Price: Fiddy Cents
Year: 2006
Length: 94 minutes
Director: Alex Steyermark
Cast: Michael Angarano, Cynthia Nixon, Johnny Messner, Sunny Mabrey, Gina Gershon, Gideon Glick, Matt Bush, Ethan Hawke, Wyclef Jean
The happy (?) ending of this movie is a kid who just died of terminal cancer fishing on a heavenesque beach with Ethan Hawke, who plays his father who also die(getic)d of terminal cancer many moons ago, and then Wyclef Jean swings by on a bicycle because I guess he's an angel now or some shit, then the soundtrack swells into some shitty latter day Wyclef treaclemuck about how heaven is in New York City. FIN.
Jesus, what a great fucking ending, right? It's like What Dreams May Come for the post-Rock of Love 2 set, amylrite? But still, this movie is simply not very good because it is based on a horrible premise, shifts tones more uncomfortably than my bowels, and has a recurring motif of the main character being haunted by the haunting visage of soulful, intellectual poet, Ethan Hawke. But let's bring out the magic of this clusterfuck before diving into the turgid morass of misguided tallow that keeps this movie from being rewatchably, hilariously misguided (oh, it'll all mesh together anyway).
First (1): It is about a kid with terminal cancer declaring on National Television (on the dying kid wish channel apparently) that his dying wish is the spend the weekend alone with some fug "supermodel" who wouldn't last 3 weeks on ANTM. OK, so far so LOLZ.
2nd (2): It was prodouched by the irrepressible golden goofball of the NBA, Mark Cuban! I somehow feel that the non-Michael Chiklis Commish, David Stern, must have had a role in this. Maybe it was he who slipped the script along with some roofies and a bunch of pens into El Cubano's ComicCon ToteBag. We will never know; unless Mark Cuban reads this while Googling himself, as I am sure he is right right now, and sends me some angry e-mail about how this movie is heartwarming and not a result of a David Stern plot against him, although he doesn't remember signing the paperwork for this which is kind of weird and come to think of it that red wine at dinner with the Sternmeister was a little bitter. Hmm. Maybe this'll pop up in his newsfeed. I demand answers!
Third (3): The cast is miss guided lee funny. We get the cancery Michael Angarano being all cancery again hot on the heels on his cancertastic turn in Lords of Dogtown, where he dies of cancer at the end. Johnny "Hot" Messner uses the acting chops he developed in ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID to sympathetically love up on Cynthia Nixon while her son is dying, which is presented as a classy move within the movie, even though in the real world, it's maybe i dunno creepy? Then there is the lifeless face of GinaGershon2006 coasting on Cristal Connors goodwill yet again, but I ain't mad because she was and always will be GODDESS. Then we get Wyclef Jean as a cabbie/angel/"magikal negro" a la Cuba Gooding JR in Wet Dreams Make Cum. HE IS SO CHARISMAGIC!! Also, a kid in this is named Gideon Glick and he kinda looks like the illegitimate step son of Gideon Yago and Jiminy Glick, so there's that. BUT the crown jewel of this all is, of course, the UNBILLED role of Ethan "Mi Douchi Weighs a Ton" Hawke squinting and squirming his ways into our hearts as the dead father whose death from terminal illness a few years prior makes Cynthia Nixon the saddest woman ever to bone a football star on the side while her dying son is getting beaten up by bouncers at a strip club and vomiting blood all over them. Which conveniently transitions us into
Four (4): th blud. This movie is constantly on the verge of getting enjoyable and silly; but right whenever the movie starts to become mildly enjoyable, the main character (Angarano) starts bleeding black blood out of his nose and coughing up red blood everywhere. This seriously happens every four minutes in this otherwise relatively silly film. It's like if you're masturbating to porn and just when you're about to jizz into the carefully folded napkin in your right hand, the porno switches to being video of aborted feti eating the shit out of the asshole of an experimental mutant crossbred between Melissa Rivers and a Whooping Crane. You may still jizz in that napkin, but by G-d if that switch up didn't kill yr buzz. It's like that except with laughter instead of cum.
(5) Phive: This movie presents a world in which Ethan Hawke has died years ago of a terminal illness and that, my friendos, is a world in which I wish we all lived.
Crucial Context: This movie was purchased for 50 cents on DVD at the final closing blow out of a Hollywood Video near where I work in San Franshitsco. They maybe had a total of 35 DVDs left in stock at this point. 15 were copies of ONE LAST THING, 10 were copies of SILVER CITY (some misguided seeming John Sayles Bush murder mystery satire feat. Billy Zane, which I also bought), and the remaining ten were miscellaneous direct to DVD crap starring people like Jeff Speakman and Lorenzo Lamas.
In spite of this seeming non-popularity, this movie is somehow (ballot stuffing) pulling a 7.0 on the ever reliable bastion of taste, the IMDB. I guess, people find it heart-warming? Depressing? I guess that since it's about a cancer boy nobody wants to hate on it too much. After all, what kind of sick fuck hates on a movie about a kid who wants to fuck some coke addicted, scotch sipping "model" who he's never even met before as his dying wish? Why I can feel the cockles of my heart gaining temperature as I type! Maybe it'll be the next PATCH ADAMS! Either way, this movie is better than PATCH ADAMS because, at least for the first ten minutes, the main character is constantly smoking weed, which makes it somewhat redeemable in my red red eyes. It gives you the brief hope that you might be embarking upon some unholy teeny amalgam of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE FUCKET LIST, and EVIL BONG, that is alas dashed as the kid inexplicably hangs up his joints only to find that not being stoned all the time makes it a lot weirder when you start mistaking Wyclef Jean for DEAD FATHER ETHAN HAWKE.
Either way, it gave my roommate and me the idea to make a post-apocalyptic, terminal illness stoner comedy. You see this guy has deadly incurable parasites inside him that only the calming effects of some marijuana can stagnate. However, the rub is that he's living in a post-apocalyptic world thats a barren wasteland with a finite amount of bud left lying around so he has to like go on an adventure to find more or some shit. I dunno, it's basically Mad Max but with like weed instead of gas, and bad pot humor in place of awesome car chases. If the parasites are heartworms, I can say it's HEARTWORMING! on the box! It will make us dozens! Maybe Mark Cuban can produce it?
G-d, I hope (no barack) so!
