Ep. #453 - Love Hurts

On this episode, we discuss love hurts.

Love bites, love bleeds, it's bringing me to my knees.

Deaf Leopard.

Thanks, the Oxford

familiar Deaf Leopard's quotations.

Quotable quotables.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington, and here at the Flophouse.

Wait, who's that over there?

That over the hills.

Guys, don't break.

Oh, sorry, I was late.

It's me, Elliot, Kalen.

Oh, sorry.

I almost didn't make it.

But there's time now.

There's time at last.

Uh-huh.

There's all the time in the world.

Just don't break your podcasting glasses.

Okay, what do we do here all the time?

This is a podcast where we watch a movie that was either a critical or a commercial flop, and then we talk about it on this episode.

I finally understand.

Yeah.

Actually, that's probably the most succinct summary of show you've ever done.

We're gumming it up by talking about it now.

Okay, let's not praise you.

Sure.

I'll come to bury Dan, not to praise him.

Hand me that shovel.

Yeah, Dan's therapist texted me and was like, can you minimize Dan some more?

That's what I really need.

That's the problem he has.

Dan's therapist got in touch with you.

Dan's getting too big for his rich.

Yeah, we go out for drinks.

Dan needs.

The problem is too much self-confidence.

Yeah, we yap about Dan.

I'm saying that prescribing for Dan, what we in therapy business call a SmackDown.

Yeah, yeah.

How raw is this SmackDown?

Now let's

guys, we got to talk about love sharts, right?

So we'll, we'll get to it.

Love sharts.

Love hurts.

Oh, right.

Oh, what did I watch?

Whoa.

So

this is, you know, this is part of the

Kihe Kwan

Assance, the resurgence.

And I just want to say up front, love this guy.

Loved his child performances.

Loved him coming back, everything, everywhere all at once.

I think he comes out of this movie smelling surprisingly good, considering how this movie eats up people

I've enjoyed before.

But the movie is not that great, not to get ahead of myself.

Dan's being nice up front because he's going to be mean and bad.

Well, I'm just like, I feel bad because I like to do that.

You know, in Dan's complimentary at the top, that he is going to be a fucking savage during the movie.

I feel bad.

This is a guy who I have a lot of fondness for who hasn't come back and he's getting, you know, his starring role, but I wish it was a better starring role.

But it's so symptomatic of any time an actor

that you like wins an Academy Award for a supporting role.

Yes.

Well, because who else is in this movie?

Ariana DeBose, who won the Academy Award for a supporting role and has been in crap since then.

Like, yes,

I call it crappin'.

Oh, damn.

You're the savage one today.

Thank you.

You have two people experiencing what I would call the curse of Cuba Gooding.

Or Cuba Gooding Jr., that is.

Not Cuma Gooding, the musician, his father.

But yeah, you're exactly right, Dan, that it is it's it is exciting to see Juan in a starring role, but you wish it was not this movie.

You wish it was not what I'm going to preview, what I'm going to call what feels like a warmed-over Tarantino rip-off script from 1996.

It's that, and it's also a real nobody of a John Wick.

It's all of those things.

Yes.

But anyway, so let's talk about it.

That's what we're here for, according to what you said earlier.

We meet our lead,

played by Kwan,

Marvin Gable.

He's monologuing about what he loves about Valentine's Day, which is sort of this lame stab and a thematic thing for this movie that doesn't amount to much ever.

And it's the start of a number of voiceovers that feel very much added in in post.

Yes,

I mean,

there's a lot of ADR in this movie that is not very good.

There's that, like, I'm sure they tried their best, but a lot of this movie feels like it was

finessed at a later date for some reason.

This movie is 83 minutes long and it is nice and nutty.

No one sets out to make an 83-minute movie in the year 2024-2025.

Yeah, it is nutty how much like there's clear ADR papering over things.

Like there's scenes where like Ariana DeBose is like just explaining the plot to people who should know it already

with her back to the camera and you're like, this was all added later.

And I will say the movie kind of keeps, and I wonder if there must be a longer cut of it somewhere, but the movie kind of keeps forgetting that love is the theme that it's supposed to be hitting and then remembering it and then in voiceover, really hitting it hard.

And it feels a little bit at times like you're watching a kid give a book report about a book that they didn't read that closely.

And every now and then they're like, oh, oh, yeah, oh, and there's, there's a dog in it, too.

And the dog is important too.

Yeah, yeah.

That kind of thing.

The back cover mentions love.

So yeah, love is important.

Love hurts.

Land of contrasts.

You know, there's many ways you could talk about love hurts.

My hypothesis is

Love helps, but it also hurts.

The dichotomy of love.

In conclusion, Love Hurts is an 83-minute film.

Thank you.

Marvin seems to be a mild-mannered real estate agent.

I have to assume that's exactly what he is, Dan.

He couldn't be anything else.

No, this is a man you don't want to fuck with.

But as we are introduced to him,

he's riding around town on his bike.

He's recycling bottles.

You know, he's getting mad that people draw mustaches on him on his real estate poster.

he seems like kind of like he seems kind of like a nerd right yeah like a little bit of a like a like a boring boring nerd who's too into his job and this uh and this sort of opening montage is about all we'll get in terms of character development for this character there is so little setup for why we should care about any of these people but um i mean they are i mean sometimes that's not a bad thing like a good movie sometimes uses the shorthand of our appreciation for the performer to build a character and like i i am on his side right from the start because I like him.

I like this performer.

But yeah, they don't give, they don't give, even the, even the.

It's like Tom Cruise and Tropic Thunder, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, yes and no.

And that Tom, the whole joke of Tom Cruise and Tropic Thunder is, can you believe Tom Cruise is playing this character?

Like, that character is doesn't, the joke doesn't work with a performance.

It's not a transformation, Elliot.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

To see that character is not funny unless you're like, that's Tom Cruise underneath all that anti-Semitic makeup that he's wearing right now.

And so here they're really playing off, like, we know you like this guy, but it makes it hard.

I feel like the qualities that make him likable really fight the idea that, as we'll discover, he is a monstrous killing machine when he gets set off.

Also, during this opening, just because it briefly comes into play later, I mentioned that

there's a rival real estate guy played by one of the property brothers.

Which one?

I don't know.

The one who acts.

It's either the one who's married to Zoe Digenelle or the one who's not.

Yeah, one of the two brothers.

There's more of a double.

I don't think it's the third one that they think chained in the attic of all the houses that they show on the show.

And the theme of this real estate guy is that he's got a karate gi on and he's doing karate stuff.

I will say, he's a tough guy.

I will say, I was at first personally offended that a property brother was acting in a movie that I was watching.

But at the same time, I don't know.

There's something about the height that the property brothers achieved in the entertainment world that seems baffling to me.

But I got to say, he comes off pretty funny in this movie.

Yeah, I mean, we'll get to it, but it's a minor high point of the film.

Yeah, he's maybe the best comedy performance in the film.

When

one of his characters posters, like, we see a glimpse of it, I first was worried it was, what, Zachary Levi, Levi,

and I was like, oh, fuck.

And then when it wasn't, I was like, hell yeah, anybody but that dude.

Yeah.

You know what?

I'm okay with Property Brothers.

This episode is going to come out after it turns out one of them is a monster or something.

But I'm okay with Property Brothers until I learned that.

Only one, though, and you'll know which one.

And so you have to have a moment where you have a gun, and the Property Brothers are like, shoot him.

He's the evil Property Brother.

We meet his assistant, Ashley, who's played by Leo Tipton.

I'm going to briefly say

this performer uses they-them pronouns, and in the absence of any evidence that the character doesn't also use such pronouns, I'll try and remember to use them, but I apologize if my brain slips.

And of course, I spent the first 10 minutes being like, Where do I know them from?

And it was from Next Stop Model.

