so it turns out that chemical runoff from ai datacenters is causing chromosomal defects in sheep populations, causing something like 95% of affected sheep to be born female
No Country for Old Men is a tale of how the kind of men who exist in action-packed stories have no place in real life and how the brutal cruelty and darkness of reality keep the kinds of heroes who ride off into the sunset victorious and the kinds of villains who face certain and decisive punishment due to the black and white nature of conflicts from existing. Just another fun neo-Western from the Coen brothers! And of course, a story like that couldn’t function without a pure force of evil to show us just why those kind of good guys and happy endings don’t exist. That evil is one Anton Chigurh, who is established from his very first moment to be something else.
Armed with the world’s worst haircut and an indecipherable accent, Chigurh is a walking nightmare that practically begs to be underestimated. He’s like a human version of the Terminator, a nigh-unstoppable force of nature who exists as the culmination of all your life’s choices here to pass final judgment… OR IS HE?!
Motivations, Goals, and Backstory: Chirgurh is hired to get the money lost in the big shootout, but he goes rogue and starts killing everyone from the people who hired him to anyone who gets in his way. Why? Uh. That’s the thing; everything he does is utterly incomprehensible to everyone but himself.
Chigurh sees himself less as a hitman and more as the culmination of his victim’s choices in life. He is not responsible for their demise as he is merely an impartial arbiter of fate, and if you call his coin flip he’ll let you go. Of course, even this is something he plays around with and makes exceptions for, turning his true motivations into something only he really understands and unfortunately we aren’t privy to his thoughts. What we are left with is an inscrutable, chilling murderer who LARPs Two-Face. The lack of any sort of backstory or any hints as to who he is or where he’s from or why he’s like this only serve to make him an utterly disturbing villain.
Performance: Javier Bardem absolutely killed it, between his indecipherable accent, stoic demeanor, and rocking the world’s most unfuckable haircut. It would take a man with massive talent to make a guy who looks like The Little Lad Who Loves Berries And Cream into one of the most terrifying forces of nature outside of Michael Meyers or the T-1000, but boy does Bardem manage to sell Chigurh; hell, the stupid haircut makes him even scarier, because it’s so dorky it stands in stark contrast with the fact this guy will kill some innocent passerby just because he wants a car or threaten the life of a convenience store clerk for the crime of making small talk with him. He’s almost inhuman, alien.
Evilness: This dude is fucking mental. Like, genuinely, there is something seriously wrong with Chigurh. He ostensibly has some sort of moral codee, but it is so confusing to anyone but him that it is impossible to see any nobility in him. The fact he honors his word to a dead man to brutally kill his wife despite there being no reason he even needs to do this seeing as he’s won and obtained the money he was after at this point is so needlessly cruel but in his delusional mind is the fair and just action. Maybe if we had some insight into his inner workings that would allow us to comprehend his inner workings I’d be comfortable lowering the score, but he’s a 4.5/5 in my eyes.
Final Fate: He gets away with the money and kills everyone involved, but even if he wins in that sense, there’s every indication his victory is not only short-lived but wholly unenjoyable for him.
For one thing, Carla Jean calls his bluff in their final confrontation and correctly surmises that his little coin flip offer is nothing more than a front which allows him to absolve himself of his victim’s deaths; I mean, they chose poorly in the coin flip, so obviously it’s their fault, right? No, of course not. He could simply choose to not murder people. And you know for a fact that her calling him out bothers him, because he seems rather shaken by her words.
Then, as he’s making his getaway, he gets hit by a car. Sure, he’s alive, but he’s horribly injured and has to beg and bribe a couple of kids for help. And since the crash was just a freak accident, there’s no way for him to give it any sort of deeper meaning or find some kind of justice, twisted or otherwise, in it—it’s just random chance, coincidence, the very thing he doesn’t believe in. Essentially, Chigurh has his entire world view challenged and then utterly obliterated in a short timespan.
He wanders away from the wreck, dazed and broken in more way than one, and considering how fucked up his arm was he’s either out of commission for good, going to die painfully, or going to be arrested and tried for all those murders. Considering his code of conduct was just shattered as well, there is literally no world where Chigurh’s ending is a happy one; the man is spending whatever life he has left as a shadow of his former self.
Standout Scene: The incredibly tense scene he has with the old man, where he demonstrates his little coin flip philosophy. The fact the guy manages to survive his encounter with Chigurh does nothing to alleviate the palpable tension that the entire sequence exudes.
Best Quote: “Call it.”
Any time he insists a victim call it, to the point it has even become a meme.
Final Thoughts & Score: It almost feels to me that Chigurh is a deconstruction of another of McCarthy’s villains. You know, this guy:
The Judge is a larger-than-life, mysterious, supernatural figure who enacts horrific violence and gets away with it all. Chigurh seems to follow that same archetype, this inexplicably skilled killer who is unstoppable and untouchable… but then, right at the end, you have that moment where he is wounded and forced to beg for help before limping off. And keep in mind this is coming right off of his little coin flip game and his entire manufactured persona having its metaphorical face spat in. It’s as if God himself is putting the final nail in that Carla Jean was hammering at; you are no personification of destiny and consequences, you are a sad, strange man with delusions of grandeur. For all his mystery, for all his aura, in the end he’s just a pathetic, cowardly killer who has no more control over his fate than anyone else and this realization clearly disturbs him. All that same mystique and supernatural mysticism to him is torn away to remind us all that yeah, disturbed and violent men like that are out there, but they’re not these larger-than-life satanic archetypes like the Judge; they’re just guys, and they can get fucked over as easy as any of us.
But that doesn’t make Chigurh any scarier, cuz even as just some delusional psycho he is a fantastic antagonist. His delusions and rigid adherence to a flimsy code only serve to make him more eerie and unsettling, and he is still incredibly good at his job. Dude barely gets a scratch on him throughout the entire runtime and kills just about everyone outside of Tommy Lee Jones, and no matter how incoherent his morality is he’s still a creepy monotone murderer who no one seems to have an answer for. Maybe he isn’t supernatural, maybe he’s not fate manifest, but he is fucking terrifying. Or maybe’s a leprechaun.
Truly a fantastic villain, a terrifying villain, and an utterly pathetic and deranged villain. Great villains tend to be all of those. I also really love how he's just designed in such a way that invokes the uncanny valley; despite looking utterly ridiculous, it helps make him more effective as a villain rather than make him laughable. He really is just the perfect package, and Bardem brings him to life like no one else could. Chigurh scores a 4.5/5 in my books.
Greek mythology has been a mainstay of pop culture forever, but I think some of you might be surprised to know that a certain serpentine woman was rather absent for a very long time. In 1964 a film called The Gorgon came out featuring the titular monster… except her name was Magaera, which is the name of one of the Furies. If only there was a more fitting name for a gorgon that also began with the letter M, am I right?
Well, in 1981 someone realized this because we got Clash of the Titans. In a legendary scene featuring some of the greatest (if not the greatest) stop motion effects Ray Harryhausen ever did, the world was introduced to Medusa, and ever since she is the gorgon that permeates pop culture to the point that her portrayal pretty much codified what gorgons would look like going forth. Hell, “Medusa” is sometimes used as shorthand for gorgons in other works because of it! From a reoccurring boss in the Castlevania series to inspiring a Powerpuff Girls villain to being played by Uma Thurman in that shitty Percy Jackson movie, Medusa has utterly eclipsed her two gorgon sisters from the oldest myths in popularity and become one of the most enduring icons of those ancient tales. What other Greek monster gets people writing folk songs about them to paint them in a more positive light?
But like a reverse Helen of Troy, this terrifying and hideous monster has launched a thousand wars with her petrifying visage. People have argued over and over whether her being born a monster or whether her being a victim of the cruelty of the gods is the true, most accurate version of her. Well I’m here to set the record straight and talk all about this repulsive reptilian and her history, so buckle in.
Motivations, Goals, and Backstory: Typically Medusa doesn’t have motivations or goals, because she’s a monster. She simply exists, off in her spooky gorgon lair, waiting for foolhardy heroes to wander in so she can kill them. The oldest tales have her simply born the way she is, the mortal sister of the immortal Stheno and Euryale. Her progenitor is not always specified, though it is occasionally primordial sea deities.
(Source for the art)
It wasn’t until 8 A.D. that Ovid created the origin most of us are familiar with in his work The Metemorphoses; there, Medusa was raped by Poseidon in a temple belonging to Athena. Athena, being the colossal bitch that she is, decided to curse the rape victim by turning her hair into snakes and having her eyes petrify all she gazed upon. With that in mind, it’s kind of easy to see her hiding away as a sort of self-imposed exile and all of her murders as being accidental. I mean, she’s cursed. She can’t turn the eyes off. But she’s also not going to let anyone kill her for fame and glory, either, so she gets to have a lovely statue garden as well.
Evilness: It depends on how much agency you think she has I suppose. The straight up monster version is definitely a 5/5, while the more tragic one is either a 2.5/5 due to the involuntary nature of the curse inflicted upon her or a 4/5 for lashing out at people unrelated to her pain (though she doesn’t get full marks because they are trying to kill her). As is the case with any good mythological being, she is wildly open to interpretation, and she can even be recontextualized to be so sympathetic or even heroic you could drop her to a 1 or even 0/5.
Final Fate: Medusa’s life comes to an end at the hands of the hero Perseus, who chops her head off to use to save his mother and lover (those are two separate people by the way, my boy Perseus ain’t like Oedipus).
In some versions of the myth, Medusa’s death begets the life of Pegasus, who springs forth from the blood to fly free and help Bellerophon kill the Chimera (and then buck him to his death for his hubris).
Standout Scene: How can it not be the sequence from Clash of the Titans?
Let’s set aside the fact that this launched Medusa into the forefront of pop culture; Harryhausen got the highlights the flickering torch lights cast on a stop motion animated gorgon to look that good. That shit is consistent. That man must’ve been a Greek god himself to have that kind of power!
Best Quote: The Lightning Thief as a whole may be absolute ass cheeks, but there are a few individual scenes that I think are at the very least mildly entertaining. One such scene involves Uma Thurman playing a snarky, campy Medusa who, upon discovering who Percy’s dad is, says: “I used to date your daddy.”
Yeah, uh. That sure is one way of putting it.
Final Thoughts & Score: Medusa is a huge part of why I’ve been a huge fan of Greek mythology my whole life. She’s also an endless source of frustration for me as people spend more time arguing about whether or not she’s a victim or a monster instead of just enjoying the interpretation they like best. The great thing about old myths like this is that they survive by being told over and over, and are meant to change to reflect the storyteller; the idea Medusa is a tragic victim of the cruelty of the gods is as valid an interpretation as the idea she was merely an exceptionally powerful monster—one of three, in fact—who is little more than a road block in the story of Perseus. There is no right or wrong way to depict Medusa as you are meant to change bits and pieces of her to keep her alive.
I think it can be easy to read the more tragic take of Medusa’s fate as misogynistic, seeing as she’s a rape victim who was abused and ultimately killed, but I believe there is a more optimistic way to take it that turns Perseus’ slaying of her less an act of misogynistic violence and more as him being a chosen hero to free her from her god-inflicted pain. Perseus’ quest is all about him saving women, be it his mother or Andromeda; he’s not killing gorgons for the fun of it, he has people he cares about that he wants to protect. Thus, while she does fight back because she doesn’t want to die, his noble cause allows him to once and for all end her suffering. In many versions of the story, from the blood spilled when she was beheaded Pegasus springs forth, and I like to think of that as Medusa being reborn as a beautiful creature able to soar high and live free, finally escaping the torturous existence inflicted upon her by Athena and Poseidon’s wanton cruelty.
Of course, my favorite portrayal is Clash of the Titans, which goes back to the oldest takes with no sympathy needed; there she is simply a monster, and the coolest fucking monster there is. She’s terrifying, she’s good with a bow and arrow, and she’s awesome as all hell. That’s my Medusa, baby! And that combined with her mythological portrayal earns her an easy 5/5. I genuinely don’t think gorgons would be such a fixture of pop culture if Harryhausen didn’t create the greatest work of his career and propel some once obscure monster into the limelight. God of War would have one less enemy, Magic: The Gathering would be down one Planeswalker and a Golgari guild leader, and Zagreus wouldn’t have a maid if it weren’t for Medusa popping off like she did.
It’s crazy to think she was once just an obscure bit of classical mythology only the most turbo of nerds would know about and is now such a household name they’ve got jellyfish named after her. Greek mythology really stays winning when it comes to their monsters becoming iconic… maybe I’ll cover some of the others someday.
Until then, I'm going to continue being mad that Lauren Faust isn't making that movie about her over at Sony anymore.
This is perhaps the oddest film I have ever covered for Is It Really That Bad? Look at how high that rating is. Not only that, the film was a massive sleeper hit in the early days of COVID, doing way better than the much more acclaimed but seldom seen The Suicide Squad. Sure, it’s a Ryan Reynolds movie (people are kind of sick of him these days) and it’s directed by Shawn Levy (a pretty middling director), but that’s not really the worst thing a movie can have going for it. I barely even have anything to say because aside from delays in release there’s nothing heinously awful about the production and considering it did so well it got greenlit for a sequel no one’s career was ruined by this.
But trying telling that to Twitter and Reddit. It seems like any time this movie comes up there it is being used as shorthand for “soulless corporate slop.” This is a pretty harsh criticism seeing as a few years ago all kinds of people were raving about what a fun little movie this was; did people truly turn around so quickly? Is this just obnoxious internet hyperbole or is it really that bad?
THE GOOD
I think one of the biggest surprises for me is that Ryan Reynolds wasn’t too bad here. I like the guy a lot, but ever since the success of Deadpool it feels that’s the only thing he plays anymore and it gets genuinely exhausting. Here, he dials the cynicism and snark way back and plays the naive, sweet everyman Guy who dares to do the most badass thing a person can be in a shitty world: A genuinely nice guy. I’m not going to call it a particularly complex or deep role, but Guy was charming enough that he carried the film through the suckier parts.
Surprisingly, despite the memes around him being in the film and his modern nature as a pariah for the crime of making a mediocre Marvel movie, Taika Waititi is actually a solid effective villain. He’s an evil gaming CEO named Antwan who is motivated by greed and who is willing to cut as many corners and plagiarize as much as possible if it means making more money. While I’m not sure he really took an already funny script and riffed on a level that was freaking sublime, I do think he’s honestly one of the most realistic depictions of a corrupt CEO of a video game company, surpassed only by the nugget guy in Smiling Friends.Funnily enough, he even has a speech involving chicken, though in this case he’s using it to mock the idea of making anything other than a sequel. Genuinely one of the realest, most delightfully obnoxious caricatures imaginable.
The film also has some surprisingly interesting concepts, like how much value an artificial life holds, artistic integrity over financial gain, breaking free from the shackles of tedium that hold you back and daring to be better and live free in a chaotic world… Look, these are not new concepts, nor are they deeply explored, but considering this is a stupid Ryan Reynolds video game movie they didn’t need to exactly write anything interesting in.
