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: Country Hearts Christmas (2023)

Your Stupid Minds continues its tradition of low budget Christmas movies with wrestlers in them with Country Hearts Christmas, starring Chris Jericho and others.

Tori (Lanie McAuley) and June (Katerina Maria) are sisters seeking to become country music stars in Nashville. This was most likely set up in the previous movie Country Hearts, but that doesn’t involve Christmas so who cares? The sisters catch a big break and get a spot on a popular Christmas Eve live television show, but there’s one massive problem. They need to go to church! The women hem and haw about having to be on TV on the day before Christmas, missing key family events like church and... opening pre-Santa presents? Bear in mind, these women are adults and can still make it on Christmas Day, but that isn’t enough.

Their dad Bones (Jericho) is a former rock star who has sobered up since his rock days. He spends his days Facetiming various family members to meddle in their personal affairs, traversing the cathedral-like hallways of his cavernous McMansion, and trying to get his horses to have sex with each other.

June husband Justin (Jeff Irving) is lonely while his wife is in Nashville, drinking heavily, and having financial troubles. Why he can’t run a failing winery in Nashville with his wife is beyond us. Meanwhile Tori has a love triangle (or square? Maybe a Love Sputnik, since all the lines need to connect back to her?) with three different dudes.

We could go on about the plot forever, but I can assure you the first world travails of this extremely co-dependent family are just as boring on screen as written. There’s also a product placement for Zillow so egregious it’s basically a 30 second commercial in the middle of this movie. Enjoy!

Podcast: Tower of Terror (1997)

Your Stupid Minds brings you Disney’s first foray into films based on their amusement park rides. It’s 1997’s made-for-TV movie Tower of Terror, starring Steve Guttenberg, Nia Peeples, and Kirsten Dunst.

Buzzy Crocker (Guttenberg) is a former journalist drummed out of the journalism game for being a bad journalist. Now he’s fabricating photos for his supernatural tabloid stories with his teenage niece Anna (Dunst). When an old woman (Amzie Strickland) comes to him with the real story of the Hollywood Hotel elevator disappearance in 1939, he goes to the abandoned hotel to investigate.

He eventually finds that everyone in the elevator is still around, in spook form, and can’t cross over to the other plane. With the help of Anna he works to try to free them.

Podcast: The Skateboard Kid (1993)

In honor of the late great Roger Corman, Your Stupid Minds covers this incoherent Corman-produced family film The Skateboard Kid, starring Timothy Busfield, Bess Armstrong, and Dom DeLuise. And yes, the skateboard can talk.

Widower Frank (Busfield) and his skateboard kid Zack (Trevor Lissauer) move to Southern California where they are both turbo-bullied by a group of skateboard punks in the middle of the highway. After Zack’s skateboard gets smashed, he gets a new old one from an antique shop run by widow Maggie (Armstrong). Zack puts a lawnmower engine on it for some reason and then it’s struck by lightning and gains sentience and a horrifying claymation face. The skateboard, Rip (DeLuise) wisecracks and has magical powers, but is somehow the third most important thing going on in this movie.

The rest has something to do with an adult love triangle between Frank, Maggie and local car dealer Big Dan (Cliff De Young) who is trying to trick Maggie into marrying him because he’s a scumbag, he wants to own her crappy antique shop, AND there’s apparently buried treasure somewhere on the property he wants to steal. More hijinks ensue. One of the kids has the tiniest four wheeler in the world. Also there's a dog on the poster who's nowhere to be seen.

Podcast: A Christmas Carol (2009)

Apparently we’re only in Day Six of the Twelve Days of Christmas (look it up), so we’re doing another Christmas movie with Disney’s Robert Zemeckis’s 2009 CGI monstrosity adaptation of A Christmas Carol!

Do I really need to explain the plot of A Christmas Carol? Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is visited by three spirits (Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey, and Jim Carrey) to change him of his miserly Christmas-hating ways. This adaptation is slavishly faithful to the text of the story, so it adds a lot of non-verbal CGI gobbledygook to take advantage of all 2000s era CGI 3D technology has to offer. Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, and Bob Hoskins are also present.

The end! Merry Christmas!

Podcast: Return to Oz (1985)

Your Stupid Minds whisks you away to a magical fantasy land based on the L. Frank Baum novels that no one has read in the last 100 years. It's Disney's reimagined 1985 sequel Return to Oz!

In an effort to reinvigorate its flailing film releases, Disney bought the rights to the Wizard of Oz book series with the intention of revitalizing the franchise. One small issue though: the books are very dissimilar to MGM’s beloved The Wizard of Oz from 1939. No worries, the bones are still there: the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodsman. Oh, they’re barely in the sequels? Who are these guys? Gump? Jack Pumpkinhead? Tik-Tok? Also where are the ruby slippers? They’re silver? We have to pay MGM royalties to use the ruby ones? Oh dear.

Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) won’t shut up to Aunt Em (Piper Laurie) about this magical land of Oz where she murdered two witches and saved the Emerald City and all its diminutive residents. So naturally Aunt Em sends her off to a quack psychoanalyst who plans to electroshock this 10-year-old until she stops using her imagination.

She escapes the sanitarium and returns to Oz, teaming up with a talking chicken Billina (Denise Bryer), a robotic soldier Tik-Tok (Sean Barrett), Jack Pumpkinhead (Brian Henson) who is, let’s face it, just the Scarecrow, and Gump (Stephen Norrington) a talking moose head strapped to a flying couch.

Dorothy is determined to save the Scarecrow from the evil Nome King, and must solve a series of puzzles and challenges that were probably more interesting when they were in a children’s book. Come along with us on our flying Davenport on this wild adventure!

Podcast: The Care Bears Movie (1985)

To complement Barbie’s wild success at the box office, Your Stupid Minds reviews a different toy tin-in movie, but a bad one! It’s 1985’s The Care Bears Movie!

A man who runs an orphanage, Mr. Cherrywood (Mickey Rooney), tells his orphans a story about two other orphans who learn the value of friendship or caring or not listening to an evil book, or something. Jason (Sunny Besen Thrasher) and Kim (Cree Summer) are befriended by the Care Bears, some cutesy little creatures who live in the sky city of Care-a-Lot.

However, a neglected and bullied magician’s assistant Nicholas (Hadley Kay) finds an evil book who convinces him to cast evil spells to get children to stop caring. Can the Care Bears save Nicholas? Will they befriend a new group of equally toyetic animals? Do the Care Bears have a boat? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Podcast: Twin Sitters (1994)

Your Stupid Minds returns to the bottomless well of content that is the Barbarian Brothers (at least until we run out of Barbarian Brothers movies) with 1994’s Twin Sitters, a movie that rips off Mr. Nanny wholesale but posits the question “what if there were TWO big beefy guys instead of one?”

Peter and David Falcone (played by Peter and David Paul, respectively, since it’s entirely possible they are incapable of responding to any first name but their own) are two muscle-bound goofballs who need money to open their own Italian restaurant. When they stop a trio of assassins in a playground in which they just happen to be hanging out, the target of the assassination, Frank (Jared Martin) hires them to guard his two nephews.

Frank has turned state’s witness and plans to testify against an evil mob-like guy Leland Stromm (George Lazenby) for dumping toxic waste improperly. The two goons go to Frank’s mansion in their monster truck to guard the nephews, but wait a minute… the nephews are also… twins???

If you’ve seen Mr. Nanny you know how this goes. The twins, Bradley and Steven (Christian and Joseph Cousins) enact a series of escalating “pranks” on their guardians that border on (or are) attempted first degree murder. Eventually the twin sets become friends, but can they stay out of danger in time for the uncle to testify?

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: A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995)

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This time, Your Stupid Minds reviews a forgettable 90s family movie that is available on Disney+, 1995’s A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. A kid travels back in time (or to an alternate universe where King Arthur actually existed) to 6th century England to show medieval people the wonders of Rollerblades and portable CD players.

Click to watch the trailer, since Disney has locked this shit down and you can't embed the trailer.

Calvin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) falls through a crack in the earth after sucking at a baseball game and finds himself in Camelot. He spends most of his time in this extremely strange situation trying to court King Arthur’s (Joss Ackland) daughter Princess Katey (Paloma Baeza). But also an evil Lord Belasco (Art Malik) has a nefarious plot to marry the king’s other daughter Sarah (Kate Winslet), even though she’s in love with the jousting instructor Master Kane (Daniel Craig). Calvin defeats the bad guy mostly though 90s catchphrases and gadgets.

Podcast: 3 Ninjas Kick Back (1994)

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Your Stupid Minds moves in reverse chronological order through the 3 Ninjas franchise with 1994’s 3 Ninjas Kick Back, the second movie in the franchise. If you saw the original 3 Ninjas and thought "this doesn’t appeal to me, a dumb babby, enough," then this is the movie for you!

Grandpa Mori (Victor Wong) and one third of the kids from the original movie are back and they’re going to Japan! ...Eventually. First they have to compete in the dirtiest Little League game of all time, and then a luggage switch-em-up forces Colt (Max Elliott Slade), Rocky (Sean Fox), and Tum Tum (J. Evan Bonifant) to commit identify fraud to go to Japan and bring a sacred dagger to their grandpa in time for the end of a ninja tournament.

But who is this? Evil bad guy Koga (Sab Shimono) is trying to steal the dagger for reasons. And he’s using his dumb nephew and his two dumb friends to do it! Also who is this Japanese girl Miyo (Caroline Junko King) who is so good at ninja stuff? And why won’t this kid on the opposing baseball team stop farting? And why does Tum Tum break the fourth wall at the very end? You’ll just have to watch to find out!

Some Notes:

• This was filmed after 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up and Rocky and Tumtum were recast, thus why the trailer rushes by their faces so quickly in the opening of the trailer.
• Reportedly Kim Jong Un's favorite movie as a child. Reported by no one except for an anonymous IMDb trivia item.
• "Glam," the bleach blonde surfer dude nephew of the villain, is played by Dustin Nguyen, who plays Zing in the show Warrior, and he's really good!
• Another return of Your Stupid Minds all-star Don Stark, who plays the umpire in this, the sheriff in 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up, some guy in Santa with Muscles, and Donna's dad in That 70s Show.

Podcast: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

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Your Stupid Minds continues its “semi-recent movies that actually aren’t that bad and available on Disney Plus” series with the third Narnia movie that Disney dumped and neither of us got around to seeing until now. It’s 2010’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader!

Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are stuck in northern England waiting out the Blitz with their annoying cousin Eustace (Will Poulter) when they’re sucked into a painting and end up back in Narnia. They board King Caspian’s (Ben Barnes) ship the Dawn Treader and must recover some magic swords to stop an evil green mist from ravaging the land.

Some Notes:

• After Prince Caspian underperformed at the box office, Disney quibbled with Walden Media over the budget (Disney wanted it to be $100 million, Walden wanted it to be something less absurd). Disney left the project and 20th Century Fox picked it up. When Disney bought Fox, Dawn Treader came back to them.

Podcast: The King's Daughter (2022)

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Your Stupid Minds accidentally reviews two Kaya Scodelario movies in a row by covering a film shot in 2014 and intended to release in 2015. Instead it was dumped unceremoniously into theaters in January of this year. It’s 2022’s The King’s Daughter! Directed by Sean McNamara (3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain).

Marie-Josephe (Scodelario) is an orphan brought to 18th century Versailles for unknown reasons. It turns out she’s, get this, the king’s daughter. Specifically, the daughter of King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnon). So she must navigate the court intrigue of the palace while she finds true love.

