[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Let me make this one really easy for you: "Cool Cat Kids Superhero" (yes, that's the title; ignore what the DVD cover says) is basically just "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" with some additional self indulgent footage from Derek Savage, a few weird lines removed, a few worse lines added in, and Mama Cat's lines redubbed by Cynthia Rothrock. It's not actually worth it to watch this movie if you can get your hands on "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" but apparently that's a collector's item at this point.
Instead I'm going to talk about Derek Savage, the creator of Cool Cat. I think when we watched "Cool Cat Saves The Cats" we considered it to be a very, very flawed but earnest attempt at making a product for kids with a good message. Now that we have basically watched this movie three times, I think I'm getting cynical. Adam said that the new title for this movie was a result of Derek Savage hearing that kids only care about superheroes and he was trying to capitalize on that. This seems likely because it doesn't seem like Derek Savage cares that much about Cool Cat. On his website, three screenplays he wrote which all sound like movies we would watch at bad movie night (one revenge story, one Christian love story, and one male stripper story) are at the top with Cool Cat underneath next to "Gun Self-Defense For Ladies" and then a bunch of Cool Cat and Trolly The Trout books under that. Considering that Cool Cat is the only thing anyone seems to have consumed of his, you would think this would get a bigger highlight.
But here's what I think. Cool Cat serves two functions for Derek Savage:
1. It seemed like an easy money maker. Savage doesn't really want to make kids movies; it's not a specific passion for him. What he does want is to work in film, and because kid movies are easy to make and don't have to be particularly "good," he thought this might be a way to make some money and hopefully get some recognition for his other works, which he may have a stronger attachment to.
2. He's trying to justify owning a fursuit. Throughout the Cool Cat movies, there are scenes that are clearly designed to highlight things Derek Savage owns that he's proud of in the materialistic middle-aged man child way. There is discussion of his guitar signed by the members of Van Halen, a band no kid has heard of. We get to see his car a lot during a parade. And in "Cool Cat Kids Superhero" we get even more of this with an opening scene devoted to his motorcycles and a frankly uncomfortable series of shots of Derek Savage working out. Similarly, he displays clout with who is in the movie. He managed to get a Hollywood actress whose largest roles were a decade ago and a washed up television actor to appear and in this one he is able to cite Cynthia Rothrock on the cover of the DVD even though she just did a voice over. This movie is just a way for Derek Savage to toot his own horn and you cannot convince me that he didn't have that fursuit already before deciding to make these movies. It's just another thing he owns and happens to be a little less proud of so he found a way to use it that wasn't creepy.
If you want me to cite my speculations, I can't. There's very little about Derek Savage on the internet. The only thing IMDb adds to the conversation is the fact that he apparently used to be a Playgirl model. I literally have no idea if this is verifiable or added by Savage himself (although if you find picture evidence of this I DON'T WANT IT). It almost sounds like it was added by him because being a Playgirl model is exactly the kind of thing an out-of-touch guy would think is cool and implies that he was hot stuff to women at one point without realizing that the primary reader base of Playgirl has basically always been gay men.
So anyway, watch "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" instead if you can find it, and avoid Derek Savage if you ever encounter him in California.
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
It's been a little while since we watched a Disney Original Musical but we're all out of the really famous ones until we get the highly anticipated "Descendents 3" so in the mean time, we'll have to do with a film not successful enough to warrant a sequel: "Starstruck."
The film revolves around two sisters, Sara and Jessica, who go to California for vacation. Sara is the biggest fan of Christopher Wilde, a Bieber-a-like with even less talent, and Jessica couldn't care less about celebrity nonsense. Wilde ends up accidentally smacking Jessica in the head with a steel door outside an Under 21 club and is taken in by her obstinate attitude and her general apathy towards him. He lowkey kidnaps her and then sleeps in her garage (in his car named Cher because that's what heterosexual guys name their cars). All you need to know to explain this is that he's desperate to avoid the paparazzi at any cost because he's trying to get a film role. In spite of this rough night, they go on an adventure together when they run into each other at the beach and he destroys her grandmother's car so she gives him a dressing down about not understanding normal people. The whole thing follows a very expected romance plot that involves play fighting in water, Jessica shaming the paparazzi, and a reunion at a school dance. Occasionally we get a really bad song with all the autotune money can buy.
The film on the whole is pretty unremarkable unless you are trying to study the basics of three act structure screenwriting. There were a few funny moments, particularly the dancing of Sara's best friend at the school dance, but overall this was another movie to add to the list of "made funny by us because we're hilarious even though the movie wasn't."
Quote:
Jessica: Go away!
Sara: No . . . I live here.
Spoon Rating: 3
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
So Kay was on vacation for three weeks and two of those three weeks it was Good Movie Night instead of Bad Movie Night. Last week the movie was "Jurassic Attack: The Final Battle" or "Rise of the Dinosaurs" (the box and the DVD were in direct conflict) which got a spoon rating of five. The movie was purchased at the dollar store, and we had three other dollar store finds to pick from today. We settled on "The Hero of Color City," a kids movie that is a pretty clear rip-off of "Toy Story" influenced by the popular children's book "The Day The Crayons Quit" about how crayons and drawings come alive when a kid is asleep.
The premise is simple: two uncolored drawings of a king and bug go into a crayon box after hours to enter Color City and this somehow threatens the saturation of all the colors so they have to stop them or something. Literally the goal of the movie was explained by this annoying, mumbling crayon called Professor Heliotrope (although he was lavender) and we all managed to miss the point but not the stakes. The titular hero is Yellow, a very scared crayon who saves the day. The rest of the crew consists of Blue who's "cool", Green who's an organization freak, Red who's sassy, White who is sad about his lack of use, and Black who is monotone and lowkey emo (he's by far the funniest character). They all go on a really unexciting adventure that only lasts an hour and ten minutes and is padded with songs that do nothing for the story. There's really nothing more to explain except that there's this scene where they encounter a bunch of other unfinished drawings and color them in and there's something really horrifying about watching them pick each other up to color.
The best parts about the movie have nothing at all to do with the movie proper. When we first put in the DVD we were rivetted by the welcome screen where the uncolored king drawing keeps poking his head into the screen and groaning (because he doesn't have a mouth). We watched it for about ten minutes. After the movie, we watched cast interviews and they were wild. Christina Ricci played Yellow, and she is struggling to find something significant to say about this flimsy excuse for a movie while also waiting for her Ambien to kick in. Sean Austin played Bumblebee (literally the Bumblebee Tuna mascot because product placement) and he waxes poetic forever about who even knows what. Finally Craig Ferguson played the bug drawing and he basically jokes around the whole time, well aware of how poor the movie is but he's getting a paycheck damnit.
Keith's Review: Color me confused.
Spoon Rating: 4
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Because we had guests (Adam's nieces and Sarah's friend, Christa) we had to ensure a solid viewing experience so we rewatched "Cool Cat Saves The Kids."
Read the original review here.
Spoon Rating: 8.5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
It's been a while since we've had a musical, and some of us (okay, Kay) have been planning on watching this one for a while. "Love Never Dies" is the totally unwanted sequel to "Phantom Of The Opera." While the original musical "Phantom Of The Opera" was based off a novel from 1909 by Gaston Leroux, "Love Never Dies" was somewhat based off the 1999 novel fanfiction "Phantom In Manhattan" and oh boy, is it not like the original. "Phantom of the Opera" is an emotionally complex coming of age story for a middle aged man that has some psychological horror elements and "Love Never Dies" is a story about a love triangle where everyone is awful. For understanding sake, we watched the filmed 2011 Australian production of the show. Also for understanding sake, this is mainly what one would need to know about the original musical: a man with a deformed face who's a musical genius, unsocialized, and a murderer (The Phantom, Erik) trains a chorus girl he's obsessed with (Christine) to sing and blackmails the theater owners into putting her in lead roles and producing a musical he wrote. He kidnaps her, her fiance (Raoul) comes to save her, the Phantom lets them go after she shows pity for him and gives him a kiss, and he's never heard from again. Okay.
Ten years after the events of the original, the Phantom now owns a theater, circus, freak show, thing on Coney Island. Madame Giry, the ballet mistress in the original who was the Phantom's protector, works for him as does her daughter Meg, who was a ballet girl in the original and is now basically a stripper. Christine comes to New York to sing at the opening of a new theater and you find out Raoul is a drunk and a gambler who wasted his fortune and they have a kid named Gustave. One night the Phantom bursts into Christine's hotel room and they sing a song about how they banged on the night before her wedding to Raoul in spite of the fact that it doesn't make sense how she would even know where he was or why she would go back to him for a one night stand. He wants her to sing at his theater and threatens her son, because apparently he's still a jerk and learned nothing at the end of the previous musical. She agrees out of fear and an apparent addiction to abusive men. The Phantom suspects that Gustave is actually his son because he's musically talented, which kind of means nothing because his mom is an opera singer and Christine presumably had sex with both men in a short enough time frame that there's really no way to prove paternity.
In act two, Raoul has a sympathetic moment where he wonders why Christine loves him and then he makes a drunken bet with the Phantom where if Christine performs, Raoul will leave without her and leave her to the Phantom but if she doesn't the Phantom will give them enough money to pay off his debts and let them leave together. This is phenominally stupid since she signed a damn contract to sing and this also makes her an object with no option to make her own choice about which dude to stay with. In a subplot Madame Giry and Meg also don't want her to sing because they believe this will lead to the Phantom turning all his attention to her and them losing their jobs. There's a lot of build up and then she sings. Raoul leaves. She and the Phantom make out somewhat until she realizes her son is missing. Meg kidnapped him, literally to get the Phantom's attention, and then moves to shoot herself in the head because she's sad and crazy now. Meg and the Phantom struggle for the gun, Christine gets shot somehow, she tells Gustave the Phantom is his real dad, he runs off screaming, and Christine dies. Raoul and Gustave show up right after, the Phantom contemplates suicide until Gustave expresses kindness and acceptance towards him, ending the show IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE AS THE FIRST ONE.
This show is terrible, primarily because the plot is mostly based around a poorly formed love triangle (or square if you think Meg has any part in it) and every character has become a piece of crap or, at minimum in the case of Christine, regressed to who they were before the first musical. The music varies from good ("Devil Take The Hindmost") to boring ("Look With Your Heart," "Love Never Dies," "Once Upon Another Time," heck most of the songs) to ear-splitting ("Bathing Beauty") to hilarious ("Beneath a Moonless Sky," "The Beauty Underneath"). Most of the comedy comes from melodrama like the Phantom bursting into the hotel in a fit of dry ice and booming music.
It's a decent bad movie pick for musical fans, really, as long as you can stand to see everything from "Phantom" go to hell. It's probably best watched with a drinking game for every time someone says "beauty" or "beautiful" but you may end up in the hospital.
Spoon Rating: 4.5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
A lot of the movies we watch at Bad Movie Night have a tone problem. Tone problems often create the most comedy and are usually accidental as a result of a bad acting or production. In the case of "The Pit" a good portion of the problem can be traced back to the music. The music is entirely original compositions by the same person who apparently didn't get the memo that this move is supposed to be dark and creepy. Instead the score is peppered with comical stings and rimshot-esque noises whenever another person is fed to the monsters living in the pit. Of course, even with better music, this movie would still feel kind of like a few different people's visions. The writer of the film even released a novelization that stuck closer to the original script which was described as having a more sinister tone. But how sinister can a movie about monsters in a hole in the ground, an evil teddy bear, and a sex-obsessed 12-year-old be really?
The plot follows Jaime, a boy with no friends but a collection of nudie magazines and a teddy bear who tells him to murder. The film starts with him getting a new babysitter who he gets a crush on and manages to convince to wash him in the bathtub because apparently she knows nothing about 12-year-olds. He knows of a pit in the woods full of what he calls "Tra-la-logs." The babysitter says he means "troglodytes" even having not seen them, and he decides to do away with everyone mean to him by feeding them to the pit. We are treated to a series of pit feedings before Jaime decides to prove to the babysitter that the pit is real and she falls in accidentally and gets eaten. At this point we were 2\3 of the way through the movie and wondering where it could even go from there. Jaime lets the monsters out of the pit since he has "run out of bad people to feed them", they go around killing, and the townspeople off them with no one the wiser about Jaime's misdeeds. In the epilogue, Jaime ends up moving in with his grandparents and on his first day of hanging with his step-cousin, she pushes him into a pit of monsters, ending on a freeze frame.
Feed me, Jaime.
The saddest moment of watching this film was when Adam pointed out that the troglodytes were somehow less offensive to look at than the garbage pail kids and we had to spend a lot more time looking at those.
Spoon Rating: 5
Grandma's Review: Nightmare. Poor Jaime.
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
I'm not sure if anyone was curious about what happened to Penny, the new stripper in "Showgirls" who gets knocked up by James Smith and stars in his Private Dance show, but Rena Riffel, the actress who played her, decided we all need to know. Apparently this movie had a Kickstarter and, according to Wikipedia, is a parody but considering the first movie, it's hard to tell. Either way, it is full of references to the first one and has a bunch of actors reprising their roles because they had nothing better to do. Also, Rena Riffel wrote, directed, and starred in it and her influences include David Lynch, John Waters, and amateur porn.
After a bad Windows rainbow screensaver, the film starts with Penny and James in unhappy domestic life where Penny is still working as a stripper. She also wears five pounds of make up and fake eyelashes at all times. Penny gets a business card from a "Hollywood director" and decides to leave to become a dancer in some fictional city called Seven Sisters. She hitches a ride with some performers she found in a trailer park but one of them murders the rest of them and then dies, leaving Penny flush for cash. She gets a fancy apartment and a slutty maid who's working on her masters to pillow fight with.
Her first step in her career begins when she meets a creepy dude in some sort of beer garden who takes her to an occult house, complete with Lynchian nightmare performance. Creepy Dude gets somewhat interested in her career and takes her to a fancy party, which she wears a prom dress to with a child's birthday tiara. She meets a former prima ballerina and gets pimped out to a foreign royal, which she's originally mad about but then just kind of accepts it. Penny tries to improve her dancing at home while she watches some televised dancing program that is not nearly as scandalous as the Goddess show from "Showgirls" and is clearly filled in the dark wing of a theater. The lead dancer breaks her leg and the prima ballerina takes over. The prima ballerina also offers to teach Penny ballet and they dabble in some light girl-on-girl and drinking what appears to be Mountain Dew out of wine glasses.
Penny then gets pimped out to and sleeps with the show's producer, the former lead dancer, and the producer's bang assistant or something, which gets her an audition for the show and a spot in the show. Creepy guy claims it was his pimping that got her the part and she pushes him down the stairs and shoots him with blanks.
She and prima ballerina decide to leave for San Francisco where prima becomes her pimp while she walks the streets. She ends up taking over for prima during a show where she died (?) and James shows up again to tell her she's doing great but that he wrote a new number for her and she should come home. She refuses, and later gets arrested with some other streetwalkers for the murder crime in the beginning, and she spends only six months in jail. Slutty maid gets her free by solving the crime and tells her she wrote her thesis about her. Turns out while she was in jail she became famous for her false conviction.
This movie is long at two and a half hours. For a parody, that's a bit exhausting, especially when most of the jokes are just references to the most notable lines and scenes from the first movie. There are some funny bits, but it takes forever to get to them in between the references and plot twists. The production value is low and the acting is bad, but possibly intentionally. One of the most amusing things about the film is actually the public domain music, which includes an ominous rendition of "Pop Goes The Weasel," electric guitar "Nutcracker," and circus music. Either way, the movie really doesn't have enough to warrant a watch.
We ended the evening with the 12 minute long "Game Crazy Training Video" which we highly recommend for its very serious use of 90s slang.
Quotes:
"I made a deal with God and lapdancing is as far as I go."
"You have a beautiful smile. You have to keep it lubed up."
"Twin sister. She died in an accident. A bubble bath accident."
Spoon Rating: 3
