Directed by: Pablo Larcuren

What’s a boy to do when he’s so painfully shy that he can’t even ask his parents to pass the salt? Why, make up a friend, of course! A friend who wears swim trunks, a cape and an Admiral Ackbar mask!
Pretty funny stuff that has a pretty sweet heart at its gooshy center, even with the penetration shots and masturbation jokes.

AGNOSIA (2010)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Eugenio Mira
Written by: Antonio Trashorras

Joana (Barbara Goenaga) has a rare affliction called Agnosia. She is unable to recognize shapes at all. This means that she can’t recognize anyone, including her father or her fiancee, Carles (Eduardo Noriega). Just about the only things that she can recognize are colors, so everyone wears a big colored ribbon. When a young servant named Vicent (Felix Gomez) is hired, he falls instantly in love with the beautiful young lady, knowing that he could never have her.

Vicent is eventually fired for being too passionate and Joana is put into treatment to find a cure. She is basically put into sensory deprivation for three days. During that time, Vicent, because he looks vaguely like Carles, is forced to help with a kidnapping plot to get a formula for a revolutionary new lens that her father never wanted produced.

Will Vicent’s passion still be his undoing? Will Joana know the difference between this passionate young man and her relatively passionless fiancee?

Although the kidnapping plot is one of the most intricate kidnapping plots I’ve seen in a film, it’s also one of the stupidest. Too many things could go horribly wrong. Of course, that’s part of the plot of the movie, but really even MORE could have gone wrong in the blink of an eye. For a plot thought up by super smart people, you would think that it would have been a bit simpler and less hinged on someone that they don’t really trust.

That being said, the movie was actually very good. It reminded me of classics Hitchcock films, Vertigo being the most obvious influence. Even though the film would probably play very well in America, it still hasn’t found a distributor here. Why is that? Are we not romantic enough over here to handle a Spanish film that hinges on a complex love triangle?

Whatever. Ask your local distributor to pick this movie up. Definitely worth a shot.

VISION (2010)

Directed by: Jamie Hooper

A woman gets a DVD in the mail and watches it. There’s someone being tortured in horrible ways. Why does it look like the guy in the welding suit in the video is looking at the viewer? Not a bad little short to go into the next film with. I knew where it was going right away, but it still built up an air of suspense and got us there without boring us.

A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE (2010)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Adam Wingard
Written by: Simon Barrett

A serial killer (AJ Bowen who is also in Hatchet II at the Festival) is on the loose in Tennessee. He’s escaped from prison and is starting his spree up again. He not only has the police after him, but he has thousands of fans on Facebook who are looking for him, too.

A young woman (Amy Seimetz) has been going to AA meetings for a few months and is just now making some progress. She meets a nice guy (Joe Swanberg) at the meetings who is very supportive of everything she does. But what secret does she hold and what’s her connection to the killer?

This is one of the quietest serial killer movies I’ve ever seen. There are plenty of killings (some pretty graphic, but not all of them), but they all seem to just kind of happen. In fact, Bowen plays the killer as very remorseful…almost as if he should be going to Killer’s Anonymous meetings.

Which, of course, is the point. The film equates the killer’s need to kill with alcoholism. At times it’s a bit heavy-handed, but it works for me.

What doesn’t really work for me is the camera work. It was a stylistic (and budgetary) choice to have the camera constantly moving, but at times it really seemed like we were on a boat. The camera would swing back and forth from the actors’ foreheads to the ceiling, making sure that we had no idea what we were looking at. I understand what Wingard was trying to do, but I didn’t like it. It ended up being more annoying than off-putting.

Luckily, the story and the acting was good enough to overcome that obstacle. Swanberg was actually the weak link here, but I can forgive a little because this was his first time to really work with a script. (He typically improvises all of his performances.) Seimetz was very good as the tortured woman who couldn’t quite shake her past and Bowen was especially good at the remorseful killer. So good, in fact, that he won the Best Actor award at the Festival.

Definitely check this one out if you get a chance. Just try not to pay too much attention to the camera work.

JACKASS 3D FOOTAGE

There was a rumor going around that we were going to watch this movie as the third secret screening. Luckily, they only showed us clips from the next “Ow, My Balls” movie.

