Cameron H.

For me, and I assume for others that also love it, it was one of those movies that was always on when you were little. It felt like every weekend. Very few of the people I know who like it actually saw it in theaters. It’s more of something they associate with lazy Sunday afternoons as a kid.

As we have all heard by now, Rabbit is going away. However, as @PollyDarton has astutely stated, they “left the keys in the ignition.” We all know it’s been buggy and it’s only a matter of time before it crashes completely, but do you all want to keep continuing on until it does? If so, let’s carry on as normal. Vote in the poll above for the best date and preferred movie.

I mean, it’s essentially a live action Looney Tunes cartoon - made specifically, I would imagine, not to be scrutinized too closely.

I’ll say this for Space Jam: I saw it for the first time a few months ago, and it was absolutely fine for what it was.

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed... We watched:

(I loved the episode, I love the show, but I’m so fucking glad we can finally stop talking about Drop Dead Fred) Congrats to Triple Lindy for the win! 🥳

Has anyone had a chance to look at any of these?

My only point is that it’s BS to continue debating your point when the people you’re debating against no longer have the opportunity to respond. I don’t care that he did, but it’s a pretty disingenuous way to debate.

They said something at the end of the episode to the effect of , “If you’re going to an Altman film on the AFI list, why not Nashville” so I can only assume both Amy and Paul share my negative opinion of MASH For me, I thought Nashville was fine, but I was not nearly as blown away as they were. I don’t believe that means I need a cleanly plotted film, just that very few of the hooks Nashville cast reeled me in. Also, I wasn't particularly by the boarding house assassin and was expecting the shooting from relatively early. Perhaps that’s because I didn’t see a young Steven King, but rather Mark David Chapmen (John Lennon’s assassin). It blew my mind that this five years earlier or I would have said it was referencing Lennon’s murder. However, despite my lack of interest overall, I get how someone with an improv background, like Paul, would want to be a part of a movie like this.

Tool? Huh. Okay.

As I said in the episode thread, that movie for me was Beautiful Creatures. When it was announced, I distinctly remember wondering why they were doing that movie over so many others that they could be doing. I just felt like they went inordinately hard on it, and I disagreed with almost everything they said. I even remember thinking at the time that the episode felt “mean” which is a vibe I usually don’t get from them. (Although, to be fair, I might have been feeling a bit defensive and projected that upon them.) I’m not saying that BC is a perfect movie or that it’s above scrutiny, but in that movie’s case, it felt like they went out of their way to criticize it and most of their criticisms were pretty weak. Most of the time I get it, but that one left me cold.

It’s totally cool! Your insights have been spot on and most welcome

Perhaps, but I still find it hard to believe she had NO idea. I mean, boat owners still have to pay a personal property tax, don’t they? Every year, my property is assessed by the county so I have pretty good idea of how much my house is worth. Honestly, the more I think about it, the shadier it all seems - especially when you consider that after the payout, her character completely disappears from the movie. It’s almost like she fled the country or something. At one point, I briefly entertained the idea of her character paying off a weird, New Waver English actor to pretend to be her psychologically fragile friend’s long lost imaginary pal to give Liz sort of a “push” in the right direction, but, I mean...that would just be crazy...

To be fair to doxrus, they were responding to my claim that Team Sanity seemed to have a more analytical approach to their criticism and Team Fred having a more emotional approach. In that post, I didn't mean to imply any negative connotations with the use of the word "emotional" - especially considering I'm Team Fred myself I just didn't want too much to be laid on doxrus when I was the one who brought it up. I didn't mean for it to sound like one interpretation is better than the other, or that there was an insurmountable divide between the two. I think doxrus' point, and the point I was trying to make, is that ultimately, when you are having a two-sided debate, and one side is affected emotionally by a piece of art and the other side isn't, it's difficult (but not necessarily impossible) to rectify that. And, as played out (hilariously) in the episode, it often just leads to a circular argument. They aren't suggesting that we are "blinded by emotion" anymore than we believe them to be "cold, emotionless robots." But you can't make someone feel something if they just don't. I can go on and on about how something affected me on an emotional level, but if you don't feel that same feeling at all (not to suggest that you're incapable of feelings period), then I'm never going to change your mind. By the same token, if it didn't affect you emotionally, you can point out every single flaw and logical inconsistency in the movie until you're blue in the face, but it's not going to change the fact that it did work on some level. That being said, I think your description is better. You're saying the same thing I was trying to, but worded it far better. P.S. Glad to have you both on the boards

I totally agree. Let's face it, Liz's life was already a mess, but what made it worse is she never developed the tools in childhood to deal with life's unexpected disasters. That's part of why getting into trouble as a child is so important. Getting into trouble teaches us how to get out of trouble. I feel like it's also important to note that Fred doesn't just cause chaos indiscriminately. Whenever he creates a scene in public, it isn't to cause her harm but to take the piss out of the stuffed shirts. He's rebelling against the notion that adulthood means fancy restaurants, board meetings, clean carpets, string quartets, and pretentious wine tastings. He's saying, "You've been raised to believe that when you're an adult these are the things that should matter, but they're not. This is all artifice, and in their own way, just as ridiculous as anything I'm doing." Once she's able to come to terms with that, she is able to free her inner child. Not so that she can be an adult-child forever, but so that she can finally be a complete person.

The one reaction I really didn’t understand was Carrie Fisher’s excitement over the insurance check. She acts like it’s a financial windfall, but isn’t it just covering the cost of her home and possessions? If your home burns down, your insurance covers the repairs or whatever, but it’s not like you’re suddenly wealthy - you’re still homeless. Even weirder is she says that she had no idea her riverboat was “worth so much,” but wouldn’t she have to be paying the premiums in order to be compensated? Certainly she must have had some idea how much it was all worth. She acts like she was saddled with the property or something. Technically, she could have just sold it at any time and everything would have worked out exactly the same for her. Which leads me to wonder, is it possible that this was all an elaborate plan by Fisher to commit insurance fraud? After she’s collected her insurance check, we learn is that her home wasn’t listed as a riverboat but as a “river condominium.” There also doesn’t appear to be any other houseboats in the area - let alone house riverboats . Perhaps she tried to sell it only to find out that there just wasn’t much of a market for quirky homesteads in the early 90’s. Noticing that her friend was acting erratically and clearly on the brink of a nervous breakdown, maybe she gently encouraged Liz’s delusions of Drop Dead Fred, subtlety enabling and manipulating her behavior for her own nefarious purposes. Because, honestly, if a friend came to your house in the middle of the night talking a lot of jibber-jabber about imaginary people and then cut off half of their hair while you slept, would you really just leave them alone in your maritime manse with the keys in the ignition? Taking it a step further, who’s to say that she didn’t just hire someone who looked vaguely Charlie-like to speedboat past at just the right time, knowing full well that Crazy Liz and her hyperactive hallucinations would be unable to resist the temptation of chasing him down? In one fell swoop, Fisher rids herself of her ridiculous home and gets a sweet insurance payout all while maintaining a perfect alibi and avoiding any culpability in the “accident.” In my mind, it’s the only logical way to explain her behavior and why she would thank “Fred” for destroying her home.

100%

The only thing I’m certain is that if “Fred” exists he’s probably just Johnny Rotten having a laugh.

I think that movie for me might be Beautiful Creatures. While I might enjoy other movies they’ve done more, that’s the one movie that I can think of where I fundamentally disagreed with them on almost every point. Like Drop Dead Fred, I’m not saying Beautiful Creatures isn’t without its issues, but I think they went way harder on that movie than it really deserved.

I just want to say, whether you are Team Sanity or Team Fred, this movie has brought a bunch of new people and perspectives to the boards. I’ve really enjoyed reading all of your insights.

That’s totally fair. However, I think it might also be fair to say that Team Fred...likes vomit? Lol I agree, the movie is not for everyone. I can see why people would hate it. It’s just that those things aren’t deal breakers for Team Fred.

1) I was responding specifically to people saying the movie as a whole sucks. Somehow it feels like we’ve all conflated “Fred is real = bad movie,” and “Fred is Liz’s manifestation = good movie.” I think that’s a mistake. I think, as others have stated, if you are Team Fred you’re probably more likely to have derived enjoyment from the movie, but you’re not necessarily under any illusions to its quality. 2) I guess that depends if we’re talking about “real literary criticism” versus, “we’re just talking through our feelings about it in a heightened stupid debate.” If we judged it against the Intentional Fallacy, then yeah, it absolutely fails. My point with the poem was more to illustrate how the argument seems to come off. Neither side is all right or all wrong. Team Sanity is definitely taking a more analytical approach to the film, and Team Fred is absolutely more emotional. Logically, we should be separating the debate from quality and content. If we did that, I’m sure we would all agree that the movie isn’t particularly well made. We would also probably (mostly) all agree on the writer’s intention. The problem is that these two things have become inextricably linked in the debate, because for Team Fred, the message is more important than the quality and vice versa for Team Sanity. No one is really going to give up their position one way or the other because it all comes down to what’s more important to the individual. Most of the things I enjoy, I enjoy because of my ability to view them critically. The worst type of movie, for me, is one that leaves you feeling nothing; thinking nothing. That’s what I can enjoy both HDTGM and Unspooled. I like being able to pick movies apart and discuss what makes them work or not. 3) I’m not sure I follow your logic on this point. Catch!

Possibly my biggest issue with this movie was the scene where Fred and Little Liz are pretending to be burglars and her father is trying to call the police. While he’s on the phone, they rip the downstairs phone out of the wall which disconnects her father’s call upstairs and leads him to exclaim, “They’ve cut the line.” Um, that’s not how phone lines work. That was a standard POTS line (plain old telephone service) connected with what looks to be a standard RJ11 tipped phone cable. Even if they ripped it out of the wall and destroyed the IW (internal wiring) phone jacks aren’t on a continuous circuit. At worst, Liz’s father may have heard the phone briefly go off hook from being ripped out of the wall, but it wouldn’t have disconnected his call upstairs. In order to “cut the line” as depicted in the movie, Liz and Fred would have had to tamper with the lines coming in from the NID (Network Interface Device) from off the street which would have been difficult for a small child and her imaginary chaos agent friend to do accidentally or without the proper tools. Otherwise, everything else in the movie tracks 100%