The Flop House - Ep. #337 - Tom & Jerry

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

I don't know if this modern world has broken us, or what, but the clever podcast show notes just aren't flowing right now. This movie is bad and it should feel bad. Get the fuck outta here, Tom & Jerry. From hell's heart, we stab at thee.Wikipedia entry for Tom & Jerry.Movies recommended in this episode:Lucky12 Hour ShiftThe DevilsBorn in Flames

On this episode we discuss Tom and Jerry. Is Elliott's least favorite animated animal duo, part of his least favorite movie of the year, tune in to find out? Hey everyone and welcome to the flop house I'm Dan McCoy. Yeah, that's right, Showtime. It's me, Stuart Showtime, Wellington. And it's me, Elliott, Nap time, Kaelin, saying, When's my nap time? That's my new catchphrase, guys. Do you like it?

I do like it. I think that's probably copyright infringement on. Let's just say, like, my whole thing, my kind of vibe, my general... Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay, I guess I'll have to dig through the old episodes to find the times when you said, When's my nap time? Uh-huh. Which is now my new catchphrase. I don't remember you ever saying to dig through the old episodes to find the times when you said, when's my nap time? Which is now my new catch phrase. I don't remember you ever saying it, but if you want to retroactively...

I'd say the catch phrase. I just, you know, like sort of a sad, whiny man who's tired a lot. Like I feel like you gotta, you gotta, you know, you need to lean into more of your bits. Like, okay, I'll introduce you to the subject. You also sounded like a baby when he said it, which I think is also kind of your thing right now. Yeah, that's okay. You know okay, I'll introduce myself. He also sounded like a baby when he said it, which I think is also kind of your thing, right now.

Yeah, that's okay. You know what, I'll start a new character. I'll start a new character, okay. This hay fever, I don't like it. That's why I do this, guys. It's all the Chino and hay fever. I love it. And that's Al Pacino with hay fever.

That is, I'm amazed that that's not a character that was on SNL at some point. For Conan O'Brien, Alpogino and Hay fever. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I'm sneezing! That's when it sounds like when I sneeze. Mm. It's untied, Mr. Pogino.

Oh, man. So what do we do on this here podcast, Danny? Well, this here podcast is one where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. And in this age, this pandemic age, when the movie theaters are, even the ones that are open are not overflowing with folks. The- I mean, to be honest, a movie theater should never be overflowing with folks.

That's an occupancy problem. Yeah, that's like a grandloin situation. Yeah, you don't want them just spilling out of the doors and windows. Yeah, that's too much. But a whole bunch of movies that were originally intended to be big theatrical releases are going straight to streaming, including, is it all? Is it Warner Brothers films? Is that the slate that has been dumped to you? Yes, Warner Brothers. HBO Max is the streaming platform for Warner Brothers. And Warner Brothers has decided that they will day and date all their movies will be released in the theaters

and also on HBO Max simultaneously for a month. And so that's what we're dealing with with today's episode. Yeah, so today we decided to watch one of the them their movies, Thomas Erie. It's dealt with HBO Max has already handled a bunch of similar HBO properties, the little things, Judas and the Black Messiah and now Tom and Jerry,

movies that all are going towards the same audience, which is very difficult, you know. Exactly. Yeah, you would think they would want to vary it up a little bit, right? But nope. No. So yeah, so we all fired up our HBO Max subscriptions

and we picked a movie. I was like Dan you can pick any movie Which one do you have the most passion for and you said Tom and Jerry? Said did you guys did you guys also know a kid named HBO Max? Who is just the kid who had HBO to his house his name was Max? Uh-huh. Yeah, I thought you were gonna say Elliott Did you guys also hate Tom and Jerry as a kid? Because I was really wrestling whether to yes and stir it's bit of me loving Tom and Jerry or uses an opportunity to get into my

feelings about the characters, which I'm sure that we'll talk about it over the course of the next hour or so. But man, like. Some of these things on point. I texted Elliot and I was like, wow, it's amazing the way this movie, I guess I texted both of you, but Elliott was the one who answered. It's amazing that this movie makes me angry about the treatment of characters I did not like in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're not a big fan of Tom and Jerry, I don't know if when you peaked at the runtime, you're ready for an hour and 45 minutes slice. I mean, what's great is if you're not a big fan of Tom and Jerry, they are not the stars of the Tom and a movie called Tom and Jerry. So there's that. Yeah. I also have never really liked the Tom and Jerry characters. I found them to be when I was a kid, I just found them pointless. I was like, they don't have much personality. I don't understand why they're doing these things or why I should care when the looney tunes cartoons

are so readily available for me at the same time. And those characters are brimming with personality. And I wanted to quote, this is a discussion I was having yesterday with an anonymous source who is familiar with John Hodgman's thinking on this topic. And this anonymous source who is familiar with John Hodgman's thinking on this topic, very familiar. More familiar than probably anyone else with John Hodgman's thinking on the topic.

He said to me and I quote, he or she this source, and I said to me, Tom and Jerry always sucked. They're always sour, mean-spirited, joyless, and stupid. Tom and Jerry were always a crime against inanity. And he seemed very proud of that wordplay at the end there. This anonymous source is very familiar with John Hodgm's thinking. Yeah, he's, he, she, I don't, I don't, I don't, it's hard to know what pronoun to go by. But it's someone who's very familiar with John Hodgm's thinking.

And I agree. Yeah. I was thinking about this like, why do I find Tom and Jerry so hateful when I love the road runner, Coyote cartoons because they're both based on this sort of unending chase being locked in this battle with your cartoon persecutor. But the thing is, animated nature, red and tooth and claw. Yeah, it's just the prime evil cycles of life.

Yeah. The Roadrunner has a certain insu-shance granted, but he does not like, he's not there to bedevil the coyote, so much as the coyote wants to eat the road runner and the road runner basically ignores him. Like, all of the coyote's injuries mostly come from like his own attempts to kill the roadrunner backfire. If anyone has ever been hoisted on their own petard,

it is while E. Coyote for sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you buy petards all the time. I mean, I use this term a lot, but I feel like there's a certain amount of emotional distance in the roadrunner that I feel like I can identify with this idea of constantly chasing this hopeful dream that you can never, you'll never get.

Yeah. Where's Tom and Jerry? I'm like, who am I sympathizing with here? The early road runner cartoons also have a style to them that is very cool. The later ones, not some, by the time Wiley Coody has those ones where he's like building a giant coyote robot and walking around on its head and stuff. Those ones are not quite there. But there's a certain modern style to them that goes a long way towards creating a

distanced hilarious tone. But Tom and Jerry is just these two assholes beating each other up all the time. Well, that's the thing. You could think of, you shouldn't blow a road runner short up into a full length movie either, but at least you don't run into the same problem you do with Tom and Jerry where I'm watching it I'm like, okay, like where are my sympathies supposed to lie here? Because like I think they want me to think that Jerry is this like loveable trickster and like, you know, sure, Tom wants to get him and that's understandable. But whereas like Jerry just comes off as a constant asshole. And I'm like, yeah, Tom, eat him. That's your job. You're cat. Eat that mouse. Like, you know,

well, there's Terry Jerry. Yeah, he's he's a he is really and we'll get into it. He's he's coded here as like, yeah, he's a lovable scamp who's always getting his way and you gotta love him. Hey, hey, you can't, he just can't, he's so impressible, you can't stop. And that really parallels the heroin of the movie who is a liar and a con woman who basically cheats her way to success. And Tom has to be...

No, she is forced to by being a part of the gig economy. That's true. It is our disembodied. You've heard the working class of this movie. She is a generation Z gig economy worker. But it's a, yeah, they kind of felt like they needed to say, how do we make the cat chase and try to kill the mouse without the cat being the villain?

Because we want both characters to be sympathetic. We can't have the cat and mouse be friends. We tried that on the time I'm Jerry Show from the late 70s and it did not work. And Jerry cannot ever wear a bow tie again because we just don't want to bring any memories back about that. OK, we'll make the mouse a total dick.

Like we'll just make the mouse a dick that everything always goes right for. So the audience so desperately wants the cat to murder him. Yeah. Okay guys, let's get into it. Let's get into it. So this is Tom and Jerry. It's directed by Tim Story,

who you may not Dan loves his fantastic four films. Something the audience should know before we talk about this and more depth. This is a live action movie where every animal is a cartoon, even background animals. Even there's a scene in a fish market and all the dead fish are animated.

They go, that's what I'm saying. So like if you go to eat, get a fucking burger, right? The meat part is going to be animated. It should be. We never see anyone eat a hamburger, but it should have been. I mean, this is one of the times when the movie makes a decision that theoretically,

I can see like, oh, this is interesting. Like it's going against some of the things that I don't like in movies like this, but it opens up a whole new can of worms that is worse. I mean, a cane would be full of animated work. And it works could be like, hey boss, what you doing? Gonna put me on a hook? Because I think you don't want to see a thing like Sonic that we've seen so many times before where it's just like,

this is literally like from, they're from another world and they're here and they're one of the kind. Or like the Garfield movies, like I'm so happy they did not make them a photorealistic CGI cat and a photorealistic CGI mouse. Like that would have been a bigger mistake. The fact that like, they aren't one of the kind, which is an admirable thing,

but then you have to go the other way. This movie seems to think like, okay, everything that one's a cartoon animal. And then you're like, okay, so are we living in who frame Roger Rabbit are these like tunes? No, they're actual animals, but everyone's interacting with them in the way they would real animals. And it exists kind of like in the Muppet type world where, even though Kermit, the frog can talk and play the banjo and walks on two legs, he's just a frog, you know? Yeah.

I will say this. Yeah, okay, here's the positive side of this. And I'm gonna say the negative side of this. The positive side is the animation and the special effects in the movie are great. A lot of work was put into the animation. It looks fantastic. They, it interacts amazingly well

with the live action world that it's in. The side effect of this is it's very confusing whether, yeah, how people treat these animals which they can communicate with, the animals hold jobs and things like that, but this will treat as bad. Yeah, like they can, they buy tickets to a baseball game and then because they make the Yankees lose,

animal control puts them in prison in the animal control prison. And they, but also almost all the animals in the movie can talk except Tom and Jerry. So the whole movie I was like, are they handicapped? Like are they disabled? I don't know why, why are they unable to,

I'll accept there's only one other, the other two animals that can't talk are tweets and a goldie, the goldfish because only male animals talk in the movie also. Well, and Jubey the dog can't talk because he's wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask. But he still talks through the mask. He still talks through the mask. I didn't hear it.

