Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

I Think We Just Found a Transformer!

One could ask why they keep making these Transformers movies.  If one were to ask that, one would also have to ask why I never miss one.  But neither of these questions are without answers.  They keep making these movies because they make bank, and I keep watching them because they’re fun.  Really stupid fun, but fun nonetheless.  Let’s see if they can keep that streak alive as I review Transformers: Age of Extinction, written by Ehren Kruger, directed by Michael Bay, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Peter Cullen, Kelsey Grammer, Mark Ryan, Frank Welker, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, John Goodman, John DiMaggio, Ken Watanabe, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, Titus Welliver, and T.J. Miller.

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is a ridiculously-named struggling inventor/single parent out of Texas that comes across a beaten up old diesel truck that turns out to be the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen).  Having a Transformer in your midst has become quite a dangerous proposition as the head of an elite CIA unit named Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) has been tasked with hunting down the remaining Decepticons, but ever the over-achiever he has decided to hunt down Autobots while he’s at it, with the help of a Transformer bounty hunter named Lockdown (Mark Ryan).  Helping Optimus escape puts Cade, his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), and her boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor) on the lam as they work with Optimus to uncover a joint effort between the CIA and a robotics corporation called KSI to build their own Transformers.

They did it again!  They made another Transformers movie that is completely stupid and poorly-written, but fun enough to make me look forward to the next stupid mess.  Let us not fool ourselves into thinking these movies are anything they’re not.  They’re so dumb, but they jingle their explosive keys in front of your face enough that you might not even notice that most of the people in the movie can barely string a sentence together.  But I noticed!  I notice when people say things like, “My face is my warrant.”  I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I heard them say it, and if they’re going to continue making people say things like that, I’m going to revoke their ability to make their characters say words in their movies.  It’s not like they need them, or use them correctly for that matter.  When they’re allowed to use words, they’ll sometimes even create their own words to equally stupid effect.  Like “Transformium.”  Not since I heard a person utter the word “Unobtainium” in a movie had a word caused my nose to bleed in a movie theater.

And that’s just the dialogue!  Don’t think that the plot itself was seamless.  I mean, we can all get behind the fact that it was Transformers that brought about the end of the dinosaurs.  Except those stupid scientists that think it was an ice age or a meteor, but we all know what’s up.  One thing I didn’t understand is how Tessa’s boyfriend Shane knew that he was needed at the Yeager farm when the CIA showed up.  And if Optimus could repair himself completely by just driving by a clean diesel, then why would he be in such bad shape when Cade found him?  I can’t be on the freeway more than about a minute without seeing a diesel but Optimus couldn’t have repaired himself on his way up from Mexico?

But like I said, I don’t see these movies for the words attributed to it.  The only words that would interest me in looking through a script for this movie would be while looking through the pages to see “explodes.”  This movie won’t let you down for that.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll still get a rush out of watching Optimus Prime bust out a sword and go to town on some bad guys, and you won’t be let down watching Bumblebee throw a boat at some baddies either.  The only real problem I took with the action in the movie was with the Dinobots.  When they showed up, they were awesome, but they took so long to get to them!  They didn’t really show up until the last 20 minutes of the movie.  They were the main reason I was excited to see this movie!  I appreciate that they made good with them when they got around to them, but it was so much two and a half hours of foreplay is a little extreme.  Oh wait, I had one other problem.  It was the part where the rally car jumped out of the window of that building with the most ridiculously convenient ramp in history.  Two I-beams pointing out a window, conveniently the same distance apart as the wheels on said rally car and, the exact same distance from the window as a rally car can jump, an inexplicably created half-pipe for it to land in.

The performances were all what they needed to be in this movie, and you couldn’t really expect or need much more than what they offered.  I still resent the silliness of the name Cade Yeager.  And, as if the name Cade Yeager wasn’t silly enough, he constantly tried to prove he deserved that name with equally silly things to say.  My personal favorite was his plea to a fellow inventor played by Stanley Tucci.  He says, “I know you have a conscience because you’re an inventor, like me?”  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Are inventors notoriously conscientious?  Sure, some inventors gave us great things like the car and internet porn, but someone also invented terrible things like the atomic bomb and Kristen Stewart.  The fact that he was an inventor didn’t really work out that well either.  The movie expects me to believe that he’s up to the task of aiding in the repair of an alien robot but all he’s ever been able to do on his own is make a robot that can shoot a basketball into a hoop and a robot that can transport a beer 4 feet in 20 minutes.  They also never really bothered to explain how an inventor (a job typically reserved for people that look like the cast of Revenge of the Nerds) turned out to be ripped like Marky Mark Wahlberg.  Nicola Peltz was kind of a twat as his teenaged daughter, but she was probably only there as the occasional eye candy.  Her boyfriend was a piece of shit too.  What kind of boyfriend would say, “I like to be fresh when I’m making out with your daughter,” to his girlfriend’s dad?  Even a dad that was not overprotective would beat your ass for that.  I had a couple problems with the Transformers as well.  I enjoy that Bumblebee typically only speaks in movie quotes, but when he says, “Hey you guys,” at one point in the movie how could you not have chosen the clip of Sloth from Goonies to say that?  Fail, movie!  I also didn’t understand the character Drift at all.  Why does the Bugatti Veyron turn into a Japanese Samurai?  I don’t know much about cars, but the name Bugatti Veyron doesn’t sound Japanese to me.

No logical individual could go into Transformers: Age of Extinction expecting much more out of it than what the movie delivers.  Fairly pointless story and terrible dialogue, but with plenty enough things exploding to make you forget how stupid the movie is because you’re having fun.  Shut off your brain and enjoy.  An active brain won’t help you enjoy this movie at all.  Transformers: Age of Extinction gets “You gotta have faith, Prime.  Maybe not in who we are, but who we can be” out of “Sweetie, get my alien gun!”

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The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

Bah Weep Gragnah Weep Nini Bong!

A friend of mine named LaCharizard was once really excited about requesting movies for me to review, but I never really got around to any of them.  I think what kept me from fulfilling her request for today’s movie is that I was worried about it ruining my nostalgia.  I had been a big fan of this franchise when I was a child and didn’t want watching it in my adulthood to make me realize that it was actually a piece of shit as my ill-fated purchase of Bobby’s World on DVD had.  Should I rather not just allow myself to believe I liked it and never find out if I still would?  No!  Mainly because LaCharizard was alphabetically next on my list and this movie appealed to me more than her other requests … and because she’s named after my favorite Pokémon.  And that’s why I decided to watch The Transformers: The Movie, written by Ron Friedman, directed by Nelson Shin, and including the voices of Peter Cullen, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles, Robert Stack, Frank Welker, Lionel Stander, Chris Latta, Susan Blu, John Moschitta Jr., Scatman Crothers, Casey Kasem, and Corey Burton.

In the far distant futuristic year … 2005 … the giant robot Galactus rip-off named Unicron (Orson Welles) is roaming around the universe eating planets.  The evil transforming robots known as the Decepticons (lead by Megatron [Leonard Nimoy]) leads an ambush on the Autobot city called … Autobot City.  In the fight, Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack) gets off a signal to Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), who arrives to join the fight but is mortally wounded in the fight with Megatron.  After the Decepticon retreat, Optimus passes the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus, telling him that it will show them the light in their darkest hour.  After passing on the Matrix, Optimus passes on himself.  In deep space, Megatron is marooned by his second-in-command Starscream (Chris Latta), but is rescued by Unicron, who fixes him and turns him into Galvatron in exchange for the destruction of the Matrix.  Can the Autobots stop them?  CUE SHITTY 80’S MUSIC!

