Now that Brüno is finished and in theaters, what is Sacha Baron Cohen to do next? Surely he can continue appearing in movies not his own, such as he did with Talladega Nights and Sweeney Todd, but will there ever be another shock-mockumentary in the style of Borat and Brüno? Even if he develops some new characters, people don’t believe he could make another one of these kinds of films stealthily enough to make it work.
Well, let’s hope that isn’t true, because we would love to see at least one more. And we think he’s enough of a chameleon that his increasing fame won’t get in the way. As Metromix recently pointed out, there are just so many people (live and dead) who still need to be interviewed and/or pranked by Baron Cohen. Also, there are so many more marginalized people out there who could use a Brüno of their own to challenge the stereotypes and expose the continuing prejudices of our country.
To help Baron Cohen come up with a new character and issue, we’ve selected five already existing scenarios — which should help garner funding since Hollywood is so into remakes — to inspire him.
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Yeah, it’s that kind of day where the teaser trailer for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel is the most interesting thing to talk about. Well, honestly, it’s not the most interesting thing I’d like to talk about (though I realize I should have included the first movie in our “Creepiest Kids’ Movies” list), but not enough blogs are commenting on the latest racism evident in Disney’s upcoming 2D-animated film The Princess and the Frog (heck, hardly enough blogs are commenting on this). So instead of a discussion of racism in a kids’ movie, here’s a discussion of highly sexualized chipmunks in a kids’ movie.
Karina kind of foresaw the Chipette-debuting sequel “appealing to a young male audience’s latent lust for a trio of tarted-up little girl chipmunks” a year ago, and now this teaser is proof that the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise has gone from being influenced by Pink Flamingos to being influenced by Porky’s (or some other horny teen comedy). But while we actually had to see shit-eating in the first film’s trailer, at least we didn’t have to see any chipmunk erections in this spot. Meanwhile, some concerned people are fearing that this movie will encourage more lookalike couples. Really? Are lookalike couples that bad? Or is the real concern that the movie somehow will inspire kids to dress in drag? Is the tagline “Munk Yourself” some kind of reference to a transsexual narcissism fetish?
Check out the film blogs’ reactions to the trailer after the jump:
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Despite having a title that reminds us of that George Burns-Charlie Schlatter role-reversal movie from the ‘80s, 17 Again is not in fact part of the body swap genre. Rather, it’s more like Peggy Sue Got Married without the time travel. It’s also like a backwards Big, a movie many people mistakenly assign to the genre, which more technically includes such classics as The Hot Chick, Dream a Little Dream and Like Father Like Son. Of course, age-swapping films like Big, 13 Going on 30 and now 17 Again share many conventions and clichés with body swapping movies, so aligning them with that genre’s films is not entirely a film classification no-no.
Most familiar body swap movies owe their basic plot structure to F. Anstey’s 1882 novel Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers, which is, yes, the source material behind the 1988 movie starring Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold, as well as the basis for four other, prior film adaptations and a short-lived TV series. Even the three movie versions of Freaky Friday are more akin to Anstey’s story than the Mary Rodgers’ novel on which they’re based. In a way, because of the lesson learned in 17 Again, this new movie is also reminiscent of Anstey’s novel, even if not in a walking-in-someone-else’s-shoes sort of method.
But are there any other similarities to the body swap genre? You decide. While watching 17 Again this weekend, be on the look out for any of the clichés of the body swap movie, which we illustrate below, in order to determine its closeness to the classification.
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