The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)

If one thing can be said for the third (and blessedly final) film in the Human Centipede trilogy, it’s that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tom Six is a narcissistic, self-congratulatory fucktard with a huge boner for his own presumed ‘edginess’. It’s too bad, since the first ‘pede was passable and the second actually had it’s outstanding qualities (mostly manifested in the superb lead performance by Laurence R. Harvey as ‘Martin’) that this one should be such a train wreck.

Yeah, you’re going, tell us what you really think. So I will, and don’t think for one moment I’m going to spare anyone who participated in this ‘movie”s feelings. I mean, whoever wrote this script needs to be waterboarded and centipeded x20. Oh yeah, that would be Tom Six. But the biggest ‘screw you’ doesn’t belong to Tom Six, but to his lead, Dieter Laser. Laser, in a tooth-grindingly manic film performance, is about as ‘scary’ a baddie as a toddler throwing a tantrum.

Picture a gigantic skeletal looking two-year-old with sunken features jumping about like a moron and spewing profanities, and you’ve pretty much got Dieter Laser in this movie. Laser should be banned from acting indefinitely. His performance makes Adam Sandler look like Sir Ian McKellan. But never mind. Laser plays Bill Boss, a racist, homophobic, misogynistic D-bag who happens to be the warden at George H. W. Bush maximum security prison (oh was that a little retarded political commentary? I never would have got that. Huh.)

The prison is poorly run, understaffed, and the heat and the prisoners is driving Boss toward an inevitable mental breakdown. See how he jumps around like that and over-enunciates ever-y-thing? That’s the Texas heat getting to him and boiling his brain! Or maybe he’s just a chode. His meek assistant Dwight Butler (Laurence R. Harvey) hates him, the inmates want to rape him and the only thing from which he derives meager pleasures his his secretary and virtual sex slave, Daisy (former porn star Bree Olsen.) Ol’ Daisy’s expected to accommodate Bill in any way he sees fit (i.e. lots and lots of blow jobs, sometimes in front of the visibly uncomfortable Dwight,) and he continually blackmails her by holding her felon father’s prison sentence over her head. So suck my dick, bitch! And fix me a sandwich!

That’s right. The only woman in THC3, and she’s being treated like a dog and raped throughout the entire film. Her purpose is to be beaten senseless and be repeatedly assaulted and objectified. Weirdly enough, I actually felt embarrassed for Bree Olsen throughout this film. There’s a certain point while listening to Laser wheeze “Suck it, SLUT” as she tearfully performs fellatio on him that you begin to feel that Olsen was probably actually less humiliated and degraded in the adult film industry.

One day at the prison nightmarishly fades into the next when Dwight has a light bulb moment- inspired by the first two movies, he will convince Bill to turn the prisoners into a massive human centipede. This installment stands as kind of a film within a film within a film, with nods to the first two and a cast of characters oblivious (apart from a glib in joke at the beginning) that the two leading men look exactly like the antagonists from the first two films. Bill initially rejects the idea, but soon the gruesome twosome join forces to make the biggest human centipede the world has ever seen.

This is the kind of film where a doctor (Clayton Rohner) allows the construction of a human centipede (i.e. God-knows-how-many people sewn ass to mouth) but won’t allow them to be shot and put out of their misery because it’s against the Hippocratic oath. And Laurence R. Harvey, God knows I love the man (he tore up the screen in THC2 as the silent Martin Lomax) but he sports the worst fucking Texan accent I’ve ever heard.

On top of that, the character of ‘Dwight’ is wildly inconsistent.  So, he says he loves Daisy (Olsen) (an unrequited affection, sadly) but he has an opportunity to open the door and save her when she is cornered by the rioting prisoners. He doesn’t. Furthermore, after seeing Daisy’s sad fate at the end he mourns for exactly a minute and a half before gloating the the visiting Governor (Eric Roberts) about the completion of the centipede.

Maybe this is a intentional decision on the part of the filmmaker to show Dwight’s fickleness and amorality. However, it seems like he wants us to like Dwight on some level, as he plays the part of a hang-dog anti-hero, and it’s impossible to invest in him when his character has the emotional consistency of a squid.

“The Human Centipede 3” seems to want you to take it as a comedy, but it’s mix of horrific violence and hellish slapstick (like watching a Saturday morning cartoon from Hell) is about as funny as finding dog poo on the bottom of your shoe. There’s not a scrap of humanity or realism to the proceedings, and in the end THC3 is a thoroughly Schizophrenic, incomprehensible mess with dialogue that sounds like it was written by a thirteen-year-old in a psycho ward. So my advice to you is- even if you liked the first two movies, stay far away from this shit fest. It is to cinema what Hitler is to peace activism.

Mystery Men (1999)

How many movies can it be said are actually so bad they’re painful to watch? There have certainly been quite a few throughout film history, but I tend to watch movies that I like, or at least can tolerate. Oh, I’ve seen my share of stinkers, but seldom have I seen a comedy like “Mystery Men” where joke after joke falls pitifully flat; where even admittedly creative ideas (a superhero who can only turn invisible when no one’s watching) are executed with cringe-worthy ineptitude.

If you go onto Imdb, you will find people desperately exulting “Mystery Men” as ‘hilarious’ and ‘underrated’ and ‘unfairly maligned by the critics.’ Okay. To say something is ‘underrated’ is to imply it has value. Even Ben Stiller hates this movie, which is funny, because he’s one of the worst things about it. The biggest ‘mystery’ is how they got actual actors like William H. Macy and Geoffrey Rush to play in it.

Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller,) The Shoveler (William H. Macy,) and the Blue Raja (Hank Azaria) are desperate superhero wannabes operating in the futuristic Champion City. Their ‘powers’ are debatable- Blue Raja hurls forks at people (nicked from his mama’s silverware drawer,) Mr. Furious gets mad… really, really mad… to no particular effect, and The Shoveler, well, hits people with a shovel, but not particularly well, because superhuman ability isn’t a strong suite with this trio.

They are overshadowed by Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear,) a snarky, arrogant a-hole as well as the the city’s champion (harkening to the insufferable Captain Hammer and the later- and much more preferable- “Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.” The problem is, Amazing doesn’t have any villains to fight to make himself look good, so he poses as his lawyer alter ego Lance Hunt (unrecognizable when he puts glasses on- a contrivance of Clark Kent absurdity) and single-handedly releases maniacal supervillain Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush, sporting one of the most ridiculous accents- German? Austrian?- in film history and armed with razor-sharp fingernails) from an institution for the criminally insane.

When Captain Amazing reaps what he sows and ends up in Casanova’s evil clutches, it’s up to Champion City’s three affable superhero-wannabe losers- joined  by some fresh faces- to save the locals from a disastrously malignant machine and a plan for world domination, courtesy of Casanova and his two disco-dancing sidekicks. Although this movie is terrible, William H. Macy doesn’t totally embarrass himself and Hank Azaria is tolerable (how cute were Blue Raja and his mother together?- “Cheerio, Mummy!”)

It just seems like “Mystery Men” is going for very obvious, broad gags (like Paul Reubens as a repulsive little weirdo with a severe speech impediment whose superpower- shall we call it that?- is atomic flatulence.) Hate to break this to the studios, but farts are not quite as funny as they are imagined to be. I mean, I don’t break into hysterical laughter every time someone rips one. The jokes featured in “Mystery Men” are about 1/10 as funny as the writers presume they are, with actors that seem like they are playing an extended game of dress-up on their off time and accidentally got filmed.

Which is too bad, because some of the ideas are pretty good. I thought routinely, “This joke could be funny, if it was put in a funnier context and refined a little.” Champion City was an interesting setting, and the premise could work with a drastically different approach. But ultimately “Mystery Men” is hard to watch, filled to the brim with ludicrous dialogue, insipid characters, and wasted talent. On the up side (?), this movie would make amazing blackmail material– “Send me 50 grand or this gets sent on disc to all your potential employers.” Oh, the horror. But seriously, AVOID. If you rent this travesty, you’ll be sorry.

Imagination (2007)

I’ll admit it, I didn’t come to this film with high hopes. I had seen Netflix reviewers trash it again and again, but I hoped that it would at least be original. By the middle, when the talking fruits showed up, I was waiting for the one hour ten minutes to end.

By the credits, I was wondering how such a horrific train wreck ever came into existence. There’s a vague possibility that this could have been a good, albeit strange, film. What went wrong? As it turns out, almost everything.

The plot (if you can call it that) follows two prepubescent girls named Anna and Sarah through their joined imaginary realities. Their parents are struggling — Sarah is nearly blind, and Anna has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. As their psychiatrist attempts to understand their increasingly bizarre fantasies, we watch dream-like sequences done through stop-motion animation and special effects. When tragedy strikes, the girls retreat further into their imaginations, causing the psychiatrist to wonder what the visions mean.

That’s pretty much the sum of the story, avoiding spoilers. It actually was an interesting idea, visualizing two introverted girls’ secret world. The result, however, is horrendous. First of all the acting is pathetic — it’s hard to watch. As you watch the actors’ pitiable attempts to be “emotional,” you wonder how they could have possibly set themselves up for this kind of humiliation.

It feels like the director went out to a local park, watched people for a while, and chose a few, asking them to be in a movie. They agreed, despite their complete lack of dramatic skills. The two girl’s performances are understandable — they’re still young, after all. However, watching the adults, especially the psychiatrist, desperately trying to play their roles leaves you shaking your head in horror.

The other problem with Imagination is that Anna’s “Asperger’s Syndrome” and Sarah’s blindness are pointless, more or less just there to rationalize bizarre dream sequences. What may have helped this film is to explain why the girls “live in a world all their own.” Anna, we are told again and again, “can’t socialize,” but we rarely see her interact with anyone in the film.

It would have been interesting — more interesting, perhaps, than the weird trip scenes — to try to explain Sarah and Anna’s need to go into their own realities. Ben X did this efficiently. We understood why the main character, Ben, became obsessed with the virtual world and tuned out of real life. Imagination, however, is obviously a miserable attempt to play with hallucinogenic effects and claymation, without a glimmer of character development or logic to make sense of it.

There is one good quality, however. Even though the filmmakers got so many other things wrong, their skills at claymation are apparent. One scene, in particular, is darkly creative and weird, in a good way. In this case, the bizarre imagery actually attracted my attention. It makes you kind of wish they had kicked out the actors and let the clay figures take center stage.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to practically anyone, unless they are especially fond of weird for weird’s sake. Do not watch this looking for a realistic or informative view of Asperger’s — you won’t find it here. If you want something unusual, watch The Fall — in fact, watch practically anything else. Just stay far away from this bizarre, pointless mess of a movie.

 

Step Brothers (2008)

Okay. If you are planning to rent this film because you like Will Ferrell, or because you laughed (as I did) at his intellectual masterpiece Land of the Lost… stop and think for a minute, a practice this film ignored completely. Emotionally underdeveloped males are not funny.

Vindictive man-child squabbling is not funny. Middle aged men too lazy and pathetic to get off of their behinds and get jobs, only feed off of their long-suffering parents with the will and determination of parasites… not funny. Even if one of them is played by Will Ferrell, the humor is still pretty nonexistent.

Step Brothers, an uneasy blend of Paul Blart – Mall Cop and Chuck & Buck, is the kind of throwaway film people might awkwardly refer to as “cute” (as in “was it a good movie? it was… cute.”) The trouble is, it is far too resolute in it’s crudity to pass as such.

It mistakes winces for laughs and hammers its content ferociously into the viewer’s face, hoping that its gall will earn some kind of respect. It’s not even or satirical enough to pass as dark humor. As a feel-good raunchy comedy, it misses its mark completely, despite some ‘ah gee’ moments near the end where relationships are salvaged and the imbeciles are rewarded for their actions.

The premise runs like this – two older people Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) meet at a science convention, bond, and are in each other’s pants within the next five minutes. They put their clothes on, straighten up and get married. Nancy and Robert would like nothing more than to take Robert’s boat and embark on an indefinite vacation.

The trouble arises with their two sons, Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly), middle-aged slackers who live at home and don’t take well to the courtship.The two of them spend the film masturbating, eating junk food,  being beaten by children, beating children, and flaunting foul language like a college degree. Their idiocy is almost redeemed by the introduction of Brennan’s successful brother, Derek, who is more deplorable than they are. But it’s tough competition.

One both rubs his testicles on a drum set and is forced to lick a mound of dog feces, all in the same film. If you are interested in seeing Will Ferrell’s balls, maybe you should rent and enjoy this movie. If not…. maybe not. They should probably be marked as Will Ferrell = Brennan and John C. Reilly = Dale, since there is no personal variation between them. They exist as characters to disgust and half-heartedly amuse.

Although Richard Jenkins, playing in my recent reviewed film Burn After Reading and receiving an Oscar nomination for The Visitor (bought but not seen) has participated in many of the Farrelly’s films, I had no idea he could sink this low. He’s the only character with a working brain in the film (as his wife smiles and says “I think they’re bonding,” he responds, “I don’t like this.”)

However, for this character to work, one would need a director with a apparently functional brain. At an afterwords at the credits, when Brennan and Dale face their grade school-sized bullies, one punches a child repeatedly, his head bobbing back and forth like a rag doll. That’s the whole trouble with Step Brothers – it has no understanding of what’s funny and what isn’t. Equipped with this bumbling ignorance, it shamelessly hits all the wrong notes