Bushwhacked

Greg Beeman, 1995
Rotten Tomatoes score: 11%

The Wikipedia article for Bushwhacked explains that it has an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but we're then reassured that the audience rating is 37%. So don't be misled by the abysmally low score; slightly more than one-third of audience members enjoyed it.

Basically, this is yet another exemplar of that venerable 1990s genre, the "crook gets mistaken for a kids' role model, then has to become a genuine role model in spite of himself" film. In that genre, I think this one ranks somewhere between Mr. Headmistress with Harland Williams and the excellent Principal Takes a Holiday with Kevin Nealon.

The crook this time around is Daniel Stern, and within the first 15 minutes he finds himself impersonating a "Ranger Scout" leader on an overnight camping trip in the mountains of northern California. The only problem is that Stern's character, Max Grabelski, isn't actually a crook. He's a slacker and a slob, but he is in fact innocent of the crime he's being pursued for. That's a big misstep—this kind of story works better when the protagonist is a non-threatening but genuinely culpable person; that way there's room for him to become a mensch. Since Max was never a scoundrel to begin with, his reformation doesn't have any real significance.

Instead, Max is merely suspected of murder. The few scenes that get us to this point are a totally confusing jumble. Max works for "Freedom Express," a courier service, and he has been involved in some vaguely sketchy business involving deliveries (with a fat tip for Max) to various locations at exactly 10 p.m. On one such delivery, he finds a house on fire, and the FBI shows up just in time to think Max is the arsonist. Then they discover an unrecognizable dead body with the teeth of millionaire Reinhart Bragden.

Instead of making any effort to resolve the situation, Max becomes a fugitive from justice. Here he crosses paths with a Ragtag Band of Kids who are embarking on their first overnight scouting event. They're expecting to be led by veteran scoutmaster Jack Erickson (R. Lee Erm—oh, no, sorry. This isn't R. Lee Ermey; it's Brad Sullivan). Max steals pseudo-R.Lee's hummer to elude the police, and before we know it he's been mistaken for the real deal.

The rest of the movie is mostly a lot of wacky wilderness adventures in the vein of The Great Outdoors. Max encounters a grizzly bear and faints, impressing the kids with his ability to "play dead." While collecting pine cones to build a fire, Max picks up a beehive. (He suffers no visible stings, but the dialogue inexplicably suggests that the scouts rescued him from anaphylaxis.) Max teaches the boys how to relieve themselves over the edge of a cliff. All the while, the kids are unaware that an FBI agent and the real scoutmaster Erickson are in pursuit.

When they finally do catch up, it turns out that the FBI guy has been in on the frame-up all along. He's been hired by Reinhart Bragden, who faked his own death for some reason, and now they're trying to kill Max. So now, for the final act of the movie, the kids decide to rally behind Max to stop the bad guys. This involves a huge number of death-defying cliffhanging stunts, which were actually pretty exciting to watch, with the exception of a gag where Max stretches himself across a crevice to act as a human bridge. This scene is so cartoony that it makes the other stunts seem less daring, since cartoons are never in real danger.

What's left to talk about? Obviously Max comes through in the end, and he wins the respect of the kids and the real scoutmaster.

This is a movie I missed as a kid. Now that I've seen it, I don't see why people didn't like it. I already mentioned the biggest problem, which is that Daniel Stern was too decent to begin with, so he didn't have a chance to go from bad to good. Other than that, I think its big problem was the PG-13 rating. They fixed that problem by removing the movie's one F-bomb for the DVD release, so now 28-year-old kids like me can enjoy it.

Mr. Nanny

Michael Gottlieb, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 7%

This movie stars Terry "Hollywood" "Hulk" Hogan as an over-the-hill pro wrestler who takes a job as a bodyguard to earn some extra cash. If you replace "bodyguard" with "actor" in that last sentence, the universe will collapse in on itself.

The Hulkster plays Sean Armstrong, who spends his days fishing and being tormented by disturbingly brutal flashbacks to his wrassling days. His best friend and former manager, Sherman Hemsley (I don't remember or care what this character's actual name was), has taken to managing a security company, and he needs Sean's help. Sherman has a new client, a wealthy computer engineer named Mason who has invented a device to control ICBMs or something, and for some reason only Sean is capable of protecting him.

What Sean doesn't expect is that the job also requires him to babysit Mason's sadistic hellspawn children. (He probably also didn't expect Mason to be played by the stammering public defender from My Cousin Vinny.) These children miss their deceased mother and have a strained relationship with their father, which causes them to act out by playing Home Alone style deathtrap pranks on all of their babysitters, including Sean. At one point, the dialogue seems to suggest that they are genuinely trying to murder him, but of course Hulk Hogan is indestructible, so it doesn't work.

Hollywood finally manages to straighten out all the family's problems by shouting a lot and uttering some very inspiring speeches about values. But after Mason reconciles with his children, he is called away on a business trip that turns out to be a plot on his life. His head of security has been hired by a sinister megalomaniac with a metal cranium and the inauspicious name of Thanatos, who wants to kill Mason and take the top-secret missile-launching microchip for himself.

At about this same point, Sean is joined by Sherman Hemsley, who recounts to the little children the story of how he was shot while protecting Sean from a gangster who tried to fix Wrestle-Mania. What an unbelievable coincidence that the gangster was none other than Thanatos, who apparently runs the gamut from bookmaking to international terrorism. We learn that Thanatos got his chrome-dome after falling from a rooftop during his fight with Sean and Sherman.

Somehow or other, the heroes learn that Mason has been kidnapped by Thanatos, so the movie suddenly shifts gears from goofy slapstick comedy to goofy action thriller. Sean and the kids find Thanatos's evil lair, the Hulkster kicks every ass in sight, and the plucky kids use one of their booby-traps to electrocute Thanatos and launch him 500 feet into the air. His metal plate skull falls back down to earth, so I think it's an inescapable conclusion that two children have just killed a mobster in a PG-rated movie. Sherman Hemsley finds it hilarious: "He really blew his top!"

I saw this movie when I was eight or nine, and I remember being surprised at how much of an action movie it was. Based on the trailers, I definitely wasn't expecting anyone's skull to fall off. But what's most disturbing, looking back on it, is the kids. They far surpass Kevin McCallister in terms of juvenile psychopathy.

And another thing—apart from the scene that was in every trailer, where Hulk Hogan wears a tutu, very little was done with the premise of a pro wrestler playing nanny to little kids.

This is a bad movie.

Ernest Scared Stupid

John Cherry, 1991
Rotten Tomatoes score: 17%

Let's pause a moment and take stock of the adventures our friend Ernest has had so far: He has channeled the spirit of the immortal Native American warrior, flown Santa's magic sleigh, and become Electro-Man. What will befall our hero next?

This was the last Ernest movie to be released under Disney's Touchstone label. So if this one seems cheaply produced to you, just you wait until we get to the straight-to-VHS entries. This movie is notable for its explanation of Ernest's stupidity, and for introducing a generation of American children to authentic Bulgarian miak. It's also the only Ernest movie where someone says the word "damn."

Long ago, we're told, the wise and noble Phineas Worrell imprisoned the wicked troll Trantor beneath an oak tree in Briarville, Missouri. In retaliation, Trantor cursed the Worrell family line with ever-increasing stupidity.

In modern times, we see that Phineas' descendant Ernest is a "sanitary engineer" who drives a Rube Goldberg garbage truck, which in his mind makes him a "man above the law." The town sheriff orders Ernest to clean up the trash piled up in the yard of local eccentric Frances Hackmore (Eartha Kitt). Meanwhile, some kids are having problems with bullies, and they come to Ernest for help. Ernest responds by putting on a one-man re-enactment of the Botswanan conquest of the Ottoman Empire. Then he helps them build a tree house in the oak tree above Trantor's grave.

Eartha Kitt warns Ernest and the kids about the troll, but to no avail. Trantor emerges and begins absorbing children's souls and turning them into wooden statuettes. If he gets five by Halloween night, something terrible will happen. Eartha Kitt now declares that Ernest, as the descendant of Phineas Worrell, is the "Great Redneck Hope," the only person who can defeat Trantor. He takes to this task in a heroic fashion, running through town like a lunatic and shouting through a megaphone.

Ernest seeks help from local hucksters Tom and Bobby Tulip, who sell him $1000 worth of troll-fighting gear. (I assume Gailard Sartain, who played Bobby's brother Chuck in the last two movies, wasn't available, so he was replaced with a conveniently similar alternate brother.) Ernest sets up a bunch of troll traps and goes on patrol in his garbage truck, while Trantor continues to transmogrify children. When Ernest accidentally traps the mayor's kids instead of the troll, the obligatory Ernest-getting-fired scene occurs.

Ernest encounters Trantor while driving his pickup, so he turns the wheel over to his faithful dog Rimshot while engaging the troll in single combat in the bed of the truck. Let me just say that watching a Jack Russell terrier drive a pickup truck is one of the great moments in cinema. Ernest fails to kill Trantor, but he learns from Eartha Kitt's antique book that the troll is vulnerable to something spelled "MI_K," which Ernest astutely interprets as "miak." You would have thought he couldn't find any this time of year, but he does—unfortunately it has no effect. What's more, Trantor has managed to turn Rimshot to a statue.

The children discover that the troll's weakness is in fact milk. They stock up on it, whilst Trantor uses the souls he's stolen to bring forth a troll army. The entire town does battle with the trolls, but the kids are able to disintegrate them with milk from a Super Soaker. Unfortunately, Trantor has summoned "demons" to make him "invincible," which means not even milk can stop him. Only "the heart of a child" can defeat Trantor in this state, which means Ernest must show him unconditional love. He does so by waltzing with and kissing Trantor, which causes him to explode.

All the children (and Rimshot) are restored to life, and Ernest becomes a legend. Again.

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This was the one of only two Ernest movies I didn't see as a kid, so it's hard to evaluate it against the others. I still think Jail and Christmas were better, but this is pretty great. I appreciate the prominent product placement for Purity brand milk, one of the items Ernest used to promote in his advertising days. I'm not sure what to make of the line where Eartha Kitt tells Ernest, "You're the baby; you're the boy." This curious expression would later be used in Slam Dunk Ernest, but Google is no help to me in figuring out what it means.

If you haven't seen the movie, at least listen to the opening credits.

Double Dragon

James Yukich, 1994
Rotten Tomatoes score: 0%

I really wanted to review the notorious Street Fighter movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme, but when I searched for it on Netflix, I was told it was unavailable. Instead, Netflix helpfully directed me to this gem I recall seeing in the mid-90s.

Is it as bad as Street Fighter? Take a deep breath—it's worse. Double Dragon is to Street Fighter as Three Ninjas is to Surf Ninjas. Or is it the other way around?

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It's never a good sign when a movie begins with a narration that was obviously tacked on because the story didn't make sense without it. It has something to do with an ancient Chinese medallion that gives you power over body and soul or something. Then, in the present day, an evil ninja woman and her band of ninja friends steal half the medallion.

She brings the medallion home to her sinister boss Koga Shuko in Los Angeles, in the year 2007. The city, still recovering from a devastating earthquake, has been renamed New Angeles ("from the Hollywood Harbor to the Tijuana border"). Since this is a futuristic action movie, 2007 looks exactly like 1994, but with lots of pollution and an ineffectual government that abandons the city to criminals every night after 7.

Now we meet a host of main characters. Billy and Jimmy Lee are two brothers who look absolutely nothing alike. They are a couple of martial arts dudes who enjoy kicking butt with the help of a woman named Satori, who is supposed to be their adoptive mother, but she looks exactly the same age as them. She also possesses the second half of the Chinese medallion. Billy and Jimmy are menaced by a "steroid freak" named Abobo, who works for Koga Shuko. They also encounter a gang called the "Power Corps," led by Alyssa Milano. All she wants is to free the city from other, more evil gangs, but her police chief father considers the Power Corps "terrorists."

All this confusing plot development finally results in some punching when Koga Shuko attacks to take Satori's half of the medallion. Billy and Jimmy have to contend with Abobo, who has taken "sub-molecular steroids" to make him stronger, and to make him look like he does in the video game. Koga Shuko uses his half to possess Satori, but then he decides to blow her up instead. Anyway, she dies, but the Lee brothers keep her half of the medallion. Unfortunately, they don't know how to activate its magic.

Koga Shuko's medallion gives him supernatural abilities, including the ability to strangle someone with the Force like Darth Vader. So like all omnipotent superbeings with unlimited cosmic power, he decides to enlist a bunch of incompetent thugs to do his dirty work. The thugs chase Billy and Jimmy around Hollywood on jet-skis (we're told Hollywood now has a river so filthy it's flammable, even though it's not in Cleveland), but the boys escape alive.

The Lees team up with Alyssa Milano and break into Koga Shuko's lair, where Koga Shuko ultimately overpowers them and takes Jimmy hostage. Billy and Alyssa Milano attempt to rescue him, but by this time Koga Shuko has possessed Jimmy's body. The two Lee brothers must now duke it out (like in the video game if you set it to the mode where you can hit the other player), crashing through walls and knocking over Double Dragon arcade cabinets in the process. Because the plot requires it, Billy's half of the medallion chooses this moment to start granting him superpowers, so he delivers a kick so fierce it dislodges Koga Shuko's sinister shadow-being out of Jimmy's body.

Now, with the two medallion halves united at last, the Lee brothers transform into the Double Dragon, which means that they get to wear their video game costumes for the last five minutes of the movie. Jimmy possesses Koga Shuko's body and uses it to forge a $129 million check to the police department, and to make Koga Shuko slap himself in the face. (Wait a minute. If Jimmy is possessing Koga Shuko's body, isn't he only hurting himself? Forget it.)

The credits begin to roll as Abobo, now turned good, takes the wheel of the Double Dragon brothers' car.

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I started out by saying this movie was worse than Street Fighter, and I think I'm going to have to stick to that, but it wasn't as bad as I feared based on my childhood recollection.

It obviously aspires to the kind of dystopian comedy that was done so well in RoboCop, but the plot and action scenes just can't hold it together. Still, some of the gags made me laugh, especially the final shot of Koga Shuko's now-unemployed goons carrying cardboard signs that say "Will Hench for Food. Thugs Seek Ruthless Boss."

Also, the early scenes treat us to some truly bizarre cameos, including George Hamilton and Vannah White as newscasters, Andy Dick as a weather man, and the Furniture Guys as jackhammer salesmen. (God help me, I did not look up this reference—I actually recognized the Furniture Guys just now when I watched the movie. You may as well click the link now that you've read this far.)

Overall, I would recommend this to anybody who can't find Street Fighter.

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