Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: The Impossible Kid of Kung-fu

1982 spy movie

Rating: 6/20 (Fred: 19/20; Carrie: 20/20; Libby: did not finish)

Plot: Mr. X, a criminal who wears what looks to be a KKK hood, is kidnapping millionaires as part of some not-very-elaborate plot to get some money. Only one little secret agent can stop him!

I've decided that my Facebook friends don't really understand my movie rating system. Fred called this the worst movie we've seen to date with the Bad Movie Club, but he gave it a 19/20 because he was enamored with a scene where Weng Weng walks on a tightrope. Carrie, halfway through, announced that she wished she would have just done her homework because that would have been more entertaining than this movie. But she was impressed with a scene where Weng Weng jumps over a chasm on a pocket rocket. I mean, who wouldn't be? Libby was unable to finish. But heck, what are people looking for? You've got 2'9" Weng Weng, the previous Billy Curtis Award winner who I wrote about here, riding that aforementioned sweet ride, beating up on thugs three times his size, taking time to love on the ladies a bit, and performs what I have to believe are his own stunts, most notably that jump across the ditch on his motorbike and a leap of about 150 feet from a building. The plot is so simple that a first grader could have penned it, but it still somehow manages to be confusing. Weng Weng's great in this sequel to For Your Height Only, but nobody else in the movie really belongs in a movie. The worst thing about the film is probably the score which alternates between three songs--one flute-heavy suspenseful piece, one song that sounds a little too close to Mancini's "Pink Panther" thing, and another one. They're as repetitive as the rest of the movie. But, come on! Weng Weng displays action chops that I'd stack against anybody's, and he's got one of the best haircuts that I've ever seen. In fact, the next time I get my haircut, I'm going to ask the to "give me the Weng Weng," and when they look at me in a confused manner, I will hook up a VCR and pop in a tape of Weng Weng's highlights. But there's no way in hell I'm going to allow any of them to operate a scissor after that experience!

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Invasion of the Bee Girls

1973 erotic sci-fi thriller

Rating: 6/20 (Carrie: 5/20; Fred: 3/20; Bryan: 2/20; Libby: 6/20; Ratboy: didn't finish)

Plot: Women are being turned into the titular insect women who lure men into the sack and kill them by sexing them to death. A boring guy investigates.

Anitra Ford is the queen bee girl, so the whole thing has that going for it. My Facebook pals didn't appreciate this one, not even as a good-bad movie, nearly as much as I did. The main gripe was the plot which was pretty straightforward, but the big clue that led the guy to cracking the case--a random mention of the idiom "dropping like flies"--was just about the most ridiculous deux ex machina you'll ever see. There's a fair share of nudity for the pervy crowd, an audience who would get a kick out of the lengthy bee-transformation process that involves melted marshmallow, boobs, and blinking lights. This is cheap and sleazy with a cute librarian and creepy insect-eye effects, and despite terrible pacing and a dopey story, I kind of liked it and would recommend it to bad movie fans. Or fans of The Price Is Right. 

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Zeta One

1969 English psychedelic sci-fi perversity

Rating: 6/20 (Eric: 12/20; Fred: 14/20; Libby: 15/20)

Plot: Alien women from the planet Angvia kidnap earth women in order to repopulate their planet. It's told in flashback to a guy who might be James Bond.

This flick, which has a nearly incomprehensible story, is also called The Love Factor. It's a cheeky and silly sex romp from the groovy late-60s, like a Barberella where nobody involved tried very hard. There are some cool sets and costumes, but there's also a strip poker scene that goes on for about twenty minutes and goes absolutely nowhere. Although I'm not complaining about Yutte Stensgaard at all, don't get me wrong. Kinkiness abounds, but there's not much else going for this mess of a movie. It lacks the style and personality of the aforementioned Barberella and has a story that you feel like you're wading through.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Food of the Gods

1976 science fiction movie

Rating: 6/20 (Jason: 1/2 pi/20 [He's pressing his luck here.]; Fred: 3/20; Libby: 4/20; Carrie: 15/20; Jennifer: stopped watching; Josh: fell asleep)

Plot: Marjoe Gortner finds himself on an island where some mysterious jism is enlarging chickens, hornets, and rats.

This wasn't a great movie. We all seemed to agree that Marjoe Gortner--while not convincing as a football star, an action hero, a hunter, a narrator, or a guy that a woman would have an interest in sexually--brought some energy to the role. The special effects didn't look as bad as I would have predicted. No, the story itself was much worse. I suppose that would be surprising if it's close to the H.G. Wells source material, but I don't read books and wouldn't be the person to ask about that. But those effects--mostly close-ups of animals--weren't bad. The scenes where big animals attacked people were a little on the lame side--all shaky close-ups that managed to be both disappointing and nauseating. Most nauseating and disappointing for Fred was that we didn't get to see more of the  most interesting large animal--the killer chickens. I'd agree that there was potential there and that the rats started to feel redundant by the end of the movie. I would have liked to see more animal variety altogether actually. Surely there were more than three kinds of animals on this island! Actually, now that I reread the conversation we had during this movie, the biggest disappointment for everybody was that a newborn baby didn't eat the ooze and turn into a giant baby. A giant baby vs. giant rat climax would have been a lot better than the silliness that the makers of this came up with. Anyway, this isn't anywhere close to a good movie and it barely passes as a good bad movie. Well, unless you're a huge Marjoe Gortner fan.

My favorite part of this movie had nothing to do with the giant creatures. No, that was a moment when the character named Lorna turned to Marjoe, during a Night of the Living Dead-esque scene where they were fending off rats, and asked him to have sex with her.

Note: I have fears that a reference somebody made to "King Kong's jism" might have offended one of the BM Clubbers. I won't say who made that reference. Unfortunately, the future of the BM Club may be in jeopardy.

The Secret of the Magic Gourd

2007 children's movie

Rating: 6/20 (Jen: 3/20; Emma: 8/20; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Some lazy Chinese kid finds the annoying titular fruit which promises to give him anything he wants. Predictably, it doesn't turn out to be a good thing.


Gooby vs. Gourd--which children's movie magical character is more irritating? I think their fuzzy and flesh respectively neck and neck. Gourd's got a really annoying voice (voiced by somebody named Corbin Bleu which is almost an Arby's sandwich), crosses his arms above his mouth, spews far too many bad puns (as if there's another kind of pun), says things like "What's the diff?", raps poorly, and for reasons that I will never understand no matter how much I try to understand them, was animated with an anus. I think this is my first "anus" on shane-movies.blogspot.com, and I didn't figure it would be a children's movie that was a collaboration between Disney and China that would be responsible for it. It's possible that I was just seeing things, but I'm willing to bet you my youngest child, who actually seemed to like some of this, that this thing had an anus.

Now one of the biggest issues with this is some bad dubbing. It might not be fair to make fun of a movie for bad dubbing, but it's not like some cheapo dvd production company is taking a cheesy kung-fu movie and throwing in a bunch of voices that sound like John Wayne. This is freakin' Disney! And poor voice decisions were made here, not limited to the Corbin Bleu. And the translation? "Whenever you work hard, better is your level of satisfaction" sounds like something Yoda would say.

The movie doesn't just sound bad. The special effects--very plasticky CGI gunkiness--do create some interesting individual visuals, however. The kid running beside his bike while a frog flees on two legs might be my chase scene of the year, and a scene with some flying fish looked kind of cool. But the gourd is rubbery and doesn't always mesh with the setting or other characters as well as he should. And there's this scene featuring a circle of junk food that nearly gave me a seizure. A lot of the effects here are just gross. Dinosaurs, a parade of toys, flying books, a space ship. This thing was just ugly.

This was a family movie night selection. The idea with family movie night was that we would take turns picking movies, but I forced this one on my family because I remember seeing a preview of it (those fish, I think) and thinking it looked pretty good. Whoops. Little did I know that it had a Corbin Bleu in it. Of course, there may be some cultural things that my family and I just don't understand. For example, the main character--some annoying and really unlikable kid--saying "Huh!" in an angry way to end about three conversations. To me, that seemed goofy, but maybe in China it's completely normal. Or the grandmother's obsession with toe nails which didn't work for me as a recurring joke and for some reason seemed to offend Jennifer. Jennifer, by the way, referred to this as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Gourd at one point which distracted us enough to stop paying attention to the movie to come up with more titles. The Maltese Gourd, Indiana Jones and the Gourd of Doom, How to Train Your Gourd, I Spit on Your Gourd. That was more fun than the movie. One more thing: This lost another point because of the song playing over the end credits. I imagined this conversation:

Chinese people: [playing song] Did you like it?
Disney people: God no! That was awful! We can't use that.
Chinese people: I'm sorry, but this is Asia. That is the way we end our movies.
Disney people: Ok, fine. But this is going to cost us a point or two on Shane's blog.

