Back to the Toy Box

Toy Story 4
Director: Josh Cooley
Voice Talent: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Joan Cusack, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, Tony Hale
Released: June 21, 2019
Viewed in theaters: Juen 24, 2019

Is Toy Story 4 a good movie? Yes, of course it is. Was it necessary? A lot of people thought Toy Story 3 had a perfect ending (myself included) and while I don't think having a fourth movie was necessary (the world would have survived without a fourth Toy Story movie; however the world would not survive without Toy Story because Toy Story not existing equals Pixar not existing and how could anyone live in a world where Pixar doesn't exist!), I didn't mind because I love going on a new adventure with these characters we've met from the first three movies. Just because Andy's story is done doesn't mean that there aren't still more stories for the toys to tell. You could really make a whole bunch of these movies and as long as there's a good script and it makes sense for this universe, I'm okay with that. In other words, you could say this series could go to infinity...and beyond! Is Toy Story 4 the best of the series? To me, no. I definitely like the first and third movies better. Of course I still love the second movie and this movie was a joy to watch so even though they're on the "bottom" doesn't mean I dislike them; they're all really amazing.

I think the most surprising thing about this movie was that it didn't make me cry. Yes, I could feel the tears almost well up (especially during one scene), but I never flat-out bawled like I did during Toy Story 3. (To be fair, I didn't cry during the first two movies, but I did get a little choked up during the "When She Loved Me" scene from Toy Story 2). I was all prepared for this big emotional scene, but it never came for me. I had mixed emotions about the ending, but I'll get to that later. I did laugh a lot during this movie; there were so many great and funny scenes, mostly thanks to new characters we are introduced to and we are introduced to a LOT of new characters. So much so that many of the characters we loved from the first three movies were reduced to ancillary characters. So if you're a big fan of Slinky Dog or Hamm or Mr. Potato Head or Rex or even Jessie and Bullseye, don't go in excepting too much from them. Even Buzz Lightyear doesn't have too much screen time (more than the characters I named) because this is Woody's movie and adventure. There is a running joke where Buzz thinks his voice box buttons are his inner thoughts so he pushes the buttons for guidance of what to do in a situation.

The new characters we are introduced to include:
-Ducky and Bunny, stuffed animals of, you guessed it, a duck and a bunny. They are carnival toys waiting to be won by patrons who play the carnival game at the booth they're at. They are voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, who, I imagine, improvised most of their lines so they get a lot of funny moments. They're a bit sadistic because their plan for everything is to attack humans by jumping into their faces, calling it a "plush rush". They come across another stuffed animal that has been torn apart by a cat and are both horrified to see what they look like on the inside and one of them comments, "So much fluff!"

-Duke Caboom, a Canadian Evel Knivel-inspired action figure (voiced by Keanu Reeves) who has a sad (albeit funny) backstory where he was chucked by his "kid", Rejean (I'm taking a wild guess that he's from Quebec!), after Duke didn't perform the cool stunts exactly like how they show it on the commercial. I guess they forgot to add the text "Toy does not actually fly" on the bottom of the screen like they did for the Buzz Lightyear commercial. This made me laugh because it's so true! How many times have we ever watched a commercial with a toy that does all these really cool things, but then when you actually play with it, they can't actually jump through fiery hoops like Duke Caboom is shown in the commercial. This makes Rejean chuck poor Duke Caboom, the "Canuck with all the Luck" to the side. Duke's catchphrase is, "I Can-ada!" I felt like he was the equivalent to Toy Story 3's Ken.

-Giggles McDimples is a tiny toy clearly modeled after Polly Pocket and when we meet her, she's in one of those plastic shells. I thought her introduction was really funny. She takes a liking to Woody since he's a sheriff and she's Officer McDimples who runs Pet Patrol. There's a part in the movie when the toys are being terrorized by a cat and being that she is so small, she gets swallowed by it! I was much more concerned for the cat, not going to lie! Of course the cat eventually gags it up and Giggles McDimples is covered in cat phlegm. Lovely. I will say, if you compare the cat in this movie to Sid's dog, Scud, in the first Toy Story, wow! What a difference! I mean, it has been 24 years they've had to prefect this technology!

-Gabby Gabby (voiced by Christina Hendricks) is a pull-string doll from the 1950s who lives in an antique store and just wants a kid to love and play with her. She is presented as the villain as she is trying to steal Woody's voice box since hers is broken and she thinks the only way for a child to love her is if she isn't broken. She has these creepy ventriloquist dummy minions who don't talk; they just do her bidding. I will discuss more about her in my spoiler section, but I just wanted to say that I only remember ever having one pull-string toy, ever, in my life, and that was a stuffed Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks. I can't even remember any of the things he said.

-Forky (voiced by Tony Hale) is a plastic spork with pipe cleaner arms and a face created by Bonnie, the young girl Andy gave his toys to in the last movie (you know, the part that made everybody shed tears). He quickly becomes her favorite "toy", but Forky, not knowing why he exists (don't we all have those existential crises?), keeps wanting to throw himself in the trash because he believes that's where he belongs, but Woody, knowing how much Forky means to Bonnie, keeps fishing him out of the trash. Bonnie's attachment to Forky was a little weird. I understand she made him during kindergarten orientation and was quite proud of him, but she sleeps with him like she's cuddling a stuffed animal (how can you cuddle a plastic spork??) and when she can't find him during a family road trip with her parents, her dad tells her she can make another one and she freaks out. If I were her parents, I would be kicking myself for ever buying her toys since she she's so content with a plastic spork! It reminds me when I buy a cat toy for my cat, but I see him playing with my hair ties or the Starbucks green stopper thingy way more than when he plays with his toys! (By the way, I wonder if pet toys are sentient in this world? I hope not because that would be a little terrifying for them to be chewed by a dog or chased by a cat!) At least they didn't have to pay for the toys she received from Andy. Bonnie brings all of her toys on the road trip and I laughed when I heard a podcast review of someone complaining of how unrealistic that was because whenever my nieces visit my parents they bring a lot of their toys! Of course I know they did that in the movie so all the toys we've all come to know and love from the first movie (and Bonnie's toys we met in the third movie) will be involved in the plot, even if it's just a few minutes of screen time. Even Woody is brought along even though he's been reduced to mostly staying in the closet with the other toys that don't get much playtime. Poor Woody; literally every toy that belonged to Andy gets playtime (even the little green aliens! Even Hamm who is't really a toy because's he actually a piggy bank!) and he is left in the closet collecting dust bunnies. Not cool, Bonnie. The family is driving an RV and they make a lot of stops along the way and each time Woody has to keep Forky from jumping in the trash or running away. At one point, Forky just flings himself out of the window of the moving vehicle (very dark for a children's movie!) and Woody jumps after him, promising the others he'll return with Forky. Well, that doesn't exactly happen as they have a lot of obstacles to get through!

-Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts) is not a new character since she was in the first two movies, but she is an important part of this movie. We see a flashback of her getting packed away to be sent to a new home once Molly has gotten too old for her. Woody is set on rescuing her, but she tells him it's time to move on, but suggests that he could hop in the box with her since "kids lose their toys all the time" (I never lost any of my toys, thankyouverymuch!), but Woody is too loyal to Andy to do that. We see Molly's room and she had these little doll figurines which I totally had! They were these ceramic figures that you received each year for your birthday with the corresponding age attached to them. They went up to age 16, but I think I only got them until I was 12. I had the blonde figurines, but when my family moved, a few of them broke and we replaced them with the brunette ones because I guess we couldn't find the blonde ones. I mean, it didn't really matter since I am neither blonde nor brunette! But I had to laugh when I saw those because it brought back memories and I probably otherwise would have completely forgotten about them. They are sentient in this movie, so does that mean Molly played with them? We know Bo is sentient because Andy used her as a damsel in distress for Woody to rescue. I never played with those figurines because they were fragile! They just stayed on my shelf with my other ceramic figurines.

Woody meets up with Bo again after all these years. She has shed her dress and bonnet for a more utilitarian outfit. There is a funny moment when Woody can't remember the name of her three sheep (who are all connected together) and as far as I know, we've never actually known the names of her sheep. They are Billy, Goat, and Gruff and yes, they are very cute for being ceramic sheep. By the way, they're part of a lamp set, right? I have never heard of a lamp set where you can move the pieces; I would think that they would be glued to the actual lamp, but maybe they are able to remove themselves? I've only had lamps that were just lamps; so I don't know how that would work, I also don't know why I'm trying to work out the logistics of how that would work. Bo lives in an antique shop, but often sneaks out to a carnival nearby, hence why we have antique toys and carnival toys convening together. There is a fun callback to the first movie when Bo greets Buzz with, "My old moving buddy!" Which while it's true that Bo mention she's found her moving buddy once they all meet Buzz, did she not remember that Buzz was next door almost being blown to smithereens by Sid while all the toys were being shipped to the new house in the moving van? So technically they were never moving buddies. Just a small little nitpick!

For the rest of this review, I'm going to get into spoilers so you have been warned! SPOILERS START NOW! DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED!! SERIOUSLY, I AM WARNING YOU! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! 

SPOILERS
START
NOW!

I was surprised by how quickly the Forky storyline was concluded. After Woody tells him how important he is to Bonnie and that he's an important part to her childhood memories, Forky is all about getting back to her, but by that time Woody has been distracted by seeing Bo's lamp in the antique shop and that's when the movie goes in that direction. Of course Forky is still an integral to the plot of the movie, but he no longer wants to throw himself in the trash.

Like Stinky Pete and Lotso, Gabby Gabby is considered the villain of this movie, however while they start out as characters you think can be trusted only to realize they're not so nice, the doll starts out very aggressive, clearly wanting Woody's voice box, but turns into a sympathetic character. She is hoping to be "adopted" by Harmony, the granddaughter of the woman who owns the antique shop and she believes the only way Harmony will love her is if her voice box works. I thought Harmony was going to want her even if her voice box didn't work, but no, the movie goes another way. Gabby gets a new voice box (Woody gives her his in exchange for Forky as she had the spork held hostage) and pulls her string to make Harmony notice her. At first, the girl seems smitten with the doll, but then she's like, "Nah" and tosses her back into the crate. I literally "ahh"-ed during this moment; I felt bad for Gabby Gabby! At first I was mad with Harmony, but you know what? I can't really blame the girl. What child from this decade would want a doll from the '50s? They all have this really creepy look to them. Maybe if Gabby was an American Girl Doll she might have had more luck...

However, Gabby will get her happy ending when she is picked up by a lost girl at the carnival who turns to the doll for comfort. This is the scene where I came closest to crying. Of course who knows how long Gabby is forgotten about once the girl gets home and isn't upset about being lost anymore and starts playing on her iPhone?

I did not cry at the end which was surprising to me because I was expecting this super emotional scene. I was more bemused than upset. I guess I should have seen the ending coming because all through the movie Bo is telling Woody how great it is to be on her own and how she's independent and doesn't need a kid to play with her. She's much more satisfied helping other toys finding kids of their own. So when Woody decides to stay with Bo at the end instead of going back with his other toy friends, I wasn't really that shocked. I was just confused because through all the previous movies, Woody has been telling his friends how important it is to stay together and that a toy's job is to make their kid happy. Woody has always been about every toy staying together, but now he's going to leave them to be with Bo Peep. Eh, I wasn't crazy about that. I know Bo is supposed to be his "girlfriend", but they only have a few flirty scenes in the first two movies. Woody has a much more stronger relationship with Buzz, with Slinky Dog, with Jessie, just to name a few. Also, the notion that toys can have romantic relationships is a little weird. I'm okay with one between Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head or Barbie and Ken because at least those are already pairs. There's a scene at the end where it looks like Woody and Bo are about to kiss and I'm thinking, Please don't. I'm okay with Andy making them kiss by tapping their faces together because it's meant to be funny and it's a kid having the damsel kiss the hero her after she is rescued. Luckily they do not kiss! I wasn't too upset that Woody was leaving his toy friends (probably why I didn't cry) because he wasn't getting much playtime with Bonnie anymore, so might as well join a traveling carnival with Bo and his new toy friends so he's not sitting in a closet all day. I feel the most bad for Bullseye because he is like a loyal dog to Woody. Yes, I know he still has Jessie, but that has to be hard on the poor little horse! Hmm, does this mean that Bo is the Yoko Ono of the Toy Story franchise?

You know what I would love to see? A prequel! How did Andy obtain Woody? It is believed he belonged to Andy's father who we don't really know anything about, so a prequel could answer a lot of these questions. You're welcome for the idea, Pixar!

Buckmans v. Bravermans

Parenthood

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Dianne Weist, Rick Moranis, Martha Plimpton, Joaquin Phoenix, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves

Released: August 2, 1989

Oscar nominations:

Best Supporting Actress - Dianne Weist (lost to Brenda Fricker for My Left Foot)

Best Song - "I Love To See You Smile" by Randy Newman (lost to The Little Mermaid for "Under the Sea" by Alan Menken and Howard Shore)

Earlier this year, I watched all five seasons of the TV show Parenthood which is based on this movie. I haven't seen this movie in a very long time that I didn't remember anything about it to compare it to the TV series. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw this movie was when I was a kid so I probably found it really boring because it's mostly about grown ups and their problems...oh, sure, there are kids with their problems, but I'm sure I found that boring too! I find the TV series to be far superior. Of course, they had five seasons to tell different stories and the characters could all have bonding moments with each other. In the movie, they only have less than two hours and you only see the relationships between husbands and wives or mothers and children; you don't really see the relationships between the grown up siblings like the TV show did so well.

It was fun to compare the movie characters with their TV counterparts. So let's compare the Buckmans (from the movie) to the Bravermans (from the TV show)! Gil (Steve Martin) and his wife, Karen (Mary Steenburgen) are the counterparts to Peter Krause's Adam and Monica Potter's Kristina. While in the movie, this family is the main focus, the TV show had enough time to spend on all the families. The main difference are the kids. Gil and Karen's oldest is a nine-year-old boy, Kevin, who has "emotional problems" and needs to attend a different school to get the attention he needs as well as go to therapy. Max, from the TV show, is obviously his counterpart and has been diagnosed with Asperger's. While Max has an older sister, Kevin is the oldest and has two younger siblings, Taylor and Justin who are just there to be annoying and bad child actors. Just like in the TV show, the Buckmans are avid baseball fans and Gil wants Kevin to play on the Little League team even though his son doesn't like it. While watching a game, Gil has a daydream where Kevin is the valedictorian at his college graduation and says, "I'm the happiest, confident, most well-adjusted person in this world. And I owe it all to my dad." That daydream quickly changes, however, after Kevin has dropped the ball and loses the game and everyone is heckling him. He tells his dad, "You made me play second base!" and Gil has another daydream where Kevin is shooting a gun at college students from a bell tower and yells the same line. Yeah, I don't think the studio would be able to get away with a scene like that in this day and age! Perhaps a little too dark. Just like Christina got pregnant in the TV show, Karen also becomes pregnant. When she tells Gil the big news, he's not very excited because he's just quit his job (because they gave a promotion to someone who had been there less years than he had), and worries about money and finances, but in the end everything turns out fine.

Young Wa-keen Feenix!

Then we have the single mother family. Helen Buckman (Dianne Weist) is the sister to Gil. She is divorced and has two teen kids: a sixteen year old daughter named Julie (Martha Plimpton) and a son named Gary (played by a VERY young Joaquin Phoenix...he must have been 13 or 14. In fact, he was so young, he's not credited as Joaquin, but rather by Leaf Phoenix, which I guess was a childhood nickname...thank God he changed it back!). Obviously the TV counterpart of this family is the one with Lauren Graham and Mae Whitman and the boy. I call 2016 the Year of Lauren Graham because not only did I watch Parenthood, but I also watched all of Gilmore Girls and I'm super excited for the revival coming on Netflix in November. Super, super excited! By the way, have you ever noticed that LG's character in Gilmore Girls (who also has the same initials as her portrayer) dated her daughter's high school teacher and LG's character in Parenthood dated her daughter's high school teacher? Anyway, back to the review. Julie moves out of the house with her boyfriend, Todd (Keanu Reeves) and they get married much to Helen's dismay. This was probably my favorite of the family dynamics just because there were so many funny moments. Julie and Todd takes some x-rated photos and when they go to get them after they've been developed, Julie realizes the photos she has are her mothers and her mother has the scandalous photos. You couldn't do a scene like that now since nobody ever gets their photos developed anymore since everything is digital! They get into a huge fight and Julie threatens to move out and Helen tells her if she does that, then she can never step foot in their house again. Once Julie has all her stuff packed and is heading for the door, Helen says, "I'm here if you need me! Call me if you need anything!" After Julie gets into a fight with Todd, she moves back in until Todd comes back and apologizes and they get back together again. There's a funny scene where Todd asks Helen, "Where's my wife?" and Helen tells him, "She's still at school....she has cheerleading practice." That just made me laugh out loud...or LOL as the kids say! (Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention they get married?) The movie father of this family is much more of a douchbag than his TV counterpart. At least in the TV show, he attempted to get to know his kids, but the one in the movie has his own new family and doesn't want anything to do with his kids. There's a sad scene when Gary calls his dad and asks if he can stay with him for a few months, but is denied permission so he breaks into the dental office where his dad works and vandalizes everything. When Helen finds a porno videotape in a sack he's always carrying around (and disguised with a Back to the Future cover), she understands her son needs a man in his life to help answer any questions he has. She asks him if he wants to talk to his Uncle Gil about anything (after she asks him if she can answer any questions he might have) but he doesn't want to. Finally she gets Todd, probably the last person she wants talking to her son. There's a really funny exchange where Todd tells her that Gary got his first boner and asks her, "Do you know what that is?" and she replies, "If memory servers." It's a bit of a running joke that it's been a long time since Helen has any action.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if Nathan (Rick Moranis) or his wife, Susan (Harley Kozak...you may remember her as Jeff Daniel's wife in Arachnophobia), was the Buckman siblings, but after some research, I found out that Susan is the Buckman. I knew this family was the movie counterpart to Julia and Joel. They also have a young daughter, Patty, who is very bright and they teach new things to. Nathan is way more annoying than Joel, though. In fact, I never found Joel to be annoying. Julia was a lot more like Nathan than she is like the more easy going Susan who wants a divorce from Nathan because he is too focused on making sure their daughter is superior than all the other children her age (and he looks down on all his nephews and nieces because they're not as smart as his daughter). Susan wants to have more children, but Nathan says they needs to focus on Patty. She tells him she's leaving him, but he wins her back when he serenades her in front of the middle school class she teaches. There's a scene where Patty is at her cousin's birthday party and Gil is showing all the little kids the thumb trick where it looks like his thumb is being separated (ha, I remember when my friend's dad showed me that and I was completely amazed). I thought for sure Patty was going to tell him how he really did the trick, but instead she screams and runs away. I thought this girl was suppose to be super smart?

Larry (Tom Hulce)'s TV counterpart is Dax Shepard's Crosby. He's a bit of a free spirit and introduces his family to his son, Cool, who's black. The TV show makes a lot more sense where Joy Bryant shows up and introduces Crosby to the son he never knew he had. Here, he just shows up with the kid, who's at least five and says he met his mother who was an exotic dancer and had a one-night stand with her. We never see or hear from the mother. Larry gets into some money problems with gambling and has to get help from his father (Jason Robards). Speaking of the parents, while Papa Buckman has a good amount of scenes, their mother is hardly in the movie so they utilized Bonnie Bedelia in the TV show much more better!

The movie ends at the hospital and we see a woman giving birth, though they don't show who it is. We are suppose to think it's either Karen or Julie, who has announced she and Todd are expecting a child. When the woman and her baby are about to be revealed, the camera pans to all the family members. When you see Karen holding a baby, you think it's Julie, but then you see her standing next to Todd holding a baby. That's when you realize the only person you haven't seen yet is Helen and the man who comes out to announce that the baby is a girl is the man she's dating who is also Gary's biology teacher. It was kind of jarring to see they were having a baby since they had only been on one date, but whatever. I felt like they just did it to surprise the audience because I sure as hell wasn't expecting that. I wished it had just been Julie having the baby and we would have seen a nice moment between her and her mother, but instead they had to go for the surprise ending even though I feel like Helen was too old to be having children by then.

So I think the TV show is much more superior, but like I said, they did have five years of story telling to better flesh out the characters and storylines and I guess the show wouldn't exist without the movie. I do think the kid actors from the TV show are much, MUCH better than the kid actors in the movie. I did wonder why it took so long for them to make a TV show based on the movie because it seemed so perfect for a television series. The movie was released in 1989 and the show didn't start until 2010. Well, imagine my surprise when I found out there was a Parenthood TV show before the one we all know and love with Lauren Graham and Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia and Monica Potter and Dax Shepard and Erika Christensen and Joy Bryant and Peter Krause and Mae Whitman and Ray Romano and Michael B. Jordan (okay, I won't list the entire cast!) and all the others we love. This show came out in 1990 and aired for one season on NBC. (Which also aired the 2010 version...I guess enough time had passed! Or maybe NBC has the rights to it). Instead of giving new names to the characters like they do in the updated version, all of them have the same names, but are just played by different actors (though a couple of the kids came back to play the same role...it's not like they'll be cast in anything else!). Imagine my surprise when I found out Leonardo DiCaprio played Gary. Of course, this was before he was famous so nobody cared. And since they didn't care, they didn't watch. I'm old enough to remember 1990, but I DO NOT remember this Parenthood TV show at all! I didn't know who Leonardo DiCaprio was until 1996. MAYBE 1995...I don't remember, but I definitely didn't know who he was in 1990! I guess the show had decent reviews, but was cancelled because of low ratings...as is the case when shows are cancelled.

Here is the opening credits of the 1990 TV show. I think the song they use is the same one that is used in the movie. It is sung by Randy Newman and it sounds exactly (to my ears, anyway) like the song he sang for Toy Story.  Also, I had no idea Thora Birch (who played the daughter of the Steve Martin Character) was the Cher of her younger years as she only goes by "Thora". Hilarious. What ever happened to Thora Birch? Last time I saw her she played Kevin Spacey's daughter in American Beauty and that's been a long time now!

And because I love it so much, here are the opening credits for the 2010 TV show. I like this song much better before they changed it for the last two seasons...I don't even remember what that song was called or how it went, but I like this one much better:

Pop Quiz, Hotshot!

Speed

Director: Jan De Bont

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Joe Morton, Jeff Daniels

Released: June 10, 1994

Oscar nominations:

Best Sound (won)
Best Sound Effects Editing (won)

Best Editing (lost to Forrest Gump)

Speed is one of those movies I wished I had been able to see in the theaters. It's probably been a good ten years since I last saw it and I was getting very into the movie; screaming and shrieking at my TV and holding my breath at certain times and I can only imagine what it would have been like to see it in a theater full of enthusiastic movie goers. This has to be one of those movies that is a great movie theater going experiences. The most recent one I had of those is last year when I saw Jurassic World and you could just feel a palpable excitement in the air and someone was even humming the theme song before the movie started. 

This movie, simply put, is AMAZING! I love it so much! If you haven't seen this movie for whatever reason, what are you waiting for?? Go see it now! Everyone knows this movie as the "Bomb on the bus movie." There are three acts to this movie and the "bomb on the bus" part is the second act, and of course, the longest. But before we get to that, we need a little backstory first.

"I AM AN FBI AGENT!"

Keanu Reeves and Jeff Daniels play L.A. SWAT team members Jack Traven and Harry Temple who are called to an office building where a mad man named Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) has rigged an elevator full of 13 people with explosions and is threatening to detonate it unless he gets three million dollars. Everyone is rescued and nobody dies, but there are some close calls and when the last person is rescued from the elevator, seconds later it comes crashing down to the ground and smashes into smithereens. Jack and Harry find Payne, but he escapes and detonates his bomb and everyone 

thinks he's dead....OR IS HE???

The next scene is the medal ceremony of Jack and Harry accepting their medals for rescuing the 13 people in the elevator. I have no idea how much time has elapsed since the actual accident. One day? One week? One month? Hell if I know! But we are getting closer to the second act of the movie and this is when things start to get good. A bus explodes after Jack has gotten some coffee and exchanged some friendly words with the bus driver who he seemed to know. Luckily, no one else was on the bus. I had totally forgotten about the exploding bus and it kinda startled me when it happened! As he's running towards the bus to see if the bus driver made it (does he really think anyone could survive that??), he hears a pay phone nearby ringing. Haha, a pay phone! Well, it WAS 1994! He answers the phone and surprise, surprise, it's Howard Payne, the mad man. I should mention that the ceremony was televised and we see a scene of a man with a thumb missing clapping when Jack gets his medal and it is revealed to be Payne. He tells Jack that he's very upset that he messed up his elevator job because he had taken three years to plan this and now he has planted a bomb on a bus! Um, so it took three years to plan the elevator bomb, but a bus bomb only takes a month to plan? I want to know how much time elapsed!! I'm so confused. He tells Jack, "Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?" He got the "pop quiz" part from Harry who said that to Jack in the first act when they were trying to figure out what to do. Jack tells him he'd want to know what bus it is and Payne tells him it's the bus numbered 2525. He obviously wanted Jack to find the bus because he easily and readily gives him not only the bus number, but also the location of where the bus left from so Jack races to catch the bus which is now getting on the freeway....and for eight a.m. in Los Angeles, it doesn't look THAT busy. It's busy enough that the bus is still below 50 (we see close ups of the speedometer every few minutes and it does get a bit higher each time). Oh, remember the bus that just exploded? Well, several minutes has passed and there are NO police cars or firetrucks that have come to investigate it or put out the fire. You think someone would have called 911 when they saw an exploding bus, no?

Jack really needs to find this bus and soon because Payne said he will turn off the bomb if he gets his 3.7 million dollars by eleven a.m. and it's eight right now. He races around the other cars as much as he can. The traffic is slowing down because of construction and he gets caught in the roadwork and decides to get out his car and run to the bus and screams at the bus driver to open his doors. Well, of course the driver isn't going to open the doors if they see some random dude running and screaming to be allowed to get on the bus. And he also hits the door with his fist and breaks the glass...would you let somebody like that on a bus? No, I don't think so! And like Sam (the bus driver) said, "This ain't no bus stop!" I don't understand why he didn't just flash his badge and then I can see him being able to get on the bus. The traffic starts to let up and the bus gains some speed. Jack stops a black man in a convertible with a license plate that says TUNEMAN and flashes his badge at him and the guy exclaims, "This is my car! It's not stolen!" and Jack replies, "It is now!" At least he let the guy sit in the passenger seat instead of making him get out like so many other movies do when the main character needs a car and just steals it from some poor soul and makes them get out, probably to never see their car again.

He catches up to the bus and motions for the driver to roll his window down so he can yell, "There's a bomb on your bus!" Because of the wind, the driver can't hear him, so Jack's passenger has to relay the message and after he says, "There's a bomb on your bus!", he realizes what's he saying and turns to Jack and says, "WHAT?!" By this time the bomb has activated because the bus has now reached 50 mph. Jack wants his passenger to write "BOMB ON BUS!" on a piece of paper and hold it up so the driver can see it. He pulls in front of the bus and the guy holds up the sign, but it blows out of his hands and right into the windshield of the bus where the driver sees it before it blows away. Naturally, he lifts his foot off the gas pedal as anyone would do in that situation. Your first inclination would be to stop a vehicle that has a bomb on it and evacuate it! Realizing the bus is starting to slowly down, Jack drives next to the bus and tells him to open the door and tells him to make sure he keeps the bus over 50 mph. He asks his passenger if his car is insured and when he learns that it is, he speeds up ahead of the bus, opens the door, then slams on the brakes so the bus comes by and rips the door off. He tells the man to take the wheel so he can jump on the bus and while he's doing that, a passenger (played by Alan Ruck), who is visiting L.A., takes a photo of him. Now, if this movie were made today, the guy would be taking a video of him and uploading it to social media!

As far as the passengers go, we only really get to know a handful of them. Including the driver and Jack, there are 19 people on the bus. Being that the movie takes place in Los Angeles, there is a diverse group of people on the bus. The driver is African-American; there is an elderly African-American couple and a couple African-American women on the bus; there's an elderly Asian woman; there's a couple of Latino guys; and there are some white people. Obviously the passenger that has the most screen time is the one played by Sandra Bullock, Annie. Even though Bullock had been in a handful of movies before this, Speed was really the movie that catapulted her career. She has been taking the bus lately because her license was revoked for speeding. When she first gets on the bus, she's talking to a passenger named Helen who tells her she likes taking the bus so she can relax all the way to work without worrying about traffic. Oh, haha, movie, how funny! When Jack jumps on the bus, Annie asks him if he's crazy and demands to know what's going on. A young Hispanic guy charges at him with a gun, thinking the police is there for him. I wonder what he did? You know, we never do find out. Jack takes out his gun and points it at him and tells him he doesn't care about what he did and explains about the bomb. A big guy that Jacks nicknames "Gigantor" attacks the guy with the gun and the gun ends up going off and shoots the bus driver in the shoulder. Annie takes over driving the bus and Jack knows she'll be good for the job when she admits to him that her license was revoked for speeding.

