THE 3RD HALL OF INFAMY: Infamy Rises Again

I'm a Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers fan, so not really.

I don't know if a link was ever given out for this, but I'll need one

Today's to-do list:

1) Having COVID (check!)
2) Watch Costa Rican Summer

Yeah, it's really a banner day over here.

Ugh, sorry to hear that. Costa Rican Summer is the worst.

But seriously, hope you feel better soon.

Thanks.

And I'd like to note that I felt perfectly fine until I watched the second half of Double Down. Just sayin'. Just sayin'.









Yes, I'm saying Double Down gave me COVID. Turns out his bioterrorism worked!

Having experienced both, I think I'd prefer to relive the former.


(My bff is a teacher and got COVID approximately 1 week after her classes started. Probably her 4th infection at least. Teaching ain't no joke.)

The good news is that Breen can both cause AND cure COVID.

Sent!

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

Get well soon

I keep looking for an opportunity to refill a mostly-full water glass for a man carrying a shiny rock, but so far no dice!!

This time it was a massage client. And I'm kind of mad about it!

(And please send your BFF my commiserations, writing sub plans one week in is a nightmare).

Watching Costa Rican Summer while you have COVID. Whoa.



Get well soon!

__________________

Costa Rican Summer, 2010

Kyle (Brock Kelly) arrives in Costa Rica to visit his Aunt Carla (Susan Ward), only to learn that her resort is under threat from local surf champion Brad (David Chokachi). Kyle attempts to recruit washed up surfer Dinger (Peter Dante) to help save the resort. In the meantime, Kyle also cultivates a romance with Eva (Julianna Guill), a young woman who is vacationing at the resort.

This is a stilted, unfunny mess with just enough glimmers of potential to make you believe this could have been a decent mid-tier comedy.

As abysmal as this movie is overall, there are a few positives that make it more tolerable than expected. To start with, is it obvious that Pamela Anderson (who plays herself as a recurring fantasy that Dinger has when drunk or in withdrawal) did this movie because she could do her entire role in like an hour of filming in a studio somewhere and also there’s a monologue at the end about her being, like, both sexy and a good person? Yes. But that doesn’t change the fact that Anderson is always a fun, charismatic, sexy presence, even if her entire job in this movie is delivering lines while sitting on a chair.

I also really liked Julianna Guill as Kyle’s love interest. They do her character dirty by starting with the overused trope of a woman being mean to a guy for no reason so that later he can shame her for it and thus force her to make it up to him by being nice and spending time with him. But once the movie is past that very dumb hurdle, their subplot actually ends up being pretty nice. All of the other romantic/secs in this movie are pretty gross in one way or another---either because someone is coercive, mean spirited, or just because it doesn’t make sense. But Kyle and Eva’s relationship develops nicely, the actors have decent chemistry, and their conversations about taking risks and breaking from the expected path is an okay theme for the film. A sequence where Kyle teaches Eva to surf is probably the nicest sequence in the film.

So if this whole movie was just Kyle and Eva circling each other and learning to surf and debating going to college, we’d be on solid ground. Sadly, the Kyle-Eva subplot only makes up about 25% of the movie, and the rest of the film is pretty bleak.

There’s not much to say in addition to the completely accurate internet pile-on about Dante’s performance in the lead role. I don’t know if he was wearing bad veneers, or if it was just a choice to deliver every line with his mouth as open as possible, but it’s almost physically painful watching him deliver his dialogue. He cannot portray emotions, like even the basic ones, and his character is only seen in a positive light because he’s being contrasted with an actual sexual predator. (Though his reaction to learning that Carla is being blackmailed into sex she doesn’t want is to laugh about it and make a bunch of sex puns to a horrified Kyle, so . . . ). The fact that the script then forces Carla into falling in love with him is beyond, and by extension makes her look stupid and shallow.

The other major subplot involves Kyle’s friends, Tasty (Max Van Ville) and Doobie (Drew Roy), who have come along to get tutoring from Carla to pass a high school test. In addition to sexually harassing Carla, the young men get into a contentious flirting relationship with babes Inga (Sheila Platt) and Rikki (Dena Collar). On all levels, I found this subplot particularly bad. Ostensibly, the point of it is that the guys realize that they should better themselves. But the reality is that the women are really nasty to them---mocking their bodies and their intellects. And since the movie can’t conceive of bettering yourself without a woman as a prize, they remain the trophy that the guys chase, despite having revealed themselves to be incredibly mean-spirited. This subplot is also used to generate a lot of uninspired topless nudity from the women and the whole thing is lazy and ill-conceived.

It’s also pretty shocking to note how unattractive the film looks. There is color to be found in the costumes worn by the female characters, but other than that they manage to make the beach look muddy and uninspiring. Low budget doesn’t have to be synonymous with low effort, but in this case it really seems to be true.

I sent in my ballot. This one was hard, because there were so many flavors of bad. I decided that my criteria of "infamy" for this HoF would be the movie that most makes me say "You've GOTTA see this".

I was in too foul of a mood to enjoy their romance as much as you did, but she was the one cast member that stood out to me as having some potential as an actress, given a better film to work with.

I recognized Doobie from somewhere (Google says it's Hannah Montana), but it seems his career hasn't amounted to much.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

I thought that she was easily the best actress and also it really benefited from nothing gross happening between them. She's a bit harsh in their first encounter and that's it. From there on it's pretty mild teasing and two people growing into a romance together. Kelly isn't much of an actor, but he and the actress who plays Eva has an ease to their interactions that is conspicuously absent from the rest of the film.

I also forgot to write down my thoughts on the weird and unpleasant running joke of Dinger sexually assaulting men in his "altered state". I thought that Kyle was surprisingly chilled out about it, because if someone tried to lick my hand and then the next day told me "You look amazing when you're wet," I don't think that baffled tolerance would be response. At all. The whole thing felt lazy and homophobic.

If I learned anything from Costa Rican Summer, it's that I wish I went to a surf school. Tropical location, incredibly small student/teacher ratios, education on philosophy and literature in addition to surfing (wait, did they get any instruction on surfing? I don't think so).

I think Dinger learned how to control the weather, so there’s that. 🤷🏼*♀️

Avatar: The Last Airbender is wrong. Aang isn't the last one...
...but why's it gotta be him ?!

Now, now, Eva learned to swim on a board. (In a weird way, I kind of liked the detail that she ended up being too scared to try and actually surf a wave her first time out).

And Kyle learned that the ultimate way of the champion is to get the sky gods to murder your competition.

Yeah, that was my reaction. Whatever potential was in there was ultimately overshadowed by a long shot. Because the low points are very low.