Best and Worst of the Summer 2023 with Mike and Kelsey + Movie Review: Gran Turismo + Trailer Park: Good Burger 2

00:00:01
Speaker 1: That look Kelsey crack and a cold one. It's our afternoon coffee as we're recording this. Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host, Movie Mike. I did say that was a coffee, right, he did. That's my afternoon coffee. You're not just having a beer in the middle of the afternoon we record this.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: I mean it's four pm one Friday. It could be.

00:00:18
Speaker 1: It's true. I am also having a cold one, a nice refreshing cold Drew from Hebrew use promo code don't have one.

00:00:25
Speaker 2: Again, not sponsored, but Hibrew hit us up. Loyal customers we.

00:00:30
Speaker 1: Are, and we are here to talk about our best and worst movies of the entire summer. I have my favorite one, I have my worst one. I have some honorable mentions. Overall, a pretty good summer, which we'll get into more later in the episode. I'll be giving my review of Grand Turismo, and then in the trailer park we'll be talking about Good Burger two and whether or not it's just baiting us into some nostalgia. So ready to talk about movies? And now let's talk movies.

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Speaker 3: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses.

00:01:15
Speaker 1: From the Nashville Podcast.

00:01:16
Speaker 3: Network, this is Movie Mike's movie podcast.

00:01:20
Speaker 1: We are back and we're gonna talk about our best and worst movies of the summer. The summer blockbuster season officially kicks off the first weekend of May and just wrapped up this past weekend on Labor Day weekend. So overall, I thought it was a really solid summer blockbuster season, the best since the pandemic, which isn't the hardest thing to do because twenty one really didn't count. Twenty twenty two still felt like it was kind of like not fully enforced. But this summer was so stacked to the point that some movies suffered because just massive movies were coming out and didn't get the attention they deserved. But it was really hard for me to pick a favorite movie of the summer. Was it for you?

00:01:59
Speaker 2: Yes and no. I had a lot of movies that I really liked, but my favorite was one that just like really hit.

00:02:06
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we're gonna say here our favorite, the one we enjoyed the most and for our own specific reasons, but you'll kick it off. What was your favorite movie of the summer.

00:02:16
Speaker 2: My favorite was a little foreign film called Past Lives.

00:02:19
Speaker 1: Which was a movie I didn't expect to love as much as I did because it's so simple but get so well done.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: It was so good, so so, so so good. I think we also only saw it because our AC was out that weekend. Yeah, we may have seen it otherwise, but it was one of those where we were like looking for something to see every day that weekend, and we'd seen everything at Regal and we looked at again our other favorite place, to the bell Court, and I was like, oh, this is showing. I've heard good things about it. So we went to see it and I left and I was like, wow, I loved that so much.

00:02:50
Speaker 1: And it has such a simple message and the overall storytelling in that movie is just no bells and whistles, just a straight ahead story about these two people who stay connected through their entire lives, how they drift away and come back, and how they stay connected. So overall, it's just a true, genuine story and just filmmaking at its finest in a movie that if you haven't seen yet, I really can't recommend it enough.

00:03:12
Speaker 2: I would also like to say Barbie would have been an obvious choice. I loved Barbie so much, but I just kind of felt like that was too obvious.

00:03:20
Speaker 1: Too obvious for you. Yeah, which is ironic, because Barbie is actually my favorite of the summer, and I think it's because I knew it was going to be good going into it, when that trailer first dropped and I knew Greta Gerwig was behind it, and I saw that first look at her vision, I knew that movie was going to be something special, but it was a rare case that it even exceeded my expectations. And when I go to watch a movie in the summer, I want to see something that's such a spectacle and draws me in from everything from the music to the costume design to the story, and a movie that I watch and I forget about every other aspect of life and I just live in that world. And Barbie was the only movie this summer to do that for me. And I think it's because of the message of that movie. It's because of the cast of that movie, the director Greta Gerwig in that movie, like all those things coming together into one visual masterpiece. I felt made up my favorite.

00:04:16
Speaker 2: I love that you loved it because I feel like now you understand the plight of being a woman so much more, I really do.

00:04:23
Speaker 1: I think it was all because of America Ferreira's monologue in that movie, like one of the best monologues ten fifteen years, Like you don't really get any monologues anymore, but that one was unusually good.

