B-movie pillow fort, and burying the survey in Normal entries

If you are my age or older (which makes you a millennial, the first millennium) you probably remember if the channel needed changing (to one of the other two) someone had to get up and manually change it. If you don’t remember you probably have dementia, you probably have dementia, you probably have dementia. If you really really really remember it, the channel changer was you. Was your family nickname remote?

That’s what it’s like for me watching TV on my computer. Sure, if I was sitting in front of the computer it’d just be a twitch of the mouse. I don’t though. I sit in a big lazy boy with a pillow fort built up around me (not as adorable as it sounds, a pillow to support my bad knee, a pillow to support my bad shoulder and … the other two are as adorable as they sound).

Hulu has been a bitch about their fucking ads and gives me that bullshit about being sorry but advertisements allow them to offer me such a great service at a reasonable cost and if I could just remove ad blocker … oh, you don’t have ad blocker? Then just go through all these other steps and we will still fuck with you next commercial break. Netflix is ok, especially for binge watching, but, if you fall asleep it’ll just keep going. So, I was watching Vudu, one of their free movies with ad’s, their ads don’t have a problem with me or my pillow fort and are really just ads for Vudu free movies with ads.

This is all setting up the excuse for why I watched the movie I’m about to … critique, yes, let’s call it a critique shall we? We shall. Of the three major problems with the movie, two of them could have been fixed, the third being it just sucked. Of all the minor problems with it they all could have been fixed by me turning off Vudu and reading, internet shopping or going on a killing spree, something creative involving ukulele strings, duct tape and an old blockbuster vhs.

Ah ha! A Freudian slip! Maybe more like a Freudian Teddy. Blockbuster was the only other place this sort of thing ever happened to me. You (meaning me) find a movie in a genre you like that you’ve never heard of and your B-movie glands start salivating and, much like the old days or the pillow fort defense, your dog has eaten your remote, so a few minutes in when you realize what’s happening you have to decide whether or not you want to open a fresh pack of uke strings and duct tape or just watch the fucking thing.

Covert ultra-Christian movies. Well, not that covert, but you expect the synopsis on the back cover is just kidding about the Jesus stuff or that “…testing his faith …” means that some chick tries to pick him and his wife up at a Vegas magic show. Blockbuster got me twice with those, both sports movies. Hey, all football movies have a scene where everyone is kneeling and praying. Vudu got me with a “science fiction” religious movie. Sonsabitchs.

So, the protagonist (and director and producer, same guy) is a teacher at this seminary in the 1890’s. He just sent a book to the publishers and he wants his peers, in the name of the seminary, to endorse it. They have a rule that their endorsements must be unanimous, all the head faculty must agree on the endorsement. So, this one old bastard doesn’t. To do some editing here, which should have been done in the movie, the old bastard tells him why. The book says something like morality alone is worthy, you can be a good person with citing the source. The disagreeing old bastard says no, you can’t be good without saying it’s Christ’s idea, that removing the Christ part from Christianity is immoral. The first third of the film is caught up in the little details of him getting around to saying that, then another good fifteen minutes talking the writer into coming over to his house. Oh, yeah, in-between the writer, who teaches a science class at the seminary, tells his students good science agrees with the scripture, I forget why, I mean why the guy is ok with science at all if it’s already covered by the scripture.

So, dude goes to visit the no-morals-without-Christ son of a bitch and he has a time machine (see that’s the part Vudu told me about, knowing good and god damn well how patient I am in a pillow fort). Dude goes to the future, a hundred years (there’s a brain fart full two minutes of dialogue where dude is like “The 20th century? Impossible! No! Wait! The 21st!” It’s like sometime in the 1890’s, a hundred years only puts you in the 21st if it’s eighteen ninety eleven. How that made the cut … I think it was probably all shot in one two hour take.).

So, there’s a few subplots and shit and some banter that I’m sure would be hysterical if we were eighty-year-old Amish or from the 1890’s, and basically, he finds, or was supposed to, that the future thinks it’s moral but doesn’t have any use for Jesus. Sort of. I mean he’s got this fundamentalist view of morality, you know the one, where “Adultery” means anything at all having to do with sex, and fuck you is taking the lords name in vain and all that other prudish shit that really isn’t in any scripture at all. He also seems to be a bit confused about which one is Jesus and which one is god. Whenever he quotes Jesus Morality it’s old testament shit. The one scene that does what he was looking for is a bad scene but it makes his point, a point he seemed to have a hard time articulating.

He buys a hotdog from a street vendor (more of that witty 1890 what’s a hotdog humor, the future guy seemed confused when he asked for tea, because, you know, there’s no tea in the future I guess). He gets his dog and a coke (thank god we didn’t have to have a coke explained) sits on this bench and closes his eyes to pray. This little girl had been watching him the whole time and when he closes his eyes she steals the hot dog and runs with it. He chases her (the foot chase through a park takes way too fucking long) catches her and grabs her arm when she tries to run again. Apparently, that’s ok with Jesus. He tells her if she was hungry he’d buy her a hotdog but stealing is just wrong (she says it was just a game, she was just playing, like three times and doesn’t even want his stupid hotdog, because, yeah, here in the future grabbing kids isn’t assault especially when they take hotdogs as a game). Again, he says “Stealing is wrong!” and the kid (had to be someone’s daughter who he owed a favor, worst little girl actor since the Olsen twins) says “Oh, yeah? Says who?” and the guy says “Says Jesus”. He could have led with that badly conceived scene and saved everybody a lot of time.

After making his point he, the writer and director of the movie part of the movie, decides to just throw everything he learned in Sunday school into the mix. Assuming you liked the guy (both the character and the guy playing the character) his last deed is unconscionable. One of the side plots is these two cops who were at a service the guy attended had a gut instinct something was up with dude, researched on google, discovered most of the shit we already knew, and came to confront him in the alley he was supposed to be in at nine o clock to get his transport back home. They are pressing him and saying he better talk or they will take him downtown. The poor guy who just wanted to make a movie about Jesus has to try and act nervous and desperate because his cover is about to be blown, he comes up with an idea. “This is the rapture! Jesus is here! All that have lived in his name and give him credit for morality will go to heaven!” And then the cheap lighting special FX make him disappear. I guess it’s ok to lie to cops (though basically moral in the story, they don’t give Jesus credit) from a moral standpoint.

And you (I mean me) think, yay! I can undo my pillow fort! But no. The last scene, which never really does end, is the guy with the time machine trying to send a bible to 2090. It won’t go, presumably because there is no earth to go to. He switches it to 2080. In real time he gets as far as 2040 before the credits roll and/or the producer ran out of tape and money.

It was not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, pillow fort or no, the worst I’ve seen I didn’t sit all the way through. Its real sin was its sincerity and lack of guile (except when lying to the cops). The guy could actually write in a technical sort of way, he just didn’t think much of his audience if I’m to be offended, or, he didn’t think he had enough material so he padded it with repetition and petty morality when it occurred to him. I’m not saying he was a philosophical genius who dumbed things down, I’m just saying the movie had to explain every little piece to death except the pieces that were senseless (like the girl stealing a dog for play; no one accused her of lying. You see that a lot in movies, it’s the story telling equivalent of your mom saying “Because I said So!”).

Ok, I have a confession. I’m typing to keep from pillow forting. I’m done.