Once again over at io9 you’ll find an article by Rob Bricken listing the above, the 19 Worst Movies the hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000 ever riffed:
Bear in mind, what this list shows are the worst movies that the author felt appeared on the show. Of course, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was devoted to showing terrible films while a crew of three (one guy and two robots) skewering the films as they watched them.
I tend to agree with the list. The interesting thing is that the worst the film, the better the riffing and the better, therefore, the overall episode of MST3K. Check out the films and see if you agree. I really liked Mr. Bricken’s description of The Creeping Terror (#9 on the list):
The Creeping Terror is a movie only in the most technical sense. Things have been filmed, and that film has been stuck together to produce what is generally termed a motion picture, but that’s it.
Moving aside for a moment on the notion of which film they showed was the worst, for those who haven’t seen any MST3K fare, I highly recommend they check these film “treatments” out: Mitchell, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Teenagers From Outer Space, Attack of the Giant Leeches, and The Killer Shrews.
As I’ve been transferring more and more of my films to digital and in doing so I’ve stumbled upon some movies I hadn’t seen since first purchasing them sometimes many years before.
One such work is the acclaimed playwright David Mamet’s 2004 directed/written film Spartan. Other than the fact that the film featured Val Kilmer as a secret service (or somesuch) agent searching for the President of the United State’s missing daughter (an early screen appearance by Kristen Bell) I recalled next to nothing else about this film.
After watching it, I can see why.
Now, before you assume I’m going to slam this film hard, don’t. Even with the considerable problems the films has (I’ll get into them after the trailer below), I’d probably give this film two to two and a half stars out of four. It was entertaining enough (especially in the early going) to interest me but the film’s later half had many problems…all of them related to the screenplay.
Since I’ll be getting into considerable spoilers here, let me say this: If you’re a fan of David Mamet’s work, you may want to give Spartan a look. It may not be up there with some of his best written work especially considering how much of the plot revolves around at times extremely hard to swallow coincidences (again, I’ll get into them in a moment), but the film isn’t a complete disaster.
Faint praise, I know, but I can’t deny watching the film to its end and therefore it did, at the very least, keep my attention.
Anyway, here’s Spartan’s trailer and afterwards we’ll get into some heavy story spoilers. However, in watching this trailer, it occurs to me this is yet another case where the trailer gives away too much, so watch at your own peril. What follows from this point on are…
SPOILERS!!!!
Still here?
Don’t say you haven’t been warned!
All right so the first part of Spartan introduces us to Scott (Val Kilmer) a no-nonsense “I do anything I’m ordered” soldier. He’s resourceful, he’s deadly, and effective.
Scott is brought in from a training mission due to a critical emergency: The Daughter of the President of the United States has disappeared. After a bit of investigating, the Secret Service team comes to believe she has been kidnapped. The kidnappers, it is also believed, don’t know who they have. These kidnappers are sex slavers. They kidnap women from the United States and force them work in a brothel in Dubai.
With a very tight deadline (the worry being that the kidnappers will discover who they have kidnapped), the Secret Service is on red alert, tracking leads and getting closer and closer to the ones that run the brothel. There is Mission: Impossible-style chicanery and misdirection, especially when Scott acts as if he’s a common thug to try to worm his way closer to one of the higher ups in the prostitution/kidnapping organization. Though they are operating without 100% certainty that they’re following the trail of the President’s Daughter, they forge ahead.
Until…
Shortly after the infiltration plan fizzles, news agencies report that the President’s Daughter’s body was found. She had apparently drowned with her teacher/lover and, the Secret Service group assumes, they were chasing another similar looking woman (again, they were never 100% certain the kidnapped woman was the President’s Daughter). The mission, it appears, is over.
But all is not what it seems.
Scott’s new partner, Curtis (Derek Luke), realizes that the media is being fed a pile of bull and it is here that those pesky (and truly hard to swallow) coincidences start to rear their heads.
A little earlier in the film and while staking out a beach house Scott and Curtis suspect might have the kidnapped President’s Daughter in it, three whooper coincidences occur:
1) Curtis sees squiggled in a window’s dust a sign attributed to the President’s Daughter (oh yeah, when kidnapped by sex slavers everyone leaves weird personal marks known only to the person making them and her boyfriend instead of “Please help me” messages!)
2) For no reason I could see other than to help Scott a little later on, a scarecrow is left on a seat behind a shack by the beach house. Said scarecrow is also conveniently facing away from the beach (I’ll explain why that’s important in a moment), and…
3) Curtis, when stationing himself to cover Scott while he enters the house just happens to lay his tarp on the ground where it picks up the President’s Daughter’s earring. The earring, a veeeery tiny little thing, just happens to have been dropped there for him to pick up and, also coincidentally, Curtis subsequently finds a nice photograph of the President’s Daughter in a newspaper that just absolutely beautifully displays her wearing this very earring. Think hard about this: Of all the family pictures I have with my wife and daughters (and there are many of them) I can all but guarantee you there probably isn’t a single one that I could identify an earring they’re wearing in it, yet Curtis finds a beautiful newspaper picture that is clear enough in showing a tiny earring on the President’s Daughter.
Whew.
The very hard to swallow coincidences #1 and 3 are needed later on when Curtis convinces Scott’s “I’m a soldier and follow orders” protagonist to realize that his superiors are bamboozling the media and the world and that the President’s Daughter was indeed kidnapped and did not drown with her supposed teacher/lover.
The two return to the beach house to investigate but as they begin their search for the “sign” left behind Curtis is shot dead and Scott is forced to hide behind the (you guessed it) shack with that curiously placed scarecrow. He’s pinned down by the sniper who took out Curtis, so what will he do? How oh how will he ever escape? If only he had a means of diverting the sniper, of making him think he’s been shot…
Good thing there’s a damn convenient scarecrow within arm’s reach, eh?
Yup, Scott dresses the scarecrow in his clothing and the sniper takes the scarecrow out. Instead of then coming ashore (the sniper and his crew are on a boat just offshore) and making sure of the kills, they go away which in turn gives Scott time to escape.
Now, you would think this would end the preposterous coincidences, right?
Wrong.
We get a few more, including an elderly Secret Service (female) Agent that has Scott dead to rights and should have shot him the moment she suspected he wasn’t who he said he was (and while he was standing, by the way, just a few feet of the first lady!). Turns out she (coincidentally!) knows the First Daughter very well and has a stronger emotional attachment to her than her actual parents.
And then, later on, Scott heads out to Dubai and manages to get a hold of the First Daughter only to find that he’s been bugged. All appears doomed except, MEGA-COINCIDENCE a Swedish news group happens to be in the hanger where the final shootout occurs and they get footage of the very much alive First Daughter and are also able to flee the airport with her in tow.
The lie of the First Daughter’s death is therefore revealed though the principals behind it, we find, are clever enough to hide their devious deeds.
And so our movie ends. As someone who fancies himself a writer, pointing out all these outrageous coincidences is giving me a headache.
I don’t know the history behind the making of this film and it is very possible Mr. Mamet was in a rush to complete the screenplay and had to do what he could to make the story make some kind of sense. But in this case, the glue that holds the plot together is held by some very hard to swallow coincidences.
If the above bugs you, then steer clear of Spartan.
A couple of days ago in the blog post Crediting Bill Finger I stated Mr. Finger, while very much deserving of finally being acknowledged as a co-creator of Batman, isn’t the only one that should be credited. I pointed out that Shadow author extraordinaire Walter B. Gibson also might deserve some credit as Mr. Finger and company, when they wrote the very first Batman story which appeared in Detective Comics #27 essentially made a comic book adaptation of one of Mr. Gibson’s Shadow stories. While this was one (and the most obvious) of the Gibson written Shadow stories that clearly influenced Mr. Finger, I nonetheless feel I came off waaaay too glib in my posting and for that I apologize.
The fact is that while the very early Batman stories may have cribbed certain ideas (and even complete stories) from The Shadow works by Mr. Gibson, the Batman character and his world quickly moved off into other very fascinating and often unique directions. While Mr. Gibson and some of his Shadow novels were an inspiration at the start of the Batman series, so too were other works and, again, Batman would go off into its own unique direction and for that Mr. Finger richly deserves the lion’s share of the credit for what he did.
I suppose the above should clue you in on the fact that I’m incredibly fascinated with artistic creation(s) and the credit deserved for them.
Perhaps one of the most interesting of the “creator” issues, to me, is that regarding author Alan Moore and arguably his most recognized creation, Watchmen.