THE BAD
I hate to say this because it is such a common excuse for forgiving awful movies, but this is genuinely a movie you need to turn off your brain for. So much of how the game works, how characters behave, and what they get away with is so ludicrously unbelievable it frays my sanity thin, and the movie was genuinely annoying me at times in the first forty minutes. It doesn’t help that there is just an absurd amount of needle drops and, worst of all, Shawn Levy’s bland direction.
That’s really the biggest problem, honestly: Shawn Levy. He’s the kind of guy you hire for a mindless popcorn flick, and he delivers perfectly fine direction with little in the way of flair. He’s a guy who tends to let his actors do the talking and create the style; Night at the Museum is all about the ensemble, Big Fat Liar is Frankie Muniz and Paul Giamatti, Deadpool & Wolverine is Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman… you get the idea. He’s allegedly the cook but everyone else is adding the meat, veggies, and flavoring. Levy is basically the water. And you know, water’s great and all, but it is extremely basic, and “extremely basic” is what I’d call his direction. Don’t expect to be wowed by anything.
And of course this leads into another issue: If you are not a fan of Ryan Reynolds already, you are not going to enjoy this since he is the one seasoning Levy’s boiled chicken of a film. Unless you really like totally radical gamer stuff and pop culture references you’re not going to be having any fun here. And let me tell you, some of those pop culture references are beyond corny. Did we really need the Avengers theme when Cap’s shield shows up? Do we need the Star Wars theme when the lightsaber shows up and then multiple characters announcing it’s a lightsaber? Does this movie need to be so fucking annoying and self-referential?
IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?
No? Literally no? At any rate it’s not abysmal dogshit slop. I would call it enjoyable, stupid slop.
Have we really become so miserable and cynical as a society that some dumb popcorn film is held up as the shittiest, most soulless film around? Like I get not liking this or thinking it’s bad—this is a very dumb film you really have to suspend your disbelief for, and I was not onboard early on—but to say this is one of the worst films ever just reeks of not only a high level of jadedness, but of recency bias. It’s always some modern film that’s the worst thing ever, the latest bad Marvel film is somehow worse than Thor: The Dark World, the latest Alien entry is worse than Resurrection, historically awful movies are actually less awful than a film that’s worst crime is being dumb and annoying. It’s genuinely ridiculous! Why the fuck is Free Guy making me realize just how shitty modern film criticism in, shittier than I even realized!
This is a harmless, fun, stupid film with some good ideas in it that never really comes together to be truly great. It’s a lot like Ready Player One in that way, but I’ll admit that secret Spielberg sauce has me enjoying that film way more than Shawn Levy’s basic, sauceless “good enough” approach to filmmaking. It’s the perfect example of a “Coworker movie,” a film you can bring up to your chums at work to start a conversation without looking like a lunatic. You’ll get weird stares bringing up Pink Flamingos or Nekromantik around the water cooler, but Free Guy? The boys in the office will be hitting you with quotes I bet.
I genuinely cannot fathom how a movie this harmless and dumb has became the shorthand for slop these days. The thing with this movie is it is just so disposable, so forgettable, that getting mad at it is like getting mad at a cat for purring. You are mad that something is fulfilling its joyful duty, the thing it was born to do. What the fuck is wrong with you? This isn’t a movie you’re meant to care about or give thought to, it’s a film you watch with your friends or put on in the background while you do something else, and it is not aspiring to be any more than that. Again, I understand disliking this because it is not good. I do not understand the sheer vitriolic hatred some have for this film. It isn’t worth that because it’s barely worth a thought to begin with!
I’m kinda on the fence with regards to its surprisingly high score. A 7 for this is definitely because it’s mostly normal, average moviegoers and not cinema enjoyers like me watching it, but even then I’d only drop it down to a 6.5 at worst. It’s a fun, stupid, harmless little film. There are far more egregious examples of pandering garbage that could be shorthand for slop, so I can’t say it deserves that level of scorn, but it really is just a stupid film. But it’s the nice kind of stupid, the kind of stupid that has a place in this world. If you genuinely think this is a worse and more insulting film than anything else you’ve ever seen I can only assume you’ve seen five movies. Even I genuinely thought this was bad it’s sitting behind about forty other comedies that are far more egregiously awful, and that’s only shit I’ve seen.
This movie is fine. If you like perfectly fine, inoffensive sci-fi comedies this one is for you. If you like Ryan Reynolds, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t watch this. Everyone else, maybe skip this, but if you don’t… it’s really not that big of a deal. I wish the movies I watched for this review series were always this “bad.” I had my joy of movies killed for almost a week due to the lingering miasma of It’s Pat, this shit was like a delightful scented candle waking me up from that miserable fog. Some of you really need to temper your expectations and not just knee-jerk call anything “the worst movie ever” just because it’s not good or mid or whatever.
Michael After Midnight: The Career of "Weird Al" Yankovic, Part 2 (The 90s)
Read Part 1 here!
The 90s aren’t usually what people think of when they think Weird Al, but it’s actually the decade where I think he really came into his own artistically. From the mid 90s onwards, Al managed to produce nothing but solid work even at his worst, with the extra time he got between albums to work on things paying off. Unfortunately, he had to get through at least one colossal low to get there… but boy was it worth it, because he bounced back with some of the best work of his entire career.
Oh, and not to disappoint... I can't cover The Weird Al Show because I never watched it. I'm sorry if the picture up there misled you.
OFF THE DEEP END
This was the only album I hadn’t listened to before doing this review, so it was interesting to see how Al dived into the 90s after his career kind of hit a wall at the end of the 80s. Starting recording for this wasn’t exactly fun and games either; both Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney reluctantly denied Al the ability to parody “Black or White” and “Live and Let Die” respectively, leaving Al at a momentary loss… until a grunge band from Seattle by the name of Nirvana exploded in popularity, and inspiration struck him like a bolt from the blue. A phone call to Kurt where he assured him the song was not about food later, and Al crafted one of the finest parodies of his career: “Smells Like Nirvana.”
The song is an absolute joy, the best of Al’s parodies that take a direct jab at the artist it’s spoofing. The lyrical content is entirely about how cryptic and indecipherable the lyrics of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are, to the point where there’s a line in the song that even has the music video’s subtitles stumped. It’s an amazing song… and unfortunately, like “Eat It” before it, it kind of overshadows the rest of the album.
But again, these are not bad songs. “I Can’t Watch This” is a borderline case, as Al is clearly not confident with parodying rap quite yet, but I think some of the puns in the lyrics really help make it worthwhile (my favorite being his line regarding Twin Peaks where he says “I wish they’d Lynch those doughnut eating freaks”). “The White Stuff” is a solid song, but it’s also a parody of an incredibly mediocre NKOTB song so your enjoyment really hinges on if you think Al’s Oreo-themed lyrics make up for everything else. “Taco Grande” is the rare parody that is leagues better than the song it’s spoofing—in this case “Rico Suave”—and is impossible to listen to without wanting a fat burrito afterwards. But the most interesting parody is one of Al’s few double parodies, the Milli Vanilli spoof “The Plumbing Song,” which spoofs both “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” and “Blame It On the Rain.” Considering how that band is one of the only musical acts to be successfully canceled despite their crimes being far less egregious than someone like Chris Brown, the song almost feels like an original at this point with how the songs it lampoons have been unpersoned from the radios. It feels like foreshadowing for “Handy” decades later, so I kind of love it. They ought to toss it onto a Mario movie’s soundtrack. There’s also a brief, secret parody of Nirvana’s hidden track “Endless, Nameless” on the CD and record versions of the album, a little snippet called “Bite Me” that plays ten minutes after the final song just to be sure you’re still awake.
The polka medley here, “Polka Your Eyes Out,” is definitely one of his better medleys; a good rule is that if the medley starts off sounding exactly like one of the songs in it to the point where it tricks you, it’s probably good. It’s a very solid lineup of songs, with Billy Idol and Vanilla Ice coexisting in the same list… but really, it’s worth it for the completely out of left field inclusion of “I Touch Myself.” Not since he included “Relax” in the medley from Dare to be Stupid has a song so unashamedly raunchy been tossed in. And it’s not even the closer! He just throws that chorus in a few songs before the end so you can barely process it before “Ice Ice Baby” hits! Brilliant work of art.
The originals here are mostly solid, though they don’t stand out quite as much as I’d like. “Trigger Happy,” his Beach Boys pastiche about being a gun nut is a lot of fun, as is “When I Was Your Age,” but songs like “Airline Amy” and “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” just don’t hit as hard for me (though they’re still solid songs). I think the best original song here is “I Was Only Kidding,” which is the anthem for every “It’s just a prank, bro” jerk to ever exist. It’s a riot and it has aged like fine wine, and it makes “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” even better if you view that as a sequel to this song.
Overall, this is really solid start to the 90s, nothing more and nothing less. It definitely got Al back and track and gave him a chance to evolve, but I don’t think this is his best work by any stretch even if it’s all very good stuff.
Best Tracks:
1. “Smells Like Nirvana” – A really great parody that has aged very well, but it unfortunately eclipses most of the rest of the album.
2. "When I Was Your Age" - One of the most rocking songs Al ever made, and it's him channeling his inner boomer.
3. “I Was Only Kidding” – “It’s just a prank, bro!” stretched out into a hilarious song.
THE FOOD ALBUM
The first of two compilation albums that Al absolutely despises, seeing them as cheap money grabs that existed only to make the label money. This, of course, is what makes them worth talking about; Al is a famously chill guy, so him having contempt for something is pretty interesting. Still, there’s not really much one can say about an album that is quite literally just reheated leftovers.
One may notice that “Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch” isn’t here, which is for two major reasons: The first is that Al had to pick one song to leave off the album for it to be profitable due to a “royalty ceiling.” The second is tied into the first; this was an easy pick to leave off because Al hates the song for having its recording forced onto him by his label. “Waffle King” was also left off despite being recorded for Off the Deep End, but that’s mainly due to scheduling issues and not anything malicious.
I think the best thing about this compilation is the artwork, a passive-aggressive protest on Al’s part showing a grotesque monster picking him clean for its gluttonous satisfaction (gee, wonder what that could be a metaphor for). Said artwork was done by Doug Lawrence, who you may know better as Mr. Lawrence, a writer and voice actor who probably helped mold your childhood if you’re a millennial and who is most easily recognized as the voice of Sheldon J. Plankton himself.
Other than that… I mean, I hate to say it, but this is actually a pretty solid compilation album. Yes, it’s forced and unnecessary, and I totally get why Al dislikes it, but getting an entire buffet of his food-related songs and being able to listen to “Addicted to Spuds” without having to endure the rest of Polka Party’s parodies is pretty great. “Eat It” is on here, but because there’s so many other bangers it doesn’t overshadow the whole thing like it did in In 3-D and songs like “Lasagna” and “Spam” really get to shine in ways they weren’t able to on their original CDs. I don’t think this is truly necessary to own unless you’re a completionist, but I think it’s decent enough where you aren’t going to regret it if you do pick it up. A good collection of songs is still good even if the circumstances around it aren’t.
ALAPALOOZA
I am not going to mince words here: This is the worst album of Al’s career, bar none.
This is a bold statement considering I already talked about Polka Party, but as weak as that album was I was still able to find a handful of really strong original songs buried under the lackluster parodies and mediocre polka medley. Here? I genuinely struggled to recommend anything save for the most famous song on the album, because it really is just excessively weak.
“Jurassic Park” is the shining star of this album, with a stop-motion music video and a great summary of the plot of the film set to the deliciously melodramatic tune of “MacArthur Park.” It’s almost worth the price of admission for this song alone. Almost. There’s also “Livin’ in the Fridge,” a food-themed Aerosmith parody that deals with what happens when you live food in the fridge too long. Of the four parodies on the album, these two stand out as being exceptional entries in Al’s catalogue, and yet they are sadly overshadowed by two of his most abysmal. “Achy Breaky Song” is the less offensive one; a parody of Billy Ray’s one hit, it’s all about how listening to that song is an absolutely torturous experience that the singer would rather not endure. It is one of the most nasty and mean-spirited songs Al has ever done, eclipsed only by “It’s Still Billy Joel to Me,” so much so he made it so all songwriting proceeds went to the United Cerebral Palsy Association. Considering Cyrus has become a pretty unpleasant guy as the years have gone on I’m not too broken up by him being put through the wringer, but some of the other artists who catch strays as the less painful alternatives in the song rub me the wrong way. ABBA and the Bee Gees? Really?
But while that song is a bit of a middling but still partly amusing song, there is nothing remotely defensible about Al’s “Bedrock Anthem.” A double parody, with the opening spoofing “Under the Bridge” before going into a parody of “Give It Away” (both by the Red Hot Chili Peppers), the song is about The Flintstones… and it is not particularly inspired whatsoever. It just feels very lazy and cynical, like Al really wanted to get on the soundtrack of the 1994 movie (which he did). This is one of the few times an artist responded negatively to a parody; while they did like his work, RHCP were not impressed by the parody, and Flea would even say this about it: “I didn't think it was very good. I enjoy Weird Al's things, but I found it unimaginative. It wasn't that great. Yabba Dabba Doo. I like Weird Al and everything. But you know everyone is hit or miss, except for me, of course.”
The only things worth mentioning about this song are that the music video was Al’s first full video directing debut, and the Bee Girl from Blind Melon’s “No Rain” music video reprises her role in the opening. That’s it. Beyond that the song is just a lazy hodgepodge of references to the show with little rhyme or reason, and the chorus is gratingly cliché. “Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch” at least has the excuse of being intentionally bad; this is bad by complete accident, and that makes it 100% worse.
Now, this is where I would say the originals save this like they did with Polka Party but… no, honestly they don’t, even if they’re mostly pretty good. “Traffic Jam” especially frustrates me since it’s a style parody of Prince, and you can feel Al’s frustration with Prince’s legendarily humorlessness; you know he wanted to do a full, actual parody and not just a stylistic pastiche. “Talk Soup” is one of the better ones, a wholly original song that kind of feels like a riff on “Dirty Laundry” except Al wasn’t taking shots at people criticizing him for letting an underage girl overdose in his house like Don Henley was. “Young, Dumb & Ugly” is a fun little style parody of AC/DC that wouldn’t feel too out of place in their discography, and “Frank’s 2000” TV” is a pleasant stylistic riff on R.E.M.’s early stuff, and “Waffle King” is a solid take on Peter Gabriel. My issue isn’t that these are bad songs—I think they’re pretty fun—but none of them are good enough to make up for how genuinely awful “Bedrock Anthem” is. Nothing here is quite on the level of “Christmas at Ground Zero” or “Dog Eat Dog,” which unfortunately really holds this back. This album really needed a genuinely great original or two to put it over Polka Party, and it just lacks that. At the very least, it does close out with one of the most unique polkas in his career: “Bohemian Polka,” a full cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” If you’ve ever wanted to listen to that song but don’t have five and a half minutes to spare, this is for you!
