My Year Of Flops Case File #113, Ask The A.V. Club Crossover Edition: Yellowbeard

We live in a time of crisis. Gas
prices are skyrocketing. The war in Iraq drags on interminably. The housing
market has imploded to the point where hobos are now being offered thousands of
dollars to move into unsold houses. The August 28 release of Aaron Seltzer and
Jason Friedberg's Disaster Movie looms
ominously in our near future. More importantly, a plucky little column known as
Ask The A.V Club teeters on the
brink of extinction due to a dearth of questions.

I'll probably get in trouble for
revealing this, but things have gotten so bad that we've taken to outsourcing
the difficult task of coming up with Ask The A.V. Club questions to an Indian company called Trivia
Question Askers Inc., a fully-owned subsidiary of Globochem. This has proven a
costly, foolhardy endeavor. Here's a recent question we purchased from Trivia
Question Askers:

Okay, so I have this memory of
this show I saw when I was a kid. It took place in the future, or maybe in the
past, or possibly in an alternate universe. There was a girl, or maybe a boy,
and she had a dog, or maybe a cat. In the first 15 minutes, she bounced a big
rubber ball that may have been red. At one point she sang a song that went "La
la la la la la la." I grew up in Canada in the mid-'70s, or maybe New Hampshire
in the early '50s, and I remember seeing it on PBS or NBC or on the BBC. Come
to think of it, it may have been a song or a children's book or a Love Is cartoon. No wait, it was a dream I
had last week. Never mind.

Not A Paid Ringer From Trivia
Question Askers Inc, A Fully Owned Subsidiary Of Globochem

We paid more than a thousand
dollars for that question, only to nix it as too crappy to answer. I don't want
to make anyone question their faith in outsourcing, but Trivia Question Askers
Inc. has proven a huge disappointment. It doesn't help that half of their
"questions" involve Bollywood. If we get one more overpriced question about
Buddhadeb Dasgupta's early films and their relationship with his poetry, I'm
gonna scream.

If things don't turn around in a
jiffy, we're considering holding a "Save Ask The A.V. Club" telethon featuring all your favorite "alternative"
comedians who think they're so great just cause they went to college and have
read some Chomsky, plus hipster bands people only pretend to like so they'll
seem cool in our home base in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I know we like to pretend
that we're headquartered in Chicago, but as many of you have already figured
out, we all actually live and work in the back room of a Brooklyn American
Apparel outlet. As I write this, Noel Murray is prissily grooming his
faux-hawk, readjusting his wallet chain so it fits more snugly against his skinny
jeans, listening to a white-label, vinyl-only Radiohead remix EP, smoking a big
fat J, and cackling maniacally at the thought that some A.V. Club readers actually believe that he's a sober,
responsible father and husband in Arkansas instead of a glib hipster
caricature.

Ah, but I've already said too
much. Pay no attention to the Decemberists super-fans behind the curtain.
Nevertheless, we have received some apparently genuine, intelligent questions
from folks like yourselves, so I am going to do my part to help save Ask The
A.V. Club by answering one of these
questions in My Year Of Flops.

Yes, that's right, I am
officially embarking on the non-awaited, utterly non- historic Ask The A.V.
Club/My Year Of Flops crossover. Like Paul
Wall, this is bound to have the Internet going nuts. There hasn't been a
crossover this earth-shattering since Jason, Freddy, the Alien creature, the Predator, and Jay Sherman descended
upon Springfield to judge a film festival and visit their good friends The
Simpsons, only to discover that the cartoon family had headed down to New
Orleans to visit their good friends Seymour "Skinny Boy" Skinner and
police-chief-turned-private investigator Clancy Wiggum. At this point, you
might be asking, "Jeez, Nathan. Are you going to shoehorn a clumsy Simpsons reference into everything you write?" Yes.
Yes, I am.

