The Carrying On of A Wayward Son

Labyrinth (1986)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 59 out of 100

Metacritic Score: 50 out of 100

IMDB Score: 7.3 out of 10

I would never have considered “Labyrinth” a bad film. A tad cheesy? Of course! It has Muppets. A bit unoriginal? Why not? Some wooden acting from Jennifer Connelly? Her beauty more then makes up for any shortcomings she had as an actor in 1986.

You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power. What power? The power of voodoo. Who do? You Do. Do What? Remind me of the babe.

“Labyrinth” may not have been a perfect film but it was far from a bad film, either. In fact, I thought it was pretty great.

Apparently, critics don’t agree with me. Oh well!

In the end, I was thankful for getting the chance to watch a cherished film — a nice break from the choo-choo train of crappy movies I’ve been subjecting myself to for the last couple of months.

Deciding to mix things up for a film I had seen dozens of time over the last twenty-plus years, I went to the special screening of “Labyrinth” hosted by the Alamo Drafthouse.

Shuttle Debris, an electronic band from Austin, provided a live soundtrack for the movie. Whenever one of film’s musical numbers would happen, the movie’s sound was turned down and Shuttle Debris took over the musical reigns.

I must admit, though, I was a little disappointed with the presentation.

When I first heard about the screening, I imagined a live band with guitars, drums and at least a tambourine. Instead Shuttle Debris consisted of two guys — one with a Mac and a keyboard and another with a microphone and a somewhat decent singing voice.

It was essentially “Labyrinth”-karaoke.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that the presentation failed to live up to my expectations. David Bowie’s music was one of the most memorable aspects of the Jim Henson-directed fantasy film about a spoiled teenage girl who accidently gives her baby brother to the Goblin King.

By taking away the power of The Bowie, Shuttle Debris took a big chance. If they had been able to provide a new spin on the tunes and give the audience some remarkably different and exciting cover versions, it might have worked. Unfortunately, Shuttle Debris didn’t have the cajones to pull it off.

With the exception of the song “Chilly Down,” which the band did provide a fresh approach to with its cover, most of the songs were simply electronic whispery-vocal versions of the Bowie tunes.

Despite my disappointment with Shuttle Debris’ accompaniment of the movie, I was still able to enjoy “Labyrinth” just as much as I did when I first saw the film as a small child.

With all the attention being strewn on computer-generated characters, it’s nice to sit back and enjoy a good puppet movie every now and then.

Besides the appeal of simple nostalgia, though, “Labyrinth” is also a great source for life lessons. For example, never make idol wishes about having goblins take away your baby brother. Apparently those little boogers have big ears.

The biggest lesson I learned, though, came from one scene in the film in which Connelly’s character Sarah finds herself in a junkyard. Under the spell of a tainted piece of fruit, Sarah is almost swayed into forgetting her quest to rescue her baby brother with the appeal of being reunited with all her favorite childhood toys.

Sarah’s temptress is a disgusting little goblin weighed down by nostalgia, literally represented by a giant hump of trash-turned-treasures. Metaphorically, this hump represents the goblin’s incessant need to carry around its own personal baggage.

As the goblin reunites Sarah with childhood toy after childhood toy, it begins to pile the memories on Sarah’s back, creating her own misshapen hump of nostalgia — the threat being that unless Sarah can snap out of it she will gradually become just another goblin shuffling through the junkyard wasteland concerned only with hoarding her personal possessions like a living, breathing curio shop.

Watching this scene, I was reminded of why I began this year of bad movies in the first place. Part of the reason I had for starting this journey was due to the fact that I could no longer enjoy the movies I once did as a child.

At first, I chalked it up to the fact that I was being transformed into a movie snob and was loosing touch with what made me a movie fan to begin with.

Now, though, I’m beginning to wonder if my desperate attempt to hoard onto these childhood movies has the potential to turn me into a junk-goblin, shuffling around under the weight of my own reluctance to grow up and accept change in my taste in movies.

Is my enjoyment of “Labyrinth” due to the fact that it is a genuinely good movie or does it have more to do with nostalgia and a reluctance to give up on the things I loved as a child?

Things to think about.

“Troll 2” (1990)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 0 out of 100

IMDB score: 2 out of 10

Earlier this year I had the chance to see the film “Best Worst Movie.”

A documentary about the legacy of “Troll 2,” “Best Worst Movie was made by Michael Stephenson, the now-adult actor who played young Joshua in the 1990 horror film.

This awesome poster is available from Mondo Tees and the Alamo Drafthouse.

