Tucker & Dale versus Evil

NetFlix 4.2/5
IMDB 7.6/10
My Rating: 7.5/10

A group of college kids go vacationing in the back country and encounter a pair of hillbillies who aren't what they seem.


OK, I've seen my first great movie of 2012.  Tucker & Dale versus Evil is several movies in one - A laugh-out-loud comedy, an 80's slasher horror, and a surprisingly thoughtful look at stereotypes and how they affect our judgement.  Did I just say that, seriously?  Let's get back to that later...  First, here's what we've got.

The same standard group of attractive college students found in every "Camp Massacre" horror film are heading out into the wild country for their vacation/Spring Break/whatever.  As they begin to leave civilization behind for the land of cash-only gas pumps, they encounter a pair of grungy looking hillbilly redneck types and almost immediately run afoul of them.

Horror fans will be on familiar ground here, and we're waiting for this to turn into another Deliverance or Hills have Eyes-type flick.  The thing is, T&D isn't that movie at all - Here, Tucker and Dale are our heroes!  The "evil" of the title comes in two forms, a sociopathic frat boy and the college kids' own stupidity.  Assuming immediately that Tucker & Dale are cannibal country people, the yoofs manage to bungle every encounter they have through their own fears and assumptions.  See, all T&D want is to relax and fish... They've just bought themselves a "vacation home" (A sinister looking cabin straight out of Evil Dead) and they're ready to kick back and drink beer in their boat for the whole weekend.  What they're decidedly not counting on is this:

The college bunch freak out every time they encounter Tuck & Dale.  When T&D save one of the girls from drowning during the inevitable late night skinnydipping, their innocent arm-waving and, "WE'VE GOT YOUR FRIEND!" shouts inspire terror in the kids, who assume the crazed wildmen have claimed their first victim and are crowing for more.  Panic and lunacy ensue as the yoofs convince themselves that they're being hunted by banjo-wielding killers.  Meanwhile, the rescued girl wakes up in T&D's rustic cabin and we're introduced to the star of the movie:

Alan Tudyk's Tucker is a great character - Smart, forthright, and confident - but it's Tyler Labine that really shines as the goofy, insecure, "Aww shucks" Dale, a big, round rolypoly of a guy who's a lot more like real rednecks than city dwellers would imagine after forty years of films about inbred country folk with one eye and seven chainsaws.  Dale has NO idea what to do with the college-educated, stunningly pretty girl in their cabin, and there are a lot of laughs as she wakes up expecting to be raped and murdered, while Dale is terrified that his sausage and eggs won't be up to her tastes.  The two strike up a rapport and from there on, the movie doesn't let up as it balances the surprisingly sincere relationship between T&D and their "captive" as the rest of the frat pack scheme to kill them.  Yes, kill them...  While most of the kids are terrified lemmings, their leader is the sort of sociopathic team captain  type that's going to grow up to be Gordon Gecko, totally convinced he is the hero of his own story and absolutely reveling in the chance to prove his manhood in this wilderness clash.  Jesse Moss's Chad is downright creepy, the sort of guy who thinks date rape drugs are the pinnacle of medical progress.  He also does a terrifying imitation of a young Tom Cruise, bringing a walking, talking "I'm SO cool" attitude that shows off just what an ass Cruise's characters usually are when the whole movie isn't revolving around trying to present them as the hero.

Fortunately for T&D, most of the kids are as inept as they are frightened, and their repeatedly suicidal attempts to murder the unsuspecting hillbillies get funnier and funnier as their numbers drop and Tuck and Dale start freaking out over these 90210's hurling themselves into the woodchipper.  As the situation escalates, the conflict grows more direct and more intense - Tuck and Dale realize they're in a real fight, Chad goes right off the deep end, and eventually we get the most tense peace conference since Clinton tried to make Arafat play nice:

Aside from a lot of great jokes and some so-OTT-it's hilarious gore and a few genuinely horrifying moments late in the film, T&D vs Evil gives us a surprisingly thoughtful look at class warfare - The hicks are just good ole' boys, but they're intimidated by the brains and moneymaking potential of the city rich kids, while the yoofs have to literally be knocked over the head before they'll even consider that anyone in a beer cap might not be a cannibal.  Social insights are not unusual in horror films, but they're rare, and especially so in horror comedies.  The slow-dawning mutual respect and fondness between scary-yet-harmless Dale and psychology major Allison gives the movie a warm heart and a more enjoyable romance aspect than you'll see in a lot of 'serious' relationship films.  You can't help but cheer when goofball Dale charges to the rescue and right into the role of Movie Hero - It's like seeing John Candy finally flip out and kick ass.

Worth seeing.  Hell, worth buying - This will be the first DVD I've bought since Trick R Treat.

A Faceful of Christmas Shrapnel

Since time for Christmas reviews is rapidly running out and I want to give full reviews only to my favorites, here are some mini reviews of the onslaught of holiday films we've been watching lately.  Buckle up and hang on tight as we powerdive through a flock of yuletide cheer!

