Those Damn DirecTV Movie Tie-In Ads - Offensive To Film Buffs?

To cut to the chase - yes. Those commercials (most running for 30 seconds) that re-create a scene from a well known movie oft played on cable with an actor re-outfitted in their old characters duds and mugging to the camera about the better picture quality benefits of DirecTV have been irking me for some time now. Let's take a look at a few of them shall we? :

The first of these that I have seen wasn't too bad - it had Christopher Lloyd dressed and made up to look like his 1985 Doc Brown character from BACK TO THE FUTURE (Dir. Robert Zemeckis) in this ad designed to make you feel like you're coming back from commercials to a movie you forgot you were watching. Lloyd hams it up saying "I forgot to tell Marty when he gets back to the future he needs to get DirecTV HD!" As Wikipedia notes "Marty would not actually be able to get DirecTV once he got back to the future as it did not exist in 1985 and the Doc of 1955 would obviously have no way of knowing about it. However, this blatant illogic can be regarded simply as a joke." Uh - okay!

You can't really fault Charlie Sheen for turning a fast buck revisiting his MAJOR LEAGUE (Dir. David S. Ward, 1989) role of Rick 'Wild Thing' Vaughn. It's a movie that seems to always playing on some cable channel (mostly TBS) and he was likable in it which is seriously unlike just about all of his other films so he and DirecTV are in the clear here. Major points would have been added if Dennis Haysbert (who played Voodoo practicing Cuban defector Pedro Cerrano in the 1989 film and its sequels) did some add-on shot (he's probably too busy doing AllState ads) - but I'll still put this in the acceptable pile.

Now those were somewhat cute - if you stick to mainstream movies and B or C-list celebrities popping up in mock scenes from their movies sure we can look the other way but Sigourney Weaver resurrecting her female-empowering alien-ass-kicking heroine Ellen Ripley in this ALIENS ad attrocity that just starting airing recently really gets my goat! To see this classic character who was named by the American Film Institute as the #8 greatest hero in American cinema history shilling for DirecTV is just depressing. Maybe we can tell ourselves that it's one of Ripley's clones from ALIEN RESURRECTION - no, it's still sad.


I mean it makes some kind of marketing sense to have Jessica Simpson break the 4th wall from her role as Daisy Duke in the apocalypse-warning signpost that was THE DUKES OF HAZZARD (Dir. Jay Chandrasekhar, 2005) and chastize her leering viewers by taunting them by saying "Hey - 253 straight days at the gym to keep this body and you're not going to watch me on DirecTV HD? You're just not going to get the best picture out of some fancy big screen TV without DirecTV." Though incredibly eye-rolling inducing it makes some kind of sense because it's a completely disposable commercial movie and nobody will care if a character steps away from that kind of cinematic enterprise to do a sales pitch for a company. Speaking of stepping away from the Enterprise ...

"Settling for cable would be illogical" Captain Kirk (William Shatner) says to Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) grimace. Shatner is surrounded from footage from STAR TREK VI mind you in this commercial. Not the first time he's acted reacting to nothing and it won't be the last. This one is understandable because Shatner with his Priceline.com pitches, MCI, and the UK Kellogg's All-Bran cereal ads has been a commercial spokesman * almost more than he's been an straight actor, no wait he's never really been a straight actor. Still, I get a bit pissed off watching his laconic walk-through in this ad I'm reminded by comedian Patton Oswalt's put down from Shatner's Comedy Central Roast -when he held up a paper bag and dared Shatner - "Could you act your way out of this?"

* To see the hilarious origins of Shatner as a commercial spokesman checkout this hilarious Commodore Vic20 Ad.

I just feel like we're one step away from having Ralph Fiennes popping up as his evil Nazi personage Amon Goeth in a mock scene from SCHINDLER'S LIST looking right at the camera and saying "don't you want to see me personally execute masses of Jews in the crystal clear clarity of DirecTV? Don't you?!!?"

Okay, maybe that was a bit over the top - none of the ads so far have been from serious dramas or Oscar-caliber prestige pictures but I think these ads are bad for the film community. Okay, maybe just the online film community. Okay, maybe just me. Now this one with Pamela Anderson playing her iconic character C.J. from the television show Baywatch is just about right - hear that DirecTV! Stick to TV shows and low-brow comedies that were cheesy to begin with and all is forgiven. Okay?

Postscript : I know I haven't covered all of those damn ads - Leslie Nielsen revisited his 1980 Dr. Rumack performance in a AIRPLANE! one, Ben Stein again asked "Bueller? Bueller? ..." for a FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF throw-back, Bill Paxton once again chased a tornado in a TWISTER take, and shortly before his death in Pat Morita brought back Miyagi from THE KARATE KID ('86). If there are any others that irk you or that you actually like - send 'em on in to :

boopbloop7@gmail.com

Oh yeah - I read somewhere that Bill Murray was all set to re-Carlize himself for a spot from CADDYSHACK ('80) but he was either out of the country working on a film or he came down with a case of integrity...

More later...

The Children Of AIRPLANE!

As I talked about in my last post, it looks like the next few months will be a sucky season filled with sequels. With every genre represented, and every cliché exploited, it is going to be a long hot summer.

One genre that I’m really sick of is represented by the arrival on DVD of SCARY MOVIE 3. You know the genre, the AIRPLANE!/Mad Magazine-derived joke-a-minute spoofs that seem to appear every several months and have inane scatalogical humor in place of real satire. So let’s take a look at the chief offenders in this increasingly lame genre in a mini-guide to:

The Children Of AIRPLANE!

For those of you just tuning in, fellow comedy writers/performers Jerry and David Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams created a franchise around a bunch of cheap jokes and lame sight gags. 

It started when the Zuckers and Abrahams (ZAZ for short) took their stage show from the Kentucky Fried Theater in Milwaukee to Hollywood to make the crude but hilarious sketch film  THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE in 1977.

KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE begat AIRPLANE! 

(Dirs. ZAZ, 1980) which begat: 



Police Squad! (ABC-TV Series, 1982) After his straight-man to a perfection performance in AIRPLANE!, Leslie Neilsen starred as Detective Frank Drebin in a ZAZ's dead-on parody of '60s and '70s cop shows. Unfortunately this blueprint would soon be bred dry.

TOP SECRET! (Dirs. ZAZ, 1984) 

File this under "what were they thinking?!!?" I mean the idea was to mix Elvis movie musical fluff with Nazi spy dramas, right? RIGHT?!!? I dunno, but Val Kilmer does his earnest best to fend off prison anal sex jokes, and a misguided BLUE LAGOON take-off.

At least it has that one surreal sequence with Peter Cushing, otherwise what a collection of misfires! 

THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! (Dir. David Zucker, 1988)

THE NAKED GUN 2½: THE SMELL OF FEAR (Dir. David Zucker, 1991)

NAKED GUN 33⅓: THE FINAL INSULT (Dir. Peter Segal, 1994)

Detective Drebin (Nielsen) returns from sitcom cancellation purgatory in three movies that get progressively worse and are sadly most remembered for having O.J. Simpson appear as Drebin's cop partner punching bag in all three.

Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, Anna Nicole Simpson, and Robert Goulet chime in with pop culture icon plug-aways, and the jokes - hit or miss - just keep coming.

The first NAKED GUN movie is the only one I’d recommended.

HOT SHOTS! (Dir. Jim Abrahams, 1991)/ HOT SHOTS! PART DEUX (Dir. Jim Abrahams, 1993) 

While the Zucker Brothers did other less jokey projects (GHOST, RUTHLESS PEOPLE) Jim Abrahams never left the always go for the funny fold. 

Abraham's Charlie Sheen fronted TOP GUN spoofs took on RAMBO, NO WAY OUT, BASIC INSTINCT among countless other targets to better success than a number of later day Zucker efforts. Surprisingly both flicks hold up today - on a silly stupid level, mind you. Bits like the Saddam Hussein look-alike casting kills, and add a clueless war-time President played by Lloyd Bridges and you'll get sucker punched into the next decade.

HIGH SCHOOL HIGH (Dir. Hart Bochner, 1996) Hip hop high school dramas like DANGEROUS MINDS get a beat down in a movie that actually lets Jon Lovitz take the lead, a romantic heroic lead at that. Problem is the plethora of cheap throwaway gags, but in 1996 who was even paying attention? Only David Zucker of ZAZ was involved here as a co-writer. 

Some of the ZAZ team appear as writers or producers of the following offspring of AIRPLANE! but some titles are unrelated hangers-on or copycats. Most notably Ken Finklemen's AIRPLANE 2: THE SEQUEL (note the lack of an exclamation point) which ZAZ not only had nothing to do with - they made a pact never to see it. Despite some genuine laughs it was a blatant cash-in much like the majority of movies here:

YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE

(Dir. Garry Marshall, 1982) 

One of the first to use lame slogans like "in the tradition of..." or ad copy along the lines of "does to soap operas what AIRPLANE! did to disaster movies." Wishful thinking. This Gary Marshall directed hospital farce didn't even come close despite the talents of a post Laverne & Shirley/pre-Spinal Tap Michael McKean and Sean Young (she was in BLADE RUNNER the same summer this came out).

JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY (Dir. Amy Heckerling, 1984) This time out it's '30s-'40s gangster movies getting the joke-a-minute treatment. Try joke every 30 minutes more like.

I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA (Dir. Keenen Ivory Wayans, 1988) The Wayans Brothers pre-In Loving Color take on Blaxploitation movies from the '70s using the ZAZ mold.

FATAL INSTINCT (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1993) The less said the better.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LOADED WEAPON I (Dir. Gene Quintano, 1993) Ditto.

No, I'm just kidding. This send-up of the LETHAL WEAPON movies, starring Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson had its fair share of funny gags, one of which included Bruce Willis in a cameo as his DIE HARD character, John McClane.

JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA! 

(Dir. Jim Abrahams, 1998) 

Abrahams should've known better. At least the exclamation point was back.

The genre was dead as door-nail by the late '90s, but crap kept coming:


BASKETBALL (Dir. David Zucker, 1999) This ill-fated collaboration with Trey Parker & Matt Stone of South Park fame is barely a blink on the comedy radar. Remember it? I didn't think so.

SPY HARD (Dir. Rick Friedberg, 1996) & WRONGFULLY ACCUSED (Dir. Pat Proft, 1998) Leslie Nielsen cashes in on his ZAZ-created non-persona. Why not? 

Most recently, David Zucker took over the SCARY MOVIE franchise (originally helmed by Keenen Ivory Wayans) for SCARY MOVIE 3, now out on DVD. Wayan's movies stole heavily from the ZAZ style in their slapdash spoofery of the SCREAM movies and the modern horror genre so the takeover makes sense. If only it made laughs.

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