Tag: Book Review

Firestorm Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Firestorm? More like Fire-whoever-thought-this-movie-was-a-good-idea, bam! Howie Long oh How-I Longed for you. Been missing him since 3000 Miles to Graceland. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – Howie Long was better than expected, really hung tough with the rest of the cast (I apologize to the rest of the cast). Um … the ending was so bonkers as to be fun. If you can get to it it is pretty much worth it.
  • That being said, you ever flip through the backwoods of cable tv channels and stumble across that weird made-for-tv action movie starring the Boz or whoever and were like “oh this might be fun”, but then after 3 minutes you are like “oh yeah, no, I can feel my lifeforce bleeding out of me while watching this”? If you have, you know what Firestorm is like.
  • It does have one of the most ridiculous bad guys we’ve seen. When he has his weird blond wig and goatee on he is literally on par with Bananas from Ghosts of Mars.
  • And the aforementioned ending involving a Howie Long two hand overhead ax throw into the badguy’s chest from under water. I heard he did that at the combine to convince the Raiders to draft him. And then the bad guy comes back! Amazing.

What a weird movie. I hardly have an opinion about the movie because it is barely a movie. A little too close to made-for-tv or Van Damme territory for me, like Stone Cold (starring the Boz, natch). I was reasonably entertained though, congrats Firestorm.

And of course I want a remake. Almost any athlete vehicle can be remade because guess what? There is a whole new crop of athletes that can star in it! And of course JJ Watt will star in Perfect Firestorm. And of course the bad guy will be Ray Liotta. And of course Kaley Cuoco will costar as the spunky birdwatcher caught in the middle of it all. And of course our friends and family can be Executive Producers, it will be the number one stipulation in any screenwriting contract I sign. I’ve drawn up the paperwork, it is just waiting for a signature.

Jamie

FIRESTORM! I’m not going to dive too far into the actual film. Patrick took care of that. Instead I would like to point out something interesting: it takes place in Wyoming. How is it possible that Wyoming has two major BMT titles (Have You Heard About the Morgans? and Firestorm)? Seems like the type of state that would barely scrape by with one. It also begs the question: If we were forced to make an ultimate mapl.de.map, which of the films would be chosen? Have You Heard About the Morgans? is largely forgettable, but it is soooo Wyoming. Firestorm is fucking Firestorm, but almost seems like it’s set in Wyoming as an afterthought. What are we to do? Patrick suggests we resort to BMeTric. It’s cold and calculated… developed to replace us. These are the questions we are developing our algorithms to tackle (so you don’t have to).

For this movie I feel like Stone Cold was too on-the-nose as a real comparison. It’s almost like they are twin movies. Fire & Ice. I kept on being reminded of Bats for some reason. A wide release that was largely forgotten and has the feel of a SyFy Channel original.

For my BMTsolution, Firestorm was not based on a book. If it were based on a book, though, it would be a gritty 70’s pulp action book in the same vein as First Blood. Jesse Graves is a former smokejumper just returned from Vietnam. On his first jump back, he finds himself suddenly recalling his wartime jungle-burning experiences and nearly dies in his crazed attempt to escape his memories. In the process, he inadvertently injures the captain of the smokejumping crew. Several months later, the captain is retiring due to his injures and Graves is on desk duty. A group of prisoners, led by the psychopathic Randall Sharp, manage to escape work duty by brutally murdering the prison guards tasked with keeping them in line (who planted the weapons they used? What a mystery!). In order to hinder their pursuers, the prisoners set the Montana forest aflame. The smokejumpers jump to the rescue but find themselves ambushed by Sharp and his crew. All are slain except for Julie, Graves’ girlfriend (!), who is taken as a hostage (“and a mighty pretty one too” – a prisoner creepily notes). Can Graves jump one more time and take out these prisoners once and for all? Or will he be caught in the… FIRESTORM!

