Honey (2003)

This is Free with Ads, the podcast that asked the question: why pay max 10 bucks a month to watch Singin' in the Rain when you could go online for free and watch a modern dance movie classic that may not have Fred Astaire, but it does have genuine the Fred Astaire of the early aughts.

I'm Jordan Morris, and I'm Emily Fleming.

Today's movie is Honey, the rags to riches dance movie that proves that Jessica Alba can do anything she sets her mind to, except accents.

With us, as always, is the super producer, the he freak Matt Lieb, hitting us with those New York-style drops.

Bo, boy,

boom,

I feel like I'm there.

I feel like I'm in, honey.

Remember that era?

The just give me the light era?

You would go to the club and you would say, yes, I would like delight.

Yeah, I really thrived in the early aughts and

this movie took me back.

Either of you ever go to De Club?

I went to De Club once.

Oh, okay.

I would say I've been to DeClub maybe three times in my entire life.

Once was just to ask to use the bathroom.

Oh, nice.

You got to buy something.

They make you buy something at the gym.

You guys want to know?

I went to DeClub this past weekend.

Wow.

How is the club?

Is it still bumping?

Well, I went in Anaheim because VidCon was.

Oh,

that's where all the clubs are.

Nobody else was going out.

I went by myself.

Everyone else was like, I don't know where they went.

I think they all went to bed.

It was the last night, but I went to this club.

They let me right in because it was towards the end of the night.

But

it was the 2000s night.

So they were playing.

They were playing this music.

You feel like you, you, wow, you're, you're, you're like coming from being inside honey to talking about honey.

Oh, my God.

Yes, it was so good.

Okay, cool.

I love it.

Well, that's nice.

Sometimes you just got to take yourself to the club.

You know, know, you don't got to wait for somebody else.

You just got to go see that movie by yourself.

Go to the club.

Sometimes you just want to dance.

Sometimes you just want to dance.

That's right.

Hey, we're going to talk about this movie, which is, as of this recording, streaming free with ads.

But before we do that, we want to respond to some listener feedback in a segment called You Have Notes.

Oh.

You have notes.

Okay, so we're using this segment to kick off a campaign.

Very exciting.

Here's what we're going to to do.

We have this little show.

We want people to find it.

We want more people to listen.

We want people to join the party.

We want people to be up in this club we call free with ads.

Yes.

And a good way to do that is through

engagement that the algorithm finds desirable.

So that means...

I'm the algo.

Yes, yes, it's me.

I need your clicks.

I need clicks to grow.

Keywords, hashtags.

Amazing algorithm impression.

Thank you.

That's just what that dude sounds like.

That's what I was working on while I was in Hawaii for a week.

Oh, nice.

Okay, it's just laying on the beach, sipping a virgin pina colada.

I wonder what the algorithm sounds like.

My daughter's just drifting away in the ocean.

Dad, the current's strong.

She's drifting away on purpose.

My dad does the algorithm voice, and it scares me.

I hate it.

So here's what we need: we need five-star reviews on podcasting platforms.

The thing you're listening to us on right now probably has some sort of review function.

We want you to review us five stars.

Here's what we're going to do.

If we can get 100 five-star reviews before July 16th, we will do a special segment where we review the

live-action animation combo Sailor Moon pilot that never got picked up.

This is something we talked talked about a couple weeks ago.

Apparently, it existed in the 90s.

We will watch it.

We will tell you about it, but we have to get 100 new five-star reviews before July 16th.

So that's the deal.

Get on your app, review us five stars.

It's free.

It's fun.

It helps the show.

If we get 100 of them across all platforms, you get to hear about the Sailor Moon live-action animation hybrid pilot.

So to inspire you, what we wanted to do was to read some of our not five-star reviews.

Where'd you find these?

Can you tell me?

Yeah, so these are all from Apple Podcasts.

Okay, and don't go, don't go attacking any of these people, guys.

No, yeah, don't attack those people, and also don't give a one-star bad review as a don't do either of those.

There's some people who've done that.

It hurts the show.

Don't say, like, one star, I laugh too much.

My size is awesome.

Oh, my God.

Well, also, if we don't get

100 five-star reviews, Matt is going to do the algorithm voice from now on.

No, for the rest of this

podcast

ever in history.

It'll sound like this the whole time.

I don't even remember what voice I was doing.

It was that.

Yeah.

Timeout.

You know, preferable to the voice Jessica Alba was doing in Honey.

Oh, yeah.

Anyway, so yeah, here are some of our bad reviews.

This is the title of this review is just very bad.

One star, your pod blows, not interesting.

Fair.

This is very generic.

I don't know if this is some sort of spam bot that just leaves generic reviews on podcasts.

But yeah, I guess we could take that into account.

We can make the pod blow less, I guess.

Yeah.

Or say more interesting things.

I don't want to blow more anymore, though.

It's like I'm past a certain age.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now it's time for us to

get blown.

Why don't we move on?

We'll move on.

We'll just move on.

This person thinks the pod blows and is not interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is a one-star review, clearly written in a rage after listening to our episode about the birds.

Oh, boy.

This is an early episode we did.

How could you be mad at that episode?

It's like a lovely episode.

So one star.

What is it?

Yeah.

One star.

The title is When Talking About the Birds.

When Talking About the Birds, these two geniuses were giving their psychological opinions of Alfred Hitchcock.

OMG.

They can barely put two sentences together, but they know what makes Alfred Hitchcock tick?

The arrogance is unbelievable.

But hey, tell me more of your brilliant insights.

You can hear the fedora, can't you?

You could hear the fedora and the

male ponytail flapping in the breeze.

For some reason, this feels like something my mom would have written.

Yeah.

What is the name?

Does it say the name of the person next to it?

CMDM.

CMPM.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mom's screen.

You guys, the first one is Leprosy Dog.

Leprosy Dog.

Yeah.

Apparently.

Leprosy Dog hate podcast.

Think it blows.

Leprosy Dog love Joe Rogan.

Woof, woof, woof, woof.

Put peanut butter on my Joe Rogan podcast

so I can blow it.

So, this is this is the final bad review that I have sourced.

This is titled, I did like it.

Oh, boy.

I did really enjoy this podcast at first.

And I love Good Mythical Morning, and I love you guys on that show, but the rated X conversations constantly has gotten very old.

And you should never bring things that are divisive into the podcast because the mocking of Christianity and politics is distasteful.

It's unfortunately because overall, I do enjoy listening to the podcast.

I love this.

I love someone who was like, I really enjoy listening to the podcast, except for the perspective of the host.

The general worldview.

Just like,

couldn't you just read a Wikipedia then?

Yeah.

And this, and this, and like trying to say that it's neutral, right?

Like, clearly this person is like a conservative and is mad that we said things that were against conservative stuff.

And, but they're, it's this weird thing that conservatives do when they complain about media

where they just say, like, well, you shouldn't talk about any of it.

Don't talk about any religion or like mocking politics.

Yeah.

You know, it's just like, don't make fun of the electoral college.

Don't make fun of checks and balances.

I enjoyed this podcast until you mentioned that you thought there were clowns in Congress.

That was too much.

They work very hard.

Were you mad at that, or were we mad that you said because people who vote for Trump are racists?

Which is probably the one you probably am.

This one sounds a lot like somebody who's in the comments a lot when I'm in videos and I make jokes about it.

I tend to make Christianity jokes

in like

sporked videos and mythical kitchen video.

I remember one video I made a joke and was like, you know what?

Fuck you, God.

And I was like, I'm just kidding.

Please don't send me to hell.

I want to see my family again.

But people in the comments got really upset about that.

And I'm like,

if you don't think God has a sense of humor, I mean, look at the platypus.

Thank you, beginning of dogma.

I love it.

I love it.

The most mind-blowing point to make to a 12-year-old.

Hell yeah.

That's right.

Okay, so these are some bad reviews.

We want good ones.

105-star reviews before July 16th, and we will review the Sailor Moon hybrid animation live-action pilot for you.

Okay,

you have your marching orders.

Let's start talking about honey.

Had anybody seen this before?

This is the first one for the first time viewing from me.

No, I've watched some things online kind of making fun of it.

Yeah.

But I'd never watched the whole thing.

Honey has three three sequels wow are four total honey movies yep all of them free uh you'll be shocked totally different actresses in each in each one yeah uh is now i don't i don't know how i did not get too deep into honey lore the honey timeline

the hcu the honey cinematic sorcerer

is

Are people playing Jessica Alba in it, or is it just like

I would assume so, yeah.

Okay, it's not like she passes her powers of mediocre dance on to the next woman.

That's right, there's honey,

like uh, but I don't know.

I mean, I imagine in order to make a new honey, you just I mean, is Jessica Alba make a cameo in the other ones?

We don't know because I don't know, I don't know.

I've been seeing them when we were in theaters.

Yeah, I don't know.

Well,

maybe, you know, it's life is long, life is long, but

I refuse.

I will Jessica Alba, return to the honey franchise.

Okay.

Well, yeah, let's talk about Honey 1.

We start with some aerial shots of New York City where this was not filmed.

But, you know, New York City is kind of like another character in the movie.

Wow.

Did you just think of that?

Did you just think of that?

So, and we know it's the early aughts because the camera goes slow and then fast and slow and then fast.

Yeah.

We got honey, Jessica Alba.

She's tending bar at a cool ass nightclub.

There's a dumb movie thing where two guys come up to the bar and they just go, two, and she's like, you want two?

And they don't even say what they want.

She just gives them two beers.

No one can make a, like, you could just say cranberry vodka with no branding.

Like, you don't have to say.

Give me the lager.

Give me a light beer.

You know, just any kind of qualifier, but she must go two.

Yeah.

They don't even say two beers in this.

