Ep. 14 - Guilty Pleasures! vol. 2

This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] J.J.: So you were telling me that you had to get an MRI done. What's going on?

[0:09] Olaf: Yeah, I got I hurt my arm at work so I've been waylaid at home trying to figure it out and been going to physical therapy and all this stuff with my shoulder and finally got an MRI and today I got the results of that MRI and thankfully there was no tear or anything like that.

[0:28] J.J.: Oh nice.

[0:34] Olaf: So it's just they said it was just inflammation and tendinitis in the rotator cuff.

[0:40] J.J.: Okay. I've never had an MRI I would I've only seen them on TV and I think with the way technology is have they not found a way to improve the MRI machine or maybe they have and I'm just not aware of it but I just feel like are you still laying down and going into the tube thing?

[0:55] Olaf: You still lay down you still go into the tube which for the one I was in is quite small so like my arms are pressed up against the inside of the tube and they have I guess it's a camera that fits on my shoulder and they put that on and then they push me in they make sure that I'm comfortable they gave me like a little like wedge to go under my knees so that my legs.

[1:27] J.J.: Set the timer at 400 degrees and get ready.

[1:32] Olaf: Well then they're like we need you to stay absolutely still which I was like that no problem. Well they wanted my hand facing a specific way so then it went from just being motionless in like a rested state to having my hand in a specific position so after a while that really starts to build up because you're kind of tense trying to keep your hand.

[1:56] J.J.: Well see I feel like if you're wedged in that makes it that should be easier for you not to move as opposed to having all of this room.

[1:59] Olaf: Well yeah that does help but if they just said don't move and you're fine. Now I know that I'm not asking like I feel like these are all dumb questions but I would fall asleep I know it's really loud but how long are you in there 20 minutes?

[2:12] Olaf: I was in there for like 15 I guess it depends if you move around then it screws up and you either have to go back in or they just start over or whatever but they give you earplugs which is nice because there's a lot of banging and clanging from the machine.

[2:28] J.J.: This is what I'm saying it feels very archaic so like this sort of procedure is done enough where they should have found a way to not make it feel like you're it's like the 1940s.

[2:44] Olaf: It should be that big screen on Total Recall where you just walk through.

[2:51] J.J.: Or in Total Recall when you actually go into the vacation where you're sitting in a chair. And then you wake up suddenly and violently because they've triggered repressed memories.

[3:02] Olaf: Well we are diving back into a topic we've talked about before as a recurring sort of episode and I'm really looking forward to it so on that note let's go back to the movie theater.

[3:32] J.J.: I am so excited about today's topic we're back with another episode of Guilty Pleasures. I love this topic I have such a long list of Guilty Pleasure movies. Now the thing with these Guilty Pleasures is it doesn't mean that they bombed at the box office. It doesn't mean that they weren't successful in some way it just means that they're not necessarily great movies but people still love them.

[3:59] Olaf: Exactly like in the previous episode I think we mentioned some movies that maybe people have never even heard of or maybe didn't have a big audience or following but I feel like even as I looked at my long list there were a lot of movies that I would consider to be sort of popular movies in circles of friends and and like you said they weren't necessarily bombs they just weren't necessarily like heralded as great movies or even good movies they were just like you said Guilty Pleasures.

[4:25] J.J.: Because I do have some movies on this list that made a lot of money might have been received decently when it came out but maybe has just been abandoned and forgotten.

[4:39] Olaf: Right. But I also have movies that are terrible and I know they're terrible but it doesn't matter I love them anyway.

[4:44] J.J.: Yeah I'm excited too I don't know if I'm shortening my list because every time I get rid of two I'm adding three so it's kind of one of these addition by subtraction because I've I don't think my list has gotten shorter I think it's still.

[4:55] Olaf: Oh mine's definitely gotten longer.

[4:59] J.J.: Right. And that's okay because we'll always come back to this topic to talk about some more Guilty Pleasures and hey maybe we'll turn some heads maybe people will be like you know I need to check that out.

[5:07] Olaf: It's true. Hey it's great.

[5:11] J.J.: It's true and it's or they'll just be like we're crazy and they're terrible.

[5:14] Olaf: Well it's a well that I don't think will ever run dry as long as movies are being made. Although I will admit that the majority of my Guilty Pleasures are older movies.

[5:24] J.J.: Yes mine as well.

[5:29] Olaf: Yeah so you started the last time so I'm gonna start off this time if you don't mind.

[5:33] J.J.: Okay.

[5:36] Olaf: This first movie I'm about to mention it came out in the 90s mid 90s 1994. I guess it would be like a sci-fi action movie. This movie was actually I feel like this particular actor's most successful film.

[5:47] J.J.: Sci-fi action.

[5:52] Olaf: This actor up to this point had done a lot of movies in the mid 80s early 90s so he was a martial arts action star.

[6:04] J.J.: Oh.

[6:11] Olaf: And so this movie though sort of a different pond to swim in in terms of the action or the storyline behind it.

[6:16] J.J.: Oh I thought I knew what it was.

[6:23] Olaf: Well I won't hold you in too much more suspense. The movie I'm referring to my first Guilty Pleasure of this episode for me is the 1994 science fiction action movie Time Cop.

[6:30] J.J.: Time Cop. I was thinking Jean-Claude Van Damme but I was thinking of a different.

[6:37] Olaf: He did this one right after Hard Target but yeah no Time Cop is an ultimate Guilty Pleasure for me. I gotta say I agree Time Cop great movie. It's a very it's a well here's it's it's a lot of fun there's there's problems with it for sure but it doesn't matter I mean it's he plays this at first it starts off in 1994 in present-day and he's a cop and he's married to Mia Sarah from Ferris Bueller's Day Off so already we're off on a good note because I'm a huge Mia Sarah fan. I loved her.

[7:05] J.J.: Yes and I mean she's not in a lot of it but she is a main driving force in the movie and then you know events happen at the beginning of the movie and his house explodes she dies and then it jumps ten years so now we're in 2004 and this is where the movie feels really dated because now we're well beyond 2004 now and you're like this is not how people are dressing or like most movies get it wrong because it's hard to.

[7:33] Olaf: Oh yeah but you would think even with like they I think they overshot what it was going to be like just ten years later in terms of technology being able to time travel for starters.

[7:42] J.J.: Well I think in the early 90s we as a society were far more like science is great and progress is great and nowadays we're like let's go back in time to where science is evil it is based on a dark horse like a dark horse comic book series of the same name right it does have existing source material that is based off of but this was like Jean-Claude Van Damme's like first movie to ever hit a hundred million worldwide not even like domestic so prior to that his movies we had a he had a fan base in his movies popular but he wasn't breaking box-office records and this movie was his first big hit.

[8:18] Olaf: Yeah Ron Silver the late Ron Silver plays Senator McComb who's running for president so he backs this new time travel initiative for his own gain of course but there are certain obviously major issues with the movie like how they go back in time they have to get into this like big almost like they took the DeLorean and they really tricked it out and made it more utilitarian but then they go at a high speed into what would be a brick wall.

[9:02] J.J.: Well yeah because it's on a rail right it was more like a it was on a rail on like the cement wall and then I guess however fast they're going the machine or the vehicle that they're in sort of goes through this sort of bubble yeah however I felt like it was more like HG Wells time machine than it was the DeLorean.

[9:14] Olaf: Well yes okay I'll go with that I'll go so it's like this hybrid HG Wells DeLorean mashup but here's where I take issue with it whenever they get to whatever time period they're going in they're no longer in that vehicle they're just on their feet or they get thrown into the water or they're like on the highway and so whatever vehicle they were in to get there well I don't know where it is is some sort of parking garage somewhere who knows because then when they decide to go back whenever they're done in in time and they go back they just run through this bubble again and then they're magically back into their vehicle that they took to get there so certain things like that but who cares it is a whole lot of fun.

[10:01] J.J.: Jean-Claude Van Damme's hairstyle is ridiculous he's got this like long hair Wolverine hairstyle mullet he's trying to pull off but the idea here is that you know Ron Silver's character is running for president and so every time a change happens because now in 2004 now that Ron Silver has what he needs to run for president now he wants to shut down the time-traveling program which is the thing that he approved ten years before and so through like these easy series of events Jean-Claude Van Damme's able to figure out who the bad guy is and now he's got to stop him but then it becomes this sort of race against time no pun intended to save himself because then Ron Silver's character realizes well if I just eliminate Jean-Claude Van Damme from 1994 he won't be a problem in 2004 and so then it sort of circles back to the beginning of the movie but overall it's it doesn't age well some of the situations sort of resolve themselves really quickly but I did like some of the ideas of like same space can't occupy the same matter can't occupy the same space at the same time there's a moment where Ron Silver's younger version gets cut and then the scar immediately shows up on the older version of Ron Silver which I thought was kind of cool like okay they're trying to so there were certain time travel elements I mean hey they even bring it up in Avengers Endgame as one of the many movies that Don Cheadle lists as why the how to explain time travel a time cop gets a shout out but again it is it is that very guilty pleasure because I'm not a huge Jean-Claude Van Damme fan I know a lot of people love kickboxer Lionheart universal soldier like see I would say that for me Jean-Claude Van Damme in himself is a guilty pleasure.

[12:03] Olaf: Yeah for me because I look back and I'm like I like a lot of his movies and spoiler alert a few of them are on my list I'm not talking about any of them today but we will visit them at some point and that's a good point because I think he is one of those actors where you don't want to admit that you like anything that he's been in maybe universal soldier so it's for me the one Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that I'll be like yeah that I've always been like yeah I really liked it it's time cop so well I have not seen time cop in a while but I it's definitely one of those where I'm immediately like yes I will sit down and watch that because what I love about most guilty pleasure movies is you can kind of just turn your brain off check it at the door yeah and just have some fun.

[12:41] J.J.: That's fantastic that's a that's a good one that's a that is a great start I last one I nailed the guilty pleasure theme I think I'm still on top of it for this episode and my first one honestly I don't feel that it's a guilty pleasure I feel that it's a pleasure that a lot of people have missed out on it's super fun for anyone who likes spooky season and Halloween this is a great movie to sit down and watch I will say that it came out in 1987 has not aged well in a lot of the dialogue like there's a lot of words you can't really use today.

[13:23] Olaf: Yeah that was the mid 80s comedy problem it's a movie of its time it has a meta score of 61 which is pretty good I know exactly what you're talking about it has a runtime of an hour and 22 minutes and turns out that the studio it there's actually a longer version but the studio did not want it anywhere around an hour and a half so they ended up having to cut 13 minutes of the movie and I'll tell you you can kind of feel it because this movie does not stop it foot on the gas some things don't make sense they just happen to be there and it's just like wow there's a lot of coincidence and convenience in this movie but I am talking about the fantastic kid movie Monster Squad.

[13:40] J.J.: Yeah Monster Squad yes it is so fun and there's not a ton of well-known people in this movie like you've got Tom Noonan who was from Manhunter he was in Robocop 2 he plays Frankenstein's monster yeah this whole movie centers around the Universal Studios monsters but they are not the Universal Studios monsters right when they were designing all of the monsters for this they had to

[14:53] Olaf: They designed them in a way that they say suggested that they were those characters but they weren't because of rights issues, so they had to like kind of they couldn't look exactly like the universal version. Honestly, I can't really tell the design; it was all done by Stan Winston and yeah, they're amazing. They all look fantastic, but you got Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, you've got the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And the crazy thing is apparently three of those monsters were already in the town. Oh, that's apparently Dracula and Frankenstein's monster were the only ones that weren't there already. That's part of the 13 minutes that they cut out explaining that like all of us.

Oh my gosh, there's so many things missing that it's like whoa, how did what a who? Yeah, because so okay, so this movie centers around a bunch of kids who have their own little club called the Monster Squad. They have a club where they just talk about monsters and they draw different monsters and they're just big fans of monsters and monster movies. And all of a sudden, this plane that's carrying the body of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, Dracula wakes up, throws Frankenstein's monster's box down into the swamp that's in this town, and he goes down. It's this weird, they don't get into it very much, but ultimately they're trying to take over the world and the kids end up fighting them and they have to get this amulet to send them back in time. And now you have this movie. You own it?

[16:40] JJ: Oh yeah, yeah, I own it. Absolutely. The minute it became available and I saw it, I was like purchase. Yeah, I love this movie as a kid. I still do. It's still fun. Like I watch it now and I've got a more critical eye, so I'm like whoa, hold on. Well, that's what I'm saying. Literally when Dracula gets down on the ground in this town, the next time you see him, because he's just like a vampire bat with these glowing red eyes, the next time you see him, he pulls up in this decked-out hearse mobile that's got like fangs for a grill and all this. I'm like where'd he get that? And he's got a cane now with a wolf's head on it. And all of a sudden, the Mummy, which was in a museum in the town, shows up and this guy who's like, I'm a werewolf, somebody locked me up, and he gets killed by the cops.

He shows up as the werewolf. They just know where to be. And then Dracula points the cane at the water where the Frankenstein's monster box is, and it's almost like a scene out of Empire Strikes Back and Yoda lifting the X-wing. But then all of a sudden, you're like wait, Dracula has the Force? But then it's the Creature from the Black Lagoon lifting up the box and chucking it on there, and then they resurrect Frankenstein.

[18:04] Olaf: So this is what I'm gonna say. I saw this movie one time when I was a kid and just once.

[18:13] JJ: Yeah.

[18:14] Olaf: Because I thought it was not good. And then, and it's like Goonies but for Halloween.

[18:21] JJ: No, that is such a wow, that is such an insult to Goonies, man. That is so bad. No, see, because you're describing this whole movie to me and I don't remember a single thing, and it just sounds really, really awful. It doesn't sound good in any way.

[18:36] Olaf: Like you say, this movie feels dated. It was dated like the month it came out. Like the following year, it already felt really bad. This is the same year that The Lost Boys came out, and I would take The Lost Boys over Monster Squad every single time.

[18:48] JJ: I don't know.

[18:49] Olaf: You don't know?

[18:50] JJ: I hold them at the same.

[18:57] Olaf: What? No, Lost Boys and Monster Squad? No, no. Lost Boys is what I would consider a cult classic, where Monster Squad is just what you say, it's a guilty pleasure, and that's what we're talking about. But I would not in any way, shape, or form—

[19:08] JJ: You've already insulted the Goonies, and now you're going to insult The Lost Boys by telling me you're holding it on the same plane? No, it was written by Shane Black, Shane Black who had just written Lethal Weapon.

[19:20] Olaf: I know, it's also got Mary Ellen Trainer, who was the mom in The Goonies, and she was a psychiatrist in Lethal Weapon. She was also in Die Hard. Yeah, R.I.P. She died young. You've got John Grease.

[19:40] JJ: Yeah, John Grease.

[19:41] Olaf: Yeah, from most of the real genius and Napoleon Dynamite. So you've got a couple recognizable faces in it, but it's mostly a lot of unknowns. It's just fun. I have always liked monster movies. I've always loved the classic monsters, and despite like a lot of loopholes, this movie's great. And you know, you have to look past some of the dialogue because it's like, oh, you can't say that anymore when you're cutting a live-action movie to an hour and 22 minutes. That is your first red flag.

[20:20] JJ: Well, that wasn't—

[20:21] Olaf: I know, I understand the studio, but Men in Black 2 is an hour and 22 minutes.

[20:27] JJ: Well, it's not a good—this is my point. This is my point. It's fun. It hit right at a perfect time for me as a kid. Even now, I can watch it and have a lot of fun. It's shot well, it looks good, and the creature effects by Stan Winston, fantastic. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's very rushed, and man, I feel like if you added those 13 minutes, maybe even add a few more, you could have filled in some of those loopholes.

[21:03] Olaf: And this is Olaf's plug for a director's cut.

[21:05] JJ: Oh man, that would be fantastic. We get a director's cut of—guys, if you've never seen Monster Squad, do yourself a favor, check it out. It's fun. It's perfect for October and spooky season, which is interesting because, and maybe this is because it's not good, but I'm surprised that it hasn't gotten some sort of like 31 Days of October treatment on, what is it, Freeform or whoever does the 31 Days of October Halloween?

[21:29] Olaf: Well, it did not do well when it came out.

[21:36] JJ: No, no, and then it kind of disappeared. But there has been kind of a resurgence; it's gained popularity, it's gained an audience over time. So I'm not alone in enjoying this movie.

[21:43] Olaf: Well, we've almost spent just as long as the runtime of the movie talking about this movie, so let's move on.

[22:09] JJ: Okay, well, Monster Squad, check. So for my second pick tonight, I'm gonna go with Gone with the Wind.

[22:16] Olaf: No, but the sequel to Gone with the Wind called Scarlet starring Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley.

[22:24] JJ: No, we're not going to talk about that. My second movie is a sports comedy that came out in 1991. It's college football, to be more precise.

[22:33] Olaf: Oh man, I think I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm actually sad it's not on my list because I forgot about it.

[22:41] JJ: I okay. Oh man, I love this movie so much. I mean, they get you right at the beginning with the Bill Conti music score. So the guy who does Rocky, the score for Rocky, does the score for this movie. I'm talking about Necessary Roughness starring Scott Bakula.

[23:06] Olaf: Scott Bakula, right in his Quantum Leap years where he was given an opportunity to make some movies. He's, you know, number one on the call sheet for this movie. If you love The Replacements, you don't get The Replacements with Keanu Reeves without Necessary Roughness.

[23:25] JJ: Yeah, oh, Scott Bakula plays like this mid-30s guy. The opening sequence, the music kicks in, and it's this awesome music. It makes you want to go out. I love the music football, but he's on his tractor and he's riding his tractor, cigarette in his mouth, baseball cap on, and you think he's going to do some actual farming, but he's not. He's got a bag of footballs, and he's got this makeshift, you know, dummy football player probably about 70 yards out with a helmet on and like a torn-up 88 jersey, and he's just snapping to himself, throwing bombs to this music, and that's the whole opening credits. It's just him doing that, and you're like, all right, it's so good. And what a cast you've got.

[24:27] Olaf: Oh yeah, Jason Bateman, yeah, Sinbad. Heck, you got Rob Schneider, Hector Elizondo, Robert Loja. You got Larry Miller.

[24:34] JJ: Yeah, oh, is this my movie?

[24:36] Olaf: Don't be jealous.

[24:37] JJ: I'm so jealous that you're talking about it, not me. I love this movie so much. I've watched it so many times, so many times. And so yeah, so the idea here is that the Texas State University Armadillos have just come off their third straight national championship, but now they are riddled with scandal for bribes and booster incentives and cars and all this. And this is actually ripped from the headlines because it was sort of based off the Southern Methodist University SMU scandal of the 80s. And so TSU has to now like revamp their whole program, and Hector Elizondo gets recruited to be the new head coach. And so then he brings in his old pal Robert Loja, and Robert Loja is classic Robert Loja good.

He's got the raspy voice, he's upset in every scene he's in, and it's just perfect. It's a counter, it's a nice balance with him and Hector Elizondo's Coach Ed Straight Arrow Genero. And so he's brought in to coach, and so they have to basically build a team from the student body. So they can't recruit anybody because they don't have their own probation, they can't give scholarships out, so they're basically holding, and I still don't understand why they're holding tryouts in the gymnasium and not on the football field, but they're clearly holding football tryouts in the basketball gym, which makes it really challenging to throw passes with the basketball net hanging down. But it's a mix for great comedy, and so through all of that, yes, it turns out that Scott Bakula was the best high school quarterback of that, you know, of his class, but as you find out later on, he didn't play college, and so he's eligible, and so he comes, he's 34 years old, and he's gonna be the arm of the Armadillos, yeah, and try to solve your season. And so yeah, there's a lot of things you're like, this movie is so ridiculous. Like Sinbad plays a college professor with one year—

[26:35] JJ: Yeah, he's like a chemistry professor who's got one year of eligibility left.

[26:40] Olaf: And so Scott Bakula, through one conversation, one two-minute conversation, manages to convince Sinbad to suit up and play linebacker for the Armadillos, which again is great, makes no sense as well because he's also in his mid-30s playing defense.

[27:00] JJ: Well, the team plays Iron Man football. They have to play Iron Man football, so he's playing—

[27:05] Olaf: Oh, so he's playing both sides of the ball?

[27:06] JJ: Yeah, because Larry Miller, who's the dean, and he's brilliant in just about everything he's in, and for those who don't remember Larry Miller, he's in Pretty Woman also with Hector Elizondo, but Larry Miller plays the— in Pretty Woman, he's the— when they go to one of the department stores, and yeah, yeah, and he just plays these types of weasel-type characters to a T, and he plays the dean who would rather have the football team completely, you know, abolished from the university.

[27:39] Olaf: Yeah, he feels that football's beneath—

[27:40] JJ: Right, right, and so he's doing everything he can to make sure that they don't succeed. Rob Schneider, in what would be considered a throwaway role as the commentator of the games, he's not in a lot of it, but he was right there basically just being asked to play his copy machine character from Saturday Night Live.

[28:03] Olaf: But he's in a sound booth, you know, all by himself.

[28:05] JJ: He's great. Yeah, Rob Schneider is one of those people who even on SNL, he shows up, and whatever he brings that day, you either love it or you hate it, right? I love him. I love him in this movie. He's so good because he's so sarcastic in this subtle way where he's just kind of like very flippant with every sort of—

[28:20] Olaf: Well, it's like a Major League.

[28:21] JJ: Yeah, it is. It's very Bob Uecker, except he's by himself.

[28:27] Olaf: And so what I love about—there's a lot of things I love about the movie. One, it's just fun. Two, it's a 10-game series, but it's not about how Scott Bakula and Sinbad and this ragtag bunch of football players are going to find a way to have a winning season. They go 0 and 8 for their first eight games, and then it isn't until the last two where they start piecing things together. So it really isn't about them winning; it's more about just doing what they can with what they have, including recruiting Kathy Ireland, who at the time was an amazing model, Sports Illustrated model. She had her—she was, I mean, she's still beautiful.

[29:11] JJ: Yes, absolutely. She was at the height of her powers.

[29:16] Olaf: Yeah, and so she plays a college soccer player who they recruit to be the kicker. And yeah, like you mentioned, Jason Bateman, who I forgot was in more of the movie. Like for some reason, I knew he was in the movie.

[29:26] JJ: Oh yeah, he's in it a lot. He's in it a lot. This is interesting because to me, it's like one of those things with Bateman where he had just finished Hogan Family, the TV show. He hadn't had a lot of success movie-wise.

[29:37] Olaf: What are you talking about? Teen Wolf 2, right? He hadn't had a lot of success movie-wise, and so he was in this movie.

[29:48] J.J.: He's like maybe the fifth or sixth person that you're really focusing on. Well, I mean, other than like the two coaches, Scott Bakula, his love interest, and everybody else. Yeah, they're kind of supporting. Everyone else is just kind of ensemble-supporting. But everybody has something to do.

[30:06] Olaf: Right. What was interesting is after this movie, Jason Bateman sort of, I mean, this movie came out in '91. He maybe, I don't know, I'd have to dive in and see what he had done, but then he sort of disappeared for a good decade. But the movie overall, you know, Harley Jane Kozak plays the love interest. She was the wife in Arachnophobia, like right before this. But no, what I love is that the first game of the season, they play Southwest Texas State University, which is the college I ended up going to, and they play them the first game. And of course, they lose to Southwest.

[30:36] J.J.: Weren't Southwest Texas in the movie? Weren't they kind of the bad guys?

[30:41] Olaf: No, no, they're not. No, they're not. They just play them in week one. The irony there about Southwest Texas is that 10 years later, Southwest Texas changes their name to Texas State University. So that was kind of funny. No, the rival, I don't even call them a rival, the undefeated college team in that sort of conference is just the Texas Colts.

[31:03] J.J.: Oh, okay. No, I mean, there's so many things like the Sinbad, you just sort of forget that he's a chemistry teacher and all of his responsibilities as a teacher. He's okay. He's like, I'm just going to play football now and I'll also teach.

[31:16] Olaf: Is he still teaching? Because everybody else still has to go to class.

[31:19] J.J.: Right. And I would think is the dean, I would think the dean would not be okay with him doing both. I feel like he would have been like, you have to either pick one or the other, but he had one year of eligibility left. So I guess he's able to do that. No, but I love Necessary Roughness. I watched it a ton when I was a kid. And again, I feel like you don't get the movie, The Replacements with Keanu Reeves without this movie because when The Replacements came out and I love The Replacements also, but it's basically the same idea of this quarterback who didn't get a shot at the pros. And so he's given this opportunity and then we have to put this team together because of the strike. It's very much the same idea.

[31:59] Olaf: No, it's got a very similar feel to it, but they're both excellent.

[32:06] J.J.: Oh, yeah. And both guilty pleasures, because I'm pretty sure Replacements is on my list.

[32:10] Olaf: See, and I wouldn't, what's funny is that I wouldn't put Replacements as a guilty pleasure. I just think it's great.

[32:14] J.J.: No, I just think it's great.

[32:21] Olaf: I think it's great too. And I think a lot of people would agree, but I also don't think that it did well.

[32:26] J.J.: Oh, I think it did. I did way better than Necessary Roughness, but the Necessary Roughness, the music for me, every time I hear it, I'm like, this is great. You got the horns, you got the drums. Guys, check out Necessary Roughness. It is fantastic. It's such a fun watch from beginning to end.

[32:47] Olaf: And on one last note, the last time I watched it, I felt like this feels like a Quantum Leap episode where Sam Beckett leaps into Paul Blake and then has an opportunity to go to college and put right what once went wrong and help this team win a game with this team. And then he can leap on out.

[33:07] J.J.: You're just missing out. You really are. That's such a great movie.

[33:12] Olaf: Yeah. I love me some Necessary Roughness. You finally scored an A plus.

[33:19] J.J.: Oh, get out. Oh, and Time Cop? Time Cop was a solid.

[33:26] Olaf: Yeah, that's true. You're doing well this episode. All right. So my next movie came out in 1995.

[33:36] J.J.: Okay. It's got a Metascore of 46.

[33:42] Olaf: I love how you give us the Metascore. I don't do that. I feel like I love that you do that.

[33:49] J.J.: Yeah. Well, I want to put it out there how it's received. It has got a decent cast, all very young. I will tell you right now, in my opinion, I love this movie. I'll watch it anytime it's on. The movie, I think, ages well. The technology in it does not.

[34:06] Olaf: Oh, I'm thinking of it.

[34:06] J.J.: Oh, this movie, it is so dated. It is Hackers. It stars a young Angelina Jolie.

[34:15] Olaf: Matthew Lillard.

[34:15] J.J.: Matthew Lillard. Johnny Lee Miller. You got Jesse Bradford. Fisher Stevens is in it.

[34:23] Olaf: Yeah. Wendell Pierce from The Wire.

[34:23] J.J.: Yeah. Mark Anthony, the singer. When he was trying to have an acting career, he's in it. And you got Penn Jillette in it as well.

[34:30] Olaf: Wow. I'm going to tell you right now, I know Hackers, but I've never seen it.

[34:35] J.J.: Oh, dude, it is so nineties.

[34:45] Olaf: Oh, yeah. And the technology is so bad now because it is you got discs. You've got they're just talking about modems and laptops are just brand new. But it's so like I'm looking at the trailer. It's so nineties.

[35:00] J.J.: Oh, no. Oh, it's like emo technology. I mean, and again, I know the movie, I just never seen it. So I mean, I know Angelina Jolie's bad haircut. Hack the planet.

[35:05] Olaf: Yeah. This movie is so fun. And fun fact, Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie, they fell in love.

[35:14] J.J.: Yeah. Making the movie got married shortly after it came out. But and Matthew Lillard is just like finding himself as Matthew Lillard. This is right before Scream.

[35:28] Olaf: Yeah. Oh, this movie is so fun. Everybody's in it is great. It's like they've all got their call signs. Zero Cool. You've got Acid Burn. Crash Override. It is so fun to watch. Honestly, I would recommend anyone not of that time period to watch it to get a fun idea of what technology was like back then, because even in this movie, the technology is still exaggerated and futurized, even though it gets outdated really fast in real life.

[36:01] J.J.: Yeah, it's so outdated. It's like it's like watching The Net with Sandra Bullock.

[36:07] Olaf: Yes. It's that same idea with.

[36:12] J.J.: Yeah. Just with a lot more neon and straps and stuff. It's so fun. It starts with Johnny Lee Miller's character. As a kid, he like creates this virus that shuts everything down and he gets arrested and he's told that he can't have a touch tone phone or the Internet or a computer until he's 18. And then the time jump to him being 18 and they've just moved to New York, he and his mom. And he goes to school where he meets other hackers and meets Angelina Jolie. And he's like in love with her, but they develop this like back and forth pranking each other kind of thing at first, like they don't really like each other. But then one of the young hackers who's trying to get in with everybody else and prove himself happens to hack into this corporation and happens to come across this big conspiracy that's run by Fisher Stevens character.

The plague, I think, is his call sign. And he's like uploaded this worm that's taking little bits of money from all these transactions, very office space like and Superman 3. Now he's like setting up all these hacker kids to like take the fall for this virus that he's put in called the Da Vinci. It's just hilarious because then all the hackers band together and they're fighting against him. And it's just nonsense, but it's so fun.

[37:42] J.J.: Yeah. For me, I'd have to just watch it just to see what it is because having not seen it. And again, I'm aware of hackers. And when it came out, I was kind of like, this isn't interesting to me. So it came and went off my radar.

[37:57] Olaf: I think it still holds up despite the very outdated technology. It's shot really well. It moves really fast. It's hip. It's cool. Everybody in it is doing a great job. You're rooting for everybody. Fisher Stevens is just chewing the scenery as the bad guy. It's fun. I can't recommend it enough. I think it's super fun and get a kick to see how things used to be because they did do their research. They spent some time with real hackers. They show you some techniques in the movie that actually used to work to hack certain things. And it's fun.

[38:39] J.J.: Yeah. It's got a really good cast.

[38:39] Olaf: Yeah. And they all went on to do. This movie did not hold them back.

[38:44] J.J.: No. And honestly, I think this might have been my introduction to Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie.

[38:50] Olaf: Probably because Angelina Jolie, for me, wasn't until a few years later with Gia and Johnny Lee Miller. This was right before Trainspotting.

[38:55] J.J.: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, good. Hey, man. I don't know if people would be like, no, man, are you talking about hackers? It's great.

[39:00] Olaf: I don't think it's a guilty pleasure.

[39:04] J.J.: Oh, it's a guilty pleasure.

[39:10] Olaf: I think it's a guilty pleasure. It's definitely more on the popular side of a guilty pleasure movie. But again, that Metascore was, what, 24?

[39:18] J.J.: 46.

[39:32] Olaf: All right. Well, for my third film, I'm staying in the year 1991. Another stacked cast. It's set in the daytime television world of soap operas starring Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Jr.

[39:41] J.J.: This is a guilty pleasure?

[39:51] Olaf: Elizabeth Shue and Carrie Fisher, to name a few. I'm talking about Soap Dish. And yes, this is a guilty pleasure. It's a funny movie and it's fun and it's great. But I don't like, hey, we've said this. Some of these guilty pleasure movies would be popular movies. It's got a Metascore of 65.

[40:12] J.J.: That's pretty good. Didn't one of yours have 61 or something?

[40:20] Olaf: That's true. This is a whole four more points. But this movie is so fun and ridiculous. Gary Marshall's in it too. So many people. Whoopi Goldberg, Terry Hatcher. The backdrop is a soap opera. Sally Field is kind of like the Susan Lucci of the soap opera world, except that she wins. But she's been on this long running soap opera. And you find out that Kevin Kline's doing dinner theater in Florida, Death of a Salesman, because he was once on the show, but he got fired 20 years prior. Whoopi Goldberg plays the head writer and Sally Field's friend and Robert Downey Jr. as a 26 year old producing this soap opera. So kudos for him for landing this job. But he's very infatuated with Kathy Moriarty's character who's on the show as well. But then through a series of events, you know, the soap, the real world becomes a soap opera esque as well. Elizabeth Shue's character is introduced as Sally Field's niece. And it sort of just goes on from there.

[41:30] J.J.: To me, I've always loved this movie because I think the dialogue and the situations are hilarious because it is very much like a soap opera is so ridiculous. Gary Marshall comes in towards in bits and pieces of the movie as like the head of the network. And he's got some of the best dialogue in one of his first scenes where he's like, there was a lady making sausages almost tied us last week, you know, like in the ratings, they got quiz shows that are beating us, you know, it's just a bunch of just ridiculous stuff.

[41:52] Olaf: Ben Stein plays one of the writers in the writers room.

[41:56] J.J.: Gosh, it has been so long since I've seen this movie. I don't remember a lot about it. I do remember it. My mom loved it. She watched it a lot.

[42:07] Olaf: And my mom too. And we watched it together. This movie is so great because they're all so good in what they're tasked to do. Like Robert Downey Jr. as the, you know, he'll throw his mom under the bus to try and get his show ratings. But he really wants to hook up with Kathy Moriarty's character. He doesn't care how he does it. Kevin Kline is just happy to be back. He's getting this opportunity. He's got this idea of a one man Hamlet that he wants to put on stage that he's hoping he'll get a chance to do.

[42:35] J.J.: Yeah. Katherine, Jimmy, I'm rewatching the trailer on mute right now. It's so like, oh, yeah, I remember this.

[42:41] Olaf: Yeah, it's so good. And then there's just interesting behind the scene sort of facts like Kevin Kline was supposed to be in Hook, but he had to do reshoots to Soap Dish. So Robin Williams replaced them, which I find hard to believe that Robin Williams wasn't the first choice. I love Kevin Kline. I don't think that he could have portrayed Peter Banning, Peter Pan or Peter Pan.

[43:03] J.J.: Yeah, like he could have done the grown up version. But the thing that sells it is when he reconnects with Peter Pan, his younger side.

[43:14] Olaf: Yeah. Yeah.

[43:14] J.J.: Kathy Mariarty joined Soap Dish late. Gina Davis was supposed to be that role as Montana Morehead, but she did Thelma and Louise instead, which Thelma and Louise is a fantastic film. So good choice. I don't think I could have seen Gina Davis is that kind of like cutthroat.

[43:32] Olaf: Yeah, she yeah. No, Kathy Mariarty is great. They're all that's the thing. They're all so well cast in this movie and they are all fully invested in what they're doing in the ridiculousness of what they have to do. The actor that plays Sally Field's husband on the show is like 25 years younger and his name is Bolt.

[43:53] J.J.: Yeah. And there's one line where they're in a scene, they're shooting a scene of the show and his character runs in. He goes, are you OK? I was at the gym doing leg lifts when Father Corey told me to come on over like he literally tells you that he was at the gym doing leg lifts and he's like covered in sweat. It's just so ridiculous, but it's so amazing.

[44:26] Olaf: I never get tired of watching it. It's never old to me. And because they're not really I mean, it does it feels dated just because nowadays people would have cell phones and everybody would be recording everything on their cell phone.

[44:41] J.J. Gonzalez: John Tish and Lisa Gibbons are in it as themselves. And we had talked about Carrie Fisher and how people just see her as Princess Leia and all that, but in this movie she plays like the casting director who's like casting in the office upstairs while they're shooting downstairs. Yeah, she's so good. And she's not in a lot of it, but the scenes that she's in, she's great. She's perfect. Yeah, Soap Dish, for me, will never get old, will be something that I'll always enjoy, and I feel is a straight-up guilty pleasure, for sure. I mean, I feel like it was more popular than that, but again, we've talked about a movie that might have been popular, but then it disappeared. And I would agree, Soap Dish definitely has disappeared. But it's still available. You can still find it on certain streamers. It's out there on more than one. Yeah, I'd love to find it because I need to give it a rewatch because it's been years since I saw it.

[45:53] Olaf Adsit: Well, we're saving the best for last. I'm going to get an A+. I'm going to get an A++.

[46:04] J.J. Gonzalez: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, because this movie is terrible and I love it. I really do. I don't know why, because it's not good. It makes no sense because they cut like a half hour out of it. It looks bad, but I got to tell you, most everyone in it is doing their best. Okay. It's got a meta score of 24. I'm not telling you the year just yet because I feel like you're just too good with the years and that's what's going to give it away. Are you going to tell me who's in it or are you just going to go out and just throw it out there? I'm just going to throw it out there. I want you to remember what it was like to watch your favorite movie and then we're going to do a sequel to it and it's going to have all the elements, but at half the price and it's just going to look terrible.

[46:50] Olaf Adsit: So this is a sequel?

[46:50] J.J. Gonzalez: I'm talking about Superman 4, The Quest for Peace.

[47:02] Olaf Adsit: Oh, my God. This movie is utter trash. This is the movie, on a side note, that started the discussion about doing guilty pleasure. There you go. This was mentioned and you said, oh, that's a guilty pleasure, by the way. Christopher Reeve doing his best.

[47:16] J.J. Gonzalez: So I did a little digging on this and-

[47:19] Olaf Adsit: I know a lot.

[47:20] J.J. Gonzalez: Well, so Christopher Reeve, he was paid a lot of money. I think it was like $6 million-

[47:25] Olaf Adsit: Which was a lot in '87.

[47:26] J.J. Gonzalez: Just to reprise his role as Superman, Canon Films had taken over the rights and they were in dire straits financially and they thought by getting Superman, that would help boost them out of their money problems. But because they're idiots, they made a lot of bad choices during the making of this. The movie actually used to run around two hours. It's an hour and a half. They cut it down because Canon Films was like, if we make the movie shorter, then movie theaters will be able to play it more. So people will come and pay more money to see it. So they'll get more money that way. But because they do that, you cut 30 minutes out of a movie, nothing's going to make sense. It's so inconsistent. There was a whole other character that was cut out of the movie completely. It's not good. But you've got Christopher Reeve, who co-wrote the movie. You've got Gene Hackman is back as Lex Luthor. They brought back Margot Kidder. She does a fine job.

[48:33] Olaf Adsit: She does.

[48:34] J.J. Gonzalez: But it's almost like she's on the razor's edge of losing her mind. But there's a reason why she's... That's a whole other story about why she's not in the third one or why she's very, very little in the third one and then in this one, very little as well. John Cryer, a young John Cryer is in it. And Mariel Hemingway as the love interest for Clark Kent. And it just makes really no sense.

[48:58] Olaf Adsit: It makes no sense.

[49:00] J.J. Gonzalez: Her dad is this rich billionaire guy who buys the Daily Planet. And Clark Kent goes up to Mariel Hemingway's character and he's like, listen, we take the truth of our reporting and we take all that seriously. We're not going to let some billionaire change it to some cheap schlock. And he walks away and she's just apparently immediately in love with this guy. And then they go on a date, sort of, but it's to a gym and he's being Clark Kent and he's doing these stretches and he keeps throwing his back out. He tries doing a machine and he messes that up. And then this trainer, who isn't like super muscular or anything, and he's weirdly wearing a weight belt. He comes up to show him up and he gives him these weights that Clark Kent immediately drops.

And Mariel Hemingway's like, oh, he's such a jerk. And then she leaves and Clark Kent basically tries to kill him by using his Superman strength, picking up an even heavier set of weights and throwing it on him. And then he's like, no pay, no gain. And then he leaves. It's bad. It makes no sense that they're together.

[50:16] J.J. Gonzalez: So the original budget for the movie was $36 million. And then right before they started filming, Canon Films slashed the budget to $17 million because they were also shooting Masters of the Universe and Masters of the Universe had run out of money and they thought we might have a hit here. So they take all the money from Superman and put it in the Masters of the Universe and just basically just killed themselves because they got two terrible movies out of it. And because Superman 4 bombed at the box office, because of that, Canon Films canceled production on their Spider-Man movie that they were trying to make.

[51:02] Olaf Adsit: Well, that's a good call.

[51:03] J.J. Gonzalez: Well, and Christopher Reeve said, like, this is like his worst movie that he ever did.

[51:08] Olaf Adsit: Oh, yeah. He's publicly regretted the movie. He's called it a catastrophe from start to finish. He didn't want to talk about it in interviews. He just had huge regrets. He didn't get along with either director. The original director was supposed to be Wes Craven.

[51:26] J.J. Gonzalez: Right.

[51:27] Olaf Adsit: And they didn't get along and there were too many differences. So they moved on to Sidney Fury?

[51:32] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah, Sidney Fury. Yep. And they did not get along. So the set was always really tense because they were just at odds all the time. Apparently, Canon Films did approach Richard Donner about directing the movie. And no one knows for sure if he had actually been interested or not. But scheduling wise, he couldn't do it because he was doing Lethal Weapon.

[51:56] Olaf Adsit: Thank goodness.

[51:58] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah. And apparently they asked Richard Lester, who had just taken over and ruined Superman 2 and then made a terrible Superman 3. But nobody knows who was asked first. But yeah, Canon Films just destroyed this movie and never gave it a chance in the first place.

[52:19] Olaf Adsit: Well, again-

[52:20] J.J. Gonzalez: Even though they were hoping it would save them.

[52:23] Olaf Adsit: It's almost like this movie off of the third one is a shell of how great the first two were.

[52:30] J.J. Gonzalez: And that's a totally different conversation for another day.

[52:32] Olaf Adsit: Well, the first one.

[52:33] J.J. Gonzalez: Well, yes. If you watch the Richard Donner cut of the second one, then it's great. I would take the theatrical cut of Superman 2 over either of these other two movies. I mean, because as great as Richard Donner's Superman 2 is, which it's a much better film than the theatrical cut, both versions of Superman 2 are leaps and bounds better than either of the two we got after that. And 4 is just-

[52:58] Olaf Adsit: 4 is bad.

[52:59] J.J. Gonzalez: We just talk about it. We're like, I don't even know what this is supposed to be. Even the set pieces, how it's shot. I don't even call this a guilty pleasure. I just call this a movie I wouldn't want to watch.

[53:12] Olaf Adsit: See, I like watching it.

[53:13] J.J. Gonzalez: Why? Why do you like watching this movie?

[53:16] Olaf Adsit: I don't know. I've always loved Christopher Reeve as Superman. And for whatever reason, when I was a kid, this just hit me in a way where even though it was bad, I still enjoyed it. And when you watch it now with a more critical eye, you can tell that there's stuff missing.

[53:35] J.J. Gonzalez: Scenes do not connect.

[53:37] Olaf Adsit: No.

[53:37] J.J. Gonzalez: The effects are terrible. All of a sudden, he's like, I've got another crystal, so I'm going to use it to heal myself. You see him find the crystal on the farm earlier in the movie. But the movie opens up in space.

[53:51] Olaf Adsit: Well, first of all, it opens up with the title credits. And the title credits are trying to be the original, but it's so much cheaper. You can even hear the music. If you're listening to the opening music that was composed by John Williams, it's being played by an orchestra that will never make it to the London Symphony Orchestra.

[54:16] J.J. Gonzalez: I was listening to the opening credit music, and I'm pretty sure I heard a couple wrong notes.

[54:22] Olaf Adsit: Well, even the color of the suit is different. It's like a lighter blue.

[54:26] J.J. Gonzalez: It's like, yeah, there's just everything about it. I mean, they had no money to make this movie, and they had to find ways to shoot around that. They reused a lot of footage and a lot of effects from other movies just to patch them in. When this movie opens up, they're in space, and it's these Russian cosmonauts. One of them's floating out in space on top of the satellite, and you can see the wires holding him up.

[55:06] Olaf Adsit: It's pretty obvious.

[55:08] J.J. Gonzalez: To me, the best part of this movie is John Cryer, because he had nothing to lose here. We're comparing Gene Hackman to the first movie. We're comparing Christopher Reeve to all of them. We're comparing everybody to the previous iterations. Even Gene Hackman was great in it, because he was just having the time of his life.

[55:18] Olaf Adsit: Sure, but with John Cryer, it's like, this dude's just happy to be here.

[55:24] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah, he's just pretty in pink, so he gets this opportunity now. I'm like, you get to be in Superman? Sure. And you get to play basically the same type of character as Pretty in Pink, except a little dumber.

[55:35] Olaf Adsit: Yeah, I think he brought the same haircut, too.

[55:37] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah, it's like the same deal. So to me, I liked his character more in... Well, I don't want to be divisive here, but I think I liked his character more in Superman IV than in Pretty in Pink.

[55:50] Olaf Adsit: I know, I know. If you're still listening, everybody, I just raised some eyebrows and got a little divisive. So come on, let's bring it.

[55:57] J.J. Gonzalez: But no, it's just really, really bad. It is unfortunate, too, because Christopher Reeve did... I feel like he poured a lot of himself and his heart into this movie, into this story, because he wanted it to succeed. And I even think that he felt like as they were doing it, it wasn't going to be what he wanted it to be. I mean, you can tell when you watch Christopher Reeve in the movie that he's trying his hardest.

[56:22] Olaf Adsit: He is.

[56:23] J.J. Gonzalez: He knows it's bad. I'm pretty sure everyone else knew it was bad, but they were there and they were... I would say everyone tried their best. This movie makes Superman III look really, really good.

[56:36] Olaf Adsit: I disagree.

[56:37] J.J. Gonzalez: I don't. I think Superman III is worse. They're both awful.

[56:40] Olaf Adsit: They are both terrible movies.

[56:44] J.J. Gonzalez: They're both bad. I just feel like, well, at least with Superman III, you get Richard Pryor, you get Christopher Reeve being the bad Superman, and that's more interesting than Nuclear Man. His conflict as the dual Superman is way more interesting than the moon fight that they have in Superman IV.

[57:07] Olaf Adsit: So no, no, this is a great pick. This is a great pick. I think it's an atrocious movie that I don't even find pleasure in watching.

[57:18] J.J. Gonzalez: But again, hey. It is bad. And there's no... I would never try to sugarcoat it. I would never try to defend it as something that was good. I know it's bad and it's on the screen for everyone to see. But for whatever reason, I have always enjoyed this movie. I've always enjoyed watching it. And if I had to choose between that or Superman III, I'm watching Quest for Peace.

[57:46] Olaf Adsit: Only because it's shorter than Eugene Hackman.

[57:49] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah, Lex Luthor. He was great as Lex Luthor. And he comes back and he's like, you know what? I'm gonna bring it. To me, it just tarnishes what he did before. But that's just me.

[58:00] Olaf Adsit: Well, here we are. We've reached the end of our list of guilty pleasures. I love talking about these movies. They're terrible for the most part and so good all at the same time.

[58:11] J.J. Gonzalez: Absolutely. And I agree with you. It's always fun to do this type of topic because if I haven't seen the movies that I want to talk about, it gives me an opportunity to re-watch them and then remember why they are what they are for me, especially in that guilty pleasure mode. So no, absolutely. This is great. And while we were here, I think I added two more to my list while we were talking.

[58:37] Olaf Adsit: Yes.

[58:39] J.J. Gonzalez: Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the end of this episode of guilty pleasures. But don't worry. We'll always have more guilty pleasure movies to talk about later on. So definitely come back. Check us out because we'll have more for you later on. Until then, to be continued.

[59:01] Johnny Clay: Back to the Movie Theater is hosted by J.J. Gonzalez and Olaf Adsit. Produced by me, Johnny Clay. J.J. Gonzalez and Olaf Adsit. Theme song and incidental music by The Dimes. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Back to the Movie Theater. And find us on YouTube at Back to the Movie Theater with J.J. and Olaf.