These books will be part of a series of novels I write called Based-on-the-Book, where I write books that movies would have been based on if they were adaptations… but they’re not adaptations of the films themselves. It’s a nuanced difference.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Juwanna Mann Recap

Jamie

Last week I got to talk a whole bunch about the New Jersey State Prison that was featured in the film Lock Up. Unfortunately, I was never employed by the Charlotte Hornets, so I can’t give similar insight for Juwanna Mann. Instead I’ll take this time to speak about the athletes that were featured in the film (that’s part of the reason it was chosen after all). In the film we got to see Jamal Jeffries play for the Charlotte Beat, a fictional team consisting of him, Vlade Divac, Muggsy Bogues, Dikembe Mutombo, and Rasheed Wallace. This would probably be the most entertaining team in the history of the NBA (two seven-footers, Jamal, the shortest player in the NBA, and Rassshhheeeeed Wallace!), but a trainwreck otherwise. As far as acting goes they were all pretty solid. I was pleasantly surprised. However, they were only featured in the opening scene, which is a shame. If I could have a wish granted regarding this film, it would be that there existed some cut scene where Rasheed shows up to try out for the Banshees dressed in drag, only to get quickly ushered out by Jamal. Rasheed reveals that he knows Juwanna is Jamal (“Balls don’t lie,” says Rasheed, pointing at Juwanna’s crotch) and wants in on the action. Jamal refuses and Rasheed promises to not reveal the secret. Having been neatly tied up, the plot point is never heard from again. Sigh… if only.

I certainly would wonder how it was possible that a man could play on the team for a whole season without having a physical/drug test reveal his gender. I would have to conclude that there was a conspiracy to let it happen (for increased ratings) or that the league was so financially strapped that simple physicals weren’t even conducted. Neither option would be a good look for the league.

By the way there is a fantastic MonoSklog in this film. We knew this film probably had a MonoSklog (because… well… it just would) and it really, really delivered. Big Momma’s House level banananananananas. I call it Mi Equipo  Es muy bonito. Well worth checking out if you can find it (it does not appear to be on YouTube).

As for my BMTsolution: this film was not based on a book… but if it was it would be a 1970s postmodern novel about how Buffalo Braves star Jared Jefferson struggles to cope with the pressures of NBA stardom along with those related to his secret life as a man in the midst of a male-to-female sex change operation. I would have read the book and been touched by its stirring portrayal of Jared’s vulnerabilities in a world that has yet to know his true self. Then I would watch Juwanna Mann and realize what the film was trying to tell us all along: life’s too short. Laugh once in awhile. It would then go on to win the Smaddies Baddies Freddy Got Fingered Award for film that isn’t that bad. Alas, what could have been.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Juwanna Mann? More like Iwanna Turn This Movie Off! Heeeeeyooooo. BMTsolution means I need to be positive …. I believe in myself, I can do this. Let’s get into it.

  • Good – I thought Pollak, despite apparently having no desire to be in this film, was pretty solid, especially in the second half of the movie. The movie’s premise isn’t as ludicrous as I thought it would be. And the movie is charming in a we-aren’t-going-to-even-address-the-absurdity-so-don’t-even-worry-about-it kind of way.
  • Bad – The premise is ludicrous and absurd. It only gets more so when they finally address the fact that Juwanna would have been immediately drug tested by the league, and then forget about it two seconds later.
  • Nunez is okay, but there is no way a movie like this should rely on him.
  • In something like Big Momma’s House or Norbit the makeup itself was enough to warrant the movie existing. It was legitimately impressive (there is a reason Norbit was nominated for an Oscar, the makeup). Here … Nunez pretty much wears some foundation and fake boobs. Congrats guys.
  • I’ll end it just by saying: in the movie his team is allowed to continue playing in the playoffs after he is caught, WTF?! That is ridiculous.

Let’s do a new game called BMT News with George Sklogonopoulos. In this game I’ll pose a social-impact question from the recently watched movie and try and answer it. Here: If the events of Juwanna Mann occurred in real life what would this mean for the WNBA, and what would happen to Jefferies?

