Your Stupid Minds

Despite our protestations in the last episode, Your Stupid Minds has, by somewhat coincidence, decided to make January a Worst of 2015 theme. We review our second Fantastic Four movie with one that for some reason was actually released, 2015’s Fantastic Four. Featuring a hip new cast of Oscar nominees and hopefuls, gritty teal and orange cinematography, and a rushed, nonsense final product with 30 minutes cut, the 2015 version manages to be the worst of the bunch.

Plot synopsis: See the 1994 and 2005 versions. Science, accident, get powers, Dr. Doom is evil. Add: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Dan Castellaneta, bad American accents, and science fairs. Remove: Most of the plot, anything charming or fun, and the director’s original intent.

As part of Your Stupid Minds’ Worst of 2015 week, we have a single episode highlighting an appropriately forgotten lemon of the previous year. To call Accidental Love a 2015 film, however, is somewhat unfitting. Originally titled Nailed and helmed by prestige Oscar bait director David O. Russell, this film went through production hell following the recent 2008 financial crisis.

Filming proceeded from 2008 to 2010 with numerous stoppages (some say up to fourteen) due to lack of payment. Russell eventually left the project, and when the eventual rights holder decided to cobble it together into something resembling a film, David O. asked that his name be removed. Therefore the fictitious “Stephen Greene” is named as director.

Accidental Love is a high concept farce wherein Alice (Jessica Biel) is shot in the head with a nail gun as her boyfriend proposes to her at a local Indiana restaurant. When she is somehow refused treatment at the local hospital because she’s uninsured, she goes on a quest to Washington to seek universal healthcare. She sleeps with her representative in Congress Howard Birdwell (Jake Gyllenhaal) due to the nymphomania side effect of her injury, and then more things happen, some of which might be interpreted as jokes. Also starring Catherine Keener, James Marsden, Tracy Morgan, Kurt Fuller, Kirstie Alley, Bill Hader, Paul Reubens, and some other people.

Your Stupid Minds reviews another Christmas classic with Terry “Hollywood Hulk ‘The Hulkster’ Hogan” Bollea (a.k.a. Hulk Hogan) in Santa with Muscles! Hogan takes a break between exhibition bouts in Japan to film this family classic about a large man using physical violence to bond with orphans.

Blake (Hogan), during one of his regular paintballing jaunts with his personal staff, gets mistaken for a terrorist by the local sheriff (Clint Howard) and disguises himself as Santa Claus in a nearby shopping mall. After a bump on the noggin he believes he actually is Santa Claus, and holes up in a local orphanage with his elf partner (Don Stark). After drinking milk and eating cookies with the three orphans (one played by young Mila Kunis), an evil gang of scientists led by Ebner Frost (Ed Begley Jr.) try to take the orphanage by force in order to acquire the magic exploding crystals hidden underneath. Blake punches these guys until everyone learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas season in high gear, and that means we'll be looking at less-than-stellar Holiday movies in the month of December. Our first foray into the genre is Ron Howard's brazen cash grab live action remake of the Dr. Seuss classic with How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a.k.a. Grinch 2000). Jim Carrey cranks it up to 11 with his manic interpretation of the Grinch that is 60% Richard Nixon, 3% Jerry Lewis, and 37% Other Parts. Howard and company pad out the 64 page illustrated source material (with additional heavy influences from the 1966 Chuck Jones cartoon) by adding signature Carrey ad libs, a needless Grinch backstory, additional characters, a love interest, and precocious Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen) as a nearly jaded young adolescent.

Your Stupid Minds transitions from Halloween season into Renaissance Festival season with the 90s low-budget medieval fantasy movie Prince Valiant! Based on the boring, overwritten comic strip from the Sunday newspaper’s back page that your grandparents never read, this film adaptation eschews the sweeping ongoing medieval tale and instead opts for a trim 90 minute action movie with swords instead of firearms.

Lowly squire Valiant (Stephen Moyer) steps in at the joust for his knight after an unfortunate concussion and proceeds to not even win. King Arthur (Edward Fox) sends him on a mission to return Princess Ilene (Katherine Heigl) to her home country after Excalibur is stolen by what he thinks are Scots. In reality, goons led by Sligon the Usurper are the culprits. Sligon stole Merlin’s spell book (titled simply, “Merlin”) and plans to use it to take over the kingdom. It’s up to Valiant and his new friends Boltar (Ron Perlman) and Pechet (Warwick Davis) to stop him.

A scary monster movie is in order on Halloween for this episode of Your Stupid Minds. Recommended by friend and listener of the podcast Brendan McNamara (who also guest hosts on this episode), it’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space. This 1958 space horror flick bears a striking resemblance to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and some comparison to Scott’s most recent film The Martian (in that it involves Mars and that’s about it).

When Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) is the sole survivor of his Mars mission, the rescue crew must decide if he murdered the others or if it was some mysterious monster he keeps yapping on about. In the meantime Carruthers is free to wander around the cavernous spaceship, smoking heavily and playing poker while the womenfolk clear the dishes and crew members lob insults related to his mass murderer status.

As it turns out, an actual monster wanders onto the ship while they’re dumping some space garbage on his home planet and the crew implements a series of absurd and progressively more violent means of disposing of it, including but not limited to: World War II surplus firearms, grenades, poison gas, electrocution, and a bazooka. What they were doing in space with all of these things is anyone’s guess.

Patrick Regan returns to Your Stupid Minds after his appearance in Jonah Hex (both the episode and the movie) to help us review Universal’s 2010 flop The Wolfman (back when Universal used to make flops). This episode is part of our de facto ghoulish Halloween theme, when we review some scary movies in October and then go back to other things.

Lawrence Talbot (played by the excessively British Benicio Del Toro) receives a visit from his sister-in-law Gwen (Emily Blunt), who tells him his brother is missing. After some reluctant hero hemming and hawing, he takes the train back home to his bizarre father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) where some spooky doings are transpiring. His brother was ripped to shreds and the locals suspect either a gypsy bear or a werewolf. During a visit to the gypsy camp, Lawrence is bitten by a werewolf and later transforms into a werewolf. Then Hugo Weaving shows up as a Scotland Yard inspector and we glacially proceed to the giant London action set-piece and inevitable Marvel-style werewolf fight.

Your Stupid Minds returns to 1990s children’s movies with Disney’s Blank Check! Featuring threats of murder, smoking, horrible parenting, potential statutory rape, and Michael Lerner.

Twelve year old Preston Waters (Brian Bonsall) has it rough. He never has enough tokens for the roller coasters at Fiesta Texas, his parents don’t respect him, and his annoying brothers are allowed to set up a home office is his penthouse-sized bedroom. Fortunately a run in with a criminal (Miguel Ferrer) grants his access to a blank check tied to a criminal bank account with exactly one million dollars in laundered funds.

After Preston uses his personal computer to commit check fraud, the crooked bank president (Lerner) thinks he is the criminal contact and hands off a million bucks to a pre-teen. It’s now up to the crooks to catch this kid before he spends all the money, which Preston does dutifully in six days purchasing a castle, waterslide, personal limo driver, virtual reality helmet, and truck full of branded Chips Ahoy! packaged cookie products.

Will Preston’s newfound wealth (which he spends under the artfully crafted pseudonym “Mr. Macintosh”) allow him to start a romantic relationship with an adult woman (Karen Duffy)? Or will he learn that money can’t buy happiness? Or will the movie hedge its bets and preach a simultaneously pro and anti capitalist message while Home Alone style hijinks ensue?

Based on the 1990s flight simulator computer game (and not Space Invaders), Wing Commander is a modestly budgeted space opera set before an impending alien invasion. Starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard, Jürgen Prochnow, and Malcolm McDowell replacement David Warner, the film is largely a Star Wars ripoff injected with overt references to Star Trek, Das Boot, Battlestar Galactica, Top Gun, and whatever else director and game creator Chris Roberts could get away with.

Lieutenant Christopher Blair (Prinze) arrives at the TCS Tiger Class with vital information regarding their war with the Kilrathi aliens. Commander Gerald (Prochnow) doesn’t trust Blair because of his Pilgrim geneology. Pilgrims were the original explorers and colonizers of space who turned into big jerks and attained Force-like powers of intergalactic navigation. Meanwhile, Blair’s buddy Todd “Maniac” Marshall (Lillard) hot dogs around in his ship and generally makes an ass of himself. Will they save the Earth before the impending Kilrathi invasion? Will Blair hook up with Wing Commander Deveraux (Burrows)? Why is there gravity in space? Does any of this matter?

The summer ninja series has come to a close. We now return to our regular pre-May programming with a Your Stupid Minds mainstay: a movie with a basketball player! Dennis Rodman stars in arguably the worst of his two action movie vehicles: Simon Sez. Fresh off the heels of Double Team starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mickey Rourke, Rodman returns to (or remains in) France to make this action spy comedy.

Simon (Rodman) is a freelance Interpol agent working to uncover a mysterious arms deal with his monk-attired partners Micro (John Pinette) and Macro (Ricky Harris). Later, Nick Miranda (played by an insufferable Dane Cook) asks Simon to help him with a kidnapping exchange. Their two missions intersect and the spy group must stop the vamping bad guy from blowing up the Eiffel Tower.