Drat Pack

Our summer miniseries of Failed Franchises continues unabated with a look at an adaptation of a pretty popular children’s book that stagnated for years in development hell, had a wildly troubled production period, was unceremoniously dumped on a streaming service because of a plague, and was then taken off again in exchange for a tax write-off. Almost assuredly, you will not remember that this all describes Kenneth Branagh’s 2020 damp squib, Artemis Fowl! Journey to Ireland (well, mostly just a house) with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the manic attempts to alter this movie in post-production, the vague half-baked world building, and the nightmarish image of Josh Gad unhinging his jaw while devouring dirt and forcefully expelling it from his anus. By necessity, there’s obviously a cocktail involved here too since there’s no way we could sit through this whole drab ordeal while sober.

Whether it’s a husky-voiced puppet master creeping on his unrequited love’s daughter or a charming ’60s romantic comedy that also happens to periodically feature a ghoulish yellow-face caricature of a Japanese man, we’ve all got faves that simultaneously have some deep-seated issues. Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we discuss some of our own, be they characters with their own gross issues or movies that have aspects which have aged like a fine milk. Also, our summer of Failed Franchises continues unabated with our next episode, a long-gestating adaptation of a middle schooler book that surely seemed like a safe bet at one point, and the accompanying drink that will make the whole ordeal go down (mildly) easier.

It’s humid and hot and wildly unpleasant to be outdoors, meaning that summer is thusly upon us and more importantly, that we’re starting yet another mini-series for the summer months. Our theme this year is Failed Franchises, where we focus on movies that were supposed to launch a wildly successful franchise but then just sort of embarrassingly fizzled out. Journey with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris through space and time back to the 1990s, a period where movie studios were actively courting nostalgic baby boomers by translating the TV shows of their youth to the big screen (with wildly inconsistent results), as we discuss 1998’s Lost in Space. Despite being the movie to finally knock Titanic out of the number one spot at the box office, there’s not much that works in this dull and bloated sci-fi adventure (and we’re not just talking about Blawp here, there’s way worse stuff at play). Is there a way to turn this overly-expensive piece of nostalgic excess into a better movie? Well, we think so! Listen in as we cover all of the above and more (along with a quasi-sangria cocktail to keep us all from turning into puddles of sweat).

Remember how back in January we made some resolutions for the new year involving media (movies, books, video games, television) of some kind? Well, we did. Go back and check if you doubt us, you Doubting Thomas, you. Anyways, we’re now halfway through 2024 so we figured we’d check in and see how all those empty promises were going. In addition, we’re doing yet another miniseries / theme for the summer, so listen up to hear more about that and how drunk we’ll need to be to watch our next movie.

What better way to celebrate 100 years of existence as an entertainment corporate entity than by making a film so crammed full of back-patting references to your own history that you forget to actually make a compelling movie? According to The Walt Disney Company, there is apparently no better way. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they watch the 2023 animated movie Wish, a wild misfire of a feature that doesn’t include logic, memorable characters, or good music, but hey, at least there’s seven characters who remind us of the dwarfs, right? We try to break down exactly went awry here, covering topics such as “What the hell is the logic behind wishes in this world?” and “Really, what is anyone’s actual personality?” and “Why did the animated aesthetic break so many brains?” And we actually come up with some (truly, only some) answers here! Also we drink a cool fruity cocktail that’s a perfect drink for the prelude to summer, so hey, it wasn’t all a loss!

It’s been a week or so since The Idea of You has premiered on Prime, and the world has not been the same since (or maybe it has, we do this stuff in advance). But since only one of our hosts has seen it, we didn’t want to spend a whole episode talking about that. Instead, we’re talking about the something related to it- the concept of age gaps in relationships in media. What do we think about them? Do they feel gross? Are they actually fine? Are they, like so many other subjects, something that can done both well and horribly? (Spoiler alert: yes.) Listen up as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris go into all of this nonsense and briefly mention our next episode’s movie topic, one you’re probably going to wish was a lot better than it ended up being.

At long last, a movie that seeks to answer the age-old question, “what if doors were towels?” Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we go down under to knock on 2023’s comic fantasy The Portable Door, an Australian adaptation of the first book in a long-running British series about what if magicians used their magical powers for mundane purposes / profit (we guess???). On the bright side, it offers Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill going full ham and cheese as two corporate wizards. On the dark side, boy do we have some story and tone issues to dig into here (along with some very frustrating goblin prosthetics from The Jim Henson Company). On the drink side, we have an effervescent spring-inspired cocktail to make everything better! How many more sides could you want???

It’s a game! Look, we like things with less pressure, so games are fun for us to do. This time, we turn our slightly-drunken eyes to that beloved cinephile website, Letterboxd. Fans as we are of its sometimes intelligent, sometimes glibly entertaining user reviews, Brendan has assembled a list of short, pithy reviews for movies we have covered on this podcast and challenged Leigh and Chris to guess the movie the blurbs refer to. It’s a game! It’s fun! Also we cover our next movie, a fantastical YA-adjacent adaptation about a door that’s portable. No, we hadn’t heard of it, either.

Alors! What do you get when you take the bones of the 1963 comedy / romance / thriller Charade and filter them through a Nouvelle Vague sensibility? Well, you certainly get something worth talking about, one way or another. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris crack open The Truth About Charlie, Jonathan Demme’s 2002 attempt at doing just that. We run the gamut on this one, covering what Demme’s original intent was, why Mark Wahlberg looks like a such a lost dope in his little beret, and if the central conceit of creating a French New Wave adaptation of Charade even makes sense (kind of, but also not)! Naturally, there’s also a drink involved (and truly, a movie of this length with so much to cover really necessitates some kind of liquor).

So a few weeks back we had a brief rumination about if a rom-com has failed if it’s not actually very funny, and so we decided to speak on that for a bit. For example, are there rom-coms that are actually funny? Of our favorites, which ones fall closer to rom than com (or manage to skillfully split the difference)? Is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World by definition a rom-com (technically, yes!)? Sure, this might have been better around Valentine’s Day as opposed to St. Patrick’s Day, but planning is hard and shut up! We also introduce the focus of our next episode, which aptly enough, is a remake of a movie that kinda drains much of the rom and com aspects of the original. Get ready for some truths dropping in two weeks!