Tag Archives: Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride

My Review of WALL*E

15 Nov

from July 6, 2008

Stay tuned after the review for a special behind the scenes expose of the making of this blog!WALL*E is the latest animated offering from Pixar. If you’ve seen a good cartoon movie they’ve done it, most likely. Of course now that Disney owns them expect them to take a severe downturn in quality. Coming soon- Wall*E 2- Princess Eve’s Fantastic Castle.

WALL*E was preceded by a short ‘toon. Pixar believes in giving value for your buck. Again, since Disney bought it, expect this to end as well. The opening short was a heartwarming ‘toon about a magician who starves his pet rabbit. Seriously. It was cute and funny and PETA picketed the theater. But enough about that.

For the sake of laziness, I’ll revert to an old trope where I run down the characters instead of a proper review.. This is the lazy way of reviewing. All you kids out there- don’t try this at home. In fact, why re you kids reading this at all? Shouldn’t you be playing Grand Theft Auto 4 on the Wii?

So here’s the cast, in no particular order other than how they occur to me as I type. (This is why I need an editor. Why don’t you people listen to me when I say that?)

WALL*E: Wally (it is just easier to type this way) is a robot. In fact, he may be the only robot left on the planet Earth. You see, the Earth has been overrun by big box stores, like Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Mart-Mart. Everything is a Mart. There is Gas-Mart ($17 per gallon) and Clothes-Mart (unisex jumpers for fall fashion). There is a Mart for every need. In fact, in order to go to the bathroom you have to go to Toilet-Mart. But that didn’t last long as the only Mart they didn’t have was Garbage Mart. There was garbage everywhere- garbage in the streets, garbage in the buildings, garbage in the landfills, which honestly is what you’d expect anyway, and garbage in the seas and on the beaches. Dammit, Al Gore was right! Anyway, the whole planet is like a giant Detroit. So the whole population made the only sane and rational decision- they got the hell out of there and left the Earth.

Well, the Mart Company sent a whole load of Wall*Ebots to clean up the mess. Wall*E stands for What A Lousy Life* Everyone, and it is true. Know what these robots did? They roamed the planet and ate trash. Wall*Ebots are squat and square (kind of like fat midgets) and after eating the trash they crapped out a cube of garbage and used it to build something. Whole towns were made of square robot shit. Well, after 700 years of eating trash the robots just had enough. Can you blame them? One by one they hooked themselves up to the Kevorkian-bot and committed suicide. Then the remaining Wall*Ebots ate them, crapped them out, and used them to build something, like an ice cream stand.

Wally was the last Wall*Ebot and he was a little eccentric. For example, he collected things. He had a whole shelf of interesting (to him, that is) odds and ends, like used napkins, cans of Sterno, broken crutches, Lafayette 2007 yearbooks, junk like that. Wally also had an extensive DVD collection of the entire Disney library. Oddly enough, the only DVDs and videos to survive the centuries were Disney movies. What a coincidence. Wally watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang until the tape broke, which was not a moment too soon because he was developing an unhealthy crush on Dick Van Dyke. He also had a pet, which is the next character I’ll review.

His pet was a cockroach. Let’s move on.

Wally lived a life of quiet desperation. Everyday was the same- eat, crap, repeat. Give him credit- he was very regular. In one scene he appeared a bit constipated but it passed. (Ha! Get the pun there? And this I am proud of?) It all changed when the third character of this little reivew, I mean movie, appeared.

EVE: Eve is a female bot sent to the Earth for signs of life. The first thing she found was a Larry the Cable Guy movie and the mission was cancelled but they sent her back just to make sure. She is the exact opposite of Wally. Wally is square and short and looks like a cross between a box and a tank. Eve is smooth and white. She is long and cylindrical and slightly tapered. She emits a slight electrical humming and moves at high speed. Do I need to spell it out for you? She’s a vibrator.

Eve (Electrical Vibratory Ecstasy) has no use for Wally. And why would she? She’s a vibrator, she’s there to replace a man, not fall in love with one. In fact, she tried to kill Wally at every turn, but Wally is a masochist and that just turned him on.

Wally took her to his bachelor pad and tried every trick in book, but Eve was cold to him. (Why does that sound familiar?) In fact, nothing impressed her. He showed her his shiny rock collection- nothing. He showed her his pile of funny shaped potato chips- zilch. Even his complete run of Mad Magazine, from issue 143- 198 (missing only issue 156) failed to impress her. It wasn’t until he showed her his marijuana plant did she get interested. In fact, she took it from him and returned to her mother ship. That’s really why she was sent to Earth- to score some weed.

CAPTAIN McBUTERPANTS is the next character. OK, he wasn’t next in the movie, but this is my review and I want to write about him here. He was like everyone else from Earth. He is fat and lazy and never gets out of his chair, slurping Big Gulps all day and watching TV. (Hey, is this film really set in the future?) His job is to do nothing, and if he isn’t living the good life I don’t know who is. In fact, the autopilot does all the work. (I wish I had an autopilot.)

Wally and Eve end up on the ship and have all kinds of wacky adventures, most of which involve running around a lot.

The autopilot didn’t want to return to Earth, and after seeing this film I don’t blame him, but the Captain does. He wrests control of the ship from the autopilot and set course for Earth. This was not as easy as it sounds. The guy was about 700 pounds and had never walked a step in his life. In fact, his first step out of his chair caused him to break three bones in his foot and the trip back to Earth was delayed three weeks while he healed.

Well, to make a long review short (but alas, not any funnier), Wally and Eve return to Earth, Wally converts Eve to the hetero team, and the humans return to Earth, prepared to plant pizza trees and just generally fuck up the planet all over again.

Bottom line: Wall*E is a cautionary tale of the dangers of excess and gluttony. But the robots are cute so you’ll ignore the serious underlying themes.

 So what is the story behind this blog? Well, yesterday I saw Wall*E. I liked it and that was the end of it. Believe it or not, I don’t blog everything. If you are waiting for a blog about lunch today, for example, don’t waste your time, I’m not writing one. Wall*E didn’t have a hook.Something has to click in my head for me to blog about it. If I have to work at it, the quality isn’t there. (Stop snickering.)

I was at the not-to-be-blogged lunch today with various friends and other ne’er-do-wells when one of them mentioned that she saw Wall*E. I said that I saw it too. I was challenged on it and I determined to write a review to prove that I saw the movie, but since nothing clicked and I had no hook, it was not something I looked forward too.

But she provided me with a hook. My good friend to the left, who was on my right today, said that Wall*E was about “robot love.” I hadn’t looked at it that way but she was absolutely right. And that’s when it all clicked, because the term “robot love” set off some very odd circuits in my brain (like there are another kinds) and it hit me that Eve was a vibrator and the rest of it wrote itself right there at lunch, Kevorkian-bots, Dick Van Dyke, and everything else. (I should apologize for knocking Disney. Walt had a good head on his shoulders, for a while there anyway.)

That’s the story of the review, and also as much as you’ll get about the lunch today. There’s no telling what will work in a blog and what won’t- god knows Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride is hit or miss. I kind of like my movie reviews and hope you like this one too. (Sweet smile, please please, not too humble.)

 

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My Review of Hancock

15 Nov

from July 3, 2008

Hancock is the current Fourth of July weekend blockbuster. Will Smith both stars in and produced this biopic of Herbie Hancock, the legendary jazz musician who suddenly developed powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal humans.

Born in 1940, Herbie Hancock has gained renown as a leading figure in jazz. He has won multiple Grammy and Academy Awards, most notably for his 2007 tribute album “River: The Joni Letters,” which won the 2008 Grammy award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album to win the award.

When the film opens, Will Smith’s Herbie Hancock is drunk, sleeping on a park bench outside the offices of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, his record label. He is awakened by a young kid with a synthesizer who tells him to “play some jazz fusion, Hancock.” Unfortunately, Herbie Hancock has completely lost his memory. His memories only go back a few years, to when he awoke in the hospital with a cracked skull. Totally by coincidence, this is also when his amnesia begins.

Having no memory of jazz fusion, but now possessing superpowers, Hancock tells the cute little kid to “fuck off” and flies away. Oh, did I mention that Hancock is as drunk as Mr. Know-It-All on a good day? Herbie Hancock flew blindly, almost crashing into a TWA jet whose pilot was only marginally more sober than he was.

Herbie Hancock’s idea of stopping criminals was to shove one criminals head up another criminal’s ass. Believe me, it was effective. And graphic. If only the real penal system operated that way.

Hancock had no memory of his past. He would sometimes stalk Miles Davis, sure that the musician held the key to his past, but a restraining order kept him at least one hundred feet away.

As much as Herbie Hancock fought crime and caught criminals, he caused even more collateral damage. For example, a group of masked thugs tried to rob a bank. The vault contained just over three million dollars. During the apprehension, Hancock crashed through a wall ($85,000), destroyed an armored car ($185,000), melted an entire bank of computers ($200,000), tossed the money from three ATMs to the assembled crowd ($450,000), and created nearly $6,000,000 in assorted property damage and lawsuit settlements. If he just had let the crooks steal the money, the city would have lost only half of what it did, and three girl scouts would still be alive.

Eventually Hancock realized that he missed the applause of the crowd. Though he didn’t remember his concerts, he still had a strange urge for adoration. Therefore he hired Jason Bateman as his public relations representative. Trust me, it made sense when I watched the film. Not so much right now though, I admit.

Jason Bateman has been working a lot lately. In his youth, he lost nearly every role he auditioned for to Michael J. Fox. Nowadays, with Fox otherwise occupied, Bateman has been getting every part that would have normally gone to ol’ twitchy.

Hancock and Bateman turn out to be an unbeatable team. Bateman taught Hancock to shave and stop crushing people’s pets when he landed. Hancock taught Bateman how to play “Watermelon Man” on the flute.

Many films are predicated on implausible coincidences. Coincidentally, so is this. It turns out that Jason Bateman’s wife is none other than Hancock’s superpowered wife, whom he forgot due to the amnesia. (Perhaps this is the time for a spoiler warning.) She left him years before when he fell off the stage at a concert in Pasadena (where he cracked his skull) and took all his money. He had amnesia, he didn’t even remember what money was.

Where did Herbie Hancock get his superpowers? Why did he insist on stopping crime instead of committing crime, as I would? Would he ever play electro-funk on the moog synthesizer again?It would not be fair of me to tell you. But trust me, everything works out: Hancock’s wife stays with Jason Bateman and Hancock moves to New York, where he gets a job playing bass with Paul Schaeffer on the Letterman show.

The absolute low point of this movie had to be the trailer for Starship Troopers 3. THREE? Are they kidding me?

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