Stone Cold [1991]

This is an action movie, and it does not take that title lightly. There is so much action in this movie, that the plot is really hard to follow. There are so many explosions, that appears to be where the entire budget went. There are so many fights and shoot outs that we all collectively could not remember that the main girl who was the love interest got unceremoniously offed with ten minutes left in the film. That's what I have to say for Stone Cold really: it's not boring but it's not strictly bad-movie-good.

The plot seems to be about a cop (probably) from Alabama who is in New Orleans to infiltrate a white supremacist biker gang. Apparently the Nazi affiliation isn't the issue so much as something to do with drugs. There's a guy named Chains who seems to lead it all and he hates the DA who is called Whip and wants to give all the bikers the death penalty or something. Every scene that isn't some sort of fight or chase is only about 30 seconds long so it's hard to gleam what's happening but the main mullet man did have a partner right at the beginning who disappears for most of the movie to reappear at the end. There's a helmet with a head in it, a biker funeral that's really a Viking funeral, some bar fights, a character known only as "the Bolivian," a severed and tattooed ear, at least two major car accidents, an exploding gas station, plenty of topless women, and a lot more explosions than I can really remember. The best part of the movie was the last ten minutes or so where we got some exploded dummy action and a scene of a motorcycle going out a window and slamming into a helicopter, causing an explosion. 

So was it worth it? Well, we don't regret watching it, but we can't really recommend it unless you stick to just the end.

Spoon Rating: 3

Cop Rock: Episodes 1-2 [1990]

Every once in a while at Bad Movie Night we have the dubious honor of watching something that isn't funny-bad or painful-bad but mysterious-bad, unusual-bad, curious-bad. The only times I can really remember that happening were with After Last Season, the money-laundering scheme that was hidden behind a movie no one was meant to see, and Deadly Lessons, a movie I am completely incapable of summarizing. Both of those films we gave 5 spoons to with an asterisk saying that you should maybe just watch it for the strangeness, and that's exactly how we feel about this television show. To be clear, Cop Rock is a canceled show of eleven episodes that's half police procedural and half musical, and you probably should not watch the whole thing. We watched two episodes before deciding that was enough. If any brave soul wants to attempt the whole thing, you can but we decided two was enough to get the picture.

We went in wondering if it would be an episodic show but it turned out to have a few consistent threads: the mayor is corrupt or something, two of the cops really want to bang but one is married to a potentially lying detective who isn't as hot as her coworker, a cop gets killed in the first ten minutes of the first episode and his partner gets a new partner who likes to sing Motown, one of the cops abuses people in the interrogation room, etc. The problem is, there is no investment in any of these characters at all (and I kind of couldn't tell any of the white guys apart either). The show is really blandly written. In fact, were it not for the musical aspect, this show would have flown so far under the radar as to be invisible. It's really a very standard and boring police procedural until someone suddenly starts singing. Of course, when they sing it is also a boringly written song that often sounds like a rip-off of something that would have been on the radio at the time. One song was clearly Bryan Adams, one sounded like "The Joker", and there are a lot of late 80s style ballads. Each 45 minute episode has about five songs, most of which are pretty mercifully short. Are they good singers at least? Some are. A lot aren't notable and some are kind of confusingly bad, shocking since according to Wikipedia 200 people tried out for this show. 

Aside from the obvious absurdity of the premise, this show invites even more questions when you watch it. Chief among them is probably, who is this show for? As a musical fan myself, I have asked this question a lot about shows doing the theater circuit and the answer is often a misguided attempt at getting those straight male dollars. But this isn't Broadway trying to court a new demographic; it's television. It's meant for maximum appeal on some level. Could the target be old people? Conservatives who like radio hits? Army wives? I just don't know. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of my favorite shows of all time and even though it's a brilliant comedy-drama-musical, it had a hard time finding an audience because of its title but won people over with its writing and clever use of music. But that's a show about more universal ideas around mental health, identity, and relationships and not a corrupt police force.

The other really weird thing about this show is the tone. This show is completely devoid of humor during the non-singing scenes with the small exception of one joke in episode two that worked. The music is also seemingly meant to be serious. However, because of the absurdity of the tone shift when the song playing is something upbeat instead of a solemn ballad, it ends up being funny: not in a laughing way but the slack-jawed-what-is-happening way. The best moment in the two episodes was a song called "He's Guilty" where they just start singing a gospel song in a court room, again seemingly not trying to be funny but succeeding by sheer audacity.

So should you watch it? I don't know. You could definitely get some amusement from the clips on YouTube of the best songs. In a way though, you kind of need to see that tone shift for yourself to really process how weird this thing is. It's not really fun or worth your time but maybe you should anyway?

Spoon Rating: 5*

*I mean, what else do you have to do?