It Chapter Two (2019)

This Meeting of the Losers Club Has Officially Begun.

Two years later and we’re back!  And we’re not the only ones!  Although technically they waited 27, but I’m not gonna wait that long to write a review.  And it’s still October and Horrors are still thonning, and today’s movie qualifies.  This movie of course is It Chapter Two, based on a novel by Stephen King, written by Gary Dauberman, directed by Andy Muschietti, and starring Bill Skarsgard, Jessica Chastain, Sophia Lillis, James McAvoy, Jaeden Martell, Bill Hader, Finn Wolfhard, Isaiah Mustafa, Chosen Jacobs, Jay Ryan, Jeremy Ray Taylor, James Ransone, Jack Dylan Grazer, Andy Bean, and Wyatt Oleff.

27 years after the first movie, Pennywise (Skarsgard) has returned to Derry, Maine and is killing again.  And that means the Losers Club – Beverly (Chastain, Lillis), Bill (McAvoy, Martell), Richie (Hader, Wolfhard), Mike (Mustafa, Jacobs), Ben (Ryan, Taylor), Eddie (Ransone, Grazer), and Stanley (Bean, Oleff) – have a promise to keep: to return to Derry and finish what they started 27 years earlier.  But there’s a problem: most of them have been inexplicably forgetting everything about their time in Derry.  And another problem: Stan killed himself when Mike called him.  So not off to a great start…  But anyway, the rest of the Losers get together in Derry and must work together to overcome the otherworldly evil Clown.

I enjoyed It a great deal, and I also enjoyed It Two too…as well…  I suppose I would assume that I enjoyed the first one more, but this movie would be somewhat confusing without that movie first so it gets extra credit.  Also, just the idea of turning that book into 2 movies seems like such a daunting task and they pulled it off admirably, and trying to wrap everything up is also a challenge.  I had few issues as far as the story goes.  One of them was with the Native American ritual.  My first issue with it is that someone made a comment that the ritual was ridiculous.  Yeah?  It’s a ridiculous solution…for your problem with a shapeshifting ghost alien clown?  …But now that you mention it, you do have a point.  Why the hell would a Native American ritual affect an alien?  Another issue I had was with the way they beat Pennywise.  They essentially defeat him by bullying him.  They just mock him until he shrinks and then they rip his heart out.  So maybe they’re even worse than bullies.  I mean, their bully was a complete psychopath, but even he didn’t get much further than cutting the fat boy.  At least not until he came back as an adult.  The last issue I had with this movie is actually an issue with myself.  In the movie, they do a gag when someone busts through a door and does the “Here’s Johnny!” thing.  I am embarrassed to admit that I actually thought for far too long that this movie ripped off the Shining.

A lot of the visual stuff in this movie was very well executed.  Like all those fortune cookie monsters were terrible.  That’s what they were going for, so congratulations.  Also terrible was the way the Losers cut their hands to make their little pact.  All of their scars looked way too big and then when we saw it happen, it looked like they all cut far deeper than was necessary.  A little slice will do ya!  No need to get the hooked piece of glass and really dig into your hand with it like you’re trying to hit some tendons so you don’t have to use it anymore.  You’re making a promise, not trying to get discharged from the military.  Especially since most of the Losers were young boys that are going to really need those hands coming up in puberty times.  Another terrible thing was Stan’s spider transformation later on.  That could haunt the dreams of a lesser man.

My biggest problem with the cast of the movie is similar to one I had with the first movie: I can’t remember which kids are which.  In this movie, I can’t remember which kids are which and I also can’t remember which adult represented which kid.  Except for Beverly.  For some reason, I was always able to tell which one she was.  Otherwise, all the kids and adults were very good in the movie, and a lot of them really worked as adult versions of their kid counterparts.  Chastain was a fairly obvious choice to take over as Bev.  I feel like she was even dream cast in the part by most places before she was officially cast.  She did great in the role though.  I took some issues with the fact that she went back to her old house that was now occupied by an old lady and just took it upon herself to start destroying the old lady’s floorboards to find a poem, but the trailers already let me know that this old lady was Pennywise so she can get a pass on that.  I didn’t think McAvoy looked very much like his kid, but he was probably hired more for the acting.  But maybe he was just cast last minute when they realized they hadn’t cast a Bill yet.  I assume they do this sort of thing since in the movie he was the writer on a movie that they had started shooting before he had even written the ending yet.  I did wonder why Bill would fall for Pennywise’s Georgie trick as an adult though.  When he’d fall for it as a kid, it made more sense, but why are you as an adult seeing Georgie in a sewer and the same age he was 27 years earlier and you think, “Yup!  That’s gotta be the real Georgie!”  I also wanted to say that when Bill was talking to that kid on the skateboard right after that, I was expecting a Pet Semetary style clobbering by a big truck and was very disappointed when it didn’t happen.  Ransone was a pretty good adult version of Grazer, but I kept getting distracted by where I knew Grazer from until I realized he was the kid from Shazam.  Bill Hader was another one I thought was more cast for who he was than his resemblance to Finn Wolfhard, but it was okay because Hader was great.  He acted the bejesus out of his reaction to a character’s death in the end, and he was also a nice comic relief for the rest of the movie.  Also, there was a cool Stephen King cameo!  …That’s all I had to say about it…

It Chapter Two was probably technically not as good as its predecessor, but since they were both taken from one book, I would say it’s best to just put the two movies together and judge them as one, which means that It was a really fun horror movie that was way too long at like 5 and a half or 6 hours altogether.  The story was good, the visuals were great, it was scary-ish I suppose, and it was cast very well.  You probably already have, but if you haven’t, I recommend you go watch it.  And by it, I mean It.  It Chapter Two gets “For 27 years, I dreamt of you. I craved you… I’ve missed you” out of “I guess you could say that was long overdue.  …Get it?  ‘Cause we’re in a library?”

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Men in Black III (2012)

I Promised the Secrets of the Universe, Nothing More.

When I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman, I decided that I had the time and the energy to make the day into a double feature.  There were about four movies available at the time that I had any kind of interest in seeing.  Having one taken down at the request of my readers, I decided that I would choose the next one and that I’d just take the one that had gotten the best reviews.  It was fortunate for me that it was also the one that I wanted to see the most.  Being the third part in a series of movies that I have liked so far, as well as being the movie that seemed the most fun, it was an easy decision.  The movie I chose was Men in Black 3, written by Lowell Cunningham, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve, Mike Colter, Bill Hader, Will Arnett, David Rasche, Keone Young, and Nicole Scherzinger.

An intergalactic criminal named Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) is busted out of a prison on the moon by his girlfriend (Nicole Scherzinger).  He sets his intentions on killing an agent of the Men in Black, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), for shooting his arm off in 1969.  And, because he got that arm shot off in 1969 while trying to stop K from preventing his race of Boglodites from taking over the Earth, he decides he needs to go back in time and kill K.  The strange part is that he succeeds.  K’s partner, Agent J (Will Smith), wakes up to find that the space-time continuum has changed and K has been dead since 1969.  With a little help from the new Chief of the Men in Black, Agent O (Emma Thompson), he figures out what he must do to stop it from happening, so he too goes back to 1969 to stop him.  Of course, a time-travelling black man in 1969 gathers some attention, most notably from Agent K (Josh Brolin).  He must try to convince K that he’s telling the truth so that they can stop Boris and save the Earth.

