My blog and I might have even been attempting to revue with an "iew". God. How pretentious. Shudder.
Well, Spring has sprung, mofos! There's nothing like a crappy movie from the 80's and a crappy movie ABOUT the 80's to give one that well needed perspective.
Let's get snarking, shall we?
Pixels - released in 2015
I was sitting around one Sunday, minding my own business, when I saw that this movie was on. Now, I'm not gonna say I'd heard amazing things about this film (or anything about it, actually) but I do love me some Adam Sandler and I'm almost always willing to cut him a huge amount of slack. So I watched.
This film is basically about a group of kids who, like most kids, played massive amounts of video games in 1982. They grow up and enjoy varying degrees of success (one guy gets a Geek Squad type of job and his childhood best friend gets the job of being...the POTUS. Sure. It could happen). The Geek Squad guy, Adam Sandler, was amazing at finding the patterns in video games when they were kids. Earth is invaded by aliens who have seen our video games from the 80's because they were sent into space in a time capsule. They launch video game attacks (Pac Man, etc). So who's the POTUS gonna call? His Geek Squad bestie who is good at video games from 1982. Handy.
There is no getting around it, this movie is DUMB.
And your Suspension of Disbelief skills get a total workout. Mine were sore the next day.
But here's the weird thing, I liked it anyway. It's totally stupid, don't get me wrong! But I was in the mood to watch mindless, dumb shit. (Give me a break, I had worked the whole weekend!)
I will admit, though, there were points when this almost broke me.
The crazy thing is they got a great cast. Dan Ackroyd has a cameo, which didn't surprise me because this film definitely tips it's hat to Ghostbusters. Josh Gad plays one of the geeks (duh). I love Josh Gad. He is kind of always awesome. Most especially when he whispers his lines. I think if I hung out with him I'd laugh all the time and possibly have a huge crush. But there is also the possibility that he might be a little bit stinky. Not sure.
You know who else is in this movie? Peter Dinklage. I also love Peter Dinklage. Peter Dinklage, however, does not always know how to choose good roles. And when he chooses poorly, it's REALLY bad (I'm looking at you, Knights of Badassdom). For some reason, he also thought the best acting choice in this was to play it with a weird accenty-dialect thing that made him sound like he was imitating Robert Downey Jr's character in Tropic Thunder. Thankfully without the black face. Sigh.
The not surprising thing is the music in this film is perfect. Sandler clearly loves a good 80's soundtrack and this totally delivers.
It's directed by Chris Columbus of Harry Potter fame...read my Potter post to see how I'm super lukewarm on his directing style. Therefore, the fact that Aunt Petunia is cast in this is no surprise.
There is a ton of animation, the style looking much like what you might have played on your Atari back in the day. It's clever and the animation is good. The end credits are my favorite though, they look like an old time MS-DOS computer game.
This movie is sublimely 1982 boy humor. The only thing I missed was an Oregon Trail representation. SOMEONE should have died of dysentery.
(My drink pairing suggestion for this is an Alabama Slammer. A favorite of mine in the 80's and might dull the pain of actually watching this film.)
The Last Starfighter - released in 1984
I remember when this movie came out. Why do I remember? The leading man, the last starfighter himself, was played by a local boy. Lance Guest. He grew up in Saratoga, CA and his mom used to come into the Saratoga Community Library where I worked in 1984. She was a lovely woman who checked out a lot of travel books. And she was VERY proud of her son.
This movie, upon viewing it now, is truly terrible. I couldn't even get through it without continually turning to Facebook for relief. (you guys, I just realized there is an initialism for this. From The Skimm - TSOP: Time spent on phone. Or a way of quantifying how good a show is. Use it in a sentence, not just sporadically: "very low TSOP watching the OJ show last night." Wow, I'm so "on fleek", huh? (psst...did I use that right??)) I was ready to blame it all on the director until I looked him up on the Internet. His name is Nick Castle. HE PLAYED MICHAEL MYERS IN HALLOWEEN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! One of the creepiest motherfuckers around. AND he was friends with John Carpenter. AND he cowrote Escape From New York with Carpenter. Fuck. Now I have to love him. Nick Castle, how could you have had such auspicious beginnings and fritter them away on this pathetic movie?
So this movie is about a kid from a trailer park who obsessively (even ignoring his 80's-hot girlfriend) plays a video game until he beats it. It's actually a recruitment device for a different planet or some shit so they "recruit" (kidnap) him and leave a beta version body double who is basically retarded. The kid witnesses all the other starfighters fall to the enemy, is a whiny bitch about going home, grows a pair of balls and finally helps the nice aliens defeat the mean aliens.
First. Lance Guest did NOT grow up in a trailer park. Nor does he look like he did. He looks like he grew up in an affluent suburb in Northern California. Sorry Lance.
Second. The acting in this, across the board, is pretty terrible. The saddest part of that is the fact that Robert Preston is in The Last Starfighter. He plays the recruiter alien, Centauri. I wanted him to be good in this. He's great in other films. He's Victoria's GBF in Victor/Victoria. He's the stinkin' Music Man! But...in the end....it's still terrible. As terrible as Cilantro, with a capital C which rhymes with T that stand for Terrible!! Preston really phones it home. (Get it? He's an alien. E.T.? Phone....oh never mind, it was stupid. Like this movie)
All right, I'm clearly on an unending, pathetic spiral into movie puns and idiocy. Enough is enough.
(My drink pairing with this is a vodka martini. I experimented with them in 1984. I really didn't like them until probably 1987. But drink enough of them and you'll forget ever having seen this movie.)
My takeaways:
#1 - I'm going to make a generalization here and you can take it or leave it: Movies about video game players who use those skills to save the Earth are as good as they are realistic.
#2 - I don't think poor Lance Guest did much after The Last Starfighter. Which makes me wonder if he had to move home to Saratoga at some point to live with his lovely mother. I hope he was a good son.
#3 - I'm torn about "TSOP". While I'm happy that there is a device at my fingertips that alleviates my boredom every second of every day, I hate that it's an initialism because that means it's common and accepted that everyone ignores everything. Also, I DO NOT condone TSOP when seeing anything in public (movie, play, concert, etc).
xoxo....hashtagSueslife
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