You wanna
know if someone genuinely disagrees with you a lot or is a mere contrarian?
Here’s your litmus test: Just mention Wild Hogs, the indefensibly awful
"middle age guys get their groove back" flick from Walt Becker starring John Travolta,
Tim Allen, William H. Macy, and Martin Lawrence. If their response doesn’t
involve projectile vomiting, you know they’re a bullshitter. But actually being
watchable takes a back seat to being marketable these days, and thus the flick
was a roaring success. Predictably, it’s opened a Hellmouth here on Earth
through which Becker can continue to forcefeed us shit films toplined by the
stars of yesteryear. He got underway earlier this year with the creatively-titled
Old
Dogs (Since all it takes to name his films is a one-syllable adjective
and a noun ending in “-ogs”, can Green Frogs, starring Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno as two ker-azy
environmentalist Frenchman prone to misadventures, be that far behind?) which happens to again star Travolta, along with
the deserving-of-Hate-crimes Robin Williams, as two business partners whose
lives get “thrown for a loop” when they must suddenly become guardians of
seven-year old twins.
But as
this is a supermassive black hole of comedy and talent, the gravitational pull
is bound to ensnare countless fools drawn by the lure of filthy lucre. That’s
where Seth Green comes in. It’s not like he’s a stranger to paycheck jobs, but
he’s managed to keep a pretty steady stream of decent-to-good projects lined up
to offset them. Here, unfortunately, he’s might need a Scorsese film or two to
counterbalance his role as an executive at the firm Travolta and Williams run.
See…heh heh…what’s so kooky about this guy is that he’s planning to move to
Japan…hah hah…and he wants to show off his knowledge of Japanese culture since
they have a pending deal with a Japanese conglomerate…and….oh, wait…there’s
actually nothing funny about the character at all. Whoopsie.
This won’t
wash up until 2008, but until then, every movie theater should have an Armageddon-esque
countdown clock in the lobby so that
Never.
Forget.