Archive for the ‘Dodginess’ Category

Hoodwinked is a musical, film-noiresque detective story version of Little Red Riding Hood.  If that doesn’t immediately make you run out and buy it, and it should, you may be on the wrong site.  But, if you need more convincing, read on.

Hoodwinked starts off by showing the end of the story, which turns out to be the middle of the story, but you only find that out later. The main players in this musical drama, Red, Granny, The Wolf and Kirk all get detained by Flippers, the police investigator,  and each is interviewed. During this process, you can piece the entire story together if you pay attention, but to get all the subtleties you will need to watch it more than once.

The interviews start, and you’re still convinced that this is a Disney cartoon made by a small budget studio. Then the singing starts. The first song is a crayon version of Julie Andrews in sound of music.  You’re still fairly sure what you’ve gotten yourself into, and that’ll be the last time you question whether this movie is dodgy.  After this, the musical numbers include a yodelling goat, a singing bunny and The “Schnitzel on a Stick Song” You have to see, well, hear  them to truly appreciate the full extent of the dodginess.

Vignettes abound, including homages to the great dodgy movies XXX and The Matrix.  There is also a group of singing porcupines dressed as The Village People, which is really just icing on top of the goodies. Ultimately, the mystery is resolved and the story ends happily for everyone that you care about, despite the fact that Kirk ends up in “Der Happy Yodelers”, but it makes him happy, even though yodelling has been outlawed by the Geneva Convention as a cruel and unusual punishment.

Cartoons don’t normally qualify for more than a 4 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man scale as a certain level of dodginess is expected. Hoodwinked, however, manages a well deserved 5. It’s hard to pinpoint the moment that pushes this movie up to the maximum rating. The schnitzel song and yodelling goat, the “battle of the iron cage gladiators” champion granny as well as the squirrel after being fed caffeine could compete for that privilege. However, the Broadway-esque musical number in which the Bunny’s plan is revealed, complete with choreography by the evil henchman, including Jazz Hands, pushes it over the edge.

I bought this one having only watched the trailer, and my faith was well rewarded. Every time I watch it I find something to appreciate, and it isn’t always something new. Even the musical numbers grow on you after a while, and for that, this one gets a 5 Mutant Smileys for rewatchability.

The most memorable quote was almost a tough choice, with gems like “Oh good, More singing” and “Use the hood Red, Use the hood.” But it wasn’t even close once the bunny started dishing out commands. “Keith, darnit change your name.. Please.. That’s not scary and I’m embarrassed to say it. Boris, try that. Keith, you know, oh watch out for Keith.” We all know the importance of scary henchman names, and this spells it out in flashing neon letters.

You won’t get the  slick, polished visual smorgasboard that you experience in the newer Pixar films, given that Hoodwinked had a far smaller budget. However, the script carries this one, and the animation is more than watchable, making this one a must buy for everyone.

Evolution starts out with a lot of promise. Directed by Ivan Reitman and starring David Duchovny, dodginess is assured. Throw in a plot containing aliens, Dan Akroyd and Sean William Scott and you’ve got a winner.

The film opens with Sean William Scott saving a blow-up-doll from a burning building and just goes downhill from there. The burning building gets destroyed by an incoming meteor which conveniently happens to contain the alien organisms. With this, the thrill ride begins, taking in interesting sights along the way, including a giant alien bird hunt in a mall and the administering of an anti-dandruff shampoo enema to the giant alien.

The movie has a plot, which is nice and straightforward. This is good as it doesn’t get in the way. Basically, aliens land, they evolve, the military steps in, stuffs it up, and it’s up to the psuedo-scientific heroes to save the day, with a brilliant deduction about Arsenic and Selenium and carbon and silica based lifeforms that would make any movie scientist proud.

Essentially, the plot exists to move the film from one dodgy moment to the next, not that this is a bad thing. However, it does get a little tricky to pick out a favourite.  I have managed to narrow it down to 2 key moments. The first occurs while hunting the giant alien bird in the local mall. Sean William Scott steps up to the microphone and utters the now infamous phrase “ca-caw, ca-caw. Tooky tooky tooky.” The second, a career defining moment for all involved, is the administering of the head and shoulders anti dandruff shampoo enema to the giant alien creature using a firetruck. Despite the ensuing explosion being reminiscent of the giant marshmallow man exploding sequence in ghostbusters, it is no less memorable. As a result of these two scenes, the film gets a Staypuft marshmallow man rating of 5.

Evolution has firmly established itself as one of my top 5 movies of all time. I have yet to get bored while watching it, even though I can almost recite the script. This gives it a massive 5 out of 5 for rewatchablilty. If I didn’t already own this one, I’d have to buy it.

You’d think that the line “There’s always time for lubricant” would have no competition in the category of “Best Film Quote of all time” but, such is the strength of the script, that it doesn’t even win best quote in Evolution.  That dubious honour goes to “ca-caw, ca-caw. Tooky tooky tooky” and a well deserving winner it is.

Do yourself a favour, if you haven’t already seen Evolution, go and watch it, and if you have, go watch it again.

Hairspray is a strange movie. It’s a musical without giant man-eating plants. The tunes are vaguely catchy, but you’re far more likely to find yourself humming time warp, or some other similarly dodgy tune. To add to this lack of catchy, the film has a message, and even though I agree with the message, it’s not a plus in a dodgy movie.

So, what is it that makes this film like-able. Certainly not Zac Effron. In fact, finding out that he was in it almost diminshed the enjoyment. It wasn’t Queen Latifa either. It may have been John Travolta. He’s normally better value as a villain, but, in a female fat-suit, it’s a close second. Christopher Walken married to John Travolta definitely tips the scale in Hairspray’s favour.

Other than that, there’s not a lot going for it, but it has very few annoyances either, barring the aforementioned Effron character, damn Disney Channel has a lot to answer for.

Hairspray gets 4 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Rating for one reason and one reason only. John Travolta as a woman. This has endless possibilities for amusement, and Hairspray only scratches the surface. Perhaps we could convince him to do a hairspray sequel, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Hairspray requires a certain frame of mind to watch and as a result couldn’t get higher than 3 mutant smileys. It’s not something you’ll just grab out of the DVD cabinet, but it’s fun to watch occasionally. When you get tired of explosions, fight scenes and car chases, not that that is a regular occurrence.

Admitting to liking Hairspray may not get you any points in the heterosexual male olympics, but at least other dodgy movie afficianados may have some understanding.

And remember, we watch them, so you don’t have to.

I went into this film knowing a few things.  I knew Nicholas Cage would have emo-esque angst, I knew that at some point numerology would be mentioned, and I knew that Nicholas Cage would summon his super-emo angst powers that can make grass cut itself at ten paces and save the world.  I was only right on two of these.

The whole first half of the movie I kept on wondering how John (Nicholas Cage) was going to save the world.  He figured out the code, with a little help from a scotch ring, no coincidence that the ring happened to highlight 9/11/09, it couldn’t highlight some random date that had significance to John, like the date the hotel his wife was staying in burnt down.  But of course, that wouldn’t be transparent and easy for the audience to follow.

After he’s tried and failed to stop the second disaster I started to realise that, at last, someone had made an end-of-the-world movie in which the hero fails, and the world ends.  I started trying to figure out how the world ends.  I didn’t have to wait for long.  In a real Deus Ex Machina, which is a standard plot device for dodgy movies, but this one was excessive, John realised that the world was going to be destroyed by a super solarflare.  This really pissed me off.  There were so many opportunities for the writer to foreshadow this, or, even better, not have him realise and let the world be destroyed by a real random act of god.

But this lack of foreshadowing wasn’t the worst thing about the movie. No, that dubious honour is reserved for the biblical nature of the ending. How did the test audiences not pick up that this was a somewhat less than subtle attempt to mock Genesis, at least they could have done something interesting with it and made them pastafarians.

Knowing almost managed to rate 3 Stay Puft Marshmallow Men, but the ending screwed up its chances. The cool disasters, like the plane crash deserved 3, but the dumb silent aliens and the fucking moronic ending forced me to drop the dodginess rating down to 2.

The only reason I can think of to watch this movie again is if you get off on the emo quality of Nicholas Cage’s acting. In fact, that’s pretty much the only reason i can think of to watch this movie once, and it started with such promise.

Unless, you want to witness Cage’s secret super emo power of being able to make grass cut itself at 10 paces, know that you should avoid this.

And Remember, We watch them so you don;t have to.

Street Fighter: The legend of Chun-Li was really up against it when I started watching. After all, it had serious prejudice to overcome after the last time a movie was made based on the game. The real injustice of the last Street Fighter film wasn’t that it “starred” (I wish text could convey sarcasm better) Jean Claude van Damme, but that it was the last film Raul Julia made. But, back to the question at hand. Could Street Fighter: The Rise of Chun-Li wipe the stain?

Well, No. But it’s not really Street Fighter: The Rise of Chun-Li’s fault. The only way to wipe the stain of the original would be to go back in time and prevent Jean-Claude van Damme from becoming an actor and that would lead to the time-cops hunting you down and oh god it’s a whole bad 90’s movie flashback. And here I thought I’d repressed all those memories.

The plot, is fairly standard Kung-Fu Mobster movie fair, with a little woo-woo thrown in to explain the force balls and stuff in the fight scenes. Basically, Chun-Li’s father is captured by the mob and forced to work for them in return for his daughter staying safe. Chun-Li vows revenge and the rest is fight scenes, explosions and really bad attempts to justify calling the movie Street Fighter. In fact, if it wasn’t for the character names, there would be nothing to link the movie to the game at all.

The film doesn’t really live up to the promise of the video game, and even though fight scenes and laughable intrigure abound, I was unable to give it higher than a 3 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Scale. The dodgiest moment in the film was not a scene as is usually the case, but rather a plot point. Why did the writers have to make it some mystical thing about how Bison became all evil. He couldn’t just be a monster. Noooo. He had to remove all the good things about his soul and put them into his unborn daughter so she could conveniently be used against him later.

Deciding on what to rate this for rewatchability was tricky. I couldn’t in all fairness rate it lower than Dragonball Evolution but then I see that I rated DBE as a 3 and I have to ask “What the fuck was I thinking?” It should have been a 2 at best, then I could have rated this as a 2. And then I remembered. I don’t need to be fair. i don’t even need to be consistent, I just need to not waste anymore time thinking about a movie who’s only redeeming feature was at least it didn’t star Jean Claude van Damme.

Unless you feel the need to feel the full effects of time stretching, when 5760 seconds feels like 2 days, I wouldn’t waste any time watching it.

And Remember, we watch them, so you don’t have to.