Much as with the other movies in this series, I’m still charmed by Men in Black 3.  The story follows the same pattern that I remember from the other two movies, but adds interest and emotion to it with the time travel story.  All of the movies have been, at their core, a story of two guys trying to stop the destruction of the world.  The first one added the fish out of water part with J being brought into the Men in Black, the second one added the getting the gang back together thing with having to bring back K, and the third one adds time travel.  That adds for some decent emotion that they barely went for in the first movie and didn’t try for much in the second.  Not only is there the emotion involved in K’s temporary death, but something else that’s pretty sad happens near the end of the movie.  The problem with the thing at the end of the movie is that you can kind of see it coming.  It’s something that my roommate brought to my attention in the Avengers movie, but if they talk about something they’ve never really talked about before, seemingly out of nowhere, you know something’s up.  K defending the person that was being talked about cemented it in my mind, so when it happened, the shock was a little bit lessened.  But you don’t really come to a Men in Black movie for the emotional depth.  It’s more about the cool look and the humor, and both of those are well realized.  Every time J used the neuralizer on someone, the explanations he came up with afterwards were all pretty funny.  There was another point where J started drinking a little kid’s chocolate milk and the little kid said, “Mommy, the president is drinking my milk.”  That’s a solid joke, but it was so quiet I almost missed it.  J makes a joke about agents O and K, and I think you can figure what joke would be made there, but it was still a solid joke.  There were also two references for comedy that were a little obvious.  If you’d seen the other movies, you know that they often have eccentric celebrities on the screen in the background, implying that they’re aliens.  When I started the movie I knew that Lady GaGa would be one of them, and I was right.  Also, when they had Andy Warhol in it, I figured he’d be an easy target for an alien too.  I wasn’t entirely right, but I wasn’t entirely wrong either.

I liked almost all of the performances in this movie.  Will Smith is usually very charming and funny, and he’s also able to bring it with the emotional performance as well.  It’s no surprise that he’s able to do that in this movie, but it’s always a pleasure to watch him do it.  Tommy Lee Jones is also the perfect counterpoint to Will Smith, always able to be the consummate straight man.  He doesn’t bring it too hard with the emotional performances because that wouldn’t be right for the character, but he does have moments where you can see that it’s right under the surface, and it’s really well done.  I think the biggest surprise for me was Josh Brolin.  Not because I didn’t expect quality from him as I’ve seen him do both drama and touches of comedy before, but he does a fantastic impression of Tommy Lee Jones that deserves to be lauded.  I wasn’t really a fan of Michael Stuhlbarg in this movie though.  His character was kind of comic relief and never really worked for me.  Perhaps it was because he reminded me way too much of Justin Bartha’s character in Gigli.  Though their parts were small, I was also happy to see Will Arnett and Bill Hader in this movie, and both were pretty amusing in their small bits.

If you liked the other Men in Black movies, Men in Black 3 should be right up your alley.  It might even overcome those of you that didn’t like the other two.  It’s definitely a candidate for the best of the three, though perhaps the original still edges it out.  MiB3 is funny, interesting, and even has a few moments of emotion to get us more invested.  It still looks great and the greater majority of the performances remain fantastic.  I definitely recommend getting to the theater to watch this.  It’s worth your money.  Men in Black 3 gets “Sort of a surly, older gentleman.  Smiles like this…” out of “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

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Spaced (1999)

The Fuck-est Up-est

I purchased today’s review on DVD based entirely on the people involved with it, even though I knew very little about it beyond that.  I don’t have much experience with British television shows.  I don’t have a problem with them, I just haven’t seen very many of them.  But I decided to purchase the entire series (2 seasons, as we call it over in America) on DVD because I had heard it was enjoyable, and was the genesis of a couple of movies that I loved.  When I got the DVD’s, it took me quite some time to get around to watching them.  But when I saw they were on Netflix streaming, that sealed the deal.  So let’s hear my verdict on the TV show Spaced, created and written by Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson), directed by Edgar Wright, and starring Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson, Julia Deakin, Mark Heap, Nick Frost, Katy Carmichael, Ada the Dog, Anna Wilson-Jones, James Lance, Peter Serafinowicz, Michael Smiley, Bill Bailey, Clive Russell, Lucy Akhurst, Reece Shearsmith, with notable cameos by Olivia Williams and Ricky Gervais.

SERIES 1

The basic premise of the show is that two people, aspiring writer Daisy Steiner (Jessica Stevenson) and aspiring comic book artist Tim Bisley (Simon Pegg), have recently become homeless.  They become friends looking through the newspaper for somewhere to live until they eventually find a house that seems perfect, but is only accepting couples.  They develop a plan to pose as a couple in order to get the flat.  They meet with the landlady, Marsha Klein (Julia Deakin), and move in soon after.  They also meet the person living below them, brooding artist Brian Topp (Mark Heap).  When they finally get unpacked, Daisy decides to throw a party, but few people come.  Just Marsha, Brian, Daisy’s friend and fashionista Twist Morgan (Katy Carmichael), and Tim’s friend with aspirations of being in the Territorial Army Mike Watt (Nick Frost).  Also the paperboy.  Later, Daisy fails an interview with a women’s magazine by saying “Girl Power” and Brian gets nervous about going to to meet his former partner Vulva (David Williams).  Vulva acts like a dick to Brain, but Tim gets crazed on a combination of Resident Evil 2, Twiglets, and free boose, punches Vulva, and “rescues” everyone.  Daisy gets dumped by her boyfriend and cheers herself up by getting a dog named Colin (Ada the Dog), but Tim is horribly afraid of dogs.  Tim and Mike go paintballing, only to run into Duane Benzie (Peter Serafinowicz), the man that stole Tim’s girlfriend.  He gets his revenge by shooting Duane in the balls.  Later, Tim is forced to walk Colin and he’s abducted.  Daisy believes he did it on purpose, but he redeems himself by getting the group together for a rescue.  In later episodes, the group goes clubbing with Tim’s friend Tyres (Michael Smiley), then some trouble is stirred up when Tim’s ex wants him back, Daisy fears for him, Brian asks Twist out, Mike rejoins the Territorial Army, and Daisy finally starts writing again.

SERIES 2

Daisy uses the money she made from selling a couple of articles to go on a trip through Asia.  When she returns, Tim is still struggling to get over the pain caused by the release of The Phantom Menace.  Mike has been staying in Daisy’s room in her absence.  Later, Tim is fired from his job at the comics store for yelling at a kid that wants to buy Jar Jar merchandise.  He joins Daisy at the unemployment office to get some money.  Brian finds out that his relationship with Twist has made him happy and, thus, unable to paint.  Marsha’s daughter, Amber, runs away from home, and Mike fills her empty room.  Later, Tim and Mike have their chances of winning Robot Wars damaged by saboteurs, but they’re able to get their robot back on it’s wheels.  Tim is called by Damien Knox of Darkstar Comics, wanting to see his portfolio, but Daisy mistakenly puts a picture Tim drew of Knox saying that he’s “a massive wanker” in the portfolio.  With the help of Tyres, Mike and Tim break into Knox’s office, but the picture was already removed by his secretary, Sophie (Lucy Akhurst), who asks Tim on a date.  Later, Tim and Daisy have a night on the town, but run afoul of a group of ruffians, defeating them with a slow motion shootout with imaginary guns.  When Daisy’s birthday arrives, Sophie is unwittingly driving wedges into the group’s relationships.  Mike is jealous of how much time Tim is spending with someone else, Daisy is a little jealous of Sophie, Marsha thinks Tim is cheating on Daisy because he sees Tim and Sophie together, Brian and Twist break up, and even Colin is upset that Daisy is ignoring him so he goes to spend time with the old lady next door.  Over dinner, the truth comes out that Daisy and Tim were lying all along, and Marsha leaves feeling betrayed.  To tie it all up, Tim and Daisy must find Marsha and try to convince her to come back before she sells the house and leaves them all homeless.

What a surprise, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright did something that I thought was awesome.  Not to leave Jessica Hynes out of it, but this was my introduction to her.  I already had love for Simon, Edgar, and Nick Frost.  Now I guess I have to like all of the rest of these people as well.  This show is really the kind of show for me.  It’s funny, charming, and filled to the brim with references to things I love, from movies to video games and all other things popular culture, if you know to look for them.  The show isn’t what I would call uproariously funny.  It’s just not the type of comedy they were going for.  But it was charming all the way through, and certainly had it’s share of good laughs.  I was thinking about the idea they put out in the show that men can walk up to each other and start a slow motion shootout, and any man would start to play along.  I thought that was ridiculous for a second, but then I realized I would totally play along if it happened to me.  If there’s something negative I could say about the show, it would be that I may have missed some things because I’m not British, and that’s just downright racist of them.  I thought it was interesting that they had a lot of things they could get away with on English television that we definitely couldn’t over here.  They say “fuck” and “asshole” a couple of times, as well “cunt” and “twat”.  Hell, at one point Daisy is trying to get inspiration from magazines and one of them is one called “Huge Fat Cocks”.  They don’t let us get away with stuff like that in this fuckin’ twat of a cuntry.  There’s also a good amount of drug use in the show that wouldn’t fly over here, even though they never really made a big deal out of it on the show.  They smoked weed every now and then, and had an entire episode that was basically devoted to clubbing and ecstasy.  I feel like some of the jokes in that may have gone over my head since I know next to nothing of clubbing or drugs, but I feel I got the spirit of it.  Most of my enjoyment came from recognizing the nerdy things they referenced in the show.  They reference all sorts of things, like The Shining, Scooby Doo, Resident Evil, Star Wars, Robocop, the Matrix, and Star Trek.  They made a joke about Star Trek in the show that was made much funnier after the fact when Simon Pegg said that “Every odd numbered Star Trek film is shit”, not yet knowing that he would be in Star Trek number 11.  I also really liked their Fight Club joke when they were in the Robot Club, ’cause the first rule of Robot Club is you don’t talk about Robot Club.  The second rule of Robot Club is you don’t talk about … wait, I’ve got that wrong.  The second rule is “No Smoking”.

Edgar Wright also filmed the show in the cinematic style that he would later come to perfect, with fast cuts and interesting wipes from scene to scene.  The show’s zombie episode shows signs of Shaun of the Dead being in their minds, and they also use the joke between Pegg and Frost that was used in Shaun, the one where someone says that Frost is on the phone by saying “Your boyfriend’s on the phone” and he responds with “He’s not my boyfriend”, then picks up the phone and says “Hey babe.”

The performances in this show are easily the best part.  Everybody in the cast – both main and supporting – were enjoyable and funny.  Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes were not only the main characters, but the writers of the show, so their the ones that get the most credit for the show’s clever dialogue.  Nick Frost, not surprisingly, was the character I enjoyed the most.  He was all crazy gun nut all the time, especially when he was dual-wielding in the paintball match.  I tended to think Mark Heap’s character was pretty funny too, usually seemingly like he was barely restraining some form of psychosis.  He also introduced the show to Vulva, which lead to a lot of things I though were funny as they kind of lampooned the artsy fartsy stuff I hate by showing the crazy interpretive art of a man dressed like a woman yelling random things on a stage as a guy with a vacuum attached to him jumped around on stage.  That’s basically how I view all of that kind of art.  Julia Deakin made me laugh too.  The big joke about her was that she would drink and smoke semi-constantly, but they got a lot of mileage out of it.  Katy Carmichael’s character Twist was mainly a little stupid and a little bitchy, but she was funny when she was around.  She also had a moment I found really cute when she was trying to talk Tim into letting her take her makeup bag with them on their covert mission to rescue Colin.  My favorite character that wasn’t in the main cast was Michael Smiley as Tyres.  He had a super short attention span as a result of his overuse of ecstasy, and he would talk really fast and start raving whenever things around him made noise to a beat.  One of the things I found funniest in the series was over the credits where it showed him dancing in front of a crosswalk light that was beeping.  I was amused to see Peter Serafinowicz in the show, having already known him from Shaun of the Dead.  That guy’s pretty good at playing a douche nozzle.  I liked a couple of their cameos as well, mostly Olivia Williams playing the part of a cyclist Tim and Mike had hit with their car, an obvious reference to the Sixth Sense that Olivia Williams was actually in.  Ricky Gervais had a small bit part, but it was cool to see him too.

The DVD of the show was an excellent purchase, as I found out after I had fallen in love with the show and started checking out the extras.  There’s a lot of good stuff on these DVD’s.  Unfortunately for me, my disc two DVD would not work, but each disk had some good outtakes, and I love watching them.  If you’re a fan of commentaries (like I am) you can enjoy not only the original commentary track, but ones with other fans of the show like Kevin Smith, Diablo Cody, Matt Stone, Patton Oswalt, Bill Hader, and Quentin Tarantino.  On top of that, there’s a Q&A with the cast, and a feature-length documentary about Spaced that ties up a couple of loose ends left by the show not having a third series.

I seem to have gotten a little long-winded about the show, but I couldn’t help it.  This was a pretty great show.  It’s just the type of show for a nerdy guy like me.  Very funny, very charming, and with tons of references to other nerdy things I love.  Top that off with some great directing and fantastic performances, and this is a show I can fully recommend.  If you’d like to try it out, it’s available on Netflix streaming at the moment.  If you like it, buy it.  The only thing I regretted about my purchase is that my second disc isn’t functioning.  Either way, Spaced gets “It’s a subtle blend of lateral thinking and extreme violence” out of “You’re the best auntie I’ve ever had.”

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Hot Rod (2007)

The Movie Brave Enough to be Viciously Unfunny

This movie definitely came as a punishment for having the gall to do something creative and productive. My involvement with this movie started when my friend Robert reported to his brother Phil and the rest of my group that this movie was the funniest movie ever. He talked it up so much that my group met up to watch this movie. We were almost the only people in the theater, but it had been out for a bit so we didn’t think that was unusual. What we did think was unusual was the fact that we wanted to kill ourselves while watching it. Bring us up into the present and the first movie requested by one of my best friends, Phil, is this movie again. It makes me wonder if he thinks he’s in my will or something. Well, enough pussyfooting around the issue. This movie is Hot Rod, directed by Akiva Schaffer and starring Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Jorma Taccone, Ian McShane, Sissy Spacek, Will Arnett, and Chris Parnell.

Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) has tried to emulate his deceased father for his entire life by trying to be a stuntman. Problem is, he sucks at it. Every time he tries to jump something he crashes and injures himself. It’s partially due to his stupidity, but one could also blame his ramp builder Rico (Danny McBride) for his shoddy craftsmanship. Rod lives at home with his mom (Sissy Spacek) and his stepfather (Ian McShane), as well as his little half brother/team manager Kevin (Jorma Taccone). For nearly inexplicable reasons, Rod is constantly trying to beat his stepfather in a fist fight, but is never able. His stepfather has apparently had a heart condition for a long time and it is revealed to Rod that his step father doesn’t have long to live. Unless, of course, he’s able to accomplish the highly unlikely task of raising $50,000 for his heart transplant. A good portion of the rest of the movie is basically a really long montage of Rod preparing for a gigantic jump to make the money. There’s also a pretty typical love interest thing in there between Rod and Denise (Isla Fisher), but she has a boyfriend (Will Arnett). Kevin makes a video of Rod crashing a lot that makes Rod doubt his abilities, but also makes people interested in watching him jump. His team convinces him to go through with the jump, an AM radio station sponsor’s it, he fails the jump but makes the money, and gets Denise. At the end, he finally beats his stepfather in combat.

Expectations are a really important thing when it comes to movies. If you go in to see a move you’ve heard is awful and it turns out to be mediocre, you come out pleasantly surprised with positive memories in your brain. If you’ve heard that a movie is hilarious and you spend the entire movie waiting for a time when you will laugh, you will want to kill yourself. The best thing I can say about Hot Rod is that, this time, I went in knowing it was awful so it was nowhere near as painful as it was the first time. Is it good? Hell no! Is it funny? Not even remotely. But, I didn’t kill myself. Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.

Let’s talk story and laughs. …Okay, there aren’t any. The story is pretty typical and one I’m sure we’ve all seen in better movies before. Someone needs an operation that costs a certain amount of money, something comes along that will pay exactly the amount needed, everything works out. Also you have love interest, problem, resolution. And, just for good measure, throw in some of the old “guy with a passion for something, doubts himself, begins to believe in himself again”. All very typical. What could set that apart in a comedy is some good laughs. Should’ve told them that before they made the movie, I guess. The jokes in this movie span from trying to be funny but failing to epically unfunny. The greater majority of their jokes are slapstick jokes of people falling down a hill for about 5 minutes or so. This came right after – and subsequently ruined – one of the closest parts in the movie to amusing, when Rod gets angry and has to go to the woods to dance it out, doing a parody of Footloose. This is cute for a while, then they ruin it with slapstick humor again. And, if they’re not that, they’re strange jokes that I’m sure someone thought was humorous when they were writing it, but I just found pointless and annoying. Examples of this is when Rod rang a bell and they went around their group trying to imitate the tone with their voice. …Funny, right? Or how about when Rod and Frank were reconciling after a fight and they ended it with “Cool beans”, and then took that and cut it up so they were almost making a rap out of cool beans. I can’t really explain it, and I don’t want to. Rod also tends to be unable to keep his thoughts in his head and so he says most of them out loud. Also, for some reason, he tries to call upon the spirit of random animals before he attempts a jump. There was also a joke about the pronunciation of “whiskey” and “what” in the movie that you may remember from an episode of Family Guy when Stewie over-pronounces the “h” in Cool Whip. And yes, I did do the research. That episode of Family Guy came out a year before this movie. It was in the episode Barely Legal from 2006. I’m not saying that the makers of Hot Rod are unfunny people that copied Family Guy, I’m just saying they’re unfunny.

I feel like I can describe my thoughts about the performances in this movie in once sentence: “I normally like *blank*, but they did nothing to elevate this movie above crap.” That will pretty much cover it. Andy Samberg’s crew all have roughly the same cocky idiot persona in the movie. Danny McBride plays every other Danny McBride character minus the funny things to say, though he is probably the one that comes the closest to being funny. Isla Fisher does a fine job, but I admittedly mostly liked her because she’s cute. She pretty obviously wants Rod (pun intended), but he’d rather ruin it for most of the movie by being a cocky idiot. Will Arnett’s performance was interesting because he seemed to be the one person in the movie who realized the events of the movie were stupid and unfunny, so I was able to relate to him. Sissy Spacek was the mother in this movie, and the performance she put on when she had to confess to Rod that his father wasn’t actually a daredevil was way too good for this movie.

Beyond the somewhat enjoyable, 80’s rock soundtrack, there’s nothing in this movie that makes it worth watching. It takes a bunch of overused premises and mixes them in to a bunch of stupid slapstick jokes and non sequitars. I like almost every person that acted in this movie, but the movie was so bad that this didn’t matter. If you think America’s Funniest Home Videos is the funniest thing on television (as long as you think that solely because of the videos of people getting hit in the groin), then this may be a movie you’ll enjoy. Everyone else, I wouldn’t bother. And I would just like to say that you are all welcome for me lowering your expectations about this movie so you don’t have the same problem my friends and I had. I give Hot Rod “I said you look shitty” out of “I owe you a shot in the nuts.”

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