Julie and Jack

2003 romantic drama

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Jack, struggling in love and microchip sales, meets Julie online and falls madly in love with her. Julie seems to love him as well, but she will only meet him in some virtual reality world and refuses to tell him anything about her past. He decides to investigate.

As you can tell from the professionally-made poster up there, this is from James Nguyen, the director of the Birdemic movies. This had been on my radar for a while, but I was waiting around for the Bad Movie Club members to watch it with me. I've given up on a lot of things lately, and my Bad Movie Club friends are just one of those things.

This starts as poorly as any movie I can remember with a shot of clouds and a pan flute. There's a promise of a special appearance by Tippi Hedren, and knowing that this is what Tippi Hedren's career has become is enough to make anybody miserable.

This doesn't have the abysmal special effects or environment propaganda to make this is special as Birdemic, but I think anybody who's seen that would know this was a Nguyen production without being told that. Characters say lines that seem to have been written by somebody who learned English from watching soap operas. Scenes are strangely paced. Long chunks of movie pass by without anything happening at all. There are three or four sales meetings, some containing applause.

If Tarantino has a thing for feet, Nguyen obviously has a thing for sales. The repeated motif making a connection between capitalism and sex is almost alarming. Of course, the character who brings that up, Jack's friend Mark, is a total dick, a wannabe Casanova who has two of the most awkward examples of coitus interruptus you're likely to see in a movie. He's played by Will Springhorn with what might be the worst performance in this although the guy who plays Bill (Lee Boren) gives him a run for his money. Bill, also a dick, is Mark's rival at work, and he steals every single scene that he's in. Well, he steals it and sets it on fire and pees on it. That feels more accurate. Most of the performances aren't actually that bad. The guy who plays Jack--Justin Kunkle--is trying very very hard. His career, by the way, went nowhere. He was in a couple of shorts and no other feature-length film.

This movie might break the record for having the most scenes that don't actually need to be in the movie. Of this movie's 90 minutes, I'd say about 80 of them aren't really necessary. It takes about 35 minutes for the movie to even find a real plot. About 25 minutes is taken up by a dating montage that shows off the sights of San Francisco. If Birdemic was Nguyen's clumsy homage to Hitchcock's Birds, this is quite obviously his Vertigo. Most of the movie has Jack running around like either a detective or a stalker, depending on your perspective.

My favorite moments:

--a really awkward church service
--anything with Bill
--a print-out at a college party that says Alpha Pi but has the word Alpha and the symbol for Pi

If you laugh at how this movie ends, you should feel very bad about yourself as a human being.

Ghosthouse

1988 ghosthouse movie

Rating: 7/20 (Dylan: 6/20)

Plot: A guy with a ham radio hears something creepy, and he and his girlfriend decide to investigate. They befriend some other morons and try to survive. . .dramatic pause. . .the ghosthouse.

This would probably rate a 4/5 on the bad movie scale. It's more entertaining than Geostorm could ever hope to be!

This is from director Umberto Lenzi, but he used the pseudonym Humphrey Humbert for this one. I'm not sure if that name is funny or if I'm just kind of an idiot. Lenzi also directed movies as Humphrey Longan, Humphrey Milestone, and Hank Milestone.

Things start with a murder, and then there's a little girl with a clown doll or sometimes just the clown doll, and then there's a bunch of violence as the kids try to figure out what's going on. Good luck, kids, because I don't think this makes a lick of sense!

If you like gore, Ghosthouse has a little bit. Characters you won't care about are killed with axes, mirrors, fan blades, hammers, a guillotine, and milk. To be honest, the milk doesn't actually kill off the character. He survives the milk. A repetitive musical motif that sounds like carnival music mixed with backwards goat giggling gets more ridiculous the more it pops up. I could never quite be sure if the characters were hearing that or not.

Lenzi successfully creates a creepy vibe in some scenes, but it's impossible to maintain with a story this silly and with performances this poor. It's probably not the kids' fault as they have very few lines that sound like things actual human beings would say. The female characters do scream adequately. I'll give them that. A couple side characters are really great. Willy M. Moon plays a hitchhiker who pops into the movie for no reason and then pops in a little later on, also for no reason. He's a prankster, and his use of a skeleton arm at least made me laugh if nobody else seemed to appreciate it. Hernest Mc. Kimnoro plays a custodian at the cemetery, and he's really terrific. I think Lenzi must have actually found the guy at the cemetery. Sadly, this is his only performance.

This includes a shocking twist ending that made my son and me giggle.

Geostorm

2017 disaster movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Somebody starts using our weather-controlling satellites for nefarious purposes, and it's up to two nondescript action heroes to stop them.

I'm trying to increase this blog's popularity by watching more current blockbusters and less 60s films from countries that no longer exist. If well-written reviews of big-budget action movies that have been out less than a week don't get me more views, I don't know what will!

I may have irritated the people sitting behind me because I laughed inappropriately a few times.

Throw all logic out the window when you see this. In fact, you might want to watch this in the most illogical way possible. Put your pants over your face, or sit "Indian style" on the theater seat while facing the wrong direction and shovel popcorn down the back of your shirt. Or leave your seat during one of the many action-packed scenes in Geostorm (like the one where there's hail or maybe the one where there's lightning or maybe the one where there's lots of water or maybe the one where there's explosions or maybe the one where there's screaming or maybe the one where there's punching) and walk up to another theater patron and slap him or her across the face as fiercely as you can. That person will likely say, "What the hell? Why did you do that?" Answer: "Well, why did they do THAT?" and point at the screen. And then slap the person a second time. They'll understand.

As I usually do, I went to the theater with a water bottle shoved down the front of my pants. First, I need to stay hydrated for a movie like Geostorm, and I'm not paying movie theater prices for a beverage. Second, it's got to help my chances with the ladies, right? Anyway, the story of me sneaking a water bottle into the movie theater would probably be more entertaining than much of what happened in this movie.

Every time one of the character said the title of this movie, I want to stand up on my theater seat, grab my crotch, and scream, "Fuck yeah!" I refrained. And that's because I've grown as a human being.

I blame the terrorists. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs, dirty bombs, biological warfare, guns, trucks, or whatever else we've heard about on the news, I think our enemies are finally trying to damage us where it really counts--our intellect. Their weapons? Hollywood action movie cliches and an insane abandoning of logic! And boring characters. I could spoil the entire movie for you right now, but you're going to know exactly who the bad guys are no matter how hard the writers of this try to fool you, exactly who's going to live to see the end of the movie, and exactly who's going to be hugging whom while blandly dramatic music plays.

Laugh #1: The second time a character said "Geostorm!"
Laugh #2: A scene where a guy gets hit by a car.
Laugh #3: When the president answers a question asked by Ed Harris's character.
Laugh #4: I can't tell you because it would give away that Gerald Butler's character survives to see the end of this movie even though there's no way he should have survived.

You know what I thought was surprisingly bad, by the way? The special effects? The space station stuff looked pretty good, but the disaster-movie stuff looked pretty awful. Of course, I'm not sure how they could make buildings falling over like dominoes ever look realistic since I don't think that could actually happen, but I still expected them to at least get the effects right. Disaster movies from ten or even twenty years ago look just as realistic as this one. Come on, Gerald Butler! You can do better than that!

Note: I'm not 100% sure Gerald Butler had anything to do with this movies CGI destruction effects.

You know what the worst thing about this movie is? I think people are going to connect climate change, something that is very real and very scary, to this movie and use it to disprove that there's any such thing. I'll bring climate change up, and somebody is going to say, "Whatever, libtard snowflake! You really think geostorms could actually happen?" And I'll tell you what. If that happens, I'm going straight for the crotch!

You may be asking yourself, "Why did you even go to the theater to see this movie, Shane? You should have known that you wouldn't have liked this one."

My reply: Why the hell do I do anything that I do? I'm happy with the decisions that I'm making in my life, and I'd rather you not question them.

That, friends, was an incredibly well-written review.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (maybe The Outrageous Baron Munchausen)

1962 fantasy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Munchausen gains a moon man sidekick who becomes his romantic rival as they save a princess.

This was recommended by my friend Eric, a guy who apparently knows my movie tastes quite well. I think I'm going to have to replace Silent Saturday with Czech Saturday next year, by the way. What do you think of that idea?

I just laughed at how I asked a question to an audience I know doesn't exist. I might as well have just shouted at my bookshelf.

This whimsical tale of the fantastical Munchausen sure is a lot of fun. There's some fun silent-era humor, a mix of live action with different animation styles and puppets, and loads of surreal visuals. This starts by showing evolution--footprints to footprints and a frog morphing into a rocket--before taking us to a ludicrous moon inhabited by Cyrano de Bergerac and some guys in top hats. I had a smile immediately, and it didn't let up with the animation mash-up--some Python-esque and some that reminded me a bit of Melies. I like seeing flesh 'n' blood characters walking around in hand-drawn worlds, and when puppets are added, you know I'm probably going to end up aroused. I think the more quaint the special effects in this, the more I loved what I was seeing. I enjoyed the music, too, always quirky and frequently surprising.

After a cool ship pulled by pegai (the plural of pegasus--I looked it up), a floating spacesuit, dancing grapes, a 3-handed chess opponent, a red strobe-lit bit of swashbuckling, lots and lots of red velvet smoke, a puppet vulture knocking over a horse skeleton, invisible telescopes, a pipe-smoking ship, a "theater of destruction," a shot of moonlight shining on a boat, sea monster puppets, harpoon penetration, a line of bouncing umbrellas, that bird from The Giant Claw, a great underwater sequence including a seahorse ride, the aquatic charms of mermaids, cannonball travel, an animated history of our hero's romantic exploits, the Mona Lisa's posterior, impotent cannons, and a floating doffed hat, it all ends much, much too soon. I don't know the director, Karel Zeman, but I'm going to be seeing a lot of his stuff next year when I start up Czech Saturdays.

Also--I'm pretty sure this movie is actually about something. The princess at one corner of a love triangle that sort of develops has to choose between science and whimsy and fantasy. I think there's some kind of point being made. I don't know if I agree with her decision or not, but perhaps we can discuss that in the comments.

Ha! Now I've not only suggested that somebody might leave me a comment but I've also made the assumption that somebody who reads my blog would actually want to talk about this movie.

Here's another poster since the one above is creased:

Silent Saturday: A Cottage on Dartmoor

1929 silent drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: After a guy escapes from jail and winds up in some woman's house, a flashback shows how their encounter isn't exactly a chance one.

This is also called Escape from Dartmoor apparently.

I don't know a lot about silent movies from England unless they're the couple I've seen from Alfred Hitchcock. This is a late silent movie and probably as good or better than almost every talkie that came out in 1929. At the top of my head, I can't think of any movies I've seen from 1929.

OK, I got sidetracked and looked up movies from 1929. Man with a Movie Camera, Pandora's Box, Un Chien Andalou, and Diary of a Lost Girl are all superior silent movies, and I didn't skim across any movies with sound that I've seen except Cocoanuts, and that's not a very good Marx Brothers movie at all. But I digress.

I'll say this--I love how leafless trees look in black and white movies. There are quite a few really nice shots in this. There are great angles--and one slightly experimental moment--in a scene where there's a razor and a throat. That's probably a spoiler. I also loved the way a dizzying sequence in a theater was edited, a great and wild clash of visuals and sound. That scene, like a few others in this, was way too long though. This movie should have clocked in at just over an hour instead of the 90 minutes it was. I can forgive the length, however, because of the scarcity of intertitles. The first doesn't show up until around the 7-minute mark (just the word "Joe!"), and the story is told adequately without any words.

"Joe" is played by Uno Henning, a guy who would find the playing of the popular card game he shares a name with to be really confusing. Every time somebody would be down to one card, they'd say "Uno" and he'd have to say "What?" I'd rather watch that than Cocoanuts again, I think. Henning's performance in this is really good if "looking rapey in most of his scenes" qualifies as being really good.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

2017 comedic drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A father's three children come together to celebrate his sculpting career.

