Goon (2011)

I thought with hockey season starting again, I'd do something in honor of that.  I still haven't gotten over my Bruins' stinging game 7 loss in the Stanley Cup Finals yet.  I may not get over it.  Ever... but I digress  Now while this isn't officially DTV, it had a lack-luster theatrical run that was followed by a lot of success on Netflix and VOD, so I felt it fit here.

Goon is based off the life of Doug Smith, a boxer turned minor league hockey enforcer from Massachusetts who played for various teams in various leagues from the late 80s through the late 90s.  Seann William Scott plays Doug Glatt, a bouncer from a small city in Massachusetts who is signed by a local lower division minor league hockey team to be their enforcer after he beats up an opposing player that rushed into the stands.  He can't play, he can barely skate, but he can fight.  The coach has a brother coaching a minor league team in Halifax that needs an enforcer to protect their star player, so he gets the call up, finds love, finds himself, and helps the team from Halifax make the playoffs in their league.

Like most sports movies, this one ultimately devolved into the Rocky/Bad News Bears paradigm.  It had its fun moments, and there were great performances by Scott, Kim Coates, Jay Baruchel, Eugene Levy, Liev Schreiber, Allison Pill, and one of my personal favorites, Nicholas Campbell--also loved seeing Jonathan Cherry from WolfCop; but because the plot is essentially stuff we've seen before, I found myself checking the timer to see where we were, and mentally ticking off milestones in the story the way I would tick off milestones at a wedding, waiting for it to wrap up.  You know what I mean: best man toast?  Check.  Bride dance with father?  Check.  This is kind of the same thing: hero meets girl?  Check.  Hero faces adversity?  Check.  Hero overcomes adversity?  Check.  Hero loses girl and faces more adversity?  Check.  This did its best to not be paint-by-numbers, but it's hard when we've seen the drawing before, and it's just this time the colors were nicer.

As I'm wont to do when it comes to these reviews, here's what I think could have been done to make this better.  In the credits we see actual footage of the real Doug Smith fighting, and then getting interviewed about it after, and it was amazing.  He had an authentic Mass accent, a slight mullet, and he was speaking over grainy late 80s/early 90s home video footage of his games.  That's what the movie should have been, a documentary on this larger-than-life figure.  When it's dramatized, it can only turn into Rocky or The Bad News Bears, and we've seen those before; when it's a documentary, it's real, it's raw, and it's compelling.  That's the thing with sports: it's the most dynamic, dramatic storytelling there is, so to build on that, you either have to do Rocky, or you have to go outside the box like a Bend it Like Beckham or Raging Bull--or even Slap Shot.  I had fun with this movie, but seeing and hearing the real Doug Smith in the credits made me realize what I really missed.

But then you ask, "Matt, if this were a documentary, we wouldn't have DTVC favorite Kim Coates!"  I hear you, and I thought of that too.  He'd have to be the host/narrator.  As I mentioned above, this also had Nicholas Campbell, great actor that I know best for Da Vinci's Inquest.  He plays Doug Glatt's first coach, and when Doug leaves him to move up in ranks, I'm thinking "no, how can you improve on Campbell?"  And maybe Coates isn't an improvement on Campbell, but at the very least he's a worthy replacement.  For me, it was a nice respite to have him play a hard-nosed yet endearing hockey coach, as opposed to the jerks and villains he usually plays that I find myself rooting for when I know I shouldn't.

Eugene Levy had a small roll in this as Doug Glatt's dad.  His character is a jerk, and I wish they had maybe thrown in some pratfalls or a funny accent or something to redeem it a bit for us.  I think of all those great Christopher Guest films he's done, and it's like "oh no, stop being a jerk to Seann William Scott!"  Maybe that was the trade-off: for Coates to be a good guy in a movie, Levy had to be a baddie in order to maintain the Canadian actor balance.  I'm willing to accept that.

Much has changed in hockey since this movie came out.  In 2011 the Bruins won the Stanley Cup with Shawn Thornton, one of the league's top enforcers, on their fourth line.  Now, with fighting almost legislated out of the game, teams no longer keep an enforcer on the bench.  I think a lot of old hockey fans like me look back at those old days with rose-tinted glasses, but one thing I did appreciate about this movie is that the hockey fights were gorier than a lot of the action movies we review here, reminding us how brutal it all was.  Sure, fighting was great, but maybe it's time for us as hockey fans to evolve... maybe... (A reminder of a different sort I got was seeing Tim Thomas have a cameo.  Politics aside, he was amazing in that 2011 B's Cup run, it was an all-time performance, and the biggest reason I've been able to enjoy a Bruins Cup and parade in my lifetime.  I lift my cup of coffee on this Sunday morning to you Mr. Thomas.)

I grew up a huge hockey fan.  I remember my friend and I hiding below the banks of the pond we played on because it was too early in the season for skating and probably wasn't safe enough, so a neighbor called the cops on us.  While the Bruins were my big team, I used to go more often to see the Maine Mariners, and later the Portland Pirates, in Portland, ME; and then when I went to UMaine it was all about college hockey and the Black bears.  I say all this because I feel it's necessary to demonstrate my hockey fan credentials if I'm going to critique this movie.  I wasn't going in expecting Slap Shot, but it unfortunately did devolve into the Rocky/Bad New Bears paradigm, which I felt was less compelling than a documentary on Doug Smith would have been, and that's why I can't fully recommend this, even though it had its fun moments.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1456635

The Blood of Heroes aka The Salute of the Jugger (1989)

Back in June Moe at Drunk on VHS came to me to see if I would be back on his show to discuss this film. After the great time I had with him and Jon from The After Movie Diner discussing Hard to Die, I was excited at the opportunity to do another pod. Of course, the episode devolved into Moe, Jon, and I discussing sub-Reddits about people dry humping bags of dog food. Also, it was after this episode that Moe and Jon decided to create their own night of live podcast programming on Wednesday nights, and they asked me if I'd like to do my own show on their night, which is what led to the creation of the DTVC Podcast with Jamie and me. Finally, this film was also covered by our friend Mitch at The Video Vacuum in his Rutger Hauer-Palooza.

The Blood of Heroes takes place in a brutal, post-apocalyptic future. In it, a game known simply as "The Game," played by "Juggers," is all the rage. It's a macabre spectacle in which a dog's skull is the ball, and the goal is to post the skull on the other team's stake--the catch being that there are no rules governing how you stop the other team from winning. DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer plays a disgraced former star who leads a barnstorming team from watering hole to watering hole to play for money. When spunky newcomer Joan Chen pushes the team to go to one of the big cities to challenge a pro team, at first he disagrees, but then they all decide to go for it. Will Rocky be able to prevail against all odds? Will the spunky Bad News Bears get it done?

I don't know what to think about this movie. It's not the worst thing ever, but overall it is still a Rocky or Bad News Bears paradigm with the only differences being that it takes place in the future and it's brutal. Rutger Hauer is as great as ever, and the rest of the cast was great too, including Delroy Lindo, Vincent D'Onofrio, and the aforementioned Chen, plus Richard Norton in a small cameo at the end. I guess, for my money, if I'm watching a post-apocalyptic cheesefest, give me Mr. Norton in a leather vest with no shirt and big gun driving an '84 Caprice Classic with no windows and spikes affixed to the front, blowing the shit up out of everything. But that's just me.

Rutger Hauer is pretty great in this, but when is he not? And this is no bait-and-switch, this is Hauer in his 80s prime doing is Hauer best. One area where this film differs from the classic Rocky or Bad News Bears paradigm is that we have a character like Hauer who was once one of the best, and only had to stop due to a falling-out with one of the higher ups in the city. That gives the Bad News Bears aspect of the team a level of quality that makes them less rag-tag, but it only works if Hauer sells it with his natural charisma and awesomeness, and he does that in spades

As I mentioned above, DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton also appeared in this at the very end. He's an Aussie, and this was an Aussie production, so it makes sense, but I felt like he was there reminding me of what a post-apocalyptic cheesefest was really supposed to be like. Okay, maybe this film was trying to do something new with it, and I applaud them for that, but to what extent is it really new if the end is the same, and a lot of how we get there is the same? Maybe it was bloodier and more macabre, but it's still The Bad News Bears. Seeing Norton, I rued the fact that we weren't driving old cars with black paint jobs and spikes and bars attached to it, that we weren't seeing big guns and exploding huts, that we weren't seeing Norton and Hauer kicking massive amounts of post-apocalyptic ass. I guess we could also say that this idea of brutal futuristic sports was not entirely new either, considering we had films like Rollerball and Death Race 2000 that also banged home this idea, so who knows.

According to Wikipedia, "The Game" is actually played in real life, known as "Jugger," and they don't use a real dog skull, and I'm assuming it's also not as bloody or dangerous. I guess based on the movie it originated simultaneously in both Germany and Australia, and they have international tournaments for it and whatnot. Here in the States I see it becoming more hipster than Ultimate Frisbee and kickball, as thin, bearded, not-quite-athletes talk about how they play Jugger, and how they stopped playing Ultimate or kickball because everyone was playing those sports. Lots of craft beer and food carts at the games too.

As I mentioned above, this had a pretty robust cast. Joan Chen was Hauer's costar, and if it weren't for the fact that he's a Hall of Famer, the first paragraph after the synopsis could have just as easily gone to her. For the kids who love Twin Peaks, she's great, so you'll love that. She's small enough yet driven enough that her character works as the newcomer Hauer believes makes the team good enough to challenge the pros. And then there's Vincent D'onofrio as the kid who joined the team just before Chen. This is the third film of his we've done here, the first being the fantastic Kill the Irishman, the second the lackluster Fire with Fire. Then we had the great Delroy Lindo, who my wife and I loved in Crooklyn. He's as great here, even with a smaller role. Finally, I should have mentioned this earlier, this film was written and directed by David Webb Peoples, who wrote Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and 12 Monkeys.

So ultimately I'm not saying this movie is a pass, just that it didn't work for me. No matter how you package it, it still seems like The Bad New Bears, only bloodier. As far as purchasing it, used VHS or DVD is the way to go. I want to thank Moe again for having me on Drunk on VHS with him and Jon. If you want to check out that podcast episode, go to the After Movie Diner (link in sidebar) and look for the Drunk on VHS archive.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094764/

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Lay the Favorite (2012)

We continue our Bruce Willis Week with Lay the Favorite, a film based on the true story of gambler Beth Raymer, played by Rebecca Hall.  As with many Willis DTV flicks, there are also a bunch of other names here, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn, Laura Prepon, and Joshua Jackson.  I was also excited to see a film about sports gambling, because I love sports-- though I have only ever gambled on them in Las Vegas.

Lay the Favorite follows Hall as Beth, a young lady from Tallahassee who moves to Vegas in search of a job as a cocktail waitress.  When those jobs aren't forthcoming, she takes a job with Bruce Willis, who is a famous Vegas bookmaker and gambler.  Turns out she has a thing for numbers, so this should be the perfect gig, except Willis's wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, is the jealous type, so Willis has to fire Hall.  Hall then meets Joshua Jackson, moves out to NYC, and gets a job making bets for bookie Vince Vaughn.  What happens though when she gets involved with some shady characters in the city that never sleeps?



This one didn't work.  It's the kind of thing that sounds great on paper, and as a true story would probably be great as a documentary on cable TV, because it is interesting.  The problem is, from a cinematic angle, we have very little-- or very superficial-- conflict until the very end, meaning there's nothing driving the story for us.  We have no sense that winning or losing means anything with the betting, no sense that the choices these characters make will have any real consequences.  For two seconds we have the intrigue of Hall pursuing a relationship with Willis, but once Zeta-Jones steps in, it's over before it really starts.  Despite having some really great characters played by some really great actors, if nothing is ultimately happening until the very end, there's not much we as an audience can do, no matter how much we want to like a movie.

