Urine Couch AM Movie Club: The Cat in the Hat

2003 worst movie ever candidate

Rating: 1/20

Plot: It's pretty close to what happens in the book as far as I remember, at least for the first half. The biggest difference is that this is complete ass.

This is an hour and a half of complete unpleasantness and in my humble opinion one of the worst movies ever made. If Alec Baldwin, a guy I like, wasn't in this, I'd go ahead and say that everybody involved in the production of this should be executed. Slowly. I'm not a violent man at all and rarely have violent thoughts, but I'd be glad to pull the trigger, yank the switch, jab the instrument, toss the match, or whatever else it takes to do my part in keeping people like this from ever working again. I've recently seen Shrek about two dozen times, and I think I figured out what's wrong with the movie. I can hear Mike Myers in Shrek's voice, and Mike Myers makes me think of this atrocity and I want everybody to die.

This is the second time I've seen The Cat in the Hat. Siskel wanted to watch it because he's got a thing for Kelly Preston, an actress I want dead. And the beginning made me wonder if I was wrong about this movie. It's a nifty colorful start, a cool little Seussian world, albeit one with one of the worst narrators I've ever heard. But within seconds, the whole thing is excruciatingly painful, a headache-inducing affair that offends the ears, the eyes, and somehow even the taste buds. And any reasonable adult's sensibilities, of course. It's equal parts offensive and obnoxious. The warning signs are all there, and if Gene wasn't there and if a tent wasn't pitched in my trousers following one of the sexiest scenes in the history of cinema involving the aforementioned Preston (my new sexual fantasy: Kelly Preston vacuuming me), I would have shut this thing off and tried my best to forget that it existed. It's similar to what I wish I could do with the Holocaust actually. But those warning signs: 1) Uh oh. Children. Bad acting ones at that. One's Dakota Fanning and the other is Spencer Breslin if you want to make some kind of hit list yourself. 2) Uh oh. A dog with too much personality. It's the lazy filmmaker's way of going for cuteness. 3) Uh oh. Go ahead and double up on that animals-with-personality thing with a talking CGI fish voiced by Sean Hayes who also plays the boss and has the annoying catchphrase "You're fiiiiiirrrrrrred-duh!" and who I would like to be dead.

The soundtrack is relentless. David Newman--the guy you get when you can't afford Randy, I'm guessing--has a score-composing philosophy: every single thing that appears on the screen needs to be punctuated with music. The music is constant, highlighting the crap.

Not bad enough? Well, let's add a little cultural stereotyping. Actually, no. Let's add a ton of cultural stereotypes. And speaking of cultural stereotypes, why does the titular cat sound like an old Jewish woman through the movie? That's when he's not imitating the Kool-aide man with the big catchphrase from the film, the one that was supposed to sell Burger King kid meals or put asses in the theater seats--"Oh yeah!" C'mon, writers. Is that the best you can do? Oh yeah? Of course that beats the babysitter pun (something a three-year-old could have come up with--"She sits on babies?") or the "Oh my cod!" line or the hilarious "dirty ho" gag. Oh yeah! All while the cat uses more props than "comedian" Carrot Top. Only Carrot Top is funnier, and that's a sentence I never ever thought I would write. And just when you think the movie can't get any more annoying, they surprise you by throwing in Thing 1 and Thing 2. You know, cause the movie wasn't nearly loud enough before.

You want references to the penis or testicles, farts and belching used for laughs, urine gags, thinly-veiled allusions to sex, or characters on more than one occasion saying "Son of a _____"? This is the movie for you. You can watch this trash with your kid and then wonder why all your kid's teachers hate his guts.

There's a scene in this movie where the cat is hanging from a tree and kids are hitting him because they think he's a pinata. I don't remember for sure, but I'd guess they hit him right in the nutsack because that's the type of thing Dr. Seuss would have thought was hilarious. I wish there would have been some kind of Brandon Lee-type mishap where Mike Myers was beaten to death during the filming of that scene. It would have been a worthy punishment.

This is the worst Dr. Seuss adaptation, and that is saying quite a bit. It's not only that, it's an absolute insult to the writer. Why spend this much money making something that made me want to gouge out my eyes? Wouldn't it have been a lot cheaper just to drive to Dr. Seuss's grave and urinate on it?

And Alec Baldwin? What are you doing? Nice suit, by the way.

