Quaid In Full

Author and critic Zack Handlen made the mistake of offering to return for Pandorum, 2009's "what if we stuck a bunch of grimy Jell-O to some warehouse walls and filmed a live-action 'Space Madness' meets Event Horizon" sci-fi. The movie starts out well -- good atmospherics; good partner chemistry between Quaid and Ben Foster -- but as Zack notes, most of the interesting stuff happened before the movie started. And after we find out the enemy isn't a giant snacky space arachnid, well, it's a tough sit. (How tough? We measured its length in, variously, feet of blanket knitted, Lego kits assembled, and online games of Risk played.) Surrounded by the detritus of the other, better properties Pandorum tried to rip off, we talked about confusing ship layouts, Virtuosity, which member of Roxette wrote Nadia's dialogue, Quaid's search for emotional truth, and why hypersleep pods in the future come with tooth-whitening strips. Oh, also what the hell "pandorum" actually is. It's the QIF season finale, so tell Scotty the PA to douse your cleavage in melted licorice and join us!

Overall score: 2.83

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Special Guest: Zack Handlen.

Extra Hot Great's Dave Cole is back to help us list the many complaints prompted by 2009's dreadful and boring live-action take on G.I. Joe, including attempts to elevate an already-fine cartoon, suboptimal explosions and fight scenes, pointless origin stories, creepy side views of Quaid holograms, and the movie putting SDB in the position of defending Transformers 2. G.I. Joe lifts scenes almost wholesale from Star Wars, Apollo 13, and others, and it still sucks -- but is DQ perfectly cast, and not the third or fourth choice for once? Did Channing Tatum's character learn about marriage proposals from Galaxy Quest's historical documents? And could we identify the exact moment, in the middle of a line of dialogue, when Joseph Gordon-Levitt gave up and went full Vincent Price on The Brady Bunch? So many questions (and Winston Lights-infused line deliveries)...but knowing is half the battle in the latest Quaid In Full.

Overall score: 2

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Special Guest: David T. Cole.

Jeb had never seen a SpongeBob-isode before, and the good news is, he no longer has "incipient dread" about his child possibly enjoying it one day! The bad news...isn't really bad, or specific to this particular 12 minutes of SBSP content, because it involves the show not knowing whether it takes place underwater or on the surface, and Dennis Quaid's inconsistently accented Grandpappy is therefore obliged to fall for middle-school-theatre "set dressing" designed to convince him that Mr. Krabs is continuing the family pirate tradition. It's a hard one to gauge the Quaidosity of, but DQ's having a blast; arrrrr you ready for a pocket-sized episode of Quaid In Full?

Overall score: 6.5

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Horsemen seems to have gotten memory-holed immediately after the fest circuit (or...during production by much of the below-the-line talent?), and with good reason -- it's bafflingly poor, studded with visual clichés, its actors apparently undirected, its script evidently without access to a Bible despite basing its tortuously contrived serial-killer procedural plot on more than one book therein. It's got a grieving-family subplot that should have come to the foreground, and a couple of actors -- including Quaid! -- who could have carried that version of the movie, but the version we got is a disorganized Seven For Teens with a crumbly topping of dated kink-shaming. A lot of the cast is either straight-up wasted in this mess or doing more than they need to, but Quaid is actually not bad. "Come and see" (...sigh) what we mean in the latest episode of Quaid In Full.

Overall score: 1.5

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[NB: Due to file-corruption issues, this episode's sound isn't stellar; apologies for any inconvenience!] Critics were kindly disposed towards The Express, a well-meaning Ernie Davis bio-pic that seems to count on knee-jerk positive responses to 1) sports movies that 2) defy bigotry. It's done well, mostly, even though the dialogue really isn't how people speak to each other, mostly, and the traditional football-feelm structure wastes certain excellent actors while giving others more than they can handle -- so we're landing on "creditable, but not crucial." The Quaidosity is a more ambiguous prospect; after SDB regrettably uses the phrase "liminal space," we ponder the changing nature of the "qua" in "Quaid Qua Quaid," and DQ's transition from rakish pilot to avuncular coach/cop. Will Roy Williams-branded cliché containers, teratomae of movie rage, and the birth of a weird Brittany Murphy runner add up to a victory for our side?

Overall score: 5

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[NB: Due to file-corruption issues, this episode's sound isn't stellar; apologies for any inconvenience!] For a third-choice star in a first-draft action movie, Dennis Quaid's quite good in 2008's Vantage Point, a fridge-magnet-poetry "thriller" script whose "what if In The Line Of Fire + 24 + Dave gave DQ the adrenaline trots" logline invited multiple weary comparisons to Rashomon in (uniformly negative) reviews. Despite dialogue some film student shook out of the Michael Bay Presents: Boggle cup, a Frogger algorithm used as a car chase, inconsistent blocking, an inert title, and Quaid adopting the wrong posture for a Secret Service agent, we did find a handful of things to enjoy, like William Hurt doing an imitation of that flappy dude outside the car wash while getting shot, and imagining Niles Crane listing budget rental-car models. The president is a clone, but there's a Quaid In Full episode to distract you, so: who cares!

Overall score: 4

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Dennis Quaid fiiiinally nails the frumpy-prof part in 2008's Smart People -- but in the service of a first-draft story about damaged, pedantic, chafey people whose immaturities don't line up. One of those film-fest darlings you never hear about again until it shows up on one of the lesser Showtimes at 3:30 PM on a weekday, Smart People retreats from interesting ideas, keeps key decision-making scenes offscreen, expects us to believe a Revenge villain got a poem accepted to The New Yorker, and wastes good performances from Thomas Haden Church and Elliot Page...but at least wardrobe figured out they shouldn't make Quaid wear specs this time. The prosthetic-belly debate, the verbal fop dial, and another SDB rant about onscreen physicians not putting their hair up -- ring the bell, school's in on an all-new Quaid In Full.

Overall score: 5

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We understand why Dennis Quaid wanted to do 2007's Battle For Terra; it's unclear why BFT wanted him. The star-studded, labored comment on corruption and colonization -- you know, for kids! -- doesn't maximize Quaid's talents (or screentime), and while it's better than a lot of animated kiddie content, neither of us is planning to watch a bunch of retro-3D'd sperm with forehead jewelry fighting to survive again. Davey & Goliath exposition, broadly modular dialogue, how you get a G rating with a Mount Weather reference, cricket/manatee collabs, and the grudging admission that the big eyes worked, in the latest episode of QIF.

Overall score: 5.25

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We're thrilled to welcome This Had Oscar Buzz co-host (and TWoP Idol co-recapper emeritus) Joe Reid to the podcast to dig into American Dreamz, a satire of both competitive singing shows AND mid-aughts American politics that does one thing quite a bit better than the other -- and puts all three of us in mind of better movies like Dr. Strangelove and Dick. Cheney slapstick, peak Chris Klein, when Hugh Grant's doing more than he should, the custody battle over the set's one Dick Casablancas wig, Quaid as figurative Ken doll, the return of positive Ebert, and great galoot work all figure in our discussion of a movie we didn't hate...but also barely remember watching. Grab a golden ticket and some freedom fries and cue up an all-new Quaid In Full!

Overall score: 6.17

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Special Guest: Joe Reid.

Welcome to the (really) long-awaited seventh season of Quaid In Full -- and to the chaotic, unrealistic, and utterly Nickelodeon Yours, Mine & Ours. Critics in week-before-Thanksgiving mode weren't terribly charitable to this 2005 remake of the Ball/Fonda original, but despite the first film's cultural anxieties not really translating to the 21st century; beleaguered stunt pets; Chekhov's sailboat; an utter lack of clean-up or food-logistics credibility; as many family-film tropes as bad child actors; and the horror of a child going to town on a pile of gummi worms like he's Clemenza in a Godfather restaurant scene, for what it is, it's fine. But is Dennis Quaid fine for what he's asked to do? Climb into a rowboat full of stuffies and read the depositions in the matter of Aggrieved Hamster v. Sherwin-Williams: it's an all-new Quaid In Full.

Overall score: 5

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