The King's Teeth

If at Firth...

Our media reporter reviews some of the newest film and TV offerings:


The King's Teeth: Following up on the success of The King's Speech, the same team returns to the oral theme which produced gold. This time, having somewhat overcome a stammer, King George VI (Colin Firth) finds that even a king is not immune to having terrible teeth in England. We follow the difficult, yet hilarious, search that his loving Queen makes to find just the right dentist, who can teach the King to keep his new false teeth in his mouth and to overcome a debilitating habit of losing them.

30 Rocky: The new guys at Comcast, who have replaced GE as owners of NBC, home to the former hit show 30 Rock, have a problem on their hands. So many of the funniest plots had revolved about the inherent arrogance and stupidity of GE's corporate ways that even Tina Fey has had a hard time coming up with new ideas. Also, and this has proved embarrassing, Comcast bean counters forced NBC to vacate its ancestral home in Rock Center for a studio in Hoboken. Sylvester Stallone joins the cast of the show-within-a-show injecting new excitement, not to mention great music. Sponsored by Stairmaster.

Ravi-shing!

Dancing With The Sitars: This Bollywood TV import has surprised more than a few critics who did not think that Ravi Shankar, the show's producer (and father of Nora Jones), could pull this off. American audiences took a while to warm up to this "new" ancient sound. But, the Boomer set loves this piece of musical nostalgia (who can forget George and his sitar), and the skimpy saris on the female partners also help. And, Oh, that tabla beat!

Get Shorter: A chuckler of a new comedy about a eponymous height-challenged mayor, Sidney Shorter. This multi-billionaire mayor finds that the whiny, scolding,  condescending, sarcastic methods which made him a great business success (and the subject of many lawsuits) do not work as well in politics. Deborah Messing stars as "the towering girlfriend," who manages to put the little guy in his place in a million funny ways. Plus, she's a babe and smarter than he is. She does not succeed in making us love him, but we do kind of feel sorry for him. Well, almost. Sponsored by Cole-Haan Elevated Shoes.

Bay Witch: An ingenious fusing of John Updike's Witches of Eastwick and Bay Watch. Three wealthy, young, scantily-clad witches wander the cold, windy beaches of Duxbury, MA in skimpy bikinis and see-through cover-ups thinking up some funny-evil pranks to play on hapless locals. The thin plots are balanced by the buxom baddies. Just pull up a lounger and tune-in to the hocus-pocus. Kinda like a "Charlie's Witches" with  less clothing. Starring The Kardashians.

Desperate Bradys: We never seem to tire of this TV-family, no mater how inane the plots, how vapid the characters, or how many actors in the original cast suffer bankruptcy or cocaine addiction, get loads of parking tickets, and become pole-dancers in West Hollywood. This time around, it's a reality show, in which the producers completely dispense with any semblance of fictional "Bradys" and focus on those crazy original cast members instead. Dreadful. But, wasn't it always? Why do we love this?