If I were you, I would not watch this movie with your family. I'd watch I Spit on Your Gourd instead. Of course, I am me and I did watch this with my family, so what do I know?

Seriously though. An anus.

Screwball: The Ted Whitfield Story

2010 comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: During the 1994 baseball strike, professional wiffleball legend Ted Whitfield attempts to break the home run single single record of 122. Controversy surrounds him as cheating accusations arise.

This half-assed mockumentary, one that doesn't really follow its own rules and ends up being a half-mockumentary/half-straight-fiction, has a handful of interesting ideas mixed in with all the poop and penis jokes and cheap drug references. I thought having this coincide with the '94 strike and a lot of subtle references to McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds was kind of clever. The blue dinos, a performance-enhancing vitamin, and the diming the bat episode were almost funny. And it was fun hearing a pretty good Harry Caray impersonator. Unfortunately, this wears thin very quickly. It really should have been a nine-minute short on Youtube instead of a feature-length movie. Oh, well. At least I got to use my bestiality tag again. A movie about wiffleball does seem like a promising idea. And this one, though nowhere near a good movie, did inspire me to start up an adult wiffleball league once I recover from my foot injury surgery. Two-man teams, standard rules. So far, I've recruited one other guy, and I know my brother and brother-in-law will play. So I guess you could say that Screwball: The Ted Whitfield Story was an inspiration.

Battletruck (aka Warlords of the Twenty-First Century)

1982 Mad Max rip-off

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Some dudes got the titular vehicle and wants to use it to push everybody else around. A guy with a motorcycle and John Ratzenberger are not about to let that happen!

If this was the movie advertised on the colorful sci-fi-rific poster up there, it would really be something. Unfortunately, this one is just boring, both as a legitimate post-apocalyptic road warrior movie or as a B-movie/unintentional comedy. With the latter, you know it's obviously produced very cheaply and quite possibly sans script, but it's not quite inept enough to be worth the time of a bad movie aficionado. As the former? The colorful moments are few and far between, and the characters are some of the least engaging you're likely to meet. This is definitely a case where the bland title Battletruck fits a lot better than the bitchin' mayhem that could have been Warlords or the Twenty-First Century. The hero's humdrum, so boring that it's impossible to believe he can ever do anything heroic. The leading lady is homely, and the bad guy is more dull than he is evil. The battletruck itself is a monstrosity that is nearly as intimidating as Spielberg's 18-wheel antagonist in Duel. I did like this little creation of John Ratzenberger's, something that looks like it could have come straight from The Cars That Ate Paris:

That little slug bug turned out to be nearly invincible! Roger Corman, of course, produced this movie. It's not one I would recommend. My favorite thing about it is that everytime a character dies, they sound like they're trying to create the new Wilhelm Scream or something.

Bad Teacher

2011 comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: The titular teacher wants new tits, and after her rich fiance dumps her, she's having trouble figuring out a way to afford them on her salary. See, they just don't pay teachers what they deserve. She crushes (that's how the kids use this verb) on a new substitute teacher (although he shouldn't be rich--plot hole) while ignoring the advances of the gym teacher who is crushing on her. When it's announced that the teacher whose students do best on the standardized test will win a financial prize, she begins taking her job more seriously.

I really wondered if this would be a biopic about me, but it's not. I'm not a slut. And look at that--this wholesome family-friendly conservative blog is now likely to feel the wrath of liberals who don't like it when people call women sluts. My blog will be boycotted, and I'll be the second most hated blowhard after Rush Limbaugh. For that reason, I'm taking another point away from this movie. It's a movies-that-ruin-my-reputation-point-deduction rule. This movie wasn't funny at all even though everybody involved (with the possible exception of Jason Segal) is trying really really hard to make it work. Timberlake is intentionally miscast, and Phyllis from The Office makes a fool of herself. Things are more awkward and silly than humorous. Other than a car wash scene that was almost as magical as the one in Cool Hand Luke but that really made me wonder if I was watching a Carl's Jr. commercial, there's not much to see here. No, it's not as offensive to my profession (until somebody hires me to do something else, that is--if you're reading, just ask for my resume!) as Waiting for Superman, but it is offensive enough. And you just keep waiting for the character to change or learn a lesson because that's what happens in all stupid movies like this, but that doesn't happen either. And that might be just as bothersome.

Shane trivia: Even though this isn't a biopic based on my life and career, I did catch a few lines that I have uttered before.

