TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL

TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL
4/5 Stars
Now Streaming on Netflix

     Horror has a rich history with comedy. Shaun of the Dead and Idle Hands are high-spirited hybrids. Return of the Living Dead, An American Werewolf in London, and Gremlins all have pretty overtly comedic tones. Even the first third of The Birds is almost indistinguishable from a romantic comedy, and that was after Abbott and Costello had some interesting meetings. By comparison the notoriously gory "slasher" sub-genre has only recently begun to flirt with humor. Perhaps something about humans killing other humans just doesn't lend itself to laughs. Nevertheless, over the past few years several slasher films have taken tentative first steps into comedy. From Jason X's holographic Crystal Lake tribute to Hostel's gum gang, horror helmers have been experimenting with genre crossover pretty regularly since the self-referential boom of the 90s. In fact, this trend has been so ubiquitous that Hatchet's ad campaign promoted it as "classic" horror simply because a disfigured mute was allowed to kill college kids without winking at the audience.
     If the last decade and a half have been the courtship between slasher and slapstick, one could view Tucker And Dale vs. Evil as the consummation: a comedy that successfully embraces the bloodshed of the dead teenager films while retaining its sense of humor. Tucker and Dale is a comedy of errors that finds our hapless titular heroes mistaken for cabin-dwelling homicidal psychos. If that premise doesn't already have you smiling, you'll probably find the whole exercise tiresome. The lengths to which the writers have gone to keep this farce going are alternately side-splitting and suspension of disbelief-straining, much like watching a Fawlty Towers marathon. Ultimately the movie works. It's bloody. It's funny. It's a comedy hyphenate. No, wait- a slasher slash.

Triple Dog

TRIPLE DOG
3/5 Stars
Now Streaming on Netflix


     Just as Panic Room is like the best Lifetime movie ever made, Triple Dog is like an ABC Family Original gone wrong- in a good way.
     Most teen melodramas fail to capture much of the bite of the suburban high school experience. The problem lies mostly in the language. Cool slang is a chimera screenwriters can never manage to get their qwerty little hands on, and failed attempts only stand out as square red flags. Onscreen teens often come off sounding like undercover cops posing as high schoolers. (Ooh, I just had an idea for a TV show! They did? Really? Well, how about a movie reboot? They are? With Jonah Hill? Seriously?) Besides being mercurial, teen language is far from subtle- another aspect often absent in the cruel words of teen films. Somehow, being called a "dorkwad" just doesn't hold the same stigma for kids who regularly hear "slut", "bitch", and the perennially popular "faggot".
     Triple Dog is not 100% successful in its treatment of teen dialogue (it still comes off a bit like a cutesy cell phone commercial at times), but it does attain an uncommon level of viciousness in its words and actions. Considering the youth of the characters involved, I think you can chalk up the language as a small victory. Ironically, the R-rating keeps out the obvious demographic, so I'm not exactly sure who this movie is for. But if your 13-year-old sister thought The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants was bullshit, I might have a recommendation for her.

PS- For true success in teen language, check out these other classics currently streaming on Netflix:
Heathers
Angus
Brick

SHADE

SHADE
Now Streaming on Netflix.com

Shade is a little-known film with a very well-known cast. Stuart Townsend, Gabriel Byrne, Jamie Foxx, Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith- it seems like every role is filled by a familiar face, and they all do an excellent job in the film. But the standout performances come in the opening credits sequence, which by itself is worth the price of admission.
Simply put, Shade is about grifters using sleight of hand to cheat at poker. Right off the bat, let me state that the poker in the film is as erroneous as you have seen on screen; it is sure to infuriate the more hardcore fans out there. But the sleight of hand is as real as it gets. Not a shot of close-up magic in the film is faked, either digitally retouched or done with stand-in hands. It’s all done in camera, an incredibly impressive feat by the actors. But the film puts its best foot forward from the start: the opening credits feature the actors’ sleight of hand trainers showing off, stretching our ideas of what is possible. Whether you stay for the rest of the fairly enjoyable film or not, you MUST take six minutes to watch these human special effects do their thing.

MAD MEN

MAD MEN
Now Streaming on Netflix.com

If you still haven’t seen AMC’s breakout hit Mad Men, what about nearly unanimous critical praise is keeping you away? Perhaps you have the same misconception of the show that I did. I saw the slick ads with the smoking, the chauvinism, and the vintage couture and mistook the sizzle for the steak. I assumed that viewers were drawn to the show because of some kind of misplaced 60s nostalgia and decided that it was not for me. But as adulation for the show reached a critical mass, I eventually decided I would at least watch an episode or two, if only to prove myself right.
I was not right.
Mad Men’s retro backdrop is not what makes the show special. What stands out here is what always should: story and character. Mad Men is what drama should be. The show is written with the richness and verisimilitude of a good novel. It may in fact be the first show to declare that TV can be literature. The acting is remarkable and is rightfully making stars of almost everyone onscreen. The characters feel real and whole. Don Draper’s story is both epic and relatable. It’s quintessentially American.
If you still haven’t seen Mad Men, there’s a good chance you’re wrong about what the show is. But at least now you can stream it for free to prove yourself right.