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Review 2 Entertain Video / Blackadder - Blackadder II - Series 2 [1986]
Actors & Directors
  • Tim McInnerny
  • Rowan Atkinson
  • Tony Robinson
Release date: 1996-09-02
Run time: 177 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £1.49

Review Blackadder - Blackadder II - Series 2 [1986] / 2 Entertain Video:

In 16th-century Elizabethan England a far more confident, yet no less inept, reincarnated Blackadder is teamed with Tony Robinson's loveably filthy Baldrick for further misadventure in Blackadder II. Some of the best one-liners and overall scripts featured in the second series, and certainly made the best of its recurring cameo actors. Stephen Fry's sycophantic Melchett, Tim McInnerny's puppy-dog Percy, and Miranda Richardson's girly Queen Bess seemed fully rounded characters from the start. The series also featured unforgettable appearances from legless (in every sense) pirate Tom Baker, a canoe-pocketed Flash from Rik Mayall, and master of disguise "shorty greasy spot spot" Hugh Laurie. With new lyrics at each episode's end this was textbook "next day comedy", with playgrounds and offices alike ringing to the laughter of its infectious quotability. -Paul Tonks.

Review Vision Video Ltd. / Otis Lee Crenshaw - Live [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Christian Reilly
  • Damian Coldwell
  • Rich Hall
Release date: 2001-11-19
Run time: 71 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £0.98

Review Otis Lee Crenshaw - Live [2001] / Vision Video Ltd.:

For the satirist, country music has always presented the slowest moving of targets; the genre wears its absurdities on its sleeve, has an appeal which baffles non-adherents and is generally most beloved by people who don't pay money to watch the clever mock things they believe are beneath them. On paper, then, Otis Lee Crenshaw-the creation of American comic Rich Hall-should be about as funny as the Barron Knights in ten-gallon hats. The reality is that Crenshaw, as evinced by this recording of a performance before a nigh hysterical London audience, is very funny indeed. This is because Hall's satire is grounded, one suspects, in an abiding love of country music and as such is laughing with the music and fans rather than at it; he holds an unmistakable depth of knowledge of its conventions and idioms. In a guttural drawl evocative of what John Hiatt might sound like with a broken jaw, Hall/Crenshaw delivers a series of impeccably observed pastiches, inspired improvisations and, most memorably, a triumphant deconstruction of "Jailhouse Rock". -Andrew Mueller.

Review 4 Front Video / Catholic Boys [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Donald Sutherland
  • Kevin Dillon
  • Mary Stuart Masterson
  • Michael Dinner
  • John Heard
  • Andrew McCarthy
Release date: 2002-02-04
Run time: 99 min.
Creator: Charles Purpura
RRP: £5.99
Price: £31.99

Review Catholic Boys [1984] / 4 Front Video:


Review Entertainment in Video / Angus [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • George C. Scott
  • Patrick Read Johnson
  • Charlie Talbert
  • Kathy Bates
  • Robert Curtis Brown
  • Perry Anzilotti
Release date: 1997-03-10
Run time: 86 min.
Creator: Jill Gordon
Price: £5.99

Review Angus [1996] / Entertainment in Video:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Zig And Zag - Million Quid Vid [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Zig And Zag
Release date: 1995-10-30
Run time: 80 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Zig And Zag - Million Quid Vid [1995] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Comedy Greats - The Two Ronnies
Actors & Directors
  • Marcus Mortimer
  • Brian Penders
  • Diana Dors
  • James Gilbert
  • Terry Hughes
  • Peter Whitmore
Release date: 2000-04-17
Run time: 80 min.
Creator: Spike Milligan
RRP: £12.99
Price: £14.49

Review Comedy Greats - The Two Ronnies / 2 Entertain Video:


Review MGM Entertainment / This Is Spinal Tap [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Kimberly Stringer
  • Rob Reiner
  • Michael McKean
  • Rob Reiner
  • Chazz Dominguez
  • Christopher Guest
Release date: 2000-10-16
Run time: 80 min.
Creator: Karen Murphy
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.50

Review This Is Spinal Tap [1984] / MGM Entertainment:

