THE MOVIE ONLY FOR A REAL MEN

THE MOVIE ONLY FOR A REAL MEN

Every society gets the biker movie it deserves. A repressed 1950’s America was visited with its first taste of teenage rebellion in “The Wild One,” while a country on the verge of a full-blown plastic fantastic freak-out in 1966 was treated to “The Wild Angels.” In 1984, when MTV was showing us all that good hair was more important to music than actual singing, we got the pretty but largely brainless “Streets of Fire” (yes, I realize I’m stretching the ‘biker movie’ definition a bit), and a country glutted on extreme sports and crappy computer-generated racing F/X enjoyed “Biker Boyz” in 2003.


That said, it stands to reason that the United States of 2007, a nation consisting largely of indolent anti-intellectuals force-fed a steady diet of PG-13 comedy and sterile, Disney-fied entertainment should be subjected to “Wild Hogs,” an indolent, PG-13, Disney “biker” flick that does for comedies what Exxon did for Prince William Sound.
Lest anyone think I’m being needlessly harsh, let’s take a look at the premise. Recall that Marlon Brando’s Johnny, when asked what he was rebelling against, answered “Whaddya got?” Or that Captain America and Billy were futilely searching for freedom in an increasingly oppressive and paranoid land. In “Wild Hogs,” our four middle-aged bandito wannabes are…running away from the responsibilities of being a grown-up. Dentist Doug (Tim Allen) is desperate to recapture the carefree spirit of youth as a way to ignore the fact that his son doesn’t respect him and, well, he’s a dentist. Woody (John Travolta) is some sort of yuppie scumbag whose trophy wife has run out on him, and he’s just discovered he’s broke. Dudley (William H. Macy) is a computer programmer who celebrates the group’s ride to the Pacific by getting a tattoo…of the Apple Computers logo (in authentic rainbow coloring, which provides a hilarious touchstone for the movie’s endless gay jokes). Finally, Bobby (Martin Lawrence) – the only black guy and coincidentally (?) the only one with a blue collar job – is fleeing his nagging harpy of a wife.


The idea of grown men ditching their responsibilities for a guys-only vacation is hardly new (and taken on that level, perfectly understandable). What makes the so-called Wild Hogs unbearable is the way they perfectly embody the aesthetic of the “weekend biker” douchebag. They ride custom Harleys, dress in spotless leathers, and wear their too-tight t-shirts over swelling guts without the slightest hint of ironic self-awareness. When they inevitably run afoul of a real biker gang and are verbally abused by its leader (a more psychotic than usual Ray Liotta) for being pathetic middle-aged posers, you want to stand up and cheer.



As for comedic antics, director Walt Becker pulls out all the stops. On their journey, the Hogs will: make gay jokes, endure original and not-at-all dated motorcycle-related mishaps (bugs/birds in the face, getting knocked off by inanimate objects), question each other’s sexuality, suffer blows to the groin, inadvertently arouse a homosexual highway patrolman (John C. McGinley), and get involved in the least realistic biker brawl since the original “Cannonball Run.” Come on Walt, you’ve got John Travolta, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence together in the same movie. Is a little chain-whipping too much to ask?


Thematically, “Wild Hogs” is almost identical to 1991’s “City Slickers,” another movie about a group of whiny 40-somethings unable to come to grips with their receding hairlines and shattered dreams. At least that movie had Jack Palance. “Wild Hogs” has Marisa Tomei (who accepted her Oscar from Palance), but it’s not the same. Bad enough that the movie was made in the first place, but not even throwing us the bone of tacking on an “Easy Rider” shotgun-to-the-face ending is a mark of shame upon us all.

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Do you want to save your life?

Do you want to save your life?

When you can watch a movie and see flying armadillos and country musicians at their most purely homicidal-looking, all within the first fifteen minutes, you know you’re in for a serious rush.


And that’s exactly what you’re going to get out of “2001 Maniacs.”

Now, I’m sure by now most of you have seen this sucker sitting on the video store shelves, and gave it a sad, scornful shake of the head with a little tongue-clucking as you wondered just how low Robert Englund was planning to sink. And some of you more adventurous souls took a look at the back of the box, saw the name “Eli Roth”, remembered “Hostel”, and ran for the hills like your feet were on fire and the IRS was waving audit forms at you.

Okay, it’s true. Robert Englund’s been doing the DTV thing a lot lately. His profile on the IMDB reads like…well…like a guy who has been in theatres even less than I’ve been in the last five years. Seriously—haven’t hit a theatre since “Stay Alive.”

And we can all agree that “Hostel” was pretty much a solid block of godawful perpetrated on American viewers out of some kind of hyperdeveloped sadistic sense.

But if you’re willing to give this one a chance, you will find a highly unique and very well developed horror movie with lots of comedic bits and some nifty twists.

Plotwise, what we’ve got here is a little village in Georgia, Pleasant Valley by name, that looks like it’s packed to the brim with nice folks who live in a little backwater town in the middle of nowhere. The denizens of Pleasant Valley seem to live up to their name, and they’re just about to kick off their annual “Guts ‘n’ Glory Festival” a big village-wide party that in the beginning looks like a lot of fun.
But the fun doesn’t last long as we discover why Pleasant Valley isn’t as pleasant as we’d all hoped.
First, check out that DVD menu. That…is just fantastically freaky stuff. It truly must be seen to be believed—make sure you watch the whole thing. It’ll have a couple of spoilers but nothing too tragic.
Second, there’s a very nifty cameo at seven minutes and ten seconds. I give you, the return of Dr. Mambo! “Cabin Fever” enthusiasts will remember that one.

Third, the gradual unraveling of the town and the people therein is an absolute joy to watch. It speaks to some very careful story crafting and I approve wholeheartedly.
And yet, I’m becoming a bit unnerved by the recent push to get country music singers involved in direct to video horror movies. First, Randy Travis was breaking land-speed records for exorcisms and now we’ve got Travis Tritt looking like he’s about ready to break out the chainsaw and start a massacre of his own. What’s the logical next step in the sequence here, Garth Brooks as an axe murderer? Brooks and Dunn put people meat in a chili cook-off? Maybe the Dixie Chicks will finally get their chance to take care of Earl once and for all! Yeah! Right along with the whole block!
It really just doesn’t make much sense. Though I’m personally rooting for Cletus T. Judd….
Not that this gets in the way of enjoying “2001 Maniacs”. Not in the least. “2001 Maniacs” is packed full of comedy, action, and genuine outright blood-drenched horror sufficient to keep most fans happy.

The ending is a huge surprise. Despite an incredible fight scene at the end, where Robert Englund (or a reasonable facsimile) manages to get into a sabre duel with our last surviving male lead, there will still be at least two major twists to the end.

The special features include a behind-the-scenes featurette, an audition reel, and trailers for “2001 Maniacs”, “The Mangler Reborn”, “The Green River Killer”, and “Streets of Legend”.

All in all, despite a whole bunch of red flags screaming at you from the box, it’s really going to be worth your time and rental dollars to snag a copy of “2001 Maniacs”. Ignore everything logic and your instincts tell you on this one—this funny and action-packed romp has everything you need to make a solid night.

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How they made their sexual life amazing?

How they made their sexual life amazing?
Todd Field’s superb film adaptation of the novel by Tom Perrotta, begins in a clean and leafy suburban playground, where toddlers cavort under the watchful, benevolent gazes of their pretty young mothers. This may strike you as a rare tableau of innocence in a hectic world, unless, that is, you have spent time in such a place. For the playground really is a scene of primordial brutality, in which a few agreed-upon rules — play nice, share your toys, no hitting — barely suppress the essential savagery of the human species.

I’m not talking about the kids; they’re perfectly sweet. “Little Children,” its title notwithstanding, is a rigorous study of adult behavior, and the first playground scene, introduced by an unseen narrator whose smooth, authoritative voice is familiar from luxury-car commercials, sets a tone that is both compassionate and severe.

It can be observed that the chorus of viciously competitive moms, who reappear now and then throughout the movie to pass judgment and enforce social norms, amounts to a caricature, tinged with snobbery and misogyny. True enough, but those mean mothers nonetheless offer a glimpse into the larger reality that is one of the film’s main areas of inquiry, as it was the novel’s: the empty, invidious, anxious feelings that accompany material and domestic fulfillment.

Set in a Massachusetts suburb with many scenes filmed on location in New York, “Little Children,” which will be shown this weekend at the New York Film Festival before opening in New York and Los Angeles next Friday, balances tenderness with satire. It takes seriously the complaints of people whose lives are, by any objective historical measure, almost impossibly privileged (though they would no doubt describe themselves as middle class). But the movie, which Mr. Field and Mr. Perrotta wrote together, does not, in the manner of other, more facile examinations of suburban dysfunction (like “American Beauty”) assume that it or its audience is better than its characters. The combination of self-regard and anxiety that the characters display makes such judgment superfluous in any case.

Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet), sitting in that maternal playground klatch, insists to herself (in the narrator’s voice, an unsettling and effective touch) that while she may be in this world, she is not of it: “a researcher studying the behavior of typical suburban women, not a typical suburban woman.” Sarah has been to graduate school, and though she never received a doctorate, she did acquire the habit of living within the protective quotation marks that the postmodern academy hands out in addition to (and sometimes in lieu of) substantive knowledge.

Her bouts of parental ineptness — forgetting to bring a snack to the park for her daughter, Lucy, for example — are both humiliating and self-aggrandizing. Sarah’s sloppiness is a sign, to herself and the others, that she is too fine a creature to be bothered with the trivia of parenthood. Ms. Winslet, as fine an actress as any working in movies today, registers every flicker of Sarah’s pride, self-doubt and desire, inspiring a mixture of recognition, pity and concern that amounts, by the end of the movie, to something like love.

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