Director: Tom Bussmann   
Cast: Stuart Saunders, Grame Garden, Marc Smith

NOVEMBER 23, 2010 - Well, today I sat down to watch Whoops Apocalypse, and as I write this I am sorting out my many thoughts and notes I made while watching the movie. Taking a quick glace at the back of the movie's video box lying beside my keyboard, I see beside the plot description a blurb that the movie is "...a hilarious comedy in the tradition of Airplane!" Well, they are partially right; the humor and the attitude towards the plot material in the movie are right out of Airplane! There are sight gags both in the foreground and background of scenes, the jokes come at a rat-tat-tat machine gun-like pace, and there are goofy characters, some who play it straight and others who joke it up. There are even jokes in the closing credits. But the fact that this movie was imitating the brand of humor that was made in Airplane! gave me a problem. Yes, I liked the movie Airplane!... when I first saw it years and years ago. In the years after it was first released, its success lead to an eventual downfall of this particular kind of comedy. As the years went by, there were many attempts by filmmakers (both the same ones who made Airplane!, as well as others) to duplicate the successful humor of that movie, and most of them were utter failures, like Loaded Weapon 1, Fatal Instinct, and all those recent movies written by hacks Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, etc.) Watching all these bad movies and their relentless bad humor coming from misunderstanding of the proper comic timing (as well as what would be considered genuinely funny gags) in Airplane!, the entire genre (at least to me) suffered as a result. What was previously zany, clever, and biting now comes across as forced and desperate. In fact, when I rewatched Airplane! recently, it didn't seem as funny to me as it once was.

This may be the reason why I didn't laugh very much while watching Whoops Apocalypse. I did not laugh when the British prime minister was making a speech in parliament, while behind him a couple of dozen politicians were in a fist fight and a horse was stumbling through the aisles. I also didn't chuckle the least bit later in the movie when a politician was sent a "Rambogram", which consisted of a Stallone look-alike croaking out a message to the recipient. And when one character says, "We would sell our grandmothers for such a man", guess what supposed hilarity the movie immediately cuts to. This kind of attitude, of doing anything for a laugh instead of coming up with carefully thought out gags for a fictional yet somewhat more realistic world that usually should be limited (even for a comedy) as to what could possibly happen, is the kind of thing that has killed other comedy genres before. Just look at the spy spoof genre. In fairness to the movie, I have to admit that I did find a few things funny while watching it. The carefully selected cast, for one thing, makes a number of gags work that would have undoubtedly fallen flat had they been acted out by other hands. The plot description on the back of the video box got it right about Peter Cook, playing the British prime minister. He plays his role with utter seriousness, even when the insanity of his character starts to reveal itself and has him telling the British public that the problems of their country come from pixies and trolls. The character really seems to believe what he says, instead of delivering it like a joke, and some welcome laughs come from this. However, the character that really steals the show when he appears is the terrorist Lacrobat, played by Seinfeld star Michael Richards. His devious character, sporting a number of different disguises and aliases throughout the movie really show off his comic talents and had me chuckling at times - though I must confess that I didn't laugh during the scene where he wears brown makeup on his face and acts like an African-American in a way that would judged by many as being uncomfortably stereotypical.

Herbert Lom, on the other hand, doesn't get much of a chance to show off the comic skills he showed in The Pink Panther series. Though he plays the leader of the country that invades Santa Maya, his character soon becomes an afterthought, even disappearing for a lengthy part of the movie despite the British making a major military strike at his military and country at this point. An odder decision concerning the characters comes with Loretta Swit as the American president. While you might think that the movie would make fun of her, curiously the movie doesn't do so at all. Her character is instead shown to be sane and intelligent, an island in a sea of insanity. There seems to be no reason for this except maybe that the filmmakers needed an American distribution sale to finance the movie, and an incompetent president would make the movie seem insulting to Americans in the eyes of Hollywood. Whatever the reason, this character doesn't really seem to fit in the rest of the movie. While I'm speaking of the characters, while they may be funny at times, it comes at a price. There are simply too many characters in this movie. I haven't mentioned British royalty member Princess Wendy, two reporters that track her, members of the Soviet Union government, plus a number of other characters that each get enough focus in the movie that the central plot of the movie comes to a shrieking halt when it is not moving very slowly. Along with the "anything goes" attitude towards the comedy in the movie, this illustrates the main reason why Whoops Apocalypse fails - it simply tries to do too much, as well as doing so in too little of an amount of time. Maybe this problem didn't exist in the television series that inspired this movie, seeing it played out in six thirty minute episodes. But as it plays here, the "whoops" part of the title really seems apt.

NOVEMBER 19, 2010 - Ah, Pola, my Russian beauty! What would I do without you? How you charmed those certain members of the Russkaya Mafiya of my city as you translated the negotiations I had with them. Without you, they wouldn't have their new armaments and we wouldn't have that suitcase of money. How charmed I was when we were back home and you covered yourself with a fistful of the money as you lay in bed and said in that seductive voice, "Don't I look extra inviting?" And I remember that crafty smile of yours when I responded, "You look even better with absolutely nothing covering you." And as you brushed off the money with one sweep of your hand, unbuttoning your blouse and pulling it open, revealing your succulent [Note: The free preview of my memoirs ends here.]