Meteor Man written and directed by Robert Townsend. To be honest, me prefer his Chinatown. Still, monster surprized me not hate dis movie. Sure, it all sortz of stoopid and itz hero as interesting as a deli sandwitch named after David Caruso, but it not all bad. Only mostly bad.
After opening theme muzik dat sound suspishushly like opening to Superman, we introduced to our hero. Jeff, is quiet skool teacher living in bad nayborhood run by street gang dat look like MC Hammer back-up dancers. Dey led by guy who carry slinky around. Letz call him…
Slinky.
Jeff chased by street gang. He gets away, but den chased by meteor. It aktually fall out of sky and chase him down an alley before crashing into him. Now dat one determined, spiteful meteor!
Jeff end up at hospital but mirakulously healed. And he have other superpowerz too: flying, superstrong, x-ray, able to know everyting about a book for turdy sekonds after he touch it! Oh, he also able to understand his dog who sound like robot and give worst performance by talking dog since Maraduke Has de Runs. Anyway, he fight gang and win! He tell his mom to keep his superpowerz a sekret, but she so proud, she tell EVERYONE! Now whole nayborhood know!
Bad guyz come back. Try to shoot him. He bullet-proof. Dey try to run him down. He fly up onto lamp post and fall down, cause earthquake and giant fissure – dat gets mysteriously fixed and never seen again.
Community decide he have to patrol nayborhood. Mom make him Meteor Man costume. Reaktion of his friends and family to his new superpowerz aktually best part of movie. Everyting else is worst part of movie.
Meteor Man start his patrol. Stop crime. At one point, step into middle of shooout between police and street gang and place peacemaker. Yep, dey need to put differences aside. Just because one group believe in law and order and other believe in crime and killing dis not mean dey can’t reach some sort of understanding. Why can’t cops and criminalz just get along?
BIG BIG scenery-chewing bad guy puts bounty on Jeff. Gangsters ambush him at skool. Den, for some reazon, let him go. But den show up few days later and shoot him up. Dey drive away but Jeff notice – his hand bleeding. He getting weaker!
Big big bad guy show up at his apartment building. Jeff asleep and can’t wake up. Dog (dat must have some superpowerz of its own) drag Jeff off bed and behind couch. Big big bad guy break into apartment. Den, Slinky show up. Dey argue over who should handle Meteor Man. Den leave.
Dey leave! He lying right dere!
Community meet. Dey decide dey have to get Meteor Man to move. He too much trubble. Jeff sad. And even sadder when gangsterz show up and beat him. He losing power. He too weak.
But homeless Bill Cosby come to de reskue because he also have piece of meteor! He help Jeff regain power. But Slinky get powerz too. Fight! Fight! Fight! Meteor Man beat him and absorb his powerz. Whole nayborhood show up to help Meteor Man defeat bad guyz.
Bad guyz arrested by cops and their new friendz, the street gang dey were shooting at earlier in movie. Cops + street gang = BFF! And everyone live happily ever after.
Escape maybe whoever get shot in retaliatory drive by shooting in off-screen scene after clozing creditz. 🙁
Verdikt: Flashes of humor make dis movie not total waste of time. But pretty darn close.
Rating: 4 chocolate chippee cookies.
Please diskuss.
Next week movie look partikularly lame. Enjoy! Monster know me won’t.
–The boring opening with gravity effects in an outer space explosion didn’t bode well.
–I never thought I’d say this, but James Earl Jones didn’t sell his character. His words were nerdy, but he had the eyes of someone with a high Emotional Quotient.
–The meteor melting into burning flesh was a sudden rush of grossness in a movie that so far had been about dapper male haircuts.
–I loved, loved, loved the low-flying. If it weren’t for all the other stuff going on in the finale, I might have enjoyed the significance of the triumphant stance on top of a building when it happened instead of just now realizing it.
