Monday, March 26, 2007

More 'dud' than 'dude'

I should really have guessed that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (or TMNT as it's called - we'll come back to that) wouldn't exactly be my cup of tea by the sheer fact that I kind of felt awkwardly embarrassed asking for a ticket to see it. Once that hurdle was passed, I settled into my seat, and looked forward to what I hoped would be an exciting 90 minutes.

How. Wrong. I. Was.

It is dire. Where shall I start? Oh, well - how about the animation, that swerves from reasonably awesome for the turtles themselves (or should that just be 'T' in the new naming system?), to horrifically dire Incredibles-esque knock-offs for the supporting characters. And despite the marvels of CGI allowing anything and everything to be brought to life, it seemed like the turtles just kept bouncing around the same five crappy rooftops. And the story? Incomprehensible! Something about bringing some statues to life, and some monsters being released when some stars were alligned. In fact, at one point I thought they were fighting the shaggy blue monster from Monsters Inc.

What's most surprising, though, is that there were actually some decent voice-over artists; Sarah Michelle Gellar, Chris Evans (the American actor, not the ginger TV presenter), and Patrick-bloody-Stewart. He's done Shakespeare and Star Trek for crying out loud!

Anyway, it all made for a ridiculous mess of a movie, and a complete waste of my money. I should've gone and seen the sweaty Greek movie. What's it called? Oh yes, My Big Fat Sweaty Greek Battle.

-----

Skillz has been influencing a lot of my posts recently. Well, OK, it was just the bit about cereal yesterday, but it's about to happen again (I'm not sure if it counts as plagiarism or if he's just become my muse of late) – and it has to do with movie titles. Basically, Skillz's referral to Aliens as The Alien 2 over on his blog got me thinking about other quality alternate titles for movies. Adolescent Genetically-Modified Martial Arts-Trained Testudines anyone? That's just silly*.

But I did come up with the following:

Batman Starts
Superman Comes Back
South Park: More Epic in Scope, with a Longer Running Time, and Some Rudey Bits
Monkey World

My favourite, however, once again takes me back to Star Trek. I seriously think that Paramount should look into re-releasing Star Trek III: The Search for Spock with the following new title: Finding Nimoy.



*Something else that is silly is a new movie called The Last Mimsy. It sounds all sorts of pervy-weird.

19 comments:

Inexplicable DeVice said...

Finding Nimoy is just brilliant! Hilarious, in fact!!

* still sniggering *

Isn't Mimsy another word for Lady Bits?

Tim said...

Ha! I almost crashed the car this morning when I thought of it (Finding Nimoy, not Mimsy)!

I thought Mimsy was another word for Lady Parts too. The Last Mimsy?! Is there some kind of Mimsy-famine!?!?

Miss Smuggersham said...

Mimsy means lady parts?

Maybe they all got angry and took off in a shuttle headed for the sun...

My Big Fat Sweaty Greek Battle! I love it!

Tim said...

I always thought so, yes. At least the title The Last Mimsy had me tittering away, so it must mean something. I vote that if it doesn't already mean Lady Parts, from this moment forth it should!

And we're renaming that movie 'Where've all the Lady Parts Gone?' Or 'Gone with the Lady Parts'.

The Mimsys can't depart upon a shuttle! All the ladies of the world will be Barbiefied!

skillz said...

Woo! I'm in Muse!

*plays in every toilet*

Er hm...

Yeah, getting film titles wrong is plenty fun, my favourite method is adding extra words in that take away the 'punch' of the title, like Bend It Like David Beckham.

Also

Oceans Eleven 2
Kill Bill Volume One 2
etc

Tim said...

You are Skillz Bellamy. Take a bow!

Isn't there a new Rambo film being made that could legitimately be called Rambo IV: First Blood Part III or something?

Dinah said...

I would totally check out Finding Nimoy. He's not like, reclusive or anything, is he? Too bad - that would have been a killer documentary.

Tara said...

Wait...so...TMNT actually has a story? A frail one, but it has a story?!

Do you think that by initializing the title, the makers would think the movie would be cooler? Just like the band called New Kids on the Block came back briefly but as NKOTB?

Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes KF-C.

Tim said...

Dinah - No, I think he's quite outgoing and friendly. He's certainly one of the coolest people on the planet. It'll be killer anyway!

Tara - Let's use the word 'story' in the loosest sense of the word, huh? I'm not sure what they were thinking by calling it TMNT… maybe hoping to lull people who don't like turtles into the cinema?

"Arrgh, who the hell knew that TMNT was about some turttles?!"

Didn't Kentucky Fried Chicken become KFC because there was some doubt as to whether there was any chicken in it, or is that just an urban myth?

Another movie: The Hills Have Eyes 2 becomes The Hills Have Eyes As Well

Miss Smuggersham said...

Hehe. Bend it like David Beckham.

Skillz is on fire lately, isn't he?

As for Mimsies departing ("The Last Mimsy-fighter" perhaps or we could credit an author with the title aka "Mary Shelley's Frankenstien" becomes "Mrs Slocombe's Mimsy") I am going to start calling people Mimsies and see what happens.

Ooooh! The latest Star Trek releases could become:

"The Phantom Storyline with Faintly New Age Overtones: Midichlorians my ass"

"Attack of the this could have been cool but because of wooden acting and substandard writing for the character development, is actually quite dull: A waste of Ewan McGregor's dudeness"

and

"Thank f*ck this sham is almost over"

Inexplicable DeVice said...

From the way the 2 is placed in the posters, it looks like The Hills Have 2 Eyes. Which I think is much funnier. I'm still not going to watch the gruesome thing - the first was bad enough.

I love the Star Wars titles, T-Bird. Esp.number 2!

Hee hee! Number 2!

skillz said...

I'm *very* worried that when I glanced at Tara's post and saw NKOTB that I knew exactly what she was referring to.

Tim said...

T-Bird - Skillz IS on fire, isn't he? Although not literally, I hope. I wouldn't want to be the one to have to clean up spontaneously-combusted Skillz.

I noticed on an advert for that film that it's Mimsy with a 'Z' - so Mimzy. There must be a difference. Mimsy's definitely Lady Parts.

Now, I do like you alternate titles, but as IDV points out you're talking about the Star WARS films, not the Star TREK films. There is a difference and I thought you'd know what that was. I'm a tad disappointed, T-Bird, and I hope you're going to repost that comment with your school-girl error corrected!

Inexplicable Device - I've not seen the one-eyed hills, so I don't think I'll be seeing the two-eyed hills. I'll wait till it's on Channel 5.

Skillz - Are you a closet New Kids fan? Are you hangin' tough?

Guys - I don't think he's on fire anymore!

dmarks said...

"Patrick-bloody-Stewart. He's done Shakespeare and Star Trek for crying out loud!"

Shakespeare is for those who aren't good enough or are in training for Star Trek.

Tim said...

Dmarks - Right on! If Shakespeare had written more technobabble and they'd been some ruptured plasma conduits in The Merchant of Venice I'd certainly have paid more attention at school!

Miss Smuggersham said...

Gah! Grrrrr! Arrrrrr! Mixing those two franchises never should be done! Unless it shows Shat and Stewart taking out their phasers and killing Palpatine before he could do any damage.

Let's just chalk that one up for my frustration at not getting my hands on the BSG season finale yet!

I beg for the forgiveness of my fellow afficionados.

Tim said...

This is like the time IDV and Dinah threatened to throw me out of the coven for not having seen Dirty Dancing…

You pleas have been heard this time, T-Bird, but ensure it NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN, young padawan. I mean ensign.

Bugger.

Dinah said...

Even though there are (were? will be? time is so funny that way) probably thousands of ensigns, when I read that I thought of Ensign Lefler. Oh, Ashley Judd, you annoyed me so, in (imdb tells me) two of my favourite episodes.

Tim said...

Aaah! Ensign Robin Lefler! Dinah, are you going to start reciting Lefler's Laws? (and if anyone doesn't know that they are - to Memory-Alpha.org for you!)

I thought of Ensign Ricky from that Family Guy parody!!