The BACHELOR PARTY of ladydom.

Two adult SISTERS, Kate (Tina Fey) and Maura (Amy Poehler), throw one last party in their childhood home before their parents sell it. One sister needs to prove she is responsible. One needs to get laid.

The party gets out of hand soon enough. WAY out of hand. Which make the party scenes reminiscent of Tom Hanks’s hilarious 1984 bachelor bash. However, writer Paula Pell and director Jason Moore have augmented the sheer lunacy with a family’s dysfunction that needs to be reconciled. Both Kate and Maura are damaged in their own ways – ribald Kate an alcoholic, rudderless single mother, and cautious Maura recently divorced and clingy. You can bet all these psychological noxae will be addressed more efficiently than in any shrink session, during the time it takes to burn the ganja, drain the keg, fall through the roof, knock down the tree, and extract a ballerina music box from a guy’s ass…

James Brolin and Diane Weist are the parents, exhausted in dealing with the foibles of the two sisters, just aiming for a little quiet time to “day-bonk.”

Who woulda thought Ike Barinholtz (MAD TV) could pull off a romantic leading man? He’s always been an insipid to strong B-character (I especially note his role in NEIGHBORS and his delivery of the best line of that movie in an inappropriate singsong voice: “Rape.”) He’s Maura’s manly love interest, and though she is awkward in her advances on him, he plays it Cool Mc-Cool and adds a solid role to his resume.

John Leguizamo’s talents are wasted as Kate’s ex-boyfriend; Maya Rudolph is the troublemaker; Greta Lee brings the youth demo; Chris Parnell has never been funny in anything (correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure he has stolen that crown from Kevin Nealon); Kate McKinnon is underused with only one line; John Cena is imposing and funny as Pazuzu the drug dealer; the great Samantha Bee is also underused as a drunk wife who walks around with only her bra on; and SNL’s Bobby Moynihan is desperately desperately DESPERATELY trying to be Chris Farley (someone please tell him it’s okay to dial it down to a Kevin James and still be just as irritating).

Cameos and bit-parts are often high points of movies (and SISTERS includes many SNL alumni and friends from other shows – Rachel Dratch, and notably Jon Glaser aka Councilman Jamm from PARKS AND RECREATION who unfortunately doesn’t get to jamm), but this neurotic comedy is held up solely on the shoulders of Fey and Poehler, who have always worked so well together, never scared to go the extra mile to look unsexy for the gag (even though Fey is disarmingly hot, with that straight mouth and bedhead hair). The best female comedians of their generation. True sisters in comedy.

END

Ridiculous is as Ridiculous does…

It’s Sandler versus Tarantino in a battle of the adjectives. SPOILER ALERT: Tarantino wins.

So you’re going to call your movie THE RIDICULOUS 6? An unsubtle spoof of the title of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming humbucker, THE HATEFUL 8. In what universe are audiences unaware of this? It’s not even a spoof on the Tarantino movie itself, just a dig at its title, a joke so sophomoric and misleading that the filmmakers shoot themselves in the foot right outa the gate.

With a title like THE RIDICULOUS 6, we’re expecting a satire on Tarantino’s stylish violence, a mincing of his devil dialogue, a lampooning of his cinematic signature…  we’re expecting a comedy of the highest order. And when we say highest, we don’t mean how baked the writers were. And when we say comedy, we mean Rob Schneider shouldn’t be anywhere within puking distance. Unfortunately, co-writers Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler must’ve been on some good shit to write something so bad and think it was good shit. And Rob Schneider is here. So the path between Netflix and my bathroom becomes puking distance.

So RIDICULOUS 6 has nothing to do with Tarantino’s movie (except for marginally being a Western); rather, a simpering farce about a Caucasian raised by Native Americans (Sandler) who joins forces with five half-brothers (discovered individually when they reveal their name to be Stockburn, sired by the same father from different mothers) on a journey to rescue their mythic pater, Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte, wheezing and gulping lungfuls of oxygen like he’s about to keel over). 83 weak jokes, 45 aborted jokes and 325 non-jokes later, we realize this “comedy” is failing because it is trying to be two movies in one: a poignant tale of familial love juxtaposed over a comedic road tale where nothing is funny.

Sandler himself actually gives a fine straight-man performance as Tommy aka White Knife, rasping like Clint Eastwood, adept at everything manly – like a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE guy – whose superhuman skills in combat and knife-play leave everyone agog, with the refrain, “Man, that was some mystical shit!”

Through a series of misadventures, White Knife discovers his brothers, who are identified simply by mentioning their last name. Everybody just accepts it as truth. No one checks birth certificates or does anything Republican. And each new brah willingly joins the quest to find their dad, because I guess in the Old West there was really nothing better to do. There’s Terry Crews (who confesses he’s black), Jorge Garcia (who looks like director Kevin Smith and communicates in unintelligible grunts – like Kevin Smith), Taylor Lautner (who is surprisingly hilarious as the crossbreed of Forrest Gump and Simple Jack), Luke Wilson (miscast, looking for a way out), and Schneider (whom we will speak no more of).

“My momma says: Life is like a box of Adam Sandler films. Mostly shit.”

