Mom and Dad Save the World

***NOTE: I will no be discussing Jeffrey Jones' crimes. Obviously, I condemn what he did, but it has no bearing on my feelings about this movie, and therefore no place in this review.*** There's a difference between funny and silly. Funny, as an adjective, is when something is written or performed with the intent of making someone laugh or be otherwise amused. Silly, however, is an attitude. It can make someone laugh as a by-product, but it is not the joke or the punchline in and of itself. Monty Python's Whizzo Butter sketch, which parodies the taste-test style of commercials by seeing if housewives can tell the difference between Whizzo Butter and a dead crab, is a great example of silly; it is whimsical, light-hearted, and humorous without having a direct line on being funny. There is no punchline to Whizzo Butter; there is the overall ridiculousness of the comparison, and the disproportionate response from one of the housewives ("try that around here, and we'll slit your face!"), but the silliness is little more than a mood. It can contribute to getting a laugh, but it is more the mechanism by which the form of humor is delivered than the humor itself. Mom and Dad Save the World is silly. Exceedingly silly. It was written by the guys behind Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (and once you know it, you can tell), a marvelously silly movie. You don't have Lollipop Guild-height soldiers with bulldogs heads, and ladies-in-waiting that are also goldfish, without being intentionally, irrepressibly silly. You don't have Jon Lovitz hamming it up so much he's an honorary Easter dinner, as the evil warlord of a planet of idiots, without diving head-first into the deepest pool of silly you can find. You don't have Jeffrey Jones, Ed Rooney himself of all people, as the reluctant hero who overthrows Lovitz and saves two plants and his wife, unless the intent is that silly is the load-bearing sentiment of the movie. Mom and Dad Save the World is, unquestionably, silly. When Jones and Teri Garr's characters openly question the lack of intelligence of the people on the planet where they are abducted to, you can feel the movie itself winking at you. There isn't a moment in M&DStW where the movie doesn't know what it is. Like it's cinematic cousin, Bill & Ted, it asks you to come along for the ride and just set aside any qualms you have about how dumb it might be. Its excess of silliness is a feature, not a bug, and if you're not down with it, you're not going to appreciate it. But silliness can only get you so far, and that's where M&DStW struggles in comparison to something like Bill & Ted. For as dumb as Bill & Ted are -- and make no mistake, as much as I love those movies dearly, they are rock stupid -- there are jokes. It is a funny movie. M&DStW doesn't really have jokes. It has Lovitz chewing through scenery like Pac-Man eating dots. It has Jones grumbling and grousing in that way Jones did best. It has silly situations and silly ideas and silly moments ... but it never has JOKES. The situations it presents are just mildly amusing, worth a smirk on occasion, but little else. There's only so many times I can see Jones or Garr roll their eyes at the subterranean IQ's of their enemies, or Lovitz and his minions be bewilderingly daft, before I wonder when the movie will stop belaboring the point and actually do something else, and it never does. It's such a waste of what is clearly an imaginative world. Even if the sets look a bit cheap, and the costumes are corny, it's all done lovingly and with a reverential eye to the campy sci-fi movies of the 50's and 60's. I also wonder if Jones' character hinders the movie's overall impact. His gruff, disgruntled character Dick does have an arc, as he learned to stand up for himself more, actually live life, and appreciate his wife ... but he spends a fair bit of the movie being miserable and somewhat unlikable. Again, look at Bill & Ted. They are thick as a brick at the beginning, but they grow over the course of the movie; they learn, and they find they like learning. Their evolution as people is far from complete -- they are still teenagers, after all -- but there's growth. More importantly, though, is that they are sympathetic from the first moment; they're good-natured young men with some unusual and challenging homes, and they while they're never cruel or unkind along the way. Dick, by contrast, starts off selfish, whiny, complacent, and unappreciative. He's hard to get behind, which does the movie itself a disservice. I wonder if this would've been any better if the roles had been reversed. We'll never know, but I think it would've stood a slightly better chance. I've seen the reviews on M&DStW, and I know they are legendarily bad. At the time of writing this, I believe it's RT score is 11%. That is far, far, far lower than it should be. This is not that bad of a movie. It's not even a bad movie. It's just a movie that settles for letting its silly atmosphere alone can carry the comedic weight, instead of actually making a funny movie. But I think, for some people, that'll be enough. I do think it's a movie better than its reputation, and suggest that, if you're feeling silly, to give it a shot.