Critic Reviews
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Full of snap and sass -- and actual laughs, too -- and one wonders whether it's safe to become attached to it. [9 Sept 1996, p.]
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What sets Party Girl apart is the "girl" who hosts the party: Christine Taylor, a delightful young actress best known for playing Marcia in "The Brady Bunch" movies. Her character here, Mary, is what Marcia might have become had she been orphaned, or "Clueless'" Cher might be if she were older, wiser and poorer. [9 Sept 1996, p.C-6]
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A funny gala of fresh, cleverly bent whimsy and endearing lightness that brings out the burlesque best in Christine Taylor, allowing her to far exceed her campy neo-Marcia in two movie revivals of "The Brady Bunch."
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Party Girl exudes a certain clunky charm - much more so than the 1995 film that inspired it. It's not a perfect show, but it works for its occasional laughs, which is more than can be said about most new comedies so far this season. [9 Sept 1996, p.C10]
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In this comedy, rowdy young woman gets a job in a library, and finds she likes it. [9 Sept 1996, p.1C]
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In the first two episodes, a lot of the gags are just stupid: a stuffy man gets a cake in the face; Mary gets caught in a medieval chastity belt...But Taylor makes Mary easy to like, and John Cameron Mitchell provides nice counterpoint as her pal Derrick, who works in fashion photography and has an ironic comment on everything. [9 Sept 1996, p.6D]
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The problem is that self-styled bohemians, including sidekicks like a fey fashion photographer (John Cameron Mitchell) and a dumb-hunk bartender (Matt Borlenghi), hardly look natural delivering glib one-liners and performing slapstick spit-takes. [9 Sept 1996, p.3D]
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The show is based on a small independent film of the same name, which was never terribly daring to begin with. Any sharpness has been smoothed away for television. Mary and her friends talk endlessly about drinking, but never get drunk; they make knowing references to long-ago loss of virginity, but never seem to have sex. Party Girl is as sweetly innocent as "Clueless," the film that seems to provide its true inspiration.
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Aside from Kurtz, everything else in this makeover is about the same. That's not good.[9 Sept 1996, p.1]
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The tweaked pilot, with the addition of Swoosie Kurtz ("Sisters") as the godmother, is amusing and quite charming. The "bonus" episode is about as funny as the Dewey decimal system. [9 Sept 1996, p.C1]
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More manufactured silliness than genuine comedy; Party Girl is a theme in search of laughs. Once again TV borrows from a big-screen film, with Party Girl appropriating the premise of the motion picture of the same name. Yet whereas the film had a loose-limbed loopiness to it, a quirky affability that imparted to its actions something greater than the sum of its parts, the video Party Girl largely lacks wit or snap, and the effort generally amounts to a lackluster pastiche of shticky kitsch.
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The main problem is anemic writing that's more concerned with offering up jokes than making sure they make sense in context. The end result is one pooped Party Girl. [9 Sept 1996, p.3]
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Silly misadventures. [9 Sept 1996, p.39]
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Disaster pretty much sums up Party Girl, judging from its first two shows...The performers seem game enough, but they are utterly undone by material that gets stuck at the intersections of body parts. [9 Sept 1996, p.78]
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Suffers from being a raunchfest in search of a punchline. Any punchline at all will do. [9 Sept 1996]
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According to the laugh track, this is one seriously funny half-hour. Obviously, it knows something I don't. This isn't a sitcom, or even a comedy with a plot; it's a series of mostly lame one-liners. It's a comedy that mistakes smirks for laughs. Bet you don't even crack a smile. [9 Sept 1996, p.6D]