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Sean Connery's Eye-Popping, Special Effects Masterpiece Is The Perfect St. Paddy’s Day Movie

By Jennifer Asencio
| Updated

Every year, the whole world becomes Irish for a day. We wear green, drink green beverages, and get our brogue on for the day. We celebrate traditional Irish things like corned beef and cabbage, banshees, and leprechauns. Disney has all of that in one classic movie: Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

The story is based on Irish tales of the trickster Darby and his battle of wits with King Brian of the Leprechauns. In the movie, Darby (Albert Sharpe) is about to retire from his career as groundskeeper of the local manor, a fact he can’t reveal to his daughter, Katie (Janet Munro), because he has to figure out where they’re going to live once Darby’s replacement moves into the groundskeeper’s cottage. Meanwhile, he entertains his neighbors at the pub with tales of his adventures against King Brian and does good deeds for the town, such as carrying a church bell for the payment of its sound being forever dedicated to him.

King Brian (Jimmy O’Dea) is real, but only Darby has seen him so far, and his encounters with the leprechaun swaps the upper hand between them as they trick each other with riddles, treasures, and other mind games. As the rivalry between them blossoms into a friendship, events in the town are coming to a boil as local thug Pony Sugrue plots to steal Darby’s job and Katie’s heart. And when Michael McBride comes to town, everything they all knew will change as quickly as a leprechaun’s wish.

Michael McBride is played by the legendary Sean Connery in an early role that predates his first stint as James Bond (1962’s Dr. No). The 1958 movie is a musical, like much Disney fare of the era, and yes, Sean Connery sings. Fortunately, it’s brief. Otherwise, he manages to contain his wide aura as the new groundskeeper so that he doesn’t steal the show from its stars, Darby and Brian. His Scottish brogue also fits in well with the Irish setting.

Darby’s little town is full of characters: the swaggering bully Pony and his scheming mother, the town priest, the pub’s proprietor and his wife, and a cast of rural townsfolk from old Ireland. It paints a shiny picture of what was actually a desperate time for the Irish but also reflects the importance of Irish storytelling as a cornerstone of the culture that braced the people through its hardest periods. Scholars of Irish culture emphasize how important the fireside céilí, or nightly tale-spinning and singing party, was to the Emerald Isle from its early days. The seanchaíthe, or storytellers, are still revered in Ireland to this day as they continue the tradition of passing down stories orally and through song.

More than once, Darby encounters the most famous of Irish supernatural creatures, some of them charming and others terrifying. It’s easy to forget that it’s a Disney movie when things get tense, because the movie can get pretty scary and touch upon themes that one wouldn’t expect from an offering from the Magic Kingdom. It’s not a kids’ movie, but it is a family movie, with enough for everyone to enjoy and a few fun songs I swear my family didn’t sing at one another when I was a kid myself.

It also holds up surprisingly well for a movie that is almost 70 years old. The fight choreography and special effects are products of their time, but still pretty good considering they are entirely practical. Sean Connery and Keiron Moore, as Pony, both show their moves a few times with physical prowess and clear skill. It all looks very good for its time and fits in with the movie’s world of live-action magic, so its age never diminishes from its enjoyment.

To get your healthy dose of St. Patrick’s Day Irish, check out Darby O’Gill and the Little People on Disney+. But be careful what you wish for: King Brian can be tricky!



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Amazon greenlights 1-hour and 3-hour delivery in select US cities ahead of its spring sale

Have you ever wished that you could simply make a run to the Amazon store instead of waiting *shudders* a business day? Well, Amazon just announced the next best thing — or the first best thing, if you’d prefer to not leave your house: Depending on where you live, three-hour or one-hour Amazon delivery could be a thing now.

Three-hour Amazon delivery is available for folks in more than 2,000 cities and towns in the US, and one-hour Amazon delivery is available in hundreds. (Head to amazon.com/getitfast to see your delivery options.)

Eligible items are the types of things for which you’d typically make a Target run: pantry staples, cleaning supplies, health and beauty items, baby essentials, and over-the-counter medications. Other categories include electronics, toys, clothing and accessories, and home and garden.

The March 17 news comes the week before Amazon’s Big Spring Sale kicks off on March 25 (and runs through March 31). A huge chunk of items in the categories we just listed will be on sale.

You don’t need to be a Prime member to get access to most Big Spring Deals, nor do you have to be a Prime member to get one-hour or three-hour delivery as an option. However, speedy delivery is much cheaper for Prime members: One-hour costs $9.99 with Prime or $19.99 without Prime, and three-hour costs $4.99 with Prime or $14.99 without Prime.

It’d be nice if Amazon revived its free $5 delivery driver tip from the holidays in honor of this new delivery milestone. But either way, don’t forget to tip your driver.

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Raunchy, Unrated Comedy Will Make You Hate Your New Neighbor

By Robert Scucci
| Published

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you know how hard it is to use simple language to get your point across. Written, published words are forever, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of overcomplicating things. Mark Twain famously said, “Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” As much as I wanted to enjoy 2020’s The Mimic, written and directed by Thomas F. Mazziotti, I mostly felt like I was back in college workshopping an overzealous undergrad’s short story that was clearly written with the help of a well-worn thesaurus.

It’s not that the movie isn’t funny at times, or that the characters aren’t great. It is, and they are. The problem is that nobody talks like this, and dialogue meant to sound witty often makes the whole thing play like a prolonged episode of Gilmore Girls. The Mimic certainly tries to be a smart and witty comedy, but I’d enjoy it more if it didn’t feel like it was constantly reminding me how smart and funny it was.

