The Flop House: Episode #159 - Walking with Dinosaurs

[0:00] On this episode, we open the door, get on the floor, and review walking with dinosaurs.

[0:31] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:35] Hey, Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] I'm not Elliot Kalin.

[0:40] What the? Opa!

[0:41] I'm sorry.

[0:42] I did not look over at this third chair until now.

[0:46] This Elliot Kalin disguise worked all too well.

[0:50] I waited until after the movie to tell you I'm Kevin Marr.

[0:53] Yeah, well, we should...

[0:54] I'm Kevin Marr.

[0:55] Originally, let's be honest here.

[0:58] Originally, this was going to be a forehand or one of the rare forehand Flophouses.

[1:02] Oh, the rarest of pleasures.

[1:04] But what happened was Elliot was called away.

[1:10] This is the TMI portion of the episode.

[1:13] His child was ill.

[1:14] Sure.

[1:15] I don't know whether it's too early to call Sammy the Yoko of the Flophouse.

[1:19] Oh, wow.

[1:20] Sammy, Flophouse Ruiner Kalin, yeah.

[1:24] But, no, the poor, poor child.

[1:27] We feel bad for him.

[1:29] Yeah, dude, I hope he's okay.

[1:31] Yeah, no, I'd fucking egg on my face if he's very sick.

[1:36] More than that.

[1:37] You're terrible.

[1:38] But, no.

[1:39] Elliot couldn't be here due to family issues.

[1:42] Yeah, luckily.

[1:43] Let's put it that way.

[1:44] We were already going to have a guest, so it all worked out well.

[1:47] And, Kevin, I would say that we know you from your Kevin Geeks Out live show, which all of us have appeared on.

[1:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:57] I was on Sharks.

[1:59] You've got Jaws.

[2:01] Yeah, my Jaws, the Nintendo game PowerPoint thing.

[2:05] Elliot, who's not here, has done his Nuki thing.

[2:09] Kevin Geeks Out about aliens.

[2:10] Many times.

[2:12] And I appeared on your show talking about when Ron Reicher tweeted at me.

[2:18] But, in a larger sense, tell us about yourself.

[2:22] Who are you?

[2:23] Why are you in my apartment?

[2:25] Why are you looking at us weird?

[2:27] I'm a writer-comedian who fell into that traffic lane of knowing about pop culture and movies and weird science fiction and horror stuff.

[2:39] The more you do it, the more you take on that identity.

[2:44] Now you're trapped by it.

[2:46] Now I'm trapped by it.

[2:47] It's like wearing too many sweaters.

[2:49] I always say I was hired by AMC to do a web series about science fiction movies called The Sci-Fi Department.

[2:57] It was always supposed to be this tongue-in-cheek thing of the horror movie shirts I would wear.

[3:04] I went to Comic-Con in one episode, and it was called the Obligatory Comic-Con episode.

[3:09] I go to the press room, and the room is filled with all these guys who are going to be on camera doing this thing that I'm always sort of doing a parody of.

[3:19] I'm surrounded by them, and it was like, oh, God.

[3:21] But now I'm here with them.

[3:23] Oh, God, the joke is on me.

[3:24] I've become one of them by doing this kind of thing.

[3:27] That's a valuable persona in this Internet world.

[3:31] Big Bang Theory is huge, bro.

[3:33] People love that stuff.

[3:37] So, yeah, I'm like a Brooklyn grassroots Big Bang Theory kind of guy.

[3:43] Cool guy.

[3:44] Cool dad.

[3:45] We'll get to that later.

[3:46] Yeah, you're a cool dad.

[3:47] Like a Liam Neeson.

[3:49] Did it hurt you inside to hear me make fun of Elliot?

[3:53] No.

[3:54] What's fascinating is it's great that having a kid, you're going to be forced to watch so many horrible movies.

[4:00] Elliot's going to have to see The Smurfs 3.

[4:04] He's going to have to see so many terrible films.

[4:07] And now his son is actually preventing him from watching tonight's movie.

[4:12] Which is a movie that you actually saw with your children.

[4:15] My children demanded we see it.

[4:17] Which Elliot totally would have hated but dug in a weird way because he is the biggest dinosaur.

[4:23] He loves the dinosaurs.

[4:25] Yeah, we should say what movie we watched tonight.

[4:27] We watched Walking with Dinosaurs.

[4:30] Walking with all of the dinosaurs.

[4:32] And there was a lot of walking in this movie, I've got to say.

[4:34] Yep, aptly named.

[4:36] Probably as much walking as there was dinosaurs.

[4:39] But, Stuart, you thought, hey, let's get Kevin on this show.

[4:44] Yeah, well, Kevin saw it with his children and then began a...

[4:49] About a year ago, a little less than a year ago.

[4:51] And then you put on some kind of a vigilante garb and began a one-man war through social media against this movie.

[4:59] Oh, yeah, it was the most traction I've ever gotten.

[5:03] And now I'm being booked on podcasts and being invited on and it's going to be my parenthetical.

[5:10] Kevin Maher, hater of Walking with Dinosaurs.

[5:13] Well, you're rebranding yourself at this point.

[5:16] It's such a pleasure for me to finally watch it with other people.

[5:20] It's the thing, you know, anytime you see something horrible, you can go online and you can say, ah, this is terrible.

[5:25] And all these people can chime in.

[5:26] I know, right?

[5:27] But it was this unique situation that I saw at opening weekend with my kids.

[5:31] And I would talk about how horrible.

[5:33] No one had seen it.

[5:34] So it was so isolated.

[5:36] Because we knew.

[5:37] So I just had to keep putting it out there in the world.

[5:40] And the world responded.

[5:41] And it was one of those things people loved.

[5:44] People were so amused by my hatred.

[5:46] They loved seeing me suffer.

[5:48] I think we tweeted a picture of a guy selling a bootleg copy on the subway.

[5:52] And you were like, get away from me.

[5:54] Yeah, everywhere you look.

[5:56] Were you worried?

[5:58] It was just like, no, is it only my madness?

[6:02] Is it just me?

[6:03] Did you need the confirmation of sharing?

[6:06] Did you have to share the disease?

[6:08] Are you worried that it closed a lot of occupational doors for you?

[6:12] Do you think you lost a lot of opportunities due to your?

[6:16] It totally has the setup that this guy was up for writing Walking With Dinosaurs.

[6:21] Hashtag sour grapes.

[6:24] But no, I think the reason it hit me so hard was that I've worked in kids' television and kids' movies.

[6:34] And I've done that kind of writing.

[6:35] So I'm seeing structurally so many things that piss me off that I think the casual mom and dad

[6:42] that go to the movie theater, that go to the Court Street UA and have their phones out

[6:47] and they're not really quite paying attention.

[6:49] There's a local Brooklyn reference about the bad.

[6:52] That's the place you go for audience participation.

[6:54] And bed bugs.

[6:56] And bad bugs.

[6:59] That I don't think people were as tuned into how horrible it was in all the different ways.

[7:03] Because for me, it's not just the movie itself.

[7:05] It's the cultural forces that made this compromise movie where you're watching the notes.

[7:09] We'll get to that.

[7:10] You were uniquely prepared to hate this movie.

[7:13] I didn't go into it knowing the reaction I was going to have.

[7:18] Sure.

[7:19] You were an unsuspecting father who thought, hey, I like dinosaurs.

[7:24] I got a free Saturday afternoon.

[7:27] Let's get some popcorn.

[7:29] Some popped corn.

[7:30] Popped corn.

[7:31] Maybe one of them giant sodas.

[7:34] I don't know, you're in Brooklyn, so it's like a bag of granola.

[7:39] I don't know, juice.

[7:40] Whatever kids in Brooklyn drink.

[7:42] Some kombucha.

[7:44] Ginger beer.

[7:45] Some kind of artisanal child tea.

[7:48] If John Hodgman was here, he would say a moxie, maybe.

[7:53] Okay.

[7:54] But what is this movie?

[7:57] Explain it.

[7:58] Well, so this movie feels a lot like, as you described it, Kevin,

[8:03] it feels like they made this awesome museum movie.

[8:06] Like a 3-D museum movie with dinosaurs.

[8:09] Your best case IMAX film, maybe.

[8:12] It was based on a British miniseries,

[8:14] which was the most expensive BBC production ever made,

[8:18] that it was this lavish CGI dinosaurs in front of

[8:23] perambulations with dinosaurs.

[8:26] But they went to the locations.

[8:28] They went to real locations and they filmed it,

[8:31] and then they layered it with dinosaurs.

[8:35] In the most scientifically accurate, provable way.

[8:39] That's why the locations look so nice.

[8:41] The locations look so nice.

[8:42] And the CGI, they clearly put a lot of money into it.

[8:45] You were saying the flames look sick.

[8:48] Yeah, pretty good flames.

[8:50] I mean, CGI knows how to do flames.

[8:52] Yep.

[8:53] Tomb Raider video games taught me anything.

[8:56] When it was brought to America, they made some changes.

[8:58] They wanted to reach a wider audience.

[9:00] Add a little bit of zazz to it.

[9:02] Yeah.

[9:04] That zazz was named John Leguizamo.

[9:07] The pest.

[9:10] He was bugging out.

[9:12] Yeah, you got any more in there?

[9:14] I don't know.

[9:15] Somerset, yep.

[9:16] Yeah, that's it.

[9:17] Perfect.

[9:18] That's all I got.

[9:19] Yeah, so this movie.

[9:20] Wait, hold on.

[9:21] Wait.

[9:22] Hold on.

[9:23] Spawn.

[9:24] It was, yeah.

[9:25] The clown.

[9:26] The violator in that.

[9:27] Yeah, there you go.

[9:28] So this movie begins smash cut.

[9:30] No, wait.

[9:31] Yes.

[9:32] Smash cut to the opening of this movie.

[9:35] Smash cut from black to the opening of Walking with Dimes.

[9:39] We have a really cool jeep being driven by the world's coolest uncle,

[9:43] Zach, the paleontologist, played by Carl Urban.

[9:47] You might know him as Dredd, a judge of others.

[9:50] He's almost human.

[9:51] He's not.

[9:52] He's the human.

[9:54] He's not the almost human.

[9:55] I mean, he's got a cyborg leg in that.

[9:57] So he's almost human.

[9:58] Spoiler alert.

[9:59] Almost human.

[10:00] human and then he's got cyborg legs. So when you say he's a paleontologist, I'm thinking he's in

[10:04] some kind of a stiff white lab coat, he's got his hair parted down the middle. Oh no, my friend.

[10:08] Coindexter glasses, right? He's totally some kind of nerd, but no. He's baddicle. What? Wait, define

[10:14] that again. Well, it's a combination. It's a portmanteau. You combine bad and radical. Okay,

[10:20] but bad isn't good in this case. Yeah, the kids use bad to mean good. That's the type of thing

[10:25] that the audience for Walking with Dinosaurs would know because they're kids and they're cool.

[10:29] You know, they were like, let's get an antediluvian actor to do this. Let's get somebody

[10:36] from Down Under to bring to mind Sam Neill from Jurassic Park. You know, like he's the Jurassic

[10:45] Park Sam Neill stand-in, Carl Urban. Okay. I mean, he is a passable American. He was a good Bones,

[10:53] not from the show Bones. No. Elizabeth Deschanel. Yeah, no, he doesn't do that. No,

[11:01] from Star Trek. Sure. Yeah, so he's the cool uncle. He's taking his sour teenage nephew and

[11:10] very enthusiastic teenage niece, Herb. We know he's sour because he's got the hood up on his

[11:17] hoodie and he's not looking up from his mobile device. Yep, screens. That's shorthand for a

[11:25] teenager, I guess, at this point. That's how you know. Yeah, and he looks like a, I don't know,

[11:30] from the 90s goth guy. Yeah, he's got his hair combed forward. He's got a lot of eyebrows,

[11:36] I think. I don't remember. He's got more than the usual number of eyebrows. He's got like eight

[11:41] eyebrows. So this teenage kid, he is uninterested in checking out dinosaurs. He's way too old for

[11:46] that. He wants to, I don't know, play Mario Kart. What do they do on these things? He's sexting.

[11:53] He's snapchatting. He's playing Nudie Touch or whatever kids play. What's that thing?

[11:59] And so he is unimpressed by this dinosaur tooth that his uncle shows him. His uncle goes off to

[12:06] look. Is this dinosaur tooth a spear tooth? Is that? No, that's a mammal, dude. The spear tooth

[12:10] is a saber-tooth type. Mannex. No, that's also a mammal. Okay. So he's uninterested. Yep, that was

[12:18] a movie we watched. So Carl Urban, the paleontologist, paleontologist Zach, heads off to

[12:24] go check out whatever, dig in a hole or something. And the teenager hangs out by himself, totally

[12:30] disinterested until. But wait, before we get to that, the uncle is clearly, they're gonna go on a

[12:35] long hike and then they're gonna do a dig. And he says, all right, you can just hang out here in

[12:40] front of the jeep. He's just gonna abandon him in the woods. I think he was expecting

[12:47] him to chase after. I mean, as a non-father, unlike you or Elliot, I feel like as an

[12:55] uncle, I would do that. I'd be like, all right, you're not coming with me? Stay here with the car.

[13:01] Forge for yourself. I don't think Zach is used to people not being interested in hanging out with him.

[13:07] Yeah, man. He's got a sweet life, Zach does. But he leaves. And then a bird shows up. Do you think Zach

[13:16] normally takes the ladies out there? That's why it's a, well, he knows the path to the

[13:24] dig pretty well, because he's taking his chicks out. Yeah, the night before he covers up the dinosaur bones.

[13:29] And then when they show up, he's like, oh my god, we just found this. Awesome. Oh, the tooth matches.

[13:34] Perfect. Spoiler alert. We should probably have sex on top of these bones. And she says, there's one more

[13:40] bone I'd like to see. Yep. One more dinosaur I'd like to walk with. Everybody walk the dinosaur.

[13:52] That's what he says. Okay, so a bird shows up and just starts talking to this kid. He does it. I'm

[14:01] guessing telepathically, because he doesn't really move his mouth that much.

[14:06] That bird, played by John Legge, was an animal. Wait, Marmaduke did that, right? Where the

[14:11] mouth didn't move? No, they use CGI for the mouth. Okay, so it's more of an old time.

[14:18] Or maybe not. I don't remember Marmaduke that well. Okay. I feel like it's like an old time

[14:23] Disney movie situation, where the mouth didn't move. Not a new time. Or they put

[14:27] peanut butter in the horse's mouth, and you get a good clip going. They did not put

[14:32] peanut butter in the fake raven's mouth. Yeah, we just smeared some CGI peanut butter in his CGI mouth.

[14:41] But the reason is that it was made as a silent movie,

[14:46] and it was after the fact that they're like... Not the whole thing. I imagine the opening was...

[14:51] The opening was... Yeah, the opening was... It was all pantomime. One more thing that was designed

[14:55] to get people excited for this experience. Yeah, in a larger sense, before we go on,

[15:01] like in a larger sense... We are like two seconds into this movie.

[15:05] This is a movie that was an educational film... At one point.

[15:10] Yeah, that was not... That did not have words. And don't worry, it's still pretty educational.

[15:17] Maybe it had narration, but it did not have characters saying things, which is all that

[15:23] the rest of the movie has. Yeah, it's... I mean, it has... It feels like somebody took

[15:28] an animated movie about dinosaurs, and then they had like Bob Saget from America's Funniest Home

[15:34] Videos do voices for everybody, but not as funny. Yeah, they're doing everything that everyone's

[15:39] saying like Garfield style with like word balloons. Sure. Like thought balloons, but you hear

[15:44] what they're thinking. But you can't introduce any new information, because if a character is

[15:49] on screen for two and a half seconds, you just have to say like, oh, I'm scared, where it's just

[15:54] bringing the subtext to the surface. It's like what you already know is being said out loud for

[15:59] you in funny character voices. That's clear by their... There was quotes around funny there,

[16:04] by the way, listeners at home. But what I... Before we pass this... So of course this raven

[16:10] catches this kid's attention, because this raven is speaking to his mind. Yeah, but before we pass

[16:16] over like this raven... That's one way to take a teenager out of their screen for a second,

[16:20] am I right, parents? Yeah, to have a fucking raven talk to them. Yeah, he's like, are you

[16:25] of my death? God, don't do drugs. God. All right. I guess. Whatever, man. God, don't text and drive.

[16:35] Don't tell me what to do, raven. You're not my dad. But the weird thing to me about this whole

[16:40] like framing device of this movie is the idea that this bird thinks that this teenager really

[16:45] needs to learn a lesson about dinosaurs. Like this bird is like pulling a fucking like Christmas

[16:53] carol. Like, oh, like your life is going to go off the rails if you don't learn a lesson about

[16:58] how important dinosaurs are. Yeah, he's seen a flash forward. I mean, this bird has existed

[17:03] through all of time, as we're going to learn. Well, it's his ancestors. He morphs into his own...

[17:09] He goes from being a standard black crow. He morphs into his prehistoric ancestor.

[17:15] Earlier bird. Yeah. But like the weird thing about that too, though, is like,

[17:20] you know, like scientists pretty much agree that like modern birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs.

[17:26] But it's not a case in this case where like this bird morphs back into a dinosaur from the past.

[17:31] The bird just morphs to a different, more colorful bird. A bird with a unibrow. Yeah. That's always

[17:38] code name for a caveman type. He morphs into a bird with teeth. He retains everything about his

[17:48] sassiness. Yeah. He's got his Latin John Leguizamo accent. Exactly. Because I guess he's...

[17:56] So this bird that has existed through all times. Sure. Beginning and end till the world is

[18:02] destroyed, I'm assuming. He, I guess, takes this kid on a mind journey. I don't know what happens.

[18:08] All of a sudden, we're in the past. It doesn't tell us how far. He just flies through the air,

[18:13] and then all of a sudden there's dinosaurs all over the place. We're assuming the kid's following

[18:16] along and not just looking at his phone again. That would have been a great twist ending,

[18:22] that at the end, the bird finishes a dramatic tale to emphasize how insignificant we all are

[18:30] in the giant endless quilt of history. And the kid's... Giving his best rust coal impression.

[18:39] And the kid's... The little spots of light in the darkness. The kid's playing bubble bobble.

[18:43] Sure. Well, you can get that on your iPhone. I would love bubble bobble on iPhone. Wishful

[18:49] thinking. Oh yeah. And before this happens, I guess, I mean, I think the catalyst here is the

[18:54] kid picks up that dinosaur tooth and it starts to glow like through the cracks in the tooth,

[18:59] like there's magic inside. Now we're in the past. Okay. Maybe that's like a magic tooth.

[19:04] We'll find out later. So we go to the past. We're introduced to what type of fucking dinosaur are

[19:11] they? I don't know. Pachyrhinosaurus. Pachyrhinosaurus that look like Triceratops without

[19:18] all the horns. Yeah. They're Triceratops without horns. Bigger nose. They're not your daddy's

[19:22] Triceratops. Yeah. And we're introduced to a baby, the runt of the litter. Pachy? Pachy?

[19:29] What's his name? Pachy. Pachy. Pachy is offensive. Pachy. Pachy, not offensive. Yeah. So Pachy named,

[19:36] I'm guessing after his species, is played by Justin Long. He's the runt of the litter and

[19:43] he gets into some adventures right away. He doesn't get any of his mom's vomit food.

[19:48] He gets attacked by another dinosaur that is described to us by a disembodied little girl

[19:54] voice. Yeah. This is, whenever a new dinosaur appears on the screen, there's a free,

[20:00] he's framed

[20:01] the latin name of the dinosaur comes up

[20:03] little girl says what the dinosaur is

[20:06] uh... and this is like the vestigial

[20:09] like tail of the educational part of this movie

[20:13] like it's the web webbing between the fingers yes the one part of this is like

[20:18] maybe you wanna know what these dinosaurs actually were before we

[20:22] anthropomorphize them into like they might as well be in madagascar animated

[20:27] film you know you are doing a disservice to madagascar right now

[20:30] i've no i think that i probably would have enjoyed watching madagascar more than

[20:35] it's what i imagine those direct-to-dvd madagascar cop scat films are like

[20:40] you know

[20:41] uh... what they call uh... what like uh... tasmania now i guess that's

[20:45] actually a thing

[20:47] murder gas car

[20:49] nope that's the horror movie

[20:52] one of you

[20:53] welcome to my dinner party

[20:59] one of you lemurs is about to die you've just ingested poison

[21:05] uh... so

[21:06] some fucking other dinosaur attacks patchy

[21:10] and gives him his trademark

[21:12] hole in his frill

[21:14] and he's got the little frill like a triceratops

[21:17] puts a hole in it

[21:18] now we can identify him from all the other dinosaurs that look the same

[21:21] like portlandia

[21:22] put a hole on it

[21:23] you know what i'm talking about

[21:25] put a hole on it

[21:26] take a drink of your beer

[21:28] yeah what was the line we were laughing at like nice hole

[21:31] there are many hole jokes

[21:35] put something in my hole

[21:38] that's weird that's a weirdly sexual i think it was later on when justin long's

[21:42] character patchy

[21:44] meets juniper the love of his life who is also a dinosaur

[21:47] and he says she likes me and she likes my hole yeah that's right that goes on the

[21:51] dvd box

[21:54] uh...

[21:56] so

[21:57] yes so there's a bunch of we get introduced to this fan of this tribe of

[22:01] dinosaurs

[22:02] uh... establishes the world's of the dinosaurs you know we see there's no

[22:06] people walking around

[22:08] uh... there's only cgi dinosaurs walking with the dinosaurs

[22:12] the dinosaurs are walking with each other yeah they're they're learning to eat

[22:16] there's a lot of poop jokes jokes up top poop and barf jokes right

[22:19] the attic make sure the kids are interested

[22:22] patchy gets pooped on by a much larger dinosaur and they get a lot of jokes

[22:26] out of that

[22:27] uh... i'm sure you saw this in the theater full of

[22:30] i'm assuming very excited children and they were totally into it

[22:37] what would they have been more excited to see

[22:40] what would they have been more excited to see

[22:43] at the same time

[22:47] keener on but their parents were like this is educational we're going to take

[22:52] you to a lot of educational we're saying it's like

[22:55] it's educational

[22:56] as like the healthy choice the way mcdonald's would give you apple slices

[23:00] where it really this is not the place to go for healthy options and educational

[23:05] it's like apple slices covered with

[23:08] caramel and hot fudge and a kid gets to say well this is the healthy

[23:12] choice any whatever vitamin water it's just sugar water

[23:17] the sugar's a vitamin bro

[23:20] but at the same time it's like no no this is a hip cool

[23:23] movie with a lot of wisecracking dinosaurs

[23:27] and a soundtrack that the adults are going to get into

[23:30] we'll get into that later

[23:35] so we're introduced to uh... our hero patchy

[23:38] his uh... his brother who's like big and tough

[23:42] but not very smart schuyler was his name? schuyler

[23:46] that was his brother?

[23:47] yeah

[23:48] who do you think like you thought it was his best friend or something?

[23:51] just thought it was another dinosaur dinosaur i didn't know there was a

[23:55] it's the classic jerk older brother you know the movie

[23:59] exactly the movie is drawing upon a lot of good like kids movie archetypes

[24:05] buzz from home alone

[24:07] uh... bill paxton from weird science

[24:11] uh... similar and he does tell the female dinosaur he'd like to butter her muffins

[24:18] we're jumping ahead because there is a female dinosaur the love interest juniper

[24:23] named after the

[24:26] thing they eat

[24:27] i guess

[24:30] uh... we'll get to eating that dinosaur later uh... he falls in love with her

[24:34] uh... patchy that is uh... then they go on a big migration she can't be with

[24:38] patchy because she's part of a different tribe

[24:41] classic story

[24:44] Capulets and Romulans or whatever

[24:47] up world down world

[24:51] uh...

[24:52] and they go on they have to go south because shit's getting cold

[24:57] uh... and then somewhere in the process uh... the

[25:01] there's a big storm

[25:03] the forest catches on fire from lightning

[25:05] that's a real bambi situation yep

[25:08] they gotta run out of the fiery forest but the fire

[25:12] was caused by a bunch of tyrannosaurus rex's or something? no it was lightning

[25:16] lightning that struck the ground i was wondering how the t-rex started the fire

[25:21] smoking

[25:23] the balloon filled with kerosene

[25:27] and a time-released alarm clock

[25:33] uh... so the fire begins uh...

[25:36] the our hero and his family get separated

[25:39] his the hero's father saves his life only to be murdered by a uh... by a

[25:46] dinosaur

[25:47] because patchy and his brother's dad

[25:50] they had the the dinosaur who was the leader of their tribe he was like the

[25:54] the head guy

[25:55] of their pack

[25:57] he even had a name though i don't remember what it was

[26:00] uh... and he totally got murdered in front of their eyes which

[26:03] you know that's that's traumatizing but it's also character building

[26:07] but they don't john legaslama sets you up in the narration he says every story

[26:10] always has a scary part now it's time for the scary part you know that

[26:14] there are trigger warnings so yeah for children who've survived forest fires

[26:20] you can send your child out into the lobby where they can not have to witness this

[26:24] where they can get kidnapped

[26:26] it's fine

[26:28] don't worry about it

[26:30] that's the scary part

[26:32] uh... so after this they uh... it turns out that juniper's father kind of they

[26:38] like the two tribes marry like marry into each other they come out of the ashes

[26:42] and meet up with juniper and juniper's father i don't know slamo what's his name

[26:47] dragon face uh... awesome sauce

[26:51] he takes charge of the tribe they man this is where it's gonna get rough they

[26:56] start wandering around were introduced to the villains of the movie at this

[26:59] point

[27:00] which is a movie gorgazor gorgazons

[27:03] this film was so low on plot

[27:05] it was kind of hard to do the plot summary because you could breeze right through it

[27:11] and it seems like nothing happened but for us it was just

[27:15] yeah it's like a mumble board movie

[27:20] we were walking with those it's a mumble sore movie

[27:26] it's not here i gotta make that kind of joke

[27:28] the duplassasauruses were really good in this

[27:35] so

[27:36] you got one

[27:37] yeah okay so then we're introduced to the villains of the movie they look like

[27:41] tyrannosaurus rex but they're called gorgazors

[27:43] one of them's blue he's i guess the big bad

[27:47] uh...

[27:48] he's like the white orc from the hobbit movies and uh...

[27:52] it's just necessary he and the other uh... carnivores

[27:57] chase the tribe of dinosaurs into uh...

[28:01] up against the river

[28:04] and then the baby dinosaurs fall into the river

[28:07] that includes our hero patchy

[28:09] juniper and his brother skyler

[28:13] they go floating down the river for a while

[28:17] in an exciting scene where you know you're getting cgi water on the

[28:20] camera's lens

[28:24] we get some rewired and fast forward

[28:26] about whether patchy intentionally dove into the river or just fell

[28:31] and this is coming hot on the heels of some hilarious jokes about how the

[28:35] bad guy dinosaur has tiny ineffective arms

[28:38] like this whole movie

[28:40] if you've read it like

[28:43] i think it was pat oswalt wrote about

[28:45] how like he as a stand-up comic

[28:48] uh... was paid

[28:50] uh... to come in on an animated movie

[28:53] to just like come up with ADR gags like punch up the script

[28:58] like they've already done the animation

[29:01] so like maybe like something that someone can yell from off screen that would be

[29:05] funny

[29:06] uh... and it's like the whole movie is that

[29:09] this whole movie is that like they were like oh it doesn't matter whether

[29:14] if anyone's talking at the time

[29:16] and you could use even if you come up with a sensible good

[29:19] character driven bit yeah it's like what the character only appears on screen for

[29:23] you know three seconds so the joke has to fit for the three seconds that we see

[29:28] the bird or whoever

[29:29] uh... and then they're short and sweet

[29:32] which means in order to go for those jokes they're kind of like throwing any

[29:36] kind of continuity out the window where where patchy compares himself to a ninja

[29:40] yeah yeah which is ridiculous uh... they refer to future events that the

[29:45] dinosaurs couldn't possibly know about

[29:48] they acknowledge that they're telling a story in a movie i mean the whole thing

[29:51] it just

[29:52] and it's and dan's favorite gag when the mammal shows up on screen and the

[29:57] dinosaurs

[29:58] are happy

[30:00] know that mammal will become extinct someday as we the audience know that is

[30:04] not the case any gag that relies on the irony of a person the past

[30:08] saying something about the future that we need in the future no not be true is

[30:12] always

[30:13] all areas

[30:15] but it's it's everything is really the difference that i recommend some kind of

[30:18] like

[30:19] uh...

[30:20] early nineties gag you'd have

[30:22] i just got this new cd by millie vanilley these guys really are the real

[30:26] deal and then you get the joke that i was like why is this cabbie telling me the story

[30:31] i don't understand the comparison you're making because that joke is awesome

[30:35] but the difference being

[30:36] one character being embarrassed by the millie vanilley uh... reveal compared to

[30:41] an entire species dying and becoming extinct

[30:46] the hero of your movie

[30:48] the hero of your kids movie is making a joke not realizing he's going to die

[30:53] everything is going to die my actions are meaningless for everything i do is

[30:58] ineffectual

[30:59] we are all dead in the end nothing but dust i look into the eyes of the

[31:05] dinosaurs and i see nothing

[31:09] i think we can all agree

[31:12] i think the entire time i think we're hoping that john leguizamo had been

[31:16] replaced with werner herzog right before the end

[31:20] i hope the dvd has like audio options

[31:24] that would be clear

[31:26] but honestly i would buy that if that was the solution they came up with rather

[31:30] than having john leguizamo they were like

[31:32] we don't need to hire john leguizamo we don't need to hire justin long we don't need to hire all these

[31:36] other no-name people that we

[31:38] rounded up the cast with just get werner herzog to come in and do a shitload of

[31:42] voices and play all the characters

[31:45] he's a real michael winslow do you have any sound effects?

[31:49] i am this cute little dinosaur oh no i've fallen into the river this is terrible for me

[31:54] she likes me and she likes my horn

[31:59] she likes the hole in my horn which matches the hole in my heart

[32:04] so uh...

[32:07] uh... where were we at? i don't know i think they're in the river now

[32:11] the little girl's voiceover identified a dinosaur during a freeze-frame

[32:16] and back to the plot our heroes are out of the river they wander around in the

[32:21] woods for a little while i think they beat up on some smaller dinosaurs

[32:26] uh... then they reach the coast

[32:30] where they are introduced to some giant dinosaurs they're very hungry

[32:34] uh... this is where the giant dinosaurs walk up

[32:37] and they play uh... Fleetwood Mac's Tusk

[32:41] which is probably my favorite part of it. I think Dan got up and did a little dance. I like this song. Tusk.

[32:46] I can get behind that

[32:49] so

[32:50] uh... i guess they meet up with the rest of their tribe i don't remember what happens

[32:54] yeah the movie jumps forward yeah and that's when we do a big jump forward where we

[32:58] Brat style

[32:59] yeah except they don't tell us how far

[33:03] guys guys let's uh... let's uh... let's track the character arcs here

[33:08] patchy and juniper are kind of uh... they're becoming a little more than

[33:12] friends he's she's really warming up to him they're surviving together his big

[33:16] brother took off

[33:18] abandoned them left them and returned to the tribe

[33:21] so the two of them were on their own and uh... i think it brought them a little

[33:24] bit closer

[33:24] i know that juniper is not a girl and not yet a woman

[33:27] i know that's true

[33:29] yeah but uh... you know uh... he's he's kind of in the friend zone but at some

[33:33] point

[33:34] he's hoping that he'll you know he'll be able to uh... i don't know do with her

[33:37] what do they do like they'd meet what i like they become meet for life what's

[33:41] about how does dinosaurs do with him

[33:44] i don't know like a

[33:45] a humping? no i don't need to know that but like do they get married are they

[33:49] monogamous? Dinosaurs

[33:51] got married and it was a beautiful it was a beautiful ceremony

[33:56] they got uh...

[33:58] they got uh... flower teratons

[34:01] they come by

[34:02] and drop flowers from the sky uh... you get a

[34:06] you get a best raptor

[34:08] and a best raptor

[34:10] you have a side of the groom side or the bride side?

[34:14] a uh... brontosaurus uh... voiced by a brontosaurus wedding planner voiced by

[34:20] jennifer lopez for the adults

[34:23] that's that's great

[34:24] traditional dinosaur wedding

[34:27] that's how it works some kind of uh...

[34:29] dinosaur rabbi character

[34:32] performing the ceremony? they step on a coconut? sure they step on a coconut

[34:36] okay

[34:36] uh... so yeah fast forward we have a

[34:40] we have

[34:42] older dinosaurs they look basically the same but i guess they're bigger

[34:45] uh... this is where we're introduced to the challenge for

[34:50] dominance between two males

[34:52] which involves ramming each other's heads together until one gives up and the

[34:56] other one's the leader

[34:58] uh...

[34:59] skyler takes over the tribe

[35:02] uh... after a bunch of headbutts

[35:04] and then uh...

[35:07] i guess that means that juniper is his girlfriend now? he defeats juniper's dad

[35:12] and she's she really has no reaction to that they're totally together for a while

[35:18] was just defeated by uh...

[35:20] by her best friend's big brother

[35:24] this is dinosaur law though like the toughest

[35:30] dinosaur gets the lady

[35:32] yeah so we can only assume that like

[35:35] skyler and juniper are doing it for a while

[35:37] am i right guys?

[35:39] yeah i mean there's probably pictures on the internet somewhere

[35:43] go to deviantart

[35:44] i gotta say like skyler was kind of my favorite character in the movie because

[35:47] he takes over the movie for a while

[35:49] and he is like such a poochie character yeah like a tin pot dictator of a dinosaur

[35:54] totally radical

[35:55] he's like a radical dude

[35:57] uh...

[35:59] uh... but you know we're supposed to know but i like that we earlier in the movie

[36:03] because he has like an attitude at least he has some personality so earlier in the

[36:06] movie our hero panchy and his brother

[36:09] witness their father after saving their life get devoured by a dinosaur

[36:13] later on juniper's father gets defeated in the challenge for dominance and then

[36:18] that character disappears we don't see that character her dad ever again nor does she

[36:22] mention him. he's shamed. yeah after that point she doesn't care anymore

[36:25] yeah he goes off to

[36:26] die in the dinosaur graveyard

[36:28] which is the entire world apparently but up until that point she was juniper

[36:33] for carl urban defined and then used as a means to boning ladies i guess

[36:38] and impressing nephews

[36:41] uh...

[36:42] but that i mean like

[36:44] skyler takes over for a while and then

[36:47] that's when the movie gets a little exciting we got uh... so that a lot of

[36:51] it is them walking back like north to south

[36:53] or north to south they have to do the migration so it gives you a natural plot device

[36:58] exactly

[36:59] and at one point skyler leads them in the wrong direction they go over a frozen lake

[37:04] you keep saying skyler like it's fucking walter white's wife from breaking bad

[37:09] uh... you bring it's less cleverly named skyler

[37:13] he's a bad guy because his name is scowler

[37:19] now which came first the name scowler or the scowl

[37:22] i don't know

[37:25] they're damning him by naming him scowler

[37:27] just like by naming patchy after their entire race of course he's going to be

[37:32] the hero of the story i always find that strange in any kind of kids thing it's

[37:36] always like

[37:37] oh my name's joe gorilla this is my mom mrs gorilla it's like everyone just

[37:42] has your last name but then how do you distinguish yourselves from the

[37:46] thousands of other people how does joe gorilla distinguish himself

[37:50] well is he the smartest gorilla in the tribe? he wears a baseball cap backwards

[37:56] by the way he rides a razor scooter ok does he save them from poachers or

[38:01] we're writing the story now this is reminiscent of something that uh...

[38:05] i asked elliot recently i came into work and i'm like

[38:09] something just occurred to me about star wars

[38:12] so jabba the hutt

[38:15] hutt is the type of creature he is because there are other hutts

[38:19] yeah so like that would be like me being like

[38:21] my name is

[38:22] dan the human

[38:25] what kind of fucking name and convention is that?

[38:27] terrible

[38:28] it seems a little weird it's as though it's introducing your name for a third

[38:32] party

[38:33] to witness your adventures who's never encountered you before

[38:37] you're not familiar with my race

[38:39] my name is

[38:40] jabba the hutt

[38:41] is that your actual name?

[38:43] let's just say it is

[38:46] i mean i'm assuming it's like a jimmy the greek sort of thing though

[38:49] that's what elliot said but like

[38:51] we are there are other huts

[38:54] there are other huts yeah i don't think other huts call him that though

[38:57] there are other huts out there who are not like in like the organized crime

[39:01] uh... game

[39:02] isn't there a

[39:03] no i think every huts do we ever see other huts? i think in one of the clone wars

[39:07] that clone wars movie there's one with like a bunch of makeup on

[39:12] yeah i mean like this is right in to tell kevin what the name of the expanded

[39:16] universe here i don't know if that's expanded i mean i think it's canon if

[39:20] it's in a it's a movie

[39:22] it's just animated

[39:23] it's not like fucking timothy zahn wrote it it just seems weird it seems like a weird way to

[39:27] like introduce yourself to anybody

[39:31] but it's chewbacca the wookie and we know there's a whole race of wookies in the other planet

[39:34] yeah he's not like pardon me i'm a chewbacca for all we know that's what those sounds mean

[39:42] i don't think that's a fair way of

[39:45] i think it would give a solid defense if it was

[39:49] chewbacca t wookie

[39:52] that classic little initial

[39:54] java t hutt while e coyote

[39:58] anyway let's get back to dinosaurs

[40:00] before

[40:01] excellent

[40:02] he's an excellent

[40:04] not not based on performance

[40:07] but he can talk something that's true

[40:11] that's actually pretty excellent

[40:13] uh... and uh... you can order things i mean he's got a job

[40:17] he's good at filling out

[40:18] magazine forms

[40:20] catalog

[40:21] it's all mail fraud

[40:23] that's his real skill

[40:26] that i guess that's excellent

[40:27] uh... he's a little bit though he's not going to kill that roadrunner

[40:33] uh... so to the end of the okay so uh... patchy and skyler getting a couple

[40:39] fights

[40:41] skyler takes over the tribe again patchy almost gets eaten by a bunch of uh...

[40:45] scavengers

[40:46] he realizes that uh... he's in love with

[40:49] uh... juniper and she gives him the power love which allows him to feed

[40:52] scavengers because at one point he gets he's a curious he's in a fight

[40:56] where uh... scowler knocks a tree down

[41:00] and when

[41:01] patchy falls into a ditch the tree kinda goes over his

[41:04] neck like just buries him

[41:06] just trapping him there is no way out he is

[41:09] stuck there his brother leaves him there to die it's like when you get caught in

[41:13] like the guillotine or

[41:15] brutus the barber beefcakes headlock

[41:18] but a log that's never going to get tired and and in all of this juniper's always like

[41:22] sorry it's the rules so it's like on the one hand you have the idea that patchy is

[41:27] all about the true love that empowers him to do whatever he needs to do and

[41:30] she's like

[41:31] look man let's not rock the boat were you a fucking robot juniper

[41:37] look they're like

[41:39] like the sign says two men enter one man leaves

[41:44] that's the way dinosaurs work. Bust the deal, spin the wheel, come on patchy

[41:48] when you walk with dinosaurs you know the deal

[41:51] yeah

[41:52] uh... so patchy then uh...

[41:56] he rejoins the tribe he gets he gets superpowers of love because the bird

[42:02] gives him a flashback to his own father's death and he says patchy

[42:05] your father died for something if you're going to die

[42:09] let your death have meaning

[42:12] which gives him the power to get out from under the log

[42:15] race by all the previous bullies not unlike

[42:18] not unlike uh...

[42:19] jody at the end of phantasm encountering the bug and the lady in lavender and all

[42:24] the characters he's met along the way

[42:26] that patchy now has the confidence to run right by

[42:30] with just enough screen time to get a quick

[42:32] stand up and write a line in there

[42:34] out of my way

[42:36] move it jerks

[42:37] stuff like that

[42:38] in a way he's become the thing he hates a bully he really is pulling those trees

[42:43] what i like is that that flashback uh... reminding him that love uh... you know

[42:47] he's in love with juniper and that gives him the strength and it's not just the

[42:50] adrenaline of possibly getting eaten to death by a bunch of scavengers yeah

[42:54] i also like the subtext is like your father

[42:56] died protecting you he died for a reason

[42:59] unlike your mom who just plain died

[43:02] wait do we find out what happens to his mom does she die she gets

[43:06] baked alive they never give it a moment's notice they never give it any

[43:09] attention one of the great travesties of this movie the great

[43:12] crimes the screenwriter perpetrated is by not telling us what happens to dino

[43:16] mom

[43:16] the movie does not pass the Bechtel test

[43:20] walking with dinosaurs

[43:22] wait no yeah you're right it doesn't

[43:25] wait that's a bit

[43:27] so anyway the point is

[43:29] love conquers all

[43:31] uh... et cetera

[43:32] no i mean the point is then he meets up with juniper he's about to tell her that

[43:36] he loves her

[43:38] uh... and i guess she's into it she'll be into it i don't know she's really

[43:42] she's kind of a stickler for the rules she's irrelevant

[43:45] it doesn't matter the girl's feelings not important it's all about his journey and his quest

[43:49] and his ability to articulate how he feels about the girl

[43:53] exactly dino law dictates he's a runt no more

[43:57] yeah so we uh... right then the herd gets attacked by that same

[44:02] fucking blue asshole and his other gorgazores

[44:07] with their dino swords

[44:09] first off you're referencing uh... the property dino swords that i've been

[44:13] working on

[44:14] featuring robot cowboys dueling in the future using dinosaur swords

[44:20] uh... led by of course the hero dusty sprockets

[44:25] uh... and uh... i apologize

[44:28] so my patent infringement

[44:31] uh... copyright yeah exactly it's copyright and we've talked about you

[44:34] using this patent troll character

[44:38] i'd rather he not show up again uh...

[44:41] so

[44:42] dusty bot wait no uh... sorry i got really excited about dino swords

[44:47] point is everything turns out fine

[44:49] for our hero

[44:50] but given the choice between leaving scowler to die so he can lead the tribe

[44:55] himself and go off with the

[44:58] woman of his dreams dinosaur uh... dinosaur woman of his dreams

[45:02] uh... he he does decide to stay and defend his brother who's been just an

[45:06] asshole

[45:07] throughout the whole movie who's left him to die multiple times i mean the only thing his

[45:11] brother's done is he has sacrificed himself for the tribe which is what any

[45:15] good leader should do right right yeah

[45:17] but patchy says

[45:18] turn that scowl upside down

[45:22] patchy's like i could leave you to die but i'd rather you live forever in shame

[45:26] as i am now going to defeat this guy and become the leader of the tribe and be

[45:31] with your girl again

[45:32] but then but so they you know like they're all happy together and then we

[45:35] flash forward back to the future where like the teenagers like

[45:39] i was wrong dinosaurs are awesome

[45:42] i've learned my lesson

[45:45] he's like the best part about patchy is that he and everybody he knows is dead

[45:50] i've learned my lesson based on this one and the four or five dinosaur

[45:55] that i guess really existed in the past

[45:58] and it's not like the son of a magic bird friend

[46:02] uh... and he realizes that the tooth he holds is one of the tooth of that blue

[46:07] ass wipe who got his fucking teeth knocked out by patchy's forehead

[46:12] because he matches that broken tooth up to

[46:15] uh... a jaw bone that's the missing piece that paleontologist

[46:19] zach

[46:20] has unearthed to show off in front of his kids

[46:23] uh... probably unearthed for the first time i'm sure

[46:26] and uh...

[46:28] and then john legozano says some more fucking jokes flies away than disappears

[46:32] because his work is done

[46:34] like he's some kind of magic ghost and then a dinosaur burst through the screen

[46:37] which probably was pretty awesome when it was done in 3d this whole thing was in 3d

[46:41] i mean if you're going to end the movie anyway

[46:45] end it with a dinosaur bursting through the screen

[46:48] look i'm not going to argue with anything in this movie that's going to be the last thing

[46:52] but uh...

[46:54] yeah we've talked a long time

[46:56] we should move straight to final judgments whether this is a good bad movie or a bad bad movie

[47:00] i think i know what it's going to be

[47:03] uh... dan?

[47:05] i'm going to start

[47:07] i feel like

[47:09] if i had kids and i don't

[47:12] but if i did

[47:14] i wouldn't necessarily like hate this compared to the other shit that kids

[47:18] could be watching

[47:19] because i've seen some of the terrible shit that kids can be watching

[47:22] however yeah two girls one cup etc

[47:27] the animated children's version of two girls one cup

[47:33] but as an adult this infuriates me this like weird hybrid

[47:37] of

[47:38] supposed

[47:40] edutainment and just total

[47:43] bullshit nonsense

[47:46] like bad sub-shrek level

[47:50] reference comedy

[47:52] yeah i just i did not like this movie at all it's a bad bad movie

[47:55] uh... one of you can go

[47:57] yeah so it was a bad bad movie uh... they didn't

[48:00] so it was it was so clearly that they added the the dialogue afterwards you

[48:05] don't even see any dinosaur lips moving and they don't make any effort to

[48:09] distance the at a distance to the vocals

[48:12] so you don't know there's like there's no levels to the sound so it just sounds

[48:17] like a bunch of voices are yelling in your ear

[48:19] the only time they modulate the sound is when

[48:22] the giant dinosaurs are walking past and the Fleetwood Mac song fades out of the

[48:26] distance along with them like they're carrying a boombox

[48:30] so yeah it's a bad bad movie i guess it's a good punishment movie if you want

[48:34] to punish your kids

[48:36] i don't know the kids would see this punishment my kids didn't find it to be punishment

[48:38] they they seem to enjoy themselves on some level for me it was exactly

[48:42] to to your point Dan that

[48:44] tries to get the best of both worlds by being this sort of like

[48:48] in the spirit of a dreamworks comedy it's got all these elements

[48:51] and i think it it does not succeed on that level

[48:53] it also tries to give you a little bit of science along the way you know you'll

[48:56] learn a few things but not enough to actually uh... get uh... uh...

[49:01] preschool college credit or or what have you to actually you know

[49:05] have any real takeaway

[49:07] so it's it's worse than so many things i've seen because it's like even if you

[49:10] see some horrible

[49:11] christmas special it's like oh well that that simply was not doing one thing

[49:18] and that was not

[49:19] entertaining this was not doing multiple things at once i thought it was

[49:23] incredibly condescending

[49:24] i i just it's it's one of the most uh...

[49:27] it just makes me so angry

[49:30] so it'd be if you're going to if you want to punish

[49:32] an adult

[49:33] yes show them this movie

[49:35] which we just made you do a second time

[49:39] but moving on

[49:40] so the next segment is letters letters from from listeners

[49:46] thanks wait

[49:46] stewart is there a song there's no song because elliot's not here

[49:50] so uh... you want to call him do you want to dial in probably could do it

[49:55] over the phone but i don't think we'd have to learn to listen to the call

[50:00] That's the problem. We'd have to actually listen to the song.

[50:03] We'll just talk for a while.

[50:05] Let's pretend that there was a song here.

[50:07] Yeah, just plug in. Just turn on your iPad, iPod, and play a letter song.

[50:12] Guys, pause the tape right now. It's a tape, right? Pause it and make up your own letter song.

[50:19] And then imagine that I'm signing while that letter song is playing.

[50:23] What you should do is record it and then email it to Elliot because he loves letter songs.

[50:27] He loves them so much. But the first letter goes like this.

[50:34] I recently attended a screening of the 1983 version of La Traviata.

[50:42] It was pretty good. If nothing else, it at least makes you appreciate why Placido Domingo became a megastar.

[50:49] But ultimately, it is too flawed to be considered truly great.

[50:53] This experience got me thinking that, as far as I know, no really good opera movies have ever been made.

[50:59] Zeffirelli made some nice tries. Bergman's version of The Magic Flute is as good an attempt as I can think of.

[51:05] And Cantabrano's version of the same play.

[51:07] And Cosper Holton's version of Don Giovanni are decent attempts from recent years.

[51:12] But none of them can be said to be really good movies.

[51:15] And of course, there are all the ones that are just plain bad.

[51:20] Can you guys think of another type of movie which has been attempted frequently but has never been done just right?

[51:27] Martin Lastname withheld.

[51:29] P.S. In case you were wondering which character each of you are in my non-existing flop house opera crossover fanfiction,

[51:38] Elliot is Figaro from The Barber of Seville, always making jokes and getting into trouble.

[51:43] Stu is Don Giovanni, obviously, popular with ladies and always hanging out with supernatural creatures.

[51:49] And Dan is Siegfried, pervy but ultimately a good guy.

[51:53] I just realized in reading this that I selected all these letters not realizing that Elliot would not be here.

[52:02] Because Elliot is the guy who is an actual opera aficionado. He goes to the opera.

[52:10] So the three of us are not opera aficionados.

[52:13] Well, I don't know anything about opera.

[52:15] I know a few rock operas.

[52:17] And have they been translated to the screen properly?

[52:19] Yeah, I don't know if it's properly. I think Tommy is a little garish.

[52:24] Sure, sure.

[52:26] You think of Phantom of the Paradise.

[52:28] Phantom of the Paradise, yeah.

[52:30] The opera within the opera in some of these, within Amadeus, sure.

[52:35] But that was not built for film.

[52:37] No, but in a larger sense, I guess the question is really like, is there a genre or a type of movie that has been tried?

[52:46] Well, I think what we have to pay attention to is that the opera already existed in a previous medium.

[52:52] So it's an adaptation.

[52:54] I know the trading card genre has been attempted a couple of times with the Garbage Pail Kids.

[53:01] Mars Attacks.

[53:03] Mars Attacks.

[53:04] I haven't gotten Dinosaurs Attacks.

[53:06] Clue is a board game turned to movie.

[53:10] But I thought that was great.

[53:12] No, but it's great.

[53:15] But I'm just trying to think of other adaptations.

[53:17] Well, I think video game movies is probably the best.

[53:20] That's probably honestly the thing.

[53:22] But the closest being, shit, I don't know.

[53:25] Super Mario Brothers.

[53:27] Probably the finest.

[53:29] That Legend of Zelda movie they came out with, right?

[53:32] That Hubert film was pretty good.

[53:35] I remember when they were pitching that Doom movie and they're like,

[53:40] Oh, there's this great section of first-person shooter-ness also featuring Carl Urban.

[53:45] Not a good movie.

[53:47] No.

[53:48] I'm surprised.

[53:49] It turns out that it's not actually exciting just to see someone's hands in front of them with a gun walking around corners.

[53:57] Yeah, not as exciting as when you're not controlling anything.

[54:01] Yeah, I mean I think that people should have been able to realize that that's not exciting from the experience of watching another person play a first-person shooter,

[54:08] which is a common experience.

[54:10] Yeah.

[54:11] The experience of that is usually like, Oh, okay, can you give me the controller now?

[54:15] Can I get in on this?

[54:17] No, no, no, you're going to fuck up my save file.

[54:19] But can I just, uh, all right.

[54:21] No, just let me show you how to kill this Bobo or whatever.

[54:26] But moving on, this next letter is titled,

[54:30] Ree, the Cryptkeeper's genitals.

[54:34] Dear Flophouse,

[54:36] I was recently catching up on some old episodes and came across a discrepancy that demands exploration and potentially Stuart's immediate termination with prejudice.

[54:47] With prejudice, okay.

[54:49] During the Dreamhouse episode from 2012,

[54:52] during a discussion of the Cryptkeeper's privates,

[54:56] Stuart rather definitively stated that the Cryptkeeper's genitalia was perfectly preserved and looked like,

[55:06] Further discussion was short-circuited by Mr. McCoy giggling like a schoolgirl for 38 uninterrupted minutes.

[55:14] Less than a year later, discussion again turned to this vital question of science.

[55:18] During the letter section of Attack of the Clones,

[55:21] a Scandinavian listener asked Stuart to describe a wormy boner.

[55:25] Stuart responded that a wormy boner is a curlicue like a pig's tail,

[55:31] then claimed that the Cryptkeeper had a wormy boner.

[55:34] Unless the Cryptkeeper's flaccid preserved penis transforms into a curlicue when he becomes aroused, this makes no sense.

[55:43] Dead to rights.

[55:44] Please clarify.

[55:45] Dan, last name withheld, not McCoy.

[55:48] Oh, wow, Dan, you got me.

[55:51] There's more than one version of the Cryptkeeper.

[55:54] There's the comic book.

[55:55] There's the HBO series.

[55:58] There's the animated series.

[55:59] Kevin is my representation here, I guess.

[56:01] But I also don't understand.

[56:02] I mean, like the first time, you don't state.

[56:05] I mean, I think.

[56:06] It could have been a flaccid penis we were talking about earlier.

[56:10] And when the boner, boner style, it could spin around.

[56:15] Yeah, when he gets you up.

[56:16] I mean, I don't think it spins around.

[56:18] It turns into like a corkscrew.

[56:20] Yeah.

[56:21] I'm not saying it like there's a fucking break dance.

[56:24] Like the boner.

[56:25] Yeah, like a pinwheel or something.

[56:27] Puts down some cardboard.

[56:29] You're like a guy wearing a bow tie who gets sexually turned on.

[56:36] Yeah, I don't know.

[56:38] Well, I think you got me.

[56:41] I was probably wrong.

[56:43] I think the real answer is it looks like a bully stick that you feed your dog,

[56:48] which is a dried bull's penis that looks basically like a Slim Jim.

[56:53] I think the important thing is that any ladies out there who have slept with a

[56:58] Cryptkeeper need to write in and let us know what his junk is like firsthand.

[57:06] We need a primary source on this.

[57:08] Or fellas.

[57:09] Sure.

[57:10] Yeah, we don't know.

[57:11] Yeah.

[57:12] And no judgments, man.

[57:14] Yeah.

[57:15] We're pro.

[57:16] This is science.

[57:17] Cryptkeeper marriage.

[57:19] Or not marriage.

[57:21] Yeah, whatever.

[57:22] Having fun.

[57:23] Night.

[57:24] You want to be able to tell your friends.

[57:27] Just two corpses.

[57:28] You don't have to be a corpse.

[57:31] Cryptkeeper.

[57:32] Just doing what your corpse wants to do.

[57:35] Just doing what your body wants.

[57:37] So I hope that helps you.

[57:40] I think that probably answered the question.

[57:42] Yeah, I think that's 100% what they want to hear.

[57:46] It would be great to sleep with a Cryptkeeper to get the pun when he's finished.

[57:51] Make it all worthwhile.

[57:54] I thought I'd give a dog a bone.

[58:04] Oh, man.

[58:05] Because it's an unattractive woman that he just slept with.

[58:07] Oh, yeah.

[58:08] Context is everything.

[58:11] I don't know whether I'm coming or decomposing.

[58:17] So this letter is from Lawrence, last name withheld.

[58:21] He writes.

[58:22] Of Arabia.

[58:23] Dear Flopicanus Africanus.

[58:25] Your name if you were a hominid fossil.

[58:28] So you guys have fairly idiosyncratic taste in films.

[58:35] Elliot loves old terrible movies and doesn't seem to give a shit about quality so long as they're in black and white.

[58:40] That was a sick burn.

[58:41] And also the only explanation.

[58:43] Luckily he's not here to hear it.

[58:45] And thus fucking cry, dude.

[58:47] So thanks.

[58:48] Yeah.

[58:49] The only explanation of his love of the old dark house.

[58:53] Now I got to say.

[58:54] In the absence of Elliot, I watched the old dark house.

[58:57] I like the old dark house.

[58:59] Dan apparently just loves legitimately awesome movies.

[59:02] Hey, Dan.

[59:03] Miss 45 just got the draft house treatment.

[59:05] Also, I love you as much as one straight dude can love another.

[59:08] Well, thank you, Lawrence, last name withheld.

[59:10] And Stuart seems to go for tits, gore, and despair.

[59:14] I ran a MATLAB simulation.

[59:16] It is literally the only criterion that includes head of the family and beyond the pines.

[59:22] So what movie review sites do you guys legitimately trust?

[59:27] For me, it's 1000misspenthours.com, which may not be amazing, but strangely syncs with my tastes.

[59:33] But I'd love to know where you guys go to pick movies.

[59:36] Yours, Lawrence, last name withheld.

[59:38] I mean, I think we've all talked about our enjoyment of The Dissolve.

[59:43] Yeah, I mean, I think we can all agree on that one.

[59:46] Obvious pick.

[59:48] For horror movies, I often make an effort to check out The Arrow in the Head,

[59:54] which is a Canadian horror movie review site.

[59:58] And it's been going for a really long time.

[1:00:00] I don't always agree with the reviews, but he does break down whether or not there's a lot of gore or T&A, so that's the important part.

[1:00:08] I need to know what is going to be in Wishmaster 3 before I watch it.

[1:00:13] Kevin?

[1:00:15] I like the Dissolve a lot. I'll use a site called dailygrindhouse.com.

[1:00:21] They've got a lot of good reviews up there and keep me current with what's new, what's coming out,

[1:00:27] what I'm not going to be able to see for a long, long time,

[1:00:30] because it's rare that I get a chance to watch a drive-in type grindhouse movie at home.

[1:00:37] I'm like, kids, it's 7 o'clock, time for bed.

[1:00:40] I hear everything. It's a small Brooklyn apartment.

[1:00:42] You can't put on like a...

[1:00:44] I had to turn off Psychomania. The music was too scary. Scary music.

[1:00:49] You got to get some of those headphones.

[1:00:54] When it comes to critics, I don't know.

[1:00:57] I like David Edelstein of New York Magazine.

[1:01:02] I don't necessarily always agree with her, but I find Stephanie Zakariak interesting to read.

[1:01:09] I don't even know whether I'm saying her last name right, but I think that she has a unique take on movies.

[1:01:16] I like critics who have kind of an idiosyncratic sense of taste.

[1:01:24] I don't know. I feel like the worst critics are the ones who are 100% in line with the conventional wisdom all the time.

[1:01:33] You prefer more of an almond white sort of thing.

[1:01:37] I don't want to troll. Glenn Kenney is always interesting.

[1:01:41] Bill Gibury at Vulture, he's like that.

[1:01:44] Someone who has an intelligent and specific point of view.

[1:01:50] They're fun to read even if you don't always agree.

[1:01:54] I hope that answers your question somewhat.

[1:01:58] The last letter of the night is from Patrick, last name withheld, who writes...

[1:02:04] Patchy? Patchy the Dinosaur?

[1:02:08] Recently, I fell asleep while re-listening to the Star Wars episode 2 podcast.

[1:02:13] Not a judgment on you, wonderful guys.

[1:02:15] I sometimes listen to podcasts when I'm feeling panicky at night.

[1:02:19] Because of this, I had a very strange dream about Elliot.

[1:02:22] The dream was that Elliot was the size of a Star Wars figurine,

[1:02:26] and he requested that I place him in the cockpit of various Star Wars vehicle models.

[1:02:32] When I complied, he would make Star Wars noises while pretending to pilot the ship,

[1:02:38] then eventually request that he be moved to another model to do the same thing again.

[1:02:43] He pretended to do this inside an X-Wing, a TIE Fighter, and the Millennium Falcon.

[1:02:48] I do not know what this dream means exactly,

[1:02:51] but I was glad I could help Dream Elliot achieve his goals.

[1:02:54] Sincerely, Patrick, last name withheld.

[1:02:57] In the comedy sketch version of this, the letter ends with,

[1:03:00] and when I woke up, I was covered with chafe marks all over my penis.

[1:03:07] I had an inverted Hasbro imprint on the head of my penis.

[1:03:12] What does it mean?

[1:03:14] I've been fucking the Millennium Falcon.

[1:03:18] I'm not saying this guy did this, I'm saying in the absurd,

[1:03:22] in the tradition of, I dreamt I was eating a giant marshmallow, kind of bazooka joke.

[1:03:28] Sure.

[1:03:29] I feel like this letter suffers the most from Elliot.

[1:03:35] Well, I think if Elliot was any Star Wars figure, he'd probably be an Ugnaught.

[1:03:40] You think so?

[1:03:41] And I could be a Gamorrean.

[1:03:43] I think it would be the Power Droid.

[1:03:45] Me? Or he would?

[1:03:47] He would be.

[1:03:48] Okay, I thought you were going to say I was going to be the Rancor Keeper,

[1:03:50] and I'd say that's okay, I'll allow it.

[1:03:52] He'd be like a squat square, just like a squat square with rubber legs.

[1:03:57] I remember when I was a kid, somebody got me the Power Droid for one of my birthdays,

[1:04:02] and he was like, no, it's an awesome droid, it's called the Power Droid.

[1:04:09] It means it's the most powerful.

[1:04:11] Do you remember him for those three seconds in the movie, just kind of walking around the hall?

[1:04:15] I thought that was the droid that they flipped over and roasted his feet.

[1:04:19] I kind of wonder, I assume that the Power Droid is basically just like a battery

[1:04:24] that moves around that they use to charge other things.

[1:04:27] Why do they give this battery droid legs?

[1:04:30] Why couldn't they just put them on wheels?

[1:04:33] Don't they put drinks on his head?

[1:04:35] I don't know.

[1:04:36] Do they do that to R2-D2?

[1:04:38] So they're coasters, they're mobile coasters.

[1:04:43] But R2-D2's basically got wheels, the Power Droid walks.

[1:04:46] That's a terrible idea.

[1:04:47] He's going to knock those fucking drinks all over the place.

[1:04:49] He's better for a bowl of cocktail peanuts.

[1:04:52] Yes.

[1:04:53] Or that weird fishy thing.

[1:04:55] He'll fucking walk over, you can get your drink, plug your fucking cell phone into him, et cetera.

[1:05:01] A fucking Kindle.

[1:05:02] Yep, plug in your Kindle.

[1:05:05] Yeah, whatever, Java, I got to check my screens.

[1:05:08] Oh yeah, dinosaur, sure, whatever.

[1:05:11] So that's all for letters.

[1:05:15] For this episode.

[1:05:17] And now your last and least favorite segment of the show, recommendations.

[1:05:23] Oh, okay.

[1:05:24] Movies that we saw recently that we actually liked in lieu of, you know, to replace Walking with Dinosaurs.

[1:05:35] Yeah, so don't watch Walking with Dinosaurs.

[1:05:37] Watch the movie Dan's about to recommend.

[1:05:39] Oh, I'm going to go first?

[1:05:40] Here's the thing.

[1:05:42] Hey there, guys.

[1:05:44] I've got three recommendations.

[1:05:45] Let's do some real talk.

[1:05:46] But they're linked.

[1:05:47] I've got three recommendations.

[1:05:48] Oh, okay.

[1:05:49] So I recently re-watched the Tim Burton Sweeney Todd.

[1:05:57] Okay.

[1:05:58] Which I enjoyed a great deal.

[1:06:00] I know that people who are real Sweeney Todd aficionados don't love that movie because, number one, a lot of stuff is cut from it.

[1:06:11] And, number two, you know, you've got Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter who are not real musical theater voices who maybe can't handle the Stephen Sondheim music as well as people who are real Broadway stars.

[1:06:30] But as a movie, as a movie adaptation of a musical, it's one of the better musical films that have come out, certainly in like the last, you know, couple decades, which has been kind of a dry spot for musical theater on film.

[1:06:48] However, that made me curious to go watch the Angela Lansbury production that is available on DVD.

[1:06:57] And that production is, you know, like a film stage production.

[1:07:02] It has Angela Lansbury from the...

[1:07:05] She plays Sweeney Todd?

[1:07:07] She's Mrs. Lovett.

[1:07:08] Weird casting.

[1:07:09] I believe that she's from the original cast.

[1:07:13] I may be wrong on this.

[1:07:14] But Sweeney Todd is not from the original cast.

[1:07:17] Like, the capturing of this stage production does not capture the full original cast of that production.

[1:07:26] So it's maybe in and of itself not like the greatest record of the stage version.

[1:07:33] But she's great.

[1:07:35] And if you're wanting to see a complete version of the musical, it's certainly great.

[1:07:43] It has kind of the problems that you usually have when you watch a filmed version of a stage production.

[1:07:49] It just doesn't capture the full magic of it.

[1:07:52] But if you're interested, it's certainly great.

[1:07:56] And it's kind of interesting to watch, you know, the Tim Burton Sweeney Todd and watch that and think about how, like, that's kind of the way that theater is.

[1:08:05] Like, there's no one definitive version of a theatrical production.

[1:08:11] And likewise, there's no now, like, really definitive, good Sweeney Todd you can get on DVD necessarily.

[1:08:19] I thought that Tim Burton won.

[1:08:22] Okay, good point.

[1:08:24] But the third linked recommendation I want to make...

[1:08:28] Tim Burton's Plan of the Apes.

[1:08:31] ...is the great performances of Into the Woods, which is, I believe, the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods that has Bernadette Peters and Joanna Gleeson.

[1:08:45] And that is one of the few cases where I actually do watch a filmed version of a stage play and think, this is great.

[1:08:53] I'm totally entertained by everything that's happening here.

[1:08:57] So I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to watch a Sondheim musical, why not go check out, above all, the Into the Woods DVD.

[1:09:08] But also the Sweeney Todd ones are pretty good, too.

[1:09:11] So those are my recommendations.

[1:09:13] Three big recommendations.

[1:09:15] All to be watched on airplanes.

[1:09:17] Yeah, thanks.

[1:09:19] I'm going to... So I've seen a bunch of movies this summer.

[1:09:22] I've seen a lot of big movies.

[1:09:24] But the movie I'm going to recommend tonight is a little quiet movie called Drinking Buddies.

[1:09:30] It's directed by Joe Swanberg, who's part of that whole little crew of mumblecore, mumblecore horror directors.

[1:09:40] Not just mumblecore horror.

[1:09:43] But he's done a lot of mumblecore horror, like that group of dudes made, like Ty West and all those guys.

[1:09:48] Sure.

[1:09:50] So this is a little movie.

[1:09:53] Not very much happens.

[1:09:56] It features Jake Johnson.

[1:09:58] Is that his name?

[1:10:00] Or is it Jake Johansson?

[1:10:01] I think it's Jake Johansson.

[1:10:04] One of them.

[1:10:05] He's good.

[1:10:06] Olivia Wilde, who's great in it.

[1:10:08] I've always said that I kind of think that she's a good actress who's been stuck in shitty

[1:10:13] roles.

[1:10:14] Yeah, that's true.

[1:10:16] And what's her name?

[1:10:18] The singer from whatever.

[1:10:21] So it's a great little movie.

[1:10:24] I liked it.

[1:10:25] It was a pretty good little movie.

[1:10:29] So Not Much Happens, it's about two friends who are in relationships with other people

[1:10:38] and they obviously have chemistry, but for whatever, you know, for their own fears or

[1:10:44] societal pressures they end up not getting together.

[1:10:49] But you know, their friendship in a way kind of hurts the relationships they have with

[1:10:55] other people.

[1:10:57] And it, I don't know, it felt fairly honest to me.

[1:10:59] Although Not Much Happens.

[1:11:00] So don't watch this movie expecting a comedy like all the people on Amazon seem to if you

[1:11:06] read the reviews.

[1:11:07] All right.

[1:11:08] Evan, what do you have for Eggman?

[1:11:10] Well, if you want something to counter Walking with Dinosaurs, you know, for parents out

[1:11:14] there, I really think the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is terrific.

[1:11:19] It's got a lot of great stuff for kids, but adults too.

[1:11:22] It's just such a smart, fast, funny movie.

[1:11:25] Really terrific.

[1:11:26] So you can show that with the kids and that's not going to be torture for you, essentially.

[1:11:29] The guys who like went on to do like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie.

[1:11:32] The Lego Movie.

[1:11:33] Yeah.

[1:11:34] And I think that's probably some of their best work is in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

[1:11:39] And then, you know, full disclosure, Justin Long, Vassar grad, he and I did theater plays

[1:11:45] together.

[1:11:46] Really?

[1:11:47] We did Sad Shepard play together.

[1:11:48] We did True West.

[1:11:49] We played the brothers.

[1:11:50] Really?

[1:11:51] In college.

[1:11:52] Wow.

[1:11:53] So you would have known him fairly well.

[1:11:54] I knew him.

[1:11:56] When I was doing all my social media against Walking with Dinosaurs, I ran into him and

[1:12:00] I was like, do I say, nope, not going to bring it up.

[1:12:03] Just going to catch up and say, hey, see how he's doing.

[1:12:07] And not say, oh, by the way, I've devoted a portion of my life to trashing that thing

[1:12:11] where you got a really nice paycheck to just ad-lib while your characters were on screen.

[1:12:16] I've got to say, there's a weird portion on the internet, we have to take guns out for

[1:12:22] Justin Long in the same way that I feel like there's a weird portion.

[1:12:24] I think that's totally unfair.

[1:12:26] He's so talented.

[1:12:27] He's incredible.

[1:12:28] Yeah, no, I agree with you.

[1:12:29] He makes a lot of projects where he makes a lot of money, Alvin with the Chipmunks and

[1:12:34] a lot of the live action things, but the fact is he's super talented.

[1:12:37] I think in The Right Thing, he can be very funny.

[1:12:40] He's in The Right Thing?

[1:12:41] Yeah.

[1:12:42] He's in The Right Thing.

[1:12:43] Yeah, but I liked him in Walk Hard, I liked him in, the movie's not great, but I think

[1:12:49] he carries accepted as much as that movie.

[1:12:54] That's a movie that you came up with that idea and then they...

[1:12:58] Well, that was an old Saturday Night Live skit with Billy Crystal.

[1:13:01] Was it?

[1:13:02] Oh, man.

[1:13:03] They had a fake college and they describe on visiting day, there will be a large cardboard

[1:13:08] cutout building that you can take your photo in front of, but don't let anyone stand behind

[1:13:14] it.

[1:13:15] Yeah.

[1:13:16] That idea's been around for a while.

[1:13:17] Awesome.

[1:13:18] Yeah, Justin Long, I think he's okay.

[1:13:21] I feel like he always, he tries to bring something, except for this movie where he didn't bring

[1:13:25] anything.

[1:13:26] Well, he brought what he could.

[1:13:27] Yeah, I guess that no one's going to salvage it, sure.

[1:13:30] No one's going to fix this movie.

[1:13:31] Yeah.

[1:13:32] I mean, I'm not going to like...

[1:13:33] Producers of Walking with Dinosaurs, no one was going to fix your movie.

[1:13:36] So if you want a good Vassar grad movie as an alternative to this, I'd say check out

[1:13:42] Detonator, an indie film starring Ben Fine, class of 98, I believe.

[1:13:48] It's an indie movie about a washed up punk rock singer who's at a crossroads in his life.

[1:13:54] And I think it's very enjoyable and you can see it on demand in various iTunes and other

[1:14:01] formats.

[1:14:02] Cool, for Vassar grads.

[1:14:04] Yeah.

[1:14:05] Not me.

[1:14:06] I can't watch it.

[1:14:07] And if you just want a good movie, I finally saw an unmarried woman.

[1:14:09] It took Paul Mazursky's death to get me to finally see an unmarried woman.

[1:14:13] It's fantastic.

[1:14:15] So, I'm the only one with only not three recommendations.

[1:14:19] Yeah.

[1:14:20] Those you feel are bad.

[1:14:21] You've seen Guardians of the Galaxy twice then, I guess.

[1:14:24] Yeah.

[1:14:25] They already have.

[1:14:26] Probably, yeah.

[1:14:27] According to the numbers.

[1:14:28] Yeah.

[1:14:29] Well, guys, this has been good.

[1:14:31] Thanks for being here.

[1:14:32] Thanks for...

[1:14:33] Thanks for being you, bro.

[1:14:34] Thanks for being like a fucking precog knowing that Elliot was not going to be here.

[1:14:39] In a way, is this like putting a pin in this part of your life?

[1:14:43] I hope so.

[1:14:44] Yeah.

[1:14:45] It's the only way I can make sense of this.

[1:14:46] Because it was the longest...

[1:14:47] For my kids, it was the longest joke about how we would do all these jokes about me being

[1:14:51] in a Manchurian candidate style situation.

[1:14:54] I get hypnotized and they say, you will betray your country.

[1:14:57] I'm going to say, yes, master.

[1:14:59] You will kill your family members.

[1:15:01] I say, yes, master.

[1:15:03] You will watch Walking with Dinosaurs again.

[1:15:05] No!

[1:15:06] Like it was always the joke, I'm chained to a wall.

[1:15:08] We came up with all these great gags because my kids love needling me about Walking with

[1:15:12] Dinosaurs.

[1:15:13] And now, here, I actually saw it again.

[1:15:17] And it was just as terrible as I remember it.

[1:15:20] So the only good thing to come out of it is that this is the end.

[1:15:25] We've poured some holy water over the TV set.

[1:15:28] Yep.

[1:15:29] Yep.

[1:15:30] Bury it with Freddy Krueger's bones and John Saxon in the graveyard.

[1:15:33] He'll never come back ever.

[1:15:35] No.

[1:15:36] No.

[1:15:37] That's it.

[1:15:38] Why do they bury him with his sweater?

[1:15:41] Well, we're going to have to say goodnight.

[1:15:45] But for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:15:47] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:15:50] And I'm Kevin Marr, at KevinGeeksOut on Twitter.

[1:15:53] That's KevinGeeksOut on Twitter.

[1:15:55] That's a good plug.

[1:15:57] Yeah.

[1:15:58] Goodnight, everyone.

[1:16:00] Man, we are going to set the night on fire.

[1:16:13] Because we are not that young anymore.

[1:16:16] Yep.

[1:16:17] You're going to hear me roar.

[1:16:19] Let's do this shit.

[1:16:22] Yeah, let's fuck this up.

[1:16:25] Let's tear the new fucking thing.

[1:16:30] And the dinosaurs.

[1:16:33] Three, two, dinosaurs.

The Flop House: Episode #159 - Walking with Dinosaurs

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