The Lonely Guy (1984)

Is being single really this depressing? Is it really an empty world filled with uncooperative dogs, endless plants to water, sad sack friends, intimate pillow talk with actual pillows and cardboard cutouts in place of actual humans? Surely, it can’t be this difficult to find sexual nirvana, can it?

For Charles Grodin and Steve Martin, it certainly is. The former gets dumped by his gal after she falls for a home invader (come on) and the latter takes a while to realize his own squeeze would rather go to bed with anyone but him.

They are Lonely Guys, perpetual losers completely incapable of finding permanent, compatible partners. They meet in the park after Martin gets thrown out of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment just as he comes to terms with her openly cheating on him with a fellow dancer in her ballet company. Martin’s anger is on a 30-second delay.

Grodin tries to give him advice on how to cope and find substitutes for female companionship. But the advice is so bad, like many Lonely Guys, Grodin contemplates jumping off a bridge sparing himself any more emotional pain. Never a good sign for a comedy when one of your main characters is so bored with the material they want to write themselves out of their own story.

How pathetic is Grodin’s character? He agrees to be a warm-up act of sorts for a male friend in order to keep the guy’s girlfriend entertained before he shows up and tags in. And by entertained, I mean telling “funny” stories to keep her amused. It’s a regular gig for him. You’d think the friend would fix him up with somebody already as a thank you.

When Grodin invites Martin to a party at his apartment, they’re the only two in attendance, unless you count all the life-size celebrity cutouts displayed all over the place. When the cops come to tell them to turn down the loud music, one stays behind to ask where he can get his own substitute human. Hope Gene Hackman took out a restraining order.

At another party with actual guests, Grodin doesn’t interact with any of the women. He’d rather watch Star Wars all by himself in one of the empty bedrooms. It’s almost as if he actually doesn’t want to find love.

And then there’s his talking chess game. Not only does it easily beat him, it calls him an “asshole” for fucking up. I wouldn’t be giving that thing any kind of handshake. I would be elbow dropping it into oblivion.

I’m not sure what Grodin does for a living but Martin is an aspiring author whose main hustle is writing those corny, sappy poems in greeting cards. At first, his boss is thrilled with his lame condolences on cat deaths but eventually Martin blows it and he gets shit-canned. That turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

There are a number of comically dead scenes where Martin interacts with a woman hoping to get a phone number or at least land on the path to a serious relationship only to strike out repeatedly. He tries at the blood bank (the movie initially makes us think they’re already in bed) but the woman has a boyfriend. He tries again at a watering hole where he stupidly misreads the situation and screws himself out of an easy, guilt-free hook-up, a moment we see a mile away.

Getting increasingly desperate despite not really exhausting all his options, he rifles through his little black book and stumbles upon the sole entry. But this one’s a little tied up at the bank. She gets kidnapped by robbers, one of whom takes Martin’s call before they flee. Hate when that happens.

His situation dramatically improves when he spots the debuting Judith Ivey, one of the strangest characters I’ve ever seen in a movie. Check this out. She’s had six husbands and she’s only 30. That’s one red flag.

Here’s another. She can’t make up her mind about him. After a tired running gag involving him not being able to reach her because of excruciatingly dumb contrivances (a smudged napkin, a burned restaurant bill), they finally start seeing each other. But she won’t do anything sexual. She actually keeps her clothes on while they’re in bed together.

Shortly after one of their numerous reconciliations, Ivey reveals she’s never climaxed during sex. (How does she get laid when she never gets undressed?) That leads to Martin actually convincing her that his sneezing is orgasmic. The Lonely Guy is supposed to be a romantic comedy but it fails miserably on both levels.

As the kids say, what’s the dilleo? Well, she’s tired of getting her heart broken and worries that the hopelessly devoted Martin, who never acts like a dick, will soon be ex-husband number seven. So she drifts in and out of his life because she can’t completely resist their chaste encounters. Bizarrely, she agrees to immediately marry Martin’s friend Steve Lawrence, himself recently single after things ultimately don’t work out with his wife and his side piece. I have a lot of questions about that open arrangement (did Eydie know?) but The Lonely Guy is completely disinterested in delving deeper.

