On the Movie Bum: Oh My God, this is the Greatest blog post I've ever read in my life!

On the Movie Bum

            “Oh My God, this is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen in my life!” If you know where this line comes from, then give yourself a cookie. You’ve officially spent waaaaaay too much time on the internet.

            If you haven’t, then let me tell you about great the Chester “the Movie Bum” A. Bum. A creation of Nostalgia critic and generally awesome guy That Guy With the Glasses, the Movie Bum does pseudo reviews of that are currently out in theaters. And before you ask, yes he begins each and every single one of his reviews in this manner. Yes, even the Twilight flicks. Now this schtick has two very effective catches: one is the aforementioned fact that he’s a Bum, meaning the occasional homelessness joke, which come off as slightly offensive, but I tend to let them slide, seeing as how they don’t come from a place that’s too mean spirited. The second is that as he explains the movie, he himself tends to notice the flaws with said movie.

            Now that second part, not the first, is what I feel like is the main joke of the series. While the whole Bum thing is rather hilarious, I feel like it’s more like icing on the cake for that second joke.

            Now, most reviewers probably aren’t particularly effected by something like this, but something about viewing a movie in a movie theatre, especially a major blockbusters, make them all the better the moment. Things like plot holes the size of a house (see Promethius) or scenes that should make you face palm so hard, you break your jaw bone (see Spiderman 3) tend to get lost in the background noise of all that surround sound and a screen a story high.

            What I’m getting at is that Bum reviews pretty much summarizes the movie going experience of the average schlub (myself included). At first, he or she thinks “that was fucking awesome” and then he or she realizes, whether it be in middle of the night getting a drink or explaining to friends later “that movie made no sense whatsoever” or “that movie sucked ass,” followed by the inevitable “why did I ever think that was a good movie.”

            I don’t know about you, fair reader, but I can assure you from experience that I’ve certainly had this experience. I remember watching the aforementioned third Spiderman movie and thinking it was the greatest movie ever, only to realize it sucked later on. Even more recently, I saw World War Z in theatres (I really regret not watching Pacific Rim, but that’s a story for another post), and I can’t help but think that it was the zombie apocalypse that everyone wanted to see: zombies everywhere and we get to see what it’s like for the world to be overrun by them. On reflection, however, I realize that this has been done before, albeit with less UN bullcrap and much more symbolic weight (see Walking Dead, the videogame at least, or any classic Romero Zombie movie).

That’s all I got for now. This is Opinionated A Schlub saying: change! You got change? Aw, c’mon help a guy out! Change?

On the Room: You're Tearing Me Apart, Internet.

Well, new year, new me, or something like that. I suppose now would’ve been as good a time as any to mention the fact that I would’ve been much more focused on this blog  this past winter break, however something came up, and that something was Skyrim. I tell you, to quote Morgan Webb, that game is kinda, sorta a way of life. If most other games could be described as something akin to a dime bag full of cocaine, then Skyrim is a gallon-sized bag of meth handmade by Walter White himself. I would currently be playing it right now if not for the nice little ring around game’s disk like a circular reminder from Microsoft that they’re getting away with releasing a shitty console which they didn’t even bother to fix later on because Microsoft would rather sell out to Apple then improve their products. Sorry, I just had to do that. I was just having more fun than freight train full of monkeys, but microsoft’s shitty hardware just had derail my train, didn’t they?

            I suppose there is one main silver lining to this mother of a storm cloud. Mainly that I’m finally being productive… ish anyway. Getting back on topic, I figure the best way to celebrate the new year would be with a review of a movie that the internet cannot shut up about, and what can I say, seeing as how that particular horse is pretty much hamburger meat, I figure now’s as good a time as any to jump on the bandwagon.

            Made all the way back in 2003, this Tommy Wiseau gem is a classic in terrible film making. The film stars Tommy Wiseau as himself Johnny, just an average, all-American guy who has an accent like every other European accent got sick and all threw up in the same bucket and who’s definition of sex is rubbing his junk against his girlfriend’s navel (there's no link, but just take my word for it). He’s engaged to Lisa, who acts in a manner which can only be described as consistent of what your average conservative, right wing white guy likes to think sexually liberated women are like minus the lesbianism. Lisa’s finagling Johnny’s best friend Mark, who seems to react to marijuana in a manner consistent with how someone would react to marijuana in Reefer Madness, serves as the primary motivation for this Lifetime crackbaby. Along the way, Johnny is joined by Denny, a creepy fucker who has no problem telling his friend and financial provider that he has sexual fantasies involving his fiancée and who got into trouble with “drugs,” Lisa’s mother who seems to get her gender dynamics from the victorian era and who seems to have gone into remission for lung cancer over the course of a week, and several characters who show up at random without any discussion or implication whatsoever. 

       To summarize, imagine “Anchorman” except the humor is unintentional, they were trying to copy Lifetime and the entire production was produced by a martian.

            If the above description makes the movie sound terribly stupid, then let me tell you, one short simple summary could not adequately describe how much this movie get’s wrong. I’m sure you’ve seen bits and pieces on youtube if you’re fairly internet savvy from the likes of the Nostalgia Critic and Cinema Sins, let assure that those are just the tip of the weirdness iceberg. Hell, Cinema Sins took only eight minutes to describe everything to describe what was wrong this movie. I’m not sure how long it would take to describe this movie, but I assure it wouldn’t take eight friggen minutes. Hell, I’m pretty sure that it would take longer than the running time of the film itself to describe how bad this movie is. That being said, this is my blog, so I figure I might as well cover one or two observations that seem to be absent from most sources:

• ·      Throughout the movie, the characters go “cheep-cheep-cheep” to make chicken sounds. I’m sorry, what is this? Arrested Development? What the hell kind of chicken goes “cheep” that isn’t newly hatched.
• ·      I’m pretty sure that I’ve figured out the point of Denny’s character in this train wreck of a picture. He is Johnny’s creepiness foil. Whenever Johnny’s character does something weird, Denny does something even creepier just to make Johnny's hokey accent sound normal.

Now, mind you, this list isn’t exactly completely, mind you, so if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.