Jack has Doug, the tourist, call Harry (he took the car phone from the car he hijacked) so he can tell him about the bomb. He is able to lift a floor panel on the bus so he can look underneath the bus at the bomb. There's a funny moment when Jack says "F**k me!" and Doug hesitates for a moment and translates it as "Oh, darn." The reason Jack had such a reaction is because there was "enough C4 o put a hole in the world." Annie sees that traffic is starting to back up again and wants to know where they should go and Jack tells her to get on the shoulder at the next exit to get off and she does and she is just ramming into poles and signs and other cars. It is such a hot mess! She is now off the freeway and has to run through red lights and has a scary close call when a lady with a baby carriage is crossing the street and she hits the carriage and it goes flying through the air. Naturally, she is freaking out because she just thinks she killed a baby, but then it is revealed - thank God - that the carriage was only full of cans and they go everywhere when the carriage lands.

They now have a police escort which Jack's boss, Mac (Joe Morton) has arranged for them. The police cars go past a teacher with a group of kids waiting to cross the street and after they pass, the teacher thinks it's okay for them to cross now. Apparently they didn't see the huge bus that comes whizzing by and jump back just in time. Mac has also arranged for the bus to be escorted to the 105 Freeway which hasn't been open to the public yet, so they will be able to cruise on that for awhile without worrying about obstacles while they think of a way to safely get the people off of the bus. Mac wants to transfer the passengers from the bus to a flatbed truck that the police are driving next to them, but Jack tells him they can't do that because Payne told him if any passengers get off the bus, then he will detonate the bomb. Jack knows that Payne will know because there are news helicopters above them so he knows they are being shown on TV. He gets a call from Payne (he called the police and asked to speak to Jack) who tells him he better be careful. Jack asks him if he can at least unload the bus driver who's been shot as a show of good faith and tells him it might help him get his money faster. Payne agrees to this arrangement but says he better not let anyone else off. After Sam has safely been transferred, Helen decides to go for it and as a police officer is reaching out to help her, Payne detonates a smaller bomb that he has placed on the first step and she falls and slips under the bus. This is when all the passengers realize that this whole ordeal is real now and they're all very shaken up by the death of one of their fellow passengers. Even though I know the movie would have ended right here if it had happened, I do wonder why Payne didn't detonate the entire bus like he told Jack he would if any passengers got off the bus and he could clearly see that was what Helen was doing. Guess he just wanted to give him a scare before he decided to kill EVERYONE.

As if losing one passenger wasn't bad enough, they soon get more bad news when Mac informs them that a section of an overpass on the highway up ahead is missing....about fifty feet! Jack tells everyone to put their stuff under their seats and cover their heads. OMG....if I were on this bus, I would be so scared! I mean, I would already be scared in the first place because of the, you know, BOMB, but if I were informed that the bus I was riding on was about to jump a 50 foot gap in the freeway, I'd be thinking, Oh, HELL NO! He tells Annie to speed up and just seconds before they reach the gap, he grabs her and covers her head and the bus makes its leap and lands on the other side. It's a little (okay, A LOT!) bumpy, but everyone is okay and they all cheer. I'm sorry, but I call BS on this. There's no way that bus would have been able to jump that! But I loved it!

Jack tells Annie to get off at the next exit which takes them to the airport. This way they can just cruise around the runway in circles. He is granted permission by Payne to get off the bus (he tells them if he is able to get off, his money will more likely be delivered to him). He goes under the bus on a wooden plank with wheel to see if he can diffuse the bomb while talking to Harry, but while that is going on, the bus hits some debris on the runway (uh....I would hope they cleared that debris before any planes took off on that runway!) and Jack gets caught up and he almost goes under the back wheel, but manages to stab the oil tank with his screwdriver and lets go of the wheely device and it goes under the wheel and Annie starts freaking out, thinking they have run over Jack. Ortiz, the passenger Jack nicknamed "Gigantor", looks under the panel and sees Jack hanging onto the bottom of the bus and pulls him up through the panel door. Doug asks him, "Did you have any luck with the bomb?" and Jack replies with, "Yeah, it didn't go off!" Jack is safe, but the bus is now leaking gas and they are about to have an empty tank. Jack realizes that Payne is able to see them because he has hooked up the bus's camera to a TV in his home. He tells Mac this and he gets a TV news crew person to record the bus and then play it so Payne thinks he's watching a live stream of the bus, but it's actually just a tape and this way they are able to transport everyone from the bomb bus to a safe bus. Payne only notices this when everyone is off the bus and it has run into a plane and exploded.

We now get into the third act of the movie and while still exciting and full of suspense, this is where it sort of drops off for me. The reason why I watch this movie is for the bomb on the bus! And not only do we not have a bus with a bomb on it anymore, we no longer even have a bus! The SWAT team has found out that Howard Payne is a former police officer who feels he deserves a lot more than what he got when he retired. Harry and a team go to his home, only to find a huge bomb (of course) that goes off and kills them all. Payne poses as a police officer and tells Annie that she needs to come with him. (Remember, he knows what she looks like from the camera on the bus). When Payne doesn't show up to collect his money where he instructed the police to put it, Jack knows something is up. Now instead of a bus, the movie is taking place on a subway! Jack finds Payne with Annie who has a bomb strapped to her. Payne takes her on a subway. He is holding a controller and if he lets go of the button, the bomb will explode. See, I would rather have a controller where I pushed the button rather than have to hold it down. I would be so worried that my finger would slip! Whenever I'm in a really long line at a drive-thru, I'm always worried my foot is going to come off my brake so if I know I'll be there for awhile, I'll just put my car in park. That's weird, I know. Jack gets on the subway and climbs on top of the car that Annie and Payne are in and Payne gives the remote to Annie to hold (after killing the subway conductor) and gets into a fight with Jack. They are really close to the ceiling and there are these low hanging lights which Payne gets decapitated with and Jack makes this odd comments about being taller which makes no sense.

