I always love revisiting this one.
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Tangled (2010)
Author: Dan Stalcup
It was a promising idea to “reboot” the beach party films with Annette and Frankie in mid-life crisis, and a new set of younger surfers ready to take the helm. Swap in 80s kitsch for the old 60s kitsch. They just forgot to make it good.
I can see why this fourth (fifth if you count the Pajama Party spinoff) is considered the best of the series, though I still tip my hat to the original Beach Party.
There’s a zesty silliness to the 3rd Beach Party film that makes it a lot more fun than the 2nd (Muscle Beach Party), and certainly frothier than the 1st (Beach Party), even if I miss the latter’s sweaty tactility of its beach and party scenes.
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Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Take a sip every time Bruce Willis calls Justin Long “kid,” take 2 sips every time Bruce Willis is befuddled by technology or computer babble, take a shot every time an unprecedented hacker has an intuitive, professionally designed interface, as if penetrating government networks had the user experience of Microsoft Office.
Like the first Beach Party, this movie is fun when it’s about partying and surfing, less so when it leans on its story, which grows very thin by the end of the film.
I kept wanting this to go full Linklater and just show us the kids partying and surfing with no pretext, because those are the best bits.
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The Care Bears Movie (1985)
“There’s something so crass about a movie constructed entirely around selling toys”
Even with the framing story, this feels like some inessential shorts of familiar characters in stock sitcom plots stitched together.
From the podcast recording: “I wanted to be fond of it, because there are lots of things on the surface level I want to root for, and maybe kind of like, but none of it actually pulls through. “