Canadian Bacon transcript
Season 2 · Episode 29. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
There are a lot of funny quotes, I thought. Bill Nunn, who played one of the friends of Candy's character, can we get out of here? All these guns and white people are making me nervous.
And he was like, Well, you cut it out with that white people stuff. You're making me look at him strange.
Welcome to the worst movie podcast. I'm Ade.
I'm Aaron. This week we're talking about Canadian bacon from 1995. So what have you been watching? I haven't finished it yet, but I just started watching uh The Death of Robin Hood that we talked about. Yeah. With Hugh Jackman. Yeah. Uh have you seen it? No.
Oh.
How is it so far?
Um It's interesting, I think. Uh it's an interesting uh premise. Basically, he's like not a hero at all. He's kind of a villain and like a ruthless murderer. But I I kind of like was half listening to it while I was working. And it is not a good movie for that because it is like 90% just grunts and like stabbing sounds. And I have no fucking clue what happened in the movie. So I need to that seems like the worst way to watch a movie. Um, there are some movies that are like great for that. Like um like All the President's Men is good for that because it's all just talking. Uh so there are some movies that you can follow along just by listening for the most part. This was not one.
I tried to watch All the President's Men uh earlier this year when I had COVID, and it was like the perfect falling asleep on the couch movie.
Yeah, I love I've seen that movie probably a hundred times because I I just put it on and go to bed.
Yeah, I would just kind of wake up in a feverish daze and see them talking at the counter or something like that, and then drift back off to sleep.
It's all like newsroom ambient sounds like uh keyboards clicking away in the background and phones ringing. It's very uh pleasing to listen to. Yeah. Uh not the death of Robin Hood, though. Yeah.
I think that's cheating, by the way. You can't bring something to what you're watching now that you're like a movie that you haven't finished.
Uh well, I'll be honest, I didn't prepare a uh an answer for this question before before the podcast.
So it also takes a lot of time and energy watching bad movies.
It does.
Sometimes we've got to get away from the screen.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. What have you been watching? So I went and saw You Can See Everything, the Nathan Fielder Elizabeth Holmes movie. Yeah. You haven't seen it yet, right? Right. I'm not a big Nathan Fielder fan. I I know, but uh so Kelly went and saw it with me, and she hates Nathan Fielder um probably as much or more than you do, and she loved it and you know, didn't squirm in her seat at all the same way she does at the TV shows. It's very different. I think some of it is if I understand correctly, you hate the shows because of just kind of the cringe aspect of it, of him kind of trapping random people in these awkward situations. And yeah. It's just different because Elizabeth Holmes is at the center of this and she's a celebrity for lack of a better word, or well-known figure, and voluntarily participated in this. It wasn't like she answered an ad on Craig Craigslist and showed up to some office park and thought she was getting a job. Yeah. So it's a very different setup. I see.
It just feels like strange to watch somebody's uh line like I'm generally not somebody who gets involved in like celebrity uh gossip or news. Like I don't really care what that people do for the most part. Uh and it just feels like she's so strange and so weird that it would be uncomfortable just getting that peak into her life that I don't want to see that necessarily. Yeah.
Uh I understand that. Uh she is weird and there are uncomfortable moments. But the movie is so much about human interaction and communication and how we deceive each other or convince each other of things and how it's it's just very it gets very meta um without spoiling too much. And and by the way, if you haven't for anybody who hasn't seen it yet, try to avoid all spoilers. Like it's best to just kind of go into it cold in terms of what's happening in the documentary, obviously knowing a lot about Elizabeth Holmes and what's happened before the events of the documentary are completely fine. But yeah, I don't know. I I've I find the the whole story of Theranos really interesting and one of the big questions, especially as somebody who spent his career in tech, is like just that whole fake it till you make it ethos of founders in the tech world, especially, and just how much I think the central question certainly in her trial was like how much was she did she think they were on the verge of uh inventing this solution, and how much of it was she deliberately misleading investors and customers um about how well it works.
So does the movie answer that at all?
I feel like this isn't a spoiler, I guess, but it it doesn't definitively answer that, and I don't think there's anything that you could ever film that would definitively answer that, unless it was like some found footage circa 2014 of her being like, and now I'm about to go you know, lie. But there's no smoking gun. Right. And you can't prove the counterfactual, you can't prove that she thought she wasn't lying. Yeah, I don't think there's ever gonna be definitive proof. A little sticky, yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Well, it is three hours, so like I I might wait till I can break it up at home.
I I Kelly balked at me taking her to a Nathan Fielder movie and to a three-hour movie. I mean, she's usually like a two-hour movie. Like uh she'll sit, she'll sit and binge watch a eight-part TV show about like some serial killer, but I'm like, the movie's an hour and 45 minutes, and she's like, I just don't have time. But yeah, uh, but yeah, she said it didn't feel like three hours hours at all. I, for one, didn't have to go to the bathroom for the first time in like five years during a movie I saw in the theaters and it was three hours. So uh it goes by quickly.
Uh that reminds me I do have an answer for what I've been watching. Hell yeah. Uh just because of the length of it. I ended up watching the extended director's cut of Gettysburg.
Okay.
How long is that? It was over four hours, maybe like four hours, 15 minutes or something. But it was great. Uh, it was um it's one of those movies that is kind of held up with like Waterloo or A Bridge Too Far, where it's like these kind of historically accurate epics, you know, history fans really like to watch those movies. Uh and this one uh it's got Jeff Daniels in it. And I mean, it's an incredible cast. Martin Sheen plays Robert E. Lee, which is hilarious because Tom Barringer plays um a general. I can't remember the name of the general, a Confederate general, and they're in these scenes together all the time. And Tom Barringer is like this imposing man with this like huge beard, and then Martin Sheen is like this little guy riding around on his horse, and it's like it's like he's on a little pony, and then Tom Barringer is like this like the the juxtaposition of their uh their physical presence is hilarious to see on screen together. But yeah, it was a good movie. I I broke it up I watched it all in one day, but I broke it up into two parts, but it was it was great. I've never seen it. Jeff Daniels is in it, he was really good. He played uh a general who did the um the bayonet charge down little round top. I can't remember the general's name, but it was uh it was a big moment in the battle, but it was uh it was good, it was it was well done, and uh a lot of the well, I think almost all of the extras in it were just civil war reenactors. Yeah. So they brought like their own equipment and stuff to it and their own like knowledge of the history, and they filmed it in Gettysburg. It may still be the only film that's that was shot in a national park. So it's just kind of interesting. But it was very long. Yeah, it uh I don't think I'll watch it.
Uh just gonna tell you. Yeah, I can't blame you.
If you're not into Civil War history, you're probably not gonna enjoy it.
Maybe next time I get COVID. Yeah, maybe. Speaking of history, uh this month is Let's Talk Politics Month. Um and everyone's favorite. Yes. Uh thank you for joining the worst movie podcast to talk about politics. Uh this will be after voting day. Are you gonna vote? Yeah, of course. Do you know do you have you looked at the ballot yet? Do you know who you're gonna vote for?
No, I'm actually uh a little annoyed because California, when I lived there, was great about sending ballot packets out that had all the candidates and all the measures and propositions that they were that were up for voting and then would explain kind of both sides of the issue. And I you get nothing in Indiana. Like they don't they don't send out anything. Yeah, well, you can find it online, but yeah, yeah. But I mean you have to look it up yourself. In California, everybody gets mailed that stuff, which is which I think was nice, but yeah.
Sorry we can't spoon feed you.
If I were running things here, I would make sure everyone was informed. No, we like we like everybody.
Uh I don't know. Uh yeah, let's let's not get too much. Let's not get off the rails too much. Yeah. Uh so we're talking today about Canadian bacon from 1995. I don't know how we're not gonna get off the rails, by the way, because I know this is the the one and only, well, depending on your perspective, uh the one and only fiction movie directed by Michael Moore.
And the only quote unquote comedy.
Yeah. And uh by the way, the Nathan Fielder documentary, you can see everything, I think, is the highest grossing op documentary to open since Fahrenheit 9-11, Michael Moore movie. So um has that for a segue. Also, Nathan Fielder is Canadian, so you know, a lot of just like Neil Young.
Uh I don't know who that is. My god, you have to be joking. Just joking. They made a joke about him in this movie.
Um Canadian Bacon stars John Candy and uh Pactcast that I'm sure we'll get to later. Rotten Tomato score of 19%. It had a $11 million budget and made $180,000 at the box office. Horrible. So uh yeah, written by Michael Moore as well, clearly didn't uh didn't contribute to his career as a um you know fiction director, and so went back to documentaries. Biggest interesting bit of background is it's John Candy's last released film, unfortunately. It was shot before Wagon's East, but um came out after that. Rip. Yeah. Uh had you heard of this movie before? Had you seen it?
I've seen it once. Uh I think I saw it on TV ages ago, and I didn't care for it. I was like, oh, John Candy, I love him. And I sat there and watched it, and I was like, oh, this isn't funny.
Yeah. I mean, you would have been teenager or younger, maybe.
So well, I didn't see it when it came out. Yeah. Um I saw it. I mean, I was probably in my maybe my twenties when I saw it, so it's been a while, but yeah, I was I was not impressed when I saw it.
Have you seen it? Uh no, I hadn't seen it before. I I was aware of it just because knowing that it was John Candy's last film. I think I watched Wagons East. I'm pretty sure I did.
I think I've seen it too.
Yeah, but uh yeah, never I couldn't have told you anything about this movie. I probably would have been able to name it if uh if it came up during trivia.
Yeah, same. I I couldn't have told you the plot, really.
Can you still can you tell me the plot?
I can if you'd like it. Yeah, you want to give the overview? Um, sure. Uh Alan Alda plays a struggling U.S. president. I don't think they say his name. I don't even think we know the president's name in this movie. Is it listed in the credits? I don't know. He's on IMDB as just president of the United States. Yeah. Um, so maybe.
They were trying very hard not to make it ri you know tie him to any like real existing president.
Yeah, yeah. Um, so he's struggling uh with kind of plummeting approval ratings after the Cold War. So his advisors devised this plan to like create an enemy and they stir up all this anti-Canadian sentiment. Meanwhile, while this is all happening, John Candy is a sheriff in Niagara Falls, and he and his friends are all super patriotic and they're pissed off about the uh arms factory that closed down and they all lost their jobs, and so they get all wrapped up in this uh anti-Canadian sentiment, ironically, because I think a good chunk of the cast is maybe Canadian. I don't know. Uh but yeah, they kind of get wrapped up in it, and it leads to these silly antics of us fighting the Canadians.
Yeah. I guess we should just talk about this at the top. Uh, how do you feel about Canada? Do you think we should invade Canada?
I like Canada. I've only been once. Uh yeah, maybe I won't share that story. I don't I don't know. Oh were there problems in Canada?
Did we go together?
No, it was when um I was moving to New York and we were on the road moving all our shit and we decided to stop by Niagara Falls on the way. I had forgotten that I had my guns in the car. And we went through customs and they were like, anything to declare? And we're like, nope. We just went right on through. Uh which yeah, I don't I think they would frown on that if they'd known.
So they didn't they didn't find him?
They didn't find them, but uh we didn't realize till after we got out of Canada that we were like, oh shit, we had guns in the car the whole time.
So you you drove across the Canadian border and then backed into the US with guns in the car, yeah. With a trunk full of arms.
Yeah.
Oops. The pre pre-9-11 days were simpler times, I guess.
Yeah, this was right before 9-11, too.
So uh it's different times now for sure. I guess we should we should clarify that it wasn't a trunk full of guns, I assume it was just like your hunting rifle. Uh you want to move on. Aaron's previous li life as a gun runner.
An arms smuggler.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's the statute of limitations on that? I don't know.
That's why I was like, I may maybe shouldn't say this. This is on the record.
Yeah. All right. We'll we'll fact check that. And uh so you were saying how you think we should invade cam Canada and you tried to do it uh when you were younger.
Yeah. They've got that socialized healthcare, and you know, everybody gets everything for free up there.
Yeah. Um what what do you think about the premise of this movie? I I think it's a good premise. Yeah. I it's really smart. Obviously, I mean, wait long enough and uh fiction becomes reality.
Like it seems um I mean it's it's a great bit of satire about how clearly our current administration has seen this movie.
Yeah, that was that was gonna be uh I think it was last the Mooseport movie that I asked which current or former president had most likely watched Welcome to Mooseport. And I think it's uh yeah, it's a no-brainer on this one. On this one. At least someone in the administration has seen this one.
Oh, yeah.
They watched the first 15 minutes at least and were like, perfect idea.
Yeah, it sounds like a good plan.
Yeah, except there's a scene early on where the administration is like going through uh historic enemies of the United States and like all the dictators are dead or captured and all that stuff.
But uh then they showed Jane Fonda as one of the enemies. They're like, she's reformed and looking good or something.
Um and yeah, it kind of feels like our administration, however you feel about it, like they are like, all right, all the above. Like, let's just pick fights with everybody.
I was watching this movie and I'm like, this is like idiocracy meets Doctor Strangelove. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like these increasingly escalated stupid decisions. Yeah. Uh yeah. Yeah, it's kind of the premise is on point, but like it it's kind of um a one-joke movie. In my opinion, the first third, I had a couple laughs. I thought, okay, this might have some potential. And then they just kept telling the same joke over and over again, and it got really long. And yeah, um, like the last two-thirds of it was just such a drag.
Yeah, I feel similarly. The the first the first third, I wasn't sure how I would feel about the movie. I I thought some things were kind of funny and interesting, at least from a satiric perspective. And then yeah, it really uh really just kind of went off the rails and got boring. And yeah.
You know, I've just been dying to talk to you about satire.
Oh uh let's not revisit our show girls discussion. Kind of zagging a little bit. What are your thoughts on John Candy? What's your relationship with John Candy movies?
I love John Candy. Uh I mean I think everybody does. Yeah, it's hard to uh find anybody like he sucks. That fucking guy. What's your favorite? I mean he seemed like a sweet man. I can't even bring myself to watch the the documentary about him because I know it's gonna rip me up. Yeah. I I started it. Uh watched like the first 15 minutes, but I pretty much like him in everything. However, this movie finds a way to make him like unlikable. Um which I didn't know was even possible.
Well, I kind of feel like they didn't give him much to do in this movie. The script is pretty bad. Yeah. Um, well, let's let's let's get back to that in a second. I'm gonna pin you down. What what is what is the John Candy movie that you like most associate him with?
Because I thought this was uh Planes, Trains, and Automobiles for sure. But I'm fond of Uncle Buck. He had a bit role in the Oliver Stone movie JFK, where he played this like snazzy New Orleans lawyer uh that was like really different from what I'd seen him do that I liked. Um yeah, I I think Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is definitely the one that I if I think John Candy, that's the one I think of.
Or Cool Runnings. Yeah, I said Cool Runnings was on my list. That was probably one of the ones that um like that movie I watched a lot. Are you dead, Sonka? Uh yeah, such a great movie. I I've probably seen him in Home Alone more than any other movie, uh, just because I probably watched that more than um all the other movies, but obviously that's a much smaller part.
And his polka band or whatever they were in the back of the truck. Oh man. Catherine O'Hara too. Yeah.
Yeah. Um I didn't know how to I don't know how to transition from that. Um quit making me sad. All right. So do you want to talk about Michael Moore? Um no, let's uh let's let's move into the movie itself. So we talked about the first third um being funny. Any any really funny moments? Like when did you laugh out loud during this movie?
Um I thought the the opening scene was kind of funny. I mean it's dark. It's very dark. It's yeah, it's very dark. It's this guy who lost his job at the at the arms plant or whatever. He's basically killing himself. He's gonna drive his car off the falls, Niagara Falls. He's like duct taping himself, and he goes to drive his car, and his car like literally just falls apart before it even gets there. And so he gets out and tries to hop over the edge, but he gets caught. And yeah. And John Candy and Rhea Pearlman are these two sheriffs, and they're standing at the bottom of the falls, and they get $25 if they talk a jumper off the ledge, but they get $50 if they retrieve the body. So they're yelling at him to jump. And they uh they realize it's their friend that they uh worked with at the arms factory, and they keep telling him to jump anyway. Yeah.
Yeah, I I thought that was super dark, but uh it it was it was pretty funny.
Yeah. And the like the presidential motorcade is driving past as he's all like duct taped and hopping to the ledge, and like nobody even stops to look. Yeah. Very clear satire there, but uh yeah, it was it was kind of funny.
I I thought the idea of the next scene at the the auction at the arms factory, this factory is shutting down because there there aren't any wars to sustain it. Yeah.
And they're just auctioning all the weapons off to the former employees and so and the guy who was just trying to kill himself buys a bazooka for like $25.
Yeah. Well, in the the first scene, they show like a couple people carrying this like uh ICBM or whatever to their truck.
They have like a missile on the top of their truck. They're they're buying like machine guns and grenades and stuff. And ironically, the president is later speaking at this gun auction, which I can't imagine they would uh they'd have the president speak at a an event where people have bazookas in the crowd.
Yeah, it didn't it didn't make a lot of sense. I uh knowing this was written by Michael Moore, I it makes sense, I guess, but it it was there was like some interesting concepts and like you know the premise of the satire was there, but then it seemed like he really didn't know how to, like you said, execute it beyond a like SNL skip length um you know feature. And yeah, like there were comments here and there that I thought were funny. Um a lot of stuff didn't age well, like just comments about uh like there's some comment, this is again pre-9-11, but some comment about how like all the like big countries that they'd been fighting gone and like somebody says, like, well, what about the international terrorists? and somebody's like dismisses it. But it's not a joke, it's just like plot.
Yeah, there's nobody's gonna take terrorism seriously enough to like print to make tanks and yeah, and yeah. I think that was Rip Torn that said that because he he played the general. His name was General Dick Panzer.
