“I now dominate you in the name of male hunks.”

Insectovorus Plotarmordon.

Dinosaurs are everywhere. Loosed on the world in 2018’s FALLEN KINGDOM, they’re now as ubiquitous as cats and dogs in JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION.

The stars of JURASSIC WORLD, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, are teamed alongside JURASSIC PARK legacy players Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, to take down Biosyn, the Big Bad Corp messing with dino DNA and the world ecosystem. Campbell Scott plays Lewis Dodgson, CEO of Biosyn (and if the character sounds familiar, Dodgson gave Nedry the Barbasol can to steal the embryos in the original JP); a twitchy absent-minded nerd (heaven forbid the filmmakers give him traits that are desirable, because they don’t want us relating to him, the narrative as always: CEO = eeevil), he’s the only one who gets eaten horribly, while all the others escape being dino dinner, because they are noble and good.

Written by Emily Carmichael, Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, and directed by Trevorrow (who directed and/or wrote the previous two JW movies), DOMINION has the potential to be a great movie, if not sterling entertainment with its perfectly realized dinosaurs, but its merits are cancelled out by its faults, which are as towering as the sauropods it purveys so perfectly.

And that’s why we’re looking at the Top 5 Bottom 5 things about JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION…

Bottom 5 – UNREALISTIC DINOSAURS

Let’s start with the 5 worst things about DOMINION– but wait – “unrealistic” dinos?! To be clear: the dinosaurs LOOK great! But their behavior? Completely beholden to plot armor. They simply won’t attack any stars in the way they attack extras. Tyrannosaurus is simply used as a pal of the humans and inadvertently even does their bidding — it’s no better than Godzilla being a “friend to children.” Ultimately, the set pieces where predatory dinos chase our heroes are a waste of time, because even one snatch of jaw and our heroes would be mutilated in ways you can’t show in kiddie-based media. Thus – never gonna get caught; hence, no tension. The final scene with the Giganotosaurus is especially egregious as all the stars in a bunch casually stay out of reach of Giga as it casually walks after them.

The Therizinosaurus is portrayed as blind – very cool! – but if an animal is blind by nature, its hearing and smell are off the charts – so when its head is right next to Claire (Howard), why doesn’t it SMELL her vivid strawberry perfume and vanilla-scented body oils? (At least, that’s how *I* imagine Claire smells…)

The tyrannosaur and therizinosaur teaming up to kill the giganotosaur – since when do herbivores and carnivores team up to kill another carnivore? And the first thing Rexy shoulda done after killing Giga, was to EAT Theri, not stand there and roar in unison like some kinda wrestling takedown.

Why do the ceratopsians attack the baddie’s trucks and not the hero’s?

The Quetzalcoatlus flying as fast as a cargo plane to attack it.

We see an Oviraptor (represented here as a fully feathered cock-a-doodle-doo) stealing an egg… This poor dinosaur has been libeled from the outset with its species name meaning “egg thief,” when in reality, its first discovered skeleton was nesting on its own eggs, not stealing them. And no one has corrected this misnomer! Like Columbus calling the natives “Indians” because he thought he was in India, and then, upon discovering he wasn’t, continuing to call them Indians!

And every “hybrid” dinosaur introduced since 2015’s JURASSIC WORLD is a middle finger to the whole dinosaur kingdom and evolution! Back then, the Indominus could speak Velociraptor and turn invisible, and now we’ve arrived at dinosaurs with frickin laser beams attached to their heads (!) with the indelicately-named Atrociraptors – point a laser at someone and the animal chases them down single-mindedly. Yup, it’s as stupid now as it was when they came up with it in the last movie.

And the number of times Owen (Pratt) faces off against large carnivores and escapes unscathed – I mean, not even a scratch above the left eye (the universal shorthand for being in a scuffle that almost kills you).

Bottom 4 – THE HAND THING

How do all the dinos know to chill when the humans do the hand thing? Owen started this in JURASSIC WORLD, and no one questioned it because it seemed like a training gesture – but how did it propagate to all humans and all dinosaurs that putting your hand up in a “stop” gesture will make a dinosaur stop? This goes hand in hand (see what I did there?) with the unrealistic dino behavior. Did Henry Wu program it into their DNA? Clever girl!

Bottom 3 – INSECTS! THE PLOT IS INSECTS!

Like BATMAN RETURNS wrote itself into irrelevance by making its climax penguins with frickin laser beams attached to their heads, DOMINION’s writers also seem to have waylaid themselves by making the locust subplot the actual world threat, rather than the dinosaurs that are the selling point of any JURASSIC IP. Giant locusts with Cretaceous blood! Dodgson is breeding them to eat everyone else’s non-Biosyn crops, so that Biosyn can monopolize crop supplies on Earth. Who cares?! It’s like when they start talking about trade embargoes in STAR WARS – your eyes glaze over. (Didn’t Hollywood use giant locusts in 1957’s BEGINNING OF THE END, when grasshoppers walking on postcards of buildings was the height of efx?) At least this plot thread pairs Sam Neill with Laura Dern on a cute misadventure, giving more screentime to Laura Dern’s magnificent pearbottom.

Bottom 2 – GIRLING UP

DeWanda Wise as mercenary Kayla is so random a character – smuggler, rescuer, fighter, then just fifth wheel – that it’s OBVIOUS she is onboard as a black warrior chick for the same reason that black warrior chick was 007 for a minute: “Hey, we can do everything a Chris or a Craig can do – in high heels!” Widening the audience also – now there’s not just Owen’s hero-bulges, there’s Kayla’s too!

And just to prove Girls Can Man Any Role – there’s the chick villain, a weird-looking blonde (Dichen Lachman) with the face of a velociraptor (uh, that’s not a compliment; but I’m sure she’s a supermodel somewhere because of her prominent ribcage and depilated sphincter.) (Also, her name is “Dick In, Like Man”?!)

And just to prove they can’t write women, Claire has turned into another character altogether – from the perfectly-coiffed corporate shill into the Karen of animal activists (I can’t complain though – this new rough look is damnably gorgeous!); living off-the-grid as a hermit with Owen, parenting the now-teen clone girl from the last movie, and crazy enough to break into compounds to liberate dinos. Even the wokesters from the last movie are telling her to dial it down to a 7. I guess that’s the power of Chris Pratt’s Big D.

Bottom 1 – FORGET DARWIN

The worst thing about JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION is its ultimate message, that it thinks is eco-friendly: “We’re part of a fragile system made up of all living things – if we’re going to survive, we’re going to have to trust each other, depend on each other, co-exist.” We see parasauralophi galloping alongside horses, pterosaurs flocking with water birds, a mosasaur swimming with humpbacks, a ceratopsian walking with elephants… Are you batshit crazy? Or just biologically ignorant? Throw a bunch of diverse species together in the same food niche, and the species more suited to its environment, or more quickly adaptable (the “stronger” species) is going to wipe out the other. It’s real simple math: a gaggle of new invasive species – versus the same amount of food. You said it yourself, “a fragile system” – these prehistoric animals didn’t evolve into this ecosystem or migrate here over millennia – they are a sudden infusion into a functioning ecosystem. Something has to die for something else to live.

What does “co-exist” mean anyway? Do humans have to stop killing chickens and lambs and pigs for food? Does the lion have to stop hunting the antelope? Does the t-rex have to go vegan? It’s almost as thoughtless and harmful as Disney movie messaging. No wonder Mankind is going extinct.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Bottom – Honorable Mention: There’s the annoying teenage clone girl (Isabella Sermon) that doesn’t listen to her elders, mopes about the house, and gets herself kidnapped. Like all angsty little bitches in American blockbuster movies, we wish she’d trip and get eaten.

Top – Honorable Mention: Mamoudou Athie is Ramsay, Dodgson’s right hand, a cool cucumber in an understated performance, who aids our heroes surreptitiously, working against his liege Dodgson right under Dodgson’s nose.

And now let’s look at the Top 5 things about JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION.

Top 5 – MODERNUS REX

Dinosaurs alongside humans, ah yes, just like caveman times… One of the best things about DOMINION is that it has normalized dinosaur interaction with humans; you may see children playing with compsognathi in the park, or you may encounter a tyrannosaur chased through your drive-in movie. And it doesn’t shy away from humans being the avaricious swine that we are, because if dinos did become that prolific, you can bet that all manner of species would be exploited in black market sales, as weapons, in cock-fights, in mutating their DNA for evil ends…

The downside of incorporating dinosaurs into the fabric of society so well means they are no longer a novelty – there’s nothing for them to “do” here except chase people into the middle foreground. The scant dinosaur subplot involves Biosyn abducting the baby velociraptor, to study how a female gave birth without sex. But the high stakes plot is the locusts – even the feature fight scenes between apex predators t-rex and giganotosaurus are peripheral to everyone’s journey.

Top 4 – THE FAN SERVICE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE

I like the way JURASSIC plays its fan service: Not only did they entice back the OGs – Neill (74), Dern (55) and Goldblum (70) – the callbacks and homages are many (Ellie Satler taking off her glasses in that way, Claire saying, “Run!” in that way; in an act of poetic justice, Dodgson dies the same way Nedry died; “Life will find a way,” “humans and dinosaurs can’t co-exist”…) And there’s long-suffering geneticist Henry Wu (BD Wong), the battered housewife of the JURASSIC series, always doing his best DNA work, and always vilified – here at last, finding redemption after 30 years of gene-splicing with questionable outcomes.

And just like Michael Crichton’s novel subtly blended in discussion of Mandelbrot fractal curves (a mathematical equation that repeats and repeats on itself), this movie demonstrates how JURASSIC repeats and repeats on itself: Biosyn is InGen, Dodgson is Hammond; the company is trying to contain an ecosystem about to breakout against their best efforts; electrical implants have replaced electrical fences as boundaries; Dr Grant stuck in a tree, Claire stuck in a tree; Malcolm on the radio to Ellie, on how to reboot the system; Owen on a motorbike with raptors; Claire saying, “This is the same system I use…”

Top 3 – EJECTOR SEAT

Taken as read the stupidity that the ejector seat is a passenger seat… In a breathtaking piece of directing, Claire ejects out of a plane, and a bodycam captures the whole topsy-turvy sequence as she is attacked by pterosaurs. (It’s the same first-person cam technique they use when the mosasaur wrenches a trawler into the deep – another startling sequence just for the way it is filmed!)

Dangling in a tree, Claire is confronted by the best solo dino appearance – the Therizinosaurus, gurgling, clucking vegetarian, large as a t-rex, cataract-blind (and we see a flash of nictitating membrane!), with Wolverine claws the size of a person. A slow, cautious dino, with the scene directed slowly to match, as Claire sheds her chute and crawls hopelessly forward into muck to escape, not its bite, but the unthinking power of its sweeping talons. This whole sequence demonstrates that Trevorrow can bring suspense and art and biology together to roar spittle in our faces. Why isn’t the rest of the film this good?…

Top 2 – THE DINOSAURS ARE REAL!

We’ve come a long way from the “slurpasaurs” of the 50s and 60s (lizards with sails glued to their backs) – the photorealistic dinosaurs in DOMINION are beyond reproach. They’re just REAL. The first ten minutes is sixty-five million years ago! The best Mesozoic life art ever created; just watching dinosaurs in their habitats. Who wouldn’t give just about anything for a time machine to view this tableau as it happened?

And in the modern day, we see a fully feathered Deinonychus on ice (they list it as a Pyroraptor, but again, it’s way too big to be a pyroraptor, and is the size of Deinonychus – just like Velociraptors in these JURASSIC movies are also the size of Deinonychus – I don’t know why they don’t just CGI up a Deinonychus!); there’s a Dreadnoughtus and Apatosaurus, a surprise Dimetrodon (surprise because technically it’s not even a dinosaur!), a tiny Lystrosaurus – I mean, who went around and found all the preserved mosquitos for all these different species?

Top 1 – CALLING DOCTOR LOVE

And the best thing about JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION – Doctor Ellie Satler (Dern) and Doctor Alan Grant (Neill). These two!! As soon as Ellie manufactures a reason to recruit Alan on her DNA quest, it’s a constant Will they?/Won’t they? with these crazy kids…

In the Jurassic Park novel, they were paleontologist and student, Spielberg moved them up to comfortable lovers in the JP movie, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one disappointed when, in JPIII, director Joe Johnston wrenched this wholesome couple apart (“I don’t think they looked like a couple” – screw YOU, buddy!), with Ellie having a husband and kid in some suburb.

Here, their chemistry drives our viewing pleasure, both still holding up extremely well for reprising these roles 30 years later (shoutout to Goldblum too!), with Sam Neill, as always, snidely entertaining with his reaction of bemused detachment to every situation. Of course, Ellie is single again (as Alan pryingly discovers), so that they can run and scream and hide and gasp and eventually “accidentally” end up on top of each other, Ellie breathing and staring closely into Alan’s face like she’s just had the big O.

…And what better way to bow out than on a climax? – the Top 5 Bottom 5 – JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION.

Y’know, I could be wrong — but you know I’m right!

END

I’m Telling You So You Won’t Waste Your Time.

Looking like a cross between John Travolta and Jon Stewart, 44-year-old Jerry Seinfeld launches his second Standup Special with the force of an atom bomb being stopped from exploding.

With a star-studded cold open funeral skit that features the greats George Carlin and Garry Shandling, the goods Paul Reiser and George Wallace, and the what-the-hells Jay Leno and Ed McMahon, Jerry gives a eulogy at a cemetery, near an open casket that contains all his old comedy bits. At this Special’s release, Jerry’s unfunny-yet-dambusting TV show SEINFELD had aired the final episode of its nine-season run merely three months ago (May 1998); with the last five seasons in the Top 3 Nielsen ratings, Jerry somehow found himself on top of comedy’s golden mountain. With this Special, he was determined to prove he didn’t belong there.

It’s great seeing the legends George Carlin and Garry Shandling alive again in this bit. That’s about it. The premise is that Jerry is going to be telling these old faves [Seinfeld voice] for the last time. (20 years later, we would find he was lying, as he cherrypicks bits from this Special to pad his next Special.)

Directed by Marty Callner, filmed at the Broadhurst Theatre in Manhattan, New York, I’M TELLING YOU FOR THE LAST TIME is an inconsistent airing of scattershot material, seemingly with no particular rhyme, reason or throughline, exhibiting simultaneous brilliance and uncrafted thuggery. The problem is that the good material doesn’t string the bad material along; it exposes those bits as filler. It’s like eavesdropping on some guy talking to his friends in a diner; we’re stuck listening to all the peaks and valleys… I honestly have never understood how Jerry Seinfeld rose to comedy god status in America; which lowbrow demographic put him there?

Who ARE these people?

He covers: kids versus parents (observant); thinking his Halloween Superman outfit was “the actual costume that Superman wears” (cute); bathroom sinks at airports just allowing us a dash of water (we’re with you, man!); “impressed by Chinese people sticking with chopsticks after seeing the fork” (haha!)…

There are two bits that are laugh out loud funny: buying maximum strength meds: “Just figure out what will kill me and then back it off a little,” and the bit about Silver medals at the Olympics, showing us how inconsequential the finishing time difference is between the guy who goes down in history and “never heard of him.” These bits are so good that we wonder why Jerry feels the need to talk about a businessman turning on all the sinks at an airport and running around in spite. Oh yeh, that filler.

There is a feature segment about men and women, which is the most consistently funny segment. (“I’m a single man. No other men are attached to me.” / “What were the Apollo astronauts doing with a car on the goddam Moon anyway?” implying it was the inbuilt desire to pick up chicks / “Dating is a job interview that lasts all night.”)

Then Jerry rambles about seedless watermelons; his wonderment on why scientists would want to spend so much time on that subject is almost as big as our wonderment on why Jerry Seinfeld would want to spend so much time on that subject.

Marty Callner also directed Carlin’s very first HBO Special in 1977 (ON LOCATION: GEORGE CARLIN AT USC). I really wonder what he must have thought of this weak sauce. Carlin had Seven Dirty Words. Seinfeld has Seedless Watermelons.

Jerry Seinfeld possesses a unique style that can be mimicked and satirized, so that ease of representing him has allowed comics and civilians and schoolboys to mimic him through the decades, and that wealth of imitation has spawned a conflation of Jerry’s abilities with the abilities of those who “do” him. Jerry is a good comic – his mind works creatively, his stage presence is watchable, his fun is apparent, but the majority of his jokes are like someone cut the red wire before the numbers ticked down to zero.

END

Jerry sees how much time he has left to kill in this Special, and the irony almost breaks his spirit.

A made-up, bogus, not-necessary special event.

In an effort to sound less vanilla, Jerry Seinfeld tries to “Carlin up” his 2020 Standup Special – and winds up just another shade of vanilla.

To comedy aficionados, the words Seinfeld and Carlin should not be uttered in the same breath (and I too am paying the penance for my utterance, by spending an extra hour tonight in my caning machine), but fear not, comedy maniacs, Seinfeld’s attempt at injecting meat into his set ends up like those early attempts at a veggie burger.

In JERRY SEINFELD: 23 HOURS TO KILL, filmed at the Beacon Theater on Broadway in March 2020 (just before that covid hammer came down and changed toilet paper to gold) Seinfeld steps out over the edge where Safe Jerry has been treading water these past few decades. (Ironically, the opening shows him leaping out of a helicopter into the deep waters of New York Harbor – killing us softly with a metaphor, Jerry, hmmm?)

The manner in which Jerry t-r-i-e-s to inject life into this particular set of social observations is very strange; he starts by praising his audience (not “thanking” them, mind you), for overcoming the rigors of life to be there, but then he immediately starts questioning their decisions; questioning the audience’s choice of friends, questioning the tolerance level of those friends; questioning the very decision to come see this show! One of his lines is: “Nobody – likes – anything!” It’s almost like he’s insulting his audience for choosing to attend this “made-up, bogus, not-necessary special event, which people put together to kill time” (which is essentially true, on a cosmic level) and then saying that he’s only there because he “had nothing to do either.”

– ouch –

It’s starting to look a lot like this Standup date was the last resort of a desperately bored man, rather than – what all performers lie to their audiences – THE place he wanted to BE tonight, for the fans, for the love… for the boys!… Crowd: “Oh, so we’re the only thing keeping you from slashing your wrists?” Yeh, lead us down that road, Jerry.

Then (with a winking nod to his wealth) he tells us he’d rather be somewhere else: “If you were me, would you be up here hackin’ out another one o’ these?”– whoa! You DO remember you’re Jerry Seinfeld, right? Not Bill Burr, not Lenny Bruce, not Ricky Gervais, and definitely not George Carlin. You’re the good guy – not the firestarter twisted firestarter!

Keep in mind, this is in the first ten uncomfortable minutes! Jerry’s getting laughs, and it’s actually drawing me in due to its (albeit blunted) cruelty – but I can’t help thinking that these are not jokes that a Seinfeld audience can weather for too long, and the Virtue Signalers and SJWs and pussywhipped pantywaists that have come to make up society must be holding their breath and white-knuckling their seats wondering when the insults to their fragile sensibilities are going to subside—

—And Seinfeld suddenly tacks back to vanilla territory: “Nonetheless, I am thrilled to be here. I love it here!” eliciting the biggest applause line to that point.

