Around The World In 80 Days (1956)

Lately it seems as though Team Movie Meats be ‘bout that three-hour-plus movie, and Around The World In 80 Days was no exception. The film was based on the 1873 novel by the same name, and for moviegoers in that era, it was a great way to get a feel for other cultures and their people. Of course, if you were basing the world on this film, you would think Latinos, Asians and Native Americans were all white, but that’s beside the point.

Phileas Fogg (David Niven) is an English gentleman in every sense of the word – and we do mean every sense of the word – who makes a friendly wager with his Reform Club buddies that he can circumnavigate the world in 80 days. Well, OK, it wasn’t a “friendly wager,” it was actually for 20,000 pounds, which would be more than $2 million U.S. in today’s currency. So yeah, there was definitely some serious cheddar on the line – so much so that Phileas brought help in the form of his valet Passepartout (Mario Moreno Catinflas), a Spanish French guy. Or something.

Tracy asked a great question: “How will they account for the shenanigans?” We soon found out. After the duo leaves Paris, they take every mode of transportation imaginable: hot air balloon, ship, train, rickshaw, elephant, ostrich, foot, you name it. Phileas clearly is the brains of the operation, as he has everything planned out to perfection; he even plans for hiccups along the way. Ha, what kind of dude does that? But Passepartout more than holds his own as a partner, engaging in bullfighting, entertaining crowds as a dancer, and rescuing an “Indian” (not even close) princess. Speaking of which, this cannot be ignored: take a look at this picture and think of the balls the filmmakers had when casting her for an Indian princess.

Look familiar? Yeah, that’s because it’s F-ing Shirley MacLaine. How ridiculous is that?! She’s Indian? Oh, and by the way, she was also “educated in England,” so she also conveniently didn’t have the slightest trace of an Indian accent. Wow.

Moving on. Though Phileas makes incredible timing throughout his journey, a little rumor spreads claiming he has stolen 55,000 pounds, so now he’s got the authorities after him as well. Add a kidnapped princess to the mix, and to say Phileas and Passepartout face adversity is an understatement. And right now you’re probably wondering if Phileas makes good on the bet. Hey – it’s only been 55 years since the film came out, so we cannot play spoiler yet. But in the interest of fairness, the ending seemed a little rushed – we had a hypothesis that the cameramen only had 3 hours of film and didn’t realize they were running out until it was almost too late. That, of course, is only a hypothesis.

Around The World In 80 Days won five Oscars: Best Cinematography (Color), Best Film Editing, Best Music, Best Writing and lastly, Best Picture, beating out other classics including The King and I and The Ten Commandments. Though none of the actors stood out at the award shows, Catinflas received a lot of recognition for his role as Passepartout. The film made a revenue of $33 million, which in today’s numbers would be somewhere around $900 million.

Were the Meatheads entertained and intrigued for the full three hours? Not exactly. Tracy fell asleep more than once, Nick had a little gigglefest pouring his second glass of wine, and Jimi started a Werther’s fight. No really, he yelled “Werther’s fight!” and started throwing them at everyone. But that didn’t mean the Meatheads weren’t captivated at times – Nick even shouted that he had a mancrush on the mariachi dancer. So what were the final scores? Take a look!

JIMI: (1.11 Acting + 1.77 Visuals + 1.55 Wow + 0.77 Story + 1.0 Enjoyability) = 6.2

TRACY: (1.2 Acting + 1.56 Visuals + 1.38 Wow + 1.12 Story + 0.68 Enjoyability) = 5.94

RACHEL: (1.0 Acting + 1.5 Visuals + 1.4 Wow + 0.5 Story + 0.7 Enjoyability) = 5.1

TAD: (1.4 Acting + 1.6 Visuals + 0.8 Wow + 1.4 Story + 1.2 Enjoyability) = 6.4

NICK: (1.37 Acting + 1.61 Visuals + 1.3 Wow + 1.1234 Wow + 0.9222 Enjoyability) = 6.3256

FINAL: 5.99312

Interesting score notes: Ugh, only 0.00688 away from a 6! … Tracy’s score was the closest to the average score, separated by just 0.05. But it was argued that her Enjoyability may have suffered slightly due to her being asleep for several moments. Just an argument, not necessarily a fact. … For only the second time, Tad had the highest score. The other time was for Dancing With Wolves, so perhaps Tad likes the way-too-damn-long movies more than anyone else. Still, Tad and Nick agreed that points had to be taken away for non-white roles being played by white people. … Jimi was very satisfied with the gentleman wager. And that’s just fine! … And finally, Rachel had the lowest score and was the only person who didn’t give it at least a 5.9, but she did say she “loved the animals and the fact that WE traveled the world in just three hours!”

FAVORITE LINE: “There will be no further fiddle faddle.” (Niven) Honorable mention: “No! Not the Henrietta!” (Ship captain as they burned the Henrietta statue)

RANDOM VISUAL: Definitely them riding the ostrich. Yes, definitely them riding the ostrich.

MOVIE MEAT: Beef, because that is enjoyed in just about every culture except Indian, and since there were no legitimate Indians in the movie, we say it works.

TIME OF DEATH: 10:56 PM on April 4, 2011

NEXT UP: The Lost Weekend (1945), selected by Jimi

It Happened One Night (1934)

Monday marked Team Movie Meats’ sixth Best Picture viewing and yet It Happened One Night was actually the SECOND movie from the 1930s chosen! All the other decades were like, “Are you joking me right now?” and the Meatheads were like “Aw hell naw!” We’re paraphrasing, of course.

It Happened One Night stars Clark Gable as Peter and Claudette Colbert as Ellie, arguably the fiiiinest on-screen duo you will ever see and nowhere near as off-putting as they look in the movie poster above. But while this can certainly be classified as a romantic comedy, the film can just as easily be considered a screwball comedy as well. For starters, Ellie throws a tray of food on the floor of a ship, gets slapped in the face by her father, and jumps overboard fully clothed … all within the first 2 minutes. The plot follows Ellie’s escape from her wealthy father and her fortune-hunter fiancé as she travels across the East Coast to figure out what she wants in life. On a bus, she meets Peter, a journalist looking for a great story. As was the case with every news reporter in the 30s, Peter has a snappy comeback or threat for everything, like, “Hey, monkey face,” and “Look your head off but don’t come busting in here. This isn’t a public park – I could near as take a sock at you!”

Eventually, the two start to take a liking to one another. (As much as we try not to give anything away here, it’s two sexy people stuck on a bus and in a couple motel rooms together for days – what do you expect?) The two have several hilarious experiences together, which include a fake marriage fight in front of the police, a debate over what a legitimate piggyback ride is, and using different hitchhiking techniques in hopes of getting picked up (watch the clip below this paragraph). The funniest moments from their travels come when good ol’ Oscar Shapely starts hitting on Ellie, telling her, “I could go for you in a big way. ‘Fun-on-the-side’ Shapeley they call me, with accent on the fun, believe you me.” But when Ellie finally gives in and professes her love for Peter, he shoots her down, knowing she will eventually have to return to her fiancé.

By the time she returns to her father, he can tell Ellie has fallen in love with someone else. And even though Peter tells him, “What she needs is a guy that’d take a sock at her once a day, whether it’s coming to her or not,” her dad knows the truth: Peter is in love with her and is a really great guy! (Apparently.) Do they end up together in the end? Since you have only had 77 years to see it, we won’t spoil it. Besides, as we all know, romantic movies in the 30s rarely had happy endings. The honest truth is after watching two consecutive movies that averaged 3.5 hours, the team was just happy to catch a comedy that was under two hours.

There are a lot of craaaaazy facts about It Happened One Night. For starters, the film was only in theaters for five days before winning Best Picture. It was also the first film in history (and one of only three to date) to sweep the five major awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Writing. The movie marked the first two Academy Awards for Frank Capra, of which he’d later win four more. And rumor has it that the movie helped influence the character of Bugs Bunny, as Gable mentions an imaginary character called “Bugs Dooley” and later speaks quickly while eating a carrot and talking with his mouth full.

Fun, huh? But did TMM agree?

JIMI: (1.9 Acting + 1.83 Visuals + 2.0 Wow + 1.7 Story + 1.9 Enjoyability) = 9.33

TRACY: (1.82 Acting + 1.699 Visuals + 2.0 Wow + 1.0 Story + 2.0 Enjoyability) = 8.519

RACHEL: (2.0 Acting + 1.58 Visuals + 1.879 Wow + 1.67 Story + 1.91 Enjoyability) = 9.039

TAD: (1.85 Acting + 1.4 Visuals + 2.0 Wow + 1.3 Story + 1.81 Enjoyability) = 8.36

NICK: (1.911 Acting + 1.7 Visuals + 1.88 Wow + 1.7 Story + 1.9111 Enjoyability) = 9.1021

FINAL: 8.87

Interesting score notes: The previous high score in TMM history was 8.26. For this movie, every single person’s score beat that mark, making Jimi’s 9.33 the new high score. … Tad, Tracy and Jimi all awarded their first 2.0s, leaving Nick as the sole member left who has not given a category a perfect score yet. … Rachel expressed her love for the movie with a near-perfect Enjoyability score, stating, “This movie had me from hello!” … While Nick now has the second-highest score in TMM history, slight points were still docked because he was scared of Gable’s thin mustache, while Tad docked points in the Acting category for the bus driver’s incessant “Oh yeah?” … And though Tracy gave two perfect scores, she mentioned the Visuals were still nothing like other Best Picture winners such as Lord of the Rings, and the story concept seemed beaten into the ground by now, even if it was the original one of its kind. So Tracy became the first Meathead to dock points for the movie being old as shit.

FAVORITE LINE: “Say, where’d you learn to dunk? Finishing school?” (Gable to Colbert as she dunked a donut) Honorable mention: “This isn’t a piggyback, you’re crazy … your dad didn’t know beans about piggyback riding.” (Gable while carrying Colbert)

RANDOM VISUAL: Maybe this counts more as “Random audio,” but the driver picking up the hitchhiking duo broke out into this ridiculous nonsensical singing that never ended and it … was … amazing.

MOVIE MEAT: Fine smelling, juicy steak sandwich with eggs and donut. (Our first breakfast!)

TIME OF DEATH: 10:37 PM on March 21, 2011

NEXT UP: Around The World In 80 Days (1956), selected by Tad

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Due to some crazy scheduling conflicts, it took almost five weeks for the Meatheads to get together to watch The Best Years of Our Lives, the 1946 Best Picture winner. Just think about all the wacky events that have taken place in between:

*Charlie Sheen went CRAZY!

*Mike Bibby was traded to the Washington Wizards!

*Valentine’s Day happened!!

After the debacle that was Dances With Wolves, nothing could revive Team Movie Meats’ spirits more than a three-hour film from the 40s, right? Best Years tells the stories of three American veterans trying to adjust to civilian life post-World War II. First, there’s Al (Frederic March), a fun drunk whose daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) falls in love with Fred (Dana Andrews), the second serviceman. But there’s a problem: Fred is married to a nightclub performer, who sucks as a person but is smoking hot, so he knows all his buddies would mock him if he left her. (That’s never mentioned in the film, but ... really, come on. That’s what would have happened. You know it.) Once Peggy makes her feelings known to Daddy Al, he’s not sure what to think. Sure he is friends with Fred, but the guy is still married.

Along with Al and Fred, we also follow the story of Homer (Harold Russell), a sailor who loses both hands in the war, leaving him with hooks. When he returns home, Homer feels insecure around his longtime girlfriend and family, struggling to believe they still accept him after losing his hands. What makes this story even more fascinating is Russell actually did lose his hands in World War II, and his hooks in the movie were real. Director William Wyler saw a documentary on Russell (and other rehabilitating soldiers) and immediately cast him for the role. Russell’s inspiring performance earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor; he was the first non-actor to ever win an Oscar, and only one non-actor has won one since.

The Best Years has many enjoyable scenes, with the most intense coming at Fred’s drug store. Working as a soda jerk – no really, that’s what the profession was called – and with Homer at the counter, a patron insults each of them for fighting on “the wrong side” in the war. Homer rips an American flag button off the patron’s jacket, and Fred totally punches the commie in the face, destroying a glass display case in the process. Who doesn’t like to watch traitors take a shot in the jaw? Additionally, Al gives a drunk speech at a banquet that goes from inspiring to embarrassing back to inspiring just in time; Homer gives glimpses of how he functions without hands; and Fred’s wife does the arbitrary “I have to let people know how the title of the movie came about by saying it in the middle of a speech” move they always did pre-1950. So that was fun.

Since you have only had 65 years to see the ending, we will not spoil it for you. All we will say is it is a happy ending (which is important to know ahead of time if you’re going to watch a three-hour movie). Wanna know what else is awesome? Uncle Butch’s name in real life is Hoagy Carmichael. Classic 40s, right?

A near-crisis occurred halfway through the movie when the DVD stopped. After already watching 1 ½ hours, you can imagine how scared we were about the possibility of a scratched disc derailing the experience. To fix it, Rachel suggested we flush the DVD. When everyone else responded in a puzzled fashion, Rachel jumped up and yelled, “No one here has ever heard of flushing a DVD to fix a scratch?!” Turns out she first heard about it a whole week ago, so her shock was warranted. Luckily, a simple restart put everything back in control without a hitch, and we even learned one of the scenes is titled “Sweet Hangover” in the process. But would Rachel’s suggestion of a flushed DVD actually work? This question was asked on Yahoo! Answers in the past, and here are the community’s responses: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071230120818AAgFymU.

The Best Years of Our Lives won eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor (March), Best Supporting Actor (Russell), Best Director (Wyler) and, obviously, Best Picture. And it’s not like it defeated a bunch of crap films: other nominations for Best Picture included Henry V, The Razor’s Edge, and It’s a Wonderful Life. It was a huge commercial success at the time, making $20.4 million which in today’s figures would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 billion.

But just ‘cause the Academy loved it doesn’t mean the Meatheads did! So how did they rate it?

JIMI: (1.0 Acting + 1.21 Visuals + 1.45 Wow + 1.7 Story + 1.2 Enjoyability) = 6.56

TRACY: (1.45 Acting + 1.292 Visuals + 1.56 Wow + 1.89 Story + 1.67 Enjoyability) = 7.862

RACHEL: (1.45 Acting + 1.5 Visuals + 1.321 Wow + 1.29 Story + 1.4 Enjoyability) = 6.961

TAD: (1.45 Acting + 1.1 Visuals + 1.321 Wow + 1.78 Story + 1.48 Enjoyability) = 7.131

NICK: (1.321 Acting + 1.321 Visuals + 1.321 Wow + 1.5 Story + 1.4321 Enjoyability) = 6.8951

FINAL: 7.081

Interesting score notes: Tracy enjoyed the story saying it “didn’t feel contrived”, and her overall score of 7.862 is her highest score yet, proving this very well may be the best year of HER life. … Nick was a little “1.321-happy” with his first three scores, but perhaps he helped hypnotize Tad and Rachel, who followed suit in the Wow Factor category. Nick also finished with the first four-decimal score thus far. … For the second time in three films, Jimi had the lowest overall score. Still, his 6.56 is significantly higher than his TMM record-low score of 3.55 for An American in Paris.

FAVORITE LINE: “It is peculiarly appropriate that we meet here tonight to honor one who has valiantly fought for that freedom.” (Milton) Apparently it was so appropriate, it was peculiar. Try to say “peculiarly appropriate” three times fast. See, you can’t!

Honorable mention: “Just a few years of normal growth – don’t you approve?” (Peggy, in response to Al barely recognizing her years later.)

RANDOM VISUAL: The dance party where everyone was crammed so tightly between the tables there was no room to dance. This was a friggin’ Best Picture winner – you couldn’t cough up a couple bucks for a bigger room? Or, let’s see, get rid of 80 extras?

MOVIE MEAT: Post-World War II bomb shelter moon food and spam. Obviously.

TIME OF DEATH: 12:03 AM on March 15, 2011

NEXT MOVIE: It Happened One Night (1934), selected by Rachel

(That’s Nick’s belly poking in from the right – he’s gaining weight for a new puppetry role!)

Dances With Wolves (1990)

Finally – it’s the 90’s, yo! Dances With Wolves stars a little actor named Kevin Costner. Ever heard of him? ;) It took five years of development to complete the movie based mostly in the Civil War era, and as director, producer, narrator and lead actor, Costner was all over this thing. We even get to see his butt, which would be awesome had he not scratched it and neglected to edit that part out.

Costner stars as John Dunbar, a Civil War lieutenant who is transferred to an abandoned Western frontier and sticks around in the event his fellow soldiers reappear. Other than his horse Cisco and wolf Two Socks, Dunbar is all alone – or so he thinks. A Sioux tribe is nearby and while they at first see him as threat, once they get to know him they realize he is actually pretty nice. Or at least it seemed that way; it was hard to tell through Costner’s awful acting and much more awful narrating.

After being befriended by the Sioux, Dunbar is renamed Dances With Wolves (ah!) after his new companions see him rolling around in the grass with Two Socks. It would have made a lot more sense for Dunbar’s love interest to be a female Sioux, but for some inexplicable reason it’s Mary McDonnell, a white chick who was kidnapped by a different Native American tribe as a child. (Plus everyone we thought was a hot girl in the Sioux tribe ended up actually being a guy anyway.) McDonnell’s character’s name is Stands With a Fist; she explains how she got her name but unfortunately Kicking Bird, her adoptive father, does not explain how he got his. Seems like it would have been fun. All the non-English dialogue was spoken in the true Lakota language. And another fun fact: McDonnell, in real life, is two months older than Kicking Bird, and less than two years younger than her adoptive mother Tantoo Cardinal.