–I never thought I’d say this either, but the Bill Cosby cameos were wrong. The first one teased us that there would be a funny, fatherly super villain at least by the midpoint. Then, in the finale, it looked like he was about to upstage the potential for the community to stand up by Deus Ex Machina’ing the whole thing. It didn’t turn out that way, but I was pissed off for a bit.
–The Runway Modeling gag was so funny, I was laughing too hard by the time he tossed the book to absorb the awesomeness that surely followed.
–In the very end…The real end, not the other dozen times it seemed like the movie was over… The police showed up. Without having been there to have any idea what was going on, they arrested the white guy running for his Bentley. Has the writer ever been to D.C.? Or America? I’ve been to D.C. – I really, really, really mean D.C.
I know you gotta’ stay light-hearted so making the stakes feel curb-stomping heavy wouldn’t play, but the stakes still need to feel up close and personal or the whole thing comes across as emotionally detached.
But then they gotta’ decide…
Is it about saving some young fellow from a gang future?
Is it about a toe-to-toe rivalry with the gang leader?
Is it about protecting the few in the community who decide to stand up from the consequences of their stand?
Is it about protecting the usual order of a city neighborhood from some sinister, rich guy with a fuzzy master plan to saturate the neighborhood in even more crime?
Is it about getting the community to stand up together?
Is it about getting the hero to stand up?
Is it about the hero’s fear of heights?
A bromance?
A man and his dog?
Is it about tacking on cameo roles for big name celebrities?
This movie chose to be about all of the above and ran out of time to properly develop personal connections to the stakes.
And the finale addressed all of the above, too. The movie kept seeming like it was over, then someone else got to have their go.
A hometown setting dilutes the stakes across everyone the hero’s ever known. Some of that dilution is unavoidable, but failing to develop richness for a single personal connection and being about too many issues made an unavoidable problem far worse than it needed to be.
I think this movie had richness within its grasp, but was too busy being about too many things. I loved the haircuts.
Hey Cookie! Glad to see your around after cleaning up Snuffie’s “illness”. I agree with you about not totally hating the movie. It had it’s funny bits, and it seemed at least good hearted. And of course the whole moral of the story that an inner-city community can stand up for itself and be the agent of its own positive change is a good and worthy one, even if it is delivered with all the subtlety of a milquetoast teacher-chasing meteor.
Speaking of which, shouldn’t it really be called a meteorite, since it actually reached Earth? Or i suppose you could reason that it didn’t QUITE reach Earth since it kind of defied gravity and apparently buried itself in Meteor Man’s chest. Ouch. I suppose Meteorite Man doesn’t quite trip off the tongue so easily.
I have to say when I saw the the lead actor in the movie was also the director, producer and writer, I thought, “Uh-oh”. All that considered, it didn’t turn out completely horrible, at least in principle. But it was kind of bad and perhaps worst of all, it was rather boring.
I was going to watch Meteorman. Honest. But, as a Mother’s Day present to myself, I decided to skip it. But, as always, an entertaining review, Mr. Monster. Thanks.
Aside: my big ol’ dog is lying on the floor, running in her sleep. She’s just so darn cute sometimes.
Oh hey, well at least Blankman looks good . . . not!
I’ve been miffed that I can’t find these movies. Okay, maybe miffed isn’t the right word. Lucky? Cookie Monster reviews are so much more fun!
@JeffW I loved your NSA story! I still can’t figure out what “Red badge” meant, and why people scrambled out of your way. Were they afraid you could read read their minds, or just needed an excuse to grab a break?
And there’s a before to “The Lost Skeleton Returns Again”? It never occurred to me there could be a prequel to this, ah, gem. Sounds like a must see 🙂
@gforce I truly hope you can plan a trip to JPL. The open house is like a Disneyland for geeks and nerds! It’s really laid back with tons of exhibits and film presentations on what JPL does. Plus you get to talk with the actual scientists and engineers that worked on the projects. And they LOVE to talk about what they’ve accomplished. Last year we got to see Curiosity just before they were dismantling it for shipment to Florida. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be, which is going to make for an interesting landing this time. I can’t wait to see what they’re working on this year!
