The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  Remember all the jokes from the first film? Well, prepare to be reminded of them every minute of this film. The Spy Who Shagged Me should have a notice posted somewhere on the film stock that says, “85% Recycled Material.” Far too much of the film feels like a rehashing of the most popular elements from the first.

  Another big problem: characters acting out of character. Dr. Evil hardly seems like the same Dr. Evil. He's too active. As a friend of mine said when we saw the previews, “He moves around too much.” The Dr. Evil from the first film spent nearly the entire film sitting down. Something about him just feels wrong. Austin acts just the way he acted in the beginning of the first film, which I guess makes sense; it still feels like any progress the character made in the first film has been tossed off.

  And then there's Fat Bastard.

  This is not to say that there is nothing funny about The Spy Who Shagged Me. Mini-me is often the most entertaining character in the film. The scene in which Dr. Evil drinks Austin's mojo and seduces Frau Farbissina is great. Rob Lowe is perfect as Young Number Two. And a couple of the Dr. Evil's ship/phallic symbol jokes caught me off guard. So the film's not entirely without merit.

  Despite a few good comedic bits, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me doesn't work. It tries to be as funny as the first film while adding often-repulsive humor (such as the now-infamous scene where Austin drinks excrement and any scene at all with Fat Bastard) in an appeal to the lowest common denominator. If you liked the first one for the reasons I listed above, you probably won't care too much for this sequel. If you like poop jokes and dick jokes, however, you should see this film immediately. God help us all if the next one is worse.

  Avenging Disco Godfather (1979)

  Rating: 10 Beans

  In the annals of Blaxploitation, Rudy Ray Moore is universally known as Dolemite, icon for rap artists and indie rock kids who buy Jon Spencer albums. However, no Rudy Ray Moore retrospective would be complete without Avenging Disco Godfather, without a doubt the best movie of 1979.

  Moore plays Tucker Williams, but his friends call him Godfather. He is introduced during the incredibly long opening scene, which is made up completely of dancing and about two measures of finely-performed disco music. The only discernible lyrics are, “He's the Godfather of the Disco.” Plus, Godfather's dialogue after he shows up is a rap to the audience. Never has the phrase, “Put yo’ weight on it!” been used so many times.

  At any rate, after about ten minutes, Godfather's nephew hooks up with some devious fellows and wigs out on “angel dust,” a phrase which makes up approximately 89% of the film's total dialogue (“Put yo’ weight on it,” 8%; all other words, 3%). Soon, the Godfather is on a mission to “bust dust,” employing the help of his former co-workers (he's an ex-cop, see) and joining up with the Angels Against Dust, presumably a precursor to M.A.D.D. After all this, Godfather doesn't do much but hang out in his club; however, the criminal elements are running scared and serious precautions.

  The plot also involves a corrupt basketball team owner named Stinger Ray (James H. Hawthorne). The name of his team? The Stingrays, of course. Stinger is recruiting players who weren't quite good enough to make other pro basketball teams, and also he has an angel dust operation. Chances are good that if you find a copy of Avenging Disco Godfather in a video store, the sound isn't going to be too hot. From what I could gather, Stinger wanted Godfather's nephew on his team. At any rate, he's a bad guy, this Stinger.

  Avenging Disco Godfather has absolutely everything you could ask for in a movie: bizarre hallucinations (the people on angel dust apparently have identical hallucinations about some weird devil-woman), heavy jive, crudely choreographed action sequences, and Rudy Ray Moore in the performance of his life. If you are even remotely interested in Blaxploitation, seek out this film. You will not be disappointed.

  Belly (1998)

  Rating: 9 Beans

  Sometimes I watch MTV. Not very often, but sometimes. I've seen stylish music video directors move from MTV to the big screen with varying degrees of success. One of the biggest success stories is, of course, David Fincher (director of Seven and The Game). I'm always interested in seeing what a music video director's debut film will be like. I suppose I secretly hope that it will turn out like Fincher's films: visually arresting, and with intriguing storylines. Something more than the videos seen on MTV.

  Belly, the feature film debut of music video director Hype Williams, is a beautiful thing to look at. But watching the entire thing feels like a massive chore-- needless to say, it's not very good. Messy, violent, dark, and boring as all hell, Belly rarely works on any level.

  A plot summary of this film is nearly impossible. An awful lot of things happen in Belly, but it's never easy to string them together correctly. Rap stars DMX and Nas play Tommy Brown and Sincere, two old friends who live life on the street. Or something. Anyway, Tommy is heavily into the criminal underworld and has an amazing house and a woman he treats like crap. Sincere is, as his name would lead one to believe, a more pleasant character. He loves his girl, and lives in a modest little house.

  The film follows these two around in various situations. The first ten minutes or so are really impressive, as Williams has Nas and DMX along with several others stalking through a pulsing nightclub scene while a spare, nearly acapella song plays. The effect is disquieting, and sets up things promisingly.

  Williams, then shows the audience how amazingly cool-looking it is to be involved with drugs and crime and to kill people. For about eighty minutes, characters show up and disappear seemingly without effect on the main action. Often, I was confused as to the motivation behind certain actions. This problem was not relieved by the dialogue. Some of the characters speak in language so cluttered with slang and twisted by accent that their dialogue is virtually impossible to understand.

  In the film's last five minutes or so, we learn that all the things we have watched, and which were shot in a beautiful, artistic fashion, are bad. This incredibly contrived ending is only appropriate, however. Somehow, after sitting through the running length of Belly, a positive ending of any kind seems like a cheat.

  There are few redeeming qualities in Belly: one of them is Method Man, who is entertaining for the short time he is on the screen. The other is the amazing visuals-- if the film weren't so dull and plodding, it would be the ultimate triumph of style over substance. It really is an amazing film to look at. But watching Belly is like staring at a piece of carnival glass for a really long time: it's pretty and all, but when you're finished, you feel like there's certainly something better you could have been doing.

  The Big Hit (1998)

  Rating: 10 Beans

  Hong Kong Action Movies. If you've seen one, you know what the idea is: Boy Scout mentality, honor and goodness, tons of people being killed, and fantastically stylized direction. Just the concept is cool; anyone who's seen Hard Boiled could tell you that. So when a director known for this style of film is brought over to Hollywood to give it a shot, some people naturally get excited. I used to be.

  Then I saw Double Team. And looked more carefully at the press releases for the latest Jean-Claude Van Damme films. All the imported directors have been forced to helm terrible first projects (John Woo's Hard Target is a particularly notable example). Kirk Wong's (Crime Story, Rock and Roll Cop) Hollywood debut is no different; in fact, it's the worst one I've seen yet.

  Things start off with Melvin Smiley (Mark Wahlberg, who I still call Marky Mark out of habit) disposing of a victim in his girlfriend's house. It soon becomes clear that Melvin is not particularly a likable character. He is, as his kidnapping victim (China Chow) later says, “whipped.” Sadly, though, he is the most likable character in the entire film. His girlfriend (Lela Rochon) is hateful, his fiancée and her family (Christina Applegate, Elliott Gould, and Lainie Kazan) are unbearably annoying Jewish stereotypes, and then there's Lou Diamond Phillips.

  I guess this is a spoiler, but not really. The best thing that this mo
vie does is kill Lou Diamond Phillips. He is impossibly off-putting. Yes, he's supposed to be a villain and all, but a villain should at least be watchable. Every one of Phillips' lines feel like they were pulled from Ghetto-Slang! The White Man's Guide to Hip-Hop Jive by Vanilla Ice. Unfortunately, pretty much every character is written the same way. The only one who seems right is Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine) as Paris, the employer of Melvin and his friends. None of whom you want to see live.

  I would go into more of the plot, but it's not at all worth it since I could barely make it out. Combining slang so thick the writer of Disorderlies would be bewildered with an almost complete lack of action scenes (two, one near the beginning that's fun and one at the end which falls completely flat), absolutely no character development and some of the least funny “comedy” elements ever to shame 35mm film, The Big Hit is the easily one of the worst movies ever made. Do not see this and expect to laugh. Or be vaguely interested in what's going on. Any movie whose principal morals are, “Being a hit man doesn't necessarily mean that you're a bad person,” and “Never give a Jew liquor,” is not one that anyone should ever want to be involved with, let alone watch. Avoid at all costs.

  Body Rock (1984)

  Rating: 9.5 Beans

  Chilly D, a child of the streets, just wants to dance. He enjoys the same things any street-hardened youth likes to do: dancing with his friends, watching guys breakdance on cardboard sheets, talking about dancing, going to dance clubs, and being played by Lorenzo Lamas. Yes, the life of Chilly D is modest but full. Body Rock is the story of his rise to fame, and the price that must be paid for it.

  As the movie opens, we see Chilly D living a typical day of life in the big city. He and his friends would love to dance as a job, but it's so hard to get hooked up. Until one day Chilly gets involved with an insidious record company guy and his ancient whore. Together, they cast a magical spell made up of the promise of fame and a leather jacket with “Chilly D” on the back, and our hero begins spiraling downward spiritually while his star rises at a local club owned by the evil record company guy.

  I would think that Body Rock would be the last rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags-but- happy story ever made, just because it's so terrible, but I think a few more have been made in the years since its release. Body Rock never quite attains the incredible level of horror that Breakin' 2 does (although the Lorenzo Lamas gay bar scene is pretty scary in its own way). The movie takes its plot very seriously, and even allows Lamas a musical number that is beyond excruciating.

  Overall, Body Rock is less a film than an endurance test. You know exactly what's going to happen, you know just how it's going to end, and yet you feel compelled to sit through such scenes as Chilly D rapping at one of his old friends and the climactic finale in a giant boom-box. Anyone who can sit through Body Rock is worthy of either respect or revulsion. See for yourself and figure out how future generations will look back at you.

  Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

  Rating: 8 Beans

  Whether or not you enjoyed The Blair Witch Project has little to do with whether or not this movie will be enjoyable; by the last half-hour or so, every viewer is equal. Personally, I very much enjoyed the original film-- I did not, however, enjoy this one. Although it is promising for virtually the first full half of its running time, it completely falls apart before it finally staggers painfully to an ending.

  A young man named Jeff who spent some time in a mental institution comes home to Burkittsville, the town which has become famous since The Most Popular Student Film of All Time. To make a living, he builds stick-men, makes piles of rocks, and (eventually) decides to give tours of the spooky wooded areas outside of town. His first trip out is with a group of four people:

  1) Erica: A Wiccan. They're like earth children. I know this because Erica mentions the Wiccans' community with the Earth at least once in every scene. She wants to learn from the Witch. Go figure.

  2) Kim: A Goth. Ostensibly, anyway...she wants to go on the trip because she liked The Blair Witch Project. She's pale and wears black clothes. Also, she's psychic.

  3) Stephen & Tristen: Intellectual-types, one out to figure out what is behind the Blair Witch legend and one pregnant with his unwanted child.

  They go into the woods, proceed to drink heavily and smoke the Demon Weed until they all black out. They wake up, and shredded papers fall from the sky like snow-- the papers being, of course, all the work Stephen and Tristen have done. None of them have a clue as to what has happened, what they did, when they passed out...or how the writers are going to make an interesting film from there on out.

  In a lot of ways, Book of Shadows is the most post-modern film to come along in quite some time: its characters exist in a world that is aware of the existence of the first film, and who know that film is fiction. Much is made of how the public reaction to that film was due to its deliberately misleading promotion, and the marketing blitz that followed in the film's wake is effectively satirized.

  Unfortunately, though, it's hard to maintain a satirical voice when the language is stunted. Once the action moves into Jeff's big warehouse home, the actions that follow seem as calculated and predictable as those of Jim Carrey's belching Grinch (though sadly, less marketable). Apparently to make up for the lack of tension, much of the film is made up of a series of misdirections meant to disorient audiences (Look there! No, that didn't happen. Look there!), and their repetition grows quickly tiresome.

  By the end of Book of Shadows, what really happened, what was perceived by the characters, and what the audience sees have become so warped and unreliable that no clear narrative can be pulled from it. The only certainty I had was that if it had ended about 15 minutes sooner, it would have made just as much sense. That's saying something for a movie that only lasts 90 minutes in the first place (except in Norway, where they probably got a pretty steamy extra minute of footage).

  The “realism” that made the first film enjoyable is completely absent here-- this one is a horror film, very obviously. A horror film masquerading as a poststructuralist essay on the nature of mythology and media and their effect on perception, but a horror film nonetheless. Perhaps a second viewing of the film would be more entertaining; sadly, the first viewing did not pique my interest enough to warrant a second. I would imagine most viewers will likely feel the same.

  Booty Call (1997)

  Rating: 9 Beans

  One night, early in the school year (or “back in the day,” as is said in the vernacular), someone on campus rented Booty Call. I had seen previews for it, and it looked awful, but it was free. As so many of the terrible, terrible films I have seen were. Except, you see, it (like all those other films) wasn't truly free: my soul paid the forfeit. Yes, Booty Call is a tremendous waste of time, a plotless mess, something you watch with friends to bond together and vow never to speak of again.

  To say that Booty Call doesn't have a plot is being way too kind. Two guys and two ladies go out on a double date. One couple has been seeing each other for a while, the other are out for the first time. One of the ladies is named Listerine (Vivica A. Fox). That's about as subtle as the humor gets in this movie.

  Anyway, the two guys make a bet: the guy who's been seeing his lady for a while (Tommy Davidson) bets that he will have her in bed before the night is out. His friend is played by Jamie Fox, and I honestly don't remember what their bet was for. You wouldn't care, either, if you were trying to figure out why this wasn't just a skit on In Living Color and not a full-length film.

  So everyone's trying to get some safe sex, but no one has the proper materials. The naughtiness begins (minus the theme from The Benny Hill Show, which hurts the film a lot), and the boys have to stop to go out and buy condoms. The local shop is run by an old Asian fellow in popular African-American youth clothing. It is funny.

  Oh wait. No it isn't. At any rate, the film plods along with the stereotypes, the sex gags, and inane dialogue until it finally ends happily. I don't think that coun
ts as a spoiler, as this is a comedy, and comedies don't end badly. If you have any episodes of In Living Color on old videotapes laying around your house, you'd do much better to watch them than rent Booty Call. Of course, you'd do much better to watch UPN, too.

  Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984)

  Rating: 10 Beans

  Without a doubt, some of the worst movies are made by studios looking to make a quick buck on some stupid fad or another. These films also make some of the most delicious Bad Movie Night fun, as is the case with the totally brilliant Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, which was the epitome of badness when I was in grade school. By the way, every kid in that school was white.

  There's a plot, sure, but this movie has to be felt. Thinking about it detracts from the experience and should be saved for later. First, the characters from Breakin' are brought back. We see where they are now (“now,” in this case, being 1984) and learn what they've been up to. Of course, everything that happens is a mere formality, a respite between all-out supa dope breakdancing scenes.

  One of the stars of this film is nicknamed Boogaloo Shrimp. He's the one who dances on the ceiling and makes out with a blow-up doll. Damn! I'm giving away too much of the plot...

  This is a Golan-Globus production. It features breakdancing and Ice-T (Ricochet, Johnny Mnemonic), looking INCREDIBLY 1984 and rapping at an underground club. What would Body Count think?

  I could talk about this film for hours. Every single frame is pure cinematic gold; if your friends don't hate you after the hospital scene, it's time to get some new friends. Electric Boogaloo is absolutely amazing. It's a comedy. It's a drama. It’s a desperate attempt to keep the breakdancing craze going so another sequel can be made. There is no excuse for not seeing Breakin' 2. Enjoy the suffering.