Back in the 1980’s author Alan Moore became a superstar writer, and deservedly so, for his work on Marvel (later Miracle) Man, V for Vendetta, and Swamp Thing. Watchmen would come at the tail end of his association with DC Comics in the form of the 12 issue limited series. Watchmen explored the dark side of what the world would be like with Superheroes. It was subsequently made into a film…
It was because of what followed after the release of this series that Mr. Moore had a major falling out with DC Comics and left the publisher never to return. My understanding of the situation, based on interviews Mr. Moore gave after the fact, was when he and DC Comics came to an agreement about publishing Watchmen the contract specified that once the series was out of print, something which Mr. Moore expected to happen rather quickly, the rights of this series would revert to Mr. Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. However, Watchmen proved an incredible success and DC has been able to keep reprinting it since its first publication in 1986. I’ve read there were other issues which caused Mr. Moore’s ire as well regarding royalties, but I don’t know enough about them to comment. Suffice to say Mr. Moore’s anger toward DC stemmed to a large degree over the fact that he lost control of Watchmen when he thought it would come to him soon after the initial publication.
When Mr. Moore left DC Comics in 1989 it was with considerable rancor and, as an author I could sympathize with his desire to control his own works.
But we’re talking about creative credits here and this is where certain facts rear their heads.
To begin, Mr. Moore originally conceived Watchmen as a story which would feature the various Charlton superheroes that DC Comics had at that time acquired. Below is an image of those various Charlton Characters. From upper left and moving clockwise you’ve got The Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, The Question, The Peacemaker, and Peter Cannon/Thunderbolt.
And here we have the principle cast of Watchmen. From left and moving clockwise, you have Ozymandias (Peter Cannon), Silk Specter (Nightshade), Doctor Manhattan (Captain Atom), Nite Owl (The Blue Beetle), Rorschach (The Question), and The Comedian (Peacemaker).
Mr. Moore’s concept for a Charlton based Watchmen proved difficult for DC Comics to accept as the story was self-contained and ended in such a way it would be difficult to re-use the recently bought characters in any other way.
Therefore Mr. Moore modified the established Charlton characters into these “new” characters and the series was greenlighted and published.
Mr. Moore’s story, unquestionably, was “his” concept, a darker take on what would happen in the real world if Superheroes existed. He had already begun that process with Marvel (Miracle) Man and Watchmen was the culmination of that theme (I’ll ignore the climax of the book and its too-striking resemblance to the Outer Limits episode The Architects of Fear because it is my suspicion this might have been nothing more than an innocent coincidence).
The facts tell us that while Mr. Moore is clearly the creator and writer of the Watchmen story, every one of the characters he used within them were thinly veiled versions of other authors/artists creations. Which makes me wonder: Should the creators of the various Charlton heroes which were the basis of the Watchmen characters not be entitled to some kind of recognition -and perhaps even monetary compensation- for the characters they created and Mr. Moore essentially appropriated?
Further, because the project was initiated because DC Comics purchased the Charlton characters and those were the ones that provided the impetus to Mr. Moore’s story, don’t the people behind that purchase also deserve some credit for bringing these characters to Mr. Moore’s attention and use?
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that sometimes –sometimes– creative credit is a harder thing to assign than it at first seems.
Interesting video displaying movie “screw ups” that, as mentioned in the title, wound up being in the film itself:
The last one mentioned, that from Back To The Future II, is one of those stunts that went very wrong and wound up being used in the film.
One of the more spectacular stunts featured on Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior, featured a motorcycle driving punk hitting a car and then being spun around into the air. This was not intended (the stuntman was supposed to release the motorcycle earlier to have a more controlled flight) yet made the film’s final cut:
Keza MacDonald offers a fascinating article, posted on Kotaku.com, regarding his frustrations with so many really, really, REALLY big/multiple-hour-killer games being available seemingly all at once:
I’ll go Mr. MacDonald one better: It’s not just video games. We live in an era where we are being absolutely crushed by the amount of recreational material we have available to us.
I know, I know, first world problems.
Still, they’re there. We have too many TV shows, too much music, too many books, too many DVDs/BluRays, too many (yes) video games, etc. etc. etc. screaming for every single second of our free time.
Used to be that the choices for entertainment weren’t all that many. When I was young, there were something like five or so channels on TV and the major networks didn’t air all that many first run shows, at least compared to now. You pretty much had to see these shows when they aired or, a little later, when they were rerun.
There was so little “new” programming available for all the hours of the day that it wasn’t unusual for the local networks to replay old TV shows on “down” times such as the weekends or early afternoons.
Thus it was that I’d discover shows cancelled long before I first saw them. Shows like the original Star Trek. The Wild, Wild, West. Perry Mason. The Twilight Zone. The Outer Limits.
Cable came and grew and suddenly you had hundreds of channels and the need to fill the time with something. So many new shows appeared that it became impossible to watch everything you were even mildly interested in.
A confession: I’m one of the very few people out there who hasn’t watched a single full episode of what is arguably the most popular show on TV today, Game of Thrones. It’s not that I don’t want to, its just that I never got HBO and, when the episodes were finally available to me via video release, so much had been written/talked (and spoiled) about the various plot points that it was pointless -by that time- to try the show out.
But early on I was damn curious about it and even bought the first couple of books of the series. These books sit unread on my bookshelf, given up for the same reasons I gave up on watching the show. Granted, its my fault I was spoiled regarding the show’s plot. I could have resisted checking out the various spoilers, yet having seen a few -even one!- there became no need for me to play catch up on the rest.
Getting back to Mr. MacDonald, I too have video games I’ve purchased fully intending to play them but getting sidetracked and eventually letting them go, sometimes without playing even a minute of them.
With whatever free time I have I’m nearing the completion of the latest Batman game (XBox One version) but waiting in the wings are The Witcher, Forza, and a few others I may never get to. And that’s not counting the current Grand Theft Auto game I’ve got on my computer!
By now I think I’ve made my point: We live in an era of oversaturation and we have to be more and more picky about what it is we decide to spend our free time doing.
While it is a good thing we have so many options available for entertainment, I worry about all those things we might have missed while pursuing the new and shiny. Used to be that certain works, with the passage of time, would be given second or third looks and, over the years, people would realize these sometimes forgotten works were special.
For example, the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Never successful in his time, his works were re-assessed over the years and became viewed long after Mr. Lovecraft’s death as truly great works of horror fiction.
Could that happen today and with so many works competing for our time out there? Could anyone find the free time to re-assess an older work and realize they are holding something truly special in their hands?
For better or worse, I fear that is no longer the case.
Though I was familiar with some of them (Vic Morrow and the children he held being ripped to shreds -literally- by a falling helicopter’s blades while filming a scene for the Twilight Zone film is one of those horrifying things that make you realize stuntwork within films can sometimes be a very haphazard thing), many of them were unfamiliar to me.
Perhaps one of my favorite “horrifying” behind the scenes looks can be found on the bonus sections of the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. The film featured plenty of stuntwork, including the very famous “jumping over a pit of crocodiles” escape bit that has to be one of the most clever cliffhanger escapes ever committed to film, IMHO…
Anyway, what horrified me wasn’t so much this stunt (which, let’s face it, required some major stones from stuntman/owner of the crocodile farm to do) but rather some of the other stuntwork present in the film. Specifically I’m referring to those involving the car/motorcycle chase.
Again, if you’ve seen the bonus material on the Live and Let Die BluRay, you find that many of those stunts had the stuntmen doing the work with little preparation or anticipation of what might happen. One stuntman, for example, jumped with his motorcycle into water and, as it so happened, there was coral where he landed and he banged himself up badly. And that was just one of the stunts!
As I watched that making of material, I got the impression that the stuntmen hired to do the work within this film were told to do this or that and they just said “Sure!”, not bothering to see if the stunt was doable or if they might get hurt doing it. Perhaps that’s the way things were back then…
There has been much scorn heaped upon this past summer’s big hit Avengers: Age of Ultron. Having missed the film when it was in theaters (not a big surprise) and despite the many complaints I read online, I was nonetheless eager to watch it and, when it finally arrived, I purchased it via VUDU (you can also get it through Amazon. The physical disc version will be out soon).
Going into the movie, I wasn’t sure how I’d react. I liked the first Avengers film despite some pretty big plot problems (why did the aliens need to arrive right over New York? Why didn’t they just materialize, say, behind the Moon and, when an overwhelming amount of their forces was already through the wormhole, then invade Earth?). I also liked several of the Marvel films that came before while I hated some others. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is probably my favorite of the Marvel films while for the life of me I can’t understand what anyone found good about Guardians of the Galaxy.
With Age of Ultron (I’ll call it AOU from here on), I liked the actors playing the various superheroes. I also really liked the idea of getting James Spader to play Ultron, the film’s big baddy. He’s got one of those great voices that just drips evil when he wants it to. On the other hand, the movie featured one hell of a lot of characters and, as mentioned, it appeared many fans who otherwise loved Marvel films turned away from this one.
So I watched the film and, incredibly, I found myself siding with those who complained about several aspects of the film…and yet I enjoyed it nonetheless!
Yes, the film was awfully long. Yes, Ultron wasn’t the be-all end-all villain he should have been. Yes, the whole Thor goes to that mythical waters scene made no sense (the video release includes a “deleted” extended version of that scene and I’m here to tell you…it still makes no sense). Yes, writer/director Joss Whedon tried a little too hard to include more “heavy” concepts (check out how many times he tries to shoehorn in the concept of everyone in the film being a “monster” of some sort). Yes, and paradoxically, the dialogue is at times too cheeky and “jokey” and this diminishes the threat levels the protagonists face…
And yet…and yet…
I still enjoyed the film.
Not, however, at first. The film’s opening minutes, featuring the Avengers attacking one of Hydra’s last strongholds, was a computer generated mess, never more than cartoonish looking at best. This was a real surprise…and disappointment…considering the much higher level of CGI that came afterwards. I can’t help but wonder if that opening bit was created at the last minute. Considering it is what sets up the rest of the movie, though, that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
Yet once the opening attack is over, the film proper began and, again, I enjoyed what I saw despite the enumerated problems mentioned above.
In AOU, the Avengers have a crisis of faith with each other that threatens to tear them apart yet through the course of the film they slowly regain their shattered trust before finally confronting their nemesis head on.
Along the way we’re introduced to a trio of new (to the Marvel movie universe) characters. Again, one would worry that with so much going on and so many faces flashing by that several would inevitably get the short shift. Yet to Mr. Whedon’s credit, everyone gets a decent amount of screen time and are able to strut their stuff. Other than the already mentioned nonsensical Thor scene which was the only complete story misfire, things moved along well and I was never bored or at a loss as to what the heck was going on which was quite an accomplishment in and of itself!
No, AOU is not the “best” superhero movie ever made and yes, it has several flaws. In spite of that, it is an enjoyable romp with a group of charismatic actors in their prime having a blast playing superheroes and villains.
To say the least, I’m a big movie fan. I quickly jumped on the laserdisc “revolution” when I was absolutely blown away with the images and letterboxed presentation of Blade Runner. I amassed quite a collection of laserdiscs only to turn around and discard them all with the arrival and realization of how much better DVDs were.
Again, I amassed quite a large collection of DVDs but shifted over to BluRays and their promise of an even better picture and sound quality. Since, I’ve yet again amassed a large collection of films, some of which I’ve bought multiple copies.
That ended a couple of weeks ago, for the most part.
As the topic of this blog entry notes, I’ve (finally) discovered the joys of UV copies of films and, even better, the VUDU services.
I know there must be many like me out there, hesitant to give up physical copies of your movies and doubtful regarding the UV/cloud services for the same.
Don’t be.
The switch came when I started investigating the whole “free Digital Copy” tag on several of the movies I’d purchased. I had the Flixster app on my tablet/computer/smartphone but mostly used it to figure out theater movie times and ratings. Then, out of curiosity, I took a recently purchased BluRay (True Detective Season One, for those interested) and checked the whole UV thing out. After seeing what the service was like, I was hooked.
I went through all my recent BluRay purchases and found all the ones that offered UV copies and plopped the films onto my account. The results were breathtaking: Instead of facing cluttered shelves worth of films, I could look up what I had easily and play it with the tap of a button. Sure, the bonus material on many of the movies were absent, but I still had the physical copies and the movie itself was the important thing, right?
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I spotted the Digital Copy of Mad Max: Fury Road available at Costco a full three or so weeks before the physical BluRay/DVDs were to be released. Frankly, I couldn’t wait. I broke down and bought the Digital Copy, thinking all I’d get is the movie itself minus the bonus material. I figured one day soon I’d buy the BluRay and see the material then.
I was wrong.
The Digital Copy included all the bonus material and that, my friends, was that.
I was a full convert to the Movies-On-The-Cloud ideal.
From that moment on, I decided whatever new feature I wanted to buy I’d first check out its Digital version. The less clutter in my house, the better.
But then, purely by accident, I discovered VUDU.
While trying to see the Digital Copies of my films, I tried to see if my SmartTV had a Flixster app. It didn’t. But it did have VUDU, a service I was at that moment completely unfamiliar with.
I did some investigating and discovered what amounts to the Holy Grail of Digital Movie apps. With VUDU, your computer becomes a Digital Movie making machine. You take your physical copies of movies, be they BluRay or DVD, pop them into your player and the VUDU app will determine what the film is and offer to get you a Digital Copy of the same for the very minimal price of $2 for each BluRay and $5 to convert DVDs into HD Digital Copies. You also pay less if you go with the Standard Definition images and 50% less if you convert 10 movies at a time.
So I spent the past weekend converting nearly 200 of my films to Digital and I couldn’t be happier. Some of the films were only available in SD versions but for the most part they looked pretty nice with the one big exception being the Digital copy of Outland (until the HD version is available, I’d stay away).
There were a couple of other problems: Some movies the VUDU app could not “read” and I’m not sure why (I have the Alfred Hitchcock boxed set and some of the movies were recognized while others were not). Still other films the VUDU app recognizes but these films, unfortunately, are currently not available as UV copies.
Despite this, I managed to make a HUGE amount of my films available to me at the click of a button and across many different machines. Yes, I can see these UV films from my Smartphone, Tablet, TV, or Computer instead of exclusively relying on my BluRay player.
I’m late to this particular party but its a glorious thing to now be a part of.
If you’re like me and you love your movies and haven’t thought about going the Digital route, do so. You’ll thank me for it!
While there are plenty of things to envy regarding today’s youth (how I wish I had the technology available at their fingertips when I was in my teens!), I can say with some nostalgic pride that I’m pleased to have lived through the heights of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker filmmaking.
So take that, all you society-changing innovations!
All right, so the filmmakers are still around but their best output, in my humble opinion, occurred roughly from 1977 and the release of their first feature, The Kentucky Fried Movie, through the early to mid-1990’s.
In between that time they released what I consider is one of the all time best comedy films ever made, Airplane!as well as one of the funniest, again IMHO, TV shows ever made, the sadly short lived Police Squad! (6 episodes were made in 1982). That show’s concept and characters (as well as lead actor Leslie Nielsen) would return for the more successful Naked Gun films, three of which were made between 1988 and 1994. I consider the first of the three films the best of the lot -and it is really high up there on my list of all time favorite comedy films ever made- but the other day I got to see the second one all the way through and here are my thoughts…
To begin, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear is not as good as the original The Naked Gun but I knew that going in. So much time had passed since the last time I saw NG 2 1/2 that I wanted to experience it again as fresh as possible. I did, and most of the material really worked well…while some of it didn’t.
I’ll get to the not so good first: The film really starts on an emotional downer. Sure, the original The Naked Gun did as well. If you don’t recall, the original film, post credits, had us find Detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin’s (Leslie Nielsen, absolutely nailing the role) wife had left him. Eventually and through the course of the movie he finds love with Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley showing some great comedy chops as well).
NG 2 1/2 similarly opens on an emotional downer as this time we find that Drebin and Jane have split up in the time between the films and, while one of this movie’s themes is their reconciliation/re-connection, those opening minutes with Drebin being down and out regarding the breakup are played, in my opinion, a little too long. We don’t want a comedy to dwell too long on sadness! Thankfully, even through this rougher patch there are plenty of great sight-gags and verbal screw ups to keep us going and, after a while, the movie finds its footing and hums along.
George Kennedy, as Drebin’s partner Ed Hocken, is a particular delight this time around and has some of the funniest lines/scenes. Check out this trailer for the movie and pay particular attention to the 1:25 mark and Mr. Kennedy’s response to Drebin congratulating him on his wife’s pregnancy:
They don’t make humor like that anymore!
The movie’s funniest scene, again in my opinion, involves Mr. Kennedy and one of the biggest cop show cliche’s ever, that inevitable point where the cop puts his badge away and goes “mano a mano” against a criminal. The clip below features that joke and its set up which leads to one of the funniest payoffs:
What can I say? I really like this silly type of humor!
While NG 2 1/2 isn’t quite up to the level of the first Naked Gun as I already mentioned before, I still enjoyed the hell out of myself watching it again and therefore it is an easy film to recommend.
