Ally McBeal - Season 1 (M-Lock Packaging) > Reviews > "I Just Had Computer Sex! It Was Amazing!"

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Outstanding
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Fantastic comedy, great stories, fantastic cast
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Only in Ally Mcbeal would you hear people talking about computer sex, showing off face bra's and sniffing each others butts.

From writer David. E. Kelly, (Boston Legal and Chicago Hope) comes this fantastic comedy which is Ally McBeal. Airing between 1997 to 2001, Ally McBeal was a fantastic hit both in the states and here in the UK, (Channel 4).

Season One starts with us meeting Ally (Calista Flockhart) as a child. She sniffed the butt of a boy called Billy (Gil Bellows), which meant she liked him. Many years later the happy couple went off to law school, Ally simply following Billy there, but Billy decided to end it with Ally. So Ally completed law school on her own.

Many years later, Ally gets fired from her law firm and bumps into an old friend, Richard Fish (Greg Germann) who hires her to work as his law firm. So Ally starts work and then finds out Billy works there with his new wife.

So that's the scene set. What can you expect from the rest of the season? Well without giving too much away: The fantastic Peter MacNicol also stars as the co owner of the law firm.

Each show starts with the laywers arriving for work and attending the morning meeting. It's here where Richard gives the lawyers their strange cases. While a lot of the comedy is one liners, funny dances and Peter MacNicol, who players John, making strange sounds all day long, the cases the lawyers work on are also funny.

But if John isn't playing with his pet frog, using his autoflusher to flush the toilet before he uses it "I like a clean bowl" or the laywers aren't singing in their local bar, sadly we have to put up with Ally's love life. This can at times be funny. It's great seeing her make a fool of herself and having the computer animation team making her 2inch small or turning her green. However, the romance stories can be a little slow at times and tend to repeat themselves after the first few boyfriends Ally has.

The cast do a fantastic job in their roles. Richard, played by Greg Germann, does a fantastic job as the owner who only wants four things. Money, money, women and money. Like I said before Peter MacNicol is just the best. Other cast members such as Gills Bellows and Calista herself tend to annoy me. The show could have worked so much better without Calista, who some might call a thin stick at best. But you have to let your viewers about cast members slip and simply enjoy the show.

Now to the M-Lock DVD boxset. Anyone who's seen my X-Files reviews will know all about M-Lock and why I love them so much.

M-Lock boxsets are about the size of two standard DVD cases put together. You then simply open them like a standard DVD case. On the inside you have two DVD discs on each side of the case but the other four DVD's swing freely in the middle of the case on plastic supports. This means you can find the DVD you want simply by moving the DVD supports inside the case. So you not only get a cool case, which is smaller then some of the old fashion boxsets, but you also get a booklet.

Now the booklet is very well made, has lots of nice pictures plus an episode summary, chapter information and details on the writers and cast of each episode.

Overall the boxset is well put together, despite not having any special features. The show itself is fantastic, at least till season 3 anyway, and for £10 to £20 what more could you want? There's 24 episodes to enjoy!

French, dutch and english subtitles, rated 15, 973 minutes running time.

Starring: Calista Flockhart, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Greg Germann, Lisa Nicole Carson, Jane Krakowski, Peter MacNicol, Gil Bellows, Vonda Shepard