Trailer Park Boys: The Movie (2006), directed by Mike Clattenburg

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Heavy Metal Love" by Helix

       College is a formative year for many of us. Taking classes in unique subjects in order to broaden our horizons or experimenting zexually or with mind-altering substances in order to expand our consciousness. Personally I ate a lot of sbarros and watched TV, but in my defense it was pretty good TV. Twin Peaks, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, we’re talking primo, netflix-before-it-lost-all-the-good-shit material here. Sure you could say I was wasting my life, but I was doing it while also being fat and depressed, and you can’t put a price on those kinds of memories.

Twin Peaks and all them couldn’t hold a candle to Trailer Park Boys though, at least on a personal level. I watched every episode, every movie, the Christmas special, saw their live show, I even sat through that shitty side project they did where they tried to be Little Britain. When their revival on Netflix began I was initially very excited, I had probably watched the original series in its entirety twice over by that point, but as it went on that eagerness steadily decreased. I was hanging on by a thread when the one-two punch of John Dunsworth (who played Jim Lahey in the series) dying and the fucking F is for Family looking ass cartoon finally killed my interest, and I broke away. I don’t follow what they’re doing now, and I don’t care to know, but because of that original run, and the memories, TPB will always have a place in my heart. And that’s just the way she goes.

So if you’re wondering why I reviewed that weird Trailer Park Boys pseudo-pilot that no one cares about almost a decade ago, it’s because that was the only bit of related media that I hadn’t seen up to that point. As it’s been almost a decade though, and I’m starting to relax my stance on only doing first-impression reviews, and because I didn’t feel like covering a Christmas movie, I decided why not tackle the actual Trailer Park Boys movie? I mean a lot of us spend the holidays drunk and/or high anyway, might as well watch how the professionals do it.

Released in 2006, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie was directed by Mike Clattenburg, written by Clattenburg and Robb Wells, and produced by Clattenburg and Ivan Reitman through Trailer Park Productions and Topsail Entertainment. Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith star as Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles: career criminals and documentary subjects (Julian’s idea) that reside at Sunnyvale trailer park in Nova Scotia. After their latest get rich quick scheme ends up going south, some destruction of property, robbing a tobacco store, typical stuff, Ricky and Julian are arrested and sentenced to 18 months in the local correctional facility. Not a big problem, Ricky and Julian have been to jail plenty of times, but when the duo get out they find things have changed for the worse. Lucy, Ricky’s on-again off-again girlfriend seems to have moved on, as his daughter Trinity has moved into the lucrative field of stealing barbecue grills. Trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey and his assistant/lover Randy are down their throats, looking for every opportunity to get them out of Sunnyvale and into prison. Not to mention they don't have any money, and you can’t get a proper weed operation going without a sizable investment upfront. What’s a trio of weirdos and crooks to do that doesn’t involve actual work? Common sense might suggest going for petty crimes to avoid the attention of the cops, or you could go for The Big Dirty: one last job with a haul big enough to retire on. Guess which one we go for?

TPB: TM occupies a weird space within the canon of the show. By the time of its release the show was a year away from its original conclusion, but rather than reflecting the ‘world’ as it was at that time, the film is more a reboot of the first season. The setup of Ricky and Julian returning to Sunnyvale after being in prison and Ricky having to rekindle his relationship with Lucy reconnect with his daughter, Julian getting into a relationship with another ex-con etc., with some noticeable differences like giving Bubbles greater prominence (he was only a minor character in S1). But it’s also not a reboot/retelling because they never show Julian hiring the documentary crew, even though they still do the cut-away interviews, and they do those cut-away interviews despite the fact the film isn’t filmed like a documentary whatsoever. I feel that the intent was to capture the essence of the show for moviegoers who had never seen it, which I suppose it does generally speaking, but for those who have seen the show something definitely feels off. Reminds me of Guest House Paradiso, Bottom’s feature film in every way but name. Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson played their characters from Bottom, they did jokes you’d have seen in Bottom, but because it’s removed however slightly from the Bottom formula the whole thing is thrown off-kilter. Looks pretty though.

The cast of the movie are the people from the show, with the notable exception of Trinity who was recast, likely to more closely resemble the character’s age from season 1. Everyone is exactly as you remember them from the show as well, but an extra tip of the hat has to go to Robb Wells. While TPB has always been an ensemble show by this point in its history Ricky was definitely who a lot of the story revolved around, and the film isn’t much different. Ironic though, since season 1 was built around Julian and now in this new version of events he feels like more of an ancillary character than Corey and Trevor. Ricky is a manchild, but he’s the kind of manchild Seth McFarlane wishes he could have written; Unintelligent, boorish, with very little in the way of impulse control, but possessed with a fierce love for his family, friends and community and simple joy de vivre that Thoreau would have appreciated after a joint or two. All of which Wells portrays with a confidence and sincerity that makes him lovable and relatable. You might not want to be Ricky, but I think many of us at one point in our lives wished we had a friend like him. If they could have cut some of Ricky’s screen time to give more lines to J-Roc I wouldn’t have complained.

A theatrical budget doesn’t just mean fancy new camera angles and warmer color grading either, it means a hot soundtrack! All those bands connected with the series make an appearance, Rush, Helix, April Wine, as well as several tracks by Canadian alt-rock band The Tragically Hip. There’s something surreal about watching a scene where the boys are about to start their crime and hearing the first 10 seconds of Spirit of Radio, as the show had conditioned the audience to not expect any music that isn’t pumped through a muffled car speaker. Solid choices though.

It is disappointing that there isn’t a real scheme. One of the thing that became a staple of TPB was the unique get rich quick schemes that the boys would try to pull over the course of a season, like repaving a driveway in hash so that they could hide it in plain sight, or building a large model train track across the Canadian-American border so that they could smuggle drugs across. Considering the characters go on and on about The Big Dirty you’d expect it be more involved, but the actual heist scene takes like 5 minutes. It’s funny I guess, but also a bit anticlimactic given the way the show would descend into chaos at the end of every season. We do get to see some car stunts by the end, courtesy of that movie budget, but it feels like a consolation prize since they couldn’t figure out a good way to get the boys in trouble. Lahey doesn’t go as much off the liquor-fueled deep end either as viewers had grown accustomed to, which was a major source of that chaos in the show. Aside from the naked breasts, and I’m not talking about Randy, everything comes across as very tame. Ricky and Julian don’t even fire their guns I believe, which for a TPB fan tells you everything you need to know about that.

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is the cliff notes version of Trailer Park Boys: the show. It introduces you to all the characters you need to know, shows what they’re all about, presents a typical kind of plot and then wraps everything up. If you had never seen Trailer Park Boys and didn’t want to dedicate the time to a then 6 season show, then this movie gives you an approximate experience with no muss or fuss. For a seasoned TPB fan however there’s less meat on the bone, beyond the novelty that comes with the silver screen. It likely comes as no surprise that I’m giving it the recommendation, but compared to the original run of the show and the movies afterwards it’s sort of an also-ran, which you should factor into your viewing priorities. Also the amount of liquor, dope, chicken fingers and pepperoni you’re consuming at the time, and whether you have any cigarettes. In any case, Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year to everyone! If I don’t die I’ll see you in October.

Annie Hall (1977), directed by Woody Allen

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "It Seems Like Old Times" by Diane Keaton

       This is a blog dedicated to genre films. Sci-fi, horror, westerns, animation, if it barely made back its budget and has never been within spitting distance of any Oscar that doesn’t have the word Special Effects engraved on it, then in its in my wheelhouse. Still there comes a time in any Z-list movie blogger's life when they need a shakeup. A change of pace to avoid falling into a rut and suffering that most dreaded of all conditions: burnout. It’s something I’ve been all too familiar with over the years, and it’s why the Marathon has taken on so many quirks and gimmicks. Keep yourself engaged and your readers will follow, or they would if I had any readers.

       So if you’re looking for a change of pace from genre films, which by their nature are a niche field, then you go for the most mainstream of all styles of cinema: the romantic comedy. And if you’re going to do a romantic comedy, you can’t just start trawling through the Hallmark Channel like a barbarian, you gotta go for the primo shit. Which is exactly what we’re doing today, as I cross another film off the old bucket list. At this rate I might even cover a Christmas movie this year, the sky's the limit.

       Released in 1977, Annie Hall was written and directed by Woody Allen, and produced by Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe as A Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Production. Allen plays Alvy Singer, a neurotic comedian (naturally) whose major passions, or rather obsessions in life are death and misery. It comes as no surprise that such a guy hasn’t had the best luck in romance; Married twice, divorced twice, and a sex life that reads like a Bergman film plays. Alvy’s last relationship with a woman named Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) didn’t end up much better, but over the course of the film we see the relationship play out. We see the initial meeting and the awkward first steps, the ups and downs, and ultimately the dissolution. Throw in a couple of jokes here and there and you’ve got yourself a movie, or at least a very long commercial for therapy.

       The 70’s were a period of experimentation and maturation for Woody Allen as a filmmaker. His singular attempt at the science fiction genre, Sleeper, came out during this time, as well as films built around the works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy. From my description it all seems rather straightforward, but in practice Annie Hall is a lot more metatextual. The opening of the film is Alvy breaking the 4th wall to address the audience, and throughout the film he acts as both character and chorus, existing within and outside the story being told. Rather than just tell other characters about his childhood he just brings them into the flashback to see it, and when a noisy guy behind him at the theater starts going on about being an expert on a writer’s work, Alvy literally pulls the writer from offscreen to tell the guy how wrong he was. Allen is no stranger to zany comedy, he built his career on it, and it’s interesting to see this sorts of crossroads between that and this more grounded, realist depiction of relationships. Alvy namedrops Groucho Marx at the film’s opening, and it does feel a bit as if the mustachioed Mar brother somehow wandered into a Fellini film.

       That idea also comes into play in regards to the nonlinear way that Allen depicts the relationship. We start the film with Alvy stating he and Annie have already broken up, then jumping to a point when their relationship was dissolving, then to their early days and so on and on. If we consider the 4th wall breaks as Alvy the storyteller injecting himself into the story to go off on tangents, the way the story is structured is similar to how we as people remember past relationships. The bad times might resurface sooner, especially if you’re someone like Alvy who revels in misery, but as you delve deeper the good times start to shine through as well. We get to see things as Alvy likes to remember them and the way things really were, which can and are two separate things when dealing with romance.

        Annie Hall has a couple of faces you might recognize, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, but of course the most important are its main actors, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Alvy Singer is exactly how most people imagine every Woody Allen character is like; A man permanently locked inside his own head. Someone supremely confident in his own intelligence, that he’s the smartest guy in the room, but completely unable to confront his own problems. Completely incapable of enjoying life, but addicted with letting people know how much he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s a type of character that can be both exhausting and irritating, and I would be inclined to agree except that we know that this about a relationship failing. This is not a Adam Sandler movie where the main character acts like a screaming toddler for 90 minutes and still ends up with the girl in the end, Alvy’s behavior leads him to taking certain actions and those actions have real consequences. And it’s those real consequences that lead to real growth.  While I wouldn’t say Allen is stepping out of his comfort zone, cue him making a joke about how comfort zones have always made him feel uncomfortable, he obviously knows what he’s trying to get out of the material.

       Then we have Diane Keaton as the titular Annie Hall, and where Allen feels very calculated, very controlled, Keaton instead feels completely natural, as if she had thrown away the script and was just being herself. Annie undergoes the most amount of growth over the course of the film, makes sense, and yet it’s not a radical departure either. Annie is still Annie, just with the confidence to be herself, which is the most engaging part to the audience, while Alvy is stuck largely on the physical and sexual. I believe this was the breakout role for Diane Keaton, and it was a success well earned.

       The moral of Annie Hall then is that things change. People change, feelings change, and therefore relationships change, or in this case end. A relationship doesn’t have to end in hate, or spite, or recriminations, or lying in a dark room listening to Morrissey albums (perish the thought), it can simply be the recognition of change. That you are the same people that you were before, that your feelings aren’t the same as before, that what you need from a relationship is something the other person can’t or won’t provide. So rather than trying to force feelings you don’t have, or clam up and let things fester, it’s okay to just end things as they are. Remember the good times, try to learn from the bad times, and see where the future takes us. Which all seems like a healthy way of looking at it to me, and if it means you’re listening to less Morissey than I’m all for it.

       Annie Hall gets an easy recommendation. While Allen had been a successful filmmaker for a decade at this point, it was the release of Annie Hall that kickstarted a particularly fruitful period of his career. Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days and so on and on, the kind of output to success ratio that other creative types dream of having. So if you are looking for a way into his filmography, this is the film to watch. Of if you’re not looking for an excuse to watch a dozen or so movies and just feel like watching one interesting movie that works too, I mean I won’t judge. Someone asked me to judge a cutest baby contest and by the time I was ready to decide instead of ribbons they asked to pass out social security checks, so believe me when I tell you about judging.

Crimewave (1985), directed by Sam Raimi

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Is It A Crime" by Sade

       Sam Raimi occupies an unenviable position in the world of indie directors that made good. He’s made some critically successful films but nothing as acclaimed as those films by David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino. He’s made some commercially successful films, but he’s not a household name like James Cameron. The awkward middle child of the bunch, although when you’ve got a couple million bucks in the bank that notoriety feels a little overrated.

Obviously I and a lot of people in my age group know Raimi through his adaptation of Spider-Man, but as a big nerd I knew him principally through his cult classic (a proper one this time) Evil Dead trilogy, particularly Army of Darkness as that was one they would play on TV. The blend of gorehound violence, surreal horror and cartoonish slapstick, with the snarky, tortured but utterly badass Bruce Campbell at the center of it all, played perfectly to a kid whose mind had been shaped by Tim Burton and Ren & Stimpy. Those three films, made up the entirety of what Raimi’s career was prior to getting the Spider-Man gig, and it wasn’t until years later when I was reading Bruce Campbell’s book “If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-movie Actor” that I learned about a film that Raimi made in between the release of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. Moreover it was written by a young Joel and Ethan Coen, who had also been extremely influential in developing love of cinema. Prime Marathon material, the kind of film this blog was made for, and yet the years come and go and I always end up finding something new that strikes my interest at the time. So instead of bothering with formalities and all that rigamarole, why don’t I just watch the movie like a normal, non-crazy person, and we can go from there. Sounds good? Good.

Released in 1985, Crimewave was directed by Sam Raimi, written by Raimi, Joel & Ethan Coen, and produced by Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell through Embassy Pictures and Renaissance Pictures. It’s a dark and stormy night in Detroit, and convicted serial killer Vic Ajax (Reed Birney) is set to be executed for his crimes. Vic vigorously maintains his innocence, as you are wont to do, and through flashback tells us his side of the story; Vic was a simple schmuck working for Odegard/Trend security company, installing cameras and striking out with the lovely Nancy (Sheree J. Wilson). Prior to this (although still part of the flashback) Mr. Trend had learned that Mr. Odegard was planning on selling the business out from under him, and in a fit of murderous rage hired a pair of exterminators, Faron Crush (Paul L. Smith) and Arthur Coddish (Brion James), to kill him. Which they do, with panache. Before he can celebrate his gruesome victory however, Trend discovers an important truth: if you hire exterminators to murder a person and they agree, then they’re probably fucking crazy, and when it comes to Crush and Arthur there’s no ‘probably’ about it. As a storm rolls into Detroit the situation immediately deteriorates after Crush and Arthur accidentally murder Trend as well when he comes by the scene of the crime, setting off a chain of events that spells disaster for everyone involved. Vic, Nancy, even an immaculately dressed Bruce Campbell won’t be able to escape the pull of this Crimewave ™ .

Being preoccupied with the Evil Dead trilogy as I was, you might watch Evil Dead II and assume that the decision to incorporate slapstick was a spontaneous one, maybe Raimi was watching some Tex Avery and was inspired. As it turns out, Raimi had already tested the comedy waters a couple years prior. Where ED2 utilized a bit of slapstick to establish the Ash’s degrading sanity and powerlessness against the Deadites, Crimewave starts off bizarre and just gets crazier from there. In the review of The Fugitive I said that the film had a classic Hollywood feel and it sort of rings true here as well, only instead of Hitchcock it’s The 3 Stooges and Don Knotts vehicles from the 60s. Or to go a step further, even just a full on cartoon -- suave Renaldo’s every move is punctuated by a sound effect, Arthur’s shock box for killing rats has a convenient human setting, and Crush and Arthur’s weirdly ADR-ed voices brings to mind the mumbled dialogue of old Popeye toons, there’s even a hallway gag for those needing a Scooby Doo fix. We’ve seen a couple of films on this blog that do something similar, Monkeybone comes to mind, but Crimewave has a dedication to showcasing that absurdity visually that’s impressive.

Crimewave is also the first film of Raimi’s career to have some money behind it, and you can definitely tell. Raimi is blowing up cars, he’s got building miniatures, there’s an elaborate scene involving a chase through a series of doors out of nowhere, and so on and on. This all came back to bite him in the ass when the box office came in and it turns out that they made back 5 thousand bucks off of a 2 million dollar budget, but as a viewer I really appreciate Raimi going all out. One because the rising chaos pairs so well to the film’s absurdist tone that it just couldn’t work without it, but also because it feels like Raimi is having fun. He’s a young hotshot director that has all these new toys to play with, actual sets et cetera, and because you never know if you’ll ever get this opportunity again he’s making the most of it. It’s the same feeling that makes watching the Evil Dead and to a less extent Darkman so fun, that the filmmakers are having fun seeing the kind of wild shit they can get on film.

As far as casting goes, any film that has Bruce Campbell going ham is on the right track. Reed Birney plays the milquetoast well as Vic Ajax, in spite of him constantly reminding me of the judge from Night Court. His chemistry, or more accurately anti-chemistry with Sheree Wilson’s Nancy is a good bit of comedy, her ability to convery the message ‘fuck off nerd’ entirely through body language should be commended. Paul L. Smith and Brion James are exactly how you’d imagine lunatic exterminators would be, a regular Laurel and Hardy if they were born near a toxic waste dump although strangely they never really work together that much in the film, despite being set up as a duo. Anyway, as with the special effects, everything is turned up to 11.

This all should tip you off to the fact that if you go into this film expecting a Coen Brothers movie, then you’re likely going to be disappointed. While there is a thread of the Coens in Crimewave, the common refrain throughout this film of Vic being a decent person and the universe punishing him for it does seem up their alley, the high energy, screwball nature of the thing runs against the more grounded temperament of their later films. Aside from Raising Arizona, which does venture into Tex Avery territory when the bounty hunter enters the picture. Don’t go into it expecting to forge an emotional connection with the characters or learning some universal truth about the human condition and you should be fine.

Going into it as a Raimi film though has its own set of troubles. Despite Bruce Campbell being in the film the film lacks a strong character like Campbell’s Ash to build the story around. Reed Birney plays a good dweeb but not a captivating one, and while the exterminators are fun there’s something about them that just doesn’t click. I’ve referenced the 3 Stooges and Laurel & Hardy and that is definitely the vibe they’re attempting, but it feels surface level. Like they establish Crush as the leader, the Jackie Gleason to Arthur’s Art Carney, but that dynamic is rarely explored. Hell Crush ends up doing most of the legwork in this film, so they should have paired them up more just to give Arthur more shit to do. At the very least it would’ve increased the body count, as this psycho killer comedy made by the Evil Dead guy is barely pushing past PG as it is. How the hell that ended up happening I couldn’t say.

Crimewave is not the highlight of either Sam Raimi or the Coen Bros. career, but as a silly spectacle I was entertained the whole way through, so I’ll give it the recommendation. If you liked The Mask with its big band retro aesthetic you’ll find something familiar here, or you could go down the 80’s horror comedy route and pair it with The Burbs or Fright Night, or even Evil Dead II if you wanted to be weird about it. Guaranteed to be better than death by electrocution!