Directed by Frank Coraci (veteran of attempted comedies like ZOOKEEPER and HERE COMES THE BOOM, and the last Sandler belch-fart, BLENDED), RIDICULOUS boasts a cavalcade of droll cameos that keep it watchable (read as distracting from the weak comedy of the actual stars): John Turturro with an impeccable British accent, inventing baseball; Steve Zahn gouging out his only good right eye to be a part of The Left Eye Gang; Harvey Keitel as town sheriff Smiley (a Tarantino crossover!); Danny Trejo, Jon Lovitz, Whitney Cummings, Julia Jones, Will Forte, Nick Swardson, David Spade as Custer, Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain; and the most gross-out funniest cameo by Steve Buscemi as the town barber with all-purpose ointment – a fistful to swab a donkey’s ass with lube, then putting the remaining swab directly into Taylor Lautner’s mouth as soothing lip balm. Wolfboy enjoys.

The tone of RIDICULOUS resembles another Sandler absurdist comedy, YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN (2008), which succeeded because Sandler found a sweet spot for playing it straight with a funny premise. He is most tolerable when he’s playing adept, as in ZOHAN – a fighter, a lover, a he-man. Under its authentic Western-styled soundtrack (by Rupert Gregson-Williams and Elmo Weber), RIDICULOUS might have been a revealing, serio-comic role for Sandler, had it not been for the uneven tone of the movie and the lack of conviction from his supporting players. Especially mouse-talented Rob Schneider, playing a Mexican like the best racist you ever saw.

Tell Tarantino he needs to be afraid. Be very afraid. Because THE RIDICULOUS 6 is going to challenge his film making skills, i.e. if he watches it, he’ll be too dumb to direct anymore…

END

The Corporatization of Dumbification.

There are a few above-average jokes in ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, but most of them are quite average.

Underpinning the plot of a TV news anchorman struggling to find meaning in his job and love life, there is the cheeky indictment of the vapid 24-hour news culture and, by association, indictment of all those responsible for perpetuating it – you dummies. This saves the movie from being a crumpled, directionless ad-libathon.

Once again set in the Swingin’ ’70s, Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) leaves his wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) when the network chief (a grizzled, deadpan Harrison Ford) promotes her as the first female anchorwoman and fires him. A New York network producer (Dylan Baker) recruits Burgundy for a new concept – a 24-hour news channel. Burgundy: “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard – news going round the clock?!” Called GNN (The Global News Network) and funded by an Australian entrepreneur (Josh Lawson), “We own the news – we can say what we want!” (cough-Rupert Murdoch), it’s starting to look dangerously close to FOX marrying CNN.

Like a League of Retarded Gentlemen, Ron assembles his news team that had gone their separate ways: aggressively-gay-for-Burgundy Champ Kind (David Koechner), managing a fast food chicken store that served fried bat; sexual panther Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), working as a kitten photographer; and thick-as-a-Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell), who was dead.

Not only does Ron’s team have to conquer the resident super-pretty, super-smarmy anchormantastic Jack Lime (James Marsden), Ron also discovers his wife has started dating a psychiatrist, Gary (Greg Kinnear as the pony-tailed 80s lover, with sweater tied evocatively around neck). To regain his pole position as top anchorman and regain his wife in pole position, Ron tries anything to make his news sexy and score ratings…

Strangely enough, just by being their dumb selves, Ron’s news team spikes the ratings (“It’s crap but they can’t stop watching!”), but when Veronica on the competing network scores an interview with Yasser Arafat and threatens to usurp all their viewers, Ron must up the ante.

He sees a car chase on a monitor marked “Not Intended For Broadcast” and in desperation orders the producer, “Give it to me live!” “But that’s not news, Ron!” And ANCHORMAN 2 crosses over into simultaneous satire and indictment, as Ron – in his supposed ignorance – replies, “This is the pulse of what is going on in the country right now!” Never a truer word said in jest, as every “reporter” and “newscaster” in the real world should hang their head in shame between their limp phalluses for actually broadcasting such cheap thrill crap because they sincerely believe “this is the pulse of what is going on in the country right now.”

When Ron is told, “Speculate on who’s driving the car,” we’ve arrived at CNN.

Meagan Good plays a badly written and badly acted producer. We know it’s the ’70s, but there are still innumerable problems in the way the filmmakers portray her seducing Ron and then later knocking him out. For example, stating that you “grew up with five brothers” might give you backstory on why you can fight, but that doesn’t give you license to knock someone out in front of numerous witnesses for verbally insulting you, especially if it’s a double-standard woman-on-man knockout (i.e. think of how offensive it would be were it the other way ’round?). There might be numerous wink-wink politically incorrect jokes about the outdated manner women were treated in the ’70’s, but why isn’t it seen as politically or just ethically incorrect to hit a defenseless man?

Written by Ferrell and Adam McKay, and directed by McKay, released 9 years after its predecessor, ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES is a stream of disjointed jokes and ad-libs peripherally or hardly related to the plot. Each bit is unevenly funny (like the original), and as usual the gag reel is funnier than the movie.

