Hello!

After a year trying to raise the money to continue to exist (and then, after we couldn’t get it, bravely going ahead anyway) Bumps in the Night is back!

Which means… (drumroll, or spitballs please) the Most Dangerous Movie Reviews on the Internet are back… even if that promotion is dead. Which we weren’t sure, because we’ve gained the superpower of “fast-forwarding through commercials” now, which is rendered powerless upon the kryptonite of: “fast-forwarding through the actual horrible movie.”

As always, now and forever, rest assured: you have our solemn vow to always watch the Most Dangerous Movies in the Most Dangerous Way Possible: drunk, with the windows open.

But, in the beginning here, for the first few, we’re going to experiment with making the reviews a little bit shorter. We’re doing this because we’re know you’re busy, and have to get on with your life… and totally not because this is what we were doing with our Valentine’s Day night. Right.

Oh, and since these are so impossibly long, we’re doing them if you request them. So, if there’s a horrible movie you’d like us to tell the world about… I’m sorry, for whatever choices you made in your life that lead you to that point.

But we’d love to hear from you! bitntv@gmail.com

THE STORY SO FAR… SO FAR.

Tonight’s movie (Saturday’s movie? Once you’ve watched enough SyFy enough, calendars/days cease to exist, and everything becomes: “I Have to Do Something Better With My Life-Day.”) is:

“TRANSMORPHERS: FALL OF MAN.”

The movie, of course, is a rip off.

Created by men who spent years as big Hollywood execs, it’s a rip off of something more popular that dumb people are going to confuse for the better thing.

(Of course, this movie is ripping off “Transformers,” where everything I just said could be applied to that movie, in regards to the cartoon.) Robots, turn into things, turn back out of things, there’s explosions, maybe there’s a lot of shouting, you know the drill.

Michael Bay’s “Transformers” took years off of our lives, the sequel could positively kill us. As bad as I thought the first one might be, we never thought the biggest criticism of it would be: “It Has Too Many Masturbation Jokes.”

John had exclusive information (read: he actually paid attention to a commercial) that Transmorphers: Fall of Man was a prequel to a prior Transmorphers, proving that cynicism, like foolish people, breeds often. Questions abound:

1. Can we survive this movie?

2. Will this be the worst movie with a “Trans” in a title since “Jon Lovitz’s Trans-Am Explosion,” a 1987 movie where he and John Lithgow played an easy-listening guitar duo on the rocks, raising money for a rainforest run by a monkey with a drug problem.

3. Most importantly: will we have enough booze to last the entire night?

(Answers at the end, if we remember the questions, and don’t have to scroll back to the beginning of this to see them.)

PLOT RECAP:

“Transmorphers: Fall of Man” starts the way many men have fallen: with a crazy chick yelling on a cell phone. She drives through the anonymous LA mountains listening to an anonymous rock song, shouting at a boyfriend who has the audacity to be a plot device.

She’s eventually pulled over by… a living symbol that you shouldn’t trust the future’s going to be all that great. Not your uncle who put his retirement fund in that infomercial where you can flip houses, but Bruce Boxleitner.

Yes, the man who once battled the Master Control Program, and the Evil Guy Who Didn’t Age a Day Between “Tron” And “Titanic”… is now the lead in “Transmorphers.” The only way this would be sadder is if the movie were about kids in neon green outfits locked in a computer game, called “Tran.”

Bruce wheezes through some lines with the intensity of a man idly wondering if he cleaned his attic. He asks her why she’s speeding, she flutters her eyes bit because an acting coach/desperate-to-get-laid boyfriend told her it was “acting,” then he meanders back to his car, without asking her for license and registration.  (Bakersfield apparently takes “The Honor System” pretty seriously.)

She goes back to the phone, presumably to tell her boyfriend: “Oh my God, I know I hate you and I’ve been screaming at you and whatever, but I saw the guy from ‘Tron’… no, not Jeff Bridges! THIS is why I’m dumping you!”

… but a funny thing happens on the way to nothing funny happening:

She’s on the phone, she’s yelling, and we’re staring longingly at our vodka, beginning to voice doubts: “Vodka, you’re pretty great, but I don’t know if you can do it tonight…”

… when something amazing happens.

Her phone decides it’s had enough of listening to her yell to her boyfriend, WHEN IT TURNS INTO A ROBOT SPIDER AND ATTACKS HER NOSE!

Just savor that image in your head for a moment.

Go ahead, we’ll wait. Seriously, we’re doing shots.

She screams, and is kind enough to hold the cell phone spider on her face while she spins the car around. She remembers from her driving manual how you must always maintain at least one hand on the wheel when your phone turns into a spider robot & attacks, lest you accidentally, you know, rip it off, and ruin the film’s prop budget.

Eventually, the spider robot tires of that game, and jumps on the wheel, perhaps to take us to “Awesomeville,” although it feels like we’re almost there. The cell phone then does what your I-Phone has wanted to do to you for years, and shoots a lazer into the center of her forehead. She instantly dies, but the wound doesn’t look so much like: “The Laser Destroyed Her Instantly” but rather “Ash Wednesday Came Early This Year.”

“Maybe… the phone was her boyfriend all along,” Emmett says, staring at the shot glass as intently as… well, guys who watch a lot of bad Syfy movies stare at shot glasses. Greg and John nod at this. Somehow, the phrase “vibrate function” is never mentioned during this.

Yes, in the last year, we somehow got classy.

Greg then does a shot… and it dribbles down his chin. He lifts his shirt to his lips and tries to suck it out of the shirt, thus assuring… well, that we’d be writing this alone on Valentine’s Day.

But, despite all this high-octane drinking drama, the movie continues…. Atop what looks like the water treatment plant. A man in a suit and a woman with… what’s probably a British accent shout exposition at each other like people who are paid only in food to do so.  It’s the kind of dialogue you get in sci-fi movies, that’s meant to be high context, and grab your attention, like:

“We got a ping back on the wavelength!”

“No, not the wavelength… we’ll have to tell them!”

– but, it really doesn’t seem “mysterious” so much as that these two are so inconsequential, none of the people they work with bothered to tell them their real names, so they can only speak about their jobs in pronouns and vague terms. (NOTE: this is a great way to deal with incompetent underlings.)

Once they wrap up this conversation, (with no one saying the two most unspoken questions: 1. “Why aren’t we making out?” and 2: “Why did we have to talk on top of this facility?”) The film rockets forward with the momentum of a drunk snail considering a nap.

Boxleitner is called into an autopsy with a guy who may be an attorney, but he may just also be the only friend Boxleitner has. A pretty doctor does an autopsy on the girl who died by Spider Cell Phone Laser shot (at any level of sobriety that’s pretty satisfying to type) and has no idea what’s going on. Boxleitner agrees, and this scene instantly becomes the honest, intellectual core of the film. The doctor’s accent is British when she’s doing the autopsy, but not when they leave the room, when it becomes American… suggesting the autopsy was more harmful than she let on.

Two seemingly completely different movies away (a child playing with a remote control helicopter that somehow doesn’t kill him and a beautiful young woman dealing with her Mom’s TV not coming on, respectively) … a man lies on a couch, hungover. Pizza boxes & empties are everywhere. We look around uncomfortably, just to make sure that the camera isn’t in our house.

But no… this is the hero of our story. Jake.

Jake gets a call to go “fix a satellite dish,” which we are surprised to hear isn’t some kind of metaphor, dirty, alien, or otherwise.

He shows up at the house of the beautiful young woman, who’s named “Madison.” It turns out she dated Jake once, which seems slightly more unbelievable than the whole “objects turning into deadly robots” thing. It’s obvious they still have feelings for each other, but it’s equally obvious this is only because it says so in the script.

But, as Shakespeare said: “the course of true love never did run smooth.” And, like Shakespeare also said, “As Jake works on the satellite dish, it turns into a wildly goofy looking robot monster.” (check the end of “Timon of Athens.” It’s there.)

He then fulfills the dreams of every repairman, and jumps on his client/ex Madison, knocking her to the ground. He reaches into his “satellite repairman bag,” and pulls out a handgun, making us re-think ever calling a repairman again, (or, alternately, “calling a repairman every day.”)

“Get down… call the cops.” Apparently, Jake has seen “Tron,” and knows that if there’s goofy-looking machinery about, there’s literally no one on Earth more qualified than Boxleitner.

But, after more uncomfortable protecting/laying on Madison, he decides that maybe leaving a robot monster in the middle of a residential neighborhood is not a great idea, and goes out to look for the monster… but by that time, the robot’s on break or something, and is gone.

– Then, the movie decides to test your limits of embarrassment, and cuts to… what we suppose is some kind of Delinquent/Wild Youth guy, seeing as he’s driving an SUV too fast and listening to non-descript metal. He smokes what’s either a joint or a large piece of taffy. As his GPS gives him directions, he yells: “Yeah, sexy voice!” at it, which is unexpectedly funny.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately) the GPS does not appreciate such forward comments, and zaps him in the forehead, killing him. (Which is what your GPS would like to do to you after too many wrong turns. This whole movie’s actually about wish-fulfillment.)

– Moments later, Boxleitner shows up, and a small child whose performance is heavily influenced by either Droopy Dog, tranquilizers, or both, tells him: “The car killed him and threw him out.” Boxleitner, having spent many years in Bakersfield, buys this pretty easily.

Boxleitner springs into action, like a slinky that can’t quite make it down the stairs. It turns out that Boxleitner has been acting as Madison’s father, which is the first and last time the word “acting” should be used around this movie.

He and Jake have an uncomfortable moment where Jake gives Boxleitner his gun, perhaps uncomfortable because it just dawned on them that they’re the only two guys that can stop these monsters. So… they do what any three people would do in Bakersfield on an afternoon, drive around town aimlessly looking for a robot monster that can turn into a satellite dish. No calling of friends, no announcements over the radio, no: “Oh my God, Aunt Bessie, you have to get the hell out of town!” They search for a robot/nuclear/cyborg that can destroy the world with all the intensity of searching for a basketball that bounced out of your driveway.

– A few scenes genuinely too stupid to be mentioned later (Boxleitner hits on the “I’m British When I’m Inside a Building, Merely American When Outdoors” Lady, then Jake says: “I know all about robot drones” without drawing so much as a raised eyebrow from anyone else. Apparently, DIRECTV has a lot of secrets they’re hiding.

–A bit more aimless driving around, and they find the demon SUV/GPS that killed the delinquent kid. Or rather, it finds them. Wildly excited to see them, it wants to play bumper cars, or possibly hump Boxleitner’s SUV. It’s supposed to be a thrilling chase, but it only captures the tension of one SUV unable to reveal it’s true feelings about another.

After playing coy with a few hits and ramblings, the demon SUV can’t hold it in anymore… and it stands tall, erect… and becomes the world’s saddest rip-off of a Transformer. It’s Optimus Past-His-Prime. It’s like someone took your 1^st grade drawings of what your favorite Transformer would be, and only made it to the exact specifications of your 1^st grade art ability after your dog chewed and/or sat on it. We looked at the several-story-tall robot on screen, half expecting to see: “MADE IN TAIWAN” under one of the guns.

But, perhaps embarrassed to be caught with it’ robot hanging out, it attacks. By firing guns in random directions… before the camera cuts back to our characters ducking.

After our heroes discover the Transmorpher (God, it hurts my fingers just to type that “word”) is impervious to them “sitting still” and “arguing with each other about what to do,” a helicopter shows up out of nowhere and shoots the Trans…mphher with a missile, making it explode.

Bakersfield is a hell of a town.

In New York, that would at least make page 5 of the Post, opposite a gossip piece about one of the stars of the “Twilight” movies possibly being at a restaurant.

Then, to heighten the… well, not tension, but it certainly our impatience, our favorite workers form the NSA’s Factory (???) show up to provide a lack of anything. They shout exposition, which only begs more questions.

The boss (hereto referred to as “Goldenrod Shirt,” because, uh… the shirt didn’t look too “Maize”) has apparently been Facebook-stalking our star for some time. “YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT PREDATOR DRONES FROM YOUR DAYS IN THE WAR!” he shouts at our Jake, the way your parents would when you were a teen if they thought some quasi-embarrassing thing you were good at would impress a member of the opposite sex within earshot. You almost expect him to then say: “YOU REALLY PLAY THE ACCORDIAN WELL AT FAMILY GATHERINGS, JAKE. KISS HIM, MADISON. HE’S A KEEPER.”

The British woman is NSA, who somehow must’ve gotten the person interviewing her for the job to drop the “A.” A doctor woman shows up who may have been in earlier scenes in the film, she’s quite literally too boring to remember. “They’re Transmorphers,” she says, only hinting at the number of takes it must’ve required for her not to say “formers.”

Much more exposition oozes out of your television like somebody bombed the dam at Exposition Reservoir. “Roswell” is mentioned multiple times, each more stupefying than the last. Eventually, the Trans…miffers are rousted from their trailer and make their way to the army base out of contractual obligation.

Our intrepid heroes seem unsure on whether the right plan of attack is “Do Nothing” or “Shout Clichés At Each Other While Doing Nothing.”

“We have to leave!” “We can’t leave!” “But this is all we’ve got!” “We’re not going down!”  A “Trans…mippier” walks through the base, killing soldiers willy nilly, suggesting the producers believe the US Military is about as tough as a Boy Scout Troop After Spending an Hour at Dairy Queen. Either that, or Bakersfield is ready to be invaded at any time.

After even the Transminifphers realize that the same shot repeated over and over again of him firing at soldiers is losing cache as even a kitsch thing, the heroes shout buzz words at each other that they’ve seen in other, better movies: “Jam the signal! Get to the tower! Wait for the signal!”

It’s like word salad from other movies. You almost expect Boxleitner to yell: “Yes! Then we’ll go to the Death Star Pandora and attack it with the Implant a Virus in the Mothership Gate!”

One of the scientist ladies runs with a computer the size of our feeling of shame for watching this movie. Apparently, the only technology the NSA gets is from Texas Instruments. Boxleitner gets into a helicopter, possibly to see if he can fly off the set, and use the helicopter as collateral to keep whatever money he made for this movie.

Atop the tower!  Our heroes battle the Transmuripher. It advances on them… then, as it’s about to kill them, it realizes that this is all of what became of its Hollywood dreams, and stops, hanging its head in shame.

(Okay, the movie said something about: “We jammed the signal!” But we know what actually happened.)

— and then Boxleitner crashes the copter into the not-moving creature! Killing them both! It’s so wildly unnecessary, we’re waiting for Jake to say: “Um, why… why did he do that? Can we do a take where he doesn’t kill himself?” But, the machines are defeated… and the movie ends!

Greg and John breath heavy sighs of relief! “We survived!” John yells, almost in tears.

“But… um… err…” Emmett’s voice is heavy and cold as a rock, “We’re… we’re only sixty-five minutes in. We’re… halfway.”

Decorum prevents repeating what happened next in the apartment, but… let it be said… you never want to hear another human being say: “I… I’m sorry, but… I thought there was vodka in the carpet. I didn’t mean… for you to see that. Or be hurt by it.”

Ahem.

– -the movie seem just as incredulous as us that it hasn’t ended, and cuts into the… near future. Jake tells us that “every machine with a complex microchip was shut down.” He actually says that. Thing is, he says this… while getting out of an SUV, which of course, is run by solar power, wind, and positive thoughts.

He slow dances with Madison at a bar… she looks into his eyes, and asks him about the guys that died under his command in Iraq. He tells her about how his bad decisions got them all killed. They’re both in luck, because apparently “Gross, Fatal Incompetence” is her biggest turn on, and she kisses him. Hard.

They go back to his apartment, with the kind of passion that can only be expressed by neither participant looks at another’s genitals or move the sheets.

As they wake up the next day… (underneath a shoe rack, seriously. There’s a scary moment where you think they’re making love near the balls at Chuck E. Cheese) the Transminifpheirers heard that she was finally putting out, and begin “the invasion’ which means someone on the staff used the “copy and paste” function to make two robots.

Jake & Madison flee, and meet up with the rest of the remaining heroes from the first half of the movie, (the British woman who almost got with Boxleitner, and her attorney friend). They haven’t found anything better to do with their time in the interim, even though any semblance of a survival instinct would say: “Get the Hell Out of Bakersfield.”

They go to a field, where “other survivors” live now that “all the towns have been destroyed.” Again, we don’t see any of this. The “honor system” in Bakersfield is the most powerful thing in the world. As they arrive, their SUV, finally seeing a chance to make a run for it, either explodes, or kicks them out of the car. The movie doesn’t seem to want to be clear. Regardless, they’re on the ground, and the SUV is speeding away, no doubt calling its agent and begging for a commercial, anything.

At this point, the movie decides to take a nap, and introduce us to more people who don’t have lines, but probably had a friend/friend with benefits/friend who better have been providing benefits better than being in this movie on staff.

How slow is this next part? It involves one of the great trippy monologues of all time, from an NSA scientist (we know this, because she worked at the NSA Plant) saying this about the robots fighting:

“An extraterrestrial attacks like a friend, there’s a moment in the conflict, where you question how am I going to overpower it, up over around or whatever, this alien, it attacked like an enemy, and there was nothing for me to figure out.”

… you really do think the next line out of someone’s mouth will be: “No more drugs for that woman.”

In a way, that’s kind of like the big reveal of “Transmorphers: Fall of Man” – everyone is doing this sober.

But, since this is this kind of movie, a pacemaker turns into a spider, (Yes, it’s the Dick Cheney model pacemaker) and attacks the crowd. One of the extras, seeing a chance to work out some dark, misogynist issues, shoots at the pacemaker, misses hits the woman who had the pacemaker five times, and then finally hits the spider pacemaker. (I guess, use the opportunities you have? I dunno—)

They decide to destroy… a base? A plant? The mall where the Transminiphiersrers hang out? Regardless, there’s somewhere for us to attack to find a way to end the movie. After hiking through… pretty much all of California (we know this because someone says: “We’ve been hiking forever!”)

They run into the winner of a “Gerard Mcraney in ‘Major Dad’” competition, who manages to kill one of the Transmophi…fers through nothing but the magic of a ridiculous mustache. He tells them a lot of exposition from other, better movies, about the water being changed and the robots had plants in each country, (“we already took them down in China, Russia, and Bulgaria,” which lets you know the Tranmophphphers had an extra plant lying around, threw a dart at a board and said: “Hmm… sure, we’ll take… Belgium. Oh, it’s Bulgaria? Whatever. So long as we put one in Bakersfield. That’s where the action is.”)

A lot of shooting, running, and reaction-shotting later, Jake sets a bomb to blow up the plant, and save the world, etc. “We only have ten seconds!” he yells at Madison, clearly not the first time he’s had to tell her that something wasn’t going to last as long as they’d hope.

He sets the bomb…

… and John counts out… “nine… ten…!” He claps. We cheer, eagerly awaiting Jake blowing up.

“You have to go!” Jake yells at Madison.

“And ten!” John yells. Greg joins him.

Madison holds Jake again: “But I love you!”

“Ten!” we shout.

“You have to go!” Jake yells again, profoundly incapable of saying anything else.

“TEN!”

Jake sets the bomb down on the ground.

“TEN!”

He turns and looks at the robots.

… but he doesn’t explode for (and John kinda timed this, as much as a person can read numbers after this much drinking) another 1:45 seconds. This scene sums up the movie more than any other one… because no one, not the Transmophphphphperifiers, or Jake, or robots, can count to ten.

The plant explodes. The robots… aren’t there anymore, we’re led to believe they’ve exploded. The women run in slow motion from the plant… just as we all should’ve done from this movie. Jake survives, just to slip in one last disappointment.

… as for the three of us, we survived. Eventually. Maybe someday we’ll sober up. Next year, the monster for Valentine’s Day night…  dates.

RATINGS:

7/10 SYFYs: Large robots killing people, while non-descript actors tell each other about it in various degrees of overacting? Still, this could’ve used at least one guy that was working for the monsters, or just so insane he hurt other human beings. Those guys are always fun.

SNAKES: Still at zero, but I’m giving an honorary snake to that guy’s mustache. It was pretty fantastic. You got the feeling that if, like another cell phone turned into a spider, his mustache would’ve leapt into action.

MOMENTARY BLIP OF AWESOME: If there was an app that turned my phone into a spider that attacked other people, we’d never need another app. We would need some new friends.

COULD YOU MAKE THIS MOVIE WITH YOUR FRIENDS FOR 50 BUCKS?

Do you have Bruce Boxleitner?

Do you have a lot of friends with nothing better to do over a weekend or two?

Then…. Yeah.  Actually.  Also: Windows 2007 actually has “Boxleitner” in its spellcheck. Classy movie, MCP. Classy move.

WHAT WE LEARNED:

— We could watch people’s cell phones turn into spiders and attack them all day long. All night, too.

– Remember, if there’s a movie you’d like to see us do, drop us a line at bitntv@gmail.com

If not, we’ll assume you didn’t make it to the end this long, and we’ll do nothing but post nude pics of ourselves on this thing. Your move, internet.