The
40-Year-Old Virgin
A
witty (or at least enjoyable) comedy and the summer
movie season usually go together like Jell-O shots and
an AA meeting. Summer’s the time for movie studios to
make money, not merry. But every once in a while, you’re
surprised. Or at least I am.
This
summer’s exception to the rule is The 40-Year-Old
Virgin, the first leading role for former Daily
Show veteran Steve Carell. Carell plays—well—a 40 year-old
virgin who works at a Circuit City-esque retail chain
and really enjoys his action figures and video games,
just like a 20-year-old virgin would. Next thing you
know, his friends at work catch wind of his...affliction,
and make it their mission to put the little crusty spot
into his man panties. Of course his friends give him
some pretty-bad-yet-consistently-amusing advice, and
Carell winds up getting it on with a forty year-old
grandmother.
Virgin
was definitely amusing and I liked it a great deal,
but I thought I could do one better. Not on an epic
scale that making a movie involves, but definitely on
a smaller level.
I
stopped by a neighbor’s house. Now I don’t know, but
I’m pretty sure the only living person who ever touched
his penis was the school doctor. Or maybe his Judy Garland-loving
landlord, when he couldn’t make the rent that one month.
Anyway, I stopped by his place in Lakeview. I walked
in and the place was an action figure display case.
I realized why grease-stained pizza boxes don’t make
good interior design tools. And every variation of a
Darth Vader action figure ever made strategically placed
around the dump only cemented the theory that this pop
culture shithole needed a woman’s touch. He sat blankly
in front of the TV, XBox controller in hand. The drool
puddle in his lap complemented the clicking of the controller;
the sorry son of a bitch was about to get his rental
fee’s worth.
“You’re
getting laid tonight,” I told him. I shut off the TV.
He looked up at me with the same look that Nicholson
had on his face at the end of Cuckoo’s Nest.
Three
lines of artificial sweetener each (I cut it with Nestle
Quick), a cold shower for a Mountain Dew, and an hour
and a half later, we were downtown. The guy was as nervous
as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
He was almost tweaking as bad as the meth addict in
the beer tent I saw at the Fair. I told him not to be
foolish; he was looking at this the wrong way. The lower
he kept his expectations, the easier they would be met,
I told him.
After
another amphetamine-fueled touchdown, we strutted down
Chippewa in the snazziest duds our meager respective
livings could afford us. And this sorry son of a bitch
had to wear a goddamned Batman t-shirt on underneath.
I
certainly had my work cut out for me. This sloppy bastard
bought clothes by the pound that never quite hung on
his sorry carcass just right. He was a proud example
of a man who desperately needed a woman to take care
of him. And I was also painfully aware that, regardless
of which female he put his penis into tonight, he was
going to marry this contemptuous harpy. I was sending
one of my brethren out to face a slow and painful emasculation,
one that I could only hope would be mildly slow and
painful. I decided to just hit him with the game plan
before I lost our nerve. I tossed him my keys and forty
bucks.
“Hit
any bar on this strip. Take your pick! Down three shots
and look around the room for five minutes. Before the
booze hits, look around the room and find the dumpiest,
skankiest one in the joint. Watch her get hot while
that devil water your body’s going to distill does a
number on you and turns her into a friggin’ goddess.
If you can’t zero in on one in particular, find another
one and buy her a drink. Pick one quick and both of
you get loaded. Get back to the car and have at it!
I see no other way!”
I
didn’t see him again until about two hours later. I’d
spent all of the money I’d hustled out of busboys and
chefs in a back alley dice game. I fed booze to a minor
and my job was done. So I see him getting out of the
car as he’s pulling his jeans up. He looks around and
doesn’t see anyone. On both sides of him, I see a pasty,
chunky, and oddly proportioned ham. The... textured
legs pulled back into the car and I hid in the dark.
Now
I’ve known this manchild for quite some time, and I
know him to be the sort that takes directions literally.
If I were to describe this woman in any more detail,
you would turn to stone merely by reading her description.
So
I get him home after they exchange e-mail addresses
or pager numbers. He thinks she thought it was hot that
his pager has voicemail. She’s got two cats.
When
I got him home, his mother was waiting for him. She’s
all fire and brimstone towards me when he walks in the
door. Who the hell do I think I am keeping her thirteen-year-old
son out until the middle of the night? He’s covered
in the love stink of a fledgling demon and she goes
catatonic when she catches a whiff of him. She looks
between us and smiles like she’s going to be a grandmother
for the first time. She says she somehow knew that her
son and I were lovers, but never realized it. She said
something about a llama farm in Idaho and being so happy
for us. As she’s spouting this gibberish, I take my
leave and go home, once again with no charges pressed
against me for reckless endangerment of a minor.
Red
Eye
Between
his work in the Nightmare on Elm Street and
Scream movies, Wes Craven has all but established
himself as the Michael Bay of the horror world. Anything
Craven’s done in the past fifteen years is a miniscule
notch above utter dogshit (Scream included. What
up, bitch?) And his little buttplugging sessions with
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on cable are nothing short
of shameless self promotion. It’s kind of like starting
a low-grade media war with Tom Cruise. It won’t get
you very far, but maybe it’s worth doing.
