Out with the smug. In with the smugger.

The codes of a destructive satellite named GOLDENEYE have been stolen by Russian traitors working with a British traitor, Agent 006, who plans to use Goldeneye’s electromagnetic pulses to cause a global financial meltdown. James Bond must defeat the stronger agent, thwart the runaway satellite, and bang the Russian hotness.

new bond: brosnan, pierce brosnan

The first Bond that came to my young attention was Moore, Roger Moore. And I lavished the appropriate young-boy idolatry on this Real Man surrounded by gangsters, gadgets and girls. Upon learning of Connery, Sean Connery, it seemed only appropriate to then lavish the proprietary respect on He Who Came First – and let’s face it, he was quite the Man’s Man himself (meaning he was even more of a misogynist than Moore). Lazenby, George Lazenby, I never knew thee. And Dalton, Timothy Dalton, I was ambivalent at best about the choice, being young, dumb and fulla that white stuff.

I used to go around saying what a fine Bond that young REMINGTON STEELE fella would make; whatsisname? – Brosnan, Pierce Brosnan. Well, little did I know that wheels of fate were in motion: Brosnan was married to Cassandra Harris in 1981 when she did FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, and was introduced to producer Albert Broccoli… and thus he was, in fact, chosen to replace Roger Moore in 1987’s THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS – and lost the gig to Timothy Dalton due to NBC grasping like the tentacles on the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. octopus and extending Brosnan’s contract on REMINGTON STEELE due to the heat he would generate from being Bond. So Broccoli said Fuck NBC and hired Dalton instead…

Sadly, Cassandra would die of cancer in 1991 and would not see her husband become Bond.

But here we are at last, me being proven right on what a damn fine double-oh Brosnan cuts, in his first go-around as 007 at 42 years of age, in a film once again named so appropriately in the Bond vein, GOLDENEYE (maybe because we’ve been conditioned to accept the “gold” appellation, with GOLDFINGER (1964) and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)).

GOLDENEYE is the first Bond film not lifted from an Ian Fleming Bond novel.  But there is a connection to Fleming: Goldeneye is the name of his estate in Oracabessa Bay in Jamaica. It was where he started the first draft to the very first Bond novel in 1952, Casino Royale.

Smugtastic!

GOLDENEYE grips us immediately with James Bond 007 (Brosnan) bungee-jumping off a massive dam in total silence to infiltrate a Russian base. With fellow MI6 Agent 006 (Sean Bean), they both spy around a bit before 006 gets killed by Colonel Ourumov (Gottfried John) and 007 escapes in another throat-gripping stunt – leaping a motorbike off a cliff runway to chase a taxiing single-engine plane off the cliff, with no pilot. The stunt is so audacious, it cannot be matched by anything that comes after it. The opening titles slink in with Tina Turner singing Goldeneye.

NINE YEARS LATER…

Bond is careening down a mountain road in an Aston Martin with a young woman, who nervously begs him to slow down, “James, I enjoy a spirited ride as much as the next girl, but…”  A luscious woman in a red sportscar overtakes them, openly flirting with Bond. Bond’s young woman asks, “Who’s that?” James: “The next girl.” (Ha! I love it! Shutup! So do you! It’s 1995.)

After meeting that sportster at a baccarat table (the delectable Famke Janssen at the height of her sex as Xenia Onatopp – all the better to innuendo her), the plot kicks into gear, with Onatopp and Colonel Ourumov stealing a techno helicopter, wiping out a Russian satellite base, and tying Bond’s knickers into knots.

We are introduced to a new actor playing Moneypenny the MI6 secretary (Samantha Bond, who would play the character through Brosnan’s four Bond films); not as luscious as Caroline Bliss heating up Dalton, and not an auntie like Lois Maxwell pining for Connery’s and Moore’s underpants, Bond (Samantha) is an attractive redhead who smugly informs Bond (James) that she was just on a date with another gentleman, and that Bond’s flirtations could get him charged with sexual harassment! (Just wait’ll she gets a load of #MeToo!)

There’s a new M – Judi Dench as MI6 director, taking the reins from Robert Brown (who took over from Bernard Lee and only did four Bond films prior to Dench). The first female M, she’s openly contemptuous of Bond, “You’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur,” as Bond is direct about his distaste for her as nothing more than “an accountant.” M matches Bond in smug, with a dash of anger – smug-anger? smanger? It sets up a contentious dynamic that would play right into the Daniel Craig era.

And there’s Q, the same old weapons expert we’ve grown to love – Desmond Llewelyn (a fixture since the 2nd Bond film, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, and would be till his death after 1999’s THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH). His role is pure comic relief, and we realize this whole bit about showing Bond new gadgets has become almost a satire within each Bond film.

Alan Cumming is Russian computer whiz Boris (although it doesn’t take much to hack these 1995 computers, basically some typing skills and figuring out sexual innuendo passwords).

And the Bond Girl in this 17^th EON Production Bond film – Izabella Scorupco as Natalya. She’s a computer programmer – because she’s a girl. Think I’m joking? Computers were coming into their own as plot drivers in movies, but note the attitude toward sitting and typing in 1995 – a task usually reserved for secretaries, a job usually reserved for women since time immemorial – all the Russian computer techs are women and doughy guys, and effete Alan Cumming is the head computer nerd. Real Men were still doing the punching and shooting. There is a moment where this disparity of effort comes across: Natalya must hack Goldeneye, and Bond gives her a look that says, “Wait – you’re actually going to sit there and TYPE while I do the real work of punching and shooting?!” It lasts for just a second – but it’s there, giving away the inborn misogyny of the filmmakers (writers Jeffery Caine and Bruce Feirstein and director Martin Campbell). There’s also another message in Bond’s look: that of a man unversed in computers (again – because they’re girly things).

Compare that 1995 attitude to Timothy Olyphant’s sexy computer mastermind in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007), or even Man’s Man Daniel Craig as 007 hacking M’s computer in CASINO ROYALE (2006).

To be fair, the women are given their due in fighting skills – Onatopp, it seems, takes an equal amount of sensual pleasure in violent killing as raunchy fucking, and her signature move is wrapping her thighs around a man and crushing the breath from him. And when Bond gives Natalya a gun, asking if she knows how to use it, she quickly demonstrates how proficient she is. So, Ladies – we got your back (as long as it’s pearbottom).

Joe Don Baker’s first Bond appearance was in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS as an American ex-communicated general who supported the Confederates; here he plays agent Wade, a more regular Ugly American, loud and obnoxious, Bond’s disrespectful sidekick (“Hey, Jimbo!”), who turns up wherever he’s needed so that Bond isn’t stranded. And Robbie Coltrane is Russian mafia, more for comedy than plot.

GOLDENEYE loses steam when 006 turns up back from the dead, as a British traitor, and tries to kill Bond and Natalya. This first murder attempt, where they are left in a helicopter with missiles headed for them, yet with the EJECT button within reach… was beyond laughable for a supposedly canny traitorous double-oh agent to have set up. Was the movie pulling our legs? So by the 5^th attempt on Bond’s and Natalya’s lives, we’ve checked out, figuring that 006 must harbor some love-that-cannot-be-spoken for 007 for all his half-hearted efforts in terminating him.

But it’s not all his fault – at one point, 006 sees Bond on a monitor and clearly says to his men, “Kill him.” Easy enough directive, right? Wrong. So the stormtrooper-trained baddies all machine-gun Bond’s general direction, hitting nothing but air, then when Bond steps out with his hands up, they point their guns at him as if that’s a threat. Idiots, you were just shooting at him enough to turn him into confetti, and now that he’s standing right in front of you, you STOP? They take Bond back to 006 – who proceeds to question Bond on why he won’t die. The first thing he should’ve shouted at his idiot soldiers: “Why did you morons bring him back here?! I SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOU TO KILL HIM!”

Movie devolves to TV’s THE A-TEAM when Bond chases Ourumov through Russian streets in a tank. Yes, I said TANK. It’s the coolest scene in the movie, with Bond driving a Russian T-55 tank blithely through buildings and landmarks (the amount of collateral damage! and probable death! But – good guy, so it’s okay) – yet every police car that impacts the tank and is turned over, crushed, or pushed off bridges, we see the occupants exit the cars in quick cutaways, for the PG-13 rubdown.

What about all those trained soldiers that run directly INTO the line of fire? Well, they fall down with no blood or brains spattering everywhere, as would be the case with the high caliber weapons they are being killed with.

Inexplicable interlude in the Caribbean, where Bond and Natalya seem to be spending a casual honeymoon. Skip–

James Bond fiercely guards his woman from progressive liberalism.

More could have been made of the competitiveness between 006 and 007. I imagined 006 was the veteran, having earned his license to kill earlier than Bond. The script plays them as old friends, with Bond BETWAYED. 006 sneers that he “was always better,” which means he has the inferiority complex. A climax above the dish of a radio antenna proves him wrong. However this outcome might have been more poignant had 007 always thought he was the inferior one and comes to realize, without fanfare, that in besting 006 he was, in fact, “always better” – the better agent, the better man, the better smug.

Timothy Dalton went back to the Ian Fleming 007 novels to inspire his take on Bond, but Pierce just looked to Roger Moore – and turned up the smug. Moore was 58 years old when his last Bond was released (A VIEW TO A KILL, 1985), and just didn’t have the smug-stamina (smugina? staminug?) to compete against a new generation of bad guys and badder girls. The franchise needed the younger Pierce to inject its smug into those bad people.

Except for the opening stunts, which are organic to the story, each outlandish action sequence is predicated on stupid things being done or neglected or coincidentally falling into place in the preceding action sequence, which means negating one small coincidence, or just having one of the 50,000 stray bullets hit its mark would put an end to this whole beargarden. The biggest recurring mistake is that no one will get smart and shoot Bond in the head point-blank, over the course of about 63 opportunities to do so. Seriously, you almost start rooting for the bad guys, the number of times this super secret agent finds himself in these embarrassing situations. If he was half the spy his legend makes him out to be, he wouldn’t wind up captured or in the crosshairs in the first place, and the story wouldn’t need the pathological procrastination and breathtaking bad aim.

The grandest, stupidest plot convenience of all must surely be Boris’s subconscious habit of clicking a pen three times while twirling it in his fingers, while he does his feminine computer hacking. Well, it’s a good thing Q just happened to give Bond an explosive pen that is armed when you click it three times. So, yeh… CONVENIENT. I mean, what are the odds?

About the same as someone shooting Bond in the head point-blank.

END

I always knew – heaven is blue!

One golden glance of what should be…

Get me to sing anything, write me anything and I will sing it and I will leave you as much as I possibly can.
— Freddie Mercury to Queen.

or Don McLean, “the day the music died” was when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed in a 1959 plane crash. For us children of the 70s and 80s, that day was 24 November 1991, with the death of Freddie Mercury.

Made In Heaven is the last Queen album to feature all four original members – Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor. Released posthumously in November 1995, four years after Freddie’s death, it is something so tragic and beautiful and creepy and intriguing and criminal and sublime…

Queen’s remaining band members, and producers David Richards and Josh Macrae, take unfinished tracks, or completed tracks intended for other purposes, and finish or repurpose them to fill out this album. Make no mistake: Made In Heaven is not “filler” – it’s a full-fledged Queen record – 4 sides, 13 tracks – with all the soaring production and insatiable spirit inherent in every Queen release; it was Freddie’s intent to pour out product with his heart and soul and final flesh, so I’m sure his dying wishes are being fulfilled by Queen… yet there is something disturbing that underpins the wonder of this particular studio magic.

The fact that you CAN do something – SHOULD you?

Yes, says the fickle stock market. Yes, says the avaricious record company. Yes, say the lost Queen fans, anxiously walking the Earth like Jules from PULP FICTION, tremulously scanning the skies for a sliver of anything Queen to ease their aching hearts.

We all came down to Montreux / On the Lake Geneva shoreline…

Thus – Made In Heaven, with its triple-decked guitars and gladiatorial choirs, and some strange inclusions that make us wonder if the technology envelope was pushed just a little too far…

These are not verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs – not that much of Queen’s best work ever is – but even at this elegiac juncture, the band did not dumb it down for the sake of completing tracks or reaching “commercial” demographics. These songs thrum with a life of their own, an ethereal thread weaving its way through the album – a pondering of life and death – spiraling through starways of aural ecstasy, finding their place in a universe suddenly grown much colder.

It’s a Beautiful Day. Originally recorded in 1980, Freddie’s piano underpins this composition (which is flooded with new string pads by John Deacon), opening the album on an optimistic note.

The devil wears lycra!
Freddie Mercury in the original 1985 video for “Made In Heaven.”

Made in Heaven opens with crying Brian May harmony guitars. Freddie’s voice takes up the soaring, in his vaunted high register. Spacey sounds, gigantic drums, treated with stardust and May’s signature harmony guitars carving pentatonic pentacles passim.

Originally from Freddie’s solo album Mr. Bad Guy, with much less rock bombast, the original 1985 video was themed more along hell than heaven, showing Freddie atop a mountain dressed in red flaming cloak and lycra, overlooking a crowd of red-lycra denizens seething in chaos.

Let Me Live. Gospel! The signature Queen harmonies now sound like they’re a bunch of big black chicks wearing purple robes. Completed in 1995, a simple piano arrangement with big-black-chick choruses, Freddie taking the first verse, Roger the second and Brian the third. Inspiring to hear them all one after the other – all such great voices, overshadowed by Freddie’s crystalline timbre over the course of their careers. Reaching #9 on the UK charts, Let Me Live is a grand, bittersweet single – that falls into that unfortunate category of Lame-ass Queen Videos.

The first category of Queen videos is Cool, Innovative, Funny – all those that feature the band before tragedy befell them (Bohemian Rhapsody, Save Me, Invisible Man, I Want To Break Free, The Miracle) – while the Lame-Ass category is post-Freddie, showing unrelated people doing unrelated things, and/or interspersing stock footage of live Queen (You Don’t Fool Me, My Life Has Been Saved).

The only exceptions to both these categories would be Under Pressure (recorded by Bowie and Queen in 1981 while Freddie was very much alive, yet touring commitments precluded either act from making a video, which ends up a frustrated mashup of frustrated stock footage. The other end of the spectrum is No One But You, a song recorded post-Freddie by Queen’s remaining band members (May, Deacon, Taylor), with a video featuring the three in a recording studio, in their last appearance together (Deacon would retire from Queen after this appearance).

At last, a statue to a Queen that really mattered!

Mother Love is Freddie’s last ever vocal performance. After he took a rest from this recording session, he never returned to the studio, and Brian May had to sing the last verse. That’s how up-to-the-line they took it! And yet when you hear this slow-paced, poignant ballad, you would never think this is a man who is just – about – to – die. This is that creepiness mingled with sadness. There is amazing art, and there is that human element that makes us wonder about the men behind the art and what they went through to create it.

The ghostly outro features samples from a live recording, studio sessions, and Freddie trailing off with a lead vocal he did for Carole King in 1972. There is a sample of what sounds like a cassette tape fast-forwarding at high speed, which is apparently a “few milliseconds of every Queen song ever recorded.” Unless this fact was made public, no one would ever have known; imagine the time and care taken to produce that effect, which is really nothing special – it truly just sounds like a cassette tape fast-forwarding at high speed – a classic case of “diminishing returns,” i.e. whether that effect was included or not, it makes no difference to the song, so all that effort was expended for no reason.

The very last sound we hear is a baby crying. I like to think that Queen is telling us, this being Freddie’s swansong, that for every death, there is another birth; maybe that there is another Freddie out there somewhere, even as we mourn… Not talking reincarnation or souls or religion, rather, that all our molecules keep circulating in this universe, and if one man, one organism, can possess that makeup of unique cells, then surely another will…

John Deacon writes, and plays all guitars and keyboards, on My Life Has Been Saved, a nice easy rock track that Freddie sings in a casual lilt; feels like late Queen, not straying too far from Innuendo.

Most of the songs on this album feature some kind of string pad, which is a product of the times, but which dilutes from the essence of rawness that early Queen reveled in. (Their first seven albums – from 1973’s Queen to 1978’s Jazz – all boasted the legend, “No synthesizers!”)

There is also a 1989 B-Side version of My Life (for the single Scandal), a much fuller, thicker rock sound, with the full band performing on it (and there’s still that annoying string pad).

Mr. Bad Guy in motion.

I Was Born to Love You is re-recorded for this album; originally recorded in 1984 with piano and Annoying String Pads by Mercury for his solo album Mr. Bad Guy. The video is a mashup of the original video made by Mercury in 1985, intercut with QUEEN AT WEMBLEY 1986 (released on video 1990).

There is also a version performed by May (singing intro vocals and playing a 12-string guitar) and Taylor (singing lead vocals). Freddie gave of himself as much as he humanly could in his final hours, but re-recordings like this – lifted from Mercury’s solo efforts – seem a little tacky.

As good as the re-worked finished product is, when Freddie gave his bandmates carte blanche to do what they could with his final vocal output, did he foresee them ransacking his solo material and re-tailoring it as band product? No source I know is close enough to Queen to tell us the inside truth.

Heaven for Everyone was originally recorded in 1988 by Roger Taylor for his band The Cross (album Shove It), with Freddie guesting on lead vocals, now re-worked for Heaven. An easy rock smoothie (with those godawful string pads everywhere!), this first posthumous single from Made In Heaven charted at #2 in the UK.

The video features clips from Georges Méliès’ innovative silent masterpiece A TRIP TO THE MOON (and other silent-film “space” footage).

You’re killing him with these low low prices!

Too Much Love Will Kill You. Well, there’s the Freddie Mercury/Queen version here, recorded for 1989’s The Miracle album (omitted for legal disputes), which will make you weep…

… and there’s the Brian May version – which will kill you. Because May wrote it about the dissolution of his first marriage to Chrissie Mullen and his passion for his new love, Anita Dobson.

A friend commented on how Freddie could take any of the band’s songs and make them sound like Freddie wrote them – but not this one. Brian bleeds his soul onto the vinyl, and there is no one else who could perform this song with such rending emotion.

To me, this is the jewel of the album – and I cannot listen to it without weeping inconsolably for my own losses in life – but it obviously affected a lot more people in the same way, as it won the 1997 Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Best Song Lyrically. (Great Minds Mourn Alike!)

The Heaven version features screaming electric guitar, while Brian would rearrange the song for his 1992 album Back To The Light and employ an acoustic solo, which will tear your heart out.

You Don’t Fool Me opens with a Queen choral signature, then meanders in a completely different direction, funky bassline and hypnotic thumpa-thumpa. Sounding very 90’s-British, it’s not very Queen. Not a bad song – for most bands, probably even a great song – but in the hands of Queen, a wasted opportunity, even with Brian sprinkling it with tasty Red Special nuggets.

The song needs to only be heard, not seen, as the boring video of angst-ridden teens in a disco flurry distracts from the arrangement and excellent playing.

By Brian May’s account, this track started from nothing, producer Richards editing together shreds of Freddie’s vocals over a piece of music, which Brian, Roger and John Deacon then added their parts to later, to create a complete song. Again, a work of art accomplished, but at what cost to Freddie’s legacy and final wishes?

A Winter’s Tale. Another song written completely by Freddie on the cusp of his non-existence, apparently while looking out his hospital windows at Lake Geneva. Unlike many people who know they are not long for this world, at least Freddie was ensconced in the industry he loved, and he and his band had the means to create as much product as possible before the end.

Relaxed 6/8 tempo, flooded with smooth string pads (of course) and audaciously credited as a Christmas song, probably because of the intrusion of those jazz chords.

This is effectively where Made In Heaven ends, because the remaining “songs” seem like filler. Freddie’s final words in this song seem to herald a closing, a man going to his rest, hallucinating as the last sparks of his dying mind haywire into oblivion: “Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Oh, it’s bliss.”

Freddie and Brian in more heavenly times. Recording the video for “One Vision” (1985).

Okay, we can forgive and accept It’s a Beautiful Day (Reprise) as a final track, a bookend, where Freddie repeats the optimism of the opener, which then scalds into a heavy rock outro that somehow reflects the rage of dying when you haven’t finished your run at Life. As the band reaches maximum overdrive, under the bombast, we hear the unmistakable I-IV arpeggios of Seven Seas Of Rhye – a song from Queen II (1974) about a god in his prime, (“Fear me, you lords and lady preachers / I descend upon your Earth from the skies…”)

And then Beautiful Day ends – abruptly – as Life does. One millisecond, “You” is still you. The next, “You” is lost to the Cosmos…

Yeah. Dumb. It’s a 2-second “track” of Freddie singing the word, “yeah.” Lifted from the intro to Don’t Try Suicide (album The Game, 1980), it’s nothing new. It’s nothing exciting. It’s nothing. Dumb, yeah?

OR – is it a sly tip to depressed fans about Freddie’s death, or people with AIDS, not to commit suicide? Well, Queen, can you BE any more cryptic to people on the edge? Or is it saying, “yeah” go ahead and suicide? Yeah, like I said, dumb.

Then there’s 13 aka Track 13, a 22-minute experiment by producer Richards that doesn’t add anything to the Queen legacy, except loads of Annoying String Pads and confusion among fans (due to its inclusion in some formats, omission in others, a few seconds of it looping on some releases; the indecision on whether it should be considered a triptych with the previous two songs or a standalone track, or whether to just cry over the wasted space that might have been used for a final interview or some rehearsal tapes or a never-before-released live track).

An inauspicious end to a worthy final album from Queen. If heaven sounds like all these string pads, please, someone bitchslap some of those cherubim, or whoever’s leaning on that Ensoniq synth.

In A Kind Of Magic (1986), Freddie sings: “One dream, one soul / One prize, one goal / One golden glance of what should be / It’s a kind of magic…” That’s what Made In Heaven truly is – merely one fleeting glimpse, a shifting-sand conglom of eclectic dynamism. It can be regarded as a desperate clutching at the last embers of what made a man vital in his youth, or as going out in a blaze of supernova. We Queen fans know it is the latter.

“The day the music died” will be different for each generation, but was Don McLean correct that the music could die?

As long as the music rings on in myriad forms of media, in the minds of fans, in the hands and throats of musicians, whenever we turn it on, or reminisce about it, or perform it to the best of our ability, we keep alive that golden glance of what should be…

END

Okay, step up, people! Those tomatoes aren’t going to throw themselves!

Brady Bunchless.

It’s The Brady Bunch from the groovin’ 70s, transplanted into the grungy 90s. Plot lost. Actors shamed. Comedy dead.

The Brady’s owe back taxes. They must pay $20,000 or they lose their house. It’s up to the kids to raise that money – by winning a singing competition. So let’s get this straight: the parents of the house are derelict in their homeowner duties, yet dad keeps assuring mom that “Everything will be alright.” Yet everything is NOT alright if the money that eventually saved their house was won by their kids, who happened to see an ad for a talent contest, happened to be singers, and happened to face no better “talent” (at least, by the judges’ standards) in the contest.

Did I get that right? And then people wonder why so much vomit was choking the aisles at screenings of THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE.

Gary Cole stars as patriarch Mike Brady (originally played by the unflappable Robert Reed), the filmmakers opting to go with Reed’s cheesiest hairdo from that era – the Perm To Die For. Shelley Long is perfection as Carol Brady (originally Florence Henderson), looking and sounding exactly like Henderson in her Helmet And Fishtail ‘do. The Brady Kids are all vapid representations of their ‘70’s counterparts, except for –  Marcia Marcia Marcia! Christine Taylor positively inhabits Maureen McCormick’s most famous role – that of teen boys’ wanking fantasy, Marcia Brady. No matter what roles Taylor may play in the future (DODGEBALL, ZOOLANDER), we will always see through the makeup to the Marcia Marcia Marcia beneath.

Michael McKean is next-door neighbor Larry Dittmeyer, who has a stake in Mike selling his house; a welcome cynical presence around the syrup of Cindy Brady and her oblivious clan.

Cameos from Henderson as Grandma, Ann B. Davis (original Alice), Christopher Knight (original Peter); with Barry Williams (original Greg) in the most hilarious cameo as a record exec, approached by his modern counterpart (Christopher Daniel Barnes), begging him for a record deal as “Johnny Bravo.”

“Ohh, Mike! You make me so dry!”

TV director Betty Thomas, and writers Laurice Elehwany, Rick Copp, Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner do a strange thing with this remake of the 1970’s television sitcom that we all grew up with. They have no intention of endearing the Bradys to modern kids, nor is this version empowered to instill life lessons through the antics of the Brady brood; no, the filmmakers purposefully play it as if this is the Brady family from the early ‘70s sitcom (replete with fashion emergencies, outdated cultural norms and uncool vernacular from the 70’s) transplanted into a modern setting. As if they’ve just arrived in the 90s in a time machine. Thus, the only people who get the fish-out-of-water gags are people who knew the original cheesy show. It’s a kids’ show of the 70s, aimed at adults of the 90s. It’s completely NOT what THE BRADY BUNCH was made for, or stood for, or mocked for.

Supposedly a fish out of water tale – but these fish have never been out of the water. Meaning: how can these Bradys retain their ignorance of the modern world while living in it? They are all constantly bombarded with media, they attend school, Mike goes to his job, Alice goes shopping, Carol watches TV, reads magazines – they are all out in the world and interacting with it constantly. Where is the disconnect that allows them to be such cultural nitwits? It’s kinda stupid and embarrassing all at once.

A running gag is architect Mike only designing buildings that look like his suburban home (whether they be laundromats, burger joints or banks). How is he still employed? And how are the kids still using terms like “far out chick,” and “he’s so outa sight” when they are too young to have known those terms? You pick up slang from your peers, especially in school. But in school, there’s a Pearl Jam ethos sweeping the nation. (Real Greg Brady Record Exec even says to New Greg Hipster Tool, “Today’s sound is grunge, Seattle!”) So are the Brady kids picking up their outdated slang from reading Jimi Hendrix interviews?

The cold open shows a fast-paced, grimy world of modernity. Then the opening titles, done in the same manner as the TV series: nine boxes, smiley faces, insufferable jingle – but with a new rock beat that is far out, man! The movie has a TV feel, due to using the same interior design of the house, and the original series’ bumper music and situational music. And they start in on the classic lines from the series almost immediately.

The Bradys’ yard is a hermetically sealed environment. As soon as Cindy chases a ball out of the back gate, the clamor and grit of the 90s descends upon her. But she doesn’t feel it. Her psyche is as hermetically sealed as their yard.

There are a lot of premises from the original sitcom crammed into this movie, but none of them are resolved – they are just for nostalgia value, and mean next to nothing in the context of the movie, but to older viewers they will raise a titter or two. And Alice is as annoying as ever.

Full marks to the actors who are willing to make complete asshats of themselves in this mildly funny – satire? spoof? travesty? I was embarrassed FOR them, watching them doing such a good job of being embarrassing. Queasy, shameful emotions course through your body, chasing others of their kin through the viscous, unctuous cockles of your breast. At times you snigger with a knowing nod to the callback gags, but most of the movie, your skin will crawl with trepidation. Especially during the “talent show” where the Brady kids do the same song they did from one of their TV shows. Keep On, complete with the choreography. The most amazing part of this performance is that all the way through it, you just want to beat them with your shoe.

Davy Jones cameos, as he did on the TV series, when everyone was younger and actually cooler – here, he fronts a grunge band singing The Monkees’ Girl. Two more Monkees, Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz, cameo as judges of the talent show – which explains why the Bradys won (at least to the over-30s who get the gag). But doesn’t explain how they sang to backing tracks that faded out along with their vocals and still won.

Hang on, let me get my shoe…

END

Casper lookin’ for some morning glory. (Kids, don’t ask.)

Ghostly Brio.

He’s the friendliest ghost you know. No, not Patrick Swayze – Casper, The Friendly Ghost. Though grownups might / Look at him with fright / The children all love him so.

After innumerable comics, television shows and theater shorts, Casper makes the spirited leap to full-length feature film in CASPER, a live-action adventure melded with excellent 3D animation.

Bill Pullman is Dr. Harvey, a paranormal expert, hired by Cathy Moriarty to exorcise a mansion she has just inherited. Dr. Harvey and his teen-demographic daughter Kat (Christina Ricci) move in, and soon discover three mischievous ghosts – The Ghostly Trio: Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso (voiced by Joe Nipote, Joe Alaskey and Brad Garrett), and their round-headed nephew Casper (voiced by Malachi Pearson), who wants to be their pal. The ghost effects are very well realized: they are three-dimensional yet see-through, and the filmmakers have captured well the form and personality of the Ghostly Trio; they’ve even found a perfect effeminate yet not-gay voice for Casper, and – like SPIDER-MAN – his head roundness is Just Right.

