Last weekend, I saw "Macgruber" at my local movie house, but I did not have the opportunity to write about it, because I was busy working on a new video... thing with my cousin. This weekend, I saw "Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time", and Dennis Hopper died.So rather than write up several long-winded posts for each of these topics, I've decided to just throw them all together into one long-winded post. Enjoy it.
CHAPTER I: Macgruber
I was not looking forward to this movie. I saw the many "Macgruber" sketches on Saturday Night Live over the past two years, and I thought they were amusing, at first. As time went on, they wore out their welcome.
The themes, concerning Macgruber's addiction to plastic surgery, alcoholism, and daddy issues (culminating with an appearance by Richard Dean Anderson in a shitty mullet wig, playing Macgruber's father, although I can't remember if he was literally playing MacGyver) stopped working for me.
And when Macgruber became an extended ad for Pepsi, I completely checked out.
So when I read that a "Macgruber" movie was actually being made, the first thought that passed through my giant head was "WHY?!" Who the fuck was waiting for this? A tired 90 second long sketch parody of "MacGyver" was going to become a movie? Immediately, my mind rejected this movie.
Besides, how many Saturday Night Live movies have turned out all right? "The Blues Brothers". That's it. And that's barely an SNL-related movie. Lorne Michaels had nothing to do with the production. The only thing Saturday Night Live had to do with "The Blues Brothers" was that it brought Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi together so that they could invent The Blues Brothers together.
I know a lot of people like to say "What about 'Wayne's World'?" What about it? As a kid, I loved it. I was all over that fucking movie as a young lad. But watching it as an adult, it simply doesn't work for me. Every time that Mike Myers pops up onscreen as Wayne, I just want to punch him in the face. He's a completely unlikeable character. He just annoys me.
I honestly like "Wayne's World 2" more.
All of the weird vision quest nonsense with the ghost of Jim Morrison, the terrible kung-fu fight with James Hong, the Drew Barrymore cameo (she has never looked hotter in a movie), Charlton Heston replacing the terrible actor playing the gas station attendant, Christopher fucking Walken, and Ralph Brown's performance as the legendary burn-out roadie Del Preston all make "Wayne's World 2" infinitely more watchable to me.
It's still not a good movie. Because it's a "Wayne's World" movie. If this movie somehow existed without Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, I would love it. As it is, I only really watch it for the reasons I listed above, and zone out whenever the plot focuses on the film's stars.
The far-away, haunted look in Del Preston's eyes as he recounts the story of finding 1,000 brown M&Ms for Ozzy Osbourne slays me.
"...I had to beat them to death with their own shoes..."
Ed O'Neill is still the best thing in both movies. This is Law.
Anyway, I didn't have any real desire to see "Macgruber". I like Will Forte, and I think he can be very funny. He's been the funniest guy in many SNL sketches, good and bad. I also tend to like Kristen Wiig, although she tends to play some of the worst recurring characters on the show. She's the new Molly Shannon. I like the Lonely Island Guys, who were involved in the production.
But the trailers just left me cold. I never even cracked a smile. The film looked as bad as I imagined it would be. And after seeing "Robin Hood" the week before, I was a little hesitant to return to the cinema. That film was so awful, it nearly destroyed my love of film. But hey, my brother heard that "Macgruber" was funny, and I figured since I wasn't paying for it, I might as well give it a shot.
I am glad that I did. "Macgruber" was fucking hilarious. I knew I was going to like the film during the opening sequence, showing Macgruber involved in various activities, including a brief shot of the man standing in an empty warehouse, playing a saxophone. Something about that image just made me crack up.
It reminded me of the infamous "oiled-up shirtless sax player" in the Jason Patric mega-hit "The Lost Boys". So the film already had me laughing.
Macgruber himself is in exile, believed dead, living in a Buddhist temple like John Rambo in "Rambo Part III", for ten years after the death of his wife-to-be at their wedding ceremony by his nemesis, Dieter Von Cunth (the delightful Val Kilmer).
He is called out of retirement by Col. Faith (played by the legendary Powers Boothe, whose weathered, craggy face reminds me of the iconic Monument Valley settings from John Ford's "The Searchers") because Von Cunth has stolen a nuclear missile, and is planning on destroying Washington DC during the President's "State of the Union" address.
Macgruber puts together a team, composed entirely of WWE wrestlers, and accidentally blows them all up before they manage to do anything.
So left with his old pal Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig), who spends her free time making terrible music and obsessing over owls, and Lt. Piper (Ryan Phillippe), a military man who hates Macgruber nearly as much as Macgruber hates him, he has to stop Von Cunth from completing his nefarious plan.