They manage to stop the bomb, but Annie can't get off the subway because she is handcuffed to a pole so they cling to each other as the subway crashes, but they survive and kiss. However, three years later they are no longer together because that's when Speed 2 came out and Annie is now dating the guy played by Jason Patric who replaces Keanu Reeves in this film. I guess he was smart when he decided not to be in that movie! I saw Speed 2 but I don't remember anything about it except that it takes place on a cruise ship and it was bad. Even Sandra Bullock has said it was a pretty bad movie! I don't remember if they explain why Annie and Jack are no longer together. Watch Speed, but skip its sequel! 

Hang Ten, Dude!

Point Break

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Lori Petty, Gary Busey, John C. McGinley

Released: July 12, 1991

I would love to know who pitched this movie and how it got greenlit in the first place. Let's have a group of surfers....and make them bank robbers! That is the plot of this movie, basically. We first meet FBI agent ("I AM AN FBI AGENT!") Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) who, along with his partner, Angelo (Gary Busey, who I'm only familiar with from Celebrity Apprentice), decide that he's going to infiltrate the bank robbing surfers and try to get into their crowd so he can stop them. Since Johnny Utah is the younger, more athletic (he is a former quarterback for the Ohio Buckeyes, after all), overall better looking one, they decide that he should be the one to work his way into the surfers' group. Although it certainly would have been funnier if Gary Busey tried to. 

Since the group of robbers are wearing rubber masks of former presidents (and even call themselves the Ex-Presidents), Johnny Utah isn't exactly sure which group of surfers are the bank robbers since this is L.A. and there are a lot of surfers in L.A. The Ex-Presidents have robbed 27 banks in the last three years, but to keep from becoming caught, they never rob the vault, only grab the cash in the drawers so they can be sure they're out in 90 seconds. Although they wield guns, they have never killed anyone. Angelo figured out they were surfers because one of them mooned the camera with "Thank you" written across his butt and he could tell by the tan line that he was a surfer. They also found traces of sand left at the crime scene.

Johnny Utah attempts his first try at surfing and nearly kills himself. He is saved by a female surfer (Lori Petty) who screams at him for being stupid. After tracking down her license plate number, Johnny Utah finds out her name is Tyler and where she works so he can ask her to give him surfing lessons. Through her, he meets Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) who is the charismatic leader of a group of surfers. He and Tyler are a bit of an item, but not since other women openly flirt with him right in front of Tyler. I didn't really get their romantic dynamic. But surprise, surprise, Tyler will end up falling for Johnny Utah anyway. I did find it peculiar that Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze didn't have the other's roles. I feel like Keanu would have been better as the surfer dude, I mean he's Keanu Reeves for god's sake. But Patrick Swayze does have the long, blond beach hair, so you gotta make him the surfer! 

Johnny Utah (don't you just love that name?) gets in good with the group and quite likes his new friends. Of course he does since his only other friend is Gary Busey! Speaking of Angelo, he leads Johnny Utah and some other agents on a raid in a house where a group of surfers are gathered. Johnny Utah had a nasty altercation with them earlier when he ran into one while he was surfing and one of the guys punched him. While he was using the beach shower, the same guy and a group of his friends came upon him with the intent to beat him up, but luckily Bodhi showed up and told them to stand down before punching the guy. Johnny Utah and Bodhi followed the car with the fist-happy surfer and thought for sure they had their bank robbers. These guys are not the bank robbers, but rather involved with some serious drugs and were all loaded with guns. There's a big shootout and Johnny Utah gets awfully close to a blade of a lawn mower when one of the bad guy pushes his head towards it. This freaked me out and I had to turn around so I wouldn't see anything too gruesome. But right before he's about to get his pretty face chopped up, Angelo shoots out the motor with his gun. Whew! An undercover cop gets really angry with them because they messed up his assignment because he was this close to finding out where the drugs were coming from. 

Well, if you haven't guessed by now (and, uh, spoilers ahead!), Bodhi and his crew of surfers are the ones pulling the bank jobs. Johnny Utah begins to have his suspicions about them and while at a stakeout at a nearby bank, he and Angelo nearly miss another heist when Angelo has Johnny Utah go into a nearby sandwich shop and get him two meatball sandwiches because he can't shut up about how great they are and how hungry he is. Seriously, this scene must go on for five minutes! When they see the four masked men, they shoot out their back car window and chase after them. Their car gets stuck as the Ex-Presidents turn into a gas station where they firebomb their car so they can get a new one and Johnny Utah runs all the way there to try to stop them. The three other guys are in the car waiting for Bodhi (in a Ronald Reagan mask) to get in, but instead, he and Johnny Utah have a wild goose chase, running through houses (like actually going inside the house from the front door to the back door). It's a pretty exciting foot chase, I must say. Johnny Utah sprains his ankle after jumping from a long drop and it's clear he can't chase after "Reagan" anymore. We see a close up of the eyes behind the Reagan mask and know it's Bodhi. Well, duh, they wouldn't spend this much time on the chase if it was just some random guy Johnny Utah was running after! 

Now that Bodhi's gang know that Johnny Utah is an FBI agent (He is an FBI AGENT!), the other surfers want to get the hell out of town, but Bodhi has other plans. He blackmails Johnny Utah into joining him on a bank robbery by telling him that someone has Tyler (oh, and she's pretty pissed about how Bodhi lied to her) hostage and the only way he can free her is if he available in the next twelve hours to call it off. So Johnny Utah has his hands tied and is forced to rob the bank with the others. Only since there is no extra Presidents masks (what, they couldn't get a George Bush mask for him? Surely they had those in 1991!), Johnny Utah has to go in sans a mask. This time Bodhi decides he's going to get money from the vault and while doing this, an undercover cop who was one of the customers in the bank at the time, tells the bank security guard to back him up and shoots at one of the surfers. I think Bodhi's brother gets shot, but manages to escape...I don't remember! Bodhi kills the undercover cop and somehow manages to escape to an airfield where he has a plane ready to take off for Mexico. Johnny Utah follows him and Angelo is also there and there's a big shoot out. Johnny Utah doesn't want Angelo to kill Brodhi because he needs him alive so he can tell him where Tyler is. Angelo gets shot by one of the other surfers and Gary Busey and his teeth are hamming up that death scene so much that I was laughing...probably not a good thing to laugh over a death scene! But it was hilarious.

Johnny Utah ends up on the plane with Bodhi, Bodhi's bleeding brother, and the pilot. Johnny Utah begs for Bodhi to call off the kidnapping of Tyler and to let her go before he jumps out of the plane just in case something happens, but Bodhi ignores him and jumps out after he's sent his brother. Since Johnny Utah is now a skydiving expert since he's already skydived once before in his life (in an earlier scene), he jumps out of the plane without a parachute and tackles Bodhi in the air, puts a gun to his head and tells him to open the parachute, but Bodhi refuses to open it, saying Johnny Utah needs to open it and in order to do so, he has to drop the gun. Guess who ends up opening it? Yep, Johnny Utah has to sacrifice his gun in order to save their lives. So Bodhi gets away with the money (even though his brother is now dead) and Tyler is safe. We fast forward a year later where FBI agent Johnny Utah has finally found Bodhi in Australia where he's surrounded by cops. There's a huge storm and the ocean has 50 foot waves and Bodhi begs him to let him surf one last time because he was going on about how he wanted to surf that one perfect wave, so Johnny Utah lets him go and we see Bodhi paddle out in the death wave and I guess it's up to interpretation what happened to him, but I'm guessing he probably drowned.

This movie has a lot of fun action, but for the most part, I didn't understand why this movie even exists. Did you know there was a Point Break remake that came out just last year? I mean, was the world really clamoring for a Point Break remake? It does have some interesting history as it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow who would become the first female to win the Best Directing Oscar for The Hurt Locker and later go on to direct Zero Dark Thirty. I feel for a surfing movie there wasn't enough surfing, but I guess if I always wanted to watch a surfing movie, I could watch Blue Crush. 

Let's play a game of

Hardball
Director: Brian Robbins
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane, John Hawkes, Michael B. Jordan
Released: September 14, 2001

This movie is interesting as it is probably the film most associated with 9/11 that doesn't have anything to do with 9/11 in its plot. As you can see from its release date, it came out three days after that day. I remember watching some documentary I found on YouTube about 9/11 and the aftermath and there was a segment about the pop culture angle. A commentator said this movie did fairly well for a movie of its size at the box office because most people wanted to escape what was going on in the real world and have a temporary distraction and this was a nice, uplifting movie, which it is, but it is also pretty depressing and I think it would just add to the extreme sadness I already was feeling during that time!

This movie is very similar to The Mighty Ducks, as both movies deal with a law-breaking citizen who is sentenced to coach a crappy sports team of ragtag kids. The only difference is that it's baseball, not hockey, and all the kids are black instead of an all white team with a couple black kids. One amusing similarity is that both movies feature an actor who would grow up to be on a TV show. The Mighty Ducks had Joshua Jackson who would go on to be in Dawson's Creek and Hardball had Michael B. Jordan who would go on to be in Friday Night Lights (I wonder if he and Todd were pals? Haha....I have never seen that show, but I know Todd from Breaking Bad was on it). I was curious to see if I would know any of the other kids in anything, but looking at their IMDb pages, it appears this was their only credit or they were in only a couple of other things. Jordan is the only one to have gone on to have a career of some sort. I thought all the kids did a good job in the movie, except for the youngest one who you could not understand at all when he talked.

Keanu Reeves plays the coach, Connor O'Neil, who is a gambling addict and he owes a bunch of people a lot of money. Obviously, he never saw that episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 where Brandon gets in deep with gambling and has to learn a hard lesson! But Connor doesn't have a Nat to bail him out of trouble! Instead, he keeps stupidly betting on more sports games in order to pay off his debts. He goes to a friend who helps him out by telling him he knows a kids' baseball team that is looking for a coach because the old one left and he will be paid $500 a week. Connor isn't thrilled, but needing the money, takes the job. He is the worst coach ever. These are all inner-city kids who live in a bad part of Chicago where gangs are running rampant and he lets practice go on longer than it should have because he's waiting for a ride and one kid, while walking home after dark, gets beaten up and robbed. After the kid's mother yells at Connor for being an idiot, he realizes he needs to be more careful and follow the rules.

Diane Lane plays the boys' sixth grade teacher, Miss Wilkes, and tells them they need to finish their book reports before they can play baseball. She's not so sure about Connor at first, but after all her students are giving him glowing reviews, she decides there must be something special about him and there's some cute flirting that goes on between them. They only have one little kiss at the end of the movie when the team wins the game. So lame! (The kiss, not the game). I would have liked to see more of their relationship and how it progressed. They get into this huge fight at one point (a scene in which Keanu is pretty laughably bad in, but hey, at least he is nice to look at!), but then quickly make up.

One of my biggest wtf? moments is what happens with Jordan's character, Jamal. The other coaches call to Connor's attention that Jamal was born two weeks before the age cutoff and is therefore too old to play for the team so he has to leave. It is really sad and you feel so bad for him. In another scene, when the little bad actor kid and his older brother, who is also on the team, are walking back home, they come across Jamal who has become a part of a gang and acts like he doesn't know who his ex-teammates are. A drive-by occurs and I thought for sure Jamal was the one who was going to get shot, but it was actually the young boy. Everyone comes together for the deceased boy and win their last game of the season as a dedication to him. The only thing is, where the hell is Jamal? He wasn't at the funeral! We never see him again after the little boy is shot. I thought we would see him leaving the gang since an innocent boy was, you know, murdered in front of him! I thought they would make an exception for him and let him come back to join the team so he wouldn't be cavorting around with gang members, but nope! Never hear from him again! So did he just stay in a bad situation while all his friends got to play baseball and have fun? Doesn't seem very fair to me!

I really loved the song of the same name that L'il Bow Wow, L'il Wayne, and friends sang for the soundtrack and am so disappointed I can't find it on Spotify!