“We’re from the phone company.”

*holds up phone*

“Sylvester Stallone in a comedy” should rightly raise warning bells. Warning sirens. Some loud noise of some kind, indicating danger. After all, Stallone’s track record for comedies is dismal, to say the least. (Six words: Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!) But every so often, the stars align just so, and what should be a disaster is surprisingly non-disastrous and even pretty entertaining.

This is not to say that Oscar is a perfect comedy. It isn’t. It’s broad. It’s not exactly subtle. And while Sly tries his best (and doesn’t do badly), he’s never going to be Groucho Marx or even Chico, and a comedy like this – a farce, a comedy of errors with a strong emphasis on wordplay – is not really his forte. Plus, there are a couple of supporting performances that just kind of make you wonder things. Like “how did Marisa Tomei ever make it when she started out so poorly?”

“When I took over, your books were a mess.”
“They don’t sound like they’re in no great shape now! …damn, that’s a double negative.”

But it’s just a likable little movie. It has Tim Curry in it, before he was seemingly permanently exiled to play villains for video games, being Tim Curry and therefore completely awesome. It has a great performance from Chazz Palmintieri as a big goon mobster. (I defy anyone to not laugh when Stallone demands he shed all his weapons, and Palmintieri gives sad puppy eyes as he leaves a pile of weapons on a counter, culminating in a spiked ball-and-chain.) It had a whole horde of great character actors at their best: Peter Reigert as a smart-mouthed mobster-turned-butler, William Atherton as a snooty banker, Kurtwood Smith as a moral but not-too-bright cop, Harry Shearer as one half of a pair of quirky Italian tailors, and the late, great Eddie Bracken as a police snitch. It’s got a great cameo by Kirk Douglas and an appearance by Don Ameche in one of his last roles. And it’s got a remarkably clever plot.

“Even in the old days he was known as an honest crook.”
“That’s an oxymoron.”
“Gee, you shouldn’t oughta said that, Doc.”
“Yeah, leave Connie alone. He does the best he can.”

Stallone plays Angelo “Snaps” Provolone, a mobster who promises his dying father he’ll go straight. To this end, he has liquidated his criminal enterprises and plans to buy his way into a bank partnership. However, on the day the papers are to be signed, his young accountant (Vincent Spano, who for a while in the late 80s and early 90s was looking like a big thing, but unfortunately fizzled) comes to him and requests the hand of his daughter in marriage. However, his daughter is in love with the chauffeur, Oscar, and is a bit of a brat who wants to get her way. The cops, suspicious of Snaps’ sudden cessation of criminal activity, are suspicious, and watching his house like hawks. So is a rival gang, looking to muscle in on Snaps (who now appears weak).

“I got it! Your daughter’s not your daughter, and the cash that used to be the jewels is now your underwear!”

And then it all starts to get complex. Because the young accountant hasn’t actually ever met Snaps’ daughter. And things rapidly start to spiral out from one misunderstanding; that’s how a comedy of errors works, see, little things ball up into bigger things and bigger and bigger and then – pow, the payoff. And the good thing about Oscar is that the comedic payoff is an excellent one, all things considered. It’s a fun, hammy comedy, the sort of film Hollywood genuinely doesn’t make anymore because it’s gloriously, unapologetically pre-ironic and we live in a post-ironic world.

Plus, Tim Curry as an elocution teacher. Come on.

LIKED

– Zombieland is exactly as good as you were hoping it would be: it’s not Citizen Kane or anything, but it’s a consistently fun horror/comedy with the emphasis on the latter half of the equation and some very solid action sequences as well, plus a number of clever visual tricks that help keep the viewer engaged and entertained. This is what B-movies should be like, and I await the inevitable sequel with bated breath.

– The Jim/Pam wedding on The Office would have actually served the series very well as a finale, as others have noticed elsewhere, but even as a portion of the series it was a particularly good episode – not just for the obvious romantic/emotional catharsis but because it was just a well-written episode of a show that’s notable because it missteps so rarely. (Also: Oscar voguing. How can you not love Oscar voguing?)

– Planetary’s conclusion was about as good as could be hoped for – a note-perfect end to a near-perfect series (that, yes, only managed to produce 27 issues over nearly a decade, but that’s why it’s near-perfect).

DID NOT LIKE

– Doctor Voodoo manages the rare feat of making Dr. Strange look like a pussy-ass loser (I mean, even more than previous Marvel comics have done so) while making Doctor Voodoo look like a self-important twat. (And in the bargain, once again makes Dormammu look like a pathetic joke.) The only character to come out of the first issue not looking like a schmuck is Dr. Doom, and let’s be honest: Dr. Doom doesn’t need any help to look cool. On top of that, the comic itself is just pretty goddamned bad: heavy, ponderous dialogue that already felt a bit outdated in the 1970s combined with art that is just ugly and murky makes for a nigh-unreadable pile of slurry. Understand that, as a Dr. Strange fan, I am ostensibly the target audience for this comic. I wanted this comic to be good. Instead, it’s probably the worst new offering from Marvel in quite a while.

Yesterday, esteemed Pajiboverlord Dustin Rowles put together his list of 80s movies that have aged badly. Unfortunately, due to trolling the readership including The Goonies on that list, it is my sad duty to report that Dustin is in critical condition at Our Pajiba of Mercy Hospital, due to wounds that, according to his doctors, “resemble somewhat what one might expect from being mauled by a bear, except much, much worse.”

Now, it’s not my job to go amongst the commenters, one-by-one, inspecting them for bear-hairs like some lycanthrope-seeking Javert. (Pajiba has their own people for that, armed with salmon stuffed full of silver bullets. One can’t be too careful about werebears.) I’m simply going to attempt to resolve the situation peacefully by
drafting a list of 80s hits – massive, massively successful movies, every one culturally and financially important – that, in the fullness of time, have been revealed as massive piles of suck rather than the classics people thought they were at the time.

In no particular order but with a countdown nonetheless:

10.) Commando

Arnold Schwarzenegger has quite a respectable 80s lexicon. The Terminator, both Conans, Red Heat, Predator, The Running Man – classics all. But for some reason, with the exception of Terminator no Schwarzenepic is considered to be quite so iconic as Commando, mostly because Commando is supposedly the essence of Arnold: the baddies are bad and he kills them for being bad, for about ninety straight minutes. Here’s the problem: it’s boring and shitty. I could make that sound nicer, I suppose, but it would just be a lot of words that would all mean “boring and shitty.” Yes, I know Alyssa Milano is in it; it’s still boring and shitty. The action sequences have the slow, uneven pace of a retarded cow, the plot is nonexistent and even the explosions are somehow completely unsatisfactory. It’s a parody of 80s action movies and doesn’t realize it. In conclusion: boring and shitty.

9.) Mr. Mom

Mr. Mom relied extensively on shock value for its comedy, so it’s no surprise that it’s really not funny at all any more: the idea of a man staying home with the kids isn’t particularly odd nowadays, so an entire movie predicated on asking the audience “hey, look! Michael Keaton is taking care of children rather than going out and supporting his family! How emasculating is that, huh?” isn’t going to work like it did twenty-five years ago. (See also: the comic strip Adam, except that Adam wasn’t even funny during the 80s.) Mr. Mom could have been more timeless; after all, it’s got Keaton plus Teri Garr, Martin Mull and Christopher Lloyd, accomplished comics every one. (And even a very young Jeffrey Tambor!) But it’s not timeless: it’s a cheap hack comedy with good names trying to capitalize on cultural zeitgeist, and nothing ages a movie faster than tying itself to a given cultural shift or trend. (Unless it’s about breakdancing, lambada, or stunt skiing.)

8.) Three Men and a Baby

True story: once upon a time, Ted Danson was legitimately considered a sex symbol. No! Really!

7.) Platoon

It seems weird to include a Best Picture winner, and one that was rightly acclaimed at the time, on this list. But Platoon genuinely hasn’t aged well at all; in retrospect Oliver Stone’s script comes off as goofy and melodramatic rather than gritty and realistic as it did at the time, the movie seems to tread water in between often confusing battle sequences, and Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen often seem to be trying to out-clench one another. But the biggest problem with Platoon isn’t even its own fault, really: it’s that Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam opus, came out one year later, and who the hell can compete with one of Kubrick’s best?

6.) Flashdance

Quick quiz: name the last thing you saw Jennifer Beals in. Right, you can’t. But you can sure as hell remember her in those leg-warmers and welding shit so that she could pay for her leg-warmers. And she danced a bit. Nobody on the planet remembers anything else at all about this movie. Did she have a boyfriend in this movie? I am not sure. Neither are you. If you looked up “inessential” in the dictionary, you would not see a poster for Flashdance, because that is how inessential it is. It made a hundred million dollars and not one person on the planet remembers anything other than “Oh What A Feeling.”

5.) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Actually, all of the Vacation films kind of suck, but the worst (other than Vegas Vacation, made in the 90s and therefore not eligible for this list) is Christmas Vacation, mostly because misplaced nostalgia constantly has people trying to tell you that Chevy Chase’s horrible mugging (his grins in this movie are so tight they form a kind of zombie-like rictus that is terrifying to behold) and a bunch of really horribly staged jokes makes for some kind of holiday classic, rather than the visual equivalent of a seasonal enema. Clark Griswold is the least sympathetic “hero” in Christmas movie history, and if the film had the guts to give Clark the giant “fuck you” that he clearly deserves it might be a dark, ironic classic. Instead, Clark gets his completely undeserved happy ending, surrounded by Beverly D’Angelo and Juliette Lewis and Randy Quaid as his horrible family. If they have Christmas in Hell, the only movie they show is Christmas Vacation, over and over and over again. (Well, that and Christmas with the Kranks.)

4.) Strange Brew

I’m Canadian, so I can say this with the righteous fury it demands: this movie is crap. Want more? Okay: SCTV‘s moments of genius were vastly outnumbered when compared to the innumerable sketches on the show that went absolutely nowhere and felt like they lasted forever. Rick Moranis is justly obscure nowadays, and Dave Thomas even moreso. Cult classic, my fucking ass: this movie just isn’t funny, and worse, you can lay the blame for all those Saturday Night Live sketches-turned-movies at this sucker’s feet. When your eyes travel over It’s Pat! in the video store (not the Blockbuster, but instead that seedy video store at the strip mall which has absolutely everything, which used to be your excuse to visit it when you needed to rent porn, but that was before the internet gave you free porn on demand), you have only Strange Brew to blame.

3.) Twins

If we can blame Twins for anything, it’s the true popularization of high concept as a raison d’etre for making a film. With nothing more to it than “hey, what if Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito were twin brothers?”, Twins made a shitload of money and taught Hollywood exactly the wrong lesson, which is that people will go see anything if you can sum it up in a single sentence. Twins isn’t notoriously awful like some movies on this list; it’s just there, sitting like the turkey sandwich you forgot to throw out two days ago. You could probably still eat it. But do you want to?

2.) The Big Chill

The Big Chill was one of Dustin’s honorable mentions and probably the reason he survived that dreadful bear attack. This is because if there is a single movie that encompasses everything hateful about baby boomers, the 1980s, yuppies, and pretty much everything else that ruined the world forever, it is The Big Chill. This movie was goddamned definitive as a Boomer cultural touchstone back in the day, which tells you something unpleasant. The characters are former activist liberals turned successful young professionals, and their complex inner lives are all marked by the fact that they are all conspicuously selfish assholes of varying degrees (except for William Hurt, who is impotent instead, and there’s a bit of a message there: sell out or lose your boning ability!). By the time they start dancing to Motown songs completely unironically, the modern-day viewer understands that there is only one rational response to watching this movie, and that is to say “fuck these people.”

1.) Top Gun

Come on, what the hell else was going to be #1? Top Gun made, adjusted for inflation, approximately one zillion dollars. It reintroduced the word “maverick” to the modern lexicon, and we owe Tom Cruise a kick in the nuts for that because maybe he couldn’t have anticipated John McCain but then again he probably should have, because Tom Cruise has weird mind powers. Top Gun is almost completely unwatchable, and there isn’t any societal shift necessary to explain why. It’s unwatchable because it fucking sucks. Maybe you’re thinking “but if it fucking sucks, how can it have aged badly?” And the simple answer is that sometimes a movie that sucks can still be something that enthralls you briefly and momentarily. For example: the first Michael Bay Transformers. I came out of that feeling entertained, and only over a period of about two hours did I come to realize that I had just seen one of the biggest shitburgers I would ever see. Top Gun is like that, except it took people a few years rather than a few hours to realize it was very, very bad.

Rotten Tomatoes’ “100 Worst Films of the Decade.” The ones I have seen are bolded. The ones I have seen and don’t think deserve to be in the bottom 100 are also italicized.

100 Whiteout (2009)
99 Glitter (2001)
98 Cheaper By the Dozen 2 (2005)
97 Boat Trip (2003)
96 All About Steve (2009)
95 Lost Souls (2000)
94 The New Guy (2002)
93 A Sound of Thunder (2005)
92 Babylon A.D. (2008)
91 Surviving Christmas (2004)
90 Dragonfly (2002)
89 Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
88 Kaena: The Prophecy (2004)
87 Testosterone (2003)
86 Pavilion of Women (2001)
85 Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006)
84 Thr3e (2007)
83 Doogal (2006)
82 Supercross: The Movie (2005)
81 Extreme Ops (2002)
80 Big Momma’s House 2 (2006)
79 The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
78 Deck the Halls (2006)
77 Date Movie (2006)
76 Johnson Family Vacation (2004)
75 Son of the Mask (2005)
74 Envy (2004)
73 Gigli (2003)
72 Broken Bridges (2006)
71 College (2008)
70 New Best Friend (2002)
69 The Cookout (2004)
68 Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie (2004)
67 The Hottie & the Nottie (2008)
66 The Fog (2005)
65 Swept Away (2002)
64 Corky Romano (2001)
63 Yours, Mine, & Ours (2005)
62 Serving Sara (2002)
61 Good Luck Chuck (2007)
60 The Perfect Man (2005)
59 88 Minutes (2008)
58 Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
57 Godsend (2004)
56 Because I Said So (2007)
55 The Celestine Prophecy (2006)
54 Harry And Max (2005)
53 Modigliani (2005)
52 The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2005)
51 Fascination (2005)
50 Dirty Love (2005)
49 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008)
48 BloodRayne (2006)
47 Soul Survivors (2001)
46 Material Girls (2006)
45 My Baby’s Daddy (2004)
44 Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)
43 Darkness (2003)
42 House of the Dead (2003)
41 Zoom (2006)
40 Down to You (2000)
39 Miss March (2009)
38 Happily N’Ever After (2007)
37 Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)
36 The Whole Ten Yards (2004)
35 Deal (2008)
34 The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008)
33 Delta Farce (2007)
32 Deuces Wild (2002)
31 The Covenant (2006)
30 Fear Dot Com (2002)
29 Bless the Child (2000)
28 Rollerball (2002)
27 Battlefield Earth (2000)
26 Kickin’ It Old Skool (2007)
25 Meet the Spartans (2008)
24 Texas Rangers (2001)
23 The In Crowd (2000)
22 Disaster Movie (2008)
21 Epic Movie (2007)
20 Crossover (2006)
19 Half Past Dead (2002)
18 The Master of Disguise (2002)
17 Twisted (2004)
16 Daddy Day Camp (2007)
15 Alone in the Dark (2005)
14 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009)
13 Constellation (2007)
12 Killing Me Softly (2002)
11 Merci Docteur Rey! (2002)
10 Witless Protection (2008)
9 Redline (2007)
8 3 Strikes (2000)
7 Strange Wilderness (2008)
6 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
5 National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers (2004)
4 King’s Ransom (2005)
3 Pinocchio (2002)
2 One Missed Call (2008)
1 Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)

I am shocked by the lack of that Randy Quaid movie about go-karting.

LIKED

– Extract isn’t quite on the level of Mike Judge’s other brilliant comedies, but it’s still damn funny; Jason Bateman, JK Simmons, Kirsten Wiig, and Clifton Collins Jr. are all fantastic (and Beth Grant deserves a shout-out for creating the most hilariously annoying character ever; seriously, you will wish she would get run over by a truck), but you have to give props to Ben Affleck for being just goddamned awesome. I honestly think Ben Affleck doesn’t get enough props in this world.

– Strange Tales #1 is exactly as good as you thought it would be. Not sure why Marvel made us wait so long for it, but it’s fantastic. I thought the much-hyped Peter Bagge “Incorrigible Hulk” story was actually one of the least impressive; it’s still good, but I was a bigger fan of John Leavitt and Molly Crabapple’s She-Hulk story, Jason’s story of Spider-Man wanting to get into a barfight, and of course Dash Shaw’s Dr. Strange.