The comedic genius of This Is Spinal Tap is confirmed by the fact that a majority of studio executives were utterly clueless about its brilliance. As a first-time director and cowriter, Rob Reiner must have felt simultaneously frustrated and elated, knowing that the obtuseness of movie executives was a clue to his debut project's potential greatness. Now, of course, the clarity of hindsight and the rarity of superior satire have turned This Is Spinal Tap into one of the funniest documentary spoofs of all time. Reiner and the members of "Tap" (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer) couldn't have picked a better target for their satire, because heavy metal music in the early 1980s was already a borderline case of self-parody. From the bizarre, premature deaths of the band's drummers to the backstage squabbles over sexist cover art and meddling groupies, this movie scores about a hundred comedic bull's-eyes for lampooning every possible aspect of rock pomposity in the age of Kiss. It's a virtual bible of rock & roll irreverence, so accurate in its observations that it's become a tour-bus classic for real bands around the world. On the one-to-ten scale of satirical inspiration, This Is Spinal Tap is like the modified amplifiers that Christopher Guest so hilariously demonstrates: this one goes to 11. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Warner Home Video / The Goodbye Girl [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Dreyfuss
  • Herbert Ross
  • Quinn Cummings
  • Barbara Rhoades
  • Paul Benedict
  • Marsha Mason
Release date: 1994-06-06
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Neil Simon
RRP: £5.99
Price: £27.95

Review The Goodbye Girl [1977] / Warner Home Video:

The Goodbye Girl is a bittersweet comedy about relationships and taking chances. Though it deals with the human condition, what most quickly comes to mind are those wickedly comedic scenes featuring Richard Dreyfuss in an Oscar-winning role. He plays a struggling actor with a sharp tongue who has sublet an apartment from single mom Marcia Mason, a divorcie with horrific taste in men, who are always running out on her. She is left high and dry once more, stuck sharing her apartment with Dreyfuss when he hasn't the heart to enforce his lease and toss out mother and daughter. Neil Simon's play shines under the direction of Herbert Ross as these two mismatched people find their contempt changing into mutual admiration. Quinn Cummings is more interesting than most precocious child stars; she seems brighter and her manner is prickly instead of cloying. Watch this film just for the scene in which Dreyfuss plays Richard III in an off-off-Broadway play. He lisps, he limps, he screams. It is the worst cinema you will ever see-and thoroughly hilarious. -Rochelle O'Gorman.

Review Icon Home Entertainment / Kevin And Perry Go Large [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Kathy Burke
  • Harry Enfield
  • Ed Bye
  • Rhys Ifans
  • James Fleet
  • Laura Fraser
Release date: 2000-11-13
Run time: 82 min.
Creator: Dave Cummings
RRP: £6.99
Price: £3.98

Review Kevin And Perry Go Large [2000] / Icon Home Entertainment:

A pair of pubescent boys in all their spotty and obnoxious glory whose boundless lust for coolness and girls is matched only by their bottomless ineptitude at achieving these goals, Kevin (Harry Enfield) and Perry (Kathy Burke) were two regular characters in Harry Enfield and Chums, a successful BBC sketch show. Over the three minutes or so one of their television sketches would run in each episode, Kevin and Perry were hilarious comic creations, but their antics severely test the patience spread out over 82 minutes. The script is a pretty flimsy excuse for a series of intermittently amusing gags about Ibiza beach culture (a worthy target), the sexual excitability of teenage boys and bodily excrescence of various kinds. Our heroes set off for the sun to lose their virginities and debut their bedroom-mixed single, "All I Want to Do Is Do It". They meet the girls of their dreams, and a truly loathsome club DJ (the seemingly ubiquitous Rhys Ifans, he who no bad British film could do without) and enjoy the fleshpots of beach life. It all starts to feel like a shabby stab at aping the success of such recent classic American gross-out comedies as American Pie and There's Something About Mary but without their emotional range (no, really, we're serious here) or ludic inventiveness. Nevertheless, it does have its moments, like the epic spot-squeezing sequence, a triumph of squelchy turpitude, and Kathy Burke is magnificent as ever cross-dressing as Perry, the quiet, slack-jawed one with the really, really bad posture and a major case of the hots for Kevin's mum. -Leslie Felperin.

