Real Genius / Look Who's Talking As Well (Guest: Chris Olds)

Voice actor, and big shot trivia champ Chris Olds joins us to debate if it truly is "Real Genius," (1985) or if it's just a clever name. Starring; Val Kilmer, Gabe Jarret, and William Atherton. We debate Sci-fi v. Reality, the merits of research for your film, Arnold Schwarzenegger running up to you on the screen here, and the greatest sequel film ever "Look Who's Talking As Well."

Plot: A teenage prodigy enters a top engineering college, but struggles to fit in with the eccentric student body, and a professor with nefarious intentions.

(NOTE: The audio breaks/spaces in this episode are intentional and designed to protect all involved guilty parties)
Recorded 12/22
1hr 58mins

**All episodes contain explicit language**
Main Artwork - Ben McFadden
'Review Review Intro/Outro' Themes - Jamie Henwood
"What Are We Watching?" & "Whatcha Been Doin'?" Themes - Matthew Fosket
"Fun Facts" Theme - Chris Olds/Paul Root
Lead-Ins Edited/Conceptualized by - Ben McFadden
Produced by - Ben McFadden & Paul Root ("Shelf Help" - Paul Root)
Podcast/Program Concept - Paul Root

Transcript

Fuckus. Everybody, fuckus. Fuckus. Everybody says I was thinking. Everyone has to fuckus.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the review review. I'm Paul. I'm Ben. We co host this show and the concept of this show is, we have a guest.

Our guest today is Me. It's me, Chris Olds. Chris Olds is here with us. And what he brought us is a film called Real Genius. What we're gonna do with this 1985 film, review it as we always do.

Chris brought us this movie. I had seen it before. Ben, have you seen it? Confession. I've I've never seen it.

Nice. What a cool thing that we get to go on this journey together. We are now having freshly just seen it for the first time or re watched it in my case, in Chris's case. Mhmm. We're shortly gonna give our rating.

We're gonna sit and review it for a little while, and then we're gonna give it a final rating. That's what we're gonna do. So here we are. Concept of the show, off and running. Yeah.

Sounds good. Let's talk real quick about this movie before we give our reviews. Oh, yeah. And we'll catch up in the whole deal. Ketchup or catsup?

Catsup, please. Ketchup. Catsup. Catsup. Catsup.

Excellent. Real Genius released in 1985. Let's see. TriStar and Sony rated PG. Wow.

It's only rated PG. I guess this is before the PG 13 rating. Right. It might be. It's it's like Spaceballs also is PG.

And Temple of Doom was '86. Eighty '5 or '86. I think it was '86. No way of knowing, really. There's no way to find out.

I wish there was some sort of international sort of like movie database. Yeah. I can't help you. Okay. It's an hour and forty eight minutes.

Perfect length. It's a good length for a film. It is a good length. Directed by Martha Coolidge. Yeah.

Valley Girl, Rambling Rose, and tons of television. Written by PJ Torekvy? I'm not sure, to be honest. I don't know. I I don't think I've ever heard this name before.

Valley Girl Armed and Dangerous Back to School, WKRP in Cincinnati. Oh, wow. From TV. Great show. And Neil Israel, who did Police Academy, Bachelor Party, and not Look Who's Talking, but Look Who's Talking as well.

I wanna I I imagine in their when they were coming up with the sequel, there was a someone in the writer's room was like, I was thinking look who's talking as well. Yeah. No. It sounds stuffy. Get it.

In fact, you're fired. You're fired. Get the fuck out of here. And Pat Proft who did the scary movies Airplane, The Naked Gun, and Hot Shot. So that guy's main thing is just writing spoofs.

Top secret too, I think, maybe. I'm not sure. Did he do Hot Shots part d? At least produce something. Had a hand in it.

The better Hot Shots in my opinion. I do prefer the second one as well. Yeah. I need to rewatch those. It's been a while.

The body count thing where it's like racking up the body count always gets me where it's like bloodiest movie ever and there's like no blood but just bodies piling up everywhere. There might be tiger blood though because it's Charlie Sheen. Right. Hashtag winning. Yes.

Come here for your references, folks. And tangents. We're on the cutting edge. Director of photography was Vilmos Sigmund. Yeah.

I know that name. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Yeah. The Deer Hunter, The Long Goodbye, Maverick, Blowout, Witches of Eastwick, and Tombstone. Wow. And this.

And this. And this. Honestly. Amazing. Thomas Newman did the music, also well known for Chad Danfoss, good.

Wall E. A personal favorite. Skyfall 1917, JFK, Shawshank Redemption. Wow. There's a scene in this movie that I was I was like, this music that's happening right now is perfect.

Throughout so often, I actually re reviewed Chevy Chase movie. I watched Fletch. Yeah. And I felt so much crossover with the two characters. Mhmm.

Kinda the cavalier, I know better than everyone, very charming Mhmm. Kind of attitude. And both movies, phenomenal music Mhmm. Vary of their time and fit so well. Yeah.

And produced by Brian Grazer. So Who's done everything. Yeah. Makeup Zoltan? Makeup Zoltan.

What how or Zoltan. Just one name? That's all it says in the credits. Yeah. Flat out Isn't that an Adam Smith movie?

My attention. That's Zohan? That's Zohan. Don't mess with the Zohan, and he has the splits with the jorts. Oh my god.

That's amazing. Zoltan it's not Zoltan that that that turned Tom Hanks big. Is it? Zoltar. Zoltar.

By the way, this movie, for whatever reason, when I was doing the factoid sheet, I decided to listen to the soundtrack, and that's not for whatever reason. That was obviously intentional. But it eventually, after it's on autoplay for a minute on YouTube, it plays Carly Rae Jepsen's I Really Like You. And if you haven't seen that video, I'm not gonna spoil it for those that haven't seen it as you're both looking at me like, what the hell? But it humanizes someone, like, a living legend for me, and it's, like, just pure joy.

And as I I'm singing along with this Carly Rae Jepsen song, this incredible video, and you said something about big just now. And I was like, I can't help but bring up that that song came up when I was doing the factoid cheat. And I was thinking, I really, really like you movie. I don't know. Tangents.

This is a good show. Yeah. This is a Starring, of course, top billed Val Kilmer. Yay. Spencer Cox.

Yeah. Mutual friend. It's Christopher Knight. Don't call him Brady Bunch. The Dark Knight Yep.

In Batman Forever and he was in Tombstone, The Saint, Heat, Top Secret and of course Top Gun. Mhmm. Yeah. A million things. Yeah.

It's amazing. Top Gun Maverick had a heartbreaking scene in there. Yeah. It sure did. Good little role for Val Kilmer.

But Tom Hanks said he wouldn't do it if if he couldn't get Kilmer back. What about Tom Cruise? That one. That one. One of those.

One of the Toms. One of the really powerful Toms. Yeah. Imagine Tom Hanks. Thomas Newman also said it.

Oh, Tom Hanks with zero g's on it, like, with gravity on his head. Yeah. Thomas Dolby was like, why are you asking me? Gabriel Jarrett? Oh.

Mitch Dolby. I'm not sure when I can start asking you guys questions about this movie, but is he not one of the oddest looking boys? I was seeing a picture of him now. Yes. He is astoundingly normal looking.

He is he has got the face of someone who put on a mask and couldn't get it off. Yeah. I mean, he's got very defined features. He does. He's so specific looking for a mask.

His haircut is so, like, a weird, like, middle part penis head thing going on. And I was really looking at it in that in that beginning scene at the high school where he's like, this is a it's a perfect helmet. Yeah. And even, like, the sideburns are over his face. Gabe, if you're listening spray down.

You know that you were hired for being awkward and charming and you nailed it. Yeah. He really did. He really does. God, he's good in this movie.

He's in Frost Nixon? Who's he in Frost Nixon? He has a smaller role, I believe. He's in Apollo 13 too. He's a Yeah.

One of the guys in the big room. Sure. In the big NASA room where everyone's like one of the people operating a board. Go. Yeah.

It has a few lines. They needed a lot of white dudes in that movie, so that makes sense. Yep. I know. They were like, let's get them put them in front of a computer.

Hey. Brian Grazer. You know him. Yeah. Go.

Yeah. Also, William Atherton because if you need an asshole in the eighties Yep. Go to William Atherton. Legend. Legendary asshole.

Yeah. Ghostbusters, Die Hard, those are the two that stand out for me. Biodome and every time he showed up, I just kept thinking about him and Ghostbusters when Bill Murray says this man has no penis. Yeah. Yes.

That's all I could think about. He I watched a movie during lockdown with him and Goldie Hawn and I can't remember what it's called. Oh, I wanna know what that is just based off of cash flow. It's like a really early Spielberg movie. Sugarland Express?

Sugarland Express. That's the second time this has come up on this podcast. I really hope someone brings it. And he's like and he's so young, and he's like Goldie Hawn's boyfriend getting out of jail, and then they let go and steal a car. And it's like a very tame natural born killer, something.

They're killing anybody. They don't want to kill anybody. They just wanna get away. But it's cool to see him in a role where he is not being a total dick. Yeah.

Where he's just like, oh, I love you Goldblum. I'll do anything for you. And he's like a nice misguided boy. Because he's a good actor. Yeah.

To to what Ben was saying and I'd made a note of this, he's the ultimate eighties yuppie prick. Mhmm. He's so good at it. It's funny since I hadn't seen this movie, the movie I'd watched just before this, like literally hours before I watched it was Die Hard. Oh, wow.

Oh, so when he came out, I was just like, oh, cool. More at that. What a treat. Yeah. I did.

Yeah. Let's keep trucking along. Robert Prescott as Kent, from Bachelor Party Spaceballs, Michael Clayton. Who is he in Spaceballs? Yeah.

Who is he in Spaceballs? We we gotta look up the IMDB. I didn't I didn't memorize all these characters. Okay. Should I do it right now?

You can. You keep going. I'll I'll I'll look it up. You keep going. And he's also oh, he's also in the, Red Dead Redemption series as Sheriff Hanley.

Michelle Meinrich Oh. Is Jordan Cochran, Valley Girl, Revenge of the Nerds, The Outsiders. No credits after 1988. She has, like, 10 credits on IMDB, and that's it. And it it looks like she's still around.

Maybe she just got out of acting or what. I'm not sure. I actually did a little dive on her. She, she did retire, and she, like, runs an acting school somewhere now. That's awesome.

Thank you for doing that and that feedback. Also, I thought she was so great. Yeah. She's great. She is like my going back and watching this again, I'm like, oh, this is the prototype manic pixie dream girl.

Yeah. I thought that too. Yes. She is just, like, so frenetic and energetic and hot. The machine gun dialogue and the bob haircut.

Yeah. And people often confuse her for, Michael j Fox's girlfriend and Teen Wolf, Boof. But this isn't Boof. That that ain't Boof. No Boof.

This is Jordan. Alright? Yeah. That's Jordan Cockney. All of her scenes where she's to like, especially in the beginning when the kid's getting used to her, and she, like, busted on him in the bathroom, she's like, oh, are you peeing?

Oh, is that my fault? I gotta go. Also, she's supposed to be 19 and he's 15. He's actually 15. She's in her twenties.

Wow. He really is that young. Yeah. I don't yeah. He's older playing younger.

No. He's 15. Everyone like, Val Kilmer's twenty six. And he's supposed to be 21? This is his first movie.

No. The The kids Val Kilmer's supposed to be Yeah. Like, 21. Well, he's just, like, an absolute force through this movie. Oh, yeah.

He's yeah. He's perfect. This was his second movie after Top Secret. He's perfect. Right.

Top Secret, I think, was '83 or '4 and this was '85. Yeah. I don't wanna say it's peak Val Kilmer, but he's definitely, like, sprinting up that mountain in this movie. Batman and the Saint are peak fame Kilmer to me. I think he did a I think it's called Thunderheart with him and Sam Shepard.

Pretty solid, like, hard hitting movie and, like, great acting in that and obviously in this this and a couple other things. But you know, we all do our island of Doctor Moreau's and ghosts in the darkness and saints and That's a whole other episode, the island of Doctor Moreau. Oh man, the whole thing with Frankenheimer and how like Val Kilmer I guess worshiped Brando and Brando is just like a dick to him. Brando also was losing his mind. Didn't know his lines or anything like several movies and did not know his lines.

He's Tangents. Yeah. No, it's fine. We're almost done with this part. Mark Kamiyama, who played, Ik Ikigama, he, passed away in 2021.

RIP. Had various TV credits. Jonathan Grice. And Jonathan Grice. Almost missed him.

That was my my bad. I had Laszlo, Hollyfield, and Napoleon Dynamite, White Lotus, Get Shorty, and Taken. So you said this is why you picked this movie? So I picked this movie for two reasons. One, we are currently in the middle of eighties properties coming back that were Val Kilmer heavy that don't that are now Val Kilmer light or absent.

The Willow show, Top Gun Maverick, which he is in, obviously, in a totally different way than would have used him had he not gotten throat cancer. So that my mind was already in that place because someone was talking about Willow the other night when I was invited to do this. And then also, all over Twitter, there are all these people being like, oh my god. I just realized that, I haven't seen season two of White Lotus. But they're like, I just realized that this guy in White Lotus is uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.

Mhmm. And I'm like, yeah. I had that moment when I was watching Napoleon Dynamite and realized it's Laszlo Hohlefeld from Real Genius. So those two things kinda converged right when I was being asked what movie to watch, and I'm like, well, it's gotta be. It's gotta be Real Genius.

Let's take a look at these guys back in back in the beginning. I love that. It hit me in the credits when it said, like, Anne Jonathan. I was like, oh, shit. Like, young okay.

