Nope, that just won’t do

I saw this, this morning.  Didn’t understand it then, don’t understand it now.  Now I would say that maybe they were trying to dry it out but when I got to work it was raining.  At lunch time it was raining, and when I left for the day it was drizzling.

I think you are doing this wrong…

The hand up your ass might be a clue…

As kinky as the title sounds we’ll get back to it shortly.  I was born in the 70′s so I remember the days before VCR’s, DVR’s and Tivo.  What this means for those of you who never grew up without them is that if you missed a TV show you were shit out of luck.  While this may seem random and ranty it made watching certain shows all the more important because once it was missed it was missed for good.  As a kid of the 70′s I grew up watching the Muppets on PBS and it was a special time because it was the only time that I could watch it.

The Muppet show was a special time and the Muppet movies even more so.  There was a special quality to the Muppets which really has been lost in modern-day television.

Needless to say (and say it anyway I will) I was excited to see a new muppet movie that was written by an actor whom I have come to really enjoy on his other show (How I Met Your Mother) Jason Segel.  Additionally it had Amy Adams and anyone that knows me well knows I get weak in the knees for red heads.  Now I must admit that I had a lingering doubt creeping in the back of my mind about the movie but I really wanted to give it a chance.

Well, it wasn’t a muppet movie.

All of the magic of the muppets was sucked out (just like “enriching” white bread) and the cold dead shell that was left over was nowhere near as good as the original.  To be honest I found the whole thing to be mean-spirited and frankly really cynical.  The basic gist of the story is that a young man (Gary) grows up with a brother (Walter) who doesn’t know he is a muppet.  Oh the muppet wonders why he never grows while his brother sprouts like a weed but doesn’t worry about why their skin isn’t the same.  Eventually they discover reruns of the original muppet show and now he has a dream!

We also meet our other main character “the girl friend” aka Amy Adams (Mary).  Her character is a school teacher who is teaching her Fourth grade class to change the oil on a car.  This is a woman who frankly can do anything and while she loves her boyfriend and his brother the muppet she is kind of tired of including him in all of their adventures.  This dynamic becomes a tipping point later in the movie when Gary forgets about an intimate dinner on and for their anniversary.

The main idea of the movie is that this “unhappy” trio are taking a vacation to Los Angles to visit the old Muppet Theater and Museum and to celebrate an anniversary for our human characters.  Needless to say the tour is a disappointment since the muppets disappeared into obscurity and as we find out the machinations of a greedy corporate owner that wants to drill for oil underneath the old theater.  What is the name of our evil corporation?  Richman Oil of course!  We discover this because Walter sneaks off during the tour to check out Kermit’s old office and this is also where we discover that our evil CEO (Tex Richman wouldn’t you know) cannot perform an evil laugh.  Seriously, every time he wants to laugh the evil laugh he screams out “EVIL LAUGH, EVIL LAUGH!”  At first I wasn’t even sure if he was commanding his minions to laugh evilly or if he just couldn’t do it himself.

Before the big trip to the old muppet theater there is a big song and dance number (reminiscent of Pleasantville) as the trio hits the road and we get to our first scene of mean spiritedness.  As the bus drives away one of the dancers decries that “they are gone!” and the crowd collapses to the ground in relief.  While I can appreciate the humor of the moment it really wasn’t anything but mean.

Sadly it is Walter who discovers the evil plan and once Gary and Mary are able to extract this information from him (sadly without sharp implements or water boarding techniques) they decide to reunite the Muppets.  So off they go to the home that polliwog and swine built.  When they arrive at the gates if green and pink they discover that even the mighty have fallen on hard times.  Kermit eventually invites everyone inside and the dastardly plan is revealed to him.  A mélange of  references to the 1980′s, none of which children watching the movie would ever understand.  We have the classic 80′s robot bring a tray of tab and original recipe coke spouting phrases that haven’t been uttered in 30 years and should probably never be said again.

A plan is hatched to reunite the band and yet more 80′s references.  To “save” time they decide to travel by map, insert the traveling powers of Indiana Jones all the way down to the thick red line connecting point A to B.  First stop is Fozzie Bear who with a serious case of abandonment has rebuilt the Moopets with the nastiest group of replacements ever.  It doesn’t take a lot of prompting for him to rejoin Kermit and crew on their quest to restore the muppets.

Gonzo has become the King of, well…toilets.  He has become extremely successful and after initially rejecting the offer Gonzo blows up his entire business to rejoin the gang.  Seriously he blows his entire stock to smithereens, I am not entirely sure that he gave enough time for his employees to evacuate the building but hey who cares about the little people.  Animal, when they find him,  has committed himself to an anger management retreat.  This I understand the least.

This is Animal, the fiendish drummer of the Muppets.  When drums are mentioned he starts to flip out and Jack Black of all fucking people tries to explain that this is one of Animals trigger words.  Now I was a fan of the show but I cannot remember for the life of me that he was furiously angry about drumming.  I remember him as being a furious drummer who seemed to enjoy his outlet.  After more trigger words are accidentally discovered the anger management seminar dissolves into a grand melee and our crew of heroes slink away.

All of the former muppets are acquired, all except one.  The diva of the muppets who has apparently gotten a job in Paris for a fashion magazine.  We have another movie homage at this point, this one being The Devil Wears Prada and she also apparently consumes copious amounts of donuts ooh sorry beignets.  While I can appreciate this joke as well, once again children in the audience will not get the joke. Ms. Piggy reluctantly agrees to join her former cast-mates but not before revealing the her and Kermit had a falling out of some kind which has not yet been repaired.

Now that the group is back together they only have a short time to repair the condemned theater and put on the show.  As they make their repairs Mary starts to get antsy about her upcoming anniversary dropping many unsubtle hints to Gary who is totally consumed with making sure his brother Walter is living his dream.  On the day of the anniversary Mary wants to see the glorious sights of L.A. and have a day of pampering before the romantic dinner.  Gary promises that he will be there for dinner and of course completely forgets about it and Mary has decided she has had enough.  She heads back to their home town without leaving a note.

This leads to a song where both brothers are questioning who they are; are they muppet or are they man?  While I get it was trying to be a touching song revealing that the brothers need to be who they are it comes off as goofy.  Which totally detracts from the significance.  Gary is of course crushed by the loss of Mary and reluctantly decides to stay for his brother.  Walter is starting to have an existential crisis of his own.  Why do you ask?  Because he has no talent to offer the show to help save the Muppet theater.  Mary is having a crisis of her own.  While she is happy to be home again it does nothing but rain and of course she misses her man.

The night of the benefit has arrived and the group realizes that they have no live audience to perform for and the Network that has agreed to run the telethon is starting to get cold feet because there isn’t a celebrity host.  Once again the movie crosses a line that shouldn’t have been crossed because they kidnap Jack Black and tie him to a chair on the stage.  While this is in the vein of wacky antics that the Muppets are known for it doesn’t capture the feel that is the Muppets.  The telethon starts off roughly but begins to pick up steam, enough steam to concern our villain who makes his way down to the theater to sabotage the show.

Our villain makes it down to the theater and manages to cut the power.  Mary who is watching from home sees this and makes her way back to the theater (traveling by map to make it in time) to jury-rig a solution and power is restored.  As the time to buy back the theater ticks by and they get oh so close to their dollar goal the villain manages to destroy the antenna on the roof bringing the show to a permanent stop.  As the crushing realization sets in that they did not make their goal and that Tex Richman has defeated them the credits roll.

Seriously.  The credits roll.  You do not discover that they actually win until about halfway through the credits when Richman gets hit in the head with a bowling ball and decides to return the theater to the muppets.  Seriously, if  you walked out as the credits are rolling you would never know that the good guys won.

I guess the lesson here is that it is in fact a detriment to try and be too clever.  You cannot mix so many disparate elements into one cohesive theme without lessening the value of the whole.

And then there was rage…

Oh internet my internet I know it has been quite some time since I have given you love.  However like any good adult services provider on Craig’s List can attest to,  sometimes you have to follow the money and like a good wage slave work has taken a larger percentage of my time.  Sadly I have not missed any good movies recently since, well there haven’t been any.  Oh there have been a few films that have been a light in the darkness but like any good pessimist can agree with sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is an on-coming train.

While out at another film I happened to catch the trailer for Gnomeo & Juliet which looked like it could be, at the very least amusing.  Sadly this was not to be, as the saying goes about “Too many cooks” it also applies to “Too many writers” as well.  This piece of shit film had nine writers involved, ten if you include Shakespeare who if he were alive today would be filing rape charges against the others.  Now if you went to High School in the US then you more than likely had to suffer through Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy about teenage angst Romeo and Juliet.  Probably even had to read it aloud in English class in 9th or 10th grade.  In fact I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone living in an English-speaking country that does not have even a passing familiarity of the play.

Which leads me to ask this question/rant to the writers: WHAT THE FUCK?!? WERE YOU HOME SCHOOLED BY HELEN KELLER? I HAVE HEARD OF PHONING IT IN BUT THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS! IF SHAKESPEARE WEREN’T DEAD ALREADY HE WOULD KILL HIMSELF FROM SHAME…

To date there has only been one movie that I have walked out of and this POS was really close to being the 2nd.  When the credits finally rolled I found that I was actually quite angry, which I suspect is definitely not the response the writers were looking for.  I found myself thinking about the audience in the theater, since this was an animated movie it had a large percentage of children and suffering parents.  During the film I remember the theater being very quiet, in fact the only laugh I can recall was from a woman sitting next to me when she guffawed at a really stupid statement made by one of the characters.  For the record I didn’t laugh once.

The concept of the movie was a cute one; an attempt to update and make more accessible a classic piece of literature to a younger audience or at the very least make it more interesting to a teenage audience that increasingly does not like to read.  They even have a garden gnome making a statement at the beginning of the movie making a statement that this film will not be a standard representation of the classic play.  As the gnome is reading the statement the classic stage hook is attempting to pull him from the stage.  The ironies of a tired comedy trope being used in a movie about a tired play is sadly  not funny.  In fact if anything it annoyed the hell out of me.

The film itself opens on a pair of side-by-side houses (one red, one blue) and the mailboxes state they are 2b and not 2b.  Sadly this is not the last of the “homages” just the first is a series of really, really bad ones.  So instead of the Montague’s and the Capulet’s we have the red gnomes and blue gnomes (with matching gardens!).  At this point I experience a red out and I just wanted the movie to be over.  The movie basically dissolves into a series of vignettes of other movies.  We have Grease meets West Side Story meets a classic cheesy kung fu movie mixed with a basic flick about revenge with a dash of Shakespeare.

If anything if I didn’t know any better I would have chocked it up to a film school students tongue in cheek research project but this is sadly not the case.

Randomness

No I am not dead, work has been demanding and to prove I am not dead I will amuse you with a random selection of emails I get at work.  Names may or may not have been Dragnetted for their safety enjoy:

“I got word that the Crab Sandwich on Nine Grain Bread made someone vomit. How do you handle these situations? Is your fish supposed to be fresh? Where does it come from? Appreciate your fast response.”

I love this one because of its randomness.  One of the companies that I work with (and has nothing to do with food service) forwarded this gem to me.

“Also, for test 4, I don’t know what my order number was for test 3 so I cannot search the orders and cancel. “

I have no words…

“I have not been able to speak with my owners yet about the inventory”

But they let you send this email eh?

“We have completed all test orders, but packing slips are not available for download.  How should we proceed?”

That’s amazing.  Most people cannot complete the test orders until after they have downloaded the packing-slips…

Re: test case 1, how do I “download and save to your desktop the invoice adjustment file with an .xls extension”?  (insert sounds of me bludgeoning my skull against my desk)

Hmm I wonder if there might be some hint in there somewhere…

It’s clichéd…

While I am not completely against romantic comedy movies I do have to insist that they at the very least be interesting.  A stretch I know but there it is.  While away at the Shore (on the last night no less) the ladies in the family decided to put on “It’s Complicated“.  Now I must admit that the TV was dominated by the sports watching men and it is only fair that the fairer sex is allowed equal time but “It’s Complicated”? I cannot even begin to describe how painful this movie was.  There was absolutely nothing original about this movie, I mean it ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was original.  The entire movie was one gigantic fucking cliché, or more accurately it was a long string of clichés.

Ten years after the divorce and the youngest son is now graduating from College and the family flies in to celebrate.  Feeling vulnerable our main character Jane (how perfectly a generic name for this movie) gets loaded on booze and bangs her ex-husband.  Now they originally got divorced after having had the necessary 3 children (2 girls and a boy) because he finds a younger, sexier woman.  The new wife is of course 20 years younger than he is has 1,000% more energy than he does and wants to have at least 2 of his children.  At this stage they have had 1 of the desired 2 (making a total of 4 for him).  Since he has no desire to actually raise his 5 year-old son (new) he is anxious to be the swinging bachelor again and sees his ex-wife in a brand new light.

Of course “the sex” is fabulous for both of them and now he is completely re-interested in old ground.  Since we have not had enough clichés at this point we discover she is having an addition added to her house (enter the “new” love interest Adam the architect).  She of course keeps forgetting that she has made an appointment with him (throughout the movie) and he is nothing but patient with her.

Since there isn’t an original bone in this movies body lets skip ahead a bit:

• She asks the psychiatrist if the affair is Ok? check!
• Her daughters fiancé catches them going up to a hotel room? check!
• He has a heart incident in the hotel room, and they have to call a doctor, and the fiancé sees the doctor going up? check, check, check!!!
• Ex-husband is sneaking phone calls the exact same way he did when he was cheating on her? check!
• Gaggle of girlfriends (hers) loves the idea of her cheating with her ex-husband on the younger woman who broke up her marriage? check!
• Adam continues to pursue her for a date even though she keeps blowing him off? check!
• The Ex fails to show up to an intimate dinner (his favorite) and he doesn’t call? check!
• Cheesy internet speak? oh my goodness check!
• Finally gives Adam a try, takes him to a party that the ex-husband will be at, while high, from a single hit of a joint? chhhheeeeeecccck!
• The new wife figures out that her philandering husband is fucking the ex-wife at that same party? check!
• Ex-husband leaves the new wife to get back with Jane? check!
• The children find it really strange? check!
• While taking a bathroom break during a video conference with Adam the ex-husband sneaks into her room naked, and Adam sees him, from the front and the back? big check!
• Jane finally comes clean with Adam about seeing her ex-husband? check!
• Adam is understanding? check!
• They still get together at the end of the movie? check!

Folks these are just the highlights of the clichés, chick flicks do not actually need to be this bad.