Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #13: The Ant Bully

2006 animated ant movie

Rating: 9/20 (Emma: 9/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Poor Lucas is a bullied little kid who takes out his frustrations on a colony of ants in his front yard, squirt-gunning the hell out of them and being generally menacing. Nicolas Cage ant uses a potion to shrink Lucas down to ant size so that he can learn a lesson about teamwork and being nice. As he adapts to ant culture, he has to figure out a way to save the anthill from an exterminator he hired a few days before he started living in it. Oh, snap!

Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, and Ricardo Montalban? And the movie still is barely half as good as the other two CGI-ant movies? Nothing grabs you in this one. The animation is mediocre, the story is predictable, and the protagonist isn't easy to root for. He's really, probably like all children, unlikable. Like so many modern animated classics, this very clumsily attempts to appeal to adults and children, and I don't really see how it would be completely satisfying to either. There are a lot of big little action sequences with a thwomping score that was probably lifted from another animated movie, but all they managed to do was make my eyes hurt a little bit. I got bored with this very quickly. Cage, as expected, does fine voice work, but it was a waste of his time as he could have been working on a sequel to Vampire's Kiss--Vampire's Kiss II: Watch Out, Roaches, Because There's a New Vampire in Town. This is a completely soulless, headache-inducing affair that actually made me want to either a) get the old magnifying glass out and kill some ants myself or b) give the kid a few doors down an atomic wedgie and make him eat grass. Ricardo Montalban, by the way, needs more work. I think I'd rather watch those commercials where he talks about soft Corinthean leather over and over again than watch this movie again.

Devil

2010 Night chronicle

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Right after a man jumps to his death from a window far above the van he lands on, a black guy, a white guy, an old woman, a younger woman, and a mattress salesman enter an elevator in building 333. The elevator malfunctions, apparently because it's possessed by the devil. Devil! A detective and the audience try to figure out what the hell is going on.

As soon as the words "The Night Chronicles" popped onto the screen, I had mixed feelings of glee and disappointment. On the one hand, this wasn't an actual M. Night Shyamalanadingdong movie, so it was unlikely that the level of comedy would meet my expectations after watching his brilliant comedy The Happening. On the other hand, M. Night now apparently thinks he's become the next Alfred Hitchcock and there's going to be a whole bunch of this crap, and some of it's going to be really bad. Devil isn't a complete disaster. In fact, the premise is sort of cool, and in the hands of a better writer, one without so many A's in his last name maybe, this might have ended up fairly good. As the film begins, you get these upside-down aerial shots of a city, and I was thinking, "Oh, my God. Shyamalan couldn't even find a director who knows how to properly hold a camera!" Once the detective comes along to solve the mystery of the falling man, things get ridiculous. And that's at the beginnning of the movie, so I guess things get ridiculous fairly quickly. The detective has trouble finding the broken window because of a moving truck or something, and it made me wonder if he was the right man for this or any job. It's just like when you hear the characters in this (especially the mattress salesman) interact with each other? It made me wonder if the writer, the director, and the actors and actresses were the right men and women for the jobs. I really wondered if anybody involved in the production of Devil has ever heard actual human interaction before. My favorite bit of dialogue is the bit about toast falling "jelly-side down" or whatever. Seriously, who wrote this garbage? So is Devil watching despite its many sins? Overall, no. It's too gimmicky and too silly to really enjoy. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and it's the gimmicks and the silliness that make it enjoyable. Who knows? All I do know is that I'll never look at devil-possessed elevators the same way again. In fact, next time I'm in an elevator with other people, I'm just going to go ahead and kill everybody just to be on the safe side. It might just save my life, and I'll have M. Night Shyamalan to thank for that.

Waiting for "Superman"

2010 propaganda film

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 7/20)

Plot: A scathing, one-sided attack on public education. Documentarian Davis Guggenheim half-asses his way through detailing the problems with public education and how charter schools can magically fix everything.

Please keep in mind one thing as you read this: An incredibly "bad teacher" wrote it.

Two days ago (one day after I watched this movie), we brought a guy named Jasper Partygarden (Note: That is not his real name.) into our team meeting. Jasper shows up to school late most days if he bothers showing up at all and has problems staying focused in class. In a lot of ways, he's a mature kid. He's street wise, has a car that was wrecked when he let a fellow 8th grader (a girl he liked) take it for a spin, and is a good-looking, older-looking dude who could almost pass as a young college student if you threw him on a university campus. At the same time, he acts really immaturely. He grabs things off people's desks, falls asleep in class, and teases other students in ways you'd expect more from an elementary school student. He eventually revealed to us that he's getting jumped almost daily by "Mexicans" in his predominately Latino neighborhood. He also told us that he doesn't get to bed until around 2:00 a lot of nights because his mother is sick, his step-father isn't around much, and he's got to help take care of the seven other children in his apartment, three who are under the age of two. We teachers realized that a lot of Jasper's problems, and the reason for a lot of his immature behavior, is because he's got to be the man at home. There's no room for Jasper to be a child so he acts out at school.

I'm not bringing up Jasper to make excuses for public schools, but there are a lot of Jaspers in the middle school I work, Jaspers with a variety of problems, a lot of them that you probably wouldn't even guess existed. Waiting for "Superman" frequently mentions the "best teachers" at the "best schools," contrasting them with "bad teachers" at "failing schools," and I just wonder how these "best teachers" would handle a classroom of Jaspers. Where Davis Guggenheim and his researchers are dangerously misguided is that they think the problem with the Jaspers of the world and why they aren't getting a quality education can be blamed solely on the public education system. In reality, it's a much larger and scarier problem than education. Jasper is the result of bad parenting in a broken country filled with arrogant and complacent leaders and citizens.

Thing is, you don't even have to pay much attention to catch the solution to all the problems Davis Guggenheim points out--most kids need to be taken away from their parents. For whatever reason, that's not the conclusion that Guggenheim comes up with. Instead, he's got an agenda, and Waiting for "Superman," likely from its conception, was his attempt to find anything that helps support that agenda.

And I'd like to think that anybody with a little common sense would be able to see the holes in this thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Guggenheim's documentary is sloppy myth-making and a textbook example of propaganda. You've got the same tired data that's been passed around for years and never questioned or actually broken down (reading scores flatlining, standardized test scores, Finland has better schools statistically, blah blah blah). You've got the use of buzz words ("academic sinkholes," "drop-out facilities," etc.), cutesy animated sequences, and red herrings that manipulate and distract. You've got faulty cause and effect like when our narrator tells us that an achievement drop-off from the fifth to the seventh grade can ONLY mean one of two things--kids get stupid or there's something wrong with public education. And you've got the stories (climaxing in a seemingly endless scene where they're hoping to be randomly drawn to go to the charter schools) of some kids who really want to learn and who, perhaps coincidentally, also seem to have really supportive parents. This documentary suggests that charter schools are the answer while completely ignoring statistics that show they are just as unsuccessful as public schools. No, it's not difficult to find some charter schools that have an astounding amount of success, but that's just not the norm. One could just as easily find public schools that have an astounding amount of success; however, that doesn't fit in with Guggenheim's plan. I also love how this compares and contrasts American schools with the rest of the world without really comparing or contrasting. Finland's at the top of the pyramid. Wouldn't it have been interesting to know why? Most Americans, I would hope, understand that a lot of those schools ahead of America are there because they don't allow all of their students to even get an education if they aren't succeeding early in their education. But no, Guggenheim just wants us to know that if we replaced our lower six percent with average students, we could be right up there with Finland. Whatever that means. Another statistic that I didn't really understand, likely because I went to public schools--"Bad teachers" only teach about 50% of the curriculum while "good teachers" can teach 150% of the curriculum. What does that even mean? Nevermind. Don't even tell me.

You know, this is so horribly misguided and misses the point (or worse, it invents its own point and hits a bull's eye) that I've decided that An Inconvenient Truth is also probably a bad documentary. I'm going to adjust my rating and stop inviting Al Gore to my parties.

The Toxic Avenger

1984 superhero movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: 90-pound weakling Melvin works as a janitor at a health club, and he's endlessly teased and terrorized by the beefier and more attractive clientele. One day, they pull the ultimate practical joke--throwing Melvin in a barrel of toxic waste. It's hilarious. When he emerges, he's transformed into the titular superhero and starts mopping up crime all over town.

