1978 gave the world DAWN OF THE DEAD, one of the greatest horror movies ever, but that same year also brought HOUSE OF THE DEAD, which only shares three words of a four-word title and absolutely none of the more famous film’s virtues.
Also unknown by a variety of titles (including ALIEN ZONE), HOUSE OF THE DEAD is an anthology movie, framed by the story of an adulterer who seeks refuge from a rainstorm in a mortuary, whose proprietor shares four stories of unfortunate souls who currently occupy coffins there. TALES FROM THE HOOD (1995) has pretty much the same set-up, but that one is entertaining and this one is mulch.
It’s cool to note that HOUSE OF THE DEAD is the first film we’ve covered on the podcast that was made by a female director, although it would be a happier note if the movie were any good. This is arguably the worst one we’ve covered so far: GHOST HOUSE and THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE are in striking distance of that dubious honor but since the former has a murderous skeleton and the latter has Pam Grier (if only for a moment), I think HOUSE OF THE DEAD pulls into the lead for having absolutely zero cool things. I have faith in us to find something even more horrendous to cover, but it may be a while. We’re not technically a bad-movie podcast; a couple gems have snuck in there already and more are coming up.
On this episode we were joined by Daily Grindhouse editor-in-chief Paul Freitag-Fey, who is a tremendous writer and someone who knows even more about bad movies than I do. (Actually Joe and Freeman do also, which is why I enjoy doing this podcast so much! I always learn something new.) I can’t recommend watching the movie but I can highly recommend listening to our conversation about it, because we had a lot of fun and I think it’ll be contagious.
So now that I’ve posted this episode I’m all caught up for now. We record a new episode next week, so you’re all set to spend all weekend listening to whichever ones you haven’t heard yet! Here are all of our previous episodes:
M. Night Shyamalan, the kinda-sorta auteurist filmmaker who rocketed to above-the-title fame with a couple movies only to struggle critically over the tail end of the past decade, has a new movie coming out this summer. It’s called AFTER EARTH and it stars Will Smith, one of the last dependable movie stars, and his son Jaden. The movie is a sci-fi epic about a father and son who return to Earth in the deep future, long after the planet has been abandoned by humanity. I included AFTER EARTH on my list of 2013’s potentially strangest movies, which is totally a dick move on my part. I mean, how much have I done with MY life to be sitting here taking cheap shots? At least this guy is out there making movies, and making them with some of the world’s hugest stars. In my heart, I’m really not a so-called hater.
Quite the contrary in this case, in fact. I think there’s a particular angst for movie lovers when we start following a talented filmmaker who then makes a severe right turn down the off-roads of unfulfilled or squandered promise. It happened to me with Kevin Smith, for example, a witty, bold, and perceptive writer who I always hoped would take an interest in learning what to do with a camera, but it turned out he’d rather pursue other interests besides visual storytelling. By contrast, Shyamalan never had a problem being cinematic, but he certainly grew overly enamored of certain tics that precluded concise and coherent films. I would have liked to remain a fan, but at a certain point I had to decide that I didn’t want to follow these guys up their own asses.
So here’s a chronicle of me falling in love with another man’s talent, and then rapidly falling out of it. I wrote most of this piece back in 2008 but unfortunately my mind hasn’t much changed since then.
NOTE: This will not include anything Shyamalan did before THESIXTHSENSE,because I haven’t seen any of that stuff. I’m most interested in the Shyamalan of self-created myth & legend, the Shyamalan we have come to know in the past decade, the one who – like a young Bruce Wayne in his study who looked up at a bat and gained an instant career direction – looked up at the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK poster in his office and asked himself why he wasn’t making those kind of movies. That is the filmography I will be talking about here.
I also won’t be talking about anything after THE HAPPENING, for reasons that may soon enough become apparent.
THE SIXTH SENSE (1999) – This one came out of nowhere in the summer of 1999 and blew most people’s minds. It was a ghost story with the emphasis on story. The dramatic twist near the end actually deepens the experience, and it doesn’t hurt that it makes you want to re-watch the movie with the twist now in mind. This is an extremely solid movie about faith and the after-life and how those intersect and overlap. Is it maybe even good enough to one day sit on a shelf alongside another one of the director’s inspirations, THE EXORCIST? That may be going a little far. But it does serve as an answer to the most vehement haters, the ones who, burned by his later films, have rechristened him F. Night Shyamalan:
Anybody wondering why they still allow this guy to make movies should re-watch THE SIXTH SENSE. It was a massive financial success achieved with an actually good movie. The people who make the decisions are no doubt optimistic that one day, this guy will do that again. (So am I, for the record.)
But the movie itself does indeed hold up to revisiting. To prospective screenwriters like myself, I also recommend reading it in script form, if you can track that down, because it’s still just as affecting on the page. This movie is so solid that it has a good performance by Donnie Wahlberg. That’s directing, son.
The truth is that Shyamalan’s filmmaking talent is very real. Every movie he has made since THE SIXTH SENSE has contained varying degrees of that copious cinematic talent. Key word: “varying.” It’s why his filmography is so frustrating. He wouldn’t be so widely discussed if he wasn’t so capable.
UNBREAKABLE (2000) – I loved this one when it was first released. Saw it twice theatrically and a couple more times on DVD. So I hope that earns me enough leeway to suggest that it does not really hold up viscerally eight years later. It’s slow as a turtle attempting to moonwalk. Okay, hang on–
Here’s a rule: You can’t make a movie that’s more boring than real life. You just can’t. It’s why — to take a random and unrelated example — BROKEN FLOWERS was so disappointing to me. No matter how much Bill Murray you pour into a movie, you can’t slow a story down so much that you leave out the space for narrative.
Anyway, that’s why Shyamalan’s “deliberate” pacing falls so often flat. It also plays into the cardinal mistake Shyamalan likes to make of turning lighthearted subject matter — in this case superheroes — into a somber and ponderous suite of melancholy. It’s true that comic books themselves have been doing this for years, and now comic book movies are doing it too, so Shyamalan can’t be entirely faulted there. In a way, he was ahead of the curve.
On an intellectual level, UNBREAKABLE still works. It’s an interesting approach to the standard superhero/supervillain origin story. I just don’t want to rewatch it ever again. Unless…
You know what would solve all its problems? If the once-rumored sequel were to actually happen. Because as it stands now, UNBREAKABLE feels like the longest first act ever. I would definitely be curious as to what happens in the second UNBREAKABLE movie if it ever happened, especially since the second act is traditionally where the majority of the actual story takes place. UNBREAKABLE doesn’t add up to much without its MR. GLASS STRIKES BACK.
SIGNS (2002) – Forget the fact that it’s kind of impossible to look at Mel Gibson anymore without off-the-screen baggage. He’s fine in the movie, really. It’s the movie itself that’s the problem. This is where the storytelling problems infecting Shyamalan’s arsenal start to rear up violently. Shyamalan’s technical skill is still crazy-impressive – every scene where those aliens appear (or don’t) is freaky and great.
It’s the other stuff that just plain doesn’t add up in a coherent way — first and foremost that ending — and there’s been enough cyber-ink spilled on the subject for me to not bother to add to it. But the movie still made tons of money, and enough people still inexplicably say they like it, which is no doubt precisely how the first out-and-out blunder came to pass.
THE VILLAGE (2004) – Or as I call it affectionately: Cinematic blue-balls.
There’s nothing wrong with the original premise – colonial village is surrounded on all sides by a thick forest and maintaining an uneasy truce with the horrible monsters who live there – in fact that’s a great goddamn premise! And the way those red-cloaked spiny creatures are set up is chilling. Even knowing how things turned out, I still get chills thinking of their first couple appearances in the movie, and trust me, I don’t scare easy at movies. The first half of THE VILLAGE does the tough part and brings the fear.
So why completely subvert it for a corny twist ending? I’ll tell you how I figured out the twist after the first five minutes of the movie: “Okay, colonial village, bunch of musty old white people, how are they going to work in a role for the director, a modern-sounding East Indian guy, AHA! – it’s actually set in the present day!” And sure enough, there he was, and so it was. Sorry to ruin the movie, but you’d be a lot happier if you turned it off at the hour-mark anyway.
LADY IN THE WATER (2006) – Even worse, somehow. Massive folly. Near-unbelievable, but I didn’t see it alone, so I know for a fact it really happened.
Reading Shyamalan print interviews is one of my guilty pleasures. I’m just fascinated by how someone so smart and talented can so often be so misguided. I may risk sounding like an asshole to say so, but I truly find it illuminating. For a while there, Shyamalan was fond of defending his work by questioning why so many people criticize him and not his movies. Seems to me that one way to avoid that is to take a break from casting yourself in your movies. Right? Kind of hard to separate the two when, in this case, you’re playing the pivotal role of the man who will write the book that will change the world, even though it will mean he will die a martyr. And you can’t be so naive as to think that notebook-toting, detail-oriented professional film critics won’t pick up on the fact that the only character to meet a gruesome death, in an entire movie about the act of storytelling itself, is the cranky film critic.
The same way that you can’t complain about the way that people are always trying to figure out the twist endings of your movies when you keep putting twist endings in your movies. Right?
I particularly liked how the title character spent very close to the entire running time curled up in the shower. That was exciting.
And Paul Giamatti had the speech impediment coming and going, and that Latino dude with the fucked-up arm… (Now I’m getting confused again.) The wolf made of grass was pretty cool though. (Was I high?) Wikipedia tells me there was in fact a grass-wolf. It was called a “scrunt,” which really isn’t a great word to have in what was intended as a children’s movie.
THE HAPPENING (2008) – Okay. Okay.
It’s starting to become apparent that the director may no longer be interested in suspenseful stories about the supernatural, and has in fact now evolved into the maker of really, really weird comedies.
