Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie

2012 comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: The titular guys waste the titular billion dollars they got to make the titular movie and try to run a run-down shopping mall in order to make money to pay off their debt.

Those of you who aren't entertained by references to the "penis hole," watching children defecate on a guy, watching one character urinate on another, or Jeff Goldblum need not apply. This goes far beyond your typical gross-out comedy into something more bizarre. This is based on a Cartoon Network's Adult Swim show that is just as bizarre but in much shorter installments. The punchy absurdity of that works for its principal audience--people who eat drugs. Here, the absurdities piled on absurdities is exhausting, and although there was enough to laugh at here (shamefully) to make it worth it, especially if you're in the mood for this sort of stupidity, it's probably too much for most people to handle. I'm not even sure fans of the show would be too excited about what comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have done here. Will Ferrell and Will Forte are both pretty funny in this. John C. Reilly? Not so much.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

1989 grotesque art

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A brutish bully and sort of vague criminal--the titular thief--frequents the lush dining establishment of the titular cook. The titular abused wife meets her titular bookish lover there and begins boinking him nightly behind her husband's back. He's too busy eating fistfuls of pudding, behaving unruly, and verballing assaulting his friends and fellow patrons to notice anything like that. But when he finds out? Oh, snap! This goose is cooked!

First saw this at Clown College with Kent back in '93. It was my first trip through a Greenaway movie, and I just didn't get it. I think we rented that and Henry and June because they were both NC-17 and wanted to see some boobs. This has some boobs, specifically the two belonging to Helen Mirren, but that's not the reason to see this. The reasons to see this are the performance of Michael Gambon as the thief and the pretty pictures that Greenaway gives us. First, what's not to love-to-hate about Gambon's character? He's got to be in the running for the most despicable movie character in the history of film, right along with most of Shirley Temple's characters. What a villain. But since this is a blacker-than-black comedy, he's kind of funny, too, and he gets all sorts of great one-liners.

"There's a lady present. She doesn't want to see your shriveled contributions."
"You'd just be interested in whipping it in and whipping it out and wiping it on your jacket." (more clear in context probably)
"I think those Ethiopians like starving."
"A cow drinks its weight in water twice a week. For milk. Cause a cow's got big tits."
"I didn't mean that you literally had to chew his buttocks off. I meant it metaphorically."

It's great stuff. And it's dark and filthy, almost enough to make you feel dirty for watching the thing. It's like low-brow potty humor for the artsy-fartsy crowd. I mean, the movie starts, just like Ridicule, with a character pissing on a guy, but this takes it one step further and adds fecal matter. But as grotesque as things get, Greenaway and his cinematographer Sacha Vierny of Last Year at Marienbad fame keep things so artistic. Greenaway doesn't make motion pictures; he makes motion paintings. And there are countless shots in this son of a bitch that just floor me as the camera moves through the kitchen of the restaurant. There's no way this restaurant is passing a health inspection, by the way. There are feathers flying all over the place, a random castrato, a naked guy with shit all over him, cigarettes in the soup, a chubby shirtless guy, a truck of rotting meat, people having sex right there by the loaves of bread. But it's all so beautiful, and it's just not fair that I can only take in Greenaway's visuals with one of my senses. I'd really like to use more of them. I love the way he toys with colors in this movie with the character's clothing changing color as they move from room to room. One great scene involving a fork has this gradual reddening as the thief passively (ironic passivity) spreads something on a cracker before an intense bathroom destruction. And how the heck does one choreograph dogs and breaking bottles? Oh, man. Throw this movie in a museum because it's a visual masterpiece, marred only by a lengthy conversation near the end of the movie that I think almost spoils the surprises at the end. That scene's problem might be the acting of the cook though. Otherwise, just a lovely and disgusting movie.

Ridicule

1996 witty movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Some French guy travels to Versailles in order to get the king (Louis CXVII or something) to help him drain some swamps. He learns quickly enough that the only way to get an audience with the king is to be wittier than everybody else. He's assisted by a doctor whose lovely and bosomy daughter is trying to perfect her diving suit invention. Meanwhile, there's a whore who kind of looks like Lyle Lovett, and she keeps trying to play footsy with him while he's busy getting his wit on. I'm sure it would have all made perfect sense back in the 18th Century.

Just two minutes in, a guy whips it out (it, being the penis) and urinates on an old man wearing an eyepatch. Cory recommended this one; he really likes that sort of thing. Here are three things that stand out about this movie:

1) This is exactly why everybody hates French people. In a way, it's hard for me to believe that people were ever like this, but then I think about how people are today and believe that people were definitely like this. I like the characters' faces after they make a witty remark, most, by the way, that I didn't even understand. Their expressions made me laugh and want to punch some random French guy.

2) The writers of this totally took that "jawbone of an ass" gag (where a character thinks of a witty retort way too late as he's traveling home from one of these awesome parties) from a Seinfeld episode. You know, the jerk store one.

3) I'm going to try to find every opportunity I can to say "Your butt is wider than your mouth" to people. I don't even know what that means, but it definitely sounds like something.

I liked this movie though I'm not a big fan of stuffy period pieces regardless of how much beautiful cleavage they throw on the screen. The costumes and settings provided a colorful backdrop to the frequently clever dialogue. And although I thought a lot of this was a little cold or, yes, stuffy, I thought a scene near the end with some deaf mutes was pretty touching. If I knew anything about French history and what happened to some of these people after most of this movie takes place, I bet I would be able to appreciate some of the irony more. Nice recommendation, Cory, and definitely not something I would have popped in on my own.