Thursday, January 20, 2011

#97 - Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow



In 11 years from 1984 to 1994, there were seven Police Academy movies, and Mission to Moscow was the final installment. And while everyone agrees that the series started to go down the tank right after the first one (IMDb ratings: PA1-6.3; PA2-4.9; PA3-4.4; PA4-4.0; PA5-3.5; PA6-3.3; PA7-2.6) it is quite impressive that in this seventh film, there are still five original characters/cast members from the original movie. I would imagine they were short on cash, or that was the only script that was on their coffee table. There are no other reasons to keep going with this series.

Before watching #7, I decided to watch the original which I had not seen in quite some time. (I watched it without Christie... sorry.) While it wasn't overly clever, it was written well enough to have a few laughs and be enjoyable. I was actually quite surprised at how well it stood up with time as I got to know Mahoney all over again. Good times. And while Mahoney was last seen in the 4th movie, it was sad not to see Hightower, who had previously been in all installments of this series. But, like I said, it was impressive to see that five characters still remained. Now, see if you can remember these names: Larvelle Jones, Eugene Tackleberry, Debbie Callahan, Thaddeus Harris, and Eric Lassard.

The show opens with Pamela Guest as a news anchor. The way she delivered her lines, and her semi cross-eyed look made me laugh. I actually enjoyed that entire opening scene with her and Stuart Nisbet. It was silly, but funny all the same. Although, I was waiting for the news director played by David St.James to yell "Cut to commercial, cut to commercial" when the news anchors got out of control. He didn't and it made me a little sad. Why? I don't know, just thought it would have been that funny cliché moment to end the scene.

So, with that opening laugh, and the knowledge that Hellboy and Saruman were in the movie, I figured, how bad can this really be? Well, it wasn't good, but it wasn't anything where either Chris or I wanted to jump out of a window to make it stop. The writing was bad, the editing was bad, the jokes were forced, the new characters were uninteresting (although, every time the absolutely gorgeous Katrina, played by Claire Forlani, was on screen, the movie had my full attention), the story made little sense, and the most annoying was the bad audio dubbing/sound effects which was so obvious at times it hurt my brain.

Speaking of audio, they really forced the issue when it came to having Sgt. Larvelle Jones make sound effects. I mean, making sounds to unlock a safe? Really? And having a Three Stooges trio that only whistled and made stupid noises instead of having dialog was not as funny as I presume they thought it was when they wrote them in the script.

The stupidity of this film was eye rolling really. The main villain played by Ron Perlman (who turned in a subpar performance) knows that there is a team of American cops that are after him, but throughout the film he has no trouble inviting people with American accents into his entourage. Oh, and apparently, in Russia, they don't speak any Russian, they just speak English with Russian accents. That includes random young boys on the street. So, it then begs to wonder why they needed a translator (Forlani's character Katrina) at all, and who was apparently doing a great job. Ah, right, a love interest was needed. A love interest I didn't care about even though the eye candy was nice.

There was an almost gut busting funny moment in the movie, although, I'm sure it wasn't scripted as funny. There is an elaborate chase scene near the end of the film when Capt. Debbie Callahan gets kidnapped. Newcomer Cadet Kyle Connors, played by Charlie Schlatter, jumps on the roof of the getaway car and the rest of the crew jump into a police van and a chase ensues. When inside the van, all windows have these yellow curtains which made it painfully obvious they didn't want to spend money on a background. Even though those 'out the window green screens' look fake, they are much better than yellow curtains. Then, you have Connors. Don't go get a stunt man, no, just tie up a dummy dressed like a police officer on the roof of the car. Seeing that mannequin being thrown about was hilarious. The whole chase scene was so funny that we actually rewound the movie to watch this very funny action sequence. Actually, we watched it again because Chris hadn't noticed the dummy flopping about. Those special effects were too good for her eyes to notice.

In all, it was a sad attempt to continue something that should have ended with the first movie. I guess it took a US box office draw of just $126,247 for the studio to realize that you can't get blood from a stone. Or a corpse for that matter.

IMDb Rating: 2.6
JF's Rating: 4
Chris' Rating: 4

Turn off point: Neither Chris nor I had a turn off point for this movie. Chris said it was like Hababam sinifi askerde, but that we knew what they were saying. I think it was a little more slapstick than that, and while most of it failed, it was still a movie I had no problem sitting through and watching to the end. Had it been on TV, I probably would have switched the channel at some point, but that being said, if there had been nothing else good on to watch, I may have gone back to it as well.

So, from Moscow to L.A. we'll see you next time with the review of Alien From L.A.

Monday, January 10, 2011

#98 - Bolero


"Follows the tale of a young woman's sexual awakening and subsequent journey around the world in pursuit of her ideal lover. Encounters include an Arabian sheik and a Spanish bullfighter. Her friend and butler accompany her and help to arrange her couplings."

Could be interesting right? If there had been an awakening, or a journey, it could have been. The sad part of #98 (which has fallen to #96 as I write this) is that there is no fun story to tell outside of the movie. It was easy to find, and it's not a foreign film we can't understand. We did try to combine the knock off snuggies which are basically blankets with buttons, and that was good for a laugh before we started the movie.

I figured that even if this movie was bad, there would at least be some nudity. Apparently there was a controversy about this movie's graphic sex scenes, so hey, could be good right? Even as a young teenager staying up on Saturday night to catch an episode of Bleu Nuit I don't know if I would have cared to stay up to watch this garbage.

First off, this story is about a girl who is just out of a boarding school, which means she is supposed to be 18 years old. This "young girl" is played by a 28 year old Bo Derek who looks.... well, 28. Actually, she probably could have pulled off a 35 year old character better than how she fared as an 18 year old. Second, she is supposed to be a virgin. A virgin who within the first five minutes of the film goes running around topless on campus after graduation. Right.

To start the movie, we are treated to a two minute piece of a silent movie with what appears to be a sheik saving a damsel in distress. From that, our 28 year old virgin, who just graduated from high school (which is a more likely scenario as the character was nothing more than a dumb blonde) wants to lose her virginity to a sheik, which she does find. Now, keep in mind that this sheik thing is her wildest fantasy, and she offers this dude her "gift" of virginity, and he wants it. Only to fall asleep after being smacked in the face with a honey and milk covered stomach. No, I am not making this up, scout's honours.

Failing to get properly devirginized by this sheik, the fantasy fails by the way side, and she settles for a bullfighter. Not only is our heroine going after a bullfighter who already has a lover, but she will get help from a 13 year old girl who is just waiting to turn 14 so she can bed this very same bullfighter. Oh, and this 13 year played by then 15 year old Olivia d'Abo also has a nude scene, and I'm not up on all the laws, but wouldn't that be child porn?

Anyway, so we get to the point in the movie where our virgin is one no more, which the dialogue makes sure we understand this point. This sex scene I will give credit that it's pretty graphic in the sense that it pushes the limit and comes close to full fledged porn territory. Outside of that, it's dumb, awkward, and quite frankly uninteresting and hard to watch. The sex scene in Team America: World Police was more erotic than this one.

But this is not enough for our now non-virgin girl. She wants to find ecstasy, and oh does she ever! Well, actually she find a big "exstacy" neon sign. Close enough I guess. It does come with a big fan and a fog machine, so it's a win right? Wait, what? You're confused? About what? That the ending love/sex scene on the bullfighter's bed (who btw, is now a recovered impotent accident prone bullfighter) it becomes windy as the pink neon sign appears in the middle of the fog, which they point to just so you don't miss it. Awesome, no?

There are so many stupid scenes in this movie, I'd have to go through the entire movie to touch on them all. And the dialogue is just as brutal. "Do you like virgins?" is what her friend asks some random guy she finds cute. But worst of all is the editing. The cuts from scene to scene leaves you saying "what the?" at every turn. My favourite was when the chauffeur is sitting in the kitchen, and his chair starts to tip backwards, and the scene goes into super slowmo as the old guy is falling. At this point we're wondering where this is coming from. Is he drunk? What made him go back like that? Is he going to get hurt? You have time to think about all these things as the fall lasts about 30 seconds. But just as he is about to finally drop, the movie cuts to another scene, and this whole slow motion moment has no purpose... at all. Why? Why not just cut that 30 seconds and make the movie shorter. Shorter would have been better.

This movie was so bad that I was very close to using my veto on this one. But we had already watched 60 minutes of it, and had "only" 44 minutes left. I'm just glad we had beer and snacks.

IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 1 (Seriously, there will be "as bad as" but never "worse than")
Christie's Rating: 2 (She's optimistic that there will be worse)

Turn off point: Christie and I had the same turn off point this time around, and it was during the virginity losing sex scene. This was supposed to be the big moment in the story, the reason why they were "traveling the world", and yet, it was very anti climactic. Especially since there was no build up, and by that I mean, there wasn't a single kiss between the two before he placed himself in position for that initial thrust. "No, no," she pleads, shaking her head side to side as she pushes him slightly away. She looks at him and says "I'm not a virgin anymore" with a big smile as she lets him continue. Ugh, just reliving that scene has made me stupider.

At least our next movie (Police Academy 7) will have nostalgia attached to it. Until then, never watch Bolero!

Sunday, January 2, 2011

#99 - Marci X



I've never worked so hard in my life to find a good movie, let alone a bad one. Someone is making sure that there are as few available copies of this movie as possible. I suspect anyone that was involved in this movie. Heck, even if I was just one of the lighting crew, I would not want my name associated with this piece of filming.

I had to order the DVD from Amazon and the cost was 88% shipping and handling. It was $0.49 for the movie itself, and $3.49 in s&h costs. I've never been so excited in my life to received something in the mail that I knew was going to waste 84 minutes of my life that I knew I was never going to get back.

So, the film stars Lisa Kudrow and Damon Wayans. I know, you are wondering how could a Wayans film be rated so low, right? I was asking myself the very same question when we first saw the list. No, but seriously, these are two actors (can you classify them as such?) that I'm not very fond of. No, I was not a fan of Friends, so appologies to Kudrow fans out there. Speaking of Kudrow, her character, Marci, in this movie doesn't fall far from her character on Friends. I guess the dumb blonde is what she feels comfortable doing. But I really should give her credit for doing whatever she could with the script she was given.

As for Wayans, has he ever done anything remotely funny? It's a serious question. He is supposed to be this big bad ass hip hop superstar, gangsta rapper if you will in this movie, and in the end, he makes Vanila Ice look cool. Oh, I just died a little right now as it reminds me that we have a Vanilla Ice movie on this list somewhere. But I stand by my statement, Wayans attempts to come across as this don't mess with me bad ass whose every nasty word turns on the ladies. Samuel L. Jackson could not have made this character look cool, and Morgan Freeman could not have made this character sound good. (Yes, you know Freeman has the coolest voice ever!)

Something tells me that this was also a half assed attempt at a musical, as there were quite a few music numbers, but they all fell flat. Not a single number brought even a single smile to my face. I reached my "I've had enough" point when Kudrow and her dumb girl possy (three characters with no substance) are in a seemingly black only club, and they stop the dj so that they can show the crowd their knowledge of black culture by doing some Kenya dance they learned back in school. It was insulting to anyone who has half a brain cell. Even though I had had enough, we pushed on, as I know I will need my get our of jail free card for something far worse.

What was really frustrating about watching this movie is that there was no thought at all put into the script. The idea itself had a chance at being something decent and watchable. I'm not saying that anything could have made this an actually good movie, but a 5/10 star movie it could have been. There were too many "this makes no sense" moments. To be honest, it wasn't as bad as it was boring. A really bad movie you can laugh at, or cringe at its badness, but this was just, well, dull. None of the characters were interesting, none of the jokes were funny, and there wasn't a single piece of acting that didn't fall flat. Best acting was the cameo of Mary Hart playing herself on her Entertainment Tonight show.

The best part during the movie was looking over at Christie as she sat on the couch all comfy in her snuggy knockoff that she bought for the sole purpose of these bad movie nights. What's better than to look like a real dork while sitting down to watch what you know will be a horrible movie? And yes, she got me one too, and I was not able to get out of wearing mine, so I too, looked like a dork.

IMDb Rating: 2.6
JF's Rating: 2 (I wanted to rate it 1, but I fear that there will be worse)
Chris' Rating: 3

JF's Turn off point: At the 40 minute mark when they were doing their Kenya singing and dancing..
Chris' Turn off point: It appears as though Christie has a high bad movie tolerance, as she did not have a turn off point. She likes to see where things go, and while she admits it was bad, she would have watched it all the way through even if she could have stopped it. She is a brave soul.

Until #98, I wish you a bad movie night.