January 16, 2004: The Titular Draw

Ben Stiller's Jewish, so he's uptight and neurotic… No! Wait! Ben Stiller's an actuary, so he's uptight and neurotic, constantly calculating the risks of everything he does, even though it doesn't seem to help in terms of him being smushed uncomfortably against extremely sweaty men, at least in the previews. But then "Along Came Polly," who is played by Jennifer Aniston and who injects just the note of wildness Stiller needs to realize that life is about more than avoiding possible peril. In the process, naturally, they fall in love. From the previews, as was alluded to above, this appears to be an attempt to combine gross-out hijinks and Stiller's peerless frustrated mugging; the Stiller-centrism is expected from writer/director John Hamburg, who previously scripted Stiller vehicles "Meet the Parents" (great) and "Zoolander" (not great). This could be good, but I'm probably not going to pay to find out.

Another thing I'm not going to find out is why "Teacher's Pet" is a highly anticipated film among certain subgroups of this great population. That's 'cause I'm not 6. The Internet Movie Database, beloved of amateur reviewers and film enthusiasts alike, sez this is the plot: "Spot (Nathan Lane) is a dog who can talk and read. Posing as a human, he sneaks into school with his master Leonard (Shaun Flemming). Educational adventures ensue." Voice actors for this one include Kelsey Grammer, Jerry Stiller, and Paul Reubens in addition to the redoubtable Lane, so "Teacher's Pet" will probably be reasonably amusing to those parents whose children drag them thereat, but one of the joys of not yet having reproduced is that I can bypass movies that at least attempt to be witty and uplifting and focus on mindless tripe like

"Torque," whose biggest star is former MC Ice Cube and whose second-biggest star is…um…Jay Hernandez? Martin Henderson? Who knows? (It does have blonde hottie Jamie Pressly, whose struggles to get a role as something other than the tough girlfriend of the tough guy were chronicled in a recent issue of the New Yorker. Here she plays the tough girlfriend of one of the tough guys.) This is one of the rank cinematic parade following in the skid marks of "The Fast and the Furious," which excelled due to Rob Cohen's ability to direct a car chase and Vin Diesel's zesty, infectious overacting and bulging musculature; this entry doesn't look any better than "Biker Boyz," which looked absolutely horrible.

Nevertheless, I plan to see this movie, for the following illogical yet compelling reason: Back when I was a sprout in high school, we in IB Physics 2 had a truly great teacher in Mr. Goetz. His special genius was tolerating a certain extremely liberal amount of acting up from his students so long as we gave full effort on homework and exams. This got a lot of full effort. One of the topics our class took up was, of course, torque, and every time this topic was brought up, several current Spam-O-Matickers and I would mutter the magic word after the fashion of Beavis and Butt-head: "Torque! Torque. Torque? Torque… Torque!" And so on, a little cascade until we were done. I got a high A in IB Phys 2, and I enjoyed every minute of it, and I have such fond memories of saying "torque" over and over again that the pull of a whole movie called "Torque" is now well-nigh irresistible.

The title "Bubba Ho-Tep" has a similar luster to it, only it may work on more folks than just adolescence-addled me. It features Bruce Campbell as Elvis (that dude who died on the john was an Elvis impersonator, who had switched roles with the King when the reigning got to wearisome) and Ossie Davis as an older African-American gentleman convinced he is John Fitzgerald Kennedy. They fight mummies somehow. Bruce Campbell will be most famous to in-the-know moviegoers as Ash from the "Evil Dead" series: a man who replaced his severed hand with a chainsaw to better help him fight evil zombies unleashed by toying with the Necronomicon. Bruce Campbell portrayed him as a square-jawed lunkhead with a serious chip on his shoulder on behalf of humanity — in other words, a real man, and a man whose subsequent films bear watching for this reason. Ossie's cool too, making this an intriguing prospect. The new Landmark E Street Cinema has clutched "Bubba Ho-Tep" to its breast and kept it all to itself, so I may well wander down to see the theater (I've been once, but need to go a few more times to get enough data to add it to the movie theater reviews) and the film at once.

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