That's the basic plot, but that's not really important. The plot is just a macguffin to string together a series of bizarre jokes and situations that worked brilliantly for me.
Macgruber is an inept, unstable narcissist who thinks he's a genius, which makes him dangerous for all the wrong reasons. He drives a shitty car with a pull-out radio which he carries around everywhere. Every plan he hatches fails spectacularly. As an action hero, he sucks. But he's funny. He's very funny.
While driving to a nightclub owned by Von Cunth, he gets cut off by a car with the license plate number KFBR392. He immediately begins repeating the plate number over and over again, like a mantra. Later, Lt. Piper finds Macgruber's notebook, and as he leafs through the pages he sees KFBR392 scrawled obsessively over every page.
Macgruber stumbles across the KFBR392 car near the climax of the film, and he calmly and methodically destroys the car while talking with Vicki on his cell phone. This is all hilarious.
At one point, Macgruber reveals the origin of his long-standing feud with Von Cunth. A quick flashback shows Macgruber, Von Cunth, and his dead fiance Casey as college students, with Val Kilmer strumming a guitar, smiling like a goon with a hair-do right out of "Real Genius".
It turns out that Casey and Von Cunth were an item, but she left Von Cunth for Macgruber. Casey was pregnant with Von Cunth's child, and Macgruber demands that she have an abortion. She does, and they try to live happily ever after, while Von Cunth vows revenge.
That's pretty fucking dark, but in the film, it's a real knee-slapper. It's all played perfectly straight, and that just makes it funnier. I honestly did not expect a film like this to go for a joke like that.
Macgruber gives into temptation and has sex with Vicki, who has held a torch for Macgruber for many years. The sex scene plays out like a bizarre, straight-faced parody of every sex scene from the 1980's, before culminating in an uncomfortable series of awkward thrusting and gutteral moans.
Filled with guilt, Macgruber leaves Vicki in the night, visiting Casey's grave. Her ghost appears, telling Macgruber that it's okay for him to move on and fall in love with Vicki. He then proceeds to fuck his dead fiance's ghost on her gravestone. By the time this scene ended, my sides ached.
Macgruber finally gets his shit together (in a manner of speaking) and, after ripping out many throats, disables Von Cunth's nuclear missile, leaving his nemesis handcuffed to the missile as it blows up (sans nuclear warhead). Several months later, Macgruber and Vicki are getting married, but Von Cunth, horribly scarred but still alive, shows up to finish what he started ten years ago.
Macgruber throws Von Cunth off a cliff, and as Von Cunth falls Macgruber shoots him numerous times. After he finally hits the ground, Von Cunth blows up. Macgruber then pisses on his charred remains. Overkill, thy name is Macgruber.
I was so glad that I decided to see "Macgruber". It was insanely funny. After seeing such a dour, soul-crushingly awful movie like Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood", it was just what I needed. I'm not surprised that nobody's going to see "Macgruber". They probably feel the same way I did, and based on the terrible trailers, that's completely understandable.
This is the kind of movie that will find its life on DVD, and on cable. People are going to discover "Macgruber" late at night on Cinemax, and laugh their asses off. It's a shame, really, but not unexpected. I'm just pleased that I took a chance on this film.
CHAPTER II: Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
So on Sunday, I ventured out of my subterranean lair once again to see the latest ultra-expensive Hollywood megablockbuster, "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time". I'm sure you, Dear Imaginary Reader, are already well aware of the small controversy surrounding the film regarding its very Anglo-centric cast, so I won't dwell on it, here.
Donnie Darko plays Dastan, the Parkour-loving Prince who, as a young lad, was adopted by the kindly King of Persia, who already had two delightful sons from a wife we never see. I found that distracting, actually. I can't recall a single line of dialogue that explains why the Queen of Persia is M.I.A.
And not M.I.A., the politically-charged pop artist who made that catchy "Paper Planes" song, but M.I.A. like "Braddock: Missing In Action 3". If M.I.A. played the Queen of Persia, I would have noticed. She would have stuck out in this white cast like my friend Titus at a bluegrass festival.
Dastan's brothers, who have names like Tusk and Gassim, or at least names that sound like that, seem like decent fellas. They have certainly accepted their adopted brother well enough. They don't treat him like dirt because he doesn't have noble blood. That was much appreciated. I mean, at least they didn't go down that trite route where the genetic children resented the adopted child for nebulous reasons.
The King's brother, Gandhi, is advocating an attack on the fabled city of Alamut, because he believes that the people of Alamut are forging weapons to sell to the enemies of Persia. There is no evidence of this, but Gandhi shows the Princes a sword that he claims was forged in Alamut, and apparently, that's reason enough to go to war with a city populated with folks that never did any harm to anyone.
Yes, an Iraq War metaphor. In fucking "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time". That's just fucking insane. So Gandhi Rumsfeld gets his way, and the three Princes lead an assault on the peaceful city of Alamut. It's quickly conquered, thanks to some quick strategic thinking by Donnie Darko, and everybody celebrates, despite the fact that nobody finds any evidence of these "forges of mass destruction".
Prince Tusk gives Donnie Darko a lovely robe to present to King... the King, and the robe promptly burns the fuck out of His Majesty, killing him dead. Obviously, everyone thinks that Donnie Darko just assassinated his adopted father, even though there are certainly more subtle ways to do this aside from killing him with an acid-soaked robe in front of hundreds of people that you literally handed to him no more than 30 seconds ago.
So Donnie goes on the run with Tasmania, the Princess of Alamut, played by Gemma Arterton. Also in Donnie's possession is an amazing dagger that holds miraculous sand in its hilt that can turn back time. He doesn't know how special this lovely dagger is, at first. But he figures it out in a rather annoying scene where Tasmania keeps trying to kill him to get the dagger back.
Eventually, Taz spills the beans that she's the last in a long line of women chosen to protect the legendary Sands of Time, which lie underneath the city of Alamut. Donnie surmises that Gandhi knew about the Sands of Time all along, and cooked up the "weapons forges" story as an excuse to invade Alamut and get to the Sands, in the process becoming a god-like being who can control time, itself.
Along the way, Donnie and Taz stumble upon a Persian Teabager played by Doctor Octopus, who spends his days avoiding taxes and holding endlessly entertaining ostrich races in some secluded area, populated by thieves and cutthroats. Hilarious situations happen when Sheik Octopus realizes Donnie's true identity, and decides to turn him into the local authorites for a reward.
Eventually, Donnie and Taz join forces with Sheik Octopus and his trusty knife-throwing henchman, Seesaw. They all get together to stop Gandhi from unlocking the Sands of Time and destroying the world as they know it, butting heads with Gandhi's army of supernatural assassins, the Hassansins, who ride horses surrounded by Dust Devils and let poisonous snakes slither around in their robes.
Blah, blah, blah, Donnie Darko and Tasmania fall in love, Donnie and Gandhi Runsfeld fight, unlock the Sands of Time, Taz falls to her death in a bottomless pit and our hero and villain travel back to the point during the siege of Alamut where Donnie first found the dagger. He finds Gandhi and reveals his nefarious plan, Gandhi snaps and tries to kill Donnie, and Tusk puts the Mahatma down. Hooray.
Later, the Princes apologize to Tasmania for invading her city on false pretenses and killing perhaps thousands of people in the process, and Tusk suggests that Donnie should marry Taz in an effort to unite the Persians with the Alamutians.
Taz obviously doesn't remember any of her adventures with Donnie, because they never really happened, but Donnie still loves her, and isn't discouraged that he has to start all over with this chick.
I would be, because in movie-time, it took about a month for Donnie to get a small kiss from the woman. It's just too much work for a lazy bastard like me. And that's probably why I'll die alone, and Donnie Darko gets to bang Gemma Arterton in Ancient Persia.
The movie isn't bad. It's not great, but considering the low expectations I had, I didn't leave disappointed. The performances are at least adequate across the board. Jake Gyllenhall certainly tries to play a compelling action hero in the film. He uses his goofy grin and mannerisms well, creating a swashbuckling Prince who is prone to making mistakes.
Luckily, he has a dagger that can turn back time to keep him from getting killed. I was surprised that the creative minds behind the movie never worked in a scene where our hero misses a jump and falls to his death, only to use the dagger to reverse time and try the jump again. I remember doing that a lot when I played "The Sands of Time" on the PS2. It would have been a nice nod to the fans.
Gyllenhall attempts to adopt a British accent in the film, and it's nearly as uneven as Kevin Costner's in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", which is the official benchmark for lame accents in movies. Otherwise, I really had no problems with him. He did a fine job.
Ben Kingsley just seems really bored with his role. He's the obvious villain of the piece, but the film thinks we don't know that two minutes into the film. It's supposed to be ambiguous, but it's anything but. I'd ask why Ben Kingsley would even take a role like this, but he was in Uwe Boll's "Bloodrayne", so I know the man is hardly beneath a paycheck.
Gemma Arterton is hot.
Am I supposed to type more? That's why she's in the damned movie. She's one of the most gorgeous women on the planet, and that's reason enough. She had a thankless role in "Clash Of The Titans", but I didn't care, because if she weren't in that movie, I would have absolutely hated it. Eye candy helps a lot.
