Review: Hercules in New York (1970)

Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Stang

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065832/

Everybody’s got to start somewhere, even the great Arnold Schwarzenegger. Starting from humble beginnings in rural Austria, he eventually came over here and started doing body building and winning Mr. Universe contests with his incredibly muscular physique. He also started acting with a little movie called Hercules in New York. And…it’s pretty much no different from the body building stuff, as clearly there’s no attention to good acting, cinematography or storytelling here! What’s the deal with this misguided, softheaded little movie from 1970? Well, let’s find out. Put on your sunglasses, because his shiny steel biceps might just blind you.

The movie begins with an introduction that takes us around the Earth from outer space, while a voice tells us that before myth and history became mystery (…that’s a weird pun…), there were the Gods and Goddesses of Athens, Greece, who ruled over the land. Then it…just decides to show us these Gods and Goddesses, who are still doing their dealings today. Right off the bat we see Schwarzenegger, uh, showing off his huge muscles while talking rather woodenly (because you can’t really call that acting) to a goat-like old man with a beard that looks like he probably bought it from some tourist stand in Florida.

This is supposed to be Zeus, and I guess what’s going on is that Arnol---I mean Hercules, is tired of seeing the same people and things all the time, and wants to go explore the Earth. Or that’s what it says on his cue card, at least. He and Zeus argue and shout at each other for a few minutes in very dull conversation. I mean seriously, can’t you move on with it? We get it! Hercules wants to leave Olympus and Zeus thinks he’s not ready yet. Why? Well, just watch any of Arnold’s social interactions with literally anybody else in this damn movie and you’ll see exactly why. It’s not like you have to be a fucking detective for that one, folks.

Hey, somebody tell them to get their crappy renaissance fair out of here...oh, wait, that's the real set, isn't it?

So Zeus finally gets tired of Hercules’ bitching, too, and zaps him out of Olympus, sending him to Earth like he wants. An old lady sees him falling from the sky naked and freaks out. Then he’s found in the water swimming by a ship of sailors, who give him some clothes. He basically just kind of wanders around and talks about how great he is…while having absurdly large muscles. That basically boils down to a lot of this movie, really. Him saying “Hercules bows to no man” or some other such phrase while the camera accents his muscles.

Sigh. Just go with it; the movie will be over faster that way. Probably.

For some weird reason, he tries to get off the ship when they dock in New York, and they won’t let him. Why? Did he unknowingly sign some kind of contract to stay on as a crew member? Did they just want him to stay for their daily afternoon gay orgy in the back of the ship? What, movie? What?!

They all chase him off the ship as he leaves and start attacking him as a team, resulting in some truly ridiculous fight scenes and camera angles. Like I love the part where they’re all just pushing on this big wooden plank and trying to shove each other down. I think I played that game in elementary school! I mean, seriously…how would you even do that? In what kind of warped-ass fight scene would this kind of thing happen? It boggles the mind.

And another thing; you know what? This whole thing is starting to look like it could have just been Arnold’s real story of how he got to this country! They just added in some bullshit story about Greek gods and bam! Hercules in New York. Couldn’t you just picture that? It’s exactly the kind of badass way of arriving that only Schwarzenegger would inspire.

So after that scene, he gets picked up by this dweeby guy who is worried for his safety. I’m sorry, what? Worried for his safety after HE just kicked the asses of like five or six guys all by himself? Something doesn’t add up here. The guy’s name is Pretzie, because he sells pretzels by the ocean – I’m glad apt character naming was a priority for the filmmakers. Pretzie and Arnold take a cab that Pretzie says can drop them off on the side of the road at a random intersection by some trees. So he just wants to be dropped off at some arbitrary location on the side of the road? Oh yeah, just the finest of New York culture for these guys! The side of the road; it’s a classic tourist spot!

…oh, wait, no it’s not.

Hey, kids, did you ever wonder what would happen if you put an Austrian that barely knows English with two guys from New York who speak in nothing but slang, talking about money? Well, for the 0.0002% of you that did, that’s exactly what happens next. I mean seriously, these bozos stand there for like a full three or four minutes going back and forth with the cab driver about paying the money, which Schwarzenegger is appalled he has to pay for simply riding in a “chariot”! I’ve been refraining from any jokes about Schwarzenegger’s political career throughout this review for the sake of length, but how do you think it would fly if he tried to reinstate these political ideals in the modern day?

Somehow I don’t think it would go too well. But I promise that’s the last joke about his governor career that I’ll make in this review.

So then they go to the closest baseball field to the middle of nowhere and Schwarzenegger finds that he can do so much better than any of the guys warming up on the field. He throws a discus in the most wobbly and off-kilter way possible, and this amazes the token rich guy and his token hot daughter Helen in the crowd so much that they invite Schwarzenegger and Pretzie to lunch at their house the very same day. Don’t look at me; I didn’t write this movie.

At the rich peoples’ home, Schwarzenegger kisses Helen’s hand, and when she leaves, this prompts Pretzie to jump into a lecture about how you shouldn’t treat ‘dames’ that way. Yeah. Just because he kissed her on the hand politely, Pretzie thinks he’s being out of line. But then, this is also the guy who thought they were talking about drugs when they invited him for tea time, so I guess we can’t really expect groundbreaking logistical circles from him. Can we even expect the most basic of consistent manners with him? No. Hell no! This is Hercules in New York, bitches!

Ahem. So after that, Schwarzenegger meets the other guest that Helen has brought over, a handsome guy who he assumes is her ‘mate.’ When they rightfully express confusion at this outdated terminology and rash assumption, Schwarzenegger does the obvious thing and…picks him up and starts spinning him around over his head. This is starting to look like something that would appear on Jerry Springer.

This botched escapade for some reason attracts Helen, who I guess always likes large, socially awkward men who have muscles the size of ocean liners and speak in absurd ways and hurt the people she cares about. They just turn her on like no tomorrow! So the two of them go out again, this time alone, and find that they’re quickly attracted to each other by way of a lazily written script. They ride a carriage through the park when they’re attacked by…an actor in a very, very, very, very, very fake looking bear suit. He hobbles around like some weird goblin out of middle Earth. And Arnold has to fight it to get it away from the carriage.

Ugh…you know what, I’m not even surprised anymore. There is no point in acting like I’m surprised at a movie like this after some point. I’m just going to roll with the punches.

"This will sell the movie, my dearest, and someday we will rule this land!"

So because Arnold is gaining notoriety for being a crazy motherfucker who fights bears and stuff, he and Pretzie are in business as a pro-wrestling/weight lifting team. The mob cracks down on them and makes Pretzie sign over the rights to Arnold’s career – which he does with very little persuasion; what a great friend, right? Up in Olympus Zeus wants Hercules back, so he sends Mercury to go get him. When Hercules still doesn’t come back, Zeus then sends Nemesis after him, but Nemesis is stopped by Zeus’ wife Juno, who has a vendetta on Hercules and tells Nemesis to poison him and take away his godlike strength. Nemesis does this by slipping a drug into his drink at a restaurant.

…Really? That’s the best this Greek goddess could do? The equivalent of slipping him a roofie? What’s next, are they going to distract people by tapping them on the shoulder from the other side of them? I just can’t wait to see what’s next for these oh-so-divine gods and goddesses!

Okay, so the movie slips into a very boring spot here – yes, a movie called Hercules in New York becomes dull; I can’t believe it either. A lot of stuff involving Pluto the God of the underworld happens, and we see Pluto decked out in a suave black suit that makes him look more like he belongs in a night club rather than the eternal night. Arnold suits up for a big weight lifting contest, which of course he’ll have more trouble with seeing as his strength is going away! And…look at this. Isn’t it just about the gayest thing you’ve seen all week? C’mon, guys, can’t you put on some pants at least? Would it kill you? Oh. It would, then. I see.

So after Hercules loses, the mob starts chasing them, and Helen and her father split up with them and get into a car, fooling the mob into chasing them instead. Hercules and Pretzie steal a carriage with horses and everything and start THE BEST CHASE SCENE YOU’LL EVER SEE IN THE HISTORY OF SCHWARZENEGGER FILMS! Seriously, Terminator and Terminator 2 got NOTHING on this shit!

Just every day life for Mr. Schwarzenegger circa 1970...

When they start fighting in the warehouse Hercules starts to lose real quickly, and off to the side in Olympus, another goddess secretly calls for Atlas and Samson to go help beat the bad guys, even though Samson has nothing to do with Greek mythology. Isn’t having a biblical figure in a movie about Greek myths kind of a slap in the face? It’s like having a WalMart built over your house only for salespeople to come and try and pitch you various items from the WalMart! That’s just insensitive, in the funniest way possible.

And I also love how Zeus reacts to Atlas and Samson coming in. Does this guy have like, no control at all over anything in his empire? First he didn’t know that Juno went behind his back to trick Hercules, and now this. He’s completely clueless!

Okay, this has gone on for long enough. Hercules and Pretzie beat the bad guys, and then Hercules decides to leave. In a strangely reflective twist, we see Pretzie going back to his lonely apartment and thinking sadly about all the good times he had with Hercules, saying that he will never forget him as long as he lives. Which is…touching in a creepy way, I guess, except for one little detail. In all of the little flashback scenes shown here, it’s not stuff the two of them did together. It’s stuff Hercules did while Pretzie just stood around and watched! Yeah, real deep friendship there, right?

Maybe we’ve all been misjudging this movie. It’s not just a campy and poorly made 70s movie. It’s a veiled character study on a lonely and depressed man named Pretzie, who had no friends at all and had to cling to the only person he could find who would ever waste his time with him…a socially awkward, Austrian-accented Greek god who had no idea of any kind of human culture.

Well, after putting it like that it just sounds dumb. This movie is just…I don’t even know what to say. The title pretty much sums up the entirety of the plot, since most of the movie is nothing but a showboat for Arnold’s gigantic muscles. There’s really nothing else to it. But I can’t help but think the film does have a certain innocent charm to it, a magical, transcendent quality to its stupidity…let’s just call it moldy 70s shlock.

All images Copyright (c) their original owners. Except for the Enquirer picture, I used Paint to make that in like 2 minutes.

Review: Old Dogs (2009)

Director: Walt Becker

Starring: John Travolta, Robin Williams

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976238/

You know, with movies like this, I don’t even think there’s much human input at all. It’s just like a machine spitting out cliché plotlines, shallow characters and unfunny lines into a mishmash of blandness. And by god is this bland – I mean, you have no idea. It’s so bland it hurts. Watching this was like having to listen to a dentist drill in your ear for an hour and a half, and actually I’m tempted to say that would be preferable to watching Old Dogs again.

Yes, starring John Travolta and Robin Williams, because…I got nothing; they just picked these two big Hollywood comedic actors’ names out of a hat…Old Dogs was a commercial and critical flop, and for good reason, because this movie just sucks ass! And that’s good enough reason for me to take a look at it and put a nail in this kind of half-assed toothless comedic farce once and for all. Let us commence the beating.

It starts off with Travolta and Williams – I’m sure they have other names but I’m just going to call them by their real ones – walking down the street and arguing about what’s going to happen in their latest business venture, which is as vague and generic as any half-assed comedy ever put out. And what are their characters like? Well, what kinds of characters do they usually play? Travolta as a womanizing and suave nice guy with a voice so girly that most women talk to him because they think he’s a woman himself? Williams as a bumbling fool with a heart of gold and a temper like a volcano? Check aaaaaand check! And yes, I have my revolver on standby for this.

So after Williams begs Travolta not to tell an embarrassing story about him to the board of directors at the meeting later, like a true friend, Travolta goes ahead and tells exactly that story. What a douche. The direction here takes on a very annoying ‘snapshot’ style where short, quick scenes are shoved in your face like clumsily made religious pamphlets from a street leper as Travolta’s voice over tells the story. This is the kind of lazy crap that a lot of modern ‘comedies’ fall into. They seem to think that instead of telling a real story, they can just throw in a bunch of hastily made two-second scenes with shitty music playing over it and hope people laugh. Well I’m not laughing, movie!

Oh, right. So apparently after his first divorce, Williams was depressed and Travolta took him on a tropical vacation where he got a tattoo misspelled by an idiot tattoo artist and then married some chick he didn’t know just because she looked hot, only to leave her the next day out of shame. It’s the kind of boring crap that these kinds of movies substitute for real comedy because they think people can relate to it, or something like that. Because having any real comedy with out-there scenarios and jokes that actually call attention to themselves is just immature!

The next day, Williams gets a message from that chick he married when he was drunk, and she wants to meet him in person to talk. Travolta forces Williams to go to a tanning salon because the movie needs to set up the first of its many hilarious hijinks. Oh, what’s it going to be, movie? Maybe things are looking up after all. What’s that? The salon lady looks at his tattoo funny and then proceeds to flirt with Travolta while Williams gets a mega tan that makes him look like a Guido or something. Nope, that’s not funny at all. Pass.

At the airport, Williams gets stopped by like three people in a row who think he’s Hispanic because of the heavy tan, because…I guess that’s all they’ve got. They can’t even make any real jokes, so they’re just throwing in bland misunderstandings and hoping they get a chuckle or two. It’s like a high schooler who spent his whole night on the Internet looking up porn instead of doing the big project that’s due the next day, and so he had to throw something crappy together at the last minute, appeasing the teacher’s mercy with the barest of his wit. That’s this whole movie. A shoveled together, last minute attempt at humor from a writer who spent his evenings getting drunk because this was the only work he was getting. And who can blame him?

Ugh. So Williams meets with the chick he married when he was drunk, and they exchange several bouts of creepily awkward laughter, because THAT shows us that these two characters haven’t seen each other in a while, right? They go to a restaurant when she drops two bombshells on him one after the other: she’s going to jail for chaining herself to a bulldozer and protesting the destruction of her home (….okay…), AND she has kids. Williams’ kids. Yup, he’s a father. A father who has to impress business executives in order to get a big stake in the company and has to take care of his kids as well. Can you feel the quirkiness yet? Because it’s coming. It’s coming in absurdly small amounts so as to not alienate any of the viewers, because good comedy never takes any risks, right? It never has anything that could possibly offend anyone.

…oh, I forgot this scene, where Williams slams the trunk door on the kids’ original babysitter, ruining her hands:

Charming! I bet she’ll be depressed for weeks and never be able to use her hands fully again for at least a year, but at least you got some laug…at least it was funn…oh, wait, I can’t think of any positives. Scratch that.

So now Williams and Travolta have to take care of two kids. It’s like Two and a Half Men if it was robbed of all good taste and any kind of jokes. For some weird ass reason the film starts to make jokes about how old Travolta and Williams are, with almost every other line having something to do with the two of them being grandpa age. Uh, are we missing something? These guys are old enough to be grandpas? I don’t know; I mean sure they’re not young men anymore, but grandpas? Hardly.

There’s one scene where Williams gets kicked out of his expensive condominium for bringing kids in – and trying to disguise them with hats and sunglasses, because that usually works. The alarm goes off and the lights turn on like there’s a burglar in the house, and the woman Williams talks to runs screaming like she’s being attacked. Ha. Haha…oh, wait, it wasn’t funny.

Then they move in with Travolta, who has poison-tipped spears in glass cases, a fifteen feet deep pool and other things eccentric rich people normally have for no apparent reason other than to seem different and quirky. Williams hires two morons to ‘baby-proof’ the house, which in this movie means asking stupid questions (“You got these spears a thousand years ago? You expect me to believe that?”) and eating food out of the fridge, like total assholes who any sane person would throw out and have arrested in a second, but the movie needs to have more things to kick around its two punching bags of main characters. The kids want to go camping, and scream so loud that they make the birds fly away, and so that’s what they do next! Camping.

