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  EW Review: Merv gets his dueAlso: 'Greatest' just okay, '9 to 5' still worksBy Ken Tucker  (Entertainment Weekly) -- Let us now praise Merv Griffin, who doesn't get the old-school talk-show-host veneration that Johnny Carson received or the classy-act kudos that have sustained Dick Cavett's reputation. Griffin, now 80, presided over truly chatty chat shows on NBC and in syndication, in the evenings and afternoons, off and on from 1962 to 1986. He was a former singer and game-show host, and about as confrontational as Elmer Fudd. When the great Canadians of SCTV parodied Griffin, Rick Moranis embodied Merv as possessing a cat's-purr voice and a lurching alacrity ? Moranis captured the way Griffin would lean in with a sly smile and murmur his questions. Always cheerful (no Jack Paar tantrums or David Letterman sarcasm for Merv), he lobbed softballs his guests enjoyed fielding, eliciting quite a bit of surprisingly intimate info from a vast variety of people, two score of whom are represented on the three-disc Merv Griffin Show: 40 of the Most Interesting People of Our Time. Before talk shows became ancillary publicity machines for stars to plug movies and politicians to parrot their party lines, Merv simply booked people he found interesting or entertaining. He engages in serious conversations with Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon, and Rose Kennedy. He talks to actors ranging from Orson Welles to a Splash-era Tom Hanks (dig the white-boy Afro). A Barbarella-era, miniskirted Jane Fonda shimmers in. A prickly Richard Burton calmly calls the moon-landing astronauts ''idiots'' because they said nothing eloquent about their experience and declares that he has ''definite Communist leanings.'' (If an actor said that to Jon Stewart nowadays, it'd make front-page news and signal the end of the speaker's career -- my, how we've regressed.) Merv loved to let loose with a throaty, belly-jiggling laugh, so it's no surprise that one disc is devoted entirely to comedians: a 1965 George Carlin with short hair and a sharkskin suit; a 1986 Jerry Seinfeld rattling off his routine with shotgun precision; a 1966 Richard Pryor getting laughs from a pantomime bit, lighting the filtered end of a cigarette while distracted by an imaginary girl. Not all of this stuff ages as well, however. I'd been looking forward to seeing Totie Fields, a '60s comedian who's attained cult status as a pioneeringly ruthless female comic since her death in 1978, but the guest spot here finds her braying tired jokes about how expensive vacations are. There are no real DVD extras on The Merv Griffin Show; the ''bonus guests'' on each disc are just a few more interviews. Of these, the most piquant is a 1966 glimpse of Monti Rock III, a no-talent of the sort that doesn't exist now ? a parody of a long-haired rock star who was treated like a real one by Griffin and his baffled big-band-reared guests. Still, the host's ebullient generosity toward even a put-on artist is utterly charming. EW Grade: B+ 'The Greatest Game Ever Played'Reviewed by Jeff Labrecque The story of Francis Ouimet, the caddie who won the 1913 U.S. Open, is one of sports' great underdog tales. (The modern equivalent would be the Yankees' batboy hitting a World Series-winning home run). But Bill Paxton's directing strategy, to film golf like a Western, runs out of steam on the back nine. EXTRAS: Readers of Mark Frost's 2002 book will appreciate the author's historical commentary and a 25-minute TV interview with Ouimet from 1963. The modest champ shares still-sharp memories while walking the hallowed Brookline course. EW Grade: C- '9 to 5'Reviewed by Jennifer Armstrong Those wimps at The Office -- or even those software scammers at Office Space -- could learn something from 9 to 5, a gleefully antiestablishment comedy that became a mainstream blockbuster. In this perfectly plotted paean to overworked, underestimated, sexually harassed secretaries, the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin-Dolly Parton chemistry is divine, Dabney Coleman is at his smarmy best, and darn it if those boss-killing fantasy sequences haven't been lodged in our memories for 25 years. EXTRAS: A dream commentary track: Tomlin, Parton, and producer Bruce Gilbert fight (good-naturedly) for mic time with Fonda (''Look how I look at her boobs!'' she crows at the entrance of guess who), and chatter about researching real secretaries' experiences, Parton ''playing'' them the iconic theme song for the first time by tapping her fake nails, and their hopes for a sequel. The ''Nine @ 25'' doc covers some of the same ground, but it's fun to see the stars ? and Dolly's hair ? today and learn about the script's journey from an article about a woman who really tried to off her boss to a comedy classic. Plus, it almost lives up to its featurette's social-significance puffery (Fonda: ''There was a historic synchronicity between the film and a social movement that was ready to be born''). EW Grade: A Click Here 
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