I know it's annoying when people go, give me a beer, and then they don't say what, but this is just two.

I love how the two drinkers out of the podcast, this infuriates us most.

Yeah, just being mad about.

Like, tell us what you're drinking, you broke.

Show the drink.

Show the drink.

How you get drunk tonight?

I was spending at least the first 10 minutes of this movie going,

produced by Mark Platt.

Is this the same Mark Platt?

And then I looked it up.

It is produced by the guy who also made Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2, and whose son was Dear Evan Hansen.

Oh, you guys know

Ben Platt?

Yeah.

You know that movie?

One connection.

Yeah.

So that's how that happened.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you were wondering how that happened, that's how that happened.

That's how that happened.

Oh, so this guy's come made Dear Evan Hansen.

That's right.

Everybody involved in the movie is there because of merit and not any other reason.

That's right.

The film industry is filled with people who just worked hard.

Hard workers, good talent all around.

That's why we're doing anyway.

So, honey, she ain't just a bartender.

Five-star reviews, guys.

Five-star reviews.

Five gives five stars.

I'm sure we popular platform.

Honey, she's not just a bartender.

She's a dancer.

She gets out there.

She busts a move.

But there's a guy filming her with a camcorder.

This is like

people have cell phones, but no camera phones.

So there's a guy there with like a fucking camcorder, a dad on vacation camcorder, filming her.

I forgot what year.

This is 2003.

2003?

Yeah.

Oof.

Yeah.

Yeah.

War in Iraq.

Warren Iraq time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so she's out there dancing, getting filmed.

There is a guy dancing in the background wearing a fedora.

I think this is the worst hat in the movie.

Oh,

the worst hat.

Made worse by his awful goatee.

He's got one of those like

thin striped goatees.

And I'm like, that makes the hat worse.

What was hats bad, but the goatee just makes, like, I don't know.

Back in 2003, it was like, because you remember, Kevin Federline had one of those stupid little thin goatees.

Yeah, it's one of those.

And it's like, why is everybody banging little goatee men?

Like, what's happening?

And they're all dancers.

He's a dancer.

And his goatee looked like that.

I'm seeing a correlation.

It's a uniform thing.

Yeah, could be.

She's dancing.

There's an evil dancer at the club who is her enemy.

What's this lady's name?

She's a very famous choreographer.

Yeah, oh, Katrina.

And yeah, and I read, I do not know how much merit to this.

I guess she is a real-life choreographer and says that she's the inspiration for Honey.

Like, this is her story.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm sure it happened exactly like this.

Honey, she leaves the, after like showing up her enemy,

she leaves the club and sees these cute little breakdance kids breaking and popping and locking behind the club.

And she invites them to come take her dance class at the community center where she works.

These movies all have a community center.

Yes.

I love it when a movie's like lead

where they really just need to hammer home they are good person

over and over.

Just completely non-complex people, just like a smiley, happy, good person dances, works at community center.

I like when a movie has almost no depth.

So, Matt, so honey is your favorite movie?

My favorite movie.

Oh, I really loved it.

Yes, loved it.

Yeah, I'm

not a complex character.

There's another thing that I've noticed, like, okay, did you guys ever seen the movie Moonwalker?

It's the Michael Jackson 3D.

Oh, yeah, 3D.

There's always this thing: if you want to know someone's a good person, they hang out with kids who are on the streets.

That's right.

Street kids.

And they're always the street kids.

They're trying to save the street kids.

And I feel like this is an easy thing to throw in: to be like, oh, she's not just a dancer.

Right.

She's also a savior.

Yeah, she also likes kids.

Okay.

Yeah, good person.

Yeah.

Honey, good.

Honey, good.

So she works with a community center.

Her mom runs the community center, and she's like, why can't you just teach ballet?

She's teaching these kids funky street dances.

It's so stupid.

Like,

literally, the idea that, why can't you do something, you know, that'll take you all over the world, like ballet?

That is, it is a thousand times harder to be a touring ballet person.

Well, for sure.

But that's a mom assumption.

But also, if she was teaching ballet or doing anything ballet, then Save the Last Dance couldn't exist.

That's true.

Yeah, they couldn't step on those toes.

Yeah, we couldn't.

Yeah, exactly.

There got to be two different things.

Yes, but hip-hop dancing, much more popular and lucrative than ballet dancing.

Come on.

This conflict of mom wanting her to do ballet does not come back.

Goes nowhere.

Mentioned once, totally fucking dropped for the rest of the movie.

But you remember how in the club there was a guy filming her on a camcorder?

Well,

that guy's job apparently is to film dancers in clubs without their knowledge

and bring the videos to his boss who is a music video director for him to like find new dancers.

And wouldn't you know it, this scumbag loves honey.

He loves her.

He shows up to the club.

He's like, you got to be in my new video.

He's there.

Honey's very aggressive to him at the beginning.

And he's like, can we go to the VIP room to talk?

It's so loud in here.

And no one is yelling.

He's like, it's so loud in here.

It's just so loud in here.

It's like, come on, fuck it.

Pretend.

I know there's not music on when you're shooting this, but like, fuck it, who's directing this movie?

Say, it's a loud club.

You have to say it's loud in here.

He's like, it's so loud in here.

Yeah.

And also, like,

the VIP room also has speakers.

Yeah, also, isn't that probably louder?

It's probably louder.

Listen, I've never been in a VIP room in my entire fucking life.

No, but I can guess that it's louder.

I can guess the whole club.

Well, I do love that it's like every single thing in the beginning of meeting this guy seems like red flags because they are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's this guy.

I was kind of like, oh, maybe this guy will turn out to be just kind of nice and it'll be, you know, it won't be leading to the obvious thing of him like sexually harassing her.

That's where it goes.

Spoilers for honey.

Anyway, so he, she goes to a music video shoot for Jada Kiss,

who are apparently popular artists around this time that I did not recognize.

I'm sure they were huge and perhaps still are.

Oh, yeah.

So Honey,

he's before she shows up, he's like, this is all too choreographed.

I don't like it.

And then Honey comes in and he's like

noodle

around, this noodley, noodle lady, limpity dimpity.

Like, it's the craziest.

I can't believe they think it's supposed to be good dancing.

I don't, yeah, worth talking about.

Is she a good dancer?

I don't know.

I don't know either.

I'm sure.

I mean, better than me.

I definitely,

but it's like, I don't go to movies to watch people dance like me.

I go to watch movies where people dance like really good, where it's so obvious that it's good.

Right.

Like, I don't need to wonder if it's good.

Yeah,

I feel like even though I am a layman when it comes to watching dancing, dancing,

I have seen good dancing and been like, that dancing is good.

So I'm trusting my instincts here and going, what are the most ridiculous scenes in the movie?

Where she

goes up there after like, you know, talking to a guy about like, oh, here's what we're going to do.

And then they do it.

And I'm like, what, what is this?

What's happening?

I felt like I was on drugs.

Do you want to know what I kept thinking about?

I kept thinking, like, Britney Spears's social media dancing is better than this.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Like, her with her knives, her fake knives, clink, clanking around, is better than whatever the fuck this is.

That's all I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, you know, Jessica Alba, maybe not a good dancer.

Yeah.

Definitely shouldn't be doing the voice she's doing right.

I don't know that I'm an expert in this, but it maybe seems like the voice she's doing, she should not be.

I'm not sure about that voice.

Well, I think I know.

I don't think is she even doing it because she drops it, she drops it.

So, maybe she drops it because she realized it was a bad idea.

I love getting self-conscious in the middle of the movie and dropping the accent.

But also, movies are not filmed in sequence, yeah, which is very possible that she was trying to do an offensive voice but could not because she's too bad.

Well, I feel like it's just every single thing is a bad fit for her, she's just a bad fit for this movie.

I mean, I read it was supposed to be Aaliyah in the main role originally.

So I read Aaliyah and Beyonce also were supposed to be in this movie, and they both could not participate for different reasons.

And this was option three.

Yeah, so like it is, yeah.

So not written for Jessica Alba, but

anyway,

so that's, you know, that's all in the movie.

Yeah.

You guys, I have a really funny story.

Okay.

Sounds good.

So I went to auditions in New York.

I saw in the newspaper back in the day, like 2005, I went to this open call audition for a new agency and I was in line.

Promising.

I was in line.

No, I was in line for about an hour outside.

It was so many people.

You get inside, you go into this huge waiting room full of chairs.

There's kids, and then they're taking people into this room and they're measuring us, but they measured my hips and my bust.

And then I was like, okay, that's normal.

And then one by one, we're going in.

One person goes into a room.

They close the door.

And then they come out, put me in the room.

It's an all-white room, floor, ceiling everywhere.

And there's just one table in front of me with giant speakers.

And a man pops up and goes, dance for me.

And he pushes a button.

He pushes a button.

And then I'm like,

honey, you're honey and all that.

Yeah, I'm like doing jazz hands.

Like, all right.

Just doing the macarena.

I'm doing the macarena.

Like, exactly.

And I was just like, this is my worst worst nightmare wow it was it was for music videos did they give you two symbols to to smash together they gave me a couple of maracas and i just kind of like did a little crab dance

party started was there an old cowboy with a six shooter shooting at your feet

but he just popped up and he just went dance for me and then he like and then he pushed a button and it was so loud do you remember what the song was no i blacked out hardcore but it was like and then I left and I was like, I'll probably, I'll probably get a call.

I'll book whatever that was.

But it was, it was for video girls.

They were looking for video girls.

And I did not book it.

But that's, you know, that's, that's the trajectory that honey is on.

She becomes a video girl.

Like, all of her friends like see her on TV.

I kind of like this scene because it reminded me of that scene from that thing you do where they all hear their song on the radio for the first time.

And yeah, so I kind of liked the kind of all the kids from the neighborhood going, it's honey.

The female friendships in this are really awesome too, because I was thinking about the beginning of the movie, the best friend who's like a supermodel, gorgeous woman,

is like, my friend's going to be famous one day.

And I'm like, you're too hot to not be famous one day, too.

But all she's thinking about is how proud she is of her friend.

And I'm like, oh, that's so nice.

Yeah, I don't know.

Honey's friend is nice.

I like, I like, you know, all the interaction with Honey's friend is good.

Honey's friend, I just wrote down, makes a Monica Lewinsky joke at some point.

I forget the data.

Oh, I remember what it was, but it really like dated this.

I'm like, oh, oh, I can still do a Monica Lewinsky joke.

Are you sure that dated it?

Or the little kids

referencing Jerry Lewis?

Oh, right.

Yeah, they talk about.

Yeah, there's a, yeah, there is a, we got to save the community center scene later.

Or it's not even the save the community center.

We have to buy a new dance studio for honey.

You know, you could have care about the community center.

You could have just fixed the roof.

This is the community center.

This movie about three-quarters of the way through goes from having no plot to having too much plot.

It's like, well, the community center's broken and Honey needs a dance studio.

Can't you just, anyway, fucking whatever.

So Honey's rise is in full effect.

She's now doing the choreography herself.

There's a

especially dumb part where she can't figure out what to choreograph, and then she walks by some guys playing basketball.

This gives her the idea that she should put basketball moves into

God.

And then the jump rope.

Shooting fake basketballs is so dumb.

Well, her practicing it as she's watching guys play basketball she's just like swishing her hand like this and i'm like oh god this is so bad i can't stand it um so then uh and yeah so there's kind of this thing with her friend is like she's like constantly standing up her friend so she can go to like parties with uh uh the

video director who turns out to be a scumbag uh there's part where they go to a like vip room and meet these like rappers and there is um very prominent tropicana orange juice product placement yeah they're in the club and i'm I'm guessing it's like mixers for bottle service, but it just looks like these guys all have Tropicana orange juice.

Bring me the Tropicanas, bro.

How many Tropicanas are you going to crush?

Can we talk a little bit about the dance counting that happens in this movie?

There's so much five, six, seven, eight, nothing.

One, two, three, and it is not on beat a lot of the time.

Yeah, no one in this movie.

So much counting.

So much counting.

There's also a little subplot with Mike, the guy who owns the barbershop.

Ooh, Makai Pfeiffer.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

When Mike is on screen, I'm like,

fucking, thank God, someone who knows how to be in a movie is in this movie.

He's great, and

I can't imagine he's not going to be prominently featured in this segment or in this episode's Hunk Watch.

Oh, yeah.

He is so good and charming and has chemistry with her despite her not being able to have chemistry with anyone.

Yep.

Anyone.

He rules.

He has like a little bit of a backstory that's interesting.

He's the most fleshed-out character.

This movie should be called Mike.

A movie about Mike trying to own this barbershop.

Right.

A small business owner who plays basketball for fun.

Yeah, Mike rules.

Can we talk about who was the little kids?

Was that Lil Bow Wow?

Or who was the one that the older one?

I don't know.

I don't know.

The older brother, the little older brother is a rapper.

Yeah, there's a kid rapper in this who like gets who like, okay, so let's let's talk about this kid plot and we'll talk about where he ends up.

So she has, okay, so her big, one of her big breaks is choreographing a video for, yeah, we mentioned it at the top.

Genuine has a new video, needs a premise.

Honey comes up with the idea that it should be kids dancing.

And of course, she's going to cast the kids from the neighborhood.

So she does this thing.

Genuine loves the idea.

He's fucking crazy about it.

Um,

and kind of between coming up with that idea and them shooting, she like uh turns down her boss, who was like a creep to her at this party.

And then, so they show up to the video, and the the boss is like, We're not doing the kid thing anymore, and he brings out her fucking enemy dancer to like make the video sexier, and they have to fire the kids.

And

this is also tragic tragic because I feel for these kids.

But I'm like,

where

is Genuine okay with this?

Genuine fucking loved the idea and he doesn't say anything.

Et too Genuine?

Well, he says.

Well, he says the label didn't like it.

Genuine kowtows to the label.

I guess so.

I guess Genuine just does whatever the fucking label wants.

You're the star, Genuine.

You can make him do the...

Anyway.

This made me think less of Genuine, honestly.

So, the older brother of the two little brothers is Lil Romeo.

Lil Romeo.

Yeah, that's right.

That's who it was.

Yeah, and then so the kids lose this opportunity and immediately turn to a life of crime.

Just no,

just immediately start selling drugs and stealing sneakers on the bus.

It's the most like brutal pivot of, like, we can't be in the video.

Fine, we're fucking criminals.

Where'd you get a gun?

God damn it.

As soon as I got turned down, I had one disappointment and I got a gun.

