Of Course, Click Sucked

Over in the Recently Seen Department
Wordplay
Patrick Creadon, 2006
This here is the documentary focusing on every aspect of the crossword puzzle, or, more properly, The New York Times crossword puzzle and its master mind, Will Shortz. It's an amiable documentary, taking a close look at the people and personalities behind what can only strenuously be called a phenomenon. Still, the authentic characters presented are almost entirely endearing and the film does make the uninitiated take a different look at how the puzzle works, spending a large amount of time on discerning themes and rethinking clues. There is also a parade of famous crossworders, including Jon Stewart, of the Daily Show, not the Green Lantern Corps, and former President Clinton. It's a fun affair and worth seeing, but perhaps waiting to see on HBO. It is the sort of film that will immediately appeal to two types, however. The first are crossword fans themselves, who will eat it up – my own Aunt Connie is a case in point. The second would be that snooty crowd which will spend the summer bypassing Superman Returns in favor of supposedly upscale and somewhat pretentious documentary fare. This is not to say that Wordplay is pretentious, far from it, but it does suffer from a bit of New York elitism, especially in its constant praise of the Times crossword. Don't get me wrong, I've been known to work a crossword or two myself, and the Times' is clearly the best, but I can't help but thinking that the film could have benefited from comparing the Times' to inferior puzzles and explaining exactly what makes the Times' crossword so exceptional.

An un-related side note, I saw Wordplay at the aptly named Edina Theater in Edina, Minnesota. This is the only theater I have ever been in with an escalator. Oddly, it's only an up escalator, though. There is no down. I don't have a joke, here. I just think it's really weird.

Rating: Four letter word for “not great,” begins with ‘O’


Click
Frank Coraci, 2006
Man, would I have like to fast forward through that! Ha ha ha. Seriously, it blew. Adam Sandler plays a guy who gets a universal remote control that can control anything: people, dogs, whatever. It sounds like a one note joke and it is. Click simply doesn't have any of the zaniness of Billy Maddison or Happy Gilmore, Sandler movies I actually kind of liked, but, instead, takes the Wedding Singer route of repetitive jokes married to an overly sentimental plot. Think It's a Wonderful Life forcefully crossbred with A Christmas Carol, but without any of the endearing characters or novelty. Oh, and replace The Wedding Singer's annoying 1980s setting, complete with incessant, oh, remember the '80s? style jokes with, oh, look, it's a cheesy future, with cheesier age make-up. There is also a painful subplot revolving around a series of dogs humping a stuffed duck. I suspect the high school crowd and fans of Wedding Singer Sandler (teenage girls) will love it. Those of us who yearn for the glory days of Opera Man will only say, "Bye-byeeeee!!!!!!!!!!"

Rating: Stop. Rewind. Eject.


Over the Hedge
Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick, 2006

Believe it or not, this is actually a pretty funny movie. Definitely solid dollar theater/it’s on TV fare. Much like Dreamworks’ earlier animated release Madagascar, it isn’t the most amazing thing ever and it hardly rivals Disney in any of it’s hey days, but it’s definitely as good as non-Pixar animation gets anymore. The usual cast of celebrity voices star as woodland foragers who suddenly find themselves surrounded by suburbia. Look out for William Shatner in a tour de Shatner performance as an Opossum for whom playing dead is an art.

Side note: I have to admit to wanted to see this much more than Cars. I love Pixar, but I’m just not feeling it for Cars. I’m sure it’s good, but I figure it’s probably more Monsters, Inc/A Bug’s Life good than Incredibles/Finding Nemo good.

Rating: Shatastic


Over in the Greatest Trailer of the Summer Department
Snakes on a Plane! Snakes on a Plane! Snakes on a mother fucking plane!

Rating: What more do I have to tell you people? Snakes on a Plane!

Over in the Unreasonably Hesitant Department
Digital Projection

So, I caught Click at the Carmike Theater in Oakdale, MN. Throughout the movie, something wasn’t sitting right. It all seemed to clean and just a little bit flat, as if the depth and detail of the image weren’t where it should be. Turns out, the theater (and I don’t know if it’s just this one or the whole Carmike chain) has gone digital. There isn’t an inch of film in the place. The movie is instead projected by a digital projector from a computer file.

No, sir, I don’t like it.

Honestly, I don’t really have any particular reasoning here or real argument about the superiority of film to digital projection, but it just doesn’t feel right. I almost feel like, if that’s what they’re going to do, maybe I should just watch a DVD at home. Same basic idea. Still, I’ll look into it and get back to you.

By the way, what was up with the look the manager gave me when I asked about getting literature about the system?


Over in the Eagerly Anticipated Department
Strangers with Candy

What? How can it not be Superman Returns? Well, Superman Returns is almost here kids (I figure I’ll see it on Thursday, Friday on the outside). So, instead of anticipating something I’ve been anticipating for, like, a year and is almost here, I think I’ll anticipate something that I didn’t even know I had to look forward to.

That’s right, Amy Sedaris’ fantastic Comedy Central series, Strangers with Candy, is coming to the big screen. Amy once again plays buck toothed, over the hill Jerri Blank, a self confessed “loser, user, and boozer,” who decides to enroll as a high school freshman at 46. Stephen Colbert, who also co-wrote, returns as maybe gay teacher Chuck Noblet with Paul Dinello coming back as maybe his boyfriend teacher Geof Jellineck. Best of all, my favorite character, the brusque and very, very black principal Onyx Blackman is also back. This is sure to be hilarious.


Over in the Obscure DVD Department
Yellowbeard
Mel Damski, 1983

The Hell? How did I miss this movie all these years? Not only is it about pirates, placing it in the illustrious company of films like Ice Pirates, but it was written by the great ex-Python Graham Chapman, presumably before he died, along with Peter Cook. Better yet, it stars Chapman and Cook alongside a veritable who’s who of actors, including Peter Boyle, Cheech and Chong, Marty Feldman, Eric Idle, the ever sexy Madeline Kahn, James Mason (!), John Cleese, Kenny Mars, and even Spike Milligan. Holy shit! This is like the primarily British It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world of the eighties! I must see it!

Rating: Awaiting


Over in the Exploitation DVD Department
Tawny Kitaen in Gwendoline
Just Jaeckin, 1984

From the director of one of my dirty old man grandfather’s favorites, Emmanuelle, comes Gwendoline, aka The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak. Man, some days I wish I was just sleazy enough to walk into a store and buy this, let alone watch it. Not only does it almost certainly involve Tawny Kitaen’s breasts, which we were cruely denied in Bachelor Party, it also sounds really retarded. This is the honest to God plot summary from IMDB:
Gwendoline arrives in China in a box, and is helped out of her immediate predicament by a female contact and a devil-may-care adventurer. She's on a mission to find her father, who was last seen searching for a rare butterfly in the Land of the Yik Yak. They confront the evil Cheops in an attempt to find Gwen's lost father and the butterfly, and face many other challenges to their mission.

Oh, to be just a little more morally corrupt! Anyway, we all know what the focus of this movie is. With a director who calls himself Just Jaeckin, swear to God, how could it be about anything but?

Rating: Three boxes of tissue.


Over in the False Advertising Department
The Double D Avenger
William Winckler, 2001

I know what you’re thinking, how can I possibly justify buying this thing when I shy away from Tawny Kitaen in all her goodness? Well, the answer is simple, Joe Bob. This is the second release in the Joe Bob Briggs Presents line of DVDs. The previous release, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter wasa fantastic, by the way. The reason for buying this is not, as would be the case with Tawny, Mr. Jaeckin, but Joe Bob his very self providing audio commentary. Think Mystery Science Theater with Joe Bob in the theater. Funny stuff and, frankly, the idea of Joe Bob waxing (is that the word I want to use?) about a boobie movie just seemed too good to pass up. Don’t get me wrong, Joe Bob was spot on, as usual, but the movie wasn’t. You’d think a movie with a name like this would involve a bunch of nubile chickadees running around topless. Not so! Instead, we’re greated by the four top heavy stars who are all over fifty. Yikes! Of course, we don’t see anything, um, unleashed, but it’s probably best that way. If nothing else, though, it makes you wonder, as Joe Bob points out, why would you even bother making a movie like this with ladies like that? Oh, well. Thankfully, Joe Bob keeps it entertaining with a steady stream of wit and bizarre facts. For example, this is not the first film to feature someone knocked out blackjack style with a boob.

Rating: Saggy.

Join me next week when I’ll almost certainly have seen Superman Returns.

Cat People

Jacques Tourneur, 1942

Joe Bob Briggs has never done me wrong. Quite the contrary, even since I started watching him on TNT some years ago (he used to have a show called MonsterVision), he’s introduced me to some of the greatest and greatest worst movies ever made. If I can ever get half of what he has going on in his columns (he also used to have a newspaper column called Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, which you can usually buy off eBay) in mine, I’ll die a happy, if only marginally successful, man. Hell, Joe Bob’s old columns introduced me to some of my all time favorites. Basket Case - being the story of a man who caries his separated, deformed siamese-twin brother around in a picnic basket? All Joe Bob. The entire Evil Dead series? Joe Bob. So when Joe Bob gives four stars to a movie called Teenage Catgirls in Heat, I stand up and listen. Of course, when anybody even mentions a movie called Teenage Catgirls in Heat, I stand up and listen. I mean, come on, teenage catgirls. In heat. And what’s that, Joe Bob, you say the film has, “thirty-two breasts, multiple aardvarking, [and] multiple catvarking.” I’m sold.

