Ep.#449 - The Electric State

On this episode, we discuss the Electric State, a movie that costs how much money?

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Hey, I'm Ellie Kalen.

Wait, wait a minute.

You guys aren't usually in my bedroom where I record.

What's going on here?

Well, Ellie, your bedroom looks a lot like Dan's office.

Yeah, you must have got conked on the head with a coconut and whisked here to Flophouse HQ.

I call it that because two of us are here, so we get to decide that this is HQ.

Oh, man, I got outvoted.

It's kind of like in the video game Bloodborne, where you fight those weird, tall guys that have a giant bag.

And if they defeat you instead of killing you, that you wake up in their weird oubliette, and then you have a bunch of them.

So that's what happened to you.

You got bonked on the head by a guy carrying a big sack.

And now I'm in Dan's weird oubliette.

Yeah, great.

Yeah.

Get out of my oohette.

And if it was my oubliette, I'd call it a stoobliette.

You would indeed.

So, what are we doing on this podcast?

Specific, like you're like a comic who was really big in like 1979, and you had had one thing.

I was still swimming in my dad's ball sack back then.

This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

And

as mentioned, Elliot, who normally is on the other coast,

has been

kind enough.

to grace us with his presence.

It was very kind of me.

Thank you.

He's a ghost.

Thank you.

It is spring break.

Woo!

Spring break.

So my family is on the east coast this week.

And that means I get to see my best buds.

And then you guys.

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

So, this is a razzing podcast where we give each other the dozens.

I'm going to do 11 more of those.

Oh, boy.

I don't have that many.

And the price of eggs, that's the only other dozen I know.

Electric State.

Electric State.

We're talking about a movie.

This is one of those Netflix movies,

and it's, what, their most expensive one?

It was, well, they have disputed how much it cost.

But according to Dan.

Well, Wikipedia, which is not obviously the most,

you know, reliable source.

But not the least reliable source.

Not the least reliable either.

The projected costs of this were

made it the 13th highest, most expensive movies ever made.

The number I heard was $325 million.

I don't know who that is.

Which they spent on like a bunch of songs and like so many fucking celebrity voices.

I thought I was watching a fucking DreamWorks animated movie.

I was like, what is this?

If Holly Hunter shows up to just be like a newswoman and say,

five lines, I mean, I assume that this is, of course, a character from broadcast news.

That was my assumption, too.

This is in the broadcast newsverse.

Yeah.

But yeah, you have to imagine that Albert Brooks character went out to report in the field during the robot war and just got slaughtered instantly.

He's in this movie too, right?

Albert Brooks.

He got his Albert Brooks voice.

Is he?

No, I'm fucking with you.

should be there.

I do like there's a baseball robot done by Brian Cox.

And the whole time, I'm like, man, for some reason, hearing this robot talk, it makes me think about fucking a hamburger.

That's because Brian Cox has the sexy McDonald's commercial.

That's right.

He does have those sexy.

The way he says da, da, da, da, da, I'm like, man, he's taking that Big Mac to bed.

Or that, like, the Filet of Fish commercial.

Have you seen that thing?

I don't remember it offhand.

I want to say

the price tag of this movie was widely reported on.

Yeah.

People really talked about it.

It was the biggest news story of the year, right, Dan?

There's nothing else going on, but the electric state being expensive.

But normally I'm not one who.

Talk about waste, fraud, and misuse.

Normally I'm not one that gets mad about the size of budgets per se.

Like, I think that that argument...

is weird because it takes on this sort of moral tinge a lot of the time.

You could have done this with this money.

Like that money was never going to go to that.

That implies that Netflix either could have made this movie or fed the homeless.

Yeah.

But it also forgets that a lot of people work on these movies and they have to be paid for that work.

And Netflix would like to do nothing more.

And I say this as a person working on a show for Netflix right now, all studios would like to do nothing, or Netflix would do nothing more than to not pay those people for that work.

So you could be like, Netflix, how could you spend this much money on there?

And they might be like, we would have loved to have spent less money on this movie, believe me.

But I do, I do think

the moral question of it is always kind of a, is a false choice.

Yes.

I think so.

But that being said, I did watch this movie.

I'm like, what the fuck?

How did this cost that much money?

Well, the real issue, I think, is you watch this movie, you know how much it costs, and you're like, and they couldn't afford like ideas.

Like they couldn't afford like new stuff.

And even the fact that...

We'll get into it, but like a lot of the kneel-drop songs, they're the same old songs you hear in movies all the time.

Like the story is the same old basic story you've seen and things.

The dialogue is super on the nose.

This is a movie that does not trust the audience to ever put one plus one together and get two.

It has to tell you two every time.

Treats you like a fucking idiot.

And I also hate to,

I mean, the original.

If you're going to spend that much money, spend it on such a cerebral artistic folly that people are going to be like, yeah, I see why you spent, make megalopolis.

Where you're like, yeah, I see why you spent all that money because otherwise there's no way this would ever exist because this is bonkers.

Yeah.

Well, and I was going to say, I hate to sort of get mad at a movie that...

while it is based on a book and it's a book that sort of references the look of, you know, other sort of

ip of the book

but it's not you know it's not based on a big ip thing uh but it seems like also they took a book that was more idiosyncratic and had interesting like uh

a look and ideas and then plugged that into the most sort of like how do how can we sand down the edges of this the most and make it like every other just to make the most the most basic movie plot stronger yeah so have either of you guys read the book that this is based on no well it's based on the great gatsby right So I have read that.

Yeah.

The Great Botsby.

Yeah.

So the green light he was looking towards, it was another bot.

So I haven't read The Electric State, but I am pretty familiar with some of the artists' Simon Stalin Haggins' work.

I'm a big fan of his, the role-playing game based on it, Tales from the Loop.

And one of the things that, one of the things that I think...

The movie really latches on to two elements there, which is science fiction stuff and nostalgia, which a lot of Stalin Haggins art takes place in the past.

But one of the things that he does is he manages to incorporate these like sci-fi elements, but he puts them in otherwise very mundane situations.

And I feel like the movie, and that adds like a little bit of wonder to it.

Like the like, almost like the kids on bikes joy of like being a kid and all of a sudden there's a giant robot walking past your school bus or something.

But the movie does not do any of that.

Like it, the movie is latched, like locked in on how can we do 90s shit and how can we throw massive amounts of robots in your eyeballs?

90s shit for a little, like there's some, it's set in the 90s, but it never really feels like they're taking advantage of it in a way, like in a 90s way.

Like, I don't know.

It was like, oh, yeah, that's...

Not enough hypercolor shirts for that.

But the way that, like, as much as, you know, like, Stranger Things really makes the most of it being set in the time it's set, I feel like.

Like, it's always reminding you that you're in that time.

Whereas there was whole parts of this movie where I was like, oh yeah, this is set in the 90s.

Like, I kind of forgot, you know, that also the,

that, like, the, well, we'll get into it, but also, like, that they're like, the uh, the, I think they thought there was gonna be a lot more mileage in Mr.

Peanut being the leader of a robot rebellion than there really seemed to be.

I don't even know.

And the thing about the Mr.

Peanut thing is the first time I saw him, I got my one like bit of enjoyment out of the movie.

And then it became an important plot point.

Like, I liked just seeing Mr.

Peanut signing peace accords with Bill Clinton in like a Zealig, uh, force gump style insertion.

That was fun, but then I didn't need that to be more than just a one-off.

You didn't need that character to come back.

You didn't need him to show up with a fucking sword cane and get in a fucking sword fight with another robot.

Yeah.

Let's get into it.

Let's get into what I think.

The electric state.

Yeah, tell us all about it, Dan.

Dan's doing the summary today, so buckle up.

Well, it's a song that has a dance to it.

You sort of slide across.

Oh, wait, no.

That's a different thing.

The 1990s.

Dan, are you sure you're not the dad

of the three of us?

No, I, you know, I just loved sort of growing into dad jokes, even though I was, you know, I don't have a kid actually.

Like, I liked getting to the age where it's like, oh, my habit of making jokes just to irritate people is sort of like understood by the culture now.

I think what you're, what you're finally understanding is that

you don't become a dad and tell dad jokes.

You become an older man man who tells dad jokes, and you have a kid, so you have someone to tell those jokes to.

Because you know what's going to happen.

When you were a younger dad, or younger dad, younger man.

When I was a younger dad,

when I wore a younger dad's clothes,

people were more apt to put up with those jokes because I don't know about that.

Sing us a song, you're the piano dad,

sing us a song tonight, Abalo Dad

and Dad will get you by tonight.

Hell yeah.

Okay.

We're on the Daddy Easter, Alexa.

I forgot what one of these in-person things was like.

Yep.

You also forgot that I grew up in the land of Billy Joel, the Tri-State area.

I'm going to take you to the magical land of Billy Joel.

We eat dad and start the fire.

Where's he's got?

He's got one of those rest stops named after him, right?

And I don't think he does.

Really?

But like, they named all the other rest stops after celebrity.

David Crash.

new jersey

which which well he's more of a long island guy yeah you're right i'll shut up yeah i mean but it is there are new jersey restaurants walt whitman has one named after him and also vince lombardi you know yeah and like john bon joviovi yeah there must be molly pitcher i mean there isn't a springsteen one if only because they felt it was not it was not a

big enough tribute but he's a long island guy

he's a big in new jersey but he's not from new jersey okay well this is good to hash out so the electric state which is billy joel i mean there is some new jersey talk in it I'm sure there's at least one Billy Joel song that gets played at some point during this thing.

I'm not sure about that.

It just seems like there would be a lot of fun.

Oh, yeah, the Stranger.

That's right.

Let's go frame by frame.

Yeah,

let's get out Jeweler's Loops.

Is someone in the background playing?

Let's look at

the audio waveforms throughout the entire movie.

AI,

see if you can identify any William Joel songs in this.

So this movie's directed by.

Here's a picture of Jesus with some crabs.

That's not what I asked for, AI.

This movie's directed by the Russo brothers, right?

And they've been outspoken in saying they think AI is great, right?

But when they say it, they say it so confusingly that it's kind of hard to make.

And this movie you would think would be a movie making a statement about

that, but it's not.

It's the most basic kind of robots are people too when they get smart enough that we've been seeing in science fiction for 100 years.

Well, it's that, but it's also

an unplugged message.

It plays both sides.

Yes, it also says the very the entry it's like robots are people too also get off your screens it's it but it's and it's i mean just the fact that like so much of this movie is built on the ready player one a model of the future where everyone just has a headset on all the time yeah but their the headset means that they it's also that movie uh surrogates that we did with bruce willis movie years ago and we did ready player one right no i've never seen it oh wow i read the book and i said i've never seen this movie Yeah, that is one of the books I disliked the most while finishing.

It is, yeah, no, the same one.

It was one of these these books every 30 pages.

I was like, I hate this book.

Why am I still reading it?

Yeah.

And I was like, I got to see if it gets dumber.

It did.

Yeah.

So the electric state.

Yeah.

So we start out in 1990.

And Millie Bobby Brown, who has, you know, been, you know, is Netflix's house starlet.

What else is she in?

Well, aside from Stranger Things, she was in the two Enola Holmes movies, and then she was in some movie where she fought a dragon that was also in English.

Enola Holmes versus the dragon.

How old is she supposed to be

in 1990

1994

i'm sorry to jump forward in 1994 she still is like like a high school student yeah she's treated like she's a minor the first we see her it's 1990 and her younger brother i thought is taking a college test and she's talking about

It made it sound as if she was a college student and he was going to join her at college.

Then in 1994, suddenly she's in a high school class.

I was like, what happened?

I don't understand.

And also, there's something...

Well, he was also, he's like super genius.

But I thought she was older than him.

Yeah.

Yeah, but he's like, yeah, he's skipping ahead.

But he looks like he's like 15.

So if she's older than him, she should be college.

Four years later, she should be in college.

I was like, did she get so, did she go to jail and then she had to go back to high school?

She would just be happy that they didn't de-age digitally.

That would have been

pretty awesome.

That would have been funny because they're already young.

But

speaking of her appearance, like...

Stuart?

No, I'm just saying, like, it's like she has too much makeup on.

Like, she looks too like, like, she's like poreless almost.

She looks too much.

It's kind of jarring in compared to all the beat up robots.

I certainly never, I don't know her real age.

I never bought her as a high school age character.

But I mean, I'm not like being critical.

I just feel like the choice making her look very clean.

But the other thing is that

she doesn't look like that.

That's what I'm saying.

The other thing is there's nothing about that character that needs to be that age either.

Except that then she has to have, I guess, Jason Alexander as her meme guardian.

But anyway, she sees her brother, aforementioned brother, Christopher.

She's watching him take a super complex math test because he's a super genius.

And outside, they run into an army dude who's like, why are you wearing a cartoon shirt with a robot on it?

We're going to get a little bit of a card.

Well, the shirt has a cartoon robot on it.

It's not a cartoon shirt.

I mean, I think it's not.

Like, it's not like he didn't get it from Toontown and put it on.

The average person probably could have parsed that out.

I don't know.

They're imagining he's wearing like animated shoes that scream when you put them into.

A war with the robots.

Other than that, they're pretty quiet.

Yeah, otherwise.

A war with the robots, what's that?

Well, luckily, we get a montage of various TV reports.

They really explain the idea of a war with robots that don't want to be servants anymore, as if this is a new idea we've never seen before and we would never understand it.

When this was handled better by one of the Animatrix cartoons, you know, 30 or 20 years ago.

It's.

And I could be wrong about this, but it's my impression from reading about the book that the war in the book is never explicitly explained.

You know, like, this is not like necessarily between robots and humans or whatever.

It's more like the Clone Wars.

It was just a war.

Yeah.

Well, they just mention it and it's, you don't know about it.

Yeah, they're just like, hey, there was a war.

They present in this montage the idea that the American military just cannot handle the onslaught of robots because they never sleep, they never stop.

And when we see these robots fight finally at the end of the movie, they suck so bad.

Yeah.

They're so easily taken down.

And they don't really even have weapons.

They just throw shit.

They just throw like mail at you.

Yeah.

And

with their fists.

Yeah.

You should be clear that most of these robots are like animatronic style.

Country bears.

They're descended from Walt Disney's.

Yeah, like Mr.

Lincoln.

Yeah, these are not like kill bots from chopping malls.

They're not ED209s.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're not.

They're not even Edie McClurgs.

No,

they're not Little Edie from

Grey Gardens.

That would be so.

Now I want to see it's the electric state, but it's just, it's just

Edie, Little Edie.

Little Edie riding on Edie 209.

To Edily.

Elliot, the length of this info dump that you suggest, though, like it, it really is.

It moves pretty fast.

Well, it moves fast, but it's true that like this is not a complex idea to get across, but actually

doing it in such detail over a montage

made it more confusing to me than just like.

Yeah, because you don't know what information is important.

You don't know what you need to know.

But this is a movie that is constantly explaining everything to you.

Yeah.

They feel like you need to know everything.

And they like, but they show you Chris Pratt for a moment because you can kind of see what he was like when he was a syllabus.

Starship Troopers has like a similar kind of opening montage, but you know what?

Starship Troopers rules.

But Starship Troopers is also doing it for a very specific reason.

There's a stylistic reason and there's a thematic reason that they're like, they want it to look like old school propaganda to get across the idea.

Whereas this is just information tone.

Yeah.

And so much of those

things, those little cuts in Starship Troopers are about tone, really, more than it is about the information which you get in the movie itself.

I really liked when Starship Troopers hit like Netflix or something after not being readily available digitally for a long time.

And a whole new generation was exposed to it.

And they're like, oh, this is pretty fascist, dude.

That was very

cool media literacy.

Well, I mean, it's just history repeating.

People did not understand.

At the time when it first came out, they were like, people were like hooting and hollering.

And I like, I don't want to like pump myself up too much but like i was in the theater i'm like oh yeah this is what this is a satire and like i'm like yeah i found it so baffling that it was confusing to a whole it's this it it that kind of stuff happens a lot and it's very surprising where you'll a movie that is very clearly going for a specific idea that seems obvious to us the sophisticated you know literary and video literate types that even yeah but normally you don't lump me in on that shit but that even feels good that even the critics at the time will will not get it will like not understand yeah you know uh except for Dan's fave, Armand White.

But it reminds me of, though, it also reminds me of like the Cone brothers for years kept getting attacked for they hate their characters, they're so mean to their characters.

And it was like, have you watched their movies?

Like,

their characters are funny and they're in bad situations that they have to get out of, but you like the idea that the Cone Brothers are making fun of their characters in a way that is not okay or something like that.

It was very, it always felt very strange to me.

Um,

there is some important stuff to get out of this exposition jump, though.

Robots, uh, we meet Stanley Stanley Tucci playing Ethan Skate, who is the head of a company.

Very real name.

The head of a company called Sentry, but it's spelled with an E at the end instead of a Y, which was annoying to me.

Yeah.

And also, it's also because it's like, in the future, there will be no vowels in the names of companies.

I guess this is the 1990s.

So

his big innovation was like, hey, we can fight robots with robots if we put the brains of humans into these robot drones.

So he invents a helmet that allows you to remotely control a robot body that has a little screen with your face on it.

Yeah.

Like

why am I forgetting his name?

Like Tom Noonan in RoboCop 2.

Now, the thing is, is that I thought the problem was that

the robot brain doesn't need sleep.

So wouldn't the human brain still need sleep when they're piloting these?

Yeah, and also like, can you imagine how incredibly expensive it is to make a robot double for every soldier or for at least enough that are going to to fight a battle with these.

Like, there's nothing about the solution that's going to be.

It's in the American military budget.

It's bombing.

That's true.

But it's also one of those things where it's like, hey, you know what the American military also has?

Planes that drop bombs on the bottom.

You don't need to fight hand-to-hand with robots.

I know that.

Look, I know that for this sort of thing, you just got to

go with part of that brain up and like go with it.

But that was my problem with Pacific Rim.

I'm like, is the way to fight these monsters really to build a big robot

that has to be controlled by two people because of some drift brain fusing technology.

If this movie postulated the way to defeat the robots is by giant mechs, I'd be like, hell yeah.

Little human-sized mechs?

Hell no.

Doesn't make sense.

But also, it's the same way at the end of that the Jurassic World, was it?

Fallen Kingdom, where at the end, Jeff Govloom's like, I don't know if we're going to be able to survive the dinosaurs.

And it's like, yeah, I think we can take them.

I think we can blow up the venosaurs if we need to.

Humans make a lot of things extinct.

Pretty easy.

We're pretty much the best species at wrecking other species.

We're pretty much going to end our own species.

Body size of building, brain size of penis.

But yeah, so his solution is put, have remote control robot bodies, and that wins the war.

And then, and I wonder if there's a, if this was a smarter movie, I would wonder if there was some implication that this was, that this whole robot war was a way of his just getting his product out there and taking over the system.

That would be smarter.

And so because then his helmets go into consumer mode, and now everyone in the world is using them to sit in a in a lazy boy chair all day with that with a helmet on sending a robot out to do what you want to do.

Really

make it clear how this

helps.

They're saying like you could split your time.

I guess it's just that you can sit at home.

Is that all?

Yeah, it's all

live remotely.

Well, no, but it's not severance.

Like I put down the severance light, but I thought it was even more severance where you're there.

You're like splitting your consciousness,

but I don't think you are.

I know, because

so the one person we really see using it a lot, there's two people we see using a lot.

Jason Alexander, who just sits in a lazy boy and has a robot go to the kitchen to get him things, and Giancarlo Esposito, right, who is using it to go out and fight other robots.

But they seem to be totally concentrated on what they're doing.

It's not like they can't multitask.

Partly because they're wearing a big fucking helmet on their heads.

They can't do or see anything else.

The only other

interesting, important to the plot.

Yeah, interesting.

The clarification.

I'll change that.

Important to the plot thing isn't it?

Like to subtract the word interesting from the record.

The robots, you know, in this peace accord are sort of settled on a reservation, the exclusion zone.

Out in the desert.

And now

having learned the basics of the world, we could play this role-playing game.

Yay!

Elliot, you'll be playing Millie Bobby Brown.

