Animal Movies!

by: Katie Bruggeman

I'm an avid watcher of animal movies, and it's not just because I'm usually stoned. There's something comforting and whimsical about watching an animal take on human traits, like talking, doing laundry, mopping the floor, washing the dishes, scrubbing out the shower, and babysitting the children. Wait, that doesn't just happen in movies--it's what I force them to do at my house!  I buy them from The Home For Retired Showbiz Animals out in Passaic, New Jersey.

Here's some animal movie reviews!




Free Willy 2 & 3

Why do they keep freeing this goddamn whale?  At some point the Coast Guard needs to give Willy some tough love and let him find his own way out of these sticky, life-threatening situations.  A team of professional animal trainers can teach him how to flip around in the air and catch flaming torches in his mouth, but they can't teach him to stay within the confines of an electrical fence that will keep him from certain death?  It seems a little 'fishy' to me!  (pun alert!)  

All of this leads me to believe that maybe he wants to escape.  Maybe he's sick of living in captivity and wants to swim far away from these meddling humans that force him to perform insulting and humiliating stunts in order to entertain fat, bamboozled tourists that fork over $20 each to sit around on bleachers and get splashed by imprisoned ocean dwellers.  Maybe we shouldn't spend millions of dollars and utilize invaluable rescue workers in order to free some stupid whale keeps trying to escape in the middle of the night. 


On a side note, I had several cats that ran away when I was little and, while it was really devastating at the time, I think that it probably had something to do with the fact that I was going through my parents divorce and constantly threw the cats down the stairs in order to work out some weird abandonment issues.  Animals will leave. That's the sad state of affairs between domesticated creatures and the human beings that are their captors.





















Benji:  Off the Leash!

Disgruntled by the low pay and lack of glamour in his seeing-eye-dog job, Benji flips out, bites his blind owner, chews through his leash, and hitchhikes out to Las Vegas.  There he holes up with a showgirl named Candy in a seedy motel and pursues his real passions:  unprotected sex and crystal meth.  He enters the darkest of drug-fueled paranoid fugue states and, after three sleepless weeks, he tapes Candy to a chair and burns her repeatedly with a blowtorch.  He leaves her her cold and lifeless body on an ant-infested shag carpet.  

The feds finally catch up to him in a diner parking lot outside of Utah, where he ironically pretends that he is blind while begging for spare change.  Animal control specialists take him out in a rain of bullets, ending the long life of one of cinema's most beloved canine heroes.

This film co-stars Harry Dean Stanton as Dog Catcher Larry and Betty White as Candy the Tramp.    








Air Buddies

The fifth installment of the Air Bud franchise, this movie centers around six lovable pups that have supposedly been sired by Air Bud himself.  They're precocious little busybodies that get their noses into quite a bit of mischief, from foiling a breaking-and-entering job by thugged-out pit bulls, to proposing several Constitutional amendments to a flabbergasted Congress.  All of these madcap adventures, and they haven't even been fixed yet!

The most surprising element of this dog tale is that Air Bud had time to get a bitch pregnant, in spite of his busy baseball career (Air Bud 2: Seventh Inning Fetch), draining professional football schedule (Air Bud 3: Golden Receiver), and robust marijuana operation (Air Bud 420: Air Bud Growz Budz).  












Summer of the Monkeys

Jay Berry Lee, a poor farm boy, discovers a troupe of escaped circus monkeys while walking home one afternoon. It's a summer of fun, thrills, and unforgettable danger as Jay Berry attempts to catch the elusive monkeys and collect the reward money so that he can fulfill his dream of owning a pony.  Oddly enough, the shit hits the fan after the monkeys band together in some sort of Lord of the Flies type of alliance, and they abduct him and throw him into an abandoned mine shaft.  The monkeys then take over the town council and pass laws that make circuses illegal.  They also proclaim a precedent setting decree:  free bananas for everyone!
















The Perfect Storm 2: Waves of Dolph-struction

Just like the first Perfect Storm, a band of rag-tag, filthy merchant fisherman embark on a dangerous voyage from a New England coastal town and into the writhing anger of a thankless sea, but this time it's on the eve of World War III.

This romp through despair stars John Stamos (the poor man's George Clooney) and dozens of bomb-strapped dolphins that were let loose by the Russian military in the post-apocalyptic near future.  The Russians are back, they're angry, and they have a shitload of bombs and dolphins.  If the previous war was cold, this one will be freezing. And probably a little more wet.

You think you know about the frightening prospect of terrorizing underwater mammals that are out for the blood of human beings?  You have no idea.  These are dolphins out to settle a score: how would you like to be constantly slaughtered and passed off as tuna fish, the serfs of the sea?  Not to mention that scores of irritating eco-tourists are always trying to swim with them, grabbing onto their fins, and shoving their fingers into their blowholes?  

You may want to rethink that dolphin tattoo on the small of your back. They're here, they're queer, and they're going to kill your family.

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Visit Katie's blog, Dancing at Gunpoint, here: www.gstringsfororphans.blogspot.com

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