Crapshoot 2017: I'm Not Laughing/Finale

The year is over after this. Let us never speak of it again.

Traditionally, the proper end of Crapshoot is marked by a rundown of the subjects that went above and beyond the call of duty in badness. This year, such a task has been rendered unnecessary.

As always however, 2016 has managed to commit some sort of divine act of shitiness, not content to simply pummel me with the rest of the garbage that it brought forth but rather pile on the absolute worst I could have possibly experienced of the last 3 years combined into 3 lumps of cinematic war crimes that dare to call themselves comedy.

Admittedly, the films of any given year designed to illicit laughter composed of 2 hours of flat jokes tend to be fundamental failures of pain production any way but in a year of special achievement in awfulness, these films have somehow managed to map out new territories of bad that I hadn’t even conceived of existing.

Roughly Six years ago I attempted my first pass at Crapshoot with a look at Kevin Smith 2010 cinematic misfire “Cop Out,” a movie so bad that even Smith himself seems to wish he could erase his time working on it from existence.

As per the norm, I attempted to separate the artist from the art with regard to the movie both because, while I’ll admit to not being so above it myself, personally insulting creators for who they are rather than the work that pertains to the subject at hand is petty, immature and asinine, and at the time, I had not seen any of his previous work.

Currently however, I am 6 years older and just ever so slightly wiser, and have partaken in the man’s entire library of work, which leaves me feeling substantially vindicated when I ask myself the question of “What the fuck did I just sit through?” knowing that the man responsible for this monstrosity is responsible for at least 3 films that I like if not outright adore to pieces (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma).

The plot of 3 teenagers fending off an invasion of sentient Nazi bratwurst beneath the convenient store that they work at isn’t worth running down with any sort of fine tuned comb not because the film puts forth such little effort into its own making but simply because that would be counterintuitive to the very nature of what it is.

Perhaps even more so than Kevin Spacey’s prominent starring role in “Nine Lives,” “Yoga Hosers” is a weapons grade troll move enacted upon the largest audience possible.

The flat transitions between settings and line reads by actors that I refuse to believe were reading from any sort of script are strung together so awkwardly with no semblance of building plot or theme that you would swear the movie was cobbled together by a 13 year old Youtuber that just discovered Microsoft Movie Maker.

Then you make the realization that a 13 year old would have gotten bored with this sort of nonsense long before the quarter mark of the production reared its head.

I’m not exactly prudish when it comes to comedy but no level of low standards could ever dress up the disjointed, silly randomness that “Yoga Hosers” attempts to call humor as even the slightest bit funny no matter how drunk or high on your substance of choice the viewer may be.

The most damning thing about all of this however is that between his own prepackaged potshots at the film coordinated on his own podcasting network and his own shallow finger wagging at critics within the film itself make it clear just how much of this abomination was a giant joke played on anybody even mildly willing to see it.

His excuse may be his own daughter’s desire to kickstart an acting career but knowing that he’s done this sort of plotless madness in better movies that aren’t particularly good either makes it almost insufferable.

Rather than create some sort of satire regarding the hypocrisy of an older generation haranguing the youth of today over being young, the movie opts to ride the same jokes of millennial social media obsession and Canadian pronunciation into the ground. Instead of stylistically justifying the usage of certain random graphics and special effects ala “Scott Pilgrim,” it stays sedate and nonsensical until it randomly decides to ratchet up the energy for no real reason.

The two leads are so close to being a perfectly modernized Beavis and Butthead in their general obliviousness to the world outside of their own cell phones that the movie could have been easily rewritten into the best Mike Judge comedy never made in less than a weekend. Instead, their idiocy is supposed to be ironically funny yet unironically charming.

“Yoga Hosers” sucks because Kevin Smith actively wanted it to suck and the only thing preventing me from getting angry about subjugation to a 90 minute film that felt like a 2 hour marathon is that I can’t get over just how baffling it is to put that much effort into something that you gave not a single care for with regards to quality.

Maybe if it were a Youtube Red original production, I’d be a little bit softer on it but the notion that people were expected to pay to see this in a theater or otherwise buy it on DVD to experience top dollar nepotism from a film that was clearly not meant to be seen by more than the tens of people involved in bringing it to life is both relentlessly irksome and disappointing.

Though it pains me to speak ill of the dead, Garry Marshall may go down as one of the ultimate examples of old media greats living long enough to see themselves become the villains.

The late long time television and Hollywood veteran had been on a downward spiral for quite some time but while his holiday themed romance anthologies “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve” were only intellectually offensive in their stupidity and hollow nature, the farcically conceived “Mother’s Day” is all of the above in addition to offending in ways that I didn’t think were legitimately possible to accomplish.

Similarly to the aforementioned holiday themed rom-coms, “Mother’s Day” follows a series of independent plot threads that gradually weave in with one another as characters encounter each other at key moments in centered around, of course, mother’s day.

While the format had long since worn thin when it was using holidays of some sort of broader cultural recognition, this is the point in which a formula of debatable quality unambiguously collapses.

In keeping with the transcendent badness of “Yoga Hosers,” neither Garry Marshall nor his admittedly talented cast members seem to be aware of how close this film is to being a full on satire of the dated sitcom antics the director appears to have been locked into until the day that he died.

Everything moderately resembles reality until it has to resemble a bad 90s sitcom (Jennifer Aniston having a “meltdown” in her car that is oddly cohesive for rage), and nothing says sitcom like 40 year old Jason Sudeikis embarrassingly asking for a price check on tampons for his teenage daughter as though he were a teenager.

These painfully shallow moments are juxtaposed with manipulative scenes that would have you believe that the film has real heart and soul but I’d be hard pressed to believe that even the most media-illiterate middle American wouldn’t at least hesitate at watching a scene of the bizarrely unhinged Sudeikis crying at his Serviceman wife’s grave after being involved in a slap fight with a soccer referee ended by a sassy black woman stereotype.

This movie is so dated that it’s almost adorable how painfully flat its comedy would have fallen were it even aired on modern television but what really sets it apart is how far up its own ass it goes to buy into being hip and liberal feel good fodder.

“Mother’s Day” would have you believe that Hollywood is so liberal and progressive that the rest of the world could only hope to catch up to its understanding of life. How do they do this? By making Aasif Mandvi and Kate Hudson involved in an interracial marriage, something that could have been sweet if they simply let it be without acknowledging it as a plot point. What ensues is perhaps the very first time in my life that I have actually been offended by a movie, on behalf of white people.

Kate Hudson’s parents are brought to life by the utterly wasted talents of veteran character actors Robert Pine and Margot Martindale as retired Texans, who don’t like the idea of their daughter shacking it up with a “towelhead.”

I did not paraphrase this. This is actual dialogue in the movie that is used more than once. A derogatory term for a person of Arabic descent is thrown out casually as a means of criticizing America’s growing Islamophobia and irrational hatred of the Middle East, with regard to an Indian character.

But don’t worry, they don’t mean it in their hearts; their just loveable, whacky and traditional rough n’ tumble Texans that need to adapt their charms a little bit. By the end of the movie, they don’t even need to apologize.

What the Fuck?

Watching such veterans embarrass themselves with this dreck somebody was actually paid to write is just sad. This entire monstrosity of a subplot once again seems to come from a state that wants to boil the entire state of Texas, in which I have grown to call home after living a full childhood and majority of adolescence in New York, into a community of inbred backward rednecks despite having some of the most liberal minded and culturally developed cities in the country.

This despite the state in question having been duped into electing the Governator and cramming all of this into a movie filmed in Georgia, clearly because they didn’t want to spend more than $200 on a production budget.

And this isn’t even the most jaw dropping moment that I had watching the movie. The most colossal shock to my system occurred upon noticing that I was an hour into it, thought I’d only have about 25 more minutes to go and then made the mistake of pulling up the tracking bar on my DVD player to realize the movie was 2 hours long.

“Norm of the North,” “Alice: Through the Looking Glass,” “Max Steel,” all some of the worst films I’ve seen last year and the nicest thing that I could say about them is that at least they stayed short. This was made by a man whose claim to fame was more or less codifying the modern format of the 30 minute sitcom. How the hell did he get a pass to ramble on for 2 hours?

What the hell even needs to be said on this one?

Marlon Wayans. Strike 1. “50 Shades of Grey.” Strike 2. From here I could go on about Strike 3 being composed of the director’s filmography composing of previous Crapshoot alumn “A Haunted House 2,” that said sequel is a masterpiece compared to this, or that this is now the final film role of Florence Henderson but that strike should really be composed of just about everything that Strikes 1 and 2 bring to the table combined.

Gags that are gross more than funny, racial humor reliant on stereotypes with nary an iota of self awareness and quite frankly, as much as I’ve chewed up “Mother’s Day” for being 2 hours long, the hour and a half that I sat through in this film felt like a 5 hour chore that abolishes any good will that I could have built up in favor of a few clever set ups that are never properly followed through on.

Never did I even managed to chuckle during this abortion and rounding out the craptitude of the year that birthed it, “Fifty Shades of Black” has set a Crit Hit first for a film that I outright couldn’t even sit through in its entirety.

I got the gist of it all by the end; there isn’t exactly much in it to miss.

However, as I began to notice how disturbingly close strapping myself down to get out a single viewing of this thing was to forcing Malcolm McDowell to undergo the Ludovico treatment, I reached a snapping point in which, for my own mental safety, I would need to simply mute the film and pick up my tablet for about 5 minutes or so in favor of putting myself in a happier place. I did this roughly 3 or 4 times during the movie and while I never take pride in skipping chunks of anything meant to be analyzed, good or bad, I have no regrets and make no apologies.

I hope that the paltry profits Wayans continues to make on this cheap shit was worth my suffering this time around because, similarly to Michael Bay’s “Transformers” films, he has officially made my cinematic no fly list for the foreseeable future.

Hopefully “Fifty Shades of Black” enjoys being the worst thing to happen to cinema in 2016 because I don’t anticipate anybody involved in its making to appear here ever again if they’re actually the main stars of the production. I don’t anticipate seeing any of them together again in a film as long as I have a choice in what I watch.