Evil Spawn
March 25, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Evil Spawn is a great horror/sci-fi DVD to add to your collection. A quick glance at the Vital Stats to the right of this review will reveal that, with the exception of car chases, this movie is chock full of B-Movie goodness.
The movie starts with an introduction by filmmaker Fred Olen Ray (who distributes this film) and the cheesy “Night Owl Theater”. It features Fred hamming it up for the camera in a few skits with several topless women. It’s really not that funny, but did I mention the topless women?
The feature presentation begins, and a spaceship flies through outer space. Get a good look, because you won’t see it or hear it mentioned again. The next ten minutes is not very clear, as a mutant bug is released and some people die, and John Carradine is onscreen for about a minute before dying. Strangely, Carradine gets top-billing on the DVD sleeve.
Finally, the movie begins, and it has a surprisingly decent story for this type a movie. An aging starlet is discovering that Hollywood no longer wants her for leading lady roles. Then she receives an offer to be a spokesperson for a medical company that has discovered how to slow down the aging process. All she has to do is inject the hypodermic needle full of “medicine” into her arm and her wrinkles will go away. The wrinkles start to disappear, but something inside her has changed. She has become… EVIL SPAWN!!!
If I say too much more, I’ll give the story away. And at 70 minutes, the story moves along quickly. The T&A even includes full frontal, so don’t go to the fridge for another beer when the pool scene begins. There’s also plenty of gore and gunshots. In fact, I think the editor purposely spread out the T&A and blood so the viewer wouldn’t notice how poorly the sound was dubbed.
“Hey George, when them girls are talkin’, there lips are movin’ kinda funny-like.”
“Yep, Fred, I think they… Dang, look at them hooters!!”
Yes, the audio looping is awful. And the color correction is atrocious. And everything else more or less sucks, too. But it’s a consistent kind of suck, and that’s important when it comes to B-Movies. You can’t have one scene be really good, with quality lighting and sound and believable acting, and then follow it with a totally crappy scene where everything is terrible. That makes for an uneven viewing experience. As long as everything is at the same level of mediocrity, I’m happy.
The Extra Features include some behind-the-scenes footage, as well as some bloopers from “Night Owl Theater” (that feature even more T&A). The best extras of all are the bonus trailers from other B-Movies. My favorites were Invasion of the Blood Farmers and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. I know what you’re thinking. The producers spent all their money on drugs so they could come up with a great title and they had no money left over for the movie itself. Wrong! Judging by the trailers, these movies look to be as awesome as their titles.
Evil Spawn is a solidly entertaining piece of fluff, but “Night Owl Theater” and the bonus trailers are what make this DVD a worthy addition to your B-Movie shelf.
Tales from the Crapper
March 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Tales from the Crapper is the most recent in-house release by Troma Studios. It is also the worst 4-star movie you’ll ever see. Bad lighting, bad sound, bad acting, bad writing… hell, it’s downright bad filmmaking. How come I enjoyed it so damn much?
Former Penthouse Pet and Heavy Metal superbabe Julie Strain stars in the two separate Tales. In the first Tale - “The Case Of The Melon Heavy Alien Man Eater” - an alien makes a crash landing near a strip club in LA. The alien begins brutally slaughtering customers at the strip club, and it’s up to Julie Strain’s “loose cannon” cop character to solve the mystery and track down the murderer.
“Tuition of the Terror T**t” is the second Tale, and it features Strain as one of three vampire lesbian strippers. A young man learns that his parents can’t afford to pay for his college tuition. So he and his friends decide to have a stripper party at his apartment, charging guests $100 each for admission. They hire Strain and Friends as the strippers, and you can probably figure out the rest. This Tale features cameos by Ted Raimi and Trey Parker, who both wear wigs and are credited with fake names to trick SAG.
According to the documentary on the DVD, each of these Tales started as a feature-length movie shot on digital video. Troma financed the two movies, and were shocked when they received the footage. It looked and sounded awful (even by Troma standards). The decision was made to combine the best scenes from two crappy feature-length movies into one crappy feature-length movie.
But Troma’s work was far from over. They had to shoot several new scenes so that the heavily-edited stories made sense. And the audio was so bad that they ended up dubbing every single voice in post-production. This is particularly funny when a big tough guy enters the strip club and has a whining sissy boy voice. And of course, all the trademark Troma sound effects show up, adding fart noises where appropriate and the natural sounds that bouncing breasts make.
Ahh… bouncing breasts. There is no shortage of these in Tales from the Crapper. Big, small, fake, real… they’re all represented here. As you know, there’s the story about the strip club, and the story about the vampire strippers. And in most movies that would be sufficient. But Troma goes one step further, addressing a major problem that plagues these types of movies. There are always several scenes with guys just standing around talking. Guy cops talking about the murders. Loser guys talking about their stripper party. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, these are important scenes. They contain the necessary exposition to move the story forward. I know that. But they’re a pain in the ass to watch when you know there’s more hot stripper action on the way.
Thankfully, Troma has developed an exciting new technology to make these scenes a lot less painful: BONERVISION. Whenever one of these “guys talking” scenes occurs in Tales from the Crapper, a small circular screen pops up labeled BONERVISION. Topless women dance and cavort on BONERVISION while the guys talk. This means you can watch hot nekkid babes while listening to what the guys have to say. Genius. I hope Troma filled out all their paperwork at the U.S. Patent Office, because they’re going to make a fortune off of this.
Blood, gore, violence… it’s Troma, folks. ‘Nuff said.
Lloyd Kaufman, who is the President of Troma Studios and the Creator of the Toxic Avenger, plays the pivotal role of The Crapkeeper. His segments work as bookends to each of the Tales. These segments include an interview with Tromeo & Juliet screenwriter James Gunn, a skit with Super Tromette Debbie Rochon (who appears topless), and another skit with perennial Troma fat guy actor Joe Fleishaker (who also appears topless).
Troma always packs their DVDs with plenty of extras, and this one is no exception. There’s an hour-long documentary about the reshoots Troma had to do to make Tales from the Crapper watchable. There are also two commentary tracks, several trailers and the music video for Cannibal Lesbian Hoedown. But my favorite extra was the Topless Comedy Jam with Julie Strain. It should have been called Totally Nekkid Comedy Jam. I don’t remember any of the jokes.
While I love Troma’s philosophy of being a fiercely independent film studio, their movies usually don’t do much for me. In fact, I liked the documentaries on Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie much more than the movies themselves. However, Tales from the Crapper is highly entertaining in a bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest common denominator kind of way. I give it four stars for the entertainment value and the incredible amount of T&A.
Two paragraphs into this review, you had already made up your mind about whether or not this is your type of movie. If you’ve made it this far, then see Tales ASAP. You will not be disappointed.
Zombie Planet
March 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Let me start out by saying that this is a 2.5-star movie that’s thirty minutes away from being a 3-star movie. But it doesn’t need to ADD thirty minutes; it needs to SUBTRACT them!! Supposedly this is the director’s cut, but it’s way too long. Some scenes are unnecessary and other scenes ramble on and on. And not a single scene I’m referring to features zombies. So what does that mean to you, the viewer? It means you have to wait a whole lot longer between zombies feasting on human flesh. So for me, shorter movie = better rating.
Most big-budget zombie movies usually start the story either just before or just as the zombies start to appear. I suppose the screenwriters want to show the daily life of the main characters before the zombie infestation, and then how they react to having to run and fight for their lives, 24/7. And that worked really well the first twenty times I saw it.
