Leonard Part 6 (1987)

Bill Cosby. Oh dear, now there's a story that does not end well. Once considered "America's Dad" his reputation plummeted when historic sexual assault allegations finally caught up with him in 2014 and tarnished his legacy irreparably. But I'm not here to debate as to whether or not he was guilty (look, he probably was...) and I'm not American, or a fan of The Cosby Show, so he was never a fondly remembered part of my childhood or anything like that, so in retrospect he comes to the table here as just another former mega-star who disgraced their own legacy because of their own selfish, horrible, and destructive actions. ON THE SUBJECT of selfish, horrible and destructive actions; In 1987 Cosby watched Rambo and thought it would be a really good idea to make his own movie based around the same idea except he wanted to make it a comedy... with him as the central focus... and he employed a bunch of yes men to take care of the rest of the important details for him. And from this flaming bin fire of a foundation came the critically eviscerated and culturally derided anti-masterpiece: Leonard Part 6, or Leonard Part VI. No. There are no parts 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. That's the joke. Let that lead in just set the scene for the rest of how "funny" this cinematic production is supposed to be. 

After a little bit of nonsense, the movies first opening scene appears to depict a couple of divers using what I can only describe as a trout stylised as a sniffer dog... eating a CIA Agent alive in a swimming pool... No, seriously. After the death of 8 other agents, all involving the use of trained animals, the CIA bring one Leonard Parker (Bill Cosby) out of retirement who's past 5 escapades were so dangerous, footage of them has been confiscated in the interests of national security. Leonard who is currently retired and running his own restaurant has to first deal with an agent named Monroe (?) who appears to want to kill him in order to advance his own career. After a bit of a silly slapstick shootout in the restaurant kitchen, whereby damage caused by the weapons fire appears to aid and assist the chefs in preparing the meals... Leonard ends up killing Monroe by deflecting a bullet from his gun off several kitchen utensils before it hits Monroe in the back of the head, killing him instantly. I... hope this doesn't set the tone for the rest of the movie... Leonard arrives at CIA offices, presumably, where he is briefed on the mission; a Vegetarian lady - no the movie makes a point of highlighting that - named Medusa Johnson and based out of a company masquerading as "International Tuna", has been organising the murders and is apparently hell bent on taking over the world. Because of course she is. However he declines to take it on, citing that he quit the service to reconcile with his wife which as of yet has not happened. But will never happen if he returns to intelligence work. What follows is a scene with Leonards daughter revealing her would-be husband to be a 67 year old man, I ... I don't know if that will have any significance later we'll circle back to it. Meanwhile at the headquarters of International Tuna, Medusa Johnson (Gloria Foster) discovers they are being spied on by another CIA agent and so arranges for him to be murdered by a gang of frogs who... literally hop his car into the bay waters. Leonard puts a call in to his estranged ex-wife to discuss the marriage of their daughter situation and she invites Leonard to dinner which; cue a montage scene of Leonard getting back in shape and picking a right outfit. Arriving for dinner with his former wife, Allison (Pat Colbert) takes the opportunity to basically get her own back on Leonard for cheating on her by pouring wine all over him and pushing the food in his face, clearly signalling that any potential future reconciliation is off the table... er so to speak. Returning to action again as an Agent, there is then a quite painful scene where Leonard visits a trusted Albanian Fortune Teller he has worked with in the past who clearly speaks a complete nonsense language. But bestows Leonard with some ballet shoes and what appears to be something in a ring box that I'm sure will be important later. After getting tooled up, Leonard jumps into his car with a tank turret mounted on the top... and speeds to the International Tuna building where, after a stupid scene where he uses all of his fire power to blow down the doors but is unable to, "thick door." he retorts which if delivered by anybody else would have been funny. He eventually gains access when Medusa just... opens the doors for him. What the fuck am I watching?! We are 42 minutes in by this point and this is just bollocks. Inside Leonard is greeted by "the Vegetarians". Medusa's hired hench-people stylised as different animals and creatures. They proceed to dance around Leonard, stripping him of his weapons and armour with him unable to resist, before Leonard realises he has the ballet shoes in his possession. Donning the shoes, as our off screen narrator explains that Leonard spent 3 years undercover during a mission training in ballet, Leonard uses various over-the-top ballet moves to defeat the Vegetarian gang. After making his way through the rest of the complex, Leonard tracks down the mind control device Medusa is using to control the different kinds of animals and finds it guarded by bees (there is a mention of it being in the "B" room earlier, but that subtle pun was lost on me). He opens the ring box from earlier to reveal a "Queen Bee" inside who successfully diverts the bee drones away and allows Leonard to walk on in and steal it. After returning home with the sphere there are some quite painful scenes with Leonard and his daughter, who appears to be in a play that involves her stripping butt naked on stage for some reason (the nudity is only implied in the movies defence) that frankly I can't be bothered to apply much effort to, but all you need to know is that it ends with Allison being kidnapped and her ransom being the return of the mind control sphere. After retrieving the sphere from CIA HQ, Leonard races to International Tuna but not before sabotaging the sphere and replacing the contents with dishwashing liquid. Along the way, for some reason the Fortune Teller from earlier arrives behind them and uses magic (??) to switch places with Leonard's driver. She gives Leonard a bunch of things that are probably important before disappearing. At International Tuna, Leonard turns up and is immediately captured, with Medusa explaining the contents of the sphere aren't important but it's the additive that makes it work, explaining that she plans to use it to unleash a wave of animals to attack the city. Leonard is locked up alongside Allison in a cell where they are attacked by lobsters, but using some melted butter - bestowed on him by the Fortune Teller lady - Leonard and Allison use the lobsters to break free. After commandeering a horse they burst into the control room and stop Medusa from activating whatever it is that would start the animal uprising. Leonard keeps her hired goons at bay by shaking beef steaks at them - they are Vegetarians so afraid of meat apparently - another present from the Fortune Teller, whilst Allison frees the animals. In the ensuing chaos the building catches fire and things begin to explode randomly with Leonard escaping by jumping on an ostrich and using it to fly him to safety, even though ostriches can't fly. In the closing scenes there is just a black screen with a message written in white text asking you what you are doing with your life. Nah I'm just kidding.

I can't believe I wasted 1 hour 20 minutes of my life on this. I could have done something constructive with my time like peel paint of a wall with my bare hands. Or mowed the lawn with just my teeth. Either one of those chores would have been infinitely more enjoyable than this absolute tripe. I often found myself thinking "Wow. This is really awful." quite alot throughout this movie. Mostly after one scene finished and the next one started. And I am not just taking the gloves off because Cosby is connected to it. No it really was just that bad. It just wasn't funny. Like not even a bit. And the punchline for every scene just felt agonisingly embarrassing. Like watching your own mother or father piss themselves on stage in front of an entire audience.

I'm... I'm going to try and fish for some positives. It was, by the strictest definition, at least a competent movie. In that it told the semblance of a story from start to finish. There was a plot. There was plot developments. There was a conclusion. Fleshing out that rigid structure there was a handful of borderline nonsensical scenes that I think were supposed to convey some sense of comedy, that also went a little way in advancing the plot and developing the story, but I can at least credit the movie with having a definitive structure. 

That is... about where it starts and ends really with the positives! For me at least anyway! I don't like Bill Cosby. In this; he was just horrendously miscast. He wasn't funny. Seeing him subjected to the slapstick stuff just wasn't funny. Maybe it was a bit back then? I don't know. But in retrospect it wasn't funny. You didn't empathize with him. Nor did you feel like you wanted to root for him towards the end. He hadn't really done anything to earn it?! He hadn't really done anything?! But he did not fit this role at all. Not one bit.

And nobody else really comes out of this with a glowing endorsement either. Pat Colbert as Allison was wooden and vanilla as the day is long. I don't even know who played the narrator / Butler but he was basically just a posh British stereotype. Gloria Foster as Medusa was practically anonymous and basically an after-thought: 'we need a villain in this piece. Ok let's do that.' and let's not even go there with the borderline racist Fortune Teller lady. Everybody else was just not that significant enough to even bear thinking about. 

In terms of the actual plot development, it mostly hinges around Leonard lumbering from scene to scene either being humiliated or goofily acting out the secret agent stuff. There was a handful of nonsensical gags that were either not funny or so hamfistedly sandwiched in that they didn't make sense in context until later on in the movie, by which point they weren't funny. I wouldn't go as far as to say I really tried with it, because, well probably didn't. But they were just not funny. And this was the movies central aim: to be funny. And it wasn't.

Productionwise, things were mostly ok, it was shot and edited I think mostly competently enough although the production values did seem to dip a little bit in spots which surprised me. Maybe Bill Cosby was cheapening out. But otherwise the cinematography was fine and the soundtracking was fine which I think played more to the movies detriment than anything else. It showed the movie for what it was: a perfectly financed, competently and professionally produced production which was in stark contrast to what it was actually capturing on video: complete and total underdeveloped nonsense.

There was very little I got from this one. It was by some measure one of the worst movies I've watched for a while and another one that I just wanted to be done. I felt like just turning it off and giving up on it a couple of times. And it's not that it was necessarily bad. Well, err... maybe it was... but it was just not entertaining. Or enjoyable. Or captivating. Not in the slightest. 40 odd minutes in I was like "what am I watching?" because I just couldn't connect with it at all. And by the end I genuinely felt like I had just wasted my evening. 

