Drat Pack

Mon dieu! Le mariage- elle est trop grand! Alors, une question: que se passe-t-il lorsque les parents adoptifs divorcés d’un jeune homme adopté, sa mère biologique conservatrice et plusieurs autres membres de la famille à peine développés assistent tous à son grand mariage? Eh bien, rien de drôle, c’est sûr. Rejoignez Leigh, Brendan et Chris alors qu’ils regardent The Big Wedding en 2013, un remake Américain d’une comédie Française mettant en vedette un casting de pouvoirs dont personne ne connaît l’existence. Écoutez pendant que nous discutons de la prémisse banale, des styles comiques obsolètes et de la capacité miraculeuse du film à faire tourner ses roues pendant 90 minutes car cela complique et simplifie l’intrigue avec une ineptie éblouissante. Et, bien sûr, la première margarita de notre Été des Mariages et des Margaritas ! Vraiment, ce sera une série de mariages pas comme les autres. Ah, si seulement nous avions tous autant ri que les acteurs sur l’affiche.

Two years ago, in the Before Times, we did this sort-of game thing where we prepared lists of movies that at least one person had seen but at least one other person had not. We then used that list to try to describe what we thought the plots of these movies were to see how close our cage impressions were to the real thing. With the long-awaited adaptation of Dune probably coming to theaters this fall (keep getting them vaccines!), we decided to brush this old chestnut off again and do another round. Also, it’s pretty hot out so who wants to plan out an entire discussion topic? Also also, we have a big wedding coming up in our next episode (or so the movie’s title would imply) and a classy margarita recipe to accompany it. So listen in and see if you could do a better job trying to distill multiple seasons of Lost into a brief coherent description!

Please, please, don’t confuse 1994’s I Love Trouble with Nothing But Trouble, though both are equally unpleasant movies (albeit in wildly different ways) and both spend about the same amount of effort on compelling romance. For our nicest episode ever, we watch this aptly-forgotten Charles Shyer / Nancy Meyers romantic (?) crime thriller (??) starring Nick Nolte, Julia Roberts, and a whole lot of intrigue about milk. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss chemistry and miscasting, the specific reasons as to why having two reporters investigate a company making genetically modified cows was a mistake, and in what world there would be a Gap ad campaign featuring an aging unattractive Chicago columnist. Thankfully, there is no milk to be found in the themed cocktail we mixed up for this movie. Also we spend about four minutes talking about musicals, but hey, it’s a short episode so don’t give us that look.

With vaccines becoming readily available and the CDC spinning out new guidelines at a bizarre rate, it seems like our long international nightmare might finally be nearly over (but just that one). For this mini episode, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris all take a look back on how they spent their pandemic quarantines. What did we binge? What did we watch that we never thought we’d end up watching under normal circumstances? Can Korea make dramas fast enough for Leigh to watch most of them? Also, check out our upcoming summer prelude movie and the drink we’ll be making to ensure it ends up being more tolerable than the two leads’ working relationship.

On this episode of Why Did We Watch This, we welcome back both Michelle Pfeiffer and Catherine Zeta-Jones for their fourth (!) appearance in one of our movies (in so much as you can call it an appearance if they never actually show up on screen, but at least they both actually tried unlike the rest of the cast). That’s right, we’re watching Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, the (mostly) hand-drawn animated flick that was so poorly-received it made Jeffrey Katzenberg decide that DreamWorks should no longer do 2-D animation (and probably somehow indirectly lead to rise of Quibi but that’s for some other podcast to work out). Join the Why Watch crew as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris guzzle down a fruity fizzy cocktail and talk about what this movie was originally supposed to be, the original Sinbad mythos, and why in general this movie is such a dull episodic slog. But, on the bright side, Michelle Pfeiffer as the goddess Eris sure has some swell animation!

Going off of our generation’s love of 1980s nostalgia, it’s a sore spot that we’re not getting the glut of weird-ass original fantasy movies we were getting during that decade. In a world where the majority of fantasy movies that are kind of close to original are live-action remakes of Disney fairy tales, there’s a lot of fantastical crap to wade through. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris all try to think of more recent original fantasy films that managed to do a good job of creating their universes (along with come discussion of sci-fi world-building for good measure). Also we talk about the animated fantasy movie we’ll be covering next along with- you guessed it- another gin cocktail to wash it down.

We can all agree that two people in relationships acting as though they’re having some sort of affair is pretty questionable, but what if the universe itself demands that these half-dimensional wisps of character sketches should be together for some inexplicable reason? Well, then you’d have Serendipity, a charmless 2001 romcom starring John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, and a lot of other wasted talent. Can these two dopes manage to find each other across time and the continental United States, significant others be damned? Spoiler alert, yes, but Leigh, Brendan, and Chris have a lot of problems with how they go about doing it and a couple of ideas as to how this could have been pulled off more successfully. Also, there’s a purple fruity cocktail, and what says unmemorable early 2000s romcom more than that?

In an effort to do justice to those characters long shunted to the side for various reasons, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about their favorite side characters in movies and TV shows. Who are these champions of protagonist support, so often doing the heavy lifting of keeping the plot interesting or the jokes a-popping? Why are they often so much more interesting than the leads they’re so thanklessly holding up? Why does it not work as well when you try to shove them front and center for their own movie (hello, two inexplicable Pirates of the Caribbean sequels that for some reason focus entirely on Jack Sparrow)? And what will Leigh, Brendan, and Chris be watching and drinking come April? Will it involve John Cusack and luster dust (but probably not together)? Let’s hope so!

Imagine, if you will, a world where Disney was so desperate for a franchise that they threw a bunch of cinematic spaghetti at the wall and ended up with “a sort-of prequel to a movie we don’t own but not really and it will star James Franco and be directed by Sam Raimi and cost over $200 million.” Well, you don’t have to imagine it, you just have to struggle to remember that yes, in fact there was a Disney movie in 2013 entitled Oz the Great and Powerful. It exists! Journey somewhere that legally cannot be over the rainbow with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the wild miscasting of the title role, the twin perils of trying to be distinct from the 1929 movie but also cashing in on American nostalgia for it, and why yet another Disney fantasy movie must be slathered in layers of CGI goop and Avatar-reject goblins. Also, we make one of the finest cocktails we have ever made, so it’s got that going for it!

WE’RE BACK with consistently better sound quality (comparatively speaking) and a mini episode that mandated we actually put effort into this. That’s right, it’s the return of the Pitcher’s Mound and this time Leigh, Brendan, and Chris are all attempting to pitch feature-length adaptations of fairy tales. FUN FACT, many fairy tales don’t follow any sort of story structure and it can be very difficult to attempt to graph that onto them! Anyways, listen, won’t you, and we’ll also go into the next episode’s themed cocktail and movie (also featuring the return of Mila Kunis).