Review Channel 4 / Crapston Villas - City Of Slummington - The Complete Series 1 [VHS Tape]
Actors & Directors
  • Liz Smith
  • Jane Horrocks
  • Alistair McGowan
  • Sarah Ann Kennedy
  • Alison Steadman
  • Lesley Sharpe
Release date: 1994-10-17
Run time: 102 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £19.94

Review Crapston Villas - City Of Slummington - The Complete Series 1 [VHS Tape] / Channel 4:


Review Vision Video Ltd. / Vicar Of Dibley, The: The Specials [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Emma Chambers
  • John Howard-Davies
  • Gareth Carrivick
  • Roger Lloyd-Pack
  • Dawn French
  • Gary Waldhorn
  • Dewi Humphreys
  • James Fleet
Release date: 1999-11-15
Run time: 124 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £30.69

Review Vicar Of Dibley, The: The Specials [1994] / Vision Video Ltd.:


Actors & Directors
  • Reizl Bozyk
  • Sylvia Miles
  • Peter Riegert
  • Joan Micklin Silver
  • Jeroen Krabbe
  • Amy Irving
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £24.99

Review Crossing Delancey [1988] / WARNER HOME VIDEO:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Lee And Herring Live - Fist Of Fun [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Baynham
  • Steve Bendelack
  • Kevin Eldon
  • Stewart Lee
  • Richard Herring
Release date: 1995-10-16
Run time: 60 min.
Creator: Sam Pinnell
Price: £12.99

Review Lee And Herring Live - Fist Of Fun [1995] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Carry On Screaming [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Fenella Fielding
  • Joan Sims
  • Harry H. Corbett
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Gerald Thomas
Release date: 1997-08-18
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £0.55

Review Carry On Screaming [1966] / Warner Home Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Only Fools And Horses - Mother Nature's Son [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Pete Chesterfield
  • Mandie Fletcher
  • Roger Liddement
  • Patrick McManus
  • Grant Stevens
Release date: 1999-11-01
Run time: 65 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £0.98

Review Only Fools And Horses - Mother Nature's Son [1981] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm / Father Of The Bride [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Kieran Culkin
  • Diane Keaton
  • Martin Short
  • Charles Shyer
  • Kimberly Williams-Paisley
  • Steve Martin
Release date: 2003-02-03
Run time: 101 min.
Creator: Nancy Meyers
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.99

Review Father Of The Bride [1992] / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm:

This 1990s update of the Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor hit is a mix of the pleasant and the silly, a nice enough movie but a little too controlled to become particularly interesting. Steve Martin plays the ageing patriarch who is threatened by his daughter's engagement and not-quite-willing to let her go. The writing-directing team of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers provides Martin's character with a perhaps too-broad range of comic responsiveness to the situation, some of it gentle (a ritual game of basketball between dad and his little girl) and some of it slapstick (Martin sneaking around his prospective in-laws' house and encountering a guard dog). Martin Short turns up as a wedding co-ordinator-which has deliriously delicious possibilities-but his inventiveness doesn't quite strike the chord this time. -Tom Keogh This 90s update of the Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor hit is a mix of the pleasant and the silly, a nice enough movie but a little too controlled to become particularly interesting. Steve Martin plays the ageing patriarch who is threatened by his daughter's engagement and not-quite-willing to let her go. The writing-directing team of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers provides Martin's character with a perhaps too-broad range of comic responsiveness to the situation, some of it gentle (a ritual game of basketball between dad and his little girl) and some of it slapstick (Martin sneaking around his prospective in-laws' house and encountering a guard dog). Martin Short turns up as a wedding co-ordinator-which has deliriously delicious possibilities-but his inventiveness doesn't quite strike the chord this time. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Review VCI / Pallas 2 - Uncensored Video Version [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Queen Elizabeth II
  • Sarah Ferguson
  • Princess Anne
  • Prince Charles
  • Princess Diana
Release date: 1992-11-30
Run time: 64 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £5.74

Review Pallas 2 - Uncensored Video Version [1992] / VCI:


Review Watershed Pictures 1990 WSP 1007 / Dick Emery - Classic Dick Emery
Actors & Directors
  • Dick Emery
Release date: 1996-04-08
Run time: 60 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Dick Emery - Classic Dick Emery / Watershed Pictures 1990 WSP 1007:


