Classic Movie Review Calendar Girl

Calendar Girl (1993) 

Directed by John Whitesell 

Written by Paul Shapiro 

Starring Jason Priestley, Jerry O'Connell, Gabriel Olds, Joe Pantoliano, Steve Railsback 

Release Date September 3rd, 1993

Published September 6th, 2023 

Three teenage creeps decide to drive up to the home of a movie star because they believe she will have sex with them if they explain that they have been fans of hers for years. That's the premise of a comedy in which these three creeps are treated like harmless scamps on an adventure. Watching the movie Calendar Girl is a bleak reminder of how much our culture has dehumanized Marilyn Monroe and normalized any and all male desires as harmless parts of being a man. I'm going to be told that I am taking this too seriously and if you're the one saying that, you should keep reading, you have a lot to learn. 

Calendar Girls stars Jason Priestley as Roy Darpinian, a troubled teenager with a distant father (Steve Railsback), who works as debt collector for the local mob. Roy is about to join the army and has only a few days before he leaves.  Roy wants to spend these last few days with his best school pals, Ned (Gabriel Olds), and Dood (Jerry O'Connell). The three pals facing down having to get started on life post-High School decide a road trip in order. That road trip just happens to be a trip to Hollywood and a stop at Marilyn Monroe's house. 

Ned, though the most bland of these three white bread dorks, is possibly the biggest creep. He carries around a bible with him wherever he goes. Nothing wrong with that except that it is not an actual bible. Rather, it's a serial killer level collage of photos and details about the life of Marilyn Monroe. So extensive is Ned's obsession with Marilyn that he has somehow located her actual home address. With no one to tell them not to, as this is a fully consequence free universe, the three friends steal a car and head to Hollywood. 

There is an old proverb about a dog chasing a car and the ultimate question: what will the dog do if he actually caught the car? This is an apt analogy for our three moronic protagonists in Calendar Girl. What do they do when they meet Marilyn Monroe? What is the ultimate goal? According to Roy, they 'Canoe' her. I'm not having a stroke here, I'm not mishearing something, that's what the character played by Jason Priestley makes very clear. He believes that he and his friends should 'Canoe' Marilyn Monroe. Those who take things literally are very confused right now. Do they want to take her on a canoe trip? No, they most assuredly do not want that. 

No, for reasons that have broken my brain since I saw this abysmal movie, to 'Canoe' is to have sex. Roy believes that these three men who have never met Marilyn Monroe should have the goal of having sex with her when they meet her. He lays out how vulnerable Marilyn is having recently been fired from a movie and having recently parted ways with husband Henry Miller. It's the perfect time for three teenage creeps to go to her house and convince her to have sex with them. And somehow, a group of people made a movie with this concept and treat this idea as if it were a wacky, good-natured, adventure. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Obsessed

Obsessed (2009) 

Directed by Steve Shill

Written by David Loughery 

Starring Beyonce, Idris Elba, Ali Larter, Bruce McGill, Jerry O'Connell 

Release Date April 23rd, 2009 

Published April 22nd, 2009 

The thriller Obsessed wants to be, needs to be a trashtastic spectacle. Instead what we get is a timid, messy, goofball effort that fails to deliver on the promise of its guilty pleasure premise. The commercials sold Beyonce vs that chick from Heroes that isn't Hayden Pannetiere. We want the catfight, we get a minor kitten tangle.

Idris Elba, who may be best known for his work on HBO's little seen but much loved drama The Wire, stars in Obsessed as Derek, a happily married executive trying to put his womanizing ways in the past. You see, his wife Sharon (Beyonce Knowles) was his assistant when they met. Now, as a married man he has a rule: No female assistants.

That rule however, has to be waived when Derek is stuck with a comely temp named Lisa. They met and  briefly, modestly flirted before Derek knew she was going to temp for him. Derek didn't think much of the flirtation but Lisa is consumed with it. It's not long before she is making excuses to get him alone and eventually making a serious play on him at the office Christmas party.

Derek turns her down at every turn but unfortunately, he kept the whole thing from his wife. When Lisa makes a dramatic move that gets the cops involved Sharon finds out and Derek's picturesque life is in shambles. Meanwhile, looming from the movie's marketing campaign is that Sharon-Lisa confrontation that is the film's selling point.

Directed by television veteran Stephen Shill, Obsessed is a surprisingly dull slog for what should be a trashy little B-movie filled with cheap thrills. It's as if Shill and company were reluctant to accept their place in the movie world. It's not that they really aspire beyond cheap thrillers but rather that they lack the commitment to be as cheap and nasty as a movie like this needs to be to be successful.

Obsessed wants desperately to match the zeitgeist capturing heights of the similarly themed 80's classic Fatal Attraction. However, it lacks the raw, visceral sexuality of that film, not to mention the utterly fearless performance of Glenn Close. Ali Larter is certainly no Glenn Close. Though quite a beauty, Larter can't Close's commitment and strange, frightening charisma.

As for pop star Beyonce, her limitations as an actress continue to show. Her face, though lovely, is a blank slate in even the most stressful of scenes. Her soundtrack contributions are filled with passion but her acting leaves a great deal to be desired. In the head to head fight with Larter we get some hair pulling and an obvious, predictable end so badly shaded in the opening scenes that you might laugh if you haven't checked out already. Dull, dimwitted and inept, Obsessed fails at the minimal goal of being a cheap thrill.

Movie Review Kangaroo Jack

Kangaroo Jack (2002) 

Directed by David McNally

Written by Steve Bing, Scott Rosenberg

Starring Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Michael Shannon, Christopher Walken 

Release Date January 17th, 2002 

Published January 19th, 2002 

Jerry Bruckheimer's attack on the American moviegoing public continues with the release of the talking kangaroo movie Kangaroo Jack. The number one movie in America on its opening weekend, Jack is yet another black eye from a Hollywood community that just doesn't care anymore. They have figured it out, we will go see anything and then see it again. There will likely be a sequel to this movie proving once and for all, this country is on crack.

One of the great things about being a film critic is going to the movies for free. Great because I save money and because I can walk out on any movie at any time and not worry about arguing with the ticket guy over a refund. The movie hasn't started and I'm already eyeing the exits.

We begin with Charlie (Jerry O' Connell) in a voiceover explaining how he met his best friend Louis Booker (Anthony Anderson). Charlie was swimming and began drowning; Louis jumped in and saved him. Twenty years later Charlie is a hairdresser with his own shop that was purchased for him by his stepfather, a mobster named Sal Maggio (Christopher Walken). Louis is a street hustler (does that stereotype bother anyone? Does it matter?) who is constantly getting them in trouble. Louis's latest scam involves a truck full of Televisions that may or may not be stolen. These two characters are brain-dead morons so it's not long till the cops are onto them. They accidentally lead the cops to one of Sal's warehouses where the "family" keeps their stolen goods.

Sal is a little upset but instead of killing Charlie and Louis, he sends them on an errand in Australia. Charlie and Louis simply have to deliver a package containing 50,000 dollars to a man named Mr. Smith. Oh but if it were that simple, there wouldn't be a movie. On the way to meet Mr. Smith, Charlie runs into a kangaroo and thinks he killed it. A clowning Louis thinks it would be funny to dress up the supposedly dead animal and take pictures of it (HAHAHAHA, actually that is funny). Louis puts his jacket and sunglasses on the Kangaroo and the animal suddenly comes back to life and hops off. Not a big deal, except that Louis left the fifty grand in the jacket.

From there, Charlie and Louis mug like morons and engage in supposedly wacky hijinks with a drunk Australian airplane pilot and a sexy wildlife expert played by model Estella Warren. I would say Warren deserves better than this but she chose to be in this movie so it's her own fault.

Where do I begin with the "what's wrong with this movie" portion of my review? What's wrong is that this movie was made at all, but that is a little too general. Do you think that Jerry Bruckheimer is, in reality, some brilliant sociologist and that his films are merely an experiment to test just how far down he can push American culture before we finally fight back? Maybe he is just searching to find the bottom of the barrel, just so he knows where it is. Forgive me, I know I'm reaching but conspiracy theories are the only way I can explain Jerry Bruckheimer without just simply calling him Satan's spawn. I was just trying to be nice.

What do you think the pitch meeting for this movie was? It was probably something like:

Idiot studio exec #1 "I think the Kangaroo should talk"

Idiot studio exec #2 "That's Brilliant, call Jerry Bruckheimer".

Christopher Walken, why are you in this movie! Walken plays a stereotypical mob boss. Meanwhile, Italians are protesting the Soprano's yet not one word in protest of the goomba stereotypes of this film.

As for Anthony Anderson's character, a black street hustler simply playing the buffoon opposite the white lead character, how does Jerry Bruckheimer get away with such a blatantly stereotypical character and the makers of Barbershop get protested?

You may wonder why I ever sat through this film if I knew it was going to suck? It's simple, this is a movie review website and at the time of this review Kangaroo Jack was the number one movie in America. If this were a straight-to-video movie, we could ignore it, but with $17 million in box office receipts, someone on this site had to see and write about and no one else was as brave or crazy as I was. (Ed. Note - emphasis on crazy)

Movie Review Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D (2010) 

Directed by Alexandre Aja 

Written by Peter Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg 

Starring Elisabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Jessica Szohr, Jerry O'Connell 

Release Date August 20th, 2010 

Published August 20th, 2010 

I don't understand the appeal of a 3D penis destroyed by flesh chomping fish. Call me a buzzkill if you wish but I cannot understand why this is funny. As for it being frightening, it's certainly frighteningly poor taste but not frightening as presented in “Piranha 3D” which is, I'm assuming, supposed to be some kind of comic send up.

I assume this is comedy because the audience I watched it with were laughing far more than they were covering their eyes or ducking their heads to the shoulder of their dates. This audience cackled at the penis eating scene and roared approval during the underwater, nude, lesbian synchronized swimming scene. They roared again during the centerpiece gore-athon in the lake when the Piranha's swarmed the spring breakers leaving behind boney carcasses. I was left perplexed and a little depressed.

A lake that is home to a Sodom and Gomorrah of Spring Break debauchery is hit with a massive earthquake just before the partygoers arrive. The quake opens a crevasse that had been sealed for millions of years. Inside is a fully evolved and deadly species of Piranha seeking to quench a million years worth of bloodlust.

On land Sheriff Julie Forrester (Elisabeth Shue) and her top deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) are readying for the arrival of drunken revelers when they get a call about a missing fisherman (Richard Dreyfuss). As we have seen in the film's opening minutes, the fisherman was the first victim of the piranhas and when the cops find him well, they catch on quicker than your usual movie cops.

Opting to try and close the lake, they also call in a team of scientists lead by Novak (Adam Scott). The scientists are the ones who find the piranhas, but not before two of them are turned into piranha food. The closing of the lake meanwhile isn't happening as the tiny police force are no match for the drunken partiers about to become Piranha meat.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Julie's son Jake (Steven R. McQueen) takes a job as an assistant to Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell) the creator of Wild Wild Girls. Derrick plans on filming girls taking their tops off and even tries to recruit Jake's crush Kelly (Jessica Szohr) to star alongside his protégé Danni (Kelly Brook) in his latest video, much to Jake's consternation. Naturally, all will end up face to face with piranhas, who survives and who has their penis torn off I will leave you to discover.

It's supposed to be camp right? Kitschy, over the top, Herschel Gordon Lewis, Roger Corman stuff right? I get that, I do. But, as directed by Alexandre Aja with a surprising amount of skill and directorial touch, I found “Piranha 3D” more in poor taste than campy and fun. I know, it's supposed to be in poor taste and I understand that appeals to some but I have a hard time enjoying this type of bad taste.

There is something nihilistic about the approach to the gore of “Piranha 3D.” Directors like Alexandre Aja and his protégé Eli Roth, who has a cameo in “Piranha 3D” as a wet T-shirt contest host, enjoy their violence and gore so much that the humans lose their value. Aja has the wrong kind of rooting interest at heart in each of his films. Rather than placing a good person in peril and asking the audience to root for their survival, Aja crafts awful human beings for the purpose of watching them be comically destroyed. It's ugly and brutal and I fear for those who find this kind of thing appeal. 

This is an ugly, inhuman perspective that I find impossible to get behind. I find the approach depressing and the enjoyment that so many seem to take in the destruction of their fellow man, no matter how fake or outsized it may be, just makes me sad. Say what you will about the quality of movies like “Halloween” or the original “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the characters mattered in each of those films, especially those played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Heather Langenkamp who always had our sympathies and were held above the evil they faced. 

When those films became hits and “Friday the 13th” started showing off Jason, things began to turn. When Freddy, Michael Myers and Jason became the stars, horror began to change and the rooting interests turned ugly. That leads us to where we are today with people cheering for human suffering, rooting for the gore and delighting in the degradation.

Yes, it's just an over the top horror film. Yes, it's not at all realistic. If that’s enough excuse for you to delight in watching people shredded limb from limb then enjoy. Just don’t ask me to join you. I’m going to find a movie where characters are held above their use as gory props and sex toys. By the way, if this is your kind of movie, I don’t think you and I should hang out. Just saying.