We shake our heads. I knew it couldn’t last long.

Then Jerry steps too far over the line in THAT direction: “I love you, you love me”—Hey whoa, whoa, whoa, Jer! Just because I clicked on the Netflix thumbnail, don’t presume I want your tongue in my rectum– #MeToo!

Directed by Joe DeMaio, 23 HOURS TO KILL levels out with Jerry mostly chugging along gleefully in his safe space – you know, those regular Jerry bits like “Why is [insert noun] so [insert adjective]?” – with occasional forays into slightly less mundane fare. Strangely, when Seinfeld does start to sound interesting, he sounds like Larry David (especially in the “personal life” segment near the end). It was David who created, wrote and produced Jerry’s signature TV show that dominated the 90s, SEINFELD, that gave Jerry’s voice an international platform. How killjoy it must have been then, when the creator of SEINFELD revealed himself to be a more potent comedy typhoon than its subject, and we realized how much of the creator was in the creation. (Thankfully for Jerry, Larry David’s curmudgeonly CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM would knock us breathless only after Jerry’s insipid SEINFELD show had gasped its last Kramer.)

So don’t worry, Carlin fans, Seinfeld comes nowhere near sullying our Prophet of Mayhem. Matter of fact, this is the marketing synopsis for the special, “Jerry Seinfeld takes the stage in New York and tackles talking vs. texting, bad buffets vs. so-called great restaurants and the magic of Pop Tarts.” Heavy stuff. But pretty sure no one from Carlin’s estate will be calling him soon to sue for IP.

The last part of the show is dedicated to Jerry’s personal life. Truly looking fit and energetic, he says he loves being 65, because “when people ask you to do something, you just say no. No reason, no excuses, no explanation.” Well, when you’re as rich as Croesus, you sure can.

As someone who got married at 45, Jerry has one pearl of real wisdom: “Whichever side of marriage you’re on, you don’t ‘get’ what the other people are doing.” And I don’t think I’ve ever heard another comic talk about his wife in such a way that makes me truly fear he is the victim of psychological abuse! I mean, we’ve all heard the pandering-to-the-wife stories from a million comics, but is Jerry not crafting these jokes fully, or is this a cry for help? Can someone please send Jerry the number for the Spousal Abuse Hotline? I’d do it myself, but I’m too busy being single.

seinfeld, jerry seinfeld

Jerry Seinfeld:
A View To A Mild Concussion.

Seinfeld has themed this Special to allude to James Bond, which explains the cheeky title that sounds like a Fleming book, and the movie poster that features Seinfeld in a Bond stance. The top half of his body is suited in that characteristic gun-hand pose, while the bottom half is garbed in a wetsuit.

As Jerry exits the stage, the Bond allusion kicks in again, as Secret Agent Man plays him off and continues under the credits and a behind-the-scenes featurette, showing him prepping for his leap into the harbor.

This gag is probably taken a bit far. What a logistical and physical nightmare this whole sequence must have been! I mean, is this the same guy who just told us that at his age he can just say no? Yet here he is, wetsuited up and taking practice dives with experts off the 50-foot highboard at a swimming pool! Full credit to this sexagenarian!! And they’re milking it, as they should, as I would insist if I were to do it! – when he takes that actual stunt leap, the camera goes to great trouble to track him clearly, so we are sure it is him falling to his death—I mean, yeh…

More logistics: there’s a 14-piece big band that opens the show, giving Jerry the Frank Sinatra treatment (Come Fly With Me). After the expense and organization to secure that swingin’ big band, to then use a recorded track of Johnny Rivers’ Secret Agent Man for the outro is such a waste! How much was the band asking to stay and give that song the big band treatment for the outro? I’m sure you could have built it into your ticket prices, Jerry! Oh, and you’ll need vocals as well: I know at least 20 singers who would’ve done that gig for the bargain-basement boasting-rights fee of just $200, myself included ($100 for the rehearsal, $100 for the show, plus accom and airfare, thanks Jer!).

And yea, the Star Of Bethlehem did visit Jerry’s 2020 show and was heard to say,
“Yes, but Peter did this same shit better in Galilee in 14 BC!”

23 HOURS is just so… shallow. It reminds me of Eddie Murphy’s DELIRIOUS, not in style, but in a sociological sense: purveyed by a craftsman, filled with tepid jokes that were howlers in their day, with no staying power except as legacy material. And – like DELIRIOUS – the last 5 minutes of 23 HOURS is also a painful grimace as Jerry overstays his welcome by just that little bit.

His last special was in 1998 (I’M TELLING YOU FOR THE LAST TIME). Think of all the things that have happened in the world since then. Now I’m not suggesting Jerry give a history lesson covering 9/11 to Dumbo Donald – but get a little craftier than Pop Tarts, man! We’re gonna need a deeper dive than sensors on toilet seats and dancing around the sensor on a public sink to make it work. (These bits are actually stolen and updated from Jerry’s own 1998 Special! Or is he hoping we’ll regard it as a smart tie-in across two decades?) I know the comedy world rationalizes your bits as ‘distilling the absurdity of everyday life into quotable nuggets,’ but *I* think you’ve just been listening to drunk guys at Dennys at 3 a.m. I mean, the sink not working is actually a bit? After 20 years of the modern fucked-up world turning under your nose?!

And that’s another thing: I’ve grown to distrust comics who don’t swear (cough-Cosby!). If they’re good, they can carve a career with it (Brian Regan, Jim Gaffigan, Steven Wright), but if they’re mediocre (cough-sorry Jerry!) they’re hiding something.

Far be it for me to criticize this man who can buy my body 12 times over, but you want an example of hiding something? That bit about toilet stalls not going all the way to the floor – YouTuber ThatComedyGuy points out that’s a George Costanza bit from a SEINFELD episode!  er… AWK-ward… And if Jerry is gonna steal from his own bits – stealing to fill just a one-hour routine, mind you – what else can this psychologically battered housewife be hiding from us? (Social Services, I’m telling you, call this guy!)

For Jerry fans – he done good! He’ll always be immortal. (I somehow feel like there’s a Venn diagram crossover between Seinfeld fans and Dumbo Donald fans. Anyone that considers Jerry a genius, with that outdated mode of comedy and its trite subject matter, would probably fall into one of those circles. However, I’m guessing the fans at this Special must be the richer ones with good dental. Someone do a survey and get back to me.) To Jerry fans, he’ll always be the King Of Comedy (unlike that other Jerry who is the REAL King of Comedy). I got no beef with that.

How can I have a beef with veggie burger?

END

Portrait of a man at peace with the boss phrasing of the graffiti he just left.

Wanna know how I got these (O)scars?…

Joaquin Phoenix is unpredictable, funny, disturbing, and when you meet him, he might just kill you. In JOKER, he won the 2020 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor… But was he really acting?

JOKER, like STEPHEN KING’S IT, shows clowns for what they really are: insecure, unbalanced, traumatized sociopaths. Again, was Joaquin Phoenix even acting?

Joaquin Phoenix plays Joaquin Phoenix in JOKER, a movie that follows—no, wait… Joaquin Phoenix plays Ben Affleck in JOKER, a movie—no… Joaquin Phoenix is Arthur Fleck (i.e. A. Fleck!?) in JOKER, a movie that follows the origin of Batman’s sauciest nemesis, yet tells us nothing about the origin of Batman’s sauciest nemesis! Movie Maniacs, if you thought JOKER would solidify canon on Bill Finger’s most unhinged arch-villain, you’re in for a Joker-like conundrum. We never do figure out whether the tales of Arthur Fleck’s childhood are true, or the rantings of a disturbed woman, or the coverup of a rich man.

Arthur works as a clown for an agency in Gotham, a city seething with discontent; no jobs, filthy streets, citizens walking a tightrope of subsistence and destitution, crime rampant. And for the first time, a movie about crime isn’t satisfied with showing thugs robbing grocery stores as a shorthand for “crime,” instead, clearly links the policies of politicians (taking away healthcare, corporate corruption, etc.) to the people suffering on the streets, showing how the upper classes cause the rise in lower class crime.

Arthur visits his therapist and laments, “It’s getting crazy out there.” Now I don’t usually like the term “out there” to represent society, because it’s too amorphous, but in this movie, writer Scott Silver and co-writer/director Todd Phillips show all those small things that gradually wear you down to bare wire, brought about by the rich tweaking society so that the wealth runs uphill to them.

The moviemakers have crafted an homage to that classic 1988 Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke, in which The Joker sneers, “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy,” then goes about trying to make that bad day happen for his protagonists. JOKER uses Dinah Washington’s song What A Diff’rence A Day Made to imply the same concept, then goes about making that bad day happen to Arthur himself, to drive him over the edge into Joker. The villain in 80 years of comicbooks is the protagonist here. There are other allusions to Killing Joke: Arthur trying to break into the world of standup comedy; and the Alan Moore-penned line, “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice.”

Arthur lives with his old mother Penny (Frances Conroy). The intimacy in their relationship raises the hairs a little (as we see him bathe her, and waltz with her); she is at that advanced age that makes her feeble of mind and body, so we are on the cusp of being heartened and disturbed with Arthur’s care. He uncovers something secret she wrote to the billionaire who owns Gotham, Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen, who was in DARK KNIGHT RISES as a congressman); something about “your son” needing help… Stealing his mother’s records from Arkham State Hospital (back before it was Arkham Asylum), Arthur discovers she suffered from “delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder” (same condition as Dumbo Donald!)… So… is Arthur the son of Thomas Wayne? Which would make him Bruce Wayne’s half-brother?! Or is Penny Fleck hallucinating?…

From outside the high locked gate of Wayne Manor, Arthur cajoles a young boy to come closer – until a fit young man named Alfred drives Arthur off the property, while telling the boy, “Get inside, Bruce!” — Did we just see what we thought we saw? The first meeting of The Joker and Batman? We did! We did taw a puddy tat!

Zazie Beetz (DEADPOOL 2) is the girl next door, whom Arthur starts a tentative relationship with. But again – did we just see what we thought we saw?

Comparison with Heath Ledger’s cataclysmic clown prince is inevitable; like Heath, Phoenix puts his everything into this character, not only frying his body mass to play this sinewed, literally twisted, agonized outcast, he also adopts a timid mien, replete with twitches and stutters and a stoop-shouldered, sunken-chested carriage. Adding to Arthur’s insecurity, he has a condition where he laughs uncontrollably (mainly during times of anxiety), and Phoenix has made this Tourette-cackle his very own flesh-crawling thing.

Mark Hamill’s cartoon Joker might possess the best unbalanced guffaw, but Phoenix’s painful unbidden yowls send chills up our spines. When privileged yachtniks bully Arthur on the train, we see terror on his face, not just because he knows his incongruous laughter will make them mock him more fiercely, but that his jowls seem to ache as they contort his face against his wishes.

And when Arthur attends a comedy show to take notes (following his dream to be a standup comedian) he forces laughs which are decidedly vapid when he spies other people laughing around him – meaning he can’t actually laugh at funny, only cackles uncontrollably at pain. What a performance! And when Arthur actually embraces his destiny and shoots his oppressors – note the subtle foley effect of the ringing in his ears! – that cackle while he’s crying inconsolably!…

Uh… Heath Who?…

Portrait of a man trying (and failing) to look as disturbed as Jay Leno’s chin.

Let’s talk THE KING OF COMEDY. Rupert Pupkin is here, playing Robert De Niro. He wanted to be just like Jerry Lewis, and now he’s got his own show! De Niro is Murray Franklin, a smarmy unfunny vanilla talk show host (so basically, ‘a talk show host’), whose national show Arthur desires to perform on, so much so that he fantasizes he is singled out by Murray in the audience and brought onstage.

Much of this movie flirts with fantasy, so subtlely that some theories suggest this whole movie is taking place in Arthur’s head. We have to believe there is some bedrock “reality” to this tale, otherwise what’s the point in having a plot or throughline if it’s merely one step above Patrick Duffy in the shower?

We imagine De Niro must bear some modicum of respect for Phoenix, for morphing his body in a way similar to that of De Niro’s in RAGING BULL (1980). Phoenix is shriveled here, but just last year, he was bulked up for YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (for which he won Best Actor at Cannes).

Arthur’s admiration of Murray turns to bile when Murray shows a clip of Arthur at an open mic night, trying to squeeze out his jokes between gales of pain-laughing, with Murray mocking him, calling him “a Joker.” Thus, Arthur decides then and there he wants to be just like Robert De Niro in TAXI DRIVER and kill a buncha fools.

The meta threatens to eat us alive.

JOKER is set in 1981, but it feels like earlier (with its street dressing, its fashions, Thomas Wayne at a screening of Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES), but then the writers make a giant sociological mistake that makes it seem like today.

Who films open mic acts in 1981?

Laughing like nobody’s glistening.

This most outlandish plot point is the catalyst for Arthur’s violent denouement. Which means the film’s climax was predicated on a concatenation of events that could not possibly have existed in 1981. Let’s say someone does film open mics in dive bars (to eke out new talent), why are they sending this particular performance to Murray’s show? There’s no hook  – just some guy bombing hard. Why would Murray ever bother to broadcast it on a national TV show? And if he does broadcast it, why mock this obvious nobody? Why was Murray punching down to these subterranean levels? Was there no other news of the day to make jokes about? Except this novice who had not yet honed his craft? Any host who allows this unfiltered dreck on his show deserves a bullet to the head.

THIS IS 1981. When your dad had maybe bought a VCR but was at least 2 years away from buying a VHS video camera. This is not the sick social media climate of the 2010s (where everyone films everything Just To Watch The World Burn). So which fanatic with a portable video camera is filming Arthur? Or is it Murray’s crew, scouting open mics with their broadcast cameras? And if so, why rail on a reject?

It’s like the writers are so immersed in the spineless cancel culture of modern times that they can’t conceive of a time when people had better things to do than bully strangers on video. The tragedy is that modern audiences don’t even see this plot point as a misstep, because they too cannot conceive of a simpler time when wasting videotape on such mundane nothingness would have been the height of reckless stupidity. Nowadays this kind of dunderheaded idiocy is called the United States presidency.

Dancing like nobody knows you’ve killed anyone.

They look like the stairs from THE EXORCIST (in Washington DC, Prospect and 36^th), but they’re in The Bronx (Anderson Ave and West 167^th). And they’re One Big Metaphor. Arthur ascends this massive flight of stairs on his way home every night, stooped shoulders, head bowed, like the workers in METROPOLIS rising from the Depths with no hope. Denouement: Arthur is Joker, in full makeup and costume, Gary Glitter song on soundtrack (a controversy in itself), as he dances devil-may-care down the same stairs. He fluidly moves in an arrogant flourish, willfully, joyously embracing his Dante-esque descent into madness.

Arthur strides through the train station, smoking, looking more like Ledger with every step. Why? Because all through the movie, his gait has been gimped and cowed, except when dressed as a clown or dancing. Now, he has embraced his demons and cast off all doubt. And for the first time in society’s glare, he holds his back straight, purposeful – and STRIDES. His shooting of the yachtniks at this very station cast him as a mysterious vigilante hero for the downtrodden. Since he was witnessed in clown makeup during the incident, his copycat admirers adopt identical clown masks when rioting against the derision of the Top 1% in the film’s catastrophic climax. Movie now resembles V FOR VENDETTA in more ways than one – the sea of masks, worn for the same reason – to rebel against the hubris of the upper class.

JOKER resonates because it hits the raw nerve of America’s class struggle, bubbling under for decades, brought into the daylight with the Wall Street crash of 2008, and continuing to the present with the sneering 1% becoming more openly contemptuous of the lower classes as time passes.

Who knew that a Batman villain – the clown – would become the perfect icon for the lower classes? We came to realize the Wall Streeters’ attitude towards us when those avaricious, hubristic one-percenters continued to brazenly embezzle America’s money after being bailed out by American citizens! The filmmakers tapped into this synergy, with Thomas Wayne condemning the rioters as “clowns”….

… and in real life, actor Alec Baldwin (coincidentally, originally slated to play Thomas Wayne, and a staple on SNL playing Dumbo Donald), voiced his opinion of the Felicity Huffman jailing (for buying her daughter’s way into college), “The demonization of wealth in this country is mind-blowing!” Don’t be coy now, Alec! It’s not the demonization of wealth per se, it’s the indignation that the working class feels toward the attitude of the wealthy, who, like Thomas Wayne, look down their noses at those less fortunate as “clowns.” Mitt Romney, 2012 presidential contender, went a long way to perpetuating this indignation, implying it was somehow a choice to be poor. Until in 2016, Dumbo Donald exploited his perceived wealth to wholly undermine not only the working class, but democracy itself: ignoring subpoenas, embezzling, kidnapping, money-laundering, obstructing justice, buying judges, committing treason, violating every oath his office is beholden to, from the Emoluments Clause to Protecting the American people from all enemies foreign and domestic – he being the biggest domestic threat of all… and was protected from legal consequences by the wealthy. Thus, wealth has become synonymous with corruption. By their very actions, the wealthy call the working class “clowns” every single second of every day without actually saying the word.

Portrait of a man who likes himself just fine.

Made for $70 million, JOKER shows us what superhero films could be: devoid of outlandish special effects, with an R-rating, no cavalcade of bootylicious stars wearing enhanced pajamas, yet still a compelling and award-winning tentpole movie (Oscars, Globes, BAFTAs), and on its way to grossing $1 billion.

And it doesn’t even have to be canon!

JOKER brilliantly tap-dances across 80 years of comicbook canon, yet never mires its foot in anything other than ambiguity.

For example, the film gives us that massive Easter Egg of Arthur trespassing on the Wayne Estate, coming across a young Master Bruce – a boy that looks about 12 years old. Arthur can definitely pass for 42, so let’s say they have a clean 30-year difference in ages. So when Batman is 29 (as per the classic Silver Age comics from the Jim Aparo/Dick Giordano era), Joker should be 59, yet both he and Batman look around the same age in those panels. This movie would offer no clarification for our misty memories.

Another tap dance: amidst the climactic riots, Thomas Wayne, his wife and their son leave a cinema, avoiding the melee in the streets by turning down an alley. A rioter in a clown mask follows them… (Remember Tim Burton’s BATMAN said explicitly it was The Joker himself that killed Bruce’s parents? Well, this movie accounts for the clown visage due to the Joker fever in the streets!) But in this infamous scenario, the motive of the mugger here is not just simple robbery, as it has been played out a thousand times in the past. In Thomas Wayne’s family, the mugger sees his malefactors – the 1%! – those piranhas responsible for his downcast role in society, and further, how they are blithely trying to avoid getting their feet dirty on the class struggle erupting around them, by sneaking down an alley. Thus he follows. To enact a small class victory. Pearls are snatched and go flying. Screams. Gunshots. The man and woman fall. The boy is spattered with blood. And now we see a compelling reason for Bruce to be spared – the mugger saw no reason to kill the boy for the sins of his father… Gee, I hope that kid isn’t too traumatized and grows up to be a well-adjusted young man…

As well as the old school lilt of Dinah’s song, JOKER also utilizes two songs made famous by Sinatra – Send In The Clowns (and I find it striking that in this movie about class struggle, the opening line is, “Isn’t it rich…”), and That’s Life, because this movie is truly about the life of Joaquin Phoenix.

No acting.

END

Dong-fu.

Baba Yaga’s Bogus Journey.

Faster than a speeding Bourne, more powerful than a Transporter, able to leap Chuck Norris in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky – it’s a Bond, it’s McClane, no, it’s – JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM! The unkillable killer returns in the undisputed Heavyweight Champeen Boys’ Movie of the Summer!

If JOHN WICK 2 was “an art film first, a combat film, second,” then PARABELLUM is an out-of-the-closet combat film first, a social justice pander, second, and an art film way, way third. The world-building is expanded, the focus is narrowed, and the vaginas are coddled. The hitman “business” is fully explored, but in doing so, John Wick himself is unintentionally downgraded to a small mote in a universe he once dominated.

Following directly on the heels of its predecessor, PARABELLUM finds Wick running in the rain to escape the consequences of his excommunicado status, for spilling blood on the consecrated grounds of the Continental Hotel. And as every assassin on Earth attacks him for the $14 million bounty on his head, Wick claws his way to a meeting with the instigators of these underworld rules and penalties – the High Table – to ask forgiveness, and a way back into the unholy hitman fold.

Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick, legendary hitman. But the dynamics are all skewed. In the original JOHN WICK (2014), Wick was a feared Legend on the hunt, in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (2017), the first half saw Wick as a Legend on the hunt, but the second half was the Legend being hunted; now in CHAPTER 3, Wick is unequivocally the Legend being hunted. Every hitman who once spoke of him in reverent awe (“He once killed three men in a bar with a fucking pencil!”), is trying their hand at besting this godkiller, who now seems merely a mortal fighting for his life.

Of course, the makers of PARABELLUM (writers Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten, and director Chad Stahelski) understand the concept of removing everything from the hero so that his rise will be all the more powerful, but in flensing Wick of his halo, they have also de-boned the mythos, the fear, the baba yaga…

Equu-fu.

Ian McShane reprises his role as saucy Hotel Continental manager, Winston, who begrudgingly excommunicates Wick, because he considers Wick a friend. Lance Reddick is again stolid concierge Charon, who once again takes in Wick’s dog while Wick sorts out business. Laurence Fishburne returns as Bowery King, bringing his ghetto cred and overacting. Angelica Huston is The Director, a high-ranking leader from so far back in Wick’s past she calls him by his birth name; Wick brings her totems that ensure she will help him find passage to the High Table.

Halle Berry is fellow hitman, Sofia. Obviously old friends with Wick, she shoots him in greeting. Yes, Berry’s first shot in the film is her first shot at Keanu – hitting him in the shoulder of his armored jacket. Did she know it was armored? If so, why shoot? If she didn’t know it was armored, was she trying to kill him, and if so, why did she shoot only once? It makes zero sense. Until you realize it’s just another emasculation device: to establish Sofia as “equal” to Wick, they had to make her “dominant” first. That’s just how it is in this gutless double-standard society.

Wick presents Sofia with his “marker” – a medallion that marks a past favor (he delivered her daughter to safety from the underworld). He seeks a favor in return – guide him closer to the High Table. This scene makes Wick look unprincipled, because he is relying on the same protocols he disparaged in the previous movie. When D’Antonio wanted a return favor from Wick, Wick blew off D’Antonio’s marker, citing he was “out of the business.” But now Wick uses this exact same device to call in a favor – in a business he wants no part of. Halle accepts, because Keanu is sexy with that three-day growth an’ all.

The inclusion of Berry dilutes the movie’s dynamic even more. Up to this point, Wick is undisputed master at his craft of flopsy-haired Keanu-kwon-do. But for the sake of SJWs everywhere, Sofia is presented as a female Wick (because sisters are doing it for themselves, right?), and when Wick and Sofia storm a High Table stronghold with that same combat style, every time the camera focuses on Berry, we wonder why we’re here. Because the focus has always been on Wick’s wondrously inventive moves – and he’s way over there out of focus. It’s not called WICK AND SOFIA – why do I care how proficient Sofia is? Pandering to social justice snivelers, Sofia also owns two cute Alsatians that she brings into battle, that always go for the balls. Oh yes please! Now that we’re here, we might as well go all the way with the emasculation metaphors… When Sofia eventually disappears from the plot, I breathed a sigh of relief and took my hands off my groin.

Bitch-fu.

Speaking of ladies—er, or maybe men, Asia Kate Dillon (who in real life identifies as “non-binary”) authoritatively transmigrates into the Hotel Continental one day, introducing herself—uh, himself—uh, itself, as The Adjudicator. Representing the High Table, she/he/it declares Winston’s Continental “deconsecrated,” further doling out punishment to Bowery King, The Director and anyone else who offered succor for Wick during his excommunication. It thickens the plot, while addressing, subverting and causing sexism all at the same time.

Saïd Taghmaoui is chilling as the Elder that bestows on Wick a terrible penance. Again, Wick seems intent on getting back “in,” to the point where his sacrifices outweigh his reasons for being “out.” He says he wants to stay alive for the memory of his wife, which is almost as weak sauce as George Lucas’s, “She lost the will to live.”

Of course, you don’t watch a JOHN WICK movie to assess its plot points or rate its sexism – you watch it to marvel at the combat, and PARABELLUM’s plot jets us from one combat scene to the next. Though each combat scene is as interesting and unique as possible (gun-fu, motorbike-fu, horse-fu, mirror-fu, LGBTQ-fu, etc.), the very fact there are so many scenes of combat does become tiresome. The hand-to-hand training and expertise is on full display, with each scene framed in an artsy swirl, yet sometimes our inner voice wants to yell at Wick’s assailants: “You guys ever heard of sniping?”

Only in the last gun-battle does Winston restore a semblance of Wick’s mystique, “And Mr. Wick – do what you do best: hunt.” Keanu uses his exact same lines from THE MATRIX, to proclaim he needs: “Guns. Lots of guns.” And it’s a welcome return to the dynamic displayed in the very first battle in the very first WICK movie, when those masked intruders stalked Wick’s home, and he took them out with the Mozambique Drill and sit-on-my-face-fu.

Even so – this battle is a paradox: Winston asks Wick whether he wants to remain Baba Yaga – the Boogeyman – for eternity, or whether he wants to live in peace outside the business. Wick chooses peace over baba yaga – then goes baba yaga on his assassins. Now, I don’t mind that Wick wants to leave the business – that’s been the Prescribed Hitman Movie Plot for decades now – but you can’t quash “legend”; you can’t just send out a memo saying, “Don’t call me Baba Yaga any more, pretty please.” What does Wick hope to achieve by killing every High Table assassin except becoming a bigger Baba?

Style-fu.

That’s when Winston quotes the Latin adage: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”).

PARABELLUM is brought to a shark jump conclusion when The Adjudicator pronounces Winston “re-consecrated” on the strength of irony (i.e. since he armed Wick to annihilate all the High Table soldiers it must prove how devoted he is to keeping his hotel a sacred landmark. Uh, wha–?). Irony, or editing for runtime? And Winston’s solution to ensure John Wick returns for a snatch at the High Table is utterly haphazard, unconsidered and foolhardy, yet played to look canny. Put it this way: the only way Wick survives a fall like that is if he is the Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons.

I guess the upcoming JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR proves conclusively that John Wick is the Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons.

END

Keanu versus Keanu in a battle to the Keanu.

Baba Yaga Reloaded.

Keanu Reeves once again finds himself the linchpin of a career-defining movie series. He’s the laconic, eponymous anti-hero in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO, a movie whose story is built around its innovative combat scenes. In this sequel to 2014’s JOHN WICK, Wick must fulfill an obligation to a colleague, or risk never being able to leave his underworld life behind.

We’ve heard the tale before: hitman wants out, forced into one last job, and the person who hired him tries to kill him, to leave no loose ends. That’s basically every hitman movie since 1978, right? What makes JOHN WICK different?

Style.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO is – like its predecessor – an art film first. A combat film, second. An adrenaline rush, third. A stuntman tutorial, fourth. A hitman film, last.

Movie starts on the heels of the first film, where the recently-widowed Wick exacted revenge for his killed puppy and hunted down his stolen ride. Action opens on Wick reclaiming his precious musclecar from a Russian mobster (Peter Stormare), who is a blood relative of the previous film’s Russian mobsters. Emphasis on blood. This cold open is merely a device to showcase Wick’s deadly expertise in combat, as we hear Stormare relate the mythic story of how Wick once killed three men in a bar “with a fucking pencil!,” then witness Wick as he bone-breaks and face-smashes what seem to be a whole company of Yellow Cab drivers, who roll up in their cabs one after the other and wade into him like he hasn’t paid his fare.

What exactly is going on? Doesn’t matter. Look at that style! The glam lighting, creative subtitles, the lustrous colors, the ricochet framing and, of course, that gutshock combat. Anyone who dares compare the serpentine swoon of WICK to the headache-inducing crash-cuts of BOURNE is smoking meth.

Director Chad Stahelski (once Keanu’s stunt double) allows us to drink in the fluidity of hand-to-hand expertise (which is, once again, a combination of gun-kata meets Jackie Chan meets thigh-kwon-do) with many unbroken takes in long-shot, blocked meticulously, with Keanu’s months-long training regimen on full display. Throughout the film, witness the exacting brutality of Wick’s Mozambique Drill (2 to the gut, 1 to the head), marvel at this assassin’s assassin as he careens through a cadre of killers, specifically arming himself with minimal ammo, knowing he is going to divest each assassin of their weapon to continue his bloody sweep through marbled halls and moody catacombs. It’s the most beautiful and balletic grisly murder since Frank Miller’s 300. And that’s Keanu himself taking the bruises for 90% of the bambalam. The combat scenes are heady enough for us to give the movie a pass on what are some pretty idiotic motivations.

For example: one of the mobsters asks Stormare, “Why don’t we just give the car back to him?” and Stormare sniggers that that wouldn’t be the end of it. But why not? When someone with Wick’s legend retakes his car, why don’t they grant him easy egress, instead of rolling up in their cabs and kicking him? These guys seem intent on getting killed with a pencil. As for Wick, doesn’t he know that his car’s Blue Book value will be toast by the time he has brain-bashed and car-smashed his way through the cabbies? To be fair, he’s reclaiming it for the memories he shared with his dead wife, but is the final bullet-ridden, gashed, twisted metal worth the effort? She was a smokin’ babe but now she’s gone. There are many other cars in the sea.

Here we see Klaatu, displaying no emotion at all— oh, wait, that’s Keanu acting.

Cameos by John Leguizamo (as Wick’s mechanic) and Bridget Moynahan (as Wick’s dead wife in flashback) – and we start to wonder who is actually more precious to him… but all is quickly forgotten when the film’s real plot kicks in:

No sooner does Wick get home and bury all his weapons under concrete again, than a former colleague, Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) calls on him with a “marker” – a medallion stamped with Wick’s blood oath. D’Antonio enabled Wick to leave the biz three years ago, and has come calling to return the favor. Wick refuses; he’s not that man anymore. D’Antonio says “Ciao. You have a beautiful home, John,” calmly goes outside, then launches a few rockets through Wick’s beautiful home, razing it in hellfire.

Saucy Ian McShane is once again Winston, the owner and manager of the Continental, the hitman’s hotel, where no business shall be conducted and no blood shall be spilled. Lance Reddick is once again Charon the unflappable concierge. Winston advises Wick to fulfill the marker.

Wick’s task: kill D’Antonio’s sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini), about to be crowned at the High Table (the zenith of gangster Vatican) so that D’Antonio may ascend to the throne himself. Wick kills Gianna, in a tasty scene where we think the filmmakers might be giving Wick a pass as a sociopath, as he lets Gianna slit her wrists and bleed out in a tub (“because I lived my life my way – and I’ll end it my way”), but then, as he holds her hand tenderly – he puts a round in her head for good measure! Legit!

Then D’Antonio sends his hitmen after Wick (led by mute hit-chick Ares, played by striking Aussie Ruby Rose), “What kind of man would I be if I didn’t avenge my sister’s murder?”… Ha! You have GOT to be kidding! You blew up my house for saying No; now you’re trying to kill me for saying Yes! Bi-polar much, dude?!

The grandest achievement in the JOHN WICK series is the world-building. Besides the acrobatic killing scenes, writer Derek Kolstad has forged an underworld made up of as many rules as the overworld they exist within. There is a hitman’s code, a mutual respect, and an adherence to protocol. Which spur moments of hilarious undertone: like the Ralph Coyote and Sam Sheepdog scenes from Warner Bros. cartoons, deadly adversaries will stop their fight midway to have a drink or offer professional courtesy to each other.

Every facet of thug life is meticulously crafted by Kolstad: from Wick visiting a safety deposit box for his “knifing clothes” (as John Malkovich calls his couture when shit gets real – Wick leaves like Archer in a black turtleneck!), to the montage of Wick in Rome, securing arms, maps, suits, for his task, where every vendor knows him intimately and each is an artisan of their trade, treating their dealings with Wick not as supplying him with the methods of murder, but deliciously fussing as if he is planning a high society night on the town.

Tank: “So what do you need? Besides a miracle.”
Neo: “Guns. Lots of guns.”
— THE MATRIX

Peter Serafinowicz is known as the “sommelier,” whom Wick asks for a “tasting” – and is shown a wealth of guns and ammo to suit every occasion, “dessert” being – knives. Luca Mosca is the Italian Tailor, who asks Wick for his preference in suit design. Tailor: “What style?” Wick: “Italian.” “How many buttons?” “Two.” “Trousers?” “Tapered.” “How about the lining?”

“Tactical.”

Tasty.

Precipitating the tailor sewing cloth-like armor into the lining. It gives us a rationalization on why the upcoming gangsters who very sensibly shoot Wick instead of engage in hand-to-hand still cannot put him down.

And after Wick’s escape from Gianna’s home through the EDM ceremony (painfully gay music – why couldn’t it be an Iron Maiden show or something?), through the catacombs, (where we saw him tactically place incrementally larger weaponry along the route), and defeating Gianna’s personal bodyguard Cassian (Common, in an excellent portrayal – this dude is no longer a rapper; he’s a frickin’ ACTOR now!), D‘Antonio puts a bounty of $7 million on Wick’s head. And if this movie teaches us anything, it’s that hitmen hide in all professions – from buskers and janitors to sumo wrestlers, almost anyone passing you in the street; and with everyone getting alerts on their cellphones instantaneously on who to kill, it seems they’re all connected via Hitman Facebook.

And suddenly, we actually see John Wick kill two men with a fucking pencil! 

What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
— Neo, THE MATRIX

But too many casual hitmen are hitting on him, so Wick turns to – Morpheus!

They knew. I mean, the filmmakers musta known all the MATRIX gags that would ensue with Laurence Fishburne coming face to face with Keanu Reeves again. But they cast him anyway, as the Bowery King, a thug whom Wick did a favor for years ago, now a kingpin, who owes Wick a favor in return! (As a formal marker was called on Wick, now Wick calls on an informal marker.)

Bowery (overacting like the world is on fire and only his cheese will put it out – “Will somebody PLEASE get this man a GUN?!”) gives Wick a gun with only 7 bullets – one for each million he’s losing by not claiming the bounty himself.

As the reflection motif is a favorite gambit with director Stahelski, he stages the finale in a hall of mirrors. Now it’s nothing BUT reflection. Of course, the art of this framing is never seeing the ubiquitous camera or crew in any reflections!

Eventually, Wick will shoot the smug D’Antonio right there in the Continental, with Winston witnessing. No matter that D’Antonio was smirking down Wick’s barrel that he wasn’t allowed to shoot him on the hallowed ground of the hotel – the rules were broken! Winston has no choice but to declare Wick “excommunicado.”

And Wick runs. No more protected by the hitman code, the High Table after his blood, and every hitman on Earth open to claim his bounty, John Wick runs, his faithful unnamed doggy by his side, blood seeping from numerous wounds, black-suited, flopsy-haired, slightly limping, in the rain, as cellphones chime alarmingly on all sides, every passerby suddenly taking on menace. He runs as the outro credits roll…

…because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. If he wants peace, he must prepare for war. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. He is – The ONE!–

Dammit!– Laurence, you’re confusing me with all that overacting!–

END

Fallen Franchise.

Why do we watch “dinosaur movies”? Well, for the DINOSAURS, of course! In that respect, JURASSIC PARK: FALLEN KINGDOM is at the top of the heap, with the best dinosaurs that 2018 CGI technology can render, hands down. With every roar, every stomp, every quivering of their neck wattles, we don’t doubt these prehistoric animals are more real than Bryce Dallas Howard’s rounded ta-tas. And I envy the kids of today who are witness to this era of photo-realistic dino-mation, over those poor kids (me included) who had to make do with Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion creatures on rear-projections, or endure Roger Corman’s iguanas with sailfins taped to their backs.

So if dinos are your diversion, go! Go watch FALLEN KINGDOM and enjoy with extreme prejudice! Or you can go for the easy charm and star-lord charisma of Chris Pratt, reprising his role as Owen, ex-Navy SEAL and Velociraptor wrangler; go for the angelic smile and high tight chest of Bryce Dallas Howard, reprising her role as Claire, the corporatist-turned-activist; or go for Millennial Urkel (Justice Smith, as computer nerdist), or Woke Minority (Daniella Pineda, as dino doctor). Or go for Jeff Goldblum’s cameo, trailers teasing him but then merely bookending the film with his chaotician Ian Malcolm, testifying on Life, uh, finding a way.

But don’t go if you are looking for an original story with three-dimensional characters. In Hollywood tentpole franchises – that’s extinct.

Literally throwing everything at the audience.

Writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, and director J.A. Bayona throw together an old billionaire, a dinosaur expert and his woman, a dinosaur park, an evil corporation, a dinosaur geneticist, kids threatened by dinosaurs, and some realistic dinosaur special effects, and call it JURASSIC PARK—I mean, JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM… and sit back and wait for the dolls to fly off the shelves.

The tourist attraction Jurassic World has been abandoned for three years, with the dinosaurs roaming free and unmolested by humanity. (Already I’m not buying it. Because I know humanity. You mean to tell me that after those attempts at smuggling and stealing dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK (1993) and THE LOST WORLD (1997), not one wealthy mogul or mercenary was game enough to attempt any other illegal grabs of these unguarded animals?) Thus, the movie cold opens with a poaching mission, uh, after three years of no intrusion… Mercenaries poach a rib of the dead Indominus rex on the floor of the mosasaur tank (from JURASSIC WORLD, 2015).

Knowing the modus operandi of these Jurassic movies, we presume:
a) they are seeking its DNA, for
b) the next sequel, while
c) re-introducing the Mosasaur and Tyrannosaur in a gory opening sequence, so that
d) they can sell more dolls.

Suddenly we are slapped in the face with retconning. An old guy named Ben Lockwood (James Cromwell) appears out of nowhere, dying of Generic Movie Disease, and we discover he is known to all the characters in the story as the silent partner of John Hammond. He has a convenient One-Line Plothole Fix backstory because Hollywood thinks we’re fucken dummies. He funds Claire (Howard) to travel to Isla Nublar, where a volcano is about to erupt, and rescue all his merchandise—I mean, dinosaurs. After the retconning, comes the gaslighting – Lockwood: “This was all Hammond’s dream: to let these creatures live in peace.” What the freakin’ record scratch?! Hammond created dinosaurs to exploit them for profit in JURASSIC PARK, Old Guy Whom We’re Meant To Like Due To A One-Line-Plothole-Fix! But then…

Just like Hammond did a 180 and became a prissy philanthropist in the second Jurassic movie, Claire has caught HIV (Hammond Immunodeficiency Virus) and is also 180’d here, spearheading a dinosaur-activist group. As proof she is now humanitarian, she wears less hooker mascara, although she hasn’t skimped on the push-up bras.

For reasons of movie ticket sales, Claire asks Owen (Pratt) to join her rescue mission, using his old pet Velociraptor named Blue as bait: they can rescue Blue (and they also need her DNA for blah blah)… During this scene, I can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers are implying Claire is also meant to be tempting Owen with her own bait named Labia-majorus, because there is that urgent kiss later on during a moment of high anxiety – but there is zero chemistry in this sequel… Owen and Claire ended up as a couple after the events of JURASSIC WORLD, but in an attempt to re-cross that familiar romantic ground, the filmmakers have made them exes here, and contrive ways to recreate that sexual tension from the first film. But it doesn’t work – because we know they’ve pounded each others’ glottal stops. And the wasted money on the setup scenes could’ve gone to saving actual endangered species like the Siberian tiger or Alaskan ptarmigan.

Vanilla Rafe Spall is the slimy corporate guy supplying the vehicles and the henchmen—I mean, Rescue Team, led by Ted Levine (forever Buffalo Bill from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS). Their para-military outfit airlifts more dinos onto their freighter than either Owen or Claire could’ve facilitated. So – did we really need Owen and Claire? Oh, to open doors with her handprint. Sounds reasonable, considering you could just blow the doors down in this derelict park…

Claire and Owen end up on dinosaur island with two Millennials (Urkel and Woke), and the hunters—I mean, Rescue Team. Movie firstly tries to recreate the poignancy of the Brachiosaurus scene from JURASSIC PARK to remind us what franchise we’ve donated to, then sends Owen stealthily tracking Blue… Hunters double-cross Owen and Claire, bad screenwriting happens, cliché action sequences copied-and-pasted directly from the Running And Screaming Handbook, inserting [dinosaurs] into the field where you might otherwise write Terminators, Henchmen, Aliens, or Freddy Krueger.

But god dash it all! These dinosaurs are spectacular!

“Are the dinosaurs going to die, mommy?”
“Yes, my child.”
“Waaaaaaah!”

The stampede scene is brilliant, featuring a Carnotaurus, Allosaurus and various ceratopsians, ankylosaurids and diplodocids. During the stampede the carnivores cause havoc by still trying to eat the herbivores! As the volcano shoots burning rocks into the sky, with lava chasing down our heroes – a frenetic, brutal battle between a Carnotaurus and Sinoceratops! This is why dinosaur movies are made! Films like THE LOST WORLD (1925) and VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969), innovative though they were, pitted carnivore against herbivore in bland, stilted battle; this is what they were aiming for! I weep for those old filmmakers who could conceive of but never achieve this level of energetic realism, and I wish they could’ve seen these mind-breaking visuals!

Capping off the stampede is the only real poignant moment in the film: as the island is decimated, we see one lone Brachiosaur trumpeting mournfully on the dock, as the ship sails away from it, as ash clouds engulf it…

Levine and Spall are “saving” the dinos to auction them off to hedonists, officiated by Toby Jones. Turns out they didn’t really need Owen, Claire, Urkel or Woke at all. Which means, the movie didn’t need them either. It was just the marketing department that insisted Star-Lord and Bry and two annoying Millennials would sell more tix, so, yeh – “characters”!

Michael Giacchino composes, and does an amazing thing with just two notes of John Williams’s Jurassic Park Theme, stretching them out into full passages for key sequences.

Even though they try to connect Claire and Owen to the current plot – “You’re the parents of the new world” (because Claire authorized the Indominus experiments and Owen taught the raptors English) – nothing that anyone does matters in the least. It’s like the movie is going on with or without them: Owen finding Blue, Owen saving Claire from the sinking gyrosphere, Woke giving Blue a blood transfusion, Owen and Claire siphoning the blood of the T-rex while it sleeps, Maisie (Isabella Sermon) the little granddaughter of Lockwood being secretive, Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie’s real-life daughter) being governess to Maisie, a Stygimoloch busting Owen out of captivity, armed mercenaries everywhere whose guns are useless against any dinosaurs evah, Urkel opening doors with his computer skills and screaming like a pussy – all these things do not make a lick of difference to the final fact that numerous dinosaurs are brought to mainland America and released in the final scenes, in effect, to unwittingly create a real life Jurassic WORLD, as Goldblum presages…

As an example of how unimportant the humans are, there is a cold-blooded murder of an important character. It changes nothing, it doesn’t affect the dinosaurs, and we feel – NOTHING!

Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong – hooray!) appears in the middle background, still feeling unappreciated for mashing DNA strands together and farting out abominations, in this case – the Indoraptor!

Let’s talk about the purpose of that abomination: Not only does the breeding of the Indoraptor rehash two plot points from the previous movie (‘splicing genes to create a hybrid,’ and ‘weaponizing dinos’), it only exists because the two “villains” from JURASSIC PARK – the T-rex and Velociraptor – have been rewrought by the franchise as “heroes.” Exactly like The Terminator and Loki and Darth Vader, what were once the baddest motherfuckers in the jungle are now considered vastly more lucrative as good guys – notice how the T-rex only kills the poachers from the first scene; it hardly even notices Owen right at its feet when it kills a dinosaur near their gyrosphere. At film’s end it reappears to kill only the bad corporation guy. So the filmmakers had to create a new “evil” dinosaur that would be the one to chase the humans and take the brunt of the audience’s malign.

The re-purposing was apparent during the final battle scene of the previous movie, where the “heroes” were quite obviously the rex and raptor, and the totally made-up evil baddie was the Indominus. Now, it’s so obvious it’s popcorn-throwable. This Indoraptor just oozes pure evil, with its frowning, slitted eyes, racks of jutting teeth and screaming stepchild attitude, and here’s the smartest innovation: To get this trained dino to attack, you’ve got to aim a gun with a laser sight at the Indo’s target, then push a button that emits a signal that sends the Indo into attack frenzy mode. Did I say ‘smartest’? I meant ‘stupidest.’ Because if you’re ALREADY AIMING A GUN AT YOUR TARGET WITH A LASER SIGHT, why not just pull the trigger yourself? And cut out the 5 billion dollar middle man.

Grown men wrote this. I think.

Poor Henry Wu only seems to be needed in these movies to whine about his work, and to pack away his lab at the end with all the little test tube dinosaurs! Onto the next sequel – away!

As Goldblum’s caveat from 1993 echoes over the end montage – “Humans and dinosaurs are going to be forced to co-exist. These creatures were here before us, and if we’re not careful, they’re going to be here after us” – we see the dinos busting out over the real world, including the coolest scene of all: the T-rex facing down a lion across its zoo moat – the king of the tyrant lizards roaring at the king of the beasts, roaring back!

Now that’s why we watch dinosaur movies!

END

Is Jim Carrey’s soul as big as his beard? You decide.

Of Comedy and Molecules.

Introspective prophet Jim Carrey sits down with his beard and reminisces about the takeover of his body by Andy Kaufman while filming MAN ON THE MOON.

A calmer Jim Carrey than we’ve ever seen before, sits down with director Chris Smith in JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND, to discuss the filming of his 1999 biopic MAN ON THE MOON, where he played iconoclastic entertainer Andy Kaufman, and how Carrey’s channeling of Kaufman’s sui generis persona during that shoot changed his outlook on the meaning of life itself.

It’s a deep dive, and Jim challenges us to follow him.

We wade through behind-the-scenes footage of MAN ON THE MOON, interviews with cast members (Danny DeVito, Paul Giamatti, Judd Hirsch, etc.), Andy’s longtime collaborator Bob Zmuda, Andy’s girlfriend Lynne Margulies and Andy’s parents Stanley and Janice, and we find that Jim’s mental pilgrimage takes us as much into the mind of Andy as it does into his own.

Andy Kaufman (1949-1984) was revolutionary. Never “just” a comedian (which is how he is usually pigeonholed), Andy was always pushing the envelope, milking the gag, driving society to the edges of its norms, or – as they call it in the Catskills – stirring up shit. (“Andy Kaufman cared less about making his audience laugh than keeping them confused.” — Matt Lauer.)

Soon after Jim won the role to play his idol Andy, he tells us that Andy “visited” him; just came into his mind as Jim was looking out over the surf wondering how to find a way into the character. And – so Jim relates – Andy told Jim, “That’s okay, I’ll take over from here,” and Jim’s decision was made: to remain in character (or – if we are to believe Carrey – Andy’s decision was made to remain in Jim) during the full production.

