{"id":240,"date":"2005-09-11T16:54:10","date_gmt":"2005-09-12T00:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=223"},"modified":"2005-09-11T16:54:10","modified_gmt":"2005-09-12T00:54:10","slug":"movie-reviews-sahara-and-muppets-wizard-of-oz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/09\/11\/movie-reviews-sahara-and-muppets-wizard-of-oz\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Reviews — "Sahara" and "Muppets Wizard of Oz""},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently rented the movies Sahara<\/a> and The Muppets Wizard of Oz<\/a>. Both of them stank like a wet dog on an August afternoon.<\/p>\n

“Sahara” is an adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel. I’ve never read any Cussler, but my neighbor loves him. Cussler is a swashbuckling treasure hunter who writes about swashbuckling treasure hunters. This story has something to do with a lost Civil War ironclad ship that is burried in the Sahara desert, an evil African strongman, a swashbuckling treasure hunter and his goofy sidekick, a babealicious World Health Organization epidemiologist, and a multinational corporation that generates energy or something in a high-tech solar-powered desert facility and burries toxic waste in the underground river that supplies water to the noble nomadic freedom fighters and humble townsfolk that live nearby.<\/p>\n

If I lost you at “babealicious World Health Organization epidemiologist,” I don’t blame you. This film takes every stupid buddy and spy movie cliche, chunks them in a blender, throws in a few idotic plot twists cut between absurd exploding chase scenes, slaps on opening and closing credits, and calls it a day. I was really in the mood for a dumb-but-fun action film — some gadgets, a few explosions, the bad guy buying the farm and the good guy getting the girl — but this was just dumb.<\/p>\n

The “Muppets Wizard of Oz,” on the other hand, takes the classic Oz story, strips it of everything fun and magical, and refilms it with Kermit and friends using production values that must have Judy Garland & co. turning over in their graves. It used to be that you could count on the Muppets for kid-friendly movies with some witty adult-friendly wisecracks. In “Oz,” the jokes are simply vulgar.<\/p>\n

For example, Kermit the Frog, as the Scarecrow, is found by Dorothy in the corn patch attached to a wooden cross. Kermit cracks, “has anyone around here seen The Passion of the Christ?” Wonderful. Now even Kermit is an anti-Christian bigot. Later, we meet Gonzo as the tin man. Toto — inexplicably presented as a three foot tall prawn (yes, a prawn, like a shrimp) rather than a little dog — manipulates some buttons and knobs to get the tin man working. Eventually, Toto twiddles some protrusions on Gonzo’s chest. “Those,” Gonzo says, “are my nipples,” to which Toto replies “I feel so dirty!” How debased! Have we really sunk so low that we need S&M \/ nipple references in Muppet films? Do I really need to explain this kind of thing to my kids? I feel dirty too, Toto. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.<\/p>\n

I could go on and on about the crude and idiotic stuff in “Muppets Oz,” but I’ll spare myself the unwanted Google hits and just suggest you let this one rot on the video store shelves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We recently rented the movies Sahara and The Muppets Wizard of Oz. Both of them stank like a wet dog on an August afternoon. “Sahara” is an adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel. I’ve never read any Cussler, but my neighbor loves him. Cussler is a swashbuckling treasure hunter who writes about swashbuckling treasure hunters. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-film"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-3S","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}