[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
We started off our Christmas Eve Bad Movie Night by watching a lawyer talk about the failures and successes in the representation of a courtroom in "Miracle on 34th Street" and by rewatching "Rapsittie Kids Believe In Santa." This was a bad idea because both of these things were vastly more enjoyable than our main feature, a family movie with a sneaky Christian undertone called "Quigley." On paper this movie seems like a win. It stars Gary Busey's teeth as a Pomeranian. It was made in 2003 but looks like it was made in 1993. It has conflicting morals that ultimately have all roads leading to Jesus. But also, it went on forever in the name of being a full hour and a half. Whether or not it's worth your time is heavily dependent on how much joy you get from Gary Busey so the opinions of the movie varied slightly among the BMN members.
"Quigley" starts off by introducing Gary Busey's character who hates dogs and the feelings of others and basically everything except making money at his video game company, weird antiquity influenced art, and the "virtual reality CD ROM." He dies in a car crash when he swerves around a dog and a bunch of angels in cheap curtains tell him he has the option of going to heaven if he returns to Earth in the body of the dog and does some good deeds. He reluctantly agrees and is assigned a guardian angel who falls down a lot and changes his outfit to something new and eccentric every five minutes (most frequently he looks like a really out of touch youth pastor). First Garigley returns to his company to destory an incriminating disk and somehow causes the guy who has taken over the company to fall in love with his secretary. Then Garigley must go to the home of his estranged brother and fix his family's lives somehow. It turns out his brother also develops video games, of the kid friendly variety, but has never sold them anywhere so Garigley steals the disk of one and brings it to his former company where they offer the brother a half a million dollars to work for them. Everyone is happy! But the angels tell Gary Busey that his good deeds don't matter because he doesn't have faith. Then he wakes up in the hospital and it turns out the whole thing was a dream. His life changed, he sets out to make amends with his brother and sell his video game concept again.
The best parts of this movie were any time Gary Busey was on screen. Since only the guardian angel could see that he was really a human, it was only through his eyes that we saw Gary and not the dog but oh, every time he looked like he had just eaten the entire medicine cabinet and it was great. Otherwise, the film dragged a lot. There were a ton of kid hijinks like Garigley getting thrown in the pound, an odd German janitor ranting, and Garigley's niece disappearing and him having to find her, but you would get a good laugh interspersed between these moments.
I can't say I'd recommend watching it, but it wouldn't be the worst night ever. Either way, you're better off with "Rapsittie Kids Believe in Santa," a genuine Christmas classic.
Spoon Rating: 4
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Three young people with terrible accents (Normal Girl, Not MIchael Lillard, and Bitch) and a few other bakery employees (Other Girl, Drunk Lady, and Butcher-Baker) get terrorized by an evil gingerbread man voiced by Gary Busey. Basically the whole reason we watched this movie was to find out how the gingerdead man comes to be. A robber-murderer who did a whole lot of bad things in a bakery gets executed and cremated. The cremains end up getting sent to the bakery in a box claiming they were gingerbread supplies and then ended up getting mixed into the dough. The result is a one and a half foot terror who loves to murder and pun and is clearly a handpuppet.
He kills. Or at least tries to. Weirdly, only Bitch seems to die for real. Butcher-Baker, who left the bakery before the madness started, comes back to save the day by eating him. It doesn't work because the spirit of the murderer infects him. They shove him in the oven. In the future, it is clear that there are more cremains kicking around and potential for a whole army of gingerdead men but we will not be a part of that.
At an hour and ten minutes (ten minutes of which are all slow moving credits) this movie isn't even worth the time. It is noteable though that the only song with lyrics in the film was written by the director and the rest of the score sounds like a Danny Elfman knock-off.
We have no intentions of watching the sequels but you should know there are three:
* "Gingerdead Man 2: Passion Of The Crust"
* "Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver"
* "Gingerdead Man Vs. Evil Bong."
Spoon Rating: 1.5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Scenario: You've just made a movie. You're kind of proud of this movie in a "this will make me back the money I spent" kind of way. It's a classic revenge tale, the plot of which is mostly a ripoff of "Mad Max" (who doesn't love "Mad Max", you wonder), and it stars Gary Busey's giant teeth. It's violent enough to appeal to anyone's id and it's got the required family element since you smartly decided to skip the romance element because you want it to be somewhat believable with your choice of lead. You're pretty satisfied. But then you watch the finished product and realize, oh crap, this movie is awful. Well, it's too late to have less wooden side actors or a better, more original script, or even crazier effects but you do have a little money left in the budget. So what do you do? Capitalize on a musical phenomenon. Buy the rights to Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger", use it at least three times, and name your movie after it. Done. Pay me.
That's all just speculation, of course, agreed upon by a room full of movie fans who have been studying bad movies for three years. Here's what I can tell you for sure. The movie is about our Vietnam War vet main character, played by sketchy guy at the bus station Gary Busey, getting out of jail with a drug lord friend he made there and returning to his hometown to find it overrun with a motorcycle gang. His parole officer, the consistently Hawaiian-shirted and bolo-tied sheriff, does not give a damn about him or the gang (as long as they pay him) and his one friend in town tells him about how messed up everything has gotten since he left. After Busey saves a nurse from getting raped by the gang, in particular a man in a chainmail tank-top, they decide to get disproportionate revenge on him by wrecking his entire house and killing his wife, an experience that leaves his daughter kind of catatonic. Busey calls up drug lord friend who hooks him up with a pick-up pimped out with guns and then he goes on his revenge. And it is silly. He pulls a wire across the street, decapitating a dummy! He gives a rousing speech in a bingo parlor full of old people to try to get back up! He literally shoves a stick of dynamite up chainmail tank-top's butt and lights it! And then in a bonkers finale Busey's friend dresses like a 1940s era pilot and bombs the gang from his plane and Busey shoots them up with his gun truck. Cue "Eye Of The Tiger". Roll credits. Cha-ching.
If I can say one undeniably good thing about this movie it's that among the Bad Movie crew we had some of our funniest commentary in a while while watching it. We're hilarious.
Quotes:
"If you so much as fart and I get wind of it . . ."
"What are you looking at, black man?"
"I'm looking at a white man."
"That's right. A real white man. Take a good look."
Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was a five out of ten. Last week was a ten."
