Cowboys & Aliens? I'm laughing already! Oh, it's not a comedy.

Rainer Wolfcastle on his new movie, "Help, My son is a Nerd!"

Wolfcastle: "My son returns from a fancy East Coast college and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd."

Kent Brockman: "I'm laughing already!"

Wolfcastle: "It's not a comedy."

This quote was going through my head many times during my recent viewing of Cowboys & Aliens. You might recognize "It's not a comedy" as the talking point that ended up in virtually every promotional interview given by a member of the C&A team, pretty much from the point that the marketing campaign started. It's easy to see why that happened, "Cowboys & Aliens" is a whimsical title that suggests camp, or at least B-movie hijinks, much in the way that "Help, My Son is a Nerd!" primes the viewer to expect comedy.

I'm going to join the chorus on this one and agree that Cowboys & Aliens was a mostly disappointing experience. It's not a terrible movie, but it's not a particularly good one either. Genre mash-ups are hard because the filmmakers have to take two flavors that don't usually go together and make them taste appealing. Sometimes it works, and sometimes you let down fans of both genres. Take it from a guy who tried to mash up a Grisham courtroom thriller with a Superhero movie.

Unfortunately, Cowboys & Aliens plays it straight, trying to mesh the tones of True Grit with Predator. It's a fundamental miscalculation of everything appealing that the title promises. I have a hard time thinking of a successful mash-up film that didn't include some measure of comedy, as that sort of self-aware winking usually is what allows viewers to suspend their disbelief.

The first 30 minutes or so attempt to be indistinguishable from any other western. It wants us to accept this as the world of Unforgiven and Wyatt Earp. I'm not inherently against this verisimilitude. Just to name one example, the Nolan Batman films have worked remarkably well in their attempts to be more reality-bound than their predecessors. The Western aspect could have worked as the "straight man" in this routine. Where it goes wrong is in making the alien elements just as serious. The idea of gunslingers taking on H. R. Giger rip-offs is so inherently ridiculous that it's a crime the film doesn't even attempt to have a little fun with it.

This movie needed to be more in the vein of Tremors, an underrated Kevin Bacon film that tipped it's cap to the B-movies of the 50s and 60s while still being sophisticated enough for the early 90s. C&A seems scared to really cut loose and go over the top for fear of being cheesy, and that unfortunately makes the entire affair feel too earthbound.

And again I return to the message of "Know what your audience wants to see." If you entice an audience with a title, then what you give them had damn well come close to - or better yet, exceed - their expectations. I'd say this is especially true when trying to get someone to read your script. As much as we might mock the profanity and the whimsy often seen on the Black List scripts, those titles are memorable - and they tell the reader exactly what they're about to experience.

To Wit:

Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch
He's Fuckin' Perfect
Dirty Grandpa
Sex Tape

As Scott Myers pointed out in announcing last week's sale of The Incredible True Story of Jessica and Drew Who Accidentally Boned on the Way to the Wedding, American Pie was once called, "Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy Which Can Be Made for Under $10 Million Which Studio Readers Will Hate But We Think You Will Love."

How ticked would you be if you picked up ANY of those titles expecting to laugh and instead ended up with something deep and emotional such as "Like Crazy?" The only way to overcome that potential hurdle is to deliver a damn good story - and Cowboys & Aliens definitely isn't up to the task. The film looks pretty, but with Jon Faverau directing and Steven Spielberg producing, how could it not?

I've got a host of other issues with Cowboys & Aliens, but that might be best left for another post.  I'll just say that it would be nice to get some original creature design and not have aliens that look like generic versions of Predator or Independance Day critters.

Universal head Ron Meyer cops to making "shitty movies."

I'm an audio commentary junkie. For a long time there, if I rented a movie with an audio commentary, I'd have to listen to it. Sure, this means that you're bound to run across a few duds along the way. You'd think the low point was when I found myself listening to the Swimfan commentary, but no one - NO ONE - is a worse commentator than Mel Brooks.  His commentary on Spaceballs might as well be one of those tracks that visually impaired people listen to because he spends the entire 90 minutes describing EXACTLY what is on the screen at that point.

That's not why I listen to commentaries. The best ones are with participants who are willing to be candid and blunt about the process. Interestingly, I feel like we saw more of these back in the early days of the DVD. This probably has something to do with the fact that in the early days of commentaries, the people who'd be cajoled into doing the audio track were people who really felt they had something to say. This is explains why most commentaries I listend to were part-old war stories and part-explanation/apologies for where the film went wrong.

And this is why I now demand that Universal puts out a special edition Blu-Ray of The Wolfman with an audio commentary featuring Ron Meyer, head of Universal Studios and director Joe Johnston. It's guaranteed to be entertaining considering some statements that Meyer made at the Savannah Film Festival:

“We make a lot of shitty movies. Every one of them breaks my heart.

“We set out to make good ones. One of the worst movies we ever made was Wolfman [produced, coincidentally, by local Savannah resident Stratton Leopold.] Wolfman and Babe 2 are two of the shittiest movies we put out, but by the same token we made movies we believe in. We did United 93, which is one of the movies I’m most proud of. It wasn’t a big moneymaker, but it’s a film I believe every American should see and it showed you what people can do in the worst of times and how great the human spirit is and all that, so there are moments that can make up for all the junk that you make.”

He doesn't stop there...

“[The Wolfman is] one of those movies, the moment I saw it I thought, ‘What have we all done here?’ That movie was crappy... We all went wrong. It was one of those things… like I said, we make a lot of bad movies. That’s one we should have smelled out a long time ago. It was wrong. The script never got right… [The cast] was awful. The director was wrong. Benicio [del Toro] stunk. It all stunk.”

This might make you wonder, "what does director Joe Johnston have to say for himself?" I'm glad you asked:

"I had three weeks of prep on WOLFMAN, a ridiculously inadequate amount of time to try to bring together the fractured and scattered pieces of the production. I had taken the job mostly because I had a cash flow problem, the only time in my career I’ve ever let finances enter into the decision process. Money is always the wrong reason for doing something that requires passionate devotion. The production was a leaky, rudderless ship in a perfect storm suffering from bad decisions, infighting, reluctance of the powers-that-be to take responsibility, and too many under-qualified cooks in the kitchen."

I want to get these two guys in a room, force them to watch the film, and let them fight it out. Do you hear me, Universal? I'd buy this on Blu-Ray... And I bet a lot of other people would too.

And don't stop there. The entire Universal catalog should be re-released in special "Ron Meyer 'Shitty movie' Editions." Order now and hear Ron's straight talk on Cowboys & Aliens:

“Cowboys & Aliens wasn’t good enough. Forget all the smart people involved in it, it wasn’t good enough... All those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it.”

...Land of the Lost...

“Land of the Lost was just crap... I mean, there was no excuse for it. The best intentions all went wrong. Scott Pilgrim, I think, was actually kind of a good movie. [Addressing a small section of the audience, cheering.] But none of you guys went! And you didn’t tell your friends to go! But, you know, it happens.”

Are we sure this guy doesn't post on AICN under an alias?

“Cowboys & Aliens didn’t deserve better. Land of the Lost didn’t deserve better. Scott Pilgrim did deserve better, but it just didn’t capture enough of the imaginations of people, and it was one of those things where it didn’t cost a lot so it wasn’t a big loss. Cowboys & Aliens was a big loss, and Land of the Lost was a huge loss. We misfired. We were wrong. We did it badly, and I think we’re all guilty of it. I have to take first responsibility because I’m part of it, but we all did a mediocre job and we paid the price for it. It happens. They’re talented people. Certainly you couldn’t have more talented people involved in Cowboys & Aliens, but it took, you know, ten smart and talented people to come up with a mediocre movie. It just happens.”

Universal: It Happens.