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: Johnny Dangerously

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: 220  Days to go: 220

Movie #157:  Johnny Dangerously

Swear to God, if you haven’t seen Johnny Dangerously, just what, exactly, are you doing with your life? Once again, Amy Heckerling proves herself a skilled comedy director and gets almost no credit or cachet out of it. Why isn’t she given more projects? I mean, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless are considered iconic films of their generations. And while Johnny Dangerously isn’t that, it is the single-best film ever made entirely out of puns and silly gags.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner (Lil Sheridan) still knows all the words and choreography to “Dangerously.”

Michael Keaton plays the lead, a good Irish kid named Johnny Kelly who gets caught up in a life of crime with the Jocko Dundee (Peter Boyle) gang in order to pay for his mother’s mounting medical bills. Ma Kelly (Maureen Stapleton) is an older-than-she-looks 29-year-old, living the hard life of an immigrant widow (her husband Killer Kelly having gotten the electric chair some years before). She’s constantly in need of surgeries to locate her thyroid or unblock her salivary glands, and Johnny will do anything to pay for them. He also adores his kid brother Tommy (Griffin Dunne) and pays for his way through law school, only to find out his brother wants to be District Attorney and fight crime.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner remembers the names and faces of every single person she met making this film in 1984.

There are so many silly little things in this movie, it’s almost impossible to highlight all the ones I love. Tommy’s desperate need to hump his brains out with Sally (Glynnis O’Connor), is a good one, mostly for his mother’s “ba-BOOM ba-BOOM ba-BOOM” and Johnny’s informational film, “Your Testicles and You.” Then there’s the game show presentation by D.A. Burr (Danny DeVito), tempting Tommy to Play Ball, followed by the speeding up of the song on the radio as Tommy’s car brakes fail, followed by Johnny getting invited by Burr to two weeks in Puerto Rico before the newspaper headline “D.A. Burr Dies in Commercial.” Then, of course, there’s gangster bad boy Danny Vermin (Joe Piscopo) who carries an 88 Magnum, has it out for the Kelly boys and whose father hung him on a hook once. Once! But far and away the best is Richard Dimitri as gangland nemesis Roman Moronie, a fargin icehole corksoaking bastidge if ever there was one.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner can tell you exactly how many takes it took for Johnny to stick a business card in her boob pocket or for Danny to drop her from his lap.

There’s so much more, though. Jocko thinking his “dork” has been blown off, Ma Kelly thinking of taking up smoking and the ashtray present that clinches it, Polly the parrot wearing jailhouse stripes as he passes a message along the grapevine to Johnny, and oh, the shelf paper! It’s just filled to the brim and overflowing with jokes.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner can still give the exact details of the fit and feel of every costume she wore for the film, including fly fisherman and nun disguises.

 

A really smart joke is a great thing (something I love, in fact), but to make a super funny movie, the best plan of action is to make the most jokes. The more jokes you can cram into something, the funnier it’s going to be. Some will land better than others, some will be dumber than others, but by giving your audience no chance to breathe from one joke to the next is the absolute best way to keep them laughing. And that’s something Johnny Dangerously is great at. Plus, it has a moral: “Crime doesn’t pay. Well, it pays a little.”

Fun fact: Marilu Henner still knows precisely how Michael Keaton kisses.