Hijinks ensue, with lots of slapstick, lightning-fast sight gags, and questionable eye-lines. Ricci and Pullman (and other humans, whom the ghosts call “fleshies”) are really onscreen, but all the ghosts are CGI, while the physical environment (curtains, doors, bedposts, paintings, food, glass, etc.) is a combination of CGI and practical effects. It’s an entertaining diversion, and should keep the kiddie demo happy through your afternoon nap.

Since his creation by Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo in the 1945 cartoon THE FRIENDLY GHOST, Casper’s whole gig has been to seek out a friend who is not terrified by his ghostliness. Nothing’s changed, as Kat arcs toward trusting and loving Casper. And maybe even… desiring him? [Get your mind out of the graveyard gutter, Poffy!]

As with all ghost stories, rules bend, time warps, madness… takes control…

For example, the ghosts can touch physical objects when they want to, and can be affected by physical objects like plungers, doors and vacuum cleaners, can eat food (which goes directly through them and falls to the floor), or can choose to become incorporeal enough to float through everything. Casper can carry plates, cook breakfast, open doors, pull levers forcefully, become a cushion beneath Kat’s fall, yet when he wants to touch her in that way, his hand melts through hers. Oh, tragic!… Hey ghost, use that same willpower you use to pull levers and you’ll be honking those hooters in no time! (Oh, are the kids still here? I just meant playing choo-choo with her, kids!)

Why does Casper want to bed her anyway? Are you telling us, Movie, that his ghost form is producing spermatozoa that seeks release into a uterus? Maybe the movie is telling you that it’s time to have THAT Talk…

The funniest sequence by far is a cannonade of cameos, when Pullman looks into a mirror and sees – Clint Eastwood looking back (who satirizes his recent UNFORGIVEN by threatening, “I’m gonna kill you, your mama, and all her bridge-playin’ friends!”), who morphs into Rodney Dangerfield wisecracking, and then into Mel Gibson, who says nothing, just admires his pretty mug. Not all the cameos are commendable, as Eric Idle makes a fool of himself in a small role; it’s nowhere near horrible, but it’s nowhere near Python.

Throughout his history in media, the question of Casper’s death was swept under the carpet, considered too morbid a subject for his young audience. Here, writers Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver (and director Brad Silberling) create a pre-death history for “Casper McFadden,” so that he can desire to be his real self once more to touch Kat in that way, who by now is creaming her teen jeans aching for his ectoplasmic sheet-flute. (Kids, don’t ask your parents about what I just said.)

If you contemplate some of the life/death events here, you realize how morbid this topic can be for youngsters. (Or maybe the movie is suggesting that now might be a good time to talk to your kids about grandma’s imminent demise?…) Cathy Moriarty dies and comes back as a ghost, until she is tricked into “crossing over” to the other side. “What is ‘other side’?” ask the muslim children. Then Dr. Harvey dies, comes back as a cartoony ghost, and is resurrected by Casper’s Lazarus Machine, which he was going to use to turn himself into a real boy to touch Kat in that way. That’s downright horrifying! Where’s his physical body going to come from? The grave? Decomposed and worm-ridden? I mean, we’re talking zombies here, mormon children! I guess it’s no more horrifying than the story of Jesus, the second resurrected christian zombie (after the actual Lazarus).

Dr. Harvey’s dead wife (Amy Brenneman) also visits as a ghost in the finale. (We wonder why she appears in human form, and not cartoony, like every other ghost. Oh, it’s because she’s an angel! “That’s how we want grandma to be!” chime the evangelical children. What are the rules again? Don’t have any. Uh, okay, onward.) For sacrificing his chance to be alive by resurrecting Dr. Harvey, his wife grants Casper the wish to be human – only until ten o’clock. It’s a gruesome fate, probably more painful than not turning real at all. And then Casper blows it by getting just one timid kiss in. (And by the way – how does Dr. Harvey’s wife have the power over life and death?! Isn’t that God’s provenance? ask the christian children.)

A more suitable denouement might have been: let Dr. Harvey remain dead! He could have been with his wife! Then Casper could have become a real boy, as he and Kat have their lives ahead of them. It’s win-win! By now there’s so much living and dying going on, I’ve lost track of the zombie-muslim-scientology-pagan message. I guess they wanted to meld Pinocchio and Cinderella, and then make sure there was a curfew, so that all good teen ghosts tuck it back in their sheets.

END

The latest monster technology: one guy standing on top of another guy.

Crush-o, Kill-o, Dest-o-royah!

Godzilla’s having a nuclear meltdown!

GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH is the last of the Heisei series (that started with THE RETURN OF GODZILLA, 1984), and finds Godzilla battling a monster spawned from the weapon that killed the original Godzilla in 1954 – the Oxygen Destroyer! [dun dun daaah!]

Subtitled “The Death Of Godzilla” (which should give you some indication of where it’s going), the film not only retains a modern look and feel, but also has a sturdy throwback quality, with many refs to the one-and-only 1954 GODZILLA. Dr. Yamane, who wished to study that zilla (Takashi Shimura), appears in many photographs; Dr. Serizawa, creator of the Oxygen Destroyer (Akihiko Hirata), appears in flashback, with his weapon mentioned passim; Yamane’s daughter (Momoko Kochi) is here; and the son of the young boy from Odo village in GODZILLA is the thesis-writing Annoying Kid (Yasufumi Hayashi) who tells the military what to do (as all civilians in Japan are allowed to do during Godzilla and Gamera attacks).

Writer Kazuki Ohmori and director Takao Okawara craft a fast-paced actioner where everything seems to be happening at once, and you do need a little knowledge of the previous Heisei films to stay abreast.

Front and center, Godzilla is back to his old self, tearing through Japan again for no apparent reason, ululating in pain and glowing red. Put a pin in that. Birth Island (mistranslated as Bass Island) is destroyed mysteriously, and the zilla that was hatched in GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA II (which they originally called Baby, now Little Godzilla) has gone missing from that island. Pin that. Miki the psychic chick (Megumi Odaka, who has been poking her brain into zilla movies since 1989’s GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE) is circling in a helicopter bemoaning she has “lost her ESP connection” with Little-G (lady, you lost me at magic underpants). Pin that. Scientists have discovered something called “micro-oxygen” which is somehow related to the Oxygen Destroyer, but instead of killing, makes things grow… thus spawning some crab-Alien monsters that eventually group together and become… Destoroyah!

(By the way, you are reading that name correctly, with the extra ‘o.’ Seems Toho found it impossible to copyright the name “Destroyer” so opted for this extended version – Destoroyah – which, funnily enough, sounds like a Japanese person saying “destroyer.”)

After these and more characters are introduced, we circle back round to the red raging Godzilla – seems his heart is about to give out from radiation poisoning, and cause a nuclear explosion that will wipe out Japan! (Generals face-slap: Not another one! Information revealed to the army not by their team of scientists – but by Annoying Kid. Generals face-slap again: Not another one!) No one seems concerned enough about Godzilla’s destruction to send in toy tanks to ineffectually shoot at him. For some reason, he is considered heroic here, or at the least, a “good guy” rather than a bane. Even though his destruction of toy buildings is non-stop from film’s start to the final battle.

The Super X3. Just batshit sexy.