There’s Ron’s flute solo on ice, channeling BLADES OF GLORY, there’s an extended isolation sequence of blind Ron, eking out an existence in a lighthouse with his reunited family, there’s unnecessary narration, there’s Fred Willard delivering the best line about the new 24-hour format (“I think they’ll stick with their integrity”); and Brick even finds true love with a woman-child as odd as he (Kristen Wiig). There are three KISS references. (I’m beginning to suspect Paul Rudd is at the root of ad lib KISS references: innumerable references in ROLE MODELS which he also starred in, the only other common denom being Judd Apatow. Now we wait for ANT MAN to gag about looking like Eric Carr and my suspicions will be confirmed…)

An example of an uneven gag: the crack smoking bit. After Ron’s team toke on air, we cut to the punchline shot of them being uncuffed while on the street, with Ron concluding, “Well, now we know you can’t smoke crack on TV.” Mildly funny, mostly perplexing. If we imagine the scenario, we can presume they were chased out here, tackled and cuffed before this scene, but to achieve this shot, the producers had to dress the whole street and light it for a night shoot (which is harder than a day shoot), including wetting it down, organizing background action and extras, including cop costumes, a prop cop car, the rights to film at that fountain, etc. Couldn’t they have donated this money to a museum or cancer foundation, instead of waste it on a joke that could have worked just as well if they were being uncuffed on the studio floor?

The audience watching Ron’s “entertainment news” is shown to be all rednecks. But let’s face it: anyone who subscribes to this hijacking of quality media is being a redneck in mind and body. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE for what ultimately seeps through to our square eyes and numb brains. Says Ron, “Why tell them what they need to hear? Why can’t we tell them what they want to hear?” And isn’t that how this crap fest started rolling downhill like a trolley with no brakes?

As in ANCHORMAN (2004), the best bit is the gladiator battle between the news networks, with “no touching of the hair and face.” Featuring power cameos by Sacha Baron Cohen for the superior BBC, Jim Carrey and the incredibly polite Canadian News Team, Liam Neeson for the History Network (replete with minotaur and John C. Reilly as The Ghost of Stonewall Jackson), Amy Poehler and Tina Fey for Entertainment News, Will Smith for ESPN, Kanye West as an anachronistic MTV VJ, and – wait for it! – Vince Vaughn reprising his Wes Mantooth (I die laughing just thinking about that name).

Strangest aspect of this biting movie is that real life entertainment news networks (which is – let’s face it – all news networks) embrace Ron Burgundy as a compadre, as if he is promoting their existence as worthy. Either they have a really good sense of humor, or they are, in fact, as dumb as ANCHORMAN 2 makes them out to be. As I watch another interminable car chase on a major news network… I’m guessing the latter.

END

Celebrating 40 Years of Stunning Mediocrity.

The American comedy institution SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE continues its tradition of not being funny, by throwing a 40th Anniversary Special and not being funny.

SNL 40 is not only Not Funny, it’s embarrassing, pathetic and painful. Why do these people put themselves through this? Why do they put US through this? Why do audiences keep watching? Excepting a few quality seasons during its formative years, and a handful of good gags and entertaining personalities through its history, SNL has never been a prime cut; longevity seems to be counting more towards SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s comedy legacy than actual quality.

SNL 40, broadcast by NBC on Sunday February 15, 2015, touted as “Comedy’s Biggest Stars Come Home,” boasts a studio audience that consists of everybody who is anybody (from Spielberg down), brings together past alumni, past hosts, shows montages of classic sketches and bits, only has time for a few musical numbers, showcases veteran cast re-doing classic bits, and retains an overall sense of undeserved mutual cock-stroking.

I’m not going to outline a laundry list of bits; in this overlong show, the bits themselves are irrelevant. It’s the overarching impact of this drudgerous wankfest; the cognitive dissonance of continually hearing how “good” it is and yet witnessing exactly the opposite. Bits which are poorly written and badly rehearsed, amateur timing from supposed professionals, forced laughter, titters where there should be guffaws, and sometimes, those uncomfortable silences into which your career spirals never to be resurrected again… We view this whole shenanigan with hands over our faces, peeking through the gaps in our fingers.

It reminds me of the recent Monty Python reunion shows at the O2 arena (Jun 2014: Monty Python Live (Almost)); though that tour was a nostalgic success, even an artistic and commercial success, it was a complete failure in its attempt to recapture the timing and verve and urgency of youth. Which is what reunion shows like that – and this SNL one – are all about. Recapturing our youth. (And of course, selling advertising and merch to us in the process.) To the young or uninitiated, these shows will be a success or failure purely depending on NOW. To we who lived our youth through those original times, these shows succeed or fail on how well they recapture it. And let’s face it, they can’t recapture it. They will always only remain “failed attempts.” But it’s not just that metaphysical youth aspect – it’s the fact that when an old person tries to do something they did when they were young, it just doesn’t look right or read as well as it did when in their prime. It’s a terrible, sad fact of life.

Dan Aykroyd cannot possibly recapture the original “flavor” of his Bass-O-Matic sketch from the 70s. But he tries valiantly. And fails. In one of SNL 40’s first sketches, Aykroyd appears with that cheese-eating grin. He looks old. Really old. And fat. Camera pulls back and we see he is holding up a dead fish, a bass…

Silence.

Not even crickets. It’s just an old fat guy holding a fish. Now one would think that after all the lengths they’ve just gone to, of bashing us with the message that SNL is some kind of mythical laugh factory, that seeing the opening to the “classic” Bass-O-Matic sketch would elicit a cheer of recognition from the audience.

Silence. Because the studio audience (not the old stars, but the civilians) are too young to recognize this 35-year-old sketch! It was never one of the best sketches, but at least the performance in its heyday had a young, vital guy delivering his lines fitfully in a Pythonesque lightning strike. Now it’s just an old fat guy holding a fish. (At least with the 2014 Python shows, when Cleese came on with his dead parrot, stating, “I would like to register a complaint!” the audience’s rousing roar of recognition drowned out the pathos. Here, it was just pathos. This was devil’s territory from the get-go.) There was no way Aykroyd could attain the verve and urgency and timing of his youth. His speech was too slow for comfort, he missed putting one of the fish into the blender, he turned on the blender and it froze… His fake smile went on for miles, but the flop sweat on his soul was glistening hot…

You ask, “Why don’t they just pack it up?” Because this is what they do! What else CAN they do? This is how they made their bones. But recapturing the magic is definitely out of the question after a certain time…

Chris Rock gives a prolonged tribute to Eddie Murphy, who has gone the way of the dodo. The last quality thing he did was …um… uh… Then Eddie himself steps out to raucous applause and proceeds to do two minutes of SNL tradition (i.e. see paragraph 1).

The opening dance number with the somehow-talented Jimmy Fallon and ever-talented Justin Timberlake is spiffy. No complaints there; it retains that just-above-mediocre level that SNL sometimes attains on its absolute best nights.

Then the monologue with old hand Steve Martin (long since Not Funny himself, but somehow squeezing some last driplets of humor from his dead soul). During the monologue, Martin is beset on all sides by superstars who want to host, including Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Chris Rock, Peyton Manning, Billy Crystal, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon… and then producer Lorne Michaels makes one of his many missteps, in his quest to attract a younger, more current audience (it’s a well-known fact that Michaels has final say on all decisions, good and bad, and all the artists cringe and bow to his every whim, as per WAYNE’S WORLD): Into this lion’s den of icons, Lorne decides to trot out… Miley Cyrus. Wait– Miley Cyrus?! Yes, that class-less hooker whore cunt Miley Cyrus shares the stage with the above legends who have done something useful with their lives. (No, tell us what you really think of Miley Cyrus, Poffy?) God knows how long she had to burnish Lorne’s perineum with that ball-licking trollop tongue to score this spot over other performers closer to the human race.

McCartney tanked. Introduced by Gollum– I mean, Keith Richards, the Beatle’s minstrel, the songster, the legend – bombed horribly. In the first seconds of Maybe I’m Amazed we could hear his voice is non-existent. And it went downhill. Now I’ve even closed the gaps in my fingers. I don’t want to watch. I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to live. At the time of writing, you cannot even find this performance on YouTube – you have to go deep into the TV station’s archives to find it – which means everyone involved (from management to McCartney himself) unanimously agree that it was so bad, it needed the hiring of pro hackers to restrict this video from being posted on YouTube at all costs. They will fail, of course, because YouTube is a behemoth that will eat all of us alive and screaming in the end.

People clapped. You have to clap, right? But now you’re not clapping because you were blown away by the performance or inspired or even mildly impressed (unlike that artistic inspirational perfection of George Harrison and Paul Simon doing Here Comes The Sun and Homeward Bound on SNL in 1976); you’re clapping in pity, that a 75 year old man can kinda sing a Paul McCartney song with a band and everything. Isn’t that special? He gets so excited when they let him out of the home and the boys let him play with them, it’s good for him, great-granddad needs to make some new friends…

The saddest thing is that of McCartney’s tens of thousands of times performing this song, when it hit the atmosphere crackling like a million suns, this SNL 40 abomination (when it surfaces in mainstream social media) is going to be the most codified, the most batted about the internet like cats and tits, commented on and analyzed and critiqued by this generation of twitter twats. Weep for the death of legends. Weep for the death of youth. Weep for Gollum who lost his Precious.

Some apologists might mitigate, Well, a couple of things were good (Billy Crystal asking, “You are Steve Martin, right?; a reasonably enjoyable “digital short” from Sandler and Sandberg, Will Ferrell’s Jeopardy, etc.). Of course a couple of things were good – these are professional comedians, and a stopped clock is right twice a day. But only a couple of things, in a show that is supposedly THE comedy lodestar of the United States? If you were making automobiles or heart monitors, this kind of percentage would be entirely unacceptable.

If SNL 40 had kept it to nanosecond montages of old bits, it could have salvaged a shred of dignity. Instead, each personality dragging their feet onto that supposedly hallowed stage just prolonged an agony that wasn’t going to go away with the constant sucking of Lorne Michaels’ dick.

Here’s to the next 40 years of not being funny.

END

For To Make Democratize in America.