There!  My childhood is ruined!  Good work, LaCharizard!  I am totally gonna sick LaBlastoise on you!!  In truth, this was not a good movie but I don’t really feel as if my childhood is destroyed.  I think I knew this movie would be cheesy, and I was right.  Keeping my expectations low helped me to just watch this movie for the humor of it.  Not the intentional humor, mind you.  The best joke they could come up with was calling the Decepticons “Decepticreeps.”  Good one, bro.  I would’ve gone with Decepticunts, but then parents might have frowned on my choices.  The story of this movie is pretty dumb, but pretty ballsy as well.  They kill off so many Autobots in this movie, including Optimus Prime!  That takes balls.  I don’t really like it because Hot-Rod seemed like a tool and Rodimus Prime was Hasbro stealing my patented porn name, but it does take balls to kill your main hero early into your movie.  And it took even more balls for them to resist the temptation to slap that “You Got the Touch” over the scene when Optimus died.  Speaking of which…

This movie is the 80’s.  I thought the soundtrack was supplied by Ratt, and every other scene of music was a person using his Casio keyboard as a punching bag.  And what’s worse is that they really seemed to have no regard for the music that they chose to make sense or to sound appropriate for the situation where they were using it.  Look at Stan Bush’s classic song “The Touch,” as later famously covered by Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights.  That song was in this movie!  It was like a joke!  What does that song have to do with Optimus Prime transforming?!  I know the second line is “You got the power!” but what is he touching?  And then they use “Dare to Be Stupid” during a big battle with a robotic Mongol horde in a junkyard.  And they definitely did dare to be stupid, but it has nothing to do with the scene, and doesn’t even sound like appropriate music for a fight scene.  That being said, I do love some Weird Al.  I also feel like the animation of this movie doesn’t really hold up that well.  It’s okay, but even Saturday morning cartoons nowadays look way better than this movie.  And the sound mix of this movie never really seemed right.  First of all, it seems weird for the giant, planet-devouring robot to make chomping sounds when it absorbs a planet.  It should be Om Nom Nom or nothing!  And at other points in this movie, it seemed like they just plum forgot to put sound effects in, like the whole scene when Optimus was giving the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus.  Apparently, opening his chest and pulling a glowing orb out is completely silent.  Who knew?

One of the most impressive things about the cast of this movie is that it was one of the great Orson Welles’ final performances.  So Kudos to him.  The voice cast of the movie did a good job.  The only problem I had was with Frank Welker.  I like Frank Welker a lot, but that Wheelie character was annoying as hell.  Every time he had to speak, he had to rhyme.  And I had to sigh.  But there are plenty of problems with the characters.  First of all, Megatron.  He’s the biggest villain in the Transformers universe, surrounded by robots that turn into jets and diesels and dinosaurs and this guy … turns into a tiny pistol that is 1/10^th his size.  …And must be fired by one of his allies.  What could ever be lamer than that?  Oh wait … there’s an Autobot that turns into a microscope.  Okay, you win.  And of course, there are two Transformers that turn into cassette player boom boxes, just in case you forgot this was the 80’s.  Truth be told, I’ve always had a soft spot for Soundwave for some reason, but his transformation is inarguably lame.  Oh, if you did forget that this movie is in the 80’s, the kid in this movie rides a hoverboard.  He probably used to use a pink one like a bojo until he got stuck over a lake, ‘cause those things don’t work on water unless you’ve got power.  Also, the Decepticon Astrotrain turns into a train that looks awfully similar to Doc Brown’s train from Back to the Future 3.  And Astrotrain is stupid.  Not only because his name is stupid, but because the Decepticons were riding inside him fighting about who would take over with Megatron gone and he never thought to suggest the choice between them making him the leader or being jettisoned out of his ass into deep space.

The Transformers: The Movie might still be able to entertain children, but I even doubt that.  The story is pretty simple, but if they have any love for the Transformers going into it, they’ll probably be bummed out by how many of their favorite characters are killed off, only to be replaced by someone that would call himself Rodimus Prime with a straight face.  This movie is also horribly dated by the 80est of 80’s music that has ever 80’sed.  But, thankfully, I did not find that this movie was able to destroy my nostalgic love for the Transformers.  I just regarded it as a goofy movie that was fun to make fun of.  But there’s still not much reason to watch it.  The Transformers: The Movie gets “I’ve got better things to do tonight than die” out of “Did we have to let them detonate three-quarters of the ship?”

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Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2012 and 2013)

We’re in For a Show, Kid.

Today’s review is brought to you by Smodcast. Well, Kevin Smith and Smodcast are in no way paying me to write this review, but it probably wouldn’t have come to pass if it weren’t for Kevin Smith. I listen to numerous Kevin Smith podcasts, and I think I’ve heard him rave about today’s movies on a few different podcasts he’s taken part in. The movies are based on some comic books that meant a lot to Smith, but I had never read. I had attempted to read them, but I found them a little verbose and not as visually interesting as the comic books that I tend to go for. Then these movies came out, and Smith loved them. If I remember correctly, he stated that he is brought to tears by the retelling. After hearing him talk these movies up numerous times, I finally decided that they begged a rental. And that brings me to review Part One and Part Two of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, based on the comic books by Frank Miller, screenplay by Bob Goodman, directed by Jay Oliva, and starring the voices of Peter Weller, Michael Emerson, David Selby, Ariel Winter, Mark Valley, Wade Williams, Maria Canals Barrera, Robin Atkin Downes, Paget Brewster, Michael McKean, Gary Anthony Williams, Tress MacNeille, Grey DeLisle, Bruce Timm, Conan O’Brien, and Frank Welker.

Part One. The government has banned superheroes. Billionaire Bruce Wayne (Peter Weller) retires from crime fighting as the Batman. But, without the Batman, Police Commissioner James Gordon (David Selby) is left to fight a losing battle against the gangs of Gotham City. Harvey Dent (Wade Williams), having undergone surgery to repair his face, relapses and returns to crime. Bruce also relapses, succumbing to the gangs, Harvey’s reappearance, and the memory of his parents’ death, and returns to the cowl after saving the life of 13-year-old Carrie Kelley (Ariel Winter), who he starts training as his new Robin. But Batman’s return may have other consequences…

Part Two. Batman’s return brings the return of the Joker (Michael Emerson), who remained in a catatonic state in an asylum in Batman’s absence, his life having no purpose. Joker intends to make his big debut on a talk show interview, and Batman determines to stop him, even though he must get through Commissioner Gordon’s successor, Ellen Yindel (Maria Canals Barrera), to do so. But making such a public showing of the Batman’s return comes with another danger: the government may send Superman (Mark Valley), who works as a government operative now, to deal with the vigilante detective.

I was really happy with this movie. I knew that the comic books were well-written and entertaining, but I’m too easily bored by reading to make it through. Turning these into a movie was the perfect way to enjoy the story without any of that annoying reading stuff. And the story is definitely one that’s worth getting into your brain, either by reading or by watching. I start into the movie a little closed off because I don’t like seeing Batman retire, but I also understand the world that Miller creates that leads to Batman retiring. And then I like it even more when Batman comes back because of Two-Face. But if Two-Face no longer has two faces, doesn’t he have to change his name to Harvey Face or Scary Face? Plus, don’t they already have a villain that walks around with his face wrapped up like a mummy? Hush or something? I also thought it was cool that the movie shows us what it’s like to be an aging Batman, in the shadows planning his move against a group of criminals, and then you get to see a little bit of what it’s like to be one of the criminals, getting beaten down by the Batman, but not knowing where it’s coming from. But really, I feel like I was more excited to get to part two of the story. Part one does a lot of hinting at bigger things on the horizon. I was waiting to see what would happen with Superman, and I was waiting to see what would happen with the Joker. The relationship between the Joker and Batman has always been a fascinating one. I really liked Kevin’s Smith’s take on it in the comic book series Batman: Cacophony, and that one seems to take some ideas from Dark Knight Returns in things like the fact that the Joker is catatonic in a world without Batman and only comes back when Batman does, and Joker says something to that effect in Smith’s book. But the talk in Smith’s book was only a preamble to what happens further along in the timeline in this story, and it is an epic conclusion to their relationship to be sure. I also knew that part two would include a showdown between Batman and Superman, which I was very excited for. Mainly because I hate Superman. Such a goodie two-shoes son of a bitch. And not even a bright one! Why would he shove a train to a halt to save one blind man on the tracks when he could’ve just … I don’t know … picked him up and carried him off of the tracks instead of demolishing a train by shoving it to a stop? Fuckin’ douche…

I really don’t have a lot to say about the look of the movies. I wouldn’t say that I “liked” it, per se, but I do respect that they captured the look of the comics very well. I just wasn’t that big of a fan of the look of the comics. It works very well either way, but it’s not really my bag. I also like how the fights are realized in the movie. They’re very effective. It’s kind of like watching a UFC fight … in mud … between Batman and a mutant guy with spikey nipples … Also, I was a fan of that Bruno chick, or as I called her “Swastika Titties.” Swa-stick-ons? Swa-tit-kas? I don’t know, you work it out.

I found myself very conflicted by the voices in the movie. I liked them all, but I kept feeling myself missing the people that I had become more familiar with. Batman’s voice for me has pretty much always been Kevin Conroy from Batman: The Animated Series, which may have been one of the first times I heard him speak. Either that or Pete Holmes imitating Christian Bale. Those are my Batman voices. The same could be said for the Joker. No one does Joker like Mark Hamill. Peter Weller and Michael Emerson do good jobs, but my brain is so resistant to change that I will probably always shy away from any deviation.

If you’re anything like me, you should definitely go out and buy Parts One and Two of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It allows you to experience Frank Miller’s fantastic story of the aging Batman and his return to crime-fighting without all that tedious reading. They capture the comic book entirely, as best I can tell from my limited skimming of the graphic novels many years ago. Definitely worth buying for any comic book fans, Batman fans, and people who lack the attention span to read things. Of course, if that’s you, I doubt you made it to the end of this review. I wouldn’t have read it all, that’s for sure. Part Two is way better in my opinion because it has the fights with the Joker and Superman, but you kind of need Part One to set it all up. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns gets “It took years and cost a fortune. Luckily, I had both” out of “This isn’t a mud hole. It’s an operating table. And I’m the surgeon.”

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The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones (1988)

That’s Grass.  I Read About it in Ancient History.

Friendboss Josh requests the darndest things.  He requested today’s movie a while ago, but it felt like it was the most inappropriate time to review it immediately after I reviewed Magic Mike.  Today’s movie is a kids movie that answers a question I’m sure someone must’ve asked about what would happen if two of the most famous families in children’s cartoon history met, so suffice to say the movie won’t be banging it’s cock against my head as I write the review.  I don’t recall being that big of a fan of either of these two cartoons in my youth, nor do I really remember having seen this movie before today, so I get to go in fresh for my review of The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, written by Don Nelson and Arthur Alsberg, directed by Don Lusk, and starring the voices of George O’Hanlon, Henry Corden, Mel Blanc, Penny Singleton, Jean Vander Pyl, Julie McWhirter, Daws Butler, Janet Waldo, Jon Bauman, Hamilton Camp, Don Messick, John Stephenson, Brenda Vaccaro, and Frank Welker.

George Jetson (George O’Hanlon) is having trouble at work as his boss, Mr. Spacely (Mel Blanc), is finding all of his business ideas are being preempted by his rival, Cogswell (Daws Butler), but he finds it easier to blame George.  When George investigates, he finds out that his trusted computer R.U.D.I. (Don Messick) has been seduced by Cogswell’s computer, S.A.R.A. (Janet Waldo).  Thousands of years in the past, Wilma Flintstone (Jean Vander Pyl) and Betty Rubble (Julie McWhirter) are trying to convince their husbands, Fred (Henry Corden) and Barney (Mel Blanc), to take them on a nice vacation, but Fred gets it in his head to gamble his savings to make more money to take them on a nicer vacation, succeeding only to get him and Barney fired when their boss, Mr. Slate (John Stephenson), finds out that they skipped work.  Fred and Barney try to take their wives on a much cheaper camping trip instead, but they’re none too pleased.  It’s not made much better by the fact that George Jetson’s son, Elroy (Daws Butler), accidentally used his time machine to take his family back in time to the Flintstone’s era.  After a couple of mix ups, the Flintstones wind up in the future and the Jetsons are stuck in the past.  Then hilarity ensues.  Also, George’s daughter, Judy (Janet Waldo), spends most of the movie being a whiny bitch.

This movie was not fun times for me.  It felt like it was way too long even though it was only an hour and a half.  It just seemed like it was an easy idea, hastily thrown together.  I’m sure some people probably thought it would be an interesting idea to see what would happen if the two biggest families in Hanna-Barbera came together.  They were wrong.  They just took the idea and put in every possible combination, got the last drops of their ideas out, and ended it when they were spent.  First the Jetsons and the Flintstones meet in Bedrock.  Let’s have Fred try to use George’s futuristic stuff to help with Fred’s cornball idea to get his job back.  Out of ideas?  Alright, the Flintstones are in the future and the Jetsons are in the past.  Then they get famous and enjoy it for a bit, but then they don’t like it anymore.  Now we put both families in the future.  Gold!  Out of ideas.  Wrap it up quickly and put a price tag on this mamma jamma.  I don’t know if even kids would still find interest in this movie.  It’s mostly slapstick humor that I’m sure they’d be okay with, like people falling down and running into things, but I can’t imagine very many adults still finding this interesting.  What?  The Flintstones want to vacation to Honolurock?  Okay, you’ve won me over.  That’s just good writing right there.  They do have a couple of attempts at some funny wordplay, in their defense, that some parents might have liked.  They’re not funny, but they’re present.  There’s also a pretty good deal of humor in the movie that was even over my head, as I was only 4 when this movie originally came out, making some of their references fly right past me, so much so that I might not even have been aware they were trying.  I would say the biggest problem I had with the movie was that they shouldn’t have done it in the first place.  Putting the Jetsons and the Flintstones together only really serves to cement the idea that they were basically the same stories, just set thousands of years apart, and showing that there was not a lot of creativity in either one.  Another problem I had was with Judy’s whole story.  All she did in the entire movie was bitch and moan about how her rock star boyfriend left her for groupies.  Then she goes back in time and falls in love with his prehistoric equivalent, who then does the same thing to her.  If the prehistoric rocker was truly interested in you on a deeper level, he would’ve clubbed you over the head and raped you, as was their custom.  The time machine also became a source of irritation for me.  It would break whenever the plot needed it to.  I get that.  You need some reason for them to stick around when they don’t like it anymore so you can mine those comedy nuggets out of the situation, but it seriously broke like 20 times in the movie.  The worst one was the last time, when it broke just as the Jetsons had returned to the future and the Flintstones were ready to return to the past.  It was extra annoying because it broke and the Flintstones were talking about what they would do in the future, and then it just turned out their car had absorbed the time-travel juice (or whatever) so they went back anyway.  Why even bother having the machine break again if you were just going to make up some stupid solution a minute later?

I suppose I didn’t have any real problem with any of the voices in this movie.  They didn’t write it, so it’s not their fault.  They just came in and said the words that were written.  I would say that viewing the families through my adult eyes shows me that Fred Flintstone is a douchebag.  This mother fucker is always looking for a way to swindle someone, or use someone, or whatever it takes to be an asshole.  He’s about five minutes into meeting the oblivious George Jetson before he’s laughing to Barney about how he’s going to use George’s future technology, while acting like he’s his friend to get access to it.  Dick.  Also, Judy was a whiny bitch.  I would’ve asked that she be escorted out of the movie if I didn’t want to bang her so bad.  Was she over 18?  I’ll just believe that she was.  Also, why does Mr. Spacely have a Hitler moustache?  Seems like bad form to me.

The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones does not hold up as far as I’m concerned but, having never really been a fan, I also don’t know that I would have ever enjoyed the movie.  I’m sure kids will find it interesting enough as plenty of people fall down, but once you’re old enough to say the words, “To Hell with this crap,” I’m sure you’ve outgrown it.  After that time it’s just got a few sparse attempts at wordplay and some references I’ll have to run past my mom to understand.  The movie just wound up being a boring movie that enlightened me only to the fact that the Jetsons and the Flintstones are basically the same thing.  With as difficult as I’m sure this movie is to find, it’s not worth your time.  The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones gets “Yabba Dabba Don’t” out of “And they can’t kaputt it back together again!”

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Gremlins (1984)

I Make the Illogical Logical.

I don’t know what’s up with Fabio’s obsession with little green men movies recently.  The last movie I reviewed for him was Troll 2 which should have made me ban him from making requests forever, but when that review brought a lot of eyes to my site, I felt like I should give old Fabio another chance.  And sure, I guess you could say I’m to blame for his back to back little green men requests because I chose to do this movie first out of a large list of movies he requested of me, and it’s also true that none of the OTHER movies he requested have little green men in them, but … I lost my train of thought…  Anyways, I picked this movie because it seemed like more fun than the other movies he requested, and I also just found out that I have a very special connection to this movie as it came out exactly one year after I was born.  Will that translate into love for the movie?  Here’s my review of Gremlins, written by Chris Columbus, directed by Joe Dante, and starring Zach Galligan, Howie Mandel, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Corey Feldman, Frank Welker, Keye Luke, John Louie, Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Polly Holliday, and Judge Reinhold.

