apocalypsos | (no subject)

Cellular: A Q&A Review

Let me get this straight. Out of all of the good movies out there, you went to see Cellular?

Um, I was drunk?

Oh, you were not.

I could have been.

You also could have been temporarily criminally insane.

Oh, and I could have been possessed by Satan.

No, Satan would have made you go see Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

Oh, yeah. Probably twice. And right after eating my weight in prunes.

Eww. No one should be forced to eat their weight in prunes and then go watch a Scott Baio movie.

How about eating fifty pounds of live goldfish and voluntarily watching Zapped!?

You're going to hold what I did that weekend over my nonexistent head for the rest of my days, aren't you?

Hey, don't get snotty with me. Did I even mention the thing with the penguin and the red leather corset?

... yes.

Oops.

I'll "oops" that boat oar of yours right up your --

Hey, did I tell you I saw the "Birth" trailer?

*sigh* You mean that creepy movie where Nicole Kidman falls for a ten-year-old because he uses a lame pick-up line like "I was your husband in a past life"?

You think it's creepy now, wait'll you see the trailer. I knew I was in trouble when I reached up to scratch my nose and realized my upper layer of skin had shivered off and was making a crawl for the theater door as possible.

Also, the Seed of Chucky poster prominently features sperm.

Are you trying to make me projectile vomit?

Yes, because if you do, there still might be goldfish left over in there that come flying out and I can make a Lew Zealand crack.

I hate you.

You know, these endearing conversations of ours wouldn't be half as interesting if you loved me.

True. There'd probably be more moaning and porn, wouldn't there?

Oh, everything with you is about porn, isn't it?

I should probably stand far away from you to avoid falling anvils right now, shouldn't I?

I'd suggest it.

Whatever. Fill me in on the plot, porn monkey.

Once upon a time, there was a supposedly not-rich biology teacher who lived in a huge fuck-off house and got kidnapped by psycho men in leather so mean they didn't even let the expendable maid finish her line of dialogue before they shot her. Then the psycho men in leather took the supposedly not-rich biology teacher to their rundown mountain retreat, where they tossed her in the attic and smashed the phone, then left the pieces behind and said, "Don't you touch those or we're not giving you any of our Oreos!" So then the supposed not-rich biology teacher started making random phone calls for help, completely forfeiting those Oreos and possibly skipping over a Navy SEAL, a martial arts expert, and a bored terrorist to get to a guy with slightly less responsibility than my eighteen-year-old brother.

Hey, didn't the guy who wrote this also write Phone Booth?

Well, he just came up with the idea for it, in any event.

Sheesh, finding an original idea in this guy's head must be like finding any idea in Jessica Simpson's.

Either that, or he's some kind of wacko who considers the Biography episode on Alexander Graham Bell to be hard-core porn.

Again, ew. Can you just tell me who the hell these people are already?

Jessica Martin ... Whimpering biology teacher, a profession which means that in between seventy-five minutes worth of wibbling like an infant and curling up on a dirty attic floor, she gets to start acting pulling almost MacGyver-esque moves. Randomly calls hottie Ryan looking for help, which sure as hell beats my random phone call karma, because cute young guys with nice abs trumps elderly Asian ladies any day of the week. Named her son Ricky Martin, so probably deserves to be kidnapped at least three more times.

Ryan ... Adorably dopey frat boy whose first appearance in the movie tells the audience that he's allergic to the cotton in T-shirts and must strip to the waist whenever possible. And also, that he was dating Jessica Biel until her gigantic mouth told him they couldn't see each other anymore. Gets a random phone call from Kim Basinger and goes on to go nuts and terrorize Los Angeles, but who wouldn't respond like that to random calls from Kim Basinger?

Greer ... Nutty growly-voiced bad guy played by Jason Statham, which means the man's been in eleven movies and he's yet to be in one where he doesn't shoot somebody, kick somebody's ass, or blow something up.

Mooney ... Your official retiring-after-twenty-seven-years cop cliche, ladies and gentleman, as played by a slumming William H. Macy, who spends the entire movie hiding behind a gigantic mustache only slightly smaller than a Buick. Is giving up on the cop business to start a day spa, which I suppose would have been funnier if it weren't for the fact that if William H. Macy opened a day spa, you could have a latte, get a pedicure, and grovel at his feet like the unworthy peon you are, and all in the place! I mean, who wouldn't go at least once a day?

Craig Martin ... Jessica's realtor husband, who must be sleeping with someone really important if he and his high school teacher wife can afford a huge house in Brentwood, an expendable maid, and a pricey private school to turn their unfortunately monikered child into a conformist sheep. However, is played by Richard Burgi, late of "The Sentinel", and really, an affair with a curly-haired anthropology student in Cascade doesn't do shit for your bank account.

So, let's ramble. What's in the attic with Jessica?

You mean, aside from the extraneous phone? Oh, you know, the usual. A rug, an old table, four blond incest-spawned children with evil grandparents left over from a previous abduction.

Wait. Why is there a phone in an attic?

I don't know. Why do people get phones installed in their bathrooms?

Just in case an emergency happens while they're taking a whiz, I imagine.

Well, what if you're desperately trying to find the foamy elf magnets for the refrigerator amongst the Christmas decorations and your husband has to call from Guam to tell you they somehow wandered into his suitcase before he ran off with a curly-haired anthropology student?

Uh ... how many Bawls have you had since you got home?

I'm just starting my second one, honest. You might want to stay after the review is done so that you can help peel me off the ceiling.

Yeah, right, whatever. So, why did the head bad guy smash the phone with a sledgehammer when he could have just disconnected it from the wall and carried it out of the attic?

Maybe he didn't want the phone to get any funny ideas and start planning an escape with Kim Basinger.

No, seriously.

Uh, it slept with his wife. It called phone sex lines and used his credit card. He wanted to hit Kim Basinger but got confused when they both gave off the same dial tone when he held them up to his ears. Yeah, like I could figure out anyone's logic in this movie.

Exactly how many times did Ryan get told to find something or someone by Jessica's description only to discover that there were three trillion small children in blue shirts and khakis or twenty-five kajillion black SUVs picking up preppy sprogs at her son's private school?

Dude, every bloody time. It just goes to show you that if you want to avoid being kidnapped, it helps if you always dress in lime green leisure suits and drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. Ain't nobody gonna miss that combo.

Hey, isn't Chris Evans supposed to play the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movie?

Yes ... yes, he is.

Well, can he?

I don't see why not. He's awfully pretty, and it's not like Johnny Storm's going to have a complicated range of character development to deal with. Also, I want to lick whipped cream from his happy trail.

What does that have to do with the price of eggs in China?

Hell, I don't know. Multiply the price of eggs in China by a couple hundred thousand and that's probably how much I'd pay to lick whipped cream from his happy trail.

Wait, if he's going to play the Human Torch, did he ever get a chance to yell "Flame on!" and roast the kidnappers like marshmallows?

Don't be stupid. Actors playing superheroes don't get superpowers until after they start filming, dumbass.

So what was this whole kidnapping scheme for, anyway?

Oh, you know how all L.A. cops who aren't William H. Macy are dirty? Well, Craig Martin was off taping video of an office building to be leased, presumably to cover up that pornographic movie of him and Blair Sandburg in their romantic Pacific Northwest love nest he didn't want his easily spooked wife to watch, and he accidentally taped every policeman and policewoman in L.A. getting in line to shoot two drug dealers.

No, seriously, every policeman and policewoman, including a couple meter maids, a mall security guard, and quite possibly William Shatner as TJ Hooker.

So what does Ryan have to do to save Jessica?

First, he goes to the police station and gives William H. Macy the phone, but he can't talk because he's all excited that his avocado mud mask came in the mail.

See, you think I'm making this shit up.

No, I don't, although I don't see how anyone can justify the purpose of having William H. Macy start a beauty salon in a movie.

You would if you could hear him say, "It's a day spa, you fuck!"

Isn't it a shame that Jessica Biel's in yet another movie with a high death count and doesn't even get a paper cut?

I know! And Jason Statham probably had something in his arsenal that could smite her ... mad cow disease, a bazooka, maybe some nuclear weaponry he's been saving for a special occasion ...

So was the movie any good?

Was it any good?! Kim Basinger finally gets what was coming to her for following L.A. Confidential with I Dreamed of Africa! William H. Macy does the slide-and-shoot kickass cop maneuver! The annoying (albeit scruffily cute) kid who took over Jim Carrey's role in the Dumb and Dumber sequel is dealt the added humiliation of being stuffed into a giant whale costume for no reason whatsoever!

And do things blow up?

Yes! And people get shot and have facials and at one point, Kim Basinger gets to stab a guy in his brachial artery so he bleeds to death in about ten seconds just like they taught her to do in her "Deadly High-School-Teacher Martial Arts Maneuvers" class!

Hey, I think that was the class where my geometry teacher learned how to decapitate a student from ten feet away with a well-aimed protractor.

That's nothing. My high school creative writing teacher told me how to incapacitate someone simply by reciting "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner". It's all in how you inflect the bit about washing the dead guy out of the turret with a hose, I tell you.

Say, did Kim Basinger get to kill anyone else?

Well, she got to choke evil cop Matt McColm with the chain of her handcuffs, and he not only helped kidnap her, but he also starred in NightMan. Clearly, he was asking for it.

So, was it any good?

I wouldn't call it "good" so much as "stupidly amusing." All you have to remember is, well, nothing. It actually helps a lot if you go to the pyramids in Egypt and have your brains professionally scrambled with a giant hook shoved up your nose by the first archaeologist you can find.