Christmas Movie Magic (2021)

Director: Robert Vaughn
Writer(s): Rickie Castaneda, from a story by James S. Blakeman and Caitlin English
Starring: Holly Deveaux, Drew Seeley, Jill Frappier and Jennifer Gibson

The first holiday movie of the season more or less sets the tone for all the rest that follow. If we get a bad one, then it’s a case of “bah-humbug” and that negativity follows into the next viewing. And the next. Until one of them finally breaks the cycle by being “good”. Last year we saw an unprecedented number of above-average Christmas rom-coms.

This year hasn’t gotten off to such a good start.

Actually Christmas Movie Magic does get off to a decent start. A man encounters a woman walking her pig in the middle of the street. Through some cheeky dialogue, the two seem to hit it off instantly. But we can tell from the intentionally stilted acting (even for this type of movie) that it’s not from this time period. Alas, it is not: This love story is actually a movie from the 1950s.

I was hoping the entire movie would be done in this style. It probably would have gotten a little tiresome, but at least it would have been unique. Unfortunately, the “movie-within-a-movie” is only glimpsed occasionally after the intro, despite playing an annoyingly protracted part in the main movie itself.

Alli is an entertainment writer hoping to earn a promotion to the news team. Of course, she thinks her talents are being underutilized, and wants a chance to prove herself. Her boss offers her the chance to do just that - provided she write an article about Christmas With You, that ‘50s movie we caught a glimpse of earlier. Starring Walter Andrews - Hollywood’s heartthrob of the time - it seems the movie had such a profound impact on the city it was filmed in, that it continues even today.

That city is White Falls. And that movie seems to have had no greater impact on anyone, than a man named Brad Westdale who, of course, is Alli’s age. This man is a walking encyclopedia of the movie - in fact, it’s all he fucking talks about. It’s “Christmas With You” this, and “Christmas With You” that. Sure, his history has something to do with it - his grandpa and grandma’s movie theater was the site of the film’s premiere - but come on, Brad, it’s been 65 years. You weren’t around, and only heard the stories through a third party, even if that third party was your grandparents. Seriously, his fascination with it veers into pure obsession.

There is some boring “mystery” involving a famous song that Walter wrote for the movie, which was inspired by a secret lover he had on set. Alli and Brad’s drive to solve that mystery forms the binding agent that brings the two would-be lovers together. (Is it a spoiler alert to reveal that the two leads get together in the end?) It’s rather yawn-inducing.

Christmas Movie Magic does have one welcome change: Alli and Brad never “hate” each other. There always seems to be friction between the two leads in the beginning, which slowly becomes admiration. Here, Alli seems to be intrigued by Brad from the outset, as curious as it is. I would think most women would be put off by a man whose only knowledgeable topic is an old romance movie, but what do I know?

There are also some other strengths: Holly Deveaux is attractive - and adept - as the lead, which helps to give an air of believability to the budding romance. (Brad, on the other hand, comes off as doofy, but I think that has more to do with the script.) The flashbacks to the “classic” movie that forms the backdrop to the modern tale is also done with an impressive level of detail. Even the central song - though it’s not the least bit catchy - does sound like it was recorded in the ‘50s.

Maybe it got us in the wrong mood. After all, reviews of this are above-average across the board (including a positive write-up in the Wall Street Journal, of all places). But Brad’s relentless, grating obsession with a movie that premiered 65 years ago was enough to sink it for us. Add in the final musical number, which takes place in the present day and feels woefully out of place - and a complete lack of chemistry between the two leads - and you have the perfect recipe for holiday drowsiness.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• As out-of-left-field and laughable as its placement is, I must admit the final musical number is actually well-done, thanks to some competent choreography.

• How in the hell has no one seen Walter’s revelatory identity of his real-life love interest prior to this? It’s spelled out and written in huge fucking letters!

• This movie might have actually been helped out by some initial friction, as Alli’s skepticism is never enough to challenge Brad and his annoyingly saccharine vision of life.

• It took me a Herculean effort just to make it through without falling asleep.

• It's telling when the two leads can't muster up more than an unemotional peck for their first kiss.

RATING: 3/10

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Lonestar Christmas (aka Christmas Forgiveness) (2020)

Director: Lucie Guest
Writer(s): Casie Tabanou and Alison Spuck McNeeley
Starring: Stephanie Bennett, Marco Grazzini, Brent Stait and Colleen Wheeler

It had been a while since a holiday movie got our blood boiling; in fact, you'd have to go back to last year to find one. Usually, it's all-too-common an occurrence for us, when plotlines become almost unbearably ridiculous, or characters become too annoying in their quest to find true love. And while these movies always toe that thin line, none that we've seen this year have crossed that line.

And then came Lonestar Christmas, which is a movie about an irredeemably annoying woman who falls in love with a man that is clearly too good for her. 

She is the worst type of person, one that constantly harps on how independent she is, while simultaneously explaining to anyone who will listen about how she’s a single mom raising two kids, because her husband had the gall to go and die on her. Well, she doesn't mention that last part to everyone, but that's what happened. 

The woman is Erin. She makes it pretty clear that she doesn’t “need” a man, but of course by the end of the movie she ends up with one anyway. Our story starts when the idiotic heroine straps Christmas presents to the top of her car (?) despite clearly having enough space to fit them inside (Also, why is she bringing so many presents to the house of a man she despises?). It should come as a surprise to no one that the gifts fall off, littering the street with wrapped goodies…and that is when Mateo comes in.

He’s a handsome young man, who owns a tamale shop in his small town that’s widely revered as the best one in the entire state. He happens to be the one to stumble on Erin’s crime scene of presents, and offers to help. Of course, being the “strong” “independent” woman that she is, she initially resists…before realizing that she actually does need some help after all. He helps her load them up, and follows her to her father’s house…where we discover that him and the father, Gary, are good friends. 

But Erin doesn’t share that vision of her own father. You see, she harbors some deep resentment towards him for reasons that - at this point - are completely unclear. But whatever it is, it must be a pretty big deal, considering it took a lot of convincing to get her to agree to a visit in the first place. It was only seeing the excited look on her kids’ faces, who have no doubt been deprived of seeing their “Grandee” (which is apparently a stupid term for “Grandpa” that I have heard nowhere else) over a long period of time, that got her to cave.

So what is this terrible crime that he’s guilty of? Murdering her mother? Molesting her as a small child? Punching a handicapped child in the face? I mean, judging from the cold-hearted way she treats him, it has to be something like that. Nope…not being around enough when she was a kid, because he was busy going to school and working a full time job to help support his family. Yes, that’s it. It’s hinted at around the midway point of the movie, which leads you to think there’s more to the story…but there’s not. What’s even more frustrating: She’s planning on doing the exact same fucking thing! Good God. 

Sure, not having your grandfather around would be tough, especially for a younger child. But once you grew up, wouldn’t you understand their sacrifice? Apparently not this sack of shit, who spends the entire movie avoiding discussions with her father, and scoffing at anyone who likes the genuinely nice guy. 

These scenes are somewhat heartbreaking, because the guy clearly regrets not being there for her. There's even a scene where Erin walks away, scoffing at his latest attempt at redemption, while he stands there with a shattered look on his face, as if he's about to cry. And even despite her hard-headedness, he clearly harbors no hard feelings towards her, which makes Erin’s reluctance to see that so great, that you want to just punch her in the face. Honestly, nothing else in the movie even matters: Her romance with Mateo is just a sidebar to the elephant in the room, which is the terrible relationship with her father that's pretty much entirely her fault.

I’ll admit that my wife and I missed the final 15 or so minutes, because we were…busy doing other things, and we definitely didn’t feel even the slightest need to go back and see what we missed. I’m sure we can fill in the blanks: Somehow she sees what an irredeemable piece of garbage she was, and finally accepts her father's apologies, while getting a man who could do so much better.

This is one of those Christmas movies where no one gets what they deserve.

ENTERTAINMENT RATING: 2/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Dance-Off (2014)

Director: Alex Di Marco
Writer(s): Amy George and Mark Goodman
Starring: Shane Harper, Kathryn McCormick, Finola Hughes, and Carolyn Hennesy

On the surface, Dance-Off is your typical “two dancers fall in love” movie. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find—okay, that’s really all this is at its core: A movie with far too little “dance” and plenty of “off”. But there’s an almost endearing incompetence behind the whole production that makes it far more interesting than it should be, thanks to a complete lack of direction or understanding of basic compositional techniques: punchlines are offered to jokes without set-up, characters are introduced without explanation, and the narrative story is so abysmally cobbled together, that parts of it feel like a fever dream.

Our protagonists here are Brandon and Jasmine, two dancers from rival dance schools who are competing in a nationwide competition to decide the best of the best. Of course, they will fall in love, but there’s at least some history behind them: as children, they were dance partners, until Brandon’s mother suddenly moved him out of town. Jasmine blames him for not saying goodbye to her (the tone-deaf opening scene finds Brandon’s mom driving away from Jasmine, who chases after the car), while Brandon blames her for not reaching out at any point during the intervening years.

Also blaming Brandon is Jasmine’s domineering mother, JoAnn, who is that ridiculously over-the-top villain these movies seem to find humorous. You know the type: complaining to the dance instructor when her daughter isn’t front and center in a routine, critiquing anyone and everyone down to the tiniest detail, and flashing her money around, as if self-justifying her terrible behavior. I imagine characters such as these started as a biting satire of rich folk, but by now that bite has been shaved down to a butterknife; they’ve just become a tired retread of one another, and a lazy by-the-numbers villain for writers who don’t have the mental capacity to come up with an original one of their own.

And with that setup begins one of the most tone-deaf love stories in history, with Jasmine seemingly unable to decide if she likes him or loathes him (seriously, she goes from obsessively watching YouTube videos of his past performances, to being a stone-cold cunt to him in person; it goes so quickly from one extreme to the other that you really just want to see him move on). Brandon, meanwhile, is clearly infatuated with her, much to the chagrin of fellow group member Simone, who shows she’s infatuated with him by being a complete bitch and trying to control every aspect of his life.

Of course, not only do they drag this whole substanceless relationship out for 90 minutes, but it also just so happens to come down to their two teams in the finals, with the winner foreshadowed with all the subtlety of a bullet to the skull: Brandon’s school, Shockwave Studios, is struggling so bad financially that the lights go off during practice, they have to get financial assistance to travel, liquid that looks like chocolate milk sprays from the pipes, and the school’s owner, one Mr. Ray, can’t even afford sweaters that don’t fall apart at the slightest nudge of a thread. Gee, I wonder if they’ll win enough money to save the school at the expense of the other school who is loaded with money!

The only time the movie even has a pulse are during the surprisingly solid dance numbers, which are either far too infrequent, or just feel that way, with the multitude of issues the movie faces when it has to rely on developing its characters frequently standing front and center. It’s like a tale of two movies: Brandon and Jasmine lack complete chemistry when they’re talking, but put on some music and the two explode and sparkle like they’ve longed for each other their whole lives. And Kathryn McCormick is gorgeous as Jasmine, which at least gives viewers something to latch on to when nothing else interesting is happening on screen.

Unfortunately, “nothing interesting” takes up about 80% of its duration, leaving you with a lot of time to wonder where your life went wrong. Even with the admittedly solid dancing and surrealistic environment—which only provides sudden unexpected moments of non-sequitur “humor” that wear off almost as quickly as they appear—Dance-Off is a complete turd.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Adding to the fever dream atmosphere: Mr. Ray’s indescribably bizarre assistant, who lurches around lankily and stares at him so frequently, that I think we’re supposed to gather that she is infatuated with him, even though it's a sidestory that’s never even slightly acknowledged. Probably because Mr. Ray has no interest in a woman that looks like she was created in a lab.
• JoAnn’s other daughter, a chubby young girl named London (Marlowe Peyton) who is frequently the butt of her mother’s jokes, is by far the most genuinely likable character in this whole mess.
• Speaking of which, JoAnn’s constant fat-shaming of her young daughter is pretty harsh, and will be way out-of-bounds with today’s audiences (I’ll admit to being a terrible person: I actually found some of the comments funny, but it’s unnecessarily unrelenting.)
• An example of what the writers think is a funny idea: One of the judges during the final dance sequences is always eating something different every time we see him. No explanation, no set-up: it's just baffling.
• Also baffling: the random appearance of a red-headed character, who just suddenly appears alongside JoAnn during a scene, and laughs hysterically at everything she says. She somehow ranks up there with London as being one of the best characters, even though she should be annoying as hell.
• Could they not afford music for the obligatory “pre-finals staredown”, in which characters from both warring sides do random dance moves against each other one-on-one? It’s kind of a bizarre scene considering they do it in complete silence.
• There’s no commitment to any of this material: At one point, Jasmine catches Brandon hugging a female dance partner (in an obviously platonic exchange), and storms off in apparent disgust. This is never brought up again.
• I don’t understand the reasoning behind having the final dance numbers—which are being performed in front of an audience live on stage—be interspersed with cuts of the same characters performing the same number on a raining city street. I guess that it was probably for visual flair, and probably could have worked in the right movie, but this one ain’t it.

RATING: 3/10

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CHRISTMAS CAPSULES: Christmas in the Heartland (2017)

Director: Harvey Lowry
Writer(s): Dave Matheny
Starring: Sierra McCormick, Brighton Sharbino, Bo Derek, and Shelley Long

Oh my…there’s a lot going on during Christmas in the Heartland’s overblown running time (nearly TWO FULL HOURS!) and none of it is really good. It starts with a flimsy foundation—a stupid story that only gets dumber and dumber the farther it goes along—adds in a few too many “twists” and diversions, and despite a convoluted story, still ends up every bit as dull as it was when it started.

Jessie Wilkins is a broke teenager who is meeting her grandmother for the very first time. Kara Gentry is also meeting her grandparents for the very first time, but she just so happens to belong to a rich family. The two of these opposite-sides-of-the-tracks girls—who just met seconds before, mind you--happen to sit next to each other on the plane, and concoct a harebrained scheme to pretend to be one another, for no other reason than complete and utter boredom.

But these aren't some cunning girls planning some in-depth, complex hijinx: they literally just swap their names, because the idea that no one in either family has seen pictures of their own granddaughter in this age of virtually boundless consumer technology, is pretty logical. Oh, and no one seems to notice the many times each girl answers to the “wrong” name—a pretty dead giveaway that would be a red flag to anyone, except the stupid characters in this movie.

Really, Christmas in the Heartland's biggest flaw—besides sucking—is that it tries to pack too much into a story that doesn't really need it. There's the rich stuck-up mother who uses her husband and will do anything to gain more attention; the stuck-up boyfriend who “loves” Jessie because he believes she's rich; the black housekeeper (why does she have to be black?) with a big heart; the bully kid who's “put in his place” by one of the girls, who acts like “one of the guys” to do it; the father searching for his daughter (and the only one that knows what she looks like, apparently) that threatens to blow apart the facade; the lead singer from Rascall Flats (yes, for real) who is creepy and plays the “poor” girl's father; a poor family who has to raise money to save the family farm, or something...I mean, virtually any overplayed plot point can be found here, pulled off with very little zest or emotion, and some overall terrible acting that does it no favors.

Ironically, as bad as the whole thing is, there are a couple of characters that avoid it from being completely unwatchable (and no, neither of the leads are one of them): Bo Derek's sleazy rich villainess, Elsa, is an unabashed piece of shit, and plays the role with apparent ease; Christoper Rich (Brock from the “Reba” sitcom I'll admit to enjoying in the past) as Bob, Elsa's frustrated husband, lends some empathy and compassion to his character, and gives the movie a good guy that's worth cheering for; and Tisha Bradford manages to shine in a stereotypical role as June, the rich family's black housekeeper.

The rest is just a terminal, bloated bore that takes an already stupid idea, and somehow manages to make it even stupider.

RATING: 3/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: 12 Feet Deep (aka The Deep End / Trapped Sisters) (2017)

Director: Matt Eskandari
Writer(s): Eskandari, and Michael Hultquist
Starring: Nora-Jane Noone, Alexandra Park, Diane Farr, and Tobin Bell

There's seriously more drama in this poster than there is the entire movie.

We were actually, legitimately excited to see 12 Feet Deep, for a number of reasons, and all of them point to an anti-MarVista MarVista movie: 1.) The trailer gives nothing away, unlike most of their thriller previews which literally give away even the twist; 2.) the trailer is professionally edited, and the movie professionally shot, making it look like a legitimate movie; 3.) the plot breaks away from obsessed students and teachers to deliver an intriguing premise that’s way outside of their norm. Would we be rewarded for our sense of adventure, or punished because of it?

It didn’t take long to realize that a MarVista movie is a MarVista movie, no matter how flashy or professional the trailer is.

Bree and Jonna are two sisters who, through a pretty much completely impossible and stupid event, become trapped underneath the fiberglass cover of an Olympic-size public pool, trying to get an engagement ring that fell in. No problem, you’re thinking, all they have to do is wait until morning and they’re golden, right? Wrong! It happens to be a holiday weekend, as we are informed thanks to a typed up notice that the pool's owners tack to a bulletin board about an hour before they close, so they are forced to survive under the cover for three whole nights.

As intrigued as I was by the trailer, and as disturbing as the idea of being trapped under a cover would be, it took me but five minutes to realize that, if it’s anything like it’s pictured here, it would actually be pretty boring. After all, this being a public pool means that there are no terrifying creatures lurking within, and there’s the benefit of a shallow end, two things that pretty much negate the potential for any “natural” scares. (Claustrophobia could have made things interesting, and would be an actual concern for people trapped in real life, but neither of our heroines seem to suffer from it.)

Even the writers realized how boring and thin the foundation for this story was, so in order to inject as much tension as possible, and to provide a little “story” with which they could hang a formula around, there are some other elements at work here: Jonna is a recovering drug addict who may or may not still be using; Bree is a diabetic that must rely on insulin shots to keep her blood sugar regulated; and Clara is the pool janitor, fired that day but allowed to work out her scheduled shift (alone, oddly) who has a personal vendetta against the world…naturally, once she discovers there are two people trapped in her pool, she finds the perfect guinea pigs to take out her frustrations upon.

Unfortunately, none of it works, because it all just feels like a movie straining to make up for an ill-advised plot: any time you rely entirely on a series of health problems and coincidences to drag the story along, you're putting a lot of faith in your audience to just go along with it, and there are only so many things the audience can forgive before it all becomes laughably obvious. Take, for instance, Bree's diabetes symptoms, which seem to come and go simply to fit the dramatic needs of the screenplay. Movie running out of excitement? Oh no, her blood sugar’s so low that she’s nearly unconscious, with no possible treatment options within reach! Writers write themselves into a corner? Whoops, nevermind! Now she's perfectly healthy and functional in the next scene, just in time to give her pitiful, whiny sister a reassuring pep talk about how no one thinks she's a fuck-up and how she's a great and wonderful person that the world would miss if she were gone (all lies, by the way).

Ditto goes for Clara, the fired janitor who switches back and forth from psychopathic aggressor, to being stabbed in the ear by a sharp piece of shrapnel, to a misunderstood victim. As it turns out, she's not a bad person, just a victim of circumstance, much like her two trapped guinea pigs, a shared notion that gives them all something to bond over, and that brings the story to a simplified, "happy" ending that just as easily could have occurred much quicker to save everyone the hassle of trying to stay awake for 90 minutes.

Honestly, there's not all that much to say about 12 Feet Deep, because there's not really much of note that happens. And most of that boils down to the entire project being a failure from conception, centering its story around a mostly boring non-event, and then cramming in as many coincidental moments as possible in an effort to create enough artificial tension to carry it along to the finish line; a finish line that isn't at all worth the time and patience involved in making it that far.

The lead actresses--although playing poorly-written, overly annoying characters—are better than the material deserves, and the movie is shot competently; it's also at least a change from the typical MarVista thriller, which typically involve some kind of weird obsession or love triangle. Other than that, there's really no reason to even acknowledge its existence.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Aren't pool drains typically in the center of a pool? So then how does the pool operator not notice two grown women swimming in it when he takes one final glance before closing the pool cover?
• I hate both of these girls. Could they both just die?
• All Clara has to do to stop the video cameras from recording is turn off the monitor, a method that would defeat the entire purpose of having a camera system and that works in direct contradiction to every single video monitoring system ever.
• How do these characters constantly lose sight each other, despite being confined to the wide-open expanse of a pool?
• One character's advice after Clara turns on the jets to fill up the pool with more water is to “block the jets!”, a very logical fight-or-flight response given the dozens of jets spread across an entire pool's length and their confinement to a 5 ft. frame and four limbs.
• Being a former junkie, you would think Jonna would have much better negotiation/bargaining skills than she does.

RATING: 3/10

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47 Meters Down (2017)

Director: Johannes Roberts
Writer: Roberts, and Ernest Riera
Starring: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine, and Chris Johnson

Mandy Moore is one of the dullest actresses on the planet. She’s been pigeonholed—happily, it seems—as the perfect actress for completely boring characters. Have a prude? She’ll play it. Have a character who’s allergic to having fun? Sign her up. Watching her in movies, you get the sense that you’re really watching her, and the results couldn’t be more off-putting.

Well now, she gets a chance to play that exact same character again in 47 Meters Down, a movie that can’t help but suck despite a naturally-terrifying premise that plays on primal human fears.

Moore plays Lisa, a boring woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend for—get this—being boring (no joke!) She goes to an island with Kate, her sister, but not to have fun or spend time with her sibling, but rather in an attempt to win her ex back. (How, you may be wondering? Her thought process is, if he sees pics of her online having fun, he’ll fall in love with her all over again. Wow, boring and completely fucking stupid!)

While on vacation, they two girls meet up with two attractive male strangers, who suggest they go diving in a shark cage, because you know, what else is there to do on an island? Of course, Lisa can’t be bothered with such a potentially exciting idea and dismisses it instantly, while Kate desperately urges her to go along. (Actually, in this case, I might be on Lisa’s side: being stranded thousands of yards from land with complete strangers, and in a foreign land, probably isn’t a smart idea.) 

Thankfully for the viewers, Kate wins, saving us from having to watch a movie consisting only of Lisa sitting alone in her beach hotel room, sobbing to pictures of her ex-boyfriend.

Before you know it, the two girls are being lowered into the ocean—by complete strangers, thousands of miles from their home country, just for reiteration—in the world’s oldest, rustiest shark cage. What could possibly go wrong? I’ll tell you: the pole holding the cage rips off, sending the duo plummeting to the titular underwater level.

That’s when the “action” starts, and all of a sudden Lisa’s version of the movie doesn’t seem so bad: It has the feel of an amusement park ride, with convenient scares popping out then retreating at set stages, and walkie communication with the boat (whose inhabitants oddly stick around, despite having no emotional attachment or investment with these two girls whatsoever) coming and going whenever is best for the sake of the story.

The usual and expected dangers apply, with a limited amount of oxygen and the surrounding sharks (who all seem to be blind given the amount of times they miss biting either of the main stars) being the two biggest attractions, and a case of “the bends” conveniently ruling out the possibility of merely swimming up to the surface and sparing us all a protracted movie-watching experience.

I must admit that 47 Meters Down does manage a couple effective moments, but that owes more to its claustrophobic setting than the skill of anyone involved in the production: watching characters have to remove diving gear deep underwater to fit through a small crevice (?), or running low on oxygen while trapped in a steel cage is enough to cause anxiety in most people, regardless of claustrophobia or fear of water. Unfortunately, even being given this head start, it's never able to build on it to create anything more than another forgettable big-budget thriller.

Its most egregious failure is also one that highlights the shortcomings of the American studio system: it foregoes the chance at a brilliant, brilliant finish—one that very nearly undid much of the damage the movie inflicted on my sense of wonder and excitement for the previous 80 minutes—for a decidedly “happier” ending that allows Mandy Moore’s character to survive almost out of nowhere. And any movie that allows Mandy Moore to survive has just committed an unforgivable offense.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

-Why do the guys even stick around to help, especially when several minutes go by at first without hearing any word from the girls (who conveniently can't reach the walkie)? They have no emotional attachment to them, and there's no indication anyone else even knows they're going.
-Why is Mandy Moore so goddamned boring? Even underwater she's annoying as shit.
-I don't understand the point of having the “ex-boyfriend” subplot; it serves absolutely no purpose in advancing the storyline.
-Apparently, sharks have a hard time eating stationary main characters with no diving experience, but can easily nab minor ones even when they are experienced divers on the move.
-The boat inhabitants call the Coast Guard, who will take an hour to get to the girls' position. Wouldn't waiting it out to conserve oxygen and energy be the smart thing to do?
-If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, remember that Mandy Moore would make excellent shark bait to buy more time.
-I still can't believe the forced ending. While still not entirely “happy”, it negates the movie's only moment of near brilliance.

RATING: 3/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: The Work Wife (2018)

Director: Michael Feifer
Writer(s): Feifer
Starring: Cerina Vincent, Elisabeth Harnois, Kevin Sizemore, and Preeti Desai

MarVista Entertainment’s The Work Wife takes place in the kind of world where doors don’t exist, continuity and characterizations don’t matter, and no one seems to have any awareness of their own surroundings. How else can you explain why characters who are trying to be secretive, obliviously perform said actions right out in the open, in full view of co-workers? Or how characters’ beliefs change on a whim, with nothing remotely resembling just cause or believability? Or how no one locks their doors, even when the immediate threat of danger is present? Or how a character is murdered by being flung down stairs in the middle of a packed party, with no witnesses? (Also, how is it that throwing someone down stairs is even an option for murder in thrillers, considering the odds of the victim actually dying is pretty slim on a standard staircase?)

Sean Miller is the new executive at an advertising firm. His assistant, Jen, is immediately smitten with him, and—judging from the completely blatant staredown he gives her upon meeting her for the first time—those feelings are reciprocated. They only seem to intensify when Sean’s first meeting lands his firm their biggest client account to date. But there’s just one problem with pursuing a relationship with Jen: Whether or not he wants to be, Sean is married.

His wife, Lisa, is a graphic designer (of course!) who’s looking to return to work after taking a break following the move for Sean's job. Well, the whole marriage thing doesn’t seem to deter Jen, who invites Sean’s wife, Lisa, out with the work family one night and tosses lines out like “There’s a joke going around that I’m his work wife,” (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point) while getting a video of her badmouthing a client's alcoholic beverage brand. Uh oh, can’t see how that could be used against Lisa at any point, like when she’s brought on board as a graphic designer (at Jen's urging) and the video is played during a meeting with executives of the Gin Tonic company—the very one she’s badmouthing!

Things progress from there, with Jen stalking Sean, who (surprisingly!) refuses all of her advances, eventually becoming disgusted with her as her obsession quickly reaches a fever pitch. It should come as no shock that this isn't the first boss of hers that she has grown infatuated with...and at least one previous one even ended in murder. Can Lisa and Sean survive Jen’s murderous ways, or will they succumb to her boss fetish like others before?

Being a MarVista film, there are plenty of issues at play here, though the biggest one is logic: even after Jen’s obsessive qualities become more and more apparent, Lisa still threatens to leave Sean based solely on Jen's word-of-mouth evidence, believing the habitual liar who set their house on fire, sabotaged Lisa's job, sent threatening texts to herself with Sean’s phone (which she acquired by walking through their front door at night, and literally taking it off their dresser as they slept three feet away), and murdered her last spouse, over the man she’s been married to for several years, and who, by all indications, has always been faithful to her. Okay, makes sense.

Or the random scene where a spurned character from earlier in the film, who by this point we have completely forgotten about, shows up at a party to drunkenly answer the phone and stand awkwardly in a doorway right out in the open to talk to someone about his plans to have Jen taken in by the police in the morning. Of course, somehow, amidst the dozens of partygoers in an obnoxiously loud party atmosphere, at a sprawling multi-story mansion, she zones in on him and gets so close she can hear his words without him even noticing. 

Not helping matters is the acting, which is pretty bad across the board, with a special nod going to the drunk guy, who acts as if he just came out of a coma following trauma to his brain rather than an individual who's merely inebriated. How these things can not only get greenlit, but also go into production, pass through an editing room, and presumably go through screenings for executives and/or test audiences without anyone feeling remarkable guilt or shame for unleashing these hellish monstrosities on the world is something I will never understand.

Occasionally, it even has the gall to make a play at framing this whole story as some sort of feminist war-cry, insinuating that several women within the firm are in on Sean’s undoing, but never fully exploring that story angle outside of one or two random scenes. That might have actually been its best bet, but it's yet another idea that seems to have been abandoned in favor of a by-the-numbers thriller that's completely devoid of thrills.

About the only things preventing it from being a complete bomb are the presence of Preeti Desai, who is gorgeous but wasted in a limited role as Sean (and Jen's) boss, and the simple fact that Sean never physically cheats on his wife, at least avoiding one cliché prevalent in the typical “obsession” movie. Other than those two things, The Work Wife functions best as a study to see just how abysmally thrill-less a thriller can be.

RATING: 3/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Nanny Cam (2014)

Director: Nancy Leopardi
Writer(s): Brian McAuley
Starring: India Eisley, Laura Allen, Cam Gigandet, and Farrah McKenzie

It's been said, I'm sure somewhere, that the opening shot is the one chance you have to suck in your audience, and to give them an enticing taste of what's to come. The opening scene of Nanny Cam does a perfect job of that, by essentially showing you all the film's flaws right from the outset: Linda and Mark, the main couple of this mess, leave their 8-year-old daughter Chloe—who's a terrible actress, by the way-- with an elderly woman—also a terrible actress-- while they plan to have a romantic evening out together. As it turns out, the old biddy has dementia (c'mon Linda, you should have done a little more research!), and ends up dropping a pot of burning water on Chloe. At least, I think that's what happens...she never shows any signs of actual injury and never gets taken to a hospital, but it's made out to be a big deal, with Linda informing the old woman she can't watch Chloe anymore.

Well now what can the upper-middle-class couple do when they want to go somewhere, as apparently no one in these movies have any friends or family? The search for a replacement is about to begin when lo and behold, an option falls right into their laps! Enter Heather (India Eisley), a creepy teenager who happens to wander onto the property in time to prevent disaster; Chloe has found Mark's nailgun, which was conveniently placed out in the open and within reach of a curious 8-year-old. Just based on this random encounter, Mark thinks she'd be perfect for the job, but Linda is reluctant—after all, they did just get burned (pun intended) by not properly researching the last babysitter—so she goes the extra mile to really make sure Heather is who she says she is: by calling the one reference on her resume. When the reference checks out (and it should, since it's Heather herself, not even disguising her voice), the two stop the search immediately, having found the perfect replacement! (Now we're starting to see how they ended up with a dementia-addled oldie).

But things aren't right with the new nanny, something Linda discovers not from all the red flags we've seen up to this point, but after watching video footage in which Heather talks to Chloe for three straight hours. “What could an 18-year-old and an 8-year-old possibly have to talk about for three hours?” she wonders aloud, and becomes obsessed with finding out, hitting up the local electronics store clerk and asking him about in-depth set-ups, an area he's creepily adept at.

Soon, Chloe starts acting strangely toward her mother, as if she wants Heather to be her new mommy, and Heather really starts clamping down on Mark. Will boring ol' Linda pull her family back away from the bizarre clutches of evil? Or will Heather get rid of her competition so that she can have the family she so desperately craves?

This one is worse than most MarVista productions, with terrible acting, consistently awful dialogue, and infuriatingly-illogical plot twists. I know, I know, those are the qualities you're actually looking for in a Lifetime movie, but there's a fine line between a “bad-good” movie, and a “bad-bad” movie, and this one typically entrenches itself in the latter category, with an almost exhausting number of inconsistencies and stupid moments that it would be virtually impossible to remember them all.

Its one “saving grace”- in this case meant as the sole thing that saves it from an even lower score—is Heather's backstory, which is legitimately devastating. Usually Lifetime movies seem to skirt away from truly disturbing material, but her origins add a slight layer of complexity, and empathy, missing from many Lifetime villains. And while her motives still end up being hilariously basic and laughable, it still helps to understand why she acts the way she does, rather than just having her be some one-dimensional caricature. On the downside, the sudden burst of seriousness does underscore some of the (unintentional) goofy fun, by injecting a real underscore of sadness, though it's still so bad that the laughs resume shortly after the shock wears off.

If you're a purveyor of trashy made-for-TV movies, Nanny Cam might have what you're looking for, but for me, I learned the hard way that too much of a bad thing can be...well, just bad.

RATING: 3/10

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CHRISTMAS CAPSULES: A Puppy for Christmas (2016)

You would think the addition of a dog (or any animal, for that matter) to a sentimental Christmas story would be a guaranteed home run, but leave it up to those fine folks at MarVista to find a way to screw it up.

Noelle is a grown woman who has always been obsessed with the idea of owning a dog, but has never been able to get one, because, you know, dogs are ultra-rare and hard-to-find. Her latest dog-prevention obstacle is that the man she's been seeing for five years, ultra-douche extraordinnaire Todd, is allergic to them—until she learns that some dogs are hypo-allergenic, so she goes out and buys one. Turns out, Todd is not allergic to them, but is afraid of commitment, so he dumps her.

Meanwhile, for being so obsessed with dogs, it turns out Noelle has never actually researched anything about them; she takes the puppy to work with her, apparently thinking they come pre-trained. Of course, the puppy gets into adorable mischief that captures the attention of Liam, the rugged hunk that writes the “Adventure” column for the newspaper. After sleeping in her office overnight since she has nowhere else to go (?) she is caught by Liam, who invites her to his remote house for the weekend. This is perfect timing, because he's awaiting the arrival of his fiance, who no one in his family has ever met, and having the woman you're going to marry come home to you alone with a strange woman is probably a really great idea.

Thankfully, it's not so awkward because his family is there to surprise them with a surprise engagement party! After explaining that Noelle is not his fiance (thank God it at least avoided that trope), the two settle down with family, as Liam's real fiance keeps postponing the trip, eventually making it obvious she's never coming back. Good thing sparks are flying between him and Noelle! But it can't just be that easy—after an incredibly lame party, Todd realizes that he gave up a good gal, and tries to woo her back. Which man will she choose?

Really, it all comes down to the characters: Noelle is annoying as shit, and seems completely mismatched in all facets against the good-looking Liam. There was no part of me that felt they were a good match or wanted them to get together, and that's kind of the whole point of the movie. Then there's the whole point of the dog: I didn't even want it to get stuck with Noelle, who never seems to have any time for it amidst trying to fall in love and screwing up at every turn. Again, she shows no signs of anyone who has ever wanted a dog for a minute, let alone her whole life, as the narrative assures us is the case.

It's watchable by the slimmest of margins, and didn't fill me with the level of holiday rage that some of these movies do, but it's one that both animal lovers, and good movie lovers should skip altogether.

RATING: 3/10

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Eerie Indiana, S1 E12: Tornado Days

Starring:
Omri Katz as Marshall Teller
Justin Shenkarow as Simon Holmes
Mary-Margaret Humes as Marilyn Teller
Francis Guinan as Edgar Teller
Julie Condra as Syndi Teller
Matt Frewer as Howard Raymer
Harry Goaz as Sgt. Knight
Archie Hahn as Mr. Radford
Old Bob as Himself

Written by: Michael Cassutt
Directed by: Ken Kwapis

-----

“Eerie Indiana” is a show that has always prided itself on its bizarre ideas. And that tends to be the show's strength: it was unafraid to tread where other kid's shows would never dare to go. That being said, “Tornado Days” goes for outrageous, and ends up falling flat on its face, in a way that hasn't been seen since “The Retainer”. In fact, I would venture to say it's even worse than that one. It's a rather stupid idea, executed stupidly, and is easily the worst episode the usually creative show ever put out.

It's “Tornado Day” in Eerie, which is pretty much just an excuse for the locals to gather around for a community picnic. Ever the rebellious teen, Marshall refuses to go, and as a result, so too does his pal Simon (who, sadly, clearly wants to go, but would rather support his friend). Well, this pisses off “Ol' Bob”, the name given to the town's tornado (?) that visits Eerie every year on Tornado Day. Okay...

Things are already off to a bad start, but now we get another character tossed into the mix: A crazy stormchaser by the name of Howard Raymer, who crash lands on Marshall's front lawn. He informs Marshall that by boycotting the festivities, he is angering Bob, and sets out to find a way to tame the tornado before he wreaks havoc across the city. But his only way to do that is to get inside the tornado with his “Wind Rider”, which is basically a modified trailer.

Well I've spent enough time describing this, because none of it is remotely interesting or funny. Like I said, this show usually does really well when it comes time to dabble in the offbeat, but this one is just a flawed idea from start to finish. I was actually pretty excited to sit down with it the first time I read the synopsis, thinking there would be some typical "Eerie twist" that would make it a good episode, but it's just a straightforward failure. About the only thing I can give it is the tornado-themed dress that Marshall's sister Syndi wears...it's absolutely ridiculous, but she somehow looks adorable in it. (Kinda the way the looks adorable in anything.)

Overall, though, this is just a bad episode, full of uninteresting ideas, and lame jokes. Thankfully, this is the last bomb that I recall from the entire series; every show has its ups and downs, and this just proves that even an underrated show like “Eerie Indiana” isn't exempt from these issues. But man, what a bomb this is.

EPISODE RATING: 3/10

FULL EPISODE

(Actually found someone who just uploaded the series to YouTube last month. Considering episodes seem to be taken down with regularity, it probably won't last long, but here it is in the meantime. In case it gets taken down, a backup link is provided below.)

BACKUP LINK: Click here.

Blair Witch (2016)

Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Simon Barrett
Starring: James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Corbin Reid, and Brandon Scott

I think I've made it pretty clear what I think of Adam Wingard in previous reviews: he's a hack. He's an unoriginal filmmaker who gets heaps of praise primarily because one of his best friends is Brad Miska, the man who founded, and runs, horror news site Bloody Disgusting. This ensures every one of his films is overhyped to thousands of rabid horror fans, who eagerly gobble up what they've been force-fed, and go to the theaters with the mindset that they are watching a true genius in action. In fact, Miska produced A Horrible Way to Die, Wingard's first horrible film, and then moved on to the V/H/S trilogy, of which Wingard directed a segment in the first one.

The case continues with Blair Witch, on which Miska did not have a (credited) hand, but who was sure to have two quotes in the first trailer (including “one of the scariest films ever made” despite it clearly not being anything close to that), and who went on and on in endless hyperbolic praise about how much of a “game changer” it is in a 4.5/5 skull review on his own website (read the comments to see how well that went over).

The original Blair Witch Project actually was, for its time at least, one of the scariest films ever made. The brilliant marketing strategy had people believing that it was, in fact, real, and the film's refusal to show its monster (or witch, as it were) is the reason for the film's success. But time, over which thousands (perhaps literally, or perhaps just an over-exaggeration based on perception) of similar films have ripped off its conceit, has not been kind to the original: I tried watching it again a couple of years ago and couldn't even make it halfway through. What was once an effective piece of horror has since been watered down by the many films that ripped it off; while I still admire it and would consider it an essential piece of horror, it lacks almost all of the power that it once had.

Well, the only thing Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's remake/re-imagining/sequel/whatever it is seems to have taken from the original, is that screaming characters running through woods is the only thing that made it work, because that's all we get for just about the whole thing. Oh, and CGI monsters. In other words, take everything that is weak about not just found footage films, but horror films in general, and you know exactly what to expect from this one.

But you know what? I don't even place most of the blame on Wingard (or even his frequent writing partner Barrett) for this poorly scripted mess; this is no doubt the ill-advised idea of an idiot studio executive who decided to cash in on a franchise was that was past its shelf date fifteen years ago. In studio fare like this, it's hard to tell just how many ideas the studio pushed upon Wingard and Barrett, so I can't even chastise them for all the poor decisions and characterizations that are inflicted upon the poor, hapless audience. Truth be told, the odds were stacked against anyone dumb (or desperate) enough to take this project; I can't imagine any genre filmmaker that could have taken this idea and turned it into a formidable film.

The original clearly had the upper hand by being one of the first films to do what it did, but beyond that, also had a believable cast that looked like everyday people. The mostly-improvised dialogue (and scare scenes) also pushed the authenticity a little farther, to the point that it wasn't hard to see why so many people fell for the idea that it was real footage. This Blair Witch reboot/remake/re-imagining fails from the first frame, in which we're told basically the same thing as we were told in the original: that this movie is made up of real found footage. Yeah, like this isn't a gimmick that was beaten completely to death ten years ago. Then we get our first glimpse of the attractive cast of “Dawson's Creek”-style characters, who are clearly reciting bad lines, poorly. Great idea, Lionsgate execs!

I suppose I should touch upon the plot, as threadbare and repetitive as it is: James Donahue believes he sees his sister in a YouTube video of the old cabin from the first Blair Witch, and enlists the aide of three friends to go help find her. The online footage was supposedly found out in the woods by a couple of locals, Lane and Talia, who are obsessed with the myths; they refuse to reveal where they found the tape unless James and his crew takes them along. Reluctantly, they agree.

Then, if you've seen the first film, you've pretty much seen the rest: The crew hear creepy things in the woods, go to leave, find they're running around in circles, lose “map” (which in this case is a GPS signal, as technological updates are the only real difference), then spend the rest of the time running and screaming each others' names while evading evil spirits that we can't see. Only, we do catch glimpses of the “creatures” stalking their prey, and they look like featureless grey CGI aliens. Wow, scary.

The only time the film actually comes alive is at the end, when the remaining survivors stumble upon an old cabin in the woods. Here, the film is given a much-needed digression from the tired wood setting, and where the tight corridors and small rooms become constricting, leading to a heart-stopping scene in a tunnel that's literally the first inkling I've ever seen that Wingard has the capabilities to render an emotion besides hatred or indifference out of his audience. There's also another effective scene near the end when the remaining survivors can't look at a creature in the same room as them...but that's completely undone a few seconds later when we get a glimpse of a poorly done CGI monster that, once again, runs counter to the effectiveness of the Blair Witch franchise.

It's rare that a movie made in 2016 already feels outdated four months after release, but that's what happens when you're a major studio trying to follow an irrelevant blueprint just to make a few bucks off someone else's idea. Who says there's no karma in Hollywood?

RATING: 3/10

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The Dead Next Door (1989)

Director: J.R. Bookwalter
Writer: Bookwalter
Starring: Pete Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Michael Grossi, and Jolie Jackunas

For whatever reason, J.R. Bookwalter's The Dead Next Door was a mild obsession for me when I was still in high school, and that was before I'd ever even seen it. All I remember was that I was going through a zombie-movie phase (this was back in the late 90s or early 2000s, a few years before Hollywood got hold of the undead and ruined them forever), and would constantly visit the official website in my ninth grade keyboarding class. I honestly don't even remember how I initially heard about it, but I was a wannabe amateur filmmaker at the time, and so it wouldn't surprise me if I took to it because of its humble origins, as well as its ties to my home state.

The Dead Next Door was produced over the span of four years (also the timeframe it took for Peter Jackson to make Bad Taste) in Akron, OH, which is about two hours northeast of Columbus, the state capital and also the city in which I was born. It is known as one of the most expensive home movies ever made, a title it received because it was shot on Super 8 cameras, which were strictly consumer-grade, with director Bookwalter estimating that the total budget was a whopping $125,000 (a high figure, no doubt, but also kind of misleading, as it was raised in small increments over that entire span, so he never had more than a few thousand to work with at any given time). But what it lacked in financial resources, it made up for in sheer ambition: the film features an incredible 1,500 Ohio residents playing the part of zombies. That's pretty epic for what amounts to little more than an amateur film.

It also has some pretty great special effects, but the two footnotes to this claim are: 1.) it also features some terrible special effects, and 2.) a majority of the better ones are used up within the first thirty minutes, meaning there's a dwindling amount of reasons to keep watching as the minute count goes up. However, it's still amazing to see what Bookwalter was able to do with such a subpar video format, as well as very limited resources—some of the effects, especially the neck bites, still look impressive even today, and were pulled off by a special effects team with no notable names (at least none that I recognize).

Well when you're working with a shortage of resources, there has to be a trade-off somewhere; in other words, for every area that excels, chances are there will be more that suffer. In the case of The Dead Next Door, it's everything else. I had always had fond memories of this movie (which I bought on VHS when it was released) thanks to the copious amounts of bloodshed, and vaguely remembered the acting was bad, but I didn't remember just how shoddy all the other areas are: the story is rambling and pointless, biting off more than it can chew; “bad” doesn't even begin to describe the performances, which were worse than I remember, and range from terrible to positively atrocious; and no time or effort went into developing any of the film's many characters—even most of their names are simply plucked from the last names of popular horror film directors (Raimi, Commander Carpenter...you get the point).

I do feel kinda crass rating this on the same level as a polished feature; it's like trying an immature 12-year-old as an adult for a crime that he didn't even commit. But a bad movie is a bad movie no matter how it looks, or how epic the production might have been, or how ambitious the original idea was; and let's be honest here, The Dead Next Door is a godawful film. When blood isn't spurting, when the movie actually starts to believe that the story it's presenting us is one that's actually worth presenting, it's almost terminally-boring. Seen through these eyes—that even if the budget was tripled, or quadrupled, it still more than likely would have sucked—certainly makes me feel like less of an ass.

If this were a straightforward zombie film, where most of the budget was spent on the blood and gore effects (all of the “actors” worked for a deferred salary) we might have been on to something; for the first thirty-or-so minutes, that's essentially what we get, as members of the local “Zombie Squad” drive around, and attempt to thwart zombie attacks on the living. The leader of the gang is Raimi (Sam, the real-life namesake and director of the Evil Dead trilogy, was also the film's main financier, using his compensation for Evil Dead 2 to fund this one), who is supposed to be a no-nonsense tough guy, though his acting makes it hard to tell for sure. The other “ground members” are Mercer, Kuller, and Richards—during a routine call, Richards ends up getting bit, and so the crew is suddenly down to three.

There are other members of the squad: the scientists that are hard at work trying to figure out a way to kill the zombies. See, the undead here are rather unique in that: a.) they can run, and b.) they are impossible to kill. Now, “unique” here is used as a synonym for “uncommon”, because, like many facets of the film, it's an idea lifted directly out of another zombie feature: in this case, Return of the Living Dead. Still, it's a fascinating decision that gives Bookwalter and Co. the opportunity to try some pretty advanced effects; as I alluded to earlier, they don't always look convincing, but got to give them some points for trying. So the scientists, lead by Dr. Moulson, finally create a serum that speeds up the zombies' decomposition process, thus effectively killing them within a couple of hours.

Now here's where things really start to go a little overboard: Mercer is bitten and is used as a test subject for the new serum by Moulson. The problem is, Mercer isn't quite dead yet, so instead of decomposing him, it turns him into some sort of vengeance-seeking super-zombie; he can't run like the rest, but he can speak. This is a decision that once again bears problems for the production, because his voice is so low that it's often impossible to decipher his words, at least without cranking up the volume, which we never bothered to do. On top of this, there is a cult, lead by a Reverend Jones, who believes that the zombie invasion is God's will, and they will stop at nothing to put a stop to those, like the Zombie Squad, who are attempting to get rid of them. Even within this convoluted framework (another thing to keep in mind: all of this has to play out within a scant 78-minute duration), there are other subplots, like the paternity of one of the cultists, and frequent mention of a Dr. Bo, who created the zombie virus for reasons unknown, before being killed by his very creations.

It's all a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas, which is really what does the film in: not enough time is spent focusing on any of the major plot points, meaning the story just feels like an improvised, careless mess. Add this into the myriad of other problems that I have mentioned, and that means large portions of The Dead Next Door are dull. If it would have had the presence of mind to at least lessen its grand visions in one category, it would have been, at the very least, a serviceable film. Unfortunately, sometimes less really is more, and in the case of The Dead Next Door, more is unequivocally infinitesimal.

RATING: 3/10

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Cop Rock S1E6: Oil of Ol' Lay

Starring:
Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines
Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso
Teri Austin as Trish Vaughn

Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Stephen Bochco and Tony Graphia and John Romano

Directed by: Michael Fresco

This episode begins with a “homeless sweep”, in which officers make a large group of homeless people pack up, and move to a nearby city.  In fact, as we learn later, that’s their only plan on dealing with the overpopulation of such people--the Captain refuses to do anything more than just flip them to a different precinct so that they become a “nuisance” for a different set of cops than his own.  Sometimes, it would seem, that “Cop Rock” actually gets something right; passing the buck always seems to be the way problems like this are handled.  It just happens to be a “plus”, I guess, that the mass-deported homeless sing a song about how they have “Nowhere to Go”.

After this, LaRusso meets with the attorney that he’s banging; she has just returned from a trip to New York, where she refused to let him accompany her.  She’s a free spirit and refuses to let anyone bog her down, but it seems as if this quality is foreign to LaRusso, who apparently gets any woman that he so desires.  The fact that she doesn't cower at his feet and is able to stand up to him seems to make him want her even more…I wouldn't be surprised if, down the road, we’re going to see them fall in love, because I think that’s what the writers are going for with this story?

But there’s more to this episode for LaRusso than just a love interest--he is also grilled by another attorney, Willa Thalen (or maybe Falen? Hard to decipher on network TV-quality audio, but either way, played by the great CCH Pounder*) who is merely attempting to see how suitable he is to take the witness stand for himself.  As is expected, he doesn’t just sit there and take her barbs, which at first seems to be a bad thing--except that attorney Sidney Weitz feels that, with a little advertising, they can make him into an American hero and get the public on his side, whether or not he ever takes the stand.

Meanwhile, Vicki and Andy, the two cops who are partners, head to a bank, where an angry customer seems to be boiling over.  At first, everyone is convinced the situation can be easily resolved by bank staff, until the unhinged old man pulls a gun out of his jacket, and ends up shooting Vicki in the thigh.  Andy immediately tackles the guy, and nothing further is ever mentioned about his fate.  But Ralph, the forensic expert and Vicki’s husband, is quick to cast the blame on Andy for allowing his wife to get shot.  His opinion certainly isn’t altered when he hears Andy singing (?) to Vicki in the hospital about how their relationship, as partners, is greater than friendship, and he essentially admits that he loves her.

YOU'RE MY PARTNER

Ralph lays low and doesn’t let Andy see him in the hospital, but he eventually does a little digging himself, breaking into the women’s locker room and gaining entry into Vicki’s personal locker, fully expecting to find proof of infidelity (women must not go in there very often, as it remains empty long enough for him to sing a song about why he‘s in there).  This whole side plot is also just the second time that Captain Hollander actually sounds like an intelligent human being, rather than a police show caricature: When Ralph tries bringing up his concerns that Andy was responsible for his wife’s shooting, the Captain is quick to shoot him down, saying none of the evidence supports that theory; for this reason, he shoots down Ralph’s request to find Vicki a different partner.  On the one hand, this kind of makes sense, but we’ll see what the implications are for the Captain, or even the whole department, if this partnership leads to something more.

“Cop Rock” seems to be desperate to offset the negative storylines, with in-your-face positive ones, and this time it comes courtesy of Officer Potts.  As you may remember, he’s the white cop that became Officer Rose’s partner following the shooting death of Rose’s previous one--of course, in that episode he hated Potts, but finally grew to like him.  In an extension of that plot, Potts starts caring for the plight of the homeless people that they are just driving out of the city, and offers to take one of them to lunch.  As usual, Rose chastises him for the idea, but even after the idea seems to fail, praises him for having a “good heart”.

While we’re at it, the lunch scene itself is rife with a number of errors and pointlessness, from the homeless man starting his order with a “small orange juice”, going into the food, and then the waitress asking if he “wants a drink with that.”  Or the fact that Potts leaves the restaurant before his food is even served…the whole scene just feels very fake, but I have to give it some marks for not having any of that god-awful singing or dancing that haunts my dreams.  I am kind of interested to see how this will impact Potts for the remainder of the series…since his attempt to “rehabilitate” a homeless man failed miserably (in a scene that’s actually pretty patronizing; all he does is tell the man to clean up and get a job) will he still be the same kind-hearted cop that he’s always been, or will this whole situation harden his heart a little bit?  Hard to say where this one is headed, if anywhere at all.

In the last bit we’ll touch upon, the police chief is starting to fall for the mayor, a plot point that has started developing ever since she had facial reconstruction surgery to make her not so ugly (?).  As is usual for television shows, Chief Kendrick asks his loyal black assistant Ozzie if he’s being foolish for falling for this woman.  Ozzie responds by starting a dance number about how he should follow his heart, or something.  I’m just guessing, because I’ve honestly started blocking a lot of these out; all the song numbers seem to do is just reinforced tired television tropes, but through song instead of normal dialogue.  No matter how you dress up predictability, it’s still predictable.

HOW TO LOVE A WOMAN

Meanwhile, the mayor is also questioning her decision to go on a date with this man.  This actually leads to one of the film’s rare genuinely funny moments: After the mayor asks her assistant if she looks good, he responds with how great she and her outfit looks.  When she responds with the requisite: “Are you lying?”, the man (who’s clearly gay, if that will make this funnier) looks at her and in all seriousness says, “I never lie about clothes”.  Maybe it’s just me, but it elicited an earnest chuckle from me, which is one of the few times in this series I’ve laughed at something that was actually supposed to be humorous.

The two end up going on a date out in the wilderness in front of a campfire, with the Chief singing a song utilizing his trusty guitar (the same one he used in the opening song a couple of episodes ago).  Before we know it, they’re kissing, and the mayor is asking him to take her virginity, something the Chief seems more than willing to do.  All I could help thinking during this is, “Why is the police chief doing everything except actual police-y things?”  Seriously, he’s always with the mayor and never actually tending to the needs of the police department, but maybe that will change in future eps.

Well, another episode down!  And the series is still struggling to find its footing.  Judging from its swift cancellation after just eleven episodes, I’m highly doubting that it ever does, but join us next week when I subject myself to additional cruel and unusual punishment, and absorb another episode so you lucky devils never have to!

EPISODE RATING: 3/10, which has become standard, more or less.

*And it's "Phelan". Close.

**The videos I was originally watching on YouTube were made private, but after some digging I found alternate copies.  Note that the quality seems much worse, and with the series coming to DVD next month (May), there's a chance these may get pulled down at any time.

FULL EPISODE

Cop Rock S1E5: The Cocaine Mutiny

Starring:
Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Paul McCrane as Det. Bob McIntire
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines
Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso
Kathleen Wilhoite as Patty Spence

Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Stephen Bochco and John Romano

Directed by: Arlene Sanford

Well would you look at that episode title?  What a lovely little pun!  Here we are back on the rough streets of LA, where anyone is prone to breaking out into song at any given time.  This formula has not worked at all in previous episodes, so there’s really no reason to believe that it’s going to start working here, but stranger things have happened, right?  Wrong.

In the last episode, we saw Patty Spence get locked away for admitting to selling her child for money.  This interrogation was set up by Officer Vicki Quinn as an attempt to help her get her life back on track, but the sleazy, gravel-voiced Captain John Hollander had other plans, and abruptly asked to have her arrested.  Vicki was hurt by this, and so was Patty, thinking that Vicki was the one that had her set-up.  Well, in a surprise turn of events, Hollander, who “made the mistake of bringing it up” to his wife one night, reverses his decision, instead believing that she deserves a second shot.

This change of heart is actually pretty refreshing, because up until now Hollander has been nothing but a poorly-written sonofabitch; here, for the first time ever, we see that there might actually be a kindhearted man buried somewhere, very deep, under his tough exterior.  While he’s the topic of the moment, I do want to mention his low-pitched, annoying voice.  If that’s actually the way his voice sounds in real life, then I give him a pass; but if he talks that way to give the illusion that his character is “cool” and “tough“, well it’s one of the biggest failures of a cop show that includes song numbers.  Every time he talks, it sounds like he’s trying so hard to convince viewers that he’s a no-nonsense macho-man that my wife and I automatically comment on how much we hate him.

Now back to the story: His suggestion to give Patty a second chance puts her in a courtroom, where she squares off against someone from Social Services, or some similar organization.  Of course, Patty defies the odds by giving a heartfelt speech to the judge, who decides to get her out of prison and give her full custody of her child after all!  Isn’t yawn-inducing predictability grand? (Actually, to the show’s credit, she surprisingly does not resort to singing…at least, during this scene.)

Introduced in this episode (as a one-off character, I believe), is none other than Gina Gershon, that hot, “star-of-the-moment” in the ‘90s, that was more or less quickly forgotten by the time the 2000s rolled around.  In this, which I would actually presume to be one of her first roles (sorry, a fever and general disinterest prevents me from diligently double-checking the information as I normally would), she plays an actress being relentlessly stalked by a superfan, who she fears will eventually cross the line into physical harm.  We are then subjected to a singing number from the fan, as he explains his obsession to us, complete with romantic sax music (?).

This brings me to another critique of “Cop Rock” and its song-and-dance format: It simply doesn’t understand who’s worthy of a musical number.  When the show is at its “peak”, a term here used loosely to mean “not cringe-inducingly embarrassing”, it’s because it picks a subject that can sustain song treatment.  For example, “He’s Guilty” from way back in the pilot.  That song managed to be effective because it was catchy, and because it was convincingly executed…having the jurors suddenly don gospel garb and sing backup, as silly as it sounds, is a damn inspired choice, and the whole thing is pulled off with brazen confidence.

The only problem is, it sometimes seems to get a little overconfident, forcing us to listen to terrible, misguided attempts to rationalize its worst characters.  We saw it a couple of episodes ago with the song “Baby Merchant”, in which a man who buys and sells babies (?) sings to a “prospective couple” (in this case a duo of undercover cops) about how they shouldn’t worry because he always comes through.  Here, we get a psychotic loner singing about his love for a woman that feels threatened by him and wishes he would just go away.  As with every other song in the show, it attempts to be earnest, to be straight-faced.  On the one hand, I kind of get the point: I think it‘s the show‘s attempt to wear its heart on its sleeve, so to speak, and to get the viewer to care for even the lowest of low-lifes.  But do they really think such connection with the audience is possible through poorly-written songs?  How else are we supposed to take this besides self-parody?  It’s just too ridiculous to work straight, something no one involved with the show seemed to understand at any point of its development cycle, and it‘s a big reason as to why the world of “Cop Rock“ is enmeshed in constant failure.

Anyway, we have to have this storyline spell potential trouble for the police department, so the actress asks out Detective Bob McIntyre, who agrees to go out on a dinner date with her.  But things quickly get dicey when the superfan decides to take his obsession to the next level, opting to deliver her flowers in person.  Even though Bob is there and about to apprehend the subject, the actress panics and shoots him dead.  As of this ep, all that signals was the end of the relationship, but it might come up to be a bigger deal down the road (if it doesn’t, it’s a rather pointless single-use storyline, as neither are charged for any criminal wrongdoing).

Meanwhile, Captain Hollander also gets to be the focal point of another storyline when an epidemic of cocaine use is running rampant throughout the city.  But these aren’t just low-income ghetto dwellers that are buying the stuff, but rather upper-class executives.  One of them just happens to be the assistant of a city councilman, who of course has the power to pass an important bill for police funding.  Reluctantly, they let him go, but once the same girl is captured again, Hollander decides to go against the grain and ignore the councilman’s pull.

Another side note on Hollander:  The show goes through such great lengths to paint him as a level-headed, honest cop that it’s honestly disgusting.  No one would ever behave like this, at least in the real world, circa 2016.  He’s already gone out of his way to convict a cop that murdered a known cop-killer, and now he’s attempting to fight a highly influential councilman?  Gag me out the door.  I guess we’re supposed to appreciate his ethics, but they just feel so unnatural that it’s just another reason that it’s impossible to take him, and by extension, this show, seriously.

In the last bit (I’m going wildly out of order here), LaRusso starts falling in love with his attorney, who plans a trip to New York--and refuses to let him come with her.  Is she hiding something?  Or is she simply the womanizing LaRusso in female form?  Either way, it’s obvious that he is not happy, as he even tries exerting some of his machismo on her, attempting to control her into submission.  But even that can’t break her.  It’s apparent that he’s not used to this kind of treatment from a woman…is he going to end up falling for her?  If he does, will she reciprocate it?  I kind of hope I don’t have to answer that question.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again: This show sucks.  It has gotten to the point that I can’t even force myself to watch it more than once a week; at this point, I’d be glad to quickly force down the rest all at once, the way you used to force down liquor when you were younger, just for the sake of getting drunk as fast as possible.  But I honestly can’t do it…my heart sinks every time I’m faced with the prospect of sitting down to one of these, and my mind desperately searches for more important things that I have to do, just to get out of it.  Hopefully a future episode will change that, but I’m pretty sure we’re seeing the peak of the show, and getting an obvious glimpse as to why it was canceled.

EPISODE RATING: 3/10

FULL EPISODE