http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/five-underrated-comedies
Mr. Singer runs Criticwire and will also be contributing to The Dissolve, which is Pitchfork's new movie site that is launching this summer(and which I am very excited about).
http://thedissolve.com/
https://twitter.com/thedissolve
Follow Matt himself on Twitter or be a fool:
https://twitter.com/mattsinger
----------------
Mr. Singer runs Criticwire and will also be contributing to The Dissolve, which is Pitchfork's new movie site that is launching this summer(and which I am very excited about).
http://thedissolve.com/
https://twitter.com/thedissolve
Follow Matt himself on Twitter or be a fool:
https://twitter.com/mattsinger
----------------
"Once again, blogger and cinephile extraordinaire Brian Saur is conducting a series on his website, Rupert Pupkin Speaks,
featuring contributions from film critics, curators, and cinephiles
from all walks of life. Once again, he invited me to participate, and
once again I'm shamelessly stealing his wonderful idea for a post here
on Criticwire.
This time, Brian asked people to name
their favorite underrated comedies. I'm not sure what inspired the
topic, but the inspiration for my particular list was simple: I looked
at my DVDs and Blu-rays, and picked out the titles that I never see in
anyone else's collection.
These were those movies (well at least four are those movies. One was a recent discovery on Netflix Watch Instantly):
This zero-budget oddity from Troma Films
was apparently made in 1999 and looks maybe ten years older than that.
Whenever it was made, it was way ahead of its time (and possibly from
another dimension). Back in '99, there was almost nothing like its
cheerily cheap production design, surreal humor, and deliberately
bizarre plot -- which is basically spoiled, in its entirety, in a
hilarious opening title crawl: "This is the story of how Satan
changed into a Chicago tour bus guide and rose to earth in order to get
the souls of the people taking the tour that day because he knew the bus
was going to crash and everyone was going to die and all the while he,
along with everyone on the tour, were being pursued by Jesus Christ.
This is a true story." In 2013, it looks like the biological father
of all Internet comedy videos -- no wonder, since director Mick Napier
is a staple of the Chicago improv comedy scene and a longtime fixture at
The Second City. Just watch the first five minutes (the whole film is
available for free on YouTube from Troma). If you don't laugh at the
title, and Satan's performance, just turn it off. If you do laugh,
congrats: you just found your new favorite too-cult-to-have-a-cult
comedy.
"Semi-Pro" (2008)Directed by Kent Alterman
Many critics tend to divide the films of Will Ferrell into two camps: those he makes with writer/director Adam McKay ("Anchorman," "Step Brothers"), which are okay to like, and those he doesn't, which are not. I'm not sure why some people get so snobbish about Ferrell, but the idea that only his movies with McKay are worthwhile is ludicrous; Ferrell has given some of his best performance working without his admittedly talented partner from Gary Sanchez Productions. That's why I wanted to highlight my favorite McKay-less Ferrell movie, the underdog sports movie spoof "Semi-Pro," in which Ferrell plays a former pop star who uses the money from his one big hit ("Love Me Sexy") into buying the Flint Tropics, a franchise in the floundering American Basketball Association. With the ABA/NBA merger looming, Ferrell's Jackie Moon has to turn his team around to try to prove they deserve a spot in the newly expanded league. The plot is formula, and you can just fast-forward any scene involving the romantic intrigue involving the team's washed-up point guard (Woody Harrelson) and his ex (Maura Tierney). But Will Ferrell movies are sort of the comic equivalent of Jackie Chan adventures; you don't go see them for the intricate narratives or remarkable characters, you go for the inspired setpieces that let the star flex their unique acting muscles. In that regard, "Semi-Pro" is a winner, featuring some of my all-time favorite Ferrell moments -- including his attempt to weasel out of paying a guy his $10,000 prize for hitting a full court shot and a extremely ill-advised boxing watch with a bear as a promotional stunt. I quote this scene, in which Ferrell introduces his Tropics starting lineup, more than I'd care to admit.
Many critics tend to divide the films of Will Ferrell into two camps: those he makes with writer/director Adam McKay ("Anchorman," "Step Brothers"), which are okay to like, and those he doesn't, which are not. I'm not sure why some people get so snobbish about Ferrell, but the idea that only his movies with McKay are worthwhile is ludicrous; Ferrell has given some of his best performance working without his admittedly talented partner from Gary Sanchez Productions. That's why I wanted to highlight my favorite McKay-less Ferrell movie, the underdog sports movie spoof "Semi-Pro," in which Ferrell plays a former pop star who uses the money from his one big hit ("Love Me Sexy") into buying the Flint Tropics, a franchise in the floundering American Basketball Association. With the ABA/NBA merger looming, Ferrell's Jackie Moon has to turn his team around to try to prove they deserve a spot in the newly expanded league. The plot is formula, and you can just fast-forward any scene involving the romantic intrigue involving the team's washed-up point guard (Woody Harrelson) and his ex (Maura Tierney). But Will Ferrell movies are sort of the comic equivalent of Jackie Chan adventures; you don't go see them for the intricate narratives or remarkable characters, you go for the inspired setpieces that let the star flex their unique acting muscles. In that regard, "Semi-Pro" is a winner, featuring some of my all-time favorite Ferrell moments -- including his attempt to weasel out of paying a guy his $10,000 prize for hitting a full court shot and a extremely ill-advised boxing watch with a bear as a promotional stunt. I quote this scene, in which Ferrell introduces his Tropics starting lineup, more than I'd care to admit.
For
the life of me, I've never understood why the "Naked Gun" sequels have
such a bad reputation. Certainly neither matches the heights of the
original film (or the TV series that inspired it, "Police Squad!"), but
that's sort of like complaining that "Skyfall" isn't as awesome as "From
Russia With Love." I think the fact that the ZAZ guys were mostly
absent from this one (David Zucker hung around as a producer and
co-writer but that's it), and that the cast includes folks like Pia
Zadora and Anna Nicole Smith, made it look particularly uncool and ripe
for dismissal. But anyone paying attention would see plenty of classic
gags, a truly funny supporting turn from Smith as the devious femme
fatale Tanya (that she won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst New Star
shows not only how underrated this movie is but also how inessential
those awards truly are). "33 1/3" is bookended by two particularly
memorable sequences: an inspired parody of the Odessa Steps scene from
"Battleship Potemkin" and a hilarious satire of the Academy Awards, in
which Leslie Nelsen's Lt. Frank Drebin poses as Phil Donahue in order to
find a bomb hidden somewhere at the Oscars. That so many critics and
audiences missed such a satisfying comedy truly was the final insult.
It's hard enough to make a good movie;
imagine the skill it takes to make a good version of a bad movie. The
degree of difficulty involved in "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" is
almost too high to calculate. Somehow Larry Blamire -- who wrote,
directed, and starred in this admirably terrible paean to the
so-bad-they're-great films of Z-grade '50s auteurs like Edward D. Wood
Jr. -- pulled it off. Shot in black and white in and around Los Angeles'
famed Bronson Canyon, the site of countless cruddy science-fiction and
monster pictures from yesteryear, "Lost Skeleton" follows the hilarious
misadventures of a dopey scientist (Blamire), a pair of dopier aliens
(Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell), and a supremely dopey but incredibly
dickish living skeleton all chasing after a one-of-a-kind meteorite
containing the rare element atmosphereum. Attempts to deliberately
recreate Ed Wood's brand of lovably crummy sci-fi typically end in
disaster of the least watchable kind; "pure camp," as defined by Susan
Sontag, must be "naive," not invented. But Blamire's script is peppy and
sly, and never condescending. And, the Lost Skeleton himself (who's
literally an anatomy class prop on visible wires) steals scene after
scene. The movie's sequel, "The Lost Skeleton Returns Again," isn't bad,
but the original is the true atmosphereum in the rough. And with that, I
sleep now."
2 comments:
"The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" (2001)Directed by Larry Blamire
It's hard enough to make a good movie; imagine the skill it takes to make a good version of a bad movie. The degree of difficulty involved in "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" is almost too high to calculate."
And Blamire fails miserably. Even worse, he's gone on to make 3 or 4 more alleged "parodies", so he hardly can make a claim for being an original filmmaker - talk about beating one idea into the ground. For such a film to work, it has tell its OWN story well, and not just ape and mock.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, STRANGE INVADERS and the little seen INVASION (aka TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN) all are good films on their own, as well as winking at past films.
Fatty was produced by the guy who directed Waiting for the Man and ran the Cinema Obscura DVD label.
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