"Adios, bitches!"
"Hey, zip your shit!"
"OK, we all know these tests are gay."

I've used all of those at one point. Again, if you're interested in hiring me, let me know in the comments below. I'm willing to do anything as long as it doesn't involve a lot of hard work.

Fantasy Mission Force

1982 action movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: It's World War II, and the Japanese, while attempting to take over the world, have already captured the leaders of France, Germany, England, and America. The latter, it should be mentioned, is Abraham Lincoln. Officials get together to find somebody who can save them and decide that Lieutenant Don Wen is their man. Rejected heroes: "Snake" Plissken, James Bond (the Roger Moore one, if you care), and Rocky Balboa who is not suitable for military action. Wen assembles a ragtag crew to save the world.

Lots of weirdness here with varying degrees of entertainment value. First, if you really need a coherent plot with your action movies, you've just got to avoid this one. It's episodic, and none of the individual episodes really go together in a way that makes sense. Not only that, the individual scenes don't really make much sense on their own. Not to say that this doesn't entertain because bits and pieces of it manage to do just that. You get a musical number, some Benny Hill speeded-up weirdness, a bunch of masked flying Amazon women wielding ribbons, Jackie Chan fighting while holding a chicken, some hopping zombie things, disembodied hands and ghost women in a haunted house, and some Nazi Japanese riding on hoopties that look like they're straight out of a post-apocalyptic action flick. I expected Mel Gibson to waltz in and demand gasoline or something. Almost all of the humor in this falls completely flat, and the characters aren't really interesting at all. Except one: Brigitte Lin's (Bride with White Hair) great as Lily, all in leather and thigh-high boots, winning drinking contests like Indiana Jones' girlfriend and waxing acrobatically. She's fun to watch, as is a fight sequence with Jackie Chan (not really the star of this, by the way) at the end. Ultimately, this one is just too confusing and goofy to be completely entertaining. I'm also pretty positive that this isn't really all that historically accurate either.

Yongary, Monster from the Deep

1967 monster movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Yongary, a monster from the deep, is awakened and goes on a rampage, inspiring a video game with the same name. Rampage. The South Korean people do their best impression of scared Japanese people and flee before trying to fight the thing with toy tanks. [SPOILER ALERT!] And itching powder.

I thought I'd go ahead and make it a trifecta of Korean monster movies since nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit more than Korean monster movies. This baby's from South Korean, and nobody, as far as I know, was kidnapped and ordered to make this movie. Nope, somebody made Yongary on his own which, in a way, is even sadder. This is a really cheap production, presumably because South Korea is poor. I can understand a production company not being able to afford a real rocket, or even a realistic rocket, but to not be able to afford a real sky? The miniatures in this are charming. My favorite thing about those is how there are some things that don't even need to be fake that for some reason still are. I guess they wanted everything to look fake. I'm not sure which is worse actually--the miniatures or the big lizard. Actually, maybe things are really made like that in South Korea, so I'm not even sure I can knock the miniatures, but that Yongary needs to eat more. He's very rubbery and way too skinny and for most for the majority of the movie, he shows no personality at all. Until a scene where he starts dancing that is. I'm not sure what's going on there. I'm also not real sure what was going on with the editing in some of these scenes. There's one where you see a blue jeep driving along and then it cuts to one of the passengers making a face. Then, you hear a screeching tire sound before the vehicle makes a fiery tumble down a cliff. And then you hear the screeching tire sound again. Another weird scene--at about the 51 minute mark a character says his line twice, almost like they cut and reshot that part and forgot to remove one of them. I can forgive all that though, especially since I knew exactly what I was getting into with an especially cheap rubber monster movie. What I can't forgive is the child actor in this one, a kid who had me screaming at my screen, "C'mon, Yongary! Get him! Get that little bastard!" I don't have any tolerance when it comes to bad child acting anyway, but this kid was especially unpleasant. Also bothersome [SPOILER ALERT!]: a ridiculous and silly ending in which itching powder of all things does the monster from the deep in. Itching powder? Come on! Not only itching powder though. No, this is itching powder that apparently leads to rectal bleeding. Oh, well. At least it made the kid sad for a while. Not long though because he was back to grinning like a moron a few seconds later. I would have liked to have seen more of the filthy "Repent, you sinners!" guy, by the way. If there's a sequel to this silliness, he should be given a more prominent role.

