Anvil and Sprocket Movie Review

Q: Are we not men? A: We are… Daft Punk?

On a bizarre, alien planet, a quartet of blue-skinned rockers are getting everybody to get up off their butts and jam. In fact, their entire world is so entranced by their music that they don’t notice an oncoming alien invasion until it’s far too late. In minutes, the live audience is gassed and the band abducted. With a spacebound hero hot on their heels, the aliens take their captives to their home world – Earth – where they change the colors of their skins, fabricate Earthling memories, place them under the influence of mind control devices, and set them loose as a hit pop act called “The Crescendolls.”

We are stern. And resolute. Don’t forget resolute.

In Deewaar: Let’s Bring Our Heroes Home, Bollywood produces a stark, grim image of prisoners of war. Even though their war is thirty-three years gone, Maj. Ranvir Kaul and his Indian soldiers are still kept in a prison camp in Pakistan. Conditions are bad as the soldiers work long hours with little food and water. Kaul and his soldiers keep alive, however, surviving on the hope that they will one day escape and live to see their homes again.

City boy meets wholesome country girl. They fight, flirt, share bubbly drinks, and fall in love. He moves, she follows and is rejected. She pines, then moves on to become a pop star. It’s Romeo and Juliet meets Grease: the Bollywood movie, Taal ! If you’ve never seen a Bollywood movie, this is a good one to start with. Cue drums and dancing!

Singing, Dancing, Cheese…yup!

I would have enjoyed the movie had these two not been in it.

I couldn’t resist. I knew it would be bad, but it looked so pretty.

The Good: Bombastic scenery matches bombastic musical themes perfectly. The opening sequence sent chills down my spine. Minnie Driver, though lip-syncing her songs, makes an entertaining Carlotta. I forgive her for not singing. Heck, most of the supporting cast is great.

The Bad: The truly wretched new song tacked on the end. Might be nice on its own, but it doesn’t fit thematically with the rest of the tunes.

The Really Ugly: Webber and Schumacher made me cry, in a bad way. Because one of my favorite musicals has been tarnished by the lamentable singing of the two leads. Granted, Emmy Rossum did get a little better as the movie went on, but I couldn’t fathom how her character would become a star with that voice. In the opera world, no less. Gerard Butler screamed his way through the songs attempting to out-Crawford Crawford.

The sad thing is, I think this movie would have been spectacular had some other singers been involved, either on screen (preferable) or at least providing the singing voices.

A lively cast of characters…

Tim Burton and Danny Elfman team up again for Nightmare Before Christmas: The Seq – Um. I mean, Corpse Bride. I had reservations about it the first time I saw the trailer – if you’re not going to use music from the film you’re trying to promote, why bother? Even worse, the music they used was the “What’s This” number from…yeah, Nightmare Before Christmas. Not like the animation style was already drawing the comparison there, buddy.

The Lollipop Guild they’re not.

Before Team America: World Police, before Baseketball, even before South Park, there was Alferd Packer!: The Musical, Trey Parker’s college film about the first convicted cannibal in the United States, done in the style of Oklahoma! (the musical). The title was changed to Cannibal!: The Musical when Troma released it, as they figured out no one would know who the heck Alferd Packer was. Not only will you get vintage Parker tunes and quips, you’ll get a history lesson too. What more could you ask for? (Don’t answer that!)

“Come on, boys! It’s time to kill vaudeville again!”

Every time it rains, it rains penny-sized sequins from Heaven. Or, at least, that’s what the props in a song and dance number from this 1981 musical would have you believe. Given that a large mass of pennies falling from the sky would likely result in death and widespread panic, it’s probably best that they went with the sequins.

“You know, I really thought we’d draw a bigger crowd.”

As the elderly Cole Porter watches his younger self playing piano on the stage, he wonders aloud if this is going to be “one of those avant-garde things,” reminding the Director that musicals are supposed to be entertaining. The question we ask as the audience is, can it be both?

One of these is the artist and the other is the manager. I won’t ask you to guess which is which.

Something very odd happened in the 80’s. Movie after movie emerged with scripts built around what was essentially the same plot: A wacky group of characters engages in pointless wild and wacky hijinks until they either witness a crime or come into possession of evidence of a crime – usually involving a prominent politician/religious figure/pillar of the community – at which point they engage in wild and wacky hijinks while on the run from the various hitmen and thugs sent after them.

The 1988 Michael Nesmith production Tapeheads is definitely no exception to these standards. But it is a perfect example of why these movies were made in the first place.

If Roscoe didn’t kill rap, then nothing ever will…

Josh and Ivan are two childhood friends who grew up together, played together, studied together, and got dead-end jobs together. The intrepid heroes are watching their lives dribble by while they dream of bigger and better things – until Ivan arranges a stunt that manages to get them fired from their jobs as night watchmen.

Together, the two try to forge a new, exciting life for themselves as videographers. The going is slow, at first. Aside from video wills, funerals, and wedding parties, their primary customers are Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n’ Waffles and record producer Mo Fuzz, who insists that they produce music videos “on spec” (meaning, “for free”). If not for their rent-free office space that they share with an enigmatic, free-spirited artist, Josh and Ivan – the “Video Aces” – would go out of business in record time.

Then, fate steps in.

Ah, the 80’s.

Josh and Ivan are called in to film a music video for the godawful heavy metal band The Blender Children for their latest single, “Mr. MX-7.” The video – containing everything wrong about 80’s hair metal videos – would probably never go anywhere, if not for two wild coincidences. First, The Blender Children are squashed flat by a falling sattelite. Second, the Video Aces accidentally dub the audio from “Mr. MX-7” over a funeral video. A funeral video that – conveniently enough – syncs up perfectly with the song.

Overnight, Josh and Ivan are catapulted to stardom, giving them the chance to stage a comeback for their favorite band, The Swanky Modes, by hijacking a live-by-sattelite Menudo concert.

Featured cameo by Weird Al as… Weird Al.

“Loopy.” That’s definitely a word that describes Tapeheads. So is “disjointed.” There’s a lot of very forgettable material in this movie – not the least of which is the plug-and-play plot involving a blackmail video that accidentally winds up in the Video Aces’ library. On the other hand, the forgettable plot and its textbook twists and turns helps to string together some incredibly memorable moments, such as the string of cameos from people like “Weird Al” Yankovic, Ted Nugent, Doug E. Fresh, and Jello Biafra (as an FBI agent who deadpans, “Did you see what we did to the Dead Kennedys?”). And, of course, there are moments of solid comedy gold like the commercial for Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n’ Waffles featuring the portly manager who busts mad rhymes in gold chains with waffle medallions and dances with his “Frygirls,” or the two assassins sent after the Video Aces disguising themselves as a rock band called The Hitmen.

Which is, in the end, the reason so many movies in the 80’s had the same plot. Memorable, funny bits are easier to come up with than sustainable 90-minute comedies. You could just string these bits together and hope they work, but without a coherent plot your movie will very quickly fall apart. These one-size-fits-all plots are less creative triumphs and more frame stories off of which you can hang any number of comic beats. And among the movies that follow this pattern, Tapeheads is probably the wildest, craziest, and funniest of them all.

Roscoe requests that you rebound in the direction of the oncoming chorus.