Every once in a while a film comes out that is universally slammed by the critics. When Death To Smoochy came out, I remember how surprised I was to hear the utter distain the critics had for the film, especially when you consider the cast. Robin Williams, Edward Norton, Danny Devitto and so on. But from top to bottom the reviews were horrible. Horrible enough to keep me away from the theater and buying a ticket. For example, good ol Roger Ebert said:

In all the annals of the movies, few films have been this odd, inexplicable and unpleasant

A year later a friend brought the DVD over. We all moaned since we heard the film was horrible, but he rented it and the pizza was already here, so we put the film in. About 2 hours later we were still all in tears from the laughing.

I'm not going to hyperbolize and claim this is one of the greatest comedies of all time, but this is a very well made, well directed and most of all very well performed piece of work. Looking at the dark side of children's entertainment and the seedy underworld of children's charity organizations, this movie just catches you off guard every step of the way. My favorite line in the film was "You've gotta be careful of the Wishes of Light Foundation. They're the most ruthless of all the charities".

While this is not Robin Williams best film, I have to say that I have never seen him better in a comedy. His timing was always bang on the money, and his energy just sucks your eyes to the screen.

The DVD has some wonderful special features including some behind the scenes footage, outtakes, deleted scenes and even a short making of piece.

Overall, this is a great one to rent with a group of friends on a Thursday night. Great laughs, solid film and wonderful extra DVD stuff. For the life of me I can't understand why so many of the critics hated this film so much. Then again, what do I know.