kids

Russell Madness (2015)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

russell mania

fourstar

campstamp

Once upon a time Air Bud (known by his friends as “Buddy”) was merely a simple golden retriever with an inordinate talent for playing basketball. Not to be pigeonholed, Buddy gradually proved himself to be more of a canine Bo Jackson than just a run-of-the-mill basketball-playing dog, and found formidable careers in football, soccer, baseball, and volleyball. Even more impressive, Buddy found a way to extend his career beyond the playing field, a struggle that a lot of athletes fail to overcome, and has established a second life as a big-time movie executive. At first, Buddy made his film production choices based solely on nepotism, and released six vanity projects starring his own puppies, in what has been labeled as the Air Buddies series. Now, after seven years of straight-to-DVD movies that featured his offspring venturing into unlikely territory like space travel & supernatural crime fighting, Air Bud has finally gotten back to his roots: sports movies. Branching off from his work with Disney and rebranding his film productions as Air Bud Entertainment, Buddy has finally released his first film that does not feature his own progeny: a pro wrestling comedy called Russell Madness. As evidenced by the film’s prominence on the Air Bud entertainment website & this picture of Buddy working hard as a big time movie executive, he could not be prouder of the results.

As the title indicates, Russell Madness strays from Air Bud Entertainment’s usual preference for golden retriever protagonists by casting a Jack Russell terrier in the titular role of a rescued pound dog who finds fame & fortune in an unexpected pro wrestling career. As the title does not indicate, but as you can see in the film’s trailer, the character’s wrestling name is actually “Russell Mania”, not “Russell Madness”. The phrase “Russell Mania” is repeated constantly throughout the film, echoed even in Russell’s killer entrance music (a vital asset to any pro wrestler), but the phrase “Russell Madness” isn’t uttered even once. Why the name change, you ask? As a shrewd business dog, Air Bud was obviously side-stepping any potential legal conflicts with references to the WWE’s WrestleMania brand, dog-based puns or not. That doesn’t mean that WWE got the last laugh here. Oh, no. Air Bud Entertainment not only kept all of the verbal “Russell Mania” references in its debut feature, but also found more subversive ways to criticize the “sports entertainment” giant that robbed them of their movie’s intended title.

Although Russell Madness does not refer to the WWE directly, again thanks to Buddy’s shrewd business sense, its main conflict is built around a WWE surrogate. In the movie’s folklore, all local & regional wrestling promotions were eaten up by an amoral juggernaut that built its empire by violating long-respected business treaties of non-competition. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly how the WWE rose to prominence in the early 80s. Russell Madness even named its fake wrestling promotion the Wrestlers United Federation, or WUF. This not only serves as a reference to WWE’s past as the WWF, but also finds room for another stellar dog pun (“woof”, for those following along), of which there are plenty.  Now that’s efficiency! Just in case that wasn’t enough to drive the point home, a Vince McMahon stand-in, Mick Vaugn (played by Cliff from Cheers), is the evil capitalist head of WUF & makes constant references to his business as more “entertainment” than wrestling. He even goes so far as to ruin the illusion of the “sport”’ by suggesting that (gasp!) the results are fixed and the performers are (double gasp!) only in it for the money.

This little slice of pro wrestling history (with a talking, wrasslin’ dog added for flavor) may seem like familiar territory for even the least committed of marks, but to a child it sounds like ancient history. When the father figure of Russell’s adoptive family recaps the WUF takeover of his own father’s business as a bedtime story, he starts, “Back in his heyday, in a time called ‘The 80s’ . . . “ and instead of imagining the world thirty years ago, his kid (played by one of Mad Men‘s many Bobby Drapers) imagines a sort of dust-covered vaudevillian aesthetic that places the events about a century back. Indeed, even the Ferraro Family Wrestling (an Italian slant on the Guerreros?) arena looks like an ancient vaudevillian theater (that’s in incredible shape for a supposedly blighted building) or as the dad puts it, “midcentury guido”. There’s no denying that this one classy joint, especially once Russell’s family cleans it up & revives the old Ferraro family business. Once again, the comparison between the charming, warmhearted wrestling indies and the cold, mammoth WUF is made clear in how much more character the old-timey digs have than the blue-lit corporate arenas.