I am not a fan of Jackass. If we had watched the whole movie, I would have walked out and walked into another movie after it had already started. I think these guys have helped to lower the IQ of the nation by about 10 points and I pretty much hate them for it. It actually pisses me off that Johnny Knoxville is a decent actor. Steve O was at the screening and he is nearly incoherent. I guess he’s off all of the drugs now, but you can tell that they’re still coursing through his system. He’s pretty funny at times, but that doesn’t change the fact that it seemed like he was less answering the questions than he was just telling random stories that almost came back around to the questions.

The clip that we watched was mainly an extended trailer and a full scene of Steve O being locked into a full port-o-potty and bungeed all over the place.

Seriously. This is entertainment.

I’m out.

HELL DRIVER (2010)

*½ (1.5/5)

Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Written by: Yoshihiro Nishimura

Never in a million years did I ever think that I would be so bored by so many geysers of blood. But Yoshihiro Nishimura did just that: he bored me damn near to tears.

Nishimura always seems to have about 10 projects at the Festival every year, whether he’s directed them or done the special effects. This year alone, he directed this film and Mutant Girls Squad and did the effects for Cold Fish. In past years they’ve shown his Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl and Tokyo Gore Police while he worked on RoboGeisha. His movies tend to be full of female protagonists and villains who play tinker toys with body parts. Honestly, I don’t think he’s surpassed Machine Girl, directing or no.

Nishimura is part of a new-ish trend in Japanese film that combines the blood geysers of old Samurai films with the over the top gore and political incorrectness of Troma. Typically, that is a match made in heaven for me. As I said, Machine Girl is a masterpiece of this new genre of Japanese splatter.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that they will ever get past that particular height. They certainly keep trying, but throwing more blood at the screen isn’t necessarily the answer.

Hell Driver is the story of a girl whose horribly oppressive mother and uncle are turned into zombies, taking half of the population of Japan with them. This happens after the mother rips the girl’s heart out and takes it for her own.

The girl survives and becomes a bad-ass with no training whatsoever. She picks up a samurai chainsaw (coolest weapon ever!) and just goes to town as if she was born using it.

The zombies have these T-shaped antennae on their heads that, when ground up, make a powerful drug that is sold on the black market, so people are trying to collect those. Meanwhile, two prime ministers are fighting over whether the zombies are people or not and if they deserve full rights. One of them has an army of Pyramid Heads (some with chainsaws on the front) who help him “keep the peace.”

You know what? Whatever. The more I explain, the less sense it will make. Hell Driver was nearly two hours long and should have been the most exciting thing I saw at the festival. Instead, it was overkill. Within 15 minutes, I was so disengaged from the movie and the characters that I just wanted it to end so I could go home. It actually made me uninterested in seeing another movie tonight.

To be perfectly honest, I would have rather watched Jackass 3D.

*½ (1.5/5)

Directed by: Clay Liford
Written by: Clay Liford

Judith (Rebecca Spence) is a teacher with a difference. Apparently, she’s part alien. She occasionally gets bumps on her forehead, but they only started happening recently after some incident.

Abby (Amelia Turner) is one of Judith’s students. She awakens the beast within Judith. Will she begin an affair with the girl? Or will she listen to her better judgment?

There’s also an astronaut who has problems with his family. He was the only survivor in a horrible accident on a space station. Is he an alien, too?

I hated this movie. It tried WAY too hard to be thought provoking, but forgot to let us in on its thoughts. I know that it was “about” something, but I still don’t know what the fuck it was. After an hour and a half, I didn’t feel any connection to any character and I just wanted it to end. Then it went on for six more hours.

Whatever. The horror is over. I can go on with my life…or can I?

MIDNIGHT SHORTS

If you really want to get your gross on at SXSW, the best way is at the Midnight Shorts program. I do my best to make it to the program every year. I’m pretty glad I did this year.

5-SECOND FILMS

Directed by: Brian Firenzi

These are all available online at www.5secondfilms.com, but they’re hilarious. Five seconds of pure funny. Go to the website and check ‘em out.

CAN WE TALK?

Directed by: Jim Owen

Serious talks with your girlfriend can be pretty hard. It’s even harder when she brings up personal problems with your junk. Pretty funny at times, but a little slow. There are some very good moments.

COCOA LOCO

Directed by: SHAKA KING

An old man gets a call from his granddaughter. He goes to visit, but he’s not very welcome. Where’s his son? And why is his granddaughter so creepy?

King absolutely knows how to shoot a suspense film and he got some good performances. The grandfather overacts a little bit, but it fits his character really well. Overall, it’s a very good short with only a few shaky moments.

DELMER BUILDS A MACHINE

Directed by: Landon Zakheim

One of the funniest shorts in the program. A little boy is building a machine out of spare parts from around the house. When it ends up working, he’s very surprised at what he ends up doing. I think the last shot got the biggest laugh in the program.

DWIGHT DAVID HONEYCUTT FOR CONWAY SCHOOL BOARD

Directed by: Roland Honeycutt, Jr

Dwight David Honeycutt wants your vote for Conway School Board and this is his film telling you why he should be elected. He may not be qualified, but his dick is huge.

This short was a little long, but it was really funny and shot just like a low-budget, home-grown, political commercial.

EAGLES ARE TURNING PEOPLE INTO HORSES

Directed by: Brian McElhaney

A guy is really annoyed with his girlfriend’s laugh. How can he get rid of her? He could always tell her the truth about his real job: fighting eagles to make sure they don’t turn any more people into horses!

Speaking of over-long, this one, as funny as it was, seemed to go on for a long while. It was a pretty good short, but maybe a bit on the long side.

EXPIRATION

Directed by: Mark Nickelsburg

What happens if you drink the milk after it expires? Mark Nickelsburg knows and he tells us in a really good short that’s high on suspense and low on stress. Loved it.

FIX MY DICK

Directed by: PJ Raval

I really don’t know what to think about this one. It’s a music video that basically consists of two mostly naked men and a third dressed as the most hideous creature on film. It’s funny as hell and is a pretty disturbing parody of hip hop videos. And transgenderism. And hairy asses.

ACK!

NOT INTERESTED

Directed by: DW Young

When someone isn’t interested in a set of knives, you should probably leave them alone. Unless, of course, they’re pointing at their door nervously.

This was a really funny short with a shlubby main character. You kind of think it’s going one way, then it goes another…which is always a nice surprise in a short.

THE ALLEYWAY

Directed by: Cosmo Jarvis

I don’t really know what to make of this one. It was an old woman (played by Cosmo) narrating shots of an alleyway. There’s something wrong with the alleyway…but we don’t really know what. Neither does Cosmo. Everyone was laughing, but I was wondering if it was supposed to be funny or not. Either way, it was pretty funny.

THE BABYSITTER

Directed by: Kristen Gray-Rockmaker

A couple are late getting back home. Their babysitter might be angry and they’re worried…VERY worried.

A good little suspense short that ends on a great freakout. One of the few shorts (along with Cocoa Loco) where the characters reveal more about themselves as time goes on. Very good.

TUB

Directed by: Bobby Miller

When a man’s girlfriend doesn’t want to have sex, he goes to jerk off in the shower. But where does that semen go? When the tub gives birth to a deformed baby, he finds out.

Really funny and some great gross-out effects. This may have actually been the best of the program. Definitely worth seeking out.

Directed by: Tarik Saleh
Written by: Frederick Edin/Tarik Saleh/Martin Hultman/Stig Larsson

Only one movie tonight? Yep. I had to work my real(ish) job and I’m dog tired. This festival is LONG!

In the not too distant future, Roger (Vincent Gallo) is a nebbish. He’s paranoid, nerdy and, inexplicably, has a hot girlfriend who puts up with his weirdness. And he hears voices in his head that tell him what he should and shouldn’t do.

When he sees Nina (Juliette Lewis), the girl from the shampoo commercials that are plastered everywhere, he follows her and learns that it’s not paranoia if they really ARE after you. But will they know what to do with you once they get you?

This animated film delves deep for the paranoia of Kafka and the strangeness of Gilliam with a twist of Vertigo thrown in for good measure. The animation is a big part of the bizarro world that writer/director Tarik Saleh has created. He is the son of an Egyptian stop-motion animator who moved his family to Sweden. Tarik vowed to never work in animation, but here he is, creating a whole new animation process.

Basically, it looks like they took photos of people and animated them, then put them on top of almost South Park-esque bodies. They’re a bit more detailed than that, but you kinda get the picture. It’s a disturbing, yet kind of beautiful style of animation that works really well in this dystopian world.

The story is kind of an old one (giant corporations rule the world and are spying on all of us through their products), but Tarik has a new twist on things: the corporate heads are kind of idiots. They’re pretty much just using the whole world as wank material. And, hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, right?

I liked this movie a lot. I probably would have liked it better if I hadn’t been nodding off through the whole thing, but it was still pretty damn impressive. And the voice cast that Tarik gathered is pretty impressive, too. Along with Gallo and Lewis, he picked up , Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard and Udo Kier. Wait…Udo Kier? You mean the creepiest German man on the planet?

Yeah. Not your typical cartoon voice cast, and that’s why it’s so brilliant.

Check the movie out. Swedish animation is about to explode.

This played with a short called

ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS FROM NEBULA 5

A Spanish man (who I think maybe is supposed to be a child?) is trying to warn everyone that aliens are coming to kill him. His mom, though, keeps putting his drawings of the aliens on their refrigerator.

A cute short that runs a bit too long, but has its moments.

INNOCENT VOICES—This is a film from Mexico about an El Salvador boy and his mother who are separated during their civil war in the 80s. Now, since it’s in Spanish, there is no real dialogue in the preview, so it was kind of hard to get a handle on the story, but it looks like a pretty heartwrenching film. For some reason I never end up seeing these movies in the theatre. Well, in fact, I rarely end up seeing them on video, either, because I just kind of forget about them. But that shouldn’t stop you! Go see this film. It looks really, really good.

But enough of that. Let’s get to something a little more lighthearted…like divorce.

Frank and Walt Berkman (Owen Kline and Jesse Eisenberg) are two fairly normal kids in mid-80s NYC. Their parents, though, are about to change all that.

Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a writer who hasn’t published anything in a while. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney) is an aspiring writer who is close to getting a publisher. But their marriage is falling apart very quickly. When they finally decide to divorce, things explode in quiet, but unsubtle ways. Frank, the younger son, starts cursing like a sailor and jerking off in pretty inopportune places and, um, spreading his seed around the school. Walt gets a girlfriend, but he starts to be a pretentious asshole much like his dad. Bernard moves into a run down house on the other side of the park and insists that the kids spend exactly half of their time with him.

The whole movie is basically a fight between the parents over the kids and their past lives while the kids are fighting for their own identities and sanity. It’s probably one of the most honest portrayals of a divorce put on film in a long, long time. This isn’t a Liar, Liar type of divorce where there’s always that chance of the parents getting back together. These people really seem to hate each other even if there are flashes of unwanted love mixed in. The kids are constantly back and forth on their feelings about their parents. (“Mom? You had an affair? Dad? You’re a complete prick?”) They love both of them, but they hate both of them for putting them through all of this hell.

Walt starts a relationship with his first girlfriend, Sophie (Halley Feiffer), but is he having more feelings for his dad’s student, Lili (Anna Paquin), who just moved in with him? And how ‘bout that song that he says he wrote? Sounds pretty familiar, huh?

But it’s Frank that is the truly tragic figure here. His sanity just kind of keeps going south. Not even his beloved tennis couch (William Baldwin) is much of a refuge.

All of the acting is great here. Just about all of the characters are sympathetic in some way without being particularly good people. (It’s especially hard to identify with Bernard, but there’s even a little bit of humanity in him at times.) The kids are pretty gutsy with their harsh portrayals of loss and confused love. They’re constantly at odds with each other, but they’re all they have to hang on to. And, somewhere deep down, they know that. (I will have to say, though, that there were times that I thought Jesse was doing a Woody Allen impression. He’s still very good, though.)

This movie is very hard to watch, especially if you went through a divorce as a kid. (Although it made me feel like a bit of a schmuck because I don’t remember feeling much when it happened to me. Weird.) And it just kind of ends before any kind of resolution can happen. You just kind of hope that everything turns out ok for everybody, but you know that their lives are forever changed by this horrible experience.

Go see this movie. It’s painful, but in a way that makes you realize that, either your life isn’t as fucked up as theirs, or that your life isn’t strange in its fuckedness.

This guy hasn’t done a movie since 1997 and he follows that huge hit up with more of the same. Well, at least he’s working with Olivia Williams, who is on my British hottie list. Maybe it’s a renter.

MEN IN BLACK II–Speaking of more of the same. The problem here is that it doesn’t look nearly as funny as the first one. That one was big, loud, kinda dumb, but a lot of fun. This one just looks big and loud. You would think that it would be fun to see Tommy Lee Jones not understand what the hell’s going on around him, but it just kinda makes him look dumb.

I’ll see it, but I don’t have very high expectations.

LIKE MIKE–I’m cheating a bit because this was actually on Star Wars, but I forgot about it. Sorry.

That precious L’il Bow Wow stars in his own cute little movie about a boy who has no talent at basketball until he gets a pair of shoes that have Mike’s name on them. Then, suddenly, he’s pulling amazing antics at professional basketball games.

What the fuck are these people thinking? (I hope you heard the sarcasm in that last paragraph. I was laying it on pretty thick.) Just because a kid has a hit record and a famous uncle does NOT mean he has any real talent. So, of course, give him a movie deal. This is going to be Like Shit.

And now for a movie that I should have seen at South By Southwest, but I knew it was going to get released, so I saw something that I don’t remember instead. I had heard a lot of people say that this and ZigZag were the best movies they saw at the festival. Luckily, I finally got to see this one. Don’t know about ZigZag. It’s got Wesley Snipes backing it, so hopefully I’ll get a chance at that one, too.

This one is about a couple of high school buddies, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal from Amores Perros, another film I missed at last year’s SXSW) and Tenoch (Diego Luna from Before Night Falls and the upcoming Frida and John Carpenter’s sequel to Vampires), whose girlfriends are leaving for a few weeks after graduation. So what are a couple of affluent Mexican kids to do?

Road trip!!

Well, that wasn’t the original plan. They had actually planned to just kind of kick around town and try to get laid. Instead, they meet Tenoch’s cousin (by marriage–that’s very important), Luisa (Maribel Verdu). She’s an older woman whose husband has just cheated on her. It’s time for her to make some changes in her life and these two boys look like they could help.

The three of them take off for a beach called Heaven’s Mouth. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. The guys just made it up to get this hot, older chick to hang out with them for a week or so.

The rest of the movie is basically the three of them learning about themselves, sex, the outside world, women, men, sex, politics and sex.

Did I happen to mention sex? The movie starts off with Tenoch and his girlfriend banging away at each other in her bedroom. We’re talking everything but actual penetration is showing. In other words, this is not an art film for your grandmother. This is a foreign movie about kids and how they actually are. There’s a lot of nudity and sex in the later years of high school and college and there’s a whole lot of it in this movie. But it’s never exploitive like it is in some of Larry Clark’s movies. It’s just real. BUT I was a little tired of seeing the guys’ dicks. I know, you don’t get a lot of dick in the movies these days (especially since Ewan McGregor has put his up), but did it all have to be in one movie?

The sex scenes were great (grand total of FIVE!), but I was a little uncomfortable sitting in a theatre full of old people. Just a little weird for me. (And when I say full, I mean there were about 10 of us there. The weekend that a Star Wars movie opens is the best time to go see other movies…but go see Attack Of The Clones first. It’s awesome!)

But that’s not all it’s about. These guys are best friends. They know everything about each other. (And when I say everything, I mean everything–”Mine is only 5mm shorter than yours!”) They’re always together. They’re the kings of their own worlds. (The fact that the two actors are actually best friends since, like, the 2nd grade, doesn’t hurt the performances at all.) Unfortunately, they find out that there are some things that they don’t know about each other.

And the same thing goes for Luisa. There are things that she doesn’t know about herself that the boys get out of her. Things that she’s actually dying to get off her chest. (And, no, I don’t just mean her bra.)

There’s a lot of political stuff going on here, too. The three travelers are from the upper crust part of Mexico and when they are trying to find this beach they’re going through some poor parts that they’ve never seen before. Even if they don’t necessarily notice it all the director/writer (Alfonso Cuaron who also did Great Expectations and A Little Princess) makes sure that we notice it. All sound will stop while a narrator tells us the story of what’s going on outside the windows of Julio’s car. This makes the whole thing almost a documentary about the state of Mexico just before the ruling class lost power.

This is a great film that everyone should see. It makes a lot of important points about how we all see our lives and the lives of others. The running commentary about the people outside of the three main character’s lives goes right along with the troubles that our heroes are having between themselves.

Of course, if you’re offended by male and female nudity and two high school boys kissing each other, then you might want to skip it. (Yeah, they did that. A bit shudder inducing.)

The Journey is a documentary about a guy and his two friends who set out from Atlanta in a 1971 VW Mini-Bus trying to bridge the generation gap. The want to interview people from the older generation for advice to our generation. What can we do to make our lives fuller? How can we make the world a better place in our own way? Which way do we turn for inspiration and guidance?

I’ll tell you the answer that every one of them gave: inside yourself. Do what you love. Follow your dreams. That’s the only way to be truly happy.

Their first stop was right here in Austin to talk to then Governor Ann Richards (who was in the audience at its world premiere when I saw it). She got them in touch with Henry Winkler. He got them in touch with bunches of people at Disney and the ICM talent agency…and Billy Crystal.

Along the way they pick up an MTV director of photography who gives up her chance to work in Europe to help them complete their mission.

That’s when The Journey turns into a voyage of self-discover. Now, usually I hate to use phrases like that. They’re trite. They’re over-used. They’re stupid. But that really sums up this movie. The four bus riders end up learning about themselves and the two generations. And through it all the audience is right there with them.

This movie hit me pretty hard. As trite and cliched as the whole thing seems it is done so well that you forget that you’ve seen it a million times. But this time it’s real. These folks really were laughing together and crying together. They really cared about what they were doing above all else. They knew that it was an important mission. And the people that they interviewed knew it, too. Even George Lucas gave his seal of approval. They sent it to him to get permission to use a clip from The Empire Strikes Back and, in an unprecedented turn of events, he watched it himself and gave them the rights to do it. He also told them how amazing he thought what they were doing was.

I can’t say enough about this movie, so I think I’ll stop here. Eric Saperston and his crew already have distribution, so we can only hope that this movie gets a wide release. It’s not only a great movie, but it’s an important one. One of those rare documentaries that you could watch over and over anytime you feel depressed about your life. It’ll pick you up and put you on the right track.

THE TROUBLE WITH LOU

This movie will also make you rise to the occasion. It’s about Lou, a young man in the late 50s who has a problem. He’s spending too much time alone with exotic hand creams. Even when he gets a girlfriend he feels the need to pleasure himself anytime he sees girls in bathing suits. The urge is so strong that he drives all the way home to yank it and then forgets to pick the poor girl up.

And, to make it a little more interesting, it’s all done in the style of one of those old 50′s hygeine films.

The real problem here is that it’s pretty much a one joke story, and it holds that joke pretty well…for about half an hour. Then it starts getting a little tiresome. Oh, there are still some funny lines (one that comes to mind is, “The pilot told them that the weather was perfect for masturbating.”), but overall the pace just clinches up.

The filmmakers were there and they said that they still had some tightening to do in the 2nd and 3rd acts. They were showing us their rough Avid cut. Well, I hope they cut A LOT out. Make it a short.

In fact, at one point they show a picture of Paul Ruebens in his Pee-Wee days. Yes, that was kind of funny, but all it really did was remind me of a short that HE did back in the 80s that was pretty much the same thing…and much funnier. I don’t know how you can get ahold of it, but it’s hysterical. It comes complete with a dancing, singing animated penis. (Not the realistic one that’s making its way across the internet right now. This is actually a cartoon.) If you can find this one, watch it instead of The Trouble With Lou. You’ll get all of the same jokes in less time.

CLIMAX

And how else to follow a flick about masturbation than with a movie called Climax.

Well, it could have been a good movie called Climax.

This is about a group of friends at a party who haven’t seen each other since high school graduation two years ago. Now, of course, they’ve all kind of grown up…but not really.

I’m sure that if you were one of the fiends all of this would have been hilarious. But, being an outsider (and seeing as how a lot of the dialogue was incomprehensible), this was crap. It had about three spots where the dialogue was good, but the rest of its 90 minute length was pretty ass wrenching. Imagine watching a bunch of obnoxious people that you don’t know at a party. Now imagine trying to have a good time there. It won’t work.

Not that the acting helped at all. Most of the actors were so bad that I think even Keanu could have taught them a thing or two.

For a movie called Climax, there certainly was a shortage of them here. You know it’s a bad sign when a member of the audience tells the filmmaker, “It was good. Lots of characters.” Yeah, that’s about the only good thing I could say about it, too.

PORNSTAR: THE LEGEND OF RON JEREMY

I went into this not knowing a damn thing about Ron except that he’s short, fat and hairy. I didn’t even know that he has an enormous schwanschtucker.

Now I feel like I kind of know the guy and a little bit about why he’s so popular.

About 25 years ago a young man named Ron Hyatt got his picture put in Playgirl magazine. From that a long and illustrious career in porn started.

Now, at that time he was skinny and fairly good looking. Now, though, why is it that this little guy can still get the babes and a lot of the porn starlets are dying to do scenes with him? Why do guys go crazy when they meet him?

Well, think of it this way: he’s a regular guy just like us. He’s no longer good looking. He’s certainly no male model. He’s just a guy. And any one of us feel like we could be just like him. Except for the monster, of course.

And another thing that I never knew, he and AL LEWIS ARE GOOD FRIENDS!!! How the hell did that happen?

Overall, this is a really fun documentary about an American legend, but it’s not as illuminating as it could have been. It seems like there could have been more said. But, these guys have gotten to be pretty good friends with The Hedgehog, so we wouldn’t get any of the dirt on him. Apparently, though, there is no dirt. He’s a really nice guy who everybody likes. He was at the screening and seemed totally approachable. He even fielded a question about one of the biggest mistakes he ever made: sucking his own dick. “All right. Congratulations. You got a laugh.”

So, if you want to know the man behind the dick, this flick should be out fairly soon. It may be edited a bit (there’s a little bit of nudity in it…go figure), but they’ve got plenty of footage to go in its place.

Check it out if you’re up for this sort of thing.

Now imagine the Three Stooges made in the 90′s. They would be grosser. They would be dumber. They would be more violent. They would still be funny as hell. They would probably be directed by Peter and Bobby Farrely.

I saw this movie in one of those gigantasaur theatres that they only see fit to build in Dallas and other big cities like that. (That’s where I was this weekend when I saw the flick.) You know what? That’s fine with me. Give me a quaint, personal little 15 screen theatre anyday. There’s a problem when movie theatres get too big. They become like malls. “Let’s see. What movie should we see today? Let’s go movie shopping!” Movies become less like events and more like a way to pass the time when you happen to be at that end of the mall. That’s just wrong.

Anyway, I was in Dallas visiting friends and watching another friend at Six Flags for the first time. (If you get a chance to go, ride the Mr. Freeze coaster. It’s awesome! Strange how such a bad movie can make a great ride. Not that the ride really had anything to do with the movie. Probably a good thing, though.) Seven of us went to see this movie. Of the seven of us there were only two of us who really liked it. A couple people thought it had really funny moments, but didn’t think it added up to much. That may be true, but the funny parts made the whole thing worth it for me.

This new freak show of a movie is about Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) and his overpowering love for Mary (Cameron Diaz just before she got way too skinny). It all started when she asked him to the prom (even though he was a complete dork with bad hair and she was a beautiful and popular girl). Then things go all wrong when he goes to pick her up. He meets her mom and step-dad (Markie Post and Keith David) and her retarded brother (W. Earl Brown–Kenny from Scream). After an accident with a zipper (“How’d you get the beans above the frank?!?!” Every man in the theatre was in pain for this one) the prom is ruined. Years later, Ted hires Pat Healy (Matt Dillon–Cameron’s real life boyfriend) to find her in Florida. Pat’s name was given to Ted by his friend Dom (Chris Elliott). Pat’s not exactly a good guy. He falls for Mary and decides to tell Ted that she’s bloated up, in a wheelchair and has four kids by three different guys that she never married. He, of course, finds out that she didn’t bloat up and she’s still a fox and he goes to find her. Chaos ensues in the most ridiculous and disgusting of ways all the way to the end with a surprise cameo and a lot of people coming out of the woodworks who find that something in Mary.

Ted is basically a loser all through high school. He hangs out with the idiots who no one else would touch. (Story of my life.) Then Mary comes into his life. She’s perfect. She’s beautiful, smart, funny, loves sports and is completely unbiased about looks. She’s the perfect woman. The Farrelys were trying to create a woman who didn’t exist. Then (according to one interview) they found out that Cameron really is this person. Who’da thunk it?

Pat is the bad guy of the movie. (Well, one of them, anyway.) He’s a dirtbag P.I. who will do anything to get the girl. Including using spying devices to find out what Mary wants in a man and using her neighbor’s spying devices to tell her what kind of guy he is. He’s the kind of guy you want your worst enemy to go out with.

Through it all are Jonathan Richman with his guitar and some dude with a drum who comment on the action of the characters. A friend of mine got annoyed with him, but most of the audience loved it. Richman was also in Kingpin–he was in the band in the bar. He’s also the founding member of the Modern Lovers, an influential punk band of the late seventies who only put out one album. They’re kind of like the Velvet Underground. Not many people know about them, but they influenced everyone. Go figure. We also get to see the landlady from Kingpin again. Her name is Lin Shaye and she plays Magda, Mary’s neighbor who can’t stop tanning. She looks something like a side of bacon. (I think I might have stolen that, but I can’t remember from whom.)

These guys don’t know when to quit. They take one joke and take it to the extremes and then past those extremes. Kingpin was one of the funniest movies of the past couple of years. It was also one of the most disgusting and R-rated PG-13 movies ever made. Dumb And Dumber was dumb (you saw that one coming), but still funny with a sick edge to it. They topped themselves in their sickness. Kingpin was more consistently funny, but the five or six parts of this one are funnier than any scene from either of their earlier movies.

I don’t want to give too much away (as most of the other reviews have already done), but some good scenes are the dog jump-starting scene, the hair gel scene and the zipper scene (one of the more painful scenes in recent memory, too).

Not everyone will like this movie. In fact, I would warn some people to stay away from it. It’s very gross, twisted, disgusting, non-PC and just overall repulsive. For some of us, though, that’s not a bad thing. I am, after all, a John Waters fan. It doesn’t begin to touch the sickness of Pink Flamingos. It’s about as close as a mainstream movie will probably ever come to it, though.

You may be worried about Mary’s brother. Do they make fun of retarded people? Not really. His condition isn’t really used to get laughs, but he does things to get laughs. I guess it’s a fine line. He does things like attacking people who touch his ears. It’s something a retarded person may do, but it’s not making fun of them. The only person who says anything bad about him is Pat, and he’s supposed to be a slimeball, anyway. The guy in the leg braces is a different story, though. He’s there for laughs. He doesn’t always get them, but that’s what he’s there for. The thing is…well…I can’t tell you any more about him. Let’s just say, it’s ok to laugh.

Chris Elliott, on the other hand, only gets a few of the laughs he was supposed to get. I think he can be funny. I even thought Cabin Boy had it’s moments (most of them involving either stop motion animation or David Letterman–or perhaps both–and there’s a reference to it in this one), but he just wasn’t very funny here. Every once in a while he was, but I almost could have done without his character. Until the end. Then it’s ok to have him.

So, if you’re up for this sort of thing go for it. Just think of it this way: there are five or six great scenes in this movie that will keep you laughing after the credits have rolled. Those scenes go on for a long, long time. How many “comedies” these days have even one scene like these in them? Not many. Stick with it through the dry spots. It’s worth it. Also, stay through the credits. They have some semi-outtakes of the cast doing the old classic “Build Me Up, Buttercup” by the Foundations. And then there’s Cameron saying, “Ted, I’m just fucking with you.” about five times. Somehow, it’s cute.

By the way, don’t let my friends’ reaction scare you away from it. Everyone else in the theatre seemed to be having a pretty good time. My friends just have no taste. Look who they hang out with.