Underdog, The Movie

[yendi]

Dear fucking lord, no.

Note that you'll have to sit through other previews (including a Bridge to Terabithia that looks iffy, and which I strongly suspect will end with Leslie waking up from a mild bump on the head from the broken swing) first. But the Underdog preview looks like it'll do more to destroy my fond memories of that character than the de Niro Bullwinkle did for Jay Ward's creations.

Screenwriter Adam Rifkin, incidentally, is the maliciously terrible* screenwriting behind Zoom (currently #20 on the Bottom 100 at the IMDB), Mousehunt, and The Chase (the movie the proved that even Rollins can't make a movie any good). And director Frederik Du Chau gave us Racing Stripes and Quest for Camelot. There's no hope for this one, no matter how many fun B-list folks (Amy Adams, Samantha Bee, Patrick Warburton) make appearances.

*No way he could write shit like this without actually hating all of humanity in general, and probably hating me personally.

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

including a Bridge to Terabithia that looks iffy, and which I strongly suspect will end with Leslie waking up from a mild bump on the head from the broken swing

Nope. Apart from some minor modernizations (the kids at school have GameBoys, for instance), it's a pretty close adaptation. The big difference is, instead of "And then me and Leslie played King and Queen of Terebithia all day. Next day at school…" you get 10 minutes of them actually fighting CGI monsters in the forest, in their imaginations. It's an interesting approach, though I'm not sure how I feel about the final product. But then, I thought the original book was quaint, problematic, and pointlessly depressing.

[yendi]

I'm relieved to hear that. The commercials I've seen focus so much on the CGI (and almost not at all on the friendship), that I assumed that the best case scenario was a completely different story from the original (a la Walden's How to eat Fried Worms, which I actually like better than the book, but which is barely the same tale).

[niftybabe313.livejournal.com]

Oh thank goodness...I was afraid of a bad adaptation after seeing the previews!

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

between that and Epic Movie, they still wonder why people dont go to the movie theaters nowadays...I did not set foot in a theater in 2006...if not for Spidey 3, 2007 would prob be a no theater for me(and after last night's Ghost Rider trailer, I dunno bout that one either)...

[yendi]

Sadly, Epic Movie looks to be a hit, commercially.

I blame Crispin Glover's fangirls.

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

and poor Kevin McDonald...he's reduced to that..not to mention Jennifer Coolegde, two er I mean one of my fav comediennes who keeps getting herself into suck material...

[texmorgan.livejournal.com]

I think Epic Movie has just set the standard for everything a film shouldn't be and simulateously got a 0% on rottentomatoes.com which, until now, I thought was impossible.

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

There's a few 0%ers...3 Strikes I believe was the first to achieve the honor back in 2000...

The aforementioned Zoom was a recent 'winner' of a 0%...

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

You can defriend me now in horror: I actually liked MouseHunt (and I'll post my review one day explaining why).

But otherwise, yeah.

[yendi]

I'd love to know if it's for any reason other than an incredibly talented cast (wasted on awful material).

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Basically how it breaks all sorts of rules, guidelines and suggestions of comedy (don't have funny names! Don't have earth tones! Explain everything! The music can't be too heavy!) but made me laugh from sheer force of its personality. Seriously, it reminded me of Jeunet and Caro's Delicatessan -- another earth-toned movie about stuff that shouldn't be funny with a cast of eccentric-looking people, which I found funny. (But I really doubted in those pre-Netflix days that anyone in Hermiston, OR would have even heard of Delicatessan, let alone have seen it, so I didn't mention it.)

And the mouse was amazing; only barely anthropomorphized (good God, imagine if the mouse had spoken or something) yet you understand him enough. The special effects are actually really good in it; the computer effects have kind of an earthy look to them, which those types of effects don't usually have.

And the main theme is one of my favorite Alan Silvestri tunes: heavy and mad and over-the-top and almost like circus music from Hell.

I wrote that the only other thing Gore Verbinski was known for directing beforehand was those Budwiser Frogs and (Budwiser Lizards) commercials. "I have NO idea what his career will be like from these two works," I wrote. And he's done all sorts of different types of flicks since then.

In short, that film shows up on cable, I watch it. (Hey, I've admitted in print to liking Hudson Hawk and parts of the film of The Postman. How much salt do you need with my opinion?)

[yendi]

I adored Delicatessan, but still hate Mousehunt. I just didn't get any of what you did out of it.

There is no shame in liking Hudson Hawk. Talk about a movie that wasn't treated fairly.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I saw Hudson Hawk at a Thursday night preview, before the reviews came out. I thought it was good dumb fun that was disguisedly smart (I made an adverb!), and I immediately loved the the songs and Michael Kamen's score; you can tell he had a blast scoring it. And it's grown on me, which is true for plenty of others.

In fact, the very first review I read of Hawk was by Hal Hinson, a Pauline Kael disciple who was at the Washington Post at the time, and he liked it enough he gave it an honorable mention in his best-of-the-year list. (And added the comment, "OK, go ahead, shoot me!") That review was in the Post's Style section; the Post's Weekend section has its own stable of reviewers. Whoever reviewed it (I don't remember the name; he must've not been there long) began "The multi-talentless Bruce Willis..." and I thought "Uh oh."

[asim.livejournal.com]

I always credited my MST3K-ing friends for allowing me to enjoy Hudson Hawk upon first viewing. But then, I'm a sucker for showtunes, as well, so that might play into my love for the movie.

[tiki-man.livejournal.com]

wow surfers, that looks . . . wrong.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Here's the sad thing.

I'm going to be seeing Underdog.

Quite possibly first-run. Maybe even opening weekend.

My aunt and uncle are in it. They're "featured extras", so there are actually a couple scenes where you can see where they are. And, like, my aunt is specifically the person pointing at Underdog in some scene or another.

It's a familial duty. Even though there are maybe five seconds of film which my relatives are in, I'm going to have to see it.

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

I had to endure The Chamber for close to the same reason...one of my best pals from college was a featured extra who got to stand behind Chris O'Donnell talking on a cell phone...

[yendi]

Well, it could have been a worse Chris O'Donnell movie (like Batman and Robin), at least.

[yendi]

If Disney's smart, they'll have millions of extras in the movie, just to get an audience that feels obligated to see it.