Inventor Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) visits a small antique store in Chinatown, looking to peddle his wares and possibly find a Christmas present for his son, Billy (Zach Galligan).  He fails to sell his inventions, but he does find something he wants to give to his son.  It’s a tiny, relentlessly adorable creature known as a Mogwai (voiced by Howie Mandel).  But Randall keeps his failure alive by failing to purchase the Mogwai because the shop’s owner, Mr. Wing (Keye Luke), refuses to sell it, saying that too much responsibility comes with owning a Mogwai.  Wing’s grandson (John Louie) gives it to Randall anyway, but warns him that there are three things you have to keep in mind when taking care of a Mogwai: they will die in direct sunlight, never get them wet, and never feed them after midnight.  He gives the Mogwai to Billy and they nickname him Gizmo.  And, since rules were set for the care of Gizmo, you know that it will not be long before they’re all broken.  When Billy accidentally gets the Mogwai wet, it doesn’t divide, it multiplies.  The 5 new Mogwai are much less well-behaved than Gizmo and one of them chews the wires of Billy’s clock.  Not knowing the time, he accidentally feeds the new 5 Mogwai after midnight, causing them to create cocoons and turn into the little green men that Fabio was waiting for.

I would say that Gremlins holds up as a cute movie, but not really a good one.  It’s not bad, but I never really found it that interesting.  It’s pretty much just a monster movie, but one that attempts for comedy that I never really noticed.  I suppose you could call it a dark comedy, but I’ve never really cared for dark comedies.  In the case of this movie, I found a couple of things funny, but mostly just felt like they may have been trying to do something funny but it wasn’t so I didn’t know if it was even supposed to be.  There were also a few parts that I found funny, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to.  Like Phoebe Cates’ story about why she hates Christmas because that’s when, in an attempt to surprise her and her family, her father tried to climb down the chimney, got stuck, and died.  Sure, that might not SOUND funny, but I just kept thinking, “Well, technically he DID surprise you, right?”  I also probably wasn’t supposed to find it funny when Judge Reinhold tried to hit on Phoebe Cates by saying that he has cable.  And she DIDN’T give him her vagina right then and there!  THAT’S FUCKIN’ CRAZY!!  The later portion of the movie is where it picks up the speed, but not really the quality.  Sure, it’s when the gremlins finally show up, but it’s also just a bunch of scenes of varying degrees of goofiness of the gremlins causing some minor mayhem.  The ending’s kind of a bummer as well.

I can’t say that I was impressed by any of the performances.  Zach Galligan didn’t impress me, and he was supposed to be our lead character.  There was even at least one point where he pissed me off because he’s supposed to be our hero in the movie, but this douche still intentionally puts water on Gizmo when it seemed to obviously cause it a great deal of pain.  The first time was a legitimate accident, but taking him to the scientist dude and doing it again to show it off was just a dick move.  I also thought his mom, played by Frances Lee McCain, looked like a potential psychopath.  Just something about her face.  It was not lessened when she brutalized three gremlins in her kitchen.  Polly Holliday was cartoonishly evil as Mrs. Deagle, coming off as a live action Cruella DeVille.  Phoebe Cates didn’t do much for me beyond her looks.  Speaking of which, Gizmo is ridiculously adorable.  It doesn’t necessarily hold up in most parts, but hand puppets and animatronics was all they really had at the time, so it was as good as it could be.

Gremlins was not able to reclaim its past glory with me.  I remember thinking it was great when I was much younger, but I don’t think I’ve really seen it in its entirety since then, only catching chunks of it or its sequel on TV occasionally.  Watching it today, none of the comedy works for me anymore, and then it’s just a pretty goofy monster movie.  The performances aren’t particularly great, but Gizmo is still cute as hell.  You’ve probably already seen the movie by now, and if you haven’t I feel like it’s a movie that everyone should have watched at least once, but it’s not the most entertaining thing you can find nowadays.  Worth one watch, but probably not a re-watch.  Gremlins gets “Bye Billy” out of “Get out of my kitchen!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Independence Day (1996)

Welcome to Earth!

The third part in this contest brings me to my guilty pleasure genre: disaster movies!  Disaster movies, if done well, are a combination of various different genres.  They’re mostly action based, they always attempt drama (they don’t always get there), and they’re generally science fiction.  Usually corny and dumb, but mostly lots of fun.  Today’s movie exemplifies the genre, at least in my mind.  If the movie doesn’t exemplify the genre, the director certainly does.  Almost every movie I can think of that this guy has done has been a disaster movie.  And I’ve actually liked the majority of them, dumb and cheesy though they may be.  And so, as the biggest and the most fun in the genre, and the movie that best exemplifies the genre for me, I had no choice but to give my favorite disaster movie to Independence Day, written by Dean Devlin, written and directed by Roland Emmerich, and starring Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Vivica A. Fox, Harry Connick Jr., Margaret Colin, Judd Hirsch, Harvey Fierstein, Robert Loggia, Mary McDonnell, Mae Whitman, James Rebhorn, Adam Baldwin, Brent Spiner, James Duval, and Frank Welker.

On July 2^nd, a signal appears in outer space, between the Earth and the moon.  Spirits are lifted temporarily when the giant curiosity slows down and stops before hitting Earth, but then it gets more curious when it “splits” into smaller pieces and enters the Earth’s atmosphere, first appearing as strange clouds that seem like they’re on fire, but changing to reveal that they are massive alien spaceships that then settle over the Earth’s major cities.  David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) discovers a transmission in the satellite signal that he first thinks is just going to go away, but soon realizes that it’s a countdown to an attack.  He collects his father, Julius (Judd Hirsch), and rushes to Washington to warn his ex-wife, Constance (Margaret Colin), who is the Communications Director at the White House.  With the president, Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman), they barely manage to escape.  Also going on, a drunken crop duster named Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) escapes with his broken family, Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) takes part in an aerial assault on the aliens that he alone survives, and we go to Area 51 where scientists like Dr. Brackish Okun (Brent Spiner) have been studying these aliens in secret since some of them crashed here in 1947.

Roland Emmerich has got to be one of the best directors in the big dumb action category.  The story is pretty basic alien invasion fare that’s been going down pretty much since movies were invented, but it does it so well and makes it so fun that I can’t help but love the thing.  How can you not get behind the heroes of the movie when these fuckin’ aliens come down here and get all rowdy for no reason, laying siege to the biggest cities in the world?  It’s the easy way to get the audience invested in the movie, and it works on me.  Of course, I don’t know how much the other countries of the world will be invested near the end.  I mean, they all get involved in taking down the aliens, but it was all America’s idea.  FUCK YEAH!  It’s certainly not the brightest of movies, but I doubt it was trying to be.  From what I’ve read, they spent 4 weeks working on the script and 13 months on the production.  They knew what they were doing.  But I’m not like most film critics.  A movie doesn’t have to have a message or intelligence or something important about it; it just needs to be entertaining.  That’s what entertainment is supposed to do.  And how could you say Independence Day wasn’t entertaining?!  It’s impossible!  It’s at least impossible to finish that sentence before I slap you in the mouth.  As corny as it is, how can you not get amped by the “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!” speech?  Watching it again almost inspired me to drive to the airport, steal a jet, and fly it up the butthole of an alien spacecraft.  And the ending is entirely satisfying.  Obviously, there are stupid things that happen in this movie, but none so stupid that they ruin the experience.  I would say it was probably in bad taste for the president to joke that he was in bed with a young brunette to his wife.  Not because adultery is bad (he is the president, what do you expect?), but because the young brunette was his nine year old daughter.  I don’t get behind the idea that the super advanced aliens wearing the biomechanical armor can be knocked unconscious for several hours by one punch from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  Probably not as much as I wouldn’t get behind the idea of letting the drunken guy who can’t even formulate the sentence, “I’m a pilot.  I can fly,” without stumbling into the driver’s seat of a jet fighter.  Also, early on in the movie, it’s a little on the nose to have one of the scientists playing the R.E.M. song “End of the World”.

