By Rachel Krueger
The theory that there are only X number of plots in the world has been blamed for everything from Avatar being basically Dances With Fern Gully to the complete works of Shakespeare. I’m going to throw more Blame logs on the Blame fire because there is talk of a Les Grossman movie.
Remember that time you were watching Tropic Thunder kind of by accident and it ended up being way less shitty than you’d anticipated, especially that one bit where you lost the plot entirely because you were trying to figure out who the fat, freckled actor playing Les Grossman was? And how the shock of suddenly seeing couch-jumping, thetan-eating Tom Cruise under the bald-cap was the funniest thing about the entire scene?
If you can sustain that sense of amused shock for two hours, there’s the barest chance the Les Grossman film will be straight up your alley. I’m skeptical, though, that the Powers That Be will bother wrangling Cruise into a viable plot as well as a fat-suit.
The pervading opinion seems to be that, given the apparent dearth of fresh stories, a beloved character = a hit film. SNL has been plying this trade for years, with greater (Wayne’s World) or lesser (MacGruber) success. Comic book films regularly cash in on the name-brand cow, since Hulk geeks will see Hulk films no matter how bafflingly bad. The system works, because people are more drawn to the devil they think has had some good moments than the fresh and potentially interesting devil.
I, for one, am sick of being offered sludge and hearing But you love Indiana Jones when I don’t bite. I will not be gimmicked by a familiar face, and I refuse to have my favorite jokes turned into shaggy-dog stories.
Amen, sister!