Butt Boy
It has come to my attention that I haven’t exactly skewed as family-friendly as might be prudent for these Maltin-esque viewer guides I’ve been doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. (See my previous installments in the March 26 and April 2 issues of the Scene.) So let’s start with a few titles for parents who might be looking for something to share with their impressionable young folk. The closer you get to the end of this week’s column, though, the edgier things get — you’ve been warned. Click each title to watch its trailer.
The Peanut Butter Solution on Amazon Prime
One of the enduring weirdo kids classics of Canadian cinema, this 1985 film about bullying, body horror and the exploitative nature of the free market is also spry, adventurous and fun. The Peanut Butter Solution also features the first two English-language songs by Céline Dion. This is a great and bizarre film, finally in print in a proper HD version thanks to the freaks at Severin Films. For kids (and adults) who’ve seen the Mel Stuart Willy Wonka and want something like that.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Black Hole on Disney+
This pair of Disney classics plays like variations on a theme, with explorers encountering a mad-genius captain who has abandoned the demands and moralities of traditional society and found a place in the hostile unknown. What both do — the former with the sea, the latter with the frontiers of space — is serve classic moral drama livened with incredible special effects, dei ex machinis (whether squid or meteorite), cutesy sidekicks and genuine unease at their creepy heart. The Black Hole (Disney’s first PG movie) is hallucinatory and visionary and will spark the imagination — and, in fairness, possibly fuel some nightmares.
Bébé’s Kids on Netflix
Bébé’s Kids is an animated adaptation of the sorely missed Robin Harris’ late-1980s recurrent comedy routine. The film — mostly infamous for a terrible Super Nintendo adaptation — finds a single man set loose at a corporate theme park with the single mom he’s trying to impress as well as a phalanx of “bad kids” out to destabilize some institutions. Packed to the gills with black comedic talent (legends like Myra J., Nell Carter, John Witherspoon, George Wallace, Reynaldo Rey and Chino Williams) and capable of inspiring political action (the Fun World anthem “Fools and All Their Money” is one of the most subversive songs ever written for a kids’ movie), Bébé’s Kids will yield resounding belly laughs. Tone Lōc steals the movie as toddler Pee-Wee, and how else can you introduce the youngsters to ZZ Hill’s “Down Home Blues”?
Crip Camp on Netflix
OK, now that as a culture we’ve devoured and metabolized Tiger King, let’s move on to something that’s not going to make you weep for humanity. This documentary focuses on the legacy of Camp Jened, a Catskills space where disabled kids could spend a summer and develop skills beyond the roles traditional society wants to cast them in. The kids who went there learned and developed the skills that enabled them to craft the disabled rights movement in America, and we witness the battles for accessibility in the early ’70s through their eyes (a battle the Trump administration has been consistently undermining). Do not miss this.
Flesh + Blood on Amazon Prime
Paul Verhoeven’s first English-language film is a tale of the Crusades and the plague, riffing on The Wild Bunch and filtered through the lens of the early 16th century. This film is violent, upsetting, pitiless and utterly remarkable. Rutger Hauer is the leader of a band of mercenaries. Jennifer Jason Leigh is a princess held hostage (more on JJL in this week’s Critics’ Picks). Susan Tyrrell is there as well. Given that it’s Verhoeven, Flesh + Blood is smart and very much immersed in the mindset of that time period. This one comes with all the trigger warnings, and rightfully so. But it is a stunning work from one of the greatest filmmakers of the modern era, and well worth your time.
Butt Boy, coming to VOD April 14
Before you look at the trailer, or even read anything specifically about this film (a new release!), just know that it approaches its procedural and stylistic elements like a Michael Mann film — with laser-like focus on what doing your job means, and using that as the foundation your worldview is built on.
Now, I say that because Butt Boy is about a guy who discovers something unexpected about his body — namely that his ass could conceivably devour the world. Imagine the most powerful power bottom the world has ever known, but born into the dead-end expectations of corporate heterosexuality and without the imagination to move past that limitation.
If M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable is one of the best low-key superhero/supervillain origin-story tales, then Butt Boy is that as well — a character-based drama about something unbelievable. But because it grounds itself in the daily process of living, that one unbelievable thing is able to somehow distort reality itself, and nothing we hold as absolute can remain so. Director/co-star Tyler Cornack took a Troma Entertainment-like concept and plays it out in a much more disciplined and stylized approach than you might expect. Will folks looking for gross-out humor be satisfied? To a certain extent, sure — this film rivals The Lighthouse in terms of perfectly timed fart jokes. But Butt Boy features so much more accessible and (dare I say) smart an approach to the material that I think it could find traction with more adventurous mainstream audiences.
And honestly, at this point, what even are mainstream audiences? We’re all on the couch or on the computer, and our digital selves don’t lie about interests. This is a police-procedural deadpan horror-comedy that aims to scratch every itch that it can. This is an imaginative and surreal dive into the subconscious, and you can handle it.
Daniel Isn’t Real on Shudder
My No. 1 film of 2019, Daniel Isn’t Real, is now streaming on Shudder, and you should see it if you haven’t. And while Amazon Prime has a great selection (along with its shameful union-busting CEO), it should be noted that the platform’s versions of Earth Girls Are Easy (a delightful musical mental margarita) and Star Trek: Insurrection (a messy installment in the Trek cinematic universe) have been cropped from their cinemascope proportions to fit a 16:9 TV screen. That’s a battle that should have stopped being a thing back in the ’90s. Stop modifying films from their original aspect ratio. (HBO/Cinemax, this means you as well.)