I’d never heard of this movie until a week ago. Reading the plot and watching the trailer had me worried that this might have been like those blaxploitation movies from the 70s. Noticing that the star, writer, director and producer were all the same person had me worried that this might have been an attempt at a cheap Eddie Murphy knockoff. (Interesting trivia: Robert Townsend auditioned for the spot on Saturday Night Live which eventually went to Eddie Murphy). So, on the whole, I didn’t start watching this movie with very high expectations.
Thankfully this movie didn’t disappoint and my low expectations were fully justified.
I always had the impression that James Earl Jones was an elder statesman of Hollywood. A man of taste and conviction. I was thinking to myself, “What the hell is James Earl Jones doing in a movie like this playing a character like that?” I’ve just looked him up on IMDB and it turns out that he has done a lot of crap in his career and a lot of voice work of varying quality. So thanks, Meteor Man, for destroying my impression of James Earl Jones.
Bill Cosby, on the other hand, I had no delusions about how crap he was. Thankfully he wasn’t in this movie very much and had very few lines. I don’t know what made him decide to do this movie. I guess The Cosby Show had just been cancelled so maybe he was looking for his next pay check?
The Gay Lords were certainly the lamest movie gang since the gang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What’s the deal with recruiting little kids? Are they good to have around because the cops would be too scared to shoot at them?
But the thing that stuck in my craw the most was the total ineptitude of Meteor Man himself. I counted at least 4 opportunities when he could have stopped Slinky. Cookie, you mention the fact that the baddies try to track down Meteor Man a couple of times and when they find him they just let him go but even worse is when the baddies leave Meteor Man just lets them! They had that montage where MM busts the drug lab and gets the police, Crips and Bloods to kiss and make up but did he not think to actually find and stop the gang that was actually causing all the problems in the neighbourhood? Totally bizarre!
I’m afraid this movie just felt like a lot of different ideas that were loosely tied together with a flimsy plot. While it might have been better than I was expecting I was expecting it to be very, very bad so it didn’t have to try very hard to beat that.
Unfortunately, Blankman doesn’t look much better. 🙁
Oh, and Cookie? Say “thirty” again. Hee hee.
@paloosa: I’d really love to go to JPL sometime! Two years ago, I went to Kennedy Space Center to watch the Atlantis launch in May 2010 (It was incredible) and I also toured the center, of course. I did the “Astronaut Training Experience” which was excellent. I was telling people that it DID feel like Disneyland for me!
I’m a bit concerned about Curiosity’s landing method myself this time, but they seem pretty confident that it will work. *crosses fingers*
I seem to have missed that particular Marmaduke film.
Well, imagine that: Amazon has Blankman on their “Instant Video” for just 2.99 for all you U.S. fans that are just dying to see it!
Joe/Cookie where do you find these movies….?? I have never heard of Meteor Man or Blankman….
@paloosa:
A “Red Badge” is a person that does not have an active security clearance for that installation (in this case NSA). While I had had some DoD clearances in the past, they had expired, were not active and they were for other programs and installations (not NSA). But because my co-workers had never had clearances or worse yet, were foreign citizens, I was the “acceptable” (to the NSA) candidate to make the visit.
The reason for the blankets and hiding in closets was because as a “Red Badge”, I was not allowed to see what people were working on, or what the workers looked like, so they would cover their desks with blankets, and then go hide in closets until I had passed. By having the guards yell “Red Badge”, it gave them time to cover their desks and go hide before I arrived near their desks.
On “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera” (2004), it was actually made first; “The Lost Skeleton Returns Again” (2010) is the sequel. We’ve enjoyed both and my teenage daughter has even had “Lost Skeleton” sleep overs. 😀
Cookie’s been hitting the booze a little too hard! Meteor Man got 4 cookies but The Rocketeer dipped into the sugarless range? Is Cookie getting something on the side to tilt these reviews?
