Teen Wolf

1985 werewolf comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Scott Howard has no identity. He's a mediocre basketball player on a terrible high school team. The object of his affection doesn't know he exists. He's even got a really boring name! That all changes when he turns into a werewolf, the transformation suddenly giving him this dynamic personality and superhuman abilities. Becoming a wolf, however, has its price, and the price for Scott Howard is his true self.

Here's the deal. Since 1985, I've had recurring nightmares where I die after an accident while surfing on my friend's van. The dream is generally the same with slight variations. I'm surfing, and my friend starts turning into a wolf, gets really freaked out by the sight of his wolf fingernails, and swerves wildly. I spill off, the Beach Boys music stops, and a steamroller rolls over me. My last words are almost always, "Learn to fucking drive, Alex P. Keaton!" For the past 25 years or so, I've been convinced that I will die while surfing on a van and have done my best to avoid the activity.

Recently, as most of my readers know, I've been working at the dumpiest motel on the face of the earth, an establishment crawling with drug dealers, prostitutes, and drifters. Lately, it seems that it's unlikely that I'll die while surfing on a van and will probably die while working a night shift at this motel.

So in retrospect, it was probably a terrible idea to watch Teen Wolf while working a night shift at the motel. I'm not supposed to sit on the couch in the lobby and watch television anyway. Well, I don't think I am. It's never been addressed officially, but it seems like a really strange thing for my manager to pay me to do. If he knew, I can imagine having a conversation with him that had the words "Do you think I pay you to sit around and watch Teen Wolf?" which would probably make me start laughing which would make him ask "What? Do you think this is funny?" which would make me say (of course!) "I am an animal! Woooo!"

The perfect end to that story would be for my manager and I to take advantage of the sweet van the motel uses to shuttle people to the airport (illegally, it seems, since we're told to take off the sign on the door that advertises the inn because "we're not allowed there") to ride the waves. It's the perfect vehicle for van surfing! We would go out on the highway and pull over on the shoulder. My boss, a little Indian fellow, would start to get out, but I'd stop him, look him in the eye, and say, "These waves are mine." And then I'd probably die.

But I digress. My manager isn't Stiles, and I doubt he'd ever take me van surfing. Watching the most dangerous movie of all time in the most dangerous motel of all time? I defied the odds by surviving the experience. It's like I stared Death in his scary skull eyes and chuckled. And I got paid like 15 dollars to watch Teen Wolf on a couch that smells like somebody urinated on it. That, my friends, is a win-win situation.

"I'm not a fag. I'm a werewolf." I think that line was in Universal's Wolf Man, wasn't it?

Follow That Bird

1985 first Sesame Street movie ever!

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A nosey social worker decides that Big Bird doesn't belong with the Sesame Street gang and needs to live with his own kind. She finds a bird family to adopt him, but he gets homesick for his imaginary friend Snuffleupagus and decides to journey back home. The muppets of Sesame Street, upon hearing that Big Bird is missing from his new home, decide to venture out to search for him.

Did you know Snuffleupagus has a first name? Aloysius Snuffleupagus. Jen tells me that originally Snuffleupagus was an imaginary friend for Big Bird but that they eventually had to ditch that idea because children were confused. "Snuffleupagus" is also apparently a move similar to teabagging where you put your scrotum on somebody's nose. That doesn't happen anywhere in Follow That Bird, by the way, so it's safe to show this to your children. Here's another fun fact: Elmo's in this movie, right near the end when Big Bird comes home. He pokes his head out of a window and says something in a voice that is not the Elmo voice we know and probably despise. Anyway, the movie. Why is it a 14/20 instead of a 20/20? No Roosevelt Franklin. I haven't looked this up or anything, but I'm fairly positive mid-80's movie rules made it clear that you had to have black representation in your movies because black people weren't allowed to vote back then and couldn't be president. Forcing Hollywood to include at least one black character in each movie was the government's way of compromising. Which is a good thing because it really started the healing process after segregation and slavery and all that. The makers of Follow That Bird already had Gordon, the very realistic human muppet from the television show, in a prominent role and had no use for Roosevelt Franklin. Plus, Roosevelt Franklin had a tendency to frighten honkies anyway, and honkies were the main audience for Follow That Bird. How bitchin' would a Roosevelt Franklin movie be, by the way? Damn, my hips are moving just thinking about that. But no, the Sesame Street people are too busy with Elmo, the "idiot" who replaced Sesame Street's original "idiot" (Big Bird) and somehow became the only character who mattered anymore. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with Elmo, but that little red monster (not to be confused with the little blue monster Grover who my brother refers to as "the mentally-challenged muppet" although if you think about it, they're all kind of mentally-challenged) has "future serial killer" written all over his fluffy little face. Where are his parents anyway? Dismembered in the basement? But I digress. You honkies want to hear about this movie. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a sucker for puppets. I really like the effects that blend these lovable characters into the world outside Sesame Street. No, they don't look realistic. They still look like puppets, but they look more natural flying planes, driving slick-looking automobiles, or using telephones than you might think. Muppet Gordon is especially great to see in such a heroic role, and a death-defying stunt involving a slow-moving truck with a cage on the back of it and a slow-moving Volkswagon Beetle has to be seen to be believed. There's a lot of music in this, much provided by the legendary Van Dyke Parks (Jungle Book songsmith, Brian Wilson cohort) and one song started off by none other than Waylon Jennings. The "Bluebird of Happiness" song and its accompanying imagery might be the most depressing thing I've seen in my entire life. I'd like to see some statistics on how many 3-6 year olds committed suicide in '85 compared to previous years. Anyway, other than the toddler suicides and veiled racism, this is fun for the whole family! Oh, and to bring things full circle: Snuffleupagus has the worst singing voice I have ever heard.

Mr. Robinson Crusoe

1932 silliness

Rating: 10/20 (Dylan: 7/20)

Plot: A tough guy bets his buddies a thousand dollars that he and his dog can survive on a deserted island. He befriends a monkey, a parrot, and at least one goat and uses his ingenuity to make his short stay as comfortable as possible.

Ever want to see a monkey milk a goat? This is the movie for you! Want to see Douglas Fairbanks bounce around like an idiot juiced up on caffeine pills? This is also the movie for you! This was on some non-profit cable channel while I was at my parents, and it made Dylan and I laugh for all the wrong reasons. You get an overly enthusiastic Douglas Fairbanks (did he really transition to the talky era this poorly?) talking to all of these animals and building these sometimes-clever contraptions with unrealistic speed. You see him spend twenty minutes building a hammer, and then twenty-six island days later (that's how many days are in June, by the way, if you go by his character's calendar), he's got this entire city built. The references to Robinson Crusoe got tiresome, and this has a really lame depiction of tribe life that looks like a cross between Hawaii and Africa. Also, I'm not sure if it's because this thing hasn't been cleaned up or if the technology made it difficult to film on an island back in the early-30s, but this looked and sounded terrible. The actors all sounded like they were speaking their lines into a can while standing in a cave. I think the script must look something like this:

Douglas Fairbanks' character: Mmubua hayaba vvummbar!
Saturday: Mwey hrtung phungby.
Douglas: Phungby? Ha ha ha! Mmum pood mroth yort!

I know what the parrot was saying though. He said, "OK!" About a dozen times. Couldn't they have found a parrot with a larger vocabulary? This movie also has a scene with bananas that might be the single dumbest scene involving bananas that I've ever seen. Favorite line, spoken by Douglas Fairbanks' friends as stand on their yacht and use binoculars to watch some natives: "Oh. Mama spank." At least I think that's what the guy said.

No Time for Sergeants

1958 comedy

Rating: 12/20 (Jen missed the beginning but said she's give it an 8/20.)

Plot: Country bumpkin Will Stockdale is drafted into the Air Force. He's simpleminded and naive and makes life difficult for his commanding officer Sergeant King and new pal Ben.

Andy Griffith acts like he's attempting to make his character bust through the screen and bite your face off. And I don't mean that in a good way. He's a lumbering doofus of a character, lovable enough but way too much of a character to make this realistic enough for the comedy to work. Myron McCormick as the sergeant and Nick Adams as Private Ben are guilty of the same thing, almost like the leads have realized that the script isn't very funny and feel the need to out-funny each other with outrageous caricaturization. I kept waiting for the comedy to add up to something, turning into something satirical maybe, but it remained nothing more than a very very mild goofy comedy, like slapstick where slapping and the use of a stick has been strictly forbidden. That's fine because I can appreciate a dumb comedy as much as the next dumb American, but there wasn't a single thing that tickled any of my funny bones, and other than the criminally underused Don Knotts, I doubt I'll remember a single gag from No Time for Sergeants in a few months. In a way, this feels like an American take on a Jacques Tati type movie, the simple man who is thrown into a technologically-advanced world, or a world where the rules and regulations don't seem to match up with how the main character goes about things. But, typically American, the main character talks way too much and kind of stomps all over everything. I don't know. Maybe the the whole thing's a metaphor for our military?

