#27. 'The Mitchells Vs. the Machines'
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The main title is The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Netflix's animated film about a dysfunctional family saving the world from a robot uprising, and it splits the room hard. Sonny really liked it — sweet, funny, with a great voice cast (Danny McBride and Maya Rudolph as the parents, Olivia Colman as the villain, and Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett as broken robots) — and argues it's secretly less anti-technology than it is about using screens to connect people across time. JVL flatly hated it, on the record that he can't abide the whole "blue-collar meathead dysfunctional family" comedy genre (the Roseannes of the world) that plays bad parents and unpleasant kids for laughs and calls it heartwarming; his ideal comic family is the dark one (the Bluths, Arrested Development), and the review spirals into a long referendum on The Simpsons, the Cosby show, the Flintstones and more. Vic scores it a technical Quadrant A (plot A+, duration A-, an N/A for sex/nudity since it's animated, not anime) but admits the animation glazed his eyes over and it ran ~15 minutes too long, with everyone agreeing it takes forever to reach the actual robot apocalypse. The long cold open is peak watch-and-tangent Sub-Beacon: JVL's new Zinn wristwatch with a case forged from U-Boot Stahl (German U-boat steel), which launches a submarine-movie riff (U-571, K-19: The Widowmaker, Greyhound); Sonny's washing-machine drainpipe getting flushed out; a bit about which classmates ended up in "country-club" prison; and a running gag about Vic being unable to copy a link on his iPhone SE. It closes on a Batman & Robin outtake — JVL's theory that George Clooney spends the whole film visibly watching his career get buried alive while only Uma Thurman and Joel Schumacher are in on the camp — capped with "I'm sure it's fine."
From the show notes
A watch made of special metal! Vic has phone trouble. And a touching movie about a goofball family trying to come together to save the world. Plus: SOCK TALK! The cushier, even lamer version of WATCH TALK.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00- Every family has its challenges. - We haven't had a good family picture in years because you two are always arguing. - For my family, our greatest challenge... - Probably the robot apocalypse. - Attention all robots. Capture every single person on the planet. - Yeah!
?00:00:30Subtitles by @thesirren
Vic00:00:37- Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends. And don't forget about the Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL. - Victorino. - What's going on?
JVL00:01:00- I may have acquired another watch.
Vic00:01:09I didn't know Swatch made more than two.
JVL00:01:13- Well, this Victorino, I gotta say, everything about this watch I bought because of you.
Vic00:01:22- Oh, you bought a Rolex. Congratulations, the president. The one that Mike Tyson gave to Tawana Brawley with all the little diamond studs. - Oh, oh, oh, that's, that's uncalled for.
JVL00:01:34- Sorry. - That's a deep pull, that's a deep pull. It is not Swiss. It's not Japanese. - Oh, okay, it's German. - Ze Germans.
Vic00:01:49- You did not get a Glashütte, did you? - Oh, oh no. - Oh, which, oh, okay, go ahead, just tell me. Just tell us.
JVL00:01:58- A Zinn. - Oh, a Zinn. - Do you know what the case is made out of? - Steel from fucking U-boats. That's what it's made out of. The case is made out of the U-boat that sank the Lusitania.
Vic00:02:14- What are you talking about? - This is, this is, this is your watch.
JVL00:02:20This watch is practically a Nazi artifact.
Vic00:02:23- Okay, first of all, you're going back to World War I with the Lusitania, so that was before, that was like Tirpitz's time, okay?
JVL00:02:29Secondly, explain. - The case is made out of, as you will see when I have this thing in my hot little hands, at which point we'll do a show and tell, but it says on the back, made of U-Boot Stahl.
Vic00:02:49- Well, I mean, it could be from a current, you know, submarine, German NATO submarine level steel.
JVL00:02:55Is that what? - If you would prefer it to be, whatever gets me--
Vic00:02:59- What do you think, it's like made from the submarine that was captured by Matthew McConaughey. That one, you, what is it, Sonny? - U-571? - U-571, I was gonna say 235. - Was that Jon Bon Jovi?
JVL00:03:12- He was also in it too. - Was that in McConaughey? - He was also in U-571. - Yes, yes.
Sonny00:03:16- This is different from the Harrison Ford K-19, The Widowmaker.
Vic00:03:20- Where he had affected the Russian accent.
Sonny00:03:24- Catherine Bigelow. - I kinda liked U-571.
Vic00:03:27Is that okay? - Yeah, of course. - Was that a K-19, The Widowmaker?
JVL00:03:32- Not as much as I thought I would. - I was super excited for that. - And it didn't do much for me. - Anyway, the point is, the point is.
Sonny00:03:40- I never actually saw K-19, I want to.
JVL00:03:42- This Zinn is made out of a fucking U-boat. Wow. - Wow. - There you go. - The case. - Oh, wait, do you have it with you? - Not yet. - Oh, not yet. When Sonny says, "What does your watch do? "How many rams does it have?" What I will say is, I will say, "Mine sunk 50,000 tons of Allied shipping." That's what my watch does.
Vic00:04:07- How much tonnage? Tonnage. There you go.
JVL00:04:11- It was hunted, it was hunting the, what is it?
Vic00:04:14Tom Hanks. It was hunting Tom Hanks. - The Greyhound. - Greyhound.
JVL00:04:17- I am, I'm not gonna lie, I am very excited about this. - This is really interesting. - I have stalked this particular watch on and off for several years. - Really? - And a gentleman from Delaware, the first state, was selling it at an unbelievably deep discount. And so I reached out to him on the forums, where people like me like to hang out, and snatched it up. - Only fans had it. - HM. - Snatched it up. - H. - Oh.
Vic00:04:49- Oh. - You both stall. - Well, that's exciting. Okay, well, you bring it in and we'll take a look at that and I'll help you with the translation.
Sonny00:04:57- I don't understand this watch. Is it made from a specific U-boat, or is it made from just like--
Vic00:05:03- He didn't know, he just jumped at it.
Sonny00:05:04He saw-- - In general. - He saw a U-boat, but-- - Like a watch manufacturer bought like a bunch of U-boats, melted 'em all down. - I don't know the answer. - I guess my question, my question is, is it a single malt U-boat? - Or a blend. - Or a blend U-boat, you know? I need to know-- - Right.
Vic00:05:21I think it's made from the same kind of steel that would have gone into making a U-boat.
JVL00:05:28- Well, maybe, you know, our, our friend, Herr Dr. Gartsky--
Vic00:05:33- Yes, yes.
JVL00:05:34- Also has a Zinn. Also a Zinn that is, I believe, the U-1 or the U-2, which is also made of U-boot-stahl. And so we'll have to ask Herr Dr. Gartsky, because I'm sure he knows more about this than I do. Maybe he probably even knows the guys at Zinn.
Vic00:05:52- When, yeah, when he's in town, of course, as you know, he's living on the island of Crete right now. - Yes, yes, he paratrooped in there, as a matter of fact. Oh, sorry, bad joke.
JVL00:06:01Bad joke, for those of you who remember that campaign. - Oh, Sonny, I bet you spent more on your washing machine than I spent on my U-boat watch. - Sonny, how are you? - Speaking of which-- - Having a good week, everything great? - What's going on? - Have you bought gasoline in hefty bags and then sold it at a high markup?
