Why They Couldn't Make Weekend at Bernie's 2 Today
I'm not going to get into why I was searching YouTube for clips from Weekend at Bernie's 2 today (although I will say that it had something to do with the upcoming Dru Hill concert featuring Sisqo, and a joke about how they were going to have to figure out some way to pretend that Sisqo hadn't died. OK, I apparently I will get into it.) So I was, and I found this, and OMMOTHERFNGG, you guys:
CRAMAZING. Now that's how you make a movie. Incidentally, I saw Weekend at Bernie's 2 in the theater, by myself, because some of us didn't have anywhere to go after summer camp, because not all families do things the way your family did them and some of us had to learn how to take care of ourselves from a very young age. Don't worry about it.
But this clip, you guys. Watch the clip again. You can't even make a movie like that anymore. Why not?
Racism
We are still a crazy racist country (cracist), but we're always getting just a little less racist. Just a little, but enough. You had to be super racist to make a scene like this, and now we're just very very racist.
Voodoo
People simply don't care as much about Voodoo as they used to. It's gone out of fashion along with movies about ski bums and HyperColor.
Zoot Suits
Most people under the age of 30 probably don't even know what a zoot suit is (despite the Cherry Poppin' Daddies' worst efforts), and people under the age of 60 only know about them because of Janet Jackson's video for "Alright."
Boom Boxes
It doesn't seem important at first, but could you imagine this scene with an iBoom? Actually, an iBoom with candles melted all over it in this scene would be hilarious, nevermind.
Greed
The music in this is what makes the whole thing work. But you couldn't make this movie today because FOX would insist on spending 10,000 dollars in licensing fees to get some new JoJo song or some shit. (Haha. JoJo. How old is she now? Nine?)
Casual Dancing
If Adam Chu has taught us anything it's that there's no place left in the world for casually letting the music take you in a ridiculous way. If you're not doing some kind of turbo-worm into a popping and locking handstand, you should probably cut your ears off because you have no right to even be listening to music.
Lack Of Self-Conscious Navel Gazing
There's hardly any quirk in this. Bernie doesn't even tear down the fourth wall and address the audience. It's like they hardly even recognize that film is just a construct of universal signifiers onto which we project our own meaning. Weird.
9/11
Just kidding. Weekend at Bernie's 3,000: NEVER FORGET.
Seriously, though, Hollywood makes some stupid shit (I'm farting on you Beverly Hills Chihuahua), but not like this. Not with such blatant disrespect for an audience's intelligence. They captured the end of an era in this scene. It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.
Posted by Gabe at 3:25 PM in Nostalgia
Tags: Weekend At Bernie's 2
man, i'm so excited to see which beverly hills chihuahua catch phrase fails to catch on first.
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If you've seen Wall-E, you know that just the word "chihuahua" caught on with every kid in the audience. Thankfully, that was replaced by "waaaaAAAA@@@@AAAA-leeeee" & "eeeeee-vaaaaaa" before the movie's end.
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the latino anti-defamation league is probably super psyched for white children's first exposure to their culture be george lopez's portrayal of an oversexed, "spicy machissmo", wise-cracking chihuahua.
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I used to reasonably enjoy myself when I was younger and zoot suit riot would come on the radio, until I learned that they're basically singing about a massacre. It took the pep out of the song, you know, just a little.
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When I was a kid, my friend's cousin impersonated Bernie in this scene to the apeshit delight of all the adults at some party. For like an hour. I remember it well, because it was the first time I killed myself.
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Gabe loves semiotics.
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Isn't all that Bernie does in this scene "addressing the audience"?
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jojo is the shit
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