At this point it’d be fair for you to have a few lingering questions like, sure the arena is swell, but what about the wrasslin’? And how does a dog even wrestle in the first place? And we know about Russell’s entrance music, but what’s his signature move? First of all, Russell can wrestle. Oh boy can he wrestle. He’s a good boy, yes sir. Who’s a good boy? Russell is. That’s right. As a Jack Russell terrier, Russell obviously isn’t going to be dishing out any suplexes or pile-drivers, but he gets by on some surprisingly adept (CGI-assisted) choke holds and rope work. He may not have the height, strength, charisma, body mass, opposable thumbs, or lung capacity normally associated with pro wrestling’s top acts, but Russell uses his light frame’s aerial abilities to their full advantage and he’s got three very important things than many a wrestling legend have made careers out of in the past: novelty, heart, and raw talent. Of course novelty, heart, and raw talent alone won’t make a champion, but Russell finds a great manager in a (talking!) monkey (voiced by Will Sasso!) who has been haunting the Ferraro Family Wrestling arena since it shut down in the 80s, just waiting for a young talent to shape into a wrestling god. With his monkey manager’s help Russell proves himself champion in a sea of lesser opponents that include a mummy, a cave man, a pirate, a clown, an escaped convict, and a California surfer who says things like “Dude, that’s gnarly.” He even has a unique finisher: he pisses on the competition. It’s not a very physically taxing move, but it is wickedly brutal in its own demoralizing way.

If watching a (talking!) Jack Russell terrier fight his way to the top of the pro wrestling world with the help of his (talking!) monkey manager and a family who loves him sounds like a hokey mess to you, please keep in mind that Air Bud Entertainment is primarily made for children. Russell Madness is just one of the many hokey messes of children’s media, but it’s one with fairly deep love & understanding for both the art of pro wrestling & the art of the pun. Comedy workhorse Fred Willard resurrects his clueless sports announcer role from Best in Show here to deliver some of the best puns of the film, including a personal favorite of mine that involves chimney sweeps. That doesn’t mean he gets to have all the fun, though. Russell even gets a good one in himself when he tells the film’s central heel “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” Of course, there’s some occasionally tedious humor to the movie that will cause many-a-eye roll (Will Sasso’s literal monkeyshines certainly push it), but that’s to be expected in a straight-to-VOD kid’s movie that was greenlit & produced by a retired-athlete golden retriever. What’s more surprising is how much of Russell Madness strangely works. There’s a particular shot of the child protagonist (Bobby Draper IV) enjoying his birthday cake with a life-size cutout of his absent father that has a particularly strong pathos to it. Also, as silly as the idea of a wrestling dog might be to some people, it works surprisingly well at garnering heat for his opponents. What heel behavior could possibly trump beating up a dog for money?

If you can get past the cheap CGI weirdness, the awful little moving mouths on the talking animals (à la The Voices), and the idea that people would somehow be more impressed by a wrestling dog than a talking monkey with managerial skills, you might find yourself enjoying this little wrestling cinema oddity. Personally, I marked out to the point where I was totally on board with even its most ham-fisted messages like “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog,” and “The strongest tag team is family.” Film producer “Air Bud” Buddy may not have touched every heart with his tale of a dog who takes the pro wrestling world by storm and finds a family to call his own (or even got the film title he wanted), but he at least touched my heart. I’m actually not entirely convinced that Russell Madness wasn’t made specifically with me in mind & it’s highly likely that it will remain my favorite “bad” movie of 2015. Once again, Buddy took it to the hoop.

-Brandon Ledet

The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown (2015)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

campstamp

As I noted in my review of Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery, professional wrestling & animation were practically made for one another. Their shared love for campy violence, garish costumes, and corny jokes make them a heavenly pair. Crossing over the WWE brand with characters from the classic Hanna-Barbera universe is even more of a genius move, as it allows for some of wrestling & animation’s most over-the-top personalities to coexist in a single space. Characters like Scooby-Doo, Barney Rubble, The Undertaker, and “The Devil’s Favorite Demon”/”See No Evil” Kane are ridiculous enough in isolation. When they share a screen it’s downright magical (in the trashiest way possible). In Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery this pungently cheesy combination allowed for John Cena’s superhero strength & Sin Cara’s apparent ability to fly match the Mystery, Inc. gang’s seemingly supernatural monsters (in that particular case a “g-g-g-ghost b-b-b-bear”). In The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown the combo not only connects both The Flintstones’ Honeymooners-style comedy and the WWE’s complete detachment from reality with their roots in working class escapism, it also revels in the most important element in all of wrestling & animation, the highest form of comedy: delicious, delicious puns.

Let’s just get the list of Stone Age wrestler puns out of the way early. The Flinstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown features the likes of CM Punkrock, John Cenastone, Brie & Nikki Boulder, Marble Henry, Daniel Bryrock, Rey Mysteriopal, and Vince McMagma. CM Punk & Mark Henry even adapt their catchphrases to the Stone Age setting, calling themselves “The Best in the Prehistoric World” & “The World’s Strongest Caveman” respectively. Daniel Bryan makes no adjustments to his go-to “Yes! Yes! Yes!” chant (not a lot of room for wordplay there) but it’s put to great comical use anyway. Speaking of refusing to play along with the Stone Age puns, The Undertaker appears in Stone Age SmackDown simply as “The Undertaker”. I’m not sure if they had problems working a great pun in there (Try it at home. It’s a tough one.) but the side-effect is kind of charming anyway: it makes it seem as if The Undertaker has been alive forever, just sort of skulking around graveyards, waiting for a wrestling match.

In the Scooby-Doo crossover the WWE Superstars are already world famous and idolized, even more so than in reality; they even have their own WWE City complete with a Mount Rushmore style tribute to the championship belt. In The Flinstones crossover they’re just working class Joes (with impeccable physiques) that live milquetoast lives before a wrestling promotion is built around them. The wrestling promotion in question is FFE (Fred Flintstone Entertainment). Fred builds the enterprise from the ground up as a get-rich-quick scheme meant to fund a couples’ vacation to Rockapulco. As a WWE stand-in, FFE does a great job of poking fun at itself. At one point Fred is giving a pep-talk to his Superstars, urging them to “tear each other’s heads off . . . in a family-friendly way, of course,” satirizing WWE’s self-contradictory brand of PG violence. FFE differs in WWE in other ways, of course, as it’s a very small organization just trying its darnedest to put on a good show for the folks out there in the audience, which is a far cry from the real-life juggernaut’s billion dollar industry. There’s a good bit of blue-collar workplace humor towards the beginning of the film that recalls the The Flintstones’ Honeymooners roots and that vibe carries on nicely into the mom & pop wrestling promotion Fred creates once the plot picks up speed.

The only thing Stone Age SmackDown gets horrifically wrong from the original Flinstones series is Barney Rubble’s voice. The other characters aren’t perfectly imitated, but they’re at least passable. Barney is just not the same person at all, trading in his dopey baritone for a nasally “wise guy, eh?” voice that feels like a violation of the original character’s nature. The rest of the film is pretty much on point, though. In addition to the rock puns & working class humor mentioned above, the movie features enough Rube Goldberg contraptions, dinosaurs as appliances, visual gags (“We’ve got bigger fish to fry” is a pretty great one that you can probably imagine without the image), and swanky-kitsch music that feel true to the original cartoon. In a lot of ways, Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery brought the Hanna-Barbera characters to WWE’s world and Stone Age SmackDown is almost an exact reversal, with pro wrestlers making the time-traveling journey to Bedrock. There are a few modern updates to the Flintstones’ visual language (like wall-mounted TVs and computer tablets), but they don’t do much to distract from the show’s classic charms. In fact, the digital HD update provides the format a very vivid, vibrant look that intensifies the original series’ pop art appeal immensely.

Even though the movie is mercifully short it still makes time for fun tangents like CM Punkrock’s world-class promos, history’s first cage match (between The Undertaker & Barney Rubble of course), and some absurd sexual leering at “The Boulder Twins”. It’s a much quicker and less complicated film than the Scooby-Doo crossover and all the better for it. Plus, I really need these crossovers to work out long enough to get that Stardust Meets The Jetsons movie I’ve been clammering for. I desparately need that to happen so, as Fred puts it in Stone Age SmackDown, “Let’s yabba dabba do this” y’all. Keep these goofy wrestling cartoons coming.

