Movie Review: "Free Enterprise"

Date: Tue, Mar 5, 2002 10:49 AM

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

Starring William Shatner as himself AS an out-of-it drunken old TV
has-been with delusions that he's a great singer and Shakespeirean
actor.

The movie is about movie geeks, or geeks in general, and is FUCKING
HILARIOUS!!

My friend Jeff Rosenbaum taped it off cable and thought we'd like it. I
never heard of the damn thing, but I'm a huge Shatner-as-bulldada
fanboy, so we immediately watched it.

My god! This movie has the most poignant yet HILARIOUSLY REALISTIC
portrayal of classic sf and Trek geeks EVER. I enjoyed the fantasy
"GALAXY QUEST," but this is totally different.

These two classic movie geeks -- well, the kind that are good looking,
but still fucked up geeks -- who work in LA, on the fringes of the
movie business, happen upon William Shatner in a bookstore.

They do the usual embarrassing fanboy thing, but much to their
surprise, once their hero finds out they are remotely attached to
production companies, he is drunkenly trying to pitch this incredibly
sad and stupid idea -- his dream, a 6 hour musical theater version of
Julius Caesar starring Shatner in ALL the singing parts except
Calpurnia.

Shatner plays himself as the clueless idiot that one would expect after
hearing THAT version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- and in so doing, proves
once and for all that he's really not a complete idiot, has a great
sense of humor, and does not after all take himself very seriously.

I cackled out loud many times during the movie, which is unusual. Even
the end credits are loaded with movie geek inside jokes.

In an odd way, this film is reminiscent of THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND
TIME, Mike Jittlov's great film about film making in Hollywood -- it
ends up having a lot of heart, like Jittlov's film.

It has NO special effects, a very small cast, takes place around movie
sets -- the easiest way to make a low low budget film that doesn't LOOK
so low budget.

At the end, Shatner DOES perform the singing version of Julius Caesar,
doing all the parts. An excerpt anyway. There's a slight twist.

It's a very cool little movie and I know absolutely nothing about it.
Must have been made fairly recently. Possibly after Shatner's wife's
death. There's a very weird and sad scene in which a watery eyed
Shatner describes "a lady friend who left me."

Like "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," this movie took me
completely by surprise. I have a very fond spot for movies that somehow
mix up their own fantasy movie about the real movie world, with the
real world in which the fantasy movie about the real movie world was
made.

AHHHHHHH.

All of the side characters are nerds you have known.

Oh yes, there is even a Friday Jones "rare sexy ultra-geek girl"
character in it -- all the way down to the red hair and perverse sense
of humor. Actually one of the sad aspects of the movie is that you can
tell these two main geek boy characters have never heard of The Church
of the SubGenius, because when they finally meet an actual GIRL that
likes MONSTERS and COMICS, they act like it's the most incredible event
in the universe. Thanks to the Church, we now know that there are
DOZENS of geek girls for every thousand geek boys, and that
monster-fixated girls are not completely impossible in this time
continuum.

My own girl, my liege Princess Wei, is not that much of a monster geek,
but she IS a cartoon geek. So, whenever we start arguing over whether
to watch some GIRL MOVIE like "Chocolat", or some BOY movie like
"GHOSTS OF MARS" (which I haven't seen yet even though it's co-written
by Rev. Larry Sulkis), we can always find a CARTOON that both agree on.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Alliekatt" <alleykatzen@hotmail.com>

Aww yeah! I saw it well over a year ago and enjoyed the hell out of it.
It's really fun. The only thing about it that kind of rubbed me, was that
the geeks are Silicon Valley geeks, pre-.com bomb, and are therefore
annoyingly egotistical, vain twerps, and subject to California-induced
snottishness as regards their work AND their fandom. But then that's the
point of the characters I suppose. Shatner rocked as himself.

I just like my geeks to be longhaired, sqwooshy in the middle, furry, and
mildly sweaty, with an impossible vocabulary, a Vitamin D deficiency and
wearing a sexy ill-fitting Invader Zim T-shirt under flannel and Levi's.

Oh dammit, now I'm all hot for Rev. Jason to get home.

alliekatt

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Original file name: Movie Review- _Free Enterprise_ - converted on Friday, 20 September 2002, 16:09