(A clip from "On the Waterfront," by contrast, seems like a bid to prove that the filmmakers aren't as shallow as their movie.) Still, no matter how meta and self-consciously knowing, teen comedies like "Fired Up!" are basically just recycling the same jokes, plots and mating rituals that fueled the Frankie and Annette beach party flicks of the 1960s.
Various jokes and plot points turn on the learning and bungling of Spanish and English.
The slower, more cumbersome gadgetry of the predigital past provides "Super 8" with some clever jokes and plot twists.
Gelb's version never makes the case for the enduring worth of the original leaden jokes, incomprehensible plot, a fairy queen named Stalacta.
"The League of Gentlemen," which first appeared on the BBC in 1999, is an amalgam of sketches, sight gags, running jokes and plot lines that almost defies description.
Mr. O'Brien, on stage for the Turner Entertainment upfront presentation of TBS and its sibling cable channel TNT, joked, "The plot to 'Lost' is more plausible than the last year of my life".
If the men had been given a weekend instead, Hall Pass might have had some momentum, but as it is all seven days plod by with no jokes, no plot, and no reason why the "hall passes" would have been granted.
With Huston directing from a script doctored by Truman Capote, the film was initially promoted as a romantic adventure in the tradition of "Casablanca". On its release in 1954, however, "Beat the Devil" baffled audiences, who didn't get the in-jokes and plot twists and turns.
A bunch of leathery London criminals led by the glowering Teddy Bass Ian McShanee, whose shiny jet-black hair sits atop his wrinkled, once-handsome face like a bad joke) is plotting an elaborate heist, which requires Gal's skill as an underwater safecracker.
