Merde

I posted my opinion of the new trailer for the upcoming Three Musketeers movie over on Examiner.com. I feel i was fair and even handed in dealing with this godawful piece of shit.

Bloody Awful

If you read this yesterday, you already know about an upcoming parody of the Twilight films called Vampires Suck. While I made my feelings well known on the movie's potential yesterday, I see this as an opportunity to do something I haven't done since February, that being Movies I Haven't Seen. I'm not really reviewing the movie, of course. I'm reviewing the trailer but I think I can make an excellent case against this movie based on the fact that A) the trailer sucks and B) every other movie made by this creative team has, to varying degrees, sucked. But hey, don't take my word for it. Watch the trailer for yourself.


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And...scene. What have we learned today? We've learned that a good parody film may be the most difficult type of movie to make. This is evidenced by the fact that the only really good ones have been made by Mel Brooks and the team of the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams (the guys who made Airplane) and anyone who saw An American Carol knows that at least one of the Zucker brothers can't do it anymore. Still, I haven't seen the movie. Maybe it's funny, but the trailer (most of it anyway) sure as hell isn't

The trailer starts off with a bit of promise. I chuckled when Bella cut her finger and Jasper tied a bib around his neck but they promptly remove all the comedic promise out of the scene by doing something that is standard for the people who made Date Movie and Epic Movie. Another standard trick is to have celebrity lookalikes show up on screen and do, well, nothing. I'm fairly certain I'm supposed to laugh when Bella says, "Who's that?" and we see the cast of Jersey Shore but I'll be damned if I can figure out why we're supposed to laugh. The Jersey Shore cast just stands there doing nothing as does the Lady Gaga lookalike later on. That gimmick is a lot of things, none of which is funny.

Another huge comedy black hole that this crew loves to do in all their movie is to recreate scenes from other movies and add slapstick violence. In the trailer, you see Alice in Wonderland wandering the woods only to get shot by Edward. This can't be accurately described as, "not funny." Anti-comedy would be a good term for it as it seems to be actively trying not to get laughs.

One more thing: Ken Jeong, why? Was the money that good? Did they get every swimsuit model in Hollywood to blow you simultaneously? It's just a shame that you had to be the only recognizable face in this abomination.

To sum up, the people who made Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie and Here Come The Spartans took all the lame crap they did in those movies, repackaged it and slapped in the Twilight characters. This has no chance of being good. Nada. Zip. Less than zero. Less than negative zero, if that's possible. If I'm wrong, I'll never know because life is too short for me to waste on even a free Netflix viewing. One piece of good news is that they're releasing this in August where it will face some actual competition as opposed to dumping it in theaters in September or January where the only movies it has to worry about are new Katherine Heigl comedies and documentaries about lamps. Maybe, just maybe, this will actually lose money and the douchenozzles who make this garbage won't be allowed to make movies anymore. We can only hope.

20,000 Leagues Under The Stupidity

It's been over six months since I've done Movies I Haven't Seen. I'm not actually reviewing a movie, of course, but rather an incredibly stupid trailer. So, what trailer have I seen lately that so viscerally offended me that I revived something I haven't done since last July? Have Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay made a new movie? Has someone made a movie about an out of control cop forced to partner up with a chimp? No, nothing like that. Instead we have a new attempt to rip off Judd Apatow called She's Out Of My League. Because I'm such an awesome guy, I've conveniently embedded the trailer here.



Okie dokie then, what have we learned? First, we've learned that the lead character, TSA official Kirk Kettner (Jay Baruchel), has friends who are complete assholes. This fact is confirmed several times throughout the trailer. We also see that a hot girl is such a rare sight in an airport which deals with literally thousands of people every day that any and all business pretty much shuts down. We also see that one thing this girl, Molly (Alice Eve), has in common with Kirk is asshole friends when her friend takes offense after being gently reminded that you're not supposed to use a cell phone on an airplane. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be impressed by the friend's toughness and be on her side or not. Personally, I'm thoroughly opposed to violence against women but would gladly make an exception for some stupid bitch who thinks she has a God given right to use a cell phone on an airplane.

Anyway, Molly ends up asking Kirk out after he returns her lost iPhone and this is where it gets really unbelievable. It's not unbelievable for the reasons Hollywood thinks it is, of course. Movie producers find the idea of a girl who looks like Alice Eve winding up with a guy who looks like Jay Baruchel so preposterous that they based an entire movie around that supposedly ridiculous idea. In the real world, of course, pairings like this happen all the time. What makes this particular situation unbelievable isn't the disparity in their looks but rather the fact that Kirk is a passive/aggressive loser. He lacks not only stunning good looks but also money, wit and personality. Why is Molly dating a guy who looks like he's about to piss himself in fear when he talks to her? Because he's, "a nice guy." If you're a girl and you suddenly got wet when you heard that, this may be the movie for you. For everyone else, not so much.

I'm sure this movie has redeeming qualities though. For example, there's the scene where Kirk brings Molly to meet his buddies. Now, another reason I consider Kirk to be a loser is that he's met his buddies yet has no inkling that bringing his girlfriend to meet them might be a bad idea. I can't imagine it came as a shock to him when they ask Molly if she's a prostitute or when they encourage her to strip to her underwear. Okay, that's one scene. How about when Kirk and Molly are having dinner at her place? You remember that, right? That's where she rubs up against him a bit too vigorously during a makeout session on her couch and we discover that we must also add lack of sexual prowess to his numerous flaws when he comes in his pants and we all get Jay Baruchel's orgasm face burned forever into our memories. Then, finally, we are reminded that Kirk is the type of guy who never learns from his mistakes when he confides this to his friends and they mercilessly taunt him for it.

I hold out very little hope for this movie. Maybe it will be so loaded with funny jokes I'll forget the stupid plot and the stupid characters in it but I doubt it. It's not like it's going to be loaded with unexpected twists that no one could have predicted either. Let's see if the following happens: Kirk and Molly break up due to the fact that Molly wakes up to the fact that Kirk is a loser. Kirk then quits his airport security job and finally goes after some dream job that was referenced earlier in the movie. It could be anything. Maybe he'll go to med school or maybe he'll drive a Zamboni. All that matters is that he'll get to present the new Kirk to Molly and win her back. Hopefully he won't ejaculate when they kiss at the end but if he does, his friends will be sure to let us know.

No Joe

I haven't done a real attempt at Movies I Haven't Seen since April when I grabbed The Ugly Truth by its virtual neck and shook it around for a bit until it cried. That's coming out shortly so we'll see if I was right about it. Until then, I'm still claiming a perfect record. True, I do tend to grab the low hanging fruit when it comes to predicting which movies are going to be godawfully horrible and, at the moment, the fruit that's damn near touching the ground is G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Let's all watch the trailer.



By all means, feel free to go out and get some air and maybe have a refreshing beverage while you try to shake off the experience of that trailer. All set? Okay, let's begin.

First, we see that the preview has been approved for all audiences. It's clean so that's cool. That's also the most intelligent part of the trailer. Unfortunately, actual film clips start playing and our innocence is forever shattered.

I'm immediately annoyed when I see Christopher Eccleston playing the villain. I'm assuming negotiations for his appearance in this film went something like this:

"No way will I jeopardize my reputation as an actor by appearing in this piece of crap."

