“A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet” – William Shakespeare
“His llama pies? Weaker!” – Anagram for “William Shakespeare”
Turns out Mr. Shakespeare was full of shite: anagrams make everything way better. Just take a look at these garbageful summer blockbusters, and think of how much better they could have been if they had only trusted the power of shuffling letters around for inspiration.
Farm Snorters 2, the sequel to a gritty, moving documentary about meth abuse in rural Kansas, is one of the best imaginary films to not come out this summer. The scene where Clyde and Phillip stay up all night to milk every cow in their barn three times would have been just as chilling as it would have been poignant. Too bad they chose to make Transformers 2 instead, a sixty billion dollar action movie based on cheap plastic toys. Purists will note a plethora of critical errors in the film (still missing are any shots of Optimus Prime being thrown down the stairs to test his indestructibility, or the pivotal scene where my dad steps on Megatron and yells at me for leaving my shit in the living room), and intelligent people will note that it’s really bad.
Gerbils to Dinosaurs, an incredibly inventive and endearing fake children’s movie, was just as profitable as it was nonexistent when it didn’t storm box offices earlier this summer. A cautionary tale of science gone awry for the elementary school set, this farcical, CGI-heavy romp would have probably featured the voices of Jack Black, Jason Bateman, Amy Poehler and the great Bob Hoskins as a mad scientist who takes a plucky, wisecrack-spouting bunch of gerbils and alters their DNA… with dino-riffic results! I have to admit, this probably wouldn’t be as good as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds looks, but it would make a lakeful of money.
There haven’t been nearly enough movies making fun of ska. That’s a simple fact. So thank goodness Will Ferrell takes a rifle to that particular barrel full of fish in his latest manchild romp (that I made up), Halftone Dolts. Ferrell plays Clancy St. Claire, trombone player for The Bumpers, “the second-worst second-wave ska band in all of Newcastle upon Tyne.” Clancy and his crew may be lousy, but they have dreams of stardom: a record deal with 2 Tone Records, a tour with Madness, maybe even find a real live black guy to join the band like the English Beat. Can he and his band overcome their lack of talent and skank their way to the top of the rude boy heap, hopefully with some dick jokes? It’s like Walk Hard but with 5,000% more British accents, and almost completely inscrutable musical references. I hate almost everything about ska and I would still rather sit through this movie than Land of the Lost, the movie Ferrell actually did end up making this summer. Too bad he didn’t anagram that shit.