Matinee Manatees

As a fairly obvious attempt to replicate the success of 1997's Men In Black, 1999's Wild Wild West underperformed pretty dramatically.  But does it deserve its bad reputation?  To find out, the manatees get academic in one of our most informative episodes ever, revealing secrets of the universe like the physics of how magnets work, why Harry Potter will never be as good as Lord of the Rings (no maps!), and the fact that chainmail was not a stunning new invention in 1869.  It soon becomes fairly obvious that they don't remember much from history class, which works out nicely, because neither does the movie.  It's, uh.  It's really something, folks.

We're back at it with the vampire thing! Joel Schumacher's famous/infamous The Lost Boys (starring Kiefer Southerland, Jason Patric, Dianne Wiest and BOTH COREYS) is both a huge influence on virtually every vampire movie that came after it AND possibly the most 80's thing we've ever seen. But is it any good? The manatees dive right in and ask the really tough questions, like: Are DVDs really better than VHS tapes? Is the abandoned analogy in this movie about drug use or coming out of the closet? Would it be feasible for a modern vampire to subsist entirely on nazis? And, would you still even want to be immortal if they fed on poop instead of blood? (The movie brought it up, not us!) Float along under the boardwalk with us to lovely Santa Carla, California for 1987's summer classic: The Lost Boys.

1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch is directed by Joe Dante, stars Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, and Haviland Morris, features Christopher Lee, Dick Miller, and Robert Picardo, and just might be among the best sequels ever made. On this there was no disagreement. Nervous about potentially boring the audience with a complete consensus, Ben attempts to manufacture conflict by announcing that he has beef with xenomorphs, New York style pizza, toll bridges, and cats; Tony gives babies a piece of his mind.