A Talking Cat!?! (2013)

[inactiveuser501 168]

I think it's just an odd film. It doesn't seem like a real thing, and for children no less. It probably falls in the category of The Oogieloves as either you fall into the insanity or don't

[thestray 361]

Watched the whole thing. I was waiting for the insanity, but it just seemed more dumb than anything. With the way it was talked about I guess I expected more to be happening than just a series of really terribly written poorly acted interactions and cat voice-overs. It has some amusing wtf moments, I can't say I didn't chuckle here and there... but it just didn't live up to the hyperbole of the forum for me, it didn't blow my mind the way Birdemic did or anything. I wouldn't recommend it to someone as something they "need" to see like I would many other b-movies. That being said I wouldn't mind a HDTGM episode, I'm sure Paul, June, and Jason ripping this apart would be amusing.

 

I also don't see the "homoerotic undercurrent" at all?

[neilly 105]

The director made another of these "fine, family, weirdly homoerotic' films called A TALKING Horse?!?. It was hilarious to hear Eric Roberts talking the entire time via a cell phone. Brings the term "phoning it in" to the most literal of meanings.

[Skeevins 322]

I loved watching this movie. It was a porno without sex and a slasher movie without a bodycount. Without the sprawling and repetitive vistas, you could sum up all the major events in about 30 seconds, though.

 

 

I also don't see the "homoerotic undercurrent" at all?

 

Two teenage boys splashing around together in a pool (complete with the statue of a naked child pissing into it) while one shrieks "I'm doing it! I'm doing it!"

 

And then the other boy says something that I'm sure must have been written as "I'm so sunk!" but comes out as "I'm so suck!"

[inactiveuser501 168]

There really has to be an alternate retelling of this movie where the two boys fall in love.

 

 

[thestray 361]

Doesn't that say more about you guys than the movie itself that you see one guy teaching another guy how to swim as a "homoerotic undercurrent"? Is it just inherently gay for more than one male to be in a pool at the same time or something? I don't get it.

[inactiveuser501 168]

I REALLY can't believe I have to defend this, but did you watch the same movie? It wasn't two men in a swimming pool, it was more of Justin Cone's character being in that pool with the character. I don't know if it's his line reads, the fact that we first see him in tight jeans shorts, the director's previous work on soft-gay porn where people say scenes like this (shirtless men doing nothing) are common, or the fact that he has no chemistry whatsoever with his love interest, but when the other son began to teach him how to swim, I honestly felt like I wouldn't shock me if he suddenly fell in love with the other son. I mean, he was having a BLAST with that guy compared to his girlfriend.

[Bob Drillboids 181]

I guess it's time for me to eat crow. I really thought "The Room" and "Birdemic" were special cases and that similar over-the-top garbage would be avoided. But now that "Sharknado" has been featured, it appears that anything is fair game. I, for one, find the episodes involving mainstream films with big budgets and proper stars to be far more enjoyable ("The Devil's Advocate" being the best example of this and my personal favorite ep of all time) than the ones with low-hanging fruit like "Sharknado" and "A Talking Cat!?!", but to each his own I guess.

[thestray 361]

I REALLY can't believe I have to defend this, but did you watch the same movie? It wasn't two men in a swimming pool, it was more of Justin Cone's character being in that pool with the character. I don't know if it's his line reads, the fact that we first see him in tight jeans shorts, the director's previous work on soft-gay porn where people say scenes like this (shirtless men doing nothing) are common, or the fact that he has no chemistry whatsoever with his love interest, but when the other son began to teach him how to swim, I honestly felt like I wouldn't shock me if he suddenly fell in love with the other son. I mean, he was having a BLAST with that guy compared to his girlfriend.

 

I did watch the same movie, and I was waiting for the much talked about gay undercurrent, and when the pool scene came I was like oh boy, here it comes, but nothing even remotely homosexual happened.

 

What I got from his interaction with the girl is that he was the typical nervous around girls type of nerd. Plus he was embarrassed about not being able to swim.

I didn't think there was anything unusual about the fact that he got along better with the guy, I think it's pretty typical that awkward guys are more relaxed around another guy than they are with a pretty girl.

There's nothing gay to me about 2 guys getting along, or one teaching the other to swim.

 

As for related films, I don't see how it makes sense to say this film has gay undertones because of what's in some other films.

[inactiveuser501 168]

That's interesting, because I also read about the gay undercurrents ahead of time, and felt that it didn't disappoint. It may also have to do with the fact that this is a children's movie dealing with childish people in child like situations, and not a child in sight. There was sort of a naive innocence that made me think that "They are trying to get away with this because it's a children's film, but the actors make it infinitely more creepy/laughable" if a child was learning how to swim with another guy, or was having severe girl trouble, it would be fine, but seeing a 17 year old made me think "there's something more here" Because I didn't see it as awkward, I genuinely thought he did not give a shit about his love interest and had sort of a "Well I guess I like her" attitude.

 

Of course every character in this movie could just be a goddamn dummy and I'd be fine with that theory.

[Johnny Unusual 525]

Maybe J Kaiser Esquire (spacing please!) just has a really hip kid!

 

Yeah, thread merge.

[BeingAllFishies 99]

Ah, I see we've already encountered this one. Awesome. I'll just throw in my vote for it then.

 

Things to watch for:

 

Someone being accused of slamming doors when no door has actually been closed.

Facial hair that looks like a bruise.

Lots and lots of stock nature footage.

"LOOK AT YOUR MACHINE."

Public domain salsa music at the most inappropriate times.

"You should take a walk in the woods, and then have a talk in the woods."

 

Go watch it now. Have lots of alcohol on hand.

[Azzyth0th 0]

Eric Roberts lends his voice through what sounds like a drunk Skype session as a talking cat in this David DeCoteau film. I don't have enough room to describe just how amazing this film is. So, here's a trailer.

 

 

Oh, and that music will be stuck in your head for the rest of your life.

 

Oops. Tried to search for this and couldn't find it. Thought it hadn't been suggested yet.

[OhHeyKatie 0]

I don't even know where to begin with how incredibly awful this movie is and how I desperately need some back up on this, if anyone's heard of it.

 

A Talking Cat!?! (2013) Tells the story of a cat that appears to two families and has a special power to talk to each of them, but he can only talk once. (When asked why, the simple explanation from the cat is "I don't make the rules, Phil.")

 

First amazing thing about this film, I guess it's supposed to be a children's movie? But the same house locations are also used for a string of other children's movies as well as some soft pornos. Same set pieces and all.

 

Second is that the cat is voiced by Mr. Brightside himself, Eric Roberts. A reviewer said it best when they said "It's like they gave Eric Roberts a bottle of gin and had him record the whole movie in a closet." Not to mention, the way they get the cat to talk is nothing sort of amazing computer animation ingenuity.

 

Third, the editing. A fun fact from IMDB, "This movie takes place in two major locations, but includes a total of 59 establishing shots."

 

Check out the trailer, I promise you won't be disappointed.

 

[OhHeyKatie 0]

Just watched this on netflix, and I am in love with it. I don't think there's any doubt that Roberts was sloshed when he did his voiceover work. Besides that, man, where to even begin? The casio keyboard sample music soundtrack, which runs constantly? The crazy clothes-scanning scene? The sock on the cat's head? This movie is a wonder.

 

If you enjoyed this preformance from Eric Roberts, you really should check out A Halloween Puppy, also by the same creators... same set, same locations... except it's Eric Roberts turning into a bulldog. The bummer is that we don't get the stellar animal talking effects. Sigh.

[WalkingEye 1]

This movie defies understanding. The movie is about a talking cat, which is so ridiculous that the punctuation in the title seems almost angry.

 

Eric Roberts voices the titular cat, which based on the quality of it, seems like he recorded sessions when he was sitting on the toilet and felt he may as well get paid while he shits, by (literally) phoning in his lines. The scenes in which the cat talks would have about the same level of believability if they had taped an old tape recorder to the side of the cat while someone off camera poked the "play" button with a stick whenever the next line is supposed to be said

 

It's directed by David DeCoteau, whose credits seem to be mostly soft-core porn and/or horror films you could probably jerk off to. This "energy" comes through as well, a lot of the scenes seem oddly sleazy or like the preamble before some sex that you really don't want to watch.

 

Some incentive, after 5-10 seconds if it doesn't convince you that you need to watch this, then it might be a lost cause, also you may be dead inside.

 

 

Just keep in mind while you are watching that, THIS IS IN A FUCKING MOVIE, it's not just someone's home videos that someone is splicing Eric Roberts voice into.

[chasev 1]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2511190/

 

This movie needs to be on this podcast. I will start with the trailer which speaks for itself...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-h-KpG2tHM

 

The film features these two people as the leads.

 

 

One is a tech mogul obviously....

 

The cat who is voiced by a apparently drunk Eric Roberts talks like this...

 

It's directed by David DeCoteau, who previously had directed many gay softcore movies in the same house featured in this movie.

 

There is too much for me to add right now but there are layers and layers to this movie. It's on par with Birdemic. Just please watch this movie.

[lilseltzer 0]

This perplexing family film (the "!?!" is part of the stylization of the title) is about a magical cat named Duffy (voiced by Eric Roberts, but it sounds like it was recorded over the phone) who can speak to a person once, but only once. The shots of a lazy, tubby cat with Robert's gravelly, villainous voice overdubbed make it worth it. The dialog "You can talk?!" "Yeeah, I'm a talking cat" is exchanged at least twice during the movie.

 

​It's available on Amazon Video.

 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DnSUD3a18zo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[lilseltzer 0]

I would love to hear y'all's input about this bizarre "family comedy" film, A Talking Cat!?! - its like Gooby but with less effort. Eric Roberts, famous for playing villainous characters, especially in Christopher Nolan's Batman, voices a magical talking cat who gives fleeting "advice" to various family members in a slurring deadpan. Eric Roberts' voiceover is almost enough to make it worth it because it is so clear he doesn't want to be doing it... that plus the lazy animation to make the cat "talk" would make it worth it.

 

June's potential exploration of this family's "problems," Jason's questioning of this cat's voice acting and intentions (there's some puberty themes which - why are teenagers seeking advice from a cat? but Jason can answer those questions better) and Paul's ridiculing of the editing would make for a good episode.

 

The movie is on amazon video and on youtube... Please do it! Also, the movie's title has that punctuation in it... the "!?!" is part of the title. I almost feel like that's enough to convince y'all.

[PeppertheCat 0]

Please watch A Talking Cat?! It's bananas. Lots of cheese puff talk and cat butts

[CaptainAmazing 127]

My thoughts after reading the thread and watching the trailer:

-Why haven't they had Nathan Rabin, the author of the Onion AV Club article on this, on the show yet? He's pretty much the world's foremost authority on the subject of terrible movies. Plus he has plenty of podcast experience.

-I saw the title around randomly a few times and was 100% convinced that it was a Disney imitator B-movie from the 1950s until I came into this thread. That's just what it sounds like.

-I laughed pretty damn hard at the way the cat's mouth moves. It's like an entry-level editor did that in five minutes using the same editing program that the basic cuts for the rest of the movie were done with. Speaking as a video professional, I could have done that in college and still gotten the syncing better.

-Surprised nobody's talked about the titles in the trailer yet. They're in powder-blue Comic Sans, there's waayyy too many of them, and sometimes they screw up very basic capitalization.

The whole trailer is really like a below-average teenage kid tried to throw together something for YouTube.

[Jillybean 104]

If you watched this movie as a drinking game and took a sip any time someone said, “cheese puffs,” you’d for sure die of alcohol poisoning. I love this movie. So weird. How the retiree hates his home’s decor and says things like, “I think I have two ovens,” makes it seem like he may live elsewhere.

Girl calls guy she’s never met to get him to tutor her, sets up a tutoring session, and never gives him her name.

Genius.