Waxwork II: Lost in Time

Quick, what movie features a murderous disembodied hand, zombies, buckets of blood, possession, projectile organs, time travel, and Bruce Campbell getting tortured? No, not Evil Dead II…Waxwork II: Lost in Time!

Picking up immediately where the first Waxwork left off, Mark Loftmore (still Zach Galligan) and Sarah Brightman (replaced by the considerably hotter Monika Schnarre) attempt to return to their normal lives. Sarah creeps back to her abusive stepfather's home where he berates her for ruining her dress. After she goes to bed, the zombie hand (also from the first film) murders the abusive stepfather because…let's face it, he had it coming.

In the typical Waxwork aside into "that makes perfect sense" territory, Sarah is blamed for her stepfather's murder, claims about murderous zombie hands not withstanding. She will likely be condemned to death unless she can prove her innocence. And that's where any semblance of realism ends, because Sarah and Mark concoct a scheme to find ANOTHER zombie hand by traveling backwards in time through a magic mirror. Because of course, that's where zombie hands hang out, right?

Waxwork II is of course not about time travel at all. It's about whatever the director (Anthony Hickox) feels like parodying, beginning with Frankenstein, alternating between Alien and The Haunting, and then throwing in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Godzilla, Jack the Ripper, Nosferatu, and Dawn of the Dead for good measure. And oh yes, a long fantasy sequence that has nothing to do with anything.

Waxwork II establishes a couple of things: They are NOT time traveling, but more dimension traveling, or perhaps film hopping. Mark and Sarah have stumbled into the world of Cartagra, "God's video game," as Sir Wilfred explains – in the form of a crow (it's complicated). Cartagra is a universe where good and evil duke it out for supremacy, apparently in the form of movie plots. Mark and Sarah are now Time Warriors, inhabiting the protagonist roles of each movie and ensuring the good guys win. Or something like that.

It is also a different form of dimension hopping than the pocket dimensions seen in the first movie. When Mark, facing down Igor the hunchback, attempts to disbelieve, he gets socked in the face for his trouble.

It's clear that Hickox a real fondness for all things Evil Dead and for swashbuckling romance. He has his cake and eats it too here (like he did in the first film) by including a long fantasy sequence involving what must be the first sword fight across movie genres. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

FRANKENSTEIN: Mark manifests as the butler, while Sarah is Frankenstein's wife. They are caught in the moment when villagers are about to set the place on fire. It takes awhile for Sarah to remember her true nature, during which time Mark battles it out with Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein's Monster, Igor, and angry villagers. Using a weird compass he found amongst his uncle's belongings, Mark can usually find the exit out of each movie by running in that direction, regardless of all apparent obstacles. Once he figures this out, Mark and Sarah are split up as they escape…

THE HAUNTING: Filmed in black and white, it's clear Hickox is a fan of The Haunting. And so is Marina Sirtis, collecting a paycheck. But the biggest winner here is Bruce Campbell in a hilarious series of slapstick. This is the funniest part of the movie. It's also the most overt homage to Evil Dead.

ALIEN: Sarah has taken on the role of Ripley. She faces down a giant Alien-rip-off – literally, the Aliens look terrible, with huge, lumbering heads. The Facehugger-equivalents are much more disturbing, with tentacles probing orifices. This scene drags on far too long, seeking to emulate the terrible silences and long pauses in Alien. Fortunately, Mark shows up and ends the madness just in time.

RANDOM FANTASY SETTING: Hickox may be a fan of horror movies, but what he really wants to do is write a swashbuckling romance. So stuck in the middle of the rest of the horror homage is this sloppy collection of Monty Python jokes, subpar special effects, and confusing elements. The best part is George (Michael Des Barres), a powdered, effeminate dandy who isn't afraid to murder people with a garrote. There are some laugh-out-loud jokes here, but they don't save the piece. Oh and David Carradine (?). There's also the aforementioned appearance of the talking crow, which is in fact Sir Wilfred reincarnated. His appearance presages a huge exposition dump explaining Cartagra. No matter, all is forgiven as Mark engages in a no-holds-barred sword fight with the villain, Scarabis (Alexander Godunoy) across the universe. In no particular order, their cross-dimensional brawl leads them to…

GODZILLA: A giant, poorly made puppet. The most hilarious part being that Mark is badly dubbed in English.

