Santa Sangre

1989 Jodorowsky funk

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A boy is traumatized by some horrible experiences that took place during his young life with the circus involving a tattooed woman, his knife-throwing daddy, and his mother who worships a no-armed woman with the religious cult across the street. Following his release from an asylum, he tries to put his life back together again. That's made difficult when he runs into his no-armed mother who controls him and demands the use of his arms. His childhood sweetheart and a little fellow try to help him out.

It's really the type of movie that makes a plot synopsis pointless which explains the half-hearted effort I gave it up there. This is a psychosexual Freudian (aka Freddian) horror-comedy that is probably unlike anything you've ever seen or in some cases unlike anything you'll ever want to see. My plans were to make Santa Sangre my Oprah Movie Club pick before I got depressed about that whole thing and passed. I'm sure it would have been dug by all. This is Jodorowsky's third best film after Holy Mountain and El Topo, and although it's not as bizarre as those two, it's pretty bizarre compared to everything else. I still chuckle a little when I see this labeled as one of his most accessible. Jodorowsky seems to have had more of a budget to work with in this one, and he uses it to compile some artful visuals and utilize his vivid imagination. Not that he needed much money to help him out anyway. Drenched in film-school symbolism and saturated in cartoon colors and Part-Fellini (probably just the circus thing), part-Psycho, part-Bunuel, and all Jodorowsky, there are scenes throughout this that will linger in the mind for a long time. There's an elephant funeral that has to be seen to be believed, and the choreography and timing required for the scenes where the mother "uses" her son's arms is impressive. There's also a great little person, Jesus Juarez as Aladin. And you get a scene where some actors with Down Syndrome visit a prostitute. Exploitative? Yeah, probably. Original? Definitely. Oh, and there's a scene where a guy peels off his own ear. I'm sorry. I should have warned you all about spoilers before typing some of that. It's a challenge, but it's a thoroughly entertaining one. Shame about the dubbing though. It's also a shame that this guy can't get financing so that the rest of us can see his dreams. I keep reading that he's making a movie, but then I'll see where the Russian producers "just disappeared mysteriously" and then there's no movie.

By the way, I follow Alejandro Jodorowsky on Twitter. Highly recommended despite 95% of his tweets being in a language I don't speak. I think probably Canadian. He's like an advice columnist. One follower asked him, "Any advice for mental clarity?" and he answered, "On Sundays, lock yourself in the house and repeat, incessantly, one word: ass." It's sound advice.

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

1975 movie that should be on everybody's top-500 list

Rating: 20/20

Plot: McMurphy is lazy. Unfortunately, he's also a criminal and has to serve time in prison where they'll make him work. But he's got a plan--pretend to be insane so he can be transferred to a mental institution and serve out the remaining days of his sentence without having to work. He adds a little chaos to the gentle existence of the asylum, changing a few inmates' lives for better or worse. He also finds an enemy in the head nurse--Nurse Ratched.

I could have sworn that this came out in 1973.

First off, I'd like to point out that I don't see Nurse Ratched, stoically played by Oscar winner Louise Fletcher, as the real villain. She's a bit passive-aggressive maybe and gets on McMurphy's nerves, more as a symbol or maybe as a woman than through anything she actually does, but it's not like she's outrageously malicious or anything. McMurphy's biggest antagonist is himself, and each time I watch this, I see Nicholson's character as a failed Christ figure who, although he does do his part to save a soul in the end, ends up getting in the way of himself as he tries to do fulfill whatever mission he might have. He takes his "disciples" fishing, retiring to the bowels of the stolen ship in order to have sexual relations with a woman (don't think Jesus did that), and botches a few miracles. Jack's electric in this, really one of my favorite acting performances ever. I love the last moments of the big going-away party at the end when McMurphy sits and waits for Billy to finish doing his business. There's an extended shot of just Jack's face, and his expressions in that fifty seconds or so show loss, optimism, fear, indecision, happiness. Amazing stuff. But the ensemble cast around Nicholson is also great, portraying these crazies in a way that doesn't blow them up into comic figures (though there is plenty of comedy here) but creates these very human moments where you really feel the characters' pain. Observe that first therapy session--you have the circle of guys who can communicate, eventually fit in with society again, or whatever surrounded by all the lunatics who will never fit in again, the ones who stand in the background staring at nothing, hit a punching bag with a cane with a persistence that makes him almost a hero, or elegantly dances to the music in his head. I really like the expression on Harding's face when he realizes that nobody will help him with his problem. During that entire scene and probably all the conversations the "group" has, director Forman uses close-ups and distance shots perfectly. Danny DeVito (I'm counting him as a little person, by the way) is really good as Martini, William Redfield could easily have won something as Harding, Christopher Lloyd plays ornery and angry so well as Taber, and Brad Dourif and his Lyle Lovett-esque hair are heartbreakingly good as Billy and Billy's hair respectively. And Will Sampson is unforgettable as the Chief. I love that scene where he's striding across the court during that basketball game, the first time his character shows any personality whatsoever. He says so much for being a mute. I also like the nurse who is always with Nurse Ratched but whose only line is a lengthy scream near the end of the movie. When I saw this movie as a youngster, its themes of conformity and freedom resonated. I think it's captured best in the looks on the inmates' faces when Nurse Ratched asks, "Did Billy Bibbit leave the grounds of the hospital?"

Now, let's see why this isn't on Cory's top-500 movie list.

Gothic

1986 silliness

Rating: 11/20

Plot: We travel back to an era of English romanticism, specifically the night when Mary Shelley and poet husband Percy had a sleepover at Lord Byron's palatial estate, exchanged a few ghost stories, and gave birth to Frankenstein. Apparently, this night included a bunch of hide-and-go-seek and fighting off dwarf attacks.

Ken Russell's a director stuffed with bizarre ideas, and his films have a visual appeal. Gothic has some creative energy, but it's this really sluggish creative energy. Reimagining the night these crazy kids got together and inspired Shelley's horror novel, all the blending of reality and nightmare, is interesting movie subject matter. And there are some nifty visuals, like that suit of armor with a strap-on and the little fella featured on the poster. And you've got a strange but intriguing soundtrack provided by Thomas "She Blinded Me with Science" Dolby. But watching this movie was like wading through a filthy swamp. The period setting and stagy dialogue with freak-out interludes grew tiresome really quickly, and it's all so pretentious. It seems strange to say that since the majority of the movie involved the characters playing hide-and-seek, but it was. Fine characters, fine acting, a great scenario, some cool visuals and music. It just doesn't add up to anything that mattered to me at all. It's faux-intellectualism, flimsy and damp, a movie that drowns in itself. I was tempted to keep my finger on the fast-forward button, but I was terrified I'd miss a nipple.

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead

2004 kung-fu zombie movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Something about the star of Kill Bill and a pair of sidekicks fighting evil and giving the dead proper burials. It involves voodoo papers. His brother's turned evil and fights against him every step of the way. There are hopping zombies all over the place, too.

First off, I want to find the guy who played Buck (Michael Bowen) in Kill Bill Volume 1 and put him in the kung-fu sequel to The Diary of Anne Frank that I plan on writing and directing some day. That way I'll be able to put "From the star of Kill Bill 1" on the top of my dvd box and make a little extra cash despite having dialogue as bad as the dialogue in this movie:

Master: Take a piss!

Kid: What? Now?

Other Kid: You heard the master. Do it.

Kid: [Pisses]

Other Kid: Master, why did you tell him to take a piss?

Master: I need virgin's pee.

See, sometimes it's poor translating combined with poor dubbing that makes it all sound much worse than it actually is, but I'm not sure that's the case here. Maybe with the later "Where do you come from, devil? How dare you invade my little brother?" is the result of the translation/dubbing combo though. This whole thing's a lot of nonsense. Why do the zombies hop? What's with the ad nauseum chanting? Why's that kid keep slamming his groin into a wall? Does a suddenly materializing Mike Tyson tattoo really give a person special powers? Why so many references to whizzing? What the hell are voodoo papers? There are a few moments when this movie almost looks good, but for the most part, it's one of those modern kung-fu flicks injected with some horror that isn't very scary and some humor that doesn't fit at all. The special effects are the scariest part of this, a kind of CGI nightmare. The Shaolin vs. Evil Dead story isn't even completed in this movie which is really frustrating. Clips during the credits promise a sequel, and it looks like they've found a way to make the special effects even uglier. I have no interest in sitting through the sequel to figure out what the hell this one was about.

Basket Case

1982 horror sleaze

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Duane travels to the big city with a basket containing the lumpy blob of a brother who was formerly attached to him. They're not there to sightsee though. Oh, no. They're on a mission of revenge to kill off all those responsible for separating them. But Duane finds love, and brother Belial isn't happy about it at all.

What percentage of female first-time viewers of Basket Case (to be honest, I can't imagine there are many female fans of this movie) watch and just pray that there will be a Bilial sex scene somewhere in the sleaze? They'll get their wish with what will undoubtedly win my annual "Sex Scene of the Year" award. As a guy who enjoys both puppets and stop-motion, there's no way that I'm not going to enjoy Bilial. This is one of the cheapest movies you'll ever see, but it's got this grimy style and filthy charm that, although not something that will appeal to everybody, puts this a notch above its landfill-dwelling brethren. The most obvious thing you have to overlook is some of the worst acting ever. Kevin Van Hentenryck, the guy who plays Duane, is like a poor man's Bud Cort, and the periphery characters (mannish prostitutes, hotel managers, shady doctors) are played by actors/actresses who are each worse than the one who preceded them. Bad acting can be entertaining, but the stuff in this crosses a line into a new level of bad. I really enjoyed some over-the-top sound effects and a really weird soundtrack. There's a funny "woo-woo-woo" thing during a scene when the camera reveals an empty basket (Woo woo woo!), and the exaggerated squishes, wickery creaks, and audible drooling give this a disgusting edge. Basket Case isn't played 100% straight, and I laughed most during some flashback scenes, including an operation scene with some hilarious dubbing. This has enough sticky violence, creative garbage cinematography, and fun for somebody in just the right mood.

I'm pretty sure most of the budget for this one was spent on the basket, by the way. It's a pretty nice basket.

Sherlock Holmes

2009 action movie/bastardized lit

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 11/20)

Plot: Slobbish detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson attempt to solve the mystery of who is trying to terrorize Londoners. Turns out that it's a dead guy! Oh, snap!

The more this went on (and on and on), the more I actually ended up liking it. Unfortunately, it was never enough to completely save the movie. This is one of those movies that seems like it was written by eight different people. They all started out in same conference room around a massive oval table, a picture of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in front of an empty chair to give them inspiration. Maybe they all smoked opium, listened to violin music, and wore deerstalker hats to get in the right mood. In fact, I'm sure they all must have been smoking opium. They had trouble agreeing on much, just as you'd expect from a gaggle of writers, and decided to split up, write portions of the plot on their own, and reassemble later to paste it all together. So Guy #1 ran off with his head full of all these supernatural elements because he digs vampire movies; Guy #2, the traditionalist of the bunch, left with his convoluted explanations to show off Holmes' deductive knack and powers of observation; Guy #3, lover of action movies that he was, decided to storyboard a few ultra-modern fight scenes; Guy #4, lover of romantic comedies that he was, figured a little romance on the side wouldn't hurt anything; Guy #5 figured it was about time to put all that research he'd done on Masonry back in graduate school to use, also remembering the popularity of that Da Vinci Code movie; Guy #6, awakened from yet another terrorism-fueled nightmare, decided to put his irrational fears to use and include biological weapons; Guy #7 had writer's block and failed to contribute anything at all; and Guy #8, a chemist without any friends at all, decided to Bill-Nye-the-Science-Guy is up and add a bunch of stuff that nobody but he and the friends he would have had if he had had any would understand. They reconvened and threw all their ideas on that big oval table. But some dastardly foe, likely from a rival movie studio although that's yet to be proven, set the table on fire! The writers panicked, rapidly assembling the most coherent story they possibly can before their hard work perished in the flames. Sure the final result was a complete mess, but they decided that modern audiences won't mind if there's some nifty special effects to go along with it. I was a little annoyed by the slow-mo modern fisticuffs and Guy Ritchie's flashy direction. It's all stylistically interesting but very distracting. The story was also frustratingly complex, and after a while, I was so confused that I just gave up trying to figure out what was going on. Yes, it does all come together in the end, but it wasn't enough to make up for the previous 110 minutes of frustration. I don't easily forgive when something or somebody makes me feel so stupid for so long. The special effects team did create some cool settings (love moody London here), and as readers of my blog know, I always like Robert Downey Jr. He and Jude Law have fine chemistry. Rachel McAdams also provides some eye candy. I suppose there are enough nods to the original source material to appease some Holmes-aphiles while the purists will likely turn up their noses and pooh-pooh the whole thing. I'm somewhat in the middle. I'm not in a hurry to see this again even though it's the type of thing that repeated viewing could help, but I wouldn't mind renting the sequel when it comes out.

The Cremator

1968 Cesky film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Kopfrkingl rfealtly lipkes hits jozb as the tituvglar spalovac mrtvol. He freqcuenjtly reacds the Tibeztlan Boozk of the Dxead and usces it to supplrort his idzea that crenmatzion is the most comcfortwable way to go. It's the 1930s, and when Gezrzmzany rovlls in, they make him an offqer that he has problkems renfushing in this hiltariousc comegdy from cheehry Czechoslovakia.

At least I think it's a horror/comedy. If it is, it's one of the most disturbing comedies ever made. If not, I might be disturbed myself. But the hijinks of a recurring married couple, lines like "We take a break in the afternoon, and you can breathe fresh air in the cemetery," and a cheery song some characters sing about the death of children are too funny not to be in a comedy. It's nothing I laughed out loud at. Well, that's not true. I think I laughed at a scene where the titular cremator is training a new employee and asks him to look into a little hole in the furnace before annoucing, "There's nothing to see--we must wait for a nice cremation." I really liked The Cremator, from the opening title sequence with some cut-out animation stuff that reminded me of fellow Czech Svankmajer to the startling conclusion. Speaking of Svankmajer, there are also some rapidly juxtaposing shots of cat facial features and pictures of women's breasts that looked straight out of one of the animator's shorts. That must have been the thing to do in Czech movies from the late 60s until whenever. This dark movie is a great depiction of a man losing touch with reality. The lead, a guy with too many consonants in his name, is subdued, doing very little to help the reader know that he's going insane. Instead, director Juraj Herz lets that be shown through the cinematography with some flashy editing, the use of the always odd wide-angle lens, and some other nifty camera tricks. I also like how Herz transitions from one scene to another. Close-ups of a wrinkled animal at a zoo bleeds into the next scene with a close-up of the wrinkles on a guy's forehead. A character's lines fit with the context of one scene when you suddenly realize you've actually been taken to a brand new situation. It's really a neat trick the first few times you notice it, but for the movie to so consistently move from scene to scene like that is really impressive. I also liked a scene at a very strange wax museum, one that featured both puppets and a little person, and the ingenious way a boxing match was filmed. And the music--haunting minimalist clicks with operatic ghosts--fit very well. If you're a sucker for guys-losing-their-minds movies like I am, The Cremator is for you! I've also decided I need to see more Czech movies. Awesome stuff!

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

2009 Terry Gilliam movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: The titular doctor roams England with a rickety theater wagon, luring some lucky customers into the Imaginarium, a trip through Parnassus's dream-drenched mind. Much earlier, he'd made a deal with the devil, Mr. Nick, and as his daughter's sixteenth birthday approaches, he knows that she will soon belong to him. Parnassus and Mr. Nick decide to have a competition to see who can get five souls first. Meanwhile, the performers have rescued a man hanging beneath a bridge, and he decides to travel around with them.

This is one of those cases where I'm really frustrated. How can I not like this movie? It's obnoxiously fantastical, another visual treat from the fertile subconscious of Terry Gilliam. It's got a little person, a monkey, and a Tom Waits puppet in it. It's got Tom Waits himself with a mesmerizing performance as the flamboyant Mr. Nick. It's got a really interesting story submerged beneath the onslaught of visual peculiarities. So how do I not totally love this thing? There are lots of problems actually. Sure, you can gorge on the visuals if you're into that sort of thing, but there are lots of times when there's much too much going on, CGI-mayhem that leads to a sensory overload with tinkertoy surrealism and forced field trips to a schizophrenic's painting studio. The visuals are often neat, but there's this timeless anachronistic quality to the whole thing where everything seems out of place. It's difficult, I imagine, for the average person to get a grip on what's going on in Gilliam's worlds. As a fan of a lot of his work, I even found this one difficult, and it made me wonder how messy the man's kitchen must be. Things stutter along, get weird, stutter along some more, stop, and stutter, and after a while, I started wondering when things were going to get started. By the time the giant unfurling tongue, dancing transvestite policemen, and a giant robot woman driven by the devil (all three which looked straight from Python), I had already lost my ability to focus and had to dump a half glass of raspberry lemonade on my lap to get my leg to stop vibrating. Heath Ledger is in this movie, and I think he did a fine job. I can't be sure because it was hard to get a grip on his character until some twistiness at the very end. Depp, Law, and Farrell step in for scenes with Ledger's Tony after Ledger's death, and although I suppose the different actors playing the same role could work on some level, I didn't completely get it here and it was just one more thing about the film to frustrate the heck out of me. Tom Waits really is terrific playing Mr. Nick, borrowing a sleazy and dapper tone that he's used in more than a few of his songs. And I liked Christopher Plummer here, too. But Verne Troyer (you know, Mini-Me) proves to the world that he's not an actor. At all. His is one of the worst performances I've seen in a long time. Verne is no Herve, and nothing, not even a scene where he's in blackface, made me glad that he was in the film. Big mistake with that casting decision, Terry. This was a movie I was looking forward to for years, and I'm really sad that I didn't like it.

There's a chance I'll watch this again some day, and there's a chance I'll like it a lot better. Then again, I've always said I'd give The Brothers Grimm (couldn't finish) and Tideland (wasn't sure if I liked it or not) another chance and never have.

Harlow Hickenlooper: One Man, a Striped Jacket, a Straw Hat, Three Stooges, Hundreds of Pies, and Thousands of Adoring Fans

2008 documentary

Rating: n/r

Plot: A look at the life and work of Indianapolis independent children's entertainer Hal Fryar, better known as Harlow Hickenlooper. Includes lengthy stories from Fryar and a ton of old clips.

From what I can gather, a Hickenlooper fan named Steve Pyatte put this together and gave it to Fryar as a gift. It's not exactly a professional work, so I didn't feel like giving it a rating, but I'm sure glad I watched it as a Hoosier. I'm only marginally familiar with Hickenlooper, but it was great watching the 80-something year old Fryar talk about his work and his colleagues with such enthusiasm. Even though his stories were all over the place and at times almost like jokes that only he would get, the guy is so likable and excited that you want to listen to him for hours. From how he got his first television gig (a guy who played a cowboy character quit and at 6'2", Fryar fit in the costume) to working with William Shatner and Shari Lewis (both using the show as a platform to peddle their own work) to behind-the-scenes footage of his work with the Stooges in The Outlaws Is Coming! this is a wonderful look at a time and television genre that won't exist again. As Fryar says, without whining, kids living in a world where everything is automated just wouldn't appreciate this sort of thing. As an Indianapolis guy, I enjoyed seeing crackly footage of Fryar flying a kite at Brookside Park (I've disc golfed there) and walking through a haunted house at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. My favorite moment: Hal Fryar talking about how excited he was when he showed up on the set of the Three Stooges movie and seeing a chair with his name on the back of it.

