14 thoughts on “Movie Podcast Weekly Ep. 112: Dumb and Dumber To (2014) and Force Majeure (2014) and Autómata (2014) and Bad Turn Worse (2014)”

1. Finally! jk Jay.

   Hi guys! Too Many Cooks is amazing. I watched it last time when you recommended it and it blew my mind. Really, really funny. My favorite scenes involved a cat.

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   • You guys are way overanalyzing the video. It’s clever for sure and it’s very clear that it’s a satire, but I don’t think it was meant to be discussed with this amount of depth. But I guess that’s the cool thing about it. You can either enjoy it for what it is or for what you think it is.

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     • I actually thought we were under-analyzing it because my mind drew a blank on all of the things I had been thinking about during the previous week.

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       • I agree in the sense that there is so much going on that it deserves multiple viewings to catch all of the details. I guess I “jumped the shark” when I said that you were overanalyzing it. What I meant was that I don’t think there’s a deeper meaning than that of a critique on television in general. What I got from the video was “here’s all the crap that you’ve been watching for years condensed in 11 minutes of nightmarish visuals. Enjoy”.

         Oh hi Josh! Thanks for the shout-out, man. I’m really excited to get the film that I picked and to honor your contest—or rather Andy’s contest—I will provide you with a full review of the film.

         Speaking of contests, I received the shirt in the mail. Thanks Jay! Looks great!

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2. I’ve been a bit behind, but I had to comment on the discussion jump sharking from last week:

   You’re all missing the boat on shark jumpitude in a couple of very important particulars. What makes a jump-the-shark moment shark jumpy is that a) it happens organically, and b) it is typically identified in retrospect. I wasn’t there, of course, but I’m pretty sure that the “Happy Days” guys didn’t have a writer’s meeting where somebody said, “People think our show is starting to get lame, we have got to FIX THIS PROBLEM.” “Wait: What if we have an episode where Fonzie jumps a shark while he’s waterskiing?” “So the shark is in the water, and The Fonz LITERALLY jumps over it? BRILLIANT. That will CHANGE THE COURSE OF TELEVISION HISTORY. Lock it in.”

   Shark jumpitude, especially as people now use the term in discussing pop culture, is something that sneaks up on the creative team. They don’t realize they’re slipping and make a desperate attempt to reverse course. They think they’re just doing the show, the way they’ve always done the show. Only, they’ve gotten so comfortable with the creative process, and so accustomed to the characters and storylines, that nobody calls out anyone’s lame ideas any more, or asks whether the next thing in the next script actually suits the story and characters, etc. Shark jumpitude happens out of laziness. “Hey, they need pages for next week’s episode.” “Yeah, I just sent them over. Fonzie goes waterskiing and jumps over a shark.” “Sweet. The kids love sharks.”

   The actual episode where The Fonz jumps a shark, “Hollywood (Part 3),” was in Season Five of “Happy Days.” The show ran for 11 seasons. And the ratings were as high as they’d ever been when that episode aired, so no one was hitting the panic button. In that sense, people often argue that shark jumpitude is a symptom of arrogance, not laziness. It’s the “I’m Keith Hernandez” thing from “Seinfeld.” You’ve become so awesome in your own mind that you think your farts smell like roses and that any old thing you feel like doing is totally THE BEST because YOU thought of doing it.

   Either way, for people who watch a show faithfully, when a shark jump moment comes along, they aren’t sitting there saying, “Wait, what? The Fonz just used his water skis to jump over a shark? THAT’S IT. ‘Happy Days’ is lame, and I am DONE WATCHING THIS TRASH.” Again, plenty of people watched “Happy Days” after the shark thing. Its ratings began to decline in Season Six, and never recovered, but nobody knew that was about to happen at the time, and the show was actually on the air for longer after Fonz jumped the shark than it was before he jumped the shark. That’s why it’s a retrospect thing. Time has to pass after something like that before you can say, “You know, ‘Happy Days’ has gotten kinda lame ever since that thing with the Fonz and the shark.” Even fans of the show who rolled their eyes when it happened probably didn’t quit watching right away. They thought, “That was weird,” and tuned in next week (and probably for many weeks, or even years, after that) hoping to get something better. Identifying the moment when a creative endeavor has jumped the shark is a backward looking exercise that requires perspective.

   For example, in five years from now, people will say, “You know, Movie Podcast Weekly’s mini-reviews really jumped the shark that week that Andy and Josh didn’t bother to watch anything, and Jason just watched a couple of episodes of ‘The Killing’ and then blew it off because Mireille Enos isn’t hot enough for Brad Pitt.” PROPER USAGE. We won’t have the perspective to know that’s happened, on the other hand, until we can look back and see how the Mini-Reviews — which sometimes took up an entire 90 minutes of the show during the glory days, and even prompted a poll about whether they should be first or last because they had gotten SO FREAKING EPIC — really withered on the vine after Ep. 111. (Seriously, fellas: Twenty minutes of mini-reviews, with most of the time spent debating tangents like Mireille Enos’s relative hotness and whether you can live-tweet something by sending text messages to your buddies but not actually posting anything on Twitter? GET YOUR HEADS IN THE GAME.)

   In closing, split-decision: Movies, like any other sequential or serial creative endeavor, can have an identifiable point after which early promise is reneged upon and creative vigor dries up. (In 30-ish years of reading movie reviews, I’d say that, by an enormous margin, the phrase most often used to label that point is some variation of “goes off the rails.” I think Josh or Jay even hit that note on the show.) On the other hand, movies are so compact both in form, creation and delivery, that they don’t really fit the term “jump the shark” the way that most people use it. True shark jumpitude requires time on both sides: Time for the artist(s) to do something well, do it well repeatedly, eventually slip into formula and gradually get lazy; and time for people who consume the art to become slowly disenchanted, realize the output has been getting progressively more weak sauce for a protracted length of time (and will probably never bounce back), and then look back and say, “That’s where it all started to go bad.”

   P.S. After I’d prepped this comment, I listened to Ep. 112, and I have to give mad props to the gang for making a pretty solid reversal of the Mini-Reviews trend, though Josh is still doggin’ it a little and Andy only saved himself by watching “Snowpiercer.” Jay, on the other hand, CRUSHED IT with his EPIC review of “Sorceror,” which I must now find some way to watch ASAP. Heard/read about it for years, and I’ve even seen some extended clips, but I haven’t ever sat down to watch the whole thing. WHICH NOW WILL CHANGE. Thank you, Jason. I am 100 percent confident that I will love the movie.

   On the other hand, last week’s Mini-Reviews, with the whole vibe of “I didn’t watch anything this week except that I was taking a dump and I had my phone on, so I checked out a clip from ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ on YouTube” and “Guys, I was so busy this week that I didn’t watch any movies, but my kids were watching ‘Tinkerbell and The Secret of the Wings’ and I heard a few lines of dialogue, so lets talk about that for five minutes,” MAY STILL BE the Jump the Shark moment. We just won’t know until a couple of years from now.

   P.P.S. “Nicaragua,” “One World,” “Borneo” (yes, “Borneo”) and “Redemption Island” were all demonstrably worse seasons of “Survivor” than what we’ve gotten out of “San Juan del Sur” so far, and “Fiji” and “Vanuatu” were close. The same thing that makes “Survivor” great is also its Achilles heel: It all comes down to players. Some seasons the mix is brilliant, good, pretty good or sufficient, and some season it just plain doesn’t work. (Sometimes you even get one or two brilliant players in a season that’s generally terrible, as with Yau Man and Earl from “Fiji.”) (Recruiting players almost never helps, though.) I think they could run “Survivor” for as long as they want, and keep getting a reasonable number of good seasons, with the occasional dud mixed in, because you’re going to keep getting Spencer vs. Tony, or Malcolm/Denise vs. Whelchel/Skupin.