Here's the question I'll be
answering, in my trademark rambling, digressive fashion:

As
pro reviewers yourselves, what is your take on the fact that more than any
other films that become classics, classic comedies get slighted in the reviews
upon their initial release? Since I have been a sentient consumer of review
media, I know for a fact that this happened to The Big Lebowski when it was released, and am also
pretty sure both Austin Powers and Office Space got slagged in print before the proles
rose up against media tyranny and lifted them up to their rightful place in
comedic history. More recently, The A.V.
Club (Keith Phipps) gave Napoleon
Dynamite a middling review, and I'm wondering if he takes that back. I'm
also pretty sure that, back in the day, Caddyshack
was completely dismissed, and probably Animal
House, Stripes, and who knows how
many others. Why do great comedies so often get past reviewers? Is there some
program of increased awareness or a trusty algorithm we can follow to assure
that this travesty Never Happens Again?

And am I putting too
much blame on reviewers? Is it audiences' fault for ignoring them on initial
release too, à la Spinal Tap? I even
remember The Princess Bride falling
off the edge of the earth on its initial release. The best comedies never seem
to smash out of the gate and take over the country for a year in a Titanic or Platoon
sort of way, Pulp Fiction and 9 To 5 excepted.

Phipps doesn't have
to answer this question. In fact, I'd prefer if you gave it to Nathan, if he
has a few moments to spare. But hell, don't let me put constraints on you. I'd
be grateful for any answer.

Joe

No problem, Joe. I'll do you one
better by using your question as a springboard to discuss today's entry in My
Year Of Flops, 1983's little-loved Yellowbeard. First off, I can assure you that Keith does not regret his negative
review of Napoleon Dynamite. I
sat next to him during the press screening, and even though the theater shook
with laughter, Keith and I barely chuckled. Like horror films, comedies shoot
for a clear-cut physiological reaction: If you don't laugh at a comedy or tense
up during a horror film, it doesn't work for you on a primal level. I have
often experienced the weird cognitive dissonance that comes with sitting
stone-faced through a dire comedy while everyone around me exploded with
laughter. I'll never forget watching The Animal with my dad and looking on in abject horror as he guffawed
from start to finish. I'd look over at my dear old pa, red-faced with laughter,
and wonder if I'd been adopted.

More than just about any other genre,
comedy is subjective. You either laugh or you don't. There's precious little
grey area when it comes to chuckles. I think part of the reason the films you
list received mixed-to-negative reviews is because they're largely slobs-vs.-snobs
endeavors. Critics have historically occupied the "snob" end of the spectrum.

Similarly, middlebrow Oscar-bait
generally comes with a critic-friendly air of respectability. A movie like Atonement veritably fucks audiences up the ass with
class, what with its literary pedigree, respected director, challenging
structure, and period setting. A critic could be left cold by Atonement and still find much to praise in its
cinematography, acting, costume design, and structure, but if Stripes doesn't make you laugh, it's hard to see it
as anything other than a failure.

These broad, SNL-style comedies are also overwhelmingly pitched to
teenagers, so it's not surprising that largely middle-aged critics weren't
reduced to giggle-fits. These films also tend to fall into the "sloppy but
funny" category. As the years go on, fans tend to remember the "funny" element
and disregard the sloppy part.

I doubt many non-critics left the
theater following Caddyshack thinking, "That
was funny, but the pacing was off, the plot was thin, the tone was a little
ramshackle, and Michael O'Keefe made for a weak protagonist." But critics are
paid modestly to analyze the craft and structure of comedies, not just whether
they're funny. I like to joke that is a critic's noble obligation to take the
joy out of movies by overanalyzing everything. That's especially true of
comedies.

Yet I think we are seeing a
seismic shift in how comedies are received. Borat, Knocked Up, The
40-Year-Old Virgin, and Superbad are four broad, raunchy, dick-joke-fortified comedies that received
almost universally good reviews. They also had more on their mind than mere
laughter: Borat spiced up its
belly laughs with social satire, while Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old
Virgin, and Superbad all had an emotional component that has become
synonymous with Judd Apatow productions.

Critics are getting younger and
younger. Film criticism is beginning to look an awful lot like Logan's Run or Wild In The Streets, as older critics are put out to pasture to make way for
young kids who work cheap. Kids who cut their teeth blogging about movies are
more inclined to think positively about raunchy comedies than world-weary
fiftysomethings whose comic tastes run more to Jacques Tati than Adam Sandler.

It's hard to overstate the effect
the Internet has had on film criticism. Once upon a time, film critics were a
one-way conduit of opinion and information handing down cinematic verdicts from
on high, whereas now John Q. Olddude can instantly receive 700 online comments
accusing him of being a total douchetard for not "getting," I dunno, Napoleon
Dynamite.

So it isn't surprising that
critics were hostile toward Yellowbeard. Where
a film like Atonement (which I
liked enormously, incidentally) arrives in theaters with a lustrous sheen of
respectability, Yellowbeard scampered
into the local picture show with a giant "kick me" sign affixed to its back.
Christ, even its cast spoke out against it. John Cleese called the screenplay
one of the worst he'd ever read, and insisted that he only appeared in it
because Graham Chapman, his longtime writing partner, begged him to. As a man
who said "Hell yes" to Isn't She Great, The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, and
two Charlie's Angels movies,
Cleese knows a little something about terrible scripts.

To be fair, I suspect that Cleese
no longer reads the scripts he's sent. He just rolls around in a giant bed of
money while his assistant reads him his three lines from Pink Panther 2, which I imagine go a little something like:

Cleese [as Inspector Dreyfuss]: Here, Inspector Clouseau. I trust that you
can carry this armful of priceless Faberge eggs down this rickety, oil-slicked
staircase without too much trouble.

Cleese [as Inspector Dreyfuss]: Oh, just look at the mess you've made!

Cleese [as Inspector Dreyfuss]: Well, I never!

In his shitty memoir, Cheech
And Chong: An Unauthorized Autobiography, Tommy
Chong huffs that he and Cheech were recruited by the makers of Yellowbeard for their "audience appeal" rather than
their comedy. Chong fretted that they were cast in Yellowbeard because they'd bring in the kids, not because the
producers understood the sublime genius of Cheech and Chong bits like "E.T.,
The Extra Testicle."

Yellowbeard all but wrote its own scathing reviews. For starters,
it contains perhaps the greatest concentration of rape-based humor in film
history. If I had to describe its comedy using a single, made-up, incredibly
offensive adjective, that word would be "rapey." Unsurprisingly, not too many
critics risked looking sexist and emotionally stunted by going against the tide
and standing up for the film's use of rape and murder as go-to gags. Yet
despite the abundance of rape, murder, and gratuitous profanity, the film was
inexplicably rated PG. The producers must have bribed the ratings board with
rum and hookers. Unfortunately, viewers couldn't be bribed quite so easily.

[pagebreak]

Nor did it help that, like The
Corsican Brothers before it, Yellowbeard was a marijuana-free Cheech and Chong
movie. Cheech and Chong without pot is like Terry Southern without exclamation
points, David Foster Wallace minus footnotes, me without dick jokes and lame
pop-culture references. Where the Monty Python factor sucked critics in, the
Cheech and Chong element pushed them away.

For comedy geeks, Yellowbeard is a tricky proposition. Its once-in-a-lifetime cast makes
it seemingly irresistible. But its toxic reputation makes it eminently
resistible. Oh, what a cast! Yellowbeard boasts half of Monty Python (co-screenwriter Chapman, Cleese, and Eric
Idle), half the leads from Young Frankenstein (Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman), Peter
Cook, who co-wrote the screenplay, and regrettably, all of Cheech and Chong.
Plus James Mason, Spike Milligan, Kenneth Mars, and Beryl Reid.

