Video, Film, and Television

It is Weird.  It is Art.

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

If you were to ask me who are the greatest musical artists of the past 100 years, I’d first wonder why the hell you asked me.  But, as I answered, I would have to say Prince and Weird Al Yankovic.  Prince’s place is obvious – talented, a supporter of musicians, etc. – but Weird Al also fits the definition of artist.  He’s a musicologist in a jester’s outfit, a man who gets music and truly reaches you – art that makes you laugh for many different reasons.

His “biopic” Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is also art.  In fact, it’s art in the sense of James Joyce’s quote that the emotions art produces are where “The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.”  Art takes you out of yourself, and this movie – also a comedy – definitely does that.

Weird is a fictionalized telling of Weird Al’s career, but that doesn’t do it justice.  It takes the all-too familiar beats that many a bad biopic shoved a real person’s life into and does it with Weird Al’s life (which is often rather tame).  The result is the movie version of one of his songs – taking one thing and making it about another.

However this is not a song, but a movie about a real person, real events, played by real people.  It’s also done with a straight face, except for a few over-the-top moments and sly lines.  The result is surreal, jarring, and funny – where familiar faces and situations appear scrambled inside an often misused story framework.  We know Weird Al didn’t have an affair with Madonna, but the film has that happen because a bad romance is a common biopic trope.

As these falsehoods occur on the screens, the actors sell it with sincerity.  Daniel Radcliffe is exceptional as Weird Al, capturing both his sweetness and going off the rails in service of the plot.  Rainn Wilson does an almost disturbingly good Doctor Demento.  Evan Rachel Wood’s life-ruining Madonna is basically one of Madonna’s old personalities brought to life.  Even when he has but one scene as Wolfman Jack, Jack Black embraces it with a passion to be both the man and the bad biopic role he fills.

It’s all very wrong, all done with a straight face.

Watching Weird is funny, but the more you know about Weird Al (and I’ve been a fan of his, especially into the 90s) the more the experience keeps taking you outside of yourself.  It’s so gloriously wrong about everything that you don’t know what will happen next.  It’s also so familiar in its use of bad biopic beats that it’s a savage mockery of tropes we’re used to.  A Fauxumentary if you will, where you’re both unsure of what is to come but completely sure you’ve seen it before.

Thus I really have to consider this art – because it keeps knocking you outside of yourself.  Is that a trope or real?  Wait why is that history out of order?  Isn’t that plot twist something every bad biopic pretends happens anyway?  How can these people say these stupid and false lines without laughing themselves silly?  Wait, aren’t a lot of these supposed real-life documentaries just this dumb?

It is perhaps the perfect film to falsely sum up Weird Al’s life as it’s, well, just like his songs.  But it’s not just appropriate or a good jab at the media.  Weird is a reminder that art doesn’t have to be staid and dignified – it can wear a Hawaiian shirt, have an affair with Madonna, and eat LSD-laced corn chips.

Steven Savage

Nothing Is A Chance for Everything: The Sonic The Hedgehog Movies

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I never expected to analyze the Sonic the Hedgehog films because I never planned to watch them.  Having heard surprising praise for them, and after hearing about how Jim Carrey got inspired to play the villains of the films, I was curious.  So a friend and I watched both of them.

They weren’t “not bad,” they were actually “pretty good.”  Not the kind of films I’d watch again, but if someone wanted to see them for the first time and invited me, I’d do it.  The movies also provide some valuable filmmaking insights about doing things well.

If you’re somehow not familiar with Sonic the Hedgehog, the character started as a video game character – a blue hedgehog who can run fast and battles the villainous human Dr. Robotnik aka Eggman.  The game inspired a number of sequels, comics, shows, animated movies, and finally, live movies that faced a serious challenge of story.

To make a new series of live movies is to confront the dizzying continuity behind the Sonic the Hedgehog property.  There are many different “lores” to choose from, and not a few are laden with controversy, design choices, and weird legal issues.  The sweep of “takes” on Sonic the Hedgehog ranges from charmingly simple to insanely complex to weirdly horny.

What the people behind the Sonic The Hedgehog films wisely did is start the hell over.

In the first movie, we meet super-fast superpowered Sonic (Ben Schwartz), right as his owl mentor Longclaw saves him from an attack.  Longclaw saves the humanoid hedgehog by using alien tech to send him to Earth near the lovely town of Green Hills.  There, the lonely Sonic develops an obsession local sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) while trying to stay hidden.  When Sonic overuses his powers and creates a disaster, the military calls in black ops tech genius Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and Sonic’s life changes..  Sonic ends up calling on Tom for help, and the two end up on a bizarre road trip – unwelcome as Tom is already coping with a life and career crisis.  Battles, hijinks, and emotional bonding occur along with great visuals and gags.

It’s basically a superhero origin road trip buddy story.  Yes, the film has multiple emotional arcs because it didn’t have any other choice.  When you start with the basics of an idea, it’s not enough to carry a film, so a story is required.

Of course, they had a fantastic cast.  Schwartz’ Sonic is funny, charming, and hyperactive with great delivery.  Jim Carrey’s Robotnik goes on a slow slide into madness that only Carrey could pull off.  The big surprise is Marden, who’s role could easily be generic, but he brings a charisma and father figure charm that really adds weight.  There’s some surprisingly human and touching moments the actors put their all into it.

Added all up, Sonic gave us a story of a kind of found family bonding while coping with trauma and a life crisis.  It went pretty hard.

As for the sequel film, I won’t spoil (because it’s hard not to), but it ramps it all up to eleven, has fun inverting roles from the first film, and has more emotional arcs.  It’s not as even as the first, but it goes harder with more emotional stories, more twists, and some dark moments.  The larger universe the series is one with serious elements in it.

If this sounds familiar, it’s similar to the Marvel formula – use the original as raw material, find resonant story arcs, get the best cast, write the script well.  Sonic the Hedgehog had so much to draw from it had to start with nothing, and thus make the stories even more about characters.  I think the film could never have been mediocre – they would have been this good or utterly dismal.

If there’s a lesson to take from this beyond “just do things well,” it’s that there’s a real value in realizing an idea by mostly starting over.  There’s a time to admit complex continuities, and many universes just burden you – or have already told their tale.  Sometimes you have to ask “what matters” and start from there.

It might just get me to root for a blue hedgehog in a film I never expected to enjoy.

Steven Savage

Dogs In Space Season 2: A Risk That Paid Off

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Previously, I reviewed Dogs In Space (the Netflix show, again, not the movie on punk).  I was surprised at how good this Sci-Fi parody was, enjoying the family-friendly adventures of uplifted dogs trying to “fetch” a new home for humanity.  Though it had erratic moments, it was well-done, built a continuity, and had some gut-punch moments exploring its premise.  When I saw that Season Two had dropped, I watched it immediately, finishing it in two evenings.

The choices made surprised me -pleasantly so – and are not only good but show the importance of choices writers made.  Sometimes there’s funny, but then there’s funny with meaning.

Season One was a mix of shenanigans parodying Sci-Fi tropes, and continuing plot, ending in the cast of genetically-engineered dogs going through some personal changes.  How would the show deal with so many repercussions in Season Two?  For the writers, the answer was lean the into repercussions full force.

Season Two was almost all about the results of characters’ actions in Season One (and Season Two) having effects, often serious ones.  There was no happy reversal of fortune to establish a norm, no reset button to deliver more of the same.  In fact, parts of Season Two and its entire climax made no sense without having seen Season One.

It was still funny, at times very funny, but it was humor in the context of a developed setting where actions have consequences.  Much of the humor, indeed the theme of the season, was repercussions.

Season Two also explored backstory of the characters and how their personality quirks mean real trouble.  Some of this built the world, some seemed to tie up “spent” plots, and others explored unsavory repercussions of character traits that would otherwise be one-note jokes.  It was as if the authors were saying “that thing you laughed at in Season One is funny in a darker way if you think about it . . .”

Pleasingly, this wasn’t just characters being in a setting pinball machine.  Characters are explored, make choices, and deal with results.  Side characters weren’t forgotten and get to reappear for critical moments – and they just came in and dig their thing with no big “hey, it’s them” fanfare.  The elements of the show’s world mattered.

(I was thrilled one of my favorite side-side characters, the friendly but butt-kicking Saint Bernard Duchess got a moment.  If you want to see a humanoid dog go sword-swinging anime heroine, this is your show.)

I found this continuity-focus a very bold writing choice, and it tells us something about parody.  A good parody (which Dogs in Space is) can keep leaning on its jokes and get a lot of mileage out of that.  But meaningfully embracing the continuity you’ve built and being funny is the real challenge, and Dogs in Space pulled it off, making the show meaningful (while still keeping some dog jokes, of course).

There was still some uneven plotting as Season One had, but this time it seemed to be due to the challenge of having a continuing plot.  A few early episodes just aren’t that interesting, and the final story arc ties heavily into Season One, but it didn’t get foreshadowed well.  I’m sure there were a lot of plates to spin, while keeping the show both funny, serious, and family-friendly.

The emotional bite was also different.  Season One’s gut punches really came more and more near the end of the season, but Season Two spreads them out.  Though the end was quite dramatic, I was never quite sure when an emotional swing would come at me – which made the experience more enjoyable!  All the winding character arcs, backstory, and more were surprising, making the serious elements matter even more.

Dogs in Space Season Two showed courageous writers embracing continuity heavily, understanding it was a strength of what they’d created.  It’s a reminder that even when you’re doing funny, doing funny in a good setting with repercussions gives the audience a deeper experience.  Humor that matters is humor that hits harder and makes the darker jokes more thought-provoking.

Plus, kudos to Season Two’s cliffhanger ending.  It not only expands the universe, but promises even more complicators for our heroic canines . . .

Steven Savage