JACK THE RIPPER: Okay, not really a movie per se. Poor Jack gets kicked into…

NOSFERATU: Silent and with intertitles, Hickox nails the entire feel of a silent movie. And we get to see Nosferatu gnash his teeth after The Ripper.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS: Sarah takes a sneak peak at people running from a train. And alien pods.

DAWN OF THE DEAD: 1970s style attire, a funky beat, and a bunch of people bristling with guns shooting at zombies in a mall. It also conveniently provides a disembodied zombie hand, that flimsy "evidence" our heroes were looking for.

The swordfight ends back in Fantasy-land, but only one person can go back through the portal. Mark pushes Sarah through.

Sarah, with evidence of a zombie hand CLEARLY confirming her innocence, receives a note from Mark in the "past", attempting to establish that he was indeed time traveling. Yeah, right.

And the lovers are reunited. Eventually. The End.

Cue a gonzo song about the film, complete with rap lyrics that narrate the entire ridiculous story and 1980s style dancers.

Less horror and more a tribute to films Hickox happens to like, Waxwork II never seems to make up its mind as to what film it wants to be when it grows up. But that's part of its charm.

Futurama: Bender's Game

I'm the target audience for Bender's Game. A lifelong gamer of over two decades (yeeck, I'm getting old), I also know and love the book by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. With the title alone, the Futurama writing staff is clearly letting me know this is the movie for me.

Bender's Game starts promising, with jokes about the rising cost of fuel prices. There's also a sly joke about Leela's anger issues, which are controlled by a shock collar. A shock collar Leela starts to find ... titillating. Just when things get interesting and this plot point could turn into something awkward and funny, it's dropped.

Bender discovers that he has no imagination and, aggravated that he can't participate in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, flips out Mazes & Monsters-style, renaming himself Titanius and wandering the sewers. He then gets sent to the HAL institute, Arkham Asylum for robots. This plot point is pursued to a point and then dropped.

Meanwhile, Mom (that's her name) has been controlling dark matter prices for years, but there is a means of invalidating her stranglehold on fuel prices. Professor Farnsworth accidentally invented "anti-backwards matter" which, should it ever encounter dark matter, would render dark matter useless. It just so happens that this anti-backwards matter is a 12-sided die. Hilarious, right?

As our lovable misfits build towards a confrontation with Mom and her Killbot goons, reality shifts and suddenly everyone's in a parallel fantasy dimension. And then we get, in descending order of comedic value: D&D jokes, Greek myth jokes, Lord of the Rings jokes, Star Wars jokes, Call of Cthulhu jokes, and did I mention the Lord of the Rings jokes?

There's actually more interesting material on the extras, covering all the allusions to D&D that have appeared in Futurama and confirming that the guys who write the show are hopeless geeks themselves. Unfortunately, they're not really boosting their own geek cred with this movie.

Look, I love Futurama and I love D&D. But this movie is all over the place, using tired, easy jokes for fantasy. I always identified Futurama as a series of in-jokes for sci-fi and tech geeks, which is a much broader category than fantasy gamers. The bizarre diversion into the fantasy realm isn't well thought out, isn't particularly funny, and not all that interesting.

Sorry guys. This is one D&D adventure that doesn't give out nearly as much XP as it should.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

I was already unhappy with the first Futurama movie, so I didn't have much hope for the second. I was surprised to see that this installment of Futurama is actually two awkward subplots mashed together: Lovecraftian horror for the first half, and a meditation on religion on the second half.

On the Lovecraftian side, throw in tentacle attacks, slimy ancient gods from beyond time and space, and the nihilistic view that Heaven is a fabrication and you've got a pretty depressing, semi-creepy, not really all that funny first half. Bender finally makes good on his threat to destroy all humans, Fry conveniently forgets his entire relationship with Leela, the Robot Devil shows up for a one-note gag ... I could go on but I'll stop there.

Judging by the reviews so far, the second half went over a lot of peoples' heads. Yivo is a parody of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is itself a parody of religion. Basically, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a mental construct posed to challenge the notion of a divine being; if you can disprove that the Spaghetti Monster was responsible you win the argument. "Win" being a pretty subjective word, as anyone knows who has argued about religion or politics.

