Category: Razzies

The Whole Ten Yards Recap

Jamie

As we crawl desperately through the wasteland that is <10% RT films, the scorching sun of The Whole Ten Yards beats down on us. I think fondly of Here on Earth for a moment and wonder what films may be beyond the horizon. The oasis of our next cycle is so close, and yet one long (oh, so long) recap of The Whole Ten Yards still stands in our way. Can we make it? Or will BMT die in this desert of dog poo? Let’s find out.

What?! Jimmy ‘The Tulip’ is back, Jack! After years in hiding, Jimmy seems to have lost his edge. But when his ex-wife, Cynthia, is kidnapped by vengeful mobsters he joins up with his erstwhile friend Oz to get her back. Can he stop the bad guys, save the girl, and perhaps pull one last big job before it’s too late? Find out in… The Whole Ten Yards.

How?! When we last saw our friends from The Whole Nine Yards, Jimmy had fallen for Jill, Oz had fallen for Cynthia, and they both had come into a bucketful of cash. Flash forward four years and Oz is a successful dentist in LA and he and Cynthia are living it up. Meanwhile, Jimmy and Jill are driving each other crazy hiding out in Mexico. Draaaaammmmaaaa (may as well be an alternate title for this film). Just when Oz learns that Cynthia is pregnant, the head of the Chicago mob, Lazlo, comes to LA to get revenge for Oz’s part in the events of the first film. Oz manages to escape to Mexico but Cynthia is kidnapped and there is only one person he can turn to for help, Jimmy. Oz and Jimmy team up once again and travel back to LA. There they kidnap Lazlo’s son, drink a whole mess of delicious Carlsberg beers, and deal with enough family drama to fill a soap opera (Jimmy and Jill want a baby, Jimmy is experiencing decreased libido, Jill is concerned that Jimmy’s still in love with Cynthia, Jill is concerned she’s not a good enough hitman etc. etc. etc). Using Lazlo’s son as leverage they coerce their way into the mobster’s hideout and [SUPER TWIST ALERT!] reveal that Jimmy and Cynthia has orchestrated the whole thing! Jimmy is actually Lazlo’s son and knows the secret to his fortune! They manage to subdue Lazlo, send him back to jail, and get the money. Hooray! Oh and Jill is suddenly pregnant. Double hooray!

Why?! Jimmy and Cynthia are in it for the sweet, sweet cash monies. Knowing that Lazlo will come after them once he’s out of jail they manufacture an unnecessarily complex scheme to trick everyone they love into risking their lives for the cash. Oz, of course, falls for it because he’s a sweet man who loves Cynthia. The mobsters just want blood and never really suspect that they’re getting played. The motivations are actually simple… it’s just the plot that ends up super convoluted.

Who?! Got to give a little shout out to Bruce Willis’ daughter Tallulah who shows up as a girl scout selling cookies in one of the opening scenes. Not to disparage a child but she’s not good. Like Marten Weiner in Mad Men not good (deep cut nepotism reference). The line reading just doesn’t make sense. She stresses random syllables like she’s reading the lines phonetically. I guess this is our one and only lesson: nepotism doesn’t always work. Who would have thought.

Where?! The Whole Nine Yards had the amazing and super rare setting of Montreal. Even shot on location. The second one also really wanted you to know where you were at all time. We split time between Mexico and LA with a slight edge to LA in the end. Solid without being necessary. B.

When?! Two different newspapers were shown up close. The first gave us a date of November 2003 for the film. The second seemed like it could yield an exact day, but I would need to see a higher quality version of the film to confirm anything. Almost a B. C+ instead.

Our lips are parched and yet there is no respite. Just dog poo everywhere. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone? The Whole Ten Yards? More like … Time to Discard? I can’t even think of a good NY Post headline … Zero out of Ten? Nine Yards Short? I tried looking up some etymology but … turns out it is a riddle! Seems to maybe come from a similar origin as “dressed to the nines” which itself is not really known. Anywho, is this movie dog poo in my face? Close at least. It is quite the mess. Let’s get into it, work through this riddle together!

The Good (Sequel, Prequel, Remake) – Hmmmm. The cloud that represents the plot of this film is somehow quite simple to follow, which is nice. It also got me to watch The Whole Nine Yards, which held up far better than I expected it to. Linear, but still entertaining with two charming leads. Has anyone ever remade a sequel before!? Remake: Totally ignore that the other sequel exists, go back to Montreal, and, and this would be controversial, dump Matthew Perry. Instead, you see Tudeski trying to save Jill who, still moonlighting as an assassin, has landed herself in hot water. Jimmy teams up with a taxi driver who, ultimately, becomes a kind of getaway driver (similar to how Oz’s dental skills were the perfect skill Jimmy needed to resolve his troubles in the previous film). And yes … Kevin Hart is the taxi driver. The Whole Nine Yards 2: License to Drive. Amazingly terrible title.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – Uh, those charming characters from the first film are now lost to Flanderization, including Jimmy who they managed to invent a trait to Flanderize him towards (cooking / cleaning / being a house husband). The storyline makes no sense. Kevin Pollack is just weird playing the father of the character he played in the first film (interesting if misguided idea). The twist is telegraphed, the motivations are ludicrous, and it comes across as a carbon copy of the original. I still don’t quite know if this is dog poo in my face … this is a bit closer to where something like Old Dogs is, which is thoroughly perplexing to a degree where you are just sitting there thinking “why is any of this happening?”. It has a fantastic gay panic scene too. Like The Medallion level gay panic. Dog poo in my face is a punch in the gut, like Strange Wilderness. It is like someone shoving dog poo in my face. It feels different. Oh … the sin is greed obviously. They wanted to cash in on that sweet franchise money yo.

The BMT: Legacy – I do think this gets pretty close to a rare spot for a comedy, which is a good-bad comedy. A tad bit boring and slow, but enough of the movie is ridiculously melodramatic,and the plot line is so perplexing, and Pollack’s performance is so over-the-top, that, for me, it gets to a place where I could watch it again and think it is just as funny-bad. It helps that the original Whole Nine Yards is a solid early-2000s comedy. Gives a little extra help there since this is probably a quintessential example of taking characters to extremes and reusing old jokes. I think it has decent legs ultimately when we reflect on 2017.

And finally the StreetCreditReport.com. Not surprisingly this actually does quite well in the amazingly crowded 2004 bad movie lists. The Movie Blog ranked it an impressive number 4! And Ebert had it as his 9th worst film of the year. Previously we watched Godsend as another 2004 film and it got no play, but this film is a genuinely perplexing catastrophe, so I think the praise is well deserved.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Whole Ten Yards Preview

Gotta just jump right back into it with the StreetCreditReport.com cycle of films that received <10% on RT. For the Games portion of the cycle we had our scientists work around the clock in the laboratory to discover a fundamental entry in the Periodic Table of Smellements. After months of arduous work they were able to unearth a sparkling gem known as Willisium. That’s right! We’re watching The Whole Ten Yards starring Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis. Garnering a 4% on RT it was declared a “strained, laugh-free sequel.” If there’s something that we love at BMTHQ it’s laugh-free comedies. Should be excruciating. Let’s go!

The Whole Ten Yards (2004) – BMeTric: 49.2

TheWholeTenYards_BMeT

TheWholeTenYards_RV

(I’m digging that BMeTric plot. I think it might be the first that I’ve seen where it actually is now slowly decreasing due to regression to the mean. It will probably keep regressing as well (the mean is something like 6.0 IMDb rating). This movie has a ton of votes. Abnormally so. Intriguing. Also fun that this movie used to be a 50+ BMeTric film and now isn’t, first time in a long time we’ve had something like that I feel like.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  The sequel for which no one was clamoring reunited the cast of The Whole Nine Yards, a pleasant-enough film, and puts them in a frantically unfunny story about Willis (who’s supposedly deceased) being forced back into the crime game to help dentist Perry rescue his kidnapped wife. Or something like that. Perry falls down and bumps into everything imaginable, a valiant effort to find laughs in a script that has none to offer. That’s Willis’ daughter Tallulah as the foulmouthed Buttercup Scout.

(So I think this review could have basically been written for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. Except in that case it was Sandra Bullock falling down and bumping into everything imaginable in an attempt to find laughs in a frantically unfunny script for a sequel for which no one was clamoring. Excellent hyphen game, but while “frantically unfunny” seems promisingly, it likely translates to “boring” which is sadly how bad comedies usually go.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAAv2NKkXVY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAAv2NKkXVY

(Holy shit the sound effects in the beginning! If you can’t tell the weird mob boss guy is Kevin Pollack with a funny voice. The movie does appear to be frantically unfunny. There was a point in time in which Matthew Perry could have pulled off a Jennifer Aniston like turn into a movie star I feel like, but the demands for his physical comedy just could never really last. Him frenetically falling about just looks so outdated, 90s-esque, in retrospect.)

Directors – Howard Deutch – (Known For: Pretty in Pink; The Great Outdoors; Some Kind of Wonderful; The Replacements; Article 99; Future BMT: Getting Even with Dad; My Best Friend’s Girl; The Odd Couple II; Grumpier Old Men; BMT: The Whole Ten Yards; Notes: The Great Outdoors not being BMT (40% exactly on Rotten Tomatoes) is the upset of the century in my book. We will definitely be watching Grumpier Old Men at some point. He’s been married to Lea Thompson for nearly 30 years, and we’ve seen his daughter, Zoey Deutch, starring in Dirty Grandpa.)

Writers – Mitchell Kapner (characters & story) – (Known For: Oz the Great and Powerful; The Whole Nine Yards; BMT: The Whole Ten Yards; Romeo Must Die; Notes: Credited based on The Whole Nine Yards, he is an interesting character as he is solely a writer, but has relatively few credits, no wikipedia page, and only has news stories concerning a sequel to Oz the Great and Powerful. I would assume he is a ghostwriter and script doctor most of the time, but difficult to determine)

George Gallo (screenplay) – (Known For: Bad Boys; Midnight Run; Middle Men; 29th Street; Future BMT: Code Name: The Cleaner; See Spot Run; Double Take; Trapped in Paradise; Wise Guys; Bad Boys II; BMT: The Whole Ten Yards; Notes: Dropped out of college and wrote Wise Guys as his first project. An accomplished painter in the style of Pennsylvania Impressionists for which he’s has three one-man shows in New York City.)

Actors – Bruce Willis – (Known For: Split; Pulp Fiction; Unbreakable; The Sixth Sense; Sin City; The Fifth Element; Looper; Die Hard; Twelve Monkeys; Moonrise Kingdom; RED; The Expendables 2; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; The Expendables; Lucky Number Slevin; Die Hard 4.0; Grindhouse; Ocean’s Twelve; Alpha Dog; Planet Terror; Future BMT: Look Who’s Talking Too; Vice; The Cold Light of Day; The Prince; Extraction; Lay the Favorite; Breakfast of Champions; Cop Out; Precious Cargo; Perfect Stranger; Fire with Fire; Striking Distance; Marauders; Rock the Kasbah; The Story of Us; Blind Date; Mercury Rising; Loaded Weapon 1; Surrogates; The Jackal; Last Man Standing; Sunset; Armageddon; Tears of the Sun; Hostage; Four Rooms; Grand Champion; BMT: North; A Good Day to Die Hard; Color of Night; The Whole Ten Yards; The Bonfire of the Vanities; Hudson Hawk; G.I. Joe: Retaliation; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Screenplay for Hudson Hawk in 1992; Won for Worst Actor in 1999 for Armageddon, Mercury Rising, and The Siege; and Nominated for Worst Actor in 1992 for Hudson Hawk; and in 1995 for Color of Night, and North; Notes: What can you say about megastar Bruce Willis? I loved him in Color of Night, one of my favorite recent BMT films. We have an absolute ton of bad Bruce Willis films to go for BMT, including what could ultimately be one of our first direct-to-VOD films: Vice)

Matthew Perry – (Known For: 17 Again; The Whole Nine Yards; The Kid; Future BMT: Serving Sara; Almost Heroes; Fools Rush In; She’s Out of Control; Three to Tango; A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon; BMT: The Whole Ten Yards; Notes: Obviously most famous as Chandler on Friends. His film roles have been pretty minor, but he’s had a decent amount of television success after Friends ended. He was born in Massachusetts, but raised in Canada, and was at one point the 3rd ranked junior doubles tennis player in I think the United States (!). Hard to tell, but he is basically an incredible tennis player.)

Natasha Henstridge – (Known For: The Whole Nine Yards; Bounce; Future BMT: Maximum Risk; Adrenalin: Fear the Rush; Steal; Deception; Dog Park; BMT: Species II; Ghosts of Mars; The Whole Ten Yards; Species; Notes: The Species is back! A model turned actress, we are basically done with her major BMT filmography. I’ve never heard of her other BMT qualified films, Maximum Risk is a Jean Claude Van Damme film for example, so I doubt we’ll be falling over ourselves to complete the Natasha Henstridge filmography any time soon.)

Budget/Gross – $40 million / Domestic: $16,328,471 (Worldwide: $26,155,781)

(Wow … gigantic bomb. I have to assume a good chunk of that is the money given to Bruce Willis to vaguely pretend to care about the project during production. But obviously The Whole Eleven Yards is not going to happen at this point no matter how much our Smellements scientists want it to.)

#96 for the Comedy – Sequel (Live Action) genre

wholetenyards_comedysequel

(I’m starting to get convinced the Golden Age of Bad Movies of the noughties is directly due to the boom-bust cycle of live action sequels. Would nicely explain why the late-80s / early 90s, and 00s are both amazing ten-year spans for bad movies. Has there been an uptick in amazing bad movies recently though? Not really, but maybe that’s because the sequels we get now (Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Jason Bourne, Transformers 5, etc.) are cynical cash grabs? We’ll have to see. We certainly should be entering a new Golden Age according to the theory. The Whole Ten Yards is below Son of Mask as far as domestic box office is concerned, wooooof.)

#42 for the Hitman / Assassin genre

wholetenyards_hitman

(Below Mechanic: Resurrection, double woof. This came at a probable peak as far as total yearly box office for hitman films, coming between the Kill Bill films, between the first two Bourne films, and right before Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Pulp Fiction in 1994 probably kicked off the genre. Having watched things like the original Mechanic films, the romanticization of hitmen wasn’t unique to the time though, although the lifestyle of Arthur Bishop was hardly something to be envied I suppose.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 4% (5/118): A strained, laugh-free sequel, The Whole Ten Yards recycles its predecessor’s cast and plot but not its wit or reason for being.

(Laugh-free. I don’t fear this phrase any longer, if only because it at least will likely make my review easy. I can probably already right the opening line: “I chuckled once in this film” or something like that. The promising bit is the “reason for being” part. I like the confusion of not really knowing why a film exists, dissecting how a massive bomb like this was greenlit. So that could be fun.)

Poster – The Whole Ten Sklogs (F)

whole_ten_yards

(I’m not even going to make up a funny grade for this one. This is unimaginably bad. This is The Avengers (1998) level incompetence. Nothing is cohesive. So many colors. Bullshit font. Everything is wrong.)

Tagline(s) – They missed each other. This time, their aim is better. (C+)

(… … … Oh! Sorry, I fell asleep while reading this tagline. Too long and clunky. Makes it hard to even get the joke. But I did give it some points for playing with a plot relevant pun. A for Effort. Which is meaningless as its actual grade in still a C+.)

Keyword(s) – hare krishna; Top Ten by BMeTric: 59.1 Nothing But Trouble (1991); 49.8 My Girl 2 (1994); 49.2 The Whole Ten Yards (2004); 45.1 Young Einstein (1988); 31.8 Bee Season (2005); 30.6 Earthquake (1974); 28.9 Dying Young (1991); 25.6 Death Wish II (1982); 23.0 Roller Boogie (1979); 20.8 American Pastoral (2016);

(Not that surprising we’ve only seen one of these. Let’s just say My Girl 2 isn’t exactly on my must see list. But I like the variety, and I like how strange of a keyword this is. The Whole Ten Yards has this as the first keyword listed? That right there is why IMDb keywords are the worst.)

Notes – When Oz (Matthew Perry) wakes up in bed with Jimmy (Bruce Willis), Willis was naked under the blanket. Perry had no idea why he was naked… and reportedly was too afraid to ask. (Sounds like a fake anecdote Perry would tell Letterman)

The Buttercup girl is played by Bruce Willis’s daughter, Tallulah Willis.

When Jill and Jimmy are having their make-up sex, we hear Bruce Willis saying “Yipee-ki-yay.” This alludes to his famous catch-phrase in the ‘Die Hard’ movies. (Ugh)

The tattoo on Jimmy the Tulip’s back is the logo of the production company. (WTF, that is super weird. I don’t like that at all)

Matthew Perry previously made a cameo in Howard Deutch’s first film, Pretty in Pink (1986), as the kid in the record store. (fun fact)

Bruce Willis and Kevin Pollak also co-starred in The Whole Nine Yards (2000), Hostage (2005), and Cop Out (2010). (Cop Out, now that is a film we’ll have to watch at some point).

That’s My Boy Recap

Jamie

What?! Donny Berger is a has-been celebrity famous for a lurid affair with his middle school math teacher that produced a love child. Finding himself on the verge of prison for tax evasion, Donny must reconnect with his estranged son just days before his son’s wedding in order to somehow come up with the cash. Will he get the cash and more importantly reconnect with his son before it’s too late? Find out in… That’s My Boy.

Why?! As is the case with all Sandler films it wears its motivations on its sleeves. The cash that Donny must come up with to avoid jail is the MacGuffin of sorts. It forces him to try to reconnect with his son conveniently at a time when his son, Han Solo, is getting married and in the news. I say it’s a MacGuffin “of sorts” because once Donny shows up at the wedding weekend that plot is barely mentioned again until the very end of the film. Donny is having so much fun slumming it with some rich sexual deviants that he seems to forget all about the cash he needs. As for the antagonist of the film, Han Solo’s fiance, she is simply a classic gold digger. Wanting to marry Todd and set herself up for a life of riches even though she doesn’t really love him and cheats on him all the time. Donny to the rescue.

How?! Once Donny shows up at the wedding he he first tries to scam Han Solo into earning him some quick cash by filming a television special. When Han Solo refuses he settles in for the weekend pretending to be Han Solo’s best friend and winning the love and adoration of the bride’s family. Unable to get rid of Donny, Han Solo slowly but surely embraces his estranged dad as they go one increasingly disgusting adventures together. Eventually Han Solo figures out the scam for cash that Donny was running and he boots him out of the wedding only to have Donny discover that Han Solo’s fiance is cheating on Han Solo with her brother. You read that right. That’s the actual storyline. Of course Donny swoops into the wedding, reveals the secret incest, and saves the day. The end.

Who?! I don’t think you could honestly write about this film without talking about the extended Vanilla Ice cameo. He is TERRIBLE. He’s not even playing a character. Just a slight caricature of himself. Still TERRIBLE. Additionally, we have former NFL coach Rex Ryan show up as a Boston super fan accountant. He is also TERRIBLE. Finally, gotta love films within films and we are given a couple scenes from the Donny Berger TV movie starring Ian Ziering as Donny Berger. Good stuff.

Where?! Great settings film. Donny is from Massachusetts and still lives in Massachusetts and Han Solo is getting married on Cape Cod. Mentioned all the time. Only thing that could have made it better was if it was set on Martha’s Vineyard. B.

When?! A little debate here and some suspicion that they changed the temporal setting in post. No debate at all that this is a SECRET HOLIDAY FILM ALERT. There is a wedding announcement paper that shows that Han Solo’s wedding is part of the “Memorial Weekend Weddings” edition. Also mentioned verbally later. Online there are some assertions that it takes place during Patriots Day Weekend. Understandable confusion since a marathon plays a role at the end of the film. It would seem that it may have been edited to match the release weekend as when they talk about the marathon there are several odd edits that suggest that it was indeed referred to as the Boston Marathon at some point. Solid B+ despite the change. Would have been an extra level holiday film if they used Patriots Day though.

Not sure if you could tell, but I got a kick writing Han Solo as one of the characters. Did it as many times as I could. Let’s throw it to Patrick for some BMT straight talk. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! That’s My Boy? More like Oh Boy! Amirite or amirite … right? Adam Sandler is comedy (and box office) gold, and this is in no ways based solely on my film preferences from when I was 13 years old … what could go wrong!? Let’s get into it.

The Good (Sequel, Prequel, Remake) – This is honestly the most successful Sandler film I’ve seen in awhile. Personally, I can often find things to like in Sandler films (In Blended I thought Barrymore and Sandler continued to have amazing chemistry, and Aniston is charming as always in Let’s Go With It). This is the first one in a while where I thought Sandler himself (goofy voice and all) did an okay job. Sequelize then brother! Let’s fast forward to, you guessed it, Donny Berger and Miss McGarricle’s wedding day which is naturally going to be broadcast live on VH1. But guess who’s here to ruin the show? Donny’s other son and Todd’s half-brother, Luke Skywalker Berger! Can Todd save the day just like Donny did for him? That’s My Boy: Dream Wedding … get it? That was the name of Nick and Vanessa’s reality wedding on TLC … whatever, amazing deep cut.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – So what was wrong with the film? Boring sagging middle, cursing for the sake of cursing, the usual unnecessary violence, and a terrible ending to the film (perplexing really). And as usual with Sandler films the sin is Greed: he can’t get enough of that sweet product placement you know (in this case Rolling Rock). I’m tempted by Sloth (the jokes are indeed lazy, Vanilla Ice merely acting terribly is supposed to be a joke I think and is meant to sustain a whole chunk of the finale). Predictably unfunny unfortunately.

The BMT: Legacy – This will become merely a footnote in our quest to complete Sandler’s filmography I think. Unlike the last two films we watched, this one isn’t BMT material more because it is slightly too good, and when it is bad it is just kind of loud-swearing bad. Like a 20 I think on the BMeTric scale, definitely bad, but you can kind of get away with liking it and it is not so boring I wouldn’t sit down and watch it again (especially because Samberg is great as usual).

A very very quick Sklognalysis at this point just to, again, mention the other routine feature of Sandler films besides blatant product placement. That’s right! Unnecessary celebrity (usually sports) cameos! In this case an amazingly brutal cameo by Rex Ryan as a Boston-area lawyer helping Sandler out with his legal troubles. Terrible at acting and basically given one job: pretend to like Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. It’s not him that’s bad, to be clear, it is the material. Oh and Dan Patrick is in it as well, but he always is. Booooo!

Cheerios, 

The Sklogs

That’s My Boy Preview

Lately we’ve been using the Games category to try to tally some of the BMT Calendar that will likely never end. However, with only two punctuation marks remaining we looked back towards the Razzie Award winners to get the apostrophe. That’s right! We’re watching That’s My Boy, one of the few unwatched Adam Sandler films that also happens to be nominated for seven Razzies, winning two (Screenplay and Actor). I recall thinking the film looked like it might be good as it followed some of Sandler’s worst efforts (Grown Ups, Just Go With It, and Jack and Jill). Alas, it continued a downward spiral that is still arguably continuing through his multi-film deal with Netflix. It’s been a long time coming, so let’s get right into it. Let’s go!

That’s My Boy (2012) – BMeTric: 47.5

ThatsMyBoy_BMeT

ThatsMyBoy_RV

(What a twist! That is the opposite trend you usually see. Usually things start really high (from hardcore fans) and drop like a stone I feel like. Basically, people don’t like Sandler (shocking) and the passionate IMDb voters seem to just rock this film. It recovers really quickly. Regardless, nearly 50 BMeTric. This is a Very Popular Below Average film. Which for a comedy gives me a good feeling.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – A middle school student and his teacher have an intimate relationship resulting in pregnancy, incarceration, and (years later) a unique father-son relationship. Formulaic Sandler vehicle is filled to the brim with sight gags, inside jokes, absurd, raunchy, and racist humor. This is either a guilty pleasure, if you find it funny, or a miserable experience otherwise.

(There is something odd about Sandler films (I loved The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore, and Billy Madison growing up) rewatching them with today’s sensibilities. The main observation is just how much people kick the crap out of each other and it is celebrated. A notorious example being I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry where Kevin James repeatedly assaults people and everyone acts as if he’s a stand up guy. Racism is also obviously on the table (never forget Rob Schneider playing an Asian stereotype in the same movie) and I am sure I will not fall in the guilty pleasure camp at this stage of my life.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPV2L2CGWdQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPV2L2CGWdQ

(Man, Sandler loves his sports figure cameos (I see you Rex Ryan) and his product placement. His product placement is legendary, I can’t wait. The tattoo joke is solid, although as the youngest hedge fund managers in NYC you’d think he would at least start in on some laser removal.)

Directors – Sean Anders – (Known For: Sex Drive; Never Been Thawed; BMT: That’s My Boy; Daddy’s Home; Horrible Bosses 2; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2013 for Worst Director for That’s My Boy; This is the only movie he directed that he didn’t also write. It seems like Sex Drive is what launched his career based on this variety article (mentioning a movie that I think never came out). I can’t find much else about him.)

Writers – David Caspe (written by) – (BMT: That’s My Boy; Notes: Won the Razzie Award in 2013 for Worst Screenplay for That’s My Boy; In the notes it mentioned this movie was on the 2009 Blacklist. It isn’t surprising that a movie from the Blacklist ended up as a mess, but it is heartening that this movie didn’t destroy this guy’s career, he’s the developer of the cult comedy Happy Endings and has been all over television since this movie debuted.)

Actors – Adam Sandler – (Known For: Big Daddy; Happy Gilmore; The Wedding Singer; Hotel Transylvania 2; 50 First Dates; Hotel Transylvania; Anger Management; Billy Madison; Reign Over Me; Punch-Drunk Love; Spanglish; Funny People; Top Five; Pauly Shore Is Dead; BMT: Jack and Jill (BMT); Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo; The Animal; The Ridiculous 6 (BMT); Zookeeper (BMT); Coneheads; Little Nicky; Grown Ups 2 (BMT); You Don’t Mess with the Zohan; The Hot Chick; Pixels (BMT); That’s My Boy; Eight Crazy Nights; Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo; Mr. Deeds; Mixed Nuts; The Do-Over; The Cobbler; Bulletproof; Grown Ups (BMT); I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (BMT); The Waterboy; Bedtime Stories; Airheads; Shakes the Clown; Click; Just Go with It (BMT); The Longest Yard; Blended; Dirty Work; Men, Women & Children; Notes: Sandler’s filmography is interesting because we’ve seen him in eight BMT films, and almost all of them as the leading character! He just signed a new four picture deal with Netflix, so things like the Do-Over and Ridiculous 6 should be coming fast and furious. At some point the Razzies will have to either allow Netflix Originals, or we might have seen the last of Razzie Nominated Sandler (look at that cred!))

Sandler Razzie Cred – (Won: for Worst Actor in 2013 for That’s My Boy; in 2012 for Jack and Jill, and Just Go with It; and in 2000 for Big Daddy; for Worst Actress, Screenplay, and Screen Couple in 2012 for Jack and Jill; Nominated: for Worst Actor in 2016 for The Cobbler, and Pixels; in 2015 for Blended; in 2014 for Grown Ups 2; in 2008 for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry; in 2003 for Eight Crazy Nights, and Mr. Deeds; in 2001 for Little Nicky;in 1999 for The Waterboy; and in 1997 for Bulletproof, and Happy Gilmore; for Worst Screenplay in 2014 for Grown Ups 2; in 2012 for Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star;in 2001 for Little Nicky; and in 2000 for Big Daddy; for Worst Screen Combo in 2016 for The Cobbler; in 2013 for That’s My Boy; in 2012 for Just Go with It; and in 2008 for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry)

Andy Samberg – (Known For: Storks; Bad Neighbours; Friends with Benefits; Hotel Transylvania 2; Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping; Hotel Transylvania; I Love You, Man; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist; Hot Rod; The To Do List; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2; Brigsby Bear; Celeste & Jesse Forever; BMT: Space Chimps; Grown Ups 2 (BMT); That’s My Boy; The Watch; What’s Your Number?; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple in 2013 for That’s My Boy; I’ve loved Samberg all the way back to his Lonely Island days, I even remember the day he was announced as a cast member for SNL and being rather excited. I love him in Brooklyn 99 as well. I refuse to say bad things about him!)

Leighton Meester – (Known For: The Judge; Date Night; Going the Distance; Life Partners; Like Sunday, Like Rain; BMT: The Roommate (BMT); That’s My Boy; Monte Carlo; The Oranges; Hangman’s Curse; Country Strong; The Beautiful Ordinary; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple in 2013 for That’s My Boy; Gossip Girl represent! She started acting in Florida while living with her grandparents when her mother was serving jail time for involvement in a drug-smuggling ring! I would guess the first thing I remember her from was Entourage when she was just 18 years old.)

Budget/Gross – $70 million / Domestic: $36,931,089 (Worldwide: $57,719,093)

(What does this movie cost $70 million. The budgets for Adam Sandler films are some of the great mysteries of the universe. At the time this was a rare bomb for Sandler, and ultimately a trend. Blended didn’t do much better and after that kids’ films and sequels were his only real hits.)

#23 for the Wedding genre

wedding_23

(Standard stuff, a nice little oscillation there a bit, but otherwise Wedding movies have always been big and seem like good bang for the buck too. Below License to Wed is indeed not great. There appears to be one big Wedding comedy a year … makes sense, people are always getting married.)

#27 for the Comedy – Fish-Out-of-Water Father genre

daddyfishoutofwater_27

(Came out right on a rise. We have watched so many of these films. The Are We There Yet? series and Old Dogs in particular recently. This comes in right around Delivery Man, and oddly that movie (which came out in 2013) is the last one listed for the genre on box office mojo. Has the genre died? Doesn’t really make sense, it was still making bank when they all disappeared. Stop slacking box office mojo.)

#21 for the Slacker / Stoner genre

slackerstoner_21

(Below 30 Minutes or Less is reeeeeally not great. Right at the peak of slacker/stoner genre it would seem. I want to make an argument about Democratic and Republican presidents, but the trough in 2005 just doesn’t work with the narrative. I’ll just end with mentioning Inherent Vice is the last one listed there … how weird.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 20% (23/113): While it does represent a new foray into raunch for the normally PG-13 Sandler, That’s My Boy finds him repeating himself to diminishing effect – and dragging Andy Samberg down with him.

(Noooooooo don’t drag Samberg down too. I’ve actually never really liked gross out comedies. They … well, gross me out. I have a soft spot for Sandler though weirdly, a guy who I think gets a lot of flack for doing a really good job making movies people like to watch (the horror!). I’ll give it a shot. Open mind time.)

Poster – That’s My Sklog (B-)

thats_my_boy_ver2

(First, so easy to change the title. Second, I kind of like it, very bright and colorful, symmetric. My main complaint is that it is just kind of a picture of two people, not much else going on. At least there isn’t just a big swath of sky behind them.)

Tagline(s) – The story of a child… and his son. (D)

(Stupid. Yeah, I get it. Tells you nothing about how their relationship is unique (the son is only 12 years younger than the father and he is the product of teacher-student rape), or why I care.)

Keyword(s) – teacher student relationship; Top Ten by BMeTric: 93.0 Dragonball Evolution (2009); 78.3 Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009); 77.7 Jason X (2001); 72.6 Elektra (2005); 71.4 The Next Karate Kid (1994); 69.0 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989); 68.5 Cell (I) (2016); 67.7 Supergirl (1984); 65.1 God’s Not Dead (2014); 64.9 Jennifer’s Body (2009);

(Jason X? What does that really even mean? What does Elektra really mean? Or Dragonball Z? This list is a lie! Or at least That’s My Boy goes a little beyond what they mean I think.)

Notes – When Andy Samberg actually got married he invited Adam Sandler to the wedding who showed up as his character in this movie, outfit and all. (I wouldn’t like that, not one bit. Although I guess comedians’ weddings are probably a bit different)

Eva Amurri Martino plays the younger version of her real-life mother Susan Sarandon. (Holy shit! I was going to say they did a really good job finding a young person to look like Susan Sarandon in the movie!)

Adam Sandler is only 12 years older than Andy Samberg, who plays his son in this movie, which makes perfect sense since Sandler’s character fathered him as a child. (A rare temporal consistency)

The film was originally rated NC-17 by the MPAA due to its explicit sexual content, making the film’s Adam Sandler’s only attempt at an NC-17 rated film. The film was later re-rated R on appeal. (I’m sure Sandler did not intend it to be rated NC-17)

Adam Sandler, Tim Herlihy, Robert Smigel, David Wain and Ken Marino all did uncredited rewrites of the script. (Some State guys in there which is fun)

The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2009 Blacklist; a list of the “most liked” unmade scripts of the year. (Nice to see its critical and financial failure didn’t effect the main screenwriter)

Awards – Won the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (Adam Sandler); and for Worst Screenplay (David Caspe)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture; Worst Director (Sean Anders); for Worst Supporting Actor (Nick Swardson and Vanilla Ice); for Worst Screen Couple; and for Worst Screen Ensemble

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 Recap

Jamie

What?! Baby geniuses are back, Jack! Bobbin’s World daycare/preschool has hit it big and ready to launch a multimedia empire with media mogul Bill Biscane. Little do they know that he’s got a plan to use the partnership to launch mind control kids TV shows. Uh oh! Can a new generation of baby geniuses stop him before it’s too late? Find out in… Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2!

Why?! World domination, duh. Biscane hopes to get children across the world addicted to his television shows so that he makes gobs of money. And he can’t have it fail because, as we are told several different times, he sunk so much money in the R&D for the mind control technology (reminder: this is a children’s film). What isn’t clear about the entire plan is why he gets Stan Bobbins (little brother of Dan from the first film) involved. Biscane owns the technology… why even involve anyone else (particularly what seems like a company run out of a single location)? Such hubris is ultimately his downfall as the the babies at Bobbin’s World seem to want only one thing: to stop him at all costs.

How?! Alright, so in order to get the children of the world addicted to his television network, Biscane needs only to put a DVD into a DVD player and have it play. Simple, right? Wrong! Not when you only have one copy of the disc and employ bumbling idiots as your goons. Just when they are about to play the disc it falls into the stroller of the babies. Oh no! When the goons attempt to get it back they are stopped by a superhero kid named Kahuna who bears a striking resemblance to Whit and Sly from the first film (but that would make no sense. So why did they use the same actor? Beats me). It turns out that Biscane is actually an East German child kidnapper named Kane and that he has spent his life concocting plans to kidnap/control children only to be foiled by Kahuna every time. Kahuna in turn is a kid who drank a magic potion that has kept him young forever and super strong and smart. You following this? Anyway, now these four babies and some other unimportant side characters are caught in the middle of this eternal struggle of good vs. evil. Kahuna and the babies come up with a plan to stop Biscane, but Biscane foils it and captures Kahuna. Oh no! It must be over. Wrong… Kahuna then… uh… gets the disc back (yeah, that’s the ticket) and then… uh… they duke it out and the babies turn into superbabies and they beat up everyone and everyone is happy and Jon Voight becomes a creepy baby Jon Voight. The end. See, this plot is tight.

Who?! I 100% have to give a shout out to the weird-ass cameos in the film. Not only do we get a dose of Whoopi Goldberg playing herself and thanking Kahuna for saving some kids, but we also get a cameo by the boy band O-Town formed as part of MTV’s Making the Band in 2000 and some canned footage of George W. Bush waiting his turn to speak to Kahuna. This, of course, makes this the best president/musician-as-actor film in history.

Where?! Despite being on the cusp of a multimedia empire it would seem that Bobbin’s World hasn’t yet expanded to outside the LA area. This is confirmed as Kahuna’s hideout is straight up in the ‘H’ of the Hollywood sign. Wow. That’s an unexpected A. Using landmarks to perfect effect.

When?! I don’t recall an exact date coming up at any point (other than the flashbacks, which take place after World War I and in the 1960s), but there is a totally random moment where a side character is disappointed that a boy just wants her to tutor him rather than take her to homecoming. It also specifies that she goes to Fillmore High School which makes sense as Fillmore, CA isn’t too far from LA. Creeping about online it seems like their homecoming is usually end of October. That’s like a B-. Semi-exact but vague. Hoping I’m not flagged on too many FBI lists for the searches I just performed.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2? More like Super Crazy, Sweet Baby Jesuses Too! Amirite? Let’s see, thinly veiled allusions to Nazis in a film starring literally babies using creepy CGI. Could this be real, or is this just fantasy? This was real and it was dog poo in my face! Let’s get into it!

  • The Good – Not much. Actually nothing? Maybe getting the babies to act was impressive enough, although I wouldn’t say it was better than the first movie. There are flashes of humor in Voight’s performance as well, he has a lot of fun with it. That is it though. Let that sink in.
  • The Bad – Nearly everything. Shoddily made. 95% of the film is ADR voice work including Jon Voight’s lines. The story is ludicrous. The sets are ludicrous. The lines people say are ludicrous. It is a poorly thought out and put together film, top to bottom. I’ll save you the trouble and not list out everything individually. I’ll leave you with this: they totally unnecessarily connects the original film to this new one by making Baio the brother of MacNicols … why not just say Baio was MacNicols? Because you needed him to be kind of a sell out horrible person? Why not just write it differently?
  • The BMT – A resounding yes. This movie certainly earns its place on the IMDb bottom 100 (top ten even). It is fascinating that a film like this would be released to over 1000 theaters and even record foreign box office takes. This film probably is the pinnacle of the Bad Kids’ Film genre. This isn’t a genre we typically take part in because early in the history of BMT we watched Dudley Do-Right, and realized it was, one, not that bad, and two, just impossible to make fun of. This earns the place in BMT by sheer force of will and Jon Voight’s tour de force. Really just an incredibly tone deaf and weird to the nth degree acting performance. Steven Paul must have cashed in a few favors to get this made. Considering there is a whole television series after this (released as I think five films) there must have been money to be made, but I find even that unbelievable. In the spirit of the BMT Hall of Fame we introduced recently this would earn its ticket based on the fact that is is the peak of a full genre, the kids’ movie genre. Nothing will ever beat it.

The game this week is tough. I think I’m going to go with a Sklognalysis where I’ll draw a comparison between this movie and a movie in our past. The movie I’m thinking of is pretty niche: The Night They Saved Christmas, a TV movie from 1984. I saw this recently at the bequest of my brother who was feeling very nostalgic about the film. First: would not recommend, the movie is super weird, and mostly boring. But the comparison I made is between the strange North Pole sled depot (with pools of water everywhere and everything just kind of looking like It’s a Small World ride in the Magic Kingdom) and then also with the character of Ed played by Paul Williams (the songwriter … he wrote Evergreen with Barbara Streisand which was nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, and Academy Award) which, in his epic creepiness, operated very similarly to the Kahuna in this film. He has a weird lair, is a 50ish year old man in a child’s body, and puts children in harm’s way for his own selfish desires. They are both so creepy though … watching these movies back-to-back I think would at least make you think “huh, it seemed like we learned our lesson back in 1984 … guess not”. And doesn’t that make this movie at least a bit special in an anachronistic way?

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Baby Geniuses Recap

Jamie

What?! A multinational baby product company, BabyCo, has started experimenting on babies to discover advanced learning techniques. As a control they’ve separated twins, Sly and Whit, to prove the method works. Using his superhuman strength and smarts, Sly is able to escape the lab, leading to the recapture of Whit by mistake. Will the switcheroo be discovered in time to free the babies and bring BabyCo down? Find out in… Baby Geniuses!

Why?! Alright, I know that little synopsis may sound confusing (particularly as a plot to a kid’s film and not a surrealist horror film). Don’t worry, it’s even more confusing when you actually watch it. On the face of it there is a pretty clear reason why BabyCo is flaunting bioethical mores and engaging in baby experimentation: they hope to develop a learning technique so great that everyone will jump at the chance to pay big money to get their kid enrolled. Muddling all this, though, is the fact that both BabyCo and Whit’s father, Dan, are also obsessed with learning the ancient baby language, which purportedly holds all the secrets to the meaning of life (and conveniently explains why all babies secretly talk like adults). I guess BabyCo hopes to use the “babytalk” language to further develop the Kinder method. As for the babies, they’re motivation seems to be freedom and bringing the separated twins back together. Unrightfully separating twins is of course the greatest crime known to man, one that the Atlantic Ocean is guilty of as we speak. Fuck you, Ocean.

How?! Like any good scientist, BabyCo’s chief researcher, Dr. Heep, set up a controlled experiment with twins Sly and Whit so as to definitively prove the Kinder Method is superior to other learning methods. Unfortunately the method works too well (or maybe Sly and Whit are just naturally too smart, it’s never made all that clear) and Sly breaks free to run about town. Coincidentally they corner Sly at the very moment that he and Whit encounter each other for the first time and Whit is taken back to the lab by mistake. Uh oh! Once BabyCo realizes the mistake they know that their little Mengele-like twin experimentation will be discovered and come to an end, so they start to pack it up to jet off to Lichtenstein (this is really the plot). Acting quickly, Sly and Whit organize their baby troops, hypnotize some weak-minded adult helpers, and take down the whole enterprise, all the while spouting odd anachronistic adult-themed jokes delivered by ADR. This very well might be one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

Who?! Twin film alert! Have to mark it for next year’s Smaddies Baddies. As for Planchets, I have to highlight Kyle Howard’s Dickie (self nicknamed Icepick). He is a teenager who is given a job at Whit’s parent’s daycare as a favor to his parents, given that he can’t hold down any other job (and doesn’t appear to want to). He spends the entire film dressed in bizarre costumes (including a gigantic hoop nose ring) trying to get fired. No dice, though, as he ends up playing a part in saving the babies… which I guess means he cares or something.

Where?! Very nicely takes place in Pasadena, where BabyCo is headquartered. Mentioned outright in the beginning and supported to the very end as the LAPD race to BabyCo HQ to save the day. The Bobbins’ place seems to be somewhere in the LA suburbs not too far away. Pretty solid C+.

When?! Xmas film, alert! When Sly escapes the lab he ends up making it to a mall, where he spends the night. It is very clearly decked out in Christmas decorations, with a mall Santa and everything. We also get a clear “Merry Christmas” from one of the mall security guards. Perfection. B+.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Baby Geniuses? More like Sweet Baby Jesuses! Amirite? We watched a kid’s film literally starring babies. Totally our wheelhouse. Not the antithesis of everything BMT holds desr. What could go wrong … it isn’t like it could ruin my life, right? Right, obviously, baby geniuses didn’t ruin my life, that’s absurd, but it wasn’t very good. Let’s go!

  • The Good – You’d be surprised by how okay the story actually is. It is silly, and it doesn’t make much sense, but if you squint and let it wash over you like a summer rain it isn’t the most unpleasant. My wife actually watched this movie a bit growing up and had fond memories of it. So credit where credit is due. This is probably up there with Master of Disguise now as BMT films where people I know were kind of flabbergasted that the movie was bad. Also, I don’t know how they get babies to act. At times I was just confounded as to how they got them to do certain things. It is incredible. The supporting acting appears bad, but they are also super committed and I kind of loved that.
  • The Bad – Shoddily made. Number one. All the way down to a rented limousine having a tail light out. I would assume a feature film shoot wouldn’t be so tight on budget or schedule that they could request a not-broken limo to be sent, but not in Baby Geniuses. It looks like a movie made in 1993 but it was made in 1999. The finale was creepy enough I didn’t really know how children would watch it without becoming scared for life. Obviously it is really stupid and none of the jokes land.
  • The BMT – Yes, but lower than it is and mainly just because the idea of the movie is really stupid (or at least transparently pandering to very young kids who they knew just wouldn’t care) and the movie shoddily made. But it is like a 50. You can imagine people liking this film. It is possible. Why does this sound like praise? Read my Superbabies Baby Geniuses 2 recap to find out! The legacy of this film will be that it is a great Twin Film, and part of probably the worst film franchise in history.

I’m going Sequel Prequel Remake here and going for a Prequel. I’m much more interested in Peter MacNicol’s character of Dan Bobbins than anyone else. Why is he special in that he can understand baby talk a bit? He suggests it is in the back of his mind, just out of reach. The prequel will explore the extraordinary events of his babyhood that lead to the incomplete crossing-over and residual retention of baby talk. LSD experiments by a young and radical Dr. Heeb related to MKUltra (although you’d have to accept that Heeb is much older (70’s or even 80’s) or MacNicol’s is much younger (30s) than the actors who played them in Baby Geniuses were at the time), drawing a connection between Kane and BabyCo in the process, a manipulation to draw Dan and Robin together to allow Heeb to continue his research through Dan. It’s got it all! Baby Geniuses: Origins, coming this fall to Netflix. Totally, definitely getting picked up by Netflix.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Baby Geniuses Preview

With the first BMT Live! of the year behind us, we continue onto the Razzies entry of the Squeakuels cycle… or I should say what was the Razzies entry. That’s right. Minor shake-up for 2017 is that this entry in the cycle is now the Challenges entry. This still includes Razzies as we continue to try to cover as many nominees as possible, but it also includes any BMT challenges we may come up with. For the moment that is just the Calendar, but the Periodic Table of Smellements and a world mapl.de.map would also fall into the cycle once we officially put them on the website. So without further ado we start this new entry off with a couple of films that are both on the Calendar. Give it up for the worst reviewed film series in history and the only set of films to both appear on the IMDb Bottom 100. That’s right, we are subjecting ourselves to Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Lord help up. Let’s go!

Baby Geniuses (1999) – BMeTric: 72.1 (#66 on IMDb bottom 100)

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babygeniuses_rv

(Just shockingly low. It does seem like it wants to go up, but obviously also legendary because it really has stayed pretty consistent over the nearly 15 years this graph covers. This movie would also probably be a poster boy for why I need to figure out how to “backdate” the BMeTric. I would assume for the most part that Baby Geniuses increases in votes proportionally to the rest of IMDb. So you would assume the BMeTric should really stay the same over time. But it is based off of average votes for a movie today, so it’ll just rise over time. Such is life at the moment.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Unless you want to see walking, talking toddlers hypnotizing DeLuise into picking his nose, steer clear of this almost history-making comedy clinker about power-mad child psychologist Turner, who’s raising three bright babies in her lab. Technically shoddy and recipient of some of the decade’s worst reviews (though people did go see it). If these kids are such geniuses, why can’t they spark even a single laugh?

(Cooooooold bloooooded. That’s is just body-shot-body-shot-upper-cut Leonard, taking the industry down. History making boys, that’s why we do it. That’s why we play the game. If you are going to watch a kids’ movie, at least make sure it is historically bad, right? I’m getting all amped, nothing can push me off this mountain.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgjvh4_h_lQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgjvh4_h_lQ

(Aaaaaand, I’m out. This does look shoddy enough though that it has an outside chance of being bemusing to the point of interest. Like, I do wonder which computer graphics company developed the tech for the moving babies and whatnot, some of that did look more impressive that I expected.)

Directors – Bob Clark – (Known For: A Christmas Story; Black Christmas; Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things; Murder by Decree; Dead of Night; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Rhinestone; Porky’s II: The Next Day; Loose Cannons; Porky’s; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Director for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; And in 1985 for Rhinestone; Once hit a royal flush on a video poker machine on the Strip and won over $80 thousand on a two dollar bet.)

Writers – Steven Paul (story) – (BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Screenplay for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Was a playwright at the age of 12. Well known as a producer, he produced things like Ghost Rider and the upcoming Ghost in the Shell film. He loves ghosts.)

Francisca Matos and Robert Grasmere (story) – (BMT: Baby Geniuses; Notes: Matos basically became the writing partner of Grasmere, and while they have been attached to a number of projects this is the only significant one produced. Grasmere has had a far more impressive visual effects career including films like Demolition Man, The Core, and Toys (and yeah, I chose the worst of the bunch, it is a very impressive list).)

Bob Clark (screenplay) – (Known For: A Christmas Story; Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things; BMT: Baby Geniuses; Porky’s II: The Next Day; Porky’s Revenge; Loose Cannons; Porky’s; Notes: The last feature film he wrote, although he directed more than he wrote through his career.)

Greg Michael (screenplay) – (BMT: Baby Geniuses; Notes: Was the second unit director for a murderer’s row of 2000s action films: the entire Mummy series, The Time Machine, The Tuxedo, Van Helsing, G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra! Has never really made the jump to director, although he is attached to a film called Wild Heart that was just announced.)

Actors – Kathleen Turner – (Known For: Marley & Me; The Virgin Suicides; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Romancing the Stone; Body Heat; Monster House; Nurse 3-D; Peggy Sue Got Married; The Jewel of the Nile; The War of the Roses; Serial Mom; Prizzi’s Honor; The Accidental Tourist; The Man with Two Brains; BMT: Baby Geniuses; Dumb and Dumber To; V.I. Warshawski; A Simple Wish; Beautiful; Undercover Blues; Notes: A devoted activist for Planned Parenthood for years including becoming a chairperson. Obtained a reputation for being difficult to work with later in her career.)

Christopher Lloyd – (Known For: Back to the Future; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Back to the Future Part II; Clue; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; I Am Not a Serial Killer; Back to the Future Part III; The Addams Family; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Anastasia; Piranha 3D; Addams Family Values; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; Man on the Moon; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; The Postman Always Rings Twice; The Tale of Despereaux; Mr. Mum; Goin’ South; Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road; The Dream Team; DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp; Eight Men Out; BMT: Piranha 3DD; Baby Geniuses; Suburban Commando; My Favorite Martian; Dennis; Love, Wedding, Marriage; Fly Me to the Moon; A Million Ways to Die in the West; The Pagemaster; Angels in the Outfield; Camp Nowhere; Hey Arnold! The Movie; Notes: Is the uncle of Sam Lloyd known for his role as the lawyer on scrubs. What more is there to say? Has been in some of my favorite movies from my childhood.)

Kim Cattrall – (Known For: The Ghost; Police Academy; Sex and the City; Big Trouble in Little China; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Ice Princess; Masquerade; The Return of the Musketeers; BMT: Crossroads; Sex and the City 2; Baby Geniuses; The Bonfire of the Vanities; Mannequin; 15 Minutes; Porky’s; Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 2011 for Worst Actress for Sex and the City 2; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1991 for Worst Supporting Actress for The Bonfire of the Vanities; I can’t find anything about their relationship, but she appeared in four Bob Clark films: Tribute, Turk 182!, Porky’s, and Baby Geniuses! She is British, but her accent is Canadian where she grew up. She is an avid supporter of Liverpool F.C.)

Budget/Gross – $12 million / Domestic: $27,250,736 (Worldwide: $36,450,736)

(Wow, not bad all things considered. I’m pretty shocked by the foreign number. It doesn’t really make sense to release to foreign markets, although (and I don’t really know how this movie is constructed, so take this with a grain of salt), if they are merely putting voices over without manipulating the mouths too much it might have been a fairly trivial dub which could have made it worth it.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 2% (1/44): Flat direction and actors who look embarrassed to be onscreen make Baby Geniuses worse than the premise suggests.

(The rogue good review states: “With the recent popularity of baby-themed shows, this film has perfect timing. Younger patrons will be drawn into the fantasy, while the humor is sufficient to keep adults interested.” I had to look it up, but indeed, the show Baby Bob came out mere months before this review (June, 2002), bizarrely three years after the movie came out! Which also means Baby Geniuses held a 0% on rotten tomatoes for three years before losing it.)

Poster – Baby Sklogses (C+)

baby_geniuses

(The positive is that the symmetry is pretty good. Everything else is not great. Font is uninteresting and the coloring is not great. It does get the message across, though, with that baby wearing glasses.)

Tagline(s) – Think innocent. Think helpless. Think again. (I am dumber because of this.)

Naps are history. (Seriously. What is going on?)

(What in the fuck are these? The first one is like someone from a different country that didn’t speak english was forced to study taglines for a year and come up with one for this film. The second one is like an actual baby came up with it. Dear God. Those are rough.)

Keyword(s) – baby; Top Ten by BMeTric: 85.0 Date Movie (2006); 83.9 Scary Movie 5 (2013); 82.8 Son of the Mask (2005); 74.1 Junior (1994); 72.2 Baby Geniuses (1999); 71.4 In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011); 70.2 Look Who’s Talking Too (1990); 66.1 The Animal (2001); 64.7 Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992); 63.4 Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013);

(Wow, so there are a few movies there we’ve seen (Junior, Look Who’s Talking Too, The Animal … a few times, Honey I Blew Up the Kid) but only one we’ve done for BMT. That is a new rule by the way. We’ve stopped considering movies “watched” unless we’ve done them for BMT. So a while to go in the baby top 10 … which is a weird mix of the expected and just weird films.)

Notes – The amusement park is the one at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, NV. (Circus Smircus?! We were (kind of) just there!)

Kathleen Turner, who plays Dr. Elena Kinder, and Christopher Lloyd, who plays Dr. Heep, also co-starred in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), in which they played Jessica Rabbit and Judge Doom.

The last theatrically-released film of Dom DeLuise (although several later films he made were never publicly released). (Kind of a thing isn’t it? Terrible movies being the last release. I wonder if it is because things like voices and kids films are less demanding so actors who ultimately die of a terminal illness just end up in those roles as they approach their death. Sorry to muse about the subject, but I do find it interesting)

Dr. Elena Kinder’s surname is derived from the German word for children.

The combination for Sly’s alarm system at the beginning of the film is “1673.” (This is the kind of shit we’re supposed to do. Like me having my ATM pin be 1673 … it isn’t by the way, but that would be pretty weird right?)

The film is included on the film critic Roger Ebert’s “Most Hated” list. (These two films are hitting a bunch of marks)

Nine Lives Recap

Jamie

What?! Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey) is a high powered business man who only cares about one thing: his brand (get it?). After getting a cat as a present for his daughter, a freak series of events leaves his body in a coma and his spirit trapped in the cat! What a cat-astrophe! Can he learn to love and live as a cat before his business is sold and he loses his family forever? Nine Lives!

Why?! The primary impetus in the film is that Tom Brand is a shitty guy and needs to change. He loves his family, but doesn’t show it very well and appears to love his business and himself more than them. So the mysterious pet store owner, Mr. Purrrkins, turns him into a cat to teach him lesson. Basically, if he can’t learn to live as a cat in his own house, then he can’t learn to love and will remain a cat forever.

How?! It isn’t really made particularly clear how being a cat will teach Spacey to love or what he had to do to be free. He is just told to act like a cat. However by the end of the film you come to understand that it’s more about being there for the people in his family when they need him (just like a cat is… or whatever). He plays with his daughter and comes to understand that simply being there is what she needs. He snuggles with his wife and comes to understand that he needs to be a comfort for her when she needs comforting. And finally he comes to understand that he needs to recognize his grown son for the skills and loyalty that he has ignored for so long. Throughout the film the son is dealing with a fairly complex business scheme that the COO of Brand’s company has undertaken in the absence of Tom (just what the kiddos are craving in a film: intricate business talk). Only by truly understanding his son’s contributions to his success is he finally able to be free.

Who?! I’ll give a little shoutout to Talitha Bateman, who played the daughter of Tom’s first wife from a new marriage. Not only is she already a BMT veteran (playing Teacup in The 5th Wave), but she had one of the better running gags in the film. It becomes clear that she is a minor internet celebrity and posts amusing videos to a youtube-type channel. It’s an unacknowledged subplot of the film and even initiated my favorite joke of the film (where a security guard tasers his partner in the testicles while trying to catch Tom as the cat… can’t go wrong tasering testicles).

Where?! Pretty standard New York City fare. We get direct confirmation of the setting, numerous license plates, and even some GPS map visuals. However it is definitely not integral to the plot. Could have been Chicago pretty easily. C+.

When?! There is nothing that explicitly tells you the date. Did I give up? No! Scouring the film I found a scene on a bus with an extra reading a New York Times. The front cover clearly indicates that it was the April 2nd, 2015 issue. A vast majority of New York City dwellers will be reading the current issue so we can say that the film takes place on or around April 2nd, 2015. I’m the best. D-.

One last quick note about Nine Lives. It is the newest edition of Chris Klein’s Number Line, where we try to collect integers that appear naturally in a film’s title. This is the 17th such title that we’ve watched (Patrick’s Note: We watched the 17th title a mere week before the beginning to 2017? Coincidence or a sign from above?). It’ll end the day that Chris Klein himself makes a number line title… so it’ll never end. Hooray! I’ll also make a visual for this game for the site at some point. For now you just have to trust me.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Nine Lives? More like Weak Try (haaaaaaalf-rhymes. Nine Lives is a surprisingly hard rhyming trick). We watched Nine Lives, a movie where Kevin Spacey is a cat. I slide head first into second with the lowest of low expectations, let’s go!

  • The Good – This movie isn’t as bad as you would think. Merely by not having Kevin Spacey act like a cat and instead put him in a movie-long coma it was a major win. Things are a bit fun, but it’s a kids’ movie. Do you like kids’ movies? I don’t. So I didn’t really like this movie. No skin off my back.
  • The Bad – Basically this movie immediately jumps in the middle of a very adult story of corporate power brokerage. It is boring to me, let alone kids who just want to see a cat run around. The CGI cat looks terrible. This is also not a body switch movie. Kevin Spacey does not run around acting like a cat. That was definitely in the original script, but they clearly cut it in order to get better talent all around. He is in a coma during the movie, and thus never acts like a cat. Mistake for entertaining Patrick, smart move in making this movie tolerable.
  • The BMT – There are a ton of things going for this movie from a BMT perspective. It has a terrible CGI animal; to the point where Kevin Spacey was probably on set for two days, and in the studio for two more, and that was his shooting schedule. They definitely made back their money from LG and Lexus in product placement. And this is a classic example of mixing two genres: why are kids interested in high level corporate sabotage again? Oh yeah, they aren’t, why is that literally half of this movie then? It is BMT, but just by being a great example of: (1) Body switch that isn’t body switch, (2) mixing an adult storyline into a kids movie, (3) product placement, (4) star power that was on set for fifteen seconds total. It is solid. But not as bad as you would think.

Obviously let’s go for a Prequel/Sequel/Remake and obviously we are doing a sequel. I will call it Ten Lives. The cat from Nine Lives is living out his ninth life with the Spaceys when sadly it is time to say good bye. But nay, after winning in the business world and winning with his family, there is only one last thing Kevin Spacey needs to conquer … the afterlife. Travelling through hell Kevin Spacey learns exactly how much his earthly success means for his soul. Spoiler alert: Not much!! Upon finding Mr. Fuzzypants can he convince Cat St. Peter that their furry friend deserves a tenth life? Find out in Ten Lives!

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Nine Lives Preview

While Gods of Egypt was the most anticipated film of BMT, it was probably not the most likely to actually earn a Razzie. That honor would go to Nine Lives, a film entirely focused on Kevin Spacey being transformed into a cat. You would call it “Razzie bait,” if there was such a term. So of course that’s exactly what we’re watching this week. Despite generally avoiding kids films there was something about this film that got me excited to watch it. Perhaps the fact that it WAS ENTIRELY FOCUSED ON KEVIN SPACEY BECOMING A CAT… Let’s go!

Nine Lives (2016) – BMeTric: 35.1

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(Huh, that is quite the regression to the mean. I do wonder whether this movie’s worthlessness was a little overblown. Would jive well with the second graph where the rating rose more significantly than I would imagine. Low 5’s isn’t great, but I wonder where among sub-20% rotten tomatoes movies that actually lies. That could be a good “rigorous” data study to do actually. Would be interesting to weight things and really try and get a good distribution for specific percentage (a situation that will be somewhat data sparse for sure).)

Rogerebert.com – Thumbs Down (0 Stars) – Which leads me to this question: Just who is supposed to be the target audience for “Nine Lives”? Certainly not feline fanciers, since we are told that, “Cats don’t care if you live or die.” Definitely not fans of Spacey, who did a much better coma on the most recent season of “House of Cards,” or Walken, whose trademark wild mass of hair seems more limp than usual.

(Hooray. I do like movies which are supposed to be kid’s movies but seem to just be a screenplay shoehorned into the body of a kid’s movie. Zero stars is also impressive, I love Thumbs Down rogerebert.com, like Leonard Maltin BOMBs they often reveal more about the critic in question’s tastes than the quality of the movie itself.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jHA97HzhxE

(Yes … quite bad. I do not look forward to this. Walkin reminds me of his part in Envy. A facilitator of mischief in a wholly bizarre and unsatisfying comedy.)

Directors – Barry Sonnenfeld – (Known For: Men in Black 3; Men in Black; The Addams Family; Addams Family Values; Big Trouble; Get Shorty; BMT: Wild Wild West (Watched); RV: Runaway Vacation; Nine Lives; Men in Black II (Watched); The Concierge; Notes: Won the Razzie Award in 2000 for Worst Director for Wild Wild West; We saw Get Shorty leading up to the atrocious Be Cool. Searching variety brought up this 1995 article about him inking a deal with Disney. Neither Swordfish (not that Swordfish) or the remake to Another Man’s Poison was ever made, and then Sonnenfeld swiftly moved on to the smash hit Men In Black. Go figure.)

Writers – Gwyn Lurie (screenplay) – (Known For: The Music Never Stopped; BMT: Nine Lives; Notes: Not much about her, buts he is a producer and looking through variety reveals a few funny entries from the early 90s like this one. A comedy film based on the Guinness book of world record attempt at eating a whole 747!? Brilliant enough to never be made. Very few actual movies by her which is interesting considering he has often been attached to films. Bad luck. Did also make Variety for a large and elaborate treehouse that her and her husband built on their property. That’s fun.)

Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson(screenplay) – (Known For: Soul Surfer; BMT: Four Christmases; Nine Lives; Notes: Screenwriting partners. The only note I can find outside of their main credits is this bizarre 2010 article about a new movie being developed. Basically at the same time as (BMT) What to Expect When You’re Expecting was being developed another parenting guide was also being developed by these guys. Yeah, it was never made.)

Dan Antoniazzi and Ben Shiffrin (screenplay) – (BMT: Nine Lives; Notes: Screenwriting partners. They wrote a RomCom/Serial Killer film “Heartstoppers” that made the 2008 Black List.)

Actors – Kevin Spacey – (Known For: American Beauty; The Usual Suspects; Se7en; Moon; The Ref; Superman Returns; L.A. Confidential; Horrible Bosses; Glengarry Glen Ross; A Time to Kill; The Negotiator; Elvis & Nixon; A Bug’s Life; Margin Call; Working Girl; K-PAX; Outbreak; The Men Who Stare at Goats; Henry & June; Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; The Shipping News; Beyond the Sea; BMT: Edison; Fred Claus; Nine Lives; Father of Invention; Consenting Adults; Horrible Bosses 2; Casino Jack; Ordinary Decent Criminal; 21; Notes: Interesting only in the sense that we haven’t watched any of his BMT eligible films. Otherwise looking through recent notes he is basically only in the news for being involved with Relativity Media which emerged from bankruptcy to … well, immediately get embroiled in controversy. Whatever. Do you Spacey.)

Jennifer Garner – (Known For: Catch Me If You Can; Dallas Buyers Club; Juno; Daredevil; Miracles from Heaven; 13 Going on 30; The Kingdom; Draft Day; Danny Collins; The Invention of Lying; Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; BMT: Elektra (BMT); Mr. Magoo; Dude, Where’s My Car?; Valentine’s Day (BMT); Ghosts of Girlfriends Past; Arthur; Nine Lives; Mother’s Day (BMT); Pearl Harbor; Catch and Release; Butter; The Odd Life of Timothy Green; Notes: What more is there to say about this secret BMT all-star? Nothing really is on the docket besides The Tribes of Palos Verdes with Mel Gibson’s son (no joke). She was honored with an award for her charity baby2baby so she’s got that going for her.)

Also stars Robbie Amell – (Seen in Cheaper by the Dozen 2)

Budget/Gross – $30 million / Domestic: $19,700,032 (Worldwide: $19,700,032)

(That is really really really rough. Amazing that the foreign take it totally absent, but I guess kid’s film with no IP attachment wouldn’t be much of a foreign draw. Huge bomb, but I would hope they kind of intended to play the long con with DVDs and product placement.)

#12 for the Comedy – Body Switch genre

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(Basically the worst post 1994 body switch film in history if we were to be honest with ourselves. Is it even a body switch? It isn’t like Kevin Spacey is a cat (he appears to be in a coma). Otherwise there are too few movies for this plot to be interesting.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 11% (6/54): Not meow, not ever.

(Rough stuff rotten tomatoes. Just a shade above 10%, which is somewhat surprising. That 10% threshold it turns out is really hard to get, which I was somewhat surprised by. Even this (clearly one of the worst films of the year) couldn’t manage it.)

Poster – Nine Sklogs (B+)

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(This is actually a pretty solid poster. Nice balance, font, color scheme. I generally don’t like the cast each put in a small window on the poster, but even that is spiced up a bit with the cat highlighting Kevin Spacey. I like it.)

Tagline(s) – His life just got put on paws. (C+)

(Egad! That is a… cat-astrophe. Thank you. Thank you. But seriously, this isn’t necessarily bad from the point of view of sounding and feeling like a tagline, but the pun seems really forced and is like a kick in the stomach.)

Keyword(s) – cat; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.6 Catwoman (2004); 84.9 Date Movie (2006); 81.0 Movie 43 (2013); 80.7 Home Alone 3 (1997); 80.7 Vampires Suck (2010); 78.3 The Cat in the Hat (2003); 76.6 Spice World (1997); 74.2 Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000); 73.5 One Missed Call (2008); 71.5 Paranormal Activity 4 (2012);

(Oh yeah, Cat in the Hat for sure will be there. Actually a pretty solid list and most of these definitely have a cat in it in some way shape or form. Movie 43’s cat vignette was directed by Elizabeth Banks I think and was the reason she got Pitch Perfect 2 if I recall correctly.)

Notes – Up to 70% of Nine Lives was computer-generated. (Oh wow, that does explain a bit about how this was made)

A subplot involving catnip as an allegorical analogue for addiction was originally planned, but was cut both for time and because executives believed it would be too much for a PG children’s movie. (ha! This is going to be a kid’s movie)

The movie was released as Mr. Fuzzypants in United Arab Emirates. (makes sense, that is the cat’s name)

Five of the cast members have appeared in superhero productions. Marlina Weissman (Rebecca Brand) played Young Kara in the TV series of Supergirl, Teddy Sears (Josh Myers) & Robbie Amell (David Brand) starred in CW’s The Flash with Teddy as Hunter Soloman/Zoom & Robbie as Ronnie Raymond/Firestorm. Kevin Spacey portrayed Lex Luthor in Superman Returns and finally Jennifer Garner portrayed Elektra in the Daredevil & Elektra Marvel movies.

Rated the worst film of 2016 by Metacritic critics.

Gods of Egypt Recap

Jamie

I’d like the record to show that I actually didn’t mind Gods of Egypt all that much. It was at times beautiful (albeit inconsistently so) and played a bit like Thor (patently ridididiculous, but still fun). So in the end I was actually surprised that this landed at 16% on RT. I guess perceived/actual racism can go a long way. Let’s get into it.

What?! It’s been years since Set took the throne of Egypt from Horus and left him blind and powerless. A mortal thief, Bek, steals and returns Horus’ eye (the source of his power) in the hopes that Horus can bring order (and the woman he loves) back to Egypt. They must work together to defeat Set before he destroys both the world and the afterlife in his own vain pursuit of immortality. Gods of Egypt!

Why?! The main driving force in the film is the aim to take down Set and return Horus to the throne. Even before we learn that Set is aiming to destroy the world and obtain immortality, we know that Horus, Bek, and his lady love Zaya want to take that power from him for totally different reasons. We have Zaya who worships Horus and wants him to bring order back to Egypt, we have Bek who needs Horus to bring Zaya back to life (she died, duh), and we have Horus who really doesn’t give a shit about Bek and is more focused on his own sweet tale of vengeance. Interestingly, this whole triangle of motivation is very similar to the motivations in Ride Along… It’s basically just Ride Along in Egypt… Now I’m having fun imagining this film starring Kevin Hart instead of [Insert Anonymous Actor’s name here].

How?! The original plan is that Horus is going to squelch the source of Set’s power, the desert fire, to leave him weak and vulnerable. Then he’ll have a chance to defeat him since he only has one eye. They first go on a quest to get some of the heaven’s water to squelch the fire, then they need to find Thoth to solve the riddle of the Sphinx who guards the fire, but they are stopped before they get a chance to destroy Set. When all seems lost and the world is being eaten by a giant space demon (seriously), Horus learns that all he ever had to do to defeat Set was to believe in himself a whole bunch and everything was cool (it’s like a children’s movie). Unfortunately none of this actually makes it possible for Horus to bring Zaya back from the dead… psych! Ra totally comes down from his spaceship and is like “No probs, bro,” and everyone is alive again at the end. It may be the truest example of Deus Ex Machina in cinematic history. Literally God comes down from the heavens and fixes everything. Hoo wee, what a weird plot.

Who?! I wanted this part to be highlighting the “Planchet” of the film, however so many of these films don’t have a shred of humor in them. Sure there are quips between Bek and Horus, but it’s on a Hitman: Agent 47 level of laziness. Instead I’ll just highlight that this marked the return of Rufus Sewell to our BMT lives (seen first in Bless the Child). Hopefully we can complete the Sewell trilogy with the XxX precursor Extreme Ops, which looks aaammaaaazzzzziiinnnggggg.

Where?! Boom. A+ in the hizzouse. Set in Egypt as the title informs you. Although, you would have thought it was set in Europe given the cast and accents. Zing!

When?! Uh…. ancient? It’s… uh… ancient times. D.

If that didn’t get you excited for the film then… you probably won’t like it because it’s just as ridiculous as I described.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Gods of Egypt? More like God I Feel Ripped Off (I was going to say gypped, but that is racist. The more you know). This was one of the most anticipated movies of the year for us, so I went in with a bunch of expectations. Let’s go!

  • The Good – I liked the world building. It was interesting and the script was able to be a lot tighter than you would think given the subject matter. I hate the “this should have been a Game of Thrones like show, not a movie” nonsense, you could say that about almost anything. But this could have probably sustained itself as such a thing, and I would have been thoroughly entertained. It’s not that bad … because “that bad” for this movie is literally the worst film of the year. It isn’t the worst film of the year which is actually an achievement.
  • The Bad – The acting. The CGI was pretty atrocious. Actually, the movie itself is beautiful, no joke. But a bunch of scenes are really just terrible. I would say that while he gives it his all, having Gerard Butler in the film hurts it because it ends up too over the top. They should have stuck to totally television actors and gone from there, I think it would have ended up being a bit better.
  • The BMT – Yes. I would say 40 is just about appropriate for the film. Definitive, top 10 (maybe 5) for a year. But not the worst by any stretch. To kick it up a notch it either would have had to make literally no sense (it was shockingly coherent as I said) or just looked like a complete pile of shit throughout. But it didn’t. Part of me is impressed it managed to charm me at all, I’m down for a sequel to be honest.

Boom. Speaking of which let’s do a little Sequel Prequel Remake and rock a sequel. I think you fast forward a bunch of years and Horus is killing it as the main god. He rules a prosperous Egypt and the people love him. But alas, all good things come to an end. Ra is set to perish (they make it clear gods merely age slowly and aren’t in fact immortal in this world), and he reveals that Horus as the ruler of Egypt must lay down his mantle and take the throne. Refusing, Horus goes in search of a mythical weapon to forever strike down Apophis that would allow him to remain in Egypt after Ra’s passing. Meanwhile, Set, escaping death and returning to an Egypt missing its king, attempts a takeover of the kingdom. In the end, Horus battles Set yet again, and ultimately strikes a deal: Set can remain in the land of the living on Ra’s ship to battle Apophis, a beast which it turns out is vital to Egypt’s continued existence as well. … Confused? Me too.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs