Episode 100 — Junior

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

I almost always watch the movies unless I have seen them before. I enjoy conversing about terribleness in movies (as well as awesomeness) in real life, so I get more enjoyment out of the podcast by doing so. I know other people who don't watch the movies because they are not the obsessive movie geek I am, so it's to each his or her own, I think.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Thanks Quasar! Yeah, when I was binge listening to HDTGM there were movies I have not seen--and still haven't seen, in fact (e.g. Gooby, 88 Minutes)--and these are some of my favorite episodes. I try to watch along as best I can now that I am caught up, but I don't know...there is just something about Junior that I can't wrap my head around. It's weird. It is a visceral response. I wish I could point to a single thing about this particular film that makes me not want to watch it, but I am not coming up with anything, which makes my trepidation all the more frustrating. It's not like it is Tyler Perry's Temptation where I can see why someone wouldn't want to watch it. This is a stupid Schwarzenegger comedy about a pregnant man! Not exactly heavy stuff...

 

I think I will just have to bite the bullet and watch it tonight. Having a new episode of HDTGM ready to listen to for 3 days now, and not listening to it, is killing me.

[brightesteyes11 7]

I don't know how they didn't talk about the final scene in which the chaseDanny DeVito so they can convince him to get pregnant as well. Does this mean they've set a precedent and that more and more men are now getting pregnant?

 

Also, my husband brought up a really good point. There is a person out there who has had Arnold lick cake off of her baby foot. I need to know everything about her.

[Cameron H. 23786]

I have to say, that so far, my favorite part was just after the Universal logo and the opening shot in the library. The first credit appears on the screen, my two-year-old son groans, and in the most despondent way you can possibly imagine, says "Oh, no..." He then put his hands over his eyes and shook his head.

 

51 mins in and we have both given up completely. We are now playing with cars (I get the red one) and I am finding it to be an infinitely more rewarding use of my time.

[treiphish 38]

Honest question for the boards...

 

This is the first time since binge listening to all the episodes and getting caught up that I am seriously wondering if I need to watch the movie they are covering. I mean, I love watching bad movies (I now own copies of Glitter, Rhinestone, and Xanadu for God's sake), but there is something about this one that gives me pause. Even though I know why they are doing it for their 100th, the whole premise of this movie just never appealed to me. Is it worth watching or should I just listen to the episode and give the movie a pass? Please, let me know what you think. I will let you all be my guide

 

I personally don't usually watch the movies unless I stumble across it on netflix and it's coming up. I've never found myself too thrown on my enjoyment of what they are talking about. With many, like "Junior", I've seen in the past and that's plenty for me to listen to them riff. I honestly like when they go around and say whether it's worth watching and occasionally if it get's a recommendation I'll go watch it and just relisten to the episode.

 

However, it sounds as though you have a history of watching before listening. If that is the case, this movie is definitely better than stuff you have already watched, but I won't be rewatching this anytime soon.

 

...As I'm looking at what I did, I see this is the least helpful response ever.

[ParrotTalkBack 110]

Small nitpick: Emma wrote Sense and Sensibility not Pride and Prejudice.

 

Even smaller nitpick: She did write small parts of the newer Pride & Prejudice movie (the Keira Knightley one).

[ParrotTalkBack 110]

* if they inject the drug and embryo into a woman, they won't be able to tell whether it really worked or if the pregnancy just happened to work out normally, because women have bodies that will accept and nourish a pregnancy;

* but if they inject the drug and embryo into a man and his body accepts the pregnancy, they know it definitely actually works.

 

Couldn't they test it on a woman who is known to have a history of miscarriages? They were testing it on female monkeys that had had miscarriages... but that would shatter the cuckoo bananas logic of the movie, I guess.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Wow...so I did it! I finally finished both the movie and the episode! In the end, I have to say my opinion of it was very much like Jason's: a horrible beginning that gets moderately better toward the end.

 

To Paul's point of whether or not this should be classified as a comedy, I would say, yes, but only as defined by Shakespearean/Elizabethan standards. Shakespeare comedies, which don't necessarily rely on "jokes" like modern comedies, are rather lighthearted romps with happy endings and often include cross dressing, the lead characters getting married, and a party at the end--a birthday party in this case. This is dramatically opposed to Shakespearean tragedies that end with the cast bathed in blood. But this may offer an explanation as to why Emma Thompson is in it as she had starred in Much Ado About Nothing the year before and probably thought, "This is modern day Shakespeare!" So, I guess if we don't like it we are just a bunch of uncultured cave people.

 

It just blows my mind though, as there were so many missed opportunities at jokes in this movie. I am not saying they would be GOOD jokes, but jokes that would have lightened up the first half of the movie. For instance, when Danny is chasing Arnold through the airport and gets stopped by security, why doesn't he yell out, "I want you to have my baby!?" Then a couple of elderly nuns could look shocked and do the sign of the cross, or something. The next scene would be at a nice dinner (by "romantic" candlelight, of course) where Danny lays out the plan and convinces Arnold to go through with it. They could then go back to Danny's place where he "knocks him up." I know these aren't great ideas, but as a person who is neither a professional comedian nor a professional writer, I was able to come up with that in less than a minute.

 

Also, to the ladies out there in forum land, did any of you find it at all insulting that the movie implies that one of the apparent side effects of estrogen is that it causes you to want to be a stereotypical homemaker that gets peeved when your "man" isn't home on time to eat the dinner you cooked?

 

Hated the movie, loved the episode! Looking forward to the 200th! It should drop sometime in 2019 or 20.

[turboknoxville 10]

I have not listened to this episode yet, but was ecstatic about this movie. I had listened to the mini episode at work that Monday morning and then my wife had called me that afternoon stating that her doctor was going to induce labor for our first daughter. She was in labor for nearly 20 hours and I ended up finishing this movies just hours before delivery early on Christmas eve morning. I gotta say that watching Arnold go through labor first prepared me for what was about to happen to my wife, and I couldn't have been more greatful. This horrible movie will hold a special place in my heart as the last movie I watched before becoming a father. Thank you HDTGM!

[checkeredshoes 0]

The part of the placeholder music for the trailer is from the opening jailbreak and car chase in The Goonies.

 

 

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[the baa detective 64]

By the way, speaking of choosing the wrong test subjects, why did the protagonist scientists test a drug that reduces miscarriage on a male monkey in the first place? Where did they get this idea they need to test a drug for women on a male animal? Why would they even think of doing this? Why did they even bother? It was never intended to be use on men in the first place. Were they high while doing making tests and drugs? Yeah, that must be it: two scientists making fertility drug while on crack cocaine.

 

They could have Emma Thompson be, instead of a fellow scientist, a woman who really wanted a baby and ended up becoming a half-willing volunteer for the drug testing. But the movie would not be as funny; it would just be a movie with logical plot.

 

Interesting facts:

 

In the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character was called Alex Hesse. And the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1946 was also called Hesse -- the German writer Hermann Hesse. Now, one of Hermann Hesse’s is called Gertrude, and he was struggling with it during the writing process. Writer’s block – I don’t know, I found this in Wikipedia. Later he described his difficulty in completing the novel, the whole problematic writing process, as, get this, “a miscarriage.”

 

Also, one of Hermann Hesse’s most novels is Steppenwolf. And a Steppenwolf, or the Steppenwolf (again, only got from Wikipedia) was someone with two natures (or believed himself to be so): one high, the spiritual nature of man, the other is low and animalistic. In Junior, Alex Hesse is also a man with two natures – one is the rational man of science, and the other the emotional pregnant woman.

 

Coincidence? I think not.

 

The guy who wrote the winning essay is right. Junior is truly a great movie. We are all just too stupid to understand it.

[JacobCrites 4977]

It's crazy: I thought the plot of the movie was what Jason jokingly pitched--that Arnold gives birth to Danny Devito. I was horrified to learn that's not the real plot.

[Cameron H. 23786]

I have a few character observations to make, I will try to keep it as brief as possible.

 

Concerning both Arnold and DeVito's characters, why are they even in their chosen fields? They both seem to hate doing what they do. Initially, Arnold S. is an emotionless robot who we are lead to believe has reoccurring nightmares about being around babies, and Danny D. has the bedside manner of a hobgoblin. At the beginning of the movie, DeVito goes to check up on a very pregnant patient and she says, "I feel like I am about to burst" and he tells her "Not in here your not!" What?? That's not a very reassuring thing for an OB/GYN to tell his patient. I mean, I know they are not in a proper hospital, but she is in a clinic, with her OB/GYN, and surrounded by a (presumably) highly trained medical staff. Wouldn't that be almost the ideal place to go into labor? Wouldn't it be better if he had said, "Well, don't worry. If you do, we got it covered."

 

I mean, they are both in highly specialized fields and I am sure they both went through years of schooling, so at some point we have to assume that the following thoughts went through their heads:

 

Arnold--"Y'know, babies kind of give me the creeps--I think I'll specialize in fertility so I can help make more of them,"

 

Danny--"Gee, I have a pretty abrasive and caustic personality. I know that patients visiting an OB/GYN would ideally want someone nurturing and kind, but fuck it! I'm gonna do that."

 

In addition to this, did anyone else catch the fact that DeVito's character is a straight up sociopath? When he finally admits to Arnold that he stole Emma's egg and Arnold gets angry about it, his rebuttal is, "If you had just let me abort it we wouldn't be in this situation!" What the fuck?? So, in his mind, stealing an egg from a woman who is saving it so she can have a child one day is neither the problem, nor a deplorable act in and of itself. To him, the problem is not aborting it in time to cover up the theft and experiment.

 

Fuck you, movie!

[Cameron H. 23786]

Oh! And just so you all don't think I am letting Emma Thompson's character off the hook (whom I love as an actress, despite the fact that she is dressed like a male extra out of Anne of Green Gables throughout the majority of this film), doesn't she at one point admit to Arnold that she once had the hots for her cousin?

 

Look, I'm not here to judge, but I think that may be a nugget you may want to keep in your pocket a little longer than the second date into a new relationship.

[the baa detective 64]

While re-visiting the movie through podcast, a horrible…scenario/ scene popped into my head:

 

Years later after the movie, little Junior is now in school. One day, the teacher is doing a sex education class, teaching the kids the process of childbirth. After she finished, she asked if anyone got any question.

 

Seeing both of her parents are brilliant scientists, it comes as no surprise that little Junior is an inquisitive child, always hunger for knowledge, always wanting to know more.

She puts her hand up and asked: “What happens when a man gives birth?”

 

The entire class goes silent.

 

“Excuse me?” the teacher replied, kind of stunned.

 

“I want to know how a man gives birth to a baby.”

 

“But honey…a man can’t give birth to a baby. It’s…impossible…his body simply can’t do it.”

 

“But my dad said I came from his belly and he carried for 9 months!”

 

“But…honey, how did you…come out? From his…butt?”

 

Everyone in the class bursts into laughter and chants: “Junior comes out from the butt! Junior comes from the butt!”

 

From now onwards, Junior is nicknamed “Butt Girl,” and “Butt Junior.” People giggle whenever they heard someone says to Junior “But Junior…”

And the little girl’s school life is forever ruined…

[Joven 373]

I agree about the first half or so of this. This movie seemed really long to me, and I was watching it at 1.5x speed for the most part. I don't think it was entirely jokeless though, I remember at one point I laughed at something someone said that was intended to be a joke, but it wasn't funny enough to remember what it was.

 

Oh, can a university researcher working on a project that would surely have some kind of oversight just 'let' some people who are now completely unaffiliated with the university just set up shop in their lab? Its not even like, "Hey, can we pop down there and run a few tests on these vials off the books every now and then", they had their own computers, their own space, seemed like they were there all the time, it was like they worked there again. (and I don't think you can just decide to have some chimps as pets to hang around while you do research that has dick all to do with chimps.)

 

Im also surprised there was no mention of the weird ass foot cake eating (was that supposed to be a call-back to the chimp doing something to his lopsided birthday cake?)

 

About, robotic lab assistant, she was with Arnold for his research...was she still Arnold's assistant? Or did she just come with the lab space and now is Emma's assistant? If she was still Arnold's assistant, was she getting paid? Did she know what was going on? If she wasn't aware of anything, why come at the head of the university's research thing with a giant beaker in order to defend him at the drop of a hat?

 

I'll probably pull a June and forget about the movie completely pretty quickly, I didn't really care about it one way or the other, although the movie did just make me think of this:

[brownbathrobe 31]

Great podcast episode! Really made up for the fact that I was quite literally gagging throughout a lot of the movie.

 

Did anyone else find it strange that Ms. Arnold S. was not examined or given a physical/check-up by an on-staff doctor at the pregnancy camp? Seems like something they'd probably be in the business of doing...

[SlidePocket 707]

Minisode's gotta have to be delayed until Monday just to give everyone the heads up.

[dlo burns 129]

Great podcast episode! Really made up for the fact that I was quite literally gagging throughout a lot of the movie.

 

Did anyone else find it strange that Ms. Arnold S. was not examined or given a physical/check-up by an on-staff doctor at the pregnancy camp? Seems like something they'd probably be in the business of doing...

 

I think the justification they could of given for that preg-camp was that DeVito's character knew a doc who worked there, who could give a third opinion, and keep it on the down low.

[JustinL 216]

Confession time. I had exactly one (surprisingly hard) laugh at this movie: When Emma Thompson is trying to encourage Arnold to do his Lamaze exercise in the back seat of the car and he screams "STOP BREATHING ON ME!"

[JeremiahBenjamin 2]

I'm responding to the challenge you put out to listeners to create a fake trailer for Junior that makes it look like a horror movie. I did two versions, one in which I cheated and used the I-Movie trailer template (

) and one without the aide of a template, using pre-existing music I found on youtube:

Hope you enjoy one of those attempts.

[demagog_dog 50]

According to Cracked, there have been a few cases of man fetuses: http://www.cracked.com/article_18470_the-7-most-horrifying-things-ever-discovered-in-human-body.html/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

[ErinSPBrown 0]

Um I'm a horrible speller so I'll probably spell the word wrong however there is a thing called an ectopic pregnancy where an embryo implants somewhere other than the uterus (usually in the fallopian tubes however it can happen anywhere in the abdominal cavity) these types of pregnancy are extremely dangerous and while there have been just a couple of successful births almost all must be terminated to save the mother's life.

It had however been purposed a couple of decades ago that this process might be a.way for a male to carry a fetus to term. And then have the child by cesarean.

 

You all spent a.lot of time talking about how without a uterus the science didn't work however despite being improbable it appears to not be impossible.

[DavidMedley 0]

How did you not hit on the implausibility of Danny Devito finding work as an OB/GYN?? I demand a skit where June is a woman seeking treatment and Zukes is Danny Devito, her new OB/GYN. Comedy gold.

[Chill27 5]

Can I go out with Jason????