Rollo Tomasi

Maybe I am! Apologies if so.

The movie Paul wanted this to be exists, albeit in soap opera rather than comic book form. In 1991's Delirious, John Candy plays a soap opera writer who gets in a car accident and (Jacob's Ladder scenario) wakes up in his soap opera. He soon realizes that, as the writer, he has the ability to manipulate events within the soap opera reality. I saw it when I was a kid, so I can't really judge how good of a movie it is, but it came out shortly before Cool World so the idea was right there for the taking.

https://www.vulture.com/2016/12/every-video-game-movie-ranked-bad-to-worse.html I don't know if this list has ever been discussed on the podcast/message boards before, but when I came across it I had to laugh that the "best" video game to movie adaptations are all HDTGM movies. Even Double Dragon squeaks into the top third.

I'm more cynical about why the movie is the way it is. I don't have an "instinct" that Fred must be his own entity, I think the movie sends mixed signals about that, as others have given examples. And, I think the reason for those mixed signals is that the filmmakers wanted the movie to be more broadly marketable than a sensitive, thoughtful examination of mental illness and traumatic childhood would be. I suspect they were hoping Fred would become a Beetlejuice-type character, spawning sequels and merchandise and an animated series. But, that only works if you leave room to believe Fred has his own backstory, his own agency, his own existence. So there are two things going on in the movie that are at odds with one another, both logically and tonally, and for me that made for a strange and unpleasant movie.

Obviously this is at the heart of the disagreement, but I think the more accurate analogy would be if we were discussing a poem that went: Rose are red, Vomit is blue, Sugar is sweet, and so are you. Team Sanity: What is the vomit line about? Is this poem supposed to be tender or funny? If the poet is trying to express affection for the other person, why are they talking about vomit? Team Fred: Sure, the vomit line could be better, but it’s clearly intended to be a love poem. If you just pretend the vomit line doesn’t exist, it’s a very sweet poem.

Yes, but “the movie sucks” is an effective counterpoint to “the movie effectively conveys that Fred is a manifestation of Liz’s id.” I haven’t seen his Twitter clarification, but during the pod I never thought Paul and Casey were saying “the filmmakers clearly intend for you to think Fred is an independent being.” Instead, I took them to be saying “this film is a jumbled mess that sends mixed signals, is trying to be different things, and undermines whatever message it’s trying to convey.”

For me, the movies the podcast does fall into two categories: movies that are fun to watch in their own right despite/because of their logical gaps and insane choices (like Face/Off) and movies that are fun to watch because you know you’re going to get to hear some really funny people break down all the logical gaps and bad choices, but would otherwise be a slog and feel like a waste of time. For Team Sanity, DDF is firmly in the latter category.

I’m not sure how serious Paul and Casey were being in their defenses of the mom, but it definitely isn’t necessary to side with the mom to be Team Sanity. The main reason (in my view) to be Team Sanity is that whatever interesting ideas or noble intentions the filmmakers had, they didn’t execute them well. The movie wanted to be a broad zany grossout comedy and an empathetic exploration of the difficulties of childhood (and how those difficulties bleed into adulthood), but for me those two goals undermined each other and made for a strange and unpleasant movie.

Yes, there were times during the podcast when I felt like we were being gaslit by June and Jason. Two co-hosts of a bad movie podcast were acting like they were unfamiliar with the prospect of a movie undermining its own intentions or being internally inconsistent. I don't doubt that we were supposed to believe that Fred was an extension of Lizzie's psyche, but as Triple Lindy notes above, the movie is constantly undermining that by portraying Fred as a wacky mischief maker with his own rascally agenda coming from some alternate universe of imaginary friends. (I would guess it was also on their minds to leave enough existential independence for Fred to do a Drop Dead Fred 2.)

I was joking about him actually having a hidden agenda, though he would be perfect if they remade. (But please don't!)

This is the first time I've listened to an episode and felt the immediate need to watch the movie. Having done so, I am firmly Team Sanity. I can understand June's position, since we all have things that connected with us in childhood and formed an unbreakable bond. As for Jason, I don't know what to say about someone who connected with this movie for the first time at age 46. The most charitable explanation I can think of is that he's cynically trying to drum up interest in a remake in hopes of being cast as Fred. On the question, "who is this movie for?": I was 8 when Drop Dead Fred came out. I didn't see it, but I do remember the marketing campaign, and feeling like it was supposed to be for me -- a zany comedy for kids. In hindsight, that's insane. This was also where I found Jason and June least convincing on the podcast -- they seemed to want to pull out the parts of the movie they found poignant and hand wave away the parts that made no sense as "well, it's a mainstream comedy" or "oh, there's magical realism," as if the filmmakers bear no responsibility for creating a tonally incoherent, disturbing mess of a movie.

I came here to make a similar point. To me, "legend" implies something that's been passed down over multiple generations. If there's only been a need for something to restore the waters for 41 years, then the existence of such a thing is really more of a rumor than a legend.

This is a twist on Jason's idea that the whole franchise has been a delusion of Dom's at an insane asylum. You guys have talked a lot in this and the other Fast and Furious podcasts about all the times the characters should die if normal laws of physics applied. My idea for how the franchise should end is with the reveal that Dom in fact crashed during the opening hijack of The Fast and the Furious, and everything since then has just been a hallucination of how his life might have played out as life is leaving his body. You have to admit, that would make everything make sense (even the feverish jump forward in time to Tokyo Drift).