Happiness & Angry Birds Slingshot Stories

Happiness

Reegs: Welcome to Bad Dad's Film Review, the podcast where a bunch of movie loving dads who manage to survive the sleepless nights and temper tantrums of parenting come together once a week to put the movies we missed under the microscope.

This week you might need to grab a box of tissues, and that's not just because of our unrelenting dad sexiness, but also because we're going to be getting all emotional in Emotions Week, having already experienced misery earlier in our mid week mention.

We'll start things off today by counting down the top five tearjerkers, the movies that squeezed tears out of the empty black space where our souls used to be. Once we've emptied our collective dad ducts, it will be time to take a look at Todd Solon's 1998 black comedy Happiness, a movie so remorselessly dark I had to watch it with night vision goggles on. In fact, it is probably worth noting that this movie has some seriously disturbing and taboo content in which we will be talking about. So, if that's gonna be a problem for you, I'd suggest you skip past all the parts where we talk about predatory pedophiles, children masturbating, and ugly, awful people being ugly and awful to each other, and move on to our final section of the show in which we explore anger via the medium of animated Birds and pigs trapped in an endless cycle of violence with Netflix's Angry Birds, and we'll decide once and for all whether the irritated avians and their porcine nemeses are impeccable or just a complete flock up. All that's left to do is introduce the dad, starting with Sidey, who once told Santa to go fuck himself Dan, a man so ancient he watched Jurassic Park live, and finally there's Peter, whose family dinners are like the Avengers reunions every time there's a new member of the team. And finally there's me regs.

Hello

Sidey: Hello.

Dan: Hi.

Been watching much? To kick us off?

Sidey: Me, I watched a couple of Mission Impossible movies.

Dan: No.

Sidey: Yeah, we're gearing up for.

For

Reegs: for the new

Sidey: the new one, yeah.

Dan: Which order should I be doing them

Sidey: One through

six, I would

Dan: But are there any that I should, because I ain't going one through

Sidey: start there.

It's a

Dan: Right.

Sidey: bit like the Fast franchise but it's better from halfway through. One with Henry

Dan: I watched one with Henry Cavill when he was in a,

Sidey: Rogue Nation.

Dan: He's in a, a truck and he's got like,

Reegs: he does the shotgun. He reloads his arms in that fight in the kitchen fight. He like

Dan: No, not that. He's in a, in a van and there's like classical music playing and it's all about kicking off. Is that the one you've seen?

Reegs: He's only in one Mission Impossible

Dan: Oh, that'll be it

Reegs: good one.

Sidey: Yeah, it's

Dan: Yeah, it was good.

Reegs: Yeah.

The new one looks absolutely bonkers.

Dan: this is the next one after that, is

Reegs: mean, they've just been publicising it using that stunt where he

Sidey: Yeah, yeah,

Reegs: Tom Cruise actually just does this

Sidey: And he did it six times, yeah.

Reegs: And yeah.

Sidey: We also watched Guardians

3. Which I actually really enjoyed, it was good. Yeah, it was good. Bit of a tearjerker, if anything,

Dan: Is that, is that a new one?

Right, okay. Yeah,

Sidey: Yeah. it's, it's Dease. Yeah, yeah, it's good. They've got a new team, a bit like the Avengers, they've now got a new team. Don't know whether they'll,

don't

think they'll carry that on. I think, I'm sure there was something else, but I didn't see the end of Secret Invasion, but you were big in that up recently.

Reegs: Oh,

man. That, wow. That is,

Sidey: yeah.

I've got that to look forward to.

Okay.

Reegs: a shame because I had been sort of half enjoying that series, but it, it, that final episode is a Turkey.

Sidey: Right, okay. Yeah. Okay.

Dan: Okay. I have watched zero

Reegs: Well, you went to watch something happen in

Dan: I did. I was in French France went to watch the mighty hammers get beat by the mighty Wren and and then back again after a long wait on the, on the boat coming back delayed like five hours, three o'clock in the morning, back home.

But There

you go, you know, we're here, but it gave me very little TV viewing time.

So,

Sidey: You're here for

vibes, you're like Bez in Happy Mondays.

Dan: I did, I did start to watch the main feature so I can contribute

Sidey: Strong recommend, already out the gate. Pete.

Pete: feature, so I can contribute to that already. Couldn't help thinking like there's no need to make this film that it's just a cash cow and it's stuff

Sidey: that,

Pete: it's stuff that you like

MCU is it

Sidey: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah, you might Marvel nerds have like leveled against me for things I've like we're so they're just making it just a lot of money and That's fucking all this, that is all that film

Sidey: is

Pete: it's just to make more money. It was, in the way that I enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean films, it's light relief.

I didn't have to concentrate on it, it didn't really matter what was going on, it's kind of pointless and futile, but there was some visual entertainment and stuff.

Sidey: That's that's any film ever,

Pete: But this, yeah, I thought these were meant to be like top draw. Fucking like knockout films which in fairness like Avengers Endgame and stuff like that absolutely were but this is just shredding water

Sidey: You must have liked the dog. Being a big dog fan, you must have liked the dog.

Pete: No, I hate dogs

Reegs: All of this phase of Marvel has been like that, treading water.

Pete: Yeah, well, it's just money making bollocks, yeah

Sidey: I think they're trying to get something going, but it's just hard after Thanos to

do that.

Pete: they've definitely

Reegs: they It's hard after you write a storyline in which a giant hand emerges from the earth and then nobody ever talks about

Sidey: Yeah. And when

you're, That's your new villain, turns out to be a, a wife

Reegs: Your new villain turns yeah.

Pete: One other thing I've, I watched, which was all three series of a touch of

Sidey: Right.

Pete: which is ah, the guy I can't remember. Black Mirror Guy. Charlie Brooker. Charlie Brooker. Fucking great. Really? Have you seen these res Yeah.

Really, really good. They're kind of like British.

Reegs: naked gun, almost exactly

Pete: naked gun or It's really, like, deconstructs

things that

Reegs: It's really clever. It like deconstructs things that people are obsessed about in England, like those crime shows around like maverick detectives and all that stuff stuff. But it's clever, but it's quite funny. But even I don't like that stuff very much, but it's still very funny.

Pete: But it's got the, the two main characters, like right the way through are people who featured in like the, the sorts of shows that they're sending up really.

Which is, which is good to see as well. Yeah, very quotable. There's lots of quotes, so I need sidey. You need to watch it so that we can just quote it to each other and lull all the time like we do with Black Adder and Mighty Bush and stuff. Yeah. And the other thing I've been watching is the cricket, which.

culminated in a successful sweet moment. So which which might actually come up again later on. So, yeah,

Sidey: Riggs?

Reegs: We started watching a documentary on Disney plus about Hillsong, which is one of the mega churches that started on in Australia and is set up in, in the U S and there was, it's an expose of a scandal around one of their pastors, Carl Letts, and the extent to which the organization is complicit in the stuff that he was doing.

So, well, or in fostering an environment. It's very interesting, you know, and I can't help but thinking of like, we watched First Reformed, and that had that storyline about the megachurches and stuff, so. And this is big, big business, there's thousands of people, like it's rock shows they attend, and it's like, yeah, it's big, big business.

So that's, that's quite fascinating.

Dan: I I just heard Today about kevin spacey. That he

Reegs: Yeah, he's alright now, isn't he? Yeah, he's, he's okay.

Dan: Weird, isn't it?

Pete: Well, not that weird.

Dan: Yeah, I don't know, like, just the way that, you know, you, you, you go, oh, he's the Me

Pete: like Jackson. He didn't do anything wrong. So we can continue to love all this stuff.

Dan: like, actually,

Pete: That's

Dan: go. Okay.

Reegs: That's not really the official Bad Dads line on it, is

Pete: is it? It's my official line on it.

Sidey: I think it's hard to get a

Pete: I think it's time to a terrible film because that terrible guy was

Dan: No, I don't think we'd ever

Pete: I'm gonna watch that film and enjoy it again.

Reegs: But it once, but yeah. Well, maybe true.

Pete: yeah, but no, you can enjoy it again, just not as much.

Reegs: But I, you'd still feel a bit uncomfortable about what, there's a Guernsey director who's doing a movie with Kevin Spacey, I

Sidey: think, right?

Pete: Yeah. I'd, I'd hate it more because of the Guernsey connection than the Kevin Spacey connection.

Dan: thing for me before this...

I always thought he was a brilliant actor. I really liked him in a lot of his films, you know. So, I guess not guilty now. And you're going to see a lot more of him back in movies and stuff. Because he

Pete: he may or may not, I don't think there's been any like, noise from his camp, but yeah, whatever.

He's, he's no case to answer or not, not guilty or whatever. So, yeah.

Sidey: Top five from last week, do you want to touch base on that? Yeah. It was

births.

Reegs: Yes, it was.

Sidey: you recall, we had a few nominations. Kale's Zero Two, that mentions that there were four births in Friends. Yeah. Pete's a huge fan.

Reegs: Wait

she had triplets. Did she

Sidey: well, there's... The first series is Carol and Susan the Rosses have that kid.

Reegs: Chandler and What's Her Jobs, they adopt.

Sidey: they adopt. There's a surrogate though, so that's a birth. There's Phoebe has triplets and Ross and Rachel have Emma, so that's your four.

Pete: Phoebe has triplets, does that count as three births or one birth?

Sidey: Single scene in the TV

Pete: Right, okay.

Sidey: And then she also mentions House of Dragons, Game of Thrones, and Juno.

Reegs: There's been a few births in Well, gosh, that's, yeah, that's a great

Sidey: And J, no, Joe Bevis with a late, late shout for Apocalypto. I think the woman has a baby in a cave or in a pond or something. I think it was fairly bleak. And then him and Andy Jameson had a... argument about that. That was it. So, I don't know. I think,

Pete: think that's Brendan's

Sidey: They were probably No,

1. Yeah. So, I think friends, friends, unanimously. Oh, it's a little baby. It's a little baby. Yeah,

but friends going.

Okay. So,

yeah, we're getting all emotional and I went for top five tier jerkers.

