Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain

Year 17, Day 339 - 12/5/25 - Movie #5,192

BEFORE: Sunita Mani carries over again from "Death of a Unicorn". Yes, I'm aware she's in a Christmas movie, but it's playing on the one streaming service I don't have, so I'm just about to start my Christmas programming, and I'm NOT using her as a link. And that's maybe only because I just noticed there was another way to go, and my programming is already set. 

While I'm on the topic of programming, I've been working late at night on coming up with a rough schedule for January and February, now usually I have to do February first, because where January needs to end is based on where February needs to begin. Well, I tried that but I the list of romance films is such a complicated mess that I couldn't find a path through it at first, and the problem isn't a lack of links. Quite the opposite, there are TOO MANY links between the films, so many that I couldn't keep track of them all or decide between them. So I started working on January instead, I picked the most impossible (yet still possible) place to start, with a film that links to only ONE other movie, and I moved forward from there, aiming for a bunch of films that I really want to see, like "The Naked Gun" and the new Wes Anderson movie. This gave me a complicated schematic of the different ways to make it through the month, and three different ways to land near January 31 with films that could be considered romance or relationship-based movies. Aha, that's one way to narrow things down. 

So then I had to take all these romance-based mini-chains of various lengths that I've been constructing and try to build a month out of them - the problem there is that by putting them into small chains, I'm kind of limiting all the possible connections, instead of just thinking of a film as connecting to the film before it and the film after it, I need to know all the other connections between all the other mini-chains, because at that point I have to deconstruct the mini-chains, to some degree at least, to fuse them to other chains. It's maybe like trimming the ends off of planks of woods so that they'll be shaped properly to connect to other planks. In doing so, certain films become like scraps, they're cut loose from their mini-chains and maybe I can put those pieces into joists or pegs or connectors later on, but for now, they've got to go. 

So I took parts of a 12-film chain, a couple 11-film chains, maybe a 9-film and 8-film chain, and a bunch of 4-film and 5-film chains, tore them apart and trimmed them down, and nailed the resulting boards together to make - a 45-film chain that should take me from February 1 all the way to St. Patrick's Day - and thankfully there was an Ireland-set romance that gave me an end-point to aim for. So all's good for next year until Mid-March, I think - by then I can start looking at spring and building more months that will take me to Easter or Mother's Day or Memorial Day or something. I'll worry about all the loose scraps on the romance list later, I guess. 

THE PLOT: When three friends who live and work together realize that they don't like their life trajectory, they set off to find a treasure that is rumored to be buried in the nearby mountain.

AFTER: Let me mention right off that I worked at the NY premiere of this film, once in a while the theater where I work has one of those red-carpet events with press tents and celebrity appearances and such, however this one was back in November of 2023 and there was that SAG strike going on, so actors were unable or unwilling to appear at promotional events for films that they appeared in. So yeah, it was a bit of a weird time. I was working outside and I saw people like Jim Gaffigan and Judd Apatow as they came in to see the film, and a couple former and current SNL actors came too, but nobody from the film. Actors could go to other events for films they were NOT in, apparently, but they could not promote their own work, this was forbidden by the unwritten rules of the strike. OK, whatever, catch you next time or never, I guess. 

It goes without saying that I didn't get to see the movie that night, either - not that I was protesting, but I was working outside, trying to keep pedestrians from walking into traffic and such, but you know, some insist on doing that no matter what I say. Dude, I just don't want to have to call an ambulance after you get hit by a bus, just saying. Anyway, this movie just did NOT perform well at the box office - it took in only $14,000 - I don't know how that's possible, for a major release, simply nobody watched this film, people stayed away in droves. If only they'd charged admission at the premiere, they probably could have doubled that figure - instead they stupidly gave away tickets to that showing and probably regretted doing that. 

Anyway, if you don't know who "Please Don't Destroy" are - they're the three writers who have been interrupting episodes of "SNL" for the past few years, since the Lonely Island guys left, anyway. Total wannabes, and their humor has been hit-or-miss over the years, perhaps it's there to make all the other sketches look good, especially those stinkers that are relegated to the last 30 minutes of the show. Hell, after the 2nd song by the musical guest you could probably shoot somebody dead live on air and nobody would ever know. Anyway these Please Don't Destroy guys have used their awkward humor in mostly self-deprecating fashion, and that trend continues in this feature film about three loser guys who can't seem to better themselves or get ahead in life. The fact that out of the three writers, only one managed to move up and become a regular in the new season should tell you something. SNL has tried a lot of stunt casting in the past few seasons, after firing Kyle Mooney and Ego Nwodim they went on to hire another African-American guy (because even Kenan Thompson can't live forever) and their first non-binary performer, and now both of THOSE people weren't hired back, so I don't know, maybe try hiring funny people instead? Just a thought. 

Yes, I still watch "SNL", even if it's just to see how non-funny it is this week - I'm not hate-watching, exactly, I want it to be funnier, but there hasn't been a proper ending to a sketch since, well, probably some time in the 1990's. Or the "Coneheads" era - all the skits just kind of stop, but nothing never "ends". So now we have Diego the stereotypical Latin lover every other week and there's still Weekend Update, but the rest is just nonsense. Kind of like today's film, which is about 85 minutes of nonsense, followed by credits. These three guys are failing at life by working at a sporting goods store owned by one guy's father - Conan O'Brien is super bad at acting, yet still somehow he's the best thing about this movie, how does that even make sense? OK, maybe Bowen Yang is a half-decent actor but most everyone else here is shite. 

The story's even worse, supposedly these three kids bonded in middle school over a bad magic act one did, and then they found his compass in the woods, which turns out to be the key to locating the Treasure of Foggy Mountain. But why did they wait 12 or 13 years to go looking for the treasure? Wouldn't that have been a great adventure for teenagers to have, rather than 20-somethings who just forgot to grow up? I'm trying to be kind here, because there are a few funny things about the film, but together they don't add up to a film that's funny all the time. I wanted something more like "The Naked Gun", where it's just funny on top of funny, followed by more funny, and this just ain't it. If I wanted to watch three supposed friends just yell at each other and act terrible to themselves and others, I'd just watch "The Three Stooges". Teens don't even have enough attention span these days for something like this, they need short 20-second A.I. generated clips that make no sense at all, and end with the main character exploding or just being launched out of sight. So I hate to suggest this film aimed a little too high, because it's just so lowbrow, but that's where we find ourselves, isn't it? This is how cinema dies.

My only saving grace here is that this kind of serves as a master class in set-ups, like every little thing mentioned in the first part of the film becomes important in the third or fourth quarter, and I mean everything. Obviously it was probably written in reverse, the things that were important in the big battle scene were then worked into the beginning part, this is the "fungo" strategy where you just lob a few balls gently over home plate so the batter can at least make contact with the ball. It doesn't mean every hit's going to be a home-run, but it's good for practice - and maybe these guys can write a real screenplay some day once they learn what subtlety is, only I don't know if they're all still working together, with only one joining the SNL cast. These guys are all nepo babies of comedians, which maybe explains a lot - you don't have to be funny, you just have to be connected. We should probably try to get back to some kind of merit-based system, just saying. 

Anyway, what the treasure is doesn't make any sense, where and how they find it doesn't make any sense, and then when the three guys encounter two female rival treasure hunters and a cult led by a missing treasure hunter, things start to make even less sense then before, it all just becomes madcap nonsense, which seems to be par for the course these days. Is this being caused by the TikTok-ification of U.S. culture, if something can't be clever or funny or useful, at least it can be bright and shiny, have a lot of curse words and violence and nonsense in it? I really fear for the future after watching something like this, but I guess maybe the good news is that nobody else ever watched this?  Nah, the good news is probably that this film is gone from my list now and it never has to trouble me again.

Directed by Paul Briganti (last seen in "Obvious Child")

Also starring Martin Herlihy (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), John Higgins (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Ben Marshall, Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Rather"), Bowen Yang (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Megan Stalter, X Mayo (last seen in "The Farewell"), Nichole Sakura (last seen in "Project X"), Cedric Yarbrough (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Chloe Troast, William Banks, Jordan Mendoza, Liz Demmon, Gaten Matarazzo (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Marcel Nahapetian, Trevor Barrett Noble, Maximo Masefield, Jamie Linn Watson, Carmen Christopher (last seen in "Otherhood"), Emily Wilson, Rick Espaillat (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Stephen Starkweather, Evan Sibert, Boston Pierce, Cruz Abelita (last seen in "Haunted Mansion"), Brady Lees, Vince Canlas (last seen in "Mile 22"), Dylan James Holt, Mike Talplacido and the voice of John Goodman (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything").

RATING: 4 out of 10 walnuts in a salad (and I swear, I think I'm being kind here)

Death of a Unicorn

Year 17, Day 336 - 12/2/25 - Movie #5,191

BEFORE: It's been another crazy couple of days, the Brooklyn Nets won last night and the whole place went a little crazy - it's not something I've seen before, I think it's the first time they won at home while I was working there. Now their record is like 4 wins and 16 losses, so I don't think they're going to turn the season around, but anyway, congrats on the win. Also at the theater we had another screening of "Bob Trevino Likes It" and John Leguizamo was there again, also Rosie Perez was there to do the intro, I hadn't seen her in person before, but I've seen Mr. Leguizamo there three times now. It was one of those guild screenings where they're  trying to buy people's votes so they were serving lobster rolls and glasses of wine after.  

I signed up for a research study, tomorrow I'll travel to a clinic and they'll figure out if I qualify, I've been looking for something like this, a chance to earn a little extra money and maybe also do something good in the medical field, I tried to do one two years ago for a shingles vaccine then found out that my doctor had already given me a vaccine, so I had to back out. But this one's for Alzheimer's, and since my mother already has it and I'm starting to show signs, it's kind of now or never - maybe I'll get stuck in the placebo group, or maybe I'll help them discover a cure, you never know. I find that if I have to buy three things at the store I have to write them down or I WILL forget one of them. 

Sunita Mani carries over from "Save Yourselves!" and here are the links that should get me to the end of the year: John Goodman, Ed Helms, Emma Myers, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Edi Patterson and Stephanie Sy. If you know that 7 of the next 10 films are Christmas films, you can probably figure out exactly what I'm going to watch... I also spent some time today refining a plan for January, it starts with a "one-linkable" and it links through "The Naked Gun" and "The Phoenician Scheme", both of which I am trying to move to the front of my list, and there are "multiple outs" so I can make the month 27, 28 or 31 films long as needed - BUT I still don't know where February is going to begin, so I'm not sure if this proposed month of films is going to end near where I want to be on Feb. 1. So the next step will be to come up with a linked set of romance films for February and if it begins in a weird place, then I'll have to re-think January....

THE PLOT: A father and daughter accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while on route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature's miraculous curative properties. 

AFTER: I'm just going to watch TWO films this week, then I can start the Christmas movies next week. I'll be away for a week, so once I get back I'm going to really have to hustle to finish on time, but I think both jobs are going to be shut down for the week, so really, what else am I going to have to do? 

Tonight's film, I really don't know what to do with it. I don't know if even the filmmakers knew what to do with this story, it's so all-over-the-place. There's no clear storyline through it, I can't get a handle on the structure of it, like what are the different acts? What is the point? Am I supposed to be rooting for the unicorn or for the people? Do I want the unicorn to die or do I want the people to die?  Some people are "good", some people are "bad", or is everybody just a mixed-up mess? Are unicorns "good" or "evil" or beasts or intelligent creatures with super-powers? Unfortunately there are no choices being made, all things are possible and I wish they could have narrowed down the focus a bit here, because it's like "Every Unicorns Everywhere All at Once" or something. 

Then there are things in the backstories that are never made clear, Elliot is a lawyer and a widower but we never really find out how his wife died, because he and his daughter can't even talk about it. The thing is, though, that if they never talk about it, then I can't learn about it, and we're at something of an impasse, aren't we? Or by the time the film finally got around to dealing with this, I kind of no longer cared. In my defense, it's been a tough week. We're still dealing with the loss of one of our cats, and seeing the "mercy killing" of an injured unicorn just brought up the nightmare that was our Thanksgiving evening. It's never easy when you have to let an animal go, and have a vet tell you that it's better that they die than they should suffer. I mean, I get it, but it's still not easy. 

There's also no logical sense here - if you were standing in front of a unicorn that you struck with your car, how is your first impulse "I need to kill this magnificent, unusual creature"? It's just not a run-of-the-mill deer, or even an average horse, it's a UNICORN!  A creature of legend, one most people have been led to believe never existed in the first place, and so therefore how do you get so quickly from "it's a rare, impossible animal" to "I need to kill this" in a few seconds flat? Would you search Loch Ness for the famous Nessie monster, spend years of your life looking for it JUST to kill it and carve it up? Would you search every inch of the Pacific Northwest forest for Bigfoot, spend years looking for him/it, only to immediately kill him when you finally locate him?  This doesn't make sense - I could only understand this when it comes to that frozen mammoth they found in the ice a few years ago, because I really would like to know what 100,000 year old mammoth meat tastes like - the frozen ice probably kept it from spoiling, right? How delicious would BBQ ribs from the Pleistocene Era be? 

But OK, let's say you found an injured unicorn, what should your next step be INSTEAD of killing it? Don't you think maybe the next step should be to take some video with your phone? You don't have to post it, but surely you would want to document the occasion, even if just for yourself, as FINDING the unicorn, healthy or injured, would be a feat in itself. Nope, let's just kill it and stick it in the trunk. Not in today's world. Of course, nobody in today's world would believe a video of an injured unicorn, since someone could just use AI to create such a video, of course after 10 seconds that unicorn would for some reason start vomiting up spaghetti on to the plates of people in a restaurant and then it would explode for no reason. What I've learned from being on Instagram for the last few months is that people use AI to make whatever videos they want, but they collectively have no storytelling ability, or have any reason WHY to make things happen in a video. We're all witnessing the death of movies in real time. 

That really is the big problem here, the WHY of it all. Why did this father-daughter find this unicorn, what's the overarching purpose of this story?  What could they do with it, besides let the rich people exploit it and grind it up and use it to cure one man's disease and then snort its powdered horn like a drug?  I guess people in other parts of the world use rhinoceros horns for some kind of medicinal purpose, even though the rhino horn powder has no curative ability at all. But people THINK it does, and that's somehow a good enough reason to kill rhinos - people are idiots across the board, it seems. Look, I don't know WHY somebody made a movie about an injured unicorn and forgot to write a decent story to go with it, I'm just the messenger here. I don't really know what I was expecting out of this film, but it was a lot more than the nothing-burger it turned out to be. 

Directed by Alex Scharfman

Also starring Jenna Ortega (last seen in "X"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "All Is Bright"), Anthony Carrigan (last seen in "Superman" (2025)), Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Saltburn"), Tea Leoni (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Will Poulter (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Jessica Hynes (last seen in "Alright Now"), Denise Delgado, Steve Park (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Christine Grace Szarko (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Tasha Lawrence, David Pasquesi (last seen in "The Watcher"), and the voice of Kathryn Erbe (last seen in "Assassination Nation").

RATING: 5 out of 10 sightings of the Northern Lights (for what purpose, exactly? Just more wasted time, it seems)