This is the point where the movie really slides off a cliff and becomes flat out intolerable as opposed to just silly and clichéd. I’m going to try and sum up what happens in the next half hour of the movie without killing myself or setting out on a quest to murder everyone involved in this. Take a deep breath, people. This is gonna get ugly real fast.

So they go to camp, where this one weirdo thinks Travolta stole his girlfriend. The two guys get mistaken for a gay couple, and then they’re forced to participate in a game of ultimate Frisbee, where Williams hurts that weird guy and busts his lip. They get tackled and shoved around a lot and probably violently hurt, and then Williams blows the head off this statue of the camp’s founder. Then somehow he sets the whole thing on fire? I don’t know. They go back to the house and talk about taking pills like old men, except AGAIN they’re really not that old, so I don’t get why the movie keeps pretending they are. Does the movie assume we can’t tell the difference between the middle-aged Williams and Travolta and actual old people above the age of 65 or so? That’s really stupid, movie.

The kids knock over all the pills while Travolta and Williams aren’t looking, and thus more annoying garbage ensues as the two hapless bland personas suffer all the worst, most cartoony side effects of the pills when they’re trying to do important things, like hit on women at grief circles, and play golf games with Japanese men and Seth Green:

Ghastly. Can’t this movie even try to conjure up something watchable? Just once?

For that matter, yeah, this woman who Travolta was hitting on invited him to come to a grief circle where everyone just grieves about people, I guess. That’s all fine and well but…WHY would she invite some random guy who was hitting on her to a grief circle? Oh yeah, that’s real top notch dating material there! Is she going to have the honeymoon at a funeral parlor? Maybe first conception in the middle of a graveyard? It’s all just happiness and butterflies for this woman, isn’t it?

So because Robin Williams feels that he isn’t connecting with his kids enough, Travolta gives him some sound advice: Just be there for them, protect them and do what they want to do. So how do they go about that? Get this. Travolta takes Williams to a guy played by Bernie Mac who has developed a highly experimental ‘human puppet’ system where two people wear suits, with one moving his body and the other one being manually controlled to do whatever the first guy is doing. Because of this, Travolta and Bernie Mac are able to sit upstairs and control Williams’ movements as he has a pretend tea-party with his daughter.

Is it weird that the only thing going through my head during this was, "where did they get those costumes?"

Uh…okay. This is too much. THIS is their idea of how to foster better bonding between a father and his kids?! You can’t be serious! You really can’t be serious! That’s ludicrous. It doesn’t even matter how much you try to cover it up with sappy, poorly done emotional scenes afterward; normal human beings would never consider something like this as an alternative. Movie, shoot yourself. Repeatedly!

GOD! The rest of the film goes like this: Williams’ wife gets out of jail, and comes home, but Williams and Travolta have to go to Japan to seal the big business deal. They blow it because Williams is homesick for his family, and then the two of them and Seth Green have to invade a zoo to crash the birthday party and be there like they promised. Williams bribes a stuntman to borrow his costume and go to his kids, while Seth Green is kidnapped by a gorilla. It all ends happily ever after with this:

AAAAAAAHHHHH! That's the scariest thing I've ever seen.

Fuck this movie. It’s unfunny, it’s annoying, it’s clichéd and there’s simply nothing good about it, barely any scenes that aren’t completely horrible. Be ashamed if you ever spend money on corporate shitstockings as putrid as this. It is quite simply, unwatchable. And that’s no lie. 

Review: Dragonball Evolution (2009)

Director: James Wong

Starring: Justin Chatwin, Chow Yun Fat, Jamie Chung, Emily Rossum

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1098327/

“Something’s wrong with my grandpa! I’ve got to go.”

-Goku

Take a look at this picture:

Yeah. If you ever thought that should be made into a live action feature length film…you should probably be locked up for life. But they did it anyway! And it’s a hunk of lameness that I have not seen since the Ghost Rider movie. If you ever liked the TV series it was based on then this review will probably hurt you. People…this is Dragonball Evolution.

I remember watching Dragonball and Dragonball Z like all the time when I was a kid. It was great. It was big and fun and action packed and silly as hell, and it was just great. But there’s the first problem with this movie. For one, that was ten years ago! Talk about poor marketing! The people who watched the show are grown up by now and most of them probably weren’t near as excited now as they would have been if this came out at the height of Dragonball’s popularity. And two, it’s a live action movie; why would you ever want that? It’s so goofy looking in cartoon form that it’d be impossible to ever satisfy the fans when you try to make it live action. Of all the shows you could turn into live action movies, why this one? What kind of freaks would actually watch it?! Oh…well…except for me, I guess. Fuck it, let’s just get started.

Our movie begins with Goku, who in this version is a pasty white teenager with only slightly goofy hair, balancing on some tightropes. He’s being trained by his grandpa, who seems to think that everything is overrated, including eyes and ears, as he teaches Goku – it’s kind of like Mr. Miyagi if he took a class in 9^th grade wannabe-hipster. Goofy old grandpa also delivers such earth-shaking parables as “Normalcy is overrated,” which is clearly the answer to all of Goku’s woes about not fitting in and not being able to talk to girls!

…yeah. He whines about not fitting in and not being able to talk to girls. Wasn’t Goku in the cartoon a brash, fearless, headstrong and naïve idiot who was never self conscious about anything? Like…the exact opposite of this? GET IT RIGHT. Oh, and his grandpa gives him a Dragonball after that, because the transition from talking about girl problems to talking about ancient mystical artifacts is just so logical, right?

