No.336 : Where’s the Love? (2014)

Where's the Love? at the IMDb

No, it’s nothing to do with the Black Eyed Peas’ song - they didn’t use the contraction in any event. This is a made for TV movie about relationships and yes, we have scraped the barrel so far in our ‘W’ movie quest that we are through the base and nearing the Earth’s core.

Our lovely leads are Sebastian and Ryan (a lady) who are a married couple who host a successful daytime talk show called ’Where’s the Love’ [ Ron Howard voice : That’s the name of the film!] that deals with failing marriages. They are both doctors and dispense wisdom and advice to their guests who have issues in their relationships. The big twist is however that our couple also have issues of their own! Can the physicians heal themselves?

The couple survived a rocky period in their marriage when Seb had an affair. The couples’ agent and producers keep pressurising them on take on new jobs and tours meaning they have to shore up their relationship’s crumbling façade whilst never fixing what is at the heart of their dilemmas.

Things come to a head when they are ambushed at a book launch with pictures of Seb out with the same model with whom he had the affair. Ryan ditches his ass and gets her long hair cut to show the changes she plans on making. Seb gets bumped from the show which is rebranded as a programme for divorcees with Ryan hosting solo.

Seb meanwhile gets a job on radio and releases his own book about men making bad choices. Whilst we wait for the inevitable reconciliation there is a side plot of the agent and producer who hate each other but are slowly building respect and maybe feeling a little more? When will all the principals have a big kiss and let this thing be over? Not quickly enough!

This was a horrible cheesy film about relationships that was intercut with captions cards offering wry homilies which were clearly designed for woman to nudge their long suffering spouses and say ‘That’s you that is’. You also have short clips of couples talking about their own relationship issues, just in case the central relationship issues spine of the film wasn’t enough for you.

In truth the film was basically marriage guidance dressed up as entertainment. I wasn’t entertained at all and the ending was so pat and unearned that you are left feeling that they must have run out of money and just jettisoned the previous 80 minutes of character development to just say ‘and they lived happily ever after’. Nothing of substance or value was learned, with the ‘secret’ of a good relationship being declared as 'honesty and communication'. And not boffing models, I’d imagine.

This isn’t a film directed at my demographic and I’m sure some will take the homilies to heart and decide to work at their relationship just as their partner is trying to leave via the bathroom window.

The production values were decent and the cast mostly likeable, but the material was thin and the message patronising. Seek your therapy elsewhere!

Best Bit : They were taken last week!  ‘W’ Rating 6/23

 

No.321 : When the Bough Breaks (1994)

When the Bough Breaks (1994) at the IMDb

We recently watched another ‘When the Bough Breaks and this 1994 version safely occupies the coveted ‘2nd Best ‘When the Bough Breaks’ award’ berth. Indeed if we find the 1947 version I can see this one moving into the bronze medal slot.

This and the 2016 version share only a title, with this effort being a detective thriller that makes no sense, and has no thrills whatsoever.

The film opens with a caption telling us we’re in Texas and it’s the 4th of July - regular captions chart the date as we head towards the 16th which is soon given some significance. Despite it pissing down road workers are digging a hole and teens are partying in the streets, but their endeavours are cut short when a pair of hands is discovered, flushed out of a drain. Cowboy hat wearing sheriff Martin Sheen is puzzled and can’t even offer a witty pun along the lines of ‘need a hand’ or ‘check out the second hand store’.

Instead he calls in FBI profiler Audrey (Ally Walker) who looks like she’s facing a chauvinistic department at first, but everyone turns out to be really helpful. She has Gillian Anderson’s hair off ‘The X-Files’ and as character traits she smokes a lot and is claustrophobic. She also has scars on her back for reasons that were unexplained. It may have been that they were laying character points for future sequels but happily those amounted to one straight to video offering only.

