Podcast: The Love Guru (2008)

This time around we're joined by Vincent Goodwin from Some of My Friends Read Comics to discuss a serviceable sports comedy that just happens to have Mike Myers traipsing around in every frame doing a horrible Indian accent. It's 2008's The Love Guru!

Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) is a white guy who grew up in India. Guided by the Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley) he moves to LA to become a guru to the stars. His idol and rival Deepak Chopra (playing himself) is the top guru in the world, so Pitka is determined to get on Oprah and overtake him.

In order to do this, he will need to have Toronto Maple Leafs star player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) reconcile with his wife Prudence (Meagan Good). Due to crippling insecurity, Darren broke up with her and his performance is suffering on the ice. This comes at the most inopportune time: a credible Stanley Cup run by the Leafs (the most fantastic and unrealistic aspect of this movie).

Pitka uses all of his silly little aphorisms, acronyms and, mantras to get Prudence to leave her new French Canadian boyfriend Jacques "Le Coq" Grande (Justin Timberlake). But in order to take his Oprah victory lap (which is inexplicably scheduled before the Stanley Cup series has even concluded) he needs to cut corners on his methods.

Will Pitka be victorious? Is he the most loved man on earth? Does everyone think his lame jokes are funny? Does Jessica Alba want to have sex with him? You’ll have to listen to find out, but the answer to all of those questions is yes.

Podcast: Born Bad (1997)

Another episode, another low-budget Corman special shot in Southern California. It's 1997's (or 1999's? Unclear) Born Bad!

After a daring daylight convenience store heist where the born bad kids steal eight beers and $3.28 worth of snacks, Evan (Patrick Renna) targets the born bad kids for their biggest score yet: the local savings and loan! His step-dad is the president of the bank, who tries to impress his new son by flashing around bank blueprints and safe codes during dinner. They use this insider knowledge to... sneak into the bank at night? No. They just bust in with Point Break masks and rob the joint in the middle of the day. But the blueprints give them an important edge: they know the safe is the big metal room in the back.

The crew includes leader/hothead Craig (Ryan Francis), even bigger hothead Bullet (Michael D. Weatherred), burnout moron Marco (Corey Feldman), girl Laura (Heidi Lenhart), and normal guy Brian (Justin Walker). Brian was recently accepted to Bard, and his parents are unable and unwilling to fund his college aspirations, so Brian agrees to the robbery to fulfill his eastcoast rural liberal arts college dreams.

As you can probably guess, these petty criminal morons mess everything up. Sheriff Larabee (James Remar) clocks the robbery immediately and singlehandedly causes a hostage situation by calling the teens while they're still inside the bank. Everyone except Brian goes insane after two hours trapped inside the bank.

Will they live to tell the tale? Is the sheriff ever going to get them that helicopter? Can Corman find a way to include some sexual assault into this picture? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: The Prince and the Surfer (1999)

We continue through Chris's second hand DVD collection with another film that, unbelievably, also has no direct involvement with Roger Corman. It's 1999's The Prince and the Surfer, which barely involves any surfing at all.

Cash Canty (Sean Kellman) is a, and I cannot stress this enough, SKATEBOARD (not surfer) kid who spends his days as Southern California teenagers in films like this typically do: hanging out by the half pipe, saying "whatever" to his friends, not going to school. But after breaking into a swanky hotel, he finds a young prince of the made up country of Gelfland is his exact double! To adhere to the Twain plot, they switch places and then do... stuff.

Prince Edward (also Kellman) hangs out with Cash's friends, including the pigtailed Mel (Linda Cardellini). Meanwhile Cash goes about seducing Edward's betrothed Galina (Katie Johnson). But the queen's evil vizier Kratski (Robert Englund) has ulterior motives for the visit to the United States. He wants to sell Gelfland to a mini-golf empire and turn it into Golfland.

Also, Cash's dad Johnny (Timothy Bottoms, who is uncredited because they forgot to credit him) falls in love with Queen Albertina (Jennifer O'Neill). It's all very Shakespearean, except nothing really happens at the end and instead of a mass wedding we get a rushed epilogue read by some surfer dude to try to convince us this movie had anything to do with surfing.

And for whatever reason, in the Tubi version Jon Voight appears in a poorly mic'd intro where he says he wants to see more modern Mark Train adaptations because he is a "concerned father." Lol.

Podcast: Galaxis (1995)

Your Stupid Minds sifts through some of Chris's $4 DVD acquisitions from Half Price Books and these things called "video stores" where our ancient ancestors used to purchase their entertainment wares. We start with the 1995 sci-fi direct-to-video low budget epic Galaxis (or Terminal Force), which some critic (we'll never know who) described as "Star Wars meets The Terminator." Starring Brigitte Nielsen, Richard Moll, Fred Asparagus (lol), Alan Fudge (lol), Sam Raimi for some reason, and professional Diablo III gold farmer Arthur Mesa.

In a far off space battle that is in no way like the opening of Star Wars, Lord Tarkin (Craig Fairbrass) battles it out with evil space wizard Kyla (Moll). When Tarkin is betrayed by his sniveling wiener underling (Raimi) Kyla steals their magic crystal (which may be called Galaxis, the title is never mentioned nor explained) that gives them power or something. Ladera (Nielsen) comes upon Tarkin, who reveals to her that there is a second crystal, which she can use to defend the Sintarian people, or Kyla could use to destroy the universe or something.

Unfortunately, the crystal is on Earth. Doubly unfortunately, it's now in Los Angeles (but good for the filmmakers, who already happened to be there). The film switches abruptly from a Star Wars ripoff to a Terminator ripoff, when Ladera teams up with a rogue-like drunk named Jed Sanders (John H. Brennan). They do some Terminator stuff and Kyla shoots them with force lightening. Meanwhile corpulent gangster Victor (Asparagus) chases after Jed with various Wile E. Coyote instruments of death, and two hapless detectives (Roger Aaron Brown and Cindy Morgan) traipse around 90s LA sighing and shaking their heads at all the violence.

Podcast: Hidden Strike (2023)

What do you get when you combine Jackie Chan, John Cena, Euron Greyjoy, six Chinese production companies, AND the 2013 winner of the China division championship of the Miss Bikini of the Universe pageant? Why 2023's Hidden Strike, of course!

Dragon Luo (Chan) is the legendary leader of a private security company tasked with rescuing the kidnapped Chinese workers of an oil refinery in Iraq. For whatever reason his estranged daughter Luo Mei (Ma Chunrui) is also there, but she hates him because, like Gunner, he was busy being cool in some far off conflict zone instead of bonding with her after her mother's death.

Meanwhile, ex-special forces soldier Chris Van Horne (Cena) is just kind of hanging around a Middle Eastern village entertaining children and feeling kinda bad about American military adventurism abroad. In an attempt to get water or something for the village, he teams up with some terrorists/mercenaries in this plot to kidnap the refinery workers.

After 40 solid minutes of deadly serious action intrigue and ripoffs of Mad Max: Fury Road set pieces, Cena and Chan finally meet up and remember that they're both funny. The film shifts wildly into an action buddy comedy and stays that way. We liked the second half way more than the first. Plus there are bloops at the end!

Podcast: Kraven the Hunter (2024)

We finally did it! After months of promises we finally got around to covering the (probably) last of Sony's Spider-Man-less Spider-Man movies. It's 2024's Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, and Russell Crowe.

After a cold open action sequence in a Russian prison that serves as Aaron Taylor-Johnson's sizzle reel for his Bond audition, we are transported to the distant past of probably around 2012. Sergei (Taylor-Johnson) and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger, the Tim Robinson-looking fellow who played Caracalla in Gladiator II) Kravinoff are taken out of boarding school by their mob boss father Nicoli (Crowe) after their mother's suicide. The best healing can only be done once they hunt down a lion serial killer in the savanna named Zar.

Unfortunately, Zar gets the drop on Sergei and he's horribly mauled. However, the lion's blood, combined with a magic potion administered by passer-by Calypso (DeBose) brings him back to life AND gives him Captain America-level superpowers. He leaves home and heads to Siberia to murder poachers and hone his skills.

Years later, Dmitri is kidnapped by rival mob boss Aleksei (Alessandro Nivola) a.k.a. the Rhino, who he got a surgical procedure to turn into a rhino man unless he's constantly pumping anti-rhino venom into his body through a backpack. Sergei, now going by Kraven, goes off on a series of expensive-looking adventures to save him.

Can Kraven save his brother in time? Who's really behind this kidnapping? And, most importantly, when does Kraven get his VEST? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)

Tubi? Jim Wynorski? Comic book movie? Sometimes I think we parody ourselves. Your Stupid Minds comes to you this time around with 1989's The Return of Swamp Thing, starring Heather Locklear, Louis Jourdan and Wynorski muse Monique Gabrielle.

Picking up after the events of the last movie, as best we can surmise Swamp Thing killed Dr. Anton Arcane (Jourdan) but it didn't take, since he specializes in Ra's al Ghul style immortality practices. So Swamp Thing, a.k.a. Alec Holland, wanders around the Louisiana bayou campily beating up monsters and cajun caricatures. It vaguely resembles Alan Moore's run of the comic; as if someone recited major plot points from memory to the screenwriters while they watch TV.

Meanwhile, Abby Arcane (Locklear) goes to her step-father's swamp compound in some vague attempt to learn more about her dead mother. She's met by Dr. Arcane's menagerie of 80s misfits: buxom British scientist Dr. Lana Zurrell (Sarah Douglas), asthmatic other scientist Dr. Rochelle (Ace Mask, who as far as we know is not a homunculus assembled from Jim Carrey movie titles) and mercenary Miss Poinsettia (Gabrielle).

There's some plot point about using Abby's blood to create an immortality serum (since she has the "exact genetic code" of her mother, which is not how genetics work). Meanwhile some crawfish-fed local youths try to snap a picture of Swamp Thing using their dad's $5,000 camera.

Will Swamp Thing save the day? Will he and Abby have sex after hallucinating off a flower he picked off his body? Can Swamp Thing drive a Jeep? You'll have to listen to find out!