MEH

– Yes, I get that Spelunky is brilliant programming and revolutionary in its application of roguelike principles to platform gaming and blah blah blah but here’s the thing: a lot of little things that would have made this a truly great game as opposed to a truly great exercise in programming aren’t quite right. Most glaring is that there isn’t enough lifegain to quite counter the numerous ways to lose life in the game; the only way to gain life is to rescue the girl, an exercise that can frequently end up losing you life in the process (since carrying things is such a pain, given the loss of the whip and ability to run). There are other things: the dart-shooters do two points of damage rather than one, and given that it’s really easy to run towards one that’s offscreen and not see it before you’re getting shot with a dart, that feels unbalanced. The skulls sometimes becoming skeletons injects additional required caution that makes the game tedious. And the ghost showing up randomly is just goddamn annoying and makes the game less fun. It’s frustrating because the game is nearly great. But it’s not.

DIDN’T LIKE

– “All right, Supergirl, here you are. And you saved my life – much appreciated, by the way. But I still have to ask – are you here now as a hero… or as a villain?”
(Supergirl sheds single tear)
– “I’m Kryptonian, sure, but I’m not bad. I’m good.”
-“My father’s dead. I want justice. Together we can be justice!”

Somebody actually paid James Robinson to write Cry For Justice #3. Now, in fairness, the bits with Congo Bill and Mikaal Tomas teaming up actually flow quite well and I wish I was just reading Congo Bill and Alien Starman Fight Baddies, and there’s a nice bit with the Shade and Bobo that, one awkward line aside, feels like classic Starman. But everything with the actual star-billed superheroes in this book is total crap, and that’s before you get into the implications of them torturing a baddie who turns out to be a different baddie.

Entertaining three-hour diversion that seems shorter than it really is, has much, much less action than you would have expected, and once and for all answers the question of “is there anything Eli Roth hates more than women?” with “why, yes: Nazis.”

LIKED

– The Web is the first of JMS’ “Red Circle” comics that I’ve actually really enjoyed. This is not to say that Hangman and Inferno were bad comics; they were competently made bland ones, featuring Yet Another Spectre and a kinda boring guy-who-transforms-into-another-guy-who’s-on-fire. The Web actually has a pretty good hook, though, in that its hero is a guy who knows he’s kind of a shithead and has decided he doesn’t want to be a shithead (and has billions of dollars so he can be a superhero), and then his first time trying to not be a shithead manages to be a shithead anyway, but just a superheroic one. And then he learns a lesson. It’s kind of a twisted take on the Spider-Man origin and it works pretty well.

– I’m really enjoying Overlord II, more for its sense of humour than its occasionally annoying gameplay. Having command over an army of annoying hyperactive murderous runts is, it appears, endlessly entertaining. Listening to the heroic elves champion “all creatures, so long as they are fluffy and cute” is hilarious too. Really, it’s just a funny game with occasionally annoying controls.

– District 9 is good. (Insert dialogue about potential racist aspects of movie here.)

MEH

– How inessential a comic is Power Girl? Lemme put it this way: while hunting for a torrent of old Golden Age crime comics, I saw one for the new issue of Power Girl. It would have taken me one click to read it. I did not click. That is how inessential Power Girl is. And that comes from somebody who likes Power Girl and Amanda Conner’s art.

DIDN’T LIKE

– Wendy’s is doing this new line of “boneless wings,” which might be better called “nuggets in sauce.” They taste like you would expect nuggets in sauce to taste. The Asian Chicken ones are my least favorite, as they are nuggets basically dipped in a mix of honey and cheap, not particularly spicy sriracha. The Buffalo ones are worse. Given that Wendy’s has what is easily my favorite fast-food chicken item of all time (the Spicy Chicken sandwich), this comes as a disappointment.

SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.

BIGWIG: You know, other junior executives would have folded in the face of an economic downturn, but not my indefatigable team of four executives.
(The FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE looks around, confused.)
FIRST: Four comes after three, right?
BIGWIG: Oh, yes, that’s right. I fired Four because he ate my turkey sandwich. Or possibly because he greenlit Land of the Lost. It’s so hard to remember.
SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: That’s right. You have a lot on your plate.
FIRST: Except for the turkey sandwich.
THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Also, you fired Four three years ago.
BIGWIG: And I care about that why? Four was dead weight. Look what you three have done! One, G-Force will break the $100 million dollar mark this weekend. I admit, when you came to me and said that you had a movie about mutant guinea pigs with super-death exercise balls, I was skeptical, but I cannot argue with your results.
FIRST: In the sequel, the guinea pigs will fart more! It’ll be even better with more farting! I actually want to show you some of the concept sketches: we have a new character, a hamster named Farty. You’ll never guess what he does!
BIGWIG: I’m sure. Two, The Ugly Truth continues to be one of the romantic comedy hits of the season, and another notch on your impressive string in this area.
SECOND: Wasn’t hard, boss. It works because it acknowledges what we all know: women like shoes, men like to fuck.
BIGWIG: Yes. And Three, you’ve had some success in the romance area as well, haven’t you? The opening for The Time Traveler’s Wife is excellent, and I put that down to your advice to change the book’s original plot and give it a happy ending.
THIRD: I was being sarcastic when I said that.
BIGWIG: Regardless. Given your series of successes, gentlemen, I have decided to combine your powers for our next romantic comedy box office success. We have Kristen Bell under contract. Everything else is on the table. Go.
FIRST: Kristen Bell is a witch and she falls in love with a man-witch!
SECOND: She falls in love with a Manwich?
THIRD: I vote we think of something else.
BIGWIG: Perhaps, but One has a point. I think adding a layer of magical fantasy is exactly what this prospective romantic comedy needs. Think outside the box, gentlemen. Start with Ms. Bell’s character being a standard anal-retentive uptight romantic comedy heroine who needs a good man to loosen her up and enjoy life, and go from there. But outside the box!
SECOND: …she goes to Italy!
THIRD: Italy is outside the box?
SECOND: It’s outside the continental United States. That’s like a box.
FIRST: And while she is in Italy, she becomes a witch!
BIGWIG: No witches.
FIRST: While she is in Italy, she meets Popeye!
BIGWIG: No Popeye.
FIRST: Aw.
SECOND: While she’s in Italy she meets a hunky guy and falls for him, but secretly he is a vampire?
THIRD: Vampires are played out.
BIGWIG: Also, movies that feature clean-cut American girls falling for Euro-studs tend to tank. The American audience wants to see Americans boinking Americans, not foreigners.
THIRD: “Boinking”?
BIGWIG: This movie will be PG-13.
SECOND: I got it! She goes to Italy, meets a hunky American who is also in Italy, and they have an Italian romance without any of the annoying Italian-ness.
BIGWIG: An acceptable framework, Two, but on its own it is a little bland. This is why One is here: we need something unexpected so that the movie has a hook. Something we can sell in a thirty-minute ad.
FIRST: …there is a magic love fountain!
SECOND: (snickers)
BIGWIG: Be quiet, Two. Continue, One.
FIRST: If you jump in the fountain and make a wish, you fall in love with somebody! But she jumps in the fountain and then meets the guy and she’s not sure if it’s true love or if it’s just fountain love. Is that good?
BIGWIG: It’s a start, but it doesn’t have a wacky misunderstanding. Three? Can you find room for a wacky misunderstanding or three?
THIRD (sighs) Look, what if the fountain –
FIRST: The magic love fountain.
THIRD: What if the magic love fountain works in a way that lets multiple people fall in love with her all at the same time? Then she could have to fend off inappropriate advances from somebody who clearly will never be the lead in a romantic comedy. It’s creepy but safe.
BIGWIG: Excellent, Three. I believe we have Dax Shepard available for just such an occasion.
SECOND: In addition to Dax Shepard, maybe we could have some greasy Italians fall in love with her as well? Then we can have Dax being weird funny and Italians being greasy funny. It’ll mix things up.
FIRST: Dax Whoever isn’t enough! I say we put in lots of comedy weirdos! Let’s put in the guy who does that thing, and the short fat old guy, and the guy who’s all “come on!”
BIGWIG: …Three, what is he saying?
THIRD: He’s saying we should also cast Jon Heder, Danny Devito and Will Arnett as other people who fall in love with Kirsten Bell because of the magic fountain.
BIGWIG: And our romantic lead is… one second, let me see who I have in my Filofax… Josh DuHamel owes me a favour. Is he acceptably bland leading-man material? I’ve never seen him in anything.
SECOND: He’s got abs like a Greek god and the personality of oatmeal. He’s perfect!
THIRD: And I assume that the movie will tease that Josh DuHamel only falls in love with the girl because of the magic fountain, but in reality he never has anything to do with the magic fountain and his love is genuine?
BIGWIG: But of course. All right, gentlemen, it looks like we have this all ready to go. Call the screenwriters, throw in some Italian-themed comedy moments and maybe some minor male nudity, and I think we’re good to go.
SECOND: I’ll tell them to include an Italian wedding. Nothing like a wedding for making fun of ethnic people! Especially Italians.
THIRD: Okay, I knew about your issues with women, but what do you have against Italians?
SECOND: They know what they did.

So I went to see G.I. Joe and don’t belive the critics because this movie is fantastic. Unless the critics said it was good. Then you can believe them. Those critics! Never know what they’re going to be critical about!

Anyway I know a lot of you are skeptical so sit back. I am going to tell you ALLLLLL about the movie.

So the movie starts out in medieval France and am I thinking “wait, did Stephen Sommers decide to tie in Van Helsing to the G.I. Joe mythos?” and then I spend a few seconds thinking about what would happen if Snake-Eyes fought Dracula (answer: he would chop off Dracula’s head three times before it hit the ground), but really this is just a flashback to how one of Destro’s ancestors got caught by the French in olden times and they put a mask on him. Then, Destro’s ancestor became King of France when musketeers rescued him! No, that didn’t happen either.

Anyway, in modern times, Destro – who isn’t Destro yet, he’s just some Scotsman – has invented nanites that eat things! But then you have a safety command to disable the nanites and make them stop eating things. So MacDestro has basically invented a Grey Goo Gun, which I think they stole from a Paranoia expansion. Anyway, NATO is totally happy that they have paid for this weapon that could destroy the entire world if anything went wrong and they send Duke and Ripcord along with a bunch of GIs to transport it safely out of MacDestro’s weapons factory in Krygystan.

This is when Cobra (who aren’t actually Cobra yet either because this movie is called “The Rise of Cobra” and if they were already Cobra how would they rise?) show up. They kill all the heroic soldiers because they have a super-plane that can maneuver like, well, a super-plane, and their super-plane has this sort of kinetic ray gun which blasts people with force-blasts which, and this may be a side-effect of the kinetic stuff, right before they hit something force the target to go into slow-motion. And all the Cobra soldiers have handheld versions of the kinetic ray gun! Duke and Ripcord barely survive, and then the Baroness jumps out of the super-plane and grabs the briefcase of nano-death-warheads, and it turns out Duke and the Baroness know each other!

I’ll skip ahead a bit and explain this right now: see, before The War (in East Africa, I guess), Duke and the Baroness (who used to be a blonde!) were going to get married, but Duke shipped out just after proposing, with Ripcord (I guess that “Ripcord” is, like, his birthname or something, because everybody calls him that always – maybe he is Ripcord P. Sykes, or similar) and Anna’s brother Max (or possibly Rex, I forget), but Maxorrex got blown up in The War so Anna was distraught and Duke felt guilty and they split up. (There are a lot of flashbacks in this movie.)

Anyway. THAT is when G.I. Joe shows up with THEIR super-plane and they kill lots of Cobras. Snake-Eyes stabs a bunch of them and Mr. Eko (who is British!) shoots a lot of them and Scarlett has trouble killing one lousy Cobra because she’s a girl, see. (In fairness, we are told that Scarlett graduated college when she was twelve, which explains all of the brilliant strategies she comes up with in the movie, like… uh… I’m sure there was one.)

Duke and Ripcord get taken back to The Pit, which is in Egypt for some reason, and they learn about the top-secret existence of G.I. Joe, which is a massive support organization apparently dedicated to mostly just sending out one team of about six people over and over again. General Hawk (which is not his real name but everybody calls him that for some reason) explains how at first it was just the United States doing the joeing, but then a bunch of other countries signed on and now everybody sends their best military operatives to G.I. Joe. (General Hawk’s butler is the best soldier the Maldives have to offer! The quartermaster is the pride of Togo! The janitors are trained Maori warriors!) MacDestro appears in a hologram (there are a lot of people appearing in holograms in this movie, it is great because it’s like a phone that you don’t have to crosscut to use) and tricks the Joes into revealing the location of the Pit, because nobody knows that MacDestro is evil yet.

Then General Hawk says that he invited Duke to join G.I. Joe a few years ago in Thailand, and Duke says he doesn’t remember, and Hawk says he totally did. They did not flashback at this point, but what I bet happened is that Duke and Hawk were at the same Thai stripper orgy and totally partying down and sometime in the middle Hawk, totally wasted, turns to Duke and says “man you should totally join G.I. Joe, it would be a blast” but Duke thought it was a sort of sex act thing, like the mile high club, and did some freaky-ass shit with his strippers, and Hawk was all “….dude.”

Anyway, Duke and Ripcord demand to be let in G.I. Joe because they want REVENGE, and Hawk says no, but then Duke says “aha I know who the Baroness is” and Hawk is convinced by his deliberate withholding of vital strategic information that this guy needs to be on the most important soldier team ever. Also, Ripcord thinks Scarlett is hot but she is all “science says that love makes no sense so I am a robot beep beep boop.”

Duke and Ripcord start training, and all of a sudden Brendan Fraser shows up and says things like “he wants to try again?” and “They’re Joes, man.” And then he disappears, not to be seen again for the rest of the movie. I am not sure why Brendan Fraser shows up, but I have two theories.

1.) Brendan Fraser is wearing a little beret. Therefore, he is Flint.

2.) Brendan Fraser is actually Brendan Fraser and in the G.I. Joe universe Brendan Fraser is a member of G.I. Joe, much in the same way that Sgt. Slaughter was. Like, G.I. Joe was sitting around one week and somebody popped in a copy of The Mummy and they were all watching it and somebody said, “hey, we need this guy. What if we have to fight a mummy?” And then somebody else was like “And what if one of us was actually raised in a bombshelter until the age of thirty and suffers from severe culture shock? He could help with that too!” So they invited Brendan Fraser to join G.I. Joe, and he spends most of his time hanging around the Joe compound saying things like “They’re Joes, man,” and hoping he never actually gets sent into combat because he would die.

Duke aces all his tests. Ripcord does okay. So they say “Duke, you’re the best candidate we’ve ever had. Ripcord… you’re okay, and normally we would flunk you for not meeting our super-high standards, but you DO know how to unjam the pinball machine in the lounge, so you can stay too.”

Meanwhile, Not-Cobra prepares their attack. Cobra Commander (who is not called that yet because they aren’t actually Cobra yet) shows MacDestro how he can use nanites to turn people into totally loyal super-soldiers with no fear who are immune to snake bites (because if there’s one thing you want to be prepared for, it’s the enemy throwing snakes at you). And they are going to attack!

In The Pit, The Un-Cobra attacks with big drilly things and kills this one Dutch soldier girl who got a line previously. Storm Shadow cuts up General Hawk with his swords and looks disapproving when Zartan kills the Dutch soldier girl, because slaughtering millions with a nanite bomb is one thing, but come on, if you’re gonna stab somebody, have some standards. There is a whole lot of fighting and blowing shit up and Cobra escapes with the nanites and G.I. Joe looks stupid. Scarlett is all MAD because she couldn’t use her university degrees to beat up the Baroness, but Ripcord is there for her emotionally and she smiles so now you know they’re IN LOVE.

Meanwhile, the President is concerned! And for some reason, British. INTERNATIONAL HEROES! Meanwhile, Not Yet Cobra Commander implants Zartan (this is the first point we learn he is in fact Zartan, although given his fetish for putting on dead people’s clothes you probably could have guessed) with nanites so he can have shapechange powers like in the cartoon. Nanites! Is there anything they can’t do?

MacDestro still hates the French for what they did to Van Helsing hundreds of years ago, and he needs to use the Baroness’ Baron husband, who runs a particle accelerator, to make the inactive nanite warheads into active super-nanite death bombs. MacDestro sends Baroness and Storm Shadow and some Diet Cobra troopers to Paris (where the particle accelerator is – Paris has lots of them!) but SUPER COINCIDENCE this is exactly when G.I. Joe’s crack intel division figure out that the Baroness is married to the Baron (it only took them a few weeks!) so they send the usual bunch of guys to Paris too. Baroness and Storm Shadow get the nanite bombs made up and kill some people and head to their truck, but Breaker (who is that French Arab-lookin guy who is in that movie, you know the one) sees them and the Joes give chase!

Duke and Ripcord have these super-accelerator suits which let them do all sorts of amazing things like dodge rockets and jump through trains and cause incredible amounts of unneccessary harm to helpless bystanders, but even with the super-accelerator suits they never so much as get close to the Diet Cobra SUV of Doom which has rockets and a snowplow and armor and shit like that. Snake-Eyes, meanwhile, gets on top of the SUV without trying hard and effortlessly dodges when the bad guys throw cars at him, because Duke and Ripcord are bitches and Snake-Eyes is king shit.

Anyway all you really need to know is that the SortaCobras manage to blow up the Eiffel Tower with nanites and Duke gets taken prisoner by the ChupaCobras but they don’t kill him because they have evil plans for him. Meanwhile the French are really really really upset and want the Joes decommissioned and also they kick the Joes out of France FOREVER. Breaker is particularly distraught about this, possibly because he doesn’t realize that he can get all the trashy Euro-tail he wants in Amsterdam. Mr. Eko (who is British!) is impassive. Ripcord just wants to go save Duke. And fuck Scarlett.

At the North Pole where the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cobra base is, Duke manages to send a signal to G.I. Joe. General Hawk is all “well, they said you had to be decommissioned once you GOT BACK TO BASE and I said I WOULD SEND YOU BACK TO THE BASE but I didn’t say I would do it immediately or ever!” And then he sends the guys who had incredibly maneuverable man-tanks and still failed to stop a couple of terrorists from blowing up the Eiffel Tower as his advance strike team, because he believes in them.

Meanwhile, under the sea in the North Pole is the C0br4 base and Duke is going to get the full-on nanite-zombie-slave treatment. MacDestro gloats that Duke doesn’t even understand that destroying cities with the warheads isn’t the point and neither is putting MacDestro in charge. MacDestro has an EVEN SECRETER plan! And then he gloats that now he has the Baroness! But Baroness is conflicted!

Privately, Not Quite Cobra Commander gloats as well, and reveals to Duke that he is actually Maxorrex! Which is not surprising really because you know Joseph Gordon Levitt when you see him, even if you missed the five thousand articles that mention that he was playing Cobra Commander. But Channing Tatum really brings it in this scene because he is all “NOOOO MAX(orrex) YOU BASTARD.” Maxorrex explains that when Duke thought he died, what actually happened is that he met Dr. Mindbender and instantly realized that science is awesome when you kill people with it.

But then Baroness interrupts the evil nanite-slaving because she still loves Duke deep down! And then it turns out that ALL ALONG Baroness was in fact a nanite zombie slave the whole time! This is awesome because instead of having Baroness be an independent woman who has chosen a malicious path, this confirms that secretly all along she wanted to be a good upstanding wife and have babies and salute the flag and be blonde.

Anyway Maxorrex threatens his OWN SISTER (eeeeevil) and then McDestro launches the nanite missiles. Luckily the Joes (all five of them) have shown up at the top of the undersea ice base, and they see the rockets taking off! They’re too late! But wait, as it turns out MacDestro built the only fighter plane in the whole world that can catch the missiles AND he left it right in the ice cave at the entrance to the base where anybody could take it! Which was pretty sloppy of MacDestro, I tell you what. Anyhow this is awesome because now Ripcord gets to fly the plane because all movie he has been saying “I love planes” and “planes are great” and “I wish I was a plane” and “planey planey plane plane.” But not before he makes out with Scarlett! HOW YOU LIKE THAT SCIENCE NOW?

Snake-Eyes, Scarlett and Breaker descend into the Cobra: Year One undersea base while Mr. Eko (who is British!) goes off to find the other three billion Joes who are advancing on the ice base in war submarines and fight a lot of people and kill a lot of people. Meanwhile, Duke and Baroness fight a lot of people and kill a lot of people. Then Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes have a ninja fight which is even better than the ninja fights they had when they were kids! (You get to see a lot of the latter in this movie, because who doesn’t like to see nine-year-olds in bloody mortal combat, am I right?) And MacDestro gets horribly mutilated by burning!

Meanwhile, Mr. Eko (who is British!) and the G.I. Joe Anonymous Assault Squad get in a massive sub fight with the Almost Cobra Troopers and it is the best thing ever. One guy yells “I’m hit!” and then his sub explodes! Other guys’ subs explode too but they don’t get any dialogue. Way to go, Anonymous Joe #461!

Ripcord catches up to the missiles in his plane and can’t figure out how to shoot them, and this is when Scarlett gets her moment, showing that graduating university when she was twelve totally paid off because she guesses that the firing control is voice-activated AND that it’s in Celtic, which she happens to know! Scarlett is all “and they told me my linguistics major could never save the world, well HA ON THEM.” Ripcord blows up the first of the two missiles, but one is still headed for Washington!

The President hustles into a bunker… but it’s a bunker built by MacDestro! OOOooooOOOOoooooOOOOO!

Snake-Eyes kills Storm Shadow, or more accurately “stabs him and then Storm Shadow falls through to the icy waters below.” But there’s no way a ninja could survive THAT. Meanwhile, Maxorrex and MacDestro escape to their escape submarine to escape. Maxorrex uses nanites to give MacDestro a metal face like in the cartoons! (Nanites can do anything!) Then he puts on a helmet that, I have to admit, looks kinda like a penis, and more or less says he is Cobra Commander and he is in charge now.

Ripcord misses the second missile and it’s oh so close to destroying Washington, so he chases it down the Potomac River and then blows it up and catches all the nanites with his plane and flies them up into the upper atmosphere where they, I dunno, freeze or something. Meanwhile, one of the Secret Service agents guarding the President in the bunker is actually a nanite slave and he kills all the other agents and the President is scared (and British) and then a secret door in the bunker opens and Zartan says hello! Boy, Zartan sure is lucky that Ripcord barely managed to destroy that nanite missile.

The base starts blowing up and Mr. Eko (who is British!) warns all the Joes to get away because the ice above is going to crack and fall down into the ocean, which I thought was odd because ice, as I understand it, traditionally floats on top of water, but maybe it is special ice Cobra made with nanites. Anyway the Joes all pull away from the base and the Joes still in the base escape the base in their submarines and Duke and Baroness chase after Cobra Commander and MacDestro and finally Cobra Commander is all “my submarine is bigger than yours is” and Duke is all “well look at this army I have with me.” OH SNAP!

