Friday, November 20, 2015

Sixty-Nine, Dudes!

I had several requests for this one, and, as it is a glorious piece of cinema with unparalleled storytelling, sensational acting, and exquisite wigs, it is no chore to slap 'The Devil's Advocate' with the Danger Zone. I had my Netflix Psychic powers trained on this movie for a while, and then I forgot about it, and then it appeared on the November list, no doubt because I put so much mental juju for so long out into the troposphere that the Netflix Gods had no choice but to bless us with it. Right? Pacino sez, "RIIIIIIIIIIGHTTAAGGHGHGHGH!!!!!!!"


The director of this paragon of art is Taylor Hackford. I don't usually dwell on the directors of these shitbombs, mainly because I assume most of them made the movies because they had to pay off their coke dealer or they couldn't re-fi their island in the Bahamas, but this one is worthy of note. Taylor Hackford married Helen Mirren the year this movie came out. You guys might be familiar with Helen Mirren.


So I'm going to assume Taylor Hackford was so mesmerized by his new wife's - uh, everything - that he was walking around in a waking coma, and that's the reason 'The Devil's Advocate' is such a rodeo of insanity.

Starring Keanu's accent, Charlize's wig, and Pacino's false teef, this movie is about lawyers being the devil. INSTANT COMEDY!? THAT IS SUCH A NEW JOKE I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF IT!1!?!!! In the beginning, Weiner Dog Matarazzo (who probably wouldn't give a shit if the devil actually did show up) is on the stand in a courtroom someplace in America where people have what we call "Southern" accents. Keanu, who is what we call a "lawyer," is bored, tapping on a briefcase with his alligator boots. The camera keeps showing us the alligator boots. Is this because we're meant to infer that we are in Florida, where there are alligators? Or is it because Keanu is a shapeshifter, and turns into an alligator so he can cage-fight the devil? That would be a good movie, BTW. Weiner Dog was apparently molested by her dirtbag teacher, Andy from 'True Blood,' who Keanu is defending. Keanu sees Andy try to jerk it under the table and, rightly so, has a bad feeling about defending someone who is a child molester, or, who was in anything after season 2 of 'True Blood,' so he runs out of the courtroom to ponder his future in the bathroom. A skeezy court reporter follows him to nudge him over to the dark side. When the court reporter flushes the urinal, there's a sound like a T-Rex eating a jet plane; it's so extreme that even Keanu is startled. Is this because the reporter IS THE DEVIL!?!! (I don't really see how those things follow, but whatever) It works! Keanu is super mean to Weiner Dog and gets Andy off the hook!


You're damned right, God Warrior Slykik Lady!

Charlize's permed wig and Keanu git drunk and git down in victory over shaming a twelve year old girl in court. Because everyone is partying like degenerates, it's the perfect opportunity for a minion of Satan to show up and tempt Keanu with a fancy job up in New Yawrk Ceety. Keanu doesn't think it's a for-real thing because the minion is black. SphinctersaysWHAT! He said that because he's drunk, right? I'm guessing the writer of this movie was drunk too. Hang on, who wrote this? Tony Gilroy, who swings between awesome (Bourne) and awesome ('The Cutting Edge'). OK, makes sense.

Keanu's God Warrior mom has a bad feeling about Keanu going to New Yawrk, because it's Babylon, Babylon, something something fallen. She's got every right to be worried! Every time I go to New Yawrk I think, "You know, this place is SO much worse than Florida. I mean, Florida, that place is perfect. Nothing bad EVER happens there."


Don't do it, Keanu and Charlize's wig! DON'T DO IT!

But, they do it.

Keanu uses his dark sided wizardry to stack a jury for Satan's law firm, thus proving his lawyerness to Satan, aka Al Pacino. Pacino, whose character is very subtly named John Milton, is creepin' on Keanu while spooky music plays, so that we know he's the devil. According to dialogue, he's in Indonesia AT THE SAME TIME WOT IS DIS BLACK MAGICS. Keanu goes to Milton's law firm, where he sees whats-her-face from 'Gladiator' yelling in Italian (hot) in a red suit (hot), and subsequently gets the vapors. Don't do it, Keanu! No! There is another!

I'm getting ahead of myself. Keanu hangs out with Milton in his office, which is a hilariously designed Hitler-ish concrete bunker with a fireplace in it BECAUSE HELL. Milton smiles his fake teefs and gets Keanu to admit he doesn't hang out in the bathroom because reasons, he hangs out in the bathroom because there's a glory hole in there he uses to eavesdrop on juries.


Because Keanu's passed the evil test, Milton takes him outside to his relaxing rooftop balcony with an infinity pool on it and no railings - SURE - where Keanu stares at Milton's snazzy Saturday Night Fever high-heeled boots. WTF is the boot obsession in this movie?

Satan's minion and his snotty demon wife show Keanu and Charlize their posh new apartment. Snotty Demon is always wearing some shade of green, because she's jellis of Charlize's wig, I'm guessing. While Keanu is off lawyering, Charlize has to pick out wallpaper and drapes. The way this movie is written, it's insinuated that having to decorate her apartment is what drives Charlize insane. One might appreciate the veracity of that. Poor Charlize has to put up with Snotty Demon slagging off her decorating choices and telling her that she can spend her life working, playing, or breeding. This movie is thoughtful!

