Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Åkerman, Adam DeVine, Thomas Middleditch, Alia Shawkat, Alexander Ludwig, Nina Dobrev
Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB) A young woman grieving the loss of her mother, a famous scream queen from the 1980s, finds herself pulled into the world of her mom’s most famous movie. Reunited, the women must fight off the film’s maniacal killer.
My Opinion:
I enjoyed this. My enjoyment was only affected slightly by my hubby hating this & complaining throughout it. Sorry, dude – I thought it was okay! Flawed & certainly not perfect but fun and a great concept that was far more original than we usually get in the horror genre.
I’m going to start with the flaws. Mainly: Adam DeVine. I’m sorry but I can’t stand him. I happen to love Jack Black (I know a lot of people hate him) but why is DeVine acting like a horrible impersonation of Jack Black in this? If you hate Jack Black, please tell me that you hated DeVine in this as well. It’s like if Jack Black was still his outrageous self but completely unfunny in any way whatsoever. It was actually painful to watch. It was a shame, really, as I think there’s a potentially brilliant film hidden beneath the surface here that doesn’t quite break through due mostly to some of the performances (but mainly DeVine’s).
Other than DeVine, the rest of the movie’s flaws were pretty minor. I did find most of the characters weak or slightly annoying but, luckily, our two main ones (Taissa Farmiga & Malin Åkerman) were good. But I suppose that’s kind of the point as this is a horror comedy spoofing horror movies of the Eighties and all the silly clichés that go along with them, including everyone but the “final girl” being expendable.
I guess the biggest problem, really, is that the movie Scream already did the horror spoof thing with a much more clever script than The Final Girls. But there have now been plenty of horror comedies that spoof 70s & 80s horrors and I do love a good horror comedy so I still enjoyed this movie. I already did a list of My Top Ten Horror Comedies and The Final Girls comes close to being added. I’ll probably add it to that list & at least give it an honorable mention but DeVine sucks some of the “comedy” part out of the film’s genre classification.
As far as the story goes, I truly appreciated the originality involved in the concept of the teenage daughter of a scream queen ending up in her mother’s most famous 80’s slasher film. I was interested to see that this film was co-written by Joshua John Miller, someone from my day & age (I’m the age of the scream queen mother in this). He was in Halloween III, River’s Edge, Near Dark, Teen Witch, the cheesy Class Of 1999, and my favorite episode of Highway To Heaven! No, seriously – I liked that silly show. Anyway, I found this film to be an interesting mash-up of Generation X vs Current Teen and I thought that worked well. I probably connected to it as it was written & directed by those my age who also grew up on 80’s slashers.
Most of all, I really loved the mother/daughter relationship between Taissa Farmiga & Malin Åkerman. It was actually quite heartbreaking when the mother died (in the beginning & the plot synopsis so not a spoiler). When the daughter is reunited with her mother within her mother’s slasher film, the look of happiness & love on the daughter’s face was great. It was genuinely sweet & heartfelt for a horror comedy so they did do a great job with the two most important characters: the “Final Girls”. And I absolutely loved the climactic scene when the mother dances to Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes while her daughter watches. It was lovely & bittersweet & seriously one of my favorite movie scenes in recent years. And I’ve always liked that song and now I like it even more & will always think of that scene when I hear it. I’d love for the writers & director to get together & make a sequel to this (being a spoof of “80’s slasher clichés”, it’s obviously left open for a sequel). I’d happily watch Part 2. Just please leave Adam DeVine out of it… !
Here are three quickies for three shitty movies. I wasted enough time watching them so I don’t want to spend much time writing about them. Here we go!
Tank Girl (1995)
Directed by Rachel Talalay
Based on Tank Girl comic by Alan Martin & Jamie Hewlett
Starring: Lori Petty, Ice-T, Naomi Watts, Malcolm McDowell, Iggy Pop, Scott Coffey, James Hong, Don Harvey, Jeff Kober, Reg E Cathey
Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia) Tank Girl is set in a drought-ravaged Australia, years after a catastrophic impact event. It follows the antihero Tank Girl (Petty) as she, Jet Girl (Watts), and genetically modified supersoldiers called the Rippers fight “Water & Power”, an oppressive corporation led by Kesslee (McDowell).
My Opinion:
I recently read a collection of early Tank Girl comics (which I reviewed yesterday HERE) so figured I better finally watch the movie adaptation afterwards despite it being pretty widely trashed. While reading Tank Girl, I kept thinking “how could this actually work as a movie?”. The answer, of course, is that this movie doesn’t work. What a mess…
I’ll start with some positives: I didn’t mind Lori Petty as Tank Girl and thought she had the right look & attitude. I’ll try to ignore the fact that she’s not at all Australian! I didn’t love her as Tank Girl (I’m sure someone else might have been better although I’m not sure who) but I didn’t hate her. She seemed to have fun with the role, anyway. Tank Girl is an awesome character and I think that does come through in the movie even though they don’t quite capture her spirit. And, um… Another positive?? Let’s see… The soundtrack is pretty good! Although I would’ve liked much more punk plus they should’ve tried to use bands mentioned in the comic (but a “score by Ennio Morricone” actually wouldn’t have worked even if the comic liked to credit him with its score). 😉
In the comic, there wasn’t much of a storyline. Tank Girl was daft (and usually drunk) and the whole thing was crazy & all over the place. I liked that. I’ve only read the earliest of the Tank Girl comics so don’t know how many I missed or if there’s actually a similar story to the one in the movie at some point but I didn’t think it worked. The story & the script sucked. Malcolm McDowell was a pretty crap villain and… Naomi Watts was in this?! I didn’t know that beforehand – she must be embarrassed now.
I wondered how they’d deal with Tank Girl’s boyfriend being a kangaroo and, although the movie doesn’t really manage to pull it off, I’m not sure how you ever could portray that in a film without it looking cheesy as hell. I like this bit of trivia at IMDB:
“MGM insisted on cutting a scene of Tank Girl and her kangaroo boyfriend Booga reclining after sex, despite spending $5,000 on a prosthetic penis for Booga.”
I don’t know what else to say about this movie. It just didn’t work but, to be fair, I think it’s a very hard comic to adapt. I do wonder if it would work nowadays with the right director since comic book movies have gotten a lot better and “darker”. I’d like to see a violent, R-rated version. Like Dredd but with a sense of humor? I don’t know – it still probably wouldn’t work but I did read that this movie was very heavily cut & that the director, Rachel Talalay, had no control over that so I suppose that didn’t help. I’m giving it a higher rating than I think it deserves because I really like the character of Tank Girl and, at the very least, I don’t think the movie tainted the character. But I’d like to see that fake kangaroo penis.
My Rating: 5/10
Class Of 1999 (1989)
Directed by Mark L Lester
Starring: Bradley Gregg, Traci Lind, Malcolm McDowell, Stacy Keach, Patrick Kilpatrick, Pam Grier, John P Ryan, Darren E Burrows, Joshua John Miller, Sean Sullivan
Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB) Robot teachers have been secretly placed in the schools where the students have run riot. The teachers do a good job of controlling the unruly youngsters, until they go too far and some students get suspicious.
My Opinion:
On paper (or on a screen since that’s how we read everything now), this movie sounds awesome. To me, at least. The synopsis (killer robot teachers in a high school!), the cool poster & the fact that it’s from the 1980s had me all excited to watch this movie that I’d somehow never even heard of. Well, damn – it’s not good. What a disappointment! I was hoping it would at least be a low budget sci-fi cult classic type of thing like Hardware or something (yes! I got yet another Hardware mention into a post!). I didn’t hate it but it’s not very good despite having so much potential to be something I’d like.
One thing I always love about watching movies from this time period is seeing familiar faces from my favorite era and Class Of 1999 has lots of these. Look – a Tank Girl connection with Malcolm McDowell! He plays the school’s principal in this – I think Hollywood had him on speed dial for these types of movies back then. The movie’s hero (Bradley Gregg – a teenage delinquent who’s actually a “good guy”) is in two of my favorite movies: he’s Eyeball Chambers in Stand By Meand also the character whose death topped My Top Ten Nightmare On Elm Street Deaths in Dream Warriors!!!
