Tag: BMT 2017

The Whole Ten Yards Preview

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

The Whole Ten Yards (2004) – BMeTric: 49.2

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TheWholeTenYards_RV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wholetenyards_comedysequel

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

#42 for the Hitman / Assassin genre

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

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

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

Poster – The Whole Ten Sklogs (F)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mummy (2017) Recap

Jamie

Second BMT Live! of the year and we got a good jump on the new Dark Universe franchise. Not as sexy, embarrassing, or unintentionally hilarious as Fifty Shades Darker, but still got some things to say. Let’s go!

What?! Nick Morton is a thief, liar, and total badass. He’s treasure hunting in war-torn Iraq (natch) when he accidentally uncovers an Egyptian mummy, Ahmanet. Instantly cursed to be Set’s human vessel in Ahmanet’s dastardly plan, Morton must join forces with Dr. Jekyll and his monster hunters to stop her. Can she be stopped before it’s too late? Find out in… The Mummy!

How?! Alright, so like a million years ago Ahmanet was all set to rule Egypt as the one and only heir to the throne. That is until her daddio knocks up one of his servants and a son is born. Infuriated, Ahmanet make a deal with the devil (Set), kills her whole family, and attempts to bring death and despair to the world. Fortunately she is stopped and buried alive far from Egypt. Millenia later our hero Nick Morton inadvertently uncovers her tomb while treasure hunting/defending America in Iraq. When a sexy archaeologist (with whom Morton has has had prior relations, natch) attempts to bring the sarcophagus back to London for study, the mummy’s curse brings the plane down. Miraculously, Nick awakens unscathed from the crash revealing that he has been cursed to be Set’s human vessel in Ahmanet’s plan (and can’t die… yet). From there a bunch of origin story bullshit happens with Dr. Jekyll, Ahmanet is captured and then not captured, and Nick Morton drops some sweet one-liners. This culminates in Ahmanet’s plan almost working only to have Nick embrace the mummy’s curse to defeat her. Now part good and part evil he is left to roam the world fighting monsters trying to find a cure for his curse. Phew.

Why?! Uh… good question. Ahmanet is fueled by rage (obvs. She’s a monster). Nick Morton is mostly out to get money (and slay the ladies), but once he becomes Ahmanet’s chosen one he kind of loses any motivation for his actions. In fact this is a device used in the film, where Nick will suddenly stare into space, flashback to Ancient Egypt, and then awaken in a new place without explanation (other than that the plot needed him to be there). Only at the end do they allow that he may have grander, more virtuous motivations in stopping Ahmanet.

Who?! We have to talk about Jake Johnson, our resident comic relief and as close as we’ve gotten to a Planchet in a while. He was… not good. Weirdly miscast and misused. He only rarely had anything to say and even more rarely was actually funny. I’m not sure what happened exactly but perhaps through rewriting the script his character was lost a little and became more of a plot device than an actually person. Otherwise we’d just have to chalk it up to a bad script. Here’s to hoping he gets a better showing next time around.

Where?! Nice settings game here. The opening flashback takes place mostly in Egypt. Then we flash forward to Iraq, where the mummy is unearthed and loaded on a cargo plane back to London. From there we get a wonderful array of London establishing shots, English bobbies, and pubs. Almost an A, but I’ll leave it at a B+. Not quite indispensable.

When?! I swear to god there is a scene at the very beginning of the film where a full date is flashed on the screen as part of a video recorder perspective shot. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of a BMT Live is my inability to go ask the projectionist to quickly rewind the film so I could see it better. I’ll give this an Incomplete as a grade. Likely a B- at best. Probably a C. Could be an F if I was mistaken.

There is no way for me to make the argument that this film is actually good. It is not. It’s like if you took just the very beginning or very end of Iron Man and stretched it to feature length. Just not a lot there but origin story and franchise building (and that’s pretty lame). But it definitely was more horror than I thought it would (which was a pleasant surprise) and it’s probably better than a Transformers film… definitely shorter. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Mummy?! More like Just Crummy?! Ayyyyyyyyooooooooooooo. Take that The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, about time someone took you down a peg. So you want to make a movie universe to print Marvel like money, here’s a little checklist: (1) Get a movie star (check, Tom Cruise, killing it), (2) find some sweet IP that you own and serves a lucrative niche audience (nostalgia for Universal’s monster universe, the general boom of monster films, sounds good to me, check), (3) literally just make a Marvel movie … uh let’s get into it.

The Good (BMT Dream Journal) – I dug the bits that came across as spooky scary. The mummy sucking the life out of bobbies in jolly ole England creating a creepy zombie army? Digging it. I even could kind of get into the Dr. Jekyll as the head honcho of the Monster killers thing. Everything was there to set up a universe I cared about. I can’t really do any of these guys because, well … there is going to be a sequel, and this is a remake. So how about a little BMT Dream Journal of what I hope for this franchise moving forward: stop making these action films. They worked perfectly fine as a kind of pop-horror franchise and served a kind of cool idea: Big budget films which take the horror formula to general audience appeal. I dig it.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – Yikes. This film is hacked to pieces. It is written by like twenty people and it shows. Jake Johnson feels so out of place (I love him, but whenever he pops up it is like I’m in a different movie). It is 95% exposition and flashback. And you often feel like they kind of get bored with what they are doing so they trigger a Tom-Cruise-Is-In-A-Dream sequence and throw you in a totally new place without explanation. It is not a good movie. The sin is Greed. They wanted the Dark Universe so badly they couldn’t step back and make sure things were done right when the directors started dropping out. The result is a mess, but …

The BMT: Legacy – Here I’ll mention that I don’t think this film was irrecoverably bad. People are discussing it as if this is somehow a death knell for the Dark Universe. It is the second attempt at a start after Dracula Untold (which immediately became non-canon after it bombed), and while I haven’t seen that one, this was a promising enough start I don’t think it is an issue it bombed. It is like the DC Cinematic Universe, it takes a bit to start a universe out of nothing it seems. It isn’t a death knell, but it does put the universe on red alert. It needs to find its Wonder Woman soon, figure out the tone it will use throughout the attached films, and move into a place where a film a year is possible. We’ll see. I have hope. And I hope the legacy of The Mummy in BMT is that it was a weird footnote in a decent pop-Horror franchise, but I now like horror films, and the idea of pop-horror is cool to me.

Close with a little BMT Homework Assignment. I watched the original 1932 Mummy film with Boris Karloff. The film itself is brilliant, with a very cool story involving Imhotep being resurrected and then attempting to resurrect his lover Ankh-es-en-amon with a backdrop of British colonialism / archeology in 1930s Egypt. I would have said this story would have made much more sense for 2017’s The Mummy … but apparently that is the plot of 1999s The Mummy with Brendan Fraser … so yeah can’t really do that again. Cheerios and back to you Jamie.

The Mummy (2017) Preview

You’ve been waiting with bated breathe. You might have thought that King Arthur, Pirates, or Baywatch would have hit the mark and made it through. But no! We knew that something even worse reviewed was on the horizon… we just thought it would have been Transformers. That’s right! We’re watching our boy Tommy Cruise in the latest iteration of The Mummy for BMT Live! It’s the second of 2017 (after Fifty Shades Darker) and far less embarrassing to go see by myself. Ever since I saw it’s I, Frankenstein-esque trailers I had held out some thin hope that it might qualify. Little did I know that it would settle at a stunning and unexpected 17% on RT. Oh, I’m excited. Let’s go!

The Mummy (2017) – BMeTric: 24.4 (June 11, 2017)

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(I do love big film like this. It starts at over 8.0 … how does that happen? Who are the mega-fans of the Universal Dark Universe? With Warcraft it is a bit understandable, but this kind of suggests that a little digital manipulation has been happening by studios. That’s my thought anyways. It’ll bounce back up to around 6.0 I think, but ultimately the BMeTric will remain high because it’ll have like 100K votes. A popular below-average film through and through. NOTE: This plot was updated on August 12, 2017)

RogerEbert.com – 1.5 stars –  Perhaps I’m becoming jaded in my old age, but I was more amused than appalled. The Morton character is admittedly more of a callow nothingburger than any [Cruise]’s played. And given how the movie ends I’m a little disappointed that he wasn’t named Larry Talbot. But who knows, maybe he’ll be obliged to change it for the next installment. Which I am looking forward to, out of nothing but base curiosity.

(Not a too scathing review, even if it doesn’t match the awful 1.5 stars the reviewer gave it in the end. I had to look up Talbot (he’s the Wolfman), so … spoiler alert? Actually I doubt that is a spoiler since, I believe, Cruise is supposed to be a novel character that ties all of the franchises together, possibly Van Helsing (ultimately).)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjHgzkQM2Sg

(Tom Cruise loves his stunts. Two takeaways from this trailer: (1) They repeated his weird scream twice in the airplane scene and it throws me off; (2) I thought this was a terrible trailer which gives the opposite impression you would hope. Universal monsters aren’t action stars. They are supposed to be spooky scary. This trailer makes it abundantly clear they felt the need to “update” the stories to make them action films. They did not. And based on the reviews that decision seems like it didn’t work out.)

Directors – Alex Kurtzman – (Known For: People Like Us; BMT: The Mummy; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Screenplay for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2010; Notes: His first major directoral job … and it is meant to launch a universe. A producer and writer mostly, he stepped in after the first two directors dropped out very close to when production was meant to start.)

Writers – David Koepp (screenplay) – (Known For: Jurassic Park; Spider-Man; Mission: Impossible; War of the Worlds; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Panic Room; Zathura: A Space Adventure; Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit; Carlito’s Way; Death Becomes Her; Secret Window; Premium Rush; Stir of Echoes; Snake Eyes; Ghost Town; Bad Influence; The Trigger Effect; The Paper; Apartment Zero; Future BMT: The Shadow; Inferno; Dark Angel; Toy Soldiers; Angels & Demons; BMT: The Mummy; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay for The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1998; and Nominated for Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million for Mission: Impossible in 1997; Notes: A titan. Born in Wisconsin and went to UCLA. Hugely influenced by Raiders of the Lost Ark, and wrote the fourth Indiana Jones installment and is currently working on the fifth.)

Christopher McQuarrie (screenplay) – (Known For: The Usual Suspects; Edge of Tomorrow; Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation; Jack Reacher; Valkyrie; Jack the Giant Slayer; The Way of the Gun; Public Access; Future BMT: The Tourist; BMT: The Mummy; Notes: Kind of incredible story: bummed around teaching in places like Perth, Australia and working as a security guard. Was childhood friends with Bryan Singer and that’s how he broke into the industry, ultimately winning an academy award for The Usual Suspects.)

Dylan Kussman (screenplay) – (BMT: The Mummy; Notes: Half of these people are semi-connected to Tom Cruise. This guy acted in Jack Reacher and is, indeed, mostly an actor. Lives in Tennessee of all places.)

Jon Spaihts (screen story by) – (Known For: Prometheus; Doctor Strange; Future BMT: The Darkest Hour; Passengers; BMT: The Mummy; Notes: Interesting that he helped write Doctor Strange. Will be writing the upcoming Van Helsing movie as well. Passengers was on the 2007 Blacklist as a promising screenplay as well. He is an alum of Princeton.)

Alex Kurtzman (screen story by) – (Known For: Transformers; The Amazing Spider-Man 2; Star Trek; Star Trek Into Darkness; Mission: Impossible III; The Island; Cowboys & Aliens; People Like Us; Future BMT: The Legend of Zorro; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen; BMT: The Mummy; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Screenplay for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2010; Notes: Our director, who is indeed mostly a screenwriter. Well known for his collaboration with Roberto Orci, a partnership which has since dissolved, although both are producers on this movie and still work together outside of feature screenwriting.)

Jenny Lumet (screen story by) – (Known For: Rachel Getting Married; BMT: The Mummy; Notes: She has almost no credits which is interesting. Daughter of Sidney Lumet! And also was married to Bobby Cannavale for nearly ten years.)

Actors – Tom Cruise – (Known For: Top Gun; The Outsiders; Edge of Tomorrow; Tropic Thunder; Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation; Oblivion; Eyes Wide Shut; Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles; Minority Report; A Few Good Men; Knight and Day; Jack Reacher; Legend; Mission: Impossible; Mission: Impossible III; Collateral; Jerry Maguire; Magnolia; The Last Samurai; War of the Worlds; Future BMT: Days of Thunder; Losin’ It; Jack Reacher: Never Go Back; Lions for Lambs; BMT: Vanilla Sky; Endless Love; Cocktail; The Mummy; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Screen Couple in 1995 for Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, and The Specialist; and Nominated for Worst Actor in 1989 for Cocktail; and in 2006 for War of the Worlds; Notes: Noted scientologist and one of the last in a dying breed of genuine charming movie stars. There isn’t much I could tell most people about Cruise, so I’ll leave it with this: I would watch Jack Reacher all day. Fact.)

Sofia Boutella – (Known For: Atomic Blonde; Star Trek Beyond; Kingsman: The Secret Service; Tiger Raid; StreetDance 2; Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest; Future BMT: Monsters: Dark Continent; BMT: The Mummy; Notes: She has a very distinctive accent having been born in Algeria and grown up in France. She is a classically trained dancer.)

Annabelle Wallis – (Known For: X: First Class; Body of Lies; Come and Find Me; Future BMT: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword; Annabelle; Sword of Vengeance; Grimsby; Mine; W.E.; BMT: The Mummy; Notes: Apparently her role in Peaky Blinders snagged her the role in this movie. Niece of the original Dumbledore, Richard Harris. We’ll see her later in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword I’m sure.)

Budget/Gross – $125 million / Domestic: $12,000,000 (Worldwide: $151,000,000)

(Obviously this only counts a few days of its run (reflective when I snagged this particular piece of information). It is doing well enough worldwide to make people pause a bit. It is an utter disaster domestically … but like Pirates of the Caribbean 5 it is looking like foreign box office is saving it a bit.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 17% (32/186): Lacking the campy fun of the franchise’s most recent entries and failing to deliver many monster-movie thrills, The Mummy suggests a speedy unraveling for the Dark Universe.

(Brutal reviews. Reading through them they aren’t nearly as bad as that rating suggested, but the consensus does hint that it is forgettable and boring. Not great. Maybe there will be just enough monster-movie thrills? … Give me one monster-movie thrill, please.)

Poster – We Landed Tom Cruise! (C+)

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(Tom Cruise is… The Mummy. Not loving the droll colors here and Cruise is obviously a little prominent for a mummy movie. It’s basically the opposite of the Bredan Fraser poster that has a giant mummy head and pyramids on it. This one looks like a Jack Reacher film set in London. Points for font, artistry, and spacing.)

Tagline(s) – Welcome to a New World of Gods and Monsters (F)

(Oh no! No! Don’t do this to me. A CEO says this at a ribbon cutting ceremony at a newly opened theme park. It’s not a tagline for an actual film.)

Keyword(s) – bare chested male; Top Ten by BMeTric: 95.1 Disaster Movie (2008); 94.1 Battlefield Earth (2000); 90.5 Gigli (2003); 90.3 Fifty Shades of Grey (2015); 89.8 Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); 88.1 Street Fighter (1994); 87.6 Vampires Suck (2010); 87.3 Jaws: The Revenge (1987); 86.7 Crossroads (I) (2002); 86.4 The Love Guru (2008);

(Yeeessssss of course we are doing a full movie marathon with this keyword. Crossroads?! Street Fighter?! Fifty Shades?! Speed 2: Cruise Control?! It has got something for everyone! It’s fun for the whole family!)

Notes – It is intended to be the first installment in a possible Universal Monsters shared universe AKA “Dark Universe”.

The movie introduces Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, which will set up the character for a standalone film in Universal’s monster universe. (Maybe ill-advised. It is interesting trying to set up films based around monsters … since they aren’t heroes. I hope they aren’t marching towards a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen remake.)

The zero gravity scene took 64 takes and was shot for 2 days in a falling plane. Reportedly, a lot of the crew got nauseous during the scene and vomited, except for the main stars Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis, who were really proud of the stunt.

The Book of Amun-Ra from the previous movie-franchise is briefly seen falling down on the floor during a fight sequence. (People use this to claim the two franchises exist in the same world. They don’t … although bringing back Fraser would be kind of funny)

Sofia Boutella’s character is named Princess Ahmanet, which is similar (but not related) to Amunet, a primordial Ancient Egyptian goddess that was the consort of the deity Amun.

Javier Bardem, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Eddie Redmayne were all considered to play Dr. Henry Jekyll before Russell Crowe was cast in the role. Bardem was then cast as Frankenstein’s Monster. (Oh, I was going to say Bardem would have been a good choice. You’d have to hulkify the other two which would be a little League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as I mentioned before).

Alex Kurtzman did state that there’s no post end credit scene because that’s Marvel’s domain. (No it ain’t bro, but at the same time I don’t care)

When Jake Johnson was offered his part in the movie, he loved the idea and the opportunity to work with Tom Cruise, so he signed on immediately. However, when he read the full script and learned what stunts he was expected to do, he admitted to getting cold feet.

The film was partially filmed in London, England, with shooting taking place in July 2016. (Wooooooooooooo, settings 101 here we come)

The film’s original plot is set in Iraq and follows a Navy SEAL and his team that battle Mummies led by Ashurbanipal. (Wow, that sounds awful)

When Universal was planning their Dark Universe franchise they originally envisioned Dracula Untold (2014) as the first installment with this film being the second. That film ended with Dracula in modern day times while the Master Vampire “Let the games begin” in a very obvious set up for future installments. There was early talk about Dracula appearing in this film. However, as this film progressed it was cited as the first in the Dark Universe leaving the earlier movie to exist on its own. While Dracula director Gary Shore said he hoped the possibility that his film would join the universe was left open Mummy director Alex Kurtzman said it would not be canon. (Ha. I was wondering whether I had some homework to do … turns out nope)

Godsend Recap

Jamie

Godsend! Part of the technothriller triumvirate with Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace and Ghost in the Machine. Get it? God, Man, and the (Holy) Ghost. Thank you, thank you. Let’s get this going.

What?! Paul and Jessie have the perfect life until their son Adam is tragically killed in an accident. Approached with the possibility of cloning him, they take the chance, only to have the clone turn evil around the age that Adam was killed. Can they stop this evil Adam clone monster that they’ve unleashed on the world before it’s too late? Find out in… Godsend!

How?! The storyline starts as more of a family drama than a science fiction horror. We spend a good half hour watching a loving family get torn apart by the tragedy of a life cut short too soon. Even worse, when Robert De Niro’s creepy baby clone doctor, Dr. Wells, enters the picture (all too eager to “help” a family in mourning), you only feel sorrow. In almost any situation you would presume Dr. Wells was there to scam them with expensive false promises of cloning their lost child. But of course in this case his promises aren’t false and a new Adam is born. They live a wonderful eight years together until he begins to act super weird and have crazy violent nightmares. It would seem that he has some psychic connection to an evil, murderous child named Zachary. But who is Zachary? Twist Alert! Paul investigates and figures out that Zachary is in fact the long dead son of Dr. Wells himself! He’s a mad scientist who used Adam as a vessel to bring parts of Zachary back to life! Uh oh! When Paul confronts Dr. Wells about this things turn violent and Dr. Wells escapes. Paul recovers just in time to stop Adam/Zachary from killing Jessie. Realizing that they have a child possessed by pure evil they do what any parent would do: move away and pretend like everything’s fine… nothing to see here.

Why?! The motivations of Paul and Jessie are perfectly consistent: they mourn the loss of their child and will do anything to get him back. After they do get him back they will do anything to keep him. As for Dr. Wells, he uses a tenuous connection to Jessie to pretend that he just wants to help her with his scientific gift. Of course, after the twist is revealed it becomes clear that he shares the same motivations as Paul and Jessie for his own dead son, but chooses the evil, twisted route of incorporating his genes into Adam’s DNA without their knowledge. Finally, Adam’s motivation always was and always will be to get those sweet Reebok Pump Verticals. Pump up and air out, Adam/Zachary.

Who?! There is a nary a speck of humor in this film, so no possibility of a Planchet. No animals, no cameos, and no Presidents. The only Who?! I can think of is the fact that this was the first feature film that Mark Cuban’s production company produced. What a stain on our future President’s legacy.

Where?! Great settings film. When Adam is killed in the beginning of the film you see several cars with Massachusetts license plates in a big city. You can presume they lived in Boston. After they move to pursue the cloning, the family’s car changes from MA plates to Vermont plates. This is confirmed once Dr. Wells escapes as local newspapers list the location of the cloning center as Riverton, VT. Of course back when we were filling up the Mapl.d.map we had no way of knowing this and watched god damn A Change of Seasons for that state. What a waste. C+.

When?! No clues are given other than suggestions that the first part of the film takes place in the mid-90’s. There is a tagline from a poster for the film that says “Adam Duncan. Born: December 11, 1987. Died: December 12, 1995. Born September 23, 1996.” So if we take that at its word we have a perfect exact date as the films takes place after his second 8th birthday: September 23, 2004. All fits within the film’s context, but not clear from the film itself. D-.

I would describe the film as a slightly better version of Bless the Child until you hit the twist. From there it makes no sense with the rest of the film and leads to an stunningly bad ending (that might still have been the best of the several endings shot for the film). Woof. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Godsend? More like God, Send it Back! Amirite!? A couple’s child dies and Robert De Niro crashes their mourning period to reveal a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: play God, abandon the life as you know it, and lie to your child for the rest of your life and you can get him back! I mean, what is the downside?! Let’s get into it:

The Good (Sequel, Prequel, Remake) – For the most part the first two thirds of this film are at least okay. Not really “thrilling” maybe, but the acting is solid, a few jump scares here and there, and the premise is interesting enough to sustain the film for a good hour at least. Sounds like it is time for a sequel. Fifteen years later and Dr. Richard Wells is still missing, and his “son” Zachary has been quelled and is controlled within Adam, now a New York City detective. When episodes involving Zachary become more frequent, and disturbing stories of a mad doctor start to float around the precinct, Adam has a sinking feeling Wells is back to his genetic research games. Following leads through back alley clinics and mafia doctors Adam discovers with horror that Wells has perfected a procedure to transfer consciousnesses from one man to another. How does one catch a man who can change faces at will? Godsend: Face / Off. The New York Times calls it “a piss-poor sequel built entirely upon the premise that Robert De Niro refused to return to the series”.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – Mainly the issue with the film is that the ending is garbage. Not only that, all four alternative endings they wrote are also garbage. The writing gets seriously shaky in the third act, although it includes the gloriously evil-scientist line “Tell me something, if I’m not supposed to do this Paul, how is it that I can?” from Dr. Wells. If I had a nickel for every time I screamed that while doing my PhD work I would be a rich man. I’m not sure the sin (Lust, gluttony, greed? Probably greed), but I think all of the issues stem from the producers accidentally landing Robert De Niro and then rushing to expand his part (allegedly all shot within a very short time span). I would guess by expanding Wells into the main antagonist role they painted themselves into a corner with the ending. That’s my take anyways.

The BMT: Legacy – I do think Wells gets up there in the pantheon of evil bad movie scientists, along with Dr. Alexander McCabe from Bats. Along with that it also joins movies like The Call in which the first two thirds are pretty good and then the last act (often just the ending) ruins the entire film. Interesting, but this movie won’t be in any bad movie marathons, I don’t think. For the most part the film is too good in its first two acts to be anything that sticks around.

And wrap with StreetCreditReport.com as is usual these days. Godsend, not surprisingly, got no love at the time despite being the third lowest rated films on Rotten Tomatoes of the year. Ebert neglects it in his recap, and I found nary a list that mentioned it. But 2004 was an amazing year (Catwoman, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, New York Minute, White Chicks, The Whole Ten Yards!!) and Godsend is amazingly forgettable. Street cred? More like No Cred. For shame.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Godsend Preview

There were a number of pure science fiction films available for StreetCreditReport.com, but we were feeling a little genre mash’em-up. Let’s get something that’s a little dash of horror, a little pinch of intense family drama, a smidgen of science fiction, and literally no comedy whatsoever. That’s right! We’re watching Godsend. Not sure how many people remember this Robert De Niro/Greg Kinnear film that scored a startling 4% on RT. It’s about a family who loses their only son in a tragic accident. Offered the chance to clone their child they take the chance (against their own better judgement). All is well until strange things start happening once the child passes the age at which he died. Uh oh! Sounds extremely sad, incredibly close, and marginally creepy. Just how I like it! Let’s go!

Godsend (2004) – BMeTric: 63.9

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(Those are some dense plots for reals. Extremely promising. Basically no regression to the mean and a significantly low rating for IMDb being sub-5.0. Kind of amazing that a film released in 2004 can “only” have around 20 thousand votes over 13 years later, but even so, it seems like people have been slowly watching the film over the years and thinking “wow, this apparently terrible film is in actuality terrible” which is a good sign.)

Leonard Maltin – 2.5 stars – A couple grieving over the loss of their 8-year-old son is approached by a medical researcher who promises that he can enable the woman to give birth to the identical child all over again – using a revolutionary (is illegal) cloning method he’s perfected. Good performances and an interesting premise reel us in, but then the filmmakers string us along, teasing us about where the story is headed. It doesn’t pay off. Filmed in Canada, which never looked more unlike the U.S.

(Sweet settings burn by Leonard, decent hyphen game, and an overuse of the word “us” (speak for yourself Leonard). I kind of love this review, even if it does put a damper on my hopes for the film. Leonard doesn’t like the spooky-scary though, so 50-50 whether he actually watched this film. I could easily guess that the highlight of the film is the acting and premise based solely on the trailer.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWI2qZC_KUY

(I remember this trailer. And I remember thinking it looked spookily interesting. And I remember being shocked when it was apparently terrible. Loving the kick ass black Wilson b-ball in the beginning, and hating the little title cards “His Mother’s Eyes” etc. Cheesy, but getting me amped.)

Directors – Nick Hamm – (Known For: The Journey; The Hole; Killing Bono; Future BMT: Martha – Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence; BMT: Godsend; Notes: A BAFTA Award winning director, he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and extensively in British television.)

Writers – Mark Bomback (written by) – (Known For: The Wolverine; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; Die Hard 4.0; Unstoppable; Race to Witch Mountain; Future BMT: Deception; Total Recall; Insurgent; BMT: Godsend; Notes: There is an entire interview just about this movie and the thought process that went into it. Fascinating stuff. Seems like a writing-for-fun-and-profit kind of guy, and strangely seems to have ended up doing a ton of action films.)

Actors – Robert De Niro – (Known For: Goodfellas; Heat; The Godfather: Part II; Taxi Driver; Sleepers; A Bronx Tale; The Deer Hunter; Silver Linings Playbook; Stardust; American Hustle; Limitless; Casino; Once Upon a Time in America; Joy; Jackie Brown; The Intern; Cape Fear; The Untouchables; Raging Bull; Hands of Stone; Future BMT: Little Fockers; Killing Season; Showtime; The Carrier; The Fan; Hide and Seek; Analyze That; Shark Tale; Righteous Kill; Arthur et les Minimoys; 15 Minutes; The Bridge of San Luis Rey; Red Lights; Heist; Meet the Fockers; The Family; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Killer Elite; The Comedian; Bloody Mama; Stanley & Iris; Great Expectations; BMT: Godsend; The Big Wedding; New Year’s Eve; Dirty Grandpa; Grudge Match; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Actor for Dirty Grandpa in 2017; and Nominated for Worst Screen Couple in 2003 for Showtime; Notes: Not much to say about him, he’s been in an incredible number of films (and an incredible number of bad films). He’s been in something like 100 films with over five reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it is crazy. Anyways, someday maybe we’ll do a De Niro exclusive cycle, try and knock a few more of these guys off.)

Greg Kinnear – (Known For: Little Miss Sunshine; Brigsby Bear; As Good as It Gets; We Were Soldiers; Invincible; Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues; Sabrina; Stuck in Love; You’ve Got Mail; Robots; Mystery Men; The Gift; Baby Mama; Green Zone; Animal Attraction; Stuck on You; Little Men; Heaven Is for Real; Ghost Town; Bad News Bears; Future BMT: I Don’t Know How She Does It; Loser; Blankman; The Last Song; Salvation Boulevard; Dear God; A Smile Like Yours; Unknown; Murder of a Cat; Feast of Love; BMT: Movie 43; Godsend; Notes: If I was older I probably would have realized that he used to be a talk show host before making his film debut in Blankman (!). Nominated for an Oscar for As Good as It Gets.)

Rebecca Romijn – (Known For: X-Men; X: First Class; X-Men: The Last Stand; X-Men 2; Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; Femme Fatale; S1m0ne; Run Ronnie Run; The Alibi; Future BMT: Good Deeds; Man About Town; The Punisher; Dirty Work; BMT: Rollerball; Godsend; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Supporting Actress for Rollerball in 2003; Notes: Formerly Romijn-Stamos, and now married to Jerry O’Connell with whom she has twin daughters. Love me some twin notes. She was a model, and has an impressive filmography after breaking out in X-Men.)

Budget/Gross – $25 million / Domestic: $14,379,751 (Worldwide: $30,114,487)

(That’s a bomb. But at least the budget was modest. It could have easily been worse considering the actors involved, which is definitely why it costs $25 million instead of $10 million.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 4% (6/138): A murky thriller with few chills, Godsend is features ludicrous dialogue, by-the-numbers plotting, and an excess of cheap shocks.

(I don’t like cheap shocks, they are the worst way to make a horror film. I loooooove ludicrous dialogue though, so I’m down. Make me jump in exchange for De Niro saying something like “he’s got his brother’s memories!”. I take that deal 10 out of 10 times.)

Poster – Sklogsend (C-)

godsend_ver2

(Why is there smoke all over this poster? I can barely tell what’s actually on it. But still a nice example of how to make a poster with people in it without ruining the color. Solid orange color, terrible font, and really bad spacing. Meeeehhhhhhh.)

Tagline(s) – Adam Duncan. Born: December 11, 1987. Died: December 12, 1995. Born September 23, 1996. (Thank you.)

When a miracle becomes a nightmare, evil is born. (B-)

(The first tagline is not on the poster, but I like that at some point they made very specific decision on exactly when the entire movie took place. If worse comes to worse I can use it for the temporal setting. So thanks, anonymous tagline writer. The second one is elusive. I certainly sounds like a tagline. But does it really mean anything? I don’t think so and graded it accordingly.)

Keyword(s) – birthday; Top Ten by BMeTric: 93.1 Dragonball Evolution (2009); 87.6 Vampires Suck (2010); 85.6 The Room (2003); 84.8 Left Behind (I) (2014); 84.1 Movie 43 (2013); 81.9 Skyline (2010); 76.0 Junior (1994); 71.5 The Next Karate Kid (1994); 67.6 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998); 63.9 Godsend (2004);

(Ha! Junior is by far the best one there. Someday we are going to watch and regret watching 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain starring the Hulkster.)

Notes – Robert De Niro had originally planned on merely providing a brief cameo for the film – however after director Nick Hamm heard De Niro would be interested in his project, he asked De Niro to participate in a few more scenes that were all filmed within a week. De Niro later regretted this because his name was “splashed over all the advertisements”. (De Niro regretted that his money grab became a high profile money grab)

Before the release of this movie, Lions Gate Films set up two official websites: one conventional site with movie information, and one site that appeared to be a promotional tool for the (fictional) cloning institute depicted in the movie. The website gave an email address and phone number (1-888-699-2672) for the “Godsend Institute;” calling the number resulted in a recorded message giving the institute’s office hours. Several news outlets reported that when a few bereaved parents called or emailed the fake institute to inquire about having their children genetically reconstituted, the studio started responding to them and explaining that it was just a movie tie-in and not a real laboratory. Similar advertisements for fictional medical procedures and clinics were also produced as parts of the advertising campaigns for Gattaca (1997) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). (That isn’t great to be honest. That sounds terrible)

Five different endings were shot for this movie and the released one is the tamest one. (This is worthless unless I can see the other endings, I don’t even know what tamest means in this context)

The operating room sequences were filmed inside the empty swimming pool of the institute complex. (fun facts)

The snow scene in the graveyard was unplanned. It was hoped the snow would remain until the scene was completed, and it did. (fun facts)

Hot to Trot Recap

Jamie

Who would have thought that watching an entire cycle of films that received the rare <10% RT score would result in us getting dog poo shoved ever so slowly into our faces over and over again? That’s our BMT life. Let’s go!

What?! After the death of his mother, Fred Chaney needs to prove to his asshole stepdad that he can handle the family biz. Fortunately his mother has bequeathed him a talking horse with a nose for stock trading. Can he amass a fortune, get the lady, and shove it in his stepdad’s face before it’s too late? Find out in… Hot to Trot.

How?! Comedy business storyline alert! As is the case with most 80’s comedies, this film concerns our main characters lust for success and money in the world of finance. Fred’s mother dies, leaving him with half an investment company and one talking horse named Don. He’s a deadbeat loser, so naturally his asshole of a stepdad wants to buy him out of his stake in the company, but Fred hates his stupid face so decides to stay on out of spite. By sheer luck, Don overhears some important business tips around the stables and Fred is soon raking in the dough and living it up (with Don) in a penthouse apartment. His luck soon runs out, though, when one of Don’s tips comes up a dud and he loses everything. With only Don to his name (weird that he still “owns” Don even though he’s basically his friend and talks with him all day), he stakes it all on a big horse race. Riding Don to victory as the unlikeliest of jockey’s, Fred finally gives his stepdad the comeuppance he deserves. As for Don, his storyline is a sad affair concerned mostly with loneliness and wanderlust. As for our storyline while watching this film, it was also a sad affair concerned only with sadness and dog poo in our faces.

Why?! Technically Fred’s goals are two-fold. He primarily wants to prove that he’s not the black sheep bozo that his stepdad assumes he is (and he certainly is in actuality). There is a secondary romantic goal of getting with Allison, a coworker at the office, but that is a pretty weak romantic storyline. As for Don, he’s just looking for three simple things: a friend, a nice filly to make baby talking horses with, and all the TaB he can guzzle. The final race provides an answer to all these goals. If they win they get rich (to buy TaB, probably), Fred gets the girl, and Fred wins all of his stepdad’s horses, including the filly of Don’s dreams. How convenient! I guess that’s why they made a documentary about it since it was such a crazy convenient storyline.

Who?! We’ve been on a roll with uncredited appearances (and in a major slump on Planchets) and this film is no different. Appearing unbilled as the voice of Don’s dad is Mickey himself, Burgess Meredith. Pretty big role to go unbilled (three major scenes), but just a voice so maybe didn’t think a terrible talking horse film was worth the billing in the end. I like to imagine he was really good friends with Bobcat Goldthwait and did him a solid.

Where?! California setting. Lots of license plates and California living. Most notably though is the climactic horse race, the El Segundo Stakes, set outside LA. Pushes it from a C+ to a B-.

When?! There is no clear temporal setting for this film. There were a couple glimpses of newspapers and computer screen, but all were prop constructions. No dates to be seen. The only conjecture we can make is on the date of the El Segundo Stakes. There is a race by that name that seems to run in the third week of May, but it is so small that I can’t tell if it even existed in the 80’s or is always run in May. So that’s pretty weak. D+.

Let’s see what Patrick thought of this dog poo. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Hot to Trot? More like Dog Poo In My Face! Or Should I say Horse Poo In My Face!? Amirite? John Candy voices a stock-tip giving, best-bud of a party animal in this hilarious comedy showcasing the one of a kind talents of Bobcat Goldthwait! What could possibly go wrong! Oh yeah, I already told you, it was like dog poo being pushed slow motion into my face, let’s get into it:

The Good (Sequel, Prequel, Remake) – Some of the performances, like Virginia Madsen, were okay which is only more confusing as to how they got them in this movie in the first place. Besides that literally nothing. But we obviously are going to go Sequel! Here we see mega-billionaire Fred Chaney who, with the help of Don the talking horse, has skyrocketed to the top of the financial world. But Don is concerned after finding some discrepancies in the company’s books … could Fred be stealing from his clients and friends? Paranoid, and afraid, Don seeks out Allison Rowe to help unravel the mystery of Fred Chaney. Is he the man they thought he was, or could he be a crook … even a killer? Hot to Trot 2: Money Never Sleeps. “A tense thriller … although the talking horse deflates it a bit” says the New York Times.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – Where to start? Everything about the talking horse and the lore surrounding it is cheesy and awful and not funny. The direction is bonkers, there are parts which legit look like they filled out the film with stock footage. The writing is awful, bouncing between a kind of weird talking horse financial comedy and a surreal odd couple situation (with a talking horse). It is aimless, and at times boring, aggravating, annoying, and predictable all wrapped up in one. It is legitimately one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. The sin is Greed. And that is only because stupidity isn’t a sin. Why they thought they could just make easy money with this bit of schlock is beyond me.

The BMT: Legacy – Boy oh boy, this film is awe inspiring in how bad it is, a rarity even. This could go down as one of the worst earnest 80s films we’ll ever watch. We’ve probably seen worse actual films (Can’t Stop the Music comes to mind), and I’ve certainly seen other terrible films quality-wise, but this is somehow indicative of the legacy of the 80s. Like Maximum Overdrive it is cocaine distilled, a heady hubris-driven idea of doing whatever you want and expecting it to come up heads every time. It is special, and deserves to be in any conversation about terrible 80s films, especially in a BMT context. It is nearly beyond words … so naturally I wasted a ton of them trying to explain it. This movie is like smoke, ungraspable and ephemeral. Enjoy it while you can.

Boom, and shine that off with a little StreetCreditReport.com! Interestingly Hot to Trot doesn’t get a lot of love as a bad movie. It is the 3rd worst talking animal film ever though, but then gets 23rd on a list concerning all of the 80s. That guy is a random guy from Tampa Bay, but we have seen 5 of his top 10 (Cobra, Rhinestone, Ishtar, Over the Top, and Gymkata) … I’m sticking to my guns, this easily gets into my top 10. Anyways, I think why this doesn’t get more notice is because no one remembers. This list seems to suggest that is plausible. That is what Bad Movie Twins give you though, the unpopular opinions. You heard it here first … Hot to Trot is a bad movie.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Hot to Trot Preview

After the breath of formulaic and dull air that is License to Wed, it feels like time to paint ourselves into a corner for Chain Reaction. It’s an annual tradition whereby we see how far we can sink ourselves into the dregs of major Hollywood releases before expertly extricating ourselves like a pair of bad movie Houdini’s. There is no further we can sink than our next film (connecting through Wagons East! via John Candy), which truly puts the Street Cred in the StreetCreditReport.com cycle. That’s right! We’re watching Hot to Trot! This is the Bobcat Goldthwait vehicle in which John Candy voices a stock tip providing horse… do I need to say anything more? Let’s go!

Hot to Trot (1988) – BMeTric: 35.9

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(The delay in the regression to the mean is tripping me out. But I think what this is saying is that this film is aggressively bad to a point where almost anyone who watches it agrees with this fact … but there is something ridiculous about it that allows you to, now, watch it with irony. For an 80s film to have such a high BMeTric is a rarity as IMDb votes couts drops off dramatically for films released pre-2000, so this is something we’ve have plenty of time to plan for.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Here’s a fresh concept from the 1980s: a comedy about a talking horse. Goldthwait plays a semi-imbecile who gets stock tips from a whinnying pal with the voice of John Candy. As comedies go this is the equivalent of Black Monday. Coleman, courtesy of the makeup department, wears a pair of horse teeth here; They are funny.

(Mixed signals from Leonard here. Are the horse teeth funny or not. The rest of the review is dripping so thoroughly with irony it is hard to tell. Is it a fresh concept?! We may never know! The Black Monday joke too, so much to unpack with the review. I have a feeling this is a good sign. Leonard was juggling many thoughts and feelings about this film, it is so dense.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRE4Hoe5dQ 

(Hooves don’t fail me now! Ah there is something about 80s comedies that are so comfortably ridiculous. I think I’ll feel right at home … although 80s comedies also tend to be overly serious and often boring, so I guess we’ll see?)

Directors – Michael Dinner – (Known For: Heaven Help Us; Future BMT: The Crew; BMT: Hot to Trot; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Director for Hot to Trot in 1989; Notes: A television director (and executive producer) of shows like Justified and Sneaky Pete now. He was a singer in the 1970s:

I’m 95% sure this is him.)

Writers – Stephen Neigher (story & screenplay) – (BMT: Hot to Trot; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay for Hot to Trot in 1989; Notes: His name is … Neigher. Besides that can’t see much besides that this is his only feature film, and he most did one off television episode scripts for most of his career.)

Hugo Gilbert (story & screenplay) – (BMT: Hot to Trot; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay for Hot to Trot in 1989; Notes: Nothing. The search lead me to the book Frame by Frame II: A Filmography of the African American Image, 1978-1994, where it is noted that Harry Caesar plays Gideon Cole … nothing about Gilbert, I just had nothing else to say.)

Charlie Peters (screenplay) – (Known For: Ruth & Alex; My One and Only; Future BMT: 3 Men and a Little Lady; Krippendorf’s Tribe; My Father the Hero; Blame It on Rio; Her Alibi; Music from Another Room; BMT: Hot to Trot; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay for Hot to Trot in 1989; Notes: Taught screenwriting at USC and was brought to LA initially to help Columbia with PR after the David Begelman embezzlement scandal. Juicy stuff.)

Andy Breckman (uncredited) – (Known For: Rat Race; I.Q.; True Identity; Future BMT: Arthur 2: On the Rocks; Sgt. Bilko; BMT: Hot to Trot; Notes: A script doctor, which explains the uncredited role here. Has an ongoing feud with Don MacLean (the singer of American Pie) from when he was a singer as well:

)

Actors – Bobcat Goldthwait – (Known For: Blow; Hercules; Scrooged; One Crazy Summer; World’s Greatest Dad; Police Academy 3: Back in Training; Freaked; Tapeheads; Sleeping Dogs; Future BMT: Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol; Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment; Burglar; Destiny Turns on the Radio; Shakes the Clown; Hansel & Gretel; Mrs. Winterbourne; Radioland Murders; BMT: Hot to Trot; Grind; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Actor for Hot to Trot in 1989; Notes: Primarily a director now, his most well known film is probably World’s Greatest Dad with Robin Williams. It claims he has directed nearly 300 episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live as well, which is interesting. He was a staple of my mid-afternoon Comedy Central viewing as a child in One Crazy Summer specifically.)

Dabney Coleman – (Known For: WarGames; Rules Don’t Apply; You’ve Got Mail; Tootsie; Stuart Little; The Towering Inferno; 9 to 5; Dragnet; On Golden Pond; The Man with One Red Shoe; Bite the Bullet; Battle of Midway; Cloak & Dagger; Moonlight Mile; Rolling Thunder; This Property Is Condemned; Melvin and Howard; The Muppets Take Manhattan; Recess: School’s Out; North Dallas Forty; Future BMT: Inspector Gadget; The Beverly Hillbillies; Clifford; Amos & Andrew; Domino; Young Doctors in Love; Meet the Applegates; Viva Knievel!; BMT: Hot to Trot; Notes: He voiced the principal in the show Recess. Was somewhat well known for his short-lived television show Buffalo Bill as well.)

John Candy – (Known For: Home Alone; Spaceballs; Uncle Buck; The Blues Brothers; Stripes; Vacation; Heavy Metal; Cool Runnings; Little Shop of Horrors; JFK; Splash; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; The Great Outdoors; The Rescuers Down Under; Volunteers; Delirious; Only the Lonely; Follow That Bird; Future BMT: Armed and Dangerous; Cannonball Fever; 1941; Who’s Harry Crumb?; Rookie of the Year; Canadian Bacon; She’s Having a Baby; Career Opportunities; Summer Rental; Once Upon a Crime…; Brewster’s Millions; BMT: Nothing But Trouble; Wagons East; Hot to Trot; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Supporting Actress for Nothing But Trouble in 1992; Notes: I love John Candy. We went through this in the last Chain Reaction of course with Wagon’s East. Instead of a normal note let’s reminisce in BMT history: remember when John Candy played his own twin sister in Nothing But Trouble … yeah that was weird.)

Budget/Gross – $9,000,000 / Domestic: $6,436,211

(Wow. I’m not sure I trust the budget number for a movie this old, but at the same time it makes sense. That though is still a very low domestic total. The 109th highest grossing film of 1988 right above, gulp, Mac and Me. Not great.)

#33 for the Family – Talking Animal (Live action) genre

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(Amazing. It started the craze! Talking animals are amazing, so not surprisingly it just kind of general trends upwards … I’m not sure what is up with that gap, maybe the genre collectively moved to VOD (like Santa Paws?), but Jungle Book at least kind of put it back on the map, so maybe they’ll be a renaissance. Fun fact: The point when the trend takes off for real is with Babe in 1995, which probably also marker the point of no return where CGI was used for the talking bits instead of doing it Mr. Ed style (with peanut butter and stuff). This movie also only really beats Gordy as far as gross is concerned.)

#17 for the Horse genre

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(Not a real genre, but fun nonetheless. The peak in the mid-2000s might be due to Seabiscuit, but it is hard to tell.)

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

(My consensus: A one-note update to the Talking Horse genre merely brings profanity to the table. Justifiably considered terrible, it is somehow worse than even rock bottom expectations. There are a few reviews which suggest it isn’t sooooooo bad, but none offer anything beyond a glimmer of a hope in the comedy department. None of the reviews are from the time though. I do think it goes hand in hand with the IMDb vote analysis above: I think there are people who watch it now and think “oh that isn’t as bad as I thought it would be”, which might explain the modest regression to the mean in recent years.)

Poster – Sklog to Blog (Oh God. Oh man!)

hot_to_trot

(That… is… unfortunate.)

Tagline(s) – “When I talk, you’re going to laugh yourself hoarse.” (D-)

The funniest talking horse movie ever! (F)

(True blue double tagline film. And both seem like taglines that would be written ironically for a modern “purposefully bad film”. The first being a stereotypically bad pun and the second being almost self deprecating. I give the first a point for delivering on the pun.)

Keyword(s) – horse; Top Ten by BMeTric: 94.1 Battlefield Earth (2000); 86.8 BloodRayne (2005); 85.3 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007); 85.0 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987); 83.3 Dungeons & Dragons (2000); 82.2 The Legend of Hercules (2014); 80.2 xXx²: State of the Union (2005); 79.2 Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009); 75.5 Hercules in New York (1970); 72.6 Jonah Hex (2010);

(Loving it. Obviously this list is dominated by sword and sorcery type pictures, but the occasional bad western like Jonah Hex is always welcome. I’m not even going to try and remember where the horse in Superman IV comes in, we have to watch that for BMT anyways.)

Notes – After Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Tim Burton was offered to direct, but declined. (Good idea Tim)

Elliott Gould was the original voice of the horse. After a poor test screening of the film, the horse’s half of the script was rewritten by Andy Breckman in an effort to make the film funnier. John Candy was hired to re-record the horse’s voice; he ignored the new script and improvised the dialogue instead. (That is the beauty of such films you see, you can rewrite half of the script and punch it up indefinitely)

Reportedly, when Bobcat Goldthwait was given a script of the movie, he wrote “Why would I do this?” on the cover. His agent responded by drawing a dollar sign over it. (This is a straight cash grab job brother, get in get out)

Joan Rivers was originally cast as the lead. (Interesting, I guess after Spaceballs she was hunting for acting jobs)

During the race at the end of the movie Don asks for Fred to inspire him like the old guy from Rocky. He is of course referring to Burgess Meredith who voiced Don’s father. (fun fact)

Virginia Madsen claimed to have made this movie for two reasons: one, so that her sister’s children could see the film; secondly, for the money. She admits the movie was an embarrassment, but she was not ashamed to take the role, since she needed the money at the time. (Everyone is doing it for the money!)

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (Bobcat Goldthwait)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Director (Michael Dinner)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Stephen Neigher, Hugo Gilbert, Charlie Peters)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst New Star (The Horse I assume)

License to Wed Recap

Jamie

Ahhh. Nothing like the relaxing week of a single, simple 80 minute film with bloopies at the end. Really trying to stretch that lack of a story to feature length. Gives us something light to snack on before getting back to the g-g-g-g-garbage. Let’s go!

What?! Sadie and Ben are getting married! But before they can have their dream wedding at Sadie’s childhood church they must go through pre-wedding counseling with Reverend Frank. Can they pass the course and walk the aisle before… uh… it’s too late!? Find out in… License to Wed!

How?! The story focuses around Ben and Sadie who met and fell in love while ordering a delicious coffee from Starbucks. Ben proceeds to pop the question and Sadie says yes. Hooray! They find out that the church that Sadie wants to get married in is booked solid except for a date only three weeks away. Uh oh! Artificial plot constraint alert! This means that they have to plan the wedding and pass a pre-wedding counseling course all in a matter of days. When it turns out that the head of the church, Reverend Frank, is a monster that uses illegal surveillance and mind games to manipulate his victims into incredibly high stress situations, Bed and Sadie’s love are no match and they call off the wedding. Once separated, they both realize that Reverend Frank was right… or something… and that they belong together. Ben jets off to join Sadie at the beautiful and luxurious Sandals resort in Jamaica where they are married by the monster who almost ruined their lives. Gah!… He illegally surveilled you and almost destroyed your relationship! Everyone acts like he’s totally normal and not a crazy person! It’s infuriating.

Why?! Also infuriating. Ben and Sadie simply want to get married and literally nothing stands in their way. There isn’t some other person who wants to get married on the same day. There isn’t some crazy family drama throwing a monkey wrench in the celebration. There isn’t an unexpected ex or second thoughts giving someone cold feet. In fact they breeze through planning a wedding in three weeks as if it’s nothing. The only conflict is the garbageman himself, Frank. He is the conflict. Why? Because he is so dismayed by the divorce rate in the United States that he insists that everyone experience the ultimate levels of stress to see if their relationship can survive it. If they can then they deserve to be married, if they can’t then they don’t. What?! You are bonkers insane, Frank.

Who?! We got double decker uncredited action on this one. Both Bob Balaban and Wanda Sykes make cameo appearances as people who appear normal but, I assure you, they are crazy. It’s impossible to know why they ended up appearing uncredited. Maybe they were doing a favor to the director or a producer. Or maybe they didn’t think it was worth the credit. I certainly wouldn’t have if I appeared in the same scene as Balaban did.

Where?! Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. Everywhere you look there is a Cubs hat or a Northwestern shirt or an establishing shot of the Chicago River. It’s pretty prominent, but not ridiculously so. B.

When?! What’s that sounds? That’s right! An exact date alert! When Ben and Sadie are ordering their wedding rings we get a brief glimpse of the paperwork. Right at the top shines a beautiful “5/17” for the date. Since the proposal and wedding all take place within three weeks we know that May 17th is approximately correct for the entire film. Magnifique. B as it’s exact but not vital to the plot and hard to determine.

If you couldn’t tell I really didn’t like this film. I found it infinitely frustrating. But perhaps it just cut to my core. Perhaps the situations were just too real. I’ll have to ask an objective observer about this. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! License to Wed? More like License Revoked! A true blue NY Post headline! I’ve been informed that my rhyme game has become a little more like a half-rhyme game recently and is wizzzzzeak as shit (his words not mine). I’ll do better though, I promise. Perhaps … I just need to be put under intense pressure and stress for weeks on end until I go crazy, punch Jamie in the face, quit BMT, and am left a wreck picking up the pieces of my shattered life … but what’s that? I learn that BMT is what I need, it is what I love, and from me blossoms the most beautiful full rhymes the world has ever seen! To achieve these dizzying heights I needed to know me and BMT could go through anything together!!! Or maybe that’s bonkers and so are the writers of this movie, let’s go!

The Good (Sequel, Prequel, Remake) – How can I recover when we’ve already revealed that one of the protagonists of the movie is a raging psychopath? Well if there was one thing that kind of redeems the film it is that if you squint enough you can kind of see the point: If you can make it through the toughest time together you’ll make it through anything. Let’s extend that harsh truth into a “hilarious” sequel. This time following Reverend Frank’s young protege played by Josh Flitter. Now in seminary school the young man, billed curiously as simply Choir Boy in the original (he was like … the fifth biggest character), has started to doubt his path to God. Did Reverend Frank teach him good or evil? If his place in the world is not to commune with the Lord, what is it? A movie that explores a lost soul sinking unyieldingly into a deep spiritual depression. The New York Times called it “a huge downer. Why they would call it License to Wed: Legacy is beyond the entire editorial staff”. Sorry, harsh truths and all, if he can’t get through the toughest times how is he to know his relationship with the Lord is going to last? Gross.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – The acting by the television crew of the Office was spotty at best. This is a one laugh movie, and is otherwise just frustrating. The evil that is Reverend Frank in this film must have come about in a very complex fashion because very early on he plants a bug in Ben and Sadie’s house and from there it is hard to imagine the character recovering. Yeah, they’re going to find it. So how does everyone not immediately see Frank exposed for the garbage monster that he is? Well, a solid 20 minutes of this 80 minute long film relies on Frank’s surveillance of Ben and Sadie so you can’t write it out, so naturally they make Ben break into Frank’s house and make him look like a crazy person as well. This is a trend in this film: it exists in a world where up is down, black is white, and people act like lunacy is normal. It is the only way this film operates, and is rather common in poorly written comedies, and basically comes from sloth, too lazy to actually write normal human beings until the film is a frustrating mess. Weirdly common.

The BMT: Legacy – What I wrote in the previous paragraph is interesting: that MO, the storyline that can’t be extracted as it is somehow (and inexplicably) woven throughout the messy tapestry of a movie, is indeed quite common in bad comedies. This could ultimately be a singular example of such a storyline. That I think could be this film’s legacy for BMT. Otherwise it is bad, but it also isn’t even the worst wedding based film we’ve seen in the last couple of months so ….

And finally a quick StreetCreditReport.com: This film came out in 2007, but doesn’t get a lot of love on the worst of lists. It was number three on the MTV worst of list, and top three on CNN’s list, but otherwise doesn’t even make the top 15 on the AV Club, and is general trounced by Norbit. I think this is ultimately lost to time as it’s not even the third worst comedy of 2007, let alone anything special from an impressive decade light the 00s.

I’ll leave it there. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

License to Wed Preview

Phew, we need a little respite. We’ve been watching some pretty horrid films for the <10% RT cycle and there are a few more on the horizon. So for Girls Night Out we’re not going to subject ourselves to something like Bolero or Return to the Blue Lagoon. Nope. We’re just going to do a nice and simple recent rom com. A little palate cleanser and momentary return to BMT normalcy. That’s right! We’re watching the Robin Williams vehicle License to Wed! The consensus for this film seems to be that it is broad and formulaic… now that sounds like BMT. Let’s go!

License to Wed (2007) – BMeTric: 53.5

LicensetoWed_BMeT

LicensetoWed_RV

(Popular and Below Average. There is a modest regression to the mean, but it looks like it is probably around where it will stay. No rethinking this one, this movie is just not very good … is what it seems to be saying. The BMeTric is higher than I would have expected maybe? These plots aren’t actually that interesting.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Embarrassing comedy wastes a talented cast in a laughless story about a reverend who puts an unsuspecting engaged couple through a series of “tests” to determine if they are ready to be married. Gag after gag falls hopelessly flat, with one involving mechanical babies hitting a new low, even for this kind of lame-braining affair. A comic misfire for Williams, who is basically straitjacketed here.

(Wow, didn’t expect to see a bomb here. I feel like Maltin is far less forgiving to a boring lame comedy than he is to a boring lame action film, although perhaps that is because he likes classic comedy more? … Maybe. This movie doesn’t seem very exciting, but I’m guessing Old Dogs would be described roughly the same way and it is amazing, so I’ll hold out hope.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmyfIOp30aI

(Hmmmm. On the face of it the premise is ludicrous. Imagine yourself in such a situation. Any normal person would say that Robin Williams is (being generous) harsh, but more people would call him a lunatic. To then rest the entire movie on multiple people not only finding this person a normal human being, but also they must consider his opinion to be of the utmost importance and consider Krasinski unreasonable for inevitably becoming upset with him. It … doesn’t seem pleasant. It is going to be unfunny, and frustrating, and will wholly depend on Williams to carry the movie. Based on the reviews I’m thinking he wasn’t up to carrying such a heavy load.)

Directors – Ken Kwapis – (Known For: He’s Just Not That Into You; The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants; A Walk in the Woods; Big Miracle; Follow That Bird; Future BMT: Dunston Checks In; The Beautician and the Beast; He Said, She Said; Vibes; BMT: License to Wed; Notes: He directed He Said, She Said with his wife Marisa Silver. His career has spanned nearly four decades now, although these days he mostly directs television. For a guy I’ve never really heard of his career is really impressive.)

Writers – Kim Barker (screenplay & story) – (BMT: All About Steve; License to Wed; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay for All About Steve in 2010; Notes: It does not help that she shares the name with the journalist who inspired the film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I can’t find anything else about her … besides vitriolic rebukes of what might be called a … subpar filmography thus far.)

Vince Di Meglio and Tim Rasmussen (screenplay) – (Future BMT: Marmaduke; Smother; BMT: License to Wed; Notes: They are writing partners, although Vince Di Meglio had a career as a visual effects artist prior to an extended writing career with Rasmussen. They haven’t written a feature since 2010, but do a ton of different things within the studio system though.)

Wayne Lloyd (story) – (BMT: License to Wed; Notes: Was miscellaneous crew on The Fog … again, not much else there … where did this script come from? I would guess Kim Barker, but there is little about any of these people online, so it is quite confusing.)

Actors – Mandy Moore – (Known For: Tangled; The Princess Diaries; Saved!; Romance & Cigarettes; Dr. Dolittle 2; Dedication; American Dreamz; Future BMT: Racing Stripes; Southland Tales; Love, Wedding, Marriage; How to Deal; Swinging with the Finkels; Chasing Liberty; Try Seventeen; Hotel Noir; BMT: License to Wed; Because I Said So; Notes: Made her first album at 15 and first toured with the Backstreet Boys. Somehow a staple of my childhood, and developed an extensive filmography along the way. This movie predates her own wedding in 2009 (although she has since sadly gotten a divorce))

John Krasinski – (Known For: 13 Hours; The Hollars; The Holiday; Monsters University; Jarhead; It’s Complicated; Monsters vs. Aliens; Dreamgirls; Shrek the Third; Away We Go; Kaze tachinu; The Muppets; Promised Land; Smiley Face; Kinsey; Leatherheads; The Prophet; Big Miracle; Nobody Walks; State and Main; Future BMT: Aloha; Brief Interviews with Hideous Men; BMT: Taxi; License to Wed; Doogal; Something Borrowed; Notes: Married to Emily Blunt. Fun facts: He’s brother-in-law to The Tucc, Stanley Tucci who is married to Felicity Blunt [Editor’s Note: We talking about The Tucc?]. Also went to highschool with his Office co-star B.J. Novak)

Robin Williams – (Known For: Aladdin; Good Will Hunting; Happy Feet; Dead Poets Society; Mrs. Doubtfire; Jumanji; A.I. Artificial Intelligence; Insomnia; What Dreams May Come; The Butler; Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb; Night at the Museum; Robots; Awakenings; FernGully: The Last Rainforest; The Fisher King; Popeye; The Birdcage; Hamlet; To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar; Future BMT: Toys; Flubber; Nine Months; Fathers’ Day; RV: Runaway Vacation; Club Paradise; Jack; The Angriest Man in Brooklyn; A Merry Christmas Miracle; Absolutely Anything; Man of the Year; The Final Cut; Shakes the Clown; The Best of Times; The Survivors; The Big White; Noel; Hook; Jakob the Liar; Patch Adams; Bicentennial Man; Shrink; BMT: License to Wed; Old Dogs; The Big Wedding; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Actor in 2000 for Bicentennial Man, and Jakob the Liar; and Nominated for Worst Supporting Actor for Death to Smoochy in 2003; Notes: Obviously a legend and sadly recently took his own life. He was a staple of my childhood and also a brilliant and classically trained actor. There isn’t much more to say. I’ll add a small note about her daughter Zelda here though: she apparently voiced a character in the newest King’s Quest which I have been meaning to play.)

Budget/Gross – $35 million / Domestic: $43,799,818 (Worldwide: $69,307,224)

(Yeah, not great. You’d hope to at least get close to $100 million for a comedy, especially with that is a pretty large budget for a romantic comedy at $35 million. Not surprised License to Wed 2: The Honeymoon never happened … yeah, I might write that in the recap next week, sounds fun.)

#96 for the Romantic Comedy genre

licensetowed_romanticcomedy

(Right around the recent BMT Rumor Has It … which is at #99. The genre of the Golden age. Slowly rising during the 90s (although it made a ton of money in the 80s there were clearly less of them) and then plateauing from 2000-2010. The genre has all but collapsed, probably because of VOD. We’ll have to get them while they’re hot.)

#21 for the Wedding genre

licensetowed_wedding

(Around Bride Wars and seen more recently with That’s My Boy. Feels right doesn’t it? Getting warm outside, feels like the right time for some BMT wedding movies. I pointed out previously that there is basically one wedding movie a year. This was the wedding movie for 2007.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 7% (9/125): Featuring one of Robin Williams’ most shtick-heavy performances, the broad and formulaic License to Wed wrings little out of its slightly creepy, unappealing premise.

(Ha, “broad” is a very funny word to use here. Dirty word in comedy to an extent. I’m digging the slightly creepy premise though, sounds like something you can squeeze a little joy out of, purely rejecting of the fundamental premise of the movie.)

Poster – License to Sklog (C)

license_to_wed

(This has a lot going against it. Hard to make a good looking poster with so much white on the page. No dominant color can overtake it, so it’s screwed from the get go. The generic font doesn’t help. On the other hand the spacing, symmetry and humor to the poster are pluses. Kind of just evens out to a meh.)

Tagline(s) – First came love… then came Reverend Frank. (B+)

(Huh… this is almost a tagline you would expect for a sequel. When we know who Reverend Frank is. Still, it’s got everything you expect from a good tagline.)

Keyword(s) – church; Top Ten by BMeTric: 92.0 Date Movie (2006); 86.8 BloodRayne (2005); 84.7 Left Behind (I) (2014); 83.8 RoboCop 3 (1993); 81.7 Highlander II: The Quickening (1991); 78.5 The Devil Inside (2012); 76.2 I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998); 75.5 In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011); 72.6 Jonah Hex (2010); 70.2 The Last Exorcism Part II (2013);

(What a list! A march through time, some pretty sneaky BMTs in there too (like Robocop 3, a church plays a huge role in that film weirdly). PSA: If you are going to watch Highlander II remember to try and get the non-renegade version on VHS. Much more highlanders-are-aliens goodness in that one.)

Notes – Ben Murphy’s parents are played by John Krasinski (Ben)’s real life parents. (fun fact)

‘The Office’ (US) stars John Krasinski, Angela Kinsey, Brian Baumgartner and Mindy Kaling all featured in this movie. (fun fact)

Ken Kwapis, director of this movie, also directed many episodes of The Office (US). (fun fact)

Brian Braumgartner’s character’s name is Jim, the same name as John Krasinski (Ben) character’s name on The Office. (fun fact … just a few fun facts, nothing super interesting in these notes even! This movie can go either way)

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan Recap

Jamie

Nearing the end of our Friday the 13th journey. Officially past the halfway point and quickly approaching Freddy vs. Jason. We’ll have to confront the philosophical question of why we watched through all of Friday the 13th before that entry, but have made no indication that we will do the same for the Nightmare films. Truly a conundrum. Until then let’s just get into some details.

What?! Jason’s back, Jack! After spending some more time chilling at the bottom of Crystal Lake, Jason is inadvertently resurrected… again. He then promptly boards a cruise ship filled with teenagers headed to the Big Apple. Can they take down Jason before he brings a new problem to New York City? Find out in… Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan!

How?! We open on an eerie night on Crystal Lake where a couple teens are looking to get it on. They drop anchor, hit an underwater electric cable, and Jason is electrocuted back to life (as always… or at least per the last few movies). He kills the teens and commandeers the boat. Inexplicably, He is then able to take this boat out of the lake to the Atlantic Ocean where he boards a NYC cruise populated by the recent graduates of a local high school. Most of the characters in the film are teens looking to party, but our protagonists aren’t really into that scene. Rennie is a girl with a troubled past. She had an encounter with Jason as a kid and has been left traumatized. Sean is the son of the captain of the ship. He’s expected to take over the family business of sea captaining, but he’s just not sure he’s up to it/wants to do it. Oh, and they’re also kinda in love or something. Anyway, everything goes to shit. Everyone dies except Rennie, Sean, and other less important people. They escape via rowboat and make it to NYC only to find that Jason has followed them. Uh oh! A chase ensues, ending in the sewers of NYC where Jason is dissolved in a wave of toxic waste… can’t wait to see how he lived through that!

Why?! We keep having to go over this. Jason kills! It’s his job. He punches in, kills some sex-crazed teens, and punches out. Despite the monotony, he loves it. Perfectly satisfied in his workaday position and not looking for a promotion to upper management. While he would appreciate the raise, he doesn’t want to get too far from the day-to-day killing, you know? For the most part this film is without much motivation for the teens, other than to celebrate their graduation in style. Eventually their motivation is to not be killed. Pretty standard for F13.

Who?! The actor who played Sean has made a bit of a career in country music, but he’s more of an actor-turned-musician than the other way around. I’ll instead highlight our animal friend in this film. Rennie’s dog Toby was portrayed by a dog actor named Ace. Ace doesn’t have a huge number of credits, but he was the dog actor in a Canadian TV Show called The Odyssey which featured Ryan Reynolds (Canadian child actor extraordinaire). Show looks weird. Someday we’ll have an animal actor cycle. The credits are fun.

Where?! A+ setting alert! Obviously a good chunk of this film takes place in Manhattan. Most of it takes place off the coast of New Jersey in the Atlantic Ocean. Either way we are pretty clear on where we are the entire time. A+.

When?! Well at least this time we have an idea of when this takes place. I’ve stated a number of times that the timeline for the series is fucked. There are numerous websites claiming that the year Part VIII takes place is anywhere from 1994 to 2004. Since this deals with a high school graduation we can at least be pretty certain this film takes place at the end of May/beginning of June. C+.

There really isn’t anything like the Friday series. We’ve truly gone through a journey with these films. I daresay 2017 will be remembered in BMT lore as The Year of Jason. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan? More like Friday the 13th Part VIII: Barely In Manhattan, amirite?! A director had a vision: take Jason from quaint Crystal Lake and drop him in the most exciting city in the world! And the producers said “great, but we already built this boat set sooooooooo ….” Let’s get into it!

The Good (Sequel, Prequel, Remake) – A short rundown of the good in the film. Taking Jason out of his element was a solid idea on paper. Kane Hodder continued to impress as by far the most lively and interesting Jason in the franchise. Decent practical effects here and there. Felt a little bit more like a classic Friday the 13th than the fifth, sixth, or seventh (although that is not necessarily a good thing). As usual I would just kind of remake it as a part of remaking the whole series. I would keep the boat and do all the killing on that instead of ever getting to Manhattan. The close quarters, trapped at sea, nowhere to run. Could very well lead to some tense moments. In the end, a crippled heap of a boat floats into New York harbor, a ghost ship without a trace of Jason to be found. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Cruise Control.

The Bad (Seven Deadly Sklogs) – What didn’t work: The last bit in Manhattan didn’t work at all. There was a whole storyline about a girl being haunted by Jason due to an interaction she had with him as a child that was mainly stupid. Most of the characters are forgettable, so much so that at one point a teacher remarks “hey shouldn’t we go get the others from the restaurant?” to which another character says “there is no restaurant left” … okay, not sure how he knew that, but that is how the unceremoniously dumped a handful of ripe-for-the-killing teens out of this movie. Anywho, the real issue two-fold: the director/writer overreaching and the studio unwilling to yield on costs. The director has a solid idea on paper, but either didn’t have the resources or the ability to translate it to screen. What resulted was what I would consider the second worst Friday film in the first 8 released, which is pretty bad. I think the main culprit here was sloth. The produced-on-a-dime horror film would fall into a slumber, waiting to be awoken years later by Jason Blum.

The BMT: Legacy – I think the legacy of this film, again, is mainly tied to us having watched the entire franchise in a year. I thought it was slightly better than the Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest, so it probably won’t have the legs, but then again, if we were holding, say, a Friday the 13th Bad Movie marathon, it would be pretty easy to pick out 3, 5 and 8 as the worst three of the franchise. Nice distribution there actually, basically get one or two good ones between all of the flops. So it’s got that going for it.

Time for a StreetCreditReport.com! My new favorite game, so fun I think it might actually end up as a permanent member of my recaps. People love to rank the Friday the 13ths (including us!), and this is typically second to last (this guy has #5 as fifth best though so …), or worst, or worst again, and finally number 9. This random blog ranks movies from specific years, and Manhattan gets number 3 for 1989! Two interesting things. One, it is quite common not to rank Freddy vs. Jason because it is apparently much more of a Nightmare on Elm Street film. We just had this debate ourselves and will likely watch Freddy vs. Jason as a part of this mini-challenge. Two, people really really don’t like number seven (The New Blood)! Which is interesting, because we both dug it and have it quite high in our own personal rankings. We’ll probably go through the Friday the 13th rankings again at the end of the run, but until then …

Cheerios, 

the Sklogs