The Screengrab

This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance.  Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me.  These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.  

But hey, so what?  I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me.  I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me.  I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me.  I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone.  I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out.  The first tasty bowl of arsenic:  David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways.  Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime?  Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day?  Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal?  I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane.  Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny.  I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't.  It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack.  It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability:  the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from.  Or, to put it another way:  the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly.  If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does.  The old, non-political David Zucker knew better:  he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.  

Read More...

Did you have a guy in high school who always seemed to effortlessly attract all the girls you were interested in, and you never could figure out why? I had a guy like that, and I'd just like to take a moment to mention that I recently had a very enjoyable conversation with one of my relatives who still lives in the old country who called to ask if I still remembered that guy, and to let me know that the indictments are expected to be handed down any minute now. Turns out I had it pretty easy next to J. R. Moehringer, who in the current issue of Los Angeles magazine reveals that, in his high school class, that guy was David Spade, the former Saturday Night Live waste of space whose movie career includes the Chris Farley team-up Tommy Boy (which Moehringer, in exchange for lord knows how much money, calls "much loved") and his own star vehicle Joe Dirt, which up to September 10, 2001, was probably the single worst thing to happen in the twenty-first century. "We graduated together in May 1982," he writes, "and even back then, when we were pubescent boys, I knew Spade was the greatest ladies’ man of all time. He was voted Most Artistic, but the entire student body at Saguaro High School knew he was the campus Casanova, a walking stalk of catnip for every cheerleader and homecoming queen. I can still close my eyes and see Spade in a burst of vivid colors—royal blue Ocean Pacific shorts, black-and-white-checked Vans, beige puka shell necklace. I can see him flying across the gray quad on his skateboard, pirouetting around the caramel-legged girls in their short shorts and miniskirts, making them swoon and tee-hee and sigh his name." Moehringer's article is a profile of his own teenage pal, with a special angle: the author's desperate desire to crack the secret of Spade's appeal to women. (He also breaks the news that Spade may be plotting a sequel to Joe Dirt, to be called Joe Dirtier.)

Read More...

I’ve heard some conservatives speaking of “the humorless left,” but if this trailer tells me anything, it’s that humorlessness can be found on both sides of the aisle.

Read More...