Ep.#457 – Red One, with Linda Holmes

On this episode, we discuss Red One, the movie where we learn how Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, and other old stars got into this mess or whatever, right?

Right.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

And surprise, surprise, who's here?

Elliot Kalen.

Oh, wow.

You look different.

Yeah, I'm feeling good.

I'm feeling good.

Elliot, you know, I don't know.

He's got some nonsense, some bullshit going on.

And by that, it means a busy, busy life.

You know, like a busy social life.

He's just goofing around on a beach somewhere.

He's on a beach having a banana daiquiri.

No, we've got Linda Holmes back, of course.

Of course we do.

Who better?

I'm so

delighted to be here on my dog's favorite podcast.

Now, I'm glad you're doing it.

Your dog's dog's favorite podcast.

That's right.

There was this, you put an Instagram story up about this, actually, about how

you

the dog had gotten used to hearing the podcast yes in bed and so yes now if the dog gets lonely if you're not ready to go to bed at the same time as the dog it's true we are there to

i i have a tendency to use the back catalog of some of my favorite podcasts as my kind of like soothing audio you know i've done this with like various shows but i do it a lot with this show so the dog's very used to it this is calming downtime and so if he you know if he's in the if he's upstairs and he's kind of you know, grumpy and whining at me, I just pick up my phone and I play a little episode on the sono speaker up in the bedroom for him and he settles down right away.

It's just, it just brings him a sense of calm.

The funny thing is, that's, that's also how I calm Dan down.

I put him in on the couch.

I fire up an episode of his favorite podcast, Talk Tua.

And it just puts him right to sleep.

Now, what's, should we sing the dog a lullaby or something?

I feel like

some sort of targeted.

No, it's per it's just what it is.

It's just perfectly what it is.

Yeah, I feel like with Elliot not here, all of a sudden we're a singing podcast.

He just, he just wants, he just wants it exactly as it is.

Cool.

Okay.

Well, that's good.

Uh-huh.

You can't change things, Dan.

Friend to the ant.

Don't try to exert control.

But I am here with my, I am no Elliot Kalen, but I am here with my willing heart and my list of famous people I have seen on Broadway.

Oh, great.

That's excellent.

Well, so we're going to talk about Red One today.

And part of the reason we were going to do it now was for it to be Christmas in July.

And it was only as I was sitting down to watch that I realized that because of the schedule, this, of course, will come out at the beginning of August.

So that reason has gone away.

But the reason still exists that we promised.

that we would have Linda Beck to defend this, I assume her favorite movie.

That's what we do.

That's what this show show is all about: bringing guests on to defend a movie they like.

That's right.

That's right.

I, I, when I was on here talking, I think when I was talking about trap with you guys, right?

The Josh Hartnett classic trap.

Um, I mentioned we all liked it, yeah, right?

Yeah,

I mean, I think Linda liked at least.

Yeah, I liked at least, and I still think he's very good in it.

I still think he's very good.

And by the way, if you have not seen him in Fight or Flight, it is a killer.

You must see it.

It's like, does he get trapped on a plane?

uh yes and it is essentially josh hardnett fighting assassins for like an hour and a half and it is i would say 49 john wick and 51 shark nado plus or minus two percent right and he's got like he's got like bleach blonde die job right perfect yeah and at one point he's like he's like high on toad venom there's like it's a it is a whackadoodle movie and i loved it closing in on like crank territory right there yeah and it's incredibly bloody I enjoyed it very, very greatly.

But anyway, when I was here talking about Trep, I mentioned that I had seen Red One and I had enjoyed it in 4DX

being thrown around like a sack of potatoes or presents.

Or

presence, exactly.

And so I find myself back here having watched it again to see whether I still like it.

Without the additional D.

Yes, without the additional D and also without the timing of the fact that the first time I saw this movie, it was a week after the election

in November of 2024.

So it was like the end of a long season.

And, you know, I work in a newsroom.

And so, you know, just like a heavy time for people, you know, I was probably going into it hoping that it would be like a good time.

So I was curious when I got into it this time, whether I would still like it without the pressure of, you know,

wanting desperately to have a good time.

Yeah.

I mean, the world's gotten so much better since then.

Yeah, since everything is cool now.

Everything.

I had imagined you were going to say, like, oh, you know, like, and of course, the first time I saw it was a time that there was a gas leak in my home.

I was high on toad venom.

It wouldn't, it wouldn't have.

No, I went out to an actual movie theater.

I got air blown in my face.

It was, it was.

Interrupt the ability to snack in the movie.

I've never done 4DX.

I would say that I went to see Twisters

in 4DX, which, you know, like left 4DX and then came back to it because it was like everyone wanted to see it that way.

That group was great in 4DX.

I mean, we had a lot of fun other than like, it was one of the wildest screenings in terms of like weird shit going on around us that distracted us for the first half of the movie.

But once those people were thrown out, it was fine.

But I can tell you that Audrey, for some reason, decided that this was the time to get nachos.

And

you're getting thrown around.

It really, like, people think it's just going to be like a vibrating chair, like a massage chair or something.

No, this thing throws you around.

And it is serious.

Fortunately, at the beginning of that screening, I did find the button on the arm of the chair that said water so that I could turn it off.

Because

listen, I'm a good sport.

I'm a game girl.

I don't want dirty movie theater water sprayed in my face.

That's, that's not, that's, that's over the line.

That's over the line.

So I just got the, you know, the chair throwing me around and the, uh, and the, and the breeze blowing in my face.

There were some snow splosions that happened.

Um, and there are these things that like poke you in the back, uh, not entirely pleasant, but yeah.

So that was my first experience of red one.

Now I got to enjoy it at home the way, believe it or not, I think it was originally intended to be.

Yes, this was supposed to first be

just just an amazon release and then i i read on the wikipedia page that the rock saw oppenheimer and said red one in imax would be a game changer yeah that was his quote it would be a game changer that's what i heard too

he's right uh well no uh red one in theaters was a bomb it was however a huge, you know, hugely viewed on Amazon Prime.

I don't quite understand, understand, though, still the economics of that idea because it's like at this point, people have these services or they don't have these services to do like a huge movie as like a loss leader to get people in the door.

I don't know who's subscribing to be like, I got to see that red one.

I mean, the only time we've subscribed for something is when Poker Face came out on Peacock and we subscribed to Peacock for that.

And that's good.

Still to this day, maintain that subscription.

That's worthwhile.

It's not a bad service.

People make fun of that one for some reason, but I feel like it's got.

Yeah.

I mean,

the UI on all of them is terrible.

Yes.

Sure.

But so it's hard to complain as one being worse than the others.

Yeah.

And I think that's the thing.

That one is the Traders, too, right?

Traders is great.

Star watches the fuck out of the Traders.

Although I feel like Traders US is, despite outside of Alan Cumming and his little outfits

and attitude, he's got a lot of attitude.

Outside of that, I feel like it's not as good as the other ones.

Like UK Traders is awesome.

I would agree with that.

Australian Traders is awesome.

I think on the whole, the fact that the U.S.

Traders is much more interested in celebrities and famouses.

Yeah, well, specifically like people.

Specifically, reality show people,

I think, hurts it.

But yeah, I mean, listen, Alan coming in as a loud fits is a lot.

Yes.

It takes you quite a ways.

It gets me through.

It's true.

It gets you quite a way, especially after they added his dog.

I mean, come on, man.

But I will say, as what I promise will be my last piece of wind up, I do have a long history of being a liker of made-for-streaming action block bumpers.

They're not like blockbusters, but they're like, maybe they'll bump your block a little bit.

Like they're not, like, I was the person who liked, I liked Red Notice more than most people.

I liked The Gray Man more than most people.

I liked

the Kevin Hart.

Heist movie Lyft, which was on Netflix, which I think no one saw.

You haven't even said that existing.

Like Carrion or something, something that was genuinely like Carry On was good.

People genuinely like that, and I like that.

G20 with Viola Davis as the president.

Oh, yeah, yeah,

I like that too.

I mean, the thing is, is I would vote twice just for those shoulders alone.

I mean, she is yoked.

So, so I am sort of like, I have a history for whatever reason of being kind of in the bag for these

cheap, disposable action movies.

I don't know why.

So, this is all the history that I bring to Red One.

Okay.

Well, let's dig into Red One.

I'm going to be.

Now the gloves are coming off.

I'm going to be driving this.

Good luck.

Apologies if I ever get too detailed.

You guys can, without Elliot here, though.

Already pretty detailed.

I'll do my best to interrupt constantly.

Okay.