So
maybe all this publicity is trying to tell its viewers
and movie fans that Wes Craven could actually be making
something worthwhile. AND MAYBE IT’S NOT. The only decent
thing about this movie, if I may call it that, is Cillian
Murphy as the crazed psycho who terrorizes some wingnut
dame he met on a plane. He doesn’t go for the typical
over-the-top performance that you’d expect out of a
Wes Craven movie. You know who I’m talking about: The
guy that was in 28 Days Later, and he was the
Scarecrow in Batman Begins. He gives well controlled
performances. The thing I can’t figure out is why
here?
Yeah,
it’s a PG-13 horror movie that will probably see its
largest audience on bootleg DVDs passed around between
cousins who happen to know dudes who can
get them for cheap, and they’re still in the theaters!
Maybe teenage girls will see it at the mall before their
moms pick them up on a weekday afternoon now that summer
school’s done. I don’t know. But what I do know is this–it
should have been called Brown Eye.
The
Skeleton Key
Oh
Shit! It’s time yet again for another skinny white chick
to get thrown into a hellish situation that translates
oh so well to the screen! Hot damn.
So
let’s get the ingredients for the formula together and
see what kind of trouble we can stir up. Let’s get the
skinny little white chick and paint some happy little
trees. Kate Hudson plays a traveling nurse in the Bayou
that ends up in some whacked out Louisiana fever dream.
Let’s also tack on some old school from back in the
day actors and actresses to pull this crap together.
The
Skeleton Key is definitely creepy, but the plot
holes are too big for this future goth kid favorite
to hold together. It’s definitely nice to see Gena Rowlands
and John Hurt still working, but it’s just sad to see
them in a crappy horror flick. What the hell are you
going to do?
Umm.
Yeah. So did Dave quit or– Oh he did? Sick of the bullshit,
huh? Well, I was surprised to see him after the shifts
changed, you know? I mean, I don’t mind it too much,
but he must be wiped out when he gets out of here. I
mean he’s probably pulling a triple-header right now,
if you know what I mean. I don’t blame him. Not
at all. If I was him, I wouldn’t have stuck around for
this shift either. Oh well, I’m gonna miss the bastard...
Deuce
Bigalow: European Gigolo
There
was a time maybe a year after the original Deuce
Bigalow: Male Gigolo where I could have watched
it. We’re going back a good five years here. Cliff’s
Notes edition: I opted to get laid instead, but the
TV was on. To my dismay, I didn’t see Deuce Bigalow:
European Gigolo under similar circumstances, but
it was still pretty interesting.
We
started drinking. Maccio’s kid confessed to giving Obi-Wan
Kenobi a hand job in London a couple of weeks before.
Real horrorshow. So as you can imagine, Tom Maccio hasn’t
been the same since. He’d earlier pulled out that twenty-five-year-old
bottle of Mescal and had put a sizable dent in the bottle
when I woke up. His soul had left his body and was trying
to fondle Lily Munster on the TV, his dark, lifeless
eyes fixated on the screen. He broke the spell, poured
a shot, and downed it in record time. It was two hours
later that this valuable booze was nearly killed and
we began to grow restless.
“Gimme
the Deuce!” Maccio primally screamed. “Want the
Deuce!”
Even
if I wasn’t in a drunken haze, I still wouldn’t have
had any idea what the crazy bastard was on about. I
thought it was a bad Family Guy act. Was there a worm
that this son of a bitch ate that I didn’t see? Did
I swallow it?
“Deuce!!!!!!!
Il Deuce!!!!!” He was clearly going mad. I had to
act quick. I threw ice water at him and fed him stale
wheat thins, but that only strengthened his resolve.
I was running out of ideas fast and I still had no inkling
as to what it was that this living maniac was talking
about or wanted. Then I looked to the TV.
This
douchebag wanted to go see Deuce Bigalow. I asked
the mutant if that was what he wanted. He nodded as
if he was having some kind of conniption. We were at
the theater less than twenty minutes later.
The
flask he snuck in was full of piss-warm vodka. Dummy
stuck it in his back pocket. This ain’t no pontoon race.
Where’s he think he’s at anyhow? Anyway, that precious
bottle of Mescal wound up on the floor after the second
sip from the flask. Mine ended up in my popcorn. I offered
it to the homeless guy sleeping the row in front of
us. He seemed to like it.
I
think Maccio liked it. He sobered up and apologized
for putting me through that hellish nightmare. We sat
through the rest of the film and I took Maccio up on
his offer to punch him after every stupid joke. Maccio’s
arm was so numb that day he thought he was having a
heart attack. That was worth the price of admission
right there, I tell you! That’s some priceless shit...
We
loaded up at a Chinese buffet and headed north. Before
we were allowed to cross the border, the boys at the
gate held us up for awhile. The ghettos of Hamilton
were our destination for no reason other than to drive
through the industrial district. So we could feel like
we were in the future. There’s nothing like driving
through a metallic landscape to make you feel insignificantly
small. We loaded up at a mall food court and realized
after looking around that everything could be a hell
of a lot worse.
Supercross:
The Movie
I’m
kind of snobbish about the movies and films I like.
I don’t really watch movies as a form of disposable
entertainment. I think there’s a difference between
a movie and a film. The Wedding Planner with
Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McCaunehey is an example
of a movie: Mindless fluff that flaunts its stars like
cheap jewelry nestled in bad chest hair. Annoying chick
flicks that will age as badly as their stars in years
to come. National Treasure is also a movie: Big
name crap with a big name star that no one will remember
in a few years’ time. Then you’ve got another Nicolas
Cage film that’s an example of a film. Films actually
have something really creative going on. It may be the
direction, the acting, or the story. The more of those
things a movie has, the more it becomes a great film.
Adaptation, Face/Off, and Raising Arizona
are all films he was in. Okay, maybe Face/Off is
stretching it a little. But there were only two categories
for motion pictures.
And
now a new creature crawls out of the mud to offer itself
up as a third category of motion picture—it’s too ugly
to even be given a name. Hence Supercross: The Movie.
It’s a modern day B-Movie. It’s one of those Roger Corman
biker movies from the late ‘60s like Wild Angels
or The Trip. Easy Rider shit.
Without
a doubt, Supercross is a terrible, terrible movie.
A MOVIE. We’re looking at a movie that will be a giggle
in a girl’s college dorm on a Friday night when they
decide to have bad movie night. Or maybe it will
serve as a manifesto presenting the spawn of NASCAR.
It’ll go over really big with the mullets-and-meth-lab
crowd, if that gives you a clue as to what kind of deal
this is. To make things worse, it’s not going to be
enjoyable for another thirty years. Don’t watch this
movie until your current age doubles.
But
what I propose you do instead is not to avoid watching
this sort of movie; I suggest that you watch an older
version of this kind of movie. Maybe even a film
version of this movie. Watch Wild Angels. Watch
The Wild One. Hell, watch a movie that needed
to age to begin to resemble a film after nearly twenty
to sixty years.
So—for
anyone who reads this column on anything resembling
a regular basis, these are the alternatives I offer
to you. Go rent any one of the following films.
On
The Waterfront. The Richard Widmark version of Night
and the City. Chinatown. Vertigo. Fight Club. The Graduate.
The Godfather parts One and Two. The Last Picture
Show. Old School. Bonnie and Clyde. Cool Hand Luke.
After Hours. The Asphalt Jungle. American Beauty. Dr.
Strangelove. Evil Dead II. Maybe the last one’s
not exactly Citizen Kane, but it’s definitely
worth the rental fee. Hell, buy the goddamned thing!
Everyone should own a copy of Evil Dead II! And
The Big Lebowski...
The Aristocrats
There
is a hell of a buzz going around this one. And maybe
in some alternate reality where I would become the successor
to Roger Ebert, I know why. The basic premise of this
documentary/performance piece/comedy act video mix tape
is a simple one.
A
bunch of comedians tell the same joke in different segments.
Oh look! There’s Robin Williams! Ooh, Ooh! Whoopi Goldberg.
Is she funny! And Paul Reiser, Jason Alexander, Drew
Carey, and George Carlin are all here. I say, I’m glad
I wore my zubas, because any other pair of pants would
start splitting at the sides from laughing so goddamned
much!
And
what’s this joke? If you’re going to hear the same joke
told about a hundred times, it better be a good one,
right? Well, I’m going to save you nine dollars (if
you don’t want to know, stop reading NOW): A family
walks into a talent agency and tell a talent
agent that they’ve got a great act for him. The agents
asks what it is and the family says they roll around
in their own shit and fuck each other. The talent agent
asks what they call themselves. The Aristocrats.
Oh
sure. Maybe I didn’t tell the joke as well as Chris
Rock or Penn Jillette, but take into account that it’s
a stupid joke and I only think I’m a comedian.
There’s something mystifying about The Aristocrats.
I think it’s the way that everybody (film critics and
moviegoers alike) are bending over, lubing up, and white-knuckle
grabbing the sides of the table for this movie. It’s
fresh and inventive! They’ve seen nothing like this
before! It’s got nothing behind it. Watching The
Aristocrats is like being held hostage for about
two hours and being fed a rice cake every three minutes.
The first few are okay. At least your captors care enough
to feed you. But all they’re feeding you is rice cakes.
And despite the fact that some of them have peanut butter
and other tasty treats on them, the cakes get a little
bit more stale with each and every wretched bite.
As
far as The Aristocrats’ endearing qualities go,
there aren’t many. The only one that springs to mind
is seeing Sarah Silverman, but all that really made
me want to do is walk out of the theater and go watch
my Mr. Show DVDs. Jon Stewart for a sneeze, but doesn’t
tell the joke. Going to see this movie solely for Stewart’s
appearance is like dating a girl because you think her
one friend’s hot. Not worth it, my friend. Not worth
it.
