National Lampoon's Pucked (2006)

This was another of those Watch Instantly films that Netflix was removing so I figured I'd better watch it. With only three movies at a time, and only so many days in a week, if I can get a film on Watch Instantly I'll take it rather than waste a DVD rental on it. I also loved the idea of this film having Jon Bon Jovi in it.

Pucked has Jon Bon Jovi as a former lawyer who has given up practicing law in favor of trying to get rich quick by inventing the next biggest thing. His newest idea: a women's hockey league. But when he can't get financing he turns to credit cards, and with each one he maxes out, he's sent six or seven more, which he uses to pay off the old ones. Finally the hammer falls, but did he really commit credit card fraud? When he defends himself in court, he decides to put the entire credit card industry on trial.



This wasn't bad. In fact, it was better than I expected, but only at the end. The first hour or so is your run-of-the-mill bad National Lampoon's DTV comedy, with the same bad slapstick jokes: the big woman who kicks ass, the midget thrown around, the homeless guy who gets tons of chicks, tons of boobs, dick and fart jokes, and of course, what movie like this would be complete without Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. The people who make crap like this must have him on speed dial. The two big differences between this and the others, though, were Jon Bon Jovi, which was surreal, and the indictment of the credit card industry at the end, which was unexpectedly well done.

Let's start with that second one first. Usually films dealing with the toll credit cards can take on human lives involve heart wrenching stories about real life tragedies which, quite frankly, can be hard to listen to, because no one really wants to hear about the horrible things other people go through. This film took a different track. Bon Jovi's character Frank was a dreamer, and he never intended to defraud the credit card companies, he expected to pay everything off once his league was successful. And therein lies the rub. Credit card companies all sell us dreams. That smug bastard in the MasterCard commercials telling us such and such is "Priceless" is really telling us: "There's a whole big wonderful world out there, and you only get one go around, why let something as silly as money hold you back from getting the most out of your life?" It just happened that Frank dreamed bigger than the average person, but can you blame a family of four for applying for credit or a loan to buy things for their two kids? That might be the biggest issue lost in the recent economic problems we're having in this country, that the credit card industry and the sub-prime mortgage industry were trading on our dreams, and it's amazing that a National Lampoon's DTV comedy starring Jon Bon Jovi was able to bring that point home better than anything else I've seen since the economic crisis began. And this film was made before the crisis, in 2004.



So then there's Jon Bon Jovi. I don't even think growing up in the 80s makes JBJ bigger than life-- Bon Jovi is still putting out music and those songs are still being used for things like the MLB playoff promos. He had to be able to do a better film. He was in one of the worst films of all time, Pay it Forward, which still made a lot of money and was big in the theaters. I looked the band up on Wikipedia, and found that Have a Nice Day, which was really the one that marked their comeback, came out in 2005. At the same time, according to imdb, this was filmed in May of 2004. I guess it's possible to posit that JBJ was something of a has-been and was looking to start at the bottom as an actor, having no idea that his musical career would rebound like it did. Either way, it's still surreal to see him acting opposite David Faustino, comeback or no.

Cary Elwes career makes no sense to me, he just seems to be all over the place. He plays the DA or something in Pucked, and it's not a big role. Part of me thinks he did this to work with Bon Jovi, be he's done tons of bad ones in his time that I think he probably would've done it Bon Jovi or no. And then he still manages to do good ones too. He's like a Brion James or Dennis Hopper type in terms of the spectrum of movies he does, only with him, you'd just never guess it.



For some reason this film took place in North Carolina. It seemed like New Jersey would have been a better fit, especially with Bon Jovi in the cast. I took a stupid quiz on Facebook to see which state I am, and New Jersey was the result. I don't even know what to think about that. MTV's new show The Jersey Shore is probably more an indictment of the (many would say ironically named) Garden State than it is making fun of Italian Americans. I personally can't comment, because, like many, my only experience with Jersey is through the Jersey Turnpike. I wonder too what other people from the rest of the country think of New Jersey. In the Northeast we have one idea, but what do people who have never been there think, or who live thousands of miles away? And for the record, my favorite New Jersey joke came on Conan O'Brien's old show, when he said their state quarter read "New Jersey: wishing we were New York since 1784." We kid because we love New Jersey.

I think this is worth checking out. It's rare that one finds a film that does such a great job commenting on an aspect of modern society, but to find it in a National Lampoon's DTV movie-- well, that's just ridiculous. Plus, the Bon Jovi factor is great.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407038/

The Stoned Age aka Homo Erectus (2007)

I had my eye on this one for some time mostly because it had Gary Busey and Tom Arnold listed in the credits. It just seemed like a good deal. Of course, I had to know going in, with this being a National Lampoon's DTV, that I could be in for some pain, but I figured the price would be worth it if it was sufficiently Abusive.

The Stoned Age is about some dude living in prehistoric times who thinks outside the box, which makes him an outcast. He's in love with a chick from his tribe, but she loves his alpha male brother. Anyway, the tribe is beaten in a battle with their rival, and the girl is taken, and he goes to save her. Suddenly the movie has no identity and goes on longer than it should.



This was supposed to be a comedy, and for the first twenty minutes or so, me and my roommates were entertained. Then it got weird. The main character clubs a girl he likes, and she falls off a cliff, and then the tribe eats her. I'm not kidding. And it just gets weirder from there. Towards the end he meets up with some Amazon women, and they clean him in a pool naked, and there's a bunch of nude women with really hairy vaginae all over the place. I just didn't get it. There's a point where someone needs to come in and say "Enough!"

Gary Busey was barely in the film, but when he was, he was great. My roommates didn't think so. Busey freaks them out. The reality is Busey probably freaks a lot of people out. I'm just one of those nutty dudes out there who digs him. Other than the first twenty minutes, which was pretty good, the only redeeming feature of this movie was the few minutes Busey spends on screen, and it's because of this that I devoted all three images from the film to his brief appearance. I think Hallettsville in my instant queue may be my next Busey film for the DTVC. we'll see what happens.



Tom Arnold also was barely in the film. He played a gay man in the tribe, who is convinced by the main character to come out of the closet, and is then beaten to death and eaten by his fellow tribesmen. I didn't get it. Arnold was funny. He didn't over do the flamboyance at all, which was good. But why it was supposed to be funny that the tribe beats him to death and eats him is beyond me. Maybe it just sounded good at the time. And why didn't Arnold, who is funny-- at least he was here-- step in and say: "fellas, enough!"

My roommates weren't familiar with National Lampoon's horrible DTV reputation like I am. They were like "The people who did Animal House and Vacation did this?" Yes and no. They just seem to put their name to any old kind of DTV crap and trade on their reputation. I mentioned to them the Paris Hilton film National Lampoon's did, and they got the idea. That being said, I am interested in the National Lampoon's Van Wilder: Freshman Year. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.



I know I brought my roommates up a bit here, but that's because they watched it with me, so they shared in the painful experience. They did, though, have some fun at my expense. There's a character named The Old Fool, who's like in his seventies, and the movie makes a joke that he's "30 years old", something to do with life expectancy in the Stone Age. Anyway, when we watched this, I was only a couple weeks away (now only twelve days!) from my own 30th birthday, and my roommates thought the image of this really old man at thirty was hilarious. Go ahead, laugh it up, fuckers. [Ugh!]

Don't go near this sack of asscrack. If you see National Lampoon's and think "I bet this is funny", don't, and instead think "I read that this was a useless sack-of-asscrack, and I should steer clear of it." Sometimes it's for the best.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0484207/

National Lampoon's Last Resort (1994)

Growing up in the 80s, the Coreys were a pop culture staple. I try my best to get my hands on anything that features one and/or both of them. If I had to chose, I guess I'm more of a Feldman guy, but that's just me.

National Lampoon's Last Resort is about the Coreys, working in Detroit, who are called down to Feldman's uncle's resort island. They have to help it make money fast, because the uncle's evil rival from back when the two made pirate movies together is trying to foreclose on them... or whatever. That's pretty much it.

This is supposed to be a comedy in the vein of Airplane and The Naked Gun. It's not. It's a train wreck from start to finish. The Coreys are the only saving grace, and it's hilarious to watch them make sense of the unfunny script.



As a viewer, we fully understand how bad this is going to be when Feldman reads the letter from his uncle while the two are sitting on a bench in Detroit. Haim asks him how they'll get to the Caribbean island, and Feldman picks up some pellet or something and says "oh, it's one of these", and he slams it on the ground. In a flash they're on the island. Wow.

There were some cool parts. Former First Brother Roger Clinton is in the film for about five minutes as a mob enforcer. I totally dug that. When Corey Haim is first kissed by the chick he's after, he looks at the camera and goes "BOOM!", and they loop it three times in quick succession, go to a shot of Feldman and his uncle, and then give us a fourth one. There's a fish that's supposed to be in a bunch of scenes, and one time it's protruding from Feldman's pants, and he's stroking it. I forgot to mention the uncle is the dude who raises one of the Van Dammes in Double Impact.



There's a lot of bad, though. It's like a big Jay Leno monologue in terms of humor, or maybe the stand-up on Last Comic Standing: it's not as anger inducing as say Kathy Griffin, but at the same time, I'm laughing at, not with, any of the jokes, and after five minutes I'm wondering why I'm watching it all. In this case, the answer is the Coreys, of course.

I'd only get this if you're a Corey completist, like me, even though I'm kind of regretting it. If USA still aired Up All Night with either Rhonda Shear or Gilbert Godfrey, you'd be able to see something like this without the monetary risk. I guess now it takes people like me with blogs to warn you off, and unfortunately, that's what I must do: don't buy this, don't rent this, don't do anything with it that involves spending money. I was disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110629/

National Lampoon Adam and Eve (2005)

My buddy and I caught this on one of the Encore channels late one night. We figured the name National Lampoon would mean funny, and we were looking for a comedy.

National Lampoon's Adam and Eve is about a college dude named Adam (Kirk Douglas' grandson), who digs music and lives at a flop house type frat with some kooky characters that make up a who's-who of teen angst movie extras. Adam meets Eve (Emmanuelle Chaquiri), who's ridiculously attractive, but also a virgin and waiting for the right time for her first time. They fall in love, but Adam can't get any. After being rebuffed again despite an elaborately romantic scheme, he gets drunk and sleeps with a hot blond skank that's after him. Thinking he picked up gonorrhea from her, he has to come clean to Eve at the same time Eve is ready to do it. 13 of the final 15 minutes of the film are spent with them split up, with the second to last minute being her giving him another chance, and the final minute being them about to have sex.

I'm not all together sure what the film makers wanted me to think of this film. Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a madcap romp in a frat with a dude finally growing up? Is it about what guys and girls take from relationships? Is it simply made to annoy the piss out of me?



The premise is fairly understandable: Emmanuelle Chaquiri is so attractive that it would be hard to date her and not have sex with her. After that, this film has no identity. The kooky friends are extremely forgettable, yet the film makers seem to think they're cooler than that. One of them is the technical whiz kid from Fast and the Furious. He plays some chain smoking guy that's supposed to be really cool, but is just a dork who's not that funny and was better as the wuss who gets shot up by Asian dudes.

To show us how cool he is, he hooks up with Eve's friend; and if that wasn't bad enough, later we're forced to listen to her describe in gory detail during a banal conversation with Eve all the things he did to her. I'm assuming the banal conversation that sparked the horrific description of their tryst was an attempt to dull some of the testosterone in the film with a female point of view, but it just made the women look dumber yet more self indulgent than the dudes in the frat discussing whether or not you should stand to wipe your ass.



In terms of funny, this wasn't. It had it's moments, but they were so far and few that I didn't have the energy to laugh at them when they came. How this got the name National Lampoon is beyond me. The guys at the frat paled in comparison to other Lampoon movies. It should've been called National Lampoon Ultra Light, because it tasted like water. That reminds me of the worst scene in the movie: a girl drinks gonorrhea piss. Adam takes a urine sample (instead of doing it at the doctor's office, like you would in real life) to get tested, and he's carrying it in a keg cup down to the doctor's. A girl stops him and insists on having a sip, thinking it's beer. He lets her, and we're supposed to laugh at that. Oh my god, she drank gonorrhea piss, that's so funny!

If you want to see the hot Emmanuelle Chaquiri, skip this and watch On the Line. At least there, you get her, and the always hilarious Joey Fatone. Don't go near this sack of ass crack. If you spot it on one of the Encore channels, run, as fast as you can from your TV set. Your brain will thank you for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391728/