If you knew going in that the Meyerowitz patriarch was a failed artist and that his trio of children didn't think he was a great father, you could almost write this Noah Baumbach movie in your head before you see it. That doesn't make it any less entertaining though. Of course, it's that kind of entertainment you feel a little guilty about, like you're laughing at characters rather than laughing with them. Or even at characters who would never in a million years think they're being laughed at. This is the broken kind of family of creatives that you'd expect from Baumbach, and you couldn't ask for a better ensemble cast to bring them to life. Dustin Hoffman is Dustin Hoffman, a guy who just kind of shows up at this stage of his career because he's really not got much to prove. He still shows here that he can make material that is already pretty good just a little bit better. Ben Stiller's character isn't far removed from his role in The Royal Tenenbaums, in fact very likely a distant cousin, and I almost always enjoy seeing Stiller playing these characters who are in a constant state of smolder. Characters walking around with hunched shoulders and always just on the edge are just the types of characters he plays best. Adam Sandler proves once again that he's not a complete joke. There were times in this where his performance actually touched me a little bit, and one of those might have even been when he was singing a goofy song. Elizabeth Marvel is great as the daughter even though her character is mostly asked to stand out of the way and let the guys do their thing. And Emma Thompson's also really good, especially at tricking me into thinking she's Shelley Long.

This might be the best Netflix movie I've seen. It's also very likely Adam Sandler's best movie since Punch-Drunk Love although it's unfair for me to speculate on that because I haven't seen too many of them. Maybe it's time I do an Adam Sandler Fest and fill in those gaps in my movie education.

Baumbach gives Stroszek a shout-out in this one, by the way.

Oh, one more thing. Adam Driver is in this. At this point, I should probably just tell you when he's not in a movie.

Possession

1981 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A man tries to put his marriage back together but can't because his wife is sleeping with an octopus.

Going in, I knew this movie was going to be strange, but I thought it was just going to be because of the octopus sex scene. The first half of the movie, aside from some very strange overacting by everybody involved and especially Sam Neill, is a fairly normal domestic drama. It's a domestic drama turned up to 11 or 12, but it's still pedestrian enough. Once that octopus comes in and the characters start sawing at themselves with a meat cutter, things get very strange and never let up.

Director Andrzej Zulawski was going through his own divorce as he made this, and you can't help but wonder how much of this is intensely personal. At the same time, I wondered if this was actually a dark comedy. A fight scene filled with snarling and slapping and ending with the wife stepping in front of a truck and the husband randomly deciding to play soccer with some children? The worst private detective in the world? That scene with the meat saw? Ballet moves during a fight scene between Neill and his romantic rival? The weird performances? There's so much silliness even though the tone isn't comedic at all. The camera looms, always lurking around these characters, never quite sitting still. There's a haunting quality to the cinematography that makes it almost impossible for this to be a comedy, but I'm still going to think it was anyway.

Ok, it's not a comedy.

I started off wondering what the hell Sam Neill was doing, but gradually, the other performers caught up with him. leading me to believe that the performers were intentionally acting this way. Every line is strained, every gesture is exaggerated, and every interaction feels like it's going to end in violence. A lot of them do, the characters frequently leaving scenes with blood on them. Neill's consistent here, and I ended up really liking his performance. Even stranger was Heinz Bennent as his rival, always twirling and gesticulating like no actual person ever would. It's incoherent gesticulation. But it's Isabelle Adjani's performances here that absolutely floored me. She plays the wife as well as the couple's son's teacher, and it's as the wife that she just dazzles. The movie's title would lead one to believe this is about demonic possession or something, and although it's not quite that, you wouldn't know that if you watched Adjani's performance with the sound off. She writhes and screams like she's trying to force demons from her body through every orifice she's got, and it's an amazing performance. There's a scene with just her that takes place in a subway, and holy hell, it's the kind of thing that is just going to stay with me. It's just so great!

I have to go do something else right now. (Note: Not sex with an octopus man.)

The Belko Experiment

2016 violent drama

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Employees in a Colombian office building are locked in and forced to kill each other.

Modern makers of cinematic gore have certainly fallen in love with squelchy sound effects. This, more than any movie in recent memory, overuses squelches.

This is a really cynical movie, but that cynicism never rings true. It's poorly written with too-obvious satire and an attempt at some dark humor that just doesn't work at all. The idea isn't even very good, and I'd definitely expect James Gunn to do something a little more creative than just borrowing from Battle Royale or maybe High-Rise. The Belko Experiment has the skin of something dangerous and unpredictable and fresh, but you don't have to dig below that surface to discover that it's not any of those things.

I came very close to shutting this down about halfway through.

