Losers Weepers

It's here! A whole month of posts about vertically challenged villains, forever known as The Shortening. Evil dolls, terrible children, biting insects, Tom Cruises...whatever is small and deadly, we'll tackle it here.

Onward!

Quick Plot: Newly separated Alyson moves her bratty daughter Claire into a bargain home with your typical murdery history. Just a year or so earlier, a young boy killed his parents before ending up in the local asylum. When Claire discovers a ratty doll under a floorboard, it's not long before she begins heading down the same path.

First on her hit list: neighbor Marina Sirtis's cat. 

I'm not going to lie about my bias: when your first victim is feline, I'm not going to be on your victim/villain's side.

Perhaps the hardest hurdle to get over in Finders Keepers is just why anyone should care about Claire's possession-by-doll. Sure, the kid doesn't have the greatest parental role models (we're talking Jaime Pressly and the king of Christmas movies himself, Patrick Muldoon), but it doesn't really excuse the fact that she's a miserable thing from the start. 

At least the doll has a neat look.

Directed by Alexander Yellen (whose career primarily involves cinematography on Asylum Studio films), Finders Keepers feels aggressively mediocre, even with (or maybe, because) it contains a fairly star-studded cast for this caliber of film. Deanna Troy purrs through a thankless cat lady part, Tobin "Jigsaw" Bell gets to give terrible psychiatric advice, and poor Justina Machado has her eyes poked out and body set on fire. 

And the brat keeps going.

High Points

There's a stupid slow motion doll toss that made me unreasonably happy, which tells you how much I was reaching for entertainment in this movie

Low Points

Did I mention how much I hated this kid?

Lessons Learned

I know this sounds crazy, but here me out: in the words of trained professionals, separation and divorce can be hard for a child

Never mess with a strange kid's ugly doll

The shorter your haircut, the longer your makeup will stay on your face

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. This wasn't the high note I was hoping to open The Shortening on, but it does manage to give us BOTH an evil child AND doll, so I guess it gets some kind of half nod. I got this as a long wait on my Netflix disc queue, which felt even less rewarding than I would have liked. 

Survivor: Edward Furlong Island

Gather 'round kids, and let me tell you tales of the turn of the early years of this century. The world was a different place, a little colder in some ways and kinder in others. Most notably, reality TV was a new religion that washed over the world like a plague. 

Competitions sprang up for every possible scenario. Survivor and Big Brother were training wheels for what came after: Boot Camp, Love Boat, Strip Search, and so on. Everyone knew someone who was constantly sending audition tapes to network after network for unnamed shows that teased of minor fame and heavily taxed big winnings. It was the new American dream.

2005's Cruel World was clearly made at the height of the trend, something you can guess by the fact that Joe Millionaire is referenced in such a way that it clearly assumes everyone in the audience knew exactly what that one-season Fox show was about. While it's no ahead-of-its-time classic like Series 7: The Contenders, this one has some fun.

Quick Plot: Philip (typically greasy Edward Furlong) is still bristling from his embarrassing loss on Lovers Lane (no, not that one), a dating show where he was rejected by the beautiful Catherine (Jaime Pressly), now married to the winning contestant and living in the very mansion where the program was filmed. Bitter and insane, Philip returns to exact his vengeance on the happy couple before setting a much more complex plan into play.

With the help of his dim but incredibly strong brother Claude, Philip invites a gaggle of attractive, fame-hungry 20somethings to the mansion under the guise of filming a new Big Brother-esque reality competition. Because it's 2005, none of the "contestants" have any reason to suspect shenanigans. After all, there were some pretty terribly produced reality shows at that time hosted by dudes like this:

Naturally, being voted out of the house has bigger consequences than losing out on a cash prize and being confined to a deli interview on Late Night (seriously; in the early days of Survivor, David Letterman was so annoyed with CBS forcing him to interview reality show castoffs that he wouldn’t allow the guests in his actual studio). Each elimination is a murder at the hands of Claude or, as the game gets more intense, fellow contestants. 

Directed by Kelsey T. Howard with a clear venom towards the reality genre, Cruel World has a tricky time nailing its tone. There’s a nastiness to its opening, savagely disposing of a happy couple before thrusting a batch of somewhat horrid young people at us. As the cast gets thinned out, the contestants become a little more human and sympathetic. That kind of makes it worse.

I don’t mean to imply that I hated Cruel World. As someone who watched my share of Temptation Island, it felt like a recent time capsule that found a good look into the reality TV boom. I wish the satire was sharper and characters more tolerable, but on a certain level, this is a film that has aged somewhat well in terms of its social politics. It doesn’t make it any more pleasant to actually watch, but hey…it’s more than I expected from an Edward Furlong movie I’d never heard of streaming on Amazon Prime.

High Points

In a post-Gamergate world, there's something incredibly disturbing and  sadly believable about Cruel World's central villain, a socially awkward but tech-smart young white male so embittered by not his dream girl that he'd go to such violent lengths to right the perceived wrong

Low Points

There's an art to ending your film with a nasty stinger, and then there's "just throw some mean twist at the end without any context so we leave our audience feeling kinda crappy"

Lessons Learned

Want to throw your attacker off? Pee on him when he least expects it

Before leaving for a mystery reality competition, carb load

If you arrive at a reality show filming to discover you’ll be sharing a house with Andrew Keegan, assume the role of the smarmy villain has already been cast and promptly choose another one, like cowboy or token gay guy

Rent/Bury/Buy

I hesitate to fully recommend Cruel World to the general public (well, the general readership of the Doll's House, which is an entirely different thing of its own). It has a mean streak and sense of ugliness that I don't generally enjoy, but for anyone with a solid foundation of the reality TV craze that defined the early 2000s, there's a whole lot to appreciate. You can find it now on Amazon Prime. 

The Karate Dog (because any clever title I come up with will not be as amusing as "The Karate Dog")

The Karate Dog is one of those titles that one shouldn’t say without a smile, mostly because of the very insistent use of the article “the.” See, this ain’t Cop Dog or Ghost Cat: with a supporting performance from Pat Morita, that “the” is most definitely important.

Aaaaaaaand the movie features Jon Voight engaged in karate combat with a dog voiced by Chevy Chase that naked DWI country star Randy Travis wrote a song about. 

You can’t tell me you’re not smiling.

Quick Plot: Cho Cho is a Briard that can speak to his owner, Chin Li, a karate master with a mysterious but incredibly powerful green goo. Before you can say wax on, a band of ninjas break into Chin Li’s home to steal said goo, fighting the old man in the process and leaving him to slowly die of a heart attack while Cho Cho watches on sadly.

You know the phrase “phoned-in performance?” I think it can be used quite literally here, as Chevy Chase most likely recorded his barely caring dog lines via AT & T. Moving on…

Cho Cho is determined to catch the men responsible for his pal’s death and thusly does he team up with Peter Fowler (former porn star/MTV veejay/‘90s trivia question Simon Rex), a technologically obsessed nerd of a detective who seems to have no understanding of the word ‘warrant.’ Fowler is stuck with a crush on a sweet and naturally single young beat cop (Jaime Pressly, and only now do I realize how oddly spelled her name is) and a boss growing tired of his antics. Even though he doesn’t actually have any antics. “Tired of hero’s antics” just seems to be a thing that occurs quite often here in Animals Doing Human Stuff Month.

Anyway, some sleuthing leads Cho Cho and Fowler to the greyhound racetrack of one Hamilton Cage, a gloriously hammed up Jon Voight who is villainously using Chin Li’s goo as a steroid for his dogs…and himself, much to the comic value of later seeing Jon Voight engaged in karate.

With a dog.

A creepy CGI dog.

Shudder.

When making a talking, driving, karate chopping dog movie, a filmmaker like Bob Black Christmas Clark has a few decisions to make. Among the most important: how to make titular dog talk, drive, head a conga line, use a urinal, and of course, karate chop. This being 2002, animatronics were already on their way out in favor of cheap ‘n dirty CGI. But the late (and quite often great) Clark was a classy guy and wouldn’t quite let go of some good old fashioned canine trained thespians and puppet work.

Thusly do we arrive at this karate dog with a mixture of occasional awwwwws (because it’s a cute enough well-trained dog) and gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhs (because CGI dogs standing on two legs and acting like humans is incredibly disturbing). Some people don’t like to see Muppets in full frame…

I do not like to see CGI dogs on two legs dancing in conga lines.

Or doing housework

Sadly once seen, the CGI dog conga line cannot be unseen, rendering The Karate Dog as scary an experience as Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things or Clark’s underrated gem, Deathdream. As if to further send younger viewers into immediate series of nightmares, The Karate Dog ends with Cho Cho performing Chantily Lace with a complete jazz band of other dogs, including a Dalmatian on bass. It just…ain’t. right.

I always considered myself an open-minded, liberal person. And yet hearing Chevy Chase’s lazy vocals come through the mouth of an awkwardly positioned Briard wearing a suit made me think “too far.” It’s as if Ally McBeal’s dancing baby fantasy finally found its canine counterpart, and it’s an awful, awful thing to behold.

What dark days we once lived amongst

High Points

There’s a wonderfully over-the-top, deep slow motioned voice “Noooooooooooooooooooooooo” shoutout by Jaime Pressly towards the film’s climax that I simply refuse to believe wasn’t placed there for hilarious, intentional comedy

Low Notes

When was the last time an actor playing a film’s title character didn’t get a credit? In a world of Mooses and Kumas, what a shame it is that the briard occasionally turned into a horrific CGI creation doesn’t get his own name listed in the part of Cho Cho

Lessons Learned

Talking like a human is like riding a bike

Every dog has his day...you know?

Just cause someone’s a dog doesn’t mean they can’t smell a rat

Early 21st century ninja villains were quite the fans of Momenshuntz

Look! It’s…

The voice of Lori “Kit Keller” scratching out the voice of Peter’s computer

And Hey! How About…

The fat guy from Varsity Blues as Hamilton’s son. Actor Ron Lester might very well have the saddest IMDB profile bio of anyone I’ve ever read: “Ron Lester gained celebrity status at an early stage in his career, but his draw in Hollywood seemed to be based on one physical characteristic - his weight. Obese since 5 years old, by the time he was 30 years old, Ron weighed 508 pounds. Hollywood hired him as the lovable fat kid but his health was in serious danger. With the support of his friends, family, and co-workers, Ron decided to go through an experimental (at the time) type of gastric bypass surgery that almost took his life. When he recovered from flat-lining on the operating table Ron began to lose the weight - and his celebrity identity. 348 pounds were lost in under two years and he's had 14 plastic surgeries to tighten and remove excess skin. Now Ron has a hard time getting the roles he once won. Admits food was his 'drug of choice' to cover up pain from often being the new kid in school (he changed schools often due to discipline problems), and the death of 22 close friends and family members throughout his life.”

Gee…well…um…dogs playing poker anyone?

And Wow! I can’t believe it’s…

The overused slide whistle from Ed making a cameo appearance to signify antics

Standard Animals Doing Stuff Trope Checklist

New Kid In Town: X

Recent Dead or Divorced Parent: Check (providing a karate master who feeds a dog qualifies)

Montage: X. I don’t want to talk about how disappointing that is

New Friendship: Check

Potentially Inappropriate ‘Friendship’ Between Child & Unrelated Adult (Human): X. I don’t think there is a single cast member under the age of 30

Evil Corporate Enemy: Check

Original Song: CHECK! Check INFINITY! Check AMAZING! Check Possibly Replacing the Song In Ozzie As My Wedding or Funeral or Wrestling Entrance music

Bully Comeuppance: X 

Small Town Values: X

Back To Nature Moral: X

Overall Score: 3/10. Though Randy Travis’ lustrous vocals kind of add one thousand and one million points…

A-Paws Meter

For all its ridiculousness, The Karate Dog isn’t quite as joyous as one would seem. Like all ADHS movies, there’s far too much human storyline that simply can’t compare to dogs playing poker, although when they DO play poker, they’re creepy CGI incarnations. That being said, The Karate Dog does have a lot of fun about it: Voight’s go-for-broke performance channels his Anaconda efforts, and the very fact that Randy “Naked DWI” Travis wrote a title song is the stuff made of greatness.