In Zombie Planet, however, writer-director George Bonilla avoids that convention and takes a different approach: the zombies took over Earth four years before the story begins, and all of the characters are long-term survivors. But there is a strict class-system in place. The upper-class survivors are well-protected from the hordes of zombies. The middle-class survivors strive to become upper-class while stepping on the backs of the lower-class survivors. It just goes to show that, even after a Zombie Holocaust, humans will still be humans.
The origin of the zombies is one of the most clever bits in the movie, and I won’t spoil it here. All I’m going to say is that it involves low-carb dieting.
I’m sure it’s no surprise that there is plenty of blood and gore in this movie, as well there should be. The zombies have prosthetic blue faces, and the level of detail is impressive. The level of violence, however, wasn’t as high as I prefer in zombie movies. Most of that is due to the fact that guns are “outlawed” on Zombie Planet (i.e. the filmmakers didn’t want to pay for permits, firearms experts, etc.) A zombie movie just ain’t a zombie movie without a couple of heads getting blown to pieces. To their credit, the filmmakers apparently went shopping at Paul E. Dangerously’s yard sale, because there was a fight with barbed-wire baseball bats. They’re hardcore.
I was very pleased to see some topless female nudity during the first two minutes of the movie. Sure, it was a zombie, but this zombie had a very hot body. Little did I know that was the last T&A I’d see in the movie. After such a strong T&A beginning, I was disappointed.
I’ll be honest, the production value on this movie needed a lot more work, specifically the visuals. One of the commentary tracks features four (4!) cinematographers. Maybe that’s why the cinematography sucked so bad. If you have one cinematographer who doesn’t know what he’s doing, at least the shots are consistently bad. But when you have FOUR different cinematographers who don’t know what they’re doing… well, you get the idea.
Despite its flaws, I enjoyed the core story of Zombie Planet. It was a relief to see that Bonilla created his own unique zombie universe (instead of taking the easy route and churning out another Romero rehash). This DVD features a teaser trailer for Zombie Planet 2: Adam’s Revenge. I think it looks much better than the first movie, and I look forward to seeing it.
Zombie Planet is definitely worth a rental. It features a fresh take on zombie mythology, and will hopefully spawn a number of superior sequels. It’s certainly possible: Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead are significantly better than the original Night of the Living Dead.
Robots
March 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Now THIS is what an animated comedy should be like. Robots combines visual gags, excellent writing and some of the best animation yet, easily earning a 5 star rating.
The storyline is your basic “country boy goes to city to make it big” tale, with just minor variances from the formula. Believe me, you know exactly how this movie ends after the first 10 minutes of the movie. Heck, you should know how it ends just from the previews. In this telling the country boy is Rodney (Ewan McGregor), who wants to be an inventor just like his childhood hero, Big Weld (Mel Brooks). Unfortunately, when he gets to the big city he find that Big Weld is no longer running the show and instead Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) is in charge, and he’s only interested in making money, not inventing things for the betterment of robotkind.
Rodney makes some new friends, most notably Fender (Robin Williams), Crank (Drew Carey), Cappy (Halle Berry) and Piper (Amanda Bynes). Could you possibly guess that they band together to take on Ratchet to try and save Big Weld Industries? Could ya?!
The story is fine even though it’s very predictable, this is a kids movie after all so we wouldn’t want it to strain their grey matter too much. The real treat here is in the setting, the comedy and the voice acting. Obviously the casting is first rate, and everyone involved seemed to be having a really good time making this film. You know how you can tell over the phone if someone is smiling or not? I guarantee everyone was smiling when they made this movie.
The comedy is typical sight gags and jokes, but they are VERY well done. Notice James Earl Jones in the credits? Why do you think he’s there? But above it all is the setting as this is one well rendered world. The details in Robot City are amazing, you’ll find yourself just looking around the screen in awe at how cool everything looks. I’m gushing now, but it really does rock.
Another thing this movie has going for it is that it’s only 90 minutes long. It doesn’t try to spend 40 minutes setting the story up, it spends 5. The pacing is quick, the laughs are plentiful and you’ll leave with a smile on your face. Heck, I might go see it again.
