REWATCH: 420 Awards [2019]

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

It's not been very long but we decided to do a rewatch of the "420 Awards." Read the original post here.

Bring It On: Worldwide #Cheersmack [2017]

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

For a while we were experimenting with the idea of watching the fifth installment in a series in isolation as a bad movie night concept. Yesterday, we did one better with the sixth installment in the "Bring It On" series. But wait! It wasn't just the sixth in the series but also a film made almost a decade after the previous installment, a perfect recipe for badness. And this movie feels cheap. It stars no one except Vivica A. Fox of "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" fame who never leaves a single room and clearly shot all her scenes in a day. Everyone else in the movie is probably a dancer because they certainly aren't actors although at one point a random middle aged man shows up in the background who we all suspected was a camera guy added to the scene to increase the number of people.

The movie does an extremely poor job of establishing its universe. Right from the beginning we are unsure if the cheerleading team is a collegiate team, a professional team, or just some sort of hobby. Either way, the ironically named Rebels are part of some online cheer community that worships the Cheer Goddess, Vivica. Destiny, the captain, is a cheertator who enlists a bunch of street dancers because their dudes quit and then falls for the street artist one. She's under a lot of stress because another team, the Truth, has challenged her team and apparently this is a big deal. She fights and makes up with her friend Willow and then in a twist that was no surprise at all, the ditzy blonde is actually working for the other side. Turns out she's a cheertator over there while Destiny learns to spread the cheerpower to all the cheerlebrities on her team. This language quirk is constant and at one point lampshaded by street artist guy as a verbal quirk of Destiny even though every cheerleader does it. The Rebels beat the Truth at competition where they are the only two live performers because the other international teams videos were clearly pilfered by the film makers under the guise of them being audition tapes or something. We all learn a valuable lesson about cheership.

This movie is bad in a few different ways. The acting is abysmal, the script is predictable, and overall it felt a lot more like a "Step Up" film than a "Bring It On" film. This may be partially because of the deviation from the race themes of the series and the lack of actual cheering. We definitely got some laughs overall so it's at least worth a watch.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films) [1996] & The Hunchback of Notre Dame II [2002]

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

It's a double feature, folks! So aside from the obvious connection between the two films, there is a reason why this particular combination entered our lives. Kay's go-to favorite book is "The Hunckback of Notre Dame" and Adam finished it a while ago. Because Kay is relentless, they set out on an adventure to watch a bunch of different adaptions of the book including the 1939 film, the Disney film, and the stage musical. While hunting for the Disney film, they came across the Golden Films version of the story and it looked so bad, it went on the bad movie night list and oh, boy was it a ride.

This movie was only 44 minutes long which somehow felt both too long and too short. The movie opens on a song about France that muddles the time period of the story so much that there's no way it's taking place in medieval times. From the beginning, something seems off and Sarah hit the nail on the head: this film looks like someone took a knockoff of "Beauty and the Beast" and retrofitted it to be a "Hunchback" knockoff. Melody, Esmeralda's white gypsy replacement, looks like Belle with a torn hem and hoop earrings. Melody has talking instruments that at one point could have been dishware. The bad guy is some French stereotype named Jean Claude who looks like a poor man's Gaston. He even travels around with his father who looks kind of like LaFou. Jean Claude hits on Melody but when she rebuffs him, he decides to arrest her for "raising his taxes." She meets a mostly not quasi-modoed Quasimodo and they fall in love instantly. JC kidnaps Melody's mom to lure her out and arrest her. She sings a happy song right before her execution. She's saved at the last minute by Quasi who was hot all along.

This film is a terrible delight. The animation is shoddy and repetitive, the few songs are like rejects from a 1930s musical, nothing about the story resembles its namesake and the moral of the story is totally contradicted by the end revel. It's terrible. Watch it.

Spoon Rating: 6

Our second feature of the night was "The Hunchback of Notre Dame II," the hastily thrown together straight-to-DVD sequel to Disney's "Hunchback." The animation is notably flatter and worse than the original but they somehow managed to get back the original voice actors. The plot of this one is basically, "Get Quasi a girlfriend" with an ongoing theme about "inner beauty." Yes, it far less dark than the original and far simpler. Madeline, a circus performer, is told by her comically vain and heavily queer-coded boss to seduce Quasi in order to find out the location of this one expensive bell decorated with gems inside (it's pretty on the inside, geddit?!) that he wants to steal. How one would steal a bell so heavy that it can't be lifted is one question. Another is why do you need to know the location? It's in the BELL tower. Either way, she and Quasi hang out and bond over their shared love of climbing things until Quasi finds out from Phoebus that Madeline is tricking him. The bell gets stolen as well as Phoebus and Esmeralda's kid, Zephyr, and they have to save the day. In the end, Madeline of course has fallen for Quasi and they declare their love at this love festival that is sung about in the beginning. Presumably she moves into Notre Dame, although we never find out how Quasi makes money now that Frollo is dead. Does the church give him a stipend for his work? This bothered us the whole movie.

Overall, this is an interesting watch if you are familiar with the original Disney film but it's probably not fun if you aren't familiar with the source material. We got a few laughs for sure, but it wasn't something we'd feel super compelled to recommend.

Spoon Rating: 4

Gun Self-Defense For Ladies [2019]

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

In our effort to explore to the whole Derek Savage filmography, we obviously had to watch the latest "Gun Self-Defense For Ladies." Steeped in Savage's political rhetoric, which mostly consists of claims that crime is on the rise (it's not) and that the liberal media is lying, the film is a disjointed series of interviews and inaccurate demonstrations that are meant to convince the viewers that guns are fun and you should totally get a concealed carry permit to beat the bad guys. Oh, and he occasionally shoehorns in Cool Cat clips and music because he's Derek Savage and he needs to cross promote at every step of the way.

Because the film doesn't really have a plot, it's kind of hard to explain so I will just list some of the types of scenes we get:

• Many scenes of Derek interviewing women who managed to fight off attackers without a gun but who would "feel better" with a gun
• Scenes of Derek in the Nevada desert (why are all these crazy people in Nevada? Actually, I've been there. That tracks) shooting off guns for fun.
• More scenes in the desert with a young girl who's a first time shooter and the guy who acts as the attacker shooting for the first time and clearly hating it.
• Scenes in Derek's house where he incorrectly teaches you the parts of the guns and how to use them in front of a poster for the film.
• A sequence where he goes to a martial arts studio and you can see the pain on the instructor's face whenever Savage talks
• A bunch more interviews where people continue to perpetuate the narrative that violence is getting more common and the solution is MOAR GUNS.

It wasn't his best film. Adam as a former Marine seemed to be in genuine pain the whole film because of the inaccuracies and Kay started drifting off more than once, but it is worth a watch if you could get your hands on it for less than the $15 Adam paid. 

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Plan 9 From Outer Space [1959] & The Rainbow Sponge

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

So it turns out I've never done a full write-up on "Plan 9 From Outer Space," and I guess I'm not gonna start now. Just watch it. It's a classic.

Spoon Rating: 8

Although it should be noted that we actually watched it after we watched a video on YouTube called "The Rainbow Sponge" where a lady who is orgasmic about crafts shows us how to make designs with a dense sponge. It was possibly even more of a work of art than "Plan 9."

Sorry, Ed Wood. We still love you.

Spoon Rating: 9