Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-It Ralph

As soon as I found out about this movie I wanted to watch it. It was a video game geek's gold mine of nostalgia. Add to that a compelling story about a man wanting to be a hero, loads of humor, and an awesome voice cast, and you get the superb movie that is Wreck-It Ralph.

I can't even wait, let's get right into the movie.





We meet Ralph, a 9 feet tall man who is a character in an arcade game called Fix-It Felix, Jr. For 30 years he's been the bad guy, always wrecking the apartment building Niceland and trying to stop Felix from fixing it with his magic hammer. When the player wins the game by getting Felix to the top of the building all of the apartment residents come to the roof and give Felix a medal and throw Ralph off the roof to land in the mud. After the game is over Felix gets congratulations from the Nicelanders, but Ralph has to go live in the dump where the broken pieces of the building get sent. Ralph wishes he could be a good guy and get the adoration that Felix gets. Then we see that the voice-over that Ralph was giving was him speaking at a group therapy called Bad Anon, full of video game villains. Their slogan is "One game at a time." The others tell Ralph that it is important that games had bad guys and it is not a reflection of their true selves. Ralph still wishes he could stop being a bad guy. The other villains are afraid he's "going Turbo" which is a reference that is explained later in the movie.
The reason all of these villains can gather together is that characters can take transportation through their power cables to the central power box called Game Central Station and travel to other game environments at night when the arcade is closed. While traveling back to his game from the Bad Anon meeting we hear a PSA from Sonic the Hedgehog that warns characters to be safe when traveling outside their games because if they die while not in their own games they don't respawn.
Ralph sees Qbert and other characters from his game with a sign saying that their game was unplugged. They get to live on because they had made it to Game Central Station before it was unplugged, but they have no home now. Ralph game them one of the cherries he picked up in Pac-Man which is where the Bad Anon meeting was held.






When Ralph gets back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. he finds that everyone is having a party for the game's 30th anniversary in the penthouse of Niceland, including Pac-Man who is not even a part of their game. He is upset that they didn't invite him. He goes up and talks to Felix who is too nice to turn him away and goes inside to have cake. The cake was designed to look like the apartment building with all of the Nicelanders and Felix at the top and Ralph in the mud at the bottom. Ralph wants to be included with the group but can't really bring himself to ask them so he instead says that the figure of Ralph on the cake should be at the top of the building too. One Nicelander, Gene, says that there is no room so Ralph suggests that the Ralph figure and the Felix figure can take turns being in the mud so there's more room at the top. Gene dismisses this idea since Felix has to be on the roof to get his medal. Ralph says that maybe the Ralph figure should get the medal instead. Gene says that if Ralph ever got a medal they would invite him to live in the penthouse, but bad guys don't get medals. Ralph insists that he is not a bad guy and Gene points out that he is because all he does is wreck the building. Ralph is upset at this and slams his fists down which destroys the cake, proving that he wrecks the apartment building.
Ralph leaves the party vowing that he'll return with a medal so awesome all of Felix's medals will wet their pants.






Ralph goes to the local Root Beer bar game, Tapper, where a lot of characters hang out at night and asks the bartender if he knows where he can get a medal. The bartender suggests the lost and found and while looking through it he runs into a soldier from the game Hero's Duty, a 1st person shooter where you destroy creatures called Cy-Bugs on an alien world. The solider is a little shell-shocked. He tells Ralph all they've been doing for the week they've been plugged in is climb the building and fight Cy-Bugs. And for what he asks, a stupid medal. Ralph asks about the medal, the Medal of Heroes, it's shiny and it says Hero on it, perfect for Ralph. The soldier sees a cockroach and freaks out and runs into the wall and knocks himself out. Ralph takes his outfit and heads on over to Hero's Duty before the arcade opens, hoping to get the Medal of Heroes for himself. He runs into Qbert along the way to the game.
Ralph joins the game Heroes Duty, led by Calhoun, a no nonsense female soldier who guides the player in the game. Ralph is unprepared for the Cy-Bugs, thinking they were little things, but no, they are as big as Ralph himself and they can become whatever they eat, as evidenced when one ate Ralph's gun and then grew guns itself. They also lay eggs at an alarming rate. Ralph messes up the game and gets the player killed trying to save himself from a Cy-Bug. After the game ends a huge bright beacon goes up and all the Cy-Bugs go towards it where it fries them like a bug like. Ralph decides that instead of playing the game as normal, he will instead climb the outside of the research tower and bust his way in to the chamber where they give out medals.
Back in Fix-It Felix, Jr. a player starts a game but is confused that Ralph is not there. When Felix shows up to fix the broken building he finds that it is not broken at all. He sneaks off the side of the screen and tries to find Ralph in his dump, but Ralph is not there. The player goes to tell the arcade manager and he puts a sign on the machine saying it is out of order. The characters know what this means, if the game isn't working soon they will be unplugged. They need Ralph to save them.
Qbert shows up to tell them that he saw Ralph headed to Hero's Duty so Felix goes there after the arcade closes to find Ralph. He is shot at by Calhoun when she thinks he's a Cy-Bug, but he is quick enough to stay safe until she realizes he is not a bug. He starts to tell her what he is doing there but finds himself entranced by her beauty. She doesn't respond to flattery, though. Felix asks her if she's seen Ralph but she didn't know that she had and says that nothing gets past her. Just then they hear the sound of broken glass coming from the top of the tower where Ralph has finally broken in to the chamber with the medal. The floor is covered with Cy-Bug eggs but Ralph is able to move around them. He walks up the stairs to the platform with the medal and the game is on autopilot and awards him the medal. Ralph fantasizes about how much better his life will be in the penthouse of Niceland when he inadvertently steps on a Cy-bug egg, activating it. The bug latches onto his face and he trips over most of the other eggs. He then lands in an escape pod which launches itself. The pod goes towards the exit of the game to Game Central Station, right past Felix and Calhoun. Ralph bounces around Game Central Station before heading down the tunnel to another game where everything is made of candy and cotton candy clouds get stuck in the intake for the escape pod and it crashes. Ralph and the now fully grown Cy-bug are launched by the ejector seat and Ralph grabs the trunk of a candy cane tree while the Cy-bug hits another tree and sinks to the bottom of a taffy pond.
Ralph is glad to be rid of the bug, but then notices his medal is no longer around his neck.






Ralph sees the medal hanging off the branch of another tree and starts to climb it. On the way up he meets a little girl with candy in her hair who also sees the medal but thinks it's a gold coin. She is quicker than Ralph and gets it first. He begs her for the medal back because it will change his life. She says it will change her life too, as she pixelates and gets blurry for a moment. She then runs off while he falls into the taffy.
Felix and Calhoun find out that Ralph went into Sugar Rush, a candy-themed racing game. Calhoun tells Felix that they have to track down the Cy-bug that was with Ralph and stop it before it multiplies. Cy-bugs, she explains, do not know they are characters in a game and will only kill, eat, and multiply unless they see a beacon that will attract and destroy them. Felix remarks that she's very intense and her second-in-command says that it's not her fault, her backstory is that the one day she didn't do a full perimeter check was her wedding day and her groom was eaten by a Cy-bug in the middle of the ceremony.
Felix insists that she take him with her since it is his job to fix whatever Ralph breaks.
Back in Sugar Rush the regular characters are getting ready for their nightly event. Everyday 9 racers are available for players to choose from, but everyday the 9 that are available are different. All of the racers race every night and the top 9 are the ones playable for the next day. The cost of entry into the qualifying race is one gold coin. King Candy, the ruler of Sugar Rush, is a jolly man who's catchphrase is "Have some candy." He officiates the races as well as races himself. All of the usual racers throw a coin into the pot for their spot in the night's race. Then the little girl who got Ralph's medal throws it in and the game accepts it as a coin and she gets onto the roster as well, Vanellope von Schweetz. Everyone is upset when they find out that she is in the race, they call her a Glitch (referring to the moments when she pixelates). Her go cart doesn't even have an engine, it is pedal powered, she made it herself. Just then Ralph comes on the scene, but he is covered in taffy and looks like a green monster. He wrecks the stands trying to get to Vanellope, not knowing that she already used his medal to get into the race. When she did that the medal disappeared like all the coins do when a racer puts it in the pot, so he can't get it until after the race.
Ralph end up stuck in a cupcake as well and the cops (a donut and an eclair) beat him instead of the thief he is chasing.

Ralph gets away from the police and out of the taffy and finds Vanellope being taunted and bullied by the other racers. He stops hating her for stealing from him when he sees her being treated like a glitch the same way he was treated as a bad guy in his own game. The other racers had destroyed her cart, but she figures Ralph can help her get a new one so she makes a deal with him that if he does she will give him back his medal when she wins.
Calhoun and Felix and on Ralph's trail when Felix remarks that he never thought Ralph would go Turbo. Calhoun doesn't know what that means since her game is new to the arcade so Felix explains it for her. When the arcade first opened there was a racing game called Turbotime. Turbo was the star racer of the game and loved the attention. When a newer racing game showed up and got all the attention from the players Turbo was jealous and left his game and tried to race in the new one and ended up getting both games shut down for good.





Vanellope needed Ralph to get a new card because the bakery where the real carts are made was locked. He was strong enough to break through and help her make a real cart. When they finish the cart the police and King Candy show up, determined not to let Vanellope race. They chase Ralph and Vanellope (who doesn't actually know how to drive) around until Vanellope tells Ralph to go through the rock on Diet Cola Mountain. It was a secret entrance and Vanellope lives in the mountain next to the diet cola hot springs. The ceiling of the mountain is covered in Mentos so when they fall they cause a reaction that shoots up streams of the boiling hot cola. Ralph helps Vanellope learn how to drive and she is a natural.
King Candy decides to take matters into his own hands and goes into the code of the game. He is able to get the medal out of the code for the racing winnings and give it to himself. As he leaves the code we see Vanellope's code separated from the rest of the game and looking broken, kind of like someone did that to it intentionally.
Felix and Calhoun have a moment in the escape pod he fixed and he calls her a dynamite gal. That reminds her of her lost fiance, he called her the same thing, so she kicks out Felix who then goes to the castle and gets put in the dungeon for being associated with Ralph.
King Candy talks to Ralph while he's alone and explains why Vanellope can't race in exchange for Ralph's medal. If Vanellope wins she gets to be one of the 9 racers for the day. If she is and she glitches while being played the players will think the game itself is broken and it would get shut down. All the citizens of Sugar Crush would then leave to Game Central Station except Vanellope can't because glitches can't leave their games. The game would be powered down and she would go with it.
When Vanellope comes back she gives Ralph a cookie medal she made where she wrote that he is her hero. He destroys her cart for her own good, doing the one thing he is good at, wrecking things. She can't understand why he's doing it until she sees he has his medal back and realizes King Candy got to him.
Ralph then leaves to go home, sad about breaking Vanellope's heart, but at least he has his medal.







Ralph gets back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. and finds it all but deserted. Only Gene is left, who tells Ralph that everyone left after Felix didn't come back since the game will be unplugged in the morning. Ralph then throws his medal at the screen and the out of order sign falls and he can see Sugar Rush across the way. He then notices on the side of the machine Vanellope's picture. That's weird since everyone said she was a glitch since she wasn't supposed to exist. He goes and finds Sour Bill, a living sour ball who works for the king and is cleaning up the pieces of Vanellope's cart. Sour Bill reveals that King Candy didn't want Vanellope racing because if she crosses the finish line the game resets. He doesn't know why, though since the king had locked away everyone's memories.
Ralph frees Felix who is mad since he has been rejected and treated like a criminal today. Ralph says that he knows how that feels, that is everyday for him, which helps Felix understand why Ralph did what he did. Felix fixes the cart and they both get Vanellope out of the dungeon and get her into the race. Vanellope does really well and gets to second place behind King Candy when Calhoun shows up and says that the game is about to be overrun by Cy-bugs. The Cy-bugs are now candy themed since they've been eating candy in the game, but they are just as deadly as ever. The citizens of the game make a run for the exit to Game Central Station while Vanellope and King Candy still fight it out for first place, literally. King Candy rams Vanvellope's cart and starts to hit her with the stick that he broke off his car. Vanellope grabs the stick and starts to glitch and the glitch spreads to King Candy and he starts to transform into Turbo. Turbo didn't die when his game was unplugged, he got out and got into Sugar Rush when it came online. He reprogrammed the game and himself so no one would know he was Turbo. He is trying to crash Vanellope into a column when she realizes her glitch helps her move a little bit, so she can teleport by intentionally glitching, which she does. She gets out of the tunnel and then Turbo heads straight into the mouth of a waiting Cy-Bug, getting eaten.
Vanellope is ready to cross the finish line but the Cy-bugs eat the finish line so she can't. Ralph and Felix get her to the exit of the game but she reminds Ralph that she can't leave. He tries to take her anyway but a forcefield prevents her from leaving. Calhoun says that they'll have to blow up the exit and that Sugar Rush is lost since it doesn't have a beacon. Ralph then gets an idea. He takes Calhoun's hover board and flies to Diet Cola Mountain, planning on doing what he does best, wreck something. He starts to pound on the Mentos formation from the top of the mountain and it begins to loosen. Just as he's about to give it the final blow he get's intercepted by Turbo who is now part Cy-Bug. When the bug ate him he became part of it and says he is now the most powerful virus in the arcade and can take over any game he wants. He grabs Ralph and flies him high up into the air so Ralph can watch Vanellope get eaten by Cy-bugs at the barrier. Turbo says it's game over for Vanellope and Ralph and Ralph says, "No, just for me." He breaks out of Turbo's grasp and aims himself toward the Mentos below. As he falls re recites the Bad Guy Affirmation, "I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There is no one else I'd rather be than me." I cry every time he does this. Here is a bad guy, giving his life to save a little girl. He can do it because he's about to wreck something, that is his skill. Vanellope sees Ralph falling and starts to teleport in short jumps around the Cy-Bugs to try to get to him. Ralph lands on the Mentos and they all start to fall together. Vanellope had gotten back to her cart and is driving it while glitching to move even faster and around obstacles and goes into the mountain just in time to catch Ralph and glitch through the walls before the Mentos land in the cola and create a boiling hot geyser a couple hundred feet tall. The Cy-bugs are attracted to the geyser like it's a beacon and they all go towards it and are destroyed, even Turbo.
Felix fixes the finish line and Vanellope crosses it and turns into a princess and the whole land is restored. Everyone gets their memories back and realize that Vanellope was their princess the whole time. She'd rather be a racer, though, so becomes president instead of princess.
Ralph goes back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. and is glad to be the bad guy again. With all the characters back the game is not unplugged. They even invite homeless characters in for bonus levels and make the game very popular again. Felix makes a real home for Ralph next to the dump along with apartments for all of the transplants from old games. The best part of Ralph's day is when he is lifted up by the Nicelanders to throw him off the roof at the end of each level, because when he's up there he can see Sugar Rush and can see Vanellope racing. Her Glitch makes her popular since she can teleport at random. She will notice Ralph looking at her and she smiles. Ralph's final line is, "If a little like that can like me, how bad can I really be?"
I tear up again.

Awesome movie, and I can relate to the character well, despite not being a bad guy. All of the geek references make it even better.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

I've added a new Tag to my list: Better Than the First. There are some movies where I vastly prefer the sequel over the original. I usually won't even bother to buy the original. This is one of them. I find it more entertaining and a better emotional journey than the first. Plus, it's chock full of connected events that lead to an awesome ending.

This is the continuing story of Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan. Together they are Wyld Stallyns. In the first movie they were in danger of flunking history and Ted's dad was going to send him to military school ensuring that their band Wyld Stallyns would not materialize into anything outside of their own heads. That was the worst possible thing since in the future there is peace and prosperity for all thanks to the world-changing music and culture of Wyld Stallyns. A time traveler from the future, Rufus, comes to them in a time machine designed to look like a phone booth (hey, that would be anachronistic today as well as in the past, lol). He gives Bill and Ted use of the phone booth to travel through time and space and learn history so they can pass their big oral presentation in a couple days. Instead of just learning they end up grabbing significant historical figures and bringing them back for the presentation. While exploring medieval Europe they meet two princesses they fall for. At the end of the movie after they pass their test Rufus shows up with the two princesses telling Bill and ted that he brought them because they are part of Wyld Stalliys, too. All four of them grab their instruments and start to play, but they are terrible. Rufus ends the movie by saying that they will get better.

Let's see how the second movie plays out:





The opening scene of the movie is a guy (we find out later his name is De Nomolos) raging against the utopia they live in. He hates Bill and Ted and everything they've brought to society. He plans to go back in time to stop them from their first world broadcast and prevent them from shaping the future. He and his goons break into the university where Rufus is giving a lecture on sound and acoustics with guest speakers from across time. De Nomolos steals the time machine and sends back his secret weapons, robot versions of Bill and Ted programmed to ruin the band, kill the real Bill & Ted, and ruin their reputations for ever. As they activate the time machine Rufus snags a ride hoping to save his friends and the destined saviors of society.






Bill and Ted make it into the Battle of the Bands, barely, as the last act of the night. As they are celebrating that as well as the birthday of their princess girlfriends, they propose to them. The girls accept and the guys are riding high on life. Right after the girls leave the guys get a phone call from the robots pretending to be the girls (robots always seem to be able to mimic people's voices). The evil robots convince the real B & T that their girlfriends, who just accepted proposals from them, suddenly broke up with them. Too bad B & T aren't that bright.





The evil robots show up and pretend to be B & T from the future there to help them get the girls back. The robots convince them that they know where to find the girls (on the phone they said they were going out to the desert to be alone). The robots take B & T to the desert and reveal that they are in fact evil robots there to kill them. They force B & T to walk up a cliff and then push them off the cliff to their deaths. What will become of the future now?






B & T rise up out of their bodies as spirits, confused on what to do now. Then they see Death, the Grim Reaper, and he comes to take them onward. Bill asks if there is any way to go back and Death tells him that they can challenge him. He warns them that if they lose they will have to stay in the afterlife (I guess he means as a spirit on earth) for eternity. Ted asks what happens in they win to which Death replies, "No one has ever beaten me" with a big grin on his face. B & T can't go quietly into the dark night, they have to save their fiancees from the evil robots (I'm actually glad to see that their first priority is the princesses, not their destinies in the future). They decide to give Death a melvin (a wedgie). They tell him that his shoes are untied and then grab his robes around the groin and yank upward. B & T then walk back to San Dimas and have a couple of misadventures as ghosts. They end up crashing a seance and are mistaken for evil spirits. Then they get banished to hell by the seance leader. While in hell they find the devil who sends them to their own private hells and they realize the only way out is to challenge Death. He appears and warns them that the stakes are different now. This time if they lose they will be stuck in hell for all eternity.





As the challengers Bill and Ted get to choose the challenge. We see B & T at one end of a table in a dreary looking grey room and Death at the other. They are in front of Battleship boards (or whatever you call them), with both sides already showing 4 sunk ship counters. They trade a couple of misses and then hits, but B & T are victorious. Death, however, is a sore loser and proclaims that they must play him again for best 2 out of 3.
The second game is Clue. We see Death looking over his suspect sheet and he comes to make his final accusation. He is wrong so B & T win. They ask to go back but Death says it must be best 3 out of 5 now.
All we see is Death overlooking one of those electronic vibrating football games upset with a piece that just spins around. Bill and Ted ask "Best of 7?" "Damn right!" replies Death.
The final game is Twister with Bill and Death on the mat while Ted spins and calls the required spots. Death falls and finally admits defeat.
B & T realize that if they go back now the robots will likely kill them again. Ted comes up with a plan to make good robots to fight the evil robots. They ask Death to help them find someone for the task. He is theirs to command so he must oblige. They go to heaven and sneak into heaven (by stealing the clothes of legitimate entrants). They meet God and he tells them they must find Station to help them build their robots. They are given a map and then find Station, a pair of short Martians playing charades with the brightest minds that have passed from history. Time to go back to Earth.





Bill, Ted, Death, and the two Stations go to a hardware store to get the parts they'll need to build robots in a hurry. While pushing the cart down the aisle Death passes a man smoking (this was before they banned smoking indoors) and said "See you real soon." The man took out the cigarette and stepped on it to signify he was done smoking, for ever. I love that bit.
After they load the back of their band van with the stuff they bought the two Stations decide to play chicken and ram into one another. They fuse into one mass and then it reforms into a single 7 foot tall version of them. He then starts putting together good robot versions of B & T during their drive to the Battle of the Bands.

The character that really sets this movie apart from the prior one is Death. He is so funny. He is insecure, too, which comes out when Bill and Ted start to compliment Station on his work on the robots. "I made the wigs. I took them shopping. I pushed the cart." Even funnier when they compliment large Station on his "excellently huge Martian butt." Death chimes in, "Don't overlook my butt. I work out a lot. And reaping burns a lot of calories."

They finally get to the Battle of the Bands and it is time for Wyld Stallyns to perform. The robots get on stage and proceed to insult the audience. They proclaim that they are Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted "Theodore" Logan and together they are Wyld Stallyns. Then to the side of the stage the real B & T come out and say "No, we're Wyld Stallyns." The audience eats it up, thinking it's all a gimmick for the show, of course. The princesses are tied up and hanging above the stage to be dropped to their deaths at the end of the show, so B & T don't have a lot of time. They use the remote controls Station made and have their good robots burst through a wall and charge towards the evil robots. The evil robots look upwards and the good robots hit them with uppercuts and knock their blocks off (heh). Then the good robots punch the evil, headless robots in the chests and they burst into pieces (surprisingly the audience is not hit with debris). The Station Martians (separate again now) let down Joanna and Elizabeth so Bill and Ted can until them and kiss them. Everything looks good until the time machine shows up and De Nomolos is in it. He has a gun and declares that it is time to kill them once and for all. Before he does so, though, he blasts the TV cameras with a ray gun so they transmit to the entire world, not just Channel 12 as they had been, so the world can witness the birth of a new future, one ruled by De Nomolos. Bill and Ted are weighing their options in the face of his gun and Ted remarks that they'd be okay if only they had more time. Bill reminds him that they have all the time in the world. After they defeat De Nomolos they can use the booth and go back in time to set up what they need to defeat him now. A sandbag then falls from above and knocks down his gun. Then a cage falls around him. De Nomolos laughs and says that he can do that too and says that after he destroys them he will use the booth and go back and give himself a key to the cage and another gun. He raises the gun and pulls the trigger and instead of blasting Bill and Ted a banner comes out that says Wyld Stallyns Rule! Bill explains that only the victor can go back and set things up so they are the ones who setup the key and the gun to make him think he was winning. And that is what De Nomolos doesn't get. Even with a time machine, time seems to be set. Everything they do with the time machine has only furthered the timeline he was already in. He can't change it, whatever anyone does is what always happened in the first place. While De Nomolos is standing there trying to figure out what went wrong Death comes up and tells him that his shoelaces are untied. He looks down and Death gives him a melvin. Then Ted's father arrests him and they are free to proceed with the concert. They are now live in front of the whole world and the entire band of Wyld Stallyns is present (Bill, Ted, Joanna, Elizabeth, Death, Station, and the robots as back up dancers). They realize they still don't really know how to play. Good thing they have all the time in the world to practice thanks to the time machine. They take a several months to get good and have a honeymoon with their new wives (and now they have infant sons, too). Time to rock.

They play "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" but really it is Kiss playing. Their concert changes the world and ushers in the age De Nomolos was trying to prevent. Good thing he was a gym teacher not literature, or he would have known about self fulfilling prophecies. By trying to avoid the future he made it happen.

While the awesome song is playing their are a lot of newspapers and magazine headlines spinning across the screen showing how the world is changing thanks to Wyld Stallyns: Peace in the Middle East, no more droughts in the mid-west US, air pollution is being cleaned up, the economy is up, and the space program gets to Mars. The most awesome thing is the Road & Track magazine saying that Death won the Indy 500. He is quoted as saying "I didn't know I could run that fast."

Great way to end a movie!

A Goofy Movie

A Goofy Movie

I have loved this movie for years, since I was a teenager. Not only is it pretty funny and heart-warming, it has an awesome soundtrack. It's a musical, but unlike Mama Mia, it is not a jukebox musical, they do original music. Unfortunately, also unlike Mama Mia, one of the primary actors doesn't do his own singing but instead uses a voice double. It wasn't his idea, he can sing, but Disney wanted a Broadway singer instead, so they got one of kids from Newsies.
So this movie features your typical teenager-is-embarrassed-by-his-parent story. It is set after the series Goof Troop where Goofy is a single dad to his son Max. For those who don't know Goof Troop, Goofy is a single dad to his son, Max. They live next door to the Petes (Pete Pete, Peg Pete, PJ Pete and Pistol Pete). Pete was a common villain in Mickey Mouse cartoons. Max and PJ are best friends. Pete hates Goofy and all Goofs though his hatred lessens over time. By the time of the movie he and Goofy are best friends, too.
Max is in high school now and has a crush on a girl.

This one will be mostly spoilers, but it's an animated feature from 18 years ago, so are you really going to hate me for not covering the spoilers?

Let's watch.





So right at the beginning Max has a dream. In the dream he is in a wheat field and he hears a sing-song call of his name from Roxanne, the girl he is crushing on. He chases after her and they laugh and fall to the ground. She leans in for a kiss then recoils in horror. The wheat fields around them have turned to brambles. The sun is gone and it is dark. His teeth have grown grotesquely large. Next his ears, fingers, and toes get longer. He starts stretching to be taller and finally the top of his head pops up a little until he resembles... Goofy. Max/Goofy clutches at his throat, trying to keep the sound from coming out, but out comes Goofy's signature laugh. Max wakes up in a panic.
I love how much it followed any of several other nightmare/horror sequences when someone turns into a monster. Only instead of a monster Max turned into his father. As a teenager I think he'd rather turn into a monster.





On the way to school Max start singing the first musical number of the movie "After Today." He's planning some big gesture to get Roxanne to notice him. While he sings about that all of the other kids in school are singing about how vacation starts after today. Everyone is looking forward to how much better everything will be tomorrow. At the end of the musical number Max is at the top of the football bleachers and trips down them. He is helped up by Roxanne. Max gets so nervous he starts laughing and let's slip a hyuk, just like his dad. He gets embarrassed and runs away leaving Roxanne confused.




Max's big stunt is totally awesome. I don't know anyone in my high school who could have pulled off something like that. In the middle of the principal's speech his friends load a projection screen and have live feed of him lip-syncing and dancing to a song from a pop star Powerline. He's dressed just like Powerline from his music video for the song, including big sunglasses, so people aren't really sure who he is. He trips and falls through the screen onto the stage. He's a little nervous until he notices that Roxanne is captivated by his performance. The whole crowd is cheering for him, he gets hooked up to a rope and is swinging above the audience. He's about to reach out to Roxanne's hand when the music stops, the lights come back on, and he's brought right to the principal. The principal takes off his glasses to everyone can see that it's Max Goof who did that cool stunt. Everyone is shocked except for Roxanne who looks even happier.




Goofy and Pete are talking at work about summer plans. Pete is taking PJ camping, but Goofy doesn't think he'd be able to get Max to spend enough time with him for a trip like that. Pete puts ideas into Goofy's head that behavior like that leads to kids getting into gangs and causing riots.
Meanwhile Max is waiting to see the principal but sees Roxanne. He asks her if he could take her to a big party the next week at another student's house to see the Powerline concert on TV. She says yes so he's ecstatic and is dancing around the room after she leaves.
The principal calls up Goofy and goes on about how Max was wearing gang colors and started a riot in the auditorium, just what Pete had said would happen.He decides the best way to save his relationship with his son is to take him fishing for the summer to Idaho, just like he went with his dad and his dad did with his grandfather and so on for several generations of Goofs. When he tells Max he faints- his life is over. He just got a date with the girl of his dreams and has to cancel because his dad is forcing him on a road trip.
Max gets his dad to stop at Roxanne's house so he can break the news to her. He loses his courage and is afraid he'll lose her so he makes up a story about his dad knowing Powerline and that he will be on stage with him during the concert. Now he has to figure out a way to make it happen and hurt his dad, or not do it and hurt Roxanne. If only he hadn't lied in the first place.




During their road trip they have a couple misadventures, including a hilarious run-in with Bigfoot. Goofy was trying to teach Max his family's "perfect cast" for fishing. While casting out the line he snags a steak that Pete was cooking on his RV's barbeque grill. The steak lands across the river and attracts the attention of Bigfoot. They hide from Bigfoot in the car and he is ransacking through their camping supplies. Max says he is hungry and just then a can of soup lands on the hood of the car. Goofy rolls down the window slightly to grab the can. Bigfoot notices and runs to try to get in the car. They get the soup in and roll the window back up, Bigfoot bounces off the car door into their stuff and a box falls on his head. He shakes off the box but Max's headphone/radio is around his ears and "Staying Alive" starts playing. The look on his face when he starts to feel the beat and dance along is priceless. I found a picture online, let me show you.

I mean, how can you not laugh at this?

So Goofy uses the cigarette lighter to heat the soup and while it is "cooking" reminisces about "Hi Dad" soup. When Max was young he used to use alphabet soup to spell out little messages like Hi Dad, Bye Bye, or I Love You. Both Max and Goofy got uncomfortable with that last one as they realized their relationship was not what it used to be. After Max ate his soup the passed the cup back to Goofy before curling up to try to sleep (while Bigfoot was sleeping on the roof of the car). Goofy's eyes began to tear up as he saw Max had written Hi Dad with the letters at the bottom of the cup. Very sweet, Max has taken his first step away from rebellious teenager.

Max wakes up in the middle of the night to Goofy's and Bigfoot's snoring. He pulls out a postcard and starts to write to Roxanne saying how close he is to LA and the Powerline concert. Just then his dad asks for more Hi Dad Soup, talking in his sleep. That makes Max reconsider and he erases his message and apologizes saying "Sorry I lied." He gets frustrated knowing that no matter what he does he's messed things up with Roxanne. He kicks the glove compartment and out pops the roadmap his dad has been using. The same map had been used for this trip for generations of Goofs. He grabs the pencil and erases the trip to the lake in Idaho and remarks the map to go to LA so he can get to the concert.
Before going back to sleep Max rips up the postcard and holds it out the window so the night breeze can carry the pieces away. Before the scene changes we see a piece that had got caught on a branch. Clearly we see the words "I lied" referring to both his story to Roxanne and what he just did with the map.

The next day while eating breakfast at a diner (I guess Bigfoot got bored and left in the night) Goofy decides to make Max the navigator for the road trip and hands the map to him saying he won't even look at it anymore. Now Max can keep his plans to go to LA secret even longer.

They make stops of things that Max wants to do. He realizes that his dad is not having fun so he decided to make some stops for Goofy too, like the house of yarn (a house made from a giant ball of yarn). But the best part, the funniest thing in the whole movie is this: while at a street fair or some such Goofy is watching a mime. Goofy decides to join the mime and makes like he's passing along an invisible wall to get to the mime. The mime then is pulling an invisible rope and Goofy offers his fingers as imaginary scissors. The mime presents the imaginary rope to Goofy, he cuts it with his fingers, and then a real piano falls on the mime. So funny.






Goofy finds out that Max had changed the map but gives him the opportunity to keep true to the trip. They come upon the last junction that they can take left to LA or right to Idaho. Max is indecisive until the last instant and yells out left. Goofy thinks that means his son is up to no good and is just a liar. Goofy stops the car at a scenic overlook by a canyon. He gets out in a huff and Max follows him trying to explain why he changed their destination. Goofy is too upset to listen to Max so Max goes and leans against the car. That's when they discover that Goofy didn't put the brake on. The car starts rolling down the road and they chase after it. All of their stuff gets knocked off from a rock formation and luckily one of the objects that comes flying toward them is Max's skateboard. They both hop on and catch up to the vehicle, still fighting the whole time about who is to blame for their problems. They manage to get into the car but the brake breaks. The car goes careening off the cliff into the canyon and lands on some rock formations, knocking them over one by one until the car lands in a river. Goofy tells Max that all he wanted was to take his boy fishing. Max yells back that he is not a little boy anymore and he has his own life. Goofy responds that he just wants to be a part of that life. They both get quiet and reflective as they sit atop the car floating down the river. They then sing a duet about how even though they are different people they wouldn't want to be in this situation with anyone else. They make up by the end of the song and then Max explains his situation to Goofy while they continue along the river. Goofy wants to help his son get the girl so he vows to help him get on stage for the concert. Max is hesitant and Goofy asks "How come you think I'm always going to lead you into some calamity?" Queue the waterfall they are heading towards. Goofy gets out of the water but Max is still on the roof of the car. Their fishing pole hits Goofy so he grabs it and uses it to catch the car and try to stop it. The log he was bracing against breaks and Max and the car go over the edge. Max then gets caught up in the tarp they used to cover their stuff on the car and the tie down ropes attached to it. It catches the updraft caused by the waterfall and becomes like a parachute holding him aloft. Goofy floats to the edge of the waterfall himself and reaches out towards Max with the fishing pole. The grip on the end comes loose though and Goofy falls. Max turns the fishing pole around and shows that even though he still hated his dad at the time he still paid attention to the "perfect cast" and used it to catch his father and reel him up. Goofy was so touched that he forgot they were in mortal peril.
Now wipe to the concert.





They get into the concert and Max and Goofy get separated. Goofy ends up on stage first while Max is on the lights above. Max encourages Goofy to do the moves required for the "perfect cast" and it ends up being a new dance move that Powerline adopts mid performance. Max falls in and all three of them start dancing. All of the kids from school are watching at home and see them on TV and start dancing themselves. The song that Powerline is singing is called I 2 I - it's about listening to someone's heart and seeing them for who they are, not who you want them to be. Very appropriate for the lessons Goofy and Max learned.

Max then stops by Roxanne's house on the way home and tells her the whole truth. She is a little mad but glad that he told her the truth. She said he didn't need to go to any lengths to impress her, though. She liked him from the first time she saw him and heard him laugh like his dad. He kisses her and then they both laugh, and he sounds just like his dad. He then introduces his dad to Roxanne, proving that he is no longer embarrassed by his dad.

Good story about family, honesty, and Bigfoot.




I used to quote this movie all the time. Here are my favorite lines:

PJ: Oh man. If my dad finds out he's going to nuke my entire existence.

Goofy: We're going to be away from it all.
Max: I don't want to get "away" from it all. I like "it all."

(As he's backing out of the driveway)
Goofy: Goodbye, house. Goodbye, yard. (Backs though the fence) Goodbye, pile of broken wood.

Max: My life is a living-
Lester: Hello!

Lester: Aww, you're so sad. Who's your favorite possum? (I just love the way he says it)

This one is my favorite
Goofy: While half asleep) How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the moon?
Max: Uh... three and a half?
(Goofy falls back asleep)

Holes

Holes

This movie was a birthday gift from my good friends Rick and Cheryl. I hated the advertisements for this movie, all they said was "You know the book, now watch the movie!" I had never heard of the book, so why would I want to watch the movie when the advertisements tell me nothing about it? Fortunately for me Cheryl knew the book and loved it and knew I loved movies, so she and Rick got it for me. I loved the movie from the very beginning. I didn't know who Shia LeBeouf was at the time, I had not yet started watching reruns of Even Stevens on the Disney Channel, but I thought he was a great young actor from watching him in this movie. Add in Eartha Kitt, Jon Voight, Sigourney Weaver, and Henry Winkler, how can you go wrong?

For those, like me, who had never read the book and who have not yet see the movie, this movie is about curses. The main character, Stanley Yelntas IV, is wrongfully accused of stealing a baseball player's charity donation because of a curse of bad luck that has affected his family for 5 generations. He is sentenced to go to a rehabilitation camp for boys which used to be a lake (Camp Greenlake is the name of the camp) but was cursed to dry up and never rain again when the townspeople lynched an African-American onion farmer named Sam 100 years prior.

A Spoiler Curse:

And the warden of the camp has been searching for buried treasure after her father and his father were cursed to never find it in the desert that used to be the lake.

By the end of the movie all the curses are lifted, within 24 hours of each other, actually. Very cool.

Let's watch:

The first part of the movie sets up how things are falling into place due to destiny. A spot opens up at the camp. A pair of shoes falls from the sky and hits Stanley on the head. When he is found with the shoes he is arrested for stealing them. Stanley's father is working on a cure for foot odor so stinky shoes are his life's work (which prompted Stanley to keep the shoes after they hit him). Once at camp Stanley meets another camper called Zero who never talks but when he hears about Stanley's arrest for the shoes asks if the shoes had red X's on them, which they did, revealing that he is somehow connected to the shoes and/or Stanley. What seems like a string of bad luck is actually leading to something great, it's just that nobody knows it yet.

Jon Voight's character, Mr. Sir, is so funny. The character himself is not funny, he doesn't say pithy things or do any slapstick, but the way that Voight portrays him is just so funny. Just prior to the start of the movie the character had given up smoking so he's on edge all the time from the nicotine withdrawal. He has a crazy look in his eyes, crazy hair, and he acts rather crazy at times, it's impossible not to laugh.

I have to say it's really weird seeing Dule Hill without James Roday. I know this movie was made before Psych, and I watched it before Psych, but after 6 seasons with those two together all the time, I just can't get over Dule without James.
It is really sweet seeing the romance between the onion farmer Sam (Dule Hill) and the schoolteacher Miss Katherine (Patricia Arquette). They exchange bags of his best onions for jars of her spiced peaches (very important later in the movie). He then goes on to start fixing up her little schoolhouse and ends up romancing her by quoting Poe's poem Anabelle Lee.

Making of an Outlaw:

It's sad what happens to the schoolteacher, Miss Katherine. Her relationship with Sam is illegal since they are biracial in 190? Texas. The townspeople kill Sam's prized mule, Mary Lou, burn his boat that he used to row across the lake to his onion field, and and kill him. They kill him because it's against the law to for him to kiss a white woman, but when she begs them to kill her too they refuse since there's no law against her kissing him. She decides to get revenge on the sheriff by shooting him dead in his own office. She then finally gives him the kiss he asked for earlier and decides to go on a rampage across the state, stealing from banks and stage coaches to punish the state for their stupid law and stupid ways. Every time she kills a man she kisses him while wearing lipstick, leading her to be called Kissing Kate Barlow.
Earlier in the move Stanley's family remarked that his great grandfather made a fortune in the stock market, disproving his father's curse until Kissing Kate Barlow stole everything he had and left him to die in the desert (that used to be Camp Greenlake). The robbery proved that the curse was indeed active on him. Her death scene is sad. She's so tired of the life she's led, tired of the hole that never healed when they killed Sam. She talks to his ghost, talks to the mayor of the now defunct town and curses him and his family as she kills herself with a poisonous lizard.

I love the part when the curses start being broken. Stanley finally fulfills the request of the long dead fortune teller who cursed his family in the first place. Immediately things turn around for his family. The camp counselors are confronted by his family's new lawyer who finds out that the warden and her lackeys are not doing everything legally. As soon as the camp is no longer controlled by a Walker it starts to rain, ending the curse on the land. The way everything comes together in a story like this is just as awesome to me as a cosmic alignment. Everyone gets what they deserve in the end, both the good guys and the bad guys.

I've seen and enjoyed other movies with bad marketing, but I think this is my favorite. Hope it comes out on blu ray eventually, I might wear out my DVD copy.