So then the next day we see Goku going to school on his motorized bicycle, which he parks for some reason in a car’s parking space. It is then completely destroyed by two overgrown sacks of testosterone who run it over with their car – guess that’s what you get, you frigging moron. He tries to pick a fight with them but can’t muster up the courage. What a pussy. Then we see him in class fantasizing about a girl named Chi Chi and what would happen if she was…looking at him and eating strawberries rather sensually while the background outside turned into a rejected Wizard of Oz set with golden cornfields and a blue sky and everything.

The camera then switches to what looks like a flying coffee machine in which Piccolo, here looking more like Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies if he was seasick, is dropping fireballs casually down toward the Earth. I’d like to take this moment to apologize to all environmentalists for Piccolo’s littering problem. He will be duly reprimanded for it. Apparently Piccolo tried to take over the world 2000 years ago, was sealed under the Earth by the Dragonballs and is now…inexplicably back somehow. I don’t know; it’s never really elaborated on at all. He just is.

Why so green?

Then Goku sees that Chi Chi is having trouble with her locker, and so he uses his Ki to make all the lockers open magically from far away. She runs after him and seems to know about the Ki powers somehow – it’s every nerd’s dream; a hot Asian girl who does martial arts and will accept you, smile at you and invite you to her parties even after you completely and utterly botch the process of trying to act cool in front of her. Which is exactly what happens! Don’t you just love implausible wet-dream filmmaking?

So in a true dick move, Goku skips out on his grandpa’s homemade birthday dinner to go out to the party and perform some ridiculous stunts, defeating those bullies from before in a sudden and sporadic burst of self confidence. He then starts to talk to Chi Chi and seems to be doing alright, until the Dragonball he was given earlier starts to glow in his coat pocket. He then delivers probably the funniest line in this movie: “Something’s wrong with my grandpa! I’ve got to go.” I’m serious, just picture hearing that from Chi Chi’s perspective. Isn’t it just…so hilariously out of nowhere? Here’s a piece of advice for all the ladies out there: If some guy ever says this to you so randomly, especially in the throes of passion, it’s time to re-evaluate your choices in men.

GRANDPA!!!

But of course, as the laws of shitty, lazy filmmaking dictate, the one night Goku decided to leave is the night that Piccolo tracked down his grandpa’s house and blew it up. However, the movie decides to mire itself in even worse cliché as we see the grandpa live juuuuuuuust long enough to deliver a long, dry monologue about how Goku is the chosen one to defeat Piccolo and save the world, or some shit like that. How is it that every dying character in these movies can always muster up just enough breath to deliver the exact information necessary for the plot, getting all of it out very neatly and tidily, before they croak? I think it’d probably be a lot messier, like this:

“Goku…ugh…you have to…uuuuugggghhh…find the Dragonballs…cough…splutter…gag…and grow a pair of balls yourself to talk to chicks better and…uuuuugggghh…cough…” *Dies*

Yeah, that sounds more realistic. But let us take a moment of silence for Grandpa Gohan, who would probably want us to stop grieving and move on as soon as we could. After all, as he would say…life is overrated, anyway. Like, totally.

So the next morning his house is broken into by a spunky blue-haired vixen named Bulma, who as we will come to know, is completely devoid of any kind of real character. She tells some bullshit story about how someone stole a Dragonball from her father’s high tech security building and that she thinks it was him. They end up lying next to one another on the floor after a clumsy fight scene and Bulma finally realizes through a very sloppy change of emotion that Goku is not the one she’s looking for! Then Goku says he can “sense his grandpa.” Man, no wonder this kid has problems with girls; he can’t shut up about his grandpa for two seconds! What’s he gonna do when he gets a real girlfriend and they’re in bed together when that Dragonball of his goes off? “Ooh, I can feel my grandpa vibrating real strong tonight! Excuse me a moment!” Ugh. Disgusting…

Goku and Bulma team up and go to find Master Roshi, who is played by Chow Yun Fat. I would begrudge his presence in this movie as a terrible waste of talent or maybe that his character looks NOTHING like the one from the cartoon, but…honestly, he’s like the only person in this movie I kind of like. He’s fun and energetic and he actually seems to be trying, which is more than I can say for half the rest of the cast. The three of them set out to go find the rest of the Dragonballs. Roshi reveals that the end of the world is coming in just a few days – wow, this whole thing is just excellently timed, isn’t it? Right on time for the friggin’ end of the world!

We see Piccolo saying that he needs to step up his game and get serious, and so he straps himself into this weird chair thing that somehow creates…shitty special effect monsters that they could barely afford! After a very silly fight scene in which they end up using the monsters as a bridge to get across a lava-filled volcano to get a Dragonball…I know, just go with it…Master Roshi reveals that there is another way they can get the Dragonballs. So wait, after all that shit, NOW is when he decides to tell them?! Don’t they have like 2 days left till the END OF THE WORLD? Well, fuck, I guess he was just waiting until the very last possible second to tell them there was an easier way to do this. What a douche.

Yeah, THIS is what you think of when you think of Dragonball. Right. It looks like something out of the Matrix or some shit like that.