Buster's Mal Heart

2016 drama

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A hotel desk clerk meets a conspiracy theorist and then dives head first into one of the earth's two assholes.

This had real potential, starting with a cover of a Tom Waits' song ("God's Away on Business"), a nonlinear structure that keeps you guessing, and some cool transitions (dug that winding of a crank transitioning into a shot of a fishing rod). Unfortunately, it just doesn't add up to much, feels a bit unfinished thematically, and makes you wonder if that nonlinear structure actually adds to anything. This bounces between three distinct time periods, one which might be only in the character's head, and while that's easy enough to get a handle on, there's messiness elsewhere. References to Biblical Jonah, Y2K fears, the aforementioned pair of Earth assholes, and other nonsense muddy things. There's intrigue, but it starts to get a little redundant, and once you figure out the movie's big twist--which you might, especially now that I've told you there's a big twist--the homestretch just seems extraneous.

I also didn't like the title of this movie.

DJ Qualls is in this movie. He used to be a pet peeve of mine, but I think I've started to appreciate him. I'm not sure who Rami Malek is, but I've apparently seen him in some things and he's going to be playing Freddie Mercury in an upcoming movie. I thought he was pretty good here.

Legend

2015 English gangster movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Twin gangsters do gangster things.

This was a frustrating movie as it really had potential to be something special with the pair of performances by the great Tom Hardy at the heart of the thing. The guy just fascinates me with everything he does, so while I was really not all that excited to see another gangster flick, I needed to see how Hardy tackled two roles. And tackle them he does! He scowls, he screams, he drools, he pierces, he eviscerates, he punches, he spouts, he spits, and he charms. I like his rapport with himself in scenes where both brothers are present, and the movie magic used to have them engage in fisticuffs is flawless. It's been a while since I've seen Freaky Friday, but I don't remember Hayley Mills punching herself.

Now that I think about it, I really want to see a movie where Hayley Mills beats herself up.

I imagine it would be extremely difficult for an artist to pull this off and make it look so effortless. I know the twin thing has been done again and again--even by the great Nicolas Cage--but what Hardy does to make these two characters actually two characters rather than just carbon copies of the same guy is amazing. There was never a moment in the movie where I wasn't convinced that I was actually watching two different performers who happened to look nearly identical play these Krays. It's not just the glasses and slightly-different hair either. It's subtle body language, lip curls, eyebrow movements. Hardy pulls a lot of tricks out to make this happen, and it works so incredibly well.

I like some of the writing, I thought love interest Emily Browning was really cute, and I always always love seeing David Thewlis. I had problems with nearly everything else--storytelling flaws, side characters who muddied things, weird music choices, a general lack of flare, some unnecessary scenes--but none of it was enough to make those Hardy performances not worth watching.

The Foreigner

2017 action movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: An elderly Jackie Chan hunts down the terrorists who blew up his daughter.

This isn't normally something that I'd see in a theater, but I saw the above poster and thought watching Jackie Chan fight a gigantic Pierce Brosnan might be fun. Not only did the above poster lie about their even being a gigantic Pierce Brosnan in the movie, but it's also not any fun at all. This is the least fun I've ever had watching a Jackie Chan movie. The story and its characters are derivative, there's nothing at all new with any of the action sequences, and the movie's tone is way too somber. Maybe I'm alone here (I definitely was alone in the theater, allowing me to enjoy the movie sans pants), but I don't want my Jackie Chan movies to be ultra-serious.

I'm not sure if Jackie Chan has it any more. If he doesn't, he's not a guy who has to make any excuses or apologize. The man is 63 years old, and considering I'm twenty years younger and can barely get out of bed in the morning, watching him do what he does in the limited action sequences here is remarkable. I assume he still does all or most of his own stunts, mostly bouncing off walls or slamming into the ground, and there's still a little of the old Jackie Chan in that body of his. He's still got that trademark wince, too, the little thing he does at the ends of some of his stunts to sell it to the audience. Sadly, he's just not the salesman that he used to be. Besides, there's only 3 1/2 action sequences in this anyway, and none of them show anything new to an audience of one hungry for fun action scenes or do anything old well enough to make up for it. Mostly, Jackie Chan just mopes around and sets up traps and explosives like he's Rambo.

Pierce Brosnan is probably capable of being a force even if he's not gigantic. His character here has all kinds of meaty potential, but it's never realized. Really, neither his character or Jackie Chan's character feels like he even needs to be in the movie. That's likely a problem.

I've grown weary of thumping and thunking techno music in these kinds of action movies. Is it because I'm old?

Alien: Covenant

2017 sequel prequel

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Following the events shown in Prometheus, more things happen.

I have some questions.

Why wasn't this movie called Covenant or the last movie called Alien: Prometheus? Consistency, Ridley Scott!

I have other questions, but I don't feel like asking them. They'd be spoilers anyway.

Halfway through this movie, I think I decided I was done with Alien movies. As my faithful readers know, I love the first one where Sigourney Weaver is walking around in her underpants. I didn't like the second one as much, but it's very good for the sci-fi action movie that it is. The third and fourth installments confuse me, and but I liked both of them a lot more than I liked Prometheus. This one's also better than Prometheus, although it's nearly toppled by its own ambitions, has too many characters for me to not care about, and has some really perplexing logical lapses. The movies are starting to become exercises in seeing how many different parts of the body aliens can pop out of and how gruesome it can look on the screen.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about something that's starting to alarm me. A while ago, I felt like the song "Beyond the Sea" was stalking me because it seemed to pop up in every third movie I watched one year. This year, there's a new song--"Take Me Home, Country Road"--that seems to be haunting me. This is the third movie from 2017 where "Take Me Home, Country Road" has featured prominently. That's right--I've completed a John Denver trifecta.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle and Logan Lucky were the other two, in case you're keeping score at home. That makes this the best movie of the year that features "Take Me Home, Country Road."

Life

2017 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: People aboard the International Space Station get themselves a new pet. Note: This might be a film adaptation of the children's picture book of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd's Goodnight Moon.

In my search for movies to watch with my Bad Movie Club people, I come across rip-offs of Alien all the time. I'm not sure I've seen one that had the budget of this Alien clone. As with the others, this lacks the subtleties that make Alien a work of poetic horror minimalist genius.

There are a lot of characters, and the makers of this found actors to play them. They should have just gone with special effects though because there's not much done to flesh out any of them. Sure, they reveal that one of them becomes a father. One of them is brave and sarcastic. One of them waxes poetically about how he prefers being in space over being back home. One of them is a Russian woman named Ekaterina. There's an effort to make the audience care about these people, but the special effects and action sequences overwhelm anything remotely human in the story, and the whole thing just leaves you cold.

One of the Hollywood Ryans is in this. For this movie, it's the Ryan who spends movies yucking it up. Here, whichever Ryan it is yucks it up in space. Jake Gyllenhaal is in there acting all astronaut-y. I don't know who any of these other people are. It doesn't matter because once you know this is an Alien knock-off, you know most of them (or none of them) won't be around to see the closing credits anyway.

I'm not sure what movie magic was used to make the actors and actresses float around like they do in this, but my guess is pixie dust. The opening five minutes or so shows off the ISS and the humans inhabiting it with a continuous shot of them floating around while one of them yucks it up. It's an impressive start, really simulating that weightlessness for the viewer. There are a few nice moments--zero-gravity blood spurts, a jacked-up hand--but this unfortunately starts to get redundant, rerunning the same sort of ideas over and over again with a slightly-larger variations of the undulating monster. The ending would have nearly redeemed it, but the twists created by cheap editing tricks annoyed me more than anything else.

The reading of Goodnight Moon with dramatic music was not a high point.

Happy Death Day

2017 horror mystery movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: A sorority girl is forced to live her birthday over and over again, each day ending with her being murdered by a masked individual.

What the hell am I doing with my life?

In my defense, I really only went to see this because I like the chairs in the theater and needed about 30 minutes of driving time to listen to a podcast. But still, I could have probably seen another movie.

This horror spin on Groundhog Day looked interesting to me, but I knew pretty much right off from the start that these characters were going to be too unlikable for me to want to spend much time with them. Jessica Rothe is cute for a sorority girl, especially if that's your thing. She's also as obnoxious as a Hollywood depiction of a sorority girl can be. As with Bill Murray's character, hers is a dynamic one, but the whole thing is handled superficially, and her character is so unlikable at the start, that you just never really end up rooting for her. The supporting characters, with the exception of the guy whose dorm room she keeps waking up in and the masked killer just because you really support his efforts after a while, are equally obnoxious. This is the type of movie that can make an old fart like me hate college-aged kids.

There are all kinds of opportunities for this movie to be clever, but it never takes advantage of them. I generally like the fun repetitious things in time-travel or time-loop movies like this, but they didn't really serve much of a purpose here except to remind us that she was indeed reliving the same day over and over again. The movie does make an allusion to Groundhog Day at one point, but instead of being something sneaky or clever, it just basically has a character saying, "Hey, this whole movie kind of seems like a rip-off of Groundhog Day, doesn't it?" It wasn't the first time I groaned audibly and rolled my eyes while watching this.

I'll give the movie this--it is unpredictable. You won't figure out who the killer is until it's revealed. Unfortunately, that's because the whole thing is stupid and doesn't make much sense. But wait a few minutes because there'll be yet another twist that makes even less sense followed by another twist that will make you wish you had just decided to stay home and enjoy some gluten-free pretzels instead.

The main character's name is Tree. What is there not to hate about this movie?

Mental note: If a movie's title is as bad as Happy Death Day, don't waste your time seeing the movie. Which does make me wonder: What is the best movie with a terrible title? Maybe I'll make a list at some point.

Hugo the Hippo

1975 cartoon

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The plight of the titular river horse as he and his hippo tribe fight off some sharks and are then forgotten by the people of Zanzibar they saved.

This is either allegorical or the product of a secondhand marijuana haze. Or maybe it's just the product of its time. There's a cheapness to the animation that actually contributed to the psychedelia. Things get as trippy in chunks as the trippiest moments in Yellow Submarine, all sorts of colors and ideas coming together to make something that's not quite for children but not quite for adults either. It's not the kind of thing that's going to dazzle, but it's worth a look for fans of 70's animation or LSD-inspired lunacy.

At times, this seems as square as an animated movie can be. I mean, Burl Ives narrates the thing and sings at least two songs, and fucking Osmonds are involved. Ives had to have been confused with his work although maybe the talking reindeer and snowmen set him up for it. His narration includes nuggets like "Everyone knows the difference between animals and people. People take medicine, fight wars, and read books. Animals don't," that give the whole thing a naive profundity.

I didn't realize this was a musical until the second song. The opening credits--complete with weird shots of animal faces--had a song about what a "strange story" this was going to be. But then there was another song and another and another. I'm not sure what to make of the songs. The lyrics, as well as the dialogue for that matter, make it seem like this was translated poorly from another language and then dubbed, but apparently it wasn't. One song has somebody spelling hippopotamus like that Jiminy Cricket encyclopedia song. A song Ives sings called "You've Said a Mouthful" was especially wacky, including word play gems about eating the ox out of the oxygen. I half-expected to look up the songwriter and find out it was somebody who went on to bigger and better things, but Bob Larimer only did a few off-Broadway things and jingles for fragrance commercials in the 70s. "H-I-P-P-O-T-O-T-A-M-U-S" was apparently too much for the guy to overcome. There are a lot of songs here, so maybe he just shot his proverbial songwriting wad and had no more ideas. The rest of the soundtrack is filled in with cheapo funk 'n' roll music.

Maddening editing in an early storm-of-sharks sequence, one complete with sharks who are smoking and wearing funny hats, made me believe I was in for a treat, and for the most part, I did really enjoy seeing what the animators had to show me. There were green-faced bad guys, psychedelic foliage and vegetables, a variety of animals, lots of hippos, an apple assassin. It's great trippy fun with something to see on nearly every inch of the screen, and I looked forward to seeing more from director Bob Feigenbaum. But alas, Bob Feigenbaum didn't do a single other movie.

That might have been the result of an unfortunate sequence in this where monkeys are used to satirize the Harlem Globetrotters, complete with "Sweet Georgia Brown."

The great Paul Lynde voices the main villain in this. It's a voice that will remind people of a certain age of villainous voices on Hanna-Barbera cartoons. He's perfect!

Apparently, this is based on an actual story about a hippo.