00:04:36
Speaker 2: I want that monologue tattooed on me, the whole thing, the entire thing, the whole thing on my back.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: That would take a long time. But yes, everything about that movie I loved, and it was hard for me to pick because when you look at this blockbuster season, I think we've seen over thirty movies this summer, which is a lot of movies.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: And we haven't gone on like our normal date night because all we do on the weekend.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been doing to a weekend. But the crazy thing is in those thirty movies, I actually hand it out three fives, which I never do. I usually give out one to five out of five a year. If that, I think the entire time I've been doing this podcast since twenty nineteen, I've probably given out five five out of fives, and in just this year alone, in the summer season, I've given out my three fives of the year, which have been Barbie Oppenheimer and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three, which to me, have been perfect films this year. And I think, I know it's still September, but I feel like twenty twenty three is going to go down in history as one of the best years in film of all time, the best since twenty nineteen, but I still say overall my favorite is two thousand and seven, twenty nineteen probably being number two. But after this year, with still things that are supposed to come out, which you know, what the strike going on, I think they'll still come out this year. But if that wasn't affecting it, twenty twenty three would easily make it as the best year and so long. So we'll see how the rest of the year plays out. But honestly, everybody, writers, actors need to get paid, so if we end up not getting some of those movies, I'm fine with it. I want to recognize that I haven't really spoken on the strike that much, because really I don't know all the details about it, but I know there is money to pay these people a living wage and to get health insurance and to get all the things they are asking for. And if you are not on the side of the actors and the writers, I think you're going to be on the wrong side of history. So as a movie fan, it's hard for me because I want all these movies to come out, but as a writer. But as a writer, I'm like, yes, they are the ones making these dreams and making these stories and making these characters that people fall in love with, making you know, on the Disney side of it, the reason people go to the park, it's all because of the writers, directors and actors. Without them, you have nothing. You can't computer generate that, you can't computer generate ideas that are going to live forever. Yes, they need to get paid, and if we need to, as movie fans miss out on some things this year, I'm totally fine with that. I'll start reviewing movies from the eighties and seventies if I have to.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: If that's not reason enough to pay them, please get this man new movies.

00:07:15
Speaker 1: So yes, But if all the movies that are slated to come out the rest of this year. I think twenty twenty three is going to be one of the best just looking at this summer alone. So now that we've talked about the good, let's get into the bad. What was your worst movie of the summer?

00:07:31
Speaker 2: It was one that we attempted to see recently and we haven't done this since the beginning of the year. But we left we left it, and that was Strays. Now, Listen, I knew it wasn't gonna be a cinematic masterpiece. It's about talking dogs.

00:07:46
Speaker 1: With Will Ferrell and Jimmie Fox.

00:07:48
Speaker 2: But it looked funny, like a raunchy funny, but like they made the dog's mouths move and it was weird. And there were just a lot of penis jokes.

00:07:59
Speaker 1: Lot, yeah, and it's weird to hear them coming from a dog.

00:08:02
Speaker 2: But like they also just like used other cruder terms for it. Like it was just a lot of I'm not gonna say the word in case you have kids in the car, but it's for a letter word I think you can.

00:08:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was raunchy without purpose, that.

00:08:16
Speaker 2: Wasn't It's kind of like when HBO just puts like nudity in and you're like, huh, did that add to the story or were you just trying to put someone naked on the screen.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: And it kind of felt they just let the actors run away with anything they thought was funny. And I know I wasn't going into this movie expecting Get to have like a great script, but it felt like there was nothing like they like, hey, this is what's happening in this scene. Do what you want, say what you want, and you just kind of default to saying a bunchet FNS words.

00:08:42
Speaker 2: We didn't really laugh. I looked do you after I finished my popcorn, and I was like, I've had my snack, we can go now.

00:08:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just felt it was just weird. I think it should have been animated. I think it would have been a lot funnier and it wouldn't have been as weird to watch if all the characters were animated.

00:08:58
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:08:58
Speaker 2: They do crude animated things all the time at South Park.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, look it's yeah south Park, or even like Sausage Party. I think it works when it's animated. When it's live action dogs, it feels weird because there's also a character Doug, who is the main character of who is the owner of the dog and he is mean to him, and it feels weird to see a human be abusive to a dog, even though it's a movie and it's supposed to be comedic.

00:09:23
Speaker 2: I didn't like that.

00:09:24
Speaker 1: I just, yeah, just the whole thing just didn't feel right. I agree with that one being one of the worst of the year.

00:09:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I wanted to laugh. I went into a thinking I was gonna laugh, and I'm we laughed him. We're like, that wasn't funny, because.

