Ep. #337 - Tom & Jerry

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Tom and Jerry.

[0:04] Is Elliot's least favorite animated animal duo part of his least favorite movie of the year?

[0:10] Tune in to find out.

[0:30] Hey everyone and welcome to The Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[0:42] Yeah, that's right. Showtime. It's me, Stuart Showtime Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:46] And it's me, Elliot Nap Time Kalen, saying, when's my nap time?

[0:50] That's my new catchphrase, guys. Do you like it?

Dan McCoy

[0:52] I do like it.

[0:53] I think that's probably copyright infringement on, let's just say, my whole thing.

[0:57] My kind of vibe. My general...

[0:59] Oh, wow. Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00] Okay, I guess I'll have to dig through the old episodes to find the times when you said, when's my nap time?

[1:05] Which is now my new catchphrase. I don't remember you ever saying it, but if you want to retroactively claim it...

Dan McCoy

[1:10] I didn't say the catchphrase. I just, you know, like, sort of like a sad, whiny man who's tired a lot.

[1:16] Like, I feel like you gotta, you know, you need to lean into more of your bits.

[1:22] Okay, I'll introduce you to the character.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24] He also sounded like a baby when he said it, which I think is also kind of your thing, right, Dan?

Elliott Kalan

[1:27] Yeah, that's okay. You know what? I'll start a new character. I'll start a new character. Okay.

[1:31] This hay fever. I don't like it.

[1:34] That's my new character.

[1:35] It's Al Pacino with hair hay fever?

[1:37] I love it.

[1:37] That's Al Pacino with hay fever.

[1:39] That is...

[1:39] I'm amazed that that's not a character that was on SNL at some point.

[1:42] Poor Conan O'Brien. Al Pacino with hay fever.

[1:45] Yeah, I love it.

Dan McCoy

[1:45] How does this guy come up with this?

[1:46] I'm sneezing. That's what it sounds like when I sneeze.

[1:51] Sun tight, Mr. Pacino.

[1:57] Oh, man. So what do we do on this here podcast, Danny?

[1:59] Well, this here podcast is one where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. And in this age, this pandemic age, when the movie theaters are, you know, even the ones that are open are not overflowing with folks.

Elliott Kalan

[2:17] I mean, to be honest, a movie theater should never be overflowing with folks. That's an occupancy problem.

[2:22] Yeah, that's like a gremlin situation.

[2:24] Yeah, you don't want them just spilling out of the doors and windows. Yeah, that's too much.

[2:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:28] But a whole bunch of movies that were originally intended to be big theatrical releases are going straight to streaming, including...

[2:38] Is it Warner Brothers films? Is that the slate that has been dumped to...

Elliott Kalan

[2:41] Yes, Warner Brothers... HBO Max is the streaming platform for Warner Brothers.

[2:45] And Warner Brothers has decided that they will day and date all their movies will be released in the theaters and also on HBO Max simultaneously for a month.

[2:53] And so that's what we're dealing with with today's episode.

Dan McCoy

[2:56] Yeah. So today we decided to watch one of the Them There movies, Tom and Jerry.

Elliott Kalan

[3:01] It's dealt with... HBO Max has already... It's already handled a bunch of similar HBO properties.

[3:05] The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, and now Tom and Jerry.

[3:09] Movies that all are going towards the same audience, which is very difficult, you know.

[3:13] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[3:14] Yeah, you would think they would want to vary it up a little bit, right?

[3:16] But nope.

[3:17] No.

[3:19] So yeah, so we all fired up our HBO Max subscriptions and we picked a movie.

[3:25] I was like, Dan, you can pick any movie.

[3:27] Which one do you have the most passion for?

[3:29] And you said Tom and Jerry.

[3:31] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[3:32] So did you guys also know a kid named HBO Max who was just the kid who had HBO at his house whose name was Max?

[3:38] Uh-huh.

[3:38] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:39] See, I thought you were going to say, Elliot, did you guys also hate Tom and Jerry as a kid?

[3:43] Because I was really wrestling whether to yes and Stuart's bit of me loving Tom and Jerry or use this as an opportunity to get into my feelings about the characters.

[3:54] Which I'm sure that we'll talk about it over the course of the next hour or so.

[4:00] But man.

[4:01] Certainly seems on point.

[4:02] I texted Elliot and I was like, wow, it's amazing the way this movie.

[4:08] I guess I texted both of you, but Elliot was the one who answered.

[4:11] It's amazing that this movie makes me angry about the treatment of characters I did not like in the first place.

Stuart Wellington

[4:20] Yeah.

[4:21] If you're not a big fan of Tom and Jerry, I don't know if when you peaked at the runtime, you're ready for an hour and 45 minute slice.

Elliott Kalan

[4:28] I mean, what's great is if you're not a big fan of Tom and Jerry, they are not the stars of a movie called Tom and Jerry.

[4:33] So there's that.

[4:34] I also have never really liked the Tom and Jerry characters.

[4:37] I found them to be, when I was a kid, I just found them pointless.

[4:41] I was like, they don't have much personality.

[4:43] I don't understand why they're doing these things or why I should care.

[4:46] When the Looney Tunes cartoons are so readily available for me at the same time.

[4:49] And those characters are brimming with personality.

[4:52] And I wanted to quote, this is a discussion I was having yesterday with an anonymous source who is familiar with John Hodgman's thinking on this topic.

[4:59] And this anonymous source who is familiar with John Hodgman's thinking on this topic, very familiar.

[5:03] More familiar than probably anyone else with John Hodgman's thinking on the topic.

[5:06] He said to me, and I quote, he or she, this source, anonymous, said to me,

[5:11] Tom and Jerry always sucked.

[5:13] They're always sour, mean-spirited, joyless, and stupid.

[5:16] Tom and Jerry were always a crime against inanity.

[5:19] And he seemed very proud of that wordplay at the end there.

[5:22] This anonymous source is very familiar with John Hodgman's thinking.

[5:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[5:25] He, she, they.

[5:27] I don't, I don't, I don't, it's hard to know what pronoun to go by.

[5:29] But it's someone who's very familiar with John Hodgman's thinking.

[5:32] And I agree.

[5:32] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[5:33] I mean, I was thinking about this, like, why do I find Tom and Jerry so hateful when I love the Roadrunner coyote cartoons?

[5:44] Because they're both based on this sort of unending chase, being locked in this battle with your, your, your cartoon, you know, persecutor.

[5:57] But the thing is, animated nature, red in tooth and claw.

Elliott Kalan

[5:59] Yeah.

[6:00] It's just the primeval cycles of life.

[6:01] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:02] Sure.

[6:02] The thing is, like, the, the Roadrunner, you know, has a certain insouciance, uh, granted.

[6:09] But he does not, like, he's not there to, like, bedevil the coyote so much as the coyote wants to eat the Roadrunner.

[6:16] And the Roadrunner basically ignores him.

[6:18] Like, like, all of the coyote's injuries mostly come from, like, his own attempt to kill the Roadrunner backfiring.

Elliott Kalan

[6:27] If anyone has ever been hoisted on their own petard, it is Wile E. Coyote, for sure.

[6:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[6:32] Yeah.

[6:32] I mean, he buys petards all the time.

[6:34] I mean, I use this term a lot, but I feel like there's a certain.

[6:36] Petards, yeah.

[6:37] There's a certain amount of emotional distance in the Roadrunner that I feel like I can identify with.

[6:42] This idea of constantly chasing this, this hopeful dream that you can never, you'll never get.

Dan McCoy

[6:49] Yeah.

[6:49] Whereas Tom and Jerry, I'm like, who am I sympathizing with here?

Elliott Kalan

[6:53] The early Roadrunner cartoons also have a style to them that is very cool.

[6:57] You know, the later ones, not so much.

[6:58] By the time Wile E. Coyote has those ones where he's, like, building a giant coyote robot and walking around on its head and stuff.

[7:04] Those ones are not quite there.

[7:05] But there's a certain, there's a certain modern style to them that goes a long way towards creating a distanced, hilarious tone.

[7:13] But Tom and Jerry is just these two assholes beating each other up all the time.

Dan McCoy

[7:15] Well, that's the thing.

[7:17] Like, you know, you could think of, you shouldn't blow a Roadrunner short up into a full-length movie either.

[7:26] But at least you don't run.

[7:26] They are trying.

[7:28] But at least you don't run into the same problem you do with Tom and Jerry where I'm watching it.

[7:32] I'm like, okay, like, where are my sympathies supposed to lie here?

[7:37] Because, like, I think they want me to think that Jerry's this, like, lovable trickster.

[7:43] And, like, you know, sure, Tom wants to get him and that's understandable.

[7:46] But whereas, like, Jerry just comes off as a constant asshole.

[7:51] And I'm like, yeah, Tom, eat him.

[7:53] That's your job.

[7:53] Your cat.

[7:54] Eat that mouse.

[7:55] Like, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[7:56] Do it.

[7:57] Jerry, yeah, he is really – and we'll get into it.

[8:00] He's coded here as, like, yeah, he's the lovable scamp who's always getting his way and you got to love him.

[8:06] Hey, hey, you can't – you just can't – he's so irrepressible.

[8:10] You can't stop.

[8:11] And that really parallels the heroine of the movie who is a liar and a conwoman who basically cheats her way to success.

[8:20] And Tom has to be –

Stuart Wellington

[8:22] No, she is forced to by being a part of the gig economy.

[8:25] That's true.

[8:26] It is hard to survive.

[8:27] Being part of the working class of this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[8:29] She is a Generation Z gig economy worker.

[8:32] But the – it's a – yeah, they kind of felt like they needed to say, how do we make – how do we make the cat chase and try to kill the mouse without the cat being the villain?

[8:42] Because we want both characters to be sympathetic.

[8:45] We can't have the cat and mouse be friends.

[8:46] We tried that on the Tom and Jerry show from the late 70s and it did not work.

[8:51] And Jerry cannot ever wear a bow tie again because we just don't want to bring any memories back about that.

[8:55] Okay, we'll make the mouse a total dick.

[8:58] Like we'll just make the mouse a dick that everything always goes right for.

[9:01] So the audience so desperately wants the cat to murder him.

[9:04] Yeah.

[9:05] Okay, guys.

[9:06] Well, should we get into it?

[9:07] Let's get into it.

[9:08] So this is Tom and Jerry.

[9:09] It's directed by Tim Story, who you may know – Dan loves his Fantastic Four films.

[9:13] And something the audience should know before we talk about this in more depth.

[9:18] This is a live action movie where every animal is a cartoon, even background animals.

[9:23] Okay.

[9:23] Even – there's a scene in a fish market and all the dead fish are animated.

[9:27] They go to –

[9:28] That's what I'm saying.

Stuart Wellington

[9:29] So like if you go to eat – get a fucking burger, right?

[9:32] The meat part is going to be animated.

[9:35] It should be.

Elliott Kalan

[9:36] We never see anyone eat a hamburger, but it should have been.

Dan McCoy

[9:38] I mean, this is one of the times when the movie makes a decision that theoretically I can see like, oh, this is interesting.

[9:48] Like it's going against some of the things that I don't like in movies like this, but it opens up a whole new can of worms that is worse.

Stuart Wellington

[9:55] I mean, that can would be full of animated worms.

[9:57] Animated worms would be like, hey, boss, what you doing?

[9:59] Going to put me on a hook?

Dan McCoy

[10:00] Because I think you don't want to see a thing like Sonic that we've seen so many times before where it's just like this is literally like – they're from another world and they're here and they're one of a kind.

Elliott Kalan

[10:11] Or like the Garfield movies.

[10:12] Like I'm so happy they did not make them a photorealistic CGI cat and a photorealistic CGI mouse.

[10:18] Like that would have been a bigger mistake.

Dan McCoy

[10:19] The fact that like they aren't one of a kind, which is an admirable thing, but then you have to go the other way.

[10:26] This movie seems to think like, okay, everyone's a cartoon animal.

[10:30] And then you're like, okay, so are we living in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

[10:33] Are these like toons?

[10:34] No, they're actual animals, but everyone's interacting with them in the way they would real animals.

Elliott Kalan

[10:41] Yeah, it exists kind of like in the Muppet type world where even though Kermit the Frog can talk and play the banjo and watch,

[10:48] walks on two legs, he's just a frog, you know?

[10:50] Yeah.

[10:50] I will say this.

[10:51] Okay, here's the positive side of this and I'm going to say the negative side of this.

[10:55] The positive side is the animation and the special effects in the movie are great.

[10:59] A lot of work was put into the animation.

[11:00] It looks fantastic.

[11:02] It interacts amazingly well with the live action world that it's in.

[11:07] The side effect of this is it's very confusing whether, yeah, how people treat these animals, which they can communicate with.

[11:13] The animals hold jobs and things like that, but they're still treated as bad.

Stuart Wellington

[11:15] Yeah, like they can, they buy tickets to a baseball game and then because they make the Yankees lose, animal control puts them in prison, in the animal control prison.

Elliott Kalan

[11:26] And they, but also almost all the animals in the movie can talk except Tom and Jerry.

[11:31] So the whole movie I was like, are they handicapped?

[11:33] Like, are they disabled?

[11:34] I don't know.

[11:35] Why, why are they unable to, I'll accept there's only one other, the other two animals that can't talk are Toots and Goldie the Goldfish because only male animals talk in the movie also.

[11:44] Well, and Drew B. the dog can't talk because he's wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask.

Stuart Wellington

[11:48] But he still talks through the mask.

Dan McCoy

[11:49] He still talks through the mask.

[11:50] I didn't hear it.

[11:51] I, I do not think this movie's animation looks good or interacts with the world well.

[11:58] They're doing something here that I admire theoretically.

[12:01] Again, a thing I admire theoretically that in practice I do not like.

[12:06] They, this movie is a computer animated film, but they have done the computer, computer animation to look like it is traditional cell animation, the old style.

[12:17] And I'm glad that they want to do that.

[12:20] But, and maybe it's just because I'm like too much of a cartoon person that I'm like my brain is attuned to this.

[12:25] Like it's like how you can see motion smoothing, but your parents don't.

[12:30] Like I watched this and I'm like, this looks super weird to me.

[12:35] Like it doesn't feel integrated to me.

[12:38] It feels like they're like just drawing over spaces, but also like.

[12:42] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:42] It's like when Sylvester Stallone sees the Expendables movies with all the fake bullet hits and he's like, oh, it looks good.

[12:49] And you're like, I don't think so.

[12:50] I would disagree.

Elliott Kalan

[12:51] I think Dan, you could argue that on aesthetic grounds, that aesthetically it's not pleasing to you.

[12:55] But I think the way, there's a scene where Tom and Jerry destroying a hotel room and the way they interact with the live action objects in that room is really well done.

[13:03] It's not funny, but it's really well done.

[13:05] I'll say that.

Dan McCoy

[13:06] Sure.

[13:07] Maybe that scene, but they, I'm sure it's a budget consideration.

[13:11] They save it up and they do it in like a couple of places.

[13:15] And then otherwise I think it's actually pretty bad because they'll have like, for instance, Michael Pena will be walking the dog.

[13:22] And you see him holding one of those, like the end of a, one of those stiff, uh, invisible dog walking, uh, leashes.

[13:32] And you won't like see his hand interact with the dog in the same frame.

[13:37] They will like do it.

[13:38] So like the dog's face will block any connection between like what Michael Pena is doing, what he's doing.

[13:44] They'll play a bunch of things and close up rather than master.

[13:48] So you don't see the, the cartoons like, and the humans together so much.

[13:52] It's, it's like, I would see several plates where it's like, okay, well that's clearly a choice to hide the fact that they aren't interacting well.

[14:01] Although I will say one interesting thing I learned about this.

[14:03] If they, if they're like, when they're interacting with like small objects themselves, they're holding stuff or whatever.

[14:08] That is photorealistic CGI that they did.

[14:13] Oh, they didn't actually get a mouse to come out and pick something up, right?

[14:16] Yeah, exactly.

[14:16] I think that looks really good.

[14:17] I think that's a, I think that's a great, I'm not arguing against that.

[14:20] I think that's a great use of the technology.

[14:23] I'm just saying in general, I didn't, I was not impressed by the look.

[14:26] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[14:26] I think, I think my, I didn't have a specific, a test as the Michael Pena holding a leash that's attached to a cartoon dog test.

Dan McCoy

[14:32] Uh, I mean, we can just, uh, disagree on something without you mocking.

[14:36] Yeah, you don't have to win.

[14:37] I think we have to.

Stuart Wellington

[14:38] The movie opens with a couple of, with a couple of pigeons, uh, singing a tribe called Quest song.

[14:43] And this was the moment when I was like, Oh, you know, I, I've talked a lot.

[14:49] I've talked about how much I want to see movies filmed in pre COVID New York.

[14:54] I love it.

[14:54] I love this city, but this felt a little bit like, not like this, you know, no, I don't want to, I don't want to see New York like this.

Elliott Kalan

[15:03] This is a real, like, uh, it's not a, it's not a particularly realistic New York later on.

[15:07] Uh, Tom will hide out in, uh, one of Midtown Manhattan's many alleyways around, uh, around Central Park West.

[15:14] Those don't exist.

[15:15] Uh, but this also, something is going on in this movie where the soundtrack, as you'll notice as you watch the movie, is working so hard over time to make Tom and Jerry seem cool and hip and exciting.

[15:25] It's like wall to wall hip hop.

[15:28] Anytime Tom and Jerry or anybody are doing anything.

[15:30] And we start with these animated pigeons who are rapping while they fly over New York.

[15:33] Then we see Tom and Jerry as classic newcomers to the city.

[15:36] Tom is riding the subway with his keyboard because it's established early on.

[15:40] He's a talented keyboard player, a keyboard cat, if you will.

[15:42] While a rat real estate agent is showing off an abandoned car to Jerry the mouse as an apartment.

[15:48] You know Jerry the mouse is a newcomer to New York because he has a backpack.

[15:50] Which is like shorthand for I just moved into the big city.

[15:53] The two of them first meet when Tom is busking in Central Park pretending to be a blind piano playing cat.

[15:59] And Jerry, this is him being a dick, tries to horn in by breakdancing in front of Tom and taking all the money.

[16:06] The two start fighting.

[16:07] Tom's keyboard breaks.

[16:08] The crowd turns on Tom when they realize he isn't blind.

[16:10] And the one really funny line I think in the whole movie when someone yells,

[16:13] he's just an ordinary piano playing cat.

[16:15] And they get really mad.

Dan McCoy

[16:17] I mean we're talking about unlikability of characters.

[16:19] This is like one of the fatal flaws of the movie for me right off the bat.

[16:23] Is that Jerry like not only like, yeah, tries to horn in.

[16:27] He breaks Tom's keyboard.

[16:28] Tom's keyboard.

[16:29] We were seeing, you know, we were showing him.

[16:32] Like he doesn't just do this as a busker.

[16:34] Like he has musical ambitions because he like looks up at John Legend on a billboard

[16:39] and imagines himself playing in a John Legend concert even though.

[16:43] It was so specific that I was sure that John Legend was going to show up in the movie later on.

Elliott Kalan

[16:48] It's the classic story of a cat who wants to play MSG.

[16:53] And it's just like a star is born but it's a cat.

Dan McCoy

[16:57] I'm like you don't like break a musician's musical instrument like that.

Elliott Kalan

[17:02] Like that is a huge thing.

[17:03] No, I disagree, Dan.

[17:04] I think you do.

[17:05] I think you should.

[17:07] Wow.

[17:08] Like which one?

[17:09] You got Armin White over here.

[17:10] Yeah.

[17:13] So, but the point is Tom is mad.

[17:15] Understandably so.

[17:16] His livelihood has just been destroyed by Jerry.

[17:19] Chases Jerry through the park and bumps into Kayla played by Chloe Grace Moritz.

[17:23] She's biking through the park with a box of clothes and it knocks the clothes all over the ground which for some reason causes her to lose her job.

[17:30] I'm not totally sure exactly why that happened.

Stuart Wellington

[17:33] She like works like as a Postmates person or something somewhere, right?

Elliott Kalan

[17:36] But she was delivering a box of clothes or something.

[17:39] Maybe she's a –

[17:40] Postmates has spies everywhere.

[17:43] I guess so.

[17:45] She's some kind of task rabbit which is not an animated animal in this movie unfortunately.

[17:50] So she loses her job.

[17:51] She needs one.

[17:52] Jerry sneaks into a fancy hotel and Kayla is apparently a regular at this hotel just walking through the lobby getting free snacks.

[17:59] She ends up meeting a woman who is about to apply for a job staffing a fancy wedding at the hotel.

[18:04] Two famous social media influencers are getting married at this hotel and they need a temporary event staff.

[18:10] And Kayla basically says to this woman, actually, I work at the hotel and you failed the test.

[18:14] Can I have your resume?

[18:15] And she steals the resume and applies for the job under this fake name.

[18:19] Super bummed me out, man.

Dan McCoy

[18:21] Yeah.

[18:21] I don't like this.

[18:23] This is the second time a character is introduced and I take an immediate dislike to them because of their actions.

[18:29] But also – so it is confirmed that they're social media influencers because I said that afterwards and Audrey didn't remember anything about it and she was baffled where I got that.

[18:37] But if you got it too, then –

Elliott Kalan

[18:39] It is the only thing that is told to us about them that would explain why anyone cares that they're getting married.

[18:43] It's never clear what they do, why they're rich and famous.

[18:46] They are just two social media influencers who are –

[18:49] Why are you talking shit about Colin Jost like that, dude?

[18:51] Well, I mean, no.

[18:52] Far be it from me to denigrate Colin Jost's one facial expression that he wears throughout the entire movie no matter what is happening at any given point.

[18:59] His total lack of chemistry or charisma with the woman playing Preeta, his fiancee.

Dan McCoy

[19:04] Who looks far more lovingly at Chloe Grace Moretz at a couple of times.

[19:09] Yes, very much so.

Elliott Kalan

[19:11] Very much so.

[19:12] But again, this kind of lack of charisma on Colin Jost's part has not failed to bring him to the top of television comedy and bag him Scarlett Johansson.

[19:20] So I really can't – I guess there's just something there I don't see.

[19:23] I guess I just don't –

[19:23] Oh, wow.

Stuart Wellington

[19:23] You must have read his fucking vows with that one.

Elliott Kalan

[19:27] Babe, babe, I knew I bagged a good one when –

[19:30] Anyway, but this – by this point, it is very – something is made clear to the audience in this movie.

[19:35] This kid's movie about a feuding mouse and cat will mostly concern itself with a celebrity wedding and how that wedding affects a young woman's career in the hospitality industry.

[19:43] That's what the movie's about.

[19:45] Tom and Jerry.

Dan McCoy

[19:46] And it is one of these things where you're like – there's no clearer indication that the only reason this movie was made was that someone owned the property, Tom and Jerry.

[19:57] Because it's like there's nothing in the outlines of the actual plot of this movie.

[20:02] It's like, oh, someone with a passion for the material made this.

[20:04] They're like, no, okay, we've got Tom and Jerry.

[20:07] We think that Tom and Jerry – we did some testing.

[20:10] It's not very good against – with young women.

[20:12] And so, I don't know, let's get a story of a young woman making her way in the world in there.

[20:17] It's just – all of it seems like just awkward pieces of screenplays that – like down at the screenplay factory that got fitted together.

Stuart Wellington

[20:26] Speaking of that, I'm doing a little detective work here and I can see behind Dan in a trash can there's a script that is titled Untitled Celebrity Wedding Script.

[20:38] I guess Dan's mad because this scooped him.

Dan McCoy

[20:40] You can't see the Zoom recording, of course, because this is a podcast.

[20:43] But Stuart delivered that so convincingly that I looked behind myself.

Elliott Kalan

[20:49] Dan, for a moment, thought there was a garbage can behind him even though that's his room.

[20:56] I would say this Tom and Jerry falls into the – it's kind of like the later Marx Brothers movies where there's a couple that has a problem and the Marx Brothers are there to service the needs of the couple.

[21:06] Not in the sexy way that that just sounded like that I described it as.

[21:10] Tom and Jerry are basically there to like just bring a little bit of extra jazz to the exciting story of a young woman lying her way to the top of the hotel event management industry.

Stuart Wellington

[21:21] No matter how many Michael Peñas she has to step on to get there.

Elliott Kalan

[21:25] Oh, yeah.

[21:25] It's once again a movie where they're like, hey, how do we get some people of color into this movie?

[21:33] How about we have them be the obstacles that the white hero needs to step on?

[21:37] Like, guys, no, you're not doing it right.

Dan McCoy

[21:39] Yeah, I did say – when we were watching it, I said this, like I don't – like I feel so bad like having to like, you know, watch this dumb kids movie through this lens.

[21:53] Like, you know, Tim Story is a black director, one of the few like blockbuster black directors.

[22:00] I think he did make an effort to like have this movie be more multicultural than this sort of film usually is.

[22:07] But unfortunately, also the fact that he has Chloe Grace Moretz, this young white woman who does not appear to actually have many like huge problems other than, you know, losing her previous job.

[22:22] You know, like lies her way to the top by, yeah, like basically like getting Michael Peña not fired but close to it, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[22:31] I mean he does essentially get fired at one point but he gets back somehow.

Stuart Wellington

[22:35] He gets back by destroying a wedding, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[22:38] Yes, that too.

[22:39] Yeah.

[22:40] And most of the animals have – except for Bobby Cannavale as Spike the bulldog.

[22:45] Most of the animals are voiced by black performers and actors of color and it's like a way of getting their voices into it.

[22:51] But again, it just – when you like don't really have – it's like there's one –

[22:55] The movie hasn't thought it through.

[22:57] Yeah, it kind of hasn't thought it through.

[22:58] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[22:59] Yeah, it was when we saw that Bobby Cannavale did the voice for Spike in the credits.

[23:04] Charlene was like, that's why I'm attracted to the dog.

Elliott Kalan

[23:10] So Tom, he's accosted by some tough cats in an alley.

[23:13] They're called the Paper Cup Boys, I think.

[23:15] In the credits.

[23:16] Yep.

[23:16] As I said, one of many of New York City's midtown alleyways.

[23:20] He escapes by calling animal control on them.

[23:23] And meanwhile, Jerry moves into the hotel and sets up this little like mouse cave for himself where he's got like a smartphone set on its side.

[23:30] So it's a big screen TV and like there's so many –

[23:34] Christopher Nolan was so fucking mad when he saw that.

[23:37] There's so many moments in the movie that are just Jerry kicking back in his pad while hip-hop plays on the soundtrack.

Stuart Wellington

[23:45] He has a fucking mouse-sized door for his room.

[23:47] Like that was the first mistake.

Elliott Kalan

[23:49] That was one of the few other jokes in the movie where I was like, well, I do like that he somehow built a mouse-sized door that looks like all the other hotel room doors.

Stuart Wellington

[23:56] And a mouse-sized revolving door to the front of the hotel.

Dan McCoy

[24:00] Yeah.

[24:00] Well, the thing is like there would be like the occasional individual joke that I would enjoy.

[24:06] But it is like hammered on to such a rickety structure.

Elliott Kalan

[24:09] You've got to hope that in an hour and 40-minute comedy there's going to be at least a handful of jokes that land.

[24:15] Kayla, Chloe Grace Merritt, she cons her way through an interview with the hotel manager, Mr. Dubros, played by Rob Delaney, who is consistently very funny in the movie as a bumbling hotel manager, I thought.

Stuart Wellington

[24:26] And Michael Pena is her foil.

[24:27] And he gives it his all.

[24:29] Like he – this is like his audition reel to be the villain in a movie where the star is a dog, basically.

[24:36] Like he is great.

Elliott Kalan

[24:37] When Michael Pena is forced to stop in the middle of the street later on because he's walking Spike and Spike is off camera making a huge dump in the middle of the street.

[24:44] Like Michael Pena is selling the moment.

[24:46] That's probably animated.

[24:46] Yeah.

[24:47] You don't get to see it.

[24:48] But Michael Pena is selling this moment.

[24:50] He is not half-assing it and I've got to give him credit for that.

[24:52] His character, Terrence, is the events manager of the hotel.

[24:55] He does not like a person who he suspects is a liar being made basically a second in command.

[25:01] But he introduces her to the hotel staff.

[25:03] There's the goofy bellhop girl who's kind of weird.

[25:06] There's the cool bartender, Cameron.

[25:07] There's the high-strung chef played by Ken Jeong.

[25:10] And meanwhile, while they're doing this –

Stuart Wellington

[25:12] I just need to clarify.

[25:13] She is hired as a temporary manager for this celebrity wedding weekend.

[25:19] And if she plays her cards right, she might get a full-time job.

[25:23] Which, I mean, I know she's gotten this job under false, like, fucked-up circumstances.

[25:27] But that's a messed-up fucking carrot-tangling, right?

Elliott Kalan

[25:31] I mean, I guess it's almost – it's more the fact that they're hiring this person the day that the couple is arriving.

[25:37] Rather than – like, it's the wedding's on a Saturday and they're doing this on a Friday, it seems like.

Dan McCoy

[25:42] Yeah, and they're also, like, putting her up in a suite.

[25:44] Like, they're like, we need to have you on the premises for helping in this big wedding.

[25:50] And then they're like – they gave her the nicest room.

[25:52] It's so crazy.

[25:53] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[25:54] So, meanwhile, Tom and Jerry are having hijinks on the side.

[25:56] Again, that's the movie kind of in microcosm.

[25:59] A plot about a woman dealing with a celebrity wedding while Tom and Jerry, on the margins, are just kind of hitting each other with things.

[26:04] Can I say something about –

[26:06] Of course you can.

[26:06] Chloe Grace Moretz.

[26:07] Thank you.

[26:08] Thank you, sir.

Dan McCoy

[26:09] No, I like Chloe Grace Moretz generally.

[26:13] Like, I've liked her in previous movies.

[26:15] But here –

Stuart Wellington

[26:18] How do you feel about her in real life, the times you guys have hung out?

Dan McCoy

[26:21] You know, she seems like she has a wall up, but that's because she's famous.

[26:26] Like, people who are famous just have to do it to –

[26:28] You never know what people want from you.

[26:29] Yeah.

[26:30] You can't let them in too close.

[26:31] I just feel like in this movie, you know, maybe it was bad direction at fault.

[26:39] It seems like she's been told to make a face every second.

[26:43] Like, she is – she just does not stop moving her expression in this film.

[26:48] And I think it's – someone along the line, you know, whether it's a bad choice that she's made in this particular role or the director encouraging something that he shouldn't have.

[26:59] He's like, this is a cartoon movie.

[27:01] You should also be a cartoon person.

Elliott Kalan

[27:04] Look, Dan, we can't all be Colin Jost who cannot move his face.

Dan McCoy

[27:07] Well, yeah, he's going the full other way, which is –

[27:11] I was like, maybe if I pretend I'm not in Tom and Jerry, I can take the money without any bad parts.

Stuart Wellington

[27:18] I think she's – sorry, what did you say, Sue?

[27:21] I was just going to say this is when we're introduced to the celebrity couple, but it sounds like you have more to say about Chloe Grace Moretz's face, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[27:28] No, her performance, her face I have no real comment on.

[27:31] I think she's – I think she, like everyone else in the movie, is trying her best.

[27:35] They're trying to bring this material to life, and it's just the material is so not there that it leaves all the performers kind of flailing a little bit to try to make it work.

[27:45] But you're right.

[27:45] The celebrity couple is here.

[27:47] It's Pala Vicharda as Prita, the bride-to-be.

[27:50] She's marrying Ben, played by Colin Jost.

[27:52] And it's unclear, as we said earlier, exactly why they're famous.

[27:56] They're social media influencers of some kind.

[27:59] They bring in Spike, the bulldog voiced by Bobby Colenavale, and Toots, the fancy lady cat who does not talk because only male animals talk in this movie.

[28:07] Then we've got to go to the kitchen where Chef Ken Jeong, he sees Jerry, and he freaks out.

[28:13] So Kayla vows, I'm going to catch this mouse.

[28:15] Don't worry.

[28:16] We can't have a mouse in the hotel, even though every hotel in New York, I'm sure, has thousands of mice in it, just as every restaurant has thousands of cockroaches.

[28:23] It's what it means to live in a city, guys.

[28:24] Look, we're the alpha vermin on Earth, humanity.

[28:27] There's a reason when we create habitats for ourselves that mice, rats, roaches, and pigeons feel right at home because they are also vermin.

[28:34] They know their own.

[28:35] Look, so if you're going to have a thing in a city, there's going to be mice and rats and roaches and pigeons.

[28:39] That's just the way it is.

[28:40] Vermin knows vermin.

Stuart Wellington

[28:40] I didn't realize I was doing a podcast with Rorschach.

[28:44] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[28:45] Look, someday the vermin are going to ask me to help, and I'm going to say no.

Dan McCoy

[28:48] I will say about this couple, big miscalculation in likability number three, they're fine.

[28:57] They seem to genuinely care about each other.

[29:00] Stuart's laughing, but on a personal level, they seem to have painted these people as nice enough people.

[29:06] But for a screenplay, the fact that they don't appear to do any work at all and are just sort of engaging in this overt consumption the whole time.

[29:19] To make their fantasy wedding the cornerstone of this movie, even though the movie makes a slight attempt to make that not true at the end.

[29:30] Although what happens is all this is fancy.

[29:31] Although it still does.

[29:33] Yeah.

[29:33] Yeah, exactly.

[29:34] It seems like a particularly bad miscalculation for this moment in history.

Elliott Kalan

[29:40] I think, Dan, what you're forgetting is kids love wedding stories.

[29:44] Kids love stories about weddings.

[29:46] They love attending weddings.

[29:47] They're always on tenterhooks about whether weddings are going to go off as planned.

[29:50] It is much like superhero comics have been criticized for years as being the writers want to write about characters their age rather than characters that kids are interested in.

[30:02] Right.

[30:03] The writers of kids movies often seem to write about stuff that is – I wouldn't be surprised if someone involved in this movie was planning a wedding while they were producing it.

[30:11] But I think they made a mistake.

[30:12] The mistake I think they made is they want this couple to be likable.

[30:16] Yeah.

[30:16] There's a version of this movie where this couple is a couple of prima donnas.

[30:20] Kayla is bending over backwards and mistreating Tom and Jerry to make their dream wedding come true and then realizes, why am I doing this?

[30:27] This is a ridiculous job.

[30:28] I shouldn't do this.

[30:29] My friendship with this cat and mouse is more important.

[30:31] And she throws it away to be a happier person.

[30:33] There's a version of that movie.

[30:34] This is not that.

[30:35] In this one, they're a lovely couple and it's okay that they want elephants at their wedding.

[30:40] Maybe they're trying a little too hard.

[30:42] But otherwise, damn it, these social media influencers are just good folks.

[30:45] They're down to earth even though they live in a hotel with cartoon elephants and tigers.

Stuart Wellington

[30:49] And there's something about this mega rich couple who have no friends, no one else around them, and they quickly become friends with the staff at a hotel.

[31:02] I mean, Charlene wanted to point out having worked in hotels for quite some time, the staff don't get invited to the ceremony.

[31:10] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[31:11] That is what Audrey at the end of the movie was like, why is the whole staff just standing here at this wedding?

[31:17] Except for the bartender who has to fucking work.

[31:18] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[31:19] Yeah, classic schlub.

[31:21] Always has to work.

[31:22] The bartenders always get the worst end of the stick.

[31:24] It is a –

Stuart Wellington

[31:25] Although he does get to drink champagne out of like a fucking golden goblet at the end.

[31:30] So like I guess they're pretty chill with their staff drinking at events.

[31:34] I don't know, man.

Elliott Kalan

[31:35] But it is true that there's an untapped vein here about how these famous people are so eager, have no one in their lives except for Preeta's dad who –

[31:45] the running gag that doesn't really work is that Ben is super obsessed with trying to impress Preeta's dad.

[31:49] And they have no one else.

[31:51] So they have to be friends with the hotel staff.

[31:52] It's like the first season of I'm Alan Partridge.

[31:55] You know.

[31:55] So Kayla vows to catch this mouse.

[31:58] She sets a trap for him.

[31:59] But she's so busy flirting with camera, she doesn't see Jerry steal the cheese in the trap and leave a taunting note for her,

[32:06] which means she knows already.

[32:07] This mouse knows English and can write and form sentences and has good handwriting.

Dan McCoy

[32:13] Yeah.

[32:13] This is a problem for two reasons.

[32:14] Number one, our earlier cartoon question about what world we're living in here because she reacts with –

[32:22] like the movie splits the difference by having her be mildly surprised that a mouse has left her a note.

[32:29] Yeah.

[32:29] So I guess it's somewhat unusual.

[32:32] Yeah.

[32:33] But then also like they – all through the rest of the movie they're doing like elaborate charades to communicate.

[32:38] It's like, well, apparently he can write.

Elliott Kalan

[32:40] And at one point Tom writes something and she's like, oh, your ears are backwards.

[32:43] And it's like, dude, this cat just wrote a note.

[32:45] Like my son, his ears are backwards sometimes.

Stuart Wellington

[32:48] That guy used his fingers like inflatable balloons and wrote his name with them.

[32:53] That's crazy.

Dan McCoy

[32:54] Yeah.

[32:54] Why are you playing the keyboard?

[32:56] That skill will get you somewhere.

Elliott Kalan

[32:58] There is a scene later where like Tom is cleaning out his ears with his tail.

[33:02] Like he threads his tail into one ear and out the other.

[33:04] And Michael Peña walks by and goes, get your tail out of your ears.

[33:07] It's disgusting.

[33:07] And like I like that, like how he's not surprised to see cat stick its tail through its ears.

[33:12] But okay.

[33:13] That night, this is when Tom and Jerry's rivalry really picks up again because the devil and angel on Tom's shoulders, both voiced by Lil Ray Howery, they convince him it's time to go after Jerry.

[33:23] After Tom falls down nine or 10,000 times trying to climb up this building, it takes forever.

[33:29] He gets in.

[33:30] They have this hotel room fight that I thought was really impressive that Dan was like, yawn, ho hum.

[33:35] And Kayla walks in, catches them doing it, and hires Tom to catch Jerry.

[33:41] Mr. DeBros immediately approves.

[33:43] He loves the idea of having a cat on staff at the hotel with a name tag.

[33:46] I get it.

[33:47] Terrence, guess what?

[33:48] Doesn't like it.

[33:49] Not a fan.

Dan McCoy

[33:50] Yeah.

[33:51] I like that Rob Delaney's character, like he's not necessarily a buffoon.

[33:56] He's just kind of like too pleasant.

[33:59] He's fairly buffoonish.

[34:01] Well, he's not.

[34:02] I mean, but like, you know, there's no point at which like, I don't know, the giant dog like takes a bite out of his pants and he's got big red underwear or something.

[34:09] Or like he's not made out to be an idiot.

[34:12] He's just sort of like trusting and pleasant.

Elliott Kalan

[34:15] He definitely benefits also from being just kind of peppered throughout the movie.

[34:21] So he doesn't have to do a lot of plot carrying.

[34:23] He can just kind of be a – it's the kind of role that like Peter Sellers would do in like a big stuffed full 60s comedy where he would just kind of wander through the movie and be funny and wouldn't have to –

[34:35] Yeah.

[34:35] And wouldn't have all the pressure that the other people have.

[34:37] So Jerry almost gets caught by Toots, Prita's cat, and then Jerry meets Kayla.

[34:43] But we don't have time for the cartoon animals.

[34:45] There's tension at the Prita-Ben wedding because Ben cannot stop making this wedding bigger and more complicated.

[34:50] He wants elephants.

[34:51] He wants peacocks.

[34:53] And Prita takes Kayla aside and admits she lost her engagement ring.

[34:57] Oh, no.

[34:58] This is what the movie is going to be about for a little bit, people.

[35:00] Just deal with it.

[35:01] And this is, meanwhile, when Terrence walks Spike and Spike makes a big poop in the road and Terrence has to yell at a taxi cab that this dog is pooping and that's why he can't get out of the road.

[35:11] It's – never have I wished that Michael Peña more could have had the dignity of being Mr. Rourke in Fantasy Island than this moment.

[35:20] Thank you.

[35:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:21] I would like to postulate, by the way, that by the – the moment it leaves the cartoon dog's butt, it becomes real poop and not cartoon poop.

[35:29] I think that Stuart is so disappointed.

[35:33] Get out of here.

Elliott Kalan

[35:34] I think it's real poop the whole time.

[35:36] I think it's a real turd coming out of a cartoon dog's butt.

[35:40] Cartoon dong?

[35:41] Cartoon dog – that's how cartoon dogs poop is through their penis, not through the other end.

[35:46] Okay, man.

[35:47] I think if it's – because it's not an animal –

Stuart Wellington

[35:49] Like an ovipositor or something?

Elliott Kalan

[35:51] It's like a cloaca.

[35:52] The cartoon dog has a cloaca.

[35:53] That's basically what it is.

[35:55] So, okay.

[35:56] Jerry, it turns out –

[35:57] So, wait a minute then.

Stuart Wellington

[35:58] At what point does the cartoon animal flesh become not cartoon when it's in a person's body?

[36:05] It's during the –

[36:06] Does a person – has my stomach developed enzymes to transform tunes into regular flesh?

[36:12] Yes.

[36:12] It's called dip.

[36:13] Like fucking dip.

Elliott Kalan

[36:13] It's naturally occurring dip in the human stomach and the animal digestive system.

[36:18] In fact, that's what digestion stands for is dip ingesting gestation.

[36:22] Thank you.

[36:23] Eating some turds.

[36:25] So – or eating so turds.

[36:28] If you eat it, then it becomes it.

[36:29] That's what digest stands for.

[36:30] Oh, digest.

[36:32] No, no.

Dan McCoy

[36:32] At first, I thought you said it stood for – that's what dip stood for.

[36:36] And I'm like – you're adding letters in dip that I –

[36:40] No, no.

[36:40] This is only this guy.

[36:41] Is this from the novelization?

[36:43] DIP stands for –

[36:43] No, but DIP stands for –

Elliott Kalan

[36:45] DIP stands for don't ingest, people.

[36:47] Because it's nuts.

[36:48] Oh, okay.

[36:48] Because the naturally occurring dip in your body, your stomach has a chemical lining that keeps the dip in.

[36:53] But if you tried to drink that stuff, oh, it'd burn right through your esophagus.

[36:56] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[36:56] That's why that candy is called fun dip.

[36:58] They have to specify that it's fun and not the dip that's inside your body.

[37:02] Exactly.

[37:02] Or else it'd be very confusing.

Elliott Kalan

[37:03] So when someone –

[37:04] Nobody would buy it.

[37:05] When someone is eating, say, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs –

[37:07] Except for Judge Doom.

[37:08] Judge Doom would buy it because he needs it to kill more toons.

[37:11] Exactly.

[37:12] So in this movie – the other thing is that all the bacteria and the microbes in your body are also cartoons.

[37:18] Anything that's not a human in this is a cartoon.

[37:20] I mean Osmosis Jones told us that, so yeah.

[37:23] Exactly.

[37:23] This is the same universe.

[37:24] It's the Osmosis Jones Cinematic Universe, the OJCU.

[37:27] Now, when you order a plate of spaghetti and meatballs in this world, the meatballs are ground-up animated, either beef, turkey, whatever type of meat it is.

[37:35] But then – so it's a cartoon meatball.

[37:37] Maybe it still has an eye or it goes – that's when it goes, it's a living.

[37:40] Oh, wow.

[37:40] It goes, it's a dying.

[37:42] And then you eat that and the enzymes in your body and the cartoon microbes and the dip turn it into live-action poop.

[37:49] So there's only animated food.

[37:51] Plants – all plant food is live-action.

[37:54] But animal-based food, also leather shoes, leather jackets, there must be some process they put it through that deanimates it.

[38:00] That's true.

[38:00] Yeah, I never even thought about that.

[38:02] Yeah, there's a lot of animal types.

Dan McCoy

[38:03] You know, nature is really horrifying, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[38:06] There's nothing natural about turning animals into leather jackets or shoes, Dan.

[38:10] That's not a naturally-proof process.

Dan McCoy

[38:12] No, I'm talking about our natural dip that we have.

[38:14] Hey, speaking of fun dip, did that creep you out as a concept as a kid?

[38:19] Or not creep you out.

[38:20] Like I would like see that.

[38:22] I'm like, okay, so there's this like – you got that candy sort of just tongue depressor, right?

Elliott Kalan

[38:30] Yeah, that kind of chalk stick.

[38:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[38:31] Yeah, you got to lick that, dip it into the sugar, take it out, lick it off.

[38:37] It feels like there's a lot of opportunities for sort of like lint and fuzz to be involved in that.

Elliott Kalan

[38:42] And it's certainly not a COVID-safe candy.

[38:45] All that licking.

[38:46] It's certainly not – don't share that with people during the pandemic time.

Dan McCoy

[38:48] Like even as a messy child, I was like, this is too much for me.

Elliott Kalan

[38:52] Yeah, I was never a fan of it.

[38:54] Anyway, it turns out Jerry has the ring.

[38:55] He's setting it up as a chandelier in his house.

[38:58] Tom manages to catch him in a kind of Rube Goldberg-type trap and mails him away somewhere, stealing a little bit of Garfield, write that.

[39:07] Tom is celebrating.

[39:08] Everyone's celebrating.

[39:08] He's playing piano.

[39:09] He serenades toots.

[39:10] But Jerry shows up.

[39:11] Uh-oh, he escaped.

[39:12] And he attacks Tom.

[39:14] And Kayla's like, hey, what are you doing?

[39:16] And Jerry mimes to Kayla, you can have the ring if I can stay in the hotel.

[39:21] And she's like, oh, okay.

[39:22] But then Terrence almost catches them.

[39:24] But luckily, Spike, who Terrence has just finished walking, he had that big live-action poop that was turned by the natural dip in his stomach from cartoon to live-action.

[39:32] But then Spike comes in and causes a big fight with Tom and Jerry, culminating in what's described in the movie as an animal fight whirlwind, I think they call it.

[39:38] And it's just a three-dimensional visualization of what you see in cartoons when there's just a cloud of dust that animals are fighting in.

[39:46] It wrecks-

Stuart Wellington

[39:46] It creates like a singularity where things are being pulled closer.

[39:50] And time changes a little bit.

[39:52] A little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[39:52] And the closer you get to the animal whirlwind event horizon, the slower time goes.

[39:56] And also, the longer and thinner matter becomes.

[39:59] So it's very fascinating stuff.

Dan McCoy

[40:01] Kids might miss it, but that's why there's that old lady.

[40:05] When Chloe Grace Moritz runs out, there's that old lady who goes, I'm you.

[40:09] And it just like passes.

Elliott Kalan

[40:10] That's for the adults in the audience.

[40:13] That's an Easter egg.

[40:14] To understand, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[40:15] And Matthew McConaughey is watching the whole time, and he's just fucking bawling.

Elliott Kalan

[40:23] It wrecks the lobby.

[40:24] It even wrecks the ceiling of the lobby.

[40:27] Like, there's just a huge hole in the ceiling now.

[40:28] It's fixed, I think, within two scenes.

[40:31] Mr. DeBros fires Terrence and puts Kayla in charge.

[40:35] How else could you do it?

[40:36] So Kayla, she has a rooftop talk with Tom and Jerry, and she tells them, hey, you can stay if you stop fighting.

[40:42] The only way for you to stop fighting is to bond on a sightseeing tour of New York.

[40:46] So she calls up a black car for them.

[40:48] They are traveling around New York, doing New York things.

[40:50] They go to a very inaccurate rendition of the Natural History Museum.

[40:53] Are the dinosaur skeletons and stuffed saber-toothed tigers animated?

[40:56] Yes, they are.

[40:57] They're cartoons.

[40:58] They go to a fish market full of cartoon fish where fish are being thrown around, which is a fucking Seattle thing.

[41:03] That is not a New York thing.

[41:05] That is not something that happens at New York fish markets.

[41:07] Thank you very much, Tom and Jerry.

Stuart Wellington

[41:09] And we can tell from their Instagram feed because they apparently set up a social media account.

[41:14] They're Instagramming it.

[41:15] And at one point we find out, is it Prita?

[41:18] Apparently follows them.

Elliott Kalan

[41:19] A transition between scenes involves Prita scrolling past.

[41:24] So, okay, let's break this moment down.

[41:26] The cat and mouse that Kayla is trying to keep a secret because they live in her hotel.

[41:31] She has given them an Instagram feed or one of them already has an Instagram feed.

[41:35] Yeah.

[41:35] They are – and Prita, who is a major Instagram social media figure, she probably follows not that many other people.

[41:43] She follows either a cat or a mouse who has a social media feed.

[41:47] And up to this day, what have they been putting on that feed?

[41:50] Is it just Tom with pictures of himself being like, this is it.

[41:53] I'm finally going to get into that hotel room and then crashing to the ground?

[41:56] You know, I don't understand.

Stuart Wellington

[41:57] Or we had talked earlier about how there seems to be an unmistakable chemistry between Prita and Kayla.

[42:04] Yes.

[42:05] And maybe she is like kind of low-key stalking Kayla and she's like, oh, Kayla's following this cat and mouse.

[42:12] Maybe I'll follow them too and maybe we'll just casually bring it up in conversation.

[42:16] I mean we're the only two followers of this cat and mouse.

[42:18] So she'll probably see that I'm the only one.

[42:20] Yeah, they had a very active social media day.

[42:23] I mean they went on the cyclone.

[42:25] They saw fish being thrown around.

Dan McCoy

[42:28] I mean the limousine – like Kayla has been hired to take care of this problem.

[42:33] And she's trying.

[42:35] She's doing it in a very kind-hearted way.

[42:39] Let's broker a piece.

[42:40] But, you know, it seems like Rob Delaney, when he sees the expense report for a limousine for a cat and a mouse, will get angry about this.

Stuart Wellington

[42:49] I think she's hoping it's going to be hidden in the expense of rebuilding that like stained glass fucking skylight.

Elliott Kalan

[42:56] I mean all of this is going to be baked into the wedding fees.

[42:59] They're going to be charging them, you know, $1,000 for a cube of ice just to cover the other stuff.

[43:04] But you're right.

[43:05] It is a – she does seem – she has hiring and firing abilities.

[43:08] She has the ability – she has an unlimited expense account.

[43:10] She's been on the job for roughly three days by this point.

[43:13] And there's not that many other people.

[43:15] Also, a hotel this size you'd have to assume would have dozens of employees, you know.

[43:20] But there's really –

[43:20] They have a singular bellhop.

[43:22] They have one bellhop.

[43:25] More people seem to work in the kitchen than work anywhere else in the hotel.

Stuart Wellington

[43:28] Already the hospitality industry is being crushed right now, okay?

[43:35] And then we have to see this cat and mouse just destroy a fucking room.

[43:40] And you're like, come on.

[43:41] Will they ever bounce back?

[43:43] No, in a landmarked building too.

Elliott Kalan

[43:44] So that limits the kinds of renovations they can do.

[43:47] It makes it that much more expensive.

[43:48] Certain contractors they can't work with.

[43:50] This is all stuff that I'm kind of surprised the movie didn't go into because it doesn't seem that interested in the cat and mouse fighting each other.

[43:56] Meanwhile, speaking of the cartoon elephants and peacocks have arrived at the hotel.

[43:59] The peacocks are strangely amorous in a way that's not fully a joke but is kind of a joke.

[44:04] And Prita tells Kayla, Ben's plans for the wedding keep getting bigger and bigger and it's really stressing her out.

[44:10] But the problem is they're always in the public eye so they can't ever disagree or argue with each other.

[44:14] They've lost the ability to argue with each other.

[44:17] It's like us, right?

[44:18] Exactly.

[44:19] No, if anything, we need to lose a little bit of our ability to argue with each other.

[44:24] And she just doesn't know how to say no to Ben.

[44:26] Meanwhile, as Stuart mentioned earlier, Tom and Jerry, they're at Yankee Stadium.

[44:31] Tom catches a ball that he should not have reached over the edge when the ball was going into the glove of the outfielder.

[44:37] It should have been the game-winning ball for the Yankees.

[44:39] It's implied that they would have gone all the way if they didn't have it, if they had caught it.

[44:44] They get taken away by animal services.

Dan McCoy

[44:45] Curse of the Bambino.

[44:46] That's what that is, right?

Elliott Kalan

[44:50] No, David, the Curse of the Bambino wasn't on the Yankees.

[44:52] It was on the Red Sox.

[44:53] Tom?

[44:54] What?

[44:57] They see Droopy and a Hannibal Lecter mask in Animal Control.

[45:03] Sets up a sequel.

[45:04] I mean, I would so much rather see a Droopy movie than a Tom and Jerry movie.

[45:08] Again, I don't know how you fill an hour and a half with Droopy.

Dan McCoy

[45:10] Also, that was the one thing in the movie where I'm like, okay, well, this is providing me some kind of new insight into one of these cartoon characters.

[45:18] Because I'm like, oh, yeah, Droopy does have kind of that evil serial killer vibe.

[45:24] I see that.

[45:25] Sure, sure.

Elliott Kalan

[45:26] I mean, the fact that he says, I'm happy, and he's displaying no emotion on his face whatsoever, like a sociopath or a Colin Jost.

[45:32] Anyway, so it's another example, too, of a joke in the movie where it's like, kids will love this reference to Silence of the Lambs.

[45:40] The transphobic serial killer film from 1990-whatever.

[45:45] Okay, the street gang cats from earlier are there, and they taunt Tom into putting Jerry in his mouth.

[45:54] And this whole sequence made me very uncomfortable.

[45:56] They're like, you eat it then.

[45:57] Eat it.

[45:57] Put it in your mouth.

[45:59] Swallow it down.

[46:00] Luckily, Michael Pena shows up to interrogate them.

[46:04] He takes them into separate interrogation rooms, and suddenly there's all these split screens and, like, text on the screen.

[46:10] I mean, is this a paragraph of something?

[46:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:13] Second unit director Brian De Palma showed up.

Dan McCoy

[46:17] They would have this big cartoon text on the screen, too, that, like, were the weirdest choices of words.

[46:23] It wasn't, like, something that needed to be emphasized ever, and I never quite understood.

Stuart Wellington

[46:26] I kind of like the sequence, because it was, like, it was silly, and I'm like, I don't know what this is a reference to, but whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[46:32] I assumed it had to be a reference to something, but at least, you know, they were doing something with it.

[46:36] He basically, he tells both of them, I can take one of you back to the hotel if you agree to work with me.

[46:41] But as we'll see, he's not being totally above board.

[46:45] But the wedding has started.

Stuart Wellington

[46:47] Yeah, he's performing some liaisons dangerous on these two, making them both angry at each other.

Elliott Kalan

[46:54] You better believe it.

[46:55] The wedding begins, and this wedding, don't look in its wazoo, because it's got cartoon animals up it.

[47:00] It is just so many cartoon animals everywhere.

[47:03] There are two very unfunny elephants that are just, use internet kind of, like, abbreviations.

[47:08] They have voices like middle-aged British men, but they say, like, oh, OMG, or, like, WTF, and stuff like that.

[47:16] It's a very confused characterization for these two cartoon elephants.

[47:19] There's a cartoon tiger there that looks genuinely dangerous.

[47:22] I don't know why you would have a tiger at your wedding.

[47:24] Prita, suffice to say, is very frustrated.

[47:28] Terrence sneaks in with Tom, but he's also let Jerry loose.

[47:32] Uh-oh.

[47:33] Tom starts chasing Jerry with an enormous meat tenderizer hammer with spikes that literally cracks the floor when he hits the floor.

[47:40] Nobody seems to notice this.

[47:41] The wedding is oblivious to the fact that the ground is being shattered to pieces under their feet.

[47:46] Nobody notices this until Chef Ken Jeong sees Jerry on the cake and is so infuriated that he destroys the cake with a baseball bat.

[47:54] I think it's a cricket bat.

[47:56] I think it's a cricket bat.

[47:56] Oh, it's a cricket bat?

[47:57] My mistake.

[47:58] I apologize.

[47:58] Please take everything I've said with a grain of salt.

[48:00] Colin Jost, I apologize.

[48:01] I guess I was not watching the movie close enough.

[48:04] Yeah.

[48:04] Then, even then, many of the wedding attendees do not seem to notice the problem.

[48:09] That's how big this wedding is until the elephants see Jerry in panic.

[48:12] They're falling all over the place.

[48:14] The tiger decides that's the moment to try to murder the other animals.

[48:17] Another singularity occurs in the middle.

[48:19] Time bends and shifts.

[48:21] Yeah.

[48:21] Another animal whirlwind.

[48:23] The wedding and the hotel entrance are destroyed.

[48:26] Uh-oh.

[48:27] What's going to happen?

[48:28] Kayla admits she lied.

[48:30] And Prita calls off the wedding.

[48:31] And I look at the timeline.

[48:33] And I see there's 22 minutes left in this movie.

[48:35] Yes.

[48:35] And I'm like, wasn't this supposed to be about Tom and Jerry?

Stuart Wellington

[48:37] Yeah.

[48:38] Did I get sucked into that animal whirlwind?

Dan McCoy

[48:41] The exact same thing happened to me at, like, it must have been close to the same moment.

[48:45] Because I'm like, yeah, it's at 21 minutes.

[48:47] I'm like, how is there that much time left?

[48:49] And then I comforted myself by reminding myself that it was a big blockbuster film.

[48:53] And, you know, at least eight minutes of that would be credits.

Elliott Kalan

[48:56] I definitely, I salved my wounds with that, with being like, the credits.

[48:59] Remember the credits.

[49:00] Don't worry.

[49:00] It's the credits.

[49:01] Did you actually, did you guys watch through to the post-credits scene?

Dan McCoy

[49:05] Uh, I think I know that there is one from the Wikipedia summary.

Elliott Kalan

[49:08] Well, I'll tell you about it when we get to it.

[49:10] It's maybe the least necessary post-credits scene in the history of film.

[49:13] But, okay.

[49:14] So, the movie, you'd think this is where Kayla, like, admits she was wrong and learns her lesson

[49:19] and the movie is over.

[49:20] Nope.

[49:21] Terrence is back in charge.

[49:22] He throws Tom out of the hotel.

[49:24] Tom sleeps in a cardboard box in the rain while that pigeon sings a sad song while flying

[49:30] over New York.

[49:31] The next day, Tom and Jerry.

Stuart Wellington

[49:32] It's basically this sad song from when Howard the Duck gets kicked out of, uh, Leah Thompson's

[49:37] apartment, right?

[49:38] And he's like, she's like...

Elliott Kalan

[49:39] I mean, I have to assume it's, it, it, it functions.

[49:41] It fills the same evolutionary niche, uh, as that song.

[49:43] Yeah.

[49:44] Uh, Tom and Jerry make peace.

[49:46] I don't remember how.

[49:47] I don't care.

[49:48] Uh, and Kayla and Cameron are, like, attending a street fair or something.

[49:51] And Cameron tells Kayla she's gotta stop comparing herself to other people and just be her own

[49:56] great self.

[49:56] And she'll get ahead.

[49:58] And I was like, what movie is this the moral of?

[50:00] It doesn't seem like, it seems like the moral of this movie is don't lie your way to success.

[50:03] Yeah.

[50:04] Because it's gonna come crashing down.

Stuart Wellington

[50:06] It's, it's very weird.

[50:07] It's, and there's a little bit of a, like, don't hope for, like, don't hope above your

[50:10] station shit.

Dan McCoy

[50:12] Well, uh, I mean, no, I, I, I would say the opposite.

[50:17] I would say it make, it is, the moral is, like, it will make a, a faint effort at saying

[50:23] that, like, uh, honesty and hard work is important, but then, uh, be like, no, psych.

[50:30] Uh, because, like, the whole movie's like, like, this woman, you know, cheats her way to,

[50:36] I guess, the top of the, of the hospitality world.

Elliott Kalan

[50:40] I mean, she's, at certain, at that point, she's second in line at the hotel somehow.

[50:44] Yeah.

[50:44] And then she briefly.

Stuart Wellington

[50:45] I mean, she hasn't even filled out her union paperwork yet.

[50:47] She briefly feels, feels.

Elliott Kalan

[50:49] There must be some moment when the wedding collapses and Mr. DeBros is like, I didn't

[50:53] even get her, her W-9 yet.

[50:56] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:57] But she briefly feels bad about doing so.

[51:00] And just the mere act of feeling bad, everything is forgiven and it's fine.

[51:06] Like, there's, there's no point in this movie where I feel like, look, it's a, look,

[51:09] it's a fucking Tom.

[51:10] It's a kid's movie.

[51:10] It's a family film.

[51:11] But like, there's no idea that you have to like, sacrifice anything at all.

Elliott Kalan

[51:17] Well, considering it, it came out around the same time as Soul, ostensibly a kid's movie

[51:21] about how sometimes you have to give up your dreams of being a musician and enjoy the ordinary

[51:25] things in life because you're going to die soon.

[51:27] Like, kids are, there's some world where there's a message between those two movies that is fit

[51:32] for children.

[51:33] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[51:34] Yeah.

[51:34] I mean, I would have preferred if when she went to go meet her friend at the like, market,

[51:39] she was wearing a hair shirt out of contrition or something like that.

[51:42] Maybe she was flagellating herself.

Elliott Kalan

[51:44] Yeah.

[51:45] Yeah.

[51:45] Some sort of self-flagellation.

[51:46] It needed to be done.

[51:48] Anyway, Tom and Jerry show up and they mime their way through suggesting saving the day

[51:53] by arranging a new wedding.

[51:55] Because you know what?

[51:56] These two love each other.

[51:57] Despite the fact that we haven't seen anything really to back that up.

[52:00] We know Ben and Preeta love each other.

[52:03] And this is like the next day, right?

[52:06] Yes, it has to be.

[52:07] So like she scheduled a, like a date or like a hang with this dude for the next day?

Stuart Wellington

[52:12] Here's my guess.

Elliott Kalan

[52:12] Here's my guess.

[52:13] In the middle, he called her to check in on her.

[52:16] Oh, yeah.

[52:17] Or she called him and was like, hey, I need someone with me right now because I need just

[52:21] some help.

[52:21] I think they, I think it wasn't like they had a pre-scheduled get together probably.

[52:26] But also, you got to assume the guests at the wedding, they're still going to be at that

[52:30] brunch that was, that was scheduled for the morning after the wedding.

[52:33] Like that, but they seem to have disappeared.

[52:35] They're all gone when we, or pretty much when we see this replacement wedding.

[52:38] Anyway, first, they've got to stop Preeta from getting to the airport and flying to wherever

[52:42] these characters came from.

[52:44] Cue the motorized skateboard chase.

[52:46] And this feels like you're just going to watch like a level from like a Tom and Jerry Super

[52:50] Nintendo game for a while.

[52:52] Yeah.

[52:52] And yes.

Dan McCoy

[52:54] And it is the moment where you're like, well, you thought that that motorized skateboard

[52:59] and drone from earlier in the movie were extraneous details.

[53:03] But no, the key, like there's nothing extraneous in this clockwork plotting.

Elliott Kalan

[53:09] And it's, there's, this is the moment where I was like, it really sunk into me.

[53:13] There's not a lot of jokes in this chase sequence.

[53:15] And I was like, holy shit.

[53:17] I, a child, am supposed to care if Tom and Jerry can stop this woman from running away

[53:22] from her wedding.

[53:23] Like, I can't, like, why is this?

[53:25] High society wedding.

[53:26] Yeah.

[53:26] Not since Santa Claus the movie made me wonder whether a company was going to make profits

[53:32] off of toys that I guess they shouldn't have been making.

[53:34] I don't know because they had Santa magic in them.

[53:36] Like not since any movie about a, about a family about to lose its business, you know,

[53:42] that's ostensibly for kids.

[53:43] Like, anyway, I guess I want people who make kids movies to spend more time with kids.

[53:48] So they see what kids are interested in because they're not really that interested in the things

[53:54] that grownups do.

[53:54] But that's, that's okay.

[53:56] Tom and Jerry have a foolproof plan.

[53:57] They merely kidnap Preeta's cat from her car so that she has to run after it.

[54:01] They lure her to a new wedding in Central Park.

[54:04] That's right.

[54:05] Even though they followed her on the streets for a while, she is at the same place that

[54:09] she started from.

[54:10] It's just like, that's a pretty easy permit to get, right?

[54:13] A wedding permit for Central Park?

[54:14] I was thinking the same thing.

[54:15] It's this huge wedding in Central Park that they are doing with no permits.

[54:18] And no, but I guess they're famous.

[54:20] They can do whatever they want.

Stuart Wellington

[54:20] Yeah, you can do whatever you want.

[54:22] Money buys.

Elliott Kalan

[54:23] Kayla and Ben both take turns apologizing to Preeta.

[54:26] Then for some reason we cut away to her dog farting and Michael Payne, you're reacting

[54:30] to it.

[54:31] I could not understand why that was included in this moment, except that they finally realized

[54:35] kids love farts, which is true.

[54:37] If I had been watching this with my son, he would have laughed and laughed at it.

[54:40] They get married.

[54:41] The elephants and the tigers and all the cartoon animals are still there.

[54:44] So I'm like, what lesson did Ben really learn?

[54:46] Exactly.

Dan McCoy

[54:47] Yes.

[54:48] This is a marginally less opulent thing than the previous wedding.

[54:54] In fact, I guess the fact that it's outside.

Elliott Kalan

[54:58] No, it's still a wedding that is well out of the reach of most married couples.

[55:03] You know, this crazy wedding.

Stuart Wellington

[55:05] Yeah.

[55:05] I mean, I don't know if you guys remember, but when I got married in Puerto Rico, Char and

[55:08] I spent ages trying to hire animated animals to attend.

[55:13] And the thing is, our wedding planner kept saying they don't exist.

[55:17] And I'm like, I don't know what you're saying to me right now.

[55:20] I saw it in a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[55:21] You're like, I want Roger Rabbit to emcee the wedding.

[55:24] What's the matter?

[55:25] Is he think he's too big for us?

[55:26] He's a has-been.

[55:28] Well, what about that baby with the cigar then?

Stuart Wellington

[55:31] People would love that baby.

[55:33] That's the thing.

[55:33] They would have loved it.

[55:34] Now, I normally say no children at weddings, but that baby, he's got a real attitude.

[55:39] And I think that would go over well with my crowd.

Elliott Kalan

[55:41] I mean, not to reveal too many details about Stuart's wedding, but in real life, your officiant

[55:45] was kind of the grown-up live-action version of the baby from Roger Rabbit.

Stuart Wellington

[55:49] That's true.

[55:51] He did.

[55:52] The rent-a-rabbi who showed up to our wedding did refer to one of our guests loudly as Tata's

[55:58] Grande, which isn't even completely Spanish.

[56:02] But he was in Puerto Rico, so he figured he had to use some kind of language.

Elliott Kalan

[56:05] Yeah, I guess multicultural.

[56:06] What a weirdo.

[56:07] So, Kayla introduces Terrence to the woman whose resume she stole at the beginning, and

[56:12] it's implied that they're attracted to each other, and that there's a romance in the offing.

[56:16] Much like a Shakespeare play, all the characters must be paired off at the end.

Stuart Wellington

[56:20] And it sets up this really uncomfortable power dynamic right there.

[56:24] That's not a good work environment.

Elliott Kalan

[56:27] No, not at all.

[56:27] But that's for Tom and Jerry 2, human resources.

[56:32] Yeah, the other thing kids love to hear about.

[56:34] Yeah, by all rights, the movie should be over by now.

[56:37] But it keeps going a little bit longer so that Jerry can screw up Tom's piano playing again,

[56:41] and they can start fighting again.

[56:43] Oh, Tom and Jerry, will you never learn?

[56:45] Cut to credits, and then the post-credits scene, wherein Ben finds out the hotel is charging

[56:50] him for two weddings, and it's very expensive.

[56:52] That was the last final joke that the movie wanted to leave you with.

[56:56] After sitting through the credits.

Stuart Wellington

[56:57] And to Colin Jost, did he give a big reaction?

[57:00] Did he give a kind of muted reaction?

[57:02] How would you describe it?

Elliott Kalan

[57:03] I would say muted is the right, I would say Buster Keaton-esque deadpan would be the

[57:08] way to describe his reaction to it.

Dan McCoy

[57:10] Yeah.

[57:10] So he didn't rent his garments and say, ah, this has broken me.

[57:16] I don't have that much.

[57:18] I mean, I don't know if he rented.

[57:19] Shelby turned out.

Elliott Kalan

[57:20] I didn't know if he rented them or not.

[57:22] We didn't see a scene where he was fitted for a tuxedo, though I got to assume that they

[57:26] shot it.

[57:26] But yeah, he did not get mad.

Stuart Wellington

[57:29] He didn't have to give away his clothes and walk around with a barrel over his shoulder.

Elliott Kalan

[57:36] The thing is, it's an animated barrel for some reason, and it opens even more questions

[57:40] about what...

Stuart Wellington

[57:41] Is there a place on Earth where all the toon animals come from and they have toon trees

[57:47] that you can make barrels out of?

[57:49] Do you have to have a special barrel right to do that?

[57:52] I don't...

Dan McCoy

[57:54] Yeah.

[57:55] That's a good question.

[57:56] Questions that this movie just doesn't answer.

[57:59] But let's do final judgments.

[58:01] Whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[58:07] Guys, I want to say, you know, Loki, this is...

[58:12] The God of Mischief.

[58:12] Yeah, Loki.

[58:13] Coming soon.

Stuart Wellington

[58:13] Coming soon to Disney+.

[58:14] I think this is...

[58:15] He's running for president.

[58:17] Oh, shit.

Dan McCoy

[58:18] I think this is, low-key, one of the worst movies we've watched.

[58:22] And I'll tell you why.

[58:23] Really?

[58:23] Tell us why, please.

[58:24] It has a sheen of professionalism.

[58:28] Everything is glossy.

[58:30] It is a big-budget film with talented performers, a lot of talent put behind it.

[58:36] But I just find it so spirit-deadening to watch.

[58:41] And that's what bothers me about...

[58:43] I am not a guy who thinks that all entertainment has to be, like, art.

[58:48] In the capital A, like, art sense.

[58:52] And for kids, certainly, like...

[58:54] I mean, I think kids deserve quality, but they also have a different idea of what quality is.

[58:57] So that's fine as well.

[58:59] But, like, this movie is...

[59:02] I said it earlier.

[59:04] There's no reason for this to exist other than the fact that Tom and Jerry has name recognition.

[59:08] Someone owns that name.

[59:09] And then they set out to make the least original, least enjoyable version of that.

[59:20] And it's like...

[59:21] I'm all over the place with, like, whether I want my movies to have messages, how I feel about that.

[59:27] Like, I like a movie that has a good message.

[59:30] I also like a movie that comes close to having no message.

[59:34] I can like a movie that has...

[59:37] Is, like, espousing a bad message, ironically, to, like, make you think about things.

[59:42] I can even, at times, will like something that I think is a very bad message, but has been presented in a thoughtful way where, like, they've wrestled with something.

[59:52] But this is just, like, a cavalcade of sort of, like, bad messages, I think, that have come up from completely unexamined, just, like, let's take the path of the least resistance, stupid fucking kids movie.

[1:00:07] Like, and it just made...

[1:00:09] It put me in a bad mood.

[1:00:11] So, I hated this movie is my answer.

[1:00:13] What do you guys have to say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:16] Yeah, I mean, this is obviously clearly a bad movie.

[1:00:20] I'm sure there's a moment where I'm like, oh, it all takes place in a hotel.

[1:00:23] French farce it is.

[1:00:25] No such look.

[1:00:27] But what I'm going to say, there is a bit of optimism for me.

[1:00:31] Maybe I'm drunk.

[1:00:34] Who knows?

[1:00:35] But this movie makes me think that there's a chance that finally somebody's going to make a Mark Anthony and Pussyfoot movie.

[1:00:43] Finally, a cartoon character that I feel represented by, Mark Anthony, the bulldog who loves a cat and is occasionally berated by a woman with beautiful high heels and stockings.

[1:00:55] Yeah, yeah.

[1:00:55] As seen in the cartoon Feed the Kitty.

[1:00:57] Yeah.

[1:00:58] Yeah.

[1:00:58] So, maybe?

[1:01:00] Maybe there will be a Mark Anthony movie?

[1:01:01] Who knows?

[1:01:03] All right.

[1:01:03] And I love the idea that this housewife is like walking around the kitchen with like these high heels and like classic stockings.

[1:01:12] Mark Anthony.

[1:01:13] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:15] She always thinks he's trying to eat that cat.

[1:01:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:18] And he gets so sad when he thinks the cat's in the oven.

[1:01:21] I know.

[1:01:22] Yeah.

[1:01:22] It's amazing.

[1:01:23] If you haven't seen Feed the Kitty, it'll be on YouTube.

[1:01:26] It's such a good cartoon.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:28] I mean, it's probably on HBO Max.

[1:01:29] I think that's a Warner Brothers cartoon.

[1:01:32] So, guys, I didn't like this movie.

[1:01:34] I thought it was not very good.

[1:01:35] I did not despise it the same way Dan did.

[1:01:38] Although, there was a moment at the end of the movie where I was like, suddenly, I kind of left my own body for a moment.

[1:01:44] And I was watching myself watching Spike farting at the wedding and was like, why am I watching this?

[1:01:50] Like, what am I watching?

[1:01:52] But guys, there's two things.

[1:01:53] There's two things that made me not hate it as much.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:55] One.

[1:01:56] Yeah, you also looked over at that giant hourglass that each grain of sand represents a moment of your life.

[1:02:01] And you're like, oh, it's getting closer to death.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:03] Do not remind me about that hourglass.

[1:02:06] Because now every time I watch a Flop House movie, I'm going to be thinking about it.

[1:02:09] Why did I buy you that hourglass?

[1:02:11] That was a mistake.

[1:02:12] I'm normally good at giving gifts to people.

[1:02:13] I think you were so excited about the idea of finding an hourglass maker who could accurately tell you when I was going to die.

[1:02:20] That's true.

[1:02:21] And personalize this hourglass with the exact time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:24] I was like, the sharper image has some really cool stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:30] But two things that were saving graces.

[1:02:32] One is not, neither of them are really the movie's, you know, thing to be complimented.

[1:02:38] One, I did not have to sit and watch this with my children stuck in a theater as it was blasted at me through theater speakers.

[1:02:47] I briefly, before I watched it, considered watching this with my older son.

[1:02:51] I was like, oh, maybe he would enjoy this if we watched together.

[1:02:54] Glad we didn't.

[1:02:56] But two, if you're going to make a not very good movie about a legacy animated cartoon character, and it's going to totally be full of messages I don't agree with and messy plotting, so much happier for it to happen to Tom and Jerry than to the Looney Tunes characters who I love.

[1:03:11] Like, watching this movie, I was like, ugh.

[1:03:13] But you know what?

[1:03:14] I don't like Tom and Jerry.

[1:03:15] If this was like a Bugs Bunny movie, I would be livid.

[1:03:17] I would be so mad.

[1:03:18] So at least the only, like, it's like if they make a bad movie and it's about Heckler and Jekyll, so be it.

[1:03:24] Who cares?

[1:03:24] We're Jinx and that other guy.

[1:03:26] But if it's about, if they made a bad movie about like, you know, Daffy Duck, I'd be real mad.

[1:03:31] So I'm glad that this was a Tom and Jerry movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:33] You know, hey, actually, this makes me think.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:36] That we're going to have to watch Space Jam 2 for this podcast?

[1:03:39] Yeah, probably.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:40] Probably.

[1:03:40] No, I wanted to say.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:41] It's just going to be Dan complaining about the Lola Bunny redesign.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:46] I can't masturbate to this bunny.

[1:03:49] No, I, you can.

[1:03:51] I mean, I can, but it's a realistic masturbation.

[1:03:53] It's more of a relationship masturbate rather than a fantasy.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:56] A realistic masturbation?

[1:03:58] Wait, it's more realistic.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:00] Well, you're masturbating to the Lola Bunny, the new Lola Bunny, you're masturbating to the fact that you'd probably really get along with her.

[1:04:05] You'd have a lot in common.

[1:04:06] You'd enjoy being around her.

[1:04:08] And there's a long-term relationship potential.

[1:04:10] Whereas the old Lola Bunny was just like, just a one-night stand fuck that you just, you know, it was so dirty and so wrong.

[1:04:16] And you just loved it so much, you know?

[1:04:18] I don't know.

[1:04:18] That sounds pretty sweet to me.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:20] Why did I start this?

[1:04:21] No, what I wanted to say was, what I wanted to say was the, no, Audrey asked, like, she's like, oh, if you had to make a Tom and Jerry movie, how would you make it work?

[1:04:33] And I, like, I told her something.

[1:04:34] And then I realized I had basically, like, I don't know whether I unconsciously stole it from Brendan or just, like, came up with it on my own and then remembered.

[1:04:44] But Brendan Hay, our pal who has been on the show and, you know, was one of your groomsmen, Elliot.

[1:04:52] Like, he wrote that.

[1:04:53] Yeah, close friend of mine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:53] We're currently, we were pitching a project just the other week together, two Warner Brothers.

[1:04:57] So I should not have bad-mouthed the Tom and Jerry movie, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:00] Yeah, but he wrote that Rascal Raccoon book, which was basically what I sort of thought, like, oh, you know, what would be fun would be to see the characters realize they're caught in this sort of endless cycle and then turn their ire at the cartoonist who has put them there.

[1:05:16] And that's sort of similar to the premise of his graphic novel that he wrote.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:22] That's very much what his book, Rascal Raccoon's Raging Revenge, I think is what it's called, which I wrote the afterword for.

[1:05:32] It's well worth picking up.

[1:05:33] I think if I was going to make a Tom and Jerry movie, hey, guess what?

[1:05:36] Tom and his family moved into a new house.

[1:05:38] There's a mouse there.

[1:05:39] His name's Jerry.

[1:05:39] Tom wants to get rid of the mouse.

[1:05:41] That's your movie.

[1:05:41] Like, done.

[1:05:42] Like, that's all you need.

[1:05:43] And make it 70 minutes at most.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:46] Yes, at most.

[1:05:46] And you deal with the father's drinking problem, the fact that he's accidentally blinded his daughter in a car.

[1:05:52] In a car crash.

[1:05:52] Exactly, yes.

[1:05:53] Yeah, there's a freak of some kind in the cellar of the house.

[1:05:56] There's a freak that lives in the basement.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:57] Yeah, yeah.

[1:05:58] They had a son who died in the car crash as well.

[1:06:00] The mother and the father have been growing distant ever since then.

[1:06:04] Yeah, of course.

[1:06:04] And so Jerry is short for Giorgio, the mouse freak that lives in the cellar.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:11] Oh, we did it.

[1:06:13] We cracked the code.

S4

[1:06:19] Hey, I'm Janet Farney, host of the JV Club podcast.

[1:06:22] Ah, high school.

[1:06:24] Was it a time of adventure, romance, and discovery?

S5

[1:06:28] Class of 95, we did it!

S4

[1:06:31] Or a time of angst, disappointment, and confusion?

S5

[1:06:36] We're all tied together by four years of trauma at this place, but enjoy adulthood, I guess.

S4

[1:06:42] The truth is, it was both.

[1:06:45] So join me on the JV Club podcast where I invite some great friends like Kristen Bell, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Neil Patrick Harris, and Keegan Michael Key to talk about high school, the good, the bad, and everything in between.

[1:06:58] My teenage mood swings are getting harder to manage.

[1:07:01] The JV Club.

[1:07:02] Find it on Maximum Fun.

[1:07:06] Macho Man to the top rope.

[1:07:09] The flying elbow.

[1:07:10] The cover.

S5

[1:07:14] We've got a new champion.

[1:07:18] We're here with Macho Man Randy Savage after his big win to become the new world champion.

S4

[1:07:23] What are you going to do now, Mach?

S5

[1:07:25] I'm going to go listen to the newest episode of the Tights and Fights podcast, oh yeah.

S4

[1:07:29] Tell us more about this podcast.

S5

[1:07:31] It's the podcast of power.

[1:07:33] Too sweet to be sour.

[1:07:34] Funky like a monkey.

[1:07:36] Woke discussions, man.

[1:07:37] And jokes about wrestlers' fashion choices.

[1:07:40] Myself excluded.

[1:07:42] Yeah.

[1:07:43] I can't wait to listen.

[1:07:44] Neither can I.

[1:07:45] You can find it Saturdays on Maximum Fun.

[1:07:48] Oh yeah.

[1:07:50] Dig it.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:52] Now it is time to do a few messages from our sponsors.

[1:07:56] The Flophouse is sponsored in part by ExpressVPN.

[1:07:59] Did you know that many internet service providers log your internet activity and sell that data on to other big tech companies or advertisers?

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[1:08:46] So stop handing over your personal data to ISPs and other tech giants who mine your activity and sell off your information.

[1:08:55] Protect yourself with the VPN I trust to keep me private online.

[1:09:01] Visit expressvpn.com slash flop.

[1:09:05] That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash flop to get three extra months free.

[1:09:13] Go to expressvpn.com slash flop right now to learn more.

[1:09:18] I stopped doing that voice in the middle because it sounded like I was doing something creepy online rather than just being a fan of privacy.

[1:09:27] Yeah.

[1:09:28] Yep.

[1:09:30] Sometimes a character of choice can bite you in the ass is what I'm saying.

[1:09:35] The Flophouse is also sponsored in part by Squarespace.

[1:09:40] You can use Squarespace to create a beautiful website to showcase your new idea, blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds and more.

[1:09:50] And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers with everything optimized for mobile right out of the box.

[1:10:00] A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions, free and secure hosting.

[1:10:07] Why don't you go over to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:20] Now, Dan, I had an idea for a website and I was wondering if Squarespace might – actually two websites.

[1:10:24] And I was wondering if Squarespace might be able to help me with either or both of them.

[1:10:28] I love your ambition.

[1:10:29] Let's hear about it.

[1:10:30] Okay.

[1:10:30] So the first – Dan, let's just face it.

[1:10:32] If you're a cat who's got musical dreams, it's hard to land a gig.

[1:10:36] You can't talk.

[1:10:38] You can write a little bit.

[1:10:40] And let's just face it.

[1:10:42] You're naked.

[1:10:43] And people are loathe to hire naked performers unless that is the point of the performance, the nudity.

[1:10:48] You do not see a lot of professional musicians who perform naked just around the time.

[1:10:53] Just try it.

[1:10:54] Go see a Yo-Yo Ma show.

[1:10:55] He will be wearing pants.

[1:10:56] No matter how much you want it, he's not going to take those pants off.

[1:10:59] So this is – so I was starting to start a website called www.felinegig.com.

[1:11:04] It's your place whether you're a cat musician looking for a job to find job postings or let's say you're looking for a cat to perform at your venue, event, holiday party, family get-together, or just in the privacy of your own home.

[1:11:18] Let's say you just – you're having a rough day and you want to see a cat playing a French horn.

[1:11:23] This is your place to go.

[1:11:24] www.felinegig.com.

[1:11:26] And I was hoping that it would scale to like phones and tablets automatically.

[1:11:30] Do you think Squarespace will be able to handle that?

Dan McCoy

[1:11:32] I think Squarespace would be delighted to handle that for you, Elliot.

[1:11:37] I'm not sure that I'm ready to invest just yet.

[1:11:40] But –

[1:11:40] Well, then maybe this is more up your alley.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:42] Okay.

[1:11:43] Pun very much intended.

[1:11:44] This is called www.cartoonpoopmd.com.

[1:11:47] Okay.

[1:11:48] Here's the problem.

[1:11:49] Your poop has not fully digested and it is still partly cartoon.

[1:11:52] Who are you going to turn to?

[1:11:54] Where are the doctors who can help you with this problem?

[1:11:56] And where are other sufferers that you can share notes with, maybe share pictures and videos with, and compare your stories?

[1:12:01] Well, that's at www.cartoonpoopmd.com.

[1:12:04] Please note, we are not doctors at cartoonpoopmd.com.

[1:12:07] The MD stands for something totally different that I'm not at liberty to say right now because we're still working on it.

[1:12:13] But cartoonpoopmd.com is your place to find out what you should do if cartoon poop comes out of you.

[1:12:19] It should be live action poop.

[1:12:21] Now, cartoonpoopmd.com is not a substitute for actual medical advice.

[1:12:24] It is just a place to go to share your experiences and maybe get referrals or recommendations of doctors that you can then go to to deal with your cartoon fecal problems.

[1:12:33] Dan, is this something you would like to invest in?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:37] I'll invest some thought in it for now.

[1:12:39] How about that?

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:39] I was skeptical until I heard Elliot luck upon a rhyme there.

[1:12:47] What to do when cartoon poop comes out of you?

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:51] Yeah, that's suddenly our slogan all of a sudden.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:53] Okay.

[1:12:55] Well, those are our two fine sponsors.

[1:12:58] But we also have a couple of Jumbotrons up on the big Jumbotron board.

[1:13:02] It looks like Stuart has one queued up.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:05] Okay.

[1:13:05] J-j-j-j-jumbotron.

[1:13:08] Get out.

[1:13:09] Happy egregious 50th, you sorry vanilla rimmer.

[1:13:15] Thanks for being the best of mates and for putting me onto this batshit crazy podcast.

[1:13:23] There aren't many people who'd put up with my bullshit after all these years.

[1:13:28] My life wouldn't be as fun without you or the mighty floppers.

[1:13:32] To many more beers and many more years of taking the piss out of your sorry ass.

[1:13:39] Go manly.

[1:13:41] This is a message for Dave and the message is from Dallas.

[1:13:46] I'm assuming that's all taken in a positive way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:50] Yeah.

[1:13:50] I hope so.

[1:13:51] I just want to mention as one of the advisors and founders of cartoonpoopmd.com,

[1:13:54] the piss should not be coming out of your ass.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:58] I mean, if it's in there, somebody should take it out though.

[1:14:01] How did our Tom and Jerry episode-

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:02] Yeah, you both have good points.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:04] How did our Tom and Jerry episode become so disgusting?

[1:14:07] I don't know.

[1:14:08] It was the most scatological and urological one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:11] They put the cat in scatological.

[1:14:13] Yeah.

[1:14:14] I have another Jumbotron.

[1:14:16] Hey, guys.

[1:14:16] So this is for Dan Pollard.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:18] What if they put the ska in scatological?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:21] Well, that would be like, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, but it's all fart sounds.

[1:14:24] Okay.

[1:14:24] So that would be ska in scatological.

[1:14:28] Gives a new meaning to the word mustard plug, which is a ska band.

[1:14:31] Okay.

[1:14:31] So this Jumbotron is for Dan Pollard.

[1:14:33] It is from Lily.

[1:14:35] And it goes like this.

[1:14:36] Happy birthday, you goof.

[1:14:37] You're 25.

[1:14:38] Time to finish developing your brain.

[1:14:40] Everything is difficult and the world is on fire, but at least you have podcasts and a dope girlfriend.

[1:14:44] You're a beautiful, brilliant badass, and you can do this as well as anything else you put your mind to.

[1:14:49] Here's to many more years together that are hopefully not quarantined.

[1:14:54] Yeah.

[1:14:54] We all hope that.

[1:14:56] From Lily to Dan Pollard.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:58] Couple of nice messages that we probably ruined.

[1:15:02] Probably.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:02] What with our poop and pee talk in between them.

[1:15:05] Hey, guys.

[1:15:06] I had something I wanted to promote.

[1:15:08] Can I talk about that?

[1:15:09] Please.

[1:15:09] Yeah, why not?

[1:15:10] Sure.

[1:15:10] I'll talk about two things, actually.

[1:15:12] Hey, if you're listening to this episode, and you must be, then you know that right now,

[1:15:16] or you don't know what I'm about to tell you, right now, Maniac of New York number two is on shelves and in comic stores.

[1:15:22] That's right.

[1:15:23] The second issue of my new series from Aftershock Comics with Andre Mouti on art, Maniac of New York.

[1:15:28] It's like The Wire meets Jason, kind of.

[1:15:31] The second printing of Maniac of New York number one should also be in stores.

[1:15:35] The first issue sold out, so went back for another printing.

[1:15:37] So pick up number one and number two.

[1:15:39] If you already have number one, just pick up number two.

[1:15:42] And again, I feel sorry for all the number one and number two talk earlier in the episode when we were talking about other types of number ones.

[1:15:49] Well, I'm more sorry that I'll get in trouble about it.

[1:15:51] Also, unrelated to Maniac of New York, the comic book sensation that's sweeping the nation, number two on shelves now,

[1:15:57] is the TV show that I worked on last year.

[1:16:00] It's a Fox animated show called House Broken, the air date for the first premiere episode was announced,

[1:16:05] and that is May 31st.

[1:16:06] So stay tuned for House Broken on Fox.

[1:16:09] I worked on it.

[1:16:10] That's awesome.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:11] I'll tell you more about it as we get closer to it.

[1:16:14] Steve, you want to plug anything or should we move on?

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:17] Yeah, I'll always plug the bars that I own.

[1:16:20] If you're in Brooklyn, New York, you can go help out Minnie's Bar in Sunset Park and Hinterland's Bar in Kensington, Brooklyn.

[1:16:27] And if you are not anywhere near there and you want to support, you can always email me at hinterlandsbarmerch, M-E-R-C-H, at gmail.com.

[1:16:38] And we're selling T-shirts, hoodies, bandanas, whatever.

[1:16:41] Email that email address and I will respond to you.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:44] Nice.

[1:16:45] Okay.

[1:16:46] Offering international shipping.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:48] What?

[1:16:49] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:50] Wow.

[1:16:51] Oh.

[1:16:52] Wow.

[1:16:54] Wow.

[1:16:55] So now it's time to answer a few letters from listeners.

[1:17:00] You're out there in the world listening to us.

[1:17:04] We can talk to you.

[1:17:05] But normally you can't talk to us.

[1:17:07] Except right now.

[1:17:09] But only in a very limited way.

[1:17:10] It's letters.

[1:17:14] Elliot, you had this look on his face like he was just sort of fact checking everything I said.

[1:17:18] Is it?

[1:17:18] No, it works out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:19] It works out.

[1:17:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:20] Okay.

[1:17:21] Well, this first letter.

[1:17:22] Hey there, dad and friends.

[1:17:24] It's me, Gabe.

[1:17:25] I've come back from the future to warn you about your impending doom.

[1:17:28] If you thought 2020 and 2021 were bad, just wait till you see what happens to all the octopus and the super herpes outbreak 2025.

[1:17:37] Seriously, though, my name is Gabe and I do have an older brother named Sammy.

[1:17:42] I also have two younger sisters, Annie and Alice, so I'm just waiting for Elliot to announce the inevitable.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:48] We have made a strong decision in our family house that there will be no more children entering our family.

[1:17:54] So if there are, it is accidental.

[1:17:56] And I apologize to any future children who are hearing this.

[1:17:58] You were an accident.

[1:18:00] We still love you.

[1:18:01] Unplanned.

[1:18:02] Very unplanned.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:03] I mean, I don't want to jump ahead in the letter,

[1:18:05] but I'm assuming he's going to mention his two weird uncles, Stuart and Dan.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:11] Nothing in here, but I assume that that's true.

[1:18:13] The current pandemic has meant that my wife and I have spent a lot of time at home watching a bunch of TV and movies.

[1:18:20] I've recently been trying to watch Modern Family for the first time and haven't really been enjoying it.

[1:18:25] Last week, I finally realized why.

[1:18:27] It's a show built on misunderstanding humor and I hate it.

[1:18:31] 95% of that show revolves around simple issues that would be resolved instantly if people just used their mouths and talked to one another, explaining the situation.

[1:18:41] This is my least favorite trope in TV and film and frustrates me at how dumb it is.

[1:18:47] My question is, what tropes in TV and film are your least favorite?

[1:18:51] And why is it misunderstanding-based humor?

[1:18:54] Love you, Dad.

[1:18:55] Gabe, last name withheld, could be Kalen.

[1:18:58] I agree.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:59] I mean, one, Gabe, I'm very proud of the man you grew up to be in the future and now in the past.

[1:19:04] And your disappreciation of misunderstanding-based humor.

[1:19:07] I approve of that.

[1:19:08] Thank you.

[1:19:08] I hope you still have your interest in spooky things, which seems to be mainly what you're interested in now, holiday decorations, particularly Halloween ones.

[1:19:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:17] I mean, I agree with this on misunderstanding.

[1:19:20] I mean, the first thing that came to mind was slightly related, but slightly, well, very related, but slightly different is when people are trying to explain themselves.

[1:19:30] The trope where they're like, if you'll just give me a moment.

S5

[1:19:33] Hold on.

[1:19:34] Just, but just let me.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:35] Instead of just saying like the one sentence that would clear everything up, like it was my sister or that person's actually dead.

[1:19:43] I'm running from the cops or whatever the, like, contrived situation.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:46] She was choking and I was giving her mouth to mouth, that kind of stuff.

[1:19:49] Exactly.

[1:19:50] Instead of being like, but if you would just give him a moment.

[1:19:51] Oh, as the door closes.

[1:19:53] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:53] I must fluster for 30 seconds before I say anything.

[1:19:58] But what are you guys's?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:00] I also am not a fan of misunderstanding-based humor for the most part for that reason.

[1:20:06] Although sometimes it can still be funny.

[1:20:10] I don't know what to tell you.

[1:20:11] But I think people who have listened to Flophouse are aware of my least favorite tropes in movies.

[1:20:18] Prophecies, badass assassins, movies where there's like a cool girl who falls in love with a boring, awkward guy who is very much a stand-in for the person who wrote the movie, it seems.

[1:20:30] Any of those types of things.

[1:20:31] But in TV, I would say my least favorite trope might be when, hmm, I guess someone has to have a dinner for someone and they're embarrassed because, like, the dinner goes, like, your boss is coming over for dinner.

[1:20:49] And things aren't going the way they want.

[1:20:51] And it's like, I don't, like, this is not something that's happened, I think, in 30 years that anyone has been expected to have a new boss over for dinner.

[1:21:00] Like, maybe if you're, like, maybe I'm wrong.

[1:21:02] Guys, tell me if I'm wrong.

[1:21:04] Maybe it's just because I work for famous people and they have no interest in hanging out with me or spending time at my house.

[1:21:08] But, uh, I've never been in a situation where I've had to, like, impress an employer outside of the office, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:15] No, I don't think that's a thing that happens.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:19] Uh, well, I don't know.

[1:21:21] I mean, I've definitely had dinners with, I don't know.

[1:21:23] You're probably right.

[1:21:24] You're probably right.

[1:21:25] The, um, yeah, I mean, I was going to say, uh, because I'm not feeling overly creative right now, I think I'm going to complain about the, uh, the drama version of that trope, the misunderstanding trope.

[1:21:38] And that's the, uh, every character has to have some elaborate lie that they're keeping from someone else.

[1:21:45] Otherwise, no, there's nothing going on in the show.

[1:21:47] And so the show is just, turns out to be a spider web of people's lies, uh, connecting each other.

[1:21:53] Uh, because I just don't have the energy to keep up with it.

[1:21:56] And it is the sort of thing where you're like, no, just, you don't have to lie.

[1:22:00] You don't have to lie that you had coffee with this person.

[1:22:02] Or if this person's like, uh, yeah, let's go out for coffee.

[1:22:06] Just don't tell my husband that you have a different relationship with.

[1:22:10] Be like, uh, no, I'm going to tell him because, uh, he's my boss or whatever.

[1:22:14] You know, that sort of thing.

[1:22:15] It's often, it's often weirder to keep the secret than it is to just tell someone.

[1:22:19] It is.

[1:22:19] And I, I get that sometimes there's something hot about it, but no, cut it out.

[1:22:24] Not every time.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:26] That reminded me of a trope that I actually, uh, genuinely do like.

[1:22:31] Uh, uh, but it was funny.

[1:22:32] I saw it in a movie.

[1:22:34] I watched recently.

[1:22:35] I watched Masquerade.

[1:22:36] My friend, uh, my friends, Tom and Aaron were running some, uh, some nineties and late

[1:22:41] eighties thrillers, uh, nostalgia thrillers night.

[1:22:44] And this one is, you know, Rob, Rob Lowe and Meg Tilly and Kim Cattrall's.

[1:22:48] And it's not, it's got a lot of people in it.

[1:22:50] It's not very good at all, but it has this trope where like two characters meet in the

[1:22:56] movie and you realize that they've been working together the whole time, which is, which is

[1:23:00] always fun.

[1:23:01] Like this movie's plot makes no sense.

[1:23:02] It's actually pretty bad, but fun to watch.

[1:23:05] But like that happens twice in the movie.

[1:23:07] I just like that the film had the audacity to have it happen two times.

[1:23:12] Like have one character suddenly be like, oh, they know each other and they've been working

[1:23:17] together again.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:19] Um, it's great.

[1:23:20] I think something that, uh, that has been getting me in more modern TV shows, because I realized

[1:23:24] the TV trope I gave is very old fashioned.

[1:23:27] More modern TV tropes is when a show starts and the show doesn't really get to what the

[1:23:31] show is about until the very end of the first episode.

[1:23:34] And it's always like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:35] Well, that's such a thing.

[1:23:36] I mean, that's like all like TV and like comic book writing too.

[1:23:40] Like they always have to end with the big reveal and has to be a big fucking cliffhanger.

[1:23:45] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:46] I mean, cliffhangers are fine, but like, it's like, for instance, that show.

[1:23:49] Cliffhanger is fine.

[1:23:50] I mean, Michael Rupert's fucking great in it.

[1:23:52] It's so, it's, it's a solid, you know, if not exceptional actioner from the nineties,

[1:23:56] you know, but if there's, it's like that show, the, uh, that Fred Armisen, Maya Rudolph

[1:24:00] show where they were, they were a couple that ends up in heaven or whatever.

[1:24:03] And that the first episode ends with Fred Armisen dying.

[1:24:06] And then I'm like, I was like, forget it.

[1:24:08] I'm not watching the next day.

[1:24:10] Like if you can't tell me the premise of the show in the first episode, you don't need

[1:24:12] me to stick around for the second episode.

[1:24:14] I got so mad.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:16] That, that, that reminded me of one I don't like where they started and, uh, they start

[1:24:20] a show with something exciting happen, happening.

[1:24:23] And then it's like one day earlier, you know, and it's just like, I get it.

[1:24:29] Like you didn't have confidence that we wanted to stick around if you didn't like give us

[1:24:33] a slice of cake up front.

[1:24:34] But yeah, I've seen it so many times now.

[1:24:37] Come on.

[1:24:37] Let's, I don't, I don't need that.

[1:24:39] Yeah.

[1:24:39] What's this?

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:39] A chapter in a George R. R. Martin novel.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:42] But you love it.

[1:24:43] But Dan, you love it when the character is in the middle of some kind of crazy thing and

[1:24:45] then trucks the camera and is like, Hey, you're probably wondering how this happened.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:50] I think it's so weird how I like, I loved that in Thor Ragnarok and never anywhere else.

[1:24:56] And like the, the, it is presented not that differently than it is in other places, but

[1:25:04] with enough of a spin that you know that the movie knows that this is silly.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:10] Yeah.

[1:25:10] And we were talking about Marvel movies, which, and the previous Thor movies, which had not

[1:25:15] been silly.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:16] Yeah.

[1:25:17] Uh, okay.

[1:25:18] So the second and final letter is from Julie, last name withheld, who writes about 25 years

[1:25:24] ago, I was backpacking through Europe.

[1:25:27] I wanted to experience a traditional English pub and went into one by myself, single American

[1:25:32] woman with backpack and all.

[1:25:34] The bartender asked me what I'd wanted and what I wanted.

[1:25:38] And I had no idea.

[1:25:39] The only alcohol I'd ever had before this was Manischewitz.

[1:25:42] I asked for the first beer I could think of Bud Light.

[1:25:46] I was literally laughed out of there.

[1:25:48] How many of you have ever experienced a movie cliche in real life?

[1:25:53] Love always, Julie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:55] I'll say there was a, a couple of years ago, I had to leave my family to go on a work trip

[1:26:01] and I was in a cab on the way to the airport.

[1:26:04] And, uh, and my family, we had, we were visiting New Jersey.

[1:26:07] We were visiting New Jersey, New York, where my rest of my family, where my relatives live.

[1:26:09] And I had to leave to go to Atlanta to work on a TV show.

[1:26:12] So I was leaving my family behind with my relatives.

[1:26:15] And on the way to the airport, the taxi cab radio was playing Cats in the Cradle.

[1:26:19] And I was like, come on, come on, reality.

[1:26:22] Don't play the soundtrack from the movie at me right now.

[1:26:25] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:25] Uh, yeah.

[1:26:27] The inverse, uh, whenever I'm bartending, if somebody's like, give me a beer, I'm like,

[1:26:32] I definitely need to see ID.

[1:26:36] Uh, either that or, and that also makes me think of the time back in, uh, right after college,

[1:26:40] I was dating, uh, a woman who was working at a summer camp and I would have to, at night,

[1:26:46] I'd have to like sneak onto the camp so that we could, you know, hang out.

[1:26:50] And, uh, that was very much any moment.

[1:26:53] I'm like, Jason's going to fucking murder me.

[1:26:55] I'm like the first guy to get killed in this movie.

[1:26:58] He never murdered me though.

[1:27:00] I'm alive.

[1:27:01] Oh, good.

[1:27:01] Thank goodness.

[1:27:01] That's, I'm so relieved.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:04] Um, I had a hard time.

[1:27:05] Uh, the, the best thing I come up with is, uh, the, Mike with Audrey, like we dated briefly,

[1:27:13] then we were just friends for a long time.

[1:27:16] And then we sort of realized we wanted to be together.

[1:27:19] And I feel like that is a very like, you know, TV trope.

[1:27:25] Uh, romantic comedy thing.

[1:27:26] I mean, it is because it does happen.

[1:27:28] Like people like our friends first and then move into relationships.

[1:27:32] But I do think it happens, uh, way more in fiction than it often does in real life.

[1:27:39] Because, you know, in fiction, in real life, I feel like oftentimes, I don't know, like people

[1:27:44] grow comfortable with a certain type of relationship with another person and fear the alteration of

[1:27:52] that too much for it to, to, to, to change.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:55] Yeah.

[1:27:55] Like, it's like how Elliot's always complaining about, uh, when you were younger, you'd always

[1:27:59] get stuck in the friend zone or something.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:01] Yeah.

[1:28:01] The way Elliot was just like, you know, posted on all those message boards about.

[1:28:05] Yeah.

[1:28:05] I have a manifesto about it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:06] Anyone who wants to read it can please contact me.

[1:28:09] I have some, I have some big plans.

[1:28:10] That's going to bring a lot of attention to it.

[1:28:12] Oh boy.

[1:28:12] That's too dark.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:13] Is there something about living in a society?

[1:28:15] No.

[1:28:16] Awful.

[1:28:18] Anyway, have you guys seen this Joker movie?

[1:28:20] That's bad.

[1:28:21] Any young men who are listening to this, this is bad, poisonous thing.

[1:28:26] Yeah.

[1:28:26] Never take what I have to say for, yeah.

[1:28:29] Don't listen to me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:30] I'm an idiot.

[1:28:31] Well, it's one of the, one of the reasons that, one of my, the cliches that I mentioned

[1:28:34] in the, for the last question that I hate is the one where like, like some kind of cool

[1:28:38] badass assassin girl or whatever, like there's a, there's a loser guy, basically wanted,

[1:28:43] like there's some loser normal guy who is, is picked out as being super special.

[1:28:47] And now he's being going to be like protected by a sort of badass assassin mom girlfriend,

[1:28:52] uh, who recognizes the special part of him.

[1:28:55] And, uh, now like, or the, the lonely guy who keeps harassing his friend basically until

[1:29:03] she falls in love with him.

[1:29:04] Like that's all toxic stuff.

[1:29:05] It's all bad stuff.

[1:29:06] It's bad messages.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:06] Show Latruglio's character from Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the first season, basically.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:10] I would say, I would say like the movie say anything to a certain extent that like, or

[1:29:15] things like that.

[1:29:16] Like if you're in a relation, if you're with someone and they don't want to be around

[1:29:18] you, hanging outside their window with a boombox playing the song they lost their virginity

[1:29:23] to you to is not, that's harassment.

[1:29:25] Like that's not cute, you know?

[1:29:27] Yeah.

[1:29:28] Unless John Cusack does it.

[1:29:29] Cause look at those puppy dog eyes.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:31] Yeah.

[1:29:32] So that, that was our little, uh, the more you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:34] I feel so bad for the puppy dog that had to give up its eyes.

[1:29:37] I know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:37] Put down that it was a donor.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:39] That was on its, well the thing is.

[1:29:40] It's on its license.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:41] Weirdly, he got Jerry Orbach's eyes, that dog.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:44] Oh, weird.

[1:29:45] Oh, interesting.

[1:29:46] That makes sense.

[1:29:47] And Jerry Orbach got the eyes of Laura Mars.

[1:29:49] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:51] On DVD now.

[1:29:53] Yeah.

[1:29:55] Well, men get eyes from Laura Mars.

[1:29:57] Women get eyes from Laura Venus.

[1:29:59] From Venus.

[1:30:00] Yeah, of course.

[1:30:01] It's all right there.

[1:30:03] So, okay.

[1:30:04] Well, let's go to recommendations of movies.

[1:30:07] I would definitely say you should watch instead of Tom and Jerry.

[1:30:10] Yeah.

[1:30:11] You know, do what, do what you like.

[1:30:13] So Dan's recommending Joker.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:15] Yeah.

[1:30:16] Dan says, just put a fucking frozen pizza in the oven and watch it cook.

[1:30:19] That's more exciting than Tom and Jerry the movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:24] No, I wanted to, so our network, Maximum Fun, one of the shows on there is Reading Glasses,

[1:30:31] which is co-hosted by Bria Grant, who I have never had the pleasure of chatting with or meeting,

[1:30:38] but she is an actor, director, writer, and there are a couple of new movies she was heavily involved with out right now.

[1:30:49] There's one called Lucky that she wrote and starred in, but it's not direct.

[1:30:55] That is on Shudder, and it is very hard to explain.

[1:31:00] It is a very metaphorical horror movie to put you in the mind of sort of a woman who is basically just being gaslit by society at large.

[1:31:10] And it is harrowing and, but also kind of very darkly funny and upsetting.

[1:31:19] And I liked it so much that that same night I watched another movie, one that she directed and wrote, did not star in.

[1:31:30] Angela Bettis from May is in it.

[1:31:31] It's on Hulu.

[1:31:32] It's called 12 Hour Shift, which was also very good in a totally different way.

[1:31:37] It's more of a kind of noir, like splatter noir, dumb people get way in over their heads, kind of like early Coen brothers,

[1:31:49] but a little like goofier than that maybe.

[1:31:53] Both very fun.

[1:31:54] You know, about someone in a hospital who's running a organ selling ring.

[1:32:00] That sounds awesome.

[1:32:01] A lot of fun.

[1:32:02] So I recommend both of those, Lucky and 12 Hour Shift.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:07] I'm going to recommend a movie that I think one of you guys recommended previously, but I think it's topical,

[1:32:12] partly because I think it's just a great movie to watch with your family.

[1:32:16] And that's a movie from 1971.

[1:32:18] It's Ken Russell's The Devils.

[1:32:23] Wow.

[1:32:24] Yeah.

[1:32:25] I'm bringing it up because it just recently hit Shudder.

[1:32:28] And I think I watched it as a teenager, but I really didn't give a shit about it at the time.

[1:32:32] But now I rewatched it and it's really great.

[1:32:36] I think it's the R-rated cut.

[1:32:38] It's not the X-rated cut that is not available in the United States through normal means.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:43] I think I saw the uncut version at the Alamo as a special screening.

[1:32:49] Oh, awesome.

[1:32:49] But I think that sort of thing is what you have to do.

[1:32:52] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:53] Well, the R-rated version is very good.

[1:32:55] It's on Shudder.

[1:32:56] I highly recommend it.

[1:32:58] It's, you know, it's the story of a 17th century city and a priest who, through political machinations,

[1:33:06] gets accused of witchcraft.

[1:33:07] And it's really great.

[1:33:09] And it's pretty intense.

[1:33:11] And I don't know, maybe it's like, maybe it was just the pandemic horniness.

[1:33:17] But man, Oliver Reed can get it, man.

[1:33:20] Like, I was watching that and I'm like, maybe I should grow my mustache again.

[1:33:24] And, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:24] I mean, he is like a big bull of a man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:27] Yeah.

[1:33:27] And then, and like, I'm paraphrasing here.

[1:33:30] But there's this scene when he's accused of witchcraft and he's like, I could never be the plaything of the devil.

[1:33:37] I lack the humility for it.

[1:33:39] And I'm sitting there, you know, eating mango slices with my fingers.

[1:33:43] And I'm like, same.

[1:33:46] You know?

[1:33:47] Yeah.

[1:33:48] So, yeah, the devil's on Shudder.

[1:33:50] Check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:52] I think, Stuart, you owe it to yourselves to see the movie Women in Love just for the Oliver Reed, Alan Bates, nude wrestling scene.

[1:33:58] Whoa.

[1:33:59] Okay.

[1:34:00] Just get ready for it.

[1:34:00] I am going to recommend a movie also.

[1:34:03] This is the movie I watched right before watching Tom and Jerry and a more different movie it was hard for me to imagine, although it is also set in New York City.

[1:34:10] So, they're both New York City films.

[1:34:12] This is a movie called Born in Flames.

[1:34:14] It's from 1983.

[1:34:15] It's an underground movie written and directed by Lizzie Borden.

[1:34:18] Not the Lizzie Borden who killed her parents in the 19th century.

[1:34:21] This is a different person.

[1:34:24] And it is about, it takes place in kind of the near future, but also very much.

[1:34:30] Late 70s, early 80s, New York City.

[1:34:31] There is a proudly socialist, democratic government in charge that keeps talking about how there was a revolution and everything's better now.

[1:34:40] But in actuality, it is just another form of the same kind of soft liberalism that doesn't really affect the real problems of inequality in society.

[1:34:50] And this group of women become essentially an underground guerrilla group to force a change in the government.

[1:34:57] And the whole thing is told in a very kind of collage style.

[1:35:00] You'll have a scene between characters that kind of dissolves into a fake news story, which might dissolve into a scene with other characters who are surveilling the characters from the original scene.

[1:35:10] It's told in a very like, almost kind of like if a movie was done in the same manner as like the backups in Watchmen in a sort of way.

[1:35:21] It's a lot of like, feels like you're looking, you're kind of sifting through the found elements of this kind of slightly different from our own world.

[1:35:29] And there were a lot of things about it that felt very relevant and topical to now.

[1:35:32] It really reminded me a lot that a lot of the things that are bubbling to the surface of politics now have always been there.

[1:35:38] And only in the 80s, in the early 80s, they were more, they had not yet bubbled to that surface.

[1:35:43] And at the end, it even kind of seems to predict that this kind of action will lead to a conservative backlash of a sort.

[1:35:51] Anyway, it's, I thought it was a really good movie.

[1:35:55] It's a real punk feeling movie and there's early, very young appearances in it by Eric Boghossian and director Catherine Bigelow.

[1:36:04] Amazing in an acting role.

[1:36:06] But it's, I thought it was really good.

[1:36:08] It's on Criterion Channel right now.

[1:36:09] It's on Canopy right now.

[1:36:10] It's called Born in Flames.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:12] Now, Elliot, you mentioned that it's a world slightly different than our own.

[1:36:14] Is one of the differences that Jim Carrey went on to make the Fire Marshal Bill series of movies instead of Ace Ventura?

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:21] That's one of those details.

[1:36:22] Or is that not addressed?

[1:36:23] No, no, that's, that is just off camera.

[1:36:25] You see someone passing by a poster for Fire Marshal Bill 3, Fire, Fire, Fire.

[1:36:30] They were really running out of things to call it.

[1:36:32] Actually, it reminds me of a...

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:34] I mean, saying fire three times, that's perfect for the third movie in a series.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:38] For the third one.

[1:36:38] Yeah, well, the first one was called Fire Marshal Bill in Fire.

[1:36:41] Second one, Fire Marshal Bill in Fire, Fire.

[1:36:43] And the fourth one was called Fire Marshal Bill in Forer.

[1:36:47] They tried to combine the words fire and forer.

[1:36:49] It doesn't quite work.

[1:36:50] Yeah.

[1:36:50] Now, that reminds me of the book, The Secret Policeman's...

[1:36:54] The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon, where it is an alternate reality where there is a Jewish colony in Alaska after World War II.

[1:37:02] And for some reason, that also means it's a world where Orson Welles made his film version of Heart of Darkness.

[1:37:07] And that's just kind of thrown out as a detail in the book.

[1:37:10] And I've always wanted to ask Michael Chabon, why is that the other difference about that universe?

[1:37:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:17] Yeah, no, it is interesting.

[1:37:19] I read that, too.

[1:37:20] And I'm like, so is this just one of those fun indicators that this is a different world we're in?

[1:37:26] Or is somehow there a direct correlation between the Jewish state in Alaska and the making of this film?

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:32] We'll never know until, I guess, the TV series comes out where they have to flesh all that or maybe the prequel, the Yiddish Policeman's Ununionized Organization, where they haven't yet become a union.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:45] Oh, the prequel.

[1:37:46] Yeah, that's it.

[1:37:46] Yeah, the prequels.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:46] The prequels are always really good.

[1:37:48] Prequels are always great.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:50] Hey, guys.

[1:37:51] Thanks for being here.

[1:37:53] Thank you, listeners, for listening.

[1:37:54] Thank you to Jordan Cowling for editing this, making it sound real nice for you.

[1:38:01] I don't know what that voice was.

[1:38:03] Please do not take it as some sort of stereotype.

[1:38:06] I have no idea where it came from.

[1:38:08] But it's been a pleasure talking to you, even though Tom and Jerry was a real downer for me.

[1:38:16] We were like, can we put something?

[1:38:19] We were going to record this pretty soon after I finished watching.

[1:38:22] And we were both like, let's watch something else to take the taste of Tom and Jerry out of our mouths.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:27] I think you might need a little bit more cushion time between the movie and the recording in the future.

[1:38:32] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:33] Came in with that angry energy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:36] Yeah, yeah.

[1:38:36] Well, you shouldn't have picked Manchester by the Sea as your pick-me-up.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:45] Okay, well.

[1:38:47] What's going to cleanse the palate here?

[1:38:51] Let me listen to this Adele album to cheer up.

[1:38:55] Now, thank you so much for listening.

[1:38:58] Go over to MaximumFun.org to check out other great podcasts, review us on iTunes, tweet about us.

[1:39:06] But until next time, I have been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:39:10] As always, now and forever, until the end of time, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:39:15] And I'm Elliot Kalin, technically an animated character.

[1:39:19] See ya.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:20] Bye.

[1:39:21] Oh, wow.

Stuart Wellington

[1:39:36] Now he's jamming.

[1:39:37] Oh, man.

[1:39:38] We got to...

[1:39:38] Dan's really...

[1:39:39] Oh, wow.

[1:39:39] Give him some...

[1:39:40] Try to get my energy up.

[1:39:41] Give him some drums.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:43] Just slapping his own arms.

[1:39:44] MaximumFun.org.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:51] Comedy and culture.

S6

[1:39:52] Artist owned.

[1:39:54] Audience supported.

Ep. #337 - Tom & Jerry

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