Ep.#452 - Summer Camp

On this episode, we discuss summer camp, starring Mark Harmon.

You know, that's summer school.

What did I watch then?

That's great.

I like that.

I would also love if he said summer school and you said, what did I watch?

Literally summer school.

I assume it was summer school.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

That's right.

The Elliot Kalen from the Flop House.

Uh-huh.

Oh, wow.

That's how I know you.

Yeah.

Your face looks familiar to me.

Hmm.

Yeah, does my face look familiar to the listeners of this podcast who are looking at me right now?

Yep.

Hey, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie.

No, no, there's more.

Hold on, don't turn it off yet.

You're like,

just a podcast?

So we just generic podcast?

No, thank you.

No, no, no.

Don't worry.

There's more to the premise than just that.

It's not just a delivery medium.

It also has content, Dan.

We watch a movie that either audiences or critics rejected or both.

And then we talk about it.

In this case,

we watched.

Yeah, it was a both.

We watched a film called Summer Camp starring Diane Keaton, and Alfred Woodard and Kathy Bates.

And

Beverly D'Angelo,

Eugene Levy, and Dennis Haysbird.

Uh-huh.

Yep, and.

There's that guy.

Oh, Betsy Sedaro.

Is there a

Nicole Ritchie?

And I don't know who that guy is.

Josh Beck.

Okay.

So this is a, this is a.

Charlene was like, is that Jonathan Silverman?

I'm like, how old do you think Jonathan Silverman is?

Yeah, because he's been frozen for 30 years.

And the single guy ended, they just shoved him in a cryogenic unit.

This is a star-studded cast.

This is studded with stars.

They took a star studder and they just punched stars into the leather of this.

Also, it has Eugene Levy and Dannis Hazebert, so that's two certified studs.

And this is also

in the new genre, which is what we would call a book club.

A movie where you take some older actresses and you put them together in sort of a shaggy comedy.

And that's kind of an evolution of, I think, an even older form.

Often like British actresses, older actresses sort of get together for like a heartwarming comedy or a little bit saucy.

It's the latest version of what in the oldest, oldest, oldest Hollywood terms, you would call a woman's picture.

A picture that is about women having feelings, going through some kind of relationship with other women or between women and men that is a, that is about, more about their

emotional up and downs than it is about like a tightly plotted You know Cracker Jack story this this is the but now they're all kind of like saucy comedies or kind of like really lazy comedies as opposed to in the in the 80s they would have been like your your steel magnolias that kind of thing in the 40s they would have been like your now voyagers you know so but this is the new this is the current version of it yeah the current version is the least tightly plotted version as i i put on my letterbox it felt like the screenplay was falling downstairs

Scenes would just sort of.

Dan, you should save that kind of stuff for the podcast.

That's good stuff.

Yeah, well, you know, I recycle it.

I'm Earth conscious.

Yeah,

I feel like your letterbox reviews are just these dazzling.

If you're not subscribing to Dan's Letterbox, you should.

It is dazzling little reviews.

And your podcast recordings are often you getting angry at us for interrupting you.

I'm

here.

If you were bringing out gold and diamonds like that, we'd never interrupt you.

I love Dan's Letterbox reviews.

This is not a burn at all.

This is

great.

I love honesty.

Yeah, very kind of both of you.

If anyone pays people to review movies, you should hire Dan because he can do the job amazingly.

He's great at it.

Yeah.

For reviewing movies, or if he has to, he'll take his top off.

He doesn't care.

That's true.

That's true.

Or my shoes and socks.

Speaking of taking tops off, let's just get it.

Let's just get it.

Let's just middle away about it.

Yeah, let's let's let's air this before uh you know it gets weird.

But yes, Beverly D'Angelo still looks incredible ageless what a beauty yeah she can still get it

despite what Dan is trying to argue with me

got weird or did it just get weird I feel like

I think he said I have to say this so it'll get weird yeah I mean this this if I can't get weird with you guys who can I get weird with my

pissed he hates me the thing I wrote down in my notes is uh at one point Diane Keaton uh you know repeats to herself they force Diane Keaton to repeat to herself I'm a bad bitch over and over again.

I'm like, do I have a new kink now?

Is that what's going on?

Dan, if Diane Keaton wasn't your kink before, you got a problem.

I don't know.

I don't know you then.

Yeah.

There's a moment later on when they're about to go rafting, and I was like rubbing my hands together, being like, how covered up will Diane Keaton be for this?

How many turtlenecks is she wearing?

Is there some kind of broad-brimmed aquatic hat that she can be wearing?

The craziest thing is in that specific scene of the three women, she has the smallest brimmed hat.

Yeah, it's true.

Usually she likes a big hat.

What universe am I in?

I love her.

I mean, any movie with Diane Keaton in it, to a certain extent, is going to be at least a certain level of good to me.

I mean, I've seen some bad movies with her in it, but she's, it's almost impossible for me to not enjoy seeing her in a movie, even if she's not playing a Diane Keateny character.

She's great in reds.

I love her in that.

And she's not a character that you would think of as a Diane Keatene character.

I do love that they're just like,

we are dressing her the same no matter what movie it is.

I think that's more of a diane keaton thing i'm wearing the same clothes no matter what movie i just love just brings a rack of her own clothes from home for every probably yeah yeah i you know that i want this that seems like

but then that's that's a throwback to again old hollywood type way of treating actors where actresses where an actress had a style and actors too and that style would carry from picture to picture and i feel like with diane keaton it's a similar thing it's like this is what diane keaton dresses like and it's great it works so of her everyone loves it why would you change it you know what why bother you know yeah well what you were saying about always being happy to see her, though, I want to say that dovetails into something I just want to say that.

Dovetails into?

I don't want to get ahead of ourselves with Final Judgments.

Like, we actually really tend to like these types of movies here at the Plophouse because it is like, oh, yeah, we get to see these great performers doing things that, and unfortunately, don't get to do other stuff.

But this may be one of the shaggiest versions of this kind of thing that we've gotten thus far.

This was

very shaggy.

The highs of like 80 for Brady, for instance.

No, no, not at all.

If this movie is so shaggy that it's almost a DA.

Because there was a shaggy DA once.

It's so shaggy, it's going to claim that it wasn't him when being caught.

Exactly.

Dan, do you have a shaggy reference that you can throw to us?

It's so shaggy, it hangs out with a large dog.

And

there was three completely different shaggy guys.

We did it.

We did it.

Okay, so let's talk about that.

I'm really glad that you guys both, just to pull back the curtain, both Dan and Elliott thought they were doing the summary.

It's a real mix-em-up, something that would happen in one of these movies.

And they both thought they were doing the summary, which is great because I don't remember almost any of this movie.

So I'm very excited.

Stuart needs to go to summary camp, which is what we're going to do today.

Now, that's that.

And now, as weak as that joke was, that is a thousand percent stronger than any joke in the movie Summer Camp, because there's not a lot of jokes in the movie.

And I found that the one part that I really laughed hard at out loud was when Diane is walking out of a a room holding a pillow and just goes, ah, fucking pillow, and throws it down, which feels like an ad lib.

I have to imagine that was an ad lib.

So, okay, summer camp.

Dan, I'm going to, unless you'd like to do the honors, I'll do the summary.

I'll, you know, stay on my notes if there's anything, if there's anything incisive.

Keep me honest, yeah.

So we start at Camp Pinnacle.

It is an undefined pastime.

It's roughly the 60s or 70s.

Is it?

I thought it looked like 80s, but maybe I'm wrong.

It looks 70s to me, but all of these women were adults, or at least Diane Keaton and Kathy Vates were in the 70s.

They would have gone to summer camp in like the early 60s, let's say.

Well, they're playing Itty Bitty Pretty One on the soundtrack, which I think indicates, yeah, earlier.

Oh, I just thought it indicated a lack of imagination on the part of whoever chose the songs for the movie.

So, real quick, were you guys summer camp kids?

Did you guys go to summer camp?

I went to

nerd alert.

I went to church camp several years ago.

Oh, damn damn it.

You make me sick.

The worst kind of nerd, a religious nerd.

I mean,

it's basically the same as other several camps

in that there were outdoor activities and everyone was obsessed with the idea that maybe we would make out with one another.

Yeah.

But there would also be Bible study every day.

Oh, cool.

I mean, I went to Jewish camp at one point.

So that's, I escaped from several camps while I was a kid.

So summer camp and I were not friends.

And I actually wrote a story for a book that came out years ago, an anthology that came out from Heb magazine, the magazine that was about making Jews cool and did not succeed.

About a story about running away from camp and almost getting away with it.

And

so I had a very negative relationship with summer camp when I was young.

Now, it sounds like a lot of fun.

If I went to camp as an adult, I think I'd have a great time.

But as a kid, when I did not love outdoor activities that much and also people were bullying me all the time, I didn't like it that much.

Stuart, how about you?

Summer camp?

Did you ever do that?

My summer camp experience,

I went to soccer camp a couple times where I'd spend like two.

Soccer court camp.

You do do a lot of like Middle European baking.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, delicious patisserie.

Yeah, it, yeah, so I would do that.

So I watched this movie with my wife who did spend some time at summer camp.

Because your wife and I have one big thing in common is that we are East Coast Jews.

And that summer camp is a very big thing for

especially New York area Jewish people.

Uh-huh.

And she went to a summer camp in Pennsylvania, Camp Pointelle.

And she, in fact, like two years ago, went to a camp reunion.

She hadn't been back since they denied her application to be a counselor in training, which was a huge, which was a huge piece of trauma for her.

Which, weirdly enough, my therapist went to the same camp, had the same experience.

Isn't that strange?

Are you married to your therapist?

That feels like a conflict, it seems like a conflict.

I will say that I mentioned East Coast Jews.

My wife, who is, of course, a West Coast Jew, she went to summer camp, has a very strong connection with her summer camp.

And my older son now goes to that summer camp.

That, that tracks.

That tracks for me.

Yeah.

From what I know of your family.

And of course, you have an East Coast, West Coast beef.

So many have died in our house.

Yeah.

A lot of drive-bys.

Okay.

So I bring this up because Charlene, while watching it, gave me color commentary on whether or not, A, this looks like a nice camp, or B, if they could do that at a camp.

Oh, okay.

I'll be happy to hear Dan's commentary on my summary and your intake of Charlene's commentary of

whether they could do that.

So we're at Camp Pinnacle.

There's a little narration from Ginny, who we'll learn, is one of the titular summer campers.

It took me a while.

While you guys were watching this part, were you like trying to map the different actresses onto their young counterparts?

No, it seemed pretty clear that the black one was Alfrey Woodworth.

The skinny one with glasses was Diane Keaton.

Okay.

And the one who's kind of like, who was kind of like sassy, you knew it was going to be Candy Bates.

With his southern accent.

Okay.

Yeah, with his southern accent.

That's true.

So we're introduced to three candy.

And the kid with the eyebrows.

You're like, that's fucking Eugene Levy right there.

Enough.

Yeah, exactly.

So

I mean, I didn't know Eugene Levy was in the movie going into it.

So when they showed up.

Look at the credits.

I didn't really do a lot of

intense research.

The other dishes were calling me.

The dishes were all

tossed salad and scrambled eggs.

You hear the dishes they call in.

Didn't know what to do with them.

So I think it was the

need to get into parsing the Fraser theme song.

So

Ginny is narrating as an adult about how kids love summer camp, but nerdy Nora did not until she met bad girl Ginny and also nerdy Mary.

And the three of them became fast friends.

Ginny, of course, talks Mary through her first period,

which is about as

I mean, this is a movie that every now and then leans in

a more off-color or kind of like raunchy direction and then immediately reels back as quickly as possible.

Um, yeah, I don't want to skip ahead too much, but there is a scene when they all, you know, come back as adults where Kathy Bates' adult Ginny gives them the gift all of small

radio-controlled vibrators.

Vibrating eggs.

And I'm like, this is going to come back into the movie later on.

And other than like one quick reference, it does not.

Like, it seems like they're set up for a raunchy at some point in the draft.

There must have been, of this screenplay there must have been a scene where they're controlling each other's vibrators like in that that horrible

that that catherine heigel gerard butler the ugly song the ugly truth yeah was that it yeah the ugly truth so i i have to assume that at some point there was a scene where they were that's that's the movie where the cat's name is d'Artagnan

yeah uh so anyway they get put together in the sassafras cabin just the three of them they become best friends for years afterwards they're always being reunited at camp they really love it now it's 50 years later

That's why I assumed it was the 70s.

I think they say 50 years later, but maybe not.

And this isn't taking place in the future.

No, I don't think so.

No, I forgot to mention this takes place in the year 2245 when it's after the robot rebellion and humanity has gone back to a 2020s level of technology.

Yeah,

they're all doing it as a bit.

Yeah, exactly.

Ginny is now a famous self-help mogul, Ginny Moon.

She's determined to get her friends Mary and Nora to this big camp reunion.

Mary, we learn, is a nurse who should have been a doctor.

She did, she either dropped out of med school or didn't go because she got married young.

Her husband is always annoying her.

She minimizes herself, you know?

Yes,

she minimizes herself and puts others for herself too much.

There's a scene where she is literally giving life-saving resuscitation to somebody while her husband is calling her, being like, where's the peanuts at home?

And she keeps answering and it's like, just take your Apple Watch off.

Like, just don't wear it.

I don't, like, just, you should, anyway, but it shows that she's always putting her husband first.

Nora, meanwhile, is a workaholic CEO at a science company company of some kind.

And

Ginny and Mary ambush her at her lab, convince her to come with them in Ginny's RV.

And as they drive, Ginny reveals she had a stalker once.

This is another thing that you think is going to come up as a plot point later on, doesn't.

There's a lot of like

a lot of things that are laid in as if they're going to be important later, and they are not.

Now, Ginny's big branding, of course, also is Get Your Shit Together, which is on the side of her giant RV, which is kind of like, you know, throughout the bus.

It's a tour bus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It looks more like a bus, but they call it an RV.

And she drives it herself, right?

It's like she doesn't have a driver, I don't think.

No, no.

That's a character they're really missing.

They could have gotten some like weird old grumpy.

I think about what the girl adds to Spice World, you know?

I'm glad we solved this problem of whether there was a driver or not in the middle of.

No, I'm just saying that I wanted to say that this is like the first indication that Ginny, while well-meaning, a lot of her help is kind of based on bullying, which will become a bigger thing.

She's very much in the kind of like Dr.

Phil, Jordan Peterson.

If you have a problem, it's on you and you've got to fix yourself.

And don't blame the world.

It's your problem.

You know, be tough.

Be tough and stand up for yourself and be a bitch.

The thing is, I blame all my problems on that dang Slender man.

I mean, here's the thing, sorry.

You got to hear Slender's side of the story because he has some good reasons why he's doing those things.

I mean, he does the most trouble finding pants that don't fall down.

He promotes that unrealistic body image, too.

Yeah, that unrealistic Jack Skellington body image that's been held over our heads for too long.

Ugh, yeah.

Ideal boyfriend.

I tell you, I try to get people to have a crush on me on Tumblr, but they only want those Slenderman Jack Skellingtons.

You know, if I'm not the onceler from the Lorax movie, they are not interested.

You have 3% body fat or nothing, sir.

I want you to have the body of someone whose stomach is eating away at

your own flesh because you're not feeding it enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm only dating guys who have contracted the thinner curse.

Yeah, Bach has contracted it.

So this is the hardest part of my job.

You've caught thinner.

They arrive at the camp reunion.

They meet

Vic, who's a kind of.

So this is Betsy Tedaro, right?

And I'm like, I couldn't tell what Vic's role was supposed to be.

If they're a security guard or a program director or just like a general all-around council, she presents herself as if she is like their personal liaison who's working just for them.

But most of the movie is her yelling at them for breaking the rules or things like that.

And I kept thinking, the way this part is written, I wonder if this was a male part and then they cast Betsy Sedaro because all the writing is all it makes it clear this is like an ex, like this is supposed to be like a veteran who's like tough as a ball.

I don't know.

I think it was just like, this is the Betsy Sedaro role.

I mean, this is the kind of character that Betsy Sedaro.

90% of, yeah.

I just was, my problem with this character was it felt like

they wanted her in the movie.

They just had a part to toss out to someone and did not write lines, or it's all

about that and a lot of the Josh Peck stuff feels like it's a lot of improvising and ad-living.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's one of those things where we have these characters who are all, they're like, what are the stakes, really?

Like, all these characters seem to be well-to-do.

they are at this reunion where there's no campers it's only returning well it's an adult camper i mean camps do that they they'll for the weekend what i'm saying is that these that they're like treated like these like if they break any of these in many cases kind of silly rules they really like come down on them and it feels so strange because you're like you're an adult like you're fine i mean well that's later on later on we'll get to the point where dying keton is trying to break into the room where the phones are stored to get her phone and they're so then they're like sitting in the camp director's office getting chewed out and it's like yeah you're an adult adult.

Just leave or just do whatever.

Like,

who's what's the authority here?

But anyway, but this is

this is the this is supposed to be like the Paul Paul Blart Molkop

version of comedy, though, where it's like, oh, this character with no actual power, you know, is on a power trip, which I never find as funny as movies want me to find it.

You love Paul Blart Molkop.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I go to BlartCon every year.

You've got that tattoo on your belly that says Blart Life.

Yeah.

So they

meet a couple of the other

characters here that are their old summer camp either chums or romantic interests who are now older.

Of course, the popular girls are there, led by Beverly D'Angelo.