Sonny00:06:17- I, no, as I joked on Twitter, I took my bags of gasoline and went to the taco shop and bought a bucket of margaritas, 'cause now we can get margaritas to go. It's totally legal. In Texas. No, it was, the washing machine itself was not the issue. The washing machine was not the problem.
Vic00:06:39- It's the connecting pipes behind it.
Sonny00:06:42- So the issue-- - Oh, that's worse. - The issue was--
Vic00:06:45- If it's the pipes in the wall, that's worse.
JVL00:06:46- That happened to us.
Sonny00:06:47- The issue was that the pipes were full of crud, so they had to be flushed out. Lot of flushing and jetting.
JVL00:06:54- Did you use kombucha? - Yes, yes. - That'll flush it.
Sonny00:06:59- I just put kombucha in myself and then I got on the pipe. Just shot it all right out. Anyway, no, it was very funny.
Vic00:07:11- By the way, there's a conspiracy theory out there among listeners that we're actually sending secret messages to our poop fetish listeners.
JVL00:07:23- To Flagg and Ryan? - Yeah, oh yeah, well, okay. If you wanna name them, if you wanna mention them by name, you're into that. - The Sub-Beacon extended universe. - I think Thomas, in his defense, I think his people, his people in the north, not really into the poop stuff. - Interesting, interesting. Okay, sorry.
Vic00:07:42- It's those sickos up at Swat and Skidmore.
JVL00:07:47I'm sorry, Swat, I just committed a microaggression
Sonny00:07:49against Flagg saying Swarthmore instead of Skidmore. - Skidmore? - Yeah, that's the other school.
JVL00:07:57Oh, and that.
Sonny00:07:59- Great start to the show, guys. This is really wonderful. So it was--
JVL00:08:03- Here, let's do counting.
Sonny00:08:04- So like 10 days--
Vic00:08:05- I always wanted to go to Beaver College. That's where I wanted to go to be. - Oh, boy.
Sonny00:08:09- Like 10 days ago, we did a load-- - I think you did. - Beaver College.
JVL00:08:16- Sorry, Sonny, please. - What happened? What happened to your pipes?
Sonny00:08:20- Oh, nothing, nothing. It just, the washing machine, the exit pipe overflowed, and we had to have somebody come out, clean it out. That's the end of the story. That's the story.
JVL00:08:32- What was in it? Was this your children's fault? - It was just-- - Were they-- - No, it was just-- - They just had mulch in their pockets when you washed their pants?
Sonny00:08:40- Just full of accumulated crap over the last 60 years, I guess. I don't know.
Vic00:08:46- Oh, yeah, if the house is that old, yeah, that happened. I mean, we had something similar in our house. I think I probably mentioned this at the time. You know, those pipes date back to 1940. - Yeah. - So, you know, and of course, you know, you started to notice in the basement, like, the dark marks in the ceiling that Kate would continually point out to me, and I pretended not to notice them. - Oh, I know what that is. - I'm in denial. I'm like, what? - No. - What?
JVL00:09:12I don't see it. - Do you guys periodically find interesting things in your washing machine? - No. - You don't-- - What do you mean? - You don't have your kids-- - Oh, you mean like-- - Hiding things in their pockets that then get washed, and--
Vic00:09:24- Oh, in the washing--
JVL00:09:25- Yeah, so I'll find, like, you know, Lego mini-figs or the rubber bands and bracelets, do you remember those, Victorino?
Vic00:09:32Lot of rubber band bracelets, chapsticks,
JVL00:09:35and in fact, mere minutes before I sat down to do this show with you, I was flipping a little wash, and I found three guitar picks in the bottom of the washing machine. I just thought, okay, sure. What could possibly go wrong?
Vic00:09:48- When I was a kid, going to a parochial school, if you will, with the nuns, they monitor in the cafe and the cafeteria, you had to finish what was like, much like in the army with Dominican nuns, you had to finish what was on your tray. You take what you want, but you gotta finish what you eat, you know, and so you finish what you take. So every now and then, you'd find stuff that you just did not want to eat, you know, and so what you would do is, you know, you just stick it in your pocket and then say, oh, I'm done. So like peanuts were popular at the time, and people take peanuts and they just stick the peanuts, you know, they come in those plastic cups, and you just shove it in your blazer pocket, and then you walk out, and then everybody used them as weapons, it was like shrapnel, everyone was throwing them at each other, you know, but every now and then, you'd have peanuts in the pockets. One time, it was cheeseburger, and I love cheeseburger, but I couldn't finish it, so I just put it in my pocket, and when I went home, I just put it in the hamper, and I forgot to tell my mother, and then, so they found that in the washer, and then the worst was, I one time, I thought it was mashed potatoes, and it was potato salad, and I'd never had it before, and it was cold, and it freaked me out, I was like, this is disgusting, and I am never gonna get out of this lunchroom to go recess, you know, with this potato salad, so I just scooped it up, and shoved it in my pocket, and then went out, and the rest of the day, this is like I was in second grade, and then just forgot about it, and then it was a Friday,
Sonny00:11:21so then-- - In your pants pocket?
Vic00:11:22- No, my blazer, please, I'm not an animal, Sonny, and then I went home, and then I just, you know, it's a Friday, you just throw everything in the hamper, just threw it there, and I remember the next morning, my mother comes in, she's yelling at me, and she's all like, what is this? And it was like, in the cycle, you know, so.
JVL00:11:40- You know, had the same thing happen to him. - You gotta bleep, you can bleep those names, you can't use names. - Can we take a 120 second digression, so that you can tell the story?
Vic00:11:55- Are you gonna, you should bleep, you should bleep his name, I don't wanna talk about him. We're gonna bleep, you know, this is a human being we're talking about, Jonathan. - Is it? - Is it? - No, no, we should move on, we should move on. - Are you serious? You don't wanna tell the story? - No, I mean, we're talking about people here, you know, people, he's alive, he's still around. I don't wanna, you know, people start throwing that around. - Yeah, God knows. - On Twitter, no, no.
JVL00:12:21- You know what, that'll have to be on the double secret bonus episode.
Vic00:12:24- Yeah, the premium listeners who spend $100 a month, they're the ones who get to hear all the stories. Okay, so here's my thing, which is, you know, first I should say what I'm doing is a follow-up, like 60 minutes, you know how they do like a follow-up on a previous story, like a little coda just to ask you, tell you like what happened to these people. Do you remember, many episodes ago now, I told you about a classmate of mine who I did not like from my dorm room floor. - Oh, yes. - Yes, and he got in a little bit of trouble with the law, he was already making millions. - Allegedly. - Allegedly, and it was not enough, you know, so he tried to make more. It was a bankruptcy situation where he was managing somebody else's, a very large company's bankruptcy. In any event, he crossed the line, broke the law, and I paid special attention to when the sentencing date was, and it was last Friday. And he got six months, six months in jail. - Six months. - But I don't know if that's-- - Was that a country club jail? - Well, I'm sure, yeah, for the-- - Or federal, pound-in-the-ass jail? - No, no, you know for these people it's gonna be like, you know, you know, country club. So, but I don't know, I imagine, because the worst thing, and I'd like to, if there are reporters out there listening, when you write these stories, please include, was the person then immediately taken away? You know, do they like immediately handcuff you and then remove your belt and shoelaces on the floor? Is that the spot? - Sorry, is he white? - Is he in the courtroom? Is he white?
JVL00:14:03- Yes. - Okay, so the answer is no. You know, first he went back to the Cosmo Club and at the Cosmos Club he had some drinks.
Vic00:14:13- First of all, that's a terrible, that's a terrible slander against the Cosmos Club. - Sure, you know that's not the-- - Which is for science people.
JVL00:14:20- You know that that's not the club he belongs to. - Right, that's exactly right.
Vic00:14:22So, and then I assume that means that he has to-- - It's the Hellfire Club. - Yes, thank you, Sonny. He has to report.
JVL00:14:29Right, he has to report to-- - Right, you show up when you're ready. When you're ready to show up. And I hear actually, I remember you sent me the story on this and it said, towards the bottom of the piece, you probably stroked out and didn't make it all the way to the bottom. But the facility he is going to be incarcerated in--
Vic00:14:45- Oh, really, I missed that part. - Recently replaced their clay courts
JVL00:14:51with just normal, hard, true-- - Oh, how dare they! - So they have really, really knuckled down. It is not at all, many, of the televisions inside the cells are still normal 1080p. - Oh my gosh. - They do not have 4K. Not all of them. In the common areas, of course, they have 4K. But it's gonna be very, very stern stuff. Do you remember when the American Enterprise magazine ran a cover story by an anonymous white-collar felon describing country club prison?
Vic00:15:27- Oh no.
JVL00:15:29Do either of you remember this? - No. - It was the most unselfaware thing ever published ever anywhere in the English language. So some rich white guy gets sent away for six months and he comes out and he writes about what hell it was. - Oh. - And he's like, I was locked up with people who hadn't even finished high school. - There were people who hadn't even finished high school. Many of them, many of them were Hispanic. And yes, we lived in dorms and I had suite mates and we were basically allowed to come and go as we please. Fine.
Sonny00:16:14But one time, one time I heard two men making love in the shower.
JVL00:16:19You have no, people make jokes about these white collar prisons, but I am here to tell you it is horrifying. I'm not kidding. - I will tell you. So he was writing as if he was describing
Vic00:16:32the Gulag archipelago. - Like Oz, it was like Oz, yeah.
JVL00:16:35- Except that what he was talking about sounded essentially like a kind of run down summer camp. - It's like the line in Goodfellas
Vic00:16:44when Henry Hill says, you know why so and so wanted to go to prison to get away from Jeannie, you know, to get away from his wife. But it made me wonder, I said, you know, about, you know, you get the, well I'm sure you don't JVL, but you know, even though I don't ask for it, we get those alumni magazines and tells you, you know, you open up and it's about all your fellow classmates who are saving the world, doing amazing things to save the world. And I wondered, like, how many, how many like kids in your classes now, Sonny has a few more years to go 'til he reaches our age, but how many of them actually end up like in jail and stuff like that, you know? That's an interesting, I'm fascinated by that. It's gotta be a couple, right? In every class? I know-- - I mean, I don't know,
JVL00:17:29there's a kid in my class who went to jail before he graduated 'cause he murdered another kid on campus. - Oh, that one, yeah,
Vic00:17:34the College of Publican thingy.
JVL00:17:36- Yeah, but I don't, is it true? I mean, I'm sure nobody from Mr. Jefferson's University would ever be sent to prison.
Vic00:17:45- They have an honor code there. - In 10 more years, maybe, you never know. - They have an honor code.
JVL00:17:50They believe in honor at Mr. Jefferson's. - It is a public school though, so you never know. - Is it, is it really?
Vic00:17:59- I, you know, I mean, for me, there was a guy--
JVL00:18:03- This guy has to be the only one from Georgetown to go to jail.
Vic00:18:05- No, my roommate from sophomore year did 11 years. True story. - What? - Yeah, I do not want to discuss it on this show, though. Yeah. - Geez. - And a guy who was older than me-- - Did he take the fall for you? - No, unrelated. And a guy who was older than me went to jail. He might still be in jail for corruption, city corruption, in, I think, the city of Akron or in Ohio for kickbacks, extortion, stuff like that. So anyway, that's what I was wondering about.
JVL00:18:38- Boy, it's a good thing I didn't go to Georgetown.
Vic00:18:40- Yeah, you see that? I know, don't get me started. All right, anyway, so the story comes out, and I think it's really interesting. I wanted to send the story, but you know, you can't actually send the story if it's on a phone. I don't know if you know that. So I'm reading the story on the phone, and you can't click on the link, like, you know, with my thumb-- - You start yelling, "Kate, come here!" - "Kate, come here!" - "They got him!" - So like, normally on a computer, right, there's the link above. I'm looking at the link right now to Squadcast, right? You can highlight, and then you send the link.
JVL00:19:06- It's called the URL. - The URL. - Yes. - Thank you. - Go ahead, keep going.
Vic00:19:10- But on the phone, there is no URL. Instead, there's only one thing that says, "Done," and then there's like a lock on the thing for the whole, "Why can't I click it on?"
JVL00:19:22Please explain this. - What were you reading it on?
Vic00:19:25- On my phone, on my phone. - His Motorola Razr. - You know how it doesn't show the link? - The StarTAC. - It doesn't just show, and then you have to, and the other weird thing is that you don't even see
Sonny00:19:32who the online is. - I was on my computer, I was on my computer at vickthoughts.tumblr.com.
Vic00:19:37- Thank you, thank you.
Sonny00:19:38- And I was trying to figure out how to share the link with people, and I couldn't find it.
Vic00:19:42- You know what I'm talking about. - I have no idea what you're talking about.
Guest00:19:46- I'm gonna show you on my phone one day. - What are you talking about?
Vic00:19:48- Instead, like on the top of the phone, there's like, instead of like a link, so I can stick my, I can touch it, and then you could like select it, and then copy, paste. Instead, it just has like, whatever, wsj.com, and there's a little lock symbol, and I'm like,
JVL00:20:00what's going on there? - Vic uses a Jitterbog.
Vic00:20:02- You know what I'm talking about.
Sonny00:20:03You don't know what I'm talking about? - Were you reading it on Safari, or were you on Twitter?
Vic00:20:08- No, like, no, on their website, you know, on my phone. So like, it was Bloomberg, or Dallas Morning, whatever it is, you know, and it was like, I can't, and they don't let you copy the link. - What are you talking about? That's absolutely not how phones, I don't know.
Sonny00:20:25I don't know, I don't know what kind of phone you have. What kind of phone do you have? - I have an iPhone SE. - I have a Nokia 9190.
Vic00:20:32- No, no, no, no, no, it's an iPhone SE, which is for- - I was reading it- - For a simpler, simpler folk.
Sonny00:20:38- I was reading it eight characters in a line. It took me seven days to read it.
Vic00:20:43- Okay, speaking of hating technology, this week we're talking about the Mitchells versus the machines. Sonny, how about a big boy review?
Sonny00:20:51- I'm not, we're not moving on from this until I know, until I know that you know how to use your phone, right?
Vic00:20:58- Okay. - So like, I'll click on, oh, this is an interesting story. And it'll be like, let's see here. Hmm, hmm, I can't get to a story right now, but-
Sonny00:21:10- Lady boys in the Philippines have-
Vic00:21:13- She-males, the she-males.
JVL00:21:15- The shimali.
Vic00:21:15- Yeah. - Shimali. - So it'll be like, oh, here's an interesting thing. Okay, now it's taking forever for me to load this. Oh, oh, here, here, here. Okay, so take a look. Where's the camera? - I can't see, I can't see it. - Okay, here it is. On the, on the thing- - Harry. - On the top.
JVL00:21:28- The end. - On the top, there's just that lock symbol. - Sir, is your, is your computer plugged in?
Sonny00:21:35- No, you just click, click the bar. Just click, click like the address bar.
Vic00:21:39- Yeah, uh-huh, hold on, uh-huh. Yeah, well that one, okay, it worked that time. But how about this? Sometimes, if you're on an email, let's say it's from, let's say it's from- No, I'm gonna show you what it is because this is driving me crazy. I'm telling you the truth, man, I'm telling you the truth. I have to go for this morning. Like a morning email, and, uh-
Sonny00:22:03- Why, if you're looking at an email, it's not a web story, it's an email. You have to forward it to someone.
Vic00:22:08- No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And it takes you, it takes you to the story, but instead, it has that little lock symbol, and you can't get it from the lock symbol. That's all I'm saying.
Sonny00:22:16- Don't click, you don't click the lock. That's just about the privacy settings on the site.
Vic00:22:21- But there's no other thing for the link. The link is not there. - Just means HTTP secure. - The link is not there. - Oh my God. - Okay, big boy. - Big boy review. Sonny, go.
Sonny00:22:30- "Mitchells vs. the Machines" is about Vic Mattis trying to figure out how to use his goddamn iPhone.
Vic00:22:36- Really resonated with me.
Sonny00:22:38- "Mitchells vs. the Machines." It's from the writers and producers of "Spider- Into the Spider-Verse." It is about a family, the Mitchells, who the dad is very anti-technology, while the mom and children are all super stuck to their phones all the time. And the girl is going off to USC or some, such to study film. She's a animation prodigy. She wants to be in the movie. She's making memes. Folks, she's making memes on the internet. They're on the YouTubes. They're on the TikToks. They're everywhere. And the dad feels like he's losing touch with his daughter. You know, he feels like they have grown apart. So he decides to drive her and the rest of the family across the country to drop her off on the first day of school. In the midst of this road trip, Apple destroys the world, basically, is what happens. A smartphone company releases a new Android that is also a phone and the robots take over. And obviously this family that has both the skills with technology and the technology fearful father are perfectly situated to save everybody. I really like this movie. I'm not gonna lie. I really liked "Mitchells vs. the Machines." It is sweet and adorable. It is all, I can't wait to see what JVL has to say about the families in this movie because I imagine that he is going to tear it to shreds. But it is a heartwarming tale of a family coming together. And it's also, it is also pretty funny. I mean, so the movie really gets going maybe 25 minutes or so into it when the actual robot apocalypse starts. And at a point in there, they team up with these two guys who are two android robots, whatever they are. And they're voiced by Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett who are like two of the only funny people on SNL in the last 15 years, which brings a real levity to the proceedings. The animation style could be described as something like hyper-modern CG renderings. It's computer generated, but it's not, it's not like Shrek or Pixar. It's like they're, I don't know, it's hard to describe.
JVL00:25:06- Picture Rugrats if the Rugrats animation style was rendered in beautiful, but also I would say, so it's that sort of stylization, but done beautifully.
Sonny00:25:20- Yes, that's about right. But there's also an overlay of like kind of, I will change, charitably describe it as janky. It is intentionally kind of low fi, low res, again, very meme oriented art that is done by the daughter, giving us kind of a glimpse into how she sees the world, et cetera, et cetera. It is, here's what I like about the movie. And here's what I find kind of interesting and baffling about the movie is that it is a movie that is being released by a tech company that is nominally about the evils of being dominated by your technology. And I say only nominally, because what it's actually about is the way technology can connect people across not only distances, but time. There's a great scene in the film where the father is looking at old, you know, VHS home videos, trying to remember, you know, what the family meant to each other, what the, what, what the family meant to him and, and how things went so wrong. And then the daughter watches that same video later, and you can see these two people who have, grown apart a little bit, who come from different generations, connecting with each other via this, essentially message from the past. It is, it is a way to use a screen to look into the past, to understand your present better. And I find that, I find this all like weirdly, deeply touching. I mean, it's, it is, it is a movie that is skeptical of technology, but not really. It's a movie that is more skeptical about how we use technology and how we can use it to wall, wall other people off from our, from us or to kind of, you know, lose, lose track of what is happening in the world. I quite enjoyed all of the voice work in this. Danny McBride plays the father, Maya Rudolph plays the mother, and they are both delightful. As I mentioned, Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett are in this, and there's a wonderful sequence with thousands of Furbies, which was just pure nightmare fuel. If you remember Furbies growing up.
Vic00:27:25- And don't forget Olivia Coleman.
Sonny00:27:27- And Olivia Coleman plays the big bad in this. So, I don't know, I liked it. I enjoyed it, I thought it was cute and sweet.
Vic00:27:36- JVL, what did you think?
JVL00:27:39- I hated it.
Sonny00:27:40- Oh, did you really? I was curious because you were reserved.
Vic00:27:43- I knew it. - I'm trying to read your face during the review, and then you talked about the animation, how it's beautiful, I said, huh, maybe.
Sonny00:27:52- This is a movie about a broken family that comes together in the end. And that is schmaltz that JVL will not stand for.
Vic00:28:01- Okay, go for it. Or do you want me to go first, then you go to it, or you go first.
JVL00:28:06- Victorino, I know, I'm curious as to what you... - All right, I mean, first of all, it's always good to hear what the children of intact families think of these things. But also, Victorino, I would have thought that you would instantly go to, boy, is this thing too long.
Vic00:28:26- You know what's funny, you should say that, 'cause it was under two hours, but it... - Not much. - But not by much. - So 206. - But not that much, yeah.
Sonny00:28:34- No, but it's, without credits, it's like an hour 45.
Vic00:28:38- Still 20 minutes too long. - I could have shaved maybe 15 off.
Sonny00:28:41- I will say that at about minute 80, I was like, how is there still 40 fucking minutes left in this movie? I mean, I literally was like, what is going on?
Vic00:28:48- Once they enter that virtual world, and it's like, what am I seeing? Okay, now, the Quadrant score is an A, technically, because, you know, first of all, the plot is an A plus, that was easy to understand, okay? Duration was an A minus, I gave it. Violence action is an A, eh, there was fighting. And I did not give it, I got, and it gets the N/A for sex nudity, because it's not, again, it's the potential four, as we were talking in the last episode, the potential four.
Sonny00:29:16- You keep going back and forth on this.
Vic00:29:18- I am, but I'm sticking, no, I'm holding firm on the N/A now. - I'm sorry. - Because it doesn't apply.
JVL00:29:22- So Mortal Kombat gets a B minus from you? - Yeah, well, I've changed the rating system.
Vic00:29:26- And this thing? - It gets the N/A for this, because it's not like, for example, we were talking about WeWork, right? And I gave that an F for sex nudity, because there could have been some good stuff in there, and there wasn't, okay? And other people are telling me about work showers at WeWork, yes, a friend of ours was telling me about this.
Sonny00:29:44But this is--
Vic00:29:45- Who was telling you about that? - Robert Little. - Who was it? - Robert Little was saying that-- - Who was saying? - That there were like the showers, that WeWork has the showers, okay. But this--
JVL00:29:54- Do they have middle school 1960s style group showers?
Vic00:29:57Is that what goes on at WeWork? - I have no idea. But the sex nudity here, I was gonna say, it's animated, but it's not anime, right? - Could have gotten some manga. - Yes, if it was manga. - It's not Ghost in the Shell. - All right, yes, if it was Japanese, I would have given it an F, because you expect it, and it's not there. That would have been a very big disappointment. What did I actually think the movie--
Sonny00:30:15- It's all about expectations. It's all about expectations.
Vic00:30:18- What did I think about the movie? I thought it was okay. I liked it, there was a lot of it I liked. Kate and I very much related to Danny McDowell, The Bride, because we are not technology-savvy. - Shocking. - No, no! - You know, and we laughed. - Really? - We thought it was really funny, and the kids thought it was funny, too, because of the way it portrayed that, including, like, you know, if my daughter says, "Oh, I made this thing, this video, "you're gonna look at it." I don't know what I'm, what am I looking at? You know? But the other thing is this, though.
JVL00:30:45- What am I looking at? - These kind of movies-- - You are, like the father, a big outdoorsman. - With the exception. - Who loves having screwdrivers and making things.
Vic00:30:52- With the exception, I'm cooking. But the other thing is, what I didn't like is these kind of movies, just my eyes glaze over because of all the colors and the flashes and different things are going on, and it's just like, it's like a cartoon. How long can I watch a cartoon for? What is this, an hour 45 for a cartoon? It's just like, this is going on.
Sonny00:31:10- Did you watch Spider- Into the Spider-Verse? - I did, I did. - 'Cause that is another, that's another movie with, like, a very specific visual aesthetic. - Yes. - The kind of flat, almost like paper, Mario style.
Vic00:31:24- And I appreciate the artistic element. But for me personally, there's only so much of this I can watch as a cartoon. And that's what I have. But other than that, I thought it was, there are very funny moments in this, you know, when she decides to shut off the Wi-Fi and everybody's freaking out and there is a woman or a man, I can't remember who it was, saying, "Will somebody please take a picture of my food?" And it's just perfect because it's like, if you didn't document it, it didn't happen, okay? So that's what I thought. Oh, also this question to Sonny or to JVL, and then from there, I'm just gonna leave it to JVL to take it from here. Was this movie intended to be an homage to The Incredibles, a spoof of The Incredibles, or a poor man's The Incredibles?
Sonny00:32:14- I don't think it is intended to be anything, no.
JVL00:32:17- There's a specific nod to The Incredibles at one point. I forget, there's a line in it about, you know, we don't have to be incredible or something like that.
Vic00:32:27- Well, and there's also funny lines like, not Incredibles related, but when they say, "Geez, who would've thought a large tech company "wouldn't have our best interests in mind?" Stuff like that, very funny. But again, that's how I felt about it. JVL, what did you not like about this movie?
JVL00:32:47- So, I mean, I should start by saying that this is, this says way more about me than it does about the film. Entirely possible that, this is a wonderful movie and that it will please many people. There is something grotesque about playing dysfunctional families for laughs and then having bad parents and kind of bad kids. I mean, Katie's a bad kid. Now, maybe you could say, well, she's, you know, 18 years old, of course she's self-involved and stupid, but she is, you know, incredibly self-involved
Vic00:33:27and stupid and unpleasant and a bad child. - In the sense that because she just likes making her videos?
JVL00:33:33- When she's like, you know, my parents don't understand me. Like, I don't understand your fucking parents. You know, like it's a two-way street, sweetheart. And, but you know, but everything works out fine. You know, like, ah, they're a bunch of meatheads, but they really love each other. And this just, look how funny this dysfunction is. And, you know, a lot of times actually it's not funny and it doesn't work. It doesn't work out and people who are bad parents, like fuck up their kids and unpleasant kids are bad. I just, the whole thing for me was like nails on a chalkboard and there's an aspect to it that is like watching a dark comedy about the Rwandan genocide, which is like super funny unless you grew up in Rwanda.
Sonny00:34:19You know, like I just, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JVL00:34:23And I have never liked any sort of white, white color, sorry, blue color meathead dysfunctional family comedies, you know, the Rosanne's of the world, those types of never, they always made my skin crawl. And that's what this did. First of all, I would say I, as an actor, I guess, I don't know what, just to be very arch, I watched it on my phone. - You were thinking about watching
Vic00:34:57it with the family, so you did not watch it with the family.
JVL00:34:59- Nobody in the family was interested, except for G-Money. G-Money watched like 35 minutes of it with me. I was like, "Yeah, can we go do something else?" Didn't, didn't. We watched Batman and Robin on Saturday night with the family, and G-Money believed that this was Citizen Kane. We have had Batman and Robin on a loop in our house since then. This is, wow, does he love Batman and Robin?
Vic00:35:26- Batman and Robin, the one with, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Uma Thurman.
JVL00:35:29- Oh yeah, and Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell, and we'll talk more about that maybe in the outtakes. But I, I hated everything about this movie. Every fucking thing about it. There were, you know, a couple moments that were clever and funny, but, and again, this, I'm sure it says more about me than it does about the movie, but I couldn't wait for it to be over, and I was not even really rooting for any of the characters. None of the hugging and learning stuff made my skin crawl.
Vic00:36:04- I was gonna say, the message of the movie at the end is, hey, we're not perfect, we, you know, we're not the perfect family like their neighbors, John Legend and-- - And Chrissy Teigen. - And Chrissy Teigen, right, and their kid. But, but we make it work, right? I mean, isn't that, isn't that what's going on here, Sonny?
Sonny00:36:24- Yeah, I mean, I, like, it, it is a movie that once I was done watching it, I was like, oh, I feel kinda bad recommending this for the show, because I know JVL is going to hate it, 'cause I know that he hates this sort of thing. So, I apologize.
JVL00:36:42- No, no, it's not--
Sonny00:36:43- Jonathan Last for dragging you down.
JVL00:36:47- I was thinking about other, I mean, first of all, I think, I've watched Into the Spider-Verse a lot of times, 'cause Gene Money really likes that, too.
Sonny00:36:57It might be my top three superhero movies all time.
JVL00:37:01I love it so much more than I did upon first watching it, and I liked it a lot when we first watched it. I really love the crap out of it. You know, so the Lego Ninjago, Ninjago, whatever movie it is. - Ninjago. - Right, Ninjago. I think I talked to you guys about this a couple months ago. I watched it not because I wanna do, but purely because Gene Money likes building Ninjago sets, and was like, whoa, let's do this. It's great, and it's really funny, and it is about, it's about divorce, and it's about like this horrible absentee father, and there's not much hugging and learning, and to the extent that there is any, like it's all just like the dad is a bad dad, and he's literally the bad guy. He is the super villain of the, and he's also the divorced dad. And his son is one of the ninjas. And it's hysterical, but there's nothing saccharine about it. It's actually pretty--
Vic00:38:06- In comparison with the ending was too saccharine for you of-- - The whole thing was too saccharine.
Mike00:38:13Like, oh look, he doesn't know, the dad doesn't know what to say. He has to read off the cue cards. Bumbling dads. Dads are so stupid. Dads are stupid. They don't know what, they don't know feelings.
Sonny00:38:27- Accurate though. I mean, you say this like it's not the real world that we live in.
JVL00:38:33- I think it's not the real world that we live in. I think it's very much not the real world that we live in. And I hate it. I hate being talked down to as a parent like that in the same way that I hated being talked down to as a kid watching stupid, I'm sure I've gone into my rant on this before, but I used to get viscerally angry on Sesame Street. Watching when Mr. Snuffleupagus would disappear whenever Big Bird tried to show up. - And nobody believed him. - Nobody, and I believe they've changed that. I believe that Mr. Snuffleupagus is now just another character that everybody recognizes. And people would patronize Big Bird. Like the adults would, "Sure, sure Big Bird, your friend." Wink, wink, was here. And I would just be like, what are these stupid fucking grownups, how dare they, you know, try to pat this child on the head. And think that he's just pretending and make believe. Because, you know, you can't trust somebody to be serious just because they're four years old. And I used to get like really, really angry about it.
Sonny00:39:38- I don't even remember that being a thing.
Vic00:39:39- I do, but I always, you know, but I, when I saw it, it's sort of like, I understood like the gag is the, "No, he's really there." And how come, but you know what I mean, it's like this thing.
JVL00:39:53- Oh, it made me angry. But this fed into my whole, I mean as a kid, it always made me very angry for adults not to understand that I was smarter than they were. So, yeah.
Sonny00:40:05- A trait that has continued through the years.
JVL00:40:08- Through the years. - You know, I mean, most people tend to recognize it now. But yeah, no, it just, it made me angry and I don't like being talked down to. And I feel like stupid fathers is a trope, which I find insulting and I don't like it.
Sonny00:40:23- How do you feel about "The Simpsons"? - You know,
JVL00:40:27Homer was always the family dynamic stuff was always the least interesting part of "The Simpsons" to me. The most interesting part of "The Simpsons" is always the town. - Sure. - Right, I want to spend time with Sideshow Bob and Mayor Quimby and Moe. - And Apu. - The comic book guy. - And Apu, the comic book guy, right? All that stuff. Duff man, right? Whenever they like really leaned into that, although to be honest in "The Simpsons" the saccharine stuff was really not there. It was not like, you know, hey, we're all great. It was, boys is a fucked up family and Lisa can't wait to get out and go to college, you know?
Sonny00:41:11- Yeah, but some of the saccharine episodes are some of the best, like the "Do It For Her".
JVL00:41:16- I don't remember that one.
Sonny00:41:17- That's the one where Homer quits at the nuclear plant and then they get the, they have the third child, they have Maggie. And when they come back, Mr. Burns, who Homer had played Mr. Burns' head as a bongo while leaving the nuclear power plant, he makes him put up a sign that says, don't forget, you're here forever. And then at the end of the episode, Homer has put pictures of Maggie up all over and it spells "Do It For Her".
JVL00:41:48- That's right. - So I don't remember that, but I can tell you I would have hated it. - That is an anti-
Vic00:41:53- I was gonna say "Lisa Becomes a Vegetarian" is a great episode. Because obviously he's this unapologetic carnivore.
JVL00:42:03- But the funniest part of that is when she comes home from hanging out on the roof of Apu's garden where she meets Paul McCartney. And isn't that the one where Homer's hosting the giant cookout and the doctor's like,
Mike00:42:16"How about a hot beef injection?" - That's right. That's right.
JVL00:42:20"Diagnosis delicious." - Again, that stuff is always the funniest stuff, right? Barney and Moe. - Yeah. - Right? - Yeah. - But I mean, it's a sweet ending.
Vic00:42:30But it's a sweet ending though. - Yeah, I guess.
JVL00:42:33Early Simpsons that focuses on what a rascal Bart is. - It's funny. - And then the family stuff. No, I don't like that stuff.
Vic00:42:40- No, I mean, it's funny that they did that. And also the animation was so very much different in that first season than it is--
Sonny00:42:46- Yeah, that first season looks like a wholly different show.
Vic00:42:49- I mean, it was just a little extra throwaway in the Tracy Ullman show, right?
Sonny00:42:53- What about Family Guy?
Vic00:42:55- Never watched it. - No, I've never even seen five seconds of it. - You know what? I pretend to.
Sonny00:43:00- Now I'm just trying to think of shows with bad, what about like Home Improvement with Tim Allen? - I never even knew that. - Oh, don't even ask him that.
JVL00:43:06- I'll tell you this, I hated the Cosby show.
Vic00:43:08- Yeah, that's right. You said that. - I hated the Cosby show. - But they're not dysfunctional. They're not dysfunctional. - Yeah, but Cosby's not a boorish bad dad. - He's got other things going on.
JVL00:43:15- He's not dumb. - He's absolutely a boorish bad dad. His answer to every conflict with his children was, I have a job and I have all the money, so you have to do what I say.
Sonny00:43:27- The world works.
Vic00:43:28- What about Family Ties?
JVL00:43:32- I mean, I was like eight when I was watching Family Ties. I imagine I would not like it now. But I don't know, he was like a sensitive guy, right? He was a hippie. - He was a hippie, yeah. - He was not clueless. He was, you know, I mean, he was getting pegged by a matter of the facts to Bernie.
Vic00:43:49- I don't think Cliff Huxtable was clueless, right?
JVL00:43:55- No. - My ideal family is the Bluths. - The Bluths from Arrested Development. That is what, if you want comedy from families, if you want comedy from families, it ought to be dark. Might as well just own the dark place and go there.
Sonny00:44:15- Okay. - What about Adam's Family?
JVL00:44:22- Which one? The movie with Christina Ricci?
Sonny00:44:24- What about The Flintstones? - The Flintstones, the cartoon.
JVL00:44:29- Here we go. Flintstones or Jetsons? - Jetsons, I think. - They're both before my time.
Vic00:44:37- Yeah, you know, it was kind of boring. The Flintstones were kind of boring.
JVL00:44:39- Yeah, I didn't like either of them.
Vic00:44:41- Yeah, but I only saw them. - Those were prime time shows.
JVL00:44:45- Yeah, that's crazy, that's crazy. Is that right? - They were prime time shows. - Were they on rival networks? - No, I believe they were a package. - Hanna-Barbera, right? - Hanna-Barbera, right? Again, Jon's probably yelling at his television right now, but I believe-- - Idiots! - Both of them were on one of the big three networks. - Yeah, one of the big three. - They were only three networks. - Back in the '60s or whatever. - And they were a prime time thing, and then I think it failed, and they got shunted to UHF after school reruns.
Vic00:45:13- Yeah, and then we liked it.
JVL00:45:14- Yeah, I don't know, the answer is, I don't like any of those things. I don't like any of the family sitcoms. I want, you know, give me Friends. Friends, great. Give me Seinfeld, great. If you wanna go, you wanna do family stuff,
Vic00:45:31then I want Arrested Development. Sonny, make sure you mark it down. Never again do not ever recommend a movie like this, which ends the show at 45 minutes.
Sonny00:45:43- No, no, I mean, it is, so this is, again, this is like a very real thing. I, when I was watching the show, I was like, or when I was watching the movie, I was like, ah, man, I like this a lot. It's very sweet, and it's very, you know, everybody comes together at the end, and they're all quirky, and they all, but they all, they're quirks. They come together, and they make a, they make a hole that's bigger
Vic00:46:06than the sum of the parts. - Nobody's perfect, so they come together.
Sonny00:46:08- Poe buddies nerfect, if you will. So the, when I was watching it, I was like, I like this a lot, but God, JBL's gonna hate this movie.
Vic00:46:16- I didn't think, I didn't-- - I know it. - It didn't occur to me that--
Sonny00:46:19- First thing I thought. First thing I, because I was like, I was like, oh, we've been through, we've been through a couple of these before. I know, I know JBL's not gonna like this one, so I felt bad-- - It's okay, you know what? - As we were watching it.
JVL00:46:29- I was thinking about this, actually, when I was sitting there hating this movie, I was thinking, it's been so long since I didn't like something we've watched. - Oh. - I have been in the Vic chair, I don't know if you remember, we went through like a year and a half where Vic liked every single thing we saw. - Yes, yes. - And he has now become the East German judge, but I have gone, I don't wanna say, it's been like 12 weeks since we saw something
Vic00:46:51that I wasn't like, ah, it's great!
Sonny00:46:53- Right. - What was the, what was the, what was that? What was the thing that you, what was the last thing you didn't like?
JVL00:46:59- I don't even remember. I think it might have been "The Greyhound." - Really? - I think, I think that's how far back it probably, we probably have to go.
Sonny00:47:07- The Tom Hanks movie?
JVL00:47:08- Yeah, I didn't love it.
Sonny00:47:10- It was fine. - I don't, I don't even remember talking about that. I, I, like, I know, I know there are folks who listen to like every episode that we do a couple times and can like recall instantly, like exactly what episode we said what in, but I am at the, I am at the point where I literally cannot remember what we talked about like three weeks ago.
Vic00:47:27- I was thinking about, I was thinking about this. This is actually for "The Sub-Beacon," under the name "Sub-Beacon," not "Substandard," but "Sub-Beacon," this is, this was episode 103. I don't know if you knew that, so we passed it a couple--
Sonny00:47:40- Two years now.
Vic00:47:40- Three episodes there. Yes, but in our time, I'm trying to think, I was trying to think what is the worst movie I'd seen for the show. And I joke around about, I joke around about-- - "Widows." - "Widows," right? Okay, which I just was not in a good mood to watch that movie for whatever reason. But I have to think, I don't know, I think really up there was probably "The Beach Bum," even though it did well on some of the quadrants. But I just thought there was absolutely nothing redeeming about "The Beach Bum" with Matthew McConaughey. How about you guys? Worst movie you've seen?
Sonny00:48:15- Worst movie that we've watched for the show? - "Beach Bum" was terrible.
JVL00:48:17- I know, again. - It was terrible. - "Sentinel" is the last movie we saw that I didn't like. - Oh, that's the one with, what's her name? - "Midmarch." - "Midmarch," with--
Sonny00:48:26- Olga Kurlinko. - Olga Kurlinko.
JVL00:48:28- Oh, oh, oh, right. - Yeah, okay. - But I liked it. I like "Greenland," for God's sakes. I like, I care a lot. - Yeah.
Vic00:48:35- I guess I didn't love-- - "Money," you like most movies. - "Barb" and "Star." - "Barb" and "Star" was terrible.
Sonny00:48:41- "Barb" and "Star" was good. That's gonna be a cult classic. People are gonna look back on this episode of the "Sub-Beacon" about "Barb" and "Star," and they're gonna be like, "What are these people? This is how wrong opinions are formed."
Vic00:48:51- Jamie Dornan, James has his name, Jamie Dornan, the singing thing, you know, it was just awful.
Sonny00:48:56- Can I, can we just say one more thing about "Mitchells vs. the Machines" before we wind up? You guys both mentioned the length, and I remember looking at it, I was like, "God, two hours." When I, like, looked at how long it was gonna be to start. And like I said, I got to the 80-minute mark, and I was like, "How is there still 40 minutes of this movie left?" It's like, we're in, like, the end of act three. What is happening in this thing? And it was, there was still a little bit extra there at the end. It definitely had the feel of a Netflix thing that is probably 20% too long, or at the very least 10% too long. There's 15 minutes of this movie, or I don't know, maybe 10 minutes of this movie they could have very easily, they could have been cut out, you know, especially at the beginning. It really takes forever to get to the robot apocalypse. We want to get to the-- - Oh my God, yes.
Vic00:49:44- We want to get to the versus the machine. - I actually looked at the clock. I actually looked at the clock for a second, okay, when does it start?
Sonny00:49:49- And this whole, I get wanting to be with the family and learn who they are and blah, but it just, it goes on and on. It's not until, I mean, again, it takes about a half an hour to get to the, to the actual robot apocalypse, which feels like a pacing mistake.
JVL00:50:06It's, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Vic00:50:11- Okay, if that's all we have, we'll move right along. By the way, do you have a, are you a Danny McBride fan?
Sonny00:50:22- I love Danny McBride. - Yeah, I do too, JVL.
JVL00:50:25- I don't know enough, I mean, I've seen him in, what was the ads? He did a series of commercials based on his East and Down. - Eastbound and Down. - Eastbound and Down. - Oh, really? - Eastbound and Down.
?00:50:36- Eastbound and Down. - Eastbound and Down. - Oh, really? - Eastbound and Down.
JVL00:50:36- Oh, really? - Eastbound and Down. - Oh, really? - Eastbound and Down. - Oh, really? - Eastbound and Down.
Sonny00:50:37I can't remember. It was for sneakers, right?
Vic00:50:39Oh, really?
JVL00:50:39It was a character he did for a sneaker car, like Adidas maybe? Really? I don't know. I don't remember. Mike Warren will remember this. I did like Eastbound.
Vic00:50:47I did like Eastbound and Down. It's great. Eastbound and Down is great. It's very raunchy.
Sonny00:50:51He's funny in Tropic Thunder. I mean, he's basically doing the same thing every time. I would say. Largely.
Vic00:50:56And because of that, because he basically plays the same role every time, the best of that, in my opinion, is that movie with Seth Rogen, The End.
Sonny00:51:09Yes, this is The End.
Vic00:51:10The stuff that he talks about is fantastic in there. Stuff I can't.
Sonny00:51:14That might be my favorite of all those movies.
Vic00:51:17Talking about Emma Watson and wanting that whole thing where they're outside her door and he says, I can't wait to talk to her about Harry Potter. I love that magic shit. Anyway.
Sonny00:51:29Okay. No, he's good. Jimmy, I think you would actually really enjoy The Righteous. Gemstones, which is a HBO series that is essentially making fun of a evangelical dynasty type of John Goodman plays the patriarch.
JVL00:51:49Televangelist?
Sonny00:51:51Televangelist, yeah.
JVL00:51:53I'll watch anything John Goodman's in. That guy's great. Except for Roseanne.
Vic00:51:57That's right. He was in Roseanne. Okay. Spirit of the Week. Do you have something?
Sonny00:52:04I'm just drinking a Diet. Diet Dr. Pepper. Texas, the official drink of Texas.
Vic00:52:08I got a great one today. It actually arrived a few days ago.
JVL00:52:12And it is Citadel. Look at this beautiful bottle. Citadel.
Vic00:52:16Is this another gin? Yes. French gin. People must know that I'm in a gin kick. Jardin d'Ete. Jardin d'Ete. It is 22 different botanicals, including lemon, melon, yuzu. So a special. And it is quite delicious. The fruitier. The fruitier botanicals. I really recommend, as you know and say, would probably agree, a twist for your martini, not olives. It would clash. And, I mean, if it's strictly talking about junipers and stuff like that, like a Plymouth or London dry, I love olives. I love olives in my gin because that kind of acts as the appetizer anyway. It's like a meal and a drink in one. Especially if they give you three olives.
Sonny00:52:57Especially if they're full of blue cheese. Oh, you've got to add some meal. You get the blue cheese. That's a full.
Vic00:53:01That's it.
Sonny00:53:02That's at least. That's at least. At least, you know, the martini itself is basically, you know, absorbing itself. It is.
Vic00:53:10No, it's like it just goes. The olives and the blue cheese. Yeah, that's why you can have like three, four or a pitcher. A pitcher, as you know. So, thank you. Shout out to Ashley Ott for sending that over. That is delicious. And corrections, shout outs. I do want to give a shout out to the Georgetown lacrosse team for defeating Denver to win their third straight Big East championship. I know what everyone's wondering. Why is Denver in the Big East?
JVL00:53:37Denver? Is Denver a school?
Vic00:53:38Yeah, Denver. Denver is in University of Denver. I guess it's in the Big East. That would be east of the Sierra Madre. And that is a shout out to listener Eritrean Barrister, who pointed that out to me. So, thank you for that. That is all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, compliments. Tweet us at SonnyBunch at VictorinoMattis. Again, be sure to subscribe. Subscribe to us on Patreon. Just go to SubBeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL00:54:16Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Sonny.
Sonny00:54:19Yeah, so I actually had a very good sock experience this week. I want to relay a sock experience to everyone. So, I...
JVL00:54:28Darn tough. Smart.
Sonny00:54:30Darn, darn tough. Came through from... So, I... Two or three years ago, I got a pair of boots and I was like, oh, crap, I need boot socks to wear with these boots because, you know, the ankle... Because all I have are ankle socks and, like, dress socks.
Vic00:54:46Hold on. Yes. Good question, JBL, because I'm thinking now that you're in Texas, you got a pair.
Sonny00:54:51No, no, no, no, no. Well, I haven't been in Texas for two or three years now, have I? No, it was a pair of Allen Edmonds Normandy boots. I got them for, like, 80% off or something. It was amazing. It was the best deal ever. Anyway. First time I put them on, I was like, these are horribly uncomfortable because I'm wearing ankle socks. Gonna have to, you know, figure out how to take care of that. And my wife, my lovely wife, was like, I know this great American manufacturer of socks. Darn tough. They're in Vermont. Everything is made in America. And they have this, you know, wonderful warranty program where if the socks ever wear out, you send them back and they'll replace them. And I was like, okay, all right, sure, sure. But these are... Exceptionally expensive socks. They're like $25 a pair. So when the pair that she bought me three years ago, I put it through the washer, pull it out, and it has a little hole in it, a little hole in the bottom. And I was like, let's try this warranty out. Sure enough, I put it, I like, I put it in a envelope. I printed out a warranty label. I sent it in. And they sent me, well, they actually sent a gift certificate, like a gift card for like $25 at the Darn Tough website. But it was like the only... Only, all it cost me was shipping, shipping the thing there. Shipping, shipping the... So it cost like three bucks to ship my socks back. And they sent me $25 pair of socks. So Darn Tough, believe, believe in the warranty, folks. They take care of it.
Vic00:56:17How does that work? Because they assume not everybody takes advantage of the warranty and never buys another pair of socks.
Sonny00:56:22Well, I mean, look, I would assume, I would assume that a lot of, a lot of folks just don't, don't bother with it or forget or whatever, or, you know, they give them as a gift to somebody they don't know. Well, that's a great deal. Or, or, but I mean, I like, look, I, I am the sort of person who like, generally speaking, will just be like, I'm just gonna buy a new one. Just gonna buy a new one. I wanted to, I wanted to test it out on principle. And I got to say, great service from the folks at Darn Tough. So if you're looking for good, thick, cushy socks that if they get a hole in them, they'll replace, really no questions asked. They didn't even ask, they weren't even like, so have you been using these as slippers? Cause you should, you know, not, not supposed to be using them as slippers, right? Uh, if they had, if they had been, if they had been, you know, if they had, if they had really dug into this, who knows, who knows what they could have uncovered, but they were just like, ah, all right, here, here's get some new socks. That's I got some new socks. That's great.
Vic00:57:21You should make sure you tweet them out. You'll get, you'll get a, you should get some swag.
Sonny00:57:25Uh, then we're not JVL. I don't need swag. I got new socks.
JVL00:57:31Socks are the swag. I, uh, I haven't seen Batman and Robin. I don't think since you and I were in the theaters, Victorino and two things, the ice
Vic00:57:44age, go ahead.
JVL00:57:45The ice man coming. Do you know what killed the dinosaurs?
Sonny00:57:51The ice age.
JVL00:57:52Uh, so two things really jumped out at me. And the first is the reason it's such a terrible movie and it has become
Vic00:58:03a cause.
JVL00:58:04So the movie is clearly camp. No, it's like intentionally you're saying like, well, except that only two of the people involved with the picture are doing it as camp. Okay. Are we supposed to get those are Uma Thurmond who is full, full camp throughout, uh, and the director, Joel Schumacher. Oh, everybody else is playing, is acting as if they are in a tentpole superhero movie and you know, Chris. Donald is like acting really hard and, uh, Jim Carey is not in this film. Or is he, that's Batman forever.
Mike00:58:42Yeah.
JVL00:58:42Which comes before this, um, Alicia Silverstone looks like she thinks she's being given like her shot at the real big time and it's like really trying to effort it, but the thing which really, really jumped out of me is George Clooney. Because in every single frame, he looks like a man. Who knows that he's watching his career being buried alive and he does not do the camp thing at all. I mean, he is, you could see him trying to claw his way to like, don't put me in movie jail for this, don't put me in movie jail for this.
Sonny00:59:23He has a mode where he can do camp. He does it with the Coen brothers from time to time. And it's the reason there's reason, the reason I don't like, oh brother, where art thou? Is because I think that like Clooney is just ham and that way he's just a total ham and I can't stand, I can't stand him in that mode.
Vic00:59:40Versus like Hail Caesar.
Sonny00:59:42Right. Well, Hail Caesar, he's a ham, but it makes sense for the character because the character is an idiot actor.
JVL00:59:48Right.
Sonny00:59:48So like he's, he's playing an idiot actor and I was like, okay, I believe George Clooney as an idiot actor with ideas of socialism and whatnot.
JVL00:59:57He is playing this as if he is trying to maintain the same kind of intensity that was in The Peacemaker. Ah. If you remember The Peacemaker, which was his first.
Vic01:00:07Yeah, the question, where is this in his career in terms of movies? It's very early. It's very early.
JVL01:00:11So The Peacemaker is his big.
Sonny01:00:13It's before The Perfect Storm?
JVL01:00:15Yes. So I believe his first movie is, is From Dusk Till Dawn. Yes. But then his first movie as a star, which is meaning post ER, comes and is The Peacemaker, which was. It's supposed to be a huge, it was him and Nicole Kidman. And I want to say Wolfgang Peterson maybe as the director. I'd have to go back and look.
Vic01:00:40Maybe. And it involves the Balkans. It's, it's, it's not very good.
JVL01:00:43It's one of these, you know, it looked really kind of cool.
Vic01:00:45It's New York, UN, but also Balkans. And yes, yeah, that's right.
JVL01:00:49And, uh, and then this thing, and he managed to stay at a movie jail, but, uh, but that's why you have this tension between all these people trying to hump this thing into respectability, except that the guy behind the camera, he's trying to make Rocky horror picture show.
Mike01:01:09Wow.
JVL01:01:11Yeah, I'm sure it's fine.
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