Okay, great.

Stuart, you'll be Chris Pratt.

Okay, role more initiative.

So, Dan, are you Cosmo the robot?

Yeah.

Beep, boop.

Voiced by Alan Tudick.

Oh, was that Alan Tudick?

Yeah.

I mean, I can't get mad by Alan Tudick anymore.

Yeah.

He's got two dicks to support.

Two dicks.

He's going to buy twice as many condoms.

Twice as many eggs for those.

Yeah,

twice as many eggs to feed to the dicks.

They just swallow them like a snake.

Yeah, it's like the

Le Petit prawns when you see the snake with

an elephant.

Yeah, it's a hat.

No, it's a snake with an elephant in it anyway.

But that's his penis, you're saying?

So when you said

prawns, I thought he said it meant the little prawns for a moment.

I was like, you mean like in Muppets?

I thought it would be funnier to say it all French-like.

I don't have a good accent.

I think your accent's great.

You're going.

So back to Millie Bobby Brown.

We can tell it's later and that something bad has happened because now her hair is kind of ratty and she has a good

one.

Does she wear fingerless gloves or no?

She just has kind of like long sleeves?

No, but she does have like some sort of like house arrest

ankle bracelet.

Never explained, which is fine.

Or maybe it it is.

I don't know.

Anyway, her human robot foster dad, Jason Alexander, is best known as the voice of Duckman.

And she goes to school where she gets in trouble because she's the only one who doesn't want to wear one of these neuro helmets because she does not believe in doing that.

And yeah, because that's the thing.

Kids don't like looking at screens all day.

No.

Nope.

But she's a rebel.

Come on.

Yeah.

It reminds me of there was a time when I was in high school, there was when I was like either a freshman or sophomore.

And there was an older girl who i was sitting near uh one in a study hall or something and she took out a cigarette and put it next to me and i was like why'd you do that she goes i want to see how can how i want to see how brainwashed you are as if i was brainwashed if i didn't want to smoke a cigarette and i was like i don't know it's pretty pretty bad for you

It feels like smoking a cigarette is what I think of as adults doing that's dumb.

Man, she sounds like a fucking scientist.

Yeah, she does her own research.

Yeah.

Wake up, sheeple.

Lungs crave smoke.

They need it.

So, yeah, she gets in trouble for not wearing this Norcaster.

So we go to a disciplinary hearing where we learn what happened, that her family died in a car accident.

The guidance counselor or whatever that she's talking to doesn't know this information.

She's reading the file.

She's like, she goes, go to the next page of the file.

And she goes and reads, parents killed in car accident.

It's like, oh, so she didn't do any research at a time.

I should have looked at this before the meeting.

I just read parents were, and then it went to the next page.

And I didn't have time to turn the page.

So I thought it was parents were Jamaican.

Parents were doing great, and they still are.

Yeah.

She wakes up in the middle of the night to find a Cosmo robot outside, like the cartoon on the t-shirt.

And she's initially scared.

This was a cartoon that her and her brother loved.

Yeah, they watched this together.

She's scared, but there's something about this robot, and he seems to indicate to her that maybe he's her brother somehow.

I have some issues.

I wanted to talk through this a little bit because I had some issues with this that I think typify a major problem I have with the movie, which is that in this movie, characters don't do things because that's what their character feels like they should do.

They do things because that's what characters do in movies.

So she hears rattling in her trash cans.

I live in a suburb, basically.

I live in Los Angeles, but it's a suburb in part of Los Angeles.

And you're like coyotes.

Yeah.

If I hear my trash cans, I'm like, oh, that's an animal outside.

I'm not going to bother with that.

Whereas she immediately assumes something that she has to investigate is going on.

She goes out with what, like a taser or a knife?

I can't remember.

I don't remember.

And

she sees this robot.

The robot

scripture.

The robot chases her inside and she's hiding from it.

She's scared of this robot.

And then when Jason Alexander comes in and starts fighting the robot, she's like, robot, we got to get out of here.

And they're on the run together.

And it's like, wait, there's no reason for you to investigate.

There's no reason for you to be dealing with this robot.

There's no reason for you to now be friends with this robot because the robot makes a hand signal that she recognizes as her brother's.

But it's also the same thing that Cosmo the robot did in the cartoon show.

That's why her brother did it.

So the idea that a Cosmo robot would make the Cosmo signal.

And the robot can't communicate

with language because it only speaks in catchphrases.

Yes, it only says what the Cosmo robot is programmed to say.

But the idea that now she's like, I guess I'm on the run.

I'm a fugitive now.

Why?

I don't understand.

This is not a thing.

There's no reason for you to do this except that's what these movies do.

But yes, there's this, there's Fracas, Millie Tasers, Jason Alexander, gets Cosmo to undo the

thing on her ankle, and they drive to the outskirts of the exclusion zone.

And she asks asked cosmo hey cosmo how'd you get robo-fied my brother um

dan that was the lightest way you could have said my brother which is fine literally yeah that's true

you sounded like a narc trying to get talk your way into into a black panther meeting

uh but you know cosmo can only speak in pre-programmed phrases like uh like a woody when you know people are around or bumblebee or whatever and uh but he can he's able to make her.

A real-life robot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

A normal non-brother robot would also be like that.

Maybe it's an idea I didn't have to explain.

But

he makes her remember a doctor from after the car accident.

And that's played by Kihui Kwan, Academy Award winner.

Who is the one who told her that her brother was dead?

So

they

try to find him.

Cosmo points to a map saying he's he's in the exclusion zone.

So Millie's like, How do I get into this exclusion zone?

It seems like

seems to say that people aren't supposed to be there.

But her foster dad used to get a bunch of black market stuff that's plundered from there.

Yeah, we need like a like a Hanselo Chewbacca team to get him in.

That's what we need, all right.

Probably at this P.O.

box, right?

Yep.

That's where we'll find him.

And he comes out,

they get there to the P.O.

box, and Pratt is introduced coming out of a semi truck to the strange

Chris Pratt.

Chris Pratt to Danzig singing Mother.

And, you know, I still like him based in those Guardian movies.

Like, you know, he's gotten annoying otherwise,

but I have affection there.

But he's not like the cool dancing semi-singing trades.

Well, that's the thing.

When you play Mother.

Literally the message of the song is this guy is such bad news.

Tell your children never go near him because he's going to bring them to do the worst things they can do.

And then you introduce a guy who's like, you know, Starlord has already cut rate Han Solo, and now this character is cut rate Starlord.

Yeah, he's just kind of like a loser who roams around in a truck.

And they do the joke where he tries, he has a signal phrase that his partner is supposed to use to get him out of trouble.

And it doesn't work the first time.

And then it does.

They do the same joke later with the bots.

And I was like, you can't do this joke twice in the same movie.

Well, and the trouble he's in is that he's trying to sell some goods to Academy Award nominee,

Coleman Domingo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who is wearing, you know, he's a fashionable guy.

This time he's wearing a robot.

Yeah.

He drives up on a motorcycle, too.

It's very funny.

I better be watching some kind of heavy metal type movie.

If you can have a robot driving a motorcycle.

I know he probably wasn't as big when this was shot.

But like,

I think this was in development for a little while.

But like...

It is wild to me that he just shows up basically to be a drone and get zapped.

Yeah.

Well, it also means that he only shot the footage of his face.

He didn't do anything else, probably.

I don't think he was doing mothers for the robot, no.

But yes, yes.

Anyway, this all saying mother implies a tougher character than we're going to get.

Yeah.

But, like I said, that's a great song.

Showman.

It's great.

Showdown with hard to do in karaoke.

Warning.

Yeah, yeah.

Showdown with Coleman Domingo bot and Pratt's buddy Herman zaps him with a little electrode.

And Herman's a robot.

Herman's a little robot.

So they're a, like Stuart's saying, a Han Solo Chewbacca team.

This is a guy and a robot, but people and robots are supposed to hate each other.

Yeah, they they hate each other, but not this time.

I mean, they, you know, they razz each other a little bit, but it's, you know, there's real love there, you know.

Sure.

We get a little scene of a.

Who does Herman's voice?

Anthony Mackey.

Oh, it is Anthony Mackey.

Okay.

Because, but it's like, it's like

heavily modulated.

I do.

That is the one AI they admitted to using is with some of the voice effects.

It's funny that they would have to use AI for that because I feel like you just use Pro Tools or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like, yeah, yeah.

It's funny that they would use AI for a lot of things that could easily be done in other ways.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, a John Carlo Esposito robot.

If you could get a real kid who looks like Haley Joel Osmond, maybe even Haley Joe Osmond, you don't need an AI robot that looks like Haley Joel Osmond, you know?

Yeah.

Boy, got that movie.

I mean, you see, there's that part where he's chewing and it totally screws up his face.

Haley Joel Osmond could chew things.

Just hire him to do it.

Yeah, man.

Real John Henry tail.

Sure.

Between a man and a human chewing robot?

Or not a human chewing food chewing robot.

Chews Chews food better.

They say that machine, it's Matt Sanger who does it.

Matt Sanger, they say this machine can eat a whole Denny's wonka menu.

Matt Sanger's like, I'll compete against that machine.

No, you'll die.

You'll die.

Don't do it, Matt.

You don't have to.

There's literally no one, no reason.

I mean, we all like that this is a service you provide, but mostly because it destroys your body.

Like, we don't need a robot to do it anyway.

Okay.

A John Collar as Mosito robot is on Millie Bobby Brown's trail.

And so he was a famous general during the robot wars.

They call it the butcher of where is it?

Butcher of like

Schenectady, yeah.

And now he's like essentially a dynamic.

He killed a Philip Seymour Hoffman bot.

That was synecdoche.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

That makes sense.

So, and he's, yeah, he's like a little, like, he's dressed up like old-time sheriff.

And in his, uh, in the study, like his office, that he wears his cool uh drone rig we see uh like trophies mounted on the wall yeah robo heads robots he killed um he hates bots so he just hates them millie and uh robo bro are uh stowed away in the truck they go back to chris pratt's uh black market warehouse lair which is huge there's so much stuff in there And it's just him and the little robot who's dealing.

So I don't know how they moved all that stuff, but you know,

time, you know, a lot of unfunny Zagnuts arguing.

uh so yeah why particularly were they talking about zag nuts just because fun name that's that's not fair fun name there's a bit where they have a wall of billy big mouth basses that are motion activated that's that that lays into the least used as a plot that's true yeah the bosh detectors and the billy bass uh alert

just like in uh dan's favorite show the sopranos yeah i mean that you said that as if that was a weird thing to have as someone's favorite show because dan never watched the sopranos he never watched the sopranos dan i watched i've watched the the the

obviously not from New Jersey.

I watched The Pilot twice and both times.

Oh, you forgot there's more episodes.

You don't have to keep watching The Pilot.

It's great, but there's no more.

So I receive it.

It doesn't really hook me either time.

You need to give it a couple episodes, I think.

But

it's a really good pilot, but watching it again, it feels like an old TV pilot.

It does not feel like the kind of show it would become, you know, where that others, but it's a great show.

Yeah.

You got to watch that first couple seasons.

No, that's, I mean, I'm sure I would like it if I gave it a chance because the exact same thing happened to me with Mad Men, where I like watch the pilot.

I'm like, I don't, I don't like this.

Like, it seems like really easy with all these, like, it used to be this way.

Yeah.

And then I gave it a fuller chance later.

I'm like, oh, it gets out of that really quickly.

And Turkey just becomes a good show.

And I feel like that first season of Madmen's probably the weakest.

I think so because so much of it is about.

Are people going to find out who Don Draper really is?

Yeah.

And once they dispense with that, it just becomes a show about these characters.

And by the, yes,

the secret pregnancy thing is kind of weird.

Yeah, that's true.

And once it gets a little less soapy, and then it becomes so much better.

The same way that we're going to be able to do that.

Once the characters are established, and the whole point of every episode is not the plot, but what are the, let's do odd pairings of characters exactly.

Anyway, by this point in the movie, we're talking about...

So you got to watch it at at least the point where Pete goes, not great Bob.

That's one of the best lines of the whole show.

At that point, that was Vincent Carthizer shaving the front of his hairline so that he'd have a bald spot, which is incredible.

Like, that is such dedication.

Yeah.

So our heroes are

together now.

Yeah, I know.

We want to talk about better things.

Yeah.

But we could talk about better things.

Featuring Mikey Madison, the Academy Award winner.

There's some argument between Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown about whether he's going to help her or not.

It's all like standard.

It's still performa.

It's like there's no reason for him to help her, but except that in these movies, that character ends up helping the other character.

They have one conversation later in the movie that i really liked a lot but until that moment it's a lot of like but i'm the i'm the loner rogue rebel who doesn't who doesn't care about it doesn't stick his neck out for anybody well time for me to help you right away yeah yeah uh

so but this is interrupted by much like a girl

interrupted yeah

john carlo bottom so is that girl ever stopped being interrupted or dan being interrupted

dan starting with non-rider as dan oh wow dan's like i do think i want want to sleep with myself.

Or maybe he stars Dan Jalen and Jolie.

Oh, yeah.

Is that what she wants to stop?

I'm just dabbing me.

So that's your fantasy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like the sex of the mind.

That's a working David Cronenberg movie title.

It certainly is.

No, you throw crime in there somewhere.

There is no reason for Pratt to help her.

So, of course, Gian Carlo drone has to show up to provide some sort of motivation.

He's with the Robot Deactivation Task Force.

I like his little gun is like super powerful.

I think that's kind of cool.

I think there's something.

I mean, he's supposed to be a baddish guy right now, so it's okay the fact that he is literally risking nothing in these scenes.

He's just a robot, you know?

Pratt does probably tries to do the same thing.

How come the soldier robots never rise up and try to take over?

Well, they're just drones.

they don't have AI in them.

Yeah,

they need our human consciousness.

That's fair.

Pratt tries to do the zap, electro zap trick again with Herman, but does not want to resolve.

Yeah, yeah, shields himself.

And he our nails himself.

There's some destruction, but they finally escape, caving in the high...

the hideout on top of his drone, which both destroys Pratt's home.

So I don't understand why he's not really mad with Bobby Pratt.

He's like, well, you wrecked all my stuff, so I guess I got to help you now because we're on the run, I guess.

Well, they're trapped in the exclusion zone now.

They're trapped on like the bad side of the wall, I guess.

That's a death sentence.

Yeah, because there's scavs running around, scavenger robots.

Which are explained in detail.

They spend so much time.

So Herman, who is like this construction robot, fits himself inside a much larger robot that looks exactly like him.

Kind of like it.

Yeah.

That part's kind of cool.

I mean, to be honest, I thought I was going to hate this robot character.

He's pretty fun.

Yeah.

He gets some good lines.

He does some neat neat stuff.

Yeah.

Anthony Mackey's performance is fine.

So they

go across the exclusion zone

in a van that Herman's carrying on his shoulder.

This is one of the dumbest, another one of these dumb moments where it's like, hey, what about that van?

The engine doesn't work.

Well, what if that robot can carry us?

If you're implying that he's going to, if you're suggesting he's going to carry us in that van, it is not going to happen.

Cut to him carrying the van is like, why was he arguing against it?

Why did he change his mind?

Don't understand.

Doesn't matter.

It's just there for the cut joke, which doesn't make sense, you know.

We get a little Pratt backstory.

He was rescued by Herman during the war.

Flash Pratt.

He became an outlaw because of their forbidden Robo-human connection.

Guys, it would be.

I would like this way more if we found out they were lovers.

Which does it kind of imply at the end?

Yeah.

Pratt does have that line where he's like, I think I might like you as more than a friend.

He goes, I love you as more than a friend.

But that never has followed up.

But I would like it if they were lovers.

Yeah.

That'd be great.

The best part of the Rebel Moon series is that the bad guy is in love with a tentacle monster.

Yeah, hands down.

Meanwhile, Stanley Tucci is hanging out in VR reality.

He's just going all around Italy trying to add a little bit of 18 machines.

VR reality.

The hell's wrong with me.

In virtual reality with his dead Italian mama, but it glitches.

And he calls his underlings.

What's wrong?

One of two times in the movie that you hear him say stuffed peppers.

Why is my fantasy of my mama still being alive feeding me cannolis glitching out?

And it's because Christopher has somehow neurologically escaped his robot body and he is powering this via question mark, question mark, question mark.

So all of, we find out that the entire neuro helmet center system, which encompasses the entire world, is entirely flowing through Christopher's comatose brain.

Super brain, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't we don't get all the details now, but that's what happens.

it's because he's got such a super brain.

His super brain allows them to do all this computing power.

But it's also like, well, if the human brain has that potential, maybe we don't need computers.

Maybe we don't need robots to do stuff.

I don't know.

I mean, it reminds me a lot of how.

It reminds me a lot of how in the 41st millennia, humanity is only able to travel through the stars due to the light of the astronomicon, a psychic beacon projected by the God Emperor of Mankind.

And it flows from his magic brain, similar to Christopher.

But the only reason he's able to stay alive is by drinking the souls of a thousand psychers every day.

He is telling the truth.

That is what happens to Fortress Center.

Much like how, in the far future, as well, mankind can travel through the stars by folding space.

But the only way to do it is with a human brain that has been suffused with the spice melange, which gives them the ability to do it.

The human brain's name.

And it mutates the person, too, right?

A third stage mutation is quite something to see.

Okay, do you have any science fiction you want to talk about?

I don't know.

It must involve brains.

I'm reading the stars, my destination right now.

That fucking shit rocks.

Yeah, it does rock.

And it's about brains.

Well, yeah, I guess so.

Kind of like

teleport with their brain.

He jaunt around.

But he gets smarter.

He gets smarter.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

I haven't gotten to this.

It's not like Donovan's brain, though, which really is about a brain.

Yeah, that's true.

So, meanwhile, Giant Herman gets toppled by a bunch of animatronics from a mall, an old mall, and they're taken prisoner by Perplexo, a magician robot done by Hankazaria,

who takes them to the professional voice over with Hankaia.

You can tell the difference between a celebrity cameo robot voice and a Hankazaria doing it.

Hankazaria is a master.

He gets so many more notes out of that equipment than anybody else does, that instrument.

They take him to Mr.

Peanut, their leader, who's pretty nice to them.

Is that Woody Harrison or Magic McConney?

Woody Harrison?

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, really?

I don't know how I missed that.

It's interesting.

Well, because the voice was coming out of a big robot peanut wearing a monocle and a top hat.

Well, because what happened.

I thought it was probably a real peanut.

Hell yeah.

That was what happened.

It is a little offensive they didn't get a peanut to do the voice.

So Sharon and I were watching this movie together.

I feel bad for her, but she was like, I'm interested in that.

I'm like, whoa, bad luck for you.

You chose wrong.

And she turned into a corpse and then dust.

Yeah.

Anytime there's a movie that features voice acting, she's always like, Who's that?

Who's that?

I'm like, okay, I'll pull up IMDb.

Yeah,

that comes in the form of Audrey saying, I've seen them before as we watch one of her numerous mystery shows.

I'm like, well, I'm only half engaged by what's happening, so I'll play IMDB.

You're like, that's Benedict Cumberbatch.

He's the star of the show.

He's in every episode of Sherlock Holmes.

I wish you didn't have that 51st Dates disease.

I'm sorry.

This is the hardest part of my job.

Your wife has 51st Dates disease.

Here's a DVD copy of 51st Dates.

We recommend this to everyone to watch.

Only informationally, not for entertainment purposes.

It's just the best way of getting across the idea.

When my parents got a Blu-ray player, that was the first Blu-ray they got.

I have terrible news about your parents.

Oh,

that would actually explain a lot.

Based on the fact that I hear the same fucking stories all the time.

Oh, fuck you, Dad.

Shots fired at Stewards of Paris.

Wow.

He doesn't listen to this shit.

No.

Wow.

Neither do my parents.

It's okay.

Weirdly, mine dude.

Dad's parents love it.

They're very supportive.

I flew home one Christmas and got in the car.

And, you know, as you turn the car on, the radio comes back on.

And my voice came up as they had it plugged in.

And I'm like, oh, oh.

You're like, Mom, Ted, get off my ass.

Stop being so obsessed with me.

Yeah, yeah.

They're like, Dan, could you explain to us what a wormy boner is?

It's very sweet of them, but also I say terrible things here sometimes.

Yeah, well, they see the dark side of you.

So anyway, they find the mall.

There's all these animatronic robots there.

Mr.

Peanut's the leader.

And it's like a post-apocalyptic mall where a bunch of robots hang out.

Yeah.

Yeah, basically.

And I was going to say, Mr.

Peanut is surprisingly nice to them, considering.

you know, they just had a war and they like all the robots.

He's one of those freedom fighters who just wants the best for everybody and wants to live in coexistence and peace.

We get a pretty non-essential flashback to Millie and her non-robot brother where she convinces him to stay in college.

And it just sort of shows that they had a strong bond.

They need it so that later when the movie tries to hit a high peak of emotion to an instrumental version of, what is it, Wonder Wall, that you as the audience are going to dissolve in tears because you know how much a sister and a brother love each other.

But it gets into the Folger's Crystal sister-brother territory where it feels like they are in love.

Yeah, there's a little of that.

In the present, Robot Brother projects Cosmo cartoons like the ones they used to watch together to create a link between the two.

And that somehow it really, all the other robots are in awe of the magic of this cartoon being projected as if they're cavemen.

Seen him up.

So there's a postal lady robot who's a penny pal.

Jenny Slate does that voice.

Oh, yeah.

She delivers a letter that Dr.

Amherst left for Christopher.

That was the doctor from the flashback, right?

Yes.

In case he showed up, he had left this letter, and Mr.

Peanut takes pity on them and offers to help them get to the doctor without getting killed by these scavengers.

This is also where we meet Pop Fly, the aforementioned Pop Fly with the voice of Brian Cox.

He is a robot baseball player who has an infinite supply of baseballs that he can spit out of his mouth.

He's a funny character.

And yeah, he brags about killing scabs with his bat scavengers.

So now we have our team.

This is our core team.

Yeah.

We got two humans.

We got Cosmo.

We got Herman, Penny Pal, Pop Fly, and Mr.

Peanut.

They all go out.

It seems like a real abdication of Mr.

Peanut's responsibility for him to go out on this field mission.

Well, if they leave, nothing bad will happen to his little mall friend.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

Also, reading that sentence made me feel like I'm unscrewed.

This movie is so much less fun than that sentence makes it seems like it should be.

So they're beset by scabs in this abandoned carnival, and those are frightened away by the sounds of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunches, good vibrations, and our hero team fall into a trapdoor where they meet Dr.

Amherst.

Yeah, yep, that's all true.

They're just lurking around like a regular Phantom of the Paradise.

Yeah.

It would have been cool if he had like a little helmet or like a heart.

I mean, every other fucking character in this movie has a helmet.

Why doesn't he get one?

Now, this character was originally supposed to be Michelle Yeo, and she had to drop out for something else.

That was the Star Trek movie that we did.

Yeah.

So they said, who else is in Everything Everywhere all the time?

That's kind of what it feels like, right?

So between Dr.

Amherst and essentially robot Dr.

Amherst, a computer that he has converted into him, sort of,

between the two of them, they explained that Christopher has a special brain that allows blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, neural helmets.

blah, blah, blah.

And I wish that's the way they'd done it in the movie.

Since he was in a coma, they just told everyone, hey, he's dead.

So we can use this juicy brain to win win the war.

I will say, I did feel really, it made me feel very happy that he is the actor who is now at the point in his career where they're like, who's hot right now?

Throw him into this movie.

You know, like every act, there's every, I feel like there's a lot of actors where it's like, suddenly they're in everything.

And I'm like, okay, good.

If he, if he's that actor for a little bit, that makes me very happy.

No, I'm glad about that.

I wish that more of them seemed to be like things that were getting good reviews.

Yeah, I mean, he's mostly in, I think that he's going to be in a lot of junk for a while, but he brings a real soulfulness to this part.

That I feel like the writing is a lot of fun.

He's a supporting, like a supporting actor or actress thing, right?

Is that they make nothing but stinkers after it?

But yeah, pretty much.

I mean, that was Cuba Gooding Jr.'s curse for sure, you know.

And Heath Ledger.

Oh,

wow.

And also, what did we, what's her name?

Who won for Westside Story and was just in Ariana DeBose?

Yeah, yeah.

Was just in what was the movie, the dumb movie that we watched.

Oh, Craven.

Craig.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's just inherently likable on screen.

Yeah.

He's a good presence.

But so anyway, Christopher Woke Up.

I thought you were going to say Christopher Walken.

I don't remember him in this movie.

Christopher Walk walked in.

Everywhere.

When I fought the robot war,

actually, he should be the robot, to be fair.

I'm scared of these bots.

I put googly eyes on them.

I love Woody.

I love Woody's.

He wears your helmet.

But if Mr.

Peanut had been Christopher Walkin, I don't know.

That would have been great.

Yeah.

I think

they went with a southern voice because he's Mr.

Peanut.

But I wish they had gone for more of of either a robot voice or a more urbane voice.

He wears a top hat and a monocle.

The whole point of Mr.

Peanut is he's a sophisticated man about town, which is not the, I know Woody Harrelson is not a dumb guy, but that's not the feel I get from Woody Harrelson's voice.

And there's something about the design of this Mr.

Peanut robot.

That's grotesque.

Yes.

Well, part of it is that when his mouth moves.

It's like it's a rubber mask.

Yes.

There's no like, it's not like

a metal thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's, it's just kind of weird.

It does look like they, he's the one robot where, yeah, it's supposed to look like a human face that was turned into a peanut.

Yeah.

I wonder if the planters people were like, no, we need him to look sexy.

That's his whole brand.

His whole brand is that he's a sexy peanut who died and came back as a baby.

Can we put

go-go boots on?

Where's his bikini model?

He doesn't need a top.

Yeah, yeah.

We want his legs to look super fucking skinny.

So we were right in the middle of this boring exposition.

Put a garter belt on him, sure, yeah.

The point is, Christopher woke up, and when...

I thought you were going to say Christopher Walker.

He only needed the voice of Mr.

Peanut.

When Skate wouldn't let the doctor to free

the awakened Christopher, he made it so his brain could connect to the outside world.

Although later on, like, it seems like Christopher, you know, couldn't survive without the machine that he's on.

His body can't survive, but his brain is able to escape the mainframe into a, into a robot.

Okay, because I was like confused all of a sudden.

I'm like, well, he wouldn't, like, wouldn't he be able to, like, I guess freeing him would be just be the equivalent of like, hey, we'll set you up with your own drone and like you'll live in this pod.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know why they didn't do that.

Yeah, keep him happy.

Anyway, uh, then you've got, then you've got two if they had done it that way you had two sides of christopher there's the good side that is trying to stop things and you've got the bad side that has like

that they that they that they're just franco movie well that they're keeping happy with like some kind of sex bot drone that he can control and it's like tetsuo when he becomes a cult leader and it's just like that version of christopher is a dr as a bot that's just popping pills and just being brought women like i don't know let's edge this movie up you know yeah yeah um

so uh what the hell am i talking about so uh they found the doctor he He tells him, hey, your brother's brain's being used to run all this stuff.

Uh-oh, there's a robot sheriff at the door.

And

John Carla.

Jarlo Lobo.

John Carla bot

shows up, and Mr.

Peanut fights him, allowing the others to escape.

But they're attacked by a drone army.

Peanut gets his hat blasted off, but then later he has his hat again.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, they must have repaired him.

But, like, it is kind of disturbing.

He gets his hat ripped off, and he's got like frying brain circuits up.

And then Tucci shows up as a drone.

Tucci sounds like, I mean, it's his real name, but it sounds like another cartoon robot character.

Tucci drone flies down and kills Dr.

Amherst over the objections of Giancarlo Esposito, who only kills metal, he says.

He then takes the longest possible time to decide that Stanley Tucci is a bad guy.

Yeah.

Also, I was unclear the entire time.

So Giancarlo Esposito's character works for the government in shutting down robots, right?

That are out of the exclusion zone.

After a certain point, Stanley Tucci is like, hey, let me get in touch with you.

There's some robots you should take on.

And I want him to be like, yeah, that's my job, dude.

I don't need you to motivate me.

But instead, it feels like now he's working for Stanley Tucci.

I don't, what is he doing for him?

That's any different?

That he's letting him get into the exclusion zone to kill another robot.

Yeah,

they do address this.

I don't think it's like super.

I don't think it makes sense if you really think about it that hard, but like because of the accords, it would be, he can't go in and just like get these guys.

So, why does he want to go in so badly and get these guys

so that he has like a bit more distance?

I know why Stanley Tucci is doing it.

Okay.

I don't know why Giancarlos Posito is now acting like he was doing it.

I think there was some advantage.

He doesn't need his permission to blast bots, right?

That's true.

But maybe, but like, this allows him to get into the exclusion.

I guess that's true.

Yeah.

Where he gets Max bot Blaston.

Max Bot Blaston is a great name for a character.

Hey, like

porn actor.

It's like Magnus Robot Fighter, but instead of fighting on the S6 with Max Bot Blaston.

We need to deal with more power.

We need to get Max Bot Blaston.

Only he can give us a robot orgasm.

My name was, I grew up Max Blotbastosaurian, but you know, I'm going to change it to mine.

Max Botlaston.

Robo LSI on the

robot statue of Liberty holding up a circuit board or something.

The bots go back to the mall, which has been raised in their absence.

It's all burnt up.

Oh, they made it higher?

Yeah.

Well, if only.

Raised it up to robot heaven, man.

Meanwhile, Cosmo...

It's a heavy side layer for bots.

A handcuffed Cosmo is led through Sentry in cuffs to see himself in flesh form in a medical pod.

John Carlo bot is mad that Tucci had him hunting a human boy, and they have a boring moral argument.

Very boring.

Pratt gives Millie a little pep talk, says he'll help her try to break into this scene.

I liked a little bit.

I felt like there was some writing here that I liked more than I thought I was going to.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really.

It doesn't make sense.

Yes, that's the thing.

Like, she asks this question, like, when did you stop being a jerk?

And he says, like, I'm not, I'm still a jerk.

I got a haircut.

She goes, when did you stop being an asshole?

He goes, I still have, I got a haircut.

I like those two lines.

No, they don't, but the scene does not.

I mean, the movie doesn't deserve them, you know.

Yes.

No, like, I don't actually know.

Like, her question still stands.

I don't know why he changed his mind.

I don't know why she's listening to him.

Yeah.

But

it's sweet.

We'll take what we can get.

Fortunately, they have essentially a robot version of Dr.

Amherst still, even though.

That computer that you mentioned, yeah.

Same voice.

So he's still getting paid.

He's got glasses on the screen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's got the character.

Do you think the actor stops getting paid if the character gets killed?

Yeah.

That's why Richard Jenkins made no money off of Six Feet Under.

We wish we could pay you.

We could charge the whole series yeah same thing with uh what's that bruce willis in the sixth sense

and paradise yeah

like we can't nominate you for best actor because you're dead so he didn't know they shot the movie in sequence so he didn't know he wasn't getting paid to the last scene yeah hey that's how you do it so there's an orchestral version of don't stop believing plays yeah as submarines approach sentry the fucking music in this movie sucks so hard sucks horrible yeah and it gets worse as it goes it does get worse as it goes on i i am not the sort of person who's like usually mad about needle drops like unless they're like the most unless unless one of your friends has a heroin habit in which case you want them to drop that needle yeah i mean it's not into their arm i don't into a needle recycling bin yes yes yeah i don't need to hear you know i feel good again i don't need to hear bad to the bone i would love to hear i feel good again hallelujah hallelujah i never want to hear

but also like hold on, I'm coming.

Like, things that are like, have been

turned into cliches.

But here, like, at the beginning, it's like, oh, you know, normal, like, dumb needle drops.

It doesn't make me too mad.

But then by the end, it really ramps up into.

I think doing the orchestral versions really brings it to a new level.

It's stupid.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's like how

what is it?

The Sons of Anarchy show would just constantly do like slowed down versions of like alt-rock songs.

Yeah.

But there's a certain kind of director that loves to use pop music in their their movies.

Martin Scrassesi is one, where, for the most part, in his movies, I think he's also looking for songs that you might not associate with what you're seeing, or songs that like maybe you haven't heard that much or that mean something to him.

And I feel like in this movie, the rule was we can only use songs that have appeared in other movies within the past three to four years.

No,

I do not want the audience to be shocked out of their seats by hearing a song that they don't immediately recognize.

If it was an AI, if the music supervisor was AI, I would not be surprised.

That would be

better.

Yeah, the music supervisor is like the shittiest touch tunes in a fucking college bar.

But anyway, we get this orchestral Don't Stop Believing.

Submarines approach sentry.

Stanley Toucher frowns at some monitors.

Then Breaking the Law kicks in.

Just for it, we don't get enough of it.

A giant Herman throws cars from the parking lot.

There's a bunch of fighting.

Having said this, the deal drops suck.

Breaking the Law is great.

I'm not saying that.

Yeah, I mean, the thing is that the problem is that like, even a song like Mother or Breaking the Law, like, it's

for the, when it's applied to this specific context, it sucks.

Yeah, it's not, they're not doing anything good with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Although they are breaking the law.

It is against the law to pick up someone's car and throw it at a building.

I don't know.

Is it illegal for a robot to do that?

Let me look at the rule book.

Hold on.

Oh, and the,

what, the, this is weird.

It says law and law in A on account of why would we write it?

I was excited to see that there's that the, what, scientist who gets the car thrown at her is patty harrison

yeah that's right yeah that's cool uh yeah it was

you know there's a few yeah a few people got paid i'm happy about i'm never i'm never unhappy like i'm never unhappy when someone when someone who is good gets paid to be in a movie yeah uh Amherst bot has stuck in, disguised as a regular computer with Millie Bobby Brown hidden inside him.

And they find Christopher outside.

The tide is turning against the robots because Tucci has used the clever strategy of having a bigger mech than had previously been used.

This is so dumb.

Like, the idea that these drones were the only thing that could stop the bots, but now the bots are totally kicking the drones' ass.

You know what would stop

them?

One giant one.

And it's like, why is nobody using bombs?

Like, why is it, I don't understand, why is nobody

that also that they even like developed like small EMP technology or something.

Yeah, I know, just, but also the, the, that, again, there's no,

it's one of those things where like all the robots that are beat, it's all just robots fighting, but half the robots, if they get destroyed, they're dead.

And the other half, if they get destroyed, it doesn't matter.

You know, the other, the person controlling it is fine.

And it's a, that should raise the stakes for our heroes, but instead it just makes everything feel a little bit more meaningless.

You know?

Yeah, there wasn't even a moment where it looks like the robots are winning because they killed a bunch of the drones.

And then like we see the same pilots piloting new drones coming.

Oh, that would be a great moment.

Yeah.

They didn't do that.

I mean, because the the people, I mean, the pilots piloting the drones are treated as drones, treated as nobodies.

And if it was a smarter movie, it'd be like, oh, you, you become, you use a drone, you become a drone.

You know, that's how you lose your individuality, which is kind of the message they're trying to do later when they're saying, turn off your helmets.

But I don't know.

And the big drone, what,

blows up Herman's like

big body and then his like second big body?

Because he has, it's like a nesting body.

He's like a robot.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But But

so in the midst of all this robot carnage, Esposito has a chance to be able to.

Because of all he's seen, he tells Mr.

Peanut where to find Stanley Tucci in non-drone form, in flesh form.

Human meat form.

Millie and her brother talk inside her brother's brain.

He tells her there's no way to disconnect him without him dying.

Real quick,

robot carnage would be like computer virus or something because they're all like toxin.

Yeah, it's all toxin or virus or phage.

Christopher says there's no way to disconnect him without him dying.

And he says, go ahead and do it.

That's going to be the big triumph.

They're going to pull the plug because he doesn't want to be their Robo battery for the next hundred years.

And luckily, there's just like three buttons you hit that are like, turns it off.

Very easy to disconnect him.

Yeah.

Robo.

So this is, so this really counts as a dumb adaptation of that Ursula Kayla Guin story about the city that operates on the mistreatment of one child.

And

that's what its good fortune fortune is based on.

And some people walk away from that, you know?

Yeah, those who walk away from something.

I couldn't remember the name of the place.

So she should get, she should sue them.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

she's not alive.

No, but her safety is also amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, the best.

So.

What does that K stand for?

Herman.

Cool.

Cool as hell.

Herman dies while the others are arguing inside Christopher's brain.

She was sponsored by the city.

She sponsored a cool secret.

This argument over whether she's going to kill Christopher takes way too long, considering we're already 105 minutes into this movie.

You know it's going to happen.

Yeah, but they really, they draw it out for a long time.

Yeah.

Pratt is sad because despite them winning,

Herman has been blasted and he confesses possible romantic feelings.

Guys.

What?

What?

But so when Herman gets blasted, we've already seen him nesting doll down.

Like immediately, I'm like, there's just a little one inside his head.

There's no way this movie is going to let that character die, even though that would make instantly make the movie better, more interesting, more meaningful.

I don't know.

I think having a tiny little guy trumps that.

That's what happens.

Another smaller Herman pops out.

A little bitty one, yeah.

A little,

little, uh, guy that could perch on.

I wish his shoulder.

I wish his voice was also pitched even higher.

That'd be really fun.

And when he's in the big suit, he should have a super low voice.

That would have been

out of Herman's head.

Yes.

Oh, it all.

There's a little man inside.

And you know what?

Now there's only one of him, so he's like Herman's Hermit.

Wow.

There's probably another one inside.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

There's nothing else belongs to Hermits, Hermans, except Hermits and Heads.

What happens?

We get another dump of news clips showing that Skate was held to account.

A dump of news clips is the correct plural, like a murder of crows or a pack of lions.

I feel like this wrap-up was like somehow dumber than the rest of the movie.

Maybe.

Well, the way they're just like, yeah, and the bad guy.

And everybody now hates this technology that everybody uses.

Well, they're like, the technology that ran the world is over.

There's chaos.

People are going outside and enjoying themselves.

Like, no.

And everyone got ice cream.

And Millie Bobby Brown at this point, during an orchestral version of Wonder Wall, Millie Bobby Brown delivers a sermon to you, the viewers of the electric state, telling you to turn the electric state off for fuck's sake.

Go hug your loved ones.

Tell me that two hours ago.

Also, she's like, stop using your helmets.

Like, I thought the helmet system got fucked up.

Like, why are you telling people this?

Yeah, I didn't like this movie before, this part, but this was the part that made me angry.

Now I made me want to throw something in the middle of the day.

Well, this feels like

this feels like Sucker Punch, where Sucker Punch is two hours of like...

Girls in mini skirts fighting each other and fighting monsters.

And at the end is like, don't you love this, you sick fuck?

What's your problem that you love this movie?

Did Coach make this movie?

Michael Hanukkah made this movie?

Michael Hanukkah?

They only had enough torture for and uncomfortable stuff for one night, but it lasted eight.

We've been through this before.

You made fun of me for this.

It's how his name is pronounced.

We looked it up.

Yeah, that's true.

Anyway, finally, the last sandwich of the movie.

Last sandwich of the movie?

Last sandwich.

Oh,

on the list.

That's my ears.

That's not Dan.

That's the ears.

Cosmo is in a dump.

Christopher Cosmo.

It's called the electric state.

But, you know, we see in a puddle that a dog is drinking from that he's gotten up, suggesting that maybe Christopher lives on in some form after all.

And Yoshimi battles the pink robots plays as I think about battling some pink Russo.

And there we go.

So they just did a search for songs with robots in them.

And you know what zone they didn't do?

What?

Mr.

Roboto.

I'm kind of surprised.

Yeah.

That is weird.

Now, if it was all needle drops with songs with robots in them or robot stuff, it was Mr.

Roboto, Our Friends Electric, that kind of stuff, then I'd be like, oh, you know what?

This is kind of dumb, but it's okay.

You know, at least they're all themed robots.

Uh, hey, guys, let's uh do our final judgments.