ALSO, the king wants to live forever, so he uses his quack court doctor Labarthe (Pablo Schreiber) to concoct a plan wherein if he eats the heart of a mermaid during an eclipse, he will achieve immortality. So the king hires a Captain Yves (Benjamin Walker) to capture a mermaid (Bingbing Fan) to do the deed. Will he go through with it? Will he have a change of heart? Did anyone see this movie? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Some Notes:

• In the time between shooting and release, Kaya Scodelario and Benjamin Walker met, dated, got engaged, got married, and had two children.
• One of the main reasons it was on the shelf for so long was Bingbing Fan, who plays the mermaid, got into some tax issues with the Chinese government and is basically blacklisted. Since this film had a lot of Chinese funding, the presumption was they were waiting for the scandal to blow over so it could release in China. It never did, so it was dumped into theaters this year.
• Also this is technically an anniversary episode. The Your Stupid Minds podcast began just over ten years ago: May 2, 2012. 🥳

Podcast: The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)

 

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Your Stupid Minds returns to the well of meh Disney movies with an unfaithful adaptation of the broom dancing sequence from Fantasia. It’s 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice!

In a flashback to 740 A.D., Merlin (James A. Stephens) is betrayed by this trusted apprentice Horvath (Alfred Molina) and slain by the evil sorcerer Morgana (Alice Krige). A bunch of years later, in 2000 A.D., a kid named Dave (played by Jay Baruchel when he grows up) wanders into a curio shop and is given a magic dragon ring by Balthazar (Nicolas Cage). Ten MORE years later, in 2010 A.D., they must work together to stop Horvath from freeing Morgana, who will destroy the world or something.

Some Notes:

• Jay Bachual's only Disney role to date.

Podcast: Artemis Fowl (2020)

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Your Stupid Minds returns to its alternating YA theme with a book adaptation that Miramax and Disney had big hopes for, and then was dumped on Disney+ in the middle of the pandemic without so much as a $20 premium to watch it. It's 2020's Artemis Fowl, directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh.

Artemis Fowl II (Ferdia Shaw) is a super smart smarmy super genius whose mom is dead and dad (Artemis Fowl I, played by Colin Farrell) keeps leaving for long stretches of time for strange and sexy adventures. But one of dad's adventures puts him in hot water with a mysterious fairy (who looks like Ronan the Accuser) who kidnaps the dad and demands Artemis II give them the Aculos, an egg-shaped MacGuffin that has a bunch of power and stuff. Can Artemis save his dad? Using an elaborate heist-like plan and high charisma buff? Yeah.

Some Notes:

• The plot to this movie veers wildly from the original book. In the novel, Artemis holds a fairy for random, demanding a ton of leprechaun gold. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pays half the gold to his captive to cure his mom's insanity.
• Way too much gravely voice in this one.
• Available on Disney+.

Podcast: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

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Just in time for Christmas, we review our third Nutcracker movie in five years, 2018’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms! Eventually filmmakers will run out of ways to ruin this classic public domain story.

Clara’s (Mackenzie Foy) mom is dead. She and her family are sad. Her dead mom gives her a toy egg with a lock but no key. Clara goes to a Christmas party, talks to a weird scientist Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman) and finds herself in another realm (or realms? We’re not entirely sure which realm is what) with a Sugar Plum fairy (Keira Knightley), a Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), a guy dressed as an 18th century soldier but is just a regular dude but I guess he’s the Nutcracker but his name is Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), and some rats.

There’s something about finding the key, yes the key to the egg but also to a machine that does bad or good things. Some tin soldiers come to life and there’s a clown gang. There’s also some dancing.

Podcast: Top Dog (1995)

1995’s Top Dog asks the big questions. Well, really one question: What would happen if we paired Chuck Norris with a dog to fight Neo-Nazi terrorists in San Diego and released it nine days after the Oklahoma City bombing? The answer is nothing good.

Reno (played by Betty the dog, uncredited) is a hero dog who plays by his own rules. After his human partner is killed by white supremacist terrorists, Reno teams up with loser drunk spin-kick cop Jake Wilder (Norris) to bust the case wide open. But there are some departures where Reno has to bust up a trap house, and watch the show Cops. Eventually they get around to stopping the terrorists.

Some Notes:

• We don't actually know if ripping all the wires out of a C4 bomb will disarm it. So if you find yourself with an armed bomb under a limo that has the pope and the Jewish pope trapped inside it, it's best to leave it to the professionals.
• Top Dog noises provided by animal sounds expert Frank Welker.

Podcast: Dolittle (2020)

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Your Stupid Minds ends its two-movie cyborg series and jumps in to our tried and true “Worst of the Previous Year” mainstay. 2020 didn’t have a huge number of films to choose from, but luckily the first three months of the year, where the stinkiest movies usually reside, were relatively pandemic free. In January, Universal unceremoniously dumped Dolittle into theaters with little fanfare, and the shark critics (who can talk) swarmed on its carcass.

Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) is a doctor who can talk to animals. He also has a dead wife, so like all movies released in the last decade, he is stricken with grief, trauma, and depression. Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) comes to him to say Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) is sick and needs his expertise of talking to animals to cure her. Also, the lifelong lease for this properly is tied to the queen’s life and not his own for some reason.

Dolittle must sail to some place to get a book to go to another place to find the fruit of the Eden Tree to save the queen. He brings along his menagerie of CGI animals with unremarkable celebrity voices, including Emma Thompson as a parrot, Rami Malek as a gorilla, Kumail Nanjiani as an ostrich, John Cena as a polar bear, and so on. There’s also a kid named Stubbins (Harry Collett as a Tom Holland type, though Holland is also in the movie voicing a dog) who tags along, and Dolittle is chased by the villain Dr. Blair Müdfly (Michael Sheen). And a whale shows up at some point. And a dragon poops out some bagpipes.

Some Notes:

• We don't understand voles and voles don't understand us.
• Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan for some reason. He's is known for writing Traffic and writing and directing Syriana.
• If you're going to have a dragon poop out some bagpipes, there should at least be some poop on the bagpipes.

Podcast: Mr. Nanny (1993)

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In honor of our one-off mention of the scene where a man throws a dog in the ocean, Your Stupid Minds reviews Hulk Hogan’s Mr. Nanny!

Sean Armstrong (Hogan, credited as Terry “Hulk” Hogan, which is still not his real name) is a down-and-out wrestler whose manager Burt (Sherman Hemsley) gets him a job as a bodyguard. It turns out Armstrong will oversee two psychotic children for Alex Mason (Austin Pendleton), the CEO of a microchip company.

While the two children find various clever ways to try to kill their new bodyguard/nanny, the evil Tommy Thanatos (played by the News York Dolls’s David Johansen, who also wrote and performed the soundtrack) finds devious ways to get his hands on a cutting edge microchip Mason’s company is developing. Hijinks ensue.

Some Notes:

• The dog throwing scene, just in case you missed it.
• This dumb song has been stick in my head for two weeks.

Podcast: Milk Money (1994)

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Your Stupid Minds dips into a movie too tawdry for children and too stupid for adults: 1994’s Milk Money.

A trio of 11-year-old boys saves up to purchase the services of a sex worker so they can see her naked (which is probably what they think sex is). When V (Melanie Griffith), a prostitute in the big city, agrees, circumstances bring her to their bucolic suburb where she lives in one of the boys’ treehouse and strikes up a romance with his widower father Tom (Ed Harris). There’s also something about stolen mob money, threatened wetlands, and a frilly leather jacket. Malcolm McDowell and Anne Heche are also in there somewhere.

Some Notes:

• Paramount bought the Milk Money screenplay for $1.1 million despite it being, by all objective measures, a very bad screenplay.
• Available on Amazon Prime. The vast majority of the captions are truncated beyond recognition and barely resemble the actual lines spoken in the film. This often improves the dialogue.
• The way the boy treats V is vaguely similar to the relationship in The Toy. Another movie with "toy" in the title is Toy Story. Randy Newman does the soundtrack for Toy Story. Randy Newman also has a song in Milk Money. Coincidence???