Voyagers! (1982) – Review

Today if you turn on Netflix or Cable television you’ll most likely come across at least a half-dozen shows involving a variety of heroes travelling through time to fix history, including such shows as Timeless, The Librarians, and the Travelers, yet back in the 80s this was a relatively rare concept for television, other than Doctor Who and his companion's whose adventures weren’t limited to travelling through time as the Tardis took them across the galaxy as well, but there was one other notable pair of time travellers and that would be the characters of Phineas Bogg and Jeffrey Jones on Voyagers!

Airing on NBC during their 1982-1983 season Voyagers! introduced television viewers to the misadventures of time traveller Phineas Bogg (Jon-Erik Hexum), who due to a malfunctioning Omni – which is the small compass-like device that worked as this show’s time travel machine –  ends up in the bedroom of a young orphan boy named Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce). During the scuffle with Jeffrey’s dog, which had its teeth buried in Bogg’s Voyager Guidebook, the poor kid is knocked out of the window which forces Bogg to dive after him before Jeffrey becomes street pizza. Bogg activates his Omni before the two make a bad impression on New York City and he and Jeffrey are whisked through time until eventually landing on the banks of the river Nile circa 1450 BC.

 

“Please, no jokes about being in de-Nile.”

The wrinkle here is that the Omni was not supposed to reach any year later than 1970 but Jeffrey’s room was clearly in the year 1982 and it's because of this that the Omni is unable to return Jeffrey back to his own time.  Not only is this bad but it becomes clear that without his Guidebook, which got left behind with Jeffrey’s dog, Bogg will have a hard time completing his missions as a Voyager. And who exactly are Voyagers and what is their mission, you ask? Unfortunately, the show was cancelled before we learned much about this mysterious group of time travellers, other than that a certain number of people have been plucked from various times and places to be brought to a Voyager training facility where they would be schooled on world history – Bogg being more interested in a cute girl in his class rather than learning history with this being the reason he ends up needing the encyclopedic Jeffrey – and then these “Voyagers” would be sent off to keep history on track. Questions like “Who set up this organization?” or “What is causing the deviations in time that need to be fixed?” were never addressed, and the episode "The Trial of Phineas Bogg" is the only real glimpse we get behind the curtain, where we find Bogg on trial for violating the Voyager Code.

 

Are the Voyagers working for God or some other cosmic entity?

Lucky for Bogg Jeffrey’s late father just so happened to have been a history professor and Jeffrey himself is basically a walking talking history book. So with Jeffrey taking the place of the lost Guidebook Bogg is able to continue on with his job of fixing historical events, and this sets up the show’s basic formula.  The Omni will literally drop them in on some particular time period – say Paris during the first world war – they learn that the Germans are winning due to their Zeppelin air superiority and Jeffrey would inform Phineas what is wrong with said events, such as the fact that the Germans should not be winning the war, which Jeffrey deduces is because the airplane hadn’t, for some reason, been invented yet.  This leads to a second time jump where our heroes travel even further back and time to fix this problem, such as getting the Wright Brothers to stop fighting over a woman and invent the bloody airplane.

 

Can two wrongs make a Wright?

For a show about time travelling adventures Voyagers! really delivers on its premise, as each and every week Phineas and Jeffrey bounce in and out of one crazy adventure after another as they try to push historical events back onto their proper course.  They help Spartacus (Dan Pastorini) escape the Roman Coliseum so that he can lead the slave revolt, they prevent Teddy Roosevelt (Gregg Henry) from being killed by Billy the Kid (Frank Koppala), we see them run into the likes of Marco Polo (Paul Regina) and Lawrence Arabia (Judson Scott), and they even aid a fellow Voyager (Suzanne Barnes) in preventing the famous Mona Lisa painting from going down with the Titanic. What this resulted in was a show that wasn’t just a fun adventure series but an informative one, as the writers did their best to treat historical events fairly accurately – some fudging done to make it work for an hour-long episode was to be expected – and each episode would end with Meeno Peluce saying in voice-over, "If you want to learn more about Abe Lincoln or Charles Dickens, take a voyage down to your public library. It's all in books!"

Now, as fun and informative as this show was it wasn’t without some glaring flaws – though many of them were due to omissions of information that we may have learned if the show had lasted more than one season – and the biggest flaw would be the show’s lack of continuity.  This being a show from the 80s a serialized story arc wasn’t something audience were expecting so these showrunners didn’t bother to give them one, but this resulted in a season that just bounced around – like its time-travelling heroes – without any real stakes. In the pilot episode, Bogg goes from being a bit of a scoundrel to a loving father figure to Jeffrey rather quickly, which luckily works because Jon Erik-Hexum and Meeno Peluce have such a wonderful natural chemistry between them that is truly heartwarming at times, but the events of each following adventure doesn’t seem to have much impact on either of these characters and considering one of them is just a kid you’d think this would be a given.

 

One will lose track of how many near-death experiences this kid has.

There is no real connective tissue between one episode to the next – we even have Bogg meeting younger versions of historical figures that he’d run across on a previous missions but be completely unaware that they’d ever met before, and being that we have no clue if this job as a Voyager has an endgame it lessens a viewer’s investment. Will history be constantly in need of tune-ups?

Stray Observations:

• Phineas and Jeffrey never seem to have any problem acquiring clothing after being dropped by the Omni into a particular time period. Are we to assume Bogg is able to quickly steal the necessary clothing? The two of them don’t seem to travel with money so buying the right attire is out of the question, and in one particular episode they get spare clothes from Billy the Kid, which raises the question, “Why was Billy the Kid carrying around clothes for a young kid like Jeffrey?”
• And where exactly do our two heroes keep their regular clothing? We see them jump back and forth through time wearing various period outfits, from Roman gladiatorial togs to Victorian suits, but by the next episode, we’ll be seeing Phineas Bogg back in his standard swashbuckling attire and Jeffrey in his trademark red and white striped shirt.  Are these outfits stored in some kind of dimensional portal? And with all the action and mayhem these two find themselves in it’s hard to believe one pair of pants and shirt would survive for very long, also, who is cleaning and servicing them? Bogg certainly doesn’t seem to be the type to do laundry.
• The Omni only malfunctions when the plot requires it to – going into “automatic mode” and sending them off to some random time – but we do see Phineas and Jeffrey use the device to go to specific times, which leads to a big question, “If they fail on a particular mission why not use the Omni to go back and try again?” Would there be a paradox issue? Could it result in them running into previous versions of themselves? We learn very little about how time travel in this show works, and I doubt the writers gave it much thought either, but such a powerful device opens up a can of worms that this type of show must deal with eventually, lucky for them the show got cancelled before things got too messy.
• In the aforementioned episode "The Trial of Phineas Bogg" we learn that the council can track the Omnis used by each of their Voyagers and that they have been aware of Jeffrey joining up with Bogg, so why in the hell did they wait so long to step in? And though Bogg’s Omni was unable to take Jeffrey back to 1982 what was stopping Bogg from bringing Jeffrey before the council and asking them to take the kid home? Was his Omni unable to return to Voyage headquarters as well?
• In that same episode we meet an evil Voyager named Drake (Stephen Liska), a Voyager prosecutor who wants to see Bogg kicked out, he falsifies evidence to get a conviction, but we never get a handle on what his big plan was. We learn that he’d been getting a variety of other Voyagers “disbarred” as some kind of power play, but to what end? Does he plan on becoming the head honcho of the Voyagers and thus control all time and space? In the episode “Jack’s Back” – which was the last episode to air – we have Drake framing Phineas for the crimes committed by Jack the Ripper, but that was just a bonus as he’d already been 1888 London to screw with the timeline. And I’m left asking, “How does wrecking time advance Drake’s goals at all? Is he screwing things up just out of spite? Has Drake joined an Anti-Voyager organization?”

 

“It’s all elementary, my dear Jeffrey.”

Sure, some of those criticism could have been resolved if the show had been picked up for a second season, with elements like the organization behind the Voyagers being better explained, but I doubt it, mostly this kind of show was the product of the time and of this particular genre, as writers for a program such as Voyagers! weren’t expected to think “Big Picture” they were just worried about making an hour of fun and lighthearted entertainment.  Of course, this sentiment didn't stop them from dabbling in such dramatic aspects of changing history in ways not directed by the Omni, such as Jeffrey wanting to warn people about such events as the attack on Pearl Harbor or the sinking of the Titanic, and then diving into such delightful episodes as "Cleo and the Babe" where Cleopatra (Andrea Marcovicci) is accidentally lost in 1920s New York City, where she then teams up with Lucky Luciano (Michael Gregory) to prevent Babe Ruth (William Lucking) from hitting is home run record.

 

"Should we call The Untouchables?"

A few years later legendary television producer Donald P. Bellisario would create a time-travelling gem called Quantum Leap, where physicist Sam Beckett would be sent through time by an unknown entity to correct historical mistakes, but unlike Voyagers! that series tackled events on a much smaller scale and also managed to last five seasons. The sad thing here is that Voyagers! could have lasted five seasons but idiot network execs cancelled the show so they could replace it with a news program to challenge CBS’s 60 Minutes, and they even failed at doing that as well.
Voyagers! may not have been the “thinking man’s” science fiction series but no one can say it wasn't a helluva an entertaining ride, and if its short run got just a couple of kids interested history well that’s more than can be said about a lot of the stuff you find on television these days. So if you are looking for an exciting and fun journey through history set your Omni to 1982 and checks out Voyagers! you won’t be disappointed.

“We travel through time to help history along...give it a push where it's needed. When the Omni's red, it means history's wrong. Our job is to get everything back on track. Green light, kid! We did it!”

Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown (2017) – Review

The Scooby gang doesn’t spend a lot of time in America’s South West, preferring gothic settings or exotic locals to dusty prairies and ghost towns, but still, they are certainly no strangers when it comes to phantoms of the West. They gang tackled Miner Forty-Niner in the episode “Mine Your Own Business” from the original series Scooby-Doo, Where are You! and more recently in the series What’s New Scooby-Doo? they tackled crazed robots in the old western town of Cyber Gulch in “Go West Young Scooby,” but with Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown we not only get a true cowboy-themed mystery but a little more “relative” history for one of the gang.

Mystery Incorporated is invited to visit the Crazy Q Ranch owned by Shaggy’s (Matthew Lillard) third cousin twice removed Tawny Rogers (Melissa Villaseñor), but upon arrival, the gang is quick to learn that the ranch and neighbouring town is being terrorized by the ghost of Dapper Jack Rogers, and the townsfolk freak out upon seeing Shaggy mistaking him for the ghost. Turns out Shaggy is a direct descendant of this notorious outlaw, which causes Shaggy to question, “How come no one in my family has ever mentioned this famous relative?” and is informed by Crazy Q’s chief ranch hand Rafe (Gary Cole), “Probably because he’s mostly known for being a violent gunslinger, so evil that his ghost has come back to terrorize the whole town.” Which has me wondering if the writers of this movie understand how fame and notoriety works. Are we to believe that somehow Shaggy’s parents have never mentioned there is a tourist attraction based on a distant relative?

 

Wouldn’t a simple google search have popped this up?

While the backstory of Dapper Jack is rather fascinating, with him and his ferocious dog Atlas terrorizing the town and committing such acts of villainy as cattle rustling, cheating at cards, and returning library books late, sadly the plot of Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown isn’t nearly so interesting as there was pretty much no mystery to found here as the secret behind the ghostly apparition of Dapper Jack is fairly apparent from the outset.  So, instead of a good mystery we are subjected to many long “comedic” sketches that range from the sad to the pathetic. The writers tried to throw a few suspects our way but none of them hold water; first we have emo-goth teen Desdemona Gunderson (Jessica DiCicco) who clearly would rather be anywhere than at a dude ranch with her parents and little brother, but as a suspect this is rather ridiculous and comes off as time filler. Next, we have two movie producers who could be using the ghost as a publicity stunt for their upcoming movie on the legend of Dapper Jack but this is debunked before it even has a chance of becoming interesting.  Finally, we have sisters Carol (Tania Gunadi) and Sharon (Lauren Tom) a pair of guests who constantly prank each other, in the most unfunny ways imaginable, but there is a big difference between dumping paint on your sister and harassing an entire town with a phantom rider.

 

This is a tad elaborate for a prank.

So who was behind this terrifying apparition? Almost from their moment of their arrival the gang hears about a company called Black Rattler Management who have been buying up all the surrounding land and business, getting the real estate cheap due to the ghost driving tourists away, so the reveal that they are the ones behind the ghost of Dapper Jack is not in the least surprising.  Even Daphne (Grey Griffin) pointed out that approximately 98% of the ghosts the gang runs into having ties to real estate. Despite her allergic reaction to horses Velma (Kate Micucci) and Fred (Frank Welker) are able to collect enough clues to lay the blame on Rafe and fellow ranch hand Kyle (Eric Ladin). Turns out Rafe is Black Rattler Management and he was buying up the land to turn the whole place into a Dapper Jack themed resort, but what sucks is the fact that he was never delivered up as a possible suspects, the “proof” against him isn’t revealed until the end – the computer font he used on the ranch’s website matched the font on the business cards of Black Rattler Management – so there was no way to guess his involvement.

 

The Case of the Tell-Tale Font.

Stray Observations:
• Velma is revealed to have an obsession with fonts, which not only makes her look like a crazy person – she even hyperventilates over them – but it’s only there for cheap laughs and the big reveal at the end.
• The Crazy Q’s ranch house bears a striking resemblance to the famous Winchester Mystery House. A mystery I’d rather see the Scooby gang tackle than this bit of Wild West tripe.
• With Velma and Fred acting like complete idiots in this outing it’s nice to see Shaggy being shown as not only brave but athletically competent, even winning a Bronco Busting competition.
• This film continues Fred’s increasing obsession with traps only this time it’s combined with the sudden clumsiness that results in him netting himself. Remember when Fred was the cool dependable leader of the group?

 

Why do these writers hate Fred so much?

Due to Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown lacking of an actual mystery the bulk of the film is full of lame comedic shtick that has little to no bearing on the mystery; we get the two sisters pranking each other, Desdemona’s little brother being afraid of horses and Shaggy entering the rodeo to save the ranch, all to fill the eighty-minute runtime. There is a section that is all about the missing diary belonging to the Sheriff he defeated Dapper Jack – which later reveals that Jack was innocent and that the Sheriff had framed him – but it didn’t add much to the proceedings other than to clear Shaggy’s ancestor. Overall, this was a wasted effort by the people over at Warner Brothers Animation and not an outing I can recommend to anyone other than diehard Scooby-Doo completists.

Real Ghost Alert: As the gang leaves town Shaggy and Scooby-Doo spot the real spirit of Dapper Jack on a distant ridge, and Jack gives Shaggy a nod of gratitude for clearing his name before disappearing.

The Terminal Man (1974) – Review

Based on one of Michael Crichton’s “techno-thrillers” The Terminal Man deals once again with men of science crossing the boundaries of the natural world and the dire consequences such action will eventually lead to. The basic premise of this film is in the use of computers and brain surgery to if not heal damaged brains at least prevent them from acting out violently, and as this is your standard “cautionary tale” the result will, of course, be quite the opposite and the protagonist will come to a violent end. That at no point in this movie does a character state “There are some things man was not meant to know” is the only proof that the screenwriters had any restraint at all, otherwise the film is just two hours of boring clichés.

We are first introduced to a trio of medical professionals, Dr. Arthur McPherson (Donald Moffat), Dr. John Ellis (Richard Dysart) and Ralph Friedman (James Sikking) as they discuss the use of a computer implant to curb violent behaviour caused by brain damage, their key subject being one Harry Benson (George Segal), an extremely intelligent computer scientist who suffers from a unique form epilepsy.  Whenever a seizure occurs he blacks out only to awaken hours later with no memory of the violent acts he has committed. One dissenting opinion is raised that because Harry also suffers from the delusion that computers will "rise up against humanity" – a distinctly strange paranoia for a computer designer to have – that literally putting a computer inside Benson's head could cause adverse psychological reactions. I’d certainly considered that a very valid concern, and how they got Harry to even consider this particular procedure is never even addressed, but this view is “pish poshed” and they go ahead with the surgery.

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first nonviolent man."

I do hope you like watching surgery because this particular sequence lasts an interminable twenty minutes, it just goes on for fucking ever, and nothing really dramatic happens, we just get endless shots of Richard Dysart sticking little metal probes into George Segal’s brain. I may not be an expert in what makes scintillating drama but this is surely not it.  Now, eventually, the surgery does end – thank god – and we get Benson's psychiatrist, Janet Ross (Joan Hackett), sitting down with him as technicians then trigger electrical impulses via the various implants in his brain to see which one will stop the violence-inducing seizures.

Unfortunately, good ole Harry’s brain becomes addicted to these electrical impulses, with the seizures being initiated at increasingly shorter intervals, and this eventually results in a continuous series of impulses that will actually trigger the blackouts they were installed to prevent in the first place. Then in a rather leftfield moment Harry gets help from a stripper girlfriend (Jill Clayburgh) - because why not - to escape from the hospital and which leads to the doctors scrambling around in a vain attempt to track him down before he has his next violent inducing blackout.

 

Needless to say, they don’t find him in time.

The Terminal Man is not a terrible adaptation of Crichton’s novel as it is fairly faithful to the source material – they even fired Crichton from screenplay duties because his script did not follow the novel closely enough – but director Mike Hodges brought a very antiseptic feel to the proceedings and almost every character seems to be completely divorced of emotions. You really shouldn't have a horror/science fiction/thriller where everyone looks as emotionally engaged as a person waiting in line at the DMV, and when we do get Harry’s violent attacks there about as bland and boring as the rest of the film.  I’ve seen more thrilling moments on episodes of Goosebumps.

When we eventually get the film's big moment, where Harry breaks into Janet’s home and we finally get to see the good doctor lose a bit of her composure the scene is still a lethargic mess and is about as thrilling as visit by a Jehovah Witness, but at least it does give us a break from viewing more medical procedures. What is strange here is that in the book Janet used her microwave oven to disrupt the atomic pacemaker, the one that powers his implanted computer, while in the movie he comes at her and she simply stabs him with a kitchen knife before locking herself in the bathroom.  That they decided to diverge from the source material in this area is truly bizarre as a psycho attacking a woman with a knife is about as unoriginal as one can get.

 

“Here’s Harry!”

The idea of an implanted computer performing some kind of mind control over oneself is a terrifying prospect, one that Dr. John Ellis glibly counters with, “What do you call compulsory education through high school?” and Crichton’s novel does delve into some scary areas of medical science but the movie, on the other hand, is a collection of “talking head” scenes that never manage to engage the viewer, we just don’t care about anyone, and when we get to the laughable ending – which is definitely not from the book – where Henry just walks into an open grave, you can’t help but wonder, “What in the hell were they thinking?”

 

Is supposed to be symbolic?  If so it failed.

There have been many great science fiction movies dealing with the dangers of computer advancement – from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to Crichton’s own Westworld and Jurassic Park – but The Terminal Man not only offers nothing new on the topic it's also guilty of boring the crap out of the viewer. If you want to see the idea of human/computer interface tackled in a more entertaining fashion check out director Leigh Whannell’s 2018 sci-fi/action/horror film Upgrade, and though it may not be all that thought-provoking it will at least keeps you awake while The Terminal Man could, at best, work as a cure for insomnia.

 

Man versus Machine: The age-old struggle.

Lego Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash (2017) – Review

Kids today will doubtfully be all that familiar with the “Beach Party” movies starring 60s singing sensations Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello but Lego Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash is a clear tribute to those fun-loving goofy teen flicks of old, thus more mature viewers may get an extra chuckle or two, regardless this second Scooby-Doo Lego movie still has the standard mysteries and comedy hijinks required to be a proper Scooby-Doo adventure.

After the unmasking of another “Mummy” that had been terrorizing a local museum – in a Lego reimagining of the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too – the gang start discussing what they should do next. Fred (Frank Welker) and Velma (Kate Micucci) both want to stay at the museum while Daphne (Grey Griffin) is with Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby in their desire go somewhere fun. From the arresting police officer, who admits to not being good at his job, they learn of the “Blowout Beach Bingo Bash” which consists of three fun-filled days of singing, dancing, games and food, which ends with a giant beach barbeque, “Where they crown the two most high-spirited partiers Captains of the Bash!”

 

Time for a Road Trip

When Velma tries to figure out how best to “Optimize their fun” we get Daphne and Shaggy razzing both her and Fred for being total squares and full-on nerds. This doesn’t sit well with Fred and Velma so they vow to prove that they are "party animals" and “Not obsessed with solving mysteries.” And how will they prove such a thing, well, by becoming the “Captains of the Bash” but once they arrive at Blowout Beach they find the boardwalk deserted and a mystery on their hands. When they check into their hotel they learn from the owners Rob (Tom Kenny) and Laura Holdout (Grey Griffin) that a pair of ghost pirates have stolen the pirate hats for the “Captains of the Bash” crowning ceremony and have also scared most of the teens away. Legend tells of the notorious Captain Brutimore Bash (Kevin Michael Richardson) and his pirate companion Bingo Belle (Grey Griffin) who were the first captains of the Blowout Beach Bash, but when a navy blockade interrupted their partying the two had to sneak away, leaving their treasure behind.

 

"Avast me glowing hearties!"

As mysteries go Lego Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash is a doozy as the bulk of the cast is made up of suspects. First, we have Chad (Josh Keaton) and Krissy Holdout (Natalie Lander) the obnoxious teens who won last year's “Captains of the Bash” and seem very insistent on keeping the title despite most of the other kids finding them rather unlikable. Next, we have their father Rob who used to run the pirate tour aboard Bash’s ship, before a bumper car injury forced him to go into the hotel business, and his knowledge of pirate lore and his suspicious nature makes him a good candidate. Then there is the Sheriff and Deputy who both hate the idea of their town becoming a year-round tourist attraction because it would force them to actually do their jobs. Finally, we have businessman Dwight Monkfish (Fred Tatasciore) who wants to take over the whole town and tear down the entire boardwalk and replace it with a series of piers. Even his assistant Mitzi Capaletto (Hynden Walch) doesn’t have much good to say about her boss, calling him, “Brash, arrogant, a little short-tempered, gross, slimy, pure evil, and the lowest kind of scum, but he isn’t all bad.”

 

Surprisingly, he’s also not guilty.

But if the greedy businessman isn’t behind the ghost pirates, who is? Well, it turns out that pretty much everyone else is guilty. Chad and Krissy wanted to retain their titles so they dressed up as the infamous pirates to scare away the competition but it was their mother and father who stole the hats because they were a key component in uncovering the lost pirate treasure, and the Sheriff and his Deputy wanted to destroy tourism so they wouldn’t have to work so hard. Surprisingly, this glut of guilty parties’ works quite well with the gang pulling ridiculous reveal after ridiculous reveal to the point where even Dwight Monkfish was rather surprised that he turned out not to be guilty as well, “So you’re saying that I didn’t commit any of the crimes this weekend? Weird, I would have put my money on me, I’m such a greedy businessman.” Then Velma pulls off the final reveal, solving the riddle of the lost treasure, having figured out the poem from the legend and disclosing the fact that the treasure was hidden aboard the pirate ship all along.

 

Who needs Sherlock Holmes?

Stray Observations:
• The opening musical number “Blowout Beach Bingo Bash” is a nice homage to the songs from the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello movie Beach Blanket Bingo.
• In the Scooby-Doo Lego-verse, the gang is from Cool Town, not Coolsville.
• The tour guide aboard the pirate ship is a clear nod to the monotone stylings of Ben Stein.
• When the Salty Brick destroys the Holdout’s hotel Velma asks if they will rebuild but sadly the building is too old and they’ve since lost the instructions.
• We have a legend about pirates and navy blockades but no information as to when or how Captain Bash and Bingo Belle died and became ghosts. They just snuck away and died of old age?
• Captain Bash’s pirate The Salty Brick is found hidden in a cavern that looks as if it was lifted right out of The Goonies.

 

Goonies never say die.

Lego Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash was a delightfully fun mystery with the Lego designs and jokes beautifully adding to the atmosphere of wackiness and adventure. Daphne is given a bit more to do this time out, even being allowed to present one of the reveals, and Fred and Velma trying to become “Party Animals” was rather cute. Overall, this Lego direct-to-video movie was quite a step up from the previous entry of Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood making it well worth checking out

Birds of Prey (2020) – Review

We can all admit that the only real saving grace to 2016’s Suicide Squad was Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn, which seems to be the genesis of Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) as the star of this film is that irascible Harleen Quinzel as she flamboyantly bounces around the streets of Gotham City from one wacky moment to the next.  So don’t be fooled by the title, even though the Birds of Prey may be part of this cast of characters, what we have here is a Harley Quinn solo picture disguised as an ensemble piece.

In this latest outing of the DC Extended Universe, we find Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) on the outs with her long-time boyfriend the Joker — him kicking her out in such a way that it’s obvious they didn’t want to pay Jared Leto for a cameo — but without the protection of the Joker, our poor Harley finds most of Gotham’s underworld turned against her. It seems while working with the Clown Prince of Crime she made more enemies than friends and now everyone wants to see her dead. Top of that list is club owner and renowned gangster Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) aka Black Mask, who, between having people’s faces sliced off by his chief henchman Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina ), is trying to form a mob empire with himself as head cheese.

“You are my number one…guy.”

To achieve said goal, Roman requires a special diamond that once belonged to the Bertinelli Crime Family because within its facets are the bank account numbers that would give Roman the ability to bribe his way to the top of Gotham. Unfortunately, there are a couple obstacles in the way of this plan, with one being the mysterious “Crossbow Killer” who has been randomly killing off mobsters; she will later be revealed to be Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) aka The Huntress, who has returned to Gotham to avenge the gangland slaying of her family. The other problem revolves around young pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco ) who randomly chose Zsasz as an easy mark and lifted the precious diamond from his pocket. The remainder of the film is Roman and his goons trying to get their hands on Cassandra and the diamond while Harley Quinn tries to keep her safe. But why is the notorious crazy Harley Quinn helping a kid, you ask?  Well, to get Roman to call off his contract on her, she offers to find Cassandra and retrieve the diamond.

 

Hijinks ensue.

You may have noticed I only mentioned one actual Birds of Prey member, that being The Huntress, but we also have Detective Montoya (Rosie Perez) a police detective obsessed with putting Roman behind bars, and then there is Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) aka Black Canary, a singer at Roman’s nightclub who bizarrely gets “promoted” from singer to driver to henchperson because he saw her kick the shit out of a couple of assholes in an alley. Neither of these characters bear more than passing resemblance to their comic book counterparts and for the life of me, I can’t understand why Dinah would be willing to work for such a psychotic criminal as the Black Mask. Dinah is the one person in this movie with an actual superpower, her ultrasonic Canary scream that has ten-fold the capabilities of most sonic weapons, but for some reason, she meekly takes orders from an unstable dude with a thing for creepy masks and murder. This is not the Black Canary comic book fans will recognize.

 

“Didn’t you used to date Green Arrow?”

Stray Observations:
• We have gangland slayings all over Gotham, yet Batman barely gets a name-drop. Is he at home, washing his tights?
• Cassandra swallowing a rather large diamond has to be one of the dumbest plot points in cinema history. Not only would this object be hard to swallow, but by the end of the film she’d be dead of internal bleeding.
• In the comics, Cassandra is the daughter of Lady Shiva and eventually becomes Batgirl; none of that will have any bearing on this film.
• Notorious serial killer Victor Zsasz is reduced to being a crazy henchman in this outing.
• Apparently, a beanbag gun is all that’s required to successfully assault the Gotham City Police Department. Do the cops in Gotham not carry guns while inside their own department?
• A drunken Montoya manages to hold her own in a fight against Harley despite previous scenes showing Harley acrobatically wiping the floor when fighting numerous opponents.
• Black Mask bizarrely sends a wave of thugs armed only with clubs and knives after our girls. Why, was his gun budget cut along with the GCPD’s?
• Harley Quinn and her Birds of Prey buddies have the memory capacity of goldfish for after defeating that bunch of poorly armed goons, they stroll out of the funhouse with seemingly no concern about Black Mask and the rest of his army of thugs waiting for them.

 

Who needs guns, we have Girl Power.

As in the case of Suicide Squad, it’s Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Harley Quinn that holds this film together, with a decidedly Deadpoolesque narrative device and story structure that should force the producers to pay Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds residuals.  The action scenes with Harley are superbly choreographed and varied throughout the film, allowing Marbot Robbie to prove she has the makings of a real action star. On the villain side of things, Ewan MacGregor seemed to be relishing the role of psychotic mobster Black Mask, but his manic charm lessened his ability to come across as anything other than an annoyance. Then again, when our heroes consist of a drunken detective and a nightclub singer, one who seems to forget she has a superpower until the Deus ex Machina moment is required, maybe a big-league villain wasn’t required.  On the real crime side of things, we have the incredibly talented Mary Elizabeth Winstead who I’m assuming was told to rein in all that she’d learned as an actress and turn herself into a charisma vacuum of unparalleled boringness. This version of Huntress wouldn’t pass muster on TV’s Arrow.

I’m not saying Margot Robbie stole this movie, it’s more like it was handed to her on a silver platter. I’d say her hyena was given better character development than some of the supposed Birds of Prey we get here.

Comic Book Note: In this movie, Harley adopts a spotted hyena and names him Bruce, after billionaire Bruce Wayne, but in the comics and cartoons, she had two hyenas named Bud and Lou after the famous comedy team of Abbott and Costello.

That all said, I will admit to having fun with this movie and Margot Robbie is a true treasure — I’d watch her read the phone book — but due to the popularity of Harley Quinn, and the actress herself, the character was allowed to dominate the film, thus crowding out her castmates as well as the plot. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is an entertaining enough film, but once viewed, it will most likely be quickly forgotten.

Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon (2016) – Review

What do professional wrestling and automotive racing have in common? Well, other than my complete lack of interest in either of these two “sports,” they were both smashed together in the animated feature Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon. In this feature, once again the Scooby gang teams up with the stars of the World Wrestling Entertainment juggernaut to solve a mystery. This is the second direct-to-video pairing of WWE Studios and Warner Bros. Animation, the first one being Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery, but this time out, the action leaves the wrestling ring and enters the world of off-road racing.

As the movie opens, we find Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (Frank Welker) operating a food truck at the Muscle Moto X Off-Road Challenge, an off-road racing event featuring WWE superstars and a million-dollar prize for the winner. Before anyone can even utter a single “Jinkies,” a demon racer named Inferno (Steve Blum) appears during one of the time trials and attacks the Legendmobile, operated by Dusty Rhodes and the Undertaker. As their vehicle is destroyed by the scorpion tail of Inferno’s monster truck, poor Dusty Rhodes is left to face off against the demon himself. Dusty attacks the demon and, unfortunately, is injured when Inferno throws him down before escaping, but the Undertaker vows to make him pay.

 

“Run creature, but you can’t hide; in the end, no man or beast escapes the Undertaker.”

What follows is your standard Scooby-Doo mystery, but with the added addition of numerous WWE stars being shoved into the proceedings, making this direct-to-video movie work more as a commercial than a Scooby-Doo animated feature. The decision to take these WWE characters out of the wrestling ring and into a crazy off-road race is a tad odd and had me wondering if this had originally been a script for a feature-length version of the animated series Wacky Races. That all the vehicles are tricked-out with numerous gadgets and back-stabbing and cheating looked to be all part of the race, all goes towards supporting this conclusion and sadly kept me wishing for Dick Dastardly and Muttley to show up to brighten things up.

 

Dick Dastardly is easily more interesting than this “evil” race ghost.

The mystery itself isn’t any better, as the collection of suspects is as blatant as it is boring and the actual guilty party’s motive is beyond the pale boring and asinine. On our suspect list is reality television producer Walter Qualls (Phil Morris) who is excited about the demon racer boosting the show’s ratings. Then we have Big Earl (Eric Bauza), the head mechanic who is in desperate need of some extra cash. Next, we have Triple H and Stephanie McMahon who, despite Inferno’s attacks, make it to first place twice in a row. Finally, we have Chairman of the Board himself, Vince McMahon who seems really eager to get his daughter out of the race and he’s never seen around during any of the races, disappearing mysteriously just before an event is about to start. Of course, it turns out that Vince McMahon was simply sneaking off to practice singing the National Anthem and the real culprits were actually Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. And why would Stephanie be sabotaging Muscle Moto X Off-Road Challenge, which was entirely her concept in the first place? Well, apparently this was all done to show her father that she could win and make Muscle Moto X a huge success.

 

And she would have gotten away with it too, if not for the bad writing and contrived plot.

Stray Observations:

• Fred (Frank Welker) is concerned that his becoming a gearhead could cut into his trap studying time, which does seem in keeping with Fred’s obsessive nature of late.
• Velma (Kate Micucci) becomes jealous of Daphne’s (Grey Griffin) developing a friendship with the “Billionaire Princess” Stephanie McMahon. These moments make Velma look quite petty and Daphne to be rather shallow, and as this “subplot” is all these two have going on during this mystery, it’s a bit crap.
• Shaggy and Scooby are tapped to replace Dusty Rhodes as The Undertaker’s partners, but Shaggy states he doesn’t know how to drive, which is blatantly untrue as we’ve seen him drive in various shows and movies.
• The Undertaker plans to use his winnings to bring the world of puppetry to his “Little creatures of the night” fan base, this is the only time I actually chuckled watching this thing.

 

Note: This puppet gag is a nice reference to Daphne’s puppet obsession from Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!

I wasn’t a fan of the blatantly crass commercialism of Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery, but I can at least say the Wacky Races element of  Curse of the Speed Demon was able to bring this movie up a notch. The mystery itself was still terrible and the voice acting of the WWE cast ranged from passable to embarrassing, but at least the artists over at Warner Bros. Animation know what they are doing and thus, we still have a visually engaging adventure. Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon isn’t the worst Scooby-Doo mystery out there, but it’s not one I can recommend anyone going out of their way to see.

 

Note: The Mystery Machine does get a fun Monster Truck Makeover.

Planet of Dinosaurs (1977) – Review

When the blending of science fiction and dinosaurs in movies comes to mind, the obvious example would be Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, but even before Michael Crichton's book saw the light of day, there was a little gem called Planet of Dinosaurs, an extremely low-budget sci-fi adventure film that dealt with a small group of space travellers fending off a variety of nasty dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the film's director, James K. Shea, had decided that most of the film's budget would be spent on the special effects and not on the cast or props. Thus, we get some amazing and award-winning stop-motion dinosaurs, but everything else verges between the laughable and the godawful.

There isn’t much of a plot to Shea's Planet of Dinosaurs as it’s mostly a survival story about a group of stranded people from the spaceship Odyssey and their travails while trying to find shelter on an alien world populated by dinosaurs. The movie opens with the Odyssey’s reactor going critical and Captain Lee Norsythe (Louie Lawless) being forced to crash-land the ship’s escape shuttle on a nearby planet that has atmosphere and conditions much like that of Earth’s. To assure a somewhat “safer” landing, Norsythe decides on a water landing, which results in the ship quickly sinking beneath the lake’s surface vis-a-vis the original Planet of the Apes. The group does manage to swim safely to shore; unfortunately, communications officer Cindy (Mary Appleseth) quickly realizes that she forgot the radio aboard the ship and when she and crew-member Chuck (Chuck Pennington) start to swim out and retrieve the radio, poor Cindy is attacked and eaten by some underwater monster. It’s at this point that the survivors realize that a long wait for a potential rescue is the least of their worries.

Note: Much of the filming took place in the Vasquez Rocks area of California’s desert, which fans of the original Star Trek series will quickly recognize.

Even though most of Planet of Dinosaurs’ budget went towards the special effects, they still couldn’t afford to have wall-to-wall dino-action, so much of the film’s conflict stems from the bickering amongst the survivors. First up is Vice-President of Spaceways Incorporated, Harvey Baylor (Harvey Shain), who fills the role of “Rich Asshole” as he constantly complains about the situation and is quick to place blame on everyone else. What is surprising is that while looking for food, Harvey meets his end rather early on the pointy horn of a Centrosaurus (after he stupidly tried to raid its nest of eggs), and I was sure he was going to be the hero’s main foil for the duration of the film. Instead, he barely made it passed the thirty-minute mark.

 

Dinosaur Survival Tip: Do not be a loud asshat or you will be killed.

With Harvey out of the way, it’s ship engineer Jim (James Whitworth) who must now provide the remaining conflict for the duration of the film, and this comes in the form of his constant undermining of Norsythe’s decision to create a defensible settlement until they can be rescued, while Jim, on the other hand, believes that rescue is unlikely and that conquering the planet is their only viable option. At first, it seems that Norsythe will get his way, with him being “In Command” giving him the right to lead: “Nobody does what he thinks is right. You all do what I think is right. I'm in command here,” but when Harvey’s ex-secretary Derna Lee (Derna Wylde) is killed by a large Tyrannosaurus, demolishing his pathetic stockade in the process, he loses much of his support.

Note: That she died trying to recover a dropped laser gun, which had already proven ineffective against even the smaller dinosaurs, wins her a Darwin Award.

Yet, Jim’s argument for taking the fight to the dinosaurs isn’t much better, “Listen, centuries ago on Earth, wolves used to wipe out whole villages, until men went out and hunted them. Wolves learned. We’ve got to go out and teach them.” And he is backed up by crewmate Nyla (Pamela Bottaro) who comments that, “Jim’s right; what are we going to do, sit around here like cattle in a pen waiting for that thing to come get us? Millions of years ago on Earth, an ape, an APE, took a club and killed his first predator. Well, we’ve gotta kill that thing, or... or that something inside of us, that dignity that makes us human, fear is going to kill that!” Do these two idiots realize that primitive man was up against such beasts as the sabretooth cat and mastodons which, though tough to kill, are not on par with giant fucking reptiles?

Note: This film’s T-Rex has a battle with the fictional Rhedosaurus from Ray Harryhausen’s classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Harryhausen himself visited the studio during production and gave his consent for the creature’s cameo appearance.

The two factions began fighting over differing plans on how to best poison the Tyrannosaurus — Norsythe wanting to leave poison bait outside the creature’s cave while Jim wanting to attack it with poison-tipped spears — but when Norsythe’s plan results in the death of another crew member, it’s all “Team Jim” from here on out. The film ends on a lighter note as it jumps years into the future where we find the survivors have set up an agricultural settlement; Chuck’s even got a kid at this point, and the prospect of rescue no longer seems all that important.

Question: Exactly what kind of crops are you going to be able to grow in that terrain?

Stray Observations:

• Derna Lee slips while going through a swamp and drops one of their precious laser guns into the water. It’s submerged for about twenty seconds but is still rendered useless. So, basically, these guns could be destroyed by heavy rain.
• Much of the film consists of this ragtag group of people dropping weapons and supplies while looking for shelter; thus, any death among them could be considered Darwinism at work.
• One of the many items dropped along the way is the device that can determine what’s safe to eat, yet somehow the lack of this valuable instrument doesn’t result in anyone dying from food poisoning.
• Harvey Baylor assumes that the large eggs he finds must belong to a giant chicken despite having already seen the giant reptiles that inhabit this planet.
• Norsythe has them construct a stockade that looks as if it could be taken out by a determined toddler let alone a dinosaur.
• After Cindy’s death, which revealed that spaceflight uniforms consist of bikini undergarments, Chuck never again puts on a shirt.

 

Something for the ladies.

If you are a fan of dinosaur movies then this is a must-see as the stop-motion work by Douglas Beswick is worthy of all the praise it got, which is not something that can be said about the direction. On the other hand, the writing and acting found in Planet of Dinosaurs has much in common with the television series Land of the Lost — which itself aired between 1974-1977 — with the annoying kids from that series being replaced by even more annoying adults. That all said and done, this is still a fun film to watch and one I can easily recommend it to fans of the genre.

Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood (2016) – Review

Corporate Synergy – The concept that the combined value and performance of two companies will be greater than the sum of the separate individual parts – which pretty much sums up the strategy behind the Scooby-Doo brand joining forces with toy giant Lego, and with Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood we find out just how well these two childhood staples work together.

After defeating a sea creature that was haunting a lighthouse Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) and Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) decide to never again eat Scooby Snacks, because those delightful treats have been used as bribes to get the cowardly duo to play live bait once too often. This leads to the gang visiting the local malt shop where Shaggy and Scooby accidentally enter a hamburger eating contest and win the whole gang a trip to Hollywood. When the Scooby gang arrive at the legendary Brickton Studios, home of many classic horror movies, they are shocked to find that the place is rather understaffed. The studio's seemingly sole employee Junior (Scott Menville), an avid fan of horror films who welcomes the gang and offers to give them a tour, but before the tour can start the studio's owner Chet Brickton (James Arnold Taylor) shows up with V.I.P. guest Atticus Fink (JB Blanc), a developer who wants to buy and then level the studio.

Movie Note: Brickton Studios is an obvious stand-in for Universal and their era of classic horror.

As expected the tour doesn't go as planned, with the appearance of a Headless Horsemen cutting things short, and the Scooby gang soon have a new mystery on their hands. Things take a decidedly interesting turn when the ghost scares off the cast and crew of the film current film in production "Two Hearts in Paris" which Chet Brickton needs to succeed if the studio is to remain solvent.  This results in the Scooby gang volunteering to help finish the film. Much to Daphne's (Grey Griffin) dismay, she is overlooked as the lead in favour of horror television host Drella Diabolique (Cassandra Peterson). It's Drella who informs the gang about the curse revolving around legendary horror icon Boris Karnac, "Boris Karnac was the greatest actor who ever lived, too good in fact, he played otherworldly creatures so well that when he passed on his spirit came back to haunt the studio as his most famous creations, forever!"

Note: Drella is based on Cassandra Peterson's famous alter ego Elvira Mistress of the Dark.

Mystery wise Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood doesn't really bring anything new to the game, not only is the suspect pool shallow but the guilty party is pretty obvious from the outset as a cursed and haunted studio would lower the price of the property so Atticus Fink is the primary suspect, and then we have horror superfan Junior who hates the very idea that Brickton Studios has moved away from making a horror films and started dipping its toes into the romantic comedy genre. Drella Diabolique is a "possible" suspect as it is she who promotes the whole "Curse of Karnac" but even her getting the lead "Two Hearts in Paris" isn't enough to make her look guilty, which is why the "big" unmasking of the Headless Horsemen to be Atticus Fink is less than surprising.  We do get a second unmasking that show's that Junior was also a guilty party, but he wasn't in cahoots with Fink he simply wanted to stop "Two Hears in Paris" from being made so that studio would go back to making monster movies, and it's also revealed that Junior's full name is Boris Karnak Jr and that wanted to carry on his father's legacy. Now, where Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood fails on the mystery end of things they more than make up for in the Lego Scooby World that they have created, with costumes and reveals being done with the simple swapping of Lego pieces.

 

Lego zombies are simply adorable.

Stray Observations:

• The character of Boris Karnak is a blend of horror icon Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney “The Man of a Thousand Faces” and Boris Karnak Jr. a clear stand-in for Lon Chaney Junior.
• Fred swaps out his obsessions with traps to his new obsessive desire to complete the movie and become a great artistic director.
• Daphne is in full klutz mode as she tries to force her way into stardom while they try and shoot “Two Hearts in Paris” and its kind of painful to watch.
• Velma (Kate Micucci) is given very little to do in this movie but she is at least the on-point characterwise when it comes to solving this mystery, that the reveals is a "surprise" to no one doesn’t help though.
• The Lego versions of the Scooby monsters in this movie are well designed but are even less scary than regular Scooby-Doo villains. So if you have little ones who found the Headless Horsemen in Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King too scary this may be the movie for them.

 

He never even throws his pumpkin head at anyone.

Lego Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood is immensely fun to watch, mostly due to seeing how everyone’s favourite mystery-solving gang are transformed into Lego characters, but the mystery is weak and quite a few the “humorous” moments come across as little more than padding – which isn’t good when you consider the running time is only 75-minutes – but overall it’s a harmless entry in the series of Direct-to-Video movies.