My Beloved Monster

Shrek
Directors: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jensen
Voice Talent: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow
Released: May 18, 2001
Viewed in theaters: June 12, 2001

Oscar nominations:
Best Animated Picture (won)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger H.S.Schulman (lost to Akiva Goldsman for A Beautiful Mind)

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me

I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed

She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb

In the shape of an "L" on her forehead...

Okay, show of hands: who thinks of this movie whenever they hear this song? Cuz I sure do. Every time they play this song on the radio stations that still play music from the late '90s or early '00, I am reminded of this movie. In fact, I just figured this song was released the same year as the movie and that's why they used it, but "All Star" by Smash Mouth (whatever happened to them, I wonder? Not that I really care that much!) came out in 1999 and has since this day forward been known as the Shrek song. And once you get it in your head, it never gets out! "Hey now, you're an all star, get your game on, go play. Hey now, your'e a rock star, get the show on, get paid." Now you have that song in your head. You're welcome.

Shrek will go down in history as being the first animated movie to win the Oscar for Best Animated movie since they started that category in 2002. It was up against Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. In hindsight, Monsters, Inc. should have won. Shrek won because it was super popular and everyone loved it, but I don't think it has aged that well. Not just the animation (the humans look vey similar to Sims), but the dated pop culture references (The Matrix comes to mind) don't hold up so well either. 

Shrek the character (voiced by Mike Myers in a Scottish accent) is just super gross. He's a big fat green ogre who lives in the swamp and he belches, farts, and (in one of the most disgusting scenes from the movie) pulls ear wax out of his ear to create a candle. He also eats pretty much anything (including spiderwebs fashioned into cotton candy and rats) and has bad breathe, as we're told many times. I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for him because everyone is afraid of him and runs away when they see him. Well, if I saw a farting, belching, ear-wax picking ogre with bad breathe, I would probably run the other way too! His sidekick, Donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy), a talking donkey, can be endearing at times and at other times, annoying, as he never shuts up and likes to sing. Shrek is a bit of an a-hole too; I know where supposed to feel sorry for him and he acts like a jerk because he's really lonely and blah, blah, blah, but I really don't care. When he and Donkey are crossing the rickety, swinging bridge over a deep chasm to get to the other side, he keeps swinging the bridge back and forth even though Donkey is clearly afraid and keeps telling him to stop .Then, the first night, when Fiona finds shelter in a cave, Shrek makes it like he's going to move a big boulder in front of it, so she won't be able to get out. He tells Donkey he's only "joking", but I bet if Donkey weren't there to chastise him, he would have placed that boulder in front of that cave! 

Shrek and Donkey meet when Lord Farquaad (voiced by John Lithgow), the ruler of the kingdom Duloc, has banished fairy tale creatures and characters to the swamp where Shrek lives. Shrek, who likes his privacy and not being bothered, wants to know where Lord Farquaad is so he can speak to him and Donkey is the only person, er creature, who knows where he is, so begrudgingly Shrek lets him take him to Duloc. Lord Farquaad wants to be King, but the only way he can do so is if he marries a princess. He is told this by the Magic Mirror who points this out to him and gives him a list of potential candidates: Cinderella (even though she technically becomes a Princess AFTER she marries the Prince), Snow White, and Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz), a princess who is stuck in a castle and is waiting for her knight in shining armor who will have to slay the fire-breathing dragon who is guarding the castle. Shrek makes a deal with Farquaad that if he rescues Fiona (Farquaad never had any intention of actually rescuing the Princess; he was always going to send someone to do his job for him) that all the creatures will have to leave his premises and Farquaad agrees to the deal. 

After Farquuad picks Fiona as his betroved, the Mirror is about to tell him something important that happens to her after midnight, but Farquaad just dismisses it as he's just ready to marry his bride. Of course, well all know what he was going to say. Even if you've never seen the movie, I can't imagine you don't know what the big twist is at the end, especially if you've seen any promotional pieces from the next three (?) movies. I don't think it's a big secret or anything, but if you're that sensitive to details and really have no idea what I'm talking about, then I will have to put a spoiler warning right here...just in case! I'm putting a spoiler right now because I'm going to talk about the big twist.

