Robin Prince (Mark Harmon) is a laid-back former volleyball player who, at the age of 32, makes his living as a pool guy. It’s an easy life and he enjoys it. He sleeps with the wife (Deborah Harmon) of one of his clients and he hangs out with his richer friends. Robin enjoys being a bachelor but that all changes when he agrees to give a job to Justin (Patrick Labyorteaux), the son of Stanley Auerbach (Robert Vaughn) and meets Justin’s cousin, an artist named Jamie Harrison (Kirstie Alley). Justin goes from being bitter about having to work to idolizing Robin and his lifestyle. Robin, meanwhile, falls for Jamie.
This film came out before SummerSchool, another movie that featured Mark Harmon as a laid-back guy who falls for Kirstie Alley, but it has a similar vibe. Again, Mark Harmon is playing a likable guy who has never grown up and again, Kirstie Alley is playing a sophisticated woman who, at first, seems like she’s too serious for Harmon’s character. Robin’s mentorship of Justin feels a lot like Hamon’s mentorship of his SummerSchool students. (Dean Cameron even plays a supporting role in both Prince of Bel-Air and SummerSchool, though he’s far more memorable in Summer School.) Prince of Bel-Air is more dramatic than Summer School. In Prince of Bel-Air, Mark Harmon plays a character who secretly understands that there’s not much of a future in his lifestyle, even if he’s not initially willing to admit it.
Princeof Bel-Air is a likable movie. Mark Harmon gives an amiable and relatable performance as someone who is finally trying to grow up and, as always, Robert Vaughn is a perfectly smug villain. Kirstie Alley’s sultry performance is the highlight of the film. In the 1980s, Alley has a smoky-eyed beauty that, when combined with her ribald sense of humor, made her irresistible. It only takes a few minutes to understand why Robin would be willing to give up his previous life to be with her. There’s nothing particularly deep about PrinceofBel-Air but it’s still an entertaining 100 minutes.
DEAD IN A HEARTBEAT is a 2002 TV movie that stars Judge Reinhold as Tom Royko, the head of Seattle bomb squad, as he finds himself trying to stop a mad bomber named Zachary Franklin (Timothy Busfield). Franklin blames heart surgeon Gillian Hayes (Penelope Ann Miller) for the death of his son and makes it his mission in life to make her suffer like he has. His plan… volunteer at the hospital where Dr. Hayes works, rig their supply of pacemakers with explosives, and then implement a plan to begin blowing up her patients on the anniversary of his son’s death. When Royko figures out what’s going on, he enlists the help of Dr. Hayes to identify the next potential victims and stop the deranged Franklin before another innocent person’s chest explodes!
DEAD IN A HEARTBEAT is an entertaining TV movie. If you like Hallmark mysteries and Lifetime movies, it’s my guess that you will enjoy this film. The plot is a lot of fun… I love the movie SPEED and the “madman setting off ticking human time bombs while taunting the police” reminded me of that excellent thriller on multiple occasions. While I’m not suggesting this movie is in the same league as the Keanu Reeves / Sandra Bullock action classic, I am saying that I did feel genuine tension and excitement at times as some of the scenes played out, and I wasn’t really expecting that. As far as the performances, I must admit I really enjoyed watching Judge Reinhold in the lead. He’s not tough at all, but he does have a likable, sarcastic charm that appeals to me. After loving him in 80’s movies like BEVERLY HILLS COP and RUTHLESS PEOPLE, it was nice seeing him in this role. I only give Penelope Ann Miller average marks for her performance as the heart doctor who starts off really arrogant before having a crisis of conscience when the bad guy starts offing her former patients. She has a couple of solid moments, but for the most part I just found her competent in the role. Timothy Busfield is definitely good as the villain, but this movie’s TV roots left his character somewhat underdeveloped. I think the part could have worked better if more time had been devoted to the details that lead to him losing his grip on reality.
While not a must-see, DEAD ON A HEARTBEAT turned out to be an enjoyable, undemanding watch as I was scrolling through Amazon Prime. If you don’t mind a little absurdity with your early 2000’s, TV action movies, you’ll probably like this one.
