Women be Equal… in Objectifying Men.

WONDER WOMAN 1984, the sequel to 2017’s lauded, woman-empowering WONDER WOMAN, forgets how to ‘human,’ let alone empower women.

The movie opens on Barbara (Kristen Wiig), a shapely office blonde, who drops to all fours to pick up papers she just fumbled, and three guys walk past her without a second glance – because she wears glasses. The movie is set in 1984 (for the purpose of the outdated communication methods in the climax) – but it’s 2020 out here, and director/co-writer Patty Jenkins (who also directed the previous film, to the fist-up of feminists everywhere) now subjects us to the neanderthal trope of a woman being unattractive by being clumsy and wearing spectacles.

Hey, I’m not sexist – Patty Jenkins is.

The plot itself is a case study on non-human nature, involving an artifact called the Dream Stone that grants wishes. It arrives in a shipment to the Smithsonian, where Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is plying her day job. (During that dropped papers scene, Diana helps Barbara on all fours. No man notices. Not even an Askew Glance (that neckular angle that men have evolved in the arms race to view cameltoe and whale-tail and tight-skirted thigh without being discovered). Is this what “woman-empowerment” has devolved to? Pretending these women are “equal” to men, and therefore undesirable? Whether you subscribe to woman empowerment or are a total misogynist, that doesn’t negate basic human behavior.)

A failed businessman, Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), assumes the “villain” role as he absconds with the Dream Stone, turning himself into a granter of wishes, and grants everyone on Earth their wish. Chaos ensues worldwide. And Wonder Woman beseeches the world to recant their wishes, on the assumption that all were “selfish” (n.b. chicks, cash, and cock size). But did the writers (Geoff Johns, Dave Callaham, and Jenkins) consider wishes like “walking after being crippled,” “curing my baby of cancer,” “surviving a school shooter” or even the generic “world peace”? I’m presuming they did, because they build a negative into the wish – that there is a heavy price to pay for each wish granted. It is presumed everyone in the world is experiencing the maelstrom of disorder from their wishes granted. But I’m sure the cancer patients and cripples and parents of dead kids are mighty fine with a little caca after their lives have been resurrected from the toilet.

The movie digs itself into a pitch black hole. And then it digs deeper: everyone DOES recant. Non-human nature is built into the fabric of WONDER WOMAN 1984, which is defeated by shameful writing and the utter implausibility of this plot whose ramifications are too expansive to deal with in a 90-minute movie.

Diana herself has a morbid wish fulfilled, at the expense of losing her powers gradually – to be with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) again. And we’re meant to ignore that she must be pathologically damaged for pining over a guy she slept with once over 65 years ago. Her wish is granted, with the soul/spirit/essence of Steve Trevor taking over a random stranger’s body. That is: we see the stranger as Chris Pine, but if he looks in a mirror, he’ll see what his original body looks like – another guy. And not an iota of thought is given to this other guy’s existence: Does he not have friends or family that would realize he is missing? What about his bills, his workplace, phone calls, appointments? Does Jenkins think this is how women are empowered? By simply using a rando’s body while his brain and life are put on hold? Truly the most sinister, horrifying, morbid element in this kiddie movie, Kristoffer Polaha plays this unsuspecting male rape victim, and is credited only as “Handsome Man.” In other words, given credit for his looks only. 

Hey, I’m not sexist – the writers are.

Barbara (Wiig) idolizes Diana, desiring to be as womanly and alluring as her. The Dream Stone grants her wish to be “an apex predator” – and turns her into a cheetah (which is technically not an apex predator, and technically not Cheetah’s DC Comics origin either). She doesn’t seem to mind, as she can now walk in high heels (because – woman empowerment), and becomes Max Lord’s bottom bitch for no reason.

Kristen does an excellent job in this silly role. She’s one of my favorite SNL alumni, and kudos to her agent for landing her a tentpole movie. Only problem is: this high-profile feature is excrement, and doesn’t give her any real acting (or comedy) to do.

Well, there’s THIS position… There is no way you can NOT sexualize someone as lubricious as Gadot in that costume. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a eunuch.

If it’s not the stupid plot, it’s the lame effects: Wonder Woman runs in the street at super-speed – and it looks like she’s on a moving sidewalk being pulled along, because (as Gal describes it) she was being pulled along “as fast as Usain Bolt”… All these years later and we’re still faking Jeff-East-Running-Alongside-Train? Wonder Woman and Steve steal a jet, and she makes it invisible through, uh… magic who cares fuck you.