So, yes, turns out Fiona needs to find a private shelter to camp after the sun goes down because she turns into an ogre. We find this out on the second night when Donkey discovers her this way (and thinks Shrek has eaten her! But why would Shrek be wearing her dress?) She tells Donkey a witch put a spell on her and the only way to break the curse is to be kissed by her true love. I always just assumed she was a human and the spell made her turn into an ogre. But then, a few things made me wonder. She says "I've been this way as long as I can remember", implying that perhaps she was first an ogre, then the witch turned her into a human only when it's daylight. I know it seems like the witch's curse turned her into an ogre because she talks about how ugly she is and how nobody will love her if she turns into this hideous beast at night (and for the record, even though she was an ogre, she was still actually pretty cute). After Shrek rescues her and she demands for him to take off his helmet (even though you can still totally see green skin where his neck and hands are showing) and she sees he's an ogre, her reaction is disappointment. I feel like if she were a human-turned-ogre, her reaction would be more of disgust. Plus, the first night when she's taking shelter in the cave and we see her peeking out and listening to the conversation Shrek and Donkey are having about Shrek being lonely, she seems to have compassion and empathy for him...as though she understands because she's an ogre too and knows what he's going through. She tells Donkey a Princess is supposed to be beautiful and she wants to be the beautiful, lithe human form with the long flowing hair. I supposed maybe they go into more detail with this in the other movies, but I haven't seen Shrek 2 since May 24, 2004. God knows how long it's been since I've seen Shrek the Third or if I've even seen it at all and I'm pretty sure I never saw Shrek Forever After. Perhaps they go into Fiona's backstory in one of those movies. I guess I could just look it up on Wikipedia or something, but I just feel like that would lead me down a wormhole I don't want to dig myself into. Oh! Another reason I believe Fiona was born an ogre and "cursed" to be a human is because of her behavior. After she makes that disgusting cobweb cotton candy with the flies stuck to it for Shrek, we see her licking her fingers. She also eats the rat Shrek cooks and belches and has no problem horsing around with him. If she were truly a human princess, I can't imagine she would be doing these things (or even knowing that ogres like cotton candy spiderwebs). Yes, I suppose you could say she learned these things after being turned into an ogre for so long. 

This movie was popular because of its witty take on popular fairy tales. Yes, there are some funny moments in this movie, I will admit. I did laugh when Farquaad tortures the Gingerbread Man ("Run, run, fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man") by dunking him in milk and tearing off his legs so he can't run away. It's funny when the Gingerbread Man asks him, "Do you know the Muffin Man?" and he replies, "The Muffin Man?" and the Gingerbread Man repeats, "The Muffin Man." They recite the whole little ditty under a pretense of an interrogation. When all the fairy tale creatures are invading Shrek's home, I thought it was funny when one of the Three Pigs said about Farquaad, "He huffed and he puffed and he sent an eviction notice." When Shrek and Donkey cross the bridge to the castle, Donkey asks him where the fire breathing monster is and Shrek tells him, "Inside, waiting for us to rescue her." Okay, that was funny AND mean. Right before Shrek makes it to the highest tower of the castle to rescue Fiona, we see she's fidgeting in her bed and making sure everything is perfect when his back is turned to her so she will look perfect when he kisses her. Fiona has some other funny moments when it's about to turn midnight and she demands, "I need to find somewhere to camp NOW!" Just the way Cameron Diaz read that line made me laugh because she's so sharp and demanding; like you are going to listen to her! People seem to love Donkey's line, "And in the morning, I'm making WAFFLES!" Yes, he does say "waffles" with a lot of enthusiasm and that line is popular for some reason, but I didn't think it was that funny, but to each their own. He also never makes waffles, I should point out. Maybe he gets to make waffles in one of the sequels. Also, Farquaad's demise of being inhaled by the dragon is super funny and fully deserved.