00:09:37
Speaker 1: There are some things that are so dumb that you enjoy and you can have there's some value to it, even though the fact that it's so completely dumb and ridiculous. They're still like, oh, I get what that was supposed to be. But in that case, I saw nothing like that.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: It was like, imagine if you watched like Homeward Bound as a kid, and they just like said curse words and talked about inappropriate things. That's what the live action made me feel like.

00:10:00
Speaker 1: That's probably what the pitch was for that movie to come. You know how Homeward Bound. What if they just said the F word?

00:10:06
Speaker 2: Kids loved that movie. Now, millennials, they'll come back.

00:10:11
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the situations of where kids convinced their parents to take them to see the movie, not knowing it was rated R.

00:10:18
Speaker 2: There were some small kids in our theater, which was weird, and I think they laughed more than us.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: They stayed longer than us too. But speaking of raunchy comedies, my worst of the summer was Vacation Friends Too. Oh so dumb, And on a recent episode in the Trailer Park, I was talking about how we actually ended up enjoying Vacation Friends one so much.

00:10:41
Speaker 2: It was so funny, like an unexpected funny.

00:10:44
Speaker 1: And I almost even compared it a little bit to kind of bringing back the humor of the Hangover with all the ridiculous situations. Yes, and I think it was the fact that we had no expectations going into that movie that we enjoyed it. But Vacation Friends Too is a disaster. There was no plot to it, and they tried to make it an action movie. Taking the original concept in the first one, where it's meeting random people on vacation and then going on a crazy adventure with them that wasn't even really a plotlight. In this movie, they just turned into wanta be action stars and the comedy was so flat, and as much as I love John Cena, he couldn't even say this movie.

00:11:27
Speaker 2: Throw in Steve BUSHEMI in a random role in that was real train wreck.

00:11:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, it felt like a Saturday Night Live sketch that went on way too long with no cinematic value whatsoever. And I don't think I laughed once you fell asleep. I did fall asleep. I think there was one scene in particular where I did laugh because it was so ridiculous. It was because of John Cena's character who gets into a drinking competition with another guy, and that was the funniest part of the movie.

00:11:54
Speaker 2: That wasn't even that funny, and.

00:11:55
Speaker 1: It wasn't even that funny. I had to question whether or not I laughed at that moment or or not. So that by far is my worst of the summer because I had, oddly I wouldn't even say high expectations, but just of that movie, and it really let me down, especially because I got on here and talked about how much I love the first one. It was excited for that one, and it ended up being a disaster, a flop, a big flop. So that's our best and worst. I do have the top ten highest grossing movies of the summer. Coming in at number ten was Elemental, which at first was kind of seen as a bomb, but over time through the international box office and kind of just having a steady chugging along at ticket sales, ended up coming in at number ten, which isn't bad, but when you think of Disney Pixart, coming in at ten is kind of bad for them for how much they spent on the marketing of that movie.

00:12:51
Speaker 4: But still, I felt like cracking the top ten is pretty good for them, especially considering that Fast X came in at number eleven and The Flash came in at number twelve. They beat Fast Yeah, Fast, I'm surprised that one did not make as much did not crack the top ten.

00:13:06
Speaker 2: That reminds me is this is a great place to tell you about a meme I saw because I love those. I saw that somebody joked about if they made a crossover between Jurassic Park and Fast and the Furious, They're like, you know what, dinosaurs can't stop family.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: Uh, they actually could do that because they're both universal. That was rumored for a little bit.

00:13:23
Speaker 2: I think that was what the meme said, was like universal wanted to do it, but it made me laugh.

00:13:26
Speaker 1: I wouldn't hold it past him. But again, we were looking at the numbers in the US, so.

00:13:31
Speaker 2: He's like, please stop telling me about memes. That is our entire relationship as I read you a funny Tweeter meme and you're like, it's not as funny when you're reading.

00:13:37
Speaker 1: No, that one's pretty funny. But yes, just looking at the domestic numbers. Here at number nine was Transformers Rise to the Beasts, which, surprising, they made it into the top ten good film. I feel like that was a really good Transformers movie.

00:13:51
Speaker 2: It was.

00:13:51
Speaker 1: And at number eight is Mission Impossible Dead Recording Part one. I feel like Tom Cruise hates that that wasn't a top five or even top three movie.

00:14:00
Speaker 2: Tom criz is yelling at someone somewhere.

00:14:01
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's ripping somebody to shred over that. I do think it suffered the timing. It came out right before Barbenheimer weekend.

00:14:09
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was the week before Barbenheimer.

00:14:11
Speaker 1: And also that trailer felt a little bit stale by the time the movie actually came out. That I feel like everybody had seen the big stunt in the movie already, which they revealed so early on that it kept you from wanting to go see anything else in the movie, even though there's a lot of action in it. That was like the big scene that they should have held onto.

00:14:31
Speaker 2: What was it, I don't even remember.

00:14:32
Speaker 1: Whenever he jumps off the cliff and then parachutes, Oh yeah, down to the train. They kind of they spoiled their own movie in a sense. At number seven was Indiana Jones in the Dial of Destiny.

00:14:45
Speaker 2: See, that's what I was thinking of. I was confusing the Indiana Jones train scene a lot of trains.

00:14:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, another train movie. I feel like that movie shouldn't have flopped as much as it did. Still a pretty good movie. It's just why I put out in Indiana Jones movie now, and it just kind of went out on a your note for Harrison Ford. At number six was The Sound of Freedom. At number five was The Little Mermaid. At number four was Oppenheimer. At number three was Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three. At number two was Spider Man Across the Spider Verse. At number one summer Blockbuster season was Barbie, Oh Barbie, making ninety seven million dollars in the US and over a billion Worldwide, which at the time of this I think it's still behind the Super Mario Brothers movie, but I think it could easily pass that up since it's still in theaters.

00:15:33
Speaker 2: Super Mario made that much. Oh yeah, with the Global.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the Global. I have some honorable mentions. Like I said earlier, I was in between Barbie and Oppenheimer.

00:15:45
Speaker 2: You actually didn't say that earlier.

00:15:46
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't say that earlier. In my head, I was saying that I was in between those two. But that would have been my runner up for best, followed probably by Guardians and then Spider Man after that. My honorable mentioned worse was You're So not Invited to my bot Mitzvah, which came out on Netflix.

00:16:06
Speaker 2: When we weren't the target audience.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: That we weren't, and I think I just felt like I could see Adam Sandler not giving a crap about his performance in a movie.

00:16:17
Speaker 2: I think he probably just wanted to make something with his family.

00:16:19
Speaker 1: Which has been kind of his mo and all of his movies of how many of my friends can I continue to employ? Which is fine, But I feel like that movie could have been a lot better than it was, because at moments it had some real potential there to be a funny movie. I like the concept of the movie, but I feel like nothing really happened throughout that entire movie, for it being an hour and forty five minutes. I feel like when you make a comedy like that, you have to have like, boom boom boom, this happens, and then this happens, Therefore this happens. It just kind of felt like a bunch of random events thrown together to make a movie, and I was let down by it, especially because it's Adam Sandler with his own real kids, like it should have been a lot funnier than that. I also have the movie I wasn't expecting to like but ended up enjoying was Haunted Mansion. But I feel like that movie suffered because it was like, why put out a Halloween movie for kids in the middle of summer? And maybe it's because we had so much low expectations we ended up enjoying it.

00:17:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, why didn't they save that for.

00:17:21
Speaker 1: I think because they wanted to release on Disney Plus during the Halloween season and get more people to subscribe. But that just feels like a weird attempt to take on a movie. Hey, let's suffer in the summer so we can make it up in October.

00:17:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, at that point, why not just do it direct to Disney Plus in October? Like why even go through.

00:17:40
Speaker 1: With a It kind of taints it in a way, Yeah, like we already bombed, but here it is on Disney Plus. The movie I want to see a sequel to as soon as possible was Talk to Me, which is a horror movie that I went to go see by myself because you were like, no way.

00:17:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. Again, I don't do scary movies. And also sometimes I like having the house to myself, so I was like, goodbye, have fun.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: The movie I had to pay attention to the most was A Fire, which was a foreign film from Germany. And I think it's because I don't know any German whatsoever.

00:18:11
Speaker 2: But not true. I did learn a German curse word.

00:18:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I did learn. Actually I knew that one already because of South Park. But that was a movie I had to pay so much attention to because German is a hard language because they don't really you can't really pick up on emotion from it. It's such a dry and cold language that I had to I like even when I watch a movie from South Korea, I can kind of pick up on it, even though I don't know the language. I feel the emotion in this movie. It's just straight dialogue and you have to read it because you can't really put together how they are delivering the dialogue versus what they are actually saying.

00:18:46
Speaker 2: I think that's true of like and I. I don't want to make a huge generalization, but like for European languages, there's not always inflection. Yeah, Like I know German, it's just kind of like hard syllables and consonants, and there's not like pauses. And I have a friend who's married to someone Swedish, and she talks about how when she goes to visit this family, she can't necessarily keep up because again, kind of like German, Swedish is very hard to pick up on emotions and inflection.

00:19:14
Speaker 1: It's a very matter of the fact, just like here it is, yes. And I think that's why by the end of that movie, I was so satisfied that I picked up on the subtle plot lines and the overall message of it and understood the character dynamics because I had to pay so much attention that I was focusing on just the dialogue that I was like, Oh, I actually understood what that movie was trying to say.

00:19:34
Speaker 2: It was a really good movie. I didn't do it good one that we enjoyed.

00:19:37
Speaker 1: And then the movie that I saw twice this summer that you saw twice as well, was Blue Beetle So Good, which I would have put that one is my favorite of the summer, but the fact that we just watched it and watched it twice, I felt like it was recency bias and the fact of how much that movie has meant to me, and also getting my mom to go see it and see it be enjoyed by somebody who doesn't like superhero movies whatsoever, leave laughing and enjoying that movie.

00:20:04
Speaker 2: And your mom had so much fun. I just love going anywhere with your.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: Mom, And so that one probably could have made my favorite given if I had have done this episode in another month or two. But I still stand by Barbie is my favorite of the summer. Anything else you would like to say as we close out this portion of the podcast.

00:20:22
Speaker 2: Normally I give a book recommendation, but I'm gonna be honest, I was really bad at tracking what I read this past month's so I don't remember what I read in August. Sorry, everyone, that's probably on my good Reads somewhere.

00:20:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would give a book recommendation of a book I want to see turned into a movie, which is a graphic novel. I just read Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Last Road in which I'm also looking at right now because they have it on my booksack. But it is one of the darkest, if not the darkest origin story, not even an origin story, but Ninja Turtle story of all time. I highly recommend it. And that's somebody who can rarely start and finish a book. But I think a movie is probably coming because they're going to turn it into a video game, but it would be essentially taking the Ninja Turtle story and making a dark Knight esque adaptation, very brutal.

00:21:13
Speaker 2: From what you told me about it, Yeah, you did read it quickly on the plane.

00:21:17
Speaker 1: So if you are like me and have trouble starting and finishing something and also want something in the level of superheroes, great one to check out. All right, Well, we'll come back and talk about Grand Tarismo and then we'll get into Good Burger. Two. Let's get into it now a spoiler free movie review. I want to talk about Grand Turismo, which is a much different video game adaptation from a movie that I have seen. So the movie is the real life story of Yon Martin Burrough, who was this kid who was just a gamer and got really good at this video game, Grand Tarismo, which is a racing game that is so accurate with the dynamics and the science behind it that it's almost like you're actually driving a race car, but with a PlayStation controller. And that is the premise of this movie because Yon is just a gamer trying to figure out what to do in his life. His parents want him to go to college, but he is so obsessed with racing and so obsessed with gaming that he knows this is his passion and he wants to follow it. He wants to be the best at this video game, Grand Tarismo, so he can go on and do this as his career. At that same time, Grand Turismo, the video game decides to have a contest where they are looking for the best player in the video game, whoever gets the highest score, and they will take a group of those people to actually train to drive. Because there are millions of players all across the world and they want the best. Why do they want to do this, well to promote the video game, to promote Sony, but also to get young Blood into racing and have this whole kind of cross promotion synergy thing going on. So it's this big contest that's trying to build hype around racing and tap into this market that has been overlooked, and that is what we findy on. So this movie is an underdog story. It's a racing sport movie. The thing I felt was a little bit off about this movie was the tone. I want to talk about tone, which is something that feels like a little elusive, but if tone is just a little bit off, it can really change my viewing experience of a movie. I felt like the tone was just a little bit off in this movie. Because this movie isn't a bad movie by any means, And forgive me for using this reference while talking about a racing movie, it just kind of feels like this movie is stuck in second gear basically all the way up until the end. And I think it's because of the tone. This movie didn't really know how it wanted to say, It knew exactly what it wanted to say because it is based on a true story. The real life of Yan is pretty remarkable, even though it's a much more condensed They take some liberties like any movie based on a true story does. So it knew what it wanted to say, it just didn't know how it wanted to say it. And it's because of the tone, because at times this this movie felt a little bit over dramatic, and when you get into a sports movie, especially a racing movie, you're gonna fall into all of these cliches, and it just felt like they were trying to oversell the emotion through the acting and through the direction, and even through the look of this movie. I felt if this movie would have had a little bit of a lighter tone and maybe appealed more to like an eight or ten year old, it would have had a much better effect on the viewer. So I felt like, for me, this movie didn't know who it was talking to, and at times I did feel inspired by his story. I think the entire thing is remarkable, like I was just saying, but I just don't know who they were trying to get the message across to and who they were trying to inspire by watching this movie. I just think if it would have been a little bit more lighthearted and geared towards the people who actually played this game and incorporate more things from the video game in this movie, it would have just had a much more fun experience for me, and I think a much more fun experience for the younger audience who this movie really should have brought in. It should be inspiring kids now who are gamers, and I think that's what this movie missed out on, because that is the most inspirational part about this movie to me, the fact that they took a gamer who is just so good at what he did behind the wheel in his bedroom and he went on to do something amazing in the real world. That is the inspiring story. That is the message you want to get across the kids, because really that is remarkable when you think about the fact that at least that part of this movie actually happened. They took a kid who was just great at the video game and put that to the test, and all the implications that come with that, all of the criticism you get with that of oh, you're just some gamercare you don't have what it takes to compete with us. And then in the movie, you see what actually happens in that situation. It just felt a little bit too serious to me. And this movie just found itself in an unusual position where yes, it is a video game adaptation, but is a true story. So really trying to sell the story of Yan. But the movie is called Grand Turismo, it should incorporate more of the video game. I wanted to see more about how his mind works and how he adapted that into his actual performance as a racer. So the first act suffered by having the wrong tone, but the movie had a formula that lent itself to building to that moment. It's a racing movie. What happens in a racing movie. They race? What do you want to do in a racing movie? You want to come in first. That is exactly what this movie is. So you as the viewer, experienced that with Yan, go through all these trials and tribulations of him trying to get better and better as a racer leading up to the final race, which in this case is a twenty four hour race, the same race we saw in another racing movie called Ford v. Ferrari. And I was trying to put in my head where this movie ranked within other racing movies, and it occurred to me that racing movies are down there towards the bottom on my least favorite genre of movie. I never really thought about it before, but racing movies really just aren't that great because they are a cliche, because they are a little bit cheesy and sometimes over dramatic. And for some reason, I thought there would be this long list of great racing movies. And as I'm scanning all these racing movies, I thought to myself, Man, I'm really not missing out a whole lot here, And really this movie kind of creeped up there because there's really not that many things to compare it to. So Ford v. Ferrari would be my favorite racing movie. It didn't really have to do a whole lot to become one of my favorites. But that one is in a much different category than this movie, with a much better director and a much better cast. And you're probably screaming to yourself Days of Thunder or maybe trying to throw in some fast in the Furious movies. I'm just talking about traditional racing movies. They're really just not that great. So unless you are super into racing movies, which I would like to meet you, because I would like to know you're on more racing movies and why you really enjoy them, or unless you're gonna cheat and say Talladegan Knights is one of the best racing movies of all time, I would almost let that one pass. I would let that pass. Is a great racing movie. But I will say even though it felt a little bit predictable, and I say that knowing that it's based on a true story and you can google it, look it up on Wikipedia. I did see Yan doing some interviews before the Writer's strike talking about how he actually got to be the stunt driver in a movie about him, So I did think there are some cool aspects of it. But after watching this movie, I thought to myself, did I really need to see this?

00:28:31
Speaker 2: Like?

00:28:31
Speaker 1: Did this really change me in any way? And I know this movie isn't really getting the best reviews from critics even though audiences love it. I get that I'm right in the middle of both of those. I can see some elements from a critical standpoint of why this movie isn't great, But I do see a lot of entertainment value in this movie because at the end of it, you know, what it left racing my heart, and it's because of that formula. You get to that final race and you're so invested in it you want to see the entire thing through. Even though I felt this movie was a little bit long, going over two hours, if this would have been a ninety minute racing movie, I would have loved it. I would have come on here and told you you need to go see this movie, and you're missing out by not going to watch Grand Tarismo. Instead, it spent so much time with all this backstory, we could have really chopped down all of the weird awkwardness, over dramaticness of that first act built up more to what we wanted to see, all these gamers coming together and learning how to race, and then just get to the final race. So I won't deny that the movie had a lot of heart. I'm inspired by Yan's story, but the way it was told was very stereotypical and it didn't really know how to say it. So I think that's what kept this movie back from being great. So initially, when I was first going through my rating on this movie, I had it had about a three point five. But the more I realized what this movie could have been and how much more inspirational it could have left audiences and really even inspired some kids to maybe not become racers, but maybe take more pride in the fact that they are nerd video gamers. And I say that as a nerd video gamer, that you could go on to do things that people don't expect you to do. I think that's the biggest message of this movie of because this movie does speak to the way people pay their dues and the way you look at certain people and how they come up that there's kind of just this old guard. It could be that there's always this old guard, could be in racing, could be in music, could be in comedy, of you have to do things this way because this is how we do it, this is how you become legitimate. And this kind of throws everything out the window, saying, you know what, I can do it in my own way, and maybe I can beat you doing it. That is what the message of this movie is. In the movie, it didn't do the best at the box office. It had this weird thing where it delayed its premier day and then had this two weeks of like sneak previews trying to create some word of mouth. So with that sixty million dollar budget and made twenty one million dollars in the US and fifty eight million dollars worldwide, So overall the numbers represent just about what this movie is. So going back to the rating system, if I had to give Grand Turismo a rating, it was at that three point five, but I talked myself out of it. I give it three out of five racing helmets, And there weren't really any standouts in the cast. The story kind of overshadowed every single individual character. Orlando Bloom felt like a very odd choice as the one orchestrating this entire contest. David Harber, who you would know as Hopper from Stranger Things, really gave it as all, but he's probably the one who contributed to the most cliches in this movie. Stylistically looked pretty good, but at times it just felt like a Sony PlayStation ad and they were just trying to bring people back to buy their product, which, hey, capitalism.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: It's time to head down to movie.

00:32:02
Speaker 1: Mike Treylar Paul is good Burger too? Just nostalgia? Bate, I say it is, and I'll tell you why, the fact that this movie is not coming out in theaters is a bad sign. Nickelodeon is deciding to make this a Paramount Plus exclusive, so just trying to build hype around the nostalgia and the fact that it's based on a movie slash TV show that came out when we were kids, and trying to push us all to the Paramount Plus streaming service, which is the only one that I don't currently subscribe to. And I think it's because they keep putting out movies like Good Burger two. I it's nostalgia bait and I don't like this. I think in order to make a movie that comes twenty five or thirty years after, that has to be a little bit more of a demand or there has to be a reason for this movie to be made. And quite honestly, I'm surprised that Keenan is behind this movie and would even agree to do this movie, because I feel he has grown so far in his career. He's built so much on Saturday Night Live, and I feel like now as he's kind of on the way out of Saturday Night Live, which I'm surprised he's still on that show, but he's trying to get more into TV shows where he is the Star and into movies. I mean, even though he did fat Alber back in the day, which I thought was actually pretty good, but I feel like this is a weird step for him. This would be like justin Timberlake going back to n SYNC, which if you follow TikTok and all the news going on there, he might actually do that. But I just feel like this isn't the move I was expecting Keenan to go in, who I think is a good actor, who was one of the best childhood actors of all time and has had a really fruitful career doing things that we all love. And I think whenever they did the sketch of this on Saturday Night Live and that was the end of it, we didn't really need to see anything else. There's really not a whole lot to explore. And I'm a big nick kid. Above all the other networks that were made for kids, that I think was the best one growing up in the nineties and early two thousands, it is the only one that I really cared to watch. They had great TV shows, whether it be live action or the ones I love the most were the animated cartoons, and it was a network that felt not like it was run by adults making things that kids would like. It felt very much like it was kids making content for other kids, even though that wasn't the case. But it just very much spoke to my inner child more than Disney Channel or more than Cartoon Network. But when it comes to movies, yeah, Disney Channel really had that on lock with They're not really being that many great Nickelodeon original movies that aired on the network or the ones that come out in theaters. The first ever Nickelodeon movie came out in nineteen ninety six, and it was Harry Get the Spy. What I remember the most about that movie it was the first time I'd ever seen an orange VHS tape. For those listening who were born after the nineties, a VHS tape is this big rectangle that you would put into a VCR, which is a player much like well, you don't even have CDs anymore. It was this other big box that you would put this little box into press play and you could watch a movie. And Nickelodeon made all of their movies on orange VHS tapes because orange was the color of the network, and it really stood out on the shelf, especially when it didn't have a case. But Good Burger was the second Nickelodeon movie that came out on July twenty fifth, nineteen ninety seven, and is really the cult classic of all the Nickelodeon films, although I really wouldn't put the later Nickelodeon films in that same category when you get to movies like not Your Libe, and I wouldn't even really categorize the Ninja Turtles movies as Nickelodeon movies even though they're owned by Nickelodeon. So for all these reasons, I just don't think this movie is going to be very good because I feel like they are taking less of a risk putting it on Paramount Plus, and to me, that just feels like a straight to video approach to putting out a movie like this. And if you don't get that reference, you are also not getting my VHS reference. Straight to video means when a studio would make a lesser quality sequel and just put it out on VHS or on DVD because they didn't want to spend the money on marketing and all the other added costs to put it out in theaters because it was a lesser product. So I've already told you why this movie isn't going to be great, but I'll probably still check it out. I haven't even played the trailer yet, so here's just a little bit of the Good Burger to trailer. Hey, hey man, you're almost car burging me to that. The New Adventures of that in starts now. Welcome the good Barker home.

00:36:49
Speaker 4: The gun Barker can't.

00:36:55
Speaker 1: Water, I think, so, oh yeah, that's water for me, thanks.

00:37:03
Speaker 2: So.

00:37:04
Speaker 1: Good Burger originated as a sketch on the Nickelodeon series All That, which starred Keenan and Kel, who also had their own Nickelodeon show called Keenan and Kel. But Good Burger spun off into the movie that came out in nineteen ninety seven and had some pretty good box office success, making about twenty four million dollars on an eight million dollar budget. And the crazy thing Growing Up is as much as I love Nickelodeon, as much as I love Keenan and Kell, was probably my favorite live action Nickelodeon show. I didn't really love Good Burger. I didn't think the sketch on All That was particularly funny. Kel Mitchell as ed was never one of my favorite Nickelodeon characters. So when I first saw the movie, I thought it was really just very alright. And I think the reason I'm so against this movie is I've been burned in the past of movies that were reboots of my favorite childhood TV shows or carrots, and they just turn out to be not good. You even heard it there in that trailer. It's that same kind of humor, but done by somebody twenty five years age. It just does not hit the same. The only redeeming quality there is about this movie is it is bringing back some of the original Good Burger casts, who are some of the Nickelodeon ogs, Josh Server and my favorite Lori Beth, who was a staple of Nickelodeon's in the nineties, and you wonder what happened to her after the two thousands, because she was on that network so much, whether it be on All that or all the Nickelodeon game shows. That is what I loved about Nickelodeon. It made people like Lori Beth a star who had such great comedic timing and were such great comedic character actors. And I haven't really seen her anything past the two thousand, so I can't wait to see her role in this movie and her comeback to the medium screen on Paramount Plus. Again. There is no official release date on Good Burger two, but expect to see it sometime in November of this year, and we'll all be saying this again, at least those who decide to watch it.

00:39:07
Speaker 2: Welcome to Good Burger, Home of the Good Burger.

00:39:09
Speaker 1: Can I take ya order? Geez? And that was this week's edition of Movie by Tram or Bar And that is going to do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listener's shout out of the week. This week we are going over to let's go over to Twitter. I wanted to know all of your answers to this week's topic, what was your favorite movie you watched this summer? And this week's listener shout out is to Big Will, who replied on Twitter and said, very unpopular opinion, but I love the flash. Yes, the style took some getting used to, but it had a lot of entertainment value. And I am a fan. And I said back to Big Will, I can actually respect that. I don't ever want to deny somebody enjoyment. If you watch that movie and enjoyed it. More power to you. I don't even want to sound condescending and saying that, but I wish I had enjoyed that movie more when I saw it. But my true honest feelings was boredom and fumbling of the bag and a movie that I had so much hype going into. I was so let down by and I felt like me just speaking my truth. And that criticism of the movie ended up sparking the most outrage because people felt I was just jumping onto other people's opinions, when the fact is I don't read or listen to any other reviews before giving my review. But people thought that I was just joining on the DC bashing of the Flash. Not the case. I just did not enjoy that movie and almost fell asleep. But big will if you enjoyed it, you love that movie. Now that it's streaming on HBO Max, I do see more people talking about it and defending that movie. I may, but I probably won't give it a rewatch. But you never should have to feel bad about enjoying a movie, And really you should feel better because the other people who did hate a movie that you loved you can think, well, you wasted your time. I didn't waste my time or my mind, so really, you come out the winter. So thank you Big Will for that reply. Thanks for everybody else who gave me your opinions on your favorite movies of the summer. There were a lot of barbies. Somebody even said that there was no movie in particular. It was just listening to this podcast, and I greatly appreciate that, So thank you. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.