There's something a little more than endearing about watching Megan and Graham kiss and fondle each other. Their love is young, pure, forbidden, and lesbian.

Megan's (Lyonne) story is that of a cheerleader who doesn't quite fit in. She hugs her fellow squad members a little too tightly, and she doesn't like her boyfriend's eager French kissing. Her meat-and-potatoes parents suspect that she might be straying from God's true path and into homosexual tendencies. She is sent to True Directions, a de-gaying boot camp run by the tyrannical Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty) and her assistant, an ex-gay, Mike (RuPaul Charles ... yes, that RuPaul).

At this camp, Megan and some half-dozen other teens learn to try and cure their homosexuality through many different workshop-type activities. Once they have admitted their common problem, the men learn to chop logs, play football, and dig chicks, while the girls learn to clean house and crave babies. Their final test is a simulated heterosexual experience. Sounds preposterous, and it is, but the film absolutely recognizes this, which makes it a damn funny picture.

The be yourself message the film carries with it is a good one, and is reenforced by the characters' struggles to overcome adversity … you know the rest.

This is a bi-layered movie (no pun). There is the ‘80's-movie–style love story, a predictable relationship between the pure and confused Megan and the in-your-face-rebel Graham (Duvall) rife with ups, downs and inevitability. There is also the mirror-to-society level of the movie.

The irony to True Directions is that everything there is incredibly gay. Mary's son, Rock, looks and acts like one of the Village People, and Mike is constantly trying suppress his man-lust for Rock and all of the other boys at the camp. Even though the girls say they understand and agree with the teachings of True Directions, they can't seem to stop winking at each other.

Throw in also a couple of gay crusaders who run a house that is a safe haven for defectors of True Directions, that help the teens sneak out one night to go to The Cocksucker (a gay bar).

The soundtrack is also good, with two tracks by locals Dressy Bessy.
B Josh Tyson

"This Nicholas just then let fly a fart
/ As loud as it had been a thunderclap.

This couplet is straight out of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, one of the oldest existing examples of Western literature ... proof that poo-poo jokes can stand the test of time and enter the literary canon. Why? Because poo-poo jokes are funny.

Eddie Murphy has discovered this. In fact, he's built a career renaissance out of poo-poo jokes and amazing multiple character work (The Nutty Professor, Dr. Doolittle, Bowfinger). The Klumps is the latest in Murphy's newfound ouevre, and yes, it's funny.

This time, Sherman Klump (Murphy) has invented a youth serum, wants to marry Janet Jackson, and has trouble controlling his inner id, Buddy Love (Murphy). To keep things alive and moving, there's plenty of action from the rest of the Klump family (Murphy, Murphy, Murphy, Murphy, and Murphy).

The only problem is that some genuine feelings and poignant plot elements found their way into the final script. This aspect of the movie isn't too bad, but it really drags in comparison to the rapid-fire, nasty and naughty Klump bits that qualify this film as the poo-poo blockbuster for 2000 (sorry, Me Myself and Irene). Contrary to all logic and common sense, it's only the poo-poo that really shines.
C Chris J. Magyar

Imagine the horror when I found what lies beneath the very surface of my soul: a feminist. Okay, maybe not horror, just surprise. I was shocked to find myself sitting through this movie and wondering about gender politics, the inculcation of social ideas based on sexual preference, and the increasingly dim portrait of marriage in the Hollywood movie. For Pete's sake, this is supposed to be a dumb summer flick!

Basically, it goes like this. Norman (Ford) and Claire (Pfeiffer) are happily married. Their only daughter has just left for college, which brings up all sorts of separation anxiety for Claire (here's where the feminist theories started to kick in). New neighbors move in, so Claire, naturally, starts spying on them. And that's about as far as I can go before I reveal any twists in the plot. To vaguely sum it up, ghosts start appearing, and the conflict becomes an are they real or just her imagination? thing that reminded me all too well of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

The problem with the twists is that first, there are just too many. It's as if Zemeckis set his watch to go off every 15 minutes to remind him to put a twist in. ‘Beep beep beep.' Okay, people, now he's the bad guy and it turns out she's carrying an alien child. Action! Well, maybe not that bad. The second problem is that they're not compelling. The several (I emphasize several) twists in What Lies Beneath are just there to slowly reveal to the audience that this movie is a horror mystery. As if we couldn't tell by the ominous music in the title sequence. For example: one twist in the plot does nothing more than reveal that someone is, indeed, dead. No shit, it's a ghost story.

However, those chilling spring-loaded fright scenes are superb. Zemeckis does a great job of sending a shock up our spines several times during the movie. The best part is, even when you see them coming, they still work. It's just like those $5 Haunted Houses that spring up every Halloween you know that at some point a teenager in a werewolf mask is going to spring out from behind a corner and scare you, and if you're good, you can even tell when it will happen, but it still makes you jump.

Is this sort of jump out of the shadows trick cheap? Yes. But is it fun? Yes again. What Lies Beneath is the perfect date movie this summer. Your partner is guaranteed to jump into your lap at least four or five times. It's a terrible movie, however, for married couples, especially ones who have recently had troubles in the fidelity department. Oh, and try hard to leave your feminist ideals at home (on the couch, watching Lifetime).
B Chris J. Magyar

Barbarella is a movie about sex. Anyone who tells you differently has either not seen it or is kidding himself. But as Ebert's Law dictates, A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.

From the opening moments of the credit sequence, when a suited astronaut removes a heavy space glove to reveal a soft, feminine, perfectly-manicured hand, Barbarella is undeniably drenched in sex appeal, most of it in the form of Barbarella herself. Jane Fonda plays the five-star double-rated astronavigatrix and has never looked lovelier on screen. (Some Fonda purists might point to the earlier Tall Story to contradict this, but let's face it, she remains prudently clothed in that movie.)

The Plot? Jut getting there. After the opening strip-tease (if your finger doesn't ‘accidentally' hit the chapter-reverse button), Barbarella is called upon by the President of Earth (or the Galaxy? I forget.) to find the young scientist Duran Duran, who has invented a weapon called the Positronic Ray. Why would anyone want to invent a weapon? she asks. The president doesn't know; he just sends the space-girl on her way to the planet where Duran Duran was last seen. There she meets any number of savages, all eager to introduce her to the more primitive forms of love-making. Will Barbarella find DD before the evil tyrant learns of the Positronic Ray? Will Barbarella finally find true love in the arms of an angel named Pygar? Will Barbarella sleep with every guy in the movie?

If cult film education were a college major, Barbarella would be first up on the syllabus of Wacky Sci-Fi 101. It requires your attention, doubly so if you happen to enjoy women in skimpy costumes.

If you've ever seen Barbarella on video or, even worse, castrated for television, you know how murky all those hip ‘60's browns and oranges can be. Fortunately, the DVD presentation is nothing short of glorious, with only a few minor scratches and the usual specks on the original print lending some authenticity to the viewing experience. Don't think that the original widescreen presentation will make the plot more coherent, though: it just means you get to see every freaky little detail in this piece of super-silly, super-sexy, psychedelic ‘60's cinema.

This is the only disappointing aspect of this particular DVD: the extras are limited to the inclusion of the theatrical trailer. While the menu illustrations are nice (you can see some of the leggy drawing on the box cover), they just don't compensate for what's missing: commentary by Fonda, anyone? Or how about some commentary by a film buff who might clue us in on how they filmed the zero-grav strip tease? Even some screens of text production notes would have made this feel more like a $30 disc.

B Chris Holland

This movie's version of Star Trek is a show called Galaxy Quest, which apparently had a four-year run back in the ‘70's. In the present, the show has gained a fanatic cult following, but the only work the cast can find is making personal appearances at conventions and store openings. Enter the Thermians, an alien race currently being blasted into oblivion by an evil green lobster guy called Sarris (Robin Sachs). The Thermians have intercepted the TV signals of the original broadcast, and think they are recruiting the butt-kicking crew of the series, when in reality they're getting a bunch of actors who quickly realize they are in way, way over their heads.

The cast is uniformly good Tim Allen as Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, a blonde Sigourney Weaver as Lt. Tawny Madison (whose only job is to repeat everything the ship's computer says), and Alan Rickman as Alexander Dane, an embittered Shakespearian actor whose role was Dr. Lazaras, the ship's resident alien. Rounding things out are Tony Shalhoub as Tech Sergeant Kwan, apparently stoned to the gills and therefore the only actor to take everything in stride.

Though the earlier parts dwell on some of the darker things we've heard over the years about the Classic Trek crew, it rarely gets as biting or satiric as one would hope.

The transfer is crystal clear, and the sound magnificent. The colors in the scene where the crew must journey to the surface of an alien planet to scavenge for fuel seem too bright, but hey: it's an alien planet (well, Utah, which is close enough).

The disc has one of the longest-running jokes I've yet seen: the Thermian language track. Yes, audio track 3 is the movie's dialogue in the Thermian's bizarre, barking seal tongue. The gag would have been even better had they mixed in the sound effects and music. Galaxy Quest is certainly entertaining enough for a rental, even for non-genre fans; it's a good, harmless comedy-adventure. However, only Trekkies with a sense of humor should apply the Galaxy Quest convention segments are painfully realistic.