So, yes, there are genuinely funny moments in this movie. I remembered there was also a lot of jokes only adults would get, but I guess I forgot just how many of them there were and just how adult these jokes got. They're pretty subtle, but it's still pretty shocking some of them found their way in a PG movie (no way this movie could have been rated G!). I'm not just talking about juvenile farting/belching/urinating/defecating jokes, because there are plenty of those, but they go into some pretty awkward territory. When the Mirror introduces Snow White as a potential partner for Farquaad, he says, "Although she lives with seven other men, she's not easy". Eesh. There's also a masturbation (yes, I'm not joking) joke when we see Farquaad in bed, naked, about to pleasure himself to pictures of Fiona. We know this because he lifts up the sheet just a fraction and has a gleeful look on his face; plus the mirror, who is showing him the image of Fiona Farquaad is demanding, looks very disturbed! That scene makes me want to throw up in my mouth! When Shrek and Donkey enter Duloc and see the massively tall castle Farquaad lives in, Shrek asks Donkey with a little too much glee in his voice, "Do you think maybe he's compensating for something?" The way he says it is a wink at the adult audience, like you know what that means! But I thought surely the movie wouldn't go there, and I thought he meant he was compensating because of his stature as Lord Farquaad is a very short man; almost comically so. He's half the size of Fiona (that's human Fiona, too!) But no, they weren't talking about his height when they made that joke; they make that clear when they return with Fiona. 

When Fiona reveals herself to Shrek to be an ogre just like him (right before she's about to be married to Farquaad and Shrek stops the wedding), they kiss and the spell is broken because she's found her true love. In Beauty and the Beast fashion, she is lifted in the air in a cloud of dust as we wait for her to change. You think (or so they want you to think!) that she's going to change back into her human form, but let's be honest...if she was a human and Shrek was an ogre and they were together...that would be really f**king weird. First of all, he is about fourth girths wider than she is when she's a human and his mouth is big enough to fit over her head and his paws are huge compared to her dainty hands. It's just super weird imagining them being together if you know what I mean. The whole thing made me thing of how Hagrid from the Harry Potter series was conceived as his mother was a giant and his father was a human. Like, how does that even happen? That has always disturbed me! There must have been some kind of potion involved to make either one bigger or one smaller. Shrek and Fiona both have to be either humans or both be ogres...and of course she remains an ogre (as is her TRUE self!) and says she is ugly and Shrek tells her that she's beautiful and they live happily ever after...at least for four (?) more movies. 

Hmm, looking this over, I'm pretty sure I've spelled "Farquaad" two different ways. Oh, well. You know who I'm talking about, anyway! 

Sasquatch Sighting

Harry and the Hendersons

Director: William Dear

Cast: John Lithgow, Melinda Dillon, Don Ameche, Lainie Kazan, David Suchet

Released: June 5, 1987

Oscar nominations:

Best Make-up (won)

My knowledge of Bigfoot/Sasquatch stems from this movie and an episode of The X-Files, so that means pretty much none. I know there are (were?) shows about tracking down Bigfoot, but I don't watch those. That has to be a boring show because you know they're never going to find him! I am not a Bigfoot believer. You should go to the Bigfoot Wikipedia page and read the paragraphs under "hoaxes" - it's very interesting. I also thought "Bigfoot" was two words, but it appears to be one.

This is a movie I've only seen once, maybe twice, before so I really don't have any sentimental attachment to it. The Hendersons, a family who live in the Seattle suburbs, go camping and on their way home, the patriarch, George Henderson (John Lithgow), stops suddenly when he sees something big and hairy in the road and hits it and it tumbles to the side of the road. His wife, Nancy (Melinda Dillon aka the mom from A Christmas Story) tells him he needs to check on the animal to make sure it's not suffering if it's still alive. To them it just looks like a giant ball of fur and they can't tell what it is. George gets his rifle from the back of the station wagon (understandable) and goes closer to the animal. Nancy thinks it might be a gorilla, but George tells her that gorillas don't "usually get this big around here." Huh, I had no idea gorillas could be found in the Pacific Northwest! That's an unusual habitat for them! 

While George is inspecting the dead (so he thinks) animal, his young son, Ernie, screams out the window, "SHOOT IT!" to which his dad tells him that it's already dead and Ernie screams, "SHOOT IT AGAIN!" Here is a good time to tell you how much I hate the kids in this movie. First of all, their son, who is about ten years old, is a little blood thirsty. He just wants to kill and shoot things! It's a little disturbing. He tones down his bloodlust as the movie progresses so he's just a normal kid, however, his older sister, Sarah, oh my God, she is THE WORST! Ugh, I couldn't stand her! She is your typical sullen teenager and she is that way throughout the entire movie. 

