Day: August 26, 2014

C.H.U.D.

“What in the fuck is this?” You might all be asking yourselves. “You said you don’t do older movies! You lied to us! We trusted you!” Stop talking in unison readers, that is creepy.

This is a special occasion, much like my Milestone Reviews. I am taking part in a Blog-A-Thon with the theme of 1984. Here is a banner I am supposed to use. Banner.

So yeah, a week long blog-a-thon of only movies from 1984, and I picked C.H.U.D. because I am a winner at heart. C.H.U.D. is a movie I had never seen before, but definitely something I had heard a lot before. The first I heard about it was the summer of 2006. That is when Clerks II came out in theaters, I had to drive an hour with my brother to go see it, and we went at the first possible show time at like, 10 am. We were excited. One line stuck out to me as peculiar that they uttered twice. “Hideous Fucking C.H.U.D.”

I didn’t know what a C.H.U.D. was, but I liked it, and began saying it a lot. I obviously looked into it eventually, started seeing the references in tons of other pop culture things and swore one day I would watch it. Like. Seven years ago. Thankfully, the 1984 Blog-A-Thon happened, and I finally had an outlet for my dreams.

Stern
Speaking of dreamy.

New York City. Land of the homeless, large sewer systems, subways, and C.H.U.D.s. What is a C.H.U.D.? Good question. It just might stand for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. You’d be hard pressed to find a better acronym than that one.

No one sees them either, as they only come out of the sewers at night and bring their prey with them. However, there has been an unusual number of reported missing people cases lately. And police captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is being told to cover it up. Don’t assume murder, just regular missing people running away. Well, he doesn’t really want to anymore. The numbers are getting too large and he has personal stake in it. His wife went missing too.

When he begins to investigate, a soup kitchen owner, A.J. ‘The Reverend’ Shepherd (Daniel Stern) has also noted that the homeless population has been dwindling, including several patrons he knew who slept underground. In fact, some of them are very scared, resorting to stealing weapons from police to fend for their lives. The Reverand is also a former nuclear physicist, or something. That should be noted, because that is awesome.

On the other side of the street, we have George Cooper (John Heard), a famous photographer who took pictures of the homeless in the sewers before and needs new material. His model girlfriend (Kim Greist) and him also get caught up in this C.H.U.D. nonsense, and it will take all four of them working together to stop the madness, find the root of the problem, and prevent the town from being blown up.

Oh hey, John Goodman is in here too as an unnamed cop. That seems relevant.

Chuds
Speaking of dreamy…again.

Oh man, B-movies! I almost forgot you existed. After all, in modern times, there really isn’t too many B-movies left.

There is the bullshit that SyFy and The Asylum produce, but I would qualify them as C-Movies. They are intentionally made shitty, and are in fact, too shitty. No passion, no heart, just shit does not necessarily make a good time. Sharknado is terrible. The better B-Movies are the ones that were serious about what they were doing but ended up being shitty and amusing, not realizing that they have become a joke. The fact that C.H.U.D. had script controversy between the two male leads and rewrites means that these people wanted to make a real horror drama film.

But special effects. So bad.

While watching it, I did find myself laughing on more than one occasion. The shittyness of the 80s was fully rampart in this film. But at the same time, it had a decent plot. Corrupt government officials, nuclear waste scares, gray area between right and wrong. It wasn’t badly written. Just the make up.

This may be Daniel Stern’s best role after Home Alone (sorry Bushwhacked/Celtic Pride). Was it worth my time? Arguably. I feel better about using the term C.H.U.D. now, so I got that going for me.

It is currently on Netflix, so if you have a spare afternoon, why not?

2 out of 4.

Step Up: All In

I chose to watch Step Up: All In before The Hundred Foot Journey. Let that sink in. This is no longer true. I wrote this intro 2.5 weeks ago but then circumstances made it so I couldn’t see this movie for weeks. And I will be damned if I am going to change my intro.

That is because for the most part, I can enjoy a good dance movie. If the music is “Fresh” and the moves are “Dope”, I can be entertained. Especially if it feels a bit original and doesn’t fill it with too much badly acted drama. Hell, I had a whole week or two last year where I watched a bunch of dance movies I missed throughout the last few years, the obscure and straight to DVDs ones.

Step Up: All In is the first dance movie I will have seen since Battlefield America which was so bad and creepy it caused me to nope out of the genre completely. Which is a shame, because I still haven’t seen You Got Served (which I will now save for a Milestone Review).

Ring
A literal boxing ring, in case the dance off metaphor wasn’t strong enough for you.

Now that we have left the travesty that was Step Up: Revolution behind in Miami, we can focus on Los Angeles. Wait. Wait a minute. Is that Sean (Ryan Guzman)? Lead star of Step Up: Revolution? What the fuck? And wait, who is that, Eddy (Misha Gabriel Hamilton)? His best friend from the movie? Holy shit, the entire “The Mob”, their dance crew is here. What the fuck. Is this a direct sequel for real? No. This is something more.

The Mob is pissed off at LA, everyone except Sean. They are all broke and poor and returning home. Sean, also broke and poor, doesn’t care, he knows he can survive out here, so he says bad things to his friends and they leave. Sean finds Moose (Adam G. Sevani, who was in every Step Up movie but the first one), gets a job, and hears about this new competition called The Vortex. Lead by pop star Alexxa Brava (Izabella Miko), the best crews around the world will submit videos of them dancing. And then the top blah will go to a competition in Las Vegas, where the grand prize is a 3 year contract to perform there! Woo!

So Sean gets a new crew together, featuring Andie (Briana Evigan, from Step Up 2: The Streets), and a shit load of other people and they enter! But oh no, the rival crew that made fun of them earlier is also there, lead by Jasper (Stephen Stevo Jones) and shit, The Mob made it too.

I guess the real question is, can we really root for Sean who is going to be a dick to literally everyone in this movie, justified or not? Alyson Stoner reprises her role from the first and third movie. There a lot of other people in it, so I will just list them til I get bored.

Stephen Boss, David Shreibman, Mari Koda (Who has been in all the Moose movies), Christopher Scott, Luis Rosado, Facundo Lombard, Chadd Smith, Martin Lombard, Cyrus Spencer.

Fire
They fight fire with fire but not really how the saying meant it.

I recognize for the most part that dance movies have basically become a way to showcase the last winners of America’s Best Dance Crew and other similar TV shows. But that main one ended in 2012! Where do they get their talent from now?!

Oh. They get them from their past movies and re use them. What a concept!

First, I am glad to see so much of their effort was into actually trying to make the movies connected, versus a lame cameo here and there. Like most of the time, all the movies outside of the first film are connected. There is the small connection to the first film, but that’s all it is, small.

My problems lie heavily with the plot. The main character is a douche for 85% of the movie. And just because he sees the error by the end, I still don’t have a desire to cheer for him or his team, especially knowing how his character acted in the last film. They broke up almost everyone’s relationship (except for Moose) just to make new ones with this. Who cares if the last movie was mostly about gaining one of those relationships.

And the ending. Oh goodness. Guess what, a team was cheating. So what do they do about it? Cheat harder. Yep, that’s what I meant fighting fire with fire. They don’t rise above it and overcome it normally. No, they just cheat more. Ugh. I can’t even.

Some of the dancing was cool. I didn’t think the final “good guy” dance was actually that much better. Just felt like they were just throwing everything at a wall to see what sticks. Was a clusterfuck of annoyances.

There are better dance movies out there than this one. But at least…one or two characters are cool from this.

1 out of 4.