Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj

Why I Wanted to See it: I've been a Kal Penn fan since his line in American Desi[1] about what Indians and Black people have in common. Although the stereotypical nature of his Indian character "Taj" in the original Van Wilder was saddening, I found myself actually enjoying the movie one late night (for what it's worth: ditto with Eurotrip and 100 girls[2]). Throw Taj to the forefront, mix in some colony-metropole shenanigans by sending him to England, and I was in Dependency Theory heaven.

Why I Hadn't Seen it: Either I missed the press screening or nobody told me when it was. I forgot, I mean, it was so long ago...

Why I Just Did: The Namesake got me all in a Penn-lovin mood.[3] More importantly, the Rockets/76ers game wasn't on national TV like the ESPN® website claimed it would be. 姚 only played 27 minutes so at least I didn't miss much.

Why I'm Glad I Did: Even a broken clock is right twice a day, so there were a few quotes that will stick out in my mind: "Nerd-per-willing chick ratios." "A horny, little care bear." "FLUX CAPACITOR." "Oh, our first fight!" "Milwaukee." In the small favors dept, somehow, Taj's family wasn't a crazy collection of caricatures.[4]

Why I Wish I Hadn't: No, it wasn't funny. Yes, it was sophomoric. At times, it made little to no sense.[5] Most of all, though, I'm disappointed by how superficially the whole India/England inextricability was treated. Having Taj's nemesis Pip be so blindly racist served to sequester the issue to one small segment of the story, but the real problem is how anti-Brown sentiment permeates all of British society. I'm not trying to say England is an especially racist country — nearly every state has its groups that it hates almost a priori — but it's not just the styled Highnesses that call desis "Pakis."

Expecting nuance out of a movie that made a running joke out of the phrase "diarrhea face" is obviously asking too much. Nor could any decent diasporic satire emerge when the Irish/Scot/British conflict is likewise treated as a trifle. Maybe I should be happy Taj gets in a "gora" jab, let alone that the most offensive thing about Penn's other-ness this time around is his total inability to maintain a realistic accent. Time was, Penn would never have been the star of a movie like this (and, given his lackluster box office record, he might not for a while unless the Harold & Kumar sequel takes off[6]). Shouldn't I be grateful for that?

[1] For the record, I knew about American Desi because I used to visit its producer's website, not because I had some sort of post-colonial assimilation story fetish. Well, not back then, anyway...
[2] Both happen to feature former Nickelodeon stars. Then Kal Penn appeared in Love Don't Cost a Thing, which was rampant with Nickelodeon-ness, but I think that's one tangent too many.
[3] Unfortunately, I did not particularly care for the movie, mostly because I think the book has too wide a time span to condense (cf. Roots). On the plus side, Tabu was gorgeous.
[4] I love alliteration. Should you not feel the same I suggest you give up on this blog toute suite.
[5] Of all my gripes with its nonsense sensibility, I want to know why Taj would become a n English history TA when the subject so vehemently bores him. Why is going for a PhD, then? How much lying went into that statement of purpose (and can he teach me how to replicate that by December)?
[6] Certainly, John Cho wouldn't get to make this movie, so let's not go patting ourselves on the back just yet.

Invitation to Charms

The Namesake was the last straw.

Since giving up my admittedly ill-conceived dream of being a cultural critic and joining respectable journalism, I have missed three — three — Kal Penn movies. I no longer had an outlet (let alone an impetus) to perform Foucauldian archaeology on the socioeconomic origins of, say, Epic Movie. For You, the Moviegoing Public™, this was no great loss, but I became increasingly nostalgic, much like an erstwhile high school star with memories of grandeur.

(Just kidding: please don't shoot me, Bassy.)

Every halfway decent blog needs a hook, and as funny as it would be to simply sprinkle my prose with semi-appropriate links to The Onion, that would also be creatively bankrupt. Thus, in keeping with my desire to catch up on Kal[1], I'm going to barrel through the many movies, games, music, and comics I've missed while trying to make that paper/because I wasn't making that paper before. Look for a retrospective on movies Disney forgot, an incontrovertible proof that Lance Bass is a better actor than Usher Raymond, and my declaration of the best "Garden of Peace" sample (hint: it's not one of these).

First up: Van Wilder 2: Rise of Taj: Colon.[2] Between miscegenation, semi-breakthrough sexualization of an Asian-American male actor[3], the sticky politics of Kal's crazy-fake Indian accent, and the carefully constructed hotness of Holly Davidson, I am convinced this movie can't be as bad as They say.

[1] Now there's a catchy name for a blog!
[2] Wait, did I just steal a joke from Aqua Teen Hunger Force?
[3] The Guru already sexualized the Asian male, although its star was Canadian and, in any case, Penn doesn't play an Asian-American in Van Wilder.

Beerfest

Why I Wanted to See It: (Faint praise alert) The comedy troupe Broken Lizard can be amusing.

Why I Hadn't Seen It: Alcohol is a foreign concept to me, and I almost never root for America in movies (other countries tend to be demonized in such films, turning me off altogher), so a story following 5 Americans' quest to become the world's best drinkers might as well be designed to deter me.

Why I Just Did: Honestly, it was on TV and I was feeling mindless.

Why I'm Glad I Did: I would like to say that, as with Kal Penn, I follow director Jay Chandrasekhar's ground-breaking career with much pride, that Chandrasekhar's ability to defy on-screen South Asian stereotypes in Hollywood while simultaneously establishing himself behind-the-scences makes him eminently interesting to me. For whatever reason, this is not the case; I'm perfectly willing to subject myself to the likes of Epic Movie[1] for Penn, but there's no way on earth I'm ever watching The Dukes of Hazzard. Chandrasekhar's alcoholic gigolo "Barry" was satisfying in his inobtrusive desi-dom, but not so much to keep me watching.

No, the best part of this movie is its smattering of quotability. Cleverness doesn't exactly pervade the movie; there are only brief flashes, but they are brilliant flashes. These 40 seconds alone [warning: cussin!] have fulfilled me more than any movie since...well, actually, Alvin & the Chipmunks, but that's another story.[2]

Why I Wish I Hadn't: My aforementioned problem with stereotypes in US[A]-v-Them movies applies, although there's not enough time spent on anybody but the Germans to get me really riled up. Belching jokes abound and are repetitive without ever attaining rake-bit redemption. The least whorish woman in the entire movie is an actual whore.

From a critical perspective, however, the film's flaws are more fundamental. Beerfest is blatantly aware that it's a sports movie. This places it on that slippery slope between parody and derivation. Using genre tropes can rarely be avoided, but announcing to audience members "Look, we're retreading old ground" isn't witty; it's smug and lazy. If they weren't so content to be overbroad most of the time, you could mistake Broken Lizard for a bunch of hipsters.

[1] Trust; that review is still coming.
[2] Long story short: Vocal percussion + Sped-up vocals + Daniel Powter=Awesome

Making Meta-Meta on Metahumans

The forthcoming Aishwariy...Ashwary...Naveen Andrews movie serves as a good excuse to deconstruct another Kal Penn performance, since one Desi dude deserves another. While waiting for Epic Movie to "arrive from Netflix" I fought my TiNo inclinations and caught up on some 'Smallville.'[1] I started with 'Noir,' which sets itself up as an homage to films like The Big Sleep, which made me want to review The Big Sleep.[2]

First I had to make sure nobody else had tried this, because I hate being one of those people who attempts to be insightful but really retreads commonly held pop-cultural sentiments.[3] I fired up the ol Technorati, and I didn't find a straightforward Sleep v 'Smallville' comparison, but I found enough other entries to make me not want to try:
A running commentary (and an ironical use of the word "irregardless")
Screencaps galore (and an Erica Durance/Rita Hayworth comparison)
Iceman References (and different text from the TwoP site)
Pointing out that Philip Marlowe isn't Sam Spade (and the least text taken to spoil a plot ever)
Hair hangups (and synergy)

My favorite, however, has to be Smallville Guide's dueling reviews + transcript. That's love.


[1]You would hard pressed to find a sadder sentence in the English language.
[2]Si le haces una fiesta a una cerdita...
[3] Reason #[limit n—>∞((1+1/n)^n)] that I should never get a PhD

Transitive Property of Superhero Movie

Drake Bell is so dreamy it's not fair to compare his movies to those of mere mortals. How do the lesser beings compare to each other, though? Below, a best-of-5 contest proving Epic Movie is less reprehensible than Meet the Spartans.

STOLEN JOKES-Meet the Spartans
Epic parodied the MTV shows 'Punk'd' and 'Cribs,' despite 'Chappelle's Show' definitive efforts in that regard. MtS not only swiped a 'Chappelle's Show' staple (Grand Theft Auto) but also unironically resurrected the "f00 says what" snowclone from the '90s, and rode the homoeroticism of 300 for all it was worth. Both films would have you know that Paris Hilton is a whore.[1]

PARADOXICAL PARODIES—Epic Movie
When MtS unabashedly uses Bud Light's "Real Men of Genuis" template, it's more than a stolen joke because the beer ads were already parodies. Epic outdid its successor by featuring "Borat" in multiple scenes and mimicking the mummified "Lazy Sundays" meme. It also took a shot at Snakes on a Plane, a film which was possibly a self-parody.

FLOW—Epic Movie
Outside of editorial cartooning, there isn't a work more bent on labeling its jokes than MtS, a pathology that peaked when the narrator informed us that Carmen Electra was filled with "a venomous rage, much like Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3" as she dons the black spidey-suit. Yet by more or less following 300, MtS remains more coherent than Epic, which shifts abruptly from one film aesthetic to another.

AMATEUR ACTORS—Meet the Spartans
Kal Penn — perhaps the greatest actor of our time — headlines an all-star cast in Epic Movie, including SNL's Alterspräsident, American Pie's Eponymous MILF, Katt "I'm a Better Rapper than Nick Cannon" Williams, and Fred Willard. Carmen Electra, who played a bit part in Epic as she did in Date, is the female lead in MtS. I repeat: the female lead in Meet the Spartans is Carmen Electra.

CREATIVE BANKRUPTCY—Meet the Spartans
Two sequences in Epic uncover the subtext of their urtexts in interesting ways: the hyperbolic absurdity of Nacho Libre and the Soylent Green creepiness of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. MtS's only hint of originality is in its deceptive title: there are no Meet the Parents/Fockers references in the movie.

[1] Both also have a running gag that may or may not be derivative. For Epic, it's the repeated reference to the evil scheme being lifted from 1978's Superman, since that's a criticism often levied at 2006's Superman Returns. MtS has the Spartans skipping everywhere, which is similar to the invisible-horse-riding knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.