The boss of a powerful drug company has just issued orders for a new tranquilizer to be rushed into production with hilarious results in Brain Candy, an audacious, clever, very funny new satire from the comedy troupe known as Kids in the Hall.
They play many of their parts in drag and the joke doesn't stop there. What they have to say is as funny as how they look.
Hi, welcome to the Nina Bedford Show. I'm Nina Bedford. Do you like my new outfit?
Happiness. Can it be bought in the form of a pill?
The drug they've designed is a feel-good pill and it's possible to view Brain Candy as an indictment of the happy as a clam and excited to be one drug called Prozac.
How do you feel, patient 957? Oh, um, like a fresh towel drying on the line on a summer's day. Oh, I feel like a little worm peeking its head out of the ground after a rainstorm and seeing no Robin.
The Brain Candy players are also funny just conversing as they put down the artifice of adult behavior in the corporate business world. I thought of the name for the drug, Gleamon X.
Gleamon X makes it feel like it's 72 degrees in your head all the time.
I think this is very funny stuff. Brain Candy will appeal to young moviegoers who are fans of Kids in the Hall.
I've seen them a couple of times on late night TV and I often thought they seemed good only by comparison with the recent Saturday Night Live troops.
But in Brain Candy, they're funnier than I've ever been on TV and I recommend this picture as kind of a midnight show cult picture which I suspect it's destined to become.
Boy, are we apart on this one. I did not laugh once. I thought this movie was awful, dreadful, terrible, stupid, idiotic, unfunny, labored, forced, painful, bad.
What happened to your sense of humor? I've got my sense of humor. My sense of humor was starving for a laugh as I looked at this movie.
First of all, the drag stuff was funny. So what? If it's funny. Why is it funny that they're in drag?
It's not funny that they're in drag. I've knocked pictures where people have been in drag when they're not funny. I'm saying obviously they're laughing.
You didn't get the stuff about the drug and drugs? Oh, I caught on. I caught on. What happened, Roger? We're in different universes here.
We can't talk about it. It's not funny. I didn't laugh once. We get paid to talk about it, Roger. Let's talk about it.
Tell me one funny moment in the movie. There are dozens of funny moments. Every single time I laugh throughout the picture.
I laugh throughout the picture. Well, I'm happy for you. No, no, no. Well, at least it's a start. It's a smile. Roger, will you look at this picture again?
Sure I will. I'd be happy to. Sometime maybe in the 21st century when we come back, a new Japanese animated film about cyborgs with minds of their own.
Ghost in the Shell is next.
After driving through Botswana's never-ending supply of mind, we came upon the largest animal of the land, the African elephant.
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Japanese animation, or anime, is the fastest-growing underground cult in the movie world, even though these sleek and high-tech animated movies from Japan rarely surface in conventional theaters.
Every year, a few of them break through, however, and the new anime feature making the rounds now is Ghost in the Shell.
As the movie opens, the beautiful major Mikoko Kusanagi, who is part human, part computerized machine, breaks up in a legal meeting involving trade and Internet violations.
I don't believe it. Thermoptic camouflage.
Kusanagi and her sidekick, Batou, find themselves on the trail of the Puppet Master, a dreaded hacker whose intelligence exists only as a virus that seems to roam at will over the entire planetary network.
Police! Everybody get down!
Both sides in the struggle can become invisible, as in this fight scene between the major and her quarry.
Aw, out of ammo? Huh?
And there are philosophical dialogue passages, and one of which we learn that the Puppet Master is in fact a computer program so advanced that it became aware of itself and now directs its own destiny.
But it needs a body to occupy and wants to convince the beautiful major to let it share her body.
The ghost in the title refers to self-conscious intelligence, whether human or cybernetic, and Ghost in the Shell is unusually intelligent and challenging science fiction aimed at smart audiences.
Well, there is certainly something to think about it, and that's a refreshing thing from a lot of science fiction pictures, which are just purely doom and gloom.
This is a film dealing with artificial intelligence. I like the look of the film. I like how simply moving the shadows, you know, just little movements on each character, they do it all the time.
It always grabbed me. I was always staring at this film.
A couple of other thoughts. One, I think this whole genre is obviously a peek into the psyche of Japan, because clearly there are people who are afraid of being robotized.
Yes. And also, this business of using women. They have not gotten politically correct because the woman is constantly shown nude and her body is dissected, and it's a way of subverting or allowing sexuality.
And yet she is the heroine. I understand that.
I saw two key things in these movies. You put your finger on both of them. One, the robotized thing, and second, women are very frequently the protagonists, even though they are still seen as sex objects.
No question. Coming up next, our video pick of the week, a film that nobody saw in theaters and I thought was really one of the fine sleepers of 1994.
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Shisco and Ebert's Video Pick of the Week.
Brought to you by Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn, the best part of the movies.
And now it's time for our Video Pick of the Week.
And My Choice is a film that really appealed to me in its simplicity.
It's all set in one apartment, it seemingly takes place in real time, and all that it's about is a first date.
The picture is called What Happened Was, and it's a superb debut feature from writer-director Tom Noonan
about a dinner date between two smart and lonely New Yorkers.
First the woman, beautifully played by Karen Sillis, frantically tries to get her apartment ready.
You're early.
A real tension develops between the two as the evening progresses.
They drink and talk and dine and drink and talk and flirt with a relationship.
I mean I can't believe the kind of relationships that people have.
You know, it's amazing the things that people settle for.
You know sometimes, like if you're walking along the street, and like you see a couple,
and it's like hard to imagine them sleeping together.
Right, like your parents.
My parents.
And the compelling guy who plays the man there is Tom Noonan, the writer-director, starring in this picture as well.
I think What Happened Was would be a perfect film to rent on a date.
It could trigger a long night of conversation, honest conversation.
Tom Noonan's What Happened Was, newly out on home video, my video pick of the week.
Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed on this show.
Two thumbs down for Getting Away With Murder, a film that is a disaster right from its premise,
trying to make comedy out of a mass murderer.
Two thumbs up way up for James and the Giant Peach, a fabulous film for children and the adults who will accompany them.
Two more thumbs up for a new treatment of Jane Eyre with wonderful performances by Charlotte Gainsburg and William Hurt.
A split vote, a wildly split vote on Kids in the Hall, Brain Candy.
I thought it was an outrageous comedy. Roger was outraged by it.
And two thumbs up for Ghost in the Shell, the Japanese animation film that may introduce a whole new audience to Japanimation.
Brain Candy, Roger. Brain Candy.
I wish that for you, Gene. Check it out. I think you've been taking too much of it.
No, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna see this picture again. I'm gonna laugh just as hard.
Okay, maybe I will, too. That's it for this week.
Next we'll be back with reviews of more new movies, including Celtic Pride, starring Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern,
the two diehard basketball fans who kidnapped proposing player Damon Wayans,
Don't make me hurt you now!
and Mrs. Winterborn, a comedy about mistaken identities starring Ricky Lake and Shirley MacLennan.
That's next week, and until then, the balcony is closed.
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