The Flop House - Ep. #313 - Dolittle

Episode Date: May 23, 2020

You can't have one of #TheTwoFriends without the other! In this episode, we're joined by David Sims of the Blank Check Podcast and film critic for The Atlantic, to talk about Robert Downey Jr.'s next iconic blockbuster character, Dolittle. Meanwhile Dan makes a pitch for fart acceptance, Stuart forgets our mission statement, David gives us a taste of what it was like to see Dolittle in the theater, and Elliott does an extremely aggravating bit with a raccoon finger puppet.Also - EXCITING NEWS! Since the coronavirus pandemic has kept us from touring, we're going to bring our live show to you via the internet! On Saturday, June 6, at 6 pm Pacific / 9 pm Eastern, we'll all be doing a video livestream on our YouTube page, complete with all-new live show presentations, a discussion of classic bad movie Howard the Duck, and a little audience interaction of some sort.It'll be free to watch, but we'll be encouraging viewers to donate to some COVID-19 relief charities, and those who donate can be entered to win some Flop House prizes! Hope to see you then!Wikipedia synopsis of Dolittle.Movies recommended in this episode:Le CorbeauBad EducationFloating WeedsMid-August Lunch

On this episode we discuss, do a little. Why do they call him do little? I think he does a lot in this movie. That's true, that's exactly what I was gonna say. And it was what Audrey predicted was gonna be the gag. That is the exact thing I have written in my notes to say, too, for this part. Too Please Nupad. Hey everyone and welcome to the Flop House, I'm Dan McCoy. Oh, hey there, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Top of the morning or whenever you're listening to this midnight, I don't know, I'm Elliot Kaelin. And Dan, who's joining us? Yeah, I'm Stuart. Or Dan. I thought we decided on Stuart, but I can say it's David Simms of the Blankcheck podcast and he is the film reviewer for the Atlantic. And that is a big, high-toned magazine.

That is a respected publication. That's a two-monical magazine. That's just called Glasses glasses too. Oh, what? Hi guys, thank you for having me. Yes, I did. I did a poop all over Do Little in the Hallow pages of the Atlantic, which was founded by the Nalfoldo Emerson and people like that. I mean, it took us such a, it took such a brave stand against slavery before and during the Civil War and now you've continued that tradition by taking a brave stand against do little I mean I thought it was a I mean I think it's kind of the pixie's best album right? Yeah, that was yeah

That was another of the jokes that I was gonna make so we all round robbing it's not my other jokes It's not my favorite but it's probably their most accomplished. Your surfer, Rosalman, I assume? No, I was, because of the nudity on the cover, Dan, the answer was when I was a kid, yeah. Now I don't know the band, the Pixies, particularly well, so I'm just going to assume they have an album called Out the Door Through the Window out of the line in. It's a wonderful life where he says, out you two Pixies go, Out the Door Through the Window out of the line in it's a wonderful life where he says out you two pixies go out the door through the window and I'm gonna say that's my favorite album does that they

have that is that a real thing I'm gonna go check metal archives and see if it's listed I mean the pixies are metal archives actually no results found so no I guess 80s alt rock not heavily influenced by Frank Capra, I guess. That's disappointing. It's very disappointing. I mean, but you know that punk was because John Doe, major punk figure, named himself, I assume after the Capra movie, meet John Doe.

Oh, okay, cool. I have to assume if I ever meet him, I'll be like, meet John Doe, like the movie, and he'll laugh and laugh. Yeah, so normally if you're just tuning in, you're thinking this is an alternative music podcast. But no, in fact, with poor experts. But no, in fact, we're a movie podcast,

and we watch the movie, and now we're about to talk about it. And what kind of movies do we watch? What kind of movies do we usually watch, too? You know, we kind of run the gamut sometimes their Comedy's almost always their moving images with sound attached Very fair very rarely do you watch a silent painting and then review it or a silent movie We've never watched a silent movie or Mel Brooks's silent movie. So yeah, we're the artist the best picture winner I consistently forget existed, which is

a mostly silent movie. Now guys, was that a French movie? I feel like when Parasite came out there, like first foreign film to win the Oscar. This is a good point. I believe the artist is technically a French movie. Although, yeah. I think that it has American actors in it, like John Goodman is in it. But I think what they were saying a lot of was,

John Goodman's in Parasite. Yes, John Goodman plays, he plays the, you know the guy who's in the host and Parasite and Snowpiercer, that's John Goodman. Oh wow. Yeah, he's in the makeup chair for hours and hours. It's highly offensive. No, I think that what they were saying a lot

was first foreign language film to win the ESPER. It seemed like a weird hair splitting to me honestly, but... I mean, to be honest, they probably forgot that the artist existed. Yeah, that's probably what it was. As I consistently do every time I look up past best picture winners, I'm like, oh yeah, the artist. Oh yeah!

Yeah, and they used to soundtrack from Vertigo in it. Kim Novak got all mad. Yeah, yeah, sure, the yeah, yeah, and they used to soundtrack from Vertigo in it. Kim Novak had all mad. Yeah, yeah, sure the artist. Yeah. I just spent coffee all over my office wall, imagining John Goodman being transformed to magically into Kangho's I mean, it would take magic. It would take a spell of some kind of a cloak of disguise. So what was? Yeah? No, I just took to finish the thing that you teed up for Stuart, but he deliberately went he's agged on you.

We normally watch bad movies, and then we talk about them. And this week we watch Do Little. Now guys, Do Little, of course, as you all know, is a new adaptation of the classic story of Dr. Do Little, the man who could talk to animals. And I just want to say for warning, this is going to be a slightly awkward episode for me, because I know someone who is involved

in the making of Do Little. I know actually one person, one of the screenwriters, and one animal. And I brought the animal with me just to like make sure it's okay with everybody. So if you look on your screen, you'll see there's a tiny raccoon right there. Oh wow.

Hold on, let me take a picture. Oh wow, I didn't know we were getting too good. I didn't know we were gonna have a celebrity for the... Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Was that Catherine DeNove played the raccoon? I can't remember. Well, actually, no. We really brought them all in.

Now, now, now, this is, this is Rick raccoon. He used to be a Ranger Rick, but he was drummed out of the force, of course. Yeah, I'd rather not talk about it. How I was once a park Ranger and then was dismissed for causes that I would call unsubstantiated allegations that's fair and now your father was of course the famous rocky raccoon yeah the Beatles wrote a song about him it was called love me do now now now uh... rick you were in do little yes i remember seeing a raccoon in the movie no they

cut all my scenes oh why, why did they do that? Well, there was a whole subplot about a raccoon that wanted to be a famous chef, and they thought it was too close to Ratatouille, and I was like, Ratatouille is about a rat, but I'm a raccoon. And, well, I gotta say, I totally understand the point they made, but what was it like being on the set of Do Little?

Oh, wow. I mean, the craziest thing was, I was the only real animal in the whole movie. The rest was all computer animated. So it was just me and Bobby Downs. That's what I call Robert Downey, Jr. Just looking at a bunch of tennis balls and pretending there was like gorillas or ostriches or whatever there.

And who's going to be your celebrity voice when it was finally dubbed? Oh, Catherine DeNove, just like Mr. Sims said. Oh, okay, wow. So, do you have any funny behind-the-scenes stories about it? No, he doesn't have anything funny about it. Nothing is funny about this at all. Two things.

Well, Dan, well, Dan, if I could stop please. Dan, Dan, Dan, if I could speak please. Dan, you had your time. Now let me have my time. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, sir, excuse me, excuse me. OK. Now, for the audience at home, I do have a tiny puppet

on my finger. And I'm going to be good. That's the thing I'm missing out on. To mention is somehow it's more annoying than if he was just doing the voice that he has a puppet on his finger that he is continuing to move around as he talks. You know, I did because I'm a professional. I'm just reeling from the news that this movie had subplots that were cut out and re-shoots. I didn't show

that was not like apparent at all. Oh, no, wow. It was crazy. Originally, do little didn't even talk to animals. That was something they added. It was about a guy who thinks he can talk to animals, but he can't really. And the animals are like, why does this guy think he understands this? We're not saying that.

How long is this going to go on? So. Hey, Rick, I think it's time for you to head out. I should probably start with the summary of the movie. Okay, well, I've got some other funny stories. There was a time John Goodman's stop by, but we didn't recognize him, because he had all this makeup on him.

And we thought it was the guy from Parasite. It's the same guy. Really? Yes, the same guy. Oh, wow. Okay, well, I'm just gonna get going now. See you guys. I don't know that that guy's slowly walking off the screen. I just want to... Still walking. Okay. Eh. And he's slowly walking off the screen. I just want to still walking.

Okay. And he's off. I want to provide a little more background just to say that this is, I mean, like the Dr. Doe Little novels are by Hugh Lofting and they began in the first one was published in 1920. The final was published in 1952. They're 15 books. And some of the books were posthumous, collecting stories that he left behind. You got admire, anybody's work ethic

when they keep writing after they've died. Yes. It's like hand in- You're watching And Englishmen. And it comes out through his stories. They have a certain, I don't know. The same vibe is like Mary Poppins, I think, in a certain way, like other English children's stories

of the same basic period. But there's a little bit of a Babar in it too, in the sense of it is the purpose of white Europeans to train all animals and people to be like them, which does not age well in the books. I remember loving those books when I was a kid, but I wasn't really thinking about what rights does a giant talking snail have when Dr. Do

Little shows up to meet him. I believe there's a book where he goes to the moon. Am I right? And thinking about probably Dr. Doolittle in the moon and I'm reading that I just found this first sentence of the plot summary. Dr. Doolittle has landed on the moon. So I don't know. Chapter one, page one. I mean, it gets down to business. You can say that for it. Well, the thing was they had found a sort of alien monolith on the moon and they needed Dr. Doodle to come talk to it. And he's the only one who understood that language. The great communicator. And so Dr. Doodle is a movie. So yeah, that's a different movie. This is Doodle. That's true.

There's Eddie Murphy in it. There's two previous Dr. Do Little more. Or Rex Rex Harrison depending on the Rex Harrison movie from the late 60s, which they're in the great book Pictures at a Revolution and in the Great Book the Studio. They talk about respectively its Oscar campaign and the making of I should have named the books in the pre in the reverse order. And it was one of these it was kind of one one of the last gasps of this studio system where they were like, we're gonna make real big budget, family friendly musicals,

and then we're gonna force the Oscars to nominate them. And then there is the doctor do little with Eddie Murphy where that's pretty much just the name and the fact that he can talk to animals. I think that's the, because he's not, in the books, he's not really a doctor, is he? I can't remember.

