Reviews & Previews - Dumb and Dumber and Dumbest Part I

Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2008 at 05:00 PM

Dumb and Dumber and Dumbest Part I

By: S. Tran

So the addition of a baby into the mix has seriously cramped our movie going abilities. At some point I will need to convince the wife to let me see the new releases by myself. Alternatively, maybe we can find a babysitter and pay the $50/hour rate to have them answer calls from the swife every 5 minutes as she checks on whether the boy is still alive.

So in lieu of any reviews of new movies I thought I would vent a little bit about one of my pet peeves in movies: glaring plot holes. There is nothing, not bad lighting, not bad acting, not bad sound, that bugs me more when I see a film than a glaring plot hole. When I pay my cash money I expect that at the very least the major plot points in script make some kind of sense. I am willing to suspend disbelief but sometimes movies ask you to take your disbelief, suspend it, gut it, chop it into little pieces then feed them to the fish.

In my reviews I purposely try and avoid giving away too much of the plot, but as these next few articles will be about older films it shouldn't make a big difference. So, a warning to those people who like to see their films at least 10 years after they open, spoiler alert ahead!

SIGNS

The first movie that falls into the totally dumb plot hole category is the crapfest that was Signs. I think the full title was "Signs that M. Night Shyamalan Was a One Hit Wonder". After making a great movie like The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan apparently blew his creative wad and followed up with this alien movie that starred the stupidest aliens ever seen on film.

The premise is that these aliens are in the midst of invading the Earth. They plan to kidnap as many Earthlings as they can and turn us into human dumplings or shashimi or something. We, of course, are defenseless because these aliens come in advance spaceships crossing thousands of light years and have shields that our weapons can't penetrate.

What we don't know however is that some other smarter race of aliens must have given these aliens those ships because we soon find out that these green guys are as about as useless as Britney Spears at a awards show. Let's recap the issues that do in these aliens that are supposedly going to wreck havoc on the Earth:

1.  Why in the world would you invade a planet without bringing something cool along with you like a frikkin laser gun or light saber or something like that? How about just a space ax? How about a damn moon rock so you can maybe bust out in the event some genius manages to lock you in a pantry?

Even after the alien is locked in there Mel Gibson is still too much of a wuss to bust in with a big stick and lay waste to it. Me? I figure if it can get locked it a pantry I don't have a whole lot to be worried about. I figure anyone above the age of 16 could probably kick their way out of a pantry if it came down to it.

Although they managed to cross the universe in search of good eats they somehow neglected to bring anything that could be of any damn use to them once they got here. The result of this is that is is about as hard to capture once of these idiots as it is to wipe your own arse. In one memorable scene an alien is actually stopped in its tracked after someone locks it in a pantry.

2.  In the movie there is a scene where two aliens are just milling around outside the basement after our heroes finally grow a brain of their own and lock the door. The aliens were completely stumped by the situation as if it never occurred to them this might happen. What the eff???? Was this really happening on the screen?

Related to number 1 above, it seems these aliens also thought that once the time came to throw us into their human food shopping cart we would all just stand around outside waiting to be harvested like a bunch of little carrots or something. Because once again these morons neglected to bring anything with them to help them grab a few humans in the event we decided to pull some clever trick like.....LOCKING THE DOOR.

3.  As colossally dumb as the points were though we were still about to be treated to the final nail in the stupid coffin when we found out that the aliens had a weakness. Yes! During the movie a newscast reported that somewhere in the middle east they had discovered and ancient method of repelling the aliens. What could it be? What is this magic potion that may save the earth? Some kind of acid? A potion made from an exotic plant?

Heck no man, that would have been to smart. The ancient method? Frikkin water man! WATER. These interstellar brainfarts are deadly allergic to water...and they chose to invade the Earth. I may be no astronomist but when I see pictures of the Earth I see a whole lot of water. Fair enough, maybe they took some precautions due to all the water they may encounter. Space suits, maybe some umbrellas, some garbage bags with holes cut in them?

Hells no. These aliens are bad asses and decide they are going to invade our water logged little globe...COMPLETELY nekkid. Yeah these guys decided that despite the fact that a kid with a squirt gun could take them out, they would forgo any kind of water proof gear and kick it old school. Needless to say this puts a bit of a crimp on their plans as running around au naturel on a planet that is basically 75% acid to you is likely to hamper you invasion efforts.

Let's also mention for a moment that the news reported on an ancient method to repel the aliens. The Earth is under attack and the news can't just some out and tell us we just need to wet these clowns down with a hose? They still have to tease us like that? Why wouldn't they be broadcasting it clearly from every station? "Hey everyone, these idiots are allergic to water, WATER, W-A-T-E-R, use water, H2O, did we mention its just water?!!" No instead they make some obtuse reference to an "ancient" weapon against the aliens.

Which of course sounds like umm...at some point these greenies tried this before and were beaten off by some ancient dudes with buckets of water. I guess they thought they would try their luck again.

Anyway, I leave you with this portion of the script that was left out of the final draft for the movie. A friend of mine works for a major studio and I can verify that this is actually a real excerpt from the original script.

Scene: Alien invasion ship, in orbit above alien world

Zorg: Targ, our plans to invade the Earth is in place, they will tremble before our technological might.

Targ: You speak true Zorg, soon we will feat on human flesh.

Zorg: Should we bring our devastating laser weapons with us? Or maybe this big rock?

Targ: No, I can't really see any use for them, what could we possibly need them for?

Zorg: You are wise. What of our space suits to protect us from the water which can kill us?

Targ: Uhhhh... call me crazy but no, I say we leave them. They make me chaff and the colours are terrible. Plus I figure we just avoid the oceans and we should be okay, what are they going to do, throw water at us?

Zorg: hahahahahahaha (Targ joins in the laughter)

End Scene.