It seems that Audrey is the only one doing any work and she quickly establishes that a pair of numbered hands shows up every year and suspects a serial killer. Let’s hope so, or else a lot of villains must be getting handy. With some proto-internet skills she manages to identify a lot of the victims and soon tracks down a young mental patient who draws numbered hands on his walls. Gotta be a clue there surely? The boy chooses to be a mute, so slowly Audrey manages to get him out of his shell and the case starts to come into focus.

With July 16th approaching, and a girl already abducted, can Audrey solve the crime before another juggling career is destroyed for good?

This was an awful film that made no sense at all. The poster suggests a psychic element which isn’t covered in the film. It does turn out twins are involved but their psychic link is in full HD and never explored.

The detection was all over the place, including the uncovering of a red herring paedophile who drove about in an ice cream van wearing clown make up. Creepy as that sounds there was in fact loads of them working for a franchise. There must be a whole Texan generation of kids with an ice cream phobia! This was so ridiculous it was funny, with a flashback showing a child snared by a ‘free ice cream’ sign.

Despite his prominent poster presence Sheen does very little with all the work done by the dull and unengaging Ally Walker. I think she was let down in the edit however, as all her character’s quirks go nowhere and her breakthroughs were random and illogical.

I knew who the baddie was going to be early on as Ron Perlman was listed as appearing but didn’t show up until 70 minutes! His scenes were dreadful as was the whole finale which was lifted wholesale from ‘The Silence of the Lambs’.

You could argue it was left to the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that would just excuse glaring plot holes and bad writing. Having the mute ‘boy’ played by an obvious girl was a mistake especially as she looked like a young Justin Bieber - why not just use real twins or indeed have the twins be the same sex?

Anyway, I won’t waste any more time looking for nits and plot holes as it’s clear that the production didn’t bother, so why should I?

Te film was unintentionally funny in places, but overall this was just an incoherent mess.

Best Bit : Clown Face Ice Cream - ‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.247 : War Pigs (2015)

War Pigs at the IMDb

It’s very easy to slag off a straight to DVD film starring a bunch of Z-list actors…so let’s do that then!

The film is a bit of an ‘Inglorious Basterds’ rip off with a rag tag group of WW2 soldiers sent on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. Here the similarities end however as instead of Brad Pitt and Chrisoph Waltz you get a blink and you’ll miss him appearance from Mickey Rourke and Luke Goss out of ‘Bros’ in the lead. What they didn’t spend on acting talent they also didn’t spend on sets or locations with sunny America standing in for what should be a mud splattered and freezing Europe.

The film opens with Captain Luke leading his troops on a patrol. Bad judgement or intelligence leads him into a nest of Germans and everyone gets killed apart from our hero. He is carpeted by his C/O, a ridiculous looking Mickey Rourke, whose ‘eccentric Major’ doesn’t disguise the fact that he must be the only officer on the Western Front with extensive plastic surgery and a cowboy hat. He delivers his lines in his celebrated slurry fashion and tells Luke that he’s up for a court martial unless he can lead a mission into enemy territory.

Luke may be torn up at the loss of his men, or because he’s read the rest of the script, but he agrees to the mission with the promise that his court martial will go away if he makes it back. We get the idea that Mickey may have another agenda and is being all enigmatic so imagine the disappointment at the end when we learn he totally doesn’t and is just (badly) acting that way.

Luke heads off to meet his new unit the notorious ‘War Pigs’. These are the toughest troops in the army and earned their name by, er, getting down in the dirt. Again I thought this was going to be a big reveal near the end but that’s really how they came by their name. The troops are meant to be your usual bunch of misfits but they all came across as really dull. Except maybe for Dolph Lundgren who shows up as a French Foreign Legion solider who is assigned to the unit for reasons unknown.

After a long padding sequence where the guys are put through extensive training (don’t they know there’s a war on?!) they get their orders - to investigate reports of a giant German artillery gun 10 miles behind enemy lines. That doesn’t seem very far especially at this stage of the war and given they have pissed away weeks in training, but never mind, this climax will be great!