Part of the Kentucky Fried Popcorn Christmas Review Series.

This Christmas

NetFlix 3.6/5
IMDB 5.5/10
My Rating: 6.5/10

Sincerity Factor: 7/10

Treacle Factor: 5/10

This was probably our best unexpected surprise of this year's holiday movies.  On casual glance, it looked like another hideously dumb Queen Latifah "Bringing down the house"-style comedy, but it's actually a lot more serious than you'd expect, and a lot better.  A large family gathers under one roof for the first time in years, and everyone has issues.  There's a domineering, philandering husband, a black sheep musician, the cheerful young guy with a secret, the matron with an unaccepted new lover, the...  Well, hell, I could write a paragraph just listing their individual issues, but it's really a film about family and the ties that bind families together, even when they drive each other insane.  As you'd expect in any Christmas film, things tie up semi-neatly to a sugarcake ending, but it's a lot more believable and rocky along the way than your typical holiday fluff.  Besides, how many other seasonal movies give you a full-blown rolling-in-the-yard catfight?  Funny, suspenseful, dramatic, inspiring, and even a bit sniffle-inducing.  A Must See.


Mrs Miracle

NetFlix 4.1/5
IMDB 6.2/10
My Rating: 2/10

Sincerity Factor: 4/10

Treacle Factor: 10/10

From the sublime to the mind-melting...  I'm amazed that this has higher IMDB and Netflix ratings than This Christmas, because I thought there was really no reason for this movie to exist. This Christmas gives you a lot of plotlines that go to unexpected places and show us believable characters.  Mrs Miracle is the sort of holiday movie that an automated holiday movie machine would stamp out on an assembly line for a 500-per-week quota.  A couple of young & beautiful people are somehow lonely at Christmas (Despite the fact that both of them are attractive enough to have their own personal harems), and the guy is incapable of disciplining his children because they have no mother there to apply her magical mother guilt powers.  In walks Mrs. Merkle, the standard crotchety old bat/angel who whips the house into shape, brings the kids in line, and sets up these two wayward 20-somethings as a socially-certified breeding couple.  Mission accomplished, Mrs. Merkle touches the kids with her glowing finger, says, "Beeeee goood", and goes back into space.  5 minutes into this, you'll wonder if the whole movie is going to be so predictable.  Yes.  Go do something else with your time, because you're not getting any surprises here.  The best thing about this film is the ease with which it could be converted into one of those fake YouTube horror trailers.  Picture this edit:

Aged, vaguely caustic old lady eyes two identical children.

"What a mess this room is!", she says.

In the next room, cut to the young father on the phone - "What do you mean, the employment agency has no record of her?  But Mrs. Merkle told me your office sent her!"

Cut to a close-up of old lady's eyes narrowing.

Cue scene of children's bedroom, tidy and neat, but empty of children.

Fade to scene of old lady walking off down dark street to eerie piano music which gets creepier as she fades magically from view.

Snow

NetFlix 3.9/5
IMDB 5.8/10
My Rating: 4/10

Sincerity Factor: 5/10

Treacle Factor: 8/10

It's time for young Nick Snowden to take over the reins as the new Santa Claus.  Unfortunately, one of his reindeer falls into a plot device and ends up at a zoo run by inexpressibly perky Sandy, who has a secret closet full of Bobby socks and poodle skirts.  Madcap antics and television-quality CGI ensue as Nick tries to rescue his reindeer with the help of jive-talkin' young Hector, the most annoying "sassy black kid" in a film since that child that played Jude in Swamp Thing. Fortunately Sandy's perkiness and ability to fill out a tight sweater prove distracting, and the whole thing is painless enough as bubblegum fare goes.  "At least it's not as dull as Mrs. Miracle" is not exactly groundshaking praise, but it's the best I got. It has a few moments where you'll go, "Awww, that's almost sincere", and conservative viewers should be pleased when this bright young professional woman makes the life choice to abandon her career and become a stay-at-home mom at the North Pole.


A Christmas Romance

NetFlix NA
IMDB 6/10
My Rating: 5/10

Sincerity Factor: 6/10

Treacle Factor: 9/10

It's Olivia Newton-John!  Everything bad about this movie is forgiven.  It's not great, but males of my generation will be hopelessly devoted to Olivia because she's the one that we want.  Olivia plays a struggling single mom trying to keep her mountain farm and give her kids some semblance of Christmas, which in her case means going into her attic to find old toys to wrap, and hope the kids will appreciate this gesture because it's all she can afford.  When a banker shows up on Christmas Eve to deliver her foreclosure notice, all seems lost until he wrecks his car in the snowstorm and Olivia takes him in to spend his Christmas among wholesome country folk.  This movie is charmingly innocent and very much of its time, because after the behavior of our banks today, most people would let that fucker freeze to death.  "I can't keep up the payments right now, so tough luck for me?  Well, I guess you're going to spend Christmas Eve freezing to death in your car, tough luck for you."  Adding to the insult, our banker is a royal SOB who bitches and complains once rescued and we spent the middle part of the movie urging Olivia to introduce him to the secret pit in her barn basement.  A couple months of, "It puts the lotion on its skin" should set that guy's values in order.  Alas, instead we get the most uncomfortable and forced romantic attraction ever...  When these two finally hook up, you'll be WTFing all the way to the foreclosure office because they're so hopelessly mismatched and the guy is such a bag of liver.  But Olivia makes everything OK when she sings, and later there are a few genuinely heartwarming moments involving rescue by horses.  There are worse ways to spend your holidays than Christmas with Olivia.

Snowglobe (A KFP Guest Review)

NetFlix 3.9/5

IMDB 5.9/10

My Rating: 5.5/10

Sincerity Factor: 5/10

Treacle Factor: 5/10

Angela finds a mystical snow globe that transports her into an idyllic Christmas winter wonderland. But, when her two worlds unexpectedly collide, Angela has to make a choice about what really defines her perfect Christmas.

(To help keep KFP updates on schedule, I've roped in another guest reviewer, my very own wife!  I think you'll find she gives a much more literate review than I do, not to mention being a hell of a lot nicer to things like this than I would be.  But then, this was a chick movie through and through, so let me present the wife's review...)

Review by Emily.

My ratings above pretty much sum up how I felt about this movie: it was fun, fluffy, and a perfect example of a middle-of-the-road, mostly predictable Christmas movie that will offend no one.  It might make one want to bang some of the characters' heads together....but I'll get to that in a moment.

Snowglobe wastes no time establishing that our lead character, Angela (played by Christina Milian), is unhappy with her life and where it's (not) going. We quickly find out that she works at her family's deli and lives in an apartment building managed by her family.  Noticed a theme yet?  Keep reading.

Before we're out of the credits we've seen the titular package arrive and met the latest likely young man that her family hopes to marry her off to – because, as the building managers, her parents can choose the top picks of the eligible prospective tenants.  So, as Angela complains to her co-worker, “they stock our apartment building like a single-guy fish pond,” and then wait for her to fall in.  She's wise to their ploy, but it's one more sticky spot in the tar baby of family involvement.

Her family, interestingly, is African-American on her father's side and Italian on her mother's, and overwhelming on all fronts.  In reading other reviews to get a sense of what people thought of this movie I ran across one that praised it for its accurate portrayal of  how families really behave, and my knee-jerk reaction was along the lines of “Oh, you poor dear....”  Within the first fifteen minutes of the film the viewer has a firm understanding of why Angela might find her situation both frustrating and intractable: her family has no boundaries and observes none, mows over objections like a combine harvester, and above all, knows what's best for everyone (particularly Angela) and says so.  Loudly.

So when her mother (played with cheerful vigor by Lorraine Bracco) says “Look at your sister – married, pregnant – you should be so lucky!” and sister Gina (Luciana Carro) looks intolerably smug, we aren't surprised that Angela snaps and orders them all out of her apartment forthwith.  We really expected her to do it earlier, perhaps with a sharp stick. 

Surrounded by people who think things are just fine the way they are, Angela is fighting an uphill battle to break out and do something different, represented in this case by her desire to have a traditional Christmas goose instead of green lasagna for the holiday feast.  A cliché?  Well, yes, but also a situation that most of us can relate to.

Once the stampeding horde is out of her apartment, our heroine unpacks the box she received earlier and finds the snow globe within, sans note or card to identify the sender.  Mystified but delighted, she places the globe on her bedside table, winds the key, and drifts off to sleep to the music it plays.....and wakes up in a snow-covered Christmas tree lot!  No, wait, there's a row of shops, a pond with skaters, a stone bridge, and a one-horse open sleigh!  And snow.  Lots and lots of snow.  Angela has stumbled into her perfect Christmas, and if it seems a little too much like the village from The Prisoner to some of us, take comfort in the fact that she's far too young to have seen that show and consequently won't be worried. 

Everyone around her is happily pursuing their winter- or Christmas-related tasks, but she doesn't have much chance to explore before receiving a knockdown from a shovelful of snow and meeting Douglas, the industrious shoveler.  He is happy to welcome her to the village and introduce her around, and if he seems a trifle....well, simple, it's only a dream, after all.  He is very cute and friendly – in fact, everyone is very friendly, though alert viewers will sense the hive mind in the chorus of “Merry Christmas!” that seems to smooth all awkwardness away.  Christmas dinner is roast goose, the presents are ready, and Angela wants to stay forever, but of course she wakes up.

Her first conclusion is that she's had a wonderful dream.  The following night, however, she finds herself back in the village – to her happy surprise – and she speedily discovers that she can return there whenever she wants just by winding up the music box and drifting off with the snow globe's tune.  And  since her real-world existence is so deeply unsatisfying, she begins to escape into the Christmas world more and more.  Her relationship with Douglas grows and she passes happy hours learning to ice skate and teaching the residents of the inn attractive package-wrapping techniques.  Meanwhile, her relationship with the real world suffers: she's late to work, she's distracted, she fails to show up for family dinner (!), and finally caps it off by forgetting about her sister's baby shower.  Her family stages an Italian-style intervention and sets up dinner in Angela's apartment, without telling her that they've invited Eddie, the eligible bachelor from the first paragraph (remember him?).  Angela is incapable of being rude to him and surprises herself by having a really enjoyable evening with this real person.  We can see the idea beginning to grow that maybe romance is possible outside of the snow globe.