Bad Taste
March 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Bad Taste is the stunning feature film debut by writer/director/producer/actor Peter Jackson. Watching this movie filled with excessive violence, over-the-top gore and slapstick humor, I found myself grinning. Why? Because fifteen years after the 1989 release of Bad Taste, Jackson would become a multiple Oscar winner, a critically and commercially successful filmmaker, and most importantly, the creative force behind a fantasy movie trilogy that rivals George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy.
I’m glad I read the synopsis on the DVD cover before watching the movie. Otherwise, I would have been lost. Aliens have descended upon a small coastal village in New Zealand. They’ve slaughtered all of the townspeople, turning them into meat for their alien fast food franchise. It’s up to “the boys” to rescue the people of Earth from being turned into intergalactic combo meals.
As simple as that plot seems, somehow it gets lost in the translation from New Zealandese to American English. It doesn’t matter, though, because this is a movie for guys all the way. From the blood-soaked opening sequence on the beach to the hilariously gross conclusion, Jackson works hard to deliver what the title of the movie promises. And he largely succeeds.
Perhaps most impressive is the use of heavy artillery. The budget for this movie was in the $11,000 range, which is super-low budget for a 16mm feature film. Despite that, we get to see a rocket launcher blow up a car and the side of house. No CGI here, folks. That stuff got “blowed-up” for real!! There are also several gunfights, and the number of bullets rivals John Woo’s early work. In fact, the surprising amount of firepower that Jackson had at his disposal for this low-budget horror movie makes me wonder if the UN inspectors have been looking for WMD’s in the wrong country.
When watching a low-budget horror movie, expectations are high for cheap gore. And Bad Taste does not disappoint. Decapitations, mutilations, eviscerations are plentiful. One character has a hole in his head and his brains keep oozing out. And of course, there are buckets and buckets of blood.
But Jackson goes the Troma route with his gore, making it so unreal and unbelievable that it’s actually funny. (Well, funny if you have a sick sense of humor.) One of the ongoing gags involves the aforementioned character with the hole in his head. He discovers that he can’t stand up properly without his brain intact, so he finds new ways to keep his brain on the inside of his skull.
In addition to creating this mess, Jackson gets his hands dirty in front of the camera by playing two different roles. One is a mute alien named Robert, and Jackson is immediately recognizable with his trademark beard and long hair. (Strangely, his trademark stomach is nowhere in sight.) Jackson also plays Derek, who is one of “the boys”. Derek is clean-shaven and has short brown hair. I had no idea this was Jackson until the credits rolled. I immediately re-watched certain Derek scenes from the movie, including the one where Derek tortures Robert. Yes, Peter Jackson tortures Peter Jackson. You have to see it to believe it.
The only major drawback to this movie is that I don’t remember seeing a single female character, babe or otherwise. Jackson almost makes up for it by having excessive amounts of blood and violence. Almost. But would it have killed him to cast a fine-lookin’ Kiwi hottie in this movie? She wouldn’t have to be included in the story. She could just run around on the beach in a bikini, or better yet, completely naked.
The Special Features aren’t that great, but this Limited Edition was released in 2001 prior to the release of the first LOTR movie. I imagine one of two things will happen in the future. One, a brand new, four-disc Extended Edition of Bad Taste will be released, with two hours of additional footage not seen in the original cut, plus another six hours of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. Or two, Jackson’s management team will track down and burn every copy of Bad Taste before the current generation of LOTR kids grow up to discover it.
Bad Taste is an excellent movie for guys, and this is the perfect disc to watch with a big group of your friends. However, if excessive blood-and-guts is not your thing, you’ll probably want to steer clear of this title.