Review Warner Home Video / Billy Liar [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • John Schlesinger
  • Tom Courtenay
  • Wilfred Pickles
  • Julie Christie
  • Ethel Griffies
  • Mona Washbourne
Release date: 1994-08-01
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Willis Hall
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.70

Review Billy Liar [1963] / Warner Home Video:

Billy Liar was the multimedia phenomenon of its era. Starting out as a novel by Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse, it rapidly became a long-running stage play, adapted by Waterhouse with playwright Willis Hall, which lead to the movie, scripted by Waterhouse and Hall for John Schlesinger to direct, then a stage musical and finally a spin-off TV series. Do you get the feeling it caught the mood of the times? The basic set-up owes a lot to James Thurber's classic short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Our hero, Billy Fisher, lives at home in a Bradford semi with his nagging parents and works as a lowly clerk in an undertaker's parlour. But, in his imagination he lives a rich and varied fantasy life as gallant military leader, suave socialite, best-selling novelist and so forth. Trouble is, he can't always keep fantasy and reality apart, any more than he can the keep two girls he's engaged to separate. Not to mention his other problems…. Schlesinger's direction brings out the desperation behind the comedy, and Tom Courtenay, at once defiant and hangdog, slips perfectly into the role created on stage by Albert Finney. But the whole cast's a joy, not least the great Leonard Rossiter as undertaker Mr Shadrach, Billy's saturnine boss. And then there's Julie Christie-the luminous spirit of the Swinging 60s-in her first starring role as the girl who offers Billy a chance of real escape. [+]
At the end, when she takes the train to London, away from the smoke and the grimness "oop" north, the whole British New Wave went with her. On the DVD: just the theatrical trailer which is a fairly crass affair. There's been no remastering, it seems, but both sound and vision are clean enough and the print preserves the original's full 2. 35:1 widescreen ratio. -Philip Kemp.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Phoenix Nights 2 [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Patrick McGuinness
  • Dave Spikey
  • Peter Kay
  • Peter Kay
  • Neil Fitzmaurice
  • Ted Robbins
Release date: 2003-10-06
Run time: 145 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £3.34

Review Phoenix Nights 2 [2001] / 2 Entertain Video:

The beginning of the second series of Phoenix Nights sees Brian Potter's beloved Phoenix Club lying in ashes and the staff scattered to the four winds. Even club compere Jerry St Clair is reduced to singing "Come get your black bin bags" to the tune of Men in Black in the local supermarket. But not even being barred from having a licence for the rest of his natural life can deter the northern Svengali from reopening the club and making it bigger and better than before-even if that means making Jerry the licensee and offering up-market Chinese nosh. This second instalment of Peter Kay's cult sit-com is more upbeat than the first, with some genuine success coming to the characters and club, but it still has its hilariously subversive undertones: a botched hit job; an inflatable castle with an extra appendage; and Brian stuck on his stair lift for a day after a power cut, to take just three examples. The script remains brilliantly surreal and incredibly funny. All the favourite characters remain, with club bouncers Paddy and Max featuring in a couple of the meatier storylines (perhaps setting them up for their own spin-off series?) and Jerry continuing to wow the crowds with his original vocal stylings, the highlight being the grand Stars in Their Eyes final in which he offers his own unique clubland take on Eminem. It's brilliantly original stuff: roll on Series 3. -Kristen Bowditch.

Models & Brands:
Blackadder - Blackadder II - Series 2 [1986], Otis Lee Crenshaw - Live [2001], Catholic Boys [1984], Angus [1996], Zig And Zag - Million Quid Vid [1995], Comedy Greats - The Two Ronnies, This Is Spinal Tap [1984], The Goodbye Girl [1977], Kevin And Perry Go Large [2000], Crapston Villas - City Of Slummington - The Complete Series 1 [VHS Tape], Vicar Of Dibley, The: The Specials [1994], Crossing Delancey [1988], Lee And Herring Live - Fist Of Fun [1995], Carry On Screaming [1966], Only Fools And Horses - Mother Nature's Son [1981], Father Of The Bride [1992], Pallas 2 - Uncensored Video Version [1992], Dick Emery - Classic Dick Emery, Billy Liar [1963], Phoenix Nights 2 [2001]

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