1/22/14: A Little Noir and a Lotta Dumb

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bad films, bad movies, Barry Fitzgerald, bars, cinema, Citizen Kane, comedies, crime film, Danny Devito, ensemble casts, Film, Girl Walks into a Bar, Gothika, Jimmy Halloran, Jules Dassin, Los Angeles, Lt. Daniel Muldoon, Mark Hellinger, Movies, New York City, Robert Forster, Rosario Dawson, Sebastian Gutierrez, Snakes on a Plane, terrible films, The Naked City, voice-over narration, Z-movies, Zachary Quinto

As a rule, I like to counter-program whenever I watch multiple movies: too much of any one thing can get tiring. There are exceptions, of course, such as my annual horror movie marathon in October: that’s pretty much just an entire month of horror films. Other than that, however, I usually like a little variety. Sometimes, however, I counter-program without even knowing it. Such was the case last Wednesday when I inadvertently paired up a pretty good film-noir (The Naked City) with a god-awful skid-mark called Girl Walks into a Bar. None of the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Not all films deliver the goods in big ways. Some films (many films, if we’re being completely honest) are more about small moments, individual pleasures. You could probably fill an airplane hangar with the “pleasant diversions” that I’ve watched over the past 30 years, although I doubt if I could remember much about most of them save the titles. Sometimes, a film isn’t groundbreaking, vital or earth-shaking: sometimes, a film is just pretty good…and that’s good enough.

The Naked City is a pretty good film, less a film noir (which it at first resembles) than a police procedural. Ostensibly, the film is about the police manhunt for the individual (or individuals) who murdered a young, blonde model in her apartment. Lt. Daniel Muldoon (played with so much mischievous energy by Barry Fitzgerald that the character is practically a leprechaun) and officer Jimmy Halloran (a wide-eyed Don Taylor, evidently pretty fresh from the farm) are on the case, tearing the city apart in their quest for answers and justice.

Right off the bat, there’s something a little off about The Naked City. The film begins with an aerial view of New York City as producer Mark Hellinger (who doubles as the film’s narrator) explains to us that the film was not shot on sound stages but, rather, on the gritty streets of New York, itself. This is a film, he lets us know, that is as much about the city as the people who live there. It’s an interesting tact that makes sense when you consider the staged nature of most films released in 1948.

This attempt to get into the heart (and mind) of the city is, at first glance, quite disorienting. We spend almost ten minutes jumping around from cleaning lady to switchboard operator to late-night radio DJ and back, hearing their (mostly mundane) thoughts on their lives, jobs, etc…It’s an almost documentary-esque technique that is only shattered when the camera strays into the victim’s apartment and we witness two mysterious men kill her. For a time, the film really does seem like it will consist of day-in-the-life vignettes.

Another trait that marks The Naked City as a bit of an odd duck is the oftentimes intrusive narration by Hellinger. Much of the time, Hellinger functions less as narrator than as Greek chorus, color commentator or surrogate character in the unfolding drama. As Officer Halloran is scouring the city for clues, Hellinger’s narration is a constant companion: “Look at your city, Halloran;” “The dress shop is next, Halloran.” This can become a bit distracting, particularly once the action picks up in the latter half and Hellinger becomes a TV commentator: “Run over there, Halloran…he turned to the left…look up above you!…what’s that over there?” To further confound things, Hellinger’s narration and inflection seem rather inappropriate for a crime film. It’s hard to describe but anyone who grew up on old Disney films will, presumably, know what I’m talking about. Imagine the kindly-voiced narrator from Dumbo narrating a crime drama and you begin to get the picture. This could be a hold-over from old radio programs but Hellinger’s narration is always either too flip or snide to convey any sense of mystery.

Structure-wise, the film is very much indebted to Welles’ Citizen Kane, released a scant seven years before The Naked City. Officer Halloran travels about the city, talking to anyone and everyone that knew the dead girl, in an attempt to piece together just who she was. It’s an effective structural-choice and lends the film a sturdy framework that helps immeasurably when it (occasionally) decides to spin its wheels.