While this isn’t a wholly irredeemable album, I think it’s shockingly lackluster with the lowest low of Al’s career that is only barely ameliorated by highs that just aren’t high enough. This album needed a genuinely big parody smash hit or a stellar original to save it from the bottom of the barrel, and it just doesn’t provide that. It’s a shame, but they can’t all be winners.
Best Tracks:
1. “Jurassic Park” – Perhaps the only genuinely great song on the whole album. It’s kind of sad it had to be stuck on this CD, because I’m a sucker for the Al parodies where he recaps a whole movie.
2. “Livin’ in the Fridge” – It kind of surprises me Al only did one Aerosmith parody in his career, but this is a pretty fun one. I wouldn’t call it a soaring height of his career or anything, but I think this would’ve fit nicely on The Food Album.
3. “Bohemian Polka” – Maybe it’s not intentional, but this comes off as a nice tribute to Freddie Mercury in the wake of his passing. It’s also pretty novel to see a polka cover of a song like this.
PERMANENT RECORD: AL IN THE BOX
Yet another compilation album, this time of Al’s favorite songs from his first eight albums. Considering I have already talked about all of those albums, why even bother bringing this up? Well, for some reason, this album was the debut of the single “Headline News,” and said song would not appear on an actual album until Medium Rarities in the Squeeze Box set in 2017—which, funnily enough, was another box set.
“Headline News” is a parody of the Crash Test Dummies 1993 hit “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” which you may remember for its use in Dumb & Dumber or perhaps for it being one of the quintessential 90s one-hit wonders (though only by the technicality of having a single remembered hit in the United States, as they had more success in Canada and the UK). The song’s subject is three of the biggest tabloid stories of the time, much as the original song told the story of three different bizarre kids; Al sings of Michael Fay being caned in Singapore, the Tonya Harding incident, and Lorena Bobbitt emasculating her husband. Now, you might look at these and think there is an obvious issue: All these stories are incredibly dated now, and even when the song was made these were oversaturated in the news.
I do think that’s kind of the point, though, that the gag is that Al is just contributing to this nonsense getting more airtime under the guise of it being ‘headline news’ when it’s anything but. Al has said as much, joking that he "wanted to write a song about these people because he didn't think they're getting quite enough media attention." As time has shown, the latter two stories actually had a bit of staying power, with the Harding incident spawning an acclaimed film starring Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan while Bobbitt got a bristle worm named after her and the dubious honor of being mentioned in Fall Out Boy’s atrocious “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Also her ex did porn. The only one of these stories that has really faded from public consciousness is the first, but thanks to that it does make the song escalate pretty nicely.
Overall, this is a really good song and it’s a shame its entire existence has been relegated to a bonus track on box sets. It’s definitely worth seeking out, especially for the wacky video (keep your eyes peeled for that Dr. Demento cameo).
THE TV ALBUM
While it’s clear Al isn’t fond of this one either, it seems he has a bit more of a positive outlook on this compilation, saying "the record company was a whole lot nicer when they asked the second time" and that there was "more groveling [and] less demanding" when it came to throwing this compilation together. Still, you can see Al’s opinion of this plain as day on the album art (courtesy of Mad magazine cartoonist Jack Davis), which shows Al gleefully detonating a television set.
Because of the lack of drama, this leaves little to talk about here besides the track list which is… honestly not too amazing. Al’s early songs about television were not exactly his most inspired output, and while it’s nice hearing “Frank’s 2000” TV” free from the sludge of Alapalooza and seeing “I Lost on Jeopardy” outside of the shadow of “Eat It,” I don’t think either thing is worth suffering through “Bedrock Anthem” or “Here’s Johnny” to get to. The lack of “Isle Thing” has always baffled me, as both “Ricky” and “The Brady Bunch” are on here and there’s no indication he had to cut something like last time. The far more scattershot quality of these songs than on the previous themed compilation also leads to the good stuff being dragged down; sure, maybe it was good on its own album, but when you have to listen to it crammed in with the scraps of Al’s weakest output it just doesn’t work. Not helping matters is that unlike with food, Al doesn’t really have a big, definitive TV song. Sure, there’s “UHF” or “Beverly Hillbillies,” but as much as I like both of those I can’t really argue they’re on the level of “Eat It” or “Fat.”
I think the issue here is a lack of cohesion. The Food Album at the very least has a consistent theme—every song is about food or eating food with the exception of “Fat,” which is not only at least related but cleverly leads into the rest of the album. Why is Al fat? Here’s your answer! This album starts off with Al’s worst parody ever, “Bedrock Anthem,” before going into “I Can’t Watch This,” a song that would have served way better as either the intro (to set a tone of Al flipping through channels) or outtro (to kind of show Al has given up on watching TV). The whole thing even more than The Food Album comes off as a cheap, lazy cash grab with little to no thought put into it. I can’t really recommend this one, unless you really want that cool artwork on your shelf.
BAD HAIR DAY
Now THIS is a true Al-bum! This is the moment where Al truly achieved his perfect form, a parody artist who can make funny spoofs and great original works across the board. The increased time he had to work on this made this his most polished work up to this point, and he would continue to deliver incredibly solid work from this point on—no album after this point is something I would call bad. Al brings some seriously strong songwriting to the table here, and nowhere is that more clear than with the song that opens the album: “Amish Paradise.” Despite the minor beef it caused with Coolio due to a miscommunication that led Al to believe he got the blessing from the man himself to parody “Gangsta’s Paradise” (which he doesn’t even need, Al’s just a class act), this is genuinely one of his finest parody songs ever. It is just an absolute riot, a lighthearted ribbing of the Amish community that feels like a precursor to how South Park would end up treating Mormons.
Of course, the other parodies are no slouch either, even though they definitely ran the risk of an “Eat It” situation! While not his most well-known tracks, his U2 spoof “Cavity Search” and his TLC sendup “Phony Calls” are very fun, and his “Syndicated, Inc.” which is a parody of “Misery” by Soul Asylum is a truly underrated track that would have easily made The TV Album worthwhile if it had been on it. Then there's "Gump," where he sums up the movie Forest Gump to the tune of "Lump" by the Presidents of the United States of America, and it is genuinely one of his best "sum up a movie" songs, surpassing "Jurassic Park" and maybe even "Yoda." “The Alternative Polka” is also one of his better medleys; while it is sorely missing that “Buddy Holly” clip, it does have Al singing the chorus of Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer.” Yes, you get to hear Al say he wants to *BOINK* you like an animal, and that’s no exaggeration because he pulls out some wacky sound effects to keep his mouth clean for this one.
But this album also has some of his best original work to date, a true harbinger of how good his originals would be going forward. In fact, this really is the moment that cements him in my mind as an artist who could easily do a whole album of originals and no parodies and still have it be good. “I Remember Larry” is a personal favorite, a tale of a childhood bully that veers into beautifully cathartic black comedy in the final verse, and of course how could I not love Al’s take on the style of They Might Be Giants that is “Everything You Know is Wrong?” “Callin’ in Sick” is a fun style parody of the entire grunge movement right as it was going out the door, and “Since You’ve Been Gone” and “I’m So Sick of You” are fun little anti-love songs.
The crown jewel, of course, is his second coal-black Christmas comedy track, “The Night Santa Went Crazy.” A style parody of Soul Asylum that sounds so close to their song “Black Gold” it might as well be a straight up parody, it tells the tale of a drunken Santa going on a bloody rampage through the North Pole. It is extremely gruesome and messed up, doubly so if you’re listening to the special cut that ends with Santa getting Kirked, and it is an absolute riot. It might actually be better than “Christmas at Ground Zero,” which is a truly impressive bar to clear if I’m being honest.