Manhattan

1979 romantic comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: For aspiring writer Isaac, love doesn't come easy. His former wife and current lesbian has written a book containing every damning detail of their relationship. His newest fling likes him bunches, but the problem is that she's only seventeen and still in high school. And to make matters more complicated, he's fallen for pretentious Mary, the woman who his married friend Yale is sleeping with on the side.

It's not my favorite Woody Allen movie, and apparently it's not Woody's either. But I really like the last close-up of Woody, a guy who could really only be a leading man in a romantic comedy in his own movies, and that expression that he makes. As a comedy, this is pretty uneven and not really all that funny. The characters aren't easy to like except for maybe Mariel Hemingway's character and Woody himself. I do like the performers who play those characters even if I don't like the characters themselves though. Still, there's a certain charm and artfulness to the proceedings, and the black and white cinematography creates a sort of intimacy with the story's inhabitants. It also shows off the titular setting, almost working like a visual ode to the city at times. So this one kind of grows on you as it goes along, but it's ultimately such a downer, a comedy too cynical to be all that funny . It's a mixed bag of a movie, one that I've always wanted to like or maybe felt like I should like a lot better.

The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave

2000 straight-to-video comedy

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The titular stuntman decides to call it a career after he survives yet another failed stunt. He retires to his compound with his posse where he trains the future stuntmen of America including young D.J. who he takes under his wing and treats like a son. In fact, D.J. takes the name Super Dave Jr. before double-crossing his "father" with a shady promoter named Gil Ruston. Retirement isn't going well until Super Dave falls for the equally clumsy Sandy. But when her son Timmy aggravates his heart condition while trying to attempt his own stunt, Super Dave finds that he has no other hope of raising money for his operation than to come out of retirement for one more potentially deadly stunt.

This has about as much sophistication as the work of Jim Varney as Ernest P. Worrell. About the same amount of laughs, too. I gave this a shot because I like Bob Einstein's work on Curb Your Enthusiasm as Marty Funkhouser, and mockumentary veteran Don Lake is also in this. But had I known a bit two minutes into the movie featuring Ray Charles driving a bus was the funniest thing in the entire movie, I probably would have stopped watching. At about 90 minutes, this is a test of endurance, especially since about 40 of those minutes are made up of one seemingly endless series of fart jokes that made me embarrassed for everybody involved in the production of The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave. Predictably plotted, mind-numbingly idiotic, and devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever, it's not difficult to figure out why this movie was never released in theaters. Recommended for Bob Einstein completists only.

Sex Galaxy

2008 B-movie regurgitant

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Because of overpopulation, sex has been outlawed on earth. A crew of astronauts decide to go to the titular galaxy to find out if rumors that a planet is inhabited by sex-starved women are actually true.

I really liked the idea behind this movie--the world's first "green" movie 100% recycled from public domain cheapos. I should have just read about the movie and assumed it was cleverly written and hilarious because it turned out to be not even close to either of those descriptions. The jokes are juvenile, the same sort of stuff that my friends and I would have written if we had made this in junior high school. And regardless of how hilarious I thought I was, nothing here (or there) was really all that funny. It sure seems like a lot of time and effort would have been needed to compile all this footage and synthesize it into a halfway-coherent story. I wish more time would have been spent with the script. I don't even think the stoners who watch those Adult Swim programs on the Cartoon Network would care for this one.

The Devil's Brother

1933 comedy operetta

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Stanlio and Olio attempt to rob the infamous singing bandit Fra Diavolo. Later, they work with him.

There's a hell of a lot of singing in this one. I wish there would have been something funny in it.

Trail of the Screaming Forehead

2007 B-movie homage/comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Body-snatching alien foreheads invade earth.

I watched and enjoyed Larry Blamire's The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, another intentionally bad homage to 50's low-budget movies complete with anachronism and continuity errors. That, for the most part, was an enjoyable experience. Screaming Forehead, despite a title that might make you think you're about to watch the next Citizen Kane (or Eraserhead), just doesn't work. I think it's a case where everybody is just trying too hard, and although Cadavra also struggled with that at times, it at least had some more subtle and quietly clever moments that made it worthwhile. I never felt happy that I was watching this one though. This movie's in color, probably the grossest color that a movie can be in. There's a ridiculously over-the-top theme song that I kind of liked, like Burt Bacharach on a bad trip. Ray Harryhausen is given a production credit, but I've not been able to find any evidence that he had anything at all to do with this.

Elf

2003 holiday comedy

Rating: 10/20 (Toby: 5/20; Kasey: 10/20; Tramayne: 7/20; Dakota: 13/20; Tyler: 1/20; Derrick: 10/20; Jacob: 12/20; Kendrick: 15/20; Jazzmin: 3/20; Taylor: 17/20; Brionna: 20/20; Michaela: 16/20; Hailey: 12/20; Damion: 19.9/20; Mikhail: 1.5/20; David: 15/20; Kimberly: 16/20; Yamira: 20/20; Stephen: 4/20; Sebastian: 2/20; Elizabeth: 20/20; Brianna: 15/20; Rahim: 15/20; Austin: 13/20; Krista: 10/20)

This is already on the blog right here.
The movie isn't any better now, but I learned that middle schoolers like when Will Ferrell runs face-first into walls. Well, I guess I knew that already which makes Elf completely useless to me. And look at that poster up there. I don't want to watch a movie that features a guy who can make that face. In fact, no more Will Ferrell movies for me. You have my word that you won't see him on these pages ever again.

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.

Howard the Duck

1986 box office sensation

Rating: n/r (I couldn't finish it.)

Plot: A duck named Howard and his recliner is yanked from his planet and ends up in an alley somewhere in Cleveland. He meets a punk rock girl who takes him to a janitor to help him get back home. There's probably a bad guy later on, and I'm sure Howard has to try to phone home with a mouth full of Reece's. It's just another one of those cases where somebody has ripped off the plot of E.T. and managed to make an even more disagreeable movie.

The only movie I can think of that might be worse than a trip to Cleveland, Ohio. I watched this for three reasons:

1) I didn't think it could possibly be as bad as I remembered or as everybody seems to think.

2) If it is as bad as I remember or as everybody seems to think, it might fall into "good-bad" territory, and I could point and laugh at it.

3) I wanted to use a "quacking up" pun on the blog.

Unfortunately, it's not either of the first two. It's a terrible movie--poor writing, embarrassing effects, a main character who is impossible to like, auxiliary characters who aren't any better, an incoherent plot, dozens of details that date it--but it's nowhere near entertaining. It's excruciating, so excruciating that I gave up on it after Tim Robbins' second appearance. Like the majority of decisions in my life, the decision to watch Howard the Duck was a bad one, leaving me depressed and very unlikely to quack up any time soon.

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?

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

2000 horror-comedy

Rating: n/r

Plot: Well, apparently a mutant killer snowman from a first movie is brought back to life after a laboratory accident. He travels, naturally, to a beach resort to get revenge on some really boring characters. After travelling as water, he manages to collect a carrot and charcoal in absurd ways and eventually, I'm guessing since I couldn't finish the movie, becomes an entire mutant killer snowman.

This is not just a movie that I couldn't finish. This is a movie that forced me to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. After shutting this one down, I sat in a motionless, depressed funk for what I thought was a week and a half but turned out to be only seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

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 with One Red Shoe

1985 action comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: For reasons I've completely forgotten, a guy wants to trick the CIA into setting up surveillance on a completely random guy at an airport, the titular red-shoed guy actually. The CIA guys fall for it. My plot synopsis is funnier than anything in this movie.

Actually, Tom Hanks was probably a lot funnier in Philadelphia. After a really lengthy exposition leading to the introduction of Hanks' character, I figured things might pick up. They didn't. Weak ideas were stretched into weak gags. Tom Hanks brushes his teeth with shampoo. His plumbing is screwed up. He takes a softball to the head. He gets AIDS. His best bud's wife makes chimpanzee sounds. A woman's hair gets caught in his zipper. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. That all looks hilarious on paper. And I'm sure that's what the screenwriters were thinking. Unfortunately, there wasn't a single moment where I was glad I was watching this movie. And don't get me started on the plot and its potential holes. Any plot here was just an excuse to pile improbabilities on top of improbabilities for supposedly comedic purposes. And why were there so many crooked shots in this? I wondered several times if I had started to doze off and tilted my head, but apparently the camera was just askew. The only thing that made this movie worth my time is that it's the second "man" movie I've seen in a row with Tom Noonan. He's improbably and hilariously injured in this one!

Bicentennial Man

1999 garbage

Rating: 4/20

Plot: A boring family purchases an android and they quickly realize that he's not an ordinary robot. He seems to have more emotion than your average android, and he has a creative side. Then he wants to be a human. Blah blah blah.

The makers of this need to confess that they stole the idea from 1980's television show, Small Wonder. Unfortunately for anybody seeing this movie, this lacks the charm and wit and coherency of that sitcom. And when your movie isn't as good as Small Wonder, you've got a big problem. The offenses in this movie are reminiscent of everything that's wrong with E.T. and A.I, two of the most offensive movies ever made. Manipulative, ultra-corny, and stupidly written, Bicentennial Man has almost nothing at all going for it. It doesn't work as comedy, but in its defense, I'm not sure it's even supposed to be a comedy. It doesn't work as science fiction or drama because it doesn't make sense consistently. I couldn't believe how bad this movie was during the first twenty minutes, but it continued to shock and reshock me by gradually getting worse. By the time a second robot is added to the storyline, I was almost ready to go to the store, purchase a new television, and then throw the new television through the television I was watching just because it seemed like the right thing to do. I know the oldest daughter wasn't talking about the film her character was in when she said "It's stupid" and "I think it sucks," but I can't think of a more accurate way to describe this garbage. Oh, the biggest stain of all? Hallie Kate Eisenberg, the curly-headed and dimpled annoying child who was in some popular Pepsi commercials around this time. I actually stopped drinking Pepsi products because of her, and now here she is in Bicentennial Man. God damn it all! Why I didn't gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon and stop watching this during the first twenty Hallie Kate Eisenberg-filled minutes is a mystery to me. And in looking up her name, I've noticed that she's the sister of Jesse Eisenberg. I now hate the entire Eisenberg family. God damn it!

I might be in a bad mood, but if I am, Bicentennial Man is the reason.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man

1951 comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Bud and Lou graduate from detective school and are ready to solve some crimes. They get their first case when a boxer accused of murdering a manager arrives to get help in finding the real murderer. This particular boxer, Tommy Nelson, is also able to turn himself invisible and plans on using that ability to help them in their search.

Another misleading movie poster here. This movie isn't the riot it promises to be, and there is no scene where Abbott (or Costello since I don't care to know which is which) fondles a woman's left breast with his neck. The best thing about this is that they use the invisible man special effects, pretty much the same ones used almost twenty years before in The Invisible Man, in some creative and mildly humorous ways. The problem is that Abbott and Costello aren't really funny. I'm far from an expert on the history of comedic cinema, but surely this kind of comedy was dated by the time the early 50s rolled around. I can't think of anything else to write about Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man.

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.

Cannes Man

1996 comedy

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Big-shot producer Sy Lerner makes a bet with a buddy that he can take any individual his buddy picks and turn him into the talk of the Cannes Film Festival. Enter Frank, a cabbie with no film experience except for some work in a video store. Sy dubs him Sy Lerner and takes him to meet some other big shots, introducing him as screenwriter Frank Rhino, writing of Con Man.

Here's a cheap one. I'm surprised so many big names (Depp, Hopper, Del Toro, even Chris Penn!) agreed to be seen in something so crappy. As a parody, it falls flat. There's nothing especially biting here and not a single laugh. A lot of the crappiness, however, is because of sub-genre inconsistency. It's uneven as a mockumentary, seeming more like a traditional and cheaply-made narrative with a bunch of interviews and poor narration thrown in. Francesco Quinn (Frank Rhino in this and Anthony Quinn's son in the real world) provides that narration. His performance was awkwardly bad, terrible even. I looked him up because he seemed familiar, and I imagine that's because he was, in a completely different sort of performance, terrorist Syed Ali in season two of 24. He was also in Platoon. Seemingly, Cannes Man (or Con Man or apparently and goofily Canne$ Man) was filmed with a scant script. A lot of the interviews seem to be select samples from much longer improvisational ramblings, and a lot of the dialogue feels more spontaneous. But for the most part, it seems as if the director gave the talent an instruction to improvise but with a "Don't Even Think About Saying Anything The Least Bit Funny" rule. An extended cameo involving Sy and Frank visiting Jim Jarmusch and Johnny Depp is probably the funniest part of the movie, but that might be the reason why it seems to clash with the rest of the story. This movie thinks it's just so clever. It isn't.