Drat Pack

What do you get when America’s sweetheart teams up with Ferris Bueller for a comic revenge scheme against their exes and then end up falling for each other? Well, maybe surprisingly you’d mostly get a black comedy that struggles with its own identity despite the admirable efforts of its cast. In other words, you’d get Griffin Dunne’s 1997 directorial debut, Addicted to Love, starring Meg Ryan, Matthew Broderick, and some poor dopes who were unlucky enough to have dumped them. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris devote a chunk of time to what went wrong with the execution of this shaky premise, covering issues ranging from “why does this actively feel like a black comedy that can’t commit to its own tone” to “does Kelly Preston even have a character to portray.” We’ve also got a great spring cocktail with some strawberries tossed in, so watch out, Anton!

Our television trilogy of terror miniseries comes to an end (for now, anyway) with this mini episode, in which we finally do what we’re been musing about doing for ages and do that thing we do with movies but with a TV series instead. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris all choose a TV series they find interesting but poorly executed and discuss how it could have been fixed. We run the gamut from science fiction reboot to musical dramedy to Not Applicable (because someone did a video game instead). We also briefly comment on the movie we’ll be talking about next and the spring drink that accompanies it (in a desperate attempt to manifest spring weather).

Your television is a box. Your phone is a box. You listen to podcasts on it. You sit in your home, listening to Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss Richard Kelly’s 2009 movie The Box. The movie erodes your ability to comprehend it, while the box that is your body eventually gets so confused and frustrated by questions like “what’s with the water coffins?” and “why does every human act like a complete weirdo?”… then has to have a hard drink just to feel something again. Whereupon it is placed in the ultimate box (compartmentalization lest you shatter your brain box trying to make sense of all this), to slowly sober up.

Our TV-themed mini episode trilogy spins merrily along as we shift from our favorite couples to our favorite supporting characters- characters who may not show up every week, but once in a season or two they’ll get a fun recurring bit to do or pop up with some quippy zingers. Look, we could all use more of this television archetype in our daily lives, so sit in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we shout out some of the bests. Also, start thinking about boxes because boy you’re going to have boxes on the brain (in fact, your brain is a box!) for our next movie discussion.

It’s always an interesting choice when a movie’s title is a question- indeed, the unspoken contract entered into is “at some point, this question will be answered and the answer will be relevant.” But what happens when your movie title poses a question that is both largely irrelevant and not even really a question that matters? Well, you’d end up with 2001’s Who Is Cletis Tout?, a clumsy half-assed attempt at merging post-modern cinema, pseudo-noir, Tarantino-esque trademarks, and Tim Allen. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris attempt to focus on the issues at play here, such as “What the hell is this convoluted plotting doing here?” and “Why is Tim Allen here?” and “Did Richard Dreyfuss get paid by the word?” It’s a real mess, friends, and we’re all glad to have some smokey cocktail goodness to wash down the scene where Tim Allen goes on a weird patriotic rant to a gang in a subway station.

Valentine’s Day may be several days behind us, but we’ve never been too slavishly faithful to how calendars work before and dammit we’re not about to start now. Celebrate love in all of its forms (albeit mostly romantic) as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about their favorite television pairings and why they work. This also prompts a lot of talk about the perils of the oft-used “will they, won’t they” trope and The Mentalist, apparently. Anyway, don’t worry, with February out of the picture for our next episode we’ll be talking about a movie that couldn’t construct a romantic subplot even if it had seven seasons to suss things out.

What better way to prepare for Valentine’s Day than by watching a romantic comedy that has aged like a fine milk? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they view 1999’s Three to Tango, a stale piece of dated cinematic nonsense covering all of our favorite 1990s hallmarks- television actors from your favorite prime time programming, neurotic straight men being mistaken for being neurotic gay men, questionable aesthetics, and the neo-swing music revival. How could any of this go wrong? Well, I mean… it’s pretty obvious. Just look at all of those descriptors. How could any of this go right? Well, that’s a trickier question, and one we try to answer successfully by the time the episode ends! And as always, we got a cocktail too to make this all mildly less tiresome.

Look, we’re all very tired and we don’t really have a good discussion topic in mind, so it’s a game! Just go with it and have fun! Chris gives us a list of “cozy mystery” television episode titles and Leigh and Brendan have to guess what ones are made up. It’s one of those things! Please try to also feel cozy! And we have our February Month of Love romcom episode coming up next, so… that’s something too! Cozy!

Several years ago, a group of filmmakers gathered together to address a problem: kids today simply don’t want to go to the opera as much as their great-great-great-grandparents possibly did. The solution to this conundrum? The Magic Flute, a 2022 quasi-adaptation of the famed Mozart work that takes about 30% of said opera and then burdens it with a weird isekai-adjacent subplot where some twink in a music school has to go to a magic opera world and pretend he is the main character to help him learn to say his would-be girlfriend’s name out loud. Yup. Anyway, listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we discuss what’s the deal with opera in general, the indescribably scattered plotting of both the movie and the opera, and why Princess Pamina seems to have a fettuccine noodle stuck to her chin for some reason. And to honor the vague and ill-characterized villainous Queen of the Night, we also drink the nocturnal equivalent of a bellini to numb our confusions. Get ready to get cultured, baby!

It’s the end of December and per our usual custom, we are closing that year, baby! Please remember to indicate that you have closed your year by listening to this on your tax forms come January. Anyway, please enjoy our traditional end of year low-key review session where we reminisce about our past movies and drinks and also talk about how there’s MORE of this to come in 2025. Happy holidays, all!