When I was a kid, Anonymous and I ate these kind of movies up on USA's Up All Night program with hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear. And that other woman who was there before Rhonda Shear. Actually, very late at night is the only time this kind of movie would be appropriate. It's only late at night (very very late) when this kind of trash is funny. And this is the lowest form of trash, from the (intentionally?) awful acting to the gross-out effects to the cringeworthy attempts to be humorous. Anonymous and I missed out on some of the more gruesome effects since the USA Network apparently doesn't think there's a time late enough to show watermelons with wigs on them being run over by a car. I liked the low-budget effects; it's a good mix of bizarre and just plain icky. Nobody will accuse The Toxic Avenger or its makers of being intelligent, but there are times when you've watched too many dark and slow Hungarian movies or Czech Holocaust comedies and need something that's just the right amount of stupid. And The Toxic Avenger has that.

Planet 51

2009 pedestrian cartoon

Rating: 9/20 (Dylan: 6/20; Emma: 8/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: It's an alien invasion! Only instead of the little green guys invading our world, it's Earthlings doing the invading. American Chuck Baker, a less-than-heroic astronaut hero, comes in peace, but he isn't exactly given a welcoming reception and has to find a way to retrieve his confiscated space ship and escape the titular planet.

OK, I'm officially tired of these CGI things that try to appeal to both children and adults and end up failing to appeal to either. The forced pop culture references in this (Thanks, Shrek) are cringe worthy, and the characters are as flat or personality-free as characters can get. The aliens, not helped by the fact that they all looked the same (apologies if that sounds racist), were indistinguishable, and the 1950's Americana influence for the setting was an idea that probably worked on paper a lot better than it ended up on the screen. It didn't take very long at all for me to completely lose interest in everything that was going on here. But my biggest problem, something that bothered me on multiple levels--a penis joke. "That's a funny place for an antenna." C'mon, Ilion Animation Studios. That's not necessary and unfunny on any planet.

Matilda

1996 movie

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 12/20; Emma: 13/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Poor Matilda, a sweet intelligent little girl with cruel and dishonest parents. They don't want her to be imaginative, think for herself, or read books. Finally, she's allowed to go to school, but the principal of the school turns out to be even more cruel. Luckily for Matilda, she's got a wonderful and inspiring teacher. That and a special power!

My guess is that Danny DeVito was attempting to make the loudest, most irritating movie of all time. This is the type of movie that doesn't really have characters or much of a plot. It has overblown caricatures, more abrasive than comic, and some loosely connected situations for those caricatures to do stuff in. It's got the feel of one of those non-animated Disney family comedies from the 70's. You know, the ones with what was considered "comic mischief" back then, stuff with talking cats or kids who wake up with the ability to fly or something. This is based on a Roald Dahl story, generally a positive, but here, his usual macabre humor has been substituted for something mean and tacky.

And perhaps it's just me, but it was difficult for me to watch this because I couldn't stop picture the versatile Danny DeVito and wife Rhea Perlman doing it. Go ahead and close your eyes and picture that for a moment. Good for them being one of those rare Hollywood couples who can manage to stay together for so long though!

Roald Dahl seems to be Abbey's favorite author. She was reading this book which is why we ended up watching this. I'm glad she liked it.

Jonah Hex

2010 comic book Western

Rating: 9/20

Plot: In postbellum America, Jonah Hex is Civil War hero turned ruthless bounty hunter. The government enlists him to help find John Malkovich and his posse, Wild West terrorist who hope to bring America to its knees by using the same weapon technology that Jar Jar Binks and his friends used in The Phantom Menace--glowing orbs. Hex is all over that because Malkovich is the guy who scarred his face and killed his family.

A lot of this movie is incoherent. The plot's easy enough to follow, and the characters are nothing but cardboard types, but the individual parts that made up this whole just didn't make a lot of sense. It has the kind of fight scenes where you lose focus and can't keep track of what's going on. It's almost like that feeling when somebody turns off the lights and you can't figure out what's happening until your eyes adjust. Watching the action sequences in this movie was just like that feeling. The ultra-modern look of the movie almost clashed with the post-Civil-War and dusty town settings, and the score, thick in rockin' electronic git-fiddles, really annoyed me. There were some moments here (I like the first gun fight scene that winked at predecessors) and Josh Brolin was pretty good as the anti-hero type although his character does seem like a composite of a handful of silver screen anti-heroes. And despite all the whining about Megan Fox lately, I liked it when she was on the screen. But I suspect Jonah Hex is a movie that should have stayed a comic book, a film that cries out, "Look at how fresh I am! I'm new!" while actually seeming like nothing more than a Sin City rip-off.

What do you think, Kairow? Comic/movie comparison?

Amelia

2009 biopic

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: Details the misadventures of the notoriously lousy pilot Amelia Earhart.

That poster almost makes me throw up. So did Hillary Swank's relentless smile in this movie. I'm not sure if Amelia Earhart is known historically for having a smile that made her appear as if she was about to bite your head off, but that's about the only thing I learned about Earhart in this movie. Well, that and the fact that she was such a whore. I didn't know that. Maybe it's because I have the mentality of your typical middle schooler, but I can't watch a Richard Gere movie without thinking of gerbils or Ewan McGregor without thinking of Ewan McGregor's junk. And now, I guess because of a guilt-by-association thing, I won't be able to watch a Hillary Swank movie without thinking about gerbils or Ewan McGregor's junk. And those would be just reasons number two and three for why I'd rather not watch another Hillary Swank movie. In Amelia, like in her other movies, she's Acting with that capital A, sinking her giant teeth into a role that's got Academy Award written all over it. Only she's not a great actress, and she makes Amelia Earhart seem like one of the most irritating women in history, a character I hoped to see eaten by cannibals (or Michael Oher) by the end of the movie. Eerily melodramatic and sickeningly sentimental, almost every aspect of this movie seems unnecessary. I would much rather just read a book about Amelia Earhart, and I don't even like reading.

The Host

2006 Korean monster movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Stupid Americans! Their army dumps formaldehyde (I think that's what they said) into the river and for reasons that don't make scientific sense, a reptilian, many-tentacled monster is born. It starts killing and dragging people off, including Park Hyun-Seo. The rest of the Park family have to find her.

This is a lot of frenetic, head-scratchin' action sequences with a herky-jerky CGI tentacle-flailing monster juxtaposed with calm scenes of dopey characters sharing moments that I assume are supposed to be poignant or humorous. It was hard to tell because the dubbing didn't match the subtitles, and neither made much sense to me. This isn't like those horror/monster movies where the makers don't let you see the monster or only reveal the monster a little bit at a time. No, you get to see the thing pretty early on, and I thought it looked pretty silly. Alternating between phallic and vaginal, this thing could be a Freudian's nightmare, but if you've got no interest in psychoanalyzing the special effects team, I don't think it would be of much interest to anybody. Maybe I should give this movie credit for trying to do something a little different with the monster movie genre, but it's got this ultra-modern flavor (read: it sounds and looks really loud) that I find annoying. The Host focuses on a family of four rather than society in general as with a Godzilla movie, and that doesn't help matters either since I didn't care for the Park family. The ending was especially yucky.

The Invention of Lying

2009 comedy

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: In an alternate reality where lying doesn't exist, a guy stumbles upon the invention of untruthfulness. He tries to use it for financial gain, to advance his career, and to get a girlfriend; instead, he accidentally becomes a prophet and founds a religion.

If you're going to ask me to buy a preposterous premise like this, you at least need to keep things consistent. But the execution is frustratingly half-assed. You get something that feels half written with half-constructed characters and a half-realized theme. I could forgive all that if there was a single laugh to be had in this mess, but there isn't. By the time it gets to the parts that would make Bill Maher giggle like a tickled old man, actually the cleverest bits of the movie, I was more aggravated than anything else. Not much, if anything, succeeds in this glossy Hollywood comedy. I probably should have just watched the above poster instead. What's going on there? It looks like they photoshopped him to make his legs disproportional, but why would they do that to Ricky Gervais?

A sports talk radio guy told me that I should see this.

Caddyshack

1980 golf movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Mildly humorous goings-on go on at a country club. Danny the caddy tries to raise money for college. A stuffed gopher wreaks havoc.

The gopher being so obviously stuffed is likely the best joke in this movie. But there's not a single laugh to be had in this classic comedy. Nothing comedic genius Chevy Chase says is all that funny. Comedic genius Bill Murray is funnier but still not funny. And Rodney Dangerfield is just irritating. Some many comedy legends on one golf course, and whoever wrote this couldn't come up with one funny thing to have them do or say? Pitiful. Lump this with all those 80's comedies with its sloppy plot and envelope pushing that gives me a headache and makes me wish I had popped in one of Tati's movies instead. I've never seen it, but I actually wonder if that Bagger Vance movie is a funnier golf movie. Is there a stuffed gopher in it?

More

1969 sex and drugs movie

Rating: 9/20 (Mark: 7/20)

Plot: A guy named Stefan graduates from college, probably with a degree in Douchebaggery, and looking to sow some wild oats, he travels to France, burglarizes, and meets a lovely heroin addict. Together, he and Estelle travel to Ibiza where they sit around naked and look bemused. Eventually, Stefan becomes hooked on the wacky junk. Several more extended scenes of the two doing naked things, sometimes with other people, interrupt lots of other scenes where nothing interesting at all happens.

Sssshhh! Banana peels!

The Pink Floyd soundtrack is badass, and after Patrick played that for me in its entirety about fifteen years ago, I put More on the docket and then completely forgot about it. It wasn't worth the wait. It's like the worst and least entertaining Godard movie that Godard had nothing to do with. It's also like the longest fable ever made, an excruciatingly long fable moralizing about drugs and obsession with about as much playfulness as your average Greek myth. Indeed, the story is loosely based on the story of Daedalus and Icarus which is a cute enough idea but here only works to make the whole thing seem even more (pun intended) pretentious. I did wonder about the title. I think it's called More because as you're watching, you'll keep wondering how much more of the movie you'll have to suffer through. Hey-oooooo! [Banana peels!]

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

1997 spoofy comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Groovy secret agent Austin Powers has himself cryogenically frozen after his nemesis Dr. Evil has himself cyrogenically frozen some time in the psychedelic sixties. Some time in the future, Dr. Evil comes back with an evil plan to destroy the world. Powers is unfrozen to put a stop to it.

"The militant wing of the Salvation Army." And that's about it. The only thing in this movie that I thought was even marginally funny. I saw this when it came out but was surprised how I remembered every single detail as I watched it again. I did remember correctly that there's very little funny about this movie. Part of the problem is that there are quite a few of these spy spoof things, a lot even with a psychedelic hue. An over-saturation maybe. A lot of it is a dependence on potty humor. You get penis jokes, poop jokes, urine jokes, innuendo. Those are crutches for the non-creative, and if I want to enjoy that kind of humor, I'll just lock myself in the bathroom for a few hours with a couple puppets or, if I'm feeling really frisky, three puppets. I'll give credit to Myers for creating two unique characters. Personally, I think the Dr. Evil character is a lot more fun than the titular man of mystery, but even he gets a little old by the end of this. Elizabeth Hurley provides some eye candy and there's a lot of color to enjoy, but this movie doesn't have nearly enough material. Maybe they saved it for the sequels.

The Man Who Knew Too Little

1997 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Wally, a Blockbuster employee from Des Moines, travels on his birthday to visit his brother in England. His brother is smack in the middle of business and pays for Wally to participate in the Theater of Life, an improvisational theatrical performance with audience participation. Wally takes the wrong phone call, is mistaken for a spy, and winds up in the middle of an assassination plot.

The saddest thing is that this has less laughs than The Man Who Knew Too Much. A lot less laughs. No, I take that back. The saddest thing is how it almost seems like they are setting things up for a possible sequel at the end of this, and there really isn't even enough material for this first movie. It's pitiful. This one's got a cute premise, but it's lackadaisically written. Characters are jerked from one bit of comic mischief to the next, and it doesn't take too long to figure out that there's just nothing here. Bill Murray seems to be going through the motions, hoping to coast on his Bill Murray fumes or something, and with a decent script, that would have worked fine. With nothing even resembling a decent script, he's just a tired parody of himself, most obvious during a too-long Russian dance scene that I suppose was intended to be both comic and suspenseful and succeeds in being neither.

Note: I've actually owned this movie for over two years (long story), and now that I've finally watched it (only because it has "man" in the title), I no longer have a use for it. Who wants it? Post your favorite movie quote in the comments below to be entered in a drawing to win The Man Who Knew Too Little.

The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend

1991 biopic

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A tall tale based on young Pete Maravich, a little guy with a big heart. He works hard, dribbling around his living room with a blindfold and practicing his father's basketball drills, until he winds up on starting for the varsity team as an 8th grader.

The only thing bigger than this kid's heart is the chunk of cheese the makers of this movie drop in your lap. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the message behind the movie. But when a character actually said, "Pete, watching you makes me want to dream," I had to start giggling. It's cheese from the get-go as we open with a scene of an old Maravich conversing with his son or some other kid (something about dreaming, I think) while walking in an empty gymnasium. There's gratuitous patriotism; at one point, there's a completely random shot of an American flag. I think it's to remind the viewer about dreaming or something. There are also about five too many of those 1980s musical montage scenes. I thought the kid playing Maravich (Adam Guier) was great. He looked a little slow as he was making his moves, but you could tell he had some game when he was spinning the ball on his finger, making behind the back or head passes, and dribbling around. But enough's enough. I don't need to see another five minute montage with terrible music to show me how hard he works. I guess it was to show what a person should do when they have a dream or something. The very worst thing about this movie is the narration. Whenever the narrator says anything, it seems like he's interrupting. And it's completely unnecessary since whatever he says is usually repeated visually or through character dialogue right after he's finished talking anyway. I'm fairly sure that liberties were taken with the late Maravich's story, but there are a couple few scenes that would have really embarrassed him. There are probably some sweaters that would have embarrassed him, too. One scene involves young Pete (a little guy with a big heart) finally deciding to stand up to the bully, a comeback we've been waiting for the entire movie, when all he can say is, "You're a butthead." You're a butthead? Come on, Pistol Pete! A scene involving an intentional foul is so poorly done that it made half of the people I watched this with laugh. Somehow, he's knocked unconscious even though he didn't have an injury to the head. The head, as you probably know, is where dreams are kept. And the final scene? Whoa. I almost lost my lunch. The above poster has the same effect actually.

This was watched on the big screen at school with students. I forgot to ask them for their ratings. They're a bunch of buttheads anyway.

Ninja Assassin

2009 ode to stabbing

Rating: 9/20 (Mark: 6/20; Amy: 6 or 7/20)

Plot: Jack at the video store told us that there wasn't one. There was one, but it really didn't matter.

I don't know what the Wachowskis had to do with this, but somebody needs to stop them. If you look up "stylized violence" in the dictionary, you'll have a description of this movie. There's blood flying all over the place, mostly startlingly contrasting to a swampy darkness on the rest of the screen, probably to hide any lack of real kung-fu skills. I correctly predicted that there would be a decapitation within the first five minutes of the movie. My brother said that characters were losing more blood than people actually have in their bodies. I had to wring my shirt dry when the movie finally ended. I'm not saying that this much violence is necessarily a bad thing, but that's all this movie has going for it. There are some gorgeously brutal moments, some fine but ultimately repetitive action sequences, and some more brutally gorgeous moments. But that's it. You won't care about the characters, you'll stop worrying about what's going on, and you'll slap your forehead as things get more and more preposterous. It's all just a bunch of showing off, lots of "Look at what my computer can do!" moments, and I think any real ninja watching this movie would be offended. Lots of laughable dialogue, laughable bad acting, and laughable action scenes, most memorably a scene when ninjas are running against the highway. I looked this movie up and discovered that the Wachowskis didn't care much for the original script, and writer J. Michael Straczynski apparently finished his rewrite in just fifty-three hours. It shows. I did pick out a Wilhelm scream when a ninja is blown off a roof with a rocket launcher. Yeah. That's the type of movie this is. It's the type of movie the Academy usually loves, the type where you can watch ninjas being blown off roofs with rocket launchers. The problem isn't that it's impossible to take any of this nonsense seriously. The problem is that this nonsense takes itself way too seriously.