"Oh, so you don't want this huge check?"

"Um...in northern England, piece of crap is what we call something that disgusts us but we love it anyway, like blood pudding. Where do I sign?"

Good Lord, Eccleston, you left Doctor Who so you could do this? Okay, moving on...come on man, you were great in Doctor Who. Why oh why oh why...really moving on now. Chris and the rest of the big ball of evil known as Cobra all live jolly lives under the sea in some Blofeld-style fortress plotting and launching terrorist attacks like the destruction of the Eiffel Tower through the use of some sort of metal dissolving missile. WHY destroy the Eiffel Tower? Oh, I'm sure there'll be a good reason that's not at all offensively stupid. I'm also sure there will be a perfectly logical reason why the world's governments can't simply trace the missile to the undersea fort and nuke the ever loving piss out of it in retaliation for one of the worst terrorist attacks in history. I'm predicting Cobra will have invented something called Quasi-Crypto-Cloaking Technology. This means the world's only hope will be some two fisted tough guys who I guaran-god damn-tee you will at some point be dressed down by some weenie superior for Having Crossed The Line And Made The Situation Worse.

This is where we get to the movie's real problem. The villains, like Eccleston and a leather clad Sienna Miller are okay but the heroes are boring as shit and that analogy doesn't really work since shit can sometimes be very interesting so let's say the heroes are as boring as really, really boring shit. First you have Channing Tatum playing the main member of the Joe team, Duke. Tatum does something here he's only done in about six other movies, standing around and looking morose. Playing Ripcord is Marlon Wayans. Casting a member of the Wayans family is basically the last refuge of incompetent casting directors. In the trailer at least, none of the heroes seems to all that interesting. So far, all we have is that one is clinically depressed and one is black (this is considered to be an actual personality trait by many filmmakers). Plus, the Joes wear those stupid battle suits, something that may work just fine in cartoons or comic books but on the screen turn them into bland, interchangeable fighters. Fortunately, we live in a time where interesting characters aren't necessary. Instead, a movie can be a feast for the eyes with interesting effects and exciting action sequences which, if this trailer is anything to go by, don't exist in this movie.

One thing the filmmakers must have liked about the battle suits is that it is now easier to put the people into CGI sequences. This, for example, means that the scene where the Joes are dodging rockets is nothing more than something made in some guy's Macintosh are dodging something made in another guy's Macintosh. It's not particularly well done CGI either. It looks like a high tech cartoon, which is what it is. Even the ugly, confusing effects in Transformers 2 looked better than this. That, by the way, is meant as a devastating insult.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is going to thoroughly, utterly suck. The only way I could possibly be wrong is if the marketing strategy was to not show any of the good parts in the advertising. Another solid guarantee I want to give is that the actors in interviews will start referring to the movie as "fun" and that people should "lighten up and just enjoy it." This will be proof positive that I was right. Sienna Miller came close to doing that in an interview with Scifi Wire when she said that she took the part of the Duchess because she wanted to make, "...something that was just maybe really great fun and that people went to see and actually just had a great time seeing and weren't left damaged." That's close but not quite what I'm looking for. The Fun Movie Excuse will be used to dismiss critics, like me, who say their movie blows and will be proof that everything I've said today is true.

An Inconvenient Truth

I WAS RIGHT! Yep, that's it, people. I was right. I'm not always right but this time, I nailed it. All rightie then, that's that. See you all tomorrow.

Oh shoot, you probably want context. This site would be so much easier to write if I never had to provide that.

Back in April, I wrote an edition of something I like to call Movies I Haven't Seen about a movie called The Ugly Truth. To sum up, if The Ugly Truth is being accurately portrayed by its marketing, it's a stupid monument to misogyny lacking in intelligence and humor. However, a commenter said that test audiences enjoyed the clips they had seen, especially a scene where Katherine Heigl's character is accidentally brought to orgasm in a crowded restaurant when she's wearing vibrating panties and a ten year old boy gets hold of the remote control. That made me think, "Wow, maybe this movie will actually be funny." Now, the vibrating panties clip is on YouTube. Let's take a look.



This was just like that fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally except that was good and this isn't. When you compare the two scenes, you see the reasons why. In When Harry Met Sally, Meg Ryan does what she does on purpose to make a point in a humorous fashion. Her behavior was her choice and she wasn't embarrassed by it afterward. Katherine Heigl, on the other hand, is the victim not only of unfortunate circumstances but also of that smirking woman hating asshole played by Gerard Butler, a man who knows exactly what's going on but doesn't stop it because he finds it amusing that she's being inadvertently violated by a ten year old. That situation is made worse by the fact that he's probably going to end up with her at the end of the movie simply because that's how romantic comedies work.

So, that's it. I was right. The Ugly Truth will be a black hole from which laughter and goodness cannot escape. It will take all the wonder and joy from the souls of they who see it and replace it with despair that will spread throughout the world until we all lose the ability hear the birds sing or feel the Sun shine on our faces. Smiles will be a thing of the past, something about which we will someday tell our grandchildren in the gray, depressing world of the future.

Still, I was right, so Yay Me!

An Apology To Michael Bay

I apologize. I really do. I've been very hard on you and have often held you up as a symbol of all that is wrong with the movie business. I've always concentrated on what you've done wrong and not on the positive aspects of your work. For instance, even while laughing and groaning at the absurdities of Armageddon, there were some decent action sequences. The first part of The Island had a cool, creepy atmosphere and some provocative ideas. Transformers had Megan Fox bending over that car, a scene that should have won it the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Yet, even with all that, I have done nothing but trash you and have never recognized that, on your worst day, you never made anything like this:



Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a fucking pogo stick. Fuck. I mean...FUCK!!! I've seen loads of science fiction that has no respect for science but this has no respect for reality.

"If the electromagnetic energy is powerful enough, it will override local gravity."

Huh? WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN? Apparently, it means that people and objects will start floating but only specific people and objects at dramatically convenient times.

Hot scientist: "The Moon will impact Earth will impact Earth in 39 days."
President: "What happens to Earth?"

What the hell do you think happens to Earth, you twit?

A chunk of brown dwarf is still stuck in the Moon.

Aren't brown dwarfs made out of gas? A chunk of GAS is stuck in the Moon? Okay, very dense gas that somehow survived IMPACT WITH THE FUCKING MOON without dissipating has now lodged itself in the Moon like beef in a fat guy's colon. How do we fix this problem. Well, this is a Grade B piece of sci-fi crap which means we now nuke the damn Moon.

Impact has all the bad elements of one of your movies, Mr, Bay, without any of the stuff that makes your movies watchable. No top level actors like Bruce Willis or Scarlett Johannson. No movie-sized budget that will at least give the movie a fun video game quality. No super sexy girls bending over cars. All we're left with is TV movie silliness and an endless list of questions.

So Mr. Bay, I apologize. I will try to look at your work in a new light and, if I end up hating the new Transformers film, I will make sure to say a quiet prayer of thanks that at least it wasn't Impact.

Cruel Summer

As the big summer movie season draws ever closer, I was looking through a list of the big studio releases and was wondering, "I wonder which of these will be the most absolutely rock stupid movie of the season, a movie that causes you to question the sanity of anyone who was involved in it generally and the studio morons who thought it would be a good idea to spend tens of millions of dollars of their company's money on it specifically."

