Black Dynamite (2009)

Because Donuts Don’t Wear Alligator Shoes.

The inspiration for seeing today’s movie came a good while back, and mostly from the Nerdist podcast.  They did an interview with some of the people involved with this movie, and had previously talked about how funny the movie was.  I put it on my Netflix queue pretty quickly, even though all I knew about the movie gave me no reason I could think of to enjoy it.  I don’t know that I’ve seen a Blaxploitation film before, and it’s also a very fine line to walk to make a movie really bad to call it a comedy.  Sometimes it can be done very well, and sometimes I just think it’s using comedy as an excuse because the movie they made was not actually good (Like Leprechaun: In the Hood).  We’ll find out as I review Black Dynamite, written by Michael Jai White and Byron Keith Minns, directed by Scott Sanders, and starring Michael Jai White, Salli Richardson, Tommy Davidson, Kevin Chapman, Byron Minns, Cedric Yarbrough, Mykelti Williamson, Brian McKnight, Arsenio Hall, Obba Babatundé, Bokeem Woodbine, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Mike Starr, John Salley, and Nicole Sullivan.

The brother of Vietnam veteran and former CIA agent Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) is killed in the streets by a shady organization.  Black Dynamite decides to set out on a crusade of revenge, and to clean up the streets as he does it.  On his journey, he meets up with a black power activist that he gives a certain degree of his affections to named Gloria (Salli Richardson).  Speaking of affections, it turns out that his brother was killed to cover up a plan by “the Man” that would fill the popular Anaconda Malt Liquor with a formula that would shrink the size of all the black men’s penises.  Black Dynamite is the only thing standing between them and the destruction of the entire “Blacks on Blondes” porn series!

This was a really good movie.  Well, technically speaking it was a really bad movie, but they intended to make it as bad as they did for comedic effect, and it definitely worked.  The story is pretty typical Blaxploitation stuff that tends to be pretty ridiculous on its own, but it’s sold by all of the other ridiculous stuff.  The performances are usually over the top, the scenes drag on longer than they should, the characters are ridiculous, and it’s just really funny because of it.  The badness of the movie is an asset, using things like the main character trying and failing to hang up a phone for an extra couple of seconds, a character looks like he really got punched in an action scene and breaks character before an obvious cut gets the action back on, and they take the most ridiculous series of tangents to reach a conclusion, starting with M&Ms and how they melt in your mouth, going through Greek mythology, and somehow ending up at the fact that Anaconda Malt Liquor is going to make the black man’s penis small to defeat them.  One of my favorite parts was when a group was going into a battle situation and one of the characters starts randomly talking about his aspirations for when the revolution is over, talking about how he wants to settle down and be a father, showing a picture of his kid, and he gets expectedly hit with a spear.  Black Dynamite then shouts, “Who saw that coming?  I mean, ‘Who saw where that came from?’”  I also liked when Black Dynamite was fighting with nunchucks and “accidentally” threw them off camera, punched a dude in the head, and then someone off camera threw his nunchucks back to him.  The animated Kama Sutra part that was sold like it was supposed to be a really sweet love making scene was also pretty hilarious.

The performances in this movie deserve about as much credit as the writing and filming process.  Much like the movie Airplane!, the performances in this movie acted like they were not trying to be funny, which just makes everything that much funnier.  Unlike Airplane!, they weren’t acting as if they were in a soap opera, they were just acting like over the top characters from a Blaxploitation movie.  It was all excellent.  Michael Jai White was great, able to do the acting just as well as the action.  I was really happy with all of the cameos in the movie as well.  Tommy Davidson was in this movie, Cedric Yarbrough, Brian McKnight, Arsenio Hall, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Mike Starr, and Nicole Sullivan.  Each one of them had some solid funny parts and made me happy that they even showed their faces in the movie.

Black Dynamite was a lot of fun.  Ridiculous Blaxploitation story that takes full advantage of the generally shoddy filming that was common in those movies, while having the good sense to not have any of the performances act like they were in a comedy.  Let the movie be ridiculous around characters that only seem to be desperately trying to remember their lines and the comedy will be largely amped up.  This is like the Blaxploitation version of the movie Airplane!, and that’s alright by me.  This is definitely a movie that you should check out.  You can’t help but laugh.  I’ll be purchasing this movie as soon as I can find it, but you can find it on Netflix right now.  Black Dynamite gets “I am smiling” out of “Black Dynamite, that was the best loving I ever had.”

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The Bodyguard (1992)

Lord, Why Couldn’t You Have Taken Bobby?!

Unfortunately, my week-long trip to Arizona was not all smiles and sunshine.  Tragedy struck as the entire world realized that sometimes singers are just singers, and sometimes have drug problems, and also American soldiers die all the time without mention, but let’s talk about Whitney Houston instead.  I’m kidding … kind of.  But the lady singer did pass away while I was on vacation, causing many people to be completely devastated, causing my sister to request that I review today’s movie, and causing me to immediately think “Oh, it was probably drugs” and move on with my breakfast.  But Whitney Houston was still an amazing singer and I feel as though I should pay tribute to her because of her passing, both with the review of a movie she was in and a somewhat spiteful opening paragraph.  With that, I give you my review of The Bodyguard, written by Lawrence Kasdan, directed by Mick Jackson, and starring Kevin Costner, Whitney Houston, Tomas Arana, Michele Lamar Richards, Bill Cobbs, Gary Kemp, Mike Starr, DeVaughn Walter Nixon, Christopher Birt, Robert Wuhl, and Debbie Reynolds.

Because no one in movies is ever allowed to be the second or third best of the best, Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner) is a former Secret Service Agent who now works as the best of the best bodyguards for people.  He generally works exclusively for presidents and corporate VIPs, but is painstakingly talked into protecting a celebrity named Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) by her manager Bill Devaney (Bill Cobbs).  Along with her recent nomination for an Oscar, Marron has acquired a new stalker, but not one of the cool ones that are quirky and funny, but generally harmless … like me …  She instead gets one of those stalkers that somehow justifies his desire to kill her with how much he loves her.  Frank comes in and starts fixing all of the holes in her personal security, much to the chagrin of her current bodyguard Tony (Mike Starr), her sister Nikki (Michele Lamar Richards), and her publicist Sy Spector (Gary Kemp).  Her driver Henry (Christopher Birt) and her son Fletcher (DeVaughn Walter Nixon) seem okay with it.  Frank’s efforts to protect Rachel don’t go well, due to the incompetence of her existing crew, and her own random bitchiness directed at him.  Will Frank have the ability, and the patience, to protect this singer?

My opinion of anything will not be swayed by a person’s death.  I didn’t find Kurt Cobain, Chris Farley, or Michael Jackson any more special after their untimely demises than I did before their death.  I say that so that the proper amount of weight will be applied to the following statement: the only reason anyone remembers this movie at all is because of Whitney Houston.  She single-handedly elevated this movie beyond being entirely forgettable to being slightly above mediocre.  The weirdest part of that statement is that I intended it to be a compliment.  The story of this movie does not really work that well.  It’s got a thriller aspect to it that never really works that well because of how predictable the killer, and motive, is very early in the film.  More memorably, this movie is a love story … that also never really works because it barely makes sense.  Rachel is such a dirty bitch to Frank for the greater majority of the movie that I can’t understand Frank having any desire to be around her beyond the fact that Houston was fucking gorgeous at the time.  So I understand why he smashes that, but then he sticks around afterwards, driving her off with some nonsense about how he can’t protect her if he cares about her, which turns her into an even bigger bitch.  In her defense, she could’ve just had residual anger at him for the part where he shows off how sharp his katana is by cutting her scarf in half.  But the entire premise of that situation doesn’t make any sense at all.  What the fuck do you mean you can’t protect her if you’re falling in love with her and sleeping with her from time to time?  As I understand it, boyfriends and husbands are able to combine those two things with a fair degree of frequency!  This is hardly the only thing in this movie that doesn’t make sense to me.  At one point, everyone looks at Frank like he’s a madman because he suggests that Rachel go to brunch on Tuesday instead of her usual day.  Am I missing something?  Is there a designated day for brunching and Tuesday is just a major faux pas?  Later, Rachel catches Frank watching one of her movies intently, but is pretty much only able to tell what he is watching in the guest house (from the main house) because he is apparently playing it at the maximum volume that a human can listen to without their ears bleeding.  Also, I know that they were trying to show a great many things to illustrate how shitty Rachel’s security would be without Frank, but how would security personnel keep their job when they not only allow Milli Vanilli lookalikes to rush up on stage to dance with Rachel, but also allow it to get out of hand and have her get pulled into the audience that then tries to do everything it can to rob/rape her.  They don’t get to the rape, but it would’ve just been a matter of time.  The final, and greatest, omission of logic must be bracketed by ::SPOILER ALERT::  The sister did it.  Yes, I know, it’s shocking once you randomly hear her tell Frank about how she and Rachel got their start, not even barely concealing her excruciating jealousy for her sister, that she would eventually be the cause of it.  I half expected the end of the movie to be Frank unmasking her as she yelled “I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling Secret Service Agents!”  The predictability of it isn’t the only problem, it’s also fuckin’ insane!  I understand the concept of being jealous of your sibling.  Not through personal experience, because I’m so fucking awesome, but I understand how my sister feels living in my shadow.  But I also feel pretty sure that she wouldn’t try to kill me because of it.  I figured the sister in this movie might pay someone to scare the shit out of Rachel with death threats, but perhaps the person went off the rails and took it too far.  But for the sister to be so jealous (even though she’s living in luxury because of her sister) goes way too far.  ::END SPOILERS::

I think it is not going too far to assume that the only reason any of us remember this movie is because of the songs.  More specifically, the song.  Whitney Houston has mad pipes, son!  They display a couple of Whitney’s songs in this movie, but one of them specifically takes the cake.  They use “I Have Nothing”, “I’m Every Woman”, and “Run to You”, all of which are pretty damned good songs, but the one song no one should be able to forget is “I Will Always Love You”.  If you don’t get goosebumps listening to this song at the end of this movie – especially knowing now that she’s no longer with us – I believe you are an asshole.  What occurred to me about that song was that I never really knew this song wasn’t always Whitney’s.  It was apparently written by Dolly Parton, but I don’t know that version of the song.  In the movie, they played what sounded like a guy singing it in a country fashion, and this amused me because of how much Whitney blows that version out of the water at the end of the movie.  It’s such a heartfelt and touching song, which makes me think much less of the “Queen of the Night” song that immediately follows it in the credits.

The performances in this movie were mostly forgettable.  Whitney was, by far, the only person in this movie that impressed.  Not only was she an amazing singer, but she was a solid actress too.  She probably wasn’t playing a character that was all that far removed from herself, but she was very believable.  The dialogue she was delivering was a little stilted in parts, and the part where she asks Kevin Costner out on a date was awkwardly delivered and strangely justified, but I don’t blame either of those things on her.  The writing was just a little soft in parts of this movie.  Whitney, you are good enough.  Kevin Costner?  Eh, not so much.  No, he was fine.  He just didn’t impress.  It seemed like there was a very good chance that he actually had no real training with weaponry or Secret Service tactics.  Take, for instance, the time when he was telling Rachel’s sister to stay put downstairs as he investigated the noises upstairs.  I’m pretty sure lesson one of Guns 101 is “Don’t gesture at people’s faces with a loaded gun.”  The second rule is we don’t talk about … that girl we just accidentally shot in the face and dumped in the lake.  One could also make the argument that actual Secret Service agents don’t do action hero moves like diving through a window, somersaulting, and landing on your feet.  I think they just go through the door.  I think they also don’t really recommend being in the middle of a shootout, kneeling down in the snow, and closing your eyes, presumably to better use the Force to defeat his opponent.  Unfortunately, the Force was not strong with this one.  The only person in this movie that gave me anything to think about was the insignificant character that attempts to hit on Costner as Whitney tries to make Costner jealous by taking Tomas Arana into a back room, but that’s only because that girl looks a lot like a post-menopausal Gozer.

I’m pretty sure I’ve just put all the words down that could be written about this movie.  It’s a thoroughly mediocre movie with thoroughly mediocre performances, and would have been forgotten entirely by now if it weren’t for the efforts of the recently deceased.  By being quite possibly the best actor in this movie, and delivering immensely enjoyable songs, she made this a movie that will be (and probably already has been) remembered much longer than the movie would deserve otherwise.  Because it’s regarded as a classic, I imagine it will not be long until I endeavor to add this movie to my collection, assuming I can find it for somewhere within the five to ten dollar range.  It’s definitely something you can watch and not hate that much, but you can skip to the good parts by purchasing the soundtrack instead.  The Bodyguard gets “You people have no clue what real security is or what it takes to achieve it” out of “The atomic number of zinc is thirty.”  We’ll miss you, Whitney.

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Dumb and Dumber (1994)

We Got No Food, No Jobs … Our Pet’s HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!

Apparently I have been neglecting my friend, Josh.  He recently reminded me that he has requested my review of multiple movies and I have not done them.  But he also learned the reason I ask that my review requests come via Facebook or this very site: I don’t remember anything.  I only remember to do about half of the movies people have suggested to me on Facebook.  I should really write this stuff down, but then I’d just forget where I put that note.  In order to retain a friendship, I decided that the next available opportunity should go to Josh.  And this request was made so much easier to fulfill when the only one of his requests he could remember was one of my favorite comedies, starring one of my favorite actors, and one I own on DVD.  What worried me about this request was that it’s a movie I have not seen in somewhere around 10 years, and I was worried that I would not still find it funny.  But we’ll find out together in my review of Dumb and Dumber, written by Bobby and Peter Farrelly and Bennett Yellin, directed by the Farrelly Brothers, and starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Lauren Holly, Charles Rocket, Mike Starr, Karen Duffy, Teri Garr, Victoria Rowell, Felton Perry, Cam Neely, Lin Shaye, and Harland Williams.

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) is a limousine driver of questionable intelligence.  One day, Lloyd drives Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) to the airport and, in the process, falls madly in love with her.  The feeling is not reciprocated.  As he watches her leave, he sees her drop her briefcase by the escalator.  Lloyd jumps into action, rushing inside to return the briefcase to her, only to find that her plane has already departed to Aspen.  And, just to add more to Lloyd’s plate, it turns out that the briefcase was left intentionally in order to pay a ransom.  Also, the two criminals that were supposed to retrieve the briefcase, Joe Mentalino (Mike Starr) and J.P. Shay (Karen Duffy), saw Lloyd take the briefcase.  Lloyd returns to the apartment he shares with his best friend, Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), a recently terminated pet groomer with a van converted to look like a sheep dog.  Shortly after their arrival, Joe and J.P. show up at the front door.  Harry and Lloyd mistake the two armed criminals for representatives of the gas company, annoyed that they forgot to pay their bill, so they jump out the window.  To show they mean business, Joe kills Harry’s pet bird.  When Harry and Lloyd return to their dead pet, they get sick of their lives and concoct a plan.  The two will drive to Aspen, return Mary’s briefcase, and Harry will probably live with Lloyd and his new wife happily ever after.  And so their journey begins.

In 1994, to an 11-year-old Robert, this movie was absolutely hysterical.  Quite possibly the funniest movie I had seen at that point because Ace Ventura was not yet known to me.  17 years later, I will admit this movie is not as funny as it was back then, but I do still find it very charming.  I don’t feel like it’s fair to judge the movie on how funny I find it now because I’ve seen it WAY too many times by now.  It’s always hard to tell how I’d react to it now if it was my first viewing.  The story of the movie is pretty negligible.  It’s mainly there just to give us something cohesive to pay attention to while stupid and funny things happen on screen.  It’s a buddy movie of sorts, and a travel movie of course, but there’s not much story going on beyond that.  But it sets up lots of classic moments that I still think about to this day.  The part where Lloyd gets Harry to bet that Lloyd will not be able to make Harry gamble on something by the end of the day would be cute on it’s own, but when Lloyd genuinely doesn’t realize that Harry agreeing to said bet caused him to win it made it funny.  Every time I see a squeeze bottle of ketchup and mustard, my brain returns to the scene right after Harry and Lloyd eat a hot pepper, and that scene has another funny moment where they accidentally kill one of their pursuers.  There are lines in this movie that I still use to this day.  I cannot count how many times “Yeeaaaah, he must work out”, “Samsonite!  I was way off!”, “Suck me sideways”, “Kick his ass, Sea Bass!”, and “I have a rapist wit” have come out of my mouth.  I’ve also said “nice set of hooters you got there” numerous times, but not usually in the same context.  There are times when they go for some shit humor that I don’t find as appealing today as I did when I was 11.  There’s an entire scene of Harry tearing it up in a toilet (with horribly realistic sound effects to accompany it) that is not as much in my comedy wheelhouse today, but I will defend the filling up the gas tank on the Shaggin Waggin with the gas tank nozzle located under the sheep dog’s lifted leg.  They set that up really nice and slow-like and then paid it off.

I still like all of the performances in this movie.  Jim Carrey is Jim Carrey, so I love him.  The man does broad comedies better that almost anyone else can, and this movie just lets the man do what he does best.  From him, we expect this.  From Jeff Daniels, we don’t.  Yet the man is still able to hold up his end of the bargain remarkably well.  He has a few solid comedic moments on his own in the movie.  I would say, however, that he made Harry nowhere near as dumb as Jim Carrey made Lloyd.  Lloyd was clearly the dumber to Harry’s dumb.  Lauren Holly didn’t have to do much in this movie, but boy did she look purdy.  She looked good in this movie, and even busted out a little bit of booty, but she didn’t do much for the comedy.  Comedy was more done to (or at) her, like when Harry smashed her in the face with a snowball.

I still like this movie a great deal, even if the comedy’s lost some of it’s effect on me over the years.  When I went to look at the overall score of the movie, I was surprised to see that Rotten Tomatoes gives this movie a mere 63%.  It’s a comedy classic, for crying out loud!  For anyone to call this movie dumb only serves to show their own ignorance.  Of course it’s dumb!  It’s in the friggin title!  You’re just saying that it lived up to expectations.  I personally cannot imagine a time where I won’t have some fondness for this movie, even if I don’t laugh hysterically anymore.  You should definitely buy this movie.  Dumb and Dumber gets “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this … and totally redeem yourself!” out of “You can’t triple stamp a double stamp!”

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