There are little moments in the film that I enjoyed quite a bit: a discussion between Halloran and his wife about spanking their son turns, out of nowhere, into a really interesting argument on gender roles; the public’s fascination with every detail of the unfolding murder-mystery was the same then as it is now; there’s a blind man and his seeing-eye dog that reminded me immediately of the blind man and dog in Argento’s Suspiria, right down to the type of dog and the man’s clothing (could Argento have been a fan?); Barry Fitzgerald’s absolutely joyous portrayal of Lt. Muldoon (rarely have I seen an actor not named Richard Harris or Robert Downey Jr. tear his teeth so lustily into a role like this) and the ending is very strong.

All in all, The Naked City was really fun to watch, albeit kind of weird and a little silly, at times. While nowhere near a great noir or crime film, The Naked City is a perfectly fine way to whittle away 90 minutes. As Hellinger states at the end: “There are eight million stories in the Naked City…this has been one of them.” Damn straight, Mark: damn straight, indeed.

Full disclosure: I absolutely hated this film. Positively detested it. In fact, I dare say that I have seen few films that I actively disliked as much as this hackneyed, pretentious, stupid, blissfully unaware, towering horse manure-monument to narcissism. I can’t even say that I was glad when it was over, since I then had time to focus my disgust inwards, wondering what mental deficiency necessitate that I spend even one minute with this aggressively brain-dead waste of trust funds. I, by association, was as guilty as Sebastian Gutierrez and every other misbegotten individual involved with this cinematic abortion.

Sebastian Gutierrez…Sebastian Gutierrez…why does that name sound familiar? Had the name sounded more familiar before I began, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. You see, writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez was also the genius who wrote Snakes on a Plane and Gothika. A little history: those two films are fucking terrible, pardon my French. Snakes on a Plane may have had Sam Jackson and a big pop culture push but, in reality, it was an awful film, a self-aware bit of stupidity that strove for cult status without ever realizing what made cult films “cult” in the first place. Gothika was an aggressively stupid, unpleasant, worthless supernatural thriller that starred Halle Berry and, by itself, would have been enough reason for me to curse Gutierrez’s name from now until the stars burn out.

So, we have one of the worst writers in the biz: not good so far. But we also have huge stars like Danny Devito, Zachary Quinto, Rosario Dawson, Robert Forster (!), Gil Bellows and Josh Hartnett, you might say. Of course, we do. We also have them spewing the filmic equivalent of baby diarrhea: you don’t want a big cup of that, do you? I felt bad for every actor in the film but reserved a special reserve of pit for Robert Forster. I mean…really? Robert Forster…in this? My heart hurt for him, I won’t lie. The rest, barring Quinto (who’s still got time), have been in their fair share of embarrassments but this must be an all-time career low for Forster, even including his stellar turn in Scanner Cop II.

How about the plot? Well, there’s a hit woman and she has to go to ten different bars because she’s looking for the guy who stole her wallet while playing pool and each person she meets gives her another clue until she…oh, who gives a shit? Plot is, quite frankly, the last thing that anyone involved with this debacle is interested in. Plot holes? More like a smidgen of plot surrounded by the black hole of deepest space. To add insult to injury, the whole thing is episodic, taking place entirely in first one bar then the next then the next ad infinitum. I kept thinking this must have been an adapted stage play but who am I fooling? I’m pretty sure that the last play Sebastian watched was his elementary-school Christmas pageant. More likely, it’s just a really sloppy, lazy way to tell a story.

At this point, I would normally list all of the things that I really liked about a film. In this case, why don’t I just list the elements that made me black out from anger?

— the long, tedious, drawn-out fantasy sequence where Terri the stripper imagines one-upping the scuzzy guys in the club. A perfect example of a scene that thinks it’s exceptionally clever when it’s actually drooling in the porridge.

— Danny Devito’s entire time in the movie consists of him telling a dumb joke…what a waste.

— “What are you good at? You look like you’re really good at something but I just can’t put my finger on it.” — I can’t believe a human wrote this line: this has chimp fingerprints all over it.

— every single second of film that Rosario Dawson was in. How one individual could manage to be so annoying is a question for the ages.

— the nudity in the swinger’s club is censored with black bars because…it’s clever, I guess? Again, this was a case of Dumb and Dumbererer thinking it’s The Seventh Seal.

— Terri and the hit-woman play a game that consists entirely of them coming up with “imaginative” euphemisms for cunnilingus. I don’t laugh at these scenes when they involve boorish men and this was equally tasteless and stupid.

— the film ends with the three main characters country-line dancing in an empty bar because, honestly, how the hell else would you end something so offensively stupid?

I’ll leave you with the very last note that I took as I finished watching this cinematic masterpiece: Fuck you, Sebastian Gutierrez…fuck you very much.

1/19/14: Jumping the Shark

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Abre Los Ojos, Agora, Alejandro Amenabar, ancient Egypt, Anthony C. Ferrante, auteur theory, B-movies, bad films, bad movies, character dramas, cheesy films, cinema, costume epic, disaster films, drama, Film, Film auteurs, historical drama, hurricane, Los Angeles, Movies, Rachel Weisz, Roman Empire, Sharknado, sharks, Snakes on a Plane, Syfy Channel, Tara Reid, The Asylum, The Others, Z-movies

We took care of the first half of our quadruple bill last time. This time around, let’s take a look at the final two: Agora and Sharknado. You’d think this would be an easy fight to predict. In many ways…you would be correct.

Sometimes, the weight of expectations for a particular film (or director, for that matter) can be a heavier burden than the actual film (or person) can bear. For every Wes Anderson, there’s a Tobe Hooper. For every Terry Gilliam, a Tarsem Singh. As someone who fully subscribes to the auteur theory of filmmaking, I have a tendency to stick with directors I admire, believing them to be less capable of disappointment than those that I don’t tend to idolize.

While I won’t claim to be his number-one super booster, I’ve always been a big fan of Alejandro Amenabar’s films. My first experience came with The Others (Amenabar’s English-language debut), a chilling, elegant Nicole Kidman chiller that managed to put a very fresh and grim spin on traditional ghost stories. Once hooked, I sought out Abre Los Ojos (later remade as the far inferior Tom Cruise vehicle Vanilla Sky), Thesis and The Sea Inside, which has to rank as one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen. I’ve always been impressed with Amenabar’s range, so when I heard that he was tackling an epic set in Roman Egypt, I was particularly excited. Alas, Agora would end up being my least favorite Amenabar film yet.

Were it not for the weight of expectations set by his other films, I might not have been so disappointed with Agora. For one thing, the film has a cheap look that seems to belie a tight budget. Rather than work within the constraints of this, however, the film constantly feels like it’s straining to be more than it can be. Imagine if Star Wars featured one spaceship or Lord of the Rings featured one Orc and you begin to get the idea. As the film progresses, there are some big setpieces that are actually handled very nicely, particularly the scene where the Christians rampage through the library, destroying everything in their path.

The acting, as a whole, is good but certainly nothing extraordinary. Rachel Weisz is quite good as Hypatia of Alexandria, the philosopher that serves not only as protagonist but also as moral center. In some ways, however, it almost feels as if Weisz plays her character as too driven, pounding away any of the subtle humanism of her character. The closest that we get to real human emotion from Hypatia is the jaw-dropping scene where she responds to a student’s public declaration of love with an equally public, if much more gynecological, gift. It’s not that Weisz is bad: quite to the contrary. My problem with her performance is that she, essentially, reduces Hypatia to a one-note character, even if that note is rather resonate.

Ultimately, the film boils down to an intense discussion on tolerance, most of which is related to the inherent conflict between the Christians, pagans and Jews of the era. It’s to the film’s intense credit that it never seems to choose a side. The Christians come off looking the worst, mostly because of their whole destruction of the famed Library of Alexandria but there’s plenty of blame to spread around to the pagans and Jews. Anti-Semitism makes up a large part of the conflict and it’s interesting to see how the film develops the idea that long-held prejudices can gradually grow until they’re unbeatable.

My final takeaway from the film, however, is how massively depressing and hopeless it ultimately is. We know that no one can stand against the tide of history but for over two hours, we get to witness Hypatia scorned, mocked, humiliated, assaulted, subjugated and marginalized. It’s giving nothing away to say that the film does not end happily, for any of the players. While it may be too long and rather disjointed, it’s the ultimate feeling of hopelessness that colors my experience of this film more than anything else. Here’s to hoping Amenabar’s next film, which is currently in pre-production and stars Ethan Hawke, finds the right balance of hope and hopelessness.

In 2006, a cheesy, completely self-aware B-movie managed to leave a mark (no matter how inconsequential) on the cultural landscape. This film featured production values that made SciFi Channel fare look like Lawrence of Arabia, more stupid action than you could shake a wiffle-ball bat at and Samuel L. Jackson uttering the soon-to-be immortal line, “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” Yes, the film was Snakes on a Plane and, for a brief moment, it was the talk of the town. Was the film any good? I personally disliked it but it obviously struck a chord with plenty of folks.

Fast forward seven years and we witness the attempted birth of another legend: Sharknado. Now, as far as concept goes, Sharknado features some pretty next-level kind of stuff. Essentially, a hurricane has swept over Los Angeles, flooding the area like cutting-room footage from Roland Emmerich’s home movies. Since just a hurricane, by itself, can’t possibly be bad enough, the storm picks up what must be every shark in the ocean and carries the teeth-with-fins around: we get to watch the cute little CGI critters fly around a funnel cloud like so much of Dorothy’s furniture in Kansas. This does, of course, beg the question: doesn’t getting carried around in hundred-mile-an-hour winds, miles above the earth (and away from any water) and then getting unceremoniously flung about cause any discomfort to the sharks at all? Truly nature’s killing machines!

Since this is, ostensibly, a horror film (I guess), the filmmakers know that we’re going to need a more ferocious monster than mere flying sharks to scare us. Therefore, they enlist the services of an obviously mentally unstable Tara Reid to really shake things up. When Tara first appears, reading her lines like a tent-revival preacher might speak tongues, I’ll admit that I was fascinated: had she been lobotomized? Was this actually like a real life version of The Sixth Sense and we would all come to realize that Tara Reid has been a ghost THIS WHOLE TIME? My fascination quickly turned to terror, however, as I realized that I would be spending the next 80 minutes desperately fearing the moment that she would pop up, jack-in-the-box style, to deliver pithy lines like “We need a bigger chopper,” all while projecting the aggressive confidence of one who has learned the best way to conceal medication under one’s tongue.

Let’s see, let’s see…what else do we get here? Well, we get an awful lot of violence for what is, technically, a PG-13 TV movie, although most of it is of the “There’s a CGI shark overlaid on my foot! Aargh…this must be pain I feel!” variety. There’s also a chopper pilot that wiggles his arms so much that I got seasick, which is a perfect complement to the driving scenes that feature more arm waving than a beauty pageant.

But who am I fooling? Anyone who walks into this steaming pile of cinema expecting 2001, much less Jaws, has rocks in their heads. The moment you see the “The Syfy Channel and The Asylum Presents…” hit the screen, there should be absolutely no doubt that you’ve booked a first-class cabin on the S.S. Caca. The only question that really matters is: is the movie fun? Is this a Megalodon-level of stupidity or a Master of Disguise-level of stupidity? Will this plumb the depths of Tromaville or just be another lame Clash of the Titans remake? This, friends and neighbors, should be the only concerning factor: is this movie a guaranteed good time?

