Romeo + Juliet (1996)

This week, to celebrate a review that's been years in the making, my friend Tony and I did a podcast talking about our history with this movie and what we thought about it. Check it out:



William Shakespeare is always a tough one to tackle when making a movie, because there are so many things that can go wrong. You really just need the best actors and the best understanding of drama possible, because otherwise you could end up churning out something rather misguided or silly.

And when you don't feel like even trying, you can always just make something like Romeo + Juliet.

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes

IMDb

Co-written with Tony and Michelle.

Yes, this is the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film that some people like and other people wonder why those people won't share their illegal drugs. Seriously, guys, it's bad. I respect any opinions to the contrary, and I know it won a lot of awards, but there's no mincing words or dancing around the point here. This is a bad movie.

We start off with a TV news report talking about the Capulets and the Montagues in their ongoing strife in a big city. I guess the idea is kind of clever, but it's just done in such a goofy, cartoonish way. Hearing Shakespearean dialogue coming out of a bunch of news anchors in suits on a TV screen just doesn't fit. It's like wearing sandals with socks.

And the directing is just so god-awful. Everything is done in sped-up cartoony pace, with lots of exaggerated movements and over the top flamboyance. It's annoying as shit. Everything happens super fast and there's just no room for the film to breathe. Like, really, even before the characters actually come in – you get tons of quick shots of the city, and things burning, aerial shots that are supposed to represent the chaos between the two families.

Maybe they'll report on that King Lear fellow next town over, too, and his familial drama.

You'd think the National Guard would step in, seeing as this IS supposed to be modern times and in the United States, and these families are seemingly wreaking havoc on a whole entire big city. But I guess that wasn't important – fuck actually doing work with the stupid ideas and themes you came up with, right? "It's an artistic decision" isn't a catch-all for bullshit, guys.

And, apparently, this is now a Full House style sitcom. Because the movie can't make up its mind on fucking anything.

The very first actual scene is perpetual bad movie machine John Leguizamo as Tybalt and a bunch of other idiots as the Montagues, fighting at a gas station. I bet Shakespeare envisioned his classic work this way when writing it – idiots with Hawaiian shirts and dyed pink hair and cowboy boots fighting with guns and blowing up cars in the middle of a crowded traffic hour. THAT'S the Shakespeare I know and love!

Shakespeare!

This isn't a fucking ballet class. In real life you'd have been shot by now.

I think I finally know the real problem with these sorts of scenes. In the original story, yeah, it was two packs of young, testosterone-filled morons fighting in the streets. Fine. But you're updating this to the modern day. It really doesn't make sense to have them fighting and shooting guns at each other in the middle of a crowded city. In any modern society, they would be stopped and arrested for this. Why not just have them meet on a sidewalk somewhere in some shitty neighborhood and fight there? There's just no need for this much theatrics.

You're making Skittles look like they're all black and grey. Jesus Christ.

The more and more I watch, the more I'm convinced Luhrmann put all this over the top wackiness in there because he thought the audience would be bored by the dialogue, and so he wanted to make it so grotesquely goofy that the Looney Tunes' conflicts look like Casablanca in comparison.

Leguizamo's acting in this is so bad you can see it from outer space. The aliens are laughing at us, and this performance is why they haven't made contact yet. Every scene he's in, he's screaming, doing weird motions with his eyebrows, baring his teeth like a rabid dog, and dancing around everywhere. His wardrobe seems to be a collection of clown clothes picked out by a blind person.

The only love of Leguizamo's life...

So then we get Romeo, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Give him credit, he tries – but him exchanging Shakespeare's beautifully written dialogue about longing for young love while hanging with a bunch of dude-bros with surfer haircuts and Hawaiian shirts in a pool hall is fucking eye-gouging, ear-raping terrible.

Meanwhile, Juliet, played by Claire Danes, is in her house while they're getting ready for a party. She's probably one of the better actresses in this, but her mother played by Diane Venora is probably the worst performance in the movie (well, next to Leguizamo). It probably wasn't even her fault – I blame whoever directed her to emote every line like a woman who was just in a car crash and is screaming for the medics to help her.

Is this shot pandering to the dentists in the audience? Eugh.

Every fucking line, she's screaming her head off. Was it supposed to be funny? Because it's not, unless you just think really loud things blaring in your face are funny. In that case, I have another recommendation for you which I am sure you will also find hysterical:

So they go to a party, where Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) is dressed in drag as a disco ball, apparently, and goes into a whole song and dance about...well, I don't really know, as frankly I'm too distracted by the annoying, garish visuals to pay attention to what they're saying.

This is a carefully crafted assault on our collective minds...

I get it, they're trying to go for spectacle here, fast and entertaining and colorful – but this is way, waaaay over the top. Shakespearean theater is no stranger to silly comedy, but what you did here was like someone bringing a mechanic a car and telling him to polish up the exterior and change the tires, and he instead adds big wheels with flashing strobe lights, paints flames on the sides and puts a rocket launcher to the top.

Also, why is there a guy in an astronaut costume at this party? I guess it's a costume party, so anything goes, but seriously, doesn't that just seem slightly out of place? Or maybe that one was just between the lines in the original play.

Juliet always dreamed of being with a man who wears adult diapers.

Romeo meets Juliet, and they go through the whole routine, falling in love faster than a celebrity can backpedal after the media catches them saying racist things. It's a decent scene, as whenever the camera is just on these two, the movie is at least kind of tolerable. And by that I mean it isn't a hyperactive blast of rainbow-colored annoyance, so that's good at least.

Ew, cooties. Gross.

But alas, they find out they're from warring families, so they can't be together. In the original play this made sense, as it was hundreds of years ago and kids their age had little control over their lives. But in a big modern city like this movie is set in? Shit, man – these kids would be running away, smoking blunts in a hotel room and probably be pregnant in as much time as the movie takes place, if this were real life.

The movie kind of blathers on for a while, and we get a scene where the two of them horsing around in a pool. I love the scene where there's actually a security guard for the Capulets' mansion dressed up in regular clothes and watching a security cam, and he comes out and checks on Juliet after hearing them fall into the pool.

"I should probably retire, but being a security guard is fun because I don't have to do any work!"

The point where she learns she can get away with anything with just a smile...

He sees her for a split second and she gives him a thumbs up, so I guess that's OK – I mean, maybe she's just the type of person who falls into pools all the time. No point in checking to make sure she isn't being held hostage at gunpoint and being forced to pretend she's OK, right?

Romeo then goes to a priest and asks him how he can marry Juliet. The priest doesn't think to tell him it's a stupid idea – he just escalates the situation, presumably because he is a sick man who likes to play with peoples' lives.

"Father, shouldn't we talk him out of this crazy idea and be rational?"
"Ssshhhh... I want to see where this trainwreck goes."

But luckily, before that can come to fruition, Mercutio is brutally murdered by Tybalt. Oh, did I say luckily? I, uh, misspoke. I meant it's very tragic. Ahem. Yes. He was an annoying man who didn't deserve to die...you know what, I'm no good at eulogies. I just can't put my whole self into it.

Romeo then chases down Tybalt in the rain and kills him, too – it's another awful, wretched scene full of bad directing, with lots of super fast cuts that make you more nauseous than that rickety old carnival ride that made you puke on your date last year after you ate a chili dog. Incidentally, this movie is also the number one cause of people puking on their dates when watching it.

"THIS IS MY BEST IMPRESSION OF A TURKEY CATCHING RAINWATER IN ITS MOUTH! DO YOU LIKE IT?"

Because of this, the judge of the court banishes Romeo from the city, which is something a lot of judges do. I remember when Casey Anthony was on trial and then they banished her from Florida afterward. That was an intense day.

Juliet's family then forces her to get married to some doofus who didn't have any important lines in the movie. Still hopeful that Leonardo DiCaprio will win an Oscar back in 1996, she rebels and runs away from her family. There's also an awful, repugnant scene of her father (Paul Sorvino) screaming at her for disobeying him. Wow, an angry father taking out his insecurities on a daughter who won't obey him? Please, movie, dazzle us with more of your brilliantly original scenes!

Juliet then goes to that priest from before, and threatens to commit suicide if she has to marry that other guy. She also points a gun at the priest, which was the best scene in the movie for me.

DO IT!!!

The priest sits down with her and talks her through it, calming her down and helping her realize suicide isn't the answer.

…

Nah! Just kidding. He gives her a potion to fake her death until Romeo can come back and save her. He really had this whole fake death thing planned well, huh? He didn't even skip a beat – just brought it up like it was the most normal thing in the world.

