Jay Sherman hosts this half-hour
film preview show, reviewing new
movies and showing clips of upcoming films on TV's
The Critic. The show's set is a spartan one, featuring
Jay seated in a folding
director's chair where he waxes poetic on the nature of new films ("
It stinks!"). The show airs around dinner time on
Duke Phillips's television network live and then reruns sometime overnight just before
Jay's bedtime. Often the show will be interrupted by
Duke in order to progress the plot of the actual episode of
The Critic. Primarily the show exists to a) provide
Jay Sherman's character with a job core to the series and b) show those funny
movie parody clips such as
Speed Reading,
Honey, I Ate The Kids, and
Howard Stern's End.
Coming Attractions has a number of loyal fans including Jay's own parents, Franklin and Eleanore Sherman, and a number of stoned college kids plus some little kids who like putting lunchmeat on the screen over Jay's face. The show makes Jay New York's third popular film critic, an honor that earns his tickets to film festivals in Cannes and the Academy Awards. Duke often complains that the show's ratings are low ("If I were you, little squirrel, I'd be hoarding my nuts - winter's coming."), but he keeps the show on the air and does what he feels is fair to keep Jay happy and working.
Although The Critic was cancelled several years ago, dragging Coming Attractions down with it, the show-within-a-show returned when The Critic began appearing as Shockwave cartoons. The movie parodies struck more recent films, such as Titanic and Harry Potter, but the older parodies are still just as classic as they were in 1994. In fact, the final television episode of The Critic was a Coming Attractions tenth anniversary special that consisted primarily of the film parodies and little else.