To Be or Not to Be

PLOT:

A bad Polish actor is just trying to make a living when what should intrude but World War II in the form of an invasion. His wife has the habit of entertaining young polish officers while he’s on stage which is also a source of depression to him. When one of her officers comes back on a Secret Mission, the actor takes charge and comes up with a plan for them to escape.

REVIEW:

Ah, Mel Brooks! What a genius he is! To Be or Not to Be may not be an original masterpiece of his, as a matter of fact, this is a remake of a film from the 40s, but it is some good satirical comedy, which Brooks’ films are second to none (except maybe Airplane!)

I’m a little pressed for time, so here’s what worked.

Character chemistry. Mel Brooks’ films all have a great cast of characters. I liken them to a comedy troupe of sorts. They are used to each other’s timing, personalities, etc. Even with some new additions to the usual players, they are still on top of their game.

The jokes. In today’s so called “comedies”, the jokes are just so-so, but with a film like this they are hilarious.

The stage parts. I love how they really played up the parts where they are stage actors, especially as the credits roll. There is even a gag that bookends the film which I found to be a nice touch.

What didn’t work?

Story. As good as it was, there were times when I just got lost in what was going on.

Nazis. It seems that in almost every Mel Brooks movie, especially these earlier ones, he has to mention Nazis in every one of his films. For some reason, I think he even sneaks it into Spaceballs.

To Be or Not to Be isn’t the best film I’ve seen from Brooks, but it sure is an enjoyable one. I found myself laughing from beginning to end and wanting it to keep going even as the credit were rolling. While this isn’t the perfect film, I will highly recommend it. You won’t be disappointed!

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

Marmaduke

PLOT (spoiler alert):

Marmaduke is a Great Dane living in rural Kansas with a cat named Carlos. His owner, Phil (Lee Pace), works for Bark Organic dog food. Phil is very strict, from Marmaduke’s perspective.

One day, Carlos tells Marmaduke that he overheard Phil saying that they were being transferred to Orange County. They move from Kansas into their new house in California. Phil’s boss, Don Twombly (William H. Macy), has the goal of getting Bark Organic into every Petco store in the country. Phil and Don meet at the dog park to discuss Phil’s assignment – an ad campaign to win over Petco. There, Marmaduke meets a beautiful Rough Collie named Jezebel (Fergie), whose boyfriend is Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland), a controlling and violent Beauceron with two Miniature Pinscher minions named Thunder and Lightning (Damon Wayans, Jr. and Marlon Wayans). Bosco intimidates Marmaduke, who does not want to fight.

Marmaduke then meets Mazie (Emma Stone), who develops a crush on Marmaduke. He also meets Giuseppe (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a Chinese Crested dog who is afraid of everything, and Raisin (Steve Coogan), a highly intelligent but decidedly minute Dachshund. They get together at night and crash a pedigrees-only party thrown by Bosco, only to be scared away by Bosco. Marmaduke asks Mazie to help him get a girl, whom she presumes is herself but is actually Jezebel.

Marmaduke has Carlos pretend to be lost in the dog park, and the two stage a fight in front of all the other dogs in order to boost Marmaduke’s perceived toughness. Marmaduke then enters a dog surfing contest put together as a promotional stunt by Phil to sway Petco and beats Bosco, who is an established dog-surfing champion. They get into a fight, which appalls the Petco executives.

He then takes Jezebel on Mazie’s dream date, which the latter watches from afar. While the Winslow family are on Don’s boat, Marmaduke throws a party, with most residents of the dog park attending save Mazie, Giuseppe and Raisin. Bosco crashes the party and discovers it was Carlos at the dog park. He then exposes Marmaduke, who loses his pedigree friends. He is left with no friends and a destroyed house. When Phil discovers the house in a wreck, he locks Marmaduke outside for the night. Marmaduke runs away, and leaves Mazie a toy that she had given him earlier. Mazie goes to Marmaduke’s house, and Carlos tells her Marmaduke never returned. She then goes looking for him. Marmaduke in the meantime has met Chupadogra, a wise, elderly English Mastiff (Sam Elliott) who is feared throughout Orange County for presumably killing his owner. In reality, he ran away to lead the pack, but they abandoned him. He has spent the time alone in the woods with nothing but a blanket and his old water bowl, which reads “Buster”. Buster/Chupadogra tells Marmaduke to go home and return to his family while he still has one, and then distracts a dog catcher. Marmaduke leaves, but gets lost.

In the morning, the family discover him missing and begin searching for him. Mazie and the family find him at the same time on the streets, but Mazie falls into the subterranean rainwater conduit after the street below her collapses. Marmaduke jumps in after her and Phil tries to retrieve him, as well as the fire department. The fireman saves Mazie, but loses Marmaduke in the raging water. By this time, Phil has been fired for missing the meeting for the last chance with Petco. He then runs to the aqueduct that the conduits lead to and finds Marmaduke in the raging waters. He begs Marmaduke to let go of the branch he’s holding onto and let the waters carry him to Phil. He reluctantly does, and is saved. Several kids get that on video and put it on YouTube. Since it generates almost 700,000 hits, Phil is rehired. Phil then talks about moving back to Kansas, but the entire family wants to stay in California. Marmaduke later confronts the pedigrees, saying that differences shouldn’t matter, that they’re all dogs and should have an equal share of the park. Everyone agrees and turn on Bosco, who leaves, vowing revenge. Meanwhile, the YouTube video also wins the company the Petco deal. He and Don begin thinking of new commercials when they ask each other about if the dogs could talk to each other, or even dance.

The finale then shows Marmaduke, Jezebel, Mazie, Giuseppe, Raisin, and Buster, among others, dancing and singing “What I Like About You”, which turns out to be the commercial. In the end, Marmaduke and Mazie are dating, Marmaduke and Jezebel are friends and all is well.

REVIEW:

I hate dogs! They are evil creatures that should be burned in hell! That being said, my personal feelings aside, whoever it was that did this to Marmaduke should be, to quote Garfield, “drug out into the street and shot”. Marmaduke is perhaps the most God-awful attempt at bringing a comic strip to life.

Did anything work?

Lee Pace. I’m still burned that Pushing Daisies was so abruptly and unjustly cancelled, but he seems to be doing alright for himself. While he isn’t the star of the film, he actually makes it watchable.

They remembered this is not about the humans. In contrast to what I said about Pace, I found it refreshing that they remembered this is a movie about Marmaduke, not the family or some other random human (played by an overpaid actor, btw).

What didn’t work?

Talking animals. I’m not one of those people who hates the sheer thought of talking animals, but I do hate it when they do this weird CGI on live animals that animated only their bottom lip. It freaks me out and looks tacky and cheap. They did this crap in Underdog and it nearly ruined that film for me.

The cast. Not a bad ensemble, but together they don’t work, especially the animals. I found myself more than once wondering WTF?!?

Wasted talent. I’m speaking specifically of William H. Macy, Emma Stone, and Judy Greer. All of which have small roles in this picture, Stone’s is a little bigger than the others, but they are all just wastes, especially Greer, who does nothing but pop up as the token housewife a couple of times, said her lines, and then we don’t see her again until the last act. I’m sure they could have gotten any Joe (or Jane) Schmo off the street to do these roles.

Owen Wilson. For some reason, this guy gets on my nerves more and more. As Lightning McQueen, his voice works, but not as Marmaduke. I guess there is a bright spot, though. We weren’t forced to see his deformed nose!

The plot. Could they have picked a more overused, cliché story than this? Small town family moves to the big city and tries to fit in. There is even the love triangle complete with the bully who gets humiliated, gets payback, only to culminate in a happy ending. I’m not saying they needed to make this some kind of dark tale, but they could have done something different with those elements.

I’m actually offended that they wasted time, money, and “talent” on this piece of crap they dare to call Marmaduke. I’m sure the character’s creator was none to pleased with this, I know I wouldn’t be. This has to have been the most painful 87 minutes I’ve spent in my life. Don’t waste your time with this. Trust me, you’d be more entertained clipping your toe nails!

1 out of 5 stars

Invasion of the Bee Girls

PLOT (spoiler alert!!!):

Neil Agar, a security agent with the State Department, is dispatched to Peckham, California to investigate the death of John Grubowsky, a bacteriologist working at government-sponsored Brandt Research. Quickly making the acquaintance of the laboratory’s head librarian, Julie Zorn, he begins interviewing the firm’s leading scientists, many of whom have reputations as sexual players. His investigation is soon complicated by a growing number of deaths, all men who died of congestive heart failure caused by sexual exhaustion.

Faced with a rapidly escalating body count, the local sheriff, Captain Peters, holds a town meeting at which the laboratory’s leading sex researcher, Henry Murger, urges the town populace to practice sexual abstinence – an idea greeted with derision by the locals. Neil and Julie arrange a meeting with Murger afterwards to discuss his theories as to the cause of his deaths, only to see him chased down and run over by a car with an unseen driver. While investigating Murger’s home in search of clues, Neil discovers a secret room concealing sexual paraphernalia and Murger’s gay lover, Joe, who informs Neil that he saw Murger driving off with an unknown woman prior to his death.

Despite a curfew and the establishment of a military quarantine, the scientists continue playing their sex games. One of them, Herb Kline, is approached by Susan Harris, a beautiful entomologist working on bees. Though described by the men as an “iceberg,” she flirts with Kline and invites him over for dinner. That night, as they engage in sex, Kline suffers a fatal thrombosis and Harris reveals black compound eyes suggesting that she is more than she appears.

Meanwhile, convinced there is a similar pattern at work, Neil begins studying the sexual patterns of insects. Seeking information about the mating habits of bees, he interrogates Dr. Harris at her lab; when he departs, she resumes her project – the transformation of Kline’s wife Nora into a Bee Girl through a process of controlled mutation. With the aid of other previously mutated women, she cocoons Nora and places her in a chamber where she is swarmed by mutated bees; when she emerges, she is bombarded with radiation and awakens with the same black compound eyes and drive to mate that the other transformed women possess. The next morning, Herb Kline’s body is discovered; when Captain Peters goes to inform Nora, she attempts unsuccessfully to seduce him.

Having worked out much of what has taken place, Neil summons the remaining department chairs and presents his theory. Though the geneticist, Stan Williams, scorns the idea, the head of the diagnostics department, Aldo Ferrara, is more receptive. At Grubowsky’s funeral, Neil and Julie bring a radiation detector, which picks up the gamma radiation coming from the women in attendance who have been subjected to the treatment. Aware that they have been detected, the transformed women move to eliminate the remaining scientists; Williams is killed by his now-mutated wife and Ferrara dies during a visit by Dr. Harris, who then lures Julie to her lab to be transformed.

When Neil discovers Ferrara’s body, he realizes what the women are up to. Racing to the lab, he interrupts the women as they begin the process of turning Julie into one of their number. With Harris threatening to kill Julie unless he leaves, he moves to depart but pulls out a revolver instead and shoots the machinery. Neil then rescues Julie and bars the door, leaving the mutated women to die amidst a cascade of exploding machinery.

REVIEW:

Sometimes one just wants to watch a good, classic sci-fi flick that is a total escape from reality. At least that was my intention this afternoon when I decided to give Invasion of the Bee Girls a look-see. Was it worth it?

Well, let’s look at what worked.

First, we have the cast. This is an early 70s B-movie, but the acting isn’t horrible, at least compared to what I’ve seen from other entrants into the genre.

The heart attack plot device. Look, it’s every man’s fantasy that if they’re gonna die, let it happen during the height of sexual pleasure. They use this idea and take it one further by brining in the thrombosis diagnosis brought about by something to do with these bee women.

Sex and naked women. I really shouldn’t have this as something that worked, but given that part of the plot is that these bee women have fallen prey to radiation which has caused them to want to do nothing but mate, it makes sense that there is plenty of sex and nudity, and yet it isn’t as much as one would think.

What didn’t work?

Special effects. Even for this era in cinema, these effects wer not that great. I’m one of those people who believes special effects don’t necessarily have to look believable, just done well. Well, these were not done well. The compound eyes seemed like they were just black contacts they stuck in these women’s eye sockets, which is what they probably were.

Where was the big payoff? I was hoping for some giant bees to pop up somewhere, more than likely near the end, but that wasn’t the case. All we got were those weird eyes. I was highly disappointed.

Invasion of the Bee Girls isn’t that great of a movie, even as a piece of 70s camp fare. I don’t really see any reason to even remember that I spent the time watching it, and yet, for some reason, I think I may be remembering it at some point years from now. Does this mean that you should check it out? No, as a matter of fact, you should keep far away from this thing. It totally isn’t worth it.

2 out of 5 stars