This is another one of those movies where the title gets mentioned in passing but nobody really feels the need to talk about what it’s about. Eventually I got curious enough to track down a synopsis that satisfied me that it’s about an uncontacted tribesman coming into contact with the modernized world and finding “civilization” to be a confusing mess.
It also seems to have the kind of reputation you’d expect a movie made in the late 70s by white people about native Africans to have in terms of stereotyping.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. One America Productions 2006.
Before watching the movie:
I remember this movie as something widely loved when I was in college, even though it came out a little before I began. There was also some kind of controversy about the real people in the movie being upset at being fooled into looking ridiculous.
A few years ago there was a streaming movie comedy where the scripted plot was written around setting up hidden camera pranks on bystanders called Bad Trip, and I thought it was the first scripted fiction/prank hybrid movie, but it seems that at the time I forgot about Borat. However, the mockumentary format of this movie makes it a bit closer to reality even if the plot is pre-written at least in the broad strokes, so it’s more conventional.
I don’t know how well-known this movie is. The only reason I’ve heard about it is because The Simpsons referenced it in an episode title that I only knew because it was the only time I ever heard a TV station announce the episode title as part of saying the show was on next, and it only stuck in my head because it was confusing without knowing the reference. I think at some point I got around to looking up what the reference was and got just enough answer to satisfy me and then I forgot about it until I was looking for mockumentaries and realized I’d already heard of this.
What little discussion I’ve seen around the movie recently is about how the satire has evolved into reality. I hope there’s still a little satire that seems like satire.
The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Castle Rock Entertainment 2002.
Before watching the movie:
I was vaguely aware of this movie coming out, and it looked vaguely interesting, but I couldn’t really tell much about it from what I saw. This poster, which is just about all the promotional material I saw at the time, tells you that it stars Eddie Murphy, that he’s having adventures on the moon, and it looks vaguely like throwback to the Flash Gordon serials.
This has since become known as one of Eddie Murphy’s biggest flops, which is a distinction with a lot of competition from the 90s through the 00s. I always got the idea it was either not the movie audiences wanted it to be or didn’t hit the tone it was trying for, or both. I can certainly see Summer 2002 being a very bad time for an homage/parody of 30s pulp sci-fi.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Northern Lights Entertainment 1992.
Before watching the movie:
I don’t recall who made them, but I think this has appeared at least close to the top of lists of the worst movies of all time, which has always attracted me to it. What does it take to make a movie that bad? I’m sure Stallone fans were really disappointed to see him being embarrassed by his mother instead of blowing away mooks with dual-wielded machine rifles. But is the whole problem that it wasn’t what audiences wanted, or is it really just a bad movie? I’ve always wanted to find out.
I think I was aware of this movie as a title floating out there, but that was pretty much the end of it. Even watching a trailer, I thought this was There’s Something About Mary for a moment. I wouldn’t have expected Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston to appear together in anything.
Total opposites romantic comedies, especially where the cautious guy’s world is opened by a wildcard girl, are pretty common (off the top of my head, Something Wild fits the bill), but what the concept reminds me the most of is Yes Man. It’s something about the mix of extreme activities that he never would have agreed to without this change in his life, I think. I don’t really have a whole lot more to say about a movie I barely knew existed, just how much it reminds me of more well-regarded movies.
Nobody talks at all about this movie. I see the title floating around, but usually only as a title available in a catalog, not even anything people are referencing. It only just barely exists.
The summary I saw of this movie just described a rich eccentric paying a family to let him spend Christmas with them, but then I looked up the trailer, and I was expecting a lonely older man as the rich guy, but it’s going to be very strange to see Ben Affleck playing a goofy inept manchild. I may have missed the early heartthrob stage of his career, but I always thought he was doing more grounded romantic leads.
As well this looks incredibly like a Christmas remake of Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. I thought the guy was going to just be lonely, but apparently it specifically says he’s looking to recapture his childhood, spelled out in the contract they draw up. So it’s not just a family hijacked by someone who turned on the money firehose, it’s a family hired to make a middle-aged man feel like a kid again.
The summary on this that I saw first was pretty scant. Ringo Starr is a loser caveman, he wants to get the girl. I dug deeper and there wasn’t much more short of a blow by blow synopsis. There’s something about an adventure and exile, but it seems to just be “let’s put Ringo Starr in a silly costume and have some fun with how stupid cave people were.”
I’ve heard this movie referenced a fair bit, and surprisingly a lot of references to the title of the sequel, “The Legend of Curly’s Gold”, even though it doesn’t seem to have the kind of memetic power that “Electric Boogaloo” does.
But the extent of what filtered through was “Billy Crystal and a friend or two are city folk completely out of their depth in a western.” Daniel Stern is a headliner and how many people now can name what he’s done outside of Home Alone if they even recognize the name at all?
I was imagining something like Wagons East!, but on a cursory overview it looks like this is a modern-day movie; contemporary characters on a modern cattle drive, the closest you can get to dropping folks off the street into the Old West without invoking any time travel. So there’s likely going to be a little less city mouse/country mouse and a little more new school/old school.
I don’t often talk about them anymore, but the original release poster shown here looks incredible. I understand that art like this is expensive and that’s a big part of why they don’t do it like that anymore, this is so much better than the slapped-together photo collage they promote it with now, and it already exists. Why not use it?
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Universal-International 1948.
Before watching the movie:
For a long time I thought I had a distant memory of watching this movie, but it might have just been Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy. Whether I saw it or not, my memories are so dim that this might as well be my first time, so I’m doing it now.
It always struck me as strange that the Abbott and Costello movie that Bela Lugosi reprises Dracula in is “Meet Frankenstein”. It looks like they worked in as many of the Universal Monsters as they could make fit into the script, though I guess that list is longer than I generally think of. I don’t know that they ever paired the duo with, say, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
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