In the grand tradition of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting Columbia University in 2007 and denying the Holocaust, claiming Iran has no gays and lets women roam free with equal rights, so too is Wadiya’s dictator Hafez Aladeen, granted all courtesies when visiting the United Nations to extol the virtues of his oppressive Middle Eastern government, where the people think they’re free. Because if there’s one thing Middle Easterners know about Americans, it’s that they looove oppressive government where the people think they’re free.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s actual “films” (ALI G INDAHOUSE, TALLADEGA NIGHTS) have never been as biting as his recent “mockumentaries” (BORAT, BRUNO), and the trailers for THE DICTATOR portrayed it like a half-hearted stab at bottling his mockumentary lightning in a feature film. But writer-star Cohen smashes it out of the comedy park, smoothly sidestepping our expectations in this satire on the American perception of democracy. He really has a handle on how far to poke into the redneck chest.

Directed by longtime collaborator Larry Charles, THE DICTATOR finds General Aladeen (Cohen) of the fictional Republic of Wadiya, “invited” to the United States to testify before the United Nations on his secret nuclear weapons program. The American government affords him every courtesy, while biting their tongues at his dictatorship – though not biting them as hard as they should, as the U.S. liaison (John C. Reilly) advises Aladeen bluntly, “While you’re here, you should visit the Empire State Building before one of your sand-monkeys knocks it down.”

Meanwhile, Aladeen’s right-hand man Tamir (Ben Kingsley), bought off by U.S. billionaires, is plotting to assassinate Aladeen and install an Aladeen body-double who will bow to his agenda of making Wadiya a democracy. Tamir gets his chance to install the double when Aladeen is kidnapped by John C. Reilly, who shaves off Aladeen’s distinctive beard, leaving him stranded in America…

Earlier, we met Aladeen in his gold-plated bedchambers (after screwing Megan Fox for jewelry); a lonely man desperate to cuddle, his pathos manifested in his extensive wall of Polaroids, featuring shots of him with superstars he slept with: Halle Berry, Oprah, Ahnuld!… So even though he’s reprehensible, we actually sympathize with this misogynistic, murderous anti-American anti-hero – kidnapped in a strange land, a fish out of water (like CROCODILE DUNDEE, only oilier).

In an attempt to assimilate, Aladeen calls himself “Alison Burgers” and finds work in a New Age shop run by Zoey (an earthy, ‘pit-hairy Anna Faris with a boyish haircut), while he tries to find passage back to his beloved country. He runs across Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas, in a great understated performance), one of his many minions whom he had “executed” in Wadiya – discovering they all came to work in a restaurant in New York called The Death To Aladeen Restaurant. Ever faithful Nadal still wants Aladeen’s name placed alongside the great dictators, like Kim Jong-Il and Dick Cheney, so begins hatching a terrorist plot on New York.

Unfortunately, Aladeen is falling for Zoey (“When the thought of someone’s decapitated head upsets you – that is love”), and recants on his terrorist ways, to Nadal’s utmost disappointment. Aladeen nonetheless retains his dictatorial arrogance – every time Zoey starts talking New Age, he cuts her off with “Who cares?” He starts regimenting her pothead shop, skyrocketing profits and slapping the employees into shape – literally. A hippie employee (Kevin Corrigan) asks Aladeen “Who are you, Osama Bin Laden’s best friend?” to which Aladeen retorts, “He’s not my best friend, although he’s been staying in my guest house since they killed his double. You visit the bathroom after him, you’ll know the true meaning of the word terrorism.” Aladeen also secures for the shop an A-rating from the FDA by holding the inspector’s wife and child hostage (cameo by Garry Shandling as the inspector).

Other cameos: Edward Norton, Aasif Mandvi, Kathryn Hahn, Bobby Lee in a hilarious turn as a lecherous Chinese leader: “Tommy Lee Jones let me roll it in my fingers for $200,000.” Very funny to suddenly recognize all the source music in a foreign language: R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts, Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, et al.

With all the 9-11 references and the lauding of dictatorship, we wonder how THE DICTATOR passed muster with the Gutless MPAA. We can feel the inevitable arc of redemption coming – and it’s going to dilute the comedy, we know it! But wait, Movie Maniacs! This movie is another reason why I constantly call the Gutless MPAA numb-brained. Aladeen doesn’t arc to redemption at all – it only seems that way.

Cohen artfully, insidiously, twists our sympathies to root for the wrong man. Consider: Tamir (Kingsley) wants to assassinate Aladeen, so that he can set up a constitution and democracy for Wadiya, and create trade agreements with America (which all Americans agree is a Good Thing – ousting a dictator, creating democracy and jobs). Aladeen’s double is being groomed by Tamir to deliver a speech declaring his country a democracy, so America should rightfully be rooting for him, no? But we find ourselves rooting for Aladeen to stop his double giving that speech! We invest our sympathies with the reprehensible dictator, who declares tyranny as divine and wants to return to his life of mistreating women, murdering people for small slights and screwing movie stars.

How they work that magic on our simple minds. The true meaning of artful.

And Aladeen’s ending speech? A twisted poke in the eye at American ideals, highlighting how Americans embrace the very poke that blinds them:

Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1-percent of the people have all the nation’s wealth, you could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes, and bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You can ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones, you could torture foreign prisoners, you could have rigged elections, you could lie about why you go to war, you could fill your prisons with one particular racial group and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests. I know all this is hard for you Americans to imagine, but please try. I will tell you what democracy is: democracy is the worst. Endless talking and listening to every stupid opinion. And everybody’s vote counts, no matter how crippled or black or female they are.
— General Hafez Aladeen.

