Episode 157 - Surf Ninjas: LIVE!

[JulyDiaz 2797]

HDTGM All-stars Rob Huebel, Nicole Byer, and Gil Ozeri join Paul to discuss the 1993 film Surf Ninjas. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they cover everything from moto surfing to Leslie Nielsen’s bulge in the final fight scene. Plus, we hear from someone very close to the film during Audience Q&A! Kwantsu!

 

Where to Find Jason, June & Paul:

Paul’s new comedy Drive Share is available on Go90. You can see June and Paul on NTSF:SD:SUV:: on HULU. June stars in Grace and Frankie on Netflix, as well as Lady Dynamite alongside with Jason.

 

Jason can be seen in How to

[AdrianFlynn 68]

Thats kelly hu

 

[kwantsu 1]

I'd like to be the first to posit that this entire movie is a Jacob's Ladder scenario starting the moment that Rob Schnieder crosses the courts in Santa Monica. I can only assume that he is hit with a death blow of a squash ball serve and that the remainder of Surf Ninjas is a Sega-induced Patusan fever dream.

 

Motosurf!

[NathanGordon 1096]

Kinda meh on this movie. It really loses steam when they get to Thailand -- it feels like the movie sort of ends at around the 1:00:00 mark.

 

What was the point of Tone Loc's character? There's two musical numbers in this and he appears in neither of them.

 

Most infuriating thing for me was the kid and his Sega game during the restaurant fight; he selects an octopus on his game and says "octopus!", then grabs an octopus from the tank, then says "eat SQUID". You just told and showed us that it was an octopus!

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

like i said in the mini rob schneider was 30 when this came out, ernie reyes jr was 21 and kelly hu was 25 ... i had to look that up early on in the movie just cause rob schneider looked so out of place but knowing these ages i still found the scene with kelly hu luring those 3 guys into the bushes and then saying "you'll find out on our wedding night" to be highly inappropriate for a 15 year old character in a kids movie. even if it was a 25 year old saying it.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

this is the first movie in a long time that i made notes on my phone. here's a few examples:

 

- all these ninjas suck

- did that cop just leave 2 kids in the custody of another kid dressed up as an old Scottish dude in a wheelchair???

- i love leslie nielsen. he's the only person i know who could make running for a telephone repeatedly funny

- wonder if this was filmed in the same place as the phantom

- where did kelly hu's character grow up cause she has an american accent

- this movie is so damn slow!!!

- can you still but the Surf Ninjas Game Gear game

 

 

and the answer to that last question is yes and the answer to your next question is yes i did buy a copy of it and i sent it to paul's mailbag .... you're welcome paul

 

edit: obviously you'll have to buy the console yourself ... that was a little more expensive

[ChunkStyle 1160]

There is a good reason Paul has never heard of Patu San. With Johnny immediately abdicating the throne and not leaving a proper transition plan in place the country was thrown into chaos as various factions all rushed in at once to try and take control of the new system. Without a strong central government Patu San quickly collapsed and was absorbed by neighboring countries.

 

I will give this movie a passing grade based only on the fact that when Uncle Eye-patch looked through the binoculars they blacked out half the screen.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

last one, sorry for dumping all these together but ..

 

i think there's another movie in the surf ninjas universe. During the breakfast scene "Nick Nolte" asks Rob Schneider if his parents ever ask him where he is all the time as he always seems to be hanging around in his kitchen and Rob Schneider answers that his parents are sealed in a biosphere in Arizona ...

 

so i'm thinking bio-dome is a prequel to surf ninjas and one of these fine gents in Rob Schneider dad ... but which one??

 

[FisterRoboto 7499]

like i said in the mini rob schneider was 30 when this came out, ernie reyes jr was 21 and kelly hu was 25 ... i had to look that up early on in the movie just cause rob schneider looked so out of place but knowing these ages i still found the scene with kelly hu luring those 3 guys into the bushes and then saying "you'll find out on our wedding night" to be highly inappropriate for a 15 year old character in a kids movie. even if it was a 25 year old saying it.

I wrote down all their ages, too! The youngest brother is 14. But compared to these adults, he looks about 8.

 

And Rob Schneider makes a joke about being 37 when he's dressed up as the uncle. But he's much closer to 37 than he is to being in high school!

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Also, Taylor Anne, how much did you lose your shit when you found out who the second guest was?

[taylor anne photo 11311]

And Rob Schneider makes a joke about being 37 when he's dressed up as the uncle. But he's much closer to 37 than he is to being in high school!

That was by far the most distracting thing when I watched the first third of this movie. The whole time I was trying to figure out how they wanted us to believe that a full grown man that was in the middle of his SNL run is an 11th grader.

 

Also unrelated note (but found out because I wanted to double check when his SNL years were) he's an anti-vaxxer and this is his Pulitzer prize winning statement on the subject -

 

“The efficacy of these shots have not been proven ... And the toxicity of these things — we’re having more and more side effects. We’re having more and more autism.”

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Also, Taylor Anne, how much did you lose your shit when you found out who the second guest was?

I DIDN'T FREAK OUT AT ALL

 

 

 

 

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

That was by far the most distracting thing when I watched the first third of this movie. The whole time I was trying to figure out how they wanted us to believe that a full grown man that was in the middle of his SNL run is an 11th grader.

 

Also unrelated note (but found out because I wanted to double check when his SNL years were) he's an anti-vaxxer and this is his Pulitzer prize winning statement on the subject -

 

Let's see, I can listen to all the scientific research that proves that there's no correlation between vaccinations and autism, or I can listen to the guy who played "Iggy" in Surf Ninjas...

 

Hmmm, that's a tough call. I mean, how bad can Hepatitis B and Polio really be?

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Let's see, I can listen to all the scientific research that proves that there's no correlation between vaccinations and autism, or I can listen to the guy who played "Iggy" in Surf Ninjas...

 

Hmmm, that's a tough call. I mean, how bad can Hepatitis B and Polio really be?

I mean we're having more and more side effects. We're having more and more autism. That's the most convincing argument I've heard yet.

[NathanGordon 1096]

So it appears that the game in the movie is indeed the same one, although a bunch of the scenes shown are different -- there is no octopus selection in restaurant level, for example. It gets kinda meta because you're playing the game within the game .

 

 

The developers of the Surf Ninjas game went on to make a Beavis & Butthead game and a Motley Crue pinball game before being bought by EA sometime in the 2000s.

[tomspanks 9039]

I noticed that the little brother marries the ketchup to the mustard. Gross.

 

 

Also, the guy on the right is Mitch Hurwitz! I wondered what he was doing there.

 

[tomspanks 9039]

Oh, and the game is called "Columns." Was this a shoutout to Tetris?

 

 

ETA: Earlier in the movie, when the little brother first discovers that his Game Gear shows future events, he asks "Where's Shinobi?" referring to the Shinobi game. But here, it is shown that he has been playing Columns instead. I guess he could've switched cartridges, but why would anyone mess with the game once you find out that the current setup can show you the future?

[IMAHUGEHDTGMFAN 1837]

In 1994 (a year after Surf Ninjas) The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult also had a Waldo joke just before the final scene...

 

I guess Waldo was Uber Popular in the '90 maybe...

 

Also... Leslie Nielsen - Waldo Connection Confirmed!!!

 

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Also, the guy on the right is Mitch Hurwitz! I wondered what he was doing there.

 

WTF? I didn't even catch this, and I love that dude. I'm going to blame it on the fact that the only YouTube video I could find that seemed to have the whole movie had that big bright oval in the middle of the screen, so it was often hard to make out anything if it was at night. It also cut off about the last 5-10 minutes, but I'm confident I didn't miss anything I regret.

 

Anyway, there seemed to be some confusion at one point about the brothers. They totally knew they were adopted the whole time. The adoption thing comes up because Ernie Reyes is trying to figure out an excuse for not doing his homework. It's like a "my grandmother died" but he's using the fact he's adopted instead (and it's also to set up Rob Schneider's stupid joke about being adopted last night). It's not like they thought this old white guy was their bio dad the whole time.

 

And speaking of that scene, his homework was to come up with the intro welcome thing for Baba Ram. He clearly blew that off, but he had time to coordinate a perfect a capella rendition of "Barbara Ann"? Are they in an a capella surf group? How did they already know the song and all the harmonies and everything?

[SevenDollarsWorthofHoobastank 226]

So I'll be honest, I stopped watching the last 15 minutes of the movie. But what happened to Tone Loc's character? I would like to think he got demoted and shipped off to Miami where he later helped a local Detective (that mainly deals with animal/Pet related crimes) find a local sports teams mascot and it's star player, right before the team played in their championship game.

[NathanGordon 1096]

Oh, and the game is called "Columns". Was this a shoutout to Tetris?

Good eye! Columns was the bundled game for the Sega Game Gear when you bought the system. It was originally an arcade game and appeared on most Sega consoles. It's sort of like Tetris, but not really -- the aim is to match blocks by color instead of mixing shapes to create lines.

 

 

Incidentally, the Game Gear is notorious for being a battery hungry system -- it used six(!) AA batteries to run for only 1-3 hours. That kid must have packed a lot of Duracells on the trip to Patusan.

[kateacola 2440]

The Game Gear notoriously was a battery drainer :

per wikipedia

Though the Game Gear was designed to be technologically superior to the Game Boy, its design came at a cost of battery life: whereas the Game Boy could run for more than 30 hours on four AA batteries, the Game Gear required six AA batteries and could only run for three to five hours.

 

6 AA batteries for only 3-5 hours?? Was the little brother carrying around a shit-load of batteries?

 

ETA: ^whoops nevermind I see you said the same thing

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Correction:

 

They didn't react to the adoption thing because they already knew they were adopted. They played that off as a joke they would tell their teacher for not completing their homework. Honestly though if they didn't know that they, as two Asian boys, were not actually related to the white man, then this movie had so many more issues lol.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Good eye! Columns was the bundled game for the Sega Game Gear when you bought the system. It was originally an arcade game and appeared on most Sega consoles. It's sort of like Tetris, but not really -- the aim is to match blocks by color instead of mixing shapes to create lines.

 

 

Incidentally, the Game Gear is notorious for being a battery hungry system -- it used six(!) AA batteries to run for only 1-2 hours. That kid must have packed a lot of Duracells on the trip to Patusan.

So it was basically Bejeweled?

 

And the reason it was so battery hungry was really because it was ahead of its time. The Game Gear games were incredibly similar to the console games, whereas Gameboy games were often completely different games with the same title (e.g., Mortal Kombat was a 100% different experience on the Gameboy). But you could play the Game Gear while it was plugged in, so it was great for long car trips because you could just plug it into the cigarette lighter and play for hours.

 

Correction:

 

They didn't react to the adoption thing because they already knew they were adopted. They played that off as a joke they would tell their teacher for not completing their homework. Honestly though if they didn't know that they, as two Asian boys, were not actually related to the white man, then this movie had so many more issues lol.

THAT'S REALLY CLEVER, TAYLOR ANNE!

 

I wish I had said it on the last page or something!

[taylor anne photo 11311]

THAT'S REALLY CLEVER, TAYLOR ANNE!

 

I wish I had said it on the last page or something!

 

I'M SORRY I MISSED THAT POST GAH