Waiting for "Superman"

2010 propaganda film

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 7/20)

Plot: A scathing, one-sided attack on public education. Documentarian Davis Guggenheim half-asses his way through detailing the problems with public education and how charter schools can magically fix everything.

Please keep in mind one thing as you read this: An incredibly "bad teacher" wrote it.

Two days ago (one day after I watched this movie), we brought a guy named Jasper Partygarden (Note: That is not his real name.) into our team meeting. Jasper shows up to school late most days if he bothers showing up at all and has problems staying focused in class. In a lot of ways, he's a mature kid. He's street wise, has a car that was wrecked when he let a fellow 8th grader (a girl he liked) take it for a spin, and is a good-looking, older-looking dude who could almost pass as a young college student if you threw him on a university campus. At the same time, he acts really immaturely. He grabs things off people's desks, falls asleep in class, and teases other students in ways you'd expect more from an elementary school student. He eventually revealed to us that he's getting jumped almost daily by "Mexicans" in his predominately Latino neighborhood. He also told us that he doesn't get to bed until around 2:00 a lot of nights because his mother is sick, his step-father isn't around much, and he's got to help take care of the seven other children in his apartment, three who are under the age of two. We teachers realized that a lot of Jasper's problems, and the reason for a lot of his immature behavior, is because he's got to be the man at home. There's no room for Jasper to be a child so he acts out at school.

I'm not bringing up Jasper to make excuses for public schools, but there are a lot of Jaspers in the middle school I work, Jaspers with a variety of problems, a lot of them that you probably wouldn't even guess existed. Waiting for "Superman" frequently mentions the "best teachers" at the "best schools," contrasting them with "bad teachers" at "failing schools," and I just wonder how these "best teachers" would handle a classroom of Jaspers. Where Davis Guggenheim and his researchers are dangerously misguided is that they think the problem with the Jaspers of the world and why they aren't getting a quality education can be blamed solely on the public education system. In reality, it's a much larger and scarier problem than education. Jasper is the result of bad parenting in a broken country filled with arrogant and complacent leaders and citizens.

Thing is, you don't even have to pay much attention to catch the solution to all the problems Davis Guggenheim points out--most kids need to be taken away from their parents. For whatever reason, that's not the conclusion that Guggenheim comes up with. Instead, he's got an agenda, and Waiting for "Superman," likely from its conception, was his attempt to find anything that helps support that agenda.

And I'd like to think that anybody with a little common sense would be able to see the holes in this thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Guggenheim's documentary is sloppy myth-making and a textbook example of propaganda. You've got the same tired data that's been passed around for years and never questioned or actually broken down (reading scores flatlining, standardized test scores, Finland has better schools statistically, blah blah blah). You've got the use of buzz words ("academic sinkholes," "drop-out facilities," etc.), cutesy animated sequences, and red herrings that manipulate and distract. You've got faulty cause and effect like when our narrator tells us that an achievement drop-off from the fifth to the seventh grade can ONLY mean one of two things--kids get stupid or there's something wrong with public education. And you've got the stories (climaxing in a seemingly endless scene where they're hoping to be randomly drawn to go to the charter schools) of some kids who really want to learn and who, perhaps coincidentally, also seem to have really supportive parents. This documentary suggests that charter schools are the answer while completely ignoring statistics that show they are just as unsuccessful as public schools. No, it's not difficult to find some charter schools that have an astounding amount of success, but that's just not the norm. One could just as easily find public schools that have an astounding amount of success; however, that doesn't fit in with Guggenheim's plan. I also love how this compares and contrasts American schools with the rest of the world without really comparing or contrasting. Finland's at the top of the pyramid. Wouldn't it have been interesting to know why? Most Americans, I would hope, understand that a lot of those schools ahead of America are there because they don't allow all of their students to even get an education if they aren't succeeding early in their education. But no, Guggenheim just wants us to know that if we replaced our lower six percent with average students, we could be right up there with Finland. Whatever that means. Another statistic that I didn't really understand, likely because I went to public schools--"Bad teachers" only teach about 50% of the curriculum while "good teachers" can teach 150% of the curriculum. What does that even mean? Nevermind. Don't even tell me.

You know, this is so horribly misguided and misses the point (or worse, it invents its own point and hits a bull's eye) that I've decided that An Inconvenient Truth is also probably a bad documentary. I'm going to adjust my rating and stop inviting Al Gore to my parties.

Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story

2004 VH1 original movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: An unauthorized biopic about the guy who ended up buying the bones of the guy the last movie I watched was about. Following early fame and fortune as a child singing sensation with his brothers, Michael Jackson becomes the King of Pop, buys a ranch, pretends he's Peter Pan, burns his scalp, molests a lot of young boys, marries Elvis's daughter, divorces Elvis's daughter, has some children, has some plastic surgery, and gradually turns into a white man.

Before I pushed play, I thought I was going to watch a documentary. Nope. It's an unauthorized biopic. And being an unauthorized biopic, they weren't able to get the rights to any of Michael Jackson's songs. That's right. This is a movie about the life of Michael Jackson that doesn't include a single Michael Jackson song. Oh, there are a lot of scenes where he's performing, but there are no Michael Jackson songs. There's just something completely wrong about that. It's like making a movie about Babe Ruth without showing any scenes with Babe Ruth playing baseball. But that's not the only problem with Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story. No, no, no, this movie has more problems than Michael Jackson had quirks. First, this has more awkward moments than any movie I've ever seen. Take this bit of dialogue between Michael and sister Janet:

Michael: (enters room) "Hey, Tink."
Janet: (looking up) "Hi, Peter Pan!"
Michael: "I'm Peter Pan!"
Janet: (clapping) "And I'm Tinkerbell!"
(A tickle fight ensues.)

Or this one between Michael Jackson and a little boy:

Little Boy: "Hi. . .you're famous."
Michael: (shakes head wildly like he's in a cartoon or like he's trying to get a wasp out of his hair) "Am I?"
(A tickle fight ensues.)

Or look no further than a scene where Elizabeth Taylor tells Michael Jackson, during the time when the molestation accusation is causing him problems, that she'll always be there for him. It's a corny scene. But the next shot is with a group of photographers taking pictures of an apparently nude Michael Jackson (as I recall, part of the investigation) while Jackson's assistant stands in front of him and holds up a painting of Elizabeth Taylor. What the hell? That might give me nightmares. At one point, Elizabeth Taylor tells Michael, "This is not a joke." It's really hard for me to see this production as anything but a joke.

Don't believe me that this is stuffed with awkward? Look no further than Michael and Lisa Marie's first date, a date where they apparently go outside to look at stock footage of butterflies. One of them lands on Lisa Marie's finger, and Michael points out that "That's rare" and that it's probably because Lisa Marie is sweet. Then cut to what might be the worst montage I've ever seen--shitty music (not Michael Jackson's music though) with different shots of Lisa Marie and Michael striking slightly different poses with some trees in the background. Right at the moment when you're about to throw up, it cuts to a shot of the happy couple in the bedroom where Michael (thankfully!) announces that he doesn't believe in premarital sex. But they still kiss. And if you ever find yourself in a position where you're forced to watch this movie (i.e. you've died and gone to hell), you will still throw up all over the floor.

OK, you still don't believe me? Then take this line of dialogue, spoken right after a news person has made fun of Michael Jackson for naming one of his children Blanket. "But he's like a blanket. . .a blanket of love."

The camera work will make you wish the people involved had gone to a film school where they taught the students about tripods. There are so many scenes where the camera will very quickly pan to another character and stop to, for whatever reason, shake a little bit. You're jerked very quickly from episode to episode, and although it touches upon most of the most difficult times in Jackson's life, it's mostly very pro-Michael. The acting in this travesty is almost as good as you'd expect to get from any television commercial. Flex Alexander, an actor who presumably used a pseudonym to protect his career, had terrible writing to work with, but his Michael Jackson isn't far from what you'd expect to see in a late-night parody. The woman who plays Elizabeth Taylor (Lynne Cormack) gave another performance that seemed like a parody. In fact, I thought at first that it was Saturday Night Live's Cherie O'Teri. A lot of the story is pushed along with words that pop on the screen. It's insightful stuff. Like "A dream come true." Or, "Michael's new friend, Manny." And somehow they manage to tie in O.J. Simpson and 9/11.

This will easily be the worst movie I see all year. So why am I giving it a 2/20 instead of a 1/20? Outstanding special effects (I'm thinking a powder) used to show Michael Jackson's weird skin discoloration thing. I was impressed with that.

