The premise is that a 13 year old, black, 4 and 1/2 foot tall, orphan living at an evil orphanage, finds a pair of basketball shoes that might have been previously owned by Michael Jordan. He makes a wish on the shoes, gets struck by lightening, and suddenly he’s the greatest basketball player ever.

Through a series of events that could only happen in a movie underwritten by the NBA (seriously), the kid is signed to a play for the NBA.

He gets paired up with another player to mentor him, and you immediately know the kid will teach the mentor the real meaning of life, and eventually, the mentor will adopt him.

Anyway, the amazing thing about the movie is that is portrays an alternative universe wherein racism and even racial differences do not exist. In other words, the fact that the boy and mentor are black simply never comes into play.

The only other raceless movie I can think of involving a black main character goes back to Richard Pryor’s Brewster’s Millions.

I’m not a member of a minority. So I cannot fully imagine what it would be like to grow up subjected to racism. However, I certainly understand that if you grew up with racism and eventually became a movie director, you’d want to explore the problems with racism. Accordingly, you’d make films about the problems of racism.

However, maybe for us to get past racism we need more films showing us what our world could be like without it.

BTW, the movie was a contrived, ham-fisted, and utterly predictable piece of crap. My 10 year old son loved it, though. Which is not surprising as he was certainly a member of the intended audience for it.

Share this:

Why?

It sucks. Not the Blu-ray transfer, that’s OK. The movie itself sucks. Yeah, you heard me.

Animal House is a great example of how we look back on our lives with rose-colored glasses. Among white boys who grew up in the 70s and 80s, Animal House is considered a classic comedy. It’s not.

It might have been a funny movie back in 1978. Heck, it might have been the funniest movie back in 1978. But it’s not a classic in any way shape or form.

I know what you’re thinking, John Belushi was in it. Yeah, he was. He says about three words in the entire movie. He was also the only funny person in the movie. And he wasn’t even that funny.**

One of the main characters in the movie was Otto played by Tim Matheson. Tim went on to play the bad guy in Fletch. He was also the bad guy in A Very Brady Sequel. He is not a comedic actor. His forte is playing douchebags. More on that later.

The other main character was Boon and was played by Peter Riegert. Peter was in Crossing Delancey and Traffic. He’s definitely not a comedic actor.

So the only comedian in this one hour and fifty minute comedic movie is John Belushi, and he’s barely in it. Well, let’s put it another way, he’s in the only funny scenes the movie has. And once again, they’re not even that funny.

You might argue that it was directed by John Landis. But, so fricken what?! Sure, he’s had some funny movies. He’s also had a load of awful movies, e.g., Blues Brothers 2000, Beverly Hills Cop III, The Stupids. And I really hate The Kentucky Fried Movie. Unless you’re really stoned, that movie is not even remotely funny.

The main problem with Animal House is that it’s just a simple, low budget, coming of age, raunchy comedy. These are released year after year (Porky’s, American Pie, Van Wilder, etc.) and they’re almost always crap. They’re not designed to be great. They’re designed to extract quick money from teenage boys.

They’re crap because the writers lowly aim to please those teenage boys, who apparently can find anything funny if they’re stoned enough. E.g., a fat guy crushing a beer can on his head. A fat guy eating out of a garbage can. A fat guy eating a lot of food for lunch. A fat guy looking up cheerleaders’ skirts. A fat guy jumping around like a squirrel. A fat guy spying on girls and falling from a ladder. A fat guy squirting mashed potatoes out of his mouth like a pimple. A fat guy smashing a guitar. I’m sure if you’re young and stoned, all of that is funny. But when you’re grown up and sober, it’s just stupid.

Another problem with Animal House is that, at its core, it’s not a comedy. As I said, it’s really a coming of age film. It’s about characters reflecting on their current paths and trying to figure out their futures. In other words, at its core, it’s a drama. And it’s a sucky and utterly contrived drama.

Because the writing is bad, the characters are poorly conceived, and the situations are contrived, you simply never care if Boon and Katy end up together or whether Otto ever learns there’s more to life than getting laid.

All of that drama is just filler placed between “funny” scenes with a dildo joke*** and a horse. It’s not there to tell us a story or to give us a better understanding of the characters, it’s there because adding fake drama saves the writers from coming up with actually funny scenes.

Speaking of contrived, contrived is defined as “Obviously planned or calculated; not spontaneous or natural; labored.” What it means in relation to works of fiction is that something happens solely because it’s written that way. The plot does not flow from any inherent logic or reason, but because someone wanted it to happen.