At one point, the military do attack Godzilla – with the Super X3! Not the Super X3! Yes, the super X3!! A cross between the Space Shuttle and the Batplane, armed with freeze missiles, laser cannon and cadmium weapons, this armored plane is so batshit sexy, they film every second of it spinning on its dais as it rises to the roof to liftoff. Go, Super X3, go! But this attack is not to kill Godzilla – it’s to stop him from blowing up from within! And for once in a Godzilla movie – the military is effective! They freeze Godz where he stands. Six hours respite. And I realized why there is such dissonance in this movie – the filmmakers can’t kill a national treasure, no matter the maddening destruction he is responsible for. Godzilla the character is an emotional attachment to the Japanese.

His actual death, when it comes, will be infinitely more dramatic and tragic…

I figured that’s why Junior was waddling around (who looks like a sleek tyrannosaurus) – so that when Godzilla dies, there’ll be another to take his place. But I was wrong! The giant, bat-winged Destoroyah picks Junior up and drops him to his death! To the horror of the psychic chick! A tearful scene when Godz examines the dying body of his progeny.

Now it’s ON with Destoroyah! Firebreathing, lasers (all cartooning effects, integrated well with the live action). Destoroyah is supposedly the Oxygen Destroyer come to life. (We can’t quite figure the logistics of this, but we roll with it.) In this final battle, composer Akira Ifukube uses the majestic theme he composed for the original GODZILLA. And Destoroyah, upon hearing that stabby, odd-time motif, goes down.

Meanwhile, the Super X3 is deployed again to stop Godzilla from exploding. The launch sequence was so good the first time, they show ALL OF IT again. Please, don’t leave out one millisecond! Ah yes, the exterior body, the spinning ascending dais, the switches flicked, the pilots repeating liftoff instructions, the jets firing up… Super X3, you’re just batshit sexy…

The freeze ray deployed, Godzilla flails in agony, shards of light shooting from within him, reaching critical meltdown. And then, while choirs of angels sing him to his rest, in a last scream of defiance, Godzilla… dissolves before our very eyes…

It’s very sad, and manipulated to be so. But this sadness is tempered with the fact that there is a disconnect regarding Godzilla’s role in this film. Is he hero, villain or victim? Unless we tracked his fate from previous films, this stand-alone movie gives us no substance on the big lizard. There is some talk of Mankind’s role in irradiating him, but otherwise, Godzilla is simply an organism that tears through the city with Desto trying to kill him, and the humans – whose city is being destroyed – are trying to stop Desto from killing him, while trying to kill Desto. But he’s going to die anyway with that nuclear meltdown imminent.

Yes, we wept at the death of the original 1954 Godzilla, but that was a compelling story that made sense, with the brutality of Godzilla linked to lashing out at humanity directly responsible for causing him pain. Here, by throwing in the malignant Destoroyah, the motivations and actions of Godzilla are diluted. A fanciful silhouette of roaring Godzilla closes the film. Hope?

Don’t worry zilla fanz, we’ll always have the Super X3…

END

Angels In The Outhouse.

Angel Gabriel comes to Earth to extract a soul and destroy heaven. Like the catholic religion, THE PROPHECY is confused as hell.

A spine-shivering opening sequence: camera pans down on a lone figure standing over a charred skeleton – of what appears to be a human with wings, bird-like appendages scorched into the ochre stone ground. The figure narrates of a war in heaven… uh, okay, you’re losing me. The figure is Eric Stoltz, looking like Jesus (as usual, but playing Angel Simon), and his final words – as his pupils change from all-black to peachy – are, “I never thought the war would happen again.” After a few scenes, Stoltz would disappear from the story like sanity from christianity.

Acolyte Thomas (Elias Koteas) prostrates himself before some child-rapers– I mean, priests, to take his final vows of pedophilia– I mean, priesthood, when he is accosted by visions of priestly sexual pleasures– I mean, torment. He screams and goes home to become a detective instead. Now he starts narrating, “Some people lose their faith because heaven shows them too little, but how many lose their faith because heaven shows them too much?” I’d wager: zero. Because it’s not a case of “faith” – if heaven kept showing you visions, you’d have TOTAL FAITH in its reality; but he is confusing “faith” with “approval” or “endorsement.” He doesn’t enjoy the visions, but how is that in any way tied to believing they exist? If you believe they are, in fact, coming from heaven, then BOY have you got faith. Ironically, now I’ve lost all faith in the movie. In the first five minutes, writer-turned-director Gregory Widen (in his only directorial effort) proves he is clueless, and directing in limbo. You’ve got one hour and 25 more minutes to fill Gregory. Let fly the holy shit.

Feverish talk of Gabriel (Christopher Walken, talents wasted) creating two hells, “and that’s one too many.” So sayeth Lucifer (Viggo Mortensen, garbed in black clothes and blacker puns). Inane talk of a soul that Angel Simon hid in a little girl, Mary (Moriah Shining Dove Snyder), that Gabriel pursues, apparently having to “rip her apart” to get it. But, uh, when the soul went IN, there was no wetwork; why not extract it the same way? And isn’t a soul intangible; does one really need to rip through physical organs to get it? Two minutes after this incognizant statement, Gabriel boasts to the two people trying to stop him, Thomas and Katherine (Virginia Madsen, protector of Mary), “I’m an angel! I kill firstborns on their momma’s watch, I turn cities into salt…” Well, why are you having such a problem with two humans punching you like girls? Why even bother talking to them?

Religious-toned movies like THE PROPHECY would be far more enjoyable and respectable if there weren’t constant inconsistencies and contradictory rationalization in line after line of dialogue, in scene after scene. It’s about Catholicism – oh, that explains it… Like every priest who has to act like he really believes the guff he’s dribbling at the altar, THE PROPHECY is as scatterbrained as it is unholy and irreligious.

Explosion. Cops load the presumed-dead Gabriel into the back of their cruiser. Katherine and Thomas beseech the cops to cuff the presumed-dead man in the back. Cops humor them by cuffing Gabriel. Next scene, Katherine and Thomas drive by the shattered police car, both cops bloodied and dead on the road. Now why isn’t Gabriel using that kind of power on Katherine and Thomas?

In one scene, Gabriel puts his hand to the forehead of a nurse and says, “Shh.” She’s out like a light. There’s another power he could have used on Katherine and Thomas. Is this guy just toying with everyone like a Bond Villain?

Viggo Lucifer wants to defeat Gabriel because he doesn’t want Gabriel’s nuveau hell interfering with his own Original And Best Hell (or as some biblical scholars call it, Hell Classic), so he makes a deal with Katherine to help the humans (whom he calls “talking monkeys”). It’s as pathetic as two cover bands arguing in the parking lot of a rock venue, “We’re the better Boston Tribute band!” “Nah-uh! You don’t even do the Smokin’ solo correctly!” “Yeah, well, you don’t even have a keyboardist, so how you gonna do that solo on guitar?!”… Hell is already on Earth.

But what does Lucifer care if there are two hells? He says he wants heaven to reopen. Really? But doesn’t he get more business if heaven is closed to the public? How do you “close” heaven anyway? Is there a CLOSED sign on the pearly gates? Is there a street blocked off by divine orange cones that you drive around and then end up in purgatory instead?

Katherine flees with Mary to a Native American reservation/refuge. Because Indians are “spiritual,” see?

And Gabriel follows in a taxi. Apparently, he needs zombie Amanda Plummer to drive him around because he “can’t drive.” Uh, Mr. director, you are joking, right? Explain how he appears everywhere at will? Oh, that Uber account. Waitaminute, he can “turn cities to salt” – how about employing that kind of willpower to some driving lessons? Jesus Fucking Christ!

Gabriel finds it hard to attack Mary in the sweat lodge, so I guess the Native American religion is the right one. He proclaims: “I’ve come to feed on the guts of your little Mary!” I wonder what kind of nutrition angels gain from human guts.

Lucifer eventually kills Gabriel physically by tearing his heart out. I guess he couldn’t do that in the beginning and save us the whole charade of plotting with Katherine and whining about two hells and everything… because?

At the conclusion of battle, Thomas and Katherine are all bloody. He starts kissing her– Hey, hang on, buddy! I know we’ve been running from danger and beaten up by angels and seen the skies riven in fury together, but who exactly said we were an item?

A flesh-crawling voiceover about faith and souls and other crap ends this irrelevant, contradictory, ludicrous, witless prayer for the stupid, made by talking monkeys.

END

Gaos – evil, even at the dinner table.

Turtle Soup for the Soul.

Once more for the next generation: Gamera Vs. Gaos! Moderno melodramo maximus!

GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, despite a few shortcomings in the effects department, is everything a science fiction thriller should be. This 1995 reboot of the Gamera franchise is filled with suspense, wracked with tension, epic soundtrack and captivating action, and boasts some actual acting from all its principals.

Like Toho company’s Godzilla franchise, Daiei Films’ Gamera franchise is classified in exactly the same Periods or Eras. The first goofy lot of Gamera films (from 1985’s GAMERA to 1980’s GAMERA: SUPER MONSTER) were Showa Period. This reboot is the first Heisei Period film.

Gamera first defeated the bloodthirsty pointy-bird Gaos (or Gyaos) back in the third Showa film, 1967’s GAMERA VS. GAOS. However, like his cousin Godzilla started denying the existence of his Showa era, Gamera’s rebooters have also ignored their Showa era. As far as they’re concerned, GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE is the discovery and origin of Gamera the giant flying turtle, and the first time he has met Gaos. This Heisei series – like Godzilla’s Heisei – propels Gamera in a darker direction that doesn’t involve Japanese boys in painful tight shorts screaming his name and waving.

The opening scenes are intercut between two inscrutable events like a thriller, with excellent production values, well directed (by Shûsuke Kaneko), and snappily written (by Kazunori Ito): a navy vessel encounters a mysterious moving atoll (duh–Gamera!), whilst a flock of carnivorous giant birds wake from hibernation on an isolated Japanese island and create havoc (fans know–Gaos!). Unlike most of these daikaiju movies where monsters are named seemingly at random, the navy discovers a monolith on the island’s back whose markings are translated to recount an enigmatic creed, “…the last hope, Gamera. We bestow it to the cradle of time. Awaken with Gaos, the shadow of evil…”

A young biologist (Shinobu Nakayama) tries to capture the pointy birds at the army’s request, enticing them into a stadium with sides of beef and intending to use the closing dome to thwart their escape. Meanwhile, something big is heading towards the dome and a studly Marine officer (Tsuyoshi Ihara – another Japanese lead who looks like Patrick Swayze!) tries to warn the biologist of it – to no avail.

Two of the Gaos are trapped by the military, while one flees out over the ocean. Just when they think it’s going to escape, a massive shape explodes from beneath the brine and grabs the Gaos in killer jaws – Gamera! Hero shot. What an entrance! Then he comes ashore and does the daikaiju stroll through town – fire and explosions and destruction, sending Japanese toy town into a tizzy…

Gamera – he’s back to clean up Japan. And this terrarium.

GUARDIAN places the whole pointless creature-fight into a mythical perspective, linking it to Earth’s past, with Earth’s future at stake. The creature designs are more impressive: Gaos is wrinkly and oily, wicked eyes and jagged head. And Gamera now flies like a Jet Jagaaa, only using his two hind feet, that looks way cooler than rotating like a silly top. The sincerity is so much more evident in this feature that it reminds us at times of JURASSIC PARK, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS and the better Godz movies (GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA).

Another major difference between GUARDIAN and other Gamera movies is that usually the Scientist, the Annoying Kid, the Soldier and Politician all work together against the monster threats – but this movie throws all that kumbaya out with the crusty rubber suits. The Scientist doesn’t want to work with the military, because naturally she’s a conservationist (“You know nothing about these creatures – and you want to capture them?!” Also, the fact she is a hot young heroine – I love the progressiveness of these newer daikaiju movies!). The army cannot summarily send out toy planes and toy tanks on a whim – as they do in all those other films – because the politicians want the order to go through congress and red tape! The politician on scene screeches impotently, “We’ve no authority to do that – even in cases as ridiculous as this!” So many new angles in this film. Even the fact that the English dubbing sits more in line with the actors’ emotions – we don’t realize how much it is missed until we see it done well.

Story is built to an actual exciting climax where a giant Gaos battles Gamera in a massive city-flattening dustup. Gamera’s final resurrection in nuclear flames is like the Second Coming. Everything – from the direction, effects, editing and sound – is done so much better than usual that it raises the level of this B-movie to one pair of painful tight shorts away from being an A-minus.

END

When it’s bad being Bad.

Geez, I hope no one confuses the sex appeal and street-kewl of these Hollywood-ized detectives with the misinformed rednecks that are real cops. Too late…

BULLITT (1968), DIRTY HARRY (1971, four sequels), THE SUPER COPS (1974), BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984, two sequels), LETHAL WEAPON (1987, three sequels), COPS (1989 TV series, 27 seasons and still going strong in 2014) – the list of movies and TV shows that celebrate the phallic thrust of the bottom rung of law enforcement is literally endless. Is it any wonder that synergy continues into the 90s, with bigger explosions, bigger budgets and bigger phallic thrusts?

BAD BOYS Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are two comedians trying to make drug busts in Miami (which is basically a description of cops in Miami). On the tail of a 100 million dollar shipment for Euro badness Tchéky Karyo, they must also rescue mega-hotness Téa Leoni as a murder witness, must keep Lieutenant Joe Pantoliano out of their pantaloons, dodge Internal Affairs sexpot Marg Helgenberger, and placate Martin’s nagging wife, Theresa Randle. Their “theme song” is Inner Circle’s Bad Boys…

Michael Bay directs in his film debut, and we see all those swooping camera moves and slomo hero shots that would become a staple of his style. Maybe he was a natural extension of his predecessors, maybe a creature of his era? Maybe a copycat of some obscure European director, or a pioneer? I don’t know; I just know that this bombastic Pretty-Orange-Explosion, low-angle, guns-and-cars-and-cheese motif would inform the bulk of Hollywood blockbusters in the decades to come. We must admit, for all the chickendipshittery of it all – it looks great, with the production team of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson helming the slick affair, with a lotta laughs from the easy chemistry between Lawrence and Smith, and edge-of-your-seat thrills from Bay’s swooping cams. There’s no way we’ll ever confuse this glossy afterburner with the grit of DIRTY HARRY or the breeze of LETHAL WEAPON.

The title of the movie itself is a massive case of reappropriation (the act of taking an insult and claiming it as a badge of honor, like headbanger, jarhead, nigger, etc.). Bad Boys was a 1987 reggae song that referred to criminals as “bad boys.” However, after it was misused/overused as the COPS TV show theme song, its perception was twisted and seemed to apply to the cops as “badasses.” In fact, this movie uses the song blatantly as the epithet for Lawrence and Smith’s badass quipping buddy cops; they actually sing a snatch of the song as they roll in their souped-up Porsche 911 Turbo II 3.6. That’s what Hollywood calls realism.

But cops, policemen, baconators – whatever you want to call them – are NOT your quipping pals who would judiciously discern you are not a “bad boy” and let you walk if they accidentally bumped into you on the street or near a crime scene. And whenever you call the cops for any reason, make sure all your alcohol is hidden, all your drugs are flushed, all your porn is stashed, all the bruises on your girlfriend’s arm from Krav Maga are covered, all your traffic tickets are paid, all your clothes are expensive, all your headlights and blinkers work, all your house is painted… or they will find some reason to arrest you and/or beat the shit out of you and/or taser you. And if you’re black, then they’ll really fuck you up.

So although many cop movies are classics and highly enjoyable, cops are NOT the discerning, judicious humanitarians they are usually portrayed as. They are trained to be merely apprehenders of suspected perpetrators. They are trained not to judge, not to deliberate, not to execute. Just bring the perp in, so the SYSTEM can do all that. But it’s media like this that makes the cops think – incorrectly – that they are allowed to have discernment and an opinion and a knee on someone’s neck.

In the world of BAD BOYS, we are rooting like zealots for the cops – family man Marcus Bennett (Lawrence) and sex machine Mike Lowrey (Smith) – to track down the drugs and save the dame. And do unimaginably stupid things along the way that only Hollywood can get away with, i.e. married Marcus masquerades as the womanizer Mike Lowery so that witness Julie (Leoni) will trust him with her life. It’s not enough he’s got a badge and gun, now he’s gotta have a slap-happy tool as well. Or how about taking a page from TANGO AND CASH: Marcus is a millionaire who owns that Porsche, but still does The Job so that the other guys on the force won’t think he’s coasting through life. Hey, I got an idea: why not leave the frickin’ force and coast through life?

Watch for Michael Imperioli (soon to be Christopher from THE SOPRANOS), Anna Thomson (the cut whore from UNFORGIVEN), Kevin Corrigan (as a geek scientist, before joining the Seth Rogen clan).

And you don’t really need to watch for Téa Leoni – you can’t miss her – as the screen is seared by her absolute flawless porcelain perfection and neck-crushing thighs, which the producers were canny enough to keep exposed up to the point of vagina. I thank you, Simpson/Bruckheimer! And my bad boy thanks you.

END

The Future Is Then.

Back in the days when having a computer was like having a teleporter, young hacker Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock, who has a computer at her home and everything!) is sent a disk (wow! A floppy disk! This is like, too futuristic for me to handle!) with an illegal program on it that could allow access to all your private information, your license and social security number, your bank accounts and credit cards, thereby allowing computer hackers to totally ruin your life.

In other words, like making a purchase on amazon.

Now bad guys, led by milky Brit Jeremy Northam, are after Angela to get that disk. But are they really all that bad? All they want is to retrieve the disk and kill her. Not download malware and spyware and pop-ups, or freeze her computer until she pays a fee using a credit card that they gouge and sell to banks; not creak her mailbox with treeloads of junk mail any time she swipes a card to buy gas; not sell her information illegally to marketers and solicitation companies who make damnable Sunday morning phone calls; not deluge her with offers for erection pills and requests from Nigerian princes; not spam her email and send a virus to All in her address book that crashes their computers. I mean, it’s not like they’re amazon…

Only person she can turn to is ex-lover psychiatrist Dennis Miller. Remember when Dennis Miller was actually a cool cat? His manner came across as so natural and trustworthy that we never doubted for a second that he might’ve been a bad guy or had ulterior motives. That would come later when he got hired by Fox News.

Angela is a techno-hermit, ordering pizza on The Internet (revolutionary!), booking airline flights on The Internet (wow! You can do that?!), and planning dates that she never goes on… on The Internet. You had to say “The Internet” back then, otherwise people would think you were from The Future and call the men in white suits. Only total hipsters were allowed to call it The Net.

So now Angela (wearing those cutesy sweaters that come down to her knuckles) must escape these killers by running on real streets (not Pac Man alleys) in pearbottom jeans (that she probably bought on The Internet) and typing the shit out of some unsuspecting computers.

Is it ironic that she works on The Internet – where all information is stored – and her mother (Diane Baker) has Alzheimer’s? And is it coincidence how every single television broadcast is about her? And where’s her flying car? THE NET is a well-intentioned parable about all our information being easily retrievable and therefore dangerously vulnerable, but it’s dating faster than… uh, The Internet…

So exciting I almost opened a new gmail account.

END

The sequel doesn’t fall far from the remake.

Two pregnant chicks. Male demographic fleeing into the night, cries of “eeurw” and “gimme a break” issuing like feculence into the slipstream of retreat.

It was so easy to use someone else’s ideas to remake the 1950 film FATHER OF THE BRIDE that director-writer husband-wife team Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers use those same people’s ideas to remake the sequel those people wrote to their original film, FATHER’S LITTLE DIVIDEND (1951). (It’s not technically plagiarism, just like all those penis-enlargement e-mails aren’t technically spam…)

Hence, FATHER OF THE BRIDE PART II. Same cast as the 1991 remake film starring Steve Martin as flustered husband, Diane Keaton as glowing wife, Martin Short as wedding coordinator and raper of the English language, and Kimberly Williams as daughter. Oh, and Keiran Culkin (a much better actor than his brother Macauley) floats somewhere in the middle background as the Banks’ son.

George Banks (Martin) has just grown accustomed to his daughter being married, but now has to face the prospect of her baby’s birth and making him a – ulp! – “grandfather.” Clinging desperately to the last vestiges of his hip youth, he tries everything to feel young again, from dyeing his hair, to buying a sports car, to plonking his wife impromptu in the kitchen.

Thus arriving at the aforementioned Two Pregnant Chicks. (This film deviates from the original DIVIDEND in making the mother pregnant as well. I guess that was too far of a leap for 1950’s audiences.) Of course, you know they’ll be giving birth AT THE SAME TIME, otherwise, where’s the comedy? (All testes-bearers are welcome to stop reading now, as it is inconvenient holding your laptop while you are puking into the toilet.)

Martin Short is once again Franck, once just a wedding coordinator, now a catch-all character that turns up whenever a scene needs mutilated vowels to turn attention away from its lankness, his most valuable contribution to this film his sing-song axiom to the reticent George, “Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you! Party pooper! Party pooper!”

All the other actors return in their same roles, doing nothing different or interesting: BD Wong as Franck’s assistant, George Newbern as vapid husband Bryan, and Peter Michael Goetz as the father-in-law, used mainly as a device to argue with George over the baby’s surname and to incite slapstick moments with Dobermans.

Then there is Eugene Levy, who kills in a cameo as a very ethnic Persian(?) guy.

Steve Martin plays the same frazzled, uptight George, only this time, the filmmakers have bowed more to convention, insulting him more than in the previous film, with more outlandish slapstick and more disrespect, and though this film tries to insert moments that give insight to George’s midlife crisis (i.e. just when he thought he could relax, he’s back where he started), he seems to be more of a whiner than a comedic element; he is given only minimal opportunities to shine as the poignant force he represented in FATHER OF THE BRIDE (“Doctor, these women are my life…”).

A studied performance by Jane Adams as the delivery doctor keeps the film from flying too far into surreal.

Now all Diane has to do is find a GODFATHER for her baby…

END