Category: Recap

The Watchers Recap

Jamie

Who watches The Watchers. Apparently we do. And Live! no less. This is one of those BMT Live! films that will likely live in infamy. It’s our third out of four films for the year and do we really think we won’t get two more bangers in the next half a year? Not really, but there is a logic to our madness. The first point is simple math. There have been an unusual (at least for recent history) number of poorly reviewed horror films this year. Films like Night Swim, that seem like they should garner at least a “meh,” are getting slammed. So we gotta get a horror in and the closer you get to Halloween the more likely the studio has confidence that it’s good. The second point is that once we get into the last cycle of the year we could always watch a film in theaters for the cycle itself, as it by definition fits. Anyway, that’s how you end up watching The Watcher. Let’s go!

To recap, Mina is a saddo living in Ireland because she’s never gotten over her role in the death of her mother which has left her estranged from her twin sister. She’s tasked with delivering a rare parrot to a zoo (for real) and ends up lost in the forest. She’s ushered into a strange concrete bunker where she is told she must stay during the night or The Watchers will get her. Bum bum bum. This turns out to be true as that night they come and they all have to show themselves to these mysterious Watchers. From there Mina does a bunch of exploring and shows that she is much more daring than her comrades, Ciara, Madeline and Daniel. She explores some tunnels and takes some of the Watchers’  junk and that makes them unhappy. Ultimately Daniel locks Mina and Madeline out because he doesn’t trust them and this also makes the Watchers extra angry. Once back inside they realize that the Watchers are going to break in and kill them. At the last moment Mina finds a secret door and they figure out that the whole place was set up by a professor. In his lair there are details on how to get back to the real world. They also see that the professor befriended the creatures, which are fairies that can shapeshift. The next morning they are able to escape, losing Daniel on the way. Back in the real world Mina tracks down the professor’s old office and in it realizes that Madeline was the professor’s wife who had passed away. In reality the Madeline she knew was the shapeshifter that the professor had interacted with. She runs to Ciara’s house where Madeline is already lying in wait. Before she kills them, though, Mina is able to convince her to let them live and to go find others like herself instead. The monster is like “good point,” and flies away. THE END.

After having seen the film, the merits of this as a Live! film are harder to defend. The best it can do is prove that Ishana Night Shyamalan has the talent to be a good director. The look and atmosphere of the film are solid and it’s pretty darn impressive for a mid-20’s director. So no need to worry about nepotism too much… unless you really think about the fact that a pretty half-baked film was greenlit for a feature. It probably should have been a short film or an episode of TV or a straight-to-Shudder flick. That being said, it’s really a rather forgettable film with some merely OK acting and a classically bad Shyamalan twist. It’s also Lady in the Water level on-the-nose regarding what the concept of the film is… Like they live in a little concrete box where one side is a glass screen and every night the watchers come and watch them and oh… Also, the only thing they have to watch in this bunker is a box set of some made up reality TV show. Are you getting it yet? It’s about reality TV and escapism.  

Hot Take Clam Bake! Uh, obviously she was dead the whole time. One does not simply get lost in a deep dark forest where a bunch of other people have disappeared and live to tell the tale. They certainly don’t live to tell of a weird concrete TV that they had to live in with a bunch of other people where they learned to accept the death of their mom and reunite with their estranged twin. Convenient. But it’s all much simpler than that. Do you know how I know she was dead the whole time? Because fairies aren’t real… dumb. Hot Take Temperature: Lair of Love.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Watchers? More like I don’t want to Watch-its, amirite? Let’s go!

Naturally with, somehow, film releases being a family affair for the Shyamalan family we felt the need to go watch this film in theaters.

Because normally I think we would shy away from dunking on a film made by a young director just trying to make her way in the world one second unit directorial effort at a time.

But here we are, reviewing a very slight film with a kernel of an interesting idea: what if fairies were real, what if they were evil, and what if you were trapped with them?

But mostly the movie is boring with a fairly foreseeable twist, an unnecessary fourth act that takes place in the real world, and not particularly good acting. The acting was so odd I was stunned to learn the star (a grown up Dakota Fanning) is actually nominated for an Emmy this very same year. Quite a comeback. I don’t think she has much to do here though.

And naturally the whole film being an allegory for people watching actors in a giant television set and mimicking them in the real world … yeah, I think there is something there, but the whole thing feels very on the nose.

All that being said the movie is pretty, has a nice set piece, and the kernel of an idea could serve something that could be built off of if Shyamalan wants to push further into the Sci-Fi-Fantasy realm.

Setting as a Character (Where?) for Ireland which makes for quite the stretching needed to explain why Dakota Fanning is American. I do like a living breathing MacGuffin (Why?) kind of, with the Queen of Bavaria Parrot Fanning is inexplicably asked to drive to Belfast. And of course you can’t have a Shyamalan film without a Worst Twist (How?) in the reveal that one of the people being watched is, in fact, a half human / half fairy who will be destined to unite the two worlds together in the end. This movie is boring and Bad and just not worth it.

I’m trying something new in the quiz where everyone will get to learn about the Emmys, the Queen of Bavaria Parrot, and other stuff. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Gothika Recap

Jamie

Having now watched Gothika, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen this movie. The twist is kind of obvious so maybe that’s what I’m feeling. That I could so distinctly see where the story was going that I ended up concluding that I must have seen it before. Either that or there was a different BMT film so similar in its concept and twist that I ended up mistaking having watched that for Gothika. Yeah, that’s probably it… and yet. Every time I turn around I feel like Gothika was just there… watching me… biding its time. Waiting for the perfect moment. Ready to pop out and make me feel like I’ve seen a different movie… a future movie. It’s a never ending daisy chain of movies that I think I’ve seen because of the spooky-scariness of their generic plots and twists. Eerie.

To recap, Halle Berry is a psychiatrist at a women’s prison for those with psychiatric needs. She’s married to the head of the institution. One night during a storm she ends up almost hitting a girl in the street, but when she gets out to help she finds that that girl is on fire (and a gh-gh-ghost). Suddenly she wakes up to find that she’s confined to the jail because her husband was brutally murdered and literally everything points to her doing it (mostly because she did). Pretty much everyone, including her husband’s best friend Sheriff Ryan, is super pissed at her because what she did was, like… pretty uncool. Or was it? Because this ghost lady keeps coming back and letting her out of her cell and having her witness some guy brutally raping the women in the jail. So this ghost suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. The ghost helps her escape and Halle Berry heads back home where she regains her memory and remembers… committing the murder. Alright, that’s not great. Carefully considering how not great that is, Halle Berry then heads to a previously unmentioned creepy farmhouse that her husband owns to get more answers. I’m sure she won’t find anything unusual there… except maybe a dungeon! And a girl is still down there! She’s like “see, so I get to go free right?” and everyone else is like “what? No. You still murdered someone.” Back at the local jail she suddenly realizes that Sheriff Ryan has far too large a part in the film to just be a Sheriff and that he must have been in on it the whole time and was actually the guy brutally raping the women in jail! Oh no! Eventually Halle Berry subdues him and Halle Berry is set free for some reason and then becomes a ghost detective (only half joking). THE END.

Gothika is bad in a very traditional “We’re trying to make the next Sixth Sense” kind of way. Just misguided twists that end up compounding on each other, across space and time and other movies to the point where I feel like I’ve already watched the film… a movie with an objectively ridiculous plot is like “ho hum, obviously.” I liked the acting and I thought the atmosphere was good, but not much else. One thing that has really been bugging me is the sense that I’m not just recalling a similar movie, but that a specific aspect of the plot of Gothika was used before. So Halle Berry murders her husband, right? No doubt about it, she cuts him up with an ax. And then she’s like “not me, don’t remember.” Later she uncovers the fact that he’s a serial murderer, something she never at any point had knowledge of… and then they let her go. So I can murder someone and cross my fingers and hope they are a serial killer and then I’m all good? But also… I’ve seen this before. This exact same thing. What is it? It’s killing me.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’ve seen this before. That’s my hot take. That I’ve seen this plot twist before in some procedural TV show or something. Where part way through the plot they realize that the guy killed was a serial killer and then everyone is cool with his murder. It’s not even a hot take. It’s a warm take. Because I’m like 60% sure I’ve seen this before… Right? It’s killing me. Hot Take Temperature: That Girl is on Fire

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Gothika? More like Gothikan’t! AMIRITE?! It’s a classic for a reason. Let’s go!

There is something about this cycle because these are all films I remember seeing commercials for when I was in high school, and they must have lodged themselves deep in my future-bad-movie brain because Gothika (of all things) has always been on my radar. Partly why we’ve not seen a lot of these is because horror films are spooky scary. If I were to put a comp on this I would go with Stir of Echoes. The kind of grungy, set-piece laden, am-I-going-insane film which I took one look at when I was in my teens and was like NOPE. But now with an adult brain (and a lot of horror films in my past) there is obviously no way I was going to be scared by this.

And yeah, of course I wasn’t. And yeah, what was up with thrillers / horror in this era? Was it a holdover from Silence of the Lambs? Why are so many films from the 1999-2004 time so gross? The aforementioned Stir of Echoes? Gross. This? Gross. Hostel and the Saw films are coming around the corner.

Because yeah, if you didn’t know, this film has a weirdly obvious twist. Obviously, Halle Berry was possessed, and so yeah, she killed her husband, but she was possessed by a ghost at the time. So yeah, people think she’s insane. But ah, of course, obviously it turns out her husband is a horrible serial killing rapist! That makes sense. It also makes sense that he oversees what appears to be an insane asylum from the Batman cartoons. One would guess that is intentional … the film is called Gothika, and Batman is Gothic in general, so yeah they are effectively chilling in a technologically advanced Arkham.

Overall the film is obvious, not scary, and unpleasant stuff. Why Berry thought this and Catwoman made sense as follow-ups to Monster’s Ball is nuts. If not for X-Men, her 2000s would be winning an Oscar for Monster’s Ball and then like seven terrible films. In context it is really amazing she snagged an Oscar.

Oh yeah, I didn’t like this film though. Gross, boring, not scary. I can see why it got really dire reviews.

An odd Setting as a Character (Where?) for Connecticut, which I do specifically seem to recall being noted in the film. Really bad Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that yeah she killed Charles Dutton, and she hopes he burns in hell. The film is Bad, too boring to be an interesting BMT.

Read about my new book series based on the Gothika property in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Raise Your Voice Recap

Jamie

It actually makes me a little wistful thinking about things like Raise Your Voice. Hilary Duff occurred in a golden age of female teen pop actresses to the point where you could place her in a pyramid that goes from C-movies up to the A+ superstar. Mean Girls is Lindsey Lohan at her A+ peak. The Hottie and the Nottie is Paris Hilton at her C-movie F-minus nadir. Hilary Duff obviously falls somewhere near the top. I dream of going back to where there is so much demand that a sub-sub-genre like this can explore everything under the sun. A world where Here on Earth has a series of sequels in the HoECU. A world where The Mummy starring Tom Cruise has not just one sequel, but a whole Dark Universe. Is it weird that I went from Hilary Duff all the way back to The Mummy starring Tom Cruise? I don’t think so.

To recap, Hilary Duff is just a small town girl who loves to sing. She loves to perform for her family, but that means bupkis when it comes to whether she can be a star. So can she? Her brother thinks so. Just when it looks like she might be making it out of town her brother dies when a drunk driver hits him. The family is devastated and Hilary Duff puts her dreams on hold… that is until she finds out that she got into the big music program in LA she applied to. Her dad says no, but her mom says that she has to do this for herself and helps cover for her for the summer. Off Hilary Duff goes to the big city. She’s soon meeting all these amazing talented kids, but what about little ol’ her? Seems like she’s getting lost in the shuffle and just can’t find her voice. Her voice teacher sees something in her though and eventually reveals that it’s because with her applications came something unexpected: a video from her brother about how great she is (awww). The teacher is like “you don’t seem so great actually, so I guess your brother was a liar,” or something to that effect. Additionally she has the coolest boy in school (who also dated her arch nemesis last summer) into little ol’ her. Gulp. Will she be able to get things in her life sorted before the big show at the end of the year? You better believe it. With the help and support of her family she rocks out at the last show and… loses like a big ol’ loser. But that’s OK because it’s all about the frenemies we made along the way. THE END.

There is a movie that I like buried in the junk that is Raise Your Voice. The elevator pitch of this film is kind of my jam. Small town girl with all the talent in the world and star potential powered by her joy. Her brother dies and she just can’t jam out anymore until a teacher reveals that performance is communication and communication comes from the heart and the emotions she’s feeling don’t make her less of a star, but can actually be a source of strength. I’m tearing up just thinking about it. I’m tearing up for a different reason thinking about how they took that concept and turned it into some tween Disney bullshit about the rockinest boy in school maybe smooching little ol’ Hilary Duff. People talk about films insulting the intelligence of their audience and this is one of the best examples of that in BMT. I was insulted.

Hot Take Clam Bake! You know that brother that allegedly died in a car accident? We ever get to see a body on that one? Open that coffin Premonition style because unless his head pops out for everyone to see I’m not buying it. This is the long con. He knows that Hilary Duff doesn’t have the stuff to tough out the rough semester. Only through his death can she fulfill her destiny, so he obliges. It’s barely in frame, but in the background of the big performance you can see the brother peeking in from a window. He’s watching his grand plan come together. Either that or he’s a spooky ghost helping Hilary Duff (not) win the competition The 6th Man style. Hot Take Temperature: Jay Corgan.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Raise your voice! No seriously … I’ve had a terrible accident and now can barely hear the dulcet tones of Hilary Duff. Let’s go!

Top Line: I’ve told this story before, right? Long ago, in a hometown far far away, Jamie and I lived and went to high school. In high school, there were two lady friends who would make us watch ridiculous movies which we hated! (or so they thought, we secretly loved them and it would become one of the seeds from which BMT would be born). Grind?! Blech (we would say as we popped in the VHS tape for the 7th time). Well, one day Jamie was off … doing whatever. And I didn’t have anything to do. These two ladies were like “come see a movie” and I was like “sure what’s the worst that could happen?” But then egad! It was Raise Your Voice! And the lady friends both fell asleep within the first 10 minutes of the film leaving Patrick stewing in an empty theater watching a movie that just sucked (and not like Grind!). I couldn’t just leave because they were my ride! What a disaster. I’ve held that experience as a pithy anecdote to trot out at parties ever since. Everyone loves it, I assume. The End.

Anyways, yeah, I’ve never seen that film again … until now!

So how was it? Uh … not good. The acting is horrid (except maybe Kat Dennings which for whatever reason I always think is pretty good in a mumbly sort of way), and the story is bland.

Bland?! Well … yeah, the guy from Sex in the City doesn’t even have inappropriate relationships with anyone! To be clear, I don’t want that to happen, but where is the drama? He’s just like a normal good teacher character?

The evil girl isn’t even really evil, it isn’t like she tries to ruin the performance at the end. If anything it is just Hilary Duff herself who attempts to sabotage herself by being a saddo.

And worst of all? The accident in the beginning (on a clear stroad, the most dangerous of all infrastructure), doesn’t even make sense. He is making a left turn onto a side street and then he’s T-boned on the driver’s side? Was this drunk driver going the wrong way down this stroad? Get the fudge out of here! What a goof!

Anyways, I suppose we all learn a valuable lesson: if you are naturally an incredibly talented singer you should go to LA and hang at a summer camp for free and win scholarships and junk. The End.

Also even if your brother died literally just a few weeks ago, don’t be a big old saddo. No one likes a saddo.

You best belieb we have a major Product Placement (What?) alert for Sobe (and Three Days Grace? Maybe). A very very Setting as a Character (Where?) film for LA. And while I secretly love how cheesy this film is, I still think this falls just into the Bad category for being boring and bland, it needed more drama to push it over the top.

Read all about my spin off Disney series in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Cursed Recap

Jamie

It is weird that I have all this nostalgia for films of the late 90’s and early 2000’s and yet something like Cursed gets nothing. That nostalgia is rooted in the fact that we were watching EVERYTHING from that era. We would often pick up three movies from the video store every day. Every. Single. Day. Animated films, foreign films, Daredevil starring Ben Affleck. We were watching EVERYTHING. But not Cursed. Sure we weren’t the biggest Horror Heads in the world, but we were mostly not too discerning either. Like I remember renting Darkness Falls. We looked at Darkness Falls and thought, ‘sure, why not?’ But I guess we just thought Cursed wasn’t interesting enough… unlike Daredevil starring Ben Affleck.

To recap, Ellie is a segment producer on the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (for real) taking care of her brother Jimmy while he finishes high school. One night after dropping in on her boyfriend Jake’s new Club Haunted House (which is so dope that it’s hard to describe), they collide with a large animal and another car. When they go to try to help the other driver they are all attacked by the animal. They are able to escape but find that they have been bitten and begin to show monstrous characteristics. Jimmy is immediately like “we are werewolves,” but Ellie is less sure. Jimmy uses his werewolf powers to get one over on the bullies at his school, while Ellie has a bunch of weird things happen while trying to prep for a Scott Baio interview (for real). The next night their family dog is infected and goes on a rampage. Jimmy goes to tell Ellie at the grand opening of Club Haunted House and they all deduce that Jake is also a werewolf. He insists that he didn’t infect them, which is true. It was actually Ellie’s coworker Joanie, who was infected by Jake a while back. They battle Joanie and ultimately kill her. They think they are cured but find that they actually need to kill Jake for that to happen. Jake instead wants to kill Jimmy and live out their days as werewolves, but Ellie and Jimmy refuse and team up to kill him. THE END.

Oh no! I’ve been Wes Craven pilled I think. First it was New Nightmare where I started it and was like WTF, mate? But by the end I thought it was really rather funny and clever. Then I start up Cursed and it seems so predictable and the effects so bad and how they become werewolves is so weird and Joshua Jackson owns a club that is legitimately just the club Haunted House from I Think You Should Leave. I was like “what the hell is going on with this weird werewolf movie.” But by the end, you know what? He kinda got me again. I think it was the moment where the ‘bad guy’ comes out of the closet because of Jesse Eisenberg’s irresistible werewolf charm and then he turns out to be really cool and they are friends in the end. Or maybe it’s Craven’s ability to go meta with people like Scott Baio. Or maybe I just really want to go to Club Haunted House (maybe even more than Club Aqua). It’s like “wait, is this movie good?” It’s not, but it’s not all bad either.

Hot Take Clam Bake! While I want to go to Club Haunted House very badly, I have to break it to Jake… it ain’t happening. You’re probably like ‘Well, duh. A bunch of people got eaten by a werewolf at the Grand Opening.’ No. If anything that helps. You want street cred for Club Haunted House? How about a real werewolf shows up. I just mean that this is clearly the horror version of Planet Hollywood. Kinda like how the Dark Universe was the horror version of the Marvel Universe… and we know how that goes. So I guess I’ll phrase it like this: Club Haunted House will succeed the day that they announce The Mummy 2 with Tom Cruise. A boy can dream. Hot Take Temperature: spooky rattling chains.

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Cursed. That’s what I think we might be now that we’ve melted our brains with 750 bad movies over the last 12 years. Let’s go!

Top Line: I don’t remember this film coming out. The cast is truly insane, so I don’t really know how it stayed off my radar though. And man, once we penciled it in I got rather excited. Frankenstein, zombies, mummies, vampires, werewolves. There is something very fun with collecting this films over the years. They go all the way back to the origin of cinema, so to see legitimately over 100 years of these classic movie monster and how they come to life in the 2000s is incredible.

Oh no not like that!

For real, the werewolf in this film ranges from the absurd (the beginning show is maybe one of the worst werewolf puppet work I’ve ever seen) to insane (some of the shots nearer to the end of the full body costume / CGI is crazy).

Speaking of, some of the worst CGI I’ve ever seen as well. The dog? THE DOG?!

And let’s just not really get started on the self-hating gay bully. I don’t like that one bit obviously.

I will say the film is crazy front to back, but I do wish once they realized how crazy it actually was that they had pulled the trigger on a twist that must have been discussed. Oh first I need to set something up: In the film Ricci works for the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. As part of this gig she has to do a pre-interview with (of all people) Scott Baio. He shows up later in the film. And near the end they are really pulling out all the stops to suggest any number of people could be the original werewolf. Could it be Joshua Jackson, or Judy Greer? But I really wish they had pulled the trigger on it being Scott Baio. I just love the idea of him playing himself and then in the end they kill Scott Baio and are like … wow that’s wild. Scott Baio was a werewolf.

Bottom Line: There are some funny ideas in the film. Like I do think the Eisenberg headfake is real. He becomes a werewolf, and typically I think he’s all like “The power … it feels good” and kind of becomes evil. But he doesn’t, he’s cooler like Teen Wolf, but he is still earnestly good the entire time. I likes that. Ricci and him were probably the only acting bright sports, although Judy Greer was clearly having a lot of fun.

I’m doing it, Product Placement (What?) for the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. This is a very very Setting as a Character (Where?) LA film, I’m not sure there has ever been a more LA film. There is never really a why to werewolf films right, it is just like a curse. Lame Twist (How?) alert for Joshua Jackson being the original werewolf. The most boring choice, should have been Scott Baio. I think this film is BMT, it is pretty entertaining, a little irreverent, and ultimately pretty fun, even if the CGI sucks.

Read all about the Cursed Dark Universe in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Collateral Damage Recap

Jamie

Cooooohh-llateral. I can’t help but say it that way in my head whenever I think about this movie (which is often). The reason is a bit funny. One of our brothers was in college and we were talking with him on the phone and he said that he was going to do a double feature at the movies (maybe it was bad weather… or maybe he was hungover… or maybe none of this memory is accurate). As I recall he was rubbing his hands together contemplating the beauty of a Rollerball-Collateral Damage back-to-back-jack afternoon. Anyway, when he described this delectable treat he continually extended the Coooooooohh in Collateral Damage. Again, I can’t recall how accurate this might be. But does it matter? Fake, real, it all ends in Cooooohhhhhhh-llateral.

To recap, Gordy is a firefighter just loving life and loving his family. Nothing could go wrong in his perfect life, right? Wrong. That’s because El Lobo (The Wolf for all those that don’t habla espanol) strikes LA and Gordy’s wife and child are caught in the blast (eeesh). The police are like “cool it” but Gordy will not cool it. He’s not cool AT ALL and travels to Colombia to get El Lobo. A CIA agent, Brandt, is also not cool AT ALL and before the government can pull operations he sets up a big raid to try to take down El Lobo as well. When Gordy arrives in Colombia he is immediately arrested like a dope, but not before saving a little boy from an accident. I’m sure that won’t be relevant. He is then able to escape prison and uses a fellow prisoner to get a fake work pass for one of El Lobo’s facilities. He goes there, rigs up a bunch of bombs, and blows it sky high. Unfortunately he is captured and it looks like he’s going to be killed until the mother of the kid he saved stops El Lobo from killing him (wow, how convenient). He is held prisoner by the group, but when Brandt stages a raid on the compound he is able to escape with the woman and the child. They all travel back to the US to try to stop the next attack on DC. The woman helps them track the terrorists and foil the plan, but in the process Gordy realizes it’s all a ruse and foils the real plan. He goes after the woman who turns out to be the real El Lobo (what a twist!) and a battle ensues. After some sweet ax combat and explosions and shit Gordy, who is honestly built like Mr. Universe or something, is able to foil the last plan (I promise). Ultimately everyone is pretty happy that Gordy saved the day and they reward him with custody of that small child he’s been toting across the globe. THE END.

There is always a temptation to be like “boy they should go back to how things were done in the 90’s and make good action flicks again.” The argument has merit, but sometimes you gotta check yourself before you wreck yourself. Sometimes when you do that you end up making Collateral Damage which should be titled Collateral Boring, am I right? For all the explosions and junk the whole venture is quite dull. I’m really not even sure what would zazz it up a bit… maybe Rob Schneider? It’s difficult to say. Probably they just needed someone younger and hungrier to take on the script. When an action star ages, there is the temptation to go full contemplative. That they hate the violence and the life that their big muscles have forced them into. They mumble about how sad it all is that they have to shoot and punch all these people. Sly Stallone does this contemplative turn the best in things like Get Carter, but we have it here too with Arnold. You know what? I think a really bonkers bad guy would have done this wonders. That’s my solution. Because I just wasn’t that entertained.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m going to say it… Gordy would simply not be awarded that child in the end. That is a small child who has been brought from Colombia. He is a Colombian citizen. You don’t get custody of a kid by calling dibs. Also, Gordy just demonstrated some crazy risky behavior. I’m not sure throwing everything away to accomplish several extrajudicial bombings on foreign soil demonstrates the stable and nurturing atmosphere that this child needs. ALSO, this is the child of the people responsible for killing his wife and kid… no one seeing an issue with that? We’re all cool with that home situation? Hot Take Temperature: Exploding Toy Dinosaur.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Hmmm Extreme Damage? Nah … Explosive Damage? Naw … Collateral Damage?! That’s it. Let’s go!

Top line: In a way this is an okay movie stuck in the wrong time. The bad guy espousing the inability for the American people to understand the struggle of a people in the context of a global struggle to survive … released a year after 9/11. This is entirely by accident, but does come across as completely tone deaf.

What I remember about this film from the time it came out was that it was the last major Arnold release of the time. He would become Governor of California the next year and his career would be on hiatus during that time (obviously). I also remember the trailer and making fun of it because it seemed very silly … but then I also remember being excited for a new Arnold film as a teenager and then it came out and sucked and bombed. So there we go.

Arnold is his usual self with barely any acting chops, but somehow the film comes across as dour and he is a sad dad Arnold dad and ends up lacking his usual charm.

The twist at the end is pretty nutso. They inexplicably bring the wife of the terrorist to the U.S. where it turns out she is the actual mastermind and has infiltrated the counter terrorism headquarters and almost blows everyone to smithereens? That would be one boneheaded move by Arnold if he hadn’t also saved the day.

Bottom line: This movie mostly sucks. The action sucks, the acting sucks, and the premise sucks … and yet. For mindless action it is pretty hard to screw things up so badly you don’t at least appreciate the beginning and ending set pieces. If only they could have figured out something to do in the middle …

And no, wandering around Colombia shopping for Colombian orphans doesn’t count. And I know he wasn’t an orphan … yet. He was once Arnold killed his ‘rents though. Problem solved.

A solid South American Setting as a Character (Where?) for the dystopian vision of Colombia. I don’t think I’ll throw a MacGuffin in for the generic revenge angle at all. But definitely a Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that Selena is in on it and trying to blow up the State Department. I think this movie is Bad in the end, I don’t think I would recommend it as an action film and it isn’t entertaining enough as an action film or an Arnold film to work.

I’ll leave it short. Check out the television spin off series in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Ladies Man Recap

Jamie

I was having a real case of nostalgia recently thinking about the (kind of amazing) theatrical experiences of my youth. I recall seeing the Power Rangers movie for a birthday party and my memory is that the theater was a madhouse with kids going wild before the film started up. I remember being baffled by Godzilla in 1998 and then even more baffled when I saw Wild Wild West in a jam packed summer theater. I recall thinking Hulk was quite bad (again in a totally packed theater) and one year for our birthday going to see a double feature of Princess Mononoke and (at least as I recall) The Fantasticks… which seems impossible given when those films came out, but hard to say with a small town theater. I remember laughing so hard at Austin Powers 2 during the scene in the tent where the shadows make it seem like Powers is getting stuff pulled out of his butt (classic) and then Wedding Crashers being an absolute sensation and people going to see it over and over in theaters. Anyway… what does this have to do with The Ladies Man? Not much. I don’t think we saw it in theaters, but we definitely watched it once it came out on video. We saw everything back then.

To recap, Leon Phelps is a local radio host in Chicago. He’s real profane and misogynistic and is only kept around because the owner of the radio station has a soft spot for Leon. But Eugene Levy has gone over the owner’s head and with just one more slip up Leon is off the air… and it takes about five seconds for that to happen and he’s fired. Leon is helped out by Julie, his producer, who owes Leon for helping her pick up the pieces after a disastrous wedding. She’s in love with him, but he doesn’t really see it as he’s busy getting busy. In fact, there is a whole cadre of men out there gathering to hunt him down for bedding their wives… once they find out who he is at least. Julie takes Leon around to find a new job but he bungles it at every turn. Fortunately he gets a letter in the mail saying that one of his former flames is looking to run away with him and give him all her money. Hooray. Julie is dismayed, but Leon is not. He just has to figure out who this lucky lady is. He goes on the search and figures out that it’s the wife of the head of the group of murderous men at nearly the same time that they figure out that he’s the culprit for all their marital strife. This culminates in Leon going over to the lady’s house only to be confronted by the men and challenged to a Greco-Roman wrestling match. Leon quickly dispatches him, convinces all the other men that it was their own inattention to their ladies that got them in trouble, and walks off with Julie on his arm. THE END.

Honestly, as I wrote that recap I wondered if this movie was actually a funny concept that was just bungled badly. Like the synopsis is clever in how dumb it is… turning on a dime away from one plot (looking for a job) into another (finding his former flame) by sheer coincidence. It should be funny, and certainly has a few moments, but it’s pretty light on the jokes (and offensive to boot). Maybe because the plot is so kind of complicated in how it twists itself around that they didn’t really have much time to get the right jokes flowing. Anyway, this was unfortunately quite bad. The best parts are with Will Ferrell  (the only parts I remembered from the first viewing). The worst parts are with Lee Evans… even though they share most of their scenes together. I guess to end on a positive note: I think this was probably on the right track with how it is constructed. Starting to edge towards that Anchorman absurdity where the plot doesn’t matter much and can be thrown away at any moment. Just… like… where are the jokes?

Hot Take Clam Bake! Gonna go out on a limb on this one. Leon and Julie? I don’t think they make it. Here’s why: Leon, while loyal to his friends and a generally good guy, is also obviously a sex addict. He needs help. Julie seems to think that she can change him. You can’t change him, girl. He needs to take care of his need to find love. He also probably has a problem with alcohol (you see him chugging that Courvoisier? No bueno). Also, he still doesn’t have a job and seems incapable of getting one. Alright, so we got an unemployed addict living on a houseboat and you are a professional woman who is good at her job. Solid stuff. Hot Take Temperature: A Houseboat Aflame.

Patrick?  

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about an SNL film (again) that was garbage (again)? Let’s go!

As far as what I was thinking going into this film? Well, I mean … I’ve seen this film before. Obviously. I was once a teenage boy in the 90s. I only really remembered the fact that Will Ferrell was in it and was a very strange character obsessed with Greco-Roman wrestling. The SNL skits … I guess I haven’t seen one in a while. One second. Alright, it was what I expected, but there was actually a solid joke where someone asks for a poem, for example by Keats. And Leon responds “Well, sure, Stacy Keach is good. I didn’t care for the Mike Hammer series. But how about this …” That’s pretty good.

As far as this movie … boring and unfunny probably just about sums it up. Gross at times. Even the irreverent stuff (the very very long musical interlude among the roving band of jilted men looking to kill Leon) doesn’t work and seems more like an extended SNL sketch (the musical interlude was done better with the West Side Story parody in the first place). In the skits Leon seems dumb and inconsiderate. In this he seems actually like a garbage person, a gold digger with little evident remorse. But you know, none of that is that big of a deal, not too important if the film is funny … but as I said, it isn’t.

This is actually only our third SNL film. It’s Pat, and Stuart Saves His Family are the other two … amazingly neither actually qualify. We seemingly made exceptions for them having been released to very few theaters. We still have Superstar, Coneheads, The Waterboy (is it?), and A Night at the Roxbury to go. How have we managed this? How have we done (probably) the three worst SNL films available? It is nuts.

A few more quick things about the film: Billy Dee Williams being in this is a trip. He really wasn’t in that many major releases past the 90s, so why he agreed to do this is beyond me.

I like Will Ferrell but this is probably the weakest I’ve ever seen him. Overacting, and really quite aggravating.

And of course the king of overacting: Lee Evans, and this is no different.

And there is not a single funny joke in the entire film! It is remarkably unfunny. Almost impossibly so.

Naturally the obvious Product Placement (What?) for Courvoisier. Naturally a Worst Twist (How?) for the inevitable reveal that the lady the Ladies Man has been looking for the whole time is the wife of Will Ferrell who is leading the gang looking to murder him in cold blood. This movie is Bad bad bad, it just is not funny even for one moment.

Read about The Ladies Man cartoon I detail in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

47 Ronin (2013) Recap

Jamie

What a great Bring a Friend we got to decide on here. I was dead set on watching Fateful Findings, a true classic of the bad movie genre. Sure we have watched a Neil Breen picture before, but that was Twisted Pair for a Twin Cycle. By all accounts it’s no Fateful Findings. But what should we pair it with? It’s the eternal question of Bring a Friend… what is it? What are we trying to do? Are we trying to just watch the best film from the same year? Should they be similar in plot or theme? Should it really just be an opportunity for a best-of-the-best wild card? If you look through the data I think you’d find that the answer is “All of the Above.” This time there were really just two choices: 47 Ronin, a big budget disaster that fits BMT like a glove, or Paranoia, a film no one remembers that shares the leet haxxors plotting of FF. Alas, no matter how much hacking of planets Paranoia promised it never stood a chance. Bring on some CGI monsters.

To recap, Keanu is a boy found in the woods by the ruler of the Ako Domain in feudal Japan. The samurai scoff at him because he is half-Japanese, but Keanu is OK and knows his place within the clan. He turns out to be a great warrior and helps defeat the monsters and such that could ruin the domain’s plans to host the Shogun, but still the samurai get all the glory. He’s still OK with that. The source of these monsters is Lord Kira who wants Ako for himself and when the shogun visits he meddles such that Keanu shames himself when he is forced to take the place of a samurai in a battle. Ultimately, the ruler of Ako is hypnotized into attacking Lord Kira and is sentenced to death for the insult. He is allowed an honorable death, his daughter Mika is forced to marry Kira, Keanu is sold into slavery, and all the samurai are sent away. The head of the samurai, Oishi, is thought to be dangerous so he’s imprisoned for a year… you know so that he gets out juuuust before the marriage that will cement Kira’s place in Ako. But I’m sure he’s harmless now… wrong! He immediately assembles all the samurai and sets off to find Keanu. They rescue him from the fighting pits of whatever where he’s fighting monsters. He then is like “we need swords” and takes them to where he grew up and it’s revealed why he is such a good warrior… because he was trained from birth for this shit. With swords and quite a lot of Ronin (I can’t remember exactly how many) they set off to crush Kira. They first fall into a trap, but half of them escape and so they regroup to attack the wedding itself. There they pretend to be an acting troop where they act their asses off before fighting their asses off. In the end they kill Kira. This is against the law but the Shogun kind of digs it so they let Oishi’s son off the hook to preserve his family and he lets the rest of them, including Keanu, have an honorable death. THE END.

I had more trouble with this one than the other recent BMT films (which I mostly disliked, but also mostly bored me). Do not get me wrong, this film is so dull it actually defies belief. But its heart is in the right place and it looks beautiful. It wants to bring a classic Japanese story (that is definitely very cool) to an American scale for American audiences. Not to exaggerate but it’s like Scorsese making Silence (alright, fine, that’s a step too far). But really I liked a lot of what was on the screen, it’s just crushingly dull. I also have a theory that Keanu directed this film. I do not buy for one second that the official director of the film (a noted crazy person) delivered a big budget epic to theaters. So I choose to believe Keanu cared about this and made it happen. Kudos to him and so I will say I was fine with this film. As for Fateful Findings, this one really lived up to its reputation. It is nuts. Kid of a perfect so-bad-it’s-good. The magic sauce in a film like this is truly not being able to tell whether the people making the film know exactly what they are doing. You keep looking at Breen’s face to try to see a smirk or a look in his eyes where you can go “oh, good. He’s not serious.” But he is serious. Bafflingly beautiful.

Hot Take Clam Bake! They should have spared Keanu. This is a guy who grows up in some weird monastery being turned into a human weapon. He escapes and gets razzed all day for not being a samurai and being half-Japanese. He then tries to warn everyone about a witch and instead of being listened to he is sold into a gladiator pit. He then fights monsters for a year before totally redeeming himself in the eyes of EVERYONE. Even the shogun is like “this dude is dope.” His reward? Congrats you get an honorable death. Hold on. He doesn’t get to marry his lady love and continue his honorable line? The reward is death? That’s bullshit. Hot Take Temperature: 47 Bone-in Steaks.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Fine I’ll say it if no one else will … Keanu, can we not? Let’s go!

I remember when this came out. I remember the feeling of seeing the trailer and being like … what the fuck is this? And then it came out and critics were like “what the fuck is this?” And then I never forgot it. It has always been on the docket for BMT (as a matter of fact we were already doing BMT by then, so likely it came up in conversation in 2013 or 2014 as a distinct possibility). In reality I kind of knew the movie was probably just going to be all spectacle boring trash, but we had to see.

It was all spectacle boring trash.

Really, it is just a lot of CGI with a loose story and it could have all been made a lot better without any of the supernatural stuff. If it was an insinuation that this person’s a witch, and that person’s a demon, but in reality it is shown that that is just a perception colored by different religions basically, I think the film could have been more interesting.

I does come across as a vanity project for Keanu, but weirdly at a time when Keanu couldn’t afford it? The Matrices were over ages before, and then he did Constatine (2005) and A Scanner Darkly and The Lake House (2006) which were all fairly successful. But then there was the catastrophic The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and from there it is just bomb after bomb right up to this. Then what happened in 2014? John Wick, and his career is completely revived. He ends up kind of getting lucky. He released a straight to video film in 2013. That was probably almost his fate.

Should I talk about this film. I guess I’ll just leave it with one last thing. I liked all of the other actors in the film. It was great to see a film like this done with actually famous Japanese actors. Keanu is jarring though and it would have been better served by someone less famous or at least maybe younger and who didn’t read as much as an established American film star.

As a friend we brought along Fateful Findings which is our second Neil Breen film. The film started off slow, but quickly morphs into “Oh my god, he really is the worst filmmaker of all time … nah, he must know what he’s doing … OH MY GOD HE DOESN’T!!” Just banger after banger of weird scenes where a person who maybe can’t act like a human being directs people and makes them not act like human beings. It is truly sublime. There is at least one more Breen film we have to see, but I think we’ve seen what are considered the top two now. I’ve heard bad things about the most recent one, in that it seems like he has maybe become tired of the process of making films and so he’s fallen back to mostly using green screen and automating a lot of it. He is a year away from making the first ever feature length AI film where the film is just made using cheap out of the box LLMs by a University of Nevada computer science major for $1000. A, not as good as the earlier Breens I think, but much more weird and entertaining than I expected.

Read about my sequel in the quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) Recap

Jamie

Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. It’s me… Franchise Man. Now you might be thinking “Wow, a Nightmare on Elm Street film, this must be a delight for the likes of a Franchise Man.” It’s true, but comes with some reservations. Back when I was a Franchise Lad and had only taken in such horror fare as The Faculty, Scream, and Final Destination, I found A Nightmare on Elm Street to not only be the scariest of the big three horror franchises, but the best. It just looked cool. Bloody body bag… bloody bed… bloody everything. But with every sequel Freddy annoyed me more and more and the whole thing started to look worse and worse. Friday the 13th might be shit, but it knows its shit and it’s a fun kind of shit. Nightmare always seemed to think it was cool even after it definitely wasn’t. And so that’s where we are with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (which I had never seen) and the 2010 remake… hoping that with the return of Freddy to my life, my love for the series can also return.

To recap, our boy Kellen Lutz is having nightmares. His friends and frenemies alike are like “yo, you look terrible” and he starts talking about his dreams and eventually kills himself by slicing his neck open (but we know that really Freddy did it). At his funeral Kris sees some photos that she doesn’t remember taking with our boy Kellen Lutz. She starts to wonder whether this has anything to do with the dreams they all are having even though they didn’t know each other as kids… right, Mom? (spoiler alert: they did). Kris’ boyfriend tries to comfort Kris but it doesn’t help much when Freddy comes for her. He’s like “oh shit, they are going to think I murdered her” and he runs to warn Nancy and Quentin before they definitely think he murdered her and he dies in prison… but we know that Freddy did it. Nancy and Quentin begin a quest to uncover the truth about their history and the man known as… Freddy Krueger. Turns out that Freddy Krueger worked at a school they all went to and was accused of molesting them. In their horror the parents chased him down and burned him alive. This comes as a shock to the audience. They realize they are the only ones left of all the kids in the school and have to stay awake to try to stop this vengeful ghost. For a hot second they think Freddy Krueger was innocent and they just have to prove that, which would have been a bold step for this film to take, but alas they weren’t that bold and turns out he’s just angry because they told people about all the molesting. They concoct a plan for Nancy to pull Freddy out of the dream world since she was his favorite and this works. They kill Freddy and everything is fine again. THE END… or is it? (apparently not according to the end of the film, but we haven’t seen a Nightmare film since).

Ah well. I feel like I’ve been let down so many times recently with reboot and remakes and requels of horror films lately that I can’t even muster up enough energy. Especially for something like this. Why do you even make it? There are a few OK things. Like they remake the backstory so that they have all repressed the memories of their involvement with Freddy and when the first kid ends up going to therapy it triggers the memories of the others. OK fine. They also do a fun fake out that Freddy was innocent, which would have been insane. Cowards! But all the visual stuff is just remakes of the original. I think with all these films they have to stop just remaking stuff. Be bold and try to get to the core of why people liked this shit. Otherwise it’s just boring… like this one. Just as an aside, I watched New Nightmare for the first time before watching this film. At first I was unimpressed. By the end Craven won me over. He’s a weird director (not unlike Carpenter) so when you vibe with him it’s really fun. It got me in the end.

Hot Take Clam Bake! This is going to be controversial, but here it goes… even if Freddy Krueger turned out to be innocent of molesting all those children and was wrongfully burned to death, thus turning him into a vengeful ghost… [deep breath] I still think Freddy was kind of a bad dude. Hear me out. He’s a vengeful ghost. He kills teenagers in their sleep using a glove with knives attached to it. This is a weapon he didn’t even have back in his (alleged) molesting days. That’s not good behavior. Sure you might say that you have to separate the man from the vengeful ghost but hold up… you think he’s the only innocent person ever to be killed? You see any other Freddy Krugers running around like a bunch of murderous crybabies? I don’t think so. They don’t do that, because that ain’t right. Freddy Kruger: all around bad guy. Hot Take Temperature: The heat of a thousand Freddy Krugers.

Patrick?  

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we finally finishing up the final qualifying film of the big three horror mega-franchised?! Let’s go!

Oh snap. We finally did it. We’ve now watched all of the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween films. And yeah, I had to look up and check that we did the Friday the 13th remake. We did. Phew!

There are bits and pieces of this film I liked, although it does feel few and far between. The main thing I think I liked was just the idea that you can’t just stay up and avoid Freddy. That, effectively, once you get tired enough you will take micro-naps and it is in that in-between state where you’ll always be vulnerable to Freddy.

I didn’t really like the suggestion whereby they headfake a wait? Was Freddy innocent? Of course he wasn’t! But like … it kind of would have been cool if he was. The idea that Freddy is a child murderer and then ends up being a quippy weirdo in the original franchise is pretty unsettling. The idea that an innocent man is murdered by a town and it turns him into a dream walking murderer, pure evil and vengeance incarnate? Kind of a cool idea. The fans would have been quite upset though. So child molester it is!

Otherwise though, yet another hilariously brief borderline cameo performance by Kellen Lutz which I always like to see.

A brief moment where I’m like let me get this straight … these people own snowboards despite being decidedly blue collar and living  in rural Ohio, I don’t buy it! That’s what occupies my mind during BMT. Honestly, it is what occupies my mind when I watch good movies too which is kind of dumb.

I really didn’t like Freddy in this, primarily because his makeup just looked bad.

And of course they did the cheesy headfake ending as well ripped straight from the original. I’m going to throw out a hottake … I didn’t like it in the original movie. I think horror films, especially slashers with Last Girls should give the audience a reprieve. The headfake ending steals that away and makes it feel truly pointless to battle Freddy since he’ll just come right back and torture you in your dreams anyways.

A small Product Placement (What?) for Dell. And a quite good Setting as a Character (Where?) for once again making it official that Elm St is somewhere in Ohio. And fine, Worst Twist (How?) for just doing the fake out twist ending again.

I’ll just end with a quick review of New Nightmare which I also watched. Kind of dumb, although I do get the meta movie with the original actress (who still had it I thought). I liked a bit where they took the lore (Freddy kind of being a trickster god or something, but Freddy is just one of his many manifestations, and he likes it, so he’s back). But ultimately it was too silly and light on new good kills to be satisfying. The best kill in the movie was pretty much just a copy of one from the original … which they also did in the remake. I get it … you can rotate a room.

Read about my remake in the quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

G-Force Recap

Jamie

Sometimes I like to take a little trip down memory lane in our patented BMTime Machine to remind myself of where we came from. When we first started we didn’t even have cycles. We just watched movies that were being done on a podcast. Then we moved on to mostly watching things we could get through Netflix… the DVD delivery company. Eventually we were like wait a second… rulez are coolz and we began to go through cycles which morphed over time into a standard set of genres and a Stallonian Calendar to incorporate in theater viewing. Now we have a story that ties all the cycles together. Like reverse entropy we have sought order in a BMTverse of disorder. What is lost in all this is that at one point one of the regular genres we had in our cycles was Kids films. That is until we said, “why are we doing this to ourselves?” and stopped. But every once in a while…

To recap, [Jamie exhales an extended sigh and follows that with a contemplative look. Rain streaks down the window pane. Jamie sighs again recalling all the moments in his life he would never get back. He smiles slightly. Many of these moments were good. Moments spent with loved ones. Moments spent thinking deeply about work… love… art. But some moments. Some moments…] THE END. JK. This is a film about a bunch of secret agent guinea pigs (and a mole (and a fly)) who have been created by Zach Galifianakis. He’s worried that the US government is going to shut the program down because he’s spending millions on sciencing up these animals without much to show for it… until now. They decide to go in and get the details on the dastardly plot of a tech corporation called Saber. This goes swimmingly and they find a plan to weaponize appliances across the world secretly installed on Saber’s computer chips. Unfortunately when they show the chip to the G-men coming to shut them down the plan is nowhere to be seen. Before the government can take them into custody they escape in a delivery truck that happens to go directly to a pet store. Hilarity ensues… and by that I mean that the mole is killed trying to escape and two of the GPigs (as the kids call them) are sold off rambunctious kids. Our hero GPig, Darwin, goes after the others and with the help of an untrained GPig from the store are able to get the others in hand and make their way back to Saber to infect the mainframe and stop the plan. There they find that the head of the company is totally unaware of the plan. Instead it was their own mole who was a mole in the corporation and set the whole thing up. He wasn’t dead at all! Saboteur! They all do battle and eventually the mole sees the error of his ways and the plan is stopped. The government is grateful and they all become official agents. Hooray. THE END.

Ugh. Really, ugh. I sometimes forget what it’s like to watch an adult movie (not that kind… I mean like I Don’t Know How She Does It) compared to something like G-Force. IDKHSDI looks like Hamlet in comparison. G-Force is like something made for a sales pitch for cheap television shows. It seriously looks like they took the real actors and stuck them in front of a camera in extreme closeup and had them say a bunch of lines so they could just throw them in wherever they needed between scenes of fake animals skateboarding or whatever. Everything in this is complete nonsense… although… the company that made it obviously knew what they were doing. Their passion was talking animals and boy did they know how to make some CGI animals. Anyway, I watched this on a plane when I could have been sleeping. What a shame.

Hot Take Clam Bake! This isn’t even a hot take. It’s the cold hard truth. The ending to this film was changed. The mole has faked his death and then is revealed to be… the mole. We see him all evil and shit talking about evil stuff. Suddenly, in the middle of battling our heroes he has a change of heart. But go back and watch the end… the rest of the fight the CGI mole is still attempting to stop the heroes from saving the day. Why? Because they realized they couldn’t kill an animal onscreen in a children’s movie. Apparently they only realized this after it was too late and they had to try to obscure the truth by flash and trickery. Cowards! I want justice. Release the Murder Cut of G-Force! Hot Take Temperature: The snowy peaks of the Andes Mountains.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a kids’ film?! But … we never talk about kids’ films. Why are we watching a bad kids’ film? Let’s go!

This movie is weird. Like … it is weird that it is even partially live action. I do have theories about this … do I go into that now? Probably.

So here’s my theory (which I think is supported by some of the other information you can find online). The director of the film was effectively pioneering a method to cheaply create live-action / CGI hybrid video so that eventually they could do television and stuff. So a lot of the film is created out of just tons of B-roll which then, whenever they needed, they would insert the CGI guinea pigs. But then the budget ballooned after Disney took over and started monkeying around and ultimately they were blamed for it and the company didn’t go anywhere. Basically my theory was this was a real Jimmy Neutron situation (where they actually did parlay their movie into, if I recall, a cheaply made but decent looking CGI television show), but in the end it wasn’t successful because it ended up just being a modest success and expensive instead of cheap.

As for the film: dumb. The voice acting is dumb, and there is a sexy guinea pig, and overall it is just no bueno.

That being said, I was surprised at how well put together some of it was in the first half. Like, it looked shockingly good.

But you could see the seams at times. Specifically, there is a moment where they claim they navigated by the stars, but the characters appeared to have only traveled during the day. Clearly there was originally a big part in the middle involving a nighttime scene they either didn’t get to, cut, or overlooked. It is stuff like that where you are like … oh yeah, this film is kind of barely there.

Did I say the voice acting is dumb? Mostly just people using their own voices, and then a few who went really over the top (Nic Cage? Doing such an odd voice as to be almost unrecognizable … so much so I wondered if he just hired a proxy voice actor to do the entire thing and banked the difference as naming rights).

You know what? I’m going to toss out the fat farting guinea pig voiced by Favreau as a Planchet (Who?) and you can’t stop me. Naturally there is a solid MacGuffin (Why?) for the PDA / virus that the G-Force is going after in the beginning and throughout the film. And a Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate conclusion that obviously Nic Cage as the star-nosed mole was the bad guy all along. This movie, like nearly all bad kids’ films, is just boring and bad

Read about my sequel in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs.

I Don’t Know How She Does It Recap

Jamie

I don’t know how we do it. I don’t know how we watch I Don’t Know How She Does It and follow it up with G-Force. I don’t know how we keep falling so far behind that I have to write about I Don’t Know How She Does It and G-Force in the same day. I don’t know how we have so many good films we could watch or books we could read and lives we could live and yet we watch I Don’t Know How She Does It and G-Force… like back-to-back. I don’t know how I watched both these movies recently and seem to not be able to remember when and where I did it… like… I watched I Don’t Know How She Does it before watching G-Force? I don’t remember that. Is it possible I watched them both at the same time while holding an iPad in one hand and my phone in the other with the Red Sox game playing on mute in the background? Is that possible? I feel like that’s how I did it.

To recap, Kate is a working mom who seems to have everything under control. Don’t mind that her husband quit his job to start his own company or that she has to travel for her finance job a bunch or that she never has time to make things for her kids bake sale or… that she just had a huge project accepted at work that’ll take her to NYC all the time to work with Pierce Brosnan?! Whaaa?! It’s the opportunity of a lifetime and you know what… she can do it… right? Turns out she can, but not without a bunch of people judging her and everything going awry for three months. Things start to heat up a little when Pierce Brosnan takes her out for bowling in Cleveland. Now you are probably like “Ha! It’s funny because they are bowling in Cleveland.” Well to that I say, “What’s so funny?” Sounds like a wonderful evening. I’m totally unsurprised that this ended up making Kate worry about her relationship with Pierce Brosnan and how it might look. Bowling is damn sexy and he was sexy doing it. If someone saw her there they probably (actually, definitely) would assume they were having an affair. Bowling! Cleveland! May as well have booked a hotel at the Ritz… What was I talking about? Oh right, anyway she’s great so she succeeds and Pierce Brosnan is like “Sex, maybe?” and she’s like no… maybe have sex with my single friend instead. He agrees. She then uses her leverage from the big success to strike a new work-life balance with her boss. THE END.

Not much happens in this movie. It really just seems like a family with some young kids who find themselves in a particularly stressful moment in both their professional lives. It lasts for about three months during which the husband gets his company off the ground and the wife gets a big deal done… then things are OK because they got those things done. That’s cool. It’s a perfectly fine plot for a book… maybe not visually all that interesting. They also seemed to realize this as the film is made as if it’s part documentary with interviews with the characters stuck in there. This is not just bizarre but bad enough that someone needed to step in and stop it from happening. I don’t blame them for wanting to do something to spice it up, but it doesn’t work at all. Honestly they just needed to raise the stakes a bit or something (anything). Weird movie. Greg Kinnear and SJP are actually fine though. Oh, and there’s a scene where SJP and Brosnan go bowling in Cleveland and it’s the most unbelievable “league night” bowling scene in cinematic history.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Pierce Brosnan should have ended up with Momo. He’s a workaholic. She’s a workaholic. They’ve also already met… unlike SJP’s friend that she ends up setting him up with. He ends up sipping mai tai’s on a beach somewhere with that friend rather than making teamwork dreamwork with Momo as a power couple? I don’t think so. He’s a maniac! A maniac that thought SJP was going to leave her family for a work relationship. Guess who’s also a maniac? Momo. Mistake. Hot Take Temperature: Bowling in Cleveland.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a romantic comedy no one knows about about business business lady doing business things? Let’s go!

The biggest crime of the film is the weird interview style jokes they throw into the film every so often. Really terrible idea, never works, and keeps on going for most of (if not all of) the film for no reason.

The second biggest crime is the plot which is boring and dumb. Let’s make bankers look nice in the wake of the financial collapse. No thanks.

And the third biggest crime is that the entire movie is a bit gross in how it treats the idea of working in general.

No comment on the treatment of motherhood … although, also seems gross. Yo, Greg Kinnear. Pick up the slack bro.

Let’s see if I can even remember the storylines we are dealing with. SJP wants to make a sweet financial fund that will really help people. Kinnear has an architecture start-up and just got the Big Deal. Momo loves work but is going to have a baby (awwww). Brosnan is a hottie with a body and doesn’t need no woman (except SJP?). Kelsey Grammer is a monster who wants his employees to die at their desk (in not so many words). The end.

There is a moment in the film where Brosnan is basically like “adultery?” and she’s like “naw I have a fambly.” Jamie didn’t think this was weird. I thought it was weird. I’ll leave it to the audience.

But yeah, boring film. Not funny. Not interesting. Didn’t like it.

Definitely great Setting as a Character (Where?) for Boston. And a Secret Holiday Film (When?) for T-Givs which is RUINED by work. And a Worst Twist (How?) for the obvious twist that Brosnan is now dating Sarah Jessica Parker’s friend at the end. This film is Bad.

Read about my sequel in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs