The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Films

Posts Tagged ‘wayne’s world’

Sorry for the late post, but I totally forgot to edit everything. Listen in to John, Ross and myself as we discuss Saturday Night Live, MacGruber, and its attempts to break into the movie market.

We also give our Good, Bad and Ugly SNL movies. Do you agree with us? Think we’re way off? Send us an email to podcast@goodbaduglyfilms.com or a voice mail via Skype to let us know what your favorite SNL movie is and why.

Mark

GOOD: Blues Brothers BAD: Blues Brothers 2000 UGLY: It’s Pat

John

GOOD: Wayne’s World BAD: Superstar UGLY: The Ladies Man

Ross

GOOD: Wayne’s World BAD: Night at the Roxbury UGLY: Stuart Saves His Family

Download This Episode Here

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

As appealing as the notion of introducing someone to the marvel that is Wayne’s World would be, this idea has two drawbacks. One, most people over the age of twenty four have seen Wayne’s World. Two, it’s not a film whose humour can be easily appreciated out of context. It was subversive, clever, and hilarious back in 1991, and for those of us that experienced it then, it still is. Show someone new this film, though, and they’ll most likely be irritated, bored, or baffled. Sadly the same goes for 1987’s Adventures in Babysitting . A newcomer won’t laugh hysterically at “Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues.” Heathens.

The challenge is, then, to show this hypothetical someone something that would still be appreciable and relevant, and not widely seen. Let’s move on, then, to a movie that has been proven to get an interesting reaction every time it is watched: the 1998 film Happiness by Todd Solondz. This film is a great litmus test for the broadness of your friend’s sense of humor. However, it is a powerful weapon. Show it too soon and it may kill a budding relationship. In fact, watching this film did cause my brother to be angry at me for recommending it, and my boyfriend at the time to tell me that he was “seriously worried” about my liking this film.

Like all the works that I’ve seen by Mr. Solondz, it is aggressively bleak. The film sets out not only to shock you, but to wear down your sense of decency and faith in humanity. Also, it features a key scene where an adult is trying to drug a young boy in order to molest him, and it’s shot and scored like a sitcom, or perhaps a romantic comedy. While that’s the centerpiece of the film, it is surrounded with much debauchery, sleaziness, apathy for the human condition, and Air Supply that you may end up not focusing on that scene as the most disturbing part of the film.

If you think this film is funny, it may actually be important that your significant other does too. It is a funny movie, but it takes bizarre twists in getting to this humour. There’s a woman named Joy (Jane Adams) who may be leading the saddest life of anyone in the film as she attempts to not only become a teacher, but find true love. This does not go well. Her judgmental sister Trish (perhaps the first instance of Cynthia Stevensen playing a dour and disapproving mother) is continually goading Joy into making sense out of her life, though Trish’s idyllic family unit has its own underlying faults. The major one being that her husband Bill (in a creepy role Dylan Baker is now frequently typecast as) is a closet pedophile, but her kid Billy isn’t too far off on the screwed up meter. Billy’s played with a lack of self-awareness and weak social skills to the point where you have to wonder if Rufus Read was either a brilliant actor, or not fully cognizant of the nature of the material he was playing. Interwoven into this family drama is their heartless sister Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) who wants nothing more to be an object of desire, and her neighbor (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who is very much willing to provide this role. There are also bizarre cameos by Camryn Manheim as one of those sad spinster (it’s cool to say spinster still, right?) who dresses like the little girl she still hasn’t progressed past, and is a spitting image for the secretary at my old college in Quebec, and another scene-stealing appearance by a troubled Jon Lovitz as a potentiall suitor for Joy. Can’t forget the parents of these three sisters, as played by Louise Lasser and Ben Gazzara, whose jumpsuit-clad marriage is in shambles due to the boredom of their father, who wants nothing more than to spend his remaining days getting some good action with the relatively hotter women now available to him.

Much like Magnolia, this is a film which breezes by in spite of a relatively lengthy runtime, and weaves an interesting family tale from a large ensemble cast. By interesting, you should read “screwed up” and “psychopathic”. There is no innocence in this film. If you haven’t seen it, you might be thinking that a film examining the superficiality of suburbia and the masks of normalcy in society would be tedious, preachy, and predictable. This film is none of these things. Solondz goes out of his way to make the two most sympathetic characters by far the pedophile Bill and creepy stalker Allen. The young son Billy, while oblivious, is not a portrait of innocence; he wants nothing more than to have his first orgasm, and in doing so provides the only positive achievement a character makes in the film.

In showing this film to an unsuspecting friend or loved one, you may receive the following comments:

“That was funny!”
or
“Why did you make me watch this?”
or
“I think you need therapy.”

All of which are insightful into the countenance of your companion. Honestly, I’m not sure I should be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t like this film. While my sense of humor generally does not go this dark, it can on occasion. A guy who can see the irony and shameful joy of this film is, to me, a keeper. Also, it can be a great film to use in case of needing an urgent breakup. Many, many uses.

Wow! Who’d have thunk that we would have made it to 100 episodes? In this special podcast, we list off the 10 films that influenced us in having a greater appreciation for the cinematic medium or were milestones for us. As part of our celebrations, we decided to have a long-overdue “vodkast”. Listen to our new theme music and let us know what you think.

Our 10 films…

ALLEN Perfume: The Story of a Murderer The Rapture Short Cuts Marnie The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Eating Raoul Videodrome Tess The Last Picture Show Where the Red Fern Grows

MARK 28 Days Later The Matrix Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels The Thing Blade Runner The Fog Alien Monty Python and the Holy Grail Papillon Easy Rider

Do you have any films that have influenced you, either in your life or in the way you view cinema? Let us know! Send us an email to podcast@goodbaduglyfilms.com, or comment on this page. You can also leave us a voicemail via Skype and we may play it on one of our shows.

Download this Episode Here

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.