Movie Madness

I chuckled a few times during this movie. I laughed out loud during the notarizing of the margarine company handover (pun intended).

There are three segments in this movie. The first one is supposed to be a spoof of "woman 'grows up' and launches career" movies. The Tampax® box was the funniest thing in this segment. Most of the cast members aren't listed here on IMDb. They are the lucky ones. Few other people will be able to connect this thing to the ruin of their acting careers.

The second segment is a spoof of "sharkish woman sleeps her way to the top and seizes control of huge industry" movies. Robert Culp has several funny moments, all physical humor, including the aforementioned handover. After his character dies the segment sinks lower and lower as Dominique Corsaire rises higher and higher. By the time she becomes First Lady I wanted to rip the cable out of the TV and watch "snow." I switched to Pakistani music videos instead. I don't understand Urdu, or whatever language the videos were in. It was still better than listening to the dialogue in this painfully dull "story."

Then came "Municipalians" with the *big* stars, half of them on screen for less than a minute: Elisha Cook, Jr., Christopher Lloyd, Rhea Perlman, Henny Youngman, Julie Kavner, Richard Widmark and ... *Robby Benson.* It's supposed to be a spoof of "young cop teams with hardened, substance abusing older cop who needs retirement *badly*" movies. The horizontal flash bar on the police car is very impressive. It was interesting seeing old RTD buses, and a Shell gas station sign, and an American Savings sign -- none of them are around anymore. Nagurski's "Never stop anywhere you might have to get out the car" made me smile momentarily. Then they discuss how boring the young cop is. A lot. Back and forth about how boring he is. That was as boring as this description of how boring it is. Nagurski's Law Number Four, "Never go into a music store that's been cut into with an acetylene torch," made me think that the music store is a real business at the actual location the dispatcher gave. Thinking about that was more interesting than the set-up for the gag which followed. Young Falcone (Benson) gets shot. A lot. He becomes a hardened cop like Nagurski. The segment keeps going. On and on. And on. It won't stop. It rolls relentlessly onward no matter how many times you wish he'd just *die* already so this thing will end. It doesn't. It goes on and on and on.... Then a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode which I've seen four times already comes on. Thank God! This abysmal movie ended while I went to get the mail.

Facts about National Lampoon Goes to the Movies, a.k.a. National Lampoon's Movie Madness:

1. The movie is poor, even by Lampoon's typical standards. 2. It's not funny. 3. No one goes to see a movie.

So, after I finished watching it, I began wondering why on earth it's called 'National Lampoon Goes to the Movies,' and why it was ever conceived, much less actually made. It would be like calling Austin Powers 'An American Guy Goes to the Movies.' How lame. He isn't American, and he doesn't go to movies. None of the characters in Lampoon's so-called 'satire' are funny, and none go see movies, which causes a bit of a problem. I had hoped it would be something in the vein of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it isn't.

This was National Lampoon's first film after Animal House, although you couldn't tell it from the quality of film. Poorly developed, rough and amateurish by any standard, it induces headaches – not a good sign for an 89-minute movie that seems double the length.

I've noticed a pattern. Really bad movies are typically renamed – and this little disaster falls under that category. It has two separate titles -- probably to help try and promote it to people too stupid to remember how bad a panning it received from home video critics in 1982/83. 'Hmm, Movie Madness – I've never heard of this movie before! Let's rent it!' And then, the realization: 'Hey, wait a minute, this is just National Lampoon Goes to the Movies!'

It was shelved by MGM/UA, never to be released into theaters or DVD; it occasionally pops up on television a few times per decade, which is just about the only place you'll manage to find it.

It's split up into three stories – a parody of self-enlargement videos, butter and corporate ruthlessness, and police brutality/cop-buddy films (I guess). The first segment stars Peter Riegert (Animal House) as a frustrated guy who divorces his wife and does some other stuff. I'm not sure what because it was so boring my mind started to drift. Until the sex scene popped up.

Part II is about an exotic dancer raped by a stick of butter (don't ask) who decides to become Queen of the Margarine so she can cut off the supply of dairy products. Ouch! This contains the only funny line in the movie: 'Only I can make love with my son!' If you think that doesn't sound very funny, you're right – it's not. And just imagine – it's the highlight of this film!

Part III is about a cop who chases down a serial killer (Christopher Lloyd) only to lose his nerve and shoot the guy. It does contain one funny scene but it's extremely over-acted – only Lloyd really exhibits any humor, playing his character dry and compassionate, yet strangely surreal. The part where he's choking his victim and the meek cop stands by watching it all unfold, at least, evoked a chuckle or two.

It's a shame to watch such a cast of semi-famous names resort to low standards. The writers of each segment clearly believe that they're being very ironic and clever by spoofing so-called stereotypes – the fault being that the movie becomes one huge contradiction, favoring the standard T & A instead of plot; crude humor instead of witty dialogue; desperate performances instead of inspired ones. It's easy to see that none of the actors were enthralled with the material, muttering their lines, often so embarrassed they can seldom make eye contact with the camera.

The movie isn't funny, as I said before. I laughed once, at only one line, and even then it was a halfhearted one. Two chuckles, a smile, and a very weak laugh. Compared to Movie Madness, a number of other decent comedies seem like regular laugh tracks.

I like National Lampoon's Vacation series (or, at least three of four installments), and their classic Animal House, but their recent slew of direct-to-video bombs such as Golf Punks (with that great comic genius Tom Arnold) provide a good example of why their magazine went out of print more than a decade ago. It gets really old, really fast.

Sad to see a new film, called Gold Diggers, is being released with their 'stamp of approval.' It's like condemning a film before it even hits theaters – maybe they should start not advertising their name all over the place…

Distributor: 'This movie is bad. It gets the National Lampoon stamp of approval. That'll teach you not to make something so awful next time.'

Forget the death penalty. Just stick a bunch of criminals in a room and make them watch this over and over every day for a month.

It's so bad that I can't even begin to explain its putrid vileness. I give up.

Wow. I read about this movie and it sounded so awful that I had to see it, and my gosh, I can smell it in St Louis. Where do I start? National Lampoons was trying to follow up 5 years later on the success of Animal House, but they completely missed the mark. I'll go chronologically with these short flicks.

Short Film #1

Poor Peter Riegert (Boon from Animal House). Apparently, he wasn't working back then, so the boys at National Lampoons probably called and said "hey, we're making a c**ppy movie, wanna be in it?" Peter was like "well, I'm not doing much these days, why not?" He was a great side character in Animal House, but he couldn't carry this sorry short flop for 5 minutes.

POSSIBLE SPOILER The premise is funny enough, with Jason Cooper (Riegert) telling his wife to leave him, she needs to find herself. It's too weird that they're actually in a happy marriage. So he chases her off, there she goes, and Cooper is in charge of the kids. This, off course, leads to him burning the house down, losing several of the kids, and sleeping with an assortment of New York bimbos (including an ever so young Diane Lane). Then the wife comes back, wants the kids, and the film ends with a coin flip that'll decide the fate of the children. The idea was actually somewhat clever, but the director stunk. The characters all seem like they're falling asleep, they HAD to be doped up. Sorry Boon, your legacy was tarnished with this flop.

Short Film #2

MORE SPOILERS

Enter Dominique Corsaire. Pretty girl, recently finished college, not sure what to do with her life. So she becomes a slut, starts sleeping around with some mega rich guys, takes their money when they die, and she doesn't stop until she beds the most powerful man in the world, Fred Willard (Ooops, I mean the president of the United States). Once again, it could have been funny, and though I was happy that Corsaire (Ann Dusenberry in real life) wasn't afraid to bare all, her acting was horrible. What a waste of time.

Short Film #3

I can't believe I made it this far. Here's the rookie cop Brent Falcone (Robby Benson) with veteran Stan Nagurski (Richard Widmark). Falcone is young, naive, thinks he can really help people, though he becomes cynical after being shot several thousand times. Nagurski, really, has just given up caring. He watches muggings, assaults, you name it, and never intervenes. He figures the world is lawless and he'll probably get sued if he does anything. Even Christopher Lloyd (at the end of Taxi's run) gets in on the action, getting the police called on him, committing a crime, but having his lawyer there to protect him. God bless America!!

Once again, could have been funny, the performances were intentionally campy, but goodness, no energy whatsoever. Henry Jaglom and Bob Giraldi should be ashamed of having their names on this schlock. I think the writing wasn't bad, the ideas were there, but the execution was pulled off as well as the rescue attempt in the Iranian hostage crisis. If I had been a part of this film, I would want my name removed, it's horrible. Then again, that's why I watched it.

The only good thing about this garbage is that Dr John did the film score (repeating "Going to the Movies" over and over again) and the film isn't much longer than an hour and a half. Show this one in film classes with the heading "what you should NEVER do in film-making." This script should have been left on the shelf because yep, it's that bad.

Nothing about this movie is funny and it makes no sense. The only reason to watch this is to see the girl from the Tonight Show get topless.

A spoof on the movies, that looks at a growing movie, a revenge type movie and a buddy cop movie. Usually I open a review with a plot summary – with this film it would be pointless to try and summarise the plot in a meaningful way….the writers certainly couldn't do it!

Instead of a plot or a story we have three sketches that are only notable for how unfunny they manage to be. None of them manage to get beyond their original lazy setup, often they aren't even jokes – instead we are just given the situation and expected to find it funny. I never laughed once – not even a smile…..and I was in the mood for a silly spoof! The titles reveal what to expect – a childish, crude, rude and stupid focus.

The cast contains some `names' – Robert Culp, Christopher Lloyd, Rhea Perlman, Richard Widmark and a few others, but none do well. All of hamstrung by rubbish dialogue. It's almost sad to think that they made this film, thinking audiences would be roaring with laughter!

Overall this is absolute trash, it didn't get a cinema release and to me is the definition of pointless. Even by the low, low standards of the National Lampoon stable – this is rubbish.