And there's also their old crushes are back.

And they are, of course, Stevie D played by Eugene Levy.

I got to say,

and Tommy, played by Dennis Haysberg.

Yeah.

And they get out of the car, swing the strains of Sharp Dressed dressed man.

And I got to say, this is the one time, I think, in history that Eugene Levy has gotten a like slow-mo, sexy intro.

And I can't, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a joke.

At first, I thought it was a joke that, oh, this older guy, they're treating this this way.

But throughout the movie, they just treat him straightforwardly as like he is a, he is a handsome, sexy man.

Well, the thing is, like.

The movie made me realize, I'm like looking at him like, I'm like, oh, Eugene Levy is handsome.

He just plays like such a, like a goofball, like, Here's Daniel.

I'll give you a secret.

Even people in movies who are considered not handsome are handsome in real life.

I'll often watch Singing in the Rain and like Donald O'Connor is supposed to be like the goofy sidekick.

He's a very good looking man.

Even the goofy sidekick, but next to Gene Kelly, he's not, you know, stellarly handsome.

But like even the, even Eugene Living, yeah, like the idea that like, oh, yeah, he's a good looking guy.

Yeah, he's had a career in television movies for 50 years.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, I would rather they let him be funny in this movie.

As we, I, like, I, you, as we were texting on the Flophouse chain, and I actually said to Audrey, like, it's an odd movie where it's like Eugene Lovey does not make me laugh one time.

Like, and is not even trying a lot of the time.

I think he has like kind of, he has the kind of lines that I think are supposed to be joke lines in the hands of like,

uh,

like, who's a handsome star who's not, who's not a funny guy, you know, who would have those kinds of lines.

Like,

I don't know.

Well, I don't know what point you're making.

So like Harrison Ford or something like that.

The kind of lines where it's like, oh, this is like the handsome guy is making like an along-the-way remark.

That's not supposed to be like a huge funny joke, but just shows he has a sense of humor.

You got Eugene Levy, who's a genuinely, incredibly funny person.

So, but yeah, it's just, it's strange.

So, anyway, but their crush is so up, the ladies have to give up their phones.

Nora and Mary don't like that.

Nora, she wants to do work, and Mary's got to keep in touch with her husband who's connected to her as if he was her child.

And there's a moment where Betsy Sedaro's like, any like listing all the things they might have, and she's like, iPads.

And I'm like, you know, these women have iPads.

yes and so there's also there's a moment where they see that their cabin is full of bugs and they're like ew and i'm like okay we'll get jokes about rustic stuff no no no this is still in that kind of what's her name the one who did uh something's gotta give nora fron no no no um

nancy myers nancy myers where everyone has fancy kitchens oh you're right there i'm like well i thought this was gonna be more nancy myersy then we see how kathy bates has had their cabin glammed up and there's a lot of like top chef kitchen style panning shots of you know how nice the cabin is now and she also gives them the aforementioned egg vibrators, which do not play into the plot.

It's not a big thing, but I want to highlight a moment that I found baffling just in the sense that.

It's not a thing from the movie Big.

Yeah, it's not a thing from the movie Big.

It's from the giant fucking keyboard, right?

They dance on it.

No, that is a big thing from the movie Big.

It's big in two ways, isn't that?

That's true.

I'm saying is not.

Tonight we're serving Big Two Ways.

It's a giant keyboard from the movie Big.

I'm supposed to eat this.

I don't understand.

I'm supposed to dance on it with Robert Loja.

Let's get him out.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

So we have it.

Bring his corpse out.

We can do this.

No,

it's not a major point, but I want to bring it up.

So he's not from the movie Major Pain.

God damn it.

To me, this is just emblematic of how shaggily this movie is put together.

We get the moment where they see the pretty committee.

They're like, ugh, you know, gross.

They're still like they were, whatever.

And then

Jenny takes out her phone and plays a TikTok she made about how if you don't get the love you deserve, you should take his ass to the dumpster.

And the women have this reaction as if this was like pertinent to anything that happened before.

Like that this like flowed naturally from the scene before when it has no reference to anything.

I mean, later on, you know, like there's stuff about Alfie Wooden's character's husband, Mike, and how shitty he is and how he needs to be taken to the dumpster.

But that is not the scene that preceded this.

And I'm like, am I going mad?

Like, why is this scene here?

What's happening?

And I think that's just kind of the way the movie is in a lot of ways.

It's not a tightly structured movie.

No.

Also, we find Beverly D'Angelo's character now is enamored of Ginny because Ginny is famous.

So the idea, so you think they're setting it up for like, oh, the popular kids are now mean adults and they're going to, there's going to be tension there, but there isn't.

Like, it's just not, this is a, let's call this movie easygoing.

We've been saying shaggy.

This is a, if this was from the the 70s, people might be like, oh, it's that laid-back, shaggy 70s charm.

Classic altman-esque.

Exactly.

But it's, it doesn't, I mean, it's not good.

So it doesn't achieve that.

But it's, yeah, this is a very...

This sound is so crazy.

I wouldn't even call this movie slapped together so much as kind of like

scattered.

Like they scattered scenes on the ground, and it's up to you to pick them up and kind of put them in some kind of tense order.

Pick it up, look at it, or just put it back down.

Who cares?

Just put it back down.

Yeah.

So the ladies go have drinks.

They accidentally knock over an hors d'oeuvre's tray, leading to a food table falling over.

And it begins this running gag of Josh Peck's character who works at the camp.

The idea is they keep talking about how he keeps screwing up and having to get jobs that are kind of lower on the totem pole.

But he's not really screwing up so much as the ladies are messing things up for him.

Like he's not really doing anything wrong, but the movie always assumes that this character is kind of like a loser, but it just doesn't gel.

It doesn't make sense.

Well, also, I have to say, in my own notes, right, you know, like, as we said, we, we couldn't, we had some confusion over using the submarine.

So I was also taking notes and

I didn't register him as an important character until sort of halfway through the movie when I'm like, oh, I should start noting down what this guy is doing because by the end, he becomes important.

He is given

no, like, like the movie does not do the job that most movies do that, that underlines, okay, these are things you need to pay attention to as you watch.

Well, I think the truth.

Because I think the, the, I think the truth is that until maybe the last 10 minutes, there's nothing you need to pay attention to.

Exactly.

That's true.

It's a real wallpaper of a movie.

Anyway, they meet up with Tommy and Stevie, and there's a lot of awkward flirting all around, awkward innuendo.

But Nora is mostly annoyed at how hard it is to do work at the camp.

She yells at Vic.

She gets embarrassed in front of Stevie.

That night, Ginny's annoyed that Nora's working, and she's not present.

She doesn't know how to not work.

But luckily, she can't do work on her phone while she is river rafting.

They go river rafting.

Nora falls out of the raft.

They have to pull her in.

How the hell is it?

It was very interesting also because I was like, I'm like, how are they going to shoot this?

Because that's got to be a stunt actor.

And, you know, it doesn't really look like Diane Keaton until they haul her back in.

Yes, I mean, I think it's fair to not push Diane Keaton into river raft.

I was going to say, people believe this movie would throw Diane Keaton into the river.

Yeah, there's also a later scene where Alfrey Woodard is, you know, riding a horse around,

falls off a horse.

You know, it's just spot the stunt double.

It's a fun game you can play but again again i'm happy to not have alfrequency thrown off a horse for real i'm not saying she should do it and certainly not for summer camp yes not for summer camp yeah

of all the movies to break a collarbone for summer camp is not the one uh and it just kind of goes on on like that for a while and you keep getting the same notes of mary's talking to her husband on the phone he doesn't really pay attention uh ginny's kind of bossy nora's trying to work stevie shows up and helps her sneak into the cell phone room and they're about to kiss when Vic catches them.

Oh, no.

Stevie kind of talks them out of trouble, but not exactly.

And when Nora gets back, her friends are disappointed that she didn't kiss Stevie.

They're like, spill the tea, spill the tea.

She's like, oh, there isn't really any.

And so they're going to be.

I'm going to keep the tea in my cup.

Thank you very much.

Yep.

And the girls have a little talk about marriage and loneliness.

You know, is it right to get married?

Is it not right to get married?

Is loneliness worth the independence that you get?

And this could have been, there's a couple scenes where it's like, this isn't funny, but like, I kind of would love to see these actresses playing characters of their age, age, talking realistically about the feelings of being at that age and the choices you've made.

And now you're living with the results of those choices, which is what this movie is about.

But like, it's also

past lives like that.

Yeah, yeah, kind of, yeah.

But it's also supposed to be kind of like a bubbly nothing.

And so you're not going to get that deep into those themes or into those moments.

The next day, it's archery.

Nora almost hits people with her arrows.

At one point, she almost fires one backwards behind her, which is hard to do.

There is a scene early on on when they were kids where they do they meet dennis hays burt and uh and eugene levy's uh child care youngest characters yeah uh because they shoot one of them with an arrow yeah

and he still has a scar and it's in the story is told that then that mary as a kid like glues the wound shut which is i have to say having been to summer camp if you got hit with an arrow you would be taken away from the camp and brought to the hospital.

Like that's not, that's not the kind of, I hope that Charlene pointed out to you, Stuart, that like at a real camp, the kids were not allowed to to do the first aid for a, for a projectile puncture wound.

She said, she said that was that off track.

That all tracked

based on her experience.

Yeah.

And so there's some very sexual pottery making here, too.

So Mary goes off with Dennis Hazebert, and they do some phallic pottery that turns into vaginal pottery.

Yeah, and there's some fingering of the pottery that happens as well.

That's true.

And Nora and Stevie do some flirt archery and they hit the bullseye together.

And Dan, I think in your letterbox review you said something about sexual tension you couldn't cut with a chainsaw.

You said something about it being not since,

oh no, I'm forgetting the name.

What's that real sweaty movie with Kathleen John?

Body Heat?

Not since Body Heat.

Thank you.

There's been so much palpable sex on screen.

You said that, right?

And you're looking at it.

I mean, that sounds like me.

That sounds like the sort of thing I'd say.

And then you just said awuga, awooga, and then it was four siren emojis one after the other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you put it on your list that you just titled Heat Alert.

Yeah.

He was like, you guys looking for a third?

That's right.

I got real horned up.

What is this?

And so Ginny just keeps telling Mary to leave her husband, not in clever ways, just saying you should leave your husband.

He sucks.

They give Nora, I guess they're like trying to give her like a sexier outfit, but it still kind of looks like a Diane Keaton outfit.

And they get, which is, again, it's certainly kind of sexy.

Can't improve on it.

You can't put a hat on a hat.

There's no, you can't get more than 100%.

And then she gets her to call herself a bad bitch.

This is one of the big, I assume this was, if there had been a trailer for this movie,

this would be the trailer moment.

And they also give Mary a makeover.

So everyone's, it's a lot of, you know, sprucing each other up.

Just imagining if like after the bad bitch moment, it really like turned into like, like it took a turn and like turned into like sort of a neo-noir where she had to become like a bad bitch.

Yeah.

She gets caught up in a murder scheme or it becomes like a faster pussycat kill kill.

And now she's like kidnapping Eugene Levy and ripping his clothes off and like scratching his chest and writing like

writing like cock on his forehead with a lipstick and things like that.

Yeah, yeah.

One of her arms turns into like a gun, like

she's a cyborg ninja.

Yeah, yeah, and she has sex with a car and she goes for a three-metal baby.

Yeah, sure.

I would say this movie checks a lot of the boxes.

I was definitely expecting there to be a scene where they all accidentally do drugs, right?

They didn't, there wasn't one of those

on purpose.

You know what?

For this movie, there should have been a scene.

It's like an ayahuasca trip or something.

Ayahuasca trip, or even like they accidentally eat edibles or something like that.

A lot of Kathy Bates, Ginny Moon's character, like the jokes for her is mainly her just like saying celebrity names, right?

There's a lot of like...

She does a lot of.

Oh,

I was having a threesome with like Dr.

Phil and Oprah or something.

Yeah.

It's a lot of like celebrity name drops or like just kind of like

vulgar talk.

Like she's a little more earthy than the others, you know.

She's more Rebelaisian, you know.

Even on like a on a a more on a more basic level like there's a whole like genre of like camp movies that i feel like this movie like does not flamingos uh yeah yeah that's right yeah friday 13th

the apple yeah camp movies yeah no i just don't think

you're going down a different a different comedy path than we were going down still works still works that's true i mean it's a little more literal that is a friday 13th is a camp movie but yeah but i feel like they could have

got a lot of juice out of just like just taking the tropes tropes of

other like summer camp comedies and really doing them.

Dan, there is a food fight scene.

There is a food fight scene.

It's true.

It's true.

That's the one time they do it.

And there's no one's ever done like...

taken all the cliches about summer camp movies and made like a parody comedy never done it

they certainly didn't do it as a movie or a six episode television series

never happened but you're right dan they could have just to do like the summer camp scenes and the parent trap that kind of thing, but with older people as opposed to kids.

Now, if they were to do that, they should do a little bit of off-the-wall casting, maybe with like a SVU actor in a comedic role.

Still on this, I think, still the same, the same one.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, did he was he on SVU at the time?

I guess he was, right?

He's got to have been, he's always been on it, right?

Yeah, that's like the shining.

Yeah, there's a there's a picture of SVU from 1925 Chris Maloney in there.

Fucking cheeked up tush.

He does have a cheeked up tush.

Everybody does, right?

Like, what are your tushes made out of?

Yeah, but like, he's fucking packing some serious cake back there, man.

Well, this is we're going into.

You haven't paid attention.

No, I haven't.

I haven't really paid that much attention to how caked up he is.

Christopher Maloney is.

Yeah.

Well,

you're missing out.

Guys,

I'm going to go into too much information.

I love this.

Audrey was taking some photos of me in my underwear the other day just because she's like, Dan,

we are at the level of too much information.

I love this.

No, hold on.

Not in a sexual way.

Well, sort of, but not really.

But she's like, look at what yoga has done to your butt.

Oh, I see.

And you can't see that.

You need to see that.

I can't see it.

Yeah.

And I got to say,

I've got cheeked up cakes now.

Yeah.

You're like Chris Maloney finally.

Dan's dragging a wagon.

Yeah.

It's finally happened.

I never thought it could happen.

But the men are finally built like a Kixar

Yep.

Yeah.

So anyway, thick McCoy, that's what we call him.

Yeah, he's like the American Godzilla back there.

Yeah, Dan gets jumped on the street asking where he got his BBL.

So that night, Ginny is hosting a sort of public therapy session where people take turns getting therapy from her in front of everybody.

She reduces Beverly D'Angelo to

admitting that she is an approval-seeking phony, which is the kind of thing that would mean more if we had seen her actually being like not nice or in any way.

Like, it feels like finally she's getting her comeuppance, but for what?

There was no, there's no come to uppence from, you know, and I mean, like, the movie's the movie's doing this on purpose because Jenny is going to get a kind of a comeuppance.

Yes.

But it did seem weird to me because I'm like, oh, well, Beverly DeAngelo is being like really vulnerable.

And Jenny's reaction is like, okay, now go sit down.

It seemed really mean.

I think she is being, I mean, she's not good at this.

I mean, here's the thing.

Here's the secret, secret, everybody, about celebrity kind of therapy things.

They're often not very good.

Like, they're, they're, I think it, it, even it, uh, the main thing about therapy, for me at least, is the, um, is that you can't do it en masse.

Like, you've got to, it's got to be a personalized thing about who you are.

And so the idea that she's just, like, speed rounding therapy, like, maybe it's on purpose, the idea that, like, she's not, she's bad at this, because by the end, well, she'll admit.

She needs to get her shit together, you know?

But anyway, she's prepared.

So Ginny starts practicing her keynote speech for the other two, and it's just full of her regular kind of like, deal with it, you know, stand up for yourself, idiot, kind of stuff.

She's aggressive.

Basic like social media therapy influencer type.

Yes.

And they are like, they start to give her critique of it, and she gets defensive.

The next morning, uh-oh, Mike, Mary's husband, shows up, and he is mean to her.

He didn't give her permission to stay all this long.

She kind of like the idea that

her husband showed up and he's like, where are the peanuts at?

Same place.

I told you last time.

He's like a dominating baby is the thing.

It's his need and his disciples.

I haven't met many old men.

There are a lot of dominating babies.

That's true.

That's true.

So,

and she's like, no, I'm not going to go home with you.

And the other ladies are watching from afar and seeing all this.

And

she says, no, I'm staying here.

And her husband leaves.

Mary is relieved.

And the other's really proud of her.

And she's like, They're like, what do you want to do?

And she goes, I want to go horseback.

I want to ride a fucking horse.

Which she knew that, which we know, because we saw it earlier on, she liked as a kid.

Unfortunately, there's a minor mishap.

She gets thrown in the mud by the horse.

Don't worry, she's okay.

Yeah, she's okay.

I was like, every bone would be shattered.

And also, like, this is where I get really mad at the Josh Peck character, too, who's like, he's like doofy in the rest of the movie, but here he's like,

he does cause the problem.

Oh, like, oh, she shouldn't be riding that horse.

He stands right in front of the fucking horse, so it throws her.

I'm like, she was doing fine, man.

What is this?

Yeah.

What is this bullshit?

Yeah, that's he is doing his job badly there.

The girls have dinner with the guys.

Ginny won't stop bragging about how important she is.

And a Tommy, Dennis Haysberg, chokes and Mary saves him with the Heimlich, which leads to a food fight.

It's dumb.

This scene's just dumb.

It literally has someone yelling, food fight, which like, I've been in food fights at Suffer Camp.

No one ever yells it.

You can just start throwing it.

Once you get food hitting you, you know you're in a food fight.

Like you don't have to have it announced, you know.

For some of the things that's not a problem.

No one ever goes, war

when a war breaks out.

Like, you know, you're in one when you're getting shot at.

Yeah.

I mean, technically, Congress is supposed to go, whoa, terrible.

Yeah, but the power of the executive office has been expanded so much since the War Powers Act that that piece of legislation, though never overturned, has effectively been overturned in practical terms.

Shot war these days.

Wow, I can't believe now we're being classified as an educational podcast, right?

Well, it means deported.

Yeah, it's just to make sure that this never gets found out by the TSA because they won't let me back in.

Anywho, too real.

Let's go back to summer.

Let's go back something that is not real at all.

Sorry.

So there's a big food fight.

They leave.

Nora and Stevie escape to the kitchen, which even though it's the dinner time

session of camp, the kitchen is deserted and totally clean.

So

I guess the staff made the food, cleaned up, and left.

Yeah, they're just great.

And they do end up kissing.

She ends up kissing him because she thinks he's going in for a kiss.

At the cabin, Mary gets mad at Ginny for being so bossy and judgmental, and they argue.

They all get into a fight.

That's right.

It's the end of Act Two.

Time for the heroes to get into a fight and be mad at each other.

And they learn that Ginny was hiding a cell phone.

And she reveals.

This is like when Spider-Man gives up his powers, right?

When Spider-Man would be like, I don't want my powers anymore, and he walks around, kind of, and he just walks around.

That's what he fucking does in the movie.

You're too bossy.

My memory of Uncle Ben telling me to be responsible.

Yeah, trying to boss me all the time.

Stuart, the way he said it, it said as if he goes, I don't want my powers anymore.

So he just walks around in his costume, just solving crimes without using any of his powers.

He always wear a crutch.

Did you see when the Knicks won their game the other day?

You can guarantee I did not see that.

But there was a guy dressed up in a

Spider-Man suit with Nick's

memorabilia dancing in a circle of like hundreds of people.

And I'm like, this is the most New York thing I've ever seen.

Unless he was holding a pizza in his hand.

The only sports thing I'm aware of recently was that they've retired the scoreboard on the, for when, I think it's when the Pirates and the

and the Phillies play so that no long, if there's no score, it no longer looks like it says poop on screen.

And that was a sad moment for baseball when they retired that.

Yeah, that's too bad.

So anyway,

that's the kind of sports story that gets onto my radar is when a graphic that says poop is retired.

So they all get mad at each other.

And Ginny

admits that this whole summer camp reunion, she funded and planned the whole thing just to have an excuse to get her friends together because she didn't expect that they would want to spend time with her.

Nora storms out.

This is when she has her best line of the movie, fuck you, pillow.

And she just drops a pillow as she's walking out.

She sneaks into Ginny's RV and spends the night responding to work messages.

Oh, no, she's hit rock bottom, which for her is working too hard.

The next morning, Stevie finds her there and he gives her a talk about being a workaholic.

And she runs after him like, no, no, wait, I can change.

Mary on a hike runs into Tommy.

pours out her troubles to him.

And like the perfect man that he is in a movie for ladies, he just says, I'd just like to listen to you.

You know, doesn't try to give her advice or solve her problems.

Doesn't try to tell about his problems.

He's just there to listen.

A perfect partner because he is doing for her what she does for her husband, which is just be at her beck and call emotionally.

His love language seems to be what?

Quality time is that?

Yeah, I think so.

Attention.

And hiking.

And pottery.

And I hate pottery.

Yeah.

Nora and Stevie, they talk about setting limits at work and how he had a heart attack at one point and spending more time with his kids.

And I got to tell you, as someone whose current work status is killing, is being dead, you know, being murdered by work.

This really spoke to me, you know, this really spoke to me.

Um, for anyone who's listening, don't worry, I am not dead yet.

Well, yeah, please don't get murdered by work.

Let me be my first.

I'm trying my best.

It's a real game of cat and mouse between me and work right now over who's going to get who.

Um, you see, that ever seen that movie, uh, is it Assassins, the one where it's Antonio Banderas and Sylvester Sloane are each trying to kill each other?

That's like that, which between me and work right now.

So, uh, Ginny's trying to write her speech, and

she's having trouble, and she runs into the camp employee, Josh Peck, who keeps getting into trouble.

And he's the one who is basically like, you're too controlling.

She's really rude to him.

But then she shows him up.

He shows her up because he knows more about how dangerous deer scat is to just lead around than she does.

She doesn't know everything, you know.

Well, also, he just, I mean, like, he just...

very calmly says something like that hurt my feelings or like that was me and you hurt my feelings and it seems to get through to her in a way that everything else hasn't yeah and i'm impressed by the that that kind of subtle viral marketing for Hallie Hagelin's newsletter.

That hurts my feelings.

Or that hurt my feelings.

Look at, look it up on Substack as seen and as mentioned kind of in summer camp.

Yep.

But you're right.

Someone's saying to her, hey, that was too, you crossed the line.

I guess she, maybe she's just used to being rewarded for this kind of brash behavior.

And no one

has very just

so boldly said to her, directly said, like, that was mean.

And despite so much of her advice basically just amounting to establishing firm boundaries with other people, I don't think she's used to people establishing boundaries with her yes very good this is a well-written movie yeah exactly so no these are rich characters uh i mean they are rich characters that's true they have no financial problems whatsoever i mean that's part of the genre though right i feel like a big part of the genre is that like of like you know older ladies doing stuff that's that they don't have financial troubles or something yeah that's more time to have a book lugged but drink wine also the genre of movies which for the most part now are rarely about people with any financial issues but you're right there is a there's there's a fantasy element of like, I don't have to worry about it.

I saw Black Bag and I'm like, man, these guys are fucking loaded.

They have so many lights on their table.

These spies have the nicest house with so many fucking lamps on their, like just sitting on the table.

It's crazy.

But for real, for true, because you used to see spy movies where the spies were glamorous at work, but not necessarily like wealthy on their own, you know, like a spy war is supposed to make you rich.

More like a slow horse's thing.

Slow horses.

Or like the

Harry, the Michael Caine, what, Harry Palmer movies?

Are those the ones like where they're, what's the, his character, his spy character from like Billion Dollar Brain and things like that.

Yeah, or they would have to, like, you know, they'd have to keep like a knife in their shoe.

Like, that would have to do double duty.

They couldn't have a separate, they couldn't afford a separate knife and a separate shoe.

Yeah.

That's very good point.

Yeah.

If you had a phone in your shoe, it was because you couldn't, you couldn't have both.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

James Bond's car is full of gadgets, but that's, but they had to use a pre-existing car.

It's not like, even though it's a luxury car, it's not like they made him a special car, you know.

Whereas now, he gets a special car.

Anyway, yeah, yeah.

And when he asked for gadgets, they're like,

they're in the car.

Like, yeah, man.

You said you wanted a car.

They're all in there.

They come preloaded.

Look, you said you wanted a thing that sprays poison gas.

We had to put it in a pen because, like,

then we could call it part of the office supply budget.

That's the only way we could get it through.

So, Nora and Mary discuss Ginny's issues and they realize they're not great friends either.

They don't remember their friend's birthday or anything like that.

That night, Ginny gives her speech.

It looks like Mary and Nora didn't show up.

Once again, one of Stuart's favorite things: empty seats at a performance.

He loves it.

Loves it.

Ginny gets upset on stage.

She speaks honestly from the heart and Mary and Nora walk in and she comes to an epiphany about friendship and needing to not be in control.

She says,

it's better to be together than to have your shit together.

And this is one thing I want to say about this movie.

This is not a good movie.

It's a comedy that's not funny.

It does not get through to real emotion in the characters.

It is skating by constantly on the charisma of these leads.

But I will say this.

I recently read the book, Liar of Orpheus by Robertson Davies.

And in it, he makes the point that even bad, trite, crappy art can still embody a truth, you know?

And sometimes those truths come through even truer because

you don't have the

glittering, brilliant artifice of a great work of art to distract you.

And there are two moments in this movie.

The one where Eugene Levy is saying to Diane Keaton, you can't make your whole life about work.

Like, I did that and it was wrong and it almost killed me.

And this moment where she says, it's better to be together than to have your shit tick.

Like it's better to connect with another person than to seem perfect.

And I was like, movie,

you're bad, but you're saying real things to me that, that are good for me to hear at this point in my life at the moment, you know?

And so I will, so the, those things being true messages does not in any way make this a good movie.

But it was, it was one of those things where I'm like, movie, okay.

Like at least, at least the message is not like.

Girls got to do it for themselves, you know, something that is.

And normally when that happens, I'm like watching, I'm like, girls do got to do it for themselves.

I haven't really thought about it that way.

Thank you.

You're right.

It is so funny when you're watching a piece of shit that

speaks to you all of a sudden and you're like,

should this matter so much?

Am I an idiot for connecting?

Well, it's like there's a, there's a, there's some, I had one of the reasons I left the daily show when I did was also I didn't want to work there anymore, but the, the, and I was burnt.

Too much Dan McCoy.

And the allegation.

Too much Dan McCoy.

And what?

And the allegations.

I had to leave.

They did that.

They too

oh wow good saved

dan saved your ass right now thank you dan i appreciate after all things i've said about you was that i went to see two movies around that time it follows where i was like i love this movie there's more things to do in life and i feel like there's a deep meaning this movie and kong skull island which is a very fun movie but there's a point in it where the guy goes you go looking for a war you're going to find one and i was like i bet that hit more people harder than everything I've done at the Daily Show about war and like getting into it.

The idea that like in this monster movie, yeah, if you're looking for a monster to fight, fight, you're going to find a monster to fight, even if there wasn't one to begin with.

You're going to make that warfare.

And I was like, oh man, you can say true things in silly movies or like, you know,

goofy movies.

You know, the goofy movie obviously has.

Yeah, you can say there's some shit in the goofy movie.

Yeah, Power Line song has a lot to say to us.

I gotta watch that fucking movie.

We're gonna have to do the goofy movie at some point.

Like, it's maybe the most demanded movie for us to do.

So that night, the ladies talk about how Ginny's life has been empty because she's been so focused on seeming perfect, you know, or whatever.

They're a real family.

And they make up the next day.

They use a canopy zipline ropes course.

The movie is effectively over, but I guess there's this ropes course at the camp they were shooting at, so they've got to use it.

And Ginny hires Josh Peck.

He's now her social media marketer or something like that.

For some reason.

He's never shown any aptitude for it.

Well, she has basically sabotaged his camp career, so might as well help her with this.

Yeah.

Nora has an epiphany and she lets them help her in the ropes course and isn't, she's going to quit her job.

Ginny gives another epiphany speech.

This one I don't like.

The movie has sold, it's selling past the close, you know, and so Nora quits her job.

Mary decides to leave her husband and then they zipline.

Not just that.

Mary also, and look, I don't want to say, I don't want to close anyone down before their time.

Like many wonderful things can happen.

Don't bring her down in old age.

Oh, don't bring her down, Dan.

But Alfie Woodard is in her 70s, and the character at the end of this movie is like, like, I'm going to go back and become a doctor.

I'm like, no, don't.

Four years of medical school now?

Can you imagine someone at that age having to do a residency where you're working like 20-hour days?

Like, don't do it.

Yeah, don't do it.

But, Dan, it's just a fantasy movie.

It doesn't matter.

That's why they ride away on a Pegasus at the end.

Basic lines.

Like, what, the end of Medea or whatever?

Medea's family read.

Yeah, yeah.

Where Madea flies away with two, what, dead children?

What happens in there with that thing?

And Jason's like, what did I do?

Oh, man.

Oh, boy.

I feel like a real idiot.

I feel like a real heel.

I apologize for that.

Oh, man.

What a great character.

Man, Greek mythology has a lot of great-ass characters.

But the fact that Jason is a hero, he ruins his family life.

He puts on a hockey mask, and he just starts stabbing summer campers.

Oh, man.

Oh, what a hero.

Well, I mean, that's one of the great things about all the Greek myths is it's like, look, here's the secret.

Everybody's a piece of shit, right?

Like, the gods,

the gods, pieces of shit, the heroes, pieces of shit.

The Minotaur, probably the best guy in the whole thing.

Yeah,

I mean, I guess, like, like, who's other, like, I guess there's no good guys in Greek myths, which is great.

Yeah, that's probably what spawned the God of War video game franchise.

Somebody's like, all these people are pieces of shit.

Somebody should invent somebody to just murder them all.

Yeah.

So, anyways, they zip line away.

Summer of 69 plays, and then we get outtakes and bloops.

We get bloopers, and I want to turn it off.

One thing that I want to, you did not.

The one thing I want to

is there's a there's a scene where Nicole Ritchie and Betsy Sedaro are clearly improvising.

And Nicole Ritchie like comes the closest that the movie does to making me laugh with one of her lines and made me think about how like she's been really funny in like some sitcoms later in her career.

And back in the old days when she was hanging out with Paris Hilton, like people were making such fun of her and like how like it taught a real lesson about how you shouldn't write someone off in a way that I'm like, you're talking about like art hitting you in weird ways.

I'm like, well, that made me think more than anything else in this movie is just like thinking about the real career of this

actor.

I feel like a very real thing that people I think are just coming around to, I think at least

culture is coming around to is that Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie knew what they were doing.

Like this is a bit.

Yes, I think so.

That's a bit.

And at the time, all these people are like, oh, these characters are like, these people are dumb.

And I'm like, they're doing a bit guys I mean it will I will say in defense of the people who did not get that they were doing a bit I think there was it was a time when there was the idea of oh you're famous for being rich and pretty and now you get a TV show where you get to just kind of like in a it seems like make fun of ordinary people I think not getting the level of irony that they are the villains of that show that they're supposed playing dumb and not living in the world we live in now where being rich is the single most important thing and the only thing that matters in the entire world, that we live in such a fallen universe at the moment where all that matters is money and that a computer can make a picture of Jesus with five boobs just with a verbal prompt, you know?

Like the, I think at an earlier, more innocent time.

You're majority of AI.

I guess that's true.

So the, it's because I can't help it.

I'm an imaginative human being.

I can come up with new ideas.

But I think that we lived in a simpler, less, at a time when now it's not like irony is dead so much as reality has become so ironic that nothing matters.

And so when that TV show is on, I get people not getting that in.

That being said, Dan, I know what you're saying, which is you shouldn't just discount somebody because you think you know who they are rather than really paying attention to who they are.

Yeah, yeah.

So we all learned something from Summer Camp.

So

that's the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that takes us into final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

I'm going to say, like I said, this is a type of movie that surprisingly we often enjoy at the floppas or maybe not surprisingly but it's not geared towards uh three middle-aged men personally you mean a movie filled with beautiful older women that we wouldn't like it that's crazy dang you're making it creepy again

but as much as i like the performers i do think this is kind of like

it's definitely the weakest one of these that we've watched i don't know if it's the weakest full stop or that will ever exist but i was i will i will say bad bad even though there are elements about it that were i love that you

moving.

Somebody make a worse one.

Stuart, what do you think?

Someone's going to make a worse one.

Yeah, this is a bad, bad movie.

It just, it has,

it's, it's very scattered.

It just doesn't put any, it feels very effortless in a bad way.

Yeah, not effortless in a Michael Jordan way.

You know,

yeah.

And yeah, it just, it, it seems to rely on the

charisma and talent of the cast, and I don't think it gives them enough to work with.

It's not very good.

I'm going to surprise you guys.

This is objectively a bad movie.

It's barely a movie.

There's a joke I've always loved for Mystery Science Theater, for the movie The Screaming Skull, where they say this is about two minutes of a movie and 90 minutes of Styrofoam packing peanuts.

And that's what this movie feels like also.

But I will say.

This is one, maybe because it's not trying at all, and it is so entirely resting just on my residual enjoyment of this cast.

I did find it going down very easy.

And it had those two moments where I was like, all right, this movie is saying true things to me almost by accident, you know?

And so in the end, it was a movie I kind of liked, but it is bad.

It's not worth watching.

And it's very much like, but I think it was almost like, if this was trying to be funny and failing, I would have hated it.

But since it is not trying to be funny,

I can't discount it for failing at something it's not even attempting.

It's easy, breezy, beautiful.

Well, there's a reason why I put it on and don't remember that much of it because I'm like, yeah, it's just

a

little bit.

But it feels a little bit like when you're watching commercials in a row during a commercial break on a TV, when you're watching TV, and the commercials are neither annoying enough to be memorable, nor are they funny or cool enough to be memorable.

And you're just sitting there letting.

Letting faces that you recognize play over your retinas and you're just kind of like, all right, this happened.

If there's anything that pushes me towards not liking it, it's the the soundtrack.

Like, the needle drops are just dumb.

Like, I'm not a fan of those needle drops, but I mean, don't get me wrong, you play a, you play a ZZ Top song.

I'm going to like that.

He's going to get up and start boogieing around the room.

Yeah,

do a little Texas two-step around my living room.

But

I will say that objectively, this is a bad bad movie.

Yeah.

Hi, is this Sam?

Yes, it is.

I'm Brenda, host of Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries on Maximum Fun, and I'm calling because you've been named Maximum Funds Member of the Month for May.

Wow, I'm really excited to hear that.

I love being a member.

I like all the Boco, and I just, I enjoy all the shows that I listen to.

I just, I love Maximum Fun.

As our member of the month, you'll be getting a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store, a special member of the month bumper sticker, a special priority parking spot at Maximum Fun HQ in Los Angeles, California, just for you.

I can't wait to see what the bumper sticker looks like.

Oh, yeah.

I am obsessed with bumper stickers.

What's your message to people thinking about joining Maximum Fun?

I mean, if you really like the shows, I think it's like a really good way to help support them.

I'm really happy I'm able to.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for making your show.

Become a MaxFun member now at maximumfun.org/slash join.

It's hard to explain what Jordan Jesse Go is about, so I had my kids take a stab at it.

Probably weird stuff.

You talk about jobs that are annoying.

Business.

I think you probably learned your lesson after talking about business a couple of times.

Grown-up jokes that I don't understand,

and there's no point in making.

All the podcasts, oh boy.

Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grown-ups.

Hey, this podcast is sponsored, of course,

by the support of MaxFun listeners.

Thank you to all who are members, but it is also specifically this episode sponsored in part by Squarespace.

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Elliot, you probably have things you want to plug.

You do things on the side.

I do too many things on the side.

I've got stuff to plug.

Just the same old regular stuff.

Regular listeners know that I have a couple of ongoing projects.

One is my other podcast.

Sorry, guys, I'm cheating on you with Sean Hayes.

That podcast is...

I like to watch from the window.

My podcast, Clueless, on the Smartless Network, which is a, you know, 12 to 15 minute long, usually puzzle podcast.

Please try to check that out.

My series from DC Comics, Harley Quinn, continues to come out monthly, and I'm having a lot of fun writing it.

And

the art looks amazing.

And finally, there is my new children's picture book, Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House.

It's out in store shelves now.

And we just had a signing yesterday as we're recording this at Once Upon a Time Books in Montrose, California.

And it went really great.

And a bunch of floppers showed up with their kids, and it was really wonderful.

So thank you so much to the listeners who showed up.

Thanks for picking up Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House.

I think you're going to be a little bit more scared.

You didn't have a Salman Rushdie situation.

I did not have a Salman Rushdie situation.

No, I didn't.

Yeah.

Everything was fine.

No one tried to assassinate me.

So that was a hilarious joke, Stuart.

Dan, can we do talk to Stu about this?

Like, this is going too far.

But anyway, thanks, Floppers, for coming out at Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House on bookstore shelves.

Go to your local independent bookstore and say, get me a book where a mouse named Sadie Wrecks a house.

Nice.

Stuart, what about you?

What do you got to plug?

Well, I don't know.

We reopened our bar Commonwealth in Park Slope.

You should go check it out.

You should go to my Twitch channel, Stuart Wellington, and watch me paint models once a week.

I usually do it in the afternoons on Fridays.

Yeah, that's about it.

I got nothing else going on.

Hey, as long as we're plugging things, you know, I don't actually mention it that much, but I've got a personal newsletter.

It's called Dan McCoy's Special Interests.

You can,

I don't know, you can just Google that.

It'll come up.

Dan McCoy's special interests.

It's probably also the URL.

I can't remember.

Am I supposed to know everything?

Yeah, and certainly you have no way of looking it up now.

So what do we do next on the podcast?

the next thing is uh let's answer some uh listener letters letters from listeners uh i'm pulling them up right now and here we go hi floppers hey this is this is from joanna last name with no hi floppers fabrics

well that's joanne but yes uh sure thanks thanks for correcting me

i didn't want those joanne fabrics people who are like already sad about the you know the all of it going out of the world.

I was just winding

to come for us, you know?

Yeah, Stuart, you're just hitting so many hot button topics and raw nerves.

I'm so sorry, guys.

Joanne says, I was ecstatic when Hallie recommended Dangerous Beauty on the Better Man episode, as it finally gave me a reason to write in after listening for 15 plus years.

Wow, thank you for listening all that time and not writing in.

We appreciate your restraint.

Just kidding.

Hey, just kidding.

I attended a fancy all-girls high school that required everyone to take one semester.

Stuart, you were just telling me about a movie, about something like that.

Yeah.

I required everyone to take one semester of Italian Renaissance art.

At the end of the semester, our teacher decided to screen Dangerous Beauty.

The main character's mother, played by Jacqueline Bissette, is a former courtesan who decides that her daughter must also become a courtesan.

There's a sequence where the mother trains the daughter in the ways of the courtesan.

It is all pretty tame until she brings in a handsome stable boy and forces her daughter to watch her give him a hand job.

Imagine about

which part of that scenario

on which side.

Imagine about 20-15 year old girls screaming in absolute horror when they realize that this poor girl has to learn how to give a hand job from her mom.

I've seen and forgotten a lot of movies over the years, but that scene will live in my mind until the day I die.

Anyway, do you have any particularly memorable classroom-based movie watching incidents to share, whether from elementary school, high school, or college?

Best wishes, Joanna.

The only two things I can remember, not as striking as that.

I remember, of course,

we watched Schindler's List in school and people had to get, you know, permission slips for watching in our school.

They watched something with Jews on it, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that, like, it just struck me because, like, I understand why the school has to do it, but on the other hand, it was like, oh, the people who grow up in the most restrictive households who arguably would benefit the most from seeing this movie are not going to see it under that circumstance.

But I also remember in middle school, you know, watching, I think it was like the last week of school when the teachers have given up and nothing we're going to watch is of educational value.

Yeah, we once watched Empire Records in a biology class in high school at the end of the year.

We watched Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, and I was the only one who laughed at the like,

is the, you know, that's the Ark of the Covenant.

Are you sure?

Pretty sure.

And like the teacher like coming by like, yeah,

this guy's getting a passing grade.

You and me, we're the real ones.

We like Indy.

I had kind of the opposite type experience in a classroom once, which is my AP government politics teacher was out sick one day in high school.

And so he had, he was supposed to watch Roger and Me, the first Michael Moore movie.

And

our substitute put it on.

And then about five minutes in, he turned it off and said, this is un-American.

And he said, just

read or do your other homework for the rest of the class.

Wow.

That's incredible.

It was so funny.

I remember, I definitely, I think it was in high school,

we were doing like stream of consciousness stuff.

I think we were reading Portrait of the Artist or something.

And so as an example, we watched The Wall

and we had to get our parents to sign permission slips.

Yeah.

And like one of the kids

complained to their parents.

And so there was like a little bit of a stink because their parents were like, this is inappropriate for kids to watch.

It was really funny.

And then, and then the next year we watched boring for sure.

We watched 1776.

And I was like, man, why is that Boy Meets World guy singing all these fucking songs?

Why is Chris?

Why is Mr.

Feeney doing all this singing?

Amazing stories all around.

Just like that series.

Yeah, that's what the series amazing stories was most likely to represent.

Do you think

when they were trying to come up with a fucking title for that thing, they're like, what do we call this show with all these amazing stories?

Oh.

Wait, say that again.

What?

The show's full of amazing stories?

That's it.

And I didn't know for sure until I heard it a second time.

Amazing stories.

Can we shorten this?

This is from Pete Last Name Withheld, who writes, a while while ago, I asked you what I could do to be less like Dan or what Dan would recommend that I might enjoy.

Why would you want to be less like Dan?

Let's just start.

Dan's a wonderful person.

He's a real sweeter.

Thank you.

I think our president would be a lot better if he was more like Dan.

Yeah, I agree with that.

This was just a minor update to my Danitis.

How many Tinto Brass movies has our president seen?

Probably a few, actually.

Yeah, he's probably into it.

Probably a few.

This is just a minor update to my Danitis situation.

I've blown out my knee and torn my ACL.

So

just sorry to Pete Larry.

Yeah.

Sorry to hear that, Pete.

You know, my, you know, but here's some encouragement.

I'd say that my knee is back to being at 95%, but

the other knee deteriorated to make up for it.

So that's terrible.

And just think about it.

Dan's ACL healed, but he got years of complaints out of it.

So that was worth it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Think of all the free drinks he got from sad people who decided, wanted to make him feel better.

Keep up with your physical therapy.

That's the advice.

But now let's move on to

recommendations.

Because you're like a bit of a teacher pleaser, right, Dan?

So like,

yeah, you're trying to like,

when your doctor gives you physical therapy, you're like, I got to do that.

The teacher wants me to get this done.

Is that true or no?

Or is it entirely because you're motivated to improve yourself?

I wouldn't say it's because I'm motivated to improve myself.

I am motivated to, you know, like my body is important

as a way of walking around.

And there's like a certain amount of knee vanity tied in with that.

I want to have the sexiest knees.

Well, that's the thing.

He sees those Slender Mans and he's like, I got to have knees like that where you don't even see them.

It's just impossible to have knees like Slender Man.

You got to stop trying to reach an unachievable goal.

But he's so tall, too.

Like, he must have knee problems, like, support all that.

Oh, for sure.

Flips.

Do you think he has ankle problems?

You guys think Slender Man could hoop?

Could hoop.

I'm not sure but it's funny to think of it just

hooping yeah yeah

uh let's do recommendations of movies that we've seen recently or not so recently that we've enjoyed um I'm gonna play yeah

I would never I would never Elliot uh thank you by the time

uh this is out well I mean people are already seeing it in this theater the theaters I don't know but I saw I got to see an advanced screening uh because I had a critic friend dance flex and everybody who invited me to an early screening of Final Destination Bloodlines,

which I very much enjoyed.

I have enjoyed basically the entire Final Destination series.

Give me a quick ranking.

Even the weakest one.

I've enjoyed a little bit.

Which is the weakest one?

Four.

Four is the weakest, yeah.

That's the one where they're tracking down death and they're trying to kill death with different.

death traps and it keeps escaping.

I don't know.

Of the previous ones.

Which one is the one where the soldier plays, he plays cards and he gets the thing that lets him see desk, death, and he catches him in a bag and hangs him in a tree.

I don't think that episode of the storyteller.

Oh, you're right.

That's what I'm thinking of.

Jim Henson's storyteller, not Final Destination.

Thank you.

Of the previous ones, I think personally, I would go

three, two, five, one, four.

But

a lot of them are grouped pretty closely.

But this new one, really enjoyed it.

Probably the best one, I would say.

Oh, the one weak point about it is it doesn't have like, you know, she's, she's, she's not bad, but like, I don't think the lead has the charisma of like Mary Elizabeth Winstead or even like Allie Larder is also like let alone a Diane Keaton.

Let alone a Diane Keaton.

We're in a final destination.

I would love her kind of like bumbling through a final destination would be amazing.

But she's got to survive.

She's got to somehow like be the only one who is able to survive through like dithering.

That's basically like a Mr.

Magoo baby stay out situation.

Yes, exactly.

I don't think the new one ever gets better than its opening sequence, which is amazing, but I do think it has a lot of fun.

By this point in the series,

you know what to expect out of these movies.

And the movie knows that you know what to expect and plays some fun games with you and your expectations.

And I saw it in sort of fake IMAX, and the whole audience was hooting and hollering.

Are they showing that in 40X?

I'm sure they have to.

They have to.

Yeah, and they kill you at the end of the movie.

That's part of the experience, yeah.

That's part of it.

Stewart, what do you got?

I am going to recommend a movie that's kind of on theme with Summer Camp.

I re-watched the movie Bull Durham, a sexy baseball comedy.

They don't make a lot of sexy baseball comedies anymore.

Just the one.

Yeah, you know.

Everybody who wants them?

That's kind of sexy.

I guess you're right.

Damn, there's not a lot of baseball in it.

No.

Yeah.

It's not really about the baseball.

In some ways, well, I mean, I guess Bull Durham is about the baseball.

I remember watching it as a kid and being like, why isn't there more baseball in this movie?

And then as an adult, I'm like, why isn't there more sex in this movie?

But it's so, it's so fun.

It's a great movie.

As somebody who doesn't really care that much about baseball, I feel like the movie does a very good job of translating what baseball means to people, to a person person like me or at least communicating what baseball is for somebody who is not interested uh it also it helps that the leads are all incredibly charming i had kind of forgotten what a sex symbol kevin costner was and he's just like man he's just lighting that screen on fire baby i'm so used to him being like you know like all-purpose american dad not the american dad from the tv show so not all-purpose american dad no one purpose

yeah he's not steve smith is that uh is that his name stan smith i don't

I work in animation.

Yeah, I work in animation, which means I know the names of all the characters on the shows that I've got.

Yeah.

But it's

American Dad sometimes at events in the industry.

Yeah.

Well, like Kevin Costa.

We nods.

We already know each other, but we recognize it from other events.

Yeah, of course.

And you guys have probably mentioned, like, hey, we should work together, but you never really follow up.

You don't actually intend to do that.

No, we don't actually have that conversation.

No.

Okay.

Maybe this is all just in my fantasies that I write or the text I write to Dan.

Sure, yeah.

So what I'm saying is that Kevin Costner, Susan Saranon, very hot.

Tim Robbins, fun, great movie.

Check it out.

When are you going to watch Bull Durham with your baseball fanatic son, Elliot?

I feel like it's not really, again, the type of...

baseball movie that works best for an 11-year-old.

That being said, we have our go-to baseball movie in our house.

League of their own.

League of their own, the greatest sports movie ever made.

And so we watch that quite a bit in our house.

Your son loves that Susan Sontag speech, right?

In both of them.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

He really really is.

I mean, it's a great speech, Dan.

It is a great speech.

But the thing is, he has a lot of issues with Sontag's later work.

So that kind of muddies the water a little bit.

Yeah.

Dan, what movie are you going to recommend?

I already did it.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

It's my turn.

So I'm going to recommend a movie that is kind of the exact opposite of Summer Camp, I think, in every way, but it still says something true.

It's just kind of bitterly true.

This is a movie I may have recommended in the past on the show.

It's a favorite of mine, but recently I just wanted to watch something that I knew I would get something out of, even if it wasn't always sweetness and light.

And so that movie is Little Murders, starring Elliot Gould and Marcia Rodd from 1971 that Alan Arkin directed, written by Jules Pfeiffer from his play of the same name.

And for anyone who's not familiar, it is one of the kind of darkest comedies that is still funny to me.

that I feel came out of like American in the 60s, 70s.

It's not quite as grim to me as Where's Papa, a movie I do not find funny,

but it's still really grim.

And do they ever answer the question?

They do not answer the question of where Papa is.

No, but speaking of the movie that I'm talking about now, Little Murders, it's kind of like a

nightmare vision of New York as hell in some ways, but not the kind of like brightly lit, kind of like Martin Scorsese taxi driver, New York as hell, and more like a city that just grinds people down with real casual kind of disrespect and violence and

filth.

And

the acting in it is great.

It's a real over-the-top caricatured view of the world.

There's some amazing monologues in it.

There's a monologue that Elliot Gould has about his experience as a younger man with a government worker who was spying on him by reading his mail that is all this one-take monologue speech that really hit me really hard.

Like how I went back and rewound it and watched it again.

It's just a really great movie that will, I find it really funny.

It'll make you feel really bad, um but the performances are great um and it's just you know if you want a movie that's gonna challenge you to a certain extent little murders is a really good one for that i saw that movie when i was like 12 or 13 because not the right time to see even even as a kid for some reason i loved elliot gould yeah i'm like oh that'll be a little comedy i'll watch this and man did it horrify me

It's a haunting movie.

I love when you watch a movie with

a monologue like that and you're like, I got to rewind it.

I think the last time I did that was what was that resurrection with rebecca hall where you're like what is happening here in this movie yeah so this is one i i highly recommend it it's not gonna be for everybody but uh but i think it's i think it's really amazing so that's little murders i will say one thing try to avoid reading any summaries of it because uh there's a there's a thing that happens in it that should be a surprise and i remember once our our good friend met carmen who helps us with our flop tv stuff he i recommended to him and he got it from netflix when netflix still mailed out dvds And the summary on the envelope gave away what happened as if it was something that happens in the beginning of the movie and made him really mad.

So don't bother looking up summaries of it.

Just go, I don't know why you're reading summaries of the movie you're about to watch anyway,

but go see it in the theater where it's playing in 1971.

Yeah, I guess.

Well, that's it for this episode.

I want to thank our producer, Alex Smith.

He goes by the name Howell Doddy on the internet for all sorts of musical and Twitch streaming enterprises.

That's a name that

isn't naturally understood how it's spelled.

So I'm going to spell it out for you because

I feel like we don't do it that often.

It's H-O-W-E-L-L.

That's Howell.

Doddy D-A-W-D-Y.

And I also want to thank our network, Maximum Fun.

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

They say comedy and culture.

One of those things applies to you.

You like comedy?

You like culture?

Which one?

Maybe both.

Maybe both.

Is it possible?

Who knows?

Someone say comedy is part of culture.

You never know.

Someone say culture is part of comedy.

I just want to stretch it at the end.

Oh, okay.

Well, anyway.

For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

Okay.

See you later.

Bye.

Suckers.

Bye.

Do you like beet juice?

You do like beet juice.

You can't be

good for the heart.

And from what I hear, a natural Viagra.

So if you got a little bit of penis problems, Dan, you can try to

try picking.

How's it working for your penis?

You're drinking it right now.

I mean, it's I'm not, I'm like at least at half mass.

Dan, if you're ever having

trouble

ever having troubles downstairs, just open it up like a sandworm, shove a beat in there.

Man,

I was so close to coffee going straight into my sinuses with that one.

It would have burned your sinuses.

Yeah, I would not have enjoyed that.

No, not at all.

Should we do this recording or should we keep saying gross things that no one wants to eat?

Talk about this grandma camp movie.

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