The ending of Animal House is a great example of contrived fiction. We’re asked to root for the members of Delta House. The movie presents them as heroes. (Why?! I’ll address that below.) Their frat is dis-chartered, they’re kicked out of college (based on their midterm grades?! Talk about contrived!****), and will likely be drafted to fight in Vietnam. In response to that, they commit major felonies, which I guess might keep them from being drafted because their asses would be in prison.

So how do the writers make this a happy ending? In the Blues Brothers movie, director Landis didn’t even try to make a happy ending. Everyone went to prison for their crimes. For Animal House, the writers simply wrote a happy ending, ignoring all logic and reason to the contrary, let alone the entire movie up to that point. Despite being kicked out of college and serving some time in prison, Bluto somehow ends up being a US Senator and marrying the woman he kidnapped. Otter becomes a physician. Specifically, a Beverly Hills gynecologist. Which is Hollywood-speak for a job that gets him laid a lot. Hoover becomes a lawyer. And Pinto becomes editor of National Lampoon magazine. Which means he somehow gets into Harvard?!

And why are these guys heroes, anyway? There’s a reason why the actor who played Otter played so many bad guys in other films. Otter’s the quintessential douche bag. He’s one of those asswhipes we all hate. He gets everything he wants in life not based on his talent, his drive, or his intellect, but because he’s good looking.

Boon has given up on life even though he’s only 21 years old. He has his whole life ahead of him, yet he lives only to get drunk or high. The only times you see him happy is when he’s trying to get acceptance into Black culture. He’s up on stage dancing and singing with Otis Day and the Knights at the frat house. And he tries to buddy-up to Otis Day when they find him and his band playing at a “Black” club. You can almost see his heart break when he realizes that racism goes both ways and Otis Day pretends not to know him.

Pinto statutorily rapes a girl he knows is a 13 year old virgin.

Bluto is simply a self centered, violent, mean, drunk, retard.

Flounder is the only guy I’d want to hang out with. Despite not being very good looking or street smart, he has an extremely hot girlfriend. He’s also funny, giving, and loyal. Who wouldn’t want a friend like that? I actually felt sorry for him throughout this movie. He’s the only guy in this whole movie with a conscience.

My pet peeve with coming of age movies is that they always use actors who are too fricken old. If the coming of age movie is supposed to be about high school kids, they use college age actors. If it’s about college students, they use actors in their late 20s and early thirties.

I’ll assume that most people enter college when they’re 18, go four years, and graduate when they’re 22 or 23. But the 18 year old freshmen in Animal House are 25 (Tom Hulce playing Pinto), 23 (Stephen Furst playing Flounder), and 20 (Kevin Bacon playing Chip Diller).

I’m sure you’re thinking those ages are pretty close. They’re not. Real college freshmen look like high school kids. They’re pimply. They’re tiny. They’re weak. They look like they can be squashed. Go and find your high school yearbook. Look at even the senior football players. Even at 18 they look like kids, because they are. Males age a lot from 18 to his early 20s. That’s when they finally start looking like men.

But let’s keep going. John Belushi was playing Bluto who was in his 7th year of college. (Oh that’s so funny!) Assuming again Bluto started college when he was 18, he should have been only 25. Yet Belushi was 30 when he played the role.

Tim Matheson, who played Otter, and Peter Riegert, who played Boon, were 31. As I mentioned before, it was specifically stated that Boon was 21 in the film.***** James Daughton, who played the likely gay Marmalard, was 28. And Mark Metcalf, who played Neidermeyer, was a whopping 32.

I simply cannot buy what I’m being sold when I watch Animal House (and most other coming of age/teen/college/raunchy comedies). I can’t figure out why these thirty year olds are pretending to be 21. They’re on the screen trying to figure out their futures, when to me, they look like they’re trying to relive their pasts.

I should point out that I can suspend my disbelief. I can believe that John Belushi is on a mission from god. Heck, I can even believe that John Belushi is a blues singer, despite all auditory evidence to the contrary. But in watching Animal House, I cannot believe he’s a 25 year old college student.

Hate me if you want. Trash my mere subjective opinions in the comments. But all I ask from you is this: If you disagree with me, rewatch the movie first. My guess is that you’ll be as disappointed as I was.

* I did force myself to watch the whole thing a few days later.

** If you think about it, John Belushi is highly overrated. Sure, he was in the original SNL. He was also in the Rutles, which was a very funny movie. But his role was very small. He was in 1941, which I liked as a kid, but I also liked Animal House as a kid. It was universally panned and flopped. He was in the Blues Brothers, which is considered a classic. He was in Continental Divide, which was a terrible romantic comedy actually written for Chevy Chase. Which would have made sense because Chevy Chase was not a bad looking guy back then. He was lastly in Neighbors, which is a movie I simply don’t remember. According to Wikipedia, it flopped and critics hated it.

Basically, the only good movie he was in was the Blues Brothers and that was good mostly due to Aykroyd’s vision and Landis ability to focus that vision. Animal House didn’t have a vision, so there was nothing for him to focus. It was just an excuse to show tits to high school kids. Back then, before internet porn, the only way we could see tits was to find our dad’s Playboy collection or to sneak into R rated films.

*** They didn’t even bother writing a dildo joke. To a teenager, merely seeing a giant dildo is worthy of laughter. The writers knew that. Which is the sole reason the dildo was in that initial scene with Boon and Otto.

**** The reason the writers had to expel members of Delta house based on their mid term grades was because of the big Home-Coming parade ending the movie had. Colleges simply don’t have end term parades. So the writers were stuck writing something ridiculous.

***** 44:35

Share this:

I think the only reason they cast any females in the movie was because they needed someone to wear the ridiculous high-heels the costume department came up with.

Speaking of high heels, human females wear them to make their legs appear longer and butts more shapely. Are computer programs actually concerned with such things? “Does this file system make my butt look big?”

It’s sad that computer programs have self-esteem issues merely because they’re designated as female.

Why is the movie called Tron Legacy? The Tron character only had a few seconds of screen time.

This problem goes back to the original Tron. Tron was just a secondary character in the first. Heck, he was a computer program written by a secondary character, so Tron was basically a tertiary character. It would be like if George Lucas had named Star Wars the Chewbacca Chronicles.

My guess is that originally the Tron character was supposed to play a much larger role in the first movie. But, for whatever reason, his role was cut down during the movie’s production or editing. And of course Disney was stuck with the name for the sequel.

This has been asked numerous times, but did the world really need a sequel to Tron? The original movie bombed when it was first released. And here’s the funny part, Disney recognizes that it was so crappy that they pulled all copies of it prior to the release of Legacy. You couldn’t rent it or buy it leading up to the release of Legacy.

Think about that. The original was so incredibly bad that Disney won’t let people watch it. But yet we needed a sequel to it. Wow. Just wow.

Share this:

It features actors we like doing things we wish were more interesting.

Share this:

U2′s manager Paul McGuinness asked Apple boss Steve Jobs to create a business model for the music industry:

Steve is the guy who has always magically known what the consumer wants before the consumer even knows it. I wish he would put that great mind and that great corporation of his to work devising a model that finally allows artists and creators to get properly rewarded for their work. Maybe he’s working on it right now. I hope so.

Paul McGuinness has been in the music industry nearly his entire life. But he cannot figure out a way to make money from it? Heck, it’s even worse than that. According to McGuinness, no one in the music industry knows how to make money running a business. Does that make any sense at all?

Unfortunately, it makes perfect sense.

Most people think that copyright is a property right. It is not.

Copyright is a government granted monopoly. The government grants monopolies over music, movies, photographs, etc., and then middlemen make money off of them. That’s how Paul McGuinness makes his money. Acting as a middleman between U2 and its fans.

Every time the copyright industry is faced with competition, they sue. If they cannot sue, they have laws passed so they can sue. If they cannot have federal laws passed to suit their needs, they have state laws passed instead. If the can’t get a government to pass the laws they want, they have treaties enacted which force all governments to pass the laws they want.

What I described above has happened countless times in the history of copyright. For a great example we have to travel back into time to when the player piano was first introduced. Back then the monopoly granted by copyright did not cover performances, only published sheet music.

So anyone could play any song he or she wanted without paying a dime. The music industry made money selling sheet music to musicians.

The player piano eliminated both paying for published sheet music and eliminated the musician who would have bought the sheet music.

So, as I said, the music industry of the 1800s sued. They lost because, as I said, copyright did not cover performances.

So the music industry went to Congress and had copyright laws changed to cover performances. So when the music industry sued again, they won. Of course they won. They always win.

I have to stress, the player piano was perfectly legal. The music industry could have competed with it just like restaurants compete with each other all the time. They could have advertised the fact that music played by real musicians constitutes a better product. That full bands are better than a mere piano. Etc.

