Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

liquidcelluloid-1 Network: NBC; Genre: Comedy; Content Rating: TV-PG (for language and adult content); Classification: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);Seasons Reviewed: Season 1 of 2 "Watching Ellie" invites us to spend 22 screwball minutes with Ellie Rigg (Julia Louis Dryfuss), a lounge singer whose life is a perpetual barrage of set-backs and annoyances that include obnoxious ex-boyfriends, creepy supers (Peter Stormare) and overflowing toilets as she races to make deadlines in this frenzied, fast-paced, work-a-day world.Created by husband Brad Hall ("Saturday Night Live"), "Ellie" is a show only this couple could love. This long anticipated return to TV for powerhouse actress Julia Louis Dryfuss ("Seinfeld") is nothing short of a massive disappointment. Despite the ensemble around her (some of undeniable talent and some of questionable) "Ellie" is a platinum self-indulgent star vehicle for Dryfuss, a showcase from a loving husband and nepotism run wild. It is cringe-inducing to watch Dryfuss running around frantically while "Ellie" tries to create a screwball atmosphere that results in a complete train wreck.The gimmick "Ellie" rides on is - get this - an ever-present ticking digital clock on the screen to help us count down the minutes until it's over. It screams "gimmick", distracts from the action on screen and undeniably contributes to the comedy dropping dead all over the place. Coming a year after Fox's effectively used clock-ticking terrorist thrill-ride "24" it baffles the mind what in the world Hall thought this would add to a situation comedy. The show is completely unsatisfying, going nowhere and literally cutting off as time runs out before any, at all, pay-off. And this comes from someone who is a big fan of the smash-cut anti-endings of "Seinfeld", "Curb Your Enthusiam" and "The Office".Don't blame the supposed "Seinfeld Curse". The problem is that Dryfuss, like Michael Richards and Jason Alexander take themselves as actors (read as "ak-TOR" with a nose-in-the-air pretentious drawl) and their craft very seriously. Dryfuss desperately wants to get away from Elaine Bennace and in this attempt she has mistakenly created a character that is actually more repugnant than her "Seinfeld" counterpart. Not even Elaine would have an affair with a married man, something Ellie Rigg is introduced as doing in the first episode. The show then has the sheer gall to ask us to root for her sneaking and shuffling around trying not to get caught by his wife like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The time drones on and on. In another sign the show is failing in its goals: Ellie, the character it wants us to care about, is so selfish and repulsive that we can't stand her to the point where we actually end up caring more for pathetic Edgar (Steve Carrell, in his first big step away from "The Daily Show), the character we are supposed to be repulsed by. There is loving to hate a deliciously played anti-hero and then there is this, where Dryfuss wants to be bad but still wants us to love her. I know TV viewers are enamored with the single-camera laugh track-less style right now, but a show like "Watching Ellie" is perfectly exemplary of how lazy and devoid of creativity this execution can actually be. There still need to be fresh ideas in the mix instead of the window dressing of ticking clocks giving people the false sense of innovation.Here is where things get a little different. Instead of just sitting around and complaining like everybody else I'm going to suggest a real solution that may have given this show a fighting chance. Maybe not in the ratings, but this would have given the show some everlasting dignity. Instead of retreating and taking the show back to a multi-camera, studio audience sitcom (as a 2nd season network retool did), Hall should have taken "Ellie" the other direction and this concept all the way to the edge.Keep the single camera, keep the entire cast and for the sake of ease keep the stories (although "Ellie"s lame writing and plotting is one of its biggest problems). In this age when viewers are savee about media manipulation it would have been gutsier and more innovative to do a real-time series that was actually real time. As in, with no cuts. Challenging Dryfuss and her ensemble to do the entire series in one take and with a camera following her reality-series-style, blocked out, in her apartment and through the streets. It could have been a satire of the deadlines, suffocating technology and manufactured stress of modern life. Although with Brad Hall at the helm it wouldn't have been much funnier, this new voyeuristic element would have been more respectable and more innovative than what we have here. The problem with the show isn't the concept: it, unfortunately, is Brad Hall and Julia Louis-Dryfuss.* / 4

ewatts1980-1 I thought Watching Ellie was a great show and I loved watching it -- I even taped every episode! It may have been a spin off on the Seinfeld character Elaine but I thought it was a good one. I enjoyed watching Ellie scatter around hysterically during the show. I also enjoyed that the show only had one commercial break. The fellows in her apartment building, such as Dr. Zimmerman, were funny and her boyfriend at the the time the show ended was very handsome. Why the show ended/disappeared, I have no idea.To fill the space this site requires, I'll go on. Julia's sister was on the show and I thought that their relationship was a little funny also. I think that this show, unlike Kraemer's and George's, was a success and should have continued. Julia Louis Dreyfus proved that she could survive in the business after Seinfeld ended. I could relate to Ellie/Elaine and miss them both!!~Missing Ellie

Tom-578 The concept of this show was brilliant in it's originality. Okay, I know 24 was pretty new and doing the same sort of thing, but this was a "sitcom". It was more of a melodrama. It was met with similar criticism as Seinfeld was. Truth was the concept was well executed, but it was like being around people who have their own inside jokes and you are on the outside. You might laugh not because it's funny, but because it looks silly or is uncomfortable. It's not straight ahead humor. To all of you people cheering on this Seinfeld curse crap that's exactly what it is. They were saying that after The Michael Richards Show went off the air because The Tick suffered a similar fate. The Tick! Patrick Warburton who played Elaine's boyfriend in no more than 30 episodes (and that is being generous) is credited for starting the curse. His character on Seinfeld made him look like an easy target I guess. After the Michael Richards Show, Jason Alexander's show came on and they had it on several different time slots in the few weeks it was on. Before that show came on it was already being unfairly denounced. If you're going to attribute some curse that was started by a non-regular character then I want to point out that a character that was on a lot more frequently than Warburton was in a very successful show in the latter days of Seinfeld and beyond. Anyone hear of Wayne Knight? That's right, it's not something you want to hear. You all just want to hear the bad stuff and try to take away a great show's credibility. Watching Ellie was not a great show. Seinfeld was not a great show at first, but it got the chance because it was the right time for it. In another time the concepts attempted in Ellie will be used and develop a very solid sophisticated sit com. The only curse is that people let the media create some "curse" and like sheep say "I won't watch that somebody from Seinfeld is on." You all need to realize the Entertainment Tonight and shows of that kind are shown when people are having dinner for a reason and it ain't ratings my friend.

richard-199 This show has a number of great things going for it. The 22-minute realtime episodes follow the trend of shows (like 24 and Andy Richter Controls the Universe) that reach to new or rarely utilized filming and editing techniques that add a new dimension to television viewing. In fact, in each of the 3 episodes I have seen, one of the cast members refers to the time left to the end of the episode [e.g.: "Would you two shut up and help me out of here? We've only got 11 minutes left to wrap this up!" or words to that effect...].The lack of laughtrack harkens to one of the finest seriocomedies ever produced - M*A*S*H, in which the laughtrack was banned from all surgery scenes. This decision allows the writing to speak for itself, without the need to tell you when to laugh.Hopefully, this show will not fall prey to the Seinfeld curse. If the network can keep it on the air long enough for viewers to give it a fair chance, this could be a real hit. Don't forget, Seinfeld started out as a lone pilot episode called The Seinfeld Chronicles in July of 1989, came back in May of 1990 for a 4-episode run befor starting a regular series schedule in January of 1991. By this time, we finally see the characters and their inter-relationships start to develop and gel into a show that really worked. In my opinion, Watching Ellie deserves the same consideration and should continue through it's regular season before it is judged at all.