Both are amusing, but neither can match the urbane wit of Hodgins's prose, nor the elegance of Shrek creator William Steig's accompanying illustrations.
In fact, "Gilead" does have a gentle sort of comedy -- though there is nothing here to match the amusing portraits in "Housekeeping" -- but it is certainly a pious, even perhaps a devotional work, and its characters move in a very small society.
Although tricked out in superfluous, often distracting 3-D, the remake doesn't as much improve on the original as match it goofily amusing moment for moment.
An amusing start to the evening: This match is being broadcast on ITV and presenter Adrian Chiles and his analysts Gareth Southgate and Lee Dixon are standing pitchside.
Amid strobe-lighted dance segments (Robin Carrigan's mix-and-match choreography is consistently amusing) the plot shifts to drama, Mr. Buggeln notably underscoring Molière's points about the suppression of women.
Unfortunately for him, Nadal is, too, which makes it hard to see this match as anything but an amusing prelude to what should be an epic Nadal-Federer final showdown.
They clamor for sequels to MacGruber, an amusing action-film spoof that couldn't even match its $10m budget at the worldwide box office.
The present-tense segments are spiked with enough goofy jokes to be perfunctorily amusing, while the flashback scenes of the equally matched, bickering lovers, brought together by mischief making, are absolutely alive in comparison.
Ikx, Mikx, Drikx is a particularly amusing comedy, about a father trying to find a match for his three daughters.
If they could not match Miami in talent, they could at least tease with amusing trickery.