The Kid Is A Sociopath

The Mimic 2020

The plot for The Mimic would make for a great sketch or even a sitcom episode, but its 81-minute runtime becomes tiresome once you get to know the principal characters. Our protagonist, simply billed as The Narrator (Thomas Sadoski), is a widower and a writer (it’s all starting to make sense now). When The Kid (Jake Robinson) becomes a presence in his life, The Narrator immediately suspects he might be a sociopath. His reasoning is simple: The Kid copies everything he does and seems to have no personality of his own. The Kid never breaks eye contact while conversing, suggesting he’s constantly sizing up whoever he’s interacting with.

The Kid also has a number of odd hobbies, including ducks (in general), wild mushrooms, and talking about a wife who is never seen on screen. Fascinated by The Kid, and eager to prove his theory, The Narrator consults a woman known only as The Librarian (Jessica Keenan Wynn) so he can learn more about sociopathy. His ultimate goal is to write a story about The Kid and impress the women who work at the local paper, who constantly “bicker over semicolons.” As the two men get to know each other better, it slowly dawns on The Narrator that he and The Kid aren’t so different after all, raising the very real possibility that The Narrator himself may also be a sociopath.

The Mimic 2020

All of the above scenarios make for a solid comedy if done right, but the standout moments that truly made me cackle, like The Kid’s awkward, impromptu bathroom escapades with Gina Gershon’s “Woman at the Bar” character, are few and far between.

That’s It. That’s The Whole Thing

Being married to a woman who was a teenager when Gilmore Girls was the talk of the town, the only thought I had while watching The Mimic is that The Narrator and The Kid are basically male versions of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore. Every single conversation becomes a rapid-fire deluge of pop culture references, psychological ramblings, and gotcha-style exchanges that force the viewer to keep up with them, despite the fact that most of these exchanges don’t drive the story at all.

What’s unfortunate is that there are some tremendous zingers here, but you’ll probably miss them while trying to unpack every single line of dialogue in real time.

Circling back to that Creative Writing 101 vibe, The Mimic falls into all the familiar traps. Mazziotti is too precious with his jokes and doesn’t always know when to trim things down. Given the film’s 81-minute runtime, it often feels like there simply wasn’t enough story to stretch the premise into a feature-length film. It makes you wonder how much better this might have worked if the whole thing had been trimmed to a sharp 20 or 30 minutes.

The Mimic 2020

Things get even more convoluted when the perspective zooms out and we learn that two characters known as The Director (M. Emmet Walsh) and The Writer (Doug Plaut) are actively writing the script for The Mimic, arguing about motivation and how much of each character’s backstory should be revealed to the audience. The whole thing smells like an undergrad’s notebook. The kind of smell you get when the PB&J they packed a week ago and forgot about breaches the Ziploc bag and leaks all over the first draft right before peer review.

The Mimic, as a concept, has a lot of promise. As a feature-length film, though, it ends up feeling like all flash and no smash. I wouldn’t mind spending more time with these characters because they’re genuinely fun and riff well off each other, but I wish we got a more distilled, cohesive version of what Mazziotti was trying to accomplish.

As of this writing, The Mimic is streaming for free on Tubi.


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Disney Executive Sues Company For $40 Million Over Blatant Discrimination

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published

The Disney Corporation has experienced a lot of upheaval so far this year. First, Bob Iger announced he was stepping aside. Then Josh D’Amaro taking his place was overshadowed by the huge promotion of Dana Walden from Head of Entertainment to Chief Creative Officer. Now, Disney is being sued by another top exec for racial discrimination.

The plaintiff is Jay Ong, Head of Disney Games Group. His job has been to oversee the production, marketing, and sales of games that fall under the Disney umbrella. This includes not only Disney IP, like the Toy Story games, but also Marvel and Star Wars games, such as Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, which was announced in December at the 2025 Game Awards. The Disney games are performing above expectations right now, but Ong has taken a huge pay cut in the form of bonuses and incentives.

Suspicious Pay Cuts Despite Stellar Performance

Disney Games Group oversees production, marketing, and sales, of games such as Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic

The trouble started in February 2025, when Vice President of HR Natalia Strauch told him in an evaluation meeting that he was a “poor cultural fit” for the company. He was also told he was getting a pay cut, losing roughly $40,000 in bonuses and $150,000 in incentives. His work was called “exceptional,” but he was told he was taking the cut anyway.

Meanwhile, he alleges in his suit, Strauch also contacted his executive coach behind his back, which is against company policy. He claims this contact led to the reductions in his bonus and incentives, and that Strauch was trying to “dig up dirt” on him.

The discrimination, Ong contests, is against Asian employees at Disney. He alleges that the meeting with Strauch, the contact with his executive coach, and the reduction in compensation were all intended to drive him out of the company by embarrassing him. His suit alleges “such treatment is part of a broader pattern at Disney whereby those of Asian descent – the few which Disney deigns to hire – are discriminated against.”

On this basis, Ong is suing Disney for $40 million.

Ong’s History With House Of Mouse

While Ong is certainly not poor, the fact is that he has overseen the release of several successful Disney games during his tenure. Before managing the entire Disney library of video games, he was head of Marvel games for a decade. Since even HR admitted that his performance in his position was “exceptional,” the House of Mouse is going to find themselves in serious trouble if it turns out they’re actually discriminating against Ong and other Asian executives. It is clear the company’s treatment of Ong was unfair, given that the video game department is the only segment of Disney that hasn’t suffered under its recent leadership struggles.

At this time, Ong still lists Disney as his current employer. However, Disney has seen a lot of its executives depart recently, and a discrimination suit might lead to the departure of yet another. This time, though, it’s someone who was actually succeeding at his job, leading to a net loss for the Magic Kingdom.


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