Now, again, Joe Bob has never set me wrong. I, on the other hand, have set myself wrong multiple times. You see, Teenage Catgirls in Heat and Cat People are not the same movie, not even remotely. I, of course, accidently purchased the latter. Oh sure, I found it odd that some semi-respectably packaged picture I picked up at a retail store that doesn’t involve the packaging of my DVD purchase in an unmarked paper bag could be such a masterpiece of aardvarking, if I may blatantly steal a term, but I remained undeterred. After all, Joe Bob. Well, I put the thing in the old DVD player and, man, was I ever disappointed. First off, not only is it not the movie I thought it was, it wasn’t even a bad movie. It was good. Damn good. What’s up with that? Hell, it wasn’t even some cheapo horror movie, but a complex psychological thriller which makes use of what it doesn’t show you to create fright and suspense, rather than using crappy CGI effects or rubber costumes. It even had these two bravau sequences: one, in which a girl in a pool seems to be stalked by a panther or something from the shadows and, of course, she’s in a pool, so she can’t get out, and another, in which said girl is walking home and thinks she’s being stalked by same big game animal only for the suspense to end with me jumping out of my seat when a bus comes in from right of frame. Damn it. What’s more, I’m expecting busty nymphomaniacs with, like, cat ear barrettes, but instead get Simone Simon, this incredibly elegant and vulnerable French woman, who just drips with talent and class and who exudes the exact sort of silver screen charisma I love in actresses of her era, kind of like the great Jean Harlow. I can’t catch a break. Oh, and the plot? The plot deals with a woman (Simon) from some crazy Europe country, which has instilled in her a superstition of her turning into a killer jungle cat should she ever kiss a man. Oh, I know, still sounds like it could be pretty awful, right? But, noooooo, instead it has to be a movie from producer Val Lewton, well known for taking wonky premises and grounding them in the real world and adding a touch of the psychological to make the (minimal) weirdness believable. So, yeah, that means he never shows her turn into a cat, but largely plays her fears for the superstitions they are, while still giving them huge weight and horror to the poor girl whose fears they are. Worse, the other characters, including her husband who has to deal with clear sexual frustration (in a movie from 1942, no less) and begins to turn to his female coworker, a caring woman and not at all the mincing, husband stealing stereotype you might expect. He even brings a psychiatrist into the picture to give Simon’s fears further depth and realistic underpinnings. Awful. Just awful. I can’t tell you how furious I am that I got that instead of a reincarnated Egyptian cat cult canoodling around Texas. Unbelievable, but I only have myself to blame for watching this fantastic movie instead of a crappy one. Man, am I peeved. So, I guess I have to give it four stars and... what’s that? Joe Bob also gave Cat People four stars?

Never mind.

The Bride

Franc Roddam, 1985

"You didn't create me!"

So, like most Americans, I frequent the local Wal-Mart. I’m no Wal-Flower about it either. When I go into that Meca of the Mid-West, I dive into the bargain bins like their ball pits at Showbiz Pizza. Of course, my favorite sale bin is the $5.00 DVD vat. This is a bin of movies that either aren’t very good, have completely lapsed from the public consciousness, or both. There are a few movies that you will find in this vat regardless of Wal-Mart and regardless of time. These are movies that, for whatever reason, Wal-Mart ordered roughly a gagillion copies of and are desperately anxious to get rid of, but not so desperate that they’ll let them go for under a five spot. These are movies like Bedazzled, the Brendan Frasier remake, not the excellent Peter Cook/Dudley Moore original, Killer Klowns from Outerspace, and assorted TV series compilations. In any event, it’s a good place to look for movies you’ve never heard of before. One that I’d never heard of before is a little movie called The Bride. Now, this sucker is clearly a remake, reimagining, rewhatever of The Bride of Frankenstein. One look at the DVD packaging, though, tells you to stay away. First off, the thing stars Sting, who’ll you’ll recall is a poor man’s David Bowie at best, and Jennifer Beals. That’s right, Flashdance is the bride in question. Besides that, the cover for this thing is so excessively cheesy that you know immediately that it is either a direct to video crapfest, best watched through the goggles of a Svengoolie or with occasional breaks to stare at Elvira’s breasts, or a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. In any event, while tempted by the sheer promise of crap, I decided to avoid this sucker like the plague.

Fast forward a week or two. I’m at the local Goodwill, looking at their videos and wondering how a second hand store can expect to get $3.00 for a video tape of The Making of Apollo 13 when I spy a video copy of The Bride. Something’s wrong, though. This doesn’t look like the same movie Wal-Mart can’t sell for a fin. It’s old. Eighties old. I check out the box. Sting? Check. Flashdance? Check. Frankenstein movie? Check. The hell? This new box is a whole different story. It displays stills of perfect eighties cheese, involving nutty effects work and overly ornate wardrobe. It tells me the movie has a midget, specifically David Rappaport, one of the screen’s finest midgets, and, as the monster, Clancy Brown. Now, I adore Clancy Brown and have gone on about him before in these pages. Outside of masterful turns in The Shawshank Redemption and HBO’s underrated Carnivale, he’s the best Lex Luthor there ever was, appearing regularly on Warner Brothers’ Superman and Justice League cartoons for the past few years. He was also apparently in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. He’s the monster! Suddenly, a piece of direct to video crap becomes sweet eighties cheese and I must buy it. Well, but it I do. I even watch it and it’s. . . well, it’s only okay. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly watchable and there’s some nice bits of business in there.

Essentially, what you have here is two movies. Movie A is the Frankenstein monster, here named Viktor, and his midget pal Rinaldo heading off to join the circus. Seriously. Movie B is Baron Charles (?!) Frankenstein, remember, Sting, hanging around his mansion with Flashdance, who he’s told is an orphan he found in the woods, despite the fact that we all watched him slap her together and shoot her full of 1.21 gigawatts at the start of the movie. Anyway, Movie B is pretty much Sting saying “Monster, old pal, I made you a woman, but she’s pretty hot. So, I’m gonna keep her. Get lost,” which the monster does, beginning Movie A. Meanwhile, Movie B involves a lot of hanging around a castle with Flashdance wondering who she is and Sting teaching her about the world and science and literature while nurturing an unhealthy, pseudo incestuous lust for her. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to think is going on. There are lots of scenes with inappropriate staring and claims of ownership by Sting to his creepy pals. He even threatens to beat the tar out of Cary Elwes when he catches the man in tights trying to boink Flashdance. Still, Sting can’t be bothered to sell any of this. Really, he couldn’t be much worse. He shows up, states his lines matter of factly and devoid of emotion and leaves. I’m sure the producers wish they’d have shelled out the cash to just go ahead and hire an authentic David Bowie instead. Still, Movie A isn’t all bad. Flashdance is actually pretty good and you do feel for her and there’s a nice scene at an overly elaborate dance involving equally elaborate costumes that just glows with the sort of trumped up production values I hoped would fill the whole movie.

Then there’s Movie A, which is surprisingly touching. Again, Clancy Brown in the monster and his story begins as he flees Sting’s castle. You see, the monster knew that Sting had, at least initially, built Flashdance for him. So, after she awakens, there’s some clumsy fumbling around and then Sting says, “Get lost.” Now, our monster is an interesting one. He is not the angry Karloff monster or the incredibly erudite version of the monster that has become so en vogue of late in things like USA’s recent, intriguing Frankenstein TV, featuring Parker Posey and Michael Madsen, movie or Grant Morrison’s excellent Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein mini-series for DC Comics. Instead, Brown’s monster is simple and compassionate. He does not attack unless provoked, and he has to be provoked pretty hard, but, instead, hobbles around the countryside looking for friendship and understanding, which he finds early on in the form of Rinaldo. Now, Rinaldo could very easily be a comedy relief character, but David Rappaport, whom you might remember as the lead midget in Time Bandits, infuses him with palpable pathos. His life as man used to being shunned by the world around him makes him the perfect teacher for the monster, whom he dubs Viktor. The two very quickly become friends and the bond between them is perfectly displayed. Soon enough, they come to the circus and engage in an act where Rinaldo goes up on the trapeze and clowns around for a little while before seemingly falling off, only to be saved at the last minute by an elastic cord. Viktor, meanwhile, runs around below, dressed as a woman, screaming about his “poor baby.” Well, as things tend to go at the circus, some jerk carny cuts Rinaldo’s cord and he falls to his death, leading to the most touching scene of the film and, indeed, a much more touching scene than you would expect from it. Viktor kneels outside the tent, gently cradling the broken body of his only friend in the entire world. Rinaldo says his goodbyes to Viktor and passes on. Viktor clutches the little man’s body tightly to his own and as the scene fades to black, says, simply, “I love you.”

After this, Movies A and B come together rather predictably as Viktor has to beat up Sting to save Flashdance, who has begun to understand what she really is. The movie, of course, ends with she and Viktor sailing off into the sunset. A parting thought, it’s really a lot like Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, in that it takes a well worn, semi-pulpy work and tries to legitimize and romanticize it, often unnecessarily, making it into a Heritage Film, like Howard’s End or Remains of the Day. So, there it is, The Bride. It’s a solid little movie, more interesting for Movie A than B, but still worth your time, should it come on WGN in the afternoon. Two and a half stars.