Do you

cry a lot at a film? you've had kids, or since you're just so, so old you can't

Dan: Yeah, just, just because I'm so old now. Yeah, just keep the the tear ducts working. No, I do. I get emotional if lots of like inspirational stories, things like that will get me. So it's maybe not traditional tearjerkers.

Sidey: doesn't have to be a sad thing for

Dan: no, no, sometimes it can be is normally the happy

Pete: tearjerker. It's Like, yeah, it's like stuff where it's like, well, there's a couple and then they break up. It doesn't bother me. Like, I'm fairly dead inside to stuff like that. But like you say, where it's like, you know, like inspirational, like a comeback or like,

Dan: Against

Pete: Yeah. And it's against all odds and that kind of thing.

Like that's, that's more, gets me going more than anything else.

Dan: No, I can be, no,

Reegs: No, I

can be, no, I can, the things can get me. Yeah. Yeah. I was recently pretty moved by Lady Bird. I know you guys, I don't, you know, we don't, I don't want to unpack that, but I was really moved by that movie, yeah. I don't know if I completely shed a tear, but I was moist.

Pete: He's kicking us

Sidey: Let's get into it then.

What

Pete: yeah.

Sidey: I guess both really, but I've got some, I think I've got the first film that I blubbed at was when I was just a small, just a wee boy and it's Bambi in the, in the multiplex, such as it was back then.

And Disney are good at this. I've got quite a few Disney ones, probably do a whole section on it about I think they just expose you to death early doors. And Bambi going about his day with his mother and she's Gunned down ruthlessly by a hunter and he's just like lost, like, you know, man.

Pete: hunter and he's just lost like, yeah. parental guidance level or whatever it is

Sidey: it is. 18, To

make it an

Pete: to make it an 18. Yeah, it's X rated because of the amount of upset, but it's it's always been a you until I think within the last month, it's been raised to a pea jizzle or something like that because of the

Sidey: Yes, I saw this at the cinema, probably with my mother, and you know, you've got no concept of that as a kid, really. Certainly I hadn't

Reegs: Well, the idea that your mother could die.

Sidey: and you're like, fuck, it's absolutely brutal. So yeah, that was a real tear, like a mega tearjerker, that one.

Reegs: Fuck it, absolutely brutal. Yeah, that was a real

Sidey: Lion King, yeah, got him in there. Mustafa.

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: I don't know if

Sidey: I've not seen that

one, no.

Reegs: another one where they kill off the dad. Which my youngest noticed one time when we were watching it, so. Yeah.

Sidey: okay, I imagine so. yeah, Bambi.

Dan: Life is Beautiful is where I was gonna go. Sorry Weeks, I'll just jump in there, yeah. And I don't know if you've seen this movie, sure you have.

Reegs: You've talked about it on the pod before

Dan: a beautiful film. And yeah, it's

Sidey: He's the one that got up and danced at the Oscars on the chair. The a

Dan: Yeah, yeah, he plays a little bit behind the front too.

Well, he played a father who kind of shields his son from the horrors of concentration camp by pretending it's all a game. And And he's such a funny kind of charismatic guy. You see him before the war and then kind of leading up into the war and they managed to stay together, but they're in this concentration camp.

And and it's such a moving film. It really is. It's Unlike what I said earlier where you say there is kind of an inspiration in this that the fact that he's managed to Protect his son from all these kind of horrors and things, but it's a

Pete: I remember you mentioning

Dan: Yeah, it's an abso. Honestly, it's right up there.

It is Fantastic this film. I I don't say it lightly. It's really fantastic. You can't help but cry and laugh loads

Pete: stuff like that. It sounds, it does sound brilliant and like a good premise and, and you know, how, how you've like described it and everything, but going into a film, knowing that it's like, it's gonna be kind of like bleak and like,

Dan: It's not, it's funny as, it's funny as there is tears because it's a sad kind of subject but it is, it's a funny film as well just because of the, the, the guy and his performance, his natural physical performance as well going into it is just brilliant.

Pete: Well, yeah, after like you done giving it the big one about how like nothing really makes me sad.

It's more like the inspirational stuff and that. Like, looking at my list, all of them are just like, really like, horrible, gut punched, tear jerk.

I, I, look, this, this, I've now, this is probably like the sixth time I've mentioned this film, The Mighty.

I

fucking watched it on a plane. I think I, I think I'd taken a lot of sleeping pills to try and sleep and couldn't and watch the film and I, honestly, I was in floods and I'm going to spoil it because none of you are watching.

Every time I mention it, you guys fucking, especially Sadie, just like mock me, going like, ah, it's fucking shit, like, you've never seen it or anything. But basically, like, the, the, the, the, the horrible gut punch at the end is, is this, like, amazing buddy movie between, like, a guy with a load of physical disabilities and a guy with learning difficulties who's big and strong and the, the, the guy with physical disabilities sits on his shoulders and they kind of, like, become, like, this, like, team, like, like a knight on his steed sort of thing.

And, and they come across all these challenges. There's some horrible bullying goes on in it and everything. And Sharon Stone's the mum and she's fit. I don't know why I mentioned that. But but, so what, so what it's Kevin, not Spacey no, the other guy who's the guy that you don't like Kulkin, Kieran Kulkin, it's Kieran Kulkin,

Sidey: any, a bad word

Pete: no, Macaulay Kulkin you don't like, so

Sidey: Well, him alone I don't

Pete: his brother.

Is, is the main character and what he does halfway through the film because the, the boy with learning difficulties obviously become really attached to his pal is like, Oh, you know, I've heard these things that like, maybe you're not gonna live that, you know, your body's going to fail you and everything.

He's like, Oh no, no, come with me. So it takes him to this like great big warehouse, like on the hill and they're just kind of like laying on the grass and he's explaining how like in that, in that warehouse there is like the finest scientists and everything. They're basically building him like a. A new body where they just, you know, they're going to be able with like, you know, like advances in medicine and everything.

They're going to be able to like help me grow because it's a massive growth, like deficiency that he's got. So, and this, this boy like buys it and everything. And I didn't see it coming, honestly, didn't see it coming. And then one day everything's going really well. And they, they're like now. cool at school and they've like apprehended some muggers and stuff and you're like right there with them rooting for him and then he goes to knock on the door like one day opens up Sharon Stone's in tears and the fucking boys passed away in the night and you're like oh my god didn't see it coming they run he he just gets on his bike cycles to this factory goes in it's just a massive industrial laundry and the kid had just made it all up to make his pal feel better And honestly, I just fucking broke down on the plane.

I was like, Urgh, like proper blubbing. Like,

couple of bottles of red to like

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Pete: fucking absolutely like tore the back out

Dan: we put ourselves through it?

Pete: Like, you're looking teary

Reegs: sitting there.

Sidey: just the fifth time we've heard about that film.

Pete: I know, I know.

Sidey: brought a

tear

Pete: it brought a tear to your eye?

Reegs: tear to

I'm going for another one from my youth that got me every time I watched it and I wonder if it would still get me now. It's about my favorite ever botanist,

Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: And there's two, like, real gut wrenching moments in it when he gets ill, and he's attached to the flower, and the flower dies, oh my god.

and

they're separated and, and then at the end, when E. T. has to rejoin his people and leave Elliot,

Sidey: but Elliot could have done the old you know, like close encounters where Richard Dreyfuss goes, oh, he could've done that.

He

Dan: could have done that, but

Sidey: Yeah. I blooded like

Reegs: I'll be right here. Yeah.

Dan: Do you know

Sidey: you remember we, do you remember how he, how he had not seen it and we bullied him into watching it and he was just like, nah. Rage!

Reegs: Yeah, and then it's because when you, I do remember watching it as an adult and picking up on all the shit that you don't see when you were a kid, like, you know, the Henry's mom in it is You know, either widowed or divorced and is like struggling to bring him up and doing her very best and you don't see any of that, you know,

Dan: kids are kind of running the house themselves because she's at work all the time it's a it's a fantastic film it really is it's

Sidey: Spielberg went and did that thing with the guns, didn't he? And then really regretted it afterwards.

There's, you know, soldiers like chasing after E. T. and he changed the guns to be walkie talkies.

Pete: Oh,

Reegs: he Lucas'd

Sidey: He hadn't done it,

I think,

Reegs: He gave it the full Lucas,

Sidey: yeah.

I'm trying to think,

which

came first, I think

the last one at the cinema that really got me was Million Dollar Baby, have you seen that one, the boxing movie?

Reegs: Oh yeah. Oh, Hillary's Wan. Yeah,

Sidey: Hilary's Wank she's struggling, she's from the wrong side of the tracks,

Reegs: So Clint Eastwood joint,

Sidey: Clint's a storied, celebrated boxing trainer

and Hilary Swank is keen to. Get into the sport and she's tough. You know, she's a tough old burden no one wants to take her on so she's Scrimping and saving and eventually she's just like relentlessly fucking, you know bullies him and asked him and he just gets tired of saying No, so he takes her on.

Reegs: you know, bullies him and arses him and he just

Sidey: She has a great put down to one of the guys in the gym when she first starts training. It's like, has the floor got titties? Is that why you're always fucking lying on the floor every time you have a fight and they're enraged Too clever for him, but she's also tough as and he eventually agrees to take her to her first fight and then he realizes she actually she's got something and it builds her up and up and up in this um sort of slightly strange world of women's boxing and there's I think it's a German who's the

like the number one.

Reegs: few years ago as well, because women's boxing now

Sidey: It's

it's come on leaps and bounds, but this was still had a feeling of sort of being a bit underground. She's pretty good and she bites and he eventually he becomes like a father figure to her, you know, and he buys her this robe with an Irish slogan on it.

It's very important for her and she comes up and then she has this fight against the number one lady and she's beating her and it's all going very well. And she kind of kicks the

the

Nazi kicks the, her stool and when she knocks her and she falls down and her neck just lands on the fucking thing. So the last half an hour of the film is her like, fucking like paraplegic in bed, begging Clint to fucking kill her off.

