Square Eyes

Television Reviews

Movie of the week, The Royal Tenenbaums, Prime, Sun, 8.30pm:

This darkly subversive satire of American happy families and success is offbeat and multilayered. One critic aptly described it as "Frank Capra crossed with David Lynch, with a little Monty Python thrown in". Royal (Gene Hackman) is the estranged father of a tortured playwright (Gwyneth Paltrow), a paranoid wheeler dealer (Ben Stiller) and a washed up tennis champ (Luke Wilson). Their ambitious mother (Anjelica Huston) pushed her kids hard, then wrote a book about it, but now they're all miserable failures. Dad turns up, faking an illness, to win back his family's affections.

Legally Blonde, Prime, Fri, 8.30pm:

A dizzy blonde prom queen Elle (Reese Witherspoon) enrolls in Harvard Law School hoping to land a husband. It's a predictable fish-out-of-water teen comedy, with Elle showing that instinct can outwit pure intellect, but Witherspoon's performance as the heart-o-gold ditz with rat cunning makes it enjoyable.

Charlie's Angels, Ten, Fri, 9pm:

This mindless eye candy, starring Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore, resurrects a 70s TV show with enough camp hi-jinks to entertain. Lots of martial arts and special FX keep their kitsch adventures bubbling along.

Ice Age, Prime, Sat, 6.30pm:

Another gently amusing animated treat from the predictable misfit-animal-adventure school, a la Finding Nemo and Jungle Book, this time set during the last ice age. A comic sloth joins a loner woolly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano) on his travels. They find a child and set out to return it to its "herd", facing assorted travails.

The Sum of All Fears, Ten, Sat, 8.30pm:

Another Tom Clancy thriller churned out with all the indifference, but none of the wit, of the James Bond franchise. Ben Affleck is the new Jack Ryan -terrorists, nuclear weapons... join the dots, folks. James Cromwell has done well on his Hogget Farm and is now the US President. Morgan Freeman turns up for the cash.

Order in the House, ABC, Sun, 10.55pm:

This weekly summary of the shenanigans in Canberra is on too late, but perhaps that's the idea, lest voters discover just how much of their taxes are wasted on politicians indulging in schoolyard histrionics.

Purple Hearts, SBS, Tues, 8.30pm:

Thankfully, Australian soldiers have escaped largely unscathed from the Iraq war thus far, but more than 1000 US soldiers have died. Three injured soldiers try and make sense of it all, with mixed results, in this thoughtful doco.

Beat the chef, ABC, Weds, 6.30pm:

Just what the world needs right now - another cooking game show akin to SBS's Iron Chef, with two amateurs taking on a chef, to conjure up a meal using a specified ingredient in 25 minutes. And to think Aunty dumped George Negus for this.