Uh by the way, this may be secret Rip Torn month. Uh I know. I was surprised to see him in there. Second appearance. There are a lot of funny quotes, I thought, like the uh who played Bill Nunn, who played one of the friends of John Kerry uh Candy's character. Uh-huh. Uh can we get out of here? All these guns and white people are making me nervous at the auction.
And he was like, Well, you cut it out with that white people stuff. You're making me look at him strange.
Yeah.
He also had a good uh joke about the white or the black guy dying first in all the movies.
Yeah, near the end, they're they're out camping or whatever and about to do their final like, I don't know, invasion or whatever they're doing. I don't really know what they're doing at that point, but yeah, that was really funny.
Yeah, they were naming all the movies that they could think of where the black guy died and died first. No, not any hall.
Yeah. And then he looks around and he's like, wait a second.
Yeah. And then the other guy says, No, night of the Night of the Living Dead, and John Kay goes, that's the one. And which is funny because I remember watching Night of the Living Dead as a kid and being like, This black guy's dying first, I know it, and he did. It's just funny to see that come up again.
I wrote down a bunch of quotes and now, like, even like scanning them, I don't really remember when like they came up. But um Bill Nunn says, never saw a white one that size at some point. I think when Rhea Pearlman was sculpting uh her uh Close Encounters uh parody. Oh, is that uh was that what it was supposed to be? I thought it was like a reconstruction of the CN Tower. Was that a reference to it?
But she was making it out of mashed potatoes, and then in Close Encounters, he's doing Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes. Gotcha. Yeah. Um I thought it was funny too. They got their friend Roy Boy off the ledge by literally shooting him in the shoulder. He was like, Who did this? Then fell off. But they they've got him in the car and they're they're taking him to the gun auction for some reason. But they they're all singing High Hopes. They're like making him sing High Hopes so that he uh isn't depressed anymore. And it was just really funny.
Yeah, there were good moments, um, for sure.
I they're all in the first third of the movie, though, I think. Or for the most part. It's funny you said you didn't think this aged well because maybe some of the jokes didn't, which is maybe why it's not so funny now, but I thought the premise aged really well, actually.
Well, yeah. And I guess I'm I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth about it. Yeah, parts of it didn't age well, but yeah, the the idea itself, it feels like we're kind of living some of this.
I was wondering when I was watching it, I was like, is this too real to be funny to me? Like, is it bad or is it like just too close to reality for me?
Well, I think that's pro part of the problem, to be honest. Like at the time, it was probably so ludicrous the idea that you could convince Americans that the Canadians are your worst enemies.
Yeah.
And now we're living it. Yeah, and that's that's obviously really funny back then.
Kind of tragic now.
Yeah, no, it's like, oh, it's actually working a little bit. So yeah.
Yeah, it's really weird. I love that the international incident started because John Candy was at a hockey game and he said Canadian beer sucks. Yeah. Started this international incident.
Uh and then he there they like break up to there's this huge melee. Uh well, it it was funny because he was throwing hurling insults, Canadian insults at the hockey team.
During the national anthem. Yeah. Which I loved.
And he threw out like three or four three or four insults and nobody responded until the beer won. Yeah. Are Canadians really that sensitive about their beer? I don't know, but it was funny. It was funny. And then the the cops broke up the fight, and then it's like the the newscaster was uh recapping it, and then he said it again, and it like started a whole new melee.
The cop punched him.
Yeah, that's right.
And then uh and then his friend was like, Can't we all just get along?
Uh I don't know. I yeah, that's like the uh wasn't that joke in what was that Sinbad movie we watched Jingle the Way? Um I think that was that that same joke was was made.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Yeah. Uh I felt like that was a common joke in that area era where it's like it's just such a cheap like making fun of pacifists. Making fun of Rodney King.
Like Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh anyway. Oh, I forgot that was a Rodney King thing.
Yeah. Yeah. That was that was definitely a thing for white people to make fun of Rodney King a lot in the mid-90s.
Awkward.
Uh yeah, sorry.
I liked the CIA guy that was trying to take credit for Vietnam. Like he thought Vietnam was a great idea sending the advisors, and we would have won the damn thing if they'd followed my advice and gone nuclear.
Yeah. Yeah, he was kind of funny. Yeah. There were a lot of great cameos in this. Yeah. Dan Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, and Steven Wright were probably were the the big ones that I jotted down. Do you have a favorite?
I thought Steven Wright was my favorite.
Yeah.
He's just he's perfect. Yeah, he's great. They uh realize he's won an Oscar for some short that he was in in the 80s. But yeah, he's got an Oscar.
Yeah. Um he's 70 years old now. That's uh kind of crazy.
That's younger than I would have thought, actually.
Yeah. Um, but but yeah, he he had a great cameo as a uh mounted police. Was that yeah, um, and he was writing thank you notes to the people that he had in jail. Thank you for keeping your cell clean.
Yeah, he was so polite. Yeah, that was awesome. Dan Aykroyd was the cop who pulled him over, right?
Yeah, for uh having graffiti on their truck that didn't have uh equivalent graffiti in French.
Yeah. It was all these like anti-Canadian uh slurs and sayings and stuff, and then he got pulled over by Dan Aykroyd and got a ticket because he didn't have it in French as well.
He handed them a can of spray paint to fix it, and then they drove off with all these French can official languages. I did like Jim Belushi's cameo as well. He was a newscaster apologizing for some vague incident that had happened previously.
Yeah, it was like he had just come back from a suspension or something and we don't know what it was.
Yeah. It was pretty funny. Yeah, there were a lot of good elements to this movie, but it just didn't I felt like it didn't come together.
I like them in the when they were driving through Canada in their their truck and they were singing Born in the USA, but none of them knew any of the words other than Born in the USA. Yeah, I was gonna ask.
And then they they did the same with Oklahoma. Do you do you know the words to either of those songs? I definitely don't.
Uh no, not really. I mean, I I know that born in the USA is not a pro USA song.
Yeah. Uh but yeah. I I probably feel like I would uh try to sing along with that, but yeah, so really I think I know about as many lyrics as they do. Yeah. I mean, those moments were towards the end. So like I I felt like there was funny moments kind of scattered throughout, but um like I liked like even at the end, uh they go back, they are done in Canada and they're like headed back to the US and he's like, home, the US of A. And this is like they've they showed on one side like this picturesque, beautiful landscape, and then on the US side it's like smoke sacks and factories and stuff.
I I looked that up. That um factory is actually on the coast in Canada. It's Canada's side. Fair enough.
Fair enough. Some other funny things, uh, quotes that I jotted down. How did you know that was a nuclear facility? Well, they tricked us on that one. That was a hospital. Some moment where they like bombed, I don't know, I don't know where it was, but he's showing like the greatest hits.
Is he like, this is footage you won't see on CNN, and it's just like bomb like missile footage and they're just blowing up hospitals.
Never heard of anyone saying let's stay in and order Canadian food. One of the like the anti-Canadian propaganda things.
But they have no culture.
Yeah. Which uh uh is kind of curious. Like, why is there why isn't there like a Canadian food chain somewhere where you can get poutine and I don't know what else Canadians eat, but yeah, that was the only thing I could think of.
I was like, they've got poutine, but I'm not like maybe maple syrup, but we've got Vermont. Yeah. That was one of the few jokes in the movie that I was like, I actually don't know what I know they have culture, but I I don't know like what's so unique about it. Like it seems like they're kind of British, kind of American.
Yeah. But it seemed like you could it could kind of work to have like a Canadian theater, you know, bar that yeah, like has like some like French stuff and hockey. Yeah, hockey's always on. I mean, we have like English pubs here, and it's not like the you know the food at the English pub is so foreign, you know, and distinct from you know American food. Like American food is really just a conglomeration anyway, of like so um yeah. If we can have English pubs and French bistros, why can't we have Canadian, you know, whatever pubs?
Well, sounds like there's a market.
Uh do you like Canadian bacon, by the way?
It's not my preferred bacon, but it's fine.
But it's still like it's still pork for breakfast, so are there just two two types of bacon? It's a good question. I don't know. American and Canadian. I don't know. Is it called American bacon? I don't know. You're the meat eater here. Uh you shouldn't have all the answers.
And I'm I'm a little surprised I don't I don't know.
All right. Well, you got some homework to do. Apparently. There's some dumb jokes that still made me laugh. Uh I don't know who said this. Maybe it was John Candy. There's a time to think and a time to act. And gentlemen, this is no time to think. Like that feel feels like a joke that I've probably heard a hundred times before, but I did chuckle.
My favorite thing about that joke is they're at the bar when he says this. And then immediately after that, he spins the cylinder on his revolver and clicks it closed, and he was like, one more round, and then we can go.
Priorities.
Yeah. Mixing all of the uh the great things about America. Booze. We've gotten weapons.
Yeah. We've got ways of making you pronounce the letter O.
Oh yeah, somebody said a boat or something. And they're like, what is that?
Oh, it was so dumb. They they're, you know, I don't know, invading, and they're trying to find uh Rhea Perlmond Perlman's character, and he asked Stephen Wright where she is, and he's like, Ottawa, the capital. And they're like, Ottawa's not the capital, you can't fool us. We're going to Toronto. We go to Toronto.
