ZACK AND MIRI
MAKE A PORNO
(Review)

Okay. At this point, I honestly don’t know what to do with Kevin Smith* anymore.
For the record, I love Clerks, and Chasing Amy, I feel, is still his most real and honest film to date. I enjoyed Mallrats and Dogma too, but they both have their own sets of problems.
Now, I passed on Jersey Girl, so for all I know, that could be his hidden masterwork, but to say Clerks II disappointed me would be an understatement of enormous proportions.
At least though, Clerks II had Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes’ Buffalo Bill, and Jeff Anderson’s revelatory moments in the film’s final stretch; right now, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything good that came out of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
The Reaper Pilot wasn’t anything particularly spectacular either.
Which brings us to Zack and Miri Make a Porno.


Now let’s be clear. This one has its moments too, including a surprisingly moving bit orchestrated to Live, and capped off by Blondie. Yup, you can always get me with a good Blondie musical moment.
Zack and Miri is also blessed to have Brandon Routh and Justin Long, who manage to hijack the film and take it to some insanely hilarious places. Sadly they’re confined to only one key sequence, when I actually held out hope that they would somehow be worked into the “making Clerks, but as a porno” stretch of the movie.
As it is, they’re just there long enough to inadvertently flick the light bulb over Seth Rogen’s head, and help give him the idea of shooting a porn to pay the bills.


And I don’t think the problem is Rogen and Elizabeth Banks either, who’s as charming a screen presence as she always is. As longtime friends Zack Brown and Miriam Linky, the duo makes the most of the central situation the film revolves around.
When the time comes for the emotional games that result from certain narrative eventualities though, they’re beats we’ve definitely seen before.
There’s also an odd sort of compression that goes on where before you know it, we’re suddenly at that point in the script where the tension catalyzes, and then, just as quickly, we’re at the film’s climax.
Sadly, I’m left with the impression that most of the film’s running time is made up of awkward moments where the humour just doesn’t pop. (And the scatological bits really don’t help, either.)
The script is so anemic, compared to either Clerks’ or Chasing Amy’s, that when we hit the gooey and mushy centre of this apparently hard and raunchy piece of candy, the sentiments ring damnably hollow.
Not even the Monroeville setting, Smith stalwarts Anderson and Jason Mewes, nor brief appearances by make-up master Tom Savini—geddtit? Monroeville?!—and Tyler Labine (from Invasion and Reaper)… nay, not even Traci Lords, can save the ship, which just seems to coast, rudderless (Dutch, or otherwise), through middling comedic territory, complete with montage featuring “funny/goofy” dance moves.
You know the one.


I had high hopes for this one, and I went into it really wanting to like it.
Maybe if it had been Zack and Miri and Bobby and Brandon Make a Porno, this might have been an entirely different review, but as it is…
Tell you what: I’ll head back to my cave and give my Clerks DVD a spin, while I await Smith’s horror movie, Red State, which sounds genuinely interesting, given all that he’s said about it.
First though, it appears he’s about to go all Hollywood big budget buddy cop—are we still in the ‘80’s and someone just forgot to send me the memo?—on I-won’t-be-surprised-at-all-if-it-gets-retitled A Couple of Dicks, with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan…
Which is something, honestly, I have no idea what to do with either.
If I can’t have Red State yet, maybe Smith should just work with Routh and Long again on something truly hilarious.
Maybe then we can start talking.


* The Kevin Smith who writes and directs films, that is. Not the one who acts, or writes comic books.
Those are different discussions entirely.

(Zack and Miri Make a Porno OS courtesy of aintitcool.com; images courtesy of about.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (68)
SUPERMAN FOUND!

The Search For Superman Committee has made its choice, and the official Man of Steel for Metropolis, Illinois’ 2008 Superman Celebration is…
Josh Boultinghouse!
Congratulations, Josh! (You can find out more about Josh here.)
Josh officially debuts as the 2008 Metropolis Superman at the ribbon cutting ceremony which opens this year’s Superman Celebration, on June 12. (For other details, go to the Metropolis Tourism website.)

(All images: Josh Boultinghouse)

reVIEW (28)
FEAST

Three reasons for this look back at John Gulager’s Feast.
One: There’s a pair of direct-to-DVD sequels on the way.
Two: Feast was written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, who also wrote the screenplay for Saw IV, which is just about to open.
Three: This is the sort of fracking wild trip that’s always worth another look.

The end result of Project Greenlight’s third season, Feast is a monster mash that’s both bloody and funny, that defies expectations and pulls no punches. Out in the middle of nowhere, in The Bear Tavern (“Home of the Grill Kill Museum”), a bunch of strangers are about to face the meanest, smartest, and horniest beasties this side of Alien’s xenomorph and Species' Sil.
Setting the mood from the get-go, with instant (though perhaps unreliable) Monster Movie Victim Stats popping up on-screen as each character is introduced—“Name: Hot Wheels; Occupation: Selling Fireworks to 7th Graders; Life Expectancy: They Wouldn’t Kill a Cripple, Would They?”—Feast quickly establishes the smart-a$$ attitude that will carry us through a 95-minute ride of madcap mayhem that deftly delivers the thrills, scares, and laughs in a smart, sharp, and wickedly humourous package.

What’s pleasantly surprising about Feast is that this is not only a monster movie with a decidedly freaky-a$$ monster (courtesy of Gary J. Tunnicliffe, who’s done effects for Pulse and its sequel, as well as a couple of Heroes episodes), it’s also a film that’s well-shot (by Thomas L. Callaway), well-edited (by Pulse editor Kirk Morri), and well-acted (with people like Alias/Brothers & Sisters’ Balthazar Getty and Numb3rs/The O.C.’s Navi Rawat in the ensemble).
It’s also got buckets of blood and gore and torn appendages (human and otherwise) zinging about on-screen.
And have I mentioned? It’s really funny too.

In Feast, Gulager, Melton, and Dunstan take some post-modern swipes at the conventions of the monster movie, primary among them, not even giving their main characters proper names (Getty and Rawat play “Bozo” and “Heroine” respectively), acknowledging what we in the audience already know: most, perhaps even all, of these people are dead meat walking. Why bother with names when they’re just going to end up a bloody mess of body parts on the tavern floor?
But even with that approach, Gulager and company actually give us individuals with personalities, which makes the fact that there’s actually some good acting here, a massive plus. There’re some great moments in Feast from Baywatch/What About Brian’s Krista Allen (“Tuffy”) and 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander (“Beer Guy”). And it’s a kick and a half to see Henry Rollins (as motivational speaker “Coach”) and Jason Mewes (as himself, though he is credited as the “Edgy Cat”) among the Bear Tavern’s patrons.

Of course, given that this is a monster movie, what some horror geeks could argue is Feast’s crowning glory, is the creature itself. Believe you me, this one’s a corker. You’re lucky if all it does to you is eat you.
So if you haven’t partaken of Feast, then do yourself a great big favour and watch it, before the sequels come barreling our way. And if you’ve already seen it, I’m sure you won’t deny that watching it again sounds like a plan.
Watch it back-to-back with Planet Terror. Now that’s a double-header.

“This is just some leaky barrel radiation toxic dump waste enviro-crap freak-beast accident that crawled out of the sewer, man. That’s all this is. We’re gonna be all right.”
-- Beer Guy, before something awful happens to him

Parting shot: Though I loved the first Saw, I’ve been less than thrilled by the sequels. If Melton and Dunstan can bring to Saw IV the scares and the smarts that are readily apparent in Feast’s script, then there’s hope for Jigsaw yet.
Melton and Dunstan are also involved in the upcoming thriller The Midnight Man, Dunstan’s directorial debut.

Parting shot 2: Some quick bits on some of Feast’s ensemble:
Veteran actor Clu Gulager (who plays “Bartender”) is director John Gulager’s father, and Diane Goldner (“Harley Mama”) is John Gulager’s wife. Go nepotism!
The life of the party, Judah Friedlander is appearing in the upcoming Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, directed by Ti West.
Jason Mewes and Balthazar Getty also worked together on David Arquette’s The Tripper. (Review in Archive.)

Parting shot 3: As naughty and nasty as Feast is, the sequels promise to assault sensibilities even further. The first sequel’s title says it all: Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds.
On talking about the sequels, Dunstan says: "Neo Art & Logic is producing again, and if they let us get away with the vulgarities we've currently scripted, and if we don’t get deported, we just may have the NC-17-rated monsterfest that was only hinted at in the first film."
Boo-yah!

(Feast OS courtesy of impawards.com; image courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; behind the scenes images from Project Greenlight courtesy of bravotv.com.)