Speaking of magic, if all the other Dream Stone wishes are being magicked out of thin air, why can’t Steve Trevor be magicked in the same way? Why did they overrun Handsome Man’s unsuspecting body to assuage Diana’s obsessive ramrod fixation? And no, it’s not unhealthy obsession that she lusts after a guy she dicked down 65 years ago; it’s “true love” because she’s a woman, see.

Diana dons angelic armor for the final battle with Cheetah; armor that apparently belonged to a great Amazonian warrior, Asteria, who went MIA. But it’s simply for trailers and posters, as Diana shucks it off after Cheetah tears it to shreds… supposedly mythical armor is pretty useless if it can’t even survive an attack by the Target Lady. Besides, it was spending too much time covering Wonder’s regular bondage costume that teases with sexy combat positions just a peek-a-boo away from BAGINA.

Hey, I’m not sexist – the fight choreographer is.

Funny how they make everyone talk in Gal Gadot’s Austro-Czecho-Germano-Israeli accent. It could be seen as the Amazons being exotic and who knows what they sound like – but it’s more a case of, “What?! She can’t do an American accent? Jesus, we have to reverse-engineer everyone else around her to sound like that…” (Wouldn’t you have killed to have been in that producer meeting?)

Final scene cameos the original Wonder Woman – Lynda Carter as Asteria (the armor owner), still radiant, drop-dead stunning and salaciously irresistible–

Hey, I’m not sexist – Wonder Woman is.

END

“Dr Nefario: To Mundanity and Beyond!”

Ain’t Quite Despicable. And that’s not good. Is it?…

Ex-supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), now a family man with three adopted daughters and a host of minions to provide for, is called into service by the Anti-Villain League to help track down a new supervillain.

The original 2010 animated feature DESPICABLE ME hit the world like a cute and fluffy unicorn to the solar plexus. It was refreshingly unafraid to make the villain the anti-hero, and view the story through his sociopathic lens. Here was a guy who would “freeze-ray” a queue of people just to cut the line and get his coffee first; who would steal the moon just for the renown of being the Greatest Supervillain in the World. Gru the anti-hero would eventually arc to find his humanity amongst three little girls, but that did not change the dynamic of that film, and what made it so wickedly enjoyable. Gru’s despicability was balanced by the innocence of the girls, and the incognizance of his puffball minions.

The sequel, though fun, has forsaken that dynamic: DESPICABLE ME 2 finds the seething villain as a bona fide good guy – Gru is trying to make a legitimate go of his jam and jelly business, his minions not engaged in outlandish weaponry tests or insane acts of pummeling each other, but rather dancing around making condiments. Even his right hand mad scientist, Dr. Nefario (voice of Russell Brand), quits Gru’s employ because it’s not eeevil enough for him anymore. In this film, Gru does not have to make a giant leap to find a heart, he already has one, and now the filmmakers merely nudge him one step further by providing an adult love interest, Lucy Wild (Kristen Wiig). It is nowhere near the leap Gru had to make in the first film. Thus, the character seems a little static. And the stock love story seems tailor-made in a screenplay factory on a minion conveyor belt.

Nosegasm!

Brought to us by the same team who made the original (writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, and directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud), DM2 is a more “normalized” adventure, where a British spy agency (AVL, headed by Steve Coogan) recruits Gru, and partners him with Lucy, to track down a villain. Stock action movie mystery proceeds apace, with voice cameos by Ken Jeong, Kristen Schaal, and Benjamin Bratt as the villain El Macho. The minions wander through at intervals creating spastic vignettes, but only in the latter part of the film are they necessary, as El Macho transforms them into killing machines.

The inevitable family subplot, as Gru falls for Lucy, reconciles with Nefario and must save his minions from themselves.

Steve Carell still plays Gru to the hilt, and his accent is over half the hilarity. Lucy Wild’s cartoon kinda overacts a little for my taste, though the overall animation of all the characters is still stunning in its detail, especially in the closeup face shots. The minions are no longer as bitingly cute or funny as they used to be, in stiff competition with the peripheral sight gags in frenetic animated adventures like CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS.

Gone is the combative attitude of Gru’s three little girls; they all adore Gru and are trying to set him up on dates. The oldest (Miranda Cosgrove) is ready to moon over boys, the middle (Dana Gaier) is wary of boy germs, and the youngest (Elsie Fisher) romantically idealizes having a mom in Lucy.

And how despicable can Gru possibly be if his plan is to “save the world” rather than discombobulate it with a fart gun?

END

Stop Dragon my Bewilderbeast around.

In HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2, Jay Baruchel returns as Hiccup the Viking with his small black dragon. And his pet named Toothless.

In this sequel to 2010’s HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, Hiccup faces off with an enemy attacking his village with a horde of dragons, and proves how wrong it is to amass an army of dragons, by, uh, amassing an army of dragons and defeating the enemy.

As you can tell, TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 is a little more mixed messagey than its predecessor, because it is, after all, dealing with apex carnivorous predators as pets to apex carnivorous predators. Man – and dragon – does not live on fish alone. Woven within this straightforward Might Is Right tale is the journey of Hiccup, from reconciling his family for one joyous moment, to accepting the burden of manhood.

His mother Valka was long lost; now discovered – as queen dragon rider of a faraway land (voiced by Cate Blanchett, whose introduction is ominous and cloud-rider cool, in an African tribal mask). Valka and her reunited husband, Chief Stoik (Gerard Butler), share but one romantic highland jig, to the joy of Hiccup (and the envy of Gobber – Craig Ferguson as Stoik’s lieutenant), and before we have time to envision the lopsidedness of tonight’s 3D Viking sex, the family unit is shattered once more.

Movie attempts to capture excitement in its opening scenes with the village of Berk’s teens (voiced by America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller and Kristen Wiig) engaged in a dragon-riding race, pointedly screaming their relationships to each other, embarrassing fake camaraderie, reminding us of the worst Quidditch matches in HARRY POTTER.

Then it settles into what made the first movie so good, the quiet moments between a boy and his dragon. (And no, you won’t go blind.) Hiccup flies Toothless, his cute, expressive Night Fury, to the ends of the known earth, ever-extending his drawing of the world map, a cool concept for we who take the internet tubes for granted. Hiccup still has a prosthetic foot (from the last movie) and tries out his solo flying rig successfully. Soon he is joined by Astrid (Ferrera) and the only question in any of our heads is whether they’ve done it already, and by that, of course, I mean, milked his dragon.

Volka shows Hiccup her dragon haven, lazily ruled by the gigantic, wallow-plump Bewilderbeast (reminiscent of the creature in the Little Talks video from Of Monsters and Men). Such a big fuzzy cutie.

“Mmmm… Bewilderbeast want marshmallows… Bring for to eat!”

Into this perfect world of training your dragon, night furies and plasma blasts (okay, maybe you will go blind if you’re doing all three), Hiccup’s character is forced to grow when Drago Bloodfist (Djimon Hounsou) leads his dragon army to conquer and destroy Berk. Stoik wants to blockade the village, Volka wants to protect the haven – while Hiccup wants to “talk it out” with Drago. He learns the hard way there IS no talking with close-minded ignorance.

After Hiccup pleads nothing but platitudes (what I call “antelope trying to talk lion”), Drago brings his own black, evil yet oddly cute Bewilderbeast to battle Volka’s, like two skyscraper styracosaurs, while Stoik faces off with Drago in the foreground. The action is monumental, and once again, this DRAGON series shows its bravery by making major characters pay with their lives for Hiccup’s stubbornness. Though the movie advocates for peace via Hiccup’s words, it will soon enough turn to war for pragmatism.

Seems if the dragons are fighting on YOUR side, they’re doing it for the good of humanity, but if they’re on the OTHER side, well, that’s mind control!…

Toothless and the other dragons are won over by Hiccup’s niceness or ethics or his plasma-spitting dragon – whatever – and we have to admit that under the contradictory messages of war begetting peace and masters begetting freedom, it is quite touching when Hiccup is hailed as the returning chief with Toothless as his “Alpha to protect them all.”

Now will somebody please check on my piggy-fat Bewilderbeast?

END

Dragon fapping– I mean, flapping.

Spanking the Dragon.

Should I assume HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a sex manual on controlling premature ejaculation? Oh, a cartoon about a Viking boy that learns understanding and tolerance after befriending a dragon. (Still, that blond chick’s pretty hot for a cartoon; ‘scuse me while I train my dragon…) TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is Dreamworks, but like the greatest Pixar productions, it has heart and soul. And fire.

Young Viking Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) lives on the faraway island of Berk, which is regularly terrorized by dragons. Consequently, all the Vikings are geared towards defending themselves against the winged, fire-breathing invaders. All except Hiccup, who would rather invent things.

“Hrrrmph? Scooby Snacks?”

During a dragon raid one night, with one of his inventions – a giant slingshot – Hiccup shoots down a Night Fury (a fierce mythic dragon that none have actually seen). No one believes him. The next day, unbeknownst to his village, he finds the injured Night Fury and tends to its recovery. All the while wondering why these apparently faithful, intelligent creatures are so maligned.

The dragon, which Hiccup dubs Toothless, is a cross between a dog and an axolotl, jet-black, cute, expressive. To mend Toothless’s damaged tail from Hiccup’s slingshot, Hiccup designs a mechanical tail rudder, and together they learn to fly again, as dragon and rider. A montage of the boy and dragon growing closer, yet still distrusting of each other, with funny little vignettes showing off Toothless’s vast array of emotions, until one day – a spark of magic – Hiccup puts his hand out tentatively and Toothless moves his face forward into it. A “moment” between them – then Toothless pulls away. Excellent.

The film is filled with moments like this that catch us off guard. Hiccup’s father is Chief Stoik the Vast (the unmistakable brogue of Gerard Butler), who laments that Hiccup is a girlyman, pushing him into Dragon Academy to learn how to battle dragons, taught by blacksmith Gobber (Craig Ferguson, two steps further than Butler into indistinguishable brogue). Hiccup does want to make his father proud, but in a way that his father cannot grasp – he wants to show the village that dragons can be their allies.

This leads to another “moment” that sparkles. Hiccup discovers why the dragons raid the island intermittently – to pay tribute in food and livestock to an ominous presence on another island. Stoik discovers that island of dragons and plans to raid it – to kill all the dragons at their source – against Hiccup’s pleas and warnings. During this argument, Stoik proclaims, “You’re not my son!” and storms outside, with a look of resolve on his face as he strides to organize the raid, tempered with a sudden fleeting disconsolate look that says in wordless anguish, “What have I done?” For a brief second, his eyes are bereft, shocked at the soul-crushing insult he himself visited upon his only son, then he flenses that “weakness” for the task at hand. An amazing moment! That cartoon deserves a Golden Globe!

Hiccup’s crush is blond, blue-eyed warrior chick Astrid (America Ferrera), but she’s only interested in slaying dragons. (Do we refer to that sex manual for this psychological allegory?) The clique of friends is voiced by various comedians: Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig.

The key to the movie is voiced inadvertently by one of the Viking boys, who muses, “Imagine if you could get into a dragon’s head, then you could destroy it from the inside!” Not realizing that once you get into someone’s head, you gain understanding of their point of view. TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (from the book by Cressida Cowell) is all about Hiccup getting into his dragon’s head, assimilating dragon culture so well that, in the final battle, he leads a force of kids-on-dragons – dragons that used to be considered expendable training animals for them to slay.

The dragon designs are all extreme heads and torsos and colors, a combination of Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are and medieval hallucination.

In the grand tradition of gigantic monsters – the Kraken, the Rancor, the Balrog – the sinister king dragon is a massive masterwork of ferocious design, and the final battle is a nail-biting, emotional fracas.

TRAIN YOUR DRAGON does follow a predictable story arc – until its last scene, where it once again shocks us with its brave story decision. Tears may edge your eyes as Hiccup wakes after the final battle. With a prosthetic foot, created by the blacksmith, created to slot into his dragon harness. Toothless helps him walk. Not only does this scene perfectly balance the scenes where Hiccup helped Toothless with the prosthetic tail rudder, it also highlights a very modern solution. Whereas we are used to heroes always concluding a battle with maybe a cut above their right eye (cough–Bruce Willis) or an arm in a sling (cough–DIRTY DOZEN) – all healable wounds – this movie opens our minds to the acceptance of a hero crippled for life, yet making the best of it!

Thankfully, his dragon was untouched.

END

Home Alone 6: Kevin on Mars.

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

Marriage of heaven and hell.

One blond (Kristen Wiig), one brunette (Rose Byrne) and one fatty (Melissa McCarthy). Covering all the demos, are we?

BRIDESMAIDS was advertised as being a Chick Flick version of SUPERBAD. Nope. It’s just super bad. About a lonely bridesmaid (Wiig) who battles another snobbish bridesmaid (Byrne) for the affections of the ugly bride (Maya Rudolph).

BRIDESMAIDS also aspires to being THE HANGOVER. Nope. The closest it gets to that raunchy film is when Wiig gets drunk on the way to Vegas and gets kicked off the plane. Then she wakes up with a hangover.

Judd Apatow produces. Yet even with his usually perceptive comedy radar, this movie fails. At least, for me. Because I have man parts. It’s not as hubristic as SEX AND THE CITY, but it’s almost as annoying.

Film loses me in its first frames, as Annie (Wiig) has raunchy, multi-positional sex – with her bra on. Who’s buying this shit? Unless it’s a quickie in someone else’s bathroom, or across the hood of a car, or on a crowded dance floor, what Man would tolerate the prudishness of a woman who bolts on her bra through hours of sex?! Annie’s fuck-buddy is Jon Hamm, delighting in squeezing her tits – through her padded bra. What kind of madness–? (During this scene, Annie actually cracks a BRADY BUNCH joke about “George Glass,” which only aged viewers of the 70’s series will appreciate, if at all.)

From there, it’s an estrogen thrill ride, as we are dragged like whipped boyfriends through Woman Adventure, i.e. choosing dresses, tennis doubles, lunch, brunch, chocolate fountains, weepy movies and whining about not being married. The unbrained message is, as always, if you’re Annie’s age and don’t have a husband, then something is wrong with you. Movie desperately tries to appeal to all genders and demos by injecting swearing, sex and scat into the Woman Adventure, but it’s just polishing turds.

Directed by Paul Feig, it’s mostly hell, but there are two good aspects about BRIDESMAIDS. One is Kristen Wiig. Co-writer, co-producer and lead, she sells this bilious piece of crap; a luminous darling of the screen, a female comedian who is consistently funny in all her work, and cutie-pie sexy to boot.

And the other amazing thing about this unfunny comedy is that everyone pulls off such a fine acting performance, all underplaying so well, it’s like they think they’re in a good movie (except for the fat chick, who plays it broad; yes, pun intended). Cameo from Matt Lucas (LITTLE BRITAIN), one of two fat, pasty Brits who love showing off their porcelain girth. Jill Clayburgh, the hottest chick ever (SILVER STREAK), is Annie’s mum. Chris O’Dowd is Annie’s tentative cop love interest, in a very sensitive performance; we feel his love and pain. Love of Wiig (obviously) and pain of being in this film (doubly obviously).

As well as Wiig, Byrne and McCarthy, the bridesmaid clique includes RENO 911’s Wendi McClendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper. And then there’s the bride, Maya Rudolph. Note how the ugliest of the women is the bride. Because she’s the ugliest. If she were one of the bridesmaids, she would have played Aggressive Ugly Chick, the role that the Fat Chick fulfills. It stuns me how anyone could consider Rudolph “beautiful,” or – heaven forfend! – keep impregnating her (!) when she is so obviously empirically mad ugly. Is it just a stock fallback position that one has to adopt around women in prominent positions, like Barbra Streisand and Jennifer Garner? I’m sure Rudolph herself – being a good actress and comedienne and more financially successful than I will ever be – would be the first to admit she’s a special class of beast. It doesn’t help when she takes a botulism dump in her wedding dress in the middle of the street. I was already on the verge of vomiting having to endure that face – and now I have to think of her greasy pork-hole expulsing feculence? Jesus on a donkey!

I’m telling you, Movie Maniac, the distraction of Maya Rudolph’s mugly noggin (and Kristen Wiig’s padded bra) robs fully half my attention from the movie. If you think it’s just me who is repulsed by that face, take a good look at the BRIDESMAIDS poster: Rudolph’s face is the only picture altered so much that she looks like someone else! We know that movie stars’ pictures are always “treated” to make them look ten years younger than their human age, sans pores. But on the BRIDESMAIDS poster, the Photoshop artist made some solid overtime on Rudolph: rounder eyes, less hooky nose, less grotesque lips, slimmer cheeks – it’s a work of art! Everyone else is doctored with mere contrast and color balancing. And even the fat chick’s face has not been touched by the Photoshopper’s knife – but they felt they had to do something about Rudolph! So it’s not just me who thinks Rudolph deserves some kind of Porridge Award for that puss – it’s the marketers as well!

And the marketers have done some extraordinary work, BRIDESMAIDS proving that the sniveling awards season is all about politics and not quality, as the movie is nominated for numerous Golden Globes, Oscars, AFI Top Ten, SAG Awards, etc. Even the Fat Chick has been nominated for Best Supporting just for acting like a vaginal erection.

And as if the movie isn’t painful enough, Wilson Phillips perform the last song. You read that right: Wilson Phillips, that unlistenable 80’s girl trio of vocalists made up of one blond, one brunette and one fatty. Oh, I get it now…

END

Kind Encounters of the Close Third.

It’s a buddy comedy of the crude kind, a road movie of the chase kind, a close encounter of the third kind!