It was at this point that the movie departed from the script – not its own script, clearly, but the script that I had created about how it would come out.  I'm not going to give away the twist (if you really want to know it you can easily find out by checking other reviews) but that was what made this movie stand out a bit from the “background noise” of other extremely predictable holiday fare.  Unfortunately both of us found Christina Milian's acting style somewhat wearing; I began to see Angela as more of a collection of head twitches and hair flips than an actual character after about an hour or so.  We still have another Christmas movie to watch that she stars in, so we'll see if she can play anything other than twenty-something attitude.

The message of “Snowglobe” was clear from the start: appreciate what you have, don't worry so much about not having perfection.  It's a message that most Christmas movies want to convey in one way or another; the best of them manage it without our noticing that we've been indoctrinated (for an excellent example, see the earlier review of “Midnight Clear”).  I was skeptical about “Snowglobe” at first because I thought I could see exactly where we were headed and how we'd get there.  I was wrong, at least about how we got there, and I appreciate a story that surprises me.  So overall I would recommend this as an enjoyable movie for most family members, although if you have a low tolerance for bickering I would suggest a nice, tough piece of leather to bite into before setting off.  After all, as Angela points out, “How can you have Christmas without any shouting?”

Some Mini-Reviews

True to my goal, we've been watching loads of holiday films lately.  While there have been standouts like the last few I've given full reviews, most of them have been absolute shite - Too bland to elicit a reaction, too crap to ever be allowed to air in any other season.  Either that, or they're so hideously offensive that I'm restraining myself from doing a full review, lest it be another mouth-frothing session like my review of The Christmas Box.  Instead of wasting time on these individually, I thought I'd whip together a quickie rundown of some seasonal movies so far...

Holiday in Handcuffs utterly wastes a great title.  It missed all the opportunities to make a cool movie from this concept (Why couldn't it have been the logical sequel to Secretary, anyway?). Astonishingly bad. Like, "Did real people actually write this?"-bad. Lonely crazy artist/waitress girl kidnaps professional-looking guy to force him to pose as her boyfriend for her family's Christmas get-together. Reality is bent out of all proportion trying to explain why anyone with more brainpower than a hamster could not get himself out of this situation. But this being a chick flick, the guy is too much of a gentleman to "Punch her. Take her car keys. Leave. Call the police." Instead, he spends the entire weekend with her duck mouth and constant pouting, while putting on a good show for her insane family.  Can you possibly guess that they fall for each other, for real?  My Rating:  3/10.  Sanity Cost:  -15 points.  I wanted to kill everyone in this movie.

The Santa Trap.  Look at that cover.  Look at it!  Horrendously bad child actors mug for the camera while young daughter sets a household trap for Santa, intending to prove he is real to her doubting brother.  Her family is sad, see, because they've moved from a big city to New Mexico and it's 100 degrees outside on Christmas day, which really ought to be outlawed.  Dick Van Patten plays a god-awful Santa who gets caught by the brat, and then thrown in jail for some mistaken identity shenanigans with a bearded Stacy Keach, who later went home to flog himself for all that coke he did in the 80's that derailed his promising career and landed him in this sort of glop.  The family gets taken hostage, Keach is inept, Santa saves the day, the kids deliver gifts to the children at the local hospital, and perhaps the most brain-rending moment is when they encounter Adrienne Barbeau living homeless with her children and bring her a gift.  But she tells them she doesn't need a gift, because even though she's a lone single mom living in the street and her children are sleeping under cardboard, "It's Christmas Eve and we have love, and that's all we need."  Their consciences thus salved, our well-off family go back to their expensive suburban house and gorge on holiday food and expensive toys.  Hey, you might at least bring the homeless woman a sandwich, huh??  My Rating:  2/10.  Sanity Cost:  -35 points.  I wanted to kill almost everyone in this movie, except for Stacy Keach, who had a few funny lines.

The Netflix streaming poster previews are too small for me to have been able to read the fine print on this one, which is, "Putting Christ back in Christmas".  If I'd known I was getting into an overtly religious movie, I'd have watched something wholesome like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" instead.  Christmas with a Capitol C is about a homey Alaskan town that is putting out their city hall nativity scene when they are interrupted by the return of the rich guy that went off to the big city, Daniel Baldwin, who spends the whole movie in a black coat driving a really stupid Porsche with his hair oiled back. He is an angry atheist and gets a court order to stop the town hall nativity scene because he wants to ruin Christmas, like all atheists do.   Self righteous rants are triggered from the religious characters on subjects like wishing Happy Holidays ("It's Christmas...MERRY CHRISTMAS! It's the ONLY holiday this month that anyone celebrates! Happy Holidays is liberal doubletalk!").  Yes, people actually deliver, straight-faced, lines like, "98% of America is Christian", "Hanukkah...Right!  Who celebrates that?", and so on.  Our "heroes" go berserk when the town banner is changed from "Merry Christmas" to "Season's Greetings". All this "ruining of Christmas" is done by the angry city atheist because he is lonely, has no family and no one to care for him, and is bitter and full of spite. One character opines, "Why can't these god-haters just leave us in peace?"

