A Look Back: Vampires Suck

There used to be a popular bumper sticker back in the day that proclaimed, “Mean People Suck.” While one might assume that is a lovely sentiment upon which we can all agree and which needs no embellishment, someone took it a step further with “Mean People Suck/ Nice People Swallow,” which at least proved that the sloganeer knew that making something literal and figurative at the same time is clever (if disgusting). The movie title “Vampires Suck,” is an amusing title for the same reason, however, sadly, all the crew’s inspiration appeared to end there. This was one of those movies, I felt briefly compelled to stand outside the theater picketing in order to spare future moviegoers the same experience I had had.

I wasn’t alone. With a 4 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “Vampires Suck,” inspired the kind of vitriol from critics and amateur reviewers that would tempt even someone with sturdy self-esteem to consider drinking a glass of Drano. However, Kevin Carr of 7M Pictures attempted to be a bit more upbeat. “For the most part,” he penned, “the jokes are mildly relevant at least.”

Parodying the vampire craze should have been a cinch, at least to my eyes. The pasty blood-sucking leeches got infused with a dose of sex appeal when Stephanie Meyer – trailing in the formidable footsteps of authors like Anne Rice – struck a vein with the “Twilight” series in which she hit the bestseller list with young women whose secret fantasies of being part of a love triangle featuring a hot vampire and a dreamy werewolf were immortalized on the page.

Next came the movies, in which Kristen Stewart played the heroine, and two suitable hunks played her love interests, causing mass swooning in theaters across the world. And finally came the third phase, in which the books were parodied. Hence, I assume, “Vampires Suck.”

The good news is that the star, Jenn Proske, clearly did her homework and mimics Kristen’s various moues and mannerisms side-splittingly perfectly. Playing (snicker) Becca Crane, who moves to a perpetually gloomy Northwestern town to live with her dad (Dietrich Bader) because – plot, she reunites with her old friend (Christopher Riggi), but when she arrives at school, her glum morose sarcasticness makes her a chick magnet for hot guys like Edward-stand-in Matt Lanter, who has a weakness for chasing cats. Matt’s family and friends attend Jenn’s school because apparently vampires are the only ones for whom staying in high school for an eternity results in shrieks of joy. Despite herself, Jenn falls in love with both of them, resulting in lots of rivalry, pop culture references and fart jokes. It all culminates (where else?) at the prom, where fangirls appear to fight to the death, and Jenn decides to get married to Matt because what girl doesn’t salivate at the prospect of becoming immortal in that way?

“Vampires Suck,” got me thinking about if there were any points in the moviemaking process in which the cast and crew realized they couldn’t salvage it and just gave up and went purposely over the top.  Although Carr’s attempt to see the sunshine through the gloom no longer applies in 2019, the movie can stand as a testament to bad movies everywhere. It does get one thing right: the sheer absurdity of the “Twilight” series’ popularity, although sadly, that didn’t turn out to be enough.

Movie Review: Isn’t It Romantic

I’ve been thinking, and given the volume of movies popping out of Hollywood’s collective cranium featuring young women who fall, hit their heads and wind up in an alternate universe, maybe they should start putting on “Don’t Try This At Home” labels in case there exist viewers who sincerely believe that cracking one’s coconut is the route to a much better life. But that would be assuming that viewers are as low-IQ as characters in romantic comedies which probably isn’t true. In real life, being mugged by a homeless man is a traumatic experience, but in the TV series “Insatiable,” and “Isn’t It Romantic,” for an overweight woman that’s like finding a Golden Ticket in your Wonka bar. In the first, a teen winds up with her jaw wired shut and thus undergoes a transformation into a beauty pageant contender, and in the latter, Rebel Wilson, playing a deeply unappreciated architect, bonks her cranium – and wakes up in a bona fide romantic comedy – the kind she openly mocks to her best friend at work for being totally unrealistic.

How unrealistic are we talking? Well, when Rebel emerges from the hospital, she can’t believe she’s still in New York as, to quote a Monty Python character, it hasn’t got all that (expletive) all over it. And I do mean literally expletive because whenever Rebel tries to curse – it gets magically drowned or beeped out. When she bumps into a limo, who emerges but the swoony guy at work, Liam Hemsworth, who apologizes and insists on taking her home – to her now huge apartment, complete with every shoe she’s ever dreamed of, an adorable obedient dog, and a fabulous wisecracking neighbor (Brandon Jones) who has a habit of popping up whenever Rebel’s at a loss as to what to wear on a date or needs a ride. (As she puts it, he’s setting gay rights back 200 years.) Meanwhile Rebel’s longtime friend (Adam DeVine) falls in love with a “yoga ambassador” (Priyana Chopra) in a nauseatingly meet-cute scenario, and while Liam is a dream boyfriend, part of Rebel feels that perhaps true love has been under her nose all along.

And there’s more! At work, Rebel is preparing for the Big Presentation, only she’s in danger of being sabotaged by her now-enemy because of course, two women who are colleagues must be mortal enemies, ready at any time to stab each other in the back. It’s going to take a lot of montages, dance routines and soul searching before Rebel realizes that – wait for it – she should respect herself and not look to be completed by a man. And wouldn’t you know – that turns out to be the perfect way to get a guy anyway. Kind of like how realizing that winning isn’t everything leads to your underdog team winning, but who am I to sneer at Hollywood? The movie can be described as “Not Another Teen Movie” meets “I Feel Pretty,” or any number of combinations, all of which, like the cupcakes displayed outside Rebel’s apartment window, are irresistibly sweet.

2019 Winter Movie Lessons

Warning: These contain spoilers.

Bohemian Rhapsody
1. Having a fallback career, say in dentistry, in case your rock star dreams don’t work out is wise, but may not be necessary if you hook up with a genius frontman.

2. It’s always good to have good friends – even if you occasionally act like a jerk to them and jet off on your own to have a solo career.

3. Even if you’re a beloved rock icon who can help raise over a million for a worthy cause in 20 minutes, your cats will never give your vocal talent the acknowledgement it deserves.

The Front Runner
4. If your presidential candidate looks good wearing suspenders and throwing an axe, by all means, capitalize on his Appeal to the Average Man with a photo shoot. (But just in case, make sure you’re a safe distance away.)

5. If you’re going to commit adultery and happen to be in the public eye, choose a site whose name won’t inspire nationwide snickers later on if you get caught.

6. Don’t ever bait the media by encouraging them to tail you, even if it’s in jest. Even in the pre-cell phone era.

Holmes and Watson
7. Getting all your classmates expelled for random infractions is a great way to increase the probability that you’ll grow up to be expertly schooled, then a genius.

8. If a cake is suspiciously hard to cut and red liquid spurts out of it, it’s probably not raspberry filling.

9. Cocaine for breakfast is a great pickup after a night of hearty boozing – at least before IHOP was invented.

Vice
10. Sometimes you just need a kick in the pants from your ambitious girlfriend to get your act together and embark on a serious career.

11. A good way to choose a political party is to see who makes the wittiest welcome speech when you arrive in Washington, DC as a Congressional intern.

12. Maintaining power is like balancing a stack of cups and saucers – it takes constant dexterity to keep it from crashing down.

Escape Room
13. If you receive a package containing a bizarre puzzle, it’s a good idea to track down the sender before you decide to play the game offered as a prize for solving it.

14. If you’re playing an Escape Room game, it’s best to dress in layers, but not discard them in the rooms you’re fleeing because you may need them later.

15. If you think you’re the last one standing in said game, don’t count out the possibility that you’re done with people trying to kill you.

Mary Poppins Returns
16. If Mary Poppins arrives unexpectedly at your home, quickly smear some dirt on your face so she will take you on an amazing animated musical adventure under the sea via your ordinary-looking bathtub.

17. Befriending a London lamplighter will give you the side benefit of having a singing guide on foggy nights, even if it means taking the route through the sewers. As a bonus, he will impart some fun life lessons.

18. If your father’s boss appears in a dream as an animated weasel who kidnaps your younger brother, he’s definitely up to no good in real life. But good luck getting the adults to believe you.

The Upside
19. Being a quadriplegic does not necessarily you can’t experience sexual pleasure – the ears, for example, can be erogenous zones.

20. If your blind date suddenly mentions her therapist, it’s not a good sign, even if you seem to have been previously hitting it off.

21. Wealthy, educated people are actually easy to fool and can be conned into paying big bucks for terrible art if they think it’s a Banksy.

Green Book
22. Fried chicken may put you at risk of being a stereotype plus get your lap cover greasy, but it’s sure finger lickin’ good. Plus the bones are biodegradable.

23. Calling your friend Bobby Kennedy so that he can bail you out of jail is embarrassing but preferable to missing a scheduled concert in the Deep South.

24. No matter what your friend may claim, Pittsburgh is not filled with ample-breasted women. At least not more than any other city.

Boy, Erased
25. If your son is about to embark on a secretive program that won’t let you inspect the premises, you should still check the backgrounds of the staff, and the handbook for spelling errors.

26. If you want to be more manly, try standing in the triangle stance – and don’t cross those legs. Ever.

27. No, nothing bad will happen to you if you hang your hand out the window of a moving car. Honest.

What Men Want
28. If you want more respect at work, it’s best to check for used condoms clinging to your duds if you wake up in a one night stand’s bed before arriving at the office.

29. If you’re going to drink tea a psychic gives you, wear a helmet when you party hardy at your friend’s bachelorette party afterwards.

30. If you do get the power to hear men’s thoughts, you’re going to hear so much about prostate problems, other women’s body parts, and flatulence that you may deeply regret getting your wish.

Happy Death Day 2U
31. Baylor University may appear to be your average college, but it’s got physics majors whose genius rivals MIT and other similar schools.

32. Behind every creepy man trying to kill you is a pissed-off wife who has had it with being cuckolded. Literally.

33. Even if your sorority sister is a mediocre thespian, her talents may come in handy distracting a bad guy when you’re stealing your nuclear reactor project back.

Movie Review: Happy Death Day 2U

The nice thing about getting to the theater early enough to see the previews is that it gives the viewer some warmup dilemmas to ponder before the main feature, as they tend to be mostly in the same genre. For example, I got to wonder what would happen if my dead pets came back to life when I was a child (“Pet Sematary” remake), what would happen if I were stalked by an odd woman with a foreign accent (“Greta“), and what I would have done if a mildly odd middle-aged woman had offered her basement to my friends as a teen in order for us to have a dance party (“Ma‘). And didn’t Will Ferrell and “Saturday Night Live,” already do a recurring sketch based that very idea? Anyway, by the time “Happy Death Day 2U” rolled around, I was all warmed up when it came to spotting logic holes.

“HDD2U” begins with the main character’s (Jessica Rothe) boyfriend’s (Israel Broussard) roommate (Phi Vu) waking up on the campus of Bayfield U. only to discover that he’s trapped in a time loop. Luckily, Jessica soon wakes up in Israel’s dorm and clues Phi in, and he realizes that it’s his science project causing all the commotion. Because apparently while art majors are busy drawing nudes, and English majors are busy mining for symbolism, Quantum Physics Genius Majors are busy building wacky sculptures in the Florescent Lit Lair for the Socially Awkward that can trap people in bona fide time loops and make them repeat the same day endlessly – as long as they can discover the right algorithm, which Phi and his two buds have been doing. Makes sense? Not to me (I just misspelled algorithm, thanks spell check), but it serves as an Adequate Explanation for why Jessica interferes and winds up trapped in the same time loop she was in in the prequel – only there are major differences, such as Israel dating her sorority head, and oh, yes, her mom being alive!

This sort of makes up for the fact that she, not Phi, now has to worry about getting offed by a creepy baby-faced masked killer (and what genius came up with that mascot for what appears to be a perfectly average college anyway?). This time, in order to close the loop and return to her original place in the multiverse, Jessica must memorize every algorithm under the sun, and since she can’t do this in one day, comes up with creative ways to off herself, so said killer won’t off her first. Also, her former nemesis/roommate (Ruby Modine) is still dating that creep at the hospital, but since Jessica has become a better person, feels obligated to rescue Ruby from her grim fate. Or at least try.

While Jessica’s plight is tragic, it’s not quite as bad as poor Rebel Wilson’s in her new movie in which she finds herself living a Hollywood romantic comedy after waking up after getting bumped on the head. “HDD2U” also didn’t get panned by a reviewer who woke up on the wrong side of the bed in a single word the way “Isn’t It Romantic?” did, perhaps because it has genuine heart, thanks to the amazing, indomitable Jessica who can get even a cynical reviewer to tear up when she reunites with her deceased mom, then cheer, “You go girl,” when she smashes a case to grab an emergency axe to defend her friends without getting a single scratch. Let’s hear it for girl power, even if I think the franchise has run its course gracefully, and doesn’t need a third addition.

A Look Back: Easy A

Back in the day when I was in high school, you could seldom hope for a more enthusiastic response than the teacher announcing (wearily) that the book we were about to read had its own movie – which you could rent at the video store. However, that would be followed by the teacher pointing out that there were, shall we say, discrepancies, so it was best to read the original. As a rule Hollywood has seldom met a classic novel it does not feel compelled to add its own twist, too, and it also enjoys swooping down on the few sex scenes that are there like a flock of seagulls spotting an unattended Happy Meal and emphasizing them. As a somewhat unfortunate result, watching the film adaptation of a novel may result in the former eclipsing anything about the latter. (Then and again, there were some very dull classics, or perhaps I was just not mature enough to appreciate them at the time.) A prime example of this occurring is the 1995 version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” featuring a cunning red bird and Demi Moore having a Very Good Time in a grain bin. Let’s just say that scene is the only thing I remember. (Sorry, Dr. Goldman.)

Another popular Hollywood technique for making the classics “hip,” is to update them and set them in Teen World, an honor which happened to Nathaniel’s masterwork in 2010 when “Easy A,” a teen rom-com starring Emma Stone as a high school student who stumbles upon an unexpected way to boost her popularity, appeared. (And for a meta-snicker, it had the heroine diss the ’95 version.) Emma first announced her star power (which turned out to be more lasting than the rest of the young cast) in this vehicle in which a casual lie – that she’s lost her virginity to a college student in a one night stand – to her friend results in the school gossip (Amanda Byrnes) taking the news and running with it.

Emma then does a good deed for her other friend (Dan Byrd) who is being bullied because he is gay by pretending to have slept with him. With her reputation “compromised,” she decides to emphasize her loose moral virtue by agreeing to keep pretending with various guys who want to boost their reputations as studs in exchange for – wait for it – gift cards. Oddly, her parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) don’t seem to see this behavior as a cry for help, or at least trust Emma to eventually realize that she doesn’t have to stay this course. When Emma begins to have second thoughts, due to a STD epidemic at the school, and her favorite guidance counselor (Thomas Haden Church) being cheated on, it’s her platonic friend (Penn Badgley) who sets her straight.

So Emma does what any movie teen in need of resuscitating her reputation would do – she hijacks the school pep rally – to perform a dance number and announce to the entire student body that it’s okay to be who you are and that in each of us is a bit of a slut. This of course results in her getting the guy (Penn) who skips holding up a boombox outside her bedroom window in favor of asking her out while he’s on a riding lawnmower (i.e. “Can’t Buy Me Love“) which charms Emma (she’s a huge eighties’ film’ fan), and so they live happily ever after. I don’t know what Nathaniel would have made of “Easy A,” but once someone explained this Internet thing to him, he might have enjoyed it very much, as I did.

Movie Review: What Men Want

A wise man (Pulitzer Prize humor columnist Dave Barry) once claimed that a woman could no more communicate meaningfully with your average guy than she could play chess with a duck. An overly harsh assessment of relations between the sexes? Perhaps. Though even Freud, a noted psychiatrist, wondered what exactly it is that women want. (Not to live in Vienna a century before the Me Too movement perhaps?) It’s a question that moviemakers have also taken a stab at. In “What Women Want,” Mel Gibson played an ad exec who was granted the power to hear women’s thoughts, and now in “What Men Want,” Taraji P. Henson plays an sports agent exec who gets the gift (a word here used loosely) to be privy to the other gender’s inner thoughts. It’s a rocky ride, but wouldn’t you just know that there are some amazing life lessons to be learned by the end.

In the beginning, Taraji plays what we used to call a cast iron witch with a “B” when I was a kid, treating her assistant (Josh Brener) as if her bathmat means more to her than he does. The one good thing is that he is gay, so they can exchange stereotypically sassy wisecracks together when the mood strikes them. At work, Taraji is stunned when she is passed over for a promotion by her smarmy boss (Brian Bosworth) who adds insult to injury by telling her to “stay in her own lane,” after she points out privately the unfairness. Raised by a single father who wanted a son, (but is nevertheless a caring dad) Taraji firmly believes she knows how to be one of the guys, but after this happens, doubt creeps in. Fortunately, after having her fortune told by Erykah Badu and then getting a knock upside the head while partying with her gal pals, she wakes up in the ER listening to the doc on call deciding (in his head) to go do some blow. When she returns to the office, Taraji is horrified to be assaulted with a barrage of inner thoughts from her colleagues ranging from prostate problems to – and I hope I am not giving anything major away – disrespecting the second sex, and even revealing themselves to be backstabbers when it comes to competing at work. If you can imagine…..

Once Erykah points out that this gift is actually a huge advantage, Taraji sets about proving to her boss that she does have what it takes, or as one character puts it crudely, lady balls. This means eavesdropping on the next big thing the firm hopes to sign, a teen basketball star (Shane Paul McGhie), which also means charming his dad (Tracy Morgan). This also means pretending she’s a family woman to appease Tracy, and luckily, she manages to rope love interest Aldis Hodge and his cute little boy in to her scheme without them being any the wiser. However, eventually, she’s going to have to face the consequences of her actions – which come to a head when her psychic powers disrupt her girlfriend’s wedding, and it deteriorates into Jerry Springer territory.

However, Taraji does manage to become a better person in the end, and not evaluate herself based solely on what men think of her. “What Men Want,” isn’t groundbreaking in its message about gender communications, but it’s a lot of fun, and “to thine own self be true,” is always a useful message, to quote Shakespeare, another wise man.

Movie Review: Boy, Erased

In Susanna Keysen’s memoir “Girl, Interrupted,” (made into a movie starring Winona Ryder) an account of her incarceration in MacLean, a noted New England mental hospital, she discovers her diagnosis is Borderline Personality Disorder, bestowed upon her for her previous suicide attempt, lack of practical future plans, and promiscuity, the last of which she acidly takes issue with, wondering how many girls an adolescent boy would have to sleep with to receive that label. (The title comes from a Vermeer painting: Girl, Interrupted at Her Music.) In “Boy, Erased,” (based on the memoir by Garrard Conley), it quickly becomes clear that the main character’s (Lucas Hedges) father (Russell Crowe) would be ecstatic if that only were his son’s “symptom.” Alas, Lucas, who has a lovely high school girlfriend, doesn’t seem all that keen on consummating the relationship, and even worse (in Russell’s and his wife’s, Nicole Kidman’s eyes), arrives home from college one day and after being anonymously outed by phone call admits that, “I think about men. I don’t know why.”

Because SSA (Same Sex Attraction) is taboo in his family’s world: what with Dad being a Baptist preacher, and Mom a stand-by-your man sort, Russell seeks counsel from a couple of church elders who decide that the best course of action for Lucas is to enroll in a two week program that will “convert” him from this unfortunate tendency. Run by Joel Edgerton, a man of no real qualifications except once having suffered from the affliction himself, it requires Lucas to spend his days at the center ferreting out the causes of his SSA and nights at a motel with his mother (being careful not to reveal too much of what’s going on, as warned by Joel). At first the therapy (a word used here loosely) seems benign, but it soon crosses the line – more than once – into abuse. As Lucas witnesses this and interacts with his fellow enrollees, a couple of whom recommend that he at least pretend to be getting “better,” lest he be forced to remain in the program and not return to college, he grows increasingly disillusioned about the program’s potential to help. Eventually, he puts his foot down and insists on leaving – to Nicole’s, who can’t deny the pain her son is in, relief and the disapproval of Russell. Fast forward four years, and Lucas, who publishes a story of his experience, at last finds the courage to confront his father.

In Conley’s memoir, “erased,” happens literally as well, as the author goes from being self-described chubby to dangerously thin his first semester at college, prompting his mother to make him get a medical checkup. This change is omitted in the movie, but the inner turmoil the author faced is still true to the book. As Keysen points out in her memoir, the line between what is considered mental health and mental illness is fluid and often depends on the eye of the beholder, but Lucas eventually manages to acknowledge that the “problem” isn’t his to cure but for others to accept. One character in “Boy, Erased,” doesn’t make it, but at the end of the film, Lucas is still here, and his family, though emotionally battered by the experience, is still intact. The film, which checks all the Academy Award Approved boxes, doesn’t scapegoat any of its characters, and is worth seeing for a look at a practice that is still – as we learn in the epilogue – legal in many states today.

A Look Back: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

If you’re a Hollywood scriptwriter sitting at your laptop sipping your triple venti half-caf latte with rainbow sprinkles and extra whip, and you want your main character to experience Genuine and Moving Personal Growth by the time the credits roll, you have set yourself a hard but doable task. For there are many tried-and-true ways to accomplish this by having your character do the following:

a) Become a caretaker for someone with a disability – bonus points if they’ve lost all will to live.
b) Become ill or disabled themselves.
c) Tame/train an animal – bonus points if there’s a competition at the end to prove all the naysayers wrong.
c) Coach a team (or just one person) of comically mismatched misfits – ditto the competition.
d) Experience a bit of black magic – resulting in them waking up in their younger body or being transported to a fantasy land they previously assumed only existed in books and/or their imagination.
e) Lose their job, particularly if it’s to someone much younger and hipper than them.

The last has occurred in a myriad of movies starring Will Ferrell, and perhaps because Ferrell snagged so many non-traditional sports (figure skating, auto racing, etc.) in which to accomplish personal growth on screen, the makers of “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” while borrowing the formula wholesale chose to go with magic. This was the second of two films released that year, the other being “Oz, the Great and Powerful,” in which we’re treated to a prolonged scene of a famous magician acting like a total jerk to his assistant and his underlings. But while James Franco gets to visit Oz via a runaway hot air balloon and get fought over by witches with cleavage in order to become a better individual, “Burt” played by Steve Carell must remain tethered on Earth.

The movie opens with a flashback to Steve’s childhood which is, by any account unhappy, what with the bullying and being a latchkey kid – it’s like a punchline to a senior joke, “Back then times were so tough, I had to make my own birthday cake and go to the store to buy the mix.” Things look up, however, when he receives a magic set for a gift along with a video by his idol which promises to help him make friends. Indeed he manages to impress a fellow misfit, who grows up to be Steve Buscemi. As adults, the two are partners in a highly successful show at a Vegas club owned by James Gandolfini. Alas, Jim Carrey bursts on the scene, using social media to skyrocket his popularity, and winds up usurping the Steves. Steve Carell winds up losing all the perks of fame, plus his partner who departs after pointing out, “You can’t be magical friends with yourself!” and has to make ends meet by performing at a nursing home where he meets Alan Alda, his childhood idol.

Unsurprisingly, Alan helps Steve get back in the game and make up with the other Steve. To surpass Jim’s gruesome but camera-worthy antics, they decide to try a legendary trick in which audiences are transported to Oz. Actually, they might as well be because they wind up mass roofied in order to achieve this magical effect. If you ever wanted to know how the sausage is made, so to speak, with magic shows, this movie may well make you change your mind. I’m not sure how much better a person Steve became in “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” but at least by the end, he’s back on top of the world.