He tells her his plan with the aid of images horribly green-screened behind him, which makes this whole sequence look like a bad anti-drug video they would make you watch in fourth grade.

"Here, take my faking-death potion that I mysteriously, worryingly have for suspicious reasons!"
"But Father, wasn't that your real bottle of shark poison?!"
"Oh, well... shit."

Meanwhile, Romeo is hanging out somewhere in the desert doing nothing. Really, Juliet – are you sure this is the guy you want to marry? He doesn't seem particularly motivated. Oh, except when he learns that Juliet killed herself. Then he does an excellent overly dramatic scream at the heavens with his fist pumped. Yeah! There's the old Romeo spirit. Bravado underlined by utter pointlessness.

Also it seems like he's been exiled to North Dakota. Which makes sense - if you're going to exile people from a city, might as well send them to places with wide open space, a lot of room and no reason to want to continue living.

He had to wander around in the field and find the best spot to drop to his knees and dramatically scream at the sky. It's a talent of his, and he's becoming an expert.

It's really just too bad he couldn't put as much effort into checking whether she was really dead, as he did in that dramatic scream. Because when he finds her fake-dead body, he kills himself for real. And right before he dies, she opens her eyes and reveals that she wasn't dead!

So then she shoots herself in the head and dies along with him. I really have to admire the neat and clean way she shot herself in the head, with no blood and her head fully intact!

Guys, I know middle school theater productions of this play don't have blood, but the least you could have done after making us sit through the movie, was show us the characters' mangled and bloody corpses. Thanks for fucking nothing.

I hated this movie for years growing up, and in fact for years in high school I proclaimed this to be the worst movie ever made. Watching it again now, I don't find myself mad, but rather just very, very fascinated with all of this. It's loud, it's stupidly colorful, it's goofy, the acting was bad, the costumes were bad and I'm pretty sure it would smell bad if you could smell it. It's an assault on every sense you have, and it's amazingly, relentlessly annoying almost every minute of screentime. Tony said later that the movie deserves the same treatment as the ET game cartridges, with every copy buried in a landfill, and I'm inclined to say he's right.

The way they tried to modernize the story was half-assed and not clever at all. The story's silliest moments seem extra dumb now when you couple them with the goofy acting and the awful directing. The entire thing is just a cacophonous mess and it's actually kind of amazing how weirdly awful everything is. It's seriously a marvel how little of anything was done well here.

But really I just had to come back to one thing – in the original play, you got a sense of the young, fleeting, passionate love the characters had. You got into the drama. It was a story about two kids who fall in the kind of stupid, blind, insane and passionate love that kids fall into, and reading it or watching a faithful adaptation makes it clear how little teenagers and the young love they share have changed in the hundreds of years since Shakespeare's time. It's a timeless story and can resonate with anyone who was ever a teenager and had a boyfriend or girlfriend. That's what made it so fucking brilliant.

This movie doesn't have that timeless feel. It's tired and extremely dated now, and it just can't make you connect with any of the drama in it. Between the folds of fat of the ridiculous garish colors and over the top acting, it loses the humanity and drama of the story. I guess I can see why people like this, for the over the top artsiness, but it really fell flat for us here, and failed at everything it tried to do.

Luhrmann said in interviews that he wanted this to reflect the kind of bawdy, theatrical goofiness that would have kept crowds watching in Shakespeare's own time, when he was alive. But really, we don't need that now, because audiences are intelligent and can understand more things without gimmicky flashiness and over the top cues every second. I mean, it's just hard to take any of this seriously when the hero dies wearing a shirt that looks like it's from Spencer's.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Jingle All the Way (1996)

Well, Christmas has come and gone yet again, and I never did get around to reviewing a real Christmas movie in time. Damn it, just damn it – my own awful timing gets in the way yet again. What can I possibly do to make it up to you?

Director: Brian Levant

Starring: Arnold Schwarzennegger, Sinbad

IMDb

No, I don't think this counts. I don't think anyone in their right mind would consider Jingle All the Way a feasible manner of making amends with someone – unless you're apologizing for not annoying the ever loving piss out of your worst enemies this holiday season.

Oh, okay. It isn't that bad. Is it? IS IT?!

We start this one off with a Power Rangers-esque TV show for kids that I'm sure was made under the influence of all the leftover crack cocaine the studio execs had left over from the 1980s. Seriously, the way this is shot and the speed at which the action moves are so blitzkrieg fast, there isn't any fucking room for a story to be told. You'd have to be high on sugar to find this enjoyable.

When did they give the Ewoks Power Rangers costumes for Halloween, and when can we take them away again?

I didn't know the Flash's loser brother finally conned his way into a TV series.

...which, I suppose, would describe the majority of little children in the 90s and early 2000s. I mean have you seen their breakfast cereals? You could probably swim in an ocean of pure sugar and still be less energized and strung out than if you ate a bowl of Cinammon Toast Crunch.

Anyway, our main characters are well-to-do upper middle class white people with no serious problems. The father, Howard, is played by the obvious choice for any Christmas movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently the big crisis in this movie is him not coming to his kid's karate class on time and not buying his kid a pre-processed action figure because he spent all his time working in the office to pay the bills – what a fucking tragedy, I tell you. Why was I ever worried about all those starving orphans/Charles Dickens characters in the streets on Christmas morning huddled around fires trying to stay warm? Clearly these people have it worse.

I do love the scene where he's trying to get to the class on time. He's stopped by a cop for driving in the emergency lane, which could have killed or seriously injured any number of people in any number of ways. I just feel so bad that he got stopped by that mean old cop for that little detail.

"You could have killed someone waiting in this lane for medical or mechanical assistance!"
"But officer, I have to get to my son's karate show on time!"
"Oh, well in that case...you're still a complete douche and should be arrested."

And then by the time he gets there, the place is cleared out and the janitor is mopping the floor:

"I don't know what happened, Mr. Schwarzenegger. The kids were so bad at karate, the parents just snatched them up and sprinted for home as soon as they could!"

Uh, how late DID Howard leave for that karate match? If he promised he'd be there on time and then got there THAT late, I highly doubt it was just the cop who held him up. Either he was way too far away to ever get there on time, or everyone just rocket-sped out of there, burning their heels on the hard linoleum floor, because the karate match was so bad.

Also, was it too much to ask for a scene of Jake Lloyd (who plays the son, Jamie) trying to break one of those wooden blocks in the karate match, failing horribly and breaking his hand? C'mon. Throw me at least that bone, movie.

"OW! MY HAND!"

At home, Howard gets a tongue-lashing from his wife because hey, him actually doing shit to pay the bills on time and support his family is a rotten thing to do. Plus, it's a Christmas movie – having a father who realistically balances work and family life at all would be stupid and inconsequential to the movie's poorly written plot.

Then he goes upstairs and talks to Jamie about how sorry he is, asking if he can make it up to Jamie in any way. After a bit of prodding, Jamie finally shouts that he wants a Turbo-Man action figure, which Howard promises him and fixes their little spat. I love this - “You can miss all my karate matches if you buy me that commercial piece of plastic! In fact, you can quit your job and be a deadbeat dad and never see us again if you buy it for me! That's how warped my sense of things being equal is!”

"I just may take you up on that last bit, son."

Later on we get some talk from the wife asking if he bought the toy for Jamie yet, to which Howard lies and says yes. Wait a minute – if they knew Jamie wanted this toy - and they had to, considering he watched that Turbo-Man show like an old lady watches televangelists - why didn't they buy it for him already? The dialogue establishes that it's near Christmas eve by now. You'd think they would have known their own son well enough to BUY him the fucking action figure BEFORE he had to tell his dad to get it as a way to make up for missing karate class!

Sigh. The next day we get Howard's manic trek to find that damn action figure before the end of the day so Jamie can someday pass on a similar soul-sucking corporate mindset to his own children and further the Ouroboros-like cycle of cynicism that American culture is becoming...oh, I'm sorry, wrong meeting. The meeting at the docks is tomorrow night. Tonight it's Christmas family movie time!

We get introduced to Sinbad somewhere in the movie's jittery mess of a story, playing Myron, a postal worker who I am sure needs therapy of some kind to undo whatever is wrong with him. Why would I say something so cruel? Well, look at this.

That's what he does immediately upon Howard striking up a conversation with him. Was he just waiting to unleash that tantrum on anyone who spoke to him, or does he just do it to everyone he speaks to? Either way, I'm scared as shit now.

The look on Schwarzenegger's face pretty much sums it up, yeah: "What did I do with my life to get here?"

This movie is like 84 minutes long, and takes up a shitload of its runtime with brainless slapstick in the stores as everyone in this city apparently waited until Christmas Eve to buy Turbo Man toys. Who actually bought these things in the first place if ALL THESE PEOPLE are stampeding at the gates to get them the day before Christmas? Did they just order a shockingly low number of them to begin with? What gives?

Oh well. Just throw in more scenes of people tripping over things set to overly jubilant music, that'll fix it!

In his natural environment.

If you can believe it, there's also a scene where Howard gets taken to an underground black market for toys where for some reason, despite everyone just working from there, they're all wearing Santa costumes. Yes, every one of them. Really not much for unique costuming, are you? Or is this just supposed to be some kind of Santa cult of sorts? Either answer is enough to send your brain cells leaping off a cliff in a mass-suicide attempt, so pick your own answer.

If you can believe that, well, the movie is about to really test your sanity with a fight scene between Howard and a bunch of these Santas. Yes, really.

Also throughout the movie, we get scenes of this other guy, Ted, a next door neighbor trying to put the moves on Howard's wife. He's so un-subtle about it, I'm surprised he doesn't just kidnap the wife and prompt Schwarzennegger to revert to his past life as an action star to save her.

If only...

But that doesn't happen. Instead we get some more slapstick, and a scene with Myron going on another improv rant in a bar in the middle of the day, this time raving about a toy he wanted as a kid. I give credit to Sinbad for trying to flesh out this ridiculously underwritten, sloppy script – as a lot of his lines were just made up on the spot by him while filming apparently – but seriously, this is as funny as a stubbed toe. The first time was pretty funny, but this really isn't.

Then through another overly long and stupidly complicated chain of events, Howard and Myron find their way to some radio station promising to give away a Turbo Man doll. When they find out the station doesn't have it, they end up destroying the place and getting the cops called on them. Myron, being a stand-up guy, pretends to have a bomb package to throw off the cops. I guess he's just banking on the fact that his face is so forgettable in a crowd that they can lose him and he won't ever be arrested for this.

Except, it turns out, when one of the packages he happened to have at random IS a bomb:

And next up on 'scenes you'd never see in a movie these days'...

I guess it was just one of those bombs that makes you look comedically frazzled, and doesn't seriously hurt you. Oh, well, those are okay then.

After a bunch more boring things happen, including Howard trying to steal a present from Ted's house and Howard's wife all-but-divorcing him, Howard ends up dressed in a Turbo Man outfit for the parade going on. He doesn't have a chance to explain that he isn't supposed to be there, because like all professional productions, they don't give him a chance to talk and instead just shove him into an outfit. You know, because that wouldn't create all sorts of potential problems in real life, right?

You know, I really can't see how, even in a fictional universe, ANYONE thought having that pink monstrosity would be a good idea in a story. I mean it looks like cotton candy vomit from a grizzly bear.

Oh, and Myron shows up as the Turbo Man villain, too, which is so stupid I don't even have words for it. Oh wait yes I do – it's absolutely insane that he would somehow come to the conclusion to dress up as that character on purpose just to get the doll they're giving away as a prize. Seriously, the brain cells are heading toward the cliffside like lemmings here. Someone stop the madness!

On the float, apparently no one stops to think that maybe the two guys fighting and screaming at each other in an intensely personal way ISN'T part of the stunt. Including when Jamie comes up and kicks Myron in the balls – I guess that part was part of the routine! I wonder if the parade people pay for the surgery that comes with ruptured testicles.

What a low blow. This kid is in for a good career as a cast member of the Bad Santa remake in a few years.

Also, apparently the parade people were able to get their hands on a rocket jetpack that can actually let Howard fly way up in the air with no protection or instruction. Another reason I'm really glad those idiots running the parade were SO DISCERNING with who they let wear that costume!

None of these images needed to be seen by mortal eyes.

After a climax that involves Myron chasing Jamie up to a roof top and almost killing him for the doll, we get our happy ending where Howard reunites with his family and all is good again. Myron, I assume, gets arrested and sent to jail for the numerous heinous crimes he's committed, the first and foremost of which is subjecting us to his performance in the movie. Ha ha ha! Man, I crack myself up.

…

So, yeah, this was completely insane. Nothing about it worked, from the scant runtime mostly taken up by over-long slapstick sequences, to the directing which was as boring and slack-jawed as it could get without any notion of pacing or comedic timing, to the plot which seemed to have been written by a group of monkeys on Ritalin and the acting, which was about as good as you'd expect from everything else in this – it's clear that not a lot of work was put into making any of this, despite the actors' best efforts.

While I like the idea this movie was trying to convey - a sort of satire of the rampant consumerism and rushing to get materialistic shallow Christmas gifts for children - the movie really just doesn't pull it off well, and instead comes off as stupid, rushed and thoughtless most of the time, with little wit or clever jokes.

But strangely, I don't really regret seeing it. Through all of its complete bonkers insanity on every level, the film reaches a sort of zen level of “so bad its good” schadenfreude. It really is fun to watch when you've got friends around who are eager to rip into it with you. For that, I'd say it's worth a watch. Plus, I did like it when I was a kid!

Don't tell anybody that last part, though. I have an image to uphold.

Oh, and merry Christmas and all that, yadda yadda. Until next year!

Images copyright of their original owners. I own none of them.

REVIEW: Pinocchio's Revenge (1996)

A film with a title like this at least merits a look. Pinocchio’s Revenge? What’s next? Dumbo’s Godlike Wrath? Ronald McDonald’s Satanic Powers? Nah…neither of those is as catchy as Pinocchio’s Revenge…yeah, I’ll review it. Sure. Why not?

Director: Kevin Tenney

Starring: Rosalind Allen, Brittany Alyse Smith

IMDb

The movie kicks off “five years earlier,” whatever that means…with some cop who looks more like an orderly in a nursing home, he’s so wimpy, driving along the road at night in the rain when he comes across an abandoned car. He then goes through a DO NOT ENTER sign which the movie makes sure to notify the audience of by doing a lingering close up shot of it. Weird…but then we see that the road was blocked off because some guy was burying a creepy wooden puppet in the ground!

"Man, 12th time this week that we've found a doll at a crime scene! What with that whole Good Guy Doll thing in the next neighborhood over...it's like an epidemic or something."

Then we learn that the guy was arrested for several murders “in the present day,” and was actually burying the body of his own son out there. The prosecutor is arguing for the death sentence, and the defendant, who is also the movie’s main character, says he should get off because he only murdered his son as opposed to the others, which had a different M.O. and variations on the style of killing. Yup, he only killed a child, and his own son at that! What’s the big deal, right?!

The main character’s name is Jennifer, and she has a daughter named Zoe. Their relationship is apparently based around the fact that the father left I guess, because otherwise it’s not very well defined…and really the first half hour of this movie is pretty much just a big courtroom drama where they go back and forth for a while with terrible acting until the guy is sentenced to death. Like all courtrooms, they just haul him right in there after the trial is over and kill him.

Yup, they just take you from the courthouse to the electric chair. True Life.

Jennifer sees it aaaaand I guess that scene was in the movie to show that she saw the execution! The end result? The movie is five minutes longer.

Then we get a scene where she talks to a priest about the nature of evil over a cup of coffee. She goes into this Episcopalian church but then tells the priest that she’s not Catholic anymore because she got divorced. So what, she was just blindly walking around and just went into the first church she found, not paying attention to what type of church it was, but knowing she would just snub whatever she found no matter what? Isn't that kind of like...the most religiously intolerant, bitchy thing a person could possibly do to a church?

The priest’s response to this nonsense is to agree to go out to coffee with her. Did we miss a few lines of the script here? It’s like, “Hi, I’m not a Catholic but I’m willingly using your church anyway, by the way I’m divorced, want to go out and get some coffee?”

"Your religious intolerance amuses me."

And check out the awkward acting on priest guy! Newsflash, guy: when you laugh, try to actually make it sound like HUMAN LAUGHTER. Not…whatever creepy, vaguely pedophilic “I’m covering my ocean of insecurities” sort of expression you’re doing here. Can’t you just see that face on To Catch a Predator in a few years?

So in case you were wondering why the movie is a half-hour in and there is no sign of any revenge or any Pinocchio, the creepy puppet that almost got buried alive is in Jennifer’s office and mysteriously ends up in her car later, too. Does she question this at all, or stop the car to remove it and take it back into the office? Of course not! I personally love having evidence from murder trials in my car, so I guess I can see why she doesn’t seem to care.

Ha! I remember last week when I took home a blood-soaked knife and gave it to my girlfriend to cut up vegetables for dinner. Fun times.

She finds out her daughter’s birthday present, some random doll, won’t be there in time. Most parents would just accept this inconvenience and stop by Wal Mart to pick up some cheap knock-off instead. However, THIS parent decides the best thing to do is to give the daughter the creepy puppet that belonged to a murderer who was just executed that very day as a “substitute” until the real gift arrives…at times like this, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to have a test you have to pass before you can become a parent. Seriously, IT’S A PIECE OF EVIDENCE FROM A MURDER TRIAL. I don’t think passing it along to the defense attorney’s kid is really in order here!

So Zoe starts to bond with Pinocchio while her mom starts to bond with Mr. Replacement Dad here:

Yes, because when I think erotica, I think Pinocchio's Revenge every time.

And since it’s right next to Zoe’s room, she can hear all the fun next door as she’s trying to go to sleep!

Give the kid some credit, that's some good acting there. The look on her face is so appropriately scarred. And I love that her mom has the gall to have sex with her boyfriend at her house ON HER BIRTHDAY...yup, happy birthday kid! You get to listen to your mother having sex with a man who is not your father, because nobody loves you. Ha ha! Oh the wackiness...

Can you spell ‘psychiatrist for the rest of her childhood life’? Especially since she starts trying to mimick what her parents do except with Pinocchio...eugh, NO! Just NO!

Please hand me the brain-bleach so I can erase the implications of this scene from my mind forever.

As if the movie is apologizing for this scene, we have to have a typical slasher movie ‘naked girl in the shower’ scene, with the babysitter! It’s got no purpose besides gratuitously showing off tits and ass from a woman who clearly doesn’t have her green card yet, so she probably was forced to do this. And we see that Pinocchio is perving out on the bed…well, he’s got his needs too! And no, I’m not going to make a ‘wood’ joke. That is beneath even my standards.

At school, Pinocchio gets thrown over a fence by some mean girls. So in retaliation he pushes one of them in front of a bus…dammit, this movie stole my idea for an anti-bullying campaign: don’t bully other kids, or else a small wooden puppet will push your bike in front of a bus. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GENIUS!

In the middle of all of this nonsense, there is a subplot about how Pinocchio is “killing off” all Zoe’s other toys, including the gruesome stabbing and intense mutilation of a female doll and throwing a plush whale in the garbage. Somehow I don’t really think those two are equal kills. But hey, what do I know? I’m not the kind of numbskull who would make a slasher movie where more toys die than humans.

Well, I am just outraged. I have never seen such outrageous brutality against a toy...I will be contacting the Association for the Protection of Dolls immediately!

So, yeah, after that we see more of the mother’s brilliant career-defining defense attorney work as she tries pathetically to defend a guy who hung a pimp from a hook, burned and tortured him to death and recorded the whole thing “so he could listen to it again and again,” according to the prosecutor. They even play the tape and listen to the screams the whole way through, which are about as subtle as a wrecking ball smashing into your mom’s house. It’s completely ridiculous, over the top and probably also the best part of the movie. It’s just so out of nowhere and is completely hilarious to boot…like the prosecutor’s hilariously over the top smug smile, or just how fake those screams sound. And then the criminal guy starts cracking up while the screams are playing…it’s too much. Just too much!

What is this, a lost member of the Hell's Angels gang?

I also just love this; the guy tells Jennifer that his TV told him to kill the pimp. She’s writing notes on her legal pad and…

Insanity defense QUESTION MARK? Yes, he says his TV told him to do it…maybe he’s crazy! I dunno! Maybe the 2012 election will result in a president that will divide public opinion! Maybe Adolf Hitler wasn’t exactly the best role model for children! ANY OTHER GROUNDBREAKING OBSERVATIONS I NEED TO CLEAR UP HERE?!

Yeah, didn’t think so; anyway, next we see Mr. Replacement Dad-Boyfriend guy get pushed down the stairs. Zoe sees a psychiatrist, but brings Pinocchio with her. When the psychiatrist leaves the room for a second, Pinocchio starts talking to her in a silly voice and questioning what exactly happened to the boyfriend guy when he fell. Did Zoe actually kill him and is just imagining the puppet talking, or is Pinocchio really super-real? Such psychological intrigue is just bending my mind!

