Today’s Cheeseball Cinema film may be the most unlikely film that I review because of how good the film actually is. The film is called Moving Violations and essentially the film is about a bunch of unlikely people from Birch County that all have to attend traffic school in order to keep their records clean after they were all pull over by an overzealous team of bike cops. Dana Cannon (John Murray) is kind of a jokester whose mouth gets him in a whole lot of trouble especially with one of the cops named Deputy Halk (James Keach) who has a bone to pick with Dana. One day, the deputy ends up barking up the wrong tree and has to teach the traffic school. It is there that he will put Dana and the rest of the class through a lot of trouble in hopes that they will all fail the traffic school until Dana and the class fights back. The film also stars Jennifer Tilly (Bride Of Chucky) as Amy Hopkins, Brian Backer (The Burning) as Scott, Ned Eisenberg (The Burning) as Wink, Clara Peller (The Stuff) as Emma Jean, Wendie Jo Sperber (Back To The Future 2) as Joan, Fred Willard (American Wedding) as Doc Williams, Lisa Hart Carroll (Terms Of Endearment) as Deputy Morris, Nadine Van der Velde (Private School) as Stephanie, Ben Mittleman (Dead Heat) as Spencer, Sally Kellerman (Back To School) as Judge Henderson, and the film was directed by Neal Israel (Bachelor Party).
It was very hard for me to really pick out anything bad about the film other than the fact that it seems to go too fast through the story at times. The only downside to the film is that there was absolutely no T&A and at times they teased us with Jennifer Tilly who would later get naked in films like Hollywood North, The Getaway, and others. For a long time, I was in love with Jennifer Tilly, but that is a whole different story for another day. The film has some really clever scenes and gags in it especially when Murray’s character is interacting with Keach’s tight wad character. This was the 1980’s which means that the hairstyles, clothing, and music was pretty wild and the film has some of that contained within it for your enjoyment. The only thing I found with this film and the film Zapped Again, is that the character does way too many of his jokes within the film. It almost goes way overboard like every line he says is a one liner. The one scene that I loved was when Wendie Jo Sperber’s character had no idea that Doc Williams was a mechanic and not a real doctor. You have to see that scene cause that was typical 80’s comedy gold. Overall, I really enjoyed watching the film and I’m glad I discovered it on Youtube. On a scale of 1 being close to an A-list Hollywood Film and 5 being the cheesiest film of all time I am going to give this film a 1.9 for a final grade.
In 1985, the master of b-horror, Larry Cohen, provided us with this weeks edition of Cheeseball Cinema in his release starring Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, and Garrett Morris (Moneyball) in The Stuff. It’s about a product that is absolutely out of this world, literally! An ice cream company can’t figure out why this product is so huge and most importantly what the ingredients are. So, they hire a disgraced Former FBI agent named Mo Rutherford (Moriarty), who is the best in the business to figure out exactly what the product is and why it was approved. The only problem is that he bites off a little more than he can chew as he dives deeper and deeper in a mystery. The movie sort of reminds me of the John Carpenter film They Live as this guy believes that there is some alien force at work, but no one else believes it. There are people that are knee deep in it that they are afraid to divulge in what it is and they are those that are set to protect the secret. The film also stars Scott Bloom (John Q) as Jason, Danny Aiello (Moonstruck) as Vickers, Patrick O’Neal (The Stepford Wives) as Fletcher, James Dixon (It’s Alive) as Postman, Alexander Scourby (Giant) as Evans, and Russell Nype (Love Story) as Richards.
The thing I loved the most about this film is that when they were trying to come up with the stuff, it looks like they decided to use Fluff (the marshmallow product you can buy in the store) to portray the stuff. Danny Aiello makes a brief cameo appearance as a former food and drug administrator, who is deathly afraid of his dog. Some of the acting is a little cheesy, but overall, it’s top notch. I think the corniest scenes take place in the home of one of the characters whose parents are trying to force him into eating the stuff. Some of the scenes look as if they were shot in front of a green screen. One scene that bothered me as well was when Jason (Scott Bloom) is walking through a supermarket and he manages to damage so much of the stuff that it takes three guys to stop a kid who if I had to guess probably only weighs a 100 pounds if he’s lucky. Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) stars in the latter part of the film and it is one of the stupidest roles of his career, it’s painful. On a scale of 1 being close to an A-List film and 5 being the cheesiest film of all time, I give this movie a 2.5. It’s a decent film, but if your looking for T&A, this isn’t the film for you.
Moshpits And Movies 