Ep. #424 - Baby Geniuses, with Linda Holmes

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] Hey there, floppers. This is Elliot speaking. Before we begin this week's, let's be nice and call it nonsense. I just wanted to make sure you knew about the live show stuff we have coming up in case you miss it later in the episode or just can't wait to hear about it.

[0:12] We are still in the streaming window for the Flophouse Sinks Speed 2, our virtual online video event. Just go to stagepilot.com slash speed and you'll be able to see that whole show with exclusive footage that the in-theater audience didn't get to see through May 19th. After May 19th, of course, it goes back to the Flophouse vault where it will never be seen again for a long time.

[0:35] Then on May 24th, we will be in Oxford, England as part of the Saint Audio Podcast Festival. We're doing two shows in one night, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., two totally different shows, totally different movies, totally different presentations, totally different questions. It'll be great.

[0:48] And then for something even more completely different, on July 26th, we will be in Boston in person at WBUR City Space. We don't know what movie we're doing yet, but it'll be a fun show. It's going to be all new stuff. You're going to love it.

[1:00] So that's the Flophouse Sinks Speed 2 streaming now in Oxford, May 24th, and in Boston, July 26th. And now, on with our regular nonsense.

[1:09] On this episode, we discuss baby geniuses.

[1:12] Not like normal babies that are dumbasses.

[1:16] That's right.

[1:30] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy

[1:44] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:48] And guys, before we say anything else, before we say anything else, anything else like how the weather is, how are we doing, watching the news these days, those clowns in Congress, before we say anything else.

[1:59] Before we say anything about the biodiversity in the world today, all the way from alligators to zebras with tapirs almost in the middle.

Dan McCoy

[2:06] Nothing is being said.

Elliott Kalan

[2:07] Before we say anything about just the new technology coming our way, AI and stuff, let's, before we say anything about any of that stuff, or even the movie today, which is Baby Geniuses, or what we do on this podcast, which is watch a bad movie and talk about it.

[2:19] We've got a very exciting guest today that I'm excited to talk about before we say anything else.

[2:22] That guest, why it's the one, the only, Linda Holmes, one of the hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, author of the novels Evie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo.

[2:32] And I believe there's another one coming up at some point.

[2:36] Linda, thank you so much for joining us and being on the Flophouse today.

Linda Holmes

[2:39] Oh, thank you so much.

[2:40] This is so exciting.

Dan McCoy

[2:41] And thank you so much for watching Baby Geniuses.

Linda Holmes

[2:45] I brought it on myself.

[2:46] I brought it on myself.

[2:48] It absolutely was my choice.

[2:50] I'm just going to say, like, I had some options.

[2:53] And I was like, Baby Geniuses, sure.

[2:55] And oh, wait.

[2:56] I know you can't really do show and tell on a podcast.

[3:00] So I apologize in advance.

[3:01] It's just tell.

[3:02] I actually'll do it.

[3:04] Whoa.

[3:04] So this is talking Baby Sly from Baby Geniuses.

[3:10] Oh, and he's got an outfit.

Elliott Kalan

[3:12] Is that from the Tryon montage?

[3:14] That must be.

[3:15] It's like a tuxedo.

Linda Holmes

[3:16] Well, he's got a little graduation cap on.

[3:19] That's how you can tell he's a genius.

[3:21] He's a genius.

[3:21] Unfortunately, no matter how many fresh batteries we put in him, he does not talk anymore.

[3:27] But it used to be that if you squeezed one hand, he talked like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, baby talk.

[3:33] And if you did the other hand, he would say, for example, don't mess with the sly man.

Elliott Kalan

[3:40] Just like a real baby.

Linda Holmes

[3:43] I'm the genius here.

[3:44] And this, I should say, this is actually the property of my best friend, Stephen Thompson, who was the founder of the AV Club.

[3:52] And who is a collector of that kind of thing.

Stuart Wellington

[3:56] Ephemeral, let's call it.

Linda Holmes

[3:58] One of his.

[3:58] Normal stuff.

[4:00] There is a talking master P-doll that lives behind the tiny desk at NPR that belongs to Stephen.

[4:06] It is one of his two talking master P-dolls, which he is down to after giving away his third talking master P-doll.

[4:14] Wow.

[4:16] And yes, when you poke its stomach, it goes, uh.

[4:20] Yeah.

[4:22] Anyway.

[4:22] Nothing else can come out of his mouth.

[4:24] That's my brief introduction to baby geniuses.

[4:27] I brought my fast talking sly doll.

Elliott Kalan

[4:31] That's, so, so, so, so it's the doll as much of a, just a, just a jerk as the sly in the movie.

[4:39] Cause.

[4:39] Yeah.

[4:40] Yeah.

[4:40] I mean.

[4:40] I don't know if you guys felt all that, that, that, that the sly man, the, the titular baby

[4:44] genius is, I did the entire movie.

[4:46] I just wanted to, like, I don't know, hit him.

[4:48] He seems like the, like, just.

[4:50] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[4:51] Elliot admits to wanting to commit child abuse.

[4:54] Just to a fictional character.

Elliott Kalan

[4:55] He's the most arrogant baby I've ever seen.

[4:57] That fucking baby thinks he's so big.

Linda Holmes

[5:00] His list of phrases, his list of talking baby phrases is, uh, hasta la vista, baby.

[5:04] Uh-huh.

[5:05] Uh, look out world.

[5:05] The sly man is here.

[5:07] Yeah.

[5:08] Don't mess with the sly man.

[5:09] See you on the outside, suckers.

[5:11] I'm the genius here and the classic, and I think you will agree, very witty.

[5:16] Give me a break.

[5:18] Give me a break.

[5:20] Yeah.

[5:21] So, yes, he's a jerk.

[5:22] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[5:23] You know, like, I'm sure if this doll had come out a couple years later, one of those would

[5:27] have been like, Jeff, you'll can't melt steel beams or something.

Elliott Kalan

[5:32] Yeah.

[5:33] Yeah.

[5:33] Her emails.

[5:34] Yeah.

[5:34] Do your own research.

[5:35] That kind of stuff.

[5:36] Yeah.

[5:36] Yep.

[5:37] Yep.

[5:38] That's the vibe he gives off.

[5:39] I can see baby sly being like, I don't trust the authorities.

[5:42] I'm going to, I'm going to figure this out for myself.

[5:44] Yeah.

[5:44] Sure.

[5:45] It makes sense.

Dan McCoy

[5:46] So, Elliot talked about this back when we weren't talking about anything before introducing

[5:51] Linda, but we are a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[5:56] Quite frequently, it's a more recent bad movie, but we've been dipping back into the well

[6:00] of the classics, the bad movie canon.

[6:04] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[6:05] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:06] The worst of the worst.

[6:07] Yeah.

[6:08] I've heard actually that Super Babies, Baby Geniuses 2, is even worse than Baby Geniuses,

[6:14] but obviously that film would make no sense to us having not seen the foundational work

Elliott Kalan

[6:19] Baby Geniuses.

[6:20] You joke, Dan, but watching Boss Baby Family Business without seeing the first one, I was

[6:24] legitimately lost from much of that movie's runtime.

[6:27] Because I was like, what?

[6:28] Who are these characters?

[6:29] What is going on here?

[6:31] Why is this baby a boss?

[6:32] It assumed so much foreknowledge of the Boss Baby continuity on the part of the audience.

[6:38] So maybe Super Babies, Baby Geniuses 2 would be the same way.

Dan McCoy

[6:41] I mean, I have no way of knowing at this point.

[6:44] I kind of believe that probably the continuity would not be as important.

[6:48] That's mostly based on looking at the cast list and not seeing a lot of carryover, at least

[6:53] in the adult character.

[6:54] I mean, also the baby characters.

[6:55] I assume they had all grown up by the time of the grown up.

[6:59] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:59] Probably.

[7:00] They're not just babies.

[7:01] They're adults.

[7:01] Babyhood.

[7:02] I mean, they're adults now.

Linda Holmes

[7:03] I was going to say, they're not babies in the first place exactly, I would argue.

[7:06] Yes.

[7:07] That's true.

[7:07] No.

Elliott Kalan

[7:07] Yeah, that's true.

[7:08] They're leaving toddlerhood.

[7:10] They're toddlers.

Stuart Wellington

[7:12] Are you referring to the stunt people who make appear to be babies?

Dan McCoy

[7:18] I will say that it is weird to me that this movie is so predicated on the idea that these

[7:25] babies have their secret baby language and they're clearly of an age that they would have started

[7:30] talking.

[7:31] Yes.

[7:31] At least a few words.

Linda Holmes

[7:32] That is the part that I kept trying to figure out.

[7:35] And listen, I feel like I have to predicate literally everything I say about this movie

[7:40] by saying, I don't care.

[7:42] I'm not saying that I care.

Elliott Kalan

[7:44] But I was watching this and sort of-

[7:45] You heard it here first, folks.

[7:46] Right into NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour with their Baby Geniuses theories and explainers.

Linda Holmes

[7:51] I'm thinking like, first of all, okay, my main question is what does this company actually

[7:58] do?

[7:59] Like this baby company that is making the Baby Geniuses?

[8:02] Baby Co.

Elliott Kalan

[8:02] They seem to specialize in two-

[8:05] We see them specialize in two things on screen, indoor theme parks, which are located in their

[8:10] corporate headquarters.

[8:11] And also like education slash indoctrination of babies.

Stuart Wellington

[8:15] Seems like they're more of a robot co than a baby co if you look at their theme park.

Elliott Kalan

[8:19] Well, this is the kind of thing-

[8:20] They have robot and-

[8:21] Yeah.

[8:22] This is the classic supervillain thing where it's like, instead of robbing banks, why

[8:27] didn't you patent your machine that can melt anything or creates vibro shocks that can destabilize

[8:34] anything?

[8:34] Why don't you sell that?

[8:35] Because that you're really-

[8:36] Or your freeze gun.

[8:37] If you have a freeze gun, why are you using it to commit crimes?

[8:40] Yeah.

[8:40] That's hugely useful.

Stuart Wellington

[8:41] The United States government will give you that, will just pay you for that a lot.

[8:44] Yeah.

[8:45] You can say your prices.

[8:46] They don't care.

[8:47] They'll give you whatever.

[8:48] If you say it's a weapon, they're going to love that shit.

[8:50] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[8:50] And the Baby Co.

[8:52] logo is like an atomic energy looking thing.

[8:55] Yeah.

[8:55] So it's supposed to look like they're a science company.

[8:58] Dan, help me.

Elliott Kalan

[8:59] Well, I was wondering-

[9:01] You're asking the wrong guy.

Dan McCoy

[9:02] Thank you.

[9:03] I was wondering when Baby Einstein came out in relation to this because-

[9:09] I thought about that too.

[9:10] One side of their business seems to be sort of maybe a Baby Einstein style-

[9:15] Yeah.

[9:16] Make your baby smart.

[9:17] Make your baby smart thing.

[9:19] But then, yeah, they have this other secret thing.

[9:22] I don't want to get too far into the actual plot because Stuart will talk about it.

[9:26] But I laughed early on when I think it was Christopher Lloyd said,

[9:30] take them back to the secret laboratory.

[9:32] And I'm like, around here, we just call it the laboratory.

Stuart Wellington

[9:36] Yeah.

[9:37] Lloyd's worried they were going to take him to the regular laboratory.

[9:39] Yeah.

[9:39] But there's a secret one underneath.

Elliott Kalan

[9:41] Yeah.

[9:41] The regular laboratory where they're just working on polymers.

[9:43] And they'd be like, why is the live baby right here?

[9:45] What are you doing?

Stuart Wellington

[9:47] Why is this live baby karate-ing us?

Dan McCoy

[9:50] And I do want to get into the plot.

[9:52] But before we do that, I do want to take a moment to talk about Bob Clark, maybe.

[9:57] A man-

Elliott Kalan

[9:58] There's two human beings involved in this that I'd love to talk about.

[10:00] One is producer John Voight.

[10:02] This was a passion project for him for a while to get this made.

[10:06] But also, yeah, director Bob Clark, who has one of the more scattershot filmographies, you might say.

Dan McCoy

[10:11] A couple of noted classics, very influential films.

[10:16] I wouldn't call Porky's a classic.

[10:18] Depending on whatever, depending on whatever, well, yeah, that's a very influential movie.

[10:23] To me, it's three extremely influential movies, whether or not you think they're good.

[10:29] On the more critically acclaimed side, of course, Black Christmas, one of the earliest slashers.

[10:36] You've got A Christmas Story, which became-

[10:38] Which is a great movie.

[10:39] You know, a cable classic.

[10:42] And then, of course, Porky's, which kicked off a wave of more mainstream T&A teen sex comedies after that being sort of like bubbling under the surface in the late 70s for a while.

Elliott Kalan

[10:57] America had decided that college kids, they were done with.

[11:01] College kids were not sexy enough.

[11:02] They needed high school students to be sexy in American movies.

[11:06] A movement that I disagree with, but other people may feel different.

[11:09] To be clear, the actors were not.

Dan McCoy

[11:12] Which, by the way, that was the joke that Audrey made when she came in and saw the babies kung fu-ing people.

[11:16] She's like, you know, that baby's 15.

[11:18] That's the way they do it in Hollywood.

Elliott Kalan

[11:20] And I will say, Bob Clark also made a movie called Death Dream that I recommended on a Flatbass episode a long time ago.

[11:25] That's a good movie about a dead Vietnam vet who comes back to his family and is a-

[11:31] As close as it feels like Bob Clark came to making a political statement in a movie.

Dan McCoy

[11:36] But on the other hand, he's got movies like this.

[11:38] Until movie geniuses, yeah.

[11:39] He's got Rhinestone, the movie where Sly Stallone learns to sing country music with Kelly Park.

[11:45] We've got to do that one at some point.

[11:46] We've got to do it.

[11:47] That one's a fun, bad movie.

Linda Holmes

[11:50] I've been trying to think, like, you know how Jamal has the hedgehog beat, right?

[11:54] I've been trying to think, like, did I want my beat to be babies or geniuses?

[11:58] But I think maybe it should be Bob Clark.

Elliott Kalan

[12:00] Yeah.

[12:01] All right, yeah.

[12:02] You could be our Bob Clark correspondent.

[12:03] There's a limit to how many of those movies there are.

[12:06] But there's also a limit to how many hedgehogs there are movies.

Linda Holmes

[12:08] I was just going to say, the beat doesn't have to be infinite.

[12:10] The beat just has to have as much as you would ever want to have me on anyway.

[12:14] Oh, okay.

[12:14] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:16] But do you want to say anything about Jon Voight and his relationship to this movie now that we've talked a little bit about Bob Clark?

Elliott Kalan

[12:22] Because you might think to yourself, Bob Clark, he made a lot of schlock.

[12:26] He probably pitched this movie.

[12:27] No.

[12:28] Jon Voight pitched this movie to Bob Clark to make.

[12:31] Jon Voight's production company had this script called Baby Geniuses.

[12:34] I was doing some research.

[12:34] And they were saying how there was like a portal to a baby land, like a world where babies ruled, which is kind of what the boss baby movies are about.

[12:40] And adults drooled.

[12:42] Yeah, babies ruled and adults drooled.

[12:44] Just like in the movie when dinosaurs drooled the earth.

[12:46] And that they had like a special effects test reel showing that they could make babies look like they were talking.

[12:56] Can they though?

[12:58] That's a good question.

[12:59] That's a good question.

[13:00] True.

[13:00] And that Bob Clark was like, okay, I'll rewrite this script and make it something different.

[13:04] But this was, for whatever reason, this was just like a thing Jon Voight really wanted to get off the ground.

[13:08] And when this movie was coming out, none of the stars of the movie, as far as I know, did the talk show rounds.

[13:13] Jon Voight did the talk show rounds.

[13:15] Because I remember him being on The Daily Show to promote this movie, Baby Geniuses.

[13:19] And they showed the clip where the baby is like, where Sly is like trying on different clothes and going like, somebody stop me.

[13:24] And it's like, I just remember like how baffling it was that Jon Voight was doing this.

[13:29] And this was, I guess, the beginning of his descent into madness as he became like a, just like a hardcore conservative.

[13:35] But I don't know, it was very strange.

Dan McCoy

[13:37] I love the idea that Bob Clark was convinced by this test reel because that feels like such a Jurassic Park moment where it's like, just because you can do it, you never stop to think, should you do it?

Linda Holmes

[13:49] I always assumed that what changed Jon Voight was Anaconda, right?

[13:53] Like once you've been inside the snake, being filmed on the inside the snake cam.

[14:00] Oh, the snake cam is so good, but the inside the snake cam is so much better.

Stuart Wellington

[14:05] I have a friend who every time, back in high school, every time he would get drunk, we'd be like, do it, do it again, do Jon Voight.

[14:11] And he goes, these are my babies.

[14:14] And he like, hold up, fake eggs is so funny.

[14:17] Do it every time.

[14:19] Anaconda, man.

Linda Holmes

[14:20] That's a classic, terrible movie.

Stuart Wellington

[14:22] What a picture.

[14:23] Okay, so let's get into the plot of Baby Geniuses.

[14:26] Now, if I sound a little bit weird, that's because I'm coming to you live from the Courtyard Marriott in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

[14:34] As you can see, if Alex posts this clip, I look like I'm the most divorced podcaster.

[14:42] But no, I'm in Indiana helping my parents with some stuff.

[14:45] And that means I watch Baby Geniuses on the plane.

[14:48] So if I missed anything, it's because I wasn't paying attention to the screen and was trying to hide it so that I didn't get like arrested by a fucking air marshal or something for watching Baby Geniuses.

[14:59] Okay, so the movie opens with Sylvester, who, I have to insist, is a baby.

[15:06] Okay.

[15:06] Escapes from a top secret lab.

[15:08] Despite the fact that he can walk.

[15:10] And despite that he has.

[15:11] He can run.

Stuart Wellington

[15:12] And he can karate.

[15:13] Despite his karate skills, he is still captured by evil Dr. Christopher Lloyd and taken back to a secret lab run by Dr. Kinder, played by Kathleen Turner.

[15:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[15:27] Poor Kathleen Turner.

[15:27] Also a sad, you know, auger of things to come for Kathleen Turner.

[15:32] I was confused by the kung fu powers just right from the start.

[15:36] He's a genius, Dan.

[15:38] Yeah.

[15:38] Okay.

[15:38] So he has the proportional strength of a genius, I guess.

[15:42] Well, that's.

[15:42] And like, he's able to get.

Stuart Wellington

[15:44] He's able to get leverage.

[15:45] There's moments where babies are swinging from ropes, kicking people.

[15:48] And I'm like, yeah, I don't give a shit.

[15:50] It's a baby.

[15:50] It's not like they weigh that much.

[15:51] They bounce off me.

Elliott Kalan

[15:52] Which is, yeah, there's a, where babies swing on a rope, adults are standing there going, oh, for a while.

[15:58] Plenty of time to brace themselves.

[16:00] As a parent, little small children throw themselves at me constantly to try to knock me over or because they want me to hold them.

[16:06] You get, it's not that, yeah, it's not going to knock you over unless you're seen by surprise, which almost nobody is.

[16:11] The center of gravity thing, yeah?

[16:12] Yeah.

[16:12] They're so small.

[16:13] You can pick them up and throw them really easily.

[16:15] But I guess they've kung fu powers.

[16:17] It's like judo.

[16:18] They're using your bigness against you, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[16:20] Yeah.

[16:20] Speaking of battling babies, Sylvester, his main-

Elliott Kalan

[16:24] Battling baby is the project we should be working on right now, Stuart.

[16:27] It's like Conan the Barbarian Bees a Baby.

Stuart Wellington

[16:29] It's the prequel to Million Dollar Baby.

[16:31] You know that.

[16:32] So Sylvester's main mode later, as we'll see, is kicking guys in the crotch.

[16:37] And I feel like he used a lot of weapons.

[16:39] And I feel like kids are already pretty good at hitting you in the crotch without weapons.

[16:44] Like I've seen, like Elliot, I've seen you get hit in the crotch hundreds of times by children.

[16:48] Happened to me just the other day.

Elliott Kalan

[16:49] They'll do it accidentally.

[16:51] They'll do it on purpose.

[16:52] They know it hurts and they want to go for it.

[16:55] Yeah.

[16:55] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[16:56] Okay.

[16:57] So we get a little bit of backstory from the doctors.

[16:59] They have a top-secret lab under a building.

[17:01] There are twin babies.

[17:03] Sylvester, who we are going to call Sly from now on.

[17:06] That's what he calls himself.

[17:07] Wit, who are raised separately.

[17:10] Wit is raised with normal parents.

[17:14] And Sly is raised by-

[17:16] I don't know.

[17:17] Okay.

[17:18] Granted, those normal parents are portrayed by TV superstars, Kim Cattrall and Peter McNichol.

Dan McCoy

[17:26] Let's not diminish the film work of those two fine actors.

[17:30] The star of Dragon Slayer, Stu.

[17:33] Split second.

[17:35] Ghostbusters 2.

[17:36] And of course, Kim Cattrall in Porky's where she was with Bob Clark.

[17:40] Or Big Trouble in Little China.

[17:42] The movie that I don't like that much.

[17:43] But you guys like it.

[17:44] Yeah, Mannequin.

[17:45] Sure.

[17:46] Yeah.

[17:46] Probably at this point-

[17:47] City limits.

[17:48] More known for Ally McBeal and Sex and the City.

Linda Holmes

[17:52] Well, the thing I love about this is that they made this before Sex and the City started.

[17:58] But it came out after Sex and the City started.

[18:00] Oh, dear.

[18:00] And you got to think for her, that's like, Sex and the City is hitting.

[18:04] It's doing great.

[18:05] She's like, oh, fuck.

[18:07] She's like, oh, I still got that.

[18:09] You know, because she's-

[18:10] And I will say also, Stuart, you kind of-

[18:12] You know, you went right by the masterful exposition on that, like, TRS-80 level computer

[18:18] that they have in the lab.

[18:19] Oh, yeah.

[18:20] Where they, like, have the-

[18:21] And this was 1999.

[18:23] I feel like this looks like a 19-

[18:25] I mean, this looks like, like, this looks like, you know, the computer in Pretty in Pink

[18:30] when they morph into the-

[18:33] Yeah, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[18:33] Yes, also, that computer in Pretty in Pink, like, could you do that with computers back

[18:38] then?

[18:38] That seems wild.

Elliott Kalan

[18:39] I mean, Stuart, there was a movie around that time where a computer made a woman.

[18:43] So, like, computers do lots of things for movies that they can't do in real life.

Linda Holmes

[18:45] But I feel like the exposition, the exposition 5000 or whatever this computer is called,

[18:50] is on the level with that Pretty in Pink computer.

[18:52] Yeah.

[18:52] And that was, like, many years earlier.

[18:54] This is, like, even for 1999.

[18:57] It's like, guys, I was on AOL by then.

Stuart Wellington

[18:59] Yeah, why are you skimping on your corporate graphics, your corporate videos to show each

[19:04] other your plans?

Elliott Kalan

[19:05] I will say they are a baby company.

[19:08] So maybe the money is going into the baby stuff.

[19:09] But it is very funny.

[19:11] Anytime a character in a movie, as Christopher Lloyd does here, goes, computer, explain to

[19:15] me all the stuff I know already.

[19:17] And then it just tells you everything about the story.

[19:19] It's like, oh, good.

[19:20] Yes.

[19:20] I was checking you, computer.

[19:21] I was testing whether you knew it.

Dan McCoy

[19:23] Yeah.

[19:23] I do want to take-

[19:24] Oh, sorry.

[19:25] I just got-

[19:25] Just because we brought it up.

[19:27] Sorry, Stuart.

[19:27] I know.

[19:28] It's okay.

[19:28] We're railing a lot at the top.

[19:30] Just because we brought it up, I do feel like, for me, and I texted the guys-

Stuart Wellington

[19:32] No, Dan, we need to get back to talking about magic babies or whatever.

Dan McCoy

[19:37] Yeah, the intricate plotting of baby geniuses.

[19:39] Magic babies.

[19:40] Magic babies.

[19:41] I texted the guys that, like, we were talking about Kim Cattrall.

[19:46] To me-

[19:47] Which guys?

[19:47] The Pep Boys?

[19:48] You guys.

[19:49] Oh, yeah.

[19:49] You're one of them.

[19:50] And Stu's the other.

[19:51] For me, Kim Cattrall comes out of this looking the best, actually, because I don't know

[19:56] what she's doing.

[19:57] She's got a nothing part, but she hits it just right.

[20:02] Like, she gets the tone just right in the way that a lot of the movie around her is chaotic

[20:07] and unpleasant.

Elliott Kalan

[20:09] I think there's two MVPs in this movie, I feel like.

[20:11] It is Kim Cattrall, who is doing as good a job as she can in it, and Kathleen Turner,

[20:16] who at least is trying to reach that note of, like, I'm an evil businesswoman who's yelling

[20:22] at a baby going, ah, baby.

[20:24] I'm Carole de Vil.

Linda Holmes

[20:25] And occasionally looking, there is one moment in particular where she looks like she's going

[20:29] to hit on the baby.

[20:31] And I was like-

[20:31] That's true.

[20:32] I was like, ah.

[20:33] I was like, oh, I don't know.

[20:35] Yeah.

[20:35] Well, I mean, you're going to get that with Kathleen Turner.

[20:37] Kathleen Turner's very sexy, but I don't really want to see her, like, coming up behind a

[20:41] baby, like, slide.

[20:42] No.

Elliott Kalan

[20:43] She says she can't control her sultriness.

[20:45] She's naturally sexy.

[20:46] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[20:46] She says she.

[20:46] And then on the other end, you have, like, Peter McNichol, an actor who I think is really

[20:50] great, who is, it's maybe the worst I've ever seen him doing anything.

[20:55] Like, it's, I don't know, he's playing it a little, his character, like, his character

[20:59] is a baby who's an adult, like, the way he talks and everything.

[21:02] But you're also afraid, and there's a lot of other big stars in here, Dom DeLuise is

[21:05] the comic relief.

[21:07] Ruby Dee, the legend, shows up.

Linda Holmes

[21:08] How did Ruby Dee end up with this?

[21:11] How?

Elliott Kalan

[21:12] It's amazing sometimes when you're watching, you're watching movies and you're like, this

[21:16] is a person who, like, God should have stepped in and said, Ruby Dee, you're too good for

[21:20] this.

[21:20] Like, you shouldn't be doing this right now.

[21:22] But, you know, actors like working, you know?

Linda Holmes

[21:24] Well, it always wants me to, well, it makes me want to, like, and I'm sure it's not the

[21:28] case in this case, but it always wants to Google, like, Ruby Dee IRS.

[21:32] You know what I mean?

[21:33] Because, like, how do people end up in this situation?

Elliott Kalan

[21:38] But you never know, because it was around the same time that she was doing this, that

[21:43] Ossie Davis, her husband, was doing, like, Bubba Hotep, right?

[21:46] And that's the kind of thing that could have been, like, what are you doing here?

[21:50] But he's really good in it, and that's a real fun movie.

[21:51] So, you never know.

[21:52] You never know when a movie's going to turn out good or not.

[21:55] I mean, Ruby Dee should have probably known that Baby Geniuses was not going to turn out

[21:58] good, but you never know.

[22:00] Maybe she just wanted to hang out with some toddlers.

Stuart Wellington

[22:02] Yeah, she wanted to get out of the house.

[22:03] You know, I get it.

[22:05] Okay, so, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:06] I mean, oh, they did shoot this in Tuscany, right?

[22:08] So, that explains it.

[22:09] Like, every summer in Tuscany.

[22:11] Yeah, classic Tuscany.

Stuart Wellington

[22:12] Classic Sandler motivation.

Linda Holmes

[22:14] I was just going to say, it's the Sandler thing.

Stuart Wellington

[22:17] The Sandman.

[22:18] It's just her and all her friends.

[22:20] Just hanging out.

[22:22] Okay, so, to get back to that actual exposition, these two twin babies have been separated since

[22:27] birth.

[22:28] One of them raised normal style.

[22:29] One raised with a bunch of super secret babies in a, like, Akira-style nursery where the

[22:35] magic babies just kind of sit around and talk.

[22:38] They have, like, a salon or something.

Elliott Kalan

[22:41] I'm very glad, Stuart, that you brought up the Akira comparison.

[22:43] Because my first thought when I saw that world was, I was like, this is why Hollywood should

[22:47] not do an American remake of Akira.

[22:48] They do not get it.

Stuart Wellington

[22:50] It's going to look just like this.

[22:51] Yeah.

[22:52] And the idea is that when they are both, one, these two babies are each six years old, not

[22:57] six years old combined, like three, that wouldn't make sense.

[23:00] But when they're both six years old, when they're both six years old, they're going to

[23:06] bring them together and they're going to see which, I guess, which baby's better.

[23:11] Yeah.

[23:11] I guess they have metrics.

[23:13] They're trying to prove that the Kinder method, Kathleen Turner's scientist character, that

[23:21] her method is better, I guess, at raising super babies, which we'll find out in part two.

Linda Holmes

[23:27] What is her method?

[23:28] What is the method?

[23:30] Other than the, like, Plan 9 from Outer Space dinner theater.

[23:34] That's kind of all it is.

Stuart Wellington

[23:35] You find the best babies and then you stick them in a basement.

Elliott Kalan

[23:39] I don't understand the method.

[23:40] You never let them see sunlight and you have computers around.

[23:45] Yeah.

[23:45] And especially because what they're doing isn't that, it's not like, well, what are they doing

[23:51] that's making them genius?

[23:52] I mean, I guess he's really good at building things and he can reprogram a security system

[23:56] and stuff.

[23:57] And later on, he has a sense of style.

[23:59] Well, also.

Dan McCoy

[23:59] Later on, we learn that, like, babies are sort of attuned to the mysteries of the universe

[24:09] when they're young and they lose that as they get older.

[24:13] And so maybe she's doing absolutely nothing.

[24:15] Like, it seems like it's a weird sort of conflicting thing to have her have this system, but then

[24:20] also be like, oh, you know, the Tibetans thought or whatever.

Stuart Wellington

[24:23] Yeah, the babies are carriers of a genetic legacy and they're able to live and understand our

[24:31] ancestors.

[24:32] Okay.

[24:32] So we flash forward to the opening of the Baby Co theme park, Joy World.

[24:39] Kathleen Turner is, she's there, I guess, cutting the ribbon.

[24:44] This is a theme park that is filled with a lot of robots.

[24:47] Everything's robot controlled, including the animals at the robot zoo.

[24:51] There's a robot zoo.

[24:52] Tell me about the robot baby.

Elliott Kalan

[24:54] Tell me about the robot baby.

Stuart Wellington

[24:55] Giant robot baby is a crime against nature.

[24:57] It's a horror that I was terrified to behold.

[25:03] Yeah.

[25:04] Do you guys have thoughts?

[25:05] For a while, I thought there was a guy in a costume.

Dan McCoy

[25:07] I posted a picture of it, too.

[25:09] Although we are trying to divest from this particular website, it's still where our largest number

[25:14] of followers are.

[25:15] So there's a-

[25:17] Silk Road?

[25:18] A tweet on X that shows the giant baby.

[25:23] If you want to dig back through the archives, but it will haunt your dreams.

Linda Holmes

[25:28] Why would you have that at a theme park?

[25:30] Like, when I was little, my parents took us to Walt Disney World and my sister was scared

[25:34] to death of Smee, the pirate from Peter Pan.

Stuart Wellington

[25:40] Is it because he's, like, less in charge?

[25:43] Like, he's more desperate than Captain Hook?

Linda Holmes

[25:47] I don't really remember why.

[25:48] I just remember Smee was very scary to her.

[25:52] Or possibly-

[25:52] She's just afraid of Bob Hoskins?

[25:54] Yeah.

[25:54] Smee and Hook?

[25:55] It could be that it was scary to me, and I'm projecting it onto my sister to avoid admitting

[26:00] my vulnerabilities.

[26:01] But kids are very weird about, like, what is scary.

[26:04] Yeah.

[26:04] And so if you have, like, an eight-foot baby who's walking around going, hello, little

[26:09] girl.

[26:10] Like, what?

[26:11] Who would put that in a theme park?

[26:14] You're trying to make money.

[26:16] What?

[26:16] I-

[26:17] It's not the-

[26:19] I don't care.

Elliott Kalan

[26:20] It's not-

[26:20] It's also-

[26:21] It's prohibitively expensive to, say, just dress someone up like a big baby when it'd be

[26:26] much cheaper to create an entire robot baby that still has to be controlled manually by

[26:30] someone in a booth.

[26:32] Like, they're not very good robots.

Linda Holmes

[26:34] Exactly.

[26:34] Yeah, I feel like-

[26:35] Disney doesn't use robot Smee.

Elliott Kalan

[26:38] No.

[26:38] And as we see later, they also have, like, a robot alien that shoots actual lasers.

Dan McCoy

[26:43] Yes.

[26:44] I was like, did the Baby Genius reprogram that somehow, or do they just have, like, live

[26:49] ray guns that they walk around with?

[26:51] In a children's theme park.

Stuart Wellington

[26:52] I feel like the day of shooting, they showed up, and Jon Voight's like, hey, we got the

[26:57] robot baby already.

[26:58] And Bob Clark's like, oh, yeah.

[27:02] Thought we axed that, Jon.

[27:04] And Jon's like, nope, it's all ready.

[27:05] He's like, I didn't think we could afford it.

[27:06] He's like, I found the money.

[27:08] No, this is from my personal-

[27:10] I funded this myself.

[27:11] I took a reverse mortgage on my house so we could do the robot baby.

[27:14] Yeah, Tom Selle is counting his money.

[27:17] Okay.

[27:17] So, yeah, we see the RoboZoo.

[27:19] A key thing is that they make a point that all the children get access to a remote control

[27:24] for the robot animals.

[27:25] That is our Chekhov's robots.

[27:30] We then cut to Peter McNichol and Kim Cattrall run a childcare out of their home.

Elliott Kalan

[27:36] It's like a childcare research center out of their house.

[27:42] Yeah, I need help.

Linda Holmes

[27:43] Send your kid to daycare to get experimented on.

[27:46] You know how it is.

[27:47] Yes, exactly.

[27:48] Everybody wouldn't do that.

Stuart Wellington

[27:49] And help Dom DeLuise do plumbing stuff and handyman stuff.

Dan McCoy

[27:55] I was really happy to see Dom DeLuise show up in this.

[27:58] I got to admit that as a kid, I was like, this guy's dumb.

[28:04] This guy's a dumb guy who does dumb comedy and dumb things, which is not wrong.

[28:10] But now that I'm an adult, I have a fondness for it.

[28:13] I'm like, this is a man who is really committed to being dumb and broad.

Elliott Kalan

[28:17] I definitely, I also, the same way that I appreciate the three stooges much more now than I did when I was a kid,

[28:22] when I did not care for them.

[28:24] Like, Dom DeLuise, I appreciate him more now.

[28:27] But when I was a kid, I was like, this guy is sweaty.

[28:29] He is trying so hard.

[28:30] And he always seems like he's on the verge of, like, failing and collapsing and knows it.

[28:35] And now I get that that's kind of, like, part of his shtick, you know.

[28:37] Yeah.

[28:38] Because I just remember his voice performance in American Tale when I was a kid.

[28:42] I was always like, I don't like this.

[28:44] It's like he's trying so hard to please me.

[28:47] And it just makes him seem pathetic in my eyes.

[28:49] But now I'm like, oh, I see.

[28:50] He's supposed to be pathetic.

[28:50] I get it.

[28:51] All right.

[28:51] Yeah.

[28:52] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[28:52] Yeah.

[28:53] The same thing with, like, Secret of Nem.

[28:54] We rewatched that recently.

[28:57] And, you know, I love that movie.

[28:59] But I think I – maybe I'm putting this on Audrey and it wasn't her.

[29:03] Like, I feel like she reacted to, like, what is this annoying crow?

[29:06] I'm like, well, that's Dom DeLuise.

[29:07] You know?

[29:08] It just comes with the territory.

[29:10] That's what he does.

[29:10] That's Dom of Louise.

[29:11] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[29:12] He was like – have you ever played Planet Zoo or Planet Coaster?

[29:17] No.

[29:17] You build, like, a zoo or a theme park.

[29:21] You know?

[29:21] This is a game, of course.

[29:23] I don't actually build zoos.

[29:24] But you go in –

[29:26] Someday.

[29:26] And you –

[29:26] You should try.

Elliott Kalan

[29:27] I heard about this family that bought one.

[29:29] Oh, yeah.

[29:29] Okay.

Linda Holmes

[29:30] Well, Elliot, you'll be glad to know that the first time I made one, I titled my zoo the

[29:34] We Bought a Zoo, which is exactly that joke because I'm that dork.

[29:39] But when you go in, you can, like, build buildings from scratch or you can just go in and

[29:43] you can just, like, import an entire building already built, right?

[29:45] Like, I'm just going to build the – take the little Slurpee stand already built.

Elliott Kalan

[29:51] Yeah.

[29:51] Here's falling water.

Linda Holmes

[29:52] Just stick it in there.

[29:53] Exactly.

[29:54] Exactly.

[29:54] And when you put Dom de Louise in your movie, you're basically taking all his Dom de Louise-ness

[29:59] as a thing and you're just, like, moving it over and putting it in the movie.

[30:03] Yeah.

[30:03] You're not, like, building a character from scratch.

[30:06] You're just using the blueprint that is Dom de – which is fine.

[30:10] You're just taking him.

[30:11] You're putting him directly into the movie and he will do the same thing that he does

[30:16] and people will still like it the same way that they will, like, your prefab Slurpee stand

[30:20] at your zoo.

[30:20] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:21] Arguably, Al Pacino is kind of the same way.

Elliott Kalan

[30:24] I mean, now.

[30:25] Al Pacino wasn't always that – I mean, Dom de Louise, I guess, wasn't always that way

[30:28] either.

[30:28] Like, you watch his – in Blazing Saddles.

[30:30] He's such a different character in his one scene in that.

Dan McCoy

[30:34] He went dramatic with Fatso.

[30:37] A movie that I –

[30:38] I have never seen in its entirety.

[30:40] I just remember, like, it being on HBO and being like, why would I want to watch a movie

[30:45] about this man being sad?

Stuart Wellington

[30:48] Okay.

[30:49] Well, so we are introduced to Dom de Louise who plays a plumber, handyman character.

[30:53] And we also meet Wit, who is the twin brother of Sly, and we can tell that they are twins

[30:59] because his first act is to smash Dom de Louise in the balls with a wrench.

Elliott Kalan

[31:04] That would hurt so bad.

[31:06] Have a wrench thrown at your crotch.

[31:08] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[31:08] Yeah, that's the whole point.

[31:10] Okay.

[31:11] Meanwhile, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd are running a secret lab for eight genius babies.

[31:19] These genius babies are the product of their very expensive orphanage program.

[31:23] It's like the orphanage program is like a loss leader for their babies.

[31:27] I don't quite get it.

[31:29] As Linda said, I don't understand the business behind it.

Dan McCoy

[31:34] I want to see a business plan.

[31:36] I think –

[31:36] Wait.

[31:37] Does Kathleen Turner have the orphanage?

[31:39] I think that's their, like, farm team for who's going to be baby geniuses.

[31:43] Who's going to be a genius baby?

[31:44] I think they're, like, scouting out who's got the talent to be a genius.

Elliott Kalan

[31:47] The important thing is, like, every children's movie made in the 1980s and 1990s,

[31:52] there was a certain amount of talk of corporate hierarchy and structure and also tax planning

[31:59] for the expansion of a family business.

[32:01] You have to have that in a kid's movie from this area.

[32:03] Kids love corporate hijinks.

[32:06] They love knowing who's in charge of a company and how that company operates.

[32:09] Kids love it.

Stuart Wellington

[32:10] Well, I saw the same thing you saw about –

[32:12] We're restructuring our loan, kids.

Elliott Kalan

[32:14] My kids, every night, they're like, can you read us barbarians at the gate?

[32:18] Can you read us the smartest guys in the room?

[32:20] All right.

[32:21] Can I read you a picture book?

[32:22] No, no, no.

[32:23] Read us – I ran out of business books.

[32:24] Those are the only ones I know.

Dan McCoy

[32:25] Who moved my – jeez, is that one?

[32:27] No, Dan, that's more of an inspirational kind of motivational book.

[32:30] Yeah.

[32:31] Would they accept the little bonfire of the vanities?

[32:33] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[32:34] I mean, you know, it's kind of a Wall Street satire, but I think that would work.

[32:37] I think that would –

[32:38] Yeah.

[32:38] I'll try it.

[32:39] You know what?

[32:39] I'll try it.

Linda Holmes

[32:39] I think if they care about business.

Dan McCoy

[32:42] But I saw the same thing that you saw, Elliot, about Jon Voight's original script for this

[32:47] and then like how Bob Clark came on and he's like, no, we got to ground this in reality.

[32:52] We got to put it in this world of corporate intrigue.

[32:54] I felt the same way.

[32:56] I'm like, why did adults back then think that this is what kids wanted out of their movies?

Elliott Kalan

[33:03] Well, I guess it was just in the air.

[33:04] You know, this was the go-go 1999s, you know?

[33:07] Yeah.

[33:08] Maybe Reagan required it.

[33:10] Every movie is either about companies or the millennium.

Linda Holmes

[33:12] They've done it in like big, I guess.

[33:14] Yeah.

[33:14] Like the kid goes into a big business and, you know, I don't know, wrangles corporate guys.

Stuart Wellington

[33:23] Now, how much business is in the movie big business though?

Linda Holmes

[33:28] A lot of business.

Stuart Wellington

[33:30] I just remember liking it, but that's probably my childhood affection for the two stars.

Dan McCoy

[33:34] Twin-based farce, isn't it?

[33:35] Yeah.

[33:36] It's twin food.

[33:36] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[33:37] Okay.

[33:38] So the important thing is down in this secret lab, they have figured something out.

[33:42] None of its importance to, but continue.

[33:44] That the dumb baby crap that we have come to believe, whether it's their baby art, baby communication, all that stuff, that it is actually highly advanced and it retains this like genetic legacy of everybody who has come before them.

[34:00] So what it sounds like, it sounds like some kind of grindcore record.

[34:03] Instead, it's actually like very highly detailed orchestral compositions on, you know, on par with Rachmaninoff or some crap.

Dan McCoy

[34:13] Yeah.

[34:13] One of the baby's like scribbles, they're like, oh, it's actually cuneiform.

[34:17] And I like how the computer like takes random parts of the scribbles and reassembles them.

[34:22] Yeah.

[34:22] Like that's not, that's just, they're not writing cuneiform if you have to do that.

Stuart Wellington

[34:27] Yep.

[34:27] And this is when Kathleen Turner says, my favorite line of the movie, every baby might know the secrets of the universe.

Elliott Kalan

[34:34] I feel like it is such, this movie takes a couple of big leaps.

[34:38] And the first one is, okay, when babies are jabbering with each other, that's a language.

[34:42] Okay, I'll buy that leap.

[34:43] And another one is babies are really smart, but once they start learning English or they're, you know, grown up language, they kind of lose that smartness and they become dumb as they develop into adults.

[34:53] Okay, there's something kind of satirical on that.

[34:55] Like, you know, when we lose the innocence of childhood, you know, we lose a little bit of wisdom.

[34:59] I understand that.

[35:00] And then they jump to, these babies are in touch with the secrets of the universe and they never define what these secrets of the universe are they're even looking for.

[35:07] What is that about?

[35:08] It's a big leap.

[35:09] It's a big logical leap.

Dan McCoy

[35:11] Well, but also, I went to Roger Ebert's review of this, as I often do for like these older movies, and he points out that these babies are.

[35:19] Four stars, right?

[35:19] These babies may be like wise, you know, cosmic geniuses, but they use terms like diaper gravy.

Linda Holmes

[35:26] Okay, I assume we're going to get there because I need to talk about that fucking joke.

[35:33] Joke?

[35:33] I heard it, and then I heard it again.

[35:38] Uh-huh.

[35:38] And then I heard it again, and then I saw it in captions again.

[35:43] Oh, no.

[35:44] When a dog said it.

[35:45] This is all in five minutes.

[35:48] Yeah.

[35:48] This term, diaper gravy, when I feel like I should let Stuart get back to the plot.

[35:53] But I just –

Elliott Kalan

[35:54] Now, this was – I also was like, what is this?

[35:59] But then I was so distracted by the sex banter between hobo sly and the girl –

[36:04] The baby girl in the baby carriage.

[36:05] Oh, my God.

[36:06] That I was like, I can't.

[36:07] Diaper gravy is taking a back seat.

Linda Holmes

[36:09] It is implied that they have had a dalliance in the carriage.

[36:12] Am I insane?

[36:14] Yeah.

[36:14] Yeah, that's how they swap clothes.

Elliott Kalan

[36:16] Well, we'll talk about it.

[36:16] He needs her clothes, and he says, take your clothes off.

[36:18] And she goes, at least buy me dinner first.

[36:19] And I'm like, I don't want this in a kid's movie.

[36:21] I don't want this in any movie.

Linda Holmes

[36:22] And then when he leaves, she's like, call me.

[36:24] I'm listed.

[36:25] I'm like, no, no, no.

[36:25] And she's smoking a cigar.

[36:26] No, no.

[36:27] So bad.

Stuart Wellington

[36:29] Oh, man.

[36:31] Yeah, let's get back to this plot.

Elliott Kalan

[36:34] Sly may be in touch with the secrets of the universe, but he also knows a lot of catchphrases

[36:37] because the other kids say he's always watching TV.

Stuart Wellington

[36:40] Guys, we've been talking about how these babies are talking all the time and saying all this

[36:44] shit.

[36:45] Well, actually, in the movie, the babies don't start talking until right now when all of a

[36:50] sudden the eight super genius babies start talking to each other, their lips digitally

[36:55] enhanced, whatever, to make it seem like they're able to talk.

Elliott Kalan

[36:59] It's literally the George Sonder short story about the device you put on a baby to make

[37:04] it look like it's saying, I love you, because they want the babies to talk in it.

[37:08] And, well, anyway, there's a whole short story about that.

[37:10] They did that to these babies.

Dan McCoy

[37:12] I've seen some really bad computer-assisted baby mouth movements in commercials or other

[37:19] bullshit.

[37:20] Like the E-Tray baby?

[37:21] Yeah.

[37:21] This is, I'll give it to baby geniuses.

[37:24] This looks pretty natural.

[37:26] Like, it was done by, like, I guess, like, recording these babies.

[37:30] Unsubscribe.

[37:32] Yeah.

[37:32] I mean, not natural in the sense, like, obviously your brain rejects it.

Stuart Wellington

[37:36] Like, your brain is like, back in my day, we would make babies' lips move by slapping

[37:41] some peanut butter in their mouth.

Dan McCoy

[37:42] I'd just say, like, they recorded, I guess, these babies just saying, like, their normal,

[37:48] like, toddler gibberish around the set.

[37:52] And then would find, like, the phenomes or whatever and, like, put them together.

[37:56] That's what they said they did.

[37:57] It was better than I expected out of baby geniuses.

[38:00] I'm not going to say it should have, like, won the fucking Oscar for best baby lip twist.

[38:03] You just did, Dan.

[38:04] You just said it should have won the Oscar.

Linda Holmes

[38:06] It's just, they're just, the sound's coming out and the lips are just, the lips are just,

[38:10] like, moving.

[38:11] But I reject the idea that they, I, Dan, you are a kind and optimistic man always.

[38:18] And I understand that you are taking them at their word.

[38:22] And normally I would do that too.

[38:24] But I look at this and I just saw just flappy, flappy, flappy cartoon lips on these babies.

Dan McCoy

[38:31] So you think they did it, like, Mr. Ed style.

[38:33] They just gave the babies some peanut butter.

Linda Holmes

[38:35] No, I think they animated it.

[38:37] But I think they animated it kind of randomly.

[38:39] I think just, like, this is how long this baby is talking.

[38:41] We're going to give seven flaps of the mouth.

Elliott Kalan

[38:43] I'll be the peacemaker between you two so that this riff doesn't destroy the podcast.

[38:47] I will say there were times when the lips looked pretty good.

[38:50] And there were times when it looked really random.

[38:52] And just, like, they shoved whatever words into whatever mouth movements.

[38:55] Now, this being said.

Stuart Wellington

[38:56] LA and Kaylin raves, babies look pretty good.

Elliott Kalan

[39:00] In my research, I also saw that at one point they experimented with having grown-up voices coming out of the babies, which would have been horrifying.

[39:07] I don't like that.

[39:08] The only thing that makes Look Who's Talking not a total nightmare is that the baby's mouths are not moving.

[39:13] Exactly.

[39:14] While grown-up voices are coming out.

[39:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[39:16] I'll admit, I had a hard time paying attention to these babies.

[39:19] So maybe I saw a moment that it was good, and then my brain just checked out.

Elliott Kalan

[39:23] I mean, these babies are so unlikable.

[39:26] They're so unfunny.

[39:27] They're so full of themselves.

[39:28] The one's a narc?

[39:29] One's a narc.

[39:30] And this baby named Basil.

[39:33] To be honest, by the end, I was sympathetic with Basil just because Sly is so unlikable.

[39:37] He's such an unlikable main character.

[39:39] It's the thing when, like, you agree with somebody, but they are so unlikable that you're like,

[39:43] I guess I'm going to side with your opponent just because I find you so detestable.

[39:47] You know, Sly is, I don't like him.

[39:49] He is the ultimate kind of 90s movie hero in that he's always quipping.

[39:54] He thinks he's great.

[39:55] He calls himself the Sly Man.

[39:57] He just has such a totally unearned sense of entitlement that comes with these white male babies.

[40:02] He's like a poochie.

[40:04] He's a poochie.

[40:05] They just think they're better than everybody else.

Linda Holmes

[40:07] He's got the quality that has caused a certain reconsideration of Ferris Bueller as a movie character.

[40:14] Yeah.

[40:14] He's got that kind of like, I get away with everything.

[40:16] Isn't that amazing?

[40:17] Doesn't everybody love me?

[40:19] And then you're kind of like, maybe not.

Dan McCoy

[40:22] Maybe I've met too many entitled people in my life at this point.

[40:26] Exactly.

[40:26] What seemed like a charming power fantasy is now a disturbing power fantasy.

Elliott Kalan

[40:30] Well, because when you're young, you're like, I wish I could do that.

[40:32] And then when you're older, yeah, exactly.

[40:33] You're like, well, I've met people like that.

[40:35] I hate them.

Linda Holmes

[40:36] You're like, that guy's the reason everybody else has to stay late at work.

[40:39] Yes.

[40:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:41] He's the reason that they have all that security at parades now.

[40:45] So that nobody just jumps up on a float and takes over.

Stuart Wellington

[40:49] So speaking of annoying people, we meet Ice Pick, the nephew, I guess.

[40:54] Is he the nephew of Kim Cattrall and Peter McMickle?

[40:56] I don't remember how he's related to them.

[40:58] I think he just works for them.

[40:59] Yeah.

[40:59] Believe it or not, I tried to figure this out.

[41:02] And I think he just works.

[41:04] He's got a deep wardrobe.

Elliott Kalan

[41:06] Yeah.

[41:07] He has a lot of style looks throughout.

[41:08] He's trying on different personas from Buddhist monk to London punk.

[41:12] He's got a lot of different ways he looks.

Dan McCoy

[41:15] I sympathized a bit with Ice Pick because the adults were kind of condescending to the style choices.

[41:21] I mean, Kim Cattrall is pretty nicely joking about it.

[41:25] But Ruby Dee would be like plucking at his earrings or whatever.

[41:29] So no thanks.

[41:30] Let Ice Pick be Ice Pick.

Elliott Kalan

[41:33] Okay.

[41:34] I mean, but the thing is, Dan, who is Ice Pick?

[41:35] It's like moving on.

[41:36] Ice Pick keeps trying on different personalities and different personas like young people do.

[41:41] But instead of really exploring who he is, he's just putting on different costumes.

[41:45] He's just appropriating other people's ideas rather than exploring his own feelings.

[41:49] I want Ice Pick to be Ice Pick, but Ice Pick isn't letting Ice Pick be Ice Pick, Dan.

[41:53] Ice Pick, let Ice Pick be Ice Pick.

Linda Holmes

[41:55] You know, Dan, back in the day, more than 20 years ago, when I used to write for a website called Television Without Pity,

[42:03] they teased me one time and they said, your problem is you're the nice one.

[42:08] And I was very offended and I said, I'm not the nice one.

[42:12] But I realized later that in many ways I was the nice one.

[42:16] And Dan, you're the nice one.

Dan McCoy

[42:18] Well, I appreciate that.

[42:20] I think my problem is that I'm mostly the nice one about movies.

[42:24] And then in real life, I can be sort of grumpy.

Elliott Kalan

[42:29] Well, you're like the neighbor in Home Alone.

[42:32] You're real grumpy and off-putting, but there's a heart of gold in there when a little kid gets through it and connects to you.

Linda Holmes

[42:37] You seek the good quality in every movie.

Dan McCoy

[42:41] It's very endearing.

[42:44] Yeah.

[42:45] Thank you.

Linda Holmes

[42:45] It's what we should all, and even to somebody as terrible as Ice Pick.

[42:49] I'm just saying.

Dan McCoy

[42:50] Yeah.

[42:50] No, I mean, Ice Pick was kind of irritating.

[42:52] I just didn't like that they were making fun of his clothes.

Linda Holmes

[42:54] Now the truth comes out.

[42:56] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[42:57] So meanwhile, at this daycare, research center, whatever the fuck it is, Peter McNichol is filming the baby's faces, and he suspects that Wit is speaking English.

[43:10] He thinks he catches an actual English phrase from the baby's mouth.

Elliott Kalan

[43:14] Now, did he think he was speaking English or that he understood what he said in baby talk?

Linda Holmes

[43:19] I have the same question as Elliot, which is why it must be important.

Stuart Wellington

[43:24] Dan, you're the expert on baby geniuses.

Dan McCoy

[43:26] Well, I mean.

[43:27] Dan, you wrote the movie.

[43:28] What was the intention in this scene?

[43:29] Based on subsequent scenes, he seems to be the only one who can understand it.

[43:36] So I think that, like, everyone else is hearing gibberish.

[43:39] And Peter McNichol, as you said, he's like a big baby.

[43:42] So maybe he retains that connection to baby language because of it.

Elliott Kalan

[43:46] That's my guess is that Peter McNichol is like, this character is going to eventually decode baby language.

[43:51] So I have to play him like an innocent.

[43:53] And he seems like a kid who's pretending to be an adult throughout the entire movie.

[43:58] Peter McNichol is a good actor.

[43:59] He's been a lot of great stuff.

[44:00] Like, he's great.

[44:02] So I have to assume that there was some kind of reasoning behind that, those choices.

[44:05] Yeah.

[44:06] You know.

Stuart Wellington

[44:07] Okay.

[44:08] We also learned that Witt believes that he is psychically implanting ideas into his father's head, his adoptive father's head.

[44:17] Which seems to bear fruit since he gives Peter McNichol the idea to refinance their loan so they can take out an additional wing and get additional research babies so they can make more money.

Elliott Kalan

[44:29] I really understand this.

[44:31] The important thing is it gets explained in more than one scene.

[44:34] That's the important thing about it.

[44:36] In a, what, 95-minute movie about talking babies or geniuses, we heard about how they needed a loan to invest money because ultimately they would make more money if they had the larger facility.

[44:47] It's good.

[44:48] It's good that that stuff's in there.

[44:49] Not padding at all.

[44:50] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[44:52] So, meanwhile, in the top secret lab.

Elliott Kalan

[44:54] The only way that they could have padded it more is if Kim Cattrall was like, well, while you're doing that, I'll just finish this recipe that you can do around the house with just these simple ingredients.

[45:03] And then just pulled out a bunch of things and then just cooked on camera while explaining what she was doing.

Dan McCoy

[45:08] I mean, there is.

[45:09] I will get to her.

Elliott Kalan

[45:10] She doesn't come get ready with me or something.

Dan McCoy

[45:13] I'm not going to skip there because it'll be our little treat at the end of the movie.

[45:17] But there is some aggressive padding at the very end of the movie.

[45:21] And it's weird to me because this movie is like, I don't know, like it's like an hour 50 or something.

[45:26] Like it's not.

[45:27] That last scene of the movie, the stuff that happens at the end would make sense if this movie would just barely squeak to 90 minutes.

[45:34] And they're like, we got to put this in here to pull it out.

[45:37] But otherwise, it's inexplicable to me.

[45:38] But we'll get there.

Elliott Kalan

[45:40] And then the movies that I expect to have padding.

[45:41] There's a movie I saw.

[45:42] I thought there was going to be a ton of padding in it.

[45:44] It was called Padding Ton.

[45:45] There was no padding.

[45:46] That was a good movie.

[45:46] Fuck off.

[45:47] The scenes needed to be there, you know?

[45:49] I was sitting here waiting for that truck to arrive.

Dan McCoy

[45:51] And I was.

[45:52] When the Wells Fargo wagon came coming down the street and delivered that to me, I was happy.

Stuart Wellington

[45:58] Okay, guys.

[45:59] So time to get some baby action.

[46:02] Sly escapes his secret lab using a variety of gadgets that he built or scavenged.

[46:07] And then he hides in the laundry.

[46:08] And this is where he uses the catchphrase diaper gravy to describe the contents of those diapers.

[46:15] I'm surprised the talking doll doesn't say diaper gravy.

[46:18] Yeah.

[46:18] It is repeated like five times within a two-minute period, which I have to assume the filmmakers are like, kids are going to love this and not stop saying it.

[46:27] So we got to get on top of this landmine and say it ourselves.

Linda Holmes

[46:31] And it's really gross.

[46:35] No, it's really gross.

[46:37] Bad phrases.

[46:41] My dog is barking, by the way, if you hear him a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[46:43] Is it the implication that you would eat what's in the diaper?

[46:46] Is that what's so gross about it, particularly since it's a gravy?

Dan McCoy

[46:49] I think it's the implication about the consistency.

[46:52] Consistency, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[46:53] With lumps or without lumps, do you think?

Dan McCoy

[46:55] Okay.

[46:55] I mean, it depends on the baby.

[46:57] Linda's so disturbed already.

Stuart Wellington

[46:58] Just both words.

[47:00] So Sly is able to escape and then he runs loose on the city streets.

[47:05] This is where we also learn that Sly and Wit have some kind of psychic link, not unlike E.T. and Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[47:14] Like all twins, they can send kind of sensations to each other.

[47:20] Sensationism and concepts.

[47:22] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[47:23] So then Sly gets picked up by a cartoonish hobo fellow who wants to sell him for a reward.

[47:30] So Sly beats him up and then steals his clothes and cigar.

[47:34] And then he sneaks into the perambulator of a very fancy lady baby where we believe – we are led to believe that they had some kind of romantic tryst and end up swapping clothes while they're in the mall.

[47:48] What do you guys think of this?

[47:49] No.

Elliott Kalan

[47:49] So here's my – if this was a grown-up movie and the joke of it was he's like James Bond but he's a baby and he's going to do all – it's going to show you how ridiculous a James Bond story is by having a baby do it.

[48:01] That he's bedding women, he's having action sequences.

[48:05] The same way – there's a – is it Johnny Ryan who has the character Stud Baby?

[48:08] Who's the baby who's –

[48:09] Probably.

[48:10] The baby who's so hot that women are like, oh, I can't – I got to get that baby.

[48:14] If it was a joke like that, if it was like a taboo-breaking joke where it's like we're going to show you how dumb this is by having a baby do it.

[48:20] But it's not.

[48:20] This is a children's movie.

[48:21] So the idea that he had like a romantic dalliance for a moment with this – and that – not that it's even like hinted at, but that she says – when he says take off your clothes, that she says,

[48:31] at least buy me dinner first.

[48:32] Like I don't like any of that.

[48:33] It's so horrible.

[48:34] Yeah, it's grotesque.

[48:34] All of it.

Dan McCoy

[48:36] Most of the jokes in the movie are lazy, but this one is grotesque.

Elliott Kalan

[48:39] Yeah, exactly.

[48:40] It's –

[48:40] Yeah.

[48:41] I don't want my baby characters to have sex.

[48:43] Maybe I'm on a limb here.

[48:44] Guys, maybe I'm going to ritual.

[48:45] I don't want my baby characters to have sex with each other.

[48:47] It's very bad.

[48:48] It's very bad.

Linda Holmes

[48:48] And as you said, you get the take off your clothes.

[48:51] And then at the end, he's leaving and she's saying, call me.

[48:54] I'm listed.

[48:55] It's like, oh, God.

[48:57] Are we –

Dan McCoy

[48:58] And she doesn't even hold up a toy phone.

[49:00] I mean, come on.

[49:00] No.

[49:01] Also, she can't be listed.

[49:02] What baby is listed in the phone book?

Elliott Kalan

[49:04] That's crazy.

Linda Holmes

[49:05] Well, and I don't think they traded names.

[49:08] So like how's he even going to find her?

[49:10] This is also, I think, where you start to get some of the use of movie catchphrases is in sort of this section.

[49:18] I think you get the hasta la vista baby somewhere in this section maybe.

Elliott Kalan

[49:23] And when he starts – as I'm sure Stuart will get to when he gets to his changing montage, which to me was the most grotesque.

[49:30] After the implication that these babies made love, the most grotesque moment to me is the – what they do with him in the clothes-changing montage.

[49:37] Yeah.

[49:37] Go ahead.

[49:38] Go ahead.

Stuart Wellington

[49:38] It looks like my notes have like four paragraphs about how Peter McNichol is now planning on taking out a loan to save their business.

Elliott Kalan

[49:45] I guess I can skip that, right?

[49:47] Also, luckily, none of that information plays into the rest of the movie.

[49:51] They set it up and it doesn't matter.

[49:53] Okay.

[49:54] He's going to have some financing paperwork he was going to read.

[49:56] Yeah.

[49:57] Just for the texture.

[49:58] It's like a Robert Altman movie.

[49:59] Some of the stuff is just there to build a world.

[50:01] Yeah.

[50:01] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[50:02] Just like a Robert Altman movie, we then see Sly hiding out in the mall playing Crash Bandicoot.

[50:10] Okay.

[50:11] I did enjoy seeing Crash Bandicoot.

[50:12] It was for the steward here.

[50:13] Yeah.

[50:13] I was like, what am I – watching someone else play Crash Bandicoot is like that scene in Uncharted 4 where you get to play Crash Bandicoot in Uncharted.

[50:23] It's amazing.

[50:24] Okay.

[50:24] So now this is the most important thing.

Elliott Kalan

[50:26] Watching other people play Crash Bandicoot.

[50:28] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:28] We are at the Putting on the Ritz montage where he puts on a bunch of different baby-sized clothes.

[50:36] Is he at a fucking Photoshop?

[50:37] Like what's going on here?

Elliott Kalan

[50:38] He is at a baby Gap, I think, right?

[50:40] But that they have like –

[50:40] Baby Gaps have tuxedos?

[50:42] Do they have tuxedos?

[50:43] That they have disco leisure suits?

[50:45] Like what is going on in this –

[50:47] But the choice to do the – what, the 80s cover of Putting on the Ritz?

[50:51] Taco, yeah.

[50:51] Is a weird one.

[50:52] It's a creepy song.

[50:54] It's very creepy.

[50:55] The fact that they have him dress up as Tony Manero and do the dance from Saturday Night Fever, which is like – who is that for?

[51:01] The kids watching this movie don't know what that is.

[51:04] John Voight.

[51:04] It's all for John Voight.

[51:05] Shouldn't be watching this.

[51:06] It's all for you, Dan.

[51:07] It's all for John Voight.

[51:08] And it goes on for a long time.

[51:09] Make the baby dance.

[51:10] Make the dance longer.

[51:10] It goes on for a long time.

[51:11] Make the dance longer.

[51:12] I feel like there's – it was nothing – it was so grotesque to me that you're like, we're going to use computers to make a baby do a pop culture reference for adults.

[51:21] And I found it was like truly you are staining the idea of childhood at this point when you're doing that.

Dan McCoy

[51:27] Stuart, you just had me imagining John Voight just like throwing crumpled dollar bills and like make the baby dance around some more.

Linda Holmes

[51:37] I do think we lost something as a culture when they stopped making like new covers of arguably novelty old songs.

Elliott Kalan

[51:47] Like when the They Might Be Giants did Istanbul was Constantinople.

Linda Holmes

[51:49] I was just going to say that Istanbul was Constantinople thing, putting on the Ritz.

[51:54] I want to see like a – I want to see like a – how much is that doggy in the window from, you know, from like a very, very cool current musician.

[52:04] Yeah, why doesn't Lil Nas X do a Jeepers Creepers cover?

[52:07] I could not think of one.

[52:08] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[52:10] Yeah, Lil Nas X do a Jeepers Creepers.

[52:12] Who's cool?

[52:13] You got like a –

[52:14] Who's cool these days?

[52:16] What are the kids listening to?

[52:17] We haven't had a cover of Tiptoe Through the Tulips in decades.

[52:20] Like why isn't Billie Eilish doing that?

[52:21] Yeah.

[52:22] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[52:22] Oh, that's a good one.

[52:23] Because like that was – that charted, that taco version of putting on the Ritz.

[52:26] Like that was a hit.

[52:27] That was a hit.

[52:28] It was huge.

Dan McCoy

[52:29] In spite of the major handicap of being irritating.

[52:31] It was huge.

Stuart Wellington

[52:33] And you guys know we were like – time-wise, we were so close to one of those outfits being fucking Austin Powers, right?

[52:41] Well, he does an Austin Powers line.

Elliott Kalan

[52:42] He does an Austin Powers line.

[52:43] He does an Austin Powers?

[52:44] Yeah.

[52:45] He says, oh, behave at one point.

[52:47] And I'm like, movie, take yourself straight to hell, movie.

[52:50] Like don't do that.

Linda Holmes

[52:52] Uh-huh.

[52:53] Add the same reaction.

[52:55] Add the same reaction.

Stuart Wellington

[52:55] The movie, you behave.

[52:57] Straight to hell with the babies.

[53:00] Okay.

[53:00] So let's see.

[53:03] Kim Cattrall takes Witt to the mall.

[53:05] Oh, wow.

[53:06] That rhymed.

[53:07] Of course, Sly spots them and then they all get spotted by undercover goons.

[53:14] This mall is more goons than shoppers.

[53:18] Witt gets snatched up by the goons.

[53:20] Sly gets picked up by Kim Cattrall who's a little confused that he's not wearing overalls.

[53:25] But she's like, it's still a baby.

Linda Holmes

[53:26] He's wearing a different outfit.

[53:28] And she's like, that's odd.

[53:29] And then she just takes him home anyway.

[53:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[53:32] She's like, oh, mommy brain, you're wearing a different outfit than the one I put you in this morning.

[53:36] You know?

[53:36] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[53:37] I reckon.

[53:38] Witt doesn't adapt well to imprisonment as you would imagine.

Elliott Kalan

[53:42] This was – no, actually, I've said a bunch of times.

[53:44] This is where the movie I wanted to go to.

[53:45] This is where Witt is just crying like because – and I was like, yeah, this is scary.

[53:49] Like he's been taken to a secret lab – a secret Akira kids lab by like boons.

[53:54] Like there's nothing fun or exciting or adventurous about this to me.

[53:58] Like it's just sad.

Stuart Wellington

[53:58] You want baby geniuses to just be all little animals from Guardians of the Galaxy montage, right?

[54:04] Like you want it to only be sad.

Elliott Kalan

[54:06] Nothing but animals being sad in cages and wondering when they're going to die and stuff like that.

[54:11] Yeah, exactly.

Linda Holmes

[54:11] You want like the Werner Herzog baby geniuses.

Elliott Kalan

[54:13] Yeah.

[54:14] Werner Herzog's baby geniuses.

[54:15] To be honest, go in that direction then at least because then I can make it so dark that I'm like, oh, I guess there's some kind of sick joke to it, you know?

[54:24] Mm-hmm.

[54:25] Although if Werner Herzog was playing the Christopher Lloyd character, that would have been fantastic.

[54:29] If he was the doctor who was like yelling at babies and things like that, that would be pretty fun.

Dan McCoy

[54:34] In these babies, I see no joy, no humanity.

Stuart Wellington

[54:38] Man.

[54:38] Just imagining Kathleen Turner and Werner Herzog's voices in the same scene is so perfect.

[54:44] I love it.

Linda Holmes

[54:44] I will say, if you have never heard, there's an old episode of our podcast where Glenn Weldon, who has done this show with you guys, did a supposed like what if Werner Herzog made a romantic comedy.

[54:56] And it's extremely funny and it devolves into a whole bunch of German Glenn voice.

[55:02] And it's very good.

[55:04] And if you like a Werner Herzog voice, which I do, and he talks about, it's very good.

[55:09] Very, very good.

[55:11] I never miss a chance to plug my pals.

[55:13] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[55:14] Stuart, how's your bicep circumference compared to Glenn's these days, would you say?

[55:19] I don't think it's as good.

Stuart Wellington

[55:20] I mean, he's a beefcake.

[55:22] Man.

[55:23] Yeah, he's a big guy.

[55:24] Yeah, he doesn't post as many thirst traps as I do, though, unless he's posting them on a burner account.

[55:30] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[55:31] I think he tries not to, you know?

[55:34] But there was a poster on your Facebook page, the Facebook page for this show, who said that when you said that I was going to come on and do this, they said,

[55:42] I am almost as excited about this as I was when it was Glenn Weldon.

[55:45] And I was like, you know what?

[55:47] Appropriate and fair.

[55:49] I was like, that's appropriate.

[55:51] That's correct.

[55:51] Oh, dear.

[55:52] That's correct.

Elliott Kalan

[55:53] I feel like that's the social etiquette level of a lot of our fans is they are enthusiastic but not always tactful.

Linda Holmes

[56:02] I got it.

[56:03] I read it and I was like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

[56:05] Agree.

[56:06] Reasonable.

Stuart Wellington

[56:07] Yep.

[56:07] Well, I think I speak for Dan Elliott when we're saying we're even more excited.

[56:11] Glenn is super strong, but you're the best.

[56:13] Take that.

[56:14] Thank goodness.

[56:15] Take that, Glenn.

[56:15] The feud begins now.

[56:17] Oh, no.

[56:20] Let's see.

[56:21] Almost immediately, Dr. Kinder realizes that the switch was on, that Sly and Wit have been swapped somehow, that her goons are all idiots.

[56:30] They also find out that when a baby hits two years old, then their limbic activity slows down and they become dumb normal kids again.

[56:42] This is kind of like, this is a pretty common trope where it's like all of a sudden they lose the wonder of being a child or how in block and key you stop paying attention to the magic of the keys or some shit.

[56:53] Or flowers are for Algernon.

[56:55] It all makes sense.

[56:56] But this is very specific.

[56:58] It's like a two-year mark and one baby hits it and all the other babies are like, oh, you're not going to remember us.

[57:05] And it could have been sad, but it wasn't because it's this movie.

[57:07] Because it's dumb.

Elliott Kalan

[57:07] They call it Crossing Over and it starts with a tummy ache.

[57:10] And then it quickly becomes them not understanding baby language anymore.

Stuart Wellington

[57:15] Yeah, it's a lot like Ginger Snaps, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[57:18] Yeah, it's just like Ginger Snaps.

[57:19] Also started with a tummy ache.

Stuart Wellington

[57:22] Okay, so Dr. Kinder goes to visit her – what's her relationship with Kim Cattrall?

[57:27] Are they like cousins?

Elliott Kalan

[57:28] Dr. Kinder says she's Kim Cattrall's aunt.

[57:31] Aunt, okay.

[57:32] Oh, is that what it is?

Dan McCoy

[57:33] Like I thought – and admittedly, part of this understanding comes from reading the Wikipedia.

[57:41] It's trying to clear things up.

[57:43] Yeah, it's a pretty complicated plot.

[57:44] At one point –

Stuart Wellington

[57:45] Yeah, the exhaustive Wikipedia entry.

Dan McCoy

[57:48] Yeah, I thought they were sisters because like they find out that Kim Cattrall was adopted or something at the end and so they're not.

Linda Holmes

[57:56] Throughout the movie, they say that she's her aunt.

[58:00] Okay.

[58:00] And then at the very end of the movie, Kim Cattrall says, I'm not really your aunt.

[58:05] You were adopted when you were two.

[58:07] Yeah.

[58:07] And Kim Cattrall is very happy about this and apparently not thrown at all because it means she's not related to Kathleen Turner.

Dan McCoy

[58:17] Yeah.

[58:17] You can punch her freely.

[58:19] Okay.

[58:19] I guess I assumed a more sort of close relationship because as –

[58:27] Some people are very close to their aunt.

[58:28] I know.

[58:29] I know.

[58:29] But culturally like sort of in my Midwestern family, like my aunts are like, yeah, I'll see them occasionally I guess.

[58:38] I mean, sure.

Elliott Kalan

[58:38] Also the fact that Kim Cattrall is two years younger than Kathleen Turner.

[58:42] Yes.

[58:42] But in this movie there, there is a larger age gap I assume between the characters.

[58:46] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[58:47] Anyway.

[58:48] Yeah, but maybe Kim Cattrall's mom.

[58:49] It doesn't matter.

[58:51] So Dr. Kinder goes to visit.

Dan McCoy

[58:53] I mean, she's just down a family tree.

Elliott Kalan

[58:56] I mean, it's true.

[58:57] My grandmother, she had an aunt who was not that much older than her because she had a lot of aunts.

[59:03] There was a big gap between her mother who was the eldest and her aunt who was the youngest.

[59:08] So I could – yeah, that could happen I guess.

[59:10] It's amazing.

Linda Holmes

[59:11] It's amazing they called the Kathleen Turner character Dr. Kinder.

[59:14] It's like somebody was standing off screen going, try less.

Stuart Wellington

[59:17] Try less.

[59:18] Yeah, yeah.

[59:19] It was the laziest – it's a lazy moment in a film filled with them.

Elliott Kalan

[59:24] They were like in the first draft to go, now, Kathleen Turner's character, Dr. Mean Lady, can we make – is the name a little too on the nose?

[59:32] Yeah, Mean Man Cruelsome.

[59:35] Okay.

[59:37] When this character villain X Badman, can we change the name to something a little bit less on the nose?

[59:43] Okay, so –

[59:44] But Max Monsaito's playing him.

Stuart Wellington

[59:45] Oh, you're right.

[59:45] You're right.

[59:46] He can sometimes be a nice guy.

[59:50] He's heroic in some movies.

[59:51] Like Strange Brew.

[59:53] No.

[59:56] So she's trying to steal Sly back, but it doesn't seem to work out.

[1:00:00] She doesn't try that hard.

[1:00:02] Sly can apparently still communicate a little bit with Peter McNichol, but it's also – you know, it's garbled.

[1:00:08] Goons show up to try and capture Sly, including – who's that actor who's –

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:12] So these are both well-known – so this is Sam McMurray is one of them from Raising Arizona, from Refreaks Leaks.

[1:00:17] The other one is Jim Hanks, Tom Hanks' brother, who will sometimes do voice work or stand-in work for Tom Hanks.

[1:00:25] So these are – this is Hollywood royalty.

Linda Holmes

[1:00:27] I was legitimately standing there looking at that guy going, he really reminds me of Tom Hanks, but I know that's not Tom Hanks.

[1:00:32] And I thought, does Tom Hanks have a brother?

[1:00:34] And I looked him up and I was like, ah, yes.

[1:00:36] He does.

[1:00:36] Dan, you would probably know him best for starring in the movie Buford's Beach Bunnies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:39] Buford's Beach Bunnies?

Dan McCoy

[1:00:40] Yes, I was going to ask if he was the same one.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:45] The same one.

[1:00:46] So the goons show up to try and capture Sly, but of course he takes the high ground and he tricks both of them into getting whacked in the balls.

Linda Holmes

[1:00:56] In an ideal sequence – identical sequences.

[1:00:59] Identical sequences.

[1:01:00] Right after each other.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:01] This is the one part of the movie that I found genuinely – not exactly funny, but the fact that –

[1:01:06] so Sam McMurray is like, let me guess.

[1:01:08] You want me to stand here and you're going to jump on that.

[1:01:10] It's going to hit me in the gonads.

[1:01:12] Then I'm going to make a funny face and fall down the stairs.

[1:01:15] Well, it's not going to happen.

[1:01:16] And Sly tricks him into doing it in a way that's not funny.

[1:01:18] But then that – Jim Hanks comes up and has the same exact conversation but the same exact outcome.

[1:01:23] I was like, you know what, baby geniuses?

[1:01:24] This is kind of a funny bit.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:25] I agree, Elliot.

[1:01:26] I was like, did someone slightly funnier come in?

[1:01:28] Right, just this scene.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:30] And the thing that really helped that scene for me is when it happens to Jim McMurray and he gets whacked in the balls.

[1:01:37] Sorry, Sam McMurray.

[1:01:37] When he falls down the stairs, it is clearly the most fakest looking stuntman swap.

[1:01:44] It's like he does not have the same hair.

[1:01:46] It's like – it's very silly.

[1:01:48] And it's really – it's like the icing on that cake.

[1:01:52] So they immediately – they're like, okay, we can't –

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:55] The stunt matchups in this movie are not done with a lot of exacting care, let's just say.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:01] Not like Garbage Pail Kids the movie, for instance.

[1:02:05] So at this point, Kathleen Turner is immediately like, okay, we got to dismantle the lab, burn everything.

[1:02:13] We're all going to prison.

[1:02:15] And I was like, for what?

[1:02:17] Yeah, yeah.

[1:02:18] They're not going to put a baby on the stand.

[1:02:20] Like, he's a pretty smart baby.

[1:02:22] A genius even.

[1:02:24] But I don't think they're going to put him on the stand.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:25] Can you read back what the witness just said?

[1:02:29] Goo goo.

[1:02:30] Ga ga.

[1:02:32] I rest my case.

[1:02:34] Strike that from the record.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:36] Okay.

[1:02:37] So the babies decide to help each other.

[1:02:39] We have some training montages, right, where the babies are –

Dan McCoy

[1:02:42] My notes start to break down here.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:44] I was a couple of drinks deep.

[1:02:46] So there's a little bit of a training montage.

[1:02:49] There's a scene where the babies are in a truck going to save the other babies, right?

[1:02:58] Mm-hmm.

[1:02:59] And they're, like, singing, like, military pep songs.

[1:03:02] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:03] And here's where they line, like, I don't know what I've been told.

[1:03:07] Eskimo girls are mighty cold.

[1:03:09] And I'm like, what the fuck?

Dan McCoy

[1:03:12] Multiple problems with that.

[1:03:14] There's a part –

Linda Holmes

[1:03:16] Is Dom DeLuise hypnotized by this point?

[1:03:19] I think so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:20] Because he's driving the bus?

[1:03:21] Yeah, by the time he's driving the bus, they've hypnotized him.

Linda Holmes

[1:03:24] Yeah.

[1:03:24] I forgot.

[1:03:26] Wit has the ability – or I guess Sly has the ability to hypnotize people also.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:31] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:32] And send them to the cornfield.

[1:03:34] Yeah.

[1:03:35] Sure.

[1:03:35] That was a good thing you did, Sly.

[1:03:37] No, no, it was good that you made all those pop culture references.

[1:03:39] No, no, it doesn't instantly date the movie Sly.

[1:03:42] Those were good.

[1:03:42] Those were good at Sly.

[1:03:43] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:45] Peter McNichol and Kim Cattrall are confused by why babies are running all over the place.

[1:03:50] Their daughter explains the whole situation.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:52] They're understandably getting calls from parents saying, why are my babies not at home?

[1:03:56] Where are they?

[1:03:57] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:00] There's a big showdown at the theme park.

[1:04:03] I did.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:04] There was – there's one line – there's another line coming up.

[1:04:06] So Peter McNichol, he calls 911.

[1:04:08] They don't believe him because his story is so crazy.

[1:04:10] I don't like that part.

[1:04:10] But then Kim Cattrall calls 911 and goes, you know, Baby Co., we put a bomb there.

[1:04:14] And I was like – she goes, you want cops there?

[1:04:18] You got cops there.

[1:04:18] And I was like, that was a funny way for them to deal with that too.

Linda Holmes

[1:04:21] That's MVP.

[1:04:22] That's co-MVP Kim Cattrall for you.

[1:04:24] I think kind of like, you know, somebody good enough, they can put it over.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:29] Yes.

[1:04:29] Yeah.

[1:04:30] But I agree with you, Stuart.

[1:04:32] This mayhem at the end, like my brain like fell off the movie.

[1:04:39] Like I texted you something similar where I'm like, as I get older, like comedy, just like

[1:04:44] general comedy mayhem, unless it's like really funny gags, which this is not, just bores me.

[1:04:50] I'm like, can we wrap it up, guys?

[1:04:52] Like not have like robots kick someone in the butt?

[1:04:57] Like, I mean, that sounds pretty funny actually now that I'm saying it.

[1:04:59] No, but it doesn't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:00] It's not funny when you see it in the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:01] Or if the highest you're hoping to achieve is like a mild chuckle from your bits, maybe

[1:05:08] don't put it in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] It's also one of those, this is one of those movies where the, and I feel like Argyle,

[1:05:16] which we watched recently had the same problem where the main character, the hero of the movie

[1:05:19] is so incredibly uber competent that no one can stand in their way.

[1:05:24] And so by the end of this movie, it's just Sly in a control room, sending out the robots

[1:05:28] to beat up the adults while he makes snap, he makes wisecracks and has the same annoying

[1:05:34] kid laugh over and over again at everything that happens.

[1:05:37] And it's like, you know what, Sly, I'm not on your side at this point.

[1:05:39] Like you're just, you're just torturing.

[1:05:41] I know that you were basically kidnapped and raised to be a sort of child experiment.

[1:05:45] But at this point, you're, I want you to be challenged in some way or else you're not

[1:05:49] the hero of the movie anymore.

[1:05:51] Sly is just like Argyle.

Linda Holmes

[1:05:52] Not to be overly philosophical about action comedies, but I just recently saw The Fall

[1:05:57] Guy, which I loved.

[1:05:58] I heard it's really good.

[1:05:59] Oh, I loved it so much.

[1:06:00] I was such a sucker for that movie.

[1:06:02] And one of the reasons why I love it is that because it's about this stunt man and because

[1:06:05] I think they wanted to be true to, you know, admiration for stunt people.

[1:06:09] Every time that Ryan Gosling is doing something that looks like it would really hurt in this

[1:06:13] movie, it looks like it really hurts.

[1:06:15] And he lands and he'll immediately be like, uh.

[1:06:18] You can tell he can only do so much of this.

[1:06:21] And that's part of one of, that's one of the things the movie turned out to be about.

[1:06:23] And those kinds of things where you actually have, you know, a person who is, has some

[1:06:29] vulnerabilities.

[1:06:29] I think it really helps put an action sequence over, even in an action comedy.

[1:06:33] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:34] My favorite, my favorite moment in any Mission Impossible movie is when Tom Cruise is climbing

[1:06:38] the Bridge Khalifa and he has to slide into that window and he hits his head on it.

[1:06:41] And I know that he didn't really get hurt, but like that Ethan Hunt is like, ow.

[1:06:44] Like, he didn't do it right and he gets hurt.

[1:06:46] Yeah.

[1:06:46] I love it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:47] I mean, somebody, I saw somebody point out like the best part of the Mission Impossible

[1:06:50] movies is the look on Ethan Hunt's face when he realizes, oh shit, I have to, how am I

[1:06:54] going to get out of this?

[1:06:55] Yeah, yeah.

[1:06:56] Yeah.

[1:06:56] He, the way Tom Cruise does sell that.

[1:06:58] And that's, and that's part of what Ryan Gosling does so well in Fall Guy is the, like, he

[1:07:03] sells the vulnerability of that character and he sells the, like, the pain that he's going

[1:07:08] through so well.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:10] And we mentioned a lot, but for me, like, it's going back a while, but the gold standard

[1:07:14] is like Indiana Jones where like, like he, there's like a whole scene in Raiders of the

[1:07:19] Lost Ark where the movie pauses for him to be grumpy about how every part of him

[1:07:24] hurts.

[1:07:26] And I love that.

[1:07:27] I love that the movie acknowledges, like, this is just a guy who, like, is really good

[1:07:32] at it, but is really lucky and, like, is in pain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:35] That Indiana Jones, in the best of those movies, he looks genuinely worried and unhappy.

[1:07:40] When he's running from that giant boulder and stuff, he's not like, uh-oh, guess we're

[1:07:44] having a ball.

[1:07:45] He's like, oh shit, there's this giant thing behind me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:47] I gotta get out of here.

[1:07:49] I like to punch up for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[1:07:51] Dan, how, uh, how, how much did the, uh, the, uh, uh, when, um, the spikes come out

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:58] after, um, why am I forgetting his name?

[1:08:00] Dr. Octopus, after he betrays him.

[1:08:01] Alfred Molina.

[1:08:02] Oh, sure, sure.

[1:08:03] Alfred Molina.

[1:08:03] He's not like, spikes to see you.

[1:08:06] Now I see you got the point.

[1:08:07] Like, instead he's just like, oh, okay.

[1:08:10] I'll just take this thing and get out of here.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:12] Dan, how much did the, Dan, how much did the sequence where Indiana Jones uses his injuries

[1:08:16] and his general grumpiness to seduce somebody?

[1:08:19] How much did that inform your own love style?

Dan McCoy

[1:08:22] I mean, it's Karen Allen.

[1:08:25] So I have to imagine that I was like, okay, if this is the way, if this is how you do it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:31] This is why you're standing outside of Karen Allen's house with a boombox just playing you

[1:08:34] going, ow, ow.

[1:08:35] Yeah, I know.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:36] I'm sending her my doctor's reports about, you know, my early onset arthritis.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:43] Guys, so the, uh, the bad guys lose, the good guys win.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:48] Oh, okay.

[1:08:49] There's a montage of babies.

[1:08:50] Appropriate leap.

[1:08:51] Appropriate leap.

[1:08:52] Yeah, let's talk about this montage.

[1:08:53] Cause like, you know.

[1:08:54] There's a montage of babies.

[1:08:55] If the movie wraps up, you know, yada yada, the babies, you know, lose their magical stuff.

[1:08:59] The babies win.

Linda Holmes

[1:09:00] But do they in the end?

Dan McCoy

[1:09:02] Yeah, nobody wins.

[1:09:03] Death comes for us all eventually, yeah.

[1:09:05] It's true.

[1:09:06] But to me, there was this baffling, like, montage set to like a country ballad.

[1:09:10] About how babies are gifts from God, yeah.

Linda Holmes

[1:09:12] It's a Randy Travis song.

[1:09:13] And we haven't even talked about the fact that one of the guards who is running the robots

[1:09:19] in the theme park is Randy Travis.

[1:09:22] Oh, I didn't even write him.

[1:09:22] And so that's Randy Travis.

[1:09:24] And then you get a Randy Travis song at the end, which I guess is all part of the same,

[1:09:29] you know, maybe they made a deal with the record company or somebody knows Randy Travis's

[1:09:33] manager or whatever.

[1:09:34] But yeah, so that's a Randy Travis song at the end.

[1:09:38] Perhaps sung in the story by one of the guards.

[1:09:41] Who knows?

Dan McCoy

[1:09:42] I have to say, this would make sense to me if, like, over the credits, they had scenes

[1:09:48] from the production of Baby Geniuses just showing the kids running around being kids.

[1:09:52] And then you've got the sentimental song about kids.

[1:09:55] What it is instead is, like, within the diegetic world of the film, we just get, like, various

[1:09:59] small flashbacks to the kids doing stuff we saw in the movie already while this song

[1:10:04] plays.

[1:10:05] And I'm like, what is going on?

Linda Holmes

[1:10:07] It's just the movie going, wasn't this a good movie?

[1:10:10] It's just, wasn't this a good movie?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:11] Remember all the characters you fell in love with and the moments you'll remember forever

[1:10:15] and the ride we've been on?

Linda Holmes

[1:10:17] Remember this thing that happened eight minutes ago?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:19] This song that should be playing over the closing credits, why not just remember some of these

[1:10:24] special times with our new friends, the Baby Geniuses?

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:27] Boy.

[1:10:27] Yeah.

[1:10:28] I imagine on set, a PA came running up to Bob Clark and John Voighton was like, guys,

[1:10:32] guys, guys, get this.

[1:10:34] Randy Travis loves babies.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:37] They're like, oh, let's get them in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:40] I've been looking for a way to do a project with babies at some point.

[1:10:44] I thought you were going to say...

Linda Holmes

[1:10:45] I thought you were going to say somebody ran up and said, guys, we're short.

[1:10:48] We're short.

[1:10:49] And they were like, montage.

[1:10:51] Montage time.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:52] Always a montage.

[1:10:54] That's a good way.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:54] And so, and this song, you guys, I mean, you guys, Elliot, you're a school of music.

[1:11:01] You know, you pay attention to the pop music.

[1:11:04] This song was a huge hit, right?

[1:11:06] It was a Grammy winner.

[1:11:07] So this was a Grammy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:08] It won for best original song, best original album, best album, best spoken word, which

[1:11:15] is strange.

[1:11:16] It was number one on the pop charts, number one on the country charts, and number one

[1:11:19] on the jazz adult easy listening charts, as well as number one on the hip hop R&B charts,

[1:11:24] which is not even one of those.

[1:11:25] A quadruple threat.

[1:11:26] It took the world by storm.

[1:11:28] I think right that the war in Kosovo ended when they played this song and everyone said,

[1:11:33] yeah, we all were all babies once.

[1:11:34] And they hugged each other.

[1:11:35] It was just, this song brought the world together.

[1:11:37] We have Randy Travis and Baby Geniuses.

[1:11:39] Thanks for that.

[1:11:40] Unfortunately, we've since forgotten that because we all crossed over.

[1:11:43] When the year 1999 turned to the year 2000, we all crossed over and forgot our knowledge

[1:11:47] of the 20th century.

[1:11:49] And so once again, we live in a fallen world that the magic of Randy Travis no longer holds

[1:11:54] together.

Linda Holmes

[1:11:55] I think that's the song where they abolished the baby music chart, right?

[1:12:01] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:01] They said nothing's ever going to sell this well again.

[1:12:04] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[1:12:04] So there's no point in having it.

[1:12:06] It probably is still number one on the baby music chart to this day.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:09] Yeah.

[1:12:09] That was number one.

[1:12:10] Number two was that, yeah, I am un bebe, that French song that was a big novel to him.

[1:12:15] Oh yeah.

[1:12:15] The Geordie song?

[1:12:16] Geordie, yeah.

[1:12:17] And it was Baby Shark.

[1:12:18] Yeah.

[1:12:19] Number one, Baby Shark.

[1:12:21] You know, Randy Travis is listening to Baby Shark and he's like, there, the baby music these

[1:12:24] days.

[1:12:25] It's not, what's it really about?

[1:12:26] There's no message.

[1:12:27] It's just ear candy.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:29] And then after that, there's Baby I Love You, which is not actually a baby song.

[1:12:32] It just has baby in it, but they were running low that year.

[1:12:35] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:35] Again, it wasn't about a baby Santa Claus.

[1:12:38] That would be adorable.

[1:12:38] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:38] Santa Baby's not appropriate.

[1:12:40] Yeah.

[1:12:41] No.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:42] It was a real baby.

[1:12:42] Although I feel like the makers of this movie would have been like, yeah, I mean, there's

[1:12:46] Santa in the movie and there's babies and there's mention of a robot Santa.

[1:12:50] And, you know, we've been playing it pretty fast and loose with how sexualized these babies

[1:12:55] can be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:56] Yeah.

[1:12:56] I do want to point out one thing that one detail that we missed, which was the robot clown

[1:13:00] that is holding a sort of cross with chattering teeth all along the crossbar.

[1:13:05] And he kind of, he frightens the security goons at the end with it.

[1:13:11] What was the thinking behind that, do you think?

[1:13:13] Because the children were going to enjoy that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:14] Yeah.

[1:13:15] Yeah.

[1:13:15] They're like, hey, we're testing out a new chainsaw man character.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:20] I got to say in another movie that is not baby geniuses, I think I would like that very

[1:13:24] much.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:25] Okay.

[1:13:25] Fair.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:26] Before we close the book on baby geniuses, I just want, I also want to say after the montage,

[1:13:32] of course, the main baby is wandering around muttering to himself that if they want him in

[1:13:38] the sequel, they have to pay him $20 million.

[1:13:41] And then the end is stamped on his diaper butt.

[1:13:45] Sure.

[1:13:46] Where the gravy is hidden.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:48] With a laugh.

[1:13:49] Or as we call it, the gravy boat.

[1:13:51] Yeah.

[1:13:51] We call it the gravy boat.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:52] Yeah.

[1:13:53] That's the one that beat me to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:54] And so do you think he really got $20 million for super babies, geniuses babies too?

Dan McCoy

[1:13:58] Is he in it?

[1:13:59] I think he aged out of the franchise and has maybe possibly some emotional problems from

[1:14:06] being in baby geniuses when he was too young to process it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:09] I guess considering, yeah, super babies came out five years later.

[1:14:11] So yeah, probably all those babies were too old.

[1:14:14] Yeah.

[1:14:15] Oh, it features a cousin of Sly and Wit.

[1:14:19] Ah, okay.

[1:14:19] Oh, thank God.

[1:14:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:21] Annuity is preserved.

[1:14:23] Let's give our final judgments whether this is a good, bad move.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:26] Wait, there's a baby with super strength in it?

[1:14:28] Sorry, I'm just reading the plot summary right now.

Linda Holmes

[1:14:30] Well, Elliot, Sly can karate chop adults.

[1:14:33] So his super strength, his strength is pretty super awesome.

[1:14:36] Yeah, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:36] But these ones, they're like super babies with super powers.

[1:14:39] One of them is called Bouncing Boy.

[1:14:40] That's a real superhero.

[1:14:41] That's a Legion of Superheroes character.

[1:14:42] Anyway, Dan, what are we talking about?

Dan McCoy

[1:14:44] No, if you're this transphased with super babies, baby geniuses too, we could try and figure out some way of getting to it down the line.

[1:14:50] Maybe on a flop TV, who knows?

[1:14:52] We'll have to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:52] I'm looking at the cast right now.

[1:14:53] John Voight appears finally.

[1:14:55] Scott Baio.

[1:14:56] Vanessa Angel.

[1:14:57] TV's Lisa from TV's Weird Science.

[1:15:00] Which other people?

[1:15:01] Whoopi Goldberg as herself?

[1:15:01] What?

[1:15:02] Stewart's snap-a-blooding.

[1:15:03] Vanessa.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:06] Very important to young Stewart, I assume.

[1:15:08] Let's go to final judgments.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:10] Dan, O-Town appears as themselves.

[1:15:12] Okay, let's talk about final judgments.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:15] Okay.

[1:15:15] Whether this is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of like, I will, do not be roundly laughed at.

[1:15:26] I will clarify up front, this is a bad bad movie.

[1:15:28] Absolutely.

[1:15:30] Absolutely a bad bad movie.

[1:15:31] Do not watch baby geniuses.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:34] What?

Dan McCoy

[1:15:35] On the weird curve that we have built for ourselves within the flop house, whilst I did not like this movie, I had a better experience watching it than a lot of the bad movies, just by virtue of it being like, oh, this is a type of thing we don't get anymore.

[1:15:54] This is a type of thing.

[1:16:25] So, bad bad, but kind of an interesting experience is what I'm saying.

[1:16:31] Stewart, why don't you go?

[1:16:32] You're smirking at me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:33] Yeah.

[1:16:34] No, Dan's right.

[1:16:35] It's bad bad.

[1:16:37] Yeah, it's just, it's not weird enough to be interesting and to overcome the general unpleasantness of it, I would say.

[1:16:46] So, I would say bad bad, avoid.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:49] I'm going to second Stewart and third the part of Dan's that was about how bad it is.

[1:16:56] It's very bad bad.

[1:16:57] It's not fun.

[1:16:58] It's just, I think it's, yeah, I think it's not, it's not worthwhile.

[1:17:01] There's so many other things you can have fun with.

[1:17:03] Why are you spending time with this?

[1:17:04] This is one of those movies.

[1:17:05] Luckily, this movie, my experience of it went back and forth between being disgusted and not really being able to pay too much attention.

[1:17:13] Because as Dan said, there's a lot of hijinks that kind of slide right off your brain.

[1:17:17] But yeah, I would say don't watch it.

[1:17:20] Linda proved me wrong.

Linda Holmes

[1:17:22] Oh, I can't.

[1:17:23] No, I think it is very much a bad bad movie.

[1:17:28] And I, Dan knows this, but I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch this movie.

[1:17:36] I feel I'm so weirded out by the way that like every line in this movie sounds like ADR to me.

[1:17:42] Yeah.

[1:17:43] There's something very strange about how they just, some of the basic execution is incompetent.

[1:17:50] We didn't really talk about it, but that opening sequence where Sly is trying to escape the first time has this like really ugly, weird aesthetic with these like extreme close-ups.

[1:18:01] And it's, to me, it was.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:03] Like a little fisheye, right?

[1:18:04] Like a little fisheye.

Linda Holmes

[1:18:05] I'm not even sure if it was fisheye.

[1:18:07] I mean, it's not as distorted as I associate with fisheye, but it was like the same, like it's at your nose.

[1:18:12] And it, but it had that feel of like a fading regional department store Halloween sale kind of thing, ad for.

[1:18:22] So to me, it's just not competent enough to be a good, bad movie.

[1:18:28] It's very bad.

[1:18:29] It's very boring.

[1:18:31] Yes.

[1:18:32] I, as I said, I appreciate, I think Dan has a spirit of kindness, but I cannot, I cannot share it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:41] Ah, fair.

S5

[1:18:47] Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts is a real podcast made up of fake podcasts.

[1:18:52] Like, if you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it?

[1:18:55] So I'm going to say mugs.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:57] A little yogurt and a spoon.

[1:18:58] A small handkerchief that was given to me by my grandmother on her deathbed.

[1:19:02] Maybe some spare honey.

S6

[1:19:04] I'd keep batteries in it.

[1:19:05] I'd pretend to be a toy.

[1:19:07] If I had a cupboard in my lower back, I'd probably fill it with spines.

S5

[1:19:11] If you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it?

[1:19:13] Doesn't exist.

[1:19:14] We made it up for Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts.

[1:19:18] An award-winning comedy podcast from Maximum Fun made up of hundreds of stupid podcasts.

[1:19:23] Listen and subscribe to Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts.

[1:19:26] Now.

S6

[1:19:29] Oh my gosh, hi.

[1:19:30] It's me, Dave Holmes, host of the pop culture game show Troubled Waters.

[1:19:33] On Troubled Waters, we play a whole host of games.

[1:19:36] Like one where I describe a show using limerick.

[1:19:38] And our guests have to figure out what it is.

[1:19:40] Let's do one right now.

[1:19:41] What show am I talking about?

[1:19:43] This podcast has game after game.

[1:19:45] And brilliant guests who come play him.

[1:19:47] The host is named Dave.

[1:19:48] It could be your fave.

[1:19:49] So try it.

[1:19:50] Life won't be the same.

[1:19:52] A big business starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin.

[1:19:54] Close, but no.

S5

[1:19:56] Oh, is it Troubled Waters, the pop culture quiz show with all your favorite comedians?

S6

[1:20:00] Yes.

[1:20:01] Troubled Waters is the answer.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:02] To this question and all of my life's problems.

[1:20:05] Now, legally, we actually can't guarantee that.

S6

[1:20:08] But you can find it on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:14] Hey there, listeners.

[1:20:15] It's me, Dan McCoy, coming at you solo for a few advertisements.

[1:20:21] And if anyone has listened to me talking solo, you know how weird it can eventually get.

[1:20:28] So let's take this trip together.

[1:20:31] We hope that the sponsors like it.

[1:20:34] And one sponsor we have is that old favorite, Squarespace, which is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

[1:20:46] If you want a beautiful website, whether you're just starting out or whether you have a brand that you're growing, this is a great way to make a website.

[1:20:57] You can engage with your audience, sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place.

[1:21:05] You know, they've got Squarespace blueprint.

[1:21:09] Oh, I'm tripping over words already.

[1:21:10] See, this is how it goes, which will help you start a completely personalized website via its guided design system.

[1:21:19] You can choose from professionally curated styling options to build your own unique presence from the ground up online that's tailored to your brand and business the way you want to do.

[1:21:33] This is where kids rule and adults drool.

[1:21:35] You can also make checkout seamless for your customers with simple but powerful payment tools.

[1:21:42] Hey, you want people to pay you if you've got a business online?

[1:21:45] That's half of what happens.

[1:21:47] You provide the good and or service and you expect payment, damn it.

[1:21:53] Well, with Squarespace, you can get that payment via PayPal, Apple Pay.

[1:21:59] And in eligible countries, you can get the option to buy now and pay later with Afterpay and Clearpay.

[1:22:08] You can sell your products and services with an online store.

[1:22:11] Whether it's digital content or physical goods or services, Squarespace can help you out with the tools you need

[1:22:17] to start selling online.

[1:22:18] So why not go to squarespace.com for a free trial?

[1:22:23] And when you are ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.

[1:22:36] We also have a Jumbotron.

[1:22:38] We also have a Jumbotron.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:38] This is for Maya.

[1:22:40] It's from Dad and Mom.

[1:22:43] Maya, congratulations on your amazing performance and Mamma Mia.

[1:22:47] We were so proud of all the hard work you put into a spectacular performance and can't wait to see what next year brings.

[1:22:54] Love you, Mom and Dad.

[1:22:56] I love this Jumbotron.

[1:22:59] I love this Jumbotron.

[1:22:59] As a former theater kid, I love it.

[1:23:03] And I just, you know, what a supportive thing to do to buy a Jumbotron on our dumb show.

[1:23:12] Maya, I didn't see you, obviously, on Mamma Mia.

[1:23:15] But I also congratulate you on a great performance.

[1:23:22] And, hey, we don't do only plugs for other things.

[1:23:25] No, we plug ourselves sometimes.

[1:23:28] We plug ourselves good.

[1:23:29] Anyway, that's gross.

[1:23:31] If you are listening to this before May 19th, and I think you are.

[1:23:37] I mean, maybe you aren't.

[1:23:38] I don't know.

[1:23:39] Why did I say that?

[1:23:40] Before May 19th, 2024, you can still get tickets to the virtual event, The Flophouse Sinks Speed 2.

[1:23:50] The video on demand is still available until midnight on May 19th.

[1:23:58] And so if you want to get tickets for that, you can go to stagepilot.com slash speed.

[1:24:07] Also, we are coming to Oxford, England on the 24th of May for two shows at Oxford Town Hall.

[1:24:16] There is an early show that is at 7 p.m.

[1:24:20] And we'll be talking about The Avengers.

[1:24:23] That's the Uma Thurman-Raefe Fiennes version of the British television show, The Avengers.

[1:24:29] Not, you know, the big Marvel one.

[1:24:32] And, of course, we're in England, so we're going to do Spice World at 9 p.m.

[1:24:39] Of course, the great classic of British cinema.

[1:24:42] Towering above them all, there is one crown jewel, and that is Spice World.

[1:24:46] So if you want to see those again, they're on May 24th, 2024, at Oxford Town Hall in Oxford, England.

[1:24:55] There's a 7 p.m. show, and there's a 9 p.m. show.

[1:24:57] And also, we will be live in Boston in July, on the 26th of July, in fact, at 7 p.m. at WBUR City Space.

[1:25:14] Tickets are available.

[1:25:16] You know, the easiest way, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[1:25:21] There's listings for all these shows I'm mentioning.

[1:25:24] We don't know what we'll be talking about in Boston this time around, but we do know that we had a great time at WBUR City Space in the past, and we anticipate having a great time again in the future.

[1:25:37] We would love to see you there.

[1:25:40] And now, hey, why don't I get back to that show?

[1:25:43] Let's take some letters from listeners.

[1:25:51] Listeners like you, provided that you are a letter-writing listener.

[1:25:56] And this is from Kevin, last name being held very close to the vest.

[1:25:59] Oh, no, someone bumped into me, and I'm bobbling it.

[1:26:01] I got it.

[1:26:02] No, don't got it.

[1:26:03] And now it's spilled everywhere.

[1:26:05] So thank you for the short story and your last name, Kevin.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:09] I couldn't tell if that was you reading or you narrating what was happening to you.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:12] No, this is in the email.

[1:26:14] Kevin writes, dear floppers, I have four kids.

[1:26:18] Yes, it's a lot.

[1:26:19] And while I was putting my two-year-old to bed, I heard my nine-year-old telling one of his little brothers,

[1:26:26] dude, you need to read Horse Meets Dog.

[1:26:28] It's so funny.

[1:26:31] All my kids love the illustrations, which have some good visual gags.

[1:26:35] So a little compliment for you, Elliot, at the top of this email.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:37] Yay.

[1:26:38] Thank you.

[1:26:38] That's very nice.

[1:26:39] I'm glad they enjoy it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:42] He continues.

[1:26:43] The rest of the letter is a drag on Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:45] Yeah, and then it's like Sharko and Hippo, on the other hand, fails to reach the heights of.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:49] A sophomore slump, we call it here in this household.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:52] A Horse Meets Dog has been newly rediscovered in my household.

[1:26:57] And I find it very gratifying when my son, he laughs whenever the horse goes, woo-hoo, oats.

[1:27:02] And he thinks that's the funniest line that was ever written.

[1:27:06] And he's right.

[1:27:06] I can't argue with him.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:08] Okay.

[1:27:09] Well, he continues.

[1:27:10] Kevin continues.

[1:27:12] We also recently re-watched, pardon me, Wall-E as a family, which is, sorry, as a family, comma,

[1:27:20] which is good, full of great physical comedy.

[1:27:23] So my question is this.

[1:27:24] In the era of, say, Feral McKay-esque comedy, which prioritizes silly improvised dialogue, what are some recent-ish films or TV shows that you thought did a great job of using visual gags or physical comedy to get a laugh?

[1:27:45] It's not that recent.

[1:27:46] It's not that recent overall, but I think all of, like—

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:50] But when Dick Van Dyke would trip over the ottoman.

[1:27:52] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:53] No, you know, like, is it every frame of painting that did this?

[1:27:58] Like, someone who does video essays did one on Edgar Wright's, like, shooting of things.

[1:28:05] I think it was.

[1:28:06] It's not so much necessarily, like, that the, like—I mean, there are a lot of great slapstick gags, but, like, the talk about it was, like, also how beautifully they were shot to, like, maximize the comedy of it, which I think is a big problem with a lot of gags.

[1:28:23] If they are done at all physical gags these days, I feel like they're done in the flattest way possible.

[1:28:30] Like, they do—they go to the trouble of figuring out what a physical joke might be, but then not how to present it in a way that would maximize the comedy.

[1:28:40] And I think Edgar Wright's very good at that.

[1:28:42] Also, I have not seen it yet, but I'm very excited that I just earlier today bought a ticket to a screening in the one theater that's playing it around here of hundreds of beavers, which I hear is—

[1:28:53] I want to see that.

[1:28:53] Very funny.

[1:28:54] All—a lot of physical gags, so I have high hopes.

[1:28:59] What do you guys think?

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:00] There's none that—none specific gags that come immediately to mind, but I was a big fan of the recent show Losa Spookies, and there were a lot of funny verbal gags, but there also were a lot of funny visuals.

[1:29:11] And it wasn't always like—it wasn't slapstick necessarily, but like things that looked funny or like characters that were designed in a funny way or were kind of positioned in a funny way.

[1:29:22] Like the visual of the show very much was a part of the joke, which I agree, Dan.

[1:29:27] Often it is, especially because so much of comedy seems to come from the—that improv world that like there's this sense of like it doesn't matter what it looks like, and you can't plan for it necessarily because it's just riffing.

[1:29:39] Let's just get riffs.

[1:29:40] And I've never been a huge fan of riff-based movie comedy, but—

[1:29:45] Or podcasts.

[1:29:46] Or podcasts.

[1:29:47] Wait, hold on.

[1:29:48] Well, I don't know.

[1:29:49] There's some fun stuff there.

[1:29:51] But it does make it harder to—on the other hand, you don't want to go the other way where you're so tied to a very elaborate visual joke that it feels—what's the word?

[1:30:03] That it feels like either forced or—you know, I'm not a huge fan of the movie Caddyshack, but there are funny things in that movie.

[1:30:08] But the least funny part of that movie is that huge scene where boats are crashing into each other, and it's all the broadest physical smash-ups.

[1:30:16] Right.

[1:30:16] And it's like, oh, boy, what is—they must have spent more money on this than the rest of the movie combined, and it's so unfunny.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:21] I mean, yeah, well, that's the weird—like there's this illusion among Hollywood, I think, that like crashes are inherently funny.

[1:30:29] Like there's not really jokes in that scene.

[1:30:30] Yeah, that is called John Landis.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:32] That was the—

[1:30:33] Well, I got to say—

[1:30:33] And then he had that one crash that was very much not funny.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:35] Well, that's not such a good question.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:37] He's like, let's have a huge car crash.

[1:30:39] That'll be hilarious, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:41] I was going to bring up Blues Brothers to say, though, like, that's the one case where I'm like, well, these car crashes aren't funny, but I do find these chase scenes exciting.

[1:30:52] Like, they're well done on a technical level on that end, so at least that's okay.

[1:30:57] I guess if I'm not expected to laugh, I'll enjoy them, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:59] You're like, as long as I'm not expected to laugh at this comedy scene, then it's all right, you know.

Linda Holmes

[1:31:05] Yeah.

[1:31:05] I think the most recent Mission Impossible, a couple of the action sequences are really funny in a way that they don't necessarily play it entirely overtly for jokes, but I think the Hayley Atwell driving scene is very funny.

[1:31:17] Right.

Linda Holmes

[1:31:17] That's great.

[1:31:18] And that train scene at the end is very funny.

[1:31:20] I kept sort of as that was – I remember being in the theater for that train sequence, and as you could kind of see what the next thing was that was going to happen, like, they're in the kitchen, so it's going to be oil all over the ground.

[1:31:30] I would just go, yep, and that's very funny to me.

[1:31:34] The other thing I would mention, which is, like, commercially speaking, pretty close to the opposite of a Mission Impossible movie is the recent movie, Lisa Frankenstein, which nobody liked except me, but I kind of dug it.

[1:31:49] It was written by Diablo Cody, who I run hot and cold on, as I think a lot of people do.

[1:31:54] But I really liked it, and the main character is this teenager in the 80s who reanimates the corpse of this guy who becomes, like, her boyfriend, and he's still basically dead.

[1:32:06] And the kid is played by Cole Sprouse, who was one of the Zack and Cody Sprouses.

[1:32:14] And I think he's actually great in it.

[1:32:16] I think he gets in a lot of really, like, funny kind of – because he doesn't talk pretty much through the whole movie because he's just – because he's dead.

[1:32:24] And so everything has to be done with, like, face and body.

[1:32:27] And I actually think he's very funny, and I was really surprised that nobody liked that movie except me because I kind of dug it.

[1:32:33] But even, like, on my own team, nobody liked it except me.

[1:32:36] But I liked it.

[1:32:37] I liked it.

[1:32:38] I thought it was sweet.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:39] Yeah.

[1:32:39] I know Stuart liked it for a fact because he recommended it.

[1:32:42] And we watched it, and, like, I didn't love it, but I did like it.

[1:32:47] I did enjoy it more than in general.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:48] I don't know how I missed that because normally I would –

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:51] I feel like those two leads are so fun that it's hard not to at least like it a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:56] Yeah.

[1:32:57] Yeah.

[1:32:57] You made me realize Stuart's not going to like this, but I find that in a number of Yorgos Lanthimos movies, he has funny physical stuff.

[1:33:06] Stuart hates it.

[1:33:07] But when – before Poor Things becomes mainly a sex movie, when Emma Stone is being a baby, a lot of that stuff is really funny.

[1:33:16] And there are parts of Killing of a Sacred Deer that are so, like, off-puttingly funny to me in a way.

[1:33:23] Like, there's a part where Colin Farrell –

[1:33:24] You get a sicko.

[1:33:26] He's going to give you sicko stuff.

[1:33:28] When their son is essentially paralyzed from the waist down and they think it's psychosomatic and they're, like, picking him up and trying to force him to walk in a hallway and he just falls down in the hallway of the hospital.

[1:33:39] It's like a very – like, it's a horrifying moment.

[1:33:41] It's also, like, a very funny physical comedy bit when someone just falls down.

[1:33:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:45] Linda, before – sorry.

[1:33:46] I know that Stuart hasn't gone, but before – just saying Mission Impossible made me remember on, like, the action side, like, the end of the most recent John Wick, like, that stairway sequence in particular is, like, just, like, classic physical comedy in addition to being thrilling as an action sequence.

[1:34:04] And his – we're talking about, like, getting beat up.

[1:34:07] His, like, growing frustration every time he has to start from square one is very funny in that.

Linda Holmes

[1:34:13] Yeah, and the – I think the John Wick movies in general, you know, when you're talking about the stuff, like, fighting with the horse and – which is the previous one, but, like, the fighting with the horse or fighting with, like, slamming the book on the guy in the library.

[1:34:26] And even – I know you guys did the recent Roadhouse.

[1:34:30] I think the first time that Jake Gyllenhaal confronts the group of toughs and I think that's pretty – I think the physicality of that is pretty funny.

[1:34:43] And I think in any good – in any kind of action movie that I'm going to like, there is an element of slapstick to the action.

[1:34:51] Yeah.

[1:34:52] So it's common to see it come out and stuff like – and The Fall Guys the same way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:55] That makes sense.

[1:34:56] I mean, there's an argument to be made that Buster Keaton is the greatest action filmmaker of all time.

[1:35:00] Sure.

Elliott Kalan

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:02] Stuart, sorry.

[1:35:03] I'm not going to recommend an action comedy or a recent thing, so – but my wife has been doing a Friends rewatch.

[1:35:12] And one of the things – I feel like the whole cast is very good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:15] Just watching her friends with binoculars or telescopes or –

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:17] And – should I acknowledge Elliot's bit?

[1:35:21] No, don't.

[1:35:21] Just keep going.

[1:35:22] Don't worry about it.

[1:35:23] You know, I'm bringing this up, of course, to tie in with Cole Sprouse.

[1:35:27] But so – but one of the things that – I mean, all six of the Friends are such good performers, and their physicality is really impressive.

[1:35:37] And, you know, obviously, it's a comedy, so not all the jokes work and yada, yada, yada.

[1:35:44] That's a sign-filt thing, not a French thing.

[1:35:46] Yeah.

[1:35:47] But they're definitely, like – watching it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I get why this was a huge hit.

[1:35:53] Everybody is so good.

[1:35:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:57] Yeah.

[1:35:57] So moving on to our second and final letter.

[1:36:01] This is from Zach Lasting withheld.

[1:36:03] Zach Last.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:04] What about me?

[1:36:04] I do physical comedy.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:06] I was on a podcast-related TV show.

[1:36:09] And a TV show-related podcast.

[1:36:12] Your discussion of the happy-go-lucky violence in Argyle made me think back to the disturbing ending of the first Kingsman movie.

[1:36:19] Though it's never represented on screen, it is implied that millions of parents across the globe have just come to their senses and discovered they have

[1:36:27] bludgeoned their children to death.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:29] Clearly knowing that something like this must have occurred.

[1:36:31] Cool.

[1:36:31] What a family-friendly entertainment.

[1:36:34] I mean, I know Kingsman's not family-friendly.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:35] I don't even remember this, but I'm going to take the letter writer's word for it.

[1:36:39] Clearly knowing that something like this must have occurred, Taron Egerton proceeds to smile and slip away to have anal sex with a princess.

[1:36:46] And the film seems to end on a mirthful note.

[1:36:50] My question.

[1:36:52] What's another movie where the writing and its treatment of violence seems terribly tonally off?

[1:36:57] I.e.

[1:36:57] Something very bad is taking place off screen and something the characters know has happened and everyone, including the movie's tone itself, stays cheery or even comical.

[1:37:07] Keep on flopping.

[1:37:08] I don't think we have to stick to that particular scenario.

[1:37:10] It's just an example.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:11] No, but I've talked before, especially in the Quantumania episode, but I've talked about that moment at the end of Quantumania where MODOK literally dies to save the other characters.

[1:37:22] And they joke about it and they're like, this is a weird day, huh?

[1:37:24] And it rubbed me.

[1:37:26] I think about it every now and then, just how much it rubbed me the wrong way.

[1:37:29] I cannot exist in the world of this movie if the characters cannot even react with the slightest bit of gravity to someone they know dying right in front of them.

[1:37:38] Like, come on.

[1:37:38] Come on, guys.

[1:37:39] What are you doing?

[1:37:39] Even if it's a comedy.

Linda Holmes

[1:37:40] Yeah, I would say most – I mean, my answer to this would be most of the time it's tonally off to me.

[1:37:48] For example, there is – I know you guys did Olympus Has Fallen at some point.

[1:37:57] And that movie opens with this, like, sequence in which just hundreds of people get machine gunned.

[1:38:04] Just hundreds of people.

[1:38:06] And so by the end, to me, when you're dealing with the, like, the sort of triumphant we beat the bad guy, it's like, well, yeah, but you're going to be thinking about nothing but funerals for the next six months.

[1:38:18] It's two a year, right?

[1:38:20] And you're going to have to bring in, like, 25 trucks to carry out all the guys who got machine gunned in the first part.

[1:38:27] And I think it even – like, look, I can – even in a movie like Speed, I think the fact that, like, you see the end of that movie and they're kind of like, yeah, they're kind of snuggling and they're kind of kissing and it's kind of funny.

[1:38:39] Like, his best friend just died.

[1:38:40] Like, if you scratch the surface of almost any action comedy or triumphant action movie, you'll get to the end and be like, okay, you won, however.

[1:38:55] And it will be – you know, if you count the dead, it gets pretty incredible, which actually is one of the things that I like about the Avengers is that at the end of that movie, they are very devastated by what has happened.

[1:39:10] And it carries over to the – you know, as odd as it is to sort of defend that franchise, it carries over to the future movies that everybody's very traumatized by all of this.

[1:39:22] It also made the public conclude that maybe you're the bad guys.

[1:39:25] And I did like the fact that it had consequences despite the other things that kind of are going on in that franchise as it progresses.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:33] Yeah.

[1:39:34] You know what?

[1:39:35] Like, that makes me think about, you know, at the same time that was out or coming out, like, just earlier, like, I think was that just after Man of Steel where it was like there's all of this generalized destruction and no one seems to care.

[1:39:51] And I feel like a lot of the stuff in the Avengers, like, you know, I'm sure they have it all widely planned out knowing what happened afterwards.

[1:40:00] But also, it feels like a reaction to that where there's a lot of stuff about, like, hey, save the civilians.

[1:40:06] Like, this is what heroes are supposed to be doing in these kinds of movies rather than just, like, smashing people through buildings willy-nilly.

[1:40:13] The thing that comes to my mind, I know that this is widely viewed as a classic, especially among people maybe just slightly younger than me.

[1:40:23] Space Jam?

[1:40:23] But even when I was a kid, even when I was a kid, I could not take the second half of Home Alone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:31] I was like, oh, yeah.

[1:40:32] We watched that with Sammy not too long ago, and he had real trouble with that part where the bandits are getting beaten up.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:38] It's supposed to be Looney Tunes violence, but these are real human beings stepping on nails, you know, like getting hit with paint cans.

[1:40:45] I'm like, what?

[1:40:46] Why am I?

[1:40:47] What?

[1:40:48] What the fuck is this?

[1:40:49] You know, so that's mine, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:52] Yeah.

[1:40:52] I think, Linda, that's such a good point about those first Avengers movies that, like, they really do – they really make it feel like, okay, something happened here.

[1:41:01] Like, that, what, end credits or mid-credits scene where they're just sitting and eating and they're not talking to each other.

[1:41:07] And it's like, ah, it's a joke.

[1:41:09] Ah, they're finally having that shawarma.

[1:41:10] But they seem really, like, worn out.

[1:41:12] They seem – it's not like – it's not a – it's like a funny idea, but it's not a funny scene, you know?

[1:41:16] They seem so – and that, like, this shawarma is not filling the hole in them that is existing right now.

[1:41:23] And the opposite of that –

Linda Holmes

[1:41:23] And there's a moment before that when Downey looks around and he says, do we win?

[1:41:28] Yeah.

[1:41:28] Yay.

[1:41:29] Because – same thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:31] Yeah.

[1:41:32] At the – I was thinking about with this – there was that run of movies in the 90s where it was like, isn't it funny when people die?

[1:41:39] Like, very bad things and stuff like that, which is where it's – they just didn't seem to know what they were doing and they were chasing something.

[1:41:46] But then I started thinking about one of my least favorite movies, the 21st century, The Rise of Skywalker, and how the heroes are like, oh, we're fighting a bunch of child – people who were kidnapped as children and brainwashed.

[1:41:59] Well, sucks for them.

[1:42:00] I guess I'll blow them up.

[1:42:01] I'll blow up thousands of them.

[1:42:02] There's just so many – every one of those ships that blows up, there's hundreds if not thousands of people on it.

[1:42:07] And the body count is so enormous.

[1:42:09] And it's a – I find it so distasteful, you know, for exactly that reason.

Linda Holmes

[1:42:15] The action movies that I like tend to have a specific reason why people who get killed have to get killed, and especially if they're not bad guys.

[1:42:25] And I have said this a million times about Die Hard is that the reason why you get that really grisly, gruesome execution of Mr. Takagi early in Die Hard is that if you didn't, you would root for Hans.

[1:42:37] And you can't root for Hans and have the movie work.

[1:42:39] So he has to do something really bad in the early part of the movie so that he's established to be the bad guy.

[1:42:46] You still have to want them to catch him.

[1:42:48] You have to want him to die.

[1:42:50] And to do that, you have to have that really brutal execution because that establishes the movie's kind of – like the movie still has like a moral sort of world that it occupies.

[1:43:02] They don't just execute 20 of the people who were at the Christmas party, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:06] Yeah.

[1:43:07] The only other way you can get people to root against Alan Rickman is by having him cheat on Emma Thompson or something.

[1:43:14] Accurate.

[1:43:15] Accurate.

[1:43:16] Good point.

[1:43:16] Yeah.

[1:43:16] I mean, I feel like when it comes to like flippant violence, there is that moment in game night at the end that's really great when the guy gets sucked into the jet intake.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:26] But that's funny because she's reacting.

[1:43:30] She reacts reasonably to it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:31] Yeah.

[1:43:33] Like every time that clip gets posted, I got to watch it.

[1:43:36] One of the best line readings of the century so far, yeah.

[1:43:39] And it was such like a funny setup when she's like, don't shoot me.

[1:43:41] I have kids.

[1:43:42] He's like, not with an ass like that.

[1:43:44] You don't.

[1:43:45] Okay.

[1:43:46] I was going to say a movie that I remember talking about with producer Alex Smith.

[1:43:53] Is that movie Wanted?

[1:43:55] Where at the end, like James McAvoy after like assassinating somebody with a fucking scrimshaw bullet is like, what the fuck have you done today?

[1:44:03] I'm like, I haven't assassinated anybody, asshole.

[1:44:06] Like, don't question my life choices, bitch.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:11] And that's a toned down version of the ending of the comic book, which is even more disgusting and hostile and toxic.

[1:44:20] Yeah.

[1:44:20] It's bad.

[1:44:21] It's a bad thing.

[1:44:22] There's a – I mean it goes back to the beginning of movies that there's something cool for a lot of audience about seeing someone shoot someone specifically or kill someone.

[1:44:33] But yeah, in the better movies, they find some way to morally show why it had to be done or justify it rather than just kind of like, yeah, this guy kills people.

[1:44:42] Isn't that cool?

[1:44:43] Isn't it?

[1:44:44] I've been on the record many times as not liking Hitman movies, movies about Hitman for that reason.

[1:44:49] Except for Gross Point Blank, which is all about him struggling with that.

[1:44:52] But like the – that it's like it's not cool to go kill people.

[1:44:54] I hate to say – again, I hate to be on a limb here.

[1:44:57] It's like earlier when I said I don't want babies having sex with each other.

[1:44:59] I hate to go on a limb and say it's not cool to kill people.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:02] Well, I mean I think we're all talking about movies that seem to be made by people with emotional maturity.

[1:45:08] Mm-hmm.

[1:45:08] Yeah.

[1:45:09] Not to throw shade.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:11] But also like –

[1:45:12] I'm not saying every movie has to be Margaret either.

[1:45:14] But, you know, the hero should have some compunction about killing, you know?

Dan McCoy

[1:45:18] And I also have to say like – look, I love emotional immaturity in movies sometimes.

[1:45:24] But then you have to have like the tonal control to like pull it off.

[1:45:29] That's the other half of what's being said here.

[1:45:31] It's not just like, oh, what's reprehensible.

[1:45:33] It's like if you can create a tone within the movie that supports the gross joke.

[1:45:38] Yeah, it'll work.

[1:45:39] That's exactly right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:40] Yeah, or if it's like – do I think it's funny in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the knight just slashes the throat of the historian who's talking?

[1:45:47] Yeah, of course I do.

[1:45:47] It's really funny.

[1:45:48] But the tone in that movie is that this is a cartoon.

[1:45:50] These characters don't exist.

[1:45:51] Nothing's real, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:52] Yeah.

[1:45:53] It's similar to why when you have your like gross out immature comedies and then they inevitably try and pull off like a heart of gold at the center or some like emotional moment.

[1:46:05] And I'm like, fuck this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:07] Be gross all the way.

[1:46:09] I want only gross.

[1:46:11] Courage of your convictions.

[1:46:12] God damn conviction.

[1:46:13] Yeah, be 100% gross.

[1:46:15] Get R.U. Gross in there.

[1:46:16] Michael Gross.

[1:46:17] Some kind of gross.

[1:46:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:19] A gross of pencils.

[1:46:21] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:22] Gross.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:24] Let's move from sort of our moral outrage to some recommendations of movies that we think are more worthy of your time.

[1:46:35] Than baby geniuses.

[1:46:36] If such a thing is possible.

[1:46:38] Hard to imagine.

[1:46:38] Speaking of children.

[1:46:41] Guys, so.

[1:46:42] Oh, this is going to get weird.

[1:46:43] No, I recently, I think I've mentioned it before.

[1:46:46] I got the Criterion channel back after not having it for a little while.

[1:46:50] My body was craving nutrients after watching all of these movies for the Flophouse.

[1:46:55] And so I had kind of a list of like movies that I should catch up on that are on the channel.

[1:47:02] I sort of picked one at random on a nice Sunday afternoon.

[1:47:06] And it was Lynn Ramsey's Rat Catcher.

[1:47:10] A film.

[1:47:12] Just looking to check your brain at the door.

[1:47:13] Have some fun.

[1:47:14] Yeah.

[1:47:15] A movie that begins with a tragic death of a child.

[1:47:20] And does not get easier to watch thereafter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:23] As opposed to the other kind of a death of a child that's not tragic, Dan?

[1:47:26] What would that be?

[1:47:27] I think.

[1:47:29] Sure.

[1:47:29] Like a hilarious death of a child?

[1:47:31] No, you got me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:31] I mean, Dead Alive is a pretty hilarious.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:33] Good point.

[1:47:34] Stuart, I got Dan and you got me.

[1:47:36] Okay, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:37] I think there's a particular like sort of realism and matter of factness to the death that opens the movie that makes it like very difficult.

[1:47:46] I guess is what I'm trying to get at by saying that.

[1:47:50] Yeah, it's a movie about horrible conditions amongst this poor family in Ireland during a garbage strike when there are rats all around.

[1:47:59] I've now seen all four of Lynn Ramsey's movies.

[1:48:02] I think she's one of the best there is.

[1:48:04] I think her movies are great.

[1:48:07] This one is the roughest one to watch, I think.

[1:48:10] But I'm glad to have closed out the four.

[1:48:14] So Rat Catcher, I guess, is kind of a recommendation if you can handle it.

[1:48:19] Who wants to go next?

Stuart Wellington

[1:48:21] Oh, wow.

[1:48:22] Okay.

[1:48:23] Speaking of children.

[1:48:26] No, I'm going to recommend.

[1:48:28] People who have followed my recommendations are not going to be surprised by this at all.

[1:48:33] I'm going to recommend the new Luca Guadagino movie, Challengers.

[1:48:37] I love that guy's movies.

[1:48:39] Everyone's a hit.

[1:48:40] I love it.

[1:48:41] And this one is no exception.

[1:48:42] It is like faster, more kinetic than some of his other movies, but it's still got that same like emotional depth and also like a physicality and like a sense of place that's so great.

[1:48:54] I mean, it's loosely, I guess it's about two competing tennis players as well as a third competing tennis player played by Zendaya.

[1:49:05] And yeah, I don't want to talk too much about the plot of this.

[1:49:08] Go see it.

[1:49:09] It's great.

[1:49:10] It's sexy.

[1:49:10] It's about tennis.

[1:49:11] It's intense.

[1:49:12] It's got an amazing score.

[1:49:14] I loved it.

[1:49:15] It was great.

[1:49:16] Thumbs up.

Linda Holmes

[1:49:17] Amazing.

[1:49:17] Love that movie.

[1:49:18] Absolutely love that movie.

[1:49:19] It's great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:20] I was thinking about what's a movie I could recommend that is a better version of a movie about a talking baby.

[1:49:27] What's a movie with a talking baby in it that's not bad?

[1:49:30] And guys, you know what it has to be, that talking baby classic, Being Two Isn't Easy from 1962.

[1:49:37] This is a Japanese movie that is also on the Criterion channel right now, which is just about a kid who is almost two and his parents.

[1:49:46] And it's about kind of a series of months in this family's life, and there are parts of it that I found very sweet and very touching and parts that I found very funny where you can hear the child's thoughts, and he is confused that his conclusions about things are not the same as his parents'.

[1:50:00] There's a part where they're trying to get the crib to stay closed so that he can't get out of it, and they try to latch.

[1:50:06] They try tying it shut, and they're getting very frustrated, and the kid is like, I don't understand why they're mad at me.

[1:50:11] It was really hard to untie that knot.

[1:50:13] It was hard to undo the latch.

[1:50:14] I solved it.

[1:50:15] Why are they mad at me?

[1:50:16] Like, the child thinks that this is a puzzle that's been presented to him.

[1:50:20] And the – it's a series of scenes.

[1:50:23] There's not a – it's not a lot – it's not a plot-driven movie.

[1:50:26] Maybe it touched me a little bit deeper as a parent.

[1:50:28] There were times when I was like – I remember when I was – when I felt like that or when this child was like that.

[1:50:32] But there's some funny parts, and at the end, there is a scene where – spoiler alert – the kid turns two, and there's a part that involves him blowing out his candles that I found so beautiful and genuinely tear-jerking.

[1:50:45] And so I would recommend it.

[1:50:47] I really loved it.

[1:50:47] It's called Being Too Isn't Easy.

[1:50:50] That's beautiful.

Linda Holmes

[1:50:51] That is beautiful.

[1:50:52] I, having seen Kathleen Turner in Baby Geniuses, was very interesting because recently for a different work-related project, I had watched Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.

[1:51:04] Body Heat, which came out in like 1981 to 1982, maybe.

[1:51:10] It was really where she became famous.

[1:51:13] It's a neo-noir.

[1:51:15] I think some people credit it with being one of the most important neo-noirs.

[1:51:20] It's semi of a reimagining of something like Double Indemnity.

[1:51:25] Not exactly.

[1:51:26] It is still a very hot woman who seduces an idiot, and things get worse from there.

[1:51:37] Ultimately, it is a movie about the most boring thing I learned in law school, which is the rule against perpetuities.

[1:51:45] It is also a movie in which I think the atmospheric qualities of how it's shot, the way that they use airy spaces versus closed-in spaces, and some of those things are really, really cool and good.

[1:52:05] But also, she is just such a hot movie star in that film, and she's such a wonderful presence, and that's a kind of role that can be really hard to pull off because it can really be, I don't know if I want to say dehumanizing, but it can be really a shallow kind of role for an actress to play.

[1:52:26] I think she finds a lot of good stuff in that character.

[1:52:30] And it has really sexy sex without being, you know, it's not the same kind of like vulgar, really sexy sex that people sometimes associate with really sexy sex.

[1:52:44] In a way, it's like challengers, and that you see a little bit more, a little bit less than you feel like you saw in some ways.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:52] Those tours just whack me like that.

Linda Holmes

[1:52:56] It's like you feel like you saw the people very much having sex, and you didn't necessarily.

[1:53:01] Yeah.

[1:53:02] So anyway, Body Heat, Kathleen Turner, William Hurt, very, very young Ted Danson, preachers.

[1:53:10] Love it.

[1:53:10] Who's Danson?

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:12] That movie.

[1:53:12] Huh?

[1:53:12] He does Danson.

Linda Holmes

[1:53:14] Yeah, it's true.

[1:53:15] And again, you know, learn the rule against perpetuities.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:20] They do such a good job in that movie.

[1:53:22] I feel like when I think of film noir, I think of coolness, and they do such a good job of making a movie of heat.

[1:53:29] Like it's such a sweaty movie in a really palpable way.

[1:53:32] In a way that like is sometimes sexy and sometimes just feels like, oh, this seems like such an unpressibly humid place to be.

Linda Holmes

[1:53:41] That's why they put, I mean, they sit it right down there in, it's in Florida, I think.

[1:53:45] Yeah, I think so.

[1:53:47] And, you know, as was the recent Roadhouse, you know, you put it in that like, I don't know, hot, sweaty environment.

[1:53:54] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:55] Well, we should.

[1:53:56] There's fewer boat chases in Body Heat than in Roadhouse, though.

[1:53:58] Just a little bit.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:00] Only a couple.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:01] We should really wrap things up, but Linda, it was a joy to have you on.

[1:54:07] Like I, you fit, you fit in perfectly.

[1:54:11] You were, you felt like a natural member of it all.

[1:54:16] It was so nice to have you.

Linda Holmes

[1:54:17] It's going to be my favorite thing I do all year.

[1:54:19] I'm so excited.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:20] Is there anything in particular you want to plug before we do our usual stuff?

Linda Holmes

[1:54:24] No, just, you know, pop culture happy hour.

[1:54:27] And as Elliot mentioned at the top, Evie Drake starts over and Flying Solo are my novels.

[1:54:33] I have one coming out in 2025, which is called Back After This, which takes place in the world of audio and podcasting.

[1:54:40] So we'll see how that goes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:43] Uh-oh, I wonder if we'll see a thinly veiled Dan McCoy in there, possibly.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:47] Oh, he's like, everything hurts, babe.

[1:54:50] Weird romantic laugh, huh?

Linda Holmes

[1:54:52] But no, this is very exciting.

[1:54:55] And I do want to say, as somebody who has been making a podcast with the same team for almost 15 years,

[1:55:01] I am very well positioned to understand what you guys have done by working together for this long and this successfully.

[1:55:08] I told Jesse Thorne once that when I listen to this show, my hobby is trying to figure out when people are actually irritated versus pretending to be irritated.

[1:55:17] Usually when I'm talking, the other guys are pretty irritated.

[1:55:19] I know that from my own show as well.

[1:55:22] So I just want to say that I do appreciate the accomplishment of keeping a team together and working for this long so successfully.

[1:55:29] And the fact that it's still so much fun to listen to is really quite a special thing.

[1:55:35] So kudos for that.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:37] I think it's a testament to our genuine affection how we are able to weather the not-infrequent irritation that comes along with it.

Linda Holmes

[1:55:45] Listen, all I'm asking is that every once in a while, now that we're pals, every once in a while, just shoot me a little note.

[1:55:50] Say, I was really annoyed when this was happening.

[1:55:52] You know?

[1:55:53] And then I'll just be able to put it away in my little diary in my brain.

[1:55:55] That's all I ask.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55:56] Mm-hmm.

[1:55:57] Done.

[1:55:57] How can a Sagittarius, a Gemini, and a Pisces get along for this long?

Dan McCoy

[1:56:03] Especially when one of them gets annoyed at the implication that that means anything.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56:08] The Gemini.

[1:56:11] It's happening.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:15] Hey, before I thank our team of one other person, I want to say check us out on our socials.

[1:56:25] You can find us on Instagram.

[1:56:27] We now have a Mastodon.

[1:56:29] There's a fan-made Discord, Blue Sky.

[1:56:34] You know, there's a long-running Facebook group and YouTube videos.

[1:56:38] If you like any of that stuff, look it up.

[1:56:41] But also, thank you to that aforementioned man, Mr. Alex Smith.

[1:56:46] He goes by Howell Doughty online.

[1:56:49] He does Twitch streams.

[1:56:50] He does music.

[1:56:51] Check his stuff out.

[1:56:53] Thank you to Maximum Fun at MaximumFun.org.

[1:56:56] You can find a lot of other great podcasts.

[1:56:59] I'm sure at least one other one will tickle your fancy.

[1:57:03] So check him out.

[1:57:05] But, yeah, that's it.

[1:57:07] Thank you again to our guest for The Flophouse.

[1:57:10] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:57:11] I've been Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:13] I'm Ellie Kalin.

[1:57:14] And we've been joined by Linda Holmes.

[1:57:17] Bye.

[1:57:18] Hoo-hoo.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:27] So if you haven't been recording locally, now is the time to start.

[1:57:32] On it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:33] I've been recording locally, but thinking globally.

[1:57:36] I'm recording hyper-locally.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:38] I've been visualizing world peas.

[1:57:42] Yeah, shaving the whales.

[1:57:44] So, Dan.

[1:57:46] Maximum Fun.

S7

[1:57:47] A worker-owned network.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:48] Of artists-owned shows.

[1:57:50] Supported.

[1:57:51] Directly.

[1:57:52] By you.

Ep. #424 - Baby Geniuses, with Linda Holmes

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