Joysticks

Starring: Joe Don Baker, Jim Greenleaf, and Scott McGinnis
Directed by: Greydon Clark
Written by: Al Gomez, Mickey Epps and Curtis Burch

Joysticks was recommended to me by my friend Mike Dikk. While he doesn't share my love for the American Pie Franchise, he does share an affinity for 80's T&A movies. Being that Mike is a few years older than I am and got to watch late night cable, he's also seen a lot of movies which have fallen through the cracks for me.

What makes movies like Joysticks great is that they take a perfect formula, adapt it to one situation or another, and DON'T FUCKING STRAY FROM IT ONE BIT. Innovation is all well and good, but not enough credence is given to finding a good thing and sticking with it. There's a reason all three Naked Gun movies are solid gold, you know?

The formula which Joysticks adheres to is as follows: local kids enjoy _____. Enjoyment of ______ involves sex, drugs and rock and roll. This of course angers the local ______ authority figure. Said authority figure sets out to ruin the kids good time. The kids respond by upping the ante and a final showdown for the right of the kids to enjoy ______ is set.

The formula also calls for at least one character of each of the following groups:

1) The cool guy who is cool and popular in a rebellious sorta way. At least rebellious in the sense that his parents friends would say "oh, Billy was such a good boy until he started running with that fast crowd." I mean, he doesn't stick up hookers for coke, but he likes to party and doesn't care for RULES. Also very into tits, and gets them all the time.

2) The ultranerd that the cool guy takes pity on. This guy is always a virgin, wears glasses, and has a high pitched voice. He also really wants to see tits, but can be distracted by things like math and computers and D&D.

3) The gross fatso pig guy. This guy is also cool with #1, but it's less of a situation where #1 takes him under his wing as it is a respect for gross fatso's don't-give-a-fuck attitude. Fatso is into tits as well, and will see them and enjoy them but also skeeve out the owner of said tits. Which, of course, he doesn't give a fuck about.

4) The babe of interest. Sexy babe who's not a stuck up bitch. That's pretty much it. Sometimes she's replaced by just a bunch of:

5) Babes. Big awesome hooters, real dumb, into getting naked and DOING IT ALLLLLLL THE TIME.

6) Shitty authority figure guy(s). Occasionally a shitty authority figure lady or ladies, but usually it's a guy. Often have a bevy of henchmen- see: Dean Wormer and Niedermayer in Animal House.

7) Crazy weirdo freaker punker type(s). Either one weirdo or a group of weirdos. Sometimes they're the corny version of "crazy freaks" that someone's dad would describe to the cops, and sometimes they're actually cool weirdo punkers. They can either unite with the main characters to fight the authority figure, or can be another hassle the main characters have to deal with.

And that's pretty much it. Obviously there are endless variations on said characters, and sometimes a character not mentioned is included, but I defy you to find any self respecting 80's T&A movie that doesn't have almost all of the above characters.

The setting for all this greatness in Joysticks is, you guessed it, an arcade. The arcade is run by Jefferson Bailey (#1). His recent hire, Eugene Groebe, (#2) opens the movie on his way to his first day of work. He's stopped by two babes (#5, duh) in a convertible. They are on a mission to acquire a pair of pants that belongs to a nerd, for god knows what awesome reason. They entice him into the car by taking out their hooters, which are of course incredible. The 80's might have been the pinnacle of boobs in movies, because not only were they prevalent as all hell, but they were the perfect middle ground between gnarly 70's boobs and the absurdly fake movie boobs of the 90's.

Now as I mentioned in the FRACTURE review, this was about the time my roomates Steve and Jim decided to turn it off. I guess four perfect jugs in the first two minutes was just titty overload. They're both awesome dudes and I don't mean to rag on them that much, but that was just the most absurd time to ask to have the movie turned off. Now to be fair Joysticks, and movies of its ilk aren't for everyone. There are moments in it's 88 minutes where I can see how it might drag a bit. But two minutes in, where nothing has happened except a nerd has gotten to ogle some awesome boobs? Really? That's where you shut it off? Motherfuckers.

I'm going to have to try and nip that rant in the bud and just move on before I get too wrapped up in how frustrating that was.

Being that I'm doing this write up a few weeks after I watched Joysticks, I can't remember what the arcade was called. A preliminary internet search didn't do any good either, so that will have to be lost for the ages. But you should go out and see Joysticks, and then you can find out for yourself. As mentioned, The TittyBoobHooter Arcade is run by Jefferson Bailey, and it's home to the cool kids and the freaks and the babes. Before Eugene Groebe shows up, Bailey's only other quasi employee and defacto number two is Jonathan Andrew McDorfus (#3). He's really good at beating video games while making crazy faces and stuffing his face. While the only official employee, Eugene is still very clearly low man on the totem pole.

Being that the kids go wild for video games and don't want to do anything but hang out at the arcade, it's only a matter of time before a local authority figure decides to crack down. In Joysticks said authority figure is Joseph Rutter, played by Joe Don Baker (the PI from the Cape Fear remake, among other things).

Rutter pretty clearly hates the entire enterprise of fun, and the TittyBoobHooter arcade is his most recent target. He enlists his retarded nephews to try and steal all the games, and of course they screw it up. He ALMOST gets the arcade kids by teaming up with King Vidiot (#7) the head freak who loves video games but hates Jefferson Bailey for no apparent reason. They meet when King Vidiot breaks into Rutters house in a totally awesome way- just thrashing through his sliding glass door like it ain't no thing! I also sort of remember Vidiot moshing through a wall, but there's a very real chance that my shit memory is just totally making that up.

What follows is a sort of hazy period where Bailey has a three way with two foxes that gets interrupted by a zany distraction, Eugene gets to see some more hooters, and McDorfus grosses some babes out.

Then the climax comes with the requisite SHOWDOWN FOR THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE. And/or arcade. I guess because they're still beefing, the showdown is between McDorfus and King Vidiot.

If you've ever seen any of these movies, or really any movie besides Requim For A Dream, you know how this ends so I won't bother going into it.

What I love most about this movie is that it really captures the spirit of the joy of boobs. Naked boobs, bouncy boobs, big floppy boobs, just plain old boobs. There are still movies today that have boobs in them, but its rare that a movie celebrates not only the tits themselves but the pure, gleeful, unadulterated revelry that can, nay, SHOULD be taken in the baring of breasts.

Steve and I expound upon this at quite some length during a segment in the first episode of our podcast, The Madmosa Podcast, which you can find out more about HERE. That's a pretty shameless plug but whatever. It also saves me re-typing my comments from said podcast.

Great movie, great celebration of tits, great character acting by King Vidiot, McDorfus and Eugene, great great great. Four short and curlies out of five.

Info:
-Buy It Cheap On Amazon.com
-IMDB

Trailer:

Fracture

Starring: Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling
Directed By: Gregory Hoblit
Written By: Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers

Picture this: Anthony Hopkins is reallllllyyyy smart. And he's preeetttyyy eevvvill. And he's matched up against a brilliant but wet behind the ears up-and-comer. There might be some twists, there might be some turns. Sound familiar? It does, at least a tad, right?

Well that's because it probably should, considering The Silence Of The Lambs won the Oscar for Best Picture (insert little "rights" or maybe "copyright" sign that I don't have on my keyboard here) in 1991. And while my mind is sorta blown by the fact that that was over 15 years ago, and I'm once again reminded that despite my best efforts and worst behavior I'm still quite a few years past twenty one, 1991 wasn't THAT long ago.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting out of this movie since I was fully aware of the premise before I saw it, but I guess I just didn't think it was going to so transparently be Law and Order: Lecter in the Courtroom. Though to the filmmakers credit, they did cast a prettier foil for Hopkins by putting Ryan Gosling in the place of manface anglemonster Jodie Foster. It's really been downhill since Taxi Driver for her, yeesh.

I think I'm just too much of a sucker for trailers. Ninety percent of the time my reaction to whatever trailer I'm watching is "oh christ, I can't WAIT to see that!" Usually movies like Fracture get pushed to the back burner thanks to movies that I actually can't wait to see, which often involve a member of the Stifler family. But I pretty clearly remember being really into the Fracture trailer. Somehow it just didn't wear off in time.

The other reason I've become increasingly sour on this movie is that I WAS watching Joysticks with my roommates first, but they complained about how much it sucked and we had to turn it off to watch this instead. I guess FOUR boobs in the first MINUTE AND A HALF was just too much awesome for them. I ended up watching Joysticks next, and of course the following 82 minutes WERE awesome. But that's for the next entry.

The biggest issue I had with the movie turned into an increasingly heated debate with my one roommate about the logic of the movie versus real life criminal law. It's way too elaborate and long winded to get into here, but if you care, it also turned into an even longer and more drawn out argument, complete with actual legal advice HERE and HERE.

Time has not been kind to this movie when it comes to my review, so I'm bumping it down to 2 short and curlies out of 5. Only watch it if you're in the mood for a legal thriller. Or shitty fake southern accents. Or David Strathairn REALLY mailing it in.

Info:
-Official Site
-Buy it cheap on Amazon
-IMDB

Trailer:

Fools Gold

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Written by: Jon Clafin, Daniel Zelman, Andy Tennant

I want to preface this by saying that no deeper meaning should be sought in the selection of Fools Gold as the first post. It's the first movie I saw in theaters since I decided to start this new blog, and that's all.

That said- I'll see pretty much anything Matthew McConaughey does. This will be the first of many admissions to questionable taste and viewing choices I'm going to make. They're admissions in name only, and certainly don't carry the typical connotation of embarrassed divulgence. I make no apologies for my taste and frankly think it's impeccable and most other people's taste blows. In this case I have an unflagging loyalty to McConaughey due to the fact that pretty much all he does with the free time and fairly substantial wealth he's accumulated from acting is get high, get naked, and sometimes get arrested doing one or both of those things. And for the most part he chooses roles where he plays the type of dude who would do/does those sort of things. Which, when you add it all up, means even when I see a shitty McConaughey movie, I'm still fairly satisfied.

Fools Gold is just such a movie. Unilaterally and inarguably a crappy movie, it was redeemed by a perfect moment of McConaughey-ness. Essentially he plays a beach bum treasure hunter who's been chasing a sunken ship full of treasure. His main source of funding for this hunt is a somewhat sketchy hip hopper type dude named Bigg Bunny. After McConaughey sinks Bunny's boat, he's had enough and decides to have McConaughey killed. So Bigg Bunny's henchmen take him out and throw him overboard tied to an anchor. He escapes (duh) but is now so far out to sea that he's stranded. He manages to float around on a cooler that was thrown overboard with him or something, but passes out from dehydration. He comes to as a speedboat pulls up with two bro's and two babes, and they yell "HEY BRO, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD USE A BEER!" The bro's throw him a beer which he pounds, and the babes flash him their hooters.

I love this scene for the obvious reasons, but I love it even more so because I'd be willing to bet the farm that it was from McConaughey's actual life, and the edit came up during the first table read. The original rescue scene was probably way more boring, and then Matt was all "Dudes...writer dudes...respectfully, I think we can kick this puppy up a notch. See, I was actually lost at sea a few years ago, and right when I thought all hope was lost, this speedboat pulls up..."

The rest of the movie is pretty shitty, but primarily because Fool's Gold can never seem to decide what kind of movie it wants to be. I'd be more than content with the typical rom-com adventure romp, but it veers off into weird family drama (the father-daugther relationship between Donald Sutherland and his Paris-esque daughter) and a briefly gritty treasure hunting movie (the aggro mercenary, Bigg Bunny punching the shit out of Kate Hudson) and then the lapses into the really weak "romance" between Hudson and McConaughey. The daughter character is totally ridiculous too because they obviously included her as a one dimensional gag character and then at some point decided the movie needed more "heart" and half-assedly wrote in the whole subplot between her and Sutherland.

One of the biggest issues I had with the movie was that at multiple points a character would drop a gun in the water and then fire it moments later, sometimes even submerging the gun for a long time and shooting it off underwater. Granted, 95% of my gun knowledge comes from other stupid movies and the other 5% from going out into the woods with my friends and shooting up old computers and teevees and other garbage with AK's, so I'm not claiming to be a Navy SEAL or anything. That said, it's my general understanding that you definitely can't just take a plain old gun and swim around shooting things underwater.

Maybe I'm wrong, and if that's the case, feel free to let me know. It wouldn't be totally earth shattering to find out I'm wrong, because before I shot off the above-mentioned guns, I somehow assumed that I'd be able to see the bullet leave the barrel and follow it by eye all the way until it hit whatever I was shooting it. So it was sort of a surprise when it seemed like the Tandy monitor or whatever it was just exploded all by itself. And the closest I've come to owning a gun was when my friend Trevor and I got drunk and agreed go "go halves" on a gun or two. Which is one of the best/worst ideas I've ever had. Best if I convinced him to put the guns in his name, worst if I got my prints on them and then let Trevor have custody for the weekend. Come to think of it, I really wish I'd gone shooting in the woods more, but the only other times I thought to try and go typically tended to be in the neighborhood of 3am, and rarely in the company of anyone who was in any sort of shape to drive, much less shoot guns in the dark. I do really want to see what muzzle flash looks like in pitch black though.

So a bunch of other bullshit happens, and even though the movie runs barely an hour and a half, it runs long. I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone, because if I can't get even somewhat excited about a McConaughey movie, I really doubt ANYONE can.

1 short and curly out of 5.

Info:

-Showtimes (Fandango)
-IMDB
-Official Site

And here's the trailer.

"From The Desk Of Reg Dunlop" is dead, and out of the ashes "You Baby Gorilla" has been born.

Before I start down the road on this new project, I should mention that I like going to the movies so much that I'll see just about ANYTHING. I'll try to hassle people to accompany to movies which I have only the most passing interest in seeing, despite the fact that a movie ticket in New York is at least $11.50. When I was living in New Brunswick and had easy access to the AMC via five minute car ride, I saw at least a movie a week, if not two, thanks to AMC's weekend morning policy. For the uninitiated, any showing before noon on either Saturday or Sunday at any AMC is (about) half price. That means five or six dollars, and at that price, I will quite literally see anything. For instance, I was tricked into seeing Stomp The Yard, and I didn't even really care.

The AMC theaters in New York have the same deal, but the closest one to me is in Manhattan and at least a 40 minute train ride. So making it to a movie at 11:45 in the morning means waking up at 10:45 instead of 11:30, and my various associates tend to be wieners at that time of morning and will forego a cheap movie to sleep later.

There's also a theater in Sunnyside, Queens that has $4 movies on Tuesday nights, but for whatever reason that's the one night nobody I know can go to the movies.

As a general rule I'm really opposed to going to the movies by myself, as that's a practice I feel is generally reserved for lepers and guys in raincoats. The first time I saw "No Country For Old Men" I went alone but that was because my friend bailed last minute and I had time to kill and was way too excited not to go. And it wasn't as horribly shameful as I'd feared, but it's still more fun to go with people.

The point I'm finally getting around to is that in the interest of having a coherent and unifying theme for this blog and thereby avoid post after sporadic post of "so a funny thing happened today at the blipeededoo store when I saw Stevie Fartface do a snorglejumble", I decided to make this all movies, all the time. That will include Netflix, movies on TV, occasional selections from my DVD collection, as well as anything I see in theaters.

Before this intro prattles on further than it already has, I think it's worth listing my top 10 movies of all time to give you, the reader, an idea of my general taste.

1. Dirty Work
2. Slapshot
3. Clerks
4. Billy Madison
5. Eddie Murphy Raw
6. Vacation
7. Animal House
8. Caddyshack
9. Grandma's Boy
10. Superbad

At a later date I might break down this list and explain each choice, as well as some of the obvious omissions (Kingpin, Tommy Boy, The Jerk). But it's worth mentioning now because I think it gives an accurate idea of how my mind works. Laughing is right up there with breathing as far as my priorities go. There are some incredible non-comedic movies that I've seen, and that I love, but I'd have to make at least a top 50 list before I could even consider including any of them. They just don't rate if I don't laugh.

Onward and upward, and welcome to You Baby Gorilla.