Bad Movie Twins

RoboCop 3 Preview

Jeez, these squeakuels are long. Almost as bad as a book cycle. JK, book cycles are the worst. Anyway, this week we move onto the Action entry of the cycle and it seemed fitting that we would hit one of the worst reviewed action sequels of all time. That’s right, we’re not only watching RoboCop 2 but the much abhorred follow-up RoboCop 3! Another two-for-one this week. The first one is a classic satire of capitalism, so I can’t wait to see how RoboCop three shits all over that. Let’s go!

RoboCop 3 (1993) – BMeTric: 77.3

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(Oh snap. Yeah, this is supposed to be a terrible film. Juxtaposing this with Robocop 2 it is kind of nuts the start difference. Basically this is half as popular, but a whopping 1.7 IMDb lower! A sub-4.0 for a movie this old is definitely a big worst-of-all-time kind of contender.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – When the evil corporation OCP uses a policelike group to force impoverished Detroit citizens out of their homes, RoboCop (Burke) leaves the force and joins the rebellion. The script (by Frank Miller and the director) is smug but crude; though it lacks the first sequel’s violence, it’s also short on spectacle. Filmed in 1991.

(Maltin … are you for reals? You liked RoboCop 3 more than 2? Very interesting. (1) Awesome semi-colon work. (2) The fun facts flying in from Maltin, filmed in 1991? Very good. Too bad it all sounds like you could distill this review into one word: boring)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOdELisKpP4

(“I thought your damned ninja was supposed to take care of RoboCop for me” Oh God. Yeah, you can see how this guy went off the rails. It is kind of amazing that that is a Frank Miller plot right there. I really don’t see how that trailer made a movie that Leonard Maltin liked more than RoboCop 2. I can’t really see it.)

Directors – Fred Dekker – (Known For: The Monster Squad; Night of the Creeps; BMT: RoboCop 3; Notes: An avid comic book fan, monster movie buff, and film nerd as described on his IMDb. He went to college with Shane Black and is now involved in his new Predator remake. He only ever directed movies he wrote and this was his last.)

Writers – Edward Neumeier (characters) – (Known For: Starship Troopers; RoboCop; RoboCop (2014); Starship Troopers 3: Marauder; BMT: RoboCop 3; Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid; RoboCop 2; Notes: Basically all of his credits are based on the original RoboCop (which is is credited for characters in all but the first) and Starship Troopers (which he was very much involved with, he even directed the third). It appears that he declined the vice-presidency of Universal to make RoboCop and that is how he met Verhoeven and got involved with Starship Troopers.)

Michael Miner (characters) – (Known For: RoboCop; RoboCop (2014); BMT: RoboCop 3; Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid; Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace; RoboCop 2; Notes: For a guy who wrote RoboCop and directed Lawnmower Man 2 and Anacondas 2 this guy has nothing about him! I found this variety article about him making a movie names Marathon … yeah that movie never got made.)

Frank Miller (story & screenplay) – (Known For: 300; Sin City; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; 300: Rise of an Empire; BMT: RoboCop 3; Elektra; The Spirit; RoboCop 2; Notes: Most well known as a comic book writer it kind of shocks me he wrote a movie so long ago. He wrote this guy in 1993 and then nothing else until 2005 over ten years later. But he killed it in comics. This movie is closer to his script, which is a plus.)

Fred Dekker (screenplay) – (Known For: The Monster Squad; House; Night of the Creeps; Ricochet; BMT: RoboCop 3; House II: The Second Story; Teen Agent; Notes: Besides what was written above there isn’t too much to say about this guy unfortunately.)

Actors – Nancy Allen – (Known For: Carrie; RoboCop; Out of Sight; Dressed to Kill; The Last Detail; Blow Out; The Philadelphia Experiment; Strange Invaders; I Wanna Hold Your Hand; BMT: RoboCop 3; Poltergeist III; RoboCop 2; 1941; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1981 for Worst Actress for Dressed to Kill. Her first film role was in Stephen King’s Carrie directed by Brian De Palma. She would marry De Palma three years later, and then divorce five years after that. During their marriage she exclusively appeared in his films, and supposedly their divorce interfered quite substantially with her career (although it didn’t stop her from landing and nailed this role in the RoboCop franchise).)

Robert John Burke – (Known For: Tombstone; Limitless; 2 Guns; True Story; Munich; Safe; Cop Land; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Connie and Carla; Heaven & Earth; Brooklyn’s Finest; Good Night, and Good Luck.; Rambling Rose; Ned Rifle; A Far Off Place; The Chosen; The Unbelievable Truth; Flirt; Simple Men; First Love, Last Rites; BMT: RoboCop 3; Fast Track; Fled; Thinner; Hide and Seek; If Lucy Fell; State Property; The Oh in Ohio; Miracle at St. Anna; Notes: I personally know him as Ed Tucker from IA in Law and Order SVU. He’s been mostly a television actor (Chuck Bass’ father in Gossip Girl what what?!) despite having quite an extensive feature filmography.)

Also stars John Castle – (A ton of television work, including a 2007 episode of Midsomer Murder. I eat Murder She Wrote and Midsomer Murders for breakfast, so I cannot wait to watch that episode.)

Budget/Gross – $22 million / Domestic: $10,696,210 (N/A)

($22 million budget! My God. At least it was less than the previous film. No wonder it looks terrible though. And yeah, huge bomb. Orion was going under as this film was shot so there is a whiff of desperate throw-anything-at-the-wall IP chasing surrounding this film. Like with De Laurentiis it did not work.)

#36 for the Cyborg / Android / Robot genre

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(And while RoboCop 2 came right at the beginning of what I will call the Terminator 2 peak in this genre, this came as it unceremoniously died. Number 36 puts it right around Deadly Friend! Extremely unimpressive stuff.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 3% (1/30): No consensus yet.

(Hooray, I secretly love making consensuses: Downscaling the gore along with the budget, RoboCop 3 tries for a more family friendly affair. Losing the brilliant satire of the original (and gaining some good old fashioned Japan bashing), this is little more than a mindless actioner marking the end of a promising franchise. This paints a more expected picture of the franchise. The reviews of the time seemed to forgive the second film, but declare this the end of the RoboCops.)

Poster – RoboSklog 3 (D)

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(I initially liked this poster. Then I looked at it some more. First, the double RoboCop. Second the weird white halo around RoboCop. Then the ghostly city in the background. And finally the dreary dark blue coloring. And I realized it … I actually hated this poster.)

Tagline(s) – Chaos… Corruption… Civil War… (B+)

(Short. Sweet alliteration. Simple. Probably too simple to be an A, I don’t really know why this would be the plot of RoboCop 3, but I still like it.)

Keyword(s) – ninja; Top Ten by BMeTric: 79.0 Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997); 79.0 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007); 77.3 RoboCop 3 (1993); 70.1 The Master of Disguise (2002); 69.4 Elektra (2005); 64.1 DOA: Dead or Alive (2006); 62.1 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987); 59.5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993); 58.1 Tekken (2010); 57.9 Highlander: Endgame (2000);

(Wait wait wait ………. The fourth police academy movie has a ninja in it? Yes please. We do need to do the second Mortal Kombat for BMT. We saw it in theaters (!) when we were young, but it deserves a preview and full recap as adult bad movie connoisseurs.)

Notes – Was filmed in 1991, but was not released until end of 1993 due to production company Orion going bankrupt. (The is like the fourth movie we’ve watched in the last 6 months made by a production company going bankrupt)

Peter Weller refused to reprise his Robocop role due to scheduling conflicts with Naked Lunch (1991). (Good choice)

Filmed in Atlanta, most of the abandoned buildings seen in the film were slated for demolition to make way for facilities for the 1996 Olympics. (huh, that is kind of amazing actually)

The RoboCop suit worn in the movie was originally built for RoboCop 2 (1990). Since Robert John Burke is taller than Peter Weller, he complained that wearing it was painful after a short time.

Nancy Allen (Ofc. Ann Lewis), Robert DoQui (Sgt. Reed), Felton Perry (OCP’s Johnson), Mario Machado (Newsanchor Casey Wong) and Angie Bolling (Murphy’s wife) are the only actors to appear in all three RoboCop movies. (Good stuff, Allen had huge roles in all three, pretty impressive)

Unlike the first two movies, this one did not receive a novelization. (too bad, maybe someone can poke Frank Miller for a sweet graphic novelization)

RoboCop 2 Preview

RoboCop 2 (1990) – BMeTric: 38.5

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(Interesting from a theoretical perspective: Basically the votes has increased dramatically and by virtue of regression to the mean the rating has steadily increased as well. All the while this has somehow come out perfectly balanced such that the BMeTric has barely changed at all. Kind of cool considering the movie has a halfway decent BMeTric (somewhere around where Razzie nominees typically sit, top 10-20 worst films of the year.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars – Appallingly (and unnecessarily) mean, ugly sequel in which coldblooded corporation czar O’Herlihy and drug kingpin Noonan threaten to end Robo’s existence — while the laboratory whizzes cook up a bigger, “better” cyborg cop to take his place. Offensively violent and humorless. Phil Tippett’s stop-motion animation is the film’s only asset.

(Wow, that is an incredibly step down from Robocop. I can see ugly for sure, but I’m surprised by humorless. I vaguely remember this film from my childhood, specifically that a guy ends up with his brain in a jar and a weird CGI face.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxumzn82V9s

(I usually don’t complain about such things but … they do actually just give away arguably the main twist of the film (that Kane, the drug guy becomes RoboCop 2). I’m also shocked Gabriel Damon didn’t make an appearance since he is a gigantic part of the film. It just kind of looks terrible (although you do kind of see the money in the trailer, it is a much grander story than the first in that way at least))

Directors – Irvin Kershner – (Known For: Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back; Never Say Never Again; Eyes of Laura Mars; The Return of a Man Called Horse; One Born Every Minute; BMT: RoboCop 2; Notes: … Why did I think Kershner had way more terrible movies than that. Interesting guy having been a surprise pick for Episode V, but not much else in his career.)

Frank Miller (story & screenplay) – (Known For: 300; Sin City; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; 300: Rise of an Empire; BMT: RoboCop 3; Elektra; The Spirit; RoboCop 2; Notes: Most well known as a comic book writer it kind of shocks me he wrote a movie so long ago. He wrote this guy in 1990 and the third in 1993 and then nothing else until 2005 over ten years later. Apparently this movie is nothing like the script he wrote … makes you wonder how they convinced him to write the third.)

Walon Green (screenplay) – (Known For: WarGames; Dinosaur; The Wild Bunch; Wages of Fear; The Border; The Hi-Lo Country; Crusoe; BMT: RoboCop 2; Solarbabies; Eraser; Notes: Just recently watched his magnum opus Solarbabies (apparently he was the “big shot” writer Mel Brooks got to write a first draft before handing over complete control to Metrov, the real genius behind that film). Pretty solid filmography he is mostly known as a documentary filmmaker.)

Actors – Peter Weller – (Known For: Star Trek Into Darkness; RoboCop; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Naked Lunch; Mighty Aphrodite; Al di là delle nuvole; Cat Chaser; Shoot the Moon; Shakedown; Ivans Xtc; The New Age; BMT: The Sin Eater; RoboCop 2; Undiscovered; Leviathan; Repentance; Skin Trade; Screamers; Notes: That’s Dr. Peter Weller to you, he was awarded his Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance Art from UCLA in 2014. Most well known for RoboCop (naturally), but The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonza in Across the 8th Dimension as well. I have a weird fondness for his villainous turn on 24 personally.)

Belinda Bauer – (Known For: UHF; Winter Kills; BMT: Poison Ivy 2; RoboCop 2; Flashdance; Notes: Retired from acting now, she is a psychologist. From Australia, and was in Sklog Childhood Movie Hall of Fame … as a mud wrestler? How strange.)

Also stars John Glover – (Who was in the legendary Batman & Robin)

Budget/Gross – $35 million / Domestic: $45,681,173 (N/A)

(Not great. Makes one wonder why a third was considered. We might be hitting a little Laurentiis mirror here. Where Dino De Laurentiis was going to declare bankruptcy so he made one last desperate attempt at releasing a movie for all of the IP he owned … and they were all trash and basically sunk 1986 as a year for bad movies. In this case the third movie was made two years later while Orion was starting to go under, and might have just been a desperate last effort at saving the company.)

#25 for the Cyborg / Android / Robot genre

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(Actually made about the same as Robocop (just with a much larger budget). Actually funny that is it right at a start to a boom that was exemplified by Terminator 2. Also previous BMT Deadly Friend is on the list at 39. Terminator: Genisys may have killed the boom we’ve been seeing recently, although there is nothing like yet another Transformers movie to provide a shot in the arm for a genre like this.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 32% (11/34): No consensus yet.

(Uh oh, looks like someone needs a consensus: Half-baked and unfinished, RoboCop 2 is gruesome and humorous at turns, but without impact. Basically it feels like RoboCop 2 was an unfinished idea with the ironic-gore peppered in without thought. Sounds fine to me honestly.)

Poster – RoboSklog 2 (C+)

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(Considering that the original RoboCop poster is brilliant, it is hard not to be harsh with the grading. I think this poster is a pretty boring kind of sad example of just a giant picture of a face. The reflection of the primary bad guy of the film could have maybe saved the poster a bit, but I still think it is pretty bac=d)

Tagline(s) – He’s back to protect the innocents. (C+)

(I don’t really like the tagline. It doesn’t flow with the innocents part. And the reference (RoboCop Primary Directive #2 is to protect the innocent) isn’t so well known to really register. It barely registered with me and I literally watched three RoboCop movies in three days.)

Keyword(s) – drugs; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.1 Disaster Movie (2008); 75.8 LOL (2012); 72.7 Basic Instinct 2 (2006); 71.4 Showgirls (1995); 67.1 Year One (2009); 65.1 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); 62.6 Ghosts of Mars (2001); 59.4 Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991); 59.1 The Crow: City of Angels (1996); 56.1 Sliver (1993);

(Kind of an amazing list in a few ways. First, I’m kind of stunned at how bad Year One is on this list. I mean, I fell asleep during that movie and really didn’t like it, but getting even close to 70 alongside something like Showgirls is ridiculous. We do need to see LOL don’t we? We do. I don’t want to. Maybe when we do another Merde (foreign films adapted into American films) we’ll get to it. We need to do more classic horror franchises as well.)

Notes – Although the producers loved Frank Miller’s original version of the script, they quickly realized it was unfilmable as written. The final screen version was heavily rewritten and bears only a superficial resemblance to Miller’s story. In 2003, Miller’s screenplay was adapted into a comic book series titled, appropriately, “Frank Miller’s RoboCop”. (Again, it makes me shocked they managed to get him back for the third film)

After the success of RoboCop (1987), director Paul Verhoeven and the original screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner were immediately approached for a sequel by the studio. According to Verhoeven, he didn’t want to make the kind of sequel that the studio had in mind. He felt going forward so quickly with their ideas would make it feel like he was attempting to cash in on the first film, and he only wanted to do a follow-up if it was original and innovative. Neumeier and Miner had already presented a very rough outline called “RoboCop: Corporate Wars”. In this draft, RoboCop was to be shot and pulverized to metallic dust by a cannon in the very beginning. He would be resurrected 25 years later in an even more dystopian future, where he becomes a pawn in the struggle between an all-powerful corporation, the government and an impoverished population and even at one point having a love interest with a Neruobrain to humanize Robocop even more. The studio liked this idea, but the writers did not want to continue working on script due to personal interests associated with the writers strike. Verhoeven also did not support the project, having gone to shoot “Total Recall” for big money, while agreeing to all conditions of the producers and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave the director only three hours for making decision from the beginning of reading the script. Ultimately Verhoeven felt if the studio kept patient his idea for the sequel was far more superior.In the end, the film was shot on a new script by Frank Miller & Walon Green, but the plot also has lines from the original script and early drafts for the first movie that were never filmed. (I like the background to this, the movie business of the 80’s just sounds kind of nuts with studios going under and strikes and money (and cocaine) free flowing.)

The point-of-view shots from RoboCop show an interface based on MS-DOS . The villain Cain has the Apple based OS.interface with a skull instead of the Apple logo. (ha!)

In the scene where RoboCop was being reprogrammed by Dr. Faxx, the following hex numbers scroll quickly up the screen: “50 45 54 45 20 4B 55 52 41 4E 20 49 53 20 41 20 47 52 45 41 54 20 47 55 59”. Converted to ASCII text, it reads: “PETE KURAN IS A GREAT GUY”. Peter Kuran was the special effects photographer. (That’s just weird. Fun fact!)

A directive which is only seen briefly in the scene where they are having trouble uploading the new directives into RoboCop is ‘Directive 262: Avoid Orion Meetings’. Orion Pictures was the production and distribution company of RoboCop 2 (1990). (Fun. Fact)

Big Momma: Like Father Like Son Recap

Jamie

What?! Big Momma’s back! Uh… again! Malcolm Turner is once again the FBI’s #1 cop. While staking-out a big time mobster, Malcolm is surprised by his stepson Trent, who witnesses a murder. Oh no! What are they going to do? Go deep undercover at the Georgia Girl’s School for the Arts, that’s what! Can they hide out long enough to find the evidence they need to put the mobster behind bars? Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son.

Why?! McGuffin alert! While Malcolm is tracking the mobster the audience is made aware that an important thumb drive with important information that’s really important is importantly hidden somewhere important. So when he and his son have to go underground they go to where the thumb drive was hidden (the Georgia Girl’s School for the Arts). It’s a race against time as they attempt to find the drive before the mobsters catch up. Trent also has a B storyline motivation of his own (besides staying alive) in trying to get his music career off the ground, but he first needs to convince his disapproving father than it makes sense to skip college to pursue his dream. But of course that kind of goes to the wayside when they MIGHT DIE.

How?! McGuffins are funny in this way as they really help streamline the motivation. Their importance is so inherent that the ‘how’ revolves around it and hilarity ensues. A big part of the conflict though is that while Big Momma is playing the den mother (and thus isn’t fully trusted by the girls), it turns out that Trent, playing one of the students in drag, is able to ingratiate himself and get more information. Oh how the roles have been reversed. Unfortunately this also leads to Trent falling in love with one of the students! Uh oh! Before it all blows up in their faces they are able to find the drive (hidden in the school’s cherished music box) and subdue the mobsters. And while Malcolm ultimately does gives his blessing to Trent’s music career, it turns out that Trent learned more than just how to survive a mob hit at the Girl’s School. He also learned the value of a good education.

Who?! I wouldn’t say there was a great Planchet in the film, so instead I’ll give a little shoutout to the hoops the filmmakers went through when faced with Nia Long passing on her role as Sherry for this installment. After finding out that Trent got into Duke we get a scene of Malcolm trying to contact Sherry at the spa she’s staying at. No dice though. Apparently the spa is a no cell phone, no contact spa and she’s going to be in isolation for the next few days. Oh really? How very convenient to Nia Long’s schedule. Weirdly there is absolutely no mention of the other child that Malcolm and Sherry had at the end of the second film. Either the child is staying at Big Momma’s for the weekend, is off at boarding school, or there is a very sad underlying story that is never mentioned but Malcolm silently endures every day.

Where?! After switching the film setting to LA for the second film they jump right back to the original setting of Georgia for the final installment. It’s actually a super solid setting as they make clear that Malcolm works at the Atlanta FBI unit and then, of course, they hide out at the Georgia Girl’s School for the Arts. Prefecto. B.

When?! I actually don’t think there was an exact time spelled out. Certainly in the Spring, since Trent gets an acceptance letter from Duke at the beginning of the film. Would guess we’re talking about the beginning of April, but still not clear. D.

You got the dets, now get the truth.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Big Momma Like Father Like Son? More like Big Momma, This Franchise is Done! We completed the Big Momma Saga, could anything live up to the heady heights of the first? The second didn’t, but three times the charm right? Nope! Let’s get into it.

The Good – The rapping/music in the film is pretty solid. Somewhere deep within this film is another film not starring Big Momma that is actually halfway decent. The story is a lot tighter than you would think considering. I really liked Faizon Love.
The Bad – The fat suit got worse again! His/Her face looks just terrible. Just terrible. Moving Big Momma to an all girls school is just again moving the character to another setting. It doesn’t feel like a Big Momma movie, it just feels like another movie with Big Momma as the main character … you know? The third movie probably has the lowest of lows for the franchise with a simply awful Cleveland Shuffle twist ending.
The BMT – Again, not 60+, but 40 maybe. Above average. In the discussion for worst of the year it came out, but not stand out. Disappointing though. I would not be excited for Big Momma’s House Party now, I would just be skeptical that Martin Lawrence could even pull off something resembling entertainment within the bounds of this franchise. This franchise I fear is dead.

Sigh. We’ll end with a new-ish game (more like it is just a mix of Remake and Sklogification): Sklog Casting, where I recast the film to try and fix some of its flaws. In this case this movie feels like another movie, like how Big Momma’s House 2 is just the Pacifier with Big Momma. It’s just that the movie this one is based on hasn’t been made yet. So let’s do it: Ice Cube is an FBI agent who, along with his son, witness a mob hit and go undercover in an all-girls performing arts school. These girls have real talent, but Ice Cube and his son (both in drag) can teach them a thing or two about spitting hot fire. This time we go full musical with a very entertaining mix of classic pop with hip hop. It would be a solid movie (Leonard Maltin suggests as much in his review for Like Father Like Son), and c’mon … Cube in drag? C’mon.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Big Momma’s House 2 Recap

Jamie

What?! Big Momma is back! Just when it seemed like Malcolm Turner had settled down and was out of the game for good, he’s drawn back in for one last case. The main suspect is in need of a nanny and you know what that means! In order to catch the crooks, Big Momma gotta take care of the cooking, cleaning, and three darling kids. Big Momma time!

Why?! The bad guys are aiming to create a computer virus that would allow access to all the high-level intelligence systems in the nation. This program will be sold to the highest bidder (hint: it’s not a good guy). Malcolm needs to stop them, but that’s not all. He’s about to be a new father and needs one last thrill before settling into his life as a desk-jockey, suburbanite. If there’s one thing Big Momma is, it’s full of thrills.

How?! While Malcolm is forbidden from taking part in the mission, he goes over the heads of his superiors and learns that the suspected computer virus creator is looking for a new nanny. Disguised as Big Momma he proves once again that he’s the best agent they have and gets the job. It’s just what Big Momma do. At first he’s like fuck these kids, fuck this house, and fuck their tiny Mexican dog that watches telenovelas and drinks tequila (not joking). But, just like in Nine Lives, he soon comes to realize that the only true way to succeed is to stop trying so hard to be a good agent and just focus on being the best goddamn nanny the family has ever had. Once he does that he stops the bad guys in the nick of time. Phew!

Who?! Ugh! Worst. Planchet. Ever. Zachary Levi is ostensibly the comic relief in this film, but I assure you he is not. I’ve never wanted a character to disappear more than him in this film. Everything he said or did was unnecessary and unfunny. Should have just replaced him with another Big Momma… Note to self: make film with two Big Mommas. Oh wait, they already did and we watched it! Hooray!

Where?! Los Angeles, baby. We even get a couple intertitles telling us when we’re at the “Los Angeles FBI” and the “Orange County FBI.” With some beach scenes to boot, that’s good for an easy B.

When?! Never? And yet… always? That’s all you can presume from what is shown to the viewer. I literally scoured every frame for a hint as to when it took place. I stopped only when I found myself trying to decipher a scrap of newspaper flying through a frame. My conclusion? The piece of paper belonged to The Times-Picayune, a New Orleans paper, which is where Big Momma’s House 2 was filmed but not set. Don’t know why the family had old issues of The Times-Picayune lying around their Los Angeles house. Kinda shatters my suspension of disbelief and movie magic. We can make a broad statement that it’s at the end of the school year, right before summer. But that’s about it. D-.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Big Momma’s House 2? More like The Pacifier starring Vin “Big Momma” Diesel. Oh so long ago we watched the original Big Momma’s House, and it was glorious. Could the sequel stand up? Nope. Let’s go!

The Good – The storyline is at least somewhat more believable that the first. The kid actors are rather impressive: Chloe Grace Moretz? Kat Denning? Pretty solid picks. I have a weird soft spot for Big Momma … I don’t know why, but I do find the character heartwarming in a weird way.
The Bad – I think the fat suit got worse since the first one, something with the face seems to just get worse with each passing film. They really really didn’t give Nia Long enough to do, it is like Ride Along all over again, very talented actresses left to either spoil the guy’s fun or be eye candy. The biggest crime though … the story doesn’t feel original or like a Big Momma story. It feels like The Pacifier with Big Momma dropped into it. Kind of like Die Hard 5, which was just a generic action movie in Russia story with John McClane dropped into it. I guess I don’t really know what else to do with Big Momma except turn her into Ernest (oooo she’s going to camp now!), but it came across as soulless and thus less enjoyable.
The BMT – I don’t think it is a 60+ BMeTric. That is legendary. It is like a 40. It is a bad movie. It looks bad. It has a lot of bad jokes and isn’t once funny. But it needs a hook to make the leap. In the first one the hook was that Martin Lawrence literally tricked people who knew who Big Momma was that this ludicrous melted candle of a fat suit was a real person (the White Chicks disease: they-look-like-monsters-itis). This had nothing to really get it to where it needed to be. Too bad.

It has been a while since I “fixed” (aka Sklogified) a movie. Do you know what else was missing from this film? Paul Giamatti, whose character just disappeared from the sequel. My fix? Get a young guy in as a replacement. He’s obsessed with Big Momma. He’s been improving the suit. When Big Momma is hired as a nanny who has too many tasks to complete within a day what does Lawrence do? Gets his young FBI protegee in to clean the entire house while Big Momma is out or asleep. Oh oh oh oh oh … As Jamie said, Two Big Mommas! The young gun has his own suit and they use it to allow Lawrence to go out on assignment while the young guy has to pretend (terribly) that he’s the real Big Momma! Think Too-da-loo scene from Mrs. Doubtfire, that is the level of trickery that this young guy has to go through during the film. The movie immediately makes more sense too. Like, Lawrence becomes the nanny and then just complains incessantly about doing house work … it’s your fucking job. This way you avoid that weird aside as well. Boom. Fixed. 100% on RT, Oscar for Lawrence, you’re welcome.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Hall of Fame Speech #2: The Wicker Man

Brief note before we start: last July we got together and worked out a first class to be inducted into the Smaddies Baddies BMT Hall of Fame. It has been nearly six years since we started BMT and the films we had seen more than five years ago, in some cases, deserved a rewatch and reassessment. Over the next four weeks leading up to the fourth (sixth?) Smaddies Baddies we’ll bring you previews and Hall of Fame Speeches for the five films chosen. This is the second, for the spooky cult-bad-movie smash hit The Wicker Man starring Nick Cage. The intention is to reminisce a bit about what we remember about the film, what we think of it now, and why it deserved a special place in BMT history. Enjoy!

Hall of Fame Induction Speech for The Wicker Man

Ah, The Wicker Man. When people first learn about BMT upon meeting either me or Patrick (which is usually within five minutes) there is a high likelihood that the first question they have is “Have you seen the The Wicker Man?” It’s almost universally beloved. Primarily this is because it is Nic Cage at his craziest, but also because it defines what makes a bad film great for so many people: easily digestible pieces that stick in your mind. You can tell someone, “You gotta see Wicker Man,” and many different moments distributed throughout the film will deliver on your promise of a good time. While that’s not necessarily what defines many of the top BMT films (e.g. Here on Earth), The Wicker Man represents one of the very best of a certain type of bad movie.

As will be the case with all the BMT HoF films, it’s been five years since we watched this film. So let’s go through what I remember from that first viewing:

This film involves Nic Cage traveling to an island off the coast of Washington run by a bunch of women and bees. He has come to find a lost child and the inhabitants of the island seem determined to do everything to get in his way.
The film stuck in my mind as more of a series of crazy events rather than a coherent story.
The moment I most vividly recall from the film is Nic Cage waking up from a dream within a dream. It might still be the hardest I’ve laughed at a BMT film. It’s the craziest editing/storytelling choice we’ve seen, only rivalled by the triple flashback of Ghosts of Mars.
Besides that you have Nic Cage dressing up like a bear and punching women in the face and getting bees poured all over him.
In fact the whole storyline itself is kind of lost in those moments. I can only presume given the title of the film that Nic Cage dies at the end by being burned in a giant wicker man, but I honestly don’t remember as it was such a minor part of my original experience.

What I was most interested in seeing upon rewatching the film was how the original book may have influenced the remake. Since we watched The Wicker Man so early in BMT’s history there was never a thought of reading the original story. So obviously for the rewatch there was never a thought of not reading the original story. There was a part of me that hoped some of the craziest aspects of The Wicker Man came from that book. That somehow I’d be reading the story and everything would make sense in how we arrived at the remake from the original. Alas, it was not meant to be. The book certainly influenced the original film, but nothing more from the source made it further into the remake. The remake is through and through a remake of the original film. Nothing more.

But when I say “nothing more,” I of course mean, “nothing more than Nic Cage’s magnum opus.” It is astonishing to watch and there is little wonder that this film has captured the hearts and minds of those that follow bad movies closely. Replace Nic Cage with any other actor and the film is assuredly forgotten. He is an acting tornado, tearing into every scene with abandon. At times you wonder if the shock expressed on other actors’ faces is less the reacting to the odd aspects of the plot, and more a product of them watching Nic Cage leave no scenery unchewed. Further, all the scenes that I remember vividly continue to deliver today. The bear punching scene, the bee scene, and the still hilarious dream-within-a-dream scene. They are all still some of the funniest scenes we’ve seen to date. It confirmed for me that it is nothing less than top of the line in popular bad movies: a film that delivers on what it promises over and over again.

I say “popular” because I believe that the film will end up standing out amongst the other great works in the HoF as being more beholden than others on a singular aspect of the film: Nic Cage. Many bad bad films are beholden in this way (e.g. White Comanche and William Shatner playing a pair of White/Native American twins) and we’ve strived in BMT to look at the balance of a film rather than what might be perceived as a gimmick. But The Wicker Man earns its place near the top of BMT HoF despite this because it exemplifies the very best of that category.

The Wicker Man Preview

A small note prior to this post: Last July we decided to take a look back at the movies that we watched over five years ago and choose a Hall of Fame class, five movies that we thought embodied BMT in some way. Perhaps they were particularly bad, or an example of a specific bad movie trope, whatever, something made them stand out as special in our minds. Since we didn’t do email previews back in 2011 we also decided to provide a preview for the movie. This is the second in a series of five leading up to our yearly awards the Smaddies Baddies. A recap (Hall of Fame speech really) will follow immediate afterwards to explain why the movie was chosen, things we loved about the movie, and things we discovered upon second viewing. Enjoy!

The Wicker Man (2006) – BMeTric: 83.4

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(I feel like the Rating plot is pretty interesting. While the number of votes has been increasing steadily you’d usually expect the rating to increase over time (merely regression to the mean, most people would usually not have a particularly strong opinion about The Wicker Man). But this doesn’t, it has been around 3.6 (incredibly low) for years. Perhaps that is what it means to be a “cult bad movie” though? A movie that people who do have strong opinions about movies purposefully seek out and give a 1 on IMDb to. It wouldn’t be surprising honestly. Note that Old Dogs, which is not a cult bad movie, is rated much higher and probably does have a bit of regression to the mean happening, so it is plausible. The BMeTric is also impressively high.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars – Cop travels to an isolated island after receiving word from his ex that her child has disappeared and finds the place populated by a quietly tyrannical cult of women. Interesting (if misogynistic) reimagining of the 1973 film’s concept is poorly executed: a mysterious, building dread has been replaced with the obvious presence of evil that the hero is too dumb to figure out. Cage is sometimes hilariously hammy; only Burstyn, chillingly warm and civilized as the cult’s leader, emerges unscathed. LaBute adapted Anthony Shaffer’s original screenplay.

(Cage is sometimes hilariously hammy? Uhhhhh… watch the film again Leonard. Should just be called Hilariously Hammy Cage.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8tHgGncPA0

(They don’t make them like they used to. They actually did a pretty good job of putting together even the most hilarious parts of the film into a competent trailer. Unfortunately they still made it look like a Y2K era horror film. In other words, not good.)

Directors – Neil LaBute – (Known For: Death at a Funeral; Lakeview Terrace; The Shape of Things; Possession; Some Velvet Morning; Nurse Betty; In the Company of Men; Your Friends & Neighbors; Stars in Shorts; BMT: The Wicker Man; Dirty Weekend; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2007 for Worst Screenplay for The Wicker Man, and Anthony Shaffer. Accomplished playwright as well. Created, directed, and wrote a TV series last year called Billy & Billie… maybe I should check it out.)

Writers – Neil LaBute (screenplay) (as Neil Labute) – (Known For: The Shape of Things; Some Girl(s); Possession; Some Velvet Morning; In the Company of Men; Your Friends & Neighbors; Stars in Shorts; BMT: The Wicker Man; Dirty Weekend; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2007 for Worst Screenplay for The Wicker Man, and Anthony Shaffer. My favorite part of his IMDb bio that it opens with, “Acclaimed and highly discussed filmmaker Neil LaBute[…]” Heh, highly discussed.)

Anthony Shaffer (1973 screenplay) – (Known For: Death on the Nile; The Wicker Man; Sommersby; Evil Under the Sun; Frenzy; Sleuth; BMT: The Wicker Man; Sleuth; Notes: Writer of the original. Died in 2001 at age 75 from a heart attack. Identical twin brother (what, what!) of Peter Schaffer, who wrote the play and film adaptations for Amadeus.)

Actors – Nicolas Cage – (Known For: Snowden; The Family Man; Fast Times at Ridgemont High; The Croods; Dog Eat Dog; Kick-Ass; National Treasure; The Rock; The Trust; Con Air; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; Face/Off; Grindhouse; Lord of War; Drive Angry; Moonstruck; Leaving Las Vegas; Matchstick Men; Adaptation.; Raising Arizona; The Frozen Ground; Wild at Heart; Joe; City of Angels; Rumble Fish; Peggy Sue Got Married; Valley Girl; Bringing Out the Dead; Astro Boy; Snake Eyes; The Weather Man; World Trade Center; Bad Lieutenant; Birdy; The Cotton Club; Vampire’s Kiss; BMT: The Wicker Man; Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance; Left Behind; Ghost Rider; G-Force; Tokarev; Season of the Witch; Outcast; Trespass; Dying of the Light; Bangkok Dangerous; Stolen; Pay the Ghost; Wings of the Apache; The Runner; Zandalee; Deadfall; Amos & Andrew; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin; Windtalkers; Knowing; Next; Army of One; Trapped in Paradise; Justice; USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage; Sonny; Gone in Sixty Seconds; National Treasure: Book of Secrets; 8MM; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2015 for Worst Actor for Left Behind, in 2013 for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Seeking Justice, in 2012 for Worst Actor for Drive Angry, Season of the Witch, and Trespass, in 2008 for Ghost Rider, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and Next, and in 2007 for The Wicker Man; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2012 for Worst Screen Couple for Drive Angry, Season of the Witch, and Trespass, and in 2007 for The Wicker Man. How doesn’t he win one of those awards? Whatever. Not much more needed to say about our main man Nic Cage. Apparently up to play Reagan in an upcoming film. I say do it, bro. Do it.)

Ellen Burstyn – (Known For: Interstellar; Requiem for a Dream; The Age of Adaline; The Exorcist; Red Dragon; The Fountain; Wiener-Dog; Draft Day; Omoide no Mânî; When a Man Loves a Woman; W.; The Last Picture Show; The Calling; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; The Baby-Sitters Club; How to Make an American Quilt; Playing by Heart; The Yards; Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood; Lovely, Still; Another Happy Day; Same Time, Next Year; BMT: The Wicker Man; Main Street; Dying Young; Notes: Nominated for six Oscars, winning one for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Is the reason why Emmy nominations require an actor to appear in at least 5% of a project to be eligible after she was nominated for appearing in a TV Movie Mrs. Harris for a grand total of 14 seconds due to name recognition.)

Leelee Sobieski – (Known For: Eyes Wide Shut; Public Enemies; Deep Impact; Never Been Kissed; Roadkill; Max; My First Mister; Walk All Over Me; A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries; BMT: The Wicker Man; In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Jungle 2 Jungle; Branded; Here on Earth; 88 Minutes; The Glass House; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2009 for Worst Supporting Actress for 88 Minutes, and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. From what I understand she’s essentially retired from acting to raise her children and has no intention of returning. Noooooooooooooooooooo!)

Budget/Gross – $40 million / Domestic: $23,649,127 (Worldwide: $38,755,073)

(That is rough. But perhaps this was all part of the brilliant black comedy homage to the original, which also didn’t fair well in the theaters. Yeah, that’s the ticket. People only think it did poorly at the box office. In reality LaBute and Cage are geniuses that purposefully made sure it failed to properly honor the original.)

#40 for the Horror Remake genre

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(Right at the peak, classic BMT. It is kind of amazing, you can see that they made a few (probably the good ones) and that kicked off the 2005-2010 gold rush. I’m surprised the genre collapsed considering it pulled in decent cash ($12K per theater for 2000 theater is $24 million, more than enough considering horror films tend towards low budget). My guess? They ran out of remakes to make. Maybe in like 20 years it’ll change again when the remake to The Conjuring and Annabelle are thrown out there.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 15% (16/106): Puzzlingly misguided, Neil LaBute’s update The Wicker Man struggles against unintentional comedy and fails.

(This matches my perception of the film, which is that if you replace Nic Cage with Patrick Wilson, or someone equally white and innocuous, you have a reasonably creepy film that is forgotten at this point. The only thing actually puzzling about The Wicker Man is Nic Cage single handedly tearing it apart.)

Poster – The Wicker Sklog (B+)

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(I’m actually feeling this poster. I don’t love how prominent the picture of the little girl is on the poster, but everything else is well done and artistic.)

Tagline(s) – Some Sacrifices Must Be Made (B)

(Oh ho ho ho… get it? Sacrifices!… He’s being sacrificed in a giant wicker man. Nailed it! This is actually pretty clever, but doesn’t really take enough from the plot to get my full-throated support. The more I think about it, the more I don’t like it, so I better just go ahead and grade it.)

Keyword(s) – feminism; Top Ten by BMeTric: 83.4 The Wicker Man (2006); 52.5 Ghostbusters (2016); 44.7 Le divorce (2003); 43.1 The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962); 43.0 In the Cut (2003); 37.9 The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004); 34.8 G.I. Jane (1997); 29.3 The Single Moms Club (2014); 28.4 The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986); 27.8 Girls Against Boys (2012);

(Ha! Somehow I knew Ghostbusters would make an appearance. That BMeTric is an embarrassment and tells you loads about IMDb and its users, but whatever. We almost watched The Clan of the Cave Bear as a 1986 film adapted from a book, but I didn’t like the idea of reading a historical fiction book that probably had little to do with the eventual movie.)

Notes – There is a “Missing” sign in the police station with a photo of Edward Woodward’s character from The Wicker Man (1973). (Super fun fact!)

Robin Hardy, a writer and the director of the original film, and Christopher Lee, who played Summerisle in the original film, were both critical of the remake. Hardy had his name removed from the film’s credits as he did not wish to be associated with it.

Not screened for critics. (I did wonder whether they knew just how bad it was when they released it. These two notes answer that question.)

The film is dedicated to late musician Johnny Ramone, who introduced Nicolas Cage to Robin Hardy’s original The Wicker Man (1973). (These notes are insane)

Nicolas Cage objected to the criticism that the film was unintentionally funny, saying that he and Neil LaBute knowingly made the picture an absurdist black comedy and that it should have been seen and judged as such. (I do not believe this, mostly because it’s all well and good to make an intentionally bad film for laughs, but I doubt LaBute would use a remake of the cult classic The Wicker Man to do that.)

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (Nicolas Cage)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple (Nicolas Cage)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Remake or Rip-Off

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Neil LaBute, Anthony Shaffer)

(Oddly underappreciated at the time by the Razzies. Lost every category to either Basic Instinct 2 or Little Man. While that isn’t totally ridiculous, The Wicker Man is clearly now the most celebrated film of the three)

Big Momma Like Father Like Son Preview

We are starting up the Squeakuels category with one of the most hotly anticipated BMTs that I can remember. We watched the first entry in the trilogy in 2015 and are taking this opportunity to finish the series. That’s right! We’re watching Big Momma’s House 2 and Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son! You really can’t go wrong here. Especially considering Big Momma’s House already gave us one of the best MonoSklogs in history. It’s… it’s… beautiful. Let’s go!

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011) – BMeTric: 63.9

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(Absolutely incredible. I don’t know if there are two sequels which are as close as these two are. Also the amount films like this increase in rating over time is also very impressive. Sub-3.0 is ridiculous, and now it is a much more reasonable 4.4 after 6 years. Also, fun fact: This movie came out three weeks after BMT started. If only BMT Live! had existed all those long years ago. Sigh.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – Lawrence dons fat suit and female attire once again in second sequel to Big Momma’s House. This time, Lawrence’s cross-dressing FBI agent goes undercover with his similarly disguised teenaged son (Jackson) to find evidence incriminating a Russian mobster hidden somewhere on campus of an Atlanta girl’s high school for performing arts. Frantic slapstick and action-comedy flourishes may please some fans, but a couple of spirited song-and-dance sequences indicate that this might have worked better as — no kidding! — a musical.

(It beat the second one!!! That last line is horrifying. Imagine if Big Momma’s House 3 inexplicably just became a musical? It just doesn’t make sense. What a nonsense idea Leonard. You know what is also a nonsense idea? That incriminating evidence against a Russian mobster would be found at an elite Atlanta all-girls school … but that’s why we play the game.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3J29PNvIhY

(Oh wow. Let’s hit my highlights: (1) The son looks like a monster. Should have also gone major fat suit for him. (2) They are continuing to suggest Big Momma can be totally nude and no one would bat an eye. It is like Paul Giamatti works on it in his spare time because in the first movie it was for sure just nude colored padding underneath. (3) This looks exactly like a classic “we need comedy here … he takes ballet I guess” kind of movie. Just random stuff popped in. (4) The bad guy looks and appears to be ridididiculous. I can not wait.)

Directors – John Whitesell – (BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Deck the Halls; Malibu’s Most Wanted; See Spot Run; Thunderstruck; Calendar Girl; Notes: Veteran TV director nominated for a Primetime Emmy for The John Larroquette Show.)

Writers – Matt Fogel (screenplay) (as Matthew Fogel & story) (as Matthew Fogel) – (BMT: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Notes: Not very much on him. He worked on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs where he with Phil Lord and Chris Miller and sold the Prince Charming script. I assume that is no longer happening since Cinderella itself is made last year.)

Don Rhymer (story) – (Known For: The Santa Clause 2; Rio 2; Rio; Surf’s Up; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Big Momma’s House; Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London; Deck the Halls; The Honeymooners; Carpool; Notes: Sadly died at the age of 51 from cancer right when he was hitting his stride with Surf’s Up, Rio, and Rio 2.)

Darryl Quarles (characters) – (BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Black Knight; Big Momma’s House; Notes: Maintains a website and seems to run the lecture circuit and sell scripts. I find it very interesting how many people ended up involved in all three movies.)

Actors – Martin Lawrence – (Known For: Bad Boys; Do the Right Thing; Life; Death at a Funeral; Open Season; House Party; Boomerang; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Black Knight; College Road Trip; Big Momma’s House; Rebound; National Security; Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins; What’s the Worst That Could Happen?; Wild Hogs; House Party 2; Blue Streak; A Thin Line Between Love and Hate; Bad Boys II; Nothing to Lose; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2012 for Worst Actress for Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. Was a Golden Gloves contender in boxing as a youth but broke his eye socket and had to quit.)

Brandon T. Jackson – (Known For: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief; This Christmas; Tropic Thunder; 8 Mile; Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters; Ali; Roll Bounce; Operation: Endgame; BMT: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Tooth Fairy; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Lottery Ticket; Get a Job; Thunderstruck; Big Stan; Fast & Furious; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2012 for Worst Supporting Actress for Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. Graduated from the same high school as Justin Bartha. Now that’s a fun fact.)

Also stars Jessica Lucas (From Pompeii!)

Budget/Gross – $32 million / Domestic: $37,915,414 (Worldwide: $82,686,066)

(Just like the Fat Suit and Cross Dressing genres you can see this franchise die with each addition. They, I assume, must have seen the writing on the wall and cancelled the inevitable Big Momma’s House Party where Big Momma has to save her Brooklyn housing development from being sold to Fatty Katsman the eeeeevil real estate developer … I should have saved that little gem for sequel prequel remake in the recap, that’s gold.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 5% (3/60): Unnecessary, unfunny, and generally unwelcome, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son offers more of the same for fans of Martin Lawrence’s perplexingly popular series.

(1% less than its predecessor. Perplexingly popular is our jam. Unwelcome? You mean the world isn’t made up of people watching films ironically? Go figure.)

Poster – Big Momma Like Father Like Sklog (D)

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(Seriously, what is with Big Momma just hanging out in front of sky? Makes me wonder if it’s just a default background for a lot of films and I’ve just not noticed it before. They somehow got worse since the last one. Colors are now less consistent. There are greens, yellows, browns, blues, reds, and whites everywhere. awful.)

Tagline(s) – Momma’s got back-up. (C)

(Not the worst but stretching a bit in the cleverness department. Going for a little “baby’s got back,” play, but didn’t quite land it. Meh.)

Keyword(s) – fbi agent; Top Ten by BMeTric: 71.0 Torque (2004); 66.7 Big Momma’s House 2 (2006); 63.9 Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011); 63.6 Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009); 61.3 Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005); 60.8 Mr. Magoo (1997); 58.0 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998); 56.5 Fair Game (1995); 53.6 Half Past Dead (2002); 51.8 Corky Romano (2001);

(Amaaaaazing list. Like aliens, it looks like FBI agents = sweet BMT film. All of those films should be seen for BMT. All would be incredible. Don’t worry, 3 Ninjas would be watched during a Hulk Hogan Hulkamania BMT Bonanza Movie Ultra-Marathon)

Notes – Nia Long declined to reprise her role as “Sherry” from the first two films. (Ha! Sounds like a plan Nia)

Brandon T. Jackson, who plays Trent, was actually a 26 year old man portraying a 17 year old boy at the time. He took over the role from Jascha Washington who appeared in the first two films. (Normal age defying Hollywood stuff. I honestly didn’t realize his son was the son of Nia Long from the first film)

Big Momma’s House 2 Preview

Big Momma’s House 2 (2006) – BMeTric: 66.7

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(Fun fact: Big Momma’s House is the film that helped me discover the weird inflection in the 2011 IMDb vote plots. I saw the inflection while plotting votes for Big Momma’s House, but then realized (tragically) that Big Momma Like Father Like Son came out in 2011 and so it took like four more tests to make sure the bump wasn’t just related to sequels. Obviously 50+ BMeTric is an amazing benchmark, and we are hitting two in the same week! Squeakuel Please!!)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars – FBI agent Lawrence again dons a fat suit and transforms himself into the title character; here, he poses as a nanny to spy on the alleged designer of a deadly computer worm. Gratuitous sequel is an uneasy mixture of stale humor and goopy sentiment.

(This plot is already 1000x more realistic than the first one, where we had to convince ourselves it was possible that a man dressed in a fat suit could dupe an entire town into believing he was Big Momma… including her own grandchild. The main hesitance I have is that this sounds almost identical to the plot of The Pacifier, which wasn’t nearly as solid a BMT as the first Big Momma’s.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkSH3iCZDs

(Wow… just wow. There are a number crimes committed in this trailer that would put Martin Lawrence’s character on a sexual predator list. Also, his Big Momma costume has gotten so good at this point that he would have to spend hours every morning in makeup to apply it. He seemingly can traipse about in the nude and no one notices anything amiss.)

Directors – John Whitesell – (BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Deck the Halls; Malibu’s Most Wanted; See Spot Run; Thunderstruck; Calendar Girl; Notes: Comes from a family of Hollywood heavyweights, including his brother Patrick Whitesell who is co-CEO of WME with Ari Emanuel.)

Writers – Don Rhymer (written by) – (Known For: The Santa Clause 2; Rio 2; Rio; Surf’s Up; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Big Momma’s House; Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London; Deck the Halls; The Honeymooners; Carpool; Notes: Interestingly is credited with ‘script revisions’ on Black Knight, the other Darryl Quarles film. So was a big part of bringing all of Quarles’ credits to screen in the end.)

Darryl Quarles (characters) – (BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Black Knight; Big Momma’s House; Notes: This dude was big for a minute with Big Momma’s House and Black Knight being made back-to-back. Just a character credit for this one though.)

Actors – Martin Lawrence – (Known For: Bad Boys; Do the Right Thing; Life; Death at a Funeral; Open Season; House Party; Boomerang; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Black Knight; College Road Trip; Big Momma’s House (BMT) Rebound; National Security; Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins; What’s the Worst That Could Happen?; Wild Hogs (BMT); House Party 2; Blue Streak; A Thin Line Between Love and Hate; Bad Boys II; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2012 for Worst Actress for Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. Kind of amazed he has only been nominated once. I grew up seeing him on Martin, but probably best known for things like Bad Boys. Has had a long history with over working (including collapsing while jogging in a fat suit in preparation for the original Big Momma’s House) resulting in several high profile hospitalizations and arrests.)

Emily Procter – (Known For: Jerry Maguire; Leaving Las Vegas; Barry Munday; The Big Tease; Guinevere; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Body Shots; Notes: A major star (over 200 episodes) of CSI Miami she has a shockingly small feature filmography. She sings in a 1980s cover band (formerly called White Lightning, it is now called Motion). Unfortunately I can’t seem to find their touring schedule online.)

Nia Long – (Known For: Keanu; Friday; Boyz n the Hood; The Best Man Holiday; Boiler Room; The Best Man; Alfie; Soul Food; Love Jones; The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy; Baadasssss!; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2; Are We Done Yet?; Are We There Yet?; Big Momma’s House; Made in America; Premonition; The Single Moms Club; Held Up; Stigmata; Notes: Most famous for Pringles Mom’s Club. Just joshing. Nothing too interesting outside of standard personal stuff, but her next project appears to be starring in a remake of the 1988 film Beaches alongside Idina Menzel.)

Budget/Gross – $40 million / Domestic: $70,165,972 (Worldwide: $138,259,062)

(A phenomenon! It really it very impressive how much money this movie made, although I would think they were hoping to crack $100 million like the original. Still, no wonder a third movie was made.)

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

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(Recent viewings include Paul Blart 2 and Ride Along 2. I do love these plots because, and this will become more obvious in the next few weeks I think, previous plots suggest that sequels come in waves. I’ve said previously that it is like Hollywood must replenish their store of bad sequels. We are approaching a fall. It has just occurred to me that the Bad Movie Golden Age of 2005-2010 came during a sequel drought … perhaps truly inspired garbage films can only be made after being unshackled from money grabbing sequels. One can hope.)

#6 for the Cross Dressing / Gender Bending genre: Movies where it’s at the forefront, excluding animation and documentaries.

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(Oh shit! Right at the peak of the cross-dressing-ploitation phase of Hollywood (I presume … is my history of Hollywood off?). More seriously, nearly a quarter of all 40 movies listed here were made in 2004-2006 … which is astonishing. Having dropped financially from the heady heights of …. well, Mrs. Doubtfire I guess. But still, I assume this genre will go extinct. And honestly? I don’t see why it shouldn’t.)

#16 for the Comedy – Fat Suit genre

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(Everything about these charts is incredible. Yet another peak! One-third of all fat suit movies were made between 2004 and 2006. What is happening in this world!? This genre is also dying, the financial picture looks dire. You can basically plot a straight line down to zero on that plot.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 6% (4/71): Unfunny and unoriginal. In other words, a perfect piece of evidence for opponents of pointless movie sequels.

(Ooooof, sub-10% is stunning. And there is no way the third installment does significantly better either, so we are likely doubling up on sub-10% films this week. This has the faint whiff of White Chicks to me. Like … you know they’re going to basically make the fact that people pretending to be other people doesn’t work the way they portray it kind of part of the joke. Remember … how the White Chicks looked like horror film monsters and no one noticed? Like that.)

Poster – Big Momma’s Sklog 2 (D+)

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(Not a fan. What is even the framing in this poster? Just Big Momma standing in front of… sky? Is she on a cliff? Font is easy (Big Momma Sklog 2) and doesn’t tell me a story. Boo on all fronts. Nothing truly ugly, but nothing good either.)

Tagline(s) – The Momma of all Comedies is Back. (D+)

(Gross. Both the poster and tagline are just lazy. I hate these types of taglines. Unacceptable Big Momma’s House 2. We need more than this from you.)

Keyword(s) – undercover; Top Ten by BMeTric: 75.1 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994); 72.4 Barb Wire (1996); 70.6 Taxi (I) (2004); 69.1 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989); 66.7 Big Momma’s House 2 (2006); 63.9 Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011); 62.5 On Deadly Ground (1994); 61.3 Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005); 60.0 Big Momma’s House (2000); 57.8 Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006);

(Besides the last one it is an impressive list. Speaking of Squeakuels if we just shined off Miss Congeniality and Police Academy (ugh) we would have basically shined off of this incredible list.)

Notes – Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel & Nicholas Stoller provided uncredited rewrites to Don Rhymer’s script. (You know, I expected more better notes from this movie. Where are the notes about the producers trying to get Giamatti back or something?)

Independence Day: Resurgence Recap

Jamie

First post of the new year and we get to dive into a holiday classic. Happy New Year everyone and Happy Fourth of Joooool-eye!

What?! It’s been twenty years since Independence Day and the War of 1996. Humans have used alien technology to make immeasurable advances, but nothing could have prepared them for the next invasion. Will this next generation of fighters not go quietly into the night, not vanish without a fight, live on, and survive to celebrate humanity’s… Independence Day: Resurgence!

Why?! You may be wondering why the aliens are back just twenty years later after getting their alien butts handed to them. Turns out before Will Smith totally rocked them they were able to send out a distress signal to the super mother ship. They’re coming back for vengeance and to sap on our planet’s sweet, sweet molten core. This vengeance comes in the form of a 3000 mile long ship that is so large it totally fucks everything up with its gravity. The motivation for the humans is even simpler: survival.

How?! The aliens’ plan is to take us out, eat our planet’s core, and leave it an empty husk for the interstellar vultures. The humans’ plan is more complicated. That’s because on our own we are straight up screwed. Fortunately there is a rebel alien species that also received the distress signal and comes to our rescue. After first blowing its ship to smithereens (oops) we are able to salvage the powerful alien entity from the wreckage (in the form of a giant white orb). This orb is feared by the enemy aliens as it represents a much more advanced species capable of taking them downtown charlie brown (in the galactic sense). Teamed up with our ally we are able to lure the alien queen from the safety of the mothership and stop the drilling of our core. For this is the only way to safely set up the third film in the trilogy that everyone is obviously clamouring for (though lately Emmerich doesn’t seem super confident in it happening).

Who?! I had an existential crisis about the Who category recently. I started to think that there just weren’t enough Planchet-type characters in this world and I might need to take it in a different direction. Independence Day: Resurgence was a philosophical salve for that wound. I counted no less than five separate Planchets. We had Floyd (a nerdy auditor or something), Dikembe Umbuntu (a kooky African warlord), Papa Levinson (Jeff Goldblum’s extra Jewish father), Dr. Okun and his life partner (back from the dead and faaabbbbbuulllous), and my personal favorite Charlie Miller (BFFs with Liam Hemsworth’s character and a truly classic Planchet). The Who category is back baby! A+++ effort by the writers (one of which was one of the Planchets, Floyd!)

Where?! Kind of a hard question. If you had to pick one location it would be Area 51 in Nevada. Most time was spent there and the best fight scene took place nearby. However, we also have to give a shout out to the Moon, central Africa, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, all of which hosted key scenes of the film. Kind of an amazing set of locations. B+ effort using intertitles and everything.

When?! A+ alert! Took place on Independence Day, 2016. Straight up getting it in the title. NBD.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Independence Day: Resurgence? More like …. Resplendent Day 2? Independence Day Boo? I feel like my brain is broken, this is like the fourth week in a row with wizzeak puns. Anywho, we watched a sequel to a beloved Sci Fi adventure from 1996, how could it possibly live up to the expectations? We’ll let’s see:

The Good – I thought this movie was … surprisingly cogent. It was surprisingly entertaining. The Independence Day stalwarts are still pretty good actors. And the direction was pretty solid. The movie was average in literally every possible regard. Which is surprising. A ton of people think this movie is the worst of the year. For me it was just shy of not that bad.
The Bad – The use of Goldblum’s father (Judd Hirsch) was atrocious. His story makes no sense (am I wrong or do they suggest he drove literally across the country in a school bus through the film? [NOTE: I was wrong, he was in LA and he was struck by the wave caused by the giant ship’s gravity, not the ship landing]) and could also have been completely cut from the film with no impact. Same goes for the Russian drillers. The young actors are all either anonymous or terrible. The story is ludicrous in a couple different way, but most obviously in that it requires several enormous exposition dumps in order to clear up the plot debris that floats alongside the gravity of the 3000 mile alien ship.
The BMT – And yet I was entertained. I would gladly watch a third. I would gladly watch a well made show (don’t half ass some NBC thing, but like Showtime or HBO or something? I’d go for it). I do not personally think this is a BMT film. People think this might be the worst of the year! I find that nuts. This is like a 10 tops for me.

The Sci-Fi glory that is this movie inspired me to bring back a rare game: Sklogbusters our scientific mythbusting segment vaguely started for the movie Bats and their giant cave cooling refrigeration unit. In this segment we ask: What do the aliens want with the core and does it make sense that it was their goal in the first one anyways? The key question is: Does it actually contain enough energy to really matter for a ship that size (a 3000 mile long disc)?

To start some back of the envelope calculations (BMT does not guarantee the accuracy of these figures). Let’s assume it is a perfect disc and that it is 8:1 diameter to thickness (because). We also know it is hollow inside, so let’s say it has a hull thickness equivalent to a battleship, and the density of transparent aluminum (Star Trek references all up in here) and you get a mass of about 4 * 10^17 kg I think. Ignoring almost all physics let’s just use 62 MJ / kg as the energy needed to get the spaceship back off of the earth and away from the planet. Using the heat capacity here magma has a heat capacity of 41 J / mol / K, and the core is about 5000 K. Iron is 0.056 kg/mol so each kg of Fe would provide about 4 MJ.

And that is where the figure doesn’t really add up for assuming the core is being used to propel the spaceship back off of the Earth. You need 62 MJ / kg to get each kg of fuel off of the planet, but the heat only provides 4 MJ and the radiation isn’t much at all. Which leads to only one conclusion: fuel is not the reason for the sweet sweet core sucking power of the aliens. Perhaps with wormhole technology travelling the universe is trivial. And perhaps it is, instead, the iron itself they want. They wanted the core to “grow their technology” and for energy. Why not to build dyson spheres? Would make the most sense since they appear to have cold fusion in this universe. I think there is only one moral to this story: questioning and interrogating garbage Sci-Fi science is a waste of time, because I am forced to declare this myth plausible since the technological advances of the alien race appear to be so advanced as to be unknowable. Sigh.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Hall of Fame Speech #1: Old Dogs

Brief note before we start: last July we got together and worked out a first class to be inducted into the Smaddies Baddies BMT Hall of Fame. It has been nearly six years since we started BMT and the films we had seen more than five years ago, in some cases, deserved a rewatch and reassessment. Over the next four weeks leading up to the fourth (sixth?) Smaddies Baddies we’ll bring you previews and Hall of Fame Speeches for the five films chosen. This is the first, for the raucous buddy comedy Old Dogs starring Robin Williams and John Travolta. The intention is to reminisce a bit about what we remember about the film, what we think of it now, and why it deserved a special place in BMT history. Enjoy!

Hall of Fame Induction Speech for Old Dogs

Perhaps it should not be that shocking that the first film we watched for BMT made it into the Hall of Fame. After all, we’ve now watched nearly 350 films over the past six years. Something special must have clicked in those early days to tell us: This is worth it, this is the correct path for your life. BMT owes a lot to the podcast How Did This Get Made? for this reason, it was their first film as well. For the first several weeks of BMT’s existence we exclusively watched films from HDTGM, and only ventured away from their filmography because they only did a film every other week, and their bad movies tasted differed from ours. And in a way that is why I remember Old Dogs so fondly. It was the start of it all and also lead us down a path to differentiating our tastes from others in the “bad movie space”.

Considering I had seen this movie once nearly six years ago, it was mindblowing (and a testament to the film) how much of it I still remembered prior to the reviewing. A quick rundown:

Travolta and Williams are sports publicity managers and have a big meeting to represent Japanese baseball players.
Seth Green is their young partner who is sent to Japan to close the deal but instead ends up becoming a karaoke master.
They open with how Williams got a divorce ten years prior and then went to spring break with Travolta as some buddy therapy. While there Williams got a dumb tattoo (amazingly Jamie remembered the tattoo said Freemont instead of Freeman!) across his entire chest.
They close at the zoo where they use a jet pack or something to fly around. Seth Green gets captured by a gorilla, an extremely minor, and yet highly promoted portion of the film. And I have a vague sense of the zoo being in Vermont.

I remembered a ton more, but those were the highlights, and everything is as ridiculous as I remembered. Indeed, Old Dogs is a true rarity. It hits six different bad movie checkboxes: (1) Horrible and intrusive music. (2) Cut to shit. Flashbacks and side flashes galore where they clearly had a bunch of unused stuff lying around and didn’t know where to put it. (3) Montages all over the place. (4) Way too emotional and heart stringy. (5) It is a kids film with the perfect “adult storyline” that just doesn’t make sense. Why would kids want to hear about sports publicists trying to get Japanese baseball players on board? (6) It is a twin film, which obviously the bad movie twins love. My favorite part: Williams’ fake tan early in the film. Why? Because they clearly had shot a much more mundane and normal introduction to the kids, but felt the need to really get into the comedy early on. Before inexplicably leaving for a carnival the love interest reveals an “old family secret” to get it all off before leaving and the tan is literally never mentioned ever again. It is unusual for a bad comedy to hit any check marks (they are usually just boring). This is next level worst-of-the-year type work, and I’m surprised it isn’t more well known in bad movie circles.

Old Dogs is the very definition of good-bad. It is a zero-chuckle-comedy that is consistently terrible and punched up to shit, deconstructing it into a set of vignettes with a plot cloud instead of a plot line. The ridiculousness is peppered uniformly throughout the film: The crazy tan, the camp scene, the drug scene, and the finale are basically all in totally different parts of the film allowing for a sustained level of amazement throughout. I still think this could be the best-bad comedy we’ve watched, and an example of why such bad movies are almost impossible to find because something like this should never have been released to theaters, but, against all odds, it was. And I’m thankful for it.