Jim relates how this decision affected his cast mates and his Oscar-winning director, Milos Forman (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, AMADEUS). They all claim it was disconcerting at first. Then everyone had to play along or the production would have stalled. Danny DeVito still can’t get over it. Forman is seen speaking to Jim, calling him Andy, and trying to reason with him as one would a difficult child. In all these behind-the-scenes clips Jim is 100% immersed in Andy. Or Andy is 100% controlling Jim. Either way you look at it, it’s even disconcerting to us viewers! In fact, Jim says the studio forbad the release of the behind-the-scenes footage in conjunction with the movie because they didn’t want the public to think Jim was an “asshole”!

In a strange case of meta-casting, many people involved with Andy play themselves in MAN ON THE MOON (such as David Letterman, and some of the TAXI cast – Marilu Henner, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Conaway, Carol Kane, Tony Danza), most notably, wrestler Jerry Lawler… Back in the ‘80s, Lawler wrestled Andy, to dispute Andy’s self-proclamation as the “intergender wrestling champion of the world,” after wrestling numerous women.

Jim, who found himself asking, “What Would Andy Do?” would keep Lawler on his toes, constantly egging him into actual anger with insults and childish tomfoolery. Lawler (who admitted years later that his feud with Andy was a jape, and that they were good friends in reality) was discombobulated on whether Jim was acting the dick or actually being one. In a case of life imitating art imitating the fake feud, Lawler actually hits Jim hard in the film (at Jim’s prompting), during their scene on the Letterman show – the same way he supposedly hit Andy hard on that same show. Back then, Andy was taken to hospital, the public not knowing that it was “kayfabe” (the wrestling insider term for a staged event) – and now here was Jim being taken to the hospital, but neither the public nor the production knew whether Jim was faking it or not. Andy would like that.

No one kept the cast and director more on their toes than the mercurial force of nature known as Tony Clifton, Andy’s alter-ego lounge singer. In a fat-suit tuxedo (usually pink), with bowl-haircut wig, sideburns, dark glasses and an attitude set to Total Obnoxious, Tony Clifton would barge onto the movie set (usually with a hooker on each arm), make outrageous demands, insult everyone (including Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman) and make life miserable for all who came in contact with him. We know that Tony succeeded in whatever his endgame is, when we read the full subtitle of this Netflix special: JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND – FEATURING A VERY SPECIAL, CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED MENTION OF TONY CLIFTON. He was probably Andy’s most brilliant creation…

Let’s face it: Even if Tony Clifton didn’t have a contract, he would STILL find a way to be in this movie. Just to insult Andy Kaufman.

And in going so deep into Andy (or Andy so deep into Jim), Carrey comes away from MAN ON THE MOON seemingly more at peace with himself, the industry he is in, and his fanbase: “At some point, when you create yourself to make it, you’re going to have to either let that creation go, and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are, or you’re going to have to kill who you really are, and fall into your grave, grasping onto a character that you never were.”

And this person now – says Carrey – is who he really is. His beard agrees. He has come a long way from the face-pulling, body-swerving, ass-talking juggernaut of his youth. Back then, Jim believed audiences wanted his blood, bone and soul when performing. And he gave of it, freely and fully, over-compensating lest he be judged unworthy of their love. However Jim himself implies that he didn’t need to go that far, as he wakes us to a life lesson he discovered about audiences: “They want to be free from concern.” A lesson for every performer to take to heart, and onstage. (It is portrayed here that Jim’s early freneticism was something psychologically aberrant, like a cry for help because he so wanted to be loved; but no one considers – not even Jim – that it was precisely his outrageous iconoclastic personality “disorder” that made him the megastar he is today, with the luxury to turn his back on fame.)

Away from the bright lights of the industry that he ruled for a few breakneck comedy years, Jim says he can breathe again. He actually believes he is no more; that nothing called “Jim Carrey” exists any more in space and time. And that, he says, is where peace lies. He sees himself as a conglomeration of molecules whirling in the cosmos with no rhyme or reason (which is technically true), and in a number of interviews he has given in recent years, he has said as much, blowing some people’s minds and making others very concerned.

Jim talks sparingly of his other movie roles, and how each of them spoke to him in some way, most notably THE TRUMAN SHOW, where his character Truman Burbank was being filmed by thousands of cameras in a gigantic bio-dome city, in a simulacrum of real life. That movie’s plot – was Jim’s actual life during his halcyon days: in a bubble, the world looking in at him, while he was trying to find a way out. He says he has found that way…

(You can even see me hedging my belief in this being the real Jim, in my use of “He says,” as if an outside observer who is not to be trusted is talking about Jim, rather than the man himself. And surely, Jim himself casts doubt over his own grander-than-thou proselytizing when he appears in junkets for this film, clean-shaved, inshape, with expensive couture that surely must be rubbing his higher-consciousness molecules the wrong way.)

“You there – cease to exist!”

Back when he was making the pioneering salary of $20 million for his role in THE CABLE GUY, there was much talk about that $10 million check that Carrey had written to himself when he was a janitor, in the hopes of cashing it when he was rich. We all took it for granted Carrey had cashed it somewhere between THE CABLE GUY (1996) and LIAR LIAR (1997). Now we discover that he put it, uncashed, into his dad’s coffin. (His father never saw Jim become the megastar he would one day be, only seeing the rise of his son’s career with ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE (released February 1994), and dying 3 weeks after THE MASK was released, in September 1994.)

In 2010, Joaquin Phoenix did a performance-art experiment on Hollywood called I’M NOT HERE, to reveal its fakery, hypocrisy, venality and stupidity. It’s something Andy might have done; a long con to prove that nothing is real.

In his 2014 film DUMB AND DUMBER TO, Jim’s character pulls a long con, spending 20 years in an asylum pretending he is catatonic, just to play a joke on his best friend.

Now, in 2017, Jim Carrey, the intelligent, lucid, articulate and rich actor, doesn’t have to pander to anyone’s notion of who he must or should be any more. He can continue acting in films should he decide to, or he can give it up altogether if it seems beneath his conglomeration of molecules. Yes, Jim could be on some elevated plane, looking down on us mortals from his perch of higher understanding; or he could be playing the Socratic hermit as a long con joke on a society he is exposing for its fakery, hypocrisy, venality and stupidity.

Andy would like that.

END

Jumping to Contusions.

JUMPING JACKS marks the third time Martin and Lewis have been in the military. Army, Navy, now Paratroopers.

Through an identity mixup, civilian Hap Smith (Jerry Lewis) finds himself in the paratroopers with his old nightclub partner, private Chick Allen (Dean Martin); though Chick tries to protect Hap from the authorities and discovery, he finds that Hap inadvertently keeps getting promoted and rewarded for his ineptness. (Wait. Dean’s name is Chick? When we were very young, we figured that Dean was always named Steve or Bill, while Jerry was always Homer or Myron – but seriously, CHICK? It is to laff.)

With six writers, the premise of JUMPING JACKS is pure idiocy: Chick, entertainment director for the paratroopers, wants his dependable nightclub partner Hap, a civilian, to join a military revue he is organizing. He knows Hap will make the revue a hit, thereby earning him (Chick) a promotion. So he cooks up a plot to have one of his military cohorts, Dogface Dolan (Richard Erdman), switch papers and tags with Hap, so that Hap can travel with Chick’s paratrooper group and get onstage with impunity. Well, they perform the revue (where Martin tosses off one of his velvety croons, The Parachute Jump) and Hap does his shtick. They are such a hit with the general that he orders Chick and Dolan (i.e. Hap) on the road with the revue, meaning the actual Dogface Dolan cannot reclaim his place in the paratroopers, so wanders the wainscoting trying not to be discovered by the troupe’s irascible Sergeant McClusky (the real life dogface of Robert Strauss).

The farce allows Lewis and Martin to blast out their inimitable comedy routines, and director Norman Taurog (directing his second of six Martin and Lewis pictures) would be canny enough to just leave them to Martin-and-Lewis to their heart’s content. From its nightclub days, their act was so unique and irrepressible that it had to be seen to be believed.

In an opening scene, Jerry also gets to solo a cavalcade of different characters. By this point (their 6^th film together), Jerry’s shtick has become second nature to him; we can see the study and effort that has gone into making it all seem so effortless. The classic reactions, the impersonations of stereotypes, the scared faces, stupid faces, idiot voices, surprised jerks, etc. Either you like it or you hate it. There’s no in-betweening with Jerry Lewis. Dean Martin, ever the underappreciated straight man, was more of a broad taste.

Scenes of the boys in parachute training (with the ever-present rear-screen projections simulating sky or training fields); running gag of McClusky almost discovering the real Dogface Dolan; scenes of Hap trying to sneak out of the paratrooper camp to satisfy the subplot of returning to his female partner on Broadway (Mona Freeman), for whom he holds a torch; and Dean gets to croon no less than four songs, one of them a duet with Jerry.

In training maneuvers, pitting one regiment against its brethren, we see stock footage war, planes and tanks firing. Hap unwittingly takes cover under a bridge with a satchel of grenades and inadvertently wins the pretend war for his side. Then comes The Real Thing (complete with stock footage of air-dropping jeeps, and skies aflutter with paratroopers), where Hap and Chick parachute into enemy territory. Before any shooting or killing, they’re proclaiming their devotion to each other, until the stinger gag, and the movie ends on a Jerry scream, “Chiiick!”

Seriously, “Chick”?

END