Kevin James takes a photo of Salma Hayek’s ass, the only ass onscreen worth taking a photo of.

Would you like a little movie to go with your pee jokes?

Rob Schneider isn’t here. Nonetheless, GROWN UPS 2 is still worse than its predecessor. It starts with a pee joke, then a tit joke, then a shit joke, then another pee joke, then a combination burp-sneeze-fart trifecta douchefecta. You couldn’t make a movie this bad if you were trying to make a movie this bad. So we congratulate long-time Adam Sandler director Dennis Dugan for achieving the impossible.

The four friends from the last movie (played by Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James and David Spade) have inexplicably decided to all reside in the same small town they grew up in, after having left it to pursue their careers. In the last movie, they all rendezvoused here to pay homage to their dead high school coach; now, there’s zero reason why they are living here pursuing lives as layabouts and wieners, as they meander through a script (by Fred Wolf, Sandler and Tim Herlihy) as unrealistic as it is unfunny. About one hour into GROWN UPS 2, we give up all hope this dog-queef of a movie will come anywhere near a story, and go do something more productive, like rubbing the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.

Disjointed scenes of family life, social life, the kids of the principals interacting, Salma Hayek’s tits, rolling David Spade down the road in a tractor tire (yeah, that’s a bit), Colin Quinn simulating taking an ice cream shit, Taylor Lautner as an ambiguously-homo fraternity jock, Salma Hayek’s tits, Alexander Ludwig as Spade’s punk kid, Maya Rudolph playing Rock’s ugly wife again (no wait! People tell me she’s “beautiful.” If you say so), college chicks in bikinis, Salma Hayek’s tits, Shaq as a dopey cop, Nick Swardson ably filling Schneider’s shoes as resident douchebag, and Sandler hiring every single person he knows on the planet for an amateurish cameo.

There is a scene of unbelievable ignorance, which sums up how this movie reached its audience: Maria Bello and Kevin James show their small son math flashcards, like 8+6, to which the son answers “38” or some such idiocy. They PRAISE him. On it goes with the flashcards, every answer wrong from this idiot child, yet receiving PRAISE not correction, because they “don’t want to destroy his confidence.” Audience, you do realize that kid is YOU? Never learning the difference between quality and stupidity, the stage set to grow up an Adam Sandler fan; a Venn diagram overlapping Republicans as far away from facts as possible.

Sandler himself plays a normal guy, and I am thankful for this small mercy, as I quite like his Everyman demeanor, but Kevin James quickly cancels that out with his fat-based tryhard pratfalls.

As with the last movie, there is ONE SINGLE MOMENT that achieves any kind of empathy or resonance with normal human beings. Sandler reaches a last straw seeing his son bullied, so in order to show him that a bully needs to be stood up to, he takes on his own bully from ages past – Steve Austin. As they face off, Austin, who “has a son in Afghanistan” realizes “we’d do anything for our sons,” and whispers to Sandler that he would take a dive. It is so touching, I swear I almost cried.

Then Kevin James does something fucking stupid.

END

Looking like Harvey Keitel – and killing like him.

Deconstructionist Instructionist.

Standup comedian Colin Quinn flexes his brain bone – and incites Americans to flex theirs – in this refreshingly intelligent take on the U.S. constitution. Now all we need is for Congress to grow a brain and listen to him.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL finds the Noo Yawk raconteur in his finest form. Ever. Always been a fan of Colin Quinn’s scattershot comedy; have followed his career as generally as anyone with a cable and internet connections, but this feature has cannoned him above the morass of his contemporaries who pule about girlfriends and pets and being stuck on planes with screaming kids.

Please observe the Fasten Seat Belts sign; Colin Quinn is entering George Carlin airspace.

He has a love for it, but knows it is not sacred. He’ll abide by it, but knows it can do with improvement. He reminds us the United States constitution was written during a convention – a four-month bar crawl in Philadelphia. Therefore likens America’s psyche to a forgetful, boastful, irresponsible drunk. Respectfully. He has done his research, he is no stranger to this arcane document, and quotes it freely, fluidly, not by rote, but through an abiding comprehension, interweaving it with the flow of jokes, diversions and analogies; paraphrasing THE GODFATHER, taking jabs at Jeff Foxworthy, the Kardashians, Wayne LaPierre, megachurches… Quinn’s style has always been tangents and peripherals to the main topic, we can see his mind working faster than his mouth, yet this set is a tight, cohesive juggernaut of educative hilarity. And Quinn is the perfect instigator for this political discussion because he is neither left nor right politically, but so Middle that any way he turns will be more Middle: “…pro-choice, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-gay marriage. What do they add up to? Anti-overcrowding.”