She does have a little more to do in the film, although in the climax of the film she accomplishes nothing. I suppose her death is supposed to be the thing that spurs Donnie Darko on to defeat Gandhi, but the two actors had absolutely no chemistry in the film. We're watching the two characters fall in love throughout the course of the story, but I never bought it.
They just seemed like two cocky people insulting each other over and over again through two thirds of the film, and then suddenly they want to spend the rest of their lives together. No dice.
She's still gorgeous, though. Gemma Arterton should be cast in every big-budgeted, mediocre Hollywood movie, then at least I would find something to like in all of that detritus.
Alfred Molina and his wookie-analogue, played by Steve Toussaint, are the most entertaining people in the movie. Molina finds that sweet spot of over-acting, where he becomes endearing and not annoying, and his short speech about his love of the noble ostrich made me laugh.
Toussaint manages to create the only character in the film that I actually care about, despite his underdeveloped role in the script. The guy's just a good, charismatic actor, and when he finds himself in a deadly fight with one of the Hassansins late in the film, I was really pulling for the man to prevail.
The digital effects range from good to piss-poor, the latter most notably represented by the time-reversal sequences. Gyllenhall's face is pasted onto a digital body during these moments, and the effects wouldn't look out of place in a videogame cutscene from the original Playstation. Cringe-inducing stuff.
The script is serviceable, but nothing special. Mike Newell's direction is uninspired. Essentially, the only reason why I liked this movie at all was because some of the actors managed to rise above the lack of creativity from the folks behind the scenes.
I couldn't recommend this movie to anybody. Of course, I don't know anybody, so that takes care of itself.
CHAPTER III: A New Video Is Born
Several weeks ago, I got together with my cousin Ky and we decided to make a new photoplay. This photoplay would tell the story of a watermelon, living on the streets, who gets drawn into the seedy world of 1980's pornography, becomes a star, falls from grace, and finally hits rock bottom and commits suicide.
Real life-affirming stuff.
Anyway, whilst shooting this photoplay, I got the idea to try something a little different. We shot a little video footage, got creative and improvised some narration, and very quickly the simple photoplay became something more ambitious. When I had finally finished assembling this... thing... I didn't know what to call it.
It wasn't a photoplay, not strictly speaking. It was more of a parody of a TV newsmagazine, like Dateline or 20/20. I decided to run with that, and I named it "The Real Face Of America.". You can view it
If you like it, let me know. If you hate it, please let me know. I crave negativity. I thrive on it.
CHAPTER IV: Here's To Your Fuck!
Prostate cancer killed Dennis Hopper over the weekend. I've always been a big Dennis Hopper fan. He was always one of those guys who would show up and be entertaining and memorable, even in some of the worst movies.
"Super Mario Bros." sucks. "Waterworld" sucks. "EdTV" sucks. But he's the bright spot in all of these films. He always managed to bring some kind of manic energy to mediocre roles, so that when you left the theatre or changed the channel, his performance would stick with you.
I've only sat through "Super Mario Bros." once, but 16 years later, I still remember his King Koopa getting increasingly annoyed when the minutes tick by and his pizza remains undelivered.
The first movie I remember seeing that featured Dennis Hopper was 1985's "My Science Project". As a kid, I remember that and "The Wraith" playing on HBO seemingly every day. And I watched those movies a lot. Neither one of these films is very good, but nostalgia keeps me from fairly judging them.
In "My Science Project", Hopper played science teacher Mr. Roberts, a rather unhappy fellow who was stuck in the 1960's. After getting sucked into a time vortex and disappearing around the halfway point, I thought he was dead. But then he showed up at the end of the film, dressed like a hippie, having recently returned from Woodstock, I smiled. I was glad he got a happy ending.
Only later did I realize that the film was poking fun at his character from "Easy Rider". That just made me enjoy it more.
Hopper turned in truly iconic performances in "Easy Rider", "River's Edge", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2", and "Blue Velvet". He has created many characters in film that will live on long after we're all dead and gone. His conversation with Christopher Walken in "True Romance" is legendary, required viewing for any person who dares call him/herself a "film buff."
He may no longer be with us, but God damnit, the man lived. Just Google the man, and read about some of the shit this man did. All the highs and lows, the triumph and heartbreak, this man lived a fucking life.
He got into a knife fight with Rip Torn, for fuck's sake!
So crack open some Pabst Blue Ribbon, and pour one out for Dennis Hopper. You will be missed, sir.
EPILOGUE: What The Fuck?
On May 11th, regarding my previous post "
I don't know what that means. I'm pretty sure it's gibberish, but perhaps I'm just not reading between the lines. Anyway, thanks for the comment, "demonterius", wherever you are, whatever the fuck you were trying to say!
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