Customer Reviews

Harry Shearer: Now You See It

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Harry Shearer: Now You See It" features a calvacade of sketches satirizing both showbiz, news and politics. "Men's Synchronized Swimming" (albeit with a slightly altered soundtrack) and "Mike Wallace Investigates Minkman Novelties" alone are worth the price of the DVD. In addition to the SNL material, there are some decent cable specials and sketches, with "Astounding Innovations" (featuring Shearer as Richard Nixon hocking infommercial stain remover) and "The Magic of Live" (with Shearer sending up Michael Jackson) as stand-outs.

Wow, finally a DVD of Saturday Night Live from the mid-80's from someone other than Eddie Murphy! I've seen the swimming sequence with Martin Short at least a hundred times. This alone makes it well worth the price.

Harry Shearer is hilarious in the Sixty Minutes Spoof. Seems pretty strange/weird that it's being released just went Mike Wallace is retiring.

I'm going to place this on my wish list, and hope that someone buys it for me as part of a wedding gift. I'm getting married in July!

I must agree with everyone who has posted reviews on Netflix, this is a really shoddy product. It's really lame to put out a DVD with 9 old sketches with zero introduction, zero information about who, what, where, when. Damn, Harry, it's really sad to see such a poor quality product being put out there. Fortunately, Christopher Guest and Martin Short are in a few of the sketches and are excellent. If you want to see good comedy on a worthwhile DVD check out Best in Show, This Is Spinal Tap, and A Mighty Wind.

Let me start this review by stating that I'm a big Shearer fan. I have been since his SNL days, through Spinal Tap days, and was delighted to discover, 19+ years past, that he was going to be performing character voices for The Simpsons television series.

Originally, I bought this DVD for the stand-out 'Synchronized Swimming' skit. After searching online for the complete bit, and coming up empty handed, I decided that investing in this DVD would be well worth it, if for nothing more than revisiting Gerald and his brother, Lawrence, readying themselves for the not-yet included Olympics Men's Sychronized Swimming competition.

Shearer is accompanied, and almost upstated by the comic genius of Martin Short (playing the part of Lawrence) and Christopher Guest (as their coach/choreographer).

There were other comic sketches that were entertaining (the "Minkman Novelties" comes to mind), but I found the DVD a bit wanting.

If you're looking for Simpson-related material, snippits from Shearer's radio show, or any of the Christopher Guest movie collaborations he starred in ("For Your Consideration", "A Mighty Wind", or the above-mentioned "This is Spinal Tap"), you will be disappointed, as none of it is included.

But, if you'd like a relatively short (120 minutes) romp through Harry Shearer's 1980s career, you'll enjoy this.