King of the Hill (1993)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.
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What critics compared King of the Hill to
KFP, from a clever screenplay by ex-King of the Hill writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, is a tribute to the literally hundreds of '70s Hong Kong martial arts dramas that flooded Saturday-morning U.S. TV in the wake of Bruce Lee's success with Enter the Dragon.
The screenplay is by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, a duo that has written for TV’s “King of the Hill” and “MAD TV,” from a story by “Bulletproof Monk” writers Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris.
Hoffman clearly relishes his role even more than Black does Po, but he's not given much from screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who were far funnier as scribes for TV's King of the Hill.
"Kung Fu Panda" comes from the creative people responsible for episodes of TV's "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "King of the Hill."
The dialogue isn’t much here – some teenage jokes, ribbing of Crood father Grug (spoken by Nicholas Cage) by his wife (Catherine Keener) and mother (Cloris Leachman), and a hapless fat son lifted from King Of The Hill (Clark Duke).
Oh, and then there’s Speedman’s agent, Rick Peck -- and you can almost taste how much Stiller and his fellow screenwriters Justin Theroux (his first script credit) and King of the Hill and Idiocracy scripter Etan Cohen wanted to call him “Dick Pecker” but figured that’d be too obvious -- and studio head Les Grossman.
Stiller and his co-writers, Etan Cohen (TV’s “King of the Hill”) and actor Justin Theroux, know comedy well enough to appreciate the importance of such a character in a loopy scenario like this one.
The script by Stiller, Etan Cohen (King of the Hill, not The Big Lebowski), and Justin Theroux turns on a nifty high-concept hook: Megabudgeted war film goes explosively awry, leaving its washed-up action star (Stiller), fart-happy comic (Jack Black), and Australian ultra-Method actor (Robert Downey Jr.) lost in the jungle with drug runners in pursuit.
What is especially peculiar about this alleged comedy -- written by "King of the Hill" scribes Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, with rewrites by Adam Sztykiel ( "Made of Honor" ) and Phillips -- is how frequently it stops trying to be funny altogether and wants us to have actual feelings for these comic-strip characters.
The droll “Due Date” screenplay is credited to Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland (both of “King of the Hill”), Adam Sztykiel (“Made of Honor”), and Phillips and probably another 20 writers e-mailing bits.
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Longtime Simpsons and King of the Hill writer Jon Vitti provides a backstory that centers on Red (Sudeikis), a curmudgeonly, flightless waterfowl living on Bird Island.
Cohen, who is responsible for the prescient and criminally underrated “Idiocracy” as well as the clever “Tropic Thunder,” has worked in animated series – “King of the Hill” and “American Dad,” among them.
It is even suggested that touch between humans is a lost art when John's (John Ratzenberger, "Toy Story") hand touches Mary's (Kathy Najimy, TV's "King of the Hill") and their reaction is one of astonishment.
The writer-director behind The Iron Giant and The Incredibles (the former a critically beloved, poorly marketed underperformer, the latter a critically beloved smash) and an animation consultant on the likes of King Of The Hill and The Simpsons , Bird has a rare cinematic gift: the ability to stage slam-bang action sequences without neglecting the rich emotional resonance that makes for a great story.
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In the wake of sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh went through a down period, with films like Kafka, the underrated King of the Hill , and The Underneath .
He has as varied and multifaceted a record as any director in the biz--- "sex, lies and videotape," an intimate and fascinating study of deteriorating urban marriages and relationships; a stylish thriller called Kafka; a heart-warming and memorable period piece about a boy surviving the Depression called King of the Hill; a colorful noir called The Underneath And there were others... documentaries, a daring cable TV series, a Spaulding Gray monologue.
He gets to make unconventional, experimental films like Kafka, Schizopolis and The Limey, while still making a few bucks doing "mainstream" films like King of the Hill and Out of Sight.
But King Of The Hill is more than just the movie that straightened out Soderbergh’s career; it’s also one of his best films, albeit very different from higher-profile Soderberghs like Out Of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, and Ocean’s Eleven.
Always innovative but not always involving, they range from the sublime ("sex, lies and videotape," "King of the Hill," "Out of Sight") to the disappointing ("Kafka").
His rather mainstream King of the Hill (1993) was another critical hit, and his The Underneath (1995) quickly disappeared.