Category: Recap

Eye for an Eye Recap

Jamie

It took me just about two chapters of Eye for an Eye to be like “ah, alright. I think I’m good.” The book is insane. Just a pure injection of Death Wish fanaticism. Now you aren’t even safe in the suburbs. And when the teen nogoodniks come a-knockin’, guess what? You aren’t even gonna get justice because the system will just let them go. Now, I know what you’re thinking. ‘Jamie, this is just what the books were like back then. The movies followed. What’s the big whoop?’ You don’t understand. Not only do these nogoodniks kill the main character’s daughter (sparing her granddaughter), but then her surviving son-in-law kills himself and the baby right after that. He is so jaded by the world and the only way he knows to protect his daughter is to kill her. At that point I threw the book out a window. No thank you. As my own child would say, “Pee-yew.” Maybe this is just a product of the book coming out in 1993… kind of the tail of the urban crime hysteria of the 80’s and 90’s… you gotta step it up. Does she really need so much motivation to take up vigilante justice? I guess the author thought so.

To recap, Karen is a housewife with two great daughters and a loving husband. One day, chatting with her daughter on the way back from work, she is horrified to hear a man break into her house and kill her! My word! Horrible. Karen is shocked and has trouble grieving. It seems like things are turning around when the clear culprit, a horrible delivery man named Robert Doob, is apprehended with DNA evidence in spades. However, things go from bad to worse when he is released on a technicality. Karen begins to attend a survivor’s group and catches wind of a group that helps people like her get justice. They will set the plan in motion, get her a weapon and the rest is up to her. She starts preparing, all the while also following Robert Doob around. She even catches him scoping his next victim, but the police, who are sympathetic, still can’t do anything. When it’s revealed that a friend from the group is an undercover FBI agent (and kind of sort of knows what she’s up to) and Doob starts following her surviving child around school, she decides to drop it all. That is until Doob strikes again. Plan back in motion! She tricks her family into leaving town without her and breaks into Doob’s apartment. Doob knows it’s her and goes to her house that night for the big climactic confrontation. Well you know how that goes. Doob is donzo and the police and her family arrive only in time to reluctantly agree that they will chalk it all up to self defense and let it lie. THE END.

It’s a little hard to be jokey with this type of material, but let’s just be clear that this film does in fact have one of the funniest scenes ever put to film. Our boy Kiefer Sutherland has a scene that focuses on his drumming along intensely to a music video, becoming bored, throwing his drumsticks to the side in favor of some ice cream (or ‘scream as the kids call it), which he eats from his apartment’s balcony. The purpose of the scene? I guess to make us laugh. Not sure. Anyway, this actually is exploitative garbage riding on the high of the OJ Simpson trial. They even show footage of the trial as part of the film. It’s really brazen and bad. I usually kind of brush off critics getting all stuffy about this stuff, but really… this is no bueno. Belongs on the paperback book stands and not really in a big theatrical release (at least not one that doesn’t at least hedge a little on the ethics of it all… things turn out pretty great for her). Anyway, thank god for the absolutely stacked cast of this garbage film. The acting is actually at times out of this world. Too bad it’s in service of Death Wish 6.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me drumming manically while watching a music video in my flophouse.* Let’s go!

The Good? The cast is pretty incredible. That is maybe the only good thing you can really say about the film which was (1) late to the game to harp on super criminals and indulge in vigilante justice garbage, (2) not even particularly interesting while doing it.

The Bad? Everything else, but honestly mostly Kiefer. Kiefer is not fun. Kiefer is gross and upsetting in this film. And I get that that is the point, but you really should just channel Lithgow in Ricochet when you are doing stuff like this. More phone book prison gladiators, and less extremely graphic rape scenes please.

The BMT? This is a bad movie. I never want to watch it again. It is a relic of the time it was made, which I suppose makes it of interest when I start my Media Studies PhD on the evolution of the Super Criminal phenomenon as seen through newspaper, film, and television. Otherwise I have no interest in this weirdness. Ebert said it best: one star, “Eye for an Eye is a particularly nasty little example of audience manipulation”.

The Rewatchables? What’s aged the worst? I think, as usual with films like this, the entire “super criminal” vibe the film has going. By the time this film comes out crime would have already started falling in the US. The “That Guy” Award for Angela Paton who leads the support group in this film, but is also the innkeeper in Groundhog Day. The Overacting Award has to go to Kiefer … seriously go watch the drumming scene. It is insane. And we get a wild Needle Drop in the middle of the film for the Macarena, which I suppose is appropriate given when the movie was released (January, 1996).

I’m going to start recording some great giffable moments. Cliche Gif – Ed Harris is sitting in the dark and turns on the light when she walks in the room. Best Gif – I think for like a celebratory thing at around 28 minutes the detective says “we got him” which I would change to “we got it”. A muted celebration, but it works. Craziest gif – at 48 minutes Kiefer says “pull the fucking trigger”, although the gif truly could not do justice to how weird he says it.

Love a Cameo (Who?) for Cynthia Rothrock as the self-defence instructor. And a true blue Product Placement (What?) for I think maybe like 14 times where someone drinks a Pepsi, or has a Pepsi at a party, or you see a Pepsi machine. A Setting as a Character (Where?) for Los Angeles. And Crazy Setting (When?) for the Macarena blasting during a scene setting this almost certainly 1995 or 1996. This movie is straight unpleasant and Bad.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

All the Pretty Horses Recap

Jamie

A lot of the books we are “reading” for this cycle are more trash than treasure. And when we get a classic like The Three Musketeers, it’s more of a joke that Kiefer Sutherland is staring at me from the cover as I read it. All the Pretty Horses is a real outlier. Not only is the book amazing (controversial opinion alert), but the cover is actually not all that embarrassing to have staring back at you. It’s a serious take at the adaptation, although Billy Bob Thornton and Matt Damon seem to disagree. As for my memory of this film in BMT lore… I actually don’t have any. I don’t really recall this movie coming out. Probably with the bad press a-swirling and being recut to resemble a romance western film, we took a look at it and passed hard in favor of What Women Want, a true Christmas classic.

To recap, our boy John Grady Cole is sad. Sad because his family ranch is being sold off by his absentee mother. His dad is traumatized by the war and his Grandpa has died and everything is terrible. Time to head down to Mexico with his friend Rawlins to find the old cowboy way. They pick up a crazy kid, Blevins, on the way and work their way towards the ranching area. Blevins ends up losing his horse and gun during a thunderstorm and goes a bit crazy when he realizes they were sold off in a nearby town. He steals back his horse and makes a run for it, leaving Cole and Rawlins to continue onto the ranch on their own. After arriving and getting some low level jobs, Cole decides they should show their chops by breaking a group of wild horses. The boss is impressed and moves Cole into the horse business and uses him to help breed a stallion he bought. Meanwhile Cole finds himself falling for the boss’s daughter, Alejandra. The boss and his aunt don’t like this and ultimately give Cole and Rawlins over to the Mexican police, who are looking for them in connection to Blevins. Ultimately, they are sent to jail and Blevins is murdered. Both Rawlins and Cole barely survive attacks in the prison before the aunt helps free them. Returning for Alejandra, Cole confronts the aunt who admits she only freed them on the condition that they leave and claims Alejandra has agreed not to see him. Cole scoffs like a scoffer and contacts Alejandra and meets her at a train station where they make sweet, sweet love. He thinks they are gonna run away together given the lovemaking and such, but she’s like “I can’t” and leaves him. Jaded, Cole returns to the Mexican police to get their horses back and does so by taking the corrupt captain hostage. In the process he’s injured and barely survives his return to the US. There he returns Rawlins’s horse. THE END.

I mean, come on. I kinda love that this movie ended up qualifying and we are here watching it for BMT, because it is simply not that bad of a movie. In fact I would say it’s a pretty good movie. Not even really that bad of an adaptation, despite what Thornton and Damon say. I can see their point, that the book does not have a particularly romantic tone, so having a producer try to cut your film up to be something it’s not is probably pretty annoying. But it doesn’t really mean the movie actually is bad. This definitely seems influenced largely by just how beloved the book is. I also think the bad press by Thornton and Damon probably wasn’t helping, nor was the involvement of Weinstein, who was deep in his Oscar campaign shenanigans at the time. But I very much enjoyed watching this movie. I also think this is some of the finest work Damon has done. Showing some real acting chops. Henry Thomas is also pretty great. I liked it!

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me working haaaard on the ranch when Penelope Cruz rides by and my eyes bug out like a cartoon character, and then my head turns into a wolf’s head and I howl and my tongue rolls out on the ground.* Let’s go!

The Good? I actually liked this movie quite a bit. It is a faithful adaptation of what is something of a revisionist western. I do think the back third is a mess, but the first third especially does a lot to translate what makes the book great into a movie. Specifically, the thing I like about the book (which shares a lot of DNA with some of McMurtry’s westerns) is the idea of the “true cowboy” in post-WWII America and the question of whether the cowboy can or should exist. The image of a cowboy riding along a highway basically. I also think Damon and Henry Thomas were much better than expected. I had figured going in the acting was going to be a sore spot, but it really isn’t the issue.

The Bad? The only major issue is that every so often you can see the “indulgent” version of the movie leaking through, especially in the back third. There is a moment where a guy is just like dancing while Damon is on the phone and then it is suggested it is all in Damon’s head. And then soon after there is a slow motion shot at the train platform of a man picking up a little girl in his arms. Both shots are absurd. Amateurish, almost. I have a feeling that the version Billy Bob Thornton showed to the executives which got a bee in their bonnet was the version with like 60 other weird artsy nonsense shots like that. The edit is likely just stripping all of that stuff out. The back third suffers for it, it feels incredibly rushed and if you hadn’t read the books I can’t imagine it makes any sense whatsoever.

The BMT? Nope, I think this movie is good. As far as the difference between critical receptions then and now this is a decent example. The movie might not be the best film in the world, but it would get like 60-70% on RT now. It is a very nice looking western and a faithful adaptation of a beloved book. The idea that it would get trounced by critics is just impossible.

The Rewatchable? What aged the worst? Just giving Penelope Cruz nothing to do in the movie, seemed to genuinely derail her American career a bit. The that guy award kind of goes to Henry Thomas, Elliott from E.T., who I thought had basically retired from acting in the ‘80s, but nope. Still acts. Out of left field, the overacting award? Billy Bob Thornton gets a rare Overdirecting nod. The occasional directorial flourish he threw into the film never failed to make it worse.

I do like this for a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Mexico, it is a very Mexico film in the end. I actually don’t think the twist (that Penelope Cruz decides to never see Damon again as per her agreement with her father) is bad, genuinely quite good. It being a “revisionist romance” would be one of my hot takes. The movie is Good, through and through.

Cheers,

The Sklogs

Thinner Recap

Jamie

I am an unabashed Stephen King super fan. I have read, by my count, twenty-six of what is listed as novels in his bibliography (some are pretty borderline, but they count!). I’ve read a few of his collections as well. So when you get a chance to read lucky number twenty-slevin AND get to have that be a beautiful media tie-in version with the stunning poster on the cover… well… you do it. My conclusion? The book is weird. I kind of like it in the Cujo or Pet Semetary kind of way. The difference with those really dark books is that this also has The Shining style main character who is a giant piece of shit and gets driven crazy by his circumstances. So that’s a bit unusual for a book and you can dig into that. But it’s also all about a gypsy curse… and no one really bats an eye at the idea that this group of Romani are winding their way around New England. Was this a thing that happened in the 70’s that no one talks about? This is Stephen King before he kicked the habit kind of stuff.

To recap, Billy Halleck is a kind of scuzzy small town lawyer. He occasionally gets mobsters off. He occasionally ogles the Romani gals that pass through his Connecticut town (naturally). He very very occasionally eats. And his family loves him for it. One night his wife decides to get a little handsy in the automobile (if you know what I mean) and our boy Billy, being distracted, totally smashes into an old Romani woman. Despite manslaughtering this old lady, Billy gets off due to his connections to the judge and police chief. While leaving court, an even older Romani man who leads the group touches him and curses him with the word “Thinner.” And boy howdy, does he. He starts dropping weight like crazy. At first he’s like “dope.” Then it starts to feel less and less dope as the weight keeps coming off and he has to eat and eat just to slow the decline (and he looks crazy doing it). Eventually the local doctor and his wife insist he go to a clinic for treatment. Knowing it’s a gypsy curse, he declines. He goes and sees the judge and lawyer and they are also being totally owned by curses. So he goes in search of the Romani. He tracks them down and confronts them but they not-so-politely decline to remove the curse. Billy then recruits his mobster friend to help and after terrorizing them for a while they agree to remove the curse. This is done by putting the curse in a pie (not joking) and feeding the pie to someone who will take on the curse. Now, you have to understand that Billy at this point has become unreasonably focused on the culpability of his wife in the whole affair. He is absolutely convinced that she should have gotten cursed because she got up in his business in the car. So that’s why ultimately he feeds the pie to his wife, but is shocked and horrified to find that his daughter ate it too and he done fudged up bad because he’s a huge piece of shit. THE END.

There are aspects of Thinner that I enjoyed. Some of the makeup and effects, particularly one dream sequence involving the cursed judge driving a car into a semi, are pretty good. This stands in stark contrast to the rest of the film that has the production quality of a TV movie. Which kind of makes sense given the director also directed a TV movie adaptation of a Stephen King short story, The Langoliers. The really glaring issue with the film is the performance by the main actor Robert John Burke. You always want an actor willing to go for it… but maybe not this much. His performance is unintentionally quite funny as he makes crazy silly faces in his fat suit. Most of the actors are willing to treat the material in a soapy fun way, which is good, but his performance falls just over the line and really messes with the tone. As for the adaptation, my only quibble is an extraneous addition to the film where Billy imagines that his wife is having an affair with their doctor. Which I don’t think is needed. Works better if he’s just a bad person and slowly driven insane. 

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me admiring my super thin body as an old man looks on confused. He mouths “thinner?” and I look at him and mouth “don’t mind if I do” much to his horror* Let’s go!

The Book? One of the rare ones I read prior to watching the film. The book is about twice as long as it needs to be, but that is par for the course for King. I love King, but his best books are the ones that use their length well. It. The Shining. To some extent ‘salem’s Lot. This felt more like a short story that had an extra 100 pages stuck into the middle of it. The middle really really sags. But beyond the fact that the storyline would now be consider very very racist, the idea I kind of dug, and the “twist” ending is fun. Again, though, I like the books of his which go for the happy-ish ending more than the “ooo the good guy kind of sucked the whole time!” endings he sometimes pulls out. Anyways, mid-tier King for me as far as the book goes.

The Good? Hmmm, the only good stuff in the movie is the good stuff they pulled from the book I think. The fact that it kind of ends up looking more like a revenge tale, the fact that the main character haaaaaaates his wife by the end of it, the off-the-beaten-track New England of it all. The good stuff is the story which is why they adapt King books in the first place.

The Bad? It looks like a TV Movie. The acting is abominable. The middle of the movie also sags. Did I mention the acting is terrible? The main character, I don’t know … he probably had gone insane from the application of all the fat make-up during the course of filming, but he looks absurd 95% of the time. The whole thing now looks like amateur hour, but that is maybe what happens when you try and do a full body fat suit movie five years before you could even do a bad version like Big Momma’s House. Honestly, what it really needed was commitment from a crazy actor willing to gain and lose a crazy amount of weight. The guy never actually looks as thin as the book suggests he is. He is supposed to be a walking skeleton. With CGI I bet they could do a real creepy version of this film now.

The BMT? I mean you have to collect them all. And by “all” I mean all Stephen King adaptations. This is just a shade above the truly dire of his though, but it has cred to make it worthwhile to watch.

Rewatchable? For what’s aged the worst, it is obviously the gypsy storyline. You actually genuinely couldn’t get away with it these days. The “that guy” award goes to Michael Constantine, who you might remember from the My Big Fat Greek Wedding series, he plays the king gypsy in this and he’s the father in that. And finally obviously Joe Mantegna gets the overacting award, but that can be forgiven since the character is written that way in the book too.

A good Setting as a Character (Where?) for Maine as the ultimate setting of the climax of the film. I’ve been to the lighthouse where the final confrontation happens. And Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate conclusion that he kills himself and his entire family with the curse in the end because he sucks. The film is Bad, merely by not being bad enough to be a fun Stephen King adaptation.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Three Musketeers (1993) Recap

Jamie

The Three Musketeers was my personal favorite of the picks for this Now a Major Motion Picture cycle. There are three keys to getting a perfect Now a Major Motion Picture media tie-in edition of a book. First, it has to say something like “Now a Major Motion Picture” on the front cover. Second, it has to have a picture of the actors on the cover (or at the very least a version of the poster for the film). Third, and potentially most important, it has to have the credits for the film on the back cover. If you get those three things you have a perfect media tie-in. The Three Musketeers had all three of these (so as I read I could gander at Keifer Sutherland’s beautiful face) while also being the unabridged version of a classic. A classic from which the adaptation depicted on the cover deviates significantly. My short review of the book: it’s fun! Like an old school adventure novel. Has the feel of almost improvisation at times which is probably because, like the Bad Movie Twins story, it was being written as a serial. Really fun. 

To recap, our boy D’Artagnan is heading on to grand Paris to join up with the Musketeers. Unbeknownst to him Cardinal Richelieu has used his influence over the young King Louis XIII to disband the Musketeers… all but three (but which three, I wonder). Arriving in Paris he immediately gets into it with Athos, Porthos and Aramis and finds himself in a duel with them. This is rudely interrupted by the Cardinal’s guards and D’Artagnan acquits himself quite well dueling them. Unfortunately he is captured as more guards arrive. After escaping his cell, D’Artagnan overhears a plan by the Cardinal to form a treaty with the Duke of Buckingham with the ultimate goal to supplant the King. After being sentenced to death, D’Artagnan is rescued by the Three Musketeers, who boldly ride off in a big ol’ action set piece. They agree that they should intercept the treaty and save the day. When they are attacked by the Cardinal’s forces, the gang splits up and eventually D’Artagnan falls into the clutches of Milady. Bum bum bum. He is smitten because she is so beautiful and evil. Eventually the Three Musketeers capture her and the treaty and she reveals the Cardinal’s plot to assassinate the King before throwing herself from a cliff. Athos is devastated because she was so beautiful and evil. They all rally the Musketeers across the land and arrive at the King’s birthday celebration just in time to interrupt the assassination. They fight a whole bunch. They kill people left and right and are almost killed themselves. Eventually they win and D’Artagnan becomes a Musketeer and wins the heart of his beautiful and good lady love. THE END.

I can’t change who I am. This movie is fun and all them critics are a bunch of Debby Downers wanting us to watch The Remains of the Day or whatever. “Why do we need another Three Musketeers adaptation?” they cry. I’ll tell you why. Fun. The book is a gosh darn adventure classic and you’re like, ‘nah’? Get out of here with that. Now, is this a perfect movie? Alas, no. The cadre of actors they got for these parts are not exactly suited to the King’s English. The lines flow like molasses as they work their way through them. Rebecca De Morney has been good in some things (Never Talk to Strangers, anyone?). This is not one of them. Kill two birds with one stone and update the language, my guys. Then you’d have an answer for the reason the adaptation exists (besides being fun). You make it cool because the book is cool and it deserved a cool 90’s blockbuster adaptation. Anyway, I’ll leave you with this little hot take: I think Chris O’Donnell is actually very well cast in this. In fact the casting is great. It’s just that they didn’t do anyone any favors by trying to make they speak all old fashioned.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me swashbuckling around and wenching haaaaard* let’s go!

The Good? C’mon now, that cast! How did this movie claim a $30 million budget and that cast! The downside is Platt and Curry appear to be the only ones who know what movie they are in. The upside being Oliver Platt! Just wall the wall clowning around. This walked so Marvel could run. Sutherland appears to think he’s in a deathly serious adaptation of a classic piece of literature. Platt knows he’s doing a bit of buffoonery. The movie is just fun. It is genuinely like Pirate of the Caribbean. It seems it just took a while for the critics to get on the same wavelength.

The Bad? I guess, some might call the accent work non-existent because it is, and thus as an adaptation of one of our great works of literature it is an abomination. I would not be that person. I would be a person who would say Tim Curry, love the guy, but hooooo boy, it is maybe just a little too over the top for me. And De Mornay is something of a charisma black hole (although something tells me they hired her as Milady for a different reason…). This is tough because I liked the film, but I do see why in the early ‘90s critics would be like, “No no no! This is not how it is done!”

The BMT? In previous years there were basically two axes on which to judge BMT. Horribleness and Ridiculousness. A ridiculous movie would be something like Battlefield Earth. And a horrible movie would be something like Gods and Generals. Now Gods and Generals isn’t really considered BMT, it is considered Bad. So what is the equivalent for Good? Well, that’s the new category: gifability. This film is good, but it is also amazingly gifable at the same time. Porthos in particular is a gif machine. It is something you have to see to believe.

Rewatchable? For what’s aged the best I think just letting the actors use their own accents is an underrated choice. It is something maybe people should consider revisiting. It probably makes making the movie cheaper as well. Let Kiefer Kiefer, you know? The heat check in the movie I think is Julie Delphy, it is a bit jarring to realize she’s in it. The “that guy” award goes to Michael Wincott who has been in several BMT and BMT adjacent films from that era, like 1492, The Crow, and Along Came a Spider. And finally obviously Tim Curry gets the overacting award.

Amazingly we do not get a Planchet award. The character doesn’t even appear. I think he was replaced by the rando who keeps trying to duel D’Artagnan and mostly just looks pale and laughs dumbly at him before being embarrassed. Setting as a Character (Where?) sure, for Paris. And I guess for the time we have a Secret Holiday Film (When?) for the king’s birthday which, at least in England, would certainly be considered a holiday. But that is it. The film is Good and I’ll duel anyone who dares suggest otherwise.

Cheers,

The Sklogs

Krippendorf’s Tribe Recap

Jamie

A book cycle! A book cycle after the website has been a disaster area for like a year! What a mistake. We’ll see how long I actually am able to keep up with the reading of the books. Krippendorf’s Tribe was pretty easy. It’s a fantastically short satire of academia. I started it and I found it unpleasant. Mostly because the main character kind of sucked. But guess what? That was kind of the point. So as the book went on and got darker and darker I started to surprise myself by actually digging it. By the time the family is committing cannibalism and our “hero” is fleeing the country with his kids-turned-savages to presumably live out their days in the Amazonian jungle, I understood how it was that someone, somewhere felt like it would make a great movie. Why that movie had to be a heart warming tale starring Richard Dreyfuss? Not sure I understand that part yet.

To recap, James Krippendorf is a respected anthropologist and member of an all-star husband-wife team who have integrated the lives of their three kids into their explorations. After his wife dies, though, Krippendorf is lost. So lost that he spends the rest of their grant money on just keeping his family afloat. When the chickens come home to roost and he is expected to present the work he never completed on a lost tribe of New Guinea he never found, he does what any self respecting academic would do: make it all up. The showman to his wife’s brilliant researcher, he soon has everyone enraptured. Unfortunately they are too enraptured, as he gets roped into more lectures and a rising faculty member (and unabashed fan of his), Veronica, gets him tied up with a science-as-entertainment TV producer. So he finds himself having to produce more and more fake tribe content, including dressing his kids up in brownface and (hold onto your hats) having sex with Veronica on video to show off the mating rituals of the tribe… eeeeesh. Meanwhile a colleague of his sets out to expose the lie. This all culminates in his appearance on a TV dressed as the Chief of the Shelmikedmu and his subsequent winning of a large grant where both he and the Chief will appear. Veronica, peeved by the sex video, nonetheless agrees to help in exchange for half of the grant and helps keep up the ruse long enough for Krippendorf’s colleague to excitedly fax from New Guinea that there is no tribe. Everything falls apart… that is, until the colleague calls back and acknowledges that in fact she did find the Shelmikedmu. This was of course set up by Krippendorf’s daughter who pulled some favors with a nearby tribe who she had close ties to. THE END.

I feel like my opinion of this is painted a little by my unexpected love of the book. It’s just so much darker and I kind of wish that they went that way with it. You can even see it a little in other Dreyfuss performances. What About Bob? is a great example of Dreyfuss as insane person. I think he could have played that great. Chaos all around him while he pedantically explains it all away and people lap it up. But this is a pretty broad comedy that ended up kind of making a joke of the original satire. Is that why it got bad reviews? Because reviewers were angry that it didn’t live up to the biting satire of the source material. No. They didn’t like that it was racist mostly. And they seemed upset that Dreyfuss would do it. I will say that the fact that Elfman and Dreyfuss said yes to this insanity certainly elevated it. Dreyfuss is pretty physical as a comedian in this and so maybe that’s what attracted him to it. He got to act wild. Surprisingly middling for a film I presumed would be horrific.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me dancing around in blackface in a major motion picture in 1998* Let’s go!

The Good? The film is a little more heartwarming and the characters a little more quirky that one would initially give it credit for I think. Specifically, the whole family dynamic I think is quite nicely underplayed but also fairly nice how things get worked through in the end. And Elfman’s character in particular is just the right level of weird anthropologist groupie (?) / kind of game for the hoax and a publicity hungry crazy person that the romance works a lot better than you could ever think it could. These days she’d definitely be a buttoned-up person who only lets loose in the end.

The Bad? Uh … the blackface. I mentioned it in my intro. Five separate people dress in blackface. There is a whole section which is deeply offensive. It is only slightly saved by also having a real New Guinea tribe they are friends with that they are mostly just riffing on. Still though, hard to get past. Oh, and the rape scene. We’ll get to that in a second.

The BMT? I mean, yeah, one of the weirdest films ever made. And obviously deeply problematic and not funny. There isn’t really any other way to describe it but as an ultra weird film I watched as a kid. What do you think our parents thought watching this film? I wonder. I bet they have zero recollection of watching this film.

The Rewatchables? Might as well steal from the best. What’s aged the worst? The rape scene duh! They have a whole scene where Dreyfuss gets a woman drunk and then secretly films having sex with her. Whooooooops! The “That Guy” Award for Mac’s mother from It’s Always Sunny. Also Happy Gilmore’s grandmother as well. The Overacting Award goes to Elfman for the scene where she is pretending to be drunk (rough). And we get a wild Needle Drop in the middle of the film and over the credits for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

I took an extended break from my AI explorations, but I’m going to get back to it soon. The current key will probably focus on embeddings. In particular, there are a few huggingface models (models–google–vit-base-patch16-224 and models–openai–clip-vit-base-patch32 in particular) which I think I can get working a bit to try and see what I can see as far as one of my main goals in this cycle: Embed a bunch of movie posters and then try and find ones that match a specific but hard-to-articulate concept. Namely, can I find posters that utilize the same conceit as the For Your Eyes Only poster: you are looking through a woman’s legs. This one would be close, for example. Stay tuned.

Let’s go Early Role (Who?) for Mila Kunis who pops up as a girl at the science fair who is participating in the son’s tribal demonstration. Best Product Placement (What?) THERE IS AN ENTIRE SCENE IN McDONALD’S AAAAAND AN ENTIRE SCENE IN BEST BUY. Stop the presses. This is an unprecedented level of product placement. This film must have made bank. Setting as a Character (Where?) I’m pretty sure they are supposed to be in New York based on a few flags that are around, a choice I’m guessing was solely based on Natasha Lyonne’s crazy thick New York accent. We have an Exact Date (When?) of April 7, 1997 when the film starts. And Worst Twist (How?) for the inevitable conclusion that the daughter got the tribe they are friends with to pretend to be the Shelmikedmu Tribe to save them in the end. The film is BMT through and through, just wild and crazy stuff.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Saw IV Recap

Jamie

Franchise Man will live foreeevvvveeerrrrrr! You can’t kill him because all you little piggies can’t get enough of your precious franchises. Oink oink oink. Eat up your Saw IV slop. I’ll gladly partake for I am lore incarnate! Saw is my bible of lore. No one has done it better than Jigsaw and his wacky traps. With that out of the way, I do have to acknowledge that we live in a wondrous time. We are years from entry after entry of dumb-as-rocks entries in franchises like Final Destination (fun) and Saw (less fun) that just fed its sequels into the BMT machine. Because who gives a shit, right? It’s just a bunch of rube goldberg death traps (in both cases). Just kill some people in fun and/or unpleasant ways and yada yada yada profit. And somehow we are now getting good entries in the series. Isn’t that cool?… and yet, is it also not part of a BMT disease. Did I say Franchise Man will live forever? Maybe not if every dumb movie is now good. Then he will die.

To recap, you must bear with me. It appears that this film was designed as some kind of nefarious trap for Franchise Man. I fear I might die in an attempt at an accurate recap. So really the film starts with Detective Rigg, a hot head devastated by the death of his partner at the hands of Jigsaw, getting kidnapped. It’s implied that there is another apprentice to Jigsaw that is the key to everything we’re seeing (since at the end of Saw III we saw Amanda get killed). Rigg is warned that he better listen and not be a hothead detective or else things will end badly. He proceeds to be a big ol’ hothead and things continually end badly for him. Meanwhile we see Detective Hoffman (someone who has warned Riggs about the aforementioned hotheadedness) and Detective Donnie Wahlberg (of Wahlburgers fame) kidnapped and set up to be electrocuted or crushed or some shit. Meanwhile to this meanwhile, the FBI are tracking stuff down and we get a bunch of backstory about Jigsaw and how he was a loving husband turned crazy by not only his cancer but the miscarriage of his child. Through this backstory they are able to slowly track Rigg through his trial and it’s implied that by doing this they will ultimately kill an innocent man. Rigg gets to the location where Wahlberg and Hoffman are being held and despite being told to not be a hothead he hotheadingly barges into the room, resulting in Wahlberg getting his head smashed by giant blocks of ice (Cooool! Rad!). Hoffman rises up and reveals that he is in fact the apprentice (what a twist!). Meanwhile, the FBI gets lost like a bunch of dumbos and kills Jeff (a character from Saw III) thus revealing that all this happened simultaneously to Saw III and it’s really cool and we love it. THE END (or is it? (Come on))

Saw IV. Come on. How is it that a franchise that should be built on the premise of “none of this matters” somehow makes everything matter in the most insane(ly dumb) way possible. I have to admit, there is a certain beautiful satisfaction in watching the movie spin itself into a knot around a Lost-esque flashsideways. But when everyone is so very dumb and everything is so very cheap and the traps just don’t even try to make sense then I have to say it: fundamentals. Focus on the fundamentals Saw IV. Either that or just keep getting dumber. I want rocks to look like geniuses next to these movies. Do it Saw. In actuality, the fact that Saw X got good reviews should be devastating. Just when you make me want it to be dumber, you make it less dumb? No fair. As for Vibrations. Uh, cha. This is what we call a Friend. It’s a wild time on VHS. Just to highlight one moment in a consistently insane film, at one point a friend of the main character (who helped him with his robot hand situation) lets him use his special speaker that is so powerful that he implies it could kill people or something. And me and Patrick looked at each other and were like “wouldn’t it be so funny if in the end he sets up the people who took his hands so they get killed by the speaker?” and then that more or less played out exactly like that. And yes… it was so funny.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Jigsaw: not a good person, husband, or potential father. I really don’t think enough time is spent making sure the audience understands that Jigsaw, despite the backstory we are being treated (and I mean, treated) to, does not in fact have justification for killing all those people. In fact almost no time has been spent making sure that is clear and all the time has been spent trying to convince us that he was just a broken man driven to desperate measures to make sure people appreciate life. And I say ‘No!’ This hot take has been paid for by the Committee to Make Sure People Understand Jigsaw is Not Good. Hot Take Temperature: Burning coals in your eyes unless you let mice eat your ears off in the next fifteen seconds. 

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me screaming as my fingers are torn off or whatever AAARGH AAAAAAH ARRRRRRRGH* Let’s go!

The Good? The further you get into Saw the more ridiculous it gets and, somehow, the less revolting it ends up being. The tricks are so obviously stupid and semi-unwinnable you just sit there waiting for whatever like … pig bile to melt someone’s face off or something. All in the service of a dumb twist where it turns out Mr. Saw’s childhood friend is actually a copycat Saw killer or something. Then we all clap and go home.

The Bad? These movies are garbage. I kind of mean that in the best possible way (I guess…). They have such flimsy premises and they are specifically so obviously constructed to service a single goal (seeing dem torture devices babyyyyy), that that is part of the charm. But as actual movies? Trash. Even as horror films? Double trash. Because they aren’t scary, and even compared to other torture porn films they are quite tame. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach once while watching this film! What are we even doing here? If I can eat a sandwich while watching your film then you didn’t do it right. Fact. The acting is terrible, the premise is terrible, the film is terrible. Slammed.

The BMT? I don’t think so. I think there is going to be one Saw film which is well and truly BMT. This is dumb, but it hinges too much on prior films to be a film you’d ever revisit and revel in. That’s just a fact, Jack.

I’ve decided to, for now, revisit the idea of sifting through letterboxd reviews for something interesting. I tried initially to have it find the “weirdest” review, but it just returned aggressively unfunny reviews. So I call this “Hey Letterboxd, convince me this film isn’t garbage.” Here is the example of a good review for this film:

This is it right here. This ties up the loose ends of the previous three films and feels like a fresh start for the franchise, complete with more melodrama, Hoffman, and more frenzied intricacies within the storytelling that is clearly being written with future films mapped out—this is where the Saw lore becomes the Charlie Kelly Pepe Silva meme. I liked the peppering in of Kramer’s backstory and the quick pacing and editing are standouts, hiding what needs to be hidden…

There we go. The Pepe Silva thing … sounds bad, but I guess it is like the lore becomes such a thick fog and I can eat it up with a spoon and I unironically love how insane it gets. You know, the scene transitions and editing are a big thing among the good-ish reviews somehow. Honestly, can’t say I noticed.

I think in the end the only thing we can give this film is the Saw staple Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that the film takes place at the same time as the third film (I think) and that the main guy is the partner to Wahlberg. What a twist. It like … almost doesn’t make sense it is such a good twist. This film is Bad as I explained above.

As for our Friend this week Vibrations: uh yes please, may I have another serving of someone getting their hands chopped off in a ridiculous way and then getting robot hands and becoming an electronic music legend? This movie is actually somewhat famous on the internets for its crazy concept and oddly famous cast (well … it has Christina Applegate and one of the guys from Twin Peaks, those are famous people right?). And coincidentally this film also marks the first time a VHS popped up on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst series where I was like “I own that VHS!” The film is surprisingly heartfelt and non-ridiculous for most of the first half which is amusing in its own way, but once he basically becomes a robot the film gets shockingly entertaining all the way up to the Chekov’s killer speakers in the end. Spoiler: he doesn’t kill them, he just blasts their ears a bunch and then gets them arrested. So that is good I guess. B, I would watch it again, but it is a little slow because the film is actually only notable for the robot hands which don’t come into play until the back half of the film.

Read all about … torture chambers maybe? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

D3: The Mighty Ducks Recap

Jamie

We talking D3? I remember this film being both a massive disappointment and also specifically having some of the best stuff in the entire series. All dem pranks? That’s my jam. This should have been 80% pranks and fooling around on the ice. Even before the rewatch, if you had asked me what I remembered from this film it would have been the shift from it being the Bombay show (kind of embarrassingly so in the second one) to it being entirely about the kids. Which is… you know… kinda how a Mighty Ducks film should be. Isn’t it weird how pretty much every underdog kids sports film is mostly about the coach and how much he learns about some personal demon of his. Why are The Goonies and The Sandlot and Stand By Me so iconic? Just look at who those stories are about. Mighty Ducks just got there one film too late.

To recap, the Quack Attack is back, Jack! This time they are heading to high school. In what appears to be an elaborate publicity stunt, the prestigious Eden Hall Academy gives full scholarships to the whole team to be their JV team. This is at the expense of any and all other players who might have wanted to play JV (lol, what?). The Ducks are ready to quack their way through another fun year, but are sorely disappointed to find that Gordon Bombay isn’t their coach! Instead it’s some nerd named Ted Orion. Sounds like a guy who couldn’t hack it in the NHL. Between beefing in a prank war with the Varsity team and beefing with their coach who doesn’t want to give Charlie the captainship, the Ducks are having it rough. Doesn’t help that Banks is recruited straight to Varsity. After a game one rout turns itself into an embarrassing tie, the Varsity challenges the Ducks to a scrimmage. This is a total debacle, which results in Orion declaring the Ducks dead. Charlie and Fulton quit in protest. When Hans suddenly dies, Charlie and the team attend his funeral and Bombay confronts him about his choice. He reveals that Orion wasn’t a big ol’ quitter, but rather quit hockey to care for his ailing daughter. Charlie decides to play hockey right and Orion welcomes him back. The school tries to take away their scholarships, but Bombay acts as their lawyer and keeps them in school. When the big JV-Varsity game comes up it’s a hard fought battle. With the game 0-0 Charlie gets a chance to score it, but using what he’s learned from Orion, he passes to Goldberg (now a defenseman) who scores a wide open goal to win. THE END.

Franchise Man here and hold onto your hats… this is the best film in the series. Let me be very clear, I mean that this is the best of the Mighty Ducks films to actually follow the framework of a typical film. The first is all weird with its focus on Bombay. The second throws all rules and regulations out the window. The third… it’s dealing with the idea of these kids from the wrong side of the tracks getting an opportunity at an education. They are being asked to play two way hockey and deal with being JV when they are kind of famous. The movie is pretty shitty, other than the prank scenes, but it’s more like an actual script than the second one. Interestingly, still about branding. It’s a little unclear, but it seems like the board approved bringing in the Ducks because they were famous. If anything I would have liked them to lean into that more. Instead of Bombay coming in for some bullshit lawyer scene I would have liked him to come in and be like “we know you brought them in for publicity… well it’s not going to look great when we take how you treated them to the media.” They also simply needed bigger stakes. How can you go from the Jr. Goodwill Games to a Varsity-JV scrimmage? Come on. Overall, F for nostalgia. A positive shrug for actual quality.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t think Charlie and… uh… that girl he likes are going to make it. First of all, I don’t remember her name. Second of all, she’s like a total nerd who is into education and taking down Eden Hall’s outdated mascot: The Warriors, while Charlie is delusional enough to think he could go from Spazway all the way to the NHL when he can’t even make Varsity over Banks. I don’t think she’s going to take kindly to the hundredth time he tells her he doesn’t need school because of his future in the NHL. He needs to get his priorities straight, refocus on crew, get into Yale and then join some bone-related secret society (What could go wrong!). Finally, they are in high school (freshmen at that) and that’s… that’s just not realistic, now is it? Hot Take Temperature: The Flying V.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me being a total douche to my coach for no reason. You don’t know me old man! Quack! Quack! Qua … no one else? Not even you Goldberg?* Let’s go!

The Good? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm … This is tough because there might honestly be nothing. The film is kind of a perfect storm of very concerning decisions which (very naturally) completely killed the franchise for like 20 years. Maybe the low-stakes-ness of it all makes more sense than D2 and there is at least some admission that the only players who might actually “make it” to any degree is Banks (since he’s the most skilled) and Charlie (by sheer willpower). That makes a lot of sense to me. Oh, and Goldberg is finally benched and eventually moved to defense. FINALLY!

The Bad? Again, let’s go through the odd decisions. Bombay bounces and basically isn’t in much of the film (or so it seems, see later analysis). The school completely bails on the Ducks after like two losses (ridiculous). Killing off Hans is fine but like where is Jan?! Changing the setting from high-stakes Los Angeles back to the lowest of low stakes of JV hockey at a private school in Minneapolis is truly nuts. No new characters is also a mistake. Now that I’ve spelled it all out if you can get through those few issues there actually isn’t as much bad stuff as I remember. There is just no good stuff.

The BMT? I think this is Bad. The fun part is that this means the trilogy is a perfect BMT trilogy. The first one is Good. The second is BMT. And the third is Bad (and kills the franchise). It is actually precisely what I think trilogies should strive for.

Oooooo I actually did this AI analysis a very long time ago. So how Google Gemini (at least used to) work was if you sent in a video it would split it into single frames at one second intervals. I found this amusing since that is what I did anyways to analyze this movie. Specifically, I wanted to know: hey, Emilio Estevez is the top billed person in D3 … but how much of the movie is he actually in? The answer: well, probably somewhere between 5-10%. Given I deleted the burned DVD long ago I can’t confirm things, but I do know an inordinate number of positive identification of Emilio were false positives because the AI system seemingly can’t tell the difference between Emilio Estevez and Jeffery Nordling aka Coach Orion. Dumb AI. Anyways, “Emilio” appears specifically in around 500 frames of the film. I think you can say the false positive rate could be as much as 50% given what I recall, and the frames versus “existing in the scene” you could maybe increase things by 50% as well, so the safest rough analysis I can give you months later is: Emilio Estevez is top billed in D3 despite only appearing in 5-10% of the film. Anthony Hopkins appeared in about 13% of Silence of the Lambs (and famously won the Best Actor Oscar for it). This felt similar, and indeed, I think the numbers are probably pretty close in the end.

Might as well complete the trilogy with Planchet (Who?) for Goldberg who again just gets continually dunked on. A Setting as a Character (Where?) for some prestigious prep school in Minneapolis. I’m going to throw a Chekov’s Scholarship (Why?) in there for the scholarships they give all the Ducks which certainly won’t come to bite the school in the ass once ultra-lawyer Bombay shows up. And I kind of love the Worst Twist (How?) whereby for whatever reason Portman isn’t in the vast vast majority of the film riiiiiiight up until the end when he shows up and walks onto the JV team.

Read all about … Minnesota High School Hockey maybe? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

D2: The Mighty Ducks Recap

Jamie

I have no trouble remembering the entry of D2: The Mighty Ducks into my life. At that point we were old enough to have probably seen it in theaters. Wheelhouse territory. Amazing that Kenan hadn’t quite yet popped on All That, but my memory has him in “elite” level pretty much from right here onwards. I was not going to be missing a Kenan (or even Kel) jam. No way. No how. Playing hockey, you couldn’t swing a stick without someone trying a knuckle puck, attempting a flying V in practice, or triple deking to our heart’s desire. And yes, we already knew as 8-year-olds that Iceland being the big bad was a joke. Years later, I can only assume the people making it also knew it was a joke… that was part of the joke. At the time, though, it felt good to be like “ha, what idiots.” Life was grand. We were the champions, no doubt.

To recap, the Quack Attack is back, Jack! After the team’s most important player (Gordon Bombay, of course) is injured in the minor leagues, just before getting his shot in the NHL (as some sort of Marchand/St. Louis type), he is recruited by Hendrix Hockey to coach Team USA at the Goodwill Games. Best of all he can bring all the Ducks (minus the less interesting kids). Off they go to LA where they meet new teammates (Whaa?). Don’t worry, they are pranking each other and best bash brother friends in no time (Phew). While the Ducks handily dispatch vaunted opponents, Italy and Trinidad & Tobago, Bombay is enthralled by the celebrity of LA and the cute Icelandic trainer unfortunately associated with the eeeeevil Team Iceland and their eeeevil coach, Wolf Stansson (good name). When the Ducks finally meet up with their eeevil rivals, it’s a bloodbath. Bombay needs the sweet green that celebrity promises! He begins to drive the team like some eeevil Coach Stansson type. Where is his love of the game? The team’s tutor demands he give the kids a break. This leaves them time to play street hockey and recruit Keenan and his knucklepuck to the team. Bombay’s old mentor Hans…’s brother Jan (for real) shows up and also demands he rediscover his love in the only way anyone knows how: blading it out at the beach in hot pants. He blades so hard that he’s late for the game. He arrives in the third to a tie game with Germany and helps inspire the Ducks to a win. With the help of Keenan in the following game against Russia, the Ducks win again. In the final it’s a close and tough game against Iceland until they find the Ducks inside of us all and quack their way to a tie. They go to a shootout where Bombay replaces Goldberg with Julie (the Cat) for the final shooter and she saves the day (literally). THE END (or is it? (no, duh… but also they have to sing We Are the Champions obviously)).

This is the hardest of the films to judge. It is ludicrous. But it also cranking nostalgia at levels not seen since Rufio. Everything in the film hits. The new player, gimmicks, Rodeo Drive, opposing teams, everything. You can almost tell in real time them realizing that Bombay kind of sucks and they need to go more for the players doing pranks and stuff. More crazy gimmicks on and off the ice! By the time you get to the end of the film there may as well be a dog playing. The rulebook has been thrown so far out the window that it rocketed into outer space. As for the whole idea of branding: still here. Knowing that the Ducks made for big headlines by breaking the Hawk’s streak, Hendrix Hockey brought them in hoping for another miracle with the kids wearing his equipment. Once again I feel like they set this up and then just decide it’s not worth following through on. Hendrix clearly should have been a bad guy. Just wants the miracle for his shitty equipment. They should have said “no way” and played in Hans/Jan’s equipment. Instead he just affably stands by while they make his dreams come true. Weird. Overall. A++ for nostalgia. Somehow the worst actual film of the franchise (but, shhh, I don’t care).

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t think Bombay and the Icelandic trainer are going to make it. First of all I don’t even know her name… I guess her name is Maria… which is also the name of the actress. They probably had [Insert name here] in the script. It’s like when an athlete adds “Sr.” to their jersey. Never a good sign. Second of all, she’s hot stuff and what? Bombay’s going to go to Iceland? No way. He’s gotta take that sweet job with the Goodwill Games (see: D3: The Mighty Ducks). Finally, I can officially say it: Coach Bombay kinda sucks. He keeps getting roped in by the sweet green and having to reignite his passion for the game by skating/blading his little heart out. Everyone needs to move on from this dude. Only person more overrated in the series is Goldberg. Hot Take Temperature: Iceland.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me being a pretty sweet skater, but then an eeeeevil Icelandic hockey player slashes me in the knee, cripples me, and laughs in my face. “Well worth it” he says.* Let’s go!

The Good? Alright, this was a stalwart of young Sklog life, and I think illustrates an important factor in children’s entertainment. Specifically, when you are a child the second Mighty Ducks is the best one. It has the coolest uniforms, they get to pick and choose the best characters and replace the bad ones with more interesting ones, and you are seeing neat places like Los Angeles and playing on the biggest stage. When you are an adult the second film is either extraordinarily silly or abominable depending on how much you like the first one. I enjoy the silliness of the second one, even if some of the choices are weird.

The Bad? Let’s just go through some of those weird choices. They didn’t get Hans back and instead of recasting they get his previously unmentioned brother who then disappears for the third film, odd choice. They seem to seriously suggest Bombay was going to make the NHL at like a 32 year old rookie. Not impossible, it just feels rather unlikely. Also he goes from not playing hockey for about 20 years to borderline professional within a year. The endurance itself would take longer. He was a lawyer (and borderline alcoholic) for like 10 years! I personally doubt his back was going to hold up let alone any of the rest of his body. They then proceed to make him a sell out trash person (in line with his original character I suppose, not so much with Reformed Bombay) when the eeeeevil Team USA corporate overlord was right there ready to destroy the spirit of the team. Obviously Cat should have always been starting over Goldberg, a person who can barely skate and seems to be an objectively terrible goalkeeper. And finally Iceland has approximately 300 thousand people, just about the same number of people as Madison, Wisconsin. My understanding is that until recently they didn’t even really have any ice rinks on the island and only started to gear up their youth hockey program 20 years after this film came out. Why they chose Iceland and not something like Canada or even maybe Sweden as a (more friendly) rival is beyond me.

Again this film is very very very silly. The fact that they basically just ignore all of the lore from this film (outside of that kid they picked up off the street in L.A. moving to Minnesota to attend a private high school there) is incredible.

The actual good of the film I guess is that a good number of the characters they invented for the second film move forward to the third, which is probably a sign that they were doing something right.

The BMT? I think so. Of the three films this is the one that teeters right on the edge of so bad it’s good. It is so weird and silly that, personally, I can’t help but have fun with it.

Again, I think Goldberg is a Planchet (Who?), just getting dunked on all day. I’m inventing a new category, The Sklog Daily Lexicon (What?) for the word Knucklepuck entering firmly into everyday use in the world of the late-90s Sklogs. Definitely Setting as a Character (Where?) for saying fuck it and moving the production to the much more convenient Los Angeles. I do like the Wait This was Real (Why?) for the use of the Goodwill Games as the reason behind the entire movie taking place. The movie is very very BMT in my opinion, I probably watched it a dozen times on cable in the late-90s / early 00s.

Learn all about the real Goodwill Games I would think, in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Mighty Ducks Recap

Jamie

I can’t even imagine how big of a sensation The Mighty Ducks was. Mostly because, while the film was obviously a huge part of my cinematic life, it came out at a time where the memory of its actual release is hazy. Almost like The Mighty Ducks was always. And think about this, the film was such a sensation that there is still a major pro sports team named the Ducks. That’s Jurassic Park status. Anyway, it’s hard to parse these types of films from nostalgia. It’s why we avoided things like this (and Hackers) for a substantial chunk of BMT. How can we have anything from love and affection for The Mighty Ducks? And yet at a certain point it became undeniable that these films must be given the BMT treatment. For the sake of history. And so here they are, destined to win a Freddy Got Fingered award.

To recap, Gordon Bombay is a high powered lawyer. Sure he has a past life as a hockey-loving phenom with a dad who just wanted him to love the game with all his heart. But when that dad died, so did that love of fun. Replaced with a love of that sweet green, a need for speed and a taste for a couple of road sodas. Uh oh! Those road sodas come back and bite him when he’s pulled over and (given his general ‘tude in the courtroom) sentenced to *gulp* coach Peewee hockey! Mr. Ducksworth, this has to be a joke. That’s how he finds himself coaching the ragtaggingest ragtag group of nogoodniks this side of the Twin Cities. Things start out rough, but Gordon’s old friend, Hans, reminds him to recall the fun in hockey and he gains the trust of the team. Amongst this group is Spazway (a.k.a. Charlie Conway) who Gordon sees something in and takes under his wing. What’s that? He also has a smoking hot single mom? Oh my, Gordon hadn’t noticed, but now that you mention it… Anyway, this group is jokesters who don’t even really know how to skate, so Gordon goes out and finds even ragtaggier kids to join the team and help out. Things start coming together, so Gordon uses his lawyer skillz to find out the star player from the eeeevil Hawks, Banks, should be on his team. Blinded by his need to get one over on the Hawks’ eeeevil Coach Riley, Gordon inadvertently insults his entire team and they quit. Faced with this and the possibility of losing his job over the Banks fiasco he realizes that he doesn’t want to be a lawyer anyway. Suddenly the team is back in and they are marching to the championship. In the big game the Ducks are overmatched but play to a draw and Charlie gets a penalty shot to win it (Spazway!). Using Gordon’s patented Triple Deke, Charlie wins the game. THE END (or is it? (Nevveeerrrrrrr!)).

Is this film good? I’d like to frame this from the vantage point of Franchise Man. The Big FM would want you to understand the crux of The Mighty Ducks: marketing. Every movie is in some way about the Ducks being exploited by larger forces but ultimately coming through because of the exact opposite of marketing: genuine fun. Gordon Bombay has to forget what got him into this in the first place. He was in trouble and to get out of trouble he would coach the team. The team sucked, so to help them not suck he got his law firm to sponsor them. Ultimately, in all three movies(!), the film itself chooses fun rather than acknowledging it. They could have had Ducksworth come up and apologize, but no. Forget all that. All in all, though, the film is really weird. It’s like 85% saddo Gordon Bombay. I did appreciate the accuracy of the sports scenes in the end. Only the climactic goal is sorta fudged. They imply Bombay could choose anyone to take the penalty shot and have him explicitly choose Spazway. That doesn’t make sense with the rules. Overall, pretty middling, but an A+ for nostalgia.

Hot Take Clam Bake! You know, I don’t think Bombay and Charlie’s mom are going to make it. First of all he’s about to venture forth on a quest for the NHL as a thirty-something year old 5’7” rookie who (allegedly) quit playing after Peewee hockey. I’m thinking he won’t have much time to be there for a single mom working as a waitress to provide for her son. Second of all, she’s cute and the single guys of the Twin Cities are probably ready to pounce while he’s off toiling away on the Kalamazoo Wings. Third of all they totally whiff on Charlie’s last name in the credits of the film (Conroy? Come on)… so I don’t think they’re putting much stock in the character. Hot Take Temperature: 10,000 Frozen Lakes.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me totally beefing it on the hockey rink, but then a second gif where Coach Bombay teaches me soft hands, but then a third gif where he starts dating my mom, but then a fourth gif where maybe I’m happy he’s dating my mom because then Coach Bombay would be my dad maybe? But then a fifth gif where he stops dating my mom and we never mention it again* Let’s go!

The Good? This movie. That’s the entire review I think we’ve said enough here. But for real, the strength of the original Mighty Ducks is that it is that thing that existed since the Bad News Bears (I think) where it is an ensemble kids’ film. Disney is just doing Disney things and snatching up bonafide kids superstars (Danny Tamberelli anyone?) and hanging an entire franchise on someone I would say is probably a Kid Actor Hall of Fame candidate in Joshua Jackson.

Speaking of which, since there isn’t much else to talk about with this film in terms of BMTness or badness, there was a question on Reddit where someone asked why kid actors on television often turn into abominable teen actors. I think the answer is fairly obvious: When you are a kid actor they often play to your strength early in a series. Namely precocious quips and one liners. Once you get to later seasons of a show and you start getting paid more (presumably), you are expected to handle dramatic scenes yourself. The kids who are the actual stars of their shows (Blossum, Corey from Boy Meets World, etc.) are often fine because they were cast to hold their own in these heavier scenes. But the actors who start as just window dressing to the main star of a show (e.g. the three kids on Home Improvement), they can get a bit dicey as time goes on. Now why am I mentioning this here? Because Joshua Jackson did get a bit dicey as a teen, but he was still good enough to transition to a elder teen on Dawson’s Creek, and has had a pretty impressive television career since. That’s what these movies need, and the entire kid cast is pretty great in the original.

The Bad? Nothing? Naw, sure. The actual thing is that they really get wild with some of the stats. At one point they suggest Bombay scored like 200 goals in a youth hockey season … Do they know how many games they play in youth hockey? I don’t think it is like 80. Somehow I think they are suggesting Bombay was scoring like 10 goals a game. Somewhat unrealistic.

The BMT? Naw, it is actually pretty offensive this even qualifies. This movie is a genuine banger. Great movie. Would watch it again right now.

I think we maybe have a Planchet (Who?) here in either Lester Averman (although people aren’t really dunking on him, more like just laughing at him, he’s true comic relief) or Goldberg. A great Setting as a Character (Where?) for Saint Paul, MN (at least in part, the place Charlie’s mother works is definitely in Saint Paul). I’m making up a new category for Slo-Motion Childhood Tragedy (Why?) for Bombay missing a penalty shot in the finals of the Twin Cities Youth Hockey Championship, his dad dying, and him quitting hockey all in the same year. ROUGH. This movie is Good, get the fuck out of here.

Learn all about NHL teams probably in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Back-up Plan Recap

Jamie

There are a whole bunch of rom-coms that came out in the 2000’s (the real peak of the genre) that really left you scratching your head at what in the world they were thinking. I’m not talking something like The Ugly Truth, which is bad, but the recipe itself is a classic. I mean cases where the recipe literally went bad. The Back-up plan is probably on the tamer end of that. In the middle is probably the Madonna film where she has a baby with her gay best friend and then falls in love. Probably the crown jewel is the Kate Hudson film A Little Bit of Heaven where she has terminal cancer… what a rom-com concept! And what a trilogy I just came up with. Three powerhouses of the genre in films that define logic. Officially this is the first leg of that journey.

To recap, JLo is a lady on the move. She’s got a great job, but she has given up on finding the man of her dreams. Right after getting (successfully) artificially inseminated she bumps into Stan who turns out to be *gulp* the man of her dreams. Oh no! They keep bumping into each other and soon he’s doing more than just bumping into her as he tells her he wants to see where things might go. They start casually dating. Unfortunately, during a trip to his farm she makes the mistake of not telling him she’s pregnant before they sleep together and he reacts poorly. They briefly break up, but Stan comes back and tries to make it work. Even when he finds out she’s having twins, he ends up making a dad friend at a playground and trying to work through all the overwhelming feelings he’s having. Comedy ensues as JLo has a bunch of goofy gags with a single mother’s group including a scene where she and Stan have to witness and participate in the birth of one of the member’s babies. It’s very funny and cool. The breaking point is when he makes a point to tell his ex-gf that the babies aren’t his in front of JLo and the break-up is official. But after a new specialty stroller arrives and her grandmother gives her some grandmotherly advice, JLo realizes that Stan has grown up. Just then her water breaks and they rush to the farmer’s market to pick him up for the birth. They end up getting engaged and probably pregnant again. THE END.

I just had a realization that this is essentially Look Who’s Talking but without the talking baby. The beats are the same. A working woman bumps into a guy who she’s somewhat put off by, he slowly ingratiates himself through devotion despite not being the baby’s father, ends with them finally together and the promise of a very special delivery. The problem? Bruce Willis had a funny voice for a baby, John Travolta has 1000x the charisma of the cardboard cutout of a man in this film, and they throw all the actually interesting drama from Look Who’s Talking out in exchange for an absolute catastrophe of a birthing scene. That Melissa McCarthy performance evokes Robin Williams in 9 Months (you all know what I’m talking about). I have no idea why this exists. I did not like it. Now if it had a talking baby in it I could at least understand the existence part.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m coming in scorching on this one. I think… Stan is actually the father of JLo’s kids. That’s the sequel. It turns out this sneaky cheesemonger has in fact been donating sperm for ages. He’s also been skulking around waiting for an unsuspecting woman to accept his donation and stages an elaborate meet-cute with her. Sure it seems like he’s nervous about being in a relationship with her, but he’s playing hard to get. Wouldn’t come off very convincing if he didn’t show some trepidation. His craziness when he finds out she’s having twins? Obviously that’ll cut into his skulking time, he’s gotta think it over. What’s JLo going to do when she finds out the truth?… Did I mention the sequel is a horror film? Hot Take Temperature: Fondue.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me finding a penny on the ground heads up and looking up and J-Lo is there and winks at me and then I look confused* Let’s go!

The Good? I’ve said this before, and I don’t want to get in trouble with my wife, but J-Lo man … from 1995-2010 or so J-Lo was probably the most attractive woman in Hollywood. Money Train. This. Just incredibly attractive. It boggles the mind.

The Bad? Everything else. The guy is a weird actor and doesn’t seem attractive (at least not attractive enough). The film has several insane sequences (especially the entire bit where the guy gets jealous of his pregnant girlfriend’s body pillow … WTF mate?). And overall the experience is the unpleasantness that was prevalent in mid-2000s comedies. Specifically things like The Break Up (2006, four years prior, this might be the death nell for this particular sub-genre).

The BMT? No, the film is just Bad. As far as J-Lo films are concerned there are three in my personal hall of fame: Money Train, Gigli, and, of course, The Boy Next Door. Man … The Boy Next Door. Remember that one?

And a final look at the potential use of AI to get Rotten Tomatoes scores. I did wonder if I was very very insistent and proclaimed null values as completely invalid would that “fix” the “problem” … kind of. In that it does maybe seem to get some more values filled in. The concern is that an unknowable number still end up being wrong for no real reason (e.g. Blue Lagoon being reported as 95% which is far too high), and then several (e.g. The Long Good Friday) are very consistently still reported as well. I only tested for the first 30, and I’m confident if I expanded it to the top 100 it would only get worse as you got to more and more unpopular films. Which basically means it isn’t really using the search as I had hoped or expected. Too bad. Would have been fun.

A genuine Twin Film (Who?) in this one, since J-Lo does specifically have twins in the film. It is a whole thing, they have to get a huge stroller, like with everything it melts Stan’s mind and makes him spiral into a crisis. Definitely a very funny Product Placement (What?) for an actual McFlurry sighting. Setting as a Character (Where?) for NYC. I think that is it. I think this film is just Bad unfortunately.

Learn all about childbirth? It’ll be in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs