The Flop House - Ep.#438 - Trap, with Linda Holmes
Episode Date: November 23, 2024"But Trap wasn't a flop!" you scream to the heavens. "Neither financially, nor critically!" you wail, desperately. "It made 83 million on a 30 million budget! And it got a mixed, but not-awful 52 on M...etacritic!" But the uncaring Gods of Flop offer no comfort. Because whatever your personal feelings, Trap has inspired STRONG OPINIONS, and besides, when you have a great guest like Linda Holmes, you surrender to the whims of the floppiverse.We’re in season 2 of FlopTV! Pop in for individual episodes, or get a price break with a season pass! Peruse the full line-up and/or get tickets here! And hey, while you’re clicking on stuff, why not subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets?!”Wikipedia page for TrapRecommended in this episode:Dan: Daisies (1966), All God's Children (2024)Stu: Azrael (2024)Elliott: Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), Lifeforce (1985)Linda: Hot Frosty (2024)For a limited time, visit AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura’s best-selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code FLOP at checkout.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hi, Floppers. Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you we are in the
middle of FlopTV Season 2. That's right, the one-hour internet televised Flophouse TV show
is here for you the first Saturday of every month through February. Just go to theflophouse.simpleTix.com
and get your tickets or season pass for this all-new Flophouse TV stuff. For covering movies
we've never covered before, we've got video segments.
It's amazing.
Just go to theflophouse.simple-ticks.com for Flop TV Season 2.
This time, it's personal.
On this episode, we discuss Trap.
Okay, guys, I'm not supposed to say anything.
But you know that guy, the Ripper?
Well, this entire podcast is an elaborate trap because we heard he's going to be on
this podcast.
This whole thing is a trap for the Ripper.
Is he called the Ripper?
It's a different guy.
It's a different guy.
It's much more guys, don't you think? Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse.
I'm Dan McCoy.
I'm Stuart Wellington.
I'm Elliott Kalin. And with us we have, introduce yourself. Identify
yourself. Yes, I host like Dan McCoy. I absolutely shall. I am Linda Holmes and I am
proud to say that I asked the Flophouse to cover this movie while still sitting
in my seat at the theater. I composed an email, to cover this movie while still sitting in my seat at the theater.
I composed an email, please cover this movie,
and here I am.
I'm sorry you had to wait so long
between your initial screening
and this magic moment of culmination.
It's only gotten better with time.
I'm glad you bring that up though,
because so we always say,
this is a podcast where you watch a bad movie
and then we talk about it.
Now, usually sort of our-
Wait, Dan, I hate to interrupt.
That was the smoothest, most professional segue
you have ever done on the show,
and I just want to recognize how beautifully-
So you wanted to trip it up.
Yes, I did.
You were a smear gunk all over it.
I didn't like that you're getting too good, Dan.
Threatens me.
But the thing is about this movie is that
it was neither a commercial flop,
nor was it particularly a critical one.
People were sort of all over the place, but it does inspire strong reactions.
So we thought that it would be fun to talk about,
even though maybe like, you know, the pedants out there would be like,
well, is this, does this fall under your purview?
Is this in your mission statement?
And we're like, I don't give a shit.
You guys kind of do the Shyamalan thing.
We do.
With movies that aren't necessarily entirely bad.
That's one of my favorite 60s kind of go-go hippie movies,
the Shyamalan thing.
Yes, yeah.
But yeah, Dan is always very nervous
that someone somewhere is getting mad
about the movies we're choosing.
There's something called...
I want to tell that listener, you can go fuck yourself.
No, you can tell. It's my fault.
I mean, I was very eager.
As I said, I was... the lights came up in the theater.
I said to my friend I was with, I said, I can't leave yet.
I have to do one thing. I have to write this email.
And your friend's like, it's OK.
I'm still getting over the experience.
Yes.
And I just want to say, when Linda talks, we listen.
If you had watched, if you watched Cis and Cain
and you're like, I got to talk to the Flophouse boys
about this, we'll do it.
We'll cover that on the show.
What a stinker.
That's good to know.
What a stinker.
I mean, it was a box office flop,
so we could technically cover it.
It's true.
This is good to note for the future.
Yeah, well, this is, yeah, as you mentioned, we've covered a lot of Shyamalan films, even
ones that are sort of part of his new, like, I don't know, half the internet loves it,
half the internet hates it, rather than we have decided to hate him post, you know, his
early successes period that we're in there for a while.
Who's doing the...
Elliot's going to be doing the summary I offered,
but Elliot's like, I need this.
I need this in my life right now.
I need a win.
Yeah, I said this to her,
I don't have enough work to do right now,
busy enough as it is.
So to put a peak behind the curtain...
I apologize for not jumping on that one.
No, no, it's fine.
In retrospect.
No, this was a fine one to do
because it is not the most complicated plot.
It was actually one of the easier ones to take notes
while doing the dishes at midnight
after I finished my night work,
which comes after putting my kids to bed after my day work.
Night work for Elliot is where he takes people to a home
that I guess he's rented and he murders them.
I murder them and then I cut them up into little pieces
and scatter them artfully.
It's mainly implied, not seen.
And I say, this is my design.
If you miss anything, I really considered,
I didn't do it, but I really considered
bringing like a little bell so that when you get
to one of the many things that make no fucking sense
in this movie, I would just go, ding, got a question.
I wish I'd done that.
Linda saw this in the theater,
Elliot saw this washing dishes.
Dan, did you see this one in the theater?
I saw this in the theater. Elliot saw this washing dishes. Did you see this one in the theater? I saw this in the theater as well. I saw it with Audrey and a couple of our friends and
we all sort of...
Oh yeah, name them.
John and Mary.
Hi John and Mary.
Story checks out. Story checks out.
And I watched it in a king-size bed on a laptop at a resort that my wife and I were staying at
for our recent wedding anniversary.
13 year wedding anniversary.
Congratulations.
Was it a water bed?
Was it heart-shaped?
Uh, it got pretty wet.
Okay.
Oh.
All right.
Let's move on.
You logged into it, dude.
Yeah, you called for it, Dan.
Dan, you can't say Beetlejuice two and a half times
and then get mad when you ask for orange juice
and Beetlejuice shows up.
Come on.
That's true, like the old saying says.
That's the old saying, yeah.
So let's talk about Trap Show.
It definitely falls in the line of M. Night Shyamalan's
recent movies, which are, I can't tell if I don't,
if I think they would be better as episodes of a TV show,
like an M. Night Shyamalan anthology TV series,
or if I like that he's making these kind of like quick,
almost disposable kind of thrillers
that hearken back to what thriller movies used to be,
where it was like, watch this for 85, 95 minutes,
have an okay silly time and then go do something else.
I can't tell whether I like it or not.
How do you guys feel about it?
About that format that he's been kind of doing.
I hadn't thought about it, but now that you say it,
I do think that part of my enjoyment,
like I cackled my way through this.
I had my problems with some of the details,
but I had fun and I think it probably is partly
because you don't get movies like this that much anymore
at this sort of particular level or pitch.
At the sort of budget and theater level, yeah.
Yeah, I like- I think that's kind of what made me angry
about it a little bit, but-
If I paid for a ticket to see this movie,
I'd be like, where's my movie?
But I mean, and I don't want to spoil my final judgment,
so I won't say too much, but I think that like the,
I think that, I think he is definitely one of the few people
who has the talent, the juice, and the pull
to get like thrillers for grownups made right now.
And I kind of want him to make them good.
And that's where I ran into trouble with this one.
That's the thing, Elliot, if I had paid for a ticket
for this, I would also have been mad.
I would have walked up to the usher and I would have said, sir, I paid for an's the thing, Elliot, if I had paid for a ticket for this, I would also have been mad.
I would have walked up to the usher and I would have said, sir, I paid for an entire
seat to this movie, but I only use the edge.
Can I return some of this ticket?
I saw that.
Can I get the unused portion refunded to me?
You wouldn't have gone up to the usher and said, excuse me, usher, can you tell me where
you keep all the money and where the key to the safe is?
Because he would tell you.
And as we've established on the podcast, the Usher would have said, yeah, yeah.
I can't believe Elliot knows an Usher song.
Just the one.
It doesn't make sense to me.
Let's talk about, let's talk about half the,
that me, a guy who now fuels his night work
by just listening to Oingo Boingo's discography
from the first album to as far down as I get in it.
Yeah, sure.
And listening to dad rock night moves
while you're doing your night work.
Yep, not exactly, but sure. So, okay.
Trap. What happens in this movie? Well, we're introduced to two main characters
who are going to be the main stars until a third character abruptly becomes the hero of the movie.
Like, two thirds the way in.
Riley, she's a teenage girl. She loves this singer, Lady Raven,
who's kind of like Taylor Swift
with like a little touch of some, I don't know,
some kind of Lady Gaga costume or something.
Yeah, she's got a little more like juice than Taylor Swift.
I guess so. What do you mean juice?
Like I think she's less popular than Taylor Swift.
But I mean she, yeah, arguably,
although I don't see the butcher going to Taylor Swift.
I mean, she's like, you know, there's a little more R&B to it, a little less country.
Oh, I don't mean, that's true. I don't necessarily mean the music style.
I mean more in the showcase, the way the concert is put together.
She's a pop star.
So Riley loves this pop star Lady Raven, who is played by M. Night Shyamalan's daughter, Salika.
And she's being taken by her dad, Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett, to a concert.
They're going to see Lady Raven.
It's gonna be amazing.
This is a daddy daughter bonding experience.
Riley's been depressed because her old friends
are excluding her.
And so now he's trying to make it up for her.
And I will say this,
this movie started winning me over right away
because a few weeks ago, I took my older son, Sammy,
to see Judas Priest over at the YouTube theater in LA.
And the experience we had going to that concert
was so similar to how this starts
in a way that I could really relate to.
Until the part with Josh Hartnett's murderous secret,
you know, until that, but until the trap aspect of it.
Good job keeping your own murderous secret.
Thank you.
Your dark passenger.
There were so many moments of like a parent
trying to connect with their kid
and looking for the seats and trying to, and what's our safety plan, you know, if we get separate,
like that I was like, and being excited that your kid is getting into this music, you know,
it's a, so I really related to that, but I didn't relate to anything else, Edwards, during
the opening act.
Yeah.
I think the thing that's the most fun to me about the very beginning of the movie is that
the thing that makes the first thing that makes no sense happens like 30 seconds into the movie when they park in a surface lot down the street from the arena with no difficulty
whatsoever and go strolling in there. Maybe like classic Philly.
You get the apparently ADR line from the daughter about I'm so glad she added an
afternoon show after she sold out. You know how arena artists add a matinee?
They add a matinee.
They'll do two massive concerts with a lot of people.
Or they're elderly fans.
Exactly.
Anyway.
There's a lot of the question, as we'll find out later, this whole concert is a trap.
Well, there's a lot of questions I have about like, at what stage did this become a trap
and how much of it is this trap?
Because somehow it was organized to trap someone, but also they set it up as a trap. No, he was attending the concert
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no my friend. It was yeah
It was not organized to be a trap it like they knew he was gonna be there
But then there are other details that make it seem as if this whole thing has been set up as a trap the way that
Um, because the idea for it came from that story years ago
about they wanted to catch a bunch of people
with outstanding warrants.
So they mailed letters to their houses being like,
hey, you want a boat or something like that.
And we showed up and got arrested.
And that was my problem with the trailer.
Cause when I saw the trailer for this, I'm like,
okay, wait, the police have set up a concert
just for the purposes of being a trap
where they're like, let's get this guy in a place
where there's the most people possible
that he could either disappear into
or we could accidentally shoot or whatever.
And like, it is not that, I know it is unclear,
but like I think that the movie
is trying to indicate later on.
I sincerely hope that Eric Adams did not watch this movie,
because I feel like it would give him ideas.
Not good ideas.
Billy Joel, you got to come back to the garden.
There's a turnstile jumper we need to catch.
Got a lot of tax cheats.
And if it was Eric Adams' New York,
then yeah, the police would have shot 70 to 50,
70 to 100 people at least.
Yeah, a trashcan robot would have shot 100 people.
It is sad though that Riley, you know, after going through all those inside out emotions
troubles is going to have to deal with so much now, learning what she does about her.
Swish, swish Dan, perfect.
Nothing but net on that cross reference.
So during the opening act, which this was also a realistic thing
based on my experience is that during the opening act,
the theater is still half full
and nobody's paying attention at all.
Do they have an extra dad notices
there's a lot of police officers in the venue
and they seem to be seemingly leading seemingly random men
out of the main room.
And there's a brief conversation between Cooper and Riley
about whether the word crispy can be used to mean good.
And how do you do that? I'm not up on teenager slang my kids are not
old enough have you heard guys heard crispy or is that a is that a shaman on
shaman on coining Dan's going to his uh marks pulling up urban dictionary shaman
lexicon I don't know whether let's see whether it was put in after trap swept
the nation I'll let you do your detective work anyway Anyway, Cooper, he leaves to use the bathroom,
and while he's in the bathroom stall,
he uses his phone to check a live video feed
of a man imprisoned in a basement.
This should be our first tip-off that not all it seems.
So relatable.
Cooper, this is where my experience at the concert
and his experience begin to diverge.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, okay, so this says that-
Here's Dan McCoy with a crispy update.
This gives a definition that I would have assumed
was the definition for crispy rather than what they say
in the movie, which is essentially just cool.
Here it says, neat, clean, trim, fashionable, with it,
good looking, crispy.
Yeah, that makes more sense to me than-
It's more like crisp. What we get, yeah. Yeah, yeah, like crisp, that does make sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crispy. Yeah, that makes more sense to me than what we get.
Yeah, yeah, like crisp.
That does make sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's true.
One of the things that I think is amazing about this movie
is they put it right in the trailer that he's the murderer,
which I thought was somewhat odd.
Like maybe you could have let that be a thing
that we discover after we get there,
but they put it in the trailer.
So you're just kind of waiting, if you have the trailer, so you're just kind of waiting,
if you have seen the trailer,
you're just kind of waiting for him to reveal
that he's the murderer.
So yeah, that's when he goes in there,
he looks on his phone, you know,
they say women take a long time in the bathroom.
They're just checking out it.
Isn't that a hostage?
This is what leads to long lines at arenas.
Normally I'm with you that trailers give away too much,
but this is the essential premise.
I don't know what you would sell this on if not.
I think you have to sell it as there's a dad and a daughter
at a stadium and something's going wrong.
And he's trying to get out and they don't know what it is
and you would leave it as a twist.
But I don't know if that's enough to people get people
to do the work.
I think this whole thing works for me.
Going in I knew what the premise was
and I was still on board
Like I was not in hollering the whole time not having the trailer
I did not know what the premise was and so I will say when he looked at it. I was like
This is guy murder
Or does he just have weird taste in YouTube videos
Like a red rumor something we watched years and years ago. We watched that movie untraceable
I think it was where the guy was live streaming
his murders of people.
So there was part of me that's like,
wait, is that, so did he do that?
Or is he watching some other thing
that someone else is doing?
But it's answered pretty quickly.
Anyway, while washing his hands in the sink,
he has a vision of an older woman standing there
kind of glaring at him.
That'll happen a couple more times.
Turns out it's his mom.
Cooper runs into another mom,
the mom of one of Riley's old friends.
They have an awkward conversation
about getting these kids back together.
I think that this performance from this lady,
this is like, to me, I'm not, you know,
I have no children, but this plays as-
Not that you know of.
Realistically, you know, like a lady
who maybe you wouldn't want to encounter
or hang out with other than the fact that,
you know, your kids are friends.
You know, she's got like this weird energy
that I'm not sure.
She has very good weird energy.
I don't know if they did anything with this part
of the story, but she definitely is, yeah, weird energy.
I like how this is shot too.
Like it's a lot of like straight on closeups
of both their faces. Looking right at the camera.
Like an Errol Morris movie, yeah.
And I will say, I've been mean to Josh Hartnett in the past.
He is the star of one of the worst movies I've ever seen,
40 Days and 40 Nights.
But I gotta say, he brings it and he's hot.
Like he's a hot dad.
I've liked him a lot more in recent years.
I think he has aged into an interesting actor.
I think if you are like a young, hunk actor,
and you stick it out in the business long enough,
you will acquire the layers that make you
into a more interesting actor.
Like I feel like it's-
The Colin Farrells of this world?
Yeah, in a way, yeah.
And I feel like what people,
he's not exactly the same kind of young hunk,
but like with Arnold Schwarzenegger,
where people are like, you know, 30 years later,
like he's aged into like a pretty good actor. And I would be like, I hope so. He's been doing it for
a long time. But like,
yeah, I liked Josh Hartnett even as a young guy, though, like Josh Hartnett is one of
the is one of the people who I associate with the faculty. Okay, I think is like a super fun, weird, really stylish movie that I super like.
Yeah.
And, you know, was just, people were just reminiscing not long ago with Bibi Neuwirth
on social media somewhere about her being in that movie.
And that's one that I really like.
And I think he's always been like an interesting kind of like weird sleazeball.
And yeah, I like, I think he's good in this.
I think he's good in this. The best thing is there's a certain sleaziness to a lot, underlying a lot of those kind of like weird sleazeball and yeah I like I think he's good in this. I think he's good. I'm glad.
There's a certain sleaziness to a lot underlying a lot of those kind of young hunk guys and
when they get older they can play it up in a way that is that stops being a weird subtext
that you yeah that is creepy and becomes like oh this is a flavor of this character yeah.
I'm glad you brought up the faculty because that is the outlier for me that is the early
heart and it performance I really enjoy.
And he brings a lot of juice to that.
And it's a fun movie.
I remember when John, when we were at the Daily Show,
he would be like down on the faculty.
He'd like bring it up to like piss on it.
And I'd be like, what are you talking about John?
That's a pretty good movie.
Certainly of your filmography.
It's one of the stronger ones. I think that's. Certainly of your filmography, it's one of the stronger ones.
I think that's why he brought it up,
is because it's one of the ones,
so that it's not as bad as some of the other ones.
So he'd like dump on it without people being like,
yeah, that sucked.
Dancing about architect, or playing by heart, whatever.
Yeah, that sucked.
You know, and I think like,
I think Heart Night is one of the people,
and this happens a lot to women,
but it also happens to young guys who are actors,
is that they sort of get trapped
when they're very good looking and they're young.
They get trapped.
They get trapped.
Trapped at a concert by the police, yeah.
They get trapped in a kind of like a pretty
normal person thing.
And if their talent is that they're odd,
which is just kind of what his thing is,
it can take a while for that to sort of open up.
And as they get older, they sort of grow into interesting,
there are just some people who are like character actors
with leading man face.
And that can be something that it takes a while to get over.
Yeah, it's true.
Well, and I like him in this movie.
I feel like he does do a good job of balancing.
He's the dad with a secret
and the killer with a dad inside.
What I will say is like,
I find him very compelling and I enjoy the performance,
but he is absolutely acting like a maniac
from early in this movie.
Like the idea that he-
It is obvious from moment one
that there's something off about him.
But that's the thing.
But Dan, think about the dads you've known.
They all feel like there's something weird about them.
Dads are weird.
Like there's something weird about them.
They don't know how to relate to other human beings.
He's a dad, like he's had a dad at a concert.
Like I feel like most of the dads I know are like,
I got two hours alone, I'm going to pound seven beers.
Because dads, there's a thing about dads are all faking it.
They're all making it up as they go along, they're all faking it.
And as the generations continue, they get worse and worse at faking it
because it's harder to just yell at people and hit them
when they don't listen to you.
And so I buy him as...
But not impossible, Elliott claims.
I guess...
If you ran into him, you'd be like,
you'd be like, Riley's dad's kind of weird,
but you wouldn't be like, this guy is a mur...
This is the butcher.
I thought dads were like weird when, you know, I was a kid.
Now, even though I'm not technically one,
I'm of dad age and I look around at the dads,
I'm like, yeah, this checks out.
Like, and Hartnett still like seems like later on
suggesting like hey let's go underneath the stage.
Later when he is panicking, he's the weirdest dad stuff.
Oh I love it so much.
Anyway, we'll get to it.
He's like hey why don't we go get waffles in that waffle stand and it's like you took me to the
concert my favorite musician why are you telling me to leave now?
Yeah but everyone is like milling around there's like eight intermissions in this thing
and everybody seems to just be like hanging out in the...
That is the weirdest thing.
That is one of the things that kept striking me as I'm like,
Riley's leaving her seat a lot during the concert.
Like, are they taking breaks?
Like, what's, cause I, cause I'll tell you again,
my last concert experience was going to see Judas Priest.
The minute our butts were in the seat,
we didn't get up again for two, three hours.
Not even to stand up and cheer?
That's fucked up, Elliot.
No, that's true. We did stand up and cheer? That's fucked up, Elliot.
No, that's true. We did stand up and cheer. That's true.
They're putting on a show for you, Elliot.
The flash entered the speed zone.
Yeah.
While we were...
You're a liar, too.
So we did stand up and cheer. That's true. And Sammy would be like,
sit down, stop singing along.
Stop dancing really cool. And you're like, I can't help it.
I got the rhythm in me.
Yeah, that's true.
On stage, Lady Raven gives a speech
about the importance of forgiving people.
And meanwhile, there's a SWAT and FBI convoy
that arrives outside the venue
with an older lady FBI profiler,
who I was very excited to learn
when the credits came up, was Hayley Mills.
I was like, she's, what, from parent trap
to M. Night Shyamalan's trap, Hayley Mills can do it all.
Yeah.
No, this is, I mean, I enjoy his casting of her
both for the fact that like, you know,
like she's still great, but also like-
And she's a master trapper.
Obviously, like, dumb joke.
It's a pun, right?
This is what I asked when we covered this on our show.
I was like, the thing I don't know about M. Night Shyamalan
is he the kind of funny who cast her as a pun, right?
Yeah.
And I guess maybe-
This movie is a parent trap.
It is a trap.
Exactly.
I said to my friend I was at this movie with,
I said at the end of it,
I said if she had at the end of the movie,
looked at the camera, winked and said,
now that's a parent trap.
I would have personally campaigned this movie for Best Picture.
That would have been your stand up and cheer moment.
I would have gone to the little MPAA office in DC and I would have walked around with
a little picket sign from now until Oscar nominations, trap for Best Picture.
If she had said that.
Jack Valenti, give me a meeting.
Get friends for Best Picture.
I love Hayley Mills, but there's no way
that anyone's thinking of casting her,
if not for the pun.
You never know, you never know.
So probably not, but I'll hearken back to an experience,
something I witnessed in person.
There was a screening of Frost Nixon once,
where Ron Howard and the writer,
and whoever were talking afterwards,
and John Waters was in the audience.
And John Waters, they go, there's a question and answer section, and John Waters gets up
and he goes, I thought it was so amazing that you cast the little girl from the bad seed
as Pat Nixon.
Like what a great touch.
And Ron Howard was like, oh, oh, oh, was she a child actress?
He had no idea.
He didn't know, he had no idea about it.
And I was like, I love that John Waters picked up on that instantly.
Such a different story situation though.
Similarly, there's the story that Bob Odenkirk tells about being in The Paper with, or no,
The Post, whatever that movie is, with David Cross, where Steven Spielberg did not know
that these two guys had starred in a TV show together for years.
And when he found out, he was worried that it was going to throw the movie off.
I guess one of the other people working on it was like, this is amazing, a Mr. Show reunion.
And Steven Spielberg was like, what?
What are you talking about?
So something to bubble up to the director.
Mr. Show?
Bring me this Mr. Show.
And they bring in Michael Showalter,
you know, because it's a mistake.
This character though is very funny to me
because she doesn't do any particularly good
like serial killer finding during the course of the movie.
She exists only so that once he steals a walkie talkie,
she can provide him with useful information immediately.
Every time he turns it on, it's like when in TV shows
where there's always a news thing related to the story.
Yeah.
The minute you turn it on, they're like,
tonight in relevant news to our plot.
I love it.
Like, this is the closest I think a movie will ever get
to capturing the feeling of playing one of the Hitman games
because there's specifically a Hitman level
where you like get a walkie talkie
and you're just hearing the guys be like,
where is this guy?
He's a ghost.
You're like, yeah, I am a fucking ghost.
Except here it's more like,
my favorite moment of those is when he's about to pull
the fire alarm to have a diversion and she's like,
he will most likely now try for diversion,
perhaps pulling a fire alarm
and then he pulls his hand away from the ghost.
But again, I do think that like,
I think that these are jokes.
I think these are jokes.
Here's the backstory I'm inventing is that the butcher
killed her identical sister
and that's why she wants revenge.
Yeah.
As much as like there are things in here
that I think are just sort of like clumsy in a way
that I think maybe should have been addressed.
I think a lot of this is like devilish,
like hee hee hee hee hee on the screenwriting part.
I think perhaps.
Yeah, so Cooper's getting suspicious.
He sees the police taking away more guys. He goes, Riley, we're'll give you the pun. Yeah. So Cooper's getting suspicious.
He sees the police taking away more guys.
He goes, Riley, we've got to get you that shirt you wanted.
And he uses that opportunity to befriend a merchandise vendor who was very talkative.
Within moments, this guy has revealed to him that the whole concert is being used as a
trap to catch a notorious serial killer called The Butcher.
The only way out past the police is to go backstage and the people who work there have a code word
and Cooper is so clearly the butcher.
Like it's so, I mean, the audience,
I don't think it's supposed to be a, oh, is he really?
But even to this merch vendor,
it should be clear that Cooper is the guy that they want.
There are two things that like boggled my mind in the scene.
Number one, how quickly they become the best of friends
based on Josh Hartnett being like,
why don't we let this other girl
have this t-shirt, honey?
We have, it's fun.
She was waiting longer, and he's like,
you're a great man, I'm gonna tell you everything.
Perhaps the greatest man in history.
And then also, like, just like seconds later,
Hartnett's like, psst, come over here.
It's like to get information, and this busy vendor
in the middle of this busy, like,
There's a crowd of customers there, yeah.
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I will come over
and chat with you about the police plans, Mr. Hartnett.
Yeah, I feel like- Wouldn't be weird at all.
If you knew they were looking for a serial killer
and some guy was like,
so tell me who they're looking for
and what's the code word?
No way you'd be tipped off by that.
To defend the character,
Dan just portrayed him as saying Mr. Hartnett,
which he does not do.
That would be a total goof.
That would be a goof.
We've put that in the IMDB goof section right away.
Unless the guy's just saying it's Cooper Heartnet,
which they don't say that it's not.
I wish that Cooper stole Dragon Ball Z
or Spider-Man hoodie off somebody,
and then the guy's like, oh, I love Dragon Ball Z.
Oh, we're best friends now.
Yeah, that'd be great.
That's just the kid version of Trapp.
So he walks Riley around, he's looking at different parts
of the venue to try to get an exit,
he can't find his way out even after he pushes a woman
down the stairs as a distraction.
Totally unnecessary.
Love it.
Totally unnecessary, nothing to do with anything.
Him scrambling and trying to find a way out is so funny.
It's so good.
It doesn't work so spectacularly that the, like,
I had to talk to my friends afterwards.
I'm like, what was the plan there?
And they're like, oh, they thought that the police
would like leave the door and help the woman.
And he could slip through it.
It's so casual that he's just like wanders by like, whoop.
I don't know like a lady tumbling a sandbag.
I might as well have just done it out of frustration.
Just like, ugh.
Uh-huh.
But so the movie is, the one problem I have with this movie
is that it does lean into the stereotype
that serial killers are masterminds,
who are master planners and great at scoping out situations
when in reality serial killers are losers.
They're losers, they can't exist in normal society
and they act out their obsessions and things
in ways that they are ashamed of.
There's no serial killer who's really like a super,
who's Hannibal Lecter.
But-
And if there's a serial killer listening to this,
don't use this as a fuel to go hunt down Ellie.
No, no, just use it as fuel to look at yourself
and be like, is this who I really want to be?
But he's not so good that he doesn't keep kind of
doing things for no reason or getting stuck,
which I do kind of like.
He's the Ethan Hunt of serial killers,
where he's like, he'll get out,
but he's gonna like hit his head a bunch of times
while doing it.
Yeah, if they're good at something, it is masking.
It is pretending to be normal
and using their like nondescript quality
to evade capture simply because like, you know,
like most detectives aren't equipped to.
Yeah, so for Handsome Josh Hartnett just blends in.
Yeah.
That's just part of being a dad though,
is the mask of normality
that hides the weirdness underneath, that peeks out.
But so he's looking around,
uh-oh, he has another plan that comes up.
They go back to their seats,
Lady Raven reveals her first surprise guest, Parker Lewis, who's played by,
it's a musician, I can't remember which one it is,
and he rises up through a trap door near Cooper's seats,
and that trap door stays open for a while, trapped,
and Cooper just goes like,
hey Riley, let's go down that trap door.
Don't you wanna see underneath the stage
where all the machines are?
And she's like, that's crazy.
He is staring at that trap door
like it turned into like a fucking turkey leg or some shit.
And he's trying to sell this to her like with such like
mania like, wouldn't that be fun?
If I get really crazy, wouldn't this crazy idea seem
less crazy by comparison?
And she says, no, understandably the trap door closes up.
That is the kind of thing I could see saying to my son
being like, hey, should we go in there?
And he went, no, and then that's not doing it. Cooper goes thing I could see saying to my son being like, hey, should we go in there? And he's going, no.
And then that's not doing it.
Cooper goes back to the merchandise guy and the guy's like, oh, I got to get some more
sizes of shirt.
And he goes, I'll help you.
So he just walks with him into the stock room to get more shirts.
And the merchandise guy, it turns out, is obsessed with the butcher.
He's been following this guy's career.
He loves him.
He gives Cooper the secret password employees use to get past the cops, which is what?
Hamilton, right?
And he's going to flip when he sees the news password, employees use to get past the cops, which is what, Hamilton, right? And-
He's gonna flip when he sees the news later, by the way.
Did you see the mid-credit scene, Stuart?
No!
Stuart, the mid-credit scene is literally him flipping
when he sees the news.
Oh, this is amazing.
Here's where it bit ya in the ass, buddy.
Wow.
What a Shyamalan-style twist.
I should have held off until then.
So, and Cooper steals the vendor's key card.
He used to get into a private area.
Uh-oh, that's where the cops are being debriefed.
He manages to kind of talk his way through like he's an employee.
He snags the aforementioned police radio so he can monitor their movements.
I want to know, is it typically, do you think the case,
that the T-shirt vendor's ID will get you
into the secret FBI briefing area,
given that I'm pretty sure that when I have participated
in live events at the bell house,
security is tighter than that,
as far as getting around to different parts of the,
like I think the arena would have some areas
where you could do an FBI briefing where every vendor,
everybody with an ID because they sell French fries
could not walk into the FBI briefing.
I would imagine you would have coded badges
because you don't want the merch vendors going back
to Lady Raven's green room, you know, but this-
Well, also there's no photo on the badge,
which I think is highly unlikely.
It's one of those, I mean, like you get,
actually that's not true, I was just about to say
my key card to the offices I'm working in now,
but that does have my photo on it.
Yeah, that's true.
I will say, like, this appears to be
some kind of break room.
I buy sort of like the general idea
that he could get into this room.
Do I buy the idea that in the middle of a briefing,
they would be letting people do that?
Not necessarily.
Because he walks through the crowd of places.
Right.
He's got to get to the coffee station.
Excuse me, sorry.
And a cop's like, hey, where's the sugar?
And he's like, I'll give you my sugar from the coffee maker.
And he just knows where it is.
Like he finds it by chance.
I mean, there's a chance that all the vendors are union
and they're like, I do not want to mess with that union.
It's possible.
Those guys do not give a shit.
Yeah, that's very possible.
But he manages to get, I actually miss the moment
where he gets the police radio.
Do they show him taking it
or does he just walk out of the room and then he's like.
They show taking it.
It's very quick.
He walks by and kind of picks it up without.
It's great.
And just goes, clip. You gotta understand, I've seen this movie several times now.
Okay. I'm gonna keep relying on you then.
On the way back, Riley gets... Oh, sorry. Cooper gets stopped again by Riley's old friend's mom,
who is very agitated, and she's like, I've got a dark side, Buster. Don't mess with me.
Our kids have to get back together.
That's great.
And he... I have to say, he does a great job of calming her down in order to de-escalate
the situation. And he listens to the police radio and he starts hearing Hayley Mills,
the FBI profiler, describing a suspect who looks like him. She predicts his actions,
which again, as we said, dissuades him from setting off a fire alarm. He's about to do
it. And she's like, look for the guy who's about to set off the fire alarm. And he's
like, uh, pulls his hand away.
Well, she describes him as a man that has like a tattoo
and he looks down and he has a tattoo and I'm like,
nothing else about this guy would make me believe
he would have a tattoo.
No.
Like he's so like, particular.
It shows how clever he is
because he takes someone else's Lady Raven snap bracelet
and just puts it around his wrist, you know.
Well, and the tattoo is very important
because it is the only, the main question,
this is another ding, I got a question,
is so there's all these cops standing around,
nobody's allowed out, if you try to leave,
they're going to stop you.
They will shoot you.
And then what?
When they stop you, what are they going to do?
Say, are you the butcher?
Because their description, typically in a movie like this, I got you, Dan.
I have to finish my rant, but I hear you.
No, no, no.
We're just sparring nicely.
It's fine.
We're being held hostage by the butcher homes. Please send help. That's right, it's fine. We're being held hostage by Linda the Butcher Holmes.
Please send help.
That's right, that's right.
Nobody's leaving.
So they wanna stop everybody,
but you see all the time in things where like,
in a traditional thriller, they'd be like,
we're looking for a guy, he's about this tall,
he's got this color hair, he's wearing this.
Here, they cut all of that after we're looking for a guy.
Basically, the description is guy.
And so, if he just went through the security
on the way out, and he just said,
and they said, are you the butcher?
And he said, no, I'm not the butcher.
What on earth are they going to say next,
other than, okay, bye?
The butcher says what is what they're saying.
The butcher says what.
And that's legally binding.
Can we look at your phone, sir,
and see if you have an app that allows you
to remotely release carbon monoxide to kill your victim?
Oh, I should have deleted it.
Because he has this postage stamp-sized tattoo on his wrist,
the thinking is supposed to be,
if they were to stop him,
they would see the postage stamp-sized tattoo on on his wrist despite the fact that what they say is
surveillance footage of
People in the general area of where the bodies were found not good evidence of anything
No, very certain showed a variety of different guys one of whom has some sort of tattoo on his arm of an animal of some
sort. And I would like to know what kind of surveillance footage tells you nothing about
any of these guys except like white guy in his thirties and yet can identify a postage
stamp sized tattoo on their wrist
that is later going to be covered up by a snap bracelet.
Now I'm done.
Those cops just have to have the best goth hacker
on their team to enhance the shit out of that footage.
I don't want to mansplain to you, Linda,
but two words, computer enhance.
It is.
No, I mean, look, I was not going to spar, I was not going to disagree, I just was over eager in my desire
to agree because the thing is maybe if they had one suspect, maybe if they had one suspect
and they're like, this guy has a wrist tattoo, you could be like, okay, we have two points
of data now, he's going to be at this concert, he has a wrist tattoo,
we will like clock everyone who has those two things
and then, you know, do further surveillance,
do whatever, like that's a starting point.
But the fact is, we learn later on,
they have like multiple descriptions
of multiple people who could be the butcher.
Yeah, like it's either an old man or a young man,
it's either a black guy or a white guy.
It's either a guy with red hair or a guy with dark hair.
It's one of those.
So you're right, like this whole movie should just be
like Josh Hartnett being like,
ha ha ha, they've got nothing on me,
we're gonna watch the concert and then we're just gonna
walk the fuck out of the concert.
I mean, what they should have had is they say,
we have a witness and he doesn't know that,
you know, something like that. like he learns that or something.
Yeah, exactly, some reason that he has that they could catch him.
See how you came up with something in 30 seconds, Elliott,
that made this make somewhat more sense?
You see how that minimal amount of effort paid off?
That's why they call me second draft Kalin,
because I was at the time.
Because if they said that they had a witness,
then he would also be like,
I'll go find that witness to murder him.
Yeah, that'd be a second quest.
Yeah, that's a side quest.
But then the movie might be more than 87 minutes or whatever it is.
That's true though.
I don't know.
Let's see, it is, sorry, it's 105 minutes. That can't be right.
Anyway, then the movie would be longer.
It's pretty true right now.
But that would, actually, I kind of would have loved that if they had a witness there and he doesn't have to just escape,
he has to get to the witness and kill him without any seeing.
See, we're making a hitman level right now.
I guess this is, yeah, this is a hitman level.
So, even though, so Riley's like,
you're acting weird, Dad, and Cooper's like,
let me be weird some more and go look for more exits.
He manages, he sees an exit.
He manages to distract everyone by creating an explosion
in a deep fat fryer.
He throws like cans of something in a deep fat fryer.
It explodes.
Bottles of oil.
Bottles of oil into the deep fat fryer.
It explodes and horribly burns a woman working there.
And he like snags an apron, snags a hat.
And he goes out the door, uh oh, he's on the roof.
This is not any way he's going to be able to escape
unless he's, what's the hit man's name? Agent 40?
Agent 47, yeah.
47.
And then some SWAT cops show up, he convinces them he's a snack bar employee.
Love it.
And he has another vision of the old woman from earlier.
What could that possibly mean?
Riley again is like,
Dad, you're acting weird.
But she can't wait to tell him.
Every concert, Lady Raven picks one lucky girl from the audience,
and that's her dreamer girl. And she gets invited on stage to dance with Lady Raven.
And she gets to go backstage.
And here's the word backstage and goes,
oh, that's what I have to do.
I love it. I was so excited when this information is revealed.
He finds a Lady Raven employee, who is played by?
M. Night himself.
M. Night himself.
It's not an employee.
It's a, he's the.
He goes, you work for Lady Raven?
He goes, actually I'm her uncle, her mother's brother.
And I think it's so funny that he says her mother's brother.
It's so unnecessary, who cares?
It's just like in signs when John Leguizoma goes,
it looks like it's going to the town of Princeton.
And it's like, can you just say Princeton?
Like it's the whole like.
That's in the happening, isn't it?
That's in the happening.
Oh, the happening, not signs, in the happening. Oh, in the happening, sorry, not science,
in the happening, that's right.
I actually think, and maybe I'll come back to this,
but I think Trap is his most,
the happening movie since The Happening.
That is my feeling.
I don't know, there's a little movie called Old.
But I do, but I will say, I think it's interesting
that this movie to me begins getting dramatically worse
around the time you actually see him, you know?
And it becomes much worse.
I also think it's funny that he is,
in real life he is the actress
who's playing Lady Raven's dad.
But in the movie, he is her uncle.
If I was her, I'd be like,
so would you rather be my uncle than my dad?
Like, I don't understand what he's saying.
So he's like, and Cooper's like,
hey, that's my daughter Riley. She just recovered from leukemia.
That's where I come to the concert.
Lady Raven's music is what got her through it.
So I just want to say thank you.
Please tell Lady Raven I said thank you.
And M. Night, this uncle wanted to be a good guy.
He goes, how would you like to be the dreamer girl?
And the leukemia never comes up.
That uncle me?
That uncle's going to get fucking dragged at Thanksgiving.
Yes, and the leukemia never comes up in conversation,
so there's never a moment where Riley has to be like,
what, but anyway, she goes on stage,
she dances Lady Raven to the dismay of her ex-friends
in the audience who are so pissed.
The friend's mom is also pissed.
I love it.
And she's like, you're horrible, you're a horrible girl.
I love it, it's so awesome.
I love that, it's such a Disney Channel revenge,
but at this point, Cooper is both the butcher
and also the best dad in the world.
So you gotta give him points.
Well, and he has, I do think, you know,
there are a lot of things I like in this movie.
He gives this look off stage of like very mixed emotions
where he is a dad and a serial killer at the same time,
where he's like excited to see his daughter so happy, but also he's like oh god man. I'm a bad man. Who's it a trap?
I do love the fact that apparently nobody has ever tried the my kid has a terrible disease
Angle on on this guy before which means I guess he's never seen the Joe Namath episode of the Brady Bunch
Or it happens every show and later Raven is like,
uncle, can you please stop falling for this?
And he's like, one time I'm going to tell someone they're lying
and they won't be lying and I will feel terrible.
So I will continue to believe them.
Every dream girl is somebody whose father said she had cancer.
The profiler is only feet away from him backstage,
but he gets past her by helping a girl who collapsed
get into the infirmary and he's a firefighter.
So he has like first aid training.
And they're like, what a wonderful man you are
to help this stranger.
I wasn't sure why this part happened at all.
No, this is, I think just for the irony of people
thinking he's a great guy when really he's a monster.
And, you know, look, there's been a lot of talk
about M. Night's dialogue, like the style of his dialogue.
I think sometimes it's overstated.
His dialogue?
I am not one of those who's like,
it's to create discomfort, you know?
So like it's stilted, like it's like, yeah, okay,
well that could be true if it's like certain characters,
but all of the characters, I have a problem.
But like to me, this is like the most stilted
where it's just like, this is a good man.
Look at how good he is.
Not a lot of people would do what you do, mister.
And like with the merch vendor,
you don't see family values like that anymore,
whatever he says.
I think at a certain point when someone does-
Everything about this movie delights Stuart so much.
I love it.
I wish you guys could see all the video.
It's just every single thing that happens
is just delight, explosive smiles and applause. Yeah.
That's the thing. I feel like if he had just been wearing, if he had just been wearing
a sweatshirt with like Goku's symbol on it, it would explain why everyone loves him. Because
Goku's super cool.
People love Dragon Ball that much? That's what it is?
Yes. Elliott, they do love Dragon Ball that much.
I worked with the Suncoast Motion Picture Company in
the year 2000, 1999.
I can tell you that people love Dragon Ball.
We had a whole wall of Dragon Ball tapes.
So Dragon Ball was keeping that store afloat.
If he had a Dragon Ball thing on, I would be indifferent to it.
Well, you're a monster.
I have no context for any of this.
Yeah, that's too bad.
Well, it would be like that, the famous moment when I was walking through Times Square and
I saw a shirt that said Bazinga on it and I didn't really get the reference, like made
me so mad.
I was like, just to seeing Jim Parsons face and it said Bazinga and I was like, what the
hell is this?
They put his face on it?
That's even weirder.
So Dan, you know what's actually great about this is that means that you have no frame
of reference.
You can just start watching Dragon Ball now and experience it all for the first time.
What a dream.
Learn about Frieza, Vegeta.
You know what, factually that's correct.
I could do that.
I could start watching it.
Nothing is stopping you.
You know what, you're right, Stuart.
Yeah, cool.
So anyway, backstage, Cooper, there's,
okay, there's two moments in this movie
that I genuinely love. One is, and not Cooper, there's, okay, there's two moments in this movie that I genuinely love.
One is, and not in an ironic way,
Cooper is backstage and Lady Raven goes backstage
for costume change and uses an inhaler for a moment.
And I kept, I was like, oh, so this will be like
a plot point later.
It is not, or maybe it was at one point
and it's left in its artifact, but I love it.
I love the idea.
Just this glimpse of this superstar being a vulnerable person for a moment, I love it. I love the idea just this glimpse of this superstar being a vulnerable person for a moment
I love it and similarly she introduces her other guest star
Thinker who is played by what's the kid?
And this is my I think he's really a wig wearing
Very fake long way my he is my favorite character in the movie by far. He is a very caddy
He's a very fake, long-weary, he is my favorite character in the movie by far.
He is a very catty performer.
The first time we meet him, he is saying,
you brought me this milk and it has lactose in it.
What do you want me to poop myself on stage?
And it's one of those things where I'm like,
I think he's supposed to be presented as like a,
like he's being a prima donna, but you know what?
If you're lactose intolerant, you should,
and you're one of the stars of the show,
you should get lactose-free milk. Like that is on them. That's on production.
That's good in the writer. That should be in the writer.
That should be the writer. Yeah. That's a medical thing.
Anyway, there's only one song left. Cooper and Riley go backstage after and they perform it.
They go back to stage for the show. There's a moment, again, one of my favorite moments in the movie,
Thinker walks by, is very polite to Riley, cruises Cooper so hard.
Yes.
Just like is so, is coming on to him silently so hard. Just like, is coming onto him silently so hard.
I love it.
I was like, this is the kind of thing
that makes a character a person.
You know, makes them come alive.
And this is the kind of moment that really brings to light
in these troubled times when People Fuckin' magazine lists
John Krasinski is the sexiest man alive.
Oh my God.
Can you fucking stop fucking with me?
No.
Josh Hartnett's right there.
Give it to him.
What the fuck?
Dan?
Uh, okay.
And the picture, the picture of Krasinski
is so arm forward, but his arms don't even look good
in the picture.
What's going on?
Let's not get into nitpicking about a man's body.
John Krasinski's pretty sexy Stuart.
God fucking damn.
Turn on the podcast.
This is a trap for me.
Stuart there's more than one kind of sexy.
There's more than one kind out there.
Okay.
Listeners write in and tell me why I shouldn't jump in.
It will give you air life to know that over on Blue Sky,
where everyone should migrate away from the terrible place,
there was a lot of what the fuck when that was announced.
A lot of it.
He's pretty sexy.
He looks like a muppet with a beard on it.
I mean, sexy, yeah.
Up till this point, it has been objectively the sexiest man alive every single time.
Harry Hamlin.
Harry Hamlin.
I think Nick Nolte was the first of them that they had.
Wow, really?
But not like modern Nick Nolte.
Young Nick Nolte looked pretty good.
He had not turned into a grizzly bear yet.
In a world where Paul Newman exists,
Nick Nolte is not the sexiest man.
It's the first time Stewart's been unhappy
in this entire taping.
That's true, there's a loving trap.
And he brought it up.
None of us brought this up.
It's not like we didn't ambush.
It wasn't a trap to get him to talk about John Krasinski.
So anyway, I think our cruise is Cooper.
Cooper hears over the police radio
that every single man in the building,
including employees, is gonna be stopped by the police on the way single man in the building, including employees,
is going to be stopped by the police on the way out.
Only Lady Raven's car will be able to leave on it.
But it's a Lady Raven concert, so there's a limited number of men.
They're mostly dads bringing their daughters.
Only Lady Raven's car will be able to leave uninspected.
So Cooper, he plays his ace.
He gets alone in a room with Lady Raven and he goes, hey, I'm the butcher.
And here on my phone is my victim
and I'm gonna kill him if you don't help us
leave in your limo.
And at that point I'm like,
well, you got no cards left to play, butcher.
Like you were holding them close to the vest
for a long time and you just threw them on the table.
Let's see what happens.
How do you guys feel about it?
I loved this.
I know that a lot of people think that this movie
takes a disaster.
This is my John Krasinski.
Including Linda, I think that a lot of people think that this movie takes a disastrous. This is my John Krasinski.
Including Linda, I think that the third act of this movie
takes a disastrous turn for the worse.
Other than the fact that, God bless her,
I think she's a convincing pop star,
less convincing as an actress.
Centering Lady Raven at this part is a problem
with the movie.
Because I don't think she's. Undersetment. I don't think she's up at this part is a problem with the movie. Understatement?
I don't think she's up to the task as a performer.
Understatement again.
I'm trying to be kind to someone who is new to acting.
She's really had to prove herself.
It's not like her dad is a famous director who put her in this movie.
That's not her fault.
She fought her way to the part, man.
She auditioned under a fake name and she is a daughter. She isn't the daughter who directed
Watchers, right? That's another oh man. That was not a good man. I I do like that. This movie is like, you know what?
Fuck it like like that. The butcher is like, okay
Well, this cat-and-mouse game has played out on a large scale.
As far as it's gonna go,
we gotta just make it a smaller cat and mouse game now
between the two of us.
And this is the, you know, like,
I have to blow up my life, I guess,
if I'm gonna get out of here.
It's a turn that I genuinely didn't expect in the theater,
and I like that it went someplace new
in the last part of this movie.
And leading us to a second act that's basically just the two of them kind of yes-anding each
other.
Yeah.
Well, what do you think?
Linda does not believe in it.
No, I think, well, first of all, the fact that she's not an actor is a big problem.
The fact that they haven't developed her as a character at all is a big problem.
I think that's part of the issue for me,
is that like she, for the whole movie,
she has been not a really character in the story
and now she becomes the central character.
And I think he's going for kind of like a psycho type thing.
Where she becomes kind of the protagonist
all of a sudden, as you said, which did not work for me.
And I think like, listen, and I said this when we covered it
on the first time on our show,
I hope that if I ever had as much pull as M. Night Shyamalan,
if I had ever gotten as good at making a lot of money
for myself and other people with modest budgets,
if I had ever gotten as efficient with moviemaking
and therefore found myself
in that position.
You know, it's like, you know, what I would compare to when Mike Schur was coming off
of Parks and Rec, he's talked about how they basically said, make whatever you want.
So he made a show about moral philosophy, because it's like, I'm never going to have
this much juice again in my whole life.
So I'm going to make the show I want to make about moral philosophy. And I think if I were M. Naik Shyamalan in the position that he got himself into,
I hope that I would undertake incredibly misbegotten projects to the benefit of my family members.
I think that is a good thing to do as a human being. I really believe in it,
I think that is a good thing to do as a human being. I really believe in it,
but I think it hurts the project, right?
Like it's so, the movie is so obsessed.
And you know, they've talked about this,
that the movie was really conceived
as a way to showcase her music.
Yeah.
And I think, you know,
I was saying to somebody the other day,
like let's imagine that they do this movie without her music, right?
How's that soundtrack album by the way, Dan?
Yeah, it's in regular rotation
Yeah, it's it's it's taken over instead of what the judgment night soundtrack
He's he's never going to kind of go negotiate with somebody else for music, so it's going to
be public domain songs.
That's my theory.
Make a version of this movie with public domain songs so that when she gets there and they're
boogieing at the concert, it's like you're a grand old flag and all that kind of stuff.
That's the pure version of this movie, right?
Because it all becomes marketing for her music.
And I think it does hurt the movie.
And I think the problem is,
and we haven't quite gotten to this part yet,
but go ahead, I'll ding when we get there.
But I also, I kind of like that it is,
I feel like this is a pretty good capturing
of like a pop concert.
I'm not necessarily saying that the music is like
the same tier, but in a way it's also like,
especially like when they get out to sing the finale,
you know, the big, whatever, the encore,
and I'm like, wow, that's the song they're closing with?
There's like no hook, dude.
I think it does capture that feeling a lot,
and I'm torn because I don't think the music
is amazing.
And I think her performance is not what it needs to be
to sell that she is now the star of the show.
But the movie around it is better than it needs to be.
I think if it's a movie meant to showcase
a soundtrack album, and there have been so many movies
that were made around a band or around a singer that are terrible
because they're just excuses for getting that person
to sing in front of a camera.
So I don't know, I'm torn.
Like Natalie and Brutal, I'm torn.
I was waiting for it.
Since I clearly turned the movie off
the moment the credits started,
is there like a trap theme song played over the credits that she
sings where she like raps the story of the movie?
I'm sure there is. Not rap the story of the movie.
So the butcher's in the stands and they're pulling all the mans.
Why did you set him up for that?
Explode on his hands.
He is a dad.
Oh man, I want to hear this one.
I'll work on it later. So anyway, but we'll get to the future. Because this is where the
movie, like I was saying,
I think they're trying to go for like a psycho type thing
where it's like, you thought it was following these people,
but really it's following this person now,
but that's, that's not, doesn't work as well.
I think maybe because in psycho,
they're going from a less interesting character
to a more interesting character.
They're going from Janet Lee to Anthony Perkins.
Whereas here they're going from the butcher to a pop star.
You know?
Yeah.
So Cooper, he wants Lady Raven's limo
to take them to their car so they can escape.
They get waved right out, Lady Raven is untouchable.
Anyone in her orbit is immune to inspection.
And they're parked like super close right on the street.
So I mean, it's not even that big of a hassle for her.
I will say, perhaps he did what I did
at the Judas Priest concert and pre-booked a parking space
and just paid a little extra.
It's worth it, everybody.
You save yourself so much hassle.
Just go ahead and do it.
Maybe you're right.
Maybe you're right.
Raven takes, he's like, just drop us off at our car.
It's right next to the stadium.
And she's like, no, I want to see your house.
And Riley is like, really?
If I'm in the car with a serial killer, who has explained to me that he is someone
who has dismembered, I don't know, 14, 12, 14 people.
If we're in the car and he says,
I'm going to get out up here at the corner,
I'm going to say, okay, bye.
As opposed to, no, let's go to your house.
This is what separates you from a true hero.
That's the thing.
I think it was around this point where it's revealed
that he has a wife at home and I'm like, what?
Like he had such like single dad energy at this point.
You know what?
This is a plot hole of the many that that that that I did not think about
But even if she wants to save this guy, you're right, like let him get out. You know who this is now
Call the police and say hey, he just got out of my car. She's got a phone on her
You know, yeah do when you get to his house
that you can't do now?
That's my question.
Yeah.
Well, I think, I wonder if it's that, I mean,
I'm assumption she wants to go to his house
so that she can tell the police where he lives.
Like they can go right there, you know,
as opposed to him escape,
disappearing into the crowd potentially.
But if you say he's the dad of a girl named Riley
who's this age, you know, and looks like this,
then they could probably track him down.
So anyway-
Riley was just on stage in front of a lot of people.
Yeah, but the other answer is,
because the movie can't end right there
and you gotta keep the movie going.
So when they get to their home,
Cooper's family is so excited to have Lady Raven there
and his wife and his son, he has a younger son.
His wife is Alison Pill.
Alison Pill.
I was very excited to see that.
Yeah, it was nice to see to see that. Poor Alison Pill.
Yeah, and she gets her scene later on, you know.
So, and she's like, hey, you know the funny thing.
It's weirdly enough, it's kind of a Pill-based scene
later on.
Oh.
You think that's why they cast her?
Probably.
It's another Pill.
It's all puns, it's all pun-based.
So, Josh Hartnett. Josh Hartnett, he's called him that Hartnett. Well, they are casting a net to catch his heart.
Interesting.
This is a good theory.
I like it.
This is great.
So she's like, hey, Cooper's family, you know what's interesting?
The whole concert we were using as a trap to catch the butcher because he was going
to come to the show.
And Cooper's like-
She explains why, she does give a little bit
of background here, she explains why they were there.
They found one of his old crime spots
and they found a torn ticket there.
After that you have no idea why they would know
that the butcher loves this music.
Alison, like the wife, her reaction is restrained,
but enough that you're like, okay,
well she knows something at this point.
Why did he, because what they say is that a part
of a receipt was found in his safe house.
What, in 2024, how did he obtain a concert ticket
and wind up having a receipt he was carrying around
in his wallet?
Did he buy it at the bodega?
Maybe he went and bought it at the CVS.
He said, I don't want to pay that $3, $10 ticket master charge.
I'm going to the box office.
I know that the gas I'm using to drive to the box office in the heart of Philly, I live
out in the suburbs, is I know that's more than the using to drive to the box office in the heart of Philly, I live out in the suburbs,
is I know that's more than the money
that I'm spending on the Ticketmaster charge,
but you know what, gosh darn it,
I just don't want to pay that,
I don't think they deserve that money.
So I'm going to go and I'm going to buy it at the box office.
I bet that's what he did.
And they gave him like the little receipt
and he stuffed it in his wallet?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and he said, I'm going to keep this in my wallet
to remember this special day with Riley.
I mean, I feel like this is in Philly, so he could probably buy a concert ticket at like a Wawa or something, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, probably. Probably, yeah.
Yeah, put that on top of my sub.
And then I got to go run up the steps to the Museum of Art. Yeah.
If you said sub in Philly, Dan, they would beat you to death.
They would beat you up.
I'm sorry, you know, I'm from the Midwest.
We call things what we call them.
A hoagie, is that what the correct... Yeah. I didn't pronounce you know, I'm from the Midwest. Call things what we call them.
A hoagie, is that what the correct?
Yeah.
I didn't pronounce it correctly, but.
Wawa is the good shit, I will say that.
Grew up going to Wawa.
So she's like, hey, anyway,
it's my concert's all about trapping the butcher.
Hey, can I play a song for you?
And she plays a song and Hooper is recording it.
And then she's like, how about a selfie?
And she just takes the camera and then runs into the bathroom.
I don't want to skip over.
She takes the phone and runs into the bathroom.
A great camera move, like a legitimately funny camera move where she's like, hey, you want
me to play a song?
She points over and the camera just pans over to the piano.
It goes, smooch, there's the piano there.
And smooches back.
I loved it.
I'm like, yes, you made the right choice here.
This is very funny.
And I love that while she's playing this song,
Josh Hartnett stands right next to them filming it,
and they keep cutting to him filming,
and it's such a weird angle and shot.
Obviously, it's a setup that she's like clocking
where his phone is so she can steal it,
but it's just really funny.
It's very funny.
This whole thing is funny.
This whole part scene right here is very funny, and I think it's supposed to seem suspenseful. Like she's stall a really funny. It's very funny this whole thing. Oh this whole this whole part scene right here is very funny
And I think it's supposed to seem suspenseful like she's she's stalling for time
She's doing the only thing she knows how to do to do it which is perform music and Riley doesn't know what this is all
About so she just thinks this is the greatest day in her life, but it comes off as that's a little silly
Anyway, she grabs Cooper's phone goes into the bathroom locks herself in
Uses his serial killer app to get in touch with the victim, and is like, tell me anything you remember
about where he took you.
And he's like, oh, there was a broken statue
of a stone lion and a blue door.
And she goes onto Instagram and she's like,
hey, all my fans, hey, I love you so much.
Peace and love, peace all over, you know,
freedom in the Middle East or whatever.
And hey, I have this guy, I need you to help him.
Does anyone live near a broken stone lion
and there's a house with a blue door?
And she manages to crowdsource where the house is.
And she's like, go to that house,
which is bad advice to tell her fans.
Don't go to the house that the serial killer has a guy at.
Call the police, tell them to go to the house.
She could have called the police.
Maybe she could have called 911
when she got into the bathroom with the phone.
And said, I'm at the butcher's house.
I'm at the butcher's house, here's his address.
This is the street he lives on.
It's like this is the clever thing for her to do,
but it's not the smart thing.
Yeah, I do like this as a device.
There would have been a better,
like there are a lot of things in here where it's like,
it would have been a better way to implement it,
even though the basic device is fun.
If you had built this up with Lady Raven
as more of a character than you could have,
I think you could have had her,
you could have made a little bit more about this, you know,
but and the way she relates to her fans and all that.
But anyway, Cooper's getting increasingly loud and angry
on the other side of the door.
And I do like, it reminds me of my favorite scene
in the movie, Phone Booth, no, Phone Booth,
where he's talking on the phone with a sniper
and these other people want to use the phone
and they're banging on the door.
And he's like, there's just too much stuff going on at once.
It's very stressful. I'm like, it is, I know the stress to be on the phone with they're banging on the door. And he's like, there's just too much stuff going on at once. It's very stressful.
I'm like, it is, I know the stress to be on the phone
with somebody and someone else is yelling,
it's usually a child in my case,
is yelling at you on the other side.
Usually, not always.
No, sometimes it's the butcher.
And she yells through the door, your husband is the butcher.
And that's, you know, that's, she thinks that's checkmate.
And then I will say this, this is the scariest moment of the movie to me. And I think the movie know, that's, she thinks that's checkmate. And then I will say this,
this is the scariest moment of the movie to me.
And I think the movie does not earn it,
but I think they have it,
is the noise stops outside the bathroom door.
And then when Cooper gets that door open,
his family is gone.
And we don't know at first where they are.
And that one moment where I'm like,
did he murder his whole family?
And that, like, that's the scariest moment,
the whole movie for me.
And it turns out he locks them in a very easy to escape room. So it's not- where I'm like, did he murder his whole family? And that's the scariest moment in the whole movie for me.
And it turns out he locks them in a very easy
to escape room.
So it's not-
I feel like if they had paused for a moment with that
and maybe even done a close up on a single bit of blood,
something while she's searching for trying to figure out
what exactly happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or if it did happen and he's there and there's just a little Yeah. Yeah, or even like if he, or if it did happen
and he's there and there's just like a little blood
on his shirt or something like that,
then I would be like, this movie just jumped up
a whole like a whole level, you know?
But it didn't do that.
So he's like, hey, anyway, let me check my phone.
He goes, give me my phone.
He checks it, his victim is gone.
Uh-oh, he's been rescued already.
And he's like, you're gonna be my hostage to escape. Let's get in my wife's car because they're gonna be looking for my phone. He checks it, his victim is gone. Uh oh, he's been rescued already. And he's like, you're gonna be my hostage to escape.
Let's get in my wife's car
because they're gonna be looking for my car.
And Raven, they get in the car and Raven starts,
I guess using what the profiler taught her
before the movie started.
And she starts talking to him as if she's her mother,
as if she's his mother.
And you know, why are you being a bad boy?
Or I don't know what she says.
Did this scene work for you guys at all? Because it did not work for me at all. It seems so ridiculous, this whole section, you know, why are you being a bad boy? Or I don't know what she says. Did this scene work for you guys at all?
Because it did not work for me at all.
It seems so ridiculous, this whole section, you know.
Yeah, they tried to make something of this mom thing,
but it feels so extraneous to the movie.
Like it doesn't actually have an effect.
And she's like doing it so obviously and clumsily
that I don't know.
In terms of serial killers with relationships
with their moms, this is not the best movie to have that.
I can think of four of them that do it.
Yeah, I mean, I think you could do something
with this theoretically.
I mean, it's a direction to go down,
but I think, you know, for me in a movie like this,
I think any effort you make to explain
why he's a serial killer is completely unnecessary.
Yes.
It's not that kind of movie, right?
And so it's one thing like, yes, I mean, first of all,
as I think Dan's alluding to, it's been done a lot,
the whole like, it's the mom's fault,
but also I don't care.
Like, it's not like they're gonna get to someplace
where you're gonna be like, you know what?
And I totally understand why he decided
to start cutting up people's bodies
and leaving them in piles around various places.
Now that really makes sense to me.
Now I get it.
So I just don't care why he's a serial killer.
I just want the thriller part.
I don't care why he's a serial killer.
I don't even think they're saying it's the mom's fault,
because later on, Hayley Mills says,
probably early on, no one could have noticed that,
they're very good at disguising it,
the only person who probably noticed was his mom.
So the idea, I guess, is just that he had this relationship
with his mom where she's trying to keep him in line.
I know that you have the serial killer urge within you,
but don't kill people, please.
You know, but it's not enough.
Like, I don't, I agree in the larger sense
where it's just like, I don't need the psychology of it.
Like, this is such a silly movie that it's,
nothing's gonna be worth it.
I think it's meant to be like a deepening of the character,
but it feels like padding.
It feels like filler, you know?
Cause you're right, this is not the kind of movie
where we're gonna get inside the head of a dark soul
and see what makes it tick.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is time
that would have been better spent doing more
like tense thrill ride crap.
Yes, but that's not what happens.
And then this stalls him just for a little bit.
He opens up the garage, his family is standing there,
blocking the car and that unmans him.
He can't move against his family anymore.
He loves them too much, I guess.
And she takes the family away in her limo
as the SWAT cops descend on the house.
Have they caught the butcher?
Did they finally catch the notorious Philly butcher?
No, there's at least two more twists.
No, there's an escape tunnel.
He escaped, what I think is really is they're like,
we found a tunnel.
It leads to the neighbor's yard.
And I'm like, then he can't be that far away.
Like, just get that asshole.
What the fuck?
He just gave up?
Well, he can also teleport.
We didn't talk about that part.
Oh yeah, there is that too.
Oh boy.
I was like, we thought he was here,
but he's actually a hundred feet away. Sorry, I guess he's out of our jurisdiction when he's about that part. Oh boy. We thought he was here, but he's actually a hundred feet away.
Sorry, I guess he's out of our jurisdiction when he's in that yard.
Maybe if Lady Raven had called 911 instead of gotten on Instagram, they would have been
there sooner.
To get the social points.
I was hoping that we were going to have like a serial killer home alone situation, kind
of like in the recent season of Fargo, but we didn't get that.
We can't chase them across property lines
Now we can't go there and so
Cooper has an escape tunnel and he gets the drop on lady raven again
She's in her limo. He handcuffs her to like a railing inside the limo
Which is that a thing that limos usually have is like a like a handicapped railing or something?
Right. I mean they have that thing that you like usually have, is like a handicapped railing or something? A rail, I mean they have that thing
that you hang stuff on, right?
Like the- Like a towel rack?
No, like- Like an old shit bar?
Yeah.
Like the suit, the suit- The suit thing.
The thing where you hang up clothes and stuff like that.
But it's so low down, that's not where you would hang it.
Yeah, no, I don't think there's anything-
It would pool on the ground, okay, no.
I don't think there's anything that makes this make sense. And so he handc her to this to this rail and he's driving around he's driving through Philly with her in the back
he's like he's in the front as a the as the chauffeur and
He's like, you know, I don't like that when I saw you on stage. You seemed like you were whole
I don't like people who are whole, you know, he likes people who are who are half, you know incomplete, you know
Yeah, it's more trying to create a philosophy for him,
which does not need to be there.
He's a cipher.
Well, he should have just been talking about
all the sights and sounds of South Street in Philly.
Well, and here's the thing.
I don't know why he decides to take her through,
apparently the busiest part of Philly,
because it's crowded with people,
and she rolls down a window and she's like,
hey, I'm Lady Raven.
And they all crowd around her car.
And once again, she has weaponized her fame
to stymie this brilliant serial killing monster.
And the fans run the car and it buys time for her
to finally rip out the railing and escape.
She manages to remove it.
I would sue her limo manufacturer or something,
or at least ask for a refund.
It shouldn't break that easily.
The police show up, they shoot out the tires.
Sorry, but now, finally, finally,
they caught the butcher, right? I mean, he's
in a car. They're surrounding a car with guns.
Yeah.
Like he is finally after two traps, he is finally trapped. Right, guys?
You can't trap the trap master.
Well, I just, I just like-
You think of the trapster, aka Payspot Pete, but-
Let's envision the car surrounded by fans of her who want nothing more than to get into the car and see her,
who now sort of understand that she was in trouble
because she indicated she was.
There's a swarm of people around the car.
He does what exactly?
In slipping away, he...
So we have to assume he does not open the door
or else people would,
he'd have to move people out of the way,
they would see that happening.
So I guess he has an escape tunnel in the limo
that didn't belong to him.
But he just-
Out the bottom into a manhole.
Yeah, what happens is he starts running around in circles
and then the bottom half of his body turns into a drill
and he drills through the bottom of the car.
Oh, he did the old drill spin, yeah.
Yeah, it happens.
He got a hole in the bottom of the car.
Have you ever seen the documentary about the Toynbee tiles, which are the, those things,
there are these tiles that are in the street in the pavement in Philadelphia and some other
places that have a little weird secret message and nobody knew like how they were getting
embedded.
There are some in New York too.
And you can still occasionally see them.
They have a weird, they're like a mosaic.
They're like mosaics. They're like made out of a piece of glass and stuff.
And there's a whole documentary about these guys who went out to try to figure out where in the hell these things came from and who was doing it.
And it turns out that the person who was doing it was dropping them out of the bottom of a hole in a car, like driving over the pavement and dropping the tile out the bottom of a hole in the
car. It is a great documentary and it has, it's called Resurrect Dead, and it has the best
Philadelphia accents you will ever hear in your life. So that's just a little note about that.
And so I figure he has that kind of little hole in the bottom of the car, drop it out,
drop himself out, crawl away.
That's possible. I mean, I just thought maybe he took his one last ghost pill, which allows
him to turn invisible and intangible and he could walk through everybody. But the point
is, your way is better.
He's loose. He does what every good criminal does, goes back home. Lady Raven being a saint
goes and comforts the freed victim of the butcher. He goes back home to his wife
who has deliberately stayed at home.
The profiler was like, you can come with us to safety.
And she's like, no, I'll stay at home.
And Cooper shows up because she has to be there to reveal
that she suspected he was the butcher
and set him up by going to his kill house
and leaving the receipt torn.
So it looked like it was a mistake.
And the police would know he would be at the Lady Raven concert.
And he threatens her with a knife and she's like,
wait, before you kill me, can you at least have some of this pie that I made?
I think you are ignoring my favorite thing,
which is he goes inside and immediately starts taking his shirt off.
Yes, there was a moment where I was like,
I did, so it's another thing, I missed the moment where he took his shirt off.
So I was like, suddenly you're shirtless.
And I was like, well, I don't understand.
Why isn't he wearing a shirt?
It goes with this part of the explanation.
The explanation that they give is
she, he was being like distant and strange
and she thought maybe he was having an affair.
But then she smelled cleaning products on his clothes.
Like hospital grade cleaning products, yeah.
And so when she smells the hospital grade cleaning products,
her first thought is, he must be that serious.
Well, and she also says she does a little sleuthing.
It's an intrusive thought that gets in her head,
and so she does this test for him, I guess.
And so she starts talking about,
I smelled it on your clothes,
and that's when he starts taking his shirt off.
Oh, I see, that's why. That I think there's supposed to be a connection between she starts talking about, I smelled it on your clothes. And that's when he starts taking his shirt off. Oh, I see, that's why.
That I think there's supposed to be a connection
between she starts talking about your clothes
were incriminating.
But yeah, and the best part about the torn receipt
when she says, oh, I tore it
so that it would seem like a mistake.
No, you tore it because a real receipt for a ticket
would probably have some kind of identifying information
that would mean that they would not have to go about it
in this way.
Because there's not-
That's true, they would be able to have
like a credit card number or something.
And there's not really any reason why a torn receipt
would look more like a mistake than a whole receipt
it left behind in your hidey hole.
Yeah.
This is where I think it just starts getting real goofy.
I mean, that starts getting real goofy. Really goofy.
That doesn't make sense.
I mean, I do think that like,
I'm not saying that this is good.
I'm saying that the idea that the movie is putting forth
is like, I didn't want to believe it.
So I'm doing this like circuitous thing
and like maybe it'll prove me, maybe it'll disprove me.
And I enjoyed watching the scene because, you know,
again, God bless her, Lady Raven,
not the actress that Alison Pill is,
like you've got like two people really like tearing into
the scene here, which helps it paper over the fact
that this isn't making any sense.
Like if she suspected her husband might be this killer,
then again, call the police
They can look into it
Something about your kids. Yeah, maybe she's just like I want to see what kind of crazy trap they come up
Yeah, maybe this is their sex game their cat-and-mouse play where it's like I'm gonna set up a trap and see if he can get
Out of it. It's there was gonna be so there's a brief moment when they were going to the house and I was like
Is his wife in on it?
Yeah.
Because that would have been awesome.
I was worried that was what it was gonna be.
Better movie.
That's gonna be like, you almost got caught,
you've gotta get better, you know.
But the silly part for me was when she goes,
wait, before you kill me,
can we have some of this pie that I made?
I went all the trouble making it.
He eats a whole piece of pie
before he realizes that he's drugged.
She drugged the pie.
Yeah.
He hallucinates his mother being like.
That's the pill that I mentioned earlier. Yes. And He hallucinates his mother being like- That's the pill that I mentioned earlier.
Yes, and he hallucinates his mother being like,
I love you, and the cops come in
and tase the shit out of him.
They just keep tasing him, and they arrest him.
They bring him outside, they let him pick up Riley's
knocked over bicycle, which was lying on its side.
He's a good dad, you know?
Riley comes out, gets to hug him one last time,
and then just to speed through the end,
he's in the back of the police van,
and he pulls out from his sleeve. He's police van, and he pulls out from his sleeve,
he's handcuffed, but he pulls out of his sleeve,
he palmed one of the spokes from Riley's bike.
How you could pull the spoke out of a bike wheel
and slip it in your sleeve without anybody noticing.
He's a great magician in the history of the world.
You know how the police always give you a quiet moment
to yourself off in the corner with a piece of equipment
before they take you into the police van.
Yeah, this guy who is probably,
let's say probably a suicide risk, like, yeah, let's just leave him alone in the into the police van. Yeah, this guy who is probably, let's say probably a suicide risk,
like, yeah, let's just leave him alone
in the back of the van.
And so he takes out that spoke
and it takes more time than I thought it would.
He unlocks his handcuff as he's laughing,
as if he's gonna get away.
And it's like, when they open the doors,
is he gonna run for it?
Like, is he gonna, we're supposed to be like,
this guy's about to escape.
As soon as he leaves, we're just gonna shoot him.
Elliot, you're wrong.
He's a bastard. He's going to escape.
You know he's, like, he escaped out of that other car.
I know he's gonna escape because it's a movie,
but I'm saying, and there's nothing,
other than his supernatural escaping abilities
as a serial killer, there's nothing that would lead us
to believe he is that much closer to escaping
than otherwise. If there was one more shot,
maybe in the middle of the credits,
it would be a shot of them opening up the back doors
and he would be gone, his clothes would be there,
and they'd be like, what the fuck?
Yeah, that's true.
ABB out on a naked guy.
Hole in the bottom of the truck.
Now it's possible that would have been the more,
the mid-credit scene that would have made more sense
instead of a sequel. Instead, as we mentioned, we get the mid-credit scene that would have made more sense instead of a sequel.
Instead, as we mentioned, we get the mid-credit scene of the merch vendors just watching TV,
and they say, this guy, Cooper, did this thing, and he goes, he has the biggest comedy reaction to it.
He flips out, he goes, I'm never talking to anybody at work again. He's going, whoa, whoa, whoa!
I helped him! I helped him!
It is like, it is the live live action equivalent of someone just flipping backwards
at the end of a Bazooka Joe comics.
And they just stick it in.
Oh man, now I gotta watch it again.
I was gonna say, I cannot believe that he missed it.
I can't believe, you guys could be making this up.
No, and that's the moment where I'm like,
oh, they knew they were making a silly movie
because this is not a creepy, you know, thing.
This is just a big joke and it's so silly, you know.
Yeah, well, let's get into our judgments,
whether this is a good, bad movie,
our final judgments, in fact,
a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie,
or a movie we kinda like.
And I have to say, look, it's a movie I kinda like.
And I will say after that,
that there's a sucks or rocks mentality
that I think the internet has only made worse
where it has to be like bad only made worse where it has to be
Like bad terrible or it has to be like amazing every choice was right and I don't think every choice was right
I think that there's stuff in here that
Is like silly thriller mechanics that I like because I like the manipulation. I think he's having fun
specifically being like goofy and manipulating things and
And it might be outlandish, but it doesn't matter and then there's stuff in there where it's like no
This legitimately makes no sense. And maybe if you gave it a little more thought
You could make a better
Movie with the same elements
Likewise some of the dialogue like I don't have the problem that some people have with the same elements. Likewise, some of the dialogue,
like I don't have the problem that some people have
with the dialogue, but I am also not gonna be out there
defending it as like, no, this is exactly the dialogue
you wanted to do.
Like you could have made some dialogue that sounded
a little more like human beings.
This is how people talk.
That being said, like it is a movie that I think
is having fun being a silly trashy thriller, and I enjoyed it.
Stewart.
Yeah, I mean, to touch on, like, I feel like,
I've been critical of Shyamalan in the past
of being not really an actor's director,
and I think a big part of it is that he writes dialogue
that, you know, you have to be a good actor to sell.
And I mean, at least that's kind of how I feel with it.
I would say this is a movie that I kind of liked.
I mean, it is very silly,
large chunks of it don't make sense,
particularly the final third doesn't make much sense.
But I had a lot of fun, and I really just loved,
like I just loved that first act of
him just like desperately trying to sneak his way out of there and like being very
funny about it.
Like it's just and then like just like upping the ante to the point where he's
like, oh, I guess I got to go backstage.
Like I loved it.
Love that stuff.
But yeah, yeah, the final third's a mess.
And I feel like, yeah, they're trying to clean up
for homework.
It's like they're trying to finish their homework
on the bus on the way to school.
Yeah, it does feel like, I kind of feel similarly,
I think that like this is,
I don't think it's a good bad movie
and I don't think it's so bad bad,
but it's not quite a movie I kind of like,
but I feel like it is a, there are things I like in it,
but I think I'm grading it on a curve, to be honest, because this is the kind of movie but I feel like you to say there are things I like in it, you know But I think I'm grading it on a curve to be honest because this is the kind of movie you don't
See that much of in in wide release anymore the same way that like when I watched the net in
1995 I was like this movie is bad and now when I watch it I'm like, this is a fun movie
I kind of like this movie. So I think that's that's the curve
I'm grading it on because there's a lot in the movie that
Doesn't quite make sense and is very silly and is
not as...
It never reaches...
I think what it gets me is it never reaches the moments of thrill or suspense that it
is going for, I don't think.
What about spills?
It's trying really hard.
Spills it gets.
That woman falls down the stairs.
I mean, you just push down the stairs.
That's a spill.
But Linda, what do you think?
You loved it, right?
This is not just a good, bad movie.
This is like my exact idea of a good, bad movie.
And I had a great time at this movie.
I saw it with my best friend in the world,
and we were at the theater, and it was a great time.
Because as I said, at the end of this movie,
I turned to him and I said, you know,
if they said something about The Parent Trap,
this would be the best movie I've seen all year, right?
However, the reason why it kind of irks me
is that I fucking love thrillers.
Like I love like what I tend to refer to
as trench coat thrillers.
Like, you know, the whole, in the nineties in particular,
you had both like really high-end ones, like The Fugitive.
And then you also had like these really goofy ones like Double Jeopardy and stuff like that.
I love thrillers and I love silly thrillers. However, it is possible to spend 30 seconds
making it make more sense than this. And when it is so in your face that like,
there's no indication of like,
why his wife would,
if she really thought he was a serial killer,
go about this like,
I think you might be a serial killer,
so I'm gonna give the police a very unhelpful clue
that will set you up to be confronted
while you're with my daughter at a concert.
I'm gonna set it up so be confronted while you're with my daughter at a concert.
I'm going to set it up so that you are potentially picked up by the police or killed by the police in front of our daughter. In front of our daughter. Yeah.
There's not really any kind of effort to explain what this police
operation even is, what they're going to do if they like what they're doing to all these people.
There's no effort to get around, like this would immediately be something
that everyone in Philadelphia knew about,
as opposed to the fact that the concert's kind
of going along and everybody seems to not be paying
that much attention to it inside the concert,
even though everyone is being held by the police.
No, there's like not, and it irritates me
because I sort of agree with something
that Dan was saying about the
sucks or rocks thing.
But my version of that is that I think there is a pedantry about unimportant details that
has resulted in a backlash where anytime you say, this doesn't make a fucking bit of sense,
people are like, you don't get it.
You don't get it.
It's supposed to be fun.
It can still be fun.
In fact, I would argue,
and this makes me sound so much like the person
where like if you're responsible at the party,
it's more fun.
But it can actually be, I think, more fun
when it is put together in a way
that everything kind of fits and clicks
and that's what I love in thrillers.
That's why I maintain that if they had given Die Hard
an Oscar for screenplay,
I think that would have been absolutely appropriate.
Everything in that movie,
everything in that movie is either set up or payoff
of a specific thing.
The thing with the bare feet,
it is so, it is all so tight.
The same thing is true of Speed.
The same thing is true of The Fugitive.
And I'm not saying you have to be as good
as my favorite thrillers,
but he is good enough to make good thrillers.
And this feels a little bit like, who gives a shit?
You know?
He is good enough to make the Philly thriller movie.
Right, and it just irritates me.
Yeah, it's called Glass.
Yeah.
It irritates me that we have wound up in this situation
where if you ask for anything, there's this kind of like,
you just don't get it.
I promise you, I get trap.
Like I don't not get trap.
Now, we might be jumping into recommendations,
but you're talking about thrillers from the past.
I feel like if I'm looking for like an adult thriller movie,
what I'm hoping for like Fincher to make another one
of his paperback thrillers, like what,
where else should I look for this, Linda?
I need direction for thrills.
Well, this is the thing is that there aren't that many.
And that's what irritates me is he's sort of the guy
who should be making them.
And when they happen, they're sometimes on streaming now, like smaller ones.
There's one that Julianne Moore was in called Sharper that was on, I think, Apple.
And it's not great, but I thought it was fun.
And a lot of them are kind of getting into that space. I think also there's a lot of horror thriller
kind of blurring of that line
where you don't get as many non-horror
political trench coat thrillers
like the Grisham stuff and all that kind of stuff.
It feels like that's what a big part of what's happened.
Yeah, is that horror has eaten up the oxygen
that used to go to thrillers. And kind of movies that of the kinds of movies
That Alfred Hitchcock used to make there's a lot of psychos now, but there's not a lot of like notoriously
Yeah, no, that's a good point. Right? Yeah. I'm like I'm thinking of like I don't know like fresh
Did you see that one on Hulu with Sebastian Stan?
No, I heard I heard oh wait, I did see that. Yeah
there's a there was a lot of like,
you and danger girl movies that all came out where it's like women
going off into the woods with strange men.
You're like, I don't know why you're doing this.
And every once in a while, there's one that I really like,
that I don't expect to like, that's more on the horror side,
but pulls some of those same strings.
The one that Caitlin Deaver was in that has no dialogue almost. Yeah with the aliens one? Yeah. I thought that was fun and scary as hell and bleak as fuck which I kind of enjoyed about it in the end. So anyway I think I get mad about this movie because it's... It's a happy ending, Linda. It's, yeah. For one character. It's opportunity, I think opportunity costs
kind of got me with this movie
because I think Heartnet is like,
look, the more I've watched Trapped,
the more I've watched Trapped,
the more I do really like the Heartnet performance.
And at the end when he's like explaining
his weird sadism to his wife,
I think it's like quite effectively creepy.
I'd watch that movie,
but gotta make it make
just a little bit of sense, a little.
Sorry, I know that's a long rant,
but those are my trapped feelings.
It feels like the frustrating thing about this movie,
yeah, I think what you're saying is there's a better version
of this movie that they could have made
and they just didn't get to that.
They were kind of more focused on the concert, it feels like,
and less on everything else.
Yeah.
Somewhere in an alternate universe where Hollywood is smarter.
And the Emmy nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series are Jet Pakula, Airport Marriott,
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on Dead Pilot Society, the podcast that brings you hilarious comedy pilots that the networks and streamers bought, but never made.
Journey to the alternate television universe
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Oh, darling, why won't you accept my love?
My dear, even though you are a duke, I could never love you.
You... you borrowed a book
from me and never returned it. Save yourself from this terrible fate by listening to Reading Glasses.
We'll help you get those borrowed books back and solve all your other reader problems. Reading
Glasses every Thursday on Maximum Fun. Of course, every week, the Flophouse is sponsored
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But this week, the Flophouse is also sponsored
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And in more Flophouse specific news, we are still in the middle of our FlopTV season,
our series of six one-hour live streaming shows.
You can get tickets at theflophouse.simpletext.com.
This is our second FlopTV season, so we made this season all about sequels on our most
recent episode.
We talked about Caddyshack 2, and along with that movie discussion,
there's also my ode to mediocre films
that used to play on HBO in the 80s,
and Stewart interviewed the most iconic star
of Caddyshack 2, so that's the sort of thing
you can get.
What delights are in store for our next episode
when we discuss Highlander 2, The Quickening?
Well, you'll have to watch to find out.
That one debuts on December 7th, and I say debuts because that's when you
can watch it live and chat along with other viewers if you like to do so, but
it will also be available to ticket holders until the end of our season
which comes at the end of February 2025. Tickets again can be gotten at the
flophouse.simpletext.com
for $7 per individual show,
or you can get a season pass for $35,
which is the equivalent of getting one show for free.
And also new news, that's what makes it news, it's new.
If you prefer seeing us, the Flophouse, truly live
in meat space where you can smell Stewart's various cardigans
and tracksuits, good news.
The Flophouse is coming back to San Francisco SketchFest
in 2025, January 2025.
We were thrilled to be asked back,
and honestly, with how busy Elliot is these days,
this might be one of the only in-person live shows
we can squeeze in for the next several months. So you are interested do not sleep on it, we will be back at Cobbs Comedy Club on Sunday January 19
2025 at 7 p.m. And if you want tickets for that go to SF sketch fest
Comm and you can sort yourself out from there. Back to the show.
Let's move on to letters from listeners.
We got a couple of them.
This one is from Matt Last Name Withheld who writes,
I was recently perusing a record tent at a local flea market
when I stumbled upon an incredible gym,
a pristine promotional copy of the Cobra soundtrack. Oh wow. I don't recall if you mentioned it at your live show but the
soundtrack is back-to-back bangers Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner
impersonations, Jean Mouvoir and Gary Wright deep cuts, sorry, and some
fantastically emotive work by prolific 80s soundtrack composer Sylvester Lavey.
As this album both rules and is not available on Spotify or presumably physically anywhere else on earth,
I plan to cherish it forever or at least until I finally watch the actual movie.
This leads me to ask are there any movie soundtracks that you currently own or have owned in the past?
ROCK in the USA, Matt,
I mean that's a wide open, I don't know about you guys,
as a movie person, I own a lot of soundtracks.
Yeah, your apartment's lousy with them.
You can't walk anywhere without,
please don't step on my soundtracks.
But I feel like you've also gotten, like,
even recently I feel like you've gotten soundtracks
before you saw the movie, right?
In a couple of cases, I got the... We did.
I got the I saw the TV glow soundtrack before I saw the movie because I'm like,
I am pretty sure I'm gonna like this and it is, you know, like the...
There are a lot of limited pressings of these things these days in terms of like,
getting it on vinyl.
It's got a new Drab Magicy song, it rules.
I was gonna highlight a couple things.
That's a good one.
I was gonna say I have,
I love the guest soundtrack specifically.
Oh yeah.
A lot of synth-wavy sounds and alt pop and rock
from a certain period. and I have the house
house who soundtrack which is a great melange of like you know what you might
expect out of a horror movie but also like this I this Japanese idea of what
like a blues song sounds is on the soundtrack and then there's like a lot of
really like peppy jazzy sounds on there too it's just a fun one to go to doing it mix do you
have any soundtracks you like yeah there's it I mean there were two
soundtrack compilations that I got when I was a teenager that I listened to over
and over again and I can stand I and have stuck with me all the time one was
a compilation of Ennio Morricone songs that I got it because it had,
I already had the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack,
and I had the music for the first two
Man with No Name movies,
and then just random songs from other movies,
and then also the Once Upon a Time in the West soundtrack
was in there.
It was a lot of tracks,
and I loved just hearing a title song
or a random song from one of his movies
and just trying to think about what the movie was
that went with this. I think they were all Westerns, but what this was
about. And then similar to that House of Soundtrack, there was a disc I had that was Godzilla movie
music from the first movie until I think the early seventies. And it was great to hear
in each movie, it's kind of like, okay, now here's the kind of jazzy number. Now here's
the torch song number that's about King Caesar of the monster.
Like here's that, like, there's all the having all these different styles in Japanese applied
to songs about monsters.
And they're just very, it just was like, oh, there's so much you could do with this stuff.
It doesn't all have to sound like the same thing over and over again.
So those are two albums I listen to a lot and just kind of would make up my own kind
of movie stories to go with them. What about you, Stuart?
Oh, I mean, you know, I was a teenager in the 90s, which I think was like the heyday
of like, soundtrack CDs, you know, your Tank Girls, your Menace II Society, your aforementioned
Judgment Night, The Crow. Oh, wow. Empire Records. You were a big fan of the Empire
Records soundtrack, right? Front to back.
Let's see.
But yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of like, obviously,
one that I listen to regularly now is To Live and Die in L.A.
All Wang Chung, baby.
Let me see.
I mean, I've listened to a fair amount of the various,
like Johnny Greenwood and the Trent Reznor scores.
Though I guess that's a little different than soundtracks.
Linda?
Linda, what about you?
I will just say, we did an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour
where we talked about best soundtrack albums ever.
And it was fascinating to even try to figure out
what we thought that meant.
And I will just say the four that we picked,
I picked Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Aisha picked Waiting to Overtail.
Steven picked Purple Rain.
And Glenn Weldon, my beloved friend,
chose Superman the movie.
So we talked a lot about kind of all the different things
that go into them, but I also, like Stuart,
just owned a lot of like random ass soundtracks,
especially in the nineties,
because I would hear something and I would like the music
and I would get the CD.
I listened a lot to the League of Their Own soundtrack,
which has a lot of like classics, like takes on classics, like kind of up to some of which are really
garbage. But I listened to it a lot.
I listened a ton to the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack, stuff like that.
A lot of Rom-Pom soundtracks.
The like Tales from the Crypt Demon Knight soundtrack, Dan.
Oh man, that's hard rock and roll on there, boy.
You got it. You got it, buddy.
One that was played a lot in my house growing up,
not by me, was the Forrest Gump double CD soundtrack.
It was as if they took, they like reached their hands
into my dad's head and just pulled out two CDs.
Like, and so I think for him it's like, how did they do it?
They put my memories on disk.
There are a lot of those compilation ones,
like the American Graffiti one.
That's exactly what I was about to say.
The American Graffiti one is just like,
just endless hits and bangers and all hits, no skips,
pretty much if you like that era and that type of music.
I mean, I feel like the big chill is mostly remembered today
as like, oh, all your Motown favorites.
Okay, well, this next question is from Tom
last name was held, who writes,
as a long time listener, some of the Flophouse's
unique phrases have made their way
into my everyday lexicon.
Sorry.
This came to a head when one of my young children
in a fit of anger called me a bad dad soccer dad.
Ah, got him.
I was taken aback by this because I don't listen to episodes with my kids.
That's something a bad dad soccer dad would do.
And I don't recall ever using the phrase around them.
Since then, the phrase has continued to evolve within my family.
My wife has been accused of being a bad mom soccer mom.
And I was eventually redeemed and earned the title of good dad soccer dad.
Oh, thank goodness
Yeah, um
Are there any odd or obscure phrases from a movie or other forms of media that have made their way into your households?
Keep on flopping in the free world tom
Can I do mine? Yes, sure
Okay, I was one of a very tiny number of people who actually watched the fox show married byried by America in the early aughts, in which a bunch of people were thrown together and supposed to get married.
Nobody got married. It's a whole dark chapter in the history of reality dating shows, but
there was an amazing moment in this show, and I wrote recaps of it, which is why I watched
the whole thing.
And there's an amazing moment in this show where this woman, this guy comes out to this woman
he's supposed to marry, he comes outside
and she's sitting in the garden
and he says to her, what you doing?
And she says, eating an apple
cause she's eating an apple.
And there are at least two people in my life
I can think of where if I today said to them,
what you doing?
They would say, eating an apple.
And it's not funny outside of the context
of Married by America,
but in the context of Married by America,
absolutely amazing.
This is a tough one,
because I feel like honestly,
most of the way I communicate is through esoteric references.
So then it's hard to then think of a specific one
whenever asked, but to harken back to-
Yeah, you're like,
I just say skip to Maloo McNuggets all the time.
Yeah.
What percentage are Simpsons?
But a large percentage.
This is not actually so much a specific line reference
or anything, just like a reference to a movie title. This is not actually so much a specific line reference
or anything, just like a reference to a movie title,
but Audrey and I have taken to calling,
you know, if one of us is like gonna go out
and do something on our own during the day,
like have a day, we call it a baby's day out.
Like, oh, you know, you can take a baby's day out, okay.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's a million of these that my wife and I share.
Lately, so I won't try and remember all of them, but lately, a lot of it is me just randomly doing,
you know, anytime we're watching the news and hear a particularly good New York accent,
it makes me have to do my best The Penguin impression.
Just being like, you're a good kid, Vic.
You're a good kid.
I love it.
We have a lot of them in our house too, but I think the one that comes to mind most is
the, is the, something that Laser Wolf says in Fiddler on the Roof where he's talking
about how he doesn't have any bad blood between him and Tevye after Tevye broke his agreement
to marry Tevye's daughter.
And he goes, what's done? And he mimes a butcher's knife chopping off his fingers.
It's done. So sometimes we'll talk about something that can't be changed.
I go, what's done? It's done. And I'll mime a butcher's knife chopping my fingers off.
Love it.
It's so funny because he's a butcher. Everything he knows is butcher stuff.
And it ties into today's movie.
It does.
It does. Because he was trapped today's movie. It does. It does.
Because he was trapped in the shtetl.
Yes, exactly.
Although then they were trapped
by being kicked out of the shtetl.
Let us do our final segment of the show,
which is recommendations.
Would you say tradition is a trap, Elliot?
Well, it's interesting you say that.
Let's get into it.
Because tradition, in some ways, it's the boundaries you can't pass beyond. In some ways, it's the you say that. Let's get into it. Because tradition in some ways,
it's the boundaries you can't pass beyond.
In some ways, it's the structure that holds you up.
Tevye in the beginning, he's saying tradition
is what helps them keep their balance.
But what happens when the world takes the roof away?
How do you keep your balance then?
You have to build new traditions.
I think that's what's gonna happen in my sequel,
Tevye in America.
Tevye goes west.
I mean, it's basically an American tale.
Yeah.
He's got his little six guns.
Oh man, it's great.
Go, go Dan.
Even though...
This is literally something I would, I mean, and the Frisco
kid is a different version of this.
I have literally wanted to do something for years where somewhere, where a Jew
goes from the Pale of Settlement to the Old West, but it's but it's a Herschel that like the legendary, you know, clever Jew who can
out who can outsmart demons and things and I'm like I want to see that guy
dealing with cowboys and stuff but someday I'll have to write it someday,
you know. Yeah even though we you know may not give you a hard side eye if you
decide to spend some time watching trap, this the part I give you a hard cider and say enjoy yourself. Yeah, kick back
This is the part where we recommend movies that you know, also maybe check these ones out
I actually have a quick double recommendation to movies. I saw lately that struck me as
Ones may be good to watch right now
not gonna get deep into into the political landscape,
but there are reasons why I was like,
oh, you know what, these make me feel
a little bit better right now.
One was, I'm gonna take a page from Elliot's book,
recommend Daisy's, check New Wave film.
What a movie.
Which, there's a lot of other stuff going on there,
including political levels that I'm not smart enough
to tease out, but on its very pleasant surface level,
a lot of it is just two women being goofy and having fun.
I think it is so funny that you say on its very pleasant
surface level, because that is an assaultive movie.
Like that movie is assaulting the viewer often.
It is, but in like, you know,
I would say that the thing that, you know,
it's very much its own thing,
but the thing it reminds me of most is say
like a Richard Lester movie, like Hardness Night,
that sort of style.
Like it's anarchy, but it's a lot of fun anarchy
and a lot of beautiful anarchy.
It looks lovely.
A lot of tinted film experiments
and doing different things with stock.
But it's nice to see a movie that has a lot of sort of
joyful silliness with a couple of women at the center.
Also, last night I saw at the New York
documentary film festival our old friend and co-worker
Trayvon free from the Daily Show was in town because he executive produced a
Documentary called all God's children directed by and I apologize if I get the name
Pronunciation a little wrong on D. Timmer who Dig, was what I'd seen her do before.
And this documentary is about a rabbi and a minister
from a black church working together to sort of bridge
racial divides within the two communities in Brooklyn,
and just sort of inviting one another
to like their respective worships.
And it's a movie that is all the more sort of powerful
because it doesn't make, you know,
bridging those divides look easy.
There are parts in the movie where people get very mad
at each other and hurt each other's feelings
and say things that they don't see why it's
hurtful but the other person is hurt.
But it is ultimately joyful and affirming because it shows that these are people who
are committed to understanding each other, committed to learning to love one another
and to overcome sort of external racism
and anti-Sinismism.
And so it made me feel good at a time that I needed to.
So those are the two, Daisy's and All God's Children.
I'm gonna recommend a horror movie called Asriel.
It is set in a like a post-apocalyptic, post-rapture future.
And the characters basically all belong to a religious cult
who have taken a vow of silence.
So there is no dialogue in this movie.
And yeah, it's about a couple that try to leave
this community,
but then get pulled back in.
And there's like monster zombie things running around,
like get drawn by blood or noise or something.
I don't really remember.
It's fun and exciting.
The lead is played by Samara Weaving, who is always great.
She's always great, very captivating performer.
And it goes to some pretty nutty places.
So if that kind of a thing sounds up your alley,
check out Asriel.
I'll go next, I'll go next.
I'm gonna recommend,
because Dan mentioned daisies and seeing two ladies
having fun, being goofy,
I'm going to re-recommend very quickly
Celine and Julie Goh Boating, which I recommended,
I don't know, like a month or two ago,
and which I think of all the movies I've seen this year,
that's probably the one that sticks in my,
sticks on my ribs the most,
and has kept meaning the most to me.
But I'm also gonna recommend a very dumb movie
that I enjoyed recently, which I think I mentioned
on a mini I had been watching, but I can't remember,
which is Tobey Hooper's Life Force
from 1985, which is,
it's based on a novel called The Space Vampires,
and it should have been called The Space Vampires.
It is a very, at times lavishly made,
at times somewhat cheaply made science fiction horror movie
in which astronauts find a spaceship full of vampires in a comet
and the lead vampire is a naked lady and she forms a sort of sexual psychic mind meld with
astronaut Steve Railsback which leads to essentially a remake of Quatermass and the Pit as London falls
under a brainwashing spell and it is a movie that part of the fun of it is watching it spin off the
rails and really like get too big for its britches.
There's a certain point where they're just like, oh, by the way, London is under martial law and we're blowing things up in it.
You're like this movie got escalated fast. But there's some very,
there's very fun moments in it.
There's a lot of great kind of gross special effects in it.
It feels like what it is, which is Tobe Hooper getting given more money than he should probably be playing with at that moment
without a full story. And for those of you who, like me, are
heterosexual men, there's the naked lady in it who's naked for a lot of the movies. So that's life force.
That's life force for you.
Yeah.
Alright, Christmas decision time. Would you rather have one minute on Red One, where the rock and Chris Evans save Christmas after Santa is kidnapped or would you rather have one minute on
hot frosty on Netflix where a woman might fuck frosty the snowman now
frosty gotta be the second one clarity any clarity though are you recommending
red one that's that seems out of real yeah we talked about it yeah we are yeah
it's it's very very silly but I had a great time.
I had a great time.
The Rock acts like he doesn't know it's a comedy.
That's how it works.
I feel like it's gonna end up on our roster eventually, but.
Oh, it very well might.
It very well might.
It would be long.
My kids, when I took them to see The Wild Robot,
which they thought was so-so,
all they could talk about was the Red One trailer
for weeks afterwards.
They brought it up the other day, they wanted,
they're like, can we see Red One?
And I was like, the big Red One?
Like the Samuel Fuller movie?
Like, no, the one with Santa.
And I'm like, I don't know.
Take them to see it in 4DX,
they'll get thrown around and breeze blown in their face.
It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had,
but I had a great time.
Anyway, all right, Hot Frosty.
On Netflix, Lacey Chabert, late of Party of Five,
but also Mean Girls, plays a woman who puts a scarf
around the neck of a hot snowman played by Dustin Milligan,
who played Ted on Shit Street.
Wait, a hot snowman?
Yeah, he's been sculpted like a Greek god.
He comes to life.
He is an innocent because he has never been in the world before.
And she's very embarrassed by him because he doesn't know anything and she has a snowman
following her around.
He is also on the radar of the local police for when he was first brought to life running
around with no clothes on except his scarf. So he is being pursued by local law enforcement,
Craig Robinson and Joe Lotruio as the local police.
It is exactly what it should be.
They made it exactly correctly.
They cared about all the right things
and none of the wrong things.
And it has a great and warmhearted Lindsay Lohan joke,
which I appreciate it.
Hot Frosty on Netflix, absolutely recommend.
Okay, Hot Frosty.
Well, Linda, thank you for cat.
Hot Frosty, weirdly enough, also my Wendy's order.
Okay.
Well, I was saying the other day,
it kind of sounds like what they call it
when somebody kisses you with a slushie in their mouth.
You know? Stuart is slowly turning into Johnny Carson, very slowly. I was saying the other day, it kind of sounds like what they call it when somebody kisses you with a slushie in their mouth.
Stewart is slowly turning into Johnny Carson, very slowly.
Linda, thank you for catching us in your trap of telling us to do trap and then saying yes
when we asked you to be on the guest for trap.
We will be caught in such a trap anytime.
We're delighted whenever you come to the show.
Dan, are they paying you by the use of the word trap?
What's going on?
Yeah, I'm sponsored by traps.
Literally for anything.
Happy to come back to be the defender of Redline.
Well, that's a good idea.
All right.
So yeah, thank you very much for being here.
Thank you also to Alex Smith, our producer.
You can find him by the name how old dotty
On blue sky for instance a place. That's more pleasant to be than other places
And thank you to our network maximum fun
Go to maximum fun org for a lot of other great podcasts on the network
Well funny ones a lot of informative ones check them out
But for the Flophouse, I have been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. I've been Elliott Cailin and we've been joined by Oh Linda Holmes
Okay. Bye. Don't get trapped
Gonna say that every time someone leaves from now. If you do, shred your receipts. We're going to hear a good story.
Yesterday was my birthday.
My parents, that's not the good story.
My parents are both not in a position to remember my birthday anymore and do not call me.
But yesterday for the first time ever, my 26 year old nephew spontaneously called me remember my birthday anymore and do not call me. But yesterday, for the first time
ever, my 26-year-old nephew spontaneously called me on my birthday. Wow. Which was like, he's just
like a young dude who recently ran a triathlon. Wow. Yeah. Upsetting. Well, you know, let the
youth have their triathlons.
I got to get birthday wishes and discuss hydration.
That's how to keep enough salt in your system.
That's one thing I've heard about like long hikes and shit is that if you don't
have enough salt in your body, your body all collapses.
Well, apparently Iron Man, this is an actual Iron Man triathlon, apparently Iron Man made a controversial change
to the energy drink that they hand out on the course.
It used to be Gatorade and now it's some bullshit.
He said it made him sick.
Prime.
What I'm telling you is this was super fun, this phone call.
I just ate half a focaccia panini
with mortadella, burrata, and pesto on it, and I'm like,
this is all the salt I'll ever need to eat.
Okay, guys, only has a heart out.
She told me right before hand.
This is all good stuff for a helix opponent.
No, I know, but it's not part of the show.
I only just started recording on my side.
Let's do a count off.
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