And in the end, he goes in and gives her the injection and walks off. And you've had this hideous subplot of him with his estranged daughter, who won't even read his letters. She's just got a shit. And he's got this relationship, and he's had to fucking kill her, and you're like...

Yeah, Really

fucking good film, but it's, yeah, it's a sad one.

Yeah.

Pete: Yeah.

Dan: Really fucking good film, but it's, yeah, it's just another bleak one. Yeah. Lost on the train, separated from his family on the train. Lion. You remember it? It was an absolute beauty. Particularly that last,

it's a true story. So, it's

Reegs: Saru Brierley, is that his name? Something like

that.

Dan: The actual kid. Yeah, possibly. You, you'll remember better than I do.

But he, He gets separated from his parents in the village. He gets on the wrong train, falls asleep. And he's only a little boy going out to earn a

Reegs: with his brother,

Dan: with his brother for the, you know, sort of five years old or something. And this train is like a special train that is cutting across the country for like three days non stop.

And he's the only guy on it. He's the only kid there on it. So he goes all the way through and just in a completely different

Now eventually he gets adopted and goes to Australia. And he's always had that. So he's got a good life in Australia. Cause Nicole Kidman's his mom. So, yeah, so

Pete: famous

Dan: falling on his feet there.

But it's complicated as he gets another adopted brother from India who doesn't settle as well. And you, you have so this is going on, but, but really it's, it's a story of, of kind of hope and. Perseverance and and never giving up

Reegs: right at the end, they get the real footage,

Dan: Yeah, yeah of him going into the village for the first time and and redo it Like meeting up with his mum after all these, these

Pete: meeting up with like a blubberthon,

Dan: it was abs, oh, you know, I, I, I don't want to spoil it for anybody that, that hasn't seen it already, but it's, oh, bring the tissues.

I'm

Pete: taking my seven year old to London on Sunday, just me and him. I've got

Sidey: me And him.

But if that

Pete: happening. Yeah. He's going to get on the wrong train and maybe you'll find it.

Dan: Ol Kidman, who knows?

But yeah, it is not a dry eye in the house after this one.

Pete: Another one that got me, whether I actually blubbed or not, I don't, I, this was one I think I had to fight back the tears no need to go through the film because it's the Green Mile. And John, just like the injustice, it's so fucking, you know, like the treatment that he gets from like the, the community, the, you know, the fact that he was trying to save the girls and he was.

And,

Sidey: take it back.

Pete: oh, God,

Dan: take it

Sidey: And

then

Pete: and then he, he's still like, you know, goes to the chair at the end, and I

Sidey: And he says, don't put that thing on my head. I'm scared

of the dark.

This is

Pete: know, Jesus Christ, so, so, so bad, yeah. It's like the injustice of that one, and just, he's obviously like a beautiful. Soul and, and like, you know, a guardian angel basically on, on earth and yeah, still gets persecuted and electrocuted, which is nice.

Reegs: Yeah. This is a good topic, isn't it?

Pete: is a good topic. Yeah, yeah, like I'm, yeah, we're all feeling it a little bit here, aren't we? There's

so

Reegs: good

ones to talk about. Has anybody seen Marriage Story?

Sidey: No,

because I've seen Kramer vs. Kramer and

Dan: Adam

Sidey: to go through that again.

Dan: No, I've not. I've

Reegs: Well, don't let the name fool you, Dan, because it's really about divorce.

Dan: Yeah, I guess that, because I had seen a little bit of the trailer and everything. A tearjerker

though?

Reegs: Oh, yeah, absolutely, because it's...

Dan: Seems such a happy event.

Reegs: It's about these people, you know, they're married, they've been married for a long time, but their life has basically taken them in different directions. So it's a, it's a really complicated like breakdown of relationship and they've got this son and you know. They like have to be physically in two different places.

They face this breaking point where they've both got to choose their careers or their marriage. And you know, it's, there's many, many sad scenes because you're basically already in the marriage breaking down and you do flashback to seeing when it was good, but mostly it's all about breaking down. But there's only one like real slanging match and that is.

Heartbreaking as well. Cause it's two people pointing out each other's flaws in most, you know, graphic detail, not graphic. It's not like really

Dan: like really hurtful. But the gloves, the gloves are off and yeah,

they're trying to be

Reegs: it's not swearing. Sorry. It's like just absolutely cutting observations about people who've been together for that sort of length of time.

And then you know, it gets more and more bitter but it does eventually come to a place where it's a little, you know, they find. Some balance, Adam Driver moves to be closer to his son and, and her, and they, you know, find a way to get their relationship to a place where they can parent and all, I mean, it's just a real, like, all the way through, and, and it's been really memed and all that stuff, but the performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are absolutely brilliant, so, yeah, give that one a

Sidey: Kez, anyone seen Kez?

Reegs: Mm

Dan: Kez? He says he's kind of a loner

Sidey: So it's this kind of loner kid who's not got a huge amount of mates, not got, not got a great home life. It's got a much older brother who's a bit of a thug. But somehow it connects with this bird, this kestrel. And he's like, it's his only friend, if you like, and he's got, he's constantly out playing with it and all this sort of stuff.

And it's like grim up north or this sort of cliche stuff, but it, you know, there's a lot of drinking and working men's club and basically it's. brother's a fucking asshole and the culmination of the movie is where his brother is busy doing something but he wants the lad to go and put a bet on for him was like go and put this bet on down the bookies whatever and he doesn't do it and the fucking horse or whatever it was he was betting on wins so his retribution is he just fucking kills the bird it's fucking barren

Pete: Kez without thinking of, I've forgotten what it's called.

Sidey: Bow

Selector? Bow Selector, yes.

Pete: that's it, yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, it's not as funny as that. No. It's grim.

Pete: Dan?

Dan: Right. I was thinking of, of the, the Linklater films again, and it was like a bittersweet kind of upset, really. It was just it wasn't, I don't know, maybe it doesn't fall under tearjerker, because it's almost like a melancholy feel about it, but it's it, It did make you well up it and just things and it was about you know these these people that were were thrown together But then knew they had to leave at some point as well And that's kind of hanging over the whole story that their their time just isn't now like you know And it I guess a little bit like la la land where you have that same kind of thing You have all the way through but

Reegs: was pretty sad at the end there where they didn't quite make it

Dan: Yeah.

Yeah. So they've had all this life and the great times and everything. And it's just those, you know, those flashbacks to different times. So. I was just talking about La La Land

Pete: No, no, no, but the link later, first

Dan: don't know, but there's the link later. Before Sunset, there's Before Sunrise and After Sunset I think this one was After Sunset was the first one.

And it was, yeah, it was one that when I was growing up in my younger days that it was just a really emotional kind of one that you're together in a way and the way that he just put together this rose tinted kind of glasses view on it, I guess. It was nice.

Pete: Another one that got me, I remember at the time was the final scene of Gladiator. When obviously he, he wins against f ing River Phoenix, not River Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix. And then. You know, like, you know, glorious death kind of afterwards from the, the, the wounds he suffered from

Reegs: before

that made you cry.

Pete: It got, no, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what made me cry. It's not that. It's the fucking soundtrack. It's like, is it Hans Zimmer? And like the, like the, the, the sort of escalating soundtrack, and it goes into that, it's like almost like operatic kind of like scene. Because, you know, he's off to go and meet his family in the

Reegs: Oh, in the fields and all that.

Pete: hand in like the door opens, because his kids have been, his kid and wife and everything have been mercilessly fucking butchered like early, early doors. But it's, it's more the soundtrack, sometimes the soundtrack is, is the bit that kind of gets you. If you've got like a brass band playing in the background or whatever, it's not going to have the same

Sidey: effect.

Pete: But, but it got me again when Leicester won the Premier

Sidey: Oh, and

Pete: the one, and it was Claudio Ranieri, and his, one of his good friends is one of the tenors, and he sing, and he did like a sing, like an operatic version, singing version of the Hans Zimmer song that plays at the end of Gladiator, and I think this might have been not long after, because didn't the, the, the owner that died in the helicopter accident, Okay, but it might have even been like around that time that they got together and did that

Sidey: that Right.

Pete: and Ranieri's there stood there his mates up on stage like belting this out and Ranieri's just fucking blubbing he's like a 60 odd year old man who's only ever won one trophy in his life but it happened to be the most outrageous kind of like premier league win with that song playing and everything and yeah it like got me got me a bit weepy

Reegs: i've got a trio you couldn't really talk about This topic without bringing up Pixar, your favorite, and I got a trio of their movies. The first 10 or 15 minutes of up telling the story of Carl and Ellie's relationship is,

Sidey: Yeah, so what? It begins, it's very typical in the beginning.

Dan: relationship is Yeah, no, it begins, it's a bit of a tear jerker at the beginning, you know,

Reegs: Yeah. And

Pete: people

Dan: I've got a heart.

Reegs: Toy Story 3, which is about you know, essentially when your kids don't need you anymore and you have to find a purpose, which is a topic to

Sidey: Can't

fucking wait I

Pete: that I can't fucking wait.

Yeah, that, that didn't get me.

Sidey: know if harry was here that would have been top of his list. I know that's that's the kina

Reegs: Oh, it's a blub a thon, yeah. And Inside Out as well, which is like... Really, I know you reviewed that and didn't like it, but I love the whole thing about it being about accepting the fact that you're not always going to be okay and that happy and sad moments are going to be intertwined in, oh my God.

Dan: He's gone,

Reegs: And all shown through the prism of a, you know, the complicated feelings of an 11 year old girl. So, and it, you know, obviously got children of that age as well. So,

Pete: The bit that got me in that film, Bing Bong, Bing Bong sacrificing himself to like, her subconscious for all eternity, so that, so that she can survive, or so that Joy can survive within Riley, I think the girl's name is, but Bing Bong again, I didn't see it coming,

Sidey: Wasn't real.

Pete: he, she like, looks back and she's

Reegs: her imaginary friend from childhood

Pete: I know, but that's, but Binging Bong was really cool. Like he didn't deserve to go

Sidey: Well, how about the snowman in The Snowman?

Pete: Nah.

Reegs: Oh, yeah!

Sidey: no.

Reegs: Yeah, and the snow dog as well, bloody hell, the snowman and the snow dog. Oh, that's

Sidey: butchers. And I guess,

Reegs: anything by Raymond Briggs, to be honest. What about what's the nuclear?

Sidey: Oh, Jesus. Like the nuclear winter

thing. Yeah,

Reegs: oh, what's

Sidey: Where you had to watch them at school, like this is gonna happen to you, definitely. And then I had, we watched it recently, Interstellar, Don't Let Me Leave Murph when he's screaming at her a, through a,

Different

dimensional thing, through time and something.

Yeah.

it like,

I think I would, there was more, I would describe myself as moist there, not, not in full blood mode, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Pete: And then I had, we watched

Dan: well, I, I had tears streaming Final moments of Rudy.

Sidey: You've seen

Dan: seen that movie, ? Oh,

Sidey: so mediocre, what are you on

Dan: it's amazing. You'll, you can't believe just after he gets his moment, he's lifted on his shoulders. This guy's never given up. He had no chance to, to do

Sidey: actually a great segue into

Dan: It's awe inspiring

Sidey: segue into some Twitter nominations,

Dan: any underdog can

Sidey: That's Sean Astin, isn't it? Yeah, we've Andy Jameson he mentions. It's not a good speaker at all to be honest. He mentions Anakin shouting I hate you and Obi Wan saying you were the chosen one. We were brothers.

Reegs: and

Sidey: Which I think I was probably laughing at, not, not anywhere near crying. And then Bevis counters that with the fault in our stars.

Reegs: I don't know

Sidey: don't know what that is.

Reegs: I think it's a bit cancer y.

Sidey: oh God. And then Jaymo doubling down on the, on the Green Mile nomination

Pete: Yeah, yeah. That's a strong one. I just wanted to mention a couple of TV ones. We mentioned Only Fools before.

do the tearjerker stuff quite well as well there's one scene where Cassandra has recently had a miscarriage and Rodney's kind of gone off the rails a bit and getting pissed all the time and dealing with dealing with it like blokes do and Delboy fudges it so that the lift gets stuck and gets like Rodney to like open up to him and that's like it and Rodney breaks down in tears and stuff

Sidey: But they also have, after Grandpa

dies as well, don't they? Yeah, that's, that's,

Pete: that's tough.

But even that, the straight away with the comedy with that one, because they throw, they throw Grandad's hat in the grave and then you just hear the vicar turn around and go like, anyone see my hat? And they're like,

Sidey: hat?

Pete: so they roll that back. But the last ever episode of Blackadder,

Which, yeah, fucking.

Reegs: over the top

Sidey: Oh,

Pete: is, it's probably, it's probably the longest, it's probably only like two minutes, but that it's probably the longest spell of Blackadder all the way through that where there isn't a joke or a laugh or anything.

There's even like the watch out for that splinter on the ladder and stuff, that's probably like the last kind of gag and then they go over the top and then charge and that's it and the next thing you see the poppy

Dan: this splinter.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. And they see the, the, the, the, yeah, the poppy fields and stuff. It was it was a tear jerker.

So a couple. Any, any other? I've got Dobby dying in, in

Sidey: got a

Buffy one.

Reegs: got billions of

Dan: field of dreams. Do you want to have a catch? Like when he's going

Pete: I've still never seen that. 'cause it sounds wonk like playing g playing basket baseball with ghosts. Fuck

Reegs: Broke back Mountain,

Brokeback Mountain, you know, just, unrequited

stories of unrequited love. And then Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, they're both really good in it. And his wife, I can't remember Michelle Williams. I think she has to like live a lie, but she's very supportive of it. But she, you know, these guys can only go off like every now and then and fuck in the woods and then come back and then have to live this like oppression, you know, cause it's 1963 and you can't be gay.

Moonlight, do you remember you picked Moonlight for the pod? And that was pretty affecting

Pete: It was, yeah. Yeah. I'd, I'd say it was an emotional film without me ever kind of thinking I'm gonna cry at any point. But

Reegs: I'm gonna listen back to that episode, I reckon you said you cried, I

Pete: oh, maybe I did.

I don't think I did.

Sidey: Cry,

cry wank. It's an episode of Buffy where they come home and Buffy's mum has died due to brain aneurysm. And she's dead on the couch. And the whole episode's exploring that sort of grief of losing a parent. It's called The Body, it's really good.

Pete: Mmm,

Sidey: So I had to get some Buffy content

Reegs: Are we just at the point where we should just shout random films out? Yep. AI?

Sidey: Haven't

seen it.

Pete: seen it. I Haven't

seen it.

Reegs: Dead Poets

Dan: AI?

Pete: I have seen that. That's, that's, yeah, that's, that's, yeah. Grim himself. Yeah, that's,

Reegs: Captain, My Captain. Oh. Yeah. And obviously, you know, he's very good in it and he's not along around anymore.

The Road. Did you ever see that one? The

what's his name? Aragorn. Aragorn.

Sidey: Yeah. Viggo

Mortensen.

Reegs: Him.

Dan: All right, I've seen The Way, which was with, oh dear me, the whole,

Pete: the

Hulk?

Dan: no, the whole family is actors. That will

Sidey: the Richardson's,

Dan: No, give me more names. The whole, there's like three or four of them. Actors.

Sidey: The Baldwins Calkins,

Dan: the Baldwin's. Even the rest of his dad,

Pete: Oh, sheens, Martin and Charlie.

Dan: Yeah. And as you see that the way where he, he goes, he walked, he walks towards

Sidey: the light, the,

Dan: the, the path, the ancient, like a path that Swifty did the other week.

Pete: Machu Picchu, I don't know. You're not giving, is this a guessing game?

Dan: giving you a lot to go on, but it's a good film and it's Tearjerker.

Sidey: right? Okay.

Let's, let's wrap it up.

Pete: anyone like, I know you're not going, I know you're going to say no, but this is a, a, what's the word? A stereotypical like

Menabee tearjerker moment. Wilson in Castaway.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: No?

Pete: nothing for that.

Sidey: Didn't make me cry

Reegs: No.

Pete: It didn't make me cry either, but it's sad when he loses Wilson, like he's, he's beside himself, that's like been his only friend for many years.

I'm gonna have to go, stick, stick up for the mighty and go with that

Sidey: Brokeback

Reegs: Brokeback Mountain.

Sidey: Dan

Dan: tough. I think I will go

Sidey: the way. Sounded really good.

Dan: The way in, shouldn't I? Let's go the way.

Sidey: Yeah.

Okay. And I'm putting a million dollar baby past, past the Kleenex.

We've got a little snack selection, a smorgasbord of things going on. We've got some Rock four. I'm not happy with it this week. mean,

Pete: I, I know what you mean. Texture. Texturally. It's a little bit harder

Sidey: it's a little bit

Pete: and chalkier than the normal. I mean, it's still a tastes this, the flavors

Sidey: flavour's good. I

Reegs: I feel your wine choice is a bit poor with the Roquefort. I would have gone with the red.

Pete: We didn't, I, I just brought this white, which is a Chablis Premier Cru which I got for my birthday, which was last week. And it's just a really nice bottle of wine. So I thought I'd share it and we have got some red to go with the cheese as well. So don't judge us.

Sidey: got brie and we've got amaretti biscuits some sort of warhead sour jelly beans and some curly whirlies. So really, got it all going on.

Dan: Well represented, yeah. And the toast, don't forget the toast.

Sidey: We've got toast. And

we have

Pete: the toast. Don't forget the toast. And that segues

Sidey: Okay. Which we'll have

And that segues very nicely into this week's movie, which is called Happiness. And I have to confess, I knowingly broke the rules to shoehorn this into the Emotions Week.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Because this isn't captured by our time limit. This

Dan: 1998.

I didn't really know anything about it. And

Sidey: Yes. And I didn't really know anything about it. And then when I started watching it, I do remember reading about it at the time when it came out.

This one is there's some really fucking challenging content in this movie.

Pete: It's

Sidey: It's provocative and controversial, I would say.

Pete: Yeah,

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah, it's going to discuss some pretty taboo stuff, but the sort of, it's a series of loosely connected characters, mainly revolving around the lives of three sisters.

One who's a sort of bored ice queen author, one who's a kind of judgmental housewife and one who's a sort of lost free spirit looking for, you know, hippie looking for meaning in her

Sidey: life.

It starts off with her. Ending a relationship,

Reegs: with John Lovett.

Sidey: She's saying whether they're not gonna see each other anymore and he.

Reegs: well, they're both crying, right?

They're both, that's how it starts with them both in just tears

Dan: In a restaurant. Yeah.

Reegs: And they're breaking up. It's very sad, but she's trying to do it as gently as she

Dan: But he's geared up for something completely different. He had gifts for her and everything.

And he

Reegs: Well, they tried to continue the date.

Dan: it back. And, yeah,

Reegs: It's like, they tried to continue the date. She's like, how many rest, how many stars did it get? And he's like, three

Sidey: Thriller! He's like sobbing. But

then he recovers himself and

Reegs: But then he recovers himself and he shows her a gift that he bought for her as like a reproduction Gainsborough 18th century ashtray with her name on it. Really bizarre.

But she's like really touched. Oh, it makes me want to. take up smoking. And that's when he turns on her really viciously because he says, it's not for you. It's for somebody who will love me for who I am. And then he just completely goes off on her. Basically, you know, not what I look like.

You don't under, you think I don't understand art or fashion. You think I'm a nerd. You think I'm pathetic and lard ass fat. So, well, you're wrong. I'm Champagne and you're shit, so he just runs her down really horribly, even though she's tried to be very gentle.

Sidey: It kind of sets the tone for her journey throughout the rest of the movie.

Reegs: Kind of the whole movie. People just being unpleasant to each other.

Sidey: Yeah,

well

Reegs: Next we're gonna get the great Philip Seymour Hoffman

Sidey: Is it, it's having therapy?