The War Pigs show their greatness by mostly getting captured right away and it’s down to Luke to save the captured troops, find the gun and squeeze out a tear before the all too welcome end credits.

I quite enjoyed this terrible film, as a guilty pleasure you understand. It failed on almost every level with no characters to speak of, very little peril and dialogue that will make you cringe. Luke is a horrible actor and didn’t convince one iota as the troubled captain. He seems a nice enough bloke but saying ‘Soldier’ in every sentence doesn’t convey authority nor did he seem believable as an action hero taking down three Jerries in a fist fight.

He was better than Rourke however, who gets a laughable front and centre slot on the poster for his five minute’s work. His Frankenstein face and white cowboy hat made him look ridiculous and he conveyed all the menace of Sylvester Stallone’s mother.

The baddies were very poor too, with the one who was charged with the predictable old Gestapo torturer role as scary as a My Little Pony. The big threat of the super gun (it’s only a model) was nothing of the kind and dispatched with such ease you wonder why they didn’t issue our guys with pea-shooters instead.

The climax, which included a seemingly heroic death for Lundgren reversed, suggested a sequel could be possible - dear God no! I’d rather fight the Germans myself!

Best Bit - Luke goes Mano-a-mano-a-mano-a-mano.
‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.232 : When the Game Stands Tall (2014)

When the Game Stands Tall at the IMDb

 High school American football now, as the record breaking high school team De La Salle’s 151 game record gets the Hollywood treatment. Clearly winning 151 games in a row isn’t interesting enough as the film gets the dreaded ‘Inspired by a true story’ tag which effectively means loads of it might be made up - and according to Wikipedia it is.

Still, it isn’t billed as a documentary so let’s see if it stands up on its own two feet as a compelling sports drama.

Jesus Christ himself, Jim Caviezel stars as coach Bob Ladouceur who has lead the school to 12 straight school championships. As well as football coach he’s also scripture teacher and is married to Laura Dern, which is nice. The film opens with the Championship winning game and the pressure on the teams to maintain ‘The Streak’.  Predictable problems soon arise when star players are distracted by lucrative college offers and pushy parents tries to push their own kids into the team.

Bob has is own issues when he has a heart attack and is also tempted by offers to coach elsewhere. He also has a son on the team who isn’t that good and who takes the huff with his bedridden Dad when told that Pop may not be able to coach sports whilst he’s still warming a hospital bed.

The close season is a busy time as a player gets gunned down at a party and the new roster of players aren’t as keen on sharing their thoughts and holding hands, which helped the previous lot so well. Trouble is also brewing in the league as rival teams accuse Bob of tempting all the best players and basically cheating to keep his streak alive.

They may have a point as Bob retaliates by playing a higher ranked team and immediately loses the streak. After a second loss things threaten to go pear shaped especially as Kurgan out of ’Highlander’s son is closing in on a touchdown record that would make his old man happy and potentially enhance the boy’s future.

Things do improve and a mini streak sees the team to the championship game but can they win and will the lessons they have learned make them better people?

I was really disappointed in this film which had the potential to be good but ended up a cliché ridden mess. As soon as they left the path of truth and introduced extra dramatic elements all was lost for me. Facts were discarded and others made up which made all the achievements and sacrifices pointless.

The sub-plot of the Kurgan pressurising his son towards the touchdown record for his own aggrandisement was so well worn and hackneyed that you knew how it would play out. Every time the dad was on screen he was jabbering on about ‘the record’ and given the message that the team is more important you won’t need two guesses to see how that one plays out.

Caviezel is OK in the lead but he lacked the inspirational qualities the role demanded. His scenes with his wet son were a bit cringey and he had no spark at all with the lovely Laura Dern, who was criminally underused.

There were long periods with no on field action at all, with large swathes of the film taken up with the familiar territory of young black athletes being tempted by cars and the like and a chance to escape their tough existence.

There was nothing new in this film and given it deviated so far from the source material it failed as a biography or as a true story either. A pointless exercise all round.