Keanu's first real evil test is to see if he can get that crying bitch who built the dildo ship in 'The Core' off on a health code violation, after he butchered a goat. Delroy Lindo plays a Bad Voodoo Priest, written thoughtfully - as we now expect - to be unlike ANY stereotype of bad voodoo priests in the movies, ever. Squatting amongst stone dildos and piles of shit in a basement? Making a voodoo doll out of a cow's tongue and some nails to silence the prosecution? Speaking with a bad French accent? Check! NO STEREOTYPES HERE! Milton uses Delroy to make sure Keanu's really who he hopes he is. (Have you figured it out yet? Or are you too distracted wondering why there is still dialogue in this movie about Keanu's boots? Because everyone is still talking about the boots, except for the brief moment when Milton talks about a chicken who plays tic-tac-toe.)


At a fancy lawyer party, where everyone stands around saying cunty evil shit, Milton politely tells Charlize her wig has got to go. I love it when movies try to disguise microaggressions in shitty dialogue! While poor Charlize - who's already stressed out enough about the fact that she's decorated her apartment with yellow walls and purple velvet couches - puts up with that crap, Keanu flirts with Gladiator lady and hangs out in Milton's Hitler-ish apartment. Charlize gets MAAAAD and ditches the wig for her real hair, which, because it's a brunette bob, must mean she's not fun anymore and is about to go crazy. Snotty Demon takes her shopping to push her over the edge, and shows her her scary demon face - YIKES!


That is some Faces of Meth shit! Are we sure we aren't still in Florida? Charlize is so wigged out (c wot i did there) that she shows us her breasteses, this being long before she became a Serious Actor. Keanu is also wigged out, and while he's sticking it to poor Charlize he's imagining that he's actually sticking it to his Gladiator colleague's fake tittays. This weirds Keanu out even more when he and his visiting God Warrior mom run into Milton, Gladiator lady, and a French hooker. Keanu creeps on Gladiator's tittays, God Warrior mom creeps on Milton, and Gladiator lady licks the French hooker like a DQ chocolate-dipped cone! Do you have a bad feeling about this yet?


Milton and Keanu hang out with more hookers - and Don King - while poor Charlize is left aaaaaall alooooone. She REALLY gets a bad feeling, and starts hallucinating some scurry business and saying shit like "It's not a dream if it's true" through snot pouring out her nose, in preparation for becoming a Serious Actor. You know who else is a Serious Actor in this movie? Craig T, Coach himself, who tells his lawyer Keanu, with melancholy gravitas, "I was boning my assistant the night my wife got shot." Nice. Keanu's case of a lifetime is to prove Coach's innocence. Keanu's also got a bad feeling about this 'cause a)Coach is a slimy murdering bastard who's probably screwing his teenage stepdaughter, b)poor Charlize is making him nuts by going naked to a church and telling him "Milton fucked me," and c)he is super conflicted about Gladiator lady's fake tittays.


Even worse: God Warrior mom, who's visiting again, tells Keanu the father he never knew was some dude in New Yawrk she - as Coach would say - boned one night. Do you know who that dude might POSSIBLY be?


This, on top of the fact that Charlize manages to slit her throat while everyone stands around watching her, REALLY stresses Keanu out. What on earth could alleviate that stress? That's right - a legendary 30 minute Milton rant about Christ knows what, followed by a nice boning session with Gladiator lady, who happens to be his sister. I TOLD you there was another!


(Do you like how I'm visually telling this story now almost solely through Star Wars outtakes and shots of Pacino with his eyes bugging out of his head?)

Milton keeps hilariously monologuing, lip-syncing to Sinatra, and reciting Latin while Keanu and Gladiator lady get it on in front of him. BUT WAIT THERE'S MOAR!?!1! Because Keanu is way smarter than anyone has ever given him credit for, he pulls a switcheroo on Milton and kills himself before actually impregnating his sister with next-gen demon spawn. YAHTZEE, motherfuckers!


This, as you might imagine, makes the Devil REALLY mad. It makes him so mad, in fact, that he transmogrifies into an insane screaming flaming naked winged digital hybrid of himself and Keanu. It kind of looks like that one time Keanu played Siddhartha, which technically means Keanu is both an incarnation of evil AND an incarnation of good.


Everything catches on fire, there's some running and screaming, and then, because this movie is, as I stated earlier, a rodeo of insanity, we are suddenly taken through a religious wormhole back to the bathroom where Keanu was pondering his future in the beginning of the movie. Wait - hang on a sec. Are you telling me this whole fucking story was basically a dream sequence and Keanu gets a do-over?


WORST
STORYTELLING
DEVICE
EVAR
!?!?!*%&^!(*^%(!*^%*!(!(%)!!!%(%!15811!!

Keanu does the right thing for Weiner Dog and puts Andy away, but, as you may recall, the court reporter is also an incarnation of the Devil, because everything in this movie is telegraphed like the world's worst fixed title fight. So now we know Keanu is doomed to live perpetually in that bathroom of limbo, pondering his future like Zoolander, in a milquetoast, moralistic aping of 'Groundhog Day.'


One more, for good measure! 'The Devil's Advocate' DEFINITELY gets the Nickelback seal of approval.