Comicon odds and ends

HAPPY FEET looks like the worst fucking movie of the year. The only hope for it is that it’s directed by George Miller, who did MAD MAX and BABE, the latter of which I also thought looked fucking horrible in the trailers but turned out to be good.

This movie is a CG cartoon with almost photo-realistic penguins. Elijah Wood voices a boy penguin who can’t sing but can tap dance like a madman (motion-capture of tap-dancer Savion Glover, whom you may remember as the star of BAMBOOZLED). Brittany Murphy voices the girl penguin who’s the greatest singer ever. So far, so predictable. So why am I afraid?

A couple of reasons. First, it rehashes pop songs like Queen’s “Somebody to Love” as sung by the penguins. This is a technique that can occasionally work if done right (MOULIN ROUGE) but most often comes off as lazy (the SHREK movies).

But there’s an even bigger problem, and it goes by the name of Robin Williams. Look, the man has skills as an actor, but he also has the annoying tendency to think that everything which comes out of his mouth will automatically be hilarious if he just says it fast enough with a “funny” accent. He plays at least two characters in the clips I saw. One sounds like Napoleon Dynamite’s Pedro on Speed, and the other sounds like he’s trying to do a Big Dumb Black Guy voice.

(Don’t get pissy on me about how all black people don’t talk the same way. I know that. I’m talking about the kind of voice you might hear coming out of a fat-lipped cannibal chief in an old black and white Betty Boop cartoon, as approximated by Robin Williams)

Granted, there’s an audience for that. Some people thought ROBOTS was a good movie (What’’s the point of getting Ewan McGregor to do a VOICE-OVER if you’re gonna force him to fake an accent he has no mastery of? “Rrrrraaaadney Capperbaddam!”).

But for those of us who aren’t into Robin Williams doing dubiously “funny” racial shtick, staying away seems like a plan.

THE TRIPPER may confirm every fear you’ve ever had about David Arquette. I’d tell you about the footage I saw, except David Arquette actually lost the footage en route to the Comicon panel. He’s the director. And yes, in person, he seems friendly, but also like he just might be an idiot.

The premise of the movie, though, is genius. A killer in a Ronald Reagan mask stalks and slashes a bunch of hippies on their way to a concert. Jason Mewes is one of the stars.

One of the actors on the panel was introduced as the actor who plays the killer, though as it happens the identity of the killer in the movie is supposed to be a surprise (they pulled the same thing on VALENTINE a few years back). Arquette asked everybody in the room — “because we’re all friends here, right?” — not to go typing on the Internet, giving it away (since I haven’t mentioned the actor’s name, I think I’m still good; it isn’t Jason Mewes).

As consolation for not having any footage, Arquette offered free hugs and autographs, which most people took him up on. He might have been drunk.