So at the beginning, we get a little preface where the kid version who will be Chris Evans characters takes a key from his relatives.

He's exactly alike to you.

Well, I kind of liked that they didn't like try and find a kid that looked exactly like because like i wish they had stuck chris evans head on a little kid's body

he could do it he's got the range he does have the range that's true um what they should do is like do a opposite materialist and make him six inches shorter

do they make him taller in materialist not

oh who Pedro yeah you haven't watched

materialists yet you know I was all

I was all in for it like you know I liked Past Lives not as much as you,

but I liked it and I liked all those people.

And then there was like

such sort of mixed word on it, and there were other things I just never got around.

Okay.

Interesting.

Interesting.

It's only okay.

It's only okay.

But it's got, you know, I can't miss a DJ theater movie, you know.

That's what you got.

My favorite crazy person.

Did we see Madam Webb together, Stuart?

Or was it?

I watched it it by myself, and a guy was like, one for Madam Webb?

Yep.

So, okay.

Young kid Chris Evans steals a key from a relative to show his cousins that Santa doesn't exist.

There's a cache of presents upstairs, and we get a two-short cameo from Mark Evan Jackson as his uncle who insists that Santa is real.

So

this does bypass my problem with a lot of like Santa is real

movies where the adults don't like the adults don't think Santa is real.

And then I'm like, well, where did all those presents come from?

But anyway, we flash forward 30 years.

So what maintains the economy if Santa's real?

Who's buying all the stuff?

Well, you still buy presents for non-Santa presents.

There's the ones from your parents.

I don't.

Santa.

I just wait for Santa to show up.

I think Santa would have to have like a sideline in crime to obtain the funds to run all this.

Well, yeah, and that's the kind of in the weeds that this movie gets regarding the science and reality of the Santa situation.

But go on.

We go forward 30 years.

Adult Chris Evans, a.k.a.

Jack O'Malley, aka the wolf is some kind of tracker, super hacker.

He's MacGyvering, a distraction.

I'm like a bad guy.

He's like a bad guy.

Yeah, he's a bad guy, but for someone who apparently is like a criminal who does work for all these mercenaries all over the world,

he's more of like a

comedy bad guy.

He steals candy from a baby, literally.

Yeah, he's got

a big city

New York accent of some kind that he's put on.

East Coast.

Anyway, he's MacGyvering his way into

a security center to implant a USB for some reason as a job to pay off gambling debts.

As you say, he steals some candy from a baby, and then we get the title drop, Red One.

That's when we stand up and cheer, right?

Yeah, immediately.

It's like the flashes enter the Speed Force.

And we get to see the titular Red One immediately.

He's J.K.

Simmons.

He's the real Santa.

He's a jacked Santa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You see,

I have to say, like, if they're going to use a thing we know about J.K.

Simmons as a quality of Santa Claus, like they went with lifting.

I would maybe have gone with singing the fugue for tin horns from guys and dolls.

Like I might have like incorporated that into Santa, but they go with the lifting.

Now, I, one of my friends commented on this movie that it was like if Spike TV was trying to get in on the Hallmark movie thing.

And I think part of that is like this jacked Santa

thing.

So yeah, you see J.K.

Simmons working out, which is a thing we all know, right?

From like Instagram and like.

Well, I mean, it's hard to miss, I feel like, because at this point,

yeah, he's made a point of it.

I actually did not know until just like this month that he was a singer, that he'd been on Broadway.

I saw one of those like YouTube,

I'm talking about all my roles things.

And he was talking about how like when he was looked at for whiplash, uh, the you know, the director didn't know that he had a background in music.

Yeah, oh, he's got a beautiful voice, yeah.

So that was exciting.

I immediately sent Audrey videos of him singing.

He was wonderful, he was in this, like, really, really successful revival of Guys and Dolls that Peter Gallagher was in, and Nathan Lane was in.

Oh, that one.

Yeah, the big one.

I mean, I feel like,

was that a bigger surprise than finding out that Matts Mickelson was a ballet dancer?

Maybe.

I mean, because Simmons is known for

being a gruff dude.

Did it give you the tummy butterflies

finding out Mads Mickelson was a ballet dancer?

Yeah, not the same.

He's got that grace.

Anyway, so

he's posing as a mall Santa to get out amongst the kids, hear what's up in the world.

Some asshole influencer tries to cut the line, and we meet The Rock,

who's his security, Santa's security, with a totally normal name, Callum Drift.

Hell yeah.

Oh, hell yeah.

That's like, man, that's like a, that's like a first draft D and D character name.

We get a little.

First Drift.

My mistake, sorry.

Elliot's not here to call me on it.

So he backs the influencer off after, you know, his shift as Maul Santa.

We get a little talk back and forth.

We learn that The Rock is losing his Christmas spirit and wants to quit.

Retiring, yeah.

Santa's motorcade goes to the airport.

Yeah, the whole thing is very like

an action movie, like dealing with a VIP or a president.

And like, they're like, The Rock is like Santa's Secret Service, right?

Yeah, I know.

He's treated as a head of state.

Santa is sort of.

Yes, very much.

And there's so many people involved in this fucking process.

They like,

when they take off on their sleigh, there's like fighter jets following them.

Like,

how, what's going on?

How do they keep this secret?

They're just really, they're just really good.

Awesome.

Yeah, I guess that must be it.

At this point, why do they keep this secret?

Like, why do they let it be

thought by

many, apparently, that Santa does not exist if he is, in fact,

someone who exists and gives presence.

You would think a movie that spends so much time with the logistics of everything else would take a second to think about that part.

Anyway, well, so as he takes off,

just because it'll become important at the end, Santa says, Cavalome, his magic version of mush to his flying reindeer.

Is this in canon, guys?

Is this

not that?

I don't know.

I don't know that.

I looked up some other stuff that we'll get into later, but

not

that word.

Yeah, you looked up Bonnie Hunt feet.

i would add by the way the reindeer are also quite jacked the the reindeer are also they have been drinking a lot of uh mountain dew or what's the new one what's the one that

well no

no i'm like what's the like is it surge not surge but what's the one that like uh that some like influencers are honking i don't know oh man i don't crunch i don't know that much about influence influencers and soda pop buddy i have a i have a friend with like a son who spends all his time on YouTube, and so he's very into YouTube-based food and drink.

All I know about influencers and liquids is that they use expensive bottled water to do everything.

Yes, right?

So, Chris Evidence, Chris Evidence.

Now, that is a thing that's going to stay with me that I'm going to work on.

Sometimes I think I have some sort of a fascia and I get worried.

Ellie and I text about it all the time.

Really?

No, no.

Chris Evans sends some coordinates to some mysterious.

And Santa arrives at the North Pole, which is, of course, a bunch of CGI mush, just grey CGI.

Sounds like winter Dubai, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically.

Yeah.

Creatures are getting ready for Christmas.

We get Mrs.

Claus, the aforementioned Bonnie Hunt, another person who's not in the movie long enough.

Yeah.

And so The Rock, we get follow-up on him wanting to quit.

He hands in his resignation letter, and he and Santa have a heart-to-heart during weightlifting.

Yeah, and I'm like, wow, that's a serious overhead press he's doing there.

I'm like, oh, he's going to squat three plates.

That's pretty good.

That's like the max I've ever done.

And then he just starts overhead pressing it.

And I'm like, there's no way.

He's got to be magic.

Yeah.

But then they like, later on, they make a comment that it's okay that he eats cookies because he burns so many calories or something on Christmas Eve.

And I'm like, what the fuck, dude?

He's magic.

You don't need to talk about calories and shit.

Yeah, I guess this is like a reason to explain why he's,

you know, a jacked Santa rather than the traditional jolly round man that we all know.

But I don't know.

Give me a rounder one.

He can be jacked and round at the same time.

Yeah.

So, yeah, Santa doesn't want The Rock to go.

a, they talk about it, but this is the first year that there are more people on the naughty list than the nice list.

And Callum Drew

is fed up.

Yeah,

like, what about during slavery, dude?

That's crazy.

And

Santa says that they can't change people, just see who they really are and believe in them.

Will this have some thematic?

significance later in the in the movie who knows can't imagine probably not uh meanwhile an armed mercenary team are approaching the North Pole.

Like it's the beginning of Scrooge,

and The Rock notices that there's something wrong with some of the security lights, and they can't find Red One, a.k.a.

Santa.

He's been taken with Nariya Liam Neeson in sight.

There's more sludgy CGI where there's a chase.

He catches up to the sled, but Santa's not in it.

Uh-oh.

Yeah,

Charlene spent like 10 minutes asking me my thoughts on when there's sequences where

The Rock is like sliding down like slides and stuff.

Yes, like he's on a

mixture track.

They're like, she's like, so do they film him like pretending to be sliding down something?

I'm like, I don't know.

I think The Rock is one of those performers that's really easy to animate because he doesn't have any hair or anything.

So he's like a default guy, like default strength build, basically.

You told Charlene, like, hold on, let me text Todd Vaziri.

Todd,

how they make rock slide.

Well, the thing that I think is interesting about this that I was thinking about while I was watching this opening is that like, I think all the effects, like in that part where they're, he's outside and he's sliding on these tracks and he's falling.

Like all that stuff I think looks terrible.

And yet I think some of the, not all, I think some of the like creature stuff is cool.

Like I like the, I like the big security polar bear.

I like that guy.

Garcia.

Garcia.

And a lot of of the non-effects-based parts of this movie look better than this type of movie usually do.

Like Jake Casden's the director, and he's a reliable

journeyman director.

It's crazy because he doesn't have like a famous dad who's ever been or any famous relatives, right?

Exactly.

He got there, just got there the old-fashioned way.

But no, I think like parts of it look really, really cheap and terrible.

And other parts of it, I was like, yeah, okay.

Like the, you know, Garcia and like I said, the reindeer, I think are like pretty cool.

But then other parts of it is like sub-sci-fi channel.

Well, I liked a lot of the monsters in Krampus's uh cavern of uh weirdos, yeah, yeah, and I felt like a lot of those were masks, unless the CGI is so good, and I'm getting so old that I can't tell the difference.

No, it could be, it could be, and I wouldn't say it looked like great per se, but I found the killer snowman that come up later on pretty funny.

Oh, yeah, those guys are, those guys are cool and kind of

and they're all kind of hot frosties, too.

They are

hot frosties.

They have well-defined buttons.

It's true.

Okay, well, Lucy Liu appears in the movie, and I'm glad to see her because I've been watching Elementary with Audrey.

Have I talked about how much I think Johnny Lee Miller's performance is inspired by Sam the Eagle from the Muppets?

You have not, please.

Because he doesn't turn his neck at all when he acts.

I love it.

It's true.

That's true.

That's like his whole thing.

I love it.

Well, she appears on the screen in the North Pole situation room to yell at the rock about Santa being kidnapped and to say that they picked up some kind of tracking device that pings the North Pole that they've traced it to the wolf.

So back to Chris Evans, who's down and out.

He's being reamed over the phone by his kids' mom, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, the waitress from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

He's a bad dad hacker dad.

We learned that, among other things, he needs to learn how to be a better father.

That's going to be his arc.

She wants him to pick up their son, Dylan, from school.

He's in trouble for doing some shenanigans and sort of follow in his dad's footsteps.

And they have a conversation in the car.

It sort of makes it clear that while...

While Chris Evans isn't the greatest role model, they still have a pretty good relationship in that he's a teen boy who actually talks to his dad, wants to talk to his dad.

And the kid mentions that there's this winter jazz band pageant thing that night playing off like it's dumb, but it's clear that he wants his dad to be there,

although he doesn't get the message.

The wolf is not listening.

No.

It's too early in the arc for listening.

Yeah, yeah.

At his apartment, he's surprised by a bunch of law enforcement and gets to show off some of his Captain America moves.

He almost gets away, but is zapped.

by Lucy, who does a terrible job of interrogating him in the next scene with with a lot of vague questions or statements like, we know what you did and who hired you to find him.

Yeah.

Which

for a man who like does a lot of this work seems very nonspecific.

I do like that they zap him with these special guns that you have to like touch somebody with to knock them out.

And then they have to touch him with a different gun to wake them up.

Yes.

Yes.

It's efficient.

It's efficient.

And I think like, I think the reason why she does the interrogation that way, the reason why it's written that way, is that what they're really going for in this interrogation is him gradually realizing what's going on they're they're going for him gradually being like

what like what are you talking about who are you asking about because naturally he's eventually going to figure out that they're talking about santa claus yeah and so i think if she came in like to if she came in being like why did you help kidnap santa claus you wouldn't have that slow like him figuring out that that's what she's talking about which is kind of where they're going i think with the interrogation interrogation i yeah i think that's where they're going i don't think it particularly works because we know this is a movie about santa claus getting kidnapped um yeah you know that but he doesn't know that i i i understand but i feel like spending time wasting our time doing this cliche less interesting um

well uh I like the idea.

I didn't realize that they had a different wake-up gun.

I like the idea.

They're like, oh, sorry, I left the wake-up gun back at the office.

We just have the sleepy gun.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff where he's like mentioning things and they're all be like, oh, wow, is that the headless horseman?

And they're like, yeah, he's real.

Ho-hum, boring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that happens at the

bunker that's sort of the headquarters of M-O-R-A, MORA, the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority, where Lucy Liu is presumably the chief of that

operation director.

And yeah.

Evans, we skip over him being like, this is crazy by him seeing the headless horseman, which is pretty good proof right away that

creatures and beasties exist.

Um, and he learns that he accidentally helped kidnap Santa, and The Rock shows up.

He introduces himself as the head of ELF,

which uh is enforcements, logistics, and fortification.

ELF.

I get it,

I get it, guys.

Electric light orchestra.

They play electric forks.

So we get some of the film's most cliched writing in this scene.

Like this is like,

I'm going to spoil some of my reaction.

Like

some of this movie worked for me, but the main problem is how many like cliches are piled on cliches in this movie, like just on a screenplay level.

And we get Evans saying the line, are you saying Santa Claus has been kidnapped?

And also he gets to say, slower for the trailer, please.

They're talking about him and he gets to say, I'm right here.

Oh, yeah.

They did do that one.

That's true.

But, you know,

he has no loyalties.

He finds people.

So Lucy Lou decides just to pay him to find the guy he helped lose.

And we've got our mismatched buddy team for this action comedy.

And I want to say, like,

this movie could have been so much more insufferable if Chris Evans' character was Ryan Reynolds.

Like, this feels like a Ryan Reynolds character.

It does, doesn't it?

Evans does everything right that Reynolds would do wrong.

Like,

in so much as the same thing.

Think about how bad the materialists would have been if it had been Brian Reynolds.

Oh, man.

In a way, I kind of wish they did that swap swap so it would

actually become like serious bad movie.

Yeah.

I mean, I think like when I watched Chris Evans, when I became a fan of Chris Evans in his time in the MCU,

I was very like, I am super into Chris Evans handsome dork, right?

But it has turned out later that I am way more into Chris Evans

hot dirt bag.

Like that is even better to me.

That's sort of what he's doing in Materialists.

It's what he's doing in this.

It's kind of what he was doing in Grayman.

Like, when he's a dirtbag, I'm very, very into it, as I am in this, in this movie.

Or, you know, an asshole.

Like, that's a good gear for him, like, Knives Out or

Star Pilgrim.

Or Grayman again.

Yeah.

That, too.

Oh,

such a hot dirtbag.

Well, of course, you know, a pro like the wolf has

actually does have some idea of where this, the, the the money man who asked him to do this is he put a tracker on something or other so they go they they they need to go to aruba the rock reveals that toy stores are transit stations for elf they can zap people all around the world so they go to aruba and he has a by the way as you were saying toy stores are transit stations i'm literally like nodding along happily stewart is shaking his

ignoring

yeah they like walk into this massive toy store and i'm like do these these even exist anymore?

I thought they were all out of business.

And then they go through, they use a special key and go through an employee closet that connects to a different, to a closet in an Aruba toy store.

And they, in the process, they scoop up a whole bunch of toys, which they will later use.

The Rock's arm bracer to

distort a web store.

Alter the reality and make it a real thing.

Yeah.

This is a, I'm somewhere between the two of you because I'm like, well, if you're going to make this movie and I don't recommend it, but if you're going to make it,

like you got to do some of this stuff, right?

You got to be like, okay,

let's like, what are the Christmas things that we can work with here?

But it also does feel like they put up a big whiteboard and they're like, Christmas, go, toys, toy stores.

What do you do with them?

Like,

we got to go down the checklist, you know?

I do like the reoccurring.

There's a, this movie got at least three laughs out of me.

And one of them was when they're in the mall in Philadelphia and there's a woman angrily complaining on the phone about essential oils.

And then they end up going into a mall in Germany and there's a woman in German complaining about essential oils.

Yes.

And Chris Evans clocks it, so I guess he speaks German.

That's an unknown.

Yeah, interesting character trait.

But anyway, Santa is being held by our villain.

Turns out our villain is Kiernan Shipka, Miss Madman, Sabrina herself.

She's draining

magic energy and some kind of Santa tank.

A little of this, some of this is like a little out of order.

I'm grouping things rather than...

She's trying to duplicate some kind of a weapon, which is a really good thing.

You saw what I call the blah, blah, blah section.

Yeah, she's got a weapon that's like the snow globe.

She wants to use it.

She says, I'll start with the first name on the list.

And her magic list reveals the name Aaron Abel.

And I'm like, there's no way that's the first name on the list.

There's no like Aaron Aronson, Ardberg, Ardvark.

Like, come on.

Yeah.

You know, so that's my biggest problem with Red One.

You should put all these in a letter.

Yeah.

And you should send it to them in the event they make a sequel.

Send it to them.

Dear Santa, I was very disappointed in your movie, and here's why.

Also, I would make a population.

I love that Linda's basically saying, like, a blanket to the flop house, go tell it to the Marines.

To elf.

Exactly.

Well, we're in Aruba now.

On the beach, there are more.

Charlene made a comment.

She's like, oh, I guess somebody wanted to go to Aruba.

And I'm like, there's no way in the world they went to Aruba for this.

Yeah.

Yeah, it looks like they just threw some sand somewhere.

But.

Yeah, on the beach, there are more thong bikinis than I was expecting in Red One.

And Evans uses his scum powers to detect other scum bums and locate the bad guys.

There's a fight where the rock changes size from

rock size to elf-size.

I kind of like this.

You liked Little Rock?

Yeah, yeah.

Wasn't that a show, Little Rock?

Yeah,

wasn't that a state capitol?

Yeah, I think it was.

It is a city.

It's also, there was a show, I think, Young Rock, I think it was a show.

I think that's

not young.

He's just little because he clicks his little heels together and he gets small and

big and great ant-man.

Yeah, pretty.

But he only gets like, he gets like, he doesn't get tiny.

No, just enough to be distracting.

He gets like scale model size.

He gets like if you were making a model of the rock to like show somebody how you were going to costume him or something, but you didn't want it to be like six and a half feet tall.

You would make this scale model of the rock.

That's how big he looks.

Yeah, because the rock is too big so if you need to print him you're like i gotta do this at what like 60

of the rock we want to build a rock it's it's it's a it's a figure it's a figure yeah a rocket

um

so we do

christmassy uh we do uh we meet the middleman uh who's played by nick kroll

and

he makes a meal out of this one guys

yeah um

no he's always always good for a big performance.

He won't give the name of the woman who employed him because she will hear it.

So The Rock says, Write it in the sand.

And then Evans reads it aloud anyway, like a nooofus.

And it's Grilla, who is an actual figure from Scandinavian mythology,

a kind of a troll queen.

The guy that Hancelo shot.

No,

that's Grilo institut.

She hears her name from across the globe and possesses Kroll.

This is, I think, a fun bit.

Like,

he gives a lot to this.

He's possessed.

He enjoys this part.

He's like, I'm not going to be in this movie long.

I'm going to do the most.

He enjoys being possessed by a witch.

That is definitely fun.

I mean, I get it, guys.

So

through Kroll, she outlines her plan.

She wants to punish everyone who's ever been naughty, and she sends some snowmen to attack them.

These guys are hard to fight until you realize you can just yank their carrot noses off and kill them.

And they have freezing powers, and they're ridiculously jacked, and they all pile out of a

ice cream truck.

Yeah, you're like, I got to look more like these snowmen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We get a little vignette of Aaron Abel acting like an asshole and getting trapped in a snow globe left by the bad guys.

And I'm supposed to, I guess, zap immediately back to Gria, but Grilla, but doesn't.

So

I don't know.

I don't know why this scene is in here necessarily.

I don't know.

I think they're trying to show that

it's not quite ready yet.

Also, that it does something when you open the box.

And they need to show the stakes so that later on when somebody opens a box, you're like, oh, no.

They're just trying to introduce the idea that these snow globes are no bueno.

You open the snow globe, you touch it, and like Aaron Abel, you

scream inside your car and then you disappear.

It's such a shame, right?

Because this really killed the snow globe industry when they put it in this movie like this because kids were terrified of them.

Gigantic lawsuit, I think, from the snow globe industry.

This is the amazing thing.

Didn't they have like a baseball stadium where they were just like burning snow globes?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Throwing it was in Philadelphia.

Throw them, throw them onto the throw them onto the field, you know.

And previous, previously, kids loved snow globes, their favorite toys.

Just

shaking them, looking at them at them.

The kids' favorite toy is their phone, I think, forever.

Yeah.

So, okay.

The trail's gone a little cold, but Lucy Liu and her team look for unauthorized magic and find one at the home home of Santa's adopted brother.

So they go to Germany

where Evans, on the way, gets a phone call about this concert from Dylan's mom that he should go to, but he's busy saving Christmas.

And we get another heart to heart where Evans tells The Rock he's staying out of Dylan's life because he doesn't want to disappoint him.

And The Rock is like, well, that strategy is clearly not working.

So we're going to get a Christmas change of heart, I think.

Should be a good dad hacker dad.

Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed.

Christmas.

We get a little info dump outside of Santa's brother's lair about how they used to work together, but the brother got interested in punishing people more than

punching the naughty, more than rewarding the nice.

So Santa took the list away from him.

And of course, Santa's brother is revealed to be Krampus.

Of course.

Everyone's favorite Christmas-themed villain, I guess.

Demon.

Semi-villain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oatman, as Evans later says.

Yeah.

So Evans immediately ignores The Rock's warning not to touch anything inside of Krampus's home and steals some gold, which gets them caught and in prison.

The Rock gives him a little quiet lecture about there's always a choice to be good or not be good.

And he also says the line, I was one day away from retirement, which

is happy to hear.

Because why do it if you're not going to say it?

Exactly.

So

I do like there was a little bit where they have to distract some hellhounds by The Rock,

what, altering the reality of his little rubber chicken keychain to turn into a chicken that distracts the dogs, only for it to show up right when they're leaving so that the chicken can come back to him.

That was a cool character.

I like that one.

Helpful rescue chicken.

Yeah.

That's very DD to me.

That feels feels like a very DD move.

They go to see Krampus.

He's in the middle of this

slapping game where creatures slap each other to unconsciousness or death.

What do you think of the slapping game, Stuart?

Would you

ever

boy?

Put me in.

Okay.

I liked this because I thought it was, I think it's extremely weird.

And I think this movie is at its best when it's more weird.

Yep.

And I think the idea of them just slapping the shit out of each other is is weird and funny.

I was into the slapping contest.

Yeah.

And this is a rare moment where The Rock is presented, rare moment in his career where The Rock is presented to be less tough than someone else.

Yes, that's true.

There's no, you didn't put in the, in his contract, like the rock must be shown to be able to beat any Krampuses.

Yeah, can't.

That's true.

He can't be shown as getting the shit slapped out of him by a mythological figure.

That's true.

I mean, it's a good thing they didn't have Vin Diesel playing Krampus or they couldn't have done it this way, I think.

Because wasn't that the, wasn't that the rumor was that they wouldn't allow each other to beat them up in the, or was that, is that him and Jason Statham?

No, no, that was, yeah, it was him and Vin Diesel.

The understanding I had was, yeah, that

all fights had to sort of be interrupted at the end, so there was no clear winner.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

So The Rock tries to appeal to Krampus'

brotherly affections.

Vin Diesel's history with being a Street Shark spokesperson, I think, would have really translated well to him being a good Krampus.

Not to deride the guy who's playing Krampus.

Yeah.

He's also an Iron Giant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the guy who plays Krampus, I think, is a Game of Thrones guy, but he is doing his damnedest to sound like Nandor from What We Do with the Shadows.

Yeah, he was a Street Sharks spokesperson.

Yeah, he was like, there's a commercial of Vin Diesel selling street sharks.

Okay.

You haven't seen this?

Maybe.

I don't know.

This is, it slipped my mind if I.

Okay, we're going to pause the podcast, and Dan's going to Google this real quick.

It's going to change your life.

It's like Googling Vin Diesel with hair, which is also a very fun thing to look at.

At first, it sounded to me like, you know, like the street sharks, you know, would amongst themselves, you know, come up with like their feelings on a thing, and then Vin Diesel would come out.

Yeah, that's what, yeah, he was

a representative for street sharks.

It's the

big slam who is really standing up for trans rights.

It's the most bureaucratic part of Westside's story.

So Krampus says, look, I'll let you,

the wolf, Jack O'Malley, Malley, Chris Evans, I'll let you go to deliver a warning to Maura to not do this, to not sneak into my lands, but I am going to keep Callum Drift forever as my prisoner, as punishment.

And

so,

nobody ever wants to imprison anybody temporarily.

Have you noticed that in things like this?

It's always like you're going to be imprisoned forever in the snow gold.

You're going to get bored of him for a while.

Well, exactly.

It's like, how long do you want to feed this guy?

Have you seen him?

Yeah,

I've seen what he eats.

Have you seen what The Rock eats?

It's crazy.

I mean, I don't think they're going to keep up with his regiment.

Three giants.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

He eats one of those steaks that tips your your whole prehistoric car over.

I mean, he is called The Rock, right?

That's a Flintstones name.

It's true.

It's true.

Oh, also, in terms of their detective work or whatever, it turns out that Santa is not there.

That

Rila just came there to get the original evil snow globe that she's now.

Because she and Krampus used to used to date or be an item of some flavor.

Yeah.

So

again, Evans is free to go, but he takes The Rock's words to heart about seizing the opportunity to do the right thing.

And he says he recognizes another betting man in Krampus and challenges Krampus to a slap fight against The Rock for their freedom.

And The Rock, of course, is like a WTF because Krampus is, you know, like a winter god, essentially.

Yeah.

And he is overmatched until Evans pickpockets the risk-doohickey back, which allows him to slap Krampus harder and also zap some rock'em sock and robots large so that he can escape.

I think that's cute.

I like the rock'em sock and robots.

I did like the rock and socket robots.

But now they're a true team.

They leave to save Christmas, but Evans again accidentally says Grila's name, which makes her manifest a piano in the road in front of their car, which is playing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

And it has a present addressed to Jack o'malley that was it that was a good line when chris evans is like does this sort of thing happen to you a lot and the rock's like uh what a player piano in the middle of a road in germany no that's rare yeah yeah

um

yeah he he he is wisely suspicious of this mystery uh magic uh

piano present.

He doesn't pick up the snow globe until

Dylan phones mad that he is not at this jazz

pageant performance.

Guys, TV and movies show people using FaceTime like all the time.

Yeah.

Do you guys face, is this a thing that I'm just, I just don't do and everybody else is doing?

Should I be FaceTiming?

The young people might.

I don't personally because the percentage of the time that I wish to be seen.

is not as high as it is, perhaps, for Chris Evans and his son.

I like having, I like being seen a lot, but I also feel like it's hard for me to get the angle right.

So it's not just all nose hair.

Right, sure.

I would say that like definitely like phoning is sort of

mostly off the menu.

It's it's primarily text and I will FaceTime, but only with like family.

If it's like, this is,

we gotta see each other face to face every once in a while.

Yeah, make sure, make sure my dad didn't get a really weird haircut or something.

Yeah, but i do have

like i have a couple of people that i still talk to on the phone and the great thing is that now it's like now it's like really special like i have a friend who lives in wisconsin and she calls me like sometimes from her car when she's on the way home from work she'll just call me just so we can chat and like it's really cool because like nobody talks to me at the phone anymore so she calls him always like yay because you know my little phone lights up which usually just means it's something about work but yeah it's like oh it's someone who just wants to chat and say hello so i agree phoning is mostly gone, but it's not completely gone.

And when it comes back in my life, I'm always a little bit glad.

I will say that the one person I will have a phone conversation with is the absent Elliot Kalen.

Every once in a while, we will have a phone call to reaffirm our friendship apart from this business enterprise long-running.

Yeah, we have to have a real, a lot of it.

It's always like, Elliot, you need to take more time off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a lot of features.

Yeah, you're killing yourself.

And sometimes i'll get a phone call from uh i'm always excited when i get a phone call from hodgman when he's driving up to maine or something nice i absolutely believe it uh yeah entertain me stuart i'm like oh i'll try uh this is what a bar is

this is what beers we have on tap uh okay so The rock realizes that if Grilo wants to mass produce these snow globes, the one place to do it is the North Pole.

So Santa must actually have never left it was all a fake out a diversion he told do we address that chris evans and his son both get sucked up oh yeah sorry sorry i i uh we sort of yeah we got diverted in the middle of it uh yes uh dylan had phoned him mad about the not being at the performance and sending this dumb snow globe instead and uh he's like no don't touch the snow globe he gets sucked in so chris evans says you know i'm gonna get sucked into this snow globe find me Find me.

Very last of the Mohicans.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're going to steal, steal from the best.

So romantic.

So romantic.

Find me.

So, yes, again,

The Rock realizes, okay, he must actually be at the North Pole.

Santa must have never left.

It was a fake out.

He calls the pole.

He realizes that Mrs.

Claus is actually one of Grilla's shape-shifting sons.

Yeah, yeah.

You're like,

your foster parents are dead.

House wolf?

So

in the globes,

the snow globes, that is,

Evans tells Dylan that, look, we're not here because of anything that Dylan, you did.

I'm sorry.

I've been a bad father.

And their hearts figuratively grow three sizes, shattering them out of their globes, where they reunite with The Rock and Lucy Lou, who have snuck back into the pole.

And they realize that

Kiernan Chipka Grilla needs Santa to power the sleigh so she can deliver her evil presence so they can't let the sleigh take off and there's a chase and a fight and they free Santa but

the Grilla takes her giant troll form it's pretty cool I like it

they have no hope of fighting her until Krampus arrives having had his predictable do you think Kiernan mocapped all that

I don't know that's a good actually that's a good question.

I don't think so.

That thing had a lot of arms.

I don't know what you'd gain necessarily.

I mean, she might have a lot of arms.

We don't know.

Yeah, we don't know.

That's true.

CGI'd out in other roles.

That's a good point.

Yeah, I heard that about Mad Men.

That's what made it such an expensive show to produce, they're just cutting out all the extra arms.

Yeah.

They considered putting him back in for totally killer, but still, they didn't think it worked.

Yeah.

Wow.

There's a cut where she goes back in pull.

Totally killer.

Okay.

Anyway, more CGI fighting.

Grilla grabs the rock to kill him, but an awakened Santa yells his magic reindeer word, and the rock slips from her grasp, and she's butted by those hyperdrive antlers into the sleigh of snow globes.

She gets trapped inside.

They trap her inside.

And there's some brief unsentimental making up between Santa and Krampus.

And now we got to deliver presents.

It's Christmas time.

Evans and his kid get to ride on the sleigh, watching Santa deliver billions of gifts at warp speed.

There's a lot of pin particle growing and shrinking.

Do they

text his mom why he's missing?

Oh, there's a call where like Dylan's like, you won't believe where I am.

And I, you know, with no context for the mom, I assume she doesn't believe where he is.

Yeah, that's true.

You're like, what does your jerk dad have you doing now?

Yeah, that's one of your your dad's con men friends dressed up as soon.

Santa can't believe that, Jacked.

There's one moment I like where in the present deliveries where Santa steps on a bulb accidentally and an elf swoops down to replace it to erase any evidence of him ever being there.

I thought it was a good bit when he was taking cookies off plates, and there's a shot of him taking a macaron off a plate and then putting it back.

Yeah, because earlier in the movie it was established that he doesn't like macaroons.

Yeah.

And Santa, I'll eat all of your macaroons.

I love those things.

You heard it here, folks.

Mail Dan macaroons.

Mail Dan all the coconut macaroons that you're

as the sun rises.

The rock sees father and son reconnecting and the music rises too.

And he says to Santa, he says, I almost lost it.

And Santa says, it's easy to lose it.

The important thing is to keep trying, which given given the state of the world, I found more moving than the film deserved.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the plot of the movie, losing it, right?

Yeah, that's what it is.

Well, this is because he looks over and he sees Chris Evans had morphed into his child version, right?

Yep.

Anyway,

really, Dylan should not be there because, like, if we've, if we've morphed back to dad as a child, and like Dylan should really not exist yet.

He should exist only as an idea.

I think he sees people as children, not his eyes are time turners.

Time travel.

I hear you.

I hear you.

Your way's good too, I guess.

Yeah, no, I mean, they both work.

Yeah.

Well, they have a moment of pride over saving Christmas, and we get Santa Claus is coming to town blaring over the credits.

And that's the tale of red.

Amazon made a point of telling me that that was Mariah Carey singing.

Were there any bloops or any post-credits things?

Because I turned it off immediately.

No post-credits stuff.

Okay.

Okay.

Sorry, I was distracted because Barbara Crampton sent in the line that she recorded for Fly Scrape.