I found myself mostly mentally comparing it to Austin Powers which, although would come much later than this movie, was similarly a Spy Parody style production that just got everything right, where as this movie just got everything wrong. It stylises itself as a comedy movie but it's about as much fun as a trip to the dentist. And about as enjoyable as a colonoscopy. Zero out of Five.

Bad President (2021)

Nah. Nah, there isn't... There isn't actually make a movie about Trump and Stormy Daniels?... ?

Wow. I err... don't really know how to go about this to be honest with you! So Donnie Trump is in the news quite a bit lately because of his trial and what have you. So I guess that makes this movie relevant to current events? I don't know? What I can tell you is that I may have set a world record for fastest time deciding on a movie to watch as within seconds, as soon as I saw the thumbnail, I decided that this was my viewing entertainment for the evening. Bad President, the 2021 movie from *checks notes* Young N Free Films, appears to tell the story of how Donald Trump became President by making a deal with the Devil. And seems to lean heavily on it featuring Stormy Daniels. I don't think making my political leanings public are particularly that important for this blog, but what I will say is that I'm not American so not really in Camp Democrat or Camp Republican, but for a, mostly, decent human being and general average member of Western Society, I think Trump is a total bellend. I'll try not to let that opinion apply too much bias to the rest of this blog post though. And to be honest, going in, I genuinely think this is going to be an absolute bag of cheeseburger turds and it's that that drew me to this. More so than it being an opportunity to slag off Donald Trump.

At the beginning of the movie, Satan (Eddie Griffin) addresses his minions as they discuss their "recruiting problem." in essentially finding a new candidate to take over from where err... Adolf Hitler... left off. They ultimately decide, after considering the Kardashian sisters, that Donald Trump is their best new candidate. Meanwhile, Donald Trump (Jeff Rector) laments about his vastly accumulating debt and lack of success with the latest season of The Apprentice and decides the solution to his problems is to run for President, hoping to secure the Republican nomination (much to the amusement of his various wealthy American contacts), there is an amusing skit here where Don Jr (?) responds to the news with "over my dead body." and Donald replies with "that can be arranged." which frankly tickled me more than it should have. After observing his campaign in the first couple of days, Satan himself begins to have his doubts that even he can make this work, despite his minions trying to persuade him otherwise. Deciding to make his move, Satan under the pseudonym Luther goes to pay Mr. Trump a visit and after handily taking care of his security guard, is granted an audience with Donald where he offers his services to make Donald President, but Donald initially refuses believing he doesn't need any help. Luther leaves Donald with his "business card" before vanishing. As the situation for Donald worsens when he comes under increasing pressure to release his tax returns, and the Trump Foundation is exposed for funnelling charity donations into the business, Trump decides the answer to the problems is to go on national television and launch an anti-Mexican tirade! Which successfully results in the attention being diverted away from the Trump's corruption and (alleged) money laundering operations. Seeing this play out in real time, Satan begins to wonder if Trump even needs his help! Which is... a sentence I have just typed... but he is convinced to continue on by his minions. Deciding to make his move after the news breaks that Trump University was just a massive scam operation, Luther reappears in Donald's office. He again offers his services but in order to be convinced Donald asks him to make a lawsuit he is facing from a former decorator disappear. When Trump asks what the cost of it is going to be and if it's his soul, Luther refuses to answer, despite Donald protesting that he won't hand over his soul. After an upturn in fortunes, in the guise of aforementioned decorator being mowed down in a car accident and Trump topping the Republican nomination poll, Luther re-appears and convinces Trump to start a war of words against Senator John McCain, which he promptly does, causing fury and snatching headlines across the country. Deciding that he's taken it just a little bit too far, Luther pays Donald a visit again and reminds him that he - Satan - is calling the shots and tells Donald to calm down and stop acting like a lunatic. Trump decides he needs to address what he calls "the Muslim problem." and after giving an interview where he suggests every Muslim should be registered and tracked, he then proceeds to announce that there should be ban on Muslims entering the country until "we figure out what's going on." His actions catch the attention of Russian President; Vladimir Putin (Kevin Indo Copeland) who lends his support to the Trump campaign, with Satan's minions seemingly surprised that this somehow had nothing to do with him! That point notwithstanding though, Trump's appeal quickly begins to wane and Luther appears to announce that he obviously has zero chance of winning. He offers to ensure the vote swings in his favour in return for "solidifying their relationship" suggesting he wants Trump soul but Trump has none of it and refuses to make a deal. Which Luther reacts angrily to. Shortly afterwards, sexually and abusive comments that Trump made about women leak to the local press followed by accusations of sexual assault all but destroying his hopes of securing the nomination, with Trump seemingly feeling they are motivated by his rejection of Luther's help. Meanwhile in... well Hell I guess... Luther decides it's time to turn up the heat on ol' Donnie Trump and introduces a demon from his past... err figuratively speaking that is in the form of Stormy Daniels (Stormy Daniels... no really she plays herself!). Stormy makes the decision to go to a lawyer with her affair with Mr. Trump and how she is being pressured into signing a non-disclosure agreement which results in Trump paying her off to the tune of $130,000. Luther then decides to pay Vladimir Putin a visit, one of his close personal friends (!) and together the pair collude to threaten Donald with the most humiliating details possible about Trumps penchant for a err... golden shower... Deciding to finally cave in, after Luther's blackmail attempts, Donald goes to pay him a visit and in return for ensuring he is successfully elected, he agrees to "work" with Luther. In the closing scenes Trump celebrates his inauguration as, in Hell, Luther celebrates with the minions.

*Spoiler alert* but some of the events depicted above actually happened in real life! Crazy huh! So yeah, I thought this was going to be a sloppy pan of bum gravy going in, but I was surprised to discover it actually had some kind of cohesive narrative and some semblance of plot sewn through it! I mean it played out a bit like a 1 hour 30 TikTok parody spoof of the former US President but I'm prepared to recognise that some detailed planning and execution actually went into this to make it a bona fide attempt at being a comedy movie. I didn't think it was very funny, if I'm being completely honest, despite maybe getting a laugh out of me in spots, and I say that as pretty much the polar opposite of what might be considered a Trump supporter... but yeah I will concede that there was at least effort to make it a fully fleshed out, finished article of a movie.

The acting is... a little bit difficult to comment on really. Because everybody was, pretty much, playing over dramatized stereocast versions of the characters they were portraying: Trump, Putin, Rupert Murdoch, the Devil e.t.c. it's a little bit hard to sort of distinguish where they were genuinely trying to be parody characters or were just not very good at acting. Certainly some of the more muted portrayals; Anderson Cooper, Michael Cohen e.t.c came across as pretty vanilla and average. For what it's worth I thought Jeff Rector as Trump was alright. He was mostly convincing, seemed to be good at keeping up the act throughout the entire thing, and although it wasn't the most perfect or funniest portrayal in either direction, he did a decent enough job of playing the role. But he honestly did just look like somebody dressed up, pretending to be Donald Trump.

In terms of plot, I think the movie did a decent job of putting together a story in that it kind of built on the real world major milestones of Trump's candidacy with some (potentially) fictional backstage developments built around him and Satan's tough negotiations. And to be fair it did leave you guessing right up until the very end as to whether or not Donald would accept the help of the Dark Prince himself in order to sway the vote in his favour! For a "parody" I don't think it was quite cynical enough really and the humour is quite lighthearted. The movie chose to keep it mostly quite grounded and realistic save for a few spots and as a result it wasn't ever really laugh out loud funny. Which I think is where the movie really falls down to be honest. I think if it had been amped up to slightly more ridiculous levels it could have been a bit more amusing but I'm not really familiar with Param Gill's work so maybe this is his M.O?

Productionwise, despite being - I assume - fairly low budget, it was mostly all just fine. There was a few odd moments where I could tell it was clearly greenscreen or there was some video being superimposed on a scene post production but it was done to a fairly professional level so I'm prepared to overlook it. The soundtrack was fairly basic and it never really got too exciting, but it was adequate enough for what it was sitting in the background behind and the camera work was all pretty professional and well done save for a few odd scenes that seemed to have quite shakey filming and never settled on a fixed composition. But for the most part, it was fine, just obviously low budget.

Unfortunately though, I'm mostly coming away from this feeling that it just wasn't very good. The movie never really gets brutal or cynical enough that it plays to the vitriol and dislike that somebody who really doesn't like Trump might feel going into this. It isn't ruthless enough to satisfy that. Similarly it isn't funny and over the top enough to satisfy the Stoner movie kind of crowd, or clever and intelligent enough of a character assassination to cater to the pseudo intellectual crowd. It just kind of is really. It has a few mild gags, a Stormy Daniels cameo, and some loose semblance of an idea like; "hey, what if Trump actually had help from the Devil to secure that election win!?" upon which a parody style movie is kind of built but without any real satisfying pay off. I wouldn't say it paints Donald in a positive light, I don't think he would approve of it... but contrastingly I don't think it paints him in enough of a negative one to be that cynical of a parody. And as a result, I didn't really find it that funny or entertaining to be honest. But it wasn't unenjoyable with it. Meh? A weak 1 out of 5?