I Spit on Your Grave

1978 feminist movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: A writer retreats to the woods to work on a novel but is repeatedly assaulted and abused by four thugs. After they rape and humiliate her, three-fourths of them think she's been left for dead. Unfortunately for them, she's still alive. And pissed!

Trashy. There's a thin line, and the prolonged scenes of rapin' and killin' in this throw it firmly in the trashy category. The lack of budget isn't really a problem; as a matter of fact, if anything, it adds to the tension. So does the complete lack of music, though I suspect that it's because the makers of this couldn't afford any music or just forgot that movies are supposed to have music. This is a movie in two halves. The degradation of the protagonist goes on and on in the first half. Her story of revenge takes up the second, and the reason it didn't work for me is likely because the violence seems so unrealistic compared to what happened to her in that first half. I bet you a dollar, by the way, that I don't ever see the remake of this one.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club (The Lost Episodes): Matrix Revolutions

2003 trilogy conclusion

Rating: 6/20

Plot: I don't know. I never really could figure these movies out.

Here's the scoop, Betty Boop. This was mislabeled in the TV Guide, and I sat down on the Urine Couch expecting to see the middle movie of the Matrix trilogy--Matrix Retarded--but got this instead. And this might be one of the most boring movies ever made. At least the second movie, as bad as it is, has a pair of albinos in it. This one has a lot of talking, a bunch of flying, some lurking, a lot more talking, a gratuitous sex scene, a handful of scenes from the first movie, some seemingly endless third world country ritual party scene, and more talking. A lot of the special effects remind me of some of the science fiction stuff you can catch on cable television. I wonder if any fan of the first movie was really happy with the way this trilogy concluded. I've probably said it before, and I'll say it again: The two sequels of The Matrix managed to make me dislike The Matrix.

Full disclosure: I remember sitting down to watch this on the Urine Couch, but I can almost guarantee it led to me getting paid for a 2+ hour nap.

FINAL Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Kindergarten Cop

1990 action comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: A cop has to pose as a kindergarten teacher in order to find a drug dealer. It's just like a Fast and the Furious movie except with children replacing the cars.

It's my final Urine Couch AM Movie Club selection, and it makes me a little sad. I don't know what Gene Siskel's ghost is going to do without me actually. Probably try to find a transvestite, drug dealer, trucker, or whore or some combination of those to sit in the lobby and watch movies with.

First off, Arnold's performance in this is one of the worst "big name" performances ever. It's got to be. He stumbles his way through this one, fitting into a comedy like seven ham hocks trying to fit into a latex glove. It's awkward and messy! And I'm not sure who was in charge of his wardrobe, but I'd guess that person never worked in Hollywood again. Or I could be wrong and the various outfits he wore in this were part of the comedy. He starts the thing in this glasses/stubble/trenchcoat ensemble that, along with his size, made him stand out way too much for an undercover cop. Later, he's wearing these jeans that are the oddest color of pant that I believe I've ever seen. He's dressed up at one point as a farmer, singing through "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" with ukulele accompaniment, and yes, that's as wonderful as it sounds. But that's not the most ridiculous outfit they even put him in! No, that would have to be the V-neck with gray sweatpants that made it completely obvious that Arnold Swarzenegger has never actually been a real person. As ridiculous as his wardrobe makes him look, his acting is what makes him aggressively ridiculous. And I'll say it again--this has to be right up there with the worst acting performances of all time. He spends the majority of the movie doing this actually:

That's a face that 99.9% of people just can't make. And I guess that's something. You know how all those 80's action movies gave Arnold those great one-liners? This has all kinds of them! My favorites:

"I'm the party pooper." Come on. That's classic.

"I'm the new kindergarten teacher." You have to read that with the same intonation he used with "I'll be back."

"It's not a tumor. It's not a tumor at all!"
"Good. Now we are having fun." (Picture him with a ferret for this one.)
"What's that? It's a fire alarm! Aaahh!"
"Hi, kids! I'm back." (One of the more touching moments in the movie. What am I saying? One of the most touching moments in movie history!)

You also get to see Arnold threaten children comically, participate in a two-legged race, and act all tough in some scenes where this transforms from a comedy to what seems to be the worst television cop drama of all time. He throws down hard, too, like he's making up for all the time lost shooting those scenes with the kids. He is, after all, the party pooper. Speaking of those kids, they act circles around him. The kids are a lot funnier in this than Arnold, especially when given a chance to improvise. The scripted stuff is lousy though. One kid gets a recurring line that somebody should have been shot for writing--"Boys have a penis; girls have a vagina." The second time the kid says it, he finishes it with a flourish of unnatural arm pumps that Arnold probably taught him between scenes. That kid's name is Miko Hughes, and shane-movies aficionados will be interested to know that he was Billy Robberson in Cops and Robbersons, a movie I've never actually seen. Don't be surprised if you see Miko Hughes' name turn up on my end-of-the-year post. I'm also fond of this bit of dialogue:

"He's a poo-poo head."
"He's a poo-poo face."
"Yeah, he's a cocka poo-poo."

The bad guy's got a ponytail. Did I not mention that? This movie also has one of the most exciting action sequences I've ever seen. I don't want to give too much away, but there's a ferret bite, a gunshot, an Arnold slow-motion dive for a gun, another gunshot, and more exaggerated motions than you'd see if you were watching a pair of mimes.

Funny Man

1994 horror-comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Max beats Christopher Lee in a poker game and wins himself a mansion inhabited by a mischievous guy wearing a rubber mask and a ridiculous codpiece. The titular funny man begins harassing the new owner and his family and some random hitchhikers, including Velma and a black Yoko Ono, who show up.

First off, Christopher Lee's name might be on top of the poster, but he's in this movie for about five total minutes. So if you're going to check this out because you're some kind of weird Christopher Lee completist, be warned. The bulk of Christopher Lee's work is at the beginning during a poker game, my favorite part of the movie. Not only did it have a line that is one of my favorite things to say at the poker table ("Shit or get off the pot."), there was a bit of dialogue that I'm going to start saying in every single poker game I find myself in--"I've seen amputees with better hands than this." In my opinion, by the way, Max gets what he deserves in this movie because he slow-rolls Christopher Lee in the hand where he wins the house, and you just don't slow-roll Christopher Lee. The jester demon thing that inhabits the house is irritating. I did like his entrance--all loud percussive music ending in a thumbs-up of all things. That was pretty awesome. Funny Man isn't funny at all which makes the title not only misleading but an outright lie. He urinates on a van and plays soccer with a severed head, so sure he's the type of troll-faced demon jester you'd want to have at your parties, but he's more obnoxious than he is funny. And he repeatedly breaks the fourth wall which I'm sure the makers of Funny Man think is clever. The violent gags probably wouldn't please fans of the genre, although I did sort of enjoy seeing the character dressed as Scooby Doo's Velma get hers. The story seems pieced together, just gag stapled to gaggy gag, choppy and poorly paced.

Zookeeper

2011 talking animal and talking Kevin James movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: The titular zookeeper is really good at his job, but he's not so good at love. Luckily, the animals he's been so good to at the zoo are willing to help him attract the attention of his dream girl. But will he like the guy he has to become in order to make that happen?

I think movies with Kevin James in them are become exponentially painful. This one's got talking zoo animals, ones slightly less humorous than the ones in Madagascar. Nick Nolte's a gorilla, Cher's a girl lion, Sylvester Stallone's a boy lion, and Judd Apatow--a guy with nothing else to do?--is an elephant. Adam Sandler gives one of the most annoying voice performances you'll ever hear, and Don Rickles is a frog. And I know what you're thinking--man, that's quite the collection of comedic geniuses! So you'd think one of them would stop everything during the recording session and give the director a heads-up. "Hey, this isn't very funny at all. And I should know because I'm Sylvester Stallone and/or Cher!" The increasingly ubiquitous (wait a second--not sure something can be increasingly ubiquitous) Ken Jeong's in this, too. Hollywood seems to be doing it's best to find this guy things to do. Same with Kevin James. Look, it seems like he's a nice guy and all, and I don't mind nice guys doing well for themselves. But when King of Queens ended, I just didn't think he had that "it" that would make it possible for him to carry a movie. So it's no surprise that he can't. Hollywood writers just keep giving this guy different jobs (zookeeper, mall cop, mailman, butcher, baker, candlestick maker), throwing a girl (or two) into the script, and hoping a comedy erupts. There's a lot of fat-guy-running-into-things slapstick if that's your bag, but I couldn't find a single laugh in this. And when the zookeeper gets his girl (no, that's not the end; the end is more predictable than that), things get entirely too preposterous. The animal-talking effects look stupid, and there's the most egregious product placement I've ever seen. At one point, the movie's plot steps aside to make room for a T.G.I. Fridays commercial.

Watched this at school with 7th graders. They laughed a couple times, but didn't seem to like it very much either. I didn't have time to get their ratings.

Quick, readers--can you think of a memorable Kevin James moment?

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Predators

2010 sequel

Rating: 6/20

Plot: The titular alien things get tired of fighting against King Kong or whoever the studio responsible for these predator movies had them fighting in the last movie and decide to do a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the first movie (Predator) that had only a single alien thing (the titular Predator) but a real blockbuster action hero (Arnold Swarzeneggar). It's highly-trained humans with ludicrous weapons trying to survive being hunted by the predators on the latter's home planet.

After a sharp in-medias-res intro in which Brody spills from the sky, this turns into a one-note predictable actioner that wears out its welcome long before the black character dies. Well, the first black character. The biggest problem is that I can't buy Adrian Brody as an action hero. He's got a silly looking gun that looks like something I could buy at a Big 'n' Tall kiddy toy store and looks like the nerdy kid down the street who invited the neighborhood kids over to play army. But they only show up because his mother is kind of hot and has popsicles. The nice popsicles, too--not those cheap things that you have to suck out of the plastic tubes. Brody adopts this tough guy grizzly voice that makes it clear he spent a little money on Christian Bale's "How to Almost Ruin a Movie Using Only a Ridiculous Voice" set of instructional dvd's. The other characters--the guy from Machete (Trejo) since people who make movies like this think that including somebody like that will automatically make a movie better, some chick who might have been on Lost, and a bunch of other stock characters. Oh, and Laurence Fishburne who plays the same kind of guy he always does. I'm sure the poorly written dialogue doesn't help, but Fishburne's performance really stinks in this. He did give me a pretty sweet pick-up line if Jennifer ever decides to leave me and forces me to be a predator again myself. All I would need to do in my hunt for Wife #2 would be to saunter over to a pretty lady at a discotheque or fast food restaurant and say (in my most Fishburney cadence): "Smelled you since you got here." Yeah, I know. If I had female readers, they'd be melting right about now. This has constant music burbling below the surface, and almost every scene is assembled with this artificial suspense. But almost every scene seems extraneous since this movie never really goes anywhere. To illustrate, there's a scene with a bunch of booby traps (none which work) which seems to be the story's way of showing the audience that something might possibly happen at some point in the movie. There's a climactic fight scene where you can barely tell what's going on because there's a glare on the television from the motel lobby lights, but I honestly didn't even care what was going on at that point. I was just hoping that Brody would somehow use his nose to defeat the predators. And don't get me started on the CGI-porcupine monkeys. I think this set special effects back ten years or so.

Most ludicrous line: A character named Stans says that when they make it back home, he can't wait to do a bunch of cocaine and rape women. "I'll be like, what time is it? Five o'clock? Damn. Time to rape me some fine bitches." See, maybe it's just jealousy, but I'm really bugged that somebody is making money writing that crap.

Gene Siskel's ghost, by the way, liked this a lot more than I did. Then again, there's a guy who enjoyed raping bitches in his spare time, so he probably connected more with the characters than I did.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Seed of Chucky

2004 horror-comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Spawn of demented doll Chucky escapes from the oppressive control of a faux-ventriloquist and brings his parents back to life. They go on a murderous rampage in their attempts to use actress Jennifer Tilly to become human beings.

The worse the movie, the stronger the smell of urine from the couch. This viewing was interrupted three times--twice by customers and once when I had to chase away a prostitute. As I recall, the original Chucky movie was a pretty straight horror movie. This abandons horror altogether and goes straight for laughs. Sure you've got decapitation, victims set on fire, and stabbing, but the tone is a sickly humorous one. It's not good humor though, just a few steps from Scary Movie. I'm not sure what's happened with Jennifer Tilly's career. Roughly three-fourths of this movie just seems to be an excuse to show off her rather glorious cleavage. John Waters makes an appearance as a paparazzo and at one point gets to say "A masturbating midget!" when he peeping-Toms at Tilly's home and spots, you guessed it, Chucky enthusiastically pleasuring himself. Oh, I may have neglected to mention it, but Tilly actually does play herself in this. She's also the voice of Tiffany, bride of Chucky. She's obviously having some fun with the roles. Brad Dourif does the voice of Chucky, and he does it with vigor. There's also a cute nod to Ed Wood with the parents arguing whether or not the titular seed (bet you didn't think I'd work that in!) should be named Glen or Glenda. I did like the effects to make the dolls move around, and I did laugh during a scene where one of them was running. I guess I have to give the makers of this some credit. Seed of Chucky doesn't pretend to be anything that it isn't. What it is just isn't very good though.