-Brandon Ledet

Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery (2014)

/ swampflix / 6 Comments

scooby-doo

three star

campstamp

Look out, garbage lovers & overgrown children everywhere. WWE Studios has officially gotten in the business of making cartoons. It’s a brilliant move by all accounts, since professional wrestling itself could be described as a sort of live-action cartoon. The garish costumes, over-the-top personalities, and campy approach to violence should all be familiar to fans of animation and the two worlds have, of course, crossed paths before. Wrestling cartoons have generally been Saturday morning cartoon fodder, with dire projects like Hulk Hogan’s Rock & Wrestling and ¡Mucha Lucha! bringing no discernable level of prestige to the genre. As the WWE is currently in its long-lived, so-called “PG Era” (in which the company intensely markets its content to children) and its movie-making division WWE Studios is churning out more feature-length content than ever before, it’s a beautiful work of synergy that the company has gotten into bed with Hana-Barbera for a few proper straight-to-video animation crossovers.

Last year’s gloriously titled Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery was the first of the WWE/Hanna-Barbera crossovers. In the film, which is more fun than it should be, the Mystery, Inc. gang is dragged to WrestleMania against their will by the overenthusiastic Shaggy & Scooby. The film sets up an interesting mark/smark divide here, as the characters engage with the product in a variety of different ways. At one end of the spectrum, Shaggy & Scooby are completely obsessed with WWE’s brand of sports entertainment, sinking endless time & energy into the company’s video games and worshiping the talent like living gods. Fred takes an interest in pro-wrestling as a subject for his photography, eager to take some “wicked action shots.” Daphne falls in love with wrestling’s masculine sexuality the second she witnesses a wrestler (John Cena, specifically) removing his shirt. Velma’s all the way on the other end of the mark/smark divide, attempting to engage with the product on a purely intellectual level. She researches the history of the sport in favor of actually losing herself in the matches until the sheer spectacle of the WrestleMania main event wins her over into a little bit of mark territory and she becomes a true fan. To be fair to Velma, it is an especially spectacular main event. John Cena, Kane, Sin Cara, Shaggy & Scooby all join forces to fight a gigantic robotic ghost bear or, as the boys would put it, a “g-g-g-ghost b-b-b-bear”.

The ghost bear is a formidable threat, but nothing too out of the ordinary considering the history of Mystery, Inc. What is out of the ordinary is the sheer amount of pro-wrestling personalities that get involved in the proceedings. In addition to Cena, Kane, and Sin Cara (who get the most screen time), the movie also includes the likes of Triple H, AJ Lee, Brodus Clay, Santino, The Miz, and The Big Show (as well as cameos from Sgt. Slaughter & Jerry “The King” Lawler curiously portrayed as if they were still in their youth). Ringside announcer Michael Cole even gets in on the fun (lamenting the loss of his “favorite” table when Big Show gets smashed through it), as does WWE chairman & CEO Vince McMahon. McMahon is treated like some kind of deity by the boys, who do a “we’re not worthy” Wayne’s World routine at the billionaire’s feet. However, despite McMahon’s idol worship, Sin Cara’s apparent ability to literally fly, “See No Evil” Kane’s portrayal as a true-to-life demon, and AJ Lee’s brute strength that earns her the boys’ fearful concession that she’s “like Kane with lipstick”, no one gets quite as much ego massaging as longtime face of the company John Cena. Cena’s persona as an unstoppable superhuman can get tiresome on a weekly televised basis, but it’s kind of adorable here. He can seduce a beautiful woman with the mere removal of his shirt, conquer Indiana Jones-sized boulders and undead bears with just his hands, and is an instant friend to everyone, because he’s just so gosh darned likeable. It would be sickening if it weren’t so ridiculous. On the raw end of that deal, The Miz is just utterly abused here. His character pops in for some occasional goofball comic relief, which is totally fair all things considered, but looks absolutely nothing like him. Just no resemblance at all to the money-maker. If it weren’t for the sound of his voice or the cartoonish narcissism it would be near impossible to tell it was him.

For fans of either Scooby-Doo or pro-wrestling, the movie should be a fairly easy sell. It’s not a mind-blowing feat of animation, but it is remarkably likeable. In some ways the WWE does glorify itself a bit here, even if it’s tounge-in-cheek. For example, within the story the company has its own fully-functioning WWE City, which features a Mount Rushmore style tribute to the heavyweight championship belt. At the same time, both Hanna-Barbera & WWE poke a good bit of fun at themselves as well. Shaggy jokes that the gang wears the same outfits every day, so they have no need to pack for their trip to WrestleMania and there are also surprising references to WWE City’s environmental impact on the forest surrounding it & more realistically, former wrestlers’ career-ending injuries. The film also features some ridiculous asides like Scooby wrestling mutated junk food in outer space and Sin Cara telling the gang “The Legend of the Bear” through interpretive dance. It’s a very silly, inconsequential movie all in all, so it’s difficult to fault it for any shortcomings. Personally, I look forward to the upcoming WWE/Hanna-Barbera crossovers (which include a Flinstones picture as well as a Scooby-Doo sequel) and hope that they’ll go on at least long enough for a Stardust Meets The Jetsons feature. That’s the dream anyway.

-Brandon Ledet

A Kid for Two Farthings (1955)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

Not many films capture the essence of childhood innocence like A Kid for Two Farthings. At first, I mistook it for a classic live-action Disney film, but it’s not affiliated with Disney whatsoever. The film is based on a novel of the same name by Wolf Mankowitz, and was helmed by Academy Award winning director Carol Reed. A Kid for Two Farthings is not known as one of Reed’s best films and I’m having a hard time understanding exactly why it received such negative criticism. The enchanting story, filled with heart and whimsy, is far from being a failure.

Set in post-war London’s East End, specifically Petticoat Lane, the film focuses on the story of a delightful little boy named Joe (Jonathan Ashmore) and his diverse, overpopulated community. Joe’s neighbor, Mr. Kadinsky (David Kossof), tells him that unicorns have the magical ability to grant wishes and Joe becomes infatuated with getting his hands on one of the mystical creatures. Soon after listening to Mr. Kadinsky’s story, Joe uses his savings to purchase a unicorn, but it’s actually a baby goat with a crooked growth in the middle of its head that resembles a small horn. While most children would use their magical unicorn’s powers to grant selfish wishes, Joe is more concerned with helping out his loved ones. I’m not a fan of child actors in general, but Jonathan Ashmore is absolutely adorable and tremendously talented. It’s a shame that this is the only film he would ever act in.

As an adult, I really do appreciate the emphasis on the importance of imagination in this real-life fairytale. Imagination is what makes Joe’s childhood in the congested slums of London better and it gives him hope during a time of struggle. Joe is the only child that appears in the entire film and he participates in very adult activities. He attends evening wrestling matches, assists adults with their errands, and is involved with very grown-up situations, but his unicorn and Mr. Kadinsky’s tales keep him young and innocent by feeding into his imagination and allowing it to blossom.

Watching this flick for the first time was quite a memorable experience and it reminded me of the significance of creativity and fantasy in my own life. No matter how old we are, when times are rough, a little make-believe usually makes things a whole lot better. A Kid for Two Farthings should be widely known as a classic for all ages instead of being buried away with all the other forgotten children’s films.

A Kid for Two Farthings is currently streaming on Hulu Plus.

-Britnee Lombas

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

/ swampflix / 8 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

campstamp

One of the best aspects of the ancient art of recording television on VHS tapes was the commercials that you’d incidentally gather as a byproduct. A VHS recording of an old Sifl & Olly episode or Lifetime Original Movie may have been made irrelevant by the advent of YouTube, but the much trashier, more disposable art of a television ad is for the most part lost in the process. There’s a reason websites like Everything Is Terrible go back and dig up this garbage. An advertisement can serve as a time capsule of the era in which it was made. Even something as mundane as a car commercial feels strangely foreign 20 years later. A VHS recording of a pan & scan Jurassic Park isn’t particularly useful in 2015, but if you read between the dinosaurs there’s some useful glimpses into the world that was watching it: what the people were wearing, what hacky jokes they halfheartedly chuckled at, what bullshit later haunted their attics & dumps. Advertising is a low form of art, but it’s art that can later serve as a cultural relic.

Bad movies can work the same way. Mac & Me has just as much to say about where our culture was in 1988 as Cinema Paradiso, if not more. What kind of a sense of 1959 would you get if you only watched North by Northwest & The 400 Blows and completely avoided the likes of Attack of the Giant Leeches & Plan 9 from Outer Space? An incomplete one. We are not sophisticated people at heart. Our garbage has a lot more to say about who we are than our fine art ever will. When we create fine art we transcend our true natures and achieve greatness beyond our limitations. When we create garbage we’re being honest about the ridiculous fools we are at heart. A bad movie is a mirror to our worst, most banal impulses. A great bad movie makes us love those impulses. A great bad movie makes us love being a dumb, simple people.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Michael Bay’s production of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was The Best Bad Movie of 2014. It deserves to have great longevity as a cultural relic, as it somehow captures the entire zeitgeist of our worst cinematic impulses in one ridiculous package. I’m talking lens flairs, found footage, product placement, inclusion of viral videos, over-reliance on CGI, shaky cam, action confused by quick cuts, large-scale destruction of a major city, a phony third act death crisis, and a dubstep beat for the rap song that plays over the credits. The film itself is an example our greatest, most frequent sin of recent years: the reboot. More specifically, it’s a gritty reboot, the most ludicrous gritty reboot of the post-Dark Knight era (although the peculiarly humorless I, Frankenstein certainly gave it a run for its money there). To top it all off, it boasts an above-it-all sense of irony that compels the movie to periodically point out how inherently silly its premise is. Characters poke fun at one another for “doing the Batman voice” and frequently mock the idea of talking humanoid turtles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the last five years of bad taste in a nutshell. Or, if you will, on a half shell.

Despite its self-aware irony, there are still glorious moments when the film loses itself in its own ridiculousness. A few action set pieces, particularly a downhill slide and a rooftop battle, are the kind of far-fetched, detached-from-physics kind of fun that you’d expect in franchises like Fast & Furious and, less effectively, Transformers. The movie’s villains, a mech soldier Shredder & a corporate prick William Fichtner, are genuinely terrifying figures worthy of the film’s dark tone. There’s a “beating up the bad guys” vibe in the way the villains are dealt with that feels more like a sincere kids-playing-with-action-figures kind of storytelling than some of the film’s more ironic detachment. The found footage sequence briefly mentioned above, however, finds the film losing itself in its own ridiculousness more than any other. In this scene investigative reporter April O’Neil is digging through her childhood camcorder recordings only to discover that she herself raised the Ninja Turtles as pets in her father’s laboratory. April O’Neil is the source of the Turtles’ affinity for Pizza Hut® pizza; she is the one who named them after Renaissance painters; she is the one that saved their lives by casting them to the sewer. It’s a highly unlikely connection that the film makes & one I greatly appreciate for its lunacy.

There’s even a sense of purpose to the film’s hideous creature design. After April saves the infant Turtles by sending them underground they go through a strange transformation. Through a brief stop-animation effect & training montage, the cute-as-a-button Turtles morph into the ugly, alien-looking things that have been derided since the movie was first advertised. It was only until actually watching the film (as opposed to the ads) that I realized their ugliness had a purpose (even if it wasn’t intentional): puberty. The “Teenage” part of the characters’ namesake is stressed heavily in this incarnation. Their awkward, not-at-all-right appearance is only the tip of the pubescent iceberg. The teenage Turtles are hormonally violent, potentially dangerous young men who dream about running away from home as soon as they’re old enough and spend way too much money on their vehicle in the meantime. They struggle with creaky voices, fart openly, listen to loud music, get coked out on high doses of adrenalin, and have to answer to an angry rodent father figure when they miss their curfew. The most off-putting detail of all is the way they constantly hit on a nonplussed April O’Neil, calling “dibs” on her & whispering “She’s so hot I can feel my shell tightening” in moments of unearned, unseemly bravado, but also excitedly freaking out when she actually responds to them, bragging “I totally talked to a girl!” The Turtles are just as much teenagers as they are ninjas in the film and it’s just as awkward & disgusting as teenagers are in real life.