There are always plenty of crapfests to choose from when looking at big budget studio releases. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would be a likely candidate but it doesn't meet the sanity criterion. Of course this movie was made. No matter how stupid it is, it's a sequel to a stupid movie that made a huge chunk of money and this one will probably be a hit as well, especially if they have Megan Fox bending over two or three cars this time around. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra also falls into this category. Sure, Eiffel Tower crashing aside, it looks to be about as entertaining as a documentary about how cheese is made but the built-in G.I. Joe fanbase means that you can at least justify its existence. No, I predict the worst movie of the summer will be this:



And this brings us to another edition of Movies I Haven't Seen. The Ugly Truth not only meets the sanity criterion, it far and away exceeds it. Judging from the trailer, it's an ugly mishmash of The Producers, Cyrano and every romantic comedy you've ever seen. Because none of that was deemed offensive enough, they've also made "Wimmin Be Stoopid" one of the movie's central themes.

Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl are two of Hollywood's big up-and-comers who have apparently decided that they want their movie careers to end here and now. Heigl almost did it with her last movie 27 Dresses but thought, "No, I can do way worse," so chose to do this as well.

Heigl's character, Abby Richter is a career woman who, of course, needs a man to complete her. She figures the best way to accomplish this is to be especially annoying and creepy on first dates so she not only does extensive research on potential suitors but takes it along so they can discuss it at the dinner table. She doesn't have time to be puzzled as to why this method has yet to produce a man willing to buy her a house because her job as a television producer brings her into contact with Butler's character, Mike Chadway. Mike is what Howard Stern would be if you took away Stern's humor and style and just said blatantly sexist asshole remarks over and over again. Abby makes it clear that, as his producer, she will do everything she can to make sure he fails and gets fired or canceled or whatever. Note to all you wannabe TV producers out there: this is pretty much the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do in that job. Naturally, Abby fails and Mike becomes a big hit.

In the meantime, Abby meets a man who somehow passed her elaborate vetting process without discovering that she's a big bag of crazy. Mike tells her that she can get this guy for her and that he will quit if he fails which shows that Mike is a fucking idiot willing to gamble his future away but that's hardly the most stupid thing this movie has to offer. No, the most stupid thing would be that Abby, a woman in her late 20s, has gotten to this point in her life without realizing that men like sex and that she may have an easier time of catching one if she put some of her ample sex appeal to work. Luckily she now has a misogynistic jerk to show her the way. She even has to be taught that man may actually like it when she rubs up against him, something most girls learn when they're 13 and they slow dance with a boy for the first time.

We also find out something that anyone with two functioning neurons could have figured out when the trailer began. Turns out Mike and Abby are actually attracted to each other. This is where the movie turns into a confirmation of the worldview of the Nice Guys. You all know who the Nice Guys are, right? Those are the ones who say on message boards, "Why don't women like Nice Guys?" and then proceed to tell you the story of some girl who dumped them for total jerks. These one-sided accounts are always presented as evidence that the female of the human species is completely insane for rejecting these poor, put-upon Nice Guys. Nice Guys will love this movie. Abby is going to reject the Nice Doctor for the man who advises women to stop being lazy fatasses.

There is no chance that The Ugly Truth will be anything resembling good. Not only is it offensive and stupid but, if the trailer is anything to go by, it is the event horizon of a giant comedic black hole. Not only can humor not escape from it but the audience will feel as if time itself has slowed down until the merciful moment when the credits start rolling. It's saying a lot that I'd much rather skip The Ugly Truth in favor of another movie coming out the same week called G Force. Here's how ComingSoon.net describes the movie:

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings his first 3-D film to the big screen with "G-Force," a comedy adventure about the latest evolution of a covert government program to train animals to work in espionage. Armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment, these highly trained guinea pigs discover that the fate of the world is in their paws.

Yes, I'll be there and I'll have a huge smile on my face because I know that, no matter how many jokes we get about someone eating what looks like a Raisinet without realizing it's guinea pig poop, I'll know that it's quality is light years ahead of the sheer hell being presented somewhere else in the multiplex.

Yes We Lycan

Once again, as a service to the planet, I must do Movies I Haven't Seen. I had meant to perform this unenviable task on this particular movie a couple weeks ago but it slipped my mind till today. I prefer to do this weeks in advance of a film's release but now, since it premieres today, I fear I may be too late to keep people from seeing it and have their brains leap out of their heads in protest. I'm talking, of course, about Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I admitted yesterday that the Underworld movies were guilty pleasures of mine. This new one, I'm wildly guessing, won't be. Let's all watch the trailer.



So, what have we learned? First off, people back in the Dark Ages posed a lot and communicated mostly through pompous monologues and dramatic shouts. Other than that, it's hard to tell what the hell is going on. I sort of remember from the first two movies that you had a war between Vampires and Werewolves who, of course, can't just be called Werewolves in these movies because that's what everyone on the planet calls them so calling them Werewolves here would make too much sense. In the Underworld films, they're called Lycans. Even if you've seen Underworld more than once, the plot will probably come as a complete surprise to you. You have a better chance of remembering porn plots than you do the plot of Underworld and its sequel since they both seemed to be intentionally incoherent. Except for the action scenes, they both look like the actors were just making the whole thing up as they went along. To give a quick recap: it was revealed in the first movie that the Lycan King, Lucian, was once the loyal servant of the Vampire King, Viktor. (Allow me to give a quick thanks to IMDB for helping me remember those names. Remembering the names of these characters yourself is a waste of valuable brain cells and is as pointless as remembering the name of a prostitute.) In an extended flashback, we see that Lucian fell in love with Viktor's daughter, Sonja, so Viktor decided to try to take the Worst Father Ever Award away from Lindsay Lohan's dad by having Sonja executed as punishment. Because Viktor is as bad a jailer as he is a parent, Lucian manages to escape fairly easily and launch a centuries long war between his people and the Vampires.

So, ok, since we know all that already, what the hell is this movie going to be about? Basically, Rise of the Lycans is going all Star Wars 1-3 on us. Yeah, we know the story, but not the WHOLE story so we're getting that now even though I can't recall ever having heard anyone say, "Hey, damn it, I want the details of this Lycan revolt. Did they organize it through MySpace? Did they fund it with paper drives and flea markets and pancake breakfasts? Did Bob Hope perform for the troops? Underworld didn't tell us any of that so I demand a prequel devoted to nothing but pointless background information."

As the trailer opens, we see Rhona Mitra playing Sonja (THE ONE WHO DIES and no, this is not a spoiler since you discover it in the first movie) and taking over the "heavily armed eye candy" role from Kate Beckinsale who, along with the mildly entertaining action scenes, was the reason to watch the first two movies. After beating up on some Lycans by tossing some spinning Lycan killing things at them, she returns to get lectured by her father about how they have to all be loyal and stuff, a lecture that will get thrown out the window later on when he kills her. Sonja is apparently a major league badass although the only evidence of this that we see consists of her riding around and staring at things. Lucian and Sonja meet and the combination of greasy hair, shirtless leather vest and unbearable body odor must have been irresistible since she decides that she's never had it so good and abandons everything she's ever known in order to have sex with Lucian in the mud.

They get caught and Lucian gets thrown in Vampire jail where he gets to overact, give one of those inspirational Braveheart speeches and tell his troops that they, the ones who sprout fur and grow claws, are not animals.

As with all cheap action flicks, we now reach the point in the trailer where no shot lasts longer than three seconds and we're bombarded with quick cuts of people running around, leaping in the air, knocking stuff over and screaming things like, "NOOOOOOO!" while beating their chests before you get to the point where the title comes up and you say, "Yay, it's over," only to have one final confrontation scene.

There's no hope for this movie, folks. None. The trailer is Exhibit A. Exhibit B is the fact that it was not made available for critic's screenings ahead of its release date which means that its studio, Screen Gems, the company that allowed crap like Prom Night and Untraceable to have critic's screenings, decided to pull the trigger here and hold this one back. There's only one reason for doing this and it's never, "We felt it was so awesome that we want it to be a surprise."

Anyway, this post will most likely have no difference on the movie's box office. Wouldn't it be great if it did? If movie studios learned to fear me and tried to be spared from my wrath by offering me huge bags of money and sex with Scarlett Johannson? But no, I'm cursed with a realistic worldview that does not allow me to think that anyone will be skipping Underworld this week. I will, however, get to say, "Told you so," in a really snotty and arrogant tone and that's just as good as vast wealth and violating Scarlett's every orifice.

Yep, totally just as good.

The Ungood

It's been a while since I've done Movies I Haven't Seen and for good reason. The concept here is I review an unreleased movie that is obviously going to suck and warn the world, thus making the planet safe for democracy. The problem is that, occasionally, a movie is a victim of poor marketing (for instance, I liked Role Models even though I hated its ads) that I'm scared to go after anything that isn't really sucky fruit hanging low off a really sucky tree. This means my targets so far have been Larry the Cable Guy, Dane Cook and, of course, An American Carol.

The Unborn, however, is not a 100% surefire disaster. I'd say the odds of it being good are 99 bazillion to one against, but this could be the one out of the 99 bazillion. Before we go any further, let's watch the trailer:

So, what did we learn? First off, the idea that the world's most dangerous profession is to be a beautiful, female babysitter working alone has once again been affirmed. In this case, the babysitter is played by Cloverfield babe Odette Yustman who plays a girl named Casey who, after being overpowered by a four year old, decides to go for a soothing jog. It must be extremely important to the plot that we see her in the shower though how seeing her naked advances the story at all was not revealed in the trailer. I know because I looked at that part over and over trying to glean what must have been the relevant plot point. Anyway, Casey is obviously not one of those girls who obsesses over herself in the mirror since she managed to get into her early 20s without ever noticing that her eyes were different colors. A doctor tells her this can happen with twins but OH DEAR GOD SHE'S AN ONLY CHILD.

But no, it turns out she is not an only child. She had a twin brother who died in the womb which, ordinarily, would have been the end of that except that the dead twin has now returned as some sort of demon kid played by a very lucky young man who got paid to grope Odette Yustman while she was sleeping.

This is when we see "From Producer Michael Bay" a name synonymous with quality, assuming you think that "quality" means "huge hits that routinely wind up on Ten Worst Movies Of The Year lists." This is the first blow of a One-Two Punch the movie receives, the second being, "And David S. Goyer, co writer of Batman Begins and the Dark Knight". Well, okay, that sounds good until you discover that Goyer is actually directing this movie, not just writing it. As a director, Goyer has treated us to such cinematic gems as The Invisible (I don't know what that is and I don't want to know) and Blade: Trinity, the movie that destroyed the Blade series and was such a trauma for Wesley Snipes that he ended up getting convicted in federal court for tax evasion. (I'm sure there was some sort of cause/effect there though I'm not going to try to confirm this because I'll look stupid if there wasn't.) Oh, we also see Gary Oldman, a guy who long ago entered the, "I'll be in anything as long as the check clears," phase of his career. This is the pedigree with which the movie is working.

After this, the trailer goes in an incoherent phase where it starts throwing everything at us to see what sticks. We've got human faced dog, contorted old guys running bug-like across the floor, and an exorcism which, for some reason, had to held in a dark, atmospherically lit room instead of outdoors on a pleasant, sunny day. None of this matters since the evil demon kid had apparently reached all-powerful status.

Another nail in the movie's coffin is that it's coming out in January, the month where bad movies go to die. Releasing a movie in January is one step above a Direct-to-DVD release and it almost always means that the filmmakers said, "Screw it, release it in January and hope nobody notices."

Finally, we see the fifth of the trailer's five distinctly different plots where Casey does what all haunted girls do, roam around by herself in a spooky house and approach some creepy looking woman who is alone in a furniture-free room. Hopefully, this all has a happy ending leaving Casey free to take many public showers in the future.

I believe that I have made a concincing case that The Unborn will be a stupid, incoherent, gory mess which will be unwatchable even with sexy, naked girls in it. The thing about Movies I haven't Seen is that, so far, the movies have turned out to be even worse than I predicted. This means that there is a very real possibility that a rabid raccoon will break into each and every theater that is showing The Unborn and attack the face and genitals of each and every person who buys a ticket since that's the only thing that could make the experience of seeing this movie any worse. Fortunately, you have read this and will know to avoid any theater showing this movie which means you will be the envy of all your horribly disfigured friends who don't read this site.

You're welcome.

Cry Like Your Sanity Depends On It

I honestly hadn't thought about An American Carol for a while. I had envisioned doing a series of posts about it but a quick search shows that I haven't even mentioned it since September 2. For those of you who don't know, An American Carol is an alleged comedy about a Michael Moore look alike who suffers through a takeoff of A Christmas Carol made by Airplane director David Zucker whose purpose is to make America stay in Iraq until it's the 51st state and change the Constitution before Election Day so George W. Bush can have a 3rd term. For a nice refresher, let's look at the trailer:

Here are the trailer's main points:

1. Michael Moore is fat.
2. No seriously, he's freakin huge.
3. Look, he's eating a donut. Fat guys do stuff like that.
4. He thinks that Cuba has better health care than America does. (Actually, healthcare-wise, we rank #35 in the world while Cuba sits way down the list at a lowly #37. U-S-A, U-S-A.)
5. In some alternate world, Michael Moore owns slaves. Just imagine if Moore actually did real horrible stuff instead of the horrible stuff we make up.
6. Michael Moore hates America so much he wants to abolish the 4th of July. Again, what if he actually did bad stuff like this? Worse yet, how can liberals like a guy who does imaginary bad stuff like this? This proves that liberals are America hating racists.
7. Michael Moore can't tell women from men. Michael Moore is really stupid. And fat.
8. Slapping fat guys who can't fight back is funny.
9. Arab stereotypes are funny here even though they are exactly the same as Arab stereotypes that have been seen in countless other comedy venues.
10. Rosie O'Donnell is fat too.
11. Michael Moore is a perv who would grab a woman's breasts without her knowledge. Man, all these fake situations that we pulled out of our asses and put on the screen really make Michael Moore look bad. Still, he deserves it because he said bad things about President Bush and he wants all Americans to have good, affordable healthcare.
12. The Christmas Carol story model of being visited by 3 ghosts in order to change a person's attitude had been done before approximately 8 billion times. Still, Michael Moore is fat so our version will be funny.
    