Ivey is uneasy about getting closer to Martin but she’d rather jump into an instant disaster with someone she doesn’t love? Sure. Maybe she’s the one who needs the $50 intercom psychiatrist. (Yeah, what’s the dilleo with him, too?)

It’s hard to know which gender this film has more contempt for. In this exaggerated New York, women are either scatterbrains, victims of male oppression, sluts or unavailable. Meanwhile, the men are either sleazy, awkward, clueless, dishonest, doormats or literally screaming into the void hoping for a response that never comes. It’s a miracle anyone gets together.

While bemoaning Ivey’s constant absences, after losing his greeting card gig, Martin drops his romance novel idea and instead decides to write about his unwelcome solitude. It’s such a big seller even a Jimmy Carter impersonator shows up at his signing. And during his promotional tour, he finally gets to have a four-way with a bunch of his fellow guests from The Merv Griffin Show. The creator of Jeopardy apparently likes to watch. Surprised no one calls him Merv The Perv.

What’s in Martin’s book? Apparently, it’s a state secret since he never talks about the contents. This movie is so fucking lazy.

Released in 1984, The Lonely Guy predates dating apps, online chatrooms, social media, speed dating, Internet search engines and the cell phone. These fictional Manhattanites could’ve used those lifelines, although it’s clear they don’t possess a lot of ingenuity or creativity to begin with. Repeatedly screaming a woman’s name while standing on the roof of your apartment building is what happens when you’ve run out of good ideas. It’s a reliable sign of low intelligence.

While sitting in the park with Grodin, Martin and his new pal spot a cute dame jogging past them in short shorts. Martin then decides to do that himself to attract women but he’s not as committed. Not willing to work up his own sweat, apparently you can buy someone else’s. Oddly, Ivey sees right through this act (that’s how she got involved with one of her ex-husbands) but still gives him her number which of course he’s unable to dial.

Speaking of that, when Martin encounters her again at a fancy restaurant, where apparently eating alone is such a major event everyone stops what they’re doing to witness this rare phenomenon firsthand, she’s not alone. There’s one of her exes sitting at the bar waiting for her.

The moment she’s on her honeymoon with a delighted Lawrence and looks as dejected as an English soccer fan pretty much sums up the idiocy of this whole story. Now you think this is a bad idea? This woman is so maddening. Why does Martin pine for her?

Knowing full well the empty lives of these men are too bleak to laugh at, the mood at the end has to be significantly lightened somehow. Continually manipulating its characters into denying their own feelings for most of the movie, the screenplay finally gives up and throws a couple of bones to Martin and Grodin. Based on the disclosed histories of their partners, I wouldn’t get too attached.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, July 26, 2021
9:16 p.m.

Charlie’s Angels (2019)

How is it possible that The Townsend Agency, a tiny, private Los Angeles spy organization, can quietly expand internationally over a number of decades without evoking territorial disputes with the CIA? Simple. In Charlie’s Angels, Townsend never has to worry about interference or sabotage because in this fictional world, they’re not interested in pulling off illegal coups and torturing innocent people. They have enough problems dealing with staff morale.

The man responsible for its global franchising is the retiring John Bosley (Patrick Stewart) who is so beloved within the growing agency, employees who achieve lieutenant status all get renamed Bosley themselves including Rebekah (writer/director Elizabeth Banks). She’s the only one who senses a hidden agenda.

Meanwhile, a beautiful scientist/hacker named Elena (new inappropriate crush Naomi Scott) has a huge ethical dilemma. She’s been part of a team developing a product called Calisto for some impatient British plutocrat named Brok (Sam Claflin). It’s a portable energy device meant to control electricity consumption through direct voice command. Each one is individually personalized by using one’s thumbprint as proof of ID. Ideally, it’s supposed to save the planet by eliminating the need for traditional power grids. A demonstration proves promising.

But there’s a big problem. It can be hacked and weaponized. One scientist has already suffered serious injuries from an internal test gone horribly wrong. Later on, a hapless security guard fares much worse.

Elena pleads with her smug superior Peter Fleming (toothy Nat Faxon) to get her a meeting with Brok so she can allay her concerns and be given enough time to eliminate this enormous bug. But he has his own agenda with the device. He’s already suppressed her detailed report.

Now, in the real world, someone with deep reservations like this would probably go to a receptive government watchdog, maybe an inspector general, or most likely, a helpful journalist eager to get the story out there before any real damage can be done to the citizenry.

Elena takes a meeting with The Townsend Agency. In public. She meets with a different Bosley (Djimon Hounsou) at a local German cafe where a silent, tattooed assassin is watching her nearby, typing nonsense on a typewriter to kill time before springing into action. Keeping close watch are two Angels, sarcastic Sabina (Kristin Stewart at her most sexualized) who constantly veers between lesbian chic and long-haired femme fatale, and statuesque Jane (Ella Balinska), passing for a barista with deep suspicions about Tattoo Mute.

When Jane’s instincts start screaming, out comes the pistol. And then a fight. And then a car chase. Scared off of making sure he got the job done, the assassin, a wannabe T-1000, blows up his own car and walks away unscathed, retreating briefly only to regroup and try again later.

Elena learns about the Angels and they learn about Calisto. A plan is hatched to retrieve the device and all its prototypes from Brok’s corporate headquarters in Hamburg, Germany where the product was developed. But only one is secured through a plan that involves a tribute of sorts to bad 70s haircuts. As I reflect on this sequence, I wonder now if this is truly a clever scheme or is corporate security really that lax and naive? Blaming “glitchy” equipment for your dumbness is a weak excuse.

Thanks to their extraordinary surveillance capabilities (something the CIA would definitely covet themselves), they know what Peter Fleming is up to at all times. But they don’t know who he is working for and who would benefit the most from such a powerful weapon. Rebekah, however, has a pretty good idea.

Coming 16 years after Full Throttle, this third Charlie’s Angels movie isn’t a reboot but rather a revisionist sequel. Neither Bill Murray nor Bernie Mac are mentioned but there’s Patrick Stewart’s Bosley, who never existed until now, often awkwardly inserted into a bunch of archival photos featuring the previous stars of the earlier films (plus some famous figures) and even the original TV series that started it all back in 1976. That is not good Photoshopping.

Stewart hasn’t heeled it up since Conspiracy Theory, I do believe, but who wants to hate Captain Picard? And who exactly are his enemies that need eliminating, anyway? The mysterious Charlie, the real source of his unrelenting rage, is long dead. Who else does he want out of the way? (Does he know the secret of Charlie’s replacement?) Without any potential targets in play, there’s nothing literally at stake here.

For a billionaire, the overwhelmed Brok is dumber than Elon Musk. As expected, he’s perfectly fine with his flawed Calisto product being released as is despite dangerous risks to the public’s health (he’s a capitalist, after all) but not swift enough to realize he’s on the eventual path to a prison sentence. He doesn’t quite get the concept of plausible deniability.

I will say this for this incarnation of Charlie’s Angels, and I know this isn’t saying much, but it’s the least bad of the trilogy. Its mostly unconvincing action sequences may lack originality and zip (excluding tall Jane, tiny, unarmed women going toe-to-toe with jacked-up, fully armed men is difficult to believe), but at least there’s no phony wire work involved this time unlike its more cartoonish predecessors. The Angels, including Elena, take a cue or two from Jackie Chan when needed, employing nearby objects to protect themselves and to subdue relentless goons when not in the possession of a firearm. Unfortunately, it’s all for naught. There’s very little excitement when you know the eventual outcome.

The closest thing to a suspenseful moment involves Sabina and a goon fighting while trying to avoid being grinded to bits in a giant rock crushing machine. But it’s hard to care when we’ve been here many times before. The execution is not as sharp as it should be.

The film tries to evoke girl power right from its opening lines (there’s even a clip montage of young girls happily doing a variety of activities to serve as inspiration) but let’s not live in denial here. There’s nothing feminist about being a honeypot, especially when you have Kristen Stewart constantly dressing provocatively either to capture a bedazzled Australian embezzler (despite openly questioning his sexist views) or to distract an oblivious guard long enough for Jane to zap him from behind.

There’s always been an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of Charlie’s Angels. Because the original TV show was created by men, there was an overemphasis on the physicality of the women going on these dangerous missions which was true of the first two feature films, as well. No one’s in bikinis in this 2019 incarnation but no one is ever in a pantsuit and without make-up, either. (Even when she’s not wearing a wig, Stewart still looks like a fashion model rather than a hardened undercover operative.) I’m not saying you can’t glam it up on your own terms (hell, I’m all for good looking dames wearing hot outfits) but how effective would these operatives be if they were hideous?

There’s slightly more character development with this new cast of Angels. Sabina’s a former con with vague “abandonment issues” coinciding with a history of self-destruction. She also appears to be bisexual (there’s a joke about shooting her husband during their wedding and a brief flirtation with a woman at a gym) but doesn’t have a love life. Jane worked with British intelligence until a botched mission involving an abortion clinic (again, not a lot of background here) led to an early retirement and estrangement from an angered Turkish ally who she eventually convinces through bribery to assist her in the Calisto mission. Unlike Sabina, she’s given a love interest, a colleague of Elena’s.

But it’s hard to care about a plot that is so familiar. I recently watched G-Force, a rather painful example of copaganda targeted shamelessly at kids. Released in 2009, it too involves technology (in this case, smart appliances) that can be hacked and transformed into machines of terror by a character with a serious, albeit understandable grudge against humanity. In the first scene, there’s an intelligence briefing where concerns about black market sales are addressed. One wonders if Banks has seen it.

Stewart’s Bosley was hoping for a promotion and didn’t get it (did Charlie pick up douche chills, as well?), so that’s his rationalization for turning heel. (Why bother building another network when you could conceivably pull off a coup of sorts at Townsend? Also, where did he find the time and how has this been a secret for so long?) It’s not much different from Demi Moore’s even weaker motive for aligning with nefarious players in Full Throttle. It’s also not very interesting. You don’t look for deep, penetrating thoughts in these movies. Just babes kicking ass. But it doesn’t even deliver on that level.

I hated the Pitch Perfect trilogy but at least there were a few collective laughs. You won’t find any in Charlie’s Angels. Elizabeth Banks, who previously directed the middle entry of that series, is the absolute wrong person to write and direct here. She’s not radical in her approach and she panders too much. She finds great comfort in the familiar. Her one-note characterizations of sexist heels are overly obvious. Showcasing more subtle microaggressions would’ve had a much bigger impact.

Despite starring in a bunch of comedies in the last 20 years, she can’t write a good joke to save her life. And she’s no Guillermo Del Toro when it comes to staging fight scenes. She’s wearing too many hats here. Pick one job and hire more daring artists for the others.

After the expected resolution, we see Elena preparing for her new life within the organization. Even a plethora of unnecessary celebrity cameos, including a bunch of famous athletes, can’t break the witless slump.

Because of Banks’s participation, Charlie’s Angels is too tame and lame for someone like me to enjoy. (Why not aim higher than a safe PG rating?) But there weren’t many women singing its praises during its lacklustre run in theatres two years ago, either. God knows the film was driving hard to the net to win over that audience, especially in one particular scene.

During the sky jumping sequence, Banks’s character lets slip that the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg was also trained by the Townsend Agency, sometime in 1999. If you do the math, that means she would’ve been 66. (None of the Angels appear to be older than 30.) She also contracted colon cancer for the first time. According to Wikipedia, “Ginsburg was physically weakened by the cancer treatment, and she began working with a personal trainer.”

If you wanna make a joke like this, do the fucking research first. Is it any wonder why the Alliance of Women Film Journalists named it the “Sequel or Remake That Shouldn’t Have Been Made”?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, July 18, 2021
3:48 a.m.

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

If you watch enough movies like I do it becomes a whole lot easier to see through absolute bullshit. After a while, you start realizing there isn’t a lot of originality in contemporary films. Stale plots and one-dimensional characters are shamelessly recycled. And complexity is often sacrificed for loud, empty spectacle.

The second Charlie’s Angels movie is an excellent example of this. Released nearly 20 years ago, it’s just as awful as its 2000 predecessor. Based on the 70s TV show, it’s imperial feminism in its most embarrassing form.

The artistic success of the movie depends greatly on how much you accept Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu as action heroes. Because the film ignores basic laws of gravity and physics, in order for these women to win the day against hyper-masculine, heavily-armed heels, they have to be live-action cartoons capable of supernatural flips and instant recoveries. They also need their adversaries to be hesitant, slow and stupid.

With the exception of Demi Moore as the chief villain, all of these encounters are essentially heavy mismatches that in the real world would not result in a happy ending. Again and again, automatic weaponry is pointed in their direction. Their fates appear sealed. But then an antagonist starts yapping and that brief delay is all that’s needed to reverse momentum in their favour.

Subtitled Full Throttle, Barrymore, Diaz and Liu are once again summoned by the voice of their unseen boss (the late John Forsythe) to track down some classified government information that’s been stolen. Get a load of this nonsense. The info is contained on two titanium rings, one of which is worn by a DOJ operative (Bruce Willis in a nothing cameo) and the other by a US Marshall (Terminator 2’s Robert Patrick).

I guess they’re supposed to pass for wedding rings so that most people won’t pay close attention, but really, why would you literally wear a secret list of protected witnesses on your fucking finger? Why make it so easy for an unscrupulous ruffian to get revenge on whistleblowers? More importantly, why make it even easier to put people in compromising positions by potentially losing these goddamn things altogether?

In order to access the content, you need to get both rings, put them together and presto, it’s murdering time. That’s why porn-lovin’ Eric Bogosian is found smothered all alone in his strangely lit house even though I don’t remember being informed what crime he actually witnessed with his own eyes.

Another target is a young Shia LaBoeuf, a curly-haired BMX biker the ladies encounter while tracking down Bogosian’s killer at an underground racing event that no reasonable rider would ever participate in. (His parents were murdered and he grew up in an orphanage that looks suspiciously like The Playboy Mansion.)

Because Bill Murray was such a pain in the ass during the making of the first Charlie’s Angels movie, his newly created half-brother Bernie Mac steps in as the new Bosley. He’s the one who hides LaBoeuf at his mom’s house.

Before the discovery of the race, during a stakeout on the beach, lovely Diaz encounters the fabulous looking Moore whose high wattage star power makes her top-billed co-star look more like a character actor. We’re supposed to be shocked at Moore’s eventual heel turn but I mean it was already revealed in the trailer and the movie itself doesn’t exactly disguise her very well, unless you count that dubbed Mandarin.

Moore makes like they’re on the same team (“I get the newsletter!”) but we know better. I love how the trio are able to draw CSI-like conclusions in an instant when investigating the Bogosian crime scene but it takes them forever to realize who they’re really supposed to be gunning for.

Barrymore, Diaz and Liu constantly use their sexuality to outsmart men, a very tired trope. There’s a scene where they track down another suspect, some Irish goon, at the docks at the San Pedro Bay in order to steal his work ID and paperwork to get on board a cargo ship in order to track down the missing rings. He likes hanging out at the Treasure Chest, a conveniently located PG-rated strip bar.

So the girls blend in with the real-life Pussycat Dolls (how are they the lead dancers in their first performance?) and do the least sexy dance routine I’ve seen in a while. (That’s not a good version of The Pink Panther theme.) When Diaz gets stripped down to nothing but her undies and heels thanks to Liu whipping her, the horny men in attendance hoot and holler in appreciation. Why? You can’t see anything. This isn’t the fucking 50s anymore. At least we got some hot buns in Sex Tape.

Barrymore wasn’t always a private contractor working for the mysterious Charlie. We learn in a flashback she witnessed her then-boyfriend, Irish gangster Justin Theroux, suddenly get out of their car and pop a guy for reasons never disclosed. Just before the hit, she shrieks her undying love for him. Great timing, toots.

Pointing the finger at him in court despite threats to keep her trap shut, he’s been waiting eight years for revenge. Channeling Robert De Niro’s Max Cady (that’s not a good version of the Cape Fear theme), he finally gets his chance when someone pulls some strings and he gets let out early which strikes me as extraordinarily improbable considering the nature of his crime.

Looking like a punk Ed Grimley, the jacked up Theroux (who was so much better in The Girl On The Train) will literally walk through a wall of fire to get back at Barrymore. How she manages to escape him in one piece is one of the many lapses of logic plaguing this whiff of an action comedy. How he manages not to get burned is another altogether.

Ah yes, lest we forget this is all supposed to inspire tremendous fits of laughter. But I only laughed once at a good Bernie Mac line. Silence is great for meditating monks but disastrous for a wouldbe yukfest.

Perhaps the most tired running gag involves John Cleese, Liu’s dad in the film. Matt LeBlanc plays her on-again/off-again boyfriend (he’s also a Tom Cruisian action star with his own Mission: Impossible-inspired franchise; check out that unintentionally prescient abbreviation for the sequel ) who through his clumsy use of language makes it sound like her real job is being a voracious sex worker. (Cleese has been led to believe she’s a doctor.) Cleese is horrified that his beloved “ferret” is getting busy with a whole lot of people for money but to his credit, he doesn’t slut-shame her. He just looks really sad. This is low-rent sitcom schtick not even worthy of Three’s Company. At no time does Cleese ask LeBlanc for a clarification.

Once we realize Demi Moore’s purely capitalistic intentions, the angels figure out all too easily how to outsmart her. Moore has always struck me as a very sophisticated performer often smarter than a lot of the characters she’s played. She’s a welcome presence in any film she’s cast in but she’s the wrong person to play the heel here. I just didn’t hate her. She looks fantastic, a real movie star. But there’s just no heat and that’s not entirely her fault. There’s almost nothing to her character beyond lingering bitterness about being shot at without Kevlar protection, wanting to be her own boss and looking incredible in skimpy attire.

The movie is constantly moving from one inauthentically executed set piece to the next and so not enough time is given to establish a more substantial history of genuine animosity between her and the physically absent Charlie with the exception of one belated encounter near the end which generates zero tension. I like her gold guns, though.

The screenplay for Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is so painfully thin, director McG attempts to fill the void with loud aggression, needless spontaneous dancing, too many celebrity cameos and constant pop music. Honestly, I’m grateful for the distractions of The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Donna Summer and The Beach Boys. But I would rather hear them on CD than have them thrown into noisy, chaotic scenes that aren’t improved at all by the presence of their big hits.

As a result, Full Throttle manages to feel overstuffed and undercooked at the same time, a common problem with modern action films. The opening sequence in Mongolia is particularly baffling and nonsensical and of course, racist. (Why did the anti-imperial Rage Against The Machine license one of their songs for this?) The angels are sent in to rescue U.S. Marshall Robert Patrick who looks like he’s being tortured but not really, apparently. Once we learn of his real intentions, this all seems so overly complicated and in the end, proves pointless anyway. Can’t imagine the T-1000 getting duped this badly.

Crispin Glover’s weirdo mute assassin The Thin Man returns for some reason, as does Luke Wilson who plays Diaz’s live-in boyfriend. There’s the late Carrie Fisher, so funny in the Star Wars movies, wasting our time as a nun. Another Wilson brother playing a paranoid cop, Eve and the Olsen Twins as imagined angel replacements, and on and on and on. You have to do more than just put a famous face on screen for 10 seconds, you know.

In between all the kinetics and phony fisticuffs are tired, predictable subplots involving the angels and their personal lives. Diaz and Luke Wilson moving in and Barrymore worrying that this will lead to marriage and the end of the team. Wilson teasing a big question he needs to ask that you know won’t be a marriage proposal. Barrymore temporarily bailing because of her encounter with her vengeful ex only to be dragged back in because of a last minute pep talk with one of the original Charlie’s Angels. Diaz constantly breaking out into dance for no apparent reason.

For his part, Bernie Mac is relegated to being terrified of his mom and the wimpy assistant called into action for shit jobs like pretending to be a coroner, licking some guy’s surfboard (don’t ask) and masquerading as a crossing guard. Bill Murray must’ve been relieved to have been fired.

There’s even a dreadful selection of brutally unfunny outtakes stuffed into the end credits (including one with Melissa McCarthy) in between cheesecake shots of the three angels washing a car. Which brings me to another point I wanted to make. Who is the intended audience for this franchise? Barrymore, Diaz and Liu are all charismatic performers who look good in close-up and the movie exploits this constantly. It’s a crutch, though. Fully developed bodies on display replacing fully developed characters to care about. But because everything is so tame, you can’t even enjoy that.

Beyond the female bonding stuff, what’s really here for women to enjoy? Setting aside producer Barrymore, it’s mostly men in creative control and it’s obvious whose gaze is considered more of a targeted priority, two chiselled shirtless heels notwithstanding. I’m find with looking at babes but give me a goddamn reason to care about them.

Beyond Barrymore “always falling for the bad guy” and her weak-ass Bowiesque moonsaulting wrestling persona; Diaz’s retro love of MC Hammer and her butch CSI alter-ego; and Liu’s hot-and-cold relationships with men and her wig collection, there’s nothing memorable about any of them. As for their action work, give me a break. It’s so obvious they’re on ropes the whole time. And, as I said, if the villains weren’t so fucking weak, they’d be eliminated in an instant.

Instead of pulling off the feminist badass bit, this second generation of Charlie’s Angels look more like fashion models moonlighting with Cirque de Soleil.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
2:40 a.m.

The Shaggy D.A. (1976)

It’s hard to build suspense when you give it all away in the title.

Dean Jones, the poor man’s Jimmy Stewart, plays a lawyer who ultimately decides to run for district attorney after his family’s home gets ransacked by a couple of hired goons pretending to be movers. The goons work for Vic Tayback, the crotchety cook from the old sitcom Alice. He’s got a secret warehouse filled with stolen merch, none of it brand name probably because Walt Disney Pictures was too cheap to secure product placement deals. Let’s just say we’re not talking top-of-the-line quality here. Benton Electronics, anyone?

Jones is running against “Honest” John Slade (Keenan Wynn), a longtime incumbent who looks the complete opposite of his self-professed nickname. I don’t trust anyone with a bushy mustache like that. Neither charming nor particularly bright, “Honest” John has a secret deal with Tayback. I’ll look the other way if you cut me in. No problem, mustache.

The two hired goons get a little greedy. During a tour of the Borgias exhibit at a local museum, they inquire about a peculiar “bug ring” kept in a not-so-secure glass case. It mysteriously glows and on the other side is a curious inscription. When they learn from the curator that it is a priceless artifact that was used to punish unfaithful lovers, it soon disappears and is presented to a completely disinterested Tayback who doesn’t do business with museums.

Disappointed, one of the goons ultimately dumps it on squirrelly ice cream man Tim Conway who nabs it for a measly five smackers and then gives it to his butch lady friend at work, Jo Anne Worley, who moonlights as a roller derby queen.

All the while, that curious inscription gets read aloud numerous times by both and suddenly, Jones gets transformed into a sheepdog at the most inopportune moments, once during a live TV show meant to sell himself as a viable candidate and again during a campaign appearance in front of a bunch of old ladies. The spell is broken after just a few minutes, though.

Conway gets confused when his own sheepdog Elwood sometimes speaks perfect English but at other times doesn’t say anything at all. (It doesn’t help that Jones doesn’t correct him until the final act but Conway still calls him by the wrong name anyway.) Thinking he’s got a golden ticket to show business but not realizing what’s actually going on, he screws himself out of his own money by making bad bets with a local barman who otherwise wants nothing to do with him. In this case, awkward isn’t funny.

When Jones learns about the bug ring theft, he starts inquiring at pawn shops with no luck. (The cops could care less about his stolen property. Are they looking the other way, too?) It isn’t until his smart-ass skateboarding son learns directly from Conway the ice cream man that he gave it to his girlfriend at work. Unfortunately, she’s not too swift, either. She haphazardly removes it from her finger and it unwittingly ends up in one of the cherry pies meant for an auction doubling as a fundraiser for the corrupt Slade. Any excuse to put together a pie fight Disney will not hesitate to make happen. (Conway later revealed it took four days to shoot. That sounds worse than watching the finished result.) In an extremely contrived moment, guess who ends up finding the ring again. Anything to stretch the running time of this bullshit even further.

Eventually, the overconfident Slade, who views Jones’s candidacy as a tolerable nuisance more than a real threat (Tayback is way more worried than he is), learns the truth about the ring and thinks wrongly he’s found a way to stay in power. How he stayed in office so long to begin with when he’s so easy to expose might’ve made for a better film, although I do wonder how Jones knew he was shady from the beginning which is never explained. I’m guessing the mustache.

The Shaggy D.A. was first released in 1976, almost 20 years after The Shaggy Dog, a movie far less terrible than this one despite not being very good, either. (I laughed a little more than I expected but not nearly enough to sustain my interest.) The Dean Jones character was originally a teenager played by Tommy Kirk. In the 1959 film, he was a wannabe inventor, a past never addressed in the sequel. The only continuity carried over into chapter two is this business of him turning into a hairy white pooch when you say several fake Latin-sounding words out in the open.

That gimmick is never funny. Nor are Conway’s usual slapstick antics. Or the expected mishaps you sense well before the characters themselves experience them firsthand. “Honest” John Slade is far from a competent villain. He’s a boob. And so are his underlings.

The only actual laugh is because of a low budget necessity. Throughout the film, we see shots of a real sheepdog not so seamlessly interspersed with that of a puppet and a guy in a costume. During the scene where Jones’s character (really, an actual sheepdog) is thinking about jumping out the window to avoid capture, instead of seeing an actual canine sliding down a giant rope (which is impossible to pull off, obviously), it’s very clearly a stunt guy in a specially designed outfit. Surely, the creators knew this was gonna look silly so they just roll with it and honestly, I’m glad they did. It’s cheesetastic.

But then they beat this idea into the ground eliminating the element of surprise. There’s that guy again whizzing by on roller skates to complement shots of the real dog in bad chroma key close-ups, an overused effect throughout the film. It’s certainly not the sheepdog slugging loyal henchman Dick Van Patten in the mug. And that ain’t no animal driving a bunch of abandoned dogs around in a stolen van.

Oh yes, Slade thinks he’s got the upper hand when he has a cornered Jones, still the sheepdog at this point, locked up with a bunch of mutts, all of whom voiced unamusingly by a celebrity impersonator. One sounds like Mae West, another like Peter Lorre, there’s even a Humphrey Bogart sound-a-like. They end up becoming useful allies at just the right moment. But none is given a good joke to tell.

Realizing what he must do to break the sheepdog spell for good and bring down Slade, the centerpiece of his otherwise uninspired candidacy, Jones finagles a reluctant Conway to pull a fast one on the gullible incumbent district attorney. Then, despite the unwelcome presence of his own overly exuberant son, he has more allies to help nab the villians and capture an impromptu confession on a conveniently located and apparently battery operated tape recorder. There is never any doubt whether they will pull this off. Again, remember the title.

Released a couple years after Richard Nixon’s infamous resignation, The Shaggy D.A. is surprisingly listless and lazy for a political comedy. Its idea of an edgy joke is a throwaway ding on Dean Martin being averse to rehearsals. I know this was aimed squarely at kids back in the day but a lot less predictability would’ve been nice. The lack of killer zingers makes for a slow slog. Satire should be so comically brutal it leaves scars and wounds. These weak jokes don’t even leave a scratch.

The Borgias backstory is particularly lame. We’re asked to believe that temporarily turning a cheating lover into a sheepdog was just as horrifying a punishment for their enemies as poisoning their wine. Setting aside the obvious reason for plot purposes, why a sheepdog? Why not an ant or a bug you can squash in two seconds? Being man’s best friend even for a few minutes does not sound all that devastating. Honestly, it’s far from humiliating. And I’m a cat person.

When one character suddenly gets turned into a bulldog, again this is seen as some kind of deserved punishment since there’s no trial or mention of a conviction. How is this worse, though, than being locked in a cage?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
2:08 a.m.