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Going say it again before I even listen to the episode - Kim Basinger is literally phoning it in for this movie. COME ON!

I honestly just want to see a sitcom about ex cop WHM running a spa. Make it the next Mike Schur project and a B99 spinoff! Perhaps it's co-owned by one Adrian Pimento?

I'm confused as to how WHM didn't recognize that female cop hiding out in KB's house. I understand that the LAPD must be large and not everyone could possibly know everyone, however he seems to know Emmerich and everyone on the fourth floor. That would be her department, no? Didn't they all work together or were they a little more spread throughout LAPD in order to cover all bases? It just doesn't make sense to me that Emmerich would continuously offer a job to WHM and WHM have no clue who is on his squad.

Yeah. The dad was a real idiot. He did probably the worst thing he could have done. He didn't tell anyone he got this footage. Not even his family. It would have been safer for him to just give notable LA resident Jason Statham the phone. They would have probably left him alone. I like that the dad didn't really fight them though. He saw police officers murder a guy and steal his drugs. They are basically Training Day without Denzel's charisma. I'm not fighting them. At most, I'd unsuccessfully try to fend them off before they either beat me up or killed me. I'd probably do whatever they asked.

This movie was dumb and I feel dumber having watched it.

I think it just becomes one of those crazy twist then another twist then another twist crime movies. Certainly could work but something about him being an art thief throws me. Maybe it's just movie stereotypes but it seems like a totally different type of crime even though it's still just breaking and entering and theft. It seems like it doesn't fit with any other type of crime genre film. Everyone being cops was really dumb to me. Six (?) cops knew about a broad day light murder on the streets and they all covered it up? With kidnapping? Just make them drug dealers or something. Maybe have one cop whose in on it but the situation spiraled out of control and keeps getting worse. Also, why didn't Kim Basinger's husband go to the cops in a different precinct? Give it to the news?

Am I mis-remembering or does Chris Evans ask LA-local Jason Statham for a number to reach him on before he heads to the pier? But.... he's already talking to him ON THE PHONE. WHAT??? Chris Evans seems constantly surprised about traffic in LA too which I like. Because if there's one thing everyone knows about LA it's that it rarely if ever has traffic problems. Also some great little moments - William H. Macy saves the goldfish after the shoot out in the house. Kim Basinger does the classic movie trope of checking the sunblind for the car keys and then they're just left sitting by the gear stick! And finally why do they need Macy to ID the kid - Statham saw him with his own eyes, didn't he?

re: the idea that Kim Basinger or her husband would be involved in the crime and yet they turned out to be totally innocent, the original script did call for Kim's character to be involved. Larry Cohen, screenwriter of the 2002 thriller film Phone Booth, conceived of Cellular while working for Sony Pictures. It followed a 30- or 40-year-old man named Theo Novak who obtains a call from a woman named Lenore, who tells him that she and her husband have been abducted in a safehouse by a group of bank robbers. It is then revealed that Novak is an art thief who becomes wracked with guilt after unsuccessfully rescuing a friend from committing suicide in the past; he agrees to make a detour from a criminal undertaking and rescue Lenore. During the rescue Novak is unsuccessful, but later discovers a conspiracy involving Lenore and her accomplices over another crime they are involved with—ultimately, Novak gains the upper hand, killing Lenore and her accomplices and obtains their loot in the process, which leaves him therefore a wealthy man. Fast & Furious writer Chris Morgan was brought on by Dean Devlin to rewrite the script. Morgan wanted to tell a story of a normal person who does something heroic, but he also wanted to incorporate humor, specifically humor similar to that in Indiana Jones. "I'm a big fan of situational humor and I feel like comedy plays best when it's the right thing at the right time and not just somebody trying to make a joke. For example, in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is faced with fighting the swordsman and he just pulls out a gun and shoots him. That’s not really a joke, but it got a huge laugh. That's the kind of humor we tried to work." Also, re: LORD OF THE RINGS, Return of the King came out in December of 2003 and won Best Picture a couple of months later. Fellowship Of The Ring came out in 2001.

A couple of years ago, I did a deep dive into the Jason Statham filmography. If you want to see a worse movie t hat is also more boring and yet somehow stranger, I would recommend LONDON, which came out a year after Cellular. Why would I bring up this Jason Statham movie? Because it ALSO stars Chris Evans, Jessica Biel, and Jason Statham. It doesn't take place in London, Jessica Biel's name is London. Statham plays a coked up banker who, despite being like 50 years older than Evans, is friends with him.

This movie should have been five minutes long. The phone would display the phone number from the incoming call. Even if they get disconnected, it saves the last 50 calls. Chris Evans could have told the police that a woman was kidnapped and being held at the home with that phone number. The cops could confirm the owner of the phone number with the phone company then search the place. Also, the crooked police officer hiding out in Kim Basinger's house puts on an accent which is what tips of William H Macy. Why? That seems like a really pointless way to draw attention to yourself.

I was hoping Kim Basinger was going to be the involved ala The Usual Suspects or Wild Things. Why did I think this? Because Kim Basinger's is supposed to be a teacher? I have never seen a teacher wear fish net stockings. Dead giveaway! Also When Jason Statham puts his belt around Kim Basinger he never actually strangled her with it. She freaked out but he never choked her. I was confused why he gave up so quickly on torturing her and moved onto plan B of kidnapping Ricky Martin.

The husband was a real zero. Like somehow he got away from all those cops, immediately put the evidence in a safe deposit box. Then... just went home and pretended like everything was fine? He said his name loudly SECONDS before he saw the cops. Or they could just figure out who the realtor was. He never thought "maybe they'll go to my house?" Also he didn't do any fighting and, like, I'm used to husbands and/or fathers in movies having to really step up. Like if this was TAKEN? Liam Neeson would never. At least call the FBI if you know there are crooked cops after you. Geez.

I've got my pick locked and loaded!

This sounds like a much worse movie. It's weird because I've seen this before and I still thought Kim Basinger was in on it for most of the movie.

Local references get you local work.

I agree that everyone is in a different movie. Probably because none of them met each other. I kept wondering why they didn’t reveal Statham & co were cops earlier, because then Jessica Martin could say DON’T go to the cops. It would make a bit more sense. Of course, we’d miss the riveting stairwell scene where he is losing the signal. Macy was great though. My FAVORITE thing was that after he shoots the female cop, by distracting her by kicking over the fish tank. The next time we see him, he’s in the back of an ambulance and he has saved the fish in a tiny glass. I really wish he carried the fish around for the rest of the movie. Funny this dropped today since it was recorded in Nov. Last night on “The Good Place” (which Jason was on) they mentioned torturing Shakespeare by telling him the plot of the Entourage movie and I thought, “hey didn’t Ike Barinholtz want to talk about Entourage? Maybe HDTGM should do that one...” Is it bad enough to torture Willy Shakes? (I only saw a couple episodes of the show and I hated all the characters but Shakespeare might be kind of into the sex stuff.)

Don't forget:

Sammy Fong wound up in Barney Miller later on. James Hong (the headwaiter at Celestial Gardens) showed up in lots of movies. The only other name I recognize is Virginia Grey as Rosalind but I don't remember her character.

I can finally jump in now. Watched the entire movie last night. I enjoyed Sammy's song "Don't Marry Me". I'd heard it elsewhere but didn't know it came from this show. I LOVED Helen's dream ballet. I wish the actress who played Helen had played Linda instead. She would have had greater exposure and more to do. I agree with the others who said Helen was wasted and never got resolution of her own. I guess that's the dark part of this one but isn't very dark. I think Helen's ballet was the nicest of the three I've seen. (The young girl Louise in Carousel and I think Laurey has one in Oklahoma but it's been years since I've seen that.) I am glad to see Wang Ta got his act together later in life. He became a successful executive of a multi-billion-dollar company

I just attended a screening of SHE (1984) in NYC. This would be a hall of fame movie for HDTGM if they were able to get their hands on a copy, which sounds like it might be a difficult task. Even the Alamo Drafthouse here was only able to find an Answer Print, which was missing both the opening and end credits. This only contributed to the comedy of it all when the film attempted to end on a poignant, somber ending, and instead of slowly fading to credits it abruptly cut to black and the lights came up. The audience met that with thunderous applause. Anyways, this movie has everything. It's part sword and sandals movie, part post apocalyptic movie. It features many a scantily clad lady, ninjas, a robot Frankenstein monster, mutant leper mummies, telekinetic man gods, large hairy men dressed as ballerinas, and strangest of all, a hacky, obnoxious, impression spouting comedian who when is dismembered clones himself until there are dozens of versions of him talking like Popeye and Jimmy Cagney. This movie has to be seen to be believed. If anybody can find a copy to send to the crew, don't hesitate.

Yes, but he’s less than vanilla. He’s just, like, an ice cube.

Somehow it never occurred to me they might be avoiding a few obvious “bad movie classics” like Manos for this reason. Even glancing over the complete HDTGM list, the only movie I can think of that both have done is Mac and Me, and that one was done by the podcast waaaayyy before MST3K. They’ve also done a lot of movies that MST3K spinoffs, like Rifftrax, have done. It’s always been weird to me that 200+ episodes in, they’ve done several of the classics, like The Room, Birdemic, and The Star Wars Holiday Special, but have still left several others on the table, like Plan 9 from Outer Space, Manos, and Troll 2. Also, they need to do all three of those ones I just named.

Oh god, I forgot a horrific part. So the villains are clearly Nazis. They want to get rid of all the brand name food icon characters. "Send them to the expiration station!" the head Nazi orders. What do they call the food icons? "Ikes" ...."ikes" What does that rhyme with? Sending "ikes" to the "expiration station". THIS WAS A CHILDREN'S MOVIE! As a warm up to the literal holocaust, you get the black sidekick bragging that he's going to give one big titted woman a chocolate frosting facial, and bragging to another big titted woman about cumming in her mouth. This is on top of the Charlie Sheen dog talking about how to clean out bodily fluid stains to another big titted woman, right after yet another big titted woman teased him for being after her "raisins". End credits? A bird tries to get it on with a big titted penguin but freaks out when he can't get it up.

My favorite thing about really shitty animated movies is imagining the actors' reactions when they see the finished product. Because they likely had NO idea it was going to look like this. I'm sure they were all in those recording booths thinking they're lending their voices to a Pixar/Dreamworks level production. Then it turns out to be this hideous garbage.

Aside from The Smurfs (R.I.P.), have they done an animated wreck yet? Either this or Delgo. But probably this, because eeeeeugh! And yes, Rabin's piece on this was pretty monumental.