Moron Movies

1985 collection of short films

Rating: 3/20

Plot: The story of how one man--Len Cella--came up with the idea for Vine, the short-video sharing technology.

See this guy?

That's Len Cella. If you don't like the look of that face, you're not going to watch this hour-long collection of his shenanigans because its the only face you're going to see.

These really do feel like Vines (I'm not sure if I'm using this term right. I'm too old to understand technology, after all. My son, in fact, just told me yesterday that nobody has or cares about blogs anymore, and here I thought my blog was about to take off.), and if I have to applaud anything, it's that Cella is doing something that I don't think anybody was doing at the time and really does kind of anticipate this whole anybody-can-be-a-celebrity idea that today's technology allows.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are a lot of people out there who would think Len Cella should be making short films for public consumption. I just can't imagine anybody being entertained by these, with the possible exception of Len Cella himself. As a kid, my brother and I made all these cassette tapes with these puppets we called Gnarlies. That's right--we recorded puppet shows on cassette. Why we did these with the puppets on our hands is still confusing to me. These weren't funny or clever or entertaining at all. They remind me of Len Cella, a guy who isn't really funny or clever or entertaining at all. The difference is that he should know better because he was an adult in the 80s when these were made. I imagine that he had some friends or coworkers always telling him how funny he was or something, and he decided that it was a gift that needed to be shared with the rest of the world.

Few, if any of these, were worth the amount of time it took for Len Cella to set up his camera. He rigs up things, little inventions like a cheap artificial heart or toothpaste tubes that he's punched holes in or boots tied to mattresses that he's leaned against trees, and probably is inventive enough to have one funny idea at some point in his life. Unfortunately, I don't think I saw that good idea anywhere in this collection.

Something strange happened as I watched these. And trust me--I did watch all 58 minutes of this first installment of Moron Movies. Yes, there is a sequel called, I think, More Moron Movies, something I doubt I'll ever see. But as I watched, I just kept getting sadder and sadder. I was sad for Len Cella who I dobut accomplished what he set out to accomplish. And I was sad for myself because I really started to feel that I was wasting my life away. It was one hour of my time, but this is the kind of shit I waste my time with all the time, and those hours with people like Len Cella add up.

By the time this was over, I was as depressed as I have been for a long time.

The short pieces range from a couple of seconds to maybe 20 seconds. Actually, I doubt any of these hit 20 seconds. They go by quickly enough that you'd think it wouldn't matter if they were bad. If one of the comedy bits is terrible, you don't have to wait long for another one. But that doesn't really apply when they're all terrible.

Here's the kind of genius you can expect from the appropriately-named Moron Movies:

--A caveman looks in a mirror and says, "Damn, I'm just as ugly as my friends. We're never gonna get anywhere being this ugly."
--Mount Rushmore 2
--"They didn't have any fingers left so they gave me a monkey's tail. It isn't worth a damn." And in a separate short: "They didn't have any ears left so they gave me a foot. I hate it." Predictably, by this point, he's got a shoe balanced over his ear.
--A "hamburger comedian" and later a "chicken comedian," shorts where meat with Groucho Marx glasses is dragged across the floor.
--"Jello makes a lousy doorstop." This is exactly what you think it would be.
--"I can type 90 words a minute, but nobody will hire me because I'm a shark."
--Ass appreciation class ("This is a good ass.")
--Learning that 80 frog farts can propel a canoe sixteen feet.
--A bit called "Perverted Cameraman," featuring nothing more than several zoomed shots of animal butts.
--Speed reading. Then  speed writing. Then speed sleeping. The kinds of ideas a kid might have a recess. "Hey, guys, watch me speed read!" before flipping through pages really quickly.
--Walking a pet 2x4
--Several shorts where he's attached baby bottle nipples onto his face and says they're warts. It scares you because it makes it seem like Len Cella has actually reproduced.
--"How about Dickie DooDoo Disease?"

The worst thing about this? Len Cella's fake laugh he does in this. It makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

I wept as I typed most of this.