Best Bit : Need a time out for that one.

‘W’ Score 6/23

No.204 : White Comanche (1967)

White Comanche at the IMDb

William Shatner stars in this risible 1967 western playing the role of twins - one cowboy and one Indian. Using the classic theme of duality, one is good while one is bad with Shatner showing his range as being totally wooden as both.

We first meet Shatner as cowboy Johnny Moon, resplendent in double denim. His expert horsemanship is cut short when he’s grabbed by a lynching gang and he only just escapes. Meanwhile the Indian Shatner, Notah,  is whooping it up and attacking stagecoaches. He’s high on the peyote and kills indiscriminately, saving only the lovely Rosanna Yanni for some ravishing.

The Shatners meet at the Indian camp with cowboy Shatner telling his brother he’s tired of being blamed for his crimes. A busybody squaw stops a shootout and the Shatners agree to meet for a showdown in a nearby town in four day’s time.

Cowboy Shatner heads into town but once again his brother’s reputation gets him into trouble. The local villain tries to hire his gun while Joseph Cotten’s sheriff tries to warn him off. After an overlong saloon fight the lady fresh from the ravishing tries to kill our hero. Happily the misunderstanding is soon explained and Rosanna is hanging about Shatner’s bedroom in no time flat.

With the showdown imminent some space is padded by a low rent gunfight complete with people slowly tipping themselves over balconies and slapping ketchup on their bodies. The bad guy is trying to take over the town you see, with only Cotton, Shatner and the mayor ready to take arms against them. Not so much ‘High Noon’ as ‘Low Goon’. Apologies for that.

With the town secure for now Indian Shatner raises the Comanche nation to attack the town. They are indifferent to the muffin top spewing over the top of his jeans and after wiping out some miners the showdown is on. But wait! Some Indians aren’t in agreement with the ‘slaughter everyone’ policy and we can only hope that the brothers and peoples of all nations can learn to live in peace and harmony.

This film is so bad that it defies any criticism. It’s pious and self important while offering nothing in the way of social commentary or insight. Shatner sucks in both roles and they don’t even bother changing his haircut when he’s playing the Indian. They also don’t bother with split screens so the pairs’ meetings are always a flurry of cut shots or of obvious body double.

Shatner is the worst but the acting is uniformly  awful with the mayor possibly the worst bit part actor I’ve seen. Cotten is OK as the sheriff but you don’t buy his homily wisdom or bravery in the face of insurmountable odds.

The film was shot in Spain and it shows in the green valleys and lack of mountainous terrain. The sets and costumes are also poor with Indian Shatner parading about bare chested in jeans much of the time and possibly wearing the same jeans as the cowboy. The soundtrack sounds like it has been lifted from a porno with totally inappropriate jazzy sequences serving only to keep the audience awake.

Some will get a few laughs at this dreadful production but for the rest of us it’s a complete waste of time.

Best Bit : Shatner on Shatner Action  6/23

No.183 : World Gone Wild (1987)

World Gone Wild at the IMDb

Well here’s a first for the 100+ W Movies Quest - no not a reader, although that’d be nice - an actual request. OK it was a request borne out of vanity as the person making the request only did so as he almost shares the name of one of the characters, but we’ll take what we can get.

This dystopian action thriller is absolutely dreadful and I doubt you’d be able to find it anywhere apart from my hard drive and numerous land fill sites - but let’s have a look anyway.

The film opens with some scene setting narration. The production evidently didn’t have the cash for a scrolling paragraph so instead poor old Bruce Dern is tasked with setting the scene. It’s the late 21st century and a 75 year war has left most people dead and it hasn’t rained in 50 years. Realising their shaky premise and the abundance of clouds in the film, they add in ‘cruelly there are clouds but no rain’ - you can’t fault science like that.

After a dreadfully tacky credits sequence with the cheapest TV movie graphics and over filtered colours we get to the nub of the action. The writer has seen ‘Mad Max 2’ and thought ‘Yeah no one will notice if I steal that’ so he sets us up in a remote compound filled with people in white clothes and hair bands. He cleverly substitutes the rare resource from gasoline to water to make it all original. Anyway the school only has four books, so at least it’s an improvement from today’s education cuts - little bit of politics there, and the kids have no pencils and a teacher lacking most of her clothes.

The lesson on etiquette is interrupted when Adam Ant appears, towed by cape wearing lackeys, resplendent in his flying goggles and in a hollowed out helicopter. I ‘d say ‘you couldn’t make it up’ but clearly someone has - drugs really screw you up. Ant is playing the ridiculously named ‘Derek Abernathy’ and after spouting a lot of shite for five minutes starts shooting up all the peaceful locals along with his dead eyed henchmen. Total carnage is averted when Bruce Dern turns up and kills a bad guy by booting a hubcap into his throat - clearly he’s not a man to be messed with.

Ant crawls off with some of the settlement’s young men (Operation Yew Tree?) to brainwash them into his cult, yes that's cult, while those who remain take stock and fix their hair. They know Ant will be back and Dern sets off to town for reinforcements. The town is a hell hole with women in basques running about while dying babies are denied water. Sounds like my kinda town! After some recruiting of colourful sidekicks Dern returns to fortify the settlement and wait Ant’s next attack. Can the mismatched gang of renegades and mercenaries take on Ant’s formation bike riding team of white clad brainwashed youths? Will the inevitable explosions kick start the environment? Hell yes!

This blog has been guilty of exaggerating the awfulness of many films but I defy anyone to see this and declare it even a partial success. Well OK, pished up students may be able to laugh ironically at the many plot holes, dreadful acting and atrocious dialogue, but we’re a bit higher brow at this blog.

For a start where, in a world with no rain for 50 years, do they find an endless supply of brilliant white clothes, never mind endless bullets and enough TNT to make 9/11 look like a box of Aldi fireworks? For a world scrabbling in the dirt to survive everyone looks well nourished and there is frankly an over abundance of motorcycles and capes.

OK, we can set these gripes aside, as long as the cast is strong and the plot is tight and coherent. Er, sorry. Ant fails to stand and deliver in the acting stakes and it is baffling how he managed to get through the audition. To be fair in a film where “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” is the best line, the standards were never going to be high. Bruce Dern fails to deliver his usual mania and he seems largely disinterested in a film that doubtlessly looked more fun in the script than in reality.

The gang of misfits were uniformly dreadful from ‘Nitro’ the dynamite expert to some other guy who created a ‘snake pit’ trap with precisely 4 small snakes in it - at least they squashed them together for the close up
shot - Indiana Jones this was not.

The plot was virtually non-existent and they even had two goes at the finale both of which failed to elicit any excitement or tension. Ant had one of the lowest key demises of any movie baddie despite being seemingly bullet proof for the first 90 minutes. The big conclusion was ridiculous as it was predictable and frankly if the new rains had washed this effort out of existence no one would be complaining. Well apart from Mr Abernethy at any rate…

W Rating 6/23
Best Bit - Ant ain't no Goody Two Shoes

No.172 : Wild Stallion (1952)

Wild Stallion at the IMDb

Another crappy 1950’s western now - we really need to upgrade our movie package here at the 100+ W Movies Quest - TCM seems to have no end of these ‘classics’.

Wild Stallion is mercifully short at 70 minutes, but they are long, long minutes.

We open as a cavalry post is being decommissioned. A fat, wise old soldier is packing up the stables as an eager new recruit asks about the old white horse. ‘Thank God you asked’ the old man probably thought as we wouldn’t have a film otherwise. We quickly dissolve to a homestead in the old west, 32 years earlier. The pioneer Maw and Paw barely get a chance to wonder when Dan will be back from the fishing hole before they are dispatched by some sharp shootin’ injuns. These guys fire one bullet and one arrow and score two kills - that’s how the west might have been won! In the low key melee a young white colt escapes - remember him for the next paragraph! The injuns torch the homestead and make off just as young Dan appears with the fish dinner.