Now that we're all caught up, the reason I suddenly thought about An American Carol was the email I received recently from David Zucker. "Golly Mike," you say, "I didn't know you were so tight with the Zuck-meister." I'm not. I got that email along with everyone else who signed up for the movie's mailing list. Previous emails have urged me to become Part Of The Movement by becoming a theater captain. Also, I'm supposed to piss off at least 10 people by dragging them to see the movie. They are also supposed to drag another 10 people each and so on. This leads to the 2 separate emails that have borne Zucker's name. In the first one, he says:

All my Hollywood friends say I'm out of my foolish mind (this being Hollywood, they don't actually say "foolish," but you get the idea.) They were fine when I made people laugh in Airplane!, the Naked Guns, and Scary Movies, but now that I'm making them laugh with a movie that dares to love America and support our troops, they think I should be committed.

All right, first off, I want to know who the hell is saying that the Scary Movies were funny. Zucker took over that franchise with #'s 3 and 4 and did the impossible feat of making the two previous entries made by the Wayans brothers look like pieces of comedy genius. Second, the "love America/support our troops" stuff consists mainly of slapping a fat guy and adding in a scene where the abused, obese man is taken on a tour of the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center by the ghost of George Washington. Ha ha. (I covered all this in a post back in August.

In a second email from Zucker, he tells me this:

AN AMERICAN CAROL is different than AIRPLANE! and my NAKED GUNS and SCARY MOVIES, but even more hilarious.

Dude, Schindler's List had more laughs than the Scary Movies. In the same email, Zucker again makes the claim that he supports the troops. Zucker, of course, "supports the troops" in the typical neocon way, by wanting them to stay in Iraq until they die. They can die of bullet wounds or old age, Zucker would "support" either one.

And that's why I started thinking of An American Carol. Man oh man, is this movie ever gonna suck. I can't wait till Zucker blames the liberal media when it tanks. The sad thing is that I'll probably go see it.If the movie's opening week gross is $10, that'll be my fault.

Carol In Peril, Not Hysterical

Ah, I can finally do a proper edition of Movies I Haven't Seen. Last week, I attempted to comment on David Zucker's upcoming neocon fantasy An American Carol. Unfortunately, at the time all I had were the observations of others. Now, they have released a trailer and set up a website, both of which remove all doubt that not only will this movie will not only suck but that, in the future, if you wanted to give something an award for sucking, the award would be called The Carol. Here's the trailer.

Okay then, what have we learned? Well, we all now know that Michael Moore is fat. I mean he's just fat. In case you're not getting this, he's super duper big, morbidly obese, El Moore Grosso. If you're wondering why this point is being hammered over and over again, it means that you're not a movement conservative or right wing nut. To those people, the fact that Michael Moore is fat is intrinsically funny. In fact, it never gets old. If you're ever working as a stand up comic at a big conservative get-together, just say, "Michael Moore is fat," over and over again throughout your entire set. I guarantee that the room will smell of urine because everyone there will piss themselves laughing and they will hire you again next year. Members of the Heritage Foundation, the writers at NRO's The Corner and the comments sections of right wing blogs will giggle the way 8 year olds do when someone farts every time the image of the fat old Michael Moore look-alike appears on screen. Unfortunately, you need many more people than that to make a movie into a hit.

This reminds me of the last time a conservative comedy used Michael Moore's weight for comic effect. That was the puppet movie Team America made by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Unlike Carol, Team America was actually funny. The main reason is that Parker and Stone weren't trying to start a movement. They didn't try to recruit people to be Theater Captains or to go door to door handing out leaflets promoting the movie. Parker and Stone sat down and said, "How do we make the funniest movie possible that huge numbers of people will want to see so that we can both entertain people and make big bags of cash at the same time?" One of the ideas they had was to make fat jokes about Michael Moore. They showed him with hot dogs in each hand and covered in mustard. The main difference between that movie and An American Carol is that Moore's appearance in the film was very brief. He was in two scenes and I'd be willing to bet that total screen time was less than a minute. This is because, though they do possess many right wing beliefs which were incorporated into Team America, Parker and Stone aren't right wing nuts. They made a funny movie that even people who disagreed with their ideas could laugh at and, thus, managed to disseminate those ideas far beyond the conservative audience.

Speaking of the desire to create a movement, let's look at the web site. When I first watched this yesterday, it crashed Firefox 3 times. That was because it suffered from incompetent web design. It had several graphics scripts running at once including movie clips, animated gifs and pop ups of Arab terrorists. It made many of the same web design mistakes that 16 year old boys make when they're trying to set up their Hayden Panettiere Worship Shrines. It's running fine for me now partly because they seem to have streamlined it and thrown out some of the clutter and partly because I'm not seeing it on a more powerful computer. However, even one day can be too late in a case like this. Just imagine all the bright eyed College Republicans taking a break from not getting laid to check on this web site and having their browsers crash. Instantly, they're worried that the term papers and pictures of the sweaty, buff King Leonidas contained on their hard drives may have been wiped out. They'll never go back and will now never enter in their names, email addresses and cell phone numbers which is what they want you to do right there on the front page which brings me back to the idea that the ultimate idea behind this movie is not to create an entertaining film but to start a movement. This website also contains the ultimate sign that you're participating in a movement. It gives you information on how to book group showings. If a movie is heavily marketing group showings, it's normally a sign that the movie will mainly appeal to church groups, but church groups are just another type of Movement.

An American Carol will be heavily promoted by right wing outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and will probably have a halfway decent ad budget. If recent box office history of other heavily promoted conservative films like Expelled are any indication, it will gross around 5 million dollars in its first week, the bulk of which will come from group showings organized by churches and conservative groups. Any chance of crossover appeal will be limited by boycotts from liberals who will dislike it for its politics and horrible reviews from everyone else who will dislike it for the fact that Holocaust documentaries have more laughs and the movie will quickly drop off into oblivion.

In the meantime, between now and October 3, I will have no trouble coming up with something to write about.

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What The Dickens Is This?

Many of you have probably heard of David Zucker's new comedy/neocon fantasy An American Carol. When I read the Weekly Standard article about the movie and about Zucker in particular, I immediately figured that I should write about it here. For some reason, though, I just didn't want to. I'm not sure why. Conservative views on film fascinate me because conservatives, or at least their pundits, thinkers and operatives, don't really see movies as a mode of entertainment but rather as a delivery system for various agendas. That's why right wing websites love to scour scripts for signs of treason. It's why they tried to kill WALL·E in its crib by denouncing it as a Marxist style propaganda film designed to turn your children from cute little moppets into frothing-at-the-mouth global warming fanatics and, when they failed and WALL·E became a big hit, they refused to concede defeat and assimilated it into the Right-Wing Borg by declaring WALL·E to be a harsh criticism of the liberal nanny state.

Anyway, I wasn't at all inspired to write about An American Carol and I didn't have to as several other sites did it for me. I particularly liked the two part smackdown at YouAreDumb.net (part 1 is here, part 2 is here). So I figured, "That's all taken care of, now to write some one-liners about how I learned from The House Bunny that it's possible for a guy who has clearly never been laid to still somehow find he's able to resist the advances of a Playboy model."

