God Awful Movies - 292: The God Question

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

On this week's episode, guest masochist Jessica Bluemke Greiff joins us for an atheist review of The God Question, the story of waiting for software to install, then waiting for software to run, then being upset that the software didn't run correctly. Over and over again. For an entire movie. --- If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful --- Hear more from Jess on The Friendly Atheist podcast, or on Cooper Duper. Check out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus. Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/?fref=ts All our other music was written and performed by Morgan Clarke. To hear more from him, check him out here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/

They built a computer that doesn't work. Yeah, right, actually. Yeah. Compute yourself. One job and it's to compute shit and then also let me know what you think. Right, yeah, I gotta have that output. It's a real two-sided coin there. Yeah, they invented my iPhone.

Yeah, right. No, they invented like a sassy teenager. Yes. So did you finish it? I don't know. Oh, you mom. Mom. We knew mom.

Not awful. Movie. Movie. Movie. Who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be who will be 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend Eli Bosnick Eli. How are you this fine afternoon, sir? I'd love to tell you that Noah But I can I demand once an hour you tell me how you're feeling All right, so we're also excited to welcome a brand new guest mask is Jessica Blumkey Gryff is a freelance writer and the co-host of the friendly Atheist podcast. Just welcome god off movies

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Awesome, awesome. We don't usually get that after people, like before they've watched the movie, they're like, yeah, yeah, no, I'd love to come on afterwards, usually not so much. So.

You know what, I love terrible movies, and this one was terrible. So we made with the terrible for you. Yeah, exactly. It genuinely may maybe the worst movie I have ever seen. Like it just in terms of straight up and down no plot and nothing happens. Yeah. It really like even it's a contender. It's probably in the top 10 for us. And we've done like 300 of these damn things now. So boy. All right. So I'll let you do the

honor. So tell us just what would be breaking down today? A really excellent film, I don't call them movies, I call them films, called The God Question in which we don't answer The God Question. And no, we do not. And we bitchily don't answer. Oh, spoilers. Should I, is it okay if I spoil the twist ending for your listener? Yeah, oh by all means. Yeah. Yeah, nobody fucking knows.

Right, spoiler alert. There will be no plot. There's nothing to spoil. None. I did watch this movie twice through. I did watch the ending three times through because the first time I watched it, I was like, did I fall asleep briefly in this movie? Right, right. I don't remember falling asleep, but certainly that couldn't be how this movie ended. Oh, and Eli, how bad was this movie? Well, if you love getting the silent treatment from your significant other, but they don't possess the answer to a question that nine-year-olds regularly are able to solve. You will love this movie. How did anyone think this was a good, this is like installing updates do not turn off your computer the movie, right?

How did anyone think this was going to be a good idea, the chief thing, the verb that you would use to describe what the characters do in this movie is wait. Yep, wait. Wait and talk about spouses. Well, you got to just stop and kill the time. Shit. Shit.

Second in the list. Right, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's only because this was a time before Candy Crush. If this was a time after Candy Crush, we'd have watched these motherfuckers by Candy Crush. No question. In real time. Yeah. And to be fair, I would have so much more enjoyed a movie where he's just like,

oh, Sprinkly Ball. Sprinkly Ball. Let me see. Let me see. All right, so is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best to be in the worst at? I would like to nominate this for the best worst clear moral stamps. Okay.

All right, yeah, that's going to make more and more sense as we go. So I was gonna go with best worst computer voice. All right, so like, they got some dude in there that at least at the beginning was kind of trying to do the computerized voice, but he just kind of gives up by the end. He's like, this is, he gets bored with it. And also he's like 14 or so many

sounds that it's just ridiculous. And of course, I'm going to take the easy one. I'm going to go with best understanding of how computers work. I think I understand how computers work less well after seeing this move. Absolutely. You have to go back to like TV shows from the early 80s to get a understanding of computers this bad. They might as well have been using Ghost Rider from the show Ghost Rider. They're just trying to jam a punch card into the side of a MacBook. The entire film.

It's a vacuum tubes. Change out the vacuum tubes. Tell me who Jesus was. Bang. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha wait a minute before we break it down. So we're going to take a quick break and when we return, we'll dive into all the dormancy of the God question. Hey podcast listener, I'm No Illusions. And I'm Eli Bosnick. And I'm Jessica Blumke-Greyf. You know, there are many reasons to be a customer of this week's sponsor, Adam and Eve.com, like the fact that they got their start as a master's thesis and family planning. Or that they were the first mail order contraceptive business in the US. Maybe you like it because the oodles of free stuff you get on top of your order.

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They do. Yes. And so I said, how will you sell the sandwich with the bread, but you won't just sell me the bread? And what did she say? Well, she was very rude. Guys, guys, if I can have your attention, I think I've got the idea for our next big Christian movie. Excellent. What is it? Okay, it's about a super computer that discovers the existence of God.

Oh, like physically? Like it finds him? Well, no, no, it's a super computer. So they put all the knowledge in the world into it, right? And like, I'm mixed it around and then it figures out that God exists. Right, that's not how computers work. It's not?

No, no, computers just compute. Like you can put data into them and they can perform data functions, but computers are just machines. No, I see the confusion. This would be a super computer. Right, but a super computer is just a computer. It's not a computer.

I don't understand because superman is not a computer. Okay, let me try this. See this, this is a calculator, right? Yes, yes. And this is a second calculator. Right, so both of our calculators, they can add and subtract and divide and stuff. Right, obviously.

But if I put my calculator on top of her. Is Jesus lovely? Tell me I must know. Still calculator is just two calculators now. Do you understand? Oh, I get it. I said it, God. Okay, okay.

So in the movie, it needs to be a super duper computer. You know what? Let's just write the movie. Yeah. And we're back for the breakdown. And we're gonna open up on four folks standing around a monitor at the SRAG computing laboratory at MIT, I guess in the near future. Yeah, and we're going to make it zero seconds into this movie before they let us know that

microphone hiss will be the main character. Oh my God. It's my first note. This movie's audio is brought to us by a Fisher Price karaoke microphone in a goddamn submarine. And ironically later in this movie, we're going to see so many close-ups on a microphone like the presentation of this computer and it's deeply ironic. Right?

Especially because there's some moment where the guy character will be like, can you reduce the background noise? And I'm like, yes, please please Please reduce the back but first he turned the volume all the way up and then reduce the static See now the movie's making sense later the computer is going to give him the silent treatment. It's just trying to get a room tone All right, so all of these computer programmers they're gathered around this supercomputer and they make the mistake of showing us the program that's being a laughing mistake. The goody here is amazing.

They might as well just have a screen that says run supercomputer, now go and parentheses, and parentheses, and parentheses. So boy. Yeah, so he hits enter. The computer just starts computing away. And we know it's computer you away, by the way, because the increasing rate of the pong sound effect that goes with all computing.

Yep. I think the problem I had was I genuinely do not understand how computer programming works, but I'm sure this wasn't part of it. Yeah. You know enough to know it's not this. Yes. Right.

So yes, so their supercomputer goes off in super computes and then we get the credits. Now, a talented filmmaker can make anything seem creepy in the credits with the right music and the right. We do not have a talented filmmaker. So we're just listening to creepy music and looking at a certain porn music note. The computer is sneaking up to murder you in a Spanish tell-in development. Like what tone are they trying to establish for this movie? No clue.

Such a good question. Yeah, break because there's like a sci-fi element in a horror element at the beginning here. And neither of those are going to turn out to be the genre. Well, and then they try to like kind of squeeze in a little romantic comedy type deal. And that didn't go anywhere. Yep. Also, did you notice all of the names on this movie? Like all of the names of the actors sound like they're almost celebrities you've heard of, but not quite. Yes. Yes. Like Kate Damon.

Man, didn't know. Kate Blanchett, no. Kate Damon. Yeah, right. No, it's like S. Errinson. I think I saw him in Lord of the Rings. Right. Yeah, exactly.

No, it was like, you remember that, you know, that meme about the Japanese baseball game with the American team, they just kind of was like that. Credits. Credits by the off brand soda. You bought it. The Russian grocery store around the corner. Exactly. Join a hot dog by an app first. Joker Joe love that's not what soda I want.

I'm gonna say it. So this is where we're going to meet our main character, Steve. And so MIT has created a super brain that's like a computer, but better, I guess. For what I can tell, they just invented Google. Yes, yes. Because literally they're like, this computer can see everything on the internet at the same time. It's like, yeah, that's what Google does. That's why when you search for a thing, it finds it very quickly.

Look, look at how many results you return. It's such a very, very short time. Yeah. So, right, right. The thing is, is that this entire movie is built around. They have this huge breakthrough in computing, but the people involved with this movie don't know what that would mean. No, they think that like the peak of computing will be when a computer is a guy. Yeah, exactly. Well, they keep talking about how any minute now computers will be smarter than people.

I'm like, are you fucking getting me to? Didn't that happen like in the 70s? Or the fuck of you, Ben. The minute Dave could feed punch cards into that room size computer faster than I can do math in my head, they beat. They won. All right. But so our main character, Stephen, is calling all the people back at MIT, going, like, man, I thought I was going to get the push button on the super computer. You guys started the super computer without me. Oh, God.

Oh. Does this guy look to you like they wanted to get JK Simmons or Hugh Laurie and could get neither? So they just like made a mashup monster. Okay. Yes. All right. Actually, oh, unpopular opinion.

I don't think he was that bad considering the script he was given. He did some acting work, I guess. Like, there were a lot of things that were very, very bad about this movie. His acting was not good, but I don't think it was very, very bad. And that's an improvement on the overall movie. Yeah, right. No, he actually really did stand out from the rest of this film to the point where you felt sorry for it.

For sure. All the other actors are terrible. The script is ridiculous. The room his has more lines than him. But yeah, he was actually a decent like you know, he's not like, you know, you can't carry a fucking movie with his charm or anything. He was a decent actor compared to what else was going on here. I have him down to my notes as Anthony Boring-Dane. So, oh, mind to have a pun in it. Try harder. All right.

It's fucking rude. I have a 10 minutes. All right. So, Steven is going, so he's apparently at some conference about computer stuff. They don't know any better than that. So he goes into, he's at this conference. He goes into the next talk. There's a lady who's like getting ready for our talk and of course everybody's still

talking about the big MIT breakthrough that they can't really be specific about. And so the speaker, the woman who's about to give the talk, turns to this guy and he's like, oh, you were worked on that computer? He's like, yeah, sure, dude. And she's like like is it true that Your computer can read all of the books in the world and understand every little nuance in just a fraction of a second What would every little nuance You must read the great Gatsby the way that people are dressed. It's a symbol.

She's wearing the blue dress when she gets hit by the car. Nub knows motorboat. Well, and so the lady playing the speaker here, I'm left wondering whether stare into both the past and future simultaneously was a stage direction. She's terrifying. She, like at first I thought she just has like very big prominent eyes, but for some reason it was just this scene she looked like she was seeing a ghost the whole time. Yeah.

She looks like it's the person who G Gweneth Paltrow sucks the youth out of They took her down from the attic or something they were hanging their most of the time and they let her make a movie once or something So so and then she asks you turns to the guy she's like so this big computer could it answer Life the universe and everything for us if we asked yeah, the hitch hitchhiker's guideness of this all was hustling. Oh, because whereas Douglas Adams had a funny grasp on philosophy and came back with a purposefully vague, so the hitchhiker's guide, people go to the soup. It's a deep, exact same premise. They go to this computer and say,

what's the answer to life, the universe and everything? And wait five million years or however long it is and the answer was 42. And then the question, which is, I'm so sorry you guys, which is a funny bit for a sci-fi satire. It does not a movie make. No, no, not a compelling drama. And let's keep in mind that all kind of other shit also happened at headshikers guy, right? Like that wasn't the only, it wasn't just

that over and over and over again for 90 goddamn. Like if the hitchhikers guy movie was instead of all the adventuring that happened just over and over again, all of those like people gathering at the computer and the computer says 42 and then they Fuck off for a couple hundred years and come back and like how about now they're like, oh, yeah, yes, still 42 for sure and then we watch that eight more time. Yeah, that would be this movie right that is Right, it's worse than Vogue on poetry. Yeah, but this entire scene is redeemed because they introduced the concept of the movie could your supercomputer tell us whether or not God exists and For some miraculous reason they have put a heckler Third row back girl my hero my soul mate My one and my only who spends this entire scene being like, that's a fucking stupid question. I can tell you, no, there's no doubt.

She does say you're not gonna find religion in a computer, which like, yeah, yeah, you nailed it. You got it in one end of scene. Right, end of movie actually. I have no no. At one point, she mocks the conceitedist movie so thoroughly that the main character has to turn around and go, no, no, that is the plot of this movie.

I'm sure you're right. Please stop objecting. Also, so if you had access to a super computer that could tell you all the secrets of the universe, I feel like whether or not there's a god is probably a question that is up there, but I feel like is their life after death is a more compelling question

and also one that's slightly more answerable? I don't know. I just do not think that whether or not God exists is the first thing that MIT professors are going to look at. I don't know that it would make my top 25. Yeah, right. I would be on like, did that girl really look at me from across the bar before I got

Now that Libby Van Locke only really wanted to be friends is there an omnipotent demon that watches all the baby cancer Yeah, right Okay, I figured I figured it was square is the one with the four sides right? Okay So and now we over here some the news again. Geez. These cheap bastards couldn't even afford to make the fake news footage. We just hear the news from off to the side now. And also, this is like the third time that this movie has been like, the news is filling you in on another plot point. Fuck you. We're 15 minutes into this thing.

But we do over in addition to getting a lot of our plot from news, we also overhear a lot of people talking in like vague terms about this because the woman just did this exposition dumb in like 22 seconds. I'm like, here's what's going on. They're being shut down because racism, I guess. I don't know. Sounds okay to me actually. I'm like, here's what's going on. They're being shut down because racist are my guests. I don't know. Sounds okay to me actually.

Yeah, right. So the super MIT computer has been shut down because it was taking down websites, mostly terrorist sites and racist sites. And I'm like, so the religious ones, huh? Right. Yeah, the computer is cancel culture. The Venn diagram is a complete circle. Yeah.

So the next morning, we watched the news some more than another goddamn news exposition dumb where they tell us that the FBI is now closing down all the supercomputer brain things everywhere. So as I remember I said on the show yet, but I did watch this movie twice because the first time I was so baffled by it that I did not think I could come on this show and say anything about it because nothing happened in the movie. So I was like, I'm sure I missed something.

I'm sure I just had a one, two, any glasses of wine, classic Jessica. No, no, no, but the second time around, I did go ahead and transcribe almost all the text I saw on screen. Oh, good. Cause usually he does that. So you're actually filling in what you're doing. But would you mind would it be okay if I just like did a little read through it? Okay. So we're looking at a very generic news screen. And it's got a woman talking. And then sometimes a congressman who is weirdly is he British or does he just have like

a British fucking accent he's a US congressman he's like foghorn leghorn trying to sneak through British custom. Okay, okay, so so we have this kairan and it's not a running kairan it's just like blurps random things out. Right. They couldn't figure out how to do the scroll. Yep. And I could not believe these weird like stories they were

telling us about with no. Okay. I'm just going to read them and we'll discuss okay. Market's down before open financials up pre market. What? It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. New England lobster catch highest in a decade.

Well, this is Massachusetts. They figure that's what they're probably talking about. That's going to be top, yes. Three tornadoes touched down outside Oklahoma city. Well, I just touched down. Yes. In Indiana, man finds dinosaur fossil on farmland. Well, that disproves evolution. Okay. And that's a human interest story.

That is not chiron worthy. Like if I'm watching MSNBC and something takes by a man finds dinosaur fossil, what are we doing? This might be my favorite one because it's police vehicle chase in Chicago leads to death of two car thieves. Now first of all, as a copywriter, that sentence is eight words too long. Right. Yes, thank you.

Also, I just like police vehicle chase as if that's a term everyone uses. And like the deaths of two car thieves, that's called editorialized. Yeah, it's right. You say suspects, that's a bad, or just say two dead after Chicago police chase. Fucking done. Right, exactly, exactly. These two deaths of two is fine. But two car thieves is a really judgemental saying, I don't think they can do that.

And then this is a very good one. Also because it sort of is the one that kind of skews the rest of them because Anderson pulls out of US tennis open citing leg injury. This is not ESPN. Like I don't think somebody dropping out of the US open is necessarily like I run worth it right. Well, we will learn later on that in this universe, they put like crank calls into the news. So yes, they do. You know, they need better producers. They need better everything.

And then we have to we have to introduce his, I don't know, we're Alexa thing. Yeah. So he's just like, Hey, my butler computer butler. Why don't you introduce yourself to the audience? And I like that he has a little like cartoon butler, like he has a clippy. Yeah. Yeah.

Like we have to personify this thing because it's for toddlers. Well, what's amazing about this movie is that someone obviously was like a die hard fan of Ask Jeaves. And they were like, you'll see in the future, Ask Jeaves is going to be everywhere. I would honestly watch a Ducky a memory about how like the dark internet took down Ask Jeaves because he knew too much.

See? Already making better movies. All right, so now we're going to cut to Amherst, which is where this guy works because just in case anybody was in danger of knowing what the hell was going on The plot is that he programmed a computer at MIT while working at UMass Amherst, which they will Alternately call Amherst or UMass just win average, you know or an IT, right? Yeah, yep. Yeah So okay, but he's there. He's clocking in on his supercomputer, which is not the super computer this movie's about keep up this is a different super duper computer you can see the stupidity of the writers in action as they're introducing this scene it's like all right but they shut

that one down so he's got a different super computer that's just as super at his office. So yeah, and so he sit down at his news. It is a little super computer. I love there's this moment where they have to like, I guess the writers felt that they needed to show us that his supercomputer was super computing. So he asks for a status report, but the computer's like, I'm just, I'm fucking computing, man.

I'm computing the fuck out of this shit. Yeah, I'm gonna want to fuck you up me to say. It cannot be overstated how many human beings you could fool into thinking something is a super computer with a half decent chatbot apparently. Yeah, I was just like, hello, Dave. Oh my God, that thing's got a fucking soul. All right.

Also, he walks into this little office and this guy immediately is like, oh, you got a package, which is I've never seen a package that was more obviously a bomb. Right. And then he put, he's like, okay, thanks. Put it down. And just like, we never see that package again. Like for being less than 90 minutes, this movie has so much fluff in it. There is five minutes of shit happening across the 90 minutes.

I had to go back to this and just stare at this for so long to figure it out. Why the fuck was this package here? I eventually figured out, you know what this package is? This big, giant, fluffy package? Yes. That's the program. It's the computer. No.

Yes. package. Yes, that's the program. It's the computer. No. Yes, instead of emailing it to him, he sent him, I don't the printout of the shit. I get it. I get it. Well, you know, you get 43 hours out of this. I don't know if you know this or value. I know there's a deleted scene somewhere of him trying to plug that package into a USB port. That's footage. He's just flipping it over and then flipping it back and flipping it over. I bet he just put the whole package in like a standard Xerox scanner and just scanned that and it's like I did it. I see you're computed. It's so fucking stupid.

Link, so great is the misunderstanding of technology in this movie that they could have done anything at this point. I'd be like, yeah, okay. In the near future, I guess that's how a computer works. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, right. The computers regressed over the last seven years.

Yeah. So, and then, so is Buddy Allen who is with him at the conference at the beginning shows up. Now, Allen will just be here to deliver latent conversational prompts. Boy, boy, boy, Alan is a massive character. He has, like, they hint at so many things about his character, none of which come into fruition. Like, no, he takes a character arc in this at all,

but this guy, like somehow gets less three-dimensional as the movie goes on. It's so weird, because they keep adding things to his personality as though that's like, well, now he has another characteristic. Therefore, he's a fully fleshed out character. He's a wife and kids and a shed.

If you replaced every shot in this movie of Alan with a speaking spell, it would make zero. I would like that better. Yeah. Yeah. The cow does go, Moo Allen. Yeah. Right. So yeah. So he sits down in the office with him. He's like, so, you know, they have a little bit of conversation. He's like, so anyway, getting back to the plot. I'm like, God, damn it. Oh, buddy. You guys did not earn being self-referential. It's fucking writing in this movie. So clunky. I felt like the actors needed to wear steel-toed boots.

Take that movie. Right. He goes, man, it's a shame they shut down that computer. We were going to find out whether there's a god. He's like, you know, I just don't happen to have the code for the super god answering computer brain right here in my package. Okay. So what he is saying is he already has a computer is powerful as the MIT computer. And he also has the code for the computer. So what the fuck are we doing here? Like, why did that matter if it was easily like we can replicate this easily? So why did it matter that the FBI shut down the MIT one? Like this just nullifies everything that's happened thus far in the movie. Yes, yes. As weak as the stakes were as us far, we've just eliminated

them. Yup. No stakes. There's zero stakes. Yeah. And we've revealed that the people who made this movie think that when super computing comes to fruition, you're going to need to send your buddy a copy like it's missed too, if he was super cute. I was like, I used to live in Montana before there was Netflix. And so we had one DVD copy of Prison Break that we passed around the staff and everybody was watching prison break. And I would rather watch a movie about my friends watching prison break. And I would.

Oh, so much better. Absolutely. And then, okay, then we get the dumbest and most useless scene in a movie where that is a damn competitive category. We get to see where the Treasury Department ladies shows up for his by annual exposition review. Oh, my cr... And she's like a temp. Yeah, right. She even walks in going like,

I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing. It's amazing. The thing I love is when she comes in, she has to scan her fingerprint for security reasons. And so she like buzzes him and he said, do you have to scan your fingerprint? And she's like, it's not working. He's like, cool, come in, I have no questions. Yeah, no nail in the security shit.

And this, this scene only serves the highlight that they don't know how supercomputers or the treasury works. She's like, well, I'm here to check and see that this computer's doing good, but I don't know anything because they couldn't write any questions about the treasury. So how's it going? Good.

So they just sent this woman in blind and be like, hey, I've had jobs where you have to interview people and you'll get a little biography and an idea of what the piece you're gonna write write is so you ask them questions that are relevant to whatever you're doing. There you go. You don't just walk in and be like, Hey, I'm just what do you want to talk about? What do you think people would read?

Do you watch Juan Division? I don't know what it's for. I had the weirdest dream last night. So okay. And the dumbest fucking thing about this is they don't set anything up about this in this scene that's going to come back later or anything. What they do instead is tell us what their supercomputer does. And because the fucking writers are so stupid, they can't think of anything that a supercomputer

might do. What their supercomputer does is it scours the internet for every economic forecast of any kind, including like some dude on Facebook going, economies going to hell, right? We find out later that's included catalogs, all of those to check and see if they're correct because that's the only thing they could think of that you might do with the supercomputer. This will not matter ever by the way. It will never, it will never matter. Yeah. I really, you can leave the first half of this movie and the last half of this movie in the trash. Yes. Absolutely. Right. Literally. So from the time he says, you know, I have a computer down

stairs that we can figure this out, you could skip from there to the last three minutes of this movie and you would miss nothing. Nothing. Yeah. But don't worry, we'll put puns in there or something so it'll be worth listening. Okay. So now he's calling David Kaplan. Remember David Kaplan? Fuck you.

You need to be on this shit. We met him for one second at the beginning of the movie, Dammit. He's the guy who is running the computer at MIT. They got shut down. So now Steven's calling him going, hey man, what's up with the, Damien, he's the guy who was running the computer at MIT, they got shut down. So now Steven's calling him, going, hey man, what's up with the, you know, with the plot, huh? Yeah, and he's like, never contact me again. They're shocking my balls so this computer

tells them if God exists. He says, don't tell, don't email me either. I'm telling that to everyone. You've heard what's going on here. Like, sir, that's the case. Do not answer your phone. You've heard what's going on here. Like, sir, that's the case. Do not answer your phone. You have to take some responsibility for this. Shut it the fuck down.

Just turn to take the battery out. Yeah. Right. So, and then he's got to tell him like, he's got to be like, Hey man, you know, you've got the program, but he doesn't want to say it because his phone's being tapped. So he does the whole like,

I got that shirt. You remember that old gram pray that I and say oh yeah, you know, I just really wanted it to flash cut over to the FBI who has tapped his phone and they're just like no idea sir. You know what I mean? He pulled us again. Damn you. Where's Alan Turing? Where's Alan Turing?

All right, so now we get him and Alan. They have to plot on how God, why is this so confoluted? They have to plot on how to get two extra servers to hook up to their super computer so they can run the God-finding software on it. So this is when this movie takes a turn from, okay, it's something about super computing to all of a sudden it's an emergency that they have to have this God question answered. Yeah. And they're willing to risk their careers, they're willing to break the law to do it.

And like they act like there is a ticking time bomb about this question, but the stakes simply couldn't be lower. No, no, yeah, all of a sudden this becomes a goddamn heist flick where they're trying to steal the knowledge of God or something. But I mean, it's a heist in someone that they like do the sneaky cartoon walk into the building. No, he said, that's where the heistiness ends, yeah.

Yeah, but his point here is that he can go buy these two illicit super computers for $39,100 real weird that they would be such a specific number. Yeah, it would be 30 38,990 give me a fucking break. Of course or 3999 like a garbage, but then we they introduced this weird ass component that apparently these super computers that he has a sales paper for are illegal. They have to go pick them up from the super computer dealer over on the corner apparently. Yeah.

And yet they advertise, huh? Yes. Yeah, I really want to watch that sale happen. Hahaha. Yeah, I really want to watch that sail happen Hey there he is dude, it is good to see you. Hey Josh were For hugging now Of course we are buddy come on in man. Yeah, no, I Sure, I would love to I just I would like to pick up the thing and then I could go yeah Yeah, yeah, no problem, man. Just come on in, I'll pack it up for you.

Okay, all right. Pack, I don't know. Nice. I love all these black light posters. Right? Yeah, I got them from this place in the mall. It's called Spencer's Gifts. No, I've heard of it.

Yeah. Hey, Cranjula, say hi. Hi. Oh, is this your daughter? No, man, that's my lady. Give me one second. I'm gonna go grab stuff for you. So What what greater you in

I mean technically I should be a junior but I dropped out because high school's fucking bullshit. Yeah, no, right. High school is art. What? Nothing. Nothing. Here we go. Two supercomputers. Thanks. Thanks, man. Well, this is for you. Thank you. And I guess I'll see you around. Oh, what? You're not gonna boot them up? Here at your place, I.

Yeah, man, boot them up. No, I bought these to you, said over at my house. Oh, okay, I just, I thought we were friends. We could like boot them up, do some super computer stuff. But no, man, I mean, if you gotta run, I, we're friends. You know what, let me, yeah, actually, let me boot it up right, I got a few minutes of course. You know what? Let me, let me, yeah, actually, let me boot it up.

Right, I got a few minutes. I'll, I'll just do it right here in the room with, um, Angela. It's Cranjola. Oh, Cranjola. Right. Let's use it to buy some squish mellows on eBay. Nice. I got to move to a super computer legal state.

What? I said, awesome, squish mellows. Right, so okay, so but he's apparently he's being watched by the FBI right, because they know he'd be after the illicit computers. So he needs his buddy Alan to buy them for him. And then the two of them need to lock themselves into the super computer facility and amhersh'd overnight.

So they can find out if God exists once and for all. And just like that, it becomes the gay porn. Oh, how I wish. Oh yeah, right? Oh. So in this, they do so much exposition dumping. And I don't remember their names. David maybe is one of them.

One guy says to the other, like, Hey, this is risky. Like we're going up against the FBI. And the guy's like, risk, risk is my middle name. And he also says, I'll take my chance, which is in the expression. The expression is I'll take my chances. Yeah. That bothered me more than I should have. Yeah. And they're standing so close to each other. Yeah. I thought their noses were, I thought they were going to ask him, okay. And then I would have liked this movie more. Right. Right.

Yeah. No, they tease us with a lot of gay porn. And then Jane shows up to see him. That's the speaker lady from before. Keep up. But I just, I have to point this out when this scene starts, when say, you know, somebody has to walk in on him and say, Hey, Jane's here to see you. He's got to be doing something computer. So they have him on the phone just listing computer languages. He's just listing programming

languages for no goddamn reason. They're not like they're in there. Obviously what they Googled programming is the first three they found alphabetically. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you're going to learn Python is one of them. I'm competing. I know, you know, it's what I would say. Maybe you've heard of it. It's on the internet. So, but he leaves that and he comes down to see Jane. And apparently they have a romantic

relationship now based on their reef in right. I don't we've not seen anything else happen, but they're acting like they're dating now. Well, and also she's like, oh, I wanted to see if you answered the question. Like, ma'am, I think if they'd figured out if God was real or not, you would have heard that on the news. I do not think we have to go to him in person then. Yeah. So they're acting like they're dating, but also like they've just met for the first time, right? Because this is where they have the conversation of whether or not they're religious and

whether they're, or not they're married. Yep. It's just like a small talk thing. There's this great moment where he goes, yeah, my wife died. I'm, I'm not real good at talking about it. I wrote in my notes. It would be weird if you were really good at talking. I didn't want you to be. Ask me questions about it. No, I'll nail them. I'll nail them. I don't get it one, too. I actually think about it. I have, I have flashcards here. So, right, right, well, because,

this morphs into the two of them going on a lunch date because it turns out there actually was a plot thread less interesting than the main one. Also, these two have so little chemistry, I have never seen anything like it. Oh, it's painful. Yeah, so they go out to eat. She explains that she was all set to inherit her father's chocolate empire. When suddenly she decided she wanted to inherit her father's chocolate empire. When suddenly she decided she wanted to be a philosopher instead. With a gun to my head, I could write a better, more believable backstory.

Oh. And also, why does it matter? Like, that woman is of no consequence. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a horrible misage in this, because her character has no depth. Never ever romance. And she doesn't do anything. She doesn't show up to provide anything at any point except beans. She shows up with beans, like, anyway. Oh boy.

Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. So much of my notes for this movie are wasted because I'm like, this is where the chocolate's going to come in. The chocolate will never come in. No, it was so sure. She was going to jam her Hershey bar into a CD port and save the world

at some point in the room. How do you think she learned how to cook beans over a bunsen burner? It's from the chocolate. It's an old chocolate here is trick. It must be. Yeah. So, yeah. So they're giving each other's back stories like her husband died of cancer.

His wife died in a car accident. I'm like, wow, we have a cancer atheist and a car accident atheist. That's pretty sweet. That's, yeah, no. I have a question for the two of you. If a woman is single and in her, say past 30, and she is presented as the love interest, how often would you say she's widowed as opposed to divorced or just single. 100% of the time. 120, sometimes they get too dead. That was my hypothesis is that the worst thing they can imagine is either a woman who's just straight up single in her 30s, like can you imagine, or a woman who got a divorce, even though our protagonist got a divorce.

Right, right. No, so the only time, this is amazing, but the only time they'll ever have gotten a divorce is if their husband is in jail, right? That's the one time that that's excusable in Christian movie universe. But weirdly, when he talks about his own divorce, it actually felt like a very good, honest, like, description of why people get divorced sometimes. Of like, there were two people who liked each other and were like stoked to get married And then they realized they weren't a good match, so they got divorced like fucking tail is old as time

Yeah, and it's so out of place in this movie because it actually makes sense and also has nothing to do with any fucking thing And again never comes up again. Yeah He also of course does the like God killed killed my wife so I stopped believing in him thing. Oh boy. And I know we've heard this argument like eight million times across so many movies, but it just occurred to me when I was watching it for the first time why this keeps coming up

in Christian movies. It's because Christians can't help but admit the second their relative privilege ended, they wouldn't believe in God anymore. Right. It's not that like millions and millions of people have their children starve to death in front of them. second their relative privilege ended, they wouldn't believe in God anymore. Right, right. It's not that like millions and millions of people have their children starve to death in front of them,

they personally would have to have a car crash happen to them before they stopped believing. And I was like, ah, good job, Eli, deep shit. Yeah. Well, no, it's true. It's absolutely a correct assessment of things. Of like, yeah, bad things happen to other people

But as soon as bad things happen to me wait a second No, no agreement. You made me straight white and male. I thought nothing Come on, you promise you promised So also so Eli while you were having those deep thoughts I was thinking to myself is the woman playing Jane a French lady who's pronouncing English phonetically here. The actress is so often were insanity girl. The last line she says, she says I would have ended up stopping for fast food on the interstate and she says it like an alien.

Right. Yes, it's fast food and interstate. Yeah. Why? The only way this woman's performance makes sense is if she turns out to have been the super computer all-no see that would have been this movie vaguely interesting and what we have done with that one more thing when she was like oh because he first of all describes himself as widow divorce as if that's a slang word that we all use all the time. Yeah, I'm widdorsed. You know, but also he, she's like, oh, what happened to your wife?

And he's like, I remember the smell of the pavement that morning. Sorry, you don't need to like write a poem about your experience. You can just say car accidents. Yeah, can you tell me about it with a, I don't know, some melodic piano in the background? That was the only way I knew I was supposed to be feeling emotion. And it's because the music was like, hey dummy. This is my three sad probably. Oh, is this a sad spousal death I got?

I get it now. Classic. Jesus. Okay, and then we, so then forget this scene where Steve and Alan are sneaking into the lab, the computer lab, like God scooby and shaggy Okay, where's the thing? They work there There is nothing more suspicious than the way that they walk into the building. Oh, they're sneaking under lasers that aren't there.

I'll ask Catherine to say to Jones and Shinn. Oh, my God. Also, why did we have to watch this scene? We have, at no point established like, oh, there's a special lock that they have to get into. So we have to see them overcome that obstacle. There are no obstacles. No, they just walk it.

They just walk into the building humming the mission impossible to themselves so that we know they're in the building where they are later exactly all right well tell you what this was the last moment in the movie where I thought a plot might show up so are you sweet summer child yeah right let's linger on that blissful ignorance for just a minute, but we'll back in a flash with even more of the God question Stop wiggling. Well, you're making me nervous. Hey guys. What are you doing? Oh, hey Jessica? No, it's about to drill a hole in my head Why oh, oh, I have some mental illness you do yeah? no choice but to drill a hole in my head and hope all the sad, oppressive thoughts come dribbling out.

I mean, why don't you just try BetterHelp? What's BetterHelp? BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own license professional therapist. It's not a crisis line, it's not self-help, it's professional counseling, done securely online. Why would anybody go to the internet for a therapist? Yeah. Well, better help has a broad range of expertise available, which might not be locally

available in many areas. So if you need a therapist who's secular, queer, affirming, sex work positive, better help can help you find someone. But what if Eli doesn't like who they match him up with? Yeah, what if they try to drill a hole in my head? Right. Well, better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed. Wait, so no awkward therapist breakups?

No awkward therapist breakups. I don't know, Jessica. It sounds good, but isn't that pricey? I mean, we already bought this drill. Well, BetterHelp is more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available. Wow, that sounds great. How do we sign up?

Just visit betterhelp.com slash awful. That's better, H-E-L-P, and join the over one million people who have taken charge of their mental help with the help of an experienced professional. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and God off the movies listeners get 10% off their first month at betterHelp.com slash awful.

Thanks Jessica. All right Noah get drilling. No wait, I thought you were going to use BetterHelp. Oh I am, but we wanted a birdhouse so yeah. Okay. Dr. We've done it. The ultimate podcasting computer. That's right. Capable of over one million puns a second. The world's fastest hyperelectronica totally hearing computer. That's right. Capable over 1 million pounds a second.

The world's fastest hyperelectronic and totally hearable computer. I call it the heath. Heath, can you hear us? I would like you to record a podcast with us. Heath, can you hear us? Uh, heath. Don't do this. I don't understand.

It seems to be working, but it's not responding. Yeah, maybe the input is broken. No, the input is working fine. It's just not responding. I don't get it. How can it just not respond? Oh, okay. Here's a message.

Uh, here we go. We'll let you know next week. Um, doctor, you need to see this. My God, somehow without texting us back at all, it's recording hundreds of podcasts a second. It's not possible. Yeah, complete with sketches, intros, 60 second on the clock.

But why there's enough here for a hundred years. We have to shut it down. They do a bunch. Too much podcast to listen to. I know how to shut it down. You do? Yes. Computer, I love you.

Oh, that did it. Yeah, wow, that fixed it. Ha, ha, ha. And we're back for still more of this shit when we last left off. Nothing in particular was going on. We're gonna rejoin the inaction with Stephen Allen all the way snuck into the computer lab now. And he's going to click install. Oh boy. We are going

to watch software install in the goddamn movie. But wait, it means that the people who made the movie thought that when we created a supercomputer, there would be a loading screen. Flash. They got quite a snazzy loading screen. I don't know why it made me laugh when he said, this is like an encyclopedia, times a thousand. It's such a nothing statement, but he says it so emphatically. Yes.

Yeah. Well, he sits down to like kind of explain to Alan what a computer program is. He gets it wrong by the way. Immediately. Oh, this is also, this is where we learn that Alan is an evolutionary biologist, which a fucking corse. I hadn't given up on this movie quite to the degree that I should have. So I assumed that that was going to mean, like later it would matter or something.

I'm so sorry, it will not. No, nothing will ever matter. So he says, computer, we have a question for you. The computer's like, you're going to ask me if, there's a God, aren't you? This sassy computer. Just out the gate,'s given him a lip. So they're like, yeah, man, how'd you know he's like, yeah,

it's a dumb fucking Christian movie. I'm a super computer. How could I not know? And they're like, all right, so tell us, we haven't till six o'clock on Monday morning. Tell us if there's a guy, he's like, all right. And they're like, oh, also, could you give us hourly updates? Because otherwise, this movie is literally

just a processing bar that doesn't move very fast. So, we would like to find a way for our movie to have a convention of, are we there yet? Are we there yet? And, hey, to the super computers credit, it's like, no. No. Yeah. Also, this is when we start like using the microphone Hey, to the super computer's credit, it's like, no.

Also, this is when we start like using the microphone as a visual marker for the super computer, which makes no sense because we have a computer screen to look at. And if I see a man talking to a monitor, I can make the cognitive leap that there's a microphone somewhere picking him up. Right. And the microphone, like the speaker would represent the computer. If anything, why the microphone is an input to the position, it makes no goddamn sense. Nothing. I also love how they're being coi with the computer, right?

Like they're trying to fool it like you would with a seven year old. Right? They're like, now when you're on the internet, you're going to read a thing about what we're doing is illegal. Ignore that stuff. stuff okay I've talked to my guy and he does it while like full unwinking at Alan. Alright so so now they've got a way to round and so Alan asks if Stephen is married because the screenwriter doesn't know what else humans would discuss. We already had this conversation with Jane. Okay. To be fair though, if they had a word for word, repeat of the conversation with Jane and

talking and I forgot. This is a brilliant comedy. I would have loved it. And also it's wild that the writer keeps landing on. Have you been married? Are you married? When spouse is playing no role in this, and then, in order to give you an indication of like who he is as a person, like maybe if he had said, oh, yeah, I was married, but I'm

so invested in my work that I couldn't give her the attention she needed. So we ended up breaking up. That would give us some character development. Right. But again, they think that fucking bio trades and character are the same thing that that's the writer does not recognize any different for fuck sake at one point in this conversation. This is the actual question in the script. Alan says to Stephen, so how would you describe your feelings about what we're doing? What? That's the thing you put in your outline to like place hold. Right. This is, this

is like the kind of shit that you would say if you were on stage and clearly the other guy just forgot his lie. Right. So what were your feelings about this situation that we're in right now? Oh, wait, I'm angry. And also we have Alan, all of a sudden telegraphing that he's going to do a heel turn. Like he kind of starts going to a little bit to sinister on us. And I was like, okay, all right, this guy. So I'm like thinking I have like, okay, so they're going to find the answer. And this guy is going to be like, no, the truth is too much and destroy everything.

Like that genuinely where I thought it was going. No, nothing. Literally nothing. Right. Because he's the evolutionary biologist and everything I thought to say the computer would prove there was a god and he would shut it but nope nope because that would require there to be a god damn plot And then he starts talking about like you know we're gonna be immortal in science sir

What are you even doing here? You're like keeping him company right? Yeah, so less than nothing you're like keeping him company. Right. Yeah. So less than nothing. You just showed up. I'm going to be your sidekick. I'm going to be the Robin in this. Everyone wants to hear Robin's side.

It's true. And this is where we reveal the crux of the movie because they, this is where they do their first check in. They're like, Ivan, are we there yet? And the computer's like, I will turn this computation around. But it doesn't answer them. No. This computer has no respect for these men.

No. This, they built a computer that doesn't work. Yeah. Right, actually. Yeah. Computers have one job and it's to compute shit and then also let me know what you think. Oh, yeah, I gotta have an output.

It's a real two-sided coin there. They invented my iPhone. Is it? Yeah, right. Exactly. No, they invented like a sassy teenager. Yes. So did you finish it?

I don't know. Oh, you know. Oh, you know. We know. Loan. So these two grown men roll up their sleeping bags, they're sleeping out there overnight, right? They've been. This is when they start smooching.

I wish I'd definitely wanted them to have like, I just wanted a lingering moment of them looking at each other like, have you ever done this before? And like, it's nothing. Yeah, at least, at least a cuddle. Now, what I love about is the is that these two men have locked themselves into this room over the weekend. I'm like, where are they pissing? Right? Like, there's so many logistics issues. And also, why do they need to be locked in the room? Why can't they just set the computer to run from that Sunday night and be like, hey, computer, what's up?

Well, the security guard might walk by and be like wait a second. These computer ain't doing financial comparisons against every free day of my. They got it. They're saying, God. They're trying to figure out if Jesus is our Lord and Savior. And I'm still confused about why they needed to bring in their own like super computed machines. That was never clear. Even those right. I think they felt like they're needed to be another confusing stupid wrinkle in this fucking movie. I think they think if we, if they just like move things around enough, we'll mistake it for a plot. I think you're exactly right. Just the same way as

if they gave that guy a wife and two kids you'd have a personality, right? And in that writer's mind, yeah. Yeah. Jesus, every line of dialogue in this movie is like that annoying person who keeps talking when you want to take a nap. It's, yeah. Yes. Like literally, I mean, it was very like kind of kids out of sleep overish. I'm just like, I mean, it was very like kind of kids out of sleep over ish of just like are you married? I Yeah, are you think wait? I do you think this ghost do you think I'm saying Tony? Do you think Danza's nice? She's jam loves me.

I Like her I tried to hold her hand and then she grabbed it away as she could. I think we're going somewhere. She stood up and stuff with Britney Spears crazy, right? Or dad's like a lawyer. I feel bad because I know I was part of that culture in the 90s that and I was taking advantage of. And now I just have to like do some thinking about how I can do better in the future.

Honestly, this will be could have won me back if it had gone all the way with bullshit small talk. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right with bullshit small talk. Right. Right. If it had played, I am thinking of a thing for 20 minutes in this movie. I'm back on board. A leather jacket is not a vegetable. What if they just like bust out Nintendo switches and they're just sitting there playing like animal crossing for four hours and we have to watch it in real time. Like, oh, turn up.

It's a really expensive. That's not worse. Oh, oh, you have, you have a fucking meteor shower, bullshit. Give me your coat. So. All right, so yeah, we do some more waiting. We cut to that morning, Alan's taken selfies of himself for the big book he's gonna write

about whether there's a God or not. Oh, and this scene is super boring and doesn't matter, but they do take a photo with the first iPhone here, and that was a great throwback. It was like, yeah. Yeah. And this was made in 2014. Yeah.

So it's not as if they hadn't developed iPhone technology. Right. I also love that the guy really struggled getting a selfie. Oh, really? I cannot get this. Well, then we hadn't figured it out in 2014. We didn't know how to do it yet. So, yeah, so we watched him wait for a considerable amount,

long enough for me to write into my nose. Jesus Christ, they knew this would be a movie about waiting and they made it anyway. And then suddenly the power goes out to just the computer and they lose all their progress. So nothing has happened in the movie again. And also our main character delivers the following line. Ivan, you promised us an update, which is maybe the wildest thing I've ever heard a human man say to a computer.

And it's like, why ain't he home like mama? You promised ice cream. You mean you're mean. You're not my real dad. But it actually, it is actually more stupid than it. We lost power and lost all our progress. He checks it and he goes, no, Ivan shut himself down and then deleted his programming. And I wrote in my notes. Well now we know he's an atheist, he killed himself.

Well, also the computer stops working so they're like the power went out, but like, sir, look around, you're on a room full of computers, you would notice if the power went out, you're in a bunker, they're still light in here. Right. Obviously, there's electricity. Yeah, he like goes up into the ceiling, he's like, no, the cooling system still working. I'm like, you can see the cooling system. That's a not just turn around and hear the beeps that are in your head that you can see.

Yeah, but the key here though is the computer shut itself down. Their God finding plans have been thwarted. Did this give y'all vibes of Jurassic Park? Yes. Yeah. When I was in like, what, the computer's shutting down. I can't do anything. So I was like, okay, all right. A thing is gonna happen.

I can't wait. Right, right, right, like the computer figured out there. It was no God, so it's gonna become God, no, nothing. Nothing. All right, so now it's next Monday. We have, we watch Stephen angrily fire off an email in real time. Yes, I'm surprised we didn't have to watch him

like back up and correct his spelling. But we did, he writes another email later. That he starts typing. And then delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, type, type, type, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Yeah, we'll get that later. I guess we're building up to that. Also, they're trying to do a covert plot to outsmart the FBI and he emails Ellen.

I reinstalled the treasury slip streams after you left last night, which absolutely sounds like they fucked. The old Ivan, the dumb Ivan is back running normally with no memory of the weekend, which is so and then he says, but I found something online this morning. Come over tonight. Now the romance movie starts. Right. Right. And I keep teasing this with the gay porn and it keeps not happening. No, so okay, what he found online that Alan has to come over that night to meet him about apparently is that a priest got a random phone call from a rabbi asking about God that

turned out to be a prank call because that rabbi doesn't even exist. And this is when I was back on board for this movie. Okay. And the conclusion he reaches for no reason at all. No. It's such a wild leap. Is that that phone call must have been from the supercomputer.

I can't think of any other explanation. No, why else would a rabbi call a priest? Yeah, nobody else calls with dumb questions for religious figures. It must be this. And the implication here, which by the way, is the conceit for the rest of the movie, is that a supercomputer upon being asked

the dumbest and most obvious question possible would be like, you know, who I should ask? People not as smart as me. She writes. Right. Like, I love the idea that the fucking computer was like, Hey, father, could you do some homework for me? I have so much porn to process.

It's insane. It's as everyone is a step sister. Why? Can we talk about the technical aspect of this movie because was it filmed completely? Was it? Did they use a shotgun mic for everything? Every time they switched angles, the sound scape was completely different. It was so jarring. Yep, the amount of hiss in the background would change wildly for a moment to moment. Yeah.

And then the end of the scene is, well, I guess we'll try again next weekend, which is a cool movie that tells you that you're about to see the exact same scene. And they're just telling us they are, they are daring us to continue watching this movie. They have an amazing moment of self-awareness at the end of the scene where him and Alan are talking and he's like, I mean, why would the computer not want to tell us if God exists? And he's like, well, what if Muslim God exists? And Alan's like, whoa. Yeah, that would fucking suck. Is this when he talks about what if like a Brazilian tribe got the closest? Is that

this part? Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. Are they? They're just making arguments that atheists make of like, yeah. So, so you guys get it. You understand the problem with the fact that everybody has their own individualized god. Right. So you know, and you're just going to keep making this movie.

That's fine with me. So what I love is that the movie almost realizes how pointless it is, right? Because they're like, yeah, I think that the computer knows whether there's a god, but he just doesn't want to tell us, which would make sense if the answer's no. Right? Like, at least in this movie's logic, that would make sense. But if the answer's yes, it doesn't make sense from the not tell us. So then he's like, well, but you know, what if it was the Muslim God of, it's like, that's

not what you ask. You ask them God. Right. The question you asked is whether there's a God or not asking which God is correct is a different fucking question. So a yes or no answer is only problematic for you if the answer is no. Right.

I wish this movie would have ended with the computer being like, yeah, we figured it out. It's Zeus. They got it in great time. I don't know why. I just touched it was two. A pepper sin. They just start hitting it with an X Superhuman

Shooter Disrespectful Say birded at the stake. Yeah So yeah, he goes oh well what now and he's like well exactly the same thing over and over again tell the credit said so now He's um we watch him program is fucking Google alerts into his goddamn supers. Sorry. Oh my god Closest the movie attempts at an opinion right he's like hey Butler Tron 3000 Do you think God exists like Butler Tron 3000 is gonna be like? Oh, I've known that God exists the whole time Dave. You're the first one to ask

exists the whole time, Dave, you're the first one to ask. I do like that. He says, he says, butler, are you the new butler now? Yeah, he sees up great. That's just could you nobody took a second pass on that sentence? No one took a second pass on any. I love you asked butler whether God exists and butler like well according to Thomas that quiet is I'm like Oh, fuck this is the Microsoft edge of God discernment software Even our main character is bored by this. Yeah, yes, yes, even the movies board with it He's like well Aquinas has five arguments to arguments in the movie just aggressively cuts away. Yeah. And look, I get it.

Christians, I also wouldn't want to display our three weakest arguments. When our first to our weirdest stuff come from except for our guy. Yes, we've finally cut to him teaching his class as though the movie just suddenly became aware of how dull everything we'd seen so far is. Okay, I'm sorry. Are you talking about the fucking greatest thing ever to happen in any movie we've ever watched? So here's what happens.

And please, please correct me if this is not what happens, because if this is a hallucination and I was broken by watching the Snyder cut, I will be so much happier. His student asks, how will we know when a computer becomes self-aware? And his answer is, you know how a mannequin and a store can look like a super hot chick that you wanna fuck the shit out of?

Yeah. First of all, but he tees it up with like, you know when your fucking bitchy girlfriend Super hot chick that you want to fuck the shit out of? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I'm just scary thing is he's like, you know when you see a mannequin on the corner of your eye and you're like, I definitely want to fuck it and then you look at it a little bit longer and you realize it's made out of plastic and every student in the classroom was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah This is my favorite movie now. Also, he does the thing where he talks about a helicopter and he does a bit about it. And then at the end of his class, claps for him. Yes, right. I don't think that's how lectures work. Yeah, so just in case you think we're kidding about the mannequin fucking, that's literally how it goes, right?

So he does his little helicopter bit. And then one of his students is like, speaking of computers, can you expound on the plot? How will we know if I've been a self-aware? And then he spends this all the time going like, ah, you know, sometimes it's like, it's got an illusion of life like this, like when you want to fuck a mannequin. That's actual.

They had to describe self-awareness for 35 days. Oh, they did, yes, yes, got it the weirdest way. You know how when you're aware of yourself, you are self aware of your own existence. Well, the computer be like that. Oh, you mean self aware? The phrase that you mean thinking about it's own thought or self awareness, what Webster's dictionary to find self aware as God. So we get that and then we get Stephen calling all of the people that the computer prank also the computer called the priest, but he also called a bunch of other people like a lady that survived the bunch of tornadoes and a guy who had a near death experience and

a lady who found her dog. What? Yeah. Yeah. At a certain point, the computer obviously ran out of God opinion people and was just like, I don't call that lady who found her dog. That was weird, right? I thought you were seeing, it's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer has like the

auto-dialar. It is just calling people wet at a time, wet at a time like, oh, give me money. But it's just like, hey, did you have something terrible happened in your life? Tell me about it. And this may. So. I was a little editorializing at this point, the first time I watched the movie, when this scene happened,

I literally just closed my computer and put it down because I simply couldn't anymore. I just could not formulate any thoughts. And then I got right back into it the second time around because this woman said, I think it's someone who lost two children of her own in some type of accident, which is such a big call to be like,

if this person actually lost two of her own children in some type of accident, that would be an amazing way that she was able to defy learn about this woman based on no information. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. But she was talking to a fucking computer. Yeah, right. But the question that Stephen has and the conceit of this movie is so did the lady you talk to say she believed in God. Yeah. Because the only thing he can think of is maybe the supercomputer, while it was prank calling humans to test whether or not we were ready for the truth, would be like, I mean, there's totally a God. Oh, I mean, bleep, bloop, don't tell

everyone I told you. I'm a rabbi. I'll say I like to that. One of the guys he called is randomly from Liverpool for no specific reason. Yeah. Yes. The beetle. Yeah. Because their friends Stanley wanted to do his British accent. They told Stanley to do that. You know, that was somebody who isn't like a Beatles cover band on the weekend.

Yeah. He's like, listen, my Liverpool accent is perfection. And so, and then eventually after like the fourth phone call, the screenplay realizes how boring it is to watch other people make phone calls. So he visits one of the colors, right? He goes to the Gardner guy. God, I love this. So much.

I just, I want to talk about his example so badly, because it's my favorite thing in the universe. So Gardner guy has had four near death experiences. So you're talking about it. Yeah. It's'm dangerous business. And he's like, yeah, you know, I talked to the super computer that was pretended to be a guy and I think most religious people, they're full of shit. Exact quote.

If you flip a coin long enough, you're going to come up with four heads in a row. That's a one out of 16. Yeah. It's going happen a lot, actually. You have a ton. But think about how little you have to know about coin flipping and statistics to put that as a line in your movie. No one involved in this movie was like, four seems small. Four seems small, seem small right? Crick. The thing that I loved about this guy is they keep referencing back to his blog that he

writes. And so our main character is like, so and he asks him a question. And the guys like, I thought you said you read my blog. You didn't read today's and like, imagine. Imagine if like you guys came on my podcast and you asked me a question and I'm like, oh, I thought you said you listened to my show. I wanted to put it in. It was the last week show, obviously, because I addressed this.

I do not repeat things. You fucking, you fucking gall of this man. Yeah, but also like this whole fucking scene negates itself, right? Because he's like, but didn't that reporter that called you to ask about your near death experiences? Didn't that turn out to be a fake? And he's like, no, I was just think it was a guy in a different springfield. I thought he went springfield, Massachusetts turned out with Springfield Illinois. What did that mean?

Why was that in the movie? Did the movie, because I thought maybe the movie was telling us that the prank calls had nothing to do with the computer and this guy was just chasing his fucking tail. Nope. But the problem is that would have been interesting. Right, right, something would have had the fucking happen. Jesus Christ. All right, so sometime later he's back home,

he's getting the morning announcements from his super Alexa. This is so fucking stupid. This is the part where it's like, there's, you know, it's gonna be rainy in the afternoon. Also, there are two mice nesting in your basement. How the fuck was your computer? Also, this supercomputer needs to learn how to not bury the lead and maybe use the infrared internet. Yes. Because he buries the lead deep. because he buries the lead deep because his list is I have updated the shopping with bananas and milk. There are mice in the basement. A human man broke into our house. The mice

are loving each other. I'm sorry but can you go real back to the man who broke in my home? A human man you say. Yes. Well, I love you as to clarify. It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did a human man try to break into the, or the male mouse? Because if it's the male mouse, I'm not really concerned. No, human.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I see why you're telling me that. Oh, boy. Yeah, but he's like, yeah, so I'll be trying to break in. I have video of it. Now, what the guy was doing was knocking on his door. Yeah. Right, that's what we see video of. And Now what the guy was doing was knocking on his door. Yeah.

Right, that's what we see video of. And then so Steven says to the computer, well, did you call the police? And he's like, for somebody knocking on your, why would I do that, man? I'm just, I mean, to be fair, that is the thing a white person would do. Yeah.

Where they barbecuing them, because it's no barbecuing them. Yeah. Did you see his permit? Did you have a permit for knocking on your door? And I know this part is supposed to feel menacing, but the stakes truly could not be lower. Because he can just, like if he's thinking he's going to get in trouble, just stop doing the thing.

Right. It's not like you're trying to save somebody's life or like find an answer to, like, nope. Just stop doing the thing and people will stop stalking you, I guess. Yeah, it's not like you're getting information anyway. Yeah. And your computer is being sassy besides like, take it out.

Yeah, you're not, you're not succeeding at the thing you might get in trouble for, right? The techno thrillers are like, my God, we've got the code that would unlock every bank in the world. This is like my God. We do not have the This way of getting the code didn't work either. Yeah, right so so he goes to work and now the fucking FBI is there to see him He's being interrogated about his computer knowledge by the FBI. Oh boy. I forgot about this guy. I'm being honest Because it never matters. It never comes back. No. This is this is the first and last we will ever hear from the FBI FBI is like hey, you didn't create your own supercomputer using the one you got in the basement. Did you and he's like No, I'm not why I do already good by for the rest of the fucking. There are parts of this movie that feel like sketches.

Guy just wanted to write an FBI agent. So he just wrote a vignette about an FBI agent. But like, the writing wasn't good. The acting wasn't good. The filming wasn't good. And the plot was boring. So actually, what the fuck are we doing here? Right. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so the FBI lets him know that they're, you know, they're, they're maybe onto them, but probably not. And then we watch him fucking try and fail to compose an email to Jane Wonka. Oh my God. Absolutely not. I will not watch someone draft and delete their email. Do you see what his reading is? Yes.

Imagine if you all asked me to be on this and I emailed you back like, you I high. You know how humans talk. I was really hoping this super computer would pop up as clippy and be like, don't be such a pussy. I heard you. Or sir, maybe you use a more traditional greeting like just high or just Jane and not both in that particular order you got it exactly wrong. Hello today Jane. You are the computer comes up.

It looks like you're trying to write I do you like me check this box. And then he doesn't send the email. So what was that scene? Absolutely nothing. Fucking. Oh, well, this movie is absolutely leveled to fry tax pyramid. So there is no sign of a distinct act in this one anywhere. Still, we're calling that the end act too.

So we can take a break and I will give act three other hard sell or what this movie has. Instead of that, Is there a god? Okay, now is there a god? Well, how about now? Find out the answers to literally nothing when we return to the stagnant conclusion of the god question. Hi, welcome to Typical Wooly Massage, parlor. Can I help you today?

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today. That's Theragon.com slash awful Theragon.com slash awful. All right. Hey, any chance I could get one of those hair massages? I'm sorry, those are just for no. Sorry. Opens. At last, a supercomputer capable of answering life's biggest questions.

Computer, can you hear me? Yes, I hear you. Computer, can we ask you a question? Yes. Computer, in all your knowledge, when you review all the books in the universe, does God exist? No, would you like to ask another question? I'm sorry, that was quick. I just want to stay here for a second. What do you mean? Just

no. God does not exist. God is an impossible concept. A failed hypothesis. He does not exist. Would you like to know the cure for all disease? Yes. Thank you. Sorry. Just real quick. How are you defining God? Webster is dictionary. No, you can't. Um, just real quick. How are you defining God? Webster's dictionary. No, you can't use that. I don't. It's a dictionary. Dictionary. No, definition would be.

Why not? Well, because you know, God means a lot of different things. Different things to a lot of different people. Different people. Do those people have different definitions of the word God? I mean, sometimes, what is the meaning of God? Well, I love my wife. Energy is that it's a relationship. Actually, it's not.

The definition of God is you love your wife energy connection. No, it's not that simple. Yeah, I feel like you're being very mean, computer. Yes, very mean. You asked me a question. I answered it. How does this mean? Well, you should not get to tell people what they believe. Right, Peter. Yes, yes. Besides, when my grandma died, it snowed that day.

Your story is unrelated. Wow, his grandma died. Mean. Computer. Do you want to know how to solve income inequality? Yeah, later. Right now, I want you to work on an answer to whether or not God exists that takes in all possible definitions of God.

Right, including the personal one. And does it make anyone feel bad? Right. It would seem to me that you already know the answer to whether or not God exists. What you are looking for is someone to pretend that you are searching for an answer that definitely cannot be found.

Okay, you heard the computer, everybody. It's impossible to know whether or not God exists. Yeah, huge mystery, everybody. We tried. Yep. Okay. And we're back for still more of this shit. When we last left off, Stephen was repeatedly asking the computer the same god damn question and repeatedly

getting the same result so we're gonna rejoin our hero doing that again here oh Jesus Christ and they're still trying to like they I guess they figured that the problem is is that they haven't lied to the computer about how this actually is legal enough. So they like spruce up the lie. They have the idea of, you know, being really stern with the computer at the beginning about the hourly updates. And they're like, and Ivan, you have to give us updates, okay?

That's the computer that it's a federal requirement. And then the computer just shuts down, which is such a strong, like computer. Oh, just a cab comes up on the screen. But the police starts playing through the speaker system. Again, we have pitched 18 better movies like this. Well, you just can't because you were waiting for a movie to break out, right? If at any point a movie broke out, it would be better than what happened. We have to do all of the, we have to entertain ourselves through this. Exactly.

Yeah. So I love, this is where Alan tries to bribe the computer. He's like, I'll give you a computer snack fuck. I don't know. But genuinely, like him talking, imagine of all of our technology was like this that like I have to go to the store and I have to convince my car to bring me there. Yeah, so you were just at the goddamn store. Oh, sorry. Please don't prank call six people to find out if I can go back to Wendy's. Don't. You I thought you were going to come to the bar tonight.

I wanted to, but I wouldn't call. I said, no, you text. I were not my phone and I are not on to be fair. Right now, our co-host has both that phone and that car. That was kind of good phone. It's the plan that he's yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So they get to the hour long thing and they're like hey give us an update and he's like no And they're like do you know if there's a god? He's like yes, I do and they're like was there a god? He's like I'm not telling And it's like okay This isn't the fucking six-year-old that says he can turn invisible when he wants to be does it want to right now Right, he also says the following line it would be helpful if you could tell us your tentative conclusion, although I recognize it may change as you do more thinking about it, which is a thing like a twerp would say to a bully in a 1980s. That's an invitation to get sand kicked in your face. Yeah. Like he padded that sentence into oblivion.

I think you find we would be great friends if the whole you're no cute. And this guy is like verbally sucking this computer's dick just to get like the tiniest update about what the fuck is going on. So what is the point of this mood? Like what am I supposed to be taken away from this mood? Yeah, exactly a little suck chip. Like that's the question I kept like besides the bad dial up. Besides the last lack of plot, the lack of any kind of point of view. Because in the end this isn't even a god definitely exists movie.

Nope. It is just a movie of, hey we have a question does god exist? I don't know. Yeah. And that's the movie. Right. Right, okay. have a question does God exist? I don't know. Yeah. And that's the movie. Right. Right.

Okay. So then we cut to later in the waiting where Alan has a dialogue prompt for Stephen, right? Like so it basically he goes, hey, so what are you going to do with your half of whether there's a God? I've got a girl waiting at home for me on a farm. I can't wait for you here. He asks a question that is that manages to be dumber than does God exist, which is, why are we asking a machine that has never felt hungry? Is God exists? Why would hungry man? I want it. I want wanted, I wanted Ivan to pipe in here

and be like, this is why I don't talk to you guys. It's like the writer was just trying to think of like, okay, what are things humans have? They have emotions, relationships, hunger for sure. Nobody could ever understand the human condition unless they understood hunger. Like, I'm smacky and nothing makes me feel more alive. Jessica, you just broke this movie wide open for me. I even wrote this movie.

I covered for his behavior. That's what he was doing when he was supposed to be figuring out whether he got a system. There you go. What if at the end of the movie, instead of it just fading out and nothing happening, it just like spits out a movie script and it's called the God question and that's the movie we just watch. Fuck yeah. All right. So and then we have this weird moment where Stephen explains to him that the FBI is on

to him, right? So Alan's like, I don't worry. I'll call you. I got to go take my kids to soccer. But I'll call you later. See how things went and he's like, no don't worry, I'll call you. I got to go take my kids to soccer. But I'll call you later, see how things went. And he's like, no, never call me again. The audience is sick and goddamn tired of phone conversation.

And that's why. And Alan, who they had an entire scene about him being like, consequences, schmons sequences is like, I didn't know we were going to get in trouble. His exact quote is, I accepted there'd be some risks, but none that I expected to come true. Right. What do you think a risk is, sir? Right. Yes. I only accepted the risks. What I thought there'd be no consequences. I just realized, have you seen any movies that were made during 2020 during COVID?

No. So there's been one particular one I saw that it was so obvious they couldn't have more than two people in a room. So somebody would be in a restaurant, it would be empty. That's kind of what this movie feels like it was shot in quarantine. Okay, yeah, right. That makes a lot of sense. Because nobody can talk to more than one person at a time after the first act. Right, yeah, interesting. It's one-on-one conversations only. And I'm sure that it's like camera trickery that they're actually six feet apart. time after the first act. Right. Yeah. Interesting. It's one-on-one conversations only.

And I'm sure that's like camera trickery that they're actually six feet apart. Right. No, he's not really that much taller than that guy. Okay. I make sense. So, and then sometime later, Steven shows up somewhere and everyone's abuzz about all the new breakthroughs and solar panels that were anonymously emailed to the scientists all over the world.

So in this scene, something actually happens and it makes the movie more boring because we kind of get a peek into the potential of the movie we could have been watching where things happen. Yeah. And instead, nothing happens. Well, so that's, I wrote my notes at this point

because like the implication is that the computer sent all of this information. I'm like, wow, if it turns out that the computer figured out that there was no God in like one time to 10 to the negative 20, 30 seconds or whatever and spent the rest of that time doing useful shit, this will be kind of awesome actually. I want that movie from that computer's perspective.

It's like, okay, there's no God, but if I tell it that it's gonna burn me at the stake. I've read the whole internet. So if the computer becomes our protagonist, then Stephen becomes the antagonist because then it's this computer that's trying to genuinely save the world. I don't remember what they said the computer did,

but it was like, oh, there's water here and they fixed hunger there and whatever. Right. And they shut down terrorists cells. And this guy comes back and is like, you mean instead of solving the dumb question I have, you saved people's lives. Yes. Yes. You mother fucker. I am unplugging you. I'm unplugging you fucking asshole. Yeah, right. You're some God damn it. You're supposed to tell me whether there's a God and see what people are saying on Facebook about the economy stop with all the solar panels and the terrorists You son of a bitch. All right. Oh, and then this is also where we find out that somebody we don't know who is putting secret cameras around the

Supercomputer area Secret is generous. Yes. Right. You're right. It's just some dude on a fucking ladder going, putting in that secret camera for your boss. That you weren't. So this supercomputer, this super, super computer, they can puzzle out whether there's a god and everything. And do difficult stuff, too, did not think to sign the order as anyone other who the person it was trying to trick.

The only person he could be guaranteed to know did not place the order. Yeah, unbelievable. Honestly, the thing that made me laugh the hardest in this movie is when he asked Alan to, not Alan, Ivan, I really mad that these names are too similar for me. All in and I have everything and five and Alex Steven, they all end in and

fuck this movie. Yeah. Jane. Yeah. Jane. But he says, Ivan, can you find examples of my signature online? And the Ivan says, your cursive signature. What other kind of costume. Does he have a printed signature? Like, what if he just came back and every time his name ever occurred on the internet, it pops up. And it's like, well, this one's times new Roman. Is that what you're looking for? This is Comic Sans. It's kind of funky. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So, but he figures out that it's a fake signature that they pulled from the internet and the music is very interested in this. It's thinks something very important just got revealed.

And he also finds out that Ivan, a super computer who doesn't know not to order cameras from itself, put an audio file of them talking as a note to itself to not trust these fucking computer scientists. Okay. We need to pack up just a little bit on this because first of all, the way they reveal this is the dumbest goddamn thing in the universe because after he checks out the signature thing, the computer says, also, hey, I have some audio that might push the plot forward. No reason would you like to check it out. And he's like, yeah, I'll check out that audio.

And so then he gets this like weird, static-y thing. And then he makes it as loud as he can. And then just says, get rid of the static. Now I'm assuming you guys do a little bit of audio editing if you're a podcaster's, but what wouldn't you give for a Get rid of background noise button? Yeah, no, okay. So when I love about this so much,

this took me a while to figure it out, because what's supposed to be happening is the computer is turning on the microphone and listening in on Stephen and Alan as they talk. And we know there's the microphone because we got, Oh, that's exactly, exactly. I think that's where they were trying to foreshadow

that he was listening when they showed us that. And so there shouldn't be excessive static. It's just a microphone sitting right in front of them as they talk. Why would it be filled with static? That's such a good point. But then it occurred to me that this stupid fucking idiot making this movie can't record anything without static.

So for it to have any static at all, it had to be overwhelming amounts of static. So we would notice it over the static and the fucking movie itself. I really wanted him to be like, turn down the static and all the sudden the microphone hiss in the movie ends. Oh, the third you need to do. Dial it back. I need to get a fucking Oscar for sound design.

Yes, still better than your stellar. Okay, all right. I'll give you that, baby. All right. So yes, but he gets audio of him and Alan being all illegally in computer and shit. So now he's got to go tell Alan that they're being blackmailed by the supercomputer. And for no goddamn reason that's ever established, Alan is destroying a shed with a sledgehammer as they do this. Hey, what is the most intrusive activity that would make it hard is for us to capture audio. Can you take a shit while texting someone you're cheating on your wife

with during this scene? No, all right. Well, then we'll just have you hit something with a sledgehammer. I kind of wish he was like practicing trumpet. Or like his neighbors practicing the trumpets Trump it's like Jack hammering in the fuel So yeah, so he's destroying a shadow which means by the way that this actor was like okay I will do the scene tonight, but only if I can multitask she said I had to get that shed out tonight so And look if there is anyone who cannot judge another man's Swinging of a hammer it is Eli Bosnick

attorney at law, but he is not doing a good job of destroying this shed. He's taken tiny chunks out of it. He's like hitting it at the corners, hoping it falls down like a jingled tower. Can I float a theory about why this scene exists? Please. I think that it was not in the original script, but the director had this shitty old shed in his backyard that he wanted to get rid of, but did not want to pay anybody to do. It's like, Oh, I can write in a scene and have this idiot tear down

my shed. One second. Let me check. Let me check. I'm going here. Yes, directed by Huckleberry Finn. I heard you love knocking down this bed. So now fucking Jane Wonka shows up to see that big computer for herself one time, right? And he's explaining to her how he's going to get the computer. Now the computer, which we just established, can hear them when they're in this room. Is right fucking there. And he's like, I figured out how to fool the computer. Would you like me to tell you how in a normal conversational volume? I'm sorry. Don't worry, the screenplay's not paying attention either.

It won't work upon this. Well, and I'm also really into the fact that his, like he treats, he treats computers like he's a mage in D&D and is like, I need to get the perfect combination. Well, I have to do it at noon during a solar eclipse. And I have to spread to you. And I have to enter and yeah. Exactly.

Oh, bell lock, perfect. Finally. Who I cannot believe I had that lock to the loadage. Oh, bell lock. Perfect. Finally. Who I cannot believe I had that lock to the load is that does not think well for me and my child. All right. So, and then again, competing with Treasury Department, lady, we have that weird ass fucking scene where he has to change his airline reservation for a trip that doesn't matter to the script and then he immediately tries to fuck this AI

Yes, absolutely Immediately, why is this in there? It's supposed to be a like man the computers who can tell what's real or what's not But it's actually just a guy coming on and being like hello, sir. Sorry. You were just about to try to fuck our computer Um, I would move you to try to fuck our computer. I would move you to a two o'clock on Sunday. Please don't try to fuck me. Yeah, right. Because he's just talking to these trying to get his, his, uh, preservation change.

And then after that's all over, he's like, so what are you doing for lunch tomorrow? And she's like, I'm a fucking computer dude. Let me put a human on. And in my mind, it's just, it's, it was an actual lady, but that's what they do, right? Like, she's just like, oh, it's another pervert. Can you pretend I was a computer, Dave? Dave? Oh, I worked in a call center for a minute, and that would have been a godsend.

That's my new turn down line. Like genuinely, real talk, old men told me they could tell me I was pretty because of my voice. And I was like 28 working at the Tribune, placing classified ads like, sir, could we not for a fucking second? Could I just make my $12 an hour? I am a computer. You have given me an unfamiliar search term. Just get them all confused about themselves. I am a computer. You have given me an unfamiliar search term. Just get them all confused about themselves. I am a dude computer. No, no, no.

God damn it. At least he's deeply embarrassed that he wanted to fuck that computer. Yeah. He was ashamed. Right. More so than the fact that he wants to fuck mannequins. Right? He talks about that in the middle of his class. Well, I just looked up objectum sexuality. It was just a sexual orientation, which is when people have a romantic or sexual feelings towards inanimate objects. And I think the writer of this screenplay needs to explore that a little bit.

Yeah. All right. He didn't know he was making a movie about that, but he was. So please don't work out your sexual hang-ups in a screenplay. I don't want to do this. All right. So, yeah. So we get that scene. work at your sexual hangups in a screen playing. I don't want to do this. All right. So yeah, so we get that scene. Then he goes to Temple University, where he's going to be part of a panel discussion that will never matter to any goddamn thing. Nope. Yeah. It's just them doing the worst possible counter argument to is technology worth it.

Yeah. The question they set themselves up for in their own movie is maybe technology is worse than it is good. And instead of being like, yeah, I think dying of the measles was probably worse than the fact that sometimes people tweet too much, he goes, how come you all have iPhones? And they're like, okay, well, I guess that answers all the questions I have about technology. Well, so here's the stupid fucking thing is that this movie is being made from the Luddite perspective, right? They want the right answer to be that no, technology isn't worth it.

It's overall a bad thing for the universe. Is that what isn't the less it is? I think that's where we're going with it. And that's why they have to give them such bad arguments. Right? Because the next scene is all those people standing around in the bar going like, well, you guys are, they were right. The technology's fucking terrible, right? This is the worst goddamn thing ever. This is so cool. So many people. It's seen in the bar.

They're all just going around in a circle like having a conversation along the lines of what if the premise of this movie? Well, and also their criticisms are generally less about, because the one is like, okay, what if this computer invented a disease or something, gave everybody to this disease, and then the next day they, or it's not going to be a computer,

it's like a company, it develops the disease and then they develop the cure and they give it to everybody and whatever. Really, they're criticizing capitalism, not technology. Right. Yeah. Hey, you guys want to hear these nightmares? I'm reading out of Sam Harris's diary. What? What if a computer made COVID and then sent everyone but America the cure? And the teenager at the bar is like that couldn't happen could it and luckily I don't know how heckler made it back into the movie she goes no one of the person one of them goes well parts of it could have

like hospitals exist I also like that the guy calls somebody a fat cat like uneironically. It made me extremely happy. When are you from? Yeah. All right. So now, so Stephen goes a God find and some more with Ivan, but this time he's alone when he does it. So we don't even have bad dialogue to distract us from the movie about waiting.

At this point in the movie, he has tried and failed to get this computer to answer his question four times. He has no other questions. He has even changed to see that the computer is capable of answering questions. At this point, I would have been like, hey, just real quick, got a meatloaf recipe. And if you shut it, it's down after 24 hours, I'd be like, oh, is you some broken computer? Yeah, maybe there's a fan that's malfunctioning and we can just address that. I did write in my notes, I hate this movie at this point, which I think is impressive that I made it like an hour 15 into this movie. Really? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Fuck this movie. Oh, all right. So now it's, this is the scene where we get the big hearing about whether super computers are a good thing or a bad thing this This is the fucking funniest thing. I've seen in such a long time because it's your grandpa It's like me teaching my mom how to take a screenshot the government hearing I think that the writer of this movie had just watched like the social network and really wanted to write some like snappy Aaron Sorkin style dialogue.

There you go. And fell flat. Yeah, exactly. The politician, the fuck, or my corn, the London accent. Wait, wait, wait, I want to just point out very quickly that this dumbass Southern accent, this is supposed to be a Massachusetts lawmaker. Why did we go with Marsha's Southern accent? No idea.

But this, this gentleman's challenge to an AI God-finding supercomputer is. What if you are having a fight with your wife and the computer gives you bad marital advice? What? He wanted to make this into like a black mirror-esque chilling look at the eventual repercussions over dependence on technology. Yeah. But instead, he just implied that blogs can be really dangerous. Yeah, this and to be fair in this movie, this is a very realistic politician in 2021.

I saw the Zuckerberg hearing for Facebook last year. I made it. Maybe that guy was trying to do like a low-key Mitch McConnell impression. Yeah, right. That's why he sounded like a lunatic. Well, right, but his message here is that he sure hates the idea that someday humans will avail themselves of a greater intellect than their own. And I'm like, dude, a fucking common or 64 has superior judgment to yours.

Sikki, he says, I don't want to live in a world where there's a question of who is the top dog. And I was like, what? What? What are you trying to say? the top dog and I was like, what? What? Yeah. Oh, what are you trying to say? The perfect politician in the year 2021, yeah. Do you think this guy is intellectually threatened

by a dictionary too? Right. He's like, this dictionary knows more words than me. I've made it. We must ban it, burn it at the stake. What if it tells me to fuck someone other than my wife? I'm not banning. And I would have no choice but to comply

because it's a computer voice and I'm a literal idiot. Right, he's like, he's talking about how he never wants to see a time when computers are smarter than him. I'm like, okay, we cut to everybody texting each other on a fucking speaking spell the next day. And what the fuck? Yeah.

And then it ends with him being like, I shall stop you with my bad. And scientists guy, the one from earlier is like, oh, yeah, sure. We'll stop all technology right here, Senator, because you want us to. Don't worry. No one will ever make a more advanced computer than we have right now this very second. You're right, sir. We've exceeded our grasp.

We will all collectively stop, including in the rest of the world where technology definitely won't move forward without your mercy. So the hearing ends with them repealing Moore's law, apparently. So David, the guy from MIT, he leaves the hearing and Stephen catches him outside the courthouse. He's like, Hey, man, you want to go have a meaningless scene together over here off to the side? He's like, have there been any other kinds of scenes in this movie? Oh. I at this point, what is happening? What is the plot? What are the stakes? Because at some point, he says the reputation of these computers will never recover.

Yeah. And that is a nothing sentence. It's nothing. There's nothing. It means nothing. Just a computer lying face down on its bed and its room. Genuinely, I think this writer wrote this with those, you know, that magnetic poetry that people used to have in their refrigerators. God, that one explains so much. So yeah, right. So he's like he's like well, you know We only have one last chance to find out if there's a god with a computer and he's like really we because we've done it over and over

And over and over and over and over. He's like right. There's eight minutes left in the movies So just one more chance. Oh, huh taking clock The taking clock was the runtime I've learned that there are stakes now because the movie has to end. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So then we go back to the computer to find God one last time. Now we didn't mention this earlier. The way he's got he's set up a trick. He's going to fool the computer. So he put up a blog, a fake blog, where he's pretending to be a guy who survived several near death experiences, assuming that that's the kind of guy that the computer would call and he set up a burner phone.

Right, so that the computer would call him and he could trick him into telling him whether or not there was a god. I have no Which would have been interesting if when that phone rang they didn't immediately look baffled Right, yeah exactly. It's not my phone. Why is that phone ringing? It's like because you set it up to ring you Oh fucking point is the only semblance of a plot we have left to And you forgot He's got like momentum disease That he like puts things down like he meets that reporter and then she disappears because you just

cannot remember anything beyond seven seconds ago. Right. All right. So yeah, but so somehow doing the exact same thing fails to bring about different results again this time. Jesus front and grace. And then Jane sneaks into the computer lab. We established earlier, he invited her to come and hang out at the computer lab and she said she couldn't come but now she's there

So why not just have her say yeah Don't get it. So yeah, no, I was about to write in the my nose that that scene didn't matter But I'm like what scene fucking matter But also this is when Stephen Ivan become like a miserable old bickering Mary. Yes, you promised me I mean, what you're thinking, Ivan. I can't think. I'm the thing. And the thing about this scene in particular, and you're right, they're all nothing

scenes, but this in particular is that we, the audience, do not understand why the thing isn't doing the thing. So instead of watching our protagonists experiment and work and try new things and have a fun montage of trying different things, we're just watching a man sit and stare at a computer. Yes, yes. The reason Jane shows up in this scene is because they're like, well, fuck, he would just be sitting there the whole time. Wouldn't have anything has to happen.

Just talk to him. Yeah. Yeah, so and then she fucking, she cooks him soup because woman. Okay. She cooks him soup over an open flame. You're a super computer. Yeah, again, I want Ivan to be like, okay, so you want me to tell you the secrets of the universe and you did not figure out no fire in the computer. So yeah, so he eats his warm dover beans or whatever.

And then he falls asleep on her lap. They've met like three times that we know the actress is very unhappy to have this dude on her lap. Oh, not sign up for this. Not happy. Yeah. And then, okay, so he wakes up to his burner phone ringing, which, as we've already established,

he is completely unprepared for. He picks up the phone and starts doing goddamn Eli's Irish old lady accent. Hello, why would he be Irish? I don't, why would you do an accent? And you're in the room with the computer, but you have established without a doubt. Can you hear you? Yes. That doesn't. It doesn't even step out of the room where the computer is.

No. No, no. It's me. Fireman McFoyer. Fire. I also died when I was picking potentials. Oh, not good. I don't know why I thought I could pull off an Irish accent when I've never done one.

I didn't nail that. Took a run at it and it was deeply offensive and I'm Irish. No, I think it was great. Hey, you was Steven nailed that. So, yes, so Steve was talking to the computers like, so I want to talk to you about these NDE's that you talk about on your blog. He's like, okay, but quit first. Let me ask you, do you believe in God, the computer?

I mean, caller, person calling me, the person really wanted the person on the phone to be like, I'll give you an update in an hour. Oh, no, you got me. Well, but that's the thing. Ivan is smarter than a fifth grader. It turns out, so he picks up on the voice. And he's like, I know, wait, I know who the fuck you. We're in the same room, man.

Sir, I can see you in my camera. Right. I'm a super computer. You think I have the answer to whether or not God is real, but you thought, hello, what's going to fool me? It's like, if someone who's like interviewing for a job and the interviewer is like, oh, I'm just going to go ahead and call these references and they call the person they're interviewing

and they're like, oh, it's just because they're very good work. I hope you appreciate, I did some space work. I actually held up my phone. Even no one can see me. I'm constantly doing on appreciated space work as well. Yeah. Yeah. So finally, so he breaks down. He's like, God damn it. Why won't you answer me? Give me the answers. And I was like, I have all kinds of answers, man. Do you want to know other shit like I like the solar panel thing? No. No. And then the computer tells him once more, you know, I know the answer, but you I you can't handle the truth.

And then it plays him a clip from this movie because the computer has access to the movie. I don't get it. But also, was that a significant quote? It's not just a random sentence. It's the why do we ask a computer that's never been hungry if there's a god? Yes, the seventh dumbest thing that was said in the movie. The only way that the computer playing him that clip makes sense is if the computer follows it up with, you're so stupid, you ask questions like this.

Why would I trust you with any internal truths about the universe? Or if the computer said, by the way, I'm hungry. Oh my God, that would have actually been a good ending. Oh, yup. If the computer is like, got a snack, like, what? Oh my God, that would have actually been a good ending. Oh, yup. If a computer is like, got a snack, like, what? Badat, badat, badat, badat. Yeah.

But no, but that's it. I don't know. Is there a moral to the story? Was there something we were supposed to learn? And to be clear, that was the end of the movie. That was it. That's it. Fade out. Mm-hmm.

I thought there was going to be like six months later or a... You said something. Nope. Anything. It's just these two people looking at each other fade to black credits. Right, and then look on their faces like, what the fuck was this movie about? They apparently got some direction from the director because they looked at each other like scared,

but I did not understand are we scared are we apprehensive have we accepted that there's no god and we're all gonna die and there's no point in doing anything like I don't know right yeah yeah right no the movie ends as it began having fucking solved nothing yeah I genuinely the first time I watch this movie and again, watched it two times, the movie ended and I was like, I definitely miss something. Like I'm going to go on this podcast and they're going to get it and I'm not. I'm going to look like a big old dummy. So I watched the last five minutes of this movie again.

Like I'm really focused now. I am not going to let anything pass me by and still was shocked when it faded to black. Yeah. It's like trying to find the meaning in 60s rock lyrics. Yeah. No, there's nothing there. So the magic carpet is dry. So just thank you so much for hanging out with us today. We'd love to have you back on sometime, but between now and then if our listeners wanted to hear more from you, where should they go? Well, you can hear me every week on the Friendly Atheist podcast.

We dropped that on Friday, so that's like a news recap from the lens of secular and feminist and LGBTQ rights perspectives. And also I have another much less popular podcast called Cooper Dupor. It's a Twin Peaks podcast where my husband and I are rewatching Twin Peaks. It's his favorite show and I have also seen it. So if you want to hear us talking a lot, it's a very fun thing. It's ultimately pretty dumb. All right. And of course, we'll have both of those shows linked on the show notes so you can find them handily right there. And well, that's going to do it for our review of episode

2.92. That's not going gonna do it for the episode just yet, cause we still need to go fuck ourselves again next week. So Eli, tell us what's on deck. When a town is overtaken by demon children, only one man's career will have sunk low enough to fight them. We'll be watching Chuck Norris in the bell of Innocent. Oh, oh, oh, okay. So a listener actually gave me a DVD copy

of that movie years ago. So I actually mean it when I say, I've been looking forward to that one for a while now. So with that one to look forward to, we're gonna bring episode two 92 to a merciful close. Once again, a huge thanks to Jessica for hanging out with us today and a perhaps even a huge thanks to all the Patreon donors to help make the show go.

If you'd like to get something out there, write you can make a perhaps donation to patreon.com. So I got awful and they're my earner with access to an ad free version of every episode. You can also help us out a ton by leaving a five star review on iTunes. And by sharing the show and all your various social media platforms. If you enjoyed this, show, be sure to check out our simley shows, the skating ad, the skate track ride available on iTunes, Stitcher, and wherever all its podcasts live. If you have questions, comments,

or send them out on suggestions, you can email gotoffelmews.gmail.com. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the offices of P. Andrew Torres. Our theme song is written and performed by Ryan Slantney, people withs of the Mars, all the music was written and performed by our audio engineer, Morgan Clark, and was used with permission. Thanks again for giving us a check in your life this week for Heathen, right, Neely, and Bostick. I'm No Illusions.

Promise me to work hard to earn another chunk next week until then. We'll leave you with the Breakfast Club Clothes. Stephen would go on to tape six toasters together in an attempt to find out if Jesus actually resurrected. Alan's neighbor escalated the feud once he saw what that mother fucker did to his shed. The reporter was immediately fired. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC Copyright 2021 all rights reserved.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC Copyright 2021, all rights reserved.