Sarcastic Movie Reviews

I apologize for not having reviewed many films in December, but I just haven’t been in the mood to watch depressing films about child molesters and incest.

To me that’s more of a February thing.

Anyway, as you can guess I’m a bit of a film buff, and recently I decided to watch a classic film to see what all of the fuss was about.

My choice was the classic Alfred Hitchcock flick “North by Northwest”.

I’ve never seen it, but I knew all about the classic crop duster scene which is played ad nauseum whenever someone wants to talk about Cary Grant.

And by people, I mean the elderly because no one else gives a shit.

The premise of NBN is the classic story of mistaken identity wherein an advertising executive named Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a “spy” named George Kaplan and is promptly kidnapped.

If you stopped your VCR (remember, you’re at your grandmother’s house while watching this) right then and there you’d probably look at me and say “What’s wrong with that asshole?”

Listen, I don’t know how the spy game worked in 1859, or 1959, or whatever ancient decade this piece of crap was written in, but I’m pretty sure that there is a more effective way to dispose of a troublesome government agent then to force him to drink liquor and put him behind the wheel of his car on a windy cliff road.

Hell, back in the 50’s that’s how everyone drove home anyway.

You might as well try to kill a Rastafarian with dirty bong water.

What’s wrong with just shooting a guy and dumping his corpse in the river? That’s how half of American marriages end anyway.

To no one’s surprise, this ingenious plot device doesn’t work, and now we get to see some classic 1950’s style acting in which everyone who is drunk starts singing and babbling like they just came out of a meeting of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes.

Roger’s suit is as natty as ever, and his hair is perfect.

I was a doorman at a bar for 10 years.

Here’s what it SHOULD have looked like:

Large stain of piss in the crotchetorial regions (soiled back optional), crust of vomit in the corner of mouth, and hair that looks like a bird’s nest (if the bird in question likes to build a home with cigarette butts, French fries and those tiny plastic swords that hold maraschino cherries).

Basically, we’re talking about Amy Winehouse.

Even more disturbing though is the fact that Cary (who looks like he’s in his fifties) calls his mother to come and get him out of jail.

Dude, you don’t have any friends? You sure as hell don’t have any shame.

Every man on the planet has a secret bank account that one of his friends has access to. In this account goes poker winnings which are stored to get you out of jail, or out of a beating when you’ve spent three hours in the champagne room and discover that you only have 100 bucks in your wallet.

You call your buddy, get your ass bailed out, and when your mom asks you where you were the night before, you tell her it was with a cheap woman and some expensive wine.

Is this something that we invented in the 80’s?

Sheesh.

Well, it gets more ridiculous from here because in the next scene, Roger tracks down the man whose house he was kept in at the United Nations.

Sensing that Jaggermeister Bombs are less effective that actual bombs, the spies decide to throw a knife at Roger, but instead end up killing a diplomat.

Talk about going from one extreme to another!

“Make it look like an accident”, suddenly turns into tossing kitchen knives in broad daylight.

Who the hell is running the planning department with these guys?

What’s the next step, carpet bomb the city and blame Hitler?

Naturally Roger immediately grabs hold of the knife protruding from the diplomat’s back, and in a shrewd bit of foreshadowing, he also leaves behind a semen sample so that DNA can implicate him in the killing thirty years later.

When people turn and look all that anyone sees is Roger holding the knife.

Ya, I was going to write something sarcastic, but really… what’s the point?

Roger is on the run and he jumps on a train whereupon he meets the biggest whore on the planet named Eve Kendall, who immediately hides him in her room and then helps him elude the police.

Train sluts.

If you think they’re a rare bird then go watch “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Amtrak is a rolling brothel.

Ahhh, but you say… Eve is really a double agent and is working for the spies.

Again I would like to point out that the planning department at the spy agency is going through some kind of internal power struggle, because now we’re back to trying to kill Roger with venereal diseases, or death by hickey.

Where’s Stabby Mcgee? The man is on a train for fuck’s sake. It’s a long metal tube about fifteen feet wide. Even if you throw the knife and miss him, it will probably bounce off the wall and get him on the rebound.

A shotgun would be pretty effective here.

Let’s eavesdrop on the planning department shall we?

“Ya, so I know that the gin and tonic didn’t work, and the knife thing sucked, and the whore is useless, but now I have an ingenious idea.”

“Well good, because quite honestly we were thinking of letting you go. What’s the new idea?”

“Death by crop duster.”

“Miss Johnson? Can you get Monster.com on the phone?”

“No wait… hear me out… We lure him out to the middle of nowhere see, and he stands at the crossroads. Then when he’s alone, we fly a plane down really low and try to cut him in half. We may or may not have a machine gun on the plane, that may or may not shoot at him on every third pass, and if he hides in the reeds we’ll spray him with chemicals!! He’ll die of cancer in twenty years.”

“Everyone smokes like a chimney in 1958. We’ll ALL be dead of cancer in twenty years.”

“Oh… um…”

“Well, we’ll give this idea one more chance, but make sure you hire a good pilot. I don’t want some idiot who just learned how to fly and ends up hitting a gasoline tanker truck in the middle of the prairies.”

This people, is the most talked about scene in the film. You’ve all seen it, and now you too can marvel at the stupidity of it all.

How are you going to make this look like an accident? You’ll either cut him in half (very inconspicuous) or you’ll shoot him from a passing plane.

This is the one bone fide moment when they can pull up in a tank and roast him with a flame thrower and there are no witnesses!!

Oh, I can just anticipate the hateful emails flooding in as I type this.

Of course, they’re all going to be signed “Tilley”, or “Edna” or will be written by a cat but in the end you know I’m right.

Anyway, the cavalcade of stupidity rolls on and now we discover that Eve is really a double spy working for the government and is in fact not trying to kill Roger even though the bitch totally set him up for the crop duster hit.

Roger, after getting boned on the train forgives all, and when he learns that Eve is in danger from the real spies runs up Mount Rushmore (apparently they have luxury condos on Washington’s forehead) and rescues her.

Fade to black.

I repeat… OLD MOVIES SUCK!!

2 stars out of 5.