Deni: poor Elway…I hope things go better for all of you today.
JeffW: I just finished The Jungle. Those Clive Cussler books are addictive!
“Verdikt: Flashes of humor make dis movie not total waste of time. But pretty darn close.”
The whole film seems unintentionally amusing, but I’m with pennlynn on this one; I’ve never heard of this film or Blankman too. Was wondering if Cookie would be reviewing another genre after superheroes (sci-fi horror maybe?), but there seems to be a lot more superhero films than I realised.
@JeffW: That NSA story just keeps getting better and better!
Hey, Cookie!
Thanks for the review! I’ve never seen Meteor Man.. and now I don’t have to worry about missing out.
You have so got to review “STEEL” starring Shaq. Loosely based on the DC character that replaced Superman when he ‘died’ during the whole Reign of Supermen experiment. I’ve never seen it before, but if you review it, I’d watch it. In fact, I’ll even watch the dreadful ’94 Fantastic Four movie if you review Steel.
Hey, Joe!
Did you catch the premiere of the new season of NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR? I think they’re re-airing it tonight. Any early favorites from the new crop of talent? The new format is.. interesting.
@Tam Dixon:
I just finished “The Spy”. Even though he is a very prolific author, I’ve held off reading too many of his books because I need a good book during the airplane flights when I travel (nothing worse than starting a book on a flight and then finding I hate it and have no backup). Clive Cussler’s books are a safe bet for me.
@Sparrow_hawk:
I think I didn’t go into enough detail the first time around. It’s easy for me to forget that most people haven’t dealt with security clearances or government contracting…
I could also tell a story about how a programming error on my part caused a 3500lbs robotic cart to chase down and nearly run over my boss at the National Bureau of Standards…maybe too techno-geeky though?
Joe, poor Cookie Monster needs better movies. But I do love reading his reviews, er, rants. 🙂
BTW, wasn’t today’s blog for the 15th?
Deni, sending HUGS your way…
@JeffW – Do tell! The more “techno-geeky” the better.
Elminster
@Lewis: “I’ll even watch the dreadful ’94 Fantastic Four movie if you review Steel.” Have you seen that yet? Be careful about what you’re promising! 🙂
That said, I’m up for the “Steel” movie, which I’ve never heard of either.
@Elminster:
Okay…you asked for it 😉
I was working on a contract to upgrade the robotic carts at the National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards Technology – NIST) at their Automated Manufacturing Research Facility in Gaithersburg Maryland. The carts were used to move heavy machine castings around the manufacturing floor. We were making several improvements to the 3500lbs carts, including adding a sonar system to the front of the carts that would halt the cart if someone stepped closer than 5 feet in front of the cart.
Well when I started debugging the control system one morning, I could not get the cart to run. Everything was checking out; the Motors had power, the control system checked out, the hand controls tested out, but the cart refused to run.
I had just started looking at the sonar system (which had been integrated the day before), when the contract manager came down to the shop floor to ask if we were ready to go to lunch. As he stepped a few feet in front of the cart, the cart suddenly fired up. Since the cart motor controls had been left at full power (as part of the debugging process), it took off at high speed and chased the manager down the hallway where he narrowly avoided being crushed between the cart and a cinder block wall by jumping out of the way at the last second.
The cart crashed into the wall at high speed; the bumper system of the cart was pretty mangled, a couple of blocks in the wall were cracked and dislodged, and the manager was in a state of shock. Digging into the problem, I found that the signals from the Sonar had been inverted, so that what I thought was “Stop the cart if anything is detected closer than 5 feet” was really “Only run if something is closer than 5 feet”…we nicknamed it “Terminator Mode”.
After this incident, I noticed that our contract manager never walked in front of the carts again, he would only approach it from the sides, despite all the assurances that I had fixed the problem. Can’t really blame him 😉