Thursday, August 13, 2009

100. Chairman Of The Board

I've been poisoned. By 'health' foods no less..a curse? I guess i'd been eating alot of the same food of late, so my odds were bound to run out at some point.
A 20 minute walk from band practice towards my house somehow seemed to feel like a trek across a desert. I got home and sprinted to the bathroom, but not before checking my mail and grabbing THIS dvd.. the first of a hundred movies i'm putting myself through, for no reason, well.. not no reason, but no good reason.
Sweating and drinking water in my boxer shorts with the fan on full blast, i literally can not think of a better way to kick off this quite literal shit fest. So here it goes.


"Chairman Of The Board" 13 March 1998 (USA)

Tagline : "Work Sucks".

Plot : Carrot Top (Cleverly named "Edison") is a failed surfer 'bum' genius inventor. Can never get a job, meets an old surfer dude, old surfer dude dies, in will appoints Carrot Top has head of his multi million dollar company, crooked nephew hates Carrot Top, sabotages company, carrot top appoints Alison from Melrose Place as the boss.

First of all. This movie has the 'comedian' Carrot Top as the main star. No i'm serious. Carrot Top, and his co-star is Courtney Thorne-Smith otherwise known as Alison from 'Melrose Place'.
The director, Alex Zamm was the male responsible for directing 'Inspector Gadget 2'.. yes there was a sequel, no it did not have Matthew Broderick.
The rumour is that this movie cost around the ball park of $10,000,000 to make, and only grossed $306,715 in return and is known as possibly one of the worst comedies, of all time. I see it like this, Steve Martin's 'The Jerk'. A true masterpiece of a movie, made to essentially just showcase his talents as a comedian, everything in that movie is pretty much taken from various bits of his standup routine from the years leading up to making the movie, so 'The Jerk' is a celebration of that fact, loosely strung together with a 'rags to riches to rags' plotline.
It makes this even more upsetting, that it's pretty much the same storyline (minus carrot top being from a black family) and that this movie is doing the exact same thing, but only with Carrot Top. Please take a second to think about this, then imagine it, then shoot yourself in the face at least 16 times to match the frames per second.

So I have all these facts in my head, as well as the great poster shown above. I have my water, i'm still holding my stomach, i'm singing "what a wonderful life" in my head.. and I'm ready to start watching.

Oh, ok, so I just took it out of the NETFLIX packaging, it's a double sided DVD. And the 'widescreen' side is completely cracked. Is it really that bad? I am someone that likes to withhold judgement but I can imagine someone, maybe before myself attempting the same mission as I, starting at 100, watching this movie, then repeatedly hitting themselves in the face with this disk. Until they died.

Anyway, I've turned the DVD around now. AND NOW I can start this.

Analysis : I'm 50 seconds in, and this is happening.



Oh, you see correct, a baby, in a womb, working on some test tubes, in an orange wig...ladies and gentlemen.
The birth of Carrot Top.



I find myself going back to the same question in my mind. Was this really made in 1998?
I'm not going to lie, I really like the colour scheme in this movie!
The thing is, in case you ever forgot what it is exactly Carrot Top is 'Famous' for.. well, before the surgery anyway. You're forced to spend every second of this movie that Carrot Top is on screen (which is in fact every second) enduring all of Carrot Tops trademark gadgets 'jokes' and 'inventions'. Including the 'ball grab baseball bat' and 'fanny pooper'. (Again, this is all within the first 5 minutes).
The thing is, Carrot Top isn't even a bad actor, yeah I said it. He's not, he knows how to perform in front of people, but the two guys who are supposedly his best friends are truly the cream of the shit crop. My parents could do a better impression of west coast surf bums.



Let's play a game. I'll show you a screengrab from a scene, then you guess what the joke will possibly be afterwards.
In this mini sequence, Carrot Top is looking for a job.



Any ideas?



Man, I feel like having a Diet Coke..



Do you think this is Courtney or Carrot Top?

The fact that they pretty much tell you exactly what 'joke' is about to come up, usually a full five minutes before said 'joke' is executed, is truly upsetting, oh god soo upsetting.. my stomach still hurts..

Uhoh !!!!!

It's ok though, because Grandpa can surf 'Radical waves'.



The term 'Radical' is used literally every 4 minutes.
CRAP!
I spoke too soon about Grandpa..



Wait hold on, Raquel Welch?? I'm so confused..



Best line of the movie just happened, Carrot Top, upon his first day as boss.. "This must be the board room, you guys all look, pretty BORED!"
I usually love it when the title of a movie is said in the movie, but I don't think i've ever witnessed such a weirdly freudian self referential joke in a movie before.

Hey, you guys remember 'Twister?' Can't believe 1998 was 11 years ago!


Do you think the crew working on this movie were actually laughing at Carrot Tops' antics, genuinely, cameramen trying their best not to laugh during takes? Maybe they did, and that's why there's soo much ADR.

My Thoughts On This Movie Summed Up In One Screen Grab :

7 comments:

  1. sounds like a bad cross between Big, Brewster's Millions, and Tommy Boy. which is appropriate, since Carrot Top is a bad Pauly Shore anyway.

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  2. Are you watching all these on your laptop I presume? Tell me - how bad is the urge to just surf wikipedia for the entirety of the film? Like really, how bad is that?

    (PS _ i have and always will defend Carrot Top as a fine comedian. Same thing with Gallagher (the original carrot top))

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  3. it seems that it's dissapeared from the bottom 100. you may have to be held responsible.

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  4. But i'm screen grabbing, i'm an obsessive screen grabber, and also. I really can't ever turn a movie off, only if it's truly awful, but even then I don't see the point.

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  5. out of interest, what are your favourite films?

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  6. The Room, A Polish Vampire In Burbank, After Hours, 3 O'Clock high.

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  7. Oh man, this is a brilliant idea. I'm definitely following this blog. Good stuff.

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