When George sees the large ape-like paw, he realizes they must have stumbled across Bigfoot and that a museum will want him, so they need to take him home. Um, why doesn't he just call somebody? Why does he need to take this (seemingly) dead animal home with him? But he has his family help hoist the Bigfoot on top of the station wagon and they begin driving again until a few moments later, the creature, who is clearly very not dead, surprises them by peeking down at the windshield. George slams on his breaks and sends the creature hurtling off the car. Again, he checks on the animal and determines that this time, it is indeed dead. As he tells his wife, "Nancy, I'm no doctor, but it has no pulse, it's not breathing, and it's cold as a popsicle." Bigfoot must have some kind of ability to appear dead when it's really not...because he's not dead here either! They continue to take him home and it's really funny when they pull into their driveway and you see these two huge feet sticking out of the tarp that covers the rest of the Bigfoot's body. 

While all this is going on, we see a Bigfoot trekker named Jacques LaFleur (David Suchet) who finds the bent license plate that fell off when the Hendersons hit the Bigfoot and hairs he cannot identify (and licks them for some reason...gross). 

At 5:30 in the morning George hears something and goes out to the garage where he notices there's not a big lump under the tarp on the top of his car anymore. He hears crashing coming from his house and in his kitchen he sees Bigfoot drinking milk out of the fridge which he has knocked over. Bigfoot growls at him and comes toward George who shields himself with a table, then a chair, but Bigfoot only knocks him it out of the way. I liked the shots from Bigfoot's perspective when he's looking down at George so you can see just how much taller he is than George (and at 6'4", John Lithgow is very tall! The actor who was in the Harry costume (and how hot did that have to be, wearing that costume?), Kevin Peter Hall, was 7'2" and also played the predator in...wait for it...Predator).  It isn't until George starts screaming for help that his family wakes up. Did they not hear all the racket when tables and chairs were being thrown across the room or what about when the fridge tipped over on its side?

It was funny when Ernie, who comes down first, says, "All right! I knew you weren't dead!" and his dad replies, "Not yet, I'm not," and his son says, "Not you, him!" Nancy is able to lead the creature away by spaying a bottle of Glade and they are all able to get away from him, except for the daughter who is a complete moron. When she sees Bigfoot eating her 15th birthday corsage (who gets a corsage for their birthday? I have never heard of that), the one she saved for 6 months, she gets all indignant and starts reprimanding him like a dog. ("That was a bad thing you did! Do you hear me?") Girl, what the hell are you doing? Look, we all know this is a family movie and Bigfoot will turn into a friend of the Hendersons named Harry and they'll all come to love him, but right now...they don't know that! Let's not anger this huge creature that could squash you like a bug! Not a good idea, Sarah!

The Hendersons go outside and watch as their new visitor wreck havoc on their house because of his sheer size. We soon learn where Ernie got his bloodlust from because there are a lot of dead animal heads mounted on the walls. Harry sees one of a deer and punches through the wall to try to find the rest of the body. They see him go outside to bury Helen's mother's mink stole. George quickly realizes he has to hide all his taxidermy animal heads in a closet and this is when we see just how many kills he's done in the past. There is a moment when George climbs up to the second floor with his rifle and has a chance to shoot Harry, but he sees humanity in the creature's eyes and can't go through with it. Instead, he calls the police who don't believe him and just start laughing at him.

Their nosy neighbor, Irene (Lainie Kazan), who has been watching their dog while they were away, comes over to return him. They know that if Irene finds out that a Bigfoot is at their house, then the whole world will know. They shut curtains as Irene walks across the yard, trying to peer in and Ernie takes Harry down the basement. He tells him he'll like it because it's like a cave. As Harry descends down the stairs, the first step he takes, the entire staircase crumbles.

It is established that Harry stinks to high heaven, so when they answer the door, Irene takes a big whiff (why? In fact, she keeps sniffing! Don't sniff if the smell is so bad!) and asks what that smell is. George, Nancy, and Sarah are all blocking her, but she can still peer around them and see all the carnage from the mess Harry made. When asked about the tipped over fridge, Nancy replies, "We decided to defrost the fridge", which you would have to be an idiot to buy that line. I'm beginning to think Irene is one because George starts moving up because Harry's head has lifted the floor where he's standing and Irene doesn't even look down to notice that something is coming out of the floor and believes George when he tells her he's exercising. And right when she's about to leave, she sees a huge paw come through the laundry chute, but doesn't even question it. The Hendersons tells her it's Ernie's new pet for a science experiment; that it's like a gerbil, "only bigger!" (Yeah, much, much, MUCH bigger!) I feel like if I were Irene in this scenario, I would have a lot more questions!

There's a cute moment where Harry lifts Ernie up to the main floor and smiles at George. He and Ernie want to keep Harry and charge people to see him so they can get rich, but Nancy is against that idea. She thinks Harry might be some kind of human as he has many human characteristics which include sitting on lazy-boys and laughing during a sitcom while dipping plant leaves in dip. She mentions that they don't even know if it's a male or female and Sarah says, "It's definitely male". Nancy asks, "How can you tell...don't answer that." They don't show anything graphic, but you have to wonder....where does this thing go to the bathroom? You know what? Don't answer that! Maybe that's why their neighbor's pool gets the color it does (which is a murky brown).

There's a funny moment where George has taught Harry to sit by giving him a sugar cube and every time he sits down (and he takes a huge jump before he does), he breaks something - the couch, a table, a stool. He's ruining everything in their house and Nancy tells George that they can't keep him and they need to send him back to where he came from because it's the right thing to do for him and they can't be selfish and think of ways to get rich off of their new discovery.

Harry is a little reluctant to go (you think he'd want to return to his home since he has a Bigfoot family waiting for him!) and George tosses a fish sandwich (they know he's a pescatarian because he ate one of their goldfish), fries, and a chocolate shake (with the lid tightly on!) into the backseat of the car to entice Harry to get in. Oh, and while all this is going out, little Ernie is crying his eyes out, telling Harry how much he's going to miss him. And this is from the same kid who wanted his dad to shoot his new friend twice! Your crocodile tears don't fool me, kid! This is the moment when Harry gets his name. George tells Ernie that they should say goodbye to their "hairy friend" and Ernie says, "Harry? Since when does he have a name?" and his dad replies, "Since right now." When they go check on the car after hearing a loud noise, they see that Harry has escaped (do they think a locked car is going to stop him? All he has to do is rip off a door!) I'm not really sure why he escaped. Doesn't he want to go back to his family? Does he want to stay with the Hendersons? Not really sure what's going on here except to advance the plot.

I'm not sure how long Harry is gone from this moment until he's reunited with George, but there are suddenly an outpour of Bigfoot sightings in Seattle and George starts keeping tabs on the areas where people mention they've seen him. George works at a place called Shoot N Stuff (hilariously stupid name) that sells rifles and other hunting equipment. His father is the manager and he wants George, who we learn loves to sketch and has a talent for it, to create a Bigfoot cutout that they can display at the front of the store with a map of the area and keep track of all the places where people have spotted Harry. He wants him to draw the Bigfoot with long sharp teeth and claws and as scary as he possibly can, but as George tells his wife, it's like he's drawing a wanted poster of his best friend and ends up drawing the Bigfoot to look exactly like Harry: calm and gentle. When he sees the drawing, his father tells him it looks like "a giant gerbil".

Jacques LaFleur gets the Henderson's address by getting the DMV to run their license plate number (by the way, are they not aware they're missing a plate?) He tells the woman at the DMV that he saw an old army buddy from forty years ago and took down his license number because he couldn't remember his name. Something tells me that this kind of thing wouldn't fly in this day and age! He pays a visit to their home where he tells Nancy he's with the U.S. Forest Service and they're investigating about a large animal that was either maimed or killed. Nancy plays dumb and tells him it all happened so fast, they didn't see what kind of animal it was, but that it was okay because it "walked" back into the forest. LaFleur questions her choice of the word and she quickly chooses other words such as "crawled, scampered, scurried, waddled, and creeped." This woman is like a walking thesaurus!

