Thursday, November 17, 2016

Neither of These Deserved Their Own Post

Alex' housemate rented two other movies last weekend. I didn't have any interest in Sausage Party, but circumstances left me stuck in the house for several hours on Saturday, so I couldn't avoid overhearing the movie.

The question is whether you think the idea that hot dogs and buns can be presented as a metaphor for sex is funny or not. If you do, here you go. If you don't, this could get old fast. To be fair, there was one thing I laughed at. In the scene where Frank learns the truth about the origin of the song all the food sings each morning, its creators explain how disturbed they are by how the song has been distorted over time. One of the creators says, 'I heard something in there this morning about, 'God hates Juice?' I love Juice. Always have.' I laughed at that, because jokes about how awful organized religions can be are my speed. No surprise there.

But a lot of the characters are set up as stereotypes of the cultures they're associated with. So the bagel is the Woody Allen-style Jewish character. There's a bottle of whiskey from a brand called Firewater, which is some Native American shaman/wise man type. Lotta stuff like that, if that makes a difference to you. Wasn't really my thing.

Then there was The Monster. Which is supposed to be a horror film, except the real monster is alcoholism. A woman is taking her daughter to her ex-husband's when their car gets broken in the middle of nowhere at night. Eventually other people start showing up, and the monster emerges to start killing them. In between, there's plenty of time for flashbacks to how terrible of a mother she's been, and oh, she tries, but she doesn't have any support for dealing with her problems, and she lashes out, and keeps fucking and. . . Look, I wanted to see a horror movie, this is boring as hell. You want me to stay awake at 4 in the morning, you have to be interesting.

And the monster looks like some reject from a '50s horror film. I think they were trying for on par with some of the stuff in John Carpenter's The Thing, but instead wound up closer to the "actor in foam rubber" look. I don't understand what it was up to. It kept killing things, but it was really inefficient about eating them. It tears a tow truck driver's arm off, then lobs it out of the woods onto the hood of their car, but lets the driver drag himself all the way back to his truck before grabbing him from underneath the truck? And it could have eaten the little girl at one point, but didn't even touch her?

It was a mess, and we gave up on it shortly after the attempt to escape in the ambulance was thwarted.

2 comments:

SallyP said...

I actually have a weird affection for really terrible movies... but only the ones that are hilariously bad. These don't sound as though they fit that criteria.

CalvinPitt said...

I wouldn't say they did. The Monster had the potential, but it was bogged down with all that serious stuff about alcoholism.