Podcast: R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)

Your Stupid Minds tackles a prequel no one’s ever heard of to a movie no one ever saw. It’s 2022’s R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned!

Roy Pulsipher (Jeffrey Donovan, replacing Jeff Bridges in the role) is a sheriff in 1870s Wyoming who’s about to wed his daughter Charlotte (Tilly Keeper) to her weenie fiancé Angus (Richard Fleeshman). But some ruffians try to rob the train station and Roy is shot and killed in the ruckus.

Roy is sent up to heaven to the Rest in Peace Department (R.I.P.D.) where he must help them fight deados and maintain the balance between heaven and hell. He’s sent back to earth with his partner Jeanne (Penelope Mitchell), a 15th century devout French woman warrior with a fear of fire (see if you can guess which historical figure she is). They fight the deados and Roy learns some things about understanding or something.

Podcast: The Spirit (1987)

Did you know Frank Miller’s The Spirit isn’t the only Spirit movie out there? There’s also an almost unaired 1987 made-for-TV movie adaptation! And it also isn’t very good!

Denny Colt (Sam J. Jones of Flash Gordon fame) is a straitlaced cop who comes to town to investigate the death of his mentor Sevrin (Philip Baker Hall). It has something to do with art and artifact forgery and he’s going to get to the bottom of it. But before he can even get started, he’s shot in the gut and falls off a pier. He returns as… The Spirit! Except he isn’t dead (just injured). He hangs out in a cemetery with his sidekick Eubie (Bumper Robinson) and is romantically pursed by the commissioner’s daughter Ellen (Nana Visitor).

His special powers? Well… he can punch guys slightly better than other guys (but not if there are more than 2-3). He can also get knocked unconscious several times without any permanent brain damage because he’s already pretty dumb. He also has the ability to instantly generate tiny form-fitting masks when the occasion arises.

Available (for the time being) on the Internet Archive.

Podcast: Pinocchio (2022)

Here we go again! Your Stupid Minds covers another much maligned Pinocchio movie, this time the 2022 Pinocchio directed by Robert Zemeckis and instantly dumped on Disney+.

Geppetto (Tom Hanks) is a sad old man who makes a wooden boy named, you guessed it, Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth). Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is there, there’s the fox and the cat, Pleasure Island, Luke Evans appears, there’s a whale. You’ve seen the 1940 Pinocchio. You know the deal.

Added to this one: a puppet love interest, some forgettable songs, some lines about “influencers” for the Zoomers, and lots of opportunities for 3D things that you’ll probably never see since this never went to theaters. Lorraine Bracco is a seagull.

Podcast: Pinocchio (2002)

It’s Pinocchio season! With a new adaptation of the classic tale burning up awards and another… not, we decided to cover the baffling and much maligned Roberto Benigni Pinocchio from 2002!

Geppetto (Carlo Giuffré) is a sad old man who makes a son out of wood. That boy comes to life as a middle aged Italian man (Benigni) and immediately gets into lots of hijinks. He’s unruly, hyperactive, doesn’t want to go to school, and loves candy. He leaves for weeks at a time to go on adventures where he’s swindled, imprisoned, caught in a bear trap, or turned into a donkey. But the Blue Fairy (Nicoletta Braschi) teaches him how to be less horrible and he becomes a real boy/full grown man.

What makes this even more baffling is the atrociously mismatched English dub, featuring Breckin Meyer, Glenn Close, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Kevin James, Eddie Griffin, Cheech Marin, Topher Grace, Queen Latifah, Regis Philbin, and Jim Belushi.

Podcast: Zardoz (1974)

Your Stupid Minds kicks off 2023 with a movie that takes place in 2023 (so they say). The infamous 1974 film Zardoz, directed by John Boorman, fresh off Deliverance, and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling.

Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator commanded by the giant stone floating head god Zardoz to kill the Brutals as a form of population control, stows away on the giant floating head and finds himself in a bucolic village full of immortal hippies called the Eternals. The Eternals use the power of the Vortex to live forever. Since they cannot die, the Eternals can only punish one another (mostly for Bad Vibe Crimes) through rapid aging.

Zed is kept as a test subject by May (Sara Kestelman) to find out why he can die and also have sex. Conseulla (Rampling) hates him but is also intrigued. Zed navigates this strange world in order to exact his mission to kill the Eternals, because they hate themselves and want to die.

Featuring: Ludwig van Beethoven, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

YSM Classics: Stone Cold (1991)

Note: This episode originally aired November 16, 2016.

Another repeat! This is one of our faves, 1991's Stone Cold starring Brian "The Boz" Bosworth and Lance Henriksen. You can read the original review on the original page. See you in the new year!

Podcast: The Most Colorful Time of the Year (2022)

Your Stupid Minds has maybe the quickest turnaround on a movie and reviews a Hallmark Channel original Christmas picture that came out on Friday. It’s the classic tale of an optometrist falling in love with a colorblind hunk: The Most Colorful Time of the Year (2022)!

Dr. Michelle (Katrina Bowden, a.k.a. Cerie Xerox from 30 Rock) is a widowed single mom with a loser ex-boyfriend who highly suspects that her daughter’s science teacher Mr. Stevens (Christopher Russell) is colorblind. This is because he is overly elusive when asked to identify colors. She signs him up for an experimental trial for a pair of glasses that allow him to see color, but he is resistant. He also hates Christmas, presumably because of all the colors.

Eventually he puts them on, and loves Christmas. He also mentions a classified secret government eye test he took, and then never mentions it again. But there’s a catch: Michelle’s jerk ex boyfriend Mark (R Austin Ball) is back in the picture. Even though she hates him, and her daughter also hates him, will they get back together? You’ll just have to see (eh?) to find out.