If you go into THE HAPPENING in this spirit, you will not be disappointed. If you are looking for a creepy edge-of-the-seater, you surely will. Without giving anything important away (I want to leave the half-hearted yet still insane ultimate revelation to the bravest among you), here are some reasons why I enjoyed THE HAPPENING:
“Filbert.” Let me explain: The main characters are fleeing Philadelphia on a railroad train, which inexplicably stops. Someone ducks their head away from the window, and the name of the town in which they are now stranded is revealed: Filbert. FILBERT! Duh-duh-duhhhhh! No, God, please, no, not… Filbert! Filbert! Dooooom! I don’t even care whether or not I’m the only one who laughed at that, because it’s still funny to me. Fucking Filbert, man.
I was NOT, however, the only one who laughed when the construction workers started walking off the building. Everyone in my theater laughed at that. It’s mostly because the plummeting crazies are played by dummies. And if we learned anything from The Three Stooges and Saturday Night Live, it’s that dummies are the greatest of all comedy props.
I don’t know who in all of Hollywood I would cast as a science teacher and a math teacher, respectively, but Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo are not they. Likable and down-to-earth actors both, but far better casting for, say, the cranky gym coach and the wisecracking AV teacher. They do their best, but the dialogue they are given does them no favors.
I swear a couple times Shyamalan cuts away from the action to a reaction shot of Zooey Deschanel and it looks like she’s trying to suppress a crack-up. Shyamalan may not have noticed, but I’m sure I did.
Intentional laughs are in the movie for sure, to the point where it’s almost confusing when it happens – stay tuned for the scene where Wahlberg tries to relate on a personal level to a plastic plant. Expertly written and played, and I’m not being sarcastic at all.
Far and away Shyamalan’s best and most hilarious cameo in all of his movies to date happens in THE HAPPENING. If you end up going, please stay for the credits to see what role he played. It’s just got to be a joke. But one of those jokes that only the one making it gets; you know that kind.
The Lion Scene! Oh man, the lion scene. The lion scene is a horror-comedy classic of which an EVIL DEAD 2-era Sam Raimi would be chainsaw-wieldingly envious. Soon to be a YouTube staple, guaranteed.
So if you’re looking for scary, this is not your territory. Watch the news instead. But if you’re a certain kind of moviegoer in a certain kind of mood, grab a couple like-minded buddies and Mystery-Science-Theater away.
Now, I skipped Shyamalan’s 2010 movie, THE LAST AIRBENDER, because I didn’t think my brain could handle all the fart jokes I was destined to make about that title. By every last account (except probably Shyamalan’s), I made the correct decision. But I’m curious about AFTER EARTH. Did the nasty thrashing he got over his last couple flicks make Shyamalan reconsider some of his more over-used quirks? Does the presence of Will Smith, one of the most infallible choosers of successful projects of the last decade-and-a-half, suggest that Shammy has reclaimed his earlier mojo? The AFTER EARTH trailer does not look overtly comical. It’s somewhat well paced, and more importantly, it has hordes of monkeys in it. That’s not any guarantee I’ll be able to stay away.
In the realm of faceless people writing about movies from the safety of the internet, I like to think I’m one of the more reasonable you’ll find. But I could be wrong. (See?) It’s a point that’s come up before, but it bears repeating: Unlike most people who write about movies online, I’ve spent A LOT of time working in all corners of the film and television industries in virtually every position there is. I know well how hard people work, around the clock, to bring every show to an audience. I try not to take that hard-earned knowledge lightly. Besides, I have friends who still work in film and TV, and I’m not even all the way out myself. I try mighty hard not to put anything on a computer screen that I don’t feel ready to say to someone’s face. On top of all of that, I grew up with movies. I love this stuff as much now as I did when I was young — if not more. It doesn’t make me happy to be unkind. I’m in this to share my enthusiasm, plain and simple.
All of that said, and try as I might, it’s way harder to find new ways to be nice. It’s certainly harder to be funny that way. And sometimes, a movie is put in front of me about which I just can’t find much nice to say and still remain honest.
If the new sci-fi horror flick Legion is to be believed, God is a woman. We get a brief glimpse into Heaven late in the film, and it looks like a Calvin Klein perfume ad, complete with blue-eyed, white-winged angel men who speak in soft British accents. Not only is that the kind of scene She seems to be into, but God is also as prone to decisions based on rash emotional reactions as any mortal woman can be, only to [spoiler alert!] ultimately change her mind and be willing to make up after the outburst.
See, Legion is about God losing faith in humanity, and sending an army of angels to wipe us off the face of the planet. You wouldn’t think God could be so flighty as to make such a momentous decision and then take it back, but this isn’t a movie for the literal-minded. The guy sitting behind me leaned over to his companion and whispered, “God wouldn’t do that,” and I guess he’d know, so if you’re super-religious you may want to skip this movie. It’s not based in reality.
