The FilmNerds Blog

Back from a longer than intended absence (in which time one summer movie was released with minimal fanfare — “Robin Hood” — and if you’ll permit me a one-phrase review, I would say that it wasn’t as bad as you’ve heard but suffers from a crippling lack of purpose or novelty), as work responsibilities piled up over a short amount of time.

“MACGRUBER”

Starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph and Val Kilmer

Directed by Jorma Taccone

Probably as much of a followup film to the underrated “Hot Rod” as we’re ever going to get from The Lonely Island, director Jorma Taccone — one-third of the comedy group responsible for the album “Incredibad” and those digital shorts on Saturday Night Live — packs the very silly “MacGruber” full of absurd gags and ’80s action-movie humor. While it’s not as frequently hilarious as “Hot Rod,” “MacGruber” gets the job done more often than not, with some over-the-top silliness courtesy of scenarists Taccone, star Will Forte and SNL writer John Solomon.

As you probably know, “MacGruber” springs from those 30-second sketches on SNL starring Forte, Kristen Wiig and usually whatever guest star is hosting the show that week, in which the MacGyver roman a clef MacGruber (Forte) is faced with the task of defusing a bomb, and, inevitably, fails to do so. So you would be forgiven for questioning how such a skit translates to a 90-odd minute film, but let’s just say that it’s not all explosives humor and leave it at that — “MacGruber” has the ’80s action movie in its crosshairs (so to speak) and skewers it with increasing absurdity.

MacGruber (no first name is ever given) is a former Special Forces guy called back into action by his former C.O., General Faith (Powers Boothe), after the heinous Dieter von Cunth (Val Kilmer, in “Top Secret” mode) allegedly seizes a nuclear warhead. Cunth is the same person who killed MacGruber’s wife (Maya Rudolph) — during their wedding, on the altar — so this time, it’s personal.

With a crack team of badasses — and then, following an amazing sight gag, with the young, by-the-book Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and Vicki St. Elmo (Wiig) — MacGruber sets out to “pound some Cunth.” And that’s all you need to know, and hopefully that line from the movie will give you a general idea of the sort of humor contained herein, because the plot is as loose as I described above, and really just exists to hang all sorts of scatalogical, sexual and violent jokes upon.

Your mileage may vary, but the absurd non sequiturs and sudden bursts of violence had me giggling like a maniac in the theater. Will Forte is a comic maelstrom, chewing every bit of scenery in his path, and his costars are wise enough to back off and let him do his thing (particularly the comparatively restrained Wiig, who doesn’t play quite to her manic highs here, but is funny in a more restrained way).

I’m not saying “MacGruber” is a perfect comedy, but considering the lows we’ve been through with Saturday Night Live-based films, you can pretty much rest assured this is among the best of them.

*** (out of four)

Tomorrow: A late review of “Shrek Forever After,” followed soon after by reviews of “Sex and the City 2″ and “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” now that I actually have a bit of free time from my other job.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

I mentioned in our last installment that I felt one of the markers of 1983 filmmaking was the inescapable cheesiness that betrays most of the films of that era immediately and thus takes us as modern audience members out of the story. I’m happy to say that Krull surprised me in just how entertaining it remains today, and I don’t mean entertaining from a camp standpoint. Krull has everything a modern major blockbuster strives to offer the audience: a unique concept (sort of), strong visuals, likable characters played by good actors, a great score and, at times, an involving story.

What sets Krull apart from last week’s film Spacehunter is probably the same factor that takes any film from being bad to being at least decent: commitment. Unlike their paltry budget for Spacehunter, Columbia gave Krull an estimated $27 million to work with and the results are noticeable on-screen. The stop-motion sequences are probably the only visual aspect of the film that simply doesn’t stand as impressive today and they are thankfully limited. The sets are enormous and impressively detailed and the makeup and creature effects are solid, particularly with the cyclops character (how do they blink his eye?).

Director/producer Peter Yates being at the helm probably accounts for the film’s unusually strong story and characters (at least for the fantasy genre). Yates was at the top of his game in 1983, having already earned a Best Director and Best Picture nomination for his cycling film Breaking Away in ’79. Yates would also receive another Director and Picture nomination in ’83 for his personal drama The Dresser, which sadly does not make the Top 50 list for 1983 (though I may review it anyway as an honorable mention).

Before I go too much further, here’s a brief summary of Krull: there’s a very vague setup involved but basically there’s a bad guy called The Beast and he and his army want to take over the fantasy world of Krull. A prince and a princess from two warring kingdoms decide to get married to unite their forces against the bad guy and shortly after they are wed, the new queen is kidnapped and taken to the big scary castle of the beast. Oddly, the leads are probably the least famous cast members today, Ken Marshall and Lysette Anthony, a British actress whose voice was re-dubbed by an American voice actress. Liam Neeson has a very small role as one of a band of robbers that joins up with the young king on his way to rescue the queen. It was a very early job for Neeson and although the part is laughably small, he really finds a way to shine and he gets every last bit of mileage out of every line he’s given. Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies) also plays one of the robbers but has a significantly smaller role even than Neeson.

As you’d expect, the film is more about the journey to save the princess than about actually saving the princess. Along the way there are a series of monsters and exciting encounters, all of which are actually pretty imaginative and perilous. By the far the best of these episodes involves the character known as “The Old One”, who essentially serves as the Gandalf of the group, sneaking into a giant spiderweb to gain some pertinent information from a creepy old woman called The Widow of the Web. When the old man finally arrives at his destination, we are treated to an extremely well-acted and well-written scene revealing that the two characters have a long personal past together. Their subplot has nothing to do with the rest of the movie but in a way outshines the main plot of the film in its emotional depth, thanks largely to a truly great one-scene performance from Freddie Jones.

Probably the most enduring item from the film, at least according to those I’ve spoken to, is the special weapon given to the prince to slay the beast. It’s called the Glaive and it’s basically a giant throwing star with a mind of its own. It basically works like this: you throw it, it goes around cutting up whatever needs to be cut up, and then it comes back to the thrower’s hand. The Glaive showed up on South Park in the famous “Imaginationland” episode when Jesus used it against some of the evil characters.

What stands out today as the film’s strongest individual element is the score by James Horner. Horner has excelled for years at composing scores that seem to add instant depth and gravitas to a film (his Braveheart score remains one of the best-selling movie scores of all time) and his work here is an early example of the kind of inspiring, soaring music he would come to be known for. It’s a perfect tone-setter for what is really a film about escapist thrills with a backdrop of romance. Check out the clip below which includes probably my favorite score moment of the film.

From a business standpoint, Krull was not as successful a project as Spacehunter, since the latter made a profit at the box office and Krull topped out at $16.5 million, well below its production budget. The difference is that between the two films Krull has a better chance of having a lasting affect on its viewers. I’ve spoken to several of my older friends and colleagues this week who were kids when Krull was released and their impressions 27 years later were all positive. Does the ensuing video and TV sales from the film eventually make up for the loss Columbia took at the box office? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t but I’m inclined to believe that every once in a while, it’s in the studio’s best interest to lose a little money on a film that connects with an audience and keeps them believing in the magic of movies.

Next Up: All the Right Moves starring Tom Cruise.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

Do you like Star Wars? What about Mad Max? What if you took those two movies, combined them, traded out the actors for a bunch of nobodies, made the screenplay laughably bad and cut the special effects budget in half? You still want to see it? Then have I got a movie for you…

I knew at some point in this process, I’d run into my first camp classic and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is it. Loaded from end to end with bad acting, cheap special effects and one of the laziest, most brazen attempts at cinematic plagiarism I’ve ever seen, Spacehunter is the kind of movie that can really only be enjoyed by the cynical and sarcastic hipsters raised on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Believe me when I say, though, that I am not the kind of person who enjoys the camp factor of a bad movie. I might be amused by how bad it is but make no mistake, friends, this is 90 minutes of my life I will never get back. A sacrifice for the integrity of the blog.

The film opens with a confusingly shot effects sequence involving some cardboard spaceships hitting a meteor and exploding. An escape pod holding three women in spandex and New Wave hairdos ejects and crash lands on a strange planet where we will spend the rest of the movie. The premise here, though it is never fully explained in the film, is that this planet has been overrun by a horrible disease that has turned everyone on it into melty-faced mutants who apparently spend their entire lives making Molotov cocktails in preparation for the events of this movie.

Anyway, the three women, who are never named and never speak a word of dialog in the entire film, are captured by the mutants and taken to an evil warlord named Overdog (we’ll get to him later) for unspecified purposes. That’s when we meet our hero, Wolff.

