Hello everyone! I watched this movie a few months back, so I guess this is sort of a retrospect review. Now that I am fully over the shock of this picture. Let's look at Gingerdead Man.
 |
| Yeah. Fun times. |
Jesus Christ on a Christmas cookie, were they even trying. The shit thing about it is I have to assume they were. I mean obviously this film was played up for laughs. And of course I did not go into this film figuring it would be any good. But before I talk about the story. Allow me to share a little personal history on this film.
Back in the days when the rental industry was not ruled by Redbox and Netflix was still just in the mail, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were weekly stops for teenage me. Blockbuster had great promotions for loyal customers so on a few occasions, I would get a week or a month of free rentals. Pretty sweet huh? I consider myself lucky now if I get a rent one rent another free promo code for being subscribed to the Redbox club text messages. I will probably write a post sometime in the future expanding on my philosophies surrounding rental stores but it is worth noting for now that I spent a lot of time at these stores.
 |
| DECEASED |
 |
| ALSO FUCKING DECEASED *cries a little* |
I would ride my bike to the Blockbuster to rent a video occasionally. And even in the early days of my film craze, I was unknowingly enamoured with horror movies. But back then, I only went for movies that I thought would scare me. So everyday when I would walk through the glass doors and that confusing man trap with the security sensors and turn in my previously rented film, I would walk down to the Horror section and stroll right by this film. Gingerdead Man... Sounded stupid to me then. But since I have grown the title never escaped my conscious. As I became aware of the cleverly titled sequels, Full Moon entertainment distributions, the cross-over with the Evil Bong Franchise, I kept thinking that I'd have to check the film out one day. But I put it off and put it off.
Until two months ago.
Gingerdead man starts out its story with a deranged killer shooting up a diner. Very similar the Charles from Child's Play. This killer is plays by the deranged Gary Busey. Which seems fantastic.
 |
| FANTASTIC |
But no. It isn't though.
I will be the first one on board for an over-the-top performance but this is so disjointed. Busey doesn't know if he wants to be straight evil, unbalanced, playing it cool. I suppose the argument can be made that it's due his insanity that he temperament and mood swing so violently. But if that were the case, then why doesn't seem to be triggered my anything. You'd think to tie the insane killer into the story better you'd give him some sort of kryptonite, then he responds poorly, then he kills some poor diner patrons, THEN he scars the main character by killing the shit out of her dad or something. But no. In THIS film, he's just crazy, and kills people and later dies so the plot of the film can put him in a gingerbread man. I already know I don't like this film. But I'm strapped in and ready to watch.
The movie moves on to a bakery where we see our main character, the traumatized Sarah totally shut down totally nice guy, Amos, who later in the film is going to be sacrificed to the plot and completely given up on by the other main characters. This sucked to me because he was easily and immediately my favorite character. And he is going to die. And no one is going to really care. Especially not the characters who are supposed to care. Anyway he's a nice guy but she's going to be sad for a little while longer until some other girls bad-boy bae comes along. That's not a joke. That happens in the movie. This character's motivations on love are about as nonsensical as Amos's instinct to hold his well sliced bleeding hand over a vat of gingerbread dough in an industry where that sort of thing would get your bakery shut down. But if he hadn't got blood in the dough with the magic gingerbread seasoning dough mix stuff with the ashes of Gary Busey, then we wouldn't have a movie.
We may still not have a movie.
So yes, there is magic gingerbread seasoning and and blood in the kitchen and girls with poor decision making skills. But what kind of movie set in a bakery wouldn't have a "we can't afford to stay in business!" subplot? Well it doesn't help much. The mom of the girl is a drunk and doesn't make things easier when the owner of fancy evil chain store across the street wants to buy out their business to clear the shit view away from his customers. If only he knew about their food safety practices.
So this rich asshole has a daughter who is apparently on bad terms with Sarah. And she tries to plant rats in the bakery to get them shut down. I mean really. If this was going to be brought up I wish that I was in a position to side with the good guys. But they ought to be shut down! But bitch doesn't know that and so she's just an evil brat. Amazing story telling. She is confronted in the bakery by Sarah and then the mayhem all starts. It really seems that the only reason we pulled this witless character in here was to add characters for the body count. Her boyfriend shows up to scold her and apologize to the main character for his girlfriends actions by becoming the romantic interest. I REALLY LOVE HOW RELATABLE THESE CHARACTERS ARE! So the cookie comes to life to wreak havoc and have his revenge against the main character. Oh yeah. She testified against him and I suppose sent him to the electric chair. That's where we got the ashes. Not important.
So from there the movie becomes a typical slasher flick. The Busey Cookie runs around killing off the whole cast of characters one by one in gruesome manners having to do with being in a bakery setting. Oh yeah. I had intended to mention that the entire movie aside from a couple scenes outside this bakery and the scene in the diner are entirely inside this tiny bakery. So essentially for a large part of the film we are treated to two sets, the front of the bakery, and the back of the bakery. If I were any more riveted, I could support a team of construction workers at lunch. There are a good deal of puns and the cheese factor of this film fails to support any level of entertainment. Sarah and the bitch's boyfriend fall in love and defeat the Gingerdead Man. Oh but not after Amos returns after being absent for some time in the movie to defeat the cookie by actually eating it. This leads to the supposed death of the Gingerdead Man. Oh but wait! The soul of Garey Busey then possesses Amos and THEN Sarah and her new bae kill him. They didn't even try. "It wasn't Amos anymore" or some shit. I didn't bother to remember the quote. I'm actually surprised I remembered enough to write this review. This movie was obviously trash and I don't believe that I will be returning to this franchise by myself any time soon.
 |
| Nope |
 |
| Nuh-uh |
 |
| eheheheHEHEAHHAHAHAH!!!.. But srsly no. |
This movie is just a really good example of a bad movie that was trying to cash in on Audiences who like this kind of thing, but lacks the originality and wit to carry itself off as being a cleverly terrible movie. I am sad to say that all those years of wonder and curiosity that surrounded this movie ultimately summed up to one night of underwhelming disappointment. I did learn something though. And that is an appreciation for quality. If this film had cared more about itself, then maybe I would have cared as well. But it was just a bad movie that was just a bad movie. And this was certainly not the last time that I would run into such a thing.
Ginderdead Man. I know you ended up starring in three more films. But I wont be renting those out anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment