Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/12/watch-steve-martin-do-michael.html
…
5 Likes
This reminds me of Steve Martin in the Sgt Pepper movie
He was the best bit in that god awful movie
9 Likes
Dang! Steve’s got moves!
4 Likes
Oh yeah. That’s the “I’m intentionally dancing poorly in an entertaining way because I’m actually decent at it” set of moves.
4 Likes
I can’t get into the 1984 mindset anymore I guess. What about this bit is supposed to be funny? The laugh track says the whole thing is supposed to be funny, but all I can detect is a half-assed mimicking of the dance from the original video. (I’ll admit that I didn’t make it all the way through the video.)
5 Likes
Never seen it, so I don’t know what their parts looked like, but Aerosmith and Earth, Wind & Fire did alright with the tunes.
Oh don’t let that stop you from denouncing the video. This is the internet!
My only complaint is I wanted to hear him sing. He might not have a strong soprano, but everybody knows he can sing!
(Side note: has anybody yet done a satire of Childish Gambino called This is the Internet?)
3 Likes
There was a Sgt Pepper movie? And THIS (I jumped ship after 60 seconds, screaming) was the BEST bit?
Tell me it only ever screened in cinemas, otherwise it’s now too late to nuke the entire planet from orbit, just to be sure, because it’s already on its way to other civilisations as we speak, and they will NOT be happy!
1 Like
Oh yes. And not only was it bad (and flopped badly) it starred Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.
Robin Gibb was even quoted before the film came out thusly: “There is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don’t exist as a band and never performed Sgt Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed.”
2 Likes
I wasn’t denouncing. I am asking. Where’s the funny?
Side note: Sgt. Peppers gets a 15% Rotten Tomatoes score.
I laughed.
It’s Steve Martin: acting silly, mocking the video, dancing like a fool, and the gag with the sidewalk not responding to him properly. But hey, humor is subjective. Lots of things people find hilarious I find annoying.
4 Likes
Okay, so Michael Jackson owned the top 40 that year. (Bowie did too, but dressing up Steve Martin as 1984 Bowie is much much less funny.) So, Jackson’s dance moves were amazing, but pretty over-the-top too. Having a white guy with white hair do them is pretty funny, and even funnier when he’s good.
Don’t you love having a joke explained?
2 Likes
It was unwatchable, and yes Steve Martin was by far the best bit in the movie by miles. Everything else about it was much worse. Me and some friends watched it on dvd some years ago as part of our bad movie night and we had to stop. It wasn’t just bad it was dreadfully boring and incompetent.
Other movies you’d think would be entertaining but weren’t: Surf Nazis Must Die, Pom Poko (a movie about tanuki & their magical shape shifting testicles, made by the famous Studio Ghibli) and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.
4 Likes
That much? I was still too young to have taste then but I remember seeing it in the theater.
4 Likes
Well, we may agree about Sgt Pepper, even though I’ve only ever seen 60 seconds of the Steve Martin segment, but, umm… no, I don’t think I’d expect any of those other titles to be entertaining, based on the title and your short summary, alone. Sorry. The first and third sound like cheap rip-offs (what’s the equivalent movie term for ‘clickbait’?) and as for the second, no idea what a tanuki is and whilst the concept of shape-shifting testicles might momentarily intrigue, it also sounds like movie clickbait - shape-shifting bollocks. But I may be wrong, so off to the webtubes to investigate…
Surf Nazis Must Die is legendary among people who like to watch bad movies. Several YT channels and podcasts i follow have covered it, watched it years before them though and found it to be just boring. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter was a bargain bin buy at a Fry’s, which is a gamble and it was indeed in the boring bad camp. Pom Poko is one of the more obscure Studio Ghibli movies and with good reason. Though granted the first half of the movie is entertaining but then keeps going and going and i suspect some rewrites must’ve happened.
3 Likes
I’ll disagree on Pom Poko. It’s a weird movie, and rather slow, but it’s not bad. At its heart, it’s a parable about gentrification and displacement of native peoples, so it does get a bit preachy, too. However, it’s got a decent IMDB rating, was Japan’s best-grossing movie the year it came out, and was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award, so…
5 Likes
Ah, well. Life’s too short for bad movies, anyway, I’m afraid.
(If they are bad enough to actually entertain then they are not all bad, of course. Stopping now before semantics and philosophical disputation set in.)
I love bad movies, though i mean that as in entertaining bad movies, especially over a few drinks with friends. The dull ones are just a waste of time.
1 Like
I dunno… Billy Preston’s “Get Back” was amazing. Better than the original, IMO.
1 Like