As one big joke about relationships and religion, Beast With a Billion Backs works pretty well. But for reasons known only to the writers, the plot shambles forward well beyond the Big Revelation by Leela about Yivo, the aforementioned Spaghetti Monster. It's like the drunk guy at a party who tells a joke, discovers no one thinks it's funny, then tells it in a slightly different way that STILL doesn't make it funny. We get it: relationships with people can be just as ridiculous as relationships with God. But this is Futurama, and while I appreciate the depth of meaning the show strives for with this movie, it feels forced. A multitude of guest appearances doesn't make up for it.

Still, I can't be too harsh on Futurama. You won't find many animated shows that are willing to take on topics like relationships and religion at the same time, so Futurama gets points for trying. I just wish it didn't try so hard.

Futurama - Bender's Big Score

When Futurama first came out, I was convinced it would never last. Unlike the Simpsons, Futurama makes you feel a bit like a moron when you watch it, with perpetual in-jokes to science fiction and fact that you may only catch years later. To my delight, Futurama had a very successful run.

One of the last episodes involved the Robot Devil, a favorite character of mine, and the burgeoning romantic subplot between Fry and Leela. Fry, having traded his hands in for the Robot Devil's hands so that he could play the hypnoflute ultimately has to give the hands back and the episode ends with a sweet but sad little tune imagining Fry and Leela together. Filled with clever banter, excellent music and choreography, plot twists, and a bittersweet ending, this was Futurama at its finest.

Bender's Big Score is not Futurama at its finest. All of those plots have been discarded.

Mind you, it's not bad. It's just not fantastic. Bender's Big Score is a series of muddled plot points, pointless cameos, and a lot of "hey, look, we gave you what you wanted!" fan service. It's great to have a DVD comeback of a great show, but I expected better from a feature-length movie. I mean, Internet scams? That's so ten years ago!

That said, I'm a huge fan of Hypnotoad. Twenty minutes of Hypnotoad. TWENTY. MINUTES. That's right, twenty glorious minutes of HYPNOTOAD. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!

So for that, it gets an extra star. But only because Hypnotoad compels me.

Bad Taste

Peter Jackson is best known for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, but a long time ago he made his own cult film: Bad Taste. Watching it is a bit of cinema history, in the same way that watching The Evil Dead series is a prelude to Sam Raimi's later work. This whole movie reminds me of a role-playing game session from my high school days, where game masters and players made things up as they went along.

The first thing you notice is that Bad Taste is well, bad. The film and audio quality is terrible. The accents are a bit difficult to understand for Americans. One of the characters, Derek, appears to be mentally ill. And yet there's a certain rough charm to the whole thing.

The plot, such as it is, involves a crack team of government agents who work for the Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIDS) sent to investigate the disappearance of the citizens of Kaihoro, New Zealand. Your reaction to the in-joke name of the agency will dictate whether you find Bad Taste to be hilarious or stupid. An agency with an acronym like AIDS is something my high school buddies might dream up on a whim.

The AIDS strike force consists of Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Peter O'Herne), Frank (Mike Minett), and the aforementioned Derek. They stumble onto an alien race of merchants who know all about "how to serve man," and not the butler kind of service. The film begins with the capture of one of the aliens, Robert (Peter Jackson), who is held captive by hanging him over the edge of a cliff by his ankle. While Barry explores the ghost town, Derek decides to torture the leader for information by stabbing him in the foot. This ultimately leads to the other aliens coming to the rescue, Robert escaping, and Derek falling off a cliff to his supposed death.

"Wait, Derek died?" asks Derek's player.

"Yeah," says the GM. "You had a good fight there with the alien sledgehammers but you slipped off the cliff."

"But," whines the player, "I was just getting started! You can't kill Derek off like that!"

"Okay, fine. Derek lands on seagull eggs and only some of his brain falls out, but he's still alive. Now he's crazy as a loon."

"Great! I stuff his brains back into his skull and keep going..."

In comes Giles player. "Hey guys. Is it too late to play?"

"Nah," says the GM. "You're a collector whose come to Kaihoro to collect. And the aliens abduct you and toss you in a stew!"