Although Stephenson’s film was an amazing story that was entertaining from start to finish, I walked out of his movie a little conflicted.

Sure my sides hurt from laughing so hard at the documentary’s loving ribbing of “Troll 2,” but I remembered really digging the horror movie when I saw it as a kid.

Could I possibly have liked a movie that bad? Or was a generation’s love for irony and cynicism responsible for taking a decent horror movie and transforming it into something epic in its awfulness.

Well, after watching “Troll 2” for the first time in almost 20 years, I have to say that yes, the movie is that bad.

It turns out I had a terrible taste in films as a kid (some would say, I still do).

“Troll 2” is the sequel only in name to the Sonny Bono fantasy film I talked about a few days ago. In fact, the movie doesn’t even feature any trolls. The potato-sack wearing, paper-mache mask donning monsters of the movie are actually goblins. And in case you forget that fact, they actually live in a town named Nilbog, “goblin” spelled backwards naturally.

The non-troll goblin stars of "Troll 2."

When Joshua and his family decide to vacation in the small town of Nilbog, they unintentionally wind up on the menu for a town full of shape-changing goblins. From there, things get a little weird.

It seems that goblins can’t stand the taste of meat — which puts a bit of a dampener on their love for eating humans. Not one to let a little thing like biology get in the way of their desire to chow down on people, the goblins concoct an elaborate scheme that involves feeding people nasty green Gak-looking slime.

Once a person chows down on this junk, they are turned into human/plant hybrids — the perfect late-night snack for a hungry goblin.

Thankfully, Joshua has a little help in saving his family from becoming goblin chow: his dead grandfather who may or may not be in hell.

With his grandfather coaching him, Joshua will stop at nothing when it comes to saving his parents from being turned into plant-people including pulling down his pants and peeing on dinner, playing with fire and crashing goblin church services.

Want some Joshua?

The movie has become known in recent years for its highly quotable bad dialogue that is delivered in truly bizarre ways from a cast of mostly amateur actors.

Watching the film for the first time since seeing “Best Worst Movie,” I noticed that Stephenson’s documentary had a definite effect on my enjoyment of the film.

Now having known a little more about the actors and crew who made the movie, I spent more time wondering what was going through the cast and crew’s heads while they made the movie then actually paying attention to the plot and story.

“Troll 2” may not be the film I remembered it being as a kid, but it is still enjoyable to watch — if only because it truly is the best worst movie.

Elf Bowling The Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike (2007)

IMDB score: 3.9 out of 10

There have been some pretty bad video game-to-movie adaptations released. And then there’s “Elf Bowling The Movie.”

Call me crazy but I think that this movie's prominent use of penguins on the DVD cover is intended to ride the coattails of another CGI animated flick featuring funny penguins.

Based on the briefly popular Internet game/work productivity dampener that saw Santa Claus cruelly using his elf buddies as pins in a game of bowling, this CGI animated movie takes that basic premise and stretches it to the point of ridiculousness.

Seriously, this movie is so loopy I honestly think it was made on a drunken bet.

The film’s story reimagines the legend of Santa Claus to include pirates, gangster penguins, union labor strikes and the island of Fiji.

As the movie begins, Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle are two toy-thieving pirates who sail the high seas making mischief — always finding time, though, to enjoy their favorite game, bowling.

While Dingle is unrepentantly bad, Santa yearns for a life where he doesn’t need to make a living stealing children’s toys and selling them back to their parents.

Santa, I realize that being a pirate may sound cool and all but if you have some moral issues about stealing kids’ toys (and you should) there are other jobs you can take. You like the oceanic, slightly homoerotic lifestyle of piracy? Join the Navy.

When the Kringle brothers’ penchant for cheating at bowling causes the crew to mutiny and make the duo walk the plank, they wind up in the North Pole. Encountering a band of elves, including one that apparently has use of the Force, Santa is hired on as the official leader/spokeman for the elves. Harnessing their deep-rooted desire to make toys, Santa seeks to repent for his toy-stealing ways and embarks on a new life as a yearly worldwide gift-giver.

Unfortunately, Dingle grows jealous of Santa’s success and seeks to overthrow his chubbier brother and take over the Christmas business for himself.

Oh, and the elves apparently enjoy being used as bowling pins.

What it says about an employee’s self-esteem when his biggest sense of joy comes from having his boss hurl a heavy ball at him, I don’t know. Bowling for elves, though, is a huge source of bonding between Santa and his pint-sized staff.

This, fortunately, is not the stupidest part of the movie, though. There’s also a wide-collection of half-assed songs (not nearly as bad as those found in “Romeo and Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss,” though), there’s some truly adult-oriented humor that most parents would find objectionable at the very least and then there’s the movie’s off-putting insistence at utilizing a racial caricature for one of its elves. Wrapple, the rappin’ elf, is a black elf who pops in and out of the movie to offer an “urban” perspective on things — including, but not limited to, suggesting that Detroit could use the magical powers of an elf to clean up things. Weird.

I can see why a movie like “Elf Bowling” was released.

With the commercialization of Christmas at an all-time high, there are an increasing number of Christmas presents that people need to buy. Once you buy all the important people in your life gifts, you still have to find crappy stocking stuffers to hand out to the rest of the world. “Elf Bowling” is that perfect gift for such an occasion.

Just thoughtful enough to not be thoughtless, giving a young distant relative the movie is the perfect way to say “you’re not as important to me as my own kids but I thought you should have this terrible movie so that your parents think I’m a swell guy.”

Troll (1986)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 33 out of 100

IMDB score: 3.5 out of 10

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen “Troll 2,” a film that defines bad moviemaking, but I just didn’t think the original “Troll” was that bad. If anything, I thought the film was a clever, if cheesy, fantasy film that’s perfect for children.

This is the troll, not Sonny Bono.

With an all-star cast of b-movie proportions that includes Sonny Bono, Anne Lockhart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Moriarty, “Troll” is a fantasy/comedy/horror about a troll attempting to turn an apartment complex into a renascence fair nut’s wet dream.

Oh, and another thing: “Troll” features the original Harry Potter.

Yes, that’s right. Years before J.K. Rowling dreamt up her four-eyed boy wizard cash cow, Harry Potter, Jr. was saving his little sister from the evil machinations of an evil troll that had the power to turn Sonny Bono into a giant hairy pickle.

The Potter family made a poor choice when choosing what day to move into their new apartment. Before they could unpack all of their boxes, the littlest Potter, Wendy, stumbled upon the movie’s namesake.

After kidnapping Wendy and stealing her identity, the troll ninjas his way into the Potter family. When he isn’t going nuts over hamburgers and putting the smack down on his new big brother, Harry Potter, the Troll takes the time to visit all of his new neighbors and transform them into giant pulsating pickles that, when they pop, unleash a mess of foliage and fairies upon the apartment.

Soon enough, the apartment building is full of dancing, singing Muppets.

A singing, chirping mushroom is just one of many terrifying creatures that inhabit the world of "Troll."

Luckily, Harry Potter discovers an ally in his battle to rescue his sister, Eunice St. Clair, a former princess/current witch whose duty it is to put a stop to her former boyfriend, the troll.

Yes, the movie is silly and yes there is no shortage of corny, awkward laugh-inducing scenes but there is still something charming about the film. When compared to most of the live-action family movies that get released every year, “Troll” has a surplus of heart and imagination. There are some pretty decent special effects and, for small children, some real good scares.

While it may not be the “Labyrinth,” it’s also no “Troll 2.”

Plus, children of all ages can find something to learn from “Troll.”

For example, I discovered that it’s perfectly acceptable for little people to befriend small children because of their height similarity. While you may think it’s creepy that a middle-aged man would become friends with a small girl and invite her into his apartment unaccompanied, everything’s A-OK as long as they are both shorter then four feet.

Plus, apparently all little people harbor a secret dream to become elves and if they are lucky enough to befriend a small girl who is really a troll in disguise, they will have their dreams come true and be transformed into Gelfling-looking Muppets that vaguely resemble an elf version of themselves.

I also learned that Sonny Bono as a swinging bachelor is a lot more frightening to me then any number of trolls, goblins, giant bat-monsters or talking tree stumps. Julia Louis-Dreyfus makes a hot wood nymph though.

Dumpster Baby (2000)

IMDB Score: 3.9 out of 10

Yes, this movie, from writer/director team James Bickert and Randy Hill, is as bad as its title might suggest.

Truth be told, though, I’m not quite sure what the film was about. Maybe it was the bizarre schizophrenic plot that changed locations and characters every ten minutes or maybe it was because the sound design of the film left the dialogue sounding like it was recorded using two coffee cans and a piece of string but I only have a vague sense of the film’s plot.

The movie, as far as I could tell, had no appearance of the poster's "Garbage Pal Kids" version of a dumpster baby.

