GOOBY (2009)

Elizabeth

I think Paul Scheer of the podcast How Did This Get Made? summed up Gooby best: “Finally, a kids movie that proves the age old adage that a kid’s best friend is a 7 foot tall scary ass looking Scottish bear that makes other kids piss their pants.” Because that’s what happens in Gooby. And it is totally insane.

Gooby is about a neglected 11-year-old boy hilariously named Willy. Willy’s parents, Jack (David James Elliott) and Elize (Ingrid Kavelaars) hate him. I’m not kidding. Though he clearly has profound mental health issues, they treat him like total shit by ignoring him so completely that Willy pretty much just lives his life until one of his parents tells him that something’s changing, like they’re moving out of Willy’s childhood home . . . in like 2 weeks. Willy is constantly on edge, and for good reason. Some choice parenting moments: Willy’s parents hire a nanny, which he has never had before. They tell him they’re hiring a nanny by introducing him to her, because fuck what the kid thinks. Willy sits at the kitchen counter and eats cereal as the nanny looks on and packs his lunch. She puts two cookies on the kitchen counter behind her, near an open window, and she turns around and sees that they’re gone (hint, it was Gooby). She immediately accuses Willy of stealing the cookies, even though he was sitting right in front of her the whole time. It happens again and she accuses Willy again, getting the attention of Willy’s mom. Willy tells her he didn’t do anything and his mom doesn’t believe him. He even says, “Every time I tell you the truth you say I’m lying.” That issue is never addressed. Another good moment: Willy sits at the table with his parents, eating Chinese takeout. Gooby starts making noise upstairs, so to distract his parents Willy pretends he’s about to be sick. Instead of taking him to the bathroom, or coming to his side, both parents immediately move their food (not Willy’s food, just their’s) away from him and look at him with disgust. Nothing like favoring Chinese takeout over your child’s health.

So what made me say that Willy has profound mental health issues is that he has frequent visual hallucinations (Gooby is not one of them). He believes the monsters he draws are real and he sees them come to life right in front of him, 100% believing that they are there and are going to kill him. His parents seem to know this (his mom references a therapist he’s seen) buuuut don’t seem all that concerned. So for some reason, when Willy and his parents leave their house for the last time, Willy’s childhood stuffed bear, Gooby, is left behind, even though we clearly saw Elize check all the rooms in the house before they go. And then, again for some reason, we see Gooby light up and glow, and that’s it. Did Willy make a wish for Gooby to come to life? Was there a magical lightning storm? We’ll never know.

So one day while Willy is in his backyard, he discovers a full-size, talking Gooby and much to Willy’s surprise, he is not a hallucination. Willy takes him in and Gooby quickly becomes his only friend. They share moments not unlike a similar scene in 9 1/2 Weeks involving sitting in front of the open fridge eating food together, Gooby eating disgusting raw hot dogs out of tupperware. Also involved in this story (sort of) is Willy’s evil teacher, Mr. Nerdlinger (Eugene Levy), a failed children’s book writer who is obsessed with becoming famous. He sees Gooby (yeah, other people can see him) and it becomes his goal to get a picture of Gooby that will make him famous. Because anyone would look at a picture of Gooby and think it’s a real creature and not just a man in a weird bear suit.

Gooby basically becomes the dad Willy never had, which is sad considering his dad is still around and Gooby is a giant magical teddy bear. He helps Willy get in with the cool kids by taking them all to an R-rated movie on Halloween, pretending to be, you guessed it, a man in a weird bear suit. Eventually Gooby realizes he has a purpose and that is to get Willy and his dad back together. He does this by taking Willy to the abandoned apartment building where his dad grew up, where Willy promptly falls through the floor and is hanging on for life (or more likely just for his legs to not get broken). Gooby decides to not use his giant size to help Willy up, but instead calls Willy’s suddenly worried parents. By the time Willy’s dad shows up an undetermined amount of time later, Willy is still hanging in the hole in the floor. What the hell? His dad finally saves him and meets Gooby and is not at all concerned about Gooby’s existence. Willy’s parents accept Gooby as part of the family . . . until Gooby hones in on a little girl at Home Depot and asks Willy to to give him (Gooby) to her. Somehow, Gooby turns back into a teddy bear and Willy gives him to the little girl, essentially giving her a grown man in a suit to follow her around indefinitely. Thanks, Willy!

You just can’t help but wonder the thought process behind Gooby. It’s confusing enough to make me think a lot was cut out of it but I don’t think a director’s cut would suddenly make it not insanely terrible. Gooby is terrifying and also tragic considering he was basically brought to life because a child was so isolated that he went insane. GREAT FAMILY FILM!!!

Christopher

I have been wanting to watch this since it came out. The first time I saw the trailer for this I had no idea what I watched. It’s interesting to me how stuff like this is made because how could you look at Gooby and think he wouldn’t scare the fuck out of children? Also he acts like a grown adult the whole time.

The best part about this movie though was how much the parents hated their kid. It was kind of like What Dreams May Come. Any kind of situation involving the parents in this film always ends with them just looking annoyed that Willy was their kid. At one point the kid pretends to be sick and the parents’ only reaction is to not let him throw up on their food.

Gooby also has a problem with scenes just ending. There are so many situations where you aren’t quite sure how a scene is going to end and guess what, you never do! For instance, the scene where the Willy pretends to be sick. What’s happening is that Gooby is up in Willy’s room trying to be quiet so his parents don’t know he exists. At this time Willy and his parents are sitting around the table eating take out Chinese food. As dinner progresses you start hearing Gooby up in Willy’s room. He keeps knocking shit over and as the dinner moves along he keeps getting louder. As Gooby makes noise Willy pretends to be sick, making noises so his parents’ stop thinking about the noise upstairs . . .then the scene ends. I guess the parents don’t want to see why it sounds like a 300 lb man is stomping around upstairs?

Great movie!

VALENTINE’S DAY (2010)

Christopher

There are way too many stupid story lines in this movie. The biggest thing that’s distracting is how into Valentine’s Day everyone is. It was funny to see Ashton Kutcher be a terrible actor though. Also now when I see Garry Marshall’s name anywhere I just think of Paul F. Tompkins playing him on Comedy Bang Bang and I can’t take anything he does seriously.

I think as bad movies go this was fun to watch. I mean it’s a pretty big train wreck.

Elizabeth (spoilers! but who cares)

Valentine’s Day is a huge mess, and that’s really putting it too lightly. It tries to take a Love Actually approach to the romantic comedy by stuffing as many movie stars into one movie, but then totally forgets that it actually should probably have clear plots and characters and everything else that makes a decent movie, which Valentine’s Day has none of. The easiest way to illustrate the sheer scope of Valentine’s Day is to give a run-down of the various characters and sub-plots.

– Ashton Kutcher plays Reed, who proposes to girlfriend Morley (played by Jessica Alba and her terrible hair) in the first scene. Morley forgets to tell Reed that she doesn’t love him when he first proposes, so she waits a few hours and then breaks up with him. Reed also has two best friends played by George Lopez for some reason as Alfonso and Jennifer Garner as Julia. Julia is dating a doctor comically played by Patrick Dempsey of Grey’s Anatomy until she finds out he’s married, Baggage Claim-style. Reed and Julia end up together, and their lack of chemistry is kinda gross.

– Julia Roberts plays Kate, who is sitting next to Holden (Bradley Cooper) on an airplane as she takes a one-day leave from the Army. Their meaningless conversation alludes to a relationships we don’t know about until the end, when we discover that the person Kate is traveling to see is her kid and Holden is gay and dating a famous football player.

– Julia is a school teacher who has a student named Edison. Edison’s babysitter Grace is played by Emma Roberts, who wants to sleep with her boyfriend but decides not to. End of subplot.

– Edison has grandparents played by Héctor Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine. They have a fight and then make up. End of subplot.

– Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner play Grace’s friends who are dating and not having sex. End of subplot.

– Eric Dane plays the aforementioned closeted football player that Bradley Cooper is dating, who is thinking of retiring. Jessica Biel plays Kara, his publicist, and Queen Latifah plays Paula, his agent. Kara becomes interested in Kelvin, played by Jamie Foxx, whose boss, Susan, is played by Kathy Bates. Paula and Susan basically serve no purpose, not that that’s saying much.

– Paula hires Liz, played by Anne Hathaway, who begins dating co-worker Jason (Topher Grace). Liz is a phone sex worker who is apparently on-call for phone sex 24/7, using both her personal cell phone and office phone to do it. Hmm, okay? But Liz is a phone sex worker because of student loans, so I guess I can’t hate her that much.

I think that’s everyone. This movie is a little over two hours long, but with about a dozen (literally) subplots and “main characters,” it’s pretty much impossible to develop anything, so you’re left not giving a shit about anyone. The whole movie feels like some weird excuse; an excuse to have as many famous people as possible and an excuse to not write a whole movie.

While there’s too much going on to really pinpoint the “worst” part, I think Taylor Swift’s acting is right there at the top. Don’t get me wrong, I love Taylor Swift. But now I know I love Taylor Swift in her main profession only because she was so bad that it’s almost insulting to other actors to call what she was doing acting. And really, no one is that great in this because they’re never remotely given the chance. The whole time I was watching this I kept wondering if anyone would really rather see this movie over one with a third of the characters and triple the plot and character development. So I mean, if you want to watch a dozen shitty stories within one movie, go for Valentine’s Day. Otherwise it’s not worth even thinking about.

M (1931)

Elizabeth (spoilers!)

