Courtney Enlow

Yep. I saved the worst for last.

Over the summer, I’ve brought you some of my darkest, most secret cinematic shames. But this one? This is the clincher.

Grease 2 is, without any hint of exaggeration or hyperbole, the most batballs-retarded piece of movie shit in history. It is awful, it is painful, it is brutal.

And I love it.

Let me preface this by divulging my feelings on the original Grease. Grease and I have a troubled history. I find the original Grease to be a mess of laughably old teenagers, bad storylines and an inconsistent (at best) song list. And that is a glowing review compared to my feeling towards the stage show. Holy shit the stage show is bad. I would watch 30 showings of Cats and Annie over the Grease stage show.

And despite my loathing of the stage show, and my only partial enjoyment of the original film, it is still horribly hurtful and humiliating to admit this: I find Grease 2 to be far superior to its predecessor.

I want to be proud of my feelings, to be comfortable with them, but I am unable. You’re not supposed to say this. You’re not supposed to feel this. But I do. And I know I can’t be alone.

I don’t want to pretend anymore.

Grease 2 is the tale of one Stephanie Zinone (Michelle Pfeiffer), a Pink Lady who wants desperately to rebel against her role. She wants to wear capri pants to school and turn her pink satin jacket to its black leather reversed side (that seems really expensive and hot) and date someone who isn’t a T-Bird. Alas, the stringent rules of these social circles are unbending and anyone who breaks them will face penalty of social death (and possibly actual death).

Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend Johnny Nagarelli (Adrian Zmed) is kind of the Danny Zuko of this movie, only he doesn’t get the girl and is basically an idiot manchild. In fact in this film, set one year after the previous one, the T-Birds are all illiterate. I feel like the OGTB’s were goofy but at least passably intelligent. These guys are actually just flatiron fucking stupid.

The girls aren’t much better. There’s Sharon (Maureen Teefy, a.k.a., a chick from Fame, a.k.a., best name ever), who is desperately trying to be Jackie O. There’s Paulette (Lorna Luft) who is desperately trying to be Marilyn Monroe (though if we look at the layers below the surface is really trying desperately to be her sister Liza – DAMMIT, Judy, why was she never good enough for you?). There’s Rhonda (it does not matter what her name is) who has a nose only an emu could love.

Our boys include the extra stupid Goose (Shooter McGavin), the date rapist Louis DiMucci (proper stage actor Peter Frechette) and another one who doesn’t matter.

One would think our hero would be the greasy guido with the fancy hair, like last time. Well one would be a fool to think such things. A fool I say! Our hero is this man.

Oh Rexy indeed.

Maxwell Caulfield plays a wimpy Brit deep in smit with our Stephanie. When she tells him that she could never go for him because he is a) not a T-Bird, b) literate and c) not a coo-ooo-ooo-ool rider, he immediately betrays his identity in ways Sandy Olsson only dreamed of when she poured on those leather pants. He adopts the secret identity (and a Bale-as-Batman gruff voice with an American accent) of … guy on motorcycle … and wins the heart of our blonde rebel.

But he’s STILL not a T-Bird, you see. So there’s conflicty things. The conflict ends with him driving off a cliff, Thelma and Louise-style.

My personal favorite part of the movie is this: he drives off the cliff and is assumed dead because it’s a fucking cliff. Stephanie is heartbroken but MUST carry on and perform in the Pink Lady and Other Ladies talent show song. She immediately whizzes it and starts singing some magical song in her mind, which she duets with the ghost of Motorcycle Guy. The guy who is not actually dead.

Ghosts of people who are not dead are the best kinds of film character, and let no one tell you otherwise.

So he motorcycles through the end-of-the-year school carnival/luau thing, which I question historically as Hawaii had only been a state for like five years, totally ruins and destroys all the hard work of the Student Activities Board and reveals himself to be British Guy. The T-Birds accept him as one of their own, Stephanie allows herself to truly accept love and we all learn valuable life lessons, mostly because we were gifted with this song.

The songs, people. THE SONGS. There’s a song with bowling as a metaphor for sex, there’s a song about tricking a girl to have sex under threat of nuclear attack, there is a song about wondering who a guy is and there is a song about nailing broads at the goddamn grocery store.

Why is this movie not more beloved?

Seriously?!

Grease 2 is totally lame. But it’s no less lame than the original and for that it deserves at least one apology.

Sorry, Grease 2. Perhaps the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

Courtney Enlow

When it comes to the films I’ve reviewed in this series, I can see why others might not be as into them as I. This is not one of those films.

I love The Craft. I think it’s a great film. Fun, well-written, well acted, badass soundtrack, the coolest ’90s clothes ever, which I would totally wear today and, most importantly, it appealed to my 12-year-old desire to be a witch.

As a young girl, I was fascinated by the concept of having the power to create my own world around me.

Also I really like candles. My understanding is that there are a lot of candles.

The Craft made being a teen witch super appealing. But does the movie hold up to my pre-teen memories? I decided to watch and see.

The Craft is the story of Sarah, a be-wigged Robin Tunney, still bald from shaving her head in Empire Records. It’s a good wig, too. I genuinely can’t tell.

I should probably get this aside out of the way early – Robin Tunney is an incredibly underrated actress. I’m not sure why she never really broke out. She’s very pretty, incredibly talented and she’s a Chicago girl. If you haven’t seen Niagara, Niagara, track it down and watch it. She’s truly outstanding in it.

Anyway, speaking of actresses who never really broke out, the film also stars Rachel True and Fairuza Balk, and, in the “she broke out, but then the aughts happened and her career disappeared” category, so does Neve Campbell.

Sarah moves to LA with her family and immediately catches the eye of Skeet Ulrich. The day after getting none from her, he starts spreading vile rumors, which I’ve never understood of high school boys. Dudes, just be nice to the chick till she puts out. If you spread lies, she’ll never spread thighs.

I’m going to be a great mom someday.

Moving along …

The outcasts in school, Neve, Fairuza and Rachel, take pity on her and let her join their witch club. We learn that Nancy (Balk) is an outcast because she’s all gothy and white trashy and also had rumors spread about her by Skeet Ulrich. Bonnie (Campbell) is an outcast because she has scars on her back. Rochelle (True) is an outcast because … I think it’s because she’s black. They don’t really get into it.

After they cause a crazy homeless guy to get hit by a car through mind powers, the girls introduce Sarah to the idea of Manon, their pagan-y witch god, and we learn why each of them had to turn to magic. Rochelle had to turn to magic because Christine Taylor is an enormous racist c-word (censored for my dad who does not care for said word, but Jesus, there is no other word to describe that character). Bonnie had to because of the aforementioned scars that no amount of gene therapy can cure. Nancy had to because her skanky, drunken trailer mom married an abusive fat guy. Don’t they all.

To do away with all their troubles, they bus it out to the fields and drink each others’ blood. Butterflies appear and their wishes start coming true.

Skeet Ulrich starts lovelornedly gazing at Sarah. Bonnie’s scars disappear. Christine Taylor’s hair starts falling out in huge clumps. They dominate at Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board. Finally, Nancy’s step-dad has a big fat guy heart attack, leaving her family with a hefty life insurance payout (which was totally not enough to pay for an awesome LA penthouse, but whatever).

After that, the girls, mainly Nancy and not really including Sarah, get drunk with witchy power. Nancy decides to “invoke the spirit” which apparently involves making small animals explode and sharks wash ashore. Sarah gets freaked the eff out and is ready to quit the witch game, and then their spells start to turn ugly. Rochelle starts to feel guilty about giving the racist bitch alopecia, and Skeet tries to rape Sarah. Nancy hears this and is either pissed for her friend or jealous he doesn’t want her (I think it’s supposed to be both) and uses a glamor spell to pretend to be Sarah and seduce him, then scream him to his death out the window.

This is pretty much the back-breaking camel straw for Sarah and she bounces cult. The girls don’t take this well.

Their revenge exaction is most excellent. They invade her dreams, make her think her dad’s dead, fill her house with snakes and creepy crawlies and try to get her to kill herself. But, see, Sarah is a witch by blood. Her dead mama was a witch, and she’s a good person, so she wins, and Nancy ends up in a mental institution. Eat it, bitches.

This movie holds up. All the acting is good, but Fairuza Balk is goddamn terrifying. And this may be random, but the sets are seriously spectacular. Who ever did the decorating and design is awesome and I would like them to come do my house, please. I would absolutely live in that witch shop. Did I mention I love candles?

One glaring matter, not just in this movie, but most ’80s/’90s teen movies is this: God, actresses used to be bigger. They were still slender, but they were fleshier and had boobs made of actual human fat. Christine Taylor in this movie has almost my exact same body. This is Christine Taylor now. Actresses were allowed to weigh more than 100 pounds, and they were still beautiful. Certainly more so than now. Their heads didn’t look too big for their body and they didn’t have those weird pulled flesh wrinkles from starvation. It makes me sad.

For non-anorexic hot bods and a super fun story of witchcraft and teengirldom, I give The Craft five out of five Twinkies.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

Courtney Enlow

Because experience has taught me that nothing follows up The Crush like Fear.

Fear and The Crush are my two all-time, top two, guilty pleasure delights. The difference? Only one really makes me feel all that guilty. And it ain’t this one.

I genuinely love this movie. Not in a “God, The Room is awesome” kind of love. Like, “This is how girls who wear t-shirts to the pool and 45-year-old ladies with 10 cats and hoarding disorder feel about Twilight.” Love. Pure and simple, unconditional. Love.

James Foley, the director of Glengarry Glen Ross, no doubt inspired after working with Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin and Alan Arkin, said, “I want to work with that guy who posed in his tighty-whiteys and rapped of vibrations, good like Sunkist.” And the magic was born.

Feel it, feel it.

Fear is the tale of Reese Witherspoon, a spoiled brat who wears very short skirts. Despite constantly showing her thighs and midsection, we are lead to believe that she is the good girl to her best friend Margot’s (Alyssa Milano) giant whoreface. You can tell she’s a whoreface because she asks for chocolate cake like she wants it. Aw yeah.

They are also friends with Gary. Gary is the biggest wimp ever. Fuck Gary.

Her dad is William Peterson. At one point in the film, he whips off his sunglasses when shit goes down. David Caruso later stole this and had a career with it on Peterson’s spinoff.

Because Reese is a spoiled child of divorce, she is angsty and longs for excitement. So she, Margot and Gary sneak out of school one day and get coffee. EXCITEMENT! While java-ing, she spies the incredible pile of muscle and beauty and Boston that is Mark Wahlberg. She tingles twixt her nethers. Alyssa Milano spies his friend who looks like a fat Slash. She burns and itches twixt her nethers, but that’s probably been going on for a while, what with the aforementioned whorefacing.

When her dad bails on a James Taylor concert, Reese storms out of her house ready to be a rebel (missing out on “Fire and Rain” will do that to a 16-year-old) and she and Margot head off to experience Seattle’s mid-’90s rave scene. There’s lights, flannel, dude-on-dude action, untz-untz music and she is stoked to finally feel alive. And as if things couldn’t get better, though it is a rave of at least 300 people, she runs into Marky Mark. Well, he mysteriously appears from behind a pole, but it’s fine. She wows him with her stunning conversational skills (“So … why aren’t you dancing?”) and then a fight breaks out or grunge dies or something angsty, I’m not sure, but they all have to bounce because the police helicopters are coming.

He whisks her away from danger in his Corvair and when she tells him she should get home, he turns her watch back.

It’s a cute moment, but when he does it again later in her dad’s office, you kind of start to realize that maybe he really thinks that’s how time works.

After that, they have a montage of tenderness. Playing pool, making out, rollercoaster fingerblasting, the usual. We get hints that Marky Mark may not be all he’s cracked up to be – bossing her around, getting a little friendly with her stepmom, implied shady dealings with his friends – but dammit if he doesn’t get that job done in record speed. He’s at it, what, 10 seconds? Then the virginal teenager’s all “wiiiiiild hoooorses” on the Screamin’ Eagle and we know he is IN and, hell, we’d let him in, too.

After that, things get dark. He picks her up at school and sees Gary – pussed out little Gary – and beats the shit out of him, elbowing her in the face in the process. She cries tears that would make any one of us think, “Wow, she has an Oscar?” and decides it’s over.

Until her dad forbids her from seeing him again when he finds the condom. Then it’s all back together cuddle time and amusement park diddle jobs.

Then, shit gets the realest.

He starts threatening William Peterson. He destroys his awesome vintage car, he punches himself in the chest a bunch, then he fucking rapes a cracked-out Alyssa Milano.

Reese Witherspoon, being the sensible girl she is, witnesses this and blames her best friend. Naturally.

After that, Marky Mark threatens Margot, stalks Reese and straight up murders Gary (dude, Gary had it coming). Then …

Then he beheads the family dog, pushes its head through the doggie door and forever traumatizes Reese’s little brother.

No, seriously, it’s rough.

He and his pals proceed to terrorize the family, kill a security guard, tie up stepmom Amy Brenneman, totally ruining her bouncy curls and generally fuck shit up old school. There’s a lot of tension and he almost shoots William Peterson and then Reese stabs him in the back with a peace pipe and out the window he goes, boom CRACK against the pavement.

Goddamn I love that movie.

With the exception of an over-the-top slutty character in Margot, three incredibly random and out-of-place zoom-in close-ups and Gary as a whole, there is not a single thing wrong with this movie. Mark Wahlberg is awesomely creepy, the tension is fierce and the soundtrack is amazing. Mostly because they play “Something’s Always Wrong” by Toad the Wet Sprocket no less than twice, and that’s one of my favorite songs of all time. Fear rivals The Craft (ohhh look for it next time) as my favorite ’90s-flick-soundtrack of all time.

If you’ve never seen it, rent it. If you have seen it, watch it again. Love like I love. Fear is worth it. Five out of five Twinkies.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

If you know me at all, you know three things: 1) If it weren’t for cupcakes, I’d be a size zero, 2) It’s not that I’d leave my fiance for David Tennant; I’d actually set him on fire to get to him and 3) I love the movie The Crush. Like a child, I love it unconditionally, despite it’s disabilities, flaws and problem accents.

The Crush is the tale of The Dread Pirate Westley and his search for the perfect home. He is hired by a big deal famous magazine, despite the firmly hit plot point that he has absolutely no writing skills. His search determined hopeless after only three stops, he decides to board in a rich family’s guest house.

This would be a sweet gig if the family didn’t include the Nabakovian nightmare that is a young Alicia Silverstone.

We very quickly discover that she is a touch oversexed (this becomes an insane understatement as the movie progresses) and she is out to seduce our hero (the word “hero” becomes a gross overstatement as the movie progresses).

Because it comes up throughout the film, it is best to get this out of the way now: Cary Elwes is terrible at hiding his accent. And, hell, I can’t blame him. His accent is lovely. He should not be forced to hide it. But Hollywood keeps insisting, and whether he is telling Ashley Judd why he’s about to murder her, telling Jim Carrey’s son that he’s his new stepdad-to-be or telling Jigsaw that he wants no part in his little game, the man does so extremely Britishy.

As bad as he is in those movies, he’s awful at it in this one.

One thing that becomes abundantly clear is that the tween femme fetale’s first name has obviously been ADRed. This is due to the fact that the writer/director pulled from his own real life trauma in having a hot teenager want all up on his parts (oh, believe me, I’ll get to that) and decided the totally legal thing to do would be to use the real chick’s first name. The movie was released on VHS and cable with the original name – Darian – and re-dubbed for DVD with a new and legal edited name – Adrian.

Cary Elwes cannot say the name “Adrian.” He more typically refers to her as “Eeedrian.”

The sweet teen crush betwixt Westley and Eeedrian starts out all well and good, but turns creepy really quickly. She sneaks in and rewrites his articles, to the joy of his editor who is no doubt horrified to have hired a writer whose work can be so improved by a 14-year-old girl. She lounges by the pool, seductively adjusting her straps for his enjoyment. Of course, the director insists on delicately trailing the camera slowly along her actually-14-year-old body.

She also makes angry lemonade. This is my favorite scene in the movie.

It gets really creepy when Nick (the character’s actual name) starts dating his mush-mouthed co-worker, and Eeedrian attacks her with wasps. When Nick voices his relatively mild disappointment at this, she steals a used condom from his trash, rubs her ladybits with it, beats herself up and cries rape.

No, seriously. That happens.

After ruining his life, she runs away from her parents, who’ve whisked her to post-rape-fake safety and straps her best friend, Cheyenne (Amber Benson, aka, Tara from Buffy) to a terrifying carousel in her attic and tries to murder Nick by morphing into a male stunt double in a wig and pushing him down the stairs.

He survives through the power of his Dwayne Wayne flip-up sunglasses and saves the day. By punching his child tormentor in the face.

For real.

The Crush is something I love, but I can see its downfalls. Once you find out the film is based on a true story, it becomes truly lecherous. From the supposed “victim” writer/director’s insistence on showcasing the – again – actual-14-year-old form of Alicia Silverstone to the really convoluted rape faking, it’s basically akin to O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It book. There’s no way this guy wasn’t Humbert Humbert-ing the real-life Darian.

Once you look past the implications of bad touch, the movie is just so fun. Cary Elwes is at his peak of beauty before he aged and bloated (ugh, don’t click here. This is tragic.) and gives it his all. Alicia Silverstone is delightfully evil, a far cry from Cher Horowitz. The supporting cast is pretty good too, including Kurtwood Smith as Eeedrian’s dad, and the familiar-but-I-don’t-know-why girlfriend, whose IMDb page only further intensifies the “I-don’t-know-why” part. If someone knows why she’s familiar, please inform.

The Crush is a super-punch of awesome. It’s not a good movie, but it is fun. And sometimes, that’s all I need. I give it five out of five Twinkies.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

Remember the first time you had a Twinkie? You tasted the cake and filling and thought, “This is delicious. I simply must eat 10 more.” Then as you got older and your tastes changed, you still carried this memory of your magical Twinkie experience. Then you finally eat a Twinkie for the first time in years, and you realize, “This tastes like animal offal and homeless man skin oil.” And you immediately regret ever loving it.

Movies are a lot like Twinkies.

We all have movies in our past that we once loved and now loathe with great guilt and the humiliation of a thousand wedgies. And so, as we enter summer, I have decided to revisit the movies that filled us with warmth and now fill us with acidic rage. And what better way to start it off than with the film that took an uplifting tune about the trials and tribulations of a paraplegic race winner and turned it into the theme song of seven major assholes?

St. Elmo’s Fire is the tale of seven college friends who are all whiny morons. The first time I saw this movie, I was maybe 14. I thought it was amazing, a veritable documentary of my imagined post-grad life, since every character basically had the same mindset I did at 14. It is now 11 years later, and I am three years older than the characters themselves, which I never really realized. I thought they were older. Actually they’re 22, merely four months out of college, and somehow Judd Nelson is a senator-in-training and Demi Moore is a professional banker and gala-attendee and everyone does something else unrealistic, except Emilio Estevez who is a waiter, which is the only career that makes any sense in this movie, but this is possibly because I went to art school.

The movie opens with Rob Lowe drunk driving Mare Winningham’s car into wreckage. Mare Winningham forgives him because she’s mildly-less attractive and wears glasses and he has fancy hair. The film gives us no reason why she would be so in love with him, or why anyone in the movie would be friends with him. He’s probably the most hateful character in a slew of hateful characters.

Quickly, we are introduced to the others: We have Kirby (Emilio Estevez) the waiter. He is a terrifying stalker whose creepy obsession with Andie MacDowell’s character is supposed to be endearing, I think. There’s the aforementioned resident dipshit Billy (Rob Lowe) who is useless and rapey, and cheats on his wife/mother of his child a lot. Jules (Demi Moore) is kind of slutty and a gold digger and does a lot of coke. Judd Nelson plays Alec, another cheater, working toward a career in politics and living with Ally Sheedy’s Leslie – who really has nothing else important to her character except that Andrew McCarthy’s in love with her – in the biggest apartment I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He wears tiny shorts and buys Ally Sheedy the longest negligee in the world. It’s basically a ballgown.

Then there’s Andrew McCarthy. He is dreamy. Ally Sheedy’s stupid for choosing Nostrils McGee over him all these years.

None of these people would be friends in real life.

They insist on greeting one another with their warcry, “Ah boogah, boogah, boogah, ah ah ah!” which is short for “Ah boogah, boogah, boogah, ah ah ah! One douchebag, two douchebags, three, four, five, six, seven douchebags, ah ah ah!” These people are alternately the youngest and oldest 22-year-olds I’ve ever seen. The entire blame for this falls upon one man, Joel Schumacher, who co-wrote and directs by shooting the entire movie as a series of dramatic close-ups. I did not need to see Judd Nelson’s pores in extreme full-screen view. They were very obviously written by someone who never actually went to college and had no concept of post-grad life.

If this were a realistic movie, all of these characters would have either been living at home or roommates in a $600 a month apartment, working as office assistants or baristas. Instead they are all completely boring. Even Jules’s nervous breakdown is boring, because she’s such a whiny simp, we just can’t care about her problems. Little gems of her abusive past are strewn throughout the movie, but they’re not enough to explain anything she does. Ultimately, what we realize is that each character is a spoiled rich kid who was handed a great life and is still unhappy. Actually, in my experience, that’s not wholly unrealistic.

The biggest thing they fucked over in this movie? The goddamn title. The big speech at the end, wherein Rob Lowe explains the meaning of St. Elmo and the fire, yeah, they got that all wrong.

“Jules, y’know, honey … this isn’t real. You know what it is? It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them … there was no fire. There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this. We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.”

A) St. Elmo’s fire was real. It’s an electrical phenomenon.
B) It was not in the sky, rather around the ship’s mast.
C) St. Elmo was real – it’s the nickname for two Catholic saints.

If you’re going to name your movie after something, have the decency to research it. That said, I am to understand they didn’t have Wikipedia in 1985.

The film leaves us with many questions. Who are we now, and who will we become as we get older? Is it possible to stay the same, or do we lose ourselves with our youth? And, most importantly, just why did Hollywood try to convince us for so long that Andie MacDowell was in any way desirable? Seriously. A solid 10 year chunk of cinematic history was spent attempting to make this extraordinarily plain woman be seen as the lead character’s idea of the most beautiful, interesting woman on the planet. She looks mildly like a Muppet.

St. Elmo’s Fire is a bad movie, but a lovely, cathartic reminder of how whiny and self-absorbed we all were in high school (even though the characters were all technically adults). I give it two out of five Twinkies.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.