Hey, isn’t that Roger from AMERICAN DAD? Or do all aliens just look alike to me?…

Two Brits on a pilgrimage to famed UFO sites in Nevada pick up a real extraterrestrial alien on the run, named Paul, and find themselves targets of a manhunt (a little green man-hunt) from government spooks (Bill Hader, Joe Lo Truglio and FBI agent Jason Bateman, playing it cooler than a polar bear drinking Coca-Cola).

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the two Brits, Graeme Willy and The Writer Clive Gollings (that’s how he introduces himself – hilarious! I gotta start doing that! – for the sci-fi story he has spent his adult life penning, with Graeme providing the cover artwork – a hot alien chick with three breasts, which seemingly has the same effect on everyone, human or alien, without even reading the story – “three titties: awesome!”).

Pegg and Frost (as co-writers of this film) do a great job of capturing that uncomfortable vestige of American jingoism when they ask a Mexican concierge, “Do you believe in aliens?” and he suspiciously replies, “What do you mean, ‘aliens’?”

Alien Paul is a CG entity thrown amongst this real life comedy, styled after the infamous “grays,” with big eyes, big head and tiny gray-green body. Voiced by Seth Rogen, Paul is pretty much just an easygoing stoner dude, who has been filling his time on Earth since his crash landing in the 50s working with the government and dabbling in giving Spielberg movie ideas. Now he’s on the run from that same government, and lamenting that all his fictional ideas – like Mulder and Scully – are being attributed to others.

The trio pick up Creationist fanatic Ruth (Kristen Wiig), whom Paul mind-melds with to make her understand evolution, whereupon she realizes she can fornicate and drink and cuss all she wants. The great character actor John Carroll Lynch joins the chase as Ruth’s bible-thumping father.

Add points to movie for its atheist stance. Paul laments about Creationists, “You just can’t talk to these people!”

Subtract points for the character paradox: UFO fanatics Graeme and The Writer Clive Gollings claim to be “men of science” and they poo-poo Ruth claiming the Earth was created in five days and is 4,000 years old. And so they should… Yet they believe the government is hiding crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft at Area 51. You just can’t talk to these people!

PAUL is a fun romp across the Nevada desert, a straightforward action chase comedy, yet the story contains a lot of heart and is touching in places, with the payoffs hitting well; with innumerable nods and winks to iconic extraterrestrial movies, among others, E.T., ALIENS, STAR WARS, and the greatest extraterrestrial movie of all time, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. We even see the greatest alien fighter of all – Sigourney Weaver in a surprise cameo.

And of course, Jeffrey Tambor as vain, cynical sci-fi writer-god Adam Shadowchild. Who the hell is Adam Shadowchild?

END

The Cute Face of Evil.

Supercute, superfluffy and superevil, the CGI cartoon DESPICABLE ME follows ambiguously-continental, flamboyant do-badder Gru (Steve Carell, outdoing himself with the half-Transylvanian, half-Albanian accent) in his quest to be the Greatest Supervillain in the World.

The theft of the Great Pyramid by New Villain on the Block, Vector (voiced by Jason Segel) spurs Gru to strive for even greater glory – with his evil scientist Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) and his army of Minions (hundreds of maddeningly cute diminutive yellow beings dressed in overalls and goggles, one of them voiced by Jemaine Clement of FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS), Gru plots to steal the Moon itself.

Minion Poffy

To build a rocket, Gru must request a loan from The Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Bros), and must find a way to steal a shrink ray from Vector, to shrink the Moon. To infiltrate Vector’s HQ, Gru adopts three cute little girls (voiced by Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier and Elsie Fisher), who unknowingly aid Gru by selling Vector cookies with little cookie-bots built into them.Written by Ken Daurio, Sergio Pablos and Cinco Paul, and directed energetically by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, DESPICABLE ME is memorable because of Gru’s ubiquitous sidekicks, the Minions. (They’re basically a bunch of yellow Poffys; Universal Studios, I’m coming for my character design residuals!)

No matter the cool jazz feel of the hip hop title song by Pharrell Williams (“I’m having a bad, bad day / If you take it personal, that’s okay / Watch, this is so fun to see / Uh, despicable me!”); no matter how cute the little girls are (“He’s so fluffy, I’m gonna die!”), and no matter the excellent writing in avoiding maudlinism in the unavoidable character arc of Gru becoming a loving surrogate father, the Minions sell this film, with their chattery language and peripheral sight gags, constantly doing something so despicably cute you just want to slap somebody.

END