Throwin' banana peels
CD REVIEWS, File Under: C - Chthonic, Constant Velocity.
Every summer, I sit down with a terrible, terrible movie. In 2005, this unique tradition lead me to document my slog through "Zeus and Roxanne." Last year, I got ambitious and suffered through a Jim Belushi trilogy ("K-9," "K-911" and "K-9: P.I."). Although I'm a much busier dude in 2007, it's an annual custom I couldn't bear to give up. I mean, we just lost Bergman and Antonioni. There's something about gritting my teeth and rolling my eyes through some forgotten, aggressively mediocre studio drivel which no one has rented in half a decade that makes me feel tapped into the gaudy, draining, consumptive, bloated, empty spirit of my least favorite season. The more dust on the video rental box - and the fewer the people who recognize the title until you describe it for them - the better a summer crap flick.
The original plan was a themed double feature starring my two least favorite actresses, but time is short, so I am holding onto that idea for another year. Instead, I regressed to the standby theme of precocious children and wacky animals. Here we have a mighty expansive genre, one ripe with lowbrow, underachieving commercial crud. I'd actually considered this year's feature in years past, but refrained due to the movie not being old enough and having too much enthusiasm for its young star's later roles (and fabulous figure) to want to drag her name into this canon of cinematic slandering. But now, the flick came out 13 years ago, and said buxom brunette starlet not only turned blonde, but hasn't been in a movie anyone's heard of since 2004. Without further stalling, here's my arduous adventure with...
"Monkey Trouble"
(1994)
We were about halfway through the '90s. Coke was out, weed was in. The Internet had just begun to seep into popular consciousness. Real drums were back in popular music, hair metal was dead and and rap-rock was several years from its odious peak. The average person couldn't have picked Paris Hilton out of a lineup of pampered blonde princesses. Sept. 11, 2001 was years away. The American president wasn't a cold-blooded hillbilly murderer, just a do-nothing hillbilly philanderer. Yesiree, things were pretty good, and the nation reflected its bounteous contentment in the most logical way: with a spate of monkey movies.
Of course, there weren't many huge hits, but we can now look back at the mid-1990s as boom years that gave us such sterling cinematic simians as Ed, Rafiki, Buddy, Amy and Dunston. Amid these bigger beasts scampers Finster, a capuchin who got top billing as Dodger in the much-forgotten kids' picture "Monkey Trouble." As dated and clichéd as its cloyingly crappy tropical/synth score or the font that announces the title on its poster, the flick tells the timeworn tale of a sulky kid who finds joy and fulfillment in harboring a crafty, impertinent critter.
Its biggest human star was Harvey Keitel, as it came out the same year he appeared as Winston Wolfe in the perennial dorm room favorite "Pulp Fiction." Here, he's Azro, a shifty gypsy with an accent of undiscernable origin... perhaps the Bronx. Azro's instructed the monkey in the ways of picking pockets and robbing houses, but his is a cruel love. The swarthy thief somehow blames the furball for making his wife leave him. "You don't believe me? Read! READ!" he bellows while shoving his wife's Dear John letter in the monkey's face. "She hated you and your stinkin' mess!" What's a capuchin with an unhappy home life to do, but wander the streets in search of sympathy. He does, and finds it in the arms of Eva, played by twelve year-old Thora Birch.
Now, it's been well documented that I believe Thora Birch is one of the most attractive young ladies in Hollywood, even if she's turned all bony and underwent the aforementioned unfortunate hair coloring. I know, she's too young for me, but considering I briefly dated a girl who is actually a few months younger than Ms. Birch a couple of years ago (also too young for me), I don't feel especially creepy owning up to it. Let me be very clear that I do not find little Thora attractive, which would indeed be creepy.
When we meet Eva, she's smartly clad in a B.U.M. Equipment shirt, of which we are reminded in the next scene as it begins with a shot of a billboard advertising B.U.M. Equipment. The girl spends most of "Monkey Trouble" screaming at the monkey or sulking about her baby brother, the product of her mom and stepdad's unpleasant coupling who has stolen all her thunder as the precocious youngster of the house. ("I hate him! He's a nerd!" Eva wails.) Mimi Rogers plays mom, her brittle, stern and joyless countenance displaying what it must be like to have spawned two kids with two different guys about a decade apart. The stepdad is played by familiar character actor Christopher McDonald - the dad from the flop 1997 "Leave It to Beaver" movie - whose cold eyes and rodent smile guarantee he's perfect as a stepdad cop.
Another source of resentment for Eva is a no-pet rule instituted because of her stepdad's allergies. Thus, she must hide the monkey once she discovers him hanging out in a park. Eva names the capuchin Dodger because he steals her baseball cap. The Dickensian implication of the name is completely lost on her, and probably on everyone else except for writer/director Franco Amurri, the native Italian behind the forgotten Kiefer Sutherland/Dennis Hopper hippie comedy "Flashback," and his co-screenwriter Stu Krieger, whose poison pen helped incarnate the Pauly Shore/Andy Dick vehicle "In the Army Now" and Don Bluth's animated non-classic "A Troll in Central Park."
The monkey's sinful nature quickly drags the already self-centered Eva down to his level of brazen deception. Almost immediately after she meets Dodger, an old couple appears and starts grilling Eva about him. The inherently dishonest girl stammers that she got him from pirates in the Caribbean, "retired ones. They own a restaurant now." Oof. This girl, who used to visit her local pet store every day just to moon over the dogs she could not have, now eagerly pushes dogs out of elevators because they scare her monkey. She even pulls her only friend into a scam that involves lying to her mom and stepdad, breaking into her real dad's house and playing hooky so she can hang out with Dodger. That little beast corrupts everything it touches.
Once she gets Dodger home, Eva has a hell of a time dealing with him. He pisses on the floor and shits in the sink, laughing all the while, so she puts a diaper on him. (The application and cleaning of said diaper is never addressed.) The creature's mangy fur sets off sneezing fits in stepdad, but in keeping with dumb kids' movie convention, his dreadful allergies disappear whenever inconvenient to the plot, much like Azro's need for a walking cane. Speaking of Azro, he's skulking about looking for the monkey, and he snatches the bastard during a not-so-thrilling chase at the beach. This scene includes abundant monkeyshines, as Dodger runs around under a box, tripping up a bunch of rollerbladers, and he hops on a kite that some kid is flying.
When Azro wrestles the kite out of the kid's hand, the best moment of the movie occurs. Here, respected actor Harvey Keitel, sporting a hideous beige suit, bellows at a child, "Give it up! I eat your face!"
Azro nabs Dodger, but not before the monkey shoots at the gypsy with his own gun. I suppose this flick was made before people became super paranoid about having guns appear in children's movies - nowadays, the bad guy would probably be armed with a stick or a loaf of bread or something. For her part, Eva thinks Azro is a pirate, which is kind of funny. Eva's parents discover her housebreaking stunt, and no one believes her story about having a monkey, so she bolts to look for him. Dodger is reunited with Azro's estranged son, who apparently had some sort of love for the critter, but after Azro discovers that Eva has retrained the monkey to not steal, the beast escapes and heads for Eva's house. Eva's mom, stepdad and birth dad (who is such an emasculated sad sack he appears to only ever work or hang out with his ex-wife and her new husband) flip out that she's missing, until her baby brother spots the creature hiding in Eva's room and delivers his first word: "Monkey!"
In the end, there's a big showdown over which kid the monkey wants to stay with. On one side is Eva, the other Azro's kid. At first, Dodger goes to the boy, and Eva walks away crying. However, preferring life in a comfortable suburban house versus a rusty old shack, the capuchin rethinks and runs back to Eva, resulting in an uproarious slow-motion girl/monkey reunion scene. Azro goes to jail, his son's dual despoilment of long-lost father and pet completely ignored by the film. All that matters is that Eva has accepted her brother and gets to keep her monkey, as she brings them both to show-and-tell for the treacly finale. Her family is complete: haggard mom, creepy stepdad, pathetic real dad, cutesy brother and reformed bandit pet.
I have watched "Monkey Trouble" and detailed its proceedings in hopes that you do not. Those of you with children, please heed my warning. If for some reason deemed necessary, you can get them the Minstrel Books novelization for cheaper than the cost of a rental. Look at this stupid trailer. Do you really want something like this in your house?
Every summer, I sit down with a terrible, terrible movie. In 2005, this unique tradition lead me to document my slog through "Zeus and Roxanne." Last year, I got ambitious and suffered through a Jim Belushi trilogy ("K-9," "K-911" and "K-9: P.I."). Although I'm a much busier dude in 2007, it's an annual custom I couldn't bear to give up. I mean, we just lost Bergman and Antonioni. There's something about gritting my teeth and rolling my eyes through some forgotten, aggressively mediocre studio drivel which no one has rented in half a decade that makes me feel tapped into the gaudy, draining, consumptive, bloated, empty spirit of my least favorite season. The more dust on the video rental box - and the fewer the people who recognize the title until you describe it for them - the better a summer crap flick.
The original plan was a themed double feature starring my two least favorite actresses, but time is short, so I am holding onto that idea for another year. Instead, I regressed to the standby theme of precocious children and wacky animals. Here we have a mighty expansive genre, one ripe with lowbrow, underachieving commercial crud. I'd actually considered this year's feature in years past, but refrained due to the movie not being old enough and having too much enthusiasm for its young star's later roles (and fabulous figure) to want to drag her name into this canon of cinematic slandering. But now, the flick came out 13 years ago, and said buxom brunette starlet not only turned blonde, but hasn't been in a movie anyone's heard of since 2004. Without further stalling, here's my arduous adventure with...
"Monkey Trouble"(1994)
We were about halfway through the '90s. Coke was out, weed was in. The Internet had just begun to seep into popular consciousness. Real drums were back in popular music, hair metal was dead and and rap-rock was several years from its odious peak. The average person couldn't have picked Paris Hilton out of a lineup of pampered blonde princesses. Sept. 11, 2001 was years away. The American president wasn't a cold-blooded hillbilly murderer, just a do-nothing hillbilly philanderer. Yesiree, things were pretty good, and the nation reflected its bounteous contentment in the most logical way: with a spate of monkey movies.
Of course, there weren't many huge hits, but we can now look back at the mid-1990s as boom years that gave us such sterling cinematic simians as Ed, Rafiki, Buddy, Amy and Dunston. Amid these bigger beasts scampers Finster, a capuchin who got top billing as Dodger in the much-forgotten kids' picture "Monkey Trouble." As dated and clichéd as its cloyingly crappy tropical/synth score or the font that announces the title on its poster, the flick tells the timeworn tale of a sulky kid who finds joy and fulfillment in harboring a crafty, impertinent critter.
Its biggest human star was Harvey Keitel, as it came out the same year he appeared as Winston Wolfe in the perennial dorm room favorite "Pulp Fiction." Here, he's Azro, a shifty gypsy with an accent of undiscernable origin... perhaps the Bronx. Azro's instructed the monkey in the ways of picking pockets and robbing houses, but his is a cruel love. The swarthy thief somehow blames the furball for making his wife leave him. "You don't believe me? Read! READ!" he bellows while shoving his wife's Dear John letter in the monkey's face. "She hated you and your stinkin' mess!" What's a capuchin with an unhappy home life to do, but wander the streets in search of sympathy. He does, and finds it in the arms of Eva, played by twelve year-old Thora Birch.
Now, it's been well documented that I believe Thora Birch is one of the most attractive young ladies in Hollywood, even if she's turned all bony and underwent the aforementioned unfortunate hair coloring. I know, she's too young for me, but considering I briefly dated a girl who is actually a few months younger than Ms. Birch a couple of years ago (also too young for me), I don't feel especially creepy owning up to it. Let me be very clear that I do not find little Thora attractive, which would indeed be creepy.
When we meet Eva, she's smartly clad in a B.U.M. Equipment shirt, of which we are reminded in the next scene as it begins with a shot of a billboard advertising B.U.M. Equipment. The girl spends most of "Monkey Trouble" screaming at the monkey or sulking about her baby brother, the product of her mom and stepdad's unpleasant coupling who has stolen all her thunder as the precocious youngster of the house. ("I hate him! He's a nerd!" Eva wails.) Mimi Rogers plays mom, her brittle, stern and joyless countenance displaying what it must be like to have spawned two kids with two different guys about a decade apart. The stepdad is played by familiar character actor Christopher McDonald - the dad from the flop 1997 "Leave It to Beaver" movie - whose cold eyes and rodent smile guarantee he's perfect as a stepdad cop.
Another source of resentment for Eva is a no-pet rule instituted because of her stepdad's allergies. Thus, she must hide the monkey once she discovers him hanging out in a park. Eva names the capuchin Dodger because he steals her baseball cap. The Dickensian implication of the name is completely lost on her, and probably on everyone else except for writer/director Franco Amurri, the native Italian behind the forgotten Kiefer Sutherland/Dennis Hopper hippie comedy "Flashback," and his co-screenwriter Stu Krieger, whose poison pen helped incarnate the Pauly Shore/Andy Dick vehicle "In the Army Now" and Don Bluth's animated non-classic "A Troll in Central Park."
The monkey's sinful nature quickly drags the already self-centered Eva down to his level of brazen deception. Almost immediately after she meets Dodger, an old couple appears and starts grilling Eva about him. The inherently dishonest girl stammers that she got him from pirates in the Caribbean, "retired ones. They own a restaurant now." Oof. This girl, who used to visit her local pet store every day just to moon over the dogs she could not have, now eagerly pushes dogs out of elevators because they scare her monkey. She even pulls her only friend into a scam that involves lying to her mom and stepdad, breaking into her real dad's house and playing hooky so she can hang out with Dodger. That little beast corrupts everything it touches.
Once she gets Dodger home, Eva has a hell of a time dealing with him. He pisses on the floor and shits in the sink, laughing all the while, so she puts a diaper on him. (The application and cleaning of said diaper is never addressed.) The creature's mangy fur sets off sneezing fits in stepdad, but in keeping with dumb kids' movie convention, his dreadful allergies disappear whenever inconvenient to the plot, much like Azro's need for a walking cane. Speaking of Azro, he's skulking about looking for the monkey, and he snatches the bastard during a not-so-thrilling chase at the beach. This scene includes abundant monkeyshines, as Dodger runs around under a box, tripping up a bunch of rollerbladers, and he hops on a kite that some kid is flying.
When Azro wrestles the kite out of the kid's hand, the best moment of the movie occurs. Here, respected actor Harvey Keitel, sporting a hideous beige suit, bellows at a child, "Give it up! I eat your face!"
Azro nabs Dodger, but not before the monkey shoots at the gypsy with his own gun. I suppose this flick was made before people became super paranoid about having guns appear in children's movies - nowadays, the bad guy would probably be armed with a stick or a loaf of bread or something. For her part, Eva thinks Azro is a pirate, which is kind of funny. Eva's parents discover her housebreaking stunt, and no one believes her story about having a monkey, so she bolts to look for him. Dodger is reunited with Azro's estranged son, who apparently had some sort of love for the critter, but after Azro discovers that Eva has retrained the monkey to not steal, the beast escapes and heads for Eva's house. Eva's mom, stepdad and birth dad (who is such an emasculated sad sack he appears to only ever work or hang out with his ex-wife and her new husband) flip out that she's missing, until her baby brother spots the creature hiding in Eva's room and delivers his first word: "Monkey!"
In the end, there's a big showdown over which kid the monkey wants to stay with. On one side is Eva, the other Azro's kid. At first, Dodger goes to the boy, and Eva walks away crying. However, preferring life in a comfortable suburban house versus a rusty old shack, the capuchin rethinks and runs back to Eva, resulting in an uproarious slow-motion girl/monkey reunion scene. Azro goes to jail, his son's dual despoilment of long-lost father and pet completely ignored by the film. All that matters is that Eva has accepted her brother and gets to keep her monkey, as she brings them both to show-and-tell for the treacly finale. Her family is complete: haggard mom, creepy stepdad, pathetic real dad, cutesy brother and reformed bandit pet.
I have watched "Monkey Trouble" and detailed its proceedings in hopes that you do not. Those of you with children, please heed my warning. If for some reason deemed necessary, you can get them the Minstrel Books novelization for cheaper than the cost of a rental. Look at this stupid trailer. Do you really want something like this in your house?
posted by SoulReaper at 4:13 PM
1 Comments:
Chthonic, A Decade on the Throne (SPV/Deathlight)
Chthonic play a type of symphonic pseudo-black metal in the vein of Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth. A very capable, if not spectacular, combo, their only differences from dozens of European acts who play similar stuff are rooted in their Taiwanese heritage.
For one, vocalist Freddy Lin roots his throat-shredding lyrics in native myths and legends. For another, CJ's keyboard sweeps and arpeggios are complemented by Su-Nung's erhu, a two-stringed Oriental violin that adds a doleful vibe to the genre's requisite spookshow melodies.
Recorded last February in Taipei, Decade documents Chthonic's tenth anniversary concert across two CDs and a DVD, providing a nice overview of the band's career. The erhu truly enhances songs like "Decomposition of the Mother Isle (Aboriginal Gods Enthroned)" and "Relentless Recurrence" with sad, otherworldly refrains. Most of the time, though, it's your standard blur of racing guitar melodies, twinkling keyboards and rhythmic barks. Accoutrements like female cooing ("Quasi Putrefaction") or circus music bridges ("Floated Unconsciously in the Acheron") are nothing new for this style and makes one wish they'd substitute more Taiwanese touches.
To introduce the band to mainstream American metal audiences, Decade (along with the band's last two studio CDs) has been re-released in conjunction with Chthonic's appearance at Ozzfest. From the band's meticulous corpse paint to the live set's classy book-style packaging, it's clear that Chthonic cares about presentation. Their music, however, is barely distinguishable from that of the Mistelteins, Graveworms and Mystic Circles that have plagued Europe for the past decade.
************
Constant Velocity, Constant Velocity (self-released)
Constant Velocity, from downstate Bloomington, offer up an endearingly askew debut of indie rock. The recording, the hand-made cardboard sleeve, even Alex Smith's vocals seem held together by tenuous strands of tape. Those ragged edges make Constant Velocity's craft more compelling.
The trio's nervously poppy songs bring to mind college rock favorites from The Decemberists to the Violent Femmes. The guitars mostly stick with a jangly, fuzzy indie/classic rock sort of tone, although opener "Consolation" flirts with some surprising distortion. While low-key tunes like "The Smoker" and "Fault" slink along on brittle vocal melodies, more uptempo tracks like "3sa Crowd" and "The Cloud" flit about with art-punk energy. With its copious guitar slinging and Smith's shakily wide-eyed singing, "Genius" plays like a particularly gloomy slab of jam rock.
Constant Velocity's restless approach remains infectious almost despite its own precious brittleness. One hopes this debut's charming, less-than-polished veneer won't be too smoothed over as the band gains experience.
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