THE TRIPPER
(Review)

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
-- Ronald Reagan

After a brief prologue set in 1967, in the Northern California lumbertown of Carlisle, we flash forward to the present, where Carlisle is set to host the Free Love Festival, a weekend bacchanalia of sex, drugs, and rock and roll organized by one Frank Baker (ol’ Pee-wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens).
Throw in a bunch of modern day hippies (among them Jay himself, Jason Mewes), Carlisle’s “de facto peacekeeper,” Officer Buzz Hall (the Punisher himself, Thomas Jane), and a mad Ronald Reagan mask-wearing killer, and you’ve got The Tripper, co-written and directed by Deputy Dewey himself, David Arquette.

Given that this is a film that kicks off while the fires of the Vietnam war rage, set during a time when the war in Iraq continues to drag on with no apparent end in sight, and featuring a killer who dons the visage of a President who reigned over an America characterized by excess and conspicuous consumption, it’s obvious that Arquette is attempting to use the slasher film as a stage for some biting socio-political commentary.
Anyone who’s visited the Iguana before knows I love me a good horror film that actually says something, and though what The Tripper is saying is not necessarily anything new, my main problems with it are its ill-paced script, and the fact that a majority of the narrative’s characters are dope fiends who don’t really seem to deserve any audience sympathy.

Thus, not only does the film meander badly (I’d love to have used the adverb “trippily,” if the experience had been entertaining, which it ultimately wasn’t), but the gorehound in me found himself blasted back to the bad old days of the slasher film, when all I ended up doing was wait impatiently for the next victim to wind up dead. These are characters who are in a perpetually fraked-up state, and sympathy for these sorts is pretty hard to come by.
It’s always a challenge to get an audience to take a ride with characters like this, and when the film is a Trainspotting, or a Spun, or a Requiem for a Dream, you know all involved did their jobs splendidly. In films like these, you end up caring for and sympathizing with individuals you probably wouldn’t want to be seen in the same room with in real life.
Now, the average slasher film does have sex, drugs, alcohol, and wayward youth as some of its conventions. Not only does The Tripper up those particular antes exponentially, but Arquette asks us to spend most of our time with this host of druggies who seem to display no redeeming qualities at all. In the end, I don’t see why I should care for these people in the slightest.
And yes, we do have Samantha (Jaime King; from Sin City and TV’s Kitchen Confidential and The Class), who is currently abstaining from drugs because of a recent Bad Experience, and who is clearly the Last Girl-in-waiting, but she’s one out of six, and not a particularly compelling, charismatic screen presence. (Hey, if you’re gonna be the Last Girl, you better have some chops to deserve that honour.)

It’s also sad that some interesting actors (Balthazar Getty and Lukas Haas) are in this but aren’t really afforded anything meaty to chew on. Jane’s is perhaps the most noteworthy performance as the sane voice of authority, but of course, it’s a voice that’s drowned out by all the chemical hi-jinx going on.

One of the things The Tripper seems to be saying—an idea reinforced by the film’s end credits roll—is that while the American Powers-That-Be are evil, ineffectual passive resistance to that towering monolith is not really any better either.
Where The Tripper fails, I feel, is in not really presenting us with an alternative; in what is perhaps a gross oversimplification, the narrative doesn’t really put forward a stance between the ultra-left and the ultra-right which would make any sort of sense in this day and age.
I realize this may not really have been Arquette’s ultimate intent in the first place (this is, after all, a slasher film and not a Michael Moore documentary), but if you’re gonna get into this particular sandbox, you should at least play the game, right?

I wanted to have fun with this one, but in the end, it just didn’t float my boat.
Maybe if it had been funnier, or gorier, or more thrilling, or if it had had something more substantial to say, then The Tripper might have been worth the time and the price of admission.
As it is, re-watching a double feature of the Masters of Horror episodes, “Homecoming” and “The Washingtonians” (review in Archive: September 2007)—both effective exercises in horror as socio-political commentary—would be a far better prospect.

Parting shot: For those interested, Arquette also appears in the film as the redneck Muff, while the missus produces and has a teeny cameo.
Another name of note on The Tripper is comic book writer Steve Niles, whose 30 Days of Night has been adapted for the big screen and is just about to be unleashed on all of horror geekdom.

(The Tripper OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; DVD cover art courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)