> Have you noticed that nobody has made a movie based on The Andy Griffin Show? How can you compete with perfection? I think there was a TV special called Return to Mayberry or something like that, but I didn't watch it. They probably just showed the surviving actors so we could all see how much they have aged. But a movie version? I don't think anybody has that much nerve.

Don't count on it, Howard. A couple of years ago, I might have made the same supposition about "The Honeymooners."

I mostly don't mind TV reunion movies when it's the original cast. Return To Mayberry was pretty good, and I liked the Dick Van Dyke one from a year or two back. But theatrical movies have too much pressure on them to be hip to fresh audiences. Some material translates better than others. "The Honeymooners" and "The Andy Griffith Show" are both too rooted in the social climate of their times to survive the transition.

Ferrick, I hear your complaints about remakes, but the problem is only getting worse. Try this incomplete list on for size, and I've mercifully left out the sequels:

- The Incredible Shrinking Man
- Poseidon (The Poseidon Adventure)
- Charlotte's Web
- The Shaggy Dog
- The Pink Panther
- Flicka (My Friend Flicka)
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- Yours, Mine, and Ours
- When a Stranger Calls
- Sunset Boulevard
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- The Hitcher
- Don't Look Now
- The Hills Have Eyes
- The Swiss Family Robinson
- Porky's
- Piranha
- The Bad Seed
- Ikiru
- The Lavender Hill Mob
- Dead of Night
- The Bellboy
- Bunny Lake Is Missing
- Witness for the Prosecution
- Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
- The Fly
- 3:10 To Yuma
- Mute Witness
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Logan's Run
- Pet Semetary
- To Catch a Thief
- The Ten Commandments
- My Bodyguard
- Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea
- The Toy
- Love At First Bite
- Oh, God!
- Tron
- Phantasm
- Death Race 3000
- When Worlds Collide
- All of Me
- Strangers On a Train

Sorry to be so depressing.