Tag: comedy

129 – Hot to Trot

Hot to Trot, 1988

Tim and Jen make hay out of the 1988 comedy Hot to Trot, which killed Bobcat Goldthwait’s career for two decades. The horse was unscathed.

Hear the entire episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 other bonus episodes!

Tim confused God Bless America with Red State (and Jen did not catch the error, shame on her) — the other movie from 2011 with a divisive title and middling reviews about a gun-toting ingenue.

On his blog, script doctor Andy Breckman reminisces unkindly about working on the screenplay.

Listen to the Q&A we discussed in the episode, in which Goldthwait puts the screws to the interviewer for opening with a question about Hot to Trot.

087 – Serial

Screenwriter Josh Olson brings us a movie that he swears is actually funny and good! It’s the little-seen Serial from 1980! Featuring Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld, violent gay bikers, Sally Kellerman’s boobs, casual homophobia, Tommy Smothers in a headband, hot tubs, est probably, psychologically disturbed children whose acting out is played for laughs, etc.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

For the curious, here is the full Kevin Thomas review of Serial from 1980 that we mentioned on the episode:

Kevin Thomas shreds Serial

You can also hear more of Josh with Dave Anthony on The West Wing Thing, or with Joe Dante on The Movies That Made Me, or check out our episode on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls!

077 – Hudson Hawk

Tim and Jen revisit everyone’s favorite dad-joke heist movie: the unfairly reviled (to some) Hudson Hawk!

Bruce Willis mugging in Hudson Hawk (1991)
Doing an comedy

The entertainment media subjected Hudson Hawk to an unusual amount of negative attention during production. This poor publicity appears to have had a detrimental affect on the box office returns. However, enough time has passed that a nonzero number of people (who aren’t Tim!) will defend it. One of those pieces appeared at the Guardian:

The action scenes are fun, particularly one sequence where Willis is riding a hospital bed down the Brooklyn Bridge (“How am I driving? 1-800-I’m-gonna-fuckin’-die!”) 

Oliver Macnaughton

For another movie that became synonymous with “flop,” try our very first episode, where we discussed Ishtar.

058 – UHF

UHF key art

Tim and Jen make the case for a socialist reading of Weird Al’s lone movie outing, UHF. Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

So did Current Affairs, as it happens.

Also be sure to read the oral history of the making of UHF at the AV Club!

For more iconic 80s comedy, listen to Tim and guest Bitter Karella discuss the immortal Jim Varney’s Ernest Goes to Camp!

037 – Return of the Ghostbusters

Jen, Tim, and guest Kristian Boruff dissect something even more pointless than Funko Pops: a Ghostbusters fan film from 2007! It’s called Return of the Ghostbusters, and Kris does not care about burning bridges in this episode.

If you must see it for yourself, it’s on YouTube.

033 – Livin’ Large

Sean Morris joins Jen and Tim to discuss a favorite forgotten comedy, Livin’ Large, which prefigured “Marxist propaganda” film Sorry To Bother You! We make the connections and also ramble about symptoms of dystopia like SoundCloud rappers.

For more Sean, try our episode on the Warren Beatty comedy Bulworth!

008 – Nothing But Trouble

Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble (1991)
why

Jen is once again joined by Bitter Karella to suffer through Dan Aykroyd’s sole directorial credit, Nothing But Trouble! We have nothing else to say except that if you Google the Demi Moore picture we allude to, don’t do it at work.

For more Karella, try our episode on The Day the Clown Cried!

007 – The Day the Clown Cried

Jen invites author, artist, and asshole Bitter Karella on the show to discuss Jerry Lewis’s unfinished Holocaust, um, comedy-drama The Day the Clown Cried. Thanks to Flemish TV and Australo-German filmmaker Eric Friedler, enough footage from the notorious project has surfaced for us to discuss it. Shoutout to Friedler and the Library of Congress curator who were too important to talk to us.