VidFad

My friend Dave Faber and I thought it would be a good idea to spend a large chunk of a Friday night on a movie double feature. Our taste in movies can easily be summed up by the disparate themes of our choices, Dead Silence, an obviously sub-par horror movie and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a poorly animated blast from the past. Only a handful of people could handle an evening of such mind-blowing proportions, but we’ve trained for this kind of punishment for years. Anyone reading this should not attempt such a feat without mass quantities of alcohol, jujubes or a defibrillator within arms reach.

We decided to watch Dead Silence first, because we figured TMNT would at least be the most redeemable movie of the evening and therefore leave us with a better feeling on the drive home. Upon entering the theatre we unfortunately notice that the recently released DS has already found its way into the second smallest auditorium in the building, not a good sign. I guess there just isn’t much of an interest in a movie that only boasts Donnie Wahlberg on its cast list, even if it is from the makers of Saw. As we entered the auditorium we could hear the familiar jabber of teenage chatter above the already started trailers, also not a good sign. At least with this type of movie I don’t care too much about other interference, but teenagers are almost never fun to be around, in almost any movie situation. It turned out however, that they increased the comedic value of the movie two-fold with the girl’s screams and their witty comments (ranging anywhere from “It turned its head, it’s obviously alive!” to “Ah, my crotch!”). The movie by itself had its share of scary moments. Crazy killer puppets are always scary and they did a good job of casting the scariest looking old lady. She freaked me out all by herself a couple of times. As a whole, the movie sucked. It’s obvious that the people who made Saw simply don’t understand how to put a movie together. They come up with a nice scary idea and then think they can write/direct it because they had the idea. In truth this movie should have been about a half-hour long. If they left in all the scary parts and cut the terrible dialogue and awful set up, this could be one of the scariest half-hours of your life. Instead, it’s stretched out to 90 minutes of mostly boring rubbish. Whatever, I knew it would be bad and at least it managed to freak me out a little bit.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. I had all the action figures and saw the first movie about nine times in the theatre. However, the show has fallen into my growing list of television programs I watched as a kid that I no longer care anything about (along with He-Man, Thundercats, Transformers and GI Joe, etc). Right off the bat it became glaringly obvious to us how much the following of the show changed from when we were kids. The auditorium was nearly half full, all of which were more teenagers. The biggest surprise was how many 15 year-old girls were dressed up as their favorite turtle. Maybe I’m completely out of the loop, but I didn’t expect any of this. It was like sitting in the worst possible TMNT convention of all time. These people cheered when the opening credits started to roll (that might also have something to do with their overall relief that the pre-show/trailers had finally ended). Needless to say, we were in somewhat of a pickle here. We were in the middle of 100 salivating teenagers and about 15 die-hard 30 year-old virgin turtle fans. We don’t know if we can openly make fun of the movie or how loud we can get during the show. We had to choose our seats wisely. No matter where we go, this was going to be a difficult experience. Within ten minutes of the movie, I had all my answers. The kids toward the back hadn’t shut up and the die-hards in front of us were more into the movie than Marion Berry was during Blow. I also realized after the first ten minutes that I didn’t care what anyone thought, I was going to express my feeling openly and at will. The animation, which from the trailer looked like a video game cut scene, turned out to be worse than a video game cut scene. The only scene that was done well was a fight on a rooftop between Rafael and Leonardo. Aside from the occasional funny line from Michelangelo or Donatello, the movie was a waste. Scratch that, we did get to hear Patrick Stewart say, “Am I losing my mind or are those Giant Turtles?” Maybe I don’t remember the show too well, probably the case, but this version didn’t seem to be like the original show. This seemed completely watered down so that it could be loads of family fun, only it’s not really any fun. I don’t know how good a family movie can be when they obviously took the guy who voiced Splinter on a Robert Downey Jr. style bender, got him so liquored up that he couldn’t stand and then took him into the recording studio. At one point his speech was slurred so badly it prompted me to yell out in reaction to the line, “It is time for us to come out of hiding.” with, “Was that English? Its time for you to stop drinking.” That was the most Faber laughed during the whole movie and it was mostly because of how uncomfortable it is to be next to someone who’s yelling in the middle of a movie theatre. All in all it was just a really bad movie. If that’s the way the show was, I’m glad I no longer care about it.

Overall it seemed to be a waste of a night. We pretty much knew that going in, but I was still holding out some hope. Since I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll do it all over again in a few weeks with movies that could possibly be worse. I’m an idiot, and thankfully my friends are too.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Dead Silence made up the worst poem ever about Mary Shaw. It shares the same beat as Eenie meenie miney mo, except it doesn’t rhyme. Observe.

Beware the stare of Mary Shaw,
She had no children only dolls.
If you see her never scream,
Or she’ll tear your tongue out at the seam.

Eenie meenie miney mo,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers let him go,
Eenie meenie miney mo.

If you said, “What is Gay, Alex?” you’d be right. By the way, I’m not sure tongues have seams.