Venture Bros: Tag Sale — You’re It!
Why is Dr. Girlfriend with The Monarch? She’s smart and attractive, snappy dresser. Why does she hang out with (and fornicate) with that whining, petulant, impotent fraud?
Some of my favorite Brock moments are when he just doesn’t want to deal with the drama of a situation. When the secret service head asks him if he wants to see the chatting Misters in pretty pink dresses, he stares straight ahead and, voice thick with disinterest, says “No, I don’t want to see ’em in dresses.” The difference between Brock and a lot of other characters Patrick Warburton plays is that Brock seems to always have too much on his mind; his halting speech isn’t dim-wittedness but a reluctance to waste his breath on the unimportant, which is a great concept for an animated character.
Venture Bros: The Incredible Mr. Brisby
In a cartoon, or a movie, or a TV show, anything in popular culture really, when the creators want to point out that a character is lame, they name him Todd.
This is why I hate the name Todd.
Venture Bros: Eenie, Meeney, Miney…Magic!
Ah, yes. The appearance of Dr. Orpheus. My first time seeing this.
As someone who has worked closely with Mr. Steven Rattazzi over a few million shows, Dr. Orpheus is especially funny, as his declamatory style is only a slight exaggeration of what Steven is capable of once he gets a good heat under him. But without the spittle.
Dr. Orpheus makes a terrific counterpart to Rusty, in that they are both single parents stuck between a real and an imaginary world, but that Orpheus has somehow figured out a way to live the dream (much to his daughter’s mortification) and Rusty just feels tied down and constricted by his parental duties (which he tends to utterly ignore).
I love Hank and Dean’s pajamas, for two reasons.
1. Hank is nominally the more “grown up” twin, but he’s the one in the Aquaman jammies, whereas Dean gets the way-cooler Spider-Man jammies (which exactly match a set that my 5-year-old son has).
2. They don’t change out of them until way past noon.
In a way, the whole show is about this clash between the real world and the imaginary world we were promised as children by these fantasy shows. Every ten-year-old boy wants to be James Bond at some point, thinking that that’s what a “real man” must be like, and we continue to carry these fantasies around our in heads at some level even as adults, but Venture Bros. actually addresses the question of “well, what if James Bond (or Johnny Quest, or what have you) really existed?”
There was one single, solitary moment in Goldeneye that addressed this, and for a brief instant James Bond became an interesting person. Somebody says to Bond, in effect, “Look at you, you’re a miserable human being. You kill people for a living and you can’t sustain a relationship. The only things you know how to do is destroy things and fuck,” and you realize that Bond really is the sick fantasy of an adolescent mind. He feels no love and no compassion. He’s a monster. Whereas the most indelible moments of The Venture Bros. are those when real emotions and responsibilities intrude on the absurd adventures, whether it’s Brock Samson taking time to help Hank with his coin-catching game or Dr. Orpheus leaving a message for his daughter to not eat more than one pudding cup. The Bond fantasy of constant movement and no responsibilities (I can’t think of a better example of “no responsibilities” than a literal “license to kill”) butts up against the common, everyday ties to those we care about.
Venture Bros: Mid-life Chrysalis
My research is not complete, but I think this episode contains more disturbing images than any other.
1. Rusty in his toupee. Usually I’m struck by how much Dr. Venture resembles James Urbaniak, but with the wig on it’s truly alarming.
2. Brock losing his nerve. It’s so bizarre to see him at loose ends, without purpose, robbed of his spontaneity.
3. The Monarch masturbating to the image of his girlfriend making out with his arch-enemy. Oh. My. God. Perhaps the single most disturbing image in the history of animation.*
4. Rusty, without preamble, vomiting up reams of mucus to encase himself in.
That’s not even getting into the old, skanky and overweight strippers, the crumbling condom or the ugly pink tumor taking over Rusty’s head.
*Perhaps, even, the most disturbing image in the history of fantasy filmmaking. I don’t know why, but the mere idea of fantasy characters masturbating seems revolutionary and deeply subversive. Imagine Blofeld masturbating. Or Goldfinger. Or Darth Vader. Or even James Bond or Luke Skywalker or Gandalf the Great. Human nature insists that they all do, but, but —
— and then there’s the all-too realistic way that the Monarch goes about it. His hand idly tracing patterns on his chest, then slipping down to his abs, then — I can’t go on. It’s too disturbing.
Venture Bros: Careers in Science
A triumph.
Is it my imagination, or is the female astronaut with the big, bushy red hair but no face supposed to be a reference to the mayor’s assistant in Powerpuff Girls, who has the same haircut and the same unshowable face?
I’m curious if there was a number of character designs developed and rejected, or was the character faceless to begin with?
In general, the sweetest of the Venture Bros. episodes and the most generous in spirit. Rusty almost comes close to being likable.
It’s bizarre how the show walks this line between total parody and genuine drama. For instance, we are clearly not meant to take any of these characters as human beings, and yet they have all been given real backgrounds and personalities. They don’t just do whatever’s funny for a given situation, they react in character and without reliance on catchphrases or punchlines.
J.G. Thirwell’s music is overwhelming. Try watching the show on a home theater system with 5.1 surround sound.
Venture Bros: Are You There God? It’s Me, Dean
I seem to have missed something. What prompts Brock’s massacre of the Monarch’s henchmen? Is that Brock’s gift to the Monarch, lest the Monarch feel bored and disappointed on his birthday?
Venture Bros: Ice Station Impossible!
One of the things I like about The Venture Bros. is how, aside from all the ugliness, scabrous humor, scatology, cruelty and misanthropy, there is almost always some really interesting idea.
This time, it’s Mrs. Impossible.
First of all, props to Publick and Hammer for coming up with a cogent, valid comment/criticism on the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards is a preening, callous prick and Professor Impossible strikes me as a serious consideration of what that guy would be like in a real-life sense: cold, calculating, controlling and ultimately murderous.
But his wife (Sally?) as the woman who becomes invisible, but only her skin, well. It sticks with me.
Great idea for a character. Maybe not a superhero, because there’s not much “super” about her, but a tragic flaw. A beautiful woman who, unless she concentrates really hard, cannot maintain her outer beauty. The scenes between her and Rusty have a real punch for me because a) Mrs. Impossible is a great piece of character design (meaning, I, like Rusty, want to have sex with her) and then b) it’s impossible to see her beauty again after you’ve seen the muscles and tendons twitching beneath her skin. Endlessly attractive when her skin is on, one wants to stay with her forever. And yet, one could never relax around her, as you’d always worry that the next time you looked, AAAGGHHH! The red, twitchy muscles again. And no eyelids to boot. Beauty, lest we forget, is only skin deep.
Rusty is such a shallow, hateful man.
ON SECOND THOUGHT: When “Race Brannon” dies, he says to Brock “Tell Johnny I love –” then dies. I was fully expecting a scene where Brock would track down “Johnny” (whoever he is), tell him that Race’s dying words were “Tell Johnny I love him,” and then realize that Race’s dying words could easily have been “Tell Johnny I love Jane” or “Tell Johnny I love his cooking” or “Tell Johnny I love Alias.” And maybe the news that Race loves him wouldn’t make Johnny feel better, but then Brock wouldn’t have it in him to redact his message. And one more person would be made a little more unhappy by Brock Samson.
Madagascar, Small Time Crooks, Schindler’s List
Boy, now that’s a marquee!
Sometimes all a movie has to be is funny, and the first two movies on this short list are funny (Schindler has its moments too, but let’s not push it). I wouldn’t confuse either Madagascar or Small Time Crooks with high art, but Madagascar is a scream. I watched it for the third or fourth time this evening (that’s how it is when you’ve got kids) and my four-year-old and we both laughed our heads off. You know a movie has got something on the ball when both the four-year-old and the forty-four-year-old are laughing at the same gags.
It has almost no plot, and for once it’s a relief. These CGI pictures are so expensive, they usually end up over-plotted and airtight, not a moment wasted. As James Urbaniak once said about Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, “You could bounce a quarter off that movie.” And as much as I like the Pixar movies (I’ve seen all of them at least 50 times), they are slick, polished and calculated compared to Madagascar, which has a loose, flexible, what-the-hell quality about it. Maybe because it’s only 75 minutes long, 60 of which passes without the semblance of a plot. It feels like a much older comedy, something like Horsefeathers perhaps, with an accent on situation and character instead of plot, which, considering its budget and construction, is a miracle. I mean, think of it. Here’s a movie that had to cost over $100 million and was developed over something like a decade, and at some point someone in charge (probably Jeffrey Katzenberg) said “You know what? The hell with plot and ‘lessons’ and heart-tugging emotion. People get that all the time from family films. Let’s just make this the funniest thing we can, let it breathe a little. Can we do that?”
And then it works, and goes on to make a billion dollars (I’m guessing).
Small Time Crooks I haven’t seen since it came out, but, like a lot of Woody Allen’s slighter movies, it holds up well over time. I would put it slightly below Manhattan Murder Mystery or Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy in terms of pure enjoyment.
Woody Allen gets lauded all the time for his writing and direction, but no one ever seems to notice what a great actor he is. And you could say “Yeah, but he’s always Woody Allen,” but so what? Cary Grant was always Cary Grant, no one ever complained about it. The detail, spontaneity and rhythm of his performances is consistently astonishing to me. How he gets the performances he does from his other cast members is another question. I’ve heard from a number of actors that he is ridiculously incommunicative as a director, but he somehow he manages to get career-best performances from people. In the case of Small Time Crooks, there’s Elaine May, who I’ve never seen work as an actor before, and she is amazing here. Yes, okay, everyone’s playing stupid, but she takes it to a whole different level. With Michael Rappaport for instance, we can see that we’re seeing a smart guy play a stupid guy, but Elaine May is completely opaque, your jaw drops when she says the things she does. I’ve actually met people who are as stupid as her character here, and that’s how they are. Not just garden-variety stupid people, I mean people where you really don’t know how they get through the day, you’re worried they’re going to forget to breathe or something.
Although the DVD transfer is only okay, the photography by Zhou Fei is typically luminescent.
And I bring up Schindler’s List only to point out that it also features the guy painting the name on the glass door again. So there you are, Hudsucker, Seven and Schindler, the basis to your next “stump the film geek” quiz.