Popular Culture
The Improv Presents Windows 95 for the Technically Challenged
What’s dumber than a Jim Carrey movie and not half as much fun? Try The Improv Presents Windows 95 for the Technically Challenged (GraphixZone). This disc is unbelievably stupid – on purpose, we suppose. The idea seems to be to teach Windows 95 to computer-phobes by couching every lesson in so much unfunny comedy that one quickly gets over any fear of the computer. It certainly succeeds; after five minutes of insipid humor, even a person who dreads the word ‘hard drive’ will be searching desperately for some technical clue, in an effort to get that section of the tutorial over and done with. It would have been nice to have the creators stop slightly shorter of idiocy, so that those of us who could stand to use a tutorial for Windows, but who are not scared stiff by anything intelligent, could learn something without being insulted. Still, there’s no denying that the program is amazingly unthreatening, and that (with some considerable time investment) it will teach Windows 95. But did the ‘technically challenged’ have to be so specifically targeted? The tone here is not appropriate for children, thinkers, or funny people, which excludes a large section of the Windows 95-using population. Sample joke: a Count Dracula ripoff gazes towards his (off-screen) crotch and makes faces as he declares that the Bride of Frankenstein is “just sewing on a button.” There’s several minutes of this torture before the first word comes about the Start menu – and that’s the high end of the wit contained in the program. Stupidity? With Windows 95 for the Technically Challenged, you’re soaking in it.
– December 1995
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