Great. Because I the Napoleon Dynamite of it all of his career definitely stuck with me. Oh, he's also he's also one of the he's Benjamin Linus' dad on Lost. Oh. Yeah.

He's been in so many things. Yeah. He's one of those guys where now right now, everybody knows his name because of White Lotus. But up until this season of White Lotus, he has been that guy from that thing. He's a grinder.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always even when I saw White Lotus, I was like, oh, it's uncle Rico. Yeah. Which was awesome because I thought uncle Rico was hilarious.

Right. But still no one knew his name. They just called they just knew he was uncle Rico. Uncle Rico. Uncle Rico.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I love him. He has phenomenal comic timing.

And I honestly, before we even really crack into this movie, he's maybe the MVP of this movie for me just, like, where he doesn't overdo the little things that he does with his eyes or with his mouth. Mhmm. The little physical things that he does that kinda come and go. If you're not paying attention, you're probably not gonna notice it. And it's just it's that thing, it felt like actor choice and it really works for me.

Is that his hair? That's his hair. I think so. Man, he's now bald. Because he's bald he's balding in the movie.

He's kinda like me where he's got like a a pretty good widow's peak and Yeah. Yeah. But he's got but he's got longer hair. He doesn't have longer Still definitely has long hair. He's just one of the he's one of the greats.

Finishes I agree. I love grinders. Is win you're on Grindr? That's actually how we know each other. Winner of two Paris Film Fest Awards, best actor Gabe Jarrett as Mitch, and director, Martha Coolidge.

Wow. Good job, Gabe Jarrett. You can ask me. Well deserved. Yeah.

And looking weird. Shot in San Diego, I actually looked up where the school was. It's in Pomona because I was like this looks familiar and I it has it's been filmed it's been used in a lot of movies as like a fill in for some school because this is supposed to be Caltech. Well, they call it Pacific Tech. Right.

But it's basically Cal. Supposed to be Caltech. He also It's a parody of essentially. Mitch's high school is called Western Regional High School at the science fair. That's something that someone may have noticed.

Did anyone else notice that laboratory is spelled incorrectly at the science fair? Oh, no. Oh, okay. It looks like there's, like, an o or whatever. Like, it never maybe I read it wrong.

I mean, if that's true, that's great. Because this movie and and and looking up various things about this movie I feel like that would be intentional in this movie potentially. Martha Coolidge. Martha Coolidge spent months in research on this movie and interviewed dozens of Caltech students. Laszlo is based on two actual Caltech students.

One who lived in the basement to avoid going to gym, and one who did that Frito Lay contest thing. There's so much in this movie. Successful. Right? Like, they were They were, like, super yeah.

Yeah. And they were super focused on making all the science even if it was theoretical and not like, the laser wasn't possible, But they did stuff in this movie that someone was like, oh, that's cool, and then made it for real two years later. It's almost like when Neil deGrasse Tyson, kind of verified Interstellar. Like, there are various people that verify That's a that's a whole that's a whole rabbit hole. No.

I'm sure. Carl Sagan was actually the part of the writer of Interstellar before Carl Sagan passed. And I haven't seen this movie. But this is, does it under am I not communicating properly? No.

I'm understanding what you're saying. It's like the science to people that can speak as or seeming to speak as authorities Right. Say this has my stamp of approval. Yeah. Which is a cool thing.

Yeah. Especially when you think of a lower budget comedy from the eighties, from a young director with a young cast that no one is this isn't gonna make awards rounds or anything like that. There aren't a bunch of explosions going on. Except for the winner to Paris film festival. Which is kind of a big deal.

Yeah. It's so great. For Gabe Jarrett. Yeah. Yeah.

Wonderful. It's so great that people cared so much about this movie that they're like, this is gonna be legit. Yeah. So what I was gonna say is, Pomona, the school that it's filmed at was also used in the Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis. With Jerry Lewis.

And its sequel, the one that's like the son of Flubber or whatever. That's probably right. That's where I recognized it from. Budget was 8,000,000, adjusted would be 22,110,000.00. Insanely cheap by today's standards.

Mhmm. Open open weekend was 08/07/1985, day after my b day. Oh, wow. Mine is August 6. And this movie is all about weapons and weaponry and whatnot, and the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6.

That's you? It's just interesting that all these things are so correlated. Yeah. Yeah. I basically am.

And it grossed opening weekend, 2,600,000.0, adjusted 7,200,000.0. Overall gross was 13,000,000, adjusted 36,000,000. Made some money. Yeah. The letterbox average for this movie is 3.5 stars.

Sysco and Ebert gave this two thumbs up especially Ebert loved it and gave it 3.5 out of a possible four. Oh. Do you remember in Godzilla when there was Mayor Ebert and his assistant, Sysco? Is that the '98 Matthew Broderick Godzilla? The Dean the Dean Devlin.

Yes. We were talking about Day After Tomorrow earlier. Dean Devlin is also in this movie. Dean Devlin is in this movie. It's just interesting.

Dean Devlin is in this movie. Illuminati what? Oh. I love Ebert because it it was like when we talked about Predator, we did Predator a couple episodes ago. And Ebert gave that a thumbs up.

And said, if you're wanting to watch a violent action movie with explosions and buff dudes and loud noises, etcetera, you will like this movie. And they did a great job with it. I think he has just kind of a more of the people, kind of a more populist approach to reviewing. I I like I like Ebert. Before we get into the movie, Derpa Derpa Derpa.

Derpa. What's going on with people? Chris, you were just telling me you worked on a voice over thing, which is cool. Yeah. I can't give too many details about it but I I moved here to be a voice over guy and very quickly got into it doing commercials and all that kind of good stuff.

But, I finally, almost ten years into it, have broken through and made it into my first animated role. Congratulations. Thank you. Super awesome. Yeah.

I'm really excited, and hopefully, I, get some steady work for, you know, the next couple weeks because that's how this industry is. It really is. It's so fickle. Good luck. Good luck.

Yeah. It's cool. You know? That's awesome. It's really cool.

It's always fun. It's always fun to get in there and have the people on the other side of the glass laughing. I always feel like no matter what I'm doing, if it's a commercial or this animated thing, like, even narration sometimes, like, as long as I have the people on the other side of the glass laughing, then I'm very comfortable. Yeah. I know that I'm doing a good job.

I love that feedback. That's why I personally and I know that everyone's not the same. I personally prefer stage because I just love getting feedback. Yeah. Direct energy feedback from somebody in that area.

Like, you can literally feel it. Right. Yeah. And I think you can get that on sets too. Like that's there in people who spend a lot of time on set, I feel like who get to know their crew, who get to know, like, who are regulars, they definitely get that feedback.

But I think for someone who's just like dropped in the middle of a, like, a TV set, like, the level that I'm at, you know, for a day, I don't know anybody and they just want me to go as fast as I can and get the hell out. Like, it's so hard to get that feedback. Yeah. Interesting. Seeing them laugh, like, getting that response that's that's just like, oh, cool.

I'm I'm doing my job right. Yep. Alright. Let me let me do one more then. You know?

If I got you like this, then let me do the thing that I didn't do. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I met Chris when he was working at a bar locally here in the Los Angeles area.

I was also working. And then we bonded to a degree over the male, m a I l, prank that I played on you and attended This is force it. Okay. Great. And then, I think this is the original guy?

Yeah. He was coming out. Wow. Yeah. The original Mark.

Yeah. This is the original idiot? You said what I should have? This fucking fool right here. Oh my goodness.

I think people do you see him as a fool or like a good sport? Good sport. A %. I know. The only idiot in this room is me.

But Oh, no. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. Yeah. What a good time we had.

We did. Were you were you in the middle of it when he was doing it? Did you know about it? Or did you just So, I was told about it when we went out to trivia one night. Do people know what this prank is?

Yes. Paul basically right? Can I just say We we we talked about it on here? Mailing someone over and over and over and over and over again from anonymous addresses and places and countries even sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah. Which then got translated off of you onto and that's kind of when I started taking part resealing a box of cereal with the DVD inside it, which gave me such joy to found out that one of their interns was eating the cereal. This was years ago now, which is great. Oh, god. But somebody literally opened that cereal And he decided to eat it.

And it went into the they, oh, they put it in the break room. Intern opens it and starts eating a bowl of cereal. And I resealed it. Amazing. DVD comes out like the prize.

Alright. Such good stuff. More of a curse. More of a curse really. True.

Truly truly it is. Back when cereals used to come with curses and not prizes. But, yeah, then we went to we handed out a bunch of DVDs to everybody and told everyone, oh, yeah. Some guy paid me $50 to come and hand these out. I don't know what's going on.

We had a great time. It was wonderful. Man. Tangents. Well, I this is part of the thing is it's just we're just hanging.

Well, we are just hanging. What yeah. Paul, how are you? I'm alright. Like I said, I I rewatched Fletch recently, which was great.

I had a great time. That age kinda like fine wine for me. I got in the mood for something with Chevy Chase that I would like because someone recently was speaking very well of Chevy Chase. Someone was speaking well of Chevy Chase? Of movies he had done in the eighties.

Oh, okay. And rewatching Fletch is a reminder of why this guy for a while was a fucking white hot supernova. Like, just a fucking superstar. If I was like right now, for me I see peep like certain actors and I compare I think like who were the movie star actors who are closest to my parents? Chevy Chase has always been my dad.

Okay. Which is really funny especially as he got older because he became a famous asshole. Yeah. And my dad is I love my dad. I love him, but he can be kind of an asshole.

Paul cut out the love you dad part. Okay. But yeah. Chevy Chase, like, because especially Chevy Chase, in Nashville Lampoon's vacation and Christmas vacation. That's, like, my dad.

The moment when he hits the pool in that first vacation movie and he just, like, can't stop screaming because it's so cold Yes. Is one of the funniest. It remains one of the funniest things that's ever happened in a movie to me. In in Christmas Vacation, he he goes between being the straight man Mhmm. To Eddie, to his to cousin Eddie, to being the, you know, being the buffoon almost, you know, like going so far in the extreme of, like, wanting everything to be perfect that he, like, you know, loses his mind.

So it's like the ass, I guess, is what he's being. But he he bridges that gap so expertly. You know what I thought too after I watch I watch European Vacation, I don't know, like a year or two ago, and it made me think a lot of community, what he does in that show community. I'm like, he found a channel right back to that style of Chevy Chase Mhmm. On community that I didn't appreciate when I first watched it.

But then going back and watching it, because I'm like, oh, man. He's he still has it. Yeah. It's just that now everybody knows he's a dickhead. And so it makes, like, it makes it a little bit less enjoyable to watch.

But he's still I mean, it's kind of the same Chevy Chase to me. Anyway No. I that was for me just watching Fletch. It's something that is when we watch White Men Can't Jump, it's like something that is just perfected in time. It's it's it's colon to a diamond Yeah.

At this point. That's like a three and a half or four star movie for me at this point, Fletch. What Ben was saying about him and what you were saying about recapturing that charm a bit in community. But in Fletch, he rides this line. Whenever he's Fletch, he's so dry and cutting and fairly serious and delivers everything seriously or that he takes it seriously.

And every time he's playing one of these characters where he's a doctor or a an airplane mechanic or what have you, all these characters are just, like, wild. Mhmm. And he commits totally to what he's doing with the character to the point where he's like, well, you know, you need to use ball bearings to fix that engine. And they're like, why do we need ball what are you and he commits to it so hard. He believes in it so hard that you can't help but think he knows something you don't know.

Yeah. It's pretty great. Yeah. Just picturing that mechanic in my head now. The the teeth.

And like the flat top haircut. Oh, god. But speaking of haircuts Yeah. I wanna talk about this movie. I wanna talk about our mutual friend, Spencer, and how I think he may have modeled himself after Chris Knight.

I will tell you that when I was a boy, when I was a kid when this movie came out, I saw this in the theater. And it was what did you say? It was '85. Eighty '5. So I would have been it was August.

I was seven years old, and I was like, this is who I want to be. Yeah. That man, Chris Knight, is who I want to be. He's Yeah. So cool.

I mean, that makes I mean, I was thinking about why I'd never seen this movie when I was watching it because it fits into a lot of categories of movies that I did like and were was into. And I may I might have just I may have just missed the mark. I don't know because Were you like, am I late? Because from I think I thought I just wanna well, I know that. I will I I've just stopped trying to be cool like in junior high.

Which is what has made you so cool. I knew when I was being chased around the gymnasium by a kid with a street hockey stick who was trying to hit me in the shins. I was like, maybe maybe I'm not cool. Maybe that's why he wants to hit me with that. Anyway, Maybe it's because you were so cool he was threatened by your cool ality, coolness ality.

Cool ality. Cool ality. We have to ask Scott McCacker in that. And I don't know where that guy is. Scott McCacker?

Yeah. Hey, Freddy Krueger. You're about to be dethroned as the greatest horror movie character name of all time. It's okay. I pushed him into a Scott McCacran.

I pushed him into a locker room mirror. I never Scott's team. So it's okay. Yeah. We we made up in the principal's office.

And I I wanna say about Who gets the bad luck for that? Well, hopefully him. Yeah. I certainly hope so. Scott MacCachren.

But what I was gonna say Yeah. Is just in terms of like what what filled the gap in my life that this movie supplied, I guess, was Back to the Future and Weird Science was sort of what I fell into. And maybe that's why I never saw this movie. This movie came out within like four or five days of weird science. That makes sense.

Yeah. It's the same it's like the Olympus has fallen White House down Hollywood thing where they're like, oh, you're making a weird science team movie. You gotta do that too. Yeah. And so this, my science project and weird science were all released in, like Concurrent.

Like a ten day span. I and Back to the Future wouldn't have been too long before. Right? It would have been because that was '85 as well. Yeah.

Yeah. I think summer eighty five as well is May or June. I will tell you that in the movie Back to the Future, all of the Back to the Future movies, a key date in that world is 10/26/1985, my eighth birthday. So that's always worth it. It remains fun to this day to see that on screen.

His birthday? My birthday. Your birthday. Yeah. One one one one Illuminati.

Mhmm. Here we are. Earth is flat. Mhmm. I knew it.

Somewhere in Time, your birthday. So many birthdays. 10/26/1985. It's October 20 have you seen Somewhere in Time? No.

We talked about this all the way here and how bad it was. I brought it up to my brother because he wants to listen to this podcast really bad. Oh, wow. First time for everything. And I asked him if he'd seen Somewhere in Time.

He was like, oh, yeah. I love that movie. And I just started laughing. Alright. So before okay.

You told me that we need to rate this. Yeah. Yeah. We we're gonna rate it. I wanna say one more thing.

I love how this movie makes smart sexy and smart cool. Yep. But also, Chris beat the beast. Ben hosts trivia, has hosted trivia. I'm a big trivia fan.

Yeah. We've played, I think, together under the name Toots Boots at one point. I used to write trivia during, Yeah. Or maybe Chris attended a trivia you were running. I feel like we've all crossed paths.

This is important to talk about that you haven't seen and hosted over Zoom because I was bored. Yeah. And A friend of mine did that. Yeah. Every Friday night.

It was great. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work. I joined in several times.

It's a great time. Mhmm. But you beat the beast on on the chase. The chase. Yeah.

The chase. Yeah. Yeah. That was a long time ago. That's like eight years ago now.

But still, they that's very cool. That's a very small number before it was on NBC. Right? When it was still on game show network Yeah. Season three.

That's awesome. One of our teammates got kicked out, and me and this other guy beat the beast. Congrats. Yeah. That's awesome.

Again, it was years ago, but not a lot of people do that. Like, you know, tip of the cap there. Thank you. Not as cool as that, but I I, I beat Wayne Brady on Let's Make a Deal. Nice.

By that, I mean, he said, do you want this or this? And I was like, I'll take that. And then they opened it and it was a thing. What were you wearing? I was a pirate.

Not much. Nice. Okay. Alright. Well, you know, let's make a deal.

Everyone dresses up all goofy and shit. Oh, yeah. He looked like a complete idiot. Yeah. No idea.

The the the it was weird because it was in this time that still I think they're still doing this where they don't have an audience. It's like because of quarantine they're you're in your own little like pods and then they you may or may not get picked. Mhmm. But you are required to dress up and I felt like an idiot the entire time I was on that show. Yeah.

I can see that. The thing that I smile the entire time was Stressed out most was the producers coming out and like giving us more energy, giving us more energy. We need more energy. You're not giving us enough energy. Ugh.

I know. Especially because the audience was so small because it was just us that at one point Wayne Brady turned around. He was like alright I'm gonna say something that's gonna sound mean but I'm gonna turn around. Y'all are terrible. I need you to I need you to give me more otherwise I have to keep working harder.

And they shoot three of those in a day and this was the third one. Yeah. As an actor, I can take direction. You need more energy? I'll give you all the fucking energy you need.

Yeah. Tangents. Yeah. No. I tangents.

Yeah. They were begging me for more energy on the set of the chase and I was like, do you mind if I just focus on these questions because I might win a lot of money here. Yeah. And then Cocaineum. And then And then I did miracles were achieved.

We're gonna talk about game show. You do the cocaine. You get the energy. Oh, okay. You can do whatever you wanna do.

That's right. You can achieve miracles. Really quick tangent about my game show appearance. I was on a game show called cocaine. Sorry.

Keep going. I'm a cocaine show. I'm stretching. So, I was on a game show called Chain Reaction. Yeah.

And we had to do that sort of a thing. The game where you have to connect library book to book Kevin Bacon. Book book. Yes. So Library book to book.

Great improv on this show too. That's a great Yes. And Kevin Bacon. And Beverly Hills Cop, Axel Foley. I'm sorry.

Kevin Bacon. And Jeff Reinhold. And so many people. Taggart's back. That's a good thing.

I could I'm fantasizing, man, about seeing the movie. Not about Taggart. Alright. This podcast is about thank you so much for listening. What is Taggart?

From Beverly Hills Cop. Oh, the one of the Beverly Hills Cop? Yeah. The chubby one, like Yeah. Bald one with the mustache.

Yes. He was not in the third one. He is going to be back in the new one. They're making it of course, they are. It looks good.

I think it looks good. It better be good. I mean Okay. It's got Kevin Bacon. Yeah.

Fine. It's got It's also got Eddie Murphy. And JGO. His track record record isn't great right now. And judge Reinhold?

I liked, My Name is Dolomite. My Name is Dolomite? Awesome. Coming to America? Not awesome.

Not awesome. Sexual track. My name is Dolomite. That was pretty cool. What's his name?

Randy? Randy. Watson. Jackson Heights is old. That was good.

Good and terrible. That was really lovely. Thank you. What's the log line of this movie? Like, what's how can how can you define this movie in, like, one So you're not asking me to tell you what they printed on a poster.

I am writing a logline. Not a tagline. Not a tagline. But, like, what's what's the synopsis of this movie in, like, a sentence? A 15 year old science prodigy goes to school, goes to college, oh, shit.

This is harder than I was I was doing real good for a second there. You knew the age. A 15 year a 15 year old, prodigy, goes to Caltech and works on a laser with a bunch of crazy people. I'd see that. Awesome.

Do you wanna hear the actual one? Yeah. Yeah. An uptight teenage prodigy enters a top engineering college, but feels awkward among the free willing students when a professor aims to turn their laser project into a military weapon, he and his offbeat roommate plot to ruin the plan. That's definitely much longer than I think we set Chris up for.

Yes. It is. We didn't set you up for success then. But But I thought you did alright. I thought you did a pretty good job.

Thanks. Yeah. Hey. Thank you for bringing this. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm happy to. You know how the reviewing works. You've had the scoring system explained. Yes.

You understand the scoring system. It's five stars. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be stars? It can be anything I want.

Yes. I think I'm on this. Got it. I'm gonna give this movie four and a half out of five liquid nitrogen coins. Oh.

We're gonna talk about that later. Obviously, still too. Really good selection. Who who who's next? You are.

I'm gonna give this movie four sideburns. Four more than Val Kilmer had. Oh. I would like to give him four to 15 sideburns. I I don't feel like I'm I okay.

So I'm giving this three and a half out of five popcorn kernels. Alright. We all have different scores. But no one's super low. No no one's super high.

I really liked the movie. I really liked the movie too. Three and a half Chris obviously really is a good score for me. So everybody really likes this movie. So we're gonna have a bit of a love fest here.

Yeah. Yeah. I have always loved this movie. I had seen Top Secret. Again, this movie came out when I was seven.

My parents had very little restrictions on what I was allowed to watch. And here's this guy, Val Kilmer, again, in this movie. Just trying to think again, I loved him. I thought he was the coolest fucking guy because he was so smart, but he was so cool. He's like, I don't care.

I'm gonna wear these bubbly things on my head, and I'm gonna throw a gyroscope fan out the window and, it was just it he's like, I don't need to study. I'm already wicked smart. Whatever. Sorry. I'm from Boston.

Wicked smart. As long as you apologize. Sorry. I'm from Boston. Yeah.

And he did he have the first drone? You said it was a gyroscope. It was like did he have, like, the very first drone? So look at it at this time, it's like a gyroscope sphere with just a plastic fan inside it clearly being moved around the room on like a string on a fishing hook. It wasn't that clear to me.

That's great. Thanks for ruining that moment for me. Well, you know, it's called practical effects. Did is it true Christopher Nolan set off a nuke? No.

He didn't set off a nuke. He set off a very large explosion. Looked like a nuclear explosion. Got it. Good on him.

And we have fusion Less is a little hard. So you know, today's been a day. What? Interesting thing about that Fusion power. That laser.

It's laser. Yeah. It's laser power that produced more energy than the laser put in. Yep. First time.

However A 50% more. The energy required to power the laser was more than that. First time to the same. The laser puts out one thing of energy. Yes.

The question now is, like, what does a what does a plant what does a new what does a fusion plant look like? Mhmm. To because they said like we won't see this fully integrated till twenty sixties. Alfred Molina. Can't put a timetable on innovation.

The power of the sun in the palm of my hand. I wasn't think I thought it looked like Springfield. Sure. The three eyed fish. Yeah.

Blinky. So you saw this in the theater I saw this in the theater a million years ago with my family. Everybody loved it. The music was awesome. I mean, that was how the world was introduced to that Tears for Fears song Okay.

At the end credit, which still That blew my mind. Yeah. I I I assumed that's how it was and I just, like, that surprised me. Yep. That's where I heard that song for the first time ever.

I first heard that song in Donnie Darko as a cover. The different song. Different Tears for Fears. Oh, okay. This is Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

Oh, right, right, right, right. Head Over Heels is the one in Donnie Darko. I just remember Do you remember when you need to go into it? Tears for Fears being around when I was in my forties, fifties, and the early days. You were in your forties?

Mid early, late forties. How old are you? Who knows? Are you talking about It's really hard to say. It really is, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. It's easy for me to say about me. It's hard to say about you. You look great.

Thanks. Yeah. It's all the booze. Booze, you know, keeps you young. What was it that Ernest Borgnine said?

They were like, he's like 99. You look great. And he was like, I masturbate a lot. Just like Kent. Ernest touches his dog.

Ward 9. Yeah. Kent does touch himself. Yep. No, he doesn't.

No. No. It is you, God. Definitely did though. He definitely did.

He does. Those braces can. He's perfect. They're so good. The ice scene, the cool lasers that lead everyone to a bikini party, the popcorn house, like, every as a kid, everything in this movie was real and awesome.

And like I said, it turns out they did a bunch of research. Most of except for, like, the popcorn thing and the existence of a five megawatt laser, everything in this movie is, like, scientifically accurate and possible and on film. When people are It's not awesome. When people are speaking What about the ice? Sorry.

Keep going. No. When peep when when The ice was real. But it didn't disintegrate into It didn't disintegrate. But so That's another thing I wanted to say is that all the pranks that they do on each other in this movie are real things that happen.

Either at Caltech or MIT. Taking a car and putting it back together. With its engine running inside a dorm room, that's a real thing that somebody did. I love that they never tell us how it was done. Oh, he just apart.

Yeah. But and and or we never see it get take put back together. Any of the stuff, it just happens. Like, it happens to us kind of how it happens to Kent. Yeah.

And I love that. Yeah. I love that this movie, sometimes it speaks with a lot of technical jargon, as like Chris is talking about. As a person who it's like, you can fool me with good enough fake shit. I'm sure of it.

I'm sure it's happened many, many times. But this movie, when people are speaking, it sounds insanely official and that's part that shit is very hard to deliver. Val Kilmer does an excellent job with it. The actress who plays, Jordan Cochran does a phenomenal job with it. And she's just speaking like a machine gun.

And so does the guy who won the Paris Film Festival best award That's great man Gabe. Gabe Jarrett. Yeah. I mean, the Val Kilmer, he's just he's absolutely perfect for this part. He does do that thing where you believe that he knows everything that's coming out of his mouth.

Yes. And that is not easy to do. He has an unearned confidence in the movie when you come in as as an audience member. Yeah. He's just some guy.

Yeah. And but he's so confident he doesn't have to earn it. You just believe it. Yeah. He believes it so hard and it carries over so well through the direction of the performance, and so on and so on.

And it's also good because then you don't know when when he's like being truly smart and scientific, and when he's just being an asshole. Thank you again for bringing this movie. Yeah. It was such a great break from another movie that we had questions about, like what the fuck? When we watched Somewhere in Time in this movie, it's like you have a lot of questions and it's like, okay.

This kilowatt laser, this, this, this, this, and everything they're talking about and doing and connecting and whatever, and all the research was actually done. Yeah. And this is a little bit it's more grounded. Yeah. The so the ice scene, they they had this corridor and they lined the floor with some kind of, like, cooling system and then just poured water all over the floor for, like, three days and made an ice rink.

Was this the last scene they shot? Do you have any idea? You seem to know so much about this movie, which is great. It's just, like, stuff that I've picked up over the years of, like, no. I mean, I I have to have watched this movie, like, 15 times at this point.

I love it. Like, it's just one of the classics for me, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it also, like I think for me, part of it too is that there's, like, a very strong connection with me and my older sister about this movie because we saw it together.

And when it would come out at home, like, on cable or whatever, we'd watch it together. And so, yeah, I just go back and revisit it because it's like it's almost like a Christmas movie feeling to me where it's like a comfort blanket. Yeah. My first experience with this movie, I'm pretty sure I watched it on cable on some weekend, and had watched it on TV a couple times before I ended up watching it a few years ago. But definitely got up, took bathroom breaks, and let it run or whatever it might be.

This was the first time I had really actually ever in my life sat down and been like, I'm going to watch Real Genius. Mhmm. I know I paid very close attention to this movie as a child because as Chris had mentioned, there's so many great visuals in this movie. There's great music stimuli. There's so many things that any kid and now our generation as adults who grew up with this guy is like, oh, if teenagers were cool, they'd be this guy.

Yeah. And I know he's supposed to be about 21 in this movie or whatever. But a lot of the quote unquote cool teenagers are people that were the kids in this movie or, Anthony Michael Hall weirdly in Weird Science or Marty McFly, like Marty McFly. You know the kids from this genre. Excuse me.

You monster. Marty McFly was that for me. Yeah. Of course. And for me too.

And I gotta say I love that we're talking about both of these movies. Well, you know what I was thinking? So the first time I watched this movie was two days ago Yep. On the couch. And I went into it thinking there's a chance I'm going to get bored.

Like there's always a moment that I track now especially when I'm like I'm watching a movie, I'm like maybe I'll make popcorn, pour a drink, whatever, like this is what I'm doing and my phone's gonna be over there and I do not wanna look at it because I wanna watch this movie. Same. And I always track when I hit the point where I'm like I wanna look at my phone. Because that usually tells me that maybe this movie is starting to fall apart. And I never really felt that watching this movie, which is a really big relief especially after our last venture hits Somewhere in Time.

Which luckily I watched with commercials. Because And I watched it twice. Yeah. No. Paul loves that movie.

It's somewhere in my top one. But I it made me think about it made me a little nostalgic. I'm so confounded by it, Chris. You have no idea. So confounded.

It is a very confusing movie. Somewhere in time you're talking about? I was so fucking it it's I was flabbergasted. I wanna use all sorts of fucking fancy words because you gotta use songs. You gotta use them from 1912 or whatever.

Twelve. I figured out this movie It is 06/07/1912. Yeah. There's parts that live in my head somewhere. From 1912.

It's so bad. Anyway, what I was gonna say is this this, real genius falls into a genre that isn't pretty definitive of the eighties Of where you're doing a genre piece like a sci fi or fantasy or something, but it's a comedy. I don't see this as sci fi or fantasy really at all. But it but it is but but there is a sci fi aspect to it. It's similar to me to like, Weird Science or even Ghostbusters where Ghostbusters is a comedy.

It's a dude driven male gaze comedy that has a overlay of this sort of like science thing, science fiction thing. I I wanna say I'm with Chris as he's talked about it and having rewatched it. This is the version of that movie that takes the quote unquote hard science or the sci fi version of Back to the Future and says we're gonna double down on the groundedness of it. Yeah. This is this is something that we don't see as fantasy.

This is a romantic adventure comedy to me that is that has science elements, but feel grounded in reality. Their their their mission, what's going on, the movie itself, the characters, it all feels very real to me. Those things Which I really that was something that I really liked. It has all these, it does have fantastical elements. Yeah.

Especially the end. It's wild. But especially in a movie that is so grounded throughout and then goes, fuck it. Which I love. It was great that it throws it out the window.

It does it does creep into sci fi at times, but I do feel like it's it it lives more in the grounded world for me. Yeah. It was like, I'm I've read an interview with the director, and she was saying when she first looked at the script she turned this down twice. And when she first looked at the original script, it was all just, like, crude. It was, like, a bunch of dick jokes, a bunch of sex jokes.

Which it still has. And she's like the same amount of dick jokes. Did you know those cause enormous boobs? Oh my god. I'm too late.

Yeah. Large breasts. Yeah. I rewatched that and I just showed that one part. She's eating a burger.

Right. And you expect he's gonna come up and be like, it makes you fat or that was such a a canned thing in the eighties of people just being mean and nagging people. Yeah. And he grabs the burger and throws away and he says something you don't expect and it doesn't feel gross. Right.

It's he says something that it's like maybe you wouldn't wanna say, but maybe? No. You should not say that. Sure. Sure.

But he does it in a way that doesn't feel predatory. Yeah. Well, it's also the eighties. It's also the eighties. Yeah.

The way that people communicate with each other changes over time. Absolutely. And it's like, I heard Henry Winkler talking about this. It's on us to adapt. He wouldn't say things to women like the Fonz said on happy days anymore, and he wouldn't wanna do that really, like, as play that kind of stuff for comedy now.

But at the time, it was Jean Cousineau's a little borderline at times. At times. But I think on purpose. Right. Right.

Because he's a definite he's he's, like, he represents an age. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah.

Excellent point. See, it went through a couple of rewrites, like, with all those writers that you named, and then it came back and it was like, alright. This is actually, like, a good engaging story. And if we really bring the science aspect into it and keep it grounded, then the story and the characters work so much better because there's something that people can connect to that these people are going through Uh-huh. As opposed to just, like, you know I wouldn't say that this is as strong a comedy as Ghostbusters.

I think weird science goes for much more kooky sci fi laughs and stuff. It's John Hughes. The story of this kid going to college and, like, dealing with all these weirdos and actually, that was another thing about the eighties too is that we were all so fucking terrified of nukes in the cold war that all like, these teen there are so many teen movies that were, like, kids had to stop the Russians. Yeah. Like, Red Dawn.

The military war games. Yeah. War games. I have to think about that. You know?

So this was, like, that kind of a thing with, like, a solid dose of really well written humor and interpersonal relationships that makes this as like an eighties teen movie, like, one of the strongest ones to me. Again, I gotta stop, like, dick riding you or whatnot, but this movie is fucking I really fucking liked this movie. I'm enjoying myself for so This was a movie I was I am skilled. This was a movie I was ready to watch a second time. Today, I had the day off.

I had shit I had to get done. But I was almost ready to be like, I might just like turn this on to have it on because I can maybe speak more strongly about it? Mhmm. Yeah. Or make my case more strongly about it?

I maybe already like this movie more than the rating I gave it at at at the top. We see the TriStar logo. Has anyone seen Total Recall? Of course. Yeah.

The commentary to Total Recall? No. This is Schwarzenegger. Why would I have seen that? This is because it's amazing.

And Schwarzenegger says this at the very beginning, as the Pegasus is, he'll tell you. Well, this is me, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this is me on the screen here riding towards the camera. It was a great scene. He basically says he is the pegasus.

Wait. What? As the pegasus is running toward the camera, it's like, Arnold Schwarzenegger says, this is me here running up to you on the screen towards the camera. Like, he's the pegasus. That is incredible.

It's incredible. I'm never gonna It was worth the wait? Was it worth the wait? I'm never gonna not think of that now. I genuinely though, I do very weirdly wake up with the TriStar theme music.

It is a triangle. It's inspiring. Right? I should've looked at it. And I'm like, yeah.

Let's fucking do it. And then I'm like, fuck. I gotta go to work. Yeah. And you're like, wait, I wasted the TriStar theme on work day?

Yeah. Drew, we wasted the good surprise we wasted the good surprise on you. I was just like, this is me running towards the camera. It's crazy. Unreal.

I love the opening credits, the evolution of the weapon Yes. As it's showing us the spear, the knife, the gun, the bomb, the and it goes through all this as and as blueprints, as schematics, as cave drawings, all these different interpretations, the story and timeline of the weapon. Yeah. Mhmm. It's so good.

Yeah. And it's and the song is you took advantage of me, which is just laying on the theme for what's gonna happen in these kids. Movie's about. It's great. Yeah.

It sets you up for the whole movie beautifully. The ad or whatever it is, the propaganda that they've shot was a for me, because I hadn't seen the movie. Mhmm. So when it started I was like, is this a b movie? What if I what are we doing?

What is what is it? It's got a little Robocop feel to it. It's really nice. I enjoy it. I was like what is what is this gonna be?

And like that was a nice turn for me to be like You're talking about the guy in the ship who Yeah. Assassinates like the Turns into fire. Yeah. Yeah. Is it a chair?

Well, it's a guy in a chair. He just Guy in a chairs. He and it's like A guy in a chair gets pink laser beamed and his, like, waiter is like, whoop. Yeah. And there's just a hole in the chair.

There his legs aren't there. His arms aren't there. Nothing's there. It only vaporized a small part of the chair. Yeah.

But then it lets you in on the fact that, like, this is what it will be when we build this thing. Space Very very soon. And you've got the room full of, like, nefarious generals and Yeah. It's before or after, Reagan's Star Wars? Star Wars.

During? During. During. Yeah. And this is this is obviously many years post doctor Strangelove and this great homage to doctor Strangelove.

Yeah. And there's a bunch of, like, doofy white guys and the one non white guy is, like, you guys are fucking up. This is insane. I know. I know.

And they all, like, double, insane. I know. I'm out of here. I know. And they all, like, double triple down and one of them is even like, my weapon hasn't worked since Korea.

And they just, like, laugh about it. Yeah. It's nuts. I do love the Doctor Strange love homage of it all. It is wonderful.

Yeah. When it's also purpose just like Doctor Strange love, it's purposely saying like, look at what assholes are calling the shots. Right. Yes. Look at these fucking idiots.

Yep. These are the villains. They'll come back later. Yeah. Imperfect being computer is an imperfect being made by an imperfect being.

It's like an elected person is a person elected by a person. Mhmm. Like, they're all fallible and do terrible things for money or power or whatever it is and probably shit just like this. Except for Donald Trump. No.

He's he was fine. He was fine. I have a really serious question you can make fun. You have my advanced permission, not that you needed it. Is Mitch Laszlo?

Is Mitch Laszlo? There is a thing about Sherry and Laszlo that feels a little time travel y. I don't fully follow Sherry. I feel like I see her three different times. Is she the blonde one?

Yeah. Yeah. She's I had a job interview in the beginning Yeah. In the middle where she's maybe gonna hook up with, Mitch. That's that was a job interview.

I could not I I He's Good Will Hunting It. He's wearing his awesome sneakers. This movie has tons of awesome sneakers. For some reason, I always, my mind must have blocked something out where I thought that that was him interviewing to be part of the school program that is the movie. That's what I thought too.

But no. He's about to graduate, which is why he's like, I don't need to care about anything. I'm about to get out of here. This is why I think But he's interviewing for jobs elsewhere. Why is she there?

And why is she oh, because she's attracted to the hot mind. Yeah. She mentions that she, like, bone like, bone I've met seven of the top 10. She infers that she's, like, slept with a couple of them or something, it seems like. He goes, are they he goes, are most of them dead?

And she goes, they are now. Yeah. This one guy is dead now. She kind of, like, implies that she's a murdered of death. Is she a black widow?

Is she a black widow? Is she a black widow? Senya Onatop him. Yeah. Yeah.

Some of the things that they talk about with Laszlo or the timeline when he was 12, I think he freaked out if that's him when they're talking in the beginning. The youngest was a 12 year old. Are you somewhere in time he freaked out? I mean, I really like this movie that I played. 08/07/1985.

It's 08/07/1985. I'm there. It's perfect. But it's like Sherry, I didn't fully understand her thing. Laszlo, I know.

I think she's just horny for smart dudes. So we're at the science fair. Does William Atherton's character just go so it seems like he has a previous relationship with Mitch's parents. Yeah. It's a little unclear at first, but he does say the line that he he's like, well, Mitch is the youngest person that I've ever recruited into this thing, so you should be honored.

I mean, I think it's just like a writing convenience, like, well, we'll have this science fair, and then the guy shows up and he's, oh, I've recruited you. Like, he doesn't need to be there, but maybe must be something he goes to yearly or couple times a year. The Western Regional High School, I don't think he does. I think he's there specifically to see Mitch. Is this a gathering of multiple high schools in the Western Region?

The Western Regional High School science fair. It's like 40 schools. That makes so much more sense than it is being called. Western Regional High School. I love the idea that it is just called that because why do you need to name your if it's not a president's name or a New York like PS fifty one.

That's like being like Just would call it Western Region. Welcome to one hundred and twenty fourth street high school. Downtown This is where it's at. Yeah. Downtown Coolesville High School time.

Whenever we get to those things where it's like what's your stripper name is your first pet and the street you lived on, I'm always like, oh, 701 Sixth Avenue. Yeah. I only lived on numbered streets. I have nothing interesting to say. Yeah.

Same for the most part. Well, and with with William Atherton to your to the question of why is he there, he also loves celebrity. He loves the level of celebrity he has. He has he's signing autographs as he's walking into that place. He's very popular in this niche of people and He's a TV star too.

Yes. With his TV show headline the same the same font that Star Trek the next the Science Guy was a thing. I guess he's more like Carl Sagan because Carl Sagan had a His show Beyond or whatever it's called, it uses the Star Trek the Next Generation Yeah. Font. It's so funny to me like these little things that we notice.

But I immediately am like, yeah, this guy sucks and he's just like such a pretense everybody. Yeah. Is Mitch adopted? Incredible. Isn't it?

And you you immediately just get the feeling that this guy is just pompous as shit. Yeah. When you can tell he, like, when he talks to Mitch, he, like, drops a facade for a second. Yes. And then, like, picks it back up when that woman walks by, like, yes, I'll be right over.

Most people have the IQ of a carrot. Yeah. Yeah. In comparison to him. There's another little line in there where Mitch is explaining the little laser that he's built to his dad.

And he's like he's like, so it's a cohesive it's coherent light. And his dad goes, oh, so I can talk. Yeah. Parent I thought that was a great little setup for, like, how just insanely smarter he is than anyone else around him. And that's why this guy's coming to this, like, science fair to be like, yep.

Everyone sees me picking up this kid because I'm the shit. I recruited him. And all these people know who he is. A lot of these people people probably watch his TV show or have interest in whatever magazine he may be in, what have you. He probably picks up chicks here.

That is one of my favorite things about this movie, actually. High school? Or their parents. Yeah. Whatnot.

There are a lot of parents there. But that that Val Kilmer doesn't really have a romantic interest. The girl that we think is gonna be his romantic interest, we finds out late find out later is actually sleeping with William Atherton. And Val Kilmer, I don't think ever sleeps with her. And I think it's great.

She doesn't have a hammer penis or whatever she wants. Yeah. Can you hammer a spike through What the fuck was that? I was like, is this a thing you just ask people? Can you hammer a spike through a board with your penis?

A six inch spike through a board with your penis. I think she means she wants to get fucked real hard. And he's like, no. And she's like Not right now. Girls gotta have standards.

Yep. I was like She's the star of Valley Girl, by the way. She's the main Yeah. Yeah. She, I think, is great in that little part in their little exchange where she's just kind of confused.

Yeah. Because he's so insanely literal and she's not giving him the information he wants. Right in front of her dad too. He disregards her. Would you have would you have the balls to say that kind of stuff to a girl in front of her dad?

No. At a point in life, yes. I mean, that was another moment where I was like I don't say real shit, dad. You don't ever just say she has a great body, doesn't she? Yeah.

That that's my daughter. But you just wouldn't say that to anybody. So I guess you have, have you know? You wouldn't really ever say especially in front of Yeah. That's why there were just moments in this movie where I was like, oh, it's the eighties.

Oh, it's the eighties. Right. Oh, it's the eighties. It didn't hit me that hard as hard as I recently watched Weekend at Bernie's. That hit me in a certain way with certain things.

It's the nineties. Right? Somewhere in, I thought Weekend at Bernie's was the eighties. Weekend at Bernie's was firmly in the eighties. Somewhere in time was 80.

That's something recent that listeners can relate to where so much of Somewhere in Time is so cringe. I felt so much more uncomfortable with so much of that in this movie. And a lot of it feels so innocent when when Chris brings up having sex to Dean Devlin and the bad guy from Karate Kid two, when he's like, this may be your only chance to have sex. They seem kind of uninterested in that. Yeah.

The idea of it is like, no thanks. That it doesn't really cross that line other than the moment where the adult is doing the thing with his business partner that he's embezzling with his daughter. Like, it's like the the adults do the bad things for the most part of this movie, which is kind of like real life. I just wanna point out Weekend Bernie's was '89. Eighty '9.

Oh, late eighty. I was close. We were like right on the edge there. Yeah. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, '90 is one of my favorite movies.

And I had to I was doubting the other day. I was like, is that '89, '90, or '91? With a young Sam Rockwell. Regular or menthol? The answer is always menthol.

Oh my god. They outlawed that shit. What world are we living in? I don't know. But, hey, we get to meet Chris pretty quick into the movie, which is great.

He, Atherton mentions him. This guy's a big deal. He's got the same name as the Brady Bunch dude who played the youngest guy or whatever, Christopher Knight. You gotta meet him. Right.

Smartest guy ever. You work with him. Yeah. And Mitch goes to Pacific Tech Tech, and Chris has worked it out. He's got a room with him, and he's thrown his clothes in some drawer.

And he's immediately a force of nature. He's something is just, like, happening now. Meet Laszlo. Yeah. Before we before Mitch meets Chris, we meet Laszlo Yes.

Who just walks in the room and silently goes into the closet. And the kid's like, what the fuck? Like, what is and there's also like, he's walking through the dorm, such great classic, like, fish out of water. There's a girl just wearing two towels, like, she in the middle of, like, the public lounge. She's, like, leaning against a pole, wearing a towel on her body and a towel on her hair, and she's like, what are you looking at?

Welcome to being an adult in the real world. How do you react how could could you imagine reacting to most of this movie at the age of 15 even as a super a kid that has a one sixty IQ, one seventy, whatever it's gonna be. Yeah. You'd be constantly like hunched over whatever it might be. I mean, I remember watching movies set in college when I was in high school and just being like, oh man, she's gonna see boobs all the time.

I I love how obscenely confident a lot of these guys are even when Mitch kind of comes into his own later in the movie. Yeah. And on that note as we're moving, I gotta ask, did anybody else feel like this movie was super easy to follow in terms of acts and that they were almost broken up by music montages? Yes. And that makes it so much more it's so satisfying.

It's kind of like Rocky in that way. But instead of like workout or fight montages you get study science montage. Okay. I have a one of my favorite moments in this movie is when Chris has to buckle down and he's studying in the park and a girl walks by and he wants to hit on her so badly. He's physically pained that he is gonna buckle down Uh-huh.

And study. It's so wonderful. Again, just Yeah. Every so many choices in this movie really work for me other than the no sideburns. It's so hard for me that he doesn't have sideburns.

I don't know why. That's hilarious. I really landed hard for you. Yeah. It really did.

It was like the jacket in what dreams may come. I know. And those are things for me that I was just like, I I don't care. One thing one thing that I noticed in this is, during one of those montages, Mitch is walking around with, like, all of his folders and notebooks, and he, like, trips down some stairs and spills them all over the place. And Laszlo comes up Yeah.

And starts picking up papers Politely helps. And helps. And then I think he, like, hands him some papers, and they look at each other for a second. And Laszlo's like, oh, and bugs out and walks away. And he's done no help whatsoever.

There's just, like, still a massive pile of yellow paper and loose Manila folders and shit, and he just, like, scoops it all up and chases him to the edge of this building. On the other side, it appears to be a massive plaza, but he's just gone. And, like, Laszlo just keeps vanishing, and this is why you think it's the same guy as the time traveler. He might be time traveling or there may be a network of places that he can get to on campus where he can duck out of the way. Yeah.

But he's got a built in, like, elevator system that goes underground through a closet. I mean, I went to UMass and there were underground tunnels there. You could get in between buildings Yeah. Underground. That was more a snow based issue.

Yeah. Not at this place. Well, and I on the note of that moment, there's this insane lens flare when we when he looks up and sees Laszlo and and the shots on Laszlo. You get this crazy lens flare and that's when he bugs out and leaves. And if you're Mitch, fuck yeah, you chase that guy.

Oh, this is the dude. I'm gonna fuck the papers. You would chase that guy. You take that opportunity and the fact that he's gone. Again, I talk about how grounded this movie is.

Like, this isn't really fantasy and it's like, how fantastical was that? We're trying to apply logic here. And it's like, do we need to? I don't know. It's kind of fun.

It's more I feel like there's more movie magic than magic magic. Right? Yeah. I do love the choice that he does say fuck the papers and to chase him. Yeah.

I think that makes a lot of sense. There's another great part of that same montage is, Laszlo leaves the room while Mitch is working on something at his desk. And as the door closes, Mitch realizes, he jumps up and goes to the door. And as he opens it, Jordan comes in with this, like, device. You can't hear her.

It's just music, but she's clearly, like, talking a mile a minute. And she puts this device down. It has this huge fucking easel. It's just to turn the page of a book Yeah. Yes.

And hold the page in place. It's the funniest thing. I love movies with with, like, nerdy kids and gadgets and stuff like that. I love Gremlins or Goonies. Yeah.

Gremlins is a movie I watch every Christmas without fail. Yeah. It's a movie I I said a class speech, man. Very high regard. And I did that in an acting class once.

And two people were like, holy shit, and like laughed. Yeah. It doesn't take long for Chris' cool to rub off on Mitch. And he's like, check out this thing I set up with the laser. Come to this party.

Like, you gotta relax already. And isn't it? You're just like I was. Like, come to the tanning invitational. That's after that's after we find out that William Atherton I keep I don't know what Oh, yeah.

Yeah. His whole nefarious plot. I skipped over the kind of. His whole nefarious plot, but all but which is pretty obvious to us because we see Yeah. In the beginning.

They don't sugarcoat or hide that he's just a piece of shit. Yeah. That and I think that, like, the whole the way he treats the people working on his I believe he actually has to align your laborers. You should be laboring. Which is like the most offensive thing.

Gary Old man and the professional. Your kids, you should be in school. Yeah. But just like that is so insult like, he just insults everybody. Everybody.

Because he just sees himself as so superior. I have notes about that too about certain things. He's obviously threatened by Chris as well as Mitch and needs validation from and work done by kids. Obviously, because he's not smart enough to figure it out. Right.

No. That's what it comes down to is he just he he is literally not smart enough to figure that problem out and he's been hired to. So that's why he's been doing things first. Stealing this money. When he puts the the paper up in front of the dude's face, when they're driving to his insane house, and he says, you're gonna get us killed.

Well, he could have seen us. It's the Dean because he's essentially stealing this money and letting this Right. Project take forever and taking all this cash to fund his kind of terrible looking house in my opinion that he values above anything and everything in the universe. I felt like that house looked like it was built on a nuclear test site. The outside almost felt like it was a fake house, so they could use something else for the inside.

I think it was. Yeah. Maybe. Especially after the popcorn thing. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that is just a facade.

So they built the facade. I know this. Yeah. They built the whole exterior of the house specifically just for, like, a couple of out exterior shots and do the popcorn thing. They built the interior two stories of the house on a sound stage at Hollywood Center.

Okay. Okay. Great. You could kinda tell it was a facade. And part of that is, as we're watching some of these older movies, it's like you're watching on a four k screen or up converted ten eighty or whatever it might be.

I logged this on Letterboxd. I checked the average on Letterboxd. That's how I found out it was on Amazon, and I used my credits that I hadn't paid Amazon, you know, to watch it. I did the free stars seven day trial. Oh, nice.

And I canceled it. Nice. Chris, do you own this? No. I may end up.

I don't. I may end up a Criterion collection? Would it surprise would it surprise you? It would not surprise me. No.

If this Criterion or Arrow video or something along those lines where it got some sort of, Scream Factory whatever, some sort of Yeah. Upgraded version, it wouldn't and it's long overdue if it doesn't already have it. Or a rerelease. Yeah. I would I would love to see this movie in the theater.

I had so much fun. Chris is smiling. He's like, it's so It's so fun. Well, and that's the like, we get William Atherton's whole plan and we get the laser thing where Chris is convinced, you know, I'm cool. Let's do the tanning invitational.

And you're meet you're on the journey. We asked when we watch what dreams may come, what's an adventure? Is just going to the store an adventure? This movie's an adventure. You're with this 15 year old kid unknowingly, which is a bit of a stretch.

But yeah. But in a land that he's unfamiliar with. Yeah. You're stranger to stranger. People that are Eccentric.

Eccentric and extreme. It is an adventure. You're right. And he goes on the biggest journey. Of all of the characters, he is the one who changes well, actually, that's a good question.

Which does or does Christopher Knight change the most? I would love to see what Chris's transformation was from the Mitch he started out as into the Chris that he becomes. Oh, like Chris is very Chris is it crystallizes for me when he said Chris Knight origins. Yeah. I would let's start a spin off.

Fuck it. Amazing. Do you wanna try do you wanna do the real genius cinematic universe? Kind of. I'm gonna say this.

Back to the Future is great. I also love the second one. The third one is what it is for me. I really fucking like this movie. That Kent movie got really dark though.

The Kent one. Because he goes to that like that that like university and creates a massacre. And that was just real dark as a as a spin off in the cinematic universe. Well, he gotta stop touching himself. I don't know.

Oh my god. Kent's a dirty boy. No. I just I love the fact that Kent I mean, they psychologically torture this man. Like, he ends up in He's a peon dude.

That guy sucks. But they they they He could have died in that house. All of his motivations are terrible, but they also tried to get him out. They tried to warn him. They pulled him out of the popcorn when he could have drowned him to death.

Well, I remember. Jesus. I almost thought it was God. I thought the house was gonna explode. So when he goes in there Oh.

I was like, oh, they're just no one's gonna be after him. We gotta hold on to some of this until the end. Like, we're Wait. Did you have no clue that it was gonna be popcorn? Not at first.

Not until I saw the Until the audio. Until I saw the tin foil. Then I was like, oh, I put it together. Because the noise of the window Imagine seeing that for the first time. Like, that's such an ingrained image in my life.

Over three decades, popcorn coming out of a house is just a thing that I'm innately familiar with. Yeah. I can't even imagine that today, you are seeing this for the first time, all this popcorn. It was like a 40,000 pounds of popcorn or something. It was real popcorn?

It so they had to, like they came up with the idea. The director, she was like, I know everything about this, but I just don't know how they're gonna get back at him. They're gonna use a laser against him, but I don't know how that's gonna work. And she, like, went and asked a bunch of friends. And this one guy was like, hey.

I got an idea. Set it up so that the guy hates popcorn, and then at the end, it's fucking popcorn all over the place. Yeah. When he makes him toss it on the porch. When he toss it at the house, is that popcorn?

Get it out of here. No. Yeah. I tracked that. And he just drops it on the porch.

Yeah. It was the it was like the ultimate fuck you. Yeah. So but that was real popcorn they used in the movie. So they, they hired one company to do it.

The company was working twenty four hours around the clock to make all this popcorn. This is how Orville Redenbacher died. They burned down the original the original company they hired to do it burned down because the popcorn machines were not meant to run. Wait. They burned down literally because of making the popcorn.

Because of making the popcorn full this evening. Oh. Worth it. And then Yeah. Well, for me, maybe not.

They had a series of, and like a bunch of, like, dump trucks or something full of popcorn. That house, by the way, was in a neighborhood. It's not in a lot. And it's on it looked like it's in an actual is on a lot. So it's like in an undeveloped side of a new development.

So they used a lot to build this house that they were gonna then destroy and take away. And they had to figure out how much popcorn they needed. They figured out that popcorn weighs, like, two pounds per cubic foot or something like that. And they're like, now we have to fill this house, and we have to make it blow out the windows. And so they had to do internal shots and external shots.

And if they wanted to get a shot again, it took a week to clean up. But they figured out Styrofoam would blow away, and it would look fake. So they did a bunch of real popcorn, but then they burned some of their shit down because popcorn's super combustible. Dust that it makes is super combustible. So, for some reason oh, they had to make it flame retardant, so they had get came up with this, like they came up with this yellow chemical that they added to make it look like buttered popcorn.

But then they had to, like, keep every but they had to keep dogs and birds and neighborhood children away. Wow. The actors you see eating popcorn during that scene, it very specifically had to be handed the right kind of popcorn. Oh, wow. Otherwise, they would die if they ate it.

Holy shit. Like, it it's just they called it, like, their million dollar joke. Dump trucks with all these, like, vacuum tubes. So there was a lot of popcorn in the house that was actively being popped and in that foil thing. Active, real, popcorn coming out.

And then they had these trucks with, big vacuum hoses coming from the trucks to pump it into the upper stories and then, like, rigged windows and the door burst open with that stuff. My mouth is a gateway. A prank worth every penny. Yeah. What what I know how That was all real popcorn, all practical.

Every penny. That level of work is like the fucking house implosion at the end of Poltergeist. We just just think about it. Yes. Yes.

I was thinking about it. We're here. Yeah. We just don't we just don't see that level of practical. Maybe Chris Nolan.

Mhmm. Sure. This is right now the the conversation hot button where it's like Chris Nolan v James Cameron where it's like practical v. See that's what I want. I wanna see Chris Nolan recreate the popcorn house.

Yeah. And and no shit, like, this is so I love hearing stuff like this. It's like, I intentionally didn't do as much research as I normally would and I love that you have so such a strong opinion about this movie and so much to say and that you know so many things. You guys notice that I have not looked at a note. No.

Not a single fucking thing retained at all. Writable. Yeah. That's right. I love it.

But Kent oh, so again, so Kent invades the tanning invitational after we find out like, Mitch, these guys cannot relax. Mitch and these guys are with Chris and they meet all these beautician, women that are beauty beauty school. Yeah. And they're all super intimidated. Yet.

That's right. And Chris says and Chris says, this may be the only time you get to, like, have sex and the bad guy from Karate Kid two and Dean Devlin and not everybody's there. Mitch is there. And they're all like, oh, that sounds terrible. But everybody's, like, dancing to Dom Henley and this, you know, Bryan Adams is there.

That's why this guy did so well in Canada. Yeah. They kinda shrunk their shoulders a little bit. And they're like, I guess he's got a point. And that was a lecture hall that they turn turned into a swimming pool.

I loved it. And I it's so perfect. There's so many There's so many part was the part that reminded me of, oh, I just went I just had a brain I like to leave these in. No. I don't like it when you do leave them.

It doesn't make me happy. I don't though is the thing. I did like, Jordan showing up with her, like, three tank rebreather. Oh, my god. And she's like, oh, it's this and that.

No bubbles. And I'm like, that sounds do we We still don't have that. The Jedi the Jedi had that when they went in the booth. Oh my god. Talking about grounded movies.

Yeah. We were talking about dick jokes. There's an insane amount of dick jokes. The the hammer through the board and the war room and the penis stretcher when we meet Chris. Oh, the penis stretcher.

And later on when Ken when Ken says before he sabotages the laser and he says he's gonna go to the bathroom and Chris says, I don't think that's gonna help your confidence and, like, looks at his dick and Kent's like, but there are just so many dick jokes in this movie. Yep. And I feel like it's funny because the movie is about weaponry and the and weaponry is about dick measuring and this movie is directed by a lady who I think, like, kind of gets that. And I well, I And she toned it down. That's the toned down version that she came out with.

Which is great. This was this is the palatable amount for almost any era. Well, because you think of well, yeah. I mean, I guess that's true. I mean, even as we went into the nineties and February, it's still pretty heavy male gaze comedy.

Like every comedy Yeah. Much was unless it was It kinda starts with the animal house more than in my mind, it starts kinda with animal house like mid late seventies whatever and then kinda goes until like the mid two thousands. Yeah. I I mean like American Pie Road Trip. Porkies.

American Pie Road Trip which owe a lot to this movie in a lot of ways. Totally. Yeah. We're we'll go over that later on because I almost dove into that. But there there are so many movies that pull from this that don't do things nearly As well.

As well as with the depth of a hand. And as we were talking about the ice rink earlier, like, that the dorm ice rink was real, like, I think that's kind of the next scene. Right? Where Oh, so they party gets busted. So they built that thing with the ice and whatever, and they made the ice and then it melts.

In the movie, the ice sublimates. It just turns straight to gas. Yeah. It does not blow up. It doesn't blow up.

But that is based on a real thing at either MIT or Caltech that they would make ice and have bobsled races down the stairs. Smart kids do cool shit. And then when it was and then when it started melting, they would break out rafts. That's so cool. But the but the sublimation going going from solid to gas is scientifically possible.

They just didn't do it for the movie. You can tell all these people are having so much fun. Chris, do you know did people have a good time making this movie? Most of what I've read is from what's his name? Gabe Jarrett's perspective.

Okay. You know, he was like, the director was really nice. William Atherton, one of the nicest guys ever. Dude, I wanna hear the perspective of the Can I help you? 15 year old that, you know, isn't some superstar?

Because they're probably gonna be pretty honest. Yeah. He yeah. He was, like, you know, I was just focused on, like he's, like, most of what he had to do was either deliver this, like, technical jargon or react to, like, the craziness that was going around. So, like, all of the stuff with, like, him and Jordan in the bathroom or her just, like, talking to him about, like, oh, I would have built you a bed if I had known you were coming, whatever.

Like, a lot of that is just him young, trying to do well, and reacting in the moment. Val Kilmer, he said he said everybody was civil. Nobody got really close. And Val Kilmer was very focused on Val Kilmer. Job.

Okay. Well, it was also his second movie. And so there's, like, Val Kilmer's legendary for being very much about Val Kilmer. I've read and heard as much in terms of podcasts and articles and so on and so forth. Yeah.

Has anyone seen the documentary he did, Val, on Amazon Prime? On my list. I think it's really, really great. Yeah. I I do wanna watch it.

I think his son does a great job with the narration, that Val wrote. And you learn a lot about his life and also just kind of his change in perspective. Yeah. So he goes to festivals where people have on Batman Forever or Tombstone or Heat or whatever it might be. And he loves signing autographs and hearing people say like, you're an integral part of my life.

I love Yeah. This thing that you did. And he apparently takes now takes a lot a lot of value in the things that he's done that have brought people so much joy. Joy was my friend, Kelly, and his wife went to see, Bell Coomer's one man Mark Twain show. I this is actually very funny.

He at the end of the show, he sat in a stool and took questions from the audience. And he took and there was someone, like, removing his makeup on stage while he was sitting there answering questions. He wasn't no. He he stayed he got out of character, and there was someone removing his makeup. And then somebody asked him I don't know what the question was.

I don't remember what it was. But it was something about, you know, performing this role or that role, whatever. And by this time, he was standing. He was answering questions. Somebody asked him a thing that he didn't wanna answer, and he started backing up.

His response was, well, that's a very excellent question. And instead of answering that, I am going to continue slowly walking backwards until I'm off stage, Which was timed exactly for him to disappear backwards through the curtain. That's great. And he left. It's great.

I love when people kinda mic drop like that to whatever degree. Like, just describe what he was doing. Yeah. It's wonderful. Yep.

That's that's something I love when you're talking about describing what you're doing. Chris is so insanely literal Yeah. In terms of all the jokes and so on and so forth. Like, I'd like to see you in the lab I'd like to see more of you in the lab. Well, I guess I'll have to gain some weight.

And so many of the literal jokes where he really wants people and he says to Mitch, you really you got he's a bigger guy than you when he talks about why he goes in the closet. You gotta think about these questions Mhmm. Before you ask. Like, he always just like is picking at people. It's kinda it but it doesn't feel mean to me.

It just feels like he's just kinda being like, He's just always keeping everyone around him on their back foot. Yeah. Like, they're just like, hey, serious question. He's like, I don't think so. No.

That's not how I approach the world, you know. So in terms of approaching the world, the liquid nitrogen coins, how you rated this movie? Yeah. Would that that weight in the slot to tip the Is it the same weight as a quarter? And that's the thing is, like, because we're nitpicking about this and when I did the minimal amount of research that I did, it was that's one of the hotly debated things from this movie is the liquid nitrogen coin.

So in an early version of the script, you will find out that some reason it got edited so that they say that it's liquid nitrogen. It isn't. It is sealed. It is frozen carbon dioxide that is super cooled by liquid nitrogen. Got it.

Why? Why do I know all of this? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know, but I love it.

You're the the person that Fucking guess. Is that supposed to be the same weight as a quarter? Quarter? All I know is that most of the stuff they did in this movie were as scientifically accurate as they could make it. And that's So why wouldn't that be Sure.

A thing as well? And in the end, why would I care? It's just a cool guy doing a cool thing where it's like, I'm gonna cheat the system. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, Cool guy.

I think that's one of the most fun things about this is that all this stuff that happens, you're like, cool. I don't know any of this science. Sounds like they know what they're talking about. But then in subsequent years and looking into it and looking back on it, then discovering that all of this was accurate, it's like icing on the cake, which is already a delicious goddamn cake. Yeah.

It doesn't even need it it could be nothing. It could be it could be I am such a imbecile compared to the level of science that they're You're a carrot. We're carrots. Yeah. Chris is talking about how he discovered how the laser will work.

And it's a pretty long amount, large A lot of jargon. Of jargon. It doesn't mean to be anything for me to buy it. Right. But it the fact that it's anywhere close is just, like, pretty incredible that Yeah.

The writers took that level of care with the comedy. And to go through all the checks and balances of all this, making those strong choices. We're at the point in the movie where Chris meets Susan, Susan's dad, William Atherton. They meet up at William Atherton's house, and they have that weird interaction that we mentioned where they have this sexual tension and she sees William Atherton is not her dad. Well, her dad and William Atherton.

Got it. Got it. She fucks William Atherton. Right. Right.

And he says the thing to the dad, have you ever seen a Bonnie like that? That's my daughter. Yeah. Oh, so you see it every day. But you know what?

I just realized this. You know what takes you know what takes directly from this is Van Wilder. Oh, in a big big big way. I was gonna talk about that later. Yes.

I just I just made that connection. Yeah. I never saw Van Wilder. The line, don't take life too seriously. You'll you're you'll never get out alive.

It seems like that's what Chris lives by. Yeah. And it seems that the writers of Van Wilder watched this movie many many times. Yeah. Absolutely.

Old school road trip, good little hunting, little things where he does he's kind of goofy on the job interviews. They they don't really take it a % seriously. Mhmm. I feel that a little bit Spiderman in various iterations, like post this movie, animated or film. I don't know.

Les Miserables. So all so many greats. Les Miserables? Yep. You mean the book by Victor Hugo that was written in, like, the eighteen hundreds?

Yeah. Took from oh, it's time it's all a loop. Time's a loop, I guess. I just wanted to see how I was like, what can I say when someone's gonna stop me? Yeah.

No. That got that got me. Where the line is drawn. That got me real good. I'm like, who?

Javert? Like, what's going on there? Hugh Jackman? Yeah. What does it all mean?

I the this movie is Oh, no. It's like Anne Hathaway crying when the kid's calling his mom. Oh. He's got it. That's like the Anne Hathaway crying.

But God, he's got it. So we're talking about we need to make Real Genius the music the stage music. Le Genius. Le Genius. Le Genius.

Le Genius. Le Genius. Le Genius. Le's baby actresses. Actually, real genius is a musical if it was going if you were to tell me that's a Broadway show, I would not doubt you.

Real Misery. Yep. Now that they're real Misery. Now that they're making musicals out of everything Yeah. And everything like, I wouldn't doubt you.

No? If you said Real Genius the musical, I'd be like sure. Musicals, I would see Real Genius the Musical. I'd say Tears of the Musical. That was the shit.

Oh, speaking okay. Awesome. So this oh my god. This movie already has its own original music. There's a couple of montages where they're just not and this is one of my favorite things about eighties movies is that they get someone to write songs that are just about what they're doing.

Yes. Like Number one. Number one. Gabe Jarrett, Mitch's, oh, I gotta read all these papers and go to class. Oh my god.

I'm surrounded by tape recorders. I wasn't ready for this. Like It's so good. It's just like the most little, like, go get to class and then drop my notebook. So dumb.

Yeah. I forget what movie that is where, oh, it's baseball where he realizes that the radio is just narrating everything he's thinking and doing. Yeah. It's so real I was really confused about the tape recorders at first because they just like, as that went on, I got it. But at first, I was like, are those boom boxes?

Why are they there? What's happening? Oh, everyone was just recording the request. Yeah. Real thing.

Yeah. Again, real thing that she got from Caltech students. Well, that doesn't surprise me, especially now that we do things on Zoom and shit. Yeah. Where, like, professors could theoretically just record their plan, and you as a student could just record them speaking and listen to it later while you're writing an essay.

I have taken I have paid good money to do, like, a voice over online workshop with someone who's like, I'm the voice of 8,000 things that you know. And then you log on and you do this thing, and it's a hour and a half video of this person telling you it's very it's a very frustrating experience. Tell. To log into a thing and have someone tell you, yeah, I already know to buy this. I already know that I need a pop filter and a, like, acoustic absorbing material.

I'm gonna get professionals. I'm gonna, like, work on something or, like, try something and get some feedback. Not to watch you advertise your book. Otherwise, you could just take a master class, which isn't the same thing, basically. Right?

Right. But, yeah, I did love that though. Like, that especially because then the professor ends up Just recording It ends up with a bunch of tape recorders recording a tape recorder. Yeah. Great.

What a great joke. Yeah. And it's just and it's real. That's, like, what makes it the funniest thing for me. A lot of the visual gags in this movie just totally work.

We went on and on about the popcorn house, bunch of the stuff about the laser. It's even at the party when the way the girl is walking and the way Val Kilmer just throws the burger Yeah. And he said, like, there's so many great little visual gags and things that happen in this movie. It's act it's just very beautifully directed. And it has so many things getting thrown.

Papers and keys and books and stuff from freezers or whatnot and shit getting kicked and people yelling, no. No. All of it works for me. Yeah. All of it works for me.

Yeah. The ongoing I feel like we're at the point where we're sort in the movie where we're sort of getting the fact that Kent and his tribe or his people and Chris and Mitch eventually like, the the these are two separate groups within this group that are constantly at war. Mhmm. I feel like Kent is alone. I know he has those guys he works with in the lab, but I don't are they like following him or him around or or getting in on his little, you know, schemes with him?

Yeah. You might be right. I I just I don't know. I felt like it was established though that like because at the top when we meet those other two guys in Kent, like, they're clearly, like, they're clearly trying to figure this thing out. Look, it goes from God Yeah.

To Jerry. Don't call him Jerry. Don't don't use my first name. Hello, Lily. To Mitch Jerry.

Yeah. No. You're right though. When we first meet those guys, they give them a hard time. Like, they don't seem to respect him.

They Kent is being Kent. Jerry, he yells at them and they're like, oh, they kinda get put in their place. And he's like, Mitch is doing everything. And then I don't like, you only 15 year olds gonna check their work, which they're obviously pissed about. You only see them a couple more times, I feel like.

Because then Kent around. Because then Kent gets the the implant, the voice of God in his mouth. And then he gets all Jesus weird. Yeah. I was wondering, was it established earlier and I missed it that he was religious?

Can No. No. They told him that they were the voice of God. I knew. I just didn't know if like No.

It was established that he was already religious. So this I'm gonna back up a little bit. Sorry. Like we get the Atherton kind of thing where he's like, I'm gonna kick you out of school to Chris. Like you're fucking you're Yeah.

You're done here. I want five megawatts by mid way. Sure. And and I mean the laser is so insanely powerful when they actually achieve it. Yeah.

It's great. But when he's like, look Chris, you're fucking out of here. Nobody's gonna believe you. It's my word versus yours. You're not graduating.

You're done. You're not getting the job. None of this is happening for you. And then he buckles down and we get that great where he's like, I'm gonna beat you at your own game. We get the great montage.

And they create this laser and this is the thing that's a bit of a reach for me where it's like, what did you guys think what you were creating? You didn't think this was a weapon? What did you think this was? To me it felt I mean, I I Yeah. I get that.

I feel like part of it is like, it's like the Kobayashi Maru. Like here's a here's a Unbeatable. Here's a Yeah. Here's a task that you cannot accomplish. Mhmm.

And and I wanna see how close you can get. The Kobayashi Maru is a test in Star Trek that captain James T Kirk rigged to beat because he couldn't handle Uzi. That's true. I feel like that's kinda what it felt like. Like, this is something that is not gonna be possible and I wanna see how what you can do.

But that's a really good point. You actually just justified something that I kind of like, yeah, that I kind of was like, how would you not know? But ultimately, if he's just a guy who's like trying to push their limits and if they're like, yeah, push our limits, maybe that doesn't necessarily cross their mind. But the laser is so insanely powerful. I mean, you think about think about like It's so powerful.

I mean, you think about like the Manhattan Project and like I did during this movie a lot. All of these things where you're like Einsteins in this movie Yeah. Like mentioned a lot. They're comp they're trying to accomplish the scientifical the science, that's not a word. The scientific feat Paul leave that in.

Scientifical? Yeah. The scientifical feat just to just to prove that it's possible but not really thinking through the repercussions. Or you knew you could do it. You didn't stop and think if you should do it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it it's great, but I just I love how powerful the laser is. How it goes through cinder blocks, the wall, trees, a bronze statue, a billboard. I will tell you, because it went into No.

We don't know. It went into space. Yeah. Like, when they finally get the laser to work after many failed attempts at getting this laser to work at hitting this power threshold that Atherton needs to hit to please the military to hide his embezzlements. I was just always worried about what if somebody was on the other side of that wall when we joined them.

You know? That's nagged me my whole entire life. So this was a big thing for me. Fortunately, no one got hurt. We never saw how far it went.

We saw it go to the top. What if it like took out a plane? We don't know. What if it killed a bird? It could've cancel this movie.

I'm done with it. It's over. I can't wait to talk about how much I hate this movie. What if this is five g? It's killing birds.

Birds aren't even real. Yeah. Birds aren't real, man. We don't even I'm sorry. So when they when they go to test the laser before they before they fire it, and they're all standing behind the plexi and wearing the and Chris is wearing the catcher's gear and everything.

It's definitely gonna protect him. William Atherton doesn't put on his goggles because the goggles, they do nothing. Which is he's wrong. Yeah. In this case.

They do nothing. My eyes He doesn't put on the goggles. And then he looks at Mitch and sees that Mitch is wearing the goggles. Yeah. And then he puts the goggles on.

He looks to see if the one person in the room that he knows for certain is smarter than him is doing this thing. He is such a bitch. He is Calculating. So good at this. And I don't know if that's an actor thing or a director thing, but him to go, is Mitch doing it?

Okay. I'll do it. I mean, if you look at his track record as an asshole, I feel like it's probably an an Atherton choice because he's just so good at Goddamn it. He's good. Eat your heart out channel five.

I do empathize with Mitch, I wanna say. They fire off the laser. It's successful. No one thinks anything of it at this point, but they all go out to celebrate. And I do empathize with Mitch when Jordan says, am I can I meet your parents?

And he says, no. And she says, are you embarrassed of me? And he says, no. I'm embarrassed of them. It's like, yeah.

Do you not get this? Yeah. Like, parents can be very embarrassing. And we've met his mom who looks just like him, which, like, maybe he's just trying to hide her where he's like, okay. Don't think about the fact that I look like my mom.

Or like, what did Ben say? Like, he was just stuck in a mask. I think it's more yeah. I think it's more don't listen to my dad who thought I made a talking laser. Yeah.

Yeah. It's so good. It's so good. I I love when Laszlo shows up and he's like, hey, dummies, as the MVP of this movie, performance and character. Mhmm.

What do you think they're gonna do with this thing? Yeah. Remember that mirror that Kent made? Like, as like a graveling thing to get the job from William Atherton? It's like, you guys created a fucking weapon.

And it takes that guy, the guy living in the basement to put it together. Well, because they're so obsessed with their own Achievement. Achievement. Yeah. And their own, like, fame Yeah.

Potential. This is when they get the voice of God thing going. Where they install the brake the speakers and chains braces. Because now now it's like, okay, we've created a weapon. We didn't realize it.

Now how can we stop it? They do the voice of God thing. Kent either realizes, knew, has been told this is a weapon. You did a bad thing. And they install the speaker in his braces, and they think he's vulnerable enough right now If we give him the voice of God intervening to redeem himself Mhmm.

He will become a vessel of our, not only God, but of our success in sabotaging this weapon we've created. And so it's I don't know. It's just it's very effective, and the whole stop playing with yourself is also good. Stop playing with yourself. Oh.

Put your eye out. So what did he what did they what did they have him do that helps When they got the information from him, something to do with the professor. Okay. Where it was, I believe is what or where he was taking it, something along those Alright. Yeah.

See, I thought what they were doing at first. I thought they were just gonna, like, put a, like, a recorder on it so they could listen to his conversations and with the professor. Fucking with him. They're just like, we're gonna fuck with you for the rest of your life now. Yeah.

Like, that level of I could never really, like, figure out what tangible thing they gained. But I think it I think it does track a bench I mean, it tracked for me who's watching it this time. Yeah. Okay. At first, I did think they were gonna put a recorder on him so they could listen to it.

And then I'm like, oh, they're fucking with him so they get some information. He becomes the responsible party and also starts to maybe think that he's crazy, which is kind of a bonus. No. He goes crazy. It's like, I don't know.

This is a little tangential, but here we are. This is the most recent last season of Better Call Saul, if anyone has seen it. Yes. I am on season five episode three or four. Okay.

So I won't say too much. But how like Please don't. The big chunk of the season is about, about fucking with the what's his name. Yeah. Just leave it as what's his name.

Yeah. The the other lawyer. And that for me for a long time in this series, that series felt like why is this happening? It was like Jerry getting fucked with on Parks and Rec, but then he gets the most beautiful Just Desserts at the very end if you've seen it. When he becomes the mayor?

You mean Larry? I mean Gary. Oh, Gary. I mean Terry. Terry.

Okay. Gurgic. Gurgic. Gurgic. Gurgic.

Jerry, Terry, Larry, Gary, Gurgic. They go to the base, and I think Yeah. They get that info from Kent somewhere. Okay. Yeah.

The mustache that Mitch has on is perfection. It's kind of I love that thing. Insane. Right? I love it.

It's such a nice thin wispy mustache. It's pretty good. But he already looks so weird. And then they put that on him and I'm like, why? I'm physically uncomfortable now.

I'm gonna say my one I'm gonna say one thing about him. Outside of that, someone's told me he looks like Amanda Vines from She's the Man. His nose is a bit big for his face and I haven't seen him He's got very like I said, he's got very defined features. Yeah. Yeah.

He I think he must be Italian, the actor. No clue. But Let's not speculate. Okay. That might be racist.

But he because he does look like an old Italian man. He looks like F. Marie Abraham. Yeah. With that mustache.

Yes. Yeah. He does. But I I also love that when they're talking to the gate guard, they have Kent's car. It's their crappy rental and all this other stuff.

But he says, look, man. Someday, you might be in the private sector. We're four hours late. We could lose our job. Just let us through.

And they let him through. And this feels like a Pat Proff joke to me, like an airplane y joke where they get the call Like, look out for when they're being let through. Look out for anything that looks suspicious. Okay. And they just let through this, like, 10 year old with a mustache and, like, the flock the flock of seagulls.

It's surprising to me they pick Mitch to go in as opposed to like Laszlo who looks like maybe Who looks like he's 34? Yeah. Looks like a scientist. Mhmm. You know, like someone who would be working on that and not the kid who looks like he's 12.

I don't know why they send in the child other than it was written that way. It's just written that way. I mean, you know It works. I mean He does a great job. They switched the microchips.

They're successful in their mission. And most of the movie is very scientifically accurate, but They dropped one. Not all of it. Did they drop one off the bat? They drop a chip.

No. Definitely not on purpose. You don't even see them properly. They left they left the chip that that was originally in it, but replaced it already with the chip that they wanted to put in it for guidance, I assume. Assume.

And this is when we get God returning in Kent's head. And one of the hardest laughs I had at the movie, dad, you know, my father, God, I lost my shit. That shit is brilliant. I died. I died.

Yeah. Oh, man. It's great little touches, like, through this movie. Like, little things like dumb jokes like that and the cars that look like g men cars, old Lincoln Continentals with crash dummies that look like test sites that it's got all of this wonderful imagery and so much throwback whatever. I don't know.

It it turns little directions that I don't necessarily expect. I don't expect to go from God to, like, g men cars and crash test dummies and, like, etcetera. I I don't know. And somehow it all blends together so beautifully. Mike, so I have a question.

So as we're getting towards the end where they, have retooled the laser to, you know, go to Afton's house and pop a bunch of popcorn, Embarrassing him. Yeah. We just know it's gonna go somewhere that you don't want it to be. Yeah. And like, ruining basically ruining his career.

Destroying his his reputation. Yeah. Destroying him because he's an awful person. Well, of course. He gets his just desserts a hundred percent.

So that's we kinda end little Des du Monde with the Laszlo and like everyone sort of going on with their business. So my question to you guys is who is this movie to me, like to you, who is this movie about? Who who who changes the most in this movie? I'd I'd wanna say really quickly before I answer that, that there's one scene where Laszlo is changing the coordinates. Where he's like, they've connected the chip.

He's like hacking in or whatever. And he goes, oh, no. And Ick is sending this too much time. And Ick is sending this, and he's like, what's the matter? And then the screen just explodes in, like, a very early screensaver where it's just multicolored lines appearing, and he's like, oh, nothing.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. This movie's dumb. This movie sucks.

This movie is who is this movie about? Sensibly, it's about Mitch, but I think he definitely changes the most. I think Chris Knight started out as a Mitch. We met him as a Chris Knight, and then he realized that there needs to be a little bit of he needs to add a little bit of focus and balance back into it. But Mitch, I think, is the one who has to change how he approaches the world the most because he has to let all these weirdos and kooks in because he can't do it by himself.

He tries to do it by himself. He can't. He has to accept the party aspect and the weird randomness that is being in society with other people, as part of, yeah, everything's cool. I still get to be super smart. I will probably study harder than most of you, but, I can at least cut loose and go swimming.

I do agree that he does. He comes a long way. Chris helps him, I think, come a long way really fast Mhmm. Which is great. And he doesn't really have much of a choice because his parents have already rented out his room.

When he tries to go home, we already rented out your room, dog. Like weird What a weird thing to do. Like uncle uncle Jerome's friends are already in there. There. What a weird thing to do.

I just love their name. 15 year old, I 15. For me, it's Chris. Now that we've really talked about this and dug it out, I think he kinda understands some of the limits and things that he needs to do a little bit more that he went a little bit too much like party animal and needs to balance a little bit more. But outside of that, by the end of the movie, he has the freak out where, like he has the, they go back to get the laser and he throws the keys against the wall and just trashes that office and loses it.

And Laszlo's like, bro, chill. Mhmm. We're gonna talk, we're gonna figure out how we're gonna fix this, how we're gonna handle it, We're gonna put it all together. And Chris, right before that point says, for you, it's fine. You're a freshman.

It's this. It's that. I'm a cynic. This is just confirmation of everything that I've ever thought. I and I, for a moment, believed that I was able to achieve something good for good people and so forth.

And then Laszlo says, this doesn't have to be the end of the world. Your journey's not over. The story's not over. We can still do something. Let's focus on what we can do.