I didn't know what to do with Willis in this either.  I loved the scenes when he was freaking out about losing bets, smashing flat screens and firing everyone.  The awkward poignant moments with Hall and Zeta-Jones, not so much.  I think that's another problem here though, the real life Dink (that was the guy's name) is probably great, and hearing things from him directly probably sounds compelling and entertaining; that doesn't mean he works on-screen.  But I guess again I'm left with the conclusion that he probably sounded like he would translate well in a movie, and it just didn't work.



When I was out in Vegas in early 2013, I stayed at the Rio.  I gotta say, it doesn't quite look as nice in real life as it does on screen-- though Vegas in general doesn't look that nice.  I have yet to see a movie that takes place in Vegas that shows the click-click guys, who are ubiquitous along The Strip, trying to hand out little flyers for all the local strip clubs.  I wonder if the casino lobby prevents that from happening.  It is a very interesting thing to see movies about Vegas after having visited.  Like a Leaving Las Vegas makes more sense, and I guess something like this feels a little more down-to-earth, because Vegas is less glamour and more, well, Vegas.

Catherine Zeta-Jones joins the long line of Oscar winners to be featured at the DTVC-- and the second one in Bruce Willis Week, after Forest Whitaker in Catch .44.  She doesn't have a big part, and it appears she's playing a woman older than herself, which is also very interesting.  Like Willis's though, I think it's another one that seemed great in real life, but on-screen doesn't quite wash.  She's not bad enough or crazy enough or even endearing enough to work on any of those levels.  In real life that's probably how she really is, and is probably very nice because of it; but in a movie, she needs to be more of one aspect than any of the others to be entertaining, and because she wasn't, it didn't work.



Look who's playing basketball on the far right there.  It's Curly from Baller Blockin', Jerry Katz.  Only, he's listed as "Jerome Katz", playing "Some Guy", and he has two separate imdb pages.  Come on Jerry Katz, get your agent in there and clean that up.  We need more of you on-screen.  You should've had a much bigger part in this, like maybe winning a bet and saying "who's the baller now, wardy?"  Here's to you Jerry "Jerome" Katz, you're one of the good ones.

Unfortunately this is not.  What seems like a great idea based on an interesting true story just didn't work in a dramatic movie setting.  As I said above, maybe a cable TV special, with interviews from the actual people involved, combined with some dramatic reenactments would've been better.  Even the great cast couldn't save it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132449/

Screwball: The Ted Whitfield Story (2010)

After the 90 minutes of pure amazing that was Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, I had to see what else Ross Patterson had to offer, and fortunately, he had a couple on Watch Instantly. I went with this one, because I liked the idea of a movie based on Whiffle Ball, something I used to play growing up.

Screwball: The Ted Whitfield Story, is about Ted Whitfield (Patterson), a star in the SoCal Whiffle Ball league, who finds himself something of a celebrity in 1994, when the MLB strike brings a few more people to the game. In 1995 though, when the MLB strike ends, Whitfield, in a desperate attempt to keep people at the games, makes a charge at the league's home run record, something he'll do at any cost. Will he succeed, yet lose himself in the process?



While this is not Poolboy, very little is, and this still has some great moments. Patterson is hilarious, as are many in the cast. I think people who have seen Poolboy will recognize Patterson's style, from his line delivery, to some of the random craziness-- one of my favorites being when he threatens an ump with a box cutter. The film meanders a bit near the end, but Patterson picks it back up, and there's a twist ending that had me in stitches. See Poolboy first, then check this out, especially if you're here in the States and can check both on Watch Instantly.

Ross Patterson is one of those types of comedic actors that can say anything in a movie and make it funny. All of the scenes with him in them were hilarious, whether he's working out and smoking and taking blue dinosaur vitamins-- performance enhancing drugs-- or he's hitting on women giving interviews. His writing in this is great too, especially when the woman who played Peters in Poolboy (Edi Patterson) enters the film as Whitfield's wife, and describes her harrowing ordeal of being vaginally raped by a mountain lion-- in sign language. Who thinks of that? Ross Patterson apparently. The two of them have great comedic chemistry too-- Patterson and Patterson, not Patterson and the mountain lion. What you gotta love about this is that, even though it's not as good as Poolboy, you can see how he gets better from film to film, meaning FDR: American Badass could be something so fantastic words won't be able to describe it-- I may not even be able to review it.



Another thing Poolboy has going for it that might make it more of a fit for readers of this blog is that it's about action movies, which everyone here is familiar with, while Screwball is about sports, and I'm not sure how many of my readers that connects with. Also, this makes fun of the issues Major League Baseball had with players taking steroids, and I'm not sure how many readers outside of the US and Canada know or care about that. For me personally, having grown up an hour north of Boston, I was raised on baseball, and a lot of these jokes rang true. I also grew up near some trailer parks, so a lot of the red neck jokes rang true too.

Whiffle Ball in particular hit close to home. We all used to play in my neighborhood, plus my dad and I would play in the back yard. The idea of a Whiffle Ball league is great, and I imagine people actually have them. I know my buddy played in a kickball league in Portland. No irony either, this was competitive rec league kickball. He asked if I wanted to check out a game, and I asked if I should bring orange wedges. He thought it was funny, his teammates not so much.



Finally, fans of the blog might recognize Jaime Bergman. She appeared in the very first film we reviewed, Boa vs. Python. In this she plays a reporter interviewing Ted Whitfield, who is only in a robe and jock strap. Snippets of the interview play throughout the film. I think in a couple spots she was trying not to laugh. I gotta think there were a few retakes in some of those scenes, because I know I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. I also thought it would be good to put her picture up here, because her husband is David Boreanaz, and his pics are all over Tumblr. Gotta even things up a bit.

If you haven't seen Poolboy, do that first-- and do that now!-- then take a look at this. You'll recognize things you liked in Poolboy in this, even if you're not a sports fan. The jump in quality though from this to Poolboy has me wondering if the world can handle FDR: American Badass when it comes out. We'll just have to see.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262978/

South Beach Academy (1996)

Our buddy Seth over at Lost Video Archive has organized a week dedicated to the films of James Hong, and among the many blogs he invited to join him, the DTVC was one. I jumped at the chance-- I mean, who doesn't love James Hong? And I had a few of his films already on my radar, including this one, which also starred DTVC favorite Corey Feldman.

South Beach Academy is about a (in)famous school on Miami's South Beach that teaches classes on how to enjoy oneself in the sun and surf. It's run by Grandpa Munster, uncle to Harry and Billy (Corey Feldman). Harry has been down there for a while, and is very popular with the locals; while Feldman has just shown up from North Dakota, and ready to get after it. Not so fast though, Grandpa Munster is a bit of a gambling man, and he's into local mob moss Johnny Staccato (the great James Hong) for a huge bet that, if he loses, will force him to forfeit the academy. Well, Harry and Feldman can't let this happen, so they do everything in their power to defeat Staccato. Will it be enough?



Based strictly on USA Up All Night nostalgia, this is pretty sweet. It's exactly the kind of thing you'd see on there at like 3AM, only on USA, all the boobs would've been blurred out. And there are tons of boobs in this, so it's like USA Up All Night plus. On the other hand, as far as a beach romp type film goes, this is woefully inadequate. There's really no romping going on. A movie like this should be following in the steps of Porky's, but instead, it's more like that Saved by the Bell season they spent working at that resort with Leah Remini. That's kind of too bad, because Hong was hilarious, Grandpa Munster was tons of fun, and who knows what Feldman was, but he was great too; but all of that is wasted on a bad plot about some Harry guy and the volleyball playing woman he has his heart set on.

We might as well start with Mr. Hong, since the week and this post is dedicated to him. He was easily the funniest person in the cast. In fact, had he had better material, he might have been even more funny. This film does one of those deals where it kind of starts at the end then goes back to the beginning and spends the next 70 minutes getting back to the start that's really the end. Anyway, at the beginning (that's really the end), our hero, Harry, encounters Hong in a bedroom in Hong's yacht, where he has some girl bound and gagged on his bed, and he's tickling her and whatnot. We find out later that she's our hero's girl, and it's really just a damsel in distress scenario; but it would've been so great if she was just some random girl he was doing that with while Harry stumbles onto him, which is what I thought originally. The crazier the better in a romp picture, and this movie was just too afraid to go there.



Corey Feldman was all over the place. Like the USA Up All Night nostalgia factor, we also have a high Feldman novelty factor too. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe his jokes aren't that funny-- though some of them were--, do I care? I'm just loving that we have Corey Feldman in this. The mid-90s Feldman DTV flicks were always fun, and, while this movie could've been better-- and could've had more Feldman-- it still has that mid-90s Feldman feel that I'm looking for when I see his name on a film like this.

This is our third volleyball film at the DTVC, the other two being the C. Thomas Howell classic Side Out, and the David Charvet flick Beach Kings. Side Out, obviously, is the greatest volleyball movie of all time, so this would've had trouble compared to that; and Beach Kings was pretty painful, so saying this was better isn't saying much. This should've been the ultimate beach volleyball romp, and it never got there, which was very disappointing.



Finally, how can I not mention Grandpa Munster? He was fantastic. He was like 73 at the time, hitting on all kinds of women, making tons of great Don Rickles-esque jokes. The problem is, again, he was only scratching the surface of what you'd want a dirty old man Grandpa Munster to be doing in a romp-style movie. You need to turn him loose in something like this, and they never quite did it. Also, we had some Ron Jeremy as a sleazy strip club owner. In true wasted romp style, his comeuppance is the barely-an-afterthought shove into the pool. Come on, really? No elaborate prank?

Ultimately though, for me anyway, the USA Up All Night nostalgia makes this a yes despite its shortcomings. In 1996, if I were coming home at 3AM, with blurred vision and trying to keep the room from spinning so I could sleep without getting sick, this would've been a pretty fun deal. A sober me in 1996, maybe notsomuch; but a sober me now can appreciate it, and it is a little fun blast from the past.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111248/

Rocky IV (1985)

This is our 800th post, which isn't the biggest milestone, but it is on an even hundred, and worth celebrating I think. And what better flick to look at than one that, while it wasn't itself a DTV flick, launched the career of the man we've come to know of as the Babe Ruth of DTV, Dolph Lundgren. Even today, when most people think of Dolph, they think Ivan Drago-- though they often get the famous line wrong. For the record, it's "I must break you", which I imagine Stallone wrote in to drive home the point that Drago didn't have any free will under the Soviet Union-- no "will", all "must".

Rocky IV has Sylvester Stallone back as his iconic sports hero, this time taking a break after beating Clubber Lang. A Soviet heavy weight named Ivan Drago has been making news, and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) sees this as a last chance at glory. Drago ends up beating him to death in the ring, so Stallone goes on a one-man crusade to take down Drago, and maybe end the Cold War while he's at it.



While this was the highest grossing of Stallone's Rocky films, there's definitely a feeling of shark jumping, especially considering how over the top (no pun intended) so much of it is. Stallone incorporates a montage of clips from the previous films as Rocky reflects on how far he's come, and I think we can't help doing the same. Everything the first one was-- real, compelling, and not out of proportion with what we associate with the real world, while still being big and theatrical-- this one wasn't-- it was always out of proportion and overly theatrical, so by the time we get to the end and Rocky is essentially ending the Cold War in his post fight interview, we aren't surprised by the ridiculousity. But it did have enough of what made the first Rocky so endearing and so successful, in particular Stallone's down-to-Earth working class hero that we can't help but root for, even if we're surrounded by jingoism and silly larger-than-life dramatizations. In the end, shark jumping or no, this is a fun flick in the Rocky series.

No, he wasn't the star, far from it, and no, this wasn't his first big screen role, he had a small part in A View to a Kill, but this is the one that put Dolph on the map. Unfortunately his next film, Masters of the Universe, was a colossal flop, and the one two after that The Punisher, was stuck in limbo and didn't get a US theatrical release (Red Scorpion was in between those two). So began his journey into DTV-dom, with only a blip coming with Universal Soldier, though that film was more a Van Damme vehicle than it was a Dolph flick. We always talk about movies as gems that fell through the cracks when Hollywood ignored them, and here we have the same thing, only with an actor-- their loss is our gain. Who'd'a thunk that a role in a Stallone flick would lead to the greatest DTV action career in history? Here's to you Dolph Lundgren, you're one of the great ones.



It's hard for me to go back to when I was six and get a good grasp on what Stallone and Rocky meant at the time in 1985. I remember the Cold War scare. Though it was near the end, it was still very palpable, and I remember fearing that the Soviets would invade and take my neighborhood hostage. But it's also important to remember that the 80s was Stallone's decade. Schwarzenegger had some good ones then too, but he really came on in the 90s and replaced Stallone then. With that in mind, this is a Stallone at the height of his popularity, revisiting the character that made him most famous. I had this sense as I watched the scene where Rocky looked back on where he came from, and thought about how he needed to get back down to Earth, that his character was trying to speak to Stallone, telling him that this ride won't go on forever, but in his hubris he didn't listen, and in just five short years Rocky V came out, and two years after that Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. I think the difference between Stallone and Rocky, is that Rocky never felt comfortable as a star, while Stallone craved it.

Getting back to Rocky, the first film, I noticed on Tumblr recently that a kid (like 21 or 22) was talking about the travesty that was the 1977 Oscars, because Rocky won for best picture over Taxi Driver. It's interesting how perceptions of both films have changed over time, especially for kids born in the late 80s early 90s. They've essentially only grown up with Rocky as a cliched sports film paradigm, and have had so many "inspired by a true story" sentimentality porn fests shoved down their throats, that they can't conceive of Rocky as an original and endearing concept, let alone comprehend the film's social and artistic significance at the time. It's kind of hard for us Gen X-ers to comprehend it too, because Taxi Driver just seems so much more sui generis, but at least we have some perspective, we remember when both Rocky as a character, and Stallone as a person, were much more relevant in Hollywood, and that's something kids today can't conceive of. Rocky will always be The Blind Side or Seabiscuit to them, while Taxi Driver will always be Travis Bickle kicking ass.



The soundtrack on this is amazing. First and foremost, you have Survivor's "Burning Heart". I'm not ashamed to admit that that's on my iPod in my exercise mix alongside Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose". Just a fantastic montage song, the kind that makes you wish by the end of it that you'd just done 6 months worth of exercise in 3 minutes. Then John Cafferty has "Hearts On Fire". You can never go wrong with John Cafferty. Also we have some Go West, with "One Way Street", and 80s soundtrack mainstay Kenny Loggins, who teams up with Gladys Knight for "Double or Nothing". One of my personal favorites was "No Easy Way Out", which was performed by Robert Tepper-- There's no easy way out/there's no short cut home! Finally, I can't go over the Rocky IV soundtrack without mentioning James Brown's "Living with a Hernia"-- er, I mean "Living in America"-- which was written by Dan Hartman of "I Can Dream About You" fame.

I don't know why I included a shot of Stallone in that Hugo Boss sweatshirt above, I just thought it was so cool. I wish they made sweatshirts like that today, I'd totally buy them. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the sport of boxing, because Stallone was recently inducted into the boxing hall of fame for his work in making boxing films, in particular the first one. In this one, he bends the rules of what's allowed in boxing, especially in the Creed/Drago fight. He went for the element of Creed wanting to die like a warrior in the fight instead of growing old and deteriorating, but the way the whole thing went down, with no ringside doctors, the press surrounding him after he hit the canvas, the ref not stopping the fight when it was obvious Drago had won. For me as a boxing fan it was a little hard to watch, and I wanted scream at the TV when Rocky yells "Can somebody get a doctor!", because every fight has a doctor at it, and he'd have been in the ring before Rocky was.



The boxing thing wasn't nearly as bad as this here. The training scenes were shot in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with the Grand Tetons in the background. If you don't know, the Tetons are over 13,000 feet in elevation, and require, at the very least, rock climbing at a 5.4 difficulty. I get that in the film these were supposed to be fake mountains in Siberia, but anyone looking at them can see that they aren't hills, they have some serious altitude and some serious rock climbing associated with them, so to see Rocky on a whim in just some snow boots and a leather jacket run up to the summit of one was ridiculous. It was also very silly, because they obviously just dropped a stuntman off near the top of one of the peaks and had him run around, then cut to Stallone somewhere else. It was that kind of thing that added to the shark jumping effect.

This is available on a really nice DVD from MGM video. Don't let my screenshots fool you, the DVD is two-sided, with one in widescreen and the other full screen, and I only decided to use the full screen side because I think they look better on the blog. It's a beautiful widescreen transfer on the other side, worth watching on a nice TV. If you see it used or on sale at a big chain, I'd scoop it up. This is a fun film and full of nostalgia-- plus it's the movie that introduced us to Dolph, and for that we're forever grateful.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089927/

Circle of Pain (2010)

About a month ago I reviewed a film called Locked Down. In the comments section of that post, two things happened. First, our friend Ty at comeuppance reviews, gave us the term "punchfighting movie" when describing this UFC/TapOut sub-genre of low-budget martial arts films, complete with the tatted bruisers, songs performed by Disturbed derivatives, and sea-sickness inducing MTV film edits. Second, our friend Jason over at elementarybeatboxoperator,storylike made the joke that he might handle these films better while under the influence of Mountain Dew. And thus the Punchfighting Movie Mountain Dew Doritos Experiment was born.

I decided to go back to my movie watching roots for this one. On a recent free day, after my morning walk and a quick shower, I planted myself on the couch and had Mountain Dew and Doritos for lunch-- that's it-- while I watched two recent Punchfighting movie efforts, Circle of Pain and Beatdown. Below is a picture of what I put into my system:



And no, Mr. Anonymous from Unrivaled, it wasn't this:



Before I get into the review, let me just say that I was ill equipped physically to deal with the ramifications of what a lunch of Mountain Dew and Doritos meant. I was lightheaded, felt some tingling in my left arm, and thought on numerous occasions that I might have what the competitive eaters call a "reversal of fortune". As late as midnight-- twelve hours later!-- I was still feeling these effects. I know as a blogger the idea is that junk food is considered an average meal for us in our parents' basements; but in the real world, as an actual person, I'm too far removed from my college days when I used to pull this kind of shit and get away with it. My body just doesn't find it funny anymore.

Anyway, so here we are, onto Circle of Pain. It stars rising Punchfighting guy Tony Schiena (Locked Down) as a former fighter who broke his buddy Dean Cain's back with a spin kick (believe me, it was hilarious). Five years later, Bai Ling, who runs the MMA outfit Schiena used to fight for, decides that he needs to fight again against her champ, Heath Herring. She twists his arm by evicting Schiena's baby mama and daughter out of the house Ling provided for them, somehow circumventing any landlord/tenant laws in the process. Now Schiena must overcome his regrets for what he did to his buddy and climb back into that ring triumphant.



I don't know if it was the Mountain Dew or what, but this wasn't too bad. Yes, the scene where Schiena breaks Cain's back is hilarious, and the flashbacks after are even better-- "I play that moment back in my mind, just thinking 'why didn't I kick him a little higher!'" The fight scenes outside of the ring were pretty clunky, like the one with Kimbo Slice, pretty much just wait, punch punch, wait, punch punch, wait, kick, block, throw, repeat; but the final fight inside the ring was great, one of the best MMA dramatizations we've seen in this sub-genre. Also, it was refreshingly light on the MTV gimmicky camera effects. Schiena in the featurette called it the "Rocky of MMA", which is what Unrivaled technically was too, but this was much better. The plot didn't stray too far and get weird on us, and Bai Ling as the MMA organization president was too perfect for words in my opinion. I would say it's more Rocky V than Rocky, but it was a good Rocky V.

Tony Schiena worked better here as the hero than he did in Locked Down, though I have to say he didn't work in the latter more because of the convoluted plot that made him act in awkward scenes than it was him. I do love that he always speaks in these breathy tones, like he's an obscene caller or something. "Hey Dean Cain, do you know who this is? What're you wearing? Are you wearing corduroy? Ooh, I can hear you swish swishing around the house as we speak..." He's a great fighter though, so hopefully he'll get more and better work.



Speaking of the devil, Dean Cain plays a paraplegic. In the featurette, he said he wanted this role because he knew people who were paralyzed, and he saw how they lived very full lives in spite of their disabilities. That brings in an interesting question: is that good enough for you Dean Cain fans out there? What I mean is, is not seeing him fight that much enough for you, if you find out after the fact why he took the role he did? It's one of those things about the featurette, because it explains a lot, but do you except the explanations if you were looking for something else? I was fine with it, even before finding out about why, but that's just me.

One of my favorite MMAers, Frank Mir, has a small, clunky cameo where he gets his ass kicked by Heath Herring. Again, in the featurette, we find out he was just doing it to get his feet wet in the acting world. I'm good with him doing that, but by putting his name on the cover, it's a bait-and-switch. Also, his fight scene wasn't very good at all. Wait, punch punch, wait, knee knee, throw. If he's going to go the next level and get a bigger part, I'd say make him a cyborg or something that throws people a lot and breaks their arms with nasty jiu-jitsu holds. That would rule. As an aside, the background of his one scene is a sick Shelby Cobra-- at least I think it is, I don't know cars that well.



Bai Ling was awesome, and if you see her in the featurette, she's even more awesome. The first thing she says is "this movie is better than drugs, alcohol, or anything else you're taking." Umm, Bai, what exactly do you think I'm taking? Oh wait, that's right, Mountain Dew. Then she says the director was a genius for casting her, because she was playing a part made for a white man. Simply beautiful. I could have done with her in a better haircut, and the leopard print nail polish was a little bit much, but otherwise, she totally sold it. It was one of the elements that elevated this from the run-of-the-mill Punchfighting film.

All right, so final verdict, clunky fights, but a really amazing last one; a pretty funny storyline, especially when you see the actual kick to the back; a script that uses the word "fucking" as its go-to verb; yet also a great Bai Ling; and a hero who speaks in breathy tones but is a solid fighter and a guy worth rooting for. It's the Rocky V of MMA films, which isn't so bad a deal. Again, maybe it was the Mountain Dew that made me lighten up, but I didn't hate this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541664/

Beach Kings aka Green Flash (2008)

The idea of this film intrigued me for three reasons. One, I love volleyball, so a volleyball film is always right up my alley. Two, I liked the idea of 90s pop culture icon Jaleel White and heartthrob David Charvet starring opposite current pop culture princess Kristin Cavallari. Finally, I wanted to see how, if at all, the story dealt with Charvet as a white American player trying to make his way into the NBA.

Beach Kings has Charvet as a former NC State All-American basketball player whose career takes a nose dive after he bricks a half-court last-second heave in a big game, and is seen as the goat because of it. He then forgoes the NBA to live in a funk for ten years, decides to make a comeback, gets that shot from Jaleel White when he sets up a tryout with the Clippers, then forgoes that by skipping out to play in a volleyball tournament-- a sport he'd only been playing for a couple weeks. Anyway, despite making it further in the tournament than he should've, he's upset he loses, goes into another funk, only to have the biggest player on the tour take him on as his new partner. He uses Charvet to make him affable with the fans, then cuts him loose, forcing Charvet to team back up with the guy from the first tournament so he can win this new one.



Did that sound convoluted enough? This was extremely poorly written, and normally for a DTV Rocky rip-off I'd be more forgiving, but some of the ideas they tried to sell were just too ridiculous. First, who holds a guy responsible for bricking a half-court last-second shot? How is that a black mark on a guy's basketball career? And how hard would it be to just say he had a bad day, went 0-for-15 with ten turnovers, and that's what killed him? The difference is with the latter, we just go "classic bad sports movie with hero looking for redemption", while with the former we go "What? What the hell are you talking about?" Beyond that, the script was so bad it was hard to watch. It was like Bi-polar Theater with the extreme, out of place reactions characters had to situations they were confronted with. It was just a mess.

What's so fascinating, though, was the potential this had to be great. Not just not bad or really good to make fun of, I mean great. Just think of it: Charvet's character is playing big time ACC basketball with an undiagnosed mental disorder. After losing the big game, his life goes into an downward spiral, and he turns to volleyball in the mental institution he's sent to. When he gets out and has what he thinks is control of his life, he tries his hand at competing, and he's actually very good, but as the stakes grow, his mental issues pop up again, and so does the turmoil. One other element this film had was its use of The Zone, which is a legitimate phenomenon-- I've had pick-up games where I go lights out and have no idea how I did it. Anyway, Charvet's character in the movie would go into The Zone and become unstoppable. What if his meds prevent him from getting to that exalted level, and he has to decide between winning and his sanity? I guess what frustrates me the most was how good this film could've been.



The moment I saw Jaleel White was in this, I knew I had to have it. Good ol' Steve Urkel. He was actually really good here in his limited capacity, almost in a Jimmie "JJ" Walker style of role. I'm not sure how much he was good compared with the lack of talent around him, or if it was really him, so I'd like to see him in a Dolph Lundgren or Steven Seagal film. That's the key for an actor like that: to be the comic relief in a bad action film and not annoy the audience.

David Charvet's character doesn't date Kristin Cavallari's, but she does hit on him quite a bit. The age difference didn't bother me too much-- him 37, she just turning 23 a few days ago (happy birthday, by the way)-- it was the idea that he was a teen heartthrob on Baywatch when she was seven. It was like two ships passing in the night, he on his way down, and she on her way up; though I think he and Jaleel White would rather it be they were just meeting her at the same port as they all made the trip on their way up. Maybe more than anything, it was a clash of worlds-- the modern pop reality star acting alongside two pillars of 90s pop culture: Steve Urkel and Baywatch. I wonder if White and Charvet were ten years younger if they would've cut their teeth on a CW teen drama and starred in summer slasher films.



ESPN's Outside the Lines did a feature recently on the dwindling number of white Americans in the NBA. It was territory that Beach Kings could've covered, but didn't. I can kind of understand that, but it would've made things more believable if they had. Say, instead of getting a shot with the Clippers, he can't because they don't see the point of a slow white boy trying out, and volleyball becomes his only option. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think any perception of white boys being slow or whatever keeps them out of the NBA. Last time I checked, Steve Nash is a white Canadian, and I'm not sure there's much difference between the two, and he won two MVPs. There's much more going on with that than anyone could cover with a 23-minute TV show, or even with a 90-minute movie, but it would've been another easy inclusion to make the film just a little better that the filmmakers decided to forgo in favor of a completely implausible scenario of Charvet turning down a shot with the Clip Show in favor of a volleyball tournament so early in the movie.

This is one of those films that might be enticing, seeing Urkel's and Charvet's names on the cover. Don't do it! You'll be in pain for a long time to come. I know, it looks so hilarious, and sometimes it was, but it was more confusing and dumb than anything, which was hard to take. Even harder was knowing a few tweaks here and there would've made it pretty good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104066/

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/

Maximum Potential (1987)

I know it's been a while since I've done a Dolph film. I feel really bad about that. I had been trying to do one every 8 posts or so, but it's been 24 since I reviewed Jill the Ripper, meaning I dropped the ball. After this, I'll only have four of his DTV movies left (Storm Catcher, Cover Up, Hidden Agenda, and Direct Action), and then we'll just be waiting for him to release more while I do all C. Thomas Howell films. (Just kidding...)

Maximum Potential is a workout video featuring Dolph Lundgren. I could tell you what the workout entails, but really it's all about showing off Dolph's body in all its Dolph-ness. Just how big a Dolph Lundgren fan are you? You'll know after you've seen this.



We aired this at the recent Dolph Fest here in Maine, and it was a huge hit. It doesn't work if you're watching it alone, but in a large group, there's plenty to giggle at. Dolph's narration is hilarious. His running is even better. And then there's the gratuitous butt, ab, and pec shots. This is the perfect answer for guys who have women that can't stand all the T-an'-A in their bad action movies. An all around great time.

This is, of course, way outside the box from any other Dolph Lundgren film I've ever covered or ever will cover. One thing I found really interesting when watching him play himself, is that he's not really that different when he acts as someone else. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Dolph's never been presented to us as the next Brando: he's just pure beefcake with a too sweet accent. Let Daniel Day Lewis hand-select his roles. I want the same Dolph in the same two-word-titled actioner.



In terms of work films, I must admit I haven't much in the way of experience in reviewing them. I've never seen Buns of Steel or Sweatin' to the Oldies or even Eric Nies' The Grind Workout Video. My exercise is the mile or so I walk to work and back each day, or the mile I walk to the grocery store, etc. I've lost a lot of weight doing that (60 lbs. since July of 2007), but I'm not very cut, so maybe the workout tape is the next stage in my fitness progression. Maybe I'll try yoga instead. I just don't know.



One of the best parts about watching something like this is seeing what names show up in the credits that you recognize before they were stars. Usually it's someone rather innocuous, but in this one we struck gold: production assistant Quentin Tarantino. According to imdb his job was cleaning dog feces off the lawn. The question is who's had the better career since? Pulp Fiction might be enough to trump Dolph's vast arsenal of great work, but I can honestly say anything after that, from Kill Bill to Jackie Brown isn't as good as Showdown in Little Tokyo or Bridge of Dragons. I'd say Reservoir of Dogs and those two Dolph flicks are a toss-up.

This cost me approximately $20 used online at Amazon. Yep, pretty pricey. Five years ago you couldn't find it for less than $40, so now I feel like I'm getting a bargain. I must stress that this an investment only the biggest Dolph fans should make, but if you're in that biggest category, you and your friends will love this bad boy.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256188/

The Best of the Best (1989)

It's hard to believe we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of this bad boy. It seems like just yesterday this was new. Then you watch it and realize the music, hairstyles, and soda cans are hopelessly out of date, and at that point you become nostalgic. Or you laugh at it. One or the other.

Best of the Best has James Earl Jones as a martial arts coach leading a group of Americans against a team of South Koreans in a competition out in Seoul. It's a Bad News Bears type plot, only Eric Roberts and Chris Penn are two of the Bears, and James Earl Jones is cooler than Billy Bob Thorton (but not Walter Mathau). The ending was way more inspired than I ever considered a movie of this caliber could achieve. I'm serious about that.

This is a sports movie. Some of the sequels are action flicks, but this one is all about the competition. The beginning was pretty slow, and overall the piece was pretty formulaic, but the ending was nice, and the star power made for some solid material to make fun of. Also, the South Korean team's training videos looked like something smuggled out of Afghanistan. I didn't understand the rules of the competition, which left me completely at the mercy of the filmmakers as they artificially built up the drama. Again, the first 90 minutes were extremely silly, and the last 5 were both silly and inspired.

Eric Roberts is an interesting case. He seems to be everywhere, taking small roles in big movies, and big roles in small movies. He's even done some music videos. In this film, his hair's awesome, and later when he hurts his shoulder, he's awesome. Then watching him get choked up was a dream, it was just so hilarious. He's just all kinds of Eric Roberts and all kinds of 1989, which is a totally comedic combination.

James Earl Jones was almost completely wasted for me. He has only one scene, where he has a monologue about his team, that makes it worth it to have him instead of someone else. I'll take it for that one scene, but I feel like when I get James Earl Jones, I want more than the equivalent of a Verizon commercial, you know? There should be a James Earl Jones law in Hollywood so this kind of thing doesn't happen, but who knows if anything will ever get done about it.

Another Chris Penn sighting. I realize now that I reviewed Redemption, another Chris Penn film, only five short posts ago. My bad. I usually try to space these kinds of things out. He's younger, but on his way to the chubbiness that would see him through the rest of his days. He played a pretty good heel who changes his stripes as the film wears on. He reprises this role in the sequel, so that's something for us to look forward to.

Finally, I was under the impression that this took place at the Olympics. They even had Ahmad Rashad Covering it. If that was the case, then wouldn't either the South Koreans or Americans get a silver medal just for showing up? If only two teams compete, the worst one can do is finish second. This, like the actual competition itself and the rules of the game, were never fully explained, and I guess they never had to be, so I should stop complaining.

Kind of a snoozefest and a little harder to make fun of after you see the nice ending. But the ending's a ways off, and there's 90 minutes of movie to mock, so why not give it a shot. Not bad, but not exactly good either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096913/

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Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice (2002)

I would've never considered this film if it didn't have Gary Busey and Stephen Baldwin in it. I wouldn't have given it a second look. I wouldn't've condescended to look at it funny. But it had them, so I needed to watch it. Ouch!

Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice was a poor sack of asscrack trading on the good name of the original Slap Shot. Stephen Baldwin is the player-coach of the Chiefs, and for some reason they've been sold to Gary Busey so he can have them be the Washington Generals to his Harlem Globetrotters hockey team. (Baldwin's character calls them the Washington Nationals, and I'd think it might be the writers making a joke about the state of DC's baseball club, except they were playing in Montreal when this was made, so the script writers were just dumb, and no one called them on it.) Baldwin gets them to play ball for a bit, then is given money by Busey to bounce because he's become a problem, then he can't stay away, so he brings the Hanson brothers with him to play Busey's team in a period of "real" hockey.



My soul still hurts. It hurt from the moment the Hanson brothers rolled out onto the ice in an early scene, and Stephen Baldwin was like "you guys!" What hilarity! I could hardly contain myself! It just amazes me that the people who made this film want us to believe they even tried to do anything but use up 1 hour and 44 minutes of film and send it out with the Slap Shot name on it to move some units. It was that bad.

This is Gary Busey's eighth post on the DTVC, which is big considering not so long ago he only had five, and he was way behind non-hall of famers like Daniel Bernhardt and Ice-T. We can't have that, especially with someone as awesome as Gary Busey is. In this movie he plays a guy who's made billions off a family values movement he created. He's supposed to be the bad guy, but really, because he's Busey, he was the only one worth rooting for. When his assistant slugs him at the film's denouement, it's given to us as an applause moment, but no one's really applauding that. On the Abusive scale, I'd give it a 4.5.



We like Stephen Baldwin here at the DTVC. Of course, in Cutaway, the other film of his we've reviewed, we saw his potential as a great actor in one scene where he sports a fake beard. Unfortunately, in that film, he never wears it again, and in this film he never wears it at all. The weak hockey cut mullet is supposed to be enough, but it so isn't. As far as his role went, he was supposed to be from Boston, but he was sporting a bad Canadian accent, so none of it worked. A huge disappointment.

Many Canadian's love Don Cherry, and I don't exactly blame them, but here in The States, we have a cat named Barry Melrose who holds it down for us hockey fans. His intermission reports back when ESPN did hockey were sometimes better viewing than the games they were covering, and that's saying a lot because I'm a huge hockey guy. He has a cameo in this where he comments that Busey's Harlem Globetrotters type hockey is an abomination. It was cool for a second, but then I realized that that meant he was in on this asinine movie. Why Barry, why?



I'm also a huge basketball guy, which lends the question: why would this show be a travesty for hockey, but all right in basketball? Should I, as a basketball fan, be offended by the Globetrotters or the And-1 Mix-tape Tour? I don't really think so. And I'm not sure I'd be that offended if there really was a Harlem Globetrotters-type deal for hockey. I don't think I would watch it either, like the people in this movie were. It just wouldn't matter, like the Globetrotters don't matter. This movie was just stupid.

Don't go near this. Stay far, far away. I am not fucking with you. I am dead serious. You like hockey? Watch Mighty Ducks 3. You like Gary Busey? Watch Point Break. You like Stephen Baldwin? Watch Point Break. Just don't watch this, whatever you do. I had to sit with a cute little bunny rabbit and vent while petting him to erase the black mark this pain ride put on my soul.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0282171/