   Also, Keith is way too much of a tool to make it all the way. Missy and Baylor are both far more savvy than Keith is. Keith is bumbling his way to a decent game, but I think even Jon and Jaclyn will last longer than he does. Also, unlike Wolf Cub Josh, I haven’t dogged any weeks in the fantasy game and just lucked into four correct safe picks. That sauce is WEAK, bro. And like the Galactic Empire, I will STRIKE BACK.

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   • By the way, I watched the “poll” all week, and I totally call B.S. on the “results.” Somebody stuffed the ballot box. “No” was wiping the floor with “Yes” until suddenly “Yes” turned it around with about a 40 percentage point swing in, like, 36 hours. I demand a re-poll conducted by an independent third party.

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3. Hi sweet jay, next time u want to “sell a movie” to us listeners, you might want to consider cutting that monologue a little shorter… Half way through your intro of everyone’s cv, i already forgot what the movie was called and all, all left in my head is your mesmerising voice and i totally lost track what you were talking about.

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4. This is how I learned about the process of blowing out oil rig fires. Enjoy! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063060/

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5. Love The Killing. I’ve seen all 4 seasons. The most interesting part of Season 1 was watching the affect of losing a child on a family. Father – guilt for not protecting his daughter, wanting revenge. Mother – inconsolable loss. The evolution of the interaction between the parents was fascinating. Jason, finish Season 1. It’s worth it.

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6. Are you guys serious?

   The big complaint about JJ taking the reigns of Star Trek was that he was more of a Star Wars guy. And the film also garnered a lot of criticism from Trekkers who felt he made it too Star Wars-like. I’m not saying that means he’ll make a great Star Wars film, but it should at least be more true to tone than his Star Trek film was. Also, it can’t be worse than what Lucas did with the last three that he made. The best news in that we’ve got the original cast and Lawrence Kasden. Can’t go too far wrong there.

   Further, there are plenty of ways that the force could “awaken” in this film. It’s been 31 years since they blew up the Death Star. Vadar and The Emperor are dead, ostensibly leaving Luke as the only living practitioner of the force. So who knows if he had reason to “use” it or not. Plus, Mark Hamill will be the same age in this film as Alec Guiness was in the first movie. Maybe, when it comes to the force, Luke just can’t get it up.

   Next, you’ve got the possibility that this has something to do with Leia. Before Luke leaves Leia at Ewok village, he tells her that “the Force runs strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And … my sister has it. Yes. It’s you, Leia.” Perhaps Leia finally gets that yellow lightsaber we’ve been waiting for and gets to get her force on. Afterall, somehow she’s always known.

   Then, there are the rumors that this new film revolves around the female offspring of Han and Leia. Chances are that their daughter would have some of that Skywalker force through birth and perhaps, in these (likely) low-stakes times when nobody is training young Jedi for battle, she would have her own natural “awakening” to the force as a teenager, like Luke did.

   And lastly (although there are really endless possibilities), there is a chance that this refers to the awakening of the dark side of the force and the return of the Sith.

   This is why I shouldn’t have left the show early. You guys are hopeless.

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   • 100% agree. This would have made for some really entertaining podcast. Perhaps you could still bring it up on the next podcast so we can all rejoice.

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   • You left out the most obvious possibility: Since Force-sensitivity and Force-use are governed by midichlorians, CLEARLY the title refers to a new strain of midichlorians propagating across the galaxy. J.J. just didn’t have the balls to go with “Star Wars: The Midichlorians Strike Back.” (Have I ever mentioned that one of the saddest moments of my moviegoing life was seeing the words “Written and Directed by George Lucas” flash on the screen at the end of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”?)

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     • Wow, Cody. You nailed it. I stand corrected. Haha. Oh, man. This could be really, really bad.

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7. I haven’t been able to get Force Majeure out of my head all week. I’m dying to see it. I revisited the Seinfeld clip of George fleeing from the fire this week as well and you know what was particularly striking that I had never noticed on previous viewings of the show? THE PARTY CLOWN is Jon Favreau! How funny.

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