He kinda keeps the adventure on track. Again, the MVP of the movie The MVP. Him and the professor who also wears the bunny slippers, and that's part of the plan. I think that guy's a real professor? I don't know.

But at the beginning of the movie, when he says, I think the young people like it when I get down with the dialogue or verbal or whatever he says. But he shows up and they're wearing the same slippers. Yeah. The professor that we've met a couple times before in the movie and a congressman show up because Chris and Jordan and Mitch bring them to show them that this laser is gonna go off and destroy this home. And Kent goes running into the home, and they do try to stop him.

They yell Kent, Kent, Kent. They yell Kent, Kent, Kent. They don't go running after him. They don't go in there for him. No.

They're like, they're like oh, no. He could have died. Oh, no. Yeah. He very easily He could have died very easily.

They couldn't have controlled what he was doing in there. And the cut of the flames He could have jumped he could have jumped right on top of the foil packet. Yeah. For all we know or right up to the stained glass window and the laser could have vaporized him before it hit the popcorn. There are a lot of variables here.

They definitely let him go. There's some resentment there. Oh, Kent don't. You're right. Oh, stop.

And the cut ins the cut ins of the plane. Willy Wonka. Yeah. Very Gene Wilder. Yeah.

The suspense is killing me. The cut ins of the plane are a little rough for me too. They're like very poorly CGI'd plane. They spent all the money on popcorn. They didn't have a dozen plane.

It's a model in front of a physical piece of blue sky. Yeah. Like, they were just a board behind it that they're holding a model and rocking it back and forth. And that's the thing is we know where the money went in this movie. They went with the right things in the right places in my opinion.

Yes. The tanning invitational was awesome. The popcorn thing at the end is awesome. Most of the stuff that we get to see in the laser lab is awesome. All the set pieces in this movie that need to work The winter ball.

Really work. The winter ball. We're at the end of the movie. Yeah. Atherton has ranked Oh, real quick.

Somehow in the military installation. Laszlo won the RV. 32% of the prizes from free to live. And the free car. Yeah.

He has got he's got like a whole trailer back there. Plus the RV is full of stuff and he's gonna marry Sherry who's been waiting for him for ten years for what? Number one. He's the number one. He's the smartest man in the country.

I you know, now that we've Okay. That he is the number one tub of the shop She's gotta make it with him. She's gotta get that dick. So Laszlo also changes He does. Quite a bit.

He does. He went from living underground underneath a college to going across America in an RV. Okay. So they're going to they're going to Wyoming. Oh, she does say Turned like bomb So maybe it's not that much.

Out of the warehouse. They're going to live in seclusion. So that's all he wants. That's true. Yeah.

And the reason that he's doing this Frito Lay competition is because he's like, I don't wanna live in this basement. Like, I don't wanna be part of society. I don't wanna live in this steam pipe basement forever, and I want some cool fun shit. That was his ticket out of living in the Caltech basement, Pacific Tech basement. And also, like, Sherry as is noted by Val Kilmer, you are beautiful.

Mhmm. He's so forward with every woman he's interested in. You're beautiful. You're great, you're captivating, you have large breasts, whatever it is. He's just so insanely forward and I can't get over the fact that I as a person who feels, I'm always like hyper aware of these things anymore.

Yeah. He does not feel creepy. He does not feel predatory. He it it just he's not sitting and leering at somebody from the dark or hypnotizing himself to go backward in time to believe he can touch your boobs. He's not he's not the Barney Stinson of this movie.

No. He is just like, hey, you're beautiful. Yeah. Like, let's hang out. Let's whatever it might be.

Yeah. And it doesn't seem like we don't see these pieces if he's rejected anyway. Yeah. He helped too because he's beautiful. So it's like He is extremely.

Very charismatic and handsome and attractive. Yeah. So you're just like, oh, yeah. I wanna, you know, as a male, you're like, I wanna be him. I wanna hang out with him.

I wanna be with him. And maybe you wanna be with him. And then like as a female, yeah. You're like, I want to I want to be with him. Mhmm.

Yeah. He's just got that he's just really cap the essence of that character is so I can't see anybody else playing that part. He is perfection. This is another reason where we go from, and I didn't write casting. There's a movie called Casting Vi.

And maybe this was Martha Coolidge, I don't know, the Nicolas Cage of it all and Valley Girl and so forth. The movie itself, when it wraps up with William Atherton coming to the house, the popcorn everywhere after the tears for fears in slow motion Yeah. Is so satisfying where it's playing everybody wants to rule the world about this narcissist that couldn't control these children. And the house is destroyed, and they're celebrating in the popcorn and the great song And the toxic popcorn. The toxic popcorn.

Yep. And and William Matherton pulls up a course in like a fucking Peugeot, like a French sedan. Yeah. With his like euro collar or whatever. And he's like, oh, and his house is destroyed.

And the movie's fucking great. Mhmm. I've just I've had such a great time not only like watching this movie, but chatting about this. Yeah. Yeah.

Again, to what I said to Burris before we wrap up about somewhere in time, more so, I feel like Ben when we watched White Men Can't Jump, my goal was that I wanted to make you feel like I gave you a gift. Uh-huh. Barris did not give me a gift. No. Barris, like, forced actual horse shit down like And he did it twice.

And he did it twice. You watched it twice. I watched it twice. Wow. But this movie was such a fucking treat.

It really, really, really was. And talking about it again was that much better. I could go on and on about this movie at this point. I almost want to watch this again. You said you wanted to maybe read somewhere in time.

So did Burris. No fucking way. But but I'm No way. But I wanted to read that because it's not like the novelization of the movie. No way.

I wanna read what the You owned the novelization Yeah. I do read it front to back. Four times. Wow. It's better than the movie.

Back to front. Did Alan Dean Foster write it? Holy shit. He did. No.

Really? You know how I know that? Because I bought it for him, and it was in my house for weeks before I sent it. So, Alan, this is I just snip Chris on the shoulder. Do a bunch of novelizations?

Alan Dean Foster is famous for doing novelizations, but he wrote two two original books that I'm aware of. One of them is called Glory Lane. It is a it's a book that I wish was a movie. I mean, it's just it's a great space adventure. A bunch of, like, regular ass kids from Phoenix in the eighties get picked up and launched on this, like, grand adventure.

It's super fun. Similarly, theme, a kid gets picked up and launched on a grand space adventure called The Last Starfighter Oh. Which I was also thinking about watch that. I was thinking about doing it for this. I do have the Blu ray special edition of that.

I have not seen that in It's the first Blu ray I ever bought. It's been a while. So I haven't seen that in twenty years. Anyway, Alan Dean Foster, you know Oh, on the note of If there's ever a novelization of a movie, I'm like, oh, Alan Dean Foster? I think it was Alan Dean Foster.

I'm almost sure of it. On the note of great arcade games and The Last Starfighter has great arcade game related content, this movie had the arcade game Food Fight. Food Fight. Appeared in this movie and I just remember playing that game when I was young and like really Was there that was one of my favorite arcade cabinets. Question.

Was there a real genius video game? There was not a real genius video game. The only the main thing that stuck out to me about this movie that lasted with the culture, and I don't know if anything predates it, Not only is Val Kilmer just, like, dressing wildly in his shirts and stuff like that. Again, it was just, like, cool sneakers and just, like, very rugged individualism. I will say that that Tears for Fear song everywhere.

Like, that movie came out with that song attached to it, and it was it, like, it was playing everywhere you went for the entire summer. Like, I mean, I don't know where it charted, but I just it's such a mass that little seg that I don't know what I don't know what I'm saying what I'm trying to say. No. I hear you. All I'm saying is that that song was, like, hugely impactful on my sister, her friends, me, and my friends being, like, seven years younger.

It was just fucking everywhere. And when, you know, time passes and things start to fall off, and then when Donnie Darko used that Tears for Fear song Head Over Heels, for everybody my I'm in my mid forties. Everybody my age, like, when they heard that watching that movie, it was such a massive, like, fire hose of nostalgia to the face. And it just, like, sunk me back into listening to Tears for Fears again, which is fantastic. Something, like you said, that just kind of feels like a warm blanket for whatever reason.

Yeah. And it's like it evokes all these, like, that just looking at that time looking at that time on film and hearing that style of music and seeing Val Kilmer that age, like, I can feel the wall mounted phone. The walls come tumbling down. I can feel the wall mounted phone in my hand. You can feel the walls start tumbling down.

That's true. If you told me that movie made a hundred million dollars based on that one song, I would have believed you. Good stuff. I'm ready to rate this. Alright.

I I would like Chris you do the honors. Who would you like to go first? I would like, I'd like you to go first. You want me to go first? Yeah.

Ben's gonna go first, everybody. I think I'm gonna be my ranking up. I think I'm gonna this conversation, it felt I mean, I enjoyed the movie anyway. It doesn't it doesn't feel like a stretch to do it. Three and a half is a high that's how I rate Fletch.

I think three and a half is a very high rating. Three and a half is a very high rating, but I just think I think I'm gonna go to I think I'm gonna go four popcorn kernels. Wow. I think it deserves that. I think it is a four.

Yeah. I'm gonna go to four. Alright. Is there anything in the conversation that made you bump it up? I mean, I think in general, the at least for me, it it was, I think the connection I think the thing that was keeping it from before for me before was it being so locked in this time in the eighties and there being a little couple things that I bumped up against.

Having to like just kind of take myself away from the fact that it's currently 2022 and just like imagining what it would be like if I saw this as a kid. Like if I saw this when I saw weird science Back the Future and stuff, that it would be that impactful to me as these I think having it being real connected to grounded science Yeah. Has has a big part of just giving me that little half half popcorn kernel. Paul? Chris, thank you so much.

I wanna come up as well. This is the conundrum that I'm in right now. Do I wanna give this four sideburns and a mustache like a four and a half? Or do I wanna give this five full sideburns? You're saying that mustache is a half?

Did you see that? I like that. I like four sideburns and a mustache. I'm gonna bump it up a half as well. I really really am strongly considering buying this movie, because I will revisit this movie sooner than later in my life.

Yeah. A day when I'm sick or I want that nostalgic warm blanket. It's also really hard to make something in the let's should we just talk about unpack the dramas from the eighties that are problematic? There's too many. Comedies as well.

This is a movie that really doesn't have a lot of those super glaring flaws. The only reason I don't know. It hits every gold it's supposed to hit. When we were talking about what dreams may come and I tried to give it a one hook and ended up giving it a nub. Half a hook.

Because you said no one should watch that ever. There's no reason to consume this. Mhmm. For me, there's almost no reason why no one shouldn't consume this. Yeah.

I just do there are a few things for me that keep it from being like in that such crazy elite company. It's four and a half. It's four it's four sideburns and Mitch's mustache. Alright. I'm gonna stay the same because, I mean, I came in Yeah.

I came in knowing exactly what this was. Yeah. Totally. I have such an intimate knowledge of it. Surprisingly, I'm like, oh, no.

That's this. Oh, yeah. The fucking original production popcorn house burnt down. But why does anybody know that? Your neon white men can't jump on steroids though.

Like, you are the fucking Terminator right now. You are the pink assists running up to the screen here. Oh my god. I'm never gonna not think about this. I'm so glad I played that for you.

Yeah. This is me running up with the screen. Fucking winged horse. What a weirdo. The only thing that keeps me from going up to a five is problems that I've had with the movie the whole time, which or or not the whole time, but as an adult watching a movie that I fell in love with as a kid.

There's some stuff in the beginning scenes of the movie that they're, like, kind of forcing the peep the positions into place to set up what the rest of the movie is. The introductory scenes for each one of the characters have some jokes that are, like, trying a little too hard. The I like Val Kilmer much more when he stops being the goofball a % of the time. Yeah. That first scene where they're that first scene where they're in the dorm room together and he's like, oh, is it this?

Oh, have you thought about that? Like, he's considering all these wacky, goofy things that are kinda goofy for the sake of being goofy. Toy. Yeah. Like, it's a little too much, and it takes me out of it a little bit.

But then I always have to every time I rewatch this movie, I have to, like, settle in past that for the movie to find its groove. And that's the only reason that I'm taking off one half of a liquid c $0.02 coin. Four and a half liquid carbon dioxide coins kept in a tube of liquid nitrogen. That's my rating for real genius. So Also, that coffee machine, I miss that.

I That flops the cup and pours for you? I can do that at any hospital. Okay. Terminator two style. By the way, I am Just use a little, just use a string.

A string to flip it back out. Yeah. Side note really quick. I am Paul acts badly on Instagram as well as Letterboxd. You can email us.

Ben's gonna go over some things while I double check our email. So sorry. Me on Letterboxd, @runbmc. That's run b e m c. Back to Paul.

Our email, reviewreviewpod@gmail.com. If you have thoughts about guests, thoughts about movies, thoughts about things that we may have missed, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Chris, do you have a letterbox? Do you have anything else you'd like to plug? Anything else you'd like to talk about before we go?

I don't have a letterbox, but I'll get one now. Letterboxed. Support us. We got someone. I'm on Instagram, and that's at panther underscore gold.

Good handle. And I'm on Twitter at Chris Olds v o. But, you know, whatever. I'll see you around. Come to the bar.

Get a drink. We'll hang out. But, yeah, listen for me on your radio and on your cartoons. It's coming. It's all coming together.

I love it. He's doing all sorts of stuff, like bringing us fucking gems, gifts. And not somewhere in time. We went up cumulatively between the three of us a full star, which in my opinion is wonderful. In our last episode, we went down a star and a half.

So this is a nice little bounce back. And similar to me with White Men Can't Jump, Chris felt like he brought something that was just a fucking slam dunk. Yeah. There was no way we were gonna lose here. Thank you so much.

Yeah. I had a great time. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you. And thank you for listening.

Bye.