Tag: BMT 2017

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter Preview

While we had looked forward to watching Hansel & Gretel for years, the horror/thriller entry in the punctuation film cycle is one that we’ve been looking forward to for a whole 2 months. That’s right! We are returning to Crystal Lake to hit up the fourth and fifth in the Friday the 13th series, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. These count as the coveted “:” entry in the cycle, which could have been any number of films. We had so much fun watching the first three entries in the sequel cycle that we couldn’t resist returning to the well for some more. At this rate we’ll be watching Jason X in no time. Let’s go!

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) – BMeTric: 28.4

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FridayThe13thTheFinalChapter_RV

(I do think this movie is benefiting from some reflection by the horror community. Perhaps it is a sense that it was the third installment to start where the previous left off and thus could be viewed as putting an appropriate button on the series. Specifically that the last three were a trilogy of the murderous rampage of Jason one weekend in New Jersey. And that nice little trilogy kind of ruined by the later installments, which can now mostly be ignored after what? Fifteen plus years since the last of this run of the character? I don’t know, that rise to near 6.0 IMDb score isn’t what I would personally call natural, it is more than regression to the mean.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Why bother with a new script? Jason finally gets his — except that (title notwithstanding) the door is left open for yet another sequel!

(Ha! Leonard Maltin notoriously hates horror films, and for the initial three films the claim to fame was low budget, high body count, and inventive kills. Not exactly up his alley. But a BOMB is always fun.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBme5lOcZF4

(That is pretty spoilerific I must say. Gives away at least a bit of what? Like 6 of the kills? Suggests Jason dies, indicates who kills him, etc. But back then you’d see this like once and then see the movie a few weeks later so who’d remember. Kind of like the voiceover and the idea though.)

Directors – Joseph Zito – (Known For: The Prowler; BMT: Red Scorpion; Missing in Action; Invasion USA; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: Known for working with Chuck Norris and being heavily influential in the slasher genre with The Prowler (1975, so quite early). But most interesting to me? He did a year of pre-production on a live action Spider-Man that never came to be. Here’s a teaser trailer:

)

Writers – Victor Miller, Ron Kurz, Sean S. Cunningham (character creator) – (I’m going to just put this at the top. We’ve already covered these guys and they’re going to show up in every subsequent preview as well. Just go look at Part II or III if you want fun facts. They wrote the first film and are credited for the character exclusively after that)

Martin Kitrosser (character creator) – (BMT: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning; Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: Last time I mentioned he was a long time script supervisor who worked with Tarantino on his films. He wrote Part III and has character credits on The Final Chapter and A New Beginning. His directorial debut was the fifth Silent Night Deadly Night movie.)

Carol Watson (character creator) – (BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: Hard to find info given her generic name, but I do know she is a credited screenwriter for the second Meatballs movie (which doesn’t qualify for BMT unfortunately))

Barney Cohen (screenplay) – (BMT: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: Speaking of that 1986 Spider Man film! This guy was one of the screenwriters for that! He suggested that Doctor Octopus be called Doc Ock, have an assistant named Weiner, get bitten by a spider and claim to be the true Spider-Man, and that Weiner was Uncle Ben’s killer. Oh, and Doc Ock says “okey-dokey” throughout the script. Best IMDb note ever.)

Bruce Hidemi Sakow (story) – (BMT: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: A veteran screenwriter whose IMDb claims he’s sold fifteen scripts with four ultimately being produced. Basically Zito must have had complete control of this project because Sakow wrote one of his other projects Quarantine (which appears to have never been made) and apparently personally hired him to write this movie.)

Actors – Erich Anderson – (Known For: Unfaithful; Officer Downe; Without Limits; Bat*21; The Glass Shield; Infinity; Special; Auggie Rose; BMT: Missing in Action; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Nightwatch; Notes: A character actor across television and film. He really has very little as far as things I know on his resume … besides Murder, She Wrote. In another life I would be a person who blogs every episode of Murder, She Wrote. That blog is live! The most recent post was about three weeks ago.)

Judie Aronson – (Known For: Weird Science; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; Lisa Picard Is Famous; BMT: American Ninja; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Hannibal; Notes: She got hypothermia while filming a scene in a lake for this movie. The stuntman playing Jason threatened to quit over the incident. Both the fourth and fifth films appear to have issues with the directing it would seem.)

Peter Barton – (Known For: Hell Night; BMT: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: Named one of the 10 sexiest guys in soaps by Playgirl. Might have to check out his turn in the revival of 60’s detective series Burke’s Law.)

Budget/Gross – $2.6 million / Domestic: $32,980,880 (N/A)

(Free money. Get yo free money. I wonder when the run will end. This is basically the fourth in a row where the return on investment was probably like 1000%, but at some point that has to end otherwise they would have just kept doing it right?)

#28 for the Horror – Slasher genre

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(The plot is somewhat uninteresting because we’ve obviously seen this plot twice before for the other two Friday the 13ths we did for BMT. This is the beginning of the end for the series as this made less than its predecessor and no Jason movie (until they added the far more popular Freddy Kruger to the mix) made more than Friday the 13th Part III after. Kind of insane to think about actually)

Rotten Tomatoes – 25% (6/24): No consensus yet.

(I do love me some consensus making: Retroactively becoming a joke the fourth installment is shockingly coherent in context. It doesn’t mean it is good, and the subsequent flogging of the series reflects poorly on what could have been a clean ending to the series. Most reviews are from around now, so it really is colored by modern attitudes towards the franchise. But people seem fairly positive about the movie in its context, it just … wasn’t the final chapter.)

Poster – Friday the Sklogteenth: The Final Chapter (F)

friday_the_thirteenth_the_final_chapter

(Oh blah. They went from shockingly artistic for the first three films to “just throw some words on a page. People will come and watch anyway.” The font and the stark red on black would normally score points, but not with this.)

Tagline(s) – Three Times Before You Have Felt The Terror, Known The Madness, Lived The Horror. But This Is The One You’ve Been Screaming For. (F)

Friday April 13th is Jason’s Unlucky Day (A-)

(The first one is hardly a tagline except that they actually put that monstrosity on a poster! Gross. The second is actually pretty clever. Short, sweet, and clever. Hints that Jason will die. Only thing working against it is that it uses the release date in the title… slightly meta as it is clear that the story doesn’t take place on that date.)

Keyword(s) – morgue; Top Ten by BMeTric: 76.6 The Fog (2005); 73.9 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007); 73.6 One Missed Call (2008); 72.9 Striptease (1996); 72.2 Halloween: Resurrection (2002); 69.2 Feardotcom (2002); 60.9 Black Christmas (2006); 56.6 Double Dragon (1994); 53.4 The Transporter Refueled (2015); 51.2 Rage (2014);

(Oooo digging this list. The Fog is amazing. One Missed Call is apparently legendary. Good mix of recent and different genres from the 90’s. Morgues man, I don’t remember it in Striptease, but whatevs.)

Notes – The strange dance which Jimbo performs at the party was contributed by actor, Crispin Glover, and was based on the eccentric way he actually danced in clubs. On the set, he was dancing to “Back in Black” by AC/DC, as the scene was filmed. In the film, an edited version of “Love Is a Lie”, by Lion, was dubbed into the scene. (Ooooo I love this fun fact. This reminds me of the Giovanni Ribisi dance from Tes and Million Ways to Die in the West)

Director Joseph Zito was opposed to using clips from previous installments at the beginning of the film. (Good on you Zito. Probably one of the weaker traits of the series is the way they kind of force-stitched everything together and wasted a whole chunk of time replaying a movie people probably already watched)

The video which Axel watches is called Aerobicise (1982), and stars Darcy DeMoss, who went on to play Nikki in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. (Also a great fun fact. I’m going to go ahead and muse about the shared Friday the 13th universe for a while)

During filming, Kimberly Beck, who plays Trish, experienced strange occurrences, including a man watching her while she ran in the park and strange phone calls at all hours. This stopped when production was over. (Actresses being stalked seemed to be a sinister running issue with this series. The actress from the first film was stalked and had to quit the series as well)

The nurse’s name tag reads “R. Morgan, RN,” an homage to actress Robbi Morgan, who played Annie in Friday the 13th (1980).

Corey Feldman was legitimately terrified during the window shot. As per series tradition, Jason was played by yet another stuntman in The Final Chapter, this time Ted White, a seasoned veteran of 40 years who had doubled for John Wayne and Clark Cable. He did not like Corey Feldman, calling him the “meanest goddamn little kid” he’d ever dealt with. When it came time to film the famous scene near the end when Jason reaches through a broken window to pull Tommy out of a house White got to act out his frustration. They had worked out the timing of when White would grab Feldman beforehand, but during filming White waited a couple of beats to the point that Feldman assumed the stunt had gone wrong. So, just as he let his guard down White grabbed him exactly as you see in the film, meaning Feldman’s screams of horror were completely authentic. (I didn’t like this note very much, but I left it in because of the “meanest little kid” thing which I find interesting. Maybe at some point we’ll do a famous child actors rotation and hit up Feldman’s other classic Meatballs 4)

This is the only film in the series to shoot new footage using sets and locations from a previous film. The beginning takes place on the set of Friday the 13th Part III (1982), before moving to a new location.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Recap

Jamie

What?! Hansel and Gretel are all grows up and ready to take out some witches. Called to action in the town of Augsburg, it soon becomes clear that this isn’t just a case of missing children; a witch gathering is afoot and spells doom if it comes to fruition. Can Hansel and Gretel stop the witches’ dastardly plan before it’s too late? Find out in… Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters!

Why?! Cue The Flintstone’s garbage disposal pterodactyl looking into the camera and declaring, “it’s a living.” Cause that’s what this is to Hansel & Gretel. They are employed as witch hunters and that is what they will goddamn do whether or not the local sheriff approves. This motivation doesn’t change much even when the witches’ scheme grows grander and scarier. They are simply looking to rescue some kids and take out some witches. As for the antagonists of the story (witches, if you hadn’t pick up on that yet), they’re motivations are more complex. They hope to perform a ritual known as the Blood Moon Sabbath where they sacrifice 12 children, take the heart of a white witch, and create powerful magic to make witches immune to fire (and thus immune to Hansel & Gretel’s skillz). In order to do this they must lure Hansel & Gretel to town and capture Gretel, as they are aware that [SPOILER ALERT] Gretel is actually a white witch herself! Oh my GAAAWWWWD:

How?! The first half of the film plays out pretty linearly. Hansel & Gretel are there to save the day and they run around killing witches and unveiling the secrets of the Blood Moon Sabbath. Just as they realize the role they play in the plan (after they find out that their mother was a uber white witch herself and so Gretel is as well), Gretel is kidnapped and Hansel must save her. Using their mother’s extra strong white magic power he creates super weapons that make it all but futile for any witch to oppose him… which is exactly what happens. Seriously, the climax is him just systematically mowing down a hundred witches who stand no chance. In the end Hansel & Gretel both survive and walk the Earth evermore hunting witches in numerous sequels to come… wait, they didn’t make like eight sequels to this a la Fast and the Furious? Oh well.

Who?! Planchet alert! This is one of the best Planchets we’ve had in awhile. He is so Planchet that if we had watched this film before The Three Musketeers the trope would be called a Walser. Ben Walser is a Hansel & Gretel superfan who is basically just dismissed and made fun by his heroes for the entire movie. Only at the end, when Hansel needs anyone he can find to help save Gretel, does he finally allow this lame weirdo to join in the fun. He is a Planchet. A Planchet is he.

Where?! It is very clearly set in Augsburg, which I can assume is in Germany since that’s the name of one of the oldest cities in the country. If I can’t assume that then we don’t know where it is since it’s never mentioned. Pretty typical “meh” setting you sometimes get with a fantasy film. C

When?! This is a solid F. There is no indication of time other than an implication that it is probably somewhere in the 1350-1650 range (when witch hunts were the rage)… belied by the fact that Hansel & Gretel carry advanced weaponry and even play a record on a record player at one point. But that’s steampunk for you… and steampunk is an F temporal setting type of genre.

Wow, I breezed through that. Now let’s get an idea of how BMT the film was. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters? More like Hansel & Gretel: Niche Blunders! You’ll get it in a second. Hansel and Gretel are a steampunk set of buddy cops in the wild west of Grimm’s Germany … it was probably a better idea than that gives it credit for. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – There are bits and pieces throughout which are arguably the best the steampunk genre has to offer. Three Musketeers and Wild Wild West are two of the notorious examples of steampunk. Snow White and the Huntsman and Red Riding Hood are the same kind of dreary fairy tale film. This is better than all four of those. It is at times fun, Renner is very funny, the makeup and effects are great (even if the accompanying soundtrack isn’t my cup of tea), especially Edward the Troll, who I insist looks like a hulking Aaron Eckhart:Edward_by_the_springEven if you don’t quite see it I was so convinced when I was watching the film that I had to look it up on IMDb. Like “wait … maybe Aaron Eckhart did play Edward the Troll” … he didn’t. Great stuff.
  • The Bad – The storyline is a mess. More of a mess than you could ever really describe. The film is a comedy … and yet there is literally heads exploding left and right. There is a sex scene which is literally just there for the sake of a sex scene. There is a full blown rape scene. And if all of that doesn’t turn you off, then the third act should be enough to turn you off. It is weak.
  • The BMT – Huge BMT film. Easily in the 75th percentile and only because this film is so fun to watch in a perplexed fashion, and has enough to like that you’d probably grow to like it a bit more than you feel comfortable with (like a Underworld or Resident Evil, a real cult film). It has steampunk, it has the second best Planchet in BMT history, it rocks random sex scenes, ultra violence, and a heavy metal soundtrack. It has a ton to love and is real dumb to boot. This is what I meant by niche blunders, it goes wrong in all of the best BMT ways. It makes me proud to say this albatross of a film followed through so well. I’m looking at you now 10,000 BC, it is time to deliver.

And naturally I think this is a prime Sequel territory. The problem with doing a prequel is it would be pre-combinatorial gang explosion (by the end of the first film their witch hunting posse was up to four people, I guarantee with me at the helm I’ll have that number up to twenty hilarious characters hanging around) so it is Hansel, Gretel, Planchet, and Edward the Troll globetrotting and witch hunting. I think what the series needed was a sense of the world, so let’s take them to China (dat sweet Chinese box office bucks too, oooo that is nice). I’m thinking Jackie Chan maybe as a Chinese witch hunter, and the investigation concerns a pair of ninja witches attempting to steal a McGuffin from the Forbidden City. Turns out the Imperial Guard has been systematically infiltrated by a coven and Hansel and Gretel have only mere days to stop the ninja-witches before they get the treasure and take control of the Chinese Kingdom. Hansel & Gretel 2: The Forbidden Coven. Honestly I could just dump Hansel and Gretel and go with Jackie Chan, sounds rad (natch).

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Preview

Ooooooooooooooh boy. Guys… it’s happening. Every once in awhile we do a film that has been on our docket for so long that it seems like not doing it is a running joke. Not today! That’s right! We’re watching Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters! I remember when this came out. BMT was just a baby (with far fewer beautiful rules and regulation) and I was stoked to watch it. But the stars never seemed to align. Alas. But now with our punctuation cycle and trying to hit nine different punctuation marks it seemed primed that we would require the use of an ampersand. Welcome to the show Hansel & Gretel! If only your ill-conceived sequel wasn’t scrapped for 2016 it would have come sooner. I… can… not… wait. Let’s go!

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) – BMeTric: 27.1

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HanselAndGretel_RV

(For you hard-core fans out there you must just be screaming! What about all the Hall of Fame talk, Patrick, whereby films whose rating didn’t change in the face of increased votes are somehow special. Welp … amazingly this film is so overpoweringly average that it doesn’t really regress to the mean, it is already there the entire time! A BMeTric of 25 is about average too, and look at that plot. I kind of love it.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars –  Hansel and Gretel, of the famous fairy tale, are now all grown up and seeking revenge for the murder of their parents by becoming bounty hunters, out to kill witches wherever they find them. Renner and Arterton are lost in the fireworks of this ridiculous movie, which is just another excuse to bring out big guns and pyrotechnics. (It’s never explained how this pair are packing such modern-day weapons.) Why does Hollywood want to destroy all of our childhood memories?

(I want to get lost in the fireworks! Bring the guns and the pyrotechnics. They also don’t explain where the witches came from Leonard. And whose fond childhood memories is about the nightmare that is Grimm’s fairytales? I have a lot of problems with this review, although I’m mostly joshing around here. I’m mostly bitter that Maltin yet again is stingy with his BOMB ratings, give the people what they want Leonard!)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9246msCh7x4

(I’m getting a heavy Seventh Son vibe on this one. My favorite line from it is Renner saying “I don’t think we’re hunting witches.” Uh, what?… there are like 5000 witches in that trailer. I’m pretty sure you’re hunting witches.)

Directors – Tommy Wirkola – (Known For: Dead Snow; Dead Snow 2; BMT: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; Notes: Norwegian. Has a completed directing project called What Happened to Monday? starring Noomi Rapace, although there is very little information about it outside of variety stories from four years ago.)

Writers – Tommy Wirkola (written by) – (Known For: Dead Snow; Dead Snow 2; BMT: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; Notes: He is attached to a project called Irredeemable as the writer based on a comic book series, but hasn’t done anything major outside of the Dead Snow series in a while. Might have to check out Irredeemable, sounds interesting.)

Actors – Jeremy Renner – (Known For: Arrival; Captain America: Civil War; Avengers: Age of Ultron; Avengers Assemble; American Hustle; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation; Thor; The Hurt Locker; The Town; Wind River; Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol; The Bourne Legacy; 28 Weeks Later; S.W.A.T.; Lords of Dogtown; Kill the Messenger; North Country; BMT: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; Senior Trip; A Little Trip to Heaven; Notes: I feel like I’ve heard a variety a weird things about Renner … but specifics escape me. His filmography is impressively lacking in BMT worthy movies. Renovated homes with fellow actor Kristoffer Winters.)

Gemma Arterton – (Known For: The Girl with All the Gifts; The Boat That Rocked; RocknRolla; Quantum of Solace; 100 Streets; Their Finest; The Voices; Byzantium; Tamara Drewe; Orpheline; The Disappearance of Alice Creed; Gemma Bovery; Song for Marion; A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures; BMT: Runner Runner; Clash of the Titans; St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold; St. Trinian’s; Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; Notes:  British, burst onto the scene when she beat out 1500 other women for a role in Quantum of Solace. My favorite IMDb note: A lifelong fan of karaoke, Gemma once worked as a singer in a south London ‘gangster bar’ where she was frequently instructed to sing “My Heart Will Go On” whenever things got out of hand with the rowdy patrons. … I need to find that bar! I bet it is some posh bullshit.)

Also stars Peter Stormare – (I know his from the smash hit Prison Break … but real people would know him from things like Fargo, Minority Report, and most importantly Armageddon. His BMT library is impressive, but we’ve only seen him in The Tuxedo)

Budget/Gross – $50 million / Domestic: $55,703,475 (Worldwide: $226,349,749)

(Kind of a weird smash hit. The formula I’ve always heard it double the budget and use 50% of domestic and 25% of foreign and you’ll be close (don’t quote me on any of that though). So $25 + $113 = $130 million ish versus a $100 break even. They made money … why did this film always seem like a disaster then and why did the director never get another shot?)

#34 for the Adventure – Period genre

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(Right below the classic Knight’s Tale. The plot is super weird. The number of theaters taking in films like this was so consistent from the 90s and then all of a sudden the money starts to tumble until, boom, the genre collapses. I kind of assume it has to do with the cost of such a production. Period pieces need costumes, and locations need to be dressed, etc. etc. Maybe making a comeback with Tarzan and King Kong though? Plausible.)

#49 for the Fantasy – Live Action genre

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(Just below Sklog childhood classic Willow! Gods of Egypt and Warcraft are recent additions to the genre and BMT. With Harry Potter and more fantastic Marvel movies coming out this genre is on the rise it would seem, although it seems nisely settled at a nice level that looked like a cool $100 million was in reach for most releases. Are the Icarus, flying too close to the sun on their wings of Fantasy Live Action films? We’ll see.)

#4 for the Witch genre

(I’m not going to give the plot because it is useless. I wanted to mainly point out that this being #4 on a genre list means this isn’t a real genre. Other shocks: It is just below the Bewitched remake starring Will Ferrell and only a shade above Hocus Pocus. Take a deep breath, that’s the smell of a non-genre.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 15% (19/130): Alternately bloody and silly, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters fails as both a fantasy adventure and as a parody of same.

(Ha. I kind of love when reviewers get all weird about violence in films like this. I mean, it makes sense, I think a lot of people would expect this to be a little more comedy than action. But for a movie described on wikipedia as an American-German dark fantasy action horror comedy film I’m sure I’ll get what I’m expecting … which is the Applebee’s menu of movies (Mike Lombardi fans know what I’m talking about, that menu that has so much stuff you know none of it could possibly be good, boom roasted).)

Poster – Jamie & Patrick: Sklog Hunters (C-)

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(I like the bold red color splashed on the rest of the neutral backdrop and I love the original font. Dutch angle is a mistake and the characters are way too prominent. Takes away from the other artistic aspects and ruins it. Also, there is an alternate poster that Patrick figured out was a perfect play on a Rorschach inkblot. To this day I don’t think anyone else has made the connection. In a day where it seems everything has already been done or said on the internet this still is a totally original thought by The Sklogs. You’re welcome.)

Tagline(s) – Classic Tale New Twist (C-)

(Ehhhhh, kinda fits with my criteria. Short, got some cadence and cleverness, and gives a slight hint at a plot. However, it’s getting a bit meta for me… like just acknowledging that this is a classic tale and now they are witch hunters. Not loving it.)

Keyword(s) – bounty hunter; Top Ten by BMeTric: 72.5 Barb Wire (1996); 68.3 Jonah Hex (2010); 65.3 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); 61.3 Ghost Rider (2007); 53.0 Jupiter Ascending (2015); 49.9 Suburban Commando (1991); 48.6 One for the Money (2012); 47.8 The Bounty Hunter (I) (2010); 42.5 Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014); 40.3 Identity Thief (2013);

(Oooooooo, can’t wait to see Jason Goes to Hell. Why would this be on the bounty hunter list. So many questions! Solid list top to bottom, but wouldn’t really work for a marathon, too similar across the board, all action, no genre mix … I was going to say, what about those romantic bounty hunter movies, but that is literally what One for the Money and the Bounty Hunter are, blah.)

Notes – Hansel is diabetic, as a result of his experience in the gingerbread house as a child. In the original script, Gretel was also supposed to have an eating disorder, as a result of the same trauma, but this was not included in the movie. (Ugh, just the worst. It is like something I would write and think was very clever in high school … no offense)

Originally scheduled for release in March 2012, the movie was delayed for ten months to accommodate Jeremy Renner’s appearances in Avengers Assemble (2012) and The Bourne Legacy (2012), and to give director Tommy Wirkola time to shoot a post-credits scene. (That super sweet after credits scene. Kind of nuts to think this was released basically just after The Avengers …. It feels like this came out so long ago)

Director Tommy Wirkola got the idea to create the film, based on the adult lives of Hansel and Gretel in 2007, while at film school in Australia. After being discovered by Gary Sanchez Productions, Wirkola pitched the idea at a meeting with Paramount Pictures and won a contract. (Will Ferrell why? You could have stopped this).

Despite portraying brother and sister of close ages, Jeremy Renner (Hansel) is actually fifteen years older than Gemma Arterton (Gretel). (Ugh, classic Hollywood)

The movie’s cast featured two former Bond Girls,Famke Janssen from GoldenEye (1995) and Gemma Arterton from Quantum of Solace (2008), where the movies were made and released around thirteen years apart in the James Bond film franchise. (ooooo fun fact)

In an interview with Famke Janssen at Cannes 2011, she stated that she took the role as the head witch in this movie because she had to pay off her mortgage. Janssen has stated multiple times that since 2007, she was prepping her writing/directorial debut with Bringing Up Bobby (2011), where funding and distribution had gone through hard times, partly due to the 2008 economic crisis. She also had not done much acting in that period of time. (ha, get yo money Famke)

The text of the newspaper clippings, used in the opening credits, is from Alexander Roberts’ 1616 “A Treatise on Witchcraft.” (We will end with that ultra-fun fact)

Car 54, Where Are You? Recap

Jamie

You may ask why we would even care to delve deep into what is essentially just dog poo in our faces… why? Because it’s what we do. Here are the details!

What?! Officer Toody is a fun-loving Brooklyn cop just looking to have a good time. When he and his new uptight partner are tasked to protect a mob witness targeted for a hit, it’s made clear that he needs to shape up or lose his badge. Uh oh! Can they keep the party going while keeping the witness safe? Find out in… Car 54, Where Are You?!

Why?! Talk about a loaded question. Why, indeed? Officer Toody is our main character and the action almost exclusively follows him. His motivation for 95% of the film is to remove the stick up the ass of his new partner by getting him paid and laid. Doesn’t sound like much of a plot, right? It isn’t. Concurrently the station that he works in has struck up a deal to protect a state’s witness against a mob boss. After several nearly successful assassination attempts on the witness’ life the captain decides to hide him with Toody (who would ever suspect?!). Even then Toody doesn’t seem to care much about the witness until he loses him and has to hunt him down or get stripped of his badge. So that’s kind of a secondary motivation… first off, get his partner laid, second save the witness. Even writing this all down is making me sad.

How?! You have the general idea of most of the film from the motivations. There are two other aspects of the plot that play almost no role until the climax. The first is that the police station Toody works in has upgraded to a new computer system called Madd Cop (a play on police brutality? Hard to say), which is a futuristic crime-tracking system… this is strictly a plot device. The second is that Toody is obsessed with a Cops-like show and hopes to be on it one day. This luckily happens a week later when he begins to be followed by a camera crew… this is also strictly a plot device. After Toody has lost the witness, he ingratiates himself with the mob, impersonates a hitman, and goes after the witness. At the same time his partner uses Madd Cop and the tracking devices to locate the witness and goes after Toody. The real mob hitmen see a promo for the cops-like show and figure out that Toody is an imposter and go after both Toody and the witness. They all converge at Coney Island and after a brief chase the mobster is snagged by the police and everyone lives happily ever after. Confusing? No kidding.

Who?! There are a number of interesting musical cameos in the film, which include The Ramones, Tone Loc, and Coati Mundi. But by far the most interesting thing is the Ghostbusters-like rap theme song to the film called “Car 54 Rap.” It is terrible and yet mesmerizing. Unfortunately it’s not available online so you just have to take my word for it. But even that’s not as interesting as the artist that created the masterpiece: legitimate band MMM&S. They seem to be a funk band full of the whitest kids in the world according to the videos I can find:

That’s a banger! Seems like the same story as the Beasties Boys. White kids who started in funk/punk and moved to rap… except they never made it. Weird and wild stuff.

Where?! As MMM&S say in their rap, “Brooklyn! Busting out on a hot tip. Two of New York’s finest you can’t diss.” Brooklyn indeed. This is basically as close as you can get to an A without it being part of the title. Drips with Brooklyn and culminates on Coney Island. Perfection. B+.

When?! Secret holiday film alert! There is very little overt indication of the time at which this film takes place. That is until the mob boss laments the fact that his witness isn’t dead yet by opening a newspaper detailing who was killed by mistake. On the opposite page of that headline? A disastrous July 4th fireworks accident! This may in fact be my favorite ever. So fucking random. B+!

I just gave you so much unnecessary detail, let’s find out if it’s BMT. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Car 54, Where are You? More like Bizarre Shitty Chore, It’s Dog Poo! (In my face … it’s dog poo in my face). Orion Pictures, on the brink of bankruptcy, decides to IP dump a Car 54 movie as a musical starring David Johansen, shelves it for 3 years, and then releases it without the musical numbers and cut to shit. What could go wrong? Sigh. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – A few of the side actors, O’Donnell and Fran Drescher were solid for sure. The relationship between Rosie and Johansen feels real somehow, and even Johansen for all his over-the-top stage mannerisms (which Jamie pointed out to me was probably the reason he was cast and hardly a knock against him as an actor, the guy already has a starring role in Scrooged, they knew what they were getting) comes across as a genuine guy. There are a few jokes here and there as well including maybe the best spit take I’ve ever seen.
  • The Bad – Parts of the movie look like something I could shoot. The quality is dire. If this movie were to be released today it would have been dumped on VOD and forgotten about. There are basically no good jokes in the film, and the acting throughout from the main players is terrible. I will say that I didn’t necessarily feel bored during the film, but there is a level of wackiness that just doesn’t really work (or maybe it is that it isn’t consistent?). I’m usually not one to harp on things like this but … this movie is like 95% sex jokes strung together by basically no coherent story. Take from that what you will.
  • The BMT – Not since Dino De Laurentiis dumped King Kong Lives and Raw Deal have we seen such a blatant barely-movie widely released to theaters from a dying production company. If there is any legacy to this film it is the opening: if the movie got even close to “okay” for the rest of the film it may have gone down as the one true movie that is ruined by the opening scene (similar to how The Call was ruined by literally the last five seconds, a much more common trope). The opening is legendary, including terrible singing in a dream sequence complete with a cartoon bird dressed as a rapper. Bomb. Thinking about it I would actually give this is a pretty good BMeTric too, because I would definitely watch this again with a crowd. It is just so weird that I’m betting there are a million layers to unpeel.

I mean there is really only one thing to do: Prequel! It might not be pretty but we need to see Car 54, Where Are You? When Toody Met Leo … my god, the title even sounds like When Harry Met Lloyd. Anyways, in the first film we were given what is an oh so tantalizing glimpse of the hilarious (and heartfelt!) relationship between Toody and his partner Leo before they are torn asunder by Leo’s retirement in the beginning of the film. “We want more Leo!” was what I assume the Car 54-heads were screaming in their packed opening day theaters. Bonus, the film will feature a cameo by none other than a person who could pass as a young Rosie O’Donnell to show the early stages of Gunther’s courtship of Lucille. The screenwriter for this film (me) says, “the courtship is much like the Cyclone of Coney Island: A Rollercoaster!”.

Cheerios, 

The Sklogs

Car 54, Where Are You? Preview

The big question as we head into the comedy entry of the What the ?!&%*# cycle is what punctuation mark we’ll go for next? It’s a question that we’re going to answer with a question. That’s right, we’re watching Car 54, Where Are You? (the crowd boos vociferously as they realize that we’re not watching Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot). Hold on! Sly Stallone flicks are like gold. You don’t throw gold around willy-nilly. Need to save it for when it’s truly needed. Anywho, the most interesting thing about this film is that it was nearly impossible to find. It is not free or rentable on any streaming service and is not available from Netflix DVD. I was lucky enough to find that there was a single copy in the MN Public Library system up in Mountain Iron, MN (real name, real place. Pop. 2886). Once it arrived in the mail I could see that the DVD was absolutely pristine. I might in fact be the only person to ever watch this film. It’s like they ordered it new just for me. Thank you, local public library system. I love you. Let’s go!

Car 54, Where Are You? (1994) – BMeTric: 42.1

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(A classic extreme rating example of these types of plots where despite only having a few thousand votes it still manages an impressive 40+ based solely on its sub-3.0 rating. Kind of cool that you can see the BMeTric go through the inflection. Also like any good street cred BMT film the rating stays solidly low despite increased votes suggesting only bad movie aficionados are watching and reviewing the film at this point.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars –  This retread of the hilarious 1960s TV show about N.Y.C. cops with a hefty Keystone quotient is a woefully embarrassing assemblage of gags that would bring up the read in Police Academy. O’Donnell (her screen debut), Drescher, and Piven acquit themselves well, under the circumstances. Despite presence of Al Lewis – reprising his Schnauzer role from the original Nat Hiken series – this turkey sat on the shelf after completion in 1991.

(Not a BOMB! Not a BOMB! Not a BOMB! And oh wow, I forgot this is a rare example of very delayed wide release films. Leonard tips his hand a bit that he is an old man by doting on the original. I’ve seen clips and it is funny I suppose, but I wouldn’t laugh out loud as you would imagine. This should be an experience though. Makes me truly wonder where the half star comes from … from the actors who acquit themselves well I suppose.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh2_IWz50jM

(From the people who didn’t bring you Lethal Weapon?… that film came out seven years before this one. Weird. Otherwise this just looks like a cheap comedy almost in the same vein as Weekend at Bernies. Looks boring.)

Directors – Bill Fishman – (Known For: Tapeheads; My Dinner with Jimi; BMT: Car 54, Where Are You?; Notes: Mainly a music video director this was a rare foray into features. His videography is impressive, and it isn’t too surprising he was chosen considering the movie was apparently initially supposed to be a musical (see notes below).)

Writers – Nat Hiken (television series) – (BMT: Car 54, Where Are You?; Sgt. Bilko; Notes: He died in 1968 so years before two of his shows (Car 54 and the Phil Silvers Show which became Sgt. Bilko) became movies. Well known as a songwriter as well.)

Erik Tarloff (story & screenplay) – (Known For: Cheetah; BMT: Car 54, Where Are You?; Notes:  Chiefly a television writer in the 70s and 80s this marked the end of his Hollywood writing career. He is married to Laura Tyson who was chief economic advisor to the Clinton Administration, and his brother-in-law is Alan D’Andrea a cancer researcher at Harvard Medical School.)

Ebbe Roe Smith (screenplay) – (Known For: Falling Down; BMT: Car 54, Where Are You?; Notes: He wrote Falling Down solo which is kind of nuts. Mostly an actor all the way up to today where he’ll appear on occasion on Portlandia as characters such as Swinger Husband.)

Peter McCarthy (screenplay) – (Known For: Tapeheads; Floundering; BMT: Car 54, Where Are You?; Notes: Not much on him. On variety his news is dominated by his directoral debut Floundering which was released to some acclaim at Sundance with a cast including John Cusack, Ethan Hawke, and Jeremy Piven)

Peter Crabbe (screenplay) – (BMT: McHale’s Navy; Car 54, Where Are You?; Notes: Almost nothing to say about this guy beyond that it appears he parlayed his involvement in this film into another 60s television adaptation McHale’s Navy, so congrats to him for that.)

Actors – David Johansen – (Known For: Married to the Mob; Scrooged; A Very Murray Christmas; Cats Don’t Dance; Glass Chin; Naked in New York; The Tic Code; Candy Mountain; BMT: Mr. Nanny; Car 54, Where Are You?; Freejack; 200 Cigarettes; Tales from the Darkside: The Movie; Notes: Started the bands New York Dolls and David Johansen Group in addition to touring under as the character Buster Poindexter producing a total of twelve albums across the three acts. He appeared on SNL six times as Buster Poindexter, and has a surprisingly extensive acting career considering he’s first and foremost a singer.)

John C. McGinley – (Known For: The Belko Experiment; Se7en; The Rock; Platoon; Point Break; Office Space; Identity; 42; Any Given Sunday; Wall Street; Born on the Fourth of July; World Trade Center; Set It Off; Nixon; Kid Cannabis; Shadow Makers; Talk Radio; Mother’s Boys; A Midnight Clear; The Discoverers; Mother; Shakedown; Article 99; Sweet Liberty; Crazy as Hell; Johns; BMT: Highlander II: The Quickening (BMT); The Animal; Are We Done Yet? (BMT); On Deadly Ground (BMT); Alex Cross (BMT); Get Carter (BMT); Summer Catch; Stealing Harvard; Car 54, Where Are You?; Get a Job; Wagons East; Wild Hogs (BMT); Three to Tango; Surviving the Game; Hear No Evil; Nothing to Lose; Truth or Consequences, N.M.; Notes: Our seventh McGinley film and we could easily get to ten if we wanted to by adding The Animal, Wagons East!, and Summer Catch. He was on the celebrity version of American Gladiators in 1994.)

Fran Drescher – (Known For: This Is Spinal Tap; Hotel Transylvania; Hotel Transylvania 2; Saturday Night Fever; Ragtime; UHF; Cadillac Man; Doctor Detroit; The Big Picture; BMT: Car 54, Where Are You?; Jack; The Beautician and the Beast; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1998 for Worst Actress for The Beautician and the Beast. Well known for her distinctive voice. I knew her best as Pamela Finklestein from UHF growing up. But her work on TV’s The Nanny is probably her claim to fame.)

Budget/Gross – $10.7 million / Domestic: $1,238,080 (N/A)

(Obviously brutal, but what else would you imagine considering this is a film based on a 60’s television show, it was shelved for three years, and by all accounts was cut to shit. For the number of theaters it was released to (over 600) this is also a ridiculously low number. $2K per theater is just insane.)

#85 for the TV Adaptation (Live Action) genre

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(I feel like I shouldn’t be, and yet I am surprised by how many films are based on television shows these days and how successful they are. Probably in no small part due to things like Star Trek. This was on the leading edge of a boom that then settled into a more consistent value overall, and is literally the lowest grossing wide release on the list.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 0% (0/16): No consensus yet.

(Obviously of special note because it is one of maybe 70 films with 15+ reviews and 0% on rotten tomatoes. I shall make a consensus: Simply not funny and only of note as an example of a truly terrible film. As one reviewer said: If you paid money to see this you are stupid. Coooooold Bloooooooded.)

Poster – Sklog 54, Where Are You? (C+)

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(This also seems very 80’s… like the Meatballs poster or something. OK blue and yellow color. OK font. Interesting sketch style. Ultimately too busy to really get a great grade, but not bad.)

Tagline(s) – An Arresting Comedy (D)

(Cliche pun alert. This is more suitable for a review of the film by a time-strapped and not very creative film critic. Nothing more to say. It’s not worth the effort as they clearly didn’t expend any.)

Keyword(s) – number in title; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.9 Fifty Shades of Grey (2015); 87.8 Battlefield Earth (2000); 84.8 Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); 83.7 Fantastic Four (2015); 81.1 Movie 43 (2013); 78.6 Sex and the City 2 (2010); 77.4 RoboCop 3 (1993); 76.9 Piranha 3DD (2012); 76.0 Highlander II: The Quickening (1991); 74.4 Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959);

(We’ve done a few of these, although that isn’t surprising considering something on the order of 5000 films on IMDb have this tag (so basically it has to be real bad to get on the list in the first place). You might be saying “hey wait a minute, Battlefield Earth doesn’t have a number in the title. Bullshit”. But it is also known as Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 which is the title of the book. I wouldn’t necessarily call that official though.)

Notes – John C. McGinley worked on this film and Article 99 (1992) at the same time. He would work on this film Monday to Wednesday and the other film Thursday to Friday. (That seems like it suggested that one or both films were going to be terrible …)

Al Lewis and Nipsey Russell were in the original Car 54, Where Are You? (1961) TV series, playing Officer Leo Schnauser and Officer Dave Anderson, respectively. Here they play the same characters years older, as if this film were a sequel to the original series, rather than the updated and (otherwise) recast remake that it is. (As if the film was a sequel. What a weird choice).

According to a recent interview with John C. McGinley (AV Club’s Random Roles- April 2013), the film was original shot as a musical with full musical numbers. After editing, only two musical numbers remained. McGinley was unsure of why specifically the numbers were cut or by whom, but McGinley mused that he found the film in its’ present form an incoherent mess. (wait …. What? Wait wait wait. This movie is a musical. Wait … what?)

During Gunther Toody’s dream sequence he is wearing the same uniform that was worn by his character in the original show. (fun. fact.)

Awards – Won the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Rosie O’Donnell)

Another 48 Hrs. Recap

Jamie

What?! Just as Jack Cates is about to close in on a drug kingpin he’s been tracking for years, it turns out his old friend Reggie Hammond is primed to be the kingpin’s next victim. Can they stop the hit and take the baddies down before it’s too late? Find out in… Another 48 Hrs!

Why?! The biggest question is why the hitmen want to kill Reggie, who at the start of the film has spent the last five years in jail. Turns out the big heist that was the center of the first film involved money that belonged to a drug kingpin, the Iceman. Hearing that Reggie is finally out of jail (and away from the protection that he’s bought within), they set up a hit. However, it’s later revealed that the money is small potatoes. In reality they wanted to kill Reggie because he saw the Iceman’s face and could identify him. As for Cates, if wanting to take down a kingpin wasn’t motivation enough, he is framed for manslaughter after he justifiably takes down a hitman that he knows is connected to the Iceman. So now he needs to catch the Iceman to prove his innocence or he faces jail time. He figures out that Reggie was the target of the Iceman’s hit (what a coincidence!) and recruits Reggie to help take the him down. Obviously Reggie’s motivation is to not die, however he seems fairly unconcerned by the whole affair. He only reluctantly agrees to help after realizing that otherwise Cates won’t give him his money from the first film.

How?! Once Reggie is released from jail, both he and Cates are attacked by the hitmen. They end up in the same hospital and Cates convinces the local police to let him escort Reggie back to SF. They track the hitmen from place to place all while Cates is harassed by internal affairs and comes up empty on every lead. Only after Reggie reveals that he can identify the Iceman do they realize that he must be a cop and that’s the reason Cates is having such a hard time. Before they can catch the bad guy, Reggie is kidnapped and in a twist it turns out that the Iceman is Cates’ friend on the force, Kehoe. The twist is particularly bad as Kehoe was in the first film and as a result it reframes aspects of that film! Ugh. A shootout ensues and the bad guys are taken down in the exact same way as they were in the first film.

Who?! I actually realized this week that the Planchet isn’t the only “Who” obsession to work with. We got cameos, presidents, musicians, athletes, etc. So while watching this film I kept my eyes peeled for any of the above. Lo and behold there was a musical act in the middle of the film. Looking in the credits on IMDb the singer was credited as… former heavyweight pro boxer Michael Anthony Williams? Uh, what? That turned out to be wrong (*gasp* are you suggesting IMDb is wrong?) and it was actually the band Curio. This band had two songs on the soundtrack and yet was so obscure that the only place to find details about them is a rare and obscure music blog. Not obscure enough to not have a music video on youtube, though. Enjoy:

Where?! Just as in the first film, we are set in beautiful San Francisco. It also helps that Nolte is a cop as he’s clearly a detective in the SFPD. While obvious, this setting is not necessarily vital to the plot. Could have been LA, Miami, Chicago, New York, Philly, etc. without missing a beat. B.

When?! Another day, another film that seemingly goes out of its way to not give you an exact date. The first film at least threw you a bone and indicated that it was summer in San Fran, this one doesn’t even give you that courtesy. They even seem to purposefully obscure it as you are shown a close-up of a hospital discharge form for Reggie Hammond where the nurse is blocking the “Date of Admittance” line. What we are shown is that Reggie is 28-years-old and born on October 7th, 1961. So that’s kind of a fun exact date. Interestingly, that is the year that Murphy was born, but not the date (April 3rd is his actual birthday). This “When” is full of fun facts… but I don’t do this section for the fun facts. D.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Another 48 Hrs.? More like Isn’t This Just the First 48 Hrs? Relevant! The first 48 Hrs. was a classic buddy cop adventure with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Why change anything up … at all, is probably what the writers were thinking. Let’s Go!

  • The Good – I thought this movie was rather entertaining if you pretended it was a standalone movie. I liked Nolte and Murphy’s dynamic, I liked the plot from a buddy cop perspective, I liked how gritty it felt. The things that kill it, I think, are easy to look past if this is something like a Tango & Cash, a standalone buddy cop action-comedy. One of the better BMTs we’ve seen in the past few months I would venture.
  • The Bad – This movie is waaaay too similar to the original. I have a theory on this: the movie is a sequel to a buddy comedy from five years prior. I think they felt obligated to reset the franchise after such a long hiatus, and they planned to innovate in the third  installment. That blew up in their faces when the similarities between this and the first were a major criticism upon release. Otherwise there is a horribly ludicrous scene in which Murphy is standing in a bus that then rolls over three times while everyone notes “well that is unlikely” as if the lampshading helps. The reset is aggravating as well since we just spent an entire film with Nolte and Murphy yelling at each other, why do we have to go through that again? Also …
  • The BMT – Jamie pointed this out (to be fair), but it is the claim to BMT fame for this movie. Besides being a quintessential example of a sequel going overboard mimicking its predecessor, the aforementioned twist is … more terrible than I ever realized. Consider: Kehoe is posited to have been the drug kingpin Iceman operating out of the SFPD since prior to the first movie (at least 7 years prior to the second film when Reggie saw him during the heist). But yet, in the first film Kehoe is the one who tells Jack about Reggie in the first place … ultimately this means Reggie will be wandering about the police station with every opportunity to tell everyone that Kehoe is the Iceman. The twist is incredibly bad. What I wouldn’t give to be in the writers’ room when someone remarked “Hey wait a minute … doesn’t this conflict with the first movie?”. And that is why this movie is still BMT, shocking oversights like this.

So in the preview I noted that the director was known for his love of westerns and that genre having a heavy influence on his films. So let’s Sklogify (or Remake) it with a little western rewrite. Jack Cates is a loose cannon among the US Marshals often getting a little rough and tumble when apprehending villains in the wild (wild) west. Reginald Hammond is a gunslinger in prison for bank robbery. When Cates finds an old wanted poster among the wreckage of a manhunt gone wrong, he thinks Hammond might know what is up (and might be able to save him from a hangman’s noose) and so he springs him and they go on the run. Indeed, the notorious Iceman, a vicious train robber and gang leader that many Marshals believe to be more myth than reality, appears to be the potential culprit of a planned kidnapping of Hammond to prevent the Iceman’s secret from getting out: Hammond had discovered years before that the Iceman was a US Marshal using his badge as cover for his ruthless crime spree, and had perpetrated the bank robbery that put him in jail as a means of protection. Now working together the unlikely duo, US Marshal and fugitive, have to take down the dirty US Marshal posse before they meet untimely deaths! Another 48 Hrs. seems like a weird name considering I’m remaking this as a stand alone movie, so it would need something else. Maybe just 48 Hrs., considering I’m not sklogifying the first movie (although I could, call me Netflix).

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Another 48 Hrs. Preview

We’ve finally made it out of the woods that was the Squeakuel cycle. Little did we know how harrowing the journey would be and how much work it would actually take to do two movies per week for nine weeks. You live and learn, my friends. Or more likely, you live, learn, forget, and find yourself doing it again next year. And so we end this cycle and start anew with a cycle we call What the ?!&%*#. These are all films that contain punctuation in the title. Additionally we will attempt to do nine different punctuation marks through the cycle. Thrilling stuff. We start with the most important punctuation mark, the period (no offense to those who might think otherwise. Looking at you Christopher Walken). Lucky for us there was a classic disappointing sequel that contained a period. That’s right, we’re watching Another 48 Hrs., the sequel to the comedy classic 48 Hrs., for the Scattegories entry. For those keeping track this is our third Eddie Murphy film in the last year. Pretty exciting stuff. Let’s go!

Another 48 Hrs. (1990) – BMeTric: 31.4

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(Stable, right around where I would think it would be given its general reception (30ish). Has the 2011 inflection and the regression to the mean with a final perfectly below average rating of sub-6.0. The only really remarkable thing I would say is it has more votes than I would imagine for a sequel that no one seemed to want or like. I would classify this as a profile of vote dominant. In that almost all of its BMeTric comes from having more votes than most bad movies do, whereas its rating is now basically average. Note that this movie almost definitely transitions from a rating dominant (because it has only a few thousand votes in 2004) to a vote dominant movie all while maintaining basically the same BMeTric. I wonder if that is a trait of regression to the mean and the way the BMeTric is calculated. Not that would be some inside baseball shit.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars –  Strictly-by-the-numbers rehash of 48HRS., without its spontaneity, pizzazz, or humor: Nolte is forced to turn to Murphy (who’s just been sprung from jail) to help him solve a case and save his police career. Watchable, but not terribly invigorating; mst set some sort of record, however, for breaking more panes of glass than any movie in history.

(Ooof, this review lacks pizzazz Leonard. Strong punctuation game as always (including a somewhat invigorating use of a colon early on there). At least the stars seem to reflect Maltin’s level of concern over this film, he seems like he could give or take it, a true middle-of-the-road two-of-four if I ever saw one.)

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

(Ah right at the sweet spot where Eddie Murphy scream-singing to music with headphones on was invariably funny (he also does it in the The Golden Child). The boys are back! I’m not sure if you caught that … but the boys are back. To be honest this does look a little fun. I’ll have to rewatch the original to really figure out what they screwed up.)

Directors – Walter Hill – (Known For: The Warriors; Bullet to the Head; Wild Bill (BMT); Streets of Fire; 48 Hrs.; Red Heat; Crossroads; Undisputed; Geronimo: An American Legend; The Long Riders; Johnny Handsome; The Streetfighter; Southern Comfort; The Driver; Trespass; Extreme Prejudice; BMT: Supernova; Another 48 Hrs.; Last Man Standing; Brewster’s Millions; Notes: I remember the most interesting note from Blue City was that he considers all of his films westerns, so again, I’ll look for that influence. Makes sense, Nolte is a sheriff, and Murphy is the hired gun sprung from jail to catch the bad guys.)

Writers – Roger Spottiswoode (characters) – (Known For: 48 Hrs.; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; Notes: Mostly a director known for 6th Day and (in bad movie circles) Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! Was married to Jack Palance’s daughter. 48 Hrs. is his only true writing credit which is a tad bit odd.)

Walter Hill (characters) – (Known For: Aliens; The Warriors; Alien³; Wild Bill (BMT); Streets of Fire; 48 Hrs.; Red Heat; Undisputed; The Getaway (1972); The Long Riders; The Streetfighter; Southern Comfort; The Driver; The Drowning Pool; The MacKintosh Man; Hickey & Boggs; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; The Getaway (1994); Last Man Standing; Notes: We most recently saw him with Blue City and before that Wild Bill (a rare 40% rotten tomatoes film we did to complete the Mapl.d.map). I would consider him a legend if only for The Warriors which is one of my favorite films. The fact that he is only credited for characters makes it possible that the western influence won’t be as present. Another thing to watch out for I guess, whether that influence is present in both the original and sequel.)

Larry Gross (characters & screenplay) – (Known For: Streets of Fire; 48 Hrs.; Geronimo: An American Legend; True Crime; Porto; We Don’t Live Here Anymore; This World, Then the Fireworks; Chinese Box; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; Crime + Punishment in Suburbia; Gunshy; Notes:  Known for his collaborations with Walter Hill. On his wiki page it mentions a diary of his time on the set of 48 Hrs. And indeed, it is a ten part series on a website that barely exists anymore. I am ridiculously excited to read this.)

Steven E. de Souza (characters) – (Known For: Die Hard; The Running Man; Commando; Die Hard 2; 48 Hrs.; Ricochet; BMT: Street Fighter; The Flintstones; Knock Off; Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life; Judge Dredd (BMT); Beverly Hills Cop III; Hudson Hawk (BMT); Another 48 Hrs.; Jumpin’ Jack Flash; Bad Dreams; Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 1992 for Worst Screenplay for Hudson Hawk; Man, this guy is a staple of early 90’s bad movies. He began his career as a game show contestant who subsequently convinced producers to read some of his writing samples. Was known for his ability to balance action and humor.)

Eddie Murphy (story) (as Fred Braughton) – (Known For: Coming to America; Beverly Hills Cop II; Boomerang; BMT: Norbit (BMT); Vampire in Brooklyn; Another 48 Hrs. (BMT); Harlem Nights (BMT); Notes: See the Razzie info below. Almost done with his written filmography. As a matter of fact, if I watch Boomerang and Vampire in Brooklyn I would be totally done with Eddie Murphy as a writer. He actually most gets “story” credits, whereas only Harlem Nights and Norbit has him actually writing it. He was credited as Fred Braughton, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why he got credited that way.)

John Fasano (screenplay) – (BMT: Universal Soldier: The Return; Darkness Falls; Another 48 Hrs.; Megiddo: The Omega Code 2; Notes: Has a winding path to his somewhat modest writing career. He was the art director for special interest magazines, made posters for exploitation films, and directed IBM industrial videos before becoming a screenwriter. His entire family is in the biz, although mostly behind the camera.)

Jeb Stuart (screenplay) – (Known For: Die Hard; The Fugitive; Blood Done Sign My Name; Vital Signs; BMT: Fire Down Below (BMT); Another 48 Hrs.; Leviathan; Lock Up; Just Cause; Switchback; Notes: Pretty impressive early career, where him and de Souza wrote Die Hard as his first credit. He wrote an early draft of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull … in 1995 when it was called Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars.)

Actors – Eddie Murphy – (Known For: Shrek; Shrek 2; Shrek the Third; Mulan; Coming to America; Beverly Hills Cop; Trading Places; Dreamgirls; Tower Heist; Shrek Forever After; Beverly Hills Cop II; 48 Hrs.; Doctor Dolittle; The Nutty Professor; Life; Dr. Dolittle 2; Bowfinger; Boomerang; Imagine That; BMT: Norbit (BMT); Nutty Professor II: The Klumps; Pluto Nash (BMT); Vampire in Brooklyn; The Haunted Mansion; Meet Dave; Holy Man; I Spy; Beverly Hills Cop III; Showtime; Daddy Day Care; Metro; Another 48 Hrs.; The Golden Child (BMT); A Thousand Words (BMT); The Distinguished Gentleman; Harlem Nights (BMT); Notes: See below for Razzie notes; There isn’t much more to say about Murphy mainly because we’ve already done this two other times within a year for Harlem Nights and the Norbit Hall of Fame celebration. Y’all know Eddie Murphy, c’mon!)

Eddie Murphy Razzie Cred – Won the Razzie Award in 2010 for Worst Actor of the Decade; Won the Razzie Award in 2008 for Worst Actor, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress for Norbit; Won the Razzie Award in 1990 for Worst Screenplay for Harlem Nights; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2008 for Worst Director and Screenplay for Norbit; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2013 for Worst Actor for A Thousand Words; in 2010 for Imagine That; in 2009 for Meet Dave; and in 2003 for The Adventures of Pluto Nash, I Spy, and Showtime; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2009 for Worst Screen Couple for Meet Dave; in 2008 for Norbit; in 2003 for Showtime, I Spy, The Adventures of Pluto Nash;

Nick Nolte – (Known For: Warrior; Noah; Hulk; Tropic Thunder; The Thin Red Line; Cape Fear; Run All Night; The Spiderwick Chronicles; Hotel Rwanda; A Walk in the Woods; Over the Hedge; Parker; The Company You Keep; Paris, je t’aime; The Player; 48 Hrs.; U Turn; The Prince of Tides; Lorenzo’s Oil; New York Stories; Hateship Loveship; The Good Thief; Affliction; Down and Out in Beverly Hills; BMT: The Ridiculous 6; Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore; Zookeeper; Breakfast of Champions; I Love Trouble; Arthur; Simpatico; Another 48 Hrs.; The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Three Fugitives; Nightwatch; Blue Chips; Notes: Was up for the role of Han Solo and turned down the role of Indiana Jones. Interesting fact: could not serve in the Vietnam War after he was convicted of selling fake draft cards.)

Also stars Brion James (Who we saw in Tango & Cash)

Budget/Gross – $50 million / Domestic: $80,818,974 (Worldwide: $153,518,974)

(Not a terrible take. Weirdly some reviews mention it not doing as well as the original, but actually it did make more money, although with inflation and expectations beating out an original movie made five years prior by less than two million dollars isn’t mind blowing. My guess is if it had gone above $100 million and had gotten even a merely below average reception (40-50%) there would have been a third assuming the actors were willing.)

#23 for the Action – Buddy Comedy genre

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(Kind of in the thick of recent buddy cop films (like Ride Along 2). Also at the peak of 80s/early-90s buddy cop action films a year after Tango & Cash and Lethal Weapon 2. I have a feeling they were going to go the lethal weapon route if this had done well and there would have been a few of these made.)

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

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(Narrowly beat out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (The Secret of the Ooze) … oof. We’ve done a ton of these over the last year. Ride Along 2, Are We Done Yet?, Cheaper By The Dozen 2, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, Big Momma’s House 2, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous … my God we are mad men.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 15% (4/27): No consensus yet.

(Let’s make a consensus: As one reviewer put it, this is a sequel in the worst sense. Contrived, rarely funny, and basically a carbon copy of the original. Yeah, so the reviews harp on the fact that this is the same movie as the original, although some mention that if not for the existence of the original film this would actually be rather fun.)

Poster – Another 48 Skgs. (A-)

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(I really like this poster. I like the red and yellow primary colors, the balance with the car in the middle, and the classic font. I think the weakest point is the pictures of the actors and this could have been really artistic without that, but you can’t blame them.)

Tagline(s) – The Boys Are Back In Town (C)

(If you look in the notes you’ll see that the people involved in the film series were obsessed with this phrase. Shows up in like seven different aspects of the two films. Not sure why, though. A solid ‘meh.’)

Keyword(s) – biker; Top Ten by BMeTric: 92.8 Batman & Robin (1997); 81.9 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011); 80.8 Vampires Suck (2010); 70.7 Grease 2 (1982); 61.3 Ghost Rider (2007); 57.3 The Sweetest Thing (2002); 54.3 The Counsellor (2013); 53.8 Batman Forever (1995); 50.2 The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987); 47.4 Extraction (II) (2015);

(The only thing more unlikely than having two Cameron Diaz movies on this list is me remembering that Cameron Diaz is in The Counsellor. Pretty nice list though, we’ll have to hit up the applicable Batman movies at some point, just to get a preview in BMT, despite having seen Batman and Robin at least ten times.)

Notes – According to Brion James around 50 minutes were cut from from the final work-print until the released version. James said this in interview; “Total Recall (1990) came out a week before Another 48 Hrs. (1990) that summer, it made twenty-five million, became the number one movie in the country and the studio panicked because they had invested a lot in the 48 Hours franchise, but they felt that at well over two hours, that the movie might be too much. My stuff was in there until one week before the film opened; that is when they cut twenty-five minutes out of that movie, a week before it opened. It went from around 140 to down around 95 minutes. They said, “Cut all the behaviour, action, comedy…” I lost every major scene I had. That’s the last time I ever cared about a movie because I went to the press screening and it was like getting kicked in the stomach, seeing what is not there. I was the third lead and now I looked like a dressed extra. All the stuff that they had in the set-up, stuff in the trailer, all those scenes were gone.” (Well … that’s sad)

Character actor Frank McRae was cast as Haden, Nick Nolte’s boss, the same part he played in 48 Hrs. (1982). His part was almost completely cut from this picture. If you look closely in one of the shots in the police precinct, McRae appears on camera for a few seconds. He was uncredited for the role. (Goes hand in hand with the above note. I’ll be watching for that guy like a hawk)

Reportedly, Eddie Murphys paycheck for the first 48 Hrs. (1982) film was US $450,000 whilst Nick Nolte’s salary was US $1,000,000. For this sequel, reportedly, Nolte got US $3 million, whilst Murphy received US $7 million. (But how much did Fred Braughton get?)

Because of the sequence depicting a violent shoot-out in a hotel lobby from the first 48 Hrs. (1982) film director Walter Hill was told he would never work for Paramount again (according to the book “Walter Hill: Last Man Standing” (2004) by Patrick McGilligan). Hill did though, as he directed this sequel for the studio. (fun. fact.)

There were plans to do a third film which never materialized. (Oh, didn’t it? Considering the box office take that is actually surprising. I would guess that perhaps Murphy bailed)

Nick Nolte appears heavier in the role than usual because when shooting started, he was still carrying the weight he gained for Q & A (1990). (huh, I wonder why Nolte put on the weight, he wasn’t playing a known person. As a matter of fact … he was playing a police officer just like in this film)

When Reggie is calling his old friends to try and borrow money, one of the men he calls is named “Willie Biggs”. In the original screenplay for the first movie, Willie Biggs was the name of Reggie Hammond. Eddie Murphy requested that the name be changed because he thought it was a “generic black name.” (Good on Murphy I guess)

The “The Boys Are Back In Town” phrase was used as the main movie tagline for this movie. Similarly, the promotional blurb for the first film, 48 Hrs. (1982), started with the “The Boys Are Back In Town” wording. This was also the name of a song written specifically for that film. The track was never released when that movie came out and was never available on CD until the year 2000. For this sequel, though the original song was heard at the end of the film, the track wasn’t included on this sequel’s album either. (Whaaaaat? That’s a crazy note. I had assumed it was the line from the actual famous song with the lyrics “The boys are back in town”. Is it not? I can’t even tell, was that song written for Another 48 hrs.?! … nope, it is a different song. How strange.)

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 Recap

Jamie

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Baby Geniuses Recap

Jamie

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 Preview

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

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004) – BMeTric: 76.1 (#3 on IMDb bottom 100)

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(Interestingly has more IMDb votes than its predecessor (if you are going to bother voting why not for both? Or do you think *gasp* … they didn’t watch the original before the sequel?!). Below 2.0 is obviously incredible, it is the reason this film is an insane #3 on the bottom 100 list! The lowest we had gone before was #15 with From Justin to Kelly. The Baby Geniuses Franchise will represent our 10th and 11th movies on the list, and unfortunately we’d be hard pressed to find nine qualifying movies to make that a cycle. Maybe we’ll try … but probably not.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Sequel to Baby Geniuses casts Voight as a media mogul out to brainwash children via a tot-aimed TV network. He wants to use them to take over the world, but a band of tykes catches on and sets out to stop him. Gimmick has kids speaking to each other, thanks to creepy computer generated lip movement. Crude humor makes this not just bad but insulting.

(Whoop their ass Leonard! Seriously, I do think this is a strong contender for the worst franchise in history. Leonard is pretty conservative about BOMB ratings and both earned it, the movies have one good review out of 89! I even think both will have their own flavor of terrible. In the first I think it will be that it will just look shoddily made with the old school peanut-butter-esque mouth movements, where this, as I expected, uses the creepy CGI mouths now. This must have been pioneering in that respect, but in the last ten years it has become easy and cheap enough to do in even the worst direct-to-VOD sequels. Things like Santa Paws 2.)

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

(Oh …. Oh my God. Voight has a German accent and appears to be wearing a very Nazi-esque uniform at one point. I was very skeptical of the IMDb note claiming he based the character off Mengele, but … I mean, it certainly is a lot more possible than I initially thought! The CGI looks hilariously terrible, I might actually find this movie kind of interesting to watch. Like, how does this happen? How do you even go about directing a film like this?)

Directors – Bob Clark – (Known For: A Christmas Story; Black Christmas; Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things; Murder by Decree; Dead of Night; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Rhinestone; Porky’s II: The Next Day; Loose Cannons; Porky’s; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Director for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; And in 1985 for Rhinestone; Directed Black Christmas which is widely considered one of the first films in the slasher genre.)

Writers – Steven Paul (story) – (BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Screenplay for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; … He’s the manager for Bob Clark and Jon Voight which explains the cast and crew I suppose. In 1979 he was reported as the world’s youngest ever film producer at 20 years old.)

Gregory Poppen (screenplay) – (BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Screenplay for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Wrote an incredible number of Awards shows including seven straight ESPYs from 2002 to 2009.)

Actors – Jon Voight – (Known For: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them; Heat; Transformers; Tropic Thunder; Varsity Blues; Deliverance; U Turn; Mission: Impossible; National Treasure; Zoolander; Holes; The Manchurian Candidate; Enemy of the State; Midnight Cowboy; The Rainmaker; Ali; Rosewood; Glory Road; Catch-22; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Anaconda; Bratz; Getaway; An American Carol; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider; Four Christmases; Pearl Harbor; Most Wanted; National Treasure: Book of Secrets; September Dawn; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1998 for Worst Actor and Screen Couple for Anaconda; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2008 for Worst Supporting Actor for Bratz, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, September Dawn, and Transformers; And in 2005 for for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; And in 1998 for Most Wanted, and U Turn; Father of Angelina Jolie, although they were estranged for years apparently. Is devoutly religious and a well known conservative (which explains An American Carol at least …))

Scott Baio – (Known For: Bugsy Malone; Foxes; The Bread, My Sweet; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Cursed; Zapped!; Notes: In 1997 he was rumored to have died in a car accident. Not only had he not died, he hadn’t been in an accident in the first place and it is unknown how the rumor got started. More well known for his television work in Charles in Charge, Happy Days (and the spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi), and Arrested Development.)

Vanessa Angel – (Known For: Kingpin; King of New York; Bread and Roses; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot; Hall Pass; The Perfect Score; Kissing a Fool; Spies Like Us; Sleep with Me; Notes: I will always remember her as the computer generated Lisa from the Weird Science television series, a staple of the Sklogs’ childhood.)

Budget/Gross – $20 million / Domestic: $9,219,388 (Worldwide: $9,448,644)

(An absolute disaster. The budget is probably a bit inflated, because I don’t really see why it would get a $20 million dollar budget and cast Baio in a major role. I suppose they were hoping to slightly increase the $36 million take of the original?)

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

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(Oooof, on the second page with Caddyshack II and Teen Wolf Too! Of the films below it I could see us eventually doing Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Mannequin Two: On the Move, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: Rise of Taj, Meatballs II, and Teen Wolf Too eventually. A veritable bounty awaits. Naturally this came during the BMT gold rush from 2000-2010, the Golden Decade as I just started calling it. It would all come a-tumbling down presumably due to Hollywood’s hubris, but we have been on the rise again. A boy can dream …)

Rotten Tomatoes – 0% (0/45): A startling lack of taste pervades Superbabies, a sequel offering further proof that bad jokes still aren’t funny when coming from the mouths of babes.

(Noice. Always solid to hit up a 0%-er on rotten tomatoes. There are only 16 films with 25+ reviews on rotten tomatoes and the perfect(ly terrible) score. See here. Sorting by the number of reviews this is fifth on the list and with One Missed Call and a rewatch of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever we’d have the top five there done. A sadly sparse list as far as qualifiers are concerned, but there are some future gems like Redline. This is the 12th film we’ve seen from that list (I think … the list is pretty long so I just skimmed it).)

Poster – Superbabies: Baby Sklogses 2 (D-) 

superbabies_baby_geniuses_two

(Wow, lot to unpack with this one… this is horrendously bad. Even with good spacing, unique font, and a blue tone to the whole film I cannot help but puke all over myself when looking at this travesty. Are those drone helicopters in the corners? Is there a bouncy ball-human hybrid? What are the ghostly objects in the background? I hate this. [EDITOR NOTE: By the way, having watched the movie, these are all random babies, they aren’t the four main characters of the film … what the fuck baby geniuses?])

Tagline(s) – Meet the new generation of superheroes (A-)

Don’t drive, crawl! (Ugh.)

(It’s almost incredible to say, but that first tagline is nearly perfect. It’s a play on the dual meaning of “new” to give a hint at the premise of the film. It’s also just short enough. Some small tweaks and we might have had an A+ on our hands. The second one makes me sad.)

Keyword(s) – science experiment; Top Ten by BMeTric: 76.1 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004); 38.6 Allegiant (2016); 35.8 Splice (2009); 35.8 Cutting Class (1989); 28.3 Gekijô-ban poketto monsutâ – Myûtsû no gyakushû (1998); 28.0 Morgan (2016); 20.1 The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971); 15.8 The Experiment (2010); 15.7 The Last Mimzy (2007); 15.3 The Killer Eye (1999);

(We’ve seen none! Morgan looked like trash, I saw the trailer for that before Keeping Up With the Joneses in October. I actually don’t think we are going to get to any of the others. Just not very many good-bad science experiment bases films I guess.)

Notes – Jon Voight reportedly based the role of Kane on descriptions of Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor that performed grotesque experiments on prisoners in concentration camps. (Alright well … initially I had a kind of condemning note here angry at IMDb for not purging what appeared to be a clearly false note made by some jokester. But having now watched the trailer this seems, uh, slightly more plausible. May God have mercy on our souls.)

Last film directed by Bob Clark. He died in a car accident in April 2007. (Pretty sad story if you bother to look it up, … glad we’re ending on that note, anyone ready for a kids film?)

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (Jon Voight)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Director (Bob Clark)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Steven Paul, Gregory Poppen)