When it comes to describing comedy sketch shows, the term 'Hit and Miss', is often used. This refers to a show where some of the sketches work and are belly achingly funny but some are painfully bad and totally forgettable. For a show to be regarded as 'good', you either have to have more sketches which work than ones that don't or you have one sketch that's so pant wettingly genius, that the rest of the dire content can be forgotten or forgiven.
Personally, I think most sketch shows are 'Hit and Miss' and one in particular springs to mind; 'That Mitchell and Webb Look'. I'm a big fan of David Mitchell and I really do like 'That Mitchell and Webb Look', but for 1 cracking gag, there are 3 or 4 lame ones. What makes the show good is that the really good sketches are memorable and work well. For example, their sketch about the Nazi soldier who, upon seeing that the uniform has a skull and crossbones design, questions whether they are 'the baddies?'. This sketch is well written, brilliantly executed and often quoted. The misses, fortunately, are forgettable and so overall the show is perceived, quite rightly in my mind, as a good sketch show.
In fact, one of their funniest sketches is playing up to those of us who called it Hit and Miss. David Mitchell and Robert Webb are discussing what the running order of the show should be. Mitchell glances down at a piece of paper and replies, 'I was thinking hit, hit, miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, hit'. Genius! In fact the whole sketch sums up the whole Hit and Miss thing really well and if you want to see it, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmYC7r4dViI
This is not a new phenomenon and is a condition that has affected sketch shows since their incarnation. Even Monty Python can be labelled 'Hit and Miss'. Controversial? Not really. For every parrot sketch there was an unfunny skit which tried to be too clever or just fell over. Season 4, after John Cleese left, is truly awful and if Monty Python's legacy was based on this season, then I very much doubt students would have been quoting it ad nauseum for the last 40 years!
So even those shows considered the best, groundbreaking or classic can be hit and miss, but why, in a movie blog, am I mentioning this? Well, our next movie isn't really a movie at all, it's a series of sketches. Therefore, this blog is going to be slightly different as there is no plot to dissect and no story to examine. This blog, will look briefly at each sketch and will ask the question:
Was it a hit or was it a miss?
#76 The Underground Comedy Movie (1999).
The Underground Comedy Movie started life as a show on cable in the US at the end of the 80's. The brainchild of Vince Offer, this was a sketch show that was rude, crude and offensive. The fact it was a cable show, I did not know until the end credits, but it did explain why the whole feel is that off a cheap amateur production. In some ways, I respect Offer for keeping the very essence of his original production for the big screen adaption, but did it work? Well, as this is a bad movie blog you can probably guess the answer, but let's examine the skits more closely before we jump to conclusions......
The movie starts with a definition of 'satire' and a guarantee to offend. I personally think they should have started with a definition of funny as they don't seem to understand that particular word.....
Marilyn Monroe Parody It starts with Vince Offer's first character which looks like a cross between Shaggy from Scooby Doo and Mumra from Thudercats. Offer goes underground, turns an industrial fan on and points it upwards towards a grate. The camera goes above ground where a Marilyn Monroe style scene awaits. A woman walks over the grate, her dress is blown up by the fan and she looks like she's enjoying the sensation. Shag-ra looks up, makes some grunts and then starts filming the event. NoFx then blasts out and the movie begins. As it raised a snigger and the music was kickass it starts with a HIT.
Biker's Opening Credits Throughout the NoFx opening credits, Vince and his biker mates are cruising down the highway. We pan out and the Harleys we thought they were racing, are in fact push bikes with high handlebars. OK, I laughed at this, so another HIT.
Batman and Rhymer I won't lie, I found this sketch very funny. This is about a character called the Rhymer, who is a based loosely on The Riddler and speaks only in rhyme. He goes to rob a bank, but doesn't realise it's a sperm bank, (the sign is being worked on and said 'Bank' when he went in, but the second half of the sign, 'Sperm', is fitted after). Upon his escape he runs into Batman, a baseball uniform wearing crime fighter, (yes, I did laugh at the play on words, I must have been very hungover when I watched this) and promptly throws his loot into an old ladies shopping trolley. Batman, naturally, believes the old lady is the thief.
The old lady is hilarious and can not act. This would be bad, but is part of her charm as she just speaks straight from a script, with absolutely no emotion, punctuation or variance of pitch. She is then subject to some hardcore slapstick humour. She gets beaten up by Batman and pushed in her shopping trolley into oncoming traffic and ends up in a mobility scooter tearing down the road towards Batman. Batman takes a swing, connects with an obviously fake version of the old lady and sends her head towards 2 hungry rottweilers.
I really liked this sketch, it's daft, full of slapstick and has some genuine laugh out loud moments. Without a doubt this sketch is a HIT.
Baywatch Spoof Oh dear, oh dear oh dear, this gag revolves around the fact that Baywatch sounds like 'Boobwatch'. Eh? It doesn't. Awful. MISS
Orchard Sketch involves a redneck catching Gena Lee Nolin stealing oranges and then speaking (shouting) insanely to her. It is really weird, not funny weird, but where the heck are they going with this weird. Not every sketch has to have a punchline, Python proved that, but it's got to at least attempt to be funny. This just involved the redneck blowing raspberries and talking loudly. Oh and Vince Offer being naked and scratching dirt. MISS
Batman and Rhymer Returns A not as funny follow up to the earlier sketch, sees Batman and his arch nemesis, old lady, do battle. She is armed with a walking stick, he with a dildo. The old lady finally gets her revenge when she knocks Batman out with a baseball bat. It really is not as funny as the first time around, but there is still some good slapstick. For instance, Rhymer swaps a baseball for a grenade which then blows a catcher's hand off. This is quite funny and done rather well. A not as good as before HIT
I Hate LA Song OK, Vince Offer seems to have good taste in music, as the soundtrack proves, but he can not sing. This song is however, observant and quite funny. It talks about aspects of LA often ignored, such as the slums and the red light districts or the violence and drug problems. It lampoons the wannabes in LA and the plastic silicon fakery of Hollywood. Not laugh out loud as such, but I thought quite clever, so another HIT
The Godmother As you may guess is a spoof of The Godfather. This sketch sees a turn around in the movie, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. We start to see the side of Offer that believes in order to be funny, all he has to do is offend. He is so painfully wrong.
The premise is that some mafia type proposes to The Godmother to substitute beef mince in her restaurants for foetuses. I am afraid you have read that correctly. There is no gag here, no punchline and needless to say, if he is trying to be funny he is way off the mark.
Offensive is easy, any dick can do it. The clever bit is making it funny. I am sorry to repeat Wes, but South Park, Something About Mary, or Team America, all could be offensive, but all have a wonderfully clever sense of humour. Often the offensive part is just a ridiculous stereotype that is mocked. Or the offensive material becomes so ludicrous it can not be taken seriously. Offer proves he just has not got that extra something to turn bad taste to humour.
We're half an hour in and if Offer had finished with the I Hate LA song, it would have been a good sketch show and he would not have been found out. He didn't and we were subjected to the most crass, unfunny piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to watch. A colossal MISS
The Adventures Of Dickman Is about a superhero who has a huge penis for a head. It involves big titted women getting their big tits out and Dickman spunking all over them. This is the high brow point of the show and was written by Professor of Subtle humour at Cambridge University, Sir Stanley Smythe. Thankfully, it was a short skit but I have to admit that the sight of a man with a large penis for a head wearing a hat and oversized glasses was funny. Overall though, MISS.
Watt's Up Talk Show A brief sketch about a talk show presented by a fictitious black DJ, who invites a member of KKK onto the show and blows his head off. I assume Offer is trying to say here, 'hey look, I'm cool really, see I hate real bad people too', but he just comes across as an idiot by this point. MISS
The Miss America Bag Lady Pageant is an unfunny sketch about a beauty pageant for the homeless. It is set in the 'humourous' location 'The Toilet Bowl', (The Hollywood Bowl, geddit?) and involves tramp type old ladies taking part in a beauty pageant. It stars Slash from Guns N Roses as the MC of the pageant. I think he is supposed to be acting really pissed and stumbles and wanders over the set. What I can not understand is how bad he is at acting pissed, considering it was his natural state for 20 years.
There are no laughs to be had, it really is just based on the idea that the The Hollywood Bowl is The Toilet Bowl and wouldn't it be funny if the park dwellers and homeless types held their very own beauty pageant. The answer is no. MISS.
Flirty Harry Hey look, Flirty Harry rhymes with Dirty Harry. Ha ha ha ha. This sketch involves Offer completely getting his stereotypes confused. Flirty Harry is gay and apparently likes to wear women's clothes. Hang on, oh never mind, I would try to explain to him that gay does not equal transvestite, but hell Offer has gone off on his own little bigoted tangent and not only is he lazy offensive, he is now being lazy at being offensive. MISS
The Porno Review is a spoof film review show, specialising in, yep, Porno. First up is Sushi Mama, a Chinese style, Bruce Lee dubbed porno film, (Offer is now confusing the Far East countries). Funny in places, but goes on for too long in the same vein, (a big purple headed one, tee-hee, see Offer, that's how it's done).
Next Donna of the Dead, a zombie necrophilia porno. Again, Offer spent 2 seconds finding a not so good pun and then wrote a far too long sketch to go with it. This basically involves porn actor, Arnold Swollenpecker, (OK, I'll give you that one Offer), getting all sexy and aroused over his dead lover. It drags and drags and the initial humour soon evaporates.
Finally, Spermlake. Another bad pun this time on Swan Lake and involves very ugly people doing ballet and a very long jizz scene. This entire sketch is just too long and feels like I really am watching a very boring film review show. Unfortunately, I have had enough of boring film reviews which try to be funny but are not. Ahem. MISS
OJ Simpon Trial Spoof I can not work out if this is clever or not. It basically involves an all black jury, bar 2 white jurors, who try to be hip and cool and find OJ not guilty as 'the brother has been framed', but who get shouted down by the rest of the jurors. After one juror threatens to give 'honky' a slapping, they change their minds and the OJ character is found guilty.
I don't know if this is clever or just very racist. The white jurors were trying to be something they are not and was quite well done, but the rest of the jury was just a very outdated stereotypical mess that dragged Norbit's stereotypes into the 21st century. MISS
The End 'I don't think anyone will sit through the end of the movie unless there is someone famous at the end' proclaims Offer. He was partly right, no-one will sit through to the end of the movie, unless off course you write for a bad movie blog.
We end with clips from their original cable show, which in some ways looked better than the movie. Then we go back to Shag-ra from the first scene who is still looking up through the grate at 'Marilyn Monroe'. Unfortunately, lots of men have now formed around 'Marilyn' to watch and are jerking off. Cue Shag-ra getting covered in spunk and we end. MISS
Well, not quite the end as throughout the movie are little snippets entitled 'Things You'll Never See' and are supposed to be humorous observations about society. Here's a brief overview:
Things You'll Never See - Supermodels taking a dump. This involves 2 models in toilets with fart noises and splashing dubbed over. Seriously, this is just lame. MISS
Things You'll Never See - A big black gay bald virgin. This sketch stars Michael Clarke Duncan and I really wonder why he put himself through this. It is not clever or funny. You get the feeling by now that Vince Offer just chucks a load of offensive terms into a hat, pulls them out to form a nice long offensive sentence and then just lamely shoves it into the movie. This snippet is revisited several times throughout the movie and gets no funnier. MISS
Things You'll Never See - A beautiful young girl, dating an older man, who is poor. This is a humorous observation although the skit to accompany it is not. It is the best of the bunch though and is a HIT.
So overall was it a hit or a miss? There is a funny 22 minute sketch show trying to get out of this movie. Unfortunately it's suffocating under a pile of filler, lame jokes and offensive for offensive sake guff. The bad stuff just went on for way too long and the funny bits became forgotten.
At the end of the movie there is a message to the Farrelly brothers to give back their promotional copy of Underground Comedy Movie as they have already stolen enough jokes from it for Something About Mary. Personally I think this is a case if sour grapes as they are just more clever and successful than Offer, but if there is some truth to this, then maybe this highlights the problem.
In Underground Comedy Movie there are some good ideas and I'm sure if done correctly, could have worked better. Maybe Offer's strong point is that he's an ideas man. Perhaps he should pitch ideas, bring in someone for the writing and script producing and then make a movie with them. If people like the Farrelly Brothers, who can actually write comedy had been brought in, then maybe this film would not have made our list.
Things you'll never see: Vince Offer making an Oscar acceptance speech.
Verdict: a definite hit and miss, but more hit and miss.