So Cobra Commander and MacDestro get tossed in jail. Baroness is in jail too but it’s only until they can get rid of all the nanites in her that made her evil and capable of killing thousands of people. Duke and Ripcord are now full-time Joes, period. Breaker is still not happy that he can never go to France. And Zartan is now the President of the United States! That’s an awesome setup for G.I. Joe: The Revenge Of The Rise of Cobra!

Holy shit that’s awesome.

ITEM! Marvel Comics have the rights to Marvelman! Oh my god, how amazing is that? Marvel, Marvelman, it’s like God intended this to be! Okay, so maybe Marvel doesn’t necessarily yet have the rights to the Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman stories that are the only reason anybody other than the most devoted of British comics nerds gives a shit about Marvelman, but I’m sure that twenty years of lawsuits will all go away now. And if they don’t – well, given how well the Sentry has proven that a Superman analogue character can fit into the Marvel Universe, I know I can’t wait for a Captain Marvel (Shazam, not black lady or alien guy) analogue to fit into the Marvel Universe! I totally bet Norman Osborn hires him and then WHOOPSIE Kid Marvelman rapes the entire population of Melbourne to death. And then Hawkeye will go on TV and say “see? Norman Osborn is bad.” All this and more, brought to you by the pending Marvelman creative team of Zeb Wells and Phil Jiminez!

ITEM! Longbox announced a whole new bunch of companies that make, like, one comic apiece signing on to their digital download service. Meanwhile, Marvel announced their brilliant new digital delivery content model: comics on iTunes! Well, sort of comics. They are comics with “animated panels and voice-over work from popular actors.” (I bet you didn’t know Tony Stark sounds just like Seth Green!) Given how critically brilliant that whole “Watchmen The Motion Comic” thing was, I’m sure this will be every bit as good! And come on, it’s Marvel Comics – is there a comics company with a better track record of digital delivery than Marvel?

ITEM! DC Comics has finally acquired the rights to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Dan Didio explains he’s been trying to get that done for a long time. (This may or may not explain a whole lot about DC Comics.) Apparently the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents will be brought into the DC Universe, which will be great because look how well that worked for the Milestone superheroes!

ITEM! Red She-Hulk was originally going to be Dark She-Hulk but they changed it at the last minute. This is all part of the plan for World War Hulks next year! The year after that comes Civil Wars! And then possibly Red Reigns. Says Joe Quesada: “Pluralization is the new dark. Or possibly red.” New titles from Marvel will include renaming Deadpool Redpool. He will also get a new costume, which will be even more red than previously!

ITEM! Jeff Smith does more Bone comics. (I actually have nothing sarcastic to say about this, other than possibly a potential comparison to The Silmarillion.)

ITEM! Did you know Lost and Chuck and Heroes are coming back for another season? Well, they are! I bet you didn’t know that! The producers had special panels to tell fans that the upcoming seasons would be “more awesome than ever” and that “we’ll tie together a lot of unanswered questions,” and “you’ll be blown away.” Amazingly enough, the producers of Jonah Hex, Twilight: New Moon, Iron Man 2, Avatar, Tron Legacy, and Prince of Persia all said exactly the same thing! There’s going to be a whole lot of blown away fans next year! (The producers of Glee also said all of this, but the fans just asked them where the vampire zombies were.)

ITEM! PRACTICALLY NOTHING EVER HAPPENS OR IS REVEALED AT SAN DIEGO THAT FUCKING MATTERS. THE ENTIRE FUCKING THING IS LIKE A MOVIE TRAILER THAT LASTS FOR A FUCKING WEEK!

LIKED

– The Hurt Locker is really, really good; tense action sequences combined with an outstanding performance by Jeremy Renner make for a goddamn fantastic movie. (Of course, the movie’s best sequence is the sniper battle – not in small part because that is when Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce and David Morse show up as British commandoes in a “hey, we’re actual movie stars” moment.) Kathryn Bigelow deserves more work than she gets.

– I enjoyed Race to Witch Mountain more than I probably should have. At some point somebody is going to make a movie worthy of the Rock’s talents; he’s simply so effortless in light action comedy flicks in a way that most actors simply aren’t. (Possibly because he is very big.) Race isn’t that movie, but it’s good enough for popcorn and a rental.

– The Blackest Night issue of Green Lantern was more what I wanted out of Blackest Night: IE, superheroes beating the shit out of super-zombies and vice-versa.

DIDN’T LIKE

– With each week I grow less enthused about Wednesday Comics. The Superman strip is just a goddamn embarrassment; in three weeks there has been approximately 700 percent more “Superman whining about his life” than “Superman punching things.” Bear in mind that this is the strip running in USA Today – somebody at DC seriously thought that Superman whining was the best possible thing to expose DC Comics to a wide audience. The Batman strip is only marginally better than the Superman one is; I don’t think it’s too much for Batman to do something in three weeks of a Batman strip. The Metamorpho strip, more and more, seems like Neil Gaiman slumming for kicks (in a bad way). There are still good points (Paul Pope’s Adam Strange, Kyle Baker’s Hawkman), but they’re increasingly few.

(500) Days of Summer is quite simply the best film of the year so far.

It is absolutely perfect in any aspect I can think of: intelligent script, ingenious story construction, excellent acting, clever direction, you name it. After I saw it I was seriously tempted to get a ticket for the next immediate showing so that I could watch it again to study its structure. I’ve been sitting down for the last half hour trying to find faults in it and I just. Can’t. Do. It.

It’s more than just a postmodern take on Annie Hall,, and every reviewer saying it “takes the tropes of romantic comedy and satirizes them” needs to be taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot.

PS. Also contains the best last line to a movie since The Apartment.

PPS. No, I’m not kidding.