Ep. #351 - Andy the Talking Hedgehog, with Jamelle Bouie

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Andy the Talking Hedgehog.

[0:04] A Talking Hedgehog?

[0:31] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:34] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:35] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:40] What a high energy intro.

[0:42] And no wonder, because we've got a very special guest with us today.

[0:45] Guys, I have to drop it.

[0:47] The high energy stuff, because I think my larynx is going to explode if I keep it up.

[0:51] I spend so much time yelling at my children that I just I can't.

[0:54] I'm all out of loud.

[0:56] We're joined by a very special guest today, which is why we're so excited.

[1:00] Excited and excited.

[1:01] Excited is like excited, but a little bit Jewish.

[1:07] Our guest, Jamel Bowie, New York Times correspondent,

[1:10] freelance photographer, and even more importantly, as radio

[1:13] listeners will know because of subject matter of this episode

[1:15] and his previous appearance on the show, our regular returning hedgehog

[1:19] correspondent dealing with all the hedgehog issues, hedgehog culture,

[1:23] hedgehog social analysis, hedgehog politics.

[1:26] Jamel, before we get in on this movie, Andy the Talking Hedgehog,

[1:29] tell me, where do you see hedgehog issues today in America?

[1:34] Well, you know, first of all, we have to discuss the the big storming

[1:37] of the Capitol by that mass army of hedgehogs.

[1:42] Yeah, I get hedgehogs, the Confederate hedgehogs,

[1:46] the hedgehogs that built that gallows for Mike Pence.

[1:49] It's all very disturbing, which was doubly ironic since he is himself a hedgehog.

[1:53] Yes, true. True. First hedgehog American president, our vice president.

[1:58] Oh, just you wait. Just you wait. He'll get there.

[2:02] Any guy. Wait, guys, did I forget to mention that?

[2:04] I'm a total of a total conservative guy now.

[2:07] I love it all. It's great.

[2:08] Is that why you're pointing at us as much as you are?

[2:11] It is. I think what I like best about it is the total abdication

[2:15] of responsibility for my own health and the health of others.

[2:18] I think that's really the best thing about it.

[2:20] Anyway, hedgehogs.

[2:21] We'll talk more about hedgehogs.

[2:23] We'll have more really cutting political satire.

[2:26] But first, I want to talk to you

[2:29] about our upcoming live show.

[2:30] That's right.

[2:31] On September 25th at 9 p.m.

[2:33] Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, the Flophouse boys are doing it again.

[2:37] We're going to be on the Internet doing it.

[2:39] And by doing it, I mean talking about Super Mario Brothers.

[2:43] No nudity. Please don't misunderstand when I use the phrase doing it.

[2:47] We're going to have a live show over the Internet like we've done a few times,

[2:50] but it's going to be all new material, all new presentations,

[2:53] all new questions from the audience.

[2:54] We'll tell you more about the show later,

[2:56] but just want to make sure you knew in case you hadn't heard.

[2:58] September 25th, 9 p.m.

[2:59] Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[3:01] To get tickets, either Google SimpleTix Flophouse Mario Brothers

[3:04] or go to FlophousePodcast.com slash events

[3:07] and you'll find the link to get tickets again.

[3:10] I'll tell you about it more later in the show.

[3:13] But first, let's return to more of this cutting edge

[3:16] political satire as we talk about Andy, the talking hedgehog.

[3:20] Because, Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

[3:22] This is a podcast where we talk about bad movies.

[3:25] We watch a bad movie and we talk about them.

[3:27] And boy, boy, this is a small timber or small members,

[3:33] small member where we watch smaller movies, movies that normally,

[3:38] you know, we might think, oh, this is, you know, like

[3:42] like beating up a fish in a barrel, like just punching that fish.

[3:46] Not just punching down.

[3:48] I think that's way harder than you're making it sound.

[3:51] I feel like there's a movie like this.

[3:54] We're punching so far down.

[3:56] It's like we're burrowing our fist into the ground to hit a corpse in the face.

[3:59] Yeah. In general, this in general, we like to take on something a little larger.

[4:03] But every every year we give ourselves a month's dispensation

[4:07] to make fun of something real small.

[4:10] And in this case, oh, boy, it's a small movie in production

[4:14] and a small movie in time, 70 minutes.

[4:17] Although when we were watching it, how much of this one cost three hours?

[4:23] How much did this one cost to make, guys?

[4:25] I don't know how much it cost to make.

[4:27] I will say that there's a scene where you can see

[4:31] the address of the house because it is hugely large.

[4:36] Yeah. If you look it up, it is this house.

[4:38] They did not put up a fake address.

[4:40] And the way that address is written on the front of house,

[4:42] it's not just the street number.

[4:44] It is the street number and street name.

[4:46] Yeah. Written across the top of the door.

[4:48] I've never seen that house before.

[4:49] And it belongs to one of the producers of the film.

[4:51] I don't want to get into showing off.

[4:53] But like, I mean, that makes sense.

[4:55] That's how small the movie is.

[4:57] I mean, but it's a nice it's a it's a it's a bigger house than my house.

[5:00] But but it is a movie that takes place almost entirely inside

[5:04] and around one house. Yes.

[5:06] I mean, as far as how much it costs, I feel like it all depends

[5:08] on how much Dean Cain charged, you know?

[5:10] Yes. That's the budget.

[5:12] You know, gratis for Dean Cain.

[5:13] Then this is like, you know, a five hundred dollar movie.

[5:15] Yeah. And this is probably part of Tara Reade's community service

[5:18] for something I'm betting.

[5:19] So the other potato chip budget for this fucking movie is through the roof.

[5:23] And before you say it, yes, a movie shot mostly in and around

[5:27] one house could also be Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Bug.

[5:30] But this is not that kind of movie.

[5:31] You know what I'm talking about, listeners. Come on.

[5:34] So, Dan, tell us a little bit about Andy, the talking hedgehog.

[5:36] How did this movie come to your attention?

[5:38] Well, you know, with Small Timber,

[5:42] I have found that the best thing to do these days,

[5:46] now that I have sort of like blown through some of the stuff

[5:48] that I had wanted to see that had been on my radar is to crowdsource it.

[5:53] So I asked a lot of Flophouse listeners

[5:57] on our Facebook group to give us suggestions.

[6:00] We got a lot of great suggestions.

[6:02] I went through them all, culled it down.

[6:05] But this one, I feel like spoke to us.

[6:08] And we'll find out if I was right or wrong.

[6:11] I have my money on.

[6:12] You just Googled a talking and then autofilled

[6:17] a talking feet, a talking wife.

[6:23] Yep. A talking net worth. We get it.

[6:28] And you were given a you were given a selection of movies to choose from.

[6:31] Why did this one speak to you other than your deep and professional interest

[6:35] in hedgehogs? I mean, two reasons.

[6:38] First, I thought it would be funny

[6:39] if I just came back for another hedgehog episode.

[6:44] That was like the overriding one.

[6:46] And so it helped that this was 70 minutes.

[6:48] But like as soon as I turned it on, I was like, I made a terrible mistake.

[6:53] I got an email from saying like something like I was

[6:56] that you were 10 minutes into it.

[6:58] You didn't know if you could make it through or something along those lines.

[7:01] And that and I got to say that 70 minutes feels long

[7:04] when you're watching all them to be commercials. Am I right?

[7:07] Oh, yeah. Oh, that was a two minute.

[7:10] That's 70 minutes.

[7:11] Feels like both parts of Soda Bros.

[7:13] Shame.

[7:16] Film. OK, well, guys, I'm going to be driving this vehicle.

[7:21] Let's see where we're at.

[7:22] So as I mentioned, watch this shit on Tubi.

[7:24] Hell yeah, delivers again.

[7:26] We got some hot opening credits with footage of hedgehogs.

[7:29] Yeah. As long as we're talking about the opening credits, I want to mention

[7:31] this is written by George P. Saunders.

[7:34] Not George, not George, not the George Saunders of Pastoralia

[7:38] and Lincoln in the Bardo.

[7:40] That's a different George Saunders.

[7:41] George P. Saunders, who actually has like 43 screenplay credits, weirdly.

[7:46] But most of my notes were about the similarities between George Saunders works.

[7:50] So I'm going to have to edit it.

[7:51] Oh boy, because I mean, to be honest, the George Saunders could write a version

[7:57] of this story where a fairy gives all animals and plants

[8:00] around one house the ability to talk.

[8:02] And it would probably tell us something bittersweet

[8:04] about the human condition, ultimately, you know.

[8:07] So after the opening credits with footage of hedgehogs, we get a

[8:11] a shot with two, I guess, crooks that are stealing a hedgehog

[8:16] with narration from the hedgehog in this like how I bet you're wondering

[8:20] how I got here. That's exactly what I have in my head.

[8:23] Yeah. Yeah.

[8:25] And then but this also this starts a theme in the movie,

[8:28] which is the hedgehog introducing things, then saying,

[8:30] well, we'll talk about that later.

[8:31] Exactly. And how would you describe the voice of the hedgehog still?

[8:36] I mean, I would say 50 percent there.

[8:41] OK, it does. It does sound bone somewhere.

[8:44] It is clearly the director of the movie who also does the other animal voice in it.

[8:48] And he is clearly trying to channel Lorenzo music as Garfield.

[8:51] And it is not quite it's not coming across, you know.

[8:54] Yeah, there's a yeah.

[8:56] There's a little bit of like kind of a droopier, dopier quality.

[9:00] And then like as the cat, it's like, hi, I'm the cat.

[9:03] I mean, and all I can think about is in that mannose, the hands of fate,

[9:09] mystery theater where it's like it's just one guy doing all the voices back there.

[9:13] Just one guy. Just one guy. Yeah.

[9:17] So, yeah. So we we back up and Andy, the hedgehog, were

[9:22] informed that his name's Andy explains that he got the ability to speak

[9:25] due to a wish that all animals can speak all the time.

[9:28] Just humans can't hear it.

[9:30] But he got it because of magic.

[9:32] Wait, wait, wait. Not to not too fast.

[9:34] Let's back up again.

[9:35] So we back up to meet the family.

[9:37] There's a lot of freeze frames, freeze frames for every character.

[9:40] So I go some manuscript of a low budget talking animal family films.

[9:44] The movie just keeps keeps edging you about when you're going to get to the story.

[9:48] And, you know, yeah, it's like the most recent Mortal Kombat movie.

[9:52] So we so we're introduced to the family.

[9:56] We have a little girl named Lily, who is the caretaker for Andy, the hedgehog.

[10:00] We have I think you guys might have to help me Tina is her older sister

[10:04] Who's a cheerleader and it's very so fast to get out of that cheerleader uniform

[10:09] I know it takes place over several days and each time. She's wearing the same

[10:14] Cheerleader uniform her and her friends spend all their time everywhere in their cheerleader uniforms

[10:19] And I don't think high schools provide multiples right they expect they give you one then they expect you to clean it

[10:24] Yeah, yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah

[10:27] Perhaps this is taking place in some far future where clothing has entered a self-cleaning state maybe just for special uniforms

[10:33] Maybe it's just like in in spider-man

[10:35] 2099 the reason he uses in the Marvel Comics the reason he uses that costume is because he bought a costume made of unstable

[10:41] Molecules because he was gonna go celebrate the Day of the Dead down in Mexico

[10:44] And he didn't want to rip his clothes or get him dirty

[10:46] He bought this one more expensive outfit, and that's why spider-man 2099 has a big skull on

[10:51] Maybe it's like that. Maybe the same place in the year

[10:54] 2099 which is just like now in all respects except cheerleader uniforms can be worn multiple days

[10:59] Well, also like it is a very strange movie in terms of time like I had a hard time following

[11:05] Like the fact that time frame this is supposed to happen again

[11:08] They're dealing with all this stuff with Andy the Hedgehog and then her sister's friends come over and then they're like well

[11:13] We got to go to school. I was like wait was this all happening before 8 a.m.

[11:17] One friend to come over and then call another friend they come over and then like Dean Cain goes to work

[11:23] And I guess maybe he forgot something

[11:24] But but I don't think it's clear because he didn't like comes back like 20 minutes later from work

[11:29] I feel like when I went to school when I was going to high school

[11:32] It was either like kind of dark or like dawn when I was going to school

[11:37] Yeah, I mean at the time of the year, but yeah

[11:40] I think that that's like it is ridiculous in how often movies people like just hang out before their their day

[11:47] Start I mean just the fact that when I was a kid it was always a rush and today as an adult

[11:51] It's always a rush to get children out of the house and ready for school

[11:54] we never had leisure time to hang out with our friends before school, but

[11:59] Anyway, but that's look and again also Andy the Hedgehog takes place in a sort of liminal time zone

[12:03] Well much like in stalker or the third policeman. Yeah, I mean speaking of confusions of time and space also

[12:11] As long as we're introducing characters the mom

[12:13] I believe Melissa years outside of the kitchen only twice in the film for very brief moments

[12:19] There's one point where she opens a door trapped and there's one point where she says good night to one of the kids

[12:24] But otherwise, she's always at the kitchen either fixing a meal or drinking coffee

[12:28] Well and spoilered at the end she appears in a cheerleader outfit that she has no memory of putting on

[12:32] So this really is the movie it gets there these moments of just sheer like we're like is this all taking place in Andy's head?

[12:39] Like what's what's going on? And while we're talking about characters in their strange positioning in in space

[12:44] we have whiskers the hairless cat who is a

[12:49] Is like a grouchy evil figure

[12:52] and

[12:53] Whiskers is almost always perched on top of cabinets in every room

[12:58] Mm-hmm, like no matter what or is in one room and just can project its it's like image and also twice

[13:05] Astral twice referred to in the film as that fuzzy thing when again a hairless cat hair, right?

[13:11] We'll have to get into whiskey whiskers being

[13:14] obsessed with death later

[13:18] Finding trade in this film. Yeah, I would it's I always feel bad for hairless cats like that because you can't help

[13:27] You can't you can't help but assume that they're a demon from looking at them

[13:30] But they're just a cat like they have the brain of a regular cat, but they look like a demon

[13:35] So I can't help but assume they're monsters when probably all they want to do is normal cat things like kill me

[13:40] So we're also introduced to the the patter familius the father of the family

[13:45] That's what I just said played by Bob played by Dean Cain who in real life is a piece of shit

[13:51] And he was now I now I know he is but I can't remember why he is. Do you remember why?

[13:57] Why do I not like him? I think he's just like another like

[14:00] Washed up doctor became a right winger. I think it's yeah

[14:04] Okay, that makes sense

[14:06] He said his hair still looks pretty Superman II though. Oh, yeah. Well, okay

[14:09] I guess he gets a he gets a W on that one. So can I like him from the far head up?

[14:14] Yeah, I mean we could I mean you could take his picture to the bar

[14:17] I guess we'll have to separate art from artists in this case. I like to separate the hair from the hair

[14:23] The

[14:27] Yeah, I like to take me I sneak into their house at night and I separate their hair from them

[14:32] They call me. They call me the hair fairy

[14:34] It was just and they haven't caught me yet. So watch out Clarice. I

[14:40] Guess you need to go hang out with the cannibal to find out how to trap me

[14:44] Wow, you're so over it

[14:49] And then we're introduced to one of

[14:52] Tina's

[14:54] cheerleader friends

[14:55] Trixie, yeah, who is is like kind of ditzy and dumb and make says made-up words and is always taking pictures everyone

[15:03] Continually talks to her about how dumb she is and just you know expects her to take I mean she does take it

[15:10] But I'm like, I just want to be like Trixie. These people aren't your friends. Yeah, keep talking to you

[15:15] So it cruelly is is Trixie the one who came on to Dean Cain? That's

[15:24] But that was that

[15:26] Weird is a weird moment. Yeah, that was in Dean Cain's contract was like at some point a teen girl has to be totally turned

[15:32] On by me. That's what it's felt like because it's never remarked on again

[15:35] It definitely felt like Dean Cain's like listen if we're gonna have teen girls in this movie

[15:40] Everyone has to identify that. I'm I'm still a dilf, you know

[15:45] see my contract so

[15:47] We cut to oh, yeah, we're introduced to whiskers the hairless cat that Andy describes as

[15:56] Bob's cat from the old days and that has never remarked on

[16:00] Do not know like it said in a way where I'm like, was he an assassin? What's going on?

[16:05] I mean to go back to the possibility of this movie takes place like in 2099

[16:10] Maybe they're like in some sort of biodome, right?

[16:13] Old days are like pre climate catastrophe

[16:17] Bob had whiskers before

[16:20] Everything went to hell and they got put into this replica

[16:27] Supported by later on when inexplicably it becomes extremely foggy outside

[16:32] Like one shot to another

[16:35] When whiskers is telling his story about his lost love later on

[16:39] Spoilered we see him sitting on a balcony in a city and it is the only time the existence of urban

[16:45] Locations or anything other than the school and the house is ever hinted at yeah

[16:49] So yeah

[16:50] I totally I think this is a totally valid reading of the movie that there was he and Bob used to live in a in a

[16:54] City and there was some kind of ecological catastrophe and now he lives in this in this hologram dome

[16:59] Yeah, Whiskers has this whole like flashback like he's about like he's going on his fucking Shrike pilgrimage or something like

[17:07] Flashback by the way, it's the scene where he keeps on, you know dying getting created into a new hairless cat. Yeah

[17:16] Okay, so

[17:18] Let's see

[17:19] So the Lily is outside

[17:23] She remarks like a child would that she wishes all the things that she sees could talk plants animals, etc

[17:30] yeah immediately is whisked away into a fairy universe that looks like it looks like like a

[17:37] Filter an Instagram like stories filter or a snapchat filter that they like

[17:43] Yeah, if you went to if you went to where Shrek lives and you took a picture with an Instagram filter

[17:47] I feel like that's that's kind of yeah, just got a bunch of animated butterflies around. Mm-hmm, and we're introduced to

[17:53] Lily's fairy BFF played by Tara Reid who is dressed

[17:58] I guess like a hippie like she's she's got some flowers in her hair

[18:03] She's going to San Francisco. Yeah. Yes, and she

[18:07] She explains that she's a rookie. She is there to grant wishes

[18:11] So, of course Lily wishes that all these things could talk and of course Tara Reid grants that wish

[18:16] And I want to say like the wish that the kid makes seems pretty offhand

[18:21] just like you know the way you might just like walk outdoors and be like, oh

[18:26] Man, I wish the weather were better today, you know, like and she's like, oh

[18:30] I wish I could know what everyone's saying and then Terry shows up and she sticks with the wish

[18:35] I feel like I don't know if you're suddenly like, oh

[18:39] We're doing we're doing wishes now like that are actually gonna come true. Can I switch it up?

[18:46] She didn't even invest a birthday candle in this wish

[18:50] Like yeah, Terry maybe but Terry's a rookie, you know, that's how it is. Maybe maybe she has like a quota, you know

[18:55] she's like a cop on a

[18:57] you know a street where people speech just to get as many wishes as she can for the end of the month and

[19:03] You know a little girl whispers and Tara Reid's like hey, listen, I got this

[19:07] care of

[19:09] Just let him talk let all these things. I was I was wondered not to get too controversial

[19:14] But I always wondered why cops have to meet those quotas it seems impossible for a cop to lose their job

[19:21] So I never understood they're like we got our parking ticket quotas and it's like what and what's gonna happen if you if you write

[19:26] A less ticket one less. I don't understand. So listeners if you know the answer right to Elliot Kalin

[19:32] right to me care of police and

[19:36] Because I'll be in custody probably because they'll have caught me when I tried to steal the hair off of somebody in their sleep

[19:41] So

[19:44] Lily walks away and then it Tara Reid is immediately accosted by her boss who is I don't know God

[19:50] Who is this figure like like? Yeah, I mean, he's like the head fairy

[19:55] I guess and he explains that of course the wishy-gray

[20:00] It's just an older man wearing regular clothes.

[20:02] Like he's not even in a costume, yeah.

[20:04] That he said that, you know, the wish was far too powerful.

[20:07] She never should have granted it.

[20:09] He turns her into a toad briefly

[20:10] and then back into a human shape.

[20:15] Yeah, it's kind of weird,

[20:16] but then they don't actually talk about a way forward.

[20:19] I guess we'll get to that later.

[20:21] Lily's walking around with Andy the Hedgehog,

[20:23] who was talking to her.

[20:24] She's very excited.

[20:25] She remarks, I still can't believe you can talk,

[20:28] which was like, that was like two seconds ago, dude, still?

[20:32] You're gonna say a whole entire life?

[20:34] I think, did you mention

[20:36] there's a no talking animals rule?

[20:38] Yeah, it's like a code violation.

[20:41] He quotes a very specific, but again, does nothing.

[20:45] And then he goes to, he goes to this other magical character

[20:48] and goes, I know they wanted to know

[20:50] if these walls could talk.

[20:51] Please don't make the walls talk.

[20:52] It really freaks people out.

[20:53] They don't want talking walls

[20:54] that can watch them do things.

[20:55] Don't do it.

[20:56] Yeah.

[20:57] So now we're gonna get a little bit of,

[21:00] we get a little bit of conflict

[21:01] because we're introduced to a pair of very terrifying crooks.

[21:06] We have an older, I think, Italian gentleman

[21:09] and his sidekick Bubba,

[21:11] or as it is pronounced throughout the movie, Bubba.

[21:13] Now they're, I think he's Eastern European, Mr. Roller.

[21:17] They're criminals of opportunity.

[21:19] They aren't necessarily crooks.

[21:21] They're handymen.

[21:23] They're handymen, yeah.

[21:24] They're general handymen.

[21:25] We'll later on see an opportunity

[21:26] to steal the talking hedgehog.

[21:28] I assume that they were just posing

[21:30] as gardeners the whole time.

[21:33] No, because they know,

[21:34] because everyone in the family knows them already.

[21:36] I'll tell you something too,

[21:37] like they also have a very nice ladder

[21:40] that Audrey would so take,

[21:42] like she was more,

[21:43] like this is an indication

[21:44] of how boring the movie gets at times

[21:46] that she looked up the price of the ladder

[21:48] that these handymen have.

[21:49] It's a, we're talking a $450 ladder here, so.

[21:52] I don't want to reinforce Audrey's ladder-philia,

[21:56] but I also noticed that it was a very nice ladder.

[21:58] I was like, that's nicer than my ladder.

[22:00] They spent like 10 minutes fucking around

[22:02] with it on the patio.

[22:04] Yeah, that's true.

[22:05] I mean, in terms of screen time,

[22:06] the ladder pays for itself, for sure,

[22:08] because they use it,

[22:09] they're like this pricey ladder, guys,

[22:11] we gotta justify it, you know,

[22:13] advertise it over 10 minutes

[22:15] of you goofing around trying to set it up.

[22:18] Maybe the producer's like,

[22:19] I'll let you use my house

[22:21] if I get to keep that ladder.

[22:23] I mean, it's probably just his ladder,

[22:24] but he's got a nice house.

[22:26] But Mr. Roller, the leader of the two,

[22:30] I didn't realize this,

[22:31] but I wonder if maybe they just call him that

[22:34] because he painted their house one time

[22:36] and they don't actually know his real name,

[22:38] in which case he becomes

[22:39] a more sympathetic character to me.

[22:41] Oh, okay, yeah.

[22:42] It's not like he's using different names

[22:44] on different apps to keep his anonymity.

[22:49] I mean, can you do that?

[22:50] Probably, yeah.

[22:51] If you set up a TaskRabbit with a different name.

[22:55] Yeah. Wow.

[22:56] So, yeah, the one of the ones-

[22:59] I'm just teaching Elliot how to catfish people, Dan.

[23:00] Yeah, no, but one of them's Italian

[23:04] and the other's like-

[23:05] Dan, back me up, he said he's Italian.

[23:07] A bumbling-

[23:08] I don't think he's Italian,

[23:09] but I can do wrong on that.

[23:10] I think he is supposed to be Italian.

[23:10] I just assumed he was like generic ethnic European.

[23:13] Yeah, and the other one's like a portly bald man,

[23:16] so it's that classic Chico and Curly,

[23:20] but not funny.

[23:21] He literally does like Curly bits at one moment, right?

[23:22] He's a classic portmanteau.

[23:24] That's a portly bald man who has toes.

[23:28] So, I mean, we have to assume he has toes.

[23:30] We never see him with his shoes off,

[23:32] but his balance seems,

[23:33] other than times when he's falling down

[23:35] and knocking over his cohort, his balance is fine.

[23:37] So these guys don't just want to be gardeners.

[23:39] Mr. Roller has a plan.

[23:41] He ripped out a page of the local newspaper

[23:43] that had an advertisement for a contest to win $10,000

[23:48] by finding the weirdest thing

[23:50] and putting it on the internet.

[23:52] Yeah.

[23:54] And then they do a sequence where Bubba does some farts

[23:58] and burps to music.

[24:01] To harmonica music.

[24:03] And I figured that would be enough,

[24:05] but it's not, I guess.

[24:06] Yeah.

[24:07] He keeps, throughout the movie,

[24:08] he keeps talking about his riches

[24:09] and he's going to be rich,

[24:10] and it's like, it's just $10,000.

[24:11] Like that's a lot of, that's a good chuck of money,

[24:13] but you can't retire on $10,000.

[24:17] Maybe it's just my LA lifestyle where $10,000 is,

[24:21] you can buy a coffee for that, maybe, but you know.

[24:23] Okay, so.

[24:24] And you know, knowing Bubba, he's just going to take,

[24:26] he's a goof.

[24:27] He's just going to take it to New York,

[24:28] go to Serendipity 3, get that $10,000 Sunday

[24:31] that comes with a diamond bracelet,

[24:32] and the money's going to be gone.

[24:33] So Andy tells us that he won't, he doesn't want to,

[24:38] and I think, I guess he tells Lily

[24:40] that he doesn't want to talk around other humans

[24:41] because, and Whiskers backs him up,

[24:43] that talking around other humans will only cause trouble.

[24:47] So he almost immediately breaks that rule

[24:50] and starts talking in front of the cheerleaders.

[24:55] There's the cheerleaders, what is it,

[24:58] Trixie and Tina have very strange reactions

[25:03] when they first see this talking hedgehog.

[25:05] One is like shocked and one is kind of mad about it.

[25:10] And then meanwhile, as we mentioned,

[25:12] there were some patio shenanigans and a ladder.

[25:15] Mr. Roller climbs up there, I'm assuming to be a peeping Tom.

[25:19] Instead, he sees Andy talking, you know,

[25:22] he sees a hedgehog talking to some girls.

[25:25] He falls off the ladder, then Bubba rolls around

[25:28] on top of him, and then they snuggle

[25:31] when Melissa comes out and asks them what they're doing.

[25:34] They're hatching a scheme to kidnap Andy,

[25:36] put him on the internet, and get that 10,000 smackers.

[25:40] Now we should mention also,

[25:42] describe what it's like when Andy talks.

[25:44] Does his mouth move?

[25:46] Is there any indication that the sound

[25:47] is actually coming from this hedgehog?

[25:49] But they hang out, they bring that up out,

[25:52] they talk about that up front, right?

[25:54] They say that, you know, like a lot of people

[25:57] move their mouths a lot and say nothing, you know?

[25:59] Oh, okay, so I guess that makes it okay.

[26:02] No, it is very strange.

[26:03] He's a talking hedgehog who also says

[26:05] boilerplate nonsense philosophy, so yeah.

[26:08] Yeah, it is just talking over a footage

[26:12] of a hedgehog or a cat with, again, very similar voices.

[26:18] Yeah, and then there's flowers and like a bird,

[26:20] and that's also the same voice but a woman.

[26:24] And there's a second hedgehog later

[26:26] that we only see in one scene.

[26:27] Yeah, but it is like, it's basically, you know,

[26:31] like America's Funniest Home Videos

[26:33] where someone's just narrating over some video.

[26:37] So we get a little bit of like,

[26:38] we get a little bit of hijinks.

[26:39] The girls are, you know, becoming accustomed to Andy.

[26:45] The Tina is rightly concerned about rubbing the belly

[26:48] of a talking animal.

[26:49] I think that would be weird.

[26:51] They suggest maybe he's possessed by an alien.

[26:54] That's a weird joke, but whatever.

[26:57] They have to call their friend Tori,

[26:58] who's the head cheerleader, who, as we mentioned,

[27:00] has a very strange, very sexually charged scene

[27:04] with Dean Cain.

[27:05] Yeah.

[27:06] I expected that to be at least addressed later

[27:10] when Dean Cain, later, spoiler,

[27:14] for something we're gonna describe in 10 minutes,

[27:17] Dean Cain hears the hedgehog talk,

[27:20] has a mental breakdown where he only wants

[27:22] to watch cartoons and eat potato chips.

[27:26] And I sort of thought that there'd be some payoff

[27:30] where this teen girl is freaked out

[27:34] by the devolution of Dean Cain even further.

[27:36] Or alternately is like, yeah, okay.

[27:39] I've seen American beauty.

[27:43] This is my time to swoop in

[27:45] when they stop taking care of themselves,

[27:47] right before they start taking care of themselves.

[27:49] So Tori shows up and she's definitely like-

[27:51] Because he starts working out, Dan.

[27:53] Oh, okay, okay.

[27:54] Remember?

[27:55] So Tori swoops in, she's the like alpha mean girl.

[27:58] She barges into the room and she says,

[28:02] what's this crap about talking pets?

[28:04] Then as soon as Andy starts talking, she faints,

[28:07] which is, I thought that was a pretty good joke.

[28:12] Whiskers, meanwhile, makes a deal with the crooks

[28:14] to kidnap Andy, which is weird.

[28:17] Cause I would think that they like,

[28:19] wouldn't Whiskers be even weirder?

[28:22] I mean, he's a hairless talking cat.

[28:23] So Whiskers says, if you take me,

[28:26] I will just refuse to talk.

[28:27] But it's like, Andy can do that too, man.

[28:30] Like, I don't get this.

[28:32] Whiskers will just, he doesn't give a fuck.

[28:34] He's a nihilist.

[28:35] He doesn't, he has no real aim here.

[28:38] He just wants to cause havoc.

[28:40] Yeah.

[28:42] He's, yeah, he's seen a lot of pain

[28:44] as we later learned through his extensive flashback

[28:48] that looks kind of like karaoke footage in a cat universe.

[28:51] Well, also-

[28:52] Yeah, if you listen to karaoke for cats or cat-a-yoke, yeah.

[28:54] I mean-

[28:56] Dan, what would be your cat-a-yoke song

[28:58] if you were a cat singing karaoke?

[29:00] Probably Meow.

[29:02] Oh, okay.

[29:03] Yeah.

[29:04] Cats in the Cradle was the obvious one.

[29:07] Or Cat People.

[29:07] Yeah, I think so.

[29:08] Yeah, I assumed that we were just doing karaoke

[29:10] to cat songs.

[29:11] Oh, okay.

[29:14] No, but these flashback cats-

[29:16] Mine, by the way, would be Cat Thing You Do,

[29:18] which is all about things that cats do.

[29:21] I know I'm thanking you for that, but I appreciate it.

[29:24] Thank you for being a friend.

[29:26] No, I was just gonna say these flashback cats

[29:28] are not only younger cats,

[29:32] but clearly totally different markings,

[29:34] some of them kittens.

[29:36] And likewise, oftentimes,

[29:39] if there's a lot of footage of Andy

[29:42] just doing stuff around out in nature,

[29:45] it is clearly several different hedgehogs

[29:48] that look nothing alike that they have used.

[29:53] Yeah, this is one, around here in the movies

[29:55] when they let Andy just wander around outside.

[30:00] Clearly just the director narrating what the hedgehog is doing, whether it's eating sausage,

[30:04] scratching his face, hanging out with his other hedgehog friend, Mike, and drinking milk,

[30:08] and saying milk over and over and over.

[30:11] Yeah, he really says milk a lot.

[30:12] Now, here's my question about this footage.

[30:14] Is this footage they shot, or is this footage they bought from like some footage company

[30:20] of hedgehogs, and they just-

[30:21] Bought other hedgehog footage, because it's not the same hedgehog.

[30:24] And why else would they have a scene where he's eating sausage, or like he's eating a piece

[30:29] of a hot dog, or just drinking milk again, you know?

[30:31] Were they just trying to pad out, and they just were like, we don't have any more Andy footage.

[30:35] We got to get some more hedgehog footage.

[30:37] Oh, our Japanese investors demanded a 70-minute run time.

[30:40] Yeah.

[30:40] We're at 68.

[30:42] We got to do whatever we can.

[30:44] 100%.

[30:45] We sold a 70-minute movie to the South American market.

[30:49] We got to get it to 70 minutes.

[30:50] There's a bit where a dog shows up, and Andy is rightly terrified.

[30:55] And the dog just barks and acts like a dog, and doesn't talk unlike every plant

[31:01] and animal in the movie.

[31:02] I would also like to point out that Andy pronounces milk the way I pronounced it before you guys

[31:08] made fun of me.

[31:09] What, milk?

[31:09] Yeah, he says a lot of malk.

[31:11] Malk.

[31:11] Malk, yeah.

[31:13] Well, he's from, what, Michigan?

[31:15] Andy?

[31:16] Yeah.

[31:16] Yeah, is that a Michigan thing?

[31:17] So, the cheerleaders try and hatch a plan to exploit Andy to get famous and get Andy laid.

[31:25] I don't remember.

[31:26] Oh, yeah, actually, they do talk about that.

[31:27] They do talk about that.

[31:28] They're like, he could even have a girlfriend.

[31:30] That's like a mate, and it gets very, Andy is not interested in it, but they really seem

[31:35] to be interested in watching these hedgehogs get it.

[31:38] So, I think this is still day one of this odyssey.

[31:43] We have, and meanwhile, we have the two, again, my notes just has them listed as crooks.

[31:49] Maybe I'm doing them a disservice.

[31:50] They are in the house.

[31:52] They are stalking Andy.

[31:54] They come up with a plan to do a termite inspection, because they say the house has termites,

[31:59] and they're carrying whiskers around, and I got a little bit of an attempt to do

[32:03] like a Team Rocket vibe here, but it just wasn't working for me.

[32:06] And, again, this is happening all before school starts.

[32:10] In my notes, I kept, I was so amazed at how long it took to get

[32:15] to them actually picking up Andy and trying to take him.

[32:18] So, I kept writing, they kidnap Andy, and then having to cross it

[32:21] out because the scene would abruptly end and go to something else.

[32:24] And it was like, I assumed the movie was going to be, they kidnap Andy,

[32:30] Lily's got to get Andy back, and goes after him.

[32:33] But they just wander around that house forever, passing up opportunity after opportunity

[32:38] to pick up that hedgehog and walk away with him.

[32:40] It boggled my mind how little effort they were putting into this.

[32:45] They had $10,000, come on.

[32:47] Yeah, they had to tell the cheerleaders twice that, like,

[32:51] there's termites in the house to get them out of the room.

[32:54] Does termites necessitate a freak out?

[32:56] Like, it's not like it's like roaches or bed bugs.

[32:59] I mean, if you're the homeowner, maybe.

[33:00] Oh, yeah.

[33:01] Yeah, yeah.

[33:02] The cheerleaders also, they have wooden legs.

[33:05] That's the thing.

[33:05] Oh, that makes sense.

[33:06] Yeah.

[33:07] Yeah.

[33:08] Yeah.

[33:08] Tough business to be in.

[33:10] So, those high kicks, sometimes you just, you kick and your leg just flies right off

[33:15] because of all the force, and you gotta replace it.

[33:17] As the kids go to school, Dean Cain returns home in, as Dan mentioned before,

[33:22] a very foggy morning.

[33:24] I'm assuming he turned back because he realized there are things in the fog.

[33:29] Yeah, well, he was going off to his work beyond the Borderlands

[33:32] because they live in the house on the Borderlands,

[33:33] and I guess the pig men forced him to turn back and go home.

[33:36] That's the fog wall of Ravenloft.

[33:38] Yeah.

[33:39] So, Dean Cain returns.

[33:40] He has forgotten something.

[33:42] He ends up talking to Whiskers.

[33:43] He realizes that Whiskers can talk, but he thinks that he is having a mental breakdown,

[33:48] that Whiskers is not actually talking, and that he's been working too hard.

[33:51] That was evidenced by him walking in while talking on his cell phone,

[33:54] doing some business bitch stuff.

[33:57] In the movies, shorthand for works too much.

[34:00] Yep.

[34:00] Wear a suit, have a cell phone, is called a sports agent.

[34:04] That's it.

[34:05] It means you work too much.

[34:06] You should be with your family.

[34:08] I hate having phone calls, guys.

[34:11] Yeah.

[34:13] I would want to get all my business done over text.

[34:18] Okay.

[34:18] So, the crooks have to hide under the bed while Dean Cain hangs out with Andy.

[34:23] There's some more bits.

[34:25] Dean Cain somehow hears Tara Reed and her boss talking as they're coming up with a plan

[34:33] on how to figure out how to do away with this.

[34:36] They realize that they have to get the little girl to do a counter wish.

[34:40] Uh, Dean Cain takes Andy to bed.

[34:44] Uh, Tara Reed lures Lily into the magical school bathroom and tries to get her to reverse the wish,

[34:51] and the little girl's like, I don't get it.

[34:54] Now, when you say he takes him to bed, they just take a nap.

[34:58] It's not like, you can talk, you can give me consent, let's do this, Andy.

[35:04] I mean, there's a lot of implied sexuality between Andy and Dean Cain's Bob character.

[35:10] I mean, if the mom can't escape the kitchen, then Dean Cain might just be lonely in that bedroom.

[35:15] Yeah, that's very true.

[35:17] Melissa's going through a lot.

[35:18] She's got her own, uh, yeah, her phylactery is inside the kitchen.

[35:22] She can't go too far from it.

[35:24] Okay.

[35:25] Now, and she also is not, it's, we don't know where she is during this time when Dean Cain

[35:29] comes back and is, and thinks he's doing crazy things.

[35:31] She is just, maybe she's sleeping in the refrigerator or something like that in her kitchen apartment.

[35:36] I don't know.

[35:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[35:37] One might argue, one might make the claim that she's driving the kids to school.

[35:40] I think that's a spurious claim because as we've addressed, she can't travel too far from the kitchen.

[35:45] You know, Roger Ebert would tell us, you can't assume things that are outside the picture plane.

[35:49] You got to go with what the movie shows you.

[35:51] Is that, and he was talking about Andy the talking hedgehog when he said that, right?

[35:54] Yes, it was a class where he was teaching being there and Andy the talking hedgehog,

[35:59] and he was making it clear you have to go with what the movie tells you.

[36:02] Yeah.

[36:03] Okay, guys, time for us to get to a real, uh, the real exciting part of the movie.

[36:08] And that's at the school we're introduced to, uh, Mr. Kugin and Mrs. Habanet.

[36:15] Uh, Mr. Kugin is, I think, uh, they're both teachers and Mr. Kugin is down bad for her.

[36:21] He is, he cannot control himself and the kids can't stop talking about how much of a fucking

[36:27] hard-on Mr. Kugin has for his coworker.

[36:31] But he just can't pull the trigger on that thing.

[36:33] He just can't make it happen.

[36:35] I mean, like, I, look, I don't know.

[36:38] Maybe, maybe it's my own, uh, lack of, uh, empathy as a child.

[36:42] I don't think that teens in general, uh, pay enough attention to the lives of their teachers

[36:49] to have any opinion on whether these two should get together or not.

[36:54] I mean, two pieces of evidence.

[36:55] One, the movie Clueless, so there you go, uh, in which this is stolen.

[36:59] Uh, two, when I was in high school, I certainly knew which teachers were having affairs because

[37:04] we would all be talking about it.

[37:05] But, uh, this is the opposite of that.

[37:07] These teachers are clearly not having an affair.

[37:10] Uh, meanwhile, back home, Dean Cain is eating, uh, potato chips with the smallest possible bites.

[37:16] Yeah.

[37:16] Uh, well, you know, I mean, even for a part, Dean Cain knows a minute on the lips, a lifetime

[37:23] on Dean Cain.

[37:24] Or you got it, or like the movie's budget is so small that they could only give him

[37:28] four potato chips for all the takes.

[37:30] And they're like, make them last, Dean, make them last.

[37:33] These are Costco, man.

[37:34] And we can't, we only got one bag.

[37:37] Later on, he bumps into the crooks who were trying to steal his hedgehog and he's carrying

[37:43] a plate covered in potato chips.

[37:45] Yeah.

[37:45] Which is the worst way to carry potato chips.

[37:47] Yeah.

[37:48] Let me say, I have never seen a human being put potato chips on a plate by themselves.

[37:54] You have a sandwich or something, you got some chips on the side.

[37:57] But just like, like what maniac just like piles chips on a plate, just eat them up the

[38:01] goddamn bag.

[38:03] Or get a bowl.

[38:05] Get a bowl like your two regular dudes hanging out in a TV show eating snacks.

[38:10] Yeah.

[38:11] He's, he's a, no, he's a further sign of his mental deterioration is he doesn't even

[38:15] remember how to eat potato chips properly.

[38:18] I'm sorry, I mean, they, they should have gone another step, had him just pour them

[38:21] in a glass and have him try to drink the potato chips out and not be able to do it.

[38:24] You know, starts trying to eat them rectally.

[38:26] He doesn't remember how potato chips work, sticking them in his ears, in his nose, throwing

[38:30] them out the window.

[38:31] Is that my mouth?

[38:32] I don't understand anymore.

[38:33] Am I the house?

[38:34] Anyway, this is for the sequel.

[38:36] Andy, the talking hedgehog returns where Dean Cain has forgotten the events of the first

[38:40] movie and thinks he's crazy again.

[38:42] Yeah.

[38:42] So Dean Cain is also watching cartoons on his phone.

[38:46] He describes the cartoons as.

[38:49] Another cost-cutting measure is like, look, if he watches them on the TV, we might have

[38:52] to see the screen.

[38:53] Have him watch them on his phone.

[38:54] Watch them on his phone just to piss off Christopher Nolan.

[38:57] Yeah.

[38:59] Well, he's watching the animated version of Dunkirk on that phone.

[39:01] Yeah.

[39:02] Yeah.

[39:02] Which he describes as duck, pig, two guys who go boom to each other.

[39:06] That's Dunkirk.

[39:07] Yeah.

[39:08] He says he's, he's caught up with what happened with the duck and the pig or whatever.

[39:13] I'm like, I don't think, I mean, assuming that you're talking about Porky and Dappy,

[39:17] there haven't been a lot of new developments recently.

[39:21] I mean, we saw one of the most recent ones a couple of episodes back, but otherwise they've

[39:26] just sort of been hibernating.

[39:28] Uh, his wife, Melissa.

[39:29] Is that what you think they're doing, Dan, when they're not in cartoons, is they're hibernating

[39:32] somewhere?

[39:33] There's like a cave on the Warner Brothers lot that For Heaping and Daffy Duckard is

[39:37] sleeping in right now.

[39:37] Yeah, they're in stasis in the center of the earth.

[39:39] Everyone knows this.

[39:41] Meanwhile, Melissa, uh, his wife is worried that Dean Cain's behavior, uh, which now includes

[39:48] acting like a dog for some reason, uh, is due to him skipping breakfast.

[39:53] Uh, her want, as we have seen her interaction with other characters is very breakfast focused,

[39:58] which I am all over.

[40:00] about. Now the bad guys are still hiding in the house. I

[40:06] think they've been in the garage this whole time. Yeah, yeah.

[40:10] Okay, now it's bedtime.

[40:12] Is that when she walks in on them like collapsed on top of

[40:15] each other?

[40:16] Yeah, they're always on top of each other like the garage door

[40:19] works. And it's and it's at that point, I would be like, I don't

[40:22] care if you're in a relationship. That's great. But

[40:24] please not in my garage without telling me

[40:27] What are you doing here? Exactly? What are you

[40:30] accomplishing?

[40:31] What were they there for in the first place? All we've seen them

[40:34] do is wander around and set up a ladder like what work is going

[40:37] undone on the roof that they were supposed to be doing?

[40:40] Are they fixing the roof? Cleaning the gutters? Who are

[40:43] these guys to begin with?

[40:44] When you bring a contractor in you expect them to do just one

[40:47] thing, but then they find a bunch of other things that need

[40:49] to be fixed.

[40:50] True, true. Hedgehogs that need to be kidnapped. Yes.

[40:53] Stuart, when you say it's bedtime, I just want to note

[40:56] that Andy in voiceover says, now our story goes to later that

[41:00] night. Thank God he told me because the establishing shot of

[41:05] a dark house didn't I would have been so confused. I would have

[41:09] been like, did the sun get extinguished?

[41:12] The it's like it's like in WALL-E and the computer that

[41:16] controls the sky of the climate bubble they're in just abruptly

[41:20] switch to night so that they all have to go beddy by now.

[41:23] So the cheerleaders I guess are having a sleepover in the same

[41:26] house. They briefly talk about a car accident story that I would

[41:29] like to hear more about. And then they spend time

[41:32] which seems to be based on on a true story because during the

[41:35] credits, they talk about the actress having hit another

[41:38] another character's car with her car. So I wonder if that if that

[41:41] is them talking about a real thing.

[41:42] Yeah, you watched all the credits, you fucking maniac.

[41:45] No, well, the parts, the parts where Andy was narrating.

[41:47] Honestly, the best part, I don't if you missed them, like, it is

[41:51] Andy and the cat, Whiskers, like talking back and forth about all

[41:57] of the actors and people in the movie. And like, about them as

[42:01] actual

[42:03] humans.

[42:06] There's one actress and Andy just goes, she talked about Jesus

[42:09] a lot. I think it was the sister character. You missed the best

[42:12] part, Stuart. The best part where the director was like, as

[42:15] these characters, I'm gonna I'm gonna bad mouth my cast during

[42:18] the credits.

[42:19] Yeah, and apparently the one who played the the dumb cheerleader

[42:24] rear ended a parked car and the director like made fun of her.

[42:31] There's so many movies. It's like it's just like in in

[42:34] Midnight Cowboy when he said I'm walking here. There's so many

[42:37] movies where the best part the most iconic part was was just an

[42:40] accident caught on film. Yeah. And I guess in this one, he saw

[42:43] that she rear ended this parked car and he was like, that's in

[42:46] the movie. Now. There's no way that's not in the movie. And he

[42:48] had to buy her story, I assume, you know, which contributed to

[42:51] the budget, which is why Jane Cane can only take the tiniest

[42:54] little nibs on those potato chips, you know.

[42:57] So after sprinkling some crumbs about this car accident, we the

[43:00] the teens talk about their teacher romance subplot that

[43:03] they're very invested in. And then Whiskers is like romance,

[43:05] I'll tell you about romance. And then we get a flashback where

[43:08] we get to see Whiskers traveling throughout time, he devolves

[43:12] into this like, into like Andy circus at one point, that was

[43:15] crazy. And then Andy interrupts and then Andy the hedgehog,

[43:22] Andy the hedgehog. Although,

[43:25] yeah, how crazy would have been if it turned out that Andy

[43:27] circus was doing the mocap for Andy the hedgehog.

[43:29] This would have made a lot of sense, especially that sausage

[43:31] eating scene. The Andy interrupts.

[43:33] That's on the way. Does that a trademark Andy circus thing?

[43:36] Yeah, every single Andy circus movie, if you look carefully,

[43:40] he's eating a little Vienna sausage.

[43:43] I've got to watch. I did not notice that.

[43:44] Yeah, the next time you next time you go to Walmart or a

[43:47] Fred Meyer and you pick up the Andy circus collection box set

[43:49] from the DVD party.

[43:53] King Kong, definitely.

[43:56] Yeah, for sure.

[43:57] 24 hour party people.

[43:58] Yeah, it's, you got to imagine that it and also if you're

[44:02] looking for it, make sure to look for the DVD box set that

[44:05] comes in a circus tent. Because it's called Andy, it's they

[44:07] spell it Andy circus CIRCUS. And it says Andy circus.

[44:11] Andy's Flying Circus.

[44:15] And it's and it's comes in a tent. And it's great. And all

[44:19] the discs are in there. It's pretty actually not very great

[44:21] packaging for a DVD is to be just loose in a tent because

[44:24] they tend to move around and scratch during transport. But

[44:26] you know, so

[44:28] a different Andy. That's Andy the hedgehog. Not Andy circus.

[44:32] Yeah, it's on his way to the bathroom.

[44:33] I should mention in the Andy circus set, they did it says

[44:35] Black Panther, but it's just his scenes from Black Panther.

[44:37] It's a weird choice.

[44:40] Yeah, it's called

[44:41] Andy Givaltron. He's in Age of Ultron 2.

[44:44] Barely, but the they include as its own disc, which again,

[44:47] they're just trying to cut off. I'm just trying to inflate the

[44:49] discount at that point. Yeah.

[44:51] So Andy the hedgehog interrupts and he heads to the bathroom,

[44:57] which of course is a one way ticket to Fairyland, where he

[45:03] has

[45:03] a funny how at a certain point, they just make it clear that

[45:06] every bathroom door is now an entry to Fairyland, even if you

[45:09] need to use the bathroom. But so he goes in there.

[45:11] Terry, Terry, Terry convinces him to help her convince Lily to

[45:16] end this nonsense. And I'm like, Yes, please. The movie should be

[45:20] done. Okay, next day, Dean Cain wakes up. He's like, what a

[45:24] crazy dream I had. Oh, not a dream. He the animals are still

[45:30] talking. The plants are still talking. So he devolves again

[45:32] into a chip eating cartoon fiend. Meanwhile, Melissa is

[45:37] just sipping her coffee just trying to hold it all together.

[45:40] Yeah, I think that the yeah, the background story of this is,

[45:44] while Dean Cain is, you know, sort of dissolving in the most

[45:48] big way possible. She is just barely holding it together.

[45:52] I mean, it's really a portrait of somebody locked in a marriage

[45:55] with a man who is losing his mind and is no longer reliable.

[45:58] And she's just Yeah, she's just trying to keep things going. In

[46:01] a marriage, often one person kind of gets licensed to lose it a

[46:05] little bit, and the other one has to step up and then you

[46:07] switch roles. So you have to assume in the sequel, Freddo,

[46:10] the talking camel, that she's gonna be the one who goes nuts.

[46:13] And Dean Cain is gonna be the one who's like, Hey, we got if

[46:16] we got kids to take to school, let's do this, you know,

[46:19] I just want to say that for listeners, it was a delight to

[46:21] see Jim Jemel's face when react to Elliot say Freddo.

[46:29] Let's see, Lily goes to the bathroom, she really has to go

[46:33] Oh, back to fairyland. So she has another there's another

[46:36] attempt to have Lily change her wish. No dice yet. The I really

[46:42] don't understand why she's so resistant to changing her wish

[46:46] considering that it is obvious that her dad is having a

[46:51] breakdown as the basis of I mean, I don't I don't have any

[46:54] small children. So I don't know if they're stubborn or

[46:57] difficult to deal with guys.

[46:59] Nope. Always. I don't know about your your experience. Jamel, but

[47:02] my children are always like, yeah, whatever you say, Dad,

[47:05] that's what I want to do. Let's do it. For dinner. Yes,

[47:09] definitely. Kids love to be obedient. They love to do what

[47:13] their parents say. That's just how it goes. Yeah, bedtime. I'm

[47:18] way ahead of you. I'm already in the bed. I am brush my teeth

[47:22] five times today. Okay, let's brush my teeth. I love it. Hey,

[47:26] can I do my homework now? Yeah, that kind of they love to do

[47:30] it. At this point. My both of my sons are anytime anything is

[47:34] mentioned, they go no, even if it's something they like and

[47:36] want to do. We're like, let's go get the ice cream. And they're

[47:39] like, let's stay home. But if we were like, let's stay home,

[47:42] they'd say let's go get ice cream. They're just a couple of

[47:44] real concert. Just a couple of bizarros. I guess a couple of

[47:48] little Christopher Hitchens you have.

[47:52] I hope not. Oh, no, that would be terrible.

[47:55] So the Lily takes Andy to school, Andy charms everybody at

[48:00] school, even the bullies a little bit. But this is weird

[48:03] because later on, there's a, the plot is to bring Andy the

[48:07] talking hedgehog to the science show. Yeah, as some kind of

[48:10] science thing. And if she's already brought the hedgehog,

[48:16] like what's people will be over as well, because everyone was

[48:21] like, what a talking hedgehog. I mean, I guess that to be fair,

[48:26] versus the high school where the cheerleaders were, it's an all

[48:30] in one school. It's a very small community. As we've seen, there's

[48:33] like, well, then I don't know what's going on teachers. Here's

[48:37] my issue was that yeah, the science fair, usually you've got

[48:39] to like prove something like you're like, I built a thing or

[48:42] like, I'm going to show that this does I have an experiment.

[48:45] This is literally just like, we found a hedgehog that talks like

[48:48] D minus, you don't you didn't have anything. Yeah, you know?

[48:53] Yeah, this doesn't. What's your whatever?

[48:56] What's your hypothesis? My hypothesis is that sometimes

[48:59] hedgehogs can talk, bitch. Well, now you're definitely

[49:01] getting an F. That's unacceptable. Stop dabbing.

[49:04] You're getting an F. Also, also, Freddie goes to this high

[49:08] school.

[49:13] Well, here's my experiment is I wanted to see if you put sugar

[49:17] and water if it made plants grow better. And I guess it kind of

[49:20] does try to learn more about teens.

[49:24] So often killing teens that it reminded me I never got my high

[49:28] school. I had to go back to school. And now the teens I'm

[49:31] used to killing are killing me socially. They just won't let me

[49:34] be part of the group. Oh, man, it's so hard being me again. It

[49:38] was already hard being me because I'm a I'm a I'm a

[49:40] criminal deviant who is horribly scarred in a fire. And I'm not

[49:44] I'm some kind of dream demon.

[49:47] I mean, he should just change up his wardrobe. I mean, it's pretty

[49:49] simple.

[49:49] That's what it's called. It's called a Dyer and Elstreet

[49:51] ultimate nightmare because now it's time for Freddy's ultimate

[49:54] nightmare. High school.

[49:55] Yeah. Oh, man. He's allergic to homework. So after school

[50:00] Oh, we have a, we have this very charming scene where-

[50:02] Yes, wait, I just want to do Freddy doing the-

[50:04] Uh-huh, yeah, sure.

[50:05] The end of the trailer.

[50:06] So you see the title and then the end of the trailer

[50:07] is him doing the Pledge Allegiance.

[50:08] He goes, I pledge allegiance, bitch, to the flag, bitch.

[50:11] You know, that kind of stuff.

[50:14] So we have this-

[50:16] Dan, you're going to make this movie.

[50:17] This is your ticket to features.

[50:19] Come on.

[50:21] We have a scene in the kitchen, of course,

[50:23] where the mother is preparing dinner

[50:25] and Andy asks Melissa, like, what are you cooking?

[50:28] She says, sushi?

[50:30] And that was the last thing I was expecting her to say.

[50:35] Oh man, it was great.

[50:36] Okay, so the next day, the teenagers bring Andy

[50:42] to the science show, which seems to be this kind

[50:45] of freeform thing happening in the cafeteria.

[50:47] You get your volcano, et cetera.

[50:50] Before they go up, of course, Lily is like,

[50:52] okay, fuck it, I wish you can't talk anymore.

[50:55] Did we miss the part where Lily brings Andy

[50:59] to the school and some girls are bullying her

[51:01] and Andy calls one of the girls fat?

[51:04] I didn't, I missed that part.

[51:07] Oh man, that part shocked me.

[51:09] That's crazy.

[51:10] The girls are bullying Lily and Andy's like,

[51:13] you shouldn't say mean things about her

[51:15] because you're fat.

[51:16] And I was like, what the fuck?

[51:19] Like, fuck off, dude.

[51:22] But then later she wants to pet Andy really badly.

[51:25] She goes, later she pets, she goes,

[51:27] can I pet Andy?

[51:28] And she does.

[51:29] And it was like, oh, Andy the Hedgehog knows the game.

[51:31] You know, he obviously studied under mystery.

[51:34] Yeah, he's nagging her.

[51:36] He's been watching F-Boy Island.

[51:39] I've been watching it if we want to talk

[51:41] about F-Boy Island instead of the Hedgehog.

[51:43] Now, I have so many, I don't want to go all the way

[51:45] to watching it, but I have so many questions.

[51:47] Sure, yeah, yeah.

[51:48] So I have to choose which ones are the F-Boys

[51:50] and which ones are the what?

[51:51] I mean, they're all looking for love, you know?

[51:53] And there's 24 contestants and a few get added, a spoiler.

[51:59] And half of them are nice guys and half of them are F-Boys.

[52:04] And the F-Boys are just in it for the money.

[52:07] So if they get picked at the end, they're like,

[52:08] ha ha, I just got the money, sucka.

[52:11] And they have to eliminate people each week.

[52:14] And when they get eliminated,

[52:15] we find out if they're nice guys or F-Boys, oh man.

[52:18] So it's what, like tattooed under their arm

[52:20] whether they're an F-Boy or a nice guy?

[52:22] They have a QR code tattooed on their leg

[52:24] and they have to scan it for fun.

[52:26] Now, I'm just mad, I refuse to watch it

[52:28] because it's clearly a ripoff of my pitch, Pep Boy Island,

[52:31] where the ladies have to decide who's worth keeping

[52:33] and who's a Pep Boy.

[52:35] And it's relatively obvious

[52:36] because the Pep Boys have huge heads

[52:37] and they only want to talk about auto parts.

[52:40] The Pep Boys just mechanics?

[52:44] But sometimes that can be romantic.

[52:45] Which one of you is the Pep Boy?

[52:47] I think it's me, man.

[52:49] Are you one of the Pep Boys?

[52:53] No, I'm the surviving Car Talk brother, close.

[52:56] Oh, man.

[52:58] But now I imagine a sad scene

[53:00] where one of them goes to the doctor

[53:01] and the doctor's like, I'd like you to sit down.

[53:04] I called you down because the test results came back.

[53:07] You were a Pep Boy.

[53:07] And he's like, I am.

[53:10] And he's got a huge head, he's in black and white.

[53:11] He's dressed like it's the fifties or whatever.

[53:14] Yeah, he's holding a carburetor in his hand.

[53:18] I thought he was just a Pringles guy.

[53:19] This reminds me, I think I sent it to you.

[53:22] I drew a picture of the three of us as the Pep Boys

[53:24] because we map onto the visual design.

[53:28] The personality traits of the Pep Boys.

[53:30] Yeah, because there's the Pep Boy

[53:33] who's like kind of a nerdy chatterbox.

[53:35] There's the Pep Boy who's always like this again.

[53:37] And there's the sexy Pep Boy.

[53:39] Some call him the F Pep Boy

[53:40] that all the ladies go crazy for, yeah.

[53:43] Yeah, the Pep Boy with the giant crank.

[53:45] Okay, so.

[53:46] The problem is we would say the Pep House

[53:48] but that's already a podcast

[53:49] where we talk about pepperoni.

[53:50] So I don't know what we're gonna do.

[53:53] Where we cheer people up

[53:54] and get them energized with pepperoni.

[53:55] It's a double play on the word Pep, yeah.

[53:59] So, she made the wish in the middle of the show.

[54:02] So the girls bring Andy up and they're like,

[54:04] we got this one in the bag.

[54:05] Andy, show your stuff.

[54:07] Of course, Andy at this point can't talk.

[54:09] So they look like assholes.

[54:14] So yeah, I guess it's over.

[54:16] To be honest, to be honest.

[54:17] Movie's done, right?

[54:18] I think, and frankly, and this is, wait, no.

[54:22] Because we heard there was gonna be a kidnapping

[54:24] at some point.

[54:25] I would say, yeah, they should stay on their lane.

[54:27] It's not fair to be both the cheerleaders

[54:28] and win the science fair.

[54:30] That feels like you're reaching for too much.

[54:33] Leave some for the other people.

[54:33] No, Ali, you're boxing people in, you know?

[54:36] Like, why can't someone do that?

[54:36] No, no, I'm boxing people in Las Vegas this weekend.

[54:39] Oh, wow. It's me.

[54:41] And there's a famous boxer.

[54:42] Me and Manny Pacquiao are gonna go 10 rings,

[54:46] 10 rounds guaranteed in 10 different rings.

[54:48] 10 rounds in each ring.

[54:49] So that's right.

[54:50] It's both boxing and also using MapQuest

[54:53] to try to find the next ring.

[54:55] Yeah, it's called, it's a tie-in with Shang-Chi,

[54:57] Legend of the 10 Rings.

[54:58] It's called Caelan Pacquiao,

[55:00] Legend of the 10 Boxing Rings.

[55:02] And all those rings, obvious, we're doing a hedgehog movie.

[55:05] So the, of course, now the next day,

[55:08] the crooks try to steal.

[55:10] And at this point, they're technically crooks

[55:11] because they're stealing something.

[55:12] Okay.

[55:13] Yes, they've achieved crookitude.

[55:15] You're right, so, okay.

[55:16] They kidnap Andy,

[55:17] then they roll around in some leaves for a while.

[55:21] And then, and Whiskers is egging them on.

[55:24] And they're, they run into the front yard.

[55:26] And a little bit negging them on

[55:28] because he's very insulting to them.

[55:29] Yeah. Yeah.

[55:30] And then, I mean, a neg isn't strictly an insult, Ellie,

[55:33] but we'll get into that when we finish our training.

[55:34] It's something negative.

[55:36] Yeah, I guess when I take your learning annex course, yeah.

[55:39] Whiskers is about to run into traffic.

[55:42] And of course, Andy warns him of an oncoming car.

[55:45] Whiskers has not run over,

[55:46] and Whiskers realizes that his life

[55:50] could have been snuffed out in an instant,

[55:53] that despite all of his fixation on death,

[55:56] you know what, maybe it's time that he give Andy a shot.

[56:00] That it's time for Whiskers to finally live.

[56:03] And I'm not gonna say that, like, look,

[56:05] it's a wonderful thing, obviously,

[56:07] to save Whiskers from being run over,

[56:10] but it's also kind of a low bar for friendship.

[56:12] Like, oh, you didn't let me run out into traffic?

[56:15] Like, I guess we're best pals now.

[56:17] And now to present the con side of the debate

[56:20] that it would have been good to let Whiskers

[56:21] get hit by the car is Jamel.

[56:23] Jamel, make your case.

[56:24] Why should Andy have let Whiskers get hit by that car?

[56:27] I mean, that cat kind of sucked, let's be real.

[56:29] He plotted to get Andy kidnapped.

[56:33] Yeah, and he also seems, as you said,

[56:36] obsessed with death himself.

[56:37] Yes, I mean, we sort of, part of the flashback, right,

[56:40] is that his partner's mate, I don't know,

[56:43] gets hit by a truck, and he calls this getting flattened.

[56:46] And this becomes like a refrain from him.

[56:51] Everyone eventually gets flattened.

[56:53] The flattening is inevitable.

[56:56] And there's not really any point to this.

[56:58] He just sort of like says it as a decorative statement.

[57:02] And it shows a real fixation with mortality

[57:05] from Whiskers the cat.

[57:07] What I liked about it also is it shows

[57:09] not going back and rewriting the screenplay

[57:11] for a second draft, because it's only after he tells

[57:14] the story that he becomes death obsessed.

[57:16] And it's like they were like, yeah, yeah, okay,

[57:18] he's all about, he's a nihilist, he's all about death.

[57:19] Until then, he's just a jerk.

[57:21] And they could have easily gone back

[57:22] and just put it in earlier, but they didn't.

[57:25] They didn't bother.

[57:26] I'm guessing they booked Dean Cain, there was a mix-up.

[57:30] They thought they had a week to write the script.

[57:32] He showed up the next day on their doorstep,

[57:33] so they had an hour to write the script.

[57:35] And they just had to jam it out on Microsoft Word

[57:37] and hand it to him.

[57:39] And then immediately start shooting.

[57:40] Guys, that must have been-

[57:41] Well, he showed up and he started tearing into the chips

[57:43] right away, and they're like, fuck,

[57:44] we only have so many chips here.

[57:47] We put all of our money into the ladder budget.

[57:50] Dean, the chips aren't part of the script.

[57:52] They're not in the movie.

[57:53] What are you doing?

[57:54] They are now.

[57:57] So-

[57:58] There was a, I worked on a, sorry,

[57:59] I worked on a TV show called The Who Was Show

[58:02] with Jimmy Daly.

[58:02] Yeah.

[58:03] And there were always scenes that were in

[58:04] the Who Was craft services room.

[58:05] And there was a big pile of huge chocolate chip cookies.

[58:08] And every day, it would kill me that I could not have,

[58:11] it was like, I just wanted to reach out

[58:12] and take one so badly, but I couldn't

[58:14] because they were prop cookies.

[58:15] And I never knew where they went to at the end of the day,

[58:17] but it wasn't to me.

[58:18] Sad, really.

[58:19] I guess what I'm saying is, that's what my memoir is about.

[58:22] Are those prop cookies made out of like wax or something?

[58:25] No, they were real cookies.

[58:26] They weren't like-

[58:27] Oh, okay.

[58:28] They were just real cookies that I assume got replaced.

[58:29] Maybe they're the same cookies every day,

[58:30] in which case I'm less interested in eating them

[58:32] because they would be stale.

[58:33] But that's the show.

[58:35] I should have just taken one, you know?

[58:36] That's the thing about a crush though, you know?

[58:39] The cookies you eat every day,

[58:40] even though they're there for you

[58:41] and they might be delicious,

[58:43] they don't hold that place in your brain

[58:46] as the cookie that you saw once and never got to have.

[58:49] That's the, well, it's the fantasy about it.

[58:51] And there's never reality to fixate,

[58:53] to fix that fantasy as something other than perfect.

[58:56] It's just like the story in Citizen Cookie,

[58:59] the famous Orson Welles movie,

[59:01] where Bernstein, his friend, says,

[59:03] I remember I was getting on the ferry in New Jersey

[59:05] and I saw a cookie on a table.

[59:09] Wearing a white dress.

[59:10] I only saw the cookie for a moment.

[59:11] The cookie didn't see me at all.

[59:13] But you know, I bet a month hasn't gone by

[59:14] that I haven't thought about that cookie.

[59:16] It's a beautiful moment.

[59:18] Yeah, true, true.

[59:19] So the crooks are running across the lawn

[59:22] with the hedgehog.

[59:23] Dean Cain sees them.

[59:25] He remembers that he was at one point a football player.

[59:29] He throws his bag of chips in the air triumphantly.

[59:33] He goes and tackles Mr. Roller.

[59:37] The hedgehog hits the ground safely.

[59:39] Don't worry, he doesn't get smushed or hurt or anything.

[59:42] Lily picks up Andy the hedgehog.

[59:45] Whiskers is happy.

[59:46] The cheerleaders are cheering in the background.

[59:48] There is crowd going wild noises.

[59:51] Melissa is able to leave the house,

[59:53] but only when she's wearing a cheerleader uniform.

[59:57] Dean Cain looks at the camera for a while.

[1:00:00] Do you think that's part of her mystical sentencing that she can only leave the house in a cheerleader or is that part of their relationship?

[1:00:08] Like it's kind of like I choose what you wear and you're going to wear a cheerleader outfit.

[1:00:13] Well, I mean the movie does make, yeah, like a brief joke that perhaps this is all just like a projection of Dean Cain's shattered mind.

[1:00:23] I mean it is possible that there's an ending that we missed where Dean Cain is dreaming this on his deathbed as an old man.

[1:00:30] It's just like his memories have become so fractured that he can't keep it straight anymore.

[1:00:35] I mean they do call him a super dad at one point and then stare at the camera making sure that we got the reference to Lois and Clark.

[1:00:43] Yeah. You know what? It makes me feel old that there was a time when those were the new adventures of Superman.

[1:00:50] So I think that was the movie. I think there's like some bullshit at the end.

[1:00:54] I remember when there were some new adventures of old Christine too.

[1:00:56] Yeah. Well, that made me feel really old. I was like even old Christine's having new adventures.

[1:01:00] And now those are the old adventures of not as old as older Christine.

[1:01:05] Were those new adventures still being a car and running over people?

[1:01:09] I think a lot of them were. Christine being a haunted car can only do so much.

[1:01:17] There was the one episode where she tried to become a TikTok star.

[1:01:23] But other than that, again, it was just TikTok videos of her running over people too.

[1:01:27] Very popular though.

[1:01:29] There goes Christine again running over innocent bystanders.

[1:01:32] Laugh track. Cue credits next episode.

[1:01:36] Well, Christine, you're not going to run over anybody anymore.

[1:01:40] Here we go again.

[1:01:44] Oh, man. OK, so that's a very special episode with Christine.

[1:01:48] Yeah. Christine, you're drunk this time.

[1:01:51] Christine, you're addicted to pills.

[1:01:54] There was the nude adventures of old Christine. But again, it's a car.

[1:01:57] It doesn't wear clothes anyway. It's already naked.

[1:02:00] Well, it doesn't have any undercoating on.

[1:02:02] So that's just Christine rusting is what happens in the nude adventures.

[1:02:05] That's terrible.

[1:02:08] Yeah, that's the movie other than the bloops that Stuart missed.

[1:02:13] Yeah, which apparently I got to go back and watch.

[1:02:16] Run, don't walk home.

[1:02:18] The movie ended and I was like, OK, thank God.

[1:02:20] And then the credits started and I was like, I guess I do have to watch these

[1:02:24] because they are just that weird voiceover.

[1:02:27] And the director talking shit about everyone.

[1:02:32] It was like as if he knew everyone will have walked out of the one theater

[1:02:35] where they show this one time.

[1:02:38] What for a qualifying for an Oscar?

[1:02:42] Yeah, I mean, yeah, that one time was at the Cannes Film Festival.

[1:02:46] It played at Sperry's Movie House, according to Wikipedia,

[1:02:49] in Port Huron, Michigan in twenty eighteen.

[1:02:52] OK, so was this was this before or after the director did a couple episodes of

[1:02:57] what was that show? Yeah.

[1:02:59] Spunky Realtors or something.

[1:03:01] There was I was looking up what this director had done otherwise,

[1:03:05] and he did two episodes of a show called Spunky Airlines.

[1:03:13] Now, theoretically, there are 13 episodes, but there are only two listed on IMDb.

[1:03:19] And I don't know.

[1:03:20] I think this is probably not an actual TV show, but something that was,

[1:03:26] I don't know, streaming somewhere small.

[1:03:30] But it is a very wacky.

[1:03:33] There's like a cartoon plane that has funky on it and big cartoon letters.

[1:03:40] And then like a very put upon looking man with,

[1:03:44] I guess there are a bunch of flight attendants around him.

[1:03:46] And now what what Dan pitch to me, what you think that what do you think that is?

[1:03:50] What is Spunky Airlines? I don't understand.

[1:03:53] Well, I hope it has nothing to do with Chiz.

[1:03:56] I think it is. I think it's Spunky Airlines.

[1:04:01] You know, I had assumed that it wasn't cum related, but who knows?

[1:04:07] It is only one way to find out, I guess.

[1:04:10] But Dan, OK, if it is, pitch me the two versions of the movie then.

[1:04:14] Pitch me the one that's Chiz related and pitch me the one that's not Chiz related.

[1:04:18] To make reference to another MaxFun show,

[1:04:23] Spunk is a cum word.

[1:04:25] Oh, yeah, OK.

[1:04:27] But yeah, yeah, they would.

[1:04:29] They'll say anything on that show.

[1:04:31] I think, I mean, the Chiz related one would be this is, you know,

[1:04:36] they have to this is an airline that specializes in sperm donor,

[1:04:41] like, you know, transport, transport for the trans-porned.

[1:04:49] Yeah.

[1:04:50] For the items in question.

[1:04:52] We got it, Dan. You're a regular Robert Finch.

[1:04:55] I didn't want to say that.

[1:04:58] I said it accidentally and I had to call myself out for it.

[1:05:01] And you had to repeat it.

[1:05:03] You were describing the poster for, what, Spunky Airlines.

[1:05:08] But I also want to say, if you're interested at all,

[1:05:11] check out the poster for this movie.

[1:05:13] It is fantastically photoshopped. It's great.

[1:05:16] There's a horse on it and there's no horse in this movie at all.

[1:05:19] Yes.

[1:05:20] It's Andy's riding the horse or appears to have ridden the horse or something like that.

[1:05:26] Yeah.

[1:05:27] But there's no horse in this movie.

[1:05:28] There's no horse in this movie.

[1:05:29] So, theoretically, I can get my money back.

[1:05:32] OK.

[1:05:33] I mean, you watched it on Tubi, so.

[1:05:35] It's not a horse.

[1:05:36] It is Andy is on top of a stump bearing his teeth.

[1:05:43] I'm going to put Photoshop to smile on him because he looks like, yeah.

[1:05:47] We thought you were going to tear a reader in the sky like they've died and gone on to Palo Alto.

[1:05:53] Yeah, they crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

[1:05:55] Let's see.

[1:05:56] Andy, the talking.

[1:05:59] Yeah, it's great.

[1:06:00] Yeah.

[1:06:01] Oh, yeah, there it is.

[1:06:02] Yeah, he's riding a horse.

[1:06:03] And it says a magical good time.

[1:06:05] I do like that my Tubi algorithm is based entirely around just this and deadly lessons,

[1:06:10] a tale of Simon Conjurer or whatever.

[1:06:13] Yeah.

[1:06:14] Now, here's so you'll notice that.

[1:06:15] OK.

[1:06:16] I'm just going so fast that Andy is like to have to hold on to the main.

[1:06:20] He's now in the UK.

[1:06:21] I'm seeing this movie is Andy, the magical hedgehog.

[1:06:26] And the image, Andy is surrounded by some kind of swirling magic.

[1:06:30] And it has a quote that I can't read who the quote is by.

[1:06:33] But it says the best hedgehog movie.

[1:06:35] Now, Jamel, if anyone is qualified to make that kind of judgment.

[1:06:39] Do you agree?

[1:06:40] Is this the best hedgehog movie?

[1:06:41] I mean, I'd say I'd have to think, you know, Lawrence of the Hedgehog is probably a better hedgehog movie.

[1:06:49] Sure.

[1:06:50] Yeah.

[1:06:51] The four hour epic about the hedgehog that helped the helped defeat the Ottomans in the Middle East.

[1:06:56] But it's all about the wipes and the transfers.

[1:07:00] Yeah.

[1:07:01] Why is it called a magic hedgehog in the UK?

[1:07:04] Did the British understand what talking animals are?

[1:07:07] I'm not sure.

[1:07:08] Is the only context for like a talking animal has to be magical and so that they just throw the magic in?

[1:07:13] Here's my guess.

[1:07:14] Hedgehogs can probably already talk in England.

[1:07:16] So a movie called Andy, the talking hedgehog, people would be like, yeah, of course, he went to Oxford.

[1:07:21] We know that.

[1:07:22] Or maybe there's like there's already a popular franchise of talking hedgehogs over there.

[1:07:27] Possibly.

[1:07:28] A magical good time.

[1:07:30] Was it a magical good time, Dan?

[1:07:32] Is this the part of the episode where we talk about whether or not the poster lied to us?

[1:07:37] I do.

[1:07:38] I do want to mention.

[1:07:39] I do want to mention.

[1:07:40] Lawrence, the hedgehog, says that great that great scene cut where he blows up the match and then suddenly it's a hedgehog.

[1:07:46] What a magical movie moment.

[1:07:47] Yeah.

[1:07:48] Yeah.

[1:07:49] Tara Reid apparently tweeted about this movie making fun of the poster herself.

[1:07:56] So that's great.

[1:07:57] It's cool.

[1:07:58] Yeah.

[1:07:59] Final judgments.

[1:08:00] This is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie we kind of liked.

[1:08:05] I definitely did not like this movie.

[1:08:07] I'll put that up.

[1:08:08] Go on.

[1:08:09] I think if I had seen this with like a group of friends, maybe this would be a good, bad movie as it was.

[1:08:19] Like just Audrey and myself watching it this morning out of a sense of duty, because for some reason we have a podcast where we talk about hedgehog movies, among other things.

[1:08:32] I didn't enjoy it even as a bad movie.

[1:08:35] There's something weirdly grim about it.

[1:08:38] Like there's a sadness about this movie.

[1:08:40] I feel like –

[1:08:41] It's Whiskers.

[1:08:42] I don't know.

[1:08:43] Like this movie –

[1:08:44] I mean was it too much whimsy?

[1:08:45] Too much family-friendly whimsy for you?

[1:08:48] This is one of these like kids movies that you can just feel like the cynicism of the person who made it where they're just like, I don't know, kids will watch whatever crap.

[1:08:58] Let's get some washed up actors and it will be fine.

[1:09:02] Whatever.

[1:09:03] We'll make a movie.

[1:09:04] It's just like there's an unpleasantness that I felt bled through to the screen.

[1:09:09] But what do you guys think?

[1:09:11] I don't know.

[1:09:12] I actually – I had a fun time watching this dumb movie.

[1:09:17] I think it – I think this is a solid good, bad movie.

[1:09:20] I feel like it would be fun to watch with a group.

[1:09:22] It's very stupid.

[1:09:23] It doesn't – other than the – like there's way too much fat shaming.

[1:09:28] But other than that, it's like fairly innocuous except for like you have to see Dean Cain's stupid face all the time.

[1:09:34] But yeah, I mean it's dumb.

[1:09:37] It's like a talking cat.

[1:09:39] Yeah, I would – I'm also going to have to put this in the good, bad, it would be fun to watch with a group category.

[1:09:44] I think one of the things that makes that way for me is there are kids in it, but the kids are not terrible.

[1:09:50] The kids are fine.

[1:09:51] And so I never felt like I was laughing at them, which would make me feel bad.

[1:09:55] But it is – there's something about this movie where at every – it –

[1:10:00] wants to tell the simplest story a girl makes a wish it's a tale as old as time

[1:10:04] a girl makes a wish a hedgehog talks bad guys want to steal

[1:10:08] the hedgehog and yet it somehow fails every single

[1:10:11] scene to accomplish telling that story in new ways that i did not predict were

[1:10:15] going to happen and so i and i found uh i found that very uh fun to watch and

[1:10:20] they left so many plot threads for part two

[1:10:23] yeah yeah andy once again is a talking hedgehog didn't see that coming did you

[1:10:27] part two and he's talking again do the teachers hook up

[1:10:31] that's the question yeah yeah i mean they oh they do they clearly do because

[1:10:34] we see an image of them of snuggling together in the second

[1:10:36] movie andy can like you know help them get over their hesitation about

[1:10:41] hooking up that's the job now yeah he's it's called

[1:10:45] andy the talking sex therapist hedgehog it's uh

[1:10:47] it could be like a sequel to hitch too so it's like andy now voiced by will

[1:10:51] the hedgehog he's a hedgehog yeah yeah exactly

[1:10:57] what okay so now you're talking my language which is sequels to two movies

[1:11:00] at the same time so so hitch has either switched bodies

[1:11:04] with andy or has been transformed into a hedgehog himself

[1:11:07] and now the two of them have to help each other hitch is going to help andy

[1:11:11] uh get these teachers together and andy's going to help hitch

[1:11:14] live the life of a hedgehog it's called as we already said

[1:11:17] hitch hedgehog a slash andy the talking hedgehog too

[1:11:22] um yeah that's the movie so uh jamel that's uh you

[1:11:25] movie kind of liked uh i i have to agree that this is um

[1:11:31] uh good bad with the group bad bad by yourself

[1:11:35] watching it by myself at 10 o'clock at night

[1:11:40] you took a little high it was not that great

[1:11:45] imagine watching it with some friends and marveling we didn't really talk

[1:11:50] about this so much too much but marveling at how

[1:11:52] like it doesn't even look like it was shot on an iphone

[1:11:55] like it looks bad in a way that's inexplicable to me

[1:11:59] given that it would have been shot about 2018 and i feel like

[1:12:02] your average consumer grade uh camera would be able to capture some

[1:12:08] little decent footage there were some parts

[1:12:11] where like the shutter speed went way down and like you know all the

[1:12:17] action and the stunts i yeah i mean there were a number of

[1:12:21] scenes where i had to i was checking my internet connection

[1:12:23] yes because suddenly it would be slow motion

[1:12:25] in between like it would cut in a in a conversation you'd cut back and forth

[1:12:29] between shots that were in slow motion and shots that were not

[1:12:31] and i was like is this am i having like early onset alzheimer's

[1:12:36] problem with my wi-fi what's happening that's why i was pretty sure it wasn't

[1:12:39] my wi-fi because it would happen like within the same i think you mean to say

[1:12:43] my wife my wife no it was within the same scene yeah like

[1:12:47] but different shots would be shot in different ways and i confirmed

[1:12:51] other people complaining on letterbox being like

[1:12:54] why is this like weird like david lynch effect on some of these

[1:12:59] um but that's you know you can watch with friends you can talk about that

[1:13:03] stuff you can talk about the weird uh cheerleader wanting to fuck dean

[1:13:07] moment otherwise you know don't watch this by

[1:13:10] yourself it'll make you feel bad uh-huh yeah you will you will start to

[1:13:14] wonder what what is going on in my life and it is it is either even though you

[1:13:18] watch it on tubi so it costs you nothing it does cost you time yeah you will

[1:13:21] never receive again like if you have like if you find yourself with a free

[1:13:25] afternoon and you go by your local art house cinema

[1:13:28] and you see that they're playing andy the talking hedgehog and you're like you

[1:13:30] know what i need a little bit of me time i'm going

[1:13:33] to treat myself you go and you buy yourself a pack of cookies

[1:13:36] uh maybe maybe a bottle of water something that you know support the

[1:13:39] local cinema and you go in there and you sit down then

[1:13:42] you watch the whole movie like you're gonna feel like you wasted your time

[1:13:46] yeah yeah yeah well the cinema's gonna end

[1:13:50] gonna end the at the end the movie theater's gonna be like we insist you

[1:13:53] take your money back we hadn't watched the movie yet

[1:13:55] we just watched it with you you gotta take it back oh can i get a refund for

[1:13:59] the cookies and the water uh that okay now we're in a gray area

[1:14:02] because you still got those and those were fine quality

[1:14:05] uh and you ate them right well yeah i didn't eat i didn't finish the bottle

[1:14:08] of water no one ever does oh well i'm not gonna give you a little

[1:14:11] finishes a bottle of what that's the most insane thing that you've ever said

[1:14:15] oh the weirder thing is the weirder thing is your owner who's trying not to

[1:14:18] pay not to refund them for a bottle okay i'll say anything i feel like if you're

[1:14:23] a movie theater screening this movie you're gonna sell a shitload of potato

[1:14:26] chips right the way dean kane was nibbling on those

[1:14:29] things you see dean kane eating i mean just like oh i wish i had those like the

[1:14:33] hedgehog was taking bigger bites of sausage than he was of those chips

[1:14:38] i guess this movie proves that dean kane has a tiny mouth and that they use

[1:14:42] camera tricks to make it look like a normal human-sized mouth yeah

[1:14:49] i'm jesse thorne this week on bullseye david burn

[1:14:52] on the talking heads easing back into live performance

[1:14:56] and the magic of doo-wop you don't get it very much people doing dibbidi-dip-dip

[1:15:00] whoa you don't get a lot of that listen to

[1:15:05] bullseye from maximumfund.org and npr

[1:15:12] hey podcast fan we'd like to get a better idea of who you are and what you

[1:15:15] care about so we have a quick favor to ask if you

[1:15:18] have a few minutes to spare please go to maximumfund.org

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[1:15:50] the flophouse is sponsored in part by squarespace

[1:15:55] you can use squarespace to turn your cool idea

[1:15:58] into a new website blog or publish content

[1:16:01] sell products and services of all kinds and much much more

[1:16:05] squarespace does this by giving you beautiful customizable templates

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[1:16:33] or domain hey uh dan i had an idea for a for a website and i was wondering if

[1:16:38] squarespace would be able to help me with it sure i i'd love to hear about it

[1:16:42] uh i now this is a common problem we saw it in the movie we've all experienced it

[1:16:46] where uh you you have to go to the bathroom

[1:16:48] either to number one or number two that is a common problem respectively uh and

[1:16:52] never number three never number three very rare uh please

[1:16:56] see your doctor if number three come rears its ugly head

[1:16:58] uh you walk into the bathroom and suddenly you're in a magical field where

[1:17:02] tara reed is asking you for a wish to make a wish yeah

[1:17:06] and you just need to use the bathroom and suddenly

[1:17:08] your your your john has been transformed into a portal to a magical fairyland

[1:17:13] uh it's a problem we've all had to deal with and ordinary plumbers just

[1:17:16] are not up to the task of of figuring out how to stop these

[1:17:20] portals so that's why help my bathroom is a magic

[1:17:23] fairyland portal.com is your place to find the specialists you

[1:17:27] need to fix your bathroom turning into a

[1:17:29] magical fairyland portal problems our experts and you know i shouldn't say

[1:17:33] our experts because we are just a site that connects you we're a middleman

[1:17:37] we connect you the consumer who needs a bathroom and you need it fast

[1:17:41] because you are about to go in your pants while this

[1:17:44] magical fairy is asking you for a wish and you can't just say i wish my

[1:17:46] bathroom was back they won't do that i've tried uh we

[1:17:50] connect you with the professionals and the specialists

[1:17:53] who know not only how bathrooms work but also how magical fairylands work

[1:17:57] and how to replace one with the other anyway so

[1:18:01] help my bathroom is a portal to a magical fairyland.com

[1:18:04] is your place to find this information it's kind of a networking site

[1:18:07] we also have tutorials about how to do some repairs on your own if you say you

[1:18:10] want to install a toilet in the magical fairyland

[1:18:13] again you're just going to be using a toilet while sitting in an open magical

[1:18:16] fairyland and the fairy will continue to ask you for wishes

[1:18:18] while you're using the toilet if you're okay with that that's fine that's a

[1:18:21] personal preference i personally have trouble going to the

[1:18:24] bathroom when a magical fairy is asking me if i have any wishes

[1:18:27] at the same time even if i'm in a stall and the magical being is standing

[1:18:31] outside of the stall and is just yelling at me any wishes

[1:18:33] do you have a wish yet it's both hard for me to perform my my

[1:18:37] waste duties and also hard for me to come up with a wish it's just

[1:18:40] it's double stress and i don't need it so i i'm not the one to help you but the

[1:18:44] tutorial is there if you want to try to do it on your own anyway

[1:18:46] help my bathroom has become a magical fairyland portal dot com or whatever i

[1:18:50] called it earlier would be your place to find the

[1:18:52] specialists you need to solve that problem do you think

[1:18:55] squarespace will be able to help me put up a website yeah you know what i

[1:18:58] really do and i look forward to uh listening back to this episode and

[1:19:02] hearing what you said rather than zoning out

[1:19:06] wow honest honest moment from dan mccoy yeah i guess we're not being polite we

[1:19:13] started getting real i didn't realize that okay that's what we're getting

[1:19:16] that's what you're getting today stewart the flap house is also brought to you by

[1:19:19] story blocks bring your stories to life without

[1:19:22] sacrificing your vision with story blocks story blocks unlimited

[1:19:27] all access plan gives you unlimited downloads

[1:19:30] of the over 1 million plus assets in their library

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[1:19:44] plans and tools on the market that scale to meet your needs

[1:19:49] restock is their commitment to increase representation in stock media by hiring

[1:19:54] creators from marginalized communities to create content that is more reflective

[1:19:58] of the diverse world

[1:20:00] And if you want to see some examples of Storyblocks' content, I'm sure when you check out the upcoming Flop House live show at the end of this month, where we talk about Super Mario Brothers, tickets are still available, I'm sure there will be at least one or two segments when we use Storyblocks' footage to give us a bathroom break.

[1:20:23] I hadn't confirmed this with you guys yet, actually, but I was planning on doing another intermission just so we can have a bathroom break in the middle.

[1:20:33] For me, mostly, I'm sure the viewer actually won't get a bathroom break because they don't want to miss the song.

[1:20:41] Oh, because they're going to be so busy loving that amazing Storyblocks clip.

[1:20:43] Although, you know what? You can take the laptop into the bathroom or the phone.

[1:20:46] I'm not going to tell you where you can watch our show.

[1:20:48] Just put a piece of tape over the camera and you're all set.

[1:20:51] Sure.

[1:20:52] Wait, why would you put tape over the camera?

[1:20:54] Just in case someone's hijacked it.

[1:20:56] That makes sense.

[1:20:57] In case a Russian bot is watching UP, which is also another website, www.helpofrussianbotiswatchingup, and my bathroom has been turned into a magical fairyland portal.

[1:21:07] So explore their library and subscribe today at storyblocks.com slash flop.

[1:21:14] Once again, that is storyblocks.com slash flop.

[1:21:20] And as Stuart mentioned, we've got our live show coming up.

[1:21:24] That's right.

[1:21:25] We'll be in your house on the computer screen, that is, so you don't have to worry about cleaning up or making us dinner.

[1:21:31] Or in your phone when you're on the bus or when you're at work hiding in the closet so nobody can see you chortling away at our hijinks.

[1:21:41] Or let's say you're constipated.

[1:21:43] Perhaps the laughs that you're watching on your phone will help loosen everything up.

[1:21:48] Just giggle that we need out of there.

[1:21:50] The FDA hasn't approved us for that use, but off-label maybe.

[1:21:55] Or perhaps as a marilaid if laughter is both the best medicine and the best aphrodisiac.

[1:22:01] So perhaps you just want to have us playing on the side.

[1:22:04] Yeah.

[1:22:05] Well, if you just want to flop out and chill, that's September 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:22:14] Again, we're going to be talking the movie Super Mario Brothers.

[1:22:17] That's the only, I think, live-action feature film based on the most popular video game character in the history of video games.

[1:22:24] We're going to have all new PowerPoint presentations at the start.

[1:22:27] Dan will make something with storyblocks that he has time to pee in the middle.

[1:22:31] At the end, we'll be answering questions live from listeners over Twitter.

[1:22:34] And guess what, guys?

[1:22:36] What?

[1:22:37] Let's say you can't make it.

[1:22:38] Let's say you're too busy.

[1:22:39] Go on.

[1:22:40] It's September 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:22:43] Let's say you live somewhere where that's a crazy time.

[1:22:45] It's in the middle of the night or in the middle of the morning when you're at work or lunchtime.

[1:22:50] Go on.

[1:22:51] You're just trying to get off the screen because you're on Zoom meeting all day.

[1:22:54] If you buy a ticket, you'll get access to the archived recording of the show for one week.

[1:22:59] That's right.

[1:23:00] You can watch it at your leisure.

[1:23:01] You can watch it multiple times to memorize everything or type up a transcript because after that week, it will be gone forever.

[1:23:07] You just won't be able to watch it again.

[1:23:09] So if you have any interest in watching it, it only costs $10, one Alexander Hamilton, to get access to it whenever you want to watch it, as many times as you want to watch it.

[1:23:18] Put it on loop for a week.

[1:23:19] I don't care.

[1:23:20] Go for it.

[1:23:21] Anyway, we'll also – if we can get our act together in time, I think we can do it.

[1:23:25] We'll have some Flophouse merchandise that will only be available during the time the show is available to watch like we did last time, and we'll be talking about that during that show.

[1:23:33] So all for only $10.

[1:23:35] I mean the merchandise you got to pay for.

[1:23:37] $10 for the ticket, and it's $10 per household.

[1:23:39] If you invite all your friends over, we won't know.

[1:23:43] September 25th, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, us talking about Super Mario Brothers.

[1:23:50] Why not buy tickets now while you're thinking about it?

[1:23:53] Just go to SimpleTix, either Google SimpleTix Flophouse Mario Brothers or go to FlophousePodcast.com slash events with a link to where you can buy tickets.

[1:24:02] It's just that easy, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

[1:24:06] You know it is because the last shows were fun.

[1:24:08] Yes, Dan?

[1:24:09] Did you know that the directors of Super Mario Brothers also directed the video for Talking Heads Blind and TomTom Club Genius of Love?

[1:24:17] I did not know that.

[1:24:18] Yeah.

[1:24:19] Is that how they got the Super Mario gig?

[1:24:21] I don't know.

[1:24:22] I mean they got it off of being – it looks like music video directors and also doing the Max Headroom show.

[1:24:29] Yeah, and David Byrne was originally supposed to play Super Mario, so that's another aspect of it.

[1:24:33] Yeah.

[1:24:34] Wow.

[1:24:35] But it makes sense.

[1:24:36] There's a real 80s –

[1:24:38] Like the Koopa Troopas have big David Byrne suits, right?

[1:24:41] They do wear big suits.

[1:24:42] It all makes sense.

[1:24:43] We'll be connecting even more dots like that September 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific Time, Super Mario Brothers, FlophousePodcast.com slash events for tickets, and thank you.

[1:24:59] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[1:25:01] Let's get this train rolling.

[1:25:06] This one is from –

[1:25:07] Let's get this train rolling, he said an hour into the episode.

[1:25:10] This one is from Kevin, last name withheld, who writes, while making my way through the Flophouse back catalog, I've stumbled across the origins of some flop lore, including Elliot first referring to the floppers as the original Peaches, episode 17, Untraceable, and Stewart's Castle Freak recommendation, episode 53, Hannah Montana, the movie, but have yet to hear anyone talk about the show's theme music.

[1:25:34] Would you enlighten us?

[1:25:35] Thanks.

[1:25:36] Kevin, last name withheld.

[1:25:37] Yeah, I can't remember whether we've said this on air.

[1:25:39] I do get this question on Twitter sometimes.

[1:25:41] It is by Keith Burgun, who was I believe recommended to me by Brock, Elliot's friend and writing partner of the old days.

[1:25:53] Brock Mahan.

[1:25:55] Yeah, he – I was just looking for someone to write a piece of music that was ours, that we wouldn't be stealing some copyrighted material in case the podcast inexplicably grew popular at some point.

[1:26:13] You were very visionary about that.

[1:26:17] Forward thinking.

[1:26:18] Yeah, forward thinking because it was not but eight years later I think that we started making money off the podcast.

[1:26:25] But yeah, he gave one version of it that was sort of more blues inflected because he was kind of going off of the Flophouse thing and I said, hey, could you make it more sort of like – give it some of that Simpsons theme vibe where it's like some sort of like zany madcap feel and he just changed the instrumentation and it worked.

[1:26:50] It was great.

[1:26:51] This is a real Dave Grohl interview situation right here.

[1:26:54] Yeah.

[1:26:55] Well, I mean it's not like there's a lot to the story, but that's what it is.

[1:27:00] Anyway, that's the theme.

[1:27:02] But – and also thank you to our producer, Alex Smith, for doing the 8-bit version of the Flophouse theme for that great video game episode and doing other soundscapes for us.

[1:27:17] But –

[1:27:18] Ooh, soundscapes.

[1:27:19] Yeah.

[1:27:20] This next one – this next letter is from Lena, last name withheld.

[1:27:23] Okay.

[1:27:24] Lena Dunham.

[1:27:25] She writes, well, it's finally happened and what we, the audience, can only assume was a desperate attempt to boost ratings, the Flophouse has introduced an adorable child to the cast.

[1:27:35] Don't get me wrong.

[1:27:36] Sammy's great.

[1:27:37] His complete disregard for the conventions of linear storytelling and deadpanning's aspiration with his dad are a real breath of fresh air to the show's formula.

[1:27:44] But I worry what this move means for the future of the show.

[1:27:49] What's next now that you've started down the well-worn path of shark jumping?

[1:27:53] Will one of the Peaches be recast between seasons by a younger, sexier actor?

[1:27:59] Will Dan and Stuart finally get married only to get divorced so the writers can get some more mileage out of that whole Sam and Diane thing they have going on?

[1:28:06] Will Elliot be revealed to have been a Russian spy all along and revealed that seems cataclysmic but really changes nothing about him as a character or his relationship with his friends?

[1:28:17] Which of you will heroically sacrifice yourself for your friends only to be resurrected a few short episodes later in a move that allows the show to keep going but cheapens the emotional impact of the death?

[1:28:29] Looking forward here to sit down the slippery slope.

[1:28:33] P.S. I cannot emphasize enough that I'm 100% joking.

[1:28:36] I would never seriously and unironically write in to complain about one of Elliot's kids.

[1:28:40] Only a monster would do that.

[1:28:42] Too late, monster.

[1:28:43] Lena, last name withheld.

[1:28:45] Wow, Elliot, put those knives away.

[1:28:47] I got it.

[1:28:48] Look, I got to back up my son.

[1:28:49] As you know from the Space Jam episode, nothing I like less than a parent just standing by while someone else rips their kid a new one.

[1:28:57] So even this kind, heavily qualified joke dig must be met with atomic destruction.

[1:29:07] And our descent goes right into – I guess our descent starts with Small Timber where we talk about Andy the Talking Hedgehog.

[1:29:15] Yeah, we've added an adorable animal to the cast.

[1:29:18] Yeah, who would our adorable – I mean we do have – we have the house cat who's kind of a talking animal.

[1:29:23] That's true.

[1:29:24] All he says is rarow but still.

[1:29:26] Where is the house cat by the way, Stu?

[1:29:28] He hasn't been around in a long time.

[1:29:29] Oh, man.

[1:29:30] He's in rehab right now.

[1:29:32] Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.

[1:29:33] Oh, wow.

[1:29:34] Yeah, he got real tight with the Coors Light Beer Wolf.

[1:29:39] I guess all the signs –

[1:29:40] We've had some tough times.

[1:29:41] The signs were there in that interview that he did in Playboy.

[1:29:43] Yeah.

[1:29:44] People were wondering what was going on with him.

[1:29:45] Yeah, and his appearance on Marin.

[1:29:48] Oh.

[1:29:50] His guys were Spuds McKenzie unfortunately.

[1:29:53] Oh, boy.

[1:29:54] Yeah, that's too bad.

[1:29:56] So what should we do to wreck the show?

[1:30:00] I like the idea of replacing someone with a new actor and not just mentioning it, you know?

[1:30:05] Interesting. Interesting our guest thinks that there should be a new co-host for the show.

[1:30:10] Yeah, I can be Dan right now and it'll just be like, oh yeah, Dan's always been black.

[1:30:18] It's an audio medium, you can't prove us wrong. No evidence otherwise.

[1:30:24] No paper trail.

[1:30:25] I mean, shows must have done that, right? Where they just cast a new person of a different

[1:30:32] ethnicity and they're like, same person. We just never, you know, obviously the same,

[1:30:36] never talk about it.

[1:30:37] The closest thing I can think of to that is The Fresh Prince when they replaced the mom,

[1:30:42] who was a dark-skinned actor, with a light-skinned actor and we're just like, nothing changed.

[1:30:46] There's no difference here. Even though, right, like the actor who plays Carlton is very dark

[1:30:52] skinned and so it's sort of like, well, how, what happened there?

[1:30:58] I love the idea that you as a young person were writing into Fresh Prince being like,

[1:31:02] let's just look at their genotypes and phenotypes.

[1:31:05] You know, this is not, what, whose lineage is he expressing right now?

[1:31:09] Why, for some reason, Stan Lee wrote back and gave you a no prize?

[1:31:14] Yeah, he went, yeah, because he, well, because Jamal also offered an explanation.

[1:31:17] That's how you get, that's the secret behind the no prize. You don't just find the mistake,

[1:31:21] you explain why it's not a mistake, you know, and the explanation can't be because Stan was

[1:31:26] writing seven books at the time and forgot, you know, or that Kirby drew the issue in a day.

[1:31:31] So he was just, you know, working on fumes at that point.

[1:31:35] So now do we talk about recommendations, Danny boy?

[1:31:37] Recommendations, movies that you should probably watch instead.

[1:31:41] After you're done enjoying some Andy the Talking Hedgehog and you want to watch something else.

[1:31:46] Don't turn it off when the credits start because you're going to miss

[1:31:49] all that gold.

[1:31:50] I feel like such an asshole.

[1:31:53] I would like to.

[1:31:55] I think it's, the only reason I think it's funny, Stu, is because this was

[1:31:57] maybe the shortest movie we've seen ever.

[1:32:00] I mean, it was just like, and done, couldn't watch a minute more.

[1:32:04] I immediately threw my laptop across the room.

[1:32:08] I jumped on the treadmill, popped back, popped Hellraiser back on so I could finish my workout.

[1:32:14] Yeah, I'm like, I got to make my body as wet and glistening as the creatures on screen.

[1:32:23] Well, for my recommendation is Frank, the skinless monster in Hellraiser.

[1:32:27] That's my body.

[1:32:30] He's all muscle.

[1:32:33] He's just like a skinless guy, right?

[1:32:35] Well, when I paused the movie and it listed the characters and their actors,

[1:32:39] it listed that character as Frank, the monster.

[1:32:41] So I'm going to take my cue from Amazon, or I guess it's probably IMDb.

[1:32:47] It's all one company.

[1:32:48] Look, every company is just the same.

[1:32:50] Yeah, Worldzaibatsu Entertainment.

[1:32:55] We're getting into the fall.

[1:33:02] It's only September now, but I don't need it to be October to start watching some horror movies.

[1:33:10] Dan just made a spooky face.

[1:33:12] I want to recommend a new movie called The Night House, starring Rebecca Hall.

[1:33:22] It's about a woman whose husband has committed suicide

[1:33:28] under very unusual circumstances, very unexpectedly.

[1:33:33] She has a lot of obviously sadness, but also anger at it happening, confusion about why it happened.

[1:33:47] Her grief is strong, and she is living in the house that he built for the two of them,

[1:33:51] and strange things start happening and horror things start happening.

[1:33:57] Honestly, I think that the movie is a little stronger when it is just

[1:34:02] sort of focused on the mysterious things happening and her grief,

[1:34:06] because Rebecca Hall is so good in the movie.

[1:34:12] Sarah Goldberg plays her friend, and you may know her from Barry,

[1:34:17] where she plays Barry's girlfriend, and she's a great actor.

[1:34:20] She turns a pretty basic concerned friend role into something that feels very real.

[1:34:28] She's the one who's so good on Barry that she gets endless hate mail from

[1:34:33] asshole dudes on the internet.

[1:34:36] She's just doing her job.

[1:34:41] I think that the movie is not quite as strong when it starts explaining things and gets into

[1:34:47] the horror, the unraveling of the logic of what's going on,

[1:34:51] but it is still a very kind of haunting horror movie that I enjoyed quite a bit.

[1:34:56] So, The Night House.

[1:34:57] Yeah, I want to see that.

[1:34:58] Stuart, what do you want to recommend?

[1:35:00] I'm going to go to my familiar place, my comfort zone.

[1:35:04] I'm going to say, go over to Shudder, fire up Shudder, and watch a new movie that went up there.

[1:35:11] I don't know when you're listening to this, but at some point.

[1:35:13] It's a movie called Superhost.

[1:35:15] It's a little thriller that's a little nasty, and it's got some really fun performances,

[1:35:21] including one from former Flophouse guest Barbara Crampton.

[1:35:26] It's about a couple who make YouTube video reviews of Airbnbs, and they end up staying

[1:35:35] in an Airbnb that, you know, you can figure it out.

[1:35:41] It doesn't have any particular twists that are that surprising,

[1:35:44] but the performances are all really fun, and I thought it was good, and it was gory,

[1:35:50] and it was cool.

[1:35:51] Superhost.

[1:35:54] I'll go next.

[1:35:55] How about that?

[1:35:57] Life has been busy, and I have not had a chance to watch too many new movies lately,

[1:36:02] or any new movies other than Andy the Talking Hedgehog, which took up valuable movie viewing

[1:36:08] time that I would have loved to have spent on something else, anything else.

[1:36:12] Yeah, you're seeing all the reviews in from, what, Venice and all these other film festivals.

[1:36:16] I can only—I watched the video of the ovation they gave for Dune, and I'm like,

[1:36:20] well, I hope to see it someday if I can finish with the Talking Hedgehog movies.

[1:36:25] But I started—so I was thinking, I want to recommend a movie about a talking animal

[1:36:29] that is good, and I was doing some research, and there are not very many,

[1:36:33] it turns out.

[1:36:34] There's not a lot of non-animated—

[1:36:35] Not Francis the Talking Mule?

[1:36:37] No, not even that.

[1:36:38] There's not a lot of non-animated good talking animal movies.

[1:36:40] Hot to trot?

[1:36:42] Hot to trot.

[1:36:43] I was briefly like, do I have the guts to recommend a movie that I thought was

[1:36:46] marginally funny when I was seven and have not seen since then?

[1:36:52] But at a time when I was young enough that I thought, yeah, Bobcat Goldthwait,

[1:36:56] I guess this is how grown-ups talk.

[1:36:58] That's why he does that.

[1:37:00] But instead, I'm going to—a better movie, I think, about an animal that learns how to

[1:37:05] talk or gains the ability to talk is—it made me think of Rise of the Planet of the Apes,

[1:37:10] the first of the recent new Apes trilogy.

[1:37:13] And as someone who really loves the original Planet of the Apes movies,

[1:37:18] I remember being really bowled over by what a good job they did in making a movie and

[1:37:24] then following it up with two sequels that were really good that did something similar

[1:37:29] to the old series, but different enough that it felt like its own thing, but similar enough

[1:37:33] that it felt like we know the themes that we're playing with to a certain extent.

[1:37:39] And so that first one, I just remember being so impressed by it when I thought it was going to—I

[1:37:43] was worried that it was going to turn out to be crap, as there had been a history of bad remakes

[1:37:47] of the Planet of the Apes movies.

[1:37:49] And it was just really good.

[1:37:51] So Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it's another movie about an animal who learns how to talk,

[1:37:54] this time through scientific rather than through magical means.

[1:37:57] And it's a little harder to put the genie back in the bottle.

[1:38:01] Good one.

[1:38:02] I remember watching this.

[1:38:04] I might have said this on the show before, but I remember, like, firing that up.

[1:38:07] And, like, right away, I'm like, oh, that CGI baby monkey looks so fake.

[1:38:12] And then within, like, 10 minutes, I'm, like, sobbing.

[1:38:15] I'm like, stupid CGI baby making me cry.

[1:38:18] And we were speaking of Andy Serkis earlier.

[1:38:21] Prime Andy Serkis.

[1:38:22] But sorry, Jamal, you want to say something?

[1:38:23] I would recommend those sequels, too.

[1:38:24] The sequels, I think, are really terrific.

[1:38:26] They're great.

[1:38:27] Yeah.

[1:38:27] The sequels are, if anything, better than the sequels to the original series, too.

[1:38:31] Like, they managed to keep, as much as I love Beneath and Escape,

[1:38:35] the sequels to the new ones are much higher quality all around than the original sequels.

[1:38:40] But sorry, you were going to say?

[1:38:42] No, I mean, my recommendation is not Talking Animal or Ape related.

[1:38:49] It's, I recently watched, for the first time, The Last Seduction, a 1984 erotic thriller.

[1:38:55] As part of Criterion Channel's Modern Noir and Neo-Noir collection?

[1:38:59] Yes, as part of Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir collection, several,

[1:39:03] which contain several movies which are not noirs, is very frustrating to me.

[1:39:07] There's a bunch of stuff in there that's sort of like, I mean, these are good,

[1:39:10] but like, I don't know if they belong here.

[1:39:12] You got 10 minutes in and you're like, I can't watch this garbage.

[1:39:16] No one's wearing a hat or using a gun.

[1:39:18] There's no shadows.

[1:39:19] I think the Criterion Channel falls down sometimes when they're like,

[1:39:23] here's, instead of being like, here's five great Neo-Noirs,

[1:39:25] they're like, here's 30 Neo-Noirs.

[1:39:27] And you're like, well, some of these, you don't expect me to watch them.

[1:39:30] That's the thing.

[1:39:30] But sorry, talk about Last Seduction.

[1:39:32] Last Seduction's great.

[1:39:33] It's basically sort of double indemnity if the femme fatale is the lead,

[1:39:41] and also she is a lunatic.

[1:39:44] And she's played by Linda Fiorentino,

[1:39:48] who scams her husband out of a bunch of money or steals a bunch of money

[1:39:52] and then is basically trying to get away with it

[1:39:54] and pulls in a kind of a yokel named Peter Berg.

[1:40:00] Who gets really into her and so it's sort of it's Linda Fiorentino like exploiting all

[1:40:04] the men around her for the sake of her trying to get this money and it is a it's a totally

[1:40:10] great watch Fiorentino is terrific she's like phenomenal in the role yeah and it's a real

[1:40:17] shame that her career didn't take off the way I really think it should have after this

[1:40:23] and Men in Black she had like I think I think yeah I think within a couple years she had

[1:40:27] this and Men in Black which are two great performances from her well she I mean she

[1:40:31] got a reputation for being difficult which is frequently coded for like we just don't

[1:40:37] like this woman because I you know I yeah I think she's a terrific actor I look I don't

[1:40:44] know what she's like on a set I had met her briefly socially and she couldn't have been

[1:40:48] nicer so I I've always been a fan what was that that you met her on uh uh Sarah my ex

[1:40:56] wife is friends with her sister and we uh hung out in a bar once and she was oh that's

[1:41:02] really cool yeah yeah I remember this was one of the first I remember this movie came

[1:41:07] out in 94 and I remember so well being like 12 and watching like E or whatever and hearing

[1:41:15] about how all these critics were saying that it should have been nominated for Academy

[1:41:18] Awards but because it had aired on television first yeah it was ineligible and how that

[1:41:22] was and it was like the same the same issue that now we're going to be dealing with with

[1:41:27] what movies deserve to be nominated for Oscars if they're on streaming platforms like Last

[1:41:31] Seduction was a real pioneer with that in appearing on HBO before it was in theaters

[1:41:35] well and John Dahl like had to have it to him with Red Rock West as well like he made

[1:41:41] these two noirs that both got uh sort of dumped to premium cable is Red Rock West isn't in

[1:41:48] the neo-noir criterion question right I can't remember but it would qualify if it isn't

[1:41:54] it's it would probably just because they don't have the rights to it yeah yes it's not like

[1:41:57] they were like I think it's hard to I think it's enough I think I remember reading that's

[1:42:01] hard to hard to find yeah but I mean if you go to the video store in my hometown that's

[1:42:05] not there anymore that's where I got it okay I'll just head down to a place I don't know

[1:42:10] video town in Milburn New Jersey in 1995 okay pick up a copy of it okay but he also like I

[1:42:19] feel like could have had a bigger career because you know rounders is sort of a cult classic now

[1:42:24] and that's a fun movie and joyride I think is a really underrated yeah yeah yeah directed great

[1:42:30] Walker Steve's on Lili Sobieski vehicle yeah pun intended I don't imagine he's living off the the

[1:42:37] proceeds of his dad's estate Roald Dahl so he's fine mm-hmm all right well let's shut up the fly

[1:42:51] house for another week Jamal is there anything that listeners should check out that you've been

[1:43:00] up to lately you know there's been your times column there's been your times newsletter you

[1:43:06] can check out on serious eats I have a series for viewing bad cereals you check that out that's a

[1:43:14] lot of fun that's really about it yeah I mean that's plenty I don't want you to think that

[1:43:21] you're underachieving right now so much stuff and yet you still found time to watch the still

[1:43:27] movie and come on no it's always a play it's always a pleasure to hang out with you guys

[1:43:32] thank you so much for being here have you yeah thank you to Alex Smith our producer for the show

[1:43:39] sound good thank you to maximum fun our network they Linda so much support please return the

[1:43:48] favorite go there listen to other podcasts you know become a member of the network huh and go

[1:43:55] to simple ticks flop house and buy a ticket to our Super Mario Brothers show I don't know how

[1:44:02] you're gonna watch Super Mario Brothers that's on you buddy yeah you should uh you should buy a

[1:44:06] ticket to hear us talk bullshit about it yeah I can't do everything for you but yes September 25th

[1:44:11] 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific Super Mario Brothers go to flop house podcast comm slash events or the

[1:44:17] link to buy tickets and I guess yeah go back to video town in Millburn New Jersey in 1995 I bet

[1:44:24] they've got a copy of Super Mario Brothers just sitting on the science fiction fantasy section

[1:44:29] probably or take a you know go back in time and turn on TBS it might be playing who knows yeah

[1:44:36] yeah until we talk to you again I've been Dan McCoy I'm Stuart Wellington I'm Elliot Kalin I'm

[1:44:43] Jamal Bowie bye-bye Jamal you know I'm gonna be asking you about hedgehogs in America today

[1:44:52] get that shit ready yeah come on

[1:45:13] maximumfun.org comedy and culture artists owned audience supported

Ep. #351 - Andy the Talking Hedgehog, with Jamelle Bouie

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