Apparently they go to this temple where Ernie Hudson is playing a wise old mystic with some mystical kind of secre…wait, Ernie Hudson? He’s in this movie too? What happened, did they kidnap him? What a waste of a cool actor! Goku somehow finds Chi Chi at the temple too, because I guess they really couldn’t find a better way to write her character back in. She finds him in this templar room with a bunch of torches all around, and tells him that he has to use his Ki to light them all in order to make out with her. He does, and they make out. But wait, Goku! You forgot to mention your grandpa five times during this scene!

This chick that works with Piccolo disguises herself as Chi Chi through some weird unexplained science bullcrap, and steals the Dragonballs, resulting in a fight scene where Goku gets the real Chi Chi and the fake one confused, kicking the real one in the face and getting blasted with a laser gun. But luckily his Ki power is a substitute for CPR now, I guess, and he wakes up after a few seconds. They say goodbye to Ernie Hudson – who ya gonna call? Not him anymore – and leave.

And now the final battle with Piccolo is beginning, as he evokes the Blood Moon or something and turns Goku into a horrible special effect. Notice how you don’t see much of it? That’s because they don’t want you to. For very good reason.

Yup, that's Dragonball alright!

They kill Piccolo through a barrage of uselessly colorful special effects and, has anyone noticed that he barely got any screentime? The grandpa got more lines than he did! I mean what the hell? Why was he even in this movie if they were barely going to utilize him at all? Maybe they just…couldn’t even pay the actor to stay on screen long enough and so this was all they could get. Makes about as much sense as anything else, I guess. Goku kills Roshi by accident while in his Berzerker mode – oops! – but they bring him back with the Dragonballs, so I guess it’s OK. Trivializing death is fun.

The movie ends with a sappy, melodramatic romance scene between Goku and Chi Chi. The way they talk about their mishap with Goku hitting her makes it sound like they just had really kinky sex the night before. Then the credits roll and you all breathe a sigh of relief. And what a soulless adventure it all was!

This just sucks. But I don’t even have to say that – you know it sucks. I knew it would suck before I even saw one minute of it. Anyone who gets angry over the fact that this sucks is pretty much missing the point, as it is futile. It’s one of those movies where you don’t ever consider watching it expecting anything redeemable so much as…well, you just don’t ever consider watching it, period. The audience for this is limited to a very niche audience of inbreds and weirdos who actually wanted to see Dragonball translated to the silver screen, but even then, nothing about this movie is redeemable. So go spend your time doing something else. Like sticking your head in a blender and pressing the ‘on’ button.

All images Copyright (c) of their original owners.

Review: The Washingtonians (2007)

Director: Peter Medak

Starring: George Washington's teeth.

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0854548/

I think this movie is every history lover’s nightmare. Because it seriously defies all logic and presents one of the most out-there, ridiculous plot premises ever seen on film. Would you believe me if I told you that this movie tells us that George Washington was a cannibal, feasted primarily on young boys’ flesh AND inspired a cult of ravenous followers dedicated to protecting that secret from the American mainstream?

Well, you had me up until that last part!

No, that is seriously what this movie wants to tell a story about; pass me the Jaegermeister and a pillow while you’re leaving the theater. It’s seriously stupid, and if you try to take it the least bit seriously then you will probably hate it. But it surprisingly works, and is done with the appropriate attention to comedy and knowledge of its own silliness to be entertaining. There are even some scary moments here that are really good. It’s that strange blend of horror and comedy that sort of amalgamates itself into one festering mass of sloppy, chaotic evil…and I love the hell out of it.

Okay, so the story is basically that this family comes to the only town completely full of old people with nobody else of any other age group to settle their grandfather’s estate and get all the taxes worked out. Their daughter looks about 11 or so but acts about half that age – seriously, SHE’S AFRAID OF EVERYTHING. For Pete’s sake, even a painting of George Washington scares the bejeebus out of her and makes her scream like she is being murdered. Oh, and the parents find a scroll inside the Washington painting that tells them that George Washington was a cannibal – they don’t believe it yet, but they do think it’s interesting. Then we get some shots like these at the funeral, proving to us what a wonderful, quaint little town this really is:

Things like this are the best parts of this movie, grossing you out and just being really frigging creepy. Old people are scary!

After holding onto the scroll about Washington, the characters’ lives start to get significantly more interesting as they get some weird nightly visitors:

"We're here for the Renaissance Festival! OPEN UP OR WE'LL EAT YOUR INSIDES!"

After that the dad calls his friend the history professor to see if he knows anything about what’s going on. He comes over in the middle of the night to talk about it. The professor starts to tell a story of government manipulation of events, paranoia and historical revisionism, only to cap it all off by saying that George Washington liked little boys. WOW. That’s really something! That scene lost all tension faster than a Dennis Hopper movie! And how the hell did this guy escape capture if they don’t want anyone to know about the secret?

Bon appetit!

So the family gets kidnapped by the Washingtonians, and they’re about to be eaten when these guys show up to crash the party:

Cockblockers...

It all ends rather happily with a twist that I will not ruin for you here. It’s too good. You have to see it for yourself.

That’s The Washingtonians. It’s weird, it’s creepy, it’s…weird…and it certainly keeps your attention. For as stupid as it is, it was intended to be that way, and it will make you laugh as much as it will make your skin crawl with how creepy it is. The story is completely ludicrous, but put it in the same category as Bubba Ho-Tep, for example, and it becomes a lot more enjoyable. This is a pretty good movie that I recommend to anyone who likes this kind of comedic horror slop. Now, I’m off to change my name before the Washingtonians find me!

Review: Life of Brian (1979)

Director: Terry Jones

Starring: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

-Reg

British humor is its own institution. It’s just about one of the most trademarked, idiosyncratic styles of comedy out there, love it or hate it. And one can’t even talk about British humor in the modern day without referencing at least once or twice the comedic bastion known as Monty Python. What better way to exemplify everything that is great about this style than by reviewing one of the early classics, Life of Brian? I don’t know, so…I guess we’ll just do this the way I always do it.

This movie is hilarious because it stares right at Jesus Christ for like, a second before veering the camera off to the side to focus on a regular average Joe who isn’t interesting in the least by himself. Life of Brian works because it flaunts itself as sarcastically as possible, as often as possible. Right from the opening where the three astronomers come in and bless the baby who they think is their savior, the movie doesn’t let up. Every second bombards you with another joke and that is how it always should be – fast paced with jokes crammed into every orifice. Then you get this completely goofy song sequence while the credits roll over a cartoon side-scrolling adventure, informing us that Brian, that kid who they mistakenly thought was Jesus, is ‘not a woman.’ That’s important to know!

The movie is basically a case of mistaken identity, even though almost everyone in this movie is played in traditional Python format by one of the main ‘Python’ guys. Graham Chapman is the lead as Brian, a guy born on the same day as Jesus Christ. After falling in love with a hot rebel chick named Judith Iscariot, Brian joins the Peoples’ Front of Judea and eventually gets himself into trouble when people mistake his on-the-spot ramblings for religious prophesying…what ensues does not end well for poor Brian.

A lot of this movie is made up of really cutting satire against religion, mostly attacking the collective hive-mind worship mentality of religious followers at times and the willingness to suspend logic in the face of something supposedly divine. Exemplifying the movie’s wayward distancing from the orthodox religious norm is, again, the fact that it starts off at Jesus’ sermon at the rock, only to pay as little attention to Jesus himself as possible. It focuses more on the idiots at the back bickering about whose nose is big and whose isn’t. That’s pretty damn funny, and even moreso if it ruffled some religious feathers here and there upon its release.

The whole core of the film’s comedy is brought to the forefront when Brian finally gets mistaken for a prophet after escaping capture. He tries to blend in with the various street prophets by standing up and shouting random nonsense…except people start to believe his nonsense and take it so seriously that he becomes hailed as a real prophet. A gourd that he hands to a guy beside him becomes hailed as a sacred object, as does a sandal that he drops – illustrating the silliness behind deification of objects. It’s all very biting satire. Like another scene where he talks to his GIGANTIC league of followers and gets them all to repeat “We are individuals” as a giant chorus – like that’s not hypocritical.

It’s practically diabolical with how ridiculous and over the top it is. It’s funny and witty as hell, all the time. Being Monty Python, you’ll occasionally get a really out-there gag like the part where Brian gets flown into outer space by two aliens with eyeballs not attached to their heads, before being returned to Earth like nothing ever happened. But also with that, you get some jokes that just don’t work. I didn’t really find the continuous gag with Pilate’s lisping and “Biggus Dickus” so much funny as just irritating as hell. And the same for that retarded gag about the merchant trying to haggle with Brian – sometimes, a joke goes on too long and just…loses every trace of its original humor. But these jokes never even had that, so I guess that’s a bit of a moot point for them, isn’t it?

So it’s a bit hit-or-miss. When it’s funny, it’s hilarious, but there are some things that just…irk me. The only other Monty Python I’ve seen is Holy Grail, and this one is significantly not as good as that one was. Life of Brian has its moments, and it’s very much worth seeing if you like comedy, but it’s not quiiiiiite as good as I expected…but still, go watch it. I'd watch it again, and that's all that counts.

Review: Hollow Man 2 (2006)

Director: Claudio Fah

Starring: Christian Slater, Peter Facinelli, Laura Regan

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469916/

You know those crap films you see at every Blockbuster that nobody ever rents, so they’re just left sitting there on the shelves to rot day after day? Yeah, that’s Hollow Man 2. Because…I guess they couldn’t even come up with a creative title to balance out the supreme boredom of the movie they put out. I guess after the first film was such a riveting tale, some asshole at Sony decided it was time to make a sequel to it. And a Direct to DVD one at that! Is it worth talking about? Not really. Are you going to agree with me that someone should be put in prison for this later? Yes.

As you can plainly see by the opening scene, this movie decided it would be a good idea to start at a fancy party that the filmmakers probably couldn’t afford to get into with the money made for this movie, and probably had to prostitute their wives for on the streets in order to use. This one scientist named Dylan tells this woman that all he does is kill monkeys. Because…that’s a good pick up line, right? No? Well, no wonder those women I told that to didn’t go out with me! Why didn’t I watch this movie before now to find this out?

Anyway, he starts getting beat up by some unseen force that baffles and perplexes everyone in the audience. While most everyday scenarios would just pass this off as a drunken stunt to get some laughs, the film suggests that it’s actually the invisible man, who apparently really didn’t find Dylan’s pick up lines about killing monkeys that funny. He takes him into the bathroom and we hear that his voice is that of Christian Slater. Because I guess having Kevin Bacon in the first film set the bar so high for this one that he was the only one they could get!

Slater the Invisible Man slits Dylan’s throat with a cell phone after Dylan tries to call for help – I guess this is the movie’s attempt to stay relevant with an anti-technology theme. It must be trying to tell us all that cell phones are bad, and that we’ll get our throats slit in the bathroom if we use them for the wrong reasons. That makes sense! A truly worldly, helpful message for us all.

So after that we’re introduced to our main character, Turner, and his partner Lisa. They’re assigned to protect another scientist who the government believes Slater is going after next, based on the dying words of Dylan the monkey slayer, who I guess felt the need for his last words on Earth to be extremely convenient to the loosely thought out plot. But enough about that. Let’s have a memorial service for dear Dylan, who put down many deserving monkeys in his short time on Earth. Let us have a moment of silence for him, for he was truly a glorious specimen.

Okay, well anyway, after some arbitrary and blandish scenes with Turner and Lisa socializing with Maggie, who of course succumbs to the usual Hollywood cliché of being just about the hottest scientist in the universe:

Slater sneaks in at night and kills Lisa with a lamp cord. Here’s a question for you, filmmakers: How come nobody ever bumps into these invisible guys and disturbs their brilliant plans? Wouldn’t that just be priceless? Slater’s walking along, stealthy and silent, until Maggie comes out of the bathroom looking to pose for some more GQ covers and she rams right into him, knocking him over and giving her ample time to flee and tell the authorities?

And apparently the entire thing was a set up all along for the government to lure Slater out so they could track him. Maggie gets arrested for questioning but Turner breaks her out because he doesn’t like the station’s policies with how they’re treating his partner’s death. He basically kidnaps Maggie and makes her tell him everything: basically the government used Slater, an ex-army vet, for an experiment to turn him invisible just like Kevin Bacon in the first movie. They had him kill off political enemies of theirs until he started going crazy and killing people for no reason instead. Now, they want him back. There, that’s it; the entire backstory in 3 sentences. Much easier than filling up an entire pointless scene with it.

It does raise some questions though – Maggie says that the government wanted to create ‘undetectable soldiers.’ Now, that’s all fine and well, except…it’s not really true with what we’re shown here, as clearly the soldiers are easily detectible with a heat seeking device or even just some night-vision goggles! That makes this entire plot device of invisibility more of a small, nagging annoyance than anything, at least as soon as the enemies figure out what the government is doing. It’s just silly.

So then they go to this other guy who has been mysteriously texting Maggie over the last few months, which she decided wisely to NOT tell anyone about until now. Oh, so he stopped for a while. Well that makes it OK. The scene is pretty much pointless and I’m not going to go into it, because it seems to be here just for a gross-out moment with this guy who was also an experiment of the invisibility project:

After that, Slater goes to the government building and starts killing off everyone he can find…except for a blind woman who can’t tell he’s invisible. So let’s look at the moral scale of the Hollow Man movies: Killing dogs and raping and molesting women who can’t defend themselves is OK, but blind people? THAT WOULD JUST BE SCANDALOUS. Off with the heads of anyone who dare harm a blind person, even if just in a crappy direct to DVD sequel to a movie that was never any good in the first place!

Slater then kidnaps Maggie’s sister, using her as bait to make Maggie do what he wants. He makes her strip down to her underwear, because I guess the movie needed its obligatory fanservice, even though it never had any fans. His plan is to turn her invisible to get her out of the building without anyone noticing, and if she resists, he will kill her sister. Luckily Turner stops them in time, and then turns himself invisible in order to escape the government, who are looking for him now, too. That’s pretty drastic.

So Turner attacks the lead government guy who mistakes him for Slater, which leads to one of the movie’s most predictable moments when he finds out who it REALLY is. He’s so surprised that he backs up into the street and gets hit by a car, killing him instantly. Boy! Truly the finest of the finest, people! Truly an intelligent human being who is deserving of a spot on the governmental board. I mean, come on. It’s a Darwin Awards candidate! It’s entirely laughable.

Then Maggie gives Slater the serum to heal him, also injecting it into herself to show how serious she is. Slater fights with Turner in a truly riveting battle of invisible men – shock and awe! Seriously, how is this supposed to be engaging when we can’t even see them? It’s about as productive as showing two fire ants duking it out in the middle of a crowded New York subway. Slater turns visible again but is then killed, as it’s revealed that Maggie had also put rat poison in the serum she gave him! She faints too as she also gave it to herself, and then the movie cuts to a hospital, where Maggie is told by her sister that Turner still has not been found. Cut to outside where, ooooh, an invisible man that we can assume is Turner is watching from the ground!

Wait, what was this trying to get across again? I don’t know why Turner being invisible is supposed to be important and I don’t have a damn clue what the movie wants me to feel about it! The entire movie is like that! I guess Hollow Man 2 is pleasant while it’s on, but it leaves no lasting impression and is not entertaining at all. This is one of those movies that has nothing to say and has no idea where it wants to go. It’s just a space waster from beginning to end. Except for Dylan the monkey slayer. He was cool in my books.

So that's the Hollow Man series, and, surprise, it sucks. The first one is just awful, with such a lack of dignity that I'm surprised it hasn't been banned in any countries yet - but then, that would require some degree of popularity, and this series had about as much as the fat kid in the corner who plays Magic the Gathering all day. And the second one, I mean really? It took you six years to make this? It's got about as much edge to it as a balloon; it's just ineffective as hell! Neither of these movies are any good and I highly advise against a watching of either one. No good can come of it.