I don't claim to be the sharpest tool in the shed, or the most pithy movie reviewer ever, but there are some movies that, well, to be honest, had me hitting the 'skip ahead' feature (there's no fast forward when you're streaming movies dammit) and still not finding a single redeeming thing I can either make fun of, criticize, or praise. I found two of those just this afternoon. No, I will NOT be keeping my Amazon movie streaming account - besides uneven streaming, no close captioning and other inadequacies, they have a TON of movies just like this:
I'll Be There With You (2011): Don't bother trying to look this one up. There's nothing - well one mention on Fandango's site - but other than that all you're going to get is hundred's of references to Bon Jovi's I'll Be There For You. Sheesh. First, the fact that this movie's big name is Daniel Baldwin should stop you before you even start this film. I mean, was he EVER relevant in anything? And here he plays a sadistic pervert and yet he's not even the BAD guy of the movie? Yikes! It started badly as it was, a death knell to a movie as far as I'm concerned: Inspired by true events. I call BS on all those - they probably had some murder case in California that involved escaped somebodies and they said hey, we'll put that in a movie. A really, really BAD movie. For one thing the movie was out of focus. Whether that was the movie or Amazon, does it really matter? Secondly the movie tries to be clever by mixing film, pictures, cartoons, whatever is cheapest to string together pieces of the so-called plot. Your best bet to know for yourself that this is a movie to skip: The very first scene is in some vineyard in San Diego where they have found seven bodies lined up in the dirt. Yes, it's all the rotten cast, including Daniel Baldwin. So now you know, why continue, right? I tried, I really, really did. With my fave cuddle boy Max snuggled under my chin I worked hard at paying attention but geez. Six whiny kids that you hate immediately, five friends with one 'new' friend, decide to take a trip from San Francisco to San Diego. Yay. One of the Japanese boys (there are two, both non-redeemable characters that are foul, dumb and obnoxious) knows this guy named Constantine (Baldwin) who owns this place they can visit for lots of - uh, debauchery I assume. Sure enough when they get there things go bad very quickly: The new 'friend' is a buddy of Constantine's and their sole purpose is to rape the two blonde girls after the boys all go clubbing and quickly cheat on whoever they're with, THEN we get escaped mental patients who are shooting up whole families and groups and... sigh. When there was this protracted scene of the guys helping out this carload of people (the escaped patients I presume) who then proceed to shoot, stab, beat, etc., as well as Constantine and his friend 'John' terrorizing and hunting down the two blonde girls, I just gave up, because hey, they all end up dead anyway and frankly I'm glad. If this is a true story, it has a happy ending.
Playhouse (2005): Now I had a little higher hopes for this movie because it was not trying to take itself seriously in the slightest. In fact, a disclaimer at the beginning said that 'This film has been modified from the original to be much funnier.' Okay, sounded good, I'll bite. The basic premise was a group of 'ancient ghosts' are stirred up just before a young people's performance (looked like that awful interpretive dance crap to me) and things go horribly wrong. Oh and try to wiki this dreadful movie, I dare you - I tried everything and the closest I got was Pee Wee's Playhouse which review starts with 'I pray to Tupac's ghost that you are joking...' - there's nothing on this piece of... film. It's dedicated to a Hunter Furches (1912-2003) the search of who brought up again... absolutely nothing. It's like they're daring me now. I finally tracked down an actor from the movie with his own page which led me straight to... Amazon movies. Dammit. So you're just going to have to take my word for it or attempt watching this thing yourself. All right, it's obvious this was played for yuks (more like yucks) because the jokes are lame, the setups are reminiscent of a movie like Airplane or Police Squad - except not near as funny or clever.This is supposed to be about ancient ghosts being stirred up by this big production coming up. Trouble is, these 'ancient' ghosts are wearing better clothes than I've got and hair styles, etc. obviously from the 21 century. But this is supposed to be a duh... the special effects were really bad and cheesy, the constant running gag of the officers spewing all over everything got old really quickly, and not even the supposedly gory murders could keep my attention. The first murder, the play's director, had his arm ripped off and the arm shoved clear through his throat. He was found standing (yes, I said standing) on stage. Just as in Waxworks, this supposed 'stiff' couldn't hold still to save his life, his eyes fluttering and obviously having trouble keeping his balance. I was just about done then. Then comes the stereotyped Scottish janitor is in a horribly fake wig and outfit (which was supposed to be part of the joke I guess). Oh and every telephone call the detective got from whoever and was having conversations with, was just dogs barking, quacking, or just high pitched noises. Not funny, just irritating. Even when the 'kids' in the movie try to Scooby Doo their way through the thing, the line 'How else do you explain it without giving away the plot.' still wasn't enough to keep me interested. When the second body is found shoved (feet first) into the toilet clear up to his neck (that happens every day) and they yanked out the head and the officer spewed all over it, I was done. You know, at the beginning the 'detective' who did an absolutely horrible job (but I guess he was supposed to) said that this was the worst slaughter he'd ever seen. Okay, that's all I need to know - they're gonna die and these 'ancient ghosts in clothes from the Gap' are going to do it - for no discernible reason. And I'm done. Really. Even my cat Max escaped and ran under the bed during this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment