Product Description

Harvey Holroyd (Martin Mull) is a Marin County resident who is surrounded by strangeness. His family, neighbors and co-workers all seem consumed by the fads and trends of 1980, and it's getting to be too much to take. Sex, drugs, psychobabble and health food - it's enough to drive anyone insane! Tuesday Weld, Christopher Lee and Tommy Smothers help make up a wacky all-star cast. Serial is a biting and hilarious satire of 1980 California life that seems eerily prophetic three decades later.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12520 in DVD
• Brand: LEGEND FILMS
• Released on: 2008-07-01
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 5.00 pounds
• Running time: 92 minutes

Features

• Harvey Holroyd (Martin Mull) is a Marin County resident who is surrounded by strangeness. His family, neighbors and co-workers all seem consumed by the fads and trends of 1980, and it's getting to be too much to take. Sex, drugs, psychobabble and health food - it's enough to drive anyone insane! Tuesday Weld, Christopher Lee and Tommy Smothers help make up a wacky all-star cast. Serial is

Review
1980's Serial disappeared quickly from theaters but found its place on the new cable TV outlets that swept the nation. It's an excellent example of a minor film wanted very badly on DVD by a small but loyal group of customers. [...]

The film was sourced from a 1977 book by Cyra McFadden: The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County which itself started as a 52-part serialized satire of the problems of affluent proto- Yuppies in one of the richest parts of California. The permissive, socially progressive times gave birth to a population of self-directed people fascinated by sex, no-fault marriage, encounter groups and meditation gurus. Serial lampoons the trendy folk of Marin county with a constant barrage of one-liners, starting with a flaky marriage vow in a ceremony presided over by a guru-like minister: "Thank you for inviting me to participate in your life, for I am an a--hole. And being an a--hole is neither good nor bad. It just is." Audience surrogate Harvey Holroyd is always ready with a sarcastic quip: "These are exciting times aren't they? Gas is over a dollar a gallon, and it's okay to be an a--hole." Wife Kate thinks Harvey needs to mellow out: "Such rage, Harvey.

The price of gasoline joke is as dated (or nostalgic) as the rest of the humor, which is often hilariously funny and on target. Much of it is tasteless, which makes it seem even more contemporary. The film's advertising logo expresses its level of comedy -- a plastic 'feel good' heart transfixed by a big metal screw.

[...] Serial is a black comedy in love with its punch lines. The people are funny cartoon characters, and almost every line of dialogue is a setup for a smart laugh, usually at somebody's expense. If it weren't for the reasonably warm characters played by Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld, Bill Macy and a couple of others, the show would collapse in pointless caricature. We're invited to jeer at a certain sector of upscale California society. Make that a gross exaggeration of a particular sector. Condensing the 52 chapters of the book into ninety minutes makes most of the characters seem narcissistic decadent airheads who hide their miserable selves behind feel-good psychobabble. One family dog is named Elton John; a rebellious kid has been given the name Stokely by his politically conscious parents.

[...] One can't just conclude that Serial has something to appall everyone, and let the subject go. It is frequently hilarious, and compared to the gawd-awful witless smut that passes for comedy today, it's downright charming. But the show grossly exaggerates its Marin County lifestyles, just to have a bigger target for its humor. If you don't mind a degree of heartlessness and opportunism in comedy, Serial is highly recommended.

[...] Legend Films' DVD of Serial is a satisfactory transfer of this forced but funny comedy. The audio seems a bit distorted at times, or perhaps just a bit compressed, but all dialogue is clear. The score by Lalo Schifrin is topped by Michael Johnson's vocal on the apt title song, It's a Changing World. [...] --Glenn Erickson of DVDSavant.com

Customer Reviews

From the land of fruits and nuts..........
Great movie about life in Marin county in the late seventies. Martin Mull just wants to lead a normal, middle-class life. His wife (Tuesday Weld) and friends won't let him. They try to drag him into every fad and fashion of the 70's and early 80's, from drugs and free sex to wacky "therapists" and cults. Very funny and prescient movie, with very good performances, and great lines- especially from the supporting cast.

Great spoof of new age awareness!
Martin Mull stars in this comedy about upper-middle class life in Marin County, north of San Francisco. The movie is a good adaptation of the book by the same name and pokes fun at the "mellow speak" and new age fads of the late 70's. Contains lots of funny dialog you'll be quoting back to your friends, just like a Monty Python skit.

An obscure movie everyone should see
It's about life in Marin County, California in the late 1970s. All the hippies have grown up and are so desperately trying to convince themselves that they're still hip that they've become a horrible parody of themselves, living in a world of pop psychobabble, open marriages and narcissism. In the center of all of this is Harvey Holroyd (Martin Mull) and his wife Kate (Tuesday Weld). Harvey is the sane man in an insane world, normal by every standard, but Kate is caught up in all the lunacy and keeps trying to drag him into the bizarro-world.

Don't let the movie's late-70's look fool you; it is absolutely *hysterical*. Look for Tommy Smothers as a "priest" (though in what church, I've no idea) who thinks everything is beautiful and Christopher Lee as a hard-ass businessman during the week who has a secret about what he does on weekends. There are so many plot twists, you'll never keep up with them all, but the whole movie is a laugh riot from start to finish. Be aware; this is a hard movie to find, but if you have an opportunity to get it, do not pass it up.

I suppose it's even funnier for me because my own parents were living out in San Francisco in the early 1970s and they say the film depicts almost exactly how people out there actually were. I've a hard time seeing my dad (who'd just gotten out of the Marines) and my mom (a strict Catholic and a Navy nurse) living in such a mad place.