The performances did exactly what they were supposed to in this movie.  You probably couldn’t say that any of them impressed, but they all performed adequately.  It’s kind of hard to say who the main character in this movie is though because they have about 4 main characters in separate stories that come together at the end.  You have Will Smith’s story, Bill Pullman’s story, Jeff Goldblum’s story, and Randy Quaid’s story.  Will Smith was just becoming a superstar around this point, but he show’s what makes him a superstar in this movie.  Both charming and funny in his role, he makes for a very likeable character.  I had problems with other people in his story though.  First, Vivica A. Fox.  She’s pretty and dances in a bikini at one point, but I had already gotten fairly mad at her for her reaction to Smith getting called to the base when the aliens showed up.  Bitch, you want to marry a guy that’s in the military!  What do you think’s going to happen when a threat to America shows up?  Also, Harry Connick Jr. was usually really annoying, definitely not funny, and possibly gay.  Something about the way he kept calling Will Smith “Big Daddy” – in a post BioShock world – seems gay to me.  Pullman was strange to me in this movie.  He didn’t do a bad job, but he’s got this smug raspiness to every line delivery, making ever sentence end with a smug sounding “uh”.  His wife also made me mad because she was so naïve that, when Vivica A. Fox said that she was “a dancer”, this bitch automatically goes to ballet.  Yeah, ‘cause that’s a common occupation in America.  Also, his daughter was Mae Whitman, who was in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  That’s all I have to say about her.  Goldblum acted just like Goldblum, but he was good at it.  His dad was a little weird.  I don’t know if this is how Judd Hirsch always acts in movies, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Jackie Mason was unavailable.  Quaid plays a good drunk, but I hated pretty much everyone in his family.  His younger son was a pussy and his daughter was a whore.  Well, she never had sex with anyone in the movie, but she did fall in love with and try to have sex with about three different guys through the course of the movie, and usually within 5 minutes of meeting them.  I also assume that James Duval (who played Miguel Casse, the oldest son) never really got famous because the world already has one Keanu Reeves and doesn’t require another.

Independence Day still stands up as the shining example of how to get past the limitations of your story with fantastic special effects, spectacle, and all around fun factor.  Even after all these years, it still stands up as the most fun disaster movie that I was able to think of.  It’s what Roland Emmerich does best.  I probably don’t need to recommend this movie as I have a hard time believing that anyone has managed to not see it by the point in their life where they could be reading this.  If you haven’t, do it.  Independence Day gets “You Don’t Actually Think They Spend $20,000 on a Hammer, $30,000 on a Toilet Seat, Do You?” out of “Yes yes.  Without the ‘oops’.”

Congratulations goes to my sister, Katie, for not only guessing my favorite disaster movie, but also guessing my runner up disaster movie, Armageddon.  That just proves that she’s Country Strong.

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Chipmunk Adventure (1987)

David, Are You Drunk?

I had actually found this movie for the purpose of reviewing many months before it was requested of me.  And when it was actually requested of me, I was very excited.  This movie was a staple in my childhood.  I don’t really remember being that huge of a fan of the characters that star in this movie, but I can only assume that I was.  Whether I was or not, I distinctly remember loving this movie in my childhood.  But watching this kind of movie is dangerous as it risks ruining a fond childhood memory.  Though it has not yet done it in the course of my reviews, it’s happened before with things like Bobby’s World.  I used to love that show when I was a kid, but when I purchased a DVD of it in adulthood, I found it extremely painful to sit through.  I hope that my Friendboss Josh has not caused another Bobby’s World situation today.  We’ll find out in my review of The Chipmunk Adventure, written by Ross Bagdasarian Jr. and Janice Karman, directed by Janice Karman, and starring the voices of Ross Bagdasarian Jr., Janice Karman, Susan Tyrrell, Anthony De Longis, Dody Goodman, Frank Welker, Ken Sansom, and Nancy Cartwright.

David Seville (Ross Bagdasarian Jr.) is leaving to Europe on a business trip and leaving his … sons? … the Chipmunks – Alvin (Bagdasarian), Simon (Bagdasarian), and Theordore (Janice Karman) – in the care of Ms. Miller (Dody Goodman).  A little later, Alvin is playing an arcade game version of Around the World in Thirty Days against Brittany (Karman), the leader of the Chipettes – with Jeanette (Karman) and Eleanor (Karman).  The game starts an argument between Alvin and Brittany about who would actually be faster in a race around the world.  Coincidentally, two diamond smugglers named Claudia (Susan Tyrrell) and Klaus Vorstein (Anthony De Longis) are sitting in the same restaurant discussing their need for inconspicuous people to go around the world and make their diamond drops in various places.  They tell the chipmunks that they are just two eccentric billionaires that would like to give them the opportunity to actually hold a race.  Each team will follow a separate route and drop off a doll that is made in their own likeness, picking up a doll with the likeness of the opposing team.  The winner of the race will receive $100,000.  After tricking Miss Miller, the chipmunks set off on their adventure to unwittingly deliver blood diamonds around the globe.  It probably won’t go smoothly for either team, but I’m sure they’ll overcome … with the power of music!

Buckle in, people.  I’ve got a lot to say about this movie and the concept behind it.  That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie because I did.  I can’t say for sure if I liked it more than I should have given my own predisposition towards liking it, but I was still very fond of the movie.  I grant that it’s definitely a children’s movie, but I think it’s still enjoyable.  The story can’t really be called the most creative thing because the bulk of it can be said to be based on Around the World in 80 Days, and the story that gets the Chipmunks involved in that is a little impractical.  As crazy as these two criminals may have been, it just does not seem like the brightest of ideas to hand millions of dollars in diamonds and cash to six bickering children.  And even if it was a good idea, how the hell did these criminals get all of this set up in what seemed to be a matter of 12 hours?  They had set up detailed routes, two hot air balloons, hand-crafted dolls in the likeness of the two separate teams filled with diamonds and cash, and just as elaborate methods of making the drop which involve things like a robotic sombrero that switches the dolls and things built into ancient Mayan temples.  If they had the time to set all of this crap up, I’m sure they’re ingenious enough to make the drops themselves.  Well, they’ll get what’s coming to them in the end.  Of course, though the two bad guys acted completely evil, I was never fully sure what they were doing that was illegal in the first place.  It’s not illegal to sell diamonds as far as I know, and I was given no information to lead me to believe that the diamonds were acquired in a dishonest fashion.  Maybe they don’t get into that kind of thing in a kid’s movie.  There was also a part in the movie where the Chipmunks were captured by cannibals and Theodore was made their God.  They eventually decided they were going to sacrifice the three of them, which just made me mad that Pirates of the Caribbean so clearly ripped this idea off from this movie.  Hey, Loni!  The look of the movie was also pretty good.  The backgrounds were very pretty and usually very colorful and the animation was over the top, but appropriate.  I felt it wasn’t always realistic, like when they went to Mexico and the place was clean and there wasn’t a donkey show in sight.

One thing that amused me about this movie was that almost every predicament that the two teams got themselves into could be solved with a song and dance routine.  One such occasion was when the Chipettes had been captured by a young Arabian prince.  They found the dolls they needed in a room with snakes all over the place as guards.  They turned to each other and said, “How do we get our dolls back?” to which I replied, “Duh!  With a song and dance number!”  And it turns out I was right!  The good thing about them solving every problem with a song and dance routine was that the songs were really catchy and I enjoyed every one of them.  I especially liked the song they sang when they met up at one point and decided to see who could “out rock” the other by singing a song called The Girls and Boys of Rock and Roll.  When I was trying to remember this movie before I rewatched it, this was the moment I remembered the most clearly.  I really liked the song, but it occurred to me that, if they indeed intended to see who was able to out rock the other team, it may have been a good decision to have an audience present.  Neither team is going to be impartial enough to give it to their opponent, so you really didn’t solve anything, did you?

One major question I had about this movie will most likely never be answered in any of the movies: When are these chipmunks going to bang it out already?  They seem to me to be clearly designed to be carbon copies of each other with different genitalia, so it just seems inevitable.  But then I started thinking: What would happen if these chipmunks got together?  My belief is that Alvin and Brittany would be furiously on-again, off-again in their relationship, their egos being far too big to stick around with the other for too long.  They would probably remarry each other 27 times before they finally just killed each other.  Simon and Jeanette would work out perfectly together, and their relationship would probably give themselves the time and the intelligence to cure some major disease.  Unfortunately, I don’t see a good future in store for Theodore and Eleanor.  Sure, they’d get along great, and probably love each other very much.  The problem would be that they would still love each other no matter what they looked like, and they both love eating so much that they would become morbidly obese, and then just become morbid (dead).  Of course, they could just get lucky and lose a foot to the diabetes.