Reegs: to his therapist, Bill. And he's confessing dark fantasies he has about his neighbour, Helen. We'll come to find out it's Joey's

Pete: some like, cause it, cause it's, the scene starts with him just saying like, oh, you know, I'm gonna fuck you, and, until you come out your ears, and, you know,

Reegs: the context of

Pete: just, you don't know the context of the scene and everything, and that's what he's talking about, And, and whilst you don't know it at this point, the,

Sidey: Yeah.

Pete: I was picking up like ever so slightly some maybe like learning difficulty vibes almost that he's he's definitely not capable of

Sidey: Super, super introverted or

Pete: or his like emotions especially his like sexual urges and stuff like that but I guess the fact that he's seeing a therapist about it means that at least he's aware of it.

Reegs: Yeah. And he goes on to talk to his therapist, bill, who we'll come back to

he, that he knows for a fact that he's boring. He knows that people think he's boring, that people zone out when they're talking to him. And as he's saying this bill starts to zone out Yeah. And do a shopping list. Yeah.

Mental list of appointments and things he's got organized during the week and all sorts of stuff. And then he probably should be tuning back in because Alan has convinced himself it's a good idea to, if only he should introduce himself to his attractive neighbor. This will, she'll see what a great guy he is and they'll end up

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: with cums squirting out of their ears or it is.

Pete: And then doesn't it cut to the neighbor getting out of a car?

Reegs: Well next we go to Joy's sister, Trish. The sort of perfect suburban mum.

Sidey: She's

not like us. She hasn't got it all. And you're like, what? Yeah.

Reegs: And she says, she just takes every opportunity to run her down. She's like, you should eat more red meat.

It'll be, you know, good for your skin. And she's like, well,

Sidey: I'm only telling this because it's beneficial for

Reegs: Yeah. And and she says, Oh, I'm so, you know, joy says I'm so happy at the moment. And Trish just reacts completely incredulously, like incredulously, like really? Because your career is a mess and like, you haven't got a love life and you know, you're over 30

and you still live with your parents

Dan: have that kind of conversation and, and next year saying, I'm so happy that you are happy because you know, you, you've done okay. I thought by you got to this age, you wouldn't have any relationship. You wouldn't have a job. But look, you, you're still here, you're still alive.

Like, and they were taking that as the win. And she was doing it, it seemed to be. Genuinely, kind of pleased, but you just think of the words she's saying, it's

Reegs: she's saying. It's the most passive aggressive stuff that you can get. It's really just nasty and horrible. And it's a consistent theme that the sisters will gang up to undermine and undercut Joy, the youngest sister.

Sidey: she's married to Bill.

Reegs: And we're going to get his therapy session

Sidey: Do

Reegs: Do you remember how his therapy session starts? Starts with him recanting a dream. he

Dan: recanting a dream.

You know, awful way. Just how did

Sidey: gunned down.

Couple of people on the

Dan: well, he, he shoots like one of the partners. It seems like, you know, so in this dream, it's, it's like one of the old couple. There's like a son. And, and his dad or, or whatever in there, you know, so it just seems to have picked off a load of people. And then he just stands there, cool as, like, just staring before he

Reegs: like, swirling op sort of sitcom style music

Dan: a of it off, I don't think it's obvious right from the beginning that it is a dream, it kind of flips out

Reegs: Yeah, no, he's recanting this to his therapist and he says this one's better because he doesn't kill himself at the end of it.

Pete: Oh, yeah, yeah,

Reegs: and then he talked, his therapist asked him if he's having sex with his wife and he says no, but it's all fine because she's not interested either.

So, you know, we're, we're fine in that department and then we see probably why, because on the drive home after the therapy session, Bill nips into a convenience store type thing, picks up a

Sidey: Like a kiddies mag.

Reegs: kid

magazine from the

Dan: Yeah, like a, a, a kid's teen magazine or something. Like you would buy for your kids or something, I guess. That's what he, but in fact it's for him.

And he's, he's totally in love it seems with the kid on the front cover. And he goes and beats off

Sidey: and He kind of has a shame wank in the back seat. And you can see your mum putting her kids in the car

Pete: know,

Sidey: through the window. And you're like, oh

Pete: even that well hidden, but I think that's probably part of the thrill of it for him.

Reegs: And then he goes to a sort of, Hi honey, I'm home, type moment to his sort of

Pete: And it, it's, that's when it, that's when you realize that he is the husband's like of Trish, like the, the middle sister.

Yeah. So all the, all the, the, the little sub stories are kind of like starting to come together and

Reegs: it's immediately obvi.

It's immediately obvious when he comes home that his interaction with Trish is again, of a passive aggressive nature. And there's hinting at a facade that they're maintaining about their relationship. But it's not quite known what that is.

Dan: But because on the surface they are the perfect kind of family, you know. Kids,

Sidey: Yeah. She keeps saying it. We've got it

all. You

Dan: got it all.

Sidey: compares, her assistant says, it's not like us. So we've got everything and our life is perfect. You like, I don't think

so.

Reegs: Next is Bill and Billy's conversation. Oh,

Sidey: Oh, Jesus.

Reegs: Billy, Billy is his youngest son, I think, coming, yeah. He's strongly reminiscent, visually, I think of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in this.

Right. They they are like, he could be him when he's older.

His

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: And he's called Billy and he comes to ask him a question, are we really gonna describe all this stuff? What is, what is calm? And Bill

Sidey: It's, but it's a series of conversations. Then they get more fucking grim. Yeah. Well it's grim from the fucking get go. 'cause he says he, he

Reegs: Well, he tries to explain

Sidey: He tries

Reegs: can use it as a verb, too.

Sidey: So if it wasn't like, so completely like, grim and like

Dan: Well, to

Sidey: I guess because you've seen the rest of the film and this it could

Dan: jerk off in the car,

Sidey: could just be a birds and the bees conversation between father and

Pete: Well, I was about to say,

Sidey: But it but it veers it veers right off track

Pete: does, it absolutely does. And what I took it from this at first, is I wasn't like, you know, you're saying like, obviously like the content is, and especially then knowing what happens later on in the film, but

Reegs: Well, but you can't even pretend this is that wholesome because it ends with him

Sidey: do you want me to

Reegs: you want me to show you?

Right. So you can't

Pete: let, let me, let me finish what I was going to say then, because initially I took it as like, yeah, it's quite a jarring conversation, but you know, at any point in time some, it's unlikely to happen. One of our kids might come to us at a certain age and start asking questions about certain things where they've heard a word or where at first it was just, I thought it was like

Sidey: Yes, it did start off that way, but the

dad

Pete: Of of, you know, the boys at school are talking about coming, what's coming, what has come, and all

Reegs: doing, what we're asking

Pete: like that. And so,

Reegs: And he's shown to be really approachable and

Pete: right. And then I think he's trying to, like, then I was thinking, he's trying to be like, right, I'm not gonna like recco like panic and go like, uhoh, you don't need to know about that.

Then he is trying to have like a more of an adult grownup conversation with it and then it starts veering off into like really bizarre when he starts talking about like his own dick and his son's dick and, and like, do you

Reegs: Width, width is more important than

Sidey: think that's the next time when he talks

about

Reegs: Ronald Farber.

Sidey: 11 inch

dick and you're like, Oh God.

Reegs: Next we're going to get a little look at Joy's parents.

They hate each other. Surprising, surprising, surprising. Mom is permanently strung out on wine and Valium. And dad is just all seething, disconnected rage. controlling and when, you know, Trish, when Trish phones and he's, they say about divorce, he shouts at her and

Dan: at her.

DID I SAY DIVORCE?

Reegs: really orders her to sit down next to him.

I just want to be alone. He says, things change. People change. I want out.

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: And then next we get joy, gets a phone call. I

Pete: We know a bit, I really want to be introduced to Helen. Like, Helen gets, I'm sure it's earlier in the thing, where Helen is the, is

Reegs: this is her now.

Pete: of Philip Seymour

Reegs: This is her now. She talks to Helen now.

Yeah.

Pete: This is her now, yeah. Right, but when you, when you first see her, she gets out of a car and she's smoking, like, this is Lara Flynn Boyle,

Sidey: yeah.

it's

Pete: peaks, and, and of Men in Black 2, who I, it only became apparent to me after this, because I hadn't really, I'd only seen her in Twin Peaks and

Sidey: not...

I think it's not long after the therapy session where she's getting into the lift and Philip's him off just standing there,

Pete: There. Yeah.

Sidey: then they get in there and he's so

Pete: it becomes apparent that she's the neighbor that he's been talking about and has all these like, yeah, weird lustings

Dan: and he's about to get in the lift with her and it's just all uncomfortable because

Sidey: He's about to get

in the lift

Pete: like he's, it's like he's about to tell her the whole sort of like lift journey and then, and then doesn't, but then yeah,

Reegs: well he, he likes to spend his evenings going through the phone book and phoning people. And when it's a man crossing off, off the list on the thing and swearing at the phone book, and then when it's a woman and one in one case, it turns out to be joy, who thinks she's getting a call from a date and talk really perverted

Dan: you're wearing kind of goes on from there. Then he comes on the wall, rips out the page, and sticks it on like a poster.

Reegs: He uses a postcard to clean the cum

Dan: a postcard to clean

Pete: And then sticks it, sticks the postcard to the wall.

Dan: Wow. So this gives you a, this gives you a clue of the, the kind of,

Pete: Yeah, he sort of like escalates, again he kind of like, Not that it was a normal thing to do in the first place, But at the beginning he calls, and she immediately assumes it's someone else, So he's just like, trying to again steer the conversation, And then it becomes like what you were, and then eventually she says, You Hang on, you're not Damien or whatever.

Sidey: horrendous, but that one's like Fairly comedic.

Because he says, what are you wearing? And she's like, I don't know, jeans or something. But under that. And she's like, oh.

She twigs, and he's like, hang on, you're not Dennis. And you can just see him whacking.

Dan: Yeah

Sidey: It's

Pete: then the shot of

Sidey: such a deviant though. He's such a deviant.

Reegs: Joy gets a new job.

There's a load of teachers on strike that were teaching refugees.

Sidey: and

Reegs: and she gets a new job and that'll come out in she meets Jared Harris,

Dan: Yeah, well, first she, she has to battle her way through the picket lines and gets, gets

Reegs: gets called a scab.

Dan: And

when she goes into the class, the, All the students, all these guys, you're a scab, and they were, we want Mrs., whoever it is, Miss Julia, or whoever it was, before, and they're all singing it in unison and shouting it back at her, just charging her down, until this one chap at the front goes, well, well, well, give her a

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And

who's that guy, you, you

Reegs: Jared Harris, he was in Chernobyl. Did you see that?

Dan: did you see that? the, the, the

Pete: I've seen him before, yeah.

Reegs: Now we come to the part in my notes called Softball and Johnny Stays Over. And,

Pete: gripes.

Sidey: it

wasn't dark enough already.

Reegs: Yeah, at a softball game,

Dan: A little league or something, isn't it?

Reegs: One of the kids catches Bill's eye, and he watches him from behind a fence, doesn't he?

And his father comes to talk to him after the game. He looks like Kurt Angle, I thought.

And he comes to say, you know, you're a psychy, a psychotherapist, you know this stuff. My, my son's a fag. You know, what should I do? Should I get him a hooker? You know? And he's like, well, he's 11

Pete: He's,

Dan: right. It's too late.

Sidey: wait till he's

Reegs: Yeah, he says it's too late. And he is what he is. And then the kids come over and they ask if they can have a sleepover. And who wants to take it from here then?

Sidey: Well, okay. So I watched this over two nights and the first night this is pretty much where I got up to and I was obviously tired because what happens is they're having a sleepover and the kids are lying on the floor watching the telly and the mum, I think, is her daughter?

Reegs: And he

Pete: and the younger brother as

Sidey: And he gives them all food.

Reegs: he drugs

Sidey: gives them all food and I totally didn't pick up that he drugged them the first time I watched it. So, so he, he

Reegs: Yeah, so he drugs the

Sidey: He drugs the, kid. the,

kid. And the, the, the Ladd.

Dan: does he drug the whole

Pete: Yeah, no, he does. He sedates everyone, because he wants them all to, all

Sidey: to be away while he does the deeded. So he

and the kid, his son says, oh fucking Johnny who doesn't like chocolate fudge. And he's like, he's like, oh shit.

Reegs: So this whole sequence is set up like a sort of Hitchcock type thriller where you are essentially forced into the perspective of. Bill, as the predatory pederast here who wants to make the kid, Johnny, to have a tainted food item so that he can molest him.

And that is the scene that is set up and is played out over, like, it's, so the scene ratchets up the

Sidey: the tension,

is like, will he eat the food? Yeah. Because he won't eat the ice cream, he doesn't like it.

Then he makes him a tuna sandwich.

Which is like, actually I'm not hungry.

Pete: Can I have it

Sidey: And he's like, it won't be any good tomorrow. And eventually the kid eats it and he's like watching him and he's like,

Reegs: And the look of relief on his face when he takes a bite and he says that it's good. And then we fade to black, I think.

Sidey: Yeah,

Pete: I, I mean, I was

Dan: I think. So I think that

Sidey: I, so I picked it up the second time, but this time with my

Dan: this time with my

Pete: Well,

Sidey: film took

Pete: stop watching because of that, or did?

Dan: of that? That was enough. I still went and watched something else after that that night, but it was enough for me for that

Reegs: We have laughter. A lot of this, as we've been talking about, it, is thoroughly

Dan: It really, it was really challenging to that point.

So I thought I'll pick it up Sunday night when I get back. In fact, I was too late getting back. It was three o'clock in the morning. So, well it

Reegs: And it's almost like post coital. She

Sidey: in therapy and he's, yeah, and they're about to get it on when the kids burst into the room. And obviously no one is any the wiser,

but the kid starts,

Pete: Yeah. That everyone was drugged and therefore has no recollection of anything that

Sidey: but the kids, the victim starts being sick and

He

has to, he's had to take him home.

Reegs: Yeah, in the car ride, he says, Oh, you know, I'm sad, I'm sorry for, for throwing up. I ruined it and I had such a good time. And Bill puts his arm around him and says, Billy, we all had a good time.

Sidey: Fucking hell.

Pete: Yeah.

Dan: Billy, we all that all that happened? Yeah. Wow.

Sidey: It absolutely happened, there's

no

Dan: she, she said, actually, the last thing I remember, is she saying that she had a dream, and with that, and it was the dream, and she mentioned, like, Ah, there was me, and there was you, and there was little Billy as well in it.

Pete: Billy's her

Dan: that bit? Oh, not Billy, the, the, the,

Reegs: No, no, he drugs

Pete: Right. So,

Dan: all. Yeah,

Pete: I'd still say at this point, with you having not, you know, watched the remainder of the film, I mean, I, I watched that scene, and.

All the way through it I was thinking, I hope that this isn't going where it's, where I think it's going. And then it like fades to black and then it wakes up in the morning and da da da. And then still I, you know, I, I was almost trying to be like deliberately naive to everything here. And it's not absolutely like categorically confirmed that something happened at that point.

But there are scenes beyond that afterwards where it becomes categorically apparent what happened.

Sidey: He has another conversation with his son. His son's asking about dicks and mentions that his friend at school was talking about how big his dick is and dad's like, oh, you know, people just talk shit and it's probably not true and it doesn't really matter and blah blah blah and then goes out in the car because he's been told that the parents are away on holiday. bit later. But yeah,

Reegs: on holiday. Later, he's going to have another conversation where he says, if you, if mom and dad, if you die, how old do I have to be before I can look after everybody? And then he talks about Ronald Farber's parents have gone away. He's 11

Sidey: 11 he's been left on his tide, yeah.

Reegs: Bill is going to take advantage.

Joy's mom goes to buy a condo, which results in her just collapsing into like, you know, sadness about her divorce with the woman who sells it to her. And then the dad gets his health checked after seeing some guy collapse on the golf And after getting a clean bill of health starts a relationship with the next door neighbor, Diane.

Pete: I think it's more, it's apparent that Diane is more into it because it, it alludes

Reegs: into anything is he?

Pete: he's not into it at all. But like it alludes earlier in, cause the wife even asked, Oh, you know, what, what is it? What is it? What's the problem? Oh, is it Diane? Have you got something for her or whatever? Then this Diane introduced herself.

I mean, she's, she's not really attractive, but she's more glamorous or whatever. And so I think, but.

Diane has heard that they're now sort of separated and she sees it as her like moment to kind of like Pounce and I guess for the sake of having a bit of company's like yeah Like come back to my condo like whatever it is where they seem to be staying in some sort of like motel or something like

Sidey: It's like one of those grim single person, you know, like, everyone's a divorcee in there. But you need a bit of light relief at this point, so Joy gets a phone call to inform her that John Lovitz has killed

himself.

Pete: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Sidey: And it seems like probably left a note stating that the breakup was a factor. So she gets a phone call at work from his mother says you're a piece of and I hope you burn in hell.

So she's trying to hold it together in her cubicle and but mentions to someone about

And she's saying, you know, worked in that

Reegs: They can't remember who he

Sidey: one knows him. Like he's completely anonymous to them all. And, and they just start having this really banal and frivolous conversation about him while she's just like blubbing in a cubicle.

So she goes out wandering around the streets of New York and the what's his face.

Reegs: place? The cabby,

Sidey: Vlad, Vlad sort of he's a he's a cab driver and he's trying to

She, clearly she's distressed and he's like, well, I can give you a ride. And you're like, Oh God, where's this going to go? And she's like, no, no, it's fine. I live in New Jersey.

It's too far. It's too far. And he's like, no, no, it's fine. I'll take you. He does end up taking her back and

sort

of was forcing himself on her, but she's okay with it. I

Reegs: himself on her, but she's okay with it, I think.

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: that makes her fucking...

Pete: Well, and also, like, he, he, you know, she's like, Oh, what did you do back in Russia? And he was like, Oh, I was a thief. like

Sidey: fuck. professional thief, Know.

Pete: He's pretty, yeah, he's pretty

Dan: clean. But Is he a nice guy? Is he, no,

Sidey: she says

Pete: No, he basically, he, he sees a woman, a woman that he knows walking down the street crying and thinks vulnerable

Sidey: and she says

Pete: mean, it's, this isn't overtly rapey, but it's definitely have it taking

Sidey: He says she says something like oh, do you miss Russia and he says fuck the cunt of Russia

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: he does.

Sidey: And then they have sex and then he steals her guitar and her stereo

Pete: and he's

Reegs: not going to find that out until later when she is assaulted at work by his wife. And you can hear his baby crying in the background. We're also missing out on a load of phone call fun.

Sidey: Oh, yeah,

Reegs: because Philip Seymour Hoffman is still working through and eventually he's going to get Helen.

And in her inner monologue she's going to reveal all her doubt and what a fraud she thinks she is. She doesn't know what she's writing about. She wishes she'd been raped.

Sidey: I wish I'd been raped as a child.

Pete: more,

conviction about it in some poetry or something she's putting together,

Reegs: So when Alan phones up like all this like unbridled like sex and you are worthless piece of

Sidey: You're a nothing, you're a black hole.

Reegs: Yeah, she's, she's like, this is exactly why I've been looking for

Dan: she's

exactly what I've been looking for.

Pete: No, he knows, he knows it's her, he's ringing her.

Yeah, because, and then she, like, he hangs up after

Reegs: Well, he's ringing her at work because we get a great little moment. That's a bit like the big Lebowski actually moment

Sidey: out

the same year.

Reegs: he's ringing, he's ringing her at work and she star 69 is back.

Like,

Sidey: like,

Reegs: you? And he's a bit like, Oh fuck. And then she's like, I want you to fuck me. And he says, I don't think I can do that. Like he starts

Sidey: He has to unplug his phone and the minute he plugs it back in after like a day, it rings. And he like a

Reegs: there's a bit where he as he's like taking the phone outta work, he's put the phone down on his colleague comes over and he is like, Hey Alan, did you see the playoffs? And he's literally been saying all this shit. And then he is like, ha, yeah, it was great.

Like,

yeah.

And then he gets, he goes home and masturbates while getting blind drunk. And then his neighbor comes over and sort of looks

Sidey: been an ongoing

thing.

Pete: fuck! This

Reegs: She looks like she's gonna assault him, but then she

Sidey: She keeps coming by to tell him

Dan: oh, I've met her

Sidey: Yes, she's, she said about the, the super who, who lives in their apartment block and his, he was found dead and his penis had been cut off. Yeah. And so she keeps coming back to tell him a little bit more information about it.

And she bundles her way, he's just so drunk that she,

Pete: He

Sidey: he falls and she, she grabs him and eventually like comedically land on his bed with her on top of him and she starts like caressing him and takes his glasses off and then you're like, Oh, and he kind of comes to and runs off to be sick and then he's like, he's embarrassed.

So he tells her to fuck off. But then it, that sort of plot thread ends up with him like in the corridor and it's Helen on one side and it's her on the other and he plucks up the courage eventually to go to Helen who he's threatened all this sexual violence down the phone to her and they

have

Reegs: honestly, when the door opens, the look of disappointment on her face. It's

Pete: disappointment on her face.

There's a really good like, you know, it's like 20 seconds of no dialogue where they're looking at each other. No, before that even, where they're looking at each other and he's, he doesn't say, Oh, I'm the guy that's been ringing you, but he's like, I and he's so awkward and weird and twitchy. And then she's just looking at him and then eventually her face changes and she's like,

Dan: Penny drops

Pete: yeah, it's you.

Reegs: and

Pete: So she goes, oh, do you want to come in? And then they literally sit down. I think she gets him a drink, but they sit down

Sidey: 30 seconds

Pete: either end of this long couch and he just, he's like, hand just starts coming out and extending towards her. And she, she says something like, Oh, this isn't really working,

Sidey: And she goes,

Pete: I'm not into you.

Sidey: she goes, no, you're not my

Pete: Yeah, and he's kind of like, okay, fair enough.

Sidey: enough. And just goes straight

Pete: Gets up, gets out, goes across, and the, the one who's been coming, who's obviously is into him or

Sidey: Who I think has confessed at this

point.

Reegs: has, yeah, she's...

Sidey: She's murdered the super.

Reegs: Yeah, well, she was raped by the night manager. So,

Pete: Yeah, and you see the rape scene,

Reegs: the rape

Pete: Fucking hell, like, this film just keeps going with

Dan: raped by the guy that she ended up

Sidey: So this guy helps her carry her shopping in, and then rapes her. And so she kills him, and

Reegs: She's also about 18 inches taller than him, and probably about four stone heavier, but that's not

Sidey: She's chopped up his body, and is gradually disposing of like a bit every day or a bit a week. And so she confesses it, and he still goes over it and like gets into bed with her. And they just go to

Pete: They don't even have sex, like, he, he gets on top of the covers in his clothes, facing away from her, and they just go to sleep.

Reegs: Next we're going to get Johnny noticing that there's blood in his stool. Johnny is the boy who stayed over and he's going to go to hospital and they're going to, the police are going to ask him some questions in a really horribly uncomfortable scene.

When did you notice the blood? You know, here's a horrible question, was there someone in the last day or two who's hurt you? He says, no, I don't think so, cause...

Sidey: The dad just loses it.

Reegs: And the dad's like, he can't take it anymore. He's just angry. He's like, what do you mean? No, you've been raped. He just shouts at him. What a wonderful scene that was.

And now next segwaying into another one is just a regular family dinner at Bill's house. This is the one when the phone rings and he spies his opportunity to go off and rape Ronald Faba. We see him get the directions from director inquiries. We see that there's a grim shot of a watch children sign.

On the end of the lane that he lives on So, yeah, deeply unpleasant. And then he goes home and gives his son a kiss goodnight. And he sort of sleepily says, Dad, I almost came.

Sidey: What the fuck?

Reegs: Ah, that's what happens.

Sidey: what the missus? No.

I

Dan: that's not the end?

Pete: No, no, no, no. Oh

Reegs: the end? no, no. It's, wait,

Pete: more good bits Dan.

Sidey: the scene to end all scenes.

Reegs: Yeah, we've done the

Dan: I'm, I'm like, wow, this is grim. You fuck,

Sidey: this

is

Reegs: We've done the

Sidey: pitch black.

Reegs: we haven't done, yeah Joy goes to Vlad's apartment after she's been assaulted to apologise to the woman and finds out that he is married to her

Pete: Well, they're not married.

Sidey: though they're not.

They're not

Reegs: denies it, but she is. No, but they clearly are. There's a baby there.

Sidey: Well, they're there together. But she

Reegs: her down for money.

Sidey: still brings in, like, refreshments to them. Like, even though she's so,

like, beaten down.

Pete: Yeah.

Sidey: I think really

Reegs: the one last family dinner,

Sidey: of that pales into insignificance to what's coming up with the family dinner and the police arrive and he goes to the door and

he's kind of like straight away like fuck, you know, the game's up and so he goes.

To his wife.

Reegs: We've come to ask you some questions

Sidey: about and says, well, the police are here. Can you deal with the kids? Or something like that. And he goes off and the police ask him some questions

Reegs: Well, no, he fucks it straight

Sidey: away, But he but he says the wrong name. yeah,

Reegs: he says the wrong name, because they say, we're here to talk to you about Johnny, and he goes off, oh, can you sort the kids out, the police here, I don't know what the thing is, comes back, what's this about Ronald Farber, and they're like,

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: And he's also had a threatening phone call from Johnny's dad that he's had

Sidey: Gonna kill him, yeah.

Reegs: Didn't happen.

They

Pete: they don't arrest him there and then do

Sidey: No, but they go, the next thing is them leaving the house. Yeah. And there's,

Dan: gonna check out Ronald Farber, I guess,

Sidey: on the house that says

Reegs: Serial rapist pervert.

Sidey: yeah.

Reegs: Somebody's

graffitied on the house. But this is also revealed in a sort of like, Oh, it's a chaotic morning getting all the kids together.

Dan: kind of,

Reegs: Kind of vibe and funny music and shit. It's not that old funny, really.

Sidey: then it's, basically then the kid's coming to the dad for the last time. Yeah.

Reegs: This is the final conversation.

Sidey: It's beyond fucking bleak. This one, he says, yeah, dad, did you like get into it? He just says, did you write them? And the dad's crying. It's he's sort of framed in this way and he's just dead.

Still in the film, it's had a kind of strangely juxtaposed between like awfulness and. chirpy soundtrack but that's all gone now it's just his face like framed while he's answering these questions from his son his son's crying

Reegs: He's doing it all with the same honesty. He's

Sidey: he's crying and he's just the kid says did you you know did you rape him and he says yes and while he's crying and he says would you ever rape me and he says no i would just masturbate

Reegs: I would just masturbate

Sidey: and

Pete: But he even says like, oh, you know, did you rape him? Yes. Would you do it again? He was like, yes. Did you like it? Yes. Like, he's like, you know, full confession. And then like he say, he says like, would you ever rape me? And he, and he goes, and I think he just says like, no, I, I just jerk

Sidey: yeah.

jerk

Reegs: Floods of tears. And Trish takes the kids and leaves. And then six months later, we're at Joy's parents swish new condo. They've acquired it because some other couple's got divorced. They're sort of uneasily back together, the parents. They hate each

Pete: this is a nice family. Get together.

Sidey: The kid is now the spss. A lady

Pete: He's on a balcony. Yeah.

Sidey: boobies going to get her tan and she's lying on the sunbed. And he's like,

Dan: Who, who, who's the...

Pete: Billy Billy?

the kid.

Sidey: So He's

like,

Dan: On

Pete: On the balcony, like in broad

Sidey: Staring at this lady and there's this family conversation going on where Joy's

just

getting, Yeah, Joy's just getting run down and

want, but this time

but billy billy's wanking to him while he's spying on this lady she's putting suncream on her boobs and stuff and it does actually come this time and we see a bit of it on the railing of the balcony Which the dog licks, licks clean, and then the dog goes into the, like, where they're having, all sat around the dinner table, and the, the mom's like, Oh, the dog, the dog just fucking licks her face!

Pete: And then

Sidey: That's

Reegs: then, there's one final horrible moment, and just one last one.

Sidey: Billy comes in and says, I came.

Reegs: Yeah. Triumphantly announces to the whole family I came. And that's how the movie

Pete: Wowzers.

Reegs: And the song at the end is, we had Friends nominated earlier, didn't we? And it's a bit Frenzy at the end, like a sort of sitcom y

Dan: We'll be there for you, like

Reegs: of thing.

Sort of Yeah,

Dan: well, I feel like I've been through the mill there, listening to that second half. And I'm sure anybody who's listened to this all the way through would, or maybe has

Sidey: love to know if anyone out there has seen this, what they thought of it.

Because, I don't even know

what

Pete: got one observation and one question. The observation is... That we've just spoken. I mean before we even sat down We said like this is gonna not be fucking pleasant to talk through and everything and it and it is like Horrendous like the subject matter, you know in a lot of the scenes is it almost like desensitizes you to the like the stuff about like, you know, like the the lady getting rapes and stuff like that because because

Yes Yeah, like this guy is a fucking like Predatory, disgusting, like, piece of shit, and, like, there are kids involved, and it's horrendous, and the impact it's having on his kit, his own son, and la la la la.

But what I would say is, as we've spoken back through it, there've been moments where we've been talking about the funny scenes in it, and, you know, we've been, it's been punctuated, the hideousness has been punctuated by laughter about certain things, so, in that regard, it

Sidey: quite small

Pete: they are, they are, but, like, you know, when it said it was a dark comedy, I mean, Like you say, pitch, pitch black, and I wouldn't go as far as comedy.

At all, but there were there were sort of like moments of it the question I have is like like Why would you even make this like what what's the point behind it? What is the point

Sidey: of the stuff that he's made is really... Controversial and he kind of goes for

Reegs: I know because it's not a

Sidey: I don't think you're learning

anything.

Reegs: not a very deep mood. It's not a bad film.

Pete: It's just showing that humans are fucking humans that they're

Reegs: Humans are awful. Yeah. And here's two and a quarter hours of people just being fucking horrible to each other.

Pete: Just being fucking horrible to each other. Yeah, but you think like all of the like the The cast in it, there's some good performances in it, and it's a, it's a

Reegs: and there is some interesting

Pete: up to this, presumably having seen the script and knowing what it's all about. Especially that guy who plays the fucking pedo, like he's going, I mean, that in itself to like, take that role on and go like, oh yeah, like I'm, I'm up for that, that

Sidey: I would imagine, you play a pedo, you probably get a lot of hate for that.

Pete: Just

even

Sidey: being, yeah, I

Pete: Because I've seen that guy in, in a few other things, he's in Anchorman too. But Yeah, just, really, I just can't get my head

Dan: in that position as an actor,

Pete: Well, yeah, I guess if you take on, like, challenging parts, it gets a kudos and all of that, but I just can't get my head around why the film would be made in the first place, like, what the point is.

Dan: Yeah. All the actors were good enough to make me feel really uncomfortable the whole way through. And I guess that's

Pete: And you only watch half

Dan: he watch.

Yeah. And only watched half of it. And I guess that's the feeling that they wanted to evoke

in

Pete: Okay. So, so not so much that question. Why would you want to go forward? It's just like, why would you make that film? Like, what's this? What's the person who made this film or or you know, trying to

Dan: to maybe to start a conversation or to continue a conversation about these themes.

I don't know but

Sidey: I don't know that you learn anything

or that you're you're informed about

people with or victims or anything.

It's just, it's just there

Reegs: It's everyone's an

Sidey: be controversial.

Reegs: arsehole and we're all slaves to our boners. Basically.

Pete: one who's not an arsehole is Joy, I don't, I don't, I didn't get,

Sidey: No, she, was just the vic. she was a victim.

Pete: She's a victim, like, of, of her bullying from her family or certainly her sisters even if it is passive it's

Dan: So right in thinking the second half of this film didn't like perk up and, and things

Pete: No, no, it got worse. Like bearing in mind you didn't know that there'd been child raping it in the

Dan: first

Well, no, I like you. I, I strongly suspected it, but my, my own. Wishful

naivety just kind of said well, I don't know for sure like,

Pete: that that's not what I think it is. Yeah.

Dan: at that point he just kind of

Pete: well, it,

Reegs: It's the

Pete: what you were thinking

Dan: waiting around for the sandwich

Reegs: It's the

sort of movie that afterwards you feel like, I need to have a shower. Cause you feel grim and grimy for watching it, it's, like I said, it's not, it's well acted, it's not, it's provocative, but it's a deeply unpleasant thing to watch, really, to

Dan: Yeah.

It's, it's, it is even that scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman as he is first coming. Into picture and he's talking about on the fucking the ears and all and you don't know that anybody's in the room and they're kind of cameras pans out and you realize you get like just oh no please don't let anyone be in the room oh fuck there's people in the room like you realize he's saying this out loud and it's just awful like you know um and yeah it goes on brilliant performances of really horrible arseholes

Reegs: yeah

Sidey: it was really well received, well reviewed. It's in the thousand films Received Before You Die. It's in all lots of people's top films of 1998. Ebert gave it four stars at five. Timeout New York said repulsive some of the characters.

Ars Sos makes most of them deeply sympathetic. Dunno dunno that I had any sympathy for anyone apart from

Joy. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And John Lovet maybe. Yeah. The distributor, when they saw it fucking sold it. They, they bailed out.

Reegs: Well, but the movie does attempt to humanise him.

and

I just think it's pointless, like,

Sidey: Yeah.

I dunno, I, I, I couldn't recommend, I, I couldn't strong recommend this one to anyone. I watched it with the Mrs and she said, who the fuck nominated this

Reegs: got...

Pete: You just got,

Sidey: that was me. yeah,

She fucking looked at me like,

mad with you, bu and so, yeah, I watched like a female perspective was like, this is just absolutely fucking

Pete: And

Dan: is

Reegs: I had seen this before.

Dan: Had

Reegs: Have you? Yeah. And I did not want to see it again. And,

Sidey: Well, there's a se there is a sequel.

Dan: I think I'd seen the first

Pete: our leg?

Sidey: I've seen it a sequel. He made the sequel of all the characters 20 years down the line. It's called Life During Wartime. I don't think I could be bothered to watch that to be

Reegs: it more the same?

Sidey: honest with you.

I'd imagine so.

Pete: Yeah.

Dan: to

Sidey: I'm out.

Pete: Well, I thought it was a strong

Sidey: Same.

Dan: Yeah, no don't bother

Reegs: I honestly thought that happiness was going to be the worst, like, most unpleasant thing I was going to watch this week, but it turns out I was wrong.

Pete: Can I just say there was a guy, there's a guy in this room who tried to warn you that you'd shat the bed on the, on the specific episode. Like what we end, what you guys decided we were going to watch is not what this series is at all.

Reegs: I said change it. I didn't mind. I wasn't, I didn't mind. Change it.

Pete: But I did say, say these noms and you're like, yeah, let's just stick with it.

Sidey: it's quite late during the weekend i didn't have much time to cock about so we just went with it

Pete: all we had to do was shunt it to any of the previous seasons.

Dan: Angry Birds, like, cartoon series on Netflix is way better than what this, what we

Pete: the, the, the normal Angry Birds like, cartoon series on Netflix is way better than what this, what we ended up watching, it was,

Reegs: well, maybe we could do it again. 'cause, you know, we are running out of,

Sidey: The movie's supposed to be very good too, but we

watched the one we watched was called...

Reegs: Slingshot

Sidey: Yeah,

and it is just ten minutes of, like, fifteen second long snippets of... The game effectively like a bird being flung from a slingshot into some

Dan: a crowd

Pete: like, no dialogue or anything like that, it's

Reegs: Pingu style, where they, you know,

Dan: Oh, okay. And what are you talking about then, Pete?

Pete: Right, so, so, so, what this was, I don't know why, it was just like, obviously, specials, just like fillers or something. So this was like Season 4, Episode 1. But seasons 1 to 3 are all like 13, only like 2 minutes long. The reason you went for this is because it was like 2 minutes shorter than everything else.

But like they're normally 13 minutes long. And it has the characters from the film and dialogue and interactions and it's not just the slingshot kind of like,

like

what we watch basically. So we're not even, if we're going to review what we watched. To total bullshit. An utter waste of time. The

Reegs: we'll do, we'll do the real one another time, how about that?

Pete: We

don't have to.

Sidey: watch

Pete: We could watch the film, which is good.

Sidey: They did kind of pause it, a situation where there was like an element of purgatory because

Reegs: It was when the thing had

Sidey: A lockers, there was some

Reegs: had been hit

Sidey: Then they. They just teleported.

Yeah,

Reegs: the construct where the matrix is

Sidey: Yes. And then they were just

called again by the colonel to go back and we actually see one get crushed and then go through this kind of...

blue teleportation y thing back to the lockers, this sort of purgatory where it'd be waiting to be called up again.

Reegs: And the, the one point there's some t n t and some high jinks with the t n t being hidden and the kernel underground and blowing up. It's strongly reminiscent of the opening scenes of saving private Ryan

Pete: Yeah,

Reegs: This was fucking garbage, wasn't it? It was like, so many, like, I've got a few of them down here, but like, Sidey said, 20 second skits, or not

Dan: style

Sidey: No, nowhere

Pete: style. Like ping go type dialogue in there. Not words, just like.

Dan: it is.

Sidey: because it's Finnish, so you don't have to have dialogue, you know, translations if you just have unintelligible squawking noises.

The... The

Reegs: words, just like... It is like, pretty low

Pete: Again, it's not, it's not like it is in the normal series, the animation, which is different.

Sidey: But it this, it could have been like procedurally generated as in like, just gimme another scenario where a bird hits the thing and they

Pete: Yeah, you could AI

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: hits the thing. Well, they were using, and the NSA and GCHQ were using the angry birds app to spy on people using security vulnerabilities in it.

So maybe AI has been collecting data about you through. You ever play Angry Birds?

Sidey: Oh, do you ever play Angry Birds?

Pete: Yeah, I've got it on my phone. I don't play it very often. Every now and again, might fire it up.

Sidey: Can

Reegs: I don't play it very often, but every now and again it might fire up.

Sidey: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: I'd go for drones now.

Reegs: So

Pete: Yeah, has anyone say so you haven't seen the Angry Birds films

Sidey: No, have they, have they all got

telekinesis in that?

Because there's a thing where one of them writes in this and the pen just hovers in thin air and the other one has a broom and that just, they've got no

Pete: no, no. no. There's no not Telekinetic powers. Have you

Dan: no, I can't imagine they're any

Pete: you?

Yeah, I think they're good.

Reegs: No, I think they're good. Yeah, and the kids didn't really want to watch,

Pete: it Yeah. It's, it's got kind of like, I'd say like it's one of those films kids, like films for kids,

Sidey: You know, for kids.

Pete: that has got. Stuff for the adults is just as much as it has for the kids as well.

In fact, maybe even more so

Reegs: That's what I'm saying, I'd be willing to give the franchise, you know, another go, principally because this is

Pete: I think you've I think you've done it. You've got it wrong and we just have to put it to bed now And it's your fault, but it's a strong recommend still.

Sidey: Well, I, I'd done nominating for this week. I don't know who it is, mixed bag,

was

Dan: was excellent in midweek.

Sidey: Yeah, it was

fun to

Reegs: don't know who it is. Misery was excellent in

Sidey: wasn't it? Yeah, 50 50. Really? I, I don't know who's nominating.

It's hard to just keep track,

Dan: It may be me, but I've not got anything prepared at this moment, but I will

Sidey: Do it live now soon.

Dan: soon.

Sidey: Okay. All that remains then is to say society signing out,

Pete: Thanks

Dan: Dan's gone.