I have been in a work-release program for reasons I will leave for another time, and rather than spending my sick day hiding from work and drinking Jack Daniels like usual, I was forced to take orphans to the theater. After the last time, I was forbidden to take minors to the “Performing Arts” theater better known as “SoCo (soco.iowastripclubs.com)” in North Davenport. Therefore, my afternoon was spent sober at the 53rd Street Showcase Cinemas watching “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian“. (The manager caught me trying to sneak the rug rats into “Sex and the City: Sluts and Nymphos Gone Wild”.)

Let’s back up a couple years and remind you what the first movie was about. Narnia #1 was a quaint story of four English school children in war-torn England. The children are all a bit strange and when they come out of the closet, they end up meeting circus folk who take them in and don’t judge them for their lifestyle choice. Society is, however, a cruel mistress. In fact, a cruel, white, puckered-up mistress. The wicked white witch is a pedophile and she is lurking in the park one day when she spots the awkward and knobby young Edmund. She lures him into her pimped out sleigh with candy, and chains him up and makes him perform tricks. He seems to like the attention, but eventually he longs for the days he spent in the closet with his brother and sisters. Eventually they all help the the circus freaks win some spelling bee or something. I kind of fell asleep at this point because I’d been drinking. When I woke up, the children were going back in the closet and the movie ended.

This sequel picks up about a year later, when the children are “summoned” back to Narnia. It seems Narnia had been all nice and filled with performing bears and circus people until the Mexicans invaded. The Mexicans took all the jobs and the midgets and horse-men and trick mice had to seek refuge in the forrest, sleeping under leaves like I do sometimes when I am drunk and can’t find my van.

The Mexicans are led by a smarmy fellow who knocked up his chiquita and had a baby, and if he kills his nephew then his kid will be next in line to be King. (Same old story, so far.) So, he enlists his homeys to kill the kid and they chase him into the forrest, and they get attacked by a band of midgets. This is when the prince uses a special “pipe”. To a film critic like me, this is an obvious drug reference. It means that the children in reality are doing drugs, and they only imagine they are being transported to Narnia, like when I did hits of acid back in the 60s and imagined I was chasing a negro Bugs Bunny with Elmer Fudd in some kind of strange Technicolor cartoon. (Very unsettling!) I suppose the children were traumatized by having to stay in the closet, and deal with the abduction, S&M, molestation as well as the bombing by the Nazis in the first movie, and this drove them to become drug addicts.

The gay and carefree children are “magically” transported (read: magic mushrooms) to run naked on a beach. Freud would have had a field day with this movie, but I am not an expert or a Scientologist, so I will not take liberties and assume a cigar is a penis or anything of the sort. They have illusions of grandeur, and imagine they all have large swords and prance around the forrest until animals start talking to them. This is when they rescue a midget and he explains he is with a circus troupe. He convinces them to run away and join the circus. They meet a talking skunk and some gay mice (French). They learn that Prince Caspian summoned them with the “magic pipe”. I nodded off here, but I think they all did some weed and went to sleep. That’s what I would have done. All I know is, when I woke up Fredo and Shaniqua had eaten all my popcorn!

Blah, Blah, Blah and giant flying birds and sword waiving and next we end up on a big soccer field where the Mexicans and Circus folk are ready to kill one another. This is when the little girl wanders off to find a circus animal (a big lion) that got loose. They have a plan to keep the Mexicans distracted for several hours while the new King duels Peter. By the time the girl brings the lion back the big lunch the Mexicans had is making them long for a siesta, the kids and their buddy with the pipe blow weed across the field and that makes the Mexicans a little high and a lot more mellow. So, when they see the big lion, they get tricked onto a bridge that is only like two feet above a tiny river, but they are high and think it is a much bigger river. Someone must have opened some dam upstream, because a wave comes by and washes them into the river. Since Mexicans are all strict Catholics, they interpret all this as some religious sign and put down their swords. The little girl, Lucy, has a bottle of tequila, I think, and they all party hard like it’s 1299 AD.

I know I haven’t been paying too much attention. I was a little distracted wondering if I would get reimbursed for the popcorn. Also, the orphans wandered off somewhere with the keys to my van. But, I am a stalwart reporter, and stayed to watch the rest of the movie.

The circus freaks and the Mexicans realize in the end, they all just like to get high. Everyone is all friends now, and the children had to go home (their drug trip was ending). So, the four war orphans walked through the crotch of a tree and ended back in England. In the first movie, they came out of the closet and in this movie they experimented with drugs and ran away to join the circus. In the end, they learned a valuable lesson, that there is no place like home. Except, they are war orphans and they don’t have a home, in which case drugs are a good way to forget everything about your life really sucks.

Well, I need to try to find my two charges and return them to the orphanage, or I definitely won’t get reimbursed. I have a plan to smoke a fat one in my van, if I can find them, because they have my keys. Once they see how I act when I am wasted, they will realize the movies only glamorize drugs. I don’t expect recognition for being such a good role model, the ability to mold young impressionable minds is reward enough.

A Review of the movie “Transformers” on 7/7/7, by Dr. Grouchy, Ph.D.

When I was a boy, I didn’t play with dolls. They didn’t even have robots that turned into cars or boomboxes. Hell, we had transistor radios and G.I. Joe’s and we killed ants with magnifying glasses. Most of my toys were made of wood, because they’d just invented plastic and it was still somewhat toxic. Girls did have Barbie dolls back then, but Barbie didn’t have her gay man-friend, Ken. When Barbie wanted to play horny housewife, she had to beg G.I. Joe for pity sex. Usually, Joe didn’t have the time because he was fighting war like a real man. But, I digress.

So, this appeared to be a movie about giant toys, and not about actual transformers, as my electrical engineering friend told me it would. I couldn’t figure out how they could make a movie that was over two hours long about electrical transformers, but what the hey. Anyhow, when the movie started and I realized it was produced by Hasbro, I understood this was just a ploy to sell millions of dollars of toys to American children. I suppose now, if Barbie gets bored and G.I. Joe is in Iraq fighting a war, she will have a battery-powered Transformer with multiple attachments to keep her satisfied.

As the movie starts, real men are fighting in Iraq when a helicopter lands and turns into a big, destructive robot. There is much in the way of mayhem and killing of soldiers who just want to relax with a cold beer, or a cold shower or some young boy from the desert. The robots all seem to have unlimited power. You would think their batteries would run out, or someone would have to run up and wind them up when they run down, but no. They just keep on going like some big, metal, evil Energizer Bunny. What “does” power them? It seems they never have to recharge, even in the case they have been frozen solid for decades. Is there a scientist out there that can explain that to me?

Some of the soldiers escape and they lead some kind of metal scorpion robot to the desert-boy’s village. I thought it was very considerate of them to run into a village of innocent people when being chased by a well-armed, homicidal robot. That’s what we call “collateral damage”. At first, the Pentagon suspects the Taliban might be behind the attacks, but one soldier made a home movie showing it was “Made in Korea”. Which suddenly made sense to everyone, because most toys are either made there or China. I think there were other robots that were supposed to be good, and this kid in the movie thought they came from Japan. I’m a little confused about why Korean robots would want to fight Japanese robots in America, but I think it’s because there was a big gold box that shot out sparks under the Hoover Dam. Maybe this was the electrical transformer. I’m sure you would be confused by this point as well.

The kid that I mentioned was in high school, and he wanted to get a car so he could get sex. I don’t think he bought a robot car from Bernie Mac because he wanted to have sex with the car, but you never know. I think robot-cars can be programmed to go both ways. Anyhow, he spends a lot of time in the movie not getting laid by this fairly hot high school chick. I thought she was really hot, until they showed a close-up of her thumb. It was kind of dwarfish and it turned me off. Up until that point, I was thinking about all the things I would do with a high school chick in the back seat of a robot-car. I think this was also a turn-off for the kid, because his parents soon enough caught him masturbating in his bedroom. They called the FBI, who promptly came out and arrested him for wiki-whacking, and impounded his car.

I noticed, by this point, that there was a lot of product placement in the movie. Nokia, eBay, Paypal, GMC, Pontiac, Chevrolet… to name a few. In fact, there was so much emphasis on product placement and marketing these toys, that there wasn’t much time for decent dialogue. The script seemed to be written both by and for first graders. (I would have said kindergartners, but there was way too much violence that you have to be in at least first grade to appreciate properly.) The plot was just damn weak. They had $200 million of computer-generated special effects, and a $10 script. I guess they didn’t want to make significant changes to the crappy plot of the Transformers cartoon, so one moment you would get caught up in an action sequence, and the next someone would suggest they take “the cube” to “the city” to hide it from the evil robots. I really expected Jar Jar Binks to show up any minute. In addition, all the robots had gay, made up names and mannerisms. Obviously all the Internet research the robots did on humans focused on gay porn sites.

So, who did come up with the lame script? Clearly, the premise of big-ass robots fighting is one that we have all had wet dreams about at one time or another. Why trivialize the plot with contrivances? Did they really learn our language from “the Internet”? Do the good robots all have to turn into cars? Why can’t they turn into something else? Or, were they really Cameros and Hummers on their home world? Autobots – what a stupid name. I swear, the first half of the movie I thought someone spliced in scenes from “Herbie the Love Bug”. The only thing missing was Dean Jones and Buddy Hackett.

I am always disappointed when movie-makers take liberties with reality. It isn’t like there isn’t enough that we don’t know that they can speculate about, they have to take liberties with science and historical facts. That’s just plain lazy. They could have paid a retarded monkey to do a better job of continuity on this movie, and catch such glaring mistakes like showing the “Mars Rover” and calling it the “Beagle 2″. Believe me, I had sex once with a lady from the European Space Agency, and that was no Beagle 2! Perhaps, movies are dumbed down because producers don’t think the public would understand a movie that includes facts that agree with reality. They think people are too stupid to notice things like that. Face it, they underestimate the intelligence of audiences. You aren’t just making movies for Bubba Bumfuck and his small children! You have people like Dr. Grouchy in your audience, and they expect a movie to treat reality with respect, and only then can they suspend disbelief when it comes to power cubes and giant, evil anthropomorphized robots.

At the end of the movie, the world was saved. I hope that didn’t give too much away, I forgot to put a big “SPOILER” disclaimer up. The military didn’t even confiscate the robots for further testing, they let the kid keep his Camero-bot as a pet and they dumped all the robot trash in the ocean. (Yes, the ocean will no doubt cause them to rust in time, even though it might have been more valuable to disassemble them, or safer to chop them up and dump them in a volcano. But, that wouldn’t have left such a clear starting point for the sequel.) Junior even looked like he was going to get some as he locked lips with the dwarf-thumbed woman on the hood of the yellow Camero in the closing sequence. Although, I think having sex on an Autobot is twisted and sick, given that they are another sentient (albeit mechanical) species. But, that’s exactly the kind of thing an electrical engineer would get off on, and probably why he recommended the movie to me in the first place. Sicko!

So, I understand that Dumbledore dies on page 596 in the latest Harry Potter tome. It’s about time they admitted this fact. I watched the first movie (through someone’s dining room window, since I live in a VAN and didn’t have cable that year), and the actor was this one guy, and then I watched the third movie and realized that it wasn’t even the same guy. It appears Dumbledore died between books two and three, and there was a big cover-up.

I read the first book, “Harry Potter and the Gallstones of Death”, only because I was stuck at the bus stop and had nothing better to do for fifteen minutes. I never read the second one, “Harry Potter and the Chamberpot of Fire” or “Harry Potter and the French Tutor”, let alone the others. I think there are about seven or eight by now. I think they started going downhill with, “Harry Potter and the Nyquil Halucinations.” Just do like I do and wait for the neighbors to rent the movies on DVD… don’t rush to Amazon.com to buy whatever the latest one is called, “Harry Potter and the Half-Assed Excuse for a Book,” I think. Remember, women don’t like men who read, and especially not ones who read 8th grade fantasy novels about a pubescent warlock and his little pals at boarding school.

I have to buy me one of these T-shirts, and wear it to the next Dr. Grouchy movie night at the elementary school.

Boy, that Ashley Judd is hot. I wish she had been in one of these movies. It might have made them worth sitting through after all. Well, Dr. Grouchy spent some time laid up with a pulled groin this past month, so he watched a bunch of DVD rentals. Back before my travels in the South Pacific, we had the war between Betamax and VHS. After being rescued from my tropical paradise, so I could live in sub-zero weather in my van down by the river, it is awfully darn difficult to find movies in VHS for my old player. So, I actually had to buy a DVD player for Christmas.

Other than two movies at the theater, I was laid out on the waterbed in the back of my Vanagon, with a long extension cord run over to the outlet at the Super 8 Motel, and a pile of 49-cent burritos from Lupe’s Taco Shack and a twelve-pack of Old Style, and a stack of DVDs to watch.

Here’s the list of movies I saw, and I’ll give you my two-cents on all of ‘em. Pirates of the Carribean, Peter Pan, The Butterfly Effect, Open Range, Out of Time, The Italian Job, Underworld, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Three Blind Mice, Xmen-2, Bad Boys II, Freaky Friday, Bruce Almighty….
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Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
The Cradle of Life [on DVD]

Review by Dr. Grouchy, Ph.D.

So, I have to start off by saying I didn’t rent this myself. I found it in the parking lot while I was heaving up my dinner last night, after a round of heavy drinking with some Russians I met down by the river. Not that I wouldn’t have rented this, because I found a guilty pleasure in watching the first movie and pausing to look for computer generated artifacts from Angelina Jolie’s on-screen breast enhancements. In fact her breasts were so prominant in the first film, they both got screen credits and residuals. (I actually thought the first movie was about “Dr. Laura”… Oops!)

So, I am bored, after a day in bed “recovering” from last night, and I decide to pop in Tomb Raider 2. “What the hay?” I always say. And, it starts off and you know it is going to be like 50 percent computer effects. Very glitzy, and smooth with the credits and all. But, as an admirer of all archeology carried out by hot babes in spandex, I pick up on some problems with the plot.
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Well, Boys and Girls… For those of you who aren’t planning sleepovers at the Neverland Ranch this season, you may want to hit the movie theaters, which promise to be packed tighter than that lady’s spandex pants that I was forced to stare at in line at Wal-Mart yesterday. Let’s look at a quick couple movies, and then Dr. Grouchy can get back to enjoying some Chistmas Cheer on the couchy….
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Review of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
By Dr. Grouchy

[Disclaimer: Dr. Grouchy's opinions are his own and not supported by or endorsed by any official body, including the National Football League or the International Olympic Committee. In fact, no grown man or woman, or ape that knows sign language would agree with most anything that he says.]

Well, it’s a good thing that I sit in front of a computer on my ass all day, it prepared me for the latest long and arduous Lord of the Rings episode. Return of the King. This is a pretty good and involved film, but totally wrong in every account when it comes to historical accuracy. I cannot find this king in any history book I’ve ever read. At least they didn’t have Elvis do a cameo, that would have really ruined the movie. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if it were romantic-comedy and a musical all in one!

Let me recap the previous two movies, as I sat through them and all of the associated documentaries and outtakes over the past week. I actually had to take a week of sick leave just to carry this out. Thankfully, after a week of sitting glued to the tube, watching all 320 hours of the Lord of the Rings extended DVDs, I was as pasty-white as a frail Hobbit, and had a hacking cough. [Gollum! Gollum! Excuse my hacking cough....]

In the first movie, there is a whole town of midgets. Maybe they were originally circus-folk or something, but they aren’t very hard workers and they seem to sit around a lot and drink ale and smoke weed. And, they were the first sign that Middle Earth really needs a chain of Supercuts. Can you say, “Queer Eye for the Hobbit?” Well, I suspect there are a number of hole-dwelling Hobbits who are light in the loafer (if they weren’t always going around barefoot with those awful big hairy feet… does Supercuts also give pedicures?) They liked to wear lots of green velvet and in this movie, Frodo is chosen by a bunch of stuck up Elves and others in a big City Council meeting to take this old ring to throw in a volcano. Along the way, they do some hiking and kayaking, and camp out and eventually everyone gets jealous of Frodo, who has the best clothes and curly hair and a manservent along with this gold ring and pretty undershirt. So, after much ado, they part ways. (That took about six hours in the extended release. It seemed not that unlike a remake of the 1970′s classic, Deliverance, which was much shorter and to the point.)

In the second movie, Frodo and his friend Sam who has this real obvious crush on him, have to walk a lot. Kids these days don’t like to walk much. It showed with the young Hobbits who were always complaining about their journey. It was good that Sam was their to rub Frodo’s big hairy feet. They added back in the lost hot-tub scene in the extended DVD, so you could see where this relationship was going. Anyhow, while they were hiking, kayaking and enjoying nature, there was this big war with Orcs off in Helm’s Deep. There were a whole bunch of black Orcs (are there also Caucasian Orcs? I’ll discuss how racist this moview was later) and some who were bigger and smarter and some who were dwarf-Orcs. The humans were outnumbered, but they won in the end, because the Elves came to help and some others showed up at the last minute. They weren’t very organized, so they were fortunate they won at all. I think there were only a few people left at the end, and I don’t know if there were any Elves left, but they only came begrudgingly and they seemed mad that they were missing some boating event. Other than that, there was lots of walking-talking trees, and Gandalf died in the first movie and when he came back to life his clothes had all been bleached. (Again, this points out how racist the filmmakers were. All the “black” guys were bad and all the “white” guys were good. Even though that’s a reasonably acurate sterotype and all, it seemed to oversimplify everything in this movie. But, I think it might be because there weren’t any black people in England in those days.)