It seems that the film follows the misadventures of an abandoned crack baby who is left to die in a dumpster. What follows is a sprawling anthology of morality tales from the perspective of the most well-traveled crack baby ever. As the dumpster darling is passed from hand to hand, audiences are treated to short glimpses of the kindness, cruelty and utter naivety of humanity.

In reality, what this amounts to, is some film school reject’s attempt to create his own version of Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” centered around one of the most taboo subjects he could possibly think of.

To top it off, though, there’s some kind of mysterious Freddy Kruger resurrected serial killer on the loose who may or may not have been the baby’s father. This pale-faced phantom stranger has the ability to glide around the city unseen even though he looks like a leftover from the film “Dark City.” Honestly, I’m not sure what that whole subplot was about and I have no intention of watching the movie again in the hopes of finding out.

I’m as much a fan of edgy independent cinema as the next guy but common — make a little effort! An anthology of human corruption staring an aborted fetus could have been a truly unique and interesting film in the hands of somebody like Todd Solondz. In the hands of producer Lloyd Kauffman, it came off as exploitive and entirely missing of the mark.

While there were a few interesting glimpses at something important the directors had to say, these scenes were lost beneath the shuffle of morbidly obese crack addicts giving birth, naked sexcapades and a scene where the baby was set adrift Moses-style along a river housed only in a beer cooler.

I do have to admit some kind of curiosity about what the heck that whole trench coat vampire subplot was about. With dialogue that was incomprehensible most of the time, I had to guess at what characters were saying and even my best theories leave me stumped about what the ghost character had to do with anything.

Are there any fans of the movie out there that would be kind enough to shed some light on this query?

What am I asking?

I doubt any fans of this movie possess the motor skills to work a doorknob let alone operate a keyboard — the filmmaker’s mothers aside.

Because everybody knows that no matter how crappy your movie is, you’ll always have a fan in your mother. Well, maybe that rule doesn’t apply to a movie about a traveling dumpster baby.

Now let’s close with a big musical number:

Big Trouble (2002)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 48 out of 100

Metacritic score: 47 out of 100

IMDB score: 6.3 out of 100

I began my quest to watch a year’s worth of bad movies for several reasons — chief among them being that I was frequently finding it harder to enjoy movies I had previously loved due to a growing cynicism and a snobbish attitude towards film.

I like how for some reason, none of the actors were dressed in character for the movie poster.

“Big Trouble” is a perfect example of this.

When I first saw the film, a madcap ensemble comedy about crime among idiots, I loved it. Watching it again seven years later, though, I found the movie to be slightly messy and somewhat disappointing. Which, to me, is disappointing in and of itself.

I realize that time changes people. Seven years is a long time for a person — its only expected that little things like a sense of humor, world perspective and the ability to appreciate slapstick would be altered over the course of more then half a decade.

It’s a shame, though, that movies aren’t safeguarded against the ravages of time.

“Big Trouble” is based on a novel by Dave Barry and is directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Its stars include Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Stanley Tucci, Tom Sizemore, Johnny Knoxville, Dennis Farina, Patrick Warburton, Jason Lee and Zooey Deschanel.

With talent like that attached, it’s a mystery why “Big Trouble” wasn’t a hit. That said, I still found the movie to be mostly enjoyable. Solid comedic performances by Tom Sizemore and Dennis Farina played just as well for me today as they did when I first saw the movie.

The same, unfortunately, couldn’t be said about the movie’s plot. When I first saw the movie, I thought the plot’s fast pace and interconnected storytelling was exciting and engaging. Today, my appreciation wasn’t able to avoid leaking out through the story’s numerous holes and missed opportunities.

Although I’m a fan of Dave Barry, I must admit I never got around to reading the novel that “Big Trouble” was based on. I read his follow-up novel, though, so I’m pretty sure that “Big Trouble” was a great read that helped fill in the gaps that ultimately hurt the movie. At a running time of only 85 minutes, the film moved really fast — never really stopping to take a breath and appreciate the multiple storylines and quirky characters contained within.

Rewatching “Big Trouble,” I may have felt some tinges of regret when I couldn’t laugh as loud as I did the first time I saw the movie, but I also learned a valuable lesson about how sometimes less is more. Much like “Reno 911!” played better as a 30-minute television show then as a full-length movie, “Big Trouble” just had too much going on during the film and was ultimately unable to support its own weight.

With so many interesting characters orbiting the film’s narrator (Tim Allen), it was no surprise that his character, seemingly a proxy for Dave Barry, got lost beneath the shuffle of the story he was telling.

This less-is-more principal shouldn’t just be applied to film — I can also use the lesson in my own life.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I need to limit the number of quirky people I associate with. If I surround myself with talented comedians with unique personalities, it’ll only be my own fault when I become the least-engaging character in my own life.

Reno 911!: Miami — 2007

Metacritic score: 47 out of 100

Rotten Tomatoes score: 35 out of 100

IMDB score: 5.9 out of 10

I can’t blame “Reno 911!: Maimi”’s filmmakers for making a sub-standard theatrical adaptation of their hit TV show. The cards were, after all, stacked against them.

I wish Don Johnson had cameoed.

It takes real guts to release a theatrical version of a TV show while it is still on the air. At the same time, it takes real talent to pull it off successfully.

That’s not to say that the cats behind “Reno 911!” aren’t talented — because they are. In the end, though, their talent alone wasn’t enough to pull off a 90-minute version of their very funny TV show that retained the laugh-to-minute ratio of a standard 30-minute episode.

“Reno 911!,” for those uninitiated, is a spoof of “COPS,” the police reality show, that featured a cast of unhinged, socially inept police offers who patrolled the corrupt streets of Reno, NV.

In 2007, between seasons of the Comedy Central show, the cast and crew shot a feature-length version that saw Reno’s finest travel to Miami Beach for a police convention. The plot, involving a terrorist attack that incapacitates all of Miami’s police force, is really just a flimsy excuse to get the characters doing their usual shtick in a new, exotic location.

There are certainly a bunch of really funny jokes in the movie — unfortunately, they are spread thin over the film’s 84-minute running time.

If anything, watching “Reno 911: Miami” helps illustrate a very important lesson about spreading yourself too thin.

Inspirational sports movies have taught me that I should always reach for the stars if I want to succeed. Hollywood success stories are almost always an exercise in the excess. You rarely see a movie about a person who wins a minor victory — they’re always about people who push themselves to the limit, go in for all or nothing and come home a hero.

In reality, though, people rarely are faced with “all or nothing” situations. Most of the time, people encounter an end result that falls squarely in the win-some, loose-some category.

“Reno 911!” was the little basic cable show that could. Made with a small budget and a devoted crew, the show became an underground hit. Seeking to push itself further, it released a major motion picture version of itself in theaters across the world.

Critically and commercially, it failed — mostly.

The movie still found a connection with a devoted audience of fans, had three versions of the movie released on DVD and the show continued to run on television for another two years.

So, you see, it wasn’t a simple clear-cut matter of the show succeeding or bombing. It may not have been the success that it had hoped to be, but it wasn’t a total loss.

Wow … I’m not sure where I was going with this. I thought I started out talking about spreading yourself too thin but now I’m talking about something else entirely.

Maybe I’m spreading myself too thin with this project.

I realized the other day that by this time next year, I will have written over 400 pages about movies.

That’s almost 300,000 words.

As the year goes on, you should totally expect to read more of these types of blogs — where I really don’t say anything insightful or noteworthy. There is, after all, only so much to be said about bad movies.

Orange County (2002)

Metacritic Score: 48 out of 100

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 47 out of 100

IMDB Score: 6.1 out of 10

Before there was “The OC” or “Laguna Beach,” there was “Orange County.”

Whatever happened to Colin Hanks. I thought he showed a lot of promise.

A film in the highly lucrative “rich white kids with problems” genre, “Orange County” starred Tom Hanks’ son, Colin Hanks, as a rich white kid with problems.

When he is not admitted into Stanford due to a clerical error caused by his school’s guidance counselor, high school senior Shaun Brumder (Hanks) sets out to correct the mistake by undertaking a madcap-filled road trip with his girlfriend (played by Schuyler Fisk, the daughter of Sissy Spacek) and his older brother (played by Jack Black).

Like most Hollywood movies about young people facing turmoil, “Orange County” treads in easily-solved issues centered around social identity, detached parents and the greatest teen movie plot device since unrequited love for a cheerleader: academics.

But instead of getting assistance from Edward James Olmos, the educational hero of young inner city movie characters everywhere, Hanks has to rely on Jack Black as his sidekick.

Because this is an MTV movie, there’s a great alt-rock soundtrack, tons of pretty people and lots of drug references. Unfortunately, neither the yet-untapped majesty of Jack Black nor the combined might of two Hollywood spawn were able to completely save “Orange County” from the weight of teen movie clichés.

“Orange County” is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. All of the main actors are enjoyable in their roles and the lengthy list of cameos from comedy legends help support the film’s laugh-ratio.

Unfortunately, the film does not play as well for me now as it did when I first watched it as a high school junior.

It’s not the film’s fault, though. It’s me.

Back in high school, with the world’s possibilities laid out at my feet, “Orange County” spoke to the part of me who was still convinced that I could do anything if I set my heart to it. I identified with Hank’s character, a wannabe writer. I even learned a valuable lesson from the film — it doesn’t matter where you do what you do, as long as you keep doing it.

This movie-inspired lesson was a major factor in deciding where to go to school and what to study.

Now, looking back at the film seven years of disappointment later, I see the movie with a cynic’s eyes. While the movie’s lesson is no less valid, I grew angry with myself for having not actually learned the lesson I thought I did.

I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was in high school. When I realized I was not going to convince my parents to support me through film school, I told myself that I would continue to hone my craft while I went through business school. Just because I didn’t get a formal education in film didn’t mean I couldn’t pursue my dreams.

After high school, though, I only picked up a camera one more time. With school, a job and new friends tugging at my time, I made a conscious choice to leave my dreams of being a film director behind along with my high school locker combination and my letterman jacket, all trappings of a life I no longer led.

I betrayed my dreams of being a filmmaker and “Orange County” just served to remind me of this fact. Thanks a bunch, jerks.

Oliver & Company (1988)

IMDB Score: 6.3 out of 10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 39 out of 100

The tagline for this late ‘80s Walt Disney cartoon proclaims “Oliver & Company” to be the “first Disney movie with attitude.”

In pre-9/11 New York, it was not uncommon to see dogs driving taxis. How times have changed.

Apparently, having attitude translates to featuring animals that are portrayed as racial caricatures that perpetrate stereotypes.

All ribbing aside, I have a special spot in my heart for “Oliver & Company” — a spot in my chest cavity that no amount of now-dated ‘80s references can chip away at. The film may not be a perfect (or, as I’m sure hack critics liked to say upon the film’s release, “purr-fect”) movie but it has its charming moments.

Taking the original Charles Dickens’s story of “Oliver Twist” and placing it through the Disneyfication process, the movie is a about Oliver, a lonely kitten who is taken in by a gang of pick-pocketing canines. After he is accidently adopted by a Disney standard-issue precocious brat, Oliver has to choose between his furry friends and his new life as the pampered pet of a 5^th Avenue latch-key kid.

Featuring the voice talents of Joey Lawrence, Billy Joel, Cheech Marin, Dom DeLuise and Bette Midler, “Oliver & Company” is very much a film of its time. Seeped in that special kind of ‘80s cool that featured a predominate use of sunglasses, piano solos and heavy eye shadow, the movie is a soulless piece of commercial consumerism disguised as a talking animal picture. Heck, Huey Lewis sings the movie’s opening song.

While Mr. Lewis may be a little too “black sounding” for some, his presence in the film helped usher in the new era of Disney cartoons that was as conscious of its marketing tie-in potential as it was its character design.

Like I mentioned above, though, I have a special fondness for the film. I remember constantly watching the movie with my sister when we were young — each of us trying to outdo the other with our Tito impressions.

While now I can look at “Oliver & Company” as the bitter cynic that I have become and see a latent racism behind the stereotypical Latino Chihuahua voiced by Cheech Marin, back then I was just happy to see a Hispanic character in a cartoon.

It is this kind of childlike sense of forgiveness that I’m trying to recapture with my yearlong bad movie experiment. I want to remember what it was like to be able to watch a movie and not constantly be on the look out for things to dislike or get angry about.

I don’t know if this pessimistic attitude was created during my stint as a movie critic or if it is a byproduct of having seen so many movies during my short-life, but it is definitely a habit that I feel the need to break.

So for the rest of the space I have allocated myself for this column, I will focus on the positives:

I loved, loved, loved Billy Joel’s very cheesy yet very catchy musical number “Why Should I Worry.” I had forgotten how much I liked that song and, after hearing it again, instantly went out and purchased it off iTunes.

Also, I can get behind any animated movie that features a loan shark as the antagonist. How very ‘80s of Disney! Don’t we have enough cartoons that feature mustache-twirling evil relatives as the bad guys? It’s nice to see a villain that is more concerned about the profit-line then he’s concerned about marrying the princess against her will.

“Oliver & Company” may not be a great film and it may not have aged well, but neither have most ‘80s Disney cartoons. At least this one has a Billy Joel song.