The robot teachers are played by Patrick Kilpatrick, John P Ryan & Pam Grier (with dodgy-looking fake robot boobs). Stacy Keach is the main baddie in charge of the robots and for some reason seductively eats a banana? I immediately recognized Sean Sullivan as the drunk one who Garth doesn’t want spewing in the Mirth Mobile in Wayne’s World. Finally, Bradley Gregg’s sweet little delinquent brother is played by Joshua John Miller(!), who (whom?) I know very well from lots of 80’s movies & TV shows including my favorite episode of Highway To Heaven. Haha! Highway To Heaven!! I was such a nerd. I just looked him up & he co-wrote the screenplay for The Final Girls. What?! I should really try to watch that…
To be honest, I’m not sure what actually made this movie so bad. Yes, the acting is pretty rubbish and the special effects look dodgy and the script isn’t the greatest but I still can’t help but look at these images and the overall plot & cast and think that this is exactly my type of movie. I think it didn’t help that, when it started and we saw the exaggerated “futuristic 1999 punk kids”, it reminded me of the teenagers in Class Of Nuke ‘Em High. I’m pretty damn sure that no movie ever wants to make you immediately think of a Troma film.
Also, I watched this and the Bronies documentary very late one night as they were both about to disappear from Netflix. I kept falling asleep through both of them so I may have not fully given this movie a chance. Okay – I think I’m now trying to talk myself into liking Class Of 1999 for some reason?? It’s an okay film but extremely dated and would only possibly be appreciated by someone my age who likes this sort of thing. I’m glad I watched it but I’m not too bothered that it has disappeared from Netflix. I’m sure I’d have appreciated it more if I’d seen it when I was 15 or so. Has anyone seen the director’s previous film, Class Of 1984, which sounds like the exact same movie minus the robots? It has a higher IMDB rating. Hmm… I’ll watch that too if it shows up on Netflix!
My Rating: 5.5/10
Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (2012)
Directed by Laurent Malaquais
Produced by Anglie Brown, Morgan Peterson, Michael Brockhoff, Tara Strong, Lauren Faust & John de Lancie
Starring: A bunch of bronies!
Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia) Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (formerly titled BronyCon: The Documentary) is a 2012 documentary film centering on bronies, the adult fans of the 2010 animated television series, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
My Opinion:
I said I didn’t want to waste much time talking about these movies but I did blather on a bit in my other two reviews. Well, this one will truly be short as there’s not much to say. I find the “Bronies” thing sort of fascinating as I still don’t understand why a bunch of grown men have supposedly latched onto My Little Pony but this documentary doesn’t really explore the “why” at all. It’s just not a very good or in-depth documentary and was quite boring considering its odd topic.
I actually don’t remember if the above guy was in the documentary but this is one of many photos that come up if you Google “Bronies” (I don’t think the guys I used in the photo at the very top were in it). You’d think I’d remember if he was but I can barely remember a thing about this now. That’s the problem – the documentary failed to make a bizarre topic at all interesting. I do, however, remember the below guy as I kept thinking he looked like Corey Feldman.
I’d say that you’d probably only want to watch this documentary if you’re a fan of My Little Pony. I actually found the bits with the voice actors (Tara Strong and, oh my god – Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation, John de Lancie!) & the creator of the Friendship Is Magic series (Lauren Faust) more interesting than the interviews with the fans of the show.
Not surprisingly, one of the Bronies talked a little bit of the bullying he’d had to endure thanks to being a fan of the show (if I remember correctly, he had a gun pulled on him? God bless America!). That kind of thing always pisses me off because, although it may seem strange to a lot of us, these guys aren’t exactly hurting anyone by liking My Little Pony. I guess it was a little disappointing that the psychological aspect of what exactly it is about this show that has apparently drawn some grown men to it wasn’t explored but, hey, this was someone’s project and they did a decent enough job gathering together fans & those involved with the show. I’m sure it didn’t have a huge budget… I’d be interested to know what My Little Pony fans thought of it but I must admit that I don’t personally know any adult fans (although I did love old school My Little Pony as a young girl!).
This is the one I had!!!
My Rating: 5/10
I figured I should end this post with something from the Tank Girl soundtrack, which had potential but could’ve been much better overall. This is one of my two favorites from the soundtrack (I’ll post the other for Music Video Friday this week): Richard Hell And The Voidoids – Blank Generation:
Cinema Parrot Disco 