What it is largely based on, instead, is other movies. In particular, Legion writer/director Scott Stewart should look out for James Cameron, because they’re both out on the promotional trail right now and Legion borrows very heavily from the Terminator movies (among many, many others). Dude, if Cameron finds you, you better hope he’s flattered. When renegade angel Michael touches down in an alleyway, it’s not wrong to expect that he’s a T-800 or T-1000. He’s not though, as we learn when he hacks off his wings. (Think those might have come in handy later on, bud?) Michael is not played by John Travolta, as fans of garbage ‘90s comedies might fairly expect – instead, he’s played by Paul Bettany, who’s always reminded me of Neil Patrick Harris if he loved girls more than showtunes, or the guy from Coldplay if if he loved girls more than showtunes (ha ha!). Bettany is by far the best thing about the movie; he’s a convincingly unsentimental and competent action lead.
Legion also sports a fairly impressive supporting cast, all of them saddled with thankless roles that are thoroughly standard for the many genres that Legion encapsulates – horror, action, disaster movie, etc. There’s the spiritually adrift young waitress whose pregnancy may be the key to the whole future of humankind (played by Adrianne Palicki with an accent that disappears during her first scene and only occasionally returns.) There’s the meek young mechanic (Lucas Black) who loves her without getting any return on that investment, who unsurprisingly will be called on to prove himself before story’s end. That character’s name is Jeep, which sounds like something Sarah Palin would come up with. But no, Jeep’s dad is none other than Dennis Quaid, who’s way too good to have to be playing this many stereotypes at the same time – he’s a grouchy diner owner who’s developed a problem with booze after a ruined relationship and a troubled business. He’s lost his faith: can he regain it in time? Can I write movie tag lines?
There’s also the God-fearing dishwasher who recognizes the spiritual implications of what’s happened right away – and says he knew it was coming! If that wasn’t standard enough, this guy even has a hook where his left arm should be. Did you guess that he’s a black guy? Of course he is! Welcome to the Cliché Diner, hope you survive the visit! This character is played by Charles S. Dutton, another strong actor who I would have thought was beyond roles like this, but I guess since he’s done it a hundred times now, there’s no one better qualified to play them. Also, because a movie with this much going on can’t have just one black guy to kill off before all the other white characters (spoiler!), Tyrese Gibson is in the movie too. He plays a mysterious young brother who is involved in a custody battle and who keeps a gun on him at all times. In a stroke of inspiration, this character is from Vegas, not South Central. See, don’t think you can predict this movie.
Finally, there’s an uptight family of white people who are stranded at Quaid’s diner in the middle of nowhere because something went wrong with their Mercedes. These people are played by Jon Tenney (a well-known stage actor who I didn’t even realize was in this movie until I checked IMDB just now to write this article), Kate Walsh (that great-looking red-headed broad from Grey’s Anatomy who I would have thought was too big a TV star to have such a waste of a role in a genre movie), and some girl named Willa Holland as their teenage daughter. Don’t worry about that character; the screenwriters didn’t. (It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie character written out of a movie off-screen.)
On the side of the bad guys, there’s Kevin Durand, a great character actor (from Lost, among other things), who is thoroughly wasted as the “evil” angel leading the extermination effort. Durand deserves better roles, although at least here all he has to deal with are giant wings and a fruity accent – at least they didn’t stick him in an unconvincing fat suit like that abominable Wolverine movie did. There’s also Doug Jones (Abe Sapien!) as an evil ice cream man, whose evil power is to make his jaw get really, really low, like Jim Carrey in The Mask. Look out! It’s Giantjaw! Don’t let him…. breathe on you, I guess. (There’s not much to be afraid of here, there’s not a single supernatural heaven-sent villain in this flick who can’t be easily mowed down with tons of bullets.) There’s also that potty-mouthed old lady from the trailers. She’s probably the most fun part of the movie, and definitely the first and last point where you feel like the main characters are in danger from anything other than their own clumsiness and stupidity.
Legion plays pretty much how you’d expect, right down to the letter. The best part is the way that the bad guys attack the diner where the good guys are holed up, and then after being shot at for a while, retreat so that the good guys have enough time to talk amongst themselves. I’m glad I don’t play drinking games, because if I had to drink every time one character solemnly recounts their backstory to another in over-dramatic exposition… well then I’d be Dennis Quaid’s character. (Maybe that’s what Quaid was doing on set to keep it fun!) My single favorite getting-to-know-you moment belongs to Tyrese and it begins like so: “When I was a shorty…”
I’m hitting Legion pretty hard with the sarcasm hammer, but I actually had a great time watching it. With a packed theater, it was not at all a waste of time. The crowd I was with hollered at all the expected moments and at a lot more of the unexpected ones. It’s always fun when an audience takes a movie in the spirit it deserves, and just goes with it. (Except for the aforementioned guy who thought the Lord was acting out of character.) Nobody expected this to be a serious drama with important ideas, nobody expected artistry or poetry, and nobody expected it to even be as good as the movies it awkwardly imitates (Terminator, Terminator 2, Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight). When faced with such mediocrity, you can either whoop it up or get pissed off, and that second option is better left to JC. That’s James Cameron, not… you know.
