Category Archives: Comedy

Evil Bong (2006)

I find pot humor to be the anthesis of funny when it pops up in comedies, so imagine 83 minutes of it. And I do mean imagine, because you shouldn’t waste your time on Charles Band’s Evil Bong, unless you’re 13 years old and just looking for some quick nudity for masturbation purposes. What was Band smoking when he came up with this bargain-basement Full Moon production?

That was rhetorical. Alistair (David Weidoff, looking like Matt Damon with a butt cut) is a college chem major and resident square among a bunch of frat stoner dudes who always say “bro.” According to one of them, the pad they share lacks “a killer bong,” so they order one advertised in High Times that’s “shaped like a woman, bro: tits and a vag.”

When each guy smokes it — only Alistair doesn’t partake — he’s transported to the Club Bong strip club, where the fake-breasted dancers sport carnivorous chests that kill the dudes in real life. (All the movie is set either here — with animated ganja smoke around the edges of the frame — or at their home, which looks like the set of a sitcom threatening to burst into a porno.) Tommy Chong saves the day and runs toy cars up and down said man-made mammaries.

Highlights includes a cheerleader insulting the jive-talking bong (“It looks like an old molden dick. I ain’t suckin’ that shit”), a grandmother type being referred to as a “dusty old vaginal scab,” the phrase “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about” uttered thrice within three minutes. Hey, I didn’t say they were good highlights. You also get cameos from fellow Full Moon characters The Gingerdead Man, Jack-in-the-Box from Demonic Toys, Trancers cop Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) and more, not to mention an end-credit embedded trailer for Evil Bong II: King Bong. I’ll pass. —Rod Lott

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The Last Godfather (2010)

The Last Godfather is intended to be a comedy. It stars and is written and directed by Hyung-rae Shim, who, by all accounts, is quite popular in his native South Korea, even if there’s no real evidence of such here.

See, it’s about this … well, you see, there’s this … ah, to hell with it. I’ll let screencaps from the movie say it all.





You get the picture. —Rod Lott

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Soul Plane (2004)

So I just saw Soul Plane, aka Let’s See How Far We Can Set the Civil Rights Movement Back and Throw Tom Arnold in There as Well: Da Movie!

In a premise that makes the Wayans brothers’ White Chicks look like Roots, a lovable loser (Kevin Hart) whose dog is sucked in to the propeller while he gets diarrhea on an airplane, sues and is awarded $500 kajillion. Therefore, along with his cousin, Method Man, he opens the first black-themed airline.

It kind of sounds like Airplane!, and I feel like it earnestly tries to be, but it’s so bogged down in its own ineptitude that it just becomes an exercise in pure tedium. Not even John Witherspoon (the dad from Friday) could get a laugh out of me. The jokes are all pretty much unfunny shit-and-ass gags and the aforementioned Arnold is a guy named Mr. Hunkee (pronounced “honky”). That’s about as clever as it gets, folks.

Snoop Dogg takes over the Peter Graves role, but we get no classic lines like “Do you like movies about gladiators, Billy?” Instead, Snoop smokes some weed. Surprise! There was some actual potential in this idea, but as my date said, it seemed more like a “made-for-UPN movie.” And I’m surprised it weren’t. —Louis Fowler

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Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)  

Mr. and Mrs. Smith wasn’t the first romantic comedy Alfred Hitchcock directed. He did some early in his career, 1928’s Champagne being one of the best. But by 1941, he was much better-known for mystery-thrillers like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes and Foreign Correspondent.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s star, Carole Lombard, was the one with the rom-com pedigree, but after losing the role of Scarlett O’Hara to Vivien Leigh, she had been proving her versatility with serious dramas. Mr. and Mrs. Smith was her return to comedy, and she wanted it to be special, so she lobbied to have Hitchcock direct, thinking that he’d bring a fresh perspective to the genre.

He didn’t. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a standard screwball comedy with the requisite farce being that the title characters learn they were never legally married. When Ann Smith (Lombard) decides that that’s all for the best and that she doesn’t want to get remarried, David (Robert Montgomery) has to woo her all over again. The problem is in courting someone who already knows all his faults.

Unfortunately, the movie isn’t very funny and — since Ann is far more unlikable than her husband (he’s not flawless, but Montgomery’s charm goes a long way) — I never actually wanted him to win her over. Hitchcock and pals do get some dramatic mileage from the situation — anyone who’s had a long, intense relationship end without warning will relate to David’s wanting to win her back in spite of her failings — but even that’s resolved too quickly and randomly to be satisfying. —Michael May

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Monster High (1989)

How bad is Monster High? This bad:
1) Even if I hate you, I hope you never have to see it.
2) It should bear the credit “written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.”
3) I’d rather not watch anything for 84 minutes than sit through it again.

The list could go on and on, but let’s get down to business: Two aliens named Dume and Glume — ha, get it? — steal a wooden box containing a doomsday device. After it lands on Earth on the grounds of Montgomery Sterling High School, whereupon it kills a dog, the box is then stolen by one Mr. Armageddon.

Then lots of weird things appear in the school halls: head-smothering condoms, neck-strangling plants,a preppy zombie, a horny gargoyle, a mummy, a creature in red sneakers. It ends with the students squaring off against Mr. Armageddon at a climactic basketball match. Apparently, this plot is so complex that every scene requires narration.

The jokes — I apologize to the word “jokes” — are so insipid, that I also should apologize to the word “insipid.” An example: Dume and Glume rap! About penises and vaginas! Sample lyric: “You got your fimbriae / And your scrotum sac / And if your hymen is gone / It ain’t coming back.” Yes, Monster High has all the subtlety of a Three Stooges short. (Sorry, Moe, Larry and Curly.)

Apparently, all of the brainpower went into crafting names for the characters: Norm Median, Candice Caine, Mel Anoma, Miss Anne Thrope, Coach Otto Parts. The movie has exactly one thing going for it: boobs. Lots of large, naked breasts appear, and they’re from the era where they were real, rather than purchased on layaway. However, all the nude women are unseen from the neck up, as if they didn’t want anyone to know their identity. Smart move, ladies. —Rod Lott

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