That was all well and good until I read David Weigel's post about the movie at Reason.com. This confirmed that The Weekly Standard article only hinted at the depths of horror that are plumbed by An American Carol. This post was just the catalyst I needed to sit down and do something I haven't done for months. Thus, I present to you:

MOVIES I HAVEN'T SEEN: AN AMERICAN CAROL

Oh my freaking God, this movie is going to suck. There is no chance, none, that it will be good. Some of you may be shocked that David Zucker, a man whose film making career stretches back over 30 years, made such a horrible film. Then some of you will remember that Zucker's last good movie was 1988's The Naked Gun and that, since then, his career highlights have included Baseketball and My Boss's Daughter and won't be shocked at all.

Weigel begins by telling us how, at a Heritage Foundation rally for the movie, he was handed a card.

If I fill out the card, I can take one of four pledges, such as "Yes, I will send the trailer to my contacts" and "Yes, I want to be AN AMERICAN CAROLER or THEATER CAPTAIN." It's an induction to a movement, as the slogan on the card makes clear: "Finally, a movie for us."

First off, to all you College Republicans out there, and particularly to the male ones, you may think that being a Theater Captain or An American Caroler sounds cool. Let me assure you that wearing tags like this sends to every girl who sees it the message, "No thanks, I am not now nor will I ever be even slightly interested in receiving oral sex from you, but thanks anyway." You may as well try to impress them with your elaborate knowledge of Monty Python and I can personally assure you that girls suddenly find a reason to stand on the other side of the room when you demand that they bring you a shrubbery or yell, "THIS IS AN EX PARROT," in their faces.

We learn a bit more about the movie's plot than we did in the Stephen Hayes piece. It centers around a Michael Moore clone called Michael Malone played here by Kevin Farley, brother of the late comedian Chris Farley whose strengths as an actor included screaming, running his hands through his hair and falling face down in cow flop so you know there's going to be some quality acting there. Apparently there is a scene where Malone grabs a woman's boobs and, out of nowhere, Bill O'Reilly appears and slaps him for sexually harassing an innocent woman and then says, "I just like doing that." This would be the same Bill O'Reilly who was once forced to pay out millions of dollars to a woman in order to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit. Part of the harassment included a taped phone conversation where he talked dirty to the woman while masturbating with a vibrator. I could have left that part out, but I just liked doing that.

We also get scenes of the ghost of General Patton in a gun battle against, well, read the quote:

In a scene that Sokoloff described, but didn't bring, Patton and his soldiers storm a courthouse that's about to remove the Ten Commandments and start opening fire on the people trying to stop them. "You can't shoot these people!" Malone says. "They're not people!" says Patton. "They're the ACLU!" At this point we see that the ACLU members are unkillable George Romero zombies.

I hope that none of you wet yourselves from laughing at that. I'm sure the description of this scene killed at the Heritage Foundation, a place where they still get laughs from Billary jokes. And then we get the money scene where Michael Malone is confronted by the ghost of George Washington. That's where...this happens:

In a clip we saw, Washington takes Malone to St. Paul's Cathedral to lecture him on freedom of religion and "freedom of speech, which you abuse." Malone is grossed out by dust in the priest's box, so the doors open onto the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. "This is the dust of 3000 innocent human beings!" bellows Washington. Malone whimpers that he's just making movies. Washington won't have it. "Is that what you plan to say on Judgment Day?"

"That scene," said Sokoloff, "is hard to put in a comedy. But we had to do it."

That's producer Myrna Sokoloff stating the obvious to which I would like to add a hearty, "DUUUUUUUUH!" That line about the World Trade Center would have been hard to put into the movie World Trade Center.

All this reminded me of a couple of things. First, this is not the first time an outrageous comedy has been made about the post-9/11 world. The first one was Uwe Boll's Postal which I talked about back in May. This movie, especially the scene in which crashing a plane into the World Trade Center was played for laughs, was roundly trashed by the right wing. They wondered what sort of soulless bastard would do something so insensitive as to make light of something as serious and perilous as global terrorism. Now we find out that they meant, "How could you do something like that without advancing the conservative movement?" I was also reminded of the last time that conservatives tried to make something funny. It was conceived as "The right wing Daily Show" and was called The 1/2 Hour News Hour. It was produced by 24 executive producer Joel Surnow who said he wanted to make something that would make Michael Moore's hair stand on end and, as you can see from the YouTube link, not only was it not funny but it was so densely unfunny that light can't possibly escape it. It also shows that conservatives have no idea about what Jon Stewart does. Jon Stewart is a liberal and often fiercely and brilliantly takes conservatives to task on his show. What he does not do is sit with his writers and say, "Ok, how do we use this show to advance the liberal agenda?" Jon Stewart does not try to make a LIBERAL show, he tries to make a FUNNY show. In fact, anyone who's ever seen The Daily Show knows that they show no mercy to Democrats or liberals. Why do they do this? Because it's funny and therein lies the difference between him and Joel Surnow.

Stewart tries to make people laugh while Joel Surnow tried to make Michael Moore's hair stand on end. That's why he failed and that's also why David Zucker has failed so miserably in his attempt at conservative comedy. When he made The Naked Gun, Zucker was trying to make a funny movie. When he made An American Carol, the comedy came second to advancing his agenda. Zucker more or less says this himself in the Weekly Standard article:

He adds: "I don't have any desire to be taken seriously. Really, I really don't. But having said that, I really believe this stuff. Why can't I put it out there? And I'm scared to death of Obama. If I didn't do something about it I would feel--My kids would ask: 'What did you do in the war Daddy?'"

"I donated my career to stop this s--."

Yep, nothing says "laugh riot" like imagining yourself to be the equal of the people who are actually fighting and dying on the front lines. Surely, he can't be serious.

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Dane Makes Us Melancholy

Once again, I feel compelled to do something that, if anyone else did it, would elicit great criticism from me. I'm going to criticize a movie I haven't seen. I've done this twice before, first with Larry the Cable Guy's witless Protection and again with Martin Lawrence's College Road Trip. Today, I will write about...this. Warning: I was fine but there are rumors that many who have watched this trailer lost the ability to feel joy.

Ah, Dane Cook. Cook is a very popular comedian who, as far as I can tell, starts being funny whenever I'm not listening to him. I last wrote about Dane Cook when I reviewed his last star vehicle, Good Luck Chuck. That movie was capped off by a scene where a three-breasted woman watches a videotape where, to the apparent delight of Jessica Alba*, he gives oral sex to a toy penguin and no, I did not make up a single word of that. As you saw in the trailer for his new movie, Generic Title, Cook stretches as an actor in a scene where he gives oral sex to a burrito. At least with this one he's moved up to organic matter (unless it's a Taco Bell burrito).

So, other than that, why will Generic Title suck? First off, you have Jason Biggs, an actor who shares with Cook the distinction that he's had sex on screen with something that wasn't human. Somehow, he's managed to land Kate Hudson as his girlfriend and then completely blows it by moving too fast and asking her to move in with him after only knowing her for a few weeks. Biggs' character, Dustin, is most likely one of these A-holes you see on the internet in droves, the ones who come to every forum on the internet, no matter what the forum's topic, to bitch that women don't like nice guys. It could be Cheese-Lovers.com under the thread, "I Love Gouda," and one of these guys will show up to say, "You know who else liked gouda? My ex-girlfriend who left me for a guy who treats her like shit so this means that all women love getting treated like shit."

Anyway, we then see that Dustin is best friends with Cook's character, Tank. Why is he named Tank? I honestly believe that, if you broke everyone on the planet down to the cellular level, you wouldn't find a single human atom that gave a crap why he's named Tank although, knowing Cook, I'd bet every penny I have as well as every penny I ever will have that it has something to do with his penis. Tank apparently makes his living as a sick, hateful version of Will Smith's Hitch character. Instead of teaching men to behave in a way that pleases and excites women, Tank is hired to date a woman targetted by a man who supposedly likes her so he can behave like a complete jerk (a role that Dane Cook has shown in the past that he can play masterfully) and the woman will then run screaming back to the "nice guy" who unleashed this vicious little pig of a man on her in the first place. This all leads to Dustin deciding to make the woman he supposedly loves miserable by having Tank meet her, date her and destroy her so that she'll need a "nice guy" like Dustin to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.

Had Dustin bothered to get to know her better, he'd have known that this plan would not work. Not because it's ludicrous on the level that believing unicorns are real is ludicrous, mind you. This is a movie. Stupid ideas work like a charm on a regular basis. No, it won't work because Kate Hudson's Alexis is the embodiment of narcissistic fantasies that all those "nice guys" have of why some girl didn't like them. She actually likes it when he takes her to a strip club on their date and gets so excited that she yanks him into her home for sex after he insults her looks and calls her fat. I'm sure if he hits her, steals her credit cards and sleeps with her sister, she'll want to have his baby. After he ejaculates into Alexis, Tank suddenly develops a conscience and thinks it may be a bad thing to sleep with the woman your best friend loves.

Luckily for Tank, Dustin has the intelligence of an artichoke and doesn't suspect that Tank has betrayed him when Alexis says that she's seeing someone else. Tank then makes one last ditch effort to get Alexis to hate him by causing her grandmother to suffer a six foot fall that could easily kill a woman her age. Unfortunately, Dustin shows up with what seems to be the intent of making an ass out of himself, an intent that succeeds beyond his wildest dreams.

I'm not sure what the hell happens after that although I'm willing to bet that oral sex with non-living objects is involved. Alec Baldwin shows up to play what this movie desperately needs: a misogynistic douchebag to whom Tank turns for advice about...um...I guess about how to be more of a misogynistic douchebag than he already is.

This trailer shows that Generic Title will have the same problem that Good Luck Chuck had: hate. This movie hates decency, happiness, humor and, most of all, women. It loathes women with an intensity that is normally reserved for Nazis.

I believe the trailer, along with Cook's history of horrible films is sufficient evidence that Generic Title will be a true showcase of suckitude, but, to top it off, the movie has a release date of September 15. September, especially early September, is the month where you get two kinds of movies. One is the movie where everyone dresses frilly and speaks with English accents that comes out between September and the end of the year for Oscar consideration. The other kind is Cook's movie, the absolutely horrible movie that can only possibly make money now, when there's no competition. Even then, they mostly do crap for box office making September the month where bad movies go to die.

So, everyone go ahead and enjoy your summer at the movies. You'll probably see this trailer from time to time but now you may have a bit more tolerance for it and can chuckle at the people who break down in tears or go screaming from the theater. Don't dread the coming September day when this vicious piece of celluloid will be released. If you do that, Dane Cook wins.


*I gained an immense amount of respect for Jessica Alba's acting ability just by the fact that she was able to keep from vomiting during that entire bit. I hope she got paid a hell of a lot for Good Luck Chuck as she truly deserved it.

College Road Trip...TO HELL!!!!

Recently, I did something that a movie critic is not supposed to do, I reviewed a movie I hadn't seen. That movie was Larry the Cable Guy's new movie Witless Protection. Despite the fact that I committed what is normally considered to be some sort of journalistic mortal sin, I feel that future generations will not only vindicate me for what I did but actually put actually worship me as a national hero. Parents will name their children after me for warning them to stay the hell away from a movie that scored ZERO PERCENT on RottenTomatoes.com's Tomato Meter.

I speak now not only to my current readers but also to little Michael Clear Nussbaum in the year 2030 who's writing a school report about me and needs more than just the Witless Protection article to work with. Therefore, I will now make the case for why you all should never, ever see College Road Trip.

This won't be as easy a call like Witless was. Movies can surprise you in ways that are very...um...surprising.* I can remember seeing the trailer for Pulp Fiction and thinking it was going to be something like what retarded people would make if they ever broke into a movie studio and shot their own picture. Instead, it turned out to be on of the 20th century's great movies. On the other hand, I thought Snakes On A Plane would be a highly entertaining action film and it was instead fiercely mediocre.

So, why do I think that College Road Trip won't be one of these surprises? Let's review the evidence.

First, there's the trailer. Yeah yeah, I know I just talked about how much I didn't like Pulp Fiction's trailer but that was a complex tapestry of a film. A trailer takes some of the movie's best moments and splices them together and Pulp Fiction's best moments were difficult to appreciate when taken out of context from the rest of the film. Go ahead and watch College road Trip's trailer and see if you think that's the case here:



What did we see? First, we see that Martin Lawrence plays a mind bogglingly stupid police chief with some sort of pig phobia who seems shocked that his 18 year old daughter would want to go to college far away instead of what I assume whatever sort of agricultural community college that his small town offers. He's one of these TV/movie dads who's so insanely overprotective of his teenage daughter's virtue that he thinks it's a good idea to abuse the power of his office by tasing a young man who tries to get her a drink. Apparently he's not brought up on charges or sued since he's still driving his police vehicle when he decides to piss his daughter off by accompanying her on a series of college tours or, more specifically a (drumroll) COLLEGE ROAD TRIP. This is the point at which hilarity has supposedly been procured and the film makers attempt to set it free so that it may ensue. Unfortunately, hilarity is an unpredictable beast and in this case it not only fails to ensue but actually desues. My spell checker just told me that "desues" is not a word but, thanks to me, it will be commonly used by my fans in 2030.

Continuing with the trailer, apparently Lawrence's character has never before spent any sort of extended length of time with another human being since he thinks that playing I Spy and singing Bingo will be sufficient to keep the daughter who already resents him for coming along on this trip entertained. After acting like an ass and rolling his SUV down a hill, he and his daughter as well as his son and their pet pig (don't know how the hell they got there, don't care) bum a ride with a man played by Donny Osmond who provides the only laugh in the entire trailer. Lawrence's character possesses no self awareness since he is now visibly annoyed by Osmond's dull attempts at keeping them entertained even though it's similar to what he trying to do with his daughter.

At this point his character is revealed as either schizophrenic or manic depressive since he suddenly does a complete character reversal and whole-heartedly embraces his daughter's decision to move away and go to an out of town college. Since fucking things up and acting like an ass seems to be the only way Lawrence does things, he rushes them both onto a plane to meet what I suppose is some sort of fast-approaching deadline for either a college interview or some sort of submission filing and OH WHO GIVES A CRAP because it's unimportant to the fact that the plane they're on belongs to a skydiving club and they must now jump out of the plane to do whatever the hell it is they have to do. I guess they make it but it turns out that the girl will be staying the night at some sort of a sorority house so Lawrence reverts to his Totally Bugfuck Insane Dad personality who thinks it's a good idea to hide under the beds of strange college girls. Again, the sins he committed earlier in the movie are visited upon him when one of the sorority girls sees the strange, middle aged man hiding in the sorority house and hits him with a taser.

And, well, that's the trailer. It's my main piece of evidence but I do have more. For instance, we have the video diaries that you can see here and here. The first one shows some of the stunts where you get to see a scene not in the trailer where, after parachuting out of the plane, they steal a golf cart which they seem compelled to drive through crowds of people instead of just going to their destination. In the second one, you see some of the supporting cast making lame jokes capped off by Martin Lawrence making a lame joke about doing a sequel.

My final piece of evidence is Martin Lawrence himself. Lawrence simply doesn't make good movies. Looking through his IMDB profile, the only one I'd even come close to recommending is Bad Boys and that is because it's not a Martin Lawrence movie but rather a movie with Martin Lawrence in it. This is the same distinction I made when discussing Larry the Cable Guy and why the only decent movie Larry had been in was Cars. I admit to never having seen Big Momma's House 2 so, hell, maybe that's Lawrence's Citizen Kane and won't be truly appreciated until after he's dead.

So, that's about it. We'll all see on March 7 if I was right. If I'm wrong then I pretty much blow to hell any chance of the future getting cluttered up with all those monuments to me. I have a decent shot of still being alive in 2030 so, if you see an old man walking around with the self satisfied smile that says he did his part to make humanity a better place, that's probably me. Don't say hi though or I'll hit you with my cane.


*(Note to little M.C. Nussbaum in 2030: What I just wrote is a horribly written sentence and you should never write like that. I could go back and change but, here in 2008, we're taught not to acknowledge or correct our mistakes but, rather, to "stay the course" so that sentence stays in. Oh, and don't do drugs.)

Witless Protection: Made FOR Idiots, BY Idiots

I had planned to watch and review Fool's Gold today but, since I wasn't able to, I decided to do something that, if it was done by anybody else, would draw harsh criticism from me. I'm going to review a movie that I haven't seen, that being the latest "comedy" from Larry the Cable Guy that is oh so cleverly titled Witless Protection.

If you are one of those people who gets outraged at the idea that someone would dare to judge a movie that they haven't seen and ended up accidentally spitting so much of whatever you happened to be drinking at your computer that you short circuited it, I apologi...on second thought, if your computer doesn't work, that means that you're not even reading this so the hell with you. Hell, if you don't know that you aren't supposed to be spitting at electronic devices then you are probably a Larry the Cable Guy fan.

The fact that I can't stand Larry is Exhibit #1 in my case against Witless Protection. If you think he's funny, well, you have my pity. Some of you Larry fans may have suffered a traumatic head injury at some point and will see this movie when your caretakers bring you to the theater, help you off with your helmet and periodically wipe the drool off your face. If this is not the case for you then you really have no excuse. Larry lost me as a fan the first time I ever saw him perform on TV and heard him say something like, "First time I ever saw Rosie O'Donnell, my wiener done gone up my body and come out my butthole." There is a list of people in this world who fail to make me laugh yet have huge, passionate fanbases. These people include Tom Green, Jenny McCarthy (who's also in this movie), Dane Cook, Rush Limbaugh and, of course, Larry the Cable Guy. I just have to remind myself over and over that comedy is subjective when I see people laughing, cheering wildly and encouraging Larry to Git-R-Done when he says things like, "If you get whacked by a gay mafia, is that good or bad?"

Exhibit #2 consists of Larry's previous films. Larry was the voice of Tow Mater in Cars. That's a point in his favor. That was a wonderful movie and he was often very funny in it. Of course, that was a movie with Larry the Cable Guy in it, not a Larry the Cable Guy movie. That is not a subtle difference. Cars was a movie in which Larry supplied the voice of a supporting character and spoke dialogue that was written for him, thus making it a movie with Larry the Cable Guy in it. A Larry the Cable Guy movie is one where he's the star and had a great deal of creative input, which brings us to Health Inspector and Delta Farce. These are both movies that are so bad that the only way I could entertain myself was trying to imagine how they could have been worse. Sex with relatives or farm animals or maybe actually having to watch Larry take a crap (although there is a scene where he takes a piss in a shower) would probably have had to occur to achieve that standard. In Health Inspector he plays a stupid, incompetent health inspector who, despite the vast authority of his position, is unable to get restaurants shut down even though they are poisoning people. He gets fired from his job, partly due to what is apparently the all-powerful reach of restaurant owners but mostly because he's a moron but manages to resolve the whole, stupid situation by going undercover. In Delta Farce, he and his Blue Collar Comedy pal Bill Engvall play stupid, incompetent soldiers who crash land in Mexico and think it's Iraq. They then proceed to cause an international incident by fighting corrupt Federales and quite improbably manage to get hot Mexican girls to fall for them. The humor mainly consisted of racist and homophobic jokes with a healthy does of toilet humor mixed in. These movies are both not only bad but I'd say that their existence is almost blasphemous and that you could probably take the scripts and, given the proper incantation and alignment of the stars, use them to summon Cthulu.

Exhibit #3, my final piece of evidence, consists of the movie's trailer and IMDB profile. IMDB starts off by saying that this was written and directed by Charles Robert Carner. In his entire profile, there is only one movie that I recognized and that was his 1985 screenplay for Gymkata. This was a stupid movie about some threat to the planet that could only be solved by a combination of gymnastics and martial arts, hence the title. Everything else that Carner has ever written or directed is...well...I can't say bad since I had never seen any of them. I'm having a hard time even remembering any of them. Mostly he's done made-for TV projects like his last movie, Judas. I see that he actually thought it was a good idea to cast Tim Matheson as Pontius Pilate and, for some reason, having the guy who played Animal House's Otter condemn Jesus to death didn't garner huge ratings. So, Charles Robert Carner started off his career with a stupid movie, and proceeded from there to stupid, forgettable movies. And now he's directing Witless Protection.

The trailer's a whole different animal. In it, we see Larry playing a stupid, incompetent deputy who thinks a Russian woman he sees in a diner who is under FBI protection has been kidnapped. Because, you know, kidnappers love to bring their victims into public diners. We also get to hear a sample of the hilarious dialogue:

Russian Woman: Are you insane?

Larry: No, I'm Larry.

The trailer also shows a large number of B-list actors. Two of these include Jenny McCarthy and Eric Roberts. Jenny McCarthy is on the list I mentioned above. She got a reputation for being funny from when she hosted an MTV show where guys would laugh at what she said because she was hot. Eric Roberts, on the other hand, became famous when he played Paul Snider in the movie Star 80. The late Gene Siskel once called his performance in that one of the best pieces of acting he had ever seen. This is why I imagine he cries himself to sleep at night because, pretty much ever since then his career has been what I can only assume is some sort of experiment to see how many crappy movies he can be in before they'll stop letting him make movies.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I think I've made my case. If, after reading this, you still want to go and see Witless Protection, I just hope your caretakers make sure you don't choke on your popcorn.