Sure, but we loved it, obviously.

Good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie that we kind of liked.

Yeah, how do we feel?

This is the unofficial bot bot month or whatever.

Yeah, we went straight from Movies Without Spider-Man to bot month.

We transitioned into them, yeah.

Bot month.

month.

The voice cracking while he did it was the icing on the cake.

Yeah, I didn't like this movie.

Really, Dan?

You talked about it for a while.

Yeah, you took really exhaustive notes.

The movie you didn't like.

A likely story.

It's just, it's.

It did make me curious.

Like, I went in search of stuff about the book because I was curious and the book sounds interesting.

The book sounds like sort of haunting and it's it's vague about what happens and it's sort of horrific all the things that this is not maybe for the first time in cinema history a movie was made out of a book and they failed to capture what was special about the book yeah well this is like so antithetical to what it seems like the book's vibe is like there's nothing disquieting about the movie the electric you would think the book was ready player one or something like that yeah um

but yeah i i thought this was just your standard boilerplate nonsense uh elliott Yeah, I also felt the same way.

I thought it was a bad, bad movie, and it felt very, for that reason, it felt very generic and very kind of like default setting.

I will say this.

It looks pretty good.

The effects look good.

They clearly spent a lot of money.

There's some performances in it I like.

But overall,

from the writing to

the way the action scenes are done to the music choices, it just feels very like, it feels like they're working off a recipe, you know.

Yeah.

And after, like, I don't want to, I don't want to like start drawing correlations to the Russo brothers' other work, but it feels like that they,

I guess I just have to assume that a lot of what made their pre, like their successes comes more from like pre-established

like characters that we already like.

We already were invested in these characters, so they don't have to worry about doing that work.

And when they do have to, when they have to try and make us care about these characters, like, I don't, I can barely remember one thing about any of these characters.

um

what's next they definitely have strengths and I feel like this movie does not play to those strengths bad bad bad bad movie uh I know what's next this pod this podcast

this podcast is next I thought the one you're listening to right now this podcast is brought to you in part by Squarespace if you want to offer services and get paid you need a website and Squarespace gives you everything you need all in one place with professional on-brand invoices and online payments.

Plus, you can streamline your workflow with built-in scheduling and email marketing tools, and you can look good getting paid with their library of award-winning website templates with options for everything you might need.

Intuitive drag-and-drop editing, beautiful

any fucking where you want, beautiful styling options, visual design effects.

You don't need to be a web design expert.

You just need Squarespace.

Head to squarespace.com/slash flop flop for a free trial.

And when you are ready to launch, use offer code FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

And

now.

Actually, Dan, can I plug a couple things?

Sure, pleasure.

I just want to plug a couple things on my own.

One of those is, as I've said before, I write the Harley Quinn comic book for DC Comics.

It comes out once a month.

I'm going to be writing it for a little while longer,

which I'm excited about, because I like writing it.

And it's a fun, funny book.

Very few multi-issue storylines.

You can pick up an issue.

You can read the story.

You put it down.

Of course, plot threads continue from issue to issue, but I'm trying to stay away from too many multi-issue stories so you can have a satisfying experience every single time.

At the same time,

this episode is coming out in April.

At the end of April, April 22nd, my new picture book comes out.

It's called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House from Harper Kids.

The artist on it is Tim Miller, who did Horse Meat's Dog with me.

And I think it's super fun.

It's about a girl, Sadie Mouse.

She is the good mouse in the family.

She always has to do all the chores, and she's tired of it.

So she's going to be the bad mouse and do those chores as destructive as possible.

And it's a super fun book.

So it's called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House on bookstore shelves, April 22nd.

Pre-order it now if you want to through your local independent bookstore.

Dr.

Game Show is a podcast where we play games submitted by listeners with callers from all around the world.

And this is a game to get you to listen.

Name three reasons to listen to Dr.

Game Show.

Kyla and Lunar from Freedom, Maine.

Dishes, folding the laundry, doing cat grooming.

Okay, thank you.

Great.

Oh, things you could do while listening.

Yeah.

I love that the read, I'm like, why do you listen to this show?

And Lunar's like, dishes.

Fantastic.

Manolo.

Number one is that it will inspire you.

You're going to be like, oh, I could do that.

That's all we have time for, but you'll just have to find Dr.

Game Show on maximum fun to find out for yourself.

Say you like video games, and who doesn't?

I mean, some people probably don't.

Okay, but a lot of people do.

So, say you're one of those people and you feel like you don't really have anyone to talk to about the games that you like.

Well, you should get some better friends.

Okay, yes, you could get some better friends, but you could also listen to TripleClick, a weekly podcast about video games hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton.

Me, Maddie Myers.

And me, Jason Schreier.

We talk about new releases, old classics, industry news, and whatever, really.

We'll show you new things to love about games, and maybe even help you find new friends to talk to about them.

Triple click.

It's kind of like we're your friends.

Find us at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's answer a few letters from listeners.

Listeners.

Like who?

Like you?

Me?

Yeah, well, I mean,

currently hosting.

I know.

Oh, so we're not answering letters from listeners.

We're currently hosting the show.

No, no, no, no, no.

Dear Dan,

how's it going?

Pretty good.

Thanks.

Oh, it's good to see you.

I didn't finish.

Love Elliot.

Thank you, Elliot.

This is from...

B.S.

Stuart, how's it going?

Pretty good.

All right.

So we finished this segment, right?

Yeah, that's it.

Listeners, we can pack it up.

Lettuce from listeners.

This is from Mac.

Mac.

Mac tonight, famous for his giant crescent moon-shaped hand.

You know what?

The person made a guess that said Mac last name, the knife.

So they guessed the thing.

That is Mac giant.

I know him by his German name of Mackie Master.

Mac says, hey, Peaches.

I consider myself a Quentin Tarantino fan, but unlike most Tarantino fans, I don't like Reservoir Dogs because I didn't like the infamous ear scene.

It was too gruesome for me and took me out of the movie.

The camera pans away.

Yeah.

I mean, mean, that's the anticipation.

Your brain supplies the camera does pan away.

Do you have an example of a movie that you would have otherwise loved, say for one scene, that you wish was cut or different?

Yeah, I

mean, there's like sort of easy like 80s,

you know, like,

stuff that was like

insulting shit that I wish wasn't in movies that I otherwise like, like either either The Monster Squad or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

They both have like gay slurs in them that I would love to just not be there, but that's not a whole scene.

There's stuff in

a movie that I know Elliot doesn't like at all, but like in Licorice Pizza,

I don't know what like the racist like character played by John Michael Higgins is doing in the movie at all.

Like it's the one element where I'm like, I don't even understand.

And so I would love for that to be excised.

I get that.

I mean, there's a lot of movies that I love where there's a scene that I don't, my favorite movie of all time, The Taking Palm 123, as similarly as that scene with Walter Matha being insulting to the Japanese subway guys.

I wish that scene was not in there and something else like it was in there.

And I think your second favorite movie of all time, The Kingsman, has that weird anal sex bid at the end.

Yeah, that is my second favorite for the record.

My second favorite movie of all time is Shadow of a Doubt.

I mean, they both seem into it.

I don't understand what.

It's just kind of weird that that's like, it turned it like democracy.

It's transactional.

It's kind of weird.

But there's a, there are definitely, I was having trouble with this question because I, because there are movies I think that have a scene of, there's a lot of movies that have a similarly to the letterwriter, Mac Tonight, the, uh, a scene of violence that I find goes too far for me or that makes it like the, um, uh, makes me uncomfortable in a way that the rest of the movie doesn't necessarily.

But I'm having trouble thinking of specific ones right now.

There's definitely like, um, but there's lots of movies.

I mean, there's so many old movies I love that have a scene in it where it's like, oh, that's a race that sounds like that, or oh, that line I don't like.

But I feel like for the most part,

when there's a scene in a movie that is just out of tone brutal, then that often gets to me.

Although, that being said, then sometimes you have a movie like The Silent Partner, where there's a murder scene in that that is so much more brutal and intense than I expected.

And it is great.

It's an amazing scene.

Well, because it suddenly shifts the movie into a different year.

It becomes the movie becomes so much harsher.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's like last year, I would say probably the horror movie that stuck with me the most from last year was Smile 2 of all things, which is not a movie that I like that much,

but there was some genuinely interesting stuff in it, but there was just so many rug pulls and it's such like a...

like it's such just like a mean-spirited movie.

I had trouble like really enjoying it.

There's too many rug pulls at the end.

I would argue that like

the mean-spirited in this movie feels so sort of Sam Raimi-esque almost where it's like

a drag me to hell type thing.

Yeah, like the fun of it is like I'm gonna be just like more mean than you expect with this tone.

It is some of the fun of drag me to hell where she really doesn't deserve to be dragged to hell.

And when you think she's figured out, it's like, no, you know, I get it.

I get it.

Speaking of Sam Raimi, I think a lot of people feel this way about the tree scene and Evil Dead.

It's like that just goes a little too far, you know.

Sophie, last name with withheld writes, hey guys, there's a fairly well-known term in film criticism, the idiot plot, where the plot only works if every character is an idiot.

I was considering the idea of a genius plot where the plot only works if all or at least the pivotal characters are geniuses in a way that's equally as infuriating to watch.

Can you think of any examples?

Love your work, et cetera, et cetera.

Goodbye from Auti or

Aoti Aura, New Zealand.

Oh, Sophie, last name withheld.

This is more a scene that I feel like is maybe it's not the exact same thing.

There's that stupid, dumbass scene in the Now You See Me Naiki movie where they're flirting that car with the microchip, and it's like this scene only works if they are the most amazing magician, like cool people in the world.

And it's so stupid.

I was going to say,

so totally removed from your movie.

I was going to mention the now you see movies, which absolutely do not work unless everyone in it is like a robot programmed to understand every possible move that anyone could make.

Yeah.

But I do think that somehow it also shoots the moon in terms of stupidity, where I start liking that about those movies.

I think that that's, I guess that's what it is.

A movie where you reveal that the characters have kind of like seen through every angle and were never in any danger, where they always were going to pull it off.

Like that's as opposed to something like a movie like The Hot Rock or something, where it's a heist, but they keep screwing it up, you know?

Yeah.

I feel this way often about like mastermind serial killer movies.

It's like, yeah, I was 12 steps ahead the whole time.

Like, wait, how would you know that any of this was going to happen?

It's the plot version of when a character has to be in exactly the right spot for a cool move to take place.

Like, in First Blood, when he makes himself look like a tree, and it's like, oh, it's a good thing that the deputy walks right by that tree.

Or there's like the, which was the James Bond movie where like the train crashes through the wall in exactly the right place.

Yeah, the one with Javier Bardem, which was that sky fall.

Yeah, yeah.

He timed it.

He timed his escape from the courtroom exactly so that that train would get caught.

Yeah.

I mean, that was also during the long period where every bad guy wanted to get caught as part of his plan.

It's like, you know what?

It's easier to pull off a plan if you're not in jail.

Come up with a plan that doesn't involve being taken into custody.

Guys, at this rate, I don't think we should capture any bad guys.

They just want to get caught.

They all want to get caught.

It's just playing into their hands.

So let's get on to

recommendations of movies that we've seen recently.

Okay, I'll do it.

Okay, well, why don't you do it first?

Sure.

Oh, hell yeah.

I'm going to recommend, you know, like a big action-adventure movie, a lot like Electric State.

I'm going to recommend Lynn Ramsey's Morvern Kaler Collar.

This is a movie.

Yeah, there are a lot of robots in Morvern Collar.

I just got around to watching it, and it's really beautiful and sad.

It's about a young woman in Scotland who wakes up on Christmas Christmas morning to find that her live-in boyfriend has committed suicide.

And she then spends the rest of the movie doing everything possible to avoid dealing with that grief.

And it's like, I feel like it's a really interesting character portrait.

It's an interesting portrait of two friends.

And it also uses

music so beautifully, whether, and it feels almost all diegetic.

That's diegetic or diegetic?

Diegetic.

Diegetic.

Yeah.

When it's coming from within the scene.

And I feel like Lynn Ramsey has like, seems to have a talent with using audio in her movies.

And I think this is

a perfect example.

It's great.

Yeah.

She is

one of my faves, despite never making a movie that you would call like

a feel-good picture.

Yeah, you never throw them on just as comfort when you're sick.

I mean, that was the thing.

I was sitting on, I had borrowed, I had borrowed this Blu-ray, the Fun City Editions Blu-ray from one of my bartenders, Margaret Barton Fuomo, who is a film critic.

And she actually has an essay in this DVD copy.

And I borrowed it from her like a year and a half ago.

And I was like, okay, I think I'm in the right place emotionally to watch this.

I think I, Morvorn Kyler, though, like, I do think is weirdly like the closest she's come to like a comforting movie, just because the vibe is.

Yeah, she did Red and Catcher, too, right?

Yeah, yeah, Rad and Catcher is bleak.

I turned that, I was like, oh, you know, like, Audrey's going out this afternoon.

Let me pick a movie that I've never seen before off criterion.

Let me, like, do, like, see a good movie for a change.

And then like, Ratcatcher, oh my God, why did I, yeah, yeah.

It's a movie where you're like, why couldn't there just be a killer kid with a bow and arrow?

I wish they were fighting a robot, Mr.

Venus.

I'm going to recommend a movie I watched today, just before we all gathered together.

Damn, when I walked in, you were watching Daredevil Born Again.

That's not a movie.

No, well, and I also was more dozing to it.

But

I watched The Rule.

I do got to say, one thing I like about Daredevil Born Again is it does feature a courtroom scene where he's like the defendant

and the defendant wasn't wearing his magical amulet that gives him increased strength and power.

I'm like, hell yes, is what I want on this show, a courtroom where they talk about this shit.

Yeah, I watched the The Rule of Jiddy Penn.

Uh,

how's that?

It's good.

It's on, it just, uh, it just showed up on Shudder after like a small theatrical run.

Yeah, it's a New Zealand horror movie that stars uh Jeffrey Rush and John Lithgow.

Oh, Casanova Frankenstein, yeah, yeah, yeah,

and uh, best known for his role as Casanova Frankenstein.

Finally, Casanova Frankenstein and Dr.

Lozardo are in a movie together.

It's about

Rush plays a, a,

you know, he's a judge who has a stroke and has to go live in assisted living.

But he still, you know, he has all his like mental acuity.

He's just, you know, his body's not working well.

Yeah, he needs help.

And he's a very like dignified man and kind of a dick.

So like having to live there is hard on him.

And he discovers that sort of everyone there is being terrorized by John Lithgow, who has

this doll, this baby doll puppet that he goes around with.

And he's just a bully to all these people.

And it's, you know, but it goes beyond bullying.

He's a sort of a sadistic, evil man.

And it's about their

falling in love.

It's about a battle of wills.

And it's kind of, you know, the modern,

not female-led version of a baby Jane, whatever happened to Baby Jane style, like

hagsploitation, as they called them, picture.

And,

you know, Russian Lithgow are great.

It's,

it's just a lot.

If there's, there's, there's both elder abuse in it and keep talking.

And Joe Bullriggs over here.

I'm.

Senior foo, geezer foo.

I'm warning people that, like,

I'm warning people that there are things in it that, like, might disturb beyond like the the regular horror thrills.

There's that.

There's like an attempted sexual assault that you know gets

you know gets uh thwarted.

But there are things that in there that might bother you if you if if you're if you know that they're gonna bother you, don't watch it.

But otherwise, it's it's good.

I'm gonna recommend a movie that's not very easy to find.

I wonder if it's I've recommended before.

I don't remember, but I saw a little bit of it today, and that is The Clock by Christian Marklay.

This is a movie I have not seen all of, because if you're not familiar with it, I'll tell you, it is a 24-hour-long movie that is a supercut of scenes from movies where you can see a clock in them where the time is mentioned, and it is synchronized with the time you are watching it.

If you see it in a museum, so the movie functions like a clock, and the way that the clips are put together is really masterful at times, and it creates this sort of idea of kind of a movie universe where all these movies are kind of happening at the same time.

And it's this massive variety of different different movies that with different feels about them and different tones.

But it's 24 hours.

It's 24 hours.

So I've only ever seen at most like an hour and a half of it.

I was going to say, because like you never have time to watch shit, dude.

How do you know?

It's also this thing.

It's also an art piece.

So you have to go to a museum to see it.

Like get it at home.

And so I was at the Museum of Modern Art today and it's playing right now.

Because your kids were like, I want to see this daddy.

What's weird?

So my younger son really wanted to see Starry Night, which they have at Museum of Modern Art.

He was surprised it was so small.

And the clock was playing.

I'm like, I really want to see some of this.

Like, I've only seen a little bit of it.

If we're there and there's no line, we got to see some of it.

My kids were like, ugh, my older son got really into it.

And so it was, there's something kind of, it puts you almost in a trance in a way.

You could, I could easily have seen the two of us sitting there for 10 hours if we had had the time.

And were you guys pointing at the screen to point at the clock each time, like the Leonardo Caprioli?

That's where the clock is.

But it's a, but if you ever get the chance to see it at a museum, try to see it any time of day.

I hope to, I hope it someday is available in some way for home viewing so I can see the middle of the night parts because part of the fun of it is that because you're seeing scenes from throughout the day from different movies, time of day affects what the kind of content is.

So like we saw a lot of stuff today where it's people getting up and going to work, you know?

Yeah.

And but at night, I've heard there's a lot of like dream stuff and strange things, but around like five, six o'clock is a lot of characters having dinner.

So it's a...

you're seeing scenes that are set at the time of the time where you are.

The funniest thing was walking out of it and my son goes, what time is it?

I'm like, oh, it's 11.17.

We just walked out.

That's a good show.

But if you get the chance to see the clock by Christian Markley, I highly recommend it.

It's a really fantastic experience and not one that's easy to get because the museum's got to own this piece and then show it.

Yeah, it's a good thing that HBO Max doesn't have that because they just shelve it forever.

Well, HBO Max had it.

They would they would cut it up into into like 15 pieces, then they'd take at random 10 of them away.

The way that, I mean, now HBO Max has no Looney tunes on it at all, basically.

But at one point, they had like, oh, they had so many Looney Looney Tunes, and then they were like, eh, we're just going to take away the later seasons.

And it's like, well, you know, that these are the classic ones from the 50s, right?

Like, now all we have is the early ones from the 30s with Egbert and Porky Pig before he was a character.

Anyway, HBO Max, put out the clock so I can see it.

So I can see the whole thing.

Hey, this was the first full episode post-Max Fun Drive.

We did have a mini, but I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who

spoke a straw man who was one of the things.

Actually, Daniel.

I had no lister in my mind.

I just said it for accuracy.

This is the first full episode afterwards.

Thank you to everyone who supports the show.

I was worried about this year because the world is scary in so many other ways.

So it's easy to be anxious.

But what's going on?

Really showed up.

Thank you.

Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith.

He goes by the name.

He also knows him.

He knows the name he goes by.

He goes by the name of Howell Donne.

They say the shadow knows evil looks in the hearts of men, but does he know his own name?

Do any of us truly know our own names?

Oh, yeah.

Makes you think.

Rumble Silskin knows.

Well, my name is

Shannon.

He's like, damn it.

Mine's Dan McCoy.

Mine is scoring.

I'm imagining Rumble Silkin' tweeting.

He's like, the moment when she realizes your name.

And I'm Ellie Kalen.

Thank you, MaxFun listeners and members.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks for listening.

Let's talk about nonsense.

Bye.

Bye.

This is a not, we'll get into it.

It's not a very good movie.

It's a bad movie.

Mansing, I detects Mansinger and let him know that we watched it.

And he was proud that

we followed up on his

demands

now.

Now that we've given in to him, he'll know he knows it will capitulate.

Yeah, yeah,

he's got a one-way ticket to Flophouse control.

Yeah, but he's not long for this world because they're going to have

some kind of like Smurfs Denny's meal where it's like a thousand different blue pancakes.

He's got to eat them all.

It's funny that my two friends with the tenderest tummies are the ones who do those things.

Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of of artists-owned shows supported directly by you.