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Bleached out SKULLS full of cobwebs
SPOILER ALERT !!
Movies about Big Busness assholes has been done to death in Father Geek's opinion. Several classic 30's, 40's, and 50's flicks did the subject great justice, and more recently The Insider, Network, Wall Street, In The Company Of Men, The Game, etc... have all touched on the subject matter very entertainingly. I've never really got into this kind of heavy dramatic storyline anyway. This is the kind of story the great majority of people go to movies to get AWAY from in the first place, make it badly, and well...
I've given it a few days and haven't seen anyone chime in with a diatribe on
what could have and should have been a kick ass movie, so I feel it's my duty
to report on the press screening of Rob Cohen's el crapo "The Skulls" that I
laughed myself through last week. The only secret society we need worry about
is the one comprised of Universal studio execs who greenlighted this train
wreck of a movie.
Spoilers abound below.
The general gist is that Luke (Josh Jackson) is a kid who grew up on the
wrong side of the tracks in New Haven and has straightened himself out to
become a fine student, and champion crew team member at Yale with aspirations
for Harvard Law School. The only problem is that he doesn't have the money,
and will be paying off his current college loans for more than 10 years. His
one chance is if the secret society of overprivileged white boys "The Skulls"
invite him to become a member, because the rumour is that they pay for your
graduate school. We the audience know all this because Luke decides to blurt
it out to his best friend and room mate (Hill Harper) at the victory
celebration for Yale's conference crew championship. As luck would have it,
they do! After a ridiculous hazing episode where we meet the buff and
beautiful prototype for the Aryan Nation (Paul Walker) that involves hooded
robes, coffins, and stealing a weathervane from a rival secret society, Luke
is accepted into the hallowed halls of the Skulls and paired with Walker as
his "soul mate", charged with looking out for oneanother for the rest of
their lives, because the Skulls aren't just for school...they're for life!
(how this is different from a frat, we never know...oh, yea, they're secret!)
And who runs the Skulls? Why it's..."Coach!" (as the audience yelled as
one) er, Craig T. Nelson, who happens to be (1st big twist) Paul Walker's
dad! So the new members of the super secret society are immediately BRANDED
on their wrists with a big skull, which is craftily covered up by a brand new
$2000 Brietling watch, sure to keep their identity secret for life if they
NEVER BATHE. Along with the watch, comes a key to the compound and a book of
society rules which we are told by William Peterson, another old white guy
and (ooooo!) U.S. Senator, supercede all other laws in the world. The boys
are then whisked away on Italian speedboats to an island castle, for a black
tie dinner in their honor, complete with nubile young hoochies for all, and
each handed the keys to an $80,000 sports car the next morning.
Our hero Luke, who has had to work in the cafeteria for four years to make
ends meet, returns the next day to the queries of his best friend and the
gorgeous, rich, kind chiquita who lives upstairs that he hangs out with
PURELY PLATONICALLY. "Are you in the Skulls?" they ask. He's got a restored
'67 Mustang outside, wrist rocks that would shame Puff Daddy, and a key that
could open the crypt to the Cask of Amontillado for chrissakes!!! How could
he possibly be in a secret society? He's got a neon sign over his head that
says, "I just knocked over a mint".
Harper's character, pissed at losing his friend to the rich white
establishment, is conveniently also the editor in chief of the school paper
(as well as the coxswain on the crew team...which is impossible, but let not
practicality cramp the telling of such an engaging story) and decides to do
an expose on the Skulls. He steals the key of Luke's soulmate, and breaks
into the Skulls' building, but is caught red-handed by Walker. Cut to Luke
discovering his best friend having hung himself in the offices of the paper.
What happened? the police want to know. So does Luke.
Luke confronts his soulmate after he finds his book of rules in with his
deceased buddies belongings. Walker admits that he scuffled with him and he
accidently fell and hit his head, his death later made to look like a
suicide. It is made very clear to Luke by all parties involved that his first
loyalty is to the Skulls, and that the secret must be kept. Luke, of course,
has a crises of conscience...and the hilarity ensues!
Teaming with his hotty female co-ed and his thievin' friends from the old
days, Luke plots to steal the security tapes from the Skulls house to find
out what really happened. And The Man is out to stop 'em! Everybody's in on
the secret plot to get Luke! His phones are tapped! His room is wired! He's
under constant surveilence! Even the Provost of Yale is a Skull. Hell, if
this plot worked for Will Smith, it can work for Josh Jackson! Luke
consumates his lust for his cutie gal pal in a (heaven help us) literally
steamy scene in the bathroom with the shower on. He grabs the tapes, learns
that his roommate was (twist #2) ALIVE when his soulmate beat feet and was
later killed by the Provost on orders by Coach! Oh, the humanity! What a
world. Never did trust the Provost at my college. He was kinda beady
eyed...but, back to the "story".
Luke turns the tape into the cops, and finds his soulmate blaming Luke for
the death of his best friend/roomie/coxswain. Motive? Noooo! don't stop to
think. Cuz tha cops find Luke's tape blank after he LET'S THE ONLY COPY OUT
OF HIS SIGHT. This is a Yale kid, mind you, who wants to go to law school.
Obviously having never read the handbook of Conduct When the Whole World's
Out to Getcha: Rule #2 Make a Copy of the Name Clearing Evidence, You Ass.
Luke gets doped up and sent to the looney bin. His new girlfriend weeps
until William Peterson, a Senator who's never actually required to be IN the
Senate (and who, in a daring subplot, is having a tiff with Coach, and wants
to see him off the executive committee of the Skulls) helps her bust Luke out
of the hospital, only to be chased by the Provost of Death (cackle cackle),
and nearly shot. 'Ceptin' the cops shoot the Provost first! So the cops are
good...they only sent Luke to the looney bin (for a freakin' MONTH) to flush
out the bad guys...or something, STOP THINKING!! So the cops can just arrest
the bad guys, right? Wrong, they just shot the only one they had on tape.
"Use the rules, Luke." (No, don't go there). Luke uses an obscure rule in
the back of the book to challenge his soulmate to a duel to settle their
grievences...even though he knows he didn't kill his roomie. So why challenge
him instead of his dad? DOH! Thinking again, sorry. They choose circa 1780's
pistoleros, pace off, and of course, Walker pops his Pops in the shoulder,
after pangs of doubt about who killed the poor-little-editor-that-couldn't
are realized. Then Beautiful Boy, racked with guilt about his screw up Dad
trys to off himself, but Luke tackles him just in time, postponing any chance
the movie might end that much more quickly.
In the next and most marvelously horrible scene, in front of a great
multi-facted glass rosetta window, William Peterson says (I swear), "Luke,
join me, and together we can bring about a new order of Skulls!" It is at
this point I could contain my outright laughter no longer. Luke, of course,
rejects the offer, and walks into the sunset with his new loaded, hottie
girlfriend, late for a Dawson's Creek shoot.
Now, if that didn't make any sense to you, join the club, Baby. Pogue's
dialogue is embarrassingly weak, expository, and laughable. Cohen's direction
and editing are choppy and unclear. The characters have the emotional depth
of a skillet and the plot is as mystifying as the Yale admissions process.
Only half of the Yalies' "Boolah-Boolah!" chant will be heard in the theaters
when this goes wide at the end of the month. The greatest crime, however, is
that once again, a great premise (the inner workings of a secret, elite
college society) has probably been soiled forever by the broad, ham-handed
brush strokes of a big studio that subscribes to Details rather than to
details.
Save yourself the $9 and read the Business section for insight on rich white
guys who rule the world.
Sweat N' Toil
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+ Expand All
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The same people who told me Pitch Black was going to be a kick ass movie are now telling me not to go see The Skulls. Sorry boys, Pitch Black was a waste of my time and money. As for The Skulls, I'm now more anxious to see it now that you people hate it.
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Mar 06, 2000 12:33:55 PM CST
The Skulls looks like a bad episode of The Hardy Boys!!!
by geekbasher 3.0
isn't the teen genre over or what? I had to endure this trailer, HERE ON EARTH, and FINAL DESTINATION back to back, it was torture!! No thanks on the skulls and why the fuck has Snow Day and The Whole Nine Yards still making Bank??? That is scary!!!
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Ha, I love good reviews of bad movies. Nice job.
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Sounds sucky
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I'm never going to see this now. Thanks for saving me the coin!
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Mar 06, 2000 1:21:15 PM CST
And I would have gotten away with it too... if it weren't for th
by funny ha ha
I have long wondered about the disctinctions between the REAL Skull & Bones at Yale from your more run-of-the-mill fraternities elsewhere, and had hoped this movie might expose some things to make them sweat a bit. I guess that is not to be, which makes sense if they do in fact rule the world - in that case why would they allow an expose to the theaters when they can prevent it? I believe BOTH George Bushes (W and GHW) are members. I see it as a powerful fraternal organization with far-reaching influence - not necessarily evil. Now, I don't mean to send us down THAT conspiratorial path. I am sure the real S&B is just a cool bunch of guys who like to hang out together in the dark. As for this movie rendition of the "Skulls" - based on this entertaining review, I don't think I'll be seeing IT in the dark any time soon... Too bad, I liked the concept.
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Mar 06, 2000 1:24:09 PM CST
C'mon...did we really expect anything less than total crap?
by monster rain
Anything with Johnathan "Human Phallus" Jackson is pretty much guaranteed to be a megaton bomb. He has to be the most smug, self-aware and arrogant teen actor out there. Rob Cohen is capable of turning out a decent film, but with that turd on his roster, it's a no-go.
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Puking up that evil Tequila worm in Poltergeist II and giving rise to the evil puke monster. Am I too old now, or should that scene never have been made?
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That whole consipracy fetish is sooo 3 years ago. Love the review though- reminds me of Roger Ebert's tendency to point out every movie cliche and logical error in the movies he trashes. I agree, the movie does look like an overgrown Hardy Boys feature. Why don't they concentrate on a real conspiracy, like the Stonecutters(aka the No Homers club)?
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If it's this truly wretched, how can I resist THE SKULLS? After all, a film featuring Craig T. Nelson, who once played bad so marvelously in the '80's classic, ACTION JACKSON, and William Peterson, who is one of the few performers lucky enough to have acted alongside former Denver Nuggets power forward, Alex English, is required viewing for every red-blooded American. I wonder if Cohen was tempted to stage the duel at an agonizingly deliberate pace ala Stanley Kubrick in BARRY LYNDON.
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... Sounds like TALK BACK is its own secret society. Okay, so Sweat N' Toil didn't like this... so let's all jump on his fuckin' bandwagon!! Yeah, let's blast a simple movie for not allowing us to think too much -- and then prove that we don't really want to think too much... let's just blindly obey some deftly skilled writer's negative review. Here's a good idea, instead of watching some escapist flick, let's all run to see Pitch Black and The Faculty... I know they're good 'cuz someone wrote it on Talk Back!!
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..... and if you're going to persist with that snarky tone, Mister, you can just forget about applying for membership!
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Geeez.... if it was so painful to sit through this movie. How do you think it felt to read about it for so long.
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It's too bad that you all aren't giving this a chance. I caught a screening of it about a month ago and it was pretty damned entertaining. I don't think anyone should be running to a Joshua Jackson flick with the idea that it's going to be an Oscar contender. You gotta understand WHO this is for and WHAT this is for... it's for the WB audience and it's for fun. For the girls - there's Josh Jackson and Paul Walker, for the guys - there's Leslie Bibb (who is HOT!), and for the Poltergeist fans - there's Craig T. Nelson (who, by the way, was NOT the one you ripped off his face in that flick). I've been a fan of conspiracy theories and of secret shit for sometime now, so I was excited to see a movie come out about it. A lot of things were watered down, but nothing... NOTHING was made more dramatic than it really is (except maybe the shower love scene... but watch that for its own merits). It's a good movie... a popcorn movie... not AMERICAN BEAUTY, not THE INSIDER, and not anything by Sam Raimi... so give it a break. If nothing else, go check it out to see how it matches up with real stories from these secret societies. There are a ton of good sites: www.smokinggun.com, www.infowars.com, www.secretsocieties.org...
So, make up your own mind about this, I found that there is enough here to keep you interested, to be worth the ticket price, to make for fun entertainment, and to make you get sort of interested in a fascinating part of society... the secret societies. -
or, uh...ya know what another good name for this "Josh Jackson "thriller"" shoulda benn called?...they could of,uh, called it "BOX OFFICE POISON".
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excellent use of the word "snarky". I don't think we in the talkback arena are sheep simply because we read an adequately thought-out review and comment positively or negatively on it. Sure, we need to take every piece of advice with a grain of salt, but there wouldn't be much of a talkback here if we didn't comment one way or the other. After seeing the trailer, reading stuff on this and other sites, we do our best... By the time the movies actually come OUT, there are rarely talkbacks on them.
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If you're going to make a decent effort to turn the tide of Talk Back Opinion, at least familiarize yourself with the gods we worship. I was thinking about paying to see this garbage, but now I'm definitely sneaking in. So there!
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the point I was trying to make was that you shouldn't hold it up to such high standards. Just go and enjoy.
Little touchy, aren't we? -
Its all just a bad dream...NO, IT ISNT!!!!!!
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Great review - laughed out loud. If you want to see a really good secret society movie, you might wanna check out Brotherhood of the Bell, a TV movie with Glenn Ford, or Hammer's The Devil Rides Out or even the Greatest Horror Movie Ever Made, Jaques Tourner's Curse of the Demon.
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Mar 06, 2000 3:09:20 PM CST
Don't Make Me Get William Petersen, Hedley! (Or, Guess Who's Ha
by mrbeaks
You're the one who seperated popcorn movies and Raimi, not me. Remember, the Fraternal Order of Talk Back (FOTB) is populated with many powerful studio execs, high ranking government officials, and Whitman Mayo (for the uninitiated, that would be Grady from "Sanford and Son.") I would think twice before you make enemies here. We can make you disappear..... just like William Petersen's career.
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Ugh. Thanks for the glowing reviews here. Has it ever occured that the real secret societies are making terrible movies so that, if by chance, anyone figures them out, they'll be ridiculed? Am I on to something here? Huh? Huh? Nah, I guess not. BTW, the Illuminati rocks!--Saulot--
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I just recently had the honor of becoming an extra in one of Craig T. Nelson's next movies, 'All Over Again'. It's a charming independent movie, concerning "baseball, time travel, and second chances". It was filmed mainly in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Check out this news article: http://www.timesfreepress.com/1999/SEP/24SEP99/NEWS0524SEP.html
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If anyone wants to check out a review of the Tick Live Action pilot, head over to www.JLAdirect.com and Harry, put up a link to it. Please.
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I started laughing during the trailer, it looked that bad. And now, I have this pretty funny review to confirm my suspicions on how bad it is. It COULD be so bad it's fun to watch, though, but I'm not wasting my money to see it in theatres...especially when the whole review summarized the movie for me. (I know, I could have stopped halfway through, but I figured, what the hell, I'm probably only going to see this on cable anyways.) Honestly, this was a good review and I loved the author tears down certain parts of the, uh, plot, but did we have to get the entire movie spread out for us to hear how bad it is? (See post in Quills Talk Back for more complaint.)
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When is a review not opinionated? A review IS an opinion for crying out loud!
So increase the flak on these lameass "films". We need the studios to see that they need to spend their money wisely. More Iron Giants, less Skulls. -
Great stuff. This review is eeriely similar to the running inner monologue I often discover in my head during real stinkers. The real irony is that MST3K fades even as the candidates grow ever more abundant.
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Note to self: if one joins a secret society with ominious name, is wined, dined and sexed for no apperant reason as part of an initiation rite, then in all likelyhood trouble is right around the corner. It's laughable that studios would release this piece of shit. Dawson's Creek may work well on TV, but this is the silver screen goddamn it. There should be some sort of dolphin-safe net that catches turds like this before they make it to the films and boots their sorry asses to video (forgive me for mixing metaphors). As far as Dawson's Creek, it's a fucking blight on television. The only interest I ever had in it was when a friend of mine made a "can I touch your pussy?" joke about Katey Holmes when I was extremely drunk. So there you go. Need I remind all you bastards that any who disagree will be destroyed by my psychic Mindfire.
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Look, I know this guy's career is basically dead by now, but he really should have had better things. In his early movies: Friedkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA and Mann's MANHUNTER (Prequel to Silence of the Lambs), Petersen showed the capability of being a Steve McQueenish antihero. He was really good in those two movies. I mean, he never would have won best actor, but he'd make a much better action star than somebody like Kurt Russell or Keanu Reeves if people had of given him a chance. This sounds like it sucks and his last teen thriller (Fear) sucked, but this guy showed a flash of talent in early movies. Go check out those two flicks.
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...I saw the preview. Honest to God, what's with previews that are essentially three minute versions of the film itself? Literally each plot point is addressed, the whole 'tape being erased' bit was spelled out; what's wrong with showing a little restraint? Oh, now I remember...it's Hollywood, it's a suck film and it has a Dawson's Creep in it. Whew. Almost went and saw it. Peace. (P.S. I only feel this way because all the other TalkBackers told me how to feel...)
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Mar 06, 2000 11:03:46 PM CST
Alex De Large Thinks Father Geek Should Quit It With The 3rd Per
by alex de large
anywho, this is definately something to see as a matinee...sigh...i just hope there's more than just showest coverage for the next few days...it's great if you can get there, but i want other stuff! i'm greedy, dammit.-Alex
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I'm seeing this for Mr. Will Graham. William L. Peterson is a great guy. Check out his split second appearance in Michael Mann's "THIEF" with James Caan. BTW: "The Silence of the Lambs" is a sequel to "Manhunter" a.k.a. "Red Dragon." It is not a prequel!
Can't wait for Anchor Bay's DVD of "Manhunter." -
What a laugh out loud review! No doubt infinitely more entertaining than this cinematic dreck.
"If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." Thinking about this sentence, and the logic behind the plot to THE SKULLS, will cause your brain to explode in under 60 seconds. -
i'd like to start by sayin', great review. very concise yet giving a good feeling of the movie.
and now, i'd like to say...rob cohen is the worst fucking director working in A projects today. next to joel schumacher. he has consistently ruined every great idea that has come across his desk. dragonheart had so much potential. it could have revived a whole genre that needs to be revived...great fantasy epics. but, unfortunately, mr. cohen got his soiled fingers on it, and transformed it into something wholly unforgiveable. next, he has stallone and daylight, but what becomes of that? does anyone even remember? and now, he has ruined one of my favorite genres of films...the conspiracy flick. the genre has produced some amazing movies...paralax view...JFK...all the president's men...the conversation...blow out...the list goes on...but, damn it...and damn you, mr.cohen...actually, just damn hollywood...where they are more concerned with getting a star from dawson's creek than with finding a good director or screenwriter...sad. -
18 Buddahs --When was the last time YOU went to an art-house flick?! When was the last time YOU stood in line for a big Hollywood movie? Exactly. When YOU make a movie and when YOU get the chance to revive a genre... THEN you can decide to damn Hollywood. But, until then, shut the fuck up! Maybe Rob Cohen ain't that good, maybe Schumacher ain't that good, but YOU, Mr. Buddahs, are nowhere on the map. You want to do something? Go make a movie and impress up all. I bet you haven't even seen this movie! And that, my friend, makes your assertion to damn Hollywood even more ridiculous.
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Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the "secret group" at Yale isn't even called the SKULLS!
If I do remember correctly, it's called "Skulls and Bones". I know for a fact that it WAS known as this at one time, but I dunno if they "evolved" recently, or something. If the name of the movie is wrong, I know to stay away from it right off the bat -- if you want to make a story about a secret society, AT LEAST GET THE NAME RIGHT, GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!
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