Well, he's a veterinarian. Oh, so he's like, but he's not like a people doctor. Right. Where is I believe in the Eddie Murphy movie as in this? He is in it. And he's like a surgeon. He's like a human surgeon in his long repressed his ability to speak to animals. Like he's ignored it his whole life until now. That's the other thing is in the do little books. And in this one, it's a skill you can learn.

Anyone who pays close enough attention to animals learn to talk, but in Dr. Doe, it's like more of a drop dead Fred type ability. Now hold on, I'm going back to the first book just to get a little context. He is a respected physician and quiet bachelor living with his spinster, sister Sarah, in the small English village of Puddle, P puddle be on the marsh. Okay, see I thought he was like a doctor of literature or something like that. We're like, uh-huh. Do little MD here. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of surprised they didn't name this movie John Doodle MD and make it like a gritty reboot of the Dr. Doodle story.

Yeah, where he likes MD stands stands for massive Ding Dong. I mean, that would be kind of gritty, I guess. I mean, if you say anything, it sounds pretty gritty in my whole new voice. I'm a doctor of penis having. So let's get into this. So this is the newest version of Duelo and they make a few strange decisions with the story

and the performers make some very strange decisions with the story. And the performers make some very strange decisions with their performances. And well, let's get into it, because it's kind of all over the place. We begin, as most great movies do, with a prologue that explains who all the characters are and all their backstory, so that later when the other characters

are piecing together the clues of why Dr. Doolittle has secluded himself from humanity. We, the audience already know all of this and it is boring. But, and this is though the best part of the movie. It's this animated prologue that looks beautiful where they explain it's narrated by Emma Thompson, who of course throughout the movie is a parrot.

Where it talks about how Dr. Doolittle, he was a famous doctor who could talk to animals. He had an explorer, a girlfriend, named Lily, and she's kind of like a, I don't know, what would you call? Like a, like a cutthroat island, Gina Davis type, you know, based on the way she dresses. And like kind of a lady pirate buck in the air explorer. And they marry, unfortunately, she dies at sea. Ooh, shades of frozen there. And he becomes a reckless with his animals.

And I sort of Tim Burton-esque, wonder in Poryom of a house that has some like, steampunk conveyor belts and things like that. And it made me realize, yeah. It's like semi-rotoscope. So it's kind of a good introduction for your kid before you show them a scanner darkly, for instance. Now that's what I was gonna say.

The computer-arized rotoscoping and the presence of Robert Downing Jr. together, make it impossible without the scanner darkly. And it is, I was talking recently to my wife about scanner darkly and how Robert Downing Jr. 's performance and that is so good. And part of it is because he's so great and it was at a time when he was coming back

from rock bottom and so he is not automatically the coolest hip is dude in the world. He's not Iron Man in it. And I was like, oh, I forgot. He can play characters other than Iron Man. And he's so good in it. That whole phase of his career, sort of like starting with the singing detective and up to Iron Man. Like when it's, it was basically just, I don't know, it's like when some basketball player, like, you know, tears are killies and they're gone for a while and they come back

and you're like, oh, like, right, this guy is incredible. Like, we've, he's just been untapped for like 10 years. I would call it the, he was I am. Yeah, I would call it the proving they should ensure me for the production period. Yeah, the career. But like, Kiscus Bang Bang, Good Night Good Luck, you know, Scanner zodiac right like that

whole run pre iron man is is very exciting he's so good in in zodiac and then he makes iron man and he's great as iron man but it's like now it's just it's iron man is to him kind of what jack sparrow is to Johnny Depp where people are like oh we love this performance do just that from now on it's so funny that you bring up jack sparrowrow because Robert Downey Jr.'s accent in this movie, Too Little, makes me yearn for the careful annunciation of Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm sorry. And this is the major, one of the major performance problems.

And we haven't, we get to it when it's more important, I guess, but Robert Downey Jr.'s made the decision to one put on kind of a strange, well, she type accent and to do every line in a hushed, whispery tone, even when he's irritated. So instead of being like, animals, leave me alone. He's like, animals leave me alone?

And it was like, why does it feel, why does it always sound like Shrek is whispering at me? I don't understand. Shrek's ASMR tape. Shrek's ASMR tape. So first though, we meet Stubbins. A little boy who also loves animals, even though his dad is just wants him to hunt all the time.

Stubbins is what I ended up realizing as a totally unnecessary character, as we'll find out. He accidentally shoots a squirrel, and rather than put the CGI squirrel out of its misery like his heartless dad does, he instead follows Do Little's parrot Polly, Emma Thompson, who appears out of nowhere as if like Mary Poppins or Nany McVeah magical being, and leads him to Do Little's Estate, which is full of CGI animals. And Stubbins, I gotta tell ya, doesn't seem particularly amazed to suddenly see elephants and giraffes wandering around in English estate. He takes it pretty much in stride. The way you would take, like, he reacted to it the way I would, like, you see a busker

on the street in New York, where for an instant it distracts your attention and then you're like, hmm, not interested in that and you turn your head away. So he gets caught in, yeah. He does shriek at the presence of a gorilla. Yeah. Well, who wouldn't, Dan? He's a big shriek. He's a big shriek.

And he gets caught in a net because there is a trap there, I guess, for, I don't know, poachers or somebody. Okay, do little. Now we finally get to really meet him. He is recluse bearded and his animals help him get dressed in a kind of weird take on the scene and in a, was it snow white or Cinderella where the animals help her dress or both? I think it's simply sleeping beauty, but also maybe all of those. Look, Disney princesses cannot get dressed without the help of animals. We know that. Yeah. It was like a little bit of like Peewee's big adventure thrown in there. Yeah. Well, that's the, it made me realize,

so in Peewee's big adventure, I remember as a kid seeing that sequence where his breakfast gets made by his weirdo machines and thinking it was so amazing and so funny. We're going, Berg is listening to our podcast and it's so mad, you just called the Weirdo Machines. It was like, same my name, asshole, same my name. I had one legacy. This is the one thing I'm remembered for. Please, it's a fellow Jew, remember me,

and I'm like, hey buddy, I'll put a stone in your grave, but leave me alone. So, not my parents and ours and miles. So, but that, I don't think I've seen ever since then like a kind of steampunky clockwork group gober thing that has captured that level of magic. And why do you think that is? I was curious why you guys think that this unless this this really hit you with a sense of wonder and possibility. This is the well I mean the pee we thing is actually like you think of that as like kind of a frantic movie in certain ways

But you it takes it slow you watch every Individual thing happen and you're a mate like there's a there's a physicality to everything that happens like it feels like that Is an actual machine rather than some CGI creation because they didn't use CGI and also like it leads up to the joke where pee-we It's it incredibly small amount of breakfast before. And then wipes his mouth with the napkin very dainty. When I was a kid, my sister and I, that's all we would do after we ate was we would just take napkins and lightly dab the corners of our mouths like he does and we'd leave all this food on our face. It also reflects his personality, right? It's like silly and overly busy and like, you know, like he's,

he's very invested in it and it's funny. Where is like, I feel like Doolittle is not even, he's so laconic and uninterested in his magical house full of magical animals. Like it seems like these things are happening to him. Yeah. And we talked about his dead wife before, but I do think that I want to take a moment and talk about how like, so this is why he's withdrawn from the world, and I do not understand

this need for movies to give these kind of magical characters, tragic backstories. Like, if you think about, say, Willy Wonka, right? Like, Charlie and the chocolate factory, like, Willy Wonka doesn't have the arc there. Like Charlie has what the closest thing to an arc in that movie. Willy Wonka is just this magical pixie who is himself and doesn't need to have a reason to be that way. And, and like, I feel like do a little, like, it should be the same thing. Like, Dr. Dole, little is Dr. Dole, little, no need to be like, oh, he has a, a dead wife, and that's motivating the action of this movie to some degree. Well, Dan, I was reading variety the other day, and there was this article saying that

studios have all these fridges lying around, and you just got to throw these wives at them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're losing money on those fridges if they don't put wives, girlfriends, and assorted parents in there. I mean also remember Tim Burton perverted that by giving the long-cut tragic backstory which was sort of an odd decision. I mean it wasn't that

tragic. It was just that let me candy, right? Right. Exactly. But it was the like look, I have a weird. I have a weird I Am a weird defender of that movie. I think it's a bad choice It's not a terrible making, but otherwise it's a pretty good adaptation of the book Except for the at the shove in this dentist shit in the middle of it. Why do you think it's a bad choice for Johnny Depp to me? I think it's a little too creepy like I think that Willy Wonka is should be this character

who makes candy, but his relationship to kids is hard to pin down, you know? But like, I mean, I feel like that's what you got in them. I think I admire that in a world where Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka already exists, there's no reason to do that Willy Wonka again because it's perfect. But that like he was like,

there's a lot of shit in that movie that's not Gene Wilder. That's not very good. No, but I'm just talking about Gene Wilders amazing. The other one that I'm talking about is down. I'm just talking about Gene Wilders performance. Okay. Just Gene Wilders performance is perfect in that. And I think it's a valid twist for Johnny Depp

to be like, hmm, who's a recluse who lives in an amusement park and wants kids around, Michael Jackson? I'll make the character like Michael Jackson. And I think that's, it's a valid choice for that character, even if it doesn't totally work, ultimately as an entertaining thing to watch. Yes. I think the dead wife, I mean, everything about this movie

is a little shrouded in mystery because it was reshot and I'm sure we'll all talk about it. But Steven Gagan, I think, who is a little shrouded in mystery because it was reshot and I'm sure we'll talk about you know But Stephen Gagan, I think you know who is a bizarre choice to make a doctor do a movie He's probably the one who's coming in and is like this should have pay throws this should be about Trauma and working things out. He should be more of a brain doctor than a body doctor like Everything seems to stem from that all these weird dark decisions. I think that's probably part of it. Well, there's only three types of ways to adapt old stories now.

You can either do a prequel that explains how he became Dr. Dulittle, and it's all about him learning how to talk to animals. You do a gritty reboot, like we talked about, John Dulittle MD, where he's talking about what a massive ding-dong he's got. And if someone's killing the animals of London, and he has to like find the the jack the ripper of animals,

or you do it like this where it's like, remember the do little stories from before, and he lived happily ever after? Well whoever told you that must have lied, because do little's got some sad stuff too. But now he's gonna come back where it's the kid he's just got. Like that may, baby.

Wait, baby. Yeah, where it's like the return to Oz of do little. Like, that's the only other way to do it. And they chose the one they wanted. And of those three, that's the one it works the most for me, I guess. Elliot, there's not the only way you could do it the way that I think they're, I think they're better. Oh no, Dan, you can do it. I'm just saying now, those are the three studio approved ways

to adapt to story. Prequel. Dark reboot or it's 20 years later and somebody's got a shake I'm out of their doldrums. Well, I guess this isn't an American movie, but you can do it the pattington way, which I think at this film's best moments is what it's trying to shoot for honestly

and not really doing it, but just fucking accept the book for what it is except the vibe of it. Like not, you know, explain why there's this bear from Darkest Peru who likes Marvel Aided wants to go to London too much. Just have that be who that is and have Dr. D little be a guy who loves animals. Because here's because here's I haven't seen the patenting movies, but here's the way I would have done it so you start in Peru and It starts with pattington's Grand attention. You should really watch the paint and you would enjoy the

I will you're right. I've got lots of time on my hands and I'll watch actually every time I see just watching him to Sammy He's not he thinks they're gonna be scary so he doesn't want to watch I will say honestly for me the first one is good, but I kind of got bored the second one is amazing So here's how to do it darkest Peru. It's it's 30 years ago. An old bear shows up and tells a young bear there's a prophecy. North grandson, your grandson will be the chosen bear. And his name shall be Pa Ding. And so then you cut flash forward to, I'm walking on sunshine and Paddington is just kind of like in-prue love and life, just being like,

hey buddy, hey look over there. And you just hear the voice over, now it's just Sonic at this point, where he's like, hey, I'm having a great cool life. But uh oh, what's happening now? Let me rewind a little bit. And you see how his family like, so the movie would end with him getting

to London, because that sets up the PCU, the Paddington Cinematic Universe. And the next one is the rise of Paddington, and that's how he meets the family. And the last one. Jerry Jeremy Piven, yes, of course. And the last one is called Aftermath, Paddington Aftermath, or Dawn of the Rise of Paddington, and that's the one where he loses the family family but he becomes the hero that they all need him to be so that's patting out wait hold on i have a very important question for david

uh... what is it like being on this podcast and sort of like having to endure agrith and let's say but like one that you don't have years of friendship and history with your your your you're thinking about this all wrong. I'm just like, oh, someone else can handle anything else. I'm just here to float and have fun and occasionally. Oh, great. Yeah, you don't have to drive the car.

It's probably great. I don't have to try and keep trains on time. Like I do on my show. I'm just here having listening, laughing. I mean, it's the thing that my friend said to me once, I was like, would you babysit for us? She's like, yeah, I love babysitting. Because the kids start crying.

I know I'm going home at the end of the night. Oh, yeah, that's. So, uh, Do you really my approach to bartending? Yeah. Do Little is playing chess with his gorilla who is voiced by Ramy Malik. Yes.

In one of the other Oscar worthy performance. And who has the great catchphrase, I am not a prisoner of fear. Yeah, and for some reason, Remy Malik misunderstands what he's being told and shows his butt to Dr. D'Little, do a little other playing chess. But ironically, a man who won an Oscar for lip syncing is now doing just the voice while a gorilla lip syncs.

Amazing. But it's one, there are a lot of really good talented actors in this that are for some reason chosen to do the voices for cartoon animals and have been directed to deliver the lines as if they are people who are standing in a booth trying to get their lines done in time to get out so they don't have to be paid overtime. And it's one of these movies where it really hit me how much they needed like cartoon voice actors to do the voices for these animals like as much as I want Who was it who does the voice of the duck? Octavia Spencer?

Yeah as much as I want Octavia Spencer to get a paycheck because she's great Yeah, she's not my go-to person for the voice of a funny duck character But I know we're like and it's and they had they had Ralph Innocen playing the human father of the kid. Like, that's money on the table, dude. He's got a great voice. He's got a great voice. That's like a perfect, like, you cast John Cena to do the voice of a bear. He's completely hairless.

He's not a bear. Get that hairy guy to do it. Get the late Robin Williams to do it. A man covered in hair. So the other thing which we soon learn is that this movie takes place during the reign of Queen Victoria and the humans all speak in a sort of, you know, antique Victorian way,

but all the animals speak in normal, modern slang. To the point where an octopus later tells Dr. Do Little Snitches get stitches and the polar bear is like, hey bro, yeah, you did it, awesome. And it's like, I don't, so animals, so much as you watch, when I recently watched Paris's Burning for the first time and I was like, oh, all of our slang comes from drag culture of the 1980s. I didn't realize all of our slang even further comes from animal culture of the 1880s. Guys, we've been stealing from the animals. I gotta say, like, I don't understand the problem, Elliot. I don't know why you would expect animals, you know, dialects to have evolved in the

same way that humans talk. That's a good point. David's whole separate idiom, you know? Yeah, that involves like, what, almost, like, I would get waiting for a pop culture reference to now, and it never quite cut that far, but they got pretty close, I think. Yeah. Guys, I have a serious question. Now, I may have missed this,

but they explain that the humans can, like if they spend enough time around these animals and they study hard, they can learn how to speak animal language. Yes. So they explain how all the animals can talk with each other. Well, they all speak galactic basic. But yeah.

But they specify that different animals speak different languages. Yeah. That's true. But at the same time, it's like he only has to pick up one thing, which doesn't make any sense. But you know what I mean? Like when the kid is describing how he's learning all of the little idiotic synchrosies, I mean, I prefer the any Murphy look,

he's touched by an angel, like that's better. Like, just give me that. The best version of it is when we, years ago we did zookeeper with the King of Queens. And he gets hit on the head and I was like, oh, he's gonna get hit on the head and it's gonna give him the ability to talk to animals. And the animals were like, no, we can always talk.

We just don't like doing it around people. And I was like, why don't you talk to people and tell them not to eat you and kill you? Like, they just hit them on the head just to hit them on the head. No, no, he has, he has accident and gets hit on the head. And then the animals are like crowded around him. And I think it's the lion voiced by a belief slice

to lone who says, yeah, we just don't talk around people because it freaks them out. And it's like, but you have, you've been imprisoned. You know, I think it's like, tell them, you know, shouldn't be the... The reason it freaks them out. And it's like, but you have, you've been in prison. You know what I think it's like, tell them, you don't shouldn't be there. The reason it freaks them out is you haven't been doing it. Like, you did it all the time. Like, it would just be part of the bad old life.

Yeah, but they know it would just destabilize society too much at this point. It's just awkward at this point. I mean, the society that treats their lives as playthings and food. Again, they have nothing to lose from this, except their chains. So, Stubbins, the boy we mentioned before, he meets Lady Rose in Emissary from the Queen, the character who I believe should be in the Stubbins role, because Stubbins

is going to go on a quest with Dr. Dulittle and become his apprentice, and this Lady Rose character basically just shows up to say the Queen's in trouble and then doesn't get to go in the adventure and how much better would this movie have been if it was like a man and like a sassy little girl or at least a brave little girl rather than a man and like stubborn who all due respect to the to kid playing him has no personality whatsoever. You know they also meet the scary cat gorilla whose name is Chi Chi. I assume after the restaurant chain of the same name. Or maybe he grew up to found that chain, I don't know. Anyway, let's get to the plot, shall we? The Queen is sick. Do

little like, I don't care, but after saving Stubbins' squirrel from an operation, the squirrel vows revenge on Stubbins, which something which never pays off in any way whatsoever. I gotta say though, the squirrel's Craig Robinson, like I laughed at a few of his lines. Like, he's later on, he's, yeah, later on, he's like, like day 24. I don't know why I'm still following these lunatics. Right. The thing is everyone is giving the vocal performance of, okay, I'll do a weekend in

a booth for you, Robert. Like, sure. Yeah. You know, you know, you'll owe me a favor But if you know if you have a comedian like Camille Nanjiani Craig Robinson, at least they'll be funny It's the people like John Cena or Rami Malak where you're like what is it you're looking for like you're not gonna Get pay those from Rami Malak. I don't know. It's the same thing problem that the movie Ferdinand had I know all you guys also talk took your sons to see Ferdinand

during the coldest winter in New York history. But the, you know, in the last 100 years, I took my son to see Ferdinand and I was like, this is not a bad movie, but the voices are so flat. I mean, part of it is that they had, what's that football player's name, who's in it? Peyton Manning or Boise? Peyton Manning.

I mean, don't cast Peyton Manning as a voice in your funny animal movie, but like the voices, the delivery was so flat that even like, I remember, I'm forgetting every single name in the world, from Cernet Live and Ghostbusters and... Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning, like even her, like the reads were kind of off, and it was like, I don't know what's going on with voice directing these days, that... Well, but also, I mean, the problem is is as Billy West would rail against if you were here like they're employing

You know celebrity suit of voices when that's not necessarily their strong point like there are actors who do This all the time and are very good at it, you know They have nice faces that I like to look at that sort of a whole deal of being a famous actor Well, that's the funny I that's like a I I thought it was such a funny thing that when an animated movie goes overseas, the actors from the American dub do press overseas. So like when Madagascar was in other countries, like Ben Stiller and everybody would go do press there, even though their voices were not even in the movie. So it's like, because they dub it with a local language actor.

So it was like, hey, so here's this movie. I mean, except I'm not really in it because you're not gonna see me or hear me, but I'm famous, so ask me some questions about it. Griffin, I'm sorry, but I haven't, Griffin told a story about Jesse Eisenberg, I think getting a call from his agent being told, like, hey, Rio, is like the biggest movie in Brazil.

Like, it's huge, Rio. And Jesse Eisenberg had to be like, I had nothing to do, I'm not involved in the Brazilian huge, Rio. And Jesse I said, we're gonna have to be like, I had nothing to do. I'm not involved in the Brazilian version of Rio. You don't need to call me. I mean, also for a movie called Rio to be a big hit in Brazil is like, I mean, come on. If you do not, you screwed something up, come on.

Yeah, and there's some, I don't know if it's like a sound design thing or maybe it's just the voice acting or direction, but like, I had a lot of trouble telling where any voice was coming from. It's always just this mishmash where I could never tell if like a character was on the other side of the room. Well, I don't know whether this is related or not, but like the famous story about this is that Stephen Gagan is the original director of this after

before their reshoots did not have it planned out where the animals would be on screen, which is crazy, a crazy way to do a movie with CGI animals. And so a lot of it is ADR, a lot of it is like Jerry rigged after the fact. Yeah, Gagan was just like, we'll figure it out. Like he did not get, I think, that you need to plan pre-visual discrepant advance. Because there's a fair amount of like, ostriches running by in the background

with their heads off camera while they say a line. And it's like, yeah, okay, I guess they just, they just stuck that in because they had a line from the ostrich and he wasn't in the scene at the moment. So they had to have him run by in the background and say it. But they're gonna go, they have to go save the queen because here's the thing. The queen gave, or Dr. Dulittle, the least for this house, but if she dies, he's going

to lose the house and the animals are going to have to go to the zoo. And the animals shave him so they can go. We're going to introduce the other animals. They're dab dab the duck, Octavius Spencer. There's Plympt in the ostrich who's Camille Nonjani, Channing Tatum as the polar bear whose name I forgot, and Stubbins kind of stows away in their trunk. Meanwhile, back at Buckingham Palace,

the evil doctor Mudfly, played by Michael Sheen, is leaching the queen to ensure that she dies. Uh-oh, there's some nefarious doings about. But luckily, gyps the dog smells something suspicious, and then the queen's octopus, after telling do little snitches get stitches, tells them it's poison, it turns out the only cure is the fruit from the Eden tree, the very tree of legend that do little's wife was looking for when

she died in a storm. And like do little explain, she's like you like oh it's like from a tree No one has seen on an island no one knows exists on like like he does like this whole thing And I'm like well then how like how do you know that this island like These are supposed to be like the tree of life like is that the idea of this is so yeah, I feel like that must have Been an idea that must have been an idea in the Movie at some point that must that been an idea, that must have been an idea in the movie at some point, that was either a lie, did or a change,

but also they say like can cure anything and gives eternal life, but that's not what the fruit from the tree in Eden did. Like the tree in Eden, the fruit gave you the knowledge of good and evil, which is the queen, I assume, already knows good and evil or she shouldn't be in charge of a country.

So you're saying it would be brutal. Hey, the brain is evil, Elliot. So I have to say, I was expecting Do Little to have to go get in a riddle contest with WoTAN in order to get this fruit, but I guess I was disappointed. There's no mythological happenings at all in the rest of this movie, right? Well, we'll see. Perhaps there's a mythological animal later on. Stubbins, he sneaks along as a do-little's apprentice

on this journey. There's a brief giraffe chase where a French dog, right, or Fox, or something, is riding a giraffe. And it's- Yes, that is Mary and Cotyard. It's one of the sorrows at the end of the credits, like Mary and Cotyard. And I was like, not only do I not know why Mary and Cotyard

was chosen, I don't know why that character was in the movie because all she does is she just says that one scene with the giraffe, right? Where I assume she's the giraffes like lover and that's why she's riding on the back with stubbins. It doesn't make any sense. Was that and the giraffe was Selena Gomez, right? Uh, yes, the giraffe is Selena Gomez. I just have to imagine there's a whole like rose and cranson gildon storm plot

with them that they had to cut. I why else would you bring in Academy Award winner Mary and cut the art because name to to for all those kids who loved love and rose and want to see her in more their movies. It involves them jumping on a doodles bridge boat from a bridge. It's all very unnecessary. And Holly, the parrot, and the Thompson Tells do little, you need a human around you to remind you that you're human. Meanwhile, this evil aristocrat played by Jim Broadbent wants to kill the queen and take the throne. I don't know if he really understands how monarchy works. If the queen dies, it's not going to be this random chamberland dude who becomes the king like that seems like pretty basic kind of

Military coups. What is planning? I'm not really sure Yeah, I mean what you know to weigh in with my knowledge of British history if this is young Victoria Wait, David. David. Did you live in England or is that I did live in oh you live in England? You grew up in England interesting. Oh, yes. Yes, and. And that's something that's normal and well known about me. And it's regular news. If Queen Victoria, I mean, how old is she supposed to be? She's in her 30s. This is young Victoria.

This is young Victoria. Yeah. So her kid would be like 10 years old, if not. So maybe he's looking for a regency. And now he wants to sit on the throne while there's a child king maybe but it's like i don't know if it's already siblings but usually the younger sibling within

uh... i don't know that she had any children goes kids first then siblings i don't know that she in royal pre-miginnah but i don't know that she had any kids at that point okay do you know that you do your famous research skills to look up how old queen victoria was during the events of this movie which is based on true fact? I mean it was just it was just so strange to me to see Queen Victoria presented as a young woman when in my mind

She is a she's a stout doubty old lady who says we are not to mused to Sherlock Holmes So I'm I just I plug that into the search bar in the metal archives Disappointing especially since since Britain has such a strong presence in on the metal scene Yeah, you would think So and Jim broadband, you know, I've seen him play bigger crazy or characters, but you know, it's fun to see him And he's got he's got Michael Sheen delivering his best-like John Hodgman style character as an evil doctor general, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so Michael Sheen, Dr. Mudflies is obsessed with how Dr. Do Little always got everything he wanted and everyone thinks he's so great, but he's so crazy, and Dr. Mudflies gonna get it. And Dr. Mudfly seems to keep forgetting that Dr. Doolittle lost his wife to a shipwreck

and has lived as a recluse for years. So he's like, at the end of the movie, he's like, Dr. Doolittle, now you're gonna see what it's like to not get what you want for a change. And it's like, his a widower, come on man. He's a widower in the room. You are Dr. to the queen. Like, have you not ascended to your highest honors?

Like, what is here, what more could you be? Maybe you just always wanted a pet gorilla. I don't know Yeah, that said Michael Sheen is one of the one of the best things about this movie I feel like even in our Views at the time. Yeah, I mean he's Michael Sheen is acting in the movie that this wants to be because look guys I'll put some of my cards in the table. I did not find this to be as disastrous a movie as I had been led to believe, partly because it looks beautiful, it's bright and colorful, it's not grim and gray and beige and brown everywhere, and like black and white and with no colors.

But it's like, it wants to be this like cartoony, or it should be this cartoony romp, like you're saying Dan, but instead it's like, it's weighted down by all these elements that don't really fit into that. So by the time they are like literally running from Barbary coast pirates, it's like, why is this boring? Like I don't understand why they're in a pirate island fighting a tiger and it's boring for some reason.

I will say I watched this film again. Thanks guys. Thank you for putting the work in. I appreciate it. Um, even Dan doesn't always do that. Right, I rented it on iTunes and I just got an alert for my tunes in my rental periods almost, so obviously I got to keep an eye on that. But uh, and on my TV, I did not think I think this is a quite bad movie, but it's pretty easy to ignore.

Like you can just kind of like have it on and like, oh, what's the okay antics? Okay, yeah, the animals are making jokes. Seeing this in a theater, you really felt like being imprisoned with it. Like, and really, it really, like when you're really locked in with it, really highlights how bizarre some of the editing and some of the sort of

story smoothing is. Like it will jump from scene to scene with the parrot trying to like fill in narrative gaps really quickly. In this way where you're just like, is it at missing? Like, what happened? Oh, that's right.

I forgot that like to mention, this comes up especially with the pirate island where they're like, we're gonna have to sneak into that pirate island. And Polly is like, so they did sneak into the pirate island. And then this is what happened. And it's like, was there gonna be a scene where they snuck into the pirate island. And then this is what happened. And it's like, was there gonna be a scene where they snuck into the pirate island?

It feels like there's whole reels that they were just like, I don't know. They must have fallen off the truck, who's here. See, that's very interesting to hear that it was a different experience because to your point, when we were watching it, Audrey was like, see, this would be a perfectly fine thing to take a nap too on a Sunday.

Yeah, I was like, oh man, this is gonna be disastrous. And then I was like, I briefly considered watching with my son, and I was like, ah, I don't wanna subject to it. But now I'm like, ah, he could have watched it, and it would have been fine. And, you know, he would have,

I'm sure he would have enjoyed parts of it. Like, this is, I mean, he might have been, there is that, there's that like, kind of erotic scene where Antonio Vandaris is just languishing amidst beautiful tigers. Like, I don't know, it's pretty erotic.

I don't know what you want. Oh, the post-tiger, or are you saying, where you know, it's about the bunch of tigers. I don't know if you want to introduce children to that. It's a long tense. I mean, the real problem is my, is my son during the draft chase would be like, what voice is that?

Where have I heard that voice? Is that Marion Cotear? Hold on no, it can't be and he would do one night the same way that we watched big hero six Yesterday and I hadn't seen it and I was like who is that voice and it bugged me the home movie I'm like, oh James Cromwell that's who that voice is and then I said to him. Oh, that's the farmer from babe and he was like, who is that voice? And it bugged me the whole movie. I'm like, oh, James Cromwell, that's who that voice is. And then I said to him, oh, that's the farmer from Babe and he was like, whatever. Uh, whatever, dad.

Anyway, so Jim Broadman sends Mudfly to go after Do Little to stop him from saving the queen at all costs. Do Little, as on the ship, he's boxing the gorilla, trying to teach it to be brave, because, you know, it's a gorilla who's afraid of of things it's hilarious. Then he hears an eerie whistle at night and remembers his wife. This I don't quite know what they were getting at for sure here but it happens and that's when I realized one of the monkeys on the

ship is named Elliott. So I was like that's cool. Do little calls a whale to help them with a warship that Dr. Mudfly is commanding. They tie a harness to the whale to move their ship faster, and the worship fires, and Chi Chi, the gorilla, gets scared and drops Do Little's scuba rope because he's in kind of like a steampunk scuba suit, or one of those aqua lung type bathy's fear suits. But he survives just fine thanks to Stubbins and they escape. And that's when we really then that Mudfly is obsessed with Dr. Do Little and Mudfly establishes himself as the funniest character in the movie. But there's a lot of like, a lot of Mudfly just going like, oh, do little.

And I wasn't sure if I liked how single-minded he is or if there were times where I was like, I want to see a little more about what Mudfly does when he's not feeling that good gag where he was like looking through His telescope and too little had said something about like how he was chaneless or something Yeah, that was I that was funny. Yeah, I think that there's a sort of a meta Funniness to it as well because it's fair for the other characters to be like Why is there a fuss about this do-little guy? Downey is barely trying. Like, you know, like, the performance is so baffling

that it, like, I can under, like, she should probably just be Dr. Doodle. He'd be a good Dr. Doodle. He would have been a great Dr. Doodle. Like, he would have been a fantastic Dr. Doodle. The fact that, that Robert Daniel Jr.'s performance, it's not just, like, doodle is not just a reluctant hero, he's a reluctant living being.

You expect, I don't know why this guy didn't do, just stop breathing and pass out over and over again just to get away from day to day life. He seems to be just existing. That's what the depth comparison makes sense to where it's like, I feel like both these stars became almost hostile to their own charisma They just got sick of their usual thing and we're like well How about I just tie all my limbs behind my back and see if you know the movie still a hit like how un- Anti-fun can I be well there must be something it's similar to

Yeah, when somebody is so it becomes so Effortless to be successful that you try to sabotage yourself to see what it is or you're So I know all about that Sure the studio is like just do iron man. That'll be great Just be Tony Stark and and like for whatever reason obviously he did not want to do I mean because he had just been Tony Stark And like nine movies over two decades. So he's like, maybe it was a billion dollars. The other thing about his performance though is like, just kind of fucking English guy.

Like Robert Denny's junior is great, but him trying to do a Welsh accent. Like, this is a little better than his terrible English accent in the Sherlock Holmes movies, but he is not a character guy in that way I don't think so why put that on him and I think Michael Sheen Is he Welsh? Yeah, he is so like you got you got a Welsh guy who'd be really great at it right there But Michael Sheen doesn't open big blockbusters Dan because without a big star

What do you have to convince kids to go see a movie about a doctor who talks to animals and goes on an amazing adventure with pirates? What possible reason would a kid want to see that for unless there's a big, bopho box office name in it, like Channing Tatum. Our kids like Downey Jr.'s in it, okay, but who voices the polar bear?

John Cena. All right, let's go. Friday night. Is anyone from the big sick in it? Yeah. I'm real in the alt comedy is Jason Matsukis in the scene. Oh, there's a man. It's clearly added very late in the game.

Yeah, that feels like, I mean, I was just glancing through the trivia didn't like Seth Rogan or somebody take a stab at a couple rewrites and I feel like Jason Manzoukis is part either got completely added or totally bulked out because I mean it's it's funny but it doesn't add anything to the story of the movie. I mean he does he does wake up a tiger at one point. Oh, that's true. Now, speaking of, it's time for the side quest that involves Jason Mansookis,

because they can't just go straight to the Eden tree. It's on an island that never exists that nobody has ever heard of, because it's not real or whatever. They've got to go to Pirate Island to steal Lily's journal, because that's the only place that says where the island is. This island, it's called, what Monteverde, I think it's called,

and it's run by King Antonio Banderis, whose character's name I don't remember, but he is Lily's father, and so he's especially mad at Do Little, because he blames him for not being there when Lily died, as if Do Little would have been able to save her from the shipwreck. It's a little unclear why he thinks Do Little should have been there at the time. I don't know. Anyway, but he claims that. Kids can tell that Antonio Van Der Scherter

is gonna be an evil king because he already has multiple statues celebrating himself before he's dead. And that's never a good sign. And kids are aware of that. Yeah, kids, I mean, kids remember their Roman history and they're like,

hmm, shades of collagula perhaps as they nudge each other. Then the tiger orgy happens and they all get it. Yeah, and then they're like, hmm, shades of collagula, perhaps, as they nudge each other. Then the tiger orgy happens and they all get it. Yeah, and then they're like, oh, this guy's super cool. So they team up, stubbing sneaks in with the help of some mafia ants and a heart sick dragonfly. But accidentally, they wake up the king and his lions, oh, they're lions, not tigers, I'm sorry.

It's a tiger later. And he wakes up and he locks them all in a dungeon. He lets stubbens go, but he wants to do a little to be eaten by a tiger named Barry. Meanwhile, do a little is being taunted by a criminal rabbit who is also in jail with an eye patch, and it's one of those things where it's like, wait, so is this rabbit, like a rabbit that talks and is a criminal and commits crimes? Because the other animals don't have, like like the other animals, the idea of locking up in a jail cell seems crazy.

Yeah. What was his beef with Dulittle? He seemed to have a personal... Which the rabbit or the tiger? The rabbit. Well, the rabbit... Either one of them. I wasn't really clear.

Well, the tiger is a former patient of Dulittle's, and for some reason Dulittle abandoned him, and his feelings of never living up to his mother's expectations for him. That's the Tiger. The rabbit just seems to be a jerk and the rabbit has the line that made me wish... made me glad my son didn't see the movie because it would become his favorite line where the tiger walks in and the rabbit goes, aww, did do a little, do a little, do do? I think you did do a little do-do.

And I was like, oh boy, okay. I was... the thing was, I was actively appreciating the fact that this movie didn't seem to have any toilet humor for a long time and then it all came at once. It's backloaded. Yeah, rushing out to you like a blocked up dragon, suddenly releasing a huge gas fart right in your face. There is also that this is the part where he's being attacked by this tiger. He tries a couple different funny toys to stop him, but he can't. Chi Chi, the gorilla, finally, overcomes his fear and kicks Barry in what Barry refers

to as his Barry-Barry's. It's almost like at this point with Do Do and Barry-Barry is, yeah, Dan, the movie just kind of like, is like, you know what? We're just doing the toilet humor. It's like the story. Albert Brooks tells about opening for a band and not getting laughs and he goes, so I did it.

I said shit. And then the audience goes crazy because he starts swearing on stage and they love it. So they find, they steal Lily's journal, but Mudfly takes it and he's like, yeah, I'm a bad guy. I'm gonna kill Queen Victoria. See ya and they sink, do little's boat.

And the polar bear saves the ostrich, thus cementing their friendship. A subplot that was not really set up too far ahead of time, but it was set up a little bit, that they had, we're kind of prickly with each other, but now they're best buds. Now, why is Michael Sheen going to get the magical thing that can cure the queen if he's just trying to kill the queen?

To stop Robert any junior from getting it and maybe he's also gonna be like look. I made this discovery. I'm famous now a Less too late to say about it queen well, but also They try and explain it they they say that this Island has all these unknown floor in fauna that because he's a scientist to he will get all the glory of studying it, I guess. I wish they had gone even farther and made Charles Darwin the villain of the movie. Michael Sheen was playing that martenshean.

Or maybe martenshean was playing Charles Darwinen was playing that Martin sheen or maybe Martin Sheen was playing it was playing Charles Darwin And it was like no if animals can talk to humans it throws my whole theory of evolution a natural selection out the window I have to defeat Dr. Doolittle like that would be very funny to me and so he has to go and he's gonna make this big scoop He's it's gonna be a second Galapagos this this magic island. Oh, I'll call it on the origin of the species too, the re-origining. Okay guys, I think we have Dr. Doolittle too already, ready in the can. So Dr. Doolittle's ready to give up,

but the pirate king, he says, hey look, we both miss my daughter. So you need to keep going and he gives them a ready old pirate ship. They use whales to track Dr. Mudfly to eat an island. And they finally get there and the soldiers that are with Mudfly capture them and Mudfly is like, eh, eh, eh, I finally beat you. I guess not everything comes easy to Dr. Doodle. Again, as I mentioned earlier, forgetting that Dr. Doodle is a depressed whittle word. Has lost the single most important thing to him. Basically, has no will to do anything

whatsoever. Who would have been a permit, if not for their plot, to kill the queen. Yeah, he's just scraping by at this point. He almost got eaten by a tiger. It's like I imagine somebody being hating Franklin Delano Roosevelt and being like, see what it's like to not be the golden boy who gets everything.

And Roosevelt being like, I can't walk. Like, look at me do. I'm in a wheelchair. Did you forget about that? So, but then, uh oh, there's a guardian for the eat and treat. It's a dragon. That's right, everybody. Someone mentioned dragons off handedly once earlier in the movie. That was all the before shadow. We needed dragons. The dragon scares the soldier away and do little instantly picks up dragon language Because he's just that good. They bond over having both lost their spouses because in this world even mythological creatures Have a certain amount of trauma and survivors guilt. Yeah, this was exactly the end of

Batman be Superman basically where they're both like your mom was Martha my mom was where they're both like your mom was Martha. My mom was probably, do you make the widows or widowers? He manages. And the dragon eats one of the British soldiers, which I think is kind of a stirring commentary on anti-colonialism. And yeah, it apparently has a lot of the Spanish army

digested in her belly. There's a whole, there's all these axes and helmets getting pulled out of her. The dragon has devoured a lot of Spanish and now at least one British soldier. And dragons we learn like snakes just swallow up in the whole thing whole and digest what they can from it. Because guys, it's time for the apex of the fart humor. This dragon has a blockage in its rectum and Dr. Du Little using only a leak because he's Welsh will have to release it.

And so he manages to remove all this armor, thus freeing an enormous fart that hits him square in the face and every character seems to get their line where they talk about how smelly it is. And it was like, I get it. Just pick one. Just have one chance for comment. I will make a not full-throated defense of this fart joke because I hate I don't hate far jokes. I I don't think they're necessary in a movie like this Dan, do you think your throat should be the part the orifice you're using to defend this or the passage in your body to defend this Let me put position my butt to the microphone. No, I The one thing I like about this but sounds just like his regular voice. Yeah

The one thing I like about that part joke. That's dance, but it sounds just like his regular voice. Yeah. The one thing I liked about this fart joke is how matter of fact everyone was after the fart joke. They were like, they were all like, oh, you know, it happens to everyone. Nothing to be ashamed of. Like everyone was like trying to make the dragon feel better

about the giant fart. I'm like, oh, that's kind of sweet. So there's a little everybody poops sort of reaction to this. Yeah, I mean, it's a real it's a real strong tolerance and anti-bigotry message that we all fart. So are we really that different after all? Even murderous dragons who devour humans whole. Well, protecting some kind of quasi-mystical thing fruit because then she says, hey, you have proven to me by helping me, both psychologically and annually, that you deserve a significant fruit. And so they have the Eden fruit. They finally get there to Buckingham Halle's just in time.

The queen is just on her deathbed. Her life meter above her head is just blinking that last bar as it disappears. Right. The sonic music is playing. The Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duh-Duhuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntuntunt someone's legs and catch the Eden fruit and squeeze it drop to her lips. I would have just smashed the whole thing into her mouth. Like, but he decides, he decides to hope that this one drop makes it to her lips, uh, but it does. She revives and a stick insect who, Dr. D'Lito left on a painting there days before rats out the Chamberlain and the

Chamberlain does the classic bad guy thing of once he realizes they've got him dead to rights instead of continuing to deny it He pulls out a knife and tries to fight his way out, which is the guiltyest thing you can do He's caught by the cuz instead of being like well, I'm the Chamberlain of London and that's a stick insect That you say is talking none of us can hear it like I don't know if it's gonna hold up in a court of law You interpreting for a stick insect and like and how can you trust the stick insect? All it did was sit around on a painting all day, like, yeah. What a boring thing.

Well, I wish it went to trial, and he was like, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Can we trust an insect that's already trying to deceive us into thinking it's a stick? I rest my case. You're witness, and do lose. Robin had kept his cool. He might have gotten away with it. Yeah, the prosecutor for the state is like, he just eviscerated our case. You're witness and do you live? Robin had kept his cool. He might have gotten away with it.

Yeah. The prosecutor for the state is like he just eviscerated our case. We've got nothing now. Shit. Our lead witness is a bug who came up with this. Okay. Let me bring in bring in the next witness. He got stepped on what? Yeah. At worst, they, you know, like they would would they would cut a deal with the prosecutor in the situation But the idea that everyone's like yeah, yeah, do little says this bug said that thing. I guess he got him Do little takes on stubborn as an apprentice and he reopens his home as a pet hospital and also leaves the movie open for a sequel

During the credits we see paintings that seem to depict Do Little and some of the animals being knighted by the queen. So there's a sur Do Little and a lady dab dab, I guess. And there's a mid-credits scene that did not go the way I thought it was. Where Dr. Mudfly is still alive in the cave. And it seems like he's picked up the language of the bats in the cave.

And it was like, oh, so he's gonna come back in the sequel as a bad guy who talks to me like evil sinister animals But then the bats it's implied I guess eat him Turn him into morbidious the living vampire. I guess so they They like cover him the swarm of bats and this children's film. Yeah, presumably they eat him to the bone. And that's the end of it. And I guess we'll never find out what happened to Dr. Mudfly because I don't think there's going to be a do little two or two little I guess from the call. No, yeah. I think it's going to be lost about a hundred million dollars. I don't know. I don't think anyone's getting any sequels? I expected a mid credit sequence where we find that his wife is still alive

to shipwreck somewhere. And I would have been willing to even lay a bet on it, but instead we get death by bat. Yeah, I was hoping, yeah, that she was gonna walk out on the beach and be like, it's gonna be carnage and we're like, oh, shit. If that would make more sense, if you knew the comics already,

that would make a lot more sense. And also why Woody Harrelson is wearing that crazy Wendy's from Wendy's wig. Raggedy and wig. That is one of the, it is so goofy to me to get talk about Venom for a moment. This is a movie that has already decided that Venom, a character whose sole existence is to get revenge on Spider-Man, does not need Spider-Man in his story, but Carnage does need to have curly red hair

because that's what it's like in the comics. Even though he's played by a famously bald actor, like it's...common movies done the way. So do little, Dan. Let's do our next segment that ties up the movie talk about Do Little. And that is to decide final judgments whether it's a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie kind of like, guys, I'm not going to say it's a movie kind of like, but here's the thing. I come down where Elliot is, where he's like, I thought this was gonna be a fiasco, and I was like, you know what, whatever.

Like, here's the thing, I think, I think that this movie is not, has a lot of problems, but it would not have been viewed as such a huge fiasco if it wasn't the movie that Robert Downey Jr. decided to make directly after his hugely successful run as Iron Man, Tony Stark. It has problems, but it's making a stab at a kind of high adventure children's thing that I like, in general, like it doesn't have like the pop culture a minute references of Asonic, and I kind of appreciate it for that. Like if this movie was basically the same movie,

but they made it animated, you know, pretty good. I don't know. I mean, I know I kind of feel the same way, and I know that there's movies that I really like as a kid that are no better than this movie. And there are movies that people I know liked a lot from when we were kids, goonies, that I think is this is a better movie than come at me and hate me on the internet guys. And it's a better movie than goonies. But I think it's, I think the move, I don't know. I don't know. I'm curious, David, to hear what you're saying.

The experience of the theater was different. You felt kind of like trapped with that. The experience of the theater, it's, it's, I will, just, as I was saying, like, there's a lot of hazy editing and sort of strain, you know, cuts to the animals, like singles on the animals that are just sort of saying a joke, that just suggests like, whatever the initial concept

was here, it's lost. Like, so, instead like sort of several steps. There's the, you know, dark, you know, he's a sad depressed guy and his animals are sort of depressed too and they all need to figure out how to weather emotional pain together. There's that through line. But then there's also the ripping high seas, adventure, kids movie. And then there's this sort of, we've got in a bunch of celebs to say funny stuff.

It just feels like there's a studio movie, there's the original director's movie, and then there's this sort of like salvage job, okay, Robert Downey Jr. movie, and I would take any of them and call it just a regular old bad movie that is perfectly entertaining for kids. Putting them all together makes it feel many of them and call it just a regular old bad movie that is perfectly entertaining for kids.

Putting them all together makes it feel pretty like wins inducing. But I know what you guys are saying. The downy thing really hurt it, like the sort of like, oh, if people were sort of waiting, you know, they were smelling blood. They wanted a bomb just to ding him with. Yeah, I kept seeing in reviews that point that Dan was saying that like this is the movie that Robert Down Jr. decided to make as if he owed it to the world to make, he owed it to each individual reviewer to make the movie they wanted to see him make.

Whereas like, I don't know, maybe he's always loved the Dr. Doodle stories or maybe he was like, like he was, I think his company made the world sure whatever the judge the judge yeah people want more of the judge I mean just just that like a but it was it was one of those movies where I was I was just expect I was like this I mean the trailers for it made it look like an even more of a mishmash than the movie was because the trailers were done up as if it was like a big dramatic adventure movie, but then you'd have the quips from the animals,

but with dramatic music over them, so it was like, who's made this trailer? What's going on? But I found myself kind of thinking it was gonna be more of a disaster than it was. Stu, you're the tie-breaking vote here since... Well, let's not take this three-virtues. Oh, okay.

Cause yeah, it's two to one right now I'm gonna be on team David here I will give this movie a B- that's right not enough Tony Bandaris a B-Mine is still seems really generous no that's a very generous grade yeah I'm just joking no I didn't like this movie at all worse than Sonic the Hedgehog. Rave Stewart. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's sloppy and like it, yeah, it doesn't even seem to care that it's on there on the screen. It's, you know, it's barely a movie.

If you had this movie and you put Jim Carrier's performance from Sonic the Hedgehog in it as Dr. Dulittle, you would have, I'd be like, sure, yeah, I'll let my kids watch that any day of the week. Sure, that's fine. It would at least have a sort of consistently manic energy in that you know There's two things that I found sort of googling around this one Rob Downey Jr Decided to be Welsh because of the famous Welsh like neo druidic

Doctor guy from the Victorian Eric William Price is someone that Robrick Downey Jr. thinks is a cool dude I guess or is fascinating so he's like Dr. thinks is a cool dude, I guess, or is fascinating. So he's like, that'll be my fault. This is like a mature, Dr. Too little, right? Right, right. And like, that's a funny idea. You look at it a lot of stuff. The name is not a good name, but anyway, yeah, you're saying good.

It's a funny idea, but not for this movie. Like, not, you know, it feels like he just had sort of a fun idea that does not relate to a movie about a farting dragon. But then, the... I mean, I think it's a does not relate to a movie about a farting dragon. But then the I mean, I think it's order to call a movie about a farting dragon. The Hollywood reporter sort of quote unquote expose about like what went wrong with do little said that Downie met up with the guy who's rewriting it tore up the script's pages dramatically said I have some new ideas with a twinkle in his eye and propose the farting dragon conclusion. So I don't know what to believe. Like, did he want to make a weird Welsh doctor biopic

or did he want to make a farting dragon movie? I mean, maybe he wasn't sure himself, you know? This movie is a little unsure of itself, I would say. Oh, to be a stick bug on the wall of that conversation. Yeah, I need Robert Denny Jr. to translate and you'd be like, well, you could just be saying this Robert Denny Jr. Like, I don't know if the stick bug really thinks that. I mean, this is just a guess on my part,

but I would assume that like, yeah, the goofier shit this movie was the stuff that was quote, quote, trying to save it. Right. I think there was a original movie. Right. It was. There was a fear like, uh, oh, this isn't going to be a kid's movie that plays. We need to juice up the jokes.

That makes it. But I still still like, it could have, I mean, I had, I, if anything, now I'm like, it doesn't fully work at the end of the day, but I like give them credit for trying to kid it up and lighten it up so that we didn't get a super dour do a little movie where like his where it's up where like I'm trying to think what else would happen in it where like he has to murder someone at the end or with a pillow he just put a pillow over Queen Victoria's space and cries and says I'm sorry yeah I mean he like turns his back on humanity and the last you see of him is just naked wandering into a jungle to be with the animals

I Mean I'm so much of it felt like the the rabbit down in junior most likely came on set He had this very low energy kind of weird character that he had dreamt up and Nobody want like could talk him out of it and they're just like oh oh, fuck it. Okay, let's just get the show. Right. Like, we'll shoot it and then we'll fix it. Yeah. That combined with Stephen Gagan being like, yeah, we can do an emotional $200 million movie

and because he had Downey's backing, he was allowed to with that caveat of like, well, you know what, we'll just do reshoots. Like if it doesn't work, we'll just do reshoots. I mean, yes, you can do it and a huge emotional blockbuster movie with Robert Denny Jr. in it. It's called Avengers Endgame, boom, in theaters now.

Oh, oh. Actually, it's not in theaters now. It's been out of theaters for a while, yes. And also, theaters are largely closed. Don't go to theaters right now. Go again when it's time, when things have opened up. I guess what I'm saying is, don't, well, what are you, what are you,

what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your, what your I guess what I'm saying is don't. What are you? What are you? What are you saying? What are you saying right now? Wasn't it nice when Avengers Game was out and there was no pandemic and we went to see movies and Robert Downey Jr. was in them and they were nice. Back when he could do no wrong. So I guess Dan, does this fit into our rubric at all? Should we try to give it ratings?

Because mine is also, I wouldn't quite call it a movie a kind of liked but I don't I don't think it's good bad or bad bad yeah same here but these guys think it's bad bad that's I think the bad bads have it I don't know about that I mean I would know I'm sorry that David gets extra votes yeah hey max funsters it's Jesse Thorn. This week on my public radio interview show Bullseye, I'm talking with Tina Fey and Robert Karlock about creating unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 30 Rock, and also just kind of why they're the best at everything.

There was a window of time when we would just go to awards things and pick up our prizes and party with the people from Mad Men. You can find Bullseye at MaximumFund.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for bullseye with Jesse Thorne. Alright Adam, Maximum Fun wants us to record like a promo to tell people that they should listen to the greatest generation. You want to do that? No, I am tired of all the extra work. I just wanted to talk about Star Trek with my friend. I think it would be good to like try and get some new listeners by appealing to the audiences of other shows.

Like this, this will only take a minute or two. It could be good for us. We sit down for an hour every week and talk about a Star Trek episode and make a bunch of idiotic fart jokes about it. It's embarrassing. If it got out that we made this show, I think it would make us unemployable. Adam, I have bad news for you. We have tens of thousands of listeners at MaximumFun.org. Oh my god. I think I'm going to throw up.

The greatest generation, a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. Every Monday on MaximumFun.org. I'm really going to be sick. The flop house is sponsored in part by Squarespace, the service that allows you to turn your cool idea into a new website, blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds and more. And they do this by giving you beautiful customizable templates

created by world class designers with everything optimized for mobile right out of the box. Your site will look great on all sorts of devices. A new way to buy your domains and choose from over 200 extensions, free and secure hosting. So if you're looking to make a website with Squarespace, head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Dan, just very briefly, I had a website I was actually wondering if Squarespace would be able to help me with. Sure. Just ask away. I was inspired website I was actually wondering if Squarespace would be able to help me with. Uh, sure. Just ask away. As inspired by this movie, I have an idea for website. It's called www.dueless.com. The only website that will match you up with an animal that will do your chores for you, so you don't have to do as much. Look, we are all doing too much these days.

I know I'm taking Terry two kids, holding down a job, and trying to finish Jigsaw puzzle. It is unknightmare. If only I could hire a hedgehog to finish that Jigsaw puzzle or watch my children for me. Welcome to do less.com. The only website that matches you up with an animal that can do that stuff for you. Dan, what is there anything going on in your life that you wish that like a lemur or a slow loris, or a cassowari, to take care of? Yeah, there's a lot of dishes that I mean, a lot more cooking at home, dishes pile up, laundry, because I'm trying to wear actual clothes every day, so I don't slip into depression. Those things would be great.

I thought it interesting that you wanted your animal to possibly do the jigsaw puzzle for you, which seems like the recreational thing that you listed Dan all I'm saying is I've got too much on my plate and this animal's got to take something off my plate If that means eating my dinner for me off a plate then go ahead art vark do it So Dan I think maybe you're looking for like hmm. I don't know like a salamander or perhaps a like a mockingbird We'll do that laundry for you And let me just put that into a do less calm boop boop boop bo stuff out of the way. Do less calm cannot guarantee that these animals

will do the job well, and we are not legally liable. If they break anything, or soil anything, in your apartment or house. But look, we're just a middleman. We're not legally liable. We're just here to connect you with the animals that want to do those jobs. Think of it like task rabbit,

with actual rabbits, do less calm. Now, Snow White, notwithstanding, which I have been rewatching because I've been reading a Disney biography. I don't think that squirrels have the body strength to do the things that you are assigning them. I'm not assigned anyone anything. Dan, you put in a book that can lift like ten times their body weight. Yeah, yeah. Wait, am I thinking of ants?

Ants. Oh, you're the king. And what did he say? What did he say? Squirrels. Oh, okay, they sound alike. They do sound very similar. Dan, I'm not assigning them anything.

You put your job on the website. Animals offer to do it for you. You pay them in acorns or whatever. Just stop putting this on me. Not literally liable. I'm just the middleman. That's do less.com. Okay, let's move on.

I'm trying to promote my new website that I hope Squarespace can help me with and you gotta start telling me it doesn't work. You don't even try to yet. Okay, I think the next part of this podcast is the jumbo trance. That's where you tell us something to say. And in this case, what I am saying is, I am a freelance graphic illustrator who specializes

in fantasy and sci-fi portraits. My pieces make great gifts for anyone who likes tabletop, fantasy, video games, or their own special fandom. Just visit illustration.com to check out my commission work. Now I need to clarify the spelling of this URL is ILLUSTRATIN.com. And I just checked it out and it's really great and you'll see some familiar faces in the commission work including some of our friends over the adventure zone. And I'm assuming Dan gave me this jumbo trying to read because out of all of us I'm the only one who is commissioned a portrait of one of their role playing game characters from an artist.

Now that's just a guess. I don't want to sell you guys. I don't want to paint you guys with a brush. But is that true? Any of your favorite role-playing game characters? Have you paid to have them drawn by an artist? Stuart, I have essentially one role-playing game character. OK, you know him. The only art that's been done, you know, has been done by listeners. It's not, yeah, I did not commission anything. I recently heard someone.

Yeah. I'm just saying, maybe this will give the the opportunity to get that character drawn over it Over at illustration.com. Okay. Well, I will not continue my story because it would have been pointless because I've got another Jumbo Tron. This is a message for Jen last name with held and it is from Kevin last name with held and the message goes like this. Happy birthday to the most amazing, sweetest, most beautiful love of my life. There's nobody I'd rather be trapped indoors with, and especially, nobody I'd rather be sharing the world and my life with. I love you with all of my heart, and all of my other guts too.

And promise you an unlimited amount of face-bongues and ghost kisses forever. So that's for Jen from Kevin. How sweet. That's really lovely. Do you guys have any stories about love that you want to share? Uh, no, no. OK, let's move on to we got one final thing to promote. Flop House listeners, have you ever wondered what it would be like to see a live

flop house show in your very own home and maybe the hosts haven't showered and are wearing pajamas or haven't shaved recently? I don't know. Look, there's a lot going on and we're not taking good care of ourselves. Well, here's your chance. June 6th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. We are going to be doing a live over the computer, flop house talking about something show. We're going to put up a link at theflophousepodcast.com where you can find out where to go to see it.

We're still working out the tech details. That's right. The floplapphouse boys are bringing their patented brand of don't really know what we're doing, but we're gonna try it anyway to live online shows. Guys, is this gonna be with like presentations before it, just like a regular live show in person would be have? Yeah, they were gonna have our usual comedy

PowerPoint presentations. I mean, this is gonna be as close to a live show as we could do over Zoom. So people who have seen a live show can enjoy one from the comfort of their home, but people who, you know, don't live where we've come before, this is your chance to get that experience or close to it.

Guys, are we gonna talk about? We're about to commit to like leaving your home to do it. Now you'll realize whether or not we're just gonna waste your evening. You'll know that you never to like leaving your home to do it now. You'll realize whether or not We're just gonna waste your evening They'll know that you never have to leave your home again to see us guys Are we gonna talk about how would the duck the movie that introduced the world to the idea of ducks with boobs Which they wouldn't need because ducks don't bear live young they lay eggs That's that's correct Elliot good point

And guys are we gonna do this for a charity yet to be determined because the three of us have not yet been able to agree on a charity to do it for? That is correct. It will be free to watch. However, throughout, we will be encouraging donations to charity. We will have a place to send folks.

And we will have some sort of raffle. Yeah, so we'll offer some kind of prizes. Like this prize, I keep threatening where we're going to set up a website called Only Dan Fans, where if you're a fan of dance, you can come and we'll just see pictures of Dan, maybe chat, all that kind of stuff. Oh, my son would love that.

He's a big fan of Dan, not me though. So that's June 6th at 9 PM Eastern time, 6 PM Pacific, and just go to the FlophousePodcast.com for more information about where and how to see it. Okay, so let's move on to letters from listeners. Listeners like you. But it's a long show don't have time for a song do little letters. This first letter is from James Lasting with Held, who writes,

Clark's James Gordon. Elliott mentioned the lighthouse was surprisingly relatable in this time of isolation, but is it the best thing to watch? There's some things I can't go to the CDC for, so I come to you. What's the best thing to watch now? Something similarly isolating? Something totally freeing with crowds, a normal life, something that can uncomfortably amesh itself into my now fragile psyche,

sending me into a downward spiral of an unending fever dream trapped in repetition with no end in sight. I hope you can help us make sense of life and the way you always do with film. Sincerely, James last name withheld. It's weird. I, during quarantine, have been going in two opposite directions. I have either watched things that sort of echo life as it is right now in interesting ways, or I've gone for total lightness. I

think that the one thing I can't stand right now as much as I could maybe is something that takes a lot of intellectual or emotional energy from me but you know I watched yes I'm excited. But I watched a movie called, what was it called, A Weight Further Instructions, which is about a family trapped inside during a disaster that they know very little about. And there's themes of scapegoating, racial scapegoating, like stuff.

There's a authoritarian, but not very bright, perhaps, father character who sways people very easily like there are uncanny parallels to Life right now and I And kind of enjoyed it for that in a grim way and then on the other side of things I've been watching like I don't know Audrey Hepburn musicals and rewatching 30 rock So I think both are good ways to go. Have you guys been choosing your entertainment right now? It's just speaking for myself.

I've been watching a lot of some light things, but also, and I've been watching newsies over and over again, because that's what Sammy wants to watch. So if you look at the pie chart of movies watched over, it's the quarantine, like fully 35% of it is just newsies. But at the same time, I don't know, I think I'm trying to achieve a sort of normalcy by just watching the things I would normally watch,

you know, during our last blood episode, I remembered that I hadn't watched a lot of Japanese movies in a while, and so I've been watching a bunch of Japanese movies that I have on my cable box. I've been trying to just kind of like make a little pocket of normal for myself where I just watched the movies that I would be watching if nothing else was going on. But that's just my one way of coping with it. Stu, David, what have you been watching?

Well, I've been watching a lot of TV with Charlene. We've been doing a, well, it's a rewatch for her, but we're watching the shield of the early 2000s, FX, Michael Chicklis, police, I guess procedural. And it was kind of like, it was pretty important when it was originally released. And I'm assuming it was important because the fashion choices are in a credible

And like every other episode begins with like a sad Allison chain song But it's it's great. I like it a lot and And we're punctuating that with weekly releases of the what we do in the shadows tv show, which is the best television show Curly On. So watch that if you have it. Yeah, I've been all over the place. We did watch the entirety of the O.C. me and my partner. So it's not like I'm not binging old TV that I enjoyed when I was young and fancy free. But I do I've been wavering between like watching sort of comfortable classics that I enjoy and trying to knock off things on my criterion watch list, trying to fill in gaps, take advantage

of the time. I wrote a piece on the Atlantic about Westerns. I had a whole couple of weeks where all I watched was Westerns just because I wanted stuff that was set outside, like anything with like vistas and sweeping landscapes was sort of doing it for me. That was probably the most fun phase. So like Wild Wild West. Wild Wild West and then.

Yellow Ranger. Sure. I mean, yellow Ranger. Mafer. Right. 11. Look, a lot of, you know, a lot of old clout, you know, red river, a real bravo, things like that, like just, you know, just fun stuff.

The, I will find watching movies I'm being not triggered as the wrong word, but like, kind of shocked by little things that I didn't expect to. Like, Dan, my wife and I are in the middle of watching a movie recommended a while ago, the best worst thing that ever happened. Right, the one about, about, about, Marley we roll along. And there's the part that's weird about seeing like a theater full of people watching a play.

But it's even weirder to see television news covering a play in previews that is having trouble with its production. And being like, oh, the news used to cover stuff that wasn't like the end of the world. Like, the news would sometimes cover that these famous people are making a play and it's a musical and it's not going great. And like, it was this, that was the most shocking thing to me, but in a nice way. I was just watching, I was just watching that underwater movie the monster movie set underwater and this and there's there's some stuff in it that I really like and all the

interiors are great but specifically when they're like walking around in these like cool robo suits underwater and you're like kind of trapped inside this little shell with the actors that stuff's all really great and it was kind of more affecting for me. But yeah, and then the movie had to pull back and you'll get this big sweeping vista with Marvel style kairons and you're like, oh, that's not as good. I enjoyed underwater. I like when the movie doesn't have a first act. I'm always a fan of no first act movies. Yeah, it throws you right in it. Yeah. It's been so we're underwater.

Oh no, the whole thing exploded. Like that's the beginning of the movie. Like, well, like a lot of times, I guess we like this ourselves while we deal with this. Hi folks. See you later. Well, normally a movie like that would explain like, oh, let's spend the first third of the movie

explaining why this thing is so important. And like, why it'll never explain how it works. Right. Yeah. No, you just want to see it explode. That's all I'm here for. Well, that's funny.

It's funny how movies will get complemented for opposite things. Like, I feel like I've seen so many reviews with their like, the great thing about this movie is it really takes its time and explains who the characters are before the action happens. And other reviews were like, the best thing about this movie is it really gets into the action right away and doesn't waste time explaining all the characters

and it's like, wait a minute. I guess it's whether they do it well or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always the reviewer who's like, I wish they'd spent more time explaining who the babysitter was before she died and don't tell mom the babysitter's dead. Well, you've reached, talked about my gritty reboot of don't tell mom the babysitters

dead. When are we going to finally tell the babysitter's story? So it ends with her getting to the house. So you know, it's like a joker-style thing where the movie ends just as the character becomes remotely interesting. Um, I guess, yeah. No, I was just imagining a much like grammar version of DoTel mom, the babysitter's dead now,

where they like put her in one of those like, those big like freezers in the garage, and they'll like have to do all this, I don't know, like they're gonna be suspected by the murder, you know. Yeah, and the little and the youngest kid thinks that the body is talking to him and his psyche is breaking down.

Yeah, yeah, baby, send it to the fly as we call it. This second and final letter is from, I believe I'm gonna try and pronounce this Kier, I don't know, it's K-I-R-E, apologies if I'm doing it wrong. But Kier writes, hi, I'm a Toronto filmmaker and my new feature, the last porno show, just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. I just listened to your latest podcast on the joke thief. Thought

it was great. A little story about the joke thief. Apparently, the script was 10 pages. What are the... I pages. Apparently that makes perfect sense. One of the actors told me the script consisted of a few scenes and a bunch of spots where it just said scene will be added here, which I believe. I've had to transcribe three of Frank's scripts. Oh Frank writes the scripts by talking into a voice recorder until he's bored and whatever he comes up with is the film. There's no revisions, it's fucking insane. The reason why I'm reaching out is because Frank's I'm Frank's second largest fan, the first being himself. I've been obsessed with him for years, so much so that I casted him, cast him in my film. Not only is this the first

time Frank has acted in someone else's film, but it's the first and only time he got invited to TIFF. He plays a method acting teacher in my film, and it's easily the best acting he's ever done. Aside from casting Frank in my film, I've had the fortune slash misfortune of helping him in on his own films, easily the most stressful thing I've ever put myself through. I could go on for days, but just to give you an idea, we shot his new, his two new feature films in two and a half days, and one of them is a hockey film. Anyway, Cure promotes their movie, The Last Pornow Show. I can't, you know, speak to its quality,

but you know, it has a couple reviews on online seems like it got pretty good reviews and you can see Frank D'Angelo in a different film not directed by himself. David are you David are you familiar with the works of Frank D'Angelo? I mean familiar in that I know of I have never encountered I've never actually put myself through them. Do you think I should? Do you think it's like, you know, a nice quarantine project for me?

I mean, the Atlantic is looking for articles, right? It's true. I mean, you know, you gotta make content about something. No, no, I mean, I guess you could just go to the theaters and write about what's playing there. Oh, hold on a second. Yeah, looks like Frank D'Angelo's you new best friends. I mean, a movie called The Wretched has been the number one movie two weeks in a row at the box office. It's playing in like

some drive-ins in Florida. I think no deposit is probably worth watching, right? No, no, that one's probably just one to an actual movie. and while still being like amusingly bad, it is a trend downward. Yeah, don't see the joke thief. And Sicilian vampire is only worth it for the scene where James Khan asks him to bite him so that he can make him into a vampire and doesn't seem to think there's anything weird about that. It does sound pretty good, but I'm seeing that, I'm seeing here that no deposit is 80 minutes to Sicilian vampires, 124, so I think I'm gonna go with no deposits. No deposit does have two of the best lines in cinema history and I won't tell you what they are.

Do not spoil them. Let's just say Frank Langellis, enough range of lives, says Robert Loesha says one of them. Frank Langellis, enough French Lodge says, Robert Logea says one of them. Yeah. Frank Langella, only if only he could have been in a French angel. Robert Logea's last role, right? I believe it is, yes.

The French angelus specializes in giving famous actors their last roles. It's true. Every one of these doubles as a last known photo for a former Hollywood star. Yeah, okay, so guys, time for our final segment and that is recommendations of movies, movies that you should watch probably instead of do little unless I don't know, you're like a seven-year-old, in which case you shouldn't be listening to this show.

Not at all, not at all. I'm going to recommend a movie that we watched just recently. Audrey is a big fan of Henri George Cluzot, but has not seen several of the movies. And she was interested in the wages of fear, which is one of my favorite movies. But I was like, no, not two and a half hours of That tonight. Let's watch

This movie that neither of us had seen that was 90 minutes called Le Corboe The Raven The Raven, yes And it's about There's a doctor in a small town who There's a doctor in a small town who becomes the target of some poison pen letters, and then sort of everyone in the town becomes the target of these letters

all signed by the Raven. And it creates chaos. No one knows who it is. It's, you know, he's talked of as the French Hitchcock. This movie is kind of right at the corner of Hitchcock and Film Noir avenues with a lot of Frenchness thrown in. And it's sort of a thriller, sort of a just a drama about the way mobs can tear things apart.

And it's also, it was banned for a while it has like very frank talk about abortion and sexuality in it for a movie that was made in 1943 and I think it's kind of interesting too because it feels absolutely no need to make its protagonist likeable in any way, which makes it very easy to sort of like suspect everyone in the film of some sort of wrongdoing. But it's, you know, like I said, 90 minutes, it's on criterion. We liked it a lot. Stuart, whatcha got?

Oh, I will recommend the recently released on HBO bad education starring everybody's favorite Jacked man Hugh Jackman Ray Romano, Allison Janie. It's Every time someone says Allison Janie, I think they're gonna say Allison chains every single time that experience right now So look up Allison Janney on your metal. Yeah, metal dark vibes. Let's just give me a second. Just known for one recording of the jackal.

What? It's, it's, it's, it's. So, yeah, it's just no results. The, yeah, so it's, it's the second, it's the second movie directed by the director Corey Finley, you directed Thura Breds and it's this great thriller based on based on an article which is based on a true story about what is it Long Island, Superintendent who had been skimming money from the district and it's this thriller about corruption that slowly reveals the story in such a careful and specific way so that you are kind of dragged along like this conspiracy

slowly unfolds for you the viewer almost just like it does for the characters in the movie. It's really great. And in a time when there's not a lot of new stuff coming out, it's a real gem. So if you get a chance, check it out. I'm going to recommend a movie. I mentioned earlier that I'm watching more Japanese movies because I realized I haven't seen a Japanese movie in a while. And I finally got to see floating weeds. That's right, floating weeds. It's an OZU movie starring Genjiro Nakamura and Machiko Kyō. Yes, that's right, that Machiko Kyō from Gate of Hell and Ugetzu Mana Gattare, one of my favorites. And this is the 1959

version. This is a story that OZU told twice. This is the version that's in color and with sound. And it's the story of this kind of pretty low-rent acting troupe that shows up in a small seaside town for a run of shows of old-fashioned kind of kabuki-style drama. And in that town, unbeknownst to almost everybody else, the head of the acting troupe has an illegitimate son and an ex-lover, and the son does not know that it's his father.

He thinks that this is his uncle who shows up every, you know, 12 years or so, hasn't been there in a long time. And it's about what happens when that secret starts to come out. And the movie is told, like, a lot of Ozu movies vary, like, deceptively, simply and deceptively slowly, but it's a beautiful looking movie. And he's one of those directors where when I was young, I like didn't, wasn't quite on the right wavelength for it, but now that I'm older, I really love the way that he just

photographs things and the way that he lets the stories play out. And so I thought it was really great. And it has comedy moments, it's got heavy dramatic moments and the acting truly great in it. It's called floating weeds. David, love floating weeds. I will recommend Mid August Lunch, which is a little Italian movie from 2008. I interviewed Barry Jenkins for the Atlantic a couple of weeks ago

just asking him like, hey, what are you watching? Like, cause again, got to write about something. And this was a movie he recommended to me that I had never even heard of. It's by Gianni D'Gigorio. And he said he'd seen it at a film festival and he sort of vaguely remembered it. And he was thinking about Italy a lot about the sort of small towns in Italy

and the older population, because of what was going on in the world. And he flipped on this, I think it's 80-minute, sort of like, sweet, sad little comedy about a guy who starts looking after everyone's cranky relatives in his town when they all want to go on vacation in August. And it kind of is just one of those clever little comedies that creeps up on you, like a real sense of place, real sense of character.

Gianni did good, Gori. It's on Amazon, mid August lunch. Great. Okay, well, we've come to the end of this marathon. David. Yes. Do you have anything you want to plug? You know, blank check, who who Griffin and David, my podcast,

we take directors who were given a blank check by Hollywood at some point in their careers, you know, to make some kind of insane passion project y movie. And we go through their whole filmography up. And now you guys were on the Manchurian candidate episode for our Demi Miniseries recently. Well, that was fun.

We're just wrapping up George Miller now. And, you know, oh, has he made any good movies? Does he have one of the wildest filmographies of a poster director? Yes, yes, he does. So enjoy that. It's a, it's a, it's such a good show. I think I've alarmed Griffin and David by tweeting too much about how I've been listening. I am unalarmable. OK, good.

Audrey came out of the room once. I mean, are we going to, am I just going to hear David say I'm some Griffin Newman all quarantined? I'm like, hey, man, it's hell, yeah. It's making me feel good. It's comforting me during this time. So check it out, I say. Thank you.

Yeah. You said we'd be listening to more Alice and Janie if she had a longer metal discography, but I guess that's not happening. Yeah. So guys, that's it. Check out the other shows at the Maximum Fun Network. MaximumFun.org.

Stay safe. Wear a mask, be good to each other, all that stuff. Yep, yep. And for the flop ass, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Ellie Kaelin. David. And David is David. I'm David Sims.

This is the kind of thing that we're supposed to tell our guests that they're gonna do at the end of the episode. I was like 80% sure I was supposed to say something but I then I was- What I like is I have to assume there was a voice in the back of your mind that was like if I'm not supposed to say something and I introduce myself at the end they'll yell at me so I better not do it. Yeah, we're pretty mean. Anyway, bye everyone!

I don't know why you feel that you need to interrupt my kind invitation for socializing for a neighbor, but... Consider revenge for when you interrupted me thanking him for being on the show. Okay. So yeah, there's like two hours of this shit. This is the kind of energy. Very excited.