On the frontier, a stagecoach has been overturned and both the passenger and the driver have been killed by outlaws. The passenger was Hinkley, an archeologist. Who would want to kill a harmless archeologist? That’s what Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) set out to discover. While Nevada Jack asks questions in the nearby town, Sandy disguises himself as a medicine man.
It all links back to an old Indian site that is said to be full of gold relics. Jane (Jennifer Holt), the daughter of Hinkley’s partner, reveals that the only other person who knows the location of the site is an old Indian named Shag (Dimas Sotello). Jack and Sandy have to try to track down Shag before he’s found the gang that killed Hinkley.
Yes, it’s another Johnny Mack Brown western. Despite the title, this has nothing to do with the television series that featured James Arness and Amanda Blake. GunSmoke is still a solid western, featuring a determined performance from Johnny Mack Brown and some memorable villains from the usual poverty row western stock company. Once again, Frank Ellis shows up as a henchman, though the identity of the main villain is actually a little more interesting than was typical for these films. Johnny Mack Brown is a little more serious than usual, throwing punches with authority. For fans of B-westerns, GunSmoke is an above average entry in Johnny Mack Brown’s seemingly endless filmography.
Continuing my theme of low budget, direct-to-video, B-movie action films from the early 90’s, I found a movie called COLLEGE KICKBOXERS playing on Amazon Prime.
Also known as TRAINED TO FIGHT in some circles, COLLEGE KICKBOXERS follows James Caulfield (Ken McLeod, credited as Ken Rendall Johnson for some unknown reason), a young man with martial arts skills, as he navigates his freshman year of college. Things just aren’t going so well for James his first week of school. First, his roommate Mark (Marc D. Williams), an upperclassman, isn’t very nice to him when they first meet, so it appears that their dorm room may not be a place of peace and relaxation this semester. Second, the pretty girl he sets his sights on, Kimberly (Kendra Tucker), seems much more interested in saving the whales, the ozone layer and the planet than she does in dating him. Rude! And third, to cap it all off, one day while James and Mark are working out their differences through martial arts sparring, a racist gang called the White Tigers show up and hurl some very offensive slurs at Mark, who’s black. While James doesn’t seem to like Mark much at this point, he dislikes the racist bigots even more so he defends Mark’s honor, putting himself on a collision course of pain with The White Tigers and their A-hole leader Craig Tanner (played by Matthew Ray Cohen, whose only other role in his career was “Dancer #1” in the classic erotic thriller BODY CHEMISTRY). In all fairness, this clash with racists did result in James and Mark becoming best friends so that was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.
When it looks like things can’t get much worse for James, Craig Tanner and his racists show up at the Chinese restaurant where he works and proceed to take advantage of their superior numbers and kick his ass real good. That’s when something strange happens, the annoying cook Wing (Tak-Wing Tang), who had just messed up James’ chances to score with a chick a few minutes earlier, steps in and shows himself to be a kung fu master, easily dispatching the White Tigers with moves defined by speed, grace, balance, agility, and acupunctural science. Amazed by what he has just seen, James wants some of that and begs Sifu Wing to train him so that he too can become a martial arts master. Receiving the kinds of real-life lessons from Wing that could never be learned in a college classroom, James soon finds himself putting it all on the line in a martial arts tournament that gives him the chance to win $25,000 for his now-injured bestie’s martial arts dojo for at-risk youth. As a bonus, he’ll also get the opportunity to humiliate and destroy the White Tigers once and for all!
An impartial critical assessment of COLLEGE KICKBOXERS would probably not be very kind. For starters Ken McLeod, AKA Ken Rendall Johnson, is not a very good actor. Neither are Marc D. Williams, Kendra Tucker or Matthew Ray Cohen. To be completely honest, they’re pretty bad. I think it would be fair to say that both Ken’s and Marc’s line deliveries are awkward and amateurish, that Kendra is annoying, and that Matthew is over-the-top, and not in a good way. The script is nothing to write home about either, completely relying on the cliches of the genre and the cheesiest of dialogue. In another somewhat bad sign, clocking in at just 88 minutes, it doesn’t necessarily feel like a short movie as the middle portion definitely leaves you wanting more action to show up.
With that said though, I still had a great time with COLLEGE KICKBOXERS. I think the main reason is that I just love a good underdog story where bullies, and in this case racists, get their comeuppance, and at-risk youth get their own dojos. And I really enjoyed Tak-Wing Tang’s performance as Sifu Wing! He underplays the role in a subtle and humorous way that I found really appealing. Wing also completed the action choreography, which is the true highlight of the film. McLeod isn’t great in the acting department, but he does a fine job when called upon to kick butt. To further illustrate my appreciation of Wing’s action direction, the year after this film was made, he would serve as an action choreographer for Jackie Chan’s amazing POLICE STORY III: SUPERCOP, and a couple of years after that he’d work on Chan’s DRUNKEN MASTER II. The man is talented! And finally, COLLEGE KICKBOXERS has that intangible nostalgic charm that takes me back to the early 90’s when I’d scan over my local video store’s entire inventory, an inventory that was chock full of these types of movies. I enjoyed watching them back then even if they were silly and cheesy, and watching movies like that now takes me back to that more simple and undemanding time. There’s real value in that to me!
Having graduated from medical school, Dr. Adam Blythe (Johnny Mack Brown) is finally ready to marry his glamorous fiancée, Ann (Claire Windsor). However, when Ann learns that Adam is going to have to spend years as an lowly paid resident, she ditches him and instead marries Dr. Jerry Clement (Niles Welch). Blythe, heartbroken, becomes an alcoholic and, after a disastrous operation that leaves a patient dead, Blythe ends up on skid row. Twenty years later, Blythe is spotted by his old friend Mort (Kenneth Thomson). A self-made millionaire who dropped out of college, Mort takes Blythe to their 20-year reunion and talks him up as a brilliant surgeon. When Blythe is pressured into performing a delicate piece of surgery, he is offered a position as the head of the college’s new research wing. Blythe, meanwhile, meets and falls in love with June (Anita Louise), a young woman who reminds him of Ann. It turns out that the resemblance is not a coincidence because June is Ann’s daughter! Ann wants Blythe back and, when she discovers that Blythe is in love with June, she threatens to tell everyone that Blythe is actually June’s father! All of the secrets and lies lead to the type of sudden and tragic ending that only a pre-code film could get away with.
CrossStreets is a 65-minute soap opera that features Johnny Mack Brown in a non-western role. Brown gives a likable performance but he’s less convincing when he has to be bitter. One reason why Brown was such a successful B-western star is that he always came across as if he had never had a moment of self-doubt in his entire life. Dr. Adam Blythe is all about self-doubt so he feels miscast in the role. Claire Windsor is more convincing as the vampish Ann. The movie has its slow spots and the plot requires a healthy suspension of disbelief but the ending still packs a punch.
CrossStreets is not easy to find but there is a not-great upload available on YouTube.
When I first saw that THE NAKED GUN was being rebooted with Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin, Jr., I must admit that I was quite skeptical. You see, the original THE NAKED GUN (1988) with Leslie Nielsen came out when I was 15 years old, and I remember watching it at the movie theater on a field trip with our high school’s Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) club. I loved it so much! I eagerly watched THE NAKED GUN 2 1/2 (1991) and NAKED GUN 33 1/3 (1994) at the theaters as well. To be completely honest, this series is one of my favorites of my “growing into an adult” years, and I didn’t want to see it screwed up. When the trailer was released a couple of months ago my reaction was cautious optimism as I must admit it looked quite funny, and I decided that I would go watch it in the theater when it came out. Well, tonight my wife and I headed to the Cinemark in Little Rock to see what director Akiva Schaffer and his crew had come up with…
In THE NAKED GUN (2025), dedicated Detective Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) follows in his father’s footsteps by leading Police Squad and causing an endless array of problems for Police Chief Davis (CCH Pounder). When a bank heist is staged by Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand) in order to obtain a mysterious P.L.O.T. Device, Drebin teams up with his partner, Captain Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), and the beautiful crime novelist Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) to investigate. Their subsequent probe leads them to tech mogul Richard Cane (Danny Huston) and his sinister plot to use the device to revert humanity to a base barbaric state as the balls drop on New Year’s Eve. With the help of his deceased father’s spirit that’s being housed in the body of a large owl, Drebin goes all out to foil Cane’s plans while simultaneously falling in love with Beth!
