Guilty Pleasures

In case you haven’t noticed I’m a huge fan of movies. Love’em. And I’m not one of those elitists who thinks I’m special for knowing about a good movie that no one else does. In fact when I know about a relatively unknown movie that I think someone will love, I pimp the hell out of it. Well it recently occurred to me that a few of my favorite under appreciated comedies have been getting a lot of air play on cable channels recently, so for no particular reason I figured I’d do some brief promotions for them. NOTE: These are turn off your brain, guilty pleasure comedies so don’t read on with high expectations.

Out Cold
Main man Rick falls in love with a French girl, she vanishes, his heart’s broken, years later she shows up in his bar where she tells him that she left because she was already involved with someone all those years ago. No I am not just describing Casablanca, this is indeed the main plot for Out Cold, a snowboarding movie filled with references to my all time favorite film, Casablanca. Except instead of Nazis the bad guy is the Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors. It’s just a fun movie about a group of friends who found a life that makes them happy and then suddenly that life gets interrupted. If you haven’t seen Casablanca, watch that first then enjoy just how clever Out Cold despite being formulaic.

Great Line - Rick: Pig Pen, when I want advice about a good Planet of the Apes film or maybe how to get the resin out of my bong I'll come to you, ok? But I am not gonna take romantic advice from somebody who cannot spell “romantic” or “advice”... or “bong”.

Grandma’s Boy
I was sitting around with about two hours to kill before work one day, and I had two movies to choose from: Munich with a running time of approx. 160 minutes, and Grandma’s Boy with a running time of approx. 80 minutes. Grandma’s Boy wins.

Whoever promoted this movie should be banned from ever working in the movie business on any level ever again. No I take that back, this person should be forced to be Andy Dick’s personal assistant for the rest of his/her life. All of the commercials just make it look like it’s about a guy who lives with his grandmother and throws a big party. In reality it’s about video game programmers (though the main character does live with his grandmother due to being evicted from his apartment because his roommate likes the whores) having fun. This is shut off your brain comedy at its best and it’s about freakin’ video game programmers. While not a huge market demographic it’s certainly untapped. Again, Andy Dick’s personal assistant.

Great Line - Dante: I’m way too baked to drive to the devil’s house.

Undercover Brother
I believe the main thing that held this back from being bigger than it should be is that at first glance people probably think, “Oh, another movie by black people making fun of white people.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact I would say they make fun of black stereotypes but it’s done in a way that says, “we have to stop taking ourselves so seriously.” Sort of like friends just riffing on each other. Highlights include: Dave Chapelle as Conspiracy Brother, a stoner who comes up with outrageous conspiracy theories, Neil Patrick Harris as the only white guy working for The Brotherhood due to Affirmative Action, Billy Dee Williams somehow not laughing as Chris Kattan dances like an idiot in front of him, and of course my favorite, a very, very Funk heavy sound track. And every time I watch the seen where Denise Richards is introduced as Black Man’s Kryptonite, I laugh harder because when watching this with some friends, one of them who is black said, “Hey,” then stopped himself, hung his head and finished with, “ok, yeah, they’re right.”

Great Line - Conspiracy Brother: Jesus Christ; black man. Babe Ruth; black man. Madonna;... slept with black men.

Josie and the Pussycats
I’ll give you a moment to recover from the confusion over my recomending Josie and the Pussycats. All better? Good.

Easily the most under rated comedy on my list, JatP while another very formulaic movie, is also quite clever. Poking fun at the pop music industry while at the same time not being preachy, not taking itself seriously, and having a ridiculous amount of fun. Even Tara Reid is tolerable, possibly because she plays an idiot but I try not to read into that too much. And on top of that it has a pretty solid soundtrack, and I’m not a fan of pop rock, of course that may be helped because of vocals provided by Kay Hanley from Letters to Cleo, and she has a great voice. Seriously though, some of the lyric structures are ridiculously good. And if nothing else the DVD should be rented by all to watch the Du Jour video. Du Jour being a boy band composed of Seth Green, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, and Alex Martin (don't worry, I don’t know who he is either).

Great Line - Josie McCoy: Puppies grow into dogs that get old and DIE!

Grizzly Man
You read that right. This is the most unintentionally funny movie I’ve ever seen. A documentary about a completely delusional ex-actor (read: failed actor) who moved up to Alaska to protect its bear population. And the area he’s protecting? Well it’s already a nature preserve for the bears. And what does he know about bears? They’re big and furry. Seriously, I know more about bears than this guy. I can not put into words how crazy the man (Timothy Treadwell) is, you really must see it for yourself. Now it is possible that Werner Herzog (the director who completed the project) actually put this documentary together to show just how far a man can fall psychologically but just billed it as a documentary the highlight Timothy’s life. If so, kudos to him for pulling it off.

Great Line - Sam Egli: That bear, I think, that day, decided that he had either had enough of Tim Treadwell or that something clicked in that bear's head that he thought 'Hey, you know, he might be good to eat.'