Ep. #337 - Tom & Jerry

[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.

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

[0:46] And it's me, Elliot Nap Time Kalen Singh.

[0:49] When's my nap time?

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

[0:52] I do like it.

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

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

[0:59] Oh, wow, okay.

[1:00] Like, yeah.

[1:01] Okay, I guess I'll have to dig through the old episodes to find the times when you said,

[1:04] When's my nap time?

[1:05] Which is now my new catchphrase.

[1:07] I don't remember you ever saying it, but if you want to retroactively claim it...

[1:10] I didn't say the catchphrase.

[1:11] 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] Like...

[1:23] Okay, I'll introduce you to Stuart.

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

[1:28] Yeah, that's okay.

[1:29] You know what, I'll start a new character.

[1:30] I'll start a new character.

[1:31] Okay.

[1:32] This hay fever!

[1:33] I don't like it!

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

[1:35] Guy who's always dealing with hay fever.

[1:36] It's Al Pacino with hay fever?

[1:37] I love it.

[1:38] That's Al Pacino with hay fever.

[1:39] That is...

[1:40] I'm amazed that that's not a character that was on SNL at some point.

[1:43] Or Conan O'Brien.

[1:44] Al Pacino with hay fever.

[1:45] Yeah, I love it.

[1:46] I'm sneezing!

[1:47] That's what it sounds like when I sneeze.

[1:50] Mm.

[1:51] Suntight, Mr. Pacino.

[1:54] 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.

[2:05] 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, the...

[2:16] I mean, to be honest, a movie theater should never be overflowing with folks.

[2:20] 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.

[2:27] Yeah, that's too much.

[2:28] Yeah.

[2:29] 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?

[2:40] Is that the slate that has been dumped to...

[2:42] Yes, Warner Brothers.

[2:43] HBO Max is the streaming platform for Warner Brothers.

[2:46] 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 today's episode.

[2:56] Yeah.

[2:57] So today we decided to watch one of the Them There movies, Tom and Jerry.

[3:01] It's dealt with.

[3:02] HBO Max has already – it's already handled a bunch of similar HBO properties, The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, and now Tom and Jerry, movies that all are going towards the same audience, which is very difficult.

[3:13] Exactly.

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

[3:17] But nope.

[3:18] No.

[3:19] So, yeah.

[3:20] 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] So did you guys also know a kid named HBO Max who was just the kid who had HBO at his house?

[3:37] His name was Max.

[3:38] Yeah.

[3:39] See, I thought you were going to say, Elliot, did you guys also hate Tom and Jerry as a kid because I was really wrestling whether to yes and Stewart's bit of me loving Tom and Jerry or use this as an opportunity to get into my feelings about the characters, 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] It certainly seems on point.

[4:03] I texted Elliot and I was like, wow, it's amazing the way this movie – 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.

[4:19] Yeah.

[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 minutes slice.

[4:29] 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, so there's that.

[4:35] I also have never really liked the Tom and Jerry characters.

[4:38] I found them to be – when I was a kid, I just found them pointless.

[4:42] 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 when the Looney Tunes cartoons are so readily available for me at the same time, 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, and this anonymous source who is familiar with John Hodgman's thinking on this topic, very familiar, 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, 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, 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.

[5:26] He, she, they.

[5:27] I don't – it's hard to know what pronoun to go by, but it's someone who is very familiar with John Hodgman's thinking, and I agree.

[5:33] Yeah.

[5:34] I was thinking about this like why do I find Tom and Jerry so hateful when I love the Roadrunner coyote cartoons because they're both based on this sort of unending chase, being locked in this battle with your cartoon persecutor.

[5:58] Animated nature, red in tooth and claw.

[5:59] Yeah.

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

[6:01] Yeah.

[6:02] Sure.

[6:03] The thing is like the Roadrunner has a certain insouciance granted, but he does not like – he's not there to like bedevil the coyote so much as the coyote wants to eat the Roadrunner, and the Roadrunner basically ignores him.

[6:19] Like all of the coyote's injuries mostly come from like his own attempts to kill the Roadrunner backfiring.

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

[6:31] Yeah.

[6:32] Yeah.

[6:33] Yeah.

[6:34] I mean he buys petards all the time.

[6:35] I mean I use this term a lot, but I feel like there's a certain amount of emotional distance in the Roadrunner that I feel like I can identify with.

[6:43] This idea of constantly chasing this hopeful dream that you'll never get.

[6:48] Yeah.

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

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

[6:57] The later ones, not so much.

[6:59] 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, those ones are not quite there.

[7:05] Yeah.

[7:06] 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.

[7:16] Well, that's the thing.

[7:17] Like you could think of – you shouldn't blow a Roadrunner short up into a full-length movie either, but at least you don't run –

[7:27] They are trying.

[7:29] But at least you don't run into the same problem you do with Tom and Jerry where I'm watching it and I'm like, OK, where are my sympathies supposed to lie here?

[7:37] Because I think they want me to think that Jerry is this lovable trickster and, sure, Tom wants to get him and that's understandable.

[7:47] But whereas Jerry just comes off as a constant asshole and I'm like, yeah, Tom, eat him.

[7:53] That's your job.

[7:54] You're a cat.

[7:55] Eat that mouse.

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

[8:01] He's coded here as like – yeah, he's the lovable scamp who's always getting his way and you've got to love him.

[8:07] Hey, you just can't – he's so irrepressible.

[8:10] You can't stop and that really parallels the heroine of the movie who is a liar and a con woman who basically cheats her way to success and Tom has to be –

[8:22] So she is forced to by being a part of the gig economy.

[8:25] That's true.

[8:26] It is hard to survive as a –

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

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

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

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

[8:47] 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] OK.

[8:56] 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] OK, 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 – Dan loves his Fantastic Four films 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] There's a scene in a fish market and all the dead fish are animated.

[9:27] That's what I'm saying.

[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.

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

[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.

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

[9:57] Animated worms would be like, hey, boss.

[9:59] What are you doing?

[10:00] I think you don't want to see a thing like Sonic that we've seen so many times before

[10:04] where it's just like, this is literally like, they're from another world and they're here

[10:10] and they're one of a kind.

[10:11] Or like the Garfield movies, like, I'm so happy they did not make them a photorealistic

[10:15] CGI cat and a photorealistic CGI mouse, like that would have been a bigger mistake.

[10:20] The fact that, like, they aren't one of a kind, which is an admirable thing, but then

[10:25] you have to go the other way, this movie seems to think, like, okay, everyone's a cartoon

[10:29] animal, 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

[10:39] real animals.

[10:42] It exists kind of like in the Muppet-type world where even though Kermit the Frog can

[10:46] talk and play the banjo and walks on two legs, he's just a frog, you know?

[10:51] I will say this.

[10:52] 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.

[11:01] It looks fantastic.

[11:03] 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,

[11:12] which they can communicate with.

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

[11:16] Yeah, like they can – they buy tickets to a baseball game, and then because they make

[11:21] the Yankees lose, animal control puts them in prison, in the animal control prison.

[11:27] 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 are they unable to – all except – there's only one other – the other two animals that

[11:39] can't talk are Toots and Goldie the Goldfish because only male animals talk in the movie

[11:44] also.

[11:45] Well, and Droopy the dog can't talk because he's wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask.

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

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

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

[11:52] 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] This movie is a computer animated film, but they've done the computer animation to look

[12:13] like it is traditional cell animation, the old style.

[12:17] I'm glad that they want to do that, and maybe it's just because I'm too much of

[12:22] a cartoon person that my brain is attuned to this.

[12:26] It's like how you can see motion smoothing but your parents don't.

[12:31] I watch this and I'm like, this looks super weird to me.

[12:36] It doesn't feel integrated to me.

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

[12:40] But also –

[12:41] Yeah, it's like when Sylvester Stallone sees the Expendables movies with all the fake

[12:46] bullet hits and he's like, it looks good.

[12:49] I don't think so.

[12:50] I would disagree.

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

[12:55] to you, but I think there's a scene where Tom and Jerry are destroying a hotel room

[12:59] 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, sure, maybe that scene, but I'm sure it's a budget consideration.

[13:12] They save it up and they do it in a couple of places and then otherwise I think it's

[13:16] actually pretty bad because they'll have – for instance, Michael Peña will be walking

[13:21] the dog and you see him holding one of those – the end of one of those stiff, invisible

[13:29] dog walking leashes and you won't see his hand interact with the dog in the same frame.

[13:38] They'll do it so the dog's face will block any connection between what Michael Peña's

[13:43] doing and what he's doing.

[13:44] They'll play a bunch of things in close-up rather than master so you don't see the

[13:49] cartoons and the humans together so much.

[13:54] I would see several places where it's like, okay, well that's clearly a choice to hide

[13:59] the fact that they aren't interacting well.

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

[14:04] When they're interacting with like small objects, they're holding stuff or whatever,

[14:09] that is photorealistic CGI that they did.

[14:12] They didn't actually get a mouse to come out and pick something up, right?

[14:16] Yeah, exactly.

[14:17] I think that looks really good.

[14:18] 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 of it.

[14:26] Okay.

[14:27] I think – I didn't have a specific test as the Michael Peña holding a leash that's

[14:31] attached to a cartoon dog test.

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

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

[14:37] I think we have to.

[14:38] The movie opens with a couple of pigeons singing a Tribe Called Quest song and this was the

[14:44] moment when I was like, uh-oh.

[14:47] I've talked about how much I want to see movies filmed in pre-COVID New York.

[14:54] I love it.

[14:55] I love this city.

[14:56] But this felt a little bit like not like this.

[14:58] You know?

[14:59] No.

[15:00] I don't want to see New York like this.

[15:03] This is a real like – it's not a particularly realistic New York.

[15:07] Later on, Tom will hide out in one of Midtown Manhattan's many alleyways around Central

[15:13] Park West.

[15:14] Those don't exist.

[15:16] But this also – something is going on in this movie where the soundtrack as you'll

[15:19] notice as you watch the movie is working so hard over time to make Tom and Jerry seem

[15:24] 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 and we start with these animated

[15:31] 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 he's

[15:40] a talented keyboard player, a keyboard cat if you will, while a rat real estate agent

[15:44] 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, which

[15:51] is like shorthand for I just moved into the big city.

[15:54] The two of them first meet when Tom is busking in Central Park pretending to be a blind piano

[15:58] playing cat and Jerry – this is him being a dick – tries to horn in by breakdancing

[16:03] 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 and the one really funny line

[16:12] I think in the whole movie when someone yells, he's just an ordinary piano playing cat

[16:16] and they get really mad.

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

[16:19] This is one of the fatal flaws of the movie for me right off the bat is that Jerry not

[16:25] only tries to horn in, he breaks Tom's keyboard.

[16:28] Tom's keyboard, we were showing him he doesn't just do this as a busker, he has musical ambitions

[16:36] because he looks up at John Legend on a billboard and imagines himself playing in a John Legend

[16:41] concert even though it was so specific that I was sure that John Legend was going to show

[16:47] up in the movie later on.

[16:48] I thought so too.

[16:49] The classic story of a cat who wants to play MSG and it's just like a star is born but

[16:57] it's a cat.

[16:58] I'm like, you don't break a musician's musical instrument like that.

[17:02] That is a huge thing.

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

[17:04] I think you do.

[17:05] I think you should.

[17:06] Okay.

[17:07] Wow.

[17:08] Like which one?

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

[17:10] Yeah.

[17:11] But the point is Tom is mad, understandably so.

[17:16] His livelihood has just been destroyed by Jerry, chases Jerry through the park and bumps

[17:20] into Kayla played by Chloe Grace Moritz.

[17:24] She's biking to the park with a box of clothes and it knocks the clothes all over the ground

[17:28] which for some reason causes her to lose her job.

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

[17:33] She looks like a Postmates person or something similar, right?

[17:37] But she was delivering a box of clothes or something.

[17:40] Maybe she's a...

[17:41] Hey, 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.

[17:51] So she loses her job.

[17:52] She needs one.

[17:53] Jerry sneaks into a fancy hotel and Kayla is apparently a regular at this hotel just

[17:56] 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

[18:03] the hotel.

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

[18:09] event staff and Kayla basically says to this woman, actually I work at the hotel and you

[18:13] failed the test.

[18:14] I have your resume and she steals the resume and applies for the job under this fake name.

[18:19] Which super bummed me out, man.

[18:21] Yeah, 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

[18:28] of their actions.

[18:29] But also, so it is confirmed that they're social media influencers because I said that

[18:33] afterwards and Audie didn't remember anything about it and she was baffled where I got that.

[18:37] But if you got it too...

[18:38] It is the only thing that is told to us about them that would explain why anyone cares that

[18:43] they're getting married.

[18:44] What they do.

[18:45] Why they're rich and famous.

[18:46] They're just two social media influencers who are talking shit about Colin Jost like

[18:50] that.

[18:51] Well, I mean, far be it from me to denigrate Colin Jost's one facial expression that he

[18:55] 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 Prita, his fiance.

[19:05] Who looks far more lovingly at Chloe Grace Moretz than a couple of times.

[19:10] Very much so.

[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

[19:16] him to the top of television comedy and bag him Scarlett Johansson.

[19:20] So I really can't.

[19:21] I guess there's just something there I don't see.

[19:23] I guess I just don't.

[19:24] Oh, wow.

[19:25] You must have read his fucking vows with that one.

[19:26] Babe.

[19:27] Babe.

[19:28] I knew I bagged a good one when...

[19:30] Anyway, but by this point, 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

[19:40] wedding and how that wedding affects a young woman's career in the hospitality industry.

[19:44] That's what the movie's about.

[19:45] Tom and Jerry.

[19:46] Yeah.

[19:47] And it is one of these things where you're like, there's no clearer indication that the

[19:51] only reason this movie was made was that someone owned the property, Tom and Jerry, because

[19:57] it's like there's nothing in like the...

[20:00] that outlines of the actual part of this movie is like i was someone with a

[20:02] passion for the material made no okay

[20:06] we've got time and jerry

[20:07] uh... we think that time and jerry we did some testing it's not very good

[20:10] against uh...

[20:11] yet with young women so uh... i don't know what's good story of a young woman

[20:15] making your way in the world of their uh... it's just it all that seems

[20:20] like just awkward pieces of

[20:22] screenplays that blake down the screenplay factory they got fitted

[20:25] together

[20:26] speaking of that uh... i'm doing a little detective work here and i can see

[20:29] behind and and uh... trash trash can there's a

[20:33] uh... a script

[20:34] that is titled untitled celebrity wedding script uh... i guess dan's mad

[20:39] because this is scooped in

[20:40] you can't see the zoom recording of course because this is a podcast but uh...

[20:44] uh... stewart deliver that so convincingly that i looked behind myself

[20:49] dan for a moment thought there was a garbage can behind him even though that's

[20:53] his room

[20:54] uh...

[20:56] i would i would say this time in jerry falls into the it's kind of like the

[20:59] later marks brothers movies

[21:01] where there's a couple that has a problem in the marks brothers are there

[21:04] to service the needs of the couple

[21:06] not enough not in the sexy way that that just sounded like that i described it as

[21:10] uh... time in jerry are basically there to like

[21:13] just bring a little bit of extra jazz to the exciting story of a young woman

[21:17] lying her way to the top

[21:18] of the hotel event management

[21:20] industry

[21:21] okay guys no matter how many michael payne is she has to step on to get out

[21:25] yeah it's

[21:26] that uh... it's it's again once again a movie where

[21:28] they're like

[21:30] how do we get some uh... some people of color into this movie how about we have

[21:33] them be the obstacles that the white hero needs to put me to step on like i

[21:37] guys know you're not doing it right come on yeah i i did say i like a right when

[21:42] we're watching i said this like i don't

[21:45] i feel so bad like having to like

[21:49] you know watch this

[21:51] dumb kids movie through this lands like

[21:54] week you know ten stories as a as a a black director one of the few like

[21:58] blockbuster black directors

[22:00] i think he did make an effort to like have this movie be

[22:04] more multicultural than the sort of film usually is

[22:07] but unfortunately also the fact that he has chloe grace barrett's

[22:12] this young white woman who does not appear to actually have

[22:17] uh... many like huge problems of other than you know losing her previous job

[22:22] uh... you know like a lot of ways to the top by yet

[22:25] which is basically like getting michael payne yeah

[22:29] uh... not fired but close to it's you know it is essentially get fired at one

[22:33] point but he gets back at that somehow

[22:35] and i'll and the the back by

[22:37] destroying a wedding yes that's a yeah and and most of the animals

[22:41] had except for bobby cannavale a spike the bulldog

[22:44] most of the animals are voiced by

[22:47] black performers and and

[22:48] actors of color and it's like a way of getting their voices into it but it

[22:51] again it just it

[22:52] when you like don't really have met it's like

[22:54] there's one

[22:56] the movie has a lot of through

[22:57] yeah i haven't got a throat anyway uh...

[22:59] there was one reason when we saw that uh... bobby cannavale did the voice for

[23:03] spike in the credits charlene was like that's why i'm attracted to the dog

[23:07] haha

[23:09] so uh... tom he's accosted by some tough cats in an alley they're called the

[23:13] paper cut boys i think in the credits

[23:15] uh... in the as i said one of many of new york city is a midtown alleyways

[23:20] uh... 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

[23:27] for himself

[23:28] where he's got like a uh... a smart phone set on its side so it's a big

[23:31] screen t.v. and like

[23:33] there's there's so many i've heard no one was so fucking mad

[23:38] there's there's so many moments in the movie that are just

[23:40] jerry kicking back in his pad well

[23:43] hip-hop plays on the on the soundtrack

[23:45] he's a fucking mouse size door for his room like that was a mistake that was

[23:49] one of the one of the few other jokes the movie was like well i do like that

[23:52] he somehow built a mouse size door that looks like a little bit of a hotel room

[23:55] to a mouse size revolving door to the front of the hotel yeah i think there

[24:01] would be like the occasional individual joke

[24:04] that i would enjoy it but it is like

[24:06] it hammered onto such a rickety structure that you gotta hope that in an

[24:10] hour and forty minute comedy there's gonna be at least a handful of jokes

[24:13] that land

[24:15] kayla uh...

[24:16] chloe grace murray she cons her way through an interview with the hotel

[24:19] manager mister dubrose played by rob delaney who is consistently

[24:22] very funny in the movie as a as a bumbling hotel manager i thought and

[24:26] michael peña is her foil and he like he

[24:29] gives it his all like he this is like his audition reel to be the villain in a

[24:33] movie where the star is a dog basically when michael peña is forced to

[24:38] stop in the middle of the street later on because he's walking spike and spike

[24:41] is off camera making a huge dump in the middle of street like michael peña is selling the moment

[24:46] yeah you don't get to see it but michael peña is selling this moment he is not

[24:51] half assing it and i gotta give him credit for that his character

[24:53] terrence is the events manager of the hotel he does not like a person who he suspects

[24:58] is a liar being made basically a second in command

[25:01] but he introduces her to the hotel staff there's the goofy bellhop girl

[25:05] who's kind of weird there's the cool bartender cameron there's the high

[25:08] strung chef played by ken jiang and meanwhile while they're doing this

[25:11] she's i just need to clarify she is hired as a temporary manager for this

[25:18] celebrity wedding weekend and if she plays her cards right she might get a

[25:22] full-time job which i mean i know she's gotten this job under false like fucked

[25:27] up circumstances but that's a messed up fucking carrot dangling right i mean i

[25:32] guess it's almost it's more the fact that they're hiring this person the day

[25:35] that the couple is arriving rather than like it's if the wedding's on a saturday

[25:40] and they're doing this on a friday it seems like yeah they're also like

[25:42] putting her up in a suite like they're like yeah she also lives on the premises

[25:48] for helping in this big wedding and then they're like they gave her the nicest

[25:51] room and it's so crazy anyway so meanwhile tom and jerry are having

[25:55] hijinks on the side again that's the movie kind of in microcosm a plot about

[26:00] a woman dealing with a celebrity wedding while tom and jerry on the

[26:02] margins are just kind of hitting each other with things can i say something

[26:05] uh about of course you can grace morettes thank you thank you sir

[26:09] no uh no i like chloe grace morettes generally like i've liked her in

[26:14] previous movies but here uh i don't know the how do you feel

[26:18] about her in real life the times you guys have hung out

[26:21] uh you know uh she seems like she has a wall up but that's because she's you

[26:25] know she's famous like people who are famous just have to do it to

[26:28] you never know what people want from you yeah you can't let them in too close

[26:31] i i just feel like in this movie you know maybe it was

[26:36] bad direction at fault it seems like she's been told to make a face

[26:41] every second like she is she just does not stop

[26:46] moving her expression in this film and i think it's

[26:49] someone along the line you know whether it's

[26:53] a bad choice that she's made in this particular role or the director

[26:57] encouraging something that he shouldn't have he's like this is a cartoon movie

[27:01] you should also be a cartoon person look den we can't all be colin jost who

[27:06] cannot move his face well yeah he's going the full other way

[27:09] which is i was like maybe if i pretend i'm not in

[27:13] tom and jerry i can take the money without

[27:16] any bad parts i think i think she's sorry i was gonna say this is when

[27:22] we're introduced to the celebrity couple but it sounds like you have more to say

[27:25] about chloe grace moritz's face elliot i i know her performance her face i have

[27:30] no real comment on uh i think she's i think she like everyone

[27:33] else in the movie is trying her best they're trying to bring this material to

[27:36] life and it's just the material is so not there that uh

[27:41] it leaves all the performers kind of flailing a little bit yeah try to try to

[27:44] make it work but you're right the celebrity couple is here

[27:47] it's paula v sharda as prita the bride-to-be she's marrying

[27:50] ben played by colin jost and uh it's unclear

[27:54] as we said earlier exactly why they're famous they're social media influencers

[27:57] influencers of some kind they bring in spike the bulldog voiced by

[28:00] bobby colin navale and toots the fancy lady cat who does not

[28:04] talk because only male animals talk in this movie

[28:06] uh then we got to go to the kitchen where chef

[28:10] ken jeong he sees jerry and he freaks out

[28:13] so kayla vows i'm gonna catch this mouse don't worry we can't have a mouse in the

[28:16] hotel even though every hotel in new york i'm

[28:18] sure has thousands of mice in it just as every restaurant has thousands of

[28:22] cockroaches it's what it means to live in a city guys look

[28:24] we're the alpha vermin on earth humanity there's a reason

[28:28] when we create habitats for ourselves that mice rats

[28:31] roaches and pigeons feel right at home because they are also vermin they they

[28:34] know their own look so if you're gonna have a thing in a city there's gonna be

[28:37] mice and rats and roaches and pigeons that's just the way this vermin knows

[28:40] vermin i didn't realize i was doing a podcast with a rorschach

[28:44] yeah look someday the vermin are gonna ask me to help and i'm gonna say no

[28:48] i will say about the i will say about this couple uh

[28:52] big miscalculation in likability number three

[28:56] like they're fine they seem to genuinely like care about each other

[28:59] like like no i'm serious laughing but like on a

[29:02] personal level like they seem to have like painted these people as like

[29:05] nice enough people but for a screenplay the fact that they don't appear to do

[29:12] any work at all and are like just sort of

[29:15] engaging in this overt consumption the whole time like to make

[29:20] their fantasy wedding the cornerstone of this movie even though

[29:24] the movie makes a slight attempt to make that not true at the end although

[29:30] what happens is although it still does yeah yeah exactly like it seems like a

[29:36] particularly bad miscalculation for this moment in history

[29:40] i think dan what you're forgetting is kids love wedding stories

[29:44] kids love stories about weddings they love attending weddings they're always

[29:47] on tenterhooks about whether weddings are going to go off as planned

[29:50] the it is uh much like uh superhero comics have been criticized for years as

[29:57] being the the writers want to write about

[29:59] characters

[30:00] Their age rather than characters that kids are interested in the writers of kids movies often seem to write about stuff

[30:05] That is I wouldn't be surprised if someone involved in this movie was planning a wedding

[30:08] Well, they were well, they were producing it, but I think they made a mistake

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

[30:16] There's a version of this movie where this couple is a bunch of pre 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?

[30:26] This is a ridiculous job. I shouldn't do this

[30:29] My friendship with this cat and mouse is more important and she throws it away to be a happier person

[30:33] There's a version of that movie. This is not that in this one

[30:36] They're a lovely couple and it's okay that they want elephants at their wedding

[30:40] Maybe they maybe they're trying a little too hard. But otherwise damn it. These social media influencers are just good folks

[30:45] They're down to there's even though they live in a hotel with cartoon

[30:49] Yeah, and there's something about this like mega rich couple who have no friends

[30:55] No, no one else around them and they quickly become friends with the staff at a hotel

[31:01] Yeah, I mean Charlene wanted to point out having worked in hotels for quite some time

[31:06] That doesn't you this the staff don't get invited to the ceremony

[31:12] Audrey at the end of the movies like why is the whole staff just standing here at this wedding?

[31:16] Except for the bartender who has to fucking work. Yeah

[31:19] Yeah, classics love always has to work. The bartenders always get the worst end of the stick

[31:25] There is no he does get to drink champagne out of like a fucking golden goblet at the end

[31:30] So like I guess I guess they're pretty chill with their staffs drinking

[31:35] But it is it is true that it is there's an untie untapped

[31:39] Vein here about how these famous people are so eager have no one in their lives except for Preeta's dad who there's the running gag

[31:46] That doesn't really work is that Ben is super obsessed with trying to impress Preeta's dad and they've no one else

[31:51] So they have to be friends with the hotel staff. It's like the first season of I'm Alan Partridge, you know

[31:55] So kept so Kayla vows to catch this mouse. She sets a trap for him, but she's so busy flirting with camera

[32:01] She doesn't see Jerry steal the cheese in the trap and leave a taunting mouth a taunting note for her

[32:06] Which means she knows already this mouse knows English and can write and form sentences and has good handwriting

[32:12] Yeah, this is a problem for two reasons number one our earlier

[32:16] Cartoon question about what world we're living in here because she reacts with

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

[32:30] So, I guess that's somewhat unusual

[32:32] Then also like they all through the rest of the movie. They're doing like elaborate charades to communicate. It's like well, apparently he can write

[32:40] Tom write something and she's like, oh your ears are backwards and it's like dude

[32:44] This cat just wrote a note like my son his E's are backwards

[32:48] Sometimes that guy use his fingers like inflatable balloons and wrote his name with them. That's crazy

[32:54] Yeah, why are you playing the keyboard that that skill will get you somewhere? There is it?

[32:58] There's a scene later where like yeah

[33:00] Tom is cleaning out his ears with his tail like he threads his tail into one ear and out the other and Michael Pena walks

[33:05] Mine goes get your tail out of your ears

[33:07] Disgusting and like I like that like how it's not surprised to see cat stick its tail through

[33:12] Okay that night

[33:14] This is when Tom and Jerry's rivalry really picks up again because the devil and angel on Tom's shoulders both voiced by little Ray Howery

[33:21] They convince him it's time to go after Jerry after Tom falls down nine or ten thousand times trying to climb up this building

[33:28] It takes forever. He gets in they have this hotel room fight that I thought was really impressive that Dan was like yawn. Ho hum

[33:36] Kayla walks in catches them doing it and hires Tom to catch Jerry. Mr

[33:41] DeBrasse immediately approves. He loves the idea of having a cat on staff at the hotel

[33:47] Terrence guess what doesn't like it not a fan

[33:50] Yeah, I like I like that Rob Delaney's character. He's not necessarily a buffoon. He's just kind of like

[33:58] Too pleasant, but he's fairly buffoonish

[34:01] Well, he's not I mean, but like, you know, there's no point

[34:03] It was like I don't know the giant dog like takes a bite out of his pants

[34:07] He's got big red underwear or something or like he'd like made out to be an idiot. He's just sort of like

[34:13] trusting and pleasant

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

[34:20] So yeah, he doesn't have to do a lot of plot carrying

[34:23] He can just kind of be us

[34:24] It's the kind of role that like Peter Sellers would do in

[34:28] 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 yeah and

[34:35] Wouldn't have all the pressure that the other people have so Jerry almost gets caught by toots

[34:40] Prita's cat and then Jerry meets Kayla, 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. He wants elephants

[34:51] He wants peacocks and Prita takes Kayla side and bits. She lost her engagement ring

[34:56] Oh, no, this is what the movie is gonna be about for a little bit people just deal with it

[35:01] And this is meanwhile when Terrence walks spike and spike makes a big poop in the road and

[35:05] Yeah, 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 a not and it's never never have I wished that Michael Pena more could have had the dignity of being mr

[35:17] Rourke in Fantasy Island than this moment, you know, thank you. Yeah, I

[35:21] Would like to partially by the way that by the you know, the moment it leaves the cartoon dogs, but it becomes

[35:28] Real poop but not cartoon poop. I think that

[35:31] Stewart is so disappointed. I think it's real poop the whole time

[35:35] I think it's a real turd coming out of a cartoon dogs dogs, but and that and you dog

[35:42] That's how it's cartoon dogs poop is through their penis not

[35:46] Okay, man, I think if it's because it's not an animal like an avapositor or something

[35:51] It's like a cloaca. The cartoon dog has a cloaca. That's that's basically what it is. So, okay

[35:56] Jerry it turns out wait a minute then at what point does the cartoon animal flesh?

[36:01] become

[36:02] Not cartoon. That's a good person's body

[36:05] It's during the person has my stomach developed enzymes to transform tunes into regular flesh. Yes

[36:15] In the human stomach and the animal digestive system, in fact, that's what digestion stands for is dip

[36:21] ingesting

[36:22] Gestation. Thank you eating some turds

[36:25] So or eating so turds if you eat it that becomes it that's how what digest stands for

[36:31] It all no. No at first. I thought you said it stood for that's what dip stood for and I'm like

[36:36] I you're adding letters and dip that I

[36:44] Dip stands for don't ingest people

[36:47] Because the naturally occurring dip in your body your stomach has a chemical lining that keeps the dip in but if you tried to drink

[36:54] That stuff. Oh, you burn right through your esophagus. Anyway, that's right. 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

[37:03] So when someone

[37:05] When someone is eating say a plate except for judge doom judge doom would buy it because he needs it to kill more tunes

[37:11] Exactly. So in this movie

[37:13] And the other thing is that all the bacteria and the microbes in your body are also cartoons all the anything

[37:19] That's not a human in this is a cartoon. I mean

[37:22] Told us that so yeah, exactly. This is the same universe

[37:24] It's the osmosis Jones cinematic universe the OJC you now when you order a plate of spaghetti and meatballs in this world

[37:30] The meatballs are ground-up animated either beef turkey, whatever whatever type of meat is and but then so it's a cartoon meatball

[37:37] Maybe it still has an eye or a goat. That's when it goes

[37:39] It's a way because it goes it's a dying and then you eat that and the enzymes in your body and the cartoon microbes

[37:46] And the dip turn it into live-action poop. So there's only animated food plants

[37:51] All plant food is live-action, but animal based food also leather shoes leather jackets. There must be some process

[37:58] They put it through that

[38:03] You know nature nature is really horrifying guys, uh-huh, there's nothing natural about turning animals into leather jackets or shoes Dan

[38:10] That's not a natural process. No, I'm talking about our natural dip that we have. Hey

[38:15] dip did that creep you out as a concept as a kid or not creepy like I I

[38:21] Would like see that I'm like, okay, so there's this like you got that

[38:26] Candy sort of just tongue depressor, right? Yeah that kind of chalk stick. Yeah

[38:31] Yeah, you got a lick that dip it into the sugar take it out lick it off to get I don't know

[38:37] it feels like there's a lot of

[38:39] Opportunities for the sort of like a lint and fuzz to be involved in that not a kovat safe candy all that

[38:45] It's certainly not don't share that with people during the pandemic time even as a messy child

[38:50] I was like, this is not this is too much for me. Yeah, I was never a fan of it

[38:54] Anyway, it turns out Jerry has the ring. He's sent 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

[39:04] Stealing a little bit of Garfield right that

[39:06] Tom is celebrating everyone's celebrating. He's playing piano. He serenades toots, but Jerry shows up. Oh, he escaped and he attacks Tom and

[39:14] They 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 and she's like, oh, okay

[39:22] But then Terrence almost catches them, but luckily spike who Terrence has just finished walking

[39:27] 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

[39:34] Culminating in what's described in the movie as an animal fight whirlwind. I think they call it and it's just yeah

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

[39:46] Right, it creates it creates like a singularity where things are being pulled closer in and time changes a little bit a little bit

[39:52] the closer you get to the animal whirlwind event horizon the slower time goes and also the longer and thinner matter becomes so

[40:00] very fascinating stuff it's my business but there's you know that's what that's

[40:03] why there's an old lady

[40:05] when chloe grace moritz runs out there's an old lady who goes i'd be you

[40:09] and it's like that

[40:10] that's that's for the uh... that's for the adults in the activities yet

[40:14] to understand yet

[40:15] uh... and and and maybe mcconaughey's watching the whole time he's just

[40:18] fucking ball

[40:22] uh...

[40:23] uh... it wrecks the lobby even wrecks the the ceiling of the lobby like this

[40:27] there's a huge hole in the ceiling now it's fixed i think within two scenes

[40:30] uh... mister debrose fires terrence and puts kayla in charge what how else could

[40:35] you do it

[40:36] uh... so kayla she has a rooftop talk with tom and jerry and she tells them

[40:40] hey

[40:40] 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

[40:45] york so she calls up a black car for them

[40:48] uh... they are

[40:49] traveling around new york doing new york things they go to a very inaccurate

[40:52] rendition of the natural history museum

[40:53] are the dinosaur skeletons and stuffed saber-toothed tigers animated yes they

[40:57] are they're cartoons they go to a fish market full of cartoon fish

[41:00] where fish are being thrown around which is a fucking seattle thing that is not a

[41:04] new york thing

[41:05] that is not something that happens at new york fish markets thank you very

[41:08] much

[41:08] tom and jerry

[41:09] and we can tell from their their instagram feed because they apparently

[41:13] set up a social media account they're instagramming it and at some at one point we

[41:16] find out is that prita is uh... apparently follows them because she

[41:20] a transition between scenes involves prita scrolling past

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

[41:26] the cat and mouse that kayla is trying to keep a secret

[41:29] 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] they are and prita who is a major instagram

[41:38] social media figure

[41:40] 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 is it just tom

[41:51] with pictures of himself being like

[41:52] this is it i'm finally going to get into that hotel room and then

[41:55] crashing to the ground you know i understand

[41:57] we had talked earlier about how there seems to be an unmistakable chemistry

[42:02] between prita and uh... and

[42:04] kayla yes and maybe

[42:06] she is like kind of low-key stalking kayla and she's like oh kayla's

[42:10] following this cat and mouse maybe i'll follow them too and maybe we'll just

[42:14] casually bring it up in conversation i mean we're the only two followers of

[42:17] this cat and mouse so she'll probably see

[42:19] they had a very active social media day i mean they went on the

[42:24] cyclone they saw a fish being thrown around

[42:28] i mean the limousine like kayla has been hired to take care of this

[42:32] problem and

[42:34] you know she's trying she's doing it in a very kind hearted way

[42:39] let's broker a peace but you know it seems like rob delaney when he sees

[42:43] the expense report for a limousine for a cat and a mouse will get

[42:48] angry about this i think she's hoping it's gonna be hidden in the uh... the

[42:52] expense of rebuilding that like stained glass fucking skylight i mean all of this is

[42:57] gonna be is gonna be baked into the wedding fees they're gonna be charging

[43:00] them you know a thousand dollars for a cube of ice just to cover the

[43:03] the other stuff uh...

[43:04] but you're right it is a she does seem she has hiring and firing abilities she

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

[43:10] she's been on the job for roughly three days by this point and and there's not

[43:14] that many other people also a hotel this size you have to assume would have

[43:17] dozens

[43:18] of employees

[43:20] but yeah they have a singular bellhop

[43:24] if they have one bellhop

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

[43:29] already the uh... the hospitality industry is being crushed right now

[43:34] okay

[43:35] there 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 in a landmarked building too so that that

[43:45] limits the kinds of renovations they can do makes it that much more expensive

[43:48] certain contractors they can't work with this is all stuff that

[43:51] i'm kinda surprised the movie didn't go into because it doesn't seem that

[43:53] interested in the cat and mouse fighting each other meanwhile speaking of the

[43:57] cartoon elephants and peacocks have arrived at the hotel the peacocks are

[44:00] strangely amorous in a way that's not fully a joke

[44:03] but is kind of a joke

[44:04] and prita tells kayla

[44:06] ben's plans for the wedding keep getting bigger and bigger and it's really

[44:09] stressing her out but the problem is they're always in the public eye

[44:12] so they can't ever disagree or argue with each other they've lost the ability

[44:16] to argue with each other

[44:17] it's like us right

[44:18] exactly no if anything we need to lose a little bit of our ability to argue with

[44:21] each other

[44:24] and she just doesn't know how to say no to ben meanwhile as stewart mentioned earlier

[44:29] tom and jerry they're at the at yankee stadium tom catches a ball

[44:32] that he should not have reached over the edge when the ball was going into the

[44:36] glove of the outfielder

[44:37] it should have been the game-winning ball for the yankees it's implied that they

[44:39] would have gone all the way

[44:41] if they uh... if they didn't have it

[44:43] uh... if they caught it

[44:44] they get taken away by animal services curse of the bambino that's what that is right

[44:48] no the curse of the bambino wasn't on the yankees it was on the red sox

[44:54] tom what?

[44:57] they see droopy in a hannibal lecter mask in the uh... in animals uh...

[45:02] control and it's like what's up a sequel

[45:04] i mean i would so much rather see a droopy movie

[45:07] than a tom and jerry movie again i don't know how you fill an hour and a half with droopy

[45:11] also that was the one thing in the movie where i'm like okay well this is providing me some

[45:15] kind of new insight into uh... one of these cartoon characters because i'm like oh yeah

[45:19] droopy does have kind of that like

[45:22] evil serial killer vibe i see that sure sure i mean the fact that he says i'm happy

[45:27] and he's displaying no emotion on his face whatsoever like a sociopath

[45:31] or a colin jost anyway so uh...

[45:34] it's another example of a joke in the movie where it's like kids will love this reference

[45:38] to silence of the lambs the transphobic serial killer film from

[45:43] nineteen ninety whatever okay uh... the street gang cats from earlier

[45:49] the street gang cats from earlier are there and they taunt tom into putting jerry in his

[45:54] mouth and this whole sequence made me very uncomfortable they're like you eat it then

[45:57] eat it put it in your mouth swallow it down luckily

[46:01] michael pena shows up to interrogate them he takes them into separate interrogation

[46:06] rooms and suddenly there's all these split screens and like texts on the screen is this

[46:11] a parody of something yeah second unit director brian de palma showed up

[46:18] they would have this big cartoon text on the screen too that like

[46:21] were the weirdest choices of words it wasn't like something that needed to be emphasized

[46:25] ever and i never quite understood i kind of like the sequence because it was like it was

[46:29] silly and i'm like i don't know if this is a reference to you but whatever i assumed

[46:33] it had to be a reference to something at least they were doing something with it he basically

[46:37] he tells both of them i can take one of you back to the hotel if you agree to work with

[46:41] me but as we'll see he's not being totally above board but the wedding has started he's

[46:49] performing some liaisons dangereuses on these two making them both angry at each other you

[46:54] better believe it the wedding begins and this wedding don't look in its wazoo because it's

[46:59] got cartoon animals up it it is just so many cartoon animals everywhere there are two very

[47:04] unfunny elephants that are just use internet kind of like abbreviations they have voices

[47:09] like middle-aged british men but they say like oh omg or like wtf and stuff like it

[47:16] was a it's a very confused characterization for these two cartoon elephants there's a

[47:20] cartoon tiger there that looks genuinely dangerous i don't know why you would have a tiger at

[47:24] your wedding prita suffice to say is very frustrated terrence sneaks in with tom but

[47:30] he's also let jerry loose uh-oh tom starts chasing jerry with an enormous meat tenderizer

[47:36] hammer with spikes that literally cracks the floor when he hits the floor nobody seems

[47:40] to notice this the wedding is oblivious to the fact that the ground is being shattered

[47:44] to pieces under their feet nobody notices until chef ken jang sees jerry on the cake

[47:50] and is so infuriated that he destroys the cake with a baseball bat trying to hit jerry

[47:55] it's a cricket cricket bat oh it's a cricket bat my mistake i apologize please take everything

[47:59] i've said with a grain of salt colin jost i apologize i guess i was not watching the

[48:02] movie close enough uh yeah then even then many of the wedding attendees do not seem

[48:07] to notice the problem that's how big this wedding is until the elephants see jerry and

[48:11] panic they're falling all over the place the tiger decides that's the moment to try to

[48:16] murder the other animals another singularity occurs in the middle time bends and shifts

[48:21] yeah another animal whirlwind the wedding and the hotel entrance are destroyed uh-oh

[48:27] what's gonna happen kayla admits she lied and prita calls off the wedding and i look

[48:32] at the timeline and i see there's 22 minutes left in this movie and i'm like it wasn't

[48:36] supposed to be about tom and jerry yeah did i get sucked into that animal whirlwind the

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

[48:45] i'm like like yeah it's a 21 minutes how is there that much time left and then i comforted

[48:49] myself by reminding myself that it was a big blockbuster film and you know at least eight

[48:55] minutes of that would be credits i definitely i savved my wounds yet with that with being

[48:59] like the credits remember the credits don't worry it's the credits did you actually did

[49:02] you guys watch through to the post-credit scene uh i think i know that there is one

[49:07] okay wikipedia i'll tell you about it when we get to it it's maybe the least necessary

[49:11] post-credit scene in the history of a film but okay so uh the movie you think this is

[49:16] where kayla like admits she was wrong and learned her lesson the movie is over nope

[49:21] terence is back in charge he throws tom out of the hotel tom saying sleeps in a cardboard

[49:26] box in the rain while uh that pigeon sings a sad song while flying over new york the

[49:31] next day tom and jerry it's basically this sad song from when howard the duck gets kicked

[49:36] out of uh leah thompson's apartment right and i have to assume it's it it it functions

[49:41] it fills the same evolutionary niche uh as that song uh tom and jerry make peace i don't

[49:46] remember how i don't care uh and kayla and cameron are like attending a street fair or

[49:50] something and cameron tells kayla she's got to stop comparing herself to other people

[49:55] and just be her own great self and she'll get ahead and i was like what movie is this

[49:59] the moral

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

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

[50:06] It's very weird, and there's a little bit of a, like, don't hope above your station shit.

[50:12] Well, I would say the opposite.

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

[50:25] honesty and hard work is important.

[50:27] But then be like, no, psych!

[50:30] Because, like, the whole movie is like, this woman, you know,

[50:35] cheats her way to, I guess, the top of the hospitality world.

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

[50:44] Yeah, and then she briefly...

[50:46] I mean, she hasn't even filled out her union paperwork yet.

[50:48] She briefly fills...

[50:50] There must be some moment when the wedding collapses and Mr. Debrose is like,

[50:53] I didn't even get her W-9 yet.

[50:56] Yeah.

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

[51:01] and just the mere act of feeling bad, everything is forgiven and it's fine.

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

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

[51:11] It's a kid's movie.

[51:12] But, like, there's no idea that you have to, like, sacrifice anything at all.

[51:17] Well, considering it came out around the same time as Soul,

[51:20] ostensibly a kid's movie about how sometimes you have to give up your dreams of being a musician

[51:24] and enjoy the ordinary things in life because you're going to die soon.

[51:28] Like, kids are...

[51:29] There's some world where there's a message between those two movies that is fit for children.

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

[51:40] she was wearing a hair shirt out of contrition or something like that.

[51:43] Maybe she was flagellating herself.

[51:45] Yeah, 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 by arranging a new wedding

[51:55] because, you know what?

[51:56] These two love each other despite the fact that we haven't seen anything really to back that up.

[52:00] We know Ben and Prita 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, like, a date or, like, a hang with this dude for the next day?

[52:12] Here's my guess.

[52:13] Here's my guess.

[52:14] Well, he called her to check in on her where she called him and was like, hey, I need someone with me right now

[52:20] because I need just some help.

[52:22] I think it wasn't like they had a pre-scheduled get-together probably.

[52:26] I don't know.

[52:27] But also you've got to assume the guests at the wedding, they're still going to be at that brunch that was scheduled

[52:32] for the morning after the wedding.

[52:34] But they seem to have disappeared.

[52:36] They're all gone pretty much when we see this replacement wedding.

[52:39] Anyway, first they've got to stop Prita from getting to the airport and flying to wherever these characters came from.

[52:44] Cue the motorized skateboard chase.

[52:47] And this feels like you're just going to watch, like, a level from, like, a Tom and Jerry Super Nintendo game for a while.

[52:52] Yeah.

[52:53] And, yes, and it is the moment where you're like, well, you thought that that motorized skateboard and drone from earlier in the movie were extraneous details.

[53:04] No.

[53:05] The key – like there's nothing extraneous in this clockwork plotting.

[53:09] 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 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 from her wedding.

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

[53:25] High society wedding?

[53:26] Yeah.

[53:28] made me wonder whether a company was going to make profits 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.

[53:37] Like not since any movie about a family about to lose its business that's essentially for kids.

[53:43] Like anyway, I guess I want people who make kids' movies to spend more time with kids so they see what kids are interested in because they're not really that interested in the things that grownups do.

[53:55] But that's OK.

[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 she started from.

[54:10] It's just like –

[54:11] 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 and no – but I guess they're famous.

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

[54:21] Yeah, you can do whatever you want.

[54:22] Money buys.

[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 Peña reacting to it.

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

[54:42] 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.

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

[54:54] It's still a wedding that is well out of the reach of most married couples, this crazy wedding.

[55:05] I don't know if you guys remember, but when I got married in Puerto Rico, Char and I spent ages trying to hire animated animals to attend.

[55:14] The thing is, our wedding planner kept saying they don't exist.

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

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

[55:22] You're like, I want Roger Rabbit to emcee the wedding.

[55:24] What's the matter?

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

[55:27] He's a husband.

[55:29] What about that baby with the cigar then?

[55:31] People would love that baby.

[55:33] That's the thing.

[55:34] I normally say no children at weddings, but that baby has got a real attitude, and I think that would go over well with my crowd.

[55:41] I mean not to reveal too many details about Stuart's wedding, but in real life, your officiant was kind of the grown-up live-action version of the baby from Roger Rabbit.

[55:49] That's true.

[55:51] The rent-a-rabbi who showed up to our wedding did refer to one of our guests loudly as Tatas Grande, which isn't even completely Spanish.

[56:01] But he was in Puerto Rico, so he figured he had to use some kind of language.

[56:05] Yeah, I guess multicultural.

[56:06] What a weirdo.

[56:08] So Kayla introduces Terrence to the woman whose resume she stole at the beginning, and it's implied that they're attracted to each other and that there's like a romance in the offing.

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

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

[56:25] Like that's not a good work environment.

[56:27] No, not at all.

[56:28] But that's for Tom and Jerry 2, Human Resources.

[56:32] The other thing kids love to hear about.

[56:35] By all rights, the movie should be over by now, but it keeps going a little bit longer so that Jerry can screw up Tom's piano playing again, 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 where Ben finds out the hotel is charging 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 after seeing the credits.

[56:57] 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?

[57:04] I would say muted is the right – I would say Buster Keaton-esque deadpan would be the way to describe his reaction to it.

[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 don't know if he –

[57:19] I shall be turned out.

[57:21] I didn't know if he rented them or not.

[57:23] We didn't see a scene where he was fitted for a tuxedo, though I got to assume that they shot it.

[57:27] But yeah, he didn't – he did not get mad.

[57:30] He didn't have to give away his clothes and walk around with a barrel over his shoulder.

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

[57:42] Is there a place on earth where all the toon animals come from and they have toon trees that you can make barrels out of?

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

[57:53] I don't –

[57:55] Yeah, that's a good question, questions that this movie just doesn't answer.

[57:59] But let's do final judgments 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 Loki, this is –

[58:12] The god of mischief, yeah.

[58:13] Coming soon, coming soon to Disney+.

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

[58:17] Oh, shit.

[58:18] I think this is Loki one of the worst movies we've watched, and I'll tell you why.

[58:22] Really?

[58:23] Really?

[58:24] Tell us why, please.

[58:25] 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, and that's what bothers me about –

[58:43] I am not a guy who thinks that all entertainment has to be art in the capital-A art sense.

[58:53] And for kids, certainly – I mean, I think kids deserve quality, but they also have a different idea of what quality is.

[58:58] So that's fine as well.

[59:00] But this movie is – 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.

[59:10] And then they set out to make the least original, least enjoyable version of that.

[59:21] I'm all over the place with whether I want my movies to have messages, how I feel about that.

[59:27] 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 is espousing a bad message, ironically, to make you think about things.

[59:43] Even at times, we'll like something that I think is a very bad message, but has been presented in a thoughtful way, where they've wrestled with something.

[59:52] But this is just a cavalcade of bad messages, I think, that have come up from completely unknown sources.

[1:00:00] examined just like

[1:00:02] let's take the path of least resistance

[1:00:05] stupid

[1:00:06] fucking kids movie

[1:00:08] and it just made me put me in a bad mood

[1:00:11] so i hate this movie is my answer

[1:00:13] what do you guys have to say

[1:00:16] yeah i mean this is obviously clearly a bad movie

[1:00:19] uh... i'm sure there's a moment where i'm like oh it's all takes place in a hotel

[1:00:23] french farce it is

[1:00:25] no such luck

[1:00:27] what i'm gonna say there is there is a moment there's a bit of optimism for me

[1:00:31] maybe maybe

[1:00:33] maybe i'm drunk

[1:00:34] who knows

[1:00:35] this movie makes me think that there's a chance that finally

[1:00:39] somebody's gonna make a mark anthony in pussyfoot movie

[1:00:43] finally

[1:00:44] uh... a cartoon character that i feel represented by mark anthony

[1:00:49] the bulldog who loves a cat and is occasionally berated by a woman with

[1:00:53] beautiful high heels and stockings

[1:00:56] in the cartoon feed the kitty yeah

[1:00:57] yeah uh... so maybe

[1:01:00] maybe there will be a mark anthony movie who knows

[1:01:03] uh...

[1:01:04] i just let i love the idea of this housewife is like

[1:01:06] walking around the kitchen with like these high heels and like classic

[1:01:10] stockings

[1:01:12] mark anthony

[1:01:13] really exactly

[1:01:15] she always thinks he's trying to eat that cat

[1:01:17] uh...

[1:01:19] and he gets so sad when he thinks the cat's in the oven

[1:01:23] if you haven't seen feed the kitty you know it'll be on youtube it's such a

[1:01:27] good cartoon

[1:01:28] i mean it's probably on HBO max i think that's a warner brothers cartoon

[1:01:31] uh... so

[1:01:33] i didn't like this movie i thought it was not very good i did not

[1:01:36] despise it the same way dan did although there was a moment at the end of the

[1:01:40] movie where i was like

[1:01:41] suddenly i kind of left my own body for a moment and was watching myself watching

[1:01:46] spike farting at the wedding

[1:01:48] and was like

[1:01:49] hike why am i watching this yeah what am i watching but that guys there's two

[1:01:53] things there's two things that made me not hate it as much one yet you also

[1:01:57] looked over that giant hourglass that each screen is a represents a moment of

[1:02:01] your life and you're like uh... it's getting closer to death do not do not

[1:02:04] remind me about that hourglass is now every time i watch a flop house movie

[1:02:07] i'm gonna be thinking about it

[1:02:09] uh... i don't buy you that hourglass that was a mistake i'm normally good at

[1:02:13] giving gifts to people i think you were so excited about the idea of finding an

[1:02:16] hourglass maker who could accurately tell you when i was going to die

[1:02:20] and and and personalizes hourglass with the exact time

[1:02:24] i was like the sharper images some really cool stuff

[1:02:30] uh... but

[1:02:31] two things that that were saving graces one is not

[1:02:34] and neither of them are really the movies

[1:02:36] uh... you know

[1:02:37] uh... things become a one

[1:02:39] i did not have to sit and watch this with my children stuck in a theater as

[1:02:43] it was blasted at me through theater speakers

[1:02:46] uh... my i'd briefly before i watched it considered watching this with

[1:02:50] my older son just i was like oh maybe he would enjoy this if we watch together

[1:02:54] glad we didn't

[1:02:55] uh... but two

[1:02:57] if you're gonna make

[1:02:58] i'm not very good movie about a legacy animated cartoon character

[1:03:02] and it's gonna totally be full of messages i don't agree with and and

[1:03:06] messy plotting

[1:03:07] so much happier for to happen to tom and jerry than to the looney tunes characters

[1:03:11] who i love like watching this movie i was like

[1:03:13] but you know what i don't like tom and jerry if this is like a bugs bunny movie

[1:03:16] i would be livid

[1:03:17] i'd be so mad yeah so at least the only like

[1:03:20] it's like if they make a bad movie that's about heckling jackal

[1:03:23] so be it who cares for jinx another guy

[1:03:25] but if it's about if they made a bad movie about like uh...

[1:03:29] daffy duck

[1:03:30] i'd be real mad so i'm glad that this is a tom and jerry movie

[1:03:34] uh... actually think uh...

[1:03:36] that we're gonna have to watch space jam two for this podcast yeah probably

[1:03:40] probably

[1:03:40] now i wanted to say uh...

[1:03:42] it's just gonna be dan complaining about the lola bunny redesign

[1:03:47] i can't masturbate to this bunny

[1:03:50] you can

[1:03:51] i mean i can but it's a realistic masturbation it's more of a relationship

[1:03:54] masturbate rather than a fantasy

[1:03:58] a realistic masturbation wait it's more realistic well you're masturbating to the lola bunny

[1:04:02] the new lola bunny you're masturbating to the fact that you'd probably really get along

[1:04:05] with her you'd have a lot in common you'd enjoy being around her

[1:04:08] and there's a long-term relationship potential whereas the old lola bunny was just like

[1:04:12] just a one night stand fuck that you just you know it was so dirty and so wrong and he just loved it so much

[1:04:18] you know that sounds pretty sweet to me why did i start this no what i wanted to say was

[1:04:25] what i wanted to say was the no uh...

[1:04:27] audrey asked like she's like oh if you had to make

[1:04:30] a tom and jerry movie

[1:04:32] how would you make it work and i like

[1:04:33] told her something and then i realized

[1:04:35] i'd basically

[1:04:37] like i don't know whether i unconsciously stole it from brendan or just like came up with it on my own

[1:04:44] and then remembered

[1:04:45] but brendan hay our

[1:04:46] uh... pal who has been on the show and uh...

[1:04:50] you know

[1:04:51] uh... was one of your groomsmen elliot like he wrote that

[1:04:53] we're currently we were pitching a project just the other week together two

[1:04:57] warner brothers so i should not have bad mouthed the tom and jerry movie i guess

[1:05:00] but uh... he wrote that rascal raccoon book

[1:05:03] which was basically what i

[1:05:05] sort of thought like

[1:05:06] well you know what would be fun would be to see the characters realize they're

[1:05:09] caught in this sort of endless cycle

[1:05:11] and then turn their ire at the cartoonist who has

[1:05:15] uh... put them there and that's uh... sort of similar to the premise of

[1:05:19] of uh... his uh... that's what he wrote

[1:05:22] that's very that's very much what his book rascal rabbit address records are

[1:05:25] it's uh... rascal raccoons raging revenge i think so it's called

[1:05:29] uh... which i wrote the afterword for

[1:05:31] uh...

[1:05:32] you should it's well worth picking up

[1:05:33] i think 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 there's a mouse there his name's

[1:05:39] jerry tom wants to get rid of the mouse that's your movie like done

[1:05:43] like that's all you need

[1:05:44] make it seventy minutes at most

[1:05:46] yes and you deal with the father's drinking problem

[1:05:49] the fact that he's accidentally blinded his daughter in a car crash

[1:05:52] exactly yes there's a freak of some kind in the cellar of the house

[1:05:58] they had a son who died in the car crash as well the mother and the father have been

[1:06:02] growing distant ever since then so jerry is short for georgio

[1:06:07] the mouse freak that lives in the cellar

[1:06:11] oh we did it

[1:06:13] we cracked the code

[1:06:19] hey i'm janet farney host of the jv club podcast

[1:06:23] ah high school

[1:06:24] was it a time of

[1:06:26] adventure romance and discovery

[1:06:31] or

[1:06:33] a time of angst

[1:06:34] disappointment and confusion we're all tied together by four years of trauma at

[1:06:39] this place but enjoy adulthood i guess

[1:06:43] the truth is

[1:06:44] it was both

[1:06:46] so join me on the jv club podcast where i invite some great friends like

[1:06:50] kristin bell, angela kinsey, oscar nuñez, neil patrick harris and keegun michael key

[1:06:54] 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

[1:07:02] the jv club 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

[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

[1:07:23] what are you going to do now match?

[1:07:25] i'm going to go listen to the newest episode of the tights and fights podcast

[1:07:30] tell us more about this podcast

[1:07:31] it's the podcast of power too sweet to be sour funky like a monkey

[1:07:36] woke discussions man and jokes about wrestlers fashion choices

[1:07:41] myself excluded

[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 dig it

[1:07:52] now it is time to do a few messages from our sponsors the flop house is

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[1:09:19] i stopped doing that voice

[1:09:21] in the middle because it sounded like i was doing something

[1:09:23] creepy online rather than

[1:09:25] just being you know a fan of privacy

[1:09:27] yes he he he yup

[1:09:29] so uh... sometimes a caricature caricature choice can come you can bite you in the ass

[1:09:34] is what i'm saying

[1:09:35] the flop house is

[1:09:37] also sponsored in part by square space

[1:09:40] you can use square space to create a beautiful website to showcase your new

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[1:10:13] to launch, use the offer code FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or

[1:10:19] domain.

[1:10:20] Now, Dan, I had an idea for a website and I was wondering if Squarespace might – actually

[1:10:24] two websites and I was wondering if Squarespace might be able to help me with either or both

[1:10:27] of them.

[1:10:28] I love your ambition.

[1:10:29] Let's hear about it.

[1:10:30] Okay.

[1:10:31] So the first – Dan, let's just face it.

[1:10:33] If you're a cat who's got musical dreams, it's hard to land a gig.

[1:10:37] You can't talk.

[1:10:38] You can write a little bit and let's just face it, you're naked and people are loath

[1:10:44] 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.

[1:10:54] Just try it.

[1:10:55] Go see a Yo-Yo Ma show.

[1:10:56] He will be wearing pants.

[1:10:58] 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

[1:11:09] let's say you're looking for a cat to perform at your venue, event, holiday party,

[1:11:14] 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

[1:11:22] a French horn.

[1:11:23] This is your place to go, www.FelineGig.com.

[1:11:26] I was hoping that it would scale to like phones and tablets automatically.

[1:11:29] Do you think Squarespace will be able to handle that?

[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 but –

[1:11:40] Well, then maybe this is more up your alley, 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.

[1:11:53] Who are you going to turn to?

[1:11:54] We are the doctors who can help you with this problem and we are other sufferers that you

[1:11:57] can share notes with, maybe share pictures and videos with and compare your stories.

[1:12:01] Well, that's at www.CartoonPoopMD.com.

[1:12:05] 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

[1:12:11] 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

[1:12:19] out of you.

[1:12:20] It should be live action poop.

[1:12:21] Now, CartoonPoopMD.com is not a substitute for actual medical advice.

[1:12:25] It is just a place to go to share your experiences and maybe get referrals or recommendations

[1:12:29] 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?

[1:12:36] I will invest some thought in it for now.

[1:12:39] How about that?

[1:12:40] I was skeptical until I heard Elliot lock up on a rhyme there.

[1:12:48] What to do when cartoon poop comes out of you?

[1:12:52] That's suddenly our slogan all of a sudden.

[1:12:56] Those are our two fine sponsors, but we also have a couple of jumbotrons up on the big

[1:13:01] jumbotron board.

[1:13:02] It looks like Stuart has one queued up.

[1:13:05] Okay, j-j-j-j-j-jumbotron, get out.

[1:13:10] Happy egregious 50th, you sorry vanilla rimmer.

[1:13:16] Thanks for being the best of mates and for putting me onto this batshit crazy podcast.

[1:13:24] 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.

[1:13:33] To many more beers and many more years of taking the piss out of your sorry ass.

[1:13:40] Go manly.

[1:13:41] This is a message for Dave and the message is from Dallas.

[1:13:47] I'm assuming that's all taken in a positive way, 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, the piss

[1:13:55] should not be coming out of your ass.

[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 become so disgusting?

[1:14:07] I don't know.

[1:14:08] It was the most scatological and urological one.

[1:14:11] They put the cat in scatological.

[1:14:13] I have another jumbotron, hey guys.

[1:14:16] So this is for Dan Pollard.

[1:14:18] What if they put the ska in scatological?

[1:14:21] Well that would be like deet deet deet deet deet but it's all fart sounds.

[1:14:24] Okay 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 so this jumbotron is for Dan Pollard.

[1:14:34] It is from Lily and it goes like this.

[1:14:36] Happy birthday you goof, 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

[1:14:43] dope girlfriend.

[1:14:44] You're a beautiful brilliant badass and you can do this as well as anything else you put

[1:14:48] your mind to.

[1:14:49] Here's to many more years together that are hopefully not quarantined.

[1:14:52] Yeah.

[1:14:53] We all hope that.

[1:14:56] From Lily to Dan Pollard.

[1:14:58] Couple of nice messages that we probably ruined.

[1:15:02] Probably what with our poop and pee talk in between them.

[1:15:06] Hey guys, I had something I wanted to promote.

[1:15:08] Can I talk about that?

[1:15:09] Sure.

[1:15:10] Please.

[1:15:11] Yeah, why not?

[1:15:12] Sure.

[1:15:13] I'll talk about two things actually.

[1:15:14] 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

[1:15:20] 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 Muti on art, Maniac of New

[1:15:27] York.

[1:15:28] It's like The Wire meets Jason kind of.

[1:15:32] The second printing of Maniac of New York number one should also be in stores.

[1:15:35] The first issue sold out, so I 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

[1:15:46] when we were talking about-

[1:15:47] You don't sound that sorry.

[1:15:48] 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,

[1:15:55] number two on shelves now, is the TV show that I worked on last year.

[1:16:00] It's a Fox animated show called Housebroken.

[1:16:02] The air date for the first premiere episode is announced and that is May 31st.

[1:16:06] So stay tuned for Housebroken on Fox.

[1:16:09] I worked on it.

[1:16:10] 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 along?

[1:16:17] 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

[1:16:25] Bar in Kensington, Brooklyn.

[1:16:28] And if you are not anywhere near there and you want to support, you can always email

[1:16:31] 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.

[1:16:44] Nice.

[1:16:45] Okay.

[1:16:46] Offering international shipping.

[1:16:48] What?

[1:16:49] Wow.

[1:16:50] Wow.

[1:16:51] Wow.

[1:16:52] Oh.

[1:16:53] Wow.

[1:16:54] Wow.

[1:16:55] Unlucky.

[1:16:56] So now it's time to answer a few letters from listeners.

[1:17:01] We're out there in the world listening to us.

[1:17:04] We can talk to you, but normally you can't talk to us, except right now, but only in

[1:17:09] a very limited way.

[1:17:11] It's letters.

[1:17:12] Elliot, you had this look on his face like he was just sort of fact-checking everything

[1:17:17] I said.

[1:17:18] No, it works out.

[1:17:19] It works out.

[1:17:20] Yeah.

[1:17:21] Okay.

[1:17:22] Well, this first letter.

[1:17:23] 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 until you see what happens to all the

[1:17:33] octopus and the super herpes outbreak 2025.

[1:17:36] 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

[1:17:47] the inevitable.

[1:17:50] We have made a strong decision in our family house that there will be no more children

[1:17:53] entering our family.

[1:17:54] So if there are, it is accidental, and I apologize to any future children who are hearing this

[1:17:59] You were an accident.

[1:18:00] We still love you.

[1:18:01] Unplanned.

[1:18:02] Very unplanned.

[1:18:03] I mean, I don't want to jump ahead in the letter, but I'm assuming he's going to mention

[1:18:06] his two weird uncles, Stuart and Dan.

[1:18:12] 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

[1:18:18] 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

[1:18:24] 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

[1:18:36] 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, and why is it misunderstanding-based

[1:18:54] humor?

[1:18:55] I agree, Dad.

[1:18:56] Gabe, last name withheld could be Kalen.

[1:18:58] I agree.

[1:18:59] I mean, please.

[1:19:00] I mean, one, Gabe, I'm very proud of the man you grew up to be in the future and now in

[1:19:03] the past and your disappreciation of misunderstanding-based humor.

[1:19:07] I approve of that.

[1:19:08] Thank you.

[1:19:09] I hope you still have your interest in spooky things, which seems to be mainly what you're

[1:19:13] interested in now, holiday decorations, particularly Halloween ones.

[1:19:17] Yeah.

[1:19:18] I mean, I agree with this on misunderstanding.

[1:19:19] I mean, the first thing that came to mind was slightly related but slightly, well, very

[1:19:26] related but slightly different is when people are trying to explain themselves, the trope

[1:19:31] where they're like, if you'll just give me a moment, hold on, just, but just let me,

[1:19:35] instead of just saying like the one sentence that would clear everything up, like, it was

[1:19:40] my sister or that person's actually dead, I'm running from the cops or whatever the

[1:19:46] like-

[1:19:47] She was choking and I was giving her mouth to mouth.

[1:19:50] Instead of being like, but if you would just give us a minute, oh, as the door closes.

[1:19:53] I must, I must fluster for 30 seconds before I say anything.

[1:19:58] But what are you guys's?

[1:20:00] I also am not a fan of misunderstanding-based humor for the most part for that reason, 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, prophecies, badass assassins,

[1:20:20] movies where there's 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,

[1:20:29] 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,

[1:20:44] and they're embarrassed because the dinner goes – like your boss is coming over for dinner, and things aren't going the way they want.

[1:20:51] And it's 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.

[1:21:01] Like maybe if you're – maybe I'm wrong.

[1:21:03] 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.

[1:21:09] But I've never been in a situation where I've had to like impress an employer outside of the office.

[1:21:14] No, I don't think that's a thing that happens.

[1:21:17] Well, I don't know.

[1:21:21] I mean I've definitely had dinners with – I don't know.

[1:21:24] You're probably right.

[1:21:25] You're probably right.

[1:21:26] Yeah, I mean I was going to say because I'm not feeling overly creative right now.

[1:21:31] I think I'm going to complain about the drama version of that trope, the misunderstanding trope, and that's the – every character has to have some elaborate lie that they're keeping from someone else.

[1:21:45] Otherwise, 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 connecting each other 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 or if this person is like, 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, no, I'm going to tell him because he's my boss or whatever, that sort of thing.

[1:22:16] It's often weirder to keep the secret than it is to just tell someone what happened.

[1:22:20] It is, and I get that sometimes there's something hot about it.

[1:22:23] But no, cut it out.

[1:22:25] Not every time.

[1:22:27] That reminded me of a trope that I actually genuinely do like.

[1:22:32] But it was funny.

[1:22:33] I saw it in a movie I watched – recently I watched Masquerade.

[1:22:37] My friends Tom and Aaron were running some 90s and late 80s thrillers, nostalgia thrillers.

[1:22:45] And this one has Rob Lowe and Meg Tilly and Kim Cattrall in it.

[1:22:49] It's not – it's got a lot of people in it.

[1:22:51] It's not very good at all.

[1:22:52] But it has this trope where, like, two characters meet in the movie and you realize that they've been working together the whole time, which is always fun.

[1:23:01] Like this movie's plot makes no sense.

[1:23:03] It's actually pretty bad but fun to watch.

[1:23:05] But, like, that happens twice in the movie.

[1:23:08] I just like that the film had the audacity to have it happen two times, like have one character suddenly be like, oh, they know each other and they've been working together again.

[1:23:19] It's great.

[1:23:20] I think something that has been getting to me in more modern TV shows because I realize 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 show is about until the very end of the first episode and it's always like –

[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 it has to be a big fucking cliffhanger.

[1:23:45] I don't know.

[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 Rooker is fucking great in it.

[1:23:52] It's a solid if not exceptional actioner from the 90s.

[1:23:56] But if there's – it's like that show, that Fred Armisen, Maya Rudolph show where they were a couple that ends up in heaven or whatever and that the first episode ends with Fred Armisen dying and then I'm like – I was like forget it.

[1:24:08] I'm not watching the next – like if you can't tell me the premise of the show in the first episode, you don't need me to stick around for the second episode.

[1:24:14] I got so mad.

[1:24:16] That reminded me of one I don't like where they start a show with something exciting happening and then it's like one day earlier 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 a slice of cake up front.

[1:24:34] But I've seen it so many times now.

[1:24:37] Come on.

[1:24:38] Let's – I don't need that.

[1:24:39] What's this?

[1:24:40] A chapter in a George R.R. Martin novel?

[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 then turns to the camera and is like, hey, you're probably wondering how this happened.

[1:24:49] I think – it's so weird how I love that in Thor Ragnarok and never anywhere else and like the – it is presented not that differently than it is in other places but with enough of a spin that you know that the movie knows that this is silly.

[1:25:10] Yeah, and we were talking about Marvel movies which – and the previous Thor movies which had not been silly.

[1:25:16] Yeah.

[1:25:17] Okay.

[1:25:18] So the second and final letter is from Julie Last Name Withheld who writes, about 25 years 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 woman with backpack and all.

[1:25:35] The bartender asked me what I wanted and I had no idea.

[1:25:39] The only alcohol I'd ever had before this was Manischewitz.

[1:25:43] I asked for the first beer I could think of, Bud Light.

[1:25:46] I was literally laughed out of there.

[1:25:49] How many of you have ever experienced a movie cliche in real life?

[1:25:53] Love always, Julie.

[1:25:56] A couple years ago, I had to leave my family to go on a work trip, and I was in a cab on the way to the airport, and my family – we were visiting New Jersey, New York where my relatives live, and I had to leave to go to Atlanta to work on a TV show.

[1:26:13] So I was leaving my family behind with my relatives, and on the way to the airport, the taxicab radio was playing Cats in the Cradle, and I was like, come on.

[1:26:21] Come on, reality.

[1:26:22] Don't play the soundtrack from the movie at me right now.

[1:26:25] Yeah.

[1:26:26] Yeah, the inverse.

[1:26:28] Whenever I'm bartending, if somebody is like, give me a beer, I'm like, I definitely need to see ID.

[1:26:35] Either that or – that also makes me think of the time back in – right after college, I was dating a woman who was working at a summer camp, and I would have to – at night, I'd have to sneak onto the camp so that we could hang out, and that was very much – any moment, I'm like, Jason is 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.

[1:27:02] Thank goodness.

[1:27:03] I'm so relieved.

[1:27:04] I had a hard time.

[1:27:06] The best thing I can come up with is the – with Audrey, we dated briefly.

[1:27:14] Then we were just friends for a long time, and then we sort of realized we wanted to be together, and I feel like that is a very TV trope, romantic comedy thing.

[1:27:28] It is because it does happen.

[1:27:29] People are friends first and then move into relationships, but I do think it happens way more in fiction than it often does in real life because in fiction – in real life, I feel like oftentimes – I don't know.

[1:27:45] People grow comfortable with a certain type of relationship with another person and fear the alteration of that too much for it to change.

[1:27:55] Yeah.

[1:27:56] It's like how Elliot's always complaining about when you were younger, you'd always get stuck in the friend zone or something.

[1:28:01] Yeah, the way Elliot was just like posted on all his message boards about being –

[1:28:05] Yeah, yeah.

[1:28:06] I have a manifesto about it.

[1:28:07] Anyone who wants to read it, please contact me.

[1:28:09] I have some big plans that are going to bring a lot of attention to it.

[1:28:12] Oh, boy.

[1:28:13] That's too dark.

[1:28:14] Something about living in a society.

[1:28:15] No.

[1:28:16] Have you guys seen this Joker movie?

[1:28:20] That's bad.

[1:28:22] Any young men who are listening to this, this is a bad, poisonous thing.

[1:28:26] Yeah, never take what I have to say for – yeah, don't listen to me.

[1:28:30] I'm an idiot.

[1:28:31] Well, it's one of the reasons that – one of the cliches that I mentioned for the last question that I hate is the one where like some kind of cool, badass assassin girl or whatever, like there's a loser – basically wanted.

[1:28:43] Like there's some loser normal guy who is picked out as being super special and now he's being – going to be like protected by a sort of badass assassin mom girlfriend who recognizes the special part of him and now – like or the lonely guy who keeps harassing his friend basically until she falls in love with him.

[1:29:04] Like that's all toxic stuff.

[1:29:05] Yeah.

[1:29:06] It's all bad stuff.

[1:29:07] It's bad messages.

[1:29:08] Joe Letruglio's character from Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the first season basically.

[1:29:10] I would say – or I would say like the movie Say Anything to a certain extent that like – or things like that.

[1:29:16] Like if you're in a – if you're with someone and they don't want to be around you, hanging outside their window with a boombox playing the song they lost their virginity to you to is not – that's harassment.

[1:29:26] Like that's not cute.

[1:29:27] Yeah.

[1:29:28] Unless John Cusack does it because look at those puppy dog eyes.

[1:29:31] Yeah.

[1:29:32] So that was our little – the more you know.

[1:29:35] It's so bad for the puppy dog that had to give up its eyes.

[1:29:37] I know.

[1:29:38] Down that it was a donor.

[1:29:39] It's on its license.

[1:29:41] Weirdly, he got Jerry Orbach's eyes.

[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.

[1:29:50] 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, it's all right there.

[1:30:02] So, okay, well let's go to recommendations of movies

[1:30:07] I would definitely say you should watch

[1:30:08] instead of Tom and Jerry.

[1:30:11] You know, do what you like.

[1:30:13] So Dan's recommending Joker.

[1:30:15] Yeah, Dan says just put a fucking frozen pizza

[1:30:18] in the oven and watch it cook.

[1:30:19] That's more exciting than Tom and Jerry the movie.

[1:30:24] No, I wanted to, so our network, Maximum Fun,

[1:30:29] one of the shows on there is Reading Glasses,

[1:30:31] which is co-hosted by Bria Grant,

[1:30:34] who I have never had the pleasure

[1:30:36] of chatting with or meeting,

[1:30:38] but she is an actor, director, writer,

[1:30:44] and there are a couple of new movies

[1:30:46] she was heavily involved with out right now.

[1:30:49] There's one called Lucky that she wrote and starred in,

[1:30:53] but it's not direct, that is on Shudder,

[1:30:56] and it is very hard to explain.

[1:31:00] It is a very metaphorical horror movie

[1:31:02] to put you in the mind of sort of a woman

[1:31:05] who is basically just being gaslit by society at large,

[1:31:10] and it is harrowing, but also kind of very darkly funny

[1:31:17] and upsetting, and I liked it so much

[1:31:21] that that same night I watched another movie,

[1:31:25] one that she directed and wrote,

[1:31:28] did not star in, Angela Betts from May is in it,

[1:31:31] it's on Hulu, it's called 12 Hour Shift,

[1:31:34] which was also very good in a totally different way.

[1:31:37] It's more of a kind of noir, like splatter noir,

[1:31:43] dumb people get way in over their heads,

[1:31:46] kind of like early Coen Brothers,

[1:31:48] but a little goofier than that maybe.

[1:31:53] Both very fun, about someone in a hospital

[1:31:55] 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.

[1:32:07] I'm gonna recommend a movie that I think

[1:32:09] one of you guys recommended previously,

[1:32:11] but I think it's topical, partly because

[1:32:14] I think it's just a great movie to watch with your family,

[1:32:16] and that's a movie from 1971, it's Ken Russell's The Devils.

[1:32:20] Wow.

[1:32:21] Yeah, I'm bringing it up because

[1:32:23] it just recently hit Shudder,

[1:32:25] and I think I watched it as a teenager,

[1:32:28] but I really didn't give a shit about it at the time,

[1:32:30] but now I re-watched it, and it's really great.

[1:32:33] I think it's the R-rated cut, it's not the X-rated cut

[1:32:36] that is not available in the United States

[1:32:38] through normal means.

[1:32:40] I think I saw the uncut version at the Alamo

[1:32:45] as a special screening, but I think it's a great movie.

[1:32:49] But I think that sort of thing is what you have to do.

[1:32:52] Yeah, well, the R-rated version is very good.

[1:32:55] It's on Shudder, I highly recommend it.

[1:32:57] It's the story of a 17th century city

[1:33:02] and a priest who, through political machinations,

[1:33:05] gets accused of witchcraft, and it's really great,

[1:33:08] and it's pretty intense, and I don't know,

[1:33:12] maybe it was just the pandemic horniness,

[1:33:17] but man, Oliver Reed can get it, man.

[1:33:20] I was watching that, and I'm like,

[1:33:22] maybe I should grow my mustache again, and you know.

[1:33:24] I mean, he is like a big bull of a man.

[1:33:27] Yeah, and I'm paraphrasing here,

[1:33:30] but there's this scene when he's accused of witchcraft,

[1:33:33] and he's like, I could never be the plaything of the devil.

[1:33:37] I lack the humility for it, and I'm sitting there

[1:33:41] eating mango slices with my fingers, and I'm like, same.

[1:33:45] You know?

[1:33:47] Yeah.

[1:33:49] So yeah, The Devil's on Shudder, check it out.

[1:33:52] I think, Stuart, you owe it to yourselves

[1:33:53] to see the movie Women in Love

[1:33:55] just for the Oliver Reed, Alan Bates, nude wrestling scene.

[1:33:58] Whoa, okay.

[1:33:59] Just get ready for it.

[1:34:00] I am gonna recommend a movie also.

[1:34:03] This is the movie I watched

[1:34:04] right before watching Tom and Jerry,

[1:34:06] and a more different movie, it was hard for me to imagine,

[1:34:08] 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, it's an underground movie

[1:34:16] written and directed by Lizzie Borden,

[1:34:18] not the Lizzie Borden who killed her parents

[1:34:20] in the 19th century.

[1:34:21] This is a different person, and it is about,

[1:34:25] it takes place in kind of the near future,

[1:34:28] but also very much late 70s, early 80s New York City.

[1:34:32] There is a proudly socialist democratic government

[1:34:36] in charge that keeps talking about

[1:34:38] how there was a revolution and everything's better now,

[1:34:40] but in actuality, it is just another form

[1:34:42] of the same kind of kind of soft liberalism

[1:34:45] that doesn't really affect the real problems

[1:34:48] of inequality in society, and this group of women

[1:34:51] become essentially an underground guerrilla group

[1:34:54] 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

[1:35:01] that kind of dissolves into a fake news story,

[1:35:04] which might dissolve into a scene with other characters

[1:35:07] who are surveilling the characters from the original scene.

[1:35:10] It's told in a very like, almost kind of like

[1:35:15] if a movie was done in the same manner

[1:35:17] as like the backups in Watchmen in a sort of way.

[1:35:20] It's a lot of like, feels like you're looking,

[1:35:22] you're kind of sifting through the found elements

[1:35:24] of this kind of slightly different from our own world,

[1:35:29] and there were a lot of things about it

[1:35:30] that felt very relevant and topical to now.

[1:35:32] It really reminded me a lot that a lot of things

[1:35:34] that are bubbling to the surface of politics now

[1:35:37] have always been there, and only in the 80s,

[1:35:39] in the early 80s, they were more,

[1:35:41] they had not yet bubbled to that surface,

[1:35:43] and at the end, it even kind of seems to predict

[1:35:46] that this kind of action will lead

[1:35:48] to a conservative backlash of a sort.

[1:35:51] Anyway, I thought it was a really good movie.

[1:35:55] It's a real punk-feeling movie,

[1:35:56] and there's early, very young appearances in it

[1:35:59] by Eric Boghossian and director Catherine Bigelow,

[1:36:04] amazing in an acting role,

[1:36:06] but I thought it was really good.

[1:36:07] 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.

[1:36:12] Now, Elliot, you mentioned that it's a world

[1:36:13] slightly different than our own.

[1:36:14] Is one of the differences that Jim Carrey went on

[1:36:17] to make the Fire Marshal Bill series of movies

[1:36:20] instead of Ace Ventura, or is that not addressed?

[1:36:23] No, no, that is just off-camera.

[1:36:24] You see someone passing by a poster

[1:36:26] 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-

[1:36:34] I mean, saying fire three times,

[1:36:36] that's perfect for the third movie in a series.

[1:36:38] For the third one, yeah.

[1:36:38] Well, the first one's called Fire Marshal Bill in Fire,

[1:36:40] second one, Fire Marshal Bill in Fire Fire,

[1:36:43] and the fourth one's 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] Now, that reminds me of the book, The Secret Policemen's,

[1:36:54] the Yiddish, not Secret Policemen's,

[1:36:55] The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon,

[1:36:58] where it is an alternate reality

[1:36:59] where there is a Jewish colony in Alaska

[1:37:01] after World War II, and for some reason,

[1:37:04] that also means it's a world where Orson Welles

[1:37:05] made his film version of Heart of Darkness,

[1:37:07] and that's just kind of thrown out as a detail

[1:37:09] in the moot book, and I've always wanted

[1:37:10] to ask Michael Chabon, how are those two,

[1:37:13] why is that the other difference about that universe?

[1:37:16] Yeah, yeah, no, it is interesting.

[1:37:18] I read that, too, and I'm like,

[1:37:20] so is this just one of those fun indicators

[1:37:23] that this is a different world we're in,

[1:37:25] or is somehow there a direct correlation

[1:37:28] between the Jewish state in Alaska

[1:37:31] and the making of this film?

[1:37:32] We'll never know until, I guess, the TV series comes out

[1:37:35] where they have to flesh all that,

[1:37:37] or maybe the prequel,

[1:37:38] The Yiddish Policemen's Ununionized Organization,

[1:37:42] where they haven't yet become a union.

[1:37:45] Oh, the prequel, yeah, that's it.

[1:37:46] Yeah, the prequels.

[1:37:47] The prequels are always really good.

[1:37:48] Prequels are always great.

[1:37:50] Hey, guys, thanks for being here.

[1:37:53] Thank you, listeners, for listening.

[1:37:54] Thank you to Jordan Cowling for editing this,

[1:37:58] making it sound real nice for you.

[1:38:01] I don't know what that voice was.

[1:38:02] 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,

[1:38:11] even though Tom and Jerry was a real downer for me.

[1:38:16] We had to, we were like, can we put,

[1:38:19] we were gonna record this pretty soon

[1:38:21] after I finished watching,

[1:38:22] and we were both like, let's watch something else

[1:38:24] to take the taste of Tom and Jerry out of our mouths.

[1:38:27] I think you might need a little bit more cushion time

[1:38:30] between the movie and the recording in the future.

[1:38:32] Yeah.

[1:38:33] Came in with that angry energy, but yeah, yeah.

[1:38:36] Well, you shouldn't have picked Manchester by the sea

[1:38:38] as your pick-me-up.

[1:38:39] Yeah.

[1:38:45] Okay, well.

[1:38:47] What's gonna cleanse the palate here?

[1:38:52] Let me listen to this Adele album to cheer up.

[1:38:55] No, thank you so much for listening.

[1:38:57] Head over to MaximumFun.org

[1:39:00] to check out other great podcasts,

[1:39:04] review us on iTunes, tweet about us,

[1:39:06] but until next time, I have been Dan McCoy.

[1:39:10] As always, now and forever,

[1:39:12] until the end of time, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:39:15] And I'm Elliot Kalen, technically an animated character.

[1:39:19] See ya.

[1:39:20] Bye.

[1:39:27] Oh, wow, now he's jamming.

[1:39:29] Oh, man, we got.

[1:39:30] Oh, Dan's right.

[1:39:31] Oh, give him some, give him some drums, yeah, yeah.

[1:39:35] Yeah, just slapping his own arms.

Ep. #337 - Tom & Jerry

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