I vividly remember his rapid rise, from his first “major” role as the gloriously repellent, villainous Tony Amato in the Miami Vice episode No Exit (one hell of a performance) to his about face humorous-goodguy David Addison Jr. in Moonlighting (another great role where he shined very brightly) to his first couple of movies (Blind Date and Sunset, both of which were late era Blake Edwards works which didn’t have the charm or comedic timing of his past successes) until he hit the big time in a big way with 1988’s Die Hard.
It was at that point Bruce Willis became a bonafide superstar and would appear in a great number of films, usually as the protagonist. Like many actors who appear in many films, he’s had his ups and downs but in general audiences continued liking him for many, many years and he’s remained a very much in demand actor.
Lately, however, things appear to have changed. Mr. Willis, like all of us, has gotten older and it’s difficult for him to carry the lead action hero role like he used to. The last, and least, of the Die Hard films, for example, had him playing opposite his character’s “son”. Lately he’s appeared in a surprising number of “straight to video” features, movies that suddenly show up on your Pay-Per-View or as DVDs in your local Target and/or Walmart and just as suddenly disappear.
While perhaps not the all time best trailer I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t do a bad job in getting one interested in the film it’s selling, at least in my opinion. The idea behind the film is pretty clear: We take elements of the 1973 film Westworld (written and directed by Micheal Crichton who would reuse the concept/theme for his Jurassic Park novels and the movies they were based on) and combine them with the video game Grand Theft Auto and -voila!- we have our film.
In Vice, like Westworld, we have an “adult” theme park, named “Vice”, where human clients interact with cloned/robotic beings. How much of the artificial beings is cloned flesh and blood versus metal is never adequately explained. The human clients, when in this theme park, engage in all manner of Bacchanal behavior ranging from outright violence to murder to rape to what-have-you.
Like Westworld, there is one major flaw to this concept: How do human guests distinguish between other guests and the robots/clones? They can do whatever they want to the clones, but what if they attack/assault/rape/murder a fellow guest by accident or, worse, on purpose?
Anyway, never mind all that…on with the show!
In Westworld, the robots ultimately experienced some kind of software glitch and turn on the human clients. In Vice, the clones/robots have their memories wiped each night and, if they’re killed/maimed, get fixed up and/or revived and do a version of Groundhog Day with each new day. Until, that is, robot/clone Kelly (Ambyr Childers) has memories of her previous day(s) bleed in to her present being. This freaks her out as she was the victim of considerable violence over her time as a Vice-robot. She eventually escapes the clutches of the theme park’s nefarious rulers, including Vice’s version of Walt Disney, Julian (Bruce Willis, sadly not quite as menacing as the villain here as he was in that old Miami Vice episode) and makes her way into the real world.
In the real world Kelly’s path intersects with Police Detective Roy’s (Thomas Jane playing the cliched grizzled take-no-bullshit police officer) and eventually the two plot to take down Vice.
While many lambasted the film (it has a truly dreadful 4% positive among critics -a worse rating than the latest Fantastic Four film!- and a 17% positive rating among audiences on RottenTomatoes.com), I found it wasn’t quite as bad as all that.
Mind you, I’m not saying it’s necessarily good, either.
Perhaps its something unique to me, but Vice pleasantly reminded me of the cheesy low-budget B-movie sci-fi films that seemed to come out semi-regularly during the 1980’s and disappeared sometime into the 1990’s. We’re talking about movies like Cherry 2000, Trancers and its many sequels, Split Second, Dark Angel(aka I Come In Peace), etc. etc. etc.
Here, take a look…
“The only thing we know for sure is that’s he’s not a vegetarian“?!?! Come on, how can you not smile at that?!
None of these films would go on to be considered “classics” but for what they are -and depending on how critical your feelings are toward them- they could be pleasant enough time-killers with a certain amount of camp value.
Vice has plenty of flaws, from a script that needed a little more work (at one point Kelly is offered to have her system “upgraded” and she declines only to accept something like ten minutes later. The “upgrade”, based on what she does afterwards, consists mainly of getting her hair gelled), to indifferent acting (Bruce Willis is way too passive through most of his scenes), to bewildering acting (while Thomas Jane has some great lines and his character is presented as the audience’s surrogate, he looks somewhat lost in this film), I was nonetheless entertained enough to not feel like I had totally wasted my time.
Which makes recommending this film something of a head-scratcher. If you’re like me and have a certain nostalgic fondness for those low-budget B-sci-fi films of the 1980’s/90’s, you may get a little more out of Vice than your average viewer. All others best stay away.
