Okay, I tried to watch this once last year, and couldn't get through the first few minutes. After reading through the reviews and seeing people say it's a lot like Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and Army of Darkness, I thought I'd give it a fair chance, and forced myself to get through the goofy beginning.
John Dies at the End (2012) isn't about John Dying at the End. John actually dies just short of the middle of the movie, maybe about 1/3rd of the way through, but this doesn't seem to slow him down much. This movie is actually about a drug called Soy Sauce that gets invented by a rastafarian chemist. Soy Sauce makes you able to see things, do things, see the future, and predict the past. Or maybe it's see the past, and predict the future. Yea, that makes more sense. In any case, John, and his friend Dave, get sucked into a crazy world of drug-addled visions and inter-dimensional entities trying to cross over into our reality, and, well, we just can't have that, now can we?
Let me just say, this movie is not in the same class as Army of Darkness, nor Tucker and Dale vs Evil. It tries to manufacture a friendship between two guys, who don't seem to have any real friendship (at least to me), and cast them into a zany mash-up of ESP and psycho-Babylonian nonsense. I just made up the phrase Psycho-Babylonian! Awesome, innit? I think it means a mix of psychotic and ancient and just plain crazy. Suffice it to say that this movie needed the viewers to be as drug-addled as the people who wrote it to really be amused by it, and there were very few redeeming qualities. I may be crazy, but I don't think I'm drug-addled. Or, maybe I'm secretly a patient at a mental facility, who only THINKS he's a blogger who reviews movies, and I didn't actually SEE John Dies at the End, but I had a new drug and it gave me a crazy vision of the movie, and I'm actually just sitting in padded room, in a strait jacket, and drooling on myself. But, like the zombies wearing cashmere sweaters once asked, "What differenth doth it make?"
Doesn't ring a bell? They made a movie once, where anyone who was bitten by a zombie, died, and was reanimated wearing a cashmere sweater and constantly asking "What differenth doth it make? over and over. I can't recall the name of the movie, but it was obviously a comedy. At one point in the movie, this boy and girl are trying to warn the town about the growing zombie menace. They pass by the Sheriff's office, and peek in his window to see if he's still human. He's sitting at a desk, doing paperwork. They duck down below the window, and begin discussing what to tell the Sheriff so he believes them about the zombies. Through the window, you can clearly see the sheriff get attacked by a zombie, then the zombie wander off, and the sheriff get up a minute later and sit down at his desk. The kids take a final peek at him before running into his office, and telling their story. Everything they say, the Sheriff asks them "What differenth doth it make?" Not being all Shakespearean about it, he's just talking with a lisp. And wearing a chasmere sweater. Eventually the two genius kids figure out that they're actually talking to a zombie, and not just a sheriff who doesn't give a rat's ass, and get the hell out of there before he gets tired of asking "What difference does it make?" and starts getting all bite-y.
Why am I telling you all this, you ask? Because I think the cashmere-sweater-zombie movie was better than John Dies at The End, and I can't even remember the name of it. However, in John Dies at the End, there are the likes of Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti, skilled veteran actors who can brighten up an otherwise forgettable feature, and they do their best. The parts involving these two gentlemen are otherwise interesting bits in an uninteresting work of varied flashbacks, flash-forwards, and flash-sidewayses. Way too much time travel gobbledygook for my taste, and there's never actually any time travel going on, so I'm just ending up confusing myself. This movie just gives me a headache, like I'd get after a night of drinking straight vodka by the beer-stein-full. Which, I've done.
Okay, so, I can't recommend this movie. I don't even think watching it once is worth it, unless you're a diehard Clancy Brown or Paul Giamatti fan, and even then, neither of them are on-screen much. Not much nudity, and what there is of it, isn't very good. I guess that's about it. Can't think what else I might have missed. I'll probably forget I've seen this movie, unless I remember that I didn't like it. The reviews on Netflix play this up as an instant cult classic. Instant cult classic, my ass.
In other news, Z Nation actually getting better. The zombie-bit guy is actually going half-zombie, as far as I can tell, mimicking (or perhaps this series is based on) that long-ago webcomic I read a while back where one of the characters was actually half-zombie. So, things might get pretty entertaining on this show. I may keep watching it as long as it doesn't interfere with me watching Grimm or Constatine, assuming those shows are still good this season. heh
That's all for tonight. Catch you guys tomorrow with a hopefully better movie. :-)
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