He next goes to Shoot N Stuff where he buys "some pretty serious ammo", according to George. He asks LaFleur if he's going on safari, but LaFleur just replies he's only going hunting in "his own backyard" which concerns George greatly. George's father tells him that LaFleur always shows up when a Bigfoot sighting is reported and that he is the one who caught and killed "Claws" the huge taxidermy grizzly bear in their store. George checks out a bunch of books about Bigfoot at the library and when he and his family are at home reading them (well, except for Sarah who's on the phone), there's a photo of LaFleur and Nancy realized she was duped by him earlier. All the books make the Bigfoot creatures into man-eating killers except for one by a Dr. Wallace Wrightwood (Don Ameche) who is an expert on Bigfoot and works at the North American Museum of Anthropology (which is just a rundown shack in the middle of nowhere) where George pays him a visit.

Meanwhile, we see Harry looking forlornly across eight lanes of traffic at the mountains where his home and family is. There's also a weird scene where Harry is looking into the window (and not even attempting to hide himself at all) of a home where he sees a woman put a whole raw chicken into a pot of boiling water. While this is going on, he also sees a couple getting into a hot tub, also bubbling. This concerns him because I guess he thinks the people are cooking themselves. It's hilarious, but a little dark!

With the last known location of Harry, George is able to find him in the one part of Seattle that doesn't have any traffic or people. (I know, I know, it was a movie lot with a fuzzy Space Needle slapped into the background). He's in the bin of a garbage truck, but LaFleur finds him first and Harry jumps up and surprises him (and anyone watching, I'm sure!) and flings him into the bin with him. George hears all the growling and commotion and this is how he finds him. Some garbage man is getting fired the next day because George is able to drive the truck because somebody left the keys in the ignition. While George is driving the truck, LaFleur points a gun at Harry, but he knocks it out of his hand and proceeds to the point the gun at himself between the eyes. A bit intense for a family movie! LaFleur reaches to pull the trigger, but at that moment, George slams on the break to avoid hitting a homeless man and the bin goes flying, then skids across the street. And when I say flying, I mean flying. Nobody (or living thing!) would get out of that unscathed...but of course both Harry and LaFleur are perfectly fine. I laughed when Harry gets into George's car by tearing the other back door he hadn't torn off previously and getting in and George just shrugs. His head also stretches the roof of the car to accommodate his height.

LaFleur is arrested for being in possession of a firearm and there's a funny scene where he's locked in a jail cell with several other inmates and every time he paces, all the other inmates go on the opposite side since he reeks so bad from being in a trash bin and being in close proximity with the pungent Bigfoot. LaFleur does not smell like his surname!

When they return home, everyone is happy to see Harry, even a reluctant Sarah. Ernie accidentally opens the door to the closet where George had stored all his taxidermy animals and Harry is outraged. They bury all of them and have a funeral and this seems to appease Harry. They give him a bath and it must have completely extinguished all the odor because they invite Dr. Wrightwood over for dinner (and they all dress up as if the President of the United States were having dinner with them) and while they're eating dinner, Harry comes up right behind the anthropologist, but he seems to neither smell nor sense Harry until the very last second when he realizes something is behind him. Can I just say that Don Ameche is the most adorable old man? His sheer joy at seeing that a Bigfoot exists is wonderful, even though his "YAHOO!" cry is a bit corny. There's little time for celebration because LaFleur is out of jail and they need to get Harry to his home, pronto. They get stuck in Seattle traffic, but after seeing cars part way for a cop car to get through, Harry sticks his head out the window (which nobody apparently notices with all that traffic around them) and imitates the siren sound, thus letting their car get through all the traffic.

LaFleur is still on their tail and the family only has a short amount of time to say goodbye to Harry. To get him to leave, George tells him that he's not wanted anymore, to go back to where he came from, and slaps him (a bit harsh!), you know, the old troupe of trying to get an animal to leave for its own safety. Why don't they just tell him he needs to leave so he doesn't get killed? When they realize that LaFleur can easily just follow the footprints, the Hendersons and Dr. Wrightwood strap on fake Bigfoot feet (not sure where those came from or how he had enough for everybody) and scatter around to make footprints to confuse LaFleur.

In the end, LaFleur comes around and sees Harry as a human being as George did. When Harry is about to go back to his home, George tells him, "You take care of yourself now, okay?" and Harry replies, "Okay." This is when we see his Bigfoot family (including a little Bigfoot) who were hiding in plain sight all this time.

Like I said, this is the only movie I've seen which features Bigfoot, but I have a feeling it's the only one where they make him into a gentle giant. 

Hanging By a Thread

Cliffhanger
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Janine Turner
Released: May 28, 1993

Oscar nominations:
Best Sound (lost to Jurassic Park)
Best Sound Effects Editing (lost to Jurassic Park)
Best Visual Effects (lost to Jurassic Park)
(Dang those pesky dinosaurs!)

Would you believe that I've never seen Cliffhanger? Sure, I've seen parts of it on TV while flipping through the channels, so I know the basic plot of it, but I had never seen the entire thing in all it's R-rated glory until recently. The movie stars Stallone as Gabe, a fearless mountain climber who guides people up the mountains of Colorado. (If he's so good, why isn't he doing this on Everest?)

The opening begins with him on the top of a narrow peak where he's "just hanging around" with a couple of picks (my mountain climbing vocabulary is a little rusty) and he's just hanging upside down from a mountain 4,000 feet high in the air without any safety harness from what I can tell. Already I can sense something bad is going to happen. He's with Hal, another professional climber who also gives tours and Hal's girlfriend, Sarah, who has never been mountain climbing in her life. Uh-oh. Okay, why the hell would you bring someone who has never climbed a mountain to one of the most challenging mountain that you could possible climb? I want to know how she even got up there!

But she's having a grand old time and everyone is laughing and in good spirits. It's time to go home and the helicopter has landed at another peak about half a mile away (er, don't quote me on that, I'm really bad with measurements) where the pilot and Jess, Gabe's girlfriend, are waiting for them. They throw a wire to them and the climbers have to clip themselves to the wire and rappel across it and into the helicopter. Sounds easy enough. So Hal goes first and gets there safely. Then it's Sarah's turn. She's already scared enough, so you can imagine how much worse it got for her when she was halfway across the wire and her safety harness came undone and the only thing holding her up is a buckle that's gotten stuck. Uh-oh! What? Did her professional instructors forget to check her harness to make sure everything was secure? Isn't that the first rule in mountain climbing?

So Gabe goes out to try to save her, even though the wire isn't supposed to have all that weight on it and just as she's about to fall, he grabs her arm. I'm not sure how he plans to get her back to the other side, but it's a moot point anyway because his hand slips and she falls to her death.

Fast forward one year later. Still distraught over the death of Sarah and blaming himself, Gabe has not been back to those mountains. However, he must return, along with Hal, when they get a call that a group of people have become stranded and need help getting out. The group of people in question are the bad guys led by Lithgow. Their plane crashed in the mountain and they've lost a couple of suitcases with millions of dollars and now they need experienced mountain climbers who can find the suitcases for them.

Lithgow's Qualen has a British accent and I don't understand why they decided he needed to speak with an accent because his voice is so distinct already, so it sounds ridiculous everytime he talks. Nobody plays a bad guy better than John Lithgow. In fact, I mentioned in my review of Batman, that he was considered for the role of the Joker and I think he would have made a better one than Jack Nicholson. I still maintain that notion.

Why this movie wasn't nominted for a Best Original Screenplay, I'll never know! There were so many great quotable gems, most of them from Lithgow:

"You want to kill me? Well, take a ticket and get in line!"

"Let's see if your little angel really can fly!" (After he threatens to shove Gabe's girlfriend off the mountain).

"Kill a couple people and you're a murderer...kill a million and you're a conqueror!"

Lithgow: "You're a piece of work!"
Stallone: "And you're a piece of sh*t."

"It costs a fortune to heat this place!" (Gabe to Jess as he's burning the money to keep a fire going).

"He's the one 4,000 feet down wearing a helicopter." (Gabe referring to Qualen).

And I could go on and on. All of the bad guys end up getting their comeuppance, but probably the most notorious death was the guy Gabe impaled on a stalactite. (Stalagmite?) I just love how the bad guy was beating the crap out of Gabe and he was all tired and worn down, then miraculously got the strength to grab him, lift him over his head and impale him on the stalactite. Okaaaaay, movie.

Cliffhanger: probably one of the most unintentionally funny movies I've ever seen.