The dance studio keeps artillery.

Yeah.

And so these kids, there's this fucking thing.

Again, this movie has too much plot in the end.

It's like this kid, there's a thing where the kid goes to jail.

And it's like, is that what Juvie is like?

Do they give them orange jumpsuits?

Yeah, he's got a kind of a big kid, orange jumpsuits.

But did either of us visit him in jail?

Ever go to Juvie?

No, I i never went to juvie did you go to juvie would never i i never went to juvie i mean i go to iss sometimes what's that in school suspension okay did you wear an orange jumpsuit no no you should have i know i went there like once but i always thought that that you go to that and then if you're really bad they take you from in-school suspension right to juvie straight to juvie but i don't know if maybe people in the you know i'm in our reddit thread could tell us i'm almost positive that you don't wear a full-on orange jumpsuit when you are a minor.

Imagining little tiny jumpsuits for children.

I know adorable, like little

baby criminals.

So, yeah, so he's the littlest criminal who gets out in like a day or two because he's in the final show.

I don't know.

What's the fucking timeline of this kid's incarceration?

Whatever.

So there's okay.

Then we have the twin

problems at the end, one of which gets resolved and one of them doesn't.

The dance, the community center has a leak and is not up to code.

We do not do anything about that.

It is not mentioned after this.

But honey also wants to buy a dance studio and she like puts up the money before she has it.

And then she gets like fired from the genuine thing and doesn't have the money.

So what's the solution?

They're going to put on a fucking show.

And also, fuck the community center.

We've just forgotten about it.

Yeah, never mind.

Never mind.

Mom's business.

Just had a leak.

Oh, yeah, and she invites her mom to the show later, and her mom's like, yay.

Yeah,

fuck.

I know.

Very weird.

Feels like they could have dropped this one, you know?

Okay, so there's this fun,

fun scene where they're like the flyer in the whole town trying to get them to come to this show.

Mike has a venue.

Good old fucking Mike.

You can always count on that guy.

So they get a venue for this final dance show.

But while while this is going on,

people in the hip-hop world are going crazy for the choreography of Honey.

Everybody wants Honey to choreograph their video, including Missy Elliott.

Missy Elliott is in this.

The only person who says anything funny.

I know.

She is so funny.

She's like on one.

She's on a tear everywhere she goes.

And I love her.

Yeah, she has two little scenes, and they're both great.

It's great that she shows up.

She's like demanding that Honey choreograph her new video.

Um,

and then the director's like, What about the dance enemy?

And Honey's and Missy Elliott not having it, does not want the dance enemy to choreograph her.

Dance enemy, honey.

Um, so they, anyway, so they put on this show, it goes great.

The kid who went to jail is just out in time for the show.

Um,

this show, this final dance show, is packed full of people who I would call the oldest teen.

Oldest teen.

We see

there are like two kids who are in the front initially and who peel off and leave the stage so these 35-year-olds can dance.

Yes.

This is like supposed to be like for kids anyway.

And the kids that were in the original like music video that you know they were supposed to film.

Yeah.

Those kids are the best dancers in the entire movie.

Like

those children are amazing.

And it's like you're watching, you go, now this is what good dancing is.

I don't know what everyone else is confused about.

Yeah, so the final dance show may be a little underwhelming, but in the world of the movie, everybody loves it.

It's a huge success.

Yeah, mom's there.

Mom gives her a hug.

The best part about that dance performance was when that really, really little kid did a couple laps in his Heelys.

Oh, yeah, that was cool.

He just kind of went wee.

That's so cool.

Yeah, you didn't do any moves, just wheeled around.

It was cute.

Okay, we are almost to the end of this inspiring rags to riches classic.

Yep.

With a shockingly abrupt ending that we're going to tell you about right after this.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, Me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcast.

We're back.

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We are talking about the thrilling finale of Honey.

So as as they're celebrating this dance performance, which is six minutes long, and everybody, how much people pay to get into this?

This movie was long as hell.

It felt that way.

Yeah.

I know.

Definitely, yeah, felt infinite.

But while at the end of this, yeah, five or six minute dance performance,

we see this exterior shot.

of the the wherever the wherever Mike got them was a church or something to get the dance to do the show And Missy Elliott pulls up in the limo.

And then we get an ending that I would call more abrupt than the ending of No Country for Old Miss.

Yes, I agree.

There's this fucking it's over moment because, like, you don't see Missy Elliott meet her because obviously they didn't have her for that long.

Like, they didn't have Jessica Alba and Missy Elliott for the same amount of time, so they can't meet.

But Missy Elliott just pulls up, and I guess we're supposed to assume that, you know, her career is about to take off.

And then, kind of over the credits, we see

Missy Elliott

like talking about a video they're going to make, but it's not hers.

It's this other group.

So maybe she's just producing it.

I was kind of looking forward to that.

It's this other group who are fine.

I don't recognize them.

But they're doing this, you know,

you know, kind of good but not super memorable pop video.

And you see the, you know, the kind of the Chiron that was always on the side of videos when they were on TV that shows like the, you know, the name of the artist, the name of the album.

But instead of a director, it just says choreographed by honey.

You know how they always put the choreographer, the credits of these music videos?

It's so dumb.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

Very strange and

incredibly abrupt.

Yes.

And, but I think happy.

Yes, I think so.

I think everything worked out for the honey gang.

And not for the community gang.

The honey gang.

I love that.

But for the community.

For the community, the community at large, the community to which honey belongs.

Yes.

I think this did pretty well, like,

in theaters, though.

Well, yeah, the Iraq war was going on.

Sure, people needed a distraction.

Well, Wikipedia says the budget was $18 million and the box office was $65.2 million.

Jesus Christ.

And they cranked out sequels, so obviously.

And, you know, in this movie, like, we can talk about this a little bit more when we like assess the movie.

But, like,

I do think you're right, Emily.

I think this is, like, a bad movie classic to a certain generation.

Like, I think that this is, like, a cult classic in a weird way.

Yeah.

I

quite get it, but, like, I acknowledge that it is, like, to some people, this is kind of like...

a wacko classic for some reason.

It is a wacko classic, but it's like,

I think they wanted us to just care about the story more than the dancing.

But the dancing is the whole thing.

And it's just, you know.

Yeah,

the whole thing would be so much more fun if the dancing was better.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

We are kind of sharing some final thoughts.

But first, we got to do the honk watch.

Yay.

Kids, honk watch.

Okay.

I mean, we talked about Mike.

I think we're all kind of Sympatico on Love and Mike and think that maybe he's the best thing about the movie.

I think so, but I just

to give credit where credit is due.

Please.

The hunk of the movie for me is going to be Jessica Alba.

That's fair.

Because

she's, let's be real, at least in this movie, not a great actress, not a great dancer.

Yeah, sure.

She's been, I'm sure she's good in something.

Oh, she makes soap.

Does she make soap?

How's the soap?

Yeah, it's pretty good.

It's pretty good.

Pretty good.

She makes like

baby soap products, too, that are like supposed to be super gentle.

It's like very popular.

I'll look it up as you talk about her husband.

Well, so you know, she's not a great actress, she's not a great singer, at least, or sorry, she's probably also not a great singer, but she's not a great dancer.

Not a triple threat, Jessica Alba.

But her one big, big threat is that she's one of the most beautiful women alive.

Well,

and

she truly isn't even count that as a threat, yeah.

I mean, it's very, you know, she may not be a triple threat, but she is

got one mega threat, and she is a nuclear bomb level hot.

Sure.

And so I have to give the hunk watch to her because while she can't dance,

I just kept looking at her.

And I was like,

pretty lady.

She's very magnetic, we'll say that for sure.

That's right.

Six big threats, right in the ab region.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The abs were insane.

She has great abs, a little skinny waist, beautiful lips.

Everything about her made me fall in love with her again.

And I would like to hold her, but I'm not Derek Jeter.

Yes.

So her company is Honest Beauty and Baby Company.

She's Honest?

Yes.

Have you been scrubbing that baby with Jessica Albaing soap this time?

I've been Jessica albuming my baby this entire time.

Yo.

She's, oh my God, she's a billionaire then.

Yeah.

She's got to be.

That's crazy.

I mean, they they even make like diapers and stuff.

They do.

I use honest diapers.

I use their

shampoo, their conditioner.

No way.

Yes.

What else do they have?

Bubble bath.

Listen, she doesn't have to appear in Honey 5 into the Honeyverse because she's like...

She's got the soap.

She's an actual businesswoman.

Yes.

Holy shit.

That's crazy.

That makes her the hottest.

Yeah.

She's the hottest businesswoman alive, and I love her.

And I use her soap on my baby.

There you go.

Honey's dad seemed like a nice guy.

Honey's dad seemed like a bad guy.

He seemed nice.

Yeah, nice blue-collar dad.

Her mom's grumpy, but that's because her business is failing, and she can't get home.

Do ballet.

Yeah, yeah.

She'll fix the roof of the community center.

Honey's mom existed so she could have the one line of hip-hop dancing won't put no food on no table.

And we just,

it's very necessary to have that character.

It is.

Otherwise,

you'd think it would put food on that table.

I would love to have a movie where somebody's pursuing their unlikely dreams, and the parents are like, Yes, yeah, that'd be fun.

Supportive parents movie.

I felt like if any movie would do that, it was this one for the first two acts because there was no conflict in the first two.

Yeah, there sure isn't.

I know it is a strange, just like series of things happening.

Yeah, I do think it's funny because this is like also the high-risk, high-reward, you know, plot lines.

In a lot of movies like this, someone starts out like a heart of gold, good person, and then they get hardcore success, and then drug problem.

Like every relationship falls apart.

She only got to the moderate success.

Like, she just got a little couple ahead, like steps ahead.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, I kind of like that.

Yeah,

we see a rise to the middle.

We see a

rocket ship to the middle.

We're jumping the gun a little.

Rocket ship to health insurance.

So, yeah, let's let's we did the hunk watch.

We have thoughts on honey.

We're going to share them right after this.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

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Same episode, actually.

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Episode 64.

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We're going to rank honey on a scale of one to ten super loud commercials.

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Okay, we are going to rank honey on a scale of one to ten super loud commercials.

Emily, you want to start us off?

Okay.

I'm giving it a five.

Okay.

I had fun.

Like, it wasn't boring.

It was like cheerful, which I I think we need a little bit of cheerfulness at the moment.

You know, that's true.

But the dancing was just nothingness.

It was like, I don't know.

It was like looking at just like, I was angry that whoever made this thought we were stupid.

Like, it made me mad.

But other than that, I love the whole other stuff.

I think she's beautiful.

Makai Pfeiffer is hot as hell.

Those kids were adorable.

So, yeah, five, five, five stars.

Or five.

Fuck, what is our show?

Five really loud, dumbass commercials.

Five honest beauty and faby commercials.

Five super loud Ozempic commercials.

Yes.

Matt, what do you think?

Honey, one to ten.

I'm giving this a straight two.

Okay.

It was hard to watch and

wasn't fun.

I didn't take any pleasure in viewing it.

And

dance movies for me, I'm always impressed at how much I do enjoy them, even though the conceit is this is basically just going to be a narrative in service of scenes where people are dancing really well.

And

for me, this was like, you know, when you're a kid and you go to see fine art for the first time,

and you're just like, what the fuck do adults do with their time?

Right.

And you, because you just don't understand like paintings or fucking.

I'd say that's more of the the modern art stuff, though.

Sure.

No, but like any kind of like arts, whether it's dancing or whatnot, you're just like, this boring.

I want to watch cartoons.

I was watching this going, I feel like a kid again in that I hate art.

And the dancing was

incomprehensible and bad and not fun.

But Jessica Alba was very beautiful.

And if she wanted to be

like, if she ever got divorced.

Continue.

And I ever got divorced.

And And we met,

you know, somewhere, business meetings or whatever.

Yeah.

Because I could do business.

Yeah.

Not into club?

Yeah, probably not into club.

Probably not in the club.

But then, you know, maybe we could talk.

Okay.

Yeah,

I'll review the...

I don't think this is, I don't think my review,

you know, is a universal review of honey.

This is a personal review of honey.

This is what honey is to me.

And I think to me, I am also at Matt at two.

I think honey

stinks, uh, but I understand that, like, if you are, like, super into this music, right?

Like, if you, if this was your music growing up, like, it's probably wild to see all these people like acting and cameoing and stuff like that.

Sure, and yeah, I do understand that it has like like good, bad movie energy.

And yeah, maybe you like sought it as sleepover at the right time, maybe you went to see it to distract yourself from you know, um, looking for WMDs that weren't there.

And yeah, maybe I can see how it, you know, even kind of like

that's that football movie we watched.

Varsity Blues.

Varsity Blues.

Yeah, if you like saw this at the right time, I get how you're like attached to it.

And I do kind of like that it has a bunch of sequels.

That's kind of funny.

But yeah, as far as like, was this a blast for me personally?

It was not.

So yeah, but I would like to hear from

people who are in the honey fandom and want to be able to get a lot of stuff.

Please talk to us about it.

Let us know.

All right, that was our review of honey.

We want to remind you one more time, go to maximumfund.org slash join to check out our bonus episodes, including our very recent hot and fresh review of the BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries starring Colin Firth.

And also, we are on a quest to get 100 new five-star reviews.

So go over to to your podcast app of choice.

Rank us five stars.

We want to get 100 by July 16th.

Yeah, anybody else got anything to plug?

Emily, you doing anything?

No.

All right.

Matt, what do you got?

July 5th, I'll be at the Ice House in Pasadena.

Please come out, see me, do stand-up comedy.

It's fun.

You'll have fun.

Come, see me and my wife.

Also, Gareth Reynolds will be there and a couple other really great comedians.

Yeah, if you are in New Orleans, I will be at the Galaxy Con Pop Culture Convention July 11th through 13th.

Come on and see me.

Get some comics signed.

And let me know which restaurant with a cartoon shrimp on the sign to eat at.

I want to only eat at restaurants that have cartoon shrimps on the sign while I'm in New Orleans.

So let me know your favorite.

Come hang out at GalaxyCon July 11th through 13th.

And And buckle up.

I'm coming to San Diego Comic-Con with some

really, really cool stuff that I will be announcing on a future episode.

That's the big Comic-Con.

That's the Big Comic-Con.

It's a real chunky one.

So come out.

We're going to be doing some super fun stuff.

Love to meet the Free With Ads gang.

IRL.

Okay.

Tune in next week when our movie will be Street Fighter 1994.

Haduka.

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