As a bonus, there was some stuff about another local television personality named Sammy Terry who I remember very fondly. That guy was great! He showed terrible horror flicks and had a terrific creepy laugh.

The Man with the Golden Gun

1974 James Bond movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: 007 finds out that the titular man wants to kill him with the titular gun and globetrots to find the assassin before the assassin finds him so that he can go back to saving the world or whatever it is he does.

Bitchin' 70s funk here! Within minutes, you've got Herve Villechaize, the appearance of a third nipple, fake skeletons, an old-timey shooting range, chaos in a house of mirrors, and wax figure finger target practice. Then, the theme song to end all theme songs! "One golden shot means another poor victim has come to a glittering end. For a price, he'll erase anyone. The man with the golden gun!" All behind the visual of women's dancing silhouettes against a background of fireworks! Shipoopi! Just when you think the movie has to slow down and take a breath, you're treated to details of a circus-born assassin, bellydancing, swallowed bullets, gun fondling, kung-fu hijinks, an attack with a watermelon, faux nipples, sumo wedgies, threats with a trident, something called a Solex Agitator or something, a car chase, a boat chase, another car chase, a racist Cajun, elephant molestation, a car-plane, a sun gun, a stunt that out-Dukes the Duke Boys with slide whistle accompaniment, a conceited Christopher Lee, explosions, more than a few bad puns, and a lot more Herve Villechaize. This is nutty stuff, but you've got a great bad guy doing his damage with a cigarette case, a lighter, and a fountain pen, and an intriguing plot stuffed with too many twists and turns for the average slide whistler to be able to keep up with. I'm far from a James Bond aficionado, but I really like the tongue-in-cheek approach this one has. It's nutty but not afraid to be nutty. It leaps on a kung-fu bandwagon unapologetically. It's got lines like Christopher Lee's "Look behind you. . .lower" which, in context, is as funny as anything I've heard in any comedies I've recently seen. It's got exotic locales, improbable action sequences galore, and beautiful women. And Herve Villechaize, sometimes shirtless! What more could a warm-blooded man want?

Forbidden Zone

1982 musical

Rating: 24/20 (Anonymous: 16/20) [Rating Note: I told Anonymous after watching this that I was going to rate it eight points higher than he did. Hence, the 24/20.]

Plot: The Hercules family lives just a large intestine above the Sixth Dimension, a mysteriously goofy land ruled by King Fausto, a little fellow, and his wife Queen Doris. Inevitably, one of the family members, in this case Frenchy, finds her way into the Sixth Dimension and has to be rescued by her family and friends.

"Hot damn! The Sixth Dimension!"

Ever want to hear the little guy from Fantasy Island say, "I love to feel your nipples harden when I caress them with my fingertips"? Yes? Well, this is your movie then, mo-fo! And that's not all. With Forbidden Zone, you get a guy in a gorilla suit, an evil half-man/half-frog creature, Danny Elfman playing the devil, lots of topless women, an old guy in boxers (boxers always threatening to unflap and give a little too much information, if you know what I mean) who humps everything he encounters, a human chandelier, racial stereotyping (the first character you see is in black face), bald beatboxers in jock-straps, askew jazz numbers, and Herve Villechaize. It's hard to believe that a film this weird can sustain momentum. A lot of weirdo flicks run out of gas and get stale, but not Forbidden Zone. This starts weird, gets weirder, continues to hit you with left turn after left turn, calls you a jackass right to your face, and then ends weird. And the whole time, blood's just rushing to your balls, and you're slapping the couch with your palm or accidentally (and unknowingly) fondling your own brother. This makes Rocky Horror seem like white bread by comparison. This is what Pee Wee Herman dreams about when not molesting himself inside an extra large container of buttered popcorn. This is David Lynch, John Waters, Tim Burton, and Terry Gillium deciding to travel back in time to the 1930s to make cartoons together after having a surgery performed in which they're attached at the lobes but then killing each other in a dispute over whether or not the frog should have a sex scene and the film being completed in their absence by the second coming of Christ. This is the type of music that people form religions after watching. The music is pretty incredible--an eclectic mishmash that is part-Residents, part-jazz, part-cabaret, part-cartoon-sound-effects. The entire movie is director Richard Elfman (Danny's brother) trying to create The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo's stage show on the big screen. I didn't expect much, not being a fan of Oingo Boingo, but color me impressed. Fans of Danny Elfman's soundtrack work should seek this out as it's a lot of fun to see where he started. Any filmmaker watching this in '82 (Tim Burton maybe) would have no doubt been impressed with Elfman's potential, and it was fun for me to hear traces of Nightmare in a few of the songs. I was also impressed with the mix of animation and live action which, along with the black and white and the woman who played Frenchy's stage design, makes this unlike anything I've seen. This low-budget affair is far from cinematic perfection, but it's such an obvious labor of love, such an explosion of creativity, and such an oddball visual feast, that it's easy to forget the imperfections.

Forbidden Zone admittedly isn't for everybody. But I'm not going to like people who don't like it. Hot damn!

At the Circus

1939 movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The Marx Brothers (Karl, Ballso, and Guitfizzle) investigate the theft of a circus owner's money.

Monkey? Check. Little person? Check! Groucho, Harpo, and Chico? Check, check, and check. OK, it seems like we have all the elements for a classic comedy, right? Well, not exactly. Somebody forgot to write a script with anything funny in it. This was pretty flat, and although there are some moments when it all almost gets good, it's so far away from the best Marx movies that I'd say it's not even worth watching. It's too bad, too, because the circus could have been the perfect setting for some Marx mayhem. As always, the songs in these, with the possible exception of Groucho's song about a tattooed woman, almost made me want to take my own life.

The Princess and the Frog

2009 Disney cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 17/20; Dylan: 10/20; Emma: 15/20)

Plot: All Tiana wants is to start her own restaurant to honor her father's dream and share her culinary talents with the people of New Orleans. She's been saving for years, coins and wadded-up bills in tin cans. Finally, she's able to purchase the property and bring her dreams to life, but the deal falls through at a masquerade party thrown by her childhood friend's family. Oh, snap! Meanwhile, a penniless prince has arrived in town and, tricked by a voodoo trickster Shadow Man with connections to the other side, has been turned into a frog. Tiana, a gal who knows her fairy tales, kisses him and immediately transforms into a frog herself. Oh, double snap! They journey in search of a way to reverse the curse while the Shadow Man tries to take over the city of New Orleans.

It's unfortunate that we didn't check this out in the theater. There was an amazing amount of color, color that just exploded on my tiny television screen, and I really wish I could have seen them bigger. Color is really what The Princess and the Frog is all about. There's a great local color with vibrant New Orleans and the surrounding bayou as the backdrops. And there are really colorful characters including a bunch of Cajan fireflies, a trumpet-blowing alligator, a blind old witchy woman, and others. The main characters are also lively, both with their personality and their movements. At times, it does seem like the characters are detached from the background, but for the most part, I like how they mingle with the setting, especially during the musical numbers. Lots of musical numbers, mostly, of course, penned by the ubiquitous Randy Newman. But really, who else could have done the soundtrack for this one? It's great work, too. The characters leap off the screen during the song and dance numbers, all engulfed with swirling kaleidoscopic imagery. Black princess Tiana is a worthy addition to the Disney princess canon, and her prince, though bordering on obnoxious at times, is a great dynamic character. And John Goodman's in it, and even yells out "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" a few times. But my favorite character is the bad guy, the flamboyantly evil Dr. Facilier, aka the Shadow Man. I love how his shadow has a mind of its own, and when he conjures up the evil spirits, who also appear as shadows, the animation gets wonderfully surreal. My expectations weren't incredibly high for this, probably a combination of me not being a princess and Disney not making things happen lately. But even though a lot of the ideas seem borrowed from other Disney animated features, it's all so beautifully executed and becomes something fresh, a jazzy fairy tale that's a feast for the eyes and ears.