Orphan

2009 piece of shit

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Kate and husband John decide to adopt a highly intelligent and artistic nine-year-old Russian orphan. Kate, a recovering alcoholic, is trying to get over nearly accidentally killing one of her two biological children and a miscarriage. Things are going swimmingly until Esther, the family's new addition, begins misbehaving. She forms an attachment to John but has trouble getting along with her new mom who wonders if she might be evil. Bad stuff happens. And there's nothing more horrifying, ladies and gentlemen, than when bad stuff happens in a bad movie.

This is a Macaulay Culkin away from being The Good Son. There's also a bit of The Omen in here. In fact, the whole thing is derivative, entirely predictable in its unpredictability, and offensively bad filmmaking. You know that horror movie cliche where the filmmaker dicks around with you, letting you follow a character who is anxious or nervous and then suddenly jabbing you with a shockingly loud musical note or a noise and causing you to jump because the character has seen something scary before revealing that the only scary thing in the room is something innocent like a kitty or a child with a lollipop? If you like that, you'll love Orphan because that's a trick the director uses about ninety times. It's actually almost the entire movie. You also get some really terrible child acting, including a title character who can't remember if she's Russian or not, and several plot points that just don't make any sense whatsoever. Seriously, some of the decisions these characters make are just bewildering. There's a big big twist in this movie. Really, there had to be a big big twist because without a big big twist, nobody would care to sit through this one. But the big big twist is so stupid, crossing the line from "shocking" into "What the hell?" and forcing me, whether fair or not, to really want to kick M. Night Shyamalan right in the head. It was offensive more than anything else, an attempt to trick a reaction out of people. And that's the biggest problem with Orphan--it substitutes good storytelling, realistic character development, and genuine horror and suspense for manipulative movie cliches and lazy trickery and dickery. Trickery, dickery, dock. I really hate this movie, and I hope it's my least enjoyable movie watching experience of the year.

The Aristocrats

2005 dirty joke

Rating: 12/20

Plot: An enormous collection of some of the world's funniest people and Bob Saget ruminate a filthy vaudevillian joke.

This would have been a lot better if it was about half as long. If nothing else, it helps me discover that I don't think I like comedians very much. The interviews with the comedians are edited to make this into a pissing contest. There's also this vertigo-inducing thing going on where you get rapid quick-cuts of the comedians telling the joke from multiple angles, I guess so the producers can show off the fact that they had more than one camera. I never figured out why that was necessary. There's nothing especially clever about any of this, but it does have a lot of very funny moments and gives a glimpse of the inner workings of how funny people make the funny. Overall, it's not as outrageous as it wants to be and in no way succeeds in being as funny as it thinks it is for ninety minutes. It's definitely not for everybody although there is one scene that I doubt anybody could watch without uttering, "My God! This is the greatest thing ever filmed!" That's right--I'm referring to the scene where the mime delivers his version of the joke. That was comedy gold.

Bruno

2009 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Rating: Fashion klutz Bruno gets himself fired from his Austrian television style show. He decides to move to Los Angeles with the hope of becoming internationally famous. Inspired by America's finest and famous, he attempts to make connections, adopt African babies, and find a cause to support. Eventually, he even tries, with the aid of some friendly Christians, to cure himself of homosexuality.

The scenes that nearly had me on the floor: the interview with Mariah Carey*, the focus group watching his television show and interview with Harrison Ford, the casting call for babies to pose for pictures with his adopted son, the lessons on how to defend yourself against a homosexual, the hunting scenes. It's impossible not to compare this with Borat. Personally, I think it's better. There's no goofily pointless Pam Anderson plot, and there are less scenes that either don't work or go on far too long. Bruno's story does parallel Borat's quite a bit, and at times, the gross-out or potty-mouthed stuff seems like it came from a mind belonging to a man who was working too hard to top himself. But I was entertained from start to finish although I can't remember a time when I felt as uncomfortable while being entertained. This also works satirically, and it takes a special kind of talent to make something that is simultaneously incredibly stupid and profoundly witty at the same time. Bruno was easily my least favorite Ali G Show character, but I really liked what Cohen did with the character in this movie. Once again, I feel that Cohen should be in discussion for "best actor" awards. His comic timing, the physical comedy, and his ability to create this absolutely ridiculous character that becomes so real are awesome. I don't understand how he can do this stuff without breaking character and bursting into laughter, and I also don't understand how he did some of this without being killed. The guy who plays the assistant (Lutz) is a bit overshadowed, but he also does an amazing job.

I will watch this with the commentary now.

*Ya know, they're really all interchangeable. Apparently, it was Paula Abdul, not Mariah Carey. My apologies to both divas.

Les Enfants Terribles

1950 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Paul and his older sister Elisabeth are close. Really close. Following a snowball fight accident and the death of their mother, they become recluses, shutting themselves off from society so that they can play bizarre games and argue in the privacy of their own room. When Paul falls in love with the boy who injured him with a snowball and later a girl who looks a lot like that boy, Elisabeth starts to get a little jealous.

I really expected to like this one a lot more than I did. I think it suffers from being seen so close to Troll 2. But with the talent involved (I love both Melville and Cocteau), I had enormously high expectations despite the stylistic differences in their films. In a way, this combines those styles fairly well with Melville's stark and simple narratives and character studies balancing Cocteau's dreamy free-floating surrealism, but I have to admit that I just wasn't all that interested in these siblings while watching this. I was a little bored. Parts of whatever narrative this has float like poetry, but the movie seemed too long and didn't have a single goblin or double-decker bologna sandwich. Sacre bleu!

Choke

2008 movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Victor wants to know who his father is. Unfortunately for him, the only person who has that information, his Alzheimer-suffering mother, can't even recognize him. He works at a Colonial Williamsburg-esque park during the day and at night scams restaurant patrons by pretending to choke on food so that he can be saved and then later sent money. Or something. He also spends lots of his time at sex-addiction meetings. He has a friend who masturbates a lot.

It really felt like half of this movie was cut out or something. It's such a choppily-paced story that I wound up discombobulated beside the ottoman. And my zipper was down! Quirks-a-go-go! I felt completely disconnected from the characters and really only stuck around for the nudity. Disappointing.

Hamlet 2

2008 future cult classic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Dana Marschz, a failed commercial actor turned high school drama teacher, sees enrollment for his class increase from two enthusiastic students to a multicultural mix of troublesome, apathetic students. Inspired by Mr. Holland's Opus, Dead Poet's Society, and other feel-good movies involving teachers reaching unreachable students, he decides to change their lives. Making matters more difficult are problems at home and a school budget committee that is threatening to do away with his position entirely. The solution? Penning and producing a politically-incorrect sequel to Hamlet.

Steve Coogan hefts this baby on his shoulders and carries it from beginning to end. I think he's absolutely brilliant here, managing at times to take something that really shouldn't work at all and making it near hilarious with just the right facial expression, physical comedy, or line delivery. I also liked Elizabeth Shue in a self-deprecating role, and I've always sort of had a crush on Catherine Keener even though her role in this is arguably completely unnecessarily. The humor here is as irreverent as it gets. Nothing--Jesus, race relations, motivational "teacher" movies, education--is sacred enough not to be sent to the slaughterhouse. Extraneous sub-plots get in the way, and not every single line works. At times, it feels that the writers are trying a bit too hard. Still, this is one of those deals where there is so much stuffed into the ninety minutes, that you never have to wait very long for something you're going to like. I'd see it again, and I'd probably laugh again, likely at different things that made me laugh the first time. Except for when Steve Coogan's character is up late working on his play and yells at his cat. That is something I'll laugh at every time.

How's Your News?

1999 documentary

Rating: 4/20

Plot: A group of individuals with varying degrees of mental handicap are exploited by filmmakers to make a road trip from east to west coast incoherently interviewing folks along the way. This film tracks their stops in Connecticut, New York, D.C. Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Las Vegas, and Venice Beach.

The four points I gave this movie were for the street musician on roller blades at Venice Beach. That guy's pretty awesome. Honestly, I should probably give props to the news reporters as they enthusiastically attempt to interview every day people. Sometimes completely obliviously. Seriously, one guy is entirely unintelligible and another guy is just rolled onto the sidewalk and left there with no ability to communicate to wag a microphone at perplexed passers-by. Thing is, there is absolutely no point to any of this. There's nothing revealed about the average American in this like in that Borat movie. There's nothing accidentally revealing about what handicapped people are capable of accomplishing. There's no big discovery, no drama, no developing story. All this ever succeeds in being is mildly interesting and quirkily humorous, and that, I believe, makes the whole thing appalling. If you've seen this and know that I'm missing something (entirely possible with me), then let me know.

My Name Is Bruce

2007 junk

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Some Chinese demon is awakened by a storm or by some teenage vandals or by a combination of the two. He begins slicing the heads off the inhabitants of small-town Gold Lick, so they kidnap b-movie actor Bruce Campbell to help them out.

It's hard to tell whether or not this is self-referential or self-indulgent. I do know that every time I see Bruce Campbell, it makes me like Evil Dead II a little bit less. I realize this is actually supposed to be a bad movie, but that doesn't excuse it being so cliched, so unfunny, and, most heinously, so racially insensitive. I'm not sure what the Chinese have done to Bruce Campbell. Maybe there's some joke I'm not hip to, but regardless, I'm not sure I want to be in on it. Most offensive would be the special effects used to create the Chinese demon. No, most offensive are the terrible jokes. There are lots of references to Campbell's previous work (the "Give me some sugar" line is used at least thirty times), but it just seems so cheap. I can appreciate self-deprecating humor, but there is nothing clever about any of this and absolutely no reason to see it.

Jaws

1975 blockbuster

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: no rating because she fell asleep. She claims she saw this in a theater with her dad and sister but that she was wearing 3-D glasses which I believe means that she's confusing it with the third Jaws movie or that she's weird. She did watch both The Last Temptation of Christ and Casablanca with 3-D glasses.)

Plot: In the pacific waters of the Atlantic Ocean that surrounds Annuity Island, a special place where the sun doesn't rise and fall gradually but instead sort of dances up and down, a giant phallic symbol with teeth threatens the tourist season. "Children can't see the giant phallic symbol!" cries the police chief. The mayor disagrees, and following a gathering of homosexuals for what can only be described as the most massive phallus hunt in the history of Ambiguity Island, he declares the beaches safe from penii and open for business. But they're not, and the phallic symbol still roams freely, eventually severing the rest of some dude's body from his leg in what was quite possibly the most grotesquely kinky sex scene filmed during the 1970's. Three men--a pirate-turned-hippie-turned-pirate-again, a guy who works at a zoo (as a janitor), and a professional jerk-off racer--venture out to find and, at the very least, make the phallic symbol more inoffensively flaccid. They spend most of their time seeing who can come closest to pissing on a buoy that is hundreds of feet away. None of them even come close.

Mr. Spielberg manages to transform pulp into something artistic. This is a case where things--Williams' score, the visuals, the slight-of-hand dramatic tricks up Spielberg's sleeve--blend so nicely to create lots of genuine tension and surprise. The triumvirate of heroes are realistically flawed and their dialogue, their fears, and ultimately their companionship ring true. They're likable because they're real. The story is hokey-pokey, unscientific, and offensive to sharks, unfortunate creatures who, although highly intelligent, can't operate cameras and are unable to film a rebuttal. I also would have changed the ending to something with a little more of a thematic backbone, something like the shark eating everybody on Epiphany Island, jumping out of the water, and giving a big high five to the monster in 20 Million Miles to Earth. It'll always be my opinion that in these Man v. Nature movies, Nature should always win since that's how things wind up anyway. Despite its flaws, however, there's lots in the way this is filmed (the use of space on the screen, the angles, the withholding of even a single shot of the villain for the first 2/5 of the movie) that keep this cool. There are moments that scream out, "This is the 1970's!" but there are more moments that, for better or worse, plant the seeds for the blockbusters that follow.

I don't know. Is there anybody else who has anything to say about this movie?

The Monster Squad

1987 children's horror movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Some really dorky kids form a monster club, somehow get Fonzi to join them, and retreat to a clubhouse where they talk about monsters and plan for the events of this movie. Then Dracula, after recruiting a wolf man, Frankenstein's monster, a swamp thing, and some famale vampires, arrives to take over the earth or something and look for Van Helsing's diary which the main character's mother just happened to pick up at a yard sale that day. A German fellow and the main character's father, who since this is a movie from the 80's must find a way to reconnect with his son, help out.

This script was terrible. A pet peeve of mine is kids cursing in movies. This one annoyed me right off the bat, and then creeped me out later when there was a discussion of a five-year-old girl's virginity. The special effects in The Monster Squad were worse than they were in the 1940's classic monster movies which this movie seems to be pissing all over. Another pet peeve of mine is bad child acting, and this had about forty-seven examples of it. If it was bad in a funny way, I could forgive and forget, but this was just bad. Offensive bad. A student actually brought this in to watch instead of Apollo 13. I told him no, but he told me to take it home and watch it anyway. Now I'm probably going to fail the kid.

The Littlest Rebel

1935 confederacy propaganda film

Rating: 4/20

Plot: (Warning--Spoilers!) Sweet little Virgie lives with her mother and father on a southern plantation. Her existence is a perfect one--she hosts her own birthday party with her young friends, bosses around the family's slaves and chastises them when they do wrong, and lives it up in the luxuriant comfort of her father's mansion. But then war breaks out and her father must run off to help the southern cause. Virgie has to deal with her father's absence, the burning down of her house, her mother's death, and her father's eventual execution in the only way she knows how--tap dancing and singing!

I had promised somebody that I would watch a Shirley Temple movie by Christmas. I thought it was my first, but she's apparently in Fort Apache. But this is my first time seeing Shirley Temple in her prime, when she was six and tap dancing and dimpling her way into America's hearts. And I've got to say that it was a worse experience than I ever could have imagined. This is a movie seemingly made in a topsy-turvy America, one where the Southerners have the moral high ground; where Northerners are arrogant, cruel brutes; and where slaves are perfectly content with the hand they've been dealt. Maybe the best compliment I can give this movie is that it is Birth of a Nation-esque. Because of the way black and white relationships work in this movie, I don't think it's appropriate for children. There's the stock clown character (a slave, of course, portrayed in a fashion that looks like it's straight off a minstrel show stage) who falls in holes he's dug as traps, contemplates why shoes are called shoes, says the Union can make the weather change because whenever they's around he don't know if it winter or summer out cause he's a-sweatin' and a-shiverin' at the same time, and is told to shut up by multiple characters. And there's something almost shocking about watching Shirley Temple verbally abuse slaves although, admittedly, she seems to be friends with them throughout most of the movie. More offensive to anybody who likes good realistic movie fiction would be scenes in which the soldiers interact with each other, the range of emotions Shirley Temple displays when her mother dies, and the melodrama displayed when Shirley Temple's character shares an apple with Abraham Lincoln. The dated humor will make you cringe rather than laugh, and the dated story might make any intelligent viewer physically ill. But the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae? Five words for ya: Shirley Temple in black face. That's right. Check it:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

2008 piece of galactic poo-poo

Rating: 4/20 (Dylan: 14/20; Emma 15/20; Abbey 19/20)

Plot: It's a time of war in the galaxy as Count Dooky and his Seperatists take on the Jedi and a bunch of clones. Dooky and Emperor Palpatine form an intricate plan involving a plot to kidnap Jabba the Hutt's baby in order to turn the Hutts against the Jedi and gain an edge in the war. Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Anakin's new apprentice (whose name I didn't bother learning) have to save the day.

Crap this is. Hate it I did. Now, keep in mind that I like Star Wars. I liked the originals as a kid, and I liked a lot about the prequels as an adult. I have a Jar Jar Binks tatoo on my scrotum. I make my own Boba Fett t-shirts. I speak fluent Ewok. I've swallowed exactly four Lando Calrissian action figures. I can't have sexual intercourse without first picturing Admiral Ackbar. But this is just bad, and it was bad from the get-go. I'll put it this way--this is a Star Wars movie that actually manages to make Yoda unlikable. The animation looks stupid when nothing exciting is going on and whatever plot there is is being moved forward. The action scenes aren't bad looking at all, but there are so many of them that my eyes started bleeding and then I got yelled at for getting eye blood on the couch. And the fight scenes you really wait for have absolutely no emotional punch at all. They're just there. How can you title a movie after a war and then show only a small percentage of the war that winds up having no impact on the war at all? None of this crap is vital to the Star Wars story. This is a very poorly written, incomplete movie that I wish didn't exist. And if I ever meet an adult who likes this movie, I'm taking a swing at him. I'm not even joking.

Tropic Thunder

2008 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: With a big budget and big-name actors, a director attempts to film the story of a Vietnam War hero. Problems with that budget and with those actors drives the director and some of the crew into the wild to improvise and add some realism to the shoot. Unfortunately, the actors find themselves in the territory of some murderous drug smugglers. Oh, snap!

Me after the first 15 minutes of Tropic Thunder: Ha ha ha! Ha ha ho ha! This might be the funniest movie I've ever seen!

Me from minute 16 on: Oh, no! What happened? This thing's lost steam and has really turned into a mess! Oh, wait. Ha ho! That was sort of funny.

Yeah, I don't know what went wrong. There was a real spunk at the beginning of this and laughs aplenty, the humor somehow managing to work as this stupidly clever hybrid. Or a cleverly stupid. Then it seemed to lose that adventurous spirit and that edge and became sort of like every other comedy like this. Lots of really funny moments peppered throughout, of course, but unfortunately, a lot of script work was needed. Good cast though. And most impressive is maybe that the actors weren't all trying to overdo it, to outfunny each other. This could have been a really obnoxious movie. And I will say this: Robert Downey Jr. might be the best actor alive. He continues to take risks and show off a versatility that's impossible not to appreciate. Maybe it's the drugs?

Age of Gold

1930 surrealist dickery

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Scorpions defend themselves, deteriorating bishops are located, Rome is founded, men fall in love and then leer lustfully at the toes of statues, a son is shot, and they must get the cow out of bed as soon as possible. And what's Jesus doing in there of all places?

I'm not really positive there was a midget in this. The violinist was awfully short. Awfully short! However, even if there's not a midget in this, it's got the right spirit. Midget spirit! Follow-up to An Andalusian Dog is a bit more linear (there's a love story sort of weaving itself in and out of the nonsense) and probably more provocative. Bunuel's obsessions are here--attacks on the bourgeoisie, religion, and government. Alternately funny and disturbing, Age of Gold still works today and I can't imagine how revolutionary it would have seemed at the end of the 1920's. There's enough here to offend the whole family!

Palindromes

2004 artsy-fartsy after-school special

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Aviva is a teenage girl who is sometimes skinny, sometimes fat, sometimes white, and sometimes fat. She really wants to have a baby, and after finding out that the best way to go about that is to have sexual intercourse, she finds a penis belonging to a chubby obnoxious kid and gets busy. And boom-shakalaka, a baby is conceived! Huzzah!Her ultra-religious mother forces her to have an abortion. Later, she runs away, stays with a family of funky Christian musicians with a variety of mental deficiencies and deformities, and hooks up with an old guy. Long before then, however, interest is lost.

Well, I had considered giving this bonus points for audacity and creative effort, but upon completion, I realized that was just crap. There's something that I just can't stand about the work of Todd Solondz, and this one is much worse than the over-hyped Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness and Storytelling. Surely there are less obnoxious ways to show how bleak life sometimes is. Having various actresses playing the protagonist? Borderline fun-poking at the disabled? Shocking twists and shocking turns and shocking shock value? The dipsy soundtrack? The oh-so-clever palindromic structure? Comes across as pretentious, artsy-fartsy crap. I don't really keep track of these things, but I have to believe this movie inspired more actual groans than anything else I've seen this year.

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The Ten

2007 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Ten separate stories, one for each of the Ten Commandments. Narrated by Paul Rudd while struggling with the "adultery" commandment.

Poop! This is nowhere near consistently funny and is probably very close to what the writers of Saturday Night Live would come up with if television could be R-rated after 11:30. Gay jokes, poop jokes, prison rape jokes, ventures into the childishly absurd. There are funny bits, and I'm almost ashamed to say that I did laugh out loud a few times. Now, however, I can't remember what I could have possibly laughed about though. I will say that this will be worth wasting the 90-plus minutes if seeing Winona Ryder have sex with a ventriloquist dummy is something you've always wanted to see. It was definitely on my list! Poop!!! LOL!

Waitress

2007 romantic comedy

Rating: 7/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: A pie-making genius/waitress finds out she's having a baby with a husband she is no longer in love with. So she decides to start sleeping with her ob-gyn. Cause she's a whore. A subplot involves another waitress who sleeps with her boss. She has two good excuses though--her husband is an invalid and she's also a whore. They celebrate their whorish ways by making pies!

This is thematically offensive (the main idea being that if you are unhappy with your marriage, you have the right to sleep with somebody better) and probably even more offensive in its predictability. Not one thing happens in a way that isn't completely expected. There wasn't a laugh to be had, and most of the time I wasn't even sure whether or not it was supposed to be a funny movie. I believe this soap opera is Jen's revenge for being forced to watch The Holy Mountain, but she claims that's not the case. Overhead shots of pies being made were beautiful and, for me at least, sexually arousing. Other than that, nothing at all to see here. And, it should be pointed out, feminists would bash this movie if it was called Waiter and featured males behaving in exactly the same way as the female characters did. I'm just sayin'.