However, at no point does the copyright industry ever simply roll up its sleeves to compete in a free market. Their “solution” to legal competition was and is to make the competition illegal. That’s why the music and movie industries have no problem suing their customers. The copyright industry doesn’t really have customers. They have tolls which we, by law, are required to pay under certain circumstances. When competition is created via new technology, they have new tolls added to the new technology. That’s a completely different mindset from someone running a business such as a restaurant.

So when I hear about someone who lived off the teet of copyright for his entire life, but who’s unable to come up with a business model that works in a free market, I’m not surprised at all. People like Paul McGuinness are not businessmen. They’re middlemen who live off what the government grants them. They never create. They never innovate. They merely take their cut. When their cut gets too small, they blame everyone but themselves. They even go as far as to sue their own customers or demand to have them kicked off the internet. As if that would magically make them start paying the old tolls again. People like McGuinness think this way because they don’t understand how businesses or markets work. And because they know of no other way.

Share this:

It tells a story of a young, pretty, educated, and spoiled American woman who follows her boyfriend to Japan, only to be quickly dumped. She inexplicably decides to become a Ramen cook. (You’re probably wondering why I rented this movie. The reviews on Netflix said it was quite good. Unfortunately I completely disagree with those reviews.)

About half the dialog is in English and the rest is in Japanese. Also it was directed by an American named Robert Allan Ackerman. So technically it’s not a Japanese movie. But because of the large amount of Japanese dialog, the vast majority of American’s would never watch it either. It’s the worst of both worlds.

The very best thing about the movie is that the main character could not understand the Japanese characters, and vice versa. In other similar movies there are scenes where characters are inexplicably able to understand each other, despite not knowing each other’s language.

The worst thing is the late Brittany Murphy, who lacks any ability to act. Her “abilities” were OK in films such as Sin City where she was nothing more than eye candy. (And no one expects great acting in a Robert Rodriguez movie anyway.)

But in this movie she had the daunting task of making the audience believe that a beautiful, educated, and spoiled American woman would put up with demeaning work such as cleaning toilets and washing dishes to learn how to make Ramen. She failed.

While I believed the restaurant owner was really a restaurant owner. That his wife was really a restaurant owner’s wife. And that the main character’s Japanese/Korean boyfriend wanted to bed a hot American chick. I never even for a second believed anything about the main character, including her motivation.

The movie also had a problem in using Ramen as its central dish. In the US every college kid lived off the freeze dried variety of Ramen. So in my mind, it’d be like a Japanese person coming here to learn how to make boxed macaroni and cheese.

Thus the movie had to explain why Ramen is so special and why it is so difficult to make. It fails. There are unbelievable scenes where Ramen produces “magical” effects on the moods of those eating it. There are also speeches about how you must make Ramen with your heart, not with your brain. But when the main character finally makes Ramen with her heart, she still fails when a Romen master refuses to give her his blessing. So all of those speeches were just a waste of time.

The ending was also really bizarre, and I can’t help but think it wasn’t changed at the last minute. During the movie we learn that the restaurant owner’s son left for France to become a chef, leaving the owner without a successor. Because the main character failed at obtaining the Master’s blessing, he lost a bet with a rival and had to give up cooking Ramen forever. Without a Ramen cook his restaurant would have to close. Mmm….

There’s a “touching” scene where the owner tells the main character that he wants her to be his successor. To make sure she understands he uses a book to translate what he’s saying into English. Being a touching moment, she’s very touched by the request and agrees to be his successor. The restaurant is saved, right?

Nope. For some inexplicable reason, the very next scene shows her leaving Japan for American where she opens up her own Ramen shop in New York.

Wow. Simply wow. There was nothing in the movie telling us that she wanted to go back to the US. In fact it was pretty clear that she had nothing to go back for.

Was the movie trying to tell us that she’s still a selfish bitch? Did the owner sell the restaurant to his rival? We don’t know. We do know the “touching” scene we saw before was rendered pointless.

Every so often you hear about famous movie characters who were supposed to be played by other actors. For example, Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name was supposed to be played by non-actor bodybuilder Steve Reeves. The studio wanted Kevin Costner to play Neo in the Matrix. And of course Tom Selleck was all set to play Indiana Jones, instead of Harrison Ford.

When you hear about such asinine casting choices you can’t help but think those hugely successful movies would have failed. And failed hard.

I’ve thought that maybe the reverse could sometimes be true. Maybe there are sucky movies out there that would have been great if the right actress/actor had been cast.

I can’t help but think that the Ramen Girl could have been a better movie with a better actress playing the lead. However, because of the underlying plot problems I described above, it still would not have been a great one.

Share this:

You can even make the argument a priori. If any music was completely original, it could not use any music theory either melodically or rhythmically. E.g., if it used a chord structure, it would use notes and chords which have already been done before. Thus, it wouldn’t be completely original.

A completely original piece of music would be both atonal and arrhythmic. In other words, it would not actually be music at all.

A similar complaint of “theft” was alleged against the film Star Wars. People have claimed that it was merely a ripoff of ancient myths, of Flash Gordon, of the Japanese story The Hidden Fortress, and a retread of a western set in space.

How many claims have to be made that George Lucas ripped off diverse and utterly unrelated sources before it becomes clear that it’s the underlying idea of the stories which is common and very popular.

In the US copyright is not supposed to protect mere ideas, but a particular expression of an idea. This can be seen in the television shows The Fugitive, Renegade, Kung Fu, The Hulk, and The Pretender. They’re all based on the exact same idea. An innocent but persecuted man who goes from town to town helping people while he attempts to clear his name. (Actually, I think Caine did murder someone, but it was justified somehow. Anyway…) So the expression of the The Fugitive was protected by copyright, but the underlying idea was free to be expressed differently by others.

In the same vein, Cameron did a war movie where one of the bad guys switches sides to help the good guys. That’s not an original idea. It’s been done before. However, to claim it was “ripped off” is simply asinine.

Lucas did a war movie where the hero had to rescue the princess and stop the bad guy. That’s not an original idea. It’s been done before. Once again, to claim it was “ripped off” is simply asinine.

In thinking about this I noticed how the movies Independence Day and Avatar follow a similar theme. They both involve invasions from other planets. They both attempt a peaceful solution to the invasion. We and the Na’vi both learn that the invaders are amoral consumers of resources who have destroyed every other planet they’ve/we’ve come into contact with. We and the Na’vi contact other countries/tribes to get them on board for the coming battles. Right before the final battles President Whitmore and Jake Sully give over-the-top impassioned speeches about how the invaders must be defeated to save their planets from eradication. And despite overwhelming odds, we and the Na’vi defeat the invaders using a combination of the invader’s technology with our/their own.

So if James Cameron ripped off the movies Independence Day and Pocahontas, does that also mean the creators of Independence Day ripped off Pocahontas? Heck, considering the claim that Independence Day was merely a ripoff of the movie/book The War of the Worlds, why didn’t anyone ever claim that H. G. Wells ripped off the story of Pocahontas’ life to write it?

Share this:

It tells the story of a modern day white American kid who loves martial art movies. However, despite his encyclopedic knowledge of all things kung-fu, he has no ability to perform it.

The old Chinese man who sells the kid movies gives him a staff and tells him to deliver it to its owner. He’s then transported back in time to China. He learns the staff is owned by an immortal warrior. The immortal warrior was (and is) trapped in stone by another immortal warrior, the bad guy, of course. The movie specifically tells us that he was trapped in stone because he could not be killed. Hence being immortal.

Of course it was told in prophesy that the kid would come from another world, return the staff to the good immortal, so the bad immortal could be defeated.

The kid was told this story by another immortal. (Who in a boring twist, was not actually immortal at the time, but becomes immortal, so he can be the guy who gives the kid the staff in the first place. Which we know because we saw him give the kid the staff. Didn’t see that one coming… not!) Anyway, he becomes the kid’s master and teaches him martial arts.

I’m not going to “review” this movie and let you know if it was good or bad. That’s subjective crap. My site is mostly about logic, so I’ll point out a glaring logical inconsistency.

I hate when movies violate their own rules. The movie tells us that immortals cannot be killed. The entire reason the immortal is not dead, but merely trapped in stone, is because he cannot be killed. Thus, the only reason the kid can come back in time and return the staff necessarily depends on immortals being immortal. Otherwise, if there was anyway the bad guy could have killed the good guy he would have, which would have made a very short movie.

However, we soon meet a young girl whose parents were killed by the bad immortal. She wants revenge against him and plans on killing him with a weapon tipped with jade. So the rules have been changed. Immortals can be killed by a stone somewhat common to the area. Common enough for a dirt poor orphan teenager to find one and have it made into a dagger.

This change from the underlying rule completely undermines the entire premise of the movie making everything we’ve seen up to that point a waste of time, solely to create dramatic tension where there is none.

Such contrivances take me out of the movie and back into reality. They remind me that I’m watching a movie. A dumb one.

Share this:

It’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to tell a joke from the truth. A whole franchise of Forbidden Planet movies?! Really?

It’s not April 1st. Check. It’s not the Onion. Check. What the frick?

Share this: