Blog Archives
Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy 1990
Before I get into some more classicly bad and/or cheesy superhero movies, I picked this movie for our new podcast. I won our first game and next Tuesday will be the second episode of the As You Watch Podcast. You can be involved too. If you want to watch Dick Tracy and review it on your site, I will gladly link to your reviews so we can all discuss it together. Anyway, Dick Tracy came out on the heels of Tim Burton’s Batman movie and tried to cash in on that first wave of Superhero movies, but it was fairly short lived as nothing besides Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seemed to have any pull with audiences at the time. Dick Tracy was inspired by a classic comic strip that dates back to the 30’s. Warren Beatty pulled a lot of his influence to make this pet project, initially getting it greenlit under a moderate budget before ballooning it to almost double before he was done. The results were fairly impressive for the time, with all the bright colors and unique characters that looked like they were almost taken directly off the comic book page. But while there are still a lot of great things about the movie, it just doesn’t quite hold up as well anymore, at least in my opinion.
Almost Super: Die Hard
Almost Super: Die Hard 1988
I was never a big fan of the huge action movie franchises when I was younger. I think out of all the well known movies by the big action stars of the 80’s and 90’s, I had only seen Total Recall and Last Action Hero. It was only a couple years ago when I finally saw Die Hard back to back with the first Lethal Weapon after watching Live Free or Die Hard, mainly because I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan and try to watch almost everything he’s been involved with. That reason was also what made me watch Roadhouse – in the special edition DVD, he and Scott Mosier do a really fun commentary track for it. I never did go on to watch any of the sequels, but of the four films, the original Die Hard was head and shoulders above the other three in terms of quality. There’s a reason that for years and years after this movie came out, action movies like Speed were referred to “Die Hard on a Bus”. It was the benchmark of a great action film, and over twenty years later, it still holds up as a great flick. It is well crafted twists and turns with just the right amount of comic relief without being too silly. And John McClane himself is practically a superhero in his own right, taking on an entire pseudo-terrorist-cell all by himself.
Superhero Shorts: Batfan
Superhero Shorts: Batfan
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m talking with Anders Wotzke about his Batman parody, Batfan. Where he takes a simple concept and goes all the way with it, coming up with something pretty funny. As always, you can watch it right below, or you can check it out on his YouTube channel along with his many video reviews, you can also visit his movie site MovieDex.
Superhero Movie
Superhero Movie 2008
I was hoping that this would be the last bad movie I watched for a little while, but then Morgan from Morgan on Media pointed out this bizarre 80’s Australian superhero parody musical called the Return of Captain Invincible starring Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee, and after I looked up the trailer, it’s making me want to get back to some more classic cheesy superhero movies. At least after I watch Dick Tracy for our upcoming podcast, As You Watch. Which I should also mention that if you want to join in, I will gladly link any reviews to Dick Tracy so you can watch along with us, your deadline to get links in to me is Monday, August 27th. But back to today’s movie. I remember it being promoted as essentially a parody of all the superhero movies that were out at the time, though it primarily focused on the original Spider-Man movie, which was pretty dated even at the time considering that Spider-Man 3 came out before Superhero Movie. All of the other Superhero movie references are all just brief one-scene cameos, though the movie does stick with only parodying Marvel properties. I wasn’t much of a fan of the style of humor either, which basically consisted of playing a scene as close to Spider-Man as possible, then throwing in a sex/fart joke at the end.
As You Watch Podcast #1
Our introductory episode where you can meet all of the hosts. Me, Vern from VideoVangaurd.com, Nick of Cinematic Katzenjammer, and Joe from Two Dude Review. We also talk about out top 3 films of all time, the movie releases for the week ending 8/17, and we play a little game. I hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back with episode #2 in two weeks. Click right here to listen to our premier episode. And tomorrow will be a brand new feature from a guest poster. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Son of the Mask
Son of the Mask 2005
After sitting through My Super Ex-Girlfriend, I thought I’d turn this into a mini marathon of bad superhero comedies. The Specials wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that great either. And today’s movie trumps the both of them by a longshot. It rightly has a place on my earlier list of 33 of the worst superhero movies ever made. It shares some of the same mythology as Thor, and shares some of the same backstory as the Mask, but it goes in a completely different direction to try and make it into a more kid friendly, and seemingly therefore brainless, movie. There was not a single joke that made me laugh, I did not care about any of the characters, and the cartoonish action was a stale rehash of the actual cartoons that inspired it.
The Specials
The Specials 2000
I continue with my spree of superhero comedies with a little known movie from 2000 called The Specials. It’s a low budget movie with a lot of moderately well known comedians or comic actors, like Rob Lowe and Thomas Hayden Church, playing what is essentially a third or fourth tier superhero group. It also seems to draw inspiration from other superhero comedies such as the Tick, where the majority of the plot revolves around what happens in between natural disasters and super villains. In fact, in this movie there’s not a single action scene, and only a slight hint of what the heroes powers actually are. Instead it revolves around what happens with their interpersonal relationship in a pseudo reality show format, complete with confessional moments talking directly to the camera. While it does have some funny moments, there’s really too much going on and too many characters to try and service, so it felt like most of the runtime tries to work all the characters into the plot more than it tries to be funny.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
My Super Ex-Girlfriend 2006
After watching Megamind the other day, I considered moving on to some more animated movies again, but I finally decided on a movie that’s been sitting in my collection for a couple months ever since I picked it up for two bucks at the used DVD store on clearance. I’ve been vaguely dreading the day I actually sat down to watch it because even from the trailers, I knew it was not my type of comedy, and boy was I ever right. Through the entire movie, there was only one moment where I wasn’t laughing at a joke because of how ridiculously stupid I thought it was. It also doesn’t help the movie that none of the characters are likable except for Anna Faris, and I don’t even remember her characters name, or any character’s names except for Jenny aka G-Girl played by Uma Thurman and Barry aka Bedlam played by Eddie Izzard. Which is why I will generally refer to the actors rather than the characters, because honestly they felt more like it was just the actors. The one saving grace, if you could call it that, is that it does feature a female superhero, which is quite rare in Hollywood. But it continues the trend set by all the other movies led by a female superhero by being a bad movie.
Megamind
Megamind 2010
After going through a few documentaries, I figured it was time to get back to some more lighthearted fare. And it also helped that the newest announced acting school over at the LAMB is for Brad Pitt, who conveniently voices Metro Man in this movie. This movie is a real mash-up of different superhero tropes looked at through different angles, and there are quite a few surprise twists along with several unsurprising twists, which I will be mentioning farther down in this review in case you haven’t seen this movie yet. I don’t think knowing any of the twists beforehand really affect the outcome of the movie, but this is your spoiler warning anyway. There are also a few nice touching moments, and throughout the whole thing is a lot of laughs.
Superhero Me
Superhero Me 2010
I’m finishing up this week of documentaries with Superhero Me, which I found by randomly searching “superhero” over at Hulu and this was the first movie that popped up. It’s an odd mix of comedy and interviews based around the recent real life superhero movement combined with the filmmaker, Steve Sale’s quest to become a real life superhero himself called SOS. The humor comes from the affable nature as well as the general absurdity of the whole process. There is a large amount of charm in this movie, and it was made completely on the cheap, with practically no budget, which is really the biggest downside to the movie.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 