Hercules [2014]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

We've got some good options lined up in the future but since it was just Adam, Kay, and Grandma, we decided to watch something that probably wouldn't be too good. Since Adam loves a good bad battle scene and Kay loves any excuse to talk about mythology or historical costuming, we settled on "Hercules" starring Rock The Dwayne Johnson and a bunch of other people who had some spare time.

We spent a lot of this movie trying to figure out which part of the Hercules story was going to be told. The answer was, we made up a new story vaguely tied to mythology. All the 12 labors and the murder of his wife and kids are behind him and the whole thing just focuses on him and his band of mercenaries (yes, he has a band) getting hired to train the army of Thrace but it turns out they were the bad guys all along. Most of the movie is training montages and battle scenes. At least the battle scenes had moments of comedy for Adam who used the word stupid at least three times in relation to everything from flaming arrows to battle formations. Kay complained a lot about the costumes, especially Atlanta's boob armor, and got angry every time they used "Hades" to be synonymous with "Hell" instead of just the afterlife in general. She said "You're all going to Hades eventually!" many times.

Overall, don't bother. There are something like hundreds of Hercules movies in the world and this one didn't even feature moon men or lava monsters.

Spoon Rating: 3

Breakthrough [2019]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

So Adam's older sister has vastly different taste than the members of the Bad Movie crew. One time she offered a recommendation that we watch "Black Mirror" on bad movie night because "it's so bad" and we thought she was kidding. By this logic, we thought watching a movie that she liked might be an entertaining experience for us and we were mostly right. "Breakthrough" is a Christian movie based on a true story about a kid who fell through some ice and survived after being underwater for a while. According to Sarah, our medical expert, this is actually not a miracle but a fairly common thing that can happen when the body ends up freezing properly in the water, but sure, God did it.

The thin plot revolves around a family with a controlling mom, a fairly absent dad, and their adopted son who has a real thorn in his side about his adoption. While playing with some friends on a frozen lake, they fall in and the son, comically named John Smith, drowns but does not die. He is rescued and taken to the hospital where we see what Sarah described as a the "worst code scene" she has witnessed in a film. They apparently did everything out of a order, neglected key things they could have done, and the guy who was supposed to do compressions was mostly just rubbing him. When John obviously doesn't wake, they neglect to declare him dead, which is good since the mom demands that God wake up her son and he listened. The next hour is spent with the mom freaking out at people while the son lies comatose, giving them hope. Eventually she asks that he be taken off life support, a climactic moment of her relinquishing control in favor of God, and he manages to survive with no repercussions. She also learns to accept the hip new pastor at the church who references "Bachelor in Paradise" during sermons and has rock and rap worship music instead of the standard fare. The breakthrough was hers, and her son was just a pawn in her quest for enlightenment.

Overall, it was only okay. It was ripe for making fun of but it wasn't funny alone. Also, having Sarah explain the weird medical stuff was a big help in our enjoyment. I would mostly only recommend this if you have a medical expert in your crew or just really like schmaltzy Christian schlock.

Spoon Rating: 4

Speed 2: Cruise Control [1997]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

This movie is a problem right out of the gate. It's called "Speed 2: Cruise Control" and there is nothing speedy about this movie. First of all, it's a little over two hours long and definitely didn't need to be that long. It probably could have been shortened to an hour and a half without losing a thing. On a more literal level, "Speed" was about a speeding bus and this movie is about a cruise ship (get it) with a bomb on it. A cruise ship is a very slow moving vehicle. Shouldn't sequels try to up the stakes of the original? This should have been a movie about a bullet train or an airplane, not a resort that just happens to be on water. This reaches comical levels when there's a guy reading out the speed of the boat as it slows down, and it starts at 20 knots. Feel the speed! Adam proposed the theory that the script for this movie was just a generic action movie script that no one knew what to do with so they shoe-horned it into the "Speed" franchise so it would make money (basically the same thing as "10 Cloverfield Lane" except that movie is great).

Sandra Bullock's character from the first movie has a throwaway line explaining why Keanu Reeves has been replaced with some cop with a badly receding hairline as she fails a driving test. Sandra and Hairline go on a cruise where Willem Dafoe has planted a bunch of bombs because he used to work for a company associated with the cruises but they fired him for being sick. We never find out what his sickness is (something blood based since he messes with leeches a bunch) or if he has any motivation outside of being a crazy person. Basically, the film is a bunch of people running around a cruise ship for two hours. There's a disturbing subplot where this deaf teenager gets a big crush on Hairline after he talks to her in ASL. Fifteen is exactly the right age to ensure that she's too old for it to be cute and too young for it to be acceptable. Later on he watches "Lolita" in the hotel room to really emphasize the yikes. Also the film ends with the ship driving all the way into St. Martin and causing a bunch of damage. This is one of the funniest parts of the film but you need to wait forever to get to it. 

Otherwise, there's plenty of great Dafoe faces, a plastic container falling off a shelf with a glass breaking sound effect, and some really bad effects. The movie has a lot of hilarious parts but it takes so long to get to them that it isn't really worth watching the whole thing. A film with its humor mostly at the end is better than a movie with the humor front-loaded but it still wasn't worth it. 

Spoon Rating: 4

Descendants 3 [2019]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

So the trilogy is done. Was this movie as gay as the previous one? Not quite, but it may be the weirdest of the three. There are a few reasons for this. One is definitely that at this point in the franchise there are so many characters that the movie feels a bit overstuffed. The focus is very much on Mal, as it always has been, but there isn't even time to give the barest nod to some of the characters. Uma is the closest to getting an arc other than her but mostly each character only gets a bare nod of acknowledgment. Another thing that makes this movie odd is the reintroduction of the parents, who were completely absent from the previous film after we had to suffer through them in the first one. Removing the parents had been one of the distinct improvements of the second, but at least they didn't bring back any of those parents specifically. Finally, a big reason this movie felt off was that the songs seemed to be more poorly integrated than in the previous films. They were no worse than the previous films (although "Chillin' Like A Villain" from the second is still the best) but whenever a character started to sing, it felt sudden. Oh, and then there's the fact that the entire plot was just nuts.

The movie starts with Ben proposing to Mal. I guess they're eighteen now? Also, for some reason this means she will be a ruling monarch and her first act as queen is to demand closed borders against the Isle of the Lost. Her reason for this is weak. In the prologue, the main four select four more villain kids to go to Auradon and on their way out Hades tries to break through the barrier with seemingly no motivation. If you're wondering how a god is even able to be contained on this island, we're right there with you.

Meanwhile, Audrey, Sleeping Beauty's daughter, responds to the engagement announcement by turning into a villain. Apparently in spite of not appearing in the second one, she's still sore that Ben broke up with her. Weak motivations are the name of the game here. She breaks into the museum and steals the queen's crown and magic scepter. 

The main crew, plus Dr. Facilier's daughter who was one of the kids picked to go to Audadon, go back to the Isle of the Lost because the only thing that can defeat the magic scepter is Hades' ember. It looks like a blue gemstone and a gemstone would make more sense because Hades is the god of the wealth found underground like precious stones and metals but OKAY. Dr. Facilier makes a brief appearance in what is easily the least silly and most accurate villain costume and then his daughter leads Mal into Hadestown the Underworld. This was an enjoyable detail since the Faciliers can canonically talk to the dead. They follow the railroad line on the road to Hell and try to steal the ember while Hades is sleeping (there was a beware of dog sign but Cerberus was just a recording). He wakes up and we find out he's Mal's dad who left when she was young. Yes, in the "Descendants" universe Maleficent and Hades had sex making Mal half witch and half god. They sing a song about their conflicted relationship and then he just gives her the ember because this movie does make the barest effort to retcon making Hades evil in "Hercules." If the franchise needed a villain who was easily redeemable, Hades was actually the best choice since he's not evil in mythology and also one of the most easily likable of the Disney villains.

On their way out of the island, Mal bumps into Uma and her two queer pirates. They agree to work together to defeat Audrey under the idea that Mal will open the island when she becomes queen. Evie is a motivational speaker now. Jay and Gil(?) plan various dates together.

They go back to Auradon and the pirates are amazed by the luxuries they don't have on the Isle. Again, the class themes of this movie are so great, it's a shame the movies aren't. Everyone has been put to sleep by Audrey, and Chad has become her whipping boy of his own volition. Evie wakes Doug with a kiss of true love and has a whole weird song about it. Jane, who is inexplicably still dating Carlos in spite of him being gay, avoided Audrey's sleeping gas and Ben has a moment of being a beast for a second but he gets better. They wander around for a while and they find out Mal lied about the open borders. She sings about it after they are all turned to stone by Audrey and then she turns into a dragon to fight her and nearly kills her. Inexplicably the only one who can bring her back to life is Hades in spite of the fact that his god powers should do the exact opposite. Either way, he is brought to Auradon in handcuffs (again, he's a god so...) and he cures her. He's just happy to see the sun for once, and this depressing admission makes Mal finally realize she's being a crazy dictator.

The movie ends with a bridge being built from Auradon to the Isle of the Lost and a big dance number. There's no implication of another movie, but I think we can expect that soon there will be a raising right-wing movement against those villains who "took their jobs" and are "lowering the quality of their neighborhoods."

Spoon Rating: 6