Withnail & I

Year 14, Day 350 - 12/16/22 - Movie #4,297

BEFORE: I went out this week with a friend from my old pub trivia team, who happens to now be semi-famous because he was on a particular HBO show, which I'm not going to plug here. But let's just say there's been some debate online about whether this person is "real", because it was that kind of show - and it's a bit odd when you see strangers on the internet debating whether a friend of yours is real, trust me on this.  But it got me thinking about celebrity, or people who are known in different arenas, and I've encountered a lot of those in the real world. 

I've occasionally mentioned here that I've worked in animation or filmmaking for 30 years now, and I've been to Sundance 3 times, to San Diego Comic-Con 15 times, and now I work at a movie theater that is often hosts guild screenings, and is frequently visited by actors and directors doing Q&A panels after the films.  What this all adds up to is me having encountered a LOT of famous people over the years - but I've never kept comprehensive notes. So I racked my brains and thought about all my adventures over the decades, from casting films to working on shoots, going to book signings and sitting next to known actors on planes, everything counts, even bands that I've seen in concert. And once I opened up the memory banks, one thing led to another.  I saw Bob Dylan play at Letterman's 10th Anniversary show in Radio City, I met Ray Bradbury at the Toronto Film Festival in 1998, I lived in the same NYU dorm as Adam Sandler.  I was a P.A. when Leon Redbone and Dr. John shot a music video for "Frosty the Snowman", if you can believe that. I once shared an elevator ride with Alex Winter, and I once grilled a steak for Martha Plimpton. 

My point is, I've been places and I've done things and I've met some people, and the process continues, in fact it's been accelerating lately, last week I was within 2 feet of both Guillermo Del Toro and Emma Thompson - on different days.  But I want to start keeping a list, and that means flashing back through my photos and my brain, before my brain stops working right.  That list is about three pages long right now, and I'm stuck until I can find my Sundance diary notes - but at least I'll have a reference I can check now on my computer. 

Richard E. Grant (and several other actors) carry over from "An Accidental Studio".  Tonight's film is another production from Handmade Films, and footage from it was used in that documentary. Cheating, kind of, I know, but it's necessary. 

THE PLOT: In 1969, two substance-abusing, unemployed actors retreat to the countryside for a holiday that proves disastrous. 

AFTER: My wife watches this show called "The Great British Menu", because at this point we've basically run out of food-based competitions to watch on American TV, once we're current on "Hell's Kitchen" and we're waiting for the next season of "Top Chef" to start. I've watched two of the seasons with her, the one where the banquet celebrated Abbey Road Studios and the one that celebrated the heroes of the NHS. Essentially three chefs from a particular UK region compete against each other to get to the finals, where the judges taste the winner's four dishes and curate a menu for the banquet.  

But there's a language barrier, to be sure - we have to convert the cooking temperatures from metric, but also they have different food items over there, and different words for the same food items. They call beets "beetroot", and they have weird citrus fruits like sea buckthorns. They call parsley "lovage" for some reason, and they call shrimp "prawns" and zucchinis are "courgettes". (Don't even get me started on how their fries are "chips" but their chips are "crisps".). Look, I've known for years about Scotch Eggs and Toad in the Hole and even Black Pudding, but those are finished dishes, I'm talking about weird ingredients like flax, hop shoots, laverbread, verjuice and zanders. Then one chef will cook with "cobnuts" and I have to stop and look THAT up, only to find out that it's just another word for hazelnuts.  So we speak the same language, supposedly, as the Brits, but we really don't. 

So that was what I was up against tonight, in a way, watching "Withnail & I".  First off, that title, I didn't quite understand it at first, but it's one of the main characters' last name.  And it's not pronounced like "with-nail", but more like "withnel". But that's my problem across the board with British names, like "Leicester" really sounds like "Lester" and "Leominster" really sounds like "Lemster". I should be used to this because I grew up in Massachusetts, which shares some of the same town names with the U.K., like Gloucester ("Glos-ter") and Worcester ("Wuh-ster") and even Shrewsbury ('Shroos-bree"). Tonight's film is about two starving drunk actors from London who head out to the countryside of Penrith, or "Pith". JK.

Some other things that I needed to look up - Withnail calls a bunch of school girls "scrubbers", which means he's accusing them of being sexually active, I think.  There was another HandMade film called "Scrubbers", but it was about a bunch of girls in a borstal, which is an institution for youthful offenders.  In the U.S. we'd call a "borstal" by the name "juvie".)

The other half of the duo (the "And I") is Marwood, and he wants to leave town because someone at the pub is threatening him and calling him a "ponce", which is an offensive term for a homosexual. (The word "fag" over there is reserved for cigarettes...). Later in the film Marwood fears being thought of as a "toilet trader", which is a gay man who frequents bathrooms, it seems. 

I also had to look up the word "oomska", which seems to be synonymous with mud and muck, and "polythene", which is just the British name for plastic wrap.  Ah so, that's what the Beatles song "Polythene Pam" is about?  And finally there's the "saveloy", which is a red British sausage that used to be made from pork brains, but more recently is just made from any and all parts of the animal, so essentially it's just a British hot dog.  And in a "saveloy dip" the sausage is sliced in half and put on a bun with butter and peas pudding, with mustard and sage stuffing added before it's dipped in gravy.  Yeah, I'd give that a go. 

This film is set in 1969 - that took me a while to figure out, because they didn't say it right up front, only at the end, when Danny, the burned-out drug dealer is upset that the decade is ending and there are hippie wigs for sale in Woolworth's. Well, it wasn't going to last forever, but if anything, pot was destined to become more popular in the future, even acceptable.  Eventually even Marwood has to realize that his life of drinking and drugging with Withnail in their rat-infested apartment isn't meant to last forever, their whole trip to the country, as ill-fated and disastrous as it is, is also their last blast, their farewell tour. 

Both chronologically and thematically, this film fits into British culture somewhere between "The Young Ones" and "Trainspotting", if that makes any sense. And it's not just the man in the bar who thinks Withnail and Marwood might be gay, Withnail's Uncle Monty is gay and thinks they're a couple, so he lends them his cottage so they can go on holiday, but he also shows up there, to maybe cause a rift between them and get with Marwood himself. It becomes not just inconvenient, but downright awkward - especially when it interrupts Withnail's rigorous drinking schedule. 

Beyond all that, it's been quite a week for "Star Wars" actors - there was a cameo with Kenny Baker (the very first "Star Wars" actor I ever got an autograph from) and Jack Purvis in "Mona Lisa".  Both small actors also played Ewoks in "Return of the Jedi" - and so did all the other dwarf actors who were in "Time Bandits", who appeared in archive footage in "An Accidental Studio", but I think only one of them, Mike Edmonds, is still alive. Ralph Brown, who played Danny the drug dealer, played a spaceship pilot in "Episode I: The Phantom Menace", and Richard E. Grant played an General Pryde in "Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker". I've got Brown's autograph already, I really should look into getting Richard E. Grant's next, as I haven't added to my collection in a while. Meanwhile, Paul McGann played one of the versions of "Doctor Who" for a while, but I don't follow that show, who has that kind of time? 

It's also been a LONG time since I crossed another film off the list of the "1,001 Films to See Before You Die", but after this one, my total rises to 438. So there you go, progress is being made after all. 

Also starring Paul McGann (also carrying over from "An Accidental Studio"), Richard Griffiths (ditto), Ralph Brown (ditto), Michael Elphick (last seen in "The Elephant Man"), Daragh O'Malley, Michael Wardle, Una Brandon-Jones, Noel Johnson (last seen in "Frenzy"), Irene Sutcliffe, Llewellyn Rees (last seen in "The Dresser" (1983)), Robert Oates, Anthony Wise (last seen in "Justice League"), Eddie Tagoe. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 wolves at the zoo

An Accidental Studio

Year 14, Day 346 - 12/12/22 - Movie #4,296

BEFORE: Bob Hoskins carries over from "Mona Lisa", and so do the other stars of that film.  This is very sneaky on my part, because this documentary about the studio Handmade Films naturally features footage from their most successful films, one of which was "Mona Lisa", and another of which is tomorrow's film.  I couldn't manage to fit this film into my documentary block this year, though thematically it would have fit very well.  I figured that since watching this film was going to cost me $3.99 on iTunes or YouTube, maybe the universe was trying to save me a few bucks - so I was willing to wait to see if it would run on PBS or BBC-TV, or maybe pop up on some streaming service, so I was willing to sit on it until next year's doc chain.  But, then the need came to find some kind of link to Richard E. Grant because he's in a Christmas-themed movie, so the opportunity came to use it as a vital link, this year instead of next.  

There are so many actors appearing in this documentary, it almost seems a shame to use it here, but I don't want to think of this as going to waste - it's more like it's performing a vital service, connecting my post-Thanksgiving chain, which essentially had run out (OK, not really) to my Christmas movies.  If I'd known about "The Long Good Friday" maybe I could have gotten there another way, through Helen Mirren, but now that ship has sailed. 

Sticking with the program enabled me to watch this film with my BFF Andy, who's been staying over this weekend. I was going to take a few days off after "Mona Lisa" and save this for later in the week, but since both Andy and I are big Monty Python fans, I'd rather watch it earlier with him.  Andy and I once collaborated on a project to get the autographs of all the Monty Python members to sign the same book, which was one of his college textbooks.  Andy kicked it off by meeting Graham Chapman on his college tour, then I had the opportunities to meet John Cleese and Terry Gilliam to get them to sign the book as well. I also met Michael Palin, but Andy wanted to meet him as well, so I only ended up contributing two signatures to the book - and by the time Andy met Eric Idle, word had spread among the Pythons about the book, and then Andy topped it all off by traveling to the UK, and arranging a meeting with Terry Jones in a pub so he could be the last one to sign it.  Andy went above and beyond by then having the book signed by Carol Cleveland and Neil Innes, so that was a fun project to work on together.  I was happy just to meet three of the Pythons in person, and I got my own books signed by Cleese, Gilliam and Palin - just three separate books and not the same one, but that's fine.  

THE PLOT: Charts the early years of HandMade Films, seen through the eyes of the filmmakers, key personnel and the man who started it all: former Beatle George Harrison. 

AFTER: Well, December started off with some very American movies, but it's going to end for me with a bunch of British ones, with a few Germans mixed in. "Lassiter" was about and American stealing from Nazis in London, so there's the pivot point. "Mona Lisa" was pure British, and now a documentary about a British film studio, Handmade Films.  The studio was in business for 11 years, and produced more hits than misses - though they had some stinkers, too.  Honestly, I'd never heard of "Checking Out" or "Powwow Highway" before, or even "Cold Dog Soup", which everyone seems to want to forget.  And of course there's "Water" and "Shanghai Surprise", which are also terrible, but at least I'd heard of those. 

The secret can finally be told - the financier behind HandMade was George Harrison, who had been in some films before as a Beatle, perhaps reluctantly, and was also a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus. (Who wasn't?). But George had a problem, he had too much money - so much that the "Taxman" was liable to take away most of it, unless he could find something to invest it in, preferably a losing operation, with enough expenses to offset his income, and then in a roundabout way, he might be able to keep more of it, thanks to the vagaries of tax law.  Really, the only people who have this unique kind of problem are rock stars, a few of the top movie stars, and tech billionaires.  But the tech guys can set up a foundation to combat a disease, or start a corporation that builds rockets to go into space, and Mr. Harrison didn't have those opportunities, so really, it had to be filmmaking.  No other enterprise could possibly lose enough money to keep a Beatle from paying taxes.  "Wait, you have an screenplay?  Here's five million pounds, go and make that movie."  

It's really genius if you think about it, because if the movie bombs, then George Harrison has a write-off, assuming the director and film crew kept all their receipts.  So his music royalties would be offset by the film production costs, and therefore he's got less income, and pays less taxes.  Keeping half of $100 million is better than keeping 10% of $200 million, right? Look, I don't know how the numbers work exactly, but I know it's better to have a corporation with expenses if you can't have a charitable foundation.  But I just know in my heart that Bill Gates and George Lucas wouldn't give so much to charity unless it benefited them in the long run to do so - at their level they bring in so much money that the majority of it goes to taxes, and the charities they choose to support benefit, for sure, but so do the billionaires who donate at that high level. 

So George Harrison finance the making of "Monty Python's Life of Brian", which unfortunately became a smash hit, and a cult classic - it almost sounds like a real-life version of "The Producers", because they accidentally made too much money.  But fortunately they'd formed a studio with a large payroll and before long they were back in the red, fortunately. Then "Time Bandits" became another international smash hit, so the studio had to quickly release films like "Tattoo", "Venom" and "The Burning" just to balance the books. Films like "The Missionary" and "A Private Function" also turned profits, though, so it wasn't until the 1985 film "Water" that the company really succeeded at failing. Wait - no, that's right. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved "Time Bandits" as a kid, that was probably the gateway drug for me to get into Monty Python movies, I'd heard a few sketches on the Dr. Demento show but I wasn't allowed to watch their TV show, and I CERTAINLY wasn't allowed to watch "Life of Brian", because my parents only let me watch Disney movies and films that were approved by the Catholic newspaper in Boston. If they deemed a film sacrilegious, forget about it. But I got to see "Time Bandits", and I watched the hell out of it.  I watched it so much as a teen that I couldn't watch it for maybe 20 years after, I have it on DVD but the shrink-wrap is still on it.  Some films are like that, you've seen them so many times that you have to walk away for a time, right?  Like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark", or "Brazil", those are some of mine. You know every word, every beat, and it's better to leave them be, you can just watch them in your head any time you want. Wait a couple decades and then maybe you can go back. 

We learn in "An Accidental Studio" that the song that closes "Time Bandits", which is called "Dream Away", was written by George Harrison as a secret message to Terry Gilliam, the film's director.  It's a great song, I've loved it since I first heard it, but if you really look at the lyrics, it's the ultimate form of passive-aggressive behavior.  The songwriter, as the film's producer, was telling the director via the lyrics that he wasted too much time and money making the film.  "Greedy feeling wheeling dealing / Losing what you won / See the dream come undone" which is followed by "Lucky you got so far / All you owe is apologies / Measure the mystery and astound / Without taking up time."  Sure, it's a beautiful song about traveling through the centuries, but it's also saying, "Hurry up and finish the film, you god damned hack."

But "Time Bandits" got me to "Brazil" and "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys", also "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", and "A Fish Called Wanda", and so many others. Good times. But anyway, back to HandMade films.  I also watched "Mona Lisa" this past week, that's one of theirs, and so is tomorrow's film "Withnail and I".  I tried to block out the clips from tomorrow's film shown in "An Accidental Studio", because I didn't want to spoil anything.  So I'll fill in those gaps tomorrow. 

By 1986 HandMade had become as much of a boutique distributor as an independent film studio, so some directors were bringing finished films to the studio, while others were seeking financing.  While much of the company was struggling with the disaster that became "Shanghai Surprise", Neil Jordan snuck in there and quietly made "Mona Lisa" on a tiny budget, and damn, but it's a work of genius by comparison.  A couple of American movies like "Five Corners" and "Checking Out" just needed distribution, after being turned down by every other Hollywood studio, and Handmade was happy to scoop them up for their slate.  The studio would go on to have one more minor hit, "How to Get Ahead in Advertising", and one more major hit, "Nuns on the Run", but by this point the writing was on the wall, most of the Pythons had moved on to make movies elsewhere, and the studio was set to close up shop. Mission accomplished, I guess?

George Harrison ended up being the executive producer on 23 films, three of which received Oscar nominations.  Harrison also frequently made cameos in those films, like in "Life of Brian" he was in a crowd scene, and in "Shanghai Surprise" he played a nightclub singer, and in "Water" he played - get this - a guitarist in a band!  In the film "Checking Out" he played a janitor, and you wouldn't even see him if you weren't looking. You can do all this and probably have a fun time, if you're the one funding the whole production.  

The general consensus is that Handmade Films was lucky to stay in business for 11 years - perhaps this is because there was usually more money going out the door than coming in, I'll bet. But this makes me feel a little proud of myself, because I've been managing an independent animation studio for almost 30 years now, and so I'm going to just take a moment tonight and pat myself on the back. Now I've jinxed it, the studio could fold next week.  But still, I've kept it going for nearly three times longer than Handmade Films - apparently our secret is we've never had a huge success, that's the kiss of death apparently. I'm kidding, to a certain degree - I produced one animated feature that was in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance in 1998, that film was called "I Married a Strange Person".  That's a pretty big deal, and three years later I was back at Sundance with a film titled "Mutant Aliens" that was in the Midnight Madness section.  Still counts as a Sundance film.  Now a new feature that I was the studio manager on is called "My Love Affair with Marriage", and it's currently burning up the festival circuit, though I'm no longer employed by the production company that made it. But it's won 9 awards already in France and Norway and Romania, and it played in the Tribeca Festival here in NY.  It's not qualified for the Oscars this year, but maybe next year, we'll see - you better believe I'm putting that film on my resumé. 

Also starring Steve Abbott, George Ayoub, Ralph Brown (last seen in "Gemini Man"), Dick Clement, Ray Cooper, Julian Doyle, Mike Edmonds, Terry Gilliam (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Terry Ilott, Terry Jones, Neil Jordan, Barrie Keeffe, Ian La Frenais, David Leland, Richard Loncraine, Jonathan Lynn, A Martinez, Denis O'Brien, Michael Palin (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Bruce Robinson, Cathy Tyson (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa"), Brenda Vaccaro (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Ernest Vincze, Jonathan Wacks, Stephen Woolley, 

with archive footage of Kenny Baker (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa"), Michael Caine (ditto), Robbie Coltrane (ditto), Jack Purvis (ditto), Alan Bennett, Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jim Carter (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Graham Chapman, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), George Harrison (ditto), Elton John (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Valerie Perrine (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), John Cleese (last heard in "Trolls"), Sean Connery (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Billy Connolly (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Howl"), Bernard Delfont, Malcolm Dixon, Shelley Duvall (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Denholm Elliott (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Gary Farmer, Richard Griffiths (last seen in "About Time"), Ian Holm (last seen in "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells"), Eric Idle, Jon Lord, Joanna Lumley (last seen in "She's Funny That Way") John Mackenzie, Madonna (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Paul McGann, Helen Mirren (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Sean Penn (last seen in "The Gunman"), Pete Postlethwaite (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), David Rappaport, Tiny Ross, Peter Sellers (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Maggie Smith (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Ringo Starr (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Michael Tucker, Craig Warnock, Frank Whaley (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor")

RATING: 7 out of 10 religious protests

Mona Lisa

Year 14, Day 345 - 12/11/22 - Movie #4,295

BEFORE: I've got my BFF Andy staying over for a few days, and usually I would watch a film or two with him, let him in on my process - but that's difficult when the next film on my list is only on HBO Max, and not on HBO On Demand.  Why can't it be in both places?  And what's going on with HBO Max, why do films keep disappearing from that platform before I've had a chance to watch them?  I'm starting to wonder if the giant conglomeration that is HBO/Time Warner/AOL/Warner Bros. really wants me to be able to see movies, or if they're just messing with me.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why some films are available to stream at any given time, and others just aren't.  With the technology we have, and let's assume infinite storage space, why isn't EVERY film available to me at ALL times, not just when it's convenient for the streaming services?  I mean, I'm paying for several different streaming services each month AND premium cable, theoretically the world should be my oyster, and if the next film on my list is suddenly not available anywhere, well then somebody somewhere is losing money, because here I am, willing to pay for it, but where is it?  Doesn't Big Streaming want my money, don't they want me to use their service?  It's a very strange business model, making films available and then taking them away a few months later. 

Bob Hoskins carries over from "Lassiter". 

THE PLOT: A man recently released from prison manages to get a job driving a call girl from customer to customer. 

AFTER: The whole genesis of this film is rooted in the concept that when someone gets out of prison, it might be very hard for them to find an honest job, because who wants to hire an ex-convict?  Most employers might have qualms about this, or have company policies against it, but that former inmate still needs to make a living somehow.  So they might take a job with a less-than-reputable employer, and from there it's a short step to breaking the law yet again. And we wonder why the prison system is overcrowded. 

After seven years in the joint, George tries to make things right with his wife, and also meet the daughter who barley even knows him, but that's a no-go as well. So it's back to his underworld contacts, though the ones he knew before seem to have moved up the chain a bit, and are not hanging out at their old joints. George buys a white rabbit at a pet store, and delivers it to a bar frequented by his old boss Mortwell, and while the old boss has moved on, this does get him work as a driver for Simone, a woman who works as a high-class call girl.  She's got a couple regular customers, but also works the circuit of some mid-range London hotels, and it's handy for her to have a driver who also offers a bit of protection. The problem is, George wears cheap suits and sticks out like a sore thumb in these fancy hotels. He couldn't look more like a pimp, and he's not even trying. 

After some initial friction between the driver and his passenger, they learn to work together and form an uneasy alliance, and George starts to think that maybe there's something there between them. But then after a few fruitless trips to some bridge in London where the cheaper hookers ply their trade, Simone asks for his help in finding Cathy, a teen girl that's somewhere in the system of peep shows and bordellos, who she promised to come back for.  So George starts visiting the seamier parts of London, acting like a client, looking for a blonde named Cathy - but the problem is, any working girl will claim to be named Cathy if that's what the client wants. And the hair color doesn't help either, since any girl can put on a wig. It's a service-based industry, after all. 

George encounters a pimp named Smith, or so he says, but also finds a porn movie that Simone made that co-starred the same guy, only his name's not really Smith, go figure. But George trails him and learns that the real Cathy is one of his girls, but the trail also leads back to his own boss, Mortwell - and Mortwell wants to use Simone to blackmail one of her clients, some rich Arab guy.  Mortwell suspects that Simone does more with him every night than wear lingerie and drink tea, and sure, he's probably right, but poor George is caught in the middle of all of these low-level criminal masterminds. He and Simone take Cathy out of the system, only they don't travel far enough away to matter, they only go to Brighton (only 47 miles south of London, I checked).  

Bob Hoskins got a ton of awards for this film, but lost the Oscar that year to Paul Newman for "The Color of Money".  Still, this may have been the highlight of his career, except of course for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", of which I'm definitely overdue for a re-watch. But then on the other hand, perhaps this film is nothing more than the UK version of "Taxi Driver".  I'm kind of torn on this point. Perhaps I'll have a different perspective on this film after I watch tomorrow's film, which is a documentary about Handmade Films, the studio that made "Mona Lisa", also "Time Bandits", "Monty Python's Life of Brian" and the infamous "Shanghai Surprise". 

Also starring Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Robbie Coltrane (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Clarke Peters (last seen in "Harriet"), Kate Hardie (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Zoe Nathenson, Sammi Davis (last seen in "Four Rooms"), Rod Bedall, Joe Brown, Pauline Melville (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Hossein Karimbeik, John Darling, Raad Rawi (last seen in "Official Secrets"), David Halliwell, Maggie O'Neill (last seen in "Gorillas in the Mist"), Perry Fenwick, Bryan Coleman (last seen in "The Crying Game"), Robert Dorning, with cameos from Kenny Baker (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Jack Purvis. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 light-up Virgin Marys

Lassiter

Year 14, Day 341 - 12/7/22 - Movie #4,294

BEFORE: I'm watching this on late Tuesday/early Wednesday, but I may be a bit late in posting because Wednesday night I have to work at a screening of "Pinocchio" - not the new Disney remake, but the newer Guillermo del Toro stop-motion one. The director's going to be there - actually, both of them, and the co-director I know from one of my past jobs.  Should be a wild evening, and the theater's probably going to be packed. I'll post this as soon as I can, after. 

Jane Seymour carries over from "The War with Grandpa", which was released in 2020 (but filmed in 2017).  Today's film was released in 1984, which means I'm jumping back 36 years in Ms. Seymour's career - I love actors with LONG filmographies, it really makes this a lot easier for me. 

The reason this is on the list is that it was on the HBO Max platform, but just for a brief time.  So I added it to my list there, but then I wasn't able to link to it from "Quigley Down Under", which I watched last year - was it last year?  I want to say last year.  Anyway, this one made it to my list, then got stranded there after I couldn't link to it - and it's not even on HBO Max any more, which means I have to rent it from iTunes for $3.99.  But I'm OK with that, because this film is going to get me closer to Christmas, and hey, now it's off the list - it's very rare that I have to delete something from my list because it's not available anywhere, but I did have to do that with one of my planned Christmas movies this year.  More on that in a couple of weeks. 

THE PLOT: A handsome jewel thief is arrested and in order to avoid prison, must break into the heavily guarded German Embassy to steal millions in diamonds. 

AFTER: Well, I knew there was a reason why I don't dip back into movies from the 1980's very often, it's just too depressing.  Bob Hoskins (who'll be in my next movie, too) died back in 2014, and everybody agreed it was too soon.  Warren Clarke died the same year, and so did Christopher Malcolm, and Ed Lauter the year before - when I go through the IMDB list, it seems like half the cast of this movie is no longer alive.  Tom Selleck is still alive, I know because there are new episodes of "Blue Bloods" airing, but while searching the internet it's easy to find his fake obituary being used as clickbait - sure, you can follow the link to "Dead Celebrities-dot-net", but they phrased the article VERY carefully to not really indicate whether he's alive or dead.  I guess so when he does pass away, they won't have to re-write it?  That's kind of sick, but also genius.  

The other reason is that everyone else is getting older - Jane Seymour and Lauren Hutton have both reached the age where the IMDB graciously doesn't even LIST their birth years, and you have to go to Wikipedia to find out how old they are. (Jane's 71 and Lauren's 79.). We just lost Kirstie Alley at the age of 71, and honestly it kind of feels like every famous woman I had the hots for when I was in my teens is over 60 now.  Brooke Shields is 57, Lynda Carter is 71, Loni Anderson is 77, and it just gets worse from there. Phoebe Cates is 59, do I have to go on?  It's too painful that everybody keeps getting older, but I guess that beats the alternative. 

But I avoided "Lassiter" for 38 years, somehow.  Hey, today's the day, no time like the present - or no time like 1939, when the film takes place.  This was released JUST as Tom Selleck had hit it big on TV as "Magnum, P.I.", but after "High Road to China".  The story is that Selleck was supposed to be cast as Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", but he had to make a choice, it was either Magnum or Indy, and he chose Magnum, which left the role open for Harrison Ford. Selleck later played an Indy-like character in "High Road to China", then followed that up with another period piece, "Lassiter".  Back then it wasn't very easy for movie stars to do TV shows, or for TV stars to make movies, but Selleck crossed over like it wasn't even a problem. (Selleck is back on TV and he's 77 now, but nobody seems to care how old male actors are.) 

"Lassiter" is supposed to be a film about a jewel thief, but there are really only two scenes where he steals anything, one at the beginning and one near the end, and then the entire middle part of the film is him either trying to avoid doing the embassy heist, or talking about how to do the embassy heist - and it's a LONG middle part in a shortish movie.  During this long middle part he gets threatened a lot by the British inspector, cajoled by the U.S. FBI agent, and seduced by the German fraulein with a taste for torture and rough sexplay.  Oh, and he's married, by the way, and his wife keeps threatening to cheat on him, but she never goes through with it.  Lassiter, on the other hand, keeps saying he'll never cheat on his wife, but then of course he does.  He says she would know if he were lying because he'd tell her - yeah, right.

But if he doesn't steal the gems from the German embassy, then the Inspector's going to frame him for some made-up crime and he'll serve 20 years in prison.  Why does the inspector need to make up a crime, if he knows that Lassiter is a thief?  Why not just arrest him for his real crimes?  Ah, but they need to steal those Czech diamonds and keep Hitler from selling them in South America to fund the Nazi military buildup.  OK, sure, let me know how that works out.  

It's important above all to remember that there were NO GOOD Nazis. We don't talk about World War II and say, "There were good people on both sides."  Why do people like Donald Trump and now Kanye West think that they can advance themselves somehow by saying good things about neo-Fascists, or even Hitler?  Who, exactly, are they trying to appeal to?  Saying "I like Hitler" is only going to get you shut down, it's not going to appeal to anyone.  If you admire Hitler even a little bit, it's best to keep that to yourself - and I say this as someone of mostly German descent. If you're out there saying Hitler was great, you might have missed the message somewhere. 

Well, just six more films to go - and five more shifts at the theater - before Christmas break and the end of Movie Year 14.

Also starring Tom Selleck (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Lauren Hutton (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Bob Hoskins (last seen in "Mermaids"), Joe Regalbuto (last seen in "The Goodbye Girl"), Ed Lauter (last seen in "Magic"), Warren Clarke, Edward Peel, Paul Antrim, Christopher Malcolm (last seen in "Reds"), Barrie Houghton, Peter Skellern, Harry Towb (last seen in "Barry Lyndon"), Belinda Mayne (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), W. Morgan Sheppard (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Brian Coburn, Jane Wood (last seen in "Legend"), Tristram Jellinek (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), David Warbeck, Nicholas Bond-Owen, Clive Curtis (last seen in "The Gunman"), George Lane Cooper. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 crazy boxing fans

The War with Grandpa

Year 14, Day 339 - 12/5/22 - Movie #4,293

BEFORE: I know, after seeing what I watched last week, you all probably really want to ask me, "Why the hell is THAT film on your list?"  It's a question I get asked a lot - or I would if I took questions from the audience.  This just looks like a silly, stupid family comedy, though, so why did it even make it to the list?  I'm always thinking about next year's holidays, and there's a little section of my list devoted to possible films for Father's Day.  In that small sub-section there's a film with Christopher Walken ("One More Time"), and two with Robert De Niro ("Being Flynn" and "City by the Sea").  I've got a few De Niro films on the list, but this film would have been the easiest way to link all those Father's Day films together.  I needed to separate this one from the herd, however, to help me link my Thanksgiving films and my Christmas films.  Not to worry, though, there's another film with Christopher Walken in it that links to "Being Flynn" via Dale Dickey.  So since I don't need THIS one THEN, I'm free to watch it now. 

But then why not just come straight here from "Friendsgiving", via Jane Seymour?  Ah, but then I would have arrived here too quickly, and I'd have two empty slots to fill. Sure, I could have filled them easily, but you know, all things in due time.  I'm right on schedule, don't worry. 

Rob Riggle carries over from "True Memoirs of an International Assassin". 

THE PLOT: Upset that he has to give up his bedroom when his grandfather moves in, Peter decides to declare war in an attempt to get it back. 

AFTER: OK, this one COULD have been a lot worse.  It's a movie meant for kids, which means there's a lot of "Home Alone"-style slapstick, physical comedy where De Niro falls down or De Niro gets splatted with ketchup or covered with foam, or worse, he loses his pants (it happens at least twice, and both times the "humor" derives from his character's son-in-law being unlucky enough to view his genitals. Har har.). 

If you can get past all that, which was tough for me but I think I survived, there's the makings of a semi-heartwarming story here, where the kid first views his grandfather as the enemy, the old guy who took over his bedroom, the reason he had to relocate to the attic, and eventually through their conflict they realize they're evenly matched, and even form something akin to a friendship as a result of their pranks on each other.  I think that's a good thing?  Not sure. Then at the VERY end of the film they're back to being adversaries - talk about dropping the ball on the 1-yard line.  

Look, it's great that De Niro is still working - but part of me can't believe he's playing grandfather roles now, instead of aging gangsters.  I mean, sure, the calendar says he's 79 years old (he was 77 when this was released) but part of me still wants to remember him from "Taxi Driver" or "Raging Bull" or "The King of Comedy" or "Midnight Run", and this is the SECOND film he's been in with "Grandpa" in the title, so I should be used to it by now.  And here his character is the father of Uma Thurman's character - didn't they play love interests in "Mad Dog and Glory"?  Just saying. 

It's a bit sad to see him playing a widower, someone who's lived longer than their spouse, and long enough to have his driver's license taken away, forcing him to move in with his daughter and her family.  And there's no time to build a room on to the house, or find him a senior-friendly apartment nearby, or a nursing home, so he's got to take over his grandson's bedroom.  Peter, the grandson, holds his grandfather fully responsible for him having to move to the attic, which for some reason his parents couldn't afford to have carpeted or painted or insulated in any way.  I can see why the kid is pissed, but it's not his grandfather's fault.  It's not like they could SHARE a room.  Wait, why couldn't they share a room?

This turns into a battle between two stubborn individuals, and it's clever youth vs. wise army veteran.  One has combat training, but the other has experience surviving middle school - OK, we'll call that a wash. The kid has experience with electronics, but the grandfather has experience with tools. Another draw, as the grandson changes the ring tone on his grandfather's cell phone, but the grandfather dismantles all of his grandson's furniture with a power drill. There's a dodgeball showdown/throwdown where they can each bring three friends, but even that proves to be a stalemate - the kids are more agile but the seniors are craftier.  But if you told me that someday I'd watch Cheech Marin, Jane Seymour and Christopher Walken bouncing around in a trampoline park, I'd say that would be very strange - maybe some night after eating too many tacos I might dream that? 

There's some kind of a narrative problem here, I want to say it feels like there are too many loose ends that never get connected?  This "war" features some ground rules that get summarily ignored, for example - one rule is "no collateral damage", meaning that they both promise that the war won't hurt the other family members.  But that's what ends up happening, Peter puts a snake in his grandfather's room, for example, and it ends up in his mother's car the next morning.  Depending on the type of snake (I'm not an expert) that could have been very harmful to his mother, thus it's a clear violation of the rules of war, but there are no consequences from this.  

Another disconnect is the way Grandpa shows up to school to handle Peter's bully from the 8th grade. Once again, a Hollywood film shows that it doesn't know how to properly handle the issue of bullies - having a bigger bully show up to bully the bully is not an acceptable solution to the problem.  That's the wrong message to send out to the kids, also, it took place during the war - why would Grandpa want to beat up Peter's bully, when Grandpa was in the middle of his own war with Peter?  It's as if he's saying, "Nobody gets to beat up my grandson, except for me!" which is another bizarre message to put out there in a movie.  Anyway, adults shouldn't be showing up at a middle school to throw bullies into dumpsters.

The grandfather and grandson call a "truce" during Peter's younger sister's birthday party, which for some reason is Christmas-themed.  Sure, kids like Christmas, I get it, but nobody, repeat nobody, throws their kid a Christmas party for their birthday.  For one thing, Christmas decorations aren't usually readily available until after Halloween, but OK, let's assume that the parents went to some year-round Christmas store or found them all on eBay or something.  Still, why would anybody DO this?  It feels more like some screenwriter couldn't decide whether to have the big film climax at a birthday party or a Christmas party and said, "Well, why not do BOTH?"  Because that doesn't happen in real life, that's why.

Still, I'm forced to allow that narrative hiccup today, because it's December for me and it kind of justifies me including the film here and now.  See, the chain knows, the universe knows.  It's still a silly, stupid movie but I'm feeling generous since it's the Christmas season.

Also starring Robert De Niro (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Uma Thurman (last seen in "Motherhood"), Oakes Fegley (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Laura Marano (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Cheech Marin (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Juliocesar Chavez, Isaac Kragten, T.J. McGibbon (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Poppy Gagnon, Lydia Styslinger, Joe Gelchion (last seen in "Escape Plan 2: Hades"), Colin Ford (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Faizon Love (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Rutanya Alda (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Drew Scheid, Veronica Alicino, James Martin Kelly, Joanie Stewart

RATING: 5 out of 10 self-checkout stations

True Memoirs of an International Assassin

Year 14, Day 337 - 12/3/22 - Movie #4,292

BEFORE: OK, I got my glasses fixed today - well, sort of. I broke the left side-piece a few days before Thanksgiving, in the exact same spot where I'd broken them before, so I knew I was going to encounter trouble with my optician. The last time this happened they had to order a whole new set of frames, despite the fact that in my mind it should be an easy fix.  Just order the side-piece, there's a little screw that connects the side piece to the main part of the frame (the one that holds the lenses) and in my mind, it should be an easy fix, maybe $50 tops.  But by ordering the whole frames and switching the lenses over, it costs them more money, and they pass that cost along to me, which pisses me off.  If I drove my car to a garage with a flat tire, they wouldn't make me buy a whole new car, right?  

But the glasses shop claimed they couldn't just buy a side-piece, they had to buy the whole set of frames from the manufacturer. And they couldn't just solder the broken side-piece back together, because nobody does that any more.  I checked in at another glasses shop just to see if somebody else wanted to make a quick $50 by doing a repair, but they wouldn't do it either - which makes me wonder what we've lost as a society, when people aren't serving the customer's needs or trying to save money and time, but instead they adhere to a company policy which nets them a bigger profit on each repair job. Look, I held my glasses together for the last two weeks with a piece of duct tape, and while that wasn't perfect, it did the job. I maintain that when you've got a piece of broken equipment, the main job of fixing it in the simplest way possible should be the main goal, and there's no need to get a whole new pair of glasses when just ONE piece is broken, and anybody with a small enough screwdriver should be able to get the job done.

But I held my tongue - no I didn't, I complained quite loudly about how this store's policy sucked and would cost me four or five times what a simple repair job might cost.  But they wouldn't listen to logic and reason, they only knew ONE way to fix the glasses, by replacing the entire frame.  So I dealt with taped-up specs for two weeks and finally got over to the shop today, where they switched the lenses pretty quickly, and I paid them for the new set of frames.  Then I asked to keep the old, broken frames, and I was really expecting a fight here.  My secret agenda was that if these new glasses should break on the other side, in the same spot, I'd have the old frame that I could salvage for the part.  I was ready to point out that I paid for the new frames, so they're mine, and I paid for the old frames too, so those are also mine.  Since the old frames weren't under warranty any more, they didn't have to return them to the manufacturer, so I walked out of there with the old, broken set.  That's the best I could do, but I know that if the other side ever breaks, it's a cheaper fix, I just need to find someone with a tiny screwdriver. 

I was ready to raise a fuss, however, if they didn't let me keep the old frames - I was ready to call them out on deceptive repair practices and threaten to call the Better Business Bureau, but it didn't come to that, so I managed to keep my cool.  So there's that. 

Andy Garcia carries over from "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar". 

THE PLOT: After a publisher mislabels a writer's debut novel about a deadly assassin as non-fiction, the author finds himself thrust into the world of his lead character and must take on the role of his character for his own survival. 

AFTER: I'm finally going through some tracks, there's still a chance that I could put together a Christmas mix CD this year, before it gets too late.  So I'm previewing tracks tonight - thankfully I keep notes from last year's process, also the year before and the year before that.  So there are always songs that DON'T make the mix for space reasons, but if I was considering them before, those songs may all have some merit.  Some years I just look at the tracks I haven't used yet, and slam a mix together from that.  One track that's funny comes from Richard Cheese, the famous lounge singer who appeared in yesterday's movie playing the hotel lounge singer.  His cover of the song "Last Christmas" is only about 20 seconds long, since after the intro to the song he stops the band and says, "We were going to play our version of "Last Christmas", but that song sucks..." and then it's on to the next song.  

That's about what I was expecting from tonight's movie, I figured that after a few minutes of what looks like a horribly unfunny comedy, I'd have an overwhelming desire to stop the film and just call a mulligan today.  OK, so it's bad, but it's not THAT bad - I did manage to make it all the way through, and the saving grace here is that I'll never, ever have to watch it again.  What a time-saver!  It's somewhat reminiscent of "The Lost City", in the sense that it's also about an author who's an expert on many things, but mostly in theory.  Writers write, after all, and they do that from the comfort of their desk, and these days even research is done mostly online, so writers, for the most part, aren't DOERS.  Both this film and "The Lost City" follow the same premise, where the writer is abducted (for reasons) and then is forced to live out a scenario that very much resembles one of their books.  For some reason, I want to imagine what would happen if Stephen King suddenly had to deal with a demon or a ghost or something supernatural - sure, he's probably KNOW what to do, even though he'd made all that other stuff up.  But it would be weird. 

Sam Larson is an author who's got a friend that tells him stories about the spy game, and after a question about jumping from a helicopter, off-hand mentions some legendary agent called "The Ghost" who supposedly did that and survived somehow.  But this friend (who's obviously a former CIA agent himself, I don't know why it took Sam so long to realize this) says this stuff shouldn't go into Sam's book, so of course he writes about it all, after just changing a few minor details. So when his online publisher adds the word "True" to his title, and makes it available for download as "non-fiction", someone out there puts two and two together, and figures out that Sam must be the legendary agent "The Ghost", and he's abducted to help plan a military coup in Venezuela.  

(Sam almost has a James Frey-like confession in an interview with Katie Couric, but he bolts and runs away from the interview, which keeps the mystery alive, story-wise.  But it's a huge narrative cop-out, because in this sneaky scenario the events in the book are both true and untrue, and the author who made everything up and the publisher who mislabeled the book never have to atone for their sins.  In real life the author would be exposed as a fraud and the book sales would suffer as a result, conveniently here that doesn't happen, because the storyline needs to be advanced due to the resulting confusion.)

If I'm being honest, there's a lot about this film that seems very lazy - the fact that pudgy actor Kevin James is cast in an action role, for example.  Obviously this is not a guy who works out, and he (the actor AND the character) is thrust into a combat role, and there's a disconnect there that nobody seems willing to point out.  Look, I'm a stocky guy myself, I hate exercising and I enjoy being out of shape just a bit too much, but I don't pretend that I'm somebody I'm not and go out and run marathons.  Asking me to accept a reality where a guy of this size fights soldiers and makes his way through the jungle without sweating up a storm is a bit too much, all across the board. I'd love to hear the story, was this written for another actor who might be more believable in the part, and then that actor dropped out? 

Plus, it's yet ANOTHER example of a screenplay written about a writer, who's having difficulty writing something.  I'm going to try to remember to add all of these up at the end of the year, I feel like I've watched at least a dozen films like that in 2022. Again, it's lazy, lazy, lazy, that a screenwriter thought that the most interesting thing he could offer was about a writer trying to write something - which usually isn't very cinematic AT ALL.  But they cheat again here, because as the writer is writing his book, we see those scenes play out as if they're a movie - admittedly it's more interesting than looking at words on paper, but it's a changeable story-within-the-story that can be rewound, fixed, edited, etc. Cheating on a grand scale, but even this degree of cinematic short-cutting couldn't produce something very interesting in the end. 

The writer-turned-action hero finds himself in the middle of a triangle of Venezuelan honchos, the gangster, the guerrilla leader and El Presidente.  After numerous abductions and having to "prove" his identity as The Ghost over and over, the writer offers to kill the President for the guerrilla leader, then offers to kill the gangster for the President, and then I think he's also hired by the gangster to kill the guerrilla leader - this is extremely confusing, to say the least.  Geez, why these characters don't just kill each other is beyond me, it sure would save everybody a lot of time and effort, myself included.  (There's another HUGE shortcut used to determine one of these three characters, but I won't mention it here, no spoilers.)

There's also a rogue DEA agent, who's also a beautiful woman and ends up doing most of the hand-to-hand fighting (since it would be too unbelievable to leave this to Kevin James' character) and you just know she's going to end up falling for the writer in the end, and this also fails to come across as credible.  Who knows, maybe she's a broken person who digs overweight writers, I don't know. 

I hate to hit a low point so late in the year - this film makes me want to think that with only 9 slots left in Movie Year 14, I should be making better choices.  Big picture time, though, it's worth burning this one off tonight if it gets me closer to ending the year the way I want to end it.  It hurts, but I'm taking one for the team so I can get closer to Christmas movies.  Wait, this movie came out in 2016?  It's been on Netflix for SIX years?  How long has it been on my freaking list?  Now I'm glad I watched it tonight, it's been hanging around for WAY too long - at least it served a purpose by acting as a connector...

Also starring Kevin James (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Zulay Henao, Maurice Compte (last seen in "End of Watch"), Kelen Coleman, Andrew Howard (last seen in "Tenet"), Ron Rifkin (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Rob Riggle (last seen in "Opening Night"), Leonard Earl Howze (last seen in "The Lone Ranger"), Yul Vazquez (last seen in "The Phenom"), Kim Coates (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Emilie Ullerup, Lauren Shaw, Jeff Chase (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Katie Couric (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Gabriel Rodriguez, Al Hamacher (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Daniel Zacapa (last seen in "Masterminds"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 80's songs sung in Spanish

Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Year 14, Day 335 - 12/1/22 - Movie #4,291

BEFORE: Well, November was only 15 films long, and here's the format breakdown:

6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Disturbia, The Lost City, Here Today, The Good German, Hit and Run, The Turkey Bowl

2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Matrix Resurrections, Kajillionaire

5 watched on Netflix: The Unforgivable. The Guilty, The Starling, Don't Look Up, Friendsgiving

1 watched on Hulu: The Bob's Burgers Movie

1 watched on a random site: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

15 TOTAL

We returned from Thanksgiving five days ago, after an eight-hour drive back from Massachusetts that has seriously made me re-consider Christmas plans - I don't want to get stuck in holiday traffic for that long again.  The last two years we just stayed at home on Christmas and made lasagna, can't we just do that again?  Last year we shopped at an outlet mall like three days after Christmas, and that was a fantastic thing to do, why can't we do that again, too?  We can mail gifts that arrive late, that's acceptable, or we can order things on Amazon and they can arrive after New Year's, can that be OK like it was last time?  Look, I'm behind the 8-ball here, it's December 1 and I haven't even had a chance to THINK about making a Christmas music mix this year.  Usually by now I'm tweeting out YouTube song links, once per day as a sort of musical Advent calendar, if I want to do that again I've got to pick songs this weekend - I've just been way too busy at the theater. 

Fortune Feimster carries over from "Friendsgiving", and this final little stretch of 10 films in December is a very mixed-up bunch, there are some sort-of new comedies and some classic British "arty" films, plus one documentary that didn't fit into my summer Rock & Doc Block, but I assure you that this plan ends with a Christmas story or two.  My excuse is that by now I've watched 96% of my films for the year, and all the various choices I've made along the way have compounded to result in THIS BATCH of films being the best way to get to a Christmas theme, I've sort of painted myself into a corner, but I left just one tiny little way for me to get out of it. Without getting into set theory and probabilities and trying to decide who more deserves to make the year-end wrap-up list, Michael Caine or Richard E. Grant, let's just say that this is the way, and once I found the way, I didn't need to look for another way. OK?

THE PLOT: Friends Barb and Star embark on the adventure of a lifetime when they decide to leave their small Midwestern town for the first time ever. 

AFTER: Well, this sure was a weird one - I know, I probably say that a lot.  It's been a weird year for movies, and that was before watching the movie about Weird Al. I'll probably have a lot to say about weird movies in my year end wrap-up, since I watched everything from "Willy's Wonderland" to "Kajillionaire" during this lap around the sun, and eventually I'll have to account for everything from a Bruce Willis marathon to "House of Gucci". And for every "Encanto" there was also a "Vivo", for every "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" there was a "Ron's Gone Wrong".  There's probably some form of balance there, in the end. 

But let's put "Barb & Star" up against that Weird Al Yankovic movie, just for another second.  The Weird Al "biopic" was never meant to be taken seriously, it worked as a parody of other biopics, it didn't even TRY to get the facts right about Al's life, and that's both hilariously ironic and also ironically hilarious. By contrast, "Barb & Star" takes itself WAY too seriously, or it doesn't go far enough into comedy, or perhaps it just doesn't know what it wants to be.  It's a buddy comedy, a travel comedy, a fish-out-of-water story with two Midwestern middle-age women going to Florida and being very clueless about everything. It's a character piece, maybe it feels a bit like a story about two characters who were pitched as an SNL skit, only the skit goes nowhere in the end.

But then the film throws in another plot, about an albino villainess trying to destroy the city of Vista Del Mar, for a slight she suffered as a teen during the city's Seafood Jam event.  This character is ALSO played by Kristen Wiig, so the film suddenly feels like a re-tread of "Austin Powers", with one actor playing both the hero and the main villain.  Somehow she's manage to bio-engineer deadly mosquitoes, but I'm thinking Florida probably already had those, didn't they?  Oh, wait, these explode or something. Great, like we need something else beyond killer bees and murder hornets. This character, Sharon Fisherman, sends her henchman to this Florida seaside resort town to unleash the deadly insects, with the promise that she'll be his girlfriend once the job is done.  If the mosquitoes don't kill him, that is - I guess he didn't really think this one through?

But Edgar, this henchman/boyfriend of the evil villain encounters Barb & Star, who are visiting Florida after losing their jobs at Jennifer Convertibles. The furniture chain went out of business seven months prior and forgot to close the store they worked at - this throwaway gag was, I thought, the funniest line in the whole film.  (I checked - in reality, the chain did get sold in 2020, but it had filed for bankruptcy once before, in 2010, and got in trouble for deceptive business practices back in 2004 and several years after that...). Edgar shares a giant drink bowl with the two women at the bar, and they all wake up in bed together.  Because Florida, I guess. 

The friendship between Barb & Star is tested by this love triangle with Edgar, but he gravitates more toward Star (I guess because she looks so much like his boss?) while Barb goes on her own journey of post-divorce self-discovery, riding on ATVs and playing in drum circles and going on hikes.  Look, I'm glad these women are getting their act together and living their lives, but so freaking what?

Meanwhile, Edgar has managed to lose the microchip for the homing beacon for the mosquitoes, so another agent, one who doesn't seem to understand anything about hiding his identity, and who keeps accidentally giving out his name or his home address, appears on the scene to deliver another chip.  This character's not funny at all, unfortunately, but he's one of several.  Andy Garcia as a weirdly knowledgable or psychic shaman character isn't funny either. 

The only other saving grace here is seeing Mark Jonathan Davis, also known as Richard Cheese, head of the band Lounge Against the Machine, appear several times as the main singer at the Vista Del Mar Hotel.  I get that he can't sing any of the lounge covers of hard rock songs that he's famous for (Yeah, I own all of his albums, and I've seen him in concert four times) but his immense talent is wasted here since he's only allowed to sing original songs like "I Love Boobies".  Still, it's great to see him working again after his eye surgery.    

The rest of the time, I just couldn't really figure out where this movie was coming from, or what it was trying to say.  Maybe it could have accomplished more if the story wasn't firing in ten different directions at any given time. 

Also starring Kristen Wiig (last seen in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "The Boss"), Jamie Dornan (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Damon Wayans Jr. (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Kwame Patterson, Reyn Doi, Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween"), Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Rose Abdoo (also carrying over from "Friendsgiving"), Phyllis Smith (last seen in "Butter"), Mark Jonathan Davis (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Karen Maruyama (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Jayde Martinez, Tom Lenk (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Hank Rogerson (last seeni n "Running With the Devil"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Geostorm"), Reba McEntire (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Ian Gomez (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Patrick Bristow, Jordan Black (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Rachel Ramras, Gerry Bednob (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Elizabeth Kelly, Arina Gancicova, Avi Rothman (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), and the voice of Josh Robert Thompson.

RATING: 4 out of 10 topics at Talking Club