Movie
Summary: Large, rectangular
Gary, lovely assistant Georgia, and slightly less lovely
assistant Mike audition dancers for a trip to Singapore.
This takes up approximately the first two-thirds of the
movie, and culminates in the labored explanation of a joke:
when Gary likes a dancer, he crosses his legs; when he
doesn't, he uncrosses them. That's how Georgia knows his
answers, without Gary even saying anything, and that's why
Mike was confused. (Did I say joke?) Prologue: Crow has a syndicated newspapers column, inspired by Larry King's pointless ramblings in USA Today: "I give Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a B+!" Segment One: The Castle is gone -- actually, it's just moved, to a suburban setting somewhere: Pearl is tired of shelling out fifty bucks a year for Bobo's license. Brain Guy's crabby about all the work, but Bobo likes his huge new tag. He barks at the neighbor's dogs, though. Segment Two: Mike gets stuck in a web, like the professor in a movie; Crow and Servo made it and are delighted with the big bug they catch for dinner. A huge spider threatens Mike, though. Do the 'bots care? No. Sometimes you have to wonder about those guys. Segment Three: Mike, his feet on the desk like Gary, auditions all in the castle, who (of course) buy into it immediately. Bobo tries soft shoe; Brain Guy dons a wig and imitates a steamy scene from Flash Dance; Pearl tries a ballet and falls over. Segment Four: Crow: "So Mike, if you're a woman and you're in a plane crash, you instantly become languid, helpless, sex- starved, and you murmur a lot?" They test the premise -- turns out you do. Segment Five: Mike becomes an unconvincing spider; all share a way-too-hearty laugh when it turns out he's planning to make a braunschweiger melt, just like the 'bots. Pearl and company are moving the castle back, and are at a truck stop, where Bobo discovers a machine purveying individually wrