Bring out the chimp

Awright, this time I'll apologize, but only to myself. I have been avoiding my once-obsessed-over blog to attend to many other things. It's not that I don't love writing anymore. Since I was a little boy, it's always come natural to me as a rewarding passtime. Hell, I used to gleefully get paid to do it, plus I went out almost every night of the week, and I still devoted plenty of free time to this poor, neglected space. I find other stuff to do with my time these days. But I still love ya, Entartete Kunst.

Therefore, I am now enjoying one indulgent weekend of writing-muscle exercise. My beloved betrothed is currently away at a venerable writer's conference, hopefully digging deep into her own wordsmithing craft. While I'm on my own, I'm going to deliver some long-delayed content that's been clogging my brain. Next, and very soon, I'll detail my 20 favorite albums of 2009 and 2010. Right now, I'll revive a grand old summer ritual in which I determine the worst possible film I can think of, obtain it in a cost-friendly manner, then watch and write about it.

I traditionally go for a family movie because, at their worst, these are the most shoddily created and the most painful to complete. An irritating star usually helps a film's chances for consideration. For added face-grabbing mirth, wacky animals are invariably involved. You may fondly remember my run-ins with "Zeus and Roxanne" and "Monkey Trouble," or the fateful summer I endured "K-9" along with its excruciating sequels, "K-911" and "K-9: P.I." I've long quaked in fear of this year's awful film, combining all of the above elements with a sports theme. Ladies, gents, in-betweens, courtesy of NetFlix's handy "Watch Instantly" service, I give you... "Ed."

"Ed"
(1996)

It was March of 1996, and I was miserable. It had been a pitiless, gray winter in Chicago. I was slogging through my junior year of college in a daze, having just been rather cruelly dumped by some dame I had wrongly believed was the love of my life. Because my unheated bedroom's window had a hole in it, I was sleeping on a living room couch in the decrepit Lincoln Park apartment that I was renting with three other gentlemen. Our landlord was some sort of local folk music legend, as well as a giant, ZZ Top-bearded loose cannon who would rather bring us more and more free couches than see that the place was inhabitably heated. My grandfather passed away. And this fucking movie came out.

To me, it looked like the worst thing ever. First of all, its star was Matt LeBlanc, best known for his role on TV's "Friends," a show I detested so much that it's still tough for me to enjoy anything containing any of its six main actors. LeBlanc, however, is the worst of these cretins. When "Friends" premiered, his casting was my first problem with it. I had been thoroughly infuriated by him on the short-lived "Married... With Children" spinoff "Top of the Heap," a thankfully forgotten sitcom which also introduced me to the ear-splitting terror of Joey Lauren Adams.

Written by the creator of both of "The Sandlot" features (there are two), "Ed" is about baseball, which is not a draw for me. I feel about sports the way most people feel about opera: I range from indifferent to hostile, depending on how in my face it is. I can appreciate the dedication and skill it takes to perform well in that realm, but the result just turns me off. There are some good examples of entertainment using a sport as a backdrop ("BASEketball," "Shaolin Soccer," "Eastbound and Down"), but it is usually tired bullshit about the redemptive power of teamwork. This is especially true in the milieu of kids-and-animals-playing-sports-together films pioneered by Keystone Entertainment, creators of the "Air Bud" and "MVP: Most Valuable Primate" franchises. Those are the most obvious inspiration for "Ed," the only feature by TV director Bill Couturié, who one-upped Keystone by casting a human as the title chimp. No, I don't mean LeBlanc.

LeBlanc squints and mugs and winces his way through the film as Jack "Deuce" Cooper, a bland hayseed who wears too much denim and, before securing a spot on the minor league Santa Rosa Rockets, admits that his prodigious pitching had only been witnessed by his mother. His nickname is surprisingly not meant to indicate that he is a festering turd, rather that he prefers throwing curveballs, which the film informed me are signaled by catchers with two fingers spread into a V pointing downward. "Coop," as most of the characters call "Deuce," is established as an animal lover, one who sleeps with his dog, faithfully milks the family cows (he turns on the milking machine by throwing a baseball at it) and objects when his mom serves Wilbur, his favorite pig, for breakfast. Yet, this big softie is instantly rattled by the chimp that attacks him when he picks him up from the bus station. Granted, he went there assuming it was a new player, not... whatever Ed is.

From our first glimpse of his Hawaiian-shirted frame, made more menacing by a whimsical flute on the soundtrack, it is very clear that Ed is not a real chimp. The credits clarify that he was played by two different people in a monkey suit bearing animatronic embellishments, while his vocalizations and other noises were made by a third person. He is unsettlingly lifelike at times, mostly when he is not ambulatory, because try as they might, the actors only approach an uncanny simian countenance. Although manager Chubb (reliably crusty coot Jack Warden) sends Coop to pick him up, it's not really made clear where Ed came from, who summoned him to the team or even why he was summoned. It's offhandedly mentioned once that he's the new mascot, although what does a chimp have to do with rockets? Naturally, Chubb puts him in a game as a substitute third baseman after he shows off his amazing fielding skills during practice, throwing a ball so hard it burns a hole through a player's glove.

Along with the prodigious primate, the team is comprised of one-note cartoons. There's the Aryan asshole pitcher who becomes Coop's sneering detractor and rival. There's the obnoxiously dumb guy who thinks Ed is Curious George and beseeches Coop to respect a superstitious horseshoe. There's the cheesy nice guy who's obviously going to have something bad happen to him, in this case an eventually-sacked sucker played by Jim "Jesus Christ" Caviezel. There's the Mexican pitcher who prefaces his exotic Spanish phasing ("Mi casa, su casa") with, "As we say back home..." These stereotypes have no problem with a chimp being placed on the roster because not only is he good, he wackily pulls the toupee off Kirby, the scheming son of the team's owner. Furthermore, Ed becomes a league fixture because the first time Chubb brings him out, a black umpire detects racism in the objections of the other team's coach and gives an indignant speech extolling the chimp's right to play. This circumstantial decision is never contested by another team or authority. When Ed makes an unassisted triple play during his first inning and then is walked because his strike zone is so small, Kirby literally gets dollar signs in his eyes.

In a questionable exercise of coachly authority, Chubb forces Coop to let the chimp crash at his apartment. This is largely because Coop blows goats on the field, although when he's not playing in a game he can pitch baseballs like a really good baseball pitcher. He chokes hard during his very first game, which had to hurt more because the game was televised (as I'm sure most minor league games were during the '90s), complete with taunts by a broadcast commentator played by Jim O'Heir, currently seen as office punching bag Jerry on "Parks and Recreation." Coop gets all bent out of shape about his slump, practicing too hard and refusing to become distracted by dating his bland but interested neighbor Lydia, whose precocious daughter Liz becomes instant BFFs with Ed. He never lets his own shortcomings become the fuel for his dislike of Ed, though, even if the chimp is a way better player and becomes an instant sensation, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Teen Beat. There are so many other reasons to be pissed at this hideous manmonkey.

Ed is not inside Coop's house for five minutes before he begins frantically grabbing and pointing at his crotch, howling and carrying on like a midget who really needs to piss but is stuck inside a monkey suit. He barges into Coop's toilet, lays down some thunder, then ducks out to grab some room deodorizing spray before heading back and really letting loose with the scatological sound effects. When he exits, the bathroom is smoking, leaving Coop to lamely quip, "Jesus, you went ape with the air freshener, too!" He proceeds to jump on the bed and swing from the ceiling lamp until it breaks, laughing manically in his unholy human-chimp voice all the while. Coop declares, "I'm gonna spank that monkey!"

Later, after being locked out, Ed breaks down the door to Coop's apartment, then steals his host's frozen dinner and devours it in a disgusting high-speed manner. Later still, he takes Coop's ancient truck on a white-knuckle joyride while the owner is unconscious in the passenger seat, breaking the gear shift and Bronx cheering out the window to the strains of Meat Loaf's "Everything Louder than Everything Else." Ed receives no comeuppance when he pulls down opposing players' pants on the field, so why would he behave around the guy whose apartment he's sharing? This little bastard, like most movie monkeys, is a menace who deserves to be dressed in a yellow clown suit, caged and electrocuted.

Liz plays matchmaker for her mom and Coop, as she craves alone time with Ed and knows where her mother's heart lies. Lydia is in fact a little too buddy-buddy with her young daughter. She tells the girl that Coop is "one troubled guy" after a failed flirt session, and Liz replies that he has "a great butt." When Jack finally mans up and takes Lydia to the carnival, she has no compunction about leaving the child alone with a chimpanzee babysitter. At first, they watch cartoons and gorge on ice cream, which Ed sprays out of his rubber nose after Liz cracks him up with a silly face. Liz ultimately rewards her mother's negligence by trashing the house during a montage set to Dire Straits' annoying "Walk of Life." This includes scenes of the microwave spewing more popcorn that it could possibly cook and the pair playing dress-up, with Ed modeling a Madonna ponytail and cone-bra ensemble, intercut with footage of the adults trying to look happy on carny rides. The Coasters' immortal "Yakety Yak" accompanies the high-speed cleanup, being the only song that should accompany the image of a ghastly ape-creature scrubbing a kitchen floor.

Kirby ushers in the third act by selling Ed to some thugs, and Lydia flexes her new-girlfriend muscle by guilting Coop into hunting the little fucker down. He finds Ed dressed in a clown suit, caged and being electrocuted. Rather than smiling and walking away, he barges in and scuffles with the toughs, leading a hasty getaway during which the simian teammates are separated. Recognizing a favorite treat, Ed stows away in a frozen banana truck, and contracts hypothermia by the time Coop nearly causes a deadly accident in the act of running the truck off the road. The chimp is placed in a human hospital, with breathing tubes and IVs and sheets on the beds and everything, and no one thinks that this is strange. He instantly gets better when Liz, seemingly abandoned at the hospital, prays and gives Ed his baseball glove, proving the old American adage that Jesus and baseball can cure anything.

Meanwhile, the Big Game at the End of the Movie is happening, and everyone on the Rockets, even the dumb guy, is playing extra hard in honor of their fallen teammate. Special guest star Tommy LaSorda, the onetime Los Angeles Dodgers manager who I remember better as "the guy who loves to eat" in those old Slim-Fast ads, drops by to see the chimp play and is dismayed to learn that Ed is missing due to Kirby's machinations. Ed arrives in a stolen ambulance just as Coop is almost replaced on the pitcher's mound by his nemesis, making it just in time to see the doltish pitcher halt play at a dramatic moment so he can walk over to the stands and make his girlfriend kiss him in front of the entire stadium. Then Coop has his big moment, winning the game with his patented curveball. LaSorda immediately signs him to the Dodgers. The whole shoddy affair ends with the new nuclear family cramped into Coop's jalopy, as he apparently convinced Lydia to pack her kid up and leave whatever the hell she was doing in Santa Rosa behind. Ramones' cover of Tom Waits' "I Don't Want to Grow Up" plays as Ed munches a frozen banana and enjoys Coop's backyard swing set, which for some reason stands assembled in the back of the rickety truck for the haul to L.A.

"Ed" is indeed a shitty movie. If you ignore the plot and the freaky monkey suit, it's competently put together, but utterly without interest to anyone over the age of 10. I didn't mention some of its stupider sequences, such as when the chimp is flipping channels and comes across footage from "Friends" in which Schwimmer's pet monkey has crapped in Aniston's shoe (my hero!). There's a running thing where the Rockets' coaches flip a coin to predict Coop's fate in baseball, but it lands on its side and stays that way, waiting to drop until the very end. That pretty much sums up the flick. That, and how much goddamned denim these people wear.



This post was composed to the inspiring strains of Moonsorrow's Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maasaa, G-Side's The One... Cohesive, The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema and M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. See ya soon.