In my opinion: The playoffs would be suspended pending a large scale investigation and most of the high-level executives for the WNBA would be removed. Jamal Jefferies would be banned for life from all sporting activities and would become a pariah, especially once allegation of sexual assault are uncovered (and they would be, he assaults all of the women throughout the film). This would be the biggest sports story in history, so explosive it would potentially take down an entire league. And it would make an incredible movie eventually, a truly heart-breaking drama of a man who wanted to play basketball so badly he lied to the world. I’m tearing up here. Get Netflix on the horn, we’re doing a reboot of the franchise.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Wild Bill Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Wild Bill?! More like Mild Bill! Hey look at this a relatively short recap. New Years come early for all y’alls (you like my southern accent?):

  • Do I regret doing Wild Bill for BMT? Relevant question. The answer is no, but only because:
  • The direction is straight up insane. Dutch angles (might as well be called Wild Dutch Angles! Buuuuurn), black and white flashbacks (might as well be called Wild Black and White Flashbacks! Slammed!!!!) and overexposure galore (might as well be called Wild Overexposure Galore! Roasted!). Out of everything this is what really struck me about the film.
  • During my conversation with Jamie a couple things came up. First: just how bad Ellen Barkin and David Arquette were. This related to a conversation about Scarlet Letter and how reviews for that film, oddly, appeared to excuse Demi Moore’s acting (which was atrocious) as a simple miscasting. In this movie a similar thing happened: Arquette is ignored while Christina Applegate (who was actually okay) was eviscerated. Kind of a weird “state of the industry” thing going on. Looking back now Demi Moore’s career was never really the same after Scarlet Letter. Arquette ended up okay, he was young, but this movie strongly suggests his future would have been better served in smaller character actor roles. And Applegate is now a strong supporting or leading female comic actor. Go figure.
  • The writing and acting overall are okay. There is interesting things here and there. But nothing that warrants the 90 minutes you’ll spend watching this film. So whatever.
  • I think I’m going to steal this one from Jamie as a game: Secret Prequel/Sequel. Hear me out. Wild Bill is the prequel to … R.I.P.D. Jeff Bridges plays a not-so-reputable wild west lawman with a strange obsession with his hat. Add a short prequel explaining why Bridges goes by a different name and we’re good to go.

Alrighty. Prequel/Sequel/Remake. Well, I wouldn’t remake it, no point. I do think a prequel could work though. The legends of the west are interesting. Do a little Unreliable Narrator action with people telling stories about Bill overlaid with the much more reasonable, dirty and mundane “true” story as Bill remembers it acted out. Could work. Who knows? I don’t. I know sometimes my intelligent discourse on the industry can be deceiving, but I do not in fact work in a high-level position in any production house (yet …).

Jamie

Last week we captured South Dakota with Wild Bill. We worried quite a bit whether this would truly qualify as a BMT film, but I think we rest assured after viewing. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Middle of the pack. Kind of the down side of a strict BMT criterion. I’m sure there are a number of hilarious BMT films between 40-50% on RT, but we can’t risk the false positives we would have to wade through to find them unless we must.

Since I was able to read both sources materials for the film (Deadwood by Pete Dexter and Fathers and Sons by Thomas Babe) before watching, I’ll mostly discuss the adaptation. Really only one line and two short scenes are taken from Deadwood. It’s otherwise almost entirely based on the play Fathers and Sons. Actually startling that they gave Dexter a writing credit. It is also amazing that Walter Hill wanted to adapt Fathers and Sons to the big screen. It’s a minor 70’s play that was written with little historical accuracy in mind. In fact it was written as an allegory for the Kent State and Jackson State shootings that occurred in the early 70’s, concerning generation-on-generation violence. So Babe didn’t blink an eye when claiming that Wild Bill’s murderer Jack McCall was his son and homosexual. The change to McCall’s character serves only to deepen the allegory he had in mind, and yet many of these types of changes show up in the film. Reviews for the film derided it for playing more into legend than fact and I would say that that’s not even true. It played into a fictionalization of Wild Bill’s death (its source material) instead of fact… it didn’t even worry about legend. There is no legend of McCall being his son, and it certainly wasn’t true. It’s super weird that it sticks so closely to the play and even weirder on some of the changes Walter Hill decided to make. Which leads me to my biggest problem with the film: the mere presence of John Hurt as some bullshit fake British character, Charlie Prince, they used as a replacement of a real, historical character named Charlie Utter who was a major character in the play. Why? There is no acceptable explanation for this. The only plausible one is that they wanted John Hurt in the film, but he refused to do an American accent… which is bullshit. Tell him to go jump in a lake (if we lived in the 1950’s) and get someone willing. You even had Bruce Dern in a minor role in the film. Promote him to Charlie Utter and give Hurt the heave ho.

Also I’m glad Patrick mentioned the Applegate thing. Reviewers were aghast at her “miscasting” (but… but…. but… she’s on Married with Children! Scandalous! Harumph!). I thought she was fine and people were being particularly mean about it. So she’s more attractive than you would want your precious Wild West prostitutes? Boo hoo. Barkin is more attractive than I like my Calamity Jane. So there. Now for my game. Since the film was based primarily on a play I was certain that the film would have a perfect little MonoSklog for us. It didn’t disappoint as it delivered a wonderful Diane Lane monologue during one of the crazy flashback, black-and-white, dutch angle, nightmarescapes that Patrick mentioned. I call it Mi Vida [Editor’s Note: Apologies, as usual to avoid any legal issues with hosting video clips from movies we have to remove the monologue itself. Have fun renting and watching the clip yourself though. And by fun I mean not-fun]. Beautiful. BTW, that’s the actual quality of the film in those scenes. Purposefully grainy. This helps you get an idea of what Patrick was talking about in his recap.

Phew, with that I’m done. I love Walter Hill, but the film wasn’t for me. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Scarlet Letter Recap

Jamie

Jeez Louise. The Scarlet Letter is mind-boggling. Patrick took a lot on his shoulders concerning the movie, so I’ll speak mostly on behalf of the book and its adaptation. I generally like reading literature and thought I would love reading a masterpiece. This masterpiece was not exactly what I was expecting. It’s 200 pages of roundabout descriptions of the same thing over and over for chapters at a time. No one talks to each other… like ever. In short, it’s beautifully written but super, duper boring. I’m not even trying to insult the book (I still thought it was great), it’s just a fact. Hawthorne wrote a super boring book. I feel bad for all the high school students in the world that have to read it. All will not like it, some will cliffnotes the book just to get it over with, and the legendary few will watch this godawful film adaptation in its stead and fail… hard.

Speaking of which, this is easily the most hilarious adaptation in the history of film. Even knowing that Hollywood used to do adaptation like this all the time (take a known property, use just the barebones outline, and create a story of their own around that) doesn’t make this any less hilarious. The fact of the matter is that this film is more a prequel that an adaptation. If it had been marketed as such it may have been more evenly appraised (probably not, cause even beyond the adaption this is hilarious garbage). I wouldn’t even have called it The Scarlet Letter. Maybe something like A Scarlet Morning, to make the connection to the book with the implication of the impending storm. Further, having all the prequel stuff wouldn’t even have been all that bad if they didn’t shift a lot of blame from Rev. Dimmesdale to Hester in the movie (which kind of goes against the entire concept of the book). In order to make the movie a romance they had to have the Reverend less of a pathetic coward and more of sexy Oldman (cause what screams innate sexuality more than Gary Oldman?). In order to do that, Dimmesdale would have to do his damnest to admit guilt to the community, only stopping himself at the behest and insistence of Hester. He would scream to the heavens, ‘Damn you, Hester! Why hast though not let me unburden myself of this guilt which eats at my soul!’ and we would feel bad for him and love him all the more and hate that stupid Hester that tempted our sexy Oldman. We become the hypocrites the book rails against. Finally, the ending is a wonder to behold. Rather than have pathetic and cowardly Dimmesdale admit guilt and die in shame (SPOILER ALERT for all those still living in the 19th century), we have him and Hester rescued by an Indian attack as we sit and cheer at the gruesome deaths of our forefathers. It is absurd. This movie has a happy ending… and it is a travesty. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The only thing I’ll add to this is that I saw a lot of reviews talk about how Demi Moore was “miscast” in this film and seems out of place but can “sure fill out a costume” *lecherous laugh*. It honestly came off as super insulting. Like they were implying that an actress serious enough to play Hester Prynne wouldn’t look like her. What? Demi Moore literally fits the character’s description to a T. Hester is described as a beautiful, young woman with long dark hair who is fiercely independent and fiery… that’s Demi Moore. I’m not saying that Moore was good (in fact she was terrible). But to say that she was too pretty or sexy to play a serious role? That’s just demeaning. After all, we’re not talking a casting blunder like Selena Gomez in Getaway (reference no one gets but me and Patrick).

Since I spent some time defending the honor of Demi Moore (again, just want to make it clear: she was terrible in this), we don’t really have time for a game. Alls the better, since I’ve been getting back into MonoSklogs and this one didn’t have one (more accurately it had an amazing montage/MonoSklog combo that I couldn’t burn cause Netflix didn’t have the movie on DVD. Stupid Netflix). On with the show!

Patrick

The Scarlet Letter? More like Genuinely the Worst Classic Book Adaptation Ever (I couldn’t figure out any rhymes). The Scarlet Letter. A book so boring it is notorious as a high school literature course tradition. A movie so poorly done it makes you question everything good in this world. Let’s get into it:

  • It is almost not worth getting into just how poorly done this is as an adaptation (sorry “free adaptation” as prominently displayed in the opening credits) because this is one of the most noteworthy blunders in cinema history. Ebert included it among the movies he simply hates, and there is plenty of things to dislike beyond the adaptation. But it must be said:
    • The first half of the movie predates the book, as if they said “Hey, this book about puritan hypocrisy … can we make it into a romantic drama?”. The book starts more than halfway through the overly long movie. Dumb
    • Oldman’s character is a monster in the book, a hypocrite who wastes away with guilt, so cowardly as to eventually die as he admits his shame. In the movie he is a star crossed lover with a super hot bod and long greasy hair.
    • They change nearly everything to attempt to gloss over Hester’s guilt. Hester knowingly cheated on her husband. Here she thinks he’s dead.
    • In the end Hester wanders off to live her life alone in the book. Here they add a crazy “happy” ending involving Native Americans slaughtering all her enemies and she and Oldman go off to the Carolina’s to live happily ever after.
  • Other things:
  • Best bird performance since After Earth. I’m always into a good bird performance
  • Gratuitous nudity and dong shots. I knew Nathaniel Hawthorne forgot something in the original literary classic. That something was Gary Oldman’s penis.
  • Demi Moore’s accent is everything I could have dreamed of. When I first heard it my brain rejected it and I let out an audible “oh no”. No one escaped the terrible vortex created by this movie. Not even Gary Oldman (‘s penis).
  • A sex scene so long and bizarre you forget what it is like to not be watching it. Conspicuous absence of a Gary Oldman dong shot here (alright, that’s enough about Gary Oldman’s penis).
  • A sermon/monologue so long they had to cut it up and create the first church-sermon-montage in cinema history. The sermon monologue from Big Momma’s House is still the best though.

This movie is everything you could want in a Bad Movie Adaptation. It is the crown jewel of this rotation. I have a Remake for you: adapt the actual book into an actual movie. The end. It would probably still be boring, but at least it would add value to the world.

BTW August is a great Bad Movie Month. We’ve already got Fantastic Four (I can’t wait for the Fourth Fantastic Four disaster … actually, after everything being said about Miles Teller on set I have no doubt an actual sequel is going to be cancelled). I have a sneaking suspicious The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is going to be bad. And there are a few more coming our way soon enough. We are very quickly approaching the BMT Live! stage of the Razzie awards. Will we waste our time and money watching terrible movies in theaters? Stay tuned.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Seventh Son Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Seventh Son? More like God It’s Dumb. And it was. If you didn’t already know Seventh Son is adapted from a book that is literally for 8 year olds. And yet I read it. Would I go so far as to say I enjoyed it? Not really. It is so short I could almost (almost) see myself reading all 11 (or 12 or whatever) of them if I didn’t value time or money, but naw. No interest. And yet, once again, here we are with the source material influencing how I feel about a movie. Not much this time though, because …

  • This movie is horrible regardless. A bizarre mix between In the Name of the King A Dungeon Siege Tale, Season of the Witch and Dungeons and Dragons the movie is a perfect storm in the fantasy drama. Bad sets/CGI, bad acting and bad writing. A triple threat like that combined with the fact that these kinds of movies are geared towards people who like Renaissance Fairs it is a literal embarrassment. Like … I wonder what it is like to be on the set of a fantasy movie like this? How isn’t everyone just cringing and asking themselves how they ended up wearing silly hats and speaking in faux British accents? I don’t get it.
  • This movie should be called Cloaks, Hats and Staffs. There are a lot of them. Maybe Distractingly Overdramatic Swelling Music. Or Please, Stop Jeff Bridges. No One Wants To Hear Your Mumble Mouth Thing Anymore, We Can’t Understand You And You Are One More RIPD Away From Johnny Depp Territory. Long title.
  • Also, I got just a taste of Elektra in there (just a whiff). They have a merry band of transmogrifying baddies running around like idiots who are just way too easy to defeat in the end. Like in Elektra. Anyone? So only Jamie knows what I’m talking about?
  • Complete waste of a cast. The main guy is from Big Wedding (one of the worst BMTs ever, no joke), and then it has two pretty impressive leads in Bridges and Moore who thoroughly embarrass themselves. Thoroughly. Not a good look.
  • Also it was boring. Excruciatingly so. With that out of the way, let’s briefly touch on the book.
  • We are just one upping ourselves with the bad adaptations. It is a childs book so when they drop an F-bomb in there I was pretty stunned. They also took the main (and pretty much only) trait of the … spook sounds pretty racist, but it is his occupation, so I’m going to roll with it. The main trait of the spook is he doesn’t burn witches. In the movie it is literally all he does. He gets pretty angry with the main character because he’s not burning enough witches. A good book character is now a total bad guy in the movie. And a weird trait of the love interest (pointy shoes) shows up once in a very bizarre comment … I don’t know. This was the worst adaptation I have ever seen now. It doesn’t even make sense. It is totally different.
  • Why is Kit Harrington in this for 3 minutes and why does he have an American accent? The only thing I can thing is he was like “I’d like to practice my American accent. I’ll be in your dumb movie for a second if you’ll let me practice a bit”.
  • I’ll leave it at that. Um. I think I have enough to produce a Quote Me!: “The movie is a perfect storm in the fantasy drama … impressive leads in Bridges and Moore” – Patrick Smadbeck, Bad Movie Twins Entertainment. Sigh. Sounds about right.

Reboot, Sequel, Prequel? A Prequel would be pretty funny. Just a whole movie about Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore dating. A romantic comedy even. It would be called Burning Love. It’s the hilarious misadventures of a fire-happy spook (doesn’t get any easier to say with levity everyone, still weirded out by that little American-British racist misalignment, there’s a reason the title was changed from the Spook’s Apprentice in America) who falls head over heels for the witch he has been pursuing. Meanwhile little does he know that Mother Malkin and her sister Bony Lizzie have a bet to see who can bed (and behead) the witch hunter first. Misadventures with magic abound until Bridges finds out about the bet and Mother Malkin realizes she’s fallen in love with him! What an odd couple! The tagline will be: This January, Witches Love Fire!

My God, it is terrible. My first gut instinct of What a Witch! sounds better. I’m leaving it though.Back to you Jamie!

Jamie

That movie was straight dog poo in my face.

The prequel is great… and I’d give that second tagline an A+. Perfecto. Alright, so I kinda shirked my duties for actually recapping the film cause I knew that Patrick had a nice long recap for everyone to sink their teeth into. To briefly sum up my feelings, the book was OK in terms of what you can expect from a Harry Potter type book written for like 8-10 year olds. I would read more if I got the ebooks for free, but otherwise won’t read any more in the near future. As for the film, I thought it was an embarrassment. Seriously, straight dog poo. Awful. Dreadful. Really bad adaptation. Really bad production quality. It looked mostly like In the name of the King mixed with King Richard’s Fair. Perfect for BMT. So perfect in fact that is provided one of the longest MonoSklogs in recent memory. I call it Mi Bruja [EDITOR NOTE: Due to potential copyright issue we do not publish the MonoSklogs online, we do apologize]. A solid 2 and a half minutes of pure mumbly-bumblies from Jeff Bridges. I can just imagine the sound guys on the film being like “Damn it. We need to get Jeff back in here for another ADR session. I can’t make heads or tails of what he’s saying.” This is also my favorite type of MonoSklog, where it seems like there are pauses for another character to throw a random, terrible line out like “I’m sorry.” or “What happened?” and he looks like he’s about to say it and then… Jeff Bridges just keeps on talking. Keeps me on the edge of my seat.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Cheaper by the Dozen Recap

Jamie

BMT is truly a wonder. Just when you think it can’t get any better (seriously, how could it get better? It’s basically perfect), we go ahead and implement a BMT Book Club cycle to get us all jazzed up. It has been a joy to read these books and watch these films. In some cases it’s unnecessary (Fifty Shades of Grey is basically a straight-up adaptation, so you don’t really have to read the book), but in cases like Cheaper by the Dozen it takes what would have been a mediocre/forgettable BMT film and transmorphs it into a BMT extravaganza of insights.

