GORDY
A film review by Chad Polenz
Copyright 1997 Chad Polenz
* (out of 4 = poor) 1995, G, 90 minutes [1 hour, 30 minutes] [comedy] starring: Michael Roescher (Hank Royce), Kristy Young (Jinnie Sue MaCallister), Justin Garms (voice of Gordy), James Donadio (Gilbert Sipes), written by Leslie Stevens, Jay Sommers, Dick Chevillat, produced by Sybil Robson, directed by Mark Lewis.
"Gordy" is not a movie, it is a 90-minute-long "Sesame Street" skit, and a very bad one at that. This movie is so stupid and dumb that it's depressing to think that some Hollywood executives actually gave this the green light, and even more surprising is the fact that this is a Disney movie.
I'm sure children are the target audience of this movie, but only kids under the age of five may be able to tolerate it. It is the story of a farm a piglet named Gordy (voiced by Garms), whose family has been taken away to "up north," which we know means death. Of course we can hear the animals talk to each other, and they actually went to the trouble of attempting to sync the voices with their mouths but it comes out terrible. Actually, it's almost funny in a way.
The only remotely interesting and likable character soon appears, a little girl named Jinnie Sue MaCallister (Young) who sees Gordy on the back of a truck and essentially steals him. Jinnie is a country singer and the film goes off on a huge tangent to show her little concert and the people dancing to it. What is the point of this? Maybe she is one of the producer's relatives and they wanted to show her on camera to promote her or something.
We then cut to a huge social gathering and drop in on another young kid named Hank Royce (Roescher) who is sad because his divorced mother is dating. He leaves the party and meets Jinnie Sue, but he accidentally falls in a pool (probably because he was sitting on the diving board with a $200 suit on - nah, didn't see that one coming!), starts to drown, and is miraculously saved as Gordy pushes an inflatable float over to him and saves him.
If this had not been insanely stupid already the story quickly changes when Jinnie gives Gordy to Hank who then ends up becoming the CEO of a food processing corporation when Hank's grandfather, the original CEO, dies and leaves his fortune to Hank... and Gordy!
Of course there must be a villain, but even this villain (Donadio as Sipes) isn't that evil. He never raises his voice or becomes angry, and of course he has the typical idiot goons kidnap Gordy but this is just so beyond stupid and cartoony we are constantly two steps ahead of the story. It's hard to tell whether the overall corniness and cheesiness to the movie is intentional because it is a family film, or if the filmmaker's are just this untalented and stupid.
At times "Gordy" is tolerable to watch, thus earning it one star and not the dreaded "z-." But it's just so unbelievably boring, cliche, dumb, unfunny, corny, and just plain bad it may scare children, it certainly disturbed me.
(4/21/96) (1/29/97) (6/13/97) [see also: "Babe"]
please visit Chad'z Movie page @ http://members.aol.com/ChadPolenz/index.html
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