Aladeen sees Zoey and refers to her as he continues: “Democracy has hairy armpits…democracy kisses you because she wants to, not because her father is in the next room chained to a radiator with electrodes attached to his nipples. Democracy is flawed; it is not perfect, but democracy… I love you!” Now before you jump up and shout, ‘That’s the redemption!’ keep in mind his “recant” is simply done for Panty.

We know his calls for “real democracy and a real constitution” are not real because the closing scenes find him being his usual dictator self. Nothing has changed in Wadiya. Ironically – this is what he told us democracy IS: you can say one thing and do another; blatantly lie to the people. Which is what America’s government does. Therefore, General Hafez Aladeen is more “American” than any Democrat, Independent or Republican!

ALADEEN 2016!

END

Goolies Not Groovie.

I really wanted to like HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: an animated comedy with a cute concept (iconic screen monsters gathering at a resort set up by Dracula, far from the persecution of humans) and a simple boy-meets-girl story, featuring the talents of director Genndy Tartakovsky (the wild mind behind DEXTER’S LABORATORY and THE POWERPUFF GIRLS) and writer Robert Smigel (the insurrectionist TV FUNHOUSE and the absurdly funny YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN); even Adam Sandler producing and starring as the voice of Dracula didn’t turn me off, as Sandler’s recent output has been skewing towards the good side of bad.

But as it goes forward HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA goes backward, with storyline that doesn’t make sense, and arbitrary magic – that last bastion for limp storytellers – and then conveniently forgets to use that magic when it’s needed most.

Dracula (voice of Sandler) has not only created this resort for monsters as a refuge, but has concocted a fiction that all humans are bent on murderous intent toward monsters. We have no idea how he can continue to perpetuate this fiction with all the monsters that patronize his resort, because one would think that the monsters, being from the outside world, are encountering humans daily and assessing their threat level accordingly. The movie is for kids, we remind ourselves, and move onward… Drac has also instilled this irrational fear of humans in his “teen” vampire daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), who is celebrating her 118th birthday, and wants to explore outside the stifling walls of the resort. That’s a fine ambition – but – her desire is to visit a “human village.” The illogical storyline gives us no indication how or why. Consider:

When ideological media tries to indoctrinate us on Pearl Harbor’s “surprise attack,” Columbus “discovering America,” or Barack Obama’s “death panels,” we can pore through unlimited amounts of other media to mitigate the spin. But in HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, Mavis is never seen absorbing any contrary information to counter her father’s spin – no monsters chat with her about the outside world, she is never seen on the internet or reading a travelogue, or doing anything that would plant a seed of doubt about her father’s word. Why then, does she want to visit the human village to “make new friends”?

Turns out this human village is fake anyway – with the zombie butlers of Hotel Transylvania masquerading as bloodthirsty humans, employed by father Drac, to scare Mavis home in case she wandered outside the resort walls.

Even when Mavis returns from the village in fear, movie never once indicates she has to overcome a fear of humans. When teen Jonathan arrives (Andy Samberg) and she discovers he’s human, she still can’t wait to get it on batty-style. In other words, the filmmakers were aimlessly trying to create the trope of the sheltered princess, to no avail.

Yes, it’s for kids – but do you really want your kids exposed to this contradictory trash?

Jonathan the Valley Boy hiker stumbles upon the resort and is ordered by Dracula to pose as Mavis’s birthday party planner until Dracula can sneak him off the grounds. But Jonathan endears himself to the patrons with his down-to-earth charm (i.e. stupidity) and captures Mavis’s heart with… uh, I dunno, his stuttering excuses? His cluelessness? The fact that he carries the only properly-formed penis of all her monster acquaintances?

So though the tagline is a funny premise – “Even Monsters Need a Vacation” – the film skews to that worn chick-flick trope of teen love against all odds. Stephenie Meyer in the front row gulping down popcorn…

When Jonathan admits to Mavis that he is human, she maintains, “I still want to be with you.” Whatever that means in Disneyspeak. Is she going out in the deadly sunshine with him on picnics? Is she comfortable consuming human blood in front of him? Are they going to tell his parents she’s undead? Is this a significant leap in tolerance across species lines? Rick Santorum did warn us that tolerance for other lifestyle choices would lead to man-on-dog; did he ever foresee bat-on-dope? Undead-on-alive?

Hey, it’s for kids, which apparently means it can be illogical and stupid. Meanwhile, all that money spent on producing this swill could have been spent on your kid for a better education system and healthier food in schools…

All the OG monsters are here, those classic icons of horror that made our grandma wet her bloomers: Frankenstein (Kevin James), The Wolfman (Steve Buscemi), The Mummy (CeeLo Green), The Invisible Man (David Spade), Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), and there is much sideshow and background creativity in all the monster-centric gags. I don’t mind so much that these once-horrifying paranormal entities are being made to look cute and silly; it’s that it is happening in this badly-written movie.