I do not think this movie's animation looks good or interacts with the world well. They're doing something here that I admire theoretically. Again, the thing I admire theoretically that in practice, I do not like. This movie is a computer animated film, but they have done the computer animation to look like it is traditional cell animation, the old style. And I'm glad that they want to do that. But, and maybe it's just because I'm like too much of a cartoon person that I'm like my brain is attuned to this like it's like how you can see motions moving but your parents don't like I watch this and I'm like this looks super weird to me. Like it doesn't feel integrated to me it feels like they're like just drawing over spaces but also like, you'll see when Sylvester still unsees the expendables movies with all the fake bullet hits. And he's like, looks good.

And you're like, I don't think so. I would disagree. Dan, I think Dan, you could argue that on aesthetic grounds, that aesthetically it's not pleasing to you, but I think there's a scene where Tom and Jerry destroying a hotel room, and the way they interact with the live action objects

in that room is really well done. It's not funny, but it's really well done. I'll say that, sure, maybe that scene, but they, I'm sure it's a budget consideration. They save it up and they do it in like a couple of places and then otherwise, I think it's actually pretty bad because they'll have like, for instance, Michael Pena will be walking the dog and you see him holding one of those like the end of a one of those stiff invisible dog walking leashes and You won't like see his hand interact with the dog in the same frame

They will like do it so like the the dog's face will block any connection between like what Michael Pena is doing What he's doing? They will play a bunch of things and close up rather than master. So you don't see the cartoons like and the humans together so much. It's like I would see several play, it's where it's like, okay, well that's clearly a choice to hide the fact that they aren't interacting well. Although I will say one interesting thing I've learned about, if they're like, when they're interacting with like small objects, so they're holding stuff for whatever, that is photorealistic CGI that they did.

They didn't actually get a mouse to come out and pick something up, right? Yeah, exactly. I think that's a great, I'm not arguing against that. I think that's a great use of the technology. I'm just saying in general, I was not impressed by the look. Okay, I think I didn't have a specific test

as the Michael Pena holding a leash that's attached to a cartoon dog test. I mean, we can just disagree on something with that you mocky. Yeah, you don't have to win. I think you have to. The movie opens with a couple of pigeons singing a tribe called Quest Song.

And this was the moment when I was like, oh, oh. You know, I talked about how much I want to see movies filmed in pre-COVID New York. I love it, I love this city, but this felt a little bit like not like this, you know? I don't want to see New York like this. This is a real like, it's not a it's not a particularly realistic New York later on

Tom will hide out in one of Midtown men hat and many alleyways around Around Central Park West those don't exist But this also something is going on this movie where the soundtrack as you'll notice as you watch movie is working so hard Over time to make Tom and Jerry seem cool and hip and exciting. It's like wall to wall hip hop anytime Tom and Jerry or anybody you're doing anything. And we start with these animated pigeons who are wrapping while they fly over New York. Then we see Tom and Jerry as classic newcomers to the city. Tom is riding the subway with his keyboard because it's established early on. He's a talented keyboard player, a keyboard cat, if you

will. While a rat real estate agent is showing off an abandoned car to Jerry the mouse as an apartment. You know Jerry the mouse is a newcomer to New York because he has a backpack, which is like a shorthand for I just moved into the big city. The two of them first meet when Tom is busking in Central Park, pretending to be a blind piano playing cat, and Jerry, this is him being a dick, tries to horn in by break dancing in front of Tom and taking all the money. There's who start fighting Tom's keyboard breaks, the crowd turns on Tom when they realize

he isn't blind. And the one really funny line, I think, in the home movie when someone yells, he's just an ordinary piano playing cat. And they get really mad. I mean, we're talking about unlikeability of characters. This is like one of the fatal flaws of the movie for me right off the bat is that Jerry like, not only like yeah tries to coordinate and he breaks Tom's keyboard, Tom's keyboard we are she's seen you know we

are showing him like he doesn't just do this as a busker like he has he has musical ambitions because he like looks up at John Legend on a billboard and imagine some self playing in a John Legend concert even though I like I it was so specific that I was in a John Legend concert, even though I, like, it was so specific that I was sure that John Legend was gonna show up in the movie. I thought so too. It's the classic story of a cat who wants to play MSG. And it has big, it's just like a star is worn,

but it's a cat. I'm like, you don't like break a musician's musical instrument like that. Like that is a, you know, I disagree with it. I think you do. I think you should. Okay like that. Like that is a... No, I disagree, I think you do. I think you should. Okay. Wow.

Like which one? Like which guy? You got Armin White over here. Yeah. So, but at the point is Tom is mad, understandably so. His livelihood has just been destroyed by Jerry. Chase is Jerry through the park and bumps into Kayla, played by Chloe Grace Moritz. She is biking through the park with a box of clothes

and it knocks the clothes all over the ground, which for some reason causes her to lose her job. I'm not totally sure exactly why that happened. She looks like a postmates person or something. But she was delivering a box of clothes or something. I don't, maybe she's a, her space has spiced everywhere. I guess so. She's some kind of task rabbit's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best.

It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best.

It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best.

It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for the best. It's for staff in a fancy wedding at the hotels. Two famous social media influencers are getting married at this hotel, and they need a temporary event staff, and Kayla basically says to this woman, actually, I work at the hotel and you fail the test.

Can I have your resume, and she steals the resume and applies for the job under this fake name? Okay, super bummed me out, man. Yeah, I don't like this. This is the second time a character is introduced. I take it immediately, just like to with them because of their actions. But also, so it is confirmed that there's social media

influencers, because I said that afterwards, and already didn't remember anything about it, and she was baffled where I got that. But if you got it too, then... It is the only thing that is told to us about them that would explain why anyone cares that they're getting married. It's never fair what they do. Why they're rich and famous.

They are just two social media influencers who are talking shit about Colin Joe's like that. Well, I mean, no, far be it for me to denigrate Colin Joe's one facial expression that he wears throughout the entire movie no matter what is happening at any given point. His total lack of chemistry or charisma with the woman playing Pra his fiance. Who who looks far more lovingly at Chloe Grace were at it a couple of times. Very much so very much so. But again, this this kind of lack of charisma and collage us part has not failed to bring him to the top of television comedy and bag him Scarlet Johansson.

So I really can't I guess there's just something there I don't see. I guess I just. Oh, you must have read his fucking vows without... Babe, babe, I knew I begged a good one when... Anyway, but this, by this point, it is very, something is made clear to the audience in this movie. This kid's movie about a feuding mouse and cat will mostly concern itself with a celebrity wedding and how that wedding affects a young woman's career in the hospitality industry. That's what the movies about.

Tom and Jerry. Yeah, and it is one of these things where you're like, there's no clearer indication that the only reason this movie was made was that someone owned the property, Tom and Jerry. Because it's like, there's nothing in like the outlines of the actual plot of this movie. It's like, oh, someone with a passion for the material made this. We're like, no, okay, we've got Tom and Jerry. We think that Tom and Jerry, we did some testing. It's not very good against, with young women.

So, I don't know, let's get a story of a young woman making her way in the world in there. It's just, it all of it seems like just awkward pieces of screenplays that, like down at the screenplay factory that got fitted together. Speaking of that, I'm doing a little detective work here and I can see behind Dan in a trash can, there's a script that is titled

Untitled Celebrity Wedding script. I guess Dan's mad because this scooped him. You can't see the zoom recording, of course, because this is a podcast, but Stuart deliver that so convincingly that it looks behind myself. Dan, for a moment, thought there was a garbage can behind him, even though that's his room. I would say this time in Jerry Falls

into the, it's kind of like the later Mark's Brothers movies, where there's a couple that has a problem and the Mark's Brothers are there to service the needs of the couple, not in the sexy way that that just sounded like that I described it as. Tom and Jerry are basically there to just bring a little bit of extra jazz to the exciting story of a young woman lying her way to the top

of the hotel event management industry. Okay, guys. No matter how many Michael Payne is, she has to step on to get there. Oh, yeah. It's, it's again, once again, a movie where they're like, hey, how do we get some people of color into this movie? How about we have them be the obstacles

that the white hero needs to step on? Like, guys, no, you're not doing it right. Come on. Yeah, I did say, when we were watching it, I said this, I don this, I feel so bad, having to watch this dumb kids movie through this lens. Tim's story is a black director, one of the few blackbuster black directors.

I think he did make an effort to have this movie be more multicultural than this sort of film usually is But unfortunately also the fact that he has Chloe Grace Barretz This young white woman who does not appear to actually have Many like huge problems other than you know losing her previous job You know like lies her way to the top by, yeah, like basically like getting Michael Pania not fired, but close to it, you know, it does essentially get fired at one point, but he gets back somehow and the

gets back by destroying a wedding. Yes, that too. And and most of the animals have, except for Bobby Connavala, Spike, the Bulldog, most of the animals, except for Bobby Connavale as Spike, the Bulldog, most of the animals are voiced by black performers and actors of color. And it's like a way of getting their voices into it, but again, it just, when you don't really have, it's like there's one, there's really, there's a thought it through.

Yeah, it kind of has a thought it through. Anyway. So when we saw that Bobby Connavale did the voice for Spike and the credits, Charlene was like, that's why I'm attracted to the dog. So Tom, he's accosted by some tough cats in an alley. They're called the paper cut boys, I think, in the credits. As I said, one of many of New York City's Midtown alleyways, he escapes by calling animal control on them.

And meanwhile, Jerry moves into the hotel and sets up this little mouse cave for himself where he's got like a smart phone set on its side so it's a big screen TV and like, there's so many, I feel like- Christopher Nolan was so fucking mad with some. And- There's so many moments in the movie

that are just Jerry kicking back in his pad while hip-hop plays on the soundtrack. He has a fucking mouse-sized door for his room. Like that was the best mistake. That was one of the, one of the few other jokes in the movie where I was like, well, I do like that he somehow built a mouse-sized door that looks like all the other hotel room.

And a mouse-sized revolving door to the front of the hotel. Yeah. Well, the thing is like there would be like the occasional individual joke that I would enjoy, but it is like hammered on to such a rickety structure that you got a hope that in an hour and 40 minute comedy There's gonna be at least a handful of jokes that land Kayla Chloe Grace Merchie cons her way through an interview with the hotel manager mr. Dubros played by Rob Delaney who is

Consistently very funny in the movie as a as a bum-ling hotel manager, I thought. And Michael Pena is her foil and he like he gives it as all like he. Yes. This is like his audition reel to be the villain in a movie where the star is a dog basically. When Michael Pena is forced to stop in the middle of the street later on because he's walking spike and spike is off camera making a huge dump in the middle of the street. Like Michael Paine is selling the moment. Yeah, you don't get to see it, but Michael Paine is selling this moment. He is not half-assing it and I got to give him credit for that. His character Terrence is the events manager hotel.

He does not like a person who he suspects is a liar being made basically a second-end command. But he introduces her to the hotel staff. There's the goofy bellhop girl who's kind of weird. There's the cool bartender Cameron. There's the highest drunks chef played by Ken Jong. And meanwhile, while they're in she's she's I just need to clarify, she is hired as a temporary manager for this celebrity wedding weekend.

And if she plays her cards right, she might get a full time job, which I mean, I know she's gotten this job under false, like, fucked up circumstance, but that's a messed up fucking carrot-tangling, right? I mean, I guess it's almost, it's more the fact that they're hiring this person the day that the couple is arriving, rather than, like, it's the wedding's on a Saturday

and they're doing this on a Friday, it seems like. Yeah, and they're also like putting her up in a suite. Like, they're like, Yeah, she also lives in a hotel. She's happy on the premises for helping in this big wedding and then they're like, they gave her the nicest room. It's so crazy. So meanwhile, Tom and Jerry are having hijinks on the side.

Again, that's the movie kind of in microcosm, a plot about a woman dealing with a celebrity wedding while Tom and Jerry on the margins are just going to hit each other with things. Can I say something about a course again? Grace Moritz. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

No, I like Chloe Grace Moritz generally. Like I've liked her in previous movies, but here, I don't know. How do you feel about her in real life the time she guys have hung out? You know, she seems like she has a wall up, but that's because she's famous. Like people who are famous just have to do it to. You never know what people want from you. Yeah, you can't let them in too close. I just feel like in this movie,

you know, maybe it was bad direction at fault. It seems like she's been told to make a face every second. Like she is, she just does not stop moving her expression in this film. And I think it's someone along the line, you know, whether it's a bad choice that she's made in this particular role or the director encouraging something that he shouldn't have.

He's like, this is a cartoon movie. You should also be a cartoon person. And we can't all be Colin Jost who cannot move his face. Well, yeah, he's going the full other way. Which is, maybe if I pretend I'm not in Tom and Jerry, I could take the money without any bad parts. I think she's sorry, I was just going to say this is when we're introduced to the celebrity couple, but it sounds like you have more to say

about Chloe Grace Moritz' face, Elliot. I don't know, her performance, her face, I have no real comment on. I think she's, I think she, like everyone else in the movie is trying her best. They're trying to bring this material to life and it's just the material is so not there that it leaves all the performers kind of flailing

a little bit to try to make it work. But you're right, the celebrity couple is here. It's Pala Vicharda as preta, the bride to be. She's marrying Ben, played by Colin Jost. And it's unclear, as we said earlier, exactly why they're famous, they're social media influencers, influencers of some kind. They bring in Spike, the Bulldog voice by Bobby Columnavalli, and Tuts, the fancy lady cat who does not talk

because only male animals talk in this movie. Then we've got to go to the kitchen where chef Ken Jeong sees Jerry and he freaks out. So Caleb Hous, I'm going to catch this mouse, don't worry, we can't have a mouse in the hotel. Even though every hotel in New York, I'm sure, has thousands of mice in it. It just as every restaurant has thousands of cockroaches. It's what it means to live in a city guys look really alpha vermin on earth humanity there's a reason

when we create habitats for ourselves that mice rats roaches and pigeons feel right at home because they are also vermin they they know their own look so if you can have a thing in a city that's gonna be mice and rats and roaches and pigeons that's just the way this vermin knows vermin realize I was doing a podcast with roar shack yeah some day the vermin are going to ask me to help and I'm gonna say no is a German, no's German. How did you realize I was doing a podcast with a Rorschach? Yeah. And look, someday the vermin are going to ask me to help it. I'm going to say no.

I will say about this couple, big miscalculation and likability number three. They're fine. They seem to genuinely care about each other. Like, no, I'm serious laughing, but on a personal level, they seem to have painted these people as nice enough people. But on a personal level, like they seem to have like painted these people as like nice enough people. But for a screenplay, the fact that they don't appear to do any work at all and are like just sort of this movie, even though the movie makes a slight attempt

to make that not true at the end, although what happens is all the same. Although it still does. Yeah, exactly. Like, it seems like a particularly bad miscalculation for this moment in history. I think Dan, what you're forgetting is kids love wedding stories. Kids love stories about weddings.

They love attending weddings. They're always on tender hooks about whether weddings are going to go off as planned. The it is much like superhero comics have been criticized for years as being the writers want to write about characters their age rather than characters that kids are interested in. The writers of kids movies often seem to write about stuff that is, I wouldn't be surprised if someone involved in this movie was planning a wedding. Well, they were, well, they were producing it.

But I think they made a mistake I think they made is, they want this couple to be likable. There's a version of this movie where this couple is a bunch of pre-Modana's. Kayla is bending over backwards and mistreating Tom and Jerry to make their dream wedding come true. And then realizes, why am I doing this? This is a ridiculous job.

I shouldn't do this. My friendship with this cat and mouse is more important and she throws it away to be a happier person. There's a version of that movie. This is not that. In this one, there are lovely couple and it's okay that they want elephants that they're wedding. Maybe they're trying a little too hard, but otherwise, damn it, these social media influencers

are just good folks. They're down to this down to there's even though they live in a hotel with cartoonism. Exactly. Yeah. And there's something about this like megaric couple who have no friends, no, no one else around them. And they quickly become friends with the staff at a hotel. I mean, Charlene wanted to point out having worked in hotels for quite some time. That doesn't, the staff don't get invited to the ceremony.

Yeah, that is what like, Audrey at the end of the movie was like, why is the whole staff just standing here at this wedding? Except for the bartender who has to fucking work. Yeah, yeah, classic love always has to work. The bartender's always get the worst end of the stick. It is a, there is something. Although it does get to drink champagne out of like a fucking golden goblet at the end. So like, I guess, I guess they're pretty chill with their staffs drinking at a vent.

I don't know, man. But it is, it is true that it is, there's an untapped vein here about how these famous people are so eager have known in their lives, except for pretzels dad, who the running gag that doesn't really work is that Ben is super obsessed with trying to impress pretzels dad. And they have no one else, so they have to be friends with the hotel staff.

It's like the first season of I'm Alan Partridge, you know. So Caleb Howes to catch his mouse. She sets a trap for him, but she's so busy flirting with camera. She doesn't see Jerry steal the cheese in the trap and leave a taunting note for her, which means she knows already. This mouse knows English and can write and form sentences and has good handwriting. Yeah, this is a problem for two reasons.

Number one, our earlier cartoon question about what world we're living in here, because she reacts with, like, the movie splits the difference by having her be mildly surprised that he mouths as left her a note. So I guess that's somewhat unusual. But then also, like, they all through the rest of the movie they're doing like elaborate charades to communicate. It's like, well, apparently you can write. And at one point, Tom writes something

and she's like, oh, your ears are backwards. And it's like, dude, this cat just wrote a note. My son, his ears are backwards sometimes. That guy uses fingers like inflatable balloons and wrote his name with them. That's crazy. Yeah, why are you playing the keyboard? That skill will get you somewhere.

There is a scene later where Tom is cleaning out his ears with his tail. He threads his tail into one ear and out the other. And Michael Paniwak's mind goes, get your tail out of your ears, it's disgusting. And I like that, like how he's not surprised to see cat's stickets, tails, roots, ears. But okay, that night, this is when Tom and Jerry's rivalry

really picks up again because the devil and angel on Tom's shoulders, both voiced by Lil Ray Howray, they convince him it's time to go after Jerry. After Tom falls down nine or 10,000 times, trying to climb up this building. It takes forever. He gets in, they have this hotel room fight that I thought was really impressive,

that Dan was like, y'all on ho-hum. And Kayla walks in, catches them doing it, and hires Tom to catch Jerry. Mr. DeBros immediately approves. He loves the idea of having a cat on staff at the hotel at the main time. Terence, guess what? Doesn't like it. Not a fan. Yeah. I like that Rod Delaney's character. He's not necessarily a buffoon. He's just kind of like

too pleasant. He's fairly buffooned. Well, he's not. I mean, but like, you know, there's no point at which like, I don't know, the giant dog like takes a bite out of his pants and he's got big red underwear or something or like he's like, no, that's not. Made out to be an idiot, he's just sort of like trusting and pleasant. He's, he definitely benefits also from being just kind of peppered throughout the movie. So he doesn't have to do a lot of plot carrying, he can just kind of be a, it's the kind of role that like Peter Sellers would do in like a big stuffed full 60s comedy

where he would just kind of wander through the movie and be funny and wouldn't have to, and wouldn't have all the pressure that the other people have. So Jerry almost gets caught by Tuts, pre-discat, and then Jerry meets Kayla. But we don't have time for the cartoon animals. There's tension at the Prida Ben wedding,

because Ben cannot stop making this wedding bigger and more complicated. He wants elephants, he wants peacocks, and Prida takes Kayla's side and bits. She lost her engagement ring. Oh no, this is what the movie's gonna be about for a little bit people, just deal with it. And this is meanwhile, when Terrence walks spike

and spike makes a big poop in the road. And Terrence has to yell at a taxi cab that this dog is pooping and that's why he can't get out of the road. It's never have I wished that Michael Paine and more could have had the dignity of being Mr. Rorick and fantasy island than this moment. You know. Thank you. Yeah. I would like to partially, by the way, that by the, you know, the moment it leaves the cartoon dogs, but it becomes a real poop and not cartoon poop. I think that the story is so disappointing. I think it's real poop the whole time. I think it's a real turd coming out of a cartoon dog's dog's butt. And that and that's how cartoon dogs poop is through their penis, not through the other end. Okay, man.

I think if it's, because it's not an animal, like an avapositor or something. It's like a cloaca, the cartoon dog has a cloaca, that's basically what it is. So okay, geriot turns out. So wait a minute then.

At what point does the cartoon animal flesh become not cartoon? That's a good question. In a person's body. During the time. There's a person that has my stomach developed enzymes to transform tunes into regular flesh. Yes, it's like a fucking dip.

It's naturally occurring dip in the human stomach. And the animal digestive system. In fact, that's what digestion stands for is dip ingesting gestation, eating some turds. So, or eating so turds. If you eat it, it becomes it. That's what digest stands for. Okay, yes.

It all, it all, it all. No, no, at first I thought you said, it stood for, that's what dips stood for. And I'm like, you're adding letters in dip that I, no, no, this is not. This is for the novelization. Dip stands for, dip stands for it.

Dip stands for don't ingest people. Because it's not. Because then naturally occurring dip in your body, your stomach has a chemical lining that keeps the dip in. But if you tried to drink that stuff, oh, it'd burn right through your esophagus. Anyway. That's why that candy is called fun dip.

They have to specify that it's fun and not the dip that's inside your body. Exactly. So confusing. So when someone is eating say a plate of spaghetti. Except for judge doom, judge doom would buy it because he needs it to kill more tunes. Exactly.

So in this movie, the other thing is that all the bacteria and the microbes in your body are also cartoons. All the, anything that's not a human in this is a cartoon. So when you eat, I mean, Osmosis Jones told us that. So yeah. Exactly.

This is the same universe. It's the S most of Jones cinematic universe, the OJCU. Now, when you order a plate of spaghetti and meatballs in this world, the meatballs are ground up, animated, either beef, turkey, whatever type of meat it is. But then, so it's a cartoon meatballs, maybe it still has an eye or a goat, that's when it goes, it's a living. It goes, it's a dying. And then you eat that and the enzymes in your body

and the cartoon microbes and the dip turn it into live action poop. So there's only animated food. Plants, all plant food is live action. But animal-based food also leather shoes, leather jackets. There must be some process they put it through that D-D-Animals. D-D-Stu-R-E-N-E-N-E-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-N-E-N-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E- Disturbing and ever even thought about that. Yeah, there's a lot of other things. You know, nature is really horrifying, guys. There's nothing natural about turning animals

into leather jackets or shoes, Dan. That's not a natural age process. No, I'm talking about our natural dip that we have. Hey, it's okay, thank you. It's a fun dip. Did that creep you out as a concept as a kid? Or not creep you out? I would like see that.

I'm like, okay, so there's this, like, you got that candy sort of just tongue depressor, right? Yeah, that kind of chalk stick. Yeah. Yeah, you got to lick that, dip it into the sugar, take it out, lick it off to get, I don't know, it feels like there's a lot of opportunities for sort of like a lint and fuzz to be involved in that.

Yeah, and it's not a COVID safe candy. All that gritting, it's certainly not, don't share that with people during the pandemic. Like time. Even as a messy child, I was like, this is not, this is too much for me. Yeah, I was never a fan of it. Anyway, it turns out Jerry has the ring.

He's, he's sending it up as a chandelier in his house. Tom manages to catch him in a kind of rub Goldberg type trap and males him away somewhere. Steal a little bit of Garfield right that. Tom is celebrating, everyone's celebrating, he's playing piano, he's serenading his tuts, but Jerry shows up, uh oh, he escaped and he attacks Tom and they, Kayla is like, hey, what are you doing? And Jerry mimes to Kayla, you can have the ring if I can stay in the hotel.

And she's like, oh, okay, but then Terrence almost catches them. But luckily, Spike, who Terrence has just finished walking, he had that big live action poop that was turned by the natural dip in his stomach from cartoon to live action. But then Spike comes in and causes a big fight with Tom and Jerry, culminating in what's described in the movie as an animal fight whirlwind, I think they call it. And it's just a, it's a three dimensional visualization

of what you see in cartoons when there's just a cloud of dust that animals are fighting in. It creates like a singularity where things are being pulled closer and in time changes a little bit. A little bit. At the close you get to the animal-world wind event horizon, the slower time goes and also the longer

and thinner matter becomes. So it's very fascinating stuff. Kids might miss it, but that's why there's that old lady when Chloe Grace Moritz runs out. There's that old lady who goes, I'm you. And it just passes. That's for the adults in the audience. Yeah, to understand.

Yeah. And Matthew McConaughey is watching the whole time, and he's just fucking bawling. It wrecks the lobby. It even wrecks the ceiling of the lobby. Like there's just a huge hole in the ceiling now. It's fixed, I think, within two scenes. Mr. Debrose fires Terrence and puts Kayla in charge.

How else could you do it? So Kayla, she has a rooftop talk with Tom and Jerry and she tells them, hey, you can stay if you stop fighting. The only way for you to stop fighting is to bond on a sightseeing tour of New York. So she calls up a black car for them. They are traveling around New York, doing New York things. They go to a very inaccurate rendition

of the Natural History Museum. Are the Dinesworth skeletons and stuffed safe tooth tigers animated? Yes, they are. They're cartoons. They go to a fish market full of cartoon fish. We're a fish are being thrown around, which is a fucking Seattle thing.

That is not a New York thing. That is not something that happens at New York Fish markets. Thank you very much, Tom and Jerry. And we can tell from their Instagram feed, because they apparently set up a social media account, they're Instagramming it. And at one point we find out, is it Prida is, apparently follows that, because she is a transition between scenes

of all spridas scrolling past. So, okay, let's break this scene moment down. The cat and mouse that Kayla is trying to keep a secret because they live in her hotel. She has given them an Instagram feed or one of them already has an Instagram feed. They are and Prida, who is a major Instagram social media figure.

She probably follows not that many other people. She follows either a cat or a mouse who has a social media feed. And up to this day, what have they been putting on that feed? Is it just Tom with pictures of himself being like, this is it, I'm finally gonna get into that hotel room and then crashing to the ground, you know, I understand. Or we had talked earlier about how there seems to be an unmistakable chemistry between Prida and Kayla.

Yes. And maybe she is like kind of low-key stalking Kayla be an unmistakable chemistry between Prida and Kayla. And maybe she is like kind of low-key stalking Kayla and she's like, oh, Kayla's following this cat and mouse. Maybe all following the two and maybe we'll just casually bring it up in conversation. I mean, we're the only two followers of this cat and mouse that you'll probably see. That I'm the only one.

Yeah, they had a very active social media day. I mean, they went on the cyclone, all the things, through saw fish being thrown around. I mean, let me see, like Kayla, you know, has been hired to take care of this problem. And, you know, she's trying. She's doing it in a very kind, hard-hearted way. Let's broker a piece.

But, you know, it seems like Rob Delaney, when he sees the expense report for a limousine, for a cat and a mouse, we'll get angry about this. I think she's hoping it's going to be hidden in the expense of rebuilding that stained glass fucking spotlight. Yeah, I mean, all of this is going to be baked into the wedding fee. Is there going to be charging them $1,000 for a cube of ice just to cover the other stuff? But you're right, it is a, she has hiring and firing abilities, she has the ability, she

has an unlimited expense account, she's been on the job for roughly three days by this point. And there's not that many other people, also a hotel this size, you'd have to assume would have dozens of employees, you know. But you have a singular bell hop. They have one bell hop, more people seem to work in the kitchen than we've anywhere already already the The hospitality industry is being crushed right now, okay?

They're and then we have to see this cat and mouse just destroy a fucking room and you're like come on Will they ever bounce back now in a landmark building too? So that that limits the kinds of renovations they can do, makes it that much more expensive, certain contractors they can't work with. This is all stuff that I'm kind of surprised the movie didn't go into because it doesn't seem that interested

in the cat and mouse fighting each other. Meanwhile, speaking of the cartoon elephants and peacocks have arrived at the hotel, the peacocks are strangely amorous in a way that's not fully a joke, but is kind of a joke. And Prida tells Kayla, Ben's plans for the wedding keep getting bigger and bigger, Peacocks are strangely amorous in a way that's not fully a joke, but is kind of a joke. And pre-details Kayla, Ben's plans for the wedding keep getting bigger and bigger, and it's really stressing her out, but the problem is they're always in the public eye so they can't

ever disagree or argue with each other. They've lost the ability to argue with each other. And it's like that's right. Exactly. No, if anything, we need to lose a little bit of our ability to argue with each other. And she just doesn't know how to say no to Ben. Meanwhile, as Stuart mentioned earlier, Tom and Jerry, they're at the at Yankee Stadium, Tom catches a ball that he should not have reached over the edge when the ball was going

into the glove of the outfielder. It should have been the game-winning ball for the Yankees. It's implied that they would have gone all the way if they, if they didn't have it, if they had caught it. They get taken away by animal services. Hershey. The Mbino. That's what that is, right?

No, the first Mbino wasn't on the Yankees. It was on the red sauce. Tom? What? They see a droopy and a Hannah Baleckter mask in the, in, in animals control. And it's like, what's up a sequel? I mean, I would so much rather see a droopy movie than a Tom and Jerry movie.

Again, I don't know how you told him I want to have with droopy. Also, that was the one thing in the movie where I'm like, okay, well, this is providing me some kind of new insight into one of these cartoon characters because I'm like, oh yeah, droopy does have kind of that like evil serial killer vibe. I see that.

Sure, sure. I mean, the fact that he says I'm happy and he's displaying no emotion on his face whatsoever like the sociopath or a colon just. Anyway, so it's another example too of a joke in the movie where it's like, kids will love this reference to Silence of the Lambs. The serial, the transphobic serial killer film from 1990,

whatever. Okay. The street gang cats from earlier. The street gang cats from earlier are there. And they taunt Tom into putting Jerry in his mouth. And this whole sequence may be very uncomfortable. They're like, you eat it then. Eat it.

Put in your mouth, swallow it down. Luckily, Michael Paine shows up to interrogate them. He takes them into separate interrogation rooms, and suddenly there's all these split screens and like text on the screen, it's, I could, is this a paragraph or something? Second unit director Brian DePaul must show. Oh.

What's up? They would have this big cartoon text on the screen too that like, were the weirdest choices of words, it wasn't like something that needed to be emphasized ever. And never thought I'd just kind of like the sequence because it was like yeah it was silly and I'm like I don't know what this is a reference to but whatever I assumed it had to be a reference to something but at least it you know they were doing something with it uh he basically he tells both of them I can take one of you back to the hotel if you agree to work with me but as we'll see he's not being totally above board.

But the wedding has started this way. He's performing some liaisons, dangerous, some of these two, making them both angry at each other. You better believe it. The wedding begins and this wedding don't look in its wazoo because it's got cartoon animals up it. It is just so many cartoon animals everywhere.

There are two very unfunny elephants that are just used internet kind of like abbreviations. They have voices like middle-aged British men, but they say like, oh, OMG, or like WTF and stuff like that. It was a very confused characterization for these two cartoon elephants. There's a cartoon tiger there that looks genuinely dangerous. I don't know why you would have a tiger at your wedding.

Prida, suffice to say, is very frustrated. There's a cartoon tiger there that looks genuinely dangerous. I don't know why you would have a tiger at your wedding. Prida, suffice to say, is very frustrated. Terrence sneaks in with Tom, but he's also let Jerry loose. Uh-oh. Tom starts chasing Jerry with an enormous meat tenderizer hammer with spikes that literally cracks the floor when he hits the floor.

Nobody seems to notice this. The wedding is oblivious to the fact that the ground is being shattered to pieces under their feet. Nobody notices until Chef Ken Jeong sees Jerry on the cake and is so infuriated that he destroys the cake with a baseball bat trying to hit Jerry. I think it's a cricket bat. Oh, it's a cricket bat?

I might as well take, I apologize. Please take everything I've said with a grain of salt. Colin Jost, I apologize. I guess I was not watching the movie close enough. Then, even then, many of the wedding I was not watching the movie close enough. Yeah. Then, even then, many of the wedding attendees do not seem to notice the problem. That's how big this wedding is until the elephant seed Jerry and panic, they're falling all over the place. The tiger decides that's the moment to try to murder the other animals.

Another singularity occurs in the middle. Time bends and shifts. Yeah, another animal whirlwind. The wedding and the hotel entrance are destroyed. Uh-oh, what's gonna happen? Kayla admits she lied and Prida calls off the wedding. And I look at the timeline and I see there's 22 minutes left in this movie. And I'm like, it wasn't supposed to be about Tom and Jerry. Yeah, until I get sucked into that animal whirlwind,

the exact same thing happened to me at, like it must have been close to the same moment because I'm like, yeah, it's a 21 minutes. How is there that much time left than I comforted myself by reminding myself that it was a big Blockbuster film and you know at least eight minutes of that would be credits. I definitely I saved my wounds The at with that with being like credits remember the credits don't worry. It's the credits Did you actually did you guys watch through to the post credits scene? I know that there is one little Wikipedia. I'll tell you about it when we get to it. It's maybe the least necessary post credit scene in the history of film. But okay, so the movie you think

this is where Kayla like admits she was wrong and learns her lesson the movie is over. No, Terrence is back in charge. He throws Tom out of the hotel. Tom sings, sleeps in a cardboard box in the rain while that pigeon sings a sad song while flying over New York. The next day, Tom and Jerry... It's basically the sad song from when Howard the Duck gets kicked out of Leah Thompson's apartment, right? I mean, I have to assume it's it functions. It feels the same evolutionary niche as that. Yeah. Tom and Jerry make peace. I don't remember how. I don't care.

And Kayla and Cameron are like attending a street fair or something. And Cameron tells Kayla, she's got to stop comparing herself to other people and just be her own great self. And she'll get ahead. And I was like, what movie is this the moral of? It doesn't seem like, it seems like the moral of this movie is don't lie your way to success.

Yeah. Because it's going to come crashing down. It's very weird. And there's a little bit of a like don't hope for, like don't hope above your station shit. Well, I mean, no, I would say the opposite. I would say it is, the moral is like it will make a faint effort at saying that like honesty and hard work is important, but then be like, no, psych, because like the whole movie is like this woman, you know, cheats her way to, I guess, the top of the hospitality world. I mean, at that point,

she's second in line at the hotel somehow. Yeah, and then she briefly filled out her union paperwork yet. She briefly fills, it feels, there must be some moment when the wedding collapses and Mr. DeBros' is like, I didn't even get her W9 yet. Yeah. But she briefly feels bad about doing so

and just the mere act of feeling bad, everything is forgiven and it's fine. Like, there's no point in this movie where I feel like, look, it's a fucking time. It's a kids movie. It's a family film. But like, there's no idea that you have to like sacrifice anything at all. Well, considering it came out around the same time as Seoul, ostensibly a kids movie about how sometimes you have to give up your dreams of being musician and enjoy the ordinary things in life because you're gonna die soon like kids are like there's some world where there's a message between those two movies that is fit for children.

Yeah, I mean, I would have preferred if when she went to go meet her friend at the like market she was wearing a hair shirt out of contrition or something like that, maybe she was flagellating yourself. Yeah, some sort of self-legilation. Needed to be done. Anyway, Tom and Jerry show up and they mime their way through suggesting saving the day by arranging a new wedding. Because you know what, these two love each other despite the fact that we haven't seen anything really to back that up.

We know Ben and Preta love each other. And this is like the next day, right? Yes, it has to be. So like she scheduled a like a date or like a hang with this dude for the next. Here's my guess. Here's my guess. In the middle, he called her to check in on her and or she called him and was like, Hey, I need someone with me right now because I need just some help. I think they I think it wasn't like they had a pre-scheduled get together probably, I don't know. But also, you gotta assume, the guests at the wedding, they're still gonna be at that brunch

that was scheduled for the morning after the wedding. Like, but they seem to have disappeared. They're all gone, or pretty much, when we see this replaced wedding. Anyway, first they've gotta stop pre-tough from getting to the airport and flying to wherever these characters came from. Cue the motorized skateboard chase, and this feels like you're just going to watch like a level

from like a Tom and Jerry super Nintendo game for a while. Yeah. And yes, and it is the moment where you're like, well, you thought that that motorized skateboard and drone from earlier in the movie were extraneous details, but no, the key, like, there's nothing extraneous in this clockwork. And it's, there's, this is the moment where I was like, it really sunk into me. There's not a lot of jokes in this chase sequence. And I was like, holy shit, I a child, I'm supposed to care if Tom and Jerry can stop this

woman from running away from her wedding. Like, I can't, like, why is this? High society wedding. Yeah, not since Santa Claus the movie made me wonder whether a company was going to make profits off of toys that I guess they shouldn't have been making. I don't know because they had Santa magic in them. Like, not since any movie about a family, about to lose its business, you know, that's ostensibly for kids, like, anyway, I guess I want people

to make kids movies to spend more time with kids. So they see what kids are interested in because they're not really that interested in the things that grown up to do. But that's OK. Tom and Jerry have a foolproof plan. They merely kidnap Pritas Cat from her car so that she has to run after it. They lure her to a new wedding in Central Park.

That's right. even though they followed her on the streets for a while, she is at the same place that she started from. It's just like- That's a pretty easy permit to get, right? A wedding permit for Central Park? I think the same thing. It's this huge wedding in Central Park

that they are doing with no permits. But I guess they're famous. They can do whatever they want. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. Money buys. Kayla and Ben both take turns apologizing to Prita. Then for some reason we cut away to her dog farting and Michael Payne are reacting to it.

I could not understand why that was included in this moment, except that they finally realized kids love farts, which is true. If I had been watching this with my son, he would have laughed and laughed at it. They get married, the elephants and the tigers and all the cartoon animals are still there. So I'm like, what lesson did Ben really learn?

Exactly, yes. No. This is a marginally less opulent thing than the previous wedding. Like, outside. Outside. Like, it's the, no, it's still a wedding that is well

out of the reach of most married couples, you know, this crazy wedding. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you guys remember, but when I got married in Puerto Rico, Sharni spent ages trying to hire animated animals to attend. And Charlie, and the thing is our wedding planner kept saying they don't exist.

And I'm like, I don't know what you're saying to me right now. I saw it in a movie. You're like, I want Roger Rabbit to MC the wedding. What's the matter? Is he the least too big for us? He in a movie. You're like, I want Roger Rabbit to MC the wedding. What's the matter? Is he the least too big for us? He's a husband. Well, what about that baby with a cigar then? People would love that baby.

That's the thing. They would love that. Now, I normally say no children at weddings, but that baby, he's got a real attitude and I think that would go over well with my crowd. I mean, not to reveal too many details about search wedding, but in real life, gear efficient was kind of the grown-up live action version of the baby from Roger Hatton. That's true. He did the Rente rabbi who showed up to our wedding

did refer to one of our guests loudly as Tata's Grande, which isn't even completely Spanish. Well, he was in Puerto Rico, so he figured he had to use the sometimes- Yeah, I guess multi-cultural, what a weirdo. So Kayla introduces Terence to the woman who's resume she stole the beginning, and it's implied that they're attracted to each other and that there's like aromance in the offing,

much like a Shakespeare play, all the characters must be paired off at the end. And it sets up this like really uncomfortable power dynamic right there. Like that's not a good work environment. No, not at all. But that's for Tom and Jerry to human resources. So the other kids love to hear about.

Yeah, by all rights, the movie should be over by now. But it keeps going a little bit longer so that Jerry can screw up Tom's piano playing again. And they can start fighting again. Oh, Tom and Jerry, will you never learn, cut to credits, and then the post-credits scene where in Ben finds out the hotel is charging him for two weddings and it's very expensive. That was the last final joke

that the movie wanted to leave you with after sending credits. And then Colin Joseph, did he give a big reaction? Did he give a kind of muted reaction? How would you describe it? I would say muted is the right I would say a Buster Keaton-esque deadpan would be the way to describe his reaction to it. Yeah, so he didn't rent his guard garments and say ah This has broken me. I don't have that much. I mean, I don't know if you turned out

I didn't know if you rented them or not We didn't see a scene where he was fitted for tuxedo though I got to assume that they shot it but yeah, he didn't he didn't he did not get mad So here's he didn't have to give away his clothes and walk around with a barrel over It's the thing is it's an animated barrel for some reason and it opens even more questions about what? Is there a place on earth where all the two animals come from and they have tuned trees that you can make barrels out of? Is there a do you have to have a special barrel right to do that? I don't yeah. That's a good question. Questions so this movie just doesn't answer. But let's do final judgments whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie we kind of like

guys I want to say you know Loki this is the god of mischief yeah come soon come and soon to Disney plus I think he's right for president oh shit I think this is Loki one of the worst movies we've watched and I'll tell you why? Tell us why. It has a sheen of professional. Martian sheen. Everything is glossy. It is a big budget film with talented performers. A lot of talent put behind it. But I just find it so spirit-deadening to watch.

And that's what bothers me about. I am not a guy who thinks that all entertainment has to be like Art in the in the capital A like art sense and like and for kids certainly like I mean I think kids deserve quality But they also have a different idea of what quality is so that's fine as well, but like this movie is Like I said it earlier. There's no reason for this to exist other than the fact that Tom and Jerry has name recognition, someone owns that name, and then they set out to make the least original, least enjoyable version of that. And it's like, I'm all over the place with like, whether I want my movies to have messages,

how I feel about that. Like, I like a movie that has a good message. I also like a movie that comes close to having no message. I can like a movie that has a, is like espousing a bad message ironically to like make you think about things. I can even, at times, will like something that I think is a very bad message,

but I has been presented in a thoughtful way where like they've wrestled with something. But this is just like a cavalcade of sort of like bad messages I think that have come up from completely unexamined just like let's take the path of least resistance, stupid fucking kids movie. Like, and it just made, it put me in a bad mood. So I hated this movie, it's my answer.

What do you guys have to say? Yeah, I mean, this is obviously clearly a bad movie. I'm sure there's a moment where I'm like, oh, it's all takes place in a hotel. French Fars, it is is no such a lot. But what I'm going to say, there is a, there is a, there's a bit of optimism for me. Maybe, maybe, maybe I'm drunk. Who knows?

But this movie makes me think that there's a chance that finally, somebody, somebody's going to make a Mark Anthony and Pussyfoot movie. Finally, a cartoon character that I feel represented by Mark Anthony, the bulldog who loves a cat and is occasionally berated by a woman with beautiful high heels and stockings. Yeah, seeing the cartoon feed the kitty. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe there will be a Mark Anthony movie.

Who knows? All right. I just love the idea that this housewife is like walking around the kitchen with like these high heels and like like classic stockings. Mark Anthony. Exactly. She always thinks he's trying to eat that cat. So I get so sad when he thinks the cats in the oven. No, yeah, it's amazing.

If you haven't seen Feed the Kitty, you know, it'll be on YouTube, but such a good cartoon. I mean, it's probably on HBO Max. I think that's a Warner Brothers cartoon. So guys, I didn't like this movie. I thought it was not very good. I did not despise it the same way Dan did,

although there was a moment at the end of the movie where I was like, suddenly I kind of left my own body for a moment and was watching myself, watching Spike farting at the wedding and was like why am I watching this? But what am I watching? But guys there's two things there's two things that made me not hate it as much. One. Yeah you also looked over at that giant hourglass that each grain of sand represents a moment

of your life and you're like oh it's getting closer to death. Do not do not remind me about that hourglass, because now every time I watch a vlog, that was a movie, I'm gonna be thinking about it. Why did I buy you that hourglass? That was a mistake. I'm normally good at giving gifts to people. I just, I think you were so excited

about the idea of finding an hourglass maker who could accurately tell you when I was going to die. And, and, and personalizes hourglass with the exact time. I was like, the sharper image has some really cool stuff But two things that that were saving graces one is not And neither of them are really the movies You know Things to become a minute one. I did not have to sit and watch this with my children stuck in a theater as it was blasted at me through

theater speakers. I briefly before I watched it considered watching this with my older son, just I was like oh maybe he would enjoy this if we watched together. Glad we didn't. But two, if you're gonna make a not very good movie about a legacy animated cartoon character and it's gonna totally be full of messages that I don't agree with and messy plotting. So much happier for it to happen to Tom and Jerry than to the Looney Tunes characters who I love. Like watching this movie, I was like, ugh, but you know what, I don't like Tom and Jerry.

If this was like a Bugs Bunny movie, I would be livid. I would be so mad. So at least, like, if they make a bad movie and it's about Hecklen Jackal, so be it. Who cares, who jinxed another guy? But if they made a bad it's like, if they make a bad movie and it's about Hecklen Jackal, so be it. Who cares, where Jinx and that other guy, but if they made a bad movie about, like, you know, Daffy Duck, I'd be real mad. So I'm glad that this was a Tom and Jerry movie.

You know, actually, this makes me think that we're gonna have to watch Space Jam 2 for this podcast, yeah, probably. Probably. No, I wanted to, it's just gonna be Dan complaining about the Lola bunny redesign. Ha ha ha ha. I can't masturbate to this money. No, I can. I mean, I can, but it's a realistic masturbation. It's more of a relationship masturbate

rather than a fantasy. Realistic masturbation. Wait, it's more realistic. When you're masturbating to the low LaBunny, the new low LaBunny, you're masturbating to the fact that you'd probably really get along with her, you'd have a lot in common. You'd enjoy being around her and there's a long-term relationship potential. Whereas the old low-low-bunny was just like just a one-night stand fuck that you just, you know, it was so dirty and so wrong and you just loved it so much, you know. That sounds pretty sweet to me. No, what I wanted to say was, what I wanted to say was though,

no, Audrey asked, she's like, oh, if you had to make a Tom and Jerry movie, how would you make it work? And I told her something and then I realized, I had basically, like, I don't know whether I unconsciously stole it from Brendan or just like came up with it on my own and then remembered, but Brendan Hay are a pal up with it on my own and then remembered. But

Brendan Hay are Paul who has been on this show and you know was one of your groomsman Elliott. Yeah close friend of mine we're currently we were pitching a project just the other week together to Warner Brothers so I'm in should not have bad mouthed the time and journey movie I guess. But he wrote that rascal raccoon book which was basically what I sort of thought like, oh, you know, what would be fun would be to see the characters realize they're caught in this sort of endless cycle and then turn their eye at the cartoonist who has put them there. And that's sort of similar to the premise of his...

Yeah, it's like a whole city wrote. That's very much what his book, Rascal Rabbit, and Rascal Racco racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy racy wants to get rid of the mouse. That's your movie. Like done. Like that's all you need. And make it 70 minutes at most. Yes. And you deal with the father's, you deal with the father's drinking problem. The fact that he's accidentally blinded his daughter in a car crash. Exactly.

Yes. Yeah. There's a freak or some kind in the cell. There's a freak or something in the basement. Yeah. They had a son who died in the car crash as well. The mother and the father had been coming up, having grown just to never since then.

Yeah, of course. And so, Jerry is short for George, the mouse freak that lives in the cellar. Oh, we do it. We cracked the code. Hey, I'm Janet Farney, host of the JV Club podcast. Oh, high school. Was it a time of adventure, romance, and discovery?

Class of 1995, we did it! Or a time of angst, disappointment, and confusion. We're all tied together by four years of trauma at this place, but enjoy adulthood, I guess. The truth is, it was both. So join me on the JV Club podcast where I invite some great friends like Kristen Bell, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Neil Patrick Harrison, Kegun Michael Key, to talk about high school,

the good, the bad, and everything in between. My teenage mood swings are getting harder to manage. The JV Club, find it on maximum fun. Mucho man to the top rope. You're flying up, Obo. The cover. We've got a new champion! We're here with Macho Man Rande Savage

after his big win to become the new World Champion. What are you going to do now, Macho? I'm going to go listen to the newest episode of the Tights and Fights podcast, oh yeah. Tell us more about this podcast. It's the podcast to power, too sweet to be sour, funky like a monkey, whoop discussions man, and jokes about wrestler's fashion choices, myself excluded. I can't wait to listen. Neither can I. You can find it Saturdays on Maximum Fun. Oh yeah, dig it. Now it is time to do a few messages from our sponsors.

The Flop has a sponsor in part by ExpressVPN. Did you know that many internet service providers log your internet activity and sell that data onto other big tech companies or advertisers? To prevent ISPs from seeing your internet activity, protect your devices with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a simple app for your computer or smartphone that encrypts all your network data and tunnels it through a secure VPN server so that your ISP cannot see any of your activity. With ExpressVPN you can easily hide your online activity from your ISP, you just download the app, tap one button on your device, and you're protected.

And ExpressVPN does all of this without slowing your connection. That's why it is rated the number one VPN service by CNET and wired. So stop handing over your personal data to ISPs and other tech giants who mine your activity and sell off your information, protect yourself with the VPN I trust to keep me private online. online visit express VPN dot com slash flop that's exp r e s s VPN dot com slash flop to get three extra months free Go to express VPN dot com slash flop right now to learn more I stopped doing that voice in the middle because it sounded like I was doing something creepy online rather than just being you know a fan of privacy. Yep. So sometimes a character choice can come you can bite you in the ass as well. I'm saying the flop house is also sponsored in part by Squarespace. You can use Squarespace to create a beautiful website to showcase your new idea, blog,

or publish content, sell products, and services of all kinds, and more. And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers with everything optimized for mobile right out of the box, a new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions, free and secure hosting. Why don't you go over 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.

Now Dan, I had an idea for a website and I was wondering if Squarespace might actually do websites. I was wondering if Squarespace might be able to help me with either or both of them. I love your ambition. Let's hear about it. Okay, so the first, Dan, let's just face it. If you're a cat who's got musical dreams, it's hard to land a gig. You can't talk. You can write a little bit and you do, let's just face it. You're naked. And people are loath to higher naked performers unless that is the point of the performance, the nudity. You do not see a lot of professional musicians

who perform naked just around the time. Just try, go see a Yoyo Ma Show. He will be wearing pants, no matter how much you want it. He's not gonna take those pants off. So I was starting to start a website called www.feeligngag.com. It's your place, whether you're a cat musician, looking for a job to find job postings, So I was starting to start a wednesday called www.feeligngag.com. It's your place, whether you're a cat musician looking for a job to find job postings, or let's

say you're looking for a cat to perform at your venue event, holiday party, family get together, or just in the privacy of your own home. Let's say you're having a rough day and you want to see a cat playing a French horn, this is your place to go. www.feelignegig.com. And I was hoping that it would scale to like phones and tablets automatically. Do you think Squarespace will be able to handle that? I think Squarespace would be delighted to handle that for you, Elliot.

I'm not sure that I'm ready to invest just yet. Well, then maybe this is more up your alley. Pun very much intended. This is called www.cartoonpoopmd.com. Okay. Here's the problem. Your poop has not fully digested and it is still partly cartoon. Who are you going to turn to?

Where are the doctors who can help you with this problem? Where are other sufferers that you can share notes with, maybe share pictures and videos with, and compare your stories? Well, that's at www.cartoonpoopmd.com. Please note, we are not doctors atcartoonpoopmd.com. Please note, we are not doctors at cartoonpoopmd.com. The MD stands for something totally different that I'm not at liberty to say right now because we're still working on it.

But cartoonpoopmd.com is your place to find out what you should do if cartoon poop comes out of you. It should be live action poop. Now cartonpoopmd.com is not a substitute for actual medical advice. It is just a place to go to share your experiences or maybe get referrals or recommendations of doctors that you can then go to to deal with your cartoon fecal problems. Dan, is this something you would like to invest in? I'll invest some thought in it for now. You know, I was skeptical until I was skeptical until I heard Elliott luck upon a rhyme there.

What to do when Cartoon Poop comes out of you. Yeah, that's that suddenly are slow and all of a sudden. Well, those are our two fine sponsors, but we also have a couple of jumbo tronds up on the big jumbo tron board. It looks like Stuart has one. Okay, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch up on the big jumbo tron board. It looks like Stuart has one cute up. Okay. Jujujujumbo tron. Get out. Happy, happy, egregious 50th. You sorry, vanilla, rimmer. Thanks for being, thanks for being the best of mates. And for putting me on to this batshit crazy podcast. There aren't many people who'd put up with my bullshit after all these years.

My life wouldn't be as fun without you or the mighty floppers. To many more beers and many more years of taking the piss out of your sorry ass, go manly. This is a message for Dave, and the message is from Dallas. I'm assuming that's all taken in a positive way, yeah. I hope so. I just want to mention as one of the advisors and founders of cartoon poop MD.com,

the bitch should not be coming out of your ass. I mean, if it's in there, somebody should take it out though. How did our time in Jerry episode? Yeah, you wrote some good points. How did our time in Jerry episode become good points? How did our time in Jerry have so become so disgusting? I don't know. It was the most scatological and urological.

They put the cat in scatological. I have another jumbo tron, hey guys. So this is for Dan Pollard. What if they put the scatological? Well, that would be like, d-d-d-d-d-d-d, but it's all fart sounds. OK, so that would be like, D-D-D-D-D-D, but it's all fart sounds. Okay, so that would be, Skaw, I'm scared, Lodge-Cole.

Gives a new meaning to the word mustard plug, which is a Skavent. Okay, so this gem of tron is four, Dan Pollard. It is from Lily, and it goes like this. Happy birthday, Yagouf, you're 25. Time to finish developing your brain. Everything is difficult, and the world is on fire, but at least you have podcasts and a dope girlfriend.

You're a beautiful, brilliant badass, and you can do this as well as anything else you put your mind to here's to many more years together that are hopefully not quarantined Yeah, we all know hope that from Lily to Dan Pollard couple of nice messages that we probably ruined Probably what with our with with our poop and pee talk in between them. Hey guys, I had something I wanted to promote. Can I talk about that? Sure, please. Sure, I'll talk about two things actually. Hey, if you're listening to this episode

and you must be, then you know that right now, or you don't know what I'm about to tell you, right now, maniac of New York number two is on shelves and in comic stores. That's right, the second issue of my new series from Aftershock Comics with Andre Mutian Art, Maniac of New York. It's like the wire meets Jason, kind of. The second printing of Maniac of New York number one should also be in stores.

The first issue sold out, so went back for another printing. So pick up number one and number two, if you already have number one, just pick up number two. And again, I feel sorry for all the number one and number two talk earlier in the episode when we were talking about that. You don't say that sort of thing. That's the number one. Well, I'm more sorry that I'll get in trouble about it.

Also, unrelated to maniac of New York, the comic book sensation that's sweeping the nation, number two on shelves now, is the TV show that I worked on last year. It's a Fox animated show called Housebroken, the air date for the first premier episodes announced, and that is May 31st. So stay tuned for Housebroken on Fox. I worked on it.

I'll tell you more about it as we get closer to it. Steve, you want to plug anything? Yeah, I'll always plug the bars that I own. If you're in Brooklyn, New York, you can go help out Minis Bar in sunset park and Hinter Landsbar and Kensington, Brooklyn. And if you are not anywhere near there and you want to support, you can always email me at hinterlands bar merch, M-E-R-C-H at gmail.com.

And we're selling t-shirts, hoodies, bandanas, whatever email that email address, and I will respond to you. Nice. Okay. Offering, offering international shipping. What? What? Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Wow. Oh. So, now it's time to answer a few letters from listeners. You're out there in the world listening to us. We can talk to you, but normally you can't talk to us, except right now, but only in a very limited way. It's letters. Elliott, you had this look in his face like you're just sort of fact checking everything I said.

No, it works out. It works out. Yeah. Okay, well this first letter, hey there, dad and friends, it's me Gabe. I've come back from the future to warn you about your impending doom If you thought 2020 and 2021 were bad, just wait till you see what happens to all the octopus and the super herpes outbreak 2025 Seriously though, my name is Gabe and I do have an older brother named Sammy I also have two younger sisters Annie and Alice so I'm just waiting for Elliot to announce the inevitable. There's we we have we have made a strong decision in our family house that

there will be no more children entering our family so if there are it is accidental and I apologize to any future children who are hearing this you were in accident. We still love you. Unplanned. Very unplanned. I mean I don't want to jump ahead in the letter, but I'm assuming he's going to mention his two weird uncles, Stuart and Dan. No. Nothing in here, but I assume that that's true.

The current pandemic has meant that my wife and I have spent a lot of time at home watching a bunch of TV and movies. I've recently been trying to watch modern family for the first time, and haven't really been enjoying it. Last week I finally realized why it's a show built on misunderstanding humor and I hate it.

95% of that show revolves around simple issues that would be resolved instantly if people just used their mouths and talked to one another explaining the situation. This is my least favorite trope in TV and film and frustrates me at how dumb it is. My question is, what tropes in TV and film are your least favorite and why is it misunderstanding based humor? Love you dad, Gabe, last name withheld could be Kaylyn. I agree. I mean, once Gabe, I'm very proud of the of the man you grew up to be in the future and now in the past. And your disappreciation of misunderstanding based humor.

I approve of that. Thank you. I hope you still have your interest in spooky things, which seems to be mainly what you're interested in now, holiday decorations, particularly Halloween ones. Yeah. I mean, I agree with this on Mr. and understanding. I mean, the first thing that came to mind was slightly related, but slightly, well, I'm very related, but slightly different is when people are trying

to explain themselves, the trope where they're like, if you'll just give me a moment, hold on, just, but just let me, instead of just saying, like the one sentence that would clear everything up, like it was my sister, or that person's actually dead. I'm running from the cops or whatever the, like she was choking and I was giving her mouth to mouth that kind of stuff instead of being like,

but if you would just give them, oh, as a doorclubs, yeah. I must fluster for 30 seconds before I say anything. But what are you guys'? I also, I'm not a fan of misunderstanding based humor for the most part, for that reason, although sometimes it can still be funny. I don't know what to tell you. I think, but I think people who have listened to the Flapphouse were aware of my least favorite

tropes in movies, prophecies, badass assassins, movies where there's like a cool girl who falls in love with a boring awkward guy who is very much a stand-in for the person who wrote the movie it seems, any of those types of things. But in TV, I would say my least favorite trope might be when... I guess someone has to have a dinner for someone and they're embarrassed because like the dinner it goes like your boss is coming over for dinner and things aren't going the way they want and it's like, I don't like this is not something

that's happened I think in 30 years that anyone has been expected to have a new boss over for dinner. Like maybe if you're, maybe I'm wrong. Guys, tell me if I'm wrong. Maybe it's just because I work for famous people and they have no interest in hanging out with me or spending time at my house. But I've never been in a situation where I've had to like impress an employer outside of the office.

You know? No, I don't think that's a thing that happens. Well, I don't know. I mean, I've definitely had dinners with I don't know. You're probably right. You're probably right. The Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say Because I'm not feeling overly creative right now. I think I'm going to complain about the the drama version of that trope the misunderstanding trope and that's the Every character has to have some elaborate lie that they're keeping from someone else. Otherwise, no, but there's nothing going on in the show. And so the show is just turns out to be a spider web of people's lies connecting each other.

Because I just don't have the energy to keep up with it. And it is the sort of thing where you're like, no, just you don't have to lie. You don't have to lie that you had coffee with this person or if this person's like Yeah, and let's go out for coffee. Just don't tell my husband that you have a different relationship with be like No, I'm gonna tell him because he's my boss or whatever. You know that's sort of it It's often it's often weirder to keep the secret than it is to just tell someone it is and I get that sometimes There's something hot about it, but no, cut it out, not every time. That reminded me of a trope that I actually genuinely do like, but it was funny I saw it

in a movie I watched recently. I watched Masquerade. My friend's Tom and Aaron were running some 90s and late 80s thrillers, nostalgia thrillers night, and this one is, you know, Roblo and Magtilly and Kim Ketrells, and it's not, it's got a lot of people in it, it's not very good at all, but it has this trope where like two characters meet in the movie and you realize that they've been working together the whole time, which is always fun. Like this movie's plot makes no sense, it's actually pretty bad, but fun to watch.

But like, that happens twice in the movie. I just like the film had the audacity to have it happen two times. Like, we have one character suddenly be like, oh, they know each other and they've been working together. Again. It's great. I think it's something that has been getting me

in more modern TV shows. Because I realize the TV trope I gave is very old-fashioned. more modern TV shows because I realized the TV trope I gave is very old-fashioned. More modern TV tropes is when a show starts and the show doesn't really get to what the show is about until the very end of the first episode. Well, that's such a thing. I mean, that's like all TV and like comic book writing too, like they always have to end with the big reveal and has to be a big fucking cliffhanger.

I don't know. I mean, cliffhanger is the point, but like, it's like, for instance, that show. Cliphanger is fine. I mean, Michael Rivers is the point. It's a great minute. It's a solid, you know, if not exceptional actioner from the 90s, you know?

But if there's, it's like that show, that Fred Armason, my Rudolph show, where they were a couple that ends up in Heaven or whatever, and that the first episode ends with Fred Armas and dying, and then I was like, I was like, forget it. I'm not watching the next day. Like, if you get to tell me the premise of the show

in the first episode, you don't need me to stick around to the second episode. I got so mad. That reminds me of when I don't like where they start and they start a show with something exciting happening and then it's like one day earlier. And it's just like, I did it. Like you didn't have confidence

that we wanted to stick around if you didn't, like give us a slice of cake up front, but I've seen it so many times now, come on, let's, I don't need that. Yeah, what's this chapter in a George R. Martin novel? But you love it, but then you love it when the character is in the middle of something out of crazy thing and then trucks the camera and is it, but then you love it when the characters in the middle of some kind of crazy thing and then trucks the camera and was like, Hey, you're

probably wondering how this happens. It's so weird how I like, I loved that in Thor Ragnarok and never anywhere else. And like the, the, it is presented not that differently than it is in other places, but with enough of a spin that you know that the movie knows that this is silly. Yeah, and we were talking about Marvel movies which and the previous Thor movies which had not been silly.

Yeah. Okay, so the second and final letter is from Julie last name withheld who writes, about 25 years ago I was backpacking through Europe. I wanted to experience a traditional English pub and went into one by myself, single American woman with backpack and all. The bartender asked me what I wanted and what I wanted

and I had no idea. The only alcohol I'd ever had before this was Manacebets. I asked for the first beer I could think of, Bud Light. I was literally laughed out of there. How many of you have ever experienced a movie cliche in real life, love always Julie? I said there was a couple years ago,

I had to leave my family to go on a work trip and I was in a cab on the way to the airport and my family, we were visiting New Jersey, New Jersey, New York, where my rest of my relatives live. And I had to leave to go to Atlanta to work on a TV show. So I was leaving my family behind with my relatives. And on the way to the airport, the taxi cab radio was playing cats in the cradle and I was like, come on, come on reality. Don't play the soundtrack from the movie at me right now. Yeah.

Yeah, the inverse, whenever I'm bartending, if somebody's like, give me a beer, I'm like, I definitely need to see ID. That also makes me think of the time back in right after college, I was dating a woman who was working at a summer camp and I would have to at night I'd have to like sneak onto the camp so that we could you know hang out and uh there was very much any moment I'm like Jason's gonna fucking murder me. I'm like the

first guy to get killed in this movie. He never murdered me though I'm alive. No good thank goodness that's I'm alive. No good thank goodness. That's I'm so relieved. I had a hard time. The best thing I can move up with is the mic with Audrey like we dated briefly then we were just friends for a long time and then we sort of realized we wanted to be together and I feel like that is a very like, you know, TV trope, romantic comedy thing. I mean, it is because it does happen. Like people like our friends first

and then move into relationships, but I do think it happens way more in fiction than it often does in real life. Because you know, in fiction, in real life, I feel like oftentimes, I don't know, like people grow comfortable with a certain type of relationship with another person, and fear the alteration of that too much for it to change.

Yeah, like, it's like how Ellie, it's always complaining about when you're younger, you'd always get stuck in the friend zone or something. Yeah, the way Ellie, it was just like, you know, posting all those message boards about that. Yeah, yeah, I've a manifesto about it Anyone who wants to read it and please contact me. I have some I have some big plans that's gonna bring a lot of attention to it. Oh boy That's too dark. Something about living in a society. If you guys see this in this Joker movie, it gets to play any young man who are listening to this, this is bad poisonous thing.

Yeah, never take what I have to say for, yeah. Don't listen to me. Well, that's good. I'm an idiot. Well, it's one of the reasons that, one of my, the cliches that I mentioned in the, for the last question that I hate is the one where like,

like some kind of cool badass assassin girl or whatever, like, yeah. There's a, there's a loser got, basically wanted, like there's some loser normal guy who is picked out as being super special and now he is being gonna be like protected by a sort of badass assassin mom girlfriend who recognizes the special part of him and now he like

or the lonely guy who keeps harassing his friend basically until she falls in love with him. Like that's all toxic stuff. It's all bad stuff. It's bad news. So, let's hear Leo's character from Brooklyn 9.9 in the first season, basically. Well, I would say, or I would say like the movie,

say anything to a certain extent, that like, or things like that. Like, if you're in a relationship, if you're with someone and they don't want to be around you, hanging outside their window with a boom box, playing the song, they lost their virginity to you too, is not, that's harassment. Like, that's not cute, you know, yeah, yeah, unless John Q's act as it because look at those puppy dog eyes. Yeah, so that that was our little the more you know, feel so bad for the puppy dog that had to give up a tie down that it was a donor.

The thing is on its license, weirdly he got Jerry Orbach's eyes that oh, we're Interesting that they said and Jerry Orbach got the eyes of Laura Mars. Yeah On DVD now Yeah Well man get eyes from Laura Mars women get eyes for Laura Venus from Venus. Yeah, of course It's all right there So okay, well, let's go to Recommendations of movies. I would definitely say you should watch instead of Tom and Jerry You know do it do what you like

So dance recommendation Joker. Yeah, Dan says just put up fucking frozen pizza in the oven and watch it cook That's more exciting time to share the movie No, I wanted to, so our, our network, maximum fun. One of the shows on there is Reading Glasses, which is co-hosted by Brie Grant, who I have never had the pleasure of chatting with or meeting, but she is an actor, director, writer. And there are a couple of new movies she was happily

involved with out right now. There's one called Lucky that she wrote and starred in, but not direct. That is on shutter and it is very hard to explain. It is a very metaphorical horror movie to put you in the mind of sort of a woman who is basically just being gasslet by society at large. And it is harrowing and but also kind of very darkly funny and upsetting. And I liked it so much that that same night I watched another movie, I liked it so much that that same night I watched another movie, one that she directed and wrote, did not star in Angela Betts from Mays in it. It's on Hulu.

It's called 12-Hour Shift, which was also very good in a totally different way. It's more of a kind of noir, like splatter noir dumb people get way in over their heads kind of like early Cohen brothers, but a little like a great goofier than that maybe. Both very fun, you know, about someone in the hospital who's running a organ selling ring. That sounds awesome. A lot of fun.

So I recommend both of those. Lucky and 12-hour shift. I'm going to recommend a movie that I think one of you guys recommended previously, but I think it's topical, partly because I think it's just a great movie to watch with your family, and that's a movie from 1971. It's Ken Russell's The Devils. Wow. Yeah. I'm bringing it up because it just recently hit shutter and I think I

watched it as a teenager, but I really didn't give a shit about it at the time. But now I rewatch it. And it's really great. I think it's the R rated cut. It's not the X rated cut that is not available in the United States through normal, normal means. I think that I saw, I think I saw the uncut version at the Alamo as a special, special, strong, but I think that sort of thing is what you have to do. Yeah. Well, the R rate of version is very good. It's on shutter. I highly recommend it. It's, you know, the, it's the story of 17th century city and a priest who through political nations gets accused of witchcraft and it's really great

and it's pretty intense and I don't know, maybe it's like, maybe it was just the pandemic horniness, but man, all of a read can get it, man. Like I was watching that and I'm like, maybe I should grow my mustache again. And you know, I mean, he'm like, maybe I should grow my mustache again. And you know, he is like a big bull of a man. Yeah.

And then, and like, I'm paraphrasing here. But there's this scene when he's accused of witchcraft and he's like, I could never be the play thing of the devil. I lack the humility for it. And I'm sitting there, you know, eating mango slices with my fingers and I'm like, same.

Yeah. So you have the devil's unshuttered. Check it out. I think Stuart, you owe it to yourselves to see the movie Women in Love just for the Oliver Read Alan Bates nude wrestling scene. Whoa, okay. Just get ready for it. I am going to recommend a movie also.

This is the movie I watched right before watching Tom and Jerry. And a more different movie, it was hard for me to imagine. Although it is also set in New York City. So they're both New York City films. This is a movie called Born in Flames. It's from 1983. It's an underground movie written and directed by Lizzy Borden, not the Lizzy Borden who killed her parents in the 19th century.

This is a different person. And it is about, it takes place in kind of the near future, but also very much late 70s, early 80s, New York City. There is a proudly socialist democratic government in charge that keeps talking about how there was a revolution and everything's better now. But in actuality, it is just another form of the same kind of soft liberalism that

doesn't really affect the real problems of inequality in society, and this group of women become essentially an underground guerrilla group to force a change in the government. And the whole thing is told in a very kind of collage style. You'll have a scene between characters that kind of dissolves into a fake news story, which might dissolve into a scene with other characters who are surveilling the characters from the original scene. It's told in a very like... Almost... kind of like if a movie was done in the same manner as like the backups in Watchmen in a sort of way.

It's a lot of like... feels like you're looking... you're kind of sifting through the found elements of this kind of slightly different from our own world. And there were a lot of things about it that felt very relevant to topical to now. It really reminded me a lot that a lot of things that are bubbling to the surface of politics now have always been there.

And only in the 80s, in the early 80s, they were more, they had not yet bubbled to that surface. And at the end, it even kind of seems to predict that this kind of action will lead to a conservative backlash of a sort. Anyway, it's, I thought it was a really good movie. It's a real punk feeling movie. And there's early, very young appearances in it

by Eric Gosey and end director, Katherine Bigelow, amazing in an acting role. But I thought it was really good. It's on Criterion channel right now. It's on Canopy right now. It's called Born in Flames. Now, LA, you mentioned that it's a world slightly different than our own.

It's one of the differences that Jim Carey went on to make the Fire Martial Bill series of movies instead of Ace Ventura. That's one of those details. No, no, that is just off camera. You see someone passing by a poster for Fire Marshal Bill 3, Fire Fire Fire. They were really running out of things to call it. Actually, it reminds me of a... I mean, saying fire three times. That's perfect for the third movie. For the third one. Yeah, well, the first one was called Fire Marshal Bill

in Fire. Sengling Fire Marshal Bill in fire fire. And the fourth one is called Fire and martial bill in forer. They tried to combine the words fire and forer, it doesn't quite work. Now, that reminds me of the book, The Secret Policeman's, the Yiddish Policeman's union by Michael Shabon, where it is an

alternate reality where there is a Jewish colony in Alaska after World War II. And for some reason, that also means it's a world where Orson Wells made his film version of Heart of Darkness. And that's just going to have thrown out as a detail in the moot book. And I've always wanted to ask Michael Chebon, how are those, how could, why is that the other difference about that universe, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, no, it is, it is interesting. I read that too. And I'm like, so is this just one of those like fun indicators that this is a different like world-ren or somehow they're a direct correlation between the Jewish state and Alaska and the making of this film? Well, never know until the I guess the TV series comes out where they have to flesh all that or maybe the prequel, the the Giddish policemen's ununionized organization where they haven't yet become a union.

Oh, the prequel, yeah, that's the prequel. Yeah, the prequel. The people are always really good. Yiddish policemen's ununionized organization, where they haven't yet become a union. Oh, the prequel, yeah, that's the other prequel. They're still- The prequel's are always really good. Prequel's are always great. Hey guys, thanks for being here. Thank you listeners for listening. Thank you to Jordan Cowling for editing this,

making that sound really nice for you. I don't know what that voice was. Please do not take it as some sort of stereotype. I have no idea where it came from. But it's been a pleasure talking to you, even though Tom and Jerry was real downer for me. We had to, like, we were like, can we put some, like, you know, we were going to record this pretty soon

after I finished watching and we're both like, let's watch something else to take the taste of Tom and Jerry out of our mouths. I think you might need a little bit more cushion time between the movie and the recording in the future. Yeah, came in with that angry energy. But well, you shouldn't have picked Manchester by the sea as you're picking me up. Yeah. Okay, well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. to check out other great podcasts, review us on iTunes, tweet about us, but until next time, I have been Dan McCoy. As always, now and forever, until the end of time, I'm Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kaelin, technically an animated character. See ya. Bye! Oh wow, now he's jamming. Oh man, we got some drums. Give him some energy. Give him some drums. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just slapping his own arms. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience supported.