In the interest of full disclosure, you have to know something. This movie is the 11th longest movie of all the Best Picture winners at 175 minutes. Unfortunately, we accidentally watched the extended cut, which was 236 minutes; there are only two Best Picture winners that are longer than that. So needless to say, it was a lot of movie and by the time it ended after 1 a.m., there were some unhappy faces. We won’t spoil the ending since you’ve only had 21 years to see it and plus we fell asleep before it happened, so we don’t even know how it ended. (OK, that’s a lie.)

Dances With Wolves won seven Academy Awards. Shockingly, it beat Goodfellas for Best Picture which is inexcusable, and it also beat Godfather III, which is more inexcusable that Godfather III was nominated for Best Picture. Costner also won Best Director over Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. The American Film Institute later named it the 75th best movie of all time.

So what did the Team Movie Meats quintet think?

JIMI: (0.75 Acting + 1.78 Visuals + 1.0 Wow + 0.8 Story + 1.0 Enjoyability) = 5.33

TRACY: (0.58 Acting + 1.8 Visuals + 0.4 Wow + 0.85 Story + 0.6 Enjoyability) = 4.23

RACHEL: (0.9 Acting + 2.0 Visuals + 0.5 Wow + 0.4 Story + 0.2 Enjoyability) = 4.00

TAD: (1.4 Acting + 1.8 Visuals + 1.1 Wow + 1.4 Story + 1.2 Enjoyability) = 6.90

NICK: (1.0 Acting + 1.8 Visuals + 1.0 Wow + 1.15 Story + 0.7 Enjoyability) = 5.45

FINAL:  5.18

Interesting score notes: Rachel dished out TMM’s first-ever perfect category score with a 2.0 in Visuals. Yet not only did she have the lowest score, she walked out with about 13 minutes left stating it was one of her least favorite movies ever. … The final score would have been 4.75 had Tad’s score not been included. Though he was frustrated at the length, he thought the non-Costner acting was good and the story was solid. … Jimi’s score was the closest to the overall average, and he provided one of the odder moments: after intermission ended, he was telling us he was bored, and seconds later Costner narrated, “I am bored.” So they shared that in common. … Nick was so tired and annoyed when the movie ended he forgot to organize the group picture. … And just because Rachel’s score was lower than Tracy’s, don’t think Tracy didn’t hate this movie. Hours after it ended, she posted on Facebook, “I am so mad at Kevin Costner. I really really hate that guy right mow.” This was crazy because (1) only four people would get the reference and (2) she was so angry she wrote ‘mow’ instead of ‘now’. Reader, we pray you never get that angry.

FAVORITE LINE: “I just pissed my pants and there’s nothing anyone can do about it!” (Grits guy from My Cousin Vinny). Honorable mention: “Postscript – the man I encountered was a magnificent looking person” (Costner) and “I am in mourning” (McDonnell, a tenth of a second before having sex with Costner).

RANDOM VISUAL: Costner’s butt scratch. One of the awards this film won was Best Film Editing; it should have lost just for allowing that to stay in the movie.

MOVIE MEAT: Buffalo. After you watch the characters take out a dozen buffaloes with bows and arrows, it’s hard not to head over to Ted’s Montana Grill.

TIME OF DEATH: 1:07 AM on February 6, 2011.

NEXT UP: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), selected by Tracy. Luckily, this one is only 172 minutes.

Damn it, Tracy.

An American In Paris (1951)

Team Movie Meats history was made on Monday for two reasons: one, the group watched its first musical Best Picture winner, An American In Paris, and two, the group included Special Guest Christian!!! The film stars Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan, an American World War II veteran who is now a struggling painter in France. Jerry and his artwork are sponsored by a proper blonde named Milo, but Jerry only has eyes for French dancer Lise, who is dating Hank. In other words, all four of them would have to make their Facebook relationship status read, “It’s complicated.”

When Jerry narrates the start of the movie and says, “This is Paris, and I’m an American who lives here,” that really helped us understand the meaning behind the title, so that was much appreciated. As things progress, Lise is at first disgusted by Jerry and his refusal to accept her distaste for him. All that changes, however, when he makes the hilarious gesture of pretending to drink perfume in front of her, and from then on she is love-struck. No really, it was that easy. So Lise and Jerry see each other a few times behind Milo and Hank’s backs, putting the viewer in a very awkward position. After all, Milo is a genuine person who offers her services to help Jerry’s career, and Hank is a sweet and very talented singer who saved Lise’s life during WWII. Meanwhile, Lise is cheating on her fiancée and Jerry is using Milo to make Lise jealous. So naturally, we’re supposed to root for Lise and Jerry to end up together.

Luckily we get distracted by plenty of singing and dancing. You may recognize some of the classic songs such as, “I Got Rhythm” and “S’Wonderful,” which appear in movies that pre-date An American In Paris. Still, Hank is a wonderful singer, Kelly’s entire performance is flawless and Lise is an excellent dancer, though TMM’s Nick and Jimi found her so unappealing they had to dock points from their final scores. Do you agree?

OK, so that’s what she looked like last December at age 79, but she still has the same sass! Girrrrrrrrl!

                                                                                                                          

Anyway, there are plenty of entertaining scenes in the movie. Most of them involve Gene Kelly dancing, but his piano playing buddy Adam also has his moments, especially when he learns Jerry is dating Hank’s fiancée. But Milo’s obsession with Jerry gets a bit scary at times, specifically when she weeps about Jerry leaving her when they had met a whopping eight hours earlier. When he agrees to participate in an exhibition she sets up, Milo exclaims, “I would have died if you said no,” prompting TMM’s Nick to add, “I would have eaten your children!”

Since you have only had 50 years to see the ending we will not spoil it, but be aware that you will have to sit through a 16-minute ballet with no singing/dialogue (yes, 16 godforsaken minutes) before reaching arguably the most rushed and unexplained resolution of all-time. Other than that, they nailed it. The ballet scene cost $500,000 to create, which nowadays would be in the upwards of $40 billion, and while TMM’s Tracy enjoyed it, she also stated it was “as if someone thought of a 16-minute dance and thought they had to bullshit a movie around it.” So there’s that.

An American In Paris was nominated for seven Oscars and took home five, beating out A Streetcar Named Desire for Best Picture. Kelly received an Honorary Academy Award “in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.” Well deserved. A very weird honor, but well deserved.

So the Academy done felt it, but how did Team Movie Meats feel about An American In Paris?

JIMI: (0.34 Acting + 1.41 Visuals + 1.0 Wow + 0.28 Story + 0.52 Enjoyability) = 3.55

TRACY: (0.51 Acting + 1.82 Visuals + 1.67 Wow + 0.38 Story + 1.78 Enjoyability) = 6.16

RACHEL: (0.65 Acting + 1.79 Visuals + 1.75 Wow + 0.4 Story + 0.5 Enjoyability) = 5.09

TAD: (1.0 Acting + 1.45 Visuals + 1.75 Wow + 0.15 Story + 1.0 Enjoyability) = 5.35

NICK: (0.633 Acting + 1.63 Visuals + 1.75 Wow + 0.1 Story + 0.4 Enjoyability) = 4.513

CHRISTIAN: (0.6 Acting + 1.7 Visuals + 1.7 Wow + 0.11 Story + 0.51 Enjoyability) = 4.62*

FINAL: 4.78

*As our special guest, Christian’s score accounts for 5% of the final score.

Interesting score notes: For the first time, Tad did not have the lowest score – in fact, he had the second-highest … Special Guest Christian’s final score was the closest to the Final average, off by just 0.16 … Jimi, who currently has TMM’s record-high score of 8.26, has now broken the record of the lowest score with a 3.55. When asked to elaborate, he paused and said, “I really didn’t like this movie.” … Five of the six members gave a high Wow factor, including Rachel, who was most wowed by Kelly’s “tornadoes, hello!” … Special Guest Christian’s high Visuals score was summed up when he said “some of it looked goodish.” … And why did Nick, a man who likes almost all movies, give it a 0.4 Enjoyability? “I felt like I’ve been had by the ending, and I don’t appreciate it.”

FAVORITE LINE: “You need radar to get through all this smoke!” (Kelly … or someone in the club, anyway. This was an odd line because, really, there was not much cigarette smoke at all.)

RANDOM VISUAL: The really old woman dancing with Gene Kelly in the first musical number. Very talented, but what the hell was she doing there in the first place?

MOVIE MEAT: Escargot with melted American cheese.

TIME OF DEATH: 11:06 PM on January 17, 2011

NEXT UP: Dances With Wolves (1990), selected by Nick