Meet the Feebles

1989 puppet movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The titular Muppet-esque creatures desperately try to get their variety show ready on schedule, but a variety of issues threaten to derail the whole thing.

This is one of those movies that I want to like more than I actually like. It starts out well enough with a bit glossy impressive theme song. The puppets look great, like creations Jim Henson's people just barely decided to discard. There's a ton of color and personality on the screen as we see the characters on stage for the first time. Then, the whole thing stumbles for about an hour and a half. There's way too many subplots, Peter Jackson (yes, this is what he did before he got Hobbititis) trying to juggle way too many ideas in a movie that is far too weak on main plot. For certain types of people, it'll be a hoot seeing these puppets, like bizarro Muppets, engaging in really bad behavior. The first clue that this thing isn't for children is the first sex scene featuring a little walrus-on-cat action. They're interrupted, and the walrus exclaims, "I was just about to pop my cookies!" It's ridiculously filthy, but it does force you to imagine interesting animal pairings. How would an elephant and a chicken do the deed, for example? For the rest of the movie, the creatures show off their waxy nips, puke, fornicate, smoke, die, shoot up, eat each other, curse, gorge themselves, drool while peeping a rabbit ménage a trois, engage in S&M acts, sniff panties, bleed, perform opera, eat fecal matter, have Vietnam flashbacks, make pornography (nasal pornography), contract sexually-transmitted diseases, projectile vomit, attempt suicide, and perform songs about sodomy. Again, I want to remind you that these are not puppets that you should watch with your children. I can't recall a Muppet ever dying. Lots of the Feebles die, and they die in grotesque meaty ways that only Peter Jackson at this stage in his career can dream up. If a director who seemed to be trying to see just what kinds of lewdness he could get away with doesn't completely scare you away, this might be worth you time. You'll probably never look at puppets the same, however.

The Frighteners

1996 horror-comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Frank Bannister uses his ability to communicate with ghosts to con people. One cloaked ghost is flying around making numbers on people's heads and killing them, however, and Frank has to find a way to stop him before he's put away for the crimes.

I was trying to describe this movie to somebody I work with. I couldn't really articulate what was good about it, and I couldn't really articulate what was bad about it. It's enormously entertaining though. It's that manic sort of entertainment, the kind that can only be created by a charged and creative and loopily unpredictable mind like Peter Jackson's. The Peter Jackson who directed this--as opposed to the one who created the boring King Kong remake or all those really long movies about little people walking around New Zealand--is the same Peter Jackson who directed Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles. Here, he gets a little star power in Michael J. Fox who is every bit as likable as he is in every single other thing he's done, even when he's not surfing on top of a van. It's a little hard to buy Fox as any kind of a bad guy. He's sort of an anti-hero here, a guy who is playfully conning but nevertheless conning a community out of money by taking advantage of a gift he received in an accident that took his wife's life. Right off the bat, Jackson's asking you to root for a rather unscrupulous guy. But that guy gets to run around on those little feet of his and make big eyes and say, "Whoa!" a lot, so you end up rooting for him. That, by the way, is what Michael J. Fox does best. He'll be remembered as the guy who could run around and say, "Whoa!" I wonder if Jackson would have made Fox a hobbit? I guess we'll never know. Also really fun to watch is an unhinged performance by Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator fame. The character doesn't make a lick of sense, but he's hilariously portrayed and as eccentric as any character you're likely to see. I was really impressed with the special effects team behind this. The ghosts were cartoonishly goofy, almost like something you'd see sitting next to you at the end of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, but it was fun watching them splash through walls, manipulate the settings, and suffer disfigurements. The Reaper-esque bad ghoul is effectively sinister and visually cool whether he's rubberizing the carpet or wallpaper (not sure how he makes the setting elastic like that) or floating around as a Cape Monster. There are a lot of fun periphery characters including John Astin's ghostly The Judge and a character played by the son of last year's Torgo Award winner, Jake Busey, a guy who almost won his own Torgo in 2011. A lot of the movie really shouldn't work. Or maybe I should say that a lot more of it shouldn't work because there is quite a bit that seems a little too messy. Peter Jackson spills his soup quite a bit with this thing. Still, it entertains from beginning to end with a strange energy and creative story and was really hard not to like.

Barry recommended this just about two years ago.

Dead Alive

1992 zombie funk

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A nuts monkey captured on Skull Island (probably not that Skull Island) winds up in a zoo where it bites a woman and turns her into a zombie. Her son, poor Lionel, has to take care of her while trying to nurture a new relationship with the gal who works at the market. It doesn't get any easier for Lionel as his mom begins to infect other people.

Peter Jackson's best movie? None of those Hobbit movies or the King Kong remake even had a guy using a lawnmower as a weapon. Discuss in the comments below.

If this had been around for me to see in high school, it probably would have been my favorite movie, something I could watch back-to-back with Evil Dead II whenever I needed to fulfill my splatter-comedy needs. This is definitely splattabulous, splatrageous, and splatterific, a lot bloodier than anything Raimi will ever do. It pushes the envelope and then pushes it more, pushing it so that it goes all the way through some guy's skull so that his brains and blood stain the walls. Does it straddle the line between violence and humor? No. It sort of stomps all over the line until the blood and laughs fuse together into this scrambled mess of joke-telling bowels and slapstick viscera. I felt completely silly doing it, but I laughed out loud so much as I watched this in the wee hours while lying in bed that I woke up my poor wife a few times. And I'll admit that it didn't feel right to answer her "What's so funny?" with "Oh, this character is throwing around this zombie baby!" or "Intestines are chasing a guy around his house!" The amount of gore in this thing has to be seen to be believed, and just when I think I've seen a zombie die in the most bizarre or creative way possible, Jackson gives me something even more ridiculous to see. A mind that conceives some of the imagery in this has to be a deranged one. Dead Alive (or Braindead elsewhere) has nothing at all to say about society. It makes no grand statements and really doesn't even tell its story all that well. But from the appearance of the stop-motion (?) monkey to the thrilling and sloppy climax, this doesn't let up, assaulting the senses with the most creative gore you're likely to see and some sick, sick laughs. Recommended to film lovers who haven't grown up yet or anybody who wants to see what Peter Jackson was up to before he started filming endless scenes of Hobbits and elves walking around.

Eagle vs. Shark

2007 romantic comedy


Rating: 12/20


Plot: A likable misfit named Lily working at a Meaty Boy fast food restaurant falls for an unlikable misfit named Jarrod who is frequently a Meaty Boy customer. The unlikable misfit actually looks like a meaty boy. She shows up at his "dress-as-your-favorite-animal" party (uninvited) and impresses him with her skills at a violent video game. They end up doin' it. Later, Jarrod invites her to his hometown, mostly because he doesn't have a car to get him there, so that he can get his revenge on a high school bully. Jarrod becomes even more unlikable.


Recommended by an anonymous person who apparently knows me well enough to know that I generally like quirky stuff like this. The main reason this didn't quite work for me was that Jarrod was such an unlikable guy. I don't expect all characters in romantic comedies to be likable or anything, but I didn't want things to work out for this guy at all. This movie seems to be an attempt at a Napoleon Dynamite and is stuffed with lots of offbeat characters and offbeat moments, but it's not really consistently funny. I laughed out once during the big video game match when she was playing against a kid dressed as a horse. I may have nearly laughed a few more times. The soundtrack is oppressive, sort of like in Juno. There was some stop-motion animation stuff involving discarded apples and ants that was cute, and there were some other cute moments that make this a lot more entertaining than your average romantic comedy. But for an oddball movie, this is strangely derivative here in 2008.


I showered right before and right after watching this movie.