Movie Talk/Late Night Ramble

NOTICE: This Ramble will be ramble-y-er than usual. Bruised a bunch of ribs camping the weekend before last in an A.R.I.* Endured the pain for a week, then finally visited a doctor today. I’ve got just enough Vicodin to let me sleep the next ten nights. You’ve been warned.

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A couple times each week, I visit Apple’s movie trailer site – and I watch all the news ones. I watch the trailers for movies I’ve already seen, for movies I’ve never heard of, and even the trailers for movies I know I wouldn’t watch for free on network television. I just like movie trailers.

The trailer for “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo” had been up for a couple days, but I just couldn’t bring myself to click on the link. Rob Schneider is not now nor has he ever been funny. It’s not that I don’t enjoy lowbrow stuff – far from it. Give me a couple beers and some Three Stooges, and I’m a happy man.

But Farrelly Brothers-style comedy just isn’t funny. There’s enough humor in the human condition as is, that I find it impossible to laugh with (or even at) characters who don’t behave like real human beings, responding to impossible situations.

Case in point: “There’s Something About Mary.” The hair gel scene is empircally not funny. Semen doesn’t just hang there, and women don’t grab random blobs of “is that hair gel?” off of people’s ears, then apply to their own hair without so much as a mirror. You want funny? Watch Bill Murray’s flower-golfing scene in “Caddyshack.”

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But back to Deuce Bigalow’s European Vacation or Whatever.

Finally, I succumbed to my Watch All the Trailers Rule, and loaded it up. There wasn’t so much as a grin to be had. Halfway into the trailer, for reasons I don’t understand, a fat American woman in a bad dress is shown speaking practically to the camera. She says “Give thanks to America for bringing freedom to Iraq” or words to that effect.

And then a brick flies in from off camera and hits her in the face.

I know Hollywood doesn’t approve of the Iraq campaign. I don’t expect serious debate in a Rob Schneider movie – and if there was some, I’d hold it in contempt. But just what the hell is going on here? Making a political statement with a thrown brick? That’s supposed to be funny? That’s supposed to have a point?

That’s in a Rob Schneider movie?

What the hell?

I know the audience for these films – young folks without enough real-world experience to appreciate just how funny real-world behavior can be. I know, because I used to be one of them. We all were once: It’s called “youth.”

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So it’s come to this: Hollywood now feels the need to propagandize – with a brick! – in a summer teen flick. Or maybe “need” is giving too much credit. Maybe “audacity” is a better word for it. Whatever the case, at least we know where they stand.

Me, I’m not standing anywhere. I’m sitting in front of the laptop computer – having earlier tonight attacked my desktop monitor with a brick.

*A.R.I. = Alcohol Related Incident.

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