I’m going to go ahead and alleviate any suspense and state that I love the new NAKED GUN movie. I laughed out loud throughout the entire film, including the end credits, and I wasn’t the only one as there were people in our showing that were laughing much louder than me. It was a fun “crowd experience,” and I’m so glad we caught it in the theater. Not every joke is funny, but in the tradition of the original series, they come so fast and furious that there’s a good chance the next joke will be hilarious. Liam Neeson does a great job as Frank Drebin, Jr., infusing the character with just the right amount of seriousness to allow the absurdity all around him to be played for laughs. I told a friend a few months ago that I’d be really impressed if Neeson was able to pull this role off, and I’m glad to report that he passes with flying colors. He doesn’t make you forget the comedic genius of Leslie Nielsen, but he’s darn good. And Pamela Anderson is perfect in the crime novelist / love interest role. I haven’t seen her in anything in a long time, but she’s truly hilarious in the film. After watching her performance, I honestly don’t think any actress could have done any better. The rest of the game cast, including Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston and Kevin Durand each have good moments that add to the fun. I also enjoyed some of the specific throwbacks to the original series, including brief appearances by Priscilla Presley, Weird Al Yankovic, and especially the stuffed beaver, which got a big laugh out of me, just like it did when I was 15!
Overall, I had a great time at the movie theater with THE NAKED GUN (2025). Director Akiva Schaffer delivers a hilarious, 85 minute film that’s a worthy follow-up to the original Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker / Leslie Nielsen classics. What else could you ask for?!!
In the days of the Old West, Griff Atkins (Stanley Blystone) manages a Pony Express station but, because of his gambling debts, he actually encourages the Indians and the outlaw Richard brothers (John Rockwell and Ray Teal) to attack the Pony Express riders and steal their horses. Major Goodwin (Tom Chatterton) tries to put a stop to all this by firing Griff and putting Cal Sheridan (Johnny Mack Brown) in charge. Griff and the Richard brothers continue their outlaw ways and eventually, the head of one of the relay stations is killed in one of their raids. While the dead man’s daughter, Norma (Nell O’Day), investigates the murder, Cal works to bring peace the line and falls in love with Goodwin’s daughter, Alice (Dorothy Short). Meanwhile, aspiring Pony Express rider Shorty (Fuzzy Knight) tries to invent a trampoline system that will help him to mount a horse.
No matter how bad things get in the west, you can always count on Johnny Mack Brown to bring some order and to get it done in less than an hour. Johnny Mack Brown was always a good hero and that’s the case here. Eventually this film has all of the horse riding and tough fighting that fans of the genre expect from these westerns but, for a short movie (it only runs for 59 minutes), it still seems to take a while for it to really get going. The first half of the movie is more about Fuzzy Knight singing songs and trying to become a rider than it is about anything else. I usually enjoy Fuzzy’s antics but, like the B-western themselves, they are definitely an acquired taste for most viewers.
Are you a fan of THE KARATE KID? If you are, then I have the movie for you… SHOWDOWN (1993)! What’s better is that it’s now streaming on Amazon Prime, so you can go watch it right now!
SHOWDOWN is primarily the story of Ken Marx (Kenn Scott), a high school student who has recently moved to a new city with his mom. When he enrolls in the local high school, he catches the eye of the beautiful Julie (Christine Taylor), unaware that her boyfriend is a bullying asshole named Tom (Ken McLeod), a young martial artist trained by the ruthless sensei Lee (Patrick Kilpatrick). SHOWDOWN is also the story of ex-cop Billy Grant (Billy Blanks), who accidentally killed evil sensei Lee’s brother seven years earlier when breaking up a wild party one night when he was on duty with his partner Spinelli (Mike Genovese). Unable to cope with killing a man, Billy is now working as a janitor at the high school. The two main characters come together one afternoon when Tom gives Ken a good beating for having the nerve to talk to his property, I mean his girlfriend, Julie. Billy sees Ken doubled over in pain after taking a shot from Tom in the face and the gut, so he reluctantly decides to help the new kid, eventually introducing him to self-defense techniques and martial arts that will help him stand up to the bully. His teaching methods are quite unconventional and include such humbling tasks as cleaning toilets and urinals. The stories all come to a head one night when Ken and Tom fight it out in the ring. When evil sensei Lee tries to involve himself in the battle between the students, Billy gets his own shot at redemption when he steps in to enforce law and order for the first time in many years!
Based on the plot description above, it’s evident that SHOWDOWN is not afraid to wear its “Karate Kid” influences on its sleeve! I had never seen this 1993 B-movie before, so I found a lot of nostalgic fun in its familiar underdog story, with characters even specifically referencing key moments from the 80’s classic. Even if he’s somewhat limited as an actor, Billy Blanks just has this likable presence about him, and he’s definitely believable as a martial arts master. I enjoy watching him. Kenn Scott carries on the tradition of being a 25-year-old man playing a high school student, but he seems much older to me than Ralph Macchio did in THE KARATE KID. Scott in 1993 was much more physically developed than Macchio was in 1984, so while he doesn’t seem reasonable as a high school student, he does seem more reasonable as a fighter. Continuing my comparisons, Christine Taylor is cute as the love interest, but a fifth grade Brad Crain fell head over heels in love with Elizabeth Shue as “Ali with an I.” That’s not Christine’s fault though, and she’s fine here. Finally, I have to give a shoutout to Patrick Kilpatrick as the evil sensei Lee. In a career defined by playing bad guys, his deliriously unhinged, over-the-top performance here is a true highlight of the film.
As for the fight choreography in SHOWDOWN, it’s serviceable and delivered with conviction, but it’s not that great when viewed in 2025 and compared to the better movies of the genre. But that’s okay because the movie does what a lot of movies can’t do… it entertains and moves by at a fast pace. I enjoyed it, and I can easily recommend it to any person who enjoyed THE KARATE KID series or low budget, early 90’s, direct-to-video action.
It’s one very busy night at a police station. Everyone who is brought in from off the streets has the right to remain silent but no one exercises it. Rookie cop Lea Thompson listens to everyone’s stories. LL Cool J is the documentarian who thought it would be smart to put on Klan robes and a hood and try to infiltrate a demonstration undercover. Patrick Dempsey is the drunk who killed a kid. Carl Reiner comes in and confesses to mercy killing his wife. Christopher Lloyd is homeless. Fisher Stevens is a trans streetwalker. Judge Reinhold, I don’t even know what he was supposed to be. Reinhold actually plays two characters in this film and he’s miscast in both roles. Amanda Plummer is a pizza delivery person who shoots someone in self-defense. No one asks for a lawyer. No one lies about what they did. Instead, they just talk and talk and talk and talk some more. Thompson listens while Robert Loggia, as the chief, growls about donuts.
The Right To Remain Silent is based on a play and that is its downfall. Instead of being a story about a rookie cop and her first night on the job, it’s just a collection of rambling stage monologues. Some of the actors, like Carl Reiner and Christopher Lloyd, do okay. Most of them still seem to be acting for the folks sitting in the back row. It ultimately doesn’t add up too much because the stories are too predictable to make much of an impression. Everyone in this film had the right to remain silent and I wish they had exercised it.
