The Worst Idea Of All Time - REVIEW: Santa With Muscles

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

This was originally a pay-walled episode available only to Patreon supporters. Please consider if you can #PayTheBoiz at patreon.com/join/TWIOAT.It's 1996 and Hulk Hogan is a big, big star. Jordan Belfort is a film producer. And a young girl named Mila Kunis has just landed her first big screen role. Now it's 2019. A devastatingly hung over man named Tim Batt and his airport-dwelling pal, Guy Montgomery attempt to unpick the convoluted plot of a film involving four different mad scientists, an orphanage and, for some reason, quartz crystals.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the season of Santa, there are two kinds of people, the naughty and the nice. Santa! What? It's showtime. Now, this confused bad boy is Santa. Hello and welcome to the final edition of the Patreon Pal Christmas Treehouse Festival of Shit. Brought to you by a very laggy internet connection that conjoins you two fellas

Timbo in Auckland, New Zealand and Guybo in, I believe Los Angeles? That's right, I'm coming to you live from LAX, the Departure Lounge, so you're going to be getting quite a bit of atmos here.

It's not one of these modern, quiet airports. They announce everything over the loudspeaker. You know, there's a lot of hustle and bustle. There's families. There's a lot of, I've got to tell you, Tim, there's a lot of people traveling around the holidays. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah.

A lot of people very excited to go to new places. Some return to old places. But all of that amounts to, you you know a solid hour and a half uh waiting to show them that i don't have any water in my water bottle i've got a i've got uh some pistachios that i won't be able to eat for the duration of the podcast and a lovely beer that i will look at as i sort of uh desperately want to sip it for those of you wondering why I don't have these in my hands, I'm holding up the microphone on which I'm recording the podcast in my left hand and the phone microphone

through which Tim can hear me in the right. We should be better at this by now, but we're just not. But we get it done is the main thing. I would begrudge you not at all. You've got to have that beer, man, at some point. You've got to put something down and grab that beer. You've got to. It's the holiday season.

Well, the good news is I'll wait for you to get on a run because we have quite a, I don't want to say cultural outlier, but certainly we've got a cultural, is it even an oddity? Probably not for the time. But you put the vote to the people of Twitter, and a whole variety of nominations for awful Christmas movies were put forth. And you told me to select the winner, which I did based on name alone. I went with Santa with muscles.

Yes. Would you like me to try and do a rundown of what this film is? By all means. Please, just before you do, I'll just quickly tell you why I went for Santa with muscles. Oh, there you go. One of these people's flights is being delayed, and you've got to imagine that someone's going to be hurting because of that. Not the bulk of flyers, but certainly one or two with connecting flights,

maybe booked in alternative airlines. I mean, these little delays, they really add up, and they'll cost you, especially around the holidays. Absolutely devastating news for some other flyer. Center with Muscles, to me, it's a 1996 film starring hulk hogan the title sort of foreshadows i think a relatively popular meme format now which is like uh make it such and such but with this you know yeah uh and for that reason alone i was like send it with muscles well i love to see how this plays out um and i I mean, that I did.

I watched it this morning. I woke up at 6.30 a.m. for a screening. No better company in bed than 1996-era Hulk Hogan at 6.30 a.m. I'll now hand the reins over to you for, I guess, a summation on what the meat and potatoes of this film actually is. Also, so I went digging around for us to where we could watch this movie um if it was on streaming platforms or what have you which is quite hard with this type of film from this kind of era these sort of 90s shithouse um cash grabs they're quite they're the kind of thing that used to be at your video store but they're a little bit harder to

find on uh streaming platforms now so it's digging around digging around uh no one seemed to have it and then someone's just uploaded the entire movie on youtube so i watched uh watched a youtube video of um center with muscles thank you to whoever uploaded that basically uh this 90 I'm guessing 6 minute film is, it's about class struggle, ultimately that only becomes apparent at the end this movie is fucking bananas, it's real crazy so Hulk Hogan

who is now Hollywood Hogan I think, but at the time was Hulk Hogan is a rich what is he? He's some sort of like fitness magnate i think uh and he's got a whole lot of branded foods and supplements and he keeps spouting off rules like he's sort of a semi-motivational speaker as well so he's probably got books on tape as was the time and he lives in a big big house a big mansion and he's got a all these people

helping him out but the opening so the opening opening shot of this film is a voiceover of a very cute sounding little girl's voice writing a letter to santa telling her telling him about um how the orphanage is going to get taken away and if Santa can do anything about it and then cut to the real opening of the film and it's just Hulk Hogan getting attacked by six different guys there's a chef there's a limo driver there's what else is there there's there's other professions it's kind of the village people just attack him. Everyone very much in their uniform. And then he, you think he's in danger, but he kicks everyone's ass and it's great and we're cheering. And it's some of the worst camera work

that I've seen in the festival of shit. Probably the worst, actually. Real ranky, handheld, looks very VHS, home video style. And then he goes, you know, you think he's in danger and he's fought his way out and it's all good. But then he goes, he clicks stop on his stopwatch. He goes, four minutes 23. You call that exercise?

So this whole setup is like what he does every morning. He just goes and kicks the asses of his staff in a very physical way to kick the day off. Can we start a moment to just applaud the multifaceted skills required to be a member of Hulk Hogan's character's employ? Because presumably not only do these people have to fight him every morning, but they also then have to fulfill their ordinary tasks. So he's had to somehow cast his employment net wide enough

for a chef, a limo driver, various different village people, you know, a firefighter, a Native American, the whole gang, a lumberjack, all who are capable of performing that job to the highest degree. Like, this is a man who does not suffer fools lightly. They've got to be the best in field at their chosen profession and also sort of a professional-grade fighter. Yeah.

And also, just quickly to go back to the very, very opening when that young girl's writing a letter, I think for how clunky it is, you've also got to applaud the efficiency of storytelling it really frames the movie not that that's obvious immediately but um it really does like it just says hey here are the stakes we've got an orphanage we want to save it this is the name of the bad guy i'm looking to send her for help like everything that you need to know about the movie is communicated within the first 30 seconds it's true you can't fault them for brevity uh it's

the iterations being on there it's good storytelling you're right i mean it's very it's kind of the coward's way out it's a real shortcut um it's what you do when you don't know how to how to make a film properly but it you know it works i guess connects the dots i just i had such a bad time with this movie man this is my least favorite of all of them oh wow terrible no no no this was much better than the christmas with the cranks there was a lot of fun to be had here it was cartoonish like the whole thing could have been rendered in animation and it wouldn't have made one jot of difference. I was astounded at how bad Hulk Hogan was at acting. Yes.

Like he was fucking terrible. Every line was a dunger. Yeah. It's, I think it's not rare to see bad acting, but it's rare to see sort of standout bad acting and it really did jump off the screen like it was almost as though he was doing his first pass at all of the lines uh you know what he would have done when he first got given the script and the director ran through them with him and hulk would read them and he'd go yeah yeah yeah do you want to do that again hulk go nah we'll get it on the day but uh you know lo and behold he did not stick a single one of those lines on the day it was it was definitely one of the worst acting performances i've seen in a while and he's also there was one

but you go ahead sorry no you go ahead guy i want to hear the second bit i was gonna say he was surrounded by um talent and people not necessarily putting their best foot forward but certainly um serviceable performances from like you know the very thinly drawn characters but people at least showing up and fucking you know making a go of it few familiar faces in this flick as well, Guy. The villain is Sitwell from Arrested Development, which was great to see. Yeah, that was really fun to see. And also, he is, to me, best remembered as the dad,

like Amber Heard, I think was her name. Seth Rogen's, in Pineapple Express, the high school student that Seth Rogen is dating, who's played by Amber Heard, it's her very forcefully angry dad who fires a gun at Seth Rogen and James Franco in the movie, do you remember that?

Vaguely, I remember very little of that film. And then they're leaving because they're under siege and Seth Rogen tries to get in the car and he goes, what the fuck would make you think you're getting in or something? He's really funny, he's a fun guy. He he is he's a really good actor and even in this he's like he's doing the best with what he's been given um also a little surprise treat this has got to be one of the earliest appearance appearances of mila kunis absolutely um, I feel like it's, I mean, I did a very little bit of,

oh, see, bloody heck, you know, it's chaos here at LAX. I don't know if you're picking up on these cancellations and delays, but it's going to be a lot of bloody, you know, upset folks around the Christmas tree if this efficiency has its way with them. I wish I could just talk about the movie, but I've chosen a spot due to circumstances that is literally right under the speaker, so it's very difficult for me to maintain focus. But in my digging, I discovered that Mila Kunis, I think this was her first role, digging I discovered that Mila Kunis, I think this was her first role

and later on and reflecting on the film she didn't realise at the time how significant it was to be in a Hulk Hogan movie because I suppose in terms of the wrestling world, like Hulk Hogan, I'm pretty sure he's been cancelled now, hasn't he?

He certainly had his brushes with societal norms and running afoul of them, that's for sure He's still walking around, don't get me wrong But I think the guy's reputation is in tatters But in a way, he would have helped pave the way for guys like The Rock He was the pinnacle of the wrestling world And then launched this crossover into acting

And yeah, she was oblivious to the significance of acting in a movie with him at the time and it wasn't until reflection that she sort of could take stock she's like holy shit that's absolutely right i mean for for the younger listeners hulk hogan was a fucking superstar in the 90s like he was it was bart simpson and hulk h Those would be your two lunchboxes. Those would be your choices. I don't think there's ever been as big a crossover hit in wrestling's lifetime. And they're getting real good at it now. The whole spectacle

of the WWE. The Rock is the biggest crossover hit. The Rock's like the biggest. Oh, that's true. He's the biggest movie star in the world. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. So, the plot, Monty. What is it? It's thick.

It's dense. It's soupy. It's weird. It's, I can't, there's bits, so I watched this like a few hours ago, and there's bits, like I know the visuals of things that happened in the scene, but they don't make any contextual sense to me. So I'm going to throw out what I remember happening, and maybe you try and help me figure out why that happened. the scene, but they don't make any contextual sense to me. So I'm going to throw out what I remember happening and maybe you try and help me figure out why that happened.

With pleasure. Why is he in a car, like, shooting a gun or being chased by the police or something at the start? So he's a fun guy. He's a sort of quite conceited, you know, self-obsessed billionaire or millionaire, whatever, who he plays by his own rules and he lives at his own pace. And so after his rigorous workout in which he disarmed several different employees,

he was like, it's paintball time. And even before that, he rejects the idea. His butler says hey this organisation want to know if they can use your mansion for a charity event around Christmas and he goes no no no FM it's time to play paintball

establishing the idea that he's sort of he doesn't give two hoots about any of society outside of his very limited circle and so him and some guys they put on army fatigues or whatever and they they go out and they start playing paintball um initially in a private area but they sort of take it to the streets pretty quickly and uh at some point they kick it up a notch he's a pretty famous actor that that guy who

plays the main cop who sort of catches of catches Hulk Hogan speeding past him? Did you recognize him? Should I look up? I did recognize. Do you know what's weird? I did recognize him for sure. I don't know who he is, but I'm going to look him up now. But there's that kind of character type portrayed in Van Wilder.

The college cop. What are they called? Like the campus cop. Campus security or something. Yeah, it's not him, but it's their exact style of person and role. Well, in addition to that, I also thought to one of your favorites, Van Wilder, when Hulk Hogan starts rattling off his rules,

and he says, write that down or something. Yeah, true. I mean, absolute shades of Van Wilder. This was the original Van Wilder. Oh, okay. I'm in the cast list now, mate. So, does the name... I can't find him, guy.

I was trying to pad for time, but I can't find him. Really? Well, he's not in the main bit I'll tell you Lenny or Leonard is Don Stark He's also been in Curb Your Enthusiasm Yeah he's been in everything

He was also in that 70s show with Mila Kunis Of course He was Thingy's dad Not Eric's dad shit someone else no no no the woman

Donna I think it's Donna's dad it's the one that Red hates god this has gone off the rails immediately but yeah look Famous Faces

you love to see him in there doing a terrible job in this terrible film. So the paintball is ensuing, and I think they fire one at a cop car, windscreen, which is just great. What a cool attitude to have in a kid's movie to the law. Just like, ah, fuck this guy.

Just a mess with a cop, shoots a paintball pallet onto his windscreen, which causes him to... Yeah? For a trained police officer, this cop does not handle one paintball pallet hitting his windshield very well at all. He immediately turns the wipers on

and smears it across the entire windscreen. Instead of just breaking or, you know, putting his head out the window, crashes the car. I mean... Yeah, dramatically. Yeah, it's a silly movie, of course, but I've got to say, he did not do himself proud.

I've got to be honest, Hulk, who I assume wrote this movie, not very believable. But we're introduced to this cop being a fucking idiot pretty early on, because he's got a speed gun just on an empty road, and he's just playing with it making laser sounds to himself there's a lot of moments of that as well in this film where there's really old men like 50 year old men making children's noises for like too long in a scene there's a lot of suggestions that they didn't have the minute

duration to get across the line and they needed to make it 90 minutes and so they just sort of elongated a bunch of stuff needlessly um so that happens and then uh so the cops start chasing him and then he goes into the mall loses his fatigues finds a santa outfit to ditch the fuzz um he's holding on to this is how bad hulk hogan's acting is he's holding on to a rubber chute like he's put his body down he's hanging on with his hands to just keep him hanging there and like he's not even good at hand acting because his hands are in no way supporting any kind of weight they're just like flat he's obviously just standing on a chair on the other side of this wall. So you see his hands there. He slips, he falls, gets a massive concussion. And in a narrative feature, which is very popular to the sort of 80s, 90s children's film genre,

and I'd like to see returned to actually, frankly, Monty, he gets selective amnesia and forgets who the hell he is. And sort of, well, he gets pickpocketed by one of Santa's elves who comes upon him in the mall. And then Santa's elves, the aforementioned Lenny, Don Stark, I wouldn't say befriends because he's robbing him, but he sort of buddies up with him and is like, no, you're the mall Santa now, let's get out there. They appear to rapturous applause.

Yeah, he spies an opportunity, though. He's a very cunning elf. And it's also been established that he owes money to the villain who was outlined at the very start of the movie by the cute young girl's voiceover. So they're already bringing all of these component parts together they've got a pretty strong blueprint for just at least competent storytelling and yet somehow they find a way to fritter away what little they've done um but he he latches on to

hulk hogan's character because he realizes he's quite a famous sort of millionaire and so he he says he looks at his idea and he goes holy hell i've hit the jackpot here he's got amnesia he doesn't know who he is he gets dressed as santa he takes him out to the mall and then also while uh hulk hogan's fulfilling his santa duties at this mall because the original santa hasn't shown up so all these kids are waiting they're baying for blood he takes the credit card to the atm and tries to withdraw cash but um for 1996 it's pretty secure technology, it requires a thumbprint to withdraw funds

which is a technology that is still not applied today, I don't know if you have to meet a certain threshold of money inside of your account but I guess with anything you can take a stab in the dark at what technology the future holds but I've not seen the like of what they're using in this

film at all the suggestion is that hulk hogan's character is at some sort of platinum tier of service where they're creating atms just for him um with a thumbprint scanner on it that not only have a thumbprint scanner but also talk um so they they welcome him to the atm they greet they have essentially like a greater voice built in which i've got to say in terms of you know security for such a device that's dealing with your money probably not the best idea in the world but hey it's a family movie you do what you want absolutely so then he's gutted because he's obviously got this roadblock preventing him from clearing out hulk hogan's cards, of which there are many. So he continues to pal around with Hulk, who's now just very confused about who he is.

At no point does he sort of entertain the idea seriously that he's Santa. They sort of, they play with this idea very weirdly, but it's kind of the suggestion is that he doesn't at any stage actually believe that but there's some little kids uh at the orphanage who do later on um what the fuck happens next so he goes oh he beats the shit out of some uh mall thieves yeah i just want to say in reference to his his understanding of him being santa it's uh i guess they they they tread a pretty fine line they sort of bring it up enough to make the audience think about it but not so much that i actually explain his relationship to understanding who he is he's just told his center and he goes along with it because i guess

all right he sort of his curiosity to find out who he is dies pretty quickly and he just goes along with whatever's laid in front of him um yeah and yeah yeah it's more that it's like well i'm wearing this suit so i guess you can call me santa i guess i'm santa claus so just call me santa and then everyone just addresses him as santa from then on in yeah but then so yeah soon after that while he's uh posing for photos with the kids, there are these two young thugs, mall rats who go to steal from a woman who's raising

charity for the aforementioned orphanage and Hulk Hogan stops them and in doing so, draws great media attention to the orphanage this is the same orphanage that our villain wants to take over for reasons somewhat unexplained to us at this point and it very neatly ties Hulk Hogan's character to the orphanage there's now

a reason for him to go there there's a reason for a relationship to start there and that's when the movie really gets into the fun and game section I'd also like to add that while it makes some sense for Hulk Hogan to spend time at the orphanage maybe even sleep over the night um is it lenny the elf yep this is a man who has no place in or around the orphanage essentially the orphanage has taken in two starways a mall santa and lower yet a mall elf and um just decided to accommodate them i mean this is pretty high risk stuff from an orphanage i gotta say if if if there are two people who i'd be on high alert and letting into the the building it would be um it would be exactly who they let in you know yeah they're not doing the best job of looking after these vulnerable children, but it seems like everyone's having a good, happy time in there.

So, you know, if it works, it works, I guess. It's worked up until this point. Yeah, yeah. The less questions asked, the better. But, and I'm saying that as an audience member you know examining the plot not as the head of an orphanage uh with regards to letting adults just come and stay i just want to be clear there i just remembered a line monty uh when lenny when lenny steals hogan's wallet and realizes who he is

and he says blake thorne he's the richest man in 10 states such a weird there's so many weird bits of dialogue in this movie usually delivered by that character which makes me think i don't know maybe he was punching up the lines or something um another one that's the most sense I've heard anyone make all night. I don't know what it was about that, but it's like there's too, too many words in there somewhere or something. Yeah. There's also a great run of like Christmassy puns or Christmas inspired puns.

But I don't want to get to that yet because a lot of those are spoken by my favorite characters in the movie, which we'll get to in due course oh yes okay so is this the bit where okay so we're they're at the orphanage now they're living there um we're introduced to leslie who's the very nice lady who looks after these there's about four kids and a guy called clayton who's sort of the um i don't know manager effectively he's he's he's running guy called clayton who's sort of the um i don't know manager effectively he's he's he's running the shop and leslie's looking after the kids and um the orphanage is in peril which we know i feel like i blinked and missed the bit of dialogue which explained exactly why sitwell was trying to get um that orphanage uh something about he's got all the surrounding land but i i don't know

what it gets revealed later so don't worry we'll we'll get to it yeah it's deliberately unclear so amongst all of this action unfolding we get a few cutaways to the sit well or his character's called emina frost They call him Frost. And he's sort of got this army of cartoon villains as his henchmen, and he's got a map of the surrounding areas of the orphanage, and he's crossed a lot of the areas off, because obviously he's accrued wealth, and he's bought people off,

or he's cajoled or bullied people out of their property. And the orphanage is standing strong. And, I mean, for how militant the cops are in policing people playing paintball on the outskirts of town, I've got to say they do very little for extortion and sort of like breaking and entering, trespassing, and a variety of much higher crimes and misdemeanors that are more or less taking place right under their nose and all of the people who these crimes are happening to

do an incredibly poor job of communicating any of it to the authorities it's that classic b90s movie thing of um we'll just take care of all of it ourselves i feel like it was reflective of a fear at the time because crime was really high back then, and it was very talked about. So the way that it sort of trickled down into these family movies is all the cops are massively incompetent, and it's up to the kids and some one plucky adult that they find to take down the villains. But it's the same thing in Ernest.

All the cops are incredibly shit. Yeah, I guess i understand that but they like we aren't and i guess they do kind of show that the cops are shit in the initial chase scene but they're not shown to be specifically shit with regards to helping solve the problems that the orphanage are facing anyway let's by the by uh so from let's talk about this gaggle of scientists monty because i'm picking that was your favorite um bundle of characters this is the four of them this was the part they're so good that made it feel like um we were watching a cartoon like these could have been captain planet style villains where they're all given one sort of point of focus and that is their

only defining character trait so there's Dr Blight who's like uh this British right-hand man this very thin pseudo-scientist who comes out with all sorts of corny lines uh and you're right over there I'm so hungover I just had to adjust everything so i could sit back in my chair i'm struggling uh this sort of enforcer this very thin enforcer and then you've got these three other characters who they're all meant to i mean i guess the kids movie but they meant to be really imposing but all of their um torture techniques are like incredibly harmless and ineffective they're just you know full of mild annoyances you've got uh dr vile who's sort of this crazy um this guy who loves bad smells so he's always he's always showing up and making

uh you know the the victims of these crimes smell bad smells. He's a fart man. Dr. What. He's a classic villainous archetype. Dr. What, she's got gloves that have static electricity in them, I guess, and so she can give you a little bit of a shock. And then you've got Dr. Flint, who's this thin sort of guy like just a bit like an old school khaki safari major uh and i can't even remember what he's meant to do what does he do

was he the guy who was just giggling all the time like a fucking madman or was that dr vile dr vile loves to giggle this other thin guy i can't even remember what he does but they they show up intimately to very ineffectively um impose themselves on anyone except oh yeah you you say ineffectively except for one fight scene in a clock tower against hulk hogan himself and i tell you what the leader of this little band what's his name again the yeah dr blight he fucking throws down he is matching hulk hogan punch for punch for a lot of it absolutely uh and that that yeah that comes later in the film but pretty much what we've got laid out now in front of us right is we've got an orphanage we've got hulk hogan and lenny uh assisting the orphanage. Hulk Hogan due to amnesia and genuine goodwill built up between him and the children

and the suggestion of a romantic relationship between him and Leslie who runs the orphanage. We've got Lenny sticking around for his own selfish reasons because he still wants to try and get some money out of Hulk Hogan's character, steal from him. And then the orphans, including Mila Kunis, and they are battling it out against Frost and his lackeys, who are, by any means necessary, doing what they can to take control of the property. And they somehow make this part of the movie last for 70 minutes, I would say. Ever? Yeah.

It's very weird. I'm like, I can't believe I just saw this film and I still, I can't piece it together in my brain at all, like what happens when. What were you doing last night? So, we went to a little party just kicked on probably a bit later than i should have here's another so when they're in the orphanage the children repair hulk hogan and lenny's clothes um which is very nice of them it's megaloconus actually she sorts it out but she's also kind of sassy which is cool that's a fun that's a fun kid to put in a movie um lenny asks if his suit's ready

yet and she gives him the bloody razz big time um where was i going with that fuck i'm hung over he gets a cool and what becomes very iconic sleeveless Santa vest, which if you've seen the poster for this movie, that's what Hulk Hogan is wearing at the time. I was leading up to something, Monty, but it's gone. Hey, don't worry too much. Oh, that's right, that's right. The pyjamas, the pyjamas. So while the soul...

So these two random dudes have shown up. One dressed as a dirty santa the other dressed as a dirty elf dirty santa doesn't know his own fucking name which is terrifying considering the man's age and size and the fact that you've got the wardship of these vulnerable children uh but you're like hey you guys should definitely sleep here overnight seems like a great idea um so they do and while their costumes are being repaired they have to sleep in some I guess they're like a dress up box costume nativity scene stuff

so Hulk Hogan is wearing like a Jesus robe like a sort of Messiah's robe which Lenny is giving him a lot of shit about especially considering that Lenny is in a goddamn Easter Bunny outfit and the line that Lenny says because a goddamn Easter bunny outfit. And the line that Lenny says, because I did write this down,

and you hear the entire thing said in the movie, where is it now? Am I a sheep? Am I a bunny? Which one of these two things? This is such a weird thing to say, all of those words. Am I a sheep? Am I a bunny?

Which one of these two things? I'm glad that it got you. He's a madman. Yeah, it's sort of, the whole thing just doesn't make sense. It's not just the plot of the movie, but its production at all. I suppose they've buried the budget from the internet, so you don't know what it cost but it only pulled back about $220,000. And I don't know if you've stuck around like I have

but one of the producers was actually the Wolf of Wall Street himself, Jordan Belfort who Leonardo DiCaprio plays in the movie. I don't know or remember what the timeline of Jordan Belffort's career is whether or not this was before or after his comeuppance for his villainy but um surely before he's not producing movies after he's been convicted well he's back out in the wild now though isn't he's a public speaker it's true i reckon this was before man i reckon he fucking embezzled hulk's bucks his movie bucks

yeah i um any that's just sort of a little piece of trivia but pretty much what you get in the 70 minutes of uh the plot slowly unfurling itself is a series of uh very lame pratfalls and hijinks in which the orphans and Hulk Hogan slowly assert themselves over this crew of villains. And there's not a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. You said yours. My biggest laugh was actually much, much later in the film when things escalate again. So at some point, Hulk Hogan's character,

how does he remember who he is again? Does he get concussed a second time? Yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. So in that fight scene you described, he falls from this clock tower into a rubbish truck and lands on a pile of rubbish and sees a... Garbage truck guy.

You're in America, for God's sake. Have some self-respect. I must apologize. And he lands in a garbage truck. And inside of the garbage truck is like an empty packet of one of his protein supplements or whatever. And he goes, oh, that's right. That's who I am. And he goes home.

But he can't quite return to his old feelings. He can't shake the feeling that he's needed. And so he returns to the orphanage. And through this sort of amnesia led concussion we are to believe that he's become a better person and uh he's driving his car back to the orphanage the same car that started a car chase before and the same cop from earlier in the movie sees him and goes all right this time i'm coming and starts chasing him and a whole squadron of people join in for you know yeah whatever reasons for slapstick reasons i guess and at one point uh he's sort of been cut off at one end of the street

and the other he's he's cornered essentially by cops and one of them takes out uh bazooka yes he doesn't know why a rocket propelled grenade launch he does not know why he's chasing this man but he knows he wants it he wants him dead so he takes out a bazooka and lines it up and hogan's character very swiftly just swerves around this missile that is traveling i guess pretty slowly for a missile and it winds up exploding the original cop's car and that in and of itself is not super funny but later on the cop shows up again and you know your assumption would be that the car would not be operational anymore but the props department have really outdone themselves props and arts fucking hats off

ah hugely they sort of have rendered just this uh charred shell and axle and chassis of a car it's in total disarray and after you know 80 mirthless minutes of sort of vaguely enjoying the movie i actually audibly laughed um and i guess in a manner of speaking that would be my shining light if such a thing exists can i can i suggest that the thing that really uh you know made that what it was was the window screen wipers still operational without any kind of doors, a roof, a windscreen, but there's windscreen wipers going on the shell of a car? You know what?

Because that really set me off. You are not wrong. It was bloody good. Anyway. That bazooka bit I thought was incredibly funny unto itself. I genuinely cracked up. Because they show the car exploding in beautiful action movie Michael Bay level detail. Like you get to see this cop car explode.

This is going to cost 60 grand right there by itself. Look at all those explosives and the people who know how to use it in a film. My god. It was great. That was quality. There was some pretty wonky CGI going on. Look, I can't be bothered articulating all of the ways this is. There's more.

Ugh. There's just one big other bit that we haven't gotten into, which we need to, and that is the catacombs that are beneath the orphanage so i haven't quite teased out if this was known to frost um the villain aka sit well absolutely uh aka ebner did he know it he knows it because it's the same stuff that's under all the surrounding buildings as well so it's part of some large by the way that substance yeah is quartz the most worthless of all the crystals but me lacunas's character runs in there like a regular lisa simpson and explains to everyone that uh they're quartz crystals and surely must

be worth millions of dollars i was like no they're fucking not courts are common as hell they're everywhere and these courts are pretty magic courts too they've got some sort of electricity generating properties to them um which spoiler alert culminates in uh the whole entire orphanage exploding and falling into itself like it's like a scene out of um ghostbusters when you see the uh when that destroys all or whatever and all the stuff goes back up to the sky breaks off off the buildings it's like that oh my god they worked so hard on the cgi for that as well it is incredible a lot of puppets a lot of models i think i was trying to figure out how they did it and look pretty good pretty pretty good um but it was just such a

ridiculous premise here's my question to you guy montgomery is the only other person i know who's seen santa with muscles today hulk hogan and the kids and and Leslie go into the catacombs and there is a safe in the middle of the movie the combination is 8 24 16 the kids have somehow figured out the first three of four numbers that they need to put into a dial to open the safe to get access to the catacombs they've never been able to do it before but hulk hogan goes 8 24 16 i know and then dials it to a number which is never revealed and opens the door how does he know what the other number was uh it's implied that there's some sort of relationship between that safe and his uh his wealth, or perhaps even something to do with either his persona,

like through the amnesia, it triggers some sort of memory about some lock he has for a safe, or alternatively it might be because this is also revealed that he himself, unbeknownst to him, grew up in that orphanage, and so maybe he he retained that well but no he didn't he didn't grow up in the orphanage i don't think because this is this is what led me with my openness saying that this is actually a um a class story because frost aka sitwell our

villain who's employed all of these dastardly scientists to attack children in Hulk Hogan, he is the orphan who grew up at the orphanage and he keeps saying at the very end of the movie that Hulk and he were friends as kids but he's jealous because Hulk had all this money that he inherited from his parents

and that's how he got his start in life Hulk got adopted by a wealthy family is what I was led to believe. Oh, T-Rex. I honestly am so impressed that this movie managed to put you out of your depth. I cannot imagine the fun and merriment that you experienced last night that has reduced you to such a puddle of a person. Someone who's, you know, part of their livelihood is derived from

watching critiquing and discussing cinema has struggled to put together one of the most you know needlessly convoluted but ultimately straightforward films i've ever seen yeah everything you're saying is correct and you're right to razz me. This movie challenged me and that itself is devastating and just if you watch Santa with Muscles you'll know just how much I got owned by the festive spirit. No one's watching this movie on the back of this. I chose it for its name

I don't regret it I kind of enjoyed it but it's certainly none of the things we've seen. What did we watch? We watched Ernest Saves Christmas, Christmas with the Cranks. Christmas with the Cranks. Santa with Muscles. And was there another one?

There was. Yeah. What the fuck was it? It was the Matthew Broderick movie. Oh, Deck the Halls. Deck the Halls was the best. If you're going to watch one, watch Deck the Halls. Is this coming out on or around Christmas?

Yeah. Well, fucking Deck the Halls. Is this coming out on or around Christmas? Yeah. Well, fucking Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy holidays. Whatever you celebrate, celebrate it well. Don't celebrate as well as I was celebrating last night. Maybe three quarters of what I did. But enjoy yourself. And I know that you might not want me to do this,

but I'm tired of using two hands to hold up two microphones and just looking at a beer. So I want to put a pin in this conversation. Go at it, mate. You've earned it. But the next time we record, I'm imagining we won't be contesting with any such lag. We'll be sitting side by side, riding together once

more. What a thing. Truly a Christmas miracle. So everyone have a wonderful day, night, morning, whatever you're doing. Tim, I hope you feel better. I hope you have a fantastic afternoon. Love to all. Thank you. And to all a good night.

With muscles. Hulk Hogan is Santa with an attitude. Keep the milk and cookies warm. Santa with some friends. See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya. Santa with a mission. How are we supposed to get over this? And most of all, he's Santa with muscles.

They can't start Christmas without me. Can they? Santa with muscles.