Positive Cynicism – Maybe Hollywood just hates us
Aaron R. Davis |
I don’t like it when people see a bunch of potentially awful movies in production and say “Oh, Hollywood is finally out of ideas,” as if Hollywood has ever been a place of stunning originality and remakes are a recent phenomena. But even I have to admit that some recent movie news that piled up just this week makes me wonder if every studio shouldn’t just be burned to the ground.
1. Owen Wilson is doing the voice of Marmaduke in an upcoming movie. Marmaduke talks now? What the hell could Marmaduke possibly have to talk about, especially in Owen Wilson’s cloying, over-casual, one-toned voice? Every Marmaduke joke goes like this: “Holy shit, that dog is huge and he has no idea how huge he is!” That joke was never funny. It’s mildly amusing if you’re six or a demented person in their nineties, I suppose, but otherwise, what is it that Marmaduke can do that’s going to sustain 90 minutes?
2. Walden Media, a company I respected until I read this, retaliated with the news that they were going to make a movie starring the Berenstain Bears. Those boring, fat-assed bears are the bane of many childhoods, spreading their overly-earnest, oddly-religion-tinged lessons while generally looking like the stuff of animatronic nightmares and showing about as much sense as someone who’s been kicked in the head by a mule. Unless they wind up at a furry convention, I don’t know what the drama is going to be here.
3. Three Men and a Bride. I’m sure Steve Guttenberg has nothing to do, but I always thought Tom Selleck had a mite more sense than to embrace a (second!) sequel to a movie that was a hit over 20 years ago. Can you imagine the person who’s been waiting for two decades, desperately hoping that the trilogy would be completed? I mean, other than Steve Guttenberg? Maybe he can also appear in the Short Circuit remake. The man’s probably desperate to eat.
(And with all due respect to our esteemed editor, Joel Murphy, Short Circuit was a pile of silly shit the first time around, further made ridiculous by a sequel so idiotic it made Howard the Duck look like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. So while a remake isn’t necessary, it’s not like it’s painting over The Scream here.)
4. Robert Zemeckis is finally getting around to that long-promised sequel to another 20 year-old movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. The original is a classic that sparked a renaissance in animation. The sequel will feature motion capture, a toy that Zemeckis cannot get enough of, as shown by the creepy, soulless, dead-eyed special effects creations of his own The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. He actually thinks it’s animation. But if animation is the illusion of life, those movies are the exact opposite, starring jerky zombies that look like they’re made from Silly Putty and spackle. This kind of is painting over The Scream.
5. There are six board games in development as movies: Clue, Candyland, Battleship, Monopoly, Risk and Ouija. And they all have big name crappy directors attached to them. I can’t wait to see who ends up directing the Stratego movie.
6. What the hell else is there for Shrek to do that there’s a fourth movie coming out next year? Seriously, what’s left? DreamWorks acts like there are people out there who will file into a theater and joyously watch as Shrek sits in a mortgage consultation for an hour and then just pays his bills and warms up a glass of milk before slipping off to sleep. And, sadly, looking at the box office receipts for these movies, it’s true.
7. Did you love The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? Hollywood assumes you did, since they just announced a live-action/computer-animated hybrid of Yogi Bear. Yep. That’s happening. With Dan Aykroyd as the voice of Yogi and Justin Timberlake as the voice of Boo Boo. I know it sounds like I’m making that up, but I’m not. I’m too busy trying to stuff this gasoline-soaked rag down my throat to make up something that awful.
This is a nightmarish load of movies that I really, really want to believe no one will go to see, but history shows otherwise. After all, if no one went to see crap like this, then Hollywood wouldn’t keep making it over and over and over again. People are so accepting of garbage that as long as it’s arranged prettily enough on a nice enough plate, they will apparently sit down and eat it.
That’s what Hollywood thinks. Stop proving them right.
Unless, of course, Hollywood wants to buy my script for a great live-action/computer-animated Quick Draw McGraw movie, my concept for a Crocodile Dundee/Big Trouble in Little China/Raiders of the Lost Ark crossover, or this surefire idea I have to turn Disney’s Hall of Presidents into a crowd-pleasing action picture starring Matthew McConaughey. Those are movies you should totally go see.
Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.
I was ready to jump down your throat for besmirching Short Circuit, but I have to admit that I actually find your Crocodile Dundee/Big Trouble in Little China/Raiders of the Lost Ark crossover rather intriguing, which makes me wonder if my taste in movies isn’t a bit suspect after all.
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Clue was already made into a movie…in the mid-80s. Tim Curry + Martin Mull + Madeline Kahn = AWESOME. The thought of a new version makes…flames…flames…flames…on the sides of my face.
I was 12 when Short Circuit came out and even then I knew it was a piece of shit. I never watched more than a few minutes of it on cable without yelling at that retarded robot.
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Joel: It does sound disconcertingly cool. What have I done that I can think eerily like a studio executive?
Jesse: I saw that robot at a museum exhibit the year after the movie came out, and people were MOBBING it. It was a little celebrity for a while.
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They’re doing ANOTHER Clue movie? Oh, man. I don’t know how it could possibly even compare to the Tim Curry one. The ensemble cast in that one was so tremendously good, I can’t imagine how they’d be able to replicate that and make it work in a remake or sequel or whatever.
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You have to remember that they’ve also taken the quaint charm of the board game to Clue and decided that somehow it wasn’t cool, so they reimagined it. I suspect that is the Clue they are making, not the 1950’s camp fest that the 1985 version was (if you saw Colleen Camp in that movie, you know EXACTLY what I mean when I say that).
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