"Oh, great..."

Bad Taste pretty much devolves from there, leading to Derek attacking people with a chainsaw, Ozzy and Frank firing rocket-launchers at the aliens, and the aliens themselves turning out to be shoulder- and butt-padded monstrosities who can barely run much less pose a threat to anybody. It all ends with a house flying into space.

Bad Taste veers from thrilling action to long, boring pans of characters walking from Point A to Point B. There are random gags (most of them involving slipping on some form of excrement), over-the-top violence ranging from organs being stuffed into places to drinking someone else's vomit, and plenty of jokes about aliens and action movies. The action scenes are actually very well done, and there's plenty of people running as machine gun fire peppers their feet.

Bad Taste makes no bones about what it is - a cult film. Jackson's humor is evident here, but he would go on to do much more horrifying and humorous films. While Bad Taste is no Evil Dead, it's still enjoyable as a piece of film history over a couple of beers with your buddies.

The Simpsons Movie

There's a predictable path to pop culture icons that start on television. The Simpsons went from animated shorts on the Tracy Ulllman show to their own series and finally, to this movie. All that's missing is the live-action version and the Broadway play.

With a PG-13 rating, there's an opportunity for the Simpsons to stretch their legs a bit and do naughty things they couldn't do on television, like nudity, language, violence - you know, all the fun stuff. But there's got to be more than that.

The Simpsons is a richly detailed universe with characters that actually evolve, from the passing of Flanders' wife to Apu's massive brood. These characters are what make the Simpsons so much fun; there are stereotypes that are a reflection of every aspect of American life. They're us. Fatter, dumber, louder, uglier...but they're us.

What does the Simpsons movie do? It drops a dome over the city of Springfield and then separates the Simpsons from the rest of the cast. The rest of the film then involves a villain never-before introduced, a random helpful character (a busty Eskimo lady), and a love-interest for Lisa that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.

The plot involves the EPA and pollution. Which is odd, since Lisa, arguably the biggest opponent of pollution on the show, doesn't have much to say or do here. In fact, she's occupied with her love interest. Bart's supposedly having a crisis over Homer being a bad father (unbelievable, given that Homer's behavior borders the insane). And Marge reconsiders her marriage. For the eighth time.

For some reason, someone thought the idea of Homer becoming obsessed with a pig was funny. This in turn morphs into Homer turning the pig into "Spider-Pig." And that one-off joke, which at most gets a mild chuckle, turns into the tent pole supporting the Simpsons. It's in Homer's dream quest. It's in the DVD menu. I mean, seriously, the idea of Spider-Pig is cute the first time. But it's hardly movie material. In fact, after starting the chain of events that are the crux of the Simpsons movie, the stupid pig disappears entirely. Even the writers knew the pig was a dumb idea.

It's not that the Simpsons movie isn't funny. It's that it's extremely uninspired, given the fine pedigree of writers for the show. The mutant squirrel that becomes the symbol of Springfield's pollution best sums up the lack of inspiration. There already is a mascot of Springfield's solution: the three-eyed fish. The fact that the movie didn't use it shows just how underutilized the Springfield cast really is.

Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

By the time I finally saw Borat, every detail of the movie had been reported in detail in the media. Part of Borat's hilarity is that it matches our hunger for reality-show type interaction with candid camera type events and in doing so, exposes the bigotry of its unwitting cast.

The plot is almost beside the point, so I won't go over it in detail here. Suffice it to say that Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a journalist new to America from Kazakhstan, making a film with his producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian). They film every experience, from Borat singing a national anthem at a rodeo to Borat hitching a ride with drunk frat boys, Borat running naked in a hotel to Borat attending classes on social etiquette.

Contrary to what the many lawsuits that arose from this film, most of the American citizens compose themselves admirably. Sure, there's the occasional bigoted jerk, but said jerks are easy to spot. If you're shocked about a gun shop owner not blinking when Borat asks for a "gun to kill a Jew" then you haven't been to a gun shop.

And perhaps that's part of the humor. Borat visits places we know exist in America but haven't been there ourselves, and it shows the worst and best we have to offer in typical American fashion...by pointing a camera at it.

But I don't buy it.

One of the key elements of a magician's art is deception. The magician will tell you he has nothing up his sleeve, but he most certainly does. People picked from the audience who supposedly don't know the magician are actually trained plants. In short, magicians lie and we believe them because we want to.

Similarly, Cohen's crafted a charade that this is all raw footage, and yet there's the omnipresent camera with its boom microphone and glaring lights. It's clear that the subjects, if they aren't in on the joke, are certainly pandering to the camera. Until we invent floating invisible cameras or simply violate peoples' rights to make good television, this will always be the case.

Borat is rude, crude, and hilarious. But the amount of navel-gazing it created on behalf of the nation due to its supposedly candid look at America is unwarranted. In the tradition of our reality TV culture, Borat is as authentic as...well, reality TV shows.

Meet the Fockers

Meet the Parents is one of those Ben Stiller vehicles that's so slapstick in its hilarity that it can actually make you feel uncomfortable. It's funny, but it's almost disturbingly funny, such that if you make the mistake of imagining yourself in Greg "Gaylord" Focker's (Ben Stiller) shoes, you want to hide under your seat.

Meet the Fockers takes the conceit of the original movie one step further. Greg's already met his fiancée's (Pam Byrnes, played by Teri Polo) family, including Pam's pleasant mother Dina (Blythe Danner), her nephew Jack (Spencer and Bradley Pickren), and her domineering father Jack (Robert De Niro). It's now time for that momentous meeting that all engaged couples dread: the family meeting. It's time, finally, to meet the parents who named their son Gaylord Focker.

Thus begins a road trip down to Florida to meet Greg's parents, played hippie pitch-perfect by Barbara Streisand as Rozalin (a special kind of therapist for older couples who want to be more intimate) and Dustin Hoffman as Bernie, the over-supportive, super-pal of a dad. Mix the Byrnes with the Fockers and stir.

The additional twist is Little Jack, representing a flashpoint of parenting debate. Jack's childrearing is strict and disciplinarian one hand (the Byrnes hand, if you couldn't guess) and the free-love, do-it-if-it-feels-good empowerment of the Fockers.

Streisand and Hoffman are the real treat here. Their parental struggles and angst, or lack thereof, are what make the film. If you're a fan of either, you won't be disappointed.

If you are recently married or have a kid, the movie's struggle over childrearing is a very funny debate indeed. If you don't, then Meet the Fockers is probably only mildly amusing. Since my son was born the same month I saw his movie, it had particular comedic resonance, and my parents (who are definitely Focker-types) and my wife laughed all the way through.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

If you're a fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF), you have very low expectations of the show. ATHF involves three symbols of fast food: the insane Master Shake (Dana Snyder), the lovably moronic Meatwad (Dave Willis), and the super-intelligent Frylock (Carey Means). They are exactly what they sound like: walking (sometimes floating), talking shakes, piles of meat, and boxes of fries. This is not an ironic fact lost on the producers; at various times, other people who encounter the Hunger Force (like Carl, the shut-in voiced by Dennis Franz) comment on the strangeness of these bizarre alien beings who happen to act like teenagers.

There are other beings who happen to harass our protagonists, including spiky aliens, aliens that look like they came from an Atari 2600 video game, and aliens that might be time traveling robot turkeys. But that's largely irrelevant, because ATHF isn't so much a universe as it is performance art, with the topic of the night playing out to its inevitable conclusion. In the vein of much British humor, plotlines and continuity are irrelevant. Characters argue with each other, fight with each other, and even kill each other. Sometimes, Frylock gets tired of his idiot roommates and just leaves. Sometimes, Master Shake's insanely far-fetched plans destroy the world. And sometimes, Meatwad kills Master Shake.

ATHF, unburdened by any real anchors to reality, is thus free to explore whatever, whenever, and wherever, the plot meandering to some illogical conclusion, often played for laughs but sometimes just to torture a particular character to death. 15 minutes of this is hilarious, and it's pretty obvious that ATHF is meant to be watched by college kids with short attention spans. And adults like me who have 15 minutes before going to work.

So why make a movie? Or to be more precise, why make a movie titled Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters?

The dodge is that it reveals the origins of the ATHF, but that's silly. For one, ATHF's comedic value is precisely in the complete and utter lack of explanation as to why fast food is living in New Jersey. For another, ATHF is about conflict between various characters for no good reason other than to dance for our entertainment. And that's precisely what the movie does, although it wears a little thin after the prerequisite 15 minutes normally allocated to the television show.

Explaining the plot of the movie is pointless, because it's not meant to be explained. It involves a talking watermelon, a mad scientist, Bruce Campbell voicing a chicken McNugget (of course), Space Ghost, the reincarnated soul of MC Pee Pants, the CIA, jazzercising giant robots that poop little jazzercising robots, and Abraham Lincoln's time travel shenanigans. Aren't you sorry you asked?

Your perception of all this is really dependent on your perception of the show. It won't turn you into a fan. In fact, the entire intro is a joke on those "let's go out to the movies" dancing food characters, with various angry incarnations of movie junk food screaming to thrash metal, "You came here. Watch it. Don't like it? Walk out."

I didn't walk out. If you're a fan of ATHF, you won't either.

School of Rock

School of Rock is one of those films that's tailor-made for the comedian performing in it. This has become all the rage since Robin Williams played the Genie in Aladdin, Jim Carey in The Mask, or Will Ferrell in Elf. These sorts of films play to the comedian's strengths and minimize their weaknesses, and when they get it right, it's movie magic.

And so Black gets his moment in School of Rock. Black's been playing the overweight guy pining for the good old days of rock like geeks pine over the original Star Trek series, with pop-eyed enthusiasm far outweighing the energy that most people muster for just about anything. Black is truly the uber-music geek and the title is well earned through a film history of Black essentially playing the same guy: Bio-Dome (as Tenacious D), High Fidelity (as Barry), Shallow Hal (as Hal), and of course Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. In short, if there's going to be a film about kids learning about the pedigree of rock and roll, Black would be the guy who wrote, directed, and acted in it.

What's surprising is that this movie ISN'T Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. As a music geek, Black's tastes for music could easily alienate much of the audience. School of Rock isn't just about rock; it's about music appreciation, the lack of attention paid to kids in school, teacher malaise, and a society that no longer fights the Man. Or to put it another way, this is a movie made for the mainstream.

Which is what makes it so much fun. Our slacker hero, Dewey Finn (Jack Black), has been crashing at his substitute teacher friend's house (Ned, played by Mike White). When Ned's girlfriend (the lovely Sarah Silverman, playing a decidedly unfunny role) pushes for Dewey's ouster, the slob has to get a job. And so he does, by impersonating Ned at a private school for upper class kids. It's not long before Dewey throws out the curriculum and teaches the kids his own brand of history: good old, wholesome rock and roll.

School of Rock spends a lot of time struggling to justify the madness: the kids soundproof the room, teachers occasionally think they hear something, the uptight principal springs surprise visits (played by the delightfully naughty Joan Cusack), and parents start to get worried. Just about none of it is believable, most specifically when Dewey is finally caught by the police and ends up dashing down the hallway, two guitars in hand, without any further consequences.

But that's beside the point. Who cares if School of Rock bends the laws of time and space to allow Dewey's one chance in the sun, not as a rock star but as the aging patriarch of a band of insanely talented pre-teens? We came to see a rock show, and we get it.

Black flops around, he sweats, he tosses his head with manic glee, but most of all he passionately TEACHES. He teaches a large girl that her weight doesn't matter, teaches the geek that he should ignore the kids who make fun of him, teaches the brat some discipline, and encourages the brilliance of the lead queen bee to use her powers for good instead of evil. He makes a difference with the kids by bringing what he knows best to the room; not school learning, but plain old-fashioned street smarts. Dewey's, and by extension Black's, sheer enthusiasm makes up for his rough edges.

If only teachers were this enthusiastic about anything these days!

RV

I've read reviews of RV, and they uniformly panned the movie as piffle; humorous tripe that reinforced family values and light humor, wasting the talents of Robin Williams.

Give me a break.

See, the implication that the family road trip movie is somehow a form of high art is fallacious to begin with. Although my family (and my wife's family) venerates the National Lampoon vacation movies as the ultimate in comedy, the truth of the matter is it's all a string of silly gags and ridiculous foils. It takes real skill to play a perpetually optimistic patriarch in the face of modern indignities and family squabbles. If anything, the family road trip movie is really just a condensed version of half the sitcoms on television. And there's a reason those sitcoms are still around, even though the critics patiently explain over and over how dumb they are.

They're right. It IS dumb. But then, so is having to deal with the inanities of modern life. RV is merely an update of a long established tradition of pitting a man (Bob Munro played by Robin Williams), his hot wife (Cheryl Hines), his teenage daughter (Joanna Levesque) and pre-teen son (Josh Hutcherson) against the world and seeing who comes out on top. And we root for Bob all the way.

What makes RV so appealing is that it doesn't deviate at all from the formula but cleverly updates all the trials and tribulations. Bob's affection for his adorable daughter at two years old is sharply contrasted by her wisecracking personality as a teenager. How many parents stare at their kids and wonder what happened to the darling who never wanted to leave their side? Bob's career hinges on finishing a presentation, and much of the movie is taken up with his personal struggle to find a signal for his Blackberry. Road warriors feel his pain. And as an older, funnier man, Bob constantly has to watch his back as younger, inexperienced climbers try to steal the spotlight.

In short, the Monroe struggles are the new struggles of the middle class. Sure, Clark Griswold didn't have these problems, but then the National Lampoon movies were made decades ago. RV brings it all up to date with one difference: unlike Cousin Eddie and his brood, the country folk are actually the wiser and more decent family. We could learn a lot from their home values, preaches Brother Sonnenfeld. Maybe he's right.

When RV was playing at my parents' house, we were waiting for my brother to join us to watch a DVD. Instead, we watched (and laughed at) RV all the way through.

Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story

Let's get one thing straight: there really is, God help us, an International Dodge Ball Federation. That alone seems like enough of an excuse for a comedy about the sport. And lo, Ben Stiller saw that it was good and he made a movie about it with mixed results.

Ben Stiller usually plays sympathetic, frustrated nerds who lose their tempers when things don't go their way. In Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the usual Stiller charm has been dropped and replaced by an arrogant, irritating character named White Goodman. He is the founder of an extremely popular gym that has plans to expand by taking over extremely uptight, fastidious Peter La Fleur, played by Vince Vaughn.

Just kidding! Of course Vaughn wouldn't play anyone uptight or fastidious. He's made a career out of playing easygoing regular Joes, sometimes with large vocabularies that betray a hint of intelligence, who don't work too hard and just want to get by in life. When Vaughn is paired with an even more mellow guy like Owen Wilson, it makes Vaughn look animated in comparison and the two become an excellent combination of mellow/acerbic. See Wedding Crashers for a more palatable mix.

But alas, Wilson isn't in this film. Instead, Le Fleur is backed by a cast of equally lovable idiots, including obscure sportsphile Gordon (Stephen "Red Stapler" Root), clueless Owen (Joel Moore), normal guy Dwight (Chris Williams), the appropriately named Justin (Justin Long), and for some reason that only Stiller understands, Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk). Le Fleur falls hard for the lovely Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor and Stiller's wife), a lawyer in the employ of Goodman.

How can our just-like-you gaggle of guys possibly beat the overcoifed, hyperactive Goodman? Why, with a little training from the dodgeball champion himself, Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn). Patches is the funniest character in the entire movie. That's not a compliment.

Like the ill-fated Anchorman, Dodgeball is actually more amusing to quote than it is to watch. Stiller is much funnier as an underdog and makes for a two-dimensional villain. Vaughn is unbelievable as a successful business owner and flounders without a foil to play off of. Taylor tries, again, to be the straight woman like she did in Anchorman, but she's too slickly attractive to pull it off convincingly.

Thing is, Dodgeball doesn't care if you like it. Jason Bateman, Lance Armstrong, Chuck Norris, William Shatner, and David Hasslehoff all make appearances, so it's obvious the film doesn't take itself too seriously. On the other hand, the amusement around these characters being in the movie depends directly on the cultural relevance to the audience. The Chuck Norris jokes are getting a little creaky.

If you watch Dodgeball with your buddies and a case of beer, it definitely earns five stars. Otherwise it's merely a passable entry in the goofy sports genre.