The film's tagline in Australia justifiably
boasted, "The greatest comedy cast ever assembled for a movie! Everyone who's
ever been funny!" With so many funny people in one film, how could Yellowbeard go wrong? Yet the giddy abundance of iconic laugh
merchants points to one of the film's primary flaws: With its gaudy smorgasbord
of comic styles, it's incredibly disjointed. Instead of proving complementary,
the antithetical comic stylings of Peter Cook and Tommy Fucking Chong threaten
to cancel each other out, and not just because Cook is daft and funny, while Chong
is agonizingly, punishingly unfunny.

Yellowbeard casts Chapman as the title scalawag, a notorious
outlaw of the high seas who takes the "rape" part of the "rape and pillage"
thing very seriously. Chapman's idea of a perfect date involves rape, then
murder, though not necessarily in that order. Black comedies often revolve around
unsympathetic protagonists. But few boast leads as devoid of honorable
qualities as Yellowbeard. Chapman—who
the opening narration cheerfully points out killed more than 500 men in cold
blood, tearing captains' hearts out and eating them and forcing his victims to
eat their own lips—is not only less sympathetic than most heroes, he's
less sympathetic than most villains as well.

Chapman is imprisoned for tax
evasion, but refuses to reveal the whereabouts of his treasure. He's such a
badass that he scoffs indignantly at weak-willed fellow prisoners "taking the
easy way out" by dying after torture. He boasts to fellow prisoner Marty
Feldman, who may not have been the funniest comic actor of his generation, but
was undoubtedly the funniest-looking, "You won't catch me dying. They'll have
to kill me before I die."

These early sequences are rife
with pitch-black Python-esque absurdity. Here's some choice dialogue between
Chapman and Madeline Kahn, who visits Chapman in prison with big news:

Kahn: Do you remember before you were arrested, we were
having a cuddle?

Chapman: I was raping you, if that's what you mean.

Kahn: Right. Sort of half-cuddle, half-rape.

Kahn underplays the scene
perfectly, acting as if the concept of a "half-cuddle, half-rape" is the most
natural thing in the world. She reveals the existence of their 20-year-old son,
a fellow who unfortunately does not follow in his dad's raping, murdering
footsteps. When Chapman boasts that by the time he was 20, he'd killed more
than 500 men, Kahn deadpans, "Well, he's not quite as extroverted as you."

Alas, Chapman's son (Martin
Hewitt) is one of the many elements of the film that just doesn't work. He's a
stiff, especially compared to the all-star constellation of comic talent
surrounding him. Kahn disparages Hewitt's bookworm tendencies, arguing, with
impeccable logic, "If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that
learning never taught me nothing. And books is the worst. The last time I read
a book, I was raped. Let that be a lesson to you."

With Chapman due to be released
from prison, Secret Service man Eric Idle hits upon an ingenious scheme to
unearth the location of his secret treasure: He connives to have Chapman's sentence
extended so that the pirate will become enraged, immediately break out of
prison, and lead Idle to his treasure.

Sure enough, Chapman breaks out
of prison and joins forces with Hewitt and benign father figure Peter Cook.
Like Jay Sherman's adoptive father in The Critic, Cook is a genteel, upper-class gentleman who is
quietly yet completely insane. On the lam, Chapman goes undercover as
"Professor Anthrax" (his first two suggestions, "Professor Rape" and "Professor
Murder," are understandably nixed) and ends up part of a press gang onboard a
ship run by discipline-obsessed madman James Mason.

I loved the way Mason tries to
get around the prohibition against bringing women on board (they're apparently
bad luck) by trying to pass off a buxom young hooker with a hilariously transparent
fake mustache as his new disciplinary officer, "Mr. Prostitute." Needless to
say, half of Mr. Prostitute's name is more appropriate than the other.

Seafaring shenanigans ensue as
Chapman and his motley gang try to reach the treasure before Idle and Chapman's
lieutenant-turned-rival Peter Boyle. Yellowbeard is animated by a proudly adolescent nihilism that's initially kinky and
transgressive, but ultimately wearying.

Yellowbeard is uncompromising in its darkness. It's a measure of
the film's warped conviction and refreshing dearth of sentimentality that its
only heartwarming moment comes from Hewitt ostensibly murdering Chapman in cold
blood. Then, and only then, does Chapman sees his son as a proper pirate instead
of a book-learning fancy lad.

To return to your question, Joe,
I think part of the reason sloppy, slapdash comedies get little respect from
critics and much love from audiences is because they aspire to do nothing more
than make people laugh, and it's hard to view them charitably if they fail at
their only aspiration. If a visionary like Terry Gilliam had directed the film,
it very well could have been more than the sum of its sometimes genius, often
flat and disappointing parts. But instead, it's directed by journeyman Mel
Damski with zero visual flair or personality.

Plot isn't Yellowbeard's strong point. Nor is structure, pacing,
characterization, direction, or cinematography. It lives from gag to gag, and
while its first two acts ride some genius gags and very funny performances from
Chapman, Kahn, Feldman, Cook, and Cleese (playing a blind man whose keen
hearing makes him a popular informer) all the way to mild amusement city, the
film capsizes in its interminable, punishing final act, which is inexplicably
dominated by the comedy stylings of Tommy Chong as a tyrant who, like pretty
much every other character in the movie, including the heroes, is a murderous
sadist.

In the Cheech and Chong segment's
only joke, Cheech addresses a lithping Chong with a faux-sycophantic litany of
insulting titles ("your assholiness," "your offensiveness," "your
molestation"). At first it's merely unfunny, but it soon devolves into a
grueling comic endurance test.

The first time I saw Yellowbeard, it
benefited from low expectations. I thought, "Hey, this isn't so bad. Some of it
is actually quite good." It didn't hold up very well to a second viewing, when
my thoughts shifted to "Hey, this isn't so good. Much of it is actually quite
bad." Yet there's much about it I liked, from its pitch-black humor and
Pythonian love of wordplay and doublespeak to the following lines, which can
only benefit from being taken out of context and rendered in harsh, unforgiving
print instead of coming out of the mouths of beloved comic geniuses:

"I'm sure I killed the last one I
raped. It couldn't have been you."

"The afterplay was a bit on the
rough side, but not fatal, dear."

"Sounded as though there was a
bit of a squabble."

"Squabble? They're all dead."

"Must have been more of a tiff,
then."

"I can't kill him. He brought me
up just like a father."

"You mean he beat and kicked you
and smashed you in the teeth?"

"I don't ask for much. I'd just
like to see a few of my little dreams come true. I always wanted to buy Denmark
and be richer than the Queen."

In the ultimate indignity, Yellowbeard has gone down in history as a second-rate
Cheech and Chong movie instead of a second-rate Monty Python vehicle. In spite
of Chong's comedy-and-movie-killing term, that just seems wrong. Of course, Yellowbeard's DVD box doesn't exactly help the situation:

So, Joe, there are lots of
different reasons why sloppy, slapdash comedies get hated on by critics.
Though, in the case of Yellowbeard, the
film's critical and commercial failure can at least partially be attributed to
the sad fact that, in spite of some great moments and terrific performances, it
kind of sucks.

For the second and final entry in
Pirate Month©, I plan to write primarily about Cutthroat Island but see and touch upon Ice Pirates, Roman Polanski's Pirates!, and The Pirate Movie. Why do just a little bit of work when you can do a
whole lot?

As your humble public servant,
what other theme months would you like me to pursue? Disco Month? John Travolta
Month? Nathan Finally Learns Some Fucking Brevity And Stops Wasting Everyone's
Time Month? I am, as always, open to your suggestions. Oh, and don't forget to
send your obsessive pop-culturey questions to Ask The A.V. Club. I promise
never to transform them into the basis for a horribly bloated, unedifying My
Year Of Flops installment ever again.

Failure, Fiasco or Secret
Success: Fiasco