The Longest Yard, Indeed

/ / Movie Reviews

This is a no-brain summer comedy that has a built in audience of frats boys, frat boys to be, and former glory frat men. While certainly not a laugh riot, The Longest Yard is actually awful per se, and filmgoers who want a break from the special effects orgies but don’t want kids fare or teen drama will most likely flock to it in droves.

The Longest Yard
2 Stars

At the recent New York premier of The Longest Yard, Burt Reynolds slapped a reporter for not ever having seen the 1974 version of the seminal football film. (You can read my review of the recent DVD release HERE) While Reynolds’ publicist has tried to laugh off the incident by saying it was a playful jest, I’m left to wonder if star Adam Sandler and director Pete Segal got similar treatment on the set, because obviously they haven’t seen it either.

See that expression. Get used to it

This time around Sandler takes the role of Paul “Wrecking” Crewe a former NFL quarterback who was booted from the league for points shaving. Sick of his life as a kept boy-toy for a harridan-like Courtney Cox, Crewe goes on a wild, drunken joyride through the city and ending up in hoosegow. Unbeknownst to him, the warden (James Cromwell) has had Crewe sent to his facility in the hopes that Crewe will help his guards’ struggling semi-pro team. Soon enough Crewe and ace hustler The Caretaker (Chris Rock) are putting together an inmate team to give the guards an easy win and the inmates some much desired payback. Along the way friendships are forged The Man gets it stuck to, and no real lessons are learned.

I try to avoid comparing remakes to their source material, but in this case what’s missing from The Longest Yard makes it impossible to avoid. Sandler’s Crewe isn’t the selfish and amoral cad that Reynolds portrayed in the original, nor does Sandler experience any form of character arc or change of heart. He’s playing it straight here, which means a nearly comatose delivery almost devoid of likability. To make matters worse, Sandler has to share the screen with Reynolds, who in even his diminished role still bears the charm and aura that made him such a ubiquitous screen presence in the 70’s. Where Sandler can do barely-contained rage, Reynolds is the epitome of macho cool, an ingredient sorely lacking from this film.

Chris Rock continues his unwavering tradition of bug-eyed delivery of invariably racial jokes, but sadly he’s the comedic highlight of the film. The cast of criminal losers they assemble to form the inmate team feel like the kind of caricatures more suited to a Rob Schneider vehicle, all man-childs and morons. There’s no hint of the brutal sociopaths that filled the original, and their desire to inflict brutal revenge on the guards that torment them is mostly talked about but rarely felt.

But this is a football movie, so no matter the plot or characters a film like has to live or die on the quality of the sports action, and yet again this remake falls far short of the superb gamesmanship of the original. Either due to direction, cinematography, or editing the football game that comprises the third act of the film is just a jumbled mass of quick cuts and hit shots with jokes thrown in willy-nilly. The original, while no masterpiece, earned its place in the canon of great sports films on the weight of the game itself as much as it’s anti-establishment underdog story. Sandler’s version plays like it was designed by someone who knew of football, but not what makes it such a compelling sport to watch.

This is a no-brain summer comedy that has a built in audience of frats boys, frat boys to be, and former glory frat men. While certainly not a laugh riot, The Longest Yard is actually awful per se, and filmgoers who want a break from the special effects orgies but don’t want kids fare or teen drama will most likely flock to it in droves.

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A Life-Altering Voodoo Mind Trip with Steve-O and God

/ / Uncategorized

ZolarCzakl takes a sip of magic brew and contemplates his place in the universe

Imagine a black-magic voodoo priest whipping up a blood-tinted bubbling cauldron of mystical potion. He’s standing there, outside at night at some sort of voodoo camp and he’s all decked out in the feathers and the long things hanging from his hair and he’s even got a bone through his nose. He’s chanting in an ancient language while carefully placing an array of sketchy items into the brew: pieces of bats, assorted insects, cups of various blood-like substances, and even a few powders (which he takes a snort of from time to time). When the ingredients have all been well mixed and the voodoo soup simmers for just the right amount of time, the chanting reaches an orgiastic climax as the priest yells the magic incantation and he gets the crazy eyes, full of fire and full of death.
He raises a clay cup of the heated brew to the sky and speaks one final incantation, and for just a quick moment the thousands of visible stars in the sky seem to shift ever so slightly. You are standing a few feet in front of him, taking all of this in. You see the stars do their thing but try not to be freaked out. You feel a strange rumbling in the ground but think it’s maybe just that Poncho’s burrito you somewhat foolishly ate for dinner. Then the priest, whose name is Benny, steps forward and brings the cup close to your face, right up to your now trembling lips. His crazy-eyed stare has you captive and you have no choice but to ingest a mouthful of the rather warm and truly horrible-tasting brew… then comes the biggest change you’ve ever experienced in your life.
Suddenly you’re flying high above the ground, soaring over houses and Vietnamese restaurants that you know and adore. Time seems to have stopped, for there is no motion on the ground. Everything and everyone are frozen in their tracks, some people in mid-walk on the sidewalks, others in their cars with the lights on and the exhaust streaming from the tailpipes. You now exist outside time and outside the laws of physics, soaring high straight into the mind of what you can only imagine is God.
After flying around in a daze for what seems like quite a while (time is non-existent at this point so you don’t really have much of a concept of it) you feel very overwhelmed and find yourself flying into a glowing white room high up in the clouds. You arrive at the room and float into a very regal-looking but rather comfortable reclining chair. It takes a few moments for you to collect yourself and regain your wits, but once you do you look around the room and see that there is a rather nice widescreen television set suspended in front of you. To the right of your recliner is a TV tray with a bitchin’ assortment of snacks and drinks. To the left is another stand with a remote control on it. A loud booming voice erupts in your eardrums and you nearly leap from your bones. It says, “Watch now as the secrets of all the universe are revealed to you oh special one, for you have been chosen to taste of the holy voodoo brew and be imparted with my perfect knowledge so you can spread the word of true enlightenment to all your fellow man.”
The lights dim, the remote floats into your sweaty hand, and you instinctively press play as the television comes to life.

What you see for the next three hours is a close-cropped dark-haired goofball doing a plethora of shitty and retarded things to himself and to others. He snorts salt into his nasal cavities, takes a shot of tequila and has someone from the audience squeeze a lime into his eyes. He has people staple dollar bills to his shirtless torso and arms. He takes broken glass, slashes his tongue, chews up the glass and swallows it. He goes to a used car lot and pisses himself while trying to test-drive a car. He dresses up in a funny wig and jogging suit (the ass of which he has filled with chocolate pudding) and runs around asking people if he can use their bathroom. He wraps his legs with saran wrap and hires a hooker to pee on him. He climbs up onto the roof of a hotel and jumps into the pool. He and his buddies repeatedly smash their heads into a pumpkin in an attempt to break it. He loads his head with hairspray and has a friend spit fire onto his hair, singing it and burning his face. He dresses up like a clown, gets drunk, vomits a lot, goes to a bar, and gets the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of rednecks. He walks around in a park on stilts, juggling and entertaining families until he falls over and acts like he’s been seriously injured. He dresses in that funny wig and half of the jogging suit and dances around the city while listening to music. He dresses in a suit and hangs out at a train stop, acting like a lunatic until the cops show up. Him and his buddies rub down a barely-clothed crack whore’s ass with Vaseline and light her ass on fire as he skateboards over it. He also balances a rather large knife on his nose.
And all of this only takes place in the first half-hour!
By this point your mind is so overloaded with these images that you realize that your consciousness has forever been altered. After watching such disturbingly banal acts with no hint of social value, not even to mention any real hint of true entertainment, you have reached an almost Zen-like state. Millions of non-sequiturs pop into your mind. Random thoughts, complex questions and juvenile, ridiculous situations all fight for space in your mind and try to find their proper place in the universe. As the voodoo stew has melted your brain into a primordial soup, only one thing snaps you out of this corpse-like sleep of stupidity: the voice of God.
“What you have seen is a sampling of what humanity truly has to offer from this point in history until the end of mankind, which will be in 34,262 years, but that doesn’t really mean anything to you… anyway, now that you have been imparted with this very important information, you must make a choice.
“You must either
1) Accept that humans are silly, stupid, selfish, gross, idiotic, hurtful, mean, nasty, evil, and wasteful and not let it eat you up inside… be ok with it… let all of your bad feelings toward people and society go… just be happy, live your life, and don’t be so gosh-darn angry all the time, or
2) Kill yourself.
God out.”
At precisely this moment you are transported to a ledge outside a very tall building. You have to stand up straight against the side of the building in order not to go tumbling over the edge to your death. This is no longer a weird dream – this is real. To your left you see an open window, which you can easily crawl into and be safe. You’re about to make your move then your mind is filled with images of that close-cropped, dark haired goofball getting peed on by a hooker…

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The Longest Yard: Lockdown Edition

/ / Home Video

As with most sports films, you know how the final game ends up. What makes it such a treat is how director Robert Aldrich gets you there. The Longest Yard jumps from comedy to sports film to drama with equal ease, and the level of cynicism and bleakness inside each jumps out with alarming intensity. This is the film for football fans, and anyone interested in catching the upcoming Adam Sandler remake should skip the theater and just give the far superior original a go.

The Longest Yard: Lockdown Edition
4 & 1/2 Stars

Burt is dead sexy

When people think of the great sports movies, football-themed films are always conspicuously absent from the list. Baseball, of course, rules the genre, with basketball and golf taking up the next two slots. So why, when football is such a massive part of American sports, are there no great movies about it? Well, to tell the truth, there is a great football movie, and no it’s not Any Given Sunday or Rudy. It’s the 1974 Burt Reynolds classic, The Longest Yard.

Seriously. Why? Well for one, it’s just a great movie. Man vs. The Man. Underdogs bucking authority for one last shot at dignity and pride. Great stuff, that. But most importantly it’s the football. The last 1/3 rd of The Longest Yard is the game between the Burt Reynolds led convicts and the prison guards and, if you took out the talky bits, it’s as if you’re watching a semi-pro game. It moves like a football game, and boy does it hit like one. They didn’t pull any punches filming this, and that shows up on the screen. Having the bulk of the teams comprised of ex football pros certainly makes it feel all the more real.

The gist of the story is this: former All Pro quarterback Paul Crewe hasn’t played a game since he was kicked out of the NFL for points shaving. Fed up with his kept life, he steals his gal’s car, tears through the city in a high speed chase, dumps the car in the bay, and then beats up two cops. Needless to say, he goes to jail. He ends up in Citrus State Prison, where the warden (a phenomenal Eddie Albert) has pulled some strings to bring the ex NFL great to his little facility in the hopes that Crewe will coach his guards’ semi-pro team to a national championship. Crewe refuses to help, but eventually agrees to lead a team of convicts against the guards in an exhibition match which Albert thinks will be an easy win for his law-lovin’ boys.

Boy, is he wrong. Crewe collects an assortment of violent offenders and near-sociopaths that manage to come together for their own pride, dignity, and a shot at crippling the guards who torment them every day.

As with most sports films, you know how the final game ends up. What makes it such a treat is how director Robert Aldrich gets you there. The Longest Yard jumps from comedy to sports film to drama with equal ease, and the level of cynicism and bleakness inside each jumps out with alarming intensity. This is the film for football fans, and anyone interested in catching the upcoming Adam Sandler remake should skip the theater and just give the far superior original a go.

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Ludicrous Hullabulloo

/ / Home Video

What ever happened to Michael Keaton’s career?  Seriously folks, I’m asking you, the guy was Batman for cris’sake!  I can only assume that his latest film, White Noise, is a very loud and extremely painful cry for help from a guy who looks to be about one year away from doing gay porn.  I personally do not believe in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), contacting dead people through the static in your television, and I have to say the movie only made me sorry for those that do, which I sincerely doubt if that was the director’s objective.

White Noise
1/2 Star

What ever happened to Michael Keaton’s career?  Seriously folks, I’m asking you, the guy was Batman for cris’sake!  I can only assume that his latest film, White Noise, is a very loud and extremely painful cry for help from a guy who looks to be about one year away from doing gay porn.  I personally do not believe in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), contacting dead people through the static in your television, and I have to say the movie only made me sorry for those that do, which I sincerely doubt if that was the director’s objective.

Jonathon Rivers (Keaton) is a successful architect with a young son and a hot new second wife (Chandra West) who mysteriously disappears one night on her way home.  Paranormal expert Raymond Price (Ian McNeice) approaches Rivers and explains his wife is dead and trying to contact him through his television set.  At first Rivers is skeptical, but after his wife turns up dead, rather than going to the police, he buys into the guy’s rather flimsy story with ridiculous speed, never looking back.  He joins with Price and Sarah Tate (Deborah Kara Unger), a young woman who is trying to reach her dead fiance, into discovering what messages his wife is trying to send him from beyond the grave. 

Rivers becomes increasingly obsessed after hearing his wife on a tape Price plays for him; he buys thousands of dollars of computer equipment, recording equipment, television monitors, and VCRs to spend 20 hours a day recording looking for messages from his wife.  He totally ignores his job and his son, sending him off to live with his ex-wife.  After several attempts he discovers his wife always comes to contact him through the white noise at exactly 2:30 (am or pm seems to not matter to ghosts).  In her message she seems to warn him against some danger. 

Along with seeing his wife he also finds images of people in danger which he later discovers are people still alive that he has a chance to save if he follows the clues his wife has given him (I can’t believe I watched this whole movie!).  Also in the static are three mysterious strangers that have some stake or control in all of this very odd tale.  I won’t tell you anymore about them, not because there’s any kind of plot twist, but simply because that’s as far as these guys were developed.  Even from watching the director’s commentary I was unable to learn anything of interest about them, except that the director thought they were “really cool.”

The extras include 3 documentaries about EVP presented by the experts in the field.  As laughable as the movie is it looks sullen compared to these people walking around hotel rooms with microphones asking ghosts to talk to them.  One of the extras even shows you how you to can record voices from white noise, giving you lists of the equipment you will need and a nice step by step how to guide on how to record.  After watching moments of these extras I seriously wondered whether the makers of this DVD think EVP is complete crap and used this opportunity to let these people show how laughable their “science” is.

Also included are a commentary track with director Geoffrey Sax and Keaton which gives some nice shooting and production stories, but does nothing to explain this stupid, stupid script.  Of course a DVD wouldn’t be complete with out some useless deleted scenes with optional commentary by the director on why they weren’t worthy to be included in this gem of a movie.  Also included are some previews to movies you could be watching rather than this one.
As for the sound and picture quality they are what you would expect from a major studio DVD, with the optional different languages and subtitles. 

The problems in the movie are too numerous to go into much detail, but here are a few.  The movie never explains how people still alive are contacting Keaton’s character through the white noise that only the dead can use (let alone how the dead are doing it).  The three odd gentlemen/creatures are never developed nor explained, nor is the reason why all contact happens at exactly 2:30.  Rivers never once stops to consider he is being hustled, part of an elaborate hoax, or is going insane, all much better explanations for what happens than any given in the movie.  The police never think it’s suspicious when Keaton keeps ending up finding dead bodies, or when the people helping him turn up dead or injured.
The documentaries are unintentionally laugh out loud funny if you can manage to sit through them.  The seriousness that these people take to finding sounds in radio waves or television signals is just so bizarre you can only chuckle.

I can’t really recommend this to anyone; if you believe in EVP you won’t after watching this, and if you don’t you will just see this experience as a terrible waste of time.

One final note, the movie begins with a quote from Thomas Edison, who I honestly believe would have electrocuted himself on his first light bulb if he knew his name would ever be associated to such…….noise.

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Will Ferrell shoots….and kinda scores

/ / Movie Reviews

Kicking & Screaming won’t take any space on the ‘great sports films’ rack, but it should provide families with some easy laughs and some rainy day diversions.  And if nothing else, it’ll provide moviegoers with the all important tetherball fix we’ve so desperately been lacking.

Kicking & Sreaming
2 & 1/2 Stars

Will Ferrell doesn’t exactly break cinematic ground with Kicking & Screaming, but as yet another entry in the ‘kid sports’ genre, it’s certainly a little unique.  Not nearly as blue-collar and sarcastic as The Bad News Bears (which gets its own update this summer from Richard Linklater and Billy Bob Thorton), K&S provides a lot of unexpected laughs.

Scream, Dracula, scream!

Ferrell plays a meek and embittered vitamin supplement store owner who just can’t measure up to his hyper-competitive dad (Robert Duvall), who just happens to coach the little league soccer team his son plays on.  After Duvall trades Ferrell’s son to another team, Phil decides to coach the perennial losers in an effort to one-up his old man.  Phil brings in the help of Mike Ditka, who has been warring with his dad for years, to get his coaching skills up to par.  By definition and federal mandate, hilarity then ensues.

Put rather simply, Kicking & Screaming is The Mighty Ducks Play Soccer; same idea, same ‘coach becomes win-obsessed jerk’, and same hokey finale.  Except that in this version, the kids are really nothing more than afterthoughts to the comedic force of Will Ferrell, who almost assuredly ad-libbed a good portion of his performance.  You’ll walk out of this movie remembering only Will Ferrell and Mike Ditka (who just steals every scene he’s in). 

There are some inspired moments with Ditka and Duvall, who bring a gleeful malice to their interactions as bickering neighbors, especially to their confrontation over who’s the better coach, but in the end this is Will’s show.  No one does over-the-top reactions like Ferrell, and his moments of lunacy are enough to make you forget just how flimsy the rest of the film is.  It’ll be interesting to see how this effects his steamroller momentum in Hollywood, but I can’t imagine it’ll put too much of a dent in it.  Judging from the audience of soccer kids at the screening, it’ll be a hit with the younger crowd.  After all, there’s nothing kids like more than seeing adults make fools of themselves, and Ferrell is blissfully unafraid to be a complete buffoon.

Kicking & Screaming won’t take any space on the ‘great sports films’ rack, but it should provide families with some easy laughs and some rainy day diversions.  And if nothing else, it’ll provide moviegoers with the all important tetherball fix we’ve so desperately been lacking.

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