By Couch Baron
So the tone of this two-hour episode is totally different this week, as all eighteen remaining directors show their minute-long offerings as part of Comedy Shorts week. Instead of last week's Apprentice-esque crap, we get a two-hour awards-show-esque night that actually is produced pretty well and moves along at quite a clip. Someone figured out that watching people make movies is boring, so we don't see any of that, which is cool. I don't know if the show can find any momentum after the disastrous start, but this is a step in the right direction. Carrie Fisher and Garry Marshall are back as judges, and they're joined by D.J. Caruso, the director of Disturbia. Adrianna Costa (?) is our hostess, and she looks a bit like Eva Longoria, if Eva Longoria ever gave an organic-looking smile. But her hosting abilities...well, I've got a long night ahead of me here.
So! The first offering is a film called Dance Man, by Adam Stein. It's about a guy who uses dance instead of talking to communicate with his girlfriend. It's reasonably funny, and gets rave reviews from the judges. He says he left the safe path of Harvard to pursue filmmaking, so good on him for making it work. You know, so far.
The second director is Carolina, originally from Spain but now living in Santa Monica. Her film is a comedy entitled Deliver Me. It's about a woman who's in labor but can't get off the phone, with a lot of washed-out colors and high production values. The judges also love it, although Garry Marshall really ups the Catskills routine on his comments. Carolina is slightly nervous in her comments but down-to-earth, and cutely gives her number like an American Idol contestant.
Andrew Hunt calls himself "a tiny guppy in an ocean" here. He wants his short, Spaced Out, to be "big, bold, and funny." It's about a cop pulling over a flying saucer populated with drunk-driving puppet aliens who vomit on him. My verdict: Eh. Carrie Fisher is in love with barfing aliens, though. D.J. Caruso loved it, and Garry Marshall maybe doesn't love barfing as much as you'd think, but still gives it a good verdict.