Tag: sequel

Fifty Shades Darker Preview

Big week for BMT as we are attending the first BMT Live! of the year! Hooray! As expected (although not exactly desired) we will be watching Fifty Shades Darker. Less hooray! We watched the first film as part of BMT in 2015. As part of that viewing I actually read the first book. A direct consequence of that is that I did not read the second book this time around. I literally couldn’t bring myself to do it. The first book may be the worst thing I’ve ever read (and I read the first two Twilight books). It’s not even because they are ridiculous soap opera-like porn books for women. I’m fine with that (again, I read Twilight, which spends 90% of the book talking about the finer qualities of different characters abs). No, its greatest crime was simply that is was soooooo fucking boooorrrrrring. Nothing happens. Sure they have sex a few times but they could have at least attempted to make a coherent plot. Instead it’s just one long drama about two fairly boring people arguing over a legal contract… that’s it. I shudder even imagining having to read the second book. So instead we are going in blind, baby! A final note, this is the fifth BMT Live! We’ve had and this is the first instance where the film chosen actually fits the cycle that we are currently in. Congrats! We are nailing it here at BMTHQ. Let’s go!

Fifty Shades Darker (2017) – BMeTric: 54.5

(There is nothing in the internet archive for the movie as of February 19, 2017! I will say that at the moment Fifty Shades Darker has a 4.9 on IMDb whereas Fifty Shades of Grey settled comfortably at 4.1. I would guess that indeed it will regress to the predecessor in this case once non-mega fans get a hold of it.)

RogerEbert.com – 2 stars –  “Fifty Shades Darker” is less interested in exploring how the power plays of S&M have to be negotiated (a rich topic), and more interested in the conventional narrative of a damaged man terrified of intimacy and a loving woman waiting for him to transform into the wonderful boyfriend that she knows is inside of him. “Fifty Shades Darker” may wear leather and chains, but it’s still a retro bore.

(Yeah … sounds about right. I’ve heard criticisms of the films dressed up in all kinds of ways. But do you know what is always consistent? That they are boring. Can’t wait to pay money to be the creepy alone-guy in a theater … real excited.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6BVyk7hty8

(Pretty tantalizing stuff. So the last movie was basically “will she sign the sex contract”. This one appears to be “oh … is Grey going to change a bit?”. Wait … did she sign the sex contract? I feel like I’m going to end up totally lost in this movie since I have zero interest in re-watching the first one and obviously can’t read the books.)

Directors – James Foley – (Known For: Glengarry Glen Ross; At Close Range; Confidence: After Dark; The Corruptor; After Dark, My Sweet; Two Bits; BMT: Who’s That Girl; Fifty Shades Darker; Perfect Stranger; Fear; The Chamber; Notes:  Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1988 for Worst Director for Who’s That Girl; Directs some television now (including 12 episodes of House of Cards). Apparently he was offered to directing position for Purple Rain starring Prince. How could one resist?!)

Writers – Niall Leonard (screenplay) – (BMT: Fifty Shades Darker; Notes:  Oh ….. Oh my God. He is E. L. James’ husband! The person they got to write the script to the last two Fifty Shades films is E. L. James’ spouse. That is shocking. He has been bouncing around, mostly in television, for a while, but I’m surprised there wasn’t any credited rewrites by a more accomplished screenwriter.)

E.L. James (based on the novel by) – (BMT: Fifty Shades of Grey (BMT); Fifty Shades Darker; Notes: She’s expressed her surprise at the success of the novels which, she says, started as a kind of mid-life crisis. Her writing career famously started with Twilight Fan Fiction under the pen name Snowqueens Icedragon.)

Actors – Dakota Johnson – (Known For: How to Be Single; Black Mass; The Social Network; A Bigger Splash; 21 Jump Street; The Five-Year Engagement; BMT: Fifty Shades of Grey (BMT); Beastly (BMT); Fifty Shades Darker; Anarchy: Ride or Die; Date and Switch; Goats; Need for Speed (BMT); Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 2016 for Worst Actress and Screen Combo for Fifty Shades of Grey; She is the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson (Bucky Larson and When in Rome) from their second marriage to each other.)

Jamie Dornan – (Known For: The 9th Life of Louis Drax; Anthropoid; The Siege of Jadotville; Marie Antoinette; BMT: Fifty Shades of Grey (BMT); Fifty Shades Darker; Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 2016 for Worst Actor and Screen Combo for Fifty Shades of Grey; Naturally got his start as a Calvin Klein model and was a member of a folk band called Sons of Jim. Sadly they disbanded in 2008.)

Also stars Eric Johnson – (As see in Texas Rangers!) and BMT megastar Kim Basinger (Grudge Match, Bless the Child, The Marrying Man, and No Mercy)

Budget/Gross – $55 million / Domestic: $75,500,000 ($173,300,000 Worldwide) (So far)

(Like shooting fish in a barrel. They obviously saved a bundle shooting back to back which makes it all the easier for them to rake in a cool $300+ million worldwide with each film and laugh all the way to the bank.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 9% (13/149): Lacking enough chemistry, heat, or narrative friction to satisfy, the limp Fifty Shades Darker wants to be kinky but only serves as its own form of punishment.

(Ooooof, that is stunning. I wouldn’t have really thought it would drop so dramatically from the first (25%), I figured they would also get people to dismiss most issues as “hey the books were shit too, what did you expect?” And yet this seems like it might be a whole new level of boring … I wonder how early of a showing I can get. Just to make sure I don’t fall asleep.)

Poster – Fifty Shades Sklogger (C+) 

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(Not a huge fan of the spacing and tilt, as it’s starting to look a little like fan-art. Obviously the font is ridiculously simple and Fifty Shades Sklogger could be a reality. Besides that it’s an excellent example of where the actors are used in the poster but are modified visually enough to avoid my issues with their human-ness. They are able to maintain gray as the dominant color.)

Tagline(s) – Every Fairy Tale Has a Dark Side (B)

(Hmmm, I actually kind of like this because it’s starting to make me think about how this series relates to traditional fairy tales. Is it a play on Cinderella? Could be actually. Even the poster and masquerade ball kind of fit with that. Slightly clever and short enough to boot. Pretty good.)

Keyword(s) – helicopter crash; Top Ten by BMeTric: 78.9 Skyline (2010); 73.9 AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem (2007); 57.7 Boat Trip (2002); 57.2 A Good Day to Die Hard (2013); 55.9 Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996); 53.8 Batman Forever (1995); 53.7 Half Past Dead (2002); 51.9 Resident Evil: Retribution (2012); 50.2 Fifty Shades Darker (2017); 50.1 Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978);

(I would watch this movie marathon for sure. What an eclectic group of movies. I’d go chronological, just to get Killer Tomatoes to start. The ending of that series would be brutal too, would people just get up once Fifty Shades started?)

Notes – Rumors circulated in early 2015 that Jamie Dornan had made a decision not to reprise his role as Christian Grey in the future Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) films. However, those rumors were eventually debunked by his official rep who stated he was completely devoted to the franchise. (gross. But yeah, since they filmed the second and third back to back you’d get to basically get the series behind you and cash a huge check. Don’t blame him)

Fans have expressed interest in actresses such as Kim Cattrall, Michelle Pfeiffer and Charlize Theron for the role of Elena Lincoln aka “Mrs. Robinson”. (And we are so so glad it went to Kim Basinger instead. Love me some Kimmy B).

After receiving backlash that clean shaven Jamie Dornan wasn’t sexy enough as Christian Grey in the first film the producers decided that he could keep his stubble for Darker and Freed. (ha!)

In March of 2015, Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) director Sam Taylor-Johnson revealed she would not be returning for the film’s sequels, Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018), respectively. As well, screenwriter Kelly Marcel also stated she would not be returning to the series. (I would guess that the producers, including E. L. James, wanted more control. I thought Taylor-Johnson did a pretty solid job, the first movie was just super boring and nothing happened.)

Screenwriter Niall Leonard is the husband of E.L. James, who wrote the book series it is based upon. (Yuuuuuuup, pretty ridic)

Are We Done Yet? Preview

Onwards and upwards to Chain Reaction. After painting ourselves into a corner last year we finally fully extricated ourselves from the mess by landing on Ride Along 2. This cycle we get to move from that to the Are We There Yet? Series through Ice Cube. While this is not the worst reviewed set of films in history (that would obviously go to Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 with a shocking 2% and 0% RT scores, respectively), this is pretty spectacular in its own right with 11% and 8% RT scores for the two films. Also, it has the strange distinction of having the first film be totally original and then having the second film be a remake of the Cary Grant film Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (that was in turn based on a book which itself was expanded from a short story). Sometimes you can’t make this shit up. Let’s go! Finish up the week’s previews with the home-reno laugh-fest installment of the mega-franchise:

Are We Done Yet? (2007) – BMeTric: 64.7

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(Unlike its predecessor I’m not very surprised with how these graphics look because it is a sequel to a terrible film. I am rather delighted by how close the BMeTrics are (Are We There Yet? has a BMeTric of 62.5). The rating does regress to the mean more this time, although perhaps the rating is just rising to reach the equally terrible Are We There Yet?? I don’t know. Nice 2011 inflection like usual. Clockwork at this point.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars –  Inevitable sequel to Are We There Yet? Is also an official remake of the 1948 comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (complete with RKO Radio PIctures logo), but Ice Cube isn’t Cary Grant and this script is much more bland than Blandings. Premise is basically the same: a man moves his growing family out of the crowded city and into his “dream house” in the suburbs, where everything goes wrong. Endlessly unfunny slapstick antics may have you looking at your watch and asking the real question: “Is it over yet?”

(Ugh, much more bland? As a person who has now seen Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House … I’m skeptical a movie could be more bland. Or at least I hope Are We Done Yet? isn’t as frustrating. I was squirming in my seat and only survived because of the telegraphed happy ending. Sigh.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op8AlTe5Js8

(Boooooo. These don’t look like fun bad movies, they look like bad boring movies. You better not bore me for three hours. Give me something to latch onto, a little lifesaver I can float on in the rocking bad movie seas.)

Directors – Steve Carr – (Known For: Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life; Dr. Dolittle 2; BMT: Movie 43 (BMT); Are We Done Yet?; Paul Blart: Mall Cop (BMT); Daddy Day Care; Rebound; Next Friday; Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 2014 for Worst Director for Movie 43; Wouldn’t be surprising to complete this guy’s filmography in the not-too-distant-future. Used to be a music video director and got his start with Next Friday after directing one of Ice Cube’s music videos. Currently attached to the terribly named Cinderfella which has a perfectly obvious plotline … it is Cinderella by the opposite.)

Writers – Hank Nelken (screenplay & screen story) – (BMT: Are We Done Yet?; Saving Silverman; Mama’s Boy; Notes: The only screenwriter on this project it would seem as the others are credited for either Are We There Yet? or the “original movie” Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. This guy has a true blue pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps story starting in Mississippi and Texas making Bar Mitzvah videos and ultimately in Hollywood. He has no credits since 2011, but I would guess he’s been working behind the scenes for a while. He was at one point attached to a remake of the film Outlaw Blues.)

Steven Gary Banks and Claudia Grazioso (characters) – (BMT: Are We Done Yet?; Are We There Yet?; Notes: Wrote the predecessor Are We There Yet? Their note in that preview is quite interesting as it would seem they were tapped to write Just Go With It (probably with the intention of starring Ice Cube) which was eventually made without these guys and with Adam Sandler starring instead.)

Norman Panama (screenplay) – (Known For: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House; White Christmas; The Court Jester; Road to Utopia; My Favorite Blonde; BMT: Are We Done Yet?; Notes: Long time writing partner with Frank. It is kind of amazing to see one of the founding partnerships of Hollywood, they started writing together at the University of Chicago in 1942! They only have a credit on this film because Are We Done Yet? Is apparently an adaptation of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, which is in turn based on a book, which was expanded from an original short story. I find it nuts that they so explicitly consider it an adaptation, the movie was made in 1950!)

Melvin Frank (screenplay) – (Known For: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House; White Christmas; The Court Jester; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; A Touch of Class; Road to Utopia; My Favorite Blonde; BMT: Are We Done Yet?; The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox; Notes: Long time writing partner with Panama. Considered to be by far the more successful of the two because after going their separate ways in the 1960s Frank continued to direct (including the Oscar winning film A Touch of Class) and produce. Fun fact: I’ve always meant to watch The Court Jester because it stars a young Angela Lansbury and I am a Murder She Wrote mega-fan. Not joking.)

Actors – Ice Cube – (Known For: xXx: Return of Xander Cage; 21 Jump Street; Friday; The Book of Life; 22 Jump Street; Boyz n the Hood; Barbershop: A Fresh Cut; Three Kings; Barbershop; Rampart; Higher Learning; Barbershop 2: Back in Business; Trespass; The Glass Shield; The Longshots; BMT: xXx²: State of the Union (BMT); Anaconda; Torque (BMT); Are We Done Yet?; Ghosts of Mars (BMT); Are We There Yet?; First Sunday; Lottery Ticket; Ride Along 2 (BMT); Friday After Next; I Got the Hook Up; All About the Benjamins; Dangerous Ground; Ride Along (BMT); Next Friday; The Players Club; Notes: It is always weird writing two previews back to back when the same actors are in both. I’ll just say that I would put him right up there with The Rock as far as people who I would watch in a movie based on charm alone.)

Nia Long – (Known For: Friday; Keanu; Boyz n the Hood; Boiler Room; Alfie; Soul Food; The Best Man; The Best Man Holiday; Lemon; Roxanne Roxanne; The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy; BMT: Big Momma’s House 2 (BMT); Are We Done Yet?; Are We There Yet?; Big Momma’s House (BMT); Made in America; Premonition; The Single Moms Club; Held Up; Stigmata; Notes: Same as with Ice Cube, this is the third little write up I’ve done for here in about a month.  I would think Premonition is the last major BMT left in her filmography … which does actually qualify for our next planned cycle, Films That Got <10% on Rotten Tomatoes. So maybe a fourth Nia Long vehicle is coming our way.)

John C. McGinley – (Known For: Se7en; The Belko Experiment; Platoon; Office Space; Point Break; Identity; The Rock; Any Given Sunday; Wall Street; 42; Born on the Fourth of July; World Trade Center; Set It Off; Kid Cannabis; Nixon; BMT: Highlander II: The Quickening (BMT); The Animal; Are We Done Yet?; On Deadly Ground (BMT); Alex Cross (BMT); Get Carter (BMT); Summer Catch; Stealing Harvard; Car 54, Where Are You?; Get a Job; Wagons East; Wild Hogs (BMT); Three to Tango; Notes: I love McGinley and will look forward to completing his BMT filmography one day. Five movies is incredibly impressive. Favorite fact from IMDb? Raised in Millburn, NJ, and attended Millburn Senior High School, the alma mater of Anne Hathaway. Fun because that means he attended the same high school as bad movie mega-star Elliot Kalan of the Flop House, The Daily Show, and producer for the remake of Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

Budget/Gross – N/A / Domestic: $49,662,533 (Worldwide: $58,388,068)

(Interesting that there is no budget, so I can only really comment with regards to what I would consider to be a successful comedy and expectations given the first film. Considering that the first film got close to what I would call a comedy hit ($100 million) this was probably a disappointment. Perhaps it is why, I think, Ice Cube has not starred in a PG film since.)

#21 for the Comedy – Fish-Out-of-Water Father genre

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(Ah sliding right in there as the genre is dying. Classic. This came in right around Hall of Fame nominee Old Dogs. As I said in the Are We There Yet? preview the genre could potentially be dead? There hasn’t been a new contribution since 2013. Bumbling father is a classic though, I feel like it’ll come back.)

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

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(Ride Along 2, Paul Blart 2, Big Momma 2, Be Cool and last week’s Miss Congeniality 2 are all live action comedy sequels we’ve seen in the last year or so! Coming in a shade above Miss Congeniality 2 is not a good look, and it came just as the genre was taking a little financial nap. Once they see a bit of money they bleed any and all potential franchises dry, that includes terrible family comedies with Ice Cube.)

#21 for the Comedy Remake genre

comedyremake_21

(Ooooooo right at the end of producers yelling to their assistants: “Hey, Carl, what sweet IP we got?” and getting the response “Uh, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House from 1948” … “Make that a sequel to something”. This comes in right above Yours, Mine and Ours (2005) and the genre has taken quite a hit recently with very few productions and a lackluster return from Ghostbusters.)

#20 for the Family – Remake genre

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(……. these last two graphics are basically the same. So yeah, Family/Comedy Remakes aren’t doing so hot. Actually, most comedy remakes are probably family oriented if the source material was from before the 80’s now that I think of it. This came in just below the classic Angels in the Outfield. Recently Jungle Book was a smash hit … wait a minute, these graphs don’t include the live action remakes of the Disney movies like Cinderella. That doesn’t really make sense but whatever.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 8% (7/93): Are We Done Yet? plays it way too safe with generic slapstick and uninspired domestic foibles.

(Less than 10% on rotten tomatoes is very rare, and more so when you consider that the film garnered almost 100 reviews. I think I can turn my brain off and enjoy generic slapstick. The domestic foibles on the other hand …)

Poster – Are Sklogs Done Yet? (D+)

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(This is the same poster as for the last one so why not copy that: There is a whole class of posters that a similar to this that I just hate, hate, hate. Too much empty space and not enough stylization of the characters on the poster. The font is still okay and, bonus, making Are Sklogs Done Yet? would be a bit harder because so much stuff is all over the title. I docked a grade because they plagiarized themselves.)

Tagline(s) – New house. New family. What could possibly go wrong? (F)

(Fuck this. This is the same as the last tagline too!! The last tagline was: 24 hours. 350 miles. His girlfriend’s kids. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. We get it. Everything can and will go wrong.)

Keyword(s) – renovation; Top Ten by BMeTric: 80.8 Home Alone 3 (1997); 74.1 Prom Night (I) (2008); 64.7 Are We Done Yet? (2007); 56.5 Poltergeist III (1988); 46.1 Meet the Browns (2008); 40.2 Xanadu (1980); 33.3 From Prada to Nada (2011); 26.4 Psychosis (I) (2010); 25.9 Baby Mama (2008); 24.1 Dark Shadows (2012);

(I think this is the first time I’ve found a keyword where we haven’t seen any of the movies. Xanadu will happen soon enough I think. Besides that though I don’t really see any of the others on the BMT horizon.)

Notes – A quote from Nick, “I don’t know karate, but I know ka-razay!” when he’s confronting Chuck, are actually lyrics from James Brown’s 1974 single “The Payback” from the album of the same name.

Shipped to theaters under the name “Needs Work” (I honestly hate these “fun” facts. It just never seems all that important what a movie shipped as, nor are they ever clever or funny)

When Nick tells Chuck, who is played by John C. McGinley, that he feels good sitting on a private toilet, Chuck says, “Feeling good is good enough.” That line is said by Willem Dafoe in the 1986 Oscar winner Platoon, which stars McGinley. (Fun fact I guess)

Ice Cube was approached to do another sequel, but declined, saying that he wanted to go in a different direction. He then proposed that the movie idea be turned into a TV show, which it did: Are We There Yet? (2010). (Smart. Ice Cube seems like a smart dude. My guess is he realized he didn’t want to be shoehorned into family comedies like Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, and Martin Lawrence seemed to be. Also my guess as to why the writers got dropped from Just Go With It when they realized they couldn’t get Cube)

Miss Congeniality 2 Armed and Fabulous Preview

Very disappointing week in the world of BMT. I fully expected to be announcing the first BMT Live! of the year as xXx: The Return of Xander Cage was released. Alas. Somehow it was able to garner 42% on RT due to a plethora of “Good for what it is” type reviews. Fuck that. Sigh. Instead we’ll wait on some other obvious choices later this month and move right onto the Girls Night Out. Only two real options for the category: Sex and the City 2 or Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. Patrick hasn’t gotten through the entire series of Sex and the City in prep for the film (unfortunately that is not a joke) so we are going for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. I’m actually excited about that. Great title. Let’s go!

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) – BMeTric: 61.3

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(This is the greatest 2011 inflection ever. I think it is because you literally see it go from 0 votes to 53,000 (the first data point has 71 votes!). That is why the rating fluctuates so much in the beginning too, it was just shit on by those 71 people, and then it jumped immediately to 6.0 (early fans of the original), and then is faded to where it belonged. This is a very “sustained excellence” plot, which I think means this is going to be a classic. Nary a regression to the mean to be seen and high 4 / low 5 is genuinely terrible for IMDb. Getting excited.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars –  Bullock returns as FBI agent Gracie Hart, for public relations purposes, becomes the “face of the FBI.” When Burns and Shatner are kidnapped, the bureau’s beauty and her bodyguard (King) abandon PR duties and try to find the hostages. Forced (and redundant) sequel has only a couple of bright moments and never hits a comedic stride. Several celebrities have bit parts.

(You finished writing your novel yet, Leonard? That last statement is real vague. Just some celebrities popping in… to let you know.)

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

(Jesus Christ. So let’s go through a few things. (1) Benjamin Bratt is removed from the sequel with an off screen phone call. (2) Cameo by at least Regis. (3) The audacity to claim that all of a sudden Bullock’s character is some undercover wonder. (4) Set in Las Vegas. Roll all that up together with that fact that literally everything good from the original (Bratt and Caine at least a little bit) just are no longer there and this is a recipe for disaster. I’m excited.)

Directors – John Pasquin – (Known For: The Santa Clause; BMT: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; Jungle 2 Jungle; Joe Somebody; Notes: Basically Tim Allen’s personal director. He even directs and co-produces Allen’s current show Last Man Standing.)

Writers – Marc Lawrence (characters & written by) – (Known For: Miss Congeniality; Music and Lyrics; Two Weeks Notice; The Rewrite; Forces of Nature; BMT: Did You Hear About the Morgans?; Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; The Out-of-Towners; Life with Mikey; Notes: And this guy’s like the personal writer for Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. He wrote 4 Bullock films and 4 Hugh Grant films, including one (Two Weeks Notice) where they both appear. Weird. Nominated for an Emmy for producing Family Ties.)

Katie Ford (characters) – (Known For: Miss Congeniality; BMT: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; Notes: Wrote on Family Ties with Lawrence. Mostly has written for TV. Only feature is Miss Congeniality with a character credit on the sequel.)

Caryn Lucas (characters) – (Known For: Miss Congeniality; BMT: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; Notes: Wrote with Lawrence on a short lived sitcom Pride & Joy. Jesus, this guy must be the king of the Rolodex. Pulling out his contacts to make all these films and shows.)

Actors – Sandra Bullock – (Known For: Gravity; Crash; The Proposal; Minions; A Time to Kill; Miss Congeniality; Speed; The Heat; Demolition Man; The Prince of Egypt; Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood; While You Were Sleeping; Two Weeks Notice; The Vanishing; Infamous; Forces of Nature; The Thing Called Love; Wrestling Ernest Hemingway; Lisa Picard Is Famous; BMT: Speed 2: Cruise Control; All About Steve; Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; The Net; Premonition; Love Potion No. 9; Stolen Hearts; 28 Days; Hope Floats; Murder by Numbers; Gun Shy; Practical Magic; Our Brand Is Crisis; Loverboy; In Love and War; The Lake House; Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 2010 for Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple for All About Steve; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1998 for Worst Actress for Speed 2: Cruise Control; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1998 for Worst Screen Couple for Speed 2: Cruise Control; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1994 for Worst Supporting Actress for Demolition Man. Won an Oscar for The Blind Side and nominated for Gravity. My favorite fun fact about her is that she was once engaged to Tate Donovan.)

Regina King – (Known For: Friday; Jerry Maguire; Boyz n the Hood; Enemy of the State; Ray; Mighty Joe; Planes: Fire & Rescue; Higher Learning; The Ant Bully; This Christmas; How Stella Got Her Groove Back; Year of the Dog; BMT: Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde; Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; Daddy Day Care; Down to Earth; Our Family Wedding; A Cinderella Story; Poetic Justice; A Thin Line Between Love and Hate; Notes: Won a couple Emmy’s recently for her role on American Crime.)

William Shatner – (Known For: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story; Miss Congeniality; Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Over the Hedge; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Judgement at Nuremberg; Star Trek: Generations; Osmosis Jones; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; Airplane II: The Sequel; A Christmas Horror Story; Kingdom of the Spiders; Big Bad Mama; Incubus; Free Enterprise; BMT: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous; Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Showtime; The Wild; The Devil’s Rain; Escape from Planet Earth; Loaded Weapon 1; Notes:  Won the Razzie Award in 1990 for Worst Actor, and Director for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2000 for Worst Actor of the Century; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1995 for Worst Supporting Actor for Star Trek: Generations; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1990 for Worst Screenplay for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; His daughter Lisbeth was Miss Golden Globes. Classic fun fact.)

Budget/Gross – $60 million / Domestic: $48,478,006 (Worldwide: $101,393,569)

(That … actually doesn’t seem that bad. But dropping from a $100 million dollar comedy to about half of what it raked in a few years earlier obviously meant the end to the franchise. And the end to Bullock’s romantic comedy career for a bit. She would come back with the one-two punch of the very successful The Proposal in the same year as the widely panned (BMT) All About Steve.)

#35 for the Action Heroine genre

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(Near future BMT Resident Evil Extinction, which makes sense. We last saw this during the Hall of Fame preview for Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li. This film did substantially better and really came right before the genre collapsed. Since then it has clawed its way back very successfully. This plot doesn’t count Rogue One so it’ll continue to grow as well.)

#14 for the Cinderella Complex genre

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(Ooooo right near BMT favorite The Prince and Me. Such an odd genre. And I’m sensing a trend, this also collapsed right around 2005. I think 2005 was a point in time: a point when the studios realized if they were just a tiny bit more careful they could just print money. So they relegated this to straight-to-DVD Disney affairs (I assume).)

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

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(So … We finally discovered the root of the sequel collapse. Hollywood wasn’t replenishing their comedy coffers, they literally just couldn’t function for a bit between 2005 and 2010. That year basically marks a collapse across the board in certain “bad movie genres” as they hibernated and started to mull on the next big hit. 2008 was Iron Man, so they didn’t have to wait too long. But Miss Congeniality 2 Armed and Fabulous seems like something special. It sat on the edge of the abyss and dared people to look at it, see what our hubris wrought as critics whispered “The horror! The horror!”.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 15% (22/145): Sandra Bullock is still as appealing as ever; too bad the movie is not pageant material.

(Blech, “pageant material,” RT? That’s the best you can do? If this came out this year I bet it would get a 42% and everyone would just say “It’s dumb as a box of hair, but it delivers on what it promises.” God, I’m just so angry about xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.)

Poster – Miss Congeniality 2 Armed and Sklogulous (D-)

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(Violates everything I hold dear: too much white, weird framing, no dominant coloring, and (worst of all) no tagline! Only thing it does OK is have a fairly unique font. Would be hard to spoof.)

Tagline(s) – None! (F-)

(I need to collect together all the films that don’t have a tagline on their poster and start a letter writing campaign to shame the producers. Unacceptable behaviour and we don’t have to stand for it. Theory: Some producer thought the tagline Armed and Fabulous was so good that it needed to be a subtitle.)

Keyword(s) – female protagonist; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.6 Catwoman (2004); 85.0 Date Movie (2006); 84.7 Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); 80.5 The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009); 79.5 Crossroads (I) (2002); 78.6 Sex and the City 2 (2010); 78.5 BloodRayne (2005); 78.3 Ultraviolet (2006); 76.7 Spice World (1997); 73.1 Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009);

(Phew, I thought Bullock was going to go for a two-fer with Miss Congeniality 2 sneaking in at the end. Catwoman is incredible, and honestly this is a really fun list. Imagine watching those ten movies in a row! I’m in, let’s do it.)

Notes – Eileen Brennan, who plays Stan Fields’ mom, is actually a year younger than William Shatner, who plays Stan Fields. He was born in 1931, she was born in 1932. (wot?)

In Miss Congeniality (2000), there was supposed to be a storyline where Gracie Hart’s mother was killed in the line of duty. The storyline was included in this sequel.

A Miss Congeniality (2000) poster can be seen in the background at the Las Vegas airport during the scene where Gracie is supposed to be flying back to New York. (wot?)

An entirely different sequence was filmed wherein the limo driver was portrayed by Jeffrey Tambor. (That fact is fun!)

The “Las Vegas FBI HQ” building used in the film is actually the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse located in Downtown Las Vegas.

Friday the 13th Part III Preview

The horror genre should be the bread and butter of the Squeakuels cycle. There are a lot of directions we could go. The abhorrently titled I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Blair Witch: Book of Shadows, Jaws: The Revenge, or perhaps Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (if only for this hilarious scene). God knows I wish we could just rewatch Silent Hill: Revelation. But alas we cannot. Instead we went for a classic in order to try to take a bite out of what is largely considered the worst of the major horror franchises. That’s right, we’re watching Friday the 13th Parts II and III. Nearly all of the Friday the 13th qualify for BMT other than the first and the sixth. So here we’ll knock off 25% of the series in a go. Let’s go!

Friday the 13th Part III (1982) – BMeTric: 35.1

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(I am a little shocked, this is basically the same story as for Part 2 except drop the rating by 0.5 thus adding 10 to the BMeTric. It has the same regression to the mean, 2011 inflection, and recent drop in BMeTric. I wonder if the whole series kind of holds the same trend. Probably a little overrated rating wise, a ton of votes. It just takes me by surprise, I was expecting much more from Part III)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars –  Strictly amater night in terms of acting and writing, but this entry deemphasizes explicit gore in favor of shocks, and delivers a few – especially in 3D and widescreen.

(What?! This shows what Leonard really thinks about horror. Thank god there isn’t any explicit gore in this entry. Instead let’s go for some fun 3D shocks! What a weirdo. Just enjoy the kills and effects man. Funny enough Leonard is known to only like Part III and Jason Takes Manhattan… which everyone else hates, hates, hates.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLHbki5fKvU

(That was much better than the trailer for Part 2. Seems like there are some fun looking kills in this one and the hockey mask makes an appearance. This is actually oddly promising.)

Directors – Steve Miner – (Known For: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later; Lake Placid; Forever Young; House; Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken; Warlock; BMT: Big Bully; Friday the 13th Part III; Soul Man; My Father the Hero; Texas Rangers; Friday the 13th Part 2; Notes: Was an associate director on the first Friday the 13th and then transitioned to director for Parts II & III. Also worked as an editor for Wes Craven early in his career (although credited as a P.A. for Last House on the Left).)

Writers – Martin Kitrosser (screenplay) – (BMT: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning; Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: A long time Hollywood script supervisor working closely with Tarantino on his films.)

Carol Watson (screenplay) – (BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Notes: Ha! Both her and Kitrosser are credited with writing the story for Meatballs Part II. Interesting that they seemed to have a short lived collaboration.)

Victor Miller (character creator) – (Known For: Friday the 13th; Freddy vs. Jason; Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI; BMT: Jason X; Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan; Friday the 13th: A New Beginning; Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood; Friday the 13th; Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Friday the 13th Part 2; Notes: He claims to have only seen the first Friday the 13th as he doesn’t like the idea of Jason being the killer.)

Ron Kurz (character creator) – (Known For: Friday the 13th; BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Friday the 13th Part 2; Notes: He gets character credits for the series from here on. Interesting to note that he wrote a couple smaller films under the name Mark Jackson. Not sure if that’s his real name or the pseudonym he started with.)

Sean S. Cunningham (characters) (uncredited) – (Known For: Friday the 13th; Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI; BMT: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning; Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood; Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter; Friday the 13th Part 2; Notes: He was the director for the first one. Also directed DeepStar Six which might end up in BMT in the future.)

Petru Popescu (uncredited) – (Known For: The Last Wave; BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; Notes: He claimed in an interview that casting for the film was based entirely on looks and nothing to do with acting ability (I’m sure it shows).)

Actors – Dana Kimmell – (BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; Notes: Mostly a TV actress in soaps and the like. Retired from acting.)

Tracie Savage – (BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; The Devil and Max Devlin; Notes: Long time reporter in the LA area, she has won three LA area Emmy’s for her work. She even reported on the OJ Simpson trial and had to take the stand regarding information she reported from an anonymous source. Wow.)

Richard Brooker – (BMT: Friday the 13th Part III; Notes: He portrayed Jason in the film. Died of a heart attack a few years back. Very interesting guy if you take a look at his IMDb.)

Budget/Gross – $2.3 million / Domestic: $36,690,067 (N/A)

(Still punching well above its weight. This is still the fourth highest grossing in the series. All the films nearly go down in gross in order before bottoming out with Jason X.)

#22 for the Horror – Slasher genre

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(I found this plot to be interesting enough I’ll just copy my notes from the Part 2 preview: This guy sits right in the middle of the pre-85 horror genre at around $20 million. Blockbuster horror is still somewhat unique, at least with slashers. Only 11 films have over $50 million domestic! The Scream series holds the top three and are the only films to gross over $100 million. I had to kind of hack my program for this because they didn’t record the number of theaters for this movie, that’s why the dashed line isn’t really on the graph. The big peak is Scream. The genre saw a resurgence in the late 2000s … and now it is VOD. All Horror will be VOD soon beyond, currently, the Babadooks of the world. I am convinced there will always be a place for people to come together to be scared as a group, but it just is very small potatoes. Kind of sad to see the genre get swamped in the late 80s and then collapse in the 90s. That’s the story of horror though.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 12% (3/25): No consensus yet.

(Generally regarded as the second worst in the series. However it’s hard to tell as rankings are all over the place depending on what the ranker likes in a horror film. I believe the consensus would go a little something like this: Heavy on gimmick, light on scares. This entry may finally kill a series that was already on life support. I like that fake consensus because it would end up being so very, very wrong.)

Poster – Sklogday the 13th Part III (B+)

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(There is something fun and artistic with these posters. I like the framing and dark colors with contract. Take a look at that crazy title font to boot!)

Tagline(s) – A New Dimension In Terror… (B)

(Flows nicely and tells a bit of the story. Not as good as the Part II tagline, but still pretty good.)

Keyword(s) – serial killer; Top Ten by BMeTric: 72.9 I Know Who Killed Me (2007); 72.7 Basic Instinct 2 (2006); 72.3 I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998); 72.1 Halloween: Resurrection (2002); 69.4 Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005); 69.1 Feardotcom (2002); 67.2 Species II (1998); 65.3 Zoolander 2 (2016); 65.2 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); 62.9 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989);

(Some of these are not like the other, some of these do not belong. Hilarious list due to the comedies stuff in there. Otherwise pretty expected. Someday we’ll complete all of the major horror franchises, you’ll see.)

Notes – This was the first of the Friday the 13th films to use the iconic hockey mask, which has been in every sequel since. (Yup, watching the first three in a row the transformation of the killer is actually rather shocking considering how iconic Jason became)

The original plan for the film involved Ginny (Amy Steel) from the previous film being confined to a psychiatric hospital. Suffering from the trauma inflicted on her during the ordeal with Jason, she eventually finds that, intent on revenge, he has tracked her down, and he begins to murder the staff and other patients at the hospital. Steel ultimately declined the offer to return to the series as she was busy with other projects, but has since said that she thinks she should have accepted. (That is the plot of Halloween II, just a mental hospital not a hospital)

To prevent the film’s plot being leaked, the production used the fake title “Crystal Japan,” after a David Bowie song. This began an on-again, off-again tradition of giving “Friday the 13th” films David Bowie song titles during filming. (gross, who cares about the plot of a microbudget horror film?)

This film actually takes place the day after the events of Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), making it Saturday, the 14th. While the beginning takes place on the evening of Saturday, the 14th, when the store owner and his wife are killed, the majority of the film takes place on the following day, making it Sunday, the 15th. (Oh snap Jamie, are you ready for some temporal settings? [Jamie’s note: I don’t think this is accurate according to what I read online])

Larry Zerner was cast as Shelly when the producers spotted him handing out fliers for a horror movie and asked him if he’d want to star in one himself. (Jesus. When did they start taking this stuff seriously?)

The 3-D version contains a title card not seen in 2-D home video releases (for obvious reasons): after the Paramount Pictures logo fades out, the card reads “Ladies and gentlemen: The first few minutes of this picture are not in 3-D. However, you will need the special 3-D glasses.” The film then continues as normal with the recap of the ending of Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), presented in 2-D. The 3-D begins with the shot of Jason removing the machete from his shoulder. (Kind of wish I could watch that shitty 3D honestly)

Although it appears sunny and warm, the film was shot during a January/February winter. Several night scenes were trimmed in order to conceal the actors’ visible breath appearing on screen. (huh fun fact)

Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li Preview

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

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) – BMeTric: 70.2

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(I think this plot is a good argument as to Street Fighter’s lasting bad movie cred. A 3.7 is a comically low IMDb score, a score that, if this was a mere below-average or middling bad movie would have steadily crept higher as the thousands of votes flowed in since 2010. But it has basically just stayed constant around 3.8 since then. As I argued in The Wicker Man preview, it is the staying power that I think could be the defining feature of a good-bad movie. It is a movie people seek out, watch, and universally agree is garbage. And we have another one here. And of course 70+ BMeTric is nothing to dismiss.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Pointless new film version of the popular video game series finds pretty martial arts-trained Asian-American Chin-Li (Kreuk) spurred into action in Bangkok after her father is kidnapped. Sher uses all her wiles to snuff out the main bad guy, local crime lord McDonough, and his henchmen, led by the imposing Duncan. The 1987 game inspired a 1994 version which is Citizen Kane compared to this inept action vehicle, where even the centerpiece fight sequences are lamely choreographed and hopelessly contrived. When Interpol agent Klein yells, “Bomb! Get out now!” it would be wise to heed his advice.

(Doesn’t he say that at the end of the movie Leonard? Too little too late I would assume. Yeah, oddly a somewhat rare BOMB from Leonard within our Hall of Fame so far. I might not go so far to say the 1994 movie is that much better, but this one does stick out as a complete mess when I think about it. So maybe a cheesy Van Damme barely-movie is better than that. Solid hyphen game early by Leonard as well.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EctFEyCMDL0

(Wow, that was actually really good. Basically as good a trailer as I could have possibly expected for this film. Makes it out like it’s going to be non-stop action street fights between characters you love. I was jazzed by the end. Am I sure this is a terrible film? Looks great.)

Directors – Andrzej Bartkowiak – (BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Doom; Exit Wounds; Cradle 2 the Grave; Romeo Must Die; Notes: It just occurred to me that if you take Exit Wounds (DMX), Cradle 2 the Grave (DMX, Jet Li), and Romeo Must Die (Jet Li) you get a nice little chain reaction. I wish Jet Li and Seagal had been in a movie. We’ve seen Doom and Romeo Must Die, but finishing his filmography is a must. He is more well known as a cinematographer and his collaborations with Sidney Lumet.)

Writers – Justin Marks (screenplay) – (Known For: The Jungle Book; BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Notes: Kind of fascinating career just because he wrote Street Fighter for release in 2009, and then didn’t write another feature until 2016 with The Jungle Book. He now is well on his way, with Jungle Book 2, Top Gun 2, Shadow of the Colossus (video game adaptation), and FBP Federal Bureau of Physics (comic book adaptation) in production. I’d be willing to bet three of those will be BMT or borderline, can you guess which ones? I am stunned this movie had a single credited writer.)

Actors – Kristin Kreuk – (Known For: EuroTrip; BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Ecstasy; Notes: One of her first roles was as the ex-girlfriend Fiona in EuroTrip, otherwise she’s stuck to mostly television (like Smallville). She is Canadian and has a purple belt in karate.)

Neal McDonough – (Known For: Greater; Captain America: The First Avenger; Minority Report; RED 2; Star Trek: First Contact; Flags of Our Fathers; Darkman; Ravenous; Traitor; BMT: I Know Who Killed Me (BMT); Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (BMT); Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (BMT); Fire Down Below (BMT); Timeline (BMT); The Hitcher; 88 Minutes (BMT); Angels in the Outfield; Walking Tall; Telling You; The Last Time; Three Wishes; The Guardian (BMT); Notes: BMT legend having been in seven BMT films in our first six years, pretty good rate. He’s from Barnstable, Massachusetts of all places! Studied in London. I’m loving this guy, do your thing Neal.)

Michael Clarke Duncan – (Known For: The Green Mile; Planet of the Apes; Sin City; The Island; Kung Fu Panda; Friday; Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; Daredevil; The Scorpion King; The Whole Nine Yards; The Last Mimzy; Cats & Dogs; Bulworth; Redemption Road; BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore; Green Lantern; Breakfast of Champions; Racing Stripes; D.E.B.S.; Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins; The Underground Comedy Movie; See Spot Run; Delgo; Slipstream; School for Scoundrels; A Night at the Roxbury; The Players Club; Armageddon; The Slammin’ Salmon; Brother Bear; Notes: Sadly died a few years ago from complications related to a heart attack. My favorite note from his IMDb page: On July 12, 1979, during the Disco Demolition Night fiasco at Comiskey park, Duncan ran onto the field and slid into third base. Ha!)

Budget/Gross – $50 million / Domestic: $8,742,261 (Worldwide: $12,764,201)

(A complete and utter disaster. If that budget is correct this would probably be one of the biggest bombs of that year, and only is saved a bit from being a legend by “only” having a $50 million dollar budget. To be frank I don’t really believe that, at least some of it has to be exaggeration for tax reasons.)

#95 for the Action – Martial Arts genre

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(This plot is actually kind of sad. Initial thoughts: The 90s boom is basically people like Seagal and Van Damme. Then there was a little dip before Jackie Chan ushered in another foreign / comedy boom for the genre. This came right in the final gasp there with Rush Hour 3 and Transporter 3 kind of having the genre die off. Now … is it possible that martial arts has been relegated to VOD? Are we entering an era of whole genres being shunned from theatrical release in favor of tentpoles? It makes me a bit sad, but then again I can’t think of a situation in which I would personally go and see a martial arts film in theaters. Crouching Tiger might literally have been the only one I’ve ever seen in theaters to be honest. This movie is below Dragonball: Evolution on that chart … I’ll let that be a closing statement of sorts.)

#63 for the Action Heroine genre

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(THIS MOVIE IS BELOW CUTTHROAT ISLAND ON THAT CHART. That movie literally destroyed a production company! That giant peak around 2005: Lara Croft 2, Underworld, Catwoman, Elektra, Miss Congeniality 2, Charlie’s Angels 2, Resident Evil 2, Blade 3, Domino, Aeon Flux, Underworld 2, Ultraviolet, Resident Evil 3 … that’s a lot of terrible movies. And note how little money they made on average! And naturally since 2010 the action heroine has been a huge seller for Hollywood. I wish I could say this movie blazed a trail … but it didn’t. It merely allowed Hollywood to get the garbage juice out of its system before getting serious.)

#31 for the Video Game Adaptation genre

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(We saw Warcraft this year, and Hitman Agent 47 the year before among several BMT video game adaptations. Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li sits right above Alone in the Dark the Uwe Bol classic … so not great. Video game adaptations still make less than the martial arts genre of the 90’s, which is unimpressive to say the least. Naturally they are looking to have that change over the next few years you would imagine, but this multi-bomb year probably didn’t help matters. Five video game adaptations came out this year, that is the most ever according to this chart. Someday there will be a successful video game adaptation. It will happen.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 6% (3/54): The combination of a shallow plot and miscast performers renders Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li a perfectly forgettable video game adaptation.

(Less than 10% on Rotten Tomatoes is extremely impressive. Doing it with over 50 reviews is incredible. I wonder who they are talking about when they say miscast performers … I’m so sorry Chris Klein. So so sorry.)

Poster – Sklog Fighter: Legend of Jamie (D)

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(That is unfortunate. A truly ridiculous color scheme and spacing. Glad we at least get a unique font that would make it hard to create Sklog Fighter: The Legend of Jamie.)

Tagline(s) – Some fight for power. Some fight for us. (B)

(Hmmm. My brain is telling me that I should like this, but my heart is telling me that this is terrible and sounds like garbage. Definitely has the cadence, brevity, and a bit of the plot. I think it’s OK. My heart is disappointed in me.)

Keyword(s) – gangster; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.6 Catwoman (2004); 85.8 Gunday (2014); 82.7 Gigli (2003); 81.8 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011); 78.6 The Avengers (1998); 77.5 Super Mario Bros. (1993); 77.3 RoboCop 3 (1993); 72.8 Striptease (1996); 70.5 Grease 2 (1982); 70.2 Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009);

(Well since we aren’t ever doing Gunday we will complete this genre with Grease 2 which has to be done at some point. Solid list obviously, but I assume a few films might be a stretch. There was around 1200 films that claim a gangster keyword (around that). All of these vaguely make sense, but was there really a “gangster” in The Avengers for example? Questionable.)

Notes – Back in 2003, Jean-Claude Van Damme was working on a sequel to the original Street Fighter movie titled “Street Fighter II”, for Universal. Several cast members had been hired to join him in the sequel, including his Universal Soldier co-star Dolph Lundgren in an unrevealed role, Australian actress Holly Valance would have replaced Kylie Minogue as Cammy White, and Damian Chapa would have reprised his role as Ken Masters. Byron Mann was also reportedly in talks to return as Ryu Hoshi. However, after a few years of trying to get the sequel off the ground, the project never materialized and any plans for a sequel were scrapped in favor of this movie. (Would have also been terrible. People try to have nostalgia for the original, but in reality it is also terrible and a sequel without Raul Julia wouldn’t have been much better)

A potential sequel with Ryu and Ken was planned but was cancelled due of the poor box office performances of the film. (Jesus)

This movie only has 7 world warriors taken from Capcom’s “Fighting Game of 2008” titled Street Fighter IV (originally, the game has 25 characters) with the legendary world warrior from Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams [1995] (also know as Street Fighter Zero in Japan, Asia, South America and Australia) known as Charlie Nash being a special guest to this movie rather than reusing the hybrid-character “Carlos Blanka” from Universal Pictures’s Street Fighter [1994], The world warriors that made their appearances are: Chun Li, Gen, Crimson “Maya” Viper, Rose, Balrog, Vega, Master Bison and Charlie Nash. The world warriors that are absent are: Ryu (who is mentioned by Gen once), Ken Masters, Major Guile (who is replaced by Charlie Nash), Blanka, Edmund Honda, Zangief, Dhalsim, Sagat, Cammy White, Fei Long, Akuma, Dan Hibiki, Sakura Kasugano, Able, El Fuerte, Rufus, Gouken and Seth. (All solid information, thanks IMDb)

RoboCop 3 Preview

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

RoboCop 3 (1993) – BMeTric: 77.3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#36 for the Cyborg / Android / Robot genre

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

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

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

Poster – RoboSklog 3 (D) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RoboCop 2 Preview

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

RoboCop 2 (1990) – BMeTric: 38.5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#25 for the Cyborg / Android / Robot genre

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

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

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

Poster – RoboSklog 2 (C+)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Momma Like Father Like Son Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also stars Jessica Lucas (From Pompeii!)

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

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

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

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

Poster – Big Momma Like Father Like Sklog (D)

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

Tagline(s) – Momma’s got back-up. (C)

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

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

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

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

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

Big Momma’s House 2 Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#16 for the Comedy – Fat Suit genre

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

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

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

Poster – Big Momma’s Sklog 2 (D+)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ride Along 2 Preview

Alright, so this week we arrive back at our most misguided genre, the Chain Reaction. It was incredibly difficult jumping from 1986 to 2016. Not many actors, even big stars, are still making BMT films after 20 years. So jumping from 1986’s No Mercy to a 2016 film seemed an impossible task. Thank god for Bruce McGill. Unlike Richard Gere and Kim Basinger, McGill is still going strong, and allowed us to jump straight from No Mercy to 2016’s sequel du jour, Ride Along 2. This also means we got extra content this week as the original Ride Along is also BMT (and both DVDs have commentaries by director Tim Story). Lucky us. Let’s go!

Ride Along 2 (2016) – BMeTric: 28.8

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(Alright, like Ride Along this guy is also super stable. I love the giant drop at the end. Classic. The fans of the film give it 10’s, and then it gets a bunch of 1’s from idiots early, and then it bounces right to where it eventually lands at 5.9. Also pretty good considering its reviews. A BMeTric of 30 is solid considering it was released less than a year ago.)

RogerEbert.com – 1.5 stars – This second helping of Hart’s hyper hijinks as rookie cop Ben, once more paired with Ice Cube’s glowering bulldog presence as rule-flouting veteran James, exists for the same reason that “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” does: money. Probably a good test of whether you should consider riding along with this low-rent version of “Bad Boys” meets “Rush Hour” is if you are tickled by Ben suggesting that he and James call themselves “The Brothers-in-Law.” Get it? They are brothers-in-law and they are “brothers” IN Law. OK. You can stop giggling now

(Sounds about right. But also something you could feasibly say about nearly any franchise comedy sequel. They exist for money. And if you like the jokes they are going to make you’ll like the movie. Groundbreaking. The reviewer does note that the film is more diverse which is nice.)

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

(Ha! This is basically the plot of Dirty Grandpa … not really, but weird that both start in Atlanta and go to Florida and the main character has to get back in time for his wedding while getting pulled into trouble by a relative. C’mon, that’s weird. What’s that I smell? Is that a Hollywood badass bar? I hope it is brightly lit with sparsely and even distributed dancers! I hope there is just no crowd around the bar area and getting a drink seems convenient!)

[NOTE: I just copied these notes from the Ride Along preview as these are literally all of the same people minus Jason Mantzoukas]

Directors – Tim Story – (Known For: Think Like a Man; Barbershop; BMT: Taxi (BMT); Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer; Fantastic Four; Think Like a Man Too; Ride Along 2; Ride Along; Notes:  From the Taxi preview: The top grossing African-American director of all time (domestic at least, not sure about worldwide). Actually just retook the top spot from Tyler Perry with Ride Along 2. I’ll add that he has announced he is directing Humbug starring Ice Cube as a real estate mogul in a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol. Be still my beating heart.)

Writers – Greg Coolidge (screenplay & story) – (BMT: Employee of the Month; Sorority Boys; Ride Along 2; Ride Along; Notes:  Not much about him online, but that is an incredible filmography. I need to see Sorority Boys at some point, just an absurd White Chicks-esque premise.)

Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (screenplay) – (Known For: The Invitation; Crazy/Beautiful; BMT: The Tuxedo (BMT); Æon Flux (BMT); R.I.P.D. (BMT); Clash of the Titans; Ride Along 2; Ride Along; Notes: Legends. How does one go from Crazy/Beautiful to The Tuxedo exactly? If you want some insight this article is incredibly in depth. Turns out … you do one solid adaptation and you’ll basically be tapped for a million more. Honestly I don’t think the script was the problem with most of these movies so get yo money.)

Actors – Ice Cube – (Known For: 22 Jump Street; 21 Jump Street; Friday; The Book of Life; Boyz n the Hood; Barbershop: A Fresh Cut; Three Kings; Barbershop; Rampart; Higher Learning; Barbershop 2: Back in Business; Trespass; The Glass Shield; The Longshots; BMT: xXx²: State of the Union (BMT); Anaconda; Torque (BMT); Are We Done Yet?; Ghosts of Mars (BMT); Are We There Yet?; First Sunday; Lottery Ticket; Ride Along 2; Friday After Next; I Got the Hook Up; All About the Benjamins; Dangerous Ground; Ride Along; Next Friday; Notes: Cube! A legend in his own right if only for Ghosts of Mars, a secret BMT favorite. Most famous for being a primary player in NWA he has since become somewhat of a comedy staple. Started with Friday in the 90’s and then the Barbershop series in the 00’s, he’s a full blown comedian at this point. Impressive dude.)

Kevin Hart – (Known For: The Secret Life of Pets; Central Intelligence; This Is the End; The 40 Year-Old Virgin; Death at a Funeral; The Five-Year Engagement; Think Like a Man; Top Five; About Last Night; Death of a Dynasty; BMT: Epic Movie; Superhero Movie; Soul Plane; Scary Movie 4 (BMT); Meet Dave; In the Mix; Scary Movie 3 (BMT); Little Fockers; Fool’s Gold (BMT); Drillbit Taylor; Along Came Polly; Think Like a Man Too; Get Hard; Ride Along 2; Ride Along; Grudge Match (BMT); The Wedding Ringer (BMT); Notes: He exploded as one of the most prolific comedic actors a few years ago (and trust me, some people are not happy about that for some reason) with Ride Along, Get Hard, Central Intelligence, Ride Along 2, and the Wedding Ringer coming out in the last 3 years basically.)

With Tika Sumpter again (from Madea Christmas and now Ride Along … I’m going to be honest, I’m surprised she’s in this considering this movie takes place in Florida now. They could have easily kind of just said “she’s in Atlanta, don’t worry about it” kid-from-London-Has-Fallen style. Save some cash.)

Budget/Gross – $40 million / Domestic: $90,862,685 (Worldwide: $124,246,152)

(Definitive success if probably a disappointment considering the take of the original. Here I’ll highlight one thing. If you look through some big name multi-film series starring black actors there is a possibly-not-surprising trend. The Barbershop series has an average foreign percentage of gross of 1.6%. The Friday series has an average 2.6%. All of the Madea movies have an average of 1.1%. It is at least somewhat well known that films geared towards African American audiences basically don’t get released to foreign markets. This is probably because there is a cultural factor that is (perceived?) to not translate. Ride Along 2 though actually seems to have bucked the trend a bit taking 26.9% of its take overseas. Promising. Kevin Hart said he wanted to remove the stigma off films that are called “black films” and it seems like he is doing it.)

#19 for the Action – Buddy Comedy genre

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(Not much is going to change from the commentary from the Ride Along preview. I will say it has to be a bit disappointing to see the take slip a bit in the second installment for this genre considering how consistent Ice Cube’s other series 21 Jump Street has been. Being near Green Hornet is domestic take is not so hot.)

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

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(Unfortunately this might reveal a bit of why this film as a disappointment as it sits near Sex and the City 2 and Madea Goes to Jail on the domestic charts, oooof. We most recently saw this chart with Cheaper By the Dozen 2 where we noted these bad ones tend to come as a peak is a-tumbling. And I have a feeling we’ve crossed the rubicon and we’ll be seeing a new crop of original comedy rise so that sequels can be made a plenty in about 5 years)

Rotten Tomatoes – 14% (15/104): Ride Along 2 presents a cop-comedy sequel whose well-matched stars can’t break the law of diminishing returns — or lock up a script that unabashedly steals from the original.

(Ooooooof. For an original that was in itself simplistic, linear, and predictable being forced to borrow from oneself is a bit rough. They painted themselves into a corner a bit I think. What movie are they intending to parody in this case (or set of movies). Miami Vice? 2 Fast 2 Furious? For a little more absurdist take there are a million directions to go in, but I can’t really think of what they can do here except drug dealer in Miami, he’s bad, brightly lit clubs, the end.)

Poster – Sklog Along 2: Sklog-ami Vice (D)

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(They really liked that first poster apparently. This is still drab and dull, but instead of of effectively using yellow they throw in some crazy pants and a blue car… that blue car really bums me out. Such simple things can ruins so much. Sklog Along 2 anyone?)

Tagline(s) – The brothers-in-law are back. (C+)

(I’m digging this one a little more than the first Ride Along tagline. Here they keep it more concise and have a couple b’s popping. A light pun on “brothers-in-law” that doesn’t work great visually. No plot at all though, other than the fact that it is a sequel.)

Keyword(s) – drugs; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.0 Disaster Movie (2008); 75.7 LOL (2012); 72.6 Basic Instinct 2 (2006); 71.3 Showgirls (1995); 67.1 Year One (2009); 65.0 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); 62.5 Ghosts of Mars (2001); 59.3 Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991); 59.0 The Crow: City of Angels (1996); 56.0 Sliver (1993);

(… How is “drugs” a part of Jason Goes to Hell? I guess that is one of the smoke-weed-and-you-get-murdered tropes from horror franchises. Again, garbage list because the keyword is too general.)

Notes – The title “Ride 2gether” was strongly considered but they chose to remain with the original title. (This make come as a shock, but I think that is a horrible title. It isn’t close enough to actually remind you of the first smash hit film, so it would be difficult to pull off as a sequel)

In the beginning of the film Ben (Kevin Hart) is sitting in a surveillance van with “Packer” written on the side. This is named after the film’s producer Will Packer. (Fun facts are the best facts)

A “Gears of War 3” poster can be seen in Ben’s apartment when he is being asked to go to Miami. (okay)

Ashanti is seen as one of the party girls with Kevin Hart and Ken Joung at Ben’s bachelor party. (say what. That is weird. Sadly not many good notes for this film. Have to wait for those PAs to dish I guess)