David Spade – Podcasting Them Softly

My expectations weren’t super high for Joe Dirt and they were not only met but surpassed. This is one charming, hilarious, comfortingly juvenile exercise in spoofing the Mountain Dew monster truck crowd and I loved it to bits. Usually when I see David Spade onscreen I ball up my fists and get ready to swing but here he makes sly work of a good natured simpleton with the world’s most epic mullet. Joe was left at the Grand Canyon when he was eight years old by his dummy parents, and has been wondering the States ever since, looking for them. He explains all this in flashbacks and regales an incredibly cynical radio DJ (Dennis Miller) with his adventures with all the strange people he meets, and let me tell you that strange is a fucking understatement. He befriends a mega hottie (Brittany Daniels) who is head over heels for him while he’s too oblivious to notice. He joins forces with a Native American entrepreneur (Adam Beach) who sells fireworks but not the kind that anyone wants to buy. He shacks up with a bubblegum blonde babe (Jaime Pressley) who may or may not be his long lost sister, which is an extra turn-on for him. Christopher Walken steals the goddamn show (as he always does) as Clem, a janitorial kingpin with serious dance moves and the absolute funniest line in the film, you’ll know the one I’m talking about. Other memorable and very hyperactive work is put forth by Erik Per Sullivan, Caroline Aaron, Fred Ward, Tyler Mane, Richard Rhiele, Eddie Money, Carson Daly, Kevin Nealon, Joe Don Baker, Rosanna Arquette and, uh, Kid Rock just for the hell of it. This is about as silly as comedies get and I laughed like a loon almost the whole way through. Spade makes a great underdog hero in a story that puts him through a ringer of alienation, loneliness and embarrassment but ultimately gives him the happy ending he deserves and the overall narrative is quite sweet. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Video games, weed, Kung fu monkeys, lions, immature man children, sweet old ladies, topless chicks, toilet humour, Grandma’s Boy has it all and has to be one of the funniest films ever made, provided all that and more is your thing. Produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison label and starring many of his seemingly inexhaustible entourage, this is one comedy that knows how to cut loose, party the fuck up and kick back for ninety minutes of stoned, drunken, nerdy blissful mayhem. Allen Covert (he was the homeless bum turned caddy in Happy Gilmore) is 35 year old video game tester Alex, who hits rock bottom after being evicted by his asshole landlord (Rob Schneider in Eastern European mode). With nowhere to go he moves in with his lovable grandma (Doris Roberts) and her two friends, potty mouthed tart Shirley Jones and drugged out kook Shirley Knight. The plot here is pretty loose and that kind of leaves breathing room for various set pieces, comedic bits and one massive house party where grandma gets royally stoned. The cast is stacked with recognizable talent including the always lovely Linda Cardellini as a foxy new colleague Alex crushes on, Nick Swardson, Jonah Hill, Kevin Nealon, Peter Dante, Joel David Moore as a terminally awkward video game coder and David Spade as the world’s sassiest vegan restaurant waiter. I mean some would call this lowbrow trash and I won’t argue but if your brain is in the right spot it’s a relentlessly funny film that hardly lets you breathe between laughing. Doris Roberts has so much fun in the role and knows how to send up her own image, Cardellini is just so damn adorable in anything, Nealon has a blast as their hippy dippy CEO and the whole thing is packed with inspiration, from chimpanzee karate fights to dance dance revolution showdowns to a thirteen hour titty sucking marathon that serves as Jonah Hill’s initiation into the industry of sorts. Don’t bring your brain to this one, just come ready to chill with these childish video game stoner idiots for a while and you’ll be hugely rewarded.

-Nate Hill