Bovie Movie

Forget everything you know about Little Red Riding Hood; the classic fairy tale gets a new look and a new style in this computer-animated comedy for the whole family. Grizzly (voice of Xzibit) and Stork (voice of Anthony Anderson) are a pair of critter cops who have been called the homey bungalow of Granny (voice of Glenn Close) to investigate a disturbance of the peace. It seems there was an altercation involving Granny, her granddaughter Little Red Riding Hood (voice of Anne Hathaway), a Big Bad Wolf (voice of Patrick Warburton), and a Woodsman (voice of Jim Belushi). However, as the detectives interview the participants and get each individual’s perspective, they learn that Granny isn’t so helpless, Red may have been doing more than just visiting relatives, the Wolf isn’t the predator he’s been cracked up to be, and the Woodman doesn’t have much of an intellectual advantage over the trees he chops down. Hoodwinked also features the voice talents of Andy Dick, David Ogden Stiers, and Chazz Palminteri.

The made-for-cable musical satire Reefer Madness is based on the award-winning play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the notorious — and deliciously awful — 1936 anti-marijuana film originally titled Tell Your Children. A smarmy lecturer (Alan Cumming in the first of his three roles in the film) arrives in a typical small town of the late ’30s to warn the populace of the dangers of the “evil weed,” bringing along a lurid propaganda film to dramatize his message. In broad, unsubtle, and hilarious strokes, the movie-within-a-movie shows how even a squeaky-clean pair of highschoolers named Mary Lane (Kristen Bell) and Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell) can become hopeless dope addicts by succumbing to the lure of marijuana. Reefer Madness is not only a savage skewering of the original black-and-white movie (some of the musical’s campiest lines are taken directly from the earlier script!), but also a devastating attack on what playwrights Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney consider to be the real reason that the 1936 movie was made: to frighten the public out of their wits in order to keep them under the thumb of an oppressive government. Thus, the musical manages to take a number of not-so-veiled swipes at xenophobia, racism, McCarthyism, the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security policy, and even the recent FCC clampdown on “offensive” TV fare (one of the film’s highlights is a garish nightclub number featuring Jesus Christ). The ebulliently staged songs include “The Stuff,” “Down at the Ol’ Five and Dime,” “Lonely Pew,” “Listen to Jesus Jimmy,” “Mary Jane/Mary Lane,” “The Brownie Song,” “Tell ‘Em the Truth,” and the title number. Officially titled Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, this film first aired April 16, 2005, on the Showtime cable service.

This spoof of the Airport series of disaster movies relies on ridiculous sight gags, groan-inducing dialogue, and deadpan acting — a comedy style that would be imitated for the next 20 years. Airplane! pulls out all the clich?s as alcoholic pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays), who’s developed a fear of flying due to wartime trauma, boards a jumbo jet in an attempt to woo back his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Hagerty). Food poisoning decimates the passengers and crew, leaving it up to Striker to land the plane, with the help of a glue-sniffing air traffic controller (Lloyd Bridges) and Striker’s vengeful former captain (Robert Stack), who must both talk him down. Along the way, we meet a clutch of stock disaster movie passengers like the guitar-strumming nun, a sick little girl, a frightened old lady, and two African-American travelers whose “jive” has to be subtitled. Leslie Nielsen portrays the plane’s doctor, launching a new phase of the actor’s career that carried him through the next two decades in several similarly comedic roles. The trio of directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker responsible for the film would eventually go on to solo careers, but not before making Top Secret! and Ruthless People.

Director John Landis helmed this Cold War farce starring Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase as Austin Millbarge and Emmett Fitz-Hume — two loser misfits who dwell in the lower ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency. Convinced despite much evidence to the contrary that they’re prime secret agent material, both men keep taking service exams in an effort to win promotion. Caught cheating on their latest round of tests, Austin and Emmett expect to be fired but are instead made full field agents and ushered into intense training. Little do they know that it’s all a ruse and that they’re about to be dumped in Pakistan to throw Russian spies off the scent of two real agents with an important clandestine assignment. A spoof of the “road” pictures popularized by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, the film features a cameo by the latter as his golf-playing self.

Scary Movie screenwriters Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer join forces to parody the “biggest” movies ever to hit the silver screen in this comedy that gives such popular box-office hits as Pirates of the Caribbean and Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe the same treatment that Scary Movie gave to the slasher subgenre. A virtual smorgasbord of spoof, Epic Movie tells the tale of four fully grown orphans: one the victim of snakes that attacked her plane, another raised by a kindly Louvre curator, the third a Mexican “libre” wrestling refuge, and the last an average mutant from an “X”-community. When the curious quartet visits a sprawling chocolate factory, they stumble across a magical wardrobe which transports them to the enchanted land of Gnarnia. It seems that the wondrous fantasy land has recently fallen under the spell of the evil White Bitch (Jennifer Coolidge), and in order to bring peace back to Gnarnia these four bumbling mortals will have to join forces with a charismatic pirate, a painfully sincere group of aspiring wizards, and one particularly libidinous lion.

A space bum helps rescue a princess from an evil overlord with the help of a benevolent elder in this Star Wars send-up written and directed by Mel Brooks. Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his half-man, half-dog co-pilot, Barf the Mawg (John Candy), are content to scour the galaxy living the easy life. But they reluctantly come to the rescue when Druish Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) is threatened by the evil Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis), who wants to steal all of the air from her planet, Druidia. Trapped on a harsh desert world with Vespa and her robot chaperone, Dot Matrix (voice of Joan Rivers), Lone Starr and Barf are helpless to prevent Helmet from kidnapping the girl. But assistance arrives in the form of Yogurt (Brooks), a wizard who turns Lone Starr on to a mysterious power known as The Schwartz. Catching up with Helmet just as he’s transforming his spaceship into a giant vacuum cleaner in orbit around Druidia, the reluctant heroes stage a dramatic showdown. Although it borrows most of its plot from the Star Wars series, Spaceballs also pokes fun at Star Trek, Snow White, and Planet of the Apes — as well as the entire videocassette and movie marketing industries. The large supporting cast includes Dick Van Patten, Jim J. Bullock, and the voice of Dom DeLuise. John Hurt makes a cameo in a parody of the exploding chest scene he played in Alien.

A teen learns that all the gadgets in the world can’t help him overcome his awkwardness around the opposite sex in this big-budget family entertainment. In Agent Cody Banks, Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz plays a young man plucked from suburban obscurity to be trained as a CIA super-agent. His mission? Get friendly with his classmate Natalie (played by another teen TV star, Lizzie McGuire’s Hilary Duff) so that he can uncover her father’s diabolical scheme to create indestructible robots. To compound his problems, Cody also has to deal with the same stresses as any adolescent: nagging parents, insufferable classwork, and a fragile sense of self-esteem. Agent Cody Banks was produced by MGM, not coincidentally the studio responsible for another popular spy franchise, the venerable James Bond series.

Oceanic wise guys meet up with a small fish who has a big attitude in this computer-animated comedy. Don Lino (voice of Robert De Niro) is the patriarch of a family of sharks who lord over a bustling aquatic community based along a massive underwater reef. Don Lino has two sons, Frankie (voice of Michael Imperioli) and Lenny (voice of Jack Black); Frankie is a carnivorous tough guy who takes after his father, but Lenny is, at heart, a kind soul who has earned the ire of his dad by becoming a vegetarian. One of Don Lino’s cronies is Sykes (voice of Martin Scorsese), who runs a “whale wash” where Oscar (voice of Will Smith) scrubs aquatic mammals for a living. Oscar is a small but ambitious fish who dreams of making something of himself, and when a dropped anchor accidentally kills Frankie, Oscar is suddenly (if mistakenly) celebrated as “the shark killer.” Oscar’s overnight fame attracts the attentions of Lola (voice of Angelina Jolie), a slinky dragon fish who woos Oscar away from his steady date, Angie (voice of Ren?e Zellweger); however, Oscar strikes up a friendship with Lenny and has to decide what to do when Don Lino and Sykes decides it’s time to “take care” of the “different” shark. Also popping up in Shark Tale’s all-star voice cast are Peter Falk, Vincent Pastore, Ziggy Marley, and Katie Couric.

Dentist Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) is a respectable man. He has a daughter who is about to marry the son of a very suspicious character, Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk). They are practically relatives already, the wedding is so near. Certainly, Sheldon already despises Vince as if he were already a well-known relative. Nontheless, Vince calls on Sheldon and convinces him to go with him on a series of wild and hilarious adventures, claiming all the while that he is a CIA agent, and that what he is doing is in the national interest. Sheldon follows Vince to a South American country ruled by a very odd man, General Garcia (Richard Libertini), who talks to his hand (which talks back). It seems that the dictator is involved in a scheme to counterfeit and undermine U.S. currency.

Not to be confused with the 1939 cinematic classic The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland, this 1991 adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s beloved story is an animated short directed by Jim Simon, one of the people behind the Care Bears and Smurfs animated series. The film follows the adventures of Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion as they journey through the magical land of Oz.