Overall, a fantastic album with no real weak spots that heralded a new age where Al pretty handily put all killer and new filler on his albums. This also marked the end of his classic look, as he’d grow out his hair and get laser eye surgery for his next album. We are truly in the golden era of Al now, one where he gets more time and care to craft the best comedy songs you’ve ever heard. And boy, does that really show on the next album...
Best Tracks:
1. “Amish Paradise” – Mild controversy aside, it’s really hard to say this isn’t one of his funniest parodies ever.
2. “The Night Santa Went Crazy” – Pitch-perfect Christmas black comedy from Al yet again. I think he should just release one deranged Christmas song every decade, because he’s so damn good at it.
3. “Everything You Know is Wrong” – The closest that Al and They Might Be Giants will ever come to crossing over.
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS
Once again, I will not mince words: I think this is Al’s best work, his magnum opus. This album is almost entirely comprised of bangers, to the point where picking three to recommend was a tall order—this album is that good. But why is it such a good album? Well, the way I see it, it’s because this is Al’s edgiest work to date, with black comedy and general humor edging into the hard PG or light PG-13 territory. As always, there’s nothing worse than what you’d see on The Simpsons or in Mad magazine, but some of the jokes here are a bit more colorful than Al’s usual fare which helps this album stand out in a good way.
To demonstrate that, I am going to go song by song and give my thoughts on each of them (as opposed to quick and broad reviews), because to really understand this album we need to dive into all it has to offer.
The album opens insanely strongly with “The Saga Begins,” Al’s musical recap of The Phantom Menace set to the tune of “American Pie.” This is, without a doubt, one of his best parodies ever and deserves to held up alongside “Eat It” and “Amish Paradise.” Not only is it a funny and topical reimagining of a classic song to summarize a film with pinpoint accuracy, it is genuinely far superior to the movie it’s about! You could genuinely listen to this as a substitute for watching The Phantom Menace and all you’d be missing would be the pod race and the final duel with Maul (which you can easily look up on YouTube). Just an incredible way to open an album, he really hooks you from the first minute.
Next up is an original, “My Baby’s In Love With Eddie Vedder,” an original and accordion-heavy song about a man whose lover has become romantically obsessed with the Pearl Jam frontman. I used to skip this one a lot, but upon relistening I honestly found it absolutely delightful how it lampoons the angst of grunge singers despite their absurd success while also being a showcase of Al’s accordion skills and how they’ve improved over the years. Despite the seemingly harsh jabs to Vedder, it’s pretty obvious this is just playful ribbing, especially once we reach the song’s punchline. Not a highlight of the album by any means, but it is a fun little number.
Now we move on to another parodic masterpiece: “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi.” If you’re worried about this song seeming too offensive, don’t; Jewish people apparently love this song, adopting it as their own to the point it has fueled rumors Al is Jewish. It helps that the stereotypes present in the song are all pretty positive to neutral and are delivered in a way that establishes that the subject is pretty fly (for a rabbi), and the whole thing really plays into the self-deprecation that is part of Jewish culture. I almost want to say this is better than the original; that song had vocal backup from Chum-Chum, this one has prolific voice actress Tress MacNeille and Sheila Broflovski herself (Mary Kay Bergman) giving vocal cameos. I think we know which set of voice actors comes out on top here.
Next we come to “The Weird Al Show Theme,” and… this one is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the theme song from The Weird Al Show. Not the strongest track on the album, but it is a funny theme song and, if it had come out early enough to make it on The TV Album, it would have improved that compilation significantly.
Now comes one of the more contentious tracks on the album, “Jerry Springer.” A parody of the Barenaked Ladies’ smash hit “One Week,” this is about the schlockfest hosted by former Cincinnati mayor that pioneered trash TV and helped keep the spirit of freak shows alive in the living rooms of people in the 90s. Because of this, Al uses some rather outdated terminology, such as “Hermaphrodite,” “shemale,” and “midget” within the song; while these are pretty offensive these days, at the time they were… not great, but less seen as awful, and within the context of the song they actually fit very well because this is the kind of stuff that would be said on a normal episode. To his credit, Al no longer performs it because of the aforementioned terms, but I still think this is a genuinely great song, and it is absolutely the song The TV Album needed to be worthwhile; this is to Al’s TV songs what “Eat It” is to his food ones.
“Germs” is a song I overlooked so much as a kid, but I think it’s because I didn’t appreciate Nine Inch Nails as much as I do now. A stylistic parody of “Terrible Lie” with a bit of “Closer” sprinkled in, this captures Reznor’s style perfectly while delivering a hilarious tale of a paranoid germophobe. I honestly think Reznor could perform this live and nail it, that’s how well Al replicates his style. Definitely one of my favorite of Al’s originals nowadays.
“Polka Power!” is an unassuming sleeper hit for the album, and a large part of that is because you wouldn’t normally expect one of his tried and true polka medleys to be this good. But by some miracle, he picked the perfect batch of contemporary hits to throw together in a way that flows beautifully together and sounds amazing. Spice Girls into Harvey Danger, Backstreet Boys into Smash Mouth (and not the obvious song, either), “Semi-Charmed Life” and “Sex and Candy” sneak into the song, and it all wraps up with “Closing Time.” Maybe the reason I adore this so much is because back in the day I saw a truly impressive AMV set to this song. It brings back very fond memories of a better time on the internet every time I hear it, but even that aside it’s just a pretty perfect medley—the only flaw is that Marilyn Manson is in it, but his music sounds better when someone with talent and no history of domestic abuse sings it.
Maybe it’s just because of my fondness for Sailor Moon, which was a huge part of my childhood and had a lot of AMVs for songs from this album including this one (“Jerry Springer” has a good one as well). Maybe it’s just because 90s ska is really cool. Whatever the case may be, “Your Horoscope for Today” has always been one of my personal favorites when it comes to his originals. It’s just a fun and brutal lampooning of the absurdity of horoscopes with tons of Al’s delightful black comedy and absurd humor mixed in. Great, great song.
Al’s topical humor does lead to some of his songs becoming incredibly dated as the years go on, and few cases are quite as extreme as “It's All About the Pentiums”—and yet, it is that same datedness that makes it so endearing. The very title is an artifact of its time, as it wouldn’t be long before the Pentium brand went the way of the dodo, but the rest of the song has Al boasting about so many absurd, baffling specs for his computer that it manages to still be pretty ahead of the curve. We still don’t have flatscreen monitors 40” wide or 100 gigabytes of RAM as the norm, after all. If nothing else, this song lets you listen to a Diddy song guilt-free, so it gets major points for that alone, but it really does coast by on how charmingly late 90s it is (and again, I find that the core appeal of the album as a whole).
Now we get to the single most controversial track on the album: “Truck Drivin’ Song.” It’s exactly what it sounds like—a truck driving country song—with a twist. Said twist is that the driver is either trans or a drag queen. At first glance this seems shockingly cruel for Al, but in all honesty the song isn’t nearly as awful as the 90s could get to those who walked outside of gender norms. In fact, the subject of the song is pretty cheerful and well-adjusted by any read of the lyrics; they’re just a truck driver who loves wearing women’s clothing and mascara and so on. It’s sort of a modern day spiritual successor to “The Lumberjack Song.” I think the song is trying to go for the sheer absurdity of a queer person in a manly profession singing a manly country song, and that dates it pretty badly as this sort of heteronormativity is challenged, but if taken at face value it is actually a very positive anthem to rally behind. You go girl, drive that big ol’ truck with your high heels on!
Now we’re on to yet another song that would have greatly improved one of the forced compilations with its presence. “Grapefruit Diet,” a parody of Cherry Popppin’ Daddies’ swing revival one-hit wonder, is kind of a sequel to “Fat” in which our protagonist gives up fatty food and goes on the titular diet to lose some weight. Naturally, this means it would have been a perfect way to end The Food Album and bring things full circle. It definitely helps the song he’s parodying is such a fun little tune, which makes this a lot more listenable than you’d expect. I actually never liked this one much as a kid, but now that I enjoy some swing and eating grapefruits (and also have been losing weight to counteract years of unhealthy eating), it definitely speaks more to me.
And finally we reach the final track of the album, and what might very well be Al’s original song magnum opus: “Albuquerque,” an 11-minute epic that is like The Odyssey if it was absolutely insane. The song is a style parody of the Rugburns, specifically their epic-length song “Dick’s Automotive.” Now I need you to go listen to that song, and then listen to “Albuquerque,” because let me tell you it is one of the most bizarre experiences you will ever have. There are so many sequences from that song that are directly spoofed that this one is almost a direct parody. Despite its length, you never really feel it thanks to the absurd twists and turns Al’s story takes from his youth being forced to eat nothing but sauerkraut to his ill-fated plane trip to Albuquerque to all the nonsense he gets into when he finally arrives in New Mexico. The only contentious bit of the song is where he describes an encounter with a “big fat hermaphrodite with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and only one nostril.” Again, it was a neutral term that is incredibly outdated and kind of offensive today, and frankly them being a hermaphrodite is less egregious than having a Flock of Seagulls haircut, so it kind of flies right by. And once more, to Al’s credit, when he performs this song live he decides to go off on a side tangent apologizing for the use of the word and explaining why he used it back then, adding on to the song’s colossal length. The twists, the turns, the absurd scenarios, and that final punchline… This is arguably one of the crowning achievements of Al’s career.
This album is incredible, and it’s incredible because it could only be made by Al at that one specific point in time. This is something that could only come out in the twilight of the 90s, the end of the decade of anti-political correctness and edginess. This is as dark and edgy as Al would ever be willing to go in his music, and frankly it isn’t all too egregious even with that in mind. It’s just a fun, wacky reminder of better and weirder times punctuated by a few moments that are just a bit too dated for their own good, where even the weaker songs are still pretty darn good. Maybe it’s a hot take, but I really, genuinely believe this is his finest work.
Best Tracks:
1. “Albuquerque” – This might actually be Al’s magnum opus. It is an epic-length odyssey of pure absurdity and insanity.
2. “The Saga Begins” – A parody so good, you can actually substitute watching the movie it recaps with listening to it and nothing will be lost.
3. “Polka Power!” – Perhaps Al’s best polka medley ever. Every song just flows into each other so well.
And now, here’s how these albums rank:
6. Alapalooza
Genuinely Al’s worst album. It has one truly abysmal low and then nothing good enough to pull the album out of the muck like Polka Party did.
5. The TV Album
A truly monumental waste of potential that would have benefited from being released in the mid 2000s, where “Jerry Springer” and “Couch Potato” could give the album something to write home about.
4. The Food Album
The better of the two pointless filler compilation albums. Great album art, all bangers, and even songs that I wish could be on it that came out too late wouldn’t really make the album much better than it already is—they’d just be overkill.
3. Off the Deep End
A very solid start to the 90s that unfortunately has a similar issue to In 3-D--the big song kind of overrode the while the other tracks kind of languish in its shadow.
2. Bad Hair Day
This is where Al achieved creative perfection. This is Al as he should be, with nothing but solid songs all across the album.
1. Running With Scissors
Al’s magnum opus. A beautiful snapshot of 90s humor filtered through the mind of Al Yankovic, with some of the strongest writing of his career.
“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
This saying sadly applies to a lot of celebrities, and Marilyn Monroe is chief among them. A sex symbol, an icon, a beloved actress, she lived a short but amazing life marked by high highs and depressing lows. So of course she has captivated the public long after she passed on, with her style being endlessly imitated and all sorts of theories about her tragic death making the rounds. And, inevitably, people make books about you. Joyce Carol Oates is one such person. In 2000 she released Blonde, which she claimed was not intended to be a factual, historical document and instead just be a fictionalized take on Monroe’s life. And then 22 years later it got a feature film adaptation at Netflix courtesy of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik. This movie was in development as early as 2010, but frankly nothing that happened behind the scenes is quite as interesting as what happened when it finally dropped.
The film ended up being incredibly divisive. Many in the entertainment industry openly praised Ana de Armas’ performance, with such notable figures as Zionist Charlie Kirk fan Jamie Lee Curtis, domestic abuser Brad Pitt, and sexual harasser Casey Affleck all talking about how brilliant she was in the role (most people liked her, but man, the Wikipedia article really put the worst foot forward highlighting these three). Director Pedro Almodóvar likewise loved the film and Armas, saying she deserved an Oscar for her performance. And most impressive of all was the praise from Oates herself, heaped greats amount of praise on the film, even going so far as to say “I have seen the rough cut of Andrew Dominick’s adaptation and it is startling, brilliant, very disturbing and perhaps most surprisingly an utterly ‘feminist’ interpretation… Not sure that any male director has ever achieved anything [like] this.”
Normal people had the opposite opinion. Suzie Kennedy, professional Marilyn Monroe impersonator and historian, called it “an assassination of an icon" and that it "capitalized on and exploited the deep sadness of Marilyn's life." Jake Cole of Slant Magazine wrote that "Blonde…is the worst kind of feminism, one so absorbed in the desire to 'save' a woman that it victimizes her as much as possible to make its redemption of her that much more praiseworthy." Jessie Thompson of The Independent probably gives my favorite review of all though, saying, "Blonde is not a bad film because it is degrading, exploitative and misogynist, even though it is all of those things. It's bad because it's boring, pleased with itself and doesn't have a clue what it's trying to say."
Never has their been such a stark contrast between two differing groups of people and their opinions, besides the millions of time throughout history where that exact same scenario happened. Yeah, this is rather unremarkable in the sense there’s a divide in how it’s viewed, but it is strange how the Hollywood types really enjoy a film like this while casual viewers, film critics, and Monroe experts openly despise it for its portrayal of her life. That’s not even getting into the anti-abortion controversy surrounding this film but don’t worry, we’ll get to that.
After watching Wired, I remembered this controversial film and remembered how everything I heard from it made it seem like the gender swapped version of that film. It is really not a good thing for Wired to remind me of you. Still, I’m a fair guy, and I’ll watch anything once; is Blonde really as bad as that Belushi hit piece, or did the out of touch Hollywood elites end up on the right side of history for a change?
THE GOOD
Ana de Armas is genuinely the brightest spot in the film. She plays Marilyn Monroe with such a sweet, charming innocence that it makes all the suffering she goes through that much harder to watch, and the fact Armas is also very good at making it seem like she could burst out sobbing every time she opens her mouth only compounds it. It is almost worth plodding through this film just to see her performance. Almost.
On a technical level, the movie is also impressive. The score is great, the cinematography is great… yeah, there’s a few touches here and there that feel kind of superfluous like the random switches between black and white and color film, but at the end of it this is a film that looks really good and sounds really good.
But those are the only nice things I have to say, because this film is very much not very good.
THE BAD
I know Marilyn Monroe’s life had a lot of tragedy. She was sexually abused growing up, her marriages were messy, she had multiple miscarriages, and she died young of an apparent suicide brought on by depression which was exacerbated by all of the above. But she was a shining star in her brief time on Earth, and she did a lot of good things while she was here. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for her. But watching this movie, you wouldn’t know it, because there is not a single scene in this entire film where Monroe isn’t suffering some kind of physical or emotional abuse. The first twenty minutes have her abused and almost murdered by her mother, forced into the foster care system, and then she is raped as she’s trying to become a star. And things only get worse! Joe DiMaggio beats her, Arthur Miller starts incorporating their life into his writing against her wishes, JFK abducts and rapes her, Charlie Chaplin, Jr. tricked her into believing her mysterious disappeared dad was writing to her for years, and generally just everyone around her has some nasty comment about her life, career, personality, and so on.
The very worst bit of all, though, is when her unborn child shames her for having previously had an abortion—an abortion completely fabricated for this story, mind you. And of course that baby ends up dying anyway which makes the whole thing feel like her unborn child is just compounding her suffering out of spite. Any and all happiness she experiences in this film is fleeting, with the highlights of her life glossed over in favor of watching her get put through the wringer. Now, I don’t think a quote-unquote biopic should avoid the darker and more tragic aspects of a celebrities life; hell, I’m not going to see that MJ biopic because I am dead certain the more disturbing parts of his story are going to be completely whitewashed or ignored in favor of lionizing him. I don’t like that. I like when people are multifaceted. But there comes a point where if all you’re showing is the worst, most miserable points of someone’s life, it becomes little more than misery porn feeding on the audience’s sympathy for the subject.
This is why I fucking despise The Passion of the Christ; why the fuck would you want to make a movie that is solely about the point in Jesus’ life where he is brutally tortured and crucified? Why not highlight all his accomplishments first before culminating in his sacrifice for the sins of mankind? That’s what Martin “The GOAT” Scorsese did with The Last Temptation of Christ, and that is one of my all-time favorites! And that’s what they should have done here. Marilyn Monroe didn’t live long, but she did a lot of wonderful things in her life. Why not focus on the positives in between the suffering so that a full and complete picture of the woman is painted? I suppose that won’t stir up controversy and get people to hate watch, but it might make a good fucking movie.
And it’s not like changing things around or making stuff up for a biopic is bad. I tend to just accept any and all films based on a true story spice things up by adding or combining elements of the subject’s life, because unsurprisingly reality does not often follow a three act structure. My issue comes when stuff is changed to such an egregious extent it feels disrespectful, and this film sprints into that territory at record speed. It’s not really changing anything to streamline her story or form a more coherent narrative or anything, it’s just piling miseries onto a woman who had plenty of real ones because this movie is preoccupied witch showcasing a woman be mentally and physically tormented at every turn.
The worst thing is that since this is nearly three hours of watching a woman suffer every single indignity she could have possibly faced at that, time all performed so well by Armas that it is genuinely painful to watch, her death comes off as more of a relief than anything else. Do I need to explain why this isn’t good? It should be the saddest thing in the world, but this movie paints her life as being such an avalanche of miseries that she might be better off being dead! I SHOULD NOT FEEL HAPPINESS THAT MARILYN FUCKING MONROE IS DEAD FROM AN OVERDOSE.
THE UGLY
I guess I should touch on the abortion thing, because that was the source of a lot of drama when this came out. Obviously it has no basis in reality, Monroe did not get abortions by any account, but at a time when Roe v. Wade was being overturned it really left a bad taste in people’s mouths to have her bad CGI fetus shaming her for a forced abortion she had in the past. Now, that begs the question: Is this movie trying to push anti-abortion sentiment?
In my opinion, no. This movie isn’t trying to take a stance on abortion one way or the other; it’s inconsequential. Monroe’s forced abortions and the shaming by her unborn child exist in this narrative for the sole reason that it makes her suffer more and thus even more miserable. Let’s not attribute any sort of commentary or attempt to create a dialogue, however stupid a dialogue it might be, to a film more concerned with exploiting the tragedies of Marilyn Monroe.
IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?
Oh yes it is! In fact, this film is even worse than I imagined—and I’d already assumed it would be bad going in. And the reason why is just how shamelessly hypocritical this movie is. It’s trying to showcase a heavily fictionalized take on the life of Marilyn Monroe to portray her as a tragic figure while decrying how she was taken advantage of and abused while engaging in just that and turning her life into salacious misery porn. It’s doing the very thing it’s trying to take a stance against, and it causes the entire film to be performative at best, hollow and shameless at worst. See how I didn't use any pictures from the movie in the section about the bad shit? That's because I do not want to exploit Marilyn's misery like the film does.
I imagined it would be anyway but boy was I truly shocked at how this is a perfect sister piece to Wired! They have opposite approaches to how they portray their focal character, but spiritually they are the same thing as they defile the legacy of a beloved celebrity for a quick buck and cheap spectacle. As much as I hate this movie, though, it’s not quite as bad as Wired. It’s down there, yes, but this movie at least knows that all sympathy should be with Monroe and doesn’t demonize her to the extent Belushi gets. Essentially, this is just severe food poisoning diarrhea compared to Wired’s dysentery.
I also think this is also spiritually close to The Passion as well, but unlike Wired I do think this film is worse than that one. Gibson being an evil cunt aside, I can't really fault the film for showing how grueling and awful Jesus being tortured and abused is the way I fault this film for showing Monroe being abused; as much as I feel it's poor taste to focus an entire film on Christ's murder, I don't think showing what happened there is quite on the same level as fabricating multiple abortions and JFK having Monroe abducted and raped, to say nothing of her fetus berating her before dying. They're awful for similar reasons and good for similar reasons, but I find one more excessively gross towards its focus character than the other... which is very funny in a dark way. I think Marilyn Monroe suffered more than Jesus Christ. This movie is making me say sentences no human will ever or should ever have to say.
I do not recommend this film to anyone. In fact, I fucking hate this film. I find it crass, exploitative, sensationalist, ghoulish, cruel, and unpleasant. This is a film made for no one beside sickos who get off on the suffering of women. Its redeeming elements are not redemptive enough, and this is ultimately a waste of time to even bother with. That score up there is way, way too high. It ought to be a 1, and even that is way too generous in my opinion. This is genuinely an evil movie, a movie that treats Monroe’s life as a perverse freak show for you to gawk at and abusing her in death in similar ways to how she was abused in life.
there’s this term i coined in my friendgroup i call “the charizard effect” and it can apply to anything and everything, but it was born from me explaining my feelings about the pokemon charizard. the term is basically about how overexposure to something be it by corporate shilling or fandom prominence drives me away from really enjoying something bc i’m exposed to it so much against my will i become tired of it. it came to me bc i was ranting about how tpci does not, and cannot stop reinventing charizard, and how it is popular and obtusely included in almost every region, merch, etc in every way possible and it’s highly commodified.
i dont dislike the pokemon charizard, in fact i really like its X form, but i am exposed to so much charizard in my pokemon consumption that i cant be bothered to care for it in any more than in passing. this applies to a bunch of other stuff i’d otherwise be ok with, but i always just call this aversion phenomena “the charizard effect”
making this term has done numbers for me being able to concisely express how i feel abt something. like. its not charizard’s fault i feel this way, im sure i’d feel normal abt it if it was stripped of all this over commodification, but i cannot. hence the name
Edits where its just cropped to his face cam are okay i guess but you lose so much when you dont see the fucking stupid ass video game he plays while saying shit like this
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