So Pinocchio goes and pulls the plug on the boyfriend guy and then we see the psychiatrist telling Jennifer that Zoe is crazy, showing her the tape from before, only now we don’t hear Pinocchio talking, so it just looks like she’s talking to herself. Jennifer feels attacked and starts shouting at the psychiatrist that, despite obviously just looking out for the best interest of his patient’s safety, she will go after his license if he tries to recommend Zoe for further psychiatric treatment. She says there isn’t enough solid evidence to show that Zoe is insane. Okay…where do I start with this?

First, “HOW DARE YOU DO YOUR JOB?! I’LL TRY TO HAVE YOU DISBARRED FROM IT FOR ACCEPTING MY MONEY AND DOING YOUR JOB!” Sheesh. You know, it’s not like he’s insulting your daughter or your parental skills…he’s saying she needs help. Is such a vitriolic response really necessary? I wonder if she treats all work employees that way. Does she scream her lungs out if the guy at McDonalds gets her order wrong?

Second, how the HELL does this woman NOT think that a videotape of her daughter screaming at thin air, or rather at an inanimate puppet, constitutes tangible proof that the daughter needs psychiatric help?! What kind of parent are you, lady? You’re stupid! You’re absolutely retarded! YOU are the WORST DEFENSE ATTORNEY EVER! God! Somebody just take away this woman’s right to be a parent and a lawyer. She doesn’t deserve either one!

Then she sees the priest guy again and they have a contrived conversation about the nature of evil, because yes, when I watch a movie called Pinocchio’s Revenge, I’m really in a contemplative mood about the nature of evil. Jennifer has apparently figured out that it was the crazy guy’s son who was killing all the people and that he killed his son to stop him. That WOULD make sense if this weren’t a movie with an evil, talking puppet in it…but it is, and so you just wonder why the hell the puppet is in the movie anyway. But more on that in a bit, as first we have the climax to contend with!

Yes, apparently Jennifer goes home and finds Zoe scared and hiding from Pinocchio. Jennifer gets attacked by Pinocchio and they stumble around in the dark a bit. Look at this one scene:

This puppet should start a club with the SAW doll, Chucky, Rumplestiltskin and the Puppet Master dolls and call it the Toy Mafia. That would be cool...man, what am I even talking about?

Doesn’t it just look like the doll just got thrown on her back by someone off screen? C’mon. At least try a little more than that…and what, how did he jump that high? Was he wearing his Air Jordans?

Anyway, Jennifer finally manages to throw Pinocchio through a glass table, only when the lights come up…

Truly up there with Vertigo or Psycho for an ending twist, huh? But seriously, while I'll give the movie credit for a twist I never saw coming...I didn't see it coming because it makes no sense. So it balances out.

WHAT? PLOT TWIST!? Seriously, that doesn’t even make sense…so what, was the daughter attacking people the whole time, or was this just a trick by the puppet? Was she crazy, or is the mother just seeing things? Was the puppet possessing the daughter the whole time? What about the guy who got executed from before – what was the deal there; did the puppet kill everyone then, too, and make him think his son did it? If so, how did the puppet even get such powers? Or was the entire movie just sort of a mind game and everything was all in the characters’ heads? You can’t have a plot twist if you don’t even know what you’re trying to imply with it, movie!

Well that’s Pinocchio’s Revenge…it’s a silly train wreck, there are so many problems with it I couldn’t cover them in one of these reviews, not by a longshot. The characters are ludicrous, the story is confusingly vague and spends most of its runtime as a courtroom drama rather than a slasher film and the killer is just weak as hell. What 'revenge' was there in this movie, pray tell? Pinocchio had no motive beyond just killing everyone around him so he could be closer to Zoe - where's the revenge? I find this title highly misleading!

And it’s amazingly fun to watch. I mean, this is a terribly incoherent mess of a movie, but man is it hilarious! I laughed so much when I saw this, and it truly is one of those bad movies that becomes golden by virtue of how over the top goofy it is. Give Pinocchio’s Revenge a watch, you guys – you won’t regret it. As an unlicensed professional doctor, though, I will recommend ceasing to view the movie if you start to see visions of a small puppet trying to kill you. In that case, remind yourself that this is only a movie...for real lawyers would never be this stupid or this incompetent, and real killer puppets are a little more considerate of the feelings of other toys. They'd at least ask them to form an alliance first...sheesh, movie, you really got a lot wrong!

Pictures copyright of their original owners, I do not own any of them.