Back in 2019, I took my wife to Dallas, and while we were there, she asked if we could visit the South Fork Ranch. As many of you probably know, this is the setting for the wildly popular TV series DALLAS, that originally ran from 1978 through 1991 producing 356 episodes. She loved the series growing up and especially enjoyed watching it with her “granny” back in West Virginia. When we got back home from the trip, I hopped onto Amazon and purchased the entire original series for her, a set of TV movies, and even the series reboot that ran from 2012 through 2014, producing another 40 episodes. We watched everything over the next 6 months. The rebooted series starred, among others, Jesse Metcalfe as the grown up version of Christopher Ewing. My wife really liked him in the series, so he’s become one of our favorites that we like to watch on Hallmark and many other movies. The other day I watched a romantic comedy Jesse starred in called THE OTHER END OF THE LINE (2007). It’s currently streaming on Prime, so I decided to write up my thoughts on the film.
In THE OTHER END OF THE LINE, Shriya Saran plays Priya Sethi, a young woman working at a CitiBank call center in Mumbai, India. One day she gets a phone call from Granger Woodruff (Jesse Metcalfe), an American advertising executive, when he becomes a victim of identity theft. While working to resolve the situation, sparks being to fly during their conversations, and Priya, quite smitten with the handsome American, decides to travel to San Francisco to meet him in person. Through a variety of rom-com type circumstances, Priya ends up creating a false identity that she uses as she meets and spends time with Granger. As they continue to hit it off, her deception begins to create some serious complications. These issues come to a head when her very traditional dad, who expects her to marry a guy he’s chosen for her back in India, shows up in San Francisco. The blissfully ignorant Granger is suddenly made aware of Priya’s real life, and the two are faced with rather awkward and difficult decisions for how to move forward. Will Priya choose true love over cultural tradition? Will Granger take a chance and pursue her even though she’s been deceiving him? This is a romantic comedy, so you probably have a good idea how it might play out!
I enjoyed THE OTHER END OF THE LINE mainly because I’m an undemanding sucker for rom-coms, and I liked Jesse Metcalfe and Shriya Saran in the lead roles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Saran on-screen before, but she’s extremely beautiful and charming, and I can definitely see why Metcalfe’s character would fall in love with her. I did! Metcalfe is good as the business obsessed American who has a bit more depth and heart than you might initially suspect. The leads carry what story there is just fine, and I found myself with a smile on my face as the end credits appeared. With that said, the story itself could be a bit of a problem to more demanding viewers. This has all been done many times before, and there isn’t anything unique to differentiate this film from countless others. Cliches abound as you can pretty much guess what’s going to happen from frame to frame. And the supporting characters aren’t much to write home about either. The “best friends” are exactly what you’d expect them to be, and not really in a good way. The supporting character that had the most potential for me was Saran’s dad. Unfortunately, he was set up to be a goofus for most of the film, so when he gets to flex his acting muscles at the end, the character’s more serious scenes don’t really hit home for me. On another positive note, I did enjoy seeing the contrast in the film’s settings in San Francisco and Mumbai, India. One of the funniest moments in the movie involves Metcalfe’s character’s attempt to get across Mumbai as quickly as possible while navigating different forms of the city’s public transportation.
Overall, I recommend THE OTHER END OF THE LINE to undemanding viewers who enjoy sweet, cookie cutter romantic comedies. I think there’s plenty to enjoy. However, if you watch the movie with one of those people who likes to make fun of everything, that person will have plenty of material as well!
Robin Prince (Mark Harmon) is a laid-back former volleyball player who, at the age of 32, makes his living as a pool guy. It’s an easy life and he enjoys it. He sleeps with the wife (Deborah Harmon) of one of his clients and he hangs out with his richer friends. Robin enjoys being a bachelor but that all changes when he agrees to give a job to Justin (Patrick Labyorteaux), the son of Stanley Auerbach (Robert Vaughn) and meets Justin’s cousin, an artist named Jamie Harrison (Kirstie Alley). Justin goes from being bitter about having to work to idolizing Robin and his lifestyle. Robin, meanwhile, falls for Jamie.
Through the Shattered Lens 