Monthly Archives: July 2024

Movie Reviews

Deadpool & Wolverine – Review

For a few years, there wasn’t just one way to define a Marvel movie.  What we know now as the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) has over the past decade been the flagship of Marvel media, but there were still remnants of Marvel’s past franchises that were still trying to compete alongside the MCU.  Before Disney became the home base for the Comic book publisher, Marvel had spread it’s many characters across Hollywood, letting multiple different studios obtain the film rights.  But with the debut of Marvel Studios in 2008, the idea was to create a connected cinematic universe which unfortunately was going to be complicated because it would require the cooperation of different competing studios to allow it to happen.  When Disney bought Marvel, they now had a deep pocketed financier keen on executing this mighty vision, but the issue still persisted with the legacy rights held by the other studios.  Surprisingly, Paramount gave up the rights to Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor without a fight, which helped to get the Avengers team-up rolling without issue.  Sony, which holds the rights to Spider-Man, has been the only remaining hold out as they continue to roll out Spider-verse movies in order to still hold onto the lucrative character; many of which aren’t very good, which is probably why they made a good neighbor deal with Disney to allow shared profits on Spider-Man properties, so that Sony can still benefit from the success of the MCU.  And then there was Fox, which for a time was the most defiant in holding onto their rights.  They refused to allow their rights to revert to Disney, or make a neighborly deal like Sony did, so all of the characters they held onto would have had to sit out the connected storyline of the MCU, including the conclusion of their monumental Infinity Saga.  That meant that iconic Marvel characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men missed out on what was considered to be the pinnacle of super hero movie-making.

Fans of those franchise were upset and that was reflected in the box office for the Fox Marvel films.  Nobody was interested in the franchise anymore, because the MCU was what people were more interested.  Fox Marvel needed the MCU more than the MCU need Fox.  So, when it was announced that 20th Century Fox was about to be put on the market by it’s owner Rupert Murdoch in 2017, many comic book fans were hoping this would loosen up those rights to the Marvel characters, and allow for them to finally join the MCU.  In a record breaking deal that closed in 2019, Disney did end up acquiring 20th Century Fox’s entire film library which included the film rights to all the Marvel characters owned by the now absorbed studio. But now that all the characters were under the same roof, the question remained how they were going to be worked into the ongoing narrative of the MCU.  It wasn’t going to be easy, given the huge number of characters that exist under the X-Men banner alone.  One of the more bold choices of this new direction for Marvel was to make the next saga of the MCU be centered around the concept of the Multiverse.  Not only would exploring the multiverse help to expand the horizons of the stories that could be told, but it allowed Marvel to also canonize everything that had come before it.  With the Spider-Man sequel, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), they legitimized all the previous versions of the character, by allowing current Spider-Man Tom Holland to fight alongside his predecessors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) also introduced a What If? selection of Avengers, that including the introductions of Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart reprising his role) and Reed Richards (John Krasinski) into the MCU.  But thus far, an actual movie centered on one of the stars of the Fox Marvel canon has yet to surface as part of the MCU.  For those franchises to finally get their big debut into the MCU, Marvel and Disney needed to call upon their heaviest hitters, and that’s why we are getting a highly anticipated new feature that teams up two of the most popular super heroes of all time; Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

Deadpool & Wolverine takes place not long after the events of Deadpool 2 (2018).   Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has hung up the red suit after setting all issues right in his universe thanks to the time travel device that he got from Cable.  However, not everything has worked out for him.  His relationship with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is on the rocks and he has ended up in a dead end job that his buddy Peter (Rob Delaney) managed to get him on.  Even still, he still finds love and support from his friends, including X-Men Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Deadpool’s foul mouth roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams).  But, Deadpool’s time travel shenanigans have caught up to him, as he is captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), who are the police force of the multiverse.  After being taken to the TVA’s headquarters, Deadpool meets Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) who tells him that he has been granted the chance to join the Sacred Timeline, which is the MCU where all the Avengers live.  It has been Deadpool’s dream to join Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but he soon learns there’s a catch; he can never return to his own timeline, because it is doomed to fade away.  Mr. Paradox tells him that the reason his universe is dying is because it has lost it’s Anchor Being, a figure who is key to the universe’s survival, and that Anchor Being just so happens to be Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  In order to save his universe, Deadpool travels the multiverse to find a replacement Wolverine, but the one he ends up bringing back is a drunken mess who was responsible for getting his entire X-Men family killed.  In order to prevent them from altering their plans, the TVA sends Deadpool and the down and out Wolverine to a place called the Void, a realm that exists at the end of time.  There, they find a renegade army of outcasts who are ruled over by a powerful mutant named Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the exiled twin sister of Charles Xavier.  In order to survive, Deadpool and Wolverine must work out their differences if they’ll ever be able to survive the wrath of Cassandra Nova and a colossal being made of anti-matter called Alioth that feasts on everything that ends up in the realm, wiping it from time and space.

The arrival of Deadpool & Wolverine comes at an interesting time for Marvel Studios.  After experiencing unprecedented success over the last decade, the studio is experiencing something of a slump.  The movies are not performing like they used to at the box office, and their critical reception has also seen a down turn.  Now, I for one think that the online discourse is being wildly hyperbolic when it says that Marvel is dying.  The Marvel output is certainly not at it’s peak, but their movies on the whole are still wholly watchable and in many cases still better than most movies.  And a lot of their problems right now are really emblematic of the super hero genre as a whole and not exclusive to just them.  No matter what the discourse says, I still look at each movie on it’s own and judge it by it’s own merits, and to my surprise, the movies that people claim are Marvel’s biggest failures in recent years are actually among my favorites (2021’s Eternals and 2023’s The Marvels).  I will grant them the failure of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023); that was bad.  But, the Marvel like all the others have had to adjust their plans due to the shifting attitudes towards the genre as a whole.  Due to the disappointing box office last year, as well as the delays cause by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Marvel decided that they would only put out one movie this year in order for them to have time to re-organize.  And that put Marvel’s entire 2024 hopes on the return of Deadpool.  The first two Deadpool movies were monumental hits, and easily the most profitable from the Fox Marvel era, so you can see why Disney was eager to get Deadpool up and running as a franchise under their stewardship.  A positive sign was that Marvel Studios was going to keep this franchise R-rated, which is the only way a Deadpool movie could be made.  The even more promising news helping to spark interest for this movie was the long awaited team up between Deadpool and Wolverine, with Hugh Jackman returning to the character after initially retiring in the aftermath of the beloved film Logan (2017).  One thing is clear, this is the right movie to help revive Marvel’s fortunes at the box office; a surefire team up between their heaviest hitters.  But does it land as a cinematic experience.  The answer is a bit more complicated.

One of the hallmarks of the Deadpool franchise is it’s irreverent sense of humor.  Thankfully that has returned with Ryan Reynolds and company not missing a beat.  The movie is raunchy, subversive, and a laugh riot.  I found myself having quite a few great outbursts of laughter throughout this movie.  Nobody is spared in the crossfire of all the jokes; Marvel, Disney, Fox, the comic book genre as a whole, they all get savaged by the zingers in this movie.  But, it also in a way overwhelms the story that’s being told as well.  The movie doesn’t quite the narrative pull that it should.  It seems like most of the movie is just strung together to put Deadpool and Wolverine into different situations solely so that they can milk it for the comedy.  Thankfully, the comedy does carry the film, but when you think back on the experience, the plot feels very flimsy.  What is especially problematic is that character motivations throughout don’t make a whole lot of sense.  It’s understandable with Deadpool since he is an agent of chaos that just unpredictably goes with the flow.  But, we don’t get the deep character introspection with Wolverine that we should.  There’s only vague reference to what makes him tick, and Deadpool even makes the meta joke about waiting for a third act flashback to explain Logan’s backstory.  Thankfully, the movie doesn’t go for the easy cliché of actually cashing in that promise of a flashback, but we never really get closure on Wolverine as a character either.  He’s just along for the ride with Deadpool too.  For the most part, this movie is far more about the experience than the story and it does have some pretty incredible moments, mainly when the two leads share the screen.  But, the first two Deadpool movies balanced the story and comedy with a bit more care; which is mainly because those movies were a bit more budget conscious and had to make sure everything was clearly defined on screen.

Deadpool & Wolverine also feels a tad bit more generic stylistically than the past Deadpool movies.  I think this has to do with it being directed by Shawn Levy.  Levy is a capable filmmaker, and is clearly someone that Ryan Reynolds likes to work with, given that he directed two of his most recent movies (2021’s Free Guy and 2022’s The Adam Project).  But one area that I feel he lacks talent as a filmmaker is in the direction of the action scenes.  The first film made great use of a limited budget to create memorable and creative action sequences.  The second film leveled up even more by getting John Wick co-creator David Leitch to direct, and that film had some very stylish action set pieces that were stunning to look at.  In Deadpool & Wolverine, the results are mixed.  There are some neat action scenes, particularly in the beginning which has one of the greatest opening credits scenes I’ve seen in quite a while, and undoubtedly the best of this franchise yet.  But, there’s another fight scene halfway through that makes disappointing use of shaky cam.  The blandness of that shaky cam is extra insulting because there are unique character fighting styles that we really want to see in that moment, and it doesn’t give us a clear view of any of it.  It was a scene like that where you really want to see the Leitch style steady shots used more.  But where credit is due, Shawn Levy does deliver when it comes to the comedy.  There are some excellent prat fall moments in this film, and when the movie calls for some gratuitous violence delivered in a funny way, Levy does hit the mark.  But, given that this story was intended to have more of an action centric edge to it, it might have been better to get a director with more action movie experience than the guy behind the Night at the Museum franchise.  He’s good with comedy to be sure, but lacking in that thing that could have made the movie feel just that extra bit exciting.

The thing that undoubtedly is the best element of the movie is the performances.  It should be noted that the title Deadpool & Wolverine is a very good indicator of this film as a whole.  It is very much a two hander of film, with Wolverine getting just as much of the spotlight as Deadpool.  Ryan Reynolds of course is in his element as Deadpool.  This has been his baby now for nearly a decade, and you can tell that he brings his A-game every single time.   He doesn’t disappoint here at all, making Deadpool just as lovably raunchy and irresistibly funny throughout.  I especially love the fact that he is playing the character as just as big of a fanboy of the MCU as the audience who will be watching this movie.  Of course, getting Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine is another miraculous accomplishment for this film, and Hugh does not disappoint.  His performance here is especially strong, and amongst the best he has ever done for the character, managing to hit some surprisingly strong pathos in an otherwise silly movie.  And of course, the most talked about part of his return is that we finally get to see him in the comic book accurate blue and yellow costume, which Deadpool hilariously derides as making him look like a mascot for the LA Rams.  What is interesting is that the movie isn’t so much of a debut for Deadpool and Wolverine in the MCU as it is a swan song for the Fox Marvel universe.  Don’t go in expecting cameos from any Avengers, as the cast here is made up of familiar faces from Deadpool’s past.  It is good to see past cast members make a return, especially Leslie Uggams as Blind Al.  But, it does seem like Marvel is saving their encounters between Deadpool and the MCU for later.  There are still some incredible cameos in this movie; ones that I will spare spoiling here as they are a big surprise, including that made my jaw drop when I saw this character appear on screen.  The villains in this movie, Mr. Paradox and Cassandra Nova are fine, though not among the all time greats in the Marvel canon.  Emma Corrin in particular gets some nice scene chewing moments, and the visualization of her power is effectively disturbing.  Matthew Macfadyen also brings a nice bit of stuffy British humor to the role of Paradox.  The cast in general, with the two charismatic leads and some genuinely pleasing surprises will definitely leave audiences happy about this movie.

Regardless of the flaws that this movie has, it’s still going to be a fun experience at the movies.  It helps when you see this movie with an audience full of comic book nerds who will riotously cheer at all the big comic book and movie references thrown out in the film.  As an experience, this is absolutely a fun time.  I just wish that it held up better as a story.  In many ways, Marvel has become their own worst enemy because of how well all the story lines fell into place for their biggest hit, Avengers: Endgame (2019).  Now we seem to expect that for every movie that they make, which can never be the case because they aren’t movies that function on the same level.  While I do feel that Marvel is doing much better story wise than what the internet discourse is claiming to be a failure on all levels, there is no denying that they have had some struggles keeping the momentum going beyond Endgame, something that Deadpool even jokes about in the movie.  Does Deadpool & Wolverine fix all of those problems.  No, and in fact the symptoms are actually a bit more obvious in this movie than they are in other recent Marvel films.  But, it’s still a great fun experience when you go in just wanting to have a good laugh and see two Marvel icons team up for the first time.  Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have incredible chemistry on screen and that definitely helps to propel the film.  The jokes are also more hit than miss, so it definitely delivers on the comedy.  I definitely think that Marvel will get back on it’s footing after a tough couple of years.  I feel their biggest mistake post-Endgame was moving too fast, putting out too many movies and shows per year.  With Deadpool & Wolverine being their lone standard bearer this year, it will give Marvel the time to take a deep breath that it needs before starting the next act, which includes debuts of the Fantastic Four and more X-Men.  And, more than anything else, this movie shows that things work out better when a movie feels more like a labor of love than a mandate to fill a spot on a timeline.  The best thing about Deadpool & Wolverine is that it helps to renew our excitement for what Marvel has next for us in it’s future.  And given that the movie delivers Marvel’s first ever R-rated experience, that could be an open door for just about anything.

Rating: 8/10

Top Ten Lists

Top Ten Musical Moments in Non-Musical Movies

We all know what a movie musical is supposed to be.  There’s an expectation that most of the story is going to unfold with the support of catchy and emotional songs, and in most cases some incredibly well choreographed dancing as well.  But, not all of the best musical moments that have come from cinema are found in musical movies.  Sometimes there are moments where a magnificent musical number will suddenly break out in a movie that beforehand had none and will not have any thereafter.  And these unexpected musical treats can sometimes be among the most memorable moments ever in film.  You find these moments mostly in a comedy, where the joke usually is the unexpected break into a musical number.  Other times, the moment just springs out of the scene naturally, with the characters feeling the mood of a particular song that is playing within earshot and they either break out into a dance or sing along.  In any case, these scenes reinforce the power that music can have when it’s in the service of storytelling, and all it can take is just one song to do it.  For this article, I will be counting down what I think are the best musical moments from non-musical movies.  To make it on this list, the movies themselves have to specifically be not in the musical genre.  The movies can have more than one song in it, but the moment itself has to be one that is essential to the scene that it’s in; so no needle drops as part of the musical score.  The characters in the moment have to be actively participating in the music or reacting to it.  There are actually a surprisingly large amounts of great musical moments like these found in non-musical movies, so narrowing it down wasn’t easy.  And so with that, let’s take a look at my picks for the Top Ten Musical Moments From Non-Musical Movies.

10.

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

“Camelot”

Remember when I said that many comedies will throw in a musical number as joke, intended to make fun of other musicals.  Well, here is one of the best examples.  Like most of the jokes found in this classic comedy, the musical number comes completely out of nowhere and blindsides you.  Where it falls within the story is after King Arthur (Graham Chapman) has assembles all of his Knights of the Round Table, played by all of the other Monty Python members.  Their journey begins as a search for a kingdom, and of course they arrive at the mythical Camelot (It’s only a model).  Arthur orders his knights to follow him there and we immediately jump into the musical number in all of it’s lunacy.  In typical Python fashion, the “Camelot” song is utter nonsense with the singers desperately straining themselves to rhyme words with Camelot.  At the same time, we see knights dancing in a chorus line, knocking plates off tables and a page using their metal helmets as a percussion instrument.  Even a cat getting stepped on becomes part of the musical bridge.  And the funniest part is that the scene contributes nothing else to the story other than to convince Arthur and his knights to leave Camelot, because “tis a silly place.”  It’s a fun, absurdist diversion that stands out in a movie that is full of absurdity.  Eric Idle, one of the Monty Python members who co-wrote the song, would take the joke further by actually creating a full stage musical called Spamalot based on the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail itself, which became a huge success on it’s own.  It’s easy to think that this small like musical number meant as a gag may have itself gone full circle and sparked into existence a who musical.  That in itself is funny when you think about it.

9.

BIG (1988)

“Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks”

Sometimes you don’t even have to sing to create a great musical moment.  This is the case with this memorable scene from the movie Big.  The movie that centers around a teenage boy who makes a wish to grow bigger and the next morning finds himself in the body of an adult man (played by Tom Hanks) offers plenty of potential for comedic hijinks.  But, director Penny Marshall and screenwriter Gary Ross also managed to find a lot of heart in this story as well, giving it an emotional coming of age resonance.  A lot of the film’s best moments come out of Tom Hanks’ performance, where you see him not only convincingly playing a child in a man’s body but also someone who is learning to grow up at the same time.  That balance between becoming more mature while still having that childish sense of playfulness is perfectly captured in this scene, where Hank’s character is trying to connect with the owner of a major toy company that he works for, played by Robert Loggia.  They unexpectedly stumble upon a floor piano display and Hanks’ character’s childish instincts kick into gear.  He begins to play “Heart and Soul” by tapping his foot on the right keys and as he gets more into it, the piano playing becomes more of a dance.  He somehow manages to convince the senior business owner to jump in, and he too starts to feel a little bit like a child again.  It’s a simple but charming scene that just springs naturally out of the moment, and uses music as a great story-telling tool to show human connection.  It helps that it looked like Hanks and Loggia were having fun while filming the scene.  Indeed, the two made an effort to make the scene work, as there were apparently back up dancers on set in case they missed a note or two.  Neither missed a step and the stand-ins were never needed.  Just a sublimely charming use of music in a movie that otherwise is just a comedy.

8.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008)

“Jai Ho”

This Oscar winning film on the surface seems to be a film deeply rooted in the country of India.  But, when you look at the team behind it, it’s actually a British made film, from the director to the screenwriter to many of the key positions behind the camera all being filled by people who are distinctly not Indian.  But the film does make an effort to draw inspiration from the subcontinent’s vast cinematic history.  Bollywood after all is the second largest film industry in the world behind Hollywood, and even in recent years it has begun to catch Tinseltown by surprise.  The film Slumdog Millionaire is for the most part a straight forward drama about a young man named Jamal (Dev Patel in a star making role) trying to survive as an orphan and societal cast-out, only to take all of that struggle and learn from it and have it help him win millions of dollars on a trivia game show.  In many ways, the straight forward approach to the drama separates the movie from it’s Bollywood contemporaries.  That is until the finale though.  After the story comes to a close, and Jamal ends up a millionaire and with the girl he loves (played by Frieda Pinto), the credits begin to roll and suddenly the movie breaks into a full blown Bollywood musical number.  It’s a brilliant move to wait until the very end for the movie to spring this on us; it would have felt out of place anywhere else, which sometimes is something that Bollywood filmmakers are not concerned about.  The musical number in the end feels earned and is something of a victory lap for the film.  It helps that it feels tied into the story as well, as it takes place in a train station that was a key meeting place for the characters, both as children and as adults.  The movie brilliantly includes shots of the child actors who played the younger counterparts of the leads also dancing.  The song won composer A.R. Rahman an Oscar.  Over a decade later, a true Bollywood film would win the same award with the hit song “Naatu Naatu” from RRR (2022).  Slumdog may not have been a true Bollywood musical in the same sense, but it use the Bollywood style to give us one hell of a closing note to leave the movie on.

7.

RISKY BUSINESS (1983)

“Old Time Rock and Roll”

Sometimes a great musical moment can happen in a movie when a character just feels the vibe in the moment when a song comes on.  In this iconic scene from Risky Business, Tom Cruise’s character Joel is enjoying the freedom of having the house all to himself with his parents away.  So much so, he feels the urge to dance around, pants-less I might add, to his favorite rock song.  If it were any other actor than Tom Cruise, this scene wouldn’t matter as much as a great musical moment, but he is the ingredient that makes the difference.  It helps that he has those natural good looks, but Cruise’s whole performance in this is all in, and it looks like he is genuinely having a blast doing this.  It’s hard to listen to this Bob Segar classic, particularly the first few notes, and not think of Cruise sliding into frame back turned to the camera with his socks on that hard wood floor.  This moment has been widely imitated across media over the last 40 years, and I’m sure many people have even tried it at home when they see an open hard wood floor.  But it holds a special honor for being the moment that turned Tom Cruise into a movie star.  Sure he had already appeared in a films before this, like Taps (1981) and The Outsiders (1983).  But when people saw Risky Business, they couldn’t stop talking about “the scene.”  Without Tom Cruise’s lip-synching in his underwear, the Top Guns and the Mission: Impossibles might not have come after.  Risky Business does have a memorable soundtrack that includes the likes of The Police and Phil Collins, but they are merely mood setters, while “Old Time Rock and Roll” stands out as a moment where the movie lets the music make the scene.  And Tom Cruise’s career for that matter.

6.

WAYNE’S WORLD (1992)

“Bohemian Rhapsody”

It really says something about a song used in a movie when it forever puts an imprint on it afterwards.  The Saturday Night Live spinoff comedy starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey was a perfect translation of the comedy sketch in a film format.  It maintained the humor from SNL while managing to expand on the concept well enough to make it work in full length.  And while the whole movie is hilarious and has many classic moments, nothing hits the mark more than this opening scene with Wayne and Garth and their crew driving to their favorite haunt listening to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  The sing along is appropriately goofy, with the characters going over the top with each lyric.  And I don’t think anybody ever since this movie came out can listen to the guitar riff transition after the lyric “FOR MEEEEE” without headbanging like Wayne and the gang do in this scene.  It’s such a joyful, funny moment showing rock music fans just really getting into the music in that moment.  This moment, as it would turn out, would have a larger impact beyond the movie.  Because of Wayne’s World, “Bohemian Rhapsody” suddenly jumped up back on the music charts, helping it become a hit once again.  Queen had kind of fallen out of popularity during the late 80’s, so this movie raised their profile once again.  And it had the extra poignancy of happening mere months after lead singer Freddie Mercury had died from complications of AIDS.  The remaining members of Queen would pay Mike Myers back by giving him a role in the award-winning biopic Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).  30 years later, it’s still a hilarious moment that remarkably is now ubiquitous with the song.  If anything, I don’t know if a song as weird and experimental as “Bohemian Rhapsody” would ever have been remembered beyond it’s era without this movie.  Today, it is seen as Queen’s signature song, and they have a bunch of local access TV party animals to thank for that.

5.

FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986)

“Twist and Shout”

John Hughes movies always incorporate pop music into their soundtracks that work as perfect tone setters, whether they be classic or contemporary.  Bands like Oingo Boingo, Simple Minds, and Spandau Ballet got a major boost by having their songs featured prominently in a Hughes flick, but the most memorable musical moment in any of his movies actually takes it’s cue from the greatest rock band of all; The Beatles.  In a scene that perfectly illustrates how the character of Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) can charm his way into anything, Ferris is seen taking over a parade float in Downtown Chicago and he manages to lead the parade performers and audience into a playful performance of the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.”  Sure it’s another lip-synching performance, but Broderick puts a lot of energy into it, and in that moment you see the character at his most charismatic.  The fun thing about the scene is that it seems to organically change from a spur of the moment routine from Bueller into a full blown movie musical moment, with people in the crowd suddenly staring to dance like they rehearsed it.  For a bit, it looks like John Hughes is breaking the veneer of reality a bit by making the sing along feel like a true Hollywood musical.  It’s no surprise that Broadrick was and still remains a Broadway musical performer of note, and that talent for musical performance can definitely be seen here.  The scene also feels like a love letter to the city of Chicago from John Hughes, who would set most of his movies in the Windy City.  Both Los Angeles and New York have been the spotlighted in classic musicals before.  With Ferris Bueller, we see the city come alive with it’s own musical spark.

4.

PULP FICTION (1994)

“You Never Can Tell”

One thing that definitely defines the movies of Quentin Tarantino is the soundtrack.  And what is particularly interesting about the music in a Tarantino movie is that he doesn’t always pick an obvious, popular song to underscore his scenes.  He likes his deep cuts, and it’s often the case where a long buried song from an obscure band may end up being re-discovered by being featured in one of Quentin’s movies.  For the most part, he uses music as a tone setter, being a non-diegetic factor in the scenes.  But there are instances where he does have his characters reacting to the music they are listening to.  In some cases, those songs become such an iconic part of those scenes, that it’s another case where those songs have been imprinted with the movie that they featured in.  The torture scene from Reservoir Dogs (1992) with Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” is a great example of this, as you can’t listen to the song anymore without picturing Michael Madsen’s little shuffle step before he cuts the policeman’s ear off.  But as memorable as that moment is, Tarantino’s most memorable musical moment is found in Pulp Fiction, with John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s iconic dance in the Jack Rabbit Slim’s Twist Contest.  Performed to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” their dance is simultaneously absurd and impressive to watch.  Travolta’s waving of the two fingers in a “V” across his eyes alone is a shorthand gesture that immediately recalls this film whenever somebody imitates it.  In all of Tarantino’s body of work, this is the closest he’s ever come to making an all out musical moment in one of his movies.  He probably felt that he had to put a scene like this in a movie that was going to feature John Travolta, the star of Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).  And it’s a good thing he did, because in a film full of some pretty dark and harrowing moments, it’s the one part of the movie that just allows itself to have a little fun; and in turn it makes for an unforgettable musical moment.

3.

DIRTY DANCING (1987)

“I’ve Had the Time of My Life”

A lot of movies like to finish on a strong note, and in most cases the best way to do that is with music.  Dirty Dancing, for most of it’s runtime is a simple romantic melodrama, complete with a soundtrack of 60’s standards to help set the time and place of this movie.  But, in the closing scene of the film, when dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze at the top of his game) pushes his top student and love interest Baby (Jennifer Grey) to show off all the dance moves he’s been teaching her in a public gathering, the film suddenly launches into a full musical number that to this day defines it’s era.  In contrast with the rest of the movie, the scene is scored not with a classic, era appropriate song but instead with a contemporary 80’s ballad, sung by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. And the film suddenly shifts to staging the shots like it’s a music video.  For a film that had been a laid back drama up to this point, this final scene puts a fantastical spin on the moment and in many ways it feels earned.  You can definitely feel the shift in the movie when Swayze looks at Jennifer Grey sitting quietly at her table and delivers his now oft quoted line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”  And the film just closes out it’s story purely through song and dance from then out, something that the rest of the movie wouldn’t have indicated up to that point.  Of course the moment that becomes the highlight of the scene is when Baby perfectly lands the leap into the air, where Johnny holds her aloft over his head.  This is a move that has been attempted at many weddings across the world in the nearly 40 years since, to varying degrees of success.  It may have been peak 80’s, but it’s a moment that still represents one of the best uses of music to carry a scene and present a grandiose musical moment into a generally straightforward film and help it become something truly cinematic.

2.

BARBIE (2023)

“I’m Just Ken”

It’s actually a bit of a surprise that we got a Barbie movie that wasn’t more musical.  This Greta Gerwig directed satirical comedy became a massive box office hit in no small part to it’s perfectly executed concept and hilarious observations about gender roles and the societal pressures that reinforce them.  It also had a great soundtrack that surprisingly also contributed to the messages of the movie.  Most of the songs are great to listen to, but only one stands out as being a true musical number in this movie.  And boy does it stand out.  Penned by songwriter Mark Ronson, whose had a hand in many Top 40 hits over the years, this show-stopper is devoted to the Kens that live in Barbieland, and is a tour de force that perfectly toes the line between absurd and sincere, which makes it the perfect encapsulation of the movie itself.  Ryan Gosling’s performance completely sells this song.  It’s a hilarious parody of a rock opera ballad that is absurdly over the top.  While the initial melancholy opening part is hilarious enough, the movie really hits it’s high when we reach the “dance off” portion.  From this point, the song goes from absurdly hilarious to epically hilarious, with these wannabe alpha males trying to assert their manhood by way of interpretive dance.  In a film that already has plenty of great comedic moment, this is where the movie takes everything to an iconic level.  It’s such an imaginative road to take with what is on it’s own a very absurd song.  It’s a relatively new entry compared with all the other musical moments on this list, but the fact that it lands so well as both a joke within the scene as well as a sincerely great song on it’s own really has elevated it to being one of the best musical moments of this type.  It’s an inspired moment that really punctuates the comedy of it’s film and shows how well an unexpected musical moment can help to elevate the movie as a whole.

1.

THE PRODUCERS (1968)

“Springtime for Hitler”

The legendary Mel Brooks has always tried to work at least one musical number into most of his films.  Whether it’s the title number from Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), or Lily Von Shtupp’s dance hall routine in Blazing Saddles (1974), or the iconic and hilarious version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” from Young Frankenstein (1974), he’s always managed to get a musical moment that fits well into his movies that are otherwise more comedically driven.  But out of all of his big musical numbers,  I don’t think any stands out more than the title number for the intentionally bad stage musical “Springtime for Hitler.  In a multi-layered gag, Mel is able to poke fun at the over the top spectacle of musical theater while also getting in his shots at the expense of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  There’s actually a profound meaning behind the joke here.  Mel Brooks distilled the Nazis down to their pageantry, showing that this was the biggest weapon they had in spreading their propaganda, but when you take that pageantry out of the context of a scary Nazi rally and put it into a Broadway musical spectacle, you really see the absurdity of what it actually was in the end.  That’s the genius behind Mel Brooks’ satire in The Producers, that once you strip propaganda down to it’s naked pageantry, you rob it of it’s power by showing how ridiculous it looks out of context.  And the musical number “Springtime for Hitler” is a perfect illustration of this, with Nazi’s looking absolutely ridiculous when imagined as chorus line dancers.  The best part of the scene is seeing the horrified faces of the Broadway audience; just utterly petrified by the audacity of what they are seeing.  Even though the movie centers around musical theater, this is the one true musical number in the movie and it shows the talent that Mel Brooks had in staging a musical sequence for a film, even if the intention was for it to be a joke.  Mel would go on to take The Producers and turn it into a stage musical for real many years later, which itself would become one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time.  For a musical sequence that appears in a movie that’s not a musical, there really is nothing that quite hits as hard musically or thematically as this one does; a brilliant accomplishment from the comedic and cinematic genius that is Mr. Mel Brooks.

So, there you have my picks for the best musical moments in non-musical movies.  There is often a fine line between what we consider to be a true Hollywood musical.  Most movies contain great music, but to be a movie musical that music must also be an integral part of the story telling and not just a mood setter.  These examples that I spotlighted blur that line even more, because in most cases they are moments that you would normally find in a standard movie musical, and yet they stand alone within their movies.  Some were a part of their movie as an intentional parody of movie musical numbers, like with Monty Python‘s “Camelot” or The Producers‘ “Springtime for Hitler.”  Other times, it’s just the characters getting into the music they are hearing and that in turn creates an iconic moment on it’s own, like in Risky Business, or Big, or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  And then there is there’s the coda from Slumdog Millionaire where the movie divorces itself from the grounded story it was telling to give us a fun celebratory dance number to leave the movie on.  In all the cases, these scenes used music effectively to embellish their moments, and in turn created iconic moments that made their films even better.  Risky Business was defined by Tom Cruise’s bare legged dancing to rock music and Dirty Dancing was defined by that triumphant leap that Jennifer Grey made into Patrick Swayze’s arms, lifted high into the air.  And of course Pulp Fiction was given it’s most iconic moment with whatever dance Travolta and Thurman were trying to do in their scene together.  All of these show that a movie doesn’t have to be musical in the traditional sense to have a great musical moment.  Often these stand out as the best cinema has to offer because of how unexpected they usually are. And the best ones will also sometimes leave their mark on the songs they showcase, like what Wayne’s World did with “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  That’s a true sign of the power of music in storytelling.  One of the best kinds of surprises you’ll find in watching a movie is seeing how well one song can make a movie shine even brighter when it’s used in the best way possible.

Editorials

Paramount’s Decision – The Future of a Legendary Studio and Balancing Business With Legacy

It’s a strange time for the movie studios that defined the identity of Hollywood.  We know them as the Big 5; Warner Brothers Discovery, NBC Universal, Sony, Disney, and of course Paramount.  For the longest time, it was known as the Big 6, but the studio previously known as 20th Century Fox ceased to be independent after a merger with the Walt Disney Company that finalized in 2019.  It’s fate was one of the most revealing signs of an industry that was in flux and about to change forever.  The rise of streaming caused a disruption in the normal business model that Hollywood had been running over the last half century.  With the studios wanting to get in on the lucrative new distribution model, they went through a busy period of content consolidation, cementing stronger holds on the properties that they had acquired over the years.  This also led to several mega mergers like the Disney and Fox one, where combined catalogs of movies and shows would help boost the content library for these new streamers.  However, this streaming arms race led to several financial problems down the road.  Hard cuts have had to be made to these newly expanded studios like Disney/Fox and Warner Brothers Discovery, but no studio had a more dire outlook in these latter days of the streaming wars than Paramount Pictures.  Paramount, the last remaining studio actually located in Hollywood itself, was facing some economic shortfalls this year that forced it’s parent company, National Amusements, to pursue a sale.  The industry was watching this development closely, because depending on who ended up owning Paramount in the end could either signal a new era for the century old studio, or be a sign of the end of yet another storied brand within Hollywood.  History is important to the identity of Hollywood, but this is also a business that sometimes can steamroll over the past in the name of progress.

Throughout Paramount’s history, it has seen the studio pass through many different hands, but all the while it has still remained one of Hollywood’s most legendary studios.  Founded in 1914 by Adolph Zukor, it is the second oldest studio in Hollywood still running today after Universal Pictures.  Funny enough, Paramount started it’s history off with a merger between Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company and producer Jesse L. Lasky’s Feature Play Company.  They began to make silent pictures out of a small barn on what is now Sunset and Vine in Hollywood, giving their directorial duties to an inexperienced stage manager at the time named Cecil B. DeMille.  The barn still survives today, though it has been moved to Highland Avenue across from the Hollywood Bowl and is now the Hollywood Heritage Museum.  In the 20’s, they used the profits from their movies to establish a larger facility located on Melrose Boulevard and that’s been their home ever since.  In 1927, Paramount adopted it’s now iconic logo of a mountain top ringed by an arch of 22 stars.  The meaning behind the stars has been lost to time, but the logo has remained fairly unchanged in almost 100 years; merely upgraded graphically with the advancements in filmmaking over time.   At Paramount, the key to their success were it’s stars, and they were the home to all the silent greats like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Rudolph Valentino to name a few.  In the meantime, Paramount was also growing itself into one of the titans of exhibition as well, being the owners of numerous movie theaters across the country.  Unfortunately for them, their rapid growth in the exhibition side of the business would back and bite them, and the result would change Hollywood forever.

Paramount created a practice called “block booking” which made it so that any theater that wanted to screen a film starring one particular star would also have to buy a year’s worth of other Paramount movies.  Paramount wasn’t alone in this practice in Hollywood, but they were the most prolific studio owned theatrical distributor too, which gave them close to a monopoly in the business.  This practice of “block booking” made it impossible for independent theater owners to rise up in the business because it limited the amount of movies that would have been available to screen.  So, anti-trust lawsuits were filed, which were argued all the way up to the Supreme Court.  This led to the landmark United States v. Paramount Pictures decision of 1950, which effectively broke up the movie studios ownership of movie theaters and brought an end to the movie studio system as we knew it up to that point.  All of the studios in Hollywood were effected, but none more so than Paramount.  It lost a significant share of it’s yearly income after being forced to sell off it’s theatrical division, and it spent much of the 1950’s and 60’s struggling to regain it’s past glory.  Meanwhile, a corporate manufacturing conglomerate named Gulf+Western was beginning to pivot into the entertainment business.  They acquired two major Hollywood players in 1966, one was the television studio Desilu Pictures and the other was of course Paramount.  The combination of the two would prove fortuitous because Desilu happened to be the rights holders of a popular shows like  Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, two brands that would over time become some of the most valuable franchises under the Paramount umbrella.  Under Gulf+Western, Paramount would see a revival in the 1970’s, especially under the supervision of their new head of production, a young executive named Robert Evans, who would be a hit making machine, greenlighting beloved classics like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Love Story (1970), Chinatown (1974) and The Godfather Parts I and II (1972, 1974) during his tenure.

The success continued through the 80’s and 90’s, and Paramount would also become the starting off point for some of the biggest power players in the industry.  Both Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg would capitalize on the success of their launch of the Indiana Jones franchise at Paramount by jumping over to the leadership at Disney.  Paramount also became the original home of the mega successful producer team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and they would deliver a huge hit for Paramount with the Tom Cruise led Top Gun (1986).  Cruise himself would also set up shop as a producer within Paramount, working almost exclusively with the studio for most of his career.  But, a pivotal moment came in 1993 when billionaire Sumner Redstone’s media conglomerate Viacom decided to add Paramount to it’s portfolio.  In a deal worth $9 billion at the time, Redstone’s National Amusements, the parent company of Viacom, became the primary shareholder of Paramount Pictures and all of it’s properties.  A few short years later, Viacom would also acquire the television network CBS, which now put all three Big 3 TV networks now under the control of movie studios (NBC and ABC were already owned by Universal and Disney respectively).  With the combination of it’s movie library, it’s valuable franchises from the old Desilu studio, and now a whole TV network under one roof, Viacom built Paramount into one of the most powerful studios in Hollywood.  Viacom would continue to expand into the cable television market, acquiring channels like Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon.  As time went on, Viacom was looking to take it’s vast library of movies and shows and use it to make a foothold in the new streaming market.  Initially, they tried to make their launch under the CBS name, calling their platform CBS All Access.  It became clear that this wasn’t a strong enough brand to make a difference in the face of competition with HBO Max and Disney+.  So, Viacom decided to undergo a whole rebrand with the Paramount name being their flagship.  CBS All Access would become Paramount+ and Viacom would be renamed Paramount Global.

With over a hundred years of experience in Hollywood, you would imagine that the Paramount name would help bring fortune to this new era of streaming.  But even though they had some modest success, mainly helped by showrunner Taylor Sheridan and his hugely popular drama Yellowstone, Paramount+ has fallen well short of expectations.  Like much of the other studios in Hollywood who jumped on board the streaming craze, Paramount is learning the hard lesson that streaming wasn’t going to be the bottomless well of fortune that they all thought it would be.  For Paramount, their lack of growth in streaming combined with the enormous amount of debt they acquired in order to grow and acquire assets over the years, suddenly put them in a bind they haven’t experienced in a long while.  This all came to a head this year, as Shari Redstone, the CEO of National Amusements after the death of her father Sumner in 2020, was looking to offload the company and it’s assets.  This led to a lot of worries within the industry as to what would happen to the legendary studio.  Would it be swallowed up by another studio like Fox had under Disney.  Or would it be bought by a Wall Street backed corporate raider who would break it up and sell off the scraps of what the studio once was, effectively killing it completely.  It all depended on who would meet Shari’s asking price.  The bidding war itself became a bit of a fiasco, as what looked like done deals quickly fell apart as agreements would change seemingly every day.  All the while, Paramount Global’s stock value sank to it’s lowest mark ever, being traded at only a fraction of what it’s competitors Warner Brothers and Disney were trading at.  Thankfully, powerful indie producer Skydance Media, which has had a long history working in collaboration with Paramount, including being a part of the most recent Star Trek and Mission: Impossible films, offered a merger deal with Paramount Global valued at $8 billion.  Skydance CEO David Ellison would effectively become the head of Paramount under this new agreement and National Amusements would no longer have the controlling interest in the studio moving forward, ending their 30 year control over the studio.  For Shari Redstone, and most of the industry, this is the most ideal outcome as it keeps the studio as we know it intact, securing Sumner Redstone’s legacy as the head of the company, and prevents it’s assets from being sold off separately.

While it looks like Paramount is getting a happyish ending out of this, their struggle is still very much a clear example of how fragile legacies can be in Hollywood.  For a lot of Hollywood’s history, we’ve seen many film companies come and go, and when one ceases to exist, their library of titles suddenly hang in limbo.  If this were to happen to one of the remaining Big 5 studios, it would have a profound ripple effect across the industry.  With Paramount spending a few months of uncertainty during the bidding war, it made a lot of people worried that we were in fact seeing the last days of this storied studio.  At one point, Sony expressed interest in acquiring Paramount, which would reduce the number of big studios down to just 4.  Another merger on the level of what we saw with Disney and Fox would have been devastating for Hollywood as it would have put a whole lot of people out of work due to redundancies.  And then there was the possibility of the studio being dismantled in a fire sale of sorts, splitting all the different properties of Paramount apart and selling them to interested parties all across the business, making the former Paramount brand itself worthless.  This is something not uncommon in Hollywood.  Other once powerful studios like RKO were dismantled over the years and sold off in pieces to other studios.  These kinds of things happen in Hollywood usually due to movie productions that go way over budget, to the point where no amount of box office success will save them.  United Artists, the studio formed by the combined forces of former Paramount contracted stars Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplain, was once a powerful force in Hollywood and even made huge profits off of their American distribution of the James Bond franchise.  Then came the disaster that was Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), a box office bomb so costly that it put United Artists into bankruptcy.  They were eventually acquired by MGM, which itself fell into hard times and today is now owned by Amazon.  Smaller companies fare even worse as they lose control over their libraries of films, and those that can’t find a home in another studio end up getting lost in vaults over time and forgotten to the world.

So what does the Skydance and Paramount merger mean.  It’s still uncertain, as the deal won’t close until 2025.  But what likely will happen, as is the case with most mergers, is that there will be layoffs in both companies.  Paramount may need to offload some of it’s assets in order to meet Skydance’s offer price.  In the entirety of the Viacom era, Paramount saw massive expansion that saw their assets grow to a point where it may be too big to manage.  In all likelihood, where Paramount may make their cuts is in the struggling cable division, as streaming has become a bigger concern of theirs.  There are already interested parties who want the BET Network, so that is likely going to be one of the channels that will leave the Paramount portfolio.  Speaking of streaming, there is talk of Paramount+ either being completely overhauled, sun-setted, or merged with another streamer, as it currently is one of the key contributors leading to Paramount’s dire financial situation.   There’s talk of Paramount+ combining with Warner Brother’s MAX in what would likely be one of the biggest mergers yet to come in the streaming market, which itself will affect the industry as a whole.  But whatever move it makes, the goal is to preserve Paramount’s history as best it can be saved.  That was what Shari Redstone was so adamant about.  Her father built the company up over 30 years and she didn’t want that legacy to disappear.  Unfortunately, the nature of the business is not kind to legacy.  Shareholders were likely not happy with the prolonged and ever-changing process it took to reach a deal.  Some shareholders likely would’ve been happier if Shari Redstone had just started selling off the assets of the studio for short term profits.  Hollywood is first and foremost a business, and what it takes to make a studio like Paramount run is the confidence in investors that the company can continue to make money.  Too much effort put into preserving the past can make investors warry because they are more concerned about the future, and that’s what makes it so hard for studios to maintain their stature over time.  There’s no room for sentimental attachments in Hollywood.

One good thing about the Skydance/ Paramount merger is that it will give Paramount the chance to maintain it’s identity into the future.  And one of the biggest things that will remain as part of the company is the legendary studio lot itself.  Remaining in it’s same footprint over nearly 100 years, and the only studio to stay in Hollywood after all the others moved to the San Fernando Valley or Culver City, the Paramount Studio lot is a living monument to the history of cinema.  Walking under those iconic white arches you know that you are walking in the footsteps of giants, seeing soundstages where classics like Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Ten Commandments (1956), The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Forrest Gump (1994), and many more were filmed.  Even today it’s a bustling, alive studio lot, with recent hits like Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) keeping Paramount well positioned amongst the Big 5 studios.  Hopefully under new management with Skydance we’ll see a renewed energy at the studio that will help it survive for many more years as it currently is.  It’s just unfortunate that so much drama had to occur during the process of the company changing hands.  Paramount, for it’s whole history has had to overcome a lot of hurdles.  After being crippled by the dissolution of the studio system with the Paramount Decision by the Supreme Court, they managed to bounce back thanks to their pursuit of making quality entertainment.  They helped to revitalize old properties like Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and Transformers and turn them into billion dollar franchises.  They helped to take CBS from last place in network ratings to first place with well targeted programming like CSI and NCIS for the older crowd and The Big Bang Theory for the younger crowd.  Time will tell how Paramount+ will fare, but hopefully it doesn’t sink the future of this long time studio.  Both literally and figuratively, Paramount is Hollywood.  It’s a living reminder of what the industry has stood for, and hopefully the sun doesn’t set on the other side of it’s lofty mountaintop.

Tinseltown Throwdown

Tinseltown Throwdown – South Park vs. Team America

The Colorado born and raised duo of Trey Parker and Matt Stone have become two of the most unexpected influential filmmakers of the last quarter century.  As humorists, they are drawn to often sophomoric, low brow gags about flatulence and excessive vulgarity.  They are also some of the most astute satirists of their era, managing to perfectly mock their targets with some of the sharpest jabs known in comedy.  They are very much a combination of contradictions that in one way or another have managed to change and re-shape the worlds of filmmaking, politics, humor and animation over the years.  But, of course when you try to pin them down to one thing, Parker and Stone will refute your assesment of them.  As filmmakers, they have always strived to do one thing, which is to make movies and shows that they themselves find funny.  Their body of work reflects that well, especially the program that they are most well known for: the long running animated series South Park, which continues to run on Comedy Central after over 25 years.  Parker and Stone first connected while attending college at the University of Colorado in Boulder and found that their interests in cinema aligned perfectly.  They collaborated on a number of short student films while Trey Parker was also refining his skills in an animation program.  Parker’s animated thesis project titled American History (1992) became an unexpected hit and surprisingly earned him a Student Academy Award.  This helped to propel him quickly to Hollywood, and his friend Matt Stone was there by his side.  They spent years trying to develop projects that would get noticed in the industry while still adhering to their oddball sensibilities.  They managed to successfully get funding for their first feature, Cannibal: The Musical (1994), and had it play at Sundance, though it languished soon after without a wide distributor.  Meanwhile, Parker animated another short in the paper cut-out style that he used on American History.  This short called The Spirit of Christmas was a satirical play on upbeat Rankin Bass style holiday specials, but it introduced something more that would go on to define the rest of Parker and Stone’s careers; the town of South Park and it’s quirky inhabitants.

While The Spirit of Christmas special never got picked up by a TV station, a bootleg copy did manage to get out into the wild.  It got passed along to multiple A-listers in Hollywood, all of whom thought that it was one of the funniest things that they had ever seen.  Soon after, Parker and Stone, who had been languishing on the outskirts of the industry for a few years, were now in demand and getting meetings across the industry.  Naturally, they leaned into the success of The Spirit of Christmas and pitched a show completely about the town of South Park.  The show was picked up by the newly re-branded cable channel, Comedy Central, and South Park made it’s debut in the summer of 1997.  The show was an automatic hit, though it also stirred up quite a controversy too.  For those who thought The Simpsons was risque for it’s time were absolutely appalled once South Park arrived on the scene.  South Park was crude, vulgar, and unforgiving with it’s satirical edge.  What also made people take notice was how quickly South Park could comment on current events, as their newly adopted computer enhanced animation allowed them very short turnarounds on their episodes.  This, as a result, made Parker and Stone very influential political satirists as well, though the very centrist filmmakers would balk at being tied to any political ideology.  Nevertheless, their most monumental contributions to cinema have been movies that do address politics in a significant way.  While the duo has created a number of projects over the years, their biggest cinematic achievements are a big screen adaptation of their hit show, slyly titled South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999), and a War on Terror satire starring puppets called Team America: World Police (2004).  While there are major differences between the movie, the also are similar in that they represent Parker and Stone at their most pointed when hitting their satirical targets.

“I’m sorry I can’t help myself.  That movie has warped my fragile little mind.”

It should be noted the times in which the two films were made, as the political climates were very different (even in the span of 5 years) and they would be very influential on the themes of each film.  South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was made in the tail end of the Clinton era in U.S. politics.  It was an era defined by peacetime and economic prosperity, but also about political division domestically as well.  The political opposition in America, defined by the Republican Party, tried to make a big deal about President Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affairs, both inside and outside of office, and this ended up turning into a debate about morality in American culture.  The arguments Republicans made about appropriate behavior would at times turn Puritanical, and this made people in the arts worried about a cultural backlash that would lead to more censorship.  This was also on the mind of Parker and Stone, as they centered the story of their South Park movie on this question of the limits of free expression.  In the movie, the South Park kids (Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman) begin to use more bad language than usual after seeing their favorite cartoon characters, Terrence and Phillip, in their newest movie. As a result, the parents of the kids go on a crusade to censor Terrence and Philip and everyone like them, which spirals out of control into a war between America and Canada which in turn could trigger the Apocalypse.  Of course, it’s Parker and Stone taking the situation to a hilariously extreme place, but you can’t help feel that they are drawing from the same censorship pressures that they have faced over the years in creating the story for this movie.  But, the world would be much different when Team America was made.  Not only would the Republican Party be back in power under President George W. Bush, but America was also hit by the worst terrorist attack in history with 9/11.  The response would find America once again on a war footing, and even more divided than before politically; with unfair questioning of patriotism leveled at those who opposed the war.  With Team America, Parker and Stone again take a critical eye towards the divisiveness of American politics and poke fun at both the callousness of unchecked patriotic fervor, as well as the impotent rage of those trying to combat it while not providing a clear alternative.  With regards to both films, they are very much perfect snapshots of the cultural mood of America in the times that they were made, and it’s fascinating to see just how different the country had changed in five short years.

“Remember, there is no ‘I’ in Team America.”  “Yes there is.”

What is interesting about Parker and Stone is how they have changed up their styles as filmmakers over the years.  They are not filmmakers who want to be tied down to just one style.  Before South Park, their filmography was certainly within the realm of comedy, but their targets were very different.  Cannibal: The Musical took traditional Hollywood musicals in the vein of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Oklahoma (1955) and added the gruesome aspect of cannibalism to the mix.  Their follow-up was a satire of the adult film industry with Orgazmo (1997), which again brought their absurdist sense of humor into a different kind of genre.  Even after their success with South Park and Team America, they would try their creative talents in a whole different kind of artform, creating the smash hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.  The same approach they have used for every film and project of theirs is well illustrated in the different ways that South Park and Team America are made.  South Park uses the same cut-out style of the show, but with the assistance of their computer animation, they are able to take the show’s style ever further thanks to the expanded budget of the movie.  The movie is also free from TV regulations and it leans hard into that R-rating with language.  And yet, it is a perfect continuation of the show on a grander scale.  Team America is definitely a different kind of movie altogether.  Instead of animation, they used marionette puppets on elaborate miniature sets.  It was inspired by the Sunday morning marionette show, Thunderbirds from the 1960’s, but they wanted to do that same kind of show with a Jerry Bruckheimer action flair to it.  The result is a hilarious riff on both, as the movie is a bombastic action film, but the characters are all still limited by the physicality of marionette puppetry.  One definitely has to marvel at the craft of it. as some of the miniature sets are insanely well detailed and the puppets are surprisingly expressive given their limited movement.  But, in typical Parker and Stone fashion, the comedy strives to reach the limits of what they are allowed, including having the puppets engaged in a very graphic sex scene mid-way through the movie.  With the South Park movie and Team America, you really see the filmmaking duo at the peak of their creative powers.

Where the films do deviate a bit is in terms of how well they have held up over the years.  In truth, they both still work as comedies and cinematic achievements in craft, but they are also limited by the fact that they are both products of their time.  In terms of how well these over twenty year old movies still play in the 2024, the times have been a bit kinder to South Park.  The ongoing debate about censorship and morality has morphed into a sadly never-ending “Culture War,” where conservatives and liberals have spilled over their political disagreements into the realm of pop culture, and has polarized the discourse even more.  Even South Park continues to be a battleground to this day, with right-wingers latching onto the critiques of major studios like Disney made in the recent special South Park: Joining the Paderverse, while at the same time misreading the more nuanced take that Parker and Stone are putting forth condemning people who only complain about stuff being “woke” while missing the point about corporations who just pander to marginalized groups and do nothing worthwhile to help them.  You can definitely see the beginnings of the “Culture War” crusade in the South Park movie, with the parents shirking responsibility for their parenting by blaming outside influence; in this case the nation of Canada.  You can see the same kind of scapegoating happening today, especially targeting the LGBTQ community.  Parker and Stone definitely saw the dangers of a mob mentality that sought to suppress creative expression and it’s terrible that this movie is just as relevant today as it was then.  On the other side, Team America unfortunately is weighed down by it’s War on Terror era identification.  With America largely out of their costly foreign wars today, the World Police aspect of the movie no longer feels relevant.  What unfortunately ages the movie even worse is the needless crude jokes aimed at the LGBTQ community.  Some are still funny, like how the Team America leader Spottswoode requires oral sex from the new guy Gary as a trust building measure of good faith, but other jokes really don’t age well.  The worst one would have to be the abbreviation for the Film Actors Guild, which of course turns into a derogatory slur for gay people; a joke that Parker and Stone thankfully have removed themselves from over the years.  By contrast, South Park has a surprisingly mature take on a gay relationship in it’s film, albeit between Satan and Saddam Hussein.  Even still, the jokes about the surface level, jingoistic patriotism of Bush-era America still hit pretty hard, especially in a time when it’s reached a scarier, fascistic level under Trump.  Also, the jokes at Alec Baldwin’s expense have aged like fine wine.

“Hey Satan, don’t be such a twit.  Mother Theresa won’t have shit on me.”

There’s another thing that connects the movies together, which also is something that makes them very different as well.  Continuing their tradition of incorporating music as a fundamental feature in their filmography, ever since they started with Cannibal: The Musical, both the South Park movie and Team America can be classified as musicals.  The label is more appropriate for the South Park movie, but given that every song in Team America is original, it can’t be dismissed as anything other than a musical.  The songs in Team America definitely feel like a compilation of songs that you would hear in the soundtrack of a Bruckheimer action film, ala Top Gun (1987) or Armageddon (1998).  A lot of rock music, country music, and any sort of red, white and blue tinted American styling that fits with the tone of the comedy.  What is amazing is that most of the songs are sung by Trey Parker himself, doing his best Springsteen imitation.  The majority of them are hilarious send-ups of action movie rock music, but the most hilarious one would have to the central theme called “America, F#$k Yeah.”  This song alone is one of the funniest things that Parker and Stone have ever written, as it is just takes jingoistic patriotism to the extreme, resulting in just a laundry list of things America has followed by “F$%k Yeah” from the chorus.  The other songs are good, but this is definitely the high point of the soundtrack.  The South Park movie by contrast is a much more standard musical film, and it also shows a more collaborative effort on the soundtrack than what they had on Team America.  For South Park, the duo worked with an actual Broadway and film score vet, Marc Shaiman, to develop the musical score.  The collaboration works as each song is well integrated into the story, including songs originally made for the show, like “Kyle’s Mom is a Bitch” and “What Would Brian Boitano Do?”  The highlight of the newer songs is definitely the Oscar-nominated “Blame Canada.”  While they did ultimately lose their Oscar to Phil Collins for a song he wrote for Disney’s Tarzan (1999), they team still had one of the greatest Oscar ceremony performances ever, with Robin Williams getting to sing the song in a lavish stage performance worthy of Broadway.  While both movies have great, hilarious songs in them, the music is just a more important factor in the South Park movie and as a result it enriches that movie more.

When it comes to be a technical achievement, I don’t think anything tops Team America with regards to Parker and Stone’s body of work as a whole.  The team spent years crafting the movie, all the while still working on new seasons of South Park.  Trey Parker described the experience of making Team America to be the most grueling thing he or Matt Stone have ever done; something that holds true to this day.  They went into the project with no experience in puppetry, and they were now tasked with not only perfecting it but also pushing the artform into a scope and scale unheard of before.  The film was only greenlighted by Paramount Studios in the first place because the executives were under the impression that a puppet movie would be cheap to make.  But when you look at the film, it’s ambitious in a way you would never think that a movie with marionette puppets would ever be.  The scale of the sets are incredible, especially the ones set in Cairo, the Panama Canal, and at Kim Jung-Il’s palace in North Korea.  One of the biggest assets to the making of the film was getting a veteran cinematographer on board who would shoot this fabricated world in the same way he would a true live action film.  They found that man in Bill Pope, who among other things has shot films like The Matrix (1999) and Spider-Man 2 (2004).  While South Park was just the show with an expanded budget, Team America was a true cinematic experiment that really paid off.  You can see the care put into the crafting of the movie, where it even gets to the point where you forget that you are watching puppets instead of real people on screen.  It’s a perfect execution of a vision that Parker and Stone set out to make a reality.  It’s unfortunate that they haven’t really done anything as uniquely different as this since.  Their focus probably got diverted to Broadway with Book of Mormon, where they saw that as their next mountain to conquer.  But in the last decade, it’s largely just been South Park and not much else.  One would hope that they have something unique in the cards like Team America still in them.  Perhaps the difficulty in making the movie has prevented them from trying it again.

“You are worthless, Arec Barrwin.”

Both South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and Team America: World Police have held up remarkably well over the years, but the former certainly feels more prescient than the latter.  South Park’s take on “culture war” anxiety boiling over just shows how far ahead of it’s time it was, with the “blame Canada” fanatics not feeling that much dissimilar from the anti-woke culture warriors of today.  Team America’s look at the recklessness of the War on Terror and the resulting jingoistic patriotism that spawned from it  also helps it to stand out as a political satire, though it’s a lot more tied to it’s era than South Park is.  For the most part, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have done well to not tie themselves down to any particular ideology.  If anything, their critiques are aimed at the extremes of both the right and the left, and that is exemplified by these two movies.  They are not agenda driven movies, but really they exist primarily to point out the absurdity of politics in general.  That being said, there are times when their critiques get overshadowed by their desire to shock their audience.  For the most part, they are very good at poking fun at the targets that deserve the ridicule, but times do change values and some of the jokes that would have been funny in the past unfortunately don’t translate as well to the present.  That’s where South Park seems to benefit the most, because of it’s more universal theme about censorship and self-expression.  Also, by being the more heightened world in animation, South Park can get away with a bit more than the more grounded Team America.  As a filmmaking achievement, it can definitely be said that Team America represents Parker and Stone at the height of their craft, but as a cinematic experience, South Park is just the more complete package, and it’s clear why to this day the show remains the duo’s favorite child.  Even still, Team America is still far more cutting and relentless than the majority of political satires out there.  It is especially much better than any partisan political satire made in the year’s since, particularly from those on the right.  While they do have flaws, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and Team America: World Police are still lightyears ahead of most modern satires, and that is something that definitely puts Trey Parker and Matt Stone in a class all their own as a filmmaking team.

“It seems that everything’s gone wrong since Canada came along.”