BEFORE: Dax Shepard carries over from "Employee of the Month". He was in "CHIPS" earlier this year, but I didn't use him as a link at that time, my intro link was Michael Peña and the outro link was Vincent D'Onofrio - so I suppose these two Dax Shepard films represent a road not taken at that time, or this spot between yesterday's film and today's was perhaps another place that "CHIPS" could have fit, if I hadn't watched it back in March. I suppose I've been thinking a lot lately about choices and the roads not taken, or if the road that I've taken doesn't feel like the right one, how do I get off of it and on to another one, because I can't really go back to the old one, so do I have to wait and find a new one, or just maybe stand by the side of the road for a while I think about how to find a new one, I don't know. I'm just so confused. I think if I quit this new second job I'll be depressed for a while, but keeping it is wearing me down, and I'm not sure which is worse.
The pandemic obviously threw a monkey wrench into my career plans, because I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if not for COVID, and as soon as jobs started to become available, I jumped at the first opportunity, which may not have been the right move - but now I'm earning some extra money and I don't want to give that up, because I don't know how long it will take me to land another job. Everything is telling me to hand in my notice, but that puts me back to square one, being under-employed again. So there's another little voice telling me to stay put until I line up something else, but there's no indication when that will happen, so naturally I feel stuck. Taking time off to go to Chicago didn't help make things clearer, nor does a weekend day off like today, and thinking about it only makes me feel worse about it.
THE PLOT: When a career criminal's plan for revenge is thwarted by unlikely circumstances, he puts his intended victim's son in his place by putting him in prison...and then joining him.
AFTER: Obviously there are many forms of prison - a bad job can feel like a prison, a bad relationship can feel like a prison, and of course during the pandemic with so many people cooped up at home, even your own home can feel like a prison under certain circumstances. Then the questions start coming, like "How long is this prison sentence?" or "Is there anything I can do to get out of this situation sooner?" But never mind metaphor, because today's film concerns a genuine (only, umm, not real) prison, Rossmore Correctional Institute. SIDE NOTE: scenes were filmed at the defunct Joliet Prison, seen in the opening of "The Blues Brothers" and during the first season of "Prison Break". Most other non-prison scenes were filmed in and around Chicago, which is coincidentally where I was earlier this week.
Lead character John Lyshitski (yeah, they no doubt named him that as a sneaky way to get a curse word into the film many times over, without actually using it...) gets out of prison for the third time, and naturally he blames the judge who sentenced him two out of three times. While trying to get violent revenge on that judge, he finds out the judge died three days before his release, so he does the next best thing, tries to get revenge on the judge's son. Seems like faulty logic to me, or perhaps an antiquated belief that the perceived sins of the father should be atoned for by the son, but my guess is that some screenwriter didn't really think too hard about this. Most of the plot points in the film feel thrown together, or based on really simplistic beliefs about what it means to be incarcerated - which means a very simplistic gang structure, white skinheads vs. black militants, and a lot of gay rape jokes. I'm not saying that DOESN'T happen, but perhaps there are people who get through the system without being in constant fear of it. But then again, I'm not an expert, most of what I know about the penal system does come from watching shows like "Oz" and movies like "Papillon", "The Longest Yard", "Escape from Alcatraz" and such.
Lyshitski follows Nelson, the judge's son and messes with him randomly, like emptying the inhaler he finds in his car. This leads to a chain of events where Nelson frantically enters a pharmacy for a refill and gets mistaken for a robber. It's random and unlikely, I know - but Lyshitsky fires his own gun to take advantage of the confusion, and Nelson is then sentenced to prison. Soon after, Lyshitski knowingly sells pot to a couple undercover cops in order to get arrested himself, and request incarceration in the same prison, just to mess with Nelson further. NITPICK POINT: I'm not sure that any sentenced criminal has the right to request which prison he gets assigned to, nor would an inmate be allowed to choose his cellmate, the film really stretches believability here, just to get its two lead characters in the same place.
What follows is a delicate game, as Lyshitski pretends to take Nelson under his wing, all the while giving him bad advice or manipulating the other prisoners in order to make his life more miserable. He even pimps him out, so to speak, to Barry, a large black man, just to keep the homophobic comedy rolling, I guess. Sure, for some men this may be the worst situation they can imagine, but if the comedy's coming from either a racist or a homophobic place, that's not cool these days. I guess you could get away with this in 2006, but it just wouldn't fly today.
(There are distinct parallels to "Arrested Development", Will Arnett's characters in both this movie and that show spent time in prison, and also questioned their sexual orientation at other times. I'm not sure which came first, honestly, but at some point Will Arnett may have experienced some form of dramatic deja vu.)
Naturally, as in many comedies, things don't go as planned - the rivalry between the two men is in fact quite similar to that seen in "Employee of the Month", both times Dax Shepard's character tries to take down his rival and fails, creating an even stronger enemy in the process. Here Nelson manages to survive all the bad advice and hazing, triumphs in some very unlikely manners and eventually becomes a much stronger person, able to not only survive in prison but thrive, this too also strains the boundaries of credulity, and culminates in the most unbelievable method of prison escape ever, like honestly not even close to reality. It's the worst possible example of screenwriters painting themselves into a corner, with almost no way out. To continue the metaphor, it's like that painter had to break a hole through the wall just to get out of that corner without messing up the paint.
So, in the end, there's a lot here that just doesn't WORK, and I maintain that even in a wacky comedy, there are still rules that need to be followed, and bending reality just to find some kind of a conclusion is cheating of the highest order. Sorry, that's just how I see it.
Also starring Will Arnett (last heard in "Dolittle"), Chi McBride (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), David Koechner (last seen in "I'm Not Here"), Dylan Baker (last seen in "Selma"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), David Darlow (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "The Giant Mechanical Man"), A.J. Balance, Miguel Nino, Jay Whittaker, Amy Hill (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Jerry Minor (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Susan Messing (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Jim Zulevic, Bill McGough, Larry Neumann Jr., Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Mascots"), with cameos from Tim Heidecker (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Eric Wareheim (last seen in "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie")
and archive footage of Tim Allen (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Jim Bakker, James Brown (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Heidi Fleiss, John Gotti, Leona Helmsley, Tommy Lee (last seen in "The New Guy"), Charles Manson, Ozzy Osbourne (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Martha Stewart (last seen in "What Women Want"), Mike Tyson (last seen in "Whitney").
RATING: 4 out of 10 packs of cigarettes
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