Or maybe I’m just in a good mood because Taimak was in the theater with us at my screening. You know, Taimak = the man who played Leroy Green, a.k.a. Bruce Leroy, in Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon. If you’ve been paying occasional attention to anything I’ve said ever, you may have picked up on my overwhelming love for The Last Dragon. It’s no lost classic but it’s an energetic, entirely unpretentious movie with a good heart and a better soundtrack. When Legion got too formulaic and predictable to bear, I had a great time trying to imagine what thoughts were running through Taimak’s head as he watched the same movie. Was he, too, comparing it to the anything-goes bizarre excellence of The Last Dragon? Was he, too, imagining how he would play the Bettany role, or even imagining how the movie would be improved by the literal return of Bruce Leroy? (It sure couldn’t have hurt!) Was he, too, wondering how Bruce Leroy would fare in battle against the armies of Heaven?
A far, far better movie Legion could have been were it to have answered any of those questions. For me, anyway.
In the realm of faceless people writing about movies from the safety of the internet, I like to think I’m one of the more reasonable you’ll find. But I could be wrong. (See?) It’s a point that’s come up before, but it bears repeating: Unlike most people who write about movies online, I’ve spent A LOT of time working in all corners of the film and television industries in virtually every position there is. I know well how hard people work, around the clock, to bring every show to an audience. I try not to take that hard-earned knowledge lightly. Besides, I have friends who still work in film and TV, and I’m not even all the way out myself. I try mighty hard not to put anything on a computer screen that I don’t feel ready to say to someone’s face. On top of all of that, I grew up with movies. I love this stuff as much now as I did when I was young — if not more. It doesn’t make me happy to be unkind. I’m in this to share my enthusiasm, plain and simple.
All of that said, and try as I might, it’s way harder to find new ways to be nice. It’s certainly harder to be funny that way. And sometimes, a movie is put in front of me about which I just can’t find much nice to say and still remain honest.
These are the movies that forced me to be unkind.
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From July 20th, 2010:
Cop Out stumbles into stores on DVD today. In case you are still harboring any interest in spending your valuable time with one of the laziest, crappiest movies of the year, I urge you to do just about anything else. I hated being so mean about it, because I know how hard it is to get a movie made. Then again, I don’t think anyone involved tried all that hard at all, and I paid to see this one. So until I get my twelve bucks back, I reserve the right to complain.
Here’s my appraisal of this sorry mess:
Cop Out isn’t Kevin Smith’s worst movie, for those who are keeping track. His worst movie remains Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, that celebrity-studded, laugh-free, self-absorbed in-joke of a movie. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back is about as funny as Scary Movie, or Epic Movie, or Disaster Movie, or any of those other lazy parody parades – but at least those other junkers tend to reference movies that most everyone has seen. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back expects that you’ve seen low-budget critical favorites like Clerks and Chasing Amy, which could reasonably be considered to be an arrogant assumption on the part of its makers.
Cop Out isn’t quite as bad as that. Cop Out at least had the good sense to cast action-movie veteran Bruce Willis and comedy savant Tracy Morgan, rather than the line-mangling Jason Mewes and an endlessly mugging Kevin Smith (nepotism!), but in this case the improvement is only marginal. Bruce Willis looks drowsy, bored, and even a little sickly throughout the movie. He looks like he’s stuck on line at the bank, just waiting to pick up his paycheck, and some loud fat lady in front of him keeps making a lot of noise to the manager. Meanwhile, Tracy Morgan is that loud fat lady. He shouts every last one of his lines and shows very little of the self-awareness and charm that his fans (myself included) have come to expect.
Cop Out is a buddy-cop comedy, intended to have the charisma and care-free fun of the 1980s cop movies that made the genre so popular. Kevin Smith directed the movie, but he didn’t write it. That’s kind of like inviting Alex Rodriguez up to the mike to do stand-up comedy. Kevin Smith is a talented writer who very possibly could have come up with a fun buddy-cop story. What Kevin Smith does not have is the sense of visual stamina or momentum that the genre needs (nor does his longtime DP Dave Klein). What Kevin Smith could also have used is a sense of history – or do I really need to point out that the reason why those ‘80s cop flicks were so great is because they started with solid scripts and energetic participants? Always remember that 48 Hours was written by Walter Hill, that Lethal Weapon was written by Shane Black, that Fletch was written by Andrew Bergman (Blazing Saddles), that Beverly Hills Cop starred Eddie Murphy at the height of his comedic powers.
By contrast, Cop Out began life as a script by Robb & Mark Cullen, TV writers who may yet prove to be very talented but who surely haven’t done so on the basis of this evidence. It wouldn’t be fair to blame Kevin Smith for the awfulness of the story – the blame begins with the Cullen brothers, continues with whatever studio people thought this script was worth producing, and ends with Kevin Smith, who somehow thought it was worth making as the first film he has directed but didn’t write. Kevin Smith always struck me as a savvy guy – since when did he become the kind of cynic who is lazy enough to hang a movie on a plot where a cop causes remarkable havoc trying to get back a valuable baseball card from a Mexican gang, so that he can sell it and pay for his daughter’s wedding?
That is the actual plot of Cop Out, for the record. Bruce Willis drives up a significant body count trying to track down a baseball card. It’s the only way he can think of to pay for his kid’s wedding – which makes his character seem obnoxiously prideful, by the way, since her step-father was intending to pay for the wedding in the first place. Sure, the step-father is a bit of a prick, but he’s also played by Jason Lee, and if you’re a long-time Kevin Smith fan, like I have been, it’s tough to hate Jason Lee. (This wasn’t what I meant when I suggested that Smith work with Lee again.) In a convoluted turn of events, a Mexican gang comes into possession of the valuable collectible, so Bruce and Tracy (as his partner) have to go on the rampage. Since when does Brooklyn have Mexican gangs, you might ask? Hang on to that question, because just wait until I tell you how retarded Tracy’s subplot is.
Tracy Morgan, in this movie, is married to Rashida Jones, the adorably wry actress who’s most famous for her roles on The Office and Parks & Recreation. I have nothing but love both of these actors, really and truly, but still: There is no comedy on earth broad enough to convince me that Rashida Jones could ever fall for Tracy Morgan. So maybe it’s understandable that he spends the entire movie snooping around on her, convinced that she’s cheating on him with the next-door neighbor. What isn’t understandable is what this subplot is doing clogging up a cop comedy. We’re supposed to be taking our inspiration from ‘80s cop movies here, not ‘80s sitcoms. At least there’s a teddy bear with a camera in it; that’s what I was hoping to see when I bought my ticket.
Along the way, Bruce and Tracy cross paths with Seann William Scott as a parkour enthusiast who robs houses and craps in their bathrooms during the robberies. Seann William Scott can be terrific at driving comedy plots (see Role Models or American Wedding), but he is not terrific here, and that’s as nice as I can be about it. Bruce and Tracy also rescue a hostage along the way, a cute Mexican girl who doesn’t speak a word of English. Her one running joke is that she says “hi” a lot, and that she is the second woman in the movie who falls improbably in love with Tracy. This character does at least bring us to the movie’s one great jaw-droppingly racist scene, where the two cops need to know what she knows but they can’t take her to the precinct, so instead they take the girl to a Mexican restaurant for the maitre’d to provide translation.
There’s plenty more wrong with Cop Out. There’s the way it totally wastes great stand-up comedians like Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Susie Essman, and most egregiously, Jim Norton (who doesn’t even get in an attempt at a joke.) There’s the way it was just clever enough to hire composer Harold Faltermeyer (Fletch, Beverly Hills Cop), yet not clever enough to notice that his score, sadly, is atrocious – grating and relentless. There’s the way that Bruce and Tracy’s characters, supposed police veterans, have a weird habit of pulling loaded guns on unarmed suspects and civilians. (If you made a drinking game out of how many times this happens in the movie, you’d die.)
This movie was horrible, and not in a fun way. If you need to pay good money to see Tracy Morgan punch a ten-year-old kid in the nuts, this is your movie. But if you like laughing, it isn’t. (Admittedly, I did laugh one time, but at a reaction shot of Tracy Morgan at the climactic wedding – something I can see for free on 30 Rock, for the record.)
What makes Cop Out so depressing is that Kevin Smith was the one ultimately responsible for it, not some forgettable talentless director. Kevin Smith is so far from untalented, but you’d never know it if you were to watch Cop Out, a movie that is best described as sluggish, unfunny, and mean-spirited. He’s capable of so much more than this movie, but he settled for doing it, and that’s disappointing and sad. Let’s face it: The sun will rise and set on Kevin Smith regardless of what I think, but I wish that this time around he’d seriously listen to the people who didn’t like Cop Out, because many of them – myself included – used to be counted among his fans.
Come at me if you must, Kevin Smith army: @jonnyabomb
And now here’s a picture of Rashida Jones, just because it makes me feel a little better:
Wanted to clue everyone in to a guest post I did for the terrific movie blog Rupert Pupkin Speaks, which has been inviting all kinds of well-travelled movie writers to contribute their lists of favorite quote-unquote “bad” movies. (It’s all subjective, right?)
I think you’ll enjoy this one. I had a lot of fun putting it together. I’m very proud to be featured on another site I enjoy, amongst some fun people. You’ll have to click through to get to the meat of what I wrote, but I wanted to share some posters, still frames, and YouTube clips also, so scroll down for those.
If you know me or have stopped by my site before, you know that this is hardly the end of my voyage into tremendous cinematic badness. It’s only the beginning.
Look, you’re a different person after 10 years, if all goes well. What I got a twisted kick out of in high school, I usually have far less interest in, or patience for, as an adult. And having since seriously studied and then worked in film, there are things I’ve picked up and observed about filmmaking that I can’t unlearn. There’s a way some things have to be done, and the way things should be done, and when they’re not done that way, a movie is technically unreleasable.
So when I call the sixth Leprechaun film the worst of the series, without question, by a huge margin, I’m no longer discussing a movie that is so-bad-it’s-good or a movie that is simply bad. What I’m telling you is that this movie is unwatchable. Literally. At least with the other five, you can see what’s going on. Whether you want to see it or not is your own decision, but at least the images are viewable.
Leprechaun 6 is so shoddily filmed that it’s very often impossible to make out the action. I saw this [with any luck] final entry in the series a couple years back and I was probably drunk at the time, but my faculties are such that I should still be able to describe what happened during the running time, even if I hate it. Not so, this time. I haven’t seen this many unnecessary Dutch angles, incoherently edited sequences, or disorienting camera placements since I walked out of Battlefield Earth. This movie is so filled with Film School 101 violations that it can hardly be considered a movie at all.
Which is ironic, because it arguably features the best cast of any Leprechaun film to date, including Tangi Miller (supercute), Laz Alonso (destined one day for stardom), Sticky Fingaz from Onyx (and The Motherfucking Shield), and of course Warwick Davis (who seems as bored by now with this shit as I am). Too bad the film stock is so muddy that their performances are obstructed.
Right, so it’s a sequel to a sequel and a continuation of an insane idea that was poorly executed the first time and instead of being improved upon, that idea is done even worse the second time, with some of the most inept filmmaking you could ever see. Why am I writing this long about this movie? It’s a piece of crap. Flush that shit.
Here the series gets its biggest blast of star power since Jennifer Aniston in the first installment, and the evil Leprechaun gets his most formidable enemy.
No doubt fulfilling a career-long ambition, Ice-T appears as a pimp in the 1970s, in a flashback to a time when a man could keep a gun in his hairdo. That little flute he’s holding is the trophy he won from thwarting the Leprechaun and using his riches to become a powerful ganglord. Fast-forward to the present day, when three teens inadvertently free the Leprechaun, who instantly embarks on a revenge trail.
Leprechaun In The Hood sounds at first blush like it’s worth a chuckle, but in my humble opinion it’s more disappointing than a flat Pepsi. If you’re going to undertake the already-questionable enterprise of lampooning both Irish mythology and modern-day West Coast hip-hop culture, you want to be way more committed to the concept than what happened here. You want to cartoon it up as much as good taste will not allow.
Instead, the cowardly plot becomes obsessed with the three youthful aspiring musicians who find the Leprechaun’s magic flute (or some shit like that, I’m not even going to look it up) and use it to ignite their music careers. Of course the Leprechaun shows up to smack a bitch. But what happens then is that he aimlessly wanders around South Central while the movie spends an inordinate amount of time on the saga of the three youths following their dream.
Ice-T? He’s gone as quickly as he’s able to. So I need to ask what no one else seems to have: What movie are we making here? Does anyone lit enough to rent a movie called Leprechaun In The Hood have any interest whatsoever in the bittersweet tale of three friends who just want to make it? I may be overstating the extent of this subplot-pushed-to-the-fore, but probably I’m not. The movie is badly diluted.
I got 5 on it.
So of course the Leprechaun kills a guy with a bong, and OF COURSE he raps, but these are painfully embarrassing and depressing spectacles, regardless of what the kids on YouTube would tell you. When you suspect a movie could actually have been improved by the presence of Mike Epps, you know shit ain’t working.
Things didn’t work out for anybody in Vegas, so the franchise left the planet. I have to say, I like the specificity of that title: It’s not “[Title;] Leprechaun 4: [Subtitle;] Leprechaun In Space”; it’s Leprechaun 4: In Space. The film itself is in space! Let’s go with the obvious joke, then: They should’ve left it there.
Mixing an evil medieval Leprechaun into the science fiction genre with absolutely no explanation whatsoever is about as tasty as mixing peanut butter and tuna fish. Oh yeah, and there’s no production value either, but there wasn’t much chance of that.
When it comes to Leprechaun 4 In Space, it’s the little moments you treasure.
Like when a Space Marine blows up the Leprechaun with a bazooka, and urinates on the remains. A green electric jolt travels up the stream of urine right into the guy’s shaft. Later on, when the guy is getting it on with a fake-bazoomed bimbo, the Leprechaun reconstitutes himself from within the palooka’s bladder and climbs his way back into the world through the poor guy’s cocker. Naturally the Leprechaun caps this milestone sequence with a choice one-liner: “That’s why you should use protection!”
The Leprechaun makes these awful jokes so that I don’t have to. That is why he is a hero.
Towards the end of the movie, the few Space Marines still alive accidentally fire a space ray at the Leprechaun so that he grows in size. What, you ask, is the first act of an evil Leprechaun grown to the height of Mighty Joe Young? Why, to open up his fly and look down at his crotch to see what’s doing, of course. “Big is good!” he declares.