Oh, she said, here you go.

Hugs and kisses.

Oh, man.

She's the best.

Hugs and kisses.

Yeah, I thought about you, Stuart.

We did a whole pop culture happy hour episode about post-credit sequences.

I thought about you, the guy who never sees them.

Yeah,

those words don't make any sense to me.

Post-credit sequence?

That doesn't make any sense.

That story is over at the credits.

I took the anti.

Listen,

I was the lady who left too early at Sinners.

Jesus, no.

You're the second person I've talked to who did that.

Yeah.

Because that one actually like raises the movie up significantly.

I know, even though I really tried by temptation moment.

I had totally loved it.

But I was at a press screening and I was trying to get to my car.

I was like, okay, you're like, that's a credit.

Movie's over.

I know who won.

I know, dude.

I never do that.

I usually stay and I didn't stay.

And then like, it took forever for like my buddy that I was meeting after to get out of there.

And he was like, did you see the part where blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, no.

You're like, I did not want to risk seeing the name of a single grip.

So I, so I was the you in that situation, as you are the you with many other, uh, many other movies.

But no, I don't think this one didn't have any as far as I know.

Um, well, let us uh do our final judgments on Red One, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

So

I scoffed at the idea of Red One when you said you had enjoyed it when

we talked last.

I have to say, I'm not, I'm still going to come down on on bad bad because it is such a cavalcade of cliches that on just on like a story screenplay level, I can't see my way clear to enjoying it.

But I will say, for a bad bad, I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to.

It was a lot more watchable than I assumed.

I think that

between,

again, Jake Caston is a reliable sort of like...

working director,

Chris Evans in particular, I enjoyed, but the whole cast is doing a pretty good job.

Even

I'm getting tired of this type of thing for The Rock, but this is less annoying than this type of thing for The Rock usually is.

So, like, it's, I will give it my

highest possible recommendation, which is it is marginal.

I liked it better than I thought I would.

Even bad, bad is still a scale.

It's still a scale.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I would say I'm going to kind of be with you.

I'm going to say this is a soft bad, bad for me.

I,

it, I'm just not, I'm like so tired of the magical thing is real actually and here's all the rules.

I find it takes a lot of the joy out of life and the movie.

But I think that the two leads are very winning.

As long as Dwayne The Rock Johnson is not running for office, I still think he is a very fine, passable movie star action hero guy.

Chris Evans, he's great.

You know,

it's fine.

I wish there was more,

I guess, women in this movie, but that's there's a couple women in it, but they don't really get to do anything.

And yeah, like the,

yeah, it's not, not my bag, but I'm not too mad at it.

I feel like you guys feel an obligation to let me down easy.

That I am, I assure you, it is not necessary.

I am by far in the minority about this movie and saying that it is a movie that I kind of like.

I think the reason it worked on me is that

throughout, I think almost the entire movie, Chris Evans thinks he's in a comedy and The Rock thinks he's in

the North Pole has fallen slash taken for slash something incredibly serious.

Yes.

And I think the fact that he, I think even for him, I think he he leans into the silliness part and the kind of up eyebrow thing less than he does in most movies and stays very, very severe, as does like Lucy Lou.

And, you know, and I think the fact that most of those people play it like super, super, super straight is what made it funny to me.

I can't really, like, I can't really make a good argument on its behalf other than Chris Evans hot dirt bag.

But watching it again, I was like, I'm probably not going to like this watching it like outside the context of, you know, really needing to be entertained at that particular moment and like having this weird 40x experience where I was just so happy every time they stopped shaking my chair that I think it gave me a rush of like affection for the movie every time they stopped beating the hell out of me while I was in my seat.

Um, but honestly, watching at home, I still liked it.

I still liked it.

I still liked it even as a, as a, as a, as a summer movie.

So, what can I say?

It, uh,

it, it is what it is.

I am that girl.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, yeah, I look, I maybe said you don't have to let her down easily.

No, no, maybe I, maybe maybe my language was gentle, but I actually, yeah, it is marginal for me.

Like I came so close to

being something I was like, I kind of like this, but I mean, it's like to me, it's a good one to watch for me in the future.

If I watch it at Christmas, I will watch it with like a lot of like fast forward button because

I really did mean it when I said, like, to me, I like Kieran and Chipka, but most of the actual baddie stuff is very like blah, blah, blah.

I don't care.

Just tell me what they're fighting over and get me back to the buddy movie.

How do you think this one compares to some of the other like Christmas kind of action-y movies, like something like Ernest Saves Christmas?

What was that?

What was the

violent night or the holdovers?

It's emotional violence.

It's definitely not up there, I think, with like the best Christmas action movies,

but it's also not down there with the Christmas movies that make me hate Christmas.

Such as,

oh.

Come on,

you got to spill the tea.

You got to name names.

I can't.

And now, of course, I'm completely blanking.

Like, probably.

How do you feel about like the Hallmark Christmas movies?

Love them.

Okay.

Love them.

If you're going to talk trash, I was going to tell Alonso to turn off the channel.

No, no, no.

The interesting thing is like those.

Those have markedly improved in the last few years.

Yeah.

I think they had some executive shuffling maybe, and I'm not sure if that's going to continue.

But those had actually like they're much more endearingly written than I think people who only watched them like 10 years ago would necessarily be aware of.

They write some pretty cute ones.

I love them.

I would imagine the writer pool has grown for that.

Like the people who want to write those movies.

I think that's right.

I actually know, I actually know somebody who I knew from like an old job who writes for them, who's a good writer and writes like good, cute movies.

And I'm always so excited when he has like a movie that's running.

So yeah, I mean,

I thought you were going to say, where does this fit on the on the scale of these like cheapo

streaming streaming blockbusters?

And I think on that, I think on that scale, this is like

probably top half of those.

Yeah, yeah, that's probably.

But like I said, I have like a, I have like a weird soft spot for these.

I don't know why.

It's, it's one of my most inexplicable.

It helps that it's not dreary.

I think some of them end up being like weirdly dreary.

Like I feel like the gray man was too dreary for me.

I get that.

And one of my, one of my friends who saw this said that she wished it had been like more colorful, that the color palette is very, like, even the Santa suit is like a red leather that's kind of a, it's a sort of a dark red, like almost a maroon.

She wanted like a more Christmassy, like red look.

And I get that.

Yeah, but they're not trying, but they're not trying to go for that.

They're trying to go for like serious, cool, like leather guy.

exactly so tired of that digital dreariness i i i was thinking the same thing yeah i get that i like the i like the polar bear

hey it's john mo from depressed mode every week on our show we have honest humane conversations with artists entertainers and experts about what it's like to live with an interesting mind i just interviewed gavin rosdale from the band Bush.

You might be wondering, what would a successful, handsome, popular musician know about mental health?

Turns out, lots.

All the time, we're like, we're forced into happy situations, sad situations, challenging situations, happy, sad, challenging.

And it just never ends.

And why should it?

You know, we're just the sum of all these journeys.

Check out Depressed Mode with John Moe every Monday at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you been looking for a new podcast all about nerdy pop culture?

Well, I have just the thing for you: Secret Mysteries of Nerd Mysteries.

Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries is a weekly pop culture history podcast hosted by me, host Austin.

And me, host Brenda.

We've already tackled mysteries such as what happened to the puppets from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, is Snoopy Mexican, and why do people hate Barney so much?

From theme parks to cartoons to 80s, 90s, and 2000s nostalgia, we tackle it all.

Check us out every Tuesday on maximumfund.org and wherever you get podcasts.

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And also,

a little personal advertising.

Flop TV Season 3 is officially on sale.

Tickets are on sale.

We'll be streaming six episodes once a month from September through February of next year in our usual time slot.

That's the first Saturday of the month at 9 p.m.

Eastern, 6 Pacific.

This year's theme is Flopsterpiece Theater.

We'll be covering some classic bad movies decade by decade from the 2000s back to the 1950s.

And those movies are The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Jack Frost, The Michael Keaton one, Xanadu, Zardaz, Dr.

Doolittle, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

These are film discussions, not screenings.

We don't have the expensive screening rights, but we will enliven every show with presentations, fun pre-tapes, and questions from the chat.

As I said, tickets are on sale now.

Go to theflophouse.simpletics.com.

That is ticks TIX.

And just like last time, individual show ticks will be $7,

or you can get a full season pass for $35 for the whole season.

That's the equivalent of getting one episode for free.

Also, if you have tickets, that entitles you to video on demand versions of the show after the live taping is done.

You can watch those or re-watch at your leisure through the end of February or possibly later if we offer a grace period.

So, if you miss a show when it airs or buy a season pass later in the season, that is no problem.

You can go back and catch up.

The ticket link again is theflophouse.simpletakes.com.

We hope you will join us.

Now, back to the show.

Well, let's move on to letters from listeners.

If you're a listener, maybe this is your letter.

Who knows?

Last chance.

Is your name Ben?

Last name withheld?

Well, let's see if this is your letter.

As I write this, I am listening to the Venom Last Dance episode.

I have neither read Venom nor seen any of the movies or even the Raimi Spider-Man 3.

This means that when I listen to or passively ingest Venom-related trivia, I am deeply confused about how he is represented on screen.

He can be worn like clothes, but he's also Eddie Brock's internal monologue.

Eddie Brock can transform into him, but also Venom can hold on to Eddie Brock.

Are Venom or Eddie Brock or both of them biting people's heads off?

He/slash it can dance?

Just some of the challenges I face

in movie nerd podcast land.

I mean, yeah, the thing is, like, all of that is accurate.

Like, having seen it, I'm like, yeah, of course.

When you lay it out like that, it seems crazy.

Have any of you guys been so completely lost by the description of a movie that you had to see it to understand how it worked on screen?

Thanks for the great memories and for being such great companions to my growing older.

Long may you endure.

Peace.

Ben last name withheld.

This is such an interesting question.

I wanted to pose it, even though I don't know if I can think of a good example.

I'm sure there's stuff where I'm like, isn't interesting.

I will say, like, my immediate connection to this question is also about listening to episodes of this show where I haven't seen the movie, whether it's like a new episode, old episode.

Some of it is like some of the with the kind of catalog episodes are things that I've never even heard of.

And I'm like, I never even heard of this, never saw it, never heard of it, have no idea.

And sometimes there have been things where I'm like, okay, I'm going to sneak in and like see what this actually looks like.

Like, what does this, I remember, oh, gosh, I can't, I'm trying to remember what it was.

I don't think it was when you did Food Fight.

It was one of the animated ones.

The description of the animation was so evocative that I was like, I have to actually go see what this animation looks like.

So I think like, I think it can come up anytime you're hearing people discuss something that like, no matter how

like specific the visual description is, you just really feel like you want a reference.

So it's not uncommon for me to go in and like, you know, look up something.

But I think other than that, I usually now am so like overexposed to imagery from movies and stuff like that that I usually have at least some reference point if it's something new and something relatively popular.

Like, I don't care about Venom either, but I sort of knew some stuff about Venom, just like by osmosis.

So, there is it's not exactly this where it's not like I can't get my head around it, but I was really thinking that, like, sometimes I read

uh uh criticism i read reviews and either because they don't want to reveal something or because

the movie's tone is hard to describe i'm like i'm not sure what this movie is like i need to see it to understand and one of the things that I had that experience with is the movie Good One, which is a very simple story about a girl going on a camping trip with her dad and her dad's friend.

But the way,

like,

criticism around it went, I'm like, I don't understand.

Is this like, like, is this a thriller?

Is this a

drama?

Like, what, like, I was trying to fit it into a box.

And having seen it, like,

I understand what it is.

And like, I don't think it needs to fit into.

any kind of box necessarily, but like, I don't, I kind of also get why it's hard to write about because it's so much about

tone and small things that

you have to see it to understand.

Well, and the other thing that sometimes happens for

me when I'm talking about movies is that depending on how much distance there is from the movie, this is more of an issue with new things.

That sometimes you really do want to talk about the essence of something in a way that people would consider to be spoiling it.

And so sometimes you're talking around things in the movie so much that it's really difficult to convey how the thing actually looks because you can't talk very specifically about anything.

And so that can be, I think, a reason why sometimes people feel like the thing is just not, they can't get their arms around what in the hell you're talking about because you're trying not to say what happens in it.

And like, so I think, you know, that can come up too.

I, I had this experience talking to Stuart just recently because I

mostly enjoy Mike Flanagan and Stewart's more of a doubter.

But I saw Life of Chuck and I was like trying to be like, no, I enjoyed it.

And I was trying to explain it in a way that

makes me interested, but not.

reveal what the whole deal is.

I think I ran into that exact thing with that exact movie when I wrote a review of that movie and I had exactly the same experience.

It's really hard to describe, but you don't want to sound like you're being like, ooh, I can't even describe it to you.

It's so like, you know, it's not that.

It's like trying to actually explain how that movie is structured is you feel like you're giving away something that maybe the person has the right to experience.

And that, right?

Because that's always my mindset about spoilers.

It's like, am I taking away an experience that the person has a right to have?

Right.

Yeah.

And with Life of Chuck, it's like, yeah, anyway.

And you know, that

essentially like not that complex a story, but but everything that makes it work,

you know, you can't tell.

Yeah, it doesn't feel right to lay it out, you know,

quite the way you would feel like you need to.

Yeah, I mean,

I feel like there's got to be an answer, but

for me, it's just like, I guess it's like

all the movies that Christina shows at the Ridiculous Sublime screenings at the Nighthawk, where every time I'll read the description, I'm like, okay, well, I'm in.

Sign me up.

I'll see what kind of madness I'm in for.

I trust our friends' tastes when it comes to weird silliness, but

we got to see it.

It can happen the other way around, too.

There are times when I see something and then I think, I'm not going to really feel like I have had a complete experience until I hear other people try to explain this.

That's how I felt.

You guys did not do Wolfman, right?

The Wolfman with Christopher Abbott?

No.

The Wanna Wolfman.

Christopher Abbott's in that?

The one that was with Julia Garner.

Yeah.

I had high hopes for that because I liked Invisible Man so much.

And then

exact same.

And then it is not good.

It is not good.

And the way that they transform him into Wolfman is very strange.

And I was, when I got out of that, I was like, I really want to read a bunch of reviews of whether I am completely off about how weird I thought this was.

Anyway,

good question, Ben.

Last name withheld.

The next letter is from Sir Shaw Last Name Withheld, who writes, Recently, someone on Blue Sky brought up how strange it was that a best picture winner like Forrest Gump spawned a successful chain restaurant that was actually comparatively kind of fine.

Peaches.

I can't make any judgment calls on that.

Yeah, I've never been

peaches in a world where I'm more of a what, Dick's crab shack or whatever.

It's the kind of guy.

Is that a

chain?

Probably.

Okay.

I don't know that one.

Peaches.

Dan's more of a tilted kilt kind of guy.

In a world where Oscar nominees had theme restaurants, what would be your go-to order?

The Conclave Clam Linguine?

The Happy Hour Mank Frank?

The Zookeeper $3 Bucket of Oranges?

Thanks for all the laughs.

And the Boco Sircha.

Yeah, the Lydia Tar Surf and Turf.

Surf and Tarf.

Serf and Tarf?

Dear Lord.

That's great.

The

Conclave Clam Linguine is pretty good, but

it has to come with a little vape on the side.

Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, first of all, I just want to say, don't kid a kidder, Cersei.

You wanted to just, you just wanted to show us how many good ones you had come up with.

I agree, you did.

I agree, you did.

I absolutely all hail you.

Yeah,

I think that

it would probably be something like, I think I would have to work backwards from like what the movie is, that I would want to have like the theme restaurant of a particular movie.

But the problem with that is that

best picture nominees are often so grim.

Like, what do I want to do?

Eat at like the Oppenheimer restaurant?

It's not going to be Japanese food.

That doesn't sound fun.

We're eating at the Parasite restaurant.

I don't, that doesn't sound good.

That sounds pretty awesome, actually.

You have to eat under the table.

Maybe, maybe La La Land Lobster.

You know, you'd have to pick like a relatively upbeat movie.

Otherwise, you just end up in a really strange place very quickly.

But Sean Baker's and Orange Julius.

It's a Russian restaurant or Ukrainian.

Okay.

That's true.

That's true.

It's basically just Tatiana's out in Brighton Beach, which is great.

You should go.

Yeah.

You get any kickback for that?

I wish.

I wish I could get a table because I see every time I go there, there's always like a bunch of like older guys.

It's middle of the afternoon, summer, and there's always a couple of older guys there smoking and drinking so much beer and vodka and like eating the, you know, the heaviest food.

And I'm so jealous of how sweaty they are.

Let's do recommendations, movies that we saw that maybe we can recommend with a fuller throat than I see Dan's finger hovering around Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, which I think you already recommended, right?

No, I didn't even mention, I don't think I, yeah, I saw that

it was a 35-millimeter screening of what they claimed was the only extant copy of Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens.

That was at

streaming's just killing cinema, yeah.

Um, no, I was

in passing because it will not

require my

support, I'd like to mention that the most recent Superman had a similar message of like, hey, we can all make choices every day to be nicer.

Uh, and it's a it's a

better movie overall than uh red one.

I will allow that.

Yeah.

I enjoyed it very much, uh, but I don't think it uh needs my

voice thrown behind it.

So I'll say I finally caught up with a movie that I kept seeing

trailers for right before COVID.

And I was like, oh, you know, I'll go see that.

That looks fun.

And I saw this trailer so many times and then COVID hit.

And I never caught back up with it until just recently.

It's Extraordinary.

It's a sort of a low-key, super natural comedy

starring Maeve Higgins.

Yeah.

And

some somebody

Claudio O'Dorzi, who's

great.

Always so great.

Bring back,

what, killing it?

Yeah.

It's almost like so gentle and low-key that like watching it not in the theater, watching it at home, like some of it,

you know, almost passed right through me like a ghost.

But

it's sweet and funny and creative, and it's nice to see like a little small supernatural comedy.

So I would say go ahead and check it out.

Stuart.

Yeah, the movie I'm going to recommend, I think

by the time this is released, certainly came and went from theaters, and it hit the exact spot that I think Linda was talking about when you were talking about seeing Red One, and that is Megan 2.0,

which is a very silly,

more of an action movie than the first one.

The first movie is kind of a horror comedy, and this is more of an action comedy, but it also reminded me of 90s action thrillers like species and shit like that.

I think it's still very funny, and I think it's weird, and it gets some good performances, and the action sequences I think are actually pretty well done.

And I do like that even though at this point, Megan is

almost entirely a digital character as opposed to like a practical one, I like that they still kept like the

uncanny valley element where she still looks weird.

Like she still looks, there's something off about the way she looks.

Like they didn't try to make her look real.

Yeah, I'm with you on, like, I feel like we're a small club of people who liked the Megan sequel.

I mean, what were people looking for in a Megan sequel?

I think they wanted more of the same, and I liked that this swerved and was sillier and stranger, but like

I feel like the tone is so similar that it's

yeah, maybe

not to defend a movie, but you know, no, of course not.

One would never.

I

after what it did

after what it did.

So I,

if you're looking for a, a recent movie, I would have gone with Drop with Megan Fahey, where she's a good one.

In a restaurant, enjoyed that one very much.

But still can't get over the fact that guy showed up for a date with a single mom.

They've been talking for months.

They go to a nice restaurant and he is dressed like shit.

He is dressed, however, like a Chris Evans style dirtbag, but not as like a B-tier Josh Hartneck dirtbag.

That is a really fun movie.

I liked it.

I liked it a ton.

But then when I was preparing for a recent NPR

conversation that I was part of, I watched a bunch of journalism movies.

And so I watched, you know, I re-watched All the President's Men and, you know, a bunch that I've seen before.

I watched The Insider, so on and so on.

And I really, really, I had never sat down and watched Shattered Glass all the way through,

which I thought was really good.

And if you don't know this story, Stephen Glass was a writer at the New Republic and

got caught essentially fabricating.

uh in whole or in part a whole bunch of of magazine pieces that he had written and i i like a lot of things about this movie one of which is this really tremendous cast that it has and you go back and you're like, holy shit, this is so many people are in this.

It's like, you know, those two women who don't get to do a whole lot, but they're in it.

Like, that's Chloe Sevigny and Melanie Linsky.

Yeah.

And Hank Azaria is his boss at one point.

And, uh, but the thing I love about this movie, uh,

the thing that I responded to the most was Peter Sarsgaard playing his editor, who goes through the most amazing, oh shit, oh no, oh shit, transformation as he gradually figures out how bad this is, because he comes in as the editor and mostly inherits this problem.

And like, you, you see it dawning on him, like, this isn't great.

Like, this might not be great.

Like, oh, this might be really bad.

And he just in the face, he has been the best thing about so many things that I've seen him in.

He was the only thing I liked about the TV version of Presumed Innocent, which was mostly,

but he's really good in it.

And he's so good in this that I just, I was really glad I watched it.

It's one of those things where every once in a while NPR asks me to like prepare for something and I go back and watch a bunch of catalog movies that there's no particular reason I've never watched them.

I just haven't ever watched them.

And this was a good opportunity to do that.

So Shattered Glass, you can find it on streaming.

I thought it was great, really, really enjoyed it.

And it's a strong Hayden Christensen performance.

It is a strong Hayden.

I don't mean to leave out Anne Christensen.

It's funny because because his name is glass and glass is made of sand oh yeah but he hates sand okay it's a much better use of his vibe though than those star wars movies yeah i think that's right and i think this and little italy

well and i think this is

are you saying you like this better than awake um but i i think I think this is a pretty good use of him as somebody who is a little bit of a cipher.

Like, I don't know that this movie ever ever really tries to explain to you why this guy is like this.

He just is.

And

does he feel bad?

Like maybe a little, but mostly it's about the problem that this creates for all these other people and how hard he tries to keep from being found out.

So anyway, I was really, I was really glad that I caught up with it.

So.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Well,

thank you so much, Linda, for being here and giving us an excuse to watch a movie that I did want to address on the podcast, but we kind of like missed the first time around.

Is this our chance to start doing some plugs?

Because I have plugs.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I was going to ask whether our guests had plugs, but maybe we'll let her end the plugs.

Do you have a plug?

I do have a plug.

Sorry, Linda, I'm jumping in the plug zone.

Not at all.

Today I'd like to plug

a, I've mentioned this before, but my wife Charlene is opening a studio gym in Brooklyn, New York called Jiggle Studio.

It is a body-positive workout space that is going to have a variety of different classes, everything from traditional classes like step aerobics, some kickboxing,

some Pilates,

as well as like dance, as well as some like newer non-traditional classes like hangover recovery and things like that.

We're very excited about it.

We tried to do a Kickstarter a little under a year ago, and we didn't have much luck.

And we had a variety of different struggles with the space, but we're finally going to be opening sometime in August or September.

And if you would like to help support us and help push us over the finish line, we are running a couple of campaigns for tank tops and t-shirts.

You can find it by going on the Instagram, following us on Instagram, which is jiggle underscore studio BK.

And if you check the link in the bio, that'll link you to the campaigns.

But we're very excited.

And if you're in Brooklyn, get ready to move your took us.

Get ready to jiggle.

Love it.

Absolutely love it.

I will just say first that

it is a great time to support your local public radio and public television station.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

They could really, really use your help.

That's where I have, you know, made a bunch of my career.

But on more cheerful note,

my most recent book, which came out in February, is called Back After This.

It is about podcasting in part.

And I rolled up a lot of what I have learned from my long career in this kind of form.

And it is like part rom-com and part like about influencers and part about podcasts and part about every terrible meeting I've ever been in at any media company.

And so

again, it is called Back After This.

You can find it anywhere that you buy books.

Co-sign.

It's a fun read.

Oh, thank you.

And also, I read the audiobook.

So, if that is your preference, you can hear me read it to you.

And, well, thank you for being here.

And while we're thanking people, I'd like to thank our network, Maximum Fun.

If you go to maximumfun.org, you can find a lot of other great podcasts.

You know, we're listening supported.

So we rely on people like you.

And so uh why not why not why not check some of those other things out um

and thank you to alex smith he is our producer he goes by the name howl daughty uh he is also a talented musician he does twitch streams look him up on the internet if you like us i bet you'll like his stuff as well um but uh that's it for this episode so for the flop house i've been dan mccoy i've been stuart wellington and i've been elliot kalen

Bye.

Bye.

We're going to make it fun, Dan.

It's going to make you fix your day.

We're going to fix your day, Dan.

I hope so.

Are you having a bad day?

Did I show up late?

No, no, no.

You didn't do anything.

I just woke up a little sad.

Wrong side of the bed.

The whole everything.

Everything is.

You got to grasp onto your joy, Dan.

It's very important.

Dan's just mad that they are not going to release the Epstein files.

Yeah.

Aren't we all?

I mean,

he voted so that he would see what happened with the Epstein files.

Right, of course.

I think it is absolutely kind of amazing that, like,

maybe this is the thing that actually makes a dent.

It's the most traction anything's had.

At long last, last.

The thing that everything everyone could have assumed was true before.

Anyway,

it's not our problem for the next little while here.

It's not our problem.

None of this is our problem.

Our only problem is red one.

It's a red problem.

Okay, here we go.

Granna Gremlin committed suicide behind

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