Oldboy
March 15, 2005 | Leave a Comment
These guys have some talent! Director Chan-wook Park and creator Garon Tsuchiya have created one helluva monster and its name is Oldboy. We here at Movies for Guys don’t normally agree with or give a damn about what the rest of the world says about a movie, but in this case it’s worth pointing out that the widespread acclaim being thrown down from the ivory towers of the movie critique elite is, amazingly enough, well deserved.
You’ve never heard of this movie, you say? Well, to be honest, we hadn’t either until we had an opportunity to take a gander at it recently but, boy, are we glad we have been able to experience it. I kept thinking of Resevoir Dogs while viewing this one and I think you’ll understand why if you are ever able to see this one for yourself. There are moments of inspired genius here. There are moments of extreme depravity and wild insanity, too.
However, there are also some rough edges that show that our director is a “work in progress” (hence the Resevoir Dogs comparison). Some elements of the film still leave me totally confused. Perhaps this is intentional on the part of the director, but, if so, you should give some hint or clue to your audience that maybe you’re not supposed to understand something.
In short, though, the talent is there, but it’s not *quite* ripe. The skill is there, but not *quite* honed to a razor’s edge. Still, it is one hellaciously fun ride and one guaranteed to make a lasting impression on you.
To sum up, the story involves one Oh Daesu (Choi Min-sik), a middle aged Korean husband and businessman. The film opens with a sequence in a police station where Oh Daesu has been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. There is no relevence to the rest of the movie except that it establishes that Oh Daesu is not happy and has some serious issues with life, in general. He’s missed his daughter’s birthday party because of his arrest and his best friend comes to bail him out and take him home.
From here, things start taking more than a few twists. Oh Daesu is kidnapped and imprisoned. Where? He does not know. By whom? He does not know. Why? Again, he does not know. He is allowed a television in his wallpapered 1-room world and he soon sees on the local news that his wife has been murdered and that he is the prime suspect. He also finds out later that his daughter was adopted by new parents and taken to live somewhere in Scandinavia where, in all probability, he’ll never see her again.
Fifteen years pass. Wuh-wuh? Yes, I said fifteen. Years. He remains captive and in complete isolation. He has only that same TV for entertainment and a steady diet of fried dumplings for food. Solitary confinement for that length of time should drive pretty much anyone a bit nutty and, to be sure, Oh Daesu flirts with hallucinations and schizophrenia, but he does manage to hang onto his sanity for the most part.
And then he’s set free. He awakes from a drug-induced slumber and finds himself on the roof of a building and wearing a an expensive suit. Soon after, a vagrant leaves him a wallet loaded with cash and a cell phone. The phone rings and the voice on the other end indentifies himself as Oh Daesu’s captor. The voice tells him that he has 5 only days to figure out who and why all this horror was inflicted upon him. It is at this point that Oh Daesu sets out to exact revenge on the man that killed his wife and imprisoned him unjustly for all those years.
There is a love interest by the name of Mido (Kang Hye-jeong) thrown in and I’m glad of it, for once. She’s not just there to be the obligatory distraction for the hero and, in addition, she provides us with one of the more…stimulating sex scenes I’ve seen in a movie in recent years (outside of my porn collection, of course).
Technically speaking, the camera work here is rakish and very inventive. Creative use of off-kilter coloring and filters do wonders in establishing the proper mood for each scene, especially the trips into Oh Daesu’s momentary bouts of madness during his captivity.
Stylistically, it’s the best thing since sliced Tarantino. Where Park differs, though, is that his characters are not the idealized archetypes that Tarantino usually goes for but are, instead, ordinary people driven by depravity into extraordinary places. The big fight scene is a perfect example of this. While watching it, you don’t see a kung fu master taking the big mob to school. You don’t see the honor-bound samurai fighting to the death for his master. You simply see an ordinary man, mostly unskilled, hampered by irrationality, but imbued with a monstrous strength-of-will doing whatever is necessary to stay on his path of revenge.
Simply put, to view yourself as Vincent Vega would simply be a narcissistic fantasy. On the other hand, it’s scary to realize how easily you could fit into Oh Daesu’s shoes.
Bottom line from me: a hearty 4 star rating. Only a few rough edges and confusing moments prevent it from a full 5 stars. I really look forward to seeing other movies by Park and I’ll finish with the same thing I said after walking out Resevoir Dogs, “This boy is good…and he’s only going to get better.”
NOTE: This movie will be opening in limited release (i.e.- Los Angeles & New York) on March 25th but is not currently scheduled for a wide release here. So, unless you live in one of the lucky cities, I highly recommend ordering it on DVD immediately once it becomes available.
Hostage
March 12, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Bruce Willis is the king of hard charging action movies with a lead character that always finds himself with his back against the wall, and this movie has Bruce pinned down quite well from beginning to end.
Hostage negotiator Jeff Talley (Willis) has retired from LA S.W.A.T. to become a small town police chief of Bristo Camino in Ventura County, to escape his past… His last job went poorly (spoiler) and he thought the change of scenery would do him and his family some good. The motto in his little precinct is “No Crime Monday is followed by No crime Tuesday… etc, etc”. That was probably a great saying until 3 scrubs in a pick-up junk decided to jack a rich dude (Pollak) for his Escalade, and kill a cop in the process thus screwing with Jeff’s day. (Willis must love characters with names that start with ‘J’)
Talley arrives on scene to find the Smith family has been taken hostage by above mentioned scrubs, and one of his officer’s shot in the driveway… From this point if you have ever seen a Bruce Willis movie you know retribution is coming forthwith so just hang in there. It would seem the scrubs chose the wrong house to jack! (the plot she thickens) Daddy is an accountant for a group of less than scrupulous individuals that want their copy of Heaven Can Wait back (spoiler) in a really bad way and, they don’t care who has to die to get it. Lucky for us John McLaine err… I mean Jeff Talley is going to save the day.
The movie is really good if you dig pointless gore and a story with more holes than Willis’ John Smith character from Last Man Standing (kick hiney movie). The acting is pretty good, especially the performance delivered by Ben Foster. He was so good he even creeped me out a time or two. Kim Coates who has shared the screen with Willis on more than one occasion (touch me again and I’ll kill ya) was pretty good and Willis was back in his old form shooting everything that moves and saving the day. You gotta love a good violent action movie to start the spring season of right and this one made the grade for me. Bullets, Bodies, ‘Splosions and plot twists. Loved it.
I just hope this is the precursor to Die Hard 4.0 because I am so there if it is. Hostage only got 4 stars because no one showed me anything pink and pointy and Bruce’s daughter Rumer was so ugly I thought that they had cast his son to play his daughter. Imagine my surprise when I found he only had 2 girls… Scary!!!
Next Stop for Bruce will be as John Hartigan (told you about the letter ‘J’) in Sin City just 3 short weeks away.
Million Dollar Baby
March 7, 2005 | Leave a Comment
This is the best thing Clint has done since Unforgiven, and definitely deserved the best picture nod from the less than masculine masses, that call themselves Academy voters.
Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) is a washed up former boxing trainer that runs a dirt gym in the inner city of LA with one fighter that is about to make a run for the title. But, Frankie is to slow to make it happen and his loyal fighter drops him to join another management team that will get him his ’shot’ sooner. Of course the fighter goes for the title and wins which leaves Frankie doubting his ability as a manager and decides he isn’t going to take on any new fighters.
Frankie is flanked by his oldest and dearest friend Eddie (Freeman), who basically takes care of the gym and makes sure the fighters pay their dues on time each month. Their relationship is a good one and the story moves along at a fast enough pace you will get the true gist of their bond (spoiler) early on so I will move on. Enter Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank), a 32 year old white trash chick from Arkansas, that wants to be the next female boxing champ. Maggie begs and pleads with Frankie to train her and she is promptly rejected but she keeps pushing (many things happen) and finally he agrees. Maggie has her trainer, and Dirty Harry has a reason to keep living.
There is far too much of the movie that needs to be seen and not read to get the full effect so this is a good place to stop. Eastwood and Freeman own the screen and Swank is friggin’ awesome as her butt kicking chickie character would demand so every little statue handed out for this movie was fully deserved. We here @ MFG don’t usually give 2 farts what the Academy or other critics think but this year, they actually got it right.
Based on a short story by F.X. Toole from the book ‘Rope Burns’, this movie although great is not one I will see again because it is really, really darned depressing by credits end.
The Pacifier
March 6, 2005 | Leave a Comment
In a poor attempt to be the next “Governator” Vin decides to drop his tough guy “XXX” character and decides to try his hand at appealing to the kiddies, and all I can say, Vin needs to pray there is a 3rd Riddick film or else this might be a sign the fat lady is warming up.
Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) is a S.E.A.L. Lieutenant that is tasked with the responsibility of rescuing a defense expert that has been kidnapped by Serbian nationalists. The mission is a bust when Vin’s ‘mark’ gets killed and he gets wounded. 2 months pass and Shanes commanding officer has a new assignment for him, “just till you get back on your feet”… this is where wackiness runs rampant, NOT!
He is sent to suburban hell to look after the remaining members of the defense experts family, Mom (Faith Ford), Julie, Zoe, Seth, Peter and Tyler along with Gary (my personal favorite character), while Captain Fawcett and Mom go to Zurich to get what is believed to be the thing the Serbians wanted in the first place; The Ghost program. I personally thought it would be easier just to go down to the local Comp USA and buy the Macafee version but what do I know.
Anywhoo, Shane has to learn to be a people friendly, caring father figure for a group of kids without one, and at the same time appeal to the national audience as a big teddy bear type. Did it work? Not for me. I thought it was too much like every other film with this plot line and although Diesel did display a gamut of emotions and range, anything more than his usual dumb monkey look was more that I was expecting. If not for the kids, their principal (Graham) and his nemesis, wrestling coach and Asst. Principal, The Murninator (Garrett); this movie would have gotten one lone star and for me that is a difficult thing to do… Just look at my other reviews and see for yourself.
I can usually find good in any movie if I look close enough but, having seen Uncle Buck, Major Payne, Kindergarten Cop and this… It hurt’s my head to think about it. If you need to feel good about being a crappy parent by taking your kid to a movie, wait a week and give Robots a shot and avoid this thing until it makes it’s ABC debut some time next year.
Be Cool
March 6, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Be Cool is the sequel to 1995’s Get Shorty. John Travolta is back as Chili Palmer. And the first cool thing about this movie is that it knows that it is a movie in a very tongue in cheek kind of way. Furthermore, it knows that sequels usually suck.
The story is a total retread of Get Shorty. The big difference is now Chili has made it in the movie business and wants to get into the music business instead. Travolta is surrounded by an all star cast, but the storyline this time feels like it exists only to lace together a series of skits. The best word I can think of to describe the overall feel of the movie is “disjointed”.
This does not mean that the film totally sucks though. Based on the power of the cast, it is “cool”. And there are some true laugh out loud moments. Travolta is cool as ever as Chili. But consider the rest of the cast this time out. First off, he’s reunited with Uma Thurman and Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fiction including a dance that gives a nod to both Pulp and Saturday Night Fever. And is there anyone on the planet who can play a character who makes you want to smack the taste of their mouth more than Vince Vaughn? His character in this one is a classic which I wont spoil. Then there’s The Rock as a gay body guard. And let us not forget the scene stealing Cedric the Entertainer and his hip hop gangsta rappers.
If you like the cast, we think you’ll like the movie. We fully expect the critics to trash it. However, we laughed out loud many times and had fun watching the cast of the movie do their thing. We give it 4 stars, barely. You’ll wanna see the movie, and you’ll enjoy it more with a crowd.
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