Sadly, his reverie is not to last. Because all movies have to end, even the ones that suck frog-ass, the Leprechaun is hurled through an open cargo door into the vacuum of space, where he explodes. Like Georgie Bush Jr. and those other classic wits who always get the cleverest last word, the Leprechaun reminds the heroes and the audience that he’ll be back, as a giant, warty hand drifts across the screen, its middle finger extended in defiance as if to say “Fuck you for watching.”
I refuse to do any research for this article, so this entry will have to suffer for it.
I hardly remember Leprechaun 3.
I remember the basic plot, that an aspiring magician finds one of the Leprechaun’s gold coins in the desert, drives to Vegas and bets with it, wins big and embarks on a Vegas career… until the Leprechaun shows up.
I remember that, somewhat predictably, someone eventually gets sawed in half.
I remember that a guy tries to bang a lady who turns out to be a robot who turns out to explode.
At least I think I remember that part.
I remember that the protagonist guy for some reason begins morphing into a rival Leprechaun. [Introducing yet another weakness of evil Leprechauns: other Leprechauns. Also potatoes. Inexplicable, but there you go.]
What I don’t remember is this installment of the series being among the more entertaining (that adjective ALWAYS being relative when it comes to the Leprechaun films). In fact, to me this is where the franchise took a massive nosedive, and that’s considering that it didn’t start out as a hallmark of quality. I like to think that the producers sent the Leprechaun to Las Vegas as a prankish response to the success of the deathly serious Leaving Las Vegas that same calendar year, but the movie that resulted suggests that no such wit was involved.
In my opinion, it definitely sucked, and not in any of the good senses of the term. Speaking of which, this is also the year I started to seriously take a real interest in girls, so from here on, the Leprechaun films became less of a hobby and more of a habit, even a duty.
I watched these movies so that you don’t have to. That is why I am a hero.
This is probably the other one to watch, if you have to watch any.
[Again, the disclaimer: I am working almost entirely off memory here. I’ve seen all of these movies but I don’t necessarily recommend that to anyone else. Watch any of them at your own risk.]
Leprechaun 2 is the only one I saw in the theaters, possibly the only one ever to appear in theaters. It was directed by the same guy who directed Idle Hands, whatever that indicates for you. The point is, he worked again after Leprechaun 2, so at the very least the guy knows where to point a camera – a virtue that cannot be accorded to every single director who ever helmed a Leprechaun film. After a decade in television, he directed the documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, which given Conan O’Brien’s current culture-hero esteen, is not exactly a straight line from shlock-horror mayhem. I’m sure there’s an Irish joke to be made here, but not by me.
So anyway, in Leprechaun 2 as in the first Leprechaun, there are brief (VERY brief) moments of actual creepiness and atmosphere, although there is also much more weird sexuality and more gore, which kicks it into a different setting of disturbing. There’s also plenty of silliness, but this installment is notable as the last time the series even pretended to try to scare anybody.
Accordingly, the Leprechaun’s predatory pool this time around is dramatically less impressive than the first movie’s supporting cast. Let’s just say that the young male and female leads didn’t have any hope of going on to star on Friends.
The only member of the cast to crop up on Must-See TV was the character called Uncle Morty, played by comedian Sandy Baron, who was a semi-regular on Seinfeld (he was Jerry’s dad’s nemesis in the retirement community.) Here he plays an obnoxious asshole who corners the Leprechaun and demands he turn over his gold. The Leprechaun gives it to him, all right – in his belly! Uncle Morty dies screaming, “Get it out of me!”, which is a catchphrase you probably never heard on Seinfeld.
My favorite element of Leprechaun 2 is how it disregards/builds on the mythology established in the first movie, and introduces more magical weaknesses to the character.
You know how Freddy Kruger can’t get you if you don’t fall asleep? You know how the Predator won’t hunt you if you’re not holding a gun? Well, there are several ways to slow or stop the Leprechaun if he’s after you.
In the first movie, it was shoes and four-leaf clovers. This time around, it’s wrought-iron and manners. You can trap the Leprechaun in a safe made of a certain kind of metal, or you can stab him with a pole made of it. And if the Leprechaun has designs on breeding with your lovely daughter, as he does with the titular bride, he can only get her if she sneezes three times. You can protect her by saying “God Bless You.” Like I said: manners! This Leprechaun is an unusually vulnerable guy for a thousand-year-old demon who can take a pistol-shot to the chest.
That’s about all there is to say about Leprechaun 2, except for this: BOOBIES. If you need more information, I’m sure there are many websites to oblige, this being the internet and all. But for the intellectual-minded, it is worth noting that the Leprechaun films almost immediately got sleazier, and for the creeps, the same knowledge is useful for different ends.
Oh, and also: Keep an eye out for the cameo appearance by the great Tony Cox (Bad Santa, Friday) as a more human leprechaun, dressed for the holiday, who runs into the protagonist in the men’s room and offers him what the evil Leprechaun never would.
Demon's Resume 