Here’s where the plagiarism kicks in. Wolff is Han Solo, plain and simple. He dresses like him, he has the same haircut, he’s sarcastic, he’s a loner, on and on. The only difference is that while Harrison Ford oozed charisma in the role, Wolff is played by a TV actor (Peter Strauss) who looks like he was on morphine for the length of the production.

Even the name evokes Han Solo. Here’s how I’m pretty sure they named the character. Han Solo. Solo. Alone. Lone. Lone Wolf. Wolf. Add another f so people don’t suspect what we’ve done.

Anyway, Wolff receives a message about the three women with an offer of a reward if he can rescue them. Wolff and his sexy female assistant Chalmers (I love that name) zoom down to the planet, bury their spacecraft so the aliens can’t find it (Wolff’s best line: “Make it eat dirt, Chalmers!”) and embark on their adventure.

The first mind-blowingly stupid action set piece we encounter (don’t worry I won’t take you through all of them) involves a group of “land pirates” who ride a train in the shape of a pirate ship. I’m not even going to attempt to apply logic to that idea because I know the writers who came up with it didn’t. Anyway, the pirate scene ends with what has to be the most campy sequence in the entire film, an early death scene for the ill-fated Chalmers that contains a hilarious reveal that I admit I should have seen coming. Think Ian Holm in Alien.

With Chalmers dispatched, we meet the real female lead of the film, the much less sexy Niki, played by a pre-Sixteen Candles Molly Ringwald. I kid you not. At this point in her career, Ringwald was a newcomer, known only for her role on The Facts of Life. In her defense, she’s clearly giving this role her all. The character is meant to be obnoxious and dopey and Ringwald’s delivery is probably the best anybody could hope for with this screenplay, which I should mention is loaded with distractingly idiotic future-slang. Words like ‘brainworking’ (which means thinking) and ‘scavvy’ (which means disgusting). Marlon Brando would sound like an idiot with this dialogue. Ringwald had no chance.

As Wolff and Niki search the desert planet for signs of the three captured women, they encounter lame monsters, futuristic biker gangs and on a couple of occasions an old frenemy of Wolff’s named Washington, played by Ernie Hudson. Hudson must have gotten roped into the movie by his Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, who executive produced Spacehunter (weird) and it’s a fortunate turn of events for us as he’s far and away the most entertaining part of the movie. He too is given ridiculous dialogue, mostly focused on his love for his specialized bulldozer vehicle, but Hudson is such a likable actor that he seems to get away with it far more than the rest of the cast.

The film climaxes with a big spark-filled battle with Overdog, who looks strikingly like Darth Vader without a helmet. He’s sufficiently gross looking for an intergalactic villain but it doesn’t appear that anything was done to effect his voice, which basically sounds like a normal dude’s voice coming through a hideously disfigured half-man, half-machine.

So how did this piece of junk get a green-light from a major Hollywood studio (Columbia Pictures)? And better yet, how did this film end up in the Top 50 at the box office for the year? A quick glance at the film’s history answers both questions. Spacehunter was released on May 20, 1983, one week before the opening of what many correctly assumed would be the biggest hit of the year, Return of the Jedi. The first nerdlings were already setting up camp in front of their local theater when Spacehunter opened and Columbia must have figured that a low-budget, thrown together knock-off might be able to capitalize on the excitement preceding Jedi. It wasn’t a bad bet; Spacehunter finished with $16.5 million at the box office with a production budget of $14.4 million. Nothing to sneeze at in 1983 dollars.

Still, it’s films like this, low quality garbage with a clear intent to capitalize on the success of another well-made film from another studio, that give the ’80s a bad name when it comes to movies. I’ve flipped across so much campy trash like Spacehunter that it’s tainted my view of all films from the ’80s. I’m willing to excuse camp when it comes from a filmmaker who was legitimately trying to make a good film but failed. I’m less forgiving with films like this, churned out quickly and cheaply by a major studio with the resources to do better work. This is the first truly bad film I’ve encountered on the list so far. Looking ahead though, this might be a taste of things to come for 1983.

Next Up: Krull starring Liam Neeson.

Hey folks,

I’m back in the realm of FilmNerds, for the first time in a long time. Our mutual friend Matt has kindly asked me to offer my weekly thoughts on the summer movies, since I pretty much see all of them anyway — and I’m more than happy to oblige. Naturally, this first summer weekend was the week of my graduation from college, and Mother’s Day — but somewhere in that time, I got to see the summer’s first blockbuster twice.

