MOVIE REVIEW 14

DATE REVIEWED: 10/28/23

TITLE: Big Trouble In Little China

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1986 20th Century Fox/Taft/Barish/Monash Production

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie began with Asian sorcerer and San Francisco Chinatown tour bus driver, Egg Shen. Egg gave his recorded testimony to his would-be attorney who wanted to know if Egg was involved in half a city block exploding in green flame and chaos in the city that followed. As a result, Jack Burton, a truck driver, was missing and Egg said Jack was a hero to his Asian people and to leave Jack alone. Egg confirmed that he believed in Chinese black magic and helped the attorney believe in supernatural monsters and sorcery by conjuring lightning in his hands. Egg said it always started out very small. To explain how Egg got to the where he interviewed attorneys, we start at the beginnng where trucker Jack drove fast down a wet road in the rain in his big rig, the Pork Chop Express, and ate his sandwich while he told anyone who listened on his CB radio that if somebody asked you if you paid your dues to tell them the check was in the mail and he then ranted about his ex-wives. Jack drove his truck into Chinatown and unloaded his live pigs at the local market. Jack then gambled and drank alcohol with the locals wearing his Harley-Davidson hat. Jack cleaned all the Chinese out of their money and was about to leave, but his friend, Wang Chi, was a sore loser and told Jack he couldn’t leave and wait until next time and try to earn the money back because Wang needed cash then. Wang demanded that Jack play another game, and Jack tried to talk to his way out of it but Wang took out a butcher knife and tried to do double or nothing that he could cut a beer bottle in half…in a threatening way if Jack didn’t participate in the game. Wang said he needed the $1,148 Jack had just won, so Jack put the money on the table and switched Wang’s bottle with his own and told Wang he was out of his mind and God bless him. Jack caught the glass bottle before it hit him in the head and told Wang to pay up the extra thousand dollars he owed since he lost, and Wang said he didn’t have that kind of money and couldn’t pay his debt because he was a poor old Chinese boy. Jack knew Wang had money because he owned a restaurant, and Wang said he didn’t have the money on him and had to stop at the airport before giving Jack the money. Jack drove Wang in his big rig truck minus the trailer to the airport to pick up Wang’s fiancée who was arriving from Peking, China. Wang said she was the love of his life and he worked his fingers to the bone for the last five years to bring her from China to America so he could marry her. As Wang and Jack waited at the airport, Wang told Jack that Miao Yin had green eyes which was rare for a Chinese person. Wang went to meet Miao Yin, and Jack hit on a green-eyed female he thought was good-looking. She told him he smelled like beer, and then a Chinatown gang called the Lords of Death barged between Jack and the female and he was going to go after them but she told him not to because she recognized the gang. A Chinese girl named Tara came through the gate because Gracie Law was her ride so Gracie approached her, but then a gang member grabbed Tara. Jack intervened, and the gangster went after him with nunchuk knives inside the airport. However, that was a distraction so the gang could slap green-eyed Miao Yin and then drag her out of the airport holding a gun to her head. Jack and Wang followed into the parking garage, and Jack told Gracie to call the cops. Attorney Gracie Law ingnored Jack and sped off with Tara in an orange van as the gangsters drove towards Jack and Wang in a sports car and nearly ran them down. Jack said the SOB must pay and he and Wang raced after the car in his big rig truck without a trailer attached. Wang seemed to know Gracie and told Jack to stay away from her because she was a lawyer, but he wouldn’t tell Jack why Gracie was picking up Tara. Egg Shen gave the tourists on his bus a history lesson that the Chinese came to America to work on the transcontinental railroad and help build Chinatown, and they saved enough money to bring their families over. Egg met Jack on a narrow street and the two large vehicles nearly collided. As Jack maneuvered the big truck through allies, there was a funeral procession of the good guys, the Fighting Tong who were white robe wearing Chang Sings.Jack wanted to go down another alley, and then the truck was surrounded by the black uniform and red turban wearing, butcher-knife wielding Wing Kongs who were animals. A Wing Kong then pulled out a machine gun and took out all the Chang Sings and shot up the casket. The Chang Sings fought back with their guns. Gang members wearing black and gold appeared for the Chinese standoff, and Wang cautioned Jack not to move and alert the gangsters that they were inside the truck. The deadly gangs fought hand-to-hand kung fu combat using multiple deadly weapons to kill, and then the three storms, bulletproof elemental masters called Thunder, Lightning and Rain, appeared and threw knives to kill people. Wang told Jack no questions and to get out of there. The three masters got out of the way, but Jack ran over David Lo Pan with his big rig. When Jack looked at the ancient sorcerer, the light lasers that Lo Pan shot out of his eyes blinded Jack temporarily. Wang and Jack ran off, and Wang splashed puddle water into Jack’s eyes and he was able to see again. The Lords of Death then surrounded Wang and Jack. Jack told Wang to keep the money and he was going home. They ran off, and Wang told Jack that a smart man would leave his truck since it was insured. Jack argued that a smart man called the cops, and Wang replied that cops had better things to do than get killed so leave them out of Chinatown. Later on at Wang’s Dragon of the Black Pool Cantonese restaurant, Uncle Chu listened to Jack ranting about Lo Pan as Jack waited for the operator to put him through to his insurance company regarding his truck damage. Eddie Lee, a businessman and Wang’s friend, then showed up and informed Jack that the Lords of Death stole Jack’s truck after the white man ran away. Wang said they would find Jack’s truck, and local Eddie explained that they weren’t acting on an order from Wing Kong, they were after Miao Yin on their own for a joyride and Lo Pan ordered the boss of the Chang Sings to be killed. Gracie then appeared and told Jack it was her neighborhood, and she told everyone that the Lords of Death took Miao Yin to the White Tigers for a quick sale. Gracie suggested they buy Miao Yin back, and Wang said he needed all his money and couldn’t pay Jack because he had to get his fiancée back and it was going to cost extra because Miao Yin had green eyes. Eddie drove the group around in his pink classic car (Elvis) and sent Jack into the sale to buy Miao because the rest of them were known around Chinatown and didn’t want to show their faces to the smugglers. While waiting, Gracie jumped into the car of Margo Litzenberger, a reporter, and identified the White Tiger so Margo could get the story even though she was scared of Chinatown. Jack disguised himself as Henry Swanson (looking and laughing like Austin Powers) and told a female that he would pay in cash for time with a female prisoner. He said he was willing to pay any price for a girl with green eyes fresh off the boat, but was told by the female shady White Tiger secret brothel business employee staged to greet and screen visitors that Chinese girls didn’t have green eyes. The female criminal Asian boss overheard and went to check on Miao, who was in a secret passageway tied to a bed. As Jack was in a room with forced Chinese prostitute, the building started shaking and overhead outside was a green orb. There was pandemonium in the hallway when the women in their underclothes and the men in their suits came out of their rooms and tried to escape. The three storms came through a hole in the ceiling they made and directed lightning at the female pimp to get her away from Miao. Jack tried to fight one of the beings to no avail and was kicked to the floor so the trio of comic book villians took Miao away through the hole in the ceiling. Jack was taken to Gracie’s office and complained about the entire ordeal and wanted his truck back. Jack wanted to call the cops because everything was too crazy to be real but the others didn’t want law enforcement on the scene. They then figured out that Miao would be taken to Lo Pan, the chairman of the National Orient Bank and owner of the Wing Kong Import/Export Trading Company and he hadn’t been seen in years. Tara was there. Gracie Law told her rogue pals that she was protecting Tara’s (not a legal USA citizen) civil rights and making sure she got her chance when she came to America from China.Wang announced that he was going to the Wing Kong exchange, and Jack insisted on going and told the others to hold down the fort and call the president if the duo wasn’t back by dawn. They pretended to be repairman because there were cameras in the trading building. Egg showed up at the restaurant and told everyone that they needed to gather their strength, and there was difficulty at the beginning but they would bring order out of chaos. Egg added that the Chinese confused everything with Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism and they took what they wanted and left the rest like at a salad bar. Jack and Wang found a hidden elevator so they used it. However, the elevator filled with water and was a trap so they swam out of the elevator and were surrounded by the corpses of people who didn’t make it out before them. They reached the surface and were taken captive by the Storms, who beat them up and then brought them into a Buddha room and tied them in wheelchairs. The real Lo Pan, a 2,000-year-old being (face like Freddy Krueger), explained that the building was his tomb and he needed a special kind of woman with dragon-green eyes to make Lo Pan whole and young again so he could rule the universe from beyond his grave. Ching Dai, the god of the east, was the demon god he had to appease to regain his heart and blood, and he needed the girl with the green eyes to satisfy Ching Dai and be brave enough to embrace the naked blade and he wanted to marry her and then his curse would be lifted. Lo Pan took off in his electric wheelchair and said that Miao Lin was safer with him than any creature on earth. The rest of the group tried to convince a security guard to let them inside the building so Margo the reporter could get her story. Grace said Margo’s pen was mightier than the guard’s sword and then a man (Thunder) appeared and said he would help them. Jack and Wang were blindfolded and put in a room, and Jack tipped his wheelchair over and took his knife out of his knee-high moccasins and used it to free himself and Wang. Thunder man brought Grace’s group into a freight elevator, where they passed out when the elevator filled with gas and then the black and red gang members took them away. Wang told Jack about the myths and legends that Chinese children grew up on and believed to be real about the army of the dead, the spirit city, monkey sacrifices and the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, the mad monarch who federated seven warring states and imposed upon them the horrible curse of no flesh in 272 B.C. Wang added that was sorcery Chinese black magic. Jack and Wang got through another war party and freed Eddie after they pretended to be tied up in their chairs when Eddie was brought into the room. Thunder reported back to Lo Pan about the escapees, and Lo Pan ordered them all boiled until their flesh fell off. Lo Pan then changed into his other, younger form and went right through walls and furniture to see Miao Yin. Lo Pan prayed to Ching Dai to make him flesh again soon because he wanted to have sex with Miao Yin, the green-eyed dragon girl. As Wang Kung fued his way through gangsters, Eddie and Jack shot and killed other gang members. They then used the freight elevators to go up. Two females got the better of Eddie and Wang with their smoke sticks and then beat them up but the men quickly recovered and got rid of the two attackers just as two more females showed up. Jack freed Margo, Gracie and the dozens of other female prisoners from their cells by shooting their locks on their cell doors. The black and red turban wearing gang showed up as everyone was escaped by jumping into the water and swimming out a porthole with one female’s dress coming up to reveal her thong. The gangsters shot at the water with their guns, but missed their targets. Jack’s group made it to safety. Jack and Gracie kissed, and they were all able to climb up out of the sewer water into the warehouse. The only door out seemed to have gang members waiting for them on the other side, so Jack told the others to hide. He used his machine gun to shoot some of them and Wang took out the leftovers with Kung fu martial arts. Jack held up his gun on the security guards in the lobby while the others ran out and boarded Egg’s tour bus, except for Gracie who was left to guard the back but was snatched by a hairy Sasquatch monster who had been watching her through the eyes in a wall hanging before she made it out the door. A bunch of security guards followed them out and shot up the glass windows of the bus (not the tires), but they were able to drive away. They then realized that Gracie and Miao Yin were still inside. The hairy creature took Gracie to a chamber and put her in chains. Lo Pan showed up in his Freddy Krueger form and touched Gracie, the second green-eyed girl while laughing as she fought back against his unwelcome advances (while she was restrained). Back at Wang’s restaurant, Margo described the situation as a radical Alice in Wonderland. After Jack told Margo she had a bestseller on her hands, she told him to call the police because Jack wasn’t a one-man army (the police were not told about of the dangerous Chinatown underground gang situation). Egg then brought along the black and gold turban wearing, English-speaking California Chang Sings gang. Egg tried to offer Jack a Dirty Harry gun, but Jack said he would stick to what he already had. Margo told Jack that he couldn’t keep the press out of it and it was freedom of the press so he couldn’t stop the reporter from going, but Jack replied that Margo was safer there not to mention Eddie Lee wanted a romantic relationship with the reporter. A henchman took Gracie out of her chains, locked her in the same room as Miao Yin and told her she would live to tell about it if she played her cards right. Lo Pan then showed up to the party and told the girls that his soul swam in black magic, scattered across time and was trapped in the world of formlessness until he found and married the girl with green eyes that could tame his burning blade. Lo Pan then put Gracie in the same trace-like state that he put Miao Yin in with his glowing eyes and mouth. Egg stopped by his warehouse home and retrieved the supplies he needed, and he and the gang members used the hidden escape route to leave on their rescue mission. Like firemen, they slid down a pole to the tunnels underneath Chinatown. Egg told a story that thousands of years ago, the unnatural people committed sins against their Chinese gods. Egg then used his sorcery to send away a red-eyed creature that tried to attack the group. The test to determine the worthiness of the two green-eyed females involved Lo Pan and his groupies using their black magic to levitate Miao Yin and Gracie holding swords to the ceiling so they could touch the crystal ball and light the green eyes on a creature in order to survive the burning blade. After both passed, Lo Pan decided to marry both females. Dressed in their red wedding gowns with gold accents, extremely heavy makeup and headdresses, Gracie snapped out of her trance but Miao Yin wasn’t out yet so Gracie pretended that she was still under the wicked spell when the door opened. Lightning came into the room and did his magic, and the two girls’ green eyes turned white. Carrying his knife in his teeth, Jack slid down through the exit and landed on a pile of stinky fish full of rats inside Lo Pan’s emergency food shelter. Egg said that 2,258 years ago, the first emperor, Trunje Wong Alijima, subjugated Lo Pan and made him of low flesh. In order to make Lo Pan whole again, he had to find a certain girl of his prophecy and marry her to appease the god of the east, but to appease the emperor Lo Pan had to kill her. Egg went on to explain that the power he held in his flask was their only hope to defeat the satyr of the underworld, the ultimate evil spirit. Egg added that only a dream could kill a dream and the evil dream would die. They then discovered that the Wing Kong gang was outside, so the group waited for them to pass and then two soldiers in elaborate dragon armor went down the hallway to attend the wedding. Jack asked Egg if they had to drink the magic potion, and Egg said yes. Miao Yin and Gracie went down the skull escalator and walked to the Buddha statue. Egg and his gang encountered a floating, many-eyed creature that was a guardian and reported to Lo Pan what it saw. Lo Pan told his goons that the little bastard Egg brought his people to the bog of the dead trees, and then Lo Pan spoke to Egg through the guardian and told him he was too late because Lo Pan was marrying both of the green-eyed girls. He added that he would then sacrifice Gracie Law to appease his emperor and have his earthly pleasures with Miao Yin. Crazy Asian Lo Pan laughed psychotically because he had the best of two worlds. Jack shot the guardian and it left, and then the group entered easily into Lo Pan’s underground estate. Egg told Jack that Lo Pan was too busy preparing to marry his queen that he didn’t care to send his thugs after them. Lo Pan then went down the skull escalator. The group found a secret elevator, and before they all went down Egg handed out the potion and everyone drank it to make them able to see things and do things that Lo Pan did and nobody else could. Egg said it was the six-demon bag with wind and fire in it. Wang toasted to the army, navy and battles they won and America’s colors that never run. Jack added that may the wings of liberty never lose a feather. Jack and Wang then felt invincible, and they exited the elevator as Lo Pan prayed to Ching Dai asking him to come into their presence and witness the holy matrimony. Lo Pan then called the two females his beloved disciples, and he prepared his moment of truth that was a long needle he called love. Egg warned Jack not to shoot Lo Pan in his current state and to wait until the sorcerer was flesh where a bullet would actually injure him. Lo Pan inserted the needle into Miao Yin’s arm, and Wang pulled out his sword but Egg stopped him. Lo Pan felt Miao Yin’s blood and he was mortal, but then a guardian spotted Egg, alerted Lo Pan and the two gangs fought. In the killing moment, Jack shot at the ceiling but then cement fell from above and knocked him unconscious before he was able to battle. Gracie knocked a guard off the pedestal, and then Jack woke up and defenseless in the kung fu battle of knives, swords and magical trickery so he wasn’t much of help and seemed to be a white man in the way. Jack did manage to kill an armored soldier with his tiny knife and it fell on him, but then Jack couldn’t get it off him because of the heavy weight. Lo Pan still poked Miao Yin with his needle multiple times in her wrist and then sucking her blood. Wang was busy fighting his equal doing circus acrobat moves in the air with their swords. Like a video game controller, Lo Pan and Egg used their hands to conjure warrior images to fight each other. After that, Lo Pan and Miao Yin went back up the skull escalator. Wang finally defeated the Storm he was fighting. Egg threw dark magic at the Buddha statue and it crumbled and opened and Jack and Gracie went inside. Gracie was alarmed that Jack didn’t have a gun to fight with, but Jack reassured her his knife could handle the 7-foot tall Lo Pan. Jack took Gracie’s headdress off and they kissed passionately, and then they exited the elevator with red lipstick on Jack’s lips. Thunder told Lo Pan that he had to sacrifice Miao Yin, now awake, to appease the emperor, but Jack interrupted and Lo Pan wanted Thunder to finish Jack off. When Wang appeared, Jack Burton said his phrase “What the hell?” Jack tried to throw his knife at Lo Pan’s head while Wang took care of Thunder, but Jack missed. Lo Pan shoved Miao Yin towards Jack and picked up the knife, and he flung it at Jack to kill him but Jack had such great reflexes (catching the bottle) that he caught the knife and quickly flung it back and it landed in Lo Pan’s forehead, killing him instantly. All the Buddha statues then toppled to the ground and broke, and Gracie was impressed and Jack told her it was all in the reflexes. They went to save Wang from crazy Thunder, and Gracie handed Jack a sword and wiped the lipstick off Jack’s face so he looked like a man and not a trans. Thunder grew fat and then his body exploded, and when Lightning appeared the foursome jumped up through a hole in the ceiling. Egg used a pole rope to pull them up through another hole, and Egg dropped a Buddha statue on Lightning’s head to dispatch him. They all depended on Jack to find a way out, and he found his truck behind a warehouse door so they got up in it and the security guards shot at Jack. Egg threw magic at the guards to bomb them, and Jack took the spare key from under his seat and smashed through the Chinatown warehouse door with his bigrig truck (that had a silhouette of female on the front with the words “Haulin’ A**”). As police cars and fire trucks arrived on scene at Lo Pan’s underground hideout, they ignored the big rig truck making an escape down the alley. Wang and Miao Yin made out inside the cab, and then back at the restaurant everyone celebrated. Egg told Jack that the evil spell was lifted and Lo Pan was dead, and Egg promised himself years ago that he would go on a long vacation after his work was done. Jack suggested that Egg go over to China and visit the motherland, and Egg replied that China was in his heart and wherever he went China went with him because he taught others the China way of life. Egg left California for destination unknown. Eddie Lee and reporter Margo discussed a book title and going out on a date. Jack took the triple high dollar check from Wang for his help in defeating Lo Pan and getting back Wang’s girl from Chinatown nuts so Jack gladly accepted the kings’ ransom for his time and efforts in the Asian gang battle. The movie ended with Jack, wearing another Harley-Davidson, and not kissing Gracie goodbye but parting ways. Jack told Wang that they shook the pillars of heaven together and then Jack and Wang both made a gang sign and Jack left. Jack drove down the road drinking what appeared to be an alcoholic beverage in his big rig cab Pork Chop Express truck with no trailer while again offering free advice on a stormy night using his CB radio. Hitching a ride was the Bigfoot-hairy creature from Chinatown. You could say Jack traded in married with children for his freeloading life that involved cousin IT the China demon.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/27/23

TITLE: Gotcha!

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1985 Universal Studios / Michael I. Levy Enterprises

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie began with UCLA veterinary student Jonathan Moore. Jonathan played the campus paintball game called, “Gotcha,” of which he was the champion. On campus, the teen chased a student around as Johnathan held a very realistic black gun, and then Johnathan shot the other student in the back. The paint pellet left a red mark like a gunshot wound, and in the process, Jonathan accidentally stained a female’s sweater. She was angry and thought Jonathan was crazy for playing that game for fun, and then she gave him the middle finger and called him an a-hole when he tried to ask her out because he was desperate to have sex with a female. Jonathan tried to ask Muffy out, but she said she would rather do nothing then go out with him. Jonathan told his roommate buddy Manolo about it in class, and Manolo advised Jonathan to control the situation and be assertive when asking a female out. Jonathan wanted to go to Europe for a vacation with Manolo and there were would be a special travel deal through the school. Al Moore (dad) said no, but his wife Maria (mom) convinced him to pay for Jonathan’s trip (parents already paid for Jonathan’s apartment around campus). Upon arrival in Paris, Jonathan and Manolo got ripped off by a taxi driver who drove recklessly through traffic, and when Jonathan tried to speak French to a female she slapped him and called him an a-hole because he asked her if she wanted to go to bed with him that night. Manolo then hooked up at the hotel with Swedish Heidi by telling her that his name was Carlos and he was an Algerian terrorist. Jonathan gave them time by going to a café, where he met 24-year-old Alexis “Sasha” Banicek, a Czechoslovakian/German/American who studied film at Berkeley. Jonathan lied that he was 23, but then Sasha said she liked 18-year-old boys so he revealed that he was really 18. He lied again that he had been with dozens of women but then admitted that he was a virgin and he would kill or die to make love to Sasha. Jonathan kicked Manolo out of the hotel so Jonathan and Sasha could have sex. In the next scene, Jonathan and Sasha were in bed together with much of her bare breasts visible, and they agreed she would teach him Europe and he would teach her America. They spent all their time together (much of it making out and having sex) over the next week, and then Sasha announced that she was leaving for West Berlin on business and wanted Jonathan to come with her. Jonathan ditched his plans to go to Spain with Manolo, and Manolo said Jonathan didn’t even know Sasha but Jonathan was convinced he was in love with her so Manolo told him to go for it. After a couple of days in Berlin, Sasha explained to Jonathan that she paid for her California Berkeley tuition by being a courier for a man who paid her to carry things (she didn’t even know what) across the border. Jonathan wanted to go with Sasha. They were stopped at the heavily fortified gate to the DDR (German Democratic Republic), where Jonathan swore Jesus Christ when an unfriendly guard hit the hood of the car with a baton because Jonathan didn’t notice the stop sign. Later that night, Sasha snuck out of the hotel and met with a man on the street. She gave him matches in exchange for a torn dollar bill, and he told her the time for her pickup. A Russian named Vlad watched and continued to watch her and Jonathan in their travels. Sasha told Jonathan that if he got a message from her to meet her at the Café Friedrichstrasse, it was a code meaning he needed to leave East Berlin immediately without trying to find Sasha. Sasha went to do her business and gave a female the torn dollar bill in exchange for a canister of film hidden inside a package of strudel, which she gave Jonathan to carry. Sasha parted ways with Jonathan and was followed by Vlad, but she escaped from him. A police officer approached Jonathan and demanded to have his name and the name of the girlfriend he was waiting for. Jonathan said Sasha was American, but the officer knew she was Czechoslovakian. Sasha was instructed by her superiors to use Jonathan to her advantage so she didn’t lose the valuable film. Sasha told Jonathan that a Russian man was following her and Jonathan needed to wait for her at the hotel while she finished up her business and then they would go to Spain. However, Sasha called Jonathan later that night and gave him the codewords instructing him to leave the DDR. Jonathan’s car wouldn’t start, so he ran to the gate and was stopped by a guard who strip-searched him down to his underwear and searched his backpack. The guard confiscated Jonathan’s Playboy magazine that Manolo bought him in Paris because it was illegal to bring porn into the DDR (German Democratic Republic East Berlin). Jonathan was released and had to buy another one-day visa because his first one expired. When he arrived on the West Berlin side at the Allied Checkpoint, Jonathan gave the middle finger in the direction of the DDR and said “f**k you.” Meanwhile, Sasha was picked up by Vlad, who also strip-searched her (with her bare breats showing) but didn’t find anything. Jonathan was happy to eat an American meal at Burger King in Germany, and when he got to his hotel he had a message from Sasha telling him to meet her the following day at a fort inside Berlin. Jonathan discovered that someone raided and trashed his room even though he locked the door, and he was kicked out of the hotel because his travelers’ checks were stolen and DDR money was no good there. Jonathan was called a homo when he refused to go into a strip club to see women. He slept on a bench but was told to leave by an officer. Jonathan went to the fort, where a female claimed to be a friend of Sasha’s waited for him. The stranger female explained that Sasha was in trouble and the only way she could help Sasha was to have the package Jonathan carried. Jonathan handed it to her, but then Russian Vlad and his fellow KGB agents shot the female dead from a distance. Jonathan ran and jumped off a high wall into the moat to escape the Russian gunmen. Jonathan rode to Hamburg inside a band’s English punk van, and the heavy make-up members said they watched Dallas and JR was a bad dude. They gave Jonathan a twisted sis makeover so he could get past the DDR checkpoint without question. Jonathan called his parents home and housekeeper (mansion) Rosario (who barely spoke USA English) answered the phone again so he told her that he was back home in California and to tell his parents (were in Palm Springs) that he was back in the states from Europe. Afterward, Jonathan went through his backpack and found the film, and then some guys playing football outside accidentally threw the ball through the apartment window. Jonathan went to dinner at his parents’ house, and Al was upset that Jonathan jumped into a moat with Al’s Nikon camera. Jonathan explained the situation to his parents about how Sasha gave him a strudel and a lady was shot for the strudel, but it was actually a roll of film that the KGB wanted and not strudel. Jonathan didn’t want to get the film developed because it had spy stuff on it, and his parents then believed their son was on illegal drugs so they looked for counseling programs to put him in. Jonathan stormed out of the house, and was chased down the street by a suspicious vehicle with dark-tinted windows. Jonathan ran the other car off the road and then called the FBI from a phonebooth to report that a KGB Russian was following him. The FBI agent thought Jonathan was crank calling and told Jonathan to call the CIA because the FBI couldn’t get involved in cases with foreign espionage. However, there was a delay because the operator refused to give out the CIA address and Jonathan didn’t get a chance to speak to a duty officer before a police officer pointed a gun at his head. Jonathan was arrested for causing Bronski, a CPA from Encino, to wreck his car. Bronski wanted to sue Al, and Al was mad and bailed Jonathan out of jail and told him that Maria was popping Valiums because she was so worried about Jonathan. Jonathan returned to his apartment and he spotted a group of men searching his room for the film but they didn’t find it because Jonathan was carrying it on his person. Jonathan called the duty officer back and was given the CIA office address. However, when he arrived at the office he spotted Sasha chatting with the same men who trashed his apartment. Jonathan got a message from Sasha on the answering machine to meet her at the hotel, and he called her and told her that they were going to play by his rules and to meet him at a set location that Jonathan chose. As payback, Jonathan then had Sasha run around to several different addresses on wild goose chases until Manolo picked Sasha up in his car. CIA agents followed and pulled Manolo over. Several cars full of Manolo’s Latino homeboys pointed their guns at the two government agents, and Manolo told the CIA men to remember the Alamo. Manolo dropped Sasha off at the UCLA campus, where she explained to Jonathan that she didn’t intend for him to carry the film and she only wanted to use him for a cover because he looked so innocent. Jonathan demanded to know who the f**k Sasha was, and her accent suddenly disappeared and she said she was a CIA agent from Pittsburgh and her real name was Cheryl Brewster. Cheryl said she did care about Jonathan and it wasn’t all for show, and then the KGB agents shot at them. They ran into the vet building, where Jonathan broke into the medicine cabinet and stole a school campus tranquilizer gun and used the weapon to take out Russian KGB agents. Cheryl went to call for backup, but Vlad caught her before she could. Vlad ordered Jonathan to drop the gun and give him the film otherwise he would kill Cheryl. However, another Gotcha player student at school suddenly spotted Jonathan and shot him with a paint pellet, and the distraction gave Jonathan the opportunity to grab his tranquilizer gun and shoot Russian Vlad with a tranquillizer dart. Vlad was taken to the hospital, and Jonathan and Sasha got back together. The movie ended with the sweater female student from earlier that called Jonathan a creep as she walked by, so questionable doctor vet in the making Jonathan fired a tranquilizer dart into her butt. The movie cover art listed, Judith Crist “Funny and enormously entertaining, it’s a delightful romantic-comedy adventure…” This movie had a budget of $12.5 million and grossed over $10 million at the box office.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/26/23

TITLE: Godsend

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2004 Lionsgate Films / Artists Production Group / 2929 Entertainment / Wagner-Cuban Company

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This majority of this movie took place in Vermont. It began with Paul Duncan walking home in a large city with a wrapped gift to give to his son at Adam’s 8-year-old birthday party. Paul’s wife, Jessie, couldn’t control the kids because they were high on sugar and soda. Paul went down a scary alley and two thug males held a knife to his throat. Paul recognized his student Maurice from five years before, so the men left without robbing Paul because he was the best teacher Maurice ever had. Paul considered taking the biology teacher job at Dorset Prep half an hour away in the suburbs since it had less crack drugs in the schools. As Jessie and Paul tucked Adam in to bed, they gave him another piece of cake to eat in his room before bed and his favorite present was the red jacket his parents gave him. Jessie and Paul later discussed how she used to think that a pack of Merit Lights and Diet Coke was okay for a meal, but not anymore and they had a kid to raise. Moving to the suburbs might be better than the dangers of the city, not to mention the higher pay raise, which was twice as much as Paul was making currently and Jessie’s photography business wasn’t successful yet. Paul said that he felt like he would be selling out if he took the suburban (not project) teacher job. Jessie told him that sometimes ethics had to take the backseat. The next day, Jessie took Adam to Athlete’s Life to get him new shoes and a basketball, and while she paid inside the store, Adam went outside to test out his shoes by busy street and construction work. A bicyclist crossed the street in front of a fast moving car, as Adam dropped his ball and went to get it at the same time. The car swerved to miss the bicyclist and landed in the construction site and ran over Adam as Jessie was still inside the shop signing her credit card receipt. Paul arrived home extra late that day because he got stuck at a teachers’ conference and he had four messages on his answering machine from Jessie telling him that their son was dead. Paul sobbed in the house by himself. Soon after, Jessie and Paul made funeral arrangements at a local church and on their way out of the building they were met by Richard Wells, a past college teacher of Jessie’s. Dr. Wells explained that he was a doctor specializing in ob-gyn. Dr. Wells read the story in the paper and saw the just posted obiturary for Adam and said he rushed there to find the grieving Duncan parents. Dr. Wells and the Duncans went to a restaurant to discuss how he could help. Richard explained that his clinic might be able to clone Adam’s dead body and have him be reborn, but he would be the first person they ever tried it on. Richard admitted that he went to the hospital and accessed Jessie’s records without permission and without Jessie knowing to learn that she had complications delivering Adam and couldn’t conceive again. Paul was angry that Richard would suggest that because it was illegal and immoral. Richard went on to say that if Jessie and Paul agreed, they would have to move 300 miles away to be near Richard’s clinic, The Godsend Institute in Vermont, as well as change their lives completely and sever all ties with family, friends and anyone who ever knew Adam and the doctor could get Paul a higher paying teacher job at the high school. They refused, and Richard gave them his number if they changed their minds and added that they had to decide within 72 hours otherwise Adam’s cells would no longer be viable. Back at home, Jessie considered cloning Adam but Paul told her that it wouldn’t really be Adam, it would be an identical twin like another child (with a totally different state of mind and very questionable spirit). Sam later called Paul to offer his condolences, and when Sam was asked about Richard, Sam said that Richard was a genius and was doing gene mapping, sold his findings to a huge firm, made a lot of money, and then dropped out of the game. After watching family videos of Adam, Paul handed the phone to Jessie so she could call Richard. As it turned out, Paul and Jessie moved to Riverton, Vermont. The people at Dr. Richard’s Vermont clinic didn’t know about the procedure and as far as they were concerned, Jessie was being treated as a high-risk in vitro and not actually her being prepared to carry a cloned baby using an implant. Paul was concerned about losing Jessie because she believed it was going to be successful, so Dr. Richard gave his word that he wouldn’t let either on them down. Jessie was happy that the new larger better condition house had a basement she could use as a darkroom for photography. The delivery didn’t go so well because the cloned child wasn’t breathing after he was born but he started crying after 44 seconds. Jessie and Paul named the boy Adam, and fast forward many years and the new Adam celebrated his eighth birthday party. Uncle Dr. Richard took Adam away from the others at the party outside and helped Adam fly his new kite. Paul called to Adam to come say goodbye to his friends but instead Adam ignored his dad and stared at Richard and Adam seemed to mind Dr. Richard better than his dad. Later that night, Paul told Jessie, in her underwear, that sometimes what the new Adam did was the same as the original, but other times he was a different person so they were concerned what it might do to him if he ever found out he was a clone. Jessie then straddled Paul and they made out taking each other’s clothes off rolling around on the bed naked. Later on, Adam got out of bed and went to the window where he saw himself but as a possessed soul, and he started screaming so Paul came running to find him. Adam told Paul to get away from him, and then Adam collapsed and Jessie called Dr. Richard. Adam was unconscious for five hours, and Dr. Richard passed it off as a sleeping disorder called night terrors where the child screamed in his sleep and but wouldn’t wake up. Dr. Richard went on to say that they were entering uncharted territory and they knew Adam was going to change once he reached the age that the first Adam died (8) but they didn’t know it was going to be this way. As Jessie told Paul that she always had a feeling they would lose Adam again in a different way, Adam woke up after having a nightmare about being in a classroom with screaming children and a picture that Zachary Clark Wells drew of burning building that hung on a bulletin board inside the school. Adam then drew the same picture, and when Paul came upstairs to get him for dinner, Adam was outside. Paul went out to get Adam, but clone Adam completely ignored Paul calling him and ran off into the nearby woods. Paul followed Adam to a rundown cabin, where Adam sat as if in a trance and then snapped out of it. Jessie called Dr. Richard for his opinion, and Dr. Richard thought it was nothing to worry about so Jessie agreed with him. As Paul taught his high school biology class about inactive and dead genes, it dawned on him that things would be different in a cloned person. Paul rushed out of his classroom of students to go see Dr. Richard and asked him if what if Adam having outlived the life of his first original cell allowed a dormant problem to be switched on. Very questionable and borderline crazy Vermont Dr. Richard replied that any of Adam’s changes in health or behavior could have happened with the first Adam. When Jessie went to pick Adam up from school, he called the bully kid, Roy Hazen, a** wipe and refused to tell his mom where he learned that language. As Paul came home, Adam rode his bicycle out in front of Paul’s car and Paul swerved and just barely missed Adam. Paul shouted angrily at Adam that he could have been killed and Paul had already told Adam to keep his goddamn bike out of the street. Jessie, who wasn’t watching Adam, told her husband not to be like that. The next day, Adam was in the bathtub as Paul was on the phone with Sam who gave him a recommendation for a second opinion on Adam…Dr. Lieber. Jessie asked who that was, and Paul told her it was a wrong number. Adam saw a shadow across the shower curtain, so he got out of the tub and put on his robe. The shower curtain fell down and a zombie arm reached out for Adam, and Paul heard and came running but couldn’t open the door because it was locked. Paul kicked the door open, and Adam was traumatized and said something bad was going to happen, but not to Adam. On the school playground, Adam got on the swing set and spit in the other boys’ faces, and then he spit in the teacher’s face after he jumped off the swing from a tall height. Jessie went to lunch with Dr. Richard, who stuck to his theory that Adam’s nightmares might have started at this age anyway. Jessie added that Paul was convinced that the cloned Adam retained memories of the real Adam’s first life, and Dr. Richard mentioned an experiment which he dismissed as an urban legend where a rat ran through a maze and was then killed and fed to a second rat which completed the maze in record time proving that memory lived on in the ingested cells so it wasn’t possible that Adam was remembering. Dr. Richard added that Jessie would lose her son if Paul tried to move them out of the rural area where they now lived where he could control the situation otherwise there would be consequences if somebody found out what they did with the cloned boy. When Jessie came to the school to pick up Adam after his spitting incident, Paul smelled the wine on her breathand she said it was just an innocent lunch. Jessie wasn’t happy that Paul was driving them to get a second opinion from Dr. Lieber, who said the night terrors were something Adam would grow out of. Adam said there was a boy in his nightmare dreams named Zachary who wouldn’t leave him alone, and Adam just knew that was the boy’s name and he didn’t appear often but when he did he was wearing a red jacket (real Adam’s jacket). In the car, Adam went into a trance daydream where he saw Zachary about to kill a female with a hammer, but he snapped out of it when Paul swerved to avoid hitting a semi truck head-on. Back at home, Adam asked his dad if he had ever died, and Paul lied that Adam had been there with his parents all along. Adam had another dream of going back to the shed in the woods, and when he got there, Zachary hit him in the head with the hammer. In school class, Adam finished his picture of the burning building and signed it as Zachary. Jessie went to the local fine art gallery in town, where she was informed that Dr. Richard had bought several of her photos. Dr. Richard then called Jessie and wanted her to bring Adam by again to do more tests and use his ability to vocalize during his night terrors to find out more, and Jessie said she would get back to Dr. Richard because Paul probably wouldn’t be up for that. Meanwhile, bully Roy tried to convince some other boys to jump into the river but they wouldn’t. Adam went by on his bike and stopped. Roy was alone after the other children had left when he heard strange noises around him in the woods, and he was down by the water. Then, someone knocked the bully boy out with a stick just as miles away Dr. Robert dropped the two steel balls he had been clanging together. Jessie went into her darkroom in the basement, where she found pictures of Adam with the faces and eyes cut out. Jessie got out her file cabinet praying that the pictures of the real Adam inside were not harmed and was happy to find them still intact. Paul came home, and Jessie ran back upstairs to meet him and gave him a kiss as if nothing happened. Adam then came home and said hi to his parents as if nothing happened with him. At dinner, Roy’s mom, Tanya, called Jessie because Roy hadn’t come home yet. Jessie asked Adam if he knew where Roy was and he said no and then Paul asked Adam what he was doing by the river earlier because Paul drove by there and saw Adam and Roy’s bikes. Adam replied that he was just playing, and when Adam said he wasn’t supposed to say who he was playing with Paul angrily told him to go to his room. Paul then told Jessie they would bring Adam to see Dr. Richard the following day. During the session with Adam under a mild tranquilizer, Adam said that Zachary was at Saint Pius School and he saw doubles of other demonic children. Under the medication Adam saw that the children were laughing and pointing evilly at him as he burned things in the trashcan because they thought he was evil Zachary Clark. Adam screamed he was not Zach, and he only snapped out of it when he heard Dr. Richard’s voice. In the high security institute building, Paul followed Richard out of the room and pushed him around demanding to know why Richard called Adam “Zachary” and the boy only responded to Zachary. Paul went on to say that sometimes it was like there were too Adams and he was changing because he was destructive, tried to harm himself and the kids at school were scared of him. Paul figured out that Dr. Richard was hiding something because he had seen Dr. Richard talking to Adam alone when he was in his same blank state but he was listening to Dr. Richard but never what his parents said. Paul threatened to go public if he didn’t get answers, and Richard walked away but came back when Paul yelled that he would tell the goddamn world what the doctor did. Dr. Richard said it was what they all did together. On their way home as Paul wanted to go into the city the following day to find out some more information on Zachary Clark, there was a police roadblock where the first responders were retrieving Roy’s body out of the river with Tanya screaming and crying hysterically. Jessie and Paul got out to watch, and when Paul looked back Adam in the backseat of the car, Adam stared blankly again. Back at the house, Jessie said no matter what psycho clone Adam did, he was still their son but Paul didn’t want to hear it. The next morning, Paul left for the city without waking Jessie, but Adam was watching from the window. When Jessie woke up, she was scared half to death because Adam stood over her and told her “It’s okay, mommy.” Adam left his parents bedroom and Jessie then found the note from Paul and swore about being left alone with Adam. Paul was able to obtain an address for the Saint Pius School that was shut down from a female in public records office, and then he drove to the location and used a crowbar and gloves to break the glass and get into the condemned and barricaded building. Paul heard children’s voices inside where all the desks and chairs in the classrooms were overturned, and then he found the picture (with burn marks on it) that Adam drew with Zachary’s names on it. Paul got an home address off the back of the school drawing, and he went to the house where the female who answered the door explained that she knew nothing about the previous owners because it was just a burnt down building when she and her husband bought it and then fixed it because he was an architect. Before he left, the female came back outside and banged on his car window to tell him that when she was interviewing nannies, one of them said she used to be the nanny at the house working for who lived there before so the female gave Paul the contact information for that nanny that she didn’t hire. Paul drove to nanny Cora Williams’ house, which was the house that Adam and Zachary drew that was on fire. Cora explained that she never wanted to hear Zachary Clark’s name again because he was a terror, and he would come home from school with scrapes and once the kids locked him in an empty classroom. The teacher found Zachary and he was terrified, and that was before he started acting up and then the kids got wise and left Zachary alone. Cora went on to say they never figured out who started the fire at Saint Pius, but Cora knew and she asked Zachary about it when he came home and he just smiled and all she saw was evil behind his eyes. Cora kept her distance and was afraid of what else young Zachary might be capable of doing, and since it was just the two of them home that day, she knew what she had to do. When Zachary took his bath, nanny Cora snuck into the bathroom, pulled the shower curtain down and tried to drown Zachary with it but she just couldn’t go through with it. Zachary didn’t tell his mom what Cora did when his mom came home. Cora was home the next day and had a strong premonition, so she hurried to Zachary’s house and heard the sirens from two blocks away and on the house was on fire. Cora rushed inside, but it was too late because it was engulfed in flames and Zachary’s mom was already dead from young Zach killing her. Meanwhile, Jessie returned home from shopping alone and wasn’t happy that Paul didn’t call her and never left her a message. Jessie searched the house for Adam and went down to the basement just as Cora (miles away in the city with Paul) said that Zachary was in the basement waiting for his mom. Cora said that Zachary used a hammer he took down from the wall to kill his mom (the female from Adam’s dream), and when he was done he set a fire, and then went upstairs and finished playing and that was where they found his body. Paul asked where Zachary’s dad was, and Cora said he was at the hospital as always because he was a baby doctor (Dr. Richard) but seemed more like a scientist to her. As Paul drove home, he tried to call Jessie but she didn’t answer so he left a message. Jessie went into the basement, where Adam put the pictures of the real Adam from Jessie’s box in water. Adam asked if those pictures were of him, and she wouldn’t respond to Adam so Jessie said Zachary and he turned around and the very disturbed boy yelled “what?” at her in a hateful way. That startled Jessie and she knocked out the light in the basement. Paul called Dr. Richard’s clinic, but he was told that Dr. Wells was at the Hazen funeral that day so Paul got the address to it. There was a metal clanging noise in the darkness that scared Jessie, and then Adam ran up the basement steps and closed the door behind him telling Jessie, who he called Mrs. Duncan, that Adam couldn’t come out to play right now. Jessie ran after Adam, but he ran into the woods. Paul confronted Dr. Richard Wells at the church Hazen funeral service that once he had Adam’s cell, he was able to preserve Adam’s physical characteristics and manipulate certain genes, intangibles like cognition, personality and his memory to make them Zachary’s in an attempt to bring Zachary back to life through Adam. Dr. Wells said there was no way he could predict the results and he could only wait and hope for a glimpse of Zachary as Adam grew. Dr. Richard said Paul of all people should be able to understand how much Dr. Richard wanted his son back, but Paul was upset that Dr. Richard experimented with a human life using Adam’s cells. Inside the church, Paul and Dr. Richard fought and he called the doctor out on trespassing in a immoral ungodly wayand perhaps Paul and his wife did that too so they were all suffering the consequences of creating a psychotic being. As Paul walked out, he told Dr. Wells that he was going to go to the police and save his child. Dr. Richard called after him and told Paul what they did was an experiment and it failed, and they could always kill off the boy and try again so Paul wasn’t going to the police. Paul didn’t want to hear about killing Adam, so he decked the Vermont Dr. Richard to the floor of the church, and Dr. Wells said it wasn’t just Paul’s son but Richard’s too. Paul roughed up the doctor again and told him to stay away from Adam, and the candle fell and set fire to the Bible in the Vermont church. Violent Dr. Wells grabbed the candlestick holder and hit Paul with it, and then Dr. Richard crazily told Paul jabbing the candlestick holder into Paul’s back that he gave him a boy, a house, a job and made Paul who he was and to remember that and called him a piece of sh** and left the church burning with Paul laying on the floor. Richard slammed his hands on the steering wheel before he drove away from the burning church wondering why Paul didn’t listen to Dr. Richard’s delusional reasoning. Jessie went into the woods to look for Adam, and inside the shed Adam was up in the rafters waiting for Jessie. He was about to kill with her with a blow to the head with an axe, but Paul appeared at that moment and grabbed the axe out of Adam’s hand before he could kill Jessie. Paul asked the boy who he was at that moment, and the demon child replied that he was their son and smiled evilly like Cora said Zachary did when asked about the school fire. Six months later, Richard read news articles about how he was missing in many of the local Riverton, Vermont, newspapers and he looked in the Vermont obituaries to see if the boy Zachary had killed anybody else. Paul and Jessie moved (Allied moving company) into a new house because the doctors recommended it for Adam, and the parents told Adam that he was going to do great in the new Vermont neighborhood. After the parents left the room, Adam heard creaking and knocking in the new house bedroom so he went to check out the closet. There appeared to be nothing in the closet, so Adam turned around a bloody hand covered in sores wearing the red and white jacket pulled Adam into the darkness of the closet. Paul came back into the room and noticed the closet ajar, and when he opened the doors there was nothing inside. Adam then put his hand on Adam from behind and freaked Adam out. Adam told his daddy that his fine and nothing was wrong. Paul said it would be great for them and a place they could start over, and then they walked downstairs together. The movie cover art listed Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune, “Downright scary!” and, “A tight, handsomely crafted movie.” Chris Kaltenbach, Baltimore Sun, “An original, thought-provoking mystery.” James Rocchi, Netflix, “A subtle, insidiously creepy thriller.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/25/23

TITLE: The Smurfs 2

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2013 Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Animation / Hemisphere Media Capital / Kerner Entertainment Company

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie took place in Smurf Village, where a tribe of small male blue creatures called the Smurfs lived. There was a Smurf for pretty much everything (Crazy Smurf, Party-Planning Smurf, Panicky Smurf, Gutsy Smurf, etc.), and Papa Smurf was the leader. The evil wizard Gargamel, along with his cat Azrael, was on an endless mission to capture the Smurfs and extract their essence to use for his dark magic. Gargamel created a female gray color Smurf named Smurfette to infiltrate and betray “we the smurfple,” so Smurfette did mean things and even flooded the homeland. However, Papa Smurf used a secret formula to transform Smurfette into a true-blue Smurf. As the Smurfs planned a surprise birthday party for Smurfette, they pretended to go about their daily business and ignored Smurfette, which led her to believe they forgot her birthday. Meanwhile, Gargamel and Azrael were in France. Gargamel would be the first magician to ever perform at the Paris Opera House. Evil Gargamel became famous and people worshipped him after his powers were discovered in New York when he went after the Smurfs to get their essence. Hackus and Vexy were two Naughties (resembling Smurfs but gray) that Gargamel created as his children to capture Smurfette and force her to tell Gargamel the secret formula Papa used to make her blue. Gargamel planned to create more Naughties and use the formula to turn more Naughties into Smurfs so he could extract their essence and become so powerful the world would bow before him. Gargamel then went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, where he opened a portal to Smurf Village. Since Gargamel didn’t have enough essence to go through the portal, he sent gray Vexy. Vexy convinced Smurfette that they were the same and Gargamel was their father, and then evil Vexy pushed Smurfette into the portal before the Smurfs could save her. Papa used his saved-up grotto water from the last blue moon to create Smurfportation crystals so he and three other Smurfs of his choice could go to Paris. However, there was a mishap and Clumsy, Grouchy (who later decided that he wanted to be positive) and Vanity (British) were the ones sent to the Winslow house in New York, where the family helped the Smurfs before. Patrick Winslow’s stepdad, Victor Doyle, came for Pat’s young son Blue’s birthday party. Victor passed out Korndogs, and one boy had an allergic reaction. Pat claimed that whenever Victor showed up he ruined things, and Pat explained to his wife Grace that after his dad died and Victor moved into the house, he sent away Pat’s parrot, Zeus. That upset Pat because his dad left Zeus behind for him. When the Smurfs suddenly appeared at the house, Victor was shocked but quickly welcomed the Smurfs when Pat and Grace explained who they were. Pat thought going to Paris to rescue Smurfette was out of the question, but they went because everyone else voted to go. Gargamel tried to hypnotize Smurfette into giving him the formula, and when that didn’t work he snipped her hair short and brewed the hair into more essence so he would perform his show at the Opera House that night. Victor and Blue stayed at the hotel while Pat snuck the Smurfs into the show. Grace dressed up as the fashion inspector Mademoiselle Doolittle to get into Gargamel’s hotel and steal a waiter’s outfit for Pat to wear. Vexy and Hackus decided to trick Smurfette into being naughty and use her goodness against her so she would feel like part of their family and tell them what they wanted to know, but Smurfette escaped before they could. The Smurfs broke into Gargamel’s dressing room and discovered that the wizard was planning total Smurf-a-geddon using the giant Smurfalator he built in his lair to extract Smurf essence. Victor and Blue wanted to help, so they showed up at the Opera House. Victor confronted Gargamel during his performance, so he turned Victor into a duck.Pat, mad at Victor again, then ran with Victor and Blue. Azrael suggested that Gargamel try bribery and flattery on Smurfette to get the answers out of her, and Gargamel liked it and took credit for Azrael’s idea as usual. The Naughties caught up to Smurfette, and Vexy sent Hackus into the candy store to cause trouble so Vexy could get Smurfette to “be good,” and rescue Hackus from the angry employees. They escaped riding on a cart, and Vexy told Smurfette that she stole it and then convinced Smurfette that they were sisters. The Naughties took Smurfette for a ride over the city causing mayhem on the backs of two storks. Pat wore his waiter outfit to the hotel, and he brought the room service cart to Gargamel’s room but was distracted by Victor, who brought along what he thought was the elevator security card but was actually Pat’s room key. A chef picked up duck Victor and took him to the kitchen to be cooked, so Pat had to go save Victor. Smurfette and the Naughties arrived back at the hotel, and the Smurfs made it up to the balcony window. They watched the trio hugging and learned that the Naughties were confusing Smurfette by making her believe that she was one of them and Papa and the other Smurfs didn’t care about her. Gargamel then gave Smurfette a “heartfelt gift,” of an action figure of himself and a Dragon Wand.Gargamel filled it with essence, and Smurfette accepted it because she was happy that someone remembered her birthday. The Smurfs fell off the balcony and were caught in midair by Victor, who then transformed back into a human but the adult male was naked this time. Azrael told Gargamel that the Smurfs had been there and he went searching for them. Pat told Grace that Victor ruined everything and he wanted Victor gone. Victor overheard and explained to Pat that he sent Zeus away not because he was allergic, but because Pat was seriously allergic to birds. Victor went on to say that he loved Pat’s mom and raised Pat as his own, but Pat didn’t want Victor’s love so Victor was done. Victor added that Pat needed to grow up, stop blaming everyone else for his pain, and teach his son that love was unconditional. Victor left, and then Pat decided he and the Smurfs would rescue Smurfette. Gargamel gave Smurfette a birthday cake and asked her for the formula, but she said she couldn’t tell him because it was a sacred gift entrusted to her. Vexy and Hackus then started dying because they needed their regular feeding of essence to stay alive, and Smurfette begged Gargamel to feed them because she cared about them. Gargamel decided to use the situation to his advantage and told Smurfette that she would be the one letting the Naughties die if she didn’t give him the formula, so she wrote it down. Gargamel brewed the formula and used it to turn Vexy and Hackus blue, and then he locked them and Smurfette in cages so he could extract their essence. Grace called Victor and told him that Pat might need his help to get to Gargamel’s lair through the sewer, and father and son made amends. They and the Smurfs turned off the lights in the lair and the whole city, and Papa and British Vanity rescued Smurfette. She said she betrayed the Smurfs, but Papa told her that he was proud of her because she saved the lives of Vexy and Hackus. Gargamel captured all the Smurfs and got their essence, and then he brandished his new wand, “LaWanda,” and filled it with the essence. Pat and Victor appeared and cracked the Smurfalator, which freed the essence and sent everyone catapulting up through the manhole into the city. Smurfette used her wand to blast Gargamel away, and he and La Wanda ended up at the top of the French Eiffel tower when the fireworks went off. Vexy and Hackus (now union blue not rebel gray) accepted Papa as their new dad and the Smurfs as their family, and they all returned to Smurf Village where everyone celebrated Smurfette’s birthday. This movie had a budget of $105 million and grossed over $347 million at the box office. The movie cover art listed, Francine Brokaw, FamilyChoiceAwards.com, “A cute film both kids and parents can enjoy.” Teri Hart, TMN/The Family Channel, “Smurftacular! Blue has never looked better!”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/24/23

TITLE: Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2008 Lionsgate / Tyler Perry Studios / Reuben Cannon Productions

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in Chicago and began with Spanish-speaking Cheryl Barranquilla holding up the bus and talking trash to everyone so her friend, Brenda Brown, could make it to work. Brenda couldn’t pay her youngest daughter Lena’s babysitter, who was the next-door neighbor, Miss Mildred, until Brenda received her paycheck later that day. Miss Mildred said she wouldn’t keep Lena at her daycare the next week if she didn’t get at least $100 of the back pay that was owed to her. Brenda tried to bum the money off Cheryl. Cheryl said she would use her joint money since she smoked marijuana despite what Brenda called her friend “chemical imbalance,” and bipolar disorder which she needed medication for. Brenda got a letter that the dad she never met recently died and his family, the Browns, enclosed three tickets to Georgia for Brenda and her family to attend the funeral. Brenda said she wasn’t going. Brenda and Cheryl then discovered that their workplace was shut down and they were jobless because the plant was moved to Mexico. Cheryl said if she knew that was going to happen she would have beat up her supervisors the day before. Miss Mildred would only keep Lena for that day and she told Brenda that young mothers like Brenda only thought about her own selfish needs. Cheryl told Brenda to file with the state for the $8,000 back child support for Brenda’s 17-year-old son, Michael Rhodes Jr., that Michael (Mike) Rhodes Sr., Brenda’s ex and Michael’s lifelong absent bio dad, failed to pay. Cheryl said the state would get the money for Brenda and kick Mike’s a**, but Brenda said Mike would kill her. Cheryl said she would go pay Mike a visit with her gun and convinced Brenda to go talk to Mike. Brenda had three exes, so each of her three children had a different father who wasn’t in their lives. The power went out at Brenda’s apartment because she couldn’t pay her electricity bill. Michael said his high school basketball team won a game. Michael wanted to get a job to help out, but Brenda told him no and he needed to stay in school and play basketball while Brenda handled everything because the one thing a black woman knew how to do was make it. Brenda then told Michael not to hang out with Calvin and Co. because Calvin was a drug dealer who just used his drug money to buy himself a new car and he was no longer the person Michael had known since third grade. Michael reluctantly agreed to stay away from Calvin. Harry Bolten, a basketball scout, showed up at the door and told Michael that he had potential and wanted him to join a summer camp for high school b-ball players, but Brenda said no way because Michael needed to focus on his grades to get into college. Brenda then told Harry off that she wasn’t going to have a recruiter like him talk nonsense to her son and leave him walking around mad at the world when he didn’t get into the pros. Brenda tried to drop Lena off for a few hours again at Mildred’s for free so Brenda could get some money somewhere.Instead, Mildred gave Brenda some food knowing she was hungry since Lena was starving every time Brenda dropped her off. Mildred gave Brenda a lecture on how you don’t just go around sprouting babies because you have to take care of them, and the hard time Brenda was going through was the Lord about to give her a breakthrough and until then she had to keep praying. Mildred went on to say never get tired of doing the right thing because it paid off in the end, and Brenda seemed to be a good mother compared to some Mildred had seen at the daycare so the sitter was going to keep Lena for a few hours again to help out Brenda. Mildred added she would do that for Brenda before she did it for the other moms since Mildred didn’t even want to know where they got the money to pay her. Brenda and Cheryl went to Mike Rose’s construction site, where Cheryl said she was Mike’s baby mama and threatened the construction worker if he didn’t get Mike. Brenda asked Michael for some money, but he refused and said that he had no money to give for food even though he got paid $25 an hour. The irritated man told the women to leave and not come back, so Cheryl threw a brick at the back of Michael’s head and then they ran. Cheryl convinced Brenda to take her kids to Georgia since she had free bus tickets from Chicago. Upon arrival, Leroy Brown, an eccentric male and his adult daughter Cora Simmons, met Brenda and her kids. Brenda, Michael, Tosha, and Lena met the rest of the distant clan members (Leroy’s siblings Larry “L.B.” and Vera, L.B.’s wife Sarah, and Vera’s son Will). Vera, the youngest of Pop Brown’s children reminisced about Leroy sterilizing himself when he wore tight pants and fell on a pencil in his pocket. Harry (from Chicago), a retired pro b-ball player turned high school coach and recruiter, and also summer camp teacher, then turned up at the Brown house in Georgia to pay his respects, because the Georgia Browns knew him personally. Harry and Michael had a friendly one-on-one ball game because Harry didn’t gamble anymore. Michael won. Brenda’s middle child, Tosha, was concerned about eating too much food because at home she was supposed to save some for her siblings since there wasn’t always enough to eat, but Cora and Sarah reassured Tosha that they had plenty of food. Cora said if it weren’t for family, she and her two daughters wouldn’t have made it after her husband died. Vera tried to offer Brenda a $10 bill to take care of Tosha’s hair because it was nappy (frizzy), but Brenda refused. At the dinner table, the family did a scene like Professor Klump’s family would. Harry was invited to dinner, and Vera called him out on doing illegal things until her son, gynecologist Will, interrupted her. The truth then came out that eldest L.B. wrote the letter to Brenda. Larry went on and explained that when his dad, Pop Brown, got sick, he told L.B. all about his past life before he became a deacon. Brenda’s mom was the love of Pop Brown’s life in Chicago, where he was a pimp and Brenda’s mom was his bottom ho. Vera said that was blasphemy and her dad wasn’t a rolling stone. But L.B. insisted that all the women Pop was with who the rest of the family thought were nice girls were his hos that he had children with (all the moms of his children, hired help, and other females that Pop had sex with were Pop’s hos). The next day at the funeral service, Vera was obnoxious and dramatic grabbing onto the side of Pop’s open casket with no tears so she could be the center of attention. Leroy then pushed the preacher off the podium and shouted about how his daddy was a good and happy man and they were there to celebrate him. L.B. couldn’t handle it and interrupted, and then he pushed Vera into Pop’s grave because he didn’t like her attempts at “Amazing Grace,” which she could hardly sing because she smoked too much. L.B. told Brenda that she couldn’t leave the state of Georgia until Pop’s will was read the following day, not to mention the bus back to Chicago wouldn’t come until then. Harry took Brenda and the kids to the fair to show them what a nice town it was, and he told Brenda that he was divorced after being married for six years with three kids.They all had fun, and Brenda told Harry she would think about sending Michael to his camp. The next day, Leroy was excited about Pop’s “last will and testicles,” being read. L.B. was mad that Pop left him and Sarah all his money, which amounted to $575, because L.B. said they took care of the sucker until he died. Pop left Vera all his love and may it keep her warm at night, he left Leroy his house, and he left Brenda his old Georgia rental property on a piece of land. They went to see the house, and the kids wanted to go back to the Chicago projects instead of the run-down two-story house in the Georgia countryside. Brenda asked Michael if he wanted Harry to be his coach, and Michael said yes as long as they left that broken down Georgia house. Cora gave Brenda a few hundred dollars that she and Sarah wanted to bless Brenda with. Brenda didn’t want to take it, but she accepted and said it was the nicest thing anyone ever did for her after Cora explained that since some of the fathers didn’t take care of their babies, the single mothers had to stick together. Back in Chicago, Brenda looked for a job and Cheryl tried to talk her into moving to Georgia. Michael Sr. came to Brenda’s door and said he wanted to help her out, but then it was revealed that all he really wanted was to have sex with Brenda in exchange for money (since that was what her mama did with Pop), which Michael Sr might not even pay Brenda for afterwards. Brenda refused, so Mike refused to give her money and wanted back the $200 he gave her to abort Michael jr. and added that Brenda wished she had aborted the baby now because she was begging her ex for money. Michael Jr. came home and overheard Mike Sr. say he never wanted Brenda or a child in his life, and then Sr. and Jr. got into a confrontation where Michael stormed out the door saying he knew how to get his own money. Teen Michael met up with Calvin on the streets of the ghetto and wanted to sell some illegal drugs on the street that night to make fast money. Harry came to Brenda’s apartment and she told him where to find Michael. Harry told Michael that he lost his money, wife and three kids when he gambled, so Harry knew how it was to go down the wrong road and the mistake Michael was about to make was the wrong road for him. Harry said they had b-ball practice the following day and left Michael to make his own decision and then Harry drove off and left the underage boy alone with the drug dealer. Michael chose to go through with the drug dealing and accepted new basketball shoes from Calvin. Michael arrived back home hours later, and he told Brenda that he was dope dealing with Calvin because God wasn’t coming through for Michael and he wanted his heaven on earth now. Michael said his mom was working like a dog and had nothing to show for it, and Brenda said she wouldn’t have any of her kids selling dope and getting killed. Brenda told Michael to get out of her house if he thought he was grown up, but then she told him it would be all right and he could stay after Michael broke down and apologized saying he didn’t want to leave her like his Sr. left Brenda. The next day, Michael gave Calvin his and Calvin’s cut of last night’s drug dealing money. Michael said he didn’t want any part it and he was going to play basketball, and Calvin replied that he was a hood rat and always would be. However, two other drugs dealers then showed up and were angry that Calvin sold drugs on their turf. Calvin attacked them and gave Michael the chance to run, but one of the dealers chased after Michael in a car and shot the underage teen in the back with his gun on the dangerous crime ridden streets of Chicago. Brenda and Harry were out on a date when Cheryl (heard about the shooting) interrupted and told them to go to the hospital because the boy was shot (middle child Tosha under twelve must have been watching the lil one Lena while Brenda was out on her date). Brenda called Mike Sr. and told him that Michael was in the hospital. Mike Sr. showed up and, not caring that Jr. got shot and not wanting anything to do with him, told Brenda that he wasn’t paying for the funeral and not to call his house because it was bothering his wife and then he left. Brenda and Harry then learned that Michael would be fine because the medical staff stopped the bleeding and removed the bullet, which didn’t hit any vital organs. Michael recovered really quickly and started training basketball with Harry. Brenda and Harry resumed their dating. Harry then helped Brenda and her kids move to Georgia. Brenda was surpised upon arrival because Harry and the Browns had a fundraiser at church so the two-story house could be remodeled like new and painted beautifully inside and out with flowers in the garden. The Browns later told Brenda that Harry (his children never in the picture) pitched in the most money. Vera told Cora and Sarah that Harry was only being nice to Brenda because her son was a gold mine and if Michael went pro, Harry could get the perks and pay off his gambling debts. Brenda overheard. In the middle of the night, Leroy went screaming through the house trying to find Cora and show her the breaking news report that had her mom, Mabel “Madea,” being chased by a bunch of police cars and helicopters (think OJ Simpson) with her sidekick Joe in the passenger seat throwing bags of what looked like pot weed out the window. Cora and Leroy called Madea on her cell while she drove and tried to convince her to pull over, but Madea (sounding and looking more like a man than an old lady) told them that that she couldn’t and the police weren’t going to get her. Madea hung up telling her daughter and husband (Simmons-Brown) that she loved them and to go to hell. One of the longest police pursuits in history ended when Madea ran out of gas and was apprehended by the police, while lying Joe claimed that Madea kidnapped him and then he made a run for it to escape the police. Madea violently attacked the police officers and resisted arrest, but the Dekalb police eventually took the criminal Madea away. Harry had Michael sign a contract so Harry could become his manager, and Harry told Brenda that he sent footage of Michael to some pro scouts. Brenda (because Vera’s false words) asked Harry what was in it for him and if he was going to get a cut if Michael got a million-dollar contract. Brenda demanded to know how much gambling debt Harry was in, and he replied that he paid all his debts and didn’t owe anybody anything. Richard Carney, a sports agent, suddently showed up at Brenda’s newly remodeled house and announced that he sent Michael’s tapes to two professional teams and they were impressed and wanted to sign Michael now, as well as give him college courses and help him get a degree. Michael and Brenda agreed to do it. Richard added that it was a non salary contract that Harry had Michael sign, meaning Harry was just giving professional advice as a mentor and wouldn’t get any money out of it so Michael wouldn’t make a wrong choice and be put in a situation that took advantage of his young age and his inexperience in how the professional world of sports operated. Michael was then signed to the Thunderhawks team for $1 million. Crazily, Mike Sr. showed up at the press conference and wanted part of the boy’s money that he had no legal or spiritual claim to whatsoever and was never once a legimate parent raising GOD’s child. Michael told everyone that his mom broke her back raising him and he only saw his dad two times during his whole childhood and Jr. didn’t care about Sr. Michael because he was never a real dad. Michael Jr. added that he was going to use the money to make sure his mom and sisters were okay, and then he put Mike Sr. on the spot to answer some questions from the press. The press ate Mike Sr. up and said the man was just a gold digger who never wanted anything to do with Michael until teen Michael became famous and rich. Afterwards, Michael dropped Brenda off at the gym to make amends with Harry. Brenda told Harry she could pay him back for the house, the move and everything else now. Harry refused to take money and told Brenda that he didn’t do it for that. Brenda said she was used to people taking advantage of her, and Harry replied that she couldn’t even recognize when somebody did something for her because he loved her. Brenda said she loved Harry too, but he scared her because he was everything she had always wanted in a man. Harry told Brenda to let him be that for her. The movie ended with Harry and Brenda kissing at their wedding in Georgia with Chicago Cheryl as a bridesmaid.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/23/23

TITLE: I Am Legend

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2007 Warner Bros. Pictures / Village Roadshow Pictures / Weed Road Pictures / Overbrook Entertainment / Heyday Original Film

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: The movie began when radio announcers attempted to guess who would win the World Series. It quickly changed to a news interview with British Dr. Alice Krippin. Dr. Krippin explained that she treated 10,009 people with a measles virus that was genetically engineered to be helpful and not harmful, and because all the people were cancer-free, the British Dr. Krippin claimed to have cured cancer. However, things took a turn for the worst when the “miracle cure for cancer,” became a global virus, called the Krippin Virus (KV) that infected millions with rabies-like symptoms and violent behavioral changes that had the virus infected people killing off the uninfected. Three years later, Manhattan, New York was a ghost city after thousands of its human habitants died. Inside dark unlit buildings lived the mutant human virus infected ungodly zombie creatures with robotic strength, called hemocytes, which could only come out at night because the light caused them great hurt. Dr. Robert Neville, a lieutenant colonel and virologist, was somehow immune to the KV so he was the only human survivor along with his German Shepherd, Samantha. In his red Ford Mustang car, Robert drove fast through the city and passed a sign, “God Still Loves Us,” as he tried to hunt deer as he reckelessly dodged abandoned cars in the street. Robert lost the meal to a group of lions that escaped from the zoo. Robert and Sam returned to their house on Washington Street, already stocked with food and supplies, since daylight hours were almost over. Robert’s watch beeped to alert him of sunset approaching so he locked all the windows and doors as usual. Robert had several flashbacks of when the Manhattan Island was sealed off at Christmastime because of the KV. Robert had instructed his wife, Zoe, that day to get money and food and he would meet her and their young daughter Marley at Aunt Sara’s in upstate New York. They listened to a radio message from the President saying he was signing an executive order initiating a military quarantine of New York City. Robert and Zoe argued about him staying behind in the deserted city to find the cure, and then a bloody man crashed his face against their high security black SUV government vehicle. The military scanned people and only allowed those who were not infected with the virus to evacuate the island. Zoe failed the virus test the first time around but Robert ordered the soldiers to scan her again and she was clear the second time. Robert’s family was taken into a military helicopter, where Zoe prayed for her husband’s safety and Marley gave Robert her German Sheperd puppy Sam to keep her dad company. A bridge then collapsed in fiery flames, and a helicopter spun out of control and crashed into the military helicopter, likely killing everyone inside (possibly Zoe and Marley too). Back in real time, in his basement lab, Robert experimented on rats infected with the virus. Some died from his treatments and some were still violent, but #6 showed signs of lessened aggression and return of color which made Robert hopeful, and so he told #6 to hang in there. Robert went to the movie rental store in town, and kept his sanity by renting movies and talking to the mannequins inside the store. He raided deserted houses for food, and took the curtains off the windows to let the light in. Every day, Robert broadcast a recording of himself on all AM frequencies and asked any other survivors in the world to meet him at the dock where he would provide them food, shelter and security. One day when Robert and Sam hunt deer, Sam chased a deer into a dark building and Robert hesitantly went inside after Sam. He found the deer’s dead and bloody body. Robert and Sam hardly made it out of the building away from the hemocytes, and some of the creatures even jumped out of the glass window with Robertand were clearly paralyzed from the daylight. Robert then captured a female hemocyte to experiment on, and he injected the Alpha female with the #6 serum, made from his own immune blood, that was ineffective on humans. Robert recorded all of his experiments, and his blood tests confirmed that he was immune to the airborne and contact virus strains while dogs were immune to the airborne strain only. Based on what he had seen of the hemocytes, Robert concluded that social de-evolution was complete and typical human behavior was now entirely absent in the infected. Later on, Robert saw Fred the mannequin standing in the street instead of at the store like it was supposed to be, Robert was freaked out and shot the mannequin down with his machine gun. The out of place mannequin was a distraction set up by the leader of the hemoctyes because Robert then stepped on a rope trap which wrapped around his leg and held him suspended above the ground. By the time Robert was able to cut himself free from the rope, it was almost dark. Robert fell many feet below on something sharp that impaled his leg and left him screaming in pain. Robert crawled very slowly back to his car, and then the hemocyte leader released a pack of infected dogs he kept inside the dark building he and his virus infected gang watched Robert from. Just as the last beam of sunlight disappeared, the dogs attacked Robert and Sam. Robert dropped his gun but was able to eventually kill the other infected dogs. When he got it back, Sam was extremely injured. Robert brought Sam to his lab, where he injected the German Sheperd #6 serum. However, within minutes Sam was transforming into a hemocyte so Robert strangled the dog to death in his arms. Robert buried Sam the next day. Robert went back to the movie rental store and said hello to the female mannequin. When the mannequin didn’t say hello back, Robert broke down in tears because he was alone without his four-legged daughter Sam. Later that night, Robert went on a sucide mission and drove a large SUV to hunt down the family killers. Robert ran down a group of zombie hemocytes and screamed for them to die. The large hemocyte virus gang members easily took solo Robert down. A female human, Anna, using a bright light, then miraculously rescued Robert. Anna was able to obtain Robert’s home address from his semi-concious state and drove him back to his house, where she stitched up his leg wound. Anna explained that she and her young son Ethan (also there) came to Manhattan from Maryland because they heard Robert’s message on the AM radio. They were headed to the survivors’ colony in the mountains of Bethel, Vermont, where uninfected people lived since the virus couldn’t survive in the cold. Robert was in a very dark mood and threw his plate against the wall and screamed that everybody was dead and there were no safe zones. Anna and Ethan jumped up from the table, and she pulled out her gun while little Ethan grabbed a sharp knife for protection. Robert left the room, and when he snapped out of it he told Ethan, who was watching Shrek, that he liked Shrek also. Anna told Robert that she was on a Red Cross evacuation ship out of São Paulo, and five of the evacuees were immune but the Darkseekers got them. In Robert’s lab, Anna saw dozens of photos of other hemocytes he experimented on who all died, and Robert said that God didn’t do that, ungodly humans did. Robert told Anna that he named his daughter, Marley, after Bob Marley, and Anna didn’t know who that was. Robert played a CD and explained that Bob believed racism and hate could be cured by injecting music and love into people’s lives (said the Jamaican marijuana addict). Robert went on to say that Bob was supposed to perform at a peace rally, gunmen shot him down but two days later he performed and said he did it because the bad people trying to destroy the world didn’t get a day off, so why should Bob? Robert decided that he wasn’t leaving Manhattan, and Anna said that God told her to turn on the radio and come there because God had a plan. Anna said that God called her out of her hiding place to save Robert’s life the night before when he tried to kill himself. Robert argued that there was no God because millions of people died while millions others turned into Darkseekers who killed everybody and fed on them. Robert then realized that the hemocytes followed them home, and he set off the bombs and lights he had surrounding the house in the event that ever happened. Robert went looking for Anna, but then he was attacked by a hemocyte that used its superhuman robot strength to throw Robert down the stairs. Robert shot the house up with a machine gun until he ran out of bullets, and then he used a handgun to kill another hemocyte while Anna and Ethan hid under a dresser. Dozens more infected virus hemocytes swarmed into the house, and the trio hurried to the lab where they took shelter behind the Plexi glass. Robert and Ethan realized that the serum worked on the hemocyte Alpha female. The hemocyte Alpha male leader then started slamming himself against the glass as Robert shouted to the virus gang that he could save them all. The cracked glass made the shape of a butterfly, and Robert remembered Marley saying, “Daddy, look, it’s a butterfly,” in the car as they were evacuating and then he also noticed that Anna had a butterfly tattoo on her neck. Robert quickly gave Anna a vial of the Alpha hemoctye female’s blood, which had the antidote, and then Robert closed Anna and Ethan in the coal chute and told them not to come out until it was daylight. Robert looked at a picture of Zoe and Marley, and then he grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin and he and the hemocytes blew up together. Anna and Ethan later drove to rural Vermont with gas tanks piled on top of their SUV. They came upon a large castle like gated door that blocked the roadway. Heavily armed guards opened the gate and mother and child were both welcomed into the new Vermont colony of survivors. Anna gave the antedote blood to the guards. Anna then narrated that in 2009, a deadly virus burned through civilization and pushed humankind to the edge of extinction. Dr. Neville dedicated his life to finding the cure and restoring humanity, and on September 9th in 2012 at 8:49 p.m., he discovered the cure and gave his life to defend it minutes afterward. With a white steeple all-inclusive church, and a picturesque New England fall foliage scene with wind turbines in the background, the movie ended in the new USA non-virus Vermont (a Canadian border state smaller than Sicily controlling the only “cure” for the entire country and world). Anna added this was Robert’s legacy and legend…light up the darkness. This movie had a budget of $150 million and grossed over $585 million at the box office. The movie cover art listed, Pete Hammond, MAXIM “Mind-blowing excitement.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/22/23

TITLE: Jump In!

BOX OFFICE RATED: TV-G

PRODUCTION YEAR: Walt Disney Home Entertainment/A Disney Channel Original Movie/Davis Entertainment/A Hop, Skip and Jump Productions

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 2

REASON: This movie takes place in Brooklyn, NY, where male teenager Isadore “Izzy” Daniels lived with his dad Kenneth Daniels and eight-year-old sister Karin Daniels after their mom died. Kenneth was a former boxer and Golden Gloves champion, and he was training Izzy to follow in his footsteps. Kenneth set up Izzy’s last exhibition match before he went to Golden Gloves, and the match was against Rodney Tyler, the local bully who ruled the neighborhood with fear. Karin told Kenneth over dinner that she had a fight with her boyfriend, and dad spit out his food in surprise because she was too young to be dating. Karin wanted to attend the Double Dutch competition, but Kenneth had to go to the Daniels’ boxing gym to fix a leak so he told Izzy to take Karin to the show. Karin convinced Izzy by telling him that Mary Thomas, the leader of the Joy Jumpers team and also their neighbor who Izzy liked, would be there. The Joy Jumpers (comprised of Mary and her three best friends, Shaunda Lewis, Keisha Ray and Yolanda Brooks) got fourth place in the competition and were headed to the city finals, while the snotty Dutch Dragons won first and boasted their win. Izzy won his match against Rodney, and then he left a bag of clothes at Rodney’s doorstep that the school nurse gave him because his family was having a hard time with money, but Rodney threw bag in the trash when he saw Izzy watching him. Yolanda quit the Joy Jumpers and joined the Dutch Dragons because she wanted to be on a winning team, and Rodney demanded a rematch with Izzy to prove that Izzy didn’t just get lucky. The JJs told Izzy what happened and said they needed another jumper in order to enter city finals. Izzy didn’t think he could do it, but he showed them all up so Mary asked him to join their team. Izzy refused at first, but then Mary’s friends convinced him to fill in for their fourth jumper until they found a replacement. Mary wasn’t happy to hear that but reluctantly agreed, and Izzy insisted that they practice before school and before the gym opened so his dad and friends, Chuck Coley and Lil’ Earl Jackson, wouldn’t know. Izzy spent most of his time practicing freestyle jumping with the JJs, and his boxing suffered because of it. Tammy, the only female boxer at the gym, knew about the double Dutch and told Izzy she wouldn’t tell anyone as long as he stopped making girl boxer jokes. Izzy believed Mary’s freestyle routine was boring and wanted to change it, and he showed the JJs another group of jumpers they didn’t know about who were just jumping for fun without trying to be precise or consistent like Mary. When Rodney tried to start something with Izzy on the street, Mary dumped water on his head and then they all ran.Kenneth was wondering why Izzy was late to boxing practice, and Izzy said he was out with Mary. Rodney later overheard the loud music in the gym and went inside to investigate. Rodney took pictures of Izzy doing double Dutch with the girls. Izzy decided that he wanted to be a JJ member for the finals and said his buddies didn’t have to know about it. Izzy convinced the girls to change their team name to the Hot Chili Steppers, and they entered the Elgin Double Dutch Showcase. However, Kenneth bought tickets to a boxing match and Izzy didn’t want to disappoint his dad, so he skipped out on the competition and went to the match. Later that night, Mary was upset and told Izzy to make a choice between her and his dad. She made the choice for Izzy and kicked him off the team because he deserted them and was unreliable, and he wasn’t serious about Double Dutch the way the girls were. Chuck and Lil’ Earl made comments about how Tammy was just lucky and wasn’t a good boxer because she was a girl, but Izzy told them that Tammy was good at boxing. Rodney then printed out the pictures he took, added a pink tint and hung them up on the walls at school. All the kids, even Izzy’s friends, laughed and called Izzy as a loser as he walked down the hall and made comments about him being pretty because he hung out with girls. Izzy brought home one of the pictures and crumpled it up on the floor. While Kenneth was putting his own Golden Gloves award in Izzy’s room as a surprise, Kenneth found the picture and confronted Izzy. Karin blurted out that Izzy was on the HCS team, and Izzy explained that he didn’t tell Kenneth about the double Dutch because his dad was only concerned about boxing and wouldn’t have listened. Izzy said he didn’t like boxing anymore and told Kenneth not to take his son’s life away just because Kenneth didn’t have one anymore. Izzy found the GG award in the room. When Mary wanted him to join the team again he said he needed to focus all his attention on boxing again and he couldn’t do that if he was jumping rope with girls. Tammy told Izzy that he shouldn’t stop doing double Dutch just because other kids were laughing at him since Tammy still boxed despite what the boys said about her. Rodney then confronted Izzy and wanted his rematch, but they didn’t get very far before Izzy gave up and told Rodney that fighting wouldn’t solve anything, especially not Rodney’s dad’s unemployment. Izzy said he was tired of being mad, and it was narrated that Rodney felt the same way but didn’t say it out loud. Rodney was impressed because no one else had ever stood up to him or told him the truth, and he always remembered that moment. The HSC got a new girl to replace Izzy, but she tripped over her own two feet so everyone was happy when Izzy showed up at the city finals and wanted to rejoin the team, and Mary accepted him. In compulsory jumping, The Hot Chili Steppers won first place and the Dutch Dragons second. In speed jumping, the DD were first and the HCS second. Right before the freestyle, Izzy noticed his dad and Karin in the audience and that gave him confidence. The crowd went wild during and after the Hot Chili Steppers’ performance. Kenneth said he loved boxing and repeated his phrase that boxing was 20 percent talent and 80 percent heart, but now he saw that his son’s heart was somewhere else and he found what he liked in double dutch. Kenneth apologized to Izzy for pushing boxing on him, and they made amends. Rodney was watching too, and he admitted to Izzy that the double Dutch was cool for a daddy’s boy. Rodney and Izzy called a truce. The top three teams who would go to the state finals were the Kung Fu Flyers in third, the Dutch Dragons in second, and the Hot Chili Steppers in first. Izzy and the girls later taught Kenneth to do double Dutch, and Rodney told the story to a group of little kids at the boxing gym and told them that the HCS went to state finals that year and didn’t win, but they won that competition the next year. The movie cover art listed, David Hiltbrand “One movie you don’t want to skip.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/21/23

TITLE: Sleepover

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2004 MGM Pictures / Landscape Entertainment / Weinstock Productions / 20th Century Fox

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie began with 14-year-old Julie Corky and her best friend, Hannah Carlson, graduating from junior high. Hannah’s family planned to move to Vancouver. Julie invited Yancy Williams to the sleepover at Julie’s house after mean girl Liz Daniels said her dad was a lawyer and could help Yancy sue the diet pill company for nonperformance because she was overweight. Liz and Staci Blake once embarrassed Yancy in front of everyone at school by making her stand on a scale a mean girl kept in her locker. Julie’s mom Gabby bought things for a ladybug-themed sleepover, which Julie wasn’t happy about it because she thought that was too babyish. Julie stormed off to her mom and told Hannah that her mom was blindfolded when she bought Julie a new pair of underwear that Julie thought would suit a 10-year-old. Julie’s adult brother Ren lived with them because he decided college was too serious. Gabby went out clubbing with her gal pal while her husband, Jay, spent the evening installing an Aquapure water system because he was convinced the tap water was bad. Julie rushed her mom out of the house, and then Julie and Hannah laughed at Jay’s plumber crack showing as he fixed the sink. Meanwhile, Staci and her high school boyfriend Todd were supposed to go to the high school dance, but he refused and wanted to hook up with Staci like she said they would after she graduated junior high. Staci said no to Todd in his car because instead of taking her to the dance he pulled over and wanted sex but when Staci said no, Todd drove off in the car and left Staci alone in the dark. Officer Sherman Shiner, the new PatrolTec security officer in the neighborhood, came to the door to tell Julie and her partying girlfriends (Hannah, Farrah James and Yancy) that there was a noise complaint and they needed to keep it down. Before Shiner left, he took a sip of Julie’s Coke and swished it around in his mouth before spitting it back into the can to make sure it was Coke. Staci then made an appearance and organized a scavenger hunt competition between her friends (Liz, Molly and Jenna) and Julie and her friends. The winner would get the ideal high school lunch spot outside the fountain where the popular kids ate, while the losers would have to eat by the dumpsters where the regular kids were forced to eat. Also, the two female teams needed to take pictures of them in the act to prove that they completed the tasks. Julie told Hannah that she couldn’t participate, but Hannah convinced Julie by telling her that Steve Phillips, a high schooler who Julie had a crush on, ate by the fountain and if they didn’t win they would forever be the unknowns in high school. Julie agreed for a chance to be with Steve and then bribed sibling Ren with $50 to cover for her and the sleepover girls. Big brother gladly accepted the bribe since he didn’t have a job. For one of the tasks on the list, Staci created a Datessafe.com (a police-approved website) profile character named June using Julie’s description so she could find a date to go to the adult Cosmo Club that night. An online dating member named Dave almost immediately agreed to be Julie’s date, so the girls ripped the sleeves off one of Gabby’s dresses and made it shorter and sexier for Julie to wear and did her hair and makeup so she appeared much older. The delinquent girls climbed out the window and balanced across the trellis, but Julie fell through it. Dad was too preoccupied with fixing the contaminated water in the kitchen at the facet to see that his daughter dangled upside down with her dress on outside making her escape with her so-called friends. The four girls then all crammed into Yancy’s mini Smart electric car (with the wheel on the right side like gone postal). Yancy’s dad taught her to drive in the parking lot and told his daughter she could use the car in case of an emergency so underage Yancy decided this was an emergency situation. Russell “SpongeBob” Hayes and his buddies, Myles and Lance, snuck into the house and raided Julie’s room. They found the bras but not the babes, and Ren told them the girls left. The boys then found the scavenger hunt list and followed the girls around. Both teams went to Old Navy to put their own clothes on the mannequins, but Staci’s team finished first and locked one of the display windows so Julie’s team undressed the male mannequins to put the female clothes on the male bodies. Officer Shiner was too busy looking at himself in the mirror to notice until the girls were done dressing the males like females, and then the girls escaped and locked Officer Shiner inside the display after he finally noticed and attempted to stop the female wrecking squad. The guards outside the adult Cosmo Club let Staci and her underage girl companions through but not the others, so Julie and Hannah snuck in. Dave turned out to be Mr. Corrado, the girls’ junior high school teacher, so Julie put on sunglasses and tried to act like an adult when Mr. Corrado spotted her. Hannah texted Julie and told her to order a sex on the beach drink, but the bartender wouldn’t let her have it because it was an alcoholic drink and she didn’t have her ID. Mr. Corrado then realized that his date was his student from school, Julie, and he said that was worse than being stood up but he agreed to buy both Julie and Hannah ginger ales and take a picture with them for their crazy competition. The girls were able to get Mr. Corrado an adult date on the dancefloor by taking off his glasses and ruffling his hair. Yancy was out back waiting, and Peter, the speaker moving person from high school, introduced himself. Yancy was happy because he was the only guy who ever wanted to have a conversation with her and didn’t just ask her to hold the door for him. Julie then spotted her mom in the club dancing on a table and couldn’t believe it, so she and Hannah rushed outside. Gabby spotted her scarf on the floor that Julie had been wearing and dropped, and then Gabby spotted Julie and Hannah running outside. The girls hid in the dumpster so Gabby her girl friend didn’t see them once they got outside. Julie realized that her mom would phone Jay to check up on Julie so Julie borrowed SpongeBob Hayes skateboard and rode home on it. She rode by Steve in his car, and he noticed the female boarding in the sexy red dress with her long curly brown hair no longer up and asked his buddy, “Who was that?” Meanwhile, as the sink water spouted a hole through the ceiling, Jay reassured Gabby on the phone that Julie and her friends were fine. Julie used a ladder to climb up on the roof and get back into her room since SpongeBob Hayes and his buddies broke the trellis the rest of the way adding to the damage already done by Jules and her squad. When Jay opened the door, Julie was standing there, wearing a bathrobe, and took the phone. Julie disrespected her mom and said she was very mature and not a little girl and hatefully hung up the phone on her mother. Julie then left the house again and went back out with the girls. Yancy’s electric (not so smart) car ran out of power right as they pulled up outside Steve’s house for the next item on their scavenger list. Julie snuck into Steve’s house through a window while Staci and Liz went through Steve’s bag in his Jeep and found a pair of boxer shorts, (Steve’s boxer shorts was an item on the girls scavenger hunt). Staci and company spotted Julie, and Liz around Steve’s house so they called in a report of a suspicious person to PatrolTec. Steve and his buddy Gregg were hanging out inside, so Julie hid in the shower. Julie got drenched with water when Steve turned the water on to take his shower. From behind the curtain, Jules watched as Steve took off his shirt, pants and boxer shorts. Before he got into the shower, Steve quickly wrapped a towel around his waist to investigate the noise outside, which was the mini car crashing into Shiner’s security car because the girls tried to push the car to plug it into an outlet on a street lamp but they lost control of the car instead. Officer Shiner then saw Julie sneaking away from the house with boxers in hand, and he told her that she looked like a suspicious person and wanted to know why she was damp. Julie replied that it was the sprinklers, and then Officer Shiner called Jay because he had underage Julie give him her personal information to call her parents. The other girls got the little green electric car to another outlet they found near the homes in the area and plugged it in. Bought and bribed brother Ren was upstairs stomping around in high heels as Jay fixed the hole in the roof to make Jay think the girls were dancing to music. Ren was able to answer the phone before Jay, and he asked Julie for $50 monthly for the next six months for him to keep covering for her. Julie negotiated three months and then hung up. Just as the mini car went by, Julie stole the security decal off the side of Shiner’s car (another scavenger item) and jumped into the mini. Incompetent Officer Shiner crashed into something when he tried to give chase. The two girl teams then raced to the high school dance. Staci called for a tiebreaker where the winning team was the first team to get the king or queen crown that was to be awarded to a male and female at the dance. The high school girl that sat outside the dance taking tickets wouldn’t let Julie’s group in, but Julie was able to convince the lone student to let them in by using it against her that the girl’s current nobody status would be Julie in four years (sitting outside by herself all alone while everyone was inside partying) if Julie and her partners in crime didn’t get into that dance. When Staci spotted Todd and his new high school girlfriend (Linda) dancing, Staci slapped Todd. Linda said she and Todd had been dating for six months (Todd had just wanted a one-night stand with younger Staci), and then the two girls pushed each other around and Linda told Staci to stay away from her footballer. Todd announced that Staci had never hooked up and never would. Staci then entered the mojo dance contest with SpongeBob Hayes after he said she was a prime goddess and he would worship her if he were with her. Staci and SpongeBob won, which made Linda mad. Todd told Linda that she wasn’t a good dancer, so she slapped him and stormed off. Farrah from Julie’s team then slipped up and told Yancy that she was Staci’s replacement at the sleepover since Gabby only let three girls come to the party. That upset Yancy, but Yancy was okay moments after because Peter dedicated a song to her and then the two of them danced together. Jennifer Allen and Steve won king and queen, and Liz was convinced that Jennifer would give her the crown because they were friends. The king and queen winners then chose their partners for the next song (not each other). Steve called out to Julie (he already knew who she was because he recognized her from grade school and looked her up in his old yearbook). They danced together, and Steve gave Julie his crown and told her she won because she dropped her scavenger list and he read it. Steve explained how he knew Julie and asked for his boxers back as they danced.Then, Ren called Julie and told her that mama Gabby was coming home. Julie and her friends rushed off, and all Julie could think about was how she missed her chance to kiss Steve so he was going to wake up the next morning and realize Julie was just a freshman. As they sped off, Julie’s crown fell offher head through the window. Officer Shiner now on his bicycle saw the little green car that hit him and tried to go after it, but he ran over the crown and did a somersault in the street. He shouted that he was a security officer and took a two-week course, but he was unable to commandeer a vehicle for his purposes so he called his mom to pick him up. The girls went into the fort in the backyard, and sister Julie climbed across the gap between the fort and the window on a rope that bro Ren held so the siblings could get away scot free with all their crimes. The fort started falling towards the house, and the girls were able to jump into the window while Julie snuck in a different door just as Gabby arrived. Jay dad had Gabby mom try the new water that gave the teens extra time to cover up their deceitful and illegal behavior. Gabby confirmed that the water seemed to taste better. Both parents then checked on the girls in Julie’s room, who were all now in their sleeping bags and pretended to by asleep. The parents then wondered what was wrong with the Westie like white dog that lay on his back on the floor, and had no clue that Ren fed the poor animal many pizzas that Ren also helped eat because Julie said she would do his laundry for him if he ate all the pizza she ordered for the party. The next morning, Ren announced that he was going back to college and, thanks to his lawbreaking sister; brother had a future career in surveillance. Gabby knew after she found the scarf at the club that Julie and the girls left the house the previous night, but Gabby didn’t want to know the details and told Julie to take her time crossing the bridge from adolescence into adulthood. Gabby gave Julie a doorknob with a lock like she wanted for her bedroom, and they made amends. Everyone stayed for breakfast and then went home. Julie and Hannah said their goodbyes since Hannah was crossing the border with her family and moving to Canada. Julie then noticed the crown outside her window, and when she went out to the fort where Steve waitied for her and he put the crown on her head. The two teens kissed outside Julie’s parents house. The movie ended with Staci and her girl groupies eating their lunch by the high school dumpsters as students dumped their trash near them. This movie had a $10 million budget and grossed $10 million at the box office. The movie cover art listed the Los Angeles Times, “Lots of freewheeling fun!” The San Francisco Chronicle commented, “A good-hearted tween comedy.” The NY Daily News added, “Alexa Vega overflows with a genuine sweetness!” The Seattle Times stated, “…topped with sprinklings of Cinderella enchantment.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/20/23

TITLE: To Grandmother’s House We Go

BOX OFFICE RATED: NR (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1992 Warner Bros. / Dualstar DVD / ABC / Jeff Franklin Productions / Green / Epstein Productions / Lorimar Television

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in the Union State (filmed in Canada) at Christmastime and began with five-year-old twin sisters Julie and Sarah Thompson waking up their divorced mom, Rhonda, up so they could get ready for the day. The two very young girls, in their underwear, fought over a pair of pants and then played with their breakfast oatmeal, and made another mess for mom to clean up because the twin ill behaved children constantly competed with each other. Eddie Popko, an FPD package delivery driver and Roy Rogers fan, went to the convenience store where Rhonda worked (girls were at school) because he had a crush on her and wanted to go out with her, but she said he wasn’t her type. Julie and Sarah jumped all over the place making excuses to delay their bedtime, but Rhonda was finally able to get the girls in their shared bed, but the sisters continued to argue even after the door was closed and mom had left the room. Eddie dropped off a package for the girls the next morning, from their Great Grandma Mimi in Edgemont. The children yelled for their mom because Eddie accidentally stepped on the snowman they made by the street curb, because they played alone outside while their mom was in their second story apartment inside the building. The girls wanted to go to the Edgemont carnival and visit Grandma’s for Christmas, but Rhonda said they couldn’t that year. Eddie didn’t even know Rhonda had kids and said that Julie and Sarah were like piranhas. The girls received purses with their names on them that Grandma probably made, but they were disappointed because there was no money inside. Rhonda had a conversation with Stacey the babysitter (a friend with a newborn boy) and told her she had to work on Christmas Day (and had not told her girls yet) while the twins chased Barney the dog around because the dog already ate one of their brownies and had the other in his mouth. Rhonda then had a meltdown and told Stacey that her daughters were a handful and were always getting into trouble, and all she wanted for Christmas was a couple of days by herself. Young Julie and Sarah overheard, so while Stacey was distracted with her baby, the kindergarten girls decided they would give their mom a vacation and go to Grandma’s house by themselves. They packed food, clothes and money from their piggy banks and then set off on their tricycles. They rode around the block in a circle because they weren’t allowed to cross the street, so they decided it would be quicker to hitch a ride so they secretly boarded a bus where an elderly lady helped them figure out they were on the wrong bus. Stacey eventually found the girls missing and called Rhonda, who then kicked everyone out of the convenient store and closed it early to search for the missing children. Rhonda and Stacey called the police, and Detective Gremp came to investigate. Meanwhile, little eSarah wouldn’t let lil’ Julie become distracted by the storefront display of the Princess Penny doll she wanted. The girls then spotted Eddie the delivery driver and they sneaked onto his delivery truck. After some time, Sarah had to go to the bathroom so she shouted to Eddie that she had to go. That startled the driver and interrupted his singing along with Roy Rogers and Eddie quickly pulled over to the side of the rode. Eddie brought the girls up front and then stopped at a bar where he sent Sarah off into the bathroom. Eddie carried Sarah to the bathroom (not sure what happened to Julie then) and he went inside the woman’s bathroom with Sarah until another questionable female called Eddie out on being in the ladies restroom so he left Sarah alone with the bar lady in the bathroom. Afterward, Eddie called Rhonda to tell her that he had Julie and Sarah, and Detective Gremp took the credit for finding the girls (even though the officer did nothing). Eddie said he would finish his deliveries and then drop the girls off at home. Eddie learned that he and the girls would get tips from the customers if Julie and Sarah went to the front doors with him. Eddie called the twins his daughters and brought them to each house so they could all get tip money. Eddie then took the girls to get ice cream, and he used their birthday, June 13, 1987, for his lotto numbers and gave the girls the ticket to hold onto so one young girl carried the lotto ticket in her purse. Julie and Sarah were mad when they realized that Eddie had taken them home and not to Grandma’s house. When Eddie got out of his truck to drop them off at Rhonda’s apartment building, married couple Harvey and Shirley walked by acting all friendly, but then put on a charade where Shirley knocked Eddie out and both criminals stole his truck with the underage girls inside. Harvey and Shirley were some of the FPD bandits who were in the news for stealing delivery trucks full of Christmas presents. The bandits then found Julie and Sarah in the back of the truck and realized that they could get reward money and become heroes if they returned the missing girls. They took Julie and Sarah to their RV motor home, where they gained the girls’ trust by lying that they were Santa’s elves and their house full of presents (stolen) was a mobile workshop. Eddie told Rhonda what happened, and Detective Gremp returned to Rhonda’s apartment to get the descriptions of the bandits. Eddie, still at Rhonda’s because he had no vehicle, listened to the winning lottery number on TV, but none of the tickets he had were winners so he wouldn’t get a chance to spin for $1.3 million. Rhonda kicked Eddie out because he was more worried about lottery than finding Julie and Sarah. Eddie asked Detective Gremp for a ride home, and in the car Detective Gremp called in an APB on the missing girls and stated their birthday. That was when Eddie remembered that the girls had his possible million-dollar winning lottery ticket if he spun the wheel and it landed on the jackpot. Eddie told the detective to stop the car so Eddie could run back to Rhonda’s apartment because now Eddie had a $million reasons to help find the missing girls. Rhonda let Eddie in and he announced that he wanted to help find Julie and Sarah, and then Shirley called Rhonda and said she found the girls and they were playing games at the arcade. Shirley asked if there would be a $10,000 cash reward, and Eddie shouted that they would get the money so Shirley arranged a meeting at the skating rink in Edgemont. She advised Rhonda to wear a red hat and not tell the police otherwise Shirley wouldn’t show. Eddie then convinced Rhonda to pawn off the Christmas packages from inside another delivery truck to raise the ransom money and said that everyone would be very happy if they knew that by giving up one Christmas present, they were helping a mother be reunited with her missing daughters. Rhonda agreed because she was desperate and she kept a list of all the packages so they could use the lottery money to buy them back and deliver them on Christmas Eve. They raised all the money they needed, and then Eddie gave Rhonda a red vintage Dale Evans hat to wear and told her that he wanted to buy himself a ranch in Montana called The Lazy E if he won the lottery money. Detective Gremp went to the pawnshop, where the owner gave him the descriptions of the two people selling stolen goods. Now Detective Gremp was hunting Eddie and Rhonda thinking they were the bandits. When Eddie and Rhonda arrived in Edgemont, Eddie accidentally dinged the side of a sheriff’s car with his own car door. The sheriff said it was Christmas Eve so the sheriff wouldn’t shoot them, and they all had a laugh about that. The sheriff then recognized the duo as the “bandits,” and called it in to Detective Gremp who hurried to Edgemont. At the skating rink, Eddie confiscated everyone’s red hats until they were done skating. Rhonda told Eddie that her husband left her and she was having trouble raising two kids by herself so she felt like a failure as a mom, but Eddie told Rhonda she was a good mom and her husband made a mistake leaving because he lost her. Harvey took Julie and Sarah on a pony ride (when the girls still only wanted to go to Grandma’s house) while Shirley ran her “errand,” and the girls chanted that they wanted Grandma. Harvey told them that they weren’t going to Grandma’s house, so the twins then chanted that Harvey was a liar. Harvey said that he and Shirley were not elves so then Julie and Sarah ran off to get help from a man dressed as Santa. Once Santa man found out the girls had no adults with them, Santa man left the young girls alone on top of his wagon with two large horses attached so he could go find help for the very young unsupervised children. Rhonda was about to make the money exchange with Shirley, but she didn’t get the chance to because Harvey showed up and admitted that he lost the girls so the foursome all ran off to find the twins. Julie and Sarah took off in the two-horse sleigh wagon because they didn’t want to be around the criminals again. Eddie doned a cowboy hat and galloped off on Buttercup from the pony ride (imagining he was Roy Rogers on Trigger in a high-speed wagon chase) to save the twins on the out of control wagon sleigh with nobody controlling the horses. The runaway horses crashed through a roadblock sign that led to another road shut down for safety purposes, and then Eddie jumped off Buttercup and onto the sleigh. He jumped onto the backs of one of the horses and was able to stop the two horses and wagon sleigh right before it, him, the twins and the horses all went over the very high cliff edge. Eddie backed the horses up. At Grandma’s house, Julie and Sarah were happy to see Grandma again. Rhonda was glad Julie and Sarah appeared OK after their hours long tramatizing ordeal with many questionable strangers. Detective Gremp showed up at Grandma’s house and then arrested Eddie and Rhonda and put handcuffs on the thieving adults. Detective Gremp announced that the girls would remain in Grandma’s custody until their mom was released from jail. Eddie and Rhonda explained what they did with the packages, but Detective Gremp said the two of them sold stolen merchandise and were caught red-handed with the money (Harvey gave the money back to Rhonda because he lost the twins while the two girls rode the pony). Julie and Sarah didn’t want their mom to go, so Harvey, a softie, decided to tell the police that he and Shirley were the bandits and the kidnappers. Eddie and Rhonda confirmed it, and Detective Gremp said he knew it was Harvey and Shirley all along and arrested them. Harvey’s plan was to get out of jail in 3 to 5 years and be a vicious and rotten criminal like Shirley, and she said that was a beautiful dream. Detective Gremp told Eddie and Rhonda to expect community service. Eddie had given up his hope of spinning the lottery wheel because the lotto show was almost over, but then Rhonda asked Detective Gremp to break the speed limit and drive Eddie to town so he could spin the wheel. The entire crowd chanted “Christmas Eve,” to convince Detective Gremp, and he grumpily agreed and drove back home fast with his lights and sirens. The show was just wrapping up as the Eddie, Rhonda and the girls arrived and they couldn’t get in because security stopped them. Eddie handed the ticket to one little girl and she ran onstage with it on live TV. The show hosts saw that the ticket was a winner and let everyone through since the cameras were rolling and the live audience was still in their seats. Eddie announced that he wanted Julie and Sarah, his two good-luck charms, to spin the wheel for him and he would share half of what he won with the girls and their mom. As it turned out, Eddie won the $1.3 million jackpot so the crowd loved it and the staged scene had balloons and confetti for their celebration. It ended when Eddie and Rhonda kissed passionately on live TV and Rhonda told the children that kissing was better than the other stuff going on. Using the money, Eddie and Rhonda bought back all the gifts they stole and gave Julie and Sarah each a Princess Penny doll. They then went to deliver the presents and planned to go back to Grandma’s house all together to celebrate Christmas.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/19/23

TITLE: Camp Rock

BOX OFFICE RATED: TV-G

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2008 Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment / A Disney Channel Original Movie / Allen Sacks Productions

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 2

REASON: This movie began with teenager Mitchie Torres begging her mom Connie to send her to Camp Rock, a kids’ summer camp for music and singing. Connie said the family couldn’t afford it, but then she was able to get Mitchie a discount by agreeing to have her business, Connie’s Catering, do the cooking for the campers with Mitchie helping out. At Camp Rock, Dee La Duke, the musical director, announced that Shane Gray, the lead singer of the pop band Connect 3, would be a special celebrity instructor to help the campers prepare for the Final Jam competition at the end of the summer. However, teen Shane had a meltdown with his band and stormed off set, which would cost them thousands of dollars and possibly their record deal. Shane didn’t want to spend the summer at Camp Rock, but since the summer tour was canceled and Shane’s band members, Nate and Jason, were fed up with his self-centered behavior, they told Shane they needed the good publicity. Connect 3 had attended Camp Rock before, and the camp director, Brown Cesario (Aussie accent), was Shane’s uncle. When Shane arrived, his female fans idolized him and chased after him screaming so he had to hide. Mitchie and Caitlyn Gellar hit it off immediately. At the Opening Night Jam, Lola Scott and her backup singers sang and danced “Who’s got what it takes to be my guy…what it takes to get me fired up?” Mitchie met snooty Tess Tyler, the daughter of famous singer TJ Tyler, and her friends, Ella Pador and Margaret “Peggy” Dupree. They weren’t impressed with Mitchie because her dad wasn’t the famous Nicky Torres, but then Mitchie lied that her mom was the president of Hot Tunes TV in China. The girls let Mitchie to stay in their cabin with them, and Caitlyn wasn’t happy about that. Shane didn’t want to get up in the morning to teach, so Brown dumped water from the flower vase on him. Brown called on Mitchie to sing in class, and she had stage fright and was nervous, but everyone thought she was awesome. Tess convinced Mitchie to be a backup singer for her group by telling Mitchie that she couldn’t do a solo for her first Final Jam. When Shane came into the kitchen, Mitchie put on a chef hat and covered her face in flour. Shane said snottily that he couldn’t eat his breakfast because his food allergy list didn’t get to the person in charge. Mitchie called Shane out on being a jerk, so he changed his tune and said he would have his manager send the list again. Brown told Shane to stop acting like it was all about him and to just be a dance instructor like he was supposed to, and Shane argued that in his world it was about him. Mitchie refused to acknowledge Connie as her mom in front of Tess and her girl gang others, and Connie didn’t believe that Tess was Mitchie’s type because Mitchie was usually independent. Later that night at the campfire, Tess danced sexy as she sang about how “…me, myself and I agree, you’ll never catch up to me…cause I’m too cool to know you…” Mitchie later overheard Shane singing and playing his guitar in a style that was different than the one his band was known for, and he explained that he only publicly played what the label thought would sell. Mitchie said she would buy the song Shane was playing. In the cafeteria, Tess tripped over Caitlyn’s foot, so she dumped spaghetti on Caitlyn’s clothes. That led to a food fight that Brown broke up, and Tess lied that Caitlyn started the food throwing. Mitchie refused to correct the mistake because she didn’t want Tess to get in trouble, so Caitlyn was assigned kitchen duty for the rest of the summer. Shane performed in front of Mitchie his new song “Gotta Find You,” about being next to someone in a romantic way, and she liked it. Caitlyn then discovered that Mitchie was Connie’s daughter when they encountered each other in the kitchen, and Caitlyn was upset that Mitchie wanted everyone to believe a lie about her just so she could fit in and be popular like Tess, even though that meant Mitchie had to sell her soul. Caitlyn later admitted that she used to be friends with Tess until Tess thought Caitlyn was competition and stopped hanging out with her. Shane had overheard Mitchie singing her original song “This Is Me,” and what will I be earlier and he liked her voice but didn’t know it was her, so he started searching for the mystery girl. Shane and Mitchie went for a canoe ride together, and he said that being a jerk was part of his rock star image but he wasn’t really like that. Tess liked Shane and was jealous when she saw him with Mitchie. Tess then spotted Mitchie and Caitlyn helping Connie in the kitchen. At the Beach Jam, Shane and Connect 3 sang “Play My Music,” about how Shane wanted to hear his heroes singing his favorite songs. Afterwards, Tess confronted Mitchie and made her admit that she lied about whom her mom really was, and Shane wasn’t happy about it. Connie told Mitchie that she was talented, had good music and was a winner when she told the truth, so she should be herself and not tell lies about who she was because it wasn’t something to be ashamed of no matter how many people she claimed as friends. In the cafeteria, Tess told Mitchie that her mom made the chicken too dry. Mitchie told Tess off and said that even though she was the cook’s daughter and her dad wasn’t rich, she was a better person than someone like Tess who made her selfie feel good by making others feel bad.Tess told Mitchie she was out of their group if that wasn’t already obvious. Mitchie and Caitlyn decided to enter the Final Jam together with Mitchie singing and Caitlyn playing her electronic music. Tess than framed Caitlyn and Mitchie and claimed they stole her charm bracelet that Tess planted in the kitchen where the innocent girls worked. Brown banned the girls from participating in all camp activities “until the end of the Final Jam,” which he kept repeating. At the Final Jam, Ella and Peggy quit at the last minute and didn’t want Tess to tell them what to do anymore. Barron James and Sander Lawyer rapped “Hasta La Vista,” with other campers. Tess sang about how two stars shone brighter than one, but then she ran off the stage in tears before finishing when she saw that her mom, TJ, made an appearance but was interrupted by a phone call. Peggy entered the jam as a last-minute addition and sang the song “Here I Am,” about being yourself and screaming so you won’t be ignored. Afterwards, Tess apologized to Peggy for the way Tess treated her and told Peggy that she was really good. When the Final Jam “ended,” Caitlyn and Mitchie took what Brown said literally and Brown agreed to let the other two perform on stage then. Mitchie and Shane combined their songs, “This Is Me,” and “Gotta Find You,” and sang together. Shane’s band members, the judges, decided that Peggy was the winner and she would get to record a duet with Shane, which was the bonus prize in addition to the Final Jam trophy. Tess told Mitchie and Caitlyn they were great and confessed that she told Brown they didn’t take her bracelet. Mitchie’s parents congratulated her and she said she won the best summer of her life thanks to them. Next was the Final Jam jam session, where all the campers sang and danced “We Rock,” about being superstars and following their dreams with Mitchie and Shane as the lead singers. Three months later, Caitlyn built a recording studio for all the Camp Rock girls to use and they sang “Our Time Is Here.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/18/23

TITLE: Saved!

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children).

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2004 MGM Home Entertainment / United Artists / Single Cell Pictures / Infinity Media

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in Maryland and began with Mary Cummings, a junior in high school, narrating about how her family was Christian and Jesus was the center of her life. She and her friend Hilary Faye Stockard painted a picture of Jesus outside their school, American Eagle Christian High, while Roland, Hilary’s brother, added his commentary that he saw on TV that Jesus wasn’t white. Hilary argued that of course Jesus was white and thought her little brother Roland was retarded after he fell out of a tree at nine years old and had been paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair ever since. Mary and Hilary were members of the Christian Jewels, a girl gang for Jesus that protested against abortion and the Nazis. Mary’s mom, Lillian, was named the number one Christian interior decorator for the entire region. Two weeks before the end of summer vacation, Mary and her boyfriend Dean Withers, who she said was a great Christian, were telling each other secrets underwater in the pool. Dean said he was gay, and Mary was shocked. As she swam back up to the surface, she hit her head on the side of the pool and was knocked unconscious. When Dean tried to save her, he too fell. The gardener was the one who jumped into the pool, and Mary had a vision that made her think the gardener was Jesus wearing the crown of thorns. Jesus (the gardener hired help) told Mary to support Dean for being gay. Mary looked up “gay,” on the Internet and an adult gay website came up so she quickly got off it. Lillian flirted with Pastor Skip Wheeler, the principal of American Eagle High School. Mary decided that in order to save Dean, she needed to get him to have sexual feelings for her. They kissed and Dean groped Mary’s breasts on screen while she wore her bikini, but Dean wasn’t turn on by any of it. Mary got advice from Hilary at the shooting range, where Hilary said that Jesus could restore her physical and spiritual virginity if she lost it to a rapist, but who wants that? She added that she was saving herself until marriage and would use force if necessary, and to prove her point Hilary shot up the target dummy‘s private parts. Hilary went on to say that technically, you were only a virgin once but it wasn’t about reversing the violation of your blessed womb, it was about Jesus granting you a virginal heart. That way, you’re pure again after giving up your virginity and Hilary encouraged Mary to do just that. As Dean looked at a gay magazine, Mary barged into his bedroom and he quickly hid the magazine under his bed. Mary started kissing Dean, and then they had sex since Dean was already hot from looking at the gay magazine. Mary started her senior year and she asked Jesus to restore her emotional and spiritual virginity in exchange for curing Dean of his gayness. Hilary had some Christian Jewels pins made for the team, and one member was Vietnamese Veronica, who was adopted by her black missionary parents. Hilary said it was God’s will triumphing over a savage, godless nation, and Veronica said that in countries like China, Hilary probably would have been killed at birth. In Hilary’s handicap van that she used to transport Roland, the Christian Jewels went to pick up Dean. Dean’s parents told Mary that they sent him away to the Mercy House (a Christian facility that treated drug abuse, alcoholism, de-gayification and unwed mothers among other things) for a long time after they found the Honcho magazine under his bed. When Mary told her friends, Roland said he already knew that Dean was gay and Hilary promised she wouldn’t tell anyone. Cassandra Edelstein was the only Jewish person ever to attend American Eagle, and she was just transferred to the school with rumors that she was a stripper. Hilary wanted to get Cassandra saved and reminded her that secondhand smoke killed other people as Cassandra chain-smoked cigarettes outside the school. Cassandra said she was counting on that and flicked her cigarette at Hilary. After Hilary spotted the “Jesus Loves You, Everyone Else Thinks You’re An A-Hole,” bumper sticker on Cassandra’s car, Hilary used her keys to scratch out the a-hole part. In class, a G.W. Bush portrait hung in the classroom as Patrick Wheeler, the son of Pastor Skip, appeared. Patrick was now a student after he spent the summer in South America with his mom on missionary work and just finished a world tour of Christian skateboarding. Cassandra and Roland started crushing on each other. In the middle of the Christian school assembly, Cassandra stood up and shouted in tongues while throwing herself around. Pastor Skip encouraged Cassandra, and she went on to open the front of her shirt and show her bra. She kept repeating words, and Hilary stood up and told everything that Cassandra was actually saying she had a hot pussy. After that, Cassandra was super popular and there was no act too vulgar to get her expelled. In fact, the more she acted out, the more Hilary wanted to save her. Cassandra later came into the cafeteria, showing her thong underwear with her pants riding low, and screaming at someone that he was an a-hole and telling him the muffin shop was closed as she pointed at her private parts. Hilary then wanted her squad to save the Jewish girl by showing her that the Christian girls could be fun, but Cassandra didn’t want any part of it. Mary started throwing up and got (possibly stole because she put it in her pocket at the store) a pregnancy test after she saw on TV that her symptoms could mean cancer and not pregnancy. However, Mary was pregnant and she scheduled an appointment at Planned Parenthood. When Mary found out that a prayer circle for Dean was organized, she wasn’t happy that Hilary told everyone and she explained that it was the best way to help Dean. Cassandra and Roland went out to smoke cigarettes, and she admitted that she wasn’t a stripper and he said he wasn’t a Christian. Cassandra explained that she got expelled from her last school, and she chose American Eagle over homeschooling. She then spotted Mary coming out of Planned Parenthood and said Mary must have done something with Dean. Cassandra kissed Roland. On her way home, Mary stopped in front of a cross and said sh**, f**k, and goddamn. Hilary prayed at the circle that God would rid Dean of his unnatural perversions, and then Mary appeared and made a scene about Jesus and prayer not being the answer because Dean still ended up at Mercy House. Hilary took away Mary’s pin and said she couldn’t have Mary polluting the Christian Jewels and what they stood for. When Lillian compared Mary to a car after Lillian told Mary that parents are not equipped to handle big problems in children (like gay Dean) and thus needed to send them away to others who were, Mary realized that her mom wouldn’t be able to handle her teen daughter’s pregnancy so Mary was on her own on how to deal with it. Mary decided that a week after prom and two days after she turned eighteen, she would join the unwed mothers club. Hilary was in a hurry to get to a Halloween event at school, and she grabbed Roland’s wheelchair and he told her to go let go otherwise he would tell everyone she touched him inappropriately while helping him in the bathroom. Mary searched for a new religion and God, and when Cassandra said she saw Mary coming out of the clinic, Mary said she was handing out pamphlets and trying to keep girls like Cassandra from making a big mistake. Pastor Skip told Hilary and her posse that he was worried about Mary and wanted the girls to be warriors on the front lines for Jesus (Tia thought that meant shooting Mary but the pastor said he was talking about something less gangsta) to lead her back to faith in God. In order to do that, the girls dragged Mary into their van and tried to perform an exorcism on her. Mary escaped and she and Hilary argued, and Hilary threw the Bible at Mary as she said that she was super Christian. Patrick gave Mary a ride on the back of his scooter, and he told her that he went to the prayer meeting not because he believed that Dean was sick and could be helped at the Mercy House, but because he hoped Mary would be there. Patrick asked Mary out, but she said she wasn’t dating at that time. Mary said that teen pregnancy at her school was about as common as the flesh-eating virus. Cassandra was the only one who knew and confronted Mary in the bathroom, where she demanded to know what Mary was going to do and made her admit that she was pregnant by suggesting that Mary sell the baby to smugglers. Mary explained that she had sex with Dean because she felt like it was what Jesus wanted her to do to help him but now she thought it was stupid, and Cassandra told her it wasn’t and said she knew somebody who would pay teen Mary a lot of money to take naked pictures of her in a family way. Cassandra said Mary needed to get out of there, so Cassandra and Roland took Mary shopping for a new wardrobe to hide her growing belly from everyone (including Mary’s mother), and Roland drove them around without his license in Cassandra’s car. Cassandra bragged about how she shoplifted a frozen turkey from a Piggly Wiggly wearing a tube top and daisy dukes. Roland used one of Hilary’s credit cards to pay for the stuff, and then he held up a sign asking for money in the mall using his handicap. Patrick and Hilary (bit** face according to Cassandra) then came over, and Cassandra announced that she wanted to get saved and ditch her Hanukkah traditions that year to distract Hilary so Patrick and Mary could leave together. Hilary told Cassandra to confess all her sins out loud, and Cassandra said there was a lot of swearing and sex. Patrick took Mary to the employee back room they weren’t supposed to be in, and he said he liked her and she inspired him with her words at the prayer circle. The teens almost kissed but didn’t, and Mary told Patrick he wasn’t her type. Cassandra taped a piece of rotten bacon in Hilary’s school locker to stink up the whole hallway, and then she told Hilary that she decided to devote her life to Satan instead of Jesus. Mary wondered if Jesus’ mother Mary made it all up since it wasn’t like people could use virgin birth as an excuse again, but then Mary added that she didn’t think Mother Mary made it up but she could understand why a girl would.Hilary gave Patrick a valentine, and then Patrick gave Mary one. Pastor Skip told his son Patrick to stay away from Mary, and Patrick said sarcastically that since his parents didn’t talk any more, the pastor had no advice to give on relationships. Pastor Skip explained that his wife went on the missionary trip while he took care of his principal duties there at school. Patrick said his mom told him everything over the summer, and he questioned his dad why he didn’t divorce his wife when she asked. Skip explained that divorce wasn’t part of God’s plan, so Patrick told him to get a new plan. Lillian dyed her hair blond, and then she and Pastor Skip met for dinner. They hadn’t seen each other in a while because their meetings got canceled four other times. Lillian said that God must have a reason for making her and Skip so happy together and it was nothing to be ashamed of. Skip said that in all the classes he taught and all the bible study he did, all he could think about was kissing Lillian so they kissed. Pastor Skip suggested that Patrick take more interest in school activities because the more energy he focused on God, the less time he would have to think about dating. Patrick played Jesus on the cross in a school play, and females Veronica, Mary and Cassandra were all turned on by teen Patrick wearing his gold bikini underwear on school stage. When Hilary suggested again that Cassandra accept Jesus into her heart, Cassandra said she should kick Hilary’s fat Christian a**. Mary interrupted and said it was only two months until she got out of school without anyone knowing she was pregnant. Cassandra said the bit** Hilary was going down next time and apologized. Mary showed Cassandra a sonogram and the baby was a girl, and Mary was keeping it in her locker because it was safer there than at home (where her mom could find it). Mary wore oversized clothes to school while everyone else wore their khaki and colored school uniforms. Roland showed the girls Hilary’s photo album that proved that HIliary was fat before they moved there. Her parents could fix her but not Roland, so they used money for plastic surgery on Hilary to make her skinnier and prettier. Hilary then recorded Cassandra calling her a bit** and telling her to burn in hell, and Cassandra tried to grab the recorder but Hilary ran off down the hall saying she could use the recording to get Cassandra expelled. Pastor Skip put all of them on work detail for Hilary’s prom committee as punishment. Patrick asked Mary to prom and she said she would go with him as friends, which made someone hater Hilary because she had planned to ask Patrick to prom. Cassandra then quit and told Hilary to organize the prom herself because Cassandra was walking away from Jesus. Hilary got a call and was happy that her favorite band, Godflight, agreed to perform at the prom like she wanted. Cassandra and Mary then put the picture of overweight Hilary holding a pig with the caption “Jesus Hates You,” all over the computers for everyone to see. Hilary told Pastor Skip and reminded him that he didn’t do anything to Cassandra after Hilary gave him the recording of her threatening words. He replied that whoever did it would not escape the eyes of God, (Mary’s pregnancy escaped the pastor principal’s eyes and the entire school staff). Hilary prayed about it, and the next day at school the outside of the building was spray-painted with messages like a-hole, 666, God=dog, “God suck my a**, and upside-down crosses. Hilary blamed Cassandra and Mary, and Hilary, Veronica and Tia smiled as Pastor Skip and his assistant checked the girls’ lockers. They found spray paint in both, and the female assistant school employee found the sonogram in Mary’s locker. The other adult tried to hide it from the principal and told him she found nothing other than the spray paint can, but the sonogram fell on the floor for all to see. Mary fainted and was carried to the nurse’s office. Roland told Hilary she had everything so what was she afraid of. Mary explained everything to Lillian and Skip about how Jesus spoke to her and told her that she needed to give up her virginity to help Dean. Skip took Lillian into a closet, and she said she didn’t know Mary, her daughter, was over eight months pregnant and thought she was just stress eating. Skip told Lillian that Mary was going through that because God was punishing them for their sin of having a relationship when Skip was married. Pastor Skip said that he couldn’t see Lillian anymore if she didn’t send Mary to the Mercy House to get help, and Lillian said she would think about it. Cassandra stormed out telling Roland that Pastor Skip expelled her, and Roland wanted to go with her because he didn’t have a ride but Cassandra sped off in her car without him. At Mercy House, Dean shared a room with Mitch, another gay male teen, (which only encourages the two gay teens by sharing a room). Lillian dyed her hair back to its original color and told Mary that Pastor Principal Skip said it was best for her to go to Mercy House because the child needed to be raised by a mom and a dad. Mary was upset that she didn’t get a say in it, and Lillian told the 17-year-old she was far from prepared to raise God’s child for the next 18 years because she herself was still not an adult and was still relying on her parent. Cassandra found Roland, and he told her that he wanted to be with her because he wanted her, not because he needed her. Cassandra said she wanted Roland too, and he said he had a crazy idea about something they could do that night. Roland called Mary, and Mary sneaked out of the house and took a cab to Roland’s location where he and Cassandra (wearing a pantsuit) were dressed up for prom. Mary said that Hilary would call the police on them if they went to her prom, and Roland replied that she wouldn’t because he had been snagging all her credit card bills so she wouldn’t find out about the shopping charges they made. Roland showed Mary a bill for spray-paint at Home Depot at 3 a.m. the morning of the attack, and because they had the proof that Hilary was the vandal they had every right to be at the prom. Patrick, in his tuxedo, then came around the corner in a black limo, and he and Mary kissed since her being pregnant didn’t matter to him. Hilary and her girl gang had to take the handicap van to prom with no dates, Hilary couldn’t pay for anything because her credit card was maxed out, her brother kept calling her the “c” word, and Tia wanted to wear Hilary’s tiara. Lillian listened to quizzes with contestant Charlene on TV and responded along to random questions like Dorothy of Oz. Lillian then went to check on Mary and found her gone because she had already snuck out of the house and taken a cab to meet up with her friends. The Christian school’s prom theme was, “Light of the World,” and Godflight, the pop rock band, sang and left the stage by praising Jesus. Then, Hilary took the microphone and told everyone that Mary fornicated with gay Dean. Hilary announced that the students who desecrated their school were in attendance. Roland confronted Hilary with the credit card charges. Pastor Skip said that the Christian thing to do would be to let the accused students stay, and he said that anybody could have made those charges. Cassandra and Mary told Hilary to swear on God that she didn’t buy the spray paint, and Hilary swore to God that she did not graffiti the school. Tia then showed everyone the receipt she found on the floor of Hilary’s van, which had Hilary’s signature and called her so-called friend Hilary out for swearing to GOD knowing Hilary lied all along and Hiliary tried to teach others it was OK to not tell the truth and it meant nothing when someone took an oath and swore to God to tell the truth. Hilary tried to convince Veronica to leave with her, but Veronica said no because Hilary was nothing but a big fake. Pastor Skip escorted Hilary off the stage, and she had a major meltdown and shouted that she got the decorations and arranged for Godflight to perform because Jesus told her to (while her dad paid for the refreshments). Hilary ran outside, and Roland and Cassandra chased after her. Dean and other Mercy House members then appeared, and Dean said they stole the van to attend prom. He just now realized that Mary was pregnant, and then Dean introduced Mitch, his prom date, and Mary introduced her date Patrick. Pastor Skip told Dean to pack up his friends and go back to Mercy House before they were all arrested because what they did in the eyes of God was not cool. Teen Dean said he wasn’t leaving, Teen Patrick said it was a gray area (gay), and Teen pregnant Mary yelled at Pastor Skip to stop it because the Bible was not black and white like he believed. Dean said they had been kicked out of their homes, schools and Mercy House so they had nowhere else to go. Mary told Pastor Skip that what he thought only the thing that fit into God’s moral righteousness standards were acceptable, and everything else was wrong. Mary called the reverend out because nobody, not even him, fit in 100% of the time. Mary said it was too much to live up to all those moral standards (and obviously too much to obey laws as well). Dean said that Jesus still loved him even though he was gay, and Mary said God made everybody different for a reason. Pastor Skip and everyone then went outside to investigate the sound of squealing tires. Hilary, having lost all sense of reality, took out her raging anger on the Jesus sign outside the school by ramming it with her van. Cassandra and Roland went over to Hilary and told her it was awesome what she did, and then the head of Jesus fell on top of the car and knocked Hilary’s crown off her head (which Tia later stole). All Hilary said when she got out of the car was she crashed into Jesus and beheaded Him, she had an oversized pimple, and her prom was ruined and that was not how she wanted to remember her life. Brother and sister made amends. An ambulance arrived at the school to take Mary to the hospital because God’s child was ready to be born. The paramedic told the three boys they only had room for one of them in the vehicle, and one teen boy said he was the father, another male teen said he the current boyfriend, and the third teen boy said he was the boyfriend of the father but then Lillian jumped into the van to ride along with Mary. At the hospital, Mary realized that bringing another child into the world wasn’t what Jesus meant for her to do to help Dean, but all the teens were happy about God’s child’s arrival and took turns holding the little girl. Mary said there had to be a God or something out there to bring the new child into the universe, and then Lillian handed the baby off to gay Dean as she watched Pastor Skip outside debating whether or not to come inside with flowers. Mary didn’t know what Jesus would do. Teen mom Mary thought that figuring it out (nonbelievers unite without Jesus) all together on their own was OK with her. The movie cover art listed, USA Today “Irreverent,” and “subversively funny.” The Wall Street Journal “Wickedly funny!” Ebert & Roeper and the Movies “Two thumbs up!” Premiere “Nothing short of brilliant.” Rolling Stone “boldly hilarious satire.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times “A sassy and smart teenage comedy.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/17/23

TITLE: Fern Hill

BOX OFFICE RATED: TV

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2008 Bridgestone Multimedia Group / Agape Productions

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie began with adult Colin reciting his favorite poem, Fern Hill, and explaining that his dad was a pilot who sometimes brought Colin with him on his flights. In 1979, Colin was five, and his dad’s plane crashed in the Colorado Mountains and the plane as well as Colin’s dad was never found. 8 years later in 1987, Colin and his three friends (Seth, Kenny and Bob) were all thirteen. Colin’s mom had remarried. Seth lived alone with his mom Helen and sister Sarah because Seth’s dad walked out on them a year before. Since then, Helen regularly had men in the house who she slept with and who were often abusive to her and the kids. Helen’s most recent boyfriend was Tom, who Seth drenched with water from a hose while Tom was in bed. Kenny’s dad paid more attention to Kenny’s older brother, a star football player, than Kenny, so Kenny’s grandpa was the only one really there for him. Colin told Seth and Kenny that he wanted to go to Fern Hill to see if that was where Colin’s dad crashed because that was the only place the search parties didn’t look. They all agreed to go, but they left Bob out of the real reason they were going to Fern Hill. Bob was reluctant to go because there were stories of many people never coming back from Fern Hill, but he agreed too. The other boys kept hitting Bob for breaking the rule of not to say, “dude,” and Kenny and Bob especially weren’t on good terms and called each other names. The gang rode to school on their bicycles and broke rules on school property around a crossing guard, and Seth was sent to the principal’s office for that and then disrespected Mr. Brown (principal). Boyfriend Tom later told Seth that if he weren’t Helen’s son, Tom would kill Seth for the hose incident and called Seth a loser just like his dad. Seth threw a vase at Tom and it shattered against his back, and Tom chased Seth out the door but lost him. Joey bullied Bob on his way home from school, so Seth tackled Joey. Over pizza at Bob’s house, Colin finally filled Bob in on his plan to sneak out at night to go to Fern Hill and find his dad. Bob agreed only because of that, despite the dangers of bears and other wild animals in the woods. Kenny asked his dad for a BB gun, but his dad said he wasn’t responsible enough. Kenny reminded his dad that they had always planned to go to Fern Hill together (since his dad was too busy Kenny wanted to go without him but didn’t tell his dad that). Dad banged his fists on the table and screamed for quiet, and then everyone except Grandpa left the table. Grandpa gave Kenny a hug and said he loved him. As Colin and Kenny snuck out of their houses that night, they watched through Seth’s window as Tom pushed Helen around and yelled at her. Seth pointed a gun at Tom and screamed at him to get out, and Tom stormed out. Seth then grabbed his little sister Sarah and left Helen sobbing in the house. Seth asked the neighbor Sheila to take care of Sarah for a little while, and then he left with the others for their weekend trip. Out in the woods, Kenny used the gun they had with them for protection to shoot an innocent little bird out of a tree. Bob recognized the bird as Petey and buried him with a cross on the gravesite. Bob asked God to forgive Kenny for murdering their family friend, and also not to let Bob’s mom be sad because Petey was in bird heaven with all the other birds that Kenny killed. Kenny apologized and Bob said he forgave Kenny but called him a jerk. Seth told Colin that he had wanted to pull the trigger on Tom but didn’t, and Seth believed he was the one to blame for what happened and his dad leaving. Colin reassured Seth that wasn’t the reason and said that he did the right thing by protecting his mom. The rumor was that Old Man Tyler lived alone in his cabin in the mountains with his man-eating dogs, and he preyed on children who trespassed. Tyler was working on fixing his truck, and when it backfired the boys thought it was gunshots in the distance. Their shouts alerted Tyler’s pack of dogs that then chased after the boys, and Tyler called after them to stop. All the boys jumped off a cliff into the water below, but Bob had to push Kenny because Kenny was too scared to jump. Later on, it started storming and Bob and Kenny argued about it as usual until they remembered that Bob saved Kenny’s life. The delinquents realized their map was gone so they sheltered out of the rain in a run-down cabin that was said to be a haunted house. The spent the evening laughing and singing, and the next morning Colin saw a plane flying in the distance and said goodbye to his dad. When they reached Fern Hill, Colin told his buddies that he and Kenny were once in a car (stolen). Kenny drove and crashed into a tree, and the two boys were not injured. Ever since, Colin said he believed in God and knew his dad was in heaven. The boys then spotted the plane crash, and Colin searched it and found an old picture of him and his dad inside. The boys headed back home, and Tyler drove by and offered the boys a ride in the back of his truck. Tyler explained the misunderstanding from earlier and said that he tried to warn the boys about a mountain lion in the area, not kill them like they thought. The boys were glad it was a three-day weekend and they didn’t have school the following day. Tyler told them life wasn’t easy but it was worth it, they could do anything if they didn’t give up, and there was somebody up above watching over them even when they were lost in the woods. The boys returned home and told others what they found, and a week later a search party investigated the plane. They found Colin’s dad’s body, and Colin was glad it wasn’t him who found the body and hoped he would see his dad in heaven someday. The boys all went back to their lives, which were never the same after their escapade. Seth’s mom and Sarah hugged him when he got home, and Kenny’s dad joined him and Grandpa spending time together. The boys grew apart as the years went by, but they saw and called each other occasionally. This movie was Dove approved and received the Best Children’s Film award at the Tiburon International Film Festival and also the Best of Fest award at the San Diego International Children’s Film Festival.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/16/23

TITLE: The Long Shot

BOX OFFICE RATED: TV (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2004 Hallmark Entertainment / Mat IV Production / GT Media / Alpine Medien

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie was inspired by a true story and began with adult Annie Garrett on a Denver Horse Ranch. Anne reminisced about her younger self and how the ranch proprietor, Monte Shelton, explained dressage to Annie and her best friend/sister, Katie. Anne knew as a young girl she wanted to do dressage someday. Back in the present time, Annie’s husband, Ross, got a job as barn manager at Tillman Farms in Hidden Valley, California so the family was moving. Monte reminded Annie that Ross lost his temper under pressure and ran away, and he had already done it once to Annie and their young daughter, Taylor. Naïve Taylor blamed Annie because mean spirited Ross (dad) convinced the little girl it was Annie’s (mom’s) fault. Monte suggested that Annie enter a dressage competition, and she said she would think about it. Annie told her dad, Douglas McCloud, that her family had to use her horse as collateral to pay their bills, and she asked him not to tell her mom, Bonnie, about it because Annie believed her mom loved Taylor only. Douglas gave Annie a gas gift card and some money, and because Annie wasn’t on good terms with Bonnie she only gave her mom a quick hug and a glance but gave her dad a big hug and a love-you. Ross demanded to have Annie’s gas card. After the family checked into a motel room, Ross went to Tillman farms and had a breakdown when he learned that the farm had been sold recently and he had no job to start. Annie had another flashback of when she was a teenager and her family was preparing Douglas’s surprise birthday party. The police came to the door and informed Bonnie that Katie was in a car accident and died on the way to the hospital. Bonnie was in shock and said Annie should have gone out and bought the ice cream, but since she didn’t Katie did instead when she wasn’t supposed to be driving at all. In California, Ross then took off in the family car again and left his wife and daughter stranded with no lodging and no money, so mother and daughter went to the Hidden Valley ranch to board their horse Tolo. The ranch was full up with horses for the dressage competition, but veterinarian John Oaks let Tolo use an empty stall he kept for emergencies and drove Annie and Taylor back to their motel. Annie called her mom but then hung up, and then she learned from the Tillman rancher that he gave Ross a $2,000 compensation that Ross used to run away from his family and responsibilities again. Annie and Taylor were kicked out of the motel since they couldn’t pay, so they slept in Tolo’s barn stall. The next morning, Annie met MaryLou O’Brian, a dressage rider who was at Hidden Valley competing at owned neighboring Shamrock Farm. Annie offered to braid the mane of MaryLou’s beautiful white horse. MaryLou warned that the horse would bite Annie when she pulled his mane, but he was on his best behavior. Annie knew about MaryLou because she and Monte knew each other, and MaryLou introduced Annie to her granddaughter Colleen (young girl Colleen without parents and lived with Grandma full time) and her barn manager, Guido Levits. Annie sent Taylor off with strangers Guido and Colleen to watch the competition, and then Annie asked MaryLou to hire her as a groomer/trainer/stable hand and let her and Taylor stay in the guestroom. MaryLou got a recommendation from Monte and hired Annie, and then Annie wanted to clean out the shed so she and Taylor could stay there instead. Annie told Taylor that Ross might not be coming back, and Taylor said she wanted her dad and stormed off blaming Annie. Annie asked Guido about MaryLou’s daughter, and he explained that she would run off for days at a time and was into drugs. She came home pregnant with Colleen, and when she died of an overdose at 17, MaryLou blamed herself. Taylor and Colleen hung out and went to school together. MaryLou told Annie that Ross got a job mucking out stalls at Hidden Valley, and Annie asked MaryLou not to tell anyone because she didn’t want Taylor to know. However, Taylor overheard and went missing, and everyone split up to find her. Annie went out into the woods on Tolo, but John was the one who found Taylor at Hidden Valley and brought her home the next morning. John explained that Taylor found Ross and she wanted to go with him back to Denver, and he agreed to let Taylor come with him but then took off without the little girl. Taylor apologized for running away and told her mom she loved her, and Annie said she would never leave Taylor. When MaryLou found out that Annie rode Red, one of the horses MaryLou was training, she told Annie never to interfere again without asking MaryLou first. Guido called MaryLou out on it and said that Annie accomplished what MaryLou couldn’t and to stop making things so hard for Annie because they needed Annie’s help around the farm. MaryLou then changed her mind and said that if Annie kept training Red, MaryLou would help her improve her riding so she could enter the musical freestyle dressage competition with Tolo. MaryLou entered Annie in another contest, and Annie took first place with Ross watching in the distance. Annie called Douglas to tell him that she was filing for divorce but needed Ross to sign the papers, and when Bonnie took the phone she and Annie had a very brief exchange and Annie was the first one to hang up. Annie received a letter in the mail from her bank telling her she owed money on Tolo. Tolo then fell ill and refused to move from his stall, and John confirmed that Tolo was permanently blind in both eyes and hemorrhages caused both retinas to be detached. John recommended that Tolo be euthanized because he would have a hard time getting around and would be frightened by bumping into things. Annie refused to take that path and instead helped Tolo overcome his fears of eating and drinking out of his buckets and being out in the paddock. MaryLou agreed to let Tolo share a double stall with Red so they could become friends, and also to use Annie’s raise to pay for Tolo’s board. John asked Annie out to dinner in town, and she said yes but explained that they would have to go as friends because she was having husband issues and didn’t know where that was going. Taylor and Colleen talked about their parents, and Colleen said she didn’t even know her dad and she missed her two front teeth more than him. MaryLou offered to let Annie ride Red in the competition instead of Tolo. When Annie was hanging up a sign outside the barn, she fell from the ladder and broke her leg. Bonnie came to visit after Annie got out of the hospital, and Bonnie wanted Annie and Taylor to come back to Denver with her. MaryLou told Annie that Tolo would die if she left him behind and asked Annie what she usually did to solve her big problems, and Annie replied that she got pregnant at a young age and ran away with a stable boy (Ross). Annie and Bonnie then had an argument, and Bonnie blamed Annie for Katie’s death and for turning Katie’s bedroom into a shrine to keep her memory alive. Bonnie claimed that losing a daughter wasn’t the same as losing a sister, and Annie said that both her mom and sister died that night because Bonnie hadn’t been a mom since and only talked about exactly how many dressage ribbons Bonnie won and never mentioned Annie’s ribbons. Annie said she and Taylor would be fine and told Bonnie to go home and bury Katie. Before she left, Bonnie told MaryLou the number of ribbons Annie won before she left Denver, which she never told Annie she knew. MaryLou said they both lost a daughter, but Bonnie’s other daughter was still alive and she shouldn’t be afraid to love Annie, verses the child she lost. Annie’s doctor told her she could ride again, but she refused to for weeks because she didn’t think she could. MaryLou told Annie to try, so she did and was soon well enough to enter the Spring Classic. She and Red won a blue ribbon. Taylor wrote a letter to Mr. God saying she didn’t want anything for herself for her birthday, just a new leg for her mom and new eyes for Tolo. Annie then received a registered letter for closing her bank loan on Tolo, and MaryLou called the bank to confirm it was legal. Annie didn’t send enough money after the first notice and the loan was in default to the tune of $8,213, and Tolo would be repossessed in a few days since neither Annie, her family or MaryLou had the money. Annie decided that she would get first place in the musical freestyle and win $20,000 prize. Annie’s parents came for the show and Ross made a surprise visit. Ross told Annie that he left them with no car, no money and no place to sleep because he didn’t want to face them without a job, but now he was back and hoped to take Annie and Taylor to Virginia so he could get a job on a big horse farm. Annie wasn’t having any of it, so Ross grabbed her and pushed her against the wall. He then picked up a shovel and hit Red’s leg in an attempt to lame him, and Red threw his head up and knocked Ross to the ground. Annie yelled for Guido and he came with a security guard, who took Ross away. But before Ross left, Annie told Ross that she wouldn’t press any charges if he signed the divorce papers. John told Annie that Red needed stitches for the cut on his leg, and he would be okay but he couldn’t perform that day. Annie rode Tolo instead, and they took home the blue ribbon and $20,000 prize money. Everyone then threw a surprise birthday party for both Annie and Taylor since their birthdays were on the same day. Annie and her mom made amends when Bonnie gave Annie a plaque of all her blue ribbons, which Annie had made along with Katie’s. The attendees called for a speech, and Annie said her dad had always been there for her, she couldn’t wait to catch up with her mom after all they missed, Taylor was and always would be the center of her world, and MaryLou, Colleen and Guido helped lead Annie out of the darkness so she was forever in their debt. Annie told John it was okay if friends kissed, and they all toasted to their large family. Taylor said there was only one thing she wanted that she didn’t get, and then Taylor was given her surprise gift of two coolers of snow, which she missed from Colorado. Taylor said it was great but she liked the sunshine too, and then everyone had a snowball fight in California. The movie cover art listed, NY Daily News “The Long Shot rides to victory.” The movie description on the back stated that Annie found a new life on a Colorado horse farm as a groomer and trainer, when in the movie the farm (Shamrock Farms) was in California.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/15/23

TITLE: The Italian Job

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2003 Paramount Pictures / De Line Pictures

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie began with criminal safe cracker John Bridger calling his daughter Stella to tell her that he bought her a sparkly gift with no receipt since he was currently in Venice and mailed it to her address in the US. John confirmed that he was on parole in LA, but he was done with his parole officer and didn’t get permission to leave the country and might not be going back after he did one last heist with master thief and professional fixer Charlie Croker. Charlie and John then met up in Venice, and they discussed how “fine” which was how Charlie felt, and it stood for freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional. John came out of retirement and was happy that he didn’t have the big responsibility like Charlie now had of leading the team of criminals. John told Charlie to just worry about the timing because they only had a few minutes before the police showed up. The team hooked up together and used their telecommunication devices to make sure that people who were normally on scene would not be present as the criminal team got everything in place and pulled off their crime. Charlie’s team got inside the targeted house by hacking the boat entrance, and Steve gave them perimeters to locate the safe floors above them, which was being guarded by armed men. When all was said and done, the safe ended up falling through multiple floors to the crime gang members who unlocked underneath the water. The gang had a fake safe inside a boat to lead the chasers in the wrong direction, while the real safe was underwater. Charlie and John were in their scuba outfits cracking the safe as the gunmen chased the other criminal men on Charlie’s chain gang at high speeds recklessly down the canals in their boats. They set their clocks for seven minutes because the police boats were on their way to the scene of the crime. As the gunmen tried to shoot at Lyle and Rob (Charlie’s team), their boat flew off course. John was able to then open the safe (by touch), and inside were hundreds of gold bars. After the second boat was run up on a sand mound on top of another boat, Charlie’s boatmen with the fake safe escaped. Charlie’s extra “garbageman” boaters in the area helped make that happen and got paid well for it. Charlie and his divers were able to successfully use mobilized transport underwater to carry off the load of gold just as the police boat arrived above. In the Austrian Alps, John toasted to Charlie for pulling off the scheme to steal $35 million of gold bars without pulling a gun on anyone. They discussed how they were going to spend the gold, John told everyone to invest it in more gold and others wanted naked girls in an Aston Martin Vanquish, NAD T770 big stereo, and a big house in Andalusia. John told Charlie that he spent half his daughter Stella’s life (her being in her late 20’s or early 30’s) in prison and he wanted Charlie to find a woman to love and hold onto her. However, It then turned out that Steve sold Charlie and his team out and held his gun on Rob’s head as a group of men stopped in the middle of the road and stole the gold out of the back of the vehicle. Steve shot John dead with multiple bullets to the chest, and when the team tried to escape their van went off the bridge into the water below. Charlie and his men used the oxygen from their scuba equipment to stay underwater for a few minutes as Steve shot a machine gun at the sinking van in the water and then left. One year later in Philadelphia, Stella Bridger professionally cracked safes and this time it was for the police and Stella said she would send them the bill and told them she never looked inside as the police photographed the safe contents. Stella left that finished job and then drove recklessly off in her Mini Cooper as though there were no street laws. Charlie then showed up at Stella’s office and informed her that a contact of his discovered that a gold dealer named Yevhen, a jewelry store owner with ties to the Ukrainian mafia, was buying the gold In L.A. Stella reminded Charlie that she never wanted to see him again because he was the reason her dad died. Steve had changed his last name from Bendel to Frazelli, and Charlie wanted Stella’s help in cracking Steve’s expensive safe, a Worthington to retrieve the gold bars. Charlie said that John was like a dad to him and taught him everything he knew about how to be a professional criminal, but Stella refused. Later that night, Stella called Charlie to tell him that she was in and she wanted to take the gold from Steve because Steve took her (estranged) dad from her. Stella and Charlie met up with Lyle in a construction area, and Charlie told her that Lyle was the inventor of Napster and Lyle was convinced that Shawn Fanning, his roommate at Northeastern University in 1999, stole the idea from Lyle. Gilligan “Left Ear” was the demolition and explosives expert who had been blowing stuff up since he was ten and lost the hearing in his right ear. Rob was the wheelman who set the record for the longest freeway chase with helicopters and dozens of police cars following him (think of OJ) and women in skimpy attire holding signs on the overpass about how they loved Rob as Rob gave the officers the middle finger. Charlie was the mastermind of how to steal the money and learned young by using other delinquent kids to steal money from the bully kid that stole money from other children in Charlie’s early elementary school years. Once everyone met up, Gilligan handed out fake IDs (some weren’t happy with the fake names)and untraceable cell phones. Lyle bragged to everyone about how he harassed his ex-wife for years by hacking into the phone company and using the phone system to terrorize and harass his ex wife. After Charlie’s team arrived outside Steve’s house in L.A., they discovered that the Carson Security System guarded the house. Lyle explained that Carson held an annual contest offering a $50,000 reward to anyone who could get past their system, but even the Who’s Who of ex-cons couldn’t do it. The team met up again later on and Rob told them that the traffic was bad traffic, peak traffic or slit-your-wrist traffic. They counted on Lyle to hack the traffic transportation systems so they could have green lights the whole way after they did the heist. Yevhen at the jewelry store with a rainbow sign hanging up told Steve that they were in a world where NAFTA could overrule the Supreme Court, and Yevhen added that his Ukraine cousin Mashkov said gold was their only refuge as Steve dropped off the gold to sell. Steve was mad because Yevhen was only giving him money for two bricks and not the amount they agreed upon. Yevhen told Steve to come back another day to get the rest of the money when Ukraine Yevhen had it because he was the middleman. Stella was in her hotel room practicing on a safe in her black bra when Charlie broke into her room. She had her earbuds in and didn’t hear him, so he scared her. Stella informed Charlie that she wasn’t like her dad who was old school, and for her technology guaranteed speed and accuracy. Charlie said there were no guarantees in their thieving business. Charlie said he needed Stella to pose as a TV repairman because the only way to get into Steve’s house was to knock out his TV, and none of the guys could do it because Steve thought they were all dead. As Lyle was in the car still fuming about Napster being named that only because Shawn stole the idea when Lyle was napping, Rob told Lyle that maybe Lyle should shut down and move on like everyone else did since Rob was tired of hearing about it. Rob then had sex with Becky and stole her Netcom cable work shirt, and Rob made a copy of the truck key while Becky was passed out in bed. Stella and Charlie then stole the Netcom Cable work truck while Gilligan tampered with the service box that was outside Steve’s house on the street so his electronics inside the house went out. Outside in their van, Charlie’s gang intercepted a call from the cable company after the security guard set up a time on the phone for the cable repair tech to come out to the house. Charlie immediately called Steve’s guard back and said Netcom had a tech in the area and they would send one out within the next hour. Charlie put a USA flag camera pin on Stella’s (Becky) shirt and gave her paperwork for Steve to sign to make the staged drama tech repair visit look official. When fake Becky arrived, Steve came outside, called off the large scary dogs that were jumping up against the side of the truck, and used Jesus Christ’s name in vain. Steve said he ought to have the punk kid who he paid $30,000 to install his entertainment system strung up because it just went out. Once inside the mansion house, Stella wasn’t interested in hearing how Steve had the stone floor brought over from a monastery. It turned out Steve bought the car and stereo system that Charlie’s team had planned on buying with the gold, before Steve sold them all out. Stella went in and reset the system and then turned it back on when in reality she did nothing because outside Gilligan was there and plugged the wires back in at the box right before Steve turned the TV on. Steve then flirted with Stella and they made arrangements to go out to dinner, and Stella later told Charlie that she created an opportunity for them to steal the gold on Friday night when Steve and Stella were out at dinner but she was going to stand him up. Lyle insisted on Charlie calling him Napster, and the others chimed in and said that Lyle and Shawn were at the college at the same time and were roommates and Shawn stole Lyle’s idea. They then loaded Stella’s Mini Cooper up with metal that weighed as much as gold and planned to use the mini cooper as the getaway car because it had the necessary measurements needed (small size) to be make their escape route successful. They then recruited Wrench, a mechanic, to do the custom work on the vehicle and added two more minis to their supply list in order to pull off their perfectly timed crime event. In exchange for $10,000, Rob’s buddy Wrench would fix the suspension to handle 2,700 pounds of weight in the back of the minis driving fast on all terrain. Lyle successfully hacked into the L.A. Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control Operations Center while the others did their specialty recruited jobs to their criminal trade. The system used algorithms to control the traffic lights and Lyle created his own algorithms. He demonstrated by changing the lights and causing traffic accidents in real time. When the traffic controllers checked out the grid screen that the accidents occurred on, Lyle had switched it back to their own system so the city employees just brushed it off as normal traffic accidents because they didn’t realize their system was just hacked. Steve went to see Yevhen, who said that the vote rigging in Florida was a CIA and mob operation, which wasn’t so different from when JFK won a rigged election with the help of his father. Yevhen went on about how Americans had a holiday for Columbus, who simply made a wrong turn and wiped out a colony of indigenous people when he was looking for gold for Queen Isabella, but don’t think the Medicis back in Italy didn’t want a part in that action because they needed it for the long-distance slave trade based in Venice. Yevhen then realized that the gold bricks were from Venice, so Steve attacked Yevhen and demanded to know what he knew about the stolen gold in Venice. Yevhen spilled the beans and said he knew about the Venice heist where $35 million in gold bricks were stolen with the imprint of a Balinese dancer on them. Once Steve figured out that Yevhen told nobody, Steve shot Yevhen dead with the cameras recording in Yevhen’s jewelry wholesale shop. Steve then collected the gold bricks that he was there to sell, and when he saw on the camera that someone pulled up outside, he grabbed the cash too and wiped off his prints. The person was Mashkov, the Ukrainian mafia member, who found his cousin Yevhen dead. Charlie and Gilligan went to see Skinny Pete, the person who tipped Charlie off about where Steve and the gold bars were in California. Charlie had warned Gilligan not to stare at Skinny Pete, who wasn’t so skinny and was more like a sumo wrestler. Gilligan was in shock and clammed up and couldn’t say the supply list (which Skinny Pete wasn’t happy about), so Charlie spat out the items Gilligan needed, which were things for explosives. Meanwhile, another Ukrainian named Vance who was an assistant to Yevhen was brought to Mashkov to reveal information that Vance withheld two weeks before that Skinny Pete was at the shop inquiring about the gold bricks. One man was able to identify Skinny Pete, so they left the junkyard next to the docks where the Miranda Rose boat was anchored. Mashkov then went to see Skinny Pete and was able to get through the small security, and Mashkov threatened Skinny Pete with an axe for information. Charlie’s team met back at crime headquarters and went over the details, such as Steve calling in his reservation for dinner that night and what time they would have the three minis loaded with the gold. Lyle would be clearing the traffic path with green lights all the way to Union Station while the cops were stuck in traffic like everyone else because all the other lights would be red. The train would leave at 10:00 and the cars would be on the carrier by 9:30 and the timing had to be dead on. After Steve left his house, the team ran into a hiccup because Steve’s neighbors, the Bakers, were throwing a huge party with the guests hanging out on the streets. They had to change the plan and reschedule because there were too many witnesses, so Stella headed to her date with Steve. At dinner, Stella made a mistake and used her dad’s phrase “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust,” and that immediately triggered Steve’s memory. He called Stella out on the phrase because she said it exactly the way John Bridger did and Steve knew then that Stella was John’s daughter so Steve grabbed her wrist. Stella told him to let go, and then Steve told Stella that she was like her old man and that was why she was familiar, and Steve liked John up until the minute Steve shot John dead. Stella knew she was in trouble, so she flipped over the bottle on the table as a signal and the rest of the team appeared on cue and surrounded the table and told Steve that Stella was working with them. Stella stood up and told Steve Bendel that the only thing worse than a thief was a coward, and Steve said that John was a coward the way he begged for his life. Stella tried to attack Steve, which was what Steve wanted her to do to make a scene in the restaurant so everyone would think Stella was nutso and Steve was the victim of their gang attack. Steve told Charlie and the men to put a leash on their Stella (Becky) cat and then the other guys left with Stella, but Charlie stayed behind and told Steve it was very hard for him not to reach across the table and kill Steve with his bare hands. Steve tried to get into Charlie’s head and figure out what his moves were to steal the gold and called him out on everything that was obvious he knew Charlie would do, such as mess with the guards, have Lyle hack into the system and use Stella as a distraction and then have her crack the safe. Charlie told Steve he was always thinking defensively, so he was always number two and he had no imagination and he bought what everyone else wanted since he couldn’t decide what to do with all the money. Steve got under Charlie’s skin by telling him he only had two gold bricks left and everything else was gone and that Charlie just blew the best thing he had going for him and that was the element of surprise. That set Charlie off and Charlie punched Steve to the floor at the table with the people around them all witnessing the violent attack. Charlie left and told Steve that it was over when he said it was over. Charlie put cash on the table for the mess he made before he walked away. Charlie then went to check on Stella in her hotel room, and she said she was doing good considering she was committing so much crime for a man she barely knew. What bothered Stella the most was when John called to tell her he was on a job and she knew Charlie was right there beside him as his partner in crime and Charlie knew John better than Stella ever did because the two were always distant. They talked about how Charlie got to punch Steve because Stella’s hands were too valuable to do it since she had to crack the safe. Lyle later hacked into Steve’s phone system and told everyone at their hideout that Steve was flying the coop and was moving everything because there was a helicopter coming to pick him up, an armored car service arriving at his house an hour later, and a cargo plan scheduled to leave LAX at 8:00 that night and go to Mexico City. Stella thought it was a distraction, but Charlie said that Steve wouldn’t let the gold out of his sight and he would be watching it from the helicopter every step of the way. They weren’t sure if the gold was going to end up in Mexico because Steve could change the flight plan at any time, and Charlie said the good news was the gold in the safe was coming right to them and they were going to steal it in transit. Charlie told Lyle to gridlock all routes except for the route the crime team chose so they could control what destination they wanted to steal the gold at along the way. Charlie added they would carry it out like the Italian job. Skinny Pete called Charlie and said he got a visit from Mashkov, and if there was one thing Skinny knew, it was not to mess with Mother Nature, mother-in-laws or mother-freakin’ Ukrainians. Charlie told Skinny that he didn’t murder anybody and then Charlie asked for another favor from Skinny Pete. As Charlie and Rob looked at an Avon rental truck, they called Wrench and told him they had a hiccup and needed his help and told Wrench it would be OK that he would be all in and not kept in the dark about what Charlie’s team really did anymore. As, Gilligan was setting up his deadly esplosives; he told Charlie he needed extra time because if he touched the pieces together they would both be dead. The two men both exchanged love-yous before Gilligan finished the job. Mashkov got word that someone would be on train 59 to New Orleans. Charlie’s crime team then got in place for the big show, but then it turned out Steve rented three armored trucks with motorcycle guards and it was a shell game because they had to figure out which one the gold was in. Charlie told Rob to deal with it as Steve flew over the Hollywood sign back to his house to watch over the gold. Stella said to reroute the truck that Steve was following, but Charlie was skeptical because he thought that maybe Steve was playing them. Charlie told Lyle to see which truck was riding low as they went across the first intersection. Lyle did that by measuring the height of the tires on each truck, and he told Charlie that Houston, they had #128 truck was the one and numbers #204 and #177 were not the ones (which Lyle figured out because the first two trucks had measurements of 20 and the last one had 16.) As Mr. Scott was paged to pick up a courtesy phone at the traffic control room, the computer system went down because Lyle gridlocked it per Charlie instructions. Nobody at traffic control could log in and they knew the system wasn’t crashed because they had power. Lyle sent a message to the control room screens that “they would never shut down the real Napster” as traffic was clustered all around the city and the police weren’t able to get out of the mess. The police then told Steve’s pilot that the computers were down in the traffic control center, and Steve knew Charlie was behind it. Instead of going to the airport, the helicopter went back to check on the gold truck. As the gold truck drove by Charlie’s minis parked outside Metro Station, Lyle told them they were clear for 90 seconds so the three Mini Coopers then raced into Metro Station almost hitting people on the sidewalks in their path. The small cars sped in front of a moving train to get onto the tracks and barely made it, and Lyle shut down the train after the minis made their way through the tunnel so then the tunnel was completely blocked by the immobile train to prevent anyone from going inside the tunnel. Next to the Roosevelt Hotel, Steve in his helicopter spotted his gold truck, and below inside the train tunnels were the three minis parked and waiting for the blast to take the armored truck down to their level. When the explosives went off, the truck fell through the ground. To hide what just happened, Wrench had another blast that dropped a metal grate over the hole in the ground because he had already set up the construction cones around it. Steve lost sight for a few seconds when that happened, and when the helicopter came around the side of a building Steve could no longer see the truck and dropped the f-bomb wondering where it went. Once Charlie’s team opened the back of the armored truck, they realized it wasn’t the Worthington 1000 and Stella said there would be another hitch in their success because Steve switched safes on them. Stella explained that the safe was Israeli made and if she didn’t drill perfectly through the hole in the glass panel behind the door, steel rods would prevent the safe from being opened. Steve sent the motorcycle gang through Metro Station. Stella drilled and cracked some of the glass, but she didn’t break it through and couldn’t drill it again so she had to open the safe by touch. Steve’s motorcycles couldn’t get through the tunnel since the train blocked it. Steve rerouted the motorcycles to another entrance to the tunnels. Lyle’s hacking spot was at a baggage claim location, and the baggage machine turned on as he sat there. Stella couldn’t do it by touch because she wasn’t used to working that way, but Charlie took her hand and told her she could do it and the team encouraged her because they were running out of time. A few seconds later, Stella had the safe open. For the first time she looked inside after Charlie asked her if she wanted to see. Stella gazed upon the hundreds of gold bricks. Lyle configured that there were 208 bricks, which equated to 2.7 million but then he realized he got it wrong and corrected himself to $27 million. With a crowd of people around claiming their baggage, Lyle screamed yeah and explained to everyone that the holy spirit got him (in reality it was because he was rich) so Lyle told everyone they should get on that train because it was a good (stealing gold with his band of thieves). The minis left with the gold as the motorcycles entered from another entrance to the tunnels. Rob in the back noticed the motorcycles on their tail and the riders shot at Rob’s car so he wiped one out. The second bike was eliminated when Rob stopped the car and had Gilligan open his door, which the motorcyclist ran into because it was trying to recover from jumping out of the storm drain and landing in the water. Steve and his helicopter caught up with the red, white and blue Mini Coopers now in sight making their getaway out of the tunnels. Lyle controlled the lights so the minis hit all green lights as planned. Charlie took off by himself to get Steve in the helicopter off their trail and told Stella and Rob to continue on to Union Station. Steve, now more desperate, tried to use the helicopter to take out Charlie’s mini car on the roadway in heavy traffic. However, Charlie then got trapped when Steve had the helicopter fly under an overpass. Charlie turned and used a ramp to take the helicopter down with his blue Mini Cooper and then kept going once the helicopter was grounded. Steve jumped out of the helicopter and pulled a gun on a citizen to steal his red Ford truck so he could go after Charlie. Wrench had the train car waiting for the minis, and Steve watched as Charlie’s team exited their cars and left the building while Wrench closed the train car door. Steve snuck up behind Wrench and handed him $5,000 in cash after Wrench verified that the three red, white and blue Mini Coopers were inside the thin blue line train car. Steve said if Wrench let him ride inside the car, Wrench could have the cash and buy his girlfriend something nice. Wrench took the cash and opened the door, but then Charlie appeared. Charlie called Steve out on his brilliant plan in order to get the gold out of the country but how he failed because Charlie and his team had everything worked out. Steve pulled a gun on Charlie and demanded to have his goddamn gold, but then Mashkov and the Ukrainian mafia pulled their own guns on Steve and took his gun away because Mashkov wasn’t going to let Steve get away with murdering his Ukrainian cousin. Steve had no idea who Mashkov was or the extent of his mobster ways. Steve tried to lie about killing Yevhen, but everyone knew otherwise because they had camera footage of the murder. Steve tried to make the Ukrainians a good deal to help him, but Mashkov wasn’t interested because Steve couldn’t bring his cousin from the dead and that revenge was all that mattered to Mashkov at the moment. He told Steve that he already made his deal (with Charlie to have a share of the gold). Stella decked Steve and told him it was never about the gold, and he called her a bit**. Steve begged for his life, and the Ukrainian mobster said he wasn’t going to shoot Steve but was going to torture him with some machinery before Steve died. Charlie’s team celebrated in the sightseer lounge that was added to the gold car, and they toasted to John Bridger, the most brilliant master planner of all, father and friend. They all then took off in the Pacific Parlour train…destination unknown. In the end, Stella was right that it wasn’t about the money but that didn’t stop the guys from having some fun. Handsome Rob got his Aston Martin, and he took it for a ride to break it in and hit on the female motorcycle officer who pulled him over to get out of his ticket. Gilligan got his dream house in the south of Spain with a room just for his shoes with a white butler polishing them. Lyle finally got on the cover or Wired magazine and the kick-a** stereo he wanted which was so loud it would blow someone’s clothes off, which it did to a female he was with. Charlie took John’s advice and found somebody to spend the rest of his life with and it so happened to be him and Stella on a gondola ride in Venice. The movie had a budget of $60 million and grossed over $176 million at the box office. The movie cover art listed Thelma Adams, US Weekly, “Full-throttle entertainment.” Ebert & Roeper, “Two thumbs up!” Stephen Holden, The New York Times, “…feels like a smooth exciting whoosh down a ski slope.” Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, “fast and furious action adventure.” Leonard Maltin, Hot Ticket, “Hot!”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/14/23

TITLE: Something Wicked This Way Comes (based on the novel by Ray Bradbury and also the title was taken from a line in Act IV of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth play)

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1983 Walt Disney Pictures / Buena Vista Distribution / The Bryna Company

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in the small town of Green Town, Illinois (filmed in Vermont and at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California), in October. Two 12-year-old boys, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, were best friends and blood brothers. In detention, Jim drew a picture of the strict teacher, Miss Foley, having a pig nose. A man named Tom Fury was in town selling lightning rods and foretelling of a dangerous electrical storm. Jim took some of the family money to pay for a rod, and his mom told him to get himself something to eat since she was in bed feeling tired. Jim wanted the Egyptian lightning rod with the scarab beetles and not the Chinese one, and Tom let Jim have it for the money he had. Jim and Will went up on the roof to nail the rod on, and the sudden strong winds blew a flyer to them advertising Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival. Will’s weak-hearted librarian dad, Charles, was in town and spotted the black-clad Mr. Dark throwing his flyers on the ground. Charles looked in a window and saw through the outside of a casket to the inside, where there was a glowing red ring on a dead woman’s finger. When he blinked again, he could only see the outside of the casket. Charles also heard that one of the lion statues outside the library blew over in the winds. Tom saw the woman in the coffin and went into the building to check it out, and the glowing green eyes opened and then the doors closed. Later that night, Will and Jim heard a train coming to town and followed it to the dark carnival. They went into a caravan but quickly left when they saw a tarantula, and a black-cloaked female, the Dust Witch, was standing in the shadows watching them with a red ring on her finger as she pet a tarantula. The next morning, Will and Jim went to the carnival. Ed the bartender went into the Mirror Maze after winning a game, and Mr. Tetley won the lottery and went on the Ferris wheel with a woman wearing the red ring. The Dust Witch was the fortuneteller, and she told Mr. Crosetti that she knew he was the barber and he could have ladies in his life to make him happy. He got his fill of women from the exotic and erotic belly-dancer show, and the women surrounded him and then suddenly he was laughing maniacally with no clothes on at the center of the sexy clad veiled women. Young Jim was watched through a peephole in the tent until he got caught. After the boys encountered the strange and elusive Mr. Dark who told them to leave the carousel because it was closed, Jim convinced Will to hide out until after dark when the carnival closed to investigate. They saw Mr. Cooger get on the carousel, and as it went backwards he gradually got younger until he was a little boy. Jim and Will went back to town, where they saw Miss Foley’s shadow in her window with a young boy who they figured was Mr. Cooger. They went inside to visit Miss Foley and she introduced Mr. Cooger as her nephew Robert, and Jim wouldn’t let Will tell Miss Foley what they saw and rushed Will outside. Robert followed them and threw a rock through the window and ran, and Miss Foley blamed the older boys for the hole. They ran too. Charles insisted on having a talk with Will about the family’s time at Indigo River, where 4-year-old Will fell into the river and Charles didn’t teach him to swim because his dad didn’t believe it was right. Charles was the only person who knew that Harry, Jim’s dad, was the one to rescue Will, and Charles couldn’t forgive himself for not being able to rescue his own son. Harry then went away to sea and disappeared, but Jim still believed Harry would come back and wasn’t happy that his mom had a new boyfriend. Meanwhile, Miss Foley, who was once the most beautiful woman in town, looked in the mirror wanting to look like she used to. Her wish came true, but then she was struck blind and begged little “Robert” for help and he smiled evilly at her. Later that night, Will followed Jim to the carnival because he was hoping to go around on the carousel forwards and become older. They discovered that Mr. Dark was holding Tom hostage, and the townspeople were there too. Mr. Crosetti was now dressed as Madame Crosetti the Incredible Bearded Lady (because he desired women and was now like a woman himself), Mr. Tetley was dressed as a Native American (because he disrespected them by putting a chief statue outside his shop) and Miss Foley was there (blind because she was vain). Mr. Dark electrocuted Tom when he refused to say when the lightning was coming, and Tom still wouldn’t say even when Mr. Dark had the Dust Witch appear and Dark said she was Tom’s bride. Will and Jim shouted at Dark to stop, and then they ran outside because the Dust Witch’s face was that of a demon. They saw the guillotine behead a figure identical to Will and they kept running, and Dark told the Dust Witch that the boys had seen too much and to hunt them down. Back at home, Will told his dad to be careful because something was going on. Later that night, both Will and Jim were woken up by a strange green light outside, and Will ran across the roof to Jim’s room. The roof suddenly caved in and the room and the hallway were crawling with hundreds of tarantulas. Jim tried to beat them with his pillow and Will crawled into Jim’s bed, but then tarantulas were crawling under the sheets. The boys woke up from the shared nightmare back in their own beds. The next morning, the carnival parade came through town and Will and Jim hid because they knew that Dark was there to kill them. Will called his dad and told him that people were after him and he couldn’t go home, and then he hung up. Charles went into town, and he and Dr. Douglas noticed that the bar was closed for the first time in many years and Ed wasn’t there. The boys watched as a carnival worker whispered something in Jim’s mom’s ear and gave her a message. Dark then came into the bar and said he was new in town, and he gave the descriptions of two boys he was looking for so he could give them the prizes they won from the carnival. Charles thought that was strange and left. Dark followed him and asked about the boys. He showed Charles a picture of the boys, the pictures of Will and Jim, which were drawn on his hands. Charles made up names, but Dark said he knew Charles was lying and he already had the names of the boys because Miss Foley told him. Blood dripped from Dark’s hands as he left, and the parade procession played a funeral dirge as Dark glared at Charles. Charles told Will and Jim to meet him at the library that night. He showed them an October 1891 entry from his minister dad Charles Herbert’s diary. It stated that strange things happened when the autumn carnival of evil came to town (like other years before) and it seemed they destroyed people by granting their dearest wishes, as was the way of the devil since God created the world. Each carnival visit ended with a storm. Dark then entered the library and the boys hid. Dark and Charles quoted Shakespeare about how something wicked this way comes, God is not dead or asleep, and peace and good will to men. Dark called for Will and Jim trying to tempt them with free carnival rides where Jim could be older and treated more seriously and finally know what adults did behind locked doors when children were asleep. Dark told Jim he was the dad Jim had been waiting for. Charles spoke up and said he knew who Dark was, which was one of the autumn people who came from the dust and went to the grave. Dark confirmed it and said they were the hungry ones who fed well on people’s nightmares and pain. Dark said he would make Charles young again in his thirties if he told Dark where the boys were hiding, but Charles refused. Dark found the boys’ hiding spot and dragged them from it. He told Jim that his mom was at the carnival that night and she rode the carousel backwards and forwards until she went crazy, but Jim didn’t need her because the Dust Witch, who then appeared, was his new mom. Dark told the Dust Witch to take away the boys’ voices, and then to give Charles a brief taste of death by gradually slowing his heartbeat so he would recognize death when it came again soon. Charles went to the carnival after he woke up, where he told Jim’s mom to go home because she had been sent there with the message that her husband was waiting for her. Dark took the boys to the carnival, and Charles went into the Mirror Maze. Dark made Charles see the faults of all the people in town. He told Charles that his glass of darkness was regret and despair and made Charles see again Will drowning in the river and Charles being helpless. Dark said Will was now his and told Charles to drown in his regrets since his son hated him. Will then appeared and shouted again and again that he loved his dad, and they hugged it out. Tom was released from his electrical chair and put a lightning rod through the Dust Witch’s stomach, and she disappeared into glass shards. Dark had brainwashed Jim into wanting to ride the carousel, but Charles and Will got Jim away from it. Dark was still holding the carousel when it was struck by lightning, and he was electrocuted as the carousel went around and around. He aged into a very old man and eventually a skeleton with each turn of the carousel. The storm continued with more thunder and lightning, and the tornado winds blew away the evil carnival. Charles and the boys raced each other back to town and made it there by the next morning. Adult Will narrated that his dad freed himself from the shadows and liberated the town. Obviously, Jim’s mom was never crazy and the evil ones lied about it.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/13/23

TITLE: Star Kid

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1997 Trimark Pictures

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie began with an army of Broodwarrior aliens from the planet Ichix attacking the peaceful Trelkins on their planet, Trelkas. The Trelkins were defenseless so the scientists, including Tenris De-Thar, created a secret weapon prototype to prevent their species from going extinct and they jettisoned it into space so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. In Crystal Bluff, California, 12-year-old Spencer Griffith was the new kid at school and was singled out and bullied by Manfred “Turbo” Bruntley. Manfred tried to start a fight, and when the teacher, Janet Holloway, interrupted, the boys told her that they were just messing around. When Janet noticed that Spencer was having a hard time talking to a girl named Michelle Eberhardt who he liked, Janet used an example of how she overcame her fear of spiders (had the young boy hold her classroom pet tarantula spider) to tell Spencer that running away from the things he feared, like bullies and girls, wouldn’t make them any better. After school, Spencer spotted Michelle and her friend eating Ben & Jerry’s, so he decided to face his fears and talk to Michelle. However, she said “hi” to Spencer as she got up to leave and Spencer was still speechless. Manfred and his buddies then appeared and wanted to settle the score, and Manfred punched Spencer in the face. Spencer smushed ice cream in Manfred’s face and then ran, and to escape the bullies Spencer hid in a garbage can full of flies. Spencer’s dad Roland had to work late (and wasn’t able to pick Spencer up from school because he was so busy), so he told his moody teenage daughter to watch her little brother. She argued that she had a date with Kevin, and dad Roland told her to reschedule and the disrespectful female teen was not happy. That evening, Spencer looked out his window and saw a meteor land in the car junkyard, and when he went outside all alone to check it out he saw a spaceship (from Trelkas). Inside was an alien/robot warrior cyborsuit called Cy. Cy explained that he needed a biotic host to control him, so he opened his armor (with a feature on the back side of the suit resembling a bare butt of a human) and Spencer went inside and found himself trapped in the cyborsuit. Spencer discovered that he was able to control Cy’s movements using his brain signals, and he soon got the hang of it and discovered that Cy could lift cars and jump very high. Spencer wanted to scare his enemy, so he went to the Bruntley car repair shop, where Manfred was in a customer’s Corvette pretending to drive it and blasting head-banging music. Cy lifted the car, spun it around fast, dropped it, and then said he wanted Manfred’s brain. Manfred accidentally knocked some paint cans all over himself, and then he got paint on the customer’s car by jumping across the top of it to escape. Cy caught up to Manfred and threw him in the dumpster. Spencer tried to teach alien robot Cy that laughter was part of having fun, and Cy said he didn’t understand but then played a joke on Spencer and the alien laughed after the robot sounded an alarm and said he had a power core overload and explosion was imminent. Spencer went to the fall fair in search of Michelle, but then robot Cy started firing shots out of his arms at things he thought were hostile biotics. One of his targets was the ride Michelle and her friends were on, and the ride crashed to the ground. Cy caught it just in time, and then he and Spencer left because the police arrived. A Broodwarrior landed on Earth nearby and sent a drone to find Cy. Spencer returned to his house (and didn’t know that big sister Stacey was not home because Kevin had come to her bedroom window earlier and convinced her to sneak out of the house with him and go for a ride around the block on the motorcycle he just bought), where he tried to tell Cy to carefully get some pizza out of the fridge but Cy ended up getting the fridge stuck on his head. Cy ran around the house with the fridge and ended up destroying the furniture and putting holes in the walls. Spencer wanted to leave the cuborsuit, but Cy said that wasn’t possible until he completed his mission to test his battle functions in a field combat situation since that was what the Trelkins created him to do. Spencer had to go to the bathroom, so he went to Mrs. Holloway’s house. She fainted when she saw Cy, and when she woke up Spencer spoke through Cy to tell Janet that he needed part of the cyborsuit opened so he could relieve himself and go potty. The Broodwarrior then broke into the house, and Cy and Spencer fought it briefly and then escaped. Spencer told Cy that he needed to be released since he met the parameters of the mission by engaging in combat with, but not necessarily defeating, an enemy. Cy explained that if the Broodwarrior captured him, he would be dissected and studied and his technology would be used by the Broodwarriors to defeat the Trelkens. Spencer said he didn’t want to defeat the Broodwarriors, so he stormed off. Janet told Roland and Stacey what was going on but Roland didn’t believe her. Spencer then appeared and told them that the Broodwarriors would invade Earth if they didn’t stop the u-surper drones from getting Cy. Roland was home from work and dad didn’t want to hear it and sent Spencer to his room. Stacey gave Spencer some advice their mom gave Stacey before mom died two years before, which was to imagine what someone you admired would do in a situation. Spencer wondered what Midknight Warrior from his favorite comic book series would do, so he went outside to find Cy. Manfred confronted Spencer wanting to start a fight, and after Spencer decked Manfred with one punch, Manfred decided that he was going to stop bullying and help Spencer instead. The two young tween boys took off in a car with Manfred driving reckless and fast because he obviously didn’t have a license. Roland, Stacey and Janet found that Spencer was missing and went to look for him. The police chased Manfred and Spencer so Manfred slammed on the brakes and the police car crashed into an above ground pool. The boys followed the Broodwarrior’s tracks to the junkyard where Cy first appeared, and it turned out the Broodwarrior had already captured Cy. Spencer boarded Cy and they fought off the Broodwarrior, but when Cy was beaten up badly by the Broodwarrior and collapsed, he released Spencer. Spencer and Manfred worked together to trap the Broodwarrior inside a machine that crushed him into a block of junk.When they went back to check on Cy, he had ceased to function. A group of Trelkens then appeared and repaired Cy, and Tenris gave Spencer a medal before the Trelkens left with Cy to return to their planet. Roland and the others arrived and they and Spencer went home. Roland dropped Spencer off at school the next day, and Roland agreed to pick Spencer up from school on time from then on. The school sold Cy merchandise (t-shirts) outside (news travels fast), and Spencer walked over to Michelle and the two talked about their shared interest in comic book character Midknight Warrior. The movie cover art listed Roger Ebert,“Three stars. A lively action movie…”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/12/23

TITLE: Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1984 Walt Disney Home Entertainment / Studio Ghibli

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This anime movie takes place in the seaside kingdom of the Valley of the Wind, which was surrounded by a toxic jungle filled with insects that were spreading and threatening the survival of the remaining humans 1,000 years after the collapse of industrialized civilization. The wind from the sea protected the Valley from the poisons. Princess Nausicaä from the Valley went into the toxic jungle wearing a mask, and would be dead without her mask. The princess wore a very short dress that made her bare bottom visible. She found a perfectly preserved shell belonging to an Ohm insect, and she wanted it taken back to her village so they could make tools. Nausicaä heard gunshots and spotted in the distance a spore cloud and the Ohm that shed its shell. The princess flew on her aircraft glider riding the wind with her butt really exposed. Nausicaä rode her glider (holding her back end up in the air to expose her butt as her skirt flapped in the wind) and used flash grenades and an insect charm to calm down the Ohm whose eyes had turned red with rage. The Ohm returned to the jungle as Nausicaä suggested it do. Nausicaä was then reunited with Lord Yupa who she hadn’t seen in over a year because he had been traveling to neighboring kingdoms and discovered that they were fearful from being consumed by the jungle and were plagued by war and starvation. He brought a vicious fox-squirrel (resembling a Pikachu) with him, and Nausicaä easily tamed it to be a pet and named it Teto. Back in the Valley, the villagers asked Yupa to name a baby so the fair winds would favor her. Yupa reported that in his travels the jungle consumed more kingdoms and the kingdoms were fearful with war and starvation. The wind from the sea protected Jihl’s valley, the Valley of the Wind, from the poisons. Yupa informed King Jihl, Nausicaä’s dad, who had an illness and couldn’t fly anymore because of the jungle’s poisons, that the jungle was swallowing all of mankind. Yupa said he was not searching for the man in blue who, according to legend, was supposed to come to restore the bond between humanity and the Earth.Later that night, the villagers spotted a Tolmekian airship trying to make an emergency landing. Nausicaä took off on her glider to guide the ship to the shore, and she told them to turn but they couldn’t because the ship was covered in insects and they crashed into the cliffs. Princess Lastel from Pejite died, and Nausicaä was able to convince one of the dangerous insects to return to the jungle where it came from. Nausicaä spotted the Ohm that she helped earlier, and as she watched it retreat, the wind blew her skirt up to expose her entire bare behind...again. The villagers searched the area and found spores from the ship, and they burned the spores so the toxins wouldn’t be released into their air. Yupa told Mito that he heard a rumor that a Giant Warrior was unearthed from beneath Pejite where it had laid dormant for many years while all other Warriors were turned to stone. Those monsters were from the Seven Days of Fire a thousand years before and they incinerated the world. Tolmekian warships then invaded the valley and soldiers went to the castle, where they killed Jihl. Nausicaä used her rage to kill the soldiers in the room who killed her dad, but then Her Highness Kushana, Commander of the Tolmekian Army, explained that they came in peace. They did not plan to massacre the Valley people, but rather to unify all the kingdoms and they wanted the Valley to join them in their enterprise to burn the jungle. Obaba protested because humankind had tried time and again to burn the jungle, but it just angered the Ohms so they destroyed kingdoms and killed thousands. Kurotowa told the old hag to be silent because he would have none of her ravings, and she told him to kill her like they killed Jihl. The valley people were outraged at the news, and Kurotowa ordered his soldiers to show no mercy for the insolent. Nausicaä interrupted and suggested surrender so no one else died, and the Valley submitted. Kushana told the villagers to pick five hostages for her to take with her to Pejite, and she instructed Kurotowa to resurrect the Giant Warrior from the ship crash so they could use it as a weapon to destroy other kingdoms. Yupa found Nausicaä in a secret chamber where she kept the spores she gathered from the jungle. She discovered while in search of a cure of Jihl’s illness that in clean water and soil, the plants were not toxic, meaning the poison was in the soil and even the soil in the Valley was polluted. Now that Jihl was dead, Nausicaä cut off the water supply so the plants would die. Nausicaä was sent away as one of the hostages, and the children were sad to see her go but she promised she would be back. A Pejite gun ship attacked the Tolmekian airships and several went down, and Nausicaä, Mito and Kushana escaped in another aircraft. They put their masks on as Nausicaä went below the toxic clouds to rescue the people on the cargo barge. The people onboard refused to dump their cargo, so Nausicaä got her way by taking her mask off and giving them an order. The others agreed to do whatever she said as long as she put her mask back on so she wouldn’t die. Once they all landed, Kushana pulled a gun on Nausicaä and told her that they weren’t best friends just because Nausicaä saved Kushana. Nausicaä tried to convince Kushana to put her gun down by telling her that any gunshots would attract swarms of insects. Nausicaä added that there was nothing to be afraid of and they just wanted Kushana to go back to her own country, but Kushana fired shots anyway. The Ohms heard and surrounded them, and Nausicaä apologized for disturbing the Ohms’ nest. However, the eyes of the Ohms turned red with rage, and Nausicaä took off on her glider ordering the others to leave. She ended up rescuing Prince Asbel from Pejite, Lastel’s twin brother, from insects in the jungle. Nausicaä’s glider went down when the glider was hit by a giant dragonfly. Then, she and Asbel sunk into quicksand. Nausicaä had a flashback of when she was a small child and tried to hide a baby Ohm from her dad because it did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve to be killed. Jihl traumatized Nausicaä by taking the Ohm away and telling her that insects and humans couldn’t live in the same world. Nausicaä and Asbel fell through a hole along with the sand and awoke in the world underneath the toxic jungle. They discovered that they didn’t need to wear their masks because the air was pure. Nausicaä told Asbel that when the trees died, they fossilized into sand meaning they evolved to purify the pollution the humans made. The insects were the guardians to prevent the humans from polluting the world again. Asbel said that mankind was doomed if they didn’t find a way to stop the jungle from spreading because it would take centuries for the trees to cleanse the earth. Meanwhile, Kushana returned to the Valley and was told by Yupa that she would be released if she drowned the Warrior in Acid Lake and returned to her country. Kushana replied that it was too late and there was no turning back, and she was given orders by her people to attack Pejite because the Tolmekians feared the Pejites would get ahold of the Warrior’s powers and then other kingdoms would also send their armies to claim it. Kushana told Yupa the only thing to do was revive the Warrior, use it to repel the other kingdoms and destroy the insects and their jungle, and then live with the monster. She told Yupa to steal it from the Tolmekians (us) as they stole it from Pejite. Yupa refused and said they would keep the Warrior dormant as it was intended. The villagers panicked when they found that some of the spores survived and were spreading toxins in the air, and they tried to use fire to destroy the spores. It turned out the trees were infested, but the Valley people didn’t want to burn the jungle down. Instead, they wished to live in harmony with it and use wind and water, and only use fire in small amounts when needed. Mito and Yupa left to find Nausicaä. Nausicaä and Asbel put their masks back on to go aboveground, and when they made it to Pejite they discovered that the capital was destroyed. A Pejite airship landed, and the Pejites spoke of their plan that Asbel knew about. Nausicaä demanded to know what was going on, and Asbel explained that the Pejites lured the insects to their city and found a way to direct them towards the Valley to destroy everything and stopped the Tolmekians from reviving the Warrior. Nausicaä screamed at the Pejites to stop so they wouldn’t kill her people, but they said it was too late and the Tolmekians had already killed many Pejites. Nausicaä told them they couldn’t burn down the jungle because the trees were purifying the Earth, but the Pejites didn’t listen. When Nausicaä tried to leave on her glider, the Pejites restrained her. Asbel grabbed one of their guns and told them to release the princess, but a Pejite knocked Asbel out with a blow to the head and Nausicaä was forced to board an airship. The villagers fought the Tolmekians to protect the jungle. When Kushana appeared, Kurotowa wasn’t happy that she was alive because he was dreaming that she would die. The Pejite ship left the city, and Asbel’s mother helped Nausicaä escape the airship by having her trade places with another female. The Pejites apologized for what their people were doing to Nausicaä’s people. A Tolmekian ship then attacked and boarded the Pejite ship, and Nausicaä wanted to stay and help but Asbel told her to leave quickly on her glider and save her Valley otherwise the Pejites would never forgive themselves. Mito and Yupa appeared, and Yupa fought the Tolmekians while Mito and Nausicaä returned to the Valley in the gun ship. Kushana waited for Nausicaä in the Valley and said that if she made it back alive from the jungle, Kushana wanted a chance to get to know the princess. However, Kushana then decided to choose the bloody path instead of wait, and she told the Tolmekians to attack the Valley. The wind suddenly stopped for the first time in history and the atmosphere was filled with anger. Mito and Nausicaä saw the thousands of Ohms headed for the Valley, and they discovered that they were stampeding because the Pejites were in another ship using a baby Ohm that they stole to lure the herd towards the Valley. Mito wanted to shoot the Pejites down, but Nausicaä told him no and instructed him to warn the Valley while she left in her glider. Mito informed everyone that the Ohms were coming, and the children were frightened so Obaba told them there was nothing they could do but wait for the Ohms to come and destroy them. Kushana told her army to hold off the Ohms while she retrieved the Warrior even though Kurotowa said it wasn’t ready. Nausicaä tried to talk peace with the Pejite craft, but they shot her in the shoulder and the foot and their ship ended up crashing to the ground. The baby Ohm was bleeding profusely and tried to get into Acid Lake, but Nausicaä pushed it back so it wouldn’t since the acid was poison. The Ohm then healed Nausicaä’s wounds, and she sobbed for all the cruel things people had done to the Ohms. Instead of turning to the island to collect the baby Ohm as was expected, the Ohms continued stampeding towards the Valley because they were blind with rage. Nausicaä held a gun to the two Pejites and ordered them to take her to the Ohm herd so she could return the baby to them. The Tolmekians ran as Kushana appeared with the fearsome Giant Warrior, which followed Kushana’s command and incinerated many of the Ohms. However, the Warrior then died on the spot because it was not revived completely. Everyone witnessed Nausicaä being trampled to death by the Ohms, but then the rage left their eyes and they used their golden tentacles to lift Nausicaä’s body and make her reborn. The Valley people realized that the legend came true and they saw the man in blue walking in the golden field as Nausicaä returned to them wearing a blue dress. This movie had a budget of $758,000 and grossed over $14 million at the box office.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/11/23

TITLE: Blast from the Past

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children).

PRODUCTION YEAR: 1999 New Line Cinema / Midnight Sun Picures

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in Los Angeles, 1962, and began with a party at the Webber house. The party goers gossiped about how Calvin (anti-communist) used to be a teacher, quit his job and became very rich when he started inventing. They thought it was strange that Calvin spent all his time in his workshop while his wife Helen was pregnant and brought him lunch with hot Dr. Pepper back and forth from the house to his workshop in the backyard. The party broke up when everyone watched Kennedy on TV and Kennedy discussed Cuba and missiles. Calvin ended the party early so everyone could get home safely and pray about the situation. Above the neighborhood, Wolf One was in a jet having an emergency so he ejected from the plane. Calvin rushed Helen into the underground replica of their house that took him years to build, and just seconds later the plane crashed onto their house above ground and exploded, making Calvin think they were under attack. Calvin told Helen that the locks automatically engaged and would keep them underground for the next 35 years because that was how long the radiation lasted after an atomic bomb. The government officials believed that the Webbers burned up in the cash because they couldn’t find any remains. Calvin told Helen all their friends were burnt to a crisp and offered her hot Dr. Pepper, her favorite, but she refused to take it because it was his favorite (Helen preferred alcoholic beverages). After baby Adam was born, Calvin and Helen settled in with Calvin adding improvements all the time and Helen going grocery shopping from the aisles of supplies that would last them through the decades. Above ground, construction workers laid the foundation for Mom’s Malt Shop over the Webber’s bomb fallout shelter because they thought it was a septic tank and didn’t want to mess with it. Adam was able to stand on his feet by one year of age, and by 1965, he was already reading. As time went on, Calvin said he would like to see the public school match Adam’s homeschooling. In 1975, Calvin gave Adam his expensive baseball card collection. By 1991, Mom from Mom’s Malt Shop decided to sell her business and get out of that hellhole of a neighborhood. Mom’s first employee, Melker, stayed on and he changed to fit the malt shop that was turned into a hippie bar hard rock music and punks. Mom gave Melker the business for free. In 1995, Adam was 33 years old and blew out his birthday candles and wished to meet a girl. Calvin said he was going to miss that place when they had to leave, and Helen excused herself and went into the soundproof room to scream her head off. In 1997, two years later, the family woke up in the middle of the night from hearing the door unlocking, and Helen and Calvin cheered. The malt shop was now a run-down building where homeless people like Melker squatted.Suddenly the floor opened up, and one homeless man ran off while Melker stayed behind. Calvin appeared in a Hazmat suit and said he came in peace, and the man passed out because he thought masked Calvin was an alien. Calvin told the man (Melker) to leave his elevator alone, and then Calvin ventured outside and discovered that his backyard was now the ghetto. A trans prostitute walked over to Calvin and wanted his cigarette lit. The trans said he could be a boy, a girl or whatever Calvin wanted for $200. Calvin declined, and then he accidentally went into the adult bookstore (and quickly made his exit) to escape the drunken people vomiting in the street and the gangsters driving by pointing water guns at him. Calvin returned to the fallout shelter and told Helen (after telling adult Adam to cover his ears and hum) that the survivors were mutants and some were multi-sexual being both male and female at the same time and selling their bodies with the offer of lawn furniture as a come-on. Helen gasped, and Calvin said that for that reason they couldn’t go up above. Helen said they deserved it and she wanted her son to see the world after having been stuck down there putting up with Calvin’s odd squad behavior for 35 years. Calvin then collapsed, and Helen wasn’t sure if Calvin had a heart attack or what so she sent Adam up above to get more supplies. Helen gave Adam money and told him the stores he needed to visit, and she advised him to find a girl from Pasadena because Helen thought they were nicer than “valley girls.” Calvin told Adam to stay out of the adult bookstore because of invisible poison gas, and also to bring down a healthy young woman if he found one.Helen was worried about her 35-year-old son and called him a baby man. Adam stared up at the sky because he had never seen anything like it, and he stopped in his tracks and was happy to meet a Negro for the first time in the form of a female postal worker. Adam then spotted the adult bookstore and shouted for everyone to run because of the poison gas. Adam went around all day getting supplies and riding the bus, and he shouted at the driver to stop the bus whenever he wanted to get off. Adam stopped in at the baseball card store to sell his cards, and a woman named Eve Vrustikov who worked there interrupted because she didn’t want the owner to swindle Adam out of thousands of dollars. The owner fired Eve on the spot and told her that she couldn’t keep a job because she couldn’t keep her goddamn mouth shut, and Adam said he would appreciate it if the man didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain again. The owner said Mazel f-ing tov hoping Adam and Eve would be happy together as they left. Adam wanted Eve to drive him to the Holiday Inn to stay the night like his mom told him to, but Eve said she wasn’t going to have a stranger in her car. However, Eve agreed when Adam offered to give her one of his Rogers Hornsby cards (he had two and many other cards worth thousands) worth $4,000 each. After Adam turned Perry Como (who he grew up listening to) on the radio, Eve started driving fast and recklessly. The next morning, Eve went back to the hotel to return the baseball card to Adam and told him she couldn’t take it. She added that her relationships with her men never worked out because she was just into the legs, hair and butt and then they turned out to be even shallower than her. Eve was leaving to find a job, but Adam said he would hire her for the next two weeks to help him get supplies for his parents. They rented a U-Haul to pick up the supplies and put them in a storage unit (which they paid for by selling the baseball cards), and Eve dropped Adam off at the hotel at night. Adam then wanted Eve’s help to find him a wife, and Eve replied that everybody knew marriage bites because all of her brothers were divorced and so were her parents and there was no reason to get married since divorce was always the result. Adam couldn’t understand that because his parents had been married for over 35 years, and he told her that he didn’t want to marry a mutant and he wanted to marry someone from Pasadena within two weeks. Eve took Adam to her house, where Cliff, Eve’s ex-boyfriend (she had been dating for six months but they broke it off and he now dating a model from Harvard), was just leaving because he used his key to collect his Ralph Lauren underwear and other things from Eve’s shared house with her gay friend, Troy. Eve took Cliff’s key back from him before he walked off. Inside the house Adam met Troy, Eve’s roommate who was a website designer. After Eve told Adam that Troy was gay, Adam told Troy good for him. Eve couldn’t believe Adam wanted champagne cocktail and she said only hookers drank those, and Adam said his mom seemed to like it well enough. Meanwhile, Helen decided to go above ground to check things out while Calvin was sleeping, but she quickly went back underground when she saw Melker and his cult of followers waiting for the rest of the family to appear (as the group already met the father, the son, and now the mother). Troy took Adam shopping and Adam bought dressier clothes and rollerblades. They went to the park so Adam could skate and it was there that Adam encountered the ocean for the first time. Eve told Adam that finding a wife would be too hard, so he convinced her to help him find a girlfriend instead. The trio later went to a club, and Adam and Sophie (enemy to Eve) hit it off when they realized they could both speak fluent French. Eve already didn’t like Sophie and that made it worse. Eve tried to find Adam another girl, and she didn’t want him to be with a female who had bit** written all over her so Troy spoke up and said Adam needed someone sweet. He and Eve pointed out another female and told Adam to go introduce himself and advised Adam to lie if need be because lying could be a very effective dating tool. The crowd then cleared the dance floor and Adam and two females danced professionally. That made Eve both angry and jealous because she knew Adam wasn’t from Alaska and she wanted him to stop lying to her. Eve whistled for Adam to return to the table and leave the dancer girls and sent Troy to the bathroom so she could be alone with Adam. It was there that Adam told Eve he loved her from the first moment he saw her. Cliff then sauntered over and took Eve to the bar. Adam followed and Cliff tried to take sucker shots at Adam, but Adam knew how to defend himself from the boxing lessons he had with his dad. Cliff left, and Eve told Adam she quit because working for Adam was all-ridiculous. Later that night at their house, Troy and Eve discussed how they didn’t get the memo from their parents that Adam got from his parents about treating people with respect and having manners. Troy had Eve thinking that Adam went home with the dancers, but then Troy revealed that Adam left with Sophie that Eve thought was even worse. She stormed out of the house all huffy puffy saying she was going to go kick down the door, and when she got in her car Adam knocked on the car window on the other side. That scared Eve and she screamed and somersaulted into the street and then limped back into the house whining and talking trash. Troy told Adam that he needed to start being a man and stop treating Eve with boyish feelings. Adam nursed Eve’s skinned knee and told her to stop being such a baby as she squealed and whined. Adam admitted that he did go to Sophie’s place with her and she was hospitable, and he chose not to do anything with her and instead took a taxi to Eve’s house. After Adam sang a Perry Como song about a young man being happy to stand on the street where the woman he loved lived, Adam and Eve kissed. She asked him if he ever had sex before, and he said no and explained what happened in 1962. Adam said his dad sometimes used contractors, always from out of state and always only for part of the work, to build his fallout shelter. Calvin told them it was a secret government experiment done through Cal Tech, and then Adam wanted to take her to the shelter. Eve thought Adam was crazy and told him to get a cab and leave. Adam went back to Eve’s house the next day, where female Dr. Nina Aron and Mr. Brown waited for him from Family Services to take Adam to their office and talk about his experiences in the fallout shelter, because Eve called the questionable assessors of HIS people. (Where is GOD in the 24/7 lives of these so-called male and female officials responsible for judging and making decisions on behalf of HIS children? How can that official ever begin to correctly make any kind of assessment if he or she doesn’t put GOD first in his or her own life 24/7?). Eve convinced Adam to go by telling him it was the best thing for him. After Adam left with the state workers, Eve told Troy that she called the people because Adam wanted to take her underground and it was crazy like “Silence of the Lambs.” Troy didn’t believe there was anything wrong with Adam. However, once outside, non-crazy Adam ran away so Mr. Brown chased him. Dr. Aron tried to call the police because a complaint was made and that was state policy. Adam resisted, but Eve said no and grabbed Dr. Aron’s phone away from her. Adam then jumped in a truck and took off, and because he still couldn’t drive he backed into Dr. Aron’s car. Dr. Aron screamed that Adam was a SOB, and then she had a crazy moment and tried to attack Troy when he told her to calm down. Adam returned home with Melker, who called himself an Archbishop and offered to help Adam carry the supplies below with his church of homeless people. Eve and Troy drove to the storage unit and it was empty, and they also went to Adam’s empty hotel room to get the baseball cards and valuables to return to Adam that Adam left at the hotel to escape the questionable state workers. Troy also found stock certificates like IBM, AT&T Polaroid, and Ipana inside the hotel room. Eve and Troy called a stockbroker, who said if the stocks were purchased in the 50’s and there were thousands of each, then they would be worth millions upon millions in present day. Troy and Eve realized that everything Adam told them about him living in the fallout shelter was true. Troy told Eve that a polite gentleman walked into her life and he was the nicest man she ever met and was worth millions and she had him committed to the loony bin. Eve said at least she fell for Adam before she knew he was rich and that was new for her. They then figured out that when Troy and Adam were out getting supplies that morning, Adam wanted to stop at the porn shop so maybe his home was underneath the adult bookstore. They went inside and asked the man for the back entrance, and when they didn’t find anything they left in a car. Adam was nearby on the street leaving Eve a phone message on her answering machine thanking her for her help and wishing good things for her. When Eve saw Adam leaving the phone booth, she got out of the car and ran to him, dropping the whole box of baseball cards, and they kissed passionately. As Calvin tried to set the lock on the door for another ten years because he was more worried about the junkies up above coming down than he was about the radiation, Helen protested. Calvin didn’t get a chance to set the lock because Adam and Eve appeared and introductions were made. Adam told his parents to set the locks for two months and then he and Eve would be back to get them because they had more than enough supplies to get them through. Adam asked the elder parents to trust him without understanding why, and they agreed without hesitation. Adam and Eve stayed for dinner, and Eve told Helen that she was from Pasadena and they hugged it out. Eve narrated that it was amazing what one could do with unlimited funds because you could have whole houses built in months. It took a while to convince Archbishop Melker that Adam wasn’t God until Eve showed Melker the plans for LA’s new malt shop called The Shelter. Adam and Eve’s plan was to bring his parents up slowly to the surface and make them comfortable, and then break the bad news that there was no nuclear holocaust and they lived in isolation needlessly. Adam had already bought his parents Calvin and Helen, using his parents’ riches, a plot of land in the country and then showed them a house they had built identical to their old house that they all shared (including Eve). The elders loved it and were fascinated with the new invention of a microwave. Helen told her husband that the house was a lot different from the fallout shelter because they could go outside and breathe the fresh air in beautiful God’s country. Calvin and Adam talked privately then. Calvin asked son Adam if Eve was Russian. He said no and her last name was Ukrainian. Adam then told Calvin that he looked it up in old newspapers and learned that there was no bomb and a plane crashed in their backyard, and the Soviet Union collapsed without a shot being fired so the Cold War was over. Calvin said the commies were brilliant because they didn’t drop any bombs and they just collapsed, said “poor us,” and asked the West for aid (and communists got all the money). Calvin told Adam not to tell his mother any of that (since wife already sacrified 35 years (or more) of her life because of her husband’s horrific mistakes). Eve narrated that Adam said first the parents took care of the children, and then it was up to the children to take care of the parents. Calvin went into the backyard damning the commies because he had planned to build another underground fallout shelter. Dad then started marking the perimeter for another fallout shelter in the backyard using his footsteps as Eve looked on from the house and accepted her millionare (soon-to-be father-in-law) unusual behavior for the sake of her own happiness (rich guy, good hair and looks boyfriend) but did not really support Calvin’s eccentric ways. The movie cover art listed Linda Stolter with Entertainment Time Out Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, “An engaging romantic comedy that’s charming, funny and hip.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, “…funny and entertaining…” San Francisco Examiner, “Spacek and Walken are pure comic energy.”

DATE REVIEWED: 10/10/23

TITLE: Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (based on the best-selling book series by Carolyn Keene)

BOX OFFICE RATED: PG (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2019 Warner Bros. Pictures / A Very Good Production / Red 56 Production

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in the small town of River Heights, Illinois, where sixteen-year-old red headed shorthaired Nancy Drew (in the original book series Nancy was 18, blonde hair) and her attorney dad, Carson, moved to from Chicago after Nancy’s mom died. Nancy was interrupted from skateboarding in the middle of the street in her ripped pants at the knee by her female friend George Fayne (black female in movie and white female with blonde hair in original book), who wanted to go cheer up brunette Bess Marvin (blonde in the book and always trusting everyone verses suspious and a chemistry super smart wiz kid in movie) after some underage teen put a “Dirty Bess” video on his or her social media internet site to embarrass Bess. The video had special effects and farting sounds as Bess bent over with a gas cloud coming out of her butt. The girls figured out that varsity star #19 Derek Barnes was the guilty party because his reflection was seen in the glass part of the door in the posted video. Derek used his cell phone to record Bess at school to bully her and cause irreversible damage to her character.Bess grabbed Nancy’s face and told her not to go after Derek. Nancy licked Bess’s fingers with her tongue to make Bess let go of her face. Nancy looked at Derek’s social media and said she knew his schedule because he always posted pictures of himself working out. Nancy added that psychologists said it was okay for bullies to get a taste of their own medicine and it was called restorative justice. The three teen females then put their revenge plan in motion and went to the school gym and separated. Nancy, dressed like a male repairman, went to the boys’ locker room with her toolbox and switched out one of the showerheads. Without him knowing, Bess videoed Derek on her cell phone as he worked out, and George sat in the empty gymnasium and set up her laptop to piece all of their footage together and then post the newly created Derek revenge video for him and other students to view on the big screen (hacked television system) in the school’s workout room (after his shower). Bess had given George her cell phone video, which George uploaded to her laptop as Nancy finished putting caution tape around the other showers so Derek could only use the sabotaged one. Nancy returned to the gym and the girls shared and celebrated with maple- glazed donuts. Derek finished his shower and went and helped a half-shirt wearing female do her sets, and then everyone laughed because Derek’s skin started turning blue from the invisible dye that Nancy put in the showerhead (and said would wear off soon). Derek looked in the mirror and was horrified to see that he was blue everywhere, and Nancy hacked into the intercom and told the onlookers that this was what Derek got for humiliating others on social media. The three mean girls played the video that they created, with what appeared to be Derek hitting on guys and girls as he worked out when he already had a girlfriend, Helen, from one of the richest families in time. Derek had a hissy fit and stormed out. As they left the empty school gym, Bess grabbed Nancy’s hand and embraced her thanking her for sticking up for her. However, Nancy ended up in the local sheriff’s department, where her dad, Carson, informed Derek’s dad, Jeff, that Derek was guilty of cyberbullying, punishable by up to five years in prison and $1,000 in fines. Sheriff (small town) Marchbanks told Counselor Carson that since this wasn’t Nancy’s first offense and she involved two other girls, the sheriff couldn’t turn a blind eye and let Nancy just pay the damages this time. Nancy didn’t think it was fair that she was sentenced to community service for two months, eight hours a day, since she just stood up to a bully. Carson reminded Nancy of the time the previous week when she burned the word “assassin” into Mr. Blankenship’s lawn because he was murdering crows by shooting them. Hannah Gruen, Carson’s sister, wanted the new train to be built and give the town a modern edge, but Carson didn’t agree because his job was to protect the town and the train would destroy historical homes. Carson’s buddy Nate appeared and bragged about how good of a lawyer Carson was and put his arm around him, and Nancy told the two men to get a room. Hannah enlightened Nancy that Carson couldn’t stand living in Chicago anymore because everything reminded him of his wife. Hannah told Nancy that River Heights wasn’t as bad as she thought it was and advised Nancy to use her superpowers of being persuasive like her dad and righteous like her mom for good. Later that night, adult Willie Wharton tried to run Nancy down on her skateboard in the street while she was out skating alone. In a dark alley, Willie grabbed Nancy and said that he wasn’t a violent man but would hurt people if he had to because he wanted the train. Willie left telling Nancy to tell her dad to get out of the way if he wasn’t going to get onboard. Carson wasn’t happy to hear that Willie, who was constantly getting fired from his jobs, threatened Nancy. Young Deputy Patrick was in charge of Nancy’s community service. She overheard a woman named Flora telling Sheriff Marchbanks that she believed her old house, Twin Elms, was haunted by a ghost who moved the furniture and caused the lights to explode (not to mention she could hear crying ghosts in the walls). Sheriff Marchbanks asked Flora’s niece Helen if Flora had been drinking her own special batch of Kool-Aid, and Flora, from the second richest family in town, told the sheriff that what she drank in her retirement was none of his business. Sheriff Marchbanks blew them off and said he didn’t do haunted houses and couldn’t send his only deputy out to investigate the haunting. He told Flora to give him a call if they needed him, and Flora said she already called him and the Sheriff was no help at all.Nancy wanted to help solve the mystery, and Helen told her aunt not to trust Nancy because she made that video of Helen’s boyfriend Derek and thought she could do whatever she wanted because her mom died. Flora said she and Nancy would get along just fine because of that, and Nancy left in the middle of her community service. Flora explained that the legend began with the Colfax brothers, Malcolm and Schuyler, when they built Twin Elms in 1885. Malcolm proposed to Millicent Andrews, but she refused because he was a pig farmer and she was in love with Schuyler. Malcolm supposedly killed both his brother and Millicent out of jealously and buried them in the walls, and then Malcolm killed himself. Nancy made Carson dinner that night in hopes he would let her solve the Colfax mystery, and Carson said he couldn’t worry about Nancy because he was going out to town to schmooze a landowner and convince him to reject the train company’s offer. Carson agreed to let Nancy (and Helen) stay the night at Twin Elms for Flora. Flora told the girls that she used to be a burlesque dancer, and Nancy said her mom was a civil rights advocate who badgered the politicians to open their eyes and help the little guy. Helen went into the kitchen and screamed because she saw a pig-faced man in the window staring at her. Nancy was convinced it was Malcolm Colfax, who had never been seen in the flesh, and she rushed outside to find the ghost. She spotted a black Mercedes speeding away, and then Deputy Patrick appeared and looked around. He explained that he used to come to Twin Elms when he was a kid and had a hunch the Barnes were involved with the ghostly activity since the deputy went to school with Derek’s older brothers and knew what the family was like. Nancy was convinced that the Mercedes belonged to the Barnes, but Helen refused to believe that Derek was behind it and said he and his family were on vacation. Nancy said she would vote for Helen for prom queen if she was wrong, to which Helen replied that she was already prom queen. The lights flickered, and then the trio spotted a shadow walking by. Nancy chased after it and heard footsteps upstairs and hard rock music started blasting. Flora knew exactly what was going to happen because she had been through the routine, and she told the girls to cover their eyes as the lights sparked and then started floating in the air. The shadow grabbed Helen’s chair and dragged her into the kitchen, where cupboards and drawers started flying open. The shadow released Helen, and Nancy locked Helen and Flora in the closet while she confronted the pig ghost. It grabbed her by the throat and pulled back its rubber-looking mask to reveal shadows beneath it. Nancy then woke up on the couch with a headache the next morning, and Flora said the headache always happened after the paranormal activity. Nancy called her dad and told him that she had a ghost sighting and the teen lied that she was back at home like she was supposed to be. Nancy noticed pink footprints on the floor (pink from the painted grass outside) and followed them to a bookcase. Nancy found a secret lever and opened the bookcase, and she and Helen went down the hidden staircase. It led to an outside entrance, and the girls discovered levers and switches that enabled the “ghost” to mess with the lights and open and close the doors. Nancy called Bess and George and they suggested that “sound waves or drugs in the food” could have made the supernatural experience seem real. Nancy had Flora make a list of people who did maintenance on the house, and Nancy and Helen called them. It turned out the air conditioning company had no record of sending over a repairman, and when Nancy investigated she found a tank containing chemicals. She gave it to Bess and George since Bess was a chemistry whiz. Sheriff Marchbanks told Nancy that she couldn’t take advantage of him like she did Deputy Patrick, and the sheriff would add two more weeks to her sentence if she didn’t get to her community service work. Helen then appeared and gave Sheriff Marchbanks the pardon that she had done to get Nancy out of her her community service. The four girls broke into the school science lab and camped out that night so Bess could identify the chemicals. Bess and George weren’t happy that Helen the enemy was there, and they refused to eat the cheesecake (traitor cake) she brought. Helen told Bess that she was one of those smart girls who didn’t have to look pretty because she would never get a date anyway. That made George even madder and she told Helen that she could have unfollowed Derek on Instagram or threatened to break up with him after what he did to Bess, but Helen chose to keep dating mean boy Derek. Helen left, and George said good riddance. Bess discovered that the chemical was myristicin, aka nutmeg, which, when consumed in high concentrations, could cause nausea, hallucinations and eventually a hangover (the headache). Since the tank was connected to the AC, the nutmeg was released when the AC was turned on and the concentration in the canister was enough to affect people instantly. Nancy left her dad a message to call her and went to the Barnes house, where nobody answered the door to her knocking and doorbell ringing. Nancy picked the lock to the garage and spotted pink flamingo paint on the black Mercedes, but then Sheriff Marchbanks arrested her because a jogger spotted Nancy breaking into the house and called the police. At the station, the sheriff handcuffed teen Nancy to her chair. Deputy Patrick then lied to the sheriff to get Nancy off the hook that he (Deputy Patrick) and Nancy planned to check out the Barnes house together but he was late getting there so Nancy took a look by herself. Sheriff Marchbanks agreed to let his officer Patrick take Nancy home, and outside Deputy Patrick told Hannah that he wasn’t going to let his boss arrest the bravest kid in town twice in one week. The deputy then confirmed that the Barnes clan was away on vacation like Helen said because he made some inquiries and did his own research. Nancy called Nate and told him that neither she nor Hannah had spoken to Carson in 15 hours and that was weird. Nate said that Carson hadn’t called him either and probably had no cell service where he was out camping because Carson’s client wouldn’t close the deal with him until he went camping. Nancy didn’t think that was like her dad, and Nate said he was falling down on his godfather duties by not checking in with Nancy. Nancy looked at Carson’s hotel reservation and saw there was no phone number, and then George called to tell Nancy that she and Bess found the spice company and were ready to con their way into the records room. Nancy snuck out of the houseto go find Carson, and Helen appeared in tears and explained that she finally broke up with Derek. Nancy, without a license, drove to Carson’s hotel with Helen. Nancy told Helen to do what she thought was right and not what other people expected her to do, and Helen said that Nancy and her friends didn’t understand what it was like to be Helen since she only had her hair and Derek. Helen added that she had always been the villain instead of the hero in her story and now she wanted to work on being brave and nice. Nancy told Helen that the Barnes’ alibi checked out, and she apologized for getting revenge on Derek because it wasn’t always the answer. Bess went to the Wellings Spice Company all dressed up with makeup to get the name of the nutmeg buyer. Nancy and Helen got Carson’s room key, and they found Carson’s phone and discovered that he didn’t get any of Nancy’s messages. Nancy and Helen then blackmailed the lady behind the counter that they would tell her boss she was drinking on the job (alcohol in her coffee) if she didn’t show them the security feed from the camera outside Carson’s room. They saw a man in the hotel video knock Carson out in the parking garage and kidnap him, and Nancy couldn’t remember where she had seen the skull symbol on the back of the kidnapper’s truck window. Nancy realized the incident happened the same night that the girls broke into the chemistry lab. George and Bess then called Nancy and told her that Willie Wharton bought the nutmeg, and Nancy realized that the skull was on Willie’s shirt when he threatened her. Nancy believed that Carson was kept in the hidden staircase, and she called Deputy Patrick and told him to meet them at Twin Elms. As Deputy Patrick pulled up outside in his truck, Willie snuck up behind him and chloroformed him and took his gun. Nancy and Helen arrived and found Patrick unconscious in his truck, so they went into the house using the back entrance of the hidden staircase. They overheard Nate admitting to Carson (who was tied up along with Flora) that the train company was helping Nate get out of debt by paying him to get them Twin Elms. By scaring Flora enough to make her sell the property, the other property owners in the path of the train would follow suit and sell. Carson said he wouldn’t let the sale go through, and Willie threatened Carson with his gun but Nate took Willie aside and told him there would be no killing anybody since Nate had been forging Carson’s signature ever since he came to River Heights, so he only needed Flora’s signature. Nate added that Carson would keep his mouth shut and not tell anyone because he wanted to live, and then Helen started messing with the lights. Willie went to take care of it, and when he grabbed Helen, Nancy went after him and gave Helen a chance to run. Nate grabbed Helen, and then Nancy rang the doorbell. When Nate came outside, teen Nancy knocked him down from behind and dumped nutmeg down his throat to disorient him. Adult Nate rolled around on the ground screaming and rubbing pink grass all over his face, and Sheriff Marchbanks arrived and arrested Nate and Willie. Bess and George agreed to be civil with Helen, and Nancy was happy to see her dad safe and sound. Helen later invited all the girls to her cousin Emily’s wedding at the Lilac Inn and they agreed. This movie had a budget of $17 million and grossed over $600,000 at the box office.

DATE REVIEWED: 10/9/23

TITLE: Confessions of a Prodigal Son

BOX OFFICE RATED: NR (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)

PRODUCTION YEAR: 2014 Cinedigm / Lighting Dark / Sling Stone Productions

RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1

REASON: This movie takes place in California and began with Sean Matthews talking about the prodigal son returning home to his family. Two years later, Sean arrived late on his first day of class in his Sophmore year at USC. Professor Truman called out Sean since Sean interrupted the teacher’s speech as he entered the classroom. Truman said the students would explore the choices, good or bad, they made inside and outside his classroom. Sean later apologized to Truman for being late, and Truman told Sean that his charm and cheap words weren’t going to pass the class for him and it would take more than that since many students would fail and showing up on time would help Sean in the future. Sean caught up with his addict buddy Cameron Richard and Cameron’s new flame, Jenny, and discussed how Cameron made it to class hungover and Sean was late. Cameron already invited Jenny over to his house to hang out that night and asked her to bring a friend for Sean, and Sean wasn’t happy about it. Jenny left and James introduced himself, a freshman, tried to recruit the two men from campus to attend his Bible study group. A female walked by and distracted Sean and Cameron so James told them to bounce their eyes because there were more important things in life than chasing after women all day. After James left, Cameron said he wanted to punch out James for touching his jacket. As the two walked on, Cameron told Sean that they could share Jenny if nobody else came to the party. They passed by a homeless man and Cameron pretended he didn’t have any money so Sean gave the man $40. Later that night, the many young college students partied heavily by drinking themselves into a stupor. Jenny grabbed another hard liquor out of a drawer, and she put the photo of Sean and his parents that had been hidden in the drawer on display then to retrieve the bottle of liquor. Sean passed out and had a flashback of an argument with his parents, where they weren’t happy he was coming home at five in the morning and didn’t know where he was or God knows who he was with while he was lived under their roof as he came of age. Sean replied that he was under a lot of pressure because he had to live up to their religious standards, as compared to the many sinfilled community memebers that did not. Sean added that they tried to shove God down his throat, to which his dad, pastor Matthews, replied they weren’t doing that, they were trying to raise him right with God. Sean said that it was only because he changed his appearance and his behavior suddenly (suddenly hung around with questionable people as he graduated high school), he wanted what was entitled to him (the money Sean’s parents put aside for college) and he wanted to leave and be done with God, and free from his parents constant righteousness. Sean’s parents wrote him his check and out the door he walked. Sean immediately used the money to buy a car and get himself an apartment. Fast forward two years and Sean went to a local diner and continued to decline all calls from his parents. The waitress served Sean, and he wanted to know her name but she didn’t want to give it to him and said based upon his overpriced clothing, he probably spent all his parents’ money and she worked hard for her money and didn’t want to get involved with anyone else at the moment that wanted to know her name. She also pointed out the drink stains on Sean’s clothing from yesterday, meaning he more than likely wasn’t up to any good the previous night. Sean wouldn’t let it go and pointed out that she wrote with her left hand and her quick, witty responses meant she probably got hit on a lot but she wasn’t the kind of girl who liked that and she had probably been hurt before. He went on to say that she had perfect posture, which meant she was either a yoga instructor of gymnast. She replied that her name was Ali and she was a dancer. Soon after, there was another drinking party arranged by Cameron at his place. Cameron knew that Sean had another girl in his life and told him to lighten up and Cameron could throw girls Sean’s way at any time and not to just focus on one girl. Jenny overheard and wasn’t happy, but Cameron did some sweet-talking about her being sexy and got her to stay. Jenny sat down in Cameron’s lap, and he took out a bottle of prescription pills to share with his best friends. They all took some of Cameron’s prescription pills (possibly stolen or black market on campus) and downed them with the alcohol they were drinking heavily again. When Sean was passed out again, he had another flashback of him handing out pamphlets at his dad’s church and then Sean threw the church fliers on the floor and walked out. Sean woke up and called Cameron, who told him to enjoy writing his paper for tomorrow’s class with a hangover. Sean’s thoughts for his university thesis paper was that everybody’s story was different and was his or her’s to tell, and everyone had the freedom to make his or her own choices without the influence of others. Sean looked at a text from Cameron that told him he was late for class again as Ali danced out the door from her diner cafe job and ran into him. Sean ditched class and walked Ali to her second job that was teaching a dance class to young girls because Sean wanted to spend time with Ali. As they walked, Sean told her he attended USC and his major was everything. He explained to Ali that he wanted her to be one of his good choices for the class he was taking and, so she agreed to meet him at 6:00 pm later at Anders Dance Studio (where she taught dance class), since she was an experienced dancer for 13 years. In class, Professor Truman taught that morality defined us as a person and led us to either have good or bad choices in life. Cameron played on his cell phone and got called out on it by Truman, and Cameron couldn’t answer the professor’s question. Sean answered it and told the professor that no one person could judge someone else’s story as good or bad. Sean stood up with Professor Truman’s encouragement and made his case saying that he liked to create his own story and told the teacher that perhaps it wasn’t black and white the way everyone else was trying to make it. Sean went on to say that the professor, nor anyone else, had the right to shove their opinions down other’s throats on how life should be lived. Truman told Sean to sit down and said if each individual continued to live his or her life by what he or she believed to be good or bad choices and choosing for themselves what was right or wrong instead of adhering to a higher power, they would end up with a world filled with disparaging chaos and consequence. Truman added that Sean’s life would be like that if he was late again. Cameron told Sean after class that he thought he was having an influence on Sean with Sean’s beliefs that he wanted to live his life without anyone telling him how to do it. Sean said he was late to class because he was with someone (he was already late before meeting up with Ali, hence the text). Sean told Cameron he wasn’t going to have drinks that night because he had somewhere to go but he didn’t want to talk about it, and Cameron called him out on having a lady. Cameron told Sean if the female was a church girl then Sean just had to ease her into their drinking and partying world, and Sean didn’t want to hear anything about that. Cameron bummed money off from Sean again and wasn’t happy it was $20 when Sean gave a homeless guy $40. Sean told Cameron to get a job, so Sean gave him some more money. Cameron shouted after Sean that if Sean had another church girl, then he could go by himself a Bible and they could double date. Sean got some more money out of the ATM for himself and then went to the dance studio, where he saw Ali dancing alone (dramatically as she lay back kon the floor) after her class left. For their date, Sean planned to ignite all of Ali’s five senses and started with theater for sight. They discussed how Sean’s dad was a pastor and he didn’t like pastors telling people what to do, and Ali said that Sean being a pastor’s kid explained so much about him. She refused to say the reasons and wouldn’t talk about her family. The next was smell and taste, where they ate futomaki sushi, which Ali liked. When Ali asked Sean who he wanted to be, he replied that he wanted to explore life and figure it out as he went along. Ali said she started dancing to escape life and be part of something beautiful. They didn’t make it to sound or touch, and Ali said she had to get home since she had to open the diner the next day. Sean walked Ali home, and they stopped in the street and for sound, Sean sang and he and Ali touched by dancing together. Sean told Ali he left home because he didn’t know if he wanted to be the person his parents wanted him to be and felt pressurized by them. Sean explained his parents planned on him going to USC, the Christian school, and follow in his dad’s footsteps to become a pastor but Sean didn’t want to so he asked his parents for his college fund early and left. Ali couldn’t believe that Sean’s parents just handed over his funds, and he replied that they only gave him the first half of the money and he was told that he would get the rest no questions asked if he got A’s and managed the money he had for two years. Ali was flabbergasted that Sean kept his parents out of his life the last two years after they had done so much for him and set him on the right path raising him right as a child of God. Ali explained that her dad deserted them when she was three years old and never came back. Ali didn’t remember her dad and her mom was a young 18-year-old when she had Ali and did whatever she could to raise Ali by herself, which was basically a child trying to raise a child. She said it wasn’t a deal-breaker whether or not she met the person from her past that left her when she was young and Ali never visited her mom in the movie either. Ali told Sean that he seemed to be a nice guy and then Sean left her to go back to his apartment. Later that night, Sean joined up with Cameron and Jenny outside Professor Truman’s office. Sean said he had to get back so he could finish the paper due the next day and he still didn’t like Truman or anyone else telling him how to think. Cameron made a scene telling Truman off and smashed his alcohol bottle on the ground and convinced Sean to do the same. Jenny used her cell phone to video Sean copying Cameron and as Sean shouted in the street at Professor Truman, he threw his beer bottle that smashed against the university building. Jenny kept videoing as they all ran away. The next day in class, Professor Truman called on Sean and told him that by the end of the semester, Sean’s autobiographical thesis that he was still working on had to be done and the professor would judge it. Sean kept declining phone calls from his parents. As Sean was left class, Truman said he read Sean’s first chapter, which was similar to other arrogant students who took his class before with Sean’s carefree views getting in the way of his potential. Professor Truman told Sean as of that moment, he was not passing the class and the professor was not going to reward someone who refused to be serious.Cameron told Sean that Cameron’s parents just gave him money so he would go away and leave them alone. Cameron added that all the rules Sean’s parents raised him up with for eighteen years didn’t matter anymore and to relax because he was free. Sean said he should have been home studying the previous night, and Cameron tried to convince Sean that what they did last night was epic (shatter glass and break laws). Cameron said he had something going on again that night and not to bail because he needed Sean to be his wingman and Sean said he would be there. At Sean’s parents’ house, Mom and Dad discussed how she tried to call Sean again that day and he didn’t answer. In the next scene, Sean typed away on his Apple laptop and it said that the day someone realized his or her life was a story, they started hearing a bunch of voices calling out the different stories or characters that person could become. This, as Sean remembered all the heavy alcohol drinking and pill-popping parties they had and the hardest choice was deciding which voice to listen to (especially when he was under the influence of narcotics and those voices were the devil talking and destroying the life of HIS child). Ali left work early to hang out with Sean, who picked her up from the diner. Sean walked Ali to his favorite place to escape, which was overlooking the city, and he brought along a not so normal for him, non-alcoholic beverage called…sparkling grape juice. Ali then told Sean that when she was a young girl, she stole a cross necklace from another girl whose dad had given her for her birthday because Ali wanted it but she got caught. Sean told Ali he was out on his own with his money away from his family because he got tired of being told how to live with his parents’ rules. Ali said Sean was lucky to have parents that cared enough to make rules for him when she didn’t really have that growing up or a steady presence of God in her life. Sean tried to kiss Ali and she backed off because she didn’t want to bring that into her life at the moment since she was still dealing with her own issues. Sean got some more money from the ATM the next day, and he pondered life and thought to himself where could he find an ending worth writing about (for school) after he suffered pain from the choices he had made up until that point. Cameron told Sean a few days later that a new girl in a yellow skirt who he had never met before came up to him at one of his heavy drinking parties, and they hooked up right there on the couch. Cameron added it was dude code and not to mention Jenny because it was a story just between the two guys and what Jenny didn’t know didn’t hurt her. Cameron warned Sean not to let Sean’s new girl get him in the friend zone and interfere with Sean and Cameron’s “unhealthy” but steady bro relationship. Instead of writing his thesis, Sean later texted Ali and they agreed to meet up at his escape place. When Ali arrived, Sean explained he was still working on his school paper and needed help with the story. He said a good story involved shootouts and explosions, and Ali added car chases too. Ali asked what the ending of the story was, and Sean said he didn’t know and they would have to wait and see. Ali liked Sean’s escape place because she could see all the things below and they didn’t seem to be so demanding and consuming of her from where she sat. She wondered if that was how God saw the world, and she told Sean that God tried to help people put things in perspective but some people didn’t want to listen to God. Ali was sorting through her anger issues by going to church (the last place she would ever want to be), and she told Sean that she felt closer to God for the first time in her life. Ali said she went with her friend to a night service, and when she walked in it felt like the first time in her life she could breathe. Sean told Ali to be careful, and she wasn’t sure why because he ought to be happy for her that she was connecting with God and living the life that HE intended for her after years of living without the Almighty’s presence which caused Ali to be angry in the first place (because with God in your life, you realize what’s important in the day-to-day and are able to establish healthy relationships with those who trust in God too). Ali invited Sean to the Friday night study group on campus led by James. Sean didn’t want any part of it and told Ali he liked her, and he tried to kiss her again but she told him that wasn’t where they were at in their relationship. Sean called himself stupid and got angry with himself for trying to make the relationship sexual, and Ali said he wasn’t to blame but she had too much going on in her life that she needed to figure out before she brought somebody else into it in that way. Sean wrote in his paper how interesting it was that the people we interact with force us to change in either a good or bad way. For some, it could be like a love they never felt before that another person gave them, and for others it could be in the form of having something or everything taken away. In Professor Truman’s class, he preached that every story had an ending but not every story needed to be told and asked his students what made their story worth telling and what did it all mean. After class was dismissed, Professor Truman told Sean that he read another chapter of the story and Truman hoped he got to see how it all ended. The teacher ended by giving a note to Sean saying Dean Palermo needed to see him in his office. Dean Palermo cut to the chase and explained that they found a video on social media of Sean.Sean tried to pass it off that he was a popular guy and had been in several videos, but then the dean immediately played Sean’s angry breakdown video taken by questionable Jenny that ended with glass throwing and destruction of school property. Dean Palermo informed Sean that kind of violent behavior and vandalism was not tolerated and expelled Sean immediately from USC, and unless they got the police involved, Sean would be required to pay a fine of $5,000 to the dean’s office. Sean freaked out then and tried to tell the dean he would do anything to rectify the situation, but Dean Palermo adamantly responded that Seans’s kind of behavior was zero-tolerance in the school. The dean added that Sean could speak to the Provost or call his parents, and that what Sean did was just not what all the other USC students did. Sean went back to his apartment and smacked himself around in anger for his being caught, and then he answered the phone saying you were right, not aware whom he was speaking to. It was the apartment manager on the phone and he advised Sean that his previous month and current month’s rent checks bounced. The landlord told Sean to pay up, but then the landlord changed his mind and told Sean to pack his things and leave the apartment that day. That made Sean even madder and he broke down throwing the photo frame of him and his parents and shattered the glass frame. Instead of calling his parents, he called Cameron and wouldn’t tell him what happened at the dean’s meeting and said he needed to forget about that day. Cameron said Sean was in luck because there was another party that night. Sean went to the raging drinking party while Ali attended Bible study. Sean called her, but she ignored the call and told James that she felt God knew His people were broken and they didn’t have to be perfect to go to Him. Ali then excused herself to take the second call as the class adjourned, and Sean, sounded under the influence and told Alie that he would text Ali the address where he was at and she agreed to come. James noticed that Ali seemed upset by her call, so he offered to drive her to her destination. Ali told James to wait for her and she would be back after she went to see Sean, and James told Ali to guard her heart and he would pray for her. Ali didn’t want a drink when she got into the party room, and Cameron blurted out that Sean just got kicked out of school and lost his apartment. Sean and Ali argued with him saying that he believed she only came there to throw it in his face that he was ruining his life, but she said she came there because she cared about Sean, and she left since she didn’t care anymore after Sean screamed at her about her Bible study. Cameron pushed Sean out of the way so he wouldn’t go after Ali, but Sean got back up and chased after James’ car as it drove away. Sean then got drunk in his car and took off after Ali, and he smashed into a tree. Sean woke up with ice on his neck in Cameron’s apartment with Cameron and Jenny talking loudly, making pancakdes. Sean tried to call Ali, but it went to voicemail. Sean couldn’t remember what happened the night before, so Cameron and Jenny enlightened him that they found Sean with his car wrapped around a tree after he chased Ali. They didn’t want to get the police involved, so Cameron dragged Sean back to his apartment. Sean got a ride from Cameron to the diner because Sean wanted to talk to her, but the other waitress told him to leave because Ali didn’t want to talk to him so she told Sean to leave Ali’s workplace. Cameron told Sean to crash at his place for a while and Sean accepted because he was stuck (when Cameron and Jenny got him in that situation in the first place). Sean searched for janitor jobs online and he was hired since he suddenly had no more money in his bank account. Sean waited for Ali outside her house, and James walked her home. Sean basically called James a Jesus freak after James said he hadn’t seen Sean on campus for a month. Ali told Sean that all the little things she had done in the past didn’t define her and Jesus found her and for the first time in her life, she felt she was life God’s way and she wanted that for Sean. When Sean got back to his apartment, Cameron and Jenny were scream-fighting with the door open because yellow-skirt told Jenny she hooked up with Cameron. Cameron twisted the situation around and said yellow-skirt was a liar and Jenny replied that she didn’t want to see Cameron anymore. He grabbed Jenny and told her not to walk away, and she smacked lying cheating Cameron in the face and stormed off. Cameron and Sean had a pow-wow, where Cameron said he never really liked Jenny anyway and Sean said he might go home. Cameron couldn’t believe Sean was going to give it all up after everything he had fought for in the last two years. Sean corrected Cameron and said that he didn’t know what he was fighting for and he wasn’t on the right path because it made him get kicked out of school and his apartment, wreck his car and lose a chance with Ali. Cameron called Sean an idiot because he wanted to go back to the church and find a job to pay his parents (church) back. Cameron tried to tell his friend that he had freedom, nobody bossing him around, and no family. Sean replied that he had been lost for a long time and was ready to be found. Cameron pointed out that Sean could go home and be fixed, but for a lot of people including Cameron it didn’t work that way because they didn’t have anybody to go home to. Cameron told Sean that life sucked, and when it did you medicate (use and abuse drugs) and deal with it. Cameron told Sean that he could go home to his church friends, but Cameron was staying where he was at and living his life. Sean said he believed in second chances in the story he was telling now and was not going to live in the conditions Cameron chose for himself which were going nowhere. Cameron told Sean he might have a second chance, but Cameron didn’t think he did and told Sean to crash somewhere else. Sean narrated that no matter who you are, everyone feels the sting of their own mistakes and no one was immune to life and the blood and tears that went with it. Sean slept on a park bench while Ali danced at the studio. She saw a gift bag on the mirror, and inside it was a silver cross necklace from Sean. Sean quoted Victor Hugo “To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful,” and Sean added that Hugo left out in order to do that was not easy and it hurt. Meanwhile, Pastor Matthews preached to his church about how he was going to quote God’s scripture that day but changed it because he was feeling sad since that day marked two years since his son left and he hadn’t communicated with him since. He clarified that he wasn’t sad or angry because of his son’s choices or disappointed with them, he was sad because he missed his son, loved him and he couldn’t love him enough or back to him. The pastor told the people that the message for that day was God loved them all, and if they thought God was vengeful or angry then they didn’t know God’s love because it was infinite and supernatural. Pastor Matthews went on to say that our puny little heads couldn’t fit the Almighty God inside them so we don’t know the extent of God’s love for His children, and to never think that God is angry or disappointed with you no matter what path you take in life and just know everyday that God simply loves you and wants you to come home to HIM.As everyone left the church and Pastor Matthews thanked the churchgoers for coming, he paused to see his son walking over. They hugged it out and Sean tried to tell his dad that he lost everything but the reverend just put his arms around his son and thanked God for sending Sean back to HIS house. Sean and his mom then hugged too. Sean went on to narrate that he heard it, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” Sean said that he didn’t think he was a saint, but because of redemption through supernatural forgiveness he was given a chance to have a new future. Later on, Sean went to the bible study group and told Ali in front of everyone that he was selfish and dumb, and when he was trying to do things his way he hurt his family, friends and himself and he was sorry for hurting Ali too. Sean said he wanted to tell a better story with his life and for Ali to be part of it, and then Sean left after apologizing to James for interrupting. Ali later showed up at Sean’s house wearing the cross necklace that he gave her, and then the two of them went to the birthday party (with the partygoers of all ages drinking from red Solo cups) that Sean’s parents threw for him. They all toasted to Sean finding his way home to HIS church family. Sean then hung out with his parents and Ali at home and attended church functions with a happier heart. Cameron was still popping pills and drinking alcohol in his disastrous lifestyle around campus. The movie ended with Sean finishing his thesis about how redemption was eagerly awaiting our cry with open arms waiting to let us try again and live a story a worth telling with the life HE has been given us. Adam She from AMTC World was quoted on the movie cover art, “A timeless message presented in a way every generation will enjoy.”

MAKAYLA JANE: GOD'S Spirit Reborn WithHIS Loving JESUS HEart.

MAKAYLA JANE:
GOD'S Spirit Reborn With
HIS Loving
JESUS HEart.