Quinn reminds us the Founding Fathers prohibited the press from attending the brainstorming sessions, as they foresaw it would devolve to Reality TV – or the 1780’s version thereof. It was time to get serious, time to get real, time to break with England. Yet Quinn is not averse to admitting the idealism got lost somewhere along the way: “It used to be MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, now we’ll take a scene from RESERVOIR DOGS…”

Quinn’s rapid-fire extolling of the constitution’s underlying concept – to get rid of the class system that America left behind in England – echoes the current call to arms that an Englishman (Russell Brand) is now making to world societies (in his insightful book Revolution). It goes to show that those Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams and the rest of the Ringos) actually got the concept right, but the reality of power and the avarice and privilege of leadership just kinda got in the way.

Whenever a comedian’s “observational humor” tilts into actual “sociological issues,” in my book, they’ve won. If they do it artfully enough, they extricate themselves from the engine pit and deep-gouge their name in history books.

Filmed sometime in 2013 somewhere in New York (y’know, I’m sick of doing web searches that won’t specify dates, times and locations – fuck you, Internet!), Quinn brings it full circle to end this one-man show with a solution. Citing Canada as a suitable referee to step in and give America a pep talk, he advises the Land Of The Free to take some time to work things out… eat, drink… take four months…

In Philadelphia. No press.

Spotlight cut to black.

Quinn 2016.

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

Groan Ups.

This movie should be spanked on its botty and sent to bed with no supper.

Written by Adam Sandler and longtime collaborator Fred Wolf, directed by longtime Sandler director, Dennis Dugan, GROWN UPS stars Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade and tiresome tool Rob Schneider. Now I ask you: with the wealth of filmmaking experience in the room, why is this movie about as smart as a 12-year-old boy?

Five friends reunite for the funeral of their school coach and spend the weekend trying to be funny; between the ad-libs and the unfunny script, nostalgia is a bitch.

GROWN UPS has but one “moment” – that magical point in even some of the worst films where story, acting and emotion all comes together and bites us on the humanity bone: before taking a winning shot in the climactic basketball game, Lenny (Sandler) takes a look at his childhood rival, Dickie (Colin Quinn) and at Dickie’s trailer trash wife; in a slow motion moment, Lenny sees how desperately Dickie wants to win this meaningless game and assesses in that split-second how Dickie’s life might have turned out differently had he won a pivotal game against Lenny as a child. It’s a touching moment, as Lenny realizes how Dickie’s life was stuck on the low road, while Lenny went on to a successful career and a hot wife (Salma Hayek). Lenny decides to throw the game, to let Dickie “feel what it was like to win for a change.”

This moment would have read more emotionally had the movie been made by someone who understood movie structure. The miniscule foreshadowing of this moment was shunted aside by pee jokes, tit jokes, boring family activities and Kevin James substituting fatman-dancing for comedy.

Maria Bello plays Kevin James’s wife and is the absolute hottest thing on four decades. Even though 20-year-olds try to monopolize the perve angles (especially plastic blond Madison Riley), pretending to show off their bodies like they enjoy sex or something, you know that Bello is the Real Deal who would never object to a postman ringing twice with a manly back door delivery.

On that same tack, my, but that Maya Rudolph is one ugly woman! She plays Chris Rock’s wife, and she may be a wonderful person, a talented comedienne and more financially successful than I am, but GOD DYAM if she doesn’t have a face to sink an oil tanker. I’m just putting it out there, for all those people who are thinking it but too pc to say it. And she’s pregnant! Who was the half-blind guy who tripped over in the dark and accidentally spat DNA into that swamp thing? Eurph!

The only gag in GROWN UPS that actually works is the scene where the five friends watch Madison Riley bend over her car engine in short shorts, all agreeing that they shouldn’t be staring together, but taking shifts: the tree, the house, the lake, her ass – until they all end up staring at the tree together, no one on ass duty.

Then again – considering how many of them make rumps of themselves, they’re ALL on ass duty.

END