LOLwatch!, Dept.

Your sobsister has written previously on the painful problem of film reviewers who feel compelled to say--before God and everybody!--that a movie made them Laugh Out Loud.

Despite my efforts to the contrary, there continue to be some benighted rascals who insist on using this phrase in their, ahem, "film criticism." Don't believe me? Well, just ask Lisa Stanley, Entertainment Reporter for the K-EARTH 101 Morning Show and card-carrying Buena Vista quote whore, what she thinks of The Game Plan. You know, The Game Plan? The Rock's big-man-takes-care-of-little-girl hilarious-fish-out-of-water-hijinx-ensue "comedy". Right. Well, Ms. Stanley, who looks and sounds like she's wanted to be no-one more since childhood than Joan Rivers, says it right there in black'n'white: LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY! And she's worked for Hard Copy, so you know she knows funny. And quality. Both.

Then, in what I can only hope is an ironic dropping of the LOL-bomb, Leonard Maltin, who actually knows something about film, describes the newest shitbrick from the unbearably-tiresome Ben Stiller, The Heartbreak Kid in the following terms: "You can try to resist, but this movie makes you laugh out loud." On the one hand, he spares us the exclamation point. On the other hand, this film is an unnecessary remake of a minor comedy by a team of people (Stiller, the Farrelly Brothers, their accountants) who would likely not know funny if it bent them over and shoved two thousand feet of film stock up their butts. Maltin's only fifty-six, so one can't play the drooling-dotage card on his behalf. An apparently inexplicable lapse in taste.

I, like Jerry Lewis, will continue my crusade until the happy day comes when people will forget there ever was a need for a telethon. Or something. And remember: friends don't let friends LOL drunk. I thank you.