There are a few other bright spots to praise, like a legitimately cool animation effect that opens & closes the film (in a look that tips its hat to the characters’ comic book roots) as well as the decision to shroud the iffy CGI in darkness, which I think always benefits the format (as opposed to brighter looks like Avatar’s). The casting also shines here. Faces like Whoopi Goldberg, Taran Killam, and Will Arnett keep the mood light as physical reminders not to take the film too seriously. Arnett’s particularly funny as the flustered butt of throwaway gags, like when a Turtle calls him a “human nerd” or when he’s cooking alone to “Careless Whisper” in his apartment. Megan Fox is serviceable, not too distracting in her portrayal of April O’Neil, but not adding much either. I like to think of her here as the human Michael Bay calling card, as if the superfluous explosions weren’t enough on their own. As mentioned above, William Fichtner’s villain is as chilling as always; it’s a performance that honestly feels like it belongs in a much better film. The movie’s tone may be self-contradictory in places, but it ultimately is successful in being both a cheap thrills type of fun at face value as well as a comprehensive cultural relic when considered in the context of its place in time.

The worst part about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that I have so much fun watching it. I eat this garbage up. I first saw the film alone in a theater on a Friday night, drunk, and lightly surrounded exclusively by groupings of young dads & sons. I felt like a total goofball to be the only one chuckling as they watched in respectful (or bored) silence. C’mon, dads! It’s a fun movie! Tony Shalhoub totally plays a gigantic, scrotum-esque rat! C’mon kids! Shredder totally has badass knives for hands! My enthusiasm was unreciprocated long after I left the theater as well. No one was interested in even talking about the movie, much less watching it. I still can’t convince people to watch it, even for a goof. My love for 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a dirty secret only because no one cares to hear it. I believe the problem is that my timing is too soon. That 1993 Chrysler commercial incidentally archived on a VHS cassette during an X-Files episode wasn’t culturally significant until at least 2000. In a few more years the gritty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot will cease being a fresh, undistinguished wound and earn its rightful status as a precious artifact, a prime specimen of our modern blunders, a more valuable cultural marker than all of the Boyhoods & Birdmans in the world. As a shoddy product so distinctly of its time, its value will only increase as the years soldier on.

-Brandon Ledet

Anna and the Moods (2007)

/ swampflix / 3 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

It’s nearly impossible to be hard on Anna and the Moods, an animated short children’s film from 2007. It’s not perfect, but it is perfectly charming. Because the title character was voiced by the musician Björk I expected a story about a young girl singer in a rock band called The Moods. Instead I was treated to a quirky, compassionate take on puberty and what The Fresh Prince would call The “Parents Just Don’t Understand” Dilemma.

Anna and the Moods tells the story of a young girl who is expected to be consistently cheerful & obedient by her family, which she does willingly until she one day wakes up transformed. No longer a sentient beam of sunshine, Anna finds herself plagued by “moodicles” (hormone-induced moods). Her image shifts from that of a precious little girl to a moody goth teen and she decides to freak her parents out instead of playing to their expectations. She smokes cigars, commits petty crimes, listens to loud music, and develops a questionable taste in boys. Disturbed, Anna’s parents subject her to psychological evaluation, where a doctor, to their horror, diagnoses her as a “teenager”. Instead of prescribing her a solution to the newfound shifts in her mood, the doctor teaches Anna how to deal with flawed parenting. The movie takes a mischievous stance on the sudden changes that come with puberty, encouraging kids to misbehave, but also warning them that their parents are going to be jerks about it.

Directed by one of Björk’s former bandmates from the alt rock group The Sugarcubes, Anna and the Moods works with some hideously cheap CGI, but uses the handicap to its advantage. The characters look like snotty versions of Margaret Keane’s “big eyes” paintings and the whole picture has a bending, warped surreality to it that fits the puberty-altered mindset of its subject well. Monty Python veteran Terry Jones narrates with a perfectly measured children’s book tone that makes the movie’s less successful elements (like an unnecessary potshot at Michael Jackson) more than forgivable. It’s not a complicated or even a good-looking film, but as a short, fun trifle with an empathetic message & a sense of mischief, it’s sincerely entertaining.

-Brandon Ledet