EZ Money (2005)

The Walmart cheap movie bin is one of the greatest treasure troves of bad movies.  Somehow, for a store that seems to be getting less and less selection in physical media (at least in my area), the bargain bin is always overflowing.  Sure, most of the movies are ones that weren’t purchased because nobody wanted them, but there are sometimes good deals in there.  One of the best deals comes in the form of box sets.  The bargain bins always have the sets of eight or ten movies that nobody has heard of.  These movies are usually bad.  They end up being so cheap, however, that the price is almost worth it.

One of these box sets contained a bunch of family movies.  A few of the movies in it were from the same director, Dan T. Hall.  He directed movies such as Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery, and Lil’ Treasure Hunters.  He also directed EZ Money, a 2005 movie about brother and sister Alex Thompson (Jonas Gustavson) and Molly Thompson (Moli Hall), who scammed an email money scam.  They ended up involved in a government investigation into the scam emails, which brought them and their little sister Echo (Emma Kinghorn) into dangerous, life threatening situations.

EZ Money was filled with many ludicrous things.  The whole movie was a cavalcade of the ridiculous, giving moment after laughable moment of things that could only be in a family movie that no family would want to watch.  Much of that stemmed from the comedy, but there were a few outlying serious moments as well.  The writing was a collection of bits that shouldn’t have been strung together.  There were characters who felt like they should have been in different movies, brought into the same story.  It was an odd movie.

The first thing that EZ Money set out to let the audience know was the characters who were involved and what made them into the people they were.  None were more important than the main character, Molly.  She was a rebellious girl always getting into trouble at school.  At the start of the movie, she was taken to the principal’s office because she had loaned money to a bunch of her fellow students and made a list of which ones to beat up because they hadn’t paid it back.  This was the way she was set up as a con-artist, which would lead to the scamming of the email scammers.

Another character was Jut Monroe.  He was introduced as a biker, going to a coffee shop to get a drink.  While he was at the coffee shop, a man came in and tried to rob the place.  Jut Monroe didn’t listen to the robber’s demands.  In fact, he ended up taking down the bad guy and handcuffing him.  This was before he revealed himself to be an undercover cop.  Unless he was undercover to capture just one thief who was trying to steal money from a coffee shop, Jut Monroe blew his cover for no apparent reason.  That’s not great police work.

Sticking with the authority figures, there was a government agent who became a pivotal figure in EZ Money.  His name was Silas P. Murphy (Mike Jansen).  He was the man looking into the scam emails.  When a power surge was accidentally sent through the city, he was electrocuted and lost all of his memories.  He became an impressionist throughout the rest of the story.  He would imitate people and famous movie scenes to Jut and the children as they went on their adventure.  At one point, he even pretended to be a dog.  Silas ended up being the comic relief for a movie that was mostly comic relief.

The last character that should be noted for their strange personality was the little sister of Molly and Alex, Echo.  Her name summed up her personality pretty well.  In most situations, Echo would simply repeat what the other characters already said.  On paper, that might seem like a cute trait to have for a child in a family movie.  In execution, it was irritating.  It was like when the bully has the best friend who just snickers, says “Yeah,” and then repeats exactly what the bully says.  The only difference was that she was on the good side of things, working with the protagonists.

With those characters set up, as well as the other players in EZ Money, the movie could get going.  And get going it did.  The Nigerian prince scammers tried to scam the principal of Molly’s school, but she took their email and scammed them back.  The government was also trying to take down the scammers, which led to a large sum of money being stored in an online safe called EZ Money.  Oh, look!  That’s the name of the movie!  When the scammers didn’t get their money, they travelled to whatever town everyone was in and visited the kids at home.

The confrontation with the children and the Nigerian scammers led to the kidnapping of Echo.  Molly and Alex took matters into their own hands to save their sister.  Those matters involved enlisting J.J. (Tori Allen), in one of the most obnoxious scenes of the movie.  J.J. was a teenager with a car who could drive them to the places they needed to get to.  Her car had hydraulics, which weren’t needed for the story at all.  Some “Bounce with me” song blared as soon as the car came on screen, and J.J. quickly gave the driving responsibility to Molly.  Of course, a police officer pulled them over because a child was driving the car.  Lucky for the kids, Jut Monroe showed up and sent the police officer on his way by saying that the kids were a part of his investigation.  It was quick thinking that kept the story moving.

When they got to the bad guys’ hideout, the kids needed a way to get in.  J.J. said she could get in and immediately began climbing the building.  For whatever reason, she had the skills to climb the front of the building, get into a window, and toss some rope down to Molly and Alex.  What kind of training did the character have?  What was her backstory?  There wasn’t much to take from her non-existent backstory that could tell why she was able to do that.

At the end of EZ Money, there was a moment right out of CSI: Miami.  It wasn’t the material itself that felt like CSI: Miami.  For the most part, this was much less violent or gory.  It was the way one of the final lines was read that harkened back to the procedural television show.  Jut Monroe, hearing what happened to the money following the arrest of the kidnapping scammers, said “Looks like life,” before taking a pause and finishing with “Just got a whole lot easier.”  Then he put on his sunglasses.  It was a move right out of Horatio Caine’s playbook.

Jut was in a wheelchair during the final scene of EZ Money, due to the events of the climax.  When the police ran into the building that the kidnapping scammers were hiding out in, there was a small fight.  During the confrontation, Jut Monroe was shot.  This single moment of violence felt out of place in a children’s movie.  Even the Air Bud movies, which commonly resorted to dogs being kidnapped, never escalated things into physical violence of this nature.  Families watching EZ Money wouldn’t have expected the hero to be shot and hospitalized at the end of the movie.  That doesn’t seem like a family movie thing to do.  It happened, though.  And aside from the life getting a whole lot better line of hopefulness in the final scene, it was how the movie ended.  Dan T. Hall, what were you doing?

EZ Money might have been the most watchable of Dan T. Hall’s movies up to that point.  The nepotism of using his daughter in the cast was still there.  There were weird choices made throughout the story that kept it from reaching its full potential.  But it felt like Dan T. Hall was trying to do more than he had in Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery, or Lil’ Treasure Hunters.  He was pushing his boundaries and trying something new, and it almost sort of worked.  He was a director improving with each outing.  EZ Money wasn’t necessarily good.  It was a step in the right direction, though.

If it weren’t for the Walmart bargain bin, Dan T. Hall probably would have faded into obscurity.  Even with it, he pretty much did.  How many people are watching the movies in those ten movie packs?  Not a lot.  For the few that are, Dan T. Hall is a diamond in the rough.  His first three outings weren’t the greatest, but they showed the potential of a solid filmmaker.  Perhaps some of his other movies are even better than these.  The only way to find out is to watch them.  That’s for the future.

These notes are for now:

• Dan T. Hall has directed three movies featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  They were Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery (week 35), Lil’ Treasure Hunters (week 187) and EZ Money.
• Four actors have been in all three Dan T. Hall movies that have been covered.  They were Ran Burns, Alex Hall, Dan T. Hall, and Moli Hall.
• There were two actors from Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery (week 35) that came back for EZ Money.  They were Charlotte Battin and Neal McConochie.
• Ethel Booth, Mike J. Ferruzza, Vonda Fuhrmann, Mike Jansen, and Woody Rau all returned from Lil’ Treasure Hunters (week 187) to make appearances in EZ Money.
• Have you seen EZ Money?  Have you seen any Dan T. Hall movies?  Have you heard of Dan T. Hall?  Any of these topics could be discussed in the comments.
• Twitter or the comments are good places to suggest what movies I should be checking out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  If there’s a movie that you think I should cover that I have not yet gotten around to seeing, let me know.  I’m open to all suggestions, though it might be a while before I get to yours.
• Sometimes, when I’m watching the bad movies I watch, I will share clips from them on Snapchat.  Do you want to see those?  Add me (jurassicgriffin).
• Today is the last day of September, and as such, next month we’ll be diving into horror.  Four “bad” horror movies over the next for weeks.  That all kicks off on October 7^th, when the Sunday “Bad” Movies covers Chopping Mall.  Come back next week to celebrate spooky season with the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  See you then.

The Avengers (1998)

Something was going through Hollywood in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  The producers in the major Hollywood studios wanted to bring old television shows to the big screen with large budgets.  In the 2000s, it was the crime shows.  Things like SWAT and Starsky and Hutch were hitting cinemas.  In the 1990s, however, it was the spy-based television shows finding a new life in theaters.  Movies like Mission: Impossible were being watched by audiences all around the world.  But there were a few that didn’t have as much acclaim.

The Avengers was a 1998 movie based on the British espionage show of the 1960s.  John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) was a British special agent who had to team up with Emma Peel (Uma Thurman) to try and solve a mystery involving an Emma Peel lookalike.  Along the way, they went up against Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery), a scientist bent on controlling the weather to take over the world.  Would the unlikely pair of Steed and Peel be able to stop de Wynter from holding the world hostage with his weather machine?

There can be no argument about the quality of The Avengers.  It was not a good movie.  The story made little to no sense.  The chemistry wasn’t apparent.  Everything was boring even when it wasn’t supposed to be.  There was one good section of the movie, and that was because of the ridiculous visuals that stood out among the dull, uninspired remainder of the runtime.  It felt like The Avengers was an unintentional parody of the television show and itself, which could have worked if they played into it.  They didn’t, though.  It was never their intention.  As such, it fell flat.

The story of The Avengers was a mess, and there’s a reason for that.  The version that was released to theaters was not the intended version of the film.  When it was originally cut, it was 115 minutes long.  The studio test screened it in Arizona.  The audience was negative on the movie, and producers forced director Jeremiah Chechik to cut many of the scenes.  That brought the runtime to under an hour and a half.  It also removed many of the transitional scenes that could have supported the story and helped the movie make sense.  The cuts ruined any sense within the story, leaving The Avengers without any real thread to follow.  The basic idea of defeating the weather machine villain was there, but it was hard to tell how characters got to places or why they were doing what they were doing at that point.

Having the story make sense might not have helped with the chemistry, though.  Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman were not a good romantic pair.  There may have been a few reasons for that, but it seemed to all come down to their performances seeming empty.  Uma Thurman was playing two roles.  One of them was Emma Peel, who always felt distanced from what was going on, even when she was in the midst of the action.  She was also playing the evil Emma Peel, and didn’t really bring much to the performance outside of an “evil” look, and darker makeup and wardrobe than her counterpart.  Ralph Fiennes sure looked the part, and with a better partner in the role of Emma Peel, probably could have been a much stronger lead.  Their rapport never felt believable, and the romantic payoff was unearned because of it.

The lack of chemistry made things boring, but it wasn’t the only way that boredom came through The Avengers.  One notable aspect about when the main characters were driving from one place to another was that the roads were always empty, unless there was a direct interaction with the characters.  If they were on a country road, there were no other cars or people.  If they were on the city streets, there were no other cars or people.  The world around John Steed and Emma Peel was empty as long as they were driving.  With no background, there was no world that the audience could try and submerge themselves into.  There was nothing to make the world of The Avengers feel lived in.  It was an empty world that the characters just happened to have a story in.  It’s like when the bare bones of a story are put to the page but no subsequent rewrites are done, so the world hasn’t been built out.  There’s a sense of emptiness that can only detach audiences from what is happening.

All these negatives (confusing story, lack of chemistry, no background world) aside, there was one good thing about The Avengers that almost made it worth watching.  It’s not worth watching.  Don’t think that this is a must-see movie.  But there was one thing in it that felt like it could have been saved for a better movie.  About halfway through the movie, when John Steed and Emma Peel were investigating August de Wynter, there was a boardroom meeting going on.  Everyone at the board meeting for de Wynter’s evil empire was dressed in a giant, brightly-coloured teddy bear mascot suit.  Were the movie meant to be a parody of the spy shows from the 1960s, using one of the more popular spy properties from that era, this would have been the perfect setpiece.  As it was, however, it didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the movie.

The Avengers was a movie that had all the makings of something great.  The cast included people who typically had charisma and fun to go around.  Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, and Eddie Izzard usually bring entertainment to the screen.  Something was missing within that combination, however and it brought things down.  It could have been that the story didn’t do them any favours.  It could have been their chemistry.  Or it could have been that they were some of the only people within the world of The Avengers.  Whatever the case, they made a bad movie.

These notes won’t be as bad:

• The Avengers was suggested by @TheChewDefense, who previously suggested Howard the Duck (week 75), Tracers (week 133), Outcast (week 163), Gigli (week 225), and God’s Not Dead (week 230).
• Uma Thurman became a Sunday “Bad” Movies four-timer with The Avengers.  Her other three appearances were Playing for Keeps (week 21), Batman & Robin (week 138), and Movie 43 (week 243).
• The Avengers featured Carmen Ejogo, who was also in Alex Cross (week 12).
• Nadim Sawalha returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with The Avengers, after showing up in Ishtar (week 192).
• Finally, Fiona Shaw was in The Avengers.  She first popped up in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Super Mario Bros. (week 248).
• Have you seen The Avengers?  The 1998 one, I mean.  What were your thoughts?  Should it have leaned more into parody, or should it have gone dark and gritty?  Do you hate when people describe movies as gritty?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.
• I’m always keeping an eye open for movies that I might not otherwise know.  If you have one that you want to bring to my attention because I should be checking it out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, put it in the comments or find me on Twitter.
• If you want to add me on Snapchat (jurassicgriffin), go right ahead.  I sometimes share clips of the bad movies I watch.  You might find those entertaining.
• The movie being covered with next week’s post might not be one that you recognize.  It’s still important to the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  EZ Money is another in the line of Dan T. Hall movies that I’ve been checking out since the beginning of the blog.  So, I’ll see you next Sunday for another children’s movie that he directed.