Children of the ’80s ain’t a hard sell
March 6, 2010
I don’t want to come off harsh, but Hollywood has pretty much ruined everything I held sacred and full of awesomeness when I was young. It’s as if there’s a thirty-something speaking to the producers of every major movie studio and telling them: “Here’s what my generation thought was cool. Ruin it anyway you want, cause they’ll still eat it up like Fun Dip.”
Let’s view the tape, in no particular order:
1. Transformers. While the first one was alright, the second movie was in every way the suck. It’s like Michael Bay was given a dumpster full of C-4 and a script written by a racist 8-year-old and told to go out and have fun. Alas, people ate it up despite more plot holes than Space Mutiny and character development than can only be called…enough with the metaphors – there are no characters in Transformers. There is only CGI and explosions. Great for a Disney movie meant for tweens with no appreciation for good film; bad for everyone else.
2. GI Joe. I didn’t even see this film because I knew I would get more out of the four cups of coffee I could buy for the price of a ticket. What tipped me to the scent of film crap? How about the typical Marlon Wayans joke-a-thon, which is fine for, say, a Wayans brothers comedy, but not so pleasant in a film that’s supposed to revive my adolescent love of “fighting for freedom”. How about show a little action without peppering it with low-brow jokes every ten seconds. Sure, humor covers the scent of crap, but only ’til it hits DVD and sells a dozen copies.
3. A-Team. I don’t care who’s starring as who: it’s gonna suck. Why? Because it has a captive audience – us ’80s kids wanting the adventure with Hannibal and the boys to continue. It’ll suck because it can. Because it doesn’t have to not suck. I foresee another long line of jokes and explosions with so little substance that you don’t know what to tell your fellow 30-something when they ask: “Was it awesome?” You don’t want to say “No, it sucked” because then you’re saying the A-Team sucked, which is blasphemy.
So, let me end this rant by saying that if you, too, are an ’80s brat and want fewer movies surrounding our childhood to suck, then do us all a favor and don’t pay for a ticket to a trash movie. It’s the age of DVD everything. Go and buy the A-Team series on disk, or find old GI Joe episodes and make something cool and clever with them, like the mashups of old GI Joe PSAs. Give the original writers and artists behind Thundercats and Wheeled Warriors some cred.
Just don’t come runnin’ to Hollywood looking for an extension on your lease on the ’80s, cause all they’re selling is a perversion of our memories.
Transformers with balls….Jesus!





Having recently seen the original Last House on the Left, I thought it right to check out the new version that’s just come out on DVD. With a strong cast, I thought it likely that at least the acting would prove solid, and the new Last House doesn’t disappoint. But what about the horror? Is it as disturbing as the original? In two words: Not really. But the new Last House has its own virtues that are worth noting.
This week’s new-to-DVD review received a tepid reception in theaters, which was largely why I waited for The International with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts to hit DVD. The gist is that Interpol and the New York City DA’s office seek to bring down an international bank involved in small-arms deals in the middle east.
Who wouldn’t want to see Gerard Butler getting really pissed and wreaking havoc like Leonidas in 300? So I felt a little predisposed to enjoy in-theaters Law Abiding Citizen, and a solid 7.3 out of 10 stars on
I went into in-theaters Paranormal Activity with pretty high expectations. I’d heard “it’s the scariest movie ever” and the 7.6 rating (which was 8.2 a couple of days ago) didn’t hurt matters, either.
This throwback flick hits all of the staples of great ’80s action cinema. There’s the salty cop who treats gunshot wounds as a minor annoyance when “bagging his man” instead of as a medical emergency. There’s fast cars driven by coked-out yuppies with the sleeves of their jackets pushed to the elbow. There’s a strip club scene, with background hoot and hollers from nowhere (seemingly the equivalent to the laugh track in strip club scenes).
When Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers, critics went so far as to call him a fascist for his societal representations in the book. There were no prisons: administrative punishment was whipping in the public square. Heinlein conveyed the ideology behind this by comparing punishing people to training a dog. Not something most people react well to when the idea is presented.