I first saw this movie fairly soon after it was released. I didn't enjoy very much of it other than the segment at the beginning with Arsenio Hall. In the meantime I've become quite a big fan of "B movies" and a lot of the people in this film are now near and dear to my heart. I think I have a better understanding of what they were trying to do in this film now, but I don't think on the whole it was very successful. The film remains fun for fans of B movies but not nearly as funny as I think it tried to be.
It's certainly watchable, as it is fast-moving and features many memorable faces from not only B movie lore but popular culture at large. For example in the same segment you can see legendary exploitation director Russ Meyer ("Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill!") and stand-up star Andrew "Dice" Clay. The film's epilogue features Carrie Fisher of "Star Wars" fame and director/character actor Paul Bartel ("Eating Raoul") in a funny spoof on educational style exploitation films. Monster movie fandom icon Forrest Ackerman appears as the President in the extended sci-fi sequences, Phil Hartman does a sports announcer voice, Arsenio Hall is a man terrorized by his own apartment, Lana Clarkson (now famous for very undesireable reasons in connection to Phil Spector) is an amazon woman, B.B. King urges tolerance and sympathy towards "Blacks without Soul", Henry Silva appears as himself to spoof Jack Palance's television gig in "Bullsh** or not", and so on and so forth. You could have a pretty good time watching this movie just trying to spot random celebs who came from the B movie world and others who became big stars later (Michelle Pfeiffer for example).
But the bits and pieces don't add up to a good film, and the film fatally fails to walk the tight line required for a "B" type movie, even an expensive one with big stars, between its camp and its serious side. The sci-fi segments in particular fall pretty flat and I have to imagine would fail to amuse anyone but geeks like myself who recognize some of the "inside" jokes. Surely the outer space scenario being depicted is ridiculous, but it actually looks and feels quite a bit like an older sci-fi film (specifically the late 50s "Queen of Outer Space") without having much of its charm or the sense of innocence about it. With something like the Zuckers' "Airplane" you can see how cheezy the disaster movies they were spoofing were but at the same time the film itself was more outrageously campy and silly than any real disaster film. But with this film, it feels like the film-makers felt the source material was goofy enough that the laughs should follow from simply a reproduction of some of the genre's original camp elements -- they failed to take it to another level where it would become funny in its own right.
A lot of the other segments fail to take off as well, or overstay their welcome. The bit in the hospital, the bit about "Two IDs".... a lot of these parts just take a long time and end up having no punch line. The majority of the sketches are basically funny premises beaten into the ground and done in a self-serious style that wastes the opportunities for humor. I just do not feel this movie's conviction -- it seems like they were afraid to be too zany but they were also trying really hard to seem "irreverent" while in fact the film rarely strays into controversial territory.
It's certainly watchable, as it is fast-moving and features many memorable faces from not only B movie lore but popular culture at large. For example in the same segment you can see legendary exploitation director Russ Meyer ("Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill!") and stand-up star Andrew "Dice" Clay. The film's epilogue features Carrie Fisher of "Star Wars" fame and director/character actor Paul Bartel ("Eating Raoul") in a funny spoof on educational style exploitation films. Monster movie fandom icon Forrest Ackerman appears as the President in the extended sci-fi sequences, Phil Hartman does a sports announcer voice, Arsenio Hall is a man terrorized by his own apartment, Lana Clarkson (now famous for very undesireable reasons in connection to Phil Spector) is an amazon woman, B.B. King urges tolerance and sympathy towards "Blacks without Soul", Henry Silva appears as himself to spoof Jack Palance's television gig in "Bullsh** or not", and so on and so forth. You could have a pretty good time watching this movie just trying to spot random celebs who came from the B movie world and others who became big stars later (Michelle Pfeiffer for example).
But the bits and pieces don't add up to a good film, and the film fatally fails to walk the tight line required for a "B" type movie, even an expensive one with big stars, between its camp and its serious side. The sci-fi segments in particular fall pretty flat and I have to imagine would fail to amuse anyone but geeks like myself who recognize some of the "inside" jokes. Surely the outer space scenario being depicted is ridiculous, but it actually looks and feels quite a bit like an older sci-fi film (specifically the late 50s "Queen of Outer Space") without having much of its charm or the sense of innocence about it. With something like the Zuckers' "Airplane" you can see how cheezy the disaster movies they were spoofing were but at the same time the film itself was more outrageously campy and silly than any real disaster film. But with this film, it feels like the film-makers felt the source material was goofy enough that the laughs should follow from simply a reproduction of some of the genre's original camp elements -- they failed to take it to another level where it would become funny in its own right.
A lot of the other segments fail to take off as well, or overstay their welcome. The bit in the hospital, the bit about "Two IDs".... a lot of these parts just take a long time and end up having no punch line. The majority of the sketches are basically funny premises beaten into the ground and done in a self-serious style that wastes the opportunities for humor. I just do not feel this movie's conviction -- it seems like they were afraid to be too zany but they were also trying really hard to seem "irreverent" while in fact the film rarely strays into controversial territory.