I was going to say crazy stupid love oh yeah yeah they were the uh the babysitter that was in love with steve carell and steve carell's son was in love with them yeah uh and uh i guess i'm the only one who knew them from their history as a juvenile figure skater oh really no i guess i'm just reading that right now in their wikipedia entry oh wow uh well the thing about uh ashley is that they aren't as enthusiastic about real estate as marvin and they're thinking of quitting uh marvin tries to go in his office and is immediately knocked out by some mysterious person and he wakes up with his hand stabbed to his desk with a knife, which is the sort of injury that would cause so much more pain and trouble than a movie like this acknowledges.

That is an injury that looks like it would sever nerves.

Like you're losing the use of fingers.

And instead, he's just like, ah.

And that's it.

The other man uses it to punch people for the rest of the movie.

The other day

I was taking apart a frozen drink machine and I was unscrewing like a bolt or something using like some pliers.

And

I managed to pinch the tip of my finger and it like turned into a big blood blister and it was gross.

But it was like the amount of pain and then subsequent pain and annoyance for the rest of the next couple of days.

Yeah.

And that wasn't even a stab through the hand.

That was just a mush of a fingertip.

Turns out this stabby knife belongs to a bad poetry writing assassin called the Raven, who throws around little sharp feathers and has blade arms.

What's the blade arm part of it?

Why is that the raven?

Was that part of Edgar Allan Poe?

This is kind of a bit of a drink.

Yeah, I guess.

You remember it being it?

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary, many over many curious volume of Forgotten Lore, a raven came and slashed my throat.

Oh no, I said.

But no one heard me.

But no one heard me.

As I gurgled on my blood,

loosed as some scarlet flood, and so forth and so forth.

Yeah, yeah.

Sure, yeah.

He shows Marvin a Valentine that is signed by someone named Rose.

and the Raven says that Marvin's brother is wondering why Rose is spreading love on Valentine's.

What's his brother's name?

Knuckles.

And I was like, hell yeah.

And this is something I shouldn't have.

If this movie, the villain, had been an animated video game character, I think I would have liked it more.

Yeah, they're still supposed to be brothers.

It's only a little bit strange from the fact that they're brothers, but one of them has a heavy accent and the other does not,

which is an interesting choice.

So just go ahead and make them different types of beings.

If Fozzie and Kermit can be brothers in the Great Muppet Caper, you know, why not?

You know, Kwan is Vietnamese and the brother is from Hong Kong, but, you know, Hollywood doesn't care.

It's all the same to Hollywood.

I mean, Kwan has played

any number of Chinese characters.

No, I know.

It happens that way often.

It's just funny to me.

Marvin claims to not know where she is.

And we have our first fight, and we see Marvin uncork his kung fu powers.

Now, what do you think about these fights?

Because the director of this movie is a fight guy.

Like, he's a fight choreography guy.

Um, but I found that the fights, uh, I was kind of like,

there weren't any that I was like super,

super charged by, super thrilled by.

I don't know.

I feel like everybody is capable.

I think the

uh, it does feel like the it's shot and then sped up.

I could be wrong, but there was something that felt a little bit off, like enhanced with the

fight sequences.

I think the fights are pretty good.

They are mostly like sort of like the first level, though.

Like, I mean, they're good fight choreography, but they don't have something else going on, except for one that I'll single out soon.

Okay.

But there's not a lot of like inventiveness, right?

It's a lot of blocks, kicks.

They're not using their settings a huge amount.

I mean, I think a lot of the problem, too, though, is also like you don't care about these characters and it doesn't build.

Like, I was going to get to it it later, but like Rose keeps saying, like, I need you to be the man you were.

I'm like, I don't know, man.

He seems like he's basically the same throughout the whole thing.

Like, he's a little more concerned about not killing people at the beginning than he is at the end, but it's not such a difference in his brutality that you're like, oh, yeah, now he's really unleashed.

The beast is out.

Yeah.

You know, which I think is a problem.

It should build.

But

anyway.

They do actually, and they also do that.

I will say they also do the thing, which is always funny, where there's a group later on, there's a group of people attacking him.

And you can see they're all kind of waiting their turn

to get in because that's the way it's set up.

Yeah.

So he's able to knock the Raven out without anyone in the office party.

Guys, if you were a goon, you would probably wait for your turn, right?

Because you're like,

I've got all these fucking moves I've been practicing.

I don't want to like bump into Jerry or whatever.

And it's also, it's just goon.

professionalism and respect.

You let the first guy have his shot, then you take your shot.

You're not going to horn in on his fight territory.

You just got to work with these goons, you know?

Yes, exactly.

Maybe you don't have a fucking vibe with someone else, you know?

Yeah, if you're not going to get murdered in this fight, then you're going to have to see this guy tomorrow.

The person you're fighting, you may never see them again.

So who's his priority?

Yeah, exactly.

That's a good point.

So Marvin goes to someone else.

And by goon, you mean like a fighting thug.

You don't mean someone who just masturbates a lot on the internet.

Yeah.

I mean, you can be both.

That's a good point.

You got to fill time between those fights.

So Marvin goes over to his boss's office.

Cliff, played by Sean Aston.

So we get a Goonies review.

It's a regional.

Speaking of goons?

Right.

Goons back again.

So what if the Goonies was about kids discovering masturbation for the first time?

I mean, kind of, if you look at the movie from a certain angle.

Oh, interesting.

The treasure hunt is really a metaphor for the treasure of our own bodies.

Rather than being like, oh, you know, they saw the Fratelli's influence and they're like, oh, I could be a goon in my career.

Yeah.

Oh, I see.

I should start beating people up and pushing them out of their houses or whatever yeah

uh so cliff gives him a frame cigarette a cigarette certificate like frame cigarette he says he says elvis once held this cigarette that's why i framed it yeah that's been sick uh a frame certificate naming him regional realtor of the year which really touches marvin he hugs cliff and he's like you've changed me you've you know like you turned my life around and he borrows uh cliff's car to get out of this this is also really cool because uh sean aston it wears his big 10-gallon hat and he has this like act of like a Texas guy, which added to my questions of like, where the fuck is this movie supposed to be?

Yeah, because the license plate on his car says Wisconsin.

Yeah, and apparently it is Wisconsin is where it's supposed to be said.

It was all shot in Canada.

People don't move from one state to another.

No, but I think, but it is, it is an interesting choice to have a guy who's like, I'm from Texas.

I'm a cowboy.

Here I am in Wisconsin.

But I do like that his office walls mostly have cowboy hats hanging on them.

And just imagine, does he wear those or are those just his display hats?

You know, that was a touch that I did like.

Tell his character one thing and have them do it to the nth degree.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, again, speaking of goons, two goons named Otis and King are watching the office outside.

King is...

played by Marshawn Lynch.

After his star-making turn in bottoms, right?

Yeah.

I think he's one of the ones who comes off best in this, too.

He has like a naturalness about him.

like, I don't know how big his range is, but he's got so much charisma and he seems like a real person who wandered into this very fake movie.

Yeah.

So he was the person that my older son was most excited about being in the movie.

He didn't watch this with me, but when Love Hurts was coming out, my older son kept saying, Marshawn Lynch is in that movie.

He's like one of the best players ever.

Marsha Lynch, he goes, What movie are you watching for this episode?

Love Hurts with Marshawn Lynch.

So he was very excited that Marshawn Lynch has a movie.

What's he playing?

What's he playing?

What's his game?

Magic?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's one of the greatest Magic the Gathering players there ever was.

Is he an e-gamer?

Yeah, yeah.

He's one of the greatest pinochle players in America right now.

Oh, wow.

If you look at the rankings, yeah.

Yeah.

Cribbage.

Yeah, he's a bridge master.

Man, fuck.

So he's like good at the thing in the newspaper, right?

The little bridge, bridge.

Yes,

he actually writes those.

Yeah.

Everyone's favorite part of the paper.

I hope it never goes away.

That's one of those things like having a court artist instead of a photographer that I love that we still do it.

I love the newspaper still gives people as a bridge column.

Never get rid of that.

When being a reporter has been banned by the government and Trump rounds up all the journalists and puts them into camps, I hope that he gives special attention to the bridge columnists and the bridge columnist gets extra rations of crusty bread.

Or he bans the bridge column and that's what finally sparks the revolution.

He pushed too far.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, anyway, Martawn Lynch's king, Otis, the other one, is upset because he's having trouble with his wife at home.

That's sort of a subplot.

This is kind of a subplot that's tied to the theme of love, but their conversations are very, very sub-pulp fiction to Hitman having a lot of people.

It's like the classic hitmen that are talking about modern psychology.

Yeah, exactly.

They see Marvin leave, so they call to report back to returning Flophouse fave, Cam Guizende.

Yep.

Oh, yeah.

He's playing Rennie Merlow.

We haven't seen him in years at the Flophouse, right?

No, he's been only making good movies.

Yeah.

Rainy's in some sort of mob lair.

He tells the goons to follow Marvin.

Maybe they'll find Rose.

And meanwhile, he'll keep Knuckles in the dark.

And

why is one of Knuckles' own men keeping him in the dark?

We'll find out.

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knuckles wanted to wants to find rose because she knows where some as yet unexplained money that was stolen came from

rinny seems upset that knuckles sent raven to find her because he wants to find her for his own reasons okay dan it sounds like we're in a hilarious and exciting scramble of characters.

Well, you know what?

It should be.

And I got to say, all this plotting plotting is clearer with me explaining it than it is in the movie, even though they do a lot of explaining of things.

And also,

Knuckles is drinking Boba tea, which he loves, which I mentioned because it will become, unlike the scenes, a plot point there.

Do one thing and do it to the end's degree, like Stuart said.

And his thing is Boba.

Yeah, he's Boba Nut.

Anyway,

Knuckles,

Boba Fett's cousin, Boba Nut.

Yeah, he's funny cousin.

Matt Bolson wants to find out why Marvin didn't kill Rose like he was ordered to, so he wants Rose alive, even though when he's like, she stole it from you.

You got to kill her.

The Boba Nuts ship's called the slave fun.

King and Otis.

He's the greatest bounty hunter slash party clown in the galaxy.

Keep him around, yeah.

King and of course he captures fun solo but yeah

that's what he does put fun solo that's what you're doing when you're gooning yeah fun solo yeah yeah

when you're when you're masturbating when you're going through imperial customs who do you have a last name no well who are you masturbating with no one fun solo

Thank God they explained that.

Yeah.

We needed to know where the term came from.

I guess masturbation can be fun.

For me, it's deadly serious, guys.

It's a game of cat and mouse between you and your penis.

But who's the cat and who's the mouse?

We'll find out in the end, I hope.

Masturbation can be fun.

Join the holy orgy.

That's hair.

Anyway.

Oh, I forgot about that.

King and Otis catch up to Marvin at his house, and it turns out they're the enforcers who replaced Marvin in

the outfit.

And they ask where Rose is, and they have a big fight where this is the aforementioned thing where I think there's a little bit of an extra level that I enjoyed where he's trying to protect his Realtor of the Year certificate and also not hurt them too much.

He's not trying to kill these people.

And there's one moment in this that I do like where they close him in a refrigerator, then pick up the refrigerator and then throw it across the room, and then he falls out of the refrigerator.

And like, that's, I'm like, okay, that's something I've been seeing a character in a refrigerator get thrown around since the crystal skull.

So I mean, and it helps that Kihoi Kwan is like not a huge dude, so they can take advantage of this.

That's the thing I think they start doing and they don't really take enough advantage of is the fact that it feels like the joke of the movie or the exciting thing about the movie is that he does not look, I mean, the same with like nobody, right?

He's not a guy who looks like he would be a super tough fighter who can win these fights, just because he's a smaller guy.

And so having the fun of it would be having him.

surprise the other people with what he's what he's so good at or showing that he's amazing at it and and i feel like they it's so kind of

everything's kind of handled in such a diriguer kind of like fashion that they never really get that that point when you're like oh shit i didn't expect this little guy to be such an amazing fighter but he said a sound you know yeah there's a little bit of that like marshawn lynch has like a little like what like moment but it's it's not

i'm i'm no i'm i no longer uh enjoy frank miller's sin city comics the same that i once did but it's kind of like the moment in that first sin city story where uh marv finds the guy elijah wood plays in the movie, that like kind of like the killer who just looks like a little guy, and that guy immediately turns out to be super fast and have like razor-sharp nails.

And you're like, oh, this could be a lot more difficult than we thought.

Like, that's the moment you want in this, but it feels like they don't really have it.

Mainly, maybe because he's, I don't know, even though they're building him up as like, he's just an ordinary guy who loves, is a nerd, who loves his job.

Like, it never quite feels.

You know, the other shoe is going to drop.

It never feels like that.

They don't give enough setup to that.

Like,

the rush to the first fight is so quick that like you don't really get enough of this character to actually give a about him yes yeah i feel like i feel like a history of violence does does a better job of the of the this kind of oh yeah the the the great movie

the great movie that that a great director made yeah yeah exactly

i guess what i'm saying is love hurts doesn't stand up to david cronenberg's word yeah

uh although love hurts is actually would be a good title of david cronenberg's like uh so many if you if you did a retrospective of his movies love hurts would be a great

title for it.

Yeah.

Anyway, he escapes, but before he can drive away, he's taged by Rose,

as we mentioned before, played by Ariana DeBose.

And I want to say, I've liked her before, especially in West Side Story.

I think she is downright bad here, but I don't think it's necessarily her fault.

Like, this is like such a poorly written character, like such a off-the-shelf, like, chaotic

force character.

And like, the director doesn't seem to know what to do with her.

It's a problem, especially because the fact that they're supposedly in love is the plot driver in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

And I don't buy it.

Yeah, the fact that there's a 20-year age gap and they have like negative chemistry on screen and they never, they almost never touch on screen.

And it seems like they are in different movies.

Yeah, I think it is a, she is, she definitely does not have much of a character to play.

To borrow our friend Nathan's, you know, old phrase, she's a, and twisted like, she's a manic pixie assassin girl, you know, and the, and, uh, the

she does have a rose tattoo on her arm, not the band rose tattoo.

Not the Tennessee Williams play, the rose tattoo, yeah.

Or the band featuring Angry Anderson, who is in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

It does really hurt, and not in a fun love hurts way.

It does really hurt that they have very little chemistry and we're supposed to believe they have a history.

And if those two characters weren't supposed to have a history together, I think this movie would work slightly better if it is like, who are you and why are you doing this?

And they're discovering each other in the process.

Yes.

Like in a, in a, what is uh, what was the lifeless ordinary sort of way?

Well, or in a way, like something wild or something like that, or bringing up Bobby, and you know, that's a

bringing up Baby.

Yeah, bringing up Baba Yaga.

That's the one where the Baba Yaga gets into Carrie Grant's life and throws it out of whack.

Where's that?

Fancy chicken foot.

Where's that dinosaur bone I'm looking for?

It's in my mortar and pestle.

And she flies away.

But she does.

Arian DeBose does have one moment here that I like where she tases

Marvin and she tases somebody else.

And for whatever reason, there's two kids sitting on a swing set watching her.

And she does like a little flourish bow to them because they enjoyed seeing her tase those guys.

And I like that split second.

That bow i really like

uh meanwhile back at the office ashley uh finds the unconscious raven reads some of his poetry is immediately smitten with him on the basis of this terrible poetry uh

uh king calls rainy and is like wait i have one more thing to say his poetry is not bad enough to be funny That's another missed opportunity.

It's just realistically bad.

Yeah, it's realistically bad.

It should be really hilariously bad.

And then it's equally funny if they fall in love with him, you know?

Yeah.

So

King is like, hey, this realtor is like a nobody Baba Yaga.

I'm out.

And Rinnie is like, hey, if Knuckles finds Rose, she's going to talk.

She'll reveal it was Rinnie and someone named Kippy who haven't met yet, who actually stole from him.

So they have to keep at it.

And he's like, I'll find Rose myself.

You goons.

Go find Kippy.

Since he's the other loose head.

This is another issue with this movie is for a movie where the plot is both super simple and hard to figure out, there's a lot of characters telling each other what to do and what they're going to do next.

And it's like, we just have the characters doing this stuff.

Like we don't see so many times that Cam Gajana is giving orders to other people.

It is baffling to me that like, I watched this movie and then I just like, because it was so short, I just watched it straight to like.

watch it and then I went back and skimmed over it to take my notes and so much more was clear the second time around obviously but I mean that's good that's like a Gene Wolf novel that it's It's it's made to be re-watched not watched.

That's good work.

Yeah, but I was just confused watching it because I'm like this plot is so essentially so simple.

Why didn't it make any sense to me the first time around?

It was just like a cavalcade of

something or

what were you on edibles or something?

No, I was.

I haven't had pot in months and months.

It would be a real dereliction of duty, Dan, if you were on edibles when you were watching the movie while doing the summary.

I would, I would probably court-martial you and drum you out and tear your flophouse patches off.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

I will not tell Elliot about my choices.

Hey, Sue, as long as the summary comes through, that's okay.

But if Dan's like, you have trouble following this, maybe it's because I was intoxicated at the time.

Well, I wasn't.

Marvin wakes up somewhere in a sweater with hearts all over it.

Hilarious, right, guys?

Ashley is leaving him a voicemail about the unconscious assassin in his office and uh reads a poem in a loving voice and quits their job.

And then the raven wakes up and those two characters start connecting.

Yeah, um, that's great.

Marvin has some voiceover about liking Rose and vice versa because the movie doesn't have time to do the job.

He likes the movie vice versa.

Yes, he loves vice versa.

He's like, I love Rose, but almost as much as I love vice versa.

Yeah.

A crystal skull.

And vice versa is

the Judge Reinhold one.

That's the Judge Reinhold one.

Like Father Like Son is the Dudley Moore one.

Yes, with Kirk Cameron.

Okay.

And 18 again is the George Burns one.

Yes.

And in Dream a Little Dream,

Jason Robards is actually in a coma or something the whole time.

He's dreaming.

Oh, okay.

Corey Feldman is.

Yeah.

Hey, Aime.

He's Corey Hayne.

Yeah.

And then Feldman's a supporting character.

And Freaky Friday is the Jamie Lee Curtis one, and there's another one of that coming out.

Okay.

Uh-huh.

You get another Friday or whoever it is.

What's the Fountain one?

What's the one that's fine?

That's just the switch-up.

The switch-up.

I thought it was.

Is it the change-up or the switch-up?

I don't know.

The switch up.

Yeah, the chase with Christy Swanson and Charlie Sheen in baseball places.

Oh, yeah.

So those are all body swap movies.

We also did Freaky with our friend Barbara Grampton on the show.

And Dr.

Jekyll and Mrs.

Hyde is the one with Sean Young, right?

Yeah, and Tim Daly.

Okay.

Tyne Daly?

A Tyne Daly with whom?

A Tiny Daly.

Where was I?

Notice.

See, Tyne Daily is getting a little smaller.

Tiny Daily in theaters this song.

Closer, Tyne Daily.

You see that Daily?

Boy, that's huge.

Oh, the op, it would be Tyne Daily saying that stuff.

No, that's Tiny Elvis next.

Oh, Tiny Elvis is even tinier than Tiny Daily.

I see it.

Or Tyne Daily, okay?

Yeah, I have it all mapped out in this chart.

Oh, yeah, that's a lot of yarn between those pictures of Tyne Daily and Tiny Elvis.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've got a lot to say about Love Hurts, don't we?

Rose Rose explains she's back with the fake dead because she wants to get their lives back.

She takes them on a joyride, trying to get the old killer to come out.

Um, she says, Hello, you fool, I love you.

Want to go on a joyride?

Yeah, yeah,

uh, the Raven and Ashley continue to fall in love.

Marvin takes Rose to one of his unsold properties as a safe house, and they argue about getting their lives back.

And, you know, this is where they're supposed to be reconnecting, but again, it doesn't really happen.

Uh,

Rennie, uh, Cam Gijande, breaks into our apartment and shoots someone, but it's just a decoy mannequin that Rose has left with a message for him saying that she has Kippie along with a bunch of incriminating financial info.

This was the point where I was like, it says, I've got Kippie on the set, and I was like, am I supposed to know who Kippy is already?

Unfortunately, you meet him right now.

You meet him right now.

He's in Rose's trunk.

It's played by Rhys Darby, possibly the only Rhys Darby performance that never made me laugh.

I love Rhys Darby.

I love Rhea Starby.

And yeah, this is, it's not a, it's, I mean, they don't give him much to do.

They don't give him enough to do.

They do give him some fake teeth.

They do give him some part.

I think that's what, I think, honestly, that is the fatal mistake that makes me not laugh at any of it.

Because like she pulls like his front teeth off, his fake front teeth off when like removing the duct tape that she had in his mouth.

And so then he's got these false.

like gross uh broken teeth the whole time and supposed to be funny but it just makes makes everything off-putting that he does.

And it's weird because it's like, no, you have a very talented comedic performer.

Just let him make it funny.

Yes.

Rose threatens Kippie with a taser and we get the backstory,

which is that Rose helps Rennie steal $4 million from Knuckles and then Rennie...

put $2 million in the truck of Rose's car for Knuckles to find

so Renny could take Rose's place in the organization while Kippy cooked the books so they could keep the remaining $2 million undetected.

So everyone has that now.

Yeah.

All of the pieces are in place.

Fine.

There's a flashback to Rose at the quarry with Marvin, where he was supposed to kill her, but he tells her to run instead.

I will say, the first time we see the two of them together, they are dressed so differently from what we're used to.

And Marvin, when he was a monster hitman, has a mustache and wears kind of like

some blue hair.

And

he looks like he's a character in a leisure suit Larry video game, like it's like

I was totally

her fit her like all white suit also pretty but it feels so cart like this whole movie is not realistic but then they the characters seem so cartoonish at that moment compared to before when they're at least wearing regular you know everyday clothes that i was like what hold on a second wait so were they characters in guys and dolls for a moment and then they came back to reality like well it's also weird because it's like

like he's doing what he wants to do as a realtor yes and it's just weird to me that it's like, so was he spending a lot of time wearing these like fancy bad guy outfits?

Like, was that a rule?

Like, did he, did he not have to do that?

It doesn't seem like it's conducive to him being a battle boy.

But Knuckles was like, I need you to dress like one of the weasels in Roger Rabbit if you're going to do the job.

Like, he should have been like Danny the dog or something from that Jet Lee movie.

Like, he should have been.

Yeah, the whole time, it feels like they're trying to make him that character, basically.

The character, like, this is what I crafted you into the ultimate killer, and then I let you off your leash, you know?

It at least would make sense if they're like,

he

threw himself into being a killer because he was somebody who just needed direction, uh, because that's kind of what he has done as a realtor, that he has like taken a job and just pursued it.

Um, and that that's why he was a killer.

And then like he had a change of heart, but I don't know.

It doesn't no, well, this movie is at part of the problem with this movie is as crop, it's at cross purposes with itself because he really, I feel like he does communicate that he likes being a realtor.

He loves this job.

He's enjoying his life for real.

And you have Rose come in and say, you're lying to yourself.

You're hiding.

This isn't who you really are.

And the movie wants him to be revealed as, no, he is a, he does have a killer inside of him and he needs to bring it out that is who he is.

But that's not the performance that Juan is giving.

Juan is giving a better performance of, no, he is a realtor at heart and he wants to do that.

And also, you know what, movie, the message should be, yes, it is better to be a realtor than to be merciless killer.

But I don't care which one looks cooler on screen.

We want to live in a world of realtors, not in the world of assassins.

It certainly would have made more sense if he was like an assassin at heart who's just trying to play at being a realtor and he was bad at it.

Yes.

That would have been, at least that would have been a choice that would have maybe been funny and tied in with the rest of the movie as opposed to the choice they went with.

Or the choice of the idea that we're supposed, I mean, once, if you have a character who likes his life and Rose comes in and is throwing that balance because she wants to be him, him to be someone different is throwing that off her character has to be so charismatic that you're like that you're as tempted as he is whereas here I kept thinking about the movie I'm like just go away like he had a good life and you're wrecking it but you're not bringing anything in addition yeah like you're just a bad influence all the way through and maybe if that's the movie you're telling then make her really bad make her a bad guy you know yeah I don't feel like he's gonna be more self-actualized if he goes back to like murdering people no I mean

there's a there's another version of this movie which was not necessarily better where he loses regional realtor of the year.

And his boss is like, sorry, man, I know you want this job, but you just don't have the killer instinct.

And then through becoming an assassin again, that intensity comes back, and then suddenly he's the best realtor in the world.

You know,

that's the arc that he's on, and this adventure helps him.

Whereas here, it's like, he's like, I love my life.

Ugh, all this stuff came in.

You know what?

I do love my life.

And

I will continue to be a realtor.

It's like, why the hell did I just see you go through all this?

Yeah.

So we see that Corey flashback.

He tells her to run.

Corey flashbacked?

Was it Corey Feldman or Corey Haim?

Yeah, Corey flashbacked.

Back in the present.

Florey Feldman.

Back in the present, Rose is weirdly angry about why did you volunteer to kill me when it is pretty clear that it was to protect her?

Because if anyone else took that job, they would have just killed her, killed her.

But Marvin has to explain it anyway.

So the dumbest in the audience understand, I guess.

Yeah.

So

back at Marvin's actual house, Cliff shows up to pick up the car, and he finds Knuckles and some of his muscle.

And they have this conversation where Knuckles is obviously like menacing and angry that Cliff has become Marvin's surrogate brother

rather than him, the real brother.

And he reveals Marvin's dark past, and Cliff is so nice and forgiving that you know Sean Aston's going to get killed.

Yeah.

And he does get killed by Knuckles stabbing a Bobistra into his eye, and blood dribbles out, and it's way too gruesome for the tone of this movie.

Like, this is like the nicest guy who gets killed in this awful my guess joke way my guess is this movie was originally probably a lot gorier and that they could be and they kept that in because i guess it's neat looking or or funny that that the blood pours out through the straw you know yeah but yeah but my guess is this was a much bloodier movie and then they cut it back at some point that's because the the fight scenes feel otherwise so bloodless even though people are getting slashed with blades and like, you know, getting the shit kicked out of them.

So yeah.

It does feel like there's a that like Sean Eston's character.

I guess it makes me not like the movie that Sean Eston's character is so sweet and then gets killed.

And it's supposed to be like, no, this Knuckles guy, now I really want him dead.

But he was already a bad guy.

We already don't like him.

And I feel like there's a there's another version of this movie where Sean Eston's character is a little sleazy.

Like maybe he's he's using Marvin a little bit.

Like the guy from Die Hard.

Yeah, yeah.

So when he gets killed, it's like, uh-oh, but also not, you don't feel heartbroken, you know?

Yeah.

The movie can't, the movie can't carry Sean Austin's, Shane Eston's death in this, you know, no, no, not at all.

Marvin threatens Kippie, but is interrupted by people coming to see the house.

And Rose is like, don't open that door.

And Marvin says, I like my life now, but I am like, you don't, you can still try and keep your life as a realtor and not open the door right now while you're holding this guy hostage and there's a criminal thing going on.

Also, and like in a better movie, this would be a great, like kind of a fun scene of like, oh, like we have this farcical thing where he has to show the house while this stuff is going on, but you have to make that inevitable.

You can't just have him be like, no, I'm going to show the house.

The whole movie, he should be like,

I have this appointment coming up to show this house.

And so I've got to get to that appointment.

Like that's, that should be his drive to get out of fight scenes.

It's like, I can't be all beat to crap because I have to show this house.

Because what it feels like also is this couple showed up randomly at a model house.

hoping that the realtor would be there that day to show them around.

And it's like, that's not how realty works.

Like a realtor doesn't just live at a model house waiting for his clients to show up.

Like they would have no point.

Do you think this would have worked better if he hadn't won what regional Realtor of the Year at the start, but instead he knew that they were like judging by the end of the movie?

So he was like, okay, so I have to show this house because I need to win this award, maybe?

I think so.

He hasn't, I think if he, he's his whole drive the whole time should be, I got to win this award.

Like, I can't let this get in the way of winning this award.

And the joke there then is like, like, your life is in danger.

Why do you care so much?

This is at the end of the movie, he went.

They've judged him.

And even

they're like, You were able to protect your clients' lives.

You know, you won.

And he goes and accepts the award, and he's all beat up and he's bloody all over.

And he's giving a speech holding this certificate.

It means so much to him, but he looks half dead.

Like, that would be such a funny thing.

That's better.

That's better.

Yeah, we fixed it.

We fixed it.

Love doesn't hurt anymore.

Love fixed.

The couple comes in to see the house.

Marvin calls Ashley for the closing paperwork, but they're like, didn't you get the message?

I quit.

But Marvin convinces them them to come to the house, which means the Raven also knows where Marvin is.

But Ashley, because they've fallen in love, convinces the Raven not to kill Marvin, but take him in unharmed.

He'll kill Marvin.

Nevermore.

Oh, damn.

Kippy escapes

from the Pippini.

Yeah, it's from the Poe.

Yeah, the Conqueror Worm.

M.

Anyway.

Poe, M is what I said.

Kippie escapes.

Yeah, we got it, Dan.

We got it.

Did you hear me laughing?

It's not because I didn't get it.

Did you hear me laughing?

At your front door, baby.

Kippy escapes and calls Rippy.

Laugh, laugh, laughing at heaven's door.

Oh, yeah, it's great.

I'm so tired.

Laugh to my window or whatever the song, the most hazardous song is.

It's a great laugh medley.

Kippy escapes and calls Rennie.

Oh no, if the movie were better, things would be cooking now.

Rose calls Rainy, references telling the Russians who are these Russians.

We'll find out about the

incriminating info she left him to find.

And Rainy's like, if you want your money, come to the mob headquarters.

So she drives off, leaving a Valentine for Marvin that says, Hiding ain't living, which is kind of a

repeated mantra in the movie.

Yeah.

Also, I would say for many people in difficult situations, hiding is living.

Hiding is what keeps them alive.

So I take it, I take it, it feels real entitled.

This message.

Raven and Ashley show up at the house.

There's a non-violent standoff, which is interrupted with a violent standoff when Otis and King also show up and shoot up the place.

Which I would say is so Raven.

That is so, Raven.

That is so, Raven.

Here's Otis and King.

I did like one bit here when

the two thugs are there and they're about to fight and they go and pull the novelty decorative massive silverware off

to use as weapons.

That was pretty fun.

That was fun.

They do the thing here that happens a lot in action movies where two guys show up with automatic weapons and consistently shoot above everybody in the room.

And it's like, just lower a little bit.

There's a part where I thought this was so funny, not on purpose, but that where one of the characters is, it's like he's being shot at, and then you see a shot of him just hiding behind something, and then the shot of the guy shooting the guns at that place.

And it's like, so he stopped shooting for a second so that the guy could, so that, that our hero could like go hide somewhere.

the editing tries to hide the fact that he should be dead right now

um the fact that i i feel like i guess what i'm saying is they haven't really built up the threat of king and otis they seem to be consistently not good at their job yes um

but they raise the stakes here in a second uh well they do maybe it's partly also because i will say if i'm an assassin and i'm trying to kill somebody i would try to shoot them before i just shoot out a bunch of windows and then kick up the person and throw them across the room there's a lot of throws you know yeah yeah if i was an assassin, I would just shoot them with a sniper rifle, but maybe I'm just built different.

If I were an assassin, I'd be better at killing.

I just always wonder in movies,

when you have it like an Uzi or something, why you don't just spray all over the place so you're bound to hit him at some point, as opposed to shooting in one direction the entire time and letting the person hide behind something.

Or there's a later, someone, it's one of those things where someone has a pump action shotgun and someone else is hiding behind a rack of videos or something.

And instead of going around the corner and then firing the gun, he's just walking while firing a pump action shotgun at nothing.

You know, and it's like, I mean,

you get all worked up, Elliot.

I mean, you start, you start racking that thing and you're like, hell yeah.

But it's like, if you can't see them, you're not going to hit them with your gun.

You know,

the bullets not going to, a shotgun bullet's not going to ricochet off something and hit them.

Yeah, but you might like pin them in place and then they'll allow you to do a flanking maneuver, right?

I guess so.

Let me get back to the summary.

The karate rider.

I'll give more assassin advice later in the show in my regular Kaiten's Killer Corner.

More like Dead Vice.

More like Dad Vice.

The karate realtor I mentioned way back at the beginning is showing a house nearby.

He sees what's going on.

He jumps in to help Marvin because he's an overconfident karate black belt.

And honestly, he's really fun and goofy.

So, of course, he gets shot through the head and there's a big hole in his head.

They do a classic hard-boiled shot, hard-boiled

Jeff Darrow type shot.

Another likable character getting too gruesomely killed for my tastes in this movie.

and if it was like a dark comedy, like, if it was really, like, leaning into that, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

But the tone is, is way wrong.

Um,

but the, but, uh,

it also is too bad because he, in those moments, is the funniest character in the movie.

Yeah, he, he's really like Marvin and Raven fight off the goons while Marvin still tries to close the sale.

And there's this scene where Marvin tells a couple, stay here until I come and find you.

And they're never revisited, which makes me wonder if there was like a post-credit scene where they're still like waiting in the house that just got cut or something because they do just disappear yeah yeah um or even just a scene i mean there might have been a wrap-up scene with those characters that was cut you know

but uh they they win their fight uh ashley stops marvin from killing the raven reminding him that he was once a killer too and that everyone can change and somehow That's what sends him after Rose.

Even Rose is the one, even though Rose is the one who doesn't want him to change.

So I don't understand that.

I wonder if he feels like maybe I can have it all.

Maybe I can be a realtor and be in love with this harley quinn-esque you know chaos assassin you know harley quinn i know

harley quinn under my guidance has reached a level of maturity that raven does not have yet or not raven that uh that uh

rose does not have yet

uh speaking of raven is a raven's a better name for that character i'm sorry rose should be called raven raven should be called wordsworth like that they should have different names

uh rose tries to get her money from rinny but he's had the truth beaten from him by knuckles and goons surround her.

Marvin shows up and Rose is like, I need all of you.

So Marvin crushes his glasses to Hulk out.

But again, not really different from the rest of the movie.

No, well, what's different here is it's set to my first, my last, my everything

in the same way as they did in Argyle, where I'm like, shut up, stop doing this.

I'm tired of it.

No more ironic songs to bloody fight scenes.

No, thank you.

We've seen it.

Yeah.

They beat up the goons.

Oh, you know what?

What if she said, I need all of you?

And then he fought while singing, all of me.

Why not take, why not kill all of me?

Yeah, that'd be better.

Yeah.

Rose kills Rennie.

There's a big fight between Knuckles and Marvin where Marvin just barely wins and tries to walk away.

But Knuckles comes after with a bat, and Rose shoots him in the shoulder and turns him over to the Russian mob, whose money it was really the whole time, less her finder's fee.

Everything's wrapped up.

Did it bother you guys?

They do the thing, I think they do in the John Wick movies, right?

Where when there's a subtitle, when it's subtitling a foreign language, instead of having it along the bottom, it's like in big letters on the on the screen.

Does that bother me?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't, I don't mind it.

Why would it bother me?

I don't, because it bothers me, and I'm trying to figure out why.

Okay.

Yeah, no, I think it's okay.

It's a style choice that

I don't.

If it's just me being a stickler, that's okay.

There's a brief Valentine's Day montage to tie everything up.

Ashley.

Guys, did the ghost of Gary Marshall make this movie in the end?

It feels like it.

Ashley and the Raven are together.

King and Otis, who got sliced up.

Did you know that?

You know,

Gary Marshall got a start as a fight choreographer, right?

Yeah, he did.

That's true.

Yeah.

He choreographed the fights on Happy Days.

King and Otis, who got sliced up so much, I presumed they were dead before.

They

should be dead.

Like he's literally slicing their bellies and stuff and cutting their hamstrings.

Like they should have bled out.

They should be dead.

But no.

They were too likable to die.

Otis's wife texts him to reconcile.

Only the most likable characters in the movie get get gory on-screen deaths.

Yeah.

Marvin pulls his shades down and looks at Rose while she's tending bar with a voiceover saying, as much as love hurts, it's totally worth it.

And then credits roll.

And it just feels like such an anti-climax.

No, it is.

Didn't know how to end this thing.

Didn't know how to end it, or there was an ending and they changed it and cut it.

Maybe that was a reshot ending.

I forgot entirely this.

strip bar she's in that uh is points up the double standard

house yeah yeah but it points up the double standard of american society that we can see a bloody hole through the head of a recently murdered, likable character, but the strippers have to be wearing full butt covering panties and bras and just walk around slowly in their underpants.

I guess what I'm saying, Dan, is I like to see the human body celebrated rather than mangled.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I do not recommend the Final Destination franchise.

Okay.

i go there with my with my wife i've heard it's a real celebration of the human body

um

so love hurts what this is it time for final judgments dan it is time for final judgments whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie you kind of liked uh

i'll say this is a bad bad movie i do

enjoy seeing uh Ki Hui Hui Kwan.

He's good in it as much as you could make this work.

There's some like small sporting roles.

He has such a natural, likable charisma that makes you wish that

he did not have that time in his career when he could not find the right roles for him and or when Holly was not offering him roles.

And like, it makes you wish that, yeah, that he was in a much better vehicle for his charisma than this because he is a very charismatic performer.

But it's, you know, it's obviously been cut to hell, and

it just doesn't work.

I think that some of the fixes that we've proposed would make it at least passable, but

they didn't get our notes in time.

They're getting them now,

well after the release.

So I say it's bad, bad movie.

They should have showed us the work brand.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're the Monday morning movie makers.

I'm going to agree.

I think it's a bad, bad movie.

I think

I'm not going to lay the blame at really any other performers, but it does feel like there's some conceptual flaws in the basic choices made in the movie.

And the people that don't work as well in the movie, I think, are more miscast.

Yeah, it's kind of a stinker.

I am also going to call it a bad bad movie.

Yes, I'm not going to blame any of the performers.

I'm going to, as I always do, I'm going to blame whoever was giving notes on the movie.

But the, yeah, it's a movie that is, it's trying so hard to be a specific type of kind of like

fun,

violent, semi-romantic comedy that I feel like the 90s tried out over and over again and could never really get, could rarely get the right balance of.

And here they failed to get that balance too.

But the whole time I was watching it, it was like, this felt like, I was like, maybe I assume it's not, but it felt like a script that might have been kicking around since Pulp Fiction came out and then got gussied up with kind of like John Wick type type of thing.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't help that it came out after Nobody, which does basically everything this movie does except for the tone better.

And that it came out the same what year as Hard Eyes, which is a like, you know, a

slasher rom-com that again,

like plays with like a non-traditional love story in a,

but is actually successful.

Yeah.

But I just hope all these performers get that it's not taken as their problem and they uh

and they get to and they do more do more and better stuff.

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Buy some ad time on the flop house.

But I have some things to promote, so I'm going to talk about them.

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Go to your comic book store and why not pick up Harley Quinn coming out monthly from DC Comics, written by me.

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And this is a long way in the future, but we are about five months away from the release of my book about joke writing, Joke Farming, from the University of Chicago Press.

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But get ready for that.

Mark your calendars that is coming out in November, joke farming.

And I think the subtitle is How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense or something like that.

And it is hopefully the only joke writing manual that you will need that will explain literally the mechanics of how a joke works and how how I write them.

Wow.

Also, a week after this episode drops, I believe, is June 14th, which is the Brooklyn Pride Parade in Brooklyn, New York along Fifth Avenue.

And my bar, Commonwealth, is along that strip, and that whole area turns into a really huge party.

And if you're looking for a place to pee and get a drink, you should check out Commonwealth.

Can we order it?

Can we do it the other way around?

Depends.

It depends on

how bad you have to go when you get there.

And then five days after that is my birthday.

So

we've all got equally important plugs.

So, Dan,

are you inviting all the Flop House listeners to come to your birthday party?

If they can find it, they can't find it.

So it's like the A-team.

If you're a fan of Dan's and you can find him, celebrate his birthday.

Hey, let's do some letters from listeners.

Let's do it.

Listeners.

Yeah, I feel like that's what people on the internet need is more of an excuse to like try to try harder to find Dan.

Well, he is the mole, right?

You have to find, he's running across the country and you've got to find him.

How did that game show work?

Yeah, that's how the show works, right, Dan?

I'm thinking of myself as more of a Waldo.

Oh, yeah.

A great Waldo pepper.

Pepper.

What's my Scoville rating?

Hot, hot.

This is from Mark, last name withheld, who writes, Mark Talon, my dad.

Mark Wellington, my dad?

Wow.

You both.

Wow.

This is a real Batman versus Superman.

Yeah, we were about to kill each other, and then we all remember that.

We were fighting in an abandoned men's room, and then we realized our dad's had the same name, so we should join forces to stop whoever the bad guy was in that movie.

Mastermind, I think.

I think it was Toy Man.

This is titled Personal Non-Canon Sequels.

Hello from London.

Good luck.

Love the

i have a query about personal non-canon sequels alas another simple favor didn't recapture the magic of the first movie despite the lead still having that chemistry in an attempt to further the story the movie took the characters into places that semi-ruined the joy of the first so i've decided to remove the sequel from my head cannon so i can just enjoy a simple favor as originally intended Do you have any sequels that you'd also like to remove from your existence?

Thanks for reading.

P.S.

My simple favorite sequel would have adhered much more to a Silence of the Lambs style plot structure, but with more martinis and fabulous outfits in replacement for cannibalism.

I'm not sure how that would.

I guess Anna Kendrick would have to visit Blake Lively in prison to capture someone else.

Is that what the implication is?

I assume so, yeah.

But with yeah, and cannibalism would be in there.

Yeah, I mean, speaking of

sequels, I would remove, I would remove Hannibal from

my Silence of the Lambs.

Not the show.

The TV show, Hannibal, of course,

can't exist.

But the movie kind of ruins, I think,

probably a weak spot of old Ridley Scott's career.

I mean, I do this all the time.

I'm like, you know, well, didn't like that one.

Doesn't exist in my personal cosmology of these characters.

Yeah, you're yelling at me about The Last Jedi, right?

Love The Last Jedi.

But like, this is why I don't actually.

I mean, like, I get annoyed if, like, I was looking forward to a movie and it sucks, as anyone might, but I don't get like angry the way people seem to.

Like, that ruined everything.

Like, well, you can just pretend it doesn't exist, man.

Well, the trick is, as you get older and you develop a richfold life, you don't care as much.

I mean, that is a big part of it.

I think there's a, if you feel like you have some sense of control over any element of your own life, then you feel, I mean, you might feel less attached to the fictional lives of fictional characters.

But the,

yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's ones that, like, as far as I'm concerned, the Terminator series ends with Terminator 2.

Like, there's no reason to do that.

I mean, Terminator Salvation is a very clear one for me.

I really dislike that.

And the

part three does have that bit where Arnold head slams

Christiana Luckin into a toilet.

That's kind of crazy.

That's a crazy looking fight.

And I like the most recent one a bit.

The

Terminator.

What's Dark, Dark Future, Dark Fate?

thing but like

those those can exist sort of like as like

i don't know

supplementary material multiverse whatever it's like something i like about the godzilla series is that at a certain point they decided every movie we make is a sequel to the 1954 godzilla and will disavow the previous sequels and they've done a number of sequels in a row where they're all they all ignore every movie made previously, including the one made most recently before that.

And they're like, this is just how we're doing it.

It's just just different stories about Godzilla.

We're not beholden to what happened to him before because we don't want to have to process all that.

And it makes the character a little more special because it means that the people in the movie series don't have a familiarity with Godzilla the same way they would if there were literally 30 Godzilla adventures, you know, that had happened in canon in real life.

Yeah, it's like the first Godzilla is the like Big Bang moment and that all the movies are like spread out from that one specific point.

All the other movies are the young Sheldons that come after that Big Bang.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for putting in terms that I understand.

No problem.

But I remember like when I was younger, like when Alien 3 came out, getting caught up in how disappointing it was to have all the characters, have like the characters from Aliens that we liked just be dead.

You know?

Yes.

No, no, I, yeah, for me, like it ends with aliens.

And similarly, like, there's stuff I like in

some of the other movies.

Yeah.

There's stuff I like in some of the other movies.

There's stuff I like in some of the movies.

Swords making it a dubious fake.

What are you talking about?

I like them all, man.

There's some stuff I like

in the later

Indiana Jones movies, but basically it ends for me with Last Crusade, like in terms of taking it seriously.

It's like, these are movies I really like.

Part of the issue is that, is there, and I don't want to sound like a Last Jedi hating guy, because this is the issue that some people have Last Jedi, is that when you do some of those much later sequels,

they fall on that easy structure of the hero is bitter and has to be brought back in.

And seeing Indiana Jones in that most recent one, being a a bitter old man separated from his wife and hating his job, he was just like, I don't care if he is going to have another adventure.

Like,

this is a depressing way to think this character is going to age up.

As opposed to Luke Skywalker and Las Jedi, where I'm like, I, I do like the idea of a hero who, um, who has,

that's on such an operatic level, the Star Wars movies, that if he is a tragic figure who has failed his own principles, then I'm like, oh, well, that's a meaty thing.

Whereas Indiana Jones does not operate on that level for me.

So to see him as just like, yeah, he he was an adventure and now he hates every aspect of his life and he's just in an angry, he's just a bitter old man.

It's like, oh, well, that's, that's disappointing.

Maybe I'm just a sad person, but I liked the most recent one.

I had more of a problem with

Crystal Skull, even though there's a couple things in there I like where it's just like, I feel like it has a lot of the same problems, but also a lot of other extra problems.

I mean,

dial of time or whatever is dial of destiny.

I haven't even seen that one.

Should I see that one?

I think it's good.

It's fine.

It's better than Crystal Skull, but it's a movie that I will say, I liked it.

i didn't like it at the beginning is mutt back is mutt is not back i liked it pointedly not back i liked it more i mean it would have won me over they show you the bottom they show you the grave

he has like a he has like a he has like a shrine to mutt and it just says oh yeah he was killed when he he tried to ride a motorcycle into a train or something like that yeah but the the uh i liked that movie as it went on because it got sillier and sillier or it got bigger and bigger you know okay so

uh we got one more question from the listeners from john last name withheld subject is Salacious Crumb.

Oh, one of my favorite subjects.

Message body.

Is he a pet or a friend?

Thanks.

He is an employee.

He is both a pet and an employee.

He's not a friend.

A job has no real friends.

When you're that rich and that powerful and that dangerous, you don't have real friends.

You only have people who are afraid of you or want to use you.

That's fucked up, Elliot.

So you're saying when Salacious Crumb is like loving it and laughing his ass off, he's performing that way.

He's not doing that out of actual joy.

Here's the great thing about Salacious Crumb.

He loves his work.

So that is the real joy.

Luckily, he found the job that was right for him, which is as a pet who enjoys seeing his owner throw people to the rancor pit.

So when Slacius Crum is letting him torment droids.

Yes, that's a genuine laugh.

The same way that when I am working and I'm in the writer's room and we're genuinely coming up with really fun ideas and enjoying it, and I laugh heartily, it's like, man,

this is what a great conjunction of work and also what I, what gives me pleasure.

And Salacious Crumb lives the dream of having that every single day until the barge explodes and he dies in a fireball.

Yeah, I heard those complaints that in the writer's room, you're always laughing like Salacious Crumb, and they're like, it's kind of off-putting.

They would be so lucky if I laughed, like,

that would be wonderful.

I should do that on Monday.

Yeah.

But yeah, Salacious Crumb is, he's an employee pet.

He's like a hype man, right?

Like, he's.

Yes.

Yeah.

He's definitely like a hype man.

When Kendrick Lamar goes mustard and mustard comes out, that's what Job of the Hut would do.

Go, salacious, and then salacious crumb would come out.

It's the same relationship.

Yeah.

Same solationship.

And on my black light poster, salacious chrome would be Morty and Jabba would be Rick, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, wait, well, actually, I'm not so sure about that.

Stuart, we have to stop relating everything to your black light posters.

Okay.

I don't think that everything in the world can be.

No,

we were talking about Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Stuart's like, but who is he on my black light poster?

Yeah, is he the unicorn that's flying through outer space or is he the world snake that's devouring itself?

Is he the butterfly-winged tiger that the barbarian queen is riding?

Oh, man.

Let us now, let us go then, you and I, to

a magical answer.

Take my hand.

To recommendation.

We'll make it, I swear.

Movies that we saw that we enjoyed, perhaps a little bit more than Love Hurts, so much that we would go so far as to say you might enjoy them as well.

And I saw on Hulu, I just watched Summer of 69, which

you thought it was something different from the number in the title.

Well, actually, it means that in the movie.

They're referring to that.

So, you know, this could just be like Hulu slop.

You know, like you,

I would.

Give me an example.

Drop some Hulu slop.

I love the idea that in our world, the phrase Hulu slop means something, and it's not just like a funk performer from the 70s.

You know,

here's a cut you don't hear much from Hulu Slop.

Yeah, I feel like for the most part, the Hulu, like direct-to-hulu stuff is at least a step above Netflix.

Maybe I'm, maybe I'm disremembering.

It's probably true, but there is like a type of just like

baseline glossy, but it's not, it's not even like this.

I feel like in the old days, you would find gems in direct to video or direct-to-streaming stuff, but the idea was mostly like,

oh, this fell short of what could be theatrical, and so it ended up here.

Whereas now,

like, the bar has been lowered a lot of the time, and now it's just like, well, this is something you can kind of pay attention to.

Wasn't like wasn't Lake George a recent Hulu original?

I think, well, I mean, it was in theaters.

Okay, I don't know whether it was, I don't know, I don't, I don't know.

I don't know the deals.

Okay.

The deals were structured.

But anyway, Summer of 69 has Chloe Feynman from Saturday Night Live, and it has the main character.

She was also in Megalopolis, Dan.

Sure.

The main character is played by Stuart.

Thank you for correcting that, Stuart.

Sam Morellos.

I don't know if I'm saying the last name correctly, but she was apparently in that 90s show.

That 90s show, yeah, yeah.

But she was terrific in this.

They're both really good.

I like Sam Morellos a lot.

I think she's a funny funny performer.

This is like a, you know, a teenage sex comedy.

The idea is that the Sam Morellos character has this

crush.

She hears a rumor that her crush is really into 69.

She is a she is a nerd.

She knows nothing of sex.

It's like goes beyond like just something that she could Google.

She like wants to feel confident.

So she employs Chloe Feynman's stripper character to like sort of teach her uh this sort of thing but this is a very broad setup but what i liked about this movie is like once this broad sort of sex comedy setup happens it then turns into kind of a sweet odd couple friendship comedy between the two of them and one that feels realistic where uh Feynman's character is sort of prickly and mean to this nerd kid through a lot of it rather than being like just just having a heart of gold and she's got her own concerns.

She wants like the money that this kid is offering for her own reasons.

So that she can learn how to 69.

She wants to buy the strip club.

So she's a businesswoman.

And

there's a warmth there, like, and the teenager character is nerdy in a specific way rather than sort of just being an off-the-shelf like wallflower.

I thought it was really kind of warm and

weirdly realistic for such a broad setup, ultimately, in a way that I enjoyed.

So that's what I saw recently that I liked.

I'm going to recommend a little crime movie that came out last year called The Order.

Stars Jude Law, you got some Ty Sheridan, you got some Nicholas Holt.

And it's based on, I guess based loosely on a true story about the FBI being interested in a series of robberies, and those turn out to be linked to a white supremacist cult organization led by Nicholas Holt, which I think is kind of fun casting because he's, you know, he's a little old babyface.

A little old babyface.

He's neither little nor old.

The movie, I think, has some really good tense moments.

And

I, I, yeah, I think it's like a solid little crime thriller.

And it's also, I think this flavor of jude law where he's like kind of older and grizzled that might be my new favorite jude law flavor guys he's got a mustache well the new jude law flavor is that hey you gotta try it head over yeah i'm tired of cookies and jude that was the old flavor

no thanks yeah so yeah if you're looking for like a tight little uh

a little crime thriller that is what set in the 70s i think so you get some really cool outfits check it out i'm gonna recommend a documentary or rather a documentary series It is neither tight nor little.

It is a two-part documentary series that was just recently released on

the last dance.

I will be blown away.

No, I do want to see The Last Dance.

I haven't watched it yet.

I've first grade.

It's on Max, which is soon to be called HBO Max, because renaming it Max was dumb.

But

this is the two-part series Pee-Wee has himself, the documentary.

I've recommended

to watch that.

About Paul Rubens.

It's really good.

And it's really, there's a,

I mean, I've been a fan of Pee-Wee Herman and Paul Rubens since I was a kid.

And he's always seemed to me one of those figures where it's like, it's hard to imagine him as a real person because he's so associated with the Pee Wee character.

And there was something very illuminating to me about seeing him on camera really as himself and

being, you know, you'll read about, you're reading about the documentary, people talk about like he's combative with the director and stuff like that.

And he's very like.

prickly at times, but in a way that is intriguing and not,

and that reveals more about himself in some ways.

And just seeing

learning his full story of like where he came from and how he developed that character and how he developed as a, as an artist and a performer was really fantastic and fascinating.

And I got to see what Gary Panter looks like now

as an old man.

So because they interview him a little bit.

Does he look like one of his drawings?

That's how I imagine it.

No, he doesn't look like one of his drawings.

No.

But I thought it was really good.

And a friend of the podcast, Jesse Thorne, who worked with Paul Rubens on an audio project at one point, he said that it really felt like it gave the idea of what it's like to be around Paul Rubens and like working with him.

And so that really fit his experience.

So I really recommend it.

I think it's great.

There's this just a phenomenal amount of

archival footage of him as a young performer, which was really fantastic and fascinating.

So Pee-Wee as himself, I recommend.

Well, guys, that's it.

Another one for the books.

I really enjoyed this.

I've been alone in the house for two days.

So this, I really needed to hang out with you guys.

Yeah.

Thank you for being here.

And thank you, listeners, for being wherever you are on the other end of these

radio waves, these podcast waves.

I don't think you know how podcasts work, Dave.

No, I don't.

Is it elves?

Yeah, just little elves that jump in your ear and whisper what we're saying in our house.

How do they slide down on Mooma Kill's trunk and delivers a podcast to you?

Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith.

He goes by the name Howell Dotty Dotty, all over the internet.

You can listen to his music.

He does Twitch streams.

He does a lot of stuff.

Thank you to MaximumFun.

If you go to maximumfun.org, you can listen to all

kinds of great podcasts.

I was going to say a lot, and then I realized the vowel sounds I was making were not going to fit into where I was going.

Ah, interesting.

But if you enjoy this podcast, you'll probably like one of the other ones.

Why not give them a shot?

But anyway, for the flop house, I've been Dan McCoy, yeah, I've been Stuart Wellington, pardoner,

and I'm I'm still Elliot Kalen.

I just, I'm just, I'm just can't react.

I don't know how to react to Stuart becoming John Wayne all of a sudden.

I'm a new guy there, pardoner.

I can't wait to find out who Stuart is next time.

I'm Ellie Kalen for now, though.

Bye.

This episode, we discuss Love Hurts.

Does it ever?

Wait, no, I got a better one.

I got a better one.

Okay.

Seem too real.

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