Pikmin and Horrible Bosses

Well I’ve been out of it again, w/r/t movies and the watching of them. I am teaching more-or-less full time (ha! Meaning: one class (how do people do it??)) and spend my off-hours frantically speaking to non-18-year-old humans, staring at my dog, sleeping in the steam room at the gym, and, weirdly/newly, playing “Pikmin” on the Game Cube.

Pikmin is simply a fine game. It’s made by the guy who made the delightful suite of Super Mario Bros games that largely defined my entire childhood. He also made Donkey Kong, Zelda, and some other stuff. He’s a weird tripper of a Japanese man who grew up alone in the woods thinking about fantasy turtles and sleeping in holes in the ground. IT’S TRUE!

His are the only videogames I am really that interested in playing. I love the dude’s style. But the statement immediately previous to the statement previous to this one should let you know that I am very bad at videogames (since I never play them). So I got Pikmin and played it for like a week and didn’t even make it halfway through the game, and then I talked to my friend Cabel who said Pikmin is “a good game for kids,” but complained that he beat it “the first time [he] sat down to play it.” He probably now lets his 2 year old play it when the 2 year old needs an easy confidence-booster. So that’s my story re: videogames and how come I’m spending so much more time playing Pikmin than watching movies. I am also having a major Adult Lifetime Renaissance with the original Zelda, which I found too complex and boring as an actual child.

Yes, this means the only video game consoles (machines? Boxes.) I own are: Original Nintendo and Nintendo Game Cube. We are a Nintendo family and always will be.

The Nintendo company was founded in the LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, and manufactured mulberry-bark playing cards. ALSO NOT A LIE. Who would not love such a corporation. Also “Donkey” was an adjective for “Stubborn” in this guy’s now-obviously-shitty Japanese/English dictionary, hence the solution to a mystery pondered by a generation of 10 year olds.

But seriously, Pikmin? COME ON!

I’m currently having a real hard time beating this guy:

MEAN BIRD

However, I did go see “Horrible Bosses” because it was the only thing playing at the time when I randomly decided I must see a film immediately. We went to the delightful Bagdad and got beer and wine and pizza and popcorn, which I love. Why doesn’t every city have a fleet of cheap beer and wine and pizza theaters? Wouldn’t you make one million dollars per annum? This is the only nighttime activity I actually really love to do, aside from board game parties in people’s houses where everyone’s in socks and we drink mescal.

Anyway, “Horrible Bosses!” My review: “Not as bad as I expected.” I actually feel kind of like, kudos to you, “Horrible Bosses,” for mildly exceeding the expectations raised by your trailer! WAY FEWER POOP/DICK JOKES THAN EXPECTED. Also it’s nice to see Firth/Anniston/Spacey truly having a great time hamming it up as the titular horrible bosses. Hamming it up to the max!! Kevin Spacey is so hammy you could make an almost infinite number of sandwich-based puns about him.

The cast obviously helped things along, with lots of delightfully improv-ed repartée and a very amazing performance by Jamie Foxx as Motherfucker Jones, the gentle scary black man who teaches our heroes a valuable lesson about racial stereotyping and how you shouldn’t do it unless you want to lose $5,000 when a not-actually-scary black man pretends to be a scary black man to teach you about racial stereotyping and takes your money in exchange for murdering your boss which he then does not do.

I love his amazing reaction shot after Sudeikis mentions Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train.” Also later when he finally tells them why he spent ten years in jail (they assumed murder), he asks them if they’ve seen “Snow Falling on Cedars,” and they say no, and then he says he got caught making a bootleg video of it in the theater, and Sudeikis shames him for making them think he’s a murderer when all he really did was bootleg “an Ethan Hawke movie,” and Foxx furiously goes, “So you DO. KNOW. the MOVIE!”

But the three main guys are pretty good together. I love Jason Bateman, I don’t give a shit. Charlie Day was very funny as a dude slowly realizing he’s being literally raped by his boss (actually pretty melancholy/emo! “Rape, that’s rape, that’s what rape is, you’re a raper!” Everyone always laughing at him even though he’s genuinely disturbed and scared. The plight of the male sexual violence victim is a total bummer. And that’s the story of how patriarchy fucks everyone up, not just the ladies). It’s really weird how Jason Sudeikis, who seems so frumpy and like he’d only ever play the cute nerdy sidekick or the loser the main guy’s love interest briefly dates, is now cashing in on these macho leading-man roles where he’s pulling so much tail it’s not even funny. “Wha Happen?” Still, I’d probably french him.

Anyway, I don’t have anything to say about this film. It was lazy and half-assed, but had some redeeming features. If you are bored on a Sunday, there are worse ways to spend your 3 bucks. Oh wait, I forgot, if you don’t live in Portland you have to pay like 10.50 to see this film, in which case I say wait until it’s on Hulu or whatever your post-Netflix-price-increase at-home streaming option is (mine’s Hulu).