M is one of those movies that I can’t believe was even made, but not in the usual, Tyler Perry kind of way. I mean it in the way that this is a movie made around 1930 in Germany about a child molester/murderer. And it is CRAZY.

Something that bothers me in certain old movies is what’s left unspoken; usually it seems to be a direct result of censorship, but either way it sort of drives me crazy to watch a movie where we’re supposed to assume stuff that happens off-screen. M both follows this and bucks this; no, it doesn’t show Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) molesting or killing children, but it also flat-out says that’s what he’s doing, just in case there’s any doubt. Basically, I just love that Lang was able to let us know what’s going on but still keep the feel of a movie from that era.

The plot is really simple: Beckert has been abducting and murdering children around Berlin. The most we see of any crime is Beckert approaching a little girl, in shadow, buying that little girl a balloon and candy, and then later we see the ball she was playing with roll out from under a bush and the same balloon float up and hit a power line. The bulk of the movie is how the city reacts to these crimes and how everyone is on the hunt for him, even though no one knows what to look for. The police use fascinating (to me) techniques with fingerprints and handwriting analysis (Beckert sends the press a letter, not as himself, admitting to the crimes and promising he will commit them again) but they don’t get anywhere. Meanwhile, the Berlin mob and the rest of the criminal community is getting sick of the nightly raids the cops are holding trying to find the killer and being accused themselves of being the killer. The mob’s irritation with the killer is so interesting; they obviously think he’s evil and shouldn’t kill children. But what really drives them is that they don’t want to be lumped into the same category just because they’re also criminals, and the fact that they can’t really do criminal stuff with all the cop activity. It might not be 100% moral, but the mob is convinced that they’ll do a better job of catching the killer than the cops, and they’re right.

There’s a lot of really interesting stuff going on all the time, I think the most important being the incredible acting of Peter Lorre. Eventually, the criminals end up catching Beckert and give him a mock trial. Beckert pleads with his captors, explaining that he has to kill, that the only time he’s not in total torment is when he’s killing, and I have to say Lorre is pretty fucking convincing. He looks like he’s in pain, the way he holds himself and looks terrified of the criminals that have caught him and looks around at them so desperately. But then you remember that, wait, Beckert raped and murdered children and went out of his way to both taunt and elude the police. I love that M is all about Beckert being a killer but Lorre is somehow able to make you forget about that, even if for just a few seconds, and empathize with him a little. It’s crazy.

Lang is also really good at building tension in M. To help capture the killer, the mob recruits the homeless of Berlin to act as watchdogs over the city’s children, following any lone child until they see that the child is safe. Eventually this works, when the blind balloon salesman who sold Beckert his victim’s balloon in the beginning recognizes Beckert’s whistling of “In The Hall of the Mountain King,” which he whistled when he first bought the balloon. The salesman alerts another beggar, who follows Beckert, as he has another child, a soon-to-be-victim in tow. It’s nerve-racking watching Beckert get followed; as he moves through the crowded city it seems sure that he’ll get lost. But then the beggar writes a giant M on his hand in chalk and pretends to run into Beckert, slamming his hand on Beckert’s coat in the process and marking the back of his shoulder with an M. It’s just kind of brilliant, and once Beckert’s victim alerts him to the mark it just gets that much more tense and crazy.

M is a movie that I’m embarrassed it took me so long to see. I was honestly kind of scared to watch it; despite the time period, I thought Metropolis was super scary when I saw it in middle school and that movie is not about a child killer. But it’s really incredible and the scariest parts are feeling empathy for the killer. The restoration of M is also such a good example of why the Criterion Collection is so amazing and important.

M is amazing.

Christopher

When I think of my history with film the Criterion Collection is a big part of that. From that I remember the first CC I saw was 8 1/2. A kid at my high school had recommended it and even though I wasn’t a huge fan it certainly opened my eyes to what film could be. After I watched 8 1/2 I was at Best Buy with my mom and I remember noticing other CC movies around the store. The first one I picked up was La Dolce Vita. I grabbed it wanting to buy it before I even knew what it was about. The second film, my mom noticed, was M. The cover immediately sold me as well. I went home and watched La Dolce Vita with my mom. We both loved it and it sparked some interesting conversation about what we had actually watched. However, when I saw M for the first time, I think my love for movies really took off. I don’t think I had ever watched anything that was so captivating about such a scary subject. Everything jumped out at me. The writing, the cinematography, even the acting.

M is about a German town coming to a halt to find a child murderer. It’s crazy to think about how this movie was even made. And I think it’s interesting that it’s Fritz Lang’s first movie with sound. You can definitely tell. There are quite a few moments when there is no sound at all. I remember watching this with my dad at about 1 in the morning once and trying my best to stay awake because of the constant silence.

I love this movie and I think if you love film at all it’s worth watching. I can’t really think of anything I don’t like about it.