Tragically, rapper Redman passed away during the filming of Seed of Chucky.

Step Brothers

2008 "comedy"

Rating: 6/20 (Anonymous: 4/20; Pump or Astro-Pretzel: 3/20)

Plot: A couple unemployed middle-aged good-for-absolutely-nothing jackasses become the titular step-brothers after their parents hook up at a convention and later marry. Initially, they can't stand each other, but once they realize they have a lot in common, like their shared affinity for night vision goggles, they become friends. But their shared interests and attempts to start their own company threaten to tear the happy newlyweds apart.

I wanted to watch In the Line of Fire, but my step brother wanted to watch this instead. We fought over that for a while--rolling around on the floor, poking eyes, farting on each other, giving wedgies, kicking nutsacks, etc.--before realizing that we had a love of Mary Steenburgen in common. Then, we high-fived each other awkwardly, and he broke his finger. And that story, ladies and gentlemen, is just as clever as the one in the movie Step Brothers. Attempting to recapture the magic of Talladega Nights, a movie I've been told is a classic, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly stupid it up in this one that reminds me simultaneously of a whole bunch of predictable 80's crap and every single other Will Ferrell movie I've ever seen. There's not a single laugh to be had in this thing. It fits right in with that disturbing trend in modern comedies where lazy writers assume that creating really uncomfortable situations for characters who could never actually exist is automatically going to be funny. Awkward is not a synonym for hilarious. I should know because I looked it up, and I'm an English teacher.

It took me a while to remember it, but I made a promise around Christmas that I would not have another Will Ferrell movie on this blog. See? I'm really sorry that my own step brother made me break that promise. Maybe I'll fart on him later.

Dancing Outlaw

1991 documentary

Rating: 6/20 (Mark: 4/20; Amy: ?/20)

Plot: Documentary about Appalachian mountain dancing fiend Jesco White.

My brother promised me a "documentary surprise" and then popped this in the VCR. Dancing Outlaw is normally the sort of thing I'd get a kick out of, but I couldn't understand a single word any of these people said. After the initial "What the hell?" reaction during a scene where Jesco is doing his mountain tap-dancing thing against a backdrop of filthy nature in the proximity of what must be the white trash capital of the world, there's really very little to see here and even less to enjoy. The biggest problem is that this could have been advertised as the type of film that finds something beautiful in our ugly world, Jesco being a kind of diamond in the rough. Instead, Jesco isn't a very likable or talented guy, and he really contributes to the ugliness as he yells incoherently at his wife or pisses on the legacy left behind by his more-talented father. This is documentary trash. Thanks, Mark!

The Incredible Melting Man

1977 50's B-movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Astronaut Steve West is the only member of his crew to survive a mission to Saturn. Apparently, the sun's rays passing through the rings of Saturn is hazardous to astronauts. Steve wakes up covered in bandages in a hospital, and when he removes them, he discovers that he's melting, like a mound of M&M's or a giant raisin in the sun. Upset that he now could easily win first prize in a fecal matter costume contest, he's filled with rage and a hunger for human flesh. A gelatinous hulk, he chases nurses, decapitates a fisherman, and snacks on the elderly. Somebody needs to stop him; unfortunately, he gets stronger as he melts! Oh, snap!

Rich Baker's special effects succeed in making the titular man into an incredible goopy and disgusting mass of sewage. He's gross, and unlike a lot of very similar movies, you get to see lots of him from beginning to end. And parts of him. I like when his friend, during a search for him, stumbles across what looks to be some foliage that somebody vomited on and says, "Oh, my God. It's Steve's ear." There's not a lot of scary here; there's hardly a story actually. It's fun enough though. I mean, it's almost impossible not to love a scene where a fisherman's head floats down a stream indefinitely. Or a scene with a nurse catching a glimpse of the melting man, screaming, and running indefinitely down a gigantic hallway in slow motion before crashing through a glass door even though there was nothing to suggest the melting man was even pursuing her. But he climbs through the same door seconds later anyway. Or how about the classic line--"He more he melts the stronger he gets!" What? I'm not a scientist or anything, but I'm fairly positive that makes no sense. The soundtrack was interesting enough, ranging from noises that sound like a three year old dicking around with a synthesizer to something that sounds like futuristic hoe-down music. For whatever reason, it makes me happy that this movie was released in 1977. Like swimming, you shouldn't watch this movie after eating. Or before eating. Or while eating.

Jonathan Demme is in this movie.