Brunch and Bombs

This movie opens up with two of our favorite bad movie things crammed into the first 60 seconds--awkward, forced exposition and a plot that makes absolutely no sense. Demi Moore is Erin Grant, a single mother who lost her job and now must dance in a strip club called The Eager Beaver to try to get custody of her daughter. While on stage, Erin Grant goes by the stage name of...Erin Grant.

 Can Erin prove that she's a stable mother and get her daughter back from her pill-addicted criminal ex-husband? Will Shad the bouncer achieve his dreams of getting rich through a false lawsuit? Will Congressman Dilbeck achieve his dream of "settling down," with his wife, and one, steady mistress?

We highly recommend this one, y'all. Striptease is good, family fun. 

Literally one of the best movies we've ever seen. This is a bad movie, but an extremely enjoyable one. J.Lo is the sexy but smart Latina, Jon Voight is the mysterious stranger (with an even more mysterious accent), and Ice Cube is Ice Cube.  Oh yeah and Owen Wilson is there, too, but you barely notice. But the real star of this movie is the amazingly bad looking animatronic snake. The only thing that could have made this movie better is if Danny Trejo had had a bigger part.

I recently saw this movie for the first time, and then watched Goodfellas for the first time, later that same day. The fact that Robert De Niro is in both of these is mind-blowing.  But let's not dwell on De Niro's wasted talents. Perhaps, as he got older, he was ready to try something really fun. And this movie is fun. It's pretty bad, the grandpa's fking terrible, and there is absolutely NO chemistry between Zac Efron and his love interest, but Aubrey Plaza's hilariously weird performance saves this movie. I'll never watch it again, but, as we say often on the pod, it's not the worst thing I've ever seen.

Cellular is one of the few movies that we've watched for the pod that we actually all enjoyed. It was bad, but it fun. A pre-Captain America Chris Evans proves that attractive white people can get away with anything, as his character Ryan commits a spree of crimes all over LA (to be fair, in an effort to  save a kidnapped family). 

We couldn't decide what was more unbelievable, Kim Basinger's Jessica hotwiring a heap of electronic rubble into a working landline, or the 4k video and sound quality of Ryan's Nokia 6600.

The best performance is definitely from William H. Macy, who was funny and weirdly charming as a soon-to-be-retired cop who just wants to open up a day spa with his wife. 

Whether they meant to be or not, everyone is hilarious (except the totally forgetful patriarch of the Martin family tbh) and this movie is a great watch. 

Our last selection for Animated Movie Month, Food Fight, is available in its entirety for free on YouTube, which is a testament to how terrible it is. Food Fight has a bizarre and sad history behind it--producer Lawrence Kasanoff founded his own animation studio, and planned to come after Pixar. $65 million later, Food Fight briefly showed up in UK cinemas and went straight-to-video in the US. 

It boasts well-known names like Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria, and Christopher Lloyd--and you have to wonder if it's one of those "they weren't shown what the movie would look like until after they signed the contract" scenarios. Sure, the character design and animation are both bad, but it's the strangeness of the plot and lack of world building that leaves you feeling confused and violated.

Everything about this movie is unbelievable, but the most shocking "I can't even fathom" is that it stars a young Brad Pitt.

Frank (Pitt) is stuck in Cool World after he bullied his mom into taking a motorcycle ride of death. He somehow escapes not only death, but all the consequences and self-blame of an accident was, let's face it, kind of his fault. 

 You can't fully blame Pitt for the way he performs. It's always difficult to act opposite someone who's not actually there (in this case, badly animated characters including the overtly sexual  Holli Would, a "doodle" who is literally DTF any "noid" that will have her), but it's evident from the terrible looking massage he gives his cartoon girlfriend Lonette  that he wasn't given the best direction.

Holli doesn't care that having sex with a human will destroy both worlds, she just wants to be Kim Basinger IRL. Frank is in a long-term (60 years?) relationship with a Doodle who he can't sleep with, for fear of destroying the fabric of their worlds. 

Essentially, this movie is about blue balls.

For our second Animated Movie Month viewing, we watched Planes. Set in the Cars universe, Planes just makes you wish you were watching Cars. The replacement Mater character made us miss Larry the Cable Guy, and that's truly saying something. Find out our theories on the origin of the sentient vehicle race, what delicious first-class meal Hope cooked, and why we gave Planes a 4 mimosa rating. 

With a 49% Rotten Tomatoes rating, Bee Movie is much better received than most of the movies we've watched for the pod. The production value is good and there's an all-star cast (including several cameos from A-listers like Oprah and Sting), but it's just...weird. Renee Zellweger's character (Vanessa Bloome, a florist 😐) isn't very interesting or likeable, but, eh, she's probably good enough to be a bee's love interest? If you like bee puns, human-bee-human love triangles, and Jerry Seinfeld jokes, but coming from a bee, this is the movie for you. There are actually a couple of pretty funny parts, but the overall strangeness of it all is what makes it a good watch with friends, and preferably a drink or three.

Video Game Month ends with a bang--or a thwomp rather--with Super Mario Brothers.

At this point, we've been disappointed so many times that we should be used to it, but this movie takes the cake. With a weird storyline that doesn't make a lot of sense, a lot of talk about dinosaurs and "de-evolution," and Princess Peach's notable absence, SMB is so unlike its source material that Bob Haskins has said that it wasn't until weeks into production  that he realized his character was the same as Nintendo's iconic Mario. Though,  to be fair, he has also admitted to being drunk the whole time.

With classic characters and terrible special effects, MK2:A made us feel like we were kids again, rushing in the house after school, grabbing some chips and Coke (Ok, Sam's Cola), and settling in for the wonder that was Power Rangers. Too bad Mortal Kombat 2 doesn't compare. Jax's constant quips give out some seriously out of place buddy cop movie vibes, they brought in a different actor to play Johnny Cage just to kill him off immediately, and Raiden's edgy bleach-blond makeover is the worst. The plot is all over the place and...well, just one word: dragons. The effects alone make it worth watching, but we recommend a minimum of three mimosas.