Amazingly, throughout the whole film no ones makes the argument of, "Hey, celebrate however you want, just please don't use my tax money to promote one religion over all the others, because we both know Christians would go BERSERK if their town hall sunk tax money into promoting a Muslim holiday."

By the end of the film, the townspeople learn that the angry city atheist is bankrupt, both morally and financially, and all his god-hate comes from the emptiness of his life, so an angelic young girl brings him Christmas cookies and all the townspeople come to his house to goddamn force him to celebrate Christmas like a proper person and in the end he's converted to the wonder of religion. And the Grinch himself carved the roast beast.

Except that the Grinch managed to get across pretty much the exact same message without being obnoxious, preachy, pandering, or making me want to attack the television set.  This movie is everything bad about religion rolled up into a ball, pressed, and steeped in oil of self-righteousness for seven days.  Truly awful.  My Rating:  0/10.  Sanity Cost:  -95 points.  I wanted to kill everyone in this movie, bury them, dig up their corpses, and hit them again with hammers just to be on the safe side.  Especially that bearded guy trying to be the hard right's answer to Robin Williams. 

My Rare Exports DVD can't show up in the mail soon enough...

Blithe Spirit (1945)

NetFlix 3.5/5
IMDB 7.1/10
My Rating: 6/10

During a lark of a seance, a twice-married Englishman accidentally has the spirit of his first wife summoned to live in the house with his second wife and himself.  Bowl of milk, perhaps?


If there is any theme at all to this blog, this is it - The search for cinematic oddities that are overlooked or forgotten.  Despite being a fan of older films, I'd never seen or heard of this until I stumbled across it in the Netflix streaming library, and it sounded like a perfect way to smoothly transition into the Autumn spooky movie season.  This isn't a horror film, though... Well, perhaps a bit, but it's more of a comedy-ghost story with some scary relationship undertones for both genders.  (Note - This film ranks high on the, "Likely to get you into an argument with your wife" scale due to the less-than-noble behavior of all the characters involved in this unearthly threesome)  So, what have we got here?

The film opens on the marriage of an upper-middle class English novelist.  Charles and his wife have invited local medium Mrs. Arcati (Irrepressibly fun and the best character in the film) to do a dinner seance for friends, essentially as a prank, as the husband's real interest is to observe a "faker" at work for his current novel.  As these things go, however, everyone gets more than they bargained for when the seance turns real and latches onto the ghost of his first wife, who ends up summoned into our world to haunt him and his current marriage.  The rest of the film unspools from there, as new wife Ruth matches wits with dead wife Elvira to see who will be the ongoing Mrs, while at the same time starting to wonder if either of them really want the unscrupulous Mr. Charles, or he them.

I have to give special marks to ex-wife Elvira, a bubbly lover of life who's simultaneously witty, wanton, cunning, catty, sexy, and completely untrustworthy.  Her performance is enjoyable every time she's on the screen, from her constant sniping at shrewish current wife Ruth to her merciless teasing of medium Arcati.  Also, not to overstate it in this age of bloody masked killers, but she looks marvelously creepy in her billowing gown and pale green everything.  It's a simple look that works well, from the age before computer FX, and the actors do a grand job of acting as if the floaty green lady isn't really in the room with them.

No one, except possibly Mrs. Arcati, comes off heroically in this.  Present wife Ruth is severe, unsympathetic, won't listen to her husband's obvious distress, and when she's eventually forced to accept the reality of the ghostly presence, she morphs into an embittered tigress defending a marriage she doesn't seem to love much anyway.  I've mentioned the foibles of ghost-wife Elvira already.  Charles himself is the iconic lazy upper crust type who views everything and everyone as accessories to himself.  I mentioned spousal arguments above - When Elvira first appears, I immediately liked her and my wife immediately hated her.  As the film progresses, the wife hate bent toward Charles and I began to dislike both of the women, even though Elvira is the sort that nearly every man will have a certain soft spot for, even if he wouldn't want to have to live with her.  The relationship becomes more and more strained until all parties concerned turn towards the "fake" medium again in desperation to put the errant spirit back where she belongs.

As a comedy, it's cute but never laugh-out-loud.  It's an understated drawing room humor with some fairly spicy and black jokes for its day, not the sort of comic hijinks of something like "The Ghost and Mister Chicken".  Unfortunately, the Netflix streaming video has some annoying drawbacks that detract from overall enjoyment.  It's a restored print of damaged stock.  There are a few points in the film where the frame rate goes very stuttery and uneven, and picture quality takes a dive.  Also, and no fault of the restoration, but the British RP accents and dialog are delivered so quickly and so crisply that I was often catching only half of what was said - And this is after 7 years of watching only British TV.  It's one of those rare English films where you'll wish there were subtitles.

Despite these problems, it's a fine and frothy way to ring in the Halloween season, especially for those looking for something a little more biting than the typical family-friendly ghost comedy.

Hero at Large

NetFlix 3/5
IMDB 6/10
My Rating: 6.5/10

A struggling actor with a good heart lands a role promoting the superhero film "Captain Avenger".  When he finds himself foiling a late night stickup at a corner grocery, he is drawn by the idea of being a real world costumed hero but quickly discovers it's more dangerous than imagined, and that comicbook morality doesn't mesh well with real world politics.   

This is a mostly-forgotten film starring the late John Ritter, fresh off his Three's Company years at the time.  In many ways, it's the forerunner of today's stream of gritty "real life" superhero movies like Kick Ass and Watchmen, movies founded on the idea of, "What would it REALLY be like to put on a costume and go out to fight bad guys?"  While Kick Ass answered this question with lots of gory, OTT violence, Hero at Large was a much gentler film even though our hero's antics nearly get him into as much lethal trouble.

It's a simple formula pic and it didn't do very well when it was released - I recall watching it back in 1980 and being disappointed because it was a "John Ritter movie" and we expected it to be a wacky comedy full of sitcom slapstick instead of the largely serious adventure/romance/vigilante film it is.  Approached with the right expectations, it's a surprisingly enjoyable and heartening flick.  Eternally-struggling New York actor Steve Nichols lands a job dressing up in costume as "Captain Avenger", a popular comicbook star getting his own big-screen movie.  Steve's job is to turn up at theaters, sign autographs, talk to fans, etc.  While the rest of his busload of fellow "Captain Avengers" loathe the job and feel ridiculous, Steve embraces it with enthusiasm and enjoys the chance to personify the hero of lots of children.



One evening after a long day of appearances, he finds himself in a corner grocer that's being robbed.  He overpowers the crooks while wearing his costume and the story becomes a media sensation, with the whole city stoked up to hear more about the mysterious masked hero who saved the kindly old shopkeepers.

Instead of being a comedy, the movie follows a fairly dramatic path from here, alternating between Steve's attempts to romance his beautiful next door neighbor and his internal debate over what to do with his sudden Captain Avenger fame.  Viewers looking to see loads of KickAss-style ultraviolence will be disappointed, since the bulk of the film is about the choices Steve makes instead of his outings in costume.  He does make further attempts to live the role of the hero and is promptly shot by real bullets, discovering quickly that armed criminals are a lot more dangerous than they seem on the comic page.  Meanwhile, genre conventions are further undermined by how easily city officials are able to discover the real identity of their new superhero and start working to make his popularity work for them.  Eventually Steve is conned into a faked crimebusting encounter that's dismantled easily by an investigative reporter (Remember when we used to have those, before they just started reading out the White House press briefings?).  Things go bad, leading to a tense climax where Steve and the city have to decide what constitutes a real world hero.

It's a good film.  I enjoyed it much, much more in my 40's than I did at 14 - It's a surprisingly mature film for its subject matter and I personally thought it was far better than current flicks like Kick Ass in how it handled the whole "real life superhero" concept.  One element that made me sadly nostalgic was the basic premise - Modern films treat the idea of people putting on superhero costumes as being dangerously insane.  The Kick Ass kid is an idiot who reads too many comicbooks and thinks he'll be cool by becoming a superhero.  The characters in Watchmen dress up by turns because they are amoral thugs, psychopaths, or sexual fetishists.  The closest modern film to Hero at Large is Defendor, which operates on the concept that only a mentally-retarded person would try this.  Hero at Large, by contrast, gives us one of the few cases where a normal guy decides to put on a costume and be a hero out of the goodness of his nature.  John Ritter plays this so well it's completely believable - Steve Nichols is naive, sure, but his fumbling attempts to be a real world superhero stem from a desire to help and inspire others, not out of mental imbalance or just plain crazy.  It's a bit sad to think that this theme would never fly today...  It would almost certainly be seen as "too wholesome" in this age of grim and gritty comicbook movies.  This is ironic because when it was released, it was too serious - People wanted Jack Tripper falling down the steps, not a thoughtful examination of the pitfalls of a costumed hero.

It's a corny film when all is said and dine, but that's not a bad thing.  You'll end up rooting for Steve in a way that I never did for Dave Lizewski, and unlike KA, Steve actually manages to make the world a tiny bit better without leaving a trail of wholesale bloody slaughter in his wake.  Worth seeing!

Black Dynamite

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 7/10

This is the story of 1970s African-American action legend Black Dynamite. The Man killed his brother, pumped heroin into local orphanages, and flooded the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor. Black Dynamite was the one hero willing to fight The Man all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House..

