but still look forward for the next Batman movie July 12th, 2012. It barely eaks by with 3 stars out of 5.

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The Family Handyman Magazine Review

I fancy myself "handy" in every aspect of the word.  There really is no bound to my handiness.

Need a pickle jar opened--done.
Duct tape a vacuum handle that is broken--done.
Unclog a toilet I just clogged--done.
My general lack of success with girls in my teen years caused me to be plenty handy as well.

This is why I picked up a subscription to the Family Handyman.  Who wouldn't want to cultivate their talents?

You'd actually think I was wealthy and well-read by my current magazine subscriptions:
Forbes, US World and News, The Sporting News, The Family Handyman. 
Really these are just magazines where I found a free subscription on a message board.  It's just the luck of the draw that I'm not currently getting Ebony, 17, and World of Warcraft monthly. (I actually might have paid for WOW monthly)

Confession time--I'm really not that handy.  I did build a shed as you can read in a previous review.  I also framed and did the electrical in my basement.  No fire yet.
I would like to think I'm handy, but I'm really just handsy. (ask my wife who has learned karate to block my advances)

But luckily, the Family Handyman magazine has been very beneficial.
The magazine is pretty thin, and there are a bunch of ads...so the content isn't enormous.  But what is included is very helpful, and covers the spectrum of all handy-man-ness.
There are often articles on building items like bookshelves, decks, or a tool-benches.  These are OK, but you can find most of this information on the web.  The wealth and wisdom in these pages lies in their "tips."  This magazine is loaded with expert tips and tricks when doing any sort of project around the house.
I found particular help with their painting, automotive, and crown molding tips.  They were helpful and the big pictures helped a neanderthal like me.

This is also decent reading on the John.  Heaven knows you don't want to get stuck with your wife's Better homes and Gardens.  This makes dookie-time much more interesting.

If you're a contractor, carpenter, electrician, etc...you probably won't find any invaluable information in these pages.  You're probably the ones writing the content.

At a bare minimum, you should get this magazine to balance out your "pervert factor".  As your mailman starts placing Playboy, Penthouse, and WOW monthly into your mailbox, he'll be surprised as he places the Family Handyman in as well.

The Family Handyman hammers its way to a solid 3-star rating.  Much of the information can be found on the web, but some articles and tips are only found in print.  This magazine is much better if you pay nothing as I did.  All you have to do is peruse the WOW message boards for tips on free subscriptions to magazines. (In all honesty, this is patently un-true.  I found the information on fatwallet.com.  I generally only peruse WOW message boards for tips on how to increase my Mage 3 levels in one day)

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A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) Review

I was 14 when I snuck into the theater with a bunch of my buddies to see some movie we had heard about called A Nightmare On Elm Street. It was 1984 and my life would never be the same again. It was one of those experiences, like the first time I held a girl's hand or ate salsa, that would forever change my life. Some years later when I met my wife and we got married, we saw a commercial for Freddy's Dead (Elm Street 6) and I was pleasantly surprised that she was excited to go. She, like I, loved Krueger. We also both agreed that none of the sequels came close to the sheer awesomeness of the original. A few months back we went to see the movie The Crazies and a trailer came on that blew our minds away. It was like a dream come true or should I say a nightmare come true. Yep. They had remade A Nightmare On Elm Street.

The Elm Street series had become so ridiculous that I think it's only fair to judge this remake compared to the original film, but that's not enough. Recent remakes of classic horror movies have set the bar pretty high. Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th were all awesome movies, and were all fantastic remakes. In preparing for this joint review, Meatwad and I agreed to some guidelines:

The key to a great remake is it has to be true to the original, but should also bring something new to the table. Plus most of the originals of these movies were made about 30 years ago so advances in special effects, make-up and movie-making in general has got to be used wisely in the remake. A good remake has to help people forget what was so wrong with the sequels. In the case of Elm Street they just became too damn goofy. I don't think I could handle seeing another teenager's head featured as a meatball on top of a giant pizza that Freddy is eating. So for this movie to be good, it couldn't have any of that crap in it.


Long story short, this movie was awesome. It met and exceeded all expectations. It did drag a bit in the beginning but wow, it got so good I almost felt 14 again by the end of it. Several iconic scenes from the original have been incorporated while whole new concepts were explored making the film much richer than the original. I've read several reviews that make a big deal about the "Micro-naps" shown in this flick, as if they're something the producers of this movie had just made up. However, it seems to me the Department of Transportation has been warning us of the dangers of driving while fatigued for years. Now there's a whole new reason to fear the dreaded micro-naps. Sadly I can't tell you about my favorite aspect of this movie without ruining a crucial part, but I will just say that the final sequence goes somewhere where the original dared not to tread.

There was some bad. This Freddy is much more talkative than Freddy in the original film, but no where near as bad as he would eventually get. Unfortunately he does get close once or twice and for that the film loses a star. I would also like to take a star away for some of the special effects. There's two scenes in particular that were pretty bad, but I just can't take that 2nd star away. I loved this movie far too much. So with that in mind it is my great pleasure to award A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) 4 stars.

I was a little bit of a psycho as a kid in terms of what I considered great entertainment. After being introduced to Freddy in the 5th grade, I became a horror freak delighting in on-screen death, dismemberment, and gore. Fangoria magazine was regularly found on my night stand and some of my family, specifically my big brother was sure I was going to end up a serial killer. His paranoia culminated in an act that I consider one of the most traumatic moments in my young life.

In preparation for a costume party at school for Halloween in my 6th grade year, I had watched and rewatched that opening scene in the original A Nightmare on Elm Steet at least 100 times. Utilizing things I had at my disposal, Scissors, wooden dowels, an old glove, and some serious ingenuity, I fashioned what I thought of as a perfect replica of Freddy’s infamous glove. Knowing our schools policy on bringing implements of death to school, I had even talked to my teacher and received special permission to bring my glove to school as a costume accessory. Once I had that permission, I spread it around like wildfire that I had a real Freddy glove and would be bringing it to school. None of my friends believed me, so showing them on Halloween would be so sweet. Unfortunately, the night before Halloween, I was in my room admiring my handy work when my big bro walked by and saw me wearing the glove. He pounced, grabbed the glove, ran into another room, took a pair of scissors, and cut the fingers off of my masterpiece right there in front of me. He just looked down at me and said “Dude, you are a psycho” and handed me back only the cut-up remnants of the leathery palm. It was already late and their was no way I would be able to rebuild before the party. So, through blurry eyes, I made some cardboard cutouts, wrapped them in foil, taped them to the fingers of a yellow cloth glove, and took it to school the next day so as to have a somewhat recognizable costume. Everyone said they knew I was lying about the glove, and they thought the story about my brother was just a lie piled on a lie.

I tell you this prior to reviewing this movie to let you know how invested in this story and character I was. In a sick kind of way, he was my Superman, demented as that sounds. I followed the whole series of movies and enjoyed the comic relief, charisma, and creative mental tortures Freddy always gave his victims. That being said, they got a little too campy and I really only consider the first movie as truly horrific. There were a couple of scenes in that first one that still keep me up at night. Tina in that body bag whispering “Nancy” still creeps the hell out of me. So, like Jim mentions, we are only basing this review as a comparison of the first movie, not what the series became.

This was a true remake, in that they tried very hard to recreate the exact scenes that made the original so good. I can count at least 3 or 4 scenes that were almost exactly like the first, however, I have to say they didn’t garner the same “horror” as I remember. The body bag wasn’t really as creepy and reminded me more of a Ziplock full of Heinz than a dismembered teenager in a bag, even with the new special effects. They also redid the flying around the room scene which pretty much did the original justice, but still didn’t torture my soul with anything new.

As for Freddy’s new look. It is more burn victim-like, but less scary to me for some reason. I would describe it as a cross between the inbred kid banjo player in “Deliverance” and Rocky Dennis (look it up). He does talk too much and we really do see his face way too much in this version as well. That is also a divergence from the original film which is another aspect that I think made it so scary.

They did throw a couple of twists in this one about the origins of Freddy, which was not at all like the first version. I didn’t mind these changes with the exception of one biggie. Freddy’s motivation in this movie has nothing to do with the raw evil that his biography tells us was bred into him from “a thousand maniacs“. He is supposed to be the embodiment of the worst parts of every one of those sickos creating a being that was predestined to plague this earth. This new incarnation of Freddy has motivations that go to a place that was not really touched on too much before, and to be honest, I didn’t like it at all. I don’t want to give too much away, but come on, it is obvious that Freddy has always been fueled by the fear and torture of others, and it was never just about satisfying something sexual. Leaving a little more mystery would have been a good thing.

Other things like the micro-naps were good and added to the “not sure what is a dream and what is reality” aspect of the film. I didn’t jump once, and didn’t see anyone in the audience jump either, which isn’t really prerequisite to a good horror film in my book, but might be for some. There was absolutely no nudity, which is consistent with the series but disappointing none-the-less. I am also sad to say that if you remember the very last scene in the original, and the fact that it looked out of place and didn’t really make sense with the rules of the dream world, there is likewise a scene in this film that follows suit and should also have been omitted. In that respect, the new movie makers could have been more clever.

I don’t really know what would have made this a better film for me, but Rob Zombie as a director would have been a good start. Also, if they could have found a way to kill Johnny Depp again in a fountain of blood, I would have been thrilled. It was modestly entertaining but after watching the film, I didn’t even think about it once the remainder of the night, including when I went to bed and was lying there in the dark. That was not the case with many of the other recent remakes that were so well done. That being said, it didn’t do anything horrifically memorable for me and will probably be thrown in with the new Chucky remake rather than the masterpieces that were the new Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes. They had scenes that still won’t leave my head. Yeah, meat hooks leave a mark. I’ll cut a little slack though because, for one, I am soul-less and am desensitized to everything, and two, for me, they had some pretty big shoes to fill. So, I’ll grant 3 stars on this one.

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