Straight from the Because-It’s-For Kids bin: Direct sunlight is fatal to vampires, so Jonathan shows Mavis a sunrise from behind a ledge – but wait – if she is in shadow, how can she possibly see the sunrise? Because It’s For Kids. Drac eventually comes around to liking Jonathan – because it’s for kids. The human tourists that the monsters feared so much turn out to be loving fans of the monsters – because it’s for kids. Yes, everything’s for the kids – except quality entertainment.

Drac sees a snippet of TWILIGHT and laments, “This is how they represent us? Sheesh!” But waitaminute – look at HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: This is how they represent you? Sheesh!

END

La Dumba.

Laugh Hard.

Musicians: this one’s for us.

WALK HARD is not for Guitar Hero fakers or karaoke jackasses or talentless DJs with the audacity to call their fade-ups and fade-downs “mixing.” Let me say it again: WALK HARD is for MUSICIANS; for we who have lived the road, beaten the boards, spanked the groupies, trashed the dressing room, fart-filled the studio, fed the beast our day-job dollar, and slapped the roadies and called them Susan.

Cuke Hard

The public won’t get WALK HARD as deeply as musicians will. And I don’t care. Cherish it, Musicians. Hug it and pet it and call it George.

After the two formulaic, Hollywood-drenched biopics, RAY and WALK THE LINE, set the standard and simultaneously lowered the bar for musician biographies, WALK HARD takes every single cliché from those glossy turkeys and parties with a penis in your face.

John C. Reilly is fictional songwriter-guitarist Dewey Cox, who rises to superstardom on the wings of cliché. Cliché so battering and obvious, we will never look at musician biopics with a straight face again, especially those featuring the seminal artists of the 50’s who rose from dance halls to superstardom – Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly. They ALL look like spoof biopics now!

Dewey finds he is talented at a young age, soon after slicing his brother in half with a machete, Monty Python style, who telegraphs the tragedy: “Everything’s fine when you have such a long life in front of you!” Later, Dewey’s father (tough-as-nails Raymond J. Barry) would constantly lament, “The wrong keed died!”

John C. Reilly lives Dewey Cox, performing all his comedic songs himself, which are actually enjoyable and catchy country/rock and roll tunes. We follow him from his big break in a colored club “where people come to dance erotically,” to touring with Elvis and Jerry Lee, to immediate radio airplay with his hit Walk Hard (“recorded just 35 minutes ago by Dewey Cox”). Dewey meets The Beatles (Jack Black as Paul, Justin Long as George, Paul Rudd as John), experiments with musical styles from Dylan to Bowie; on through the 70s he hosts a TV show and marries Cheryl Tiegs (playing herself, taking the name Cheryl Cox-Tiegs – yeah, say it out loud). In the 80s, Dewey succumbs to mind-altering drugs while trying to compose a magnum opus with ethnic orchestras, trampolines, farm animals and fruit. He even takes a leaf from his friend Will Ferrell’s book and runs naked through the streets during a freakout.

WALK HARD will be compared to the progenitor of this rocku-mockumentary genre, SPINAL TAP, as WALK-HARD’s makers also display actual hands-on, penis-on knowledge of their target.

Writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow ladle out every single vignette that musician biopic screenwriters have grown lazy on – from teens at the dance warming to Dewey’s high school band and jiggling in ways that make a priest yell, “devil’s music,” to the record producer admonishing Dewey then suddenly loving his song (a riotous John Michael Higgins cameo, “…and if somehow you are able to sing a song now with these boys whom you haven’t even met… but I’m telling you right now, I don’t think it’s going to happen… I’ll give you 15 seconds”), to the whining wife in curlers (Kristen Wiig) cradling three babies, constantly telling Dewey he’ll “never make it” – even whilst he is on the road supporting a number one album. With a penis in his face.

Musicians know these scenes from their own lives, and how Hollywood has compressed them to nut-squeezing idiocy. Kasdan and Apatow display a virtuoso’s knowledge of their subject, down to making the instrument-playing look authentic (a pet peeve of all musicians watching musician movies). The script is as taut as a guitar string and sings like a Les Paul plugged through a Marshall stack on 11.

Johnny Cash and Ray Charles would be spinning in their graves – if they were not laughing so hard.

Slap a roadie for me. With your cock.

END

Snot Rod.

Here’s one you can watch with a straight face, with a script so bad, even Will Ferrell wouldn’t be in it.

There are two laughs in HOT ROD.

1. The Punch-Dance. Stunt rider Rod (Andy Samberg) “needs to go to his quiet place” and before anyone can say Kevin Bacon, he is footloosing a passionate, overwrought bodyswerve to the strains of a band who wishes they had the big-hair faux-metal chops of Europe.

2. John Farnham‘s You’re The Voice. In one of those epic sequences where the star and his cohorts do The Slomo Walk down Main Street and the townsfolk follow on their heels in support, the soundtrack is the gag. How did the filmmakers even come across this Aussie recording artist? A major Australian vocalist (and a genuine talent) who shot to fame in the early ’70s covering Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, then disappeared until 1986 for The Big Comeback with You’re The Voice, John Farnham’s anthem is so bewitchingly cheesy, it leveled mountains in Switzerland.

Besides these two high points in the film – both ruined anyway with slipshod writing – the rest of the film is like choking on someone else’s vomit.

Rod is a stunt jumper who has never made a jump. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact he’s driving a moped into the heart of darkness. Or his fake mustache. Yeh, someone actually thought that was funny. One of the instigators of comedy team The Lonely Island, Samberg is actually a funny, funny guy, but has yet to find a movie role and director that can bring out the best in him.

With only wipeouts and missed ramps under his starry belt, Rod plans for a 15-bus extravaganza – which would surely kill a lesser bad comedian, like Jason Biggs or Rob Schneider – to win the day and save his stepfather (Ian McShane, SEXY BEAST) and simultaneously wipe out cancer and whatever… Who watches these movies for plot anyway? Along the way (as usual for moronic leads in these comedies), he scores a salubrious chick (Isla Fisher), who must surely be retarded to consider swapping chromosomes with this loser. Will Arnett is Rod’s nemesis. Bill Hader and Danny McBride play the stupid supportive friends, and Jorma Taccome (also Lonely Island alum) is along for the crash-prone ride.

Sissy Spacek (CARRIE, 1976) has so little to do as Rod’s mum she almost phoned in her performance – then changed her mind and just hung up. Ian McShane must’ve lost a bet to be here.

Akiva Schaffer (the third leg of Lonely Island) is director – but helming a feature film is a far cry from Dick In A Box.

END

When The Anchorman was Man-Anchor.

Will Ferrell makes me laugh. I’m not afraid to say it anymore. His shamelessness knows no bounds and I, for one, salute his strangely misshapen nude torso.

In ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, Ferrell is the blowhard, brain-soft title character, in love with his own self-proclaimed legend. And why not? His veteran standing and perfect hair have made him San Diego’s number one anchorman and a veritable god amongst newsfolk.

Into this perfect 70s world of Men (Men who “discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn”), bringing her “exquisite breasts!” – comes Veronica Corningstone (severely luscious Christina Applegate), aspiring anchorwoman.

Anchorcuke: his hair was perfect.

Of course, this is open invitation to Burgundy’s all-male news team to conspicuously seduce this “woman with a small brain; with a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.”

Simply by being The 70s Male, Ron’s team gives us Truth In Jest: There’s Field Reporter, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), muttonchop sideburns and a cock of the head to match his jaunty, bellbottomed step; Sports Desk, Champ Kind (David Koechner), cowboy-hatted, beer-swilling Man’s Man, with an affinity for Ron Burgundy’s “musk”; and ambiguously-retarded Weatherman, Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell, whose way-off-script performances here and in BRUCE ALMIGHTY and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN indeed prove his mettle as a comic, yet which doesn’t excuse him from accepting the job in the remake “for American audiences” of Ricky Gervais’ comedic masterpiece, THE OFFICE. That ain’t right.)

And there’s Ron Burgundy himself – Anchorman (“I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany”), Jazz Flautist (“Hey, Aqualung!”), Legend (“Last time I looked in the dictionary, my name’s Ron Burgundy!”). From doing shirtless barbell curls in his office (“sculpting my guns”) to impress Veronica, to wailing, “I’m in a glass cage of emotion!” (while in a phone booth), Ferrell (who co-wrote the movie with director, Adam McKay) takes Burgundy on a mad joyride and abandons him somewhere between 70s chic and imbecile.

Ron’s team must endure the infiltration of female Veronica into their complacent All-Male world, as she steals away the heart and job of their beloved leader. Along the way, every aspect of 70s normalcy is tweaked to hyperbole, from the news team suddenly bursting into an a cappella rendition of The Starland Vocal Band’s Afternoon Delight, to Ron’s appraisal of the “new fad called jogging, or ‘yogging’ – I think the ‘j’ may be silent,” to hosing off Brian Fantana’s almost-lethal man-fragrance, Sex Panther.

The comedy hits on all levels, from the subtle (the television spots, with the News Team all looking up at the camera on cue) to the broad (Burgundy’s and Veronica’s love-making fantasy), to the insensate (the street battle of the Network News Teams, involving tridents, amputations and Roman gladiator man-nets). The usual suspects all cameo: Vince Vaughn (as competing Network Anchor, Wes Mantooth – after bequeathing this character name, where else can you turn?), Tim Robbins with a blond-fro (ditto with this ‘do), Ben Stiller as a seedy Spanish News Anchor, Luke Wilson (whose amputations in battle cause him much annoyance), and Jack Black as a hard-ridin’, hard-vengeance biker (“Did you just throw a burrito at me, Brosef?!”).

The dependably hilarious Fred Willard is Station Director (constantly apologizing on the phone for his son’s felonies at school), who fires Ron after he is fooled into swearing on air – a practical joke by Veronica that goes awry.

So begins Ron’s spiral into oblivion, wandering the streets in a hermit-beard, drunk on milk, whilst Veronica’s star rises as the world’s first female anchor. Ron must mine untapped reserves of Man-Reportage to rise to the occasion and come to terms with Veronica’s equality. In a bear den at the San Diego Zoo, all is resolved.

With its dialogue generally more “cerebral” than most SNL alumni offerings – as ridiculous as that may sound – and a cast willing to take themselves beyond the fringe for the cause, ANCHORMAN ranks alongside A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY or WAYNE’S WORLD as a stupid, stupid idea that somehow went horribly, horribly right.

END