Alas his acting range can’t convey the trauma, so he just gets on with burying his folks. He manages to plant his oversized parents without getting his hands dirty, just as a helpful stranger appears. He gives a master class in name carving before dropping the boy off at the cavalry’s military school. Things morph into his teenage years as he and the helpful stranger team up to capture wild horses for the cavalry. Dan has never forgotten his lost white colt, ‘Top Kick’, and near wets his pants as he spots his erstwhile steed.

Top Kick is the leader of a big herd of wild horses and although our man gets a rope on it, it soon escapes his frankly creepy clutches. Over the next few years our man busies himself by fighting with the cavalry’s bully boy horse trainer and in pretending to be interested in the token lady, who does nothing but simper and  look desperately for a husband.

After even more dull related horse antics, including one where Top Kick facilitates a horse jailbreak, he and our man are eventually tamed for a life in the military and with a beard wife.

We dissolve back to the old army man who is telling the tale and are meant to be surprised when we learn that the man running the post is actually our man Dan. We also get the joyous news that rather than heading  for the Tesco burger factory, Top Kick is off to San Francisco for retirement - wonder why our butch hero chose there?

Although it’s easy to tear strips off this film it has no pretensions and is simply a ‘Boys’ Own’ style adventure yarn. Any prospect of drama and suspense is lost from the beginning with the narrative all told in flashback. The surprise ending is nothing of the kind and it gets worse when our hero takes the old man along too - he thought he was for the old folks’ home!

As is often the case with melodrama like this the score is really booming and invasive, and there is no attempt at characterisation - it’s all boo-hiss - hoo-ray - boooo! The Indians get a bad press, as ever, with them randomly shooting folk and setting fire to stuff for no ideological reason that the film makers address. The plot, although slight, is ridiculous with our hero delivering his catchphrase ‘It’s MY horse’ with monotone dullness and regularity. The horse looks like it’s on day leave from the circus with its flowing mane and perfect timing - hardly a ‘wild stallion’

You can see this playing well in a 1950s Saturday matinee but for me it was a dreadful throwback, with wooden acting and stilted dialogue. Throw in an unlikable lead and a charisma free horse and you’ve got the longest 70 minutes you’ll ever endure. Where’s the Tesco value range when you need it?

Best Bit : My, Top Kick is a boy horse isn’t he?
W rating 6/23

No. 155 : WrestleManiac (2006)

Wrestlemaniac at the IMDb

Here we go with yet another slasher pic where the bad guy hacks his way through a group of kids leaving just one to run around finding the other’s bodies before a final confrontation. The twist here? The bad guy is a former wrestler, and that’s about it really. God knows why films like this are made when they have nothing new to offer apart from a few slightly different murders. There are a couple of crumbs of interest but far fewer than you’d need to justify watching, even with a skinny 75 minutes run time.

Despite it’s barely feature length running time the film has a leisurely four minutes of pre-credits which are shown over some vintage footage of Mexican wrestlers - mood setting or run time padding - you decide. Our group of fodder are three guys and three girls in a van who are scouting locations for a porn film they plan on shooting in Mexico. Given that they only have one camera you’d think they’d be better off filming in someone’s flat but these are clearly amateur pornographers.

After getting lost they stop at a predictably run down gas station and are given a warning from a crusty stranger. A seemingly legendary town is nearby and they shouldn’t stop on pain of death. One of our team is luckily an expert on Mexican wrestling lore and insists that the town is the next stop. Legend has it that in trying to secure an Olympic gold the authorities chopped up their three best wrestlers to make one superhuman fighter. He turned out great but sadly maniacal so they stuck him in some remote town and forgot about him.

You can probably guess the rest!

The gang set about making the tamest porno you’ll ever see but one by one they drift away for their appointment with doom. Most of the deaths are seen from the killer’s POV so obviously that saves on the special effects budget. The killings are pretty routine but in keeping with the Mexican wrestling tradition of unmasking opponents he rips off their faces and sticks them on the wall. The wrestling expert deduces that they can stop the bad guy by removing his mask but this proves to be easier said than done.

Soon enough we’re down to just one lady who runs around screaming and finding all the bodies. Can she possibly best the greatest wrestler in history and get away in the van? Hmmm, possibly not.

This was a competent enough slasher film but it offered little of real interest and it’s basically just a run of the mill picking them off cookie cutter special. The wrestling angle was OK and offered some decent plot points but it effectively boiled down to the masks thing and that wasn’t enough to hang the film on, even one as short as this. Of the cast I liked Alphonse the best as he has a bit of sass and the few decent lines all to himself. The fat wrestling nerd never convinced and the woman severed only as eye candy and for screaming a lot.

You’ll see worse but probably nothing so derivative of the genre as this, and frankly you’ll get a more original script from the WWF. Three count? Three out of ten if you’re lucky!

Best Bit : here comes the plumber!

‘W’ Rating : 6/23

No.63 : Without Warning (1994)

Without Warning at the IMDb

Our regular programming is interrupted to bring you this review…

‘Without Warning’ is a faux rolling news report that covers a meteor landing that soon escalates into a global emergency. I was actually annoyed that they broke away from the film they were showing at first as it looked far more fun than the derivative drivel that is to follow.

The film is basically an updated version of Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast for the CNN generation. The aged anchor, whom I understand is a real life newsman, holds things together as various correspondents file shaky reports with snippets of information. There is precious little in the way of actual footage with us having to make do with a bunch of actors shouting and holding their ears a lot.

The initial three prong meteor strike is written off as a freak natural event but when three more are spotted on the radar the SETI nuts are believed. We then get a nervous wait before the threat is dealt with by a tactical nuclear strike. Is the threat over and is an alien intelligence at work?

This film is really annoying and it’s hard to stay the course. It masquerades as a real life event but when you have ‘Malcolm in the Middle’s Mom, the Library Detective out of ‘Seinfeld’ and Q out of ‘Star Trek TNG’ pitching in, you know reality isn’t what it was. Added to the mix is an interview with Arthur C Clarke which may be archive, as he doesn't relate to the events in play during it. They probably asked him so make a comment about the tri-meteor threat to the world but were told to bugger off.

The static laced pieces to camera may be authentic looking but it is a bit annoying when they keep crackling and cutting out. The amount of access given by the government is also unbelievable as they let all the camera crews into witness a nuclear deployment - aye right. As the threat heightens the professional journalists start bubbling and talking about their kids - gee that‘ll help when the alien slavers arrive!

The special effects match the acting in the dire stakes, with computer graphics standing in for all the action. The crash scenes we do see are dark fields with small fires in them, intercut with stock footage of people rioting, celebrating and bowing to our alien overlords. Maybe not the last one, unfortunately.

To be fair this was a TV movie and you can’t expect massive alien monsters to be roaming around shooting the place up. You could however expect something a bit more exciting and believable than this full sized game of ‘Asteroids’. Supposedly people believed that the Welles’ radio show was real - anyone taken in by this nonsense should be sectioned immediately.

Best Bit : “If I turn the triangle upside down…whoa!"

‘W’ Score : 6/23

No.56 : Witless Protection (2008)

Witless Protection at the IMDb

Jeez, the things I have to watch to keep this challenge in motion. ‘Witless Protection’ fully deserves its place in the IMDb’s worst 100, but I must confess that I did smile at least twice.

Larry the Cable Guy plays Larry (Duh!) a small town sheriff’s deputy. He aspires to greater things and is self training to become an FBI agent using a video tape and a home made gym. His girlfriend, who is infeasibly played by Jenny McCarthy, doesn't agree with his dangerous career change but when a case falls into his lap Larry grabs the opportunity.

When Larry spots a witness being escorted by four FBI agents he notices some procedural inaccuracies from his video and decides that they are bogus. He grabs the witness and the pair then head across country with the baddies in hot pursuit. The witness, a sausage heiress, obviously dislikes the boorish Larry from the off, but over time they bond as Larry’s true qualities shine through.

The witness has evidence regarding corruption at the sausage firm but as some pieces are missing and a dangerous mission into enemy territory is needed. Can Larry jump through the fatuous hoops necessary to get the girl and evidence to court in time and will his FBI dreams be realised?

You have to hope that this film with its farts and puking gags is aimed at 12 years olds but seeing as it also is full of racial and sexist abuse you’d kinda hope it wasn’t. Lead Larry is an odious character who intimated Asian hotel clerks with Guantanimo threats and then projectile vomits to find a key. Of course we know he’s lovely and decent but he can’t help but look like a bigoted, red-neck prick.

The script is really awful with ‘gags’ like “we’re a team, t-e-e-m -team” and various other misunderstandings for humourless consequences. The set up, that sees an odd couple allied with a fish out of water scenario, is lazy trash and clearly just a device to transport us to the next big fart.

The film does have a decent cast with Katanga out of ‘Live and Let Die’ as the crooked agent and the usually good Peter Stomare (Fargo) as an English polo playing gent who gets a face full of horse shit. He must have had a tax bill. You also get the aforementioned Jenny who is looking a bit rough and the always terrible Eric Roberts (except in ‘Best of the Best 2’).

There are no real surprises at all, and you could miss the middle 90 minutes and still know what’s happening in the last five. I did snigger at the over zealous airport guard and the trade off DVD reveal, but only because the gags were so predictable and overdone. Honest, it’s low brow rubbish. Snigger, Billy Ray Cirus, hee-hee…

Best Bit “ I suggest you take off your boots…”

‘W’ Score 6/23

No.15 : Weekend At Bernie’s (1989)

Weekend at Bernie's at the IMDb

‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ is a high concept low laughs comedy from 1989. Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman play a couple of slackers who work at Bernie’s life insurance company and dream of the high life. When they discover a scam they report to Bernie who unknown to them is the perpetrator, in league with a clichéd version of the Mafia. Bernie plans to kill the hapless duo at his beach home, but the Mob have similar designs on Bernie, who they feel is a liability.

Bernie gets killed in short order in a throwaway scene and is found by our heroes, who realise that by pretending he’s alive they can still enjoy his hospitality and steal his watch. When they discover Bernie’s plan for their own demise, including their own faked suicide note, they have to up their game to avoid a hopeless hit man and to clear their names.

I like a bit of bad taste as much as the next pervert but even I thought this film to be a bit grubby and tasteless. Any laughs the film offers are all wringed out of the fact that one of the participants is dead. No mentions are made of self evacuations or rigor mortis, instead they get busy with corpse mutilation like stapling his wig onto his head and taking him water skiing. Add to this the fact that they are stealing all his stuff and you certainly aren’t endeared to the leads or care for their situation.

The idea that all Bernie’s hangers on don’t know or care that he’s dead as long as the champagne flows is overdone and unbelievable. Add to that the general laddish behaviour employed by the main duo such as wrecking the harbour and you just think that they’re a pair of ass holes who deserve a good slapping. A romantic subplot involving a co-worker is tacked on but it’s as believable as the rest of the nonsense.

I did quite like the hit man who kept killing Bernie only to see him resurrected the next day. It wasn’t so much funny, as laughable to see his over the top reactions and eye rubbing. Unbelievably a sequel to this mess was made, with Bernie resurrected by Voodoo magic, and I only hope I can dig up 100 ‘W’ films before I have to face that. Flogging a dead horse maybe but a dead body?

Best Bit : Lots of bikini babes to take you mind off the 'action'.

‘W’ Score : 6/23