One of my favourite things to do as a young lad in the 90's was to head on over to the local video store and peruse the aisles for something interesting. As much as I love being able to download or stream almost any movie you can imagine, part of the fun of the video store was looking at the box covers and wondering what the actual movie would be like. Nine out of ten times, box covers were bold-faced lies.
Let's take a look at some of the strange video box covers which always intrigued me.
In the early 90's I was still innocent. I watched Ninja Turtles. I rode my bike around the block. And most importantly, I hadn't yet been exposed to Pauly Shore. Read below to learn of how he stole my innocence.
PREMISE
Two friends living in Encino, California spend their time trying to be considered cool at high school. Sean "Oh, Mr. Frodo" Astin is your average kid trying to be popular. His best friend, played by Pauly Shore, is a wanna-be hippy. All they want is to be popular at school. Unfortunately, they are anything but that. One day while digging a pool in the backyard (like a lot of kids did, I'm sure), they find a frozen Brendan Fraser. He thaws out, wacky 90's era comedy ensues, and the two friends finally become popular.
Uh... not these friends.
MY TAKE
Watching this as a young teenager, I thought it was off the wall hilarious. Pauly Shore was strange in a kind of cool way. Add twenty years to that, and it starts to look a little different. You start thinking of things. From little things to big things, as an adult, they just gnaw at your mind until you have a hard time enjoying the movie. First off....
Why is Sean Astin's dad letting him dig a swimming pool in the backyard. Yeah, Astin thinks having a pool will help make him popular. In California. Where nobody has a professionally made pool. It's probably one of the dumbest ways they could have come up with for the boys to find a caveman.
That's an ambitious little hobbit.
Also, Astin wants more than anything to be popular. He constantly talks to Shore about how great it would be if they were part of the "in" crowd. The thing is, Pauly Shore seems to be completely happy with who he is. I mean, they don't sell clothes like that in most shops. You have to make an active effort to put together a wardrobe like that. So I'm assuming Shore doesn't care what people think about him.
This takes a lot of effort.
Brendan Fraser is a caveman. The only modern ideal he seems to have a grasp of is that family is important. Other than that, he has no concept of any of society's norms. Imagine taking a six and a half foot tall monkey to school. The least of the problems would be finding everything covered in poop.
Literally, everything.
Finally, Astin is the every-kid that we're supposed to relate to. He's not rich, he doesn't have a ton of friends, and he's kind of awkward. This is the image we're supposed to have. I think the reason he's an outcast, though, because he's such a little dick. The biggest indicator of this is how he thinks having or doing things will make him likeable. He thinks having a caveman will make him popular. When Fraser becomes popular, he tries to ride his coattails. When the girl he likes goes for Fraser, Astin literally takes Fraser to the woods and pulls a Harry and the Hendersons on him. He gives a caveman a handful of quarters and tells him to leave. What a dick. And even at the end, Astin does nothing to change. Brandon beats up the bully and starts dancing. What does Astin do? He tells the girl "Watch this", and joins in dancing (terribly).
Please, Mr. Frodo.
Overall, I think you can still kind of enjoy the movie for the nostalgia or 90's retro-factor. But as a story with such an unlikeable main character, it's pretty terrible. Maybe you can find a VHS of it in the bargain bin at K-Mart. FINAL SCORE- Two and a half slurpees, buuuu-dy.
The Polar Express was a kids picture book written back in the 80's. It was 32 pages long, and like most picture books, consisted of full page illustrations and a simple story. Robert Zemeckis thought this would be the perfect vehicle to play with motion-capture technology.
Read on to see what the creator of Back to the Future watches on Christmas.
There are two reasons to hate Santa. The first is because he never brought you that life-size My Buddy doll you wanted when you were 14. The second reason is because he's being played by Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa.
Before you take your kids to the mall to see Santa, read on to make sure you're not making a mistake.
Christmas? Who needs it. Let's go to the Bahamas. Or maybe we should stay in town take turns crapping in Santa's hat. Yeah, that sounds like more fun. Bring on the Chipotle!
Click the link to learn what bad kids get to watch at Christmas.
What do you get when you take a bratty kid, his pre-occupied and uncaring parents, a group of siblings and cousins who hate each other, some burglars, a scary man with a shovel, and shove them all inside a Christmas Turkey? Why, you get Home Alone, of course.
Read on to recall why you still feel nauseated anytime a person holds their face and screams...
It's December, and officially the Holiday Season. So, to help us celebrate, I'm going to be posting reviews of as many holiday movies as I can. Old, new, crappy, more crappy. They're all getting their fair share. We might not share the same opinion on all these movies, but you have to admit, they all remind us of just what this time of year means... drinking until we can't remember things anymore.
A new trailer for World War Z with Brad Pitt was just released.
First of all, the good.
I love Brad Pitt. I can't think of many movies he's been in that I don't like. I even like that episode of Growing Pains where he plaid that jerk musician (Don't be down, uh-huh uh-huh).
Also, World War Z. Come on. Max Brooks took zombies and somehow made everything about them logical. The Zombie Survival Guide, while it should have been boring, is actually really fun to read. His next book, World War Z, focused on the stories of individuals during the zombie outbreak, and tells their stories from around the world. It's well written and manages to stick to the zombie logic Brooks laid out in the Survival Guide.
According to his books, zombies are the dead come back to life. They don't possess any special powers, except for the fact that they have no emotions, no fear, and never tire. They'll keep going until their bodies are simply destroyed. You have to destroy their brains to kill them, just like in most zombie stories. They shamble around because they have very little coordination, making it almost impossible for them to climb stairs, let alone run.
Now, the trailer...
Wow, those are some fast zombies. And they have some kind of stackable skill, much like little magnetic ants. I could see this being just another movie in the zombie franchise. It almost reminds of I Am Legend. The only thing is that it's based off of Max Brooks's book, which LAID OUT HOW ZOMBIES WORK! And they don't seem to be conforming at all to his rules. I know it's just make believe and all for fun, but I think we wanted to see a movie version of World War Z specifically because it followed a set of rules.
Either way, it looks like it might be fun. And again, Brad Pitt will at least bring some quality acting to the film. I'm interested to see how this one turns out.
"Hello. This is Jonah Hill".
"Hi. I'm a studio exec. You were in that movie with all the kids, right?"
"Superbad? Yeah. That's me. But recently I've been in..."
"So do you want to be in another movie with lots of toilet humour?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to get out of that image."
"We'll pay you millions of dollars, and you get to wear the same shirt you wore in all your other movies".
"Um... is there going to be at least one dick joke?"
"Sure, sure. In fact, we'll set someone's crotch on fire."
"Sign me up!"
Click the link to see what your hard earned money paid for.
Where did we come from? Were we created, or just a fluke of the universe? Did we evolve from nothing when a flash of lightning hit some random elements? Or did bald, albino body-builders sacrifice themselves to give us life? We may never know, but Prometheus is going to try to find out.