Alas, at least as far as I’m concerned, it really isn’t. Snakes on a Plane at least had the benefit of featuring Samuel L. Jackson whereas the most we can say about Sharknado is that it features an obviously crazy Tara Reid stumbling through a performance that I’m sure she doesn’t even recall. There aren’t any badass or, to be honest, really likable characters to latch on to, which gives this something of the air of an anonymous ’80s slasher: many will die, few will care. Sharknado’s worst sin, however, the same sin that killed Snakes on a Plane, is its complete self-awareness. This isn’t an Ed Wood film or a cheesy ’80s actioner where the creators assumed they were making art: this is a modern film that deliberately sets out to imitate the inept, shoddy silliness of actual B-movies like Carnosaur and Galaxy of Terror. As such, nothing about the film feels authentic, which is kind of like trying to learn about history from an Old West re-enactment.

As an unabashed fan of Z-grade cinema, I really wanted to like Sharknado and, in all honesty, did find myself smiling a time or two. I also, unfortunately, spent a pretty fair amount of time looking at my watch. For a movie that runs less than 90 minutes and is supposed to be all about “fun fun fun,” this seems pretty unforgivable. Come to think of it, maybe being boring is a greater sin than being self-aware…especially if you’re an Asylum film.

1/18/14: The Great, The Lame and the Drooling

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Academy Awards, alcoholism, Alex Shinohara, artists, bad films, bad movies, Best Feature Documentary nominee, Chevy Chase, cinema, Cutie and the Boxer, documentaries, documentary, drama, films, high school angst, Hillary Duff, indie comedies, lazy films, Lizzy Caplan, marriage, Movies, Noriko Shinohara, Oscar nominee, Peter Dinklage, romance, Sean Astin, Snakes on a Plane, Stay Cool, The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, Ushio Shinohara, waste of time, Westerns, Winona Ryder, Zachary Heinzerling

This past (long) weekend began with two terrible films and one great one: not the most auspicious start to the proceedings but better than three terrible ones, I suppose. Here, then, is what happens when you put an Oscar contender in between two Z-grade films: the results are not pretty.

Let me begin by clarifying something: I have absolutely nothing against bad movies. Some bad movies are more ludicrously entertaining than any well-made film could ever hope to be, spewing out more ideas (terrible or otherwise) in a few moments than most films do in two hours. Some, like Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado, even manage to worm their way into the cultural zeitgeist, although I’m not personally a fan of either film. There’s a reason that “so bad they’re good” films are almost as popular as actual “good” films: they take the entertainment aspect of filmmaking and knock it out of the park, offering the kind of fan service that makes it easy to forget that every other aspect of the movie has wandered into the desert to die.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is a wretched film, an absolutely miserable waste of what I can only imagine was a lengthy 24-hour shoot. Its sins are many and run deep but some are more lethal than others. For one thing, the film displays the kind of casting choices that can best be described as “suspect”: Lizzy Caplan, most famous for her great comedic turn in Party Down, is a humorless prostitute-turned-gunfighter; Jason Priestly is the hard-as-nails titular gunslinger, Ransom Pride; Dwight Yoakam and his dead animal-pelt toupee appear as an alcoholic preacher/bad hairpiece duo that also serve as Ransom’s father; Kris Kristofferson looks half dead as some sort of Old West head honcho but his voice is still all gravel and asskicking; Peter Dinklage appears as a former circus performer who dresses like a member of one of those “urban vampire role-playing” games and travels in a circus tent with conjoined, opium-smoking twins. This, friends and neighbors, is what I like to call one messed-up goulash.

If the above-mentioned stars seem odd and out-of-place, at least they come off better than the other “actors” in the film, particularly the shrill creature that plays Maria la Morena, a whore/witch/madam/crime-boss that manages to be simultaneously ridiculous and obnoxious. After her second appearance, I muted every other time she popped up on-screen, preferring to miss whatever paltry exposition she might offer in return for my sanity. This is a film where your allegiances lie with whatever actor/actress is currently the least annoying: I tossed my hat in the circus corner, because at least they had Dinklage in wispy velvets, fake mustache and a bit where opium smoke is blown into a tracheotomy tube: yum! If Dinklage and twins had just been the damn heroes, we might be having a very different conversation but no…we get a scowling Lizzy Caplan and a love interest so bland I can only refer to him as Haircut #2.

But it’s a super-low budget Western, you might say: be gentle! Not a chance, bub: if this was big enough to get released and burn a scarlet L into my forehead, it’s big enough to take a little drubbing. Were there but one thing that actually worked, I’d keep my vitriol to myself. What in the hell are you supposed to do with dialogue like “Mexico…my precious and beautiful Hell” or “I was always a lover, despite the killings,” though? Laugh? Cry? Assume it’s some sort of Dadaist statement on the surreality of it all? How about the fact that one of the throwaway characters is named Luis Chama, apparently after John Saxon’s character in Joe Kidd? Is this relevant? Not that I could find, even though I love Joe Kidd: just a weird little bit of parallelism for no good reason.

The opening credits are a twitchy mess and the ensuing film manages to match the aesthetic perfectly. The whole thing is so jittery and spastic that I wanted to prescribe it Ritalin and a dark room: at some points, cuts were so quick and pointless that I actually thought they were using subliminal imagery. Alas, that would have taken more courage and brains than the entire production appeared to possess. And that look…oy…that look. I could be kind and say that the film looks very”digital” but, really, it  just looks crappy and cheap. Even though I prefer film stock, I’ve seen and enjoyed many films with a decidedly digital aesthetic: The Last Rites of Ransom Pride ain’t one of ’em.

Ultimately, The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is pure masochism: I detested the film almost immediately but forced myself to wade through the endless rivers of crap to see how bad it could get. The movie, however, was always up for the task: anytime I thought it had reached a new nadir, something else would come along to dig it down a foot deeper. I have, however, learned a very valuable lesson: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and you’re probably a crappy Z-Western starring the guy from 90210. Ugh.

Now this is more like it! After suffering through the tornado of terrible that was The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, I really needed something to reset my brain. What better film than one of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Feature Documentary? And so it was that Cutie and the Boxer saved my sanity.

I happen to really like documentaries, particularly those that cast a camera eye on outsider/fringe individuals. More often than not, these tales of life’s lovable losers (American Movie, Best Worst Movie, Room 237) can be bittersweet: these are usually really nice people with absolutely no sense of self-awareness and zero chance of success. It’s refreshing, then, to come across a film that arrives at roughly the same conclusion but manages to imbue it with more hope and potential than the others. There’s a lot of pain and sadness in Cutie and the Boxer but there’s a prevalent feeling of triumph that, ultimately, rules the day.

The film is an intimate examination of the 40-year marriage of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, their respective art careers and the lifestyle choices that led them to their present circumstances. The two met when Noriko was only 19 and Ushio was the ripe old age of 41. Ushio is an underground artist, the toast of New York city for a few minutes in the ’60s and ’70s. Noriko functions as an unpaid assistant, of sorts, even though she’s also an artist. One of the film’s great conflicts is the dichotomy between Noriko’s roles as assistant and peer: there’s one heartbreaking moment where Ushio scoffs at his wife’s ability, stating that “those without talent must assist those with talent.” It’s a completely unfair assessment, besides being particularly thoughtless and goes a good way towards establishing some of the painful emotions on display here.

Ushio and Noriko, you see, are essentially broke, living in a ratty studio apartment in New York City with their grown son, Alex. Since Ushio never made much money with his art, even when he was popular, the aged pair have absolutely no nest egg or safety, a frightening enough prospect when you’re in your thirties but particularly terrifying when you’re in your eighties, I would imagine. Ushio has also struggled with alcoholism his whole  life, a condition which has left him allergic to alcohol in his old age (a blessing in disguise). Unfortunately, Alex has inherited his father’s (and mother’s, for that matter) proclivity for drink and this has tended to ruin his life, as well. Via home movies, we get to see a younger Ushio and Noriko getting falling down drunk with friends while their young son looks on, eventually tucking himself into bed. It’s a particularly stunning scene, as powerful as the one where a young, drunk Ushio has a breakdown, sobbing and slamming his fists repeatedly into a table. There is no shortage of real emotion on display here and, sometimes, it can get to be a bit much.

