The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String (2003)

Directed by: Terry M. West
Run time: 72 minutes

This movie is funnier than it should be. This sex comedy is a near retelling of the Lord of the Rings as told by drunk frat boys.  It's crude, vile, unrepentant, and a funny parody of The Lord of the Rings.

Instead of  four Hobbits on a quest to destroy the ring of power, it is three Throbbits on a quest to destroy the g-string of power. Throbbits are trisexual parodies of Hobbits and the reason they are trisexual is because they will try having sex with anything once. The trio of Throbbits are sent on this quest by the drunk and lecherous wizard Smirnof and that it for anything that resembles a plot.

The rest of the movie is the trio of Throbbits wandering around in some forest and meeting a fantasy trope or obvious reference to the Lord of the Rings. A crude but amusing joke is played out and then the trio wanders on to the next joke. The jokes are funny and not in the painful cringe inducing manner that Adam Sandler and Seth MacFarlane are great at.

It is a slow but funny sex comedy. If this is your thing, you want to offend the easily offended, or you hate The Lord of the Rings movies this is a movie you want to hunt down and watch.

MVT: There is a stripper scene were both the strippers and the guys watching the strippers are trying and failing to hide how awkward the scene is. This is funny as hell to me because it sums up every story I have ever heard about strip clubs in Saskatchewan and Alberta. A place where hope goes to die and the funniest train wreck all in one place.

Make or Break: The writers not beating the audience over the head every five minutes with "This is a LoTR parody, Laugh!" made the movie much more enjoyable.

Score: 5.9 out of 10

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

When Tod Browning directed the brilliant Freaks (released in 1932, but shelved by MGM due to moral backlash more than anything, though it is readily available today), he accomplished two significant things (actually more, but for our purposes today, these two will suffice). One, he used real sideshow performers to portray the titular characters, horrifying audiences to the point of revulsion (and I believe the spectacle/exploitation angle was at least partly a conscious choice on Browning's behalf, though the opposite can also be argued). And two, he made the "monsters" the heroes of the piece, and the normal people (nigh-perfect physical specimens) are the beasts. Monsters (certainly the ones that have endured the longest) have often had some element of pathos to them, but never before (at least to my memory, but that's like Swiss cheese these days, so…) had viewers been asked to side with characters so antithetical to what they expected from their cinematic protagonists. Eventually (and some would say inevitably), the transgressive became the norm, and the heroic creature is as commonplace and accepted today as the hunky, all-American hero was then.

Dodger (MacKenzie Astin) is a skinny pantywaist who is beat up and robbed by stereotypical fiends, Juice, Wally, and Blythe (Ron MacLachlan, J.P. Amateau, and Marjory Graue, respectively). The problem is Dodger has the pubescent hots for Juice's squeeze, Tangerine(Katie Barberi, who was only Astin's elder by about a year but appears to be a good ten ahead of him), who sells her homemade clothes outside the local dance club and dreams of being a big time fashion designer. Dodger works for the loveably semi-absent-minded ex-magician, Captain Manzini (the late Anthony Newley), at the Captain's miserable antiques store. During an altercation between Dodger and Juice's gang, an (antique?) garbage pail is accidentally knocked over. Crawling out of the Slurpee-esque slime come seven broad gross out characters: Valerie Vomit (Debbie Lee Carrington, I assume voiced by Annie Wood), Windy Winston (Arturo Gil), Foul Phil (Robert Bell, voiced by Chloe Amateau), Nat Nerd (Larry Green, voice by Jim Cummings), Ali Gator (Kevin Thompson), Greaser Greg (Phil Fondacaro, voiced by Cummings again), and Messy Tessie (Susan Rossitto, voiced by Teri Benaron). Chaos is the order of the day, hilarity ensues, and we all learn a valuable lesson.

When the first credit on a film reads "A Topps Chewing Gum Production," sure as ten dimes buys you a dollar, you're in for a world of hurt. Fads have crossed over from their original forms into other media long before Rod Amateau's The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. The video game boom of the 1980s gave us such Saturday morning classics as "Saturday Supercade," "Q-Bert," and "The Legend Of Zelda." At that time, literally anything that had legs as a product for the ten to sixteen year old demographic spun off into multiple formats/forms. We had "Rubik The Amazing Cube" cartoons, Pac-Man breakfast cereal, Smurfs albums, and on, and on, and on. 

Around about 1983 or so, Cabbage Patch Dolls became THE toy for every girl to have. The furor over these products was so high, grown adults would have fist fights in store aisles trying to snag one for their child (but I'm sure this sort of thing no longer happens). In 1985, Topps released their first series of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards and stickers, parodying the cloying twee factor of Xavier Roberts's cherubic creations with grotesqueries and toilet humor, courtesy of the series' creator, Art Spiegelman. Needless to say, kids ate them up (including the razor sharp "chewing gum" included in every pack), parents hated them, and Topps executives cashed in.

What this film centers on, at least in theory, is Dodger's maturing into young adulthood and the ineluctable loss of romantic idealism brought upon by the harsh realities of the real world. The Kids serve two purposes, thematically. They serve as (supposedly) empathetic characters for the awkward, the abnormal, and the unattractive, as children just running headlong into puberty invariably feel, but they also represent those who are truly not the norm. On the other hand, they act as the anarchic id all kids revel in, because they flaunt the rules of normality. Unlike the dolls they were created to mock, the Garbage Pail Kids are dichotomous. They crave acceptance for what they are from society at large, yet their behavior is so unapologetically antisocial, the only ones who would have them are those who have "been there" or think they have (read: pubescent youth).

The depiction of The Kids, unfortunately, is resistant to any empathy a viewer may feel towards them. Nat Nerd literally pisses himself at least four times during the course of the film. Honestly, when you see this type of thing in reality, one's first reaction is not to laugh (unless the self-micturation is done as a deliberate act, instead of an involuntary reaction, but even then…really?). Windy Winston farts in people's faces with impunity. Ali Gator eats people's toes. All of them partake in grand larceny at one point or another. You get the idea. They go beyond merely being outcasts; they become alien, not just in their appearance, but in the audience's inability to reconcile the love/hate relationship their nature engenders. It's one thing to have friends who look odd or behave oddly. It's another thing if said friends persistently try to eat us, knife us, or slather mucus on us. Some things are simply not done, old bean.

This makes the film's message a trifle mixed. We get that the outwardly good-looking Juice and his gang are ugly on the inside. Conversely, The Kids, who should be the polar opposites of the antagonists, only distinguish themselves from them in their assistance of Dodger as a makeshift sweat shop for fashions that Tangerine uses to advance her own venal concerns. It can be safely stated that the filmmakers are trying to serve two masters with this film. They want us to fall for these oddballs, to look beyond the "warts" (and zits, and snot) to what lies beneath the surface. Meanwhile, they rejoice in shoving the audience's faces on the aforementioned "warts" and rubbing them up and down. There are only two characters worthy of the term "likeable" on any level. One is a sniveling, horny youngster. The other is a magician, nostalgist, and borderline child abuser who wants rid of The Kids, knowing they're nothing but trouble. And unless you're a diehard fan of John Carl Buechler's low budget animatronics (which are commendable considering the film's budget would probably make a shoestring look like a four lane highway), that's how you'll treat The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Nothing but trouble.

MVT: Buechler's character creations have always had a charmingly threadbare appeal to them. The Kids are no different. The voices don't come close to matching the lip movements. The facial expressions are wildly broad and mostly inappropriate. But for makeup effects devotees, they're great to watch in action (despite their only slight effectiveness).

Make Or Break: The Kids break out in a musical number from out of the blue. You'll either savor it for its ridiculousness and inexplicable abruptness, or you'll roll your eyes and long to smash your face against the nearest piano like Don Music. I'm in the middle but leaning moderately towards the "Make" end of the equation. The rest of the movie? Not so much. 

Score: 4.75/10 

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Jenny Ringo And The Monkey’s Paw (2011)

Self-reflexivity (for those that don't know, the pointing out of a piece's artificiality by the piece itself) has been around for a long time. In movies, you could even say it goes all the way back to the very beginning, when Justus D. Barnes pointed his six-gun directly at the camera and fired in the closing moments of The Great Train Robbery in 1903 (lovingly homaged by Scorsese in Goodfellas). As with any art form, film itself and the processes of its production and exhibition would inevitably be incorporated into the final product and eventually become another tool in the filmmakers' arsenal. While not a standard device, self-reflexivity has been widely enough used in films that it has become accepted by audiences worldwide. So, why the history lesson for things you probably already know, you ask? Because writer/director Chris Regan's short film, Jenny Ringo And The Monkey's Paw makes extensive use self-reflexivity and intertextual devices to tell its story.

We begin inside an art film. Black-and-white footage of a man and a woman sitting on a beach, smoking (what appear to be) clove cigarettes and talking in vaguely-emotion-revealing gibberish. Suddenly, our protagonist, Jenny Ringo (Rosie Duncan) interrupts, telling us, the audience, that we need to witness her tale. We then get a brief history of Jenny and her slack-ass roommate, Gavin (Lukas Habberton). Though they're friends, Jenny needs a break and heads off to a wiccan retreat. On her return, she discovers that Gavin has come into possession of an enchanted monkey's paw and, out of desperation, wished into existence two friends to keep him company. To say that Jeff Awesome (Scott Haney) and (the dying-to-be-commented-on-by-James-Bond) Candy Gorgeous (Dominique Bull) are not nearly as nice and perfect as they at first appear would be an understatement.

When W.W. Jacobs first wrote the short story, "The Monkey's Paw," in 1902, it was intended as a parable. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. It was also fatalistic in the sense that when we try to circumvent the universe's plans for us, we only bring sorrow on ourselves. This is why no one, not even Homer J. Simpson, is capable of making a wish that won't in some way, shape, or form backfire on the wisher. Jenny Ringo And The Monkey's Paw follows in this pattern. Gavin wants a perfect friend, who then wants a perfect girlfriend, and naturally the whole affair is not about to go according to Hoyle. However, Regan's film doesn't display much of the irony that pretty much every other iteration of the story does (example: you wish for a cup of coffee, and you receive it, but it has cream and sugar in it, and you're lactose intolerant and diabetic). The supernatural aspects of the new friends (they're telepathic, for starters) feel "out of left field," but I can respect their inclusion, because when dealing with a plot device like a monkey's paw, it's (almost) anything goes. When the plot finally does comment on the underlying problems between Jenny and Gavin (located in Gavin's room), it's genuinely interesting, and I felt as if the rest of the main plot should have been in this vein.

It is impossible to think about this film without talking about stylistic techniques, and Regan and company employ a slew of them. Aside from the more embedded techniques (see first paragraph), there are also animations used to tell a story within a story (or start one anyway) and to visualize (in a very well-played pun) a theatrical principle. The Magician (Simon Messingham) who foisted the monkey's paw on Gavin in the first place does a full-on song-and-dance number with ghost dancers to illustrate the futility of Jenny and Gavin's efforts. The monkey's paw is actually from a stuffed monkey doll. There are tons of clever things going on throughout, and they help maintain interest for the runtime. And this leads me to my biggest criticisms of the piece.

It is difficult to get a movie made at all, especially with the slickness of this one. The cinematography is gorgeous. When the filmmakers allowed themselves to open up the frame. Since the majority of the film takes place in a cramped apartment, the majority of shots doesn't go wider than about medium/medium-long (and are often closer). I was yearning for some more variety in shot choice, and the tightness made me feel slightly claustrophobic. Additionally (and larger), I didn't come away with any emotional connection to the characters. This is not to say that the characters are flat or the performances bad (though they could have all been taken down about 50% in intenseness), they're just not fully-realized onscreen. In twenty-five minutes, there are so many imaginative goings-on, the characters, whose story and "lives" we are supposed to be invested in, get lost. We get hints, we almost get an emotional reveal, but we're whisked off so quickly to the next plot point, it ultimately doesn't resonate. That said, Jenny's destiny (if this is, in fact, to be hers) is brilliant not only in its manner but also in its elliptical nature.

As far as I'm aware, this is Regan's first narrative directing credit, and as a first-timer, he shows a tremendous amount of promise. I'm grateful that there are filmmakers out there willing to take chances with their work like this. Does Jenny Ringo And The Monkey's Paw always work? No, but I would rather watch an imperfect film that has the balls to step out of line a bit than a perfect one that always plays it safe.

If you're interested in hearing more about the film, its universe, and future, go on over to www.jennyringo.com and sign up for the mailing list. 

MVT: Chris Regan shows that he's someone to keep an eye on in the future.

Make Or Break: The first scene sets the overall tone, and it does so quite well, right down to the non sequitur intertitles.

Score: 6.25/10