Yeah. I love that even though they're told it's not Toronto, they still decide to do it anyway.
Yeah. I guess a few overall thoughts about the movie. Like we keep we keep dancing around this, but I I do think there are funny things throughout. Like it's not just the first third. The first third is probably the most coherent. I I don't know what went wrong, but I feel like if this had a more experienced director or writer, maybe, like they could have pulled it together. It definitely had the cast. Like the cast, I wouldn't say like anybody was at their best. Like, you know, this doesn't feel like this is quintessential John Candy or anybody in this, like, didn't feel like they were operating at their A game, but yeah, it had the raw elements of it. It had a lot of like great lines, great quotes, a great you know, premise. Probably just needed somebody else to like pull it together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This needed to be a collaborative uh writing and directing project, probably.
Yeah, I I couldn't really find anything on the background to see what the process was like or you know what Michael Moore was like on the on the set, but um, so obviously just speculation. Maybe one of the problems is it tried to I I don't think it really knew who was the lead or like who to focus on. It spent a lot of time with Alan Alda and uh Kevin Pollack, who was his, I guess, chief of staff or I don't know.
Something like that. Uh the um national security advisor. Okay. Uh and Ruth Warren was like his general of head with him all the time.
Yeah, I kept bouncing between John Candy, small town sheriff and his posse, I guess. Yeah. And Army of Misfits, and then the president and the national yeah, the national guys. And yeah, I kind of felt like the latter was necessary for the satire, but really took away from the movie. Like all the funny parts were with John Candy, basically. I agree.
I was just gonna say, I like I didn't think that Alan Alda had really many jokes to work with. No. Like, I there were a few funny, like, satirical comments that he made, but uh yeah, there wasn't much like there was one where Kevin Pollack was telling him that Americans said that him being alive or dead doesn't really affect their uh their everyday lives all that much. And he was like, There's multiple ways you could take that. Like so he had like I mean, he's Alan Alda, he's likable and and charming and everything, but yeah, he was fine. They didn't have many jokes for him. Yeah, I think that if if they had just stuck to the John Candy story, it would have been funnier, but unfortunately that story was a lot less coherent, but uh yeah, it it was probably the type of movie that people would have liked.
My final takeaway was I think this would be a perfect movie for Always Sunny. If they were gonna make an Always Sunny movie, I felt like at the end Rhea Pearl Pearlman, like there's a scene where she's blowing up a bunch of equipment at the CN Tower. I was like, this is Frank through and through.
Uh oh yeah.
Like if she could if that was Frank, her character was Frank, and then it was like you know, Mac, you know, Dia Dennis like going into Canada to rescue Frank, uh that would be like this would be like the perfect always setting.
And then he was like, I was thinking this would make a great TV episode because it's it's got a great premise and and everything, but it it's like a 30-minute joke. Right.
Or maybe it's you know, maybe it's a one-hour, like a two-part or come back next week sort of situation. But yeah, it's yeah, it's an always setting episode.
Yeah, yeah. I agree. That's uh that's a perfect uh application for this story. I love Kevin Pollack. Do you like Kevin Pollock? Oh, really?
I don't have strong feelings uh for him. Uh why why do you love him?
I just think he's he's in a lot of things. Like he's a great character actor who pops up in tons of movies, and he I feel like he's always good. My favorite thing about him is just the stories he tells, like during interviews and things. Because he's worked with basically everyone in Hollywood, he has stories about everyone, and they're all really interesting, and he's a great storyteller. Yeah. And he was on the Rich Eisen podcast talking about the craziest actor that he's ever worked with. Have you heard this story? No, no. It was Rip Torn from this movie. I'd believe it. What he said. He said it's not even a competition. Uh every day Rip would decide someone in the cast or crew was out to get him. This was usually after lunch, and then he mimicked a little like drinking uh hand motion. Yeah.
Like he he decided believing it, or he decided, like, oh, this is a fun game to play.
I have no idea. Yeah. Um, he said if a day went by without Rip saying, I was on Nixon's list, uh, he was like, All right, we got it. No one wanted to ask, quite frankly. Uh that's better left unknown. But the actor who played Roy Boy, Kevin O'Connor, he and his um new wife had the hotel room right next to Rip Torn in Toronto when they were filming this, and they kept hearing him yelling shit through the walls. And they like they couldn't. Kevin O'Connor yelling it? No, they kept hearing Rip Torn yelling shit in his room, and they realized that he was yelling at sex workers. And so over the week or whatever that they were there, they were they made like a letterman style top 10 list of all the funniest things that Rip Torn yelled at the prostitute. And and uh uh Kevin Pollack was like, I don't remember uh most of them, but the number one thing on the list was um Riptorn yelled, I said milk it like a cow.
Oh my gosh.
Oh yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.
Sounds like a treat to work with on set. Sounds sounds like uh we need a Riptorn documentary. Like I don't know.
I don't really know anything about him. I I just want Kevin Pollock to come on this podcast. Well, he also has great stories about uh Tom Cruise that make me like Tom Cruise more than I thought I would. Because they were together in uh a few good men. Yeah. Which I just watched recently.
We'll have to talk to our booking agent, see if we can uh key that out.
People can get in touch with his people.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um you know, we've got a long list of people trying to knock down the door and get on this podcast. Yeah. Anything else you have about the movie? What's your final verdict?
Um I think that it has funny moments. I think it's um a funnier premise than movie generally. Incredible comedic cast that kind of didn't really find all the jokes. Um I didn't think it aged all that poorly. Like I think the premise aged fine. Um, but yeah, it's it's basically a one-joke movie that it can't really find its legs.
Yeah. Uh yeah, the premise was way better than Welcome to Mooseport if we're gonna compare in uh this month's movies. Uh yeah, the execution, yeah, ironically, was was uh not nearly as good as Mooseport.
Yeah.
Mooseport felt like a well-executed movie that had no premise or script, and this felt like just kind of all over the place.
Mooseport felt a lot more polished than this did. Like this felt I mean, it felt similar to Maximum Overdrive where it's Stephen King's one and only directorial escapade, and like you can kind of tell with movies like that. Yeah. There's like inexperience there.
This didn't feel like a $10 million plus budget movie from the mid-90s. It felt like a couple million dollars from like the late 80s or something.
Yeah. Uh yeah, if like that this doesn't feel like a 90s movie at all to me. Yeah. It definitely feels more like an 80s movie.
I will uh give it a little bit of credit for only being 91 minutes.
Like it was Wow, it felt like a lot more than that.
I yeah, I I checked about halfway through. I'm like, how much longer is this gonna go? Um, and I was like, oh, thank God this wasn't stretched out to a full two hours.
Yeah, I watched it on Tubi and they had commercials, and it was so many commercials. I was like, just end this movie already. Yeah. Let me out. Yeah. Um, what's your all pick? I picked Doctor Strange Love. Okay. It's uh it's a simple huh?
What's that movie?
Uh it's another. I was like, I don't know if you really don't know. Uh yeah, it's another satire about kind of um unnecessary military escalation and irrational cold cold war fears and silly. But it's way funnier than this movie is, and I think the satire is better. I felt like Canadian Bacon had good satire, but it was kind of lazy stereotypes a little bit um here and there, but I just think uh Doctor Strangel nailed it already, and this doesn't do it better.
So I picked Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, which we've talked about a few times already, but there's so many Well, there's so many things in Canadian Bacon about the CN Tower, and that was like the central thing about Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie. Uh all Canadian cast, and it's all about Canada too. But yeah, uh genuinely. Yeah, genuinely funny. I thought it was it was such an interesting movie. I I after I watched it, I think we talked about how like I really want to watch something about how they shot this movie. Yeah. Because they blended footage from it was like 15 years prior or something, and like there's this whole like time travel thing. And uh yeah, it it was just and it like had some elements of it that were like people on the street reacting to what they were filming and um like crazy stuff, like running wires from the top of the CN Tower, which they obviously couldn't do in real life.
Um it was super creative.
Yeah, I it was yeah, it was kind of mind-blowing how they how they made that. Uh I I don't know how they made that. It's kind of mind-blowing that they were like ended up with that on screen um low jump low budget movie as well. But yeah, genuinely hilarious. So I don't know. Good pick. Thank you. Uh that's uh yeah, that's all I could find in the well.
Yeah. This was a hard one for me to pick uh an alt pick on.
Yeah. Yeah, I felt like John Candy's resume. I mean, everybody's uh you're either familiar with it or you're not and never and and you don't care.
Or um it's funny that with a movie that had this cast, we didn't pick either one of us pick a movie that an actor had been in both.
Yeah. Uh well, that's that's all we've got. If you have uh questions, thoughts, comments, suggestions, send us an email at the worst moviepodcast at gmail.com. Please like, subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, uh everywhere. It's fine to subscribe multiple places. We won't tell anybody. Um I'm Ade.
I'm Aaron. Thanks for listening to the Worst Movie Podcast.