I wasn't sure what to expect, going into this, since I'd already seen "I'm gonna git you, sucka" many years ago and assumed another blaxploitation parody would have to be pretty much the same thing. Fortunately, Black Dynamite is hilarious in a whole different way.  Black Dynamite is more along the lines of something like OSS-117 - A very careful, very faithful recreation of the movies of its genre, right down to the film stock, lighting, sets, styles of acting and fights, and everything else. The humor is in the material itself, and the fact that the characters take it all completely seriously.  There are no outright gags - Instead, they go the Galaxy Quest route and lovingly recreate the object of their parody in a version that encapsulates all the endearing flaws of the original product, and puts them on display for grins.
A lot of the gags in the film are actually subtle and sneaky, despite the OTT subject matter, like in this fight scene. Keep your eyes on the nunchuks.  Also, enjoy the awesome theme music, which kicks ass (and I already have the soundtrack).



It starts off fairly slow and I was wondering if I'd get any laughs out of it at all, then I was pulled into it and got in the groove with its style of humor, and once it bites, it just gets funnier and funnier as it goes.

The plot is pretty basic. Drug dealers kill Black Dynamite's younger brother and Black Dynamite sets out to clean up the streets, with help from his buddies, a pack of karate women, the local pimps' organization, a band of Black Panthers, and so on. Black Dynamite uncovers a chain of corruption that starts with Anaconda Malt Liquor ("When the cap pops, the panties drop!") and carries his fight to mob bosses, pimps, and all the way to Kung Fu Island and beyond.

It's also full of great lines:

Black Dynamite: Your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery!

Black Dynamite: Fiendish Doctor Wu, you done fucked up now!

Afroditey: I get off in fifteen minutes.
Black Dynamite: You right about that, sugar. You right about that.

The names in this flick are priceless. Mahogany Black, Chocolate Giddy-Up, Mo Bitches. I'm sure that somewhere out there is a very politically correct, racially sensitive person who was absolutely horrified by this film, but I mostly just feel sorry for them.  I once read an interesting conversation with blaxploitation goddess Pam Grier on the 70's wave, and she had a lot of things to say on the subject of racism in movies.  Towards the end of the 70's, the NAACP essentially shut down the blaxploitation craze, claiming it was disrespectful to black people, portrayed them in stereotypical ways, and glorified violence.  Pam's rebuttal was that it was a 10 year long output of films about black people, with all-black casts, black stars as the heroes, not secondary roles, and that every film was built on a rejection of drugs and poverty.  When the blaxploitation craze died, we went back to another 15 years of Hollywood films in which the only black character was Clint Eastwood's doomed sidekick, or the first guy to get murdered by Jason.  I think it's safe to say that this was not an improvement.  So toast one for the glory days of cleanin' up the streets, Black Dynamite-style.  Definitely worth seeing!

**Note - While I say worth seeing, a second thought suggests that this is going to be most effective for those who have seen a few blaxploitation flicks. If you haven't seen Shaft, Coffy, or especially Dolemite, it's possible some of the humor would be lost on you.... Like a non-Trek fan watching Galaxy Quest, or a non-60's Bond fan watching OSS-117. FWIW, though, I thought it was probably the best 70's exploitation parody I've seen since Kentucky Fried Movie.  If you're too young to have ever been to a drive-in, then this probably isn't the movie for you.  But why are you reading this blog anyway?

Suggested Accompaniment: Anaconda Malt Liquor, of course.  Also, big cigars are OK if you're feeling in the mood to be villainous Whitey.  

   

Outsourced

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 6/10  

 When his department is outsourced to India, customer call center manager Todd Anderson (Josh Hamilton) heads to Mumbai to train his successor (Asif Basra), and amusing culture clashes ensue as Anderson tries to explain American business practices to the befuddled new employees. In the process, he learns important lessons about globalization -- and life. Ayesha Dharker and Matt Smith also star in director John Jeffcoat's cross-cultural comedy.

File under "Movies to watch when your wife absolutely refuses to watch another monster movie".   It's a good little indie comedy that isn't as fluffy as the description makes it sound, to its credit. It's also amusingly outdated now - It was made back in 2005 when moving your call centers to India and China was all the rage to save money, whereas now a lot of companies have started bringing their tech help lines back home due to customer backlash and lingual difficulties. Our hero's call center is shut down and he's shipped to India to train their Indian replacements. Along the way he has a lot of typical expat experiences with local food and local customs, and there's plenty of scenes that will make any traveler wince in familiarity as he trounces over some cherished local manners or customs in ignorance.

It has a lot of laughs, too, more so than my still-reigning favorite expat movie "Lost in Translation". But there's also a fair bit of insight into the cultures as it goes from him explaining why anyone would want a Wisconsin cheese hat to them demonstrating exactly why a $300/month salary is a HUGE step up for them. And a lot of it feels real, which is more than I can say for most romanticized expat movies. If this had been a Hollywood flick I suspect it would have been sentimentalized to death, but as it is, it's an enjoyably low key effort that was more similar in tone to an Indian "Local Hero" than something that would star Robin Williams. 


