What a beautiful movie!

recommended

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Watching Ally Mcbeal was like going through a phase of my life again and I could not imagine that what I felt is out there on the screen, of course with some exaggerations. Ally's views on love and life are similar to mine and I quite loved the initial season though I am not sure why the show borders on melancholy. Maybe, that is the way life is. There are certain twists and turns in the plot which spoil the series' impact but otherwise, great acting and storyline. Anyways, it deserves more than 6.5, which is its current rating in IMDb.

I started watching this show pretty much because I had seen good reviews, it looked funny and it was available on netflix. The more I watched it however, the more frustrated I became that people actually liked this character. I enjoyed the side characters with my favourites being John Cage and Elaine but Ally McBeal was pathetic to say the least. She was the most self-obsessed, selfish, egotistical person who constantly whined about not finding the love of her life. She expected everyone to drop what they were doing to hear about her problems and acted so unprofessionally at times that I couldn't believe that she hadn't been fired or at least charged with assault. The whole time I kept thinking she needs to learn to love herself without a man and stop calling herself empty all the time, it just got sad. And then, when she did meet a man, she acted so standoffish and coy- it bugged the hell out of me. I would not be friends with this person- she seems like such a buzzkill. My other little annoyance were some of her 'fantasies'. Honestly at first they were funny and cute but they got more intense and disruptive in her life and I kept thinking that maybe there was a serious medical problem there. This is just my opinion and there are probably others out there who think that it is too harsh or too serious for a TV show; however, it pains me to think that this show influences how women should view the world and themselves and how men view us. Overall, this is a seriously annoying show for any woman who has any iota of self-respect.

Here's your standard episode of Ally McBeal: Ally- a young, attractive lawyer- bites her lip, rolls her eyes, hallucinates a cartoon and avoids making any emotional or personal decisions while her law firm defends a woman's right to dress like a whore and not expect any unwanted sexual attention whatsoever.Yikes.This show is disposable Hollywood-liberal schlock, a dreary timepiece, a false step in feminism. This was back in the day when women could get a man to do anything they wanted just by kissing another woman. Yawn... Ally is the fictionalized ideal of the woman-child who has it all but is still miserable because she doesn't know what to do with it. Or maybe she's just too stupid to make any concrete and assertive choices, paralyzed by the wonderful life she's made for herself. Poor Ally…The show was the brainchild of writer/creator/lesbian David E. Kelley, who seemed to genuinely believe the offbeat and often backwards fairy- tales he wrote each week. Ostensibly designed to liberate and empower women, the show was anti-male in every sense of the word: men were brutish creatures whose hostile sexual desires were thrown back in their face and openly mocked or they were impotent teddy bears. Middle ground and complexity are not Mr. Kelley's specialty. If only men could be as sophisticated as the strong women he writes, who take no responsibility for their sexuality, unless/until it suited their desires. You've come a long way, baby. Hypocrisy and arrogance abound.Maybe that's what made it all the more ironic that the Ally herself- Calista Flockhart- was suffering from severe anorexia during the show's run: like Ally, Flockhart was an attractive young rising star who worked hard to achieve stardom, only to learn that she couldn't handle it. Just a little girl after all... how decidedly female, how decidedly obnoxious... The show shut down production several times to accommodate Flockhart's hospital stints and attempts at recovery. Like Ally, Calista wanted to have her cake and not eat it too.Women- to a certain degree- will never fully understand their own sexuality, a simple fact of Nature that can't even be overcome in a fictional TV universe with unisex bathrooms and the open discussion of orgasm or lack thereof. For anyone to base their views of life, sex or feminism on this show would be criminal... it's trite, condescending and often plain ridiculous. David E. Kelley used the show's "legal" cases for all the wrong reasons: not to examine morality and society or to tell an interesting story- the legal issues were in fact Mr. Kelley preaching and moralizing to the audience about his own personal views of the way the world SHOULD BE- and why everyone should agree. He created the weekly scenario and played judge and jury all by himself, with the underlying message to every ruling being that Men are Bad and that women- no matter how ridiculous, childish, slutty or insane- should be blindly praised and rewarded. The show hasn't been seen since its cancellation and it probably never will be- it was a sexist and insulting view of the world by a self-loathing male who wanted to atone for the carnal desires of his entire sex.So what should a successful, attractive woman do when a man looks lustfully at her ripe breasts on full display in her low-cut top? Taunt him? Sue him? Stop eating until said mammary glands disappear? According to this show she should do anything except take some responsibility and cover up... that would be anti-Ally. GRADE: D-

This is one of the worst shows I've been bored enough to sit through. I like Boston Legal and I like the idea of a comedy law show. However, this series is more focused on McBeal finding love and feeling sorry for herself. The idea is that she "needs" a man or she isn't grounded enough to perform simple tasks. This makes you wonder how the character graduated from law school. This coupled with Calista Flockhart's painfully obvious eating disorder makes for the most anti-feminist female lead I've ever had the displeasure of watching.All that said, the first 2 seasons can be pretty funny at times. I attribute most of the humor to Greg Germann's character Fish, although he can be extremely sexist.In closing, I'd like to say that apart from the sexism this series so annoyingly demonstrates, I have discovered at least two recycled monologues from Ally McBeal on Boston Legal. I would be looking for that in Harry's Law, but it's important for me now to avoid anything written or created by David. E. Kelley. I don't believe it's okay to be lazy enough when creating series to go back to your writing on a previous show and copy it onto your new script word for word.