Luckily, filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling leavens the drama with plenty of humor and some truly neat animated scenes, courtesy of Noriko’s Cutie cartoons. There’s some nice insights into the New York art movement of the time (a picture of Ushio and Andy Warhol hanging out is pretty swell, indeed). The film’s style can seem a bit pretentious, at first, but Heinzerling quickly shows himself to be a deft hand at wringing genuine emotion and pathos from moments that might be too cloying in someone else’s hands.

More than anything, though, Cutie and the Boxer is a truly beautiful love story, a tale of two fractured individuals who found the love and support in each other that they never found in the rest of the world. It’s not a perfect relationship but no marriages (especially those lasting longer than 20 years, much less 40) are. Like everyone, they have their triumphs and upsets, joys and sorrows. There’s a moment where Noriko states that she and Ushio are “like two flowers in one pot: sometimes we don’t get enough nutrients.” These is a perfectly valid, if inherently sad, way to look at their co-dependent artistic careers. There’s an equally powerful moment, however, where Noriko states that, despite everything that’s happened, all of the joys and sorrows, the crippling alcoholism and crushing poverty, she would do the whole thing all over again. That, right there, is the very definition of love. I don’t think that Cutie and the Boxer will win the Oscar (I’m pretty sure that The Act of Killing has that locked down) but I, for one, will never forget the movie.

Is there anything worse than a terrible film? Yes, by gum, there certainly is: a lazy film. Lazy films may not make the same glaring mistakes as terrible films (say what you will about Howard the Duck but laziness is not one of its sins) but that’s because they lack the courage and conviction to do much of anything. For my money, there is nothing worse than sitting through a safe, lazy, middle-of-the-road film: I’d rather watch The Room on endless repeat than view something that not even the filmmakers could be bothered to care about.

Stay Cool, friends and neighbors, is one massively lazy film. We’re not talking a few shortcuts here and there, a little stereotyping to smooth things over: we’re talking practically comatose, a pulse so flat-lined that you’ve already called the morgue. From the cover art (the pic I posted above is actually much better than the official cover art, which really tells you something) to the lazy voice-over narration (cuz, you know, how else are we gonna know what’s going on?) to the actual story (man-child must return to high school to right the wrongs of his adolescence, having comical interactions along the way), there isn’t one thing about Stay Cool that pushes anything further than a shuffleboard puck on a seniors-only cruise.

But what about all of those familiar faces in the cast list, you may well ask? Let’s see if we can check these off the list fairly quickly, shall we? Winona Ryder collects a paycheck as the romantic lead, Chevy Chase is absolutely awful as the principal, Dee Wallace and Michael Gross are completely wasted as the protagonist’s parents, Sean Astin is saddled with the swishiest cliché of a gay character to appear on-screen in some time and Jon Cryer has what amounts to a cameo. And looks bored in the process, might I add.

It’s hard to single out my least favorite aspect of the film but there’s definitely something that’s easy to peg in my top 5: the ridiculous, juvenile attitude of the lead character. We’re actually supposed to believe that this man-child still acts like a petulant teenager (I don’t mean excessive partying, etc…I mean teenage whining and bitching, ladies and gents), lives at home with his parents and still has the same feud with his former high school principal, even though he must be in his late thirties/early forties and the principal is now in his seventies?! Suspension of disbelief is one thing: calling your audience stupid is something else entirely.

Betcha don’t know where the title came from, do ya? Let’s see if we can puzzle this out, shall we? You already know this is about a guy returning to his high school as an adult so…Yeah, that’s right: the clever title comes from the eternally clichéd quote that his high school dream girl wrote in his yearbook cuz, you know…Stay Cool! Genius! And so true, bro…so true!