MY MOVIE SHELF: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

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: 224  Days to go: 225

Movie #153:  Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is a very dumb, very silly movie, but by the time it came out I was really too far down the Kevin Smith rabbit hole to put up much resistance. That being said, however, it’s a pretty funny silly movie. It has about a million silly cameos, references all the previous Kevin Smith films (and quite a few other films too), and even makes fun of itself in silly meta ways. So if you’re in the mood for dumb comedy (and if you’ve sat through Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma by this time, you must be), you could do worse.

The premise is dumb, the schtick of Silent Bob (Smith) not saying anything is played out (but called out, so maybe it’s not quite the infraction it could be), and it actually references bloggers as people who live in their parents’ basements wearing bathrobes, like who knew Kevin Smith and Aaron Sorkin had so much in common, but it’s a fun send-up all the same. In addition to Smith and Jason Mewes (as Jay), Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randall (Jeff Anderson) are back. Ben Affleck is back as Holden McNeil (from Chasing Amy) AND himself. Jason Lee is there as Banky (from Chasing Amy) AND Brodie (from Mallrats). Mark Hamill is the Cockknocker. Will Ferrell is a Federal Wildlife Marshall and Chris Rock is a militant director (while Gus Van Sant is an apathetic one, counting his money). Shannon Elizabeth, Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter and Kevin Smith’s wife are sexy jewel thieves. Judd Nelson gets called out as a badass in Chasing Amy, so he’s here as a sheriff. James Van der Beek and Jason Biggs play the movie versions of Jay and Silent Bob, while Shannen Doherty shows up in a Scream sequel (as the characters of Jay and Silent Bob actually cameoed in Scream 3). Even Alanis Morissette shows up in the epilogue as God (from Dogma). And Joey Lauren Adams is back in a cameo as Alyssa Jones.

Basically it feels like Kevin Smith just got this great opportunity to have a lot of fun with his friends, which is great for him and all, but how many inside joke vanity projects does one guy get off the back of one successful indie movie from 1994? At least five, apparently.

There are some great things that came out of Jay and Silent Bob Strike back, though: 1. Afroman’s “Because I Got High,” which is just a fun song. 2. “Bad Medicine” being used in a movie to introduce the hot chick, as it always should have been. 3. A performance by Morris Day and the Time. And 4. Boo-boo Kitty Fuck being used as a term of endearment. (Your mileage may vary on that last one.)

MY MOVIE SHELF: Blades of Glory

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #32: Blades of Glory

“These guys put the ‘bone’ in ‘Zamboni.'”

Honestly, I’m not sure if Blades of Glory is an underrated Will Ferrell movie or if it just speaks to me, personally, because of that weird mashup of love I have for sports movies in general, The Cutting Edge in particular, The House of Yes, and Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as a couple. (I’m still upset they split up, even if I think Nick Kroll is okay too.) I think it’s the former, but it might be — in part at least, it probably is — the latter. Regardless, this movie makes me laugh like crazy.

I’ve already mentioned my preference for Will Ferrell in small doses, and how its his supporting cast, more than he himself, that wins me over. This one has Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as crazy, incestual siblings (House of Yes reference #1) Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg, who are gangster Pairs figure skaters. I doesn’t get much more psychotic than that. Add Jenna Fischer as good girl Katie Van Waldenberg (sister to Stranz and Fairchild) who at one point vamps it up splendidly and Jon Heder (who is polarizing, yes, but tends to shine when playing somewhat stunted individuals, as he does here — and I dig it) as pretty boy precision figure skater champion Jimmy MacElroy. (He dresses as a literal peacock for the opening competition. It’s spectacular.) Oh, and they also manage to get honest-to-god skating superstars Nancy Kerrigan, Scott Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, Brian Boitano and Sasha Cohen to cameo, among others.

Speaking of Kerrigan, cultured MacElroy is like the Nancy Kerrigan to Ferrell’s (as Chazz Michael Michaels) Tonya Harding — the hardscrabble upstart, overweight and full of hard living. They have a public brawl and are banned from Men’s skating forever, but come back four years later to compete as Pairs. With each other.

