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Reviews32
niteman's rating
This movie starts with interesting set design and a promising premise, but fails to provide the cult-movie goods. Set in a gritty parallel universe where everything is owned by the "Blump" Corporation, it concerns a horrible stand-up comic who finds success when he grows a third arm out of his back.
All the potential for great cheese is here -- washed-up 80's star Judd Nelson, Wayne Newton, offbeat visuals and strange plot digressions, obese women in skimpy lingerie, necrophilia -- but it never pays off.
The pacing is the main problem. Each scene is excrutiatingly slow. Nelson's stand-up routines are supposed to be funny because they're pathetically not funny. But each performance drags on until it's not even tangentially funny, just boring.
Imagine someone telling you the longest, weirdest joke imaginable, full of smirky self-congratulation for how funny and weird he thinks it is. Imagine after a stultifying two hours of this, you never got a punch line. You've just saved yourself the trouble of watching The Dark Backward.
All the potential for great cheese is here -- washed-up 80's star Judd Nelson, Wayne Newton, offbeat visuals and strange plot digressions, obese women in skimpy lingerie, necrophilia -- but it never pays off.
The pacing is the main problem. Each scene is excrutiatingly slow. Nelson's stand-up routines are supposed to be funny because they're pathetically not funny. But each performance drags on until it's not even tangentially funny, just boring.
Imagine someone telling you the longest, weirdest joke imaginable, full of smirky self-congratulation for how funny and weird he thinks it is. Imagine after a stultifying two hours of this, you never got a punch line. You've just saved yourself the trouble of watching The Dark Backward.
This "movie" is the brainchild of The Firesign Theater, and outfit best known for hilarious comedy albums like "Don't Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers" and "We're all bozos on this bus." They are not known for their work in motion pictures, and Everything You Know Is Wrong demonstrates why.
Some of the material here is funny, but the visuals don't add to the comedy. It seems like the actors are just lip-syncing to a Firesign Theater record. It looks like a bad home-movie of someone's aunts and uncles karaoking comedy albums.
Note I said *some* of the material is funny. Some of it is quite aggressively not. Like Monty Python, Firesign Theater have two modes: when they're focused, they're sharp and funny, but sometimes they're just pointlessly bizarre. Unfortunately, after a promising beginning this movie falls into the latter category and wallows there. There's some sort of plot about an alien takeover, or something, but generally weird stuff happens for no particular reason. There's nothing here to equal Firesign's best stuff: no Nick Danger, no synthetic chinchillas, not even any bubonic plague.
If you're a fan of the group, you might want to see this, but you'll probably be disappointed. If you've never heard of Firesign Theater, grab "Shoes For Industry!", their greatest hits album, and start from there.
Some of the material here is funny, but the visuals don't add to the comedy. It seems like the actors are just lip-syncing to a Firesign Theater record. It looks like a bad home-movie of someone's aunts and uncles karaoking comedy albums.
Note I said *some* of the material is funny. Some of it is quite aggressively not. Like Monty Python, Firesign Theater have two modes: when they're focused, they're sharp and funny, but sometimes they're just pointlessly bizarre. Unfortunately, after a promising beginning this movie falls into the latter category and wallows there. There's some sort of plot about an alien takeover, or something, but generally weird stuff happens for no particular reason. There's nothing here to equal Firesign's best stuff: no Nick Danger, no synthetic chinchillas, not even any bubonic plague.
If you're a fan of the group, you might want to see this, but you'll probably be disappointed. If you've never heard of Firesign Theater, grab "Shoes For Industry!", their greatest hits album, and start from there.
Something about Love's Labour's Lost is causing critics to sniff and huff and puff like never before. The dance numbers aren't perfectly in sync and the music isn't perfectly performed, they sneer. Shakespeare and Gershwin don't mix. It's sheer fluff. It's bizarre.
Thus saith the critics. The forest that they're missing with their shrubs of discontentment is the overwhelming charm and infectuous fun of this silly little film. Yes, when Branagh and his cronies do a dance number it isn't lock-step choreography (one arm a little high, perhaps, one foot off the beat a bit). When Alicia Silverstone and her ladies-in-waiting cavort and giggle in a pool, they're not quite Esther Williams and company. Instead of picture-perfect Fred & Ginger, they look like real people dancing and singing because dancing and singing are fun. And unless you're Ebenezer Scrooge, The Grinch, or a movie critic, you'll have fun, too.
That's not to say the movie is just sloppy silliness. Branagh stages some gorgeous set pieces, including gondolas lit by Japanese lanterns, a prop-plane goodbye straight out of Casablanca, and a production number in which the film's silliest character kicks the moon like a big silver soccer ball. It's about a third Shakespeare, a third 30's musical, and a third Looney Tunes. What's odd is that the styles mix so well under Branagh's direction.
If you want a picture-perfect musical, rent "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" or some other dull thing. If you want perfect Shakespeare, rent Branagh's "Hamlet." If, however, you want a movie to make you believe in movies again -- if you want to kick up your heels, laugh out loud, and float out of a movie theater humming Cole Porter -- see this movie.
Thus saith the critics. The forest that they're missing with their shrubs of discontentment is the overwhelming charm and infectuous fun of this silly little film. Yes, when Branagh and his cronies do a dance number it isn't lock-step choreography (one arm a little high, perhaps, one foot off the beat a bit). When Alicia Silverstone and her ladies-in-waiting cavort and giggle in a pool, they're not quite Esther Williams and company. Instead of picture-perfect Fred & Ginger, they look like real people dancing and singing because dancing and singing are fun. And unless you're Ebenezer Scrooge, The Grinch, or a movie critic, you'll have fun, too.
That's not to say the movie is just sloppy silliness. Branagh stages some gorgeous set pieces, including gondolas lit by Japanese lanterns, a prop-plane goodbye straight out of Casablanca, and a production number in which the film's silliest character kicks the moon like a big silver soccer ball. It's about a third Shakespeare, a third 30's musical, and a third Looney Tunes. What's odd is that the styles mix so well under Branagh's direction.
If you want a picture-perfect musical, rent "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" or some other dull thing. If you want perfect Shakespeare, rent Branagh's "Hamlet." If, however, you want a movie to make you believe in movies again -- if you want to kick up your heels, laugh out loud, and float out of a movie theater humming Cole Porter -- see this movie.