Buy & Cell

Underrated Comedy

Don't listen to those bad reviews. They don't know what they're talking about.

But yes, this is a very good movie. I still own the VHS in a beta form. As a matter of fact, I got an e-mail from one of the stars. His name is John Leamer and he was an American actor living in Italy around the time this was made. December 27, 2007

Cruel and unusual punishment!

In an effort to cure my insomnia some time back, I flipped through the premium cable channels and settled for this (allegedly) comedic commentary on prison rehab and corruption. Sadly, I got very few laughs from this feature; most of the gags depicted here had been done before, and were pulled off better, in previous comedies. On the upside, "Buy & Cell"s casting department picked the perfect bunch of folks to perform these hackneyed parts. You've got Robert Carradine-- best known as the geeky Skolnick from "Revenge of the Nerds"-- as a geeky former stock broker who, while seeking a way to get revenge on his former boss who framed him, somehow gets his fellow inmates to work together to establish a prison brokerage firm. Then there's his motormouthed noisemaker of a cellmate as played by Michael Winslow, AKA the motormouthed cop who makes all those sound-effects noises in the Police Academy movies. Malcolm McDowell once again does his oily, smug & jaded spiel as the prison's oily, smug and jaded warden who's out to grab as much as he can for himself at the expense of the inmates he lords over. Finally, there's "Rowdy" Roddy Piper making like he's doin' a "Piper's Pit" segment on "Saturday Night's Main Event". It all adds up to one of the most typecast flicks I've ever had the misfortune to sit through! And don't get me started on the movie's obligatory mental case, whose annoying "human video cassette player" schtick (complete with `fast-forward', `rewind', and `slo-mo') makes Adam Sandler's usual movie roles almost bearable to sit through!

Sadly, despite my less than enthusiastic reception of "Buy & Cell", it did little to diminish my insomnia. Fortunately, I had a contingency remedy at the ready: "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" on VHS and a bottle of extra-strength NyQuil...

`Late February 19, 2004

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