Hola all. Massawyrm here.
For anyone who’s ever had to endure the very first song to capitalize upon 9/11 – Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, I present to you my take on his song, chronicling my experience seeing Toby Keith’s new ‘film’ (and I use that word in the loosest of possible terms) Broken Bridges.
Brought to you Courtesy of that Ain’t it Cool News (an Ugly American)
Ain’t it Cool Girls and Ain’t it Cool Guys,
They’ll always Talkback very crude, they’ll always recognize,
When they see a crap movie and want a man dead,
So geeks can sleep at peace never to see his work again.
Massawyrm saw my movie and let out a loud sigh,
He really clawed at his hair and tried to put out his own eyes,
Just wanted his mother, his brother, his sister and me,
To know that no one should watch it, not even for free.
Now the theatres that he loves have fallen under attack,
A sucker punch of a movie directed by some unknown hack,
I think I see clearly why this movies gonna die,
Man, with all the flags in this, thought it was the Fourth of Jul-yyyyyyyyyyy.
Massawyrm put my name at the top of his list,
and walked out of my movie just shaking his fist,
and his fingers started to fly and there's gonna be hell,
I don't think my movie career has started out so well.
And it feels like the whole wide world is crawling up my wazoo,
Oh, brought to you courtesy of that Ain't it Cool News.
(Guitar solo like it was fucking 1989!)
Oh, Justice will be served once he’s quelled all his rage,
The script should have been tossed after the first page,
You’ll be sorry that you saw it, specially if you paid,
So the Wyrm put a boot in my ass, cause it’s the Ain’t it Cool way!
Massawyrm put my name at the top of his list,
and walked out of my movie just shaking his fist,
and his fingers started to fly and there's gonna be hell,
I don't think my movie career has started out so well.
And it feels like the whole wide world is crawling up my wazoo,
Oh, brought to you courtesy of that Ain't it Cool News.
Oh whoa! From that Ain’t it Cool News!
Woah, from my Ain’t it cool News!
You know, I initially wasn’t going to write this up. I walked out positively confounded, wondering Why the fuck did they screen a made for TV movie of the week? What are they outing it on DVD or something? Much to my surprise however, the website proudly proclaims that someone actually got the bright idea to release this in theatres. Thinking about anyone watching this for free messed with my head enough, but expecting people to pay? Oh fuck that.
No, I can honestly say, without hyperbole, that this is one of the worst theatrically distributed films of the year. As a movie of the week this thing was a bloated mess of a picture, but at least I could imagine my mom kicking back on the couch watching the Saturday night CMT premiere of it just to hear some new Toby Keith songs. But the idea of people shelling out their hard earned money for this is just embarrassing.
And no, this isn’t the ranting of some Country music hating city slicker. I grew up in Texas, and living in Texas one of the first things you learn is that you will invariably meet a girl you want to sleep with who loves Country. Which means you better learn to like country, because the girls whose panties you can’t slide off with some Barry White, just might become a bit more pliable with the application of a little Collin Raye. Besides, you haven’t truly lived until you’ve nursed a beer in a hole in the wall joint to the sound of a local cover band playing Neon Moon.
No, this is just a bad movie. An epically bad movie. A mind-numbing extravaganza of suckdom that appears to be nothing more than an assemblage of Lifetime Channel clichés repackaged with a Country and Western soundtrack. Get this, when a group of patriotic young boys die in a military training accident (5 of which are from the same small town), A woman (Kelly Preston) returns to said small town with her out-of-wedlock daughter in tow to mourn for her brother. As it turns out, the father of that out-of-wedlock daughter (Toby Keith, playing, SURPRISE – a famous Country and Western singer!) also returns to mourn his own brother (now a REAL C&W movie would have had that be the same brother, but sadly the movie isn’t THAT interesting.) Forget the fact that this is two 45-year-old actors playing 30-year-old characters – that’s inconsequential - because their 14-year-old daughter is played by a 22 year old.
To make matters even more complicated, Kelly Preston’s father (Burt Reynolds, sporting a new crop of freshly dyed black hair in order to convince people that he could actually be the father of a 30-year-old daughter) has issues with both Keith (for knocking up and running out on his daughter) as well as Preston (for getting knocked up and running off.) Throw in a mother who suffers a stroke, a battle with alcoholism, the occasional journalistic crisis of conscience and a hastily dropped and ignored redneck date rape subplot, and you’ve got yourself one convoluted mess of a story that is never treated with half of the pathos it should be. Would you be surprised to know that it’s penned by Soap Opera turned Smallville writers? I sure wasn’t.
I mean, when your mother’s in the hospital recovering from a stroke and the dirt on your brothers grave is still fresh, where the fuck to you get off gleefully painting the front porch with your daughter, with the most important thing on your mind being whether or not your father would freak out about having a pink front door? Never mind the fact that they never explain WHY they’re painting the front porch to begin with. It’s apparently something you do when you visit small town USA. The film is filled with nonsensical bullshit like this.
But I did learn a few things. 1) As it turns out, it actually IS possible to have an American flag framed in almost every shot of a movie, no matter where you happen to be. I owe somebody 5 bucks. 2) You can take a crappy rock song, slow it down and make a kick ass country and western song. 3) After a funeral in the south, it is customary to sit on your porch with instruments and jam. 4) Liberal use of the phrase “I quit drinking” doesn’t actually make you an actor, no matter how many albums you’ve sold. 5) Everyone in the south drives Ford trucks, unless it requires two people, a wrench and a five-minute soul searching conversation to start. Then it’s a Chevy. 6) Even a Willie Nelson song, performed by Willie Nelson (no, not Willie!), cannot make the other hour and 55 minutes of this movie bearable. 7) Referring to someone as “Arguably the most successful American music star of the millennium” on your film’s promotional website won’t actually make people take him any more seriously and probably wasn’t a good move to begin with. 8) Country Music Television (CMT) should probably leave the movie making to their sister company Mtv – as they occasionally make good ones.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse for the South. Yankee filmmakers who keep making their cute little indie films about how funny rednecks are or the Hollywood types who make films like this FOR rednecks. The only people who are gonna enjoy this are the Dixie Chicks, who will no doubt sneak in wearing their f.u.t.k. T-shirts and laugh their mother fucking asses off.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
Okay, so Harry hasn’t decided on a winner yet, but damnit if this avatar don’t feel appropriate.