And seriously, the adaptation of this truly wonderful book was a T-R-A-V-E-S-T-Y. There is no acceptable explanation for why this film turned out this way. They shit on the source material. Ripped all the interesting stuff out of a really interesting book and replaced it with cliches and garbage. It should really have been like what Patrick will explain: dad runs family like his occupation (football coach is actually a really good choice). Don’t make him a bumbling fool and make the family fall apart. Who wants to watch that? Wouldn’t you rather have the family use their unique skills to overcome the problems that face them (perhaps with a bunch of hilarious montages where their use their football knowledge to approach aspects of their lives?). Come on! So dumb. And to think! Without the book we would have had no idea that this was a pile of shit compared to what it was a remake of. Really makes me not want to watch the second one (which is supposed to be considerably worse). And with that I don’t really have much more to say about Cheaper by the Dozen.

I’ll let Patrick explain more though.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Cheaper by the Dozen? More like just Cheaper than the Original. This entire round of adaptations has been super interesting, but this one might be the most interesting. The Cheaper by the Dozen book (non-fiction, written in 1949 about events occurring around 1929) is probably the best of the source materials we’ve encountered thus far. The original movie is a super faithful adaptation (all the way down to the depressing end). The actual real life story is crazy cool (the mother was the first practicing female industrial engineer with a PhD, was inducted into the national academy of science, and is considered a pioneer of ergonomics). So … why? Why did they adapt it this way?

  • A few things it has going for it: Steve Martin is great. Bonnie Hunt is great. Most of the kids are fine. Even the older kids (limited in screen time) are fine. So what’s the problem?
  • While I was impressed with the movie’s ability to make the kids individuals and somewhat memorable (two twin boys are youngest, then another young boy, misfit kid, two fraternal twin girls, sporty girl, skateboard kid, chunky kid, Hillary Duff, Superman, Covert Affairs …. that’s in ascending order by age, or close to it), none of them have any kind of interesting story. Hillary Duff is upset about wearing hand me downs (resolved in the first half hour). Superman is kicked off the football team (NOT RESOLVED, what the fuck?). Misfit kid is sad (resolved with swelling music and Patrick tears at the end). Covert Affairs breaks up with Ashton Kutcher twice! (NOT RESOLVED, and he’s back in the sequel? EDITORS NOTE: He is not). Even the parents stories are half-baked.
  • And the entire tone is just off. In the original the family operates like a machine. The father is an industrial engineer specializing in efficiency and runs his family accordingly. Most of the humor (and drama) come from how people react to this unconventional family. Here: chaos. Chaos everywhere. Literally the worst parents. Literally begging the question: Why do you have 12 kids?! You cannot manage them! I know you have to go a little slapstick, but it ends up as a slap in the face (heyoooo) of the original.
  • I’ll leave it there. The music was obnoxious. Which means watch out Jamie: you might be getting this soundtrack as a gift.
  • Let’s Airbud this! Cheaper by the Tolstoy. Tolstoy has a litter of puppies, a dozen of them, and oh my are they a handful. With severe separation anxiety and leash aggression abound what will Patrick do with them?! Work through it of course, with love and laughter (and a little underbite). Cheaper by the Tolstoy … hot diggity dog! (That’s the terrible tagline). Also, perhaps, called Beethoven’s … Twelfth I guess? Although he only had 9 complete symphonies …

I think it is time for a Remake! Here’s the thing. Part of the charm of the original movie is just how capable the parents are. They joke around, and things go awry, but they rarely descend into chaos. The newer movie was chaos wall to wall. So here’s the change: The father is a coach, and runs his family like a football team. When he blows his whistle everyone falls in line. The drama of the story is more about people not believing in him because twelve kids just seems like too many today. They pull through because they are a team. Like in the first movie a lot of drama can also come from the kids getting bullied because of the oddity of their family. NETFLIX!!!! This is a live one, we need to hit this while the iron is hot. Also, all of the Netflix executives who read this week to week, hear me out. Bedknobs and Broomsticks Netflix original series. Just a thought.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs