The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project, The Stupids. For the record, this is one of the few movies I had seen before I started the project, and strangely, I actually liked it, even if it was just because it was that fucking insane. Then again, that was well over a decade ago. So, I guess the only way to find out how poorly it holds up is to watch it again.

• I guess that the biggest reason I gave this movie a pass is that, for some reason, I could at least follow the Stupids' logic. Like deciding to choose chasing a garbage truck in roller skates because they have eight wheels, which he assumes gives him some sort of advantage. But then again, even with that logic, I find it hard to believe that Stanley Stupid, in his 30-some years on Earth had never seen a fucking garbage truck.
  
• One thing I did not remember is how, for some reason, their dog Kitty and their cat Xylophone are rendered using what's either janky-looking CGI or janky-looking stop-motion.
  
• In hindsight, casting Tom Arnold as someone this stupid is kind of questionable, especially given that he was diagnosed with autism as a child. Then again, the studio's first choice for the role was Jack Fucking Nicholson. Yes, really. 
  
• And now that the kids are starting this random mystery, it reminds me of Under the Silver Lake. Or, more specifically, the Redditors who keep trying to find some random codes in the movie to unlock a hidden meaning, even though, after watching that movie twice, it seems to obviously be about mocking people trying to find greater narratives in things that simply aren't there.
  
• To act like a bush, you have to think like a bush. Honestly, this scene is pretty funny, and I think maybe discovering this movie in the 2000s might have made this funnier. Even without that, it's actually funny.
  
  
  
• And then there's this random weapons deal happening in this random garbage dump. Why the fuck not? Seriously, John Landis defended this movie by claiming it was just made for ten-year-olds. And what ten-year-old is even going to follow this weapons deal subplot? I know I didn't. 
  
• I have no idea why this word processor is working like this, let alone how it's going to work in such a way that it ends up doing whatever the fuck ends up happening. I had some experience with word processors in 1996 (even if it was as a six-year-old who had just discovered Microsoft Word 95).
  
• I don't know why there's suddenly aliens in this movie, let alone how they even get that earth paper. Let alone how that story even ended up getting published when what the Stupids' alterations to the story caused the Paper's entire computer system to self-destruct. Especially with the photo.
  
• In my quest to figure out if the bodyguard was yet another movie role where Jean Reno debased himself (after all, he did Rollerball 2002 and The Last Face), I found out that it looks like Mark Metcalf appears to have revived his role as Niedermeyer from Animal House. Apparently, he faked his own fragging in Vietnam. Also, there's a bunch of random-ass cameos from movie directors, including Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Robert Wise, Costa-Gavras, and, bizarrely enough, the director of my favourite film from the 1960s (or at least the one I've recommended the most times), Gillo Pontecorvo.
  
• I swear, the way they portray Stanley Stupid's time as a mailman is exactly how I imagine all those people who claim that they lost their jobs due to cancel culture were on the job.
  
• I've watched most of Cronenberg's movies, but I can't figure out for the life of me a good reference to make. Did one of his more obscure films involve work in a post office?
  
• Hi, Costa-Gavras. Sad to see you working as a gas station attendant. Shame nobody actually saw The Little Apocalypse.
  
• Hey, Robert Wise, remind me to ask you what the fuck you were thinking with Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  
• And from what I can recall, this is easily one of the few moments people actually like. If not, they probably should, because Christopher Lee's suitably over the top:
  
  
  
• Huh. What kind of museum includes both a planetarium and massive dinosaur exhibit? And why is it in the basement?
  
• Jesus fuck, this is what Egoyan did while waiting for Sweet Hereafter to hit it big?
  
• Don't clap for Jenny McCarthy's show getting canceled. It's that sort of shit that made her an anti-vaxxer with a body count. 
  
• And if Norman Jewison had this little control over his productions, it's a wonder Hurricane worked as well as it did.
  
• Goddammit, Gillo Pontecorvo. No wonder you didn't make any movies for the previous 17 movies if you're doing this horseshit.
  
• And somehow, they already had a backing track to "My Own Grandpa."
  
• And in lieu of that, he makes the audience into this: 
  
  
  
• Make Stupidia a sovereign nation. Maybe populate it with sovereign citizens!
  
• Did they need to include a flashback to Lloyd complaining about people leaving their gum anywhere? It happened like 15 minutes ago.
  
• A single pump with a pneumatic pump is enough to perfectly cut a watermelon into four pieces. Why not?
  

Next week, I think it's going to be Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse. And I've noticed I'm running low on Deep Hurting Project movies for Tubi. I guess I'll just have to resort to whatever shit movies were uploaded to YouTube like when I was under lockdown.