Blades of Glory somehow manages to send up every sports movie cliché in smart and hilarious ways. It’s like the writers were watching the Olympics (which do not appear in the movie, but are instead parodied as the World Wintersport Games) and wondered what it would be like if ice skating were covered like other sports. Chazz Michael Michaels is the stereotypical bad boy of the sport. He doesn’t play by the same rules, and he’s provocative and daring. Jimmy McElroy is a symbol of the famous Olympian training, driven and focused from a very young age. There are training montages and one-upmanship. There is animosity and sabotage and even a great chase scene. The rival team puts on a near-perfect program (featuring JFK — House of Yes reference #2). And of course, there is the magical final skate that manages to pull off the impossible move they’ve been working on for weeks (hello, Cutting Edge).

Predictably, there are great jokes here, both subtle and less so, but the real draw is the insane physical comedy. It’s not even the various skating programs, either. The best scene by far is Stranz chasing Chazz through a building while they are both on skates, unable to walk. Cracks me up. Second place, though, might go to the Van Waldenbergs skating “an edgy look at urban culture, told in the language of the streets” to “Good Vibrations” by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, while dressed kind of like a bedazzled Salt ‘n Pepa if Salt ‘n Pepa were white and one of them was a dude.

Honorable mention to perpetual stupid-movie That Guy, Nick Swardson, who does a dynamite job as Jimmy’s stalker Hector. There’s a bonus scene of him in the closing credits that is not to be missed if only for his impressions of both MacElroy and Michaels.

And one final piece of interesting trivia: Busy Phillips, who stars in my beloved Cougar Town (once of ABC, now on TBS), has a story credit for Blades of Glory. Blades of Glory contains a joke about something being “mind-bottling … when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle.” This sort of joke, using the wrong phrase for something because your definition makes more sense than the real one, is frequently seen on Cougar Town. “Change approved!”

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Anchorman

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray (I’ll know for sure how many at the end of this project). Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #17: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Confession: I can only take so much Will Ferrell. More often than not, in the movies of his I enjoy, it’s the supporting cast that wins me over, and that’s the case here. Whenever I feel Ferrell’s portrayal of Ron Burgundy teetering over the edge into unwatchable, Paul Rudd (as Brian Fantana), Steve Carell (as Brick Tamland) or, most of all, Christina Applegate (Veronica Corningstone) is there to reel me back in. Applegate, especially, is the star of this show as far as I’m concerned. Her haltingly proper, overenunciated delivery of every single line is contained enough to level out the manic antics of everyone else on the film while still being absolutely hilarious in its own right.

What else works? The news crew gang fight (Tim Robbins in a Mike Brady perm as the public news anchor is my favorite cameo here), the animated rainbow love scene, singing “Afternoon Delight,” Sex Panther, the Burgundy/Corningstone physical fight (“Knights of Columbus, that hurt!” is the only Burgundy outburst that really makes me laugh), post-sign-off insult exchanges, some little girl on the street telling Burgundy off, Fred Willard (as news director Ed Harken) on the telephone to various people about his character’s son’s escalating violence, and the running teleprompter gag. “Go fuck yourself, San Diego,” still makes me laugh my ass off.

What doesn’t work? Well, like I said, I can only take so much Will Ferrell, so a lot of his mugging bores me to tears. I can do without the shirtlessness, the Jazz flute, the screaming and crying jags, the Jack Black scene, and the entire relationship with his dog Baxter. I also don’t understand his intelligence level. One minute he’s correcting someone on his team for saying something ridiculous, the next minute he has no idea what words mean. I know it’s meant to be funny, and I’m sure a lot of people will tell me I’m uptight for not thinking it is, but it just strikes me as inconsistent and weird. Carell’s Tamland is never not stupid, and he’s consistently one of the funniest characters in the whole film. I think Burgundy could’ve been hilarious (and Anchorman as a whole just as much of a success) if Burgundy had simply been arrogant and sexist with a tin ear for tactful conversation without being a bumbling idiot. I know idiocy is kind of Ferrell’s schtick, though, so I guess we’re stuck with it.

On a whole, I do like the movie (as I mentioned, there are lots of really funny things about it), and there’s no denying it’s secured a place in pop culture history. The only real mistake surrounding it was the decision to make a sequel, not only because it sucked, but because the original ends with a perfect epilogue, letting the audience in on the futures of our featured players. The sequel completely undermined all of that, but luckily we don’t have to go into that here, because I don’t own it and never will.

With any luck, maybe in five or ten years no one will remember that anything but this one Anchorman movie ever existed.