Classic Movie Review: Loaded Weapon 1

Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) 

Directed by Gene Quintano

Written by Gene Quintano, Don Holley 

Starring Emilio Estevez, Samuel L. Jackson, Kathy Ireland, Whoopi Goldberg 

Release Date February 5th, 1993

Published February 6th, 2023 

On the new Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast Spinoff, Everyone's a Critic 1993, myself and my co-hosts, Amy K, and M.J, watch movies that were released 30 years ago that week. One movie per week and the month of January 1993 was truly awful. It was a miserable time for movies. Leprechaun was mildly entertaining but certainly not great. Body of Evidence was downright traumatizing in how sleazy it was, and Hexed, starring Arye Gross, is among the worst movies Hollywood has produced in the last 30 years. 

Thus far, the best movie we've watched is another of the worst of all time. Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice is one of the great hidden gems of the So-Bad-Its-Good pantheon. It's one of the best unintentionally funny movies I've ever had the pleasure of watching. But, the pleasure is tinged with it being a solely ironic appreciation. In the first month of the new podcast, we have not seen a single good movie. February changed things immediately. 

On the first weekend of February, 1993, Hollywood managed to finally release a good movie. National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 stars Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson in a Naked Gun style spoof of the Lethal Weapon movies. This might sound like a tired idea but the reality is that Loaded Weapon 1 is a hidden gem, an oasis of genuinely funny comedy in a sea of terrible movies of the early 1990s. Before the Scary Movie franchise ruined parody movies seemingly for the rest of time, Loaded Weapon 1 stuck to the basics of the spoof genre and created a forgotten classic. 

The plot of Lethal Weapon 1 is brilliantly silly. William Shatner plays General Mortars, a former Army General turned drug kingpin. For reasons that are ingeniously silly, he needs a piece of micro-film to help him turn Cocaine into Girl Scout Cookies that he can distribute via a subsidiary of the Girl Scouts, headed up by Kathy Ireland as Miss Destiny Demeanor. Tim Curry co-stars as the General's right hand man and right away, from the introduction of Curry as Mr. Jigsaw, you get a sense of the wonderful silliness at play. 

A girl scout gets out of a van and begins skipping towards the door of a suburban home. Just before knocking, she stubs out a cigarette. The home is a safe house where an ex-cop, played by Whoopi Goldberg is hiding out. When she finally opens here series of comical front doors and locks, we see Curry dressed as a Girl Scout and speaking with a thick, Middle-European accent. Deadpan, Goldberg invites him in so she can buy cookies and ends up dead. The back and forth in this scene is wonderfully silly and sets a terrific tone for the rest of Loaded Weapon 1. 

From there we will unite our Riggs and Murtagh characters, Emilio Estevez as the haunted and suicidal detective with nothing to lose, Sgt. Jack Colt, and family man detective, on the day before his retirement, Sgt. Wes Luger. Luger also has a tragic backstory where he nearly killed his partner and has since been unable to shoot a gun without shaking uncontrollably, a bit that pays off multiple times in Loaded Weapon 1. Each gag is better than the last. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: American Psycho 2: All American Girl

American Psycho 2: All American Girl (2002) 

Directed by Morgan J. Freeman

Written by Karen Craig, Alex Sanger 

Starring Mila Kunis, William Shatner, Lindy Booth 

Release Date June 18th, 2002 

Published June 18th, 2002 

Bret Easton Ellis is one twisted SOB. His novel American Psycho, adapted for the screen in 2000 starring Christian Bale, is a twisted pop culture salad of axe murders and pop references to Huey Lewis and the News, Genesis and Whitney Houston. The film version, while not as good as the book (they never are,) benefited from having a stellar indie cast including Bale, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon and Chloe Sevigny. 

The sequel, on the other hand, has William Shatner. 

The sequel’s connection to the original is so insignificant that I need not mention it, let's just say it provides the lead with her very thin motivation. The lead in American Psycho 2 is “That 70's Show's” Mila Kunis. As Rachael Newman, Kunis is a psychotically ambitious college student hell-bent on getting a teacher’s assistant job that will almost guarantee her getting into the FBI. The teacher, Robert Starkman (Shatner), is a former FBI agent who's final case was the Bateman killings, which remain unsolved. Standing in Rachael's way are 3 students so insignificantly painted that I need not describe them. Needless to say they are easily dispatched. 

For some inconceivable reason Rachael decides to see a psychiatrist in the middle of her killing spree. She isn't there to confess, but rather to provide clues so that later on the psychiatrist played by Garant Wyn Davies can be the hero and try to solve the crime. Whether he solves it or not I won't say, though it doesn't really matter. By the end of American Psycho 2 the whole thing is so superfluous and the mystery so ridiculous you couldn't force yourself to care. 

Kunis is badly miscast. She lacks the menacing sexuality of a Rose McGowan or the pop culture bitch cred of a Shannen Doherty, both of whom might have made for a more interesting film. The original American Psycho was an amalgam of pop culture and psychotic ax wielding, especially memorable was Bateman's dispatching of a victim while extolling the virtues of Huey Lewis & the News as “Hip To Be Square” played in the background. The sequel has none of that flair. It is essentially just a slasher movie and a bit of ripoff. 

Does anyone recall the movie Getting In with Kristy Swanson and Matthew Perry? Same idea, psycho killer taking out the competition for a coveted scholarship. Sequels are usually bad enough without being a ripoff.