The characters in the movie are pretty one dimensional, but it’s what we expect.  I think you can also get a bit of a sign of the times from this.  You see, Simon is the intelligent one in the Chipmunks, and he’s usually right about everything he says.  When he tells the Chipettes that they shouldn’t head in a certain direction because he read that there was a hurricane coming, he was right.  The sign of the times from this is that the smart one of the Chipettes never really seemed that intelligent, and in this case had to ask Simon his opinion on which direction they should go because, though she’s smart amongst the other ladies, she’s still inferior to the man.  I can get behind the idea of them being too stubborn to change direction, and even to think that Simon would tell them something to make them go in the wrong direction, but when you’ve been told a hurricane is in that direction and you’re flying directly towards thundering black clouds, maybe you get it through your thick skull.  It was also funny to me that the two bad henchmen in the movie were a black dude and a Mexican dude.  Granted, the two main villains were white, or at least white-ish in the case of the guy.  I felt like the villains hammed it up a little much, but I suppose that’s not atypical for a cartoon.  But why did Miss Miller look like Cruella DeVille if she really let herself go?  She was a perfectly nice lady.  And if Eleanor was the Theodore of the Chipettes, why was she only slightly chubby?  Just hate fatties, do ya movie?!  I caught myself criticizing something stupid at one point when I started asking why the baby penguin was wearing a locket around it’s neck with a picture of it’s parents.  Since it was just an animal, I assumed that the people that took the baby penguin put that around it’s neck to torment it, which is just a dick move.  Later, when I saw the scenes of the baby penguin in it’s crib in the igloo it lived in with it’s parents, I began to realize the problem in my logic with complaining about anthropomorphizing animals in a movie about talking chipmunks.

Sure, I had a lot to say about The Chipmunk Adventures, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the trip down memory lane.  The story was fairly basic and there were plenty of things that didn’t make sense, but the songs that can solve any problem are so catchy that I didn’t care.  The characters are all fairly one dimensional and have nothing resembling a character arc, but you would only be looking for that if you for some reason were watching this and completely unaware of the fact that you were watching a kid’s movie.  I found the movie still holds up as completely enjoyable, and those of you with kids will have even more reason to watch it.  I don’t really know where you’ll find a copy of this, but I’m sure you can get a DVD somewhere.  The Chipmunk Adventure gets “Well, somebody has to win the race” out of “That’s enough, you guys!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (1992)

Gee, Plucky, I Guess You Didn’t Get Your Wish

When I reviewed A Goofy Movie, my interest was sparked to watch another movie with a similar concept that I enjoyed in my youth.  Both are animated movies revolving around how the characters spent their summer vacation.  Both are also based on younger versions of famous animated characters, with A Goofy Movie coming from famous Disney characters and today’s movie from famous Warner Brothers characters.  And both movie have me going in fearing the destruction of a fond childhood memory.  But when I went to find this one, I found a DVD of it to be extremely difficult to come across … mainly because an official DVD doesn’t exist.  Well, I found a copy of it anyway, so let’s get into my review of Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, a direct-to-video movie written by Paul Dini, Nicholas Hollander, Tom Ruegger, and Sherri Stoner, directed by Rich Arons, and starring the vocal talents of Charlie Adler, Tress MacNeille, Joe Alaskey, Don Messick, Cree Summer, Kath Soucie, Gail Matthius, Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Candi Milo, Jonathan Winters, Edie McClurg, Sorrell Booke, and Frank Welker.

All of the once famous Tiny Toon kids have just been released from Acme University and allowed to set off on their (mostly) separate adventures.  Buster (Charlie Adler) and Babs (Tress MacNeille) Bunny (no relation, so it’s okay if they fuck) engage in a water pistol war that eventually escalates to them flooding the town of Acme Acres and leaving themselves to float downstream on a boat with a dog named Byron Basset (Frank Welker).  They come across opossums that try to eat them, a family of alligators that want to marry Buster … and then eat them, and a river boat that wants them to entertain the guests … before they eat them.  Plucky Duck (Joe Alaskey) manages to hitch a ride with his friend Hampton J. Pig (Don Messick) and his family – Wade (Jonathan Winters), Winnie (Edie McClurg), and Uncle Stinky – on their trip to HappyWorldLand.  Fowlmouth (Rob Paulsen) finally gets Shirley the Loon (Gail Matthius) to agree to go to a movie with him, but he’s promptly kicked out for being a jerk.  Fifi Le Fume (Kath Soucie) is obsessed with a movie star named Johnny Pew and is trying to get his autograph.  Dizzy Devil (Maurice LaMarche) is sad because he can’t spin because he’s shedding and would be naked if he did.  Just live free, man!  Also, Elmyra Duff (Cree Summer) is trying to find a “kitty”.

I could not bring myself to type that this movie “holds up” to the memory I had of it in my childhood.  I didn’t hate it, but the movie was clearly made for someone to enjoy at a much younger age … mostly.  I’ll come back to that.  The humor of this movie is pretty much all the slapstick stuff that you should’ve stopped thinking was funny at about 13.  I actually saw a review on Rotten Tomatoes that called this movie “laugh-out-loud” and, best I could tell, the writer was not 9 years old and pounding his review out on his very first LeapPad.  I only read what was readily available on the screen for fear that pressing ‘more’ and reading it in it’s entirety might turn my brain to mush and have it leak out my ears.  It wasn’t a real critic, however.  None of them actually reviewed this movie.  And that is exactly why you should never listen to the reviews of the masses: they tend to be really stupid.  Getting back to what a professional reviewer thought, the movie was still pretty charming, but nowhere near funny.  One part in the movie was able to inspire me to laugh.  It was when Elmyra was driving with her parents through a zoo safari and decided she wanted to jump out of the car to get a “kitty”, herein referred to as a Cheetah.  The part that made me laugh was the person over the loudspeaker saying “May I repeat (so that Warner Brothers won’t get sued if anyone actually does this): Do not get out of the car.”  The rest of the comedy was mainly just slapstick.  They had a few moments that seemed to be meant for adults, like the parts with celebrity appearances that the children watching this would not recognize (such as Jay Leno, David Letterman, Johnny Carson, Rosanne Barr, etc.)  The problem with this was that it was also not funny.  They were just kind of there, as if you were watching the bastard child of Looney Tunes and The Critic that had a birth defect that destroyed it’s sense of humor.  There’s even a joke where Buster compares Babs to Maury Amsterdam.  This joke is so not meant for children that I’m 28 and I have no idea who that is.  At one point, Elmyra actually uses the word “capricious”.  I know ADULTS who don’t know what that word means!  They do a couple of fourth wall breaking jokes that I found cute, like when Babs shot the screen with her water pistol and the hand of the “cameraman” came up to wipe it off, but I certainly wouldn’t call that funny.  There were a couple of songs in the movie as well, but none of them nearly as good as A Goofy Movie’s songs were.  I enjoyed the song that opened it, but mainly because it was a setup exposition that reminded you of the one or two personality traits that were awarded to each character, which was a necessary refresher for me, 20 years removed from my affections for Tiny Toons. They also have a song, once they arrive at HappyWorldLand, that seems to be a “Fuck You” to Disneyland as it basically paints the Disney-esque park to be run by greedy, money hungry jerks, which is weird because this would’ve been right around the time that Warner Brothers jumped on board to Magic Mountain.  But they probably did it for much more wholesome reasons.

Can you call characters a ripoff if the company making the cartoon is the owner of the ripped off characters?  Probably.  The entire premise of these Tiny Toons is confusing to my mind, now so bitter and beaten down by life that I would actually analyze them.  They’re like children versions of the Warner Brothers cartoons, but not really because those ‘toons are still in the show.  They’re not their children either, so I don’t really know what they are.  When I was 13, I wrote a book about the children of the X-Men that I sent to Marvel, got rejected (because the book was probably pretty shitty), and later changed the characters I created just enough to turn them into my own comic book … that was also pretty shitty.  So, basically, this show’s premise is as creative as something I came up with when I was 13.  Buster was kind of a dick, but he was the cool lazy bad boy type that I probably wanted to be like when I was a kid, except for one part: his relationship with Babs.  Babs seemed pretty intent on getting after Buster’s dick for most of the movie, but he was having none of it.  I don’t know how old these characters were supposed to be, but that relationship is probably something I don’t want to see too much of.  I felt kind of bad for Plucky in this movie, but mainly because his side of the story was basically a 30 minute “Fuck You” to him.  All he wants to do is go to HappyWorldLand, but the movie does everything it can to ruin that for him.  First, his dick anus of a friend, Hampton, sees him basically begging to go along with his family on this trip and doesn’t think to ask.  I thought, at first, that Plucky’s parents might have taken issue with it, but they’re never seen and seem unconcerned with their child going missing for a few months so one can assume his parents can go to Hell.  I don’t know why he was so intent on going along with Hampton in the first place because his numerous attempts to get his family to stop on their road trip meant that he (on foot) had to get out ahead of them and set up some elaborate “Stop Here” setup to try to get into their car.  If you can run faster than their car, you should just go on foot.  Plus, the trip was horrible for Plucky, since Hampton’s family was as neglecting to Plucky as his own family probably is.  He didn’t get to eat, they didn’t let him get a drink of water from a fountain, they picked up a murderous hitchhiker and sat him down next to Plucky.  When they finally got to HappyWorldLand, Hampton’s stupid family was content in going around the perimeter of the park once in the monorail before heading home, further shitting on Plucky’s head.  I also found a few annoyances with the Fifi La Fume character, and not just because she was just a female version of Pepe Le Pew with no other differences in character than their genitalia.  It’s obvious to me (as someone who speaks French … kinda) that this character has no concept whatsoever of the French language.  I can’t really remember any examples right now, but I put it in my notes so it must be true.  Also, the introduction to the character shows pretty clearly that she (as a skunk) stinks, but later (in a crowded movie theater) they completely forget that character trait because they don’t presently have a “joke” about it.

Do you think there’s a chance I’ve written more about this movie than any other “critic” has?  I realize that I said a lot of things about the movie that would lead almost anyone to believe that I hated it, but that’s not really the case.  It’s flawed, to be sure, but it’s still somewhat charming, and I imagine kids will probably love it.  It just doesn’t hold a lot for adults.  Making fun of it does, however, so I decided to do that instead.  It’s not funny, but the story is interesting enough and I doubt any parents forced to sit down with their kids and watch it will hate life for doing so.  I recently had to sit through a few episodes of Barney with the child of my friend, and I will watch this movie over that any day of the week.  Plus, I don’t know how your kids would get you to sit down and watch this movie as it’s incredibly hard to find, so you’re probably safe from having to find out if you can take it.  Either way it’s a cute movie and I’d probably buy it if it ever comes out on DVD.  Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation gets “I think the left front tire is a little low” out of “I’m gonna go on every ride ’til I barf twice!”

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A Goofy Movie (1995)

It’s Only Powerline, Dad, The Biggest Rock Star on the Planet

Today’s review request sat my butt down in the Delgadoian and sent me back to my childhood.  Oh wait, I mean DeLorean.  How could I have made such a mistake?  Either way, this movie is a cartoon from my childhood that I’ve always been super fond of.  So much so that it lead me to purchase it the first time I saw it on DVD.  But then I never watched it.  There have been far too many things from my childhood that have been smashed by watching them in adulthood, and I didn’t want this to become one of those things.  But when my friend Christian posted a video to Facebook of two of the songs from this movie, it lead to it becoming a review request.  There’s a very real chance that Christian may have just shattered a beloved childhood memory of mine.  We’ll see, I guess, in my review of A Goofy Movie, written by Chris Matheson, Jymn Magon, and Brian Pimental, directed by Kevin Lima, and starring the voices of Jason Marsden, Aaron Lohr, Bill Farmer, Kellie Martin, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen, Pauly Shore, Jenna von Oy, Frank Welker, Wallace Shawn, Pat Buttram, Joey Lawrence, and Julie Brown.

Max Goof (Jason Marsden speaking, Aaron Lohr singing) is trying to make it through high school.  The combination of the clumsiness he’s inherited from his father, Goofy … Goof, I guess (Bill Farmer), and his own teen angst makes it kind of difficult.  His mega-crush on schoolmate Roxanne (Kellie Martin) doesn’t help things.  On the last day of school before summer Max, along with his friends Pete Junior, or PJ (Rob Paulsen), and Robert “Bobby” Zimmeruski (Pauly Shore), stage an elaborate concert, in tribute to everyone’s favorite “rock star” Powerline (Tevin Campbell), to interrupt an announcement by Principal Mazur (Wallace Shawn), with Max as Powerline.  The concert has the desired effect of making Max instantly popular and making Roxanne talk to him, but he also gets in trouble for it.  Worth it!  Max now has a date with Roxanne to watch the Powerline concert.  Unfortunately, the combination of the phone call from the principal and some bad advice from Goofy’s friend Pete (Jim Cummings) lead Goofy to think his son is in danger of going down a trouble-making path that will eventually lead him to the electric chair.  Goofy’s response is to take Max (against his will) on a trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho, on a family fishing vacation the likes of which Goofy himself went on with his father.  Max must tell Roxanne that he can’t go to his date with her because he’s been shanghaied and, not wanting to disappoint her, he fabricates a story about going across the country to dance onstage with Powerline.  Roxanne is now really excited to have Max wave to her from the stage, and Max is now in really deep shit.  Can he hijack his dad’s roadtrip in order to somehow get onstage and get the girl, and what will happen to his relationship with his dad if he does?  We’ll find out!

I’m slightly embarrassed to say this, but I still really like this movie.  I don’t doubt that my own reminiscences are kicking it up a notch or two in my brain, but I found this movie to be really charming with a good message and some pretty catchy songs.  The premise of the movie is pretty ridiculous, but then again, it IS A Goofy Movie.  The first thing that struck me about the story in this movie was that it was probably the reason I was always so excited for summer.  I can recall at least three animated movies that I loved back then that started with everyone in school being so excited for summer, thus getting me very excited for summer too.  Unfortunately for me, I never went on adventures in my summers.  In fact, I barely went outside, but I was still excited for the IDEA of summer.  After that, I got a little confused about why Max was thinking he was a loser after the song in the auditorium.  You just impressed the entire school AND got in trouble for it.  Neither of those things point you towards “loser” status in high school.  You’d be the bad boy that is a pretty awesome dancer!  But that got thrown back in my face when he actually WAS made popular AND got the girl as a result of his actions.  I found it a little weird that this was clearly a kid’s movie but the biggest motivating fear that Goofy had was that his son would end up in the electric chair.  I understand that is motivating and all, but isn’t that a little dark for a kid’s movie?  The thing I didn’t understand even more was that Max ramped up his lies to Roxanne so much.  It didn’t work to just say “I really want to go on this date with you, but my dad is forcing me to go fishing with him”, but you don’t need to take it to “He’s taking me on a trip … to LA … to dance on stage with his old buddy Powerline … and I’ll wave to you from stage … but only after Jesus comes out … and only if I can defeat Albert Einstein in a boxing match on stage … I’m going to shut up now.”  For the remainder of the short movie, they fill it with ridiculous situations, over the top goofiness and slapstick while Max is being a buzzkill and we’re just feeling really bad for Goofy.  Goofy was trying so hard to connect with his kid, who was in turn not having any of it.  I felt bad for the guy.  And it gets worse for Goofy when Max changes the trip on Goofy’s map in order to get him to LA, but I feel like Max was harshly judged for it.  First of all, fate was CLEARLY telling Max to do it when the map pops out of the glove compartment on it’s own and the pencil rolls out and stops, pointing to LA.  God clearly wanted him to change this thing!  Secondly, Goofy gives him the map to navigate and tells him he can pick any stop on the way to Lake Destiny he wants, but then gets all butt hurt when Max takes them to LA.  You told him he could pick ANY stop he wanted!  He just chose LA.  It’s still on the way!  The movie ends with a nice little message about how your parents might not be your cup of tea, but they love you and just want to connect with you, so you should stop being a douche about it all the time.  I definitely didn’t listen to this message when I was a kid, but I’m pretty sure I took another message that messed me up.  I feel like I’ve avoided getting into any relationships because of this movie, because it is so hard to find out what a girl’s favorite artist is and get on stage with them at a concert just to impress them.

The characters mostly worked in this movie, but they were also just well known Disney characters for the most part.  Max was the main star of the movie and was pretty easy to relate to when I was that age.  We all know what it’s like to be embarrassed by our parents and think they’re the worst, but most of us grow up to at least realize that they were trying their best for us, even if it wasn’t what we wanted.  I hope my mom doesn’t read this and come at me all gushy and huggy over this.  I felt really bad for Goofy through the movie.  His heart was in the right place.  Pete, as he was supposed to be, was an asshole.  Most of the bad situations Goofy ended up with Max in was because of bad advice from Pete, who was no great father to begin with.  I feel like most kids nowadays could probably count themselves lucky that they don’t know who Pauly Shore is, but this movie reminded me.  His character was pretty obviously just trying to capitalize on his inexplicable fame at the time because it was just Pauly Shore as a dog … thing … or whatever the hell Goofy and Max are.  Speaking of which, Roxanne was pretty attractive for a … whatever they are.  She had the classic hair in front of one eye and the little Marilyn Monroe beauty mark on her cheek.  I don’t know, this is probably an attraction I should not be having.  I didn’t get how Max was calling Powerline a “rock star” when he was OBVIOUSLY  a “pop star”.  Tevin Campbell supplied the singing voice for Powerline, but I really enjoyed the songs in this movie, particularly his songs “Stand Out” and “I2I”.  And this movie is REALLY a musical, having two songs in a mere 10 minutes of movie, but the songs were all enjoyable to me.  But the star of this movie for me is Frank Welker as Bigfoot.  That Bigfoot character still makes me laugh today.  He’s somewhat intimidating when he needs to be, but most of the time he’s kind of adorable.  I still laughed when the headphones landed on his head and he started getting into “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees.  The part that made me laugh was when Goofy and Max were having a serious conversation in the car and, through the back window, you could see Bigfoot dancing in the background.

Sure, this movie is goofy, clearly for kids, and really cheesy in parts, but it charmed me.  I loved the animation, the songs, the characters, and even the cheesy message of the movie.  I even laughed during this movie, and that is completely left of the ordinary for a kid’s movie.  But it’s a fun, charming little movie to me.  I grant that there is a very strong chance that people won’t like this movie if they didn’t see it when they were 12 as I did, but it’s worth taking a look at, especially if you have kids.  I still enjoyed this movie.  A Goofy Movie gets “It’s the Leaning Tower of Cheesa!” out of “It’s been handed down from Goof to Goof to Goof … and now, it’s yours, son.”

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The Smurfs (2011)

Up the Smurfin’ Creek Without a Paddle

I really wanted to see today’s movie, but only because of how bad I expected it to be.  When I saw it on RedBox, I says to myself, “I gotta see them shits.”  And I did.  We’re all already excited to hear about it, so let’s dive right in.  This movie is The Smurfs, written by J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick, and David Ronn, directed by Raja Gosnell, and starring Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Hank Azaria, and Sofia Vergara, and vocally starring Jonathan Winters, Anton Yelchin, Katy Perry, Alan Cumming, Fred Armisen, George Lopez, Paul Reubens, Kenan Thompson, Jeff Foxworthy, John Oliver, Wolfgang Puck, B.J. Novak, Tom Kane, and Frank Welker.

The Smurfs are preparing for a festival.  Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters) has a vision that Clumsy Smurf (Anton Yelchin) smurfs everything up and getting all the Smurfs captured by their greatest enemy, the wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria).  Well, Clumsy does indeed smurf everything up, causing a small group of the Smurfs to be transported from … wherever the smurf they live to New York City.  Along with Clumsy, Papa Smurf, Smurfette (Katy Perry), Grouchy Smurf (George Lopez), Brainy Smurf (Fred Armisen), Gutsy Smurf (Alan Cumming), and even Gargamel and Gargamel’s mostly CG cat, Azrael (Frank Welker).  Shortly after arriving in New York City, the Smurfs’ lives become entangled with a husband and pregnant wife combo of Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays) Winslow.  Patrick has just been promoted by his boss, Odile (Sofia Vergara), and Grace is concerned that he will pay more attention to work than to their upcoming baby.  While finding their way back to their land, the Smurfs will most likely try to solve that problem as well.

This is not a film that I can recommend on any level.  It’s not the worst thing I’ve watched, but it just seems pointless and disappointing.  Pointless because I’m sure nobody was aching for the return of the Smurfs.  I vaguely remember watching them when I was young, but I don’t even have any real affection for them.  Kids may find it somewhat entertaining, but they also have no love for the Smurfs.  At the age that they would probably enjoy this movie, they’d probably enjoy watching screen savers of shapes moving on the screen as well.  And I would say the movie is disappointing because it seems to lend credence to the argument that Hollywood will not roll the dice on a new idea anymore, so we will instead get lots of warmed over smurf from the 80’s.  The story of the movie is pretty basic and unsurprising.  The Smurfs have their own little adventure going on, and the Winslow couple has their whole upcoming baby thing.  The Winslow storyline is mainly about Patrick being worried about not being a good dad and Grace is worried that he spends too much time at work.  Patrick is also worried about losing his job because of his demanding boss.  Obviously, the Smurfs help take care of all these problems and all is left right in the world when they leave.  There’s also an odd little story line between Odile and Gargamel where he uses his magic to make her mother young and Odile, as a cosmetics company owner, wants him to be able to do that for her paying customers.  They kind of forget to wrap up this story.  The Smurf’s storyline is pretty much driven by Clumsy (or as they should’ve named him, PlotDevicey).  He’s sad that his clumsiness gets the Smurfs into bad situations and he wishes he could be a hero, but there’s no y on the end of that so he’s not allowed.  As with most kids movies, the humor is generally immature and slapsticky, but also at times bordering on too mature for their intended audience, but not smart enough to be able to claim it was to entertain the parents.  Some of it is the Smurfs saying inappropriate things but exchanging “smurf” for the dirty thing they were saying (a joke they make far too often and it gets irritating quickly).  There was also a point where Gargamel pees in a vase he thinks is a chamber pot, which just comes off a crude.  The only jokes that kind of worked for me were when Neil Patrick Harris was commenting about how the Smurf society doesn’t make any sense, referencing how Smurfette’s the only girl, how their names are all their personalities, and how they use the word smurf to take the place of any random words.

The look of the movie is fine and caused no real complaints.  The time in the Smurf’s world is very colorful and “imaginative” (or at least it was whenever the Smurfs were creative, but you can’t really take the imaginative credit when you’re just using someone else’s imagination), but the time in that world is brief.  New York City is a much cleaner version of NYC than what I imagine the real NYC looks like, but the transition is not quite as stark as the characters acted like it was.  The CG Smurfs themselves look fine and the interaction with the environment is realistic.  Azrael the cat is kind of hit and miss.  I’ve vocalized my hatred for the fact that some movies think the fact that they CAN make animals look like they’re talking is reason enough to do so and call that a movie, but this movie doesn’t rely too heavily on that, especially since the cat doesn’t really talk, but it’s face is animated in a way to give it a little personality.  It works sometimes, but they also use the cat to make jokes that are perhaps inappropriate for children, like when the cat was sitting on Gargamel’s head and he remarked about it being a boy (basically saying “Azrael, your balls are on my head”) and a part where the cat was grooming its nether-regions and Gargamel remarked about the cat needing a mint (because of how his nuts tasted, I assume).  I guess it could be expected that the comedy would get a little blue in a Smurf movie.  Yeah, Robert!  Solid joke!

The voice cast performed admirably.  My problem was never with their voices, but more with the lame, unfunny, and sometimes crude things they said.  Yes, even Katy Perry did not grate on my nerves (I was as shocked as you).  I still don’t really understand the concept of putting such people into voice roles.  Especially with someone like Katy Perry.  She’s a mediocre singer that some people like for whatever reason, but the majority of her appeal is how she looks.  You get no benefits from how she looks when you’re only putting her voice in the body of the smurf dumpster of Smurfville.  (I’m not calling her a cum dumpster because she’s voiced by Katy Perry, but she must’ve become the smurf toy for the 99 male Smurfs because she’s the only female).  And that being the case, I’m sure you could get someone to do just as good of a job, or a better one, out of a professional voice actor, and it would cost a whole lot less.  People that go to see a movie because someone they like does a voice in it really need to take a look in the mirror.  Neil Patrick Harris did fine.  I found Jayma Mays to be very cute, and Sofia Vergara to be very hot.  But I didn’t like seeing Sofia Vergara playing such a bitchy role.  It made me not like her as much.  The only other place I’ve seen her is on Modern Family, where I love her.  I normally like Hank Azaria a lot, but he was REALLY hamming it up in this movie as Gargamel.  And the Smurfs had their own person that was trying too hard in George Lopez.  There were parts where it seemed like they just forgot to turn off the microphones and he was just rambling on, to no great effect.

I’m comfortable telling you all that you can skip seeing the Smurfs.  Kids MAY enjoy it, but they’ll like anything.  Take them to a Pixar movie so you don’t want to slit your wrists while watching it.  Not that this movie is bad enough to cause that, it’s just not very interesting.  There are maybe two amusing parts in the movie, and it would be a lot more tolerable if that smurfing word replacement thing wasn’t beating you over the head.  If you don’t have kids, there’s probably nothing I could say that would talk you into seeing this movie (and I certainly have no desire to try).  And if you have kids, try to steer them towards something better, but you will probably make it through if you must to shut them up.  The Smurfs gets “I hated it … so much less than I expected” out of “Don’t get me wrong, I still hate it.”

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