The Yes Men (2003)

Oh, I assume World Trade Organization execs may hate it, but I find it difficult to believe that most people who can think for themselves would fail to get — at the very least — a chuckle out of The Yes Men, a documentary about a pair of political pranksters. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno comprise the titular twosome, who use a grant from musician Herb Alpert to help them travel the globe to speak about anti-globalization in the most outlandish ways.

It all begins when visitors to their WTO parody website don’t even read the print — fine or otherwise — and extend invitations to lectures at international conferences as WTO reps. The Yes Men are all too eager to accept, and the film follows them hatching their (mostly) harmless plots and executing them in public.

This includes demonstrating a prototype of the “future leisure suit,” which contains an inflatable, phallic appendage containing a screen on which corporate heads can monitor their workforce remotely. This outfit and accompanying suggestion that slavery was a good thing aren’t questioned by anyone. At least a classroom of collegians is sharp enough to turn on a supposed WTO/McDonald’s partnership presentation in which Americans’ feces would be piped to Third World countries and recycled into “reBurgers.”

My only complaint about The Yes Men is that 83 minutes just wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I laughed out loud too many times to allow the culture-jamming fun to end so soon. It’s directed by the geniuses behind American Movie, perhaps the greatest documentary ever made, so you know you’re in good hands with this one. —Rod Lott

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Police Academy: Assignment Hell

Recall, if you will, how difficult it was to sit through a Police Academy movie in theaters.

Now imagine sitting through all seven of them in a row at home.

Yet this test of he-man resilience is exactly what Louis Fowler and I subjected ourselves to on a sunny Saturday in spring. The idea was simple: Would we be able to watch all 612 minutes — that’s 10.2 hours — of painfully simple slapstick and belabored set pieces? And could we do it without cracking? And just how much Steve Guttenberg can one man take?

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Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D (2011)

Being someone who hasn’t played video games regularly since the heyday of the Atari 2600, I have zero to little knowledge of the Tekken franchise. That statement still holds true after taking in the animated feature it has spurred, Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D. I’m guessing the word “Tekken” must mean “boredom” in at least one of the Asian languages, because that’s the best description for this sorry excuse for entertainment.

I saw neither blood nor vengeance. I did see some leather-clad babe on a motorcycle trading sore words with another improbably proportioned woman in a near-kimono. There was also a schoolgirl who rode a panda to class, only to find herself competing with a fellow co-ed — the one garishly dressed in shades of purple, up to the added colors in her albino-white hair — for the affections of a guy who has an ongoing hobby of diving off rooftops in a bid for suicide.

In other words, TBV3D — as its fan base would call it, if the film were good enough to merit one — is less a futuristic fighting action piece and more just a piece. Of poop, that is. I suppose that’s okay if you’re expecting a giggly rom-com set in the halls of a learning institution. But then it should be titled Tekken: Giggle School 3D, no?

Tekken-ites seated around me in the theater sure enjoyed it, laughing at every gag, but those came across as in-jokes to this newbie viewer, because the movie expends no effort to set up any of the characters and their relationships to one another. Just what the hell was going on in this movie? My precious time being wasted, that’s what. —Rod Lott

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Poseidon (2006)

I’m not sure why audiences and critics were so harsh toward Poseidon, Wolfgang Petersen’s remake of the inexplicably Oscar-winning 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure, as it’s a perfectly acceptable, escapist summer movie: A boat flips, people die. What more do you want?

Poseidon wastes precious little time getting the giant wave to tip that cruise ship upside down. I think it’s chapter 5 on your DVD player, and Petersen (director of the equally water-logged The Perfect Storm and Das Boot) milks the spectacle for all it’s worth. True, that causes the film to suffer in character development, giving us extremely simplified personalities that pretty much begin and end with the stars’ images; for example, Kurt Russell is basically playing Kurt Russell, with Josh Lucas doing Josh Lucas. And the rest of the cast includes Hot Daughter, Single Mom, Token Kid, Expendable Minority and Fussy Richard Dreyfuss, who, because he wears an earring, doubles as The Gay Guy.

Ultimately, as an effects-heavy action-adventure, that doesn’t matter. That Russell still harbors nice-guy charisma and Emmy Rossum sports wet cleavage through the whole thing helps even more. It even has bite, with one person in particular meeting a gruesome death worthy of a slasher flick. Like Paul Gallico’s original novel, Peterson’s film could be accused of a little racism, if subconscious, doing away with almost all the Latinos and blacks in one fell swoop. Just seeing Andre Braugher in the role of the ship’s captain is an automatic death knell.

The film gives water a sense of real menace. Claustrophobia is very real, and Poseidon takes advantage of that. So for a disposable thriller with good special effects, Snake Plissken and a little Fergie ass-shaking, Poseidon will do you right for a night’s rental. —Rod Lott

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