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Totally Awesome Review
by Doom and the Red Fox
special guest appearance by Seth MacFarlane
There are no words to describe my hatred for this film.
Ronald Reagan. Michael Jackson. Patrick Swayze. MTV. Iran-Contra. Jim Shooter's Secret Wars. The 1980's brought us many things, not many of them very good and the vast majority of incredible poor quality. In the post WWII atmosphere, it was definitely the worst decade for America and American culture (although, the 00's decade is on pace to outsuck it), a prime example of capitalistic and cultural excesses creating a hegemonic state of whores, drug addicts, a braindead President, bad music and young yuppie Republicans. I thought we could someday put the black mark of the 1980's behind us; 6 years of Reagan 2 all hope has been abandoned. VH1, the network for people too prudish to watch masturbation sensor MTV, further puts salt in the wound with their 'programming'. Enter Totally Awesome, a VH1 produced 'film' created to 'send up' the decade they make money off every single day. You know, I always felt no parody of a style of film could ever sink as low as the Scary Movie/Date Movie/Not Another Teen Movie suckiolgy. I have been proven wrong. So, so, so, so, so wrong.
The worst film ever created. Ever. EVER! Basically that is the sentiment after watching this abysmal film which I believe will one day cause the apocalypse. Or cause someone to start the apocalypse by forcing the person to say "The world is not worth existence if this is what it creates". Either or. Having said that, the film starts out with a family moving from the east to the west coast, forcing the children to go to a new high school. Uh oh! Charlie, the main dweeb, is the lowest in class cool rankings and meets up with Billie, his equally uncool female counterpart. His sister is a dancer but they have a Footloose situation going on in town, so nobody can dance (literally, dancing is banned because the last time dancing occurred, people danced so hard their feet came lose and fell off. GET THE REFERENCE, WHORE). Shit happens, along with several racial stereotypes, and Charlie challenges Kipp, the coolest guy in school, to a...decathlon? Anyway, he gets made fun of and loses Billie (who totally likes him) and gets an oriental trainer for the decathlon, a gay guy who teaches him the tricks of the trade through menial labor. His sister starts to dance with Chris Kattan/homeless janitor (EW) and his young brother makes a supercomputer all leading to the finale where he wins the meet. Everything wraps up in a nice little package and I die of boredom. End of story.
For a film supposedly set in the 80's I was really disturbed by its complete and utter lack of truly 80's-esque materials. Beyond some window dressing, Totally Awesome misses the mark entirely. For one, there are absolutely no montages. What the Hell? How can there be no montages in a parody of eighties film? Rocky III was composed of 89% montages (the other 11% was racism)! There were perfect places for these montages to be set. Charlie had to train for half of the movie with his sister also training for the dance thing they were having. Perfect montage fodder! Hell, I would have taken a montage of a cat pissing. Montages are the foundations of 80's films, we must preserve the heritage of dopey edited footage combined with bad music to form little slices of unintentionally humorous heaven. To not have one in a movie purporting to parody the 1980's sickens me.
Now with the 'lack of montage' ire out of my system, there were also several problems with a lot of the characters. For example, they were racist, but just not enough to make me laugh at their racism. Some character smarmed too much or not enough to elicit no laughs from us. A thin line exists in the difference of funny parody and annoying parody and Totally Awesome doesn't straddle it, it runs into the annoying side and never leaves. Of course, when the cast includes Chris "No Job" Kattan and Tracy "Where Am I Now?" Morgan in the cast, that's to be expected. And as the dancing, well, people didn't really care about dancing that much then (as evidenced by the styles of the time). People cared more about drug addiction, bad fashion, and supply-side economics. All in all, I believe a chimp in roller skates would have done a better job, thank you very much. And thanks to the Steven Chimpberg project, this may soon become a reality.
A good rule of thumb when creating a parody movie is to make sure the movie you've made is funnier than the ones you spoof. It seems an easy task at first but recent attempted pieces completely fail in this regard. I laugh way more at the Scream franchise than Scary Movie; She's All That over Not Another Teen Movie; and you better believe seeing that big teeth git Hugh Grant for real is funnier than seeing a cheap C-list impression of him in Date Movie. See, parody works when it takes the intrinsic elements to a certain array of films - for this example the overexposure of bad clothing or Patrick Swayze - and gives it a funny twist not originally showcased or dwelled upon in the original works. This travesty fails insofar as it points out laughable elements everyone is already aware of, including Z-list comedians and untalented snarky hacks VH1 gets for their nostalgia driven cheapo shows, making the entire point of parody moot. "The 80's sure did have films on the subject of dancing!" Way to go, guys. You botched this simple comedy lay-up so badly the mascot now has a basketball shaped hole in his chest.
Running concurrently with 'not understanding parody' in the fuck up department is the "humor", quotation marks fully intended. Referencing a movie of the 80's, no matter what Sethie Boo tells you, is no substitute for actual comedy. Totally Awesome fails in understanding the difference between 'reference' and 'humor'. Surprise, surprise! The only twist usually results in 'existing character archetype turns homosexual' or 'insufferable Swayze type played by insufferable Chris Kattan type (or Chris Kattan, whoever's cheaper to hire)'. Hahaha, The Karate Kid had an Asian guy in it and so does this only the Asian guy here loves men...in the ass! Hahahahaha! And when in doubt, Totally Awesome repeats a gag to the point of anger. Smarmy guy's laugh? Use it after every sentence! Tracy Morgan acting crazy? Throw it in whenever! Chris Kattan not being funny? In every scene involving his character! Christ. You could write the entire script as a blind, deaf and dumb man with only a paintbrush and a canvas composed of 80's movie posters.
Going for the obvious never hurt anyone. That's a lie. It hurts a lot of people, most of all us due to Totally Awesome going the obvious route every time for the comedy. This takes place in the 80's yet I'm sad to report that the tired physical gags and sex/race humor of yore still exists two decades later, only in this instance it's even worse than usual. If you have a brain stem, believe you can predict a punchline before the punchline happens. For a while it's an amusing little game, see how fast you can predict the badly telegraphed joke, but after, oh, 7 minutes, you'll tire of it and wish the movie/your life would immediately end. The art of parody is in never expecting what the filmmakers/parodists intend to do. If the predicting of jokes is so easy it can be done by any two cynical pricks watching it illegally on a computer, what's the Goddamn point?
While we were born in the 1980's, we never truly experienced the 80's because we were too young to remember anything. To add insight into this mystical decade of the 80's, I asked Seth "Hack" MacFarlane to lend a hand.
Do you remember the 1980's as a period of time which produced television shows, movies, musical acts and other phenomena later canonized as pop culture to college students across America? I do! The 80's made me rich and now I'm finally happy/economically secure. Thank you, 1980's. You were a magical decade of things I remember. Beautiful things I remember. Anyway, I completely disagree with Doom and the Red Fox here. I found Totally Awesome to be totally awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I intend to steal a lot of their jokes and fit them into the genius comedy framework of Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy. And American Dad. And Patriarchal Dude, my upcoming series. Face facts, guys. The 1980's are funny because we remember the 1980's as happening. The Noid! The Noid! The Sandinistas! G.I. Joe! Patrick Swayze! Ferris Bueller! See, just saying the names of previous things is funny.
Totally Awesome prides itself on being written/directed by 'the co-creator of Chappelle's Show'. ...No, it's not Dave Chappelle, and after suffering through the 90-some minutes of dreck, you wish for anything Chappelle related, even a 90 minute film reel of Dave snorting crack and playing World in Warcraft while wearing a straitjacket in Africa. What exactly did Neal Brennan do in the creation of Chappelle's Show, offer a napkin for Chappelle to write his ideas on? Someone needs to take him out back and shoot him. Here he displays the writing skills of someone drummed out of Police Academy Screenwriting Academy (the college to determine who writes the next 125 Police Academy movies). Man, Brennan, you should probably reconsider your plan to never work with Dave again. Going from Chappelle's Show to shitty VH1 'movies' is like the Vice President changing jobs and becoming a groundskeeper at Yankee Stadium. Or from prostitute to human Laundromat.
We learned absolutely nothing from the horrors of 80's Nostalgia Cash-In Disguised As Movie other than the obvious lessons when exposed to such a monstrosity of nostalgia and lame parody. Never watch a film produced by the quality wizards at VH1, never watch anything starring Chris Kattan, the 80's sucked so much the decade can't even be parodied without sucking, spoofs rarely work when parodying something funny in and of itself, never watch anything starring Chris Kattan, and Ben Stein is a Nazi. Totally Awesome is the That 80's Show of movies: superfluous, unfunny, and Step 1 in readdicting yourself to cocaine.
How many drinks do I need for this to be good?: 700
Mastur-factor: -24
The Stinger: VH1 expanding their nostalgia medium net to include cinema.
Lesson Learned: The 80's still suck.