Jamie
Have I told the story where I thought the quote “That’s nice, Peanut” came from this movie because the dog’s name is Peanut (even though that doesn’t make sense)? But turns out it came from an equally quality film Celtic Pride? Yes, only a million times? Great. Just wanted to make sure it was clear that those two films were prominent enough in my cultural upbringing that I could mix up a quote from one with the other because I remembered (for eternity, apparently) the name of the dog in a Pauly Shore vehicle. The only other thing I remembered vividly from this film was the conjugal visit scene where Shore dresses up like a woman in order to see the man on trial. They then have a series of homophobic mix-up’s which results in the implication that they make love… which as a child was totally bewildering.
To recap, Tommy is a loser. He doesn’t have a job and even when his family tries to help him out he can’t help himself. When his mom and her boyfriend take the trailer and head off to Vegas, Tommy is left homeless and remembers that he has an opportunity to earn some quick cash (and a place to stay) on jury duty. He heads to the courthouse where after some searching finds a death penalty case for a serial killer, Carl Wayne Bishop. After getting himself on the jury, they head off to a swanky hotel that isn’t so swanky as most of it is being renovated. To make matters worse, Tommy is sharing a room with his high school principal (ha!). To get around this he convinces the manager of the hotel, who is struggling to book rooms during the renovation, to put him up in the nice part of the hotel in exchange for free advertising. At this point he is fully enjoying himself (and fallen in love with a fellow juror, Monica) and so when they head to the jury room he gets himself elected foreman and proceeds to plant the seeds for a drawn out deliberation. But the more he argues the more he is convincing a number of people that something is off. Just as they are ready to find Bishop innocent, the jurors find out about his dope digs and a mistrial is declared. Later, as he’s collecting trash with his stepfather, Tommy realizes that the connection between all the victims in the trial was styrofoam and that the killer was a deranged environmentalist. He tries to call Monica, but she won’t talk to him, so he tracks down Frank, another Juror who was a deranged environmentalist… wait a second! That’s right, Tommy walks right into the real killer, who was on the jury the whole time. A climactic action scene commences which results in good vanquishing evil and Tommy finding his purpose in life: the law. THE END.
I certainly have a fond recollection of Jury Duty. My new recollection of the film is less kind. The opening scene is actually kind of funny. Everyone appears disgusted by Shore and he doesn’t totally understand why. So it starts out at least recognizing that not everyone would be game for the Pauly Shore experience. From there the logic in the film makes almost no sense. There is the primary twist: the murderer was serving on the jury the whole time after tricking another potential juror to let him take his place. But like… this requires the murderer to have planned to frame the dude on trial. Did he find an insane person who threatens everyone he works with and follow him around killing his coworkers. And then when it came time to frame him his tasered him and left him at a crime scene and the cops were like… cool with that? And then he got on the jury and… did nothing? All for the environment? It is incomprehensible if you allow yourself the luxury of trying to understand it. As it is, it just feels like a low-grade spoof film they turned into a Shore vehicle. Also the conjugal visit scene is even worse than I remember. It is one of the worst things ever put to film.
Hot Take Clam Bake! Do I even have to say it? Pauly Shore does not make it through law school no matter how much this jury duty experience may have inspired him. As a result, I hate to say it, but Monica and Tommy… they don’t make it or the long haul. Sad, but true. Finally, despite what they show at the end of the film, Peanut does not have a successful run on Jeopardy. This isn’t an Air Bud scenario. I’m willing to bet there is in fact a rule against a dog (who has no way of effectively communicating with humans) being a contestant. Hot Take Temperature: Milk Man Scene.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! *gif of me laughing as my father-in-law watches this film with me and keeps on saying “ugh this is awful” over and over* Let’s go!
The Good? Hmmmm … nostalgia. This was like slipping into a warm bath and remembering all the good times watching Comedy Central on summer vacation between stints at the tennis courts. This might genuinely be the worst film I have a decent amount of affection for.
The Bad? Everything about it if I’m being honest with myself. Pauly Shore is quite an annoying character (across all of the “weasel” films). The acting is really bad. And the worst crime of all: the court case makes zero sense. The actual killer gets on the jury of his own crime (Juror #2 style) and then doesn’t really even try that hard to get the guy convicted, and then, craziest of all, he is only ultimately suspected because he was on the jury! If he hadn’t gone on the jury there would be no reason to suspect him! … Even while on the jury there was no reason to suspect him! It doesn’t make any sense at all. Fun stuff.
The BMT? Hmmmmmmm … maybe. Of all the Pauly Shore films I think Bio-Dome is the pinnacle with the right balance of kind of fun dumbness with some decent laughs and fun actors. This is probably the third of the major Weasel films (after Son-in-Law and Bio-Dome), but it is the only one that is pretty boring.
Well, now that I kind of know that the batch imaging can work consistently, I wanted to test if there would be trouble with longer sets of images or with the order of images. Obviously the answer is yes. I ran ten experiments where I did a position permutation for each of the ten and then ran ten queries on trying to find clowns in the set.
Well, cool, I suppose. It isn’t getting false positives as much with the larger set. I would mostly know because I got a bunch when I ran 10 posters (I do wonder if sometimes the model is giving back the most likely poster with a clown, so when the set is smaller you get a lot of random posters flagged). Experiment 10 does give me pause. In that case the permutation happened to put both clown posters in the back third. I sure do hope it isn’t just reading N images and giving up in those cases … Well, that is something more to test.
This actually genuinely might be the Worst Twist (How?) in the history of BMT with the illogical reveal that the Fast Food Killer is Stanley Tucci because he is some eco-terrorist who for whatever reason doesn’t want anyone to know that the murders are due to ecological reasons. It makes no sense. This movie is actually just Bad, it is very boring compared to the high lunacy of Bio-Dome and the actual genuine goodness of Son-in-law.
What could we learn about juries and jury duty? Find out in the quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 