Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023)
Director: Paul Briganti
Screenwriters: Martin Herlihy, John Higgins, Ben Marshall
Starring: Martin Herlihy, John Higgins, Ben Marshall, Conan O’Brien, John Goodman, Bowen Yang

October 9th, 2021. The first episode of the forty-seventh season of ‘Saturday Night Live’ and the debut of Please Don’t Destroy with their short video ‘Hard Seltzer.’ Consisting of three New York comedians, Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy, the troupe almost instantly skyrocketed to fame after only four years together as a group. Now, after three seasons with SNL, the trio bring us their first feature film Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain. SNL stars like Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy and Tina Fey have all gone on to bigger things, though the results are not always so pretty – some acts have failed to make a splash and some sketches that were turned into films have flopped. So the question is, how will Please Don’t Destroy fair?

The film stars the three comics as themselves, the exception being that they live, work and do everything together. When they realise that they don’t like their life trajectory, they set off to find a gold treasure that is rumoured to be buried in the nearby mountain.

Unlike the fictional versions of themselves in the film, it is clear that the trajectory of the boys’ popularity is one that not only they believe in, but in which many others do too. After only three years on the show, they earned a credit in SNL’s opening montage. Credited as “A Film by Please Don’t Destroy”, it marks the first time since 2008 that a recurring segment has its own credit in the opening; a reward that was not even afforded to the insanely popular The Lonely Island. Equally so, the opportunity to write and star in a film as themselves shows the belief that many have in the popularity of Please Don’t Destroy.

The movie opens with a narration from John Goodman explaining the lore of the titular treasure; a bust of Marie Antoinette, worth $100 million, was hidden in Foggy Mountain by French explorer Jean Pierre La Roche and the key, a golden compass, was found by the three boys as children. Flashforward fifteen years and we meet the Ben, John and Martin of today through a sequence in which they prepare to make breakfast and go to work, a sequence of events which continuously takes hilarious left turns including roller skates and underage drinking.

The film then smash cuts to Ben’s father in the form of Conan O’Brien, the owner of the store that the three work at, screaming “where the fuck were you!? You’re three hours late!” The story begins to unravel. We learn that Ben wishes to earn his father’s approval and take over the store, whereas Martin is trying to keep his girlfriend happy by going through with an adult baptism. As for John, he has no plans nor prospects. Worried about losing his friends, he proposes that they hunt for the treasure.

The story, in premise, structure and character development is far from original. The friendship of the three is predictably tested, and there comes a point where it seems as though they can’t move past their issues but in the end they remain best friends. It’s a tried and tested formula that, though not necessarily bad, is instantly recognisable. Ben, John and Martin’s sense of humour is far from traditional and so, to deliver it in the form of a traditional story allows for more accessible viewing for new viewers, all the while keeping much of the same humour that fans have come to know and love.

Similar to the writing and performance style they have become known for, the editing of the film is very in line with that of their regular sketches. Fast paced and manic, the editing allows for maximum engagement and a whole lot of laughs through unexpected sight gags and jump cuts.

By far the biggest challenge for PDD in this film was to take their style of comedy (which is usually told in three to five minute sketches) and stretch it out into a full feature film. Though there are little segments of the film that feel like their own individual sketches, they keep recurring and eventually combine together to tell a nicely intertwined story. From park rangers who wish to steal the treasure for themselves to cults, or John falling in love to a particularly sassy hawk, all of these come together well to tell the full story. It is in this sense that Foggy Mountain feels closer to traditional silent comedies like Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, a film that similarly tells many little stories in order to make one complete narrative.

This film does not, however, feel as though it will work for those who are not familiar with Please Don’t Destroy or who are not fans of that type of humour. The group’s eccentric form of delivery, performance and writing may distance some audience members. The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is a movie made for the fans.

With their feature film debuts, Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy bring their A-game in every single aspect of production. The jokes come quick and fast, and the situations they put themselves into are nothing short of ridiculous. Playing themselves, the three bring their likeable personalities and adorable chemistry to craft a trio of characters that are not only hilarious but who we care for and whose company we love to be a part of. Though every cast member does a fine job, it is when one or all of Please Don’t Destroy are on screen that we laugh the hardest. Moreso, they make it seem natural, as though comedy is second nature to them.

With The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, Please Don’t Destroy may not be making unforgettable characters or legendary films like fellow SNL alum movies The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World, but by presenting themselves as the heroes of the story they create a movie that represents their brand and elevates it in the process.

The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is a wonderful new addition to PDD’s growing library, and is evidence of their popularity and talent. Proving themselves as one of the best comedy acts in all of the United States – better yet, the world – one can only hope that their sophomore effort will be as good as Foggy Mountain.

Score: 18/24

Speed Racer (2008)
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Screenwriters: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Roger Allam, Paulie Litt, Rain, Yu Nan, Kick Gurry, John Benfield, Christian Oliver, Richard Rowntree, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benno Fürmann, Scott Porter

Following the massive financial success and pop culture dominance of The Matrix and its sequels between 1999 and 2003, writer-director siblings the Wachowskis could have gone anywhere next. What they eventually settled on was an adaptation of one of the first anime series to successfully cross over in the West. The response to Speed Racer was largely one of bewilderment, but a decade and a half on, what more can be gleaned from this ambitious living cartoon?

The ultimate embodiment of nominative determinism, Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) dreams of becoming the greatest driver in ion-powered motorsport much to the disapproval of his family who are still grieving for the loss of his older brother Rex who died during a race ten years earlier. When shady conglomerate Royalton Industries offers Speed a generous contract to eliminate one of their competitors, he must decide between integrity and his family’s security, before long being drawn into a plot of industrial espionage, his drive to be as good as his brother leading him to question everything he knows about racing. 

Yes this film is goofy, yes this film is corny, and that’s the point. There’s an endearing innocence to it all, from our protagonists’ blue-collar naivety and simplistic worldview to the fact that in this world they celebrate victory not with champagne but with cold milk. Our hero’s innate goodness is derided by the big baddie (Roger Allam, having fun being slimy) as “sickening schmaltz”, but that’s the film’s secret, that it’s just a straightforward, old-fashioned moral story driven by emotion and without a hint of irony.

It’s all about sticking to your principles and, much like the just-as-cartoony Fast and Furious franchise, sacrificing everything for family. However overwhelmed your senses might be after two-plus hours of blindingly colourful cartoon bludgeoning, the final ten minutes or so (helped in no small part by Michael Giacchino’s emotive, hummable score) may bring an unexpected tear to your eye. 

Speed wouldn’t be who he is without his support network, girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) and Mom and Pops Racer (Susan Sarandon and John Goodman), the latter of whom are great movie parents who are firm but fair and always fighting their family’s corner. Perhaps typically for most parents it’s down to the mother to actually say what needs to be said out loud: “There are times when you take my breath away… when your father is pretending he doesn’t have tears in his eyes”.

The film is never really aiming for any grounding in our reality and sometimes that’s OK. Our protagonist is named Speed Racer and he races, the investigating police officer is called Inspector Detector; this world clearly runs according to certain very literal rules. The opening shot of kaleidoscope colours sets the visual language used throughout the film, characters’ costumes colour-matching the sets, the vehicles, the mood of the scene, or all three at once.

In YouTube essayist Patrick H Willems’ video on film realism, he asks “Why do we care if movies are realistic?”. It’s a very good question. Why has this seemingly become the main thing for a director to shoot for? As Willems summarises, “realism” and “formalism” are at opposite ends of the cinema spectrum, with “classicism” (which incorporates the vast majority of films) sitting in the centre. He goes on to describe Speed Racer as “The most extreme example of formalism in mainstream American cinema in the 20th century”, and questions “How would realism improve this?… shouldn’t form follow function?”

The Wachowskis’ film is stratospherically over-the-top in its style, from the eye-popping action to the over-saturated colours and playing-to-the-back-row acting style. The action is described by the VFX team on the film’s Blu-ray features as “Car-fu”, a “Mix of NASCAR, hot wheels and skateboarding”. It’s understandable if a viewer might not gel with the overall effect, the slapstick and stylised imagery leaping off the screen, but that doesn’t make it bad filmmaking and it would be a disservice to the sheer creative energy that went into this to dismiss the film out of hand. Speed Racer has often been derided as a vacuous cartoon and as a gaudy video game (which unfairly uses “video game” as an insult, as a lesser art form), both criticisms that completely ignore what the film is trying to achieve. 

One of the groups of baddies our heroes must go up against is an outfit of Dick Tracy-alike cartoon gangsters, the kind of guys who drive around in a heavily-armed 18-wheeler with a plush office that has one wall taken up by a piranha fish tank. Everything is dialled up to 11 and slapstick is king, the most memorable physical comedy moments being a ninja’s (“more like a none-ja, terrible what passes for a ninja these days”) car keys flying out of his pocket mid-fight, a brawl atop a mountain with anime-style freeze frames to accompany the prat-falls, and the really very silly duelling vehicles with gadgets ranging from buzz saws on mechanical arms to a pop-out beehive catapult.

It’s not our world, but nor is it a world that is entirely divorced from all credibility. Safety features were introduced by the in-universe motorsport teams after a horrible crash resulted in a fatality (the cockpits now seal the driver in a protective bubble and bounce them to safety if needed) and IP infringement and match-fixing are very prominent plot points. 

While it may only just be undergoing critical reappraisal, as the Wachowskis’ first movie to be filmed in digital HD, Speed Racer employed “wraparound” location plates to construct the digital racetracks and environments which allowed for live compositing of CG elements with footage shot on the day, basically an early version of ILM’s much-touted Volume technology so extensively employed in TV shows like ‘The Mandalorian’.

This is probably the film from the 2000s trying the hardest to visually evoke another medium on film (in this case, Japanese anime). The only other prominent examples that commit as completely to their gimmick are what Ang Lee attempted with Hulk and Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City, both bringing comic book art to life and proving divisive in the process. 

There’s no need at all for this to be 2 hrs 15, or for a film this visually striking to tell more than it shows (through such clunky dialogue), and not every performance does the job it should do (Speed and Trixie in particular have a tendency to be a little dull). Plus it’s very easy to overuse your comedy chimp sidekick. But the people who love Speed Racer really love it, so while the unique visuals can be too much for some, the uncomplicated emotion and the inventiveness required to achieve the Wachowskis’ vision is to be commended in a world of genre fare that often looks and feel exactly the same.

Score: 18/24

Recommended for you: Wachowski Movies Ranked

Over the course of more than a quarter of a century, this one-time American Sweetheart has been an ever-present, transitioning from gossip magazine front covers to internet memes, all the while evolving his acting career from independent cinema to big budget Hollywood and back again. On the screen, this 1990s and 2000s heartthrob has worked with some of the film industry’s most respected names – David Fincher and Terrence Malick, to name but two – whilst his work behind the scenes has developed into a respectable collection of character-led films in its own right.

To date, the Good Will Hunting co-screenwriter has directed five films, the majority of which have arrived on the big screen with critical praise and adoration. In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are analysing each and evaluating them in terms of artistic merit, critical reception and public perception, for this: the Ben Affleck Movies Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter. 

5. Live By Night (2017)

The biggest financial flop of Affleck’s directorial career, Live By Night was so damned by audiences that it ultimately lost Affleck his place in the director’s chair for his own Batman movie.

This crime drama, centred around New York and Florida gangs during the prohibition era, starred Affleck in the lead role alongside a plethora of talented names including Brendan Gleeson, Elle Fanning, Zoë Saldana and Chris Messina, the latter of whom believed so much in the project that he gained forty pounds to play his character Dion Bartolo. The stacked cast – a feature of each of Affleck’s directorial pieces to date – wasn’t enough to bring in audiences, and the expected awards season push didn’t come, leaving many prominent voices to exclaim that the film was “like a ghost of a sensational movie” and “the worst of his excellent filmography to date”.

Live By Night is far from a bad film, but given its subject matter and the lack of popularity for gangster films in the modern era, it had to be great to be greeted with open arms by audiences and critics, and it simply wasn’t that. It is, as of this date, Affleck’s worst feature, though that is far from the criticism it may be in other editions of Ranked; a fact that pays testament to Affleck’s overall quality of work in the director’s chair.

Barton Fink (1991)
Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenwriters: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi, Richard Portnow, Christopher Murney

Barton Fink was Joel and Ethan Coens’ fourth film, written at a breakneck pace while they were still struggling with Miller’s Crossing and released only a year later. The screenplay might have been knocked out in three weeks, but it ended up being one of the Coen Brothers’ trickiest and most layered of narratives, going on to win them the Palme d’Or and Best Director at Cannes, and gain three Academy Award nominations. Most critics loved it, but many audience members were left bemused. How does it play 30 years down the line?

The film opens with an image of uninspiring, brown, Art Deco patterned wallpaper, then the camera travels downwards to the bustle and tangled pulleys of the backstage area at a theatre, playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) watching the performance nervously from the wings. Following a rapturous critical reception for his play, Barton is the toast of New York and is invited to Hollywood to bring a little of his magic to the silver screen, taking up residence in a dilapidated hotel and steadily losing his grip on reality in the process.

Turturro as Barton is a classic film portrayal of a writer character; inspired but coiled and awkward in any setting where he is forced to converse with more than one other person. “A writer writes from his gut – his gut tells him what’s good and what’s merely adequate”. 

A lot of playwrights were lured to Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s, including Clifford Odets (Barton’s reported real-world basis who wrote films such as Sweet Smell of Success) in the heyday of the studio film. Most were looking for the stability a steady flow of cash would bring more than artistic liberation. Barton trades his dream of creating “a real living theatre, of and about, and for the common man” for the promise of success in the movies. Barton goes to Hollywood to turn his acclaim on the stage into success in the cinema. He has got a couple of minders to keep him on track (Tony Shalhoub and Jon Polito) and a studio benefactor, powerful producer Jack Lipnik (Michael Lerner), who is all-accommodating and full of praise and bear hugs until he can’t meet his new boss’s high but vague demands. Inevitably, writing a crowd-pleasing boxing movie doesn’t go smoothly for Barton. 

Barton Fink has quite a lot in common with The Shining, especially in terms of its atmosphere. There may not be any literal ghosts in its corridors but the Earle is in many ways just as unappealing of a place to stay while staring at your mockingly bare typewriter as the Overlook was. Everything in the hotel seems designed to make you feel a bit uncomfortable, a little ill-at-ease. The reception bell that rings out slightly too long; Chet the bell hop’s (Steve Buscemi) dusty uniform; the zombified elevator operator; the way you can almost smell the mound in the carpets and feel the oppressive heat that melts the wallpaper paste.

John Goodman has never been quite as terrifying as he his playing totally-not-Satan insurance salesman Charlie Meadows. He is first announced off-screen by a noise coming through Barton’s wall that disturbingly is like an uncontrollable laugh and a hysterical sob in equal measure. Of course his neighbour soon comes a-knocking, though some early awkwardness is quickly bypassed by Charlie’s disarming affability and the bottle of whiskey he offers to share. “If you don’t mind me asking?” soon becomes a catchphrase of Charlie’s, as does “I could tell you some stories”, though with Barton on one of his self-righteous rants, he doesn’t usually get to.

On the rare occasion we do leave the hotel, the film loses a bit of focus and intention. Barton strikes up a suspiciously fast friendship with Judy Davis as the mistress/secretary of a famous novelist (John Mahoney) seemingly just to set up a couple of twists later on. Later Barton goes to a dance and starts a fight with some sailors and then a couple of cops straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel (Richard Portnow and Christopher Murney) show up and begin to suspect Barton of illicit activity, like his unravelling mind and writer’s block weren’t tension enough for this film.

“You don’t listen” is the biggest lesson to take away from Barton Fink, a story about writing stories. Barton is ultimately a hypocrite, claiming to be an agent of social change and bringing working-class stories to the masses but loving the sound of his own words far more than actually taking in what’s around him, or genuinely portraying other people’s varied lived experiences. He’s a narcissist masquerading as a man of the people.

Barton Fink is a film that will take at least three viewings to come close to decode. The heaven and hell imagery especially in the final act is one thing, but other motifs peppered throughout are far more elliptical and vague in their meaning, undoubtedly intentionally so – and what was it with films of the 90s and boxes with mysterious, likely gruesome contents? However difficult it can be to penetrate at times, the oppressive atmosphere, pitch-perfect performances (especially from Turturro and Goodman) and the mundane-beautiful look of the thing (this was Roger Deakins’ first of many collaborations with the Coens as DP) will keep you uncomfortably enraptured. The Coens could tell you some stories, and with Barton Fink they certainly keep you on your toes.

19/24

Captive State (2019)
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Screenwriters: Erica Beeney, Rupert Wyatt
Starring: John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, Machine Gun Kelly

When you saw Battlefield Earth did you think you needed a more complicated version? If so, here’s some good news… that’s what Captive State is.

The premises of both films are that an alien force is in charge of the Earth and using humans to mine for them. Unlike Battlefield Earth, Captive State thinks it’s some kind of spy thriller rather than a straightforward film about toppling an evil ruling class.

Part of the issue is the lack of focus. We follow three characters, each on different sides of the conflict, but two of them are mostly uninteresting and we’re with them for only the first forty-five minutes. Following that, there’s a fascinating sequence where we watch a group carry out an attack on the alien government, and then the film falls off again as we deal with the aftermath and discover the obvious twist. A better movie would focus on one of these arcs rather than trying to give three people large amounts of screen time away from one another.

A major dissonant aspect of the film is its presentation of the alien government. Society is ruled by an out-group and we must refuse to make peace with them – bringing to mind the irrational, conspiratorial fears of the implementation of Sharia Law or FEMA camps by Obama. Of course, the film is also critical of the privileged in society, the wealth gap, authoritarian government, sycophant politicians that kowtow to evil regimes, deportation of people and racism to an extent. There surely must have been a better way to accomplish this than using aliens?

At its core, this is the issue; it doesn’t wholly realize its interesting premise. There’s no reason the aliens were aliens. There’s no reason why they were furry/spiky with butthole mouths. This is a stock film put on shuffle in the hope that it will be more interesting.

After the 110 minute runtime, you’ll feel like you were freed from captivity.

Wait for this to hit Netflix.

8/24

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