Suggested Accompaniment: There is a great dearth of Indian artisan pipemakers and artisan tobacco blenders in the world.  But Orville's Tender White popcorn will do as a sufficient stand-in till better conditions are reached. 

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

NetFlix
IMDB  
My Rating: 9/10  

All Lodge wants is for his gaming group to finish their adventure. Unfortunately, they're more interested in seducing barmaids, mooning their enemies, and setting random villagers on fire. Desperate to rein in his players, Lodge injects two newbies into the scene: a non-player character controlled by Lodge, who the power gamers immediately distrust, and the rarest gamer of all -- a girl. Can the group overcome their bickering to save the kingdom, or will the evil necromancer Mort Kemnon triumph unopposed? A parody of fantasy films and the adventure gaming community, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is a hilarious romp through the world of sword and sorcery -- in this case, a world of exploding peasants, giant house cats, and undead roast turkeys. Game on!  
 

Funniest comedy I've seen in roughly forever. Funnier by far than all the Hollywood comedies I've seen lately, even topping Black Dynamite. You have to have played a lot of tabletop D&D to appreciate it. It's an ultra low budget flick filmed on a student income with SPFX done on PCs, about a group of D&D players struggling with their DM who (like all DMs) wants to write an epic fantasy story to rival Tolkien, but instead struggles constantly to keep his players from destroying the plot and looting his world. EVERY D&D player will laugh at this movie. We were cracking up constantly. My friend Paul will recognize all of our group, especially including the pincushion (and Hellion. And the DM-provided nanny NPC). Truly demonstrates why bards are the silliest class ever.

"Quick, everyone! Take shelter behind the mound of dead bards!"

Hilariously quotable:

Brother Silence: As if killing the bard impresses us.

Flynn the Fine: [singing] Shut up, dear peasant, rest your head. Or I'll have the sorceress kill your ass dead.

Flynn the Fine: What is that heavenly music?
Priestess: The Hymn to Therin. It calls to our goddess.
Leo: [voice-over] I seduce the priestess!
Lodge: [voice-over] She's taken a vow of celibacy!
Leo: [voice-over] Dude, 20 ranks in seduction!
Flynn the Fine: [to priestess] Hey, baby. Wanna tune my mandolin?
[rolls and the priestess and Flynn leave the room]
Daphne: [to Hierophant] Please understand the horny Bard does not represent us.   

I have to stress very heavily that you will suffer through the first ten minutes of this. It begins awfully, with an SCA-type microbudget scene of a D&D party fighting monsters and painted walls, then segues directly into a typical D&D table argument over rule minutia which is downright painful to sit through. I was wondering whether I was going to be able to stand to watch it. Stick with it!

As it progresses, you get to see every funny thing you ever experienced in D&D played out on screen. The enjoyment improves massively with the introduction of the girl player, the newbie who has a fighter with low strength and high charisma (So she can talk her way out of situations without having to fight everything they meet), who is the only one actually roleplaying her character in a party of power gamers. The interaction between her and the DM and the band of players who just want to pillage the landscape, frying peasants and asking how much XP they get for killing cows, is hilarious. 

The movie transitions back and forth from the real world to the game world, where all the scenes are shot in cheap SCA costumes and phony sets. This is because it's a micro-budget movie, but it works wonderfully to convey the sort of tacked-together feel of typical D&D fantasy adventures. It is loaded with classic touches, such as the male player playing a female character, who does the typical thing of playing her exactly like a male character with boobs, and whose in-game persona fluctuates back and forth between a female actress and himself in a dress, depending on whether he has remembered he's supposed to be playing a female or not.

If you see screen shots or clips from this, you'll be put off by the videorecorder look. It looks terrible from the start and you'll be wondering how the hell this can be any good. Once you start getting into the characters and the story, though, that all goes away, and you start LOLing all the way to the end at the visual representation of every silly aspect of RPGing that you've ever experienced, from the insanity of bards singing in battle to boost party morale, to the one with the hit bonuses so high that every strike is a critical hit (I hit him in the throat. I hit him in the throat again. I hit him in the throat again.) to those wonderful moments when someone rolls a 1.

(Also, I should add that if you enjoy Knights of the Dinner Table, you'll enjoy this, because a lot of the humor is the same)

I have no idea how this would play to anyone who hasn't at some point been a tabletop gamer, or at least played multiplayer RPGs.  But really, if you weren't a tabletop D&D player at some point in your school years, what are you doing reading this blog?  Go back to your sports bar.

Suggested Accompaniment:  My favorite D&D snack experience in high school was a concoction my friend Mark dubbed the Blasphemous Batch.  Get yourself a bucket.  Pour in whole milk and about half a bottle of chocolate milk syrup and stir like mad.  Add many scoops of fudge-ripple ice cream, squirt on creamy topping, and slather the entire floating bucket of glop with chocolate sauce.  Add a long bendy straw, then slurp for the next two hours.  Perfect for revving up the hyper-inflated sugar buzz needed to cope with a table full of gamers all talking at once.  Energy drinks are for wussies.