So without further ado — let’s kick off the summer…

“IRON MAN 2″

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, Don Cheadle, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by Jon Favreau

“Iron Man 2″ shares basically all the strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor, the surprising 2008 hit “Iron Man.” It feels so much like a continuation of the first film that I’m both unsurprised how much I liked it and very surprised at how critics originally with the Jon Favreau-directed first film turned so violently on the second. I would never dare say some of their concerns aren’t valid, but I suppose the novelty of the first film caused them to overlook those flaws, and the hype surrounding this one opened it up to more scrutiny — even with how damn fun this movie is.

“Iron Man 2″ starts mere seconds after the first film ends, as a Russian scientist dies while Tony Stark (Downey) is giving the press conference from the end of “Iron Man.” As his son, Ivan Vanko (Rourke), holds his dead father and watches Stark, he swears revenge — to clear the name of his unjustly punished father from crimes done by Tony’s own father, Howard (played in film strips by John Slattery of “Mad Men”).

Skip forward six months. Stark, as he tells a senator (Garry Shandling) hell-bent on taking the Iron Man suit for the U.S. government, has “privatized world peace.” (It’s a shame that the audience doesn’t get to see any of this — as it stands, Stark as Iron Man doesn’t actually… do very much at all in the film.) Stark is reopening the Stark Expo to showcase scientific advances and, more importantly, to stoke his own ego. But he’s holding a secret — the palladium core that keeps him alive and powers the Iron Man suit is slowly poisoning him. Frightened by his imminent death, Stark begins acting rashly — and Vanko capitalizes with a super-powered suit of his own, culminating in an action sequence at a racetrack at Monaco that ends the first act and draws the attention of Justin Hammer (Rockwell), a Stark competitor with a grudge who likes the idea of putting Tony Stark in his place and sees Vanko as the mechanical genius who can do it.

On top of all that, Pepper Potts (Paltrow) returns as Stark’s beleagured sidekick turned C.E.O. of Stark Industries, Jim Rhodes (now played by Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard) sees his allegiances further torn between his friend and the military, and Nick Fury (Jackson) and SHIELD return to monitor Stark for some secret project called the Avengers Initiative.

The new additions to “Iron Man 2″ are welcome and generally effective, though the standout, as I expected going in, is Sam Rockwell as the weasely Stark competitor Justin Hammer. Hammer’s hilarious bravado and insecurity, along with some choice moments and great lines, make it pretty easy for Rockwell to steal every scene he’s in. Rourke, though sadly underused (spending most of the film in Hammer’s secret compound and not really doing much) is menacing and makes the most of his screentime; it’s a villain in need of a more strongly structured screenplay. I didn’t mind Scarlett Johansson, though it’s a shame that her storyline is ultimately a distraction — though she unmistakably awakens the libidoes of countless teenage boys with her catsuit and ass-kicking, and Jon Favreau certainly lingers on the shaplier parts of her body. (Not a complaint, but these might be the shots held longest in the entire film, and that’s the sort of thing you notice on a second viewing.)

“Iron Man 2″ is flawed. You may find its climax rushed (but, unlike the first film, at least it has one). You may find yourself thinking about missed opportunities here and there, or wondering exactly what function SHIELD and its agents have in the film, other than serving as an extended trailer for the upcoming “The Avengers” film. But once again, the sheer charm of the cast and the humor and high energy of the thing make it a lot more enjoyable than it has any right being, given an almost total disregard for structure and scripting. Think about it like this:  the “Iron Man” franchise is basically Marvel’s very own “Ocean’s” franchise, though I do see “Iron Man 2″ being more widely accepted than “Ocean’s Twelve.”

I’ll generously give it a *** 1/2 out of four here, and yes, it holds up. It’s so much fun.

NEXT WEEK: A more timely review of “Robin Hood.” I’ll also be doing a weekly retrospective of the past decade’s summer movie seasons (2000-2009), running through each summer’s moneymakers, artistic successes and failures. So keep an eye out for that — the first entry should be up within the week. Thanks for reading FilmNerds.

Today marks the official beginning of the 2010 summer movie season with the release of the first major studio tentpole of the year in Marvel’s Iron Man 2. To celebrate, the FilmNerds RoundTable assembled for an hour-long discussion of the 2010 summer movie slate, the films we’re excited about and our predictions for which major releases will be hits and which ones will flop. Click the link below to hear the full podcast or head to iTunes and search for FilmNerds to subscribe to our podcast.

FilmNerds RoundTable: 2010 Summer Movie Preview