MY MOVIE SHELF: Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 198  Days to go: 139

Movie #240:  Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

When we rejoin our (mostly) fearless crew, Mystery Inc. (as they call themselves) are the big hot thing in their hometown of Coolsville. There are news cameras, red carpets and screaming fans at their latest appearance, the opening of the Coolsville Museum of Criminology, and they each have their own individual fan bases: cute chicks love Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.), weird gross guys tattoo Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) on their chests, nerd girls go wild for Velma (Linda Cardellini), stoners think Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) rules, and dogs love Scooby-Doo.

Things go awry, however, when the displays of old monster costumes turn into real monsters and wreak havoc on the building, with Shaggy and Scooby’s help. The team is discredited, and have to repair their reputation by solving this latest mystery. Only now Shaggy and Scooby feel like screw-ups, like they’re constantly letting their friends down, so they try to prove themselves on their own, with wacky results.

This time around the stakes aren’t necessarily raised, but the guest star quotient definitely is. We’ve got Seth Green as Velma’s crush Patrick, Alicia Silverstone as vampy news anchor Heather Jasper-Howe, and Peter Boyle as Old Man Wickles. There are even cameos by former Access Hollywood host Pat O’Brien, character actor Tim Blake Nelson as legendary baddie Jonathan Jacobo and American Idol season two winner Ruben Studdard singing over the closing credits because why not.

I have actually heard people compare this sequel unfavorably to the original, but I don’t see the point. They’re basically standard Scooby-Doo episodes, each one, and neither is better or worse than the other. Plus, this one features a weird dance number with an afro-bewigged Scooby and a fight scene where Gellar gets to show off her Buffy fighting skills (fitting, since her Buffy pals were often called the Scoobies). I also really got a kick out of Hot Velma wearing an approximation of Britney Spears’s “Oops I Did It Again” outfit and not being able to walk or apparently bend her legs in heels.

On top of all that, there’s a double unmasking at the end! Honestly, what more do you people want??

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Crush

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 296  Days to go: 286

Movie #77: The Crush

I bought The Crush on DVD approximately around the time DVDs were invented, as evidenced by the cardboard casing with the plastic flip closure. I’m not sure why I still have it, except for the fact (previously discussed) that I rarely get rid of my movies. I do, however, know exactly why I bought it in the first place, and that reason is Alicia Silverstone.

As far as feature film debuts go, Silverstone really knocked hers out of the park. Playing 14-year-old Adrian Forrester (IMDb says Adrienne, which is the correct spelling of the feminine form of the name, but the movie credits say Adrian, so that’s what I’m going with), she is riveting from her very first shot — haughty, sexy and entitled as she peers at Nick (Cary Elwes) from over the tops of her sunglasses. She is brilliant at appearing innocent, as manipulative as she is spoiled, and she’s a veritable loon. Her obsession with Nick becomes ever more forward, ever more ominous and ever more dangerous, yet it’s impossible to look away from her because she commands the screen so completely.

The rest of the film, unfortunately, is hugely problematic. It’s bad enough that it’s just ridiculously cheesy and melodramatic. The score is overpowering in its guitar-riff-and-synthesizer insistence that you feel on edge. The soundtrack is even worse, with a scene in which Adrian is sunning herself under Nick’s window (where else would she do it?) backed by a song crying out “You can taste it.” And the climactic confrontation between Nick, Adrian, Adrian’s friend Cheyenne (Amber Benson looking almost exactly how she will nine years later for Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Adrian’s dad (Kurtwood Smith), employs the use of a stunt double for Silverstone that is at least four inches taller than she is and has a much darker complexion — even behind the Cousin Itt wig.

What makes the film truly terrible, though, is the message it sends. Here’s some upstanding guy, innocently going about his work, and this crazy girl starts making all sorts of accusations and ruins his life. Sure, he ogles her repeatedly through windows — not to mention from the vantage point of her own closet — and he makes inviting comments about what he would do if she were ten years older, and, okay, he totally kisses her back when she twisted his arm, forced him to take her to a make-out spot, took his head in her hands and slowly started to kiss him. But other than that, he didn’t do anything wrong! (Kidding, she totally didn’t twist his arm. He barely gave up any resistance to a late-night drive with a teenage girl, and Elwes frequently enhances his performance with the universal I’ve-got-an-uncomfortable-boner cough.)

Yes, the film makes it absolutely clear that Adrian is an obsessive sociopath and criminally insane, but it’s exactly these types of stories that make so many people discount actual victim accounts of assaults, harassment and rape. There is, almost always in the case of these types of accusations, a pervasive thread that questions the girl’s motives, assumes she is out to get something, or sometimes might just be a vengeful crazy bitch who wants to ruin a guy’s life. There were boys on video sexually assaulting an unconscious girl in Ohio, and the media still lamented the loss of their promising futures, as if that was the real tragedy here — as if those boys didn’t bring it on entirely by themselves. It’s disgusting, really.

I can’t stop these types of stories from being told, and I may not be able to change the conversation concerning assaults in our society, but I can do something. I can purge The Crush from my shelf and I can make an effort not to support that kind of storytelling in the future. I’ll feel much better just supporting Silverstone’s work in Clueless anyway.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Clueless

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 305  Days to go: 294

Movie #68: Clueless

Oh, Clueless, love of my life. This movie is so much a part of me, I’m not entirely sure anymore whether it reflected back to me who I was or if I became who I am because of it. It’s a very chicken-and-egg situation, except in that case the answer is clearly the egg. The lines are much blurrier with regard to me and Clueless.

I have a confession, though: I never read Jane Austen growing up. Not once. I didn’t even read any in college, either, because by then everybody had already read it. In my defense, though, my mother read sci-fi and trashy romances for pleasure (I drifted toward the latter) and my friends read horror and fantasy. Nowhere in my life was someone to guide me through literature, to tell me to read Austen. I consider it one of the great tragedies of my youth (the other being almost the entire rest of it, in full, but that’s a story for another day). In not reading, Austen, however, when I first watched Clueless (and actually every time I watched Clueless, of the literal multiple dozens of times, up to two years ago when I finally read her), I got exactly none of the references to its inspiration, the novel Emma. The good news being that when I finally did read Emma, I suddenly found I loved Clueless all the more.

Alicia Silverstone is Cher Horowitz, our Emma Woodhouse surrogate. She’s a beautiful, intelligent, privileged teen girl living with her wealthy widower father in a posh neighborhood of Los Angeles who is much more superficial and immature than she realizes, but she has a good, loving heart. And just like Emma, Cher does such a good job setting up her teacher with someone, she sets out to makeover someone she considers a lost cause — the clumsy and awkward Tai being played with verve by the late Brittany Murphy, beautifully working that sort of goofball trashiness she was so weirdly good at. Misguided and blind to the attentions of Elton (Jeremy Sisto, long before I learned to love him on Suburgatory), she tries to match him with Tai until it falls apart horribly. (“Uch, you are a snob and a half.”) And just like Emma with regard to Harriet and Mr. Knightly, Cher is distraught when Tai turns her eye to Josh (the perfect and ageless Paul Rudd, who manages to pull off both intellectual self-righteousness and totally endearing charm), whom Cher is shocked to realize she herself loves.

It’s a stunning remake, both because of its adherence to and deviation from the original work. That is, it keeps all the things that are necessary and still relevant, but it modernizes the story so flawlessly that it could almost be considered a purely original piece. Josh isn’t a brother-in-law by marriage but an ex-step-brother, better to explain his constant presence at Cher’s house and also a wink to the multiple marriage society of the very rich. Christian isn’t secretly involved with Cher’s rival, as Frank is to Emma’s, but he’s equally unavailable in a much more current and realistic way and Cher can be just as intent on him as Emma is to Frank but still remain close friends with him. And while a Beverly Hills high school is not quite the class society of Regency England, teenage cliques can be quite the dividers, with Cher keeping Tai with the “popular” kids and away from “stoner” Travis (Breckin Meyer) just as surely as Emma separated Harriet and Mr. Martin. Meanwhile, Dionne and Murray (Stacey Dash and Donald Faison) are sort of new characters, to split the best friend/successful match role held by solely Mrs. Weston in the book. In today’s world, it’s much less likely that a girl’s best friend would be her teacher, so Cher gets a teacher to set up and a best friend to be a relationship role model. It’s really brilliant overall, and everywhere you look offers a clever peek at how the tale was updated. It could be a Masters Thesis.

Even if one doesn’t know the book, though, as I didn’t for many years, Clueless has so much to offer. The simple and constant juxtaposition of hyper-intelligent and supremely immature dialogue is a thing of beauty. “I felt impotent and out of control, which I really, really hate.” You could never call Cher stupid, really, because she clearly isn’t even if she can’t pronounce “Hatians,” but she is definitely a product of her environment, sheltered and ditzy and shallow at times. That absolutely describes me, as well as the vast majority of a lot of teen girls I’ve known, past and present. So while Clueless is sort of keenly specific with regard to its characters and setting, it’s also universal in its portrayal of the flightiness and confusion of the teenage condition, which is a delicate balance to achieve. (It should be noted this is something writer-director Amy Heckerling has quite the aptitude for, having also directed the seminal Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)

On top of all that, the movie is a cultural touchstone for anyone who was a teenager in the ’90s. It’s informed our lives and infiltrated our lexicons. (And it continues to influence teens everywhere, thanks to its ubiquitous availability on Netflix and cable and a certain video by Iggy Azalea.) If it were possible to measure the number of times Clueless is quoted around the world on a daily basis, I’m sure the result would be astronomical.

“I totally paused.”

“Whatever.”

“As. If.“

“They’re way existential.”

“Hey, James Bond, in America we drive on the right side of the road.”

“You’re a virgin who can’t drive.”

“That was way harsh, Tai.”

“Cher’s saving herself for Luke Perry.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I hope not sporadically.”

“She could be a farmer in those clothes.”

“You don’t want to be the last one at the coffee-house without chin pubes.”

“Okay, but street slang is an increasingly valid form of expression. Most of the feminine pronouns do have mocking, but not necessarily in misogynistic undertones.”

“I do not wear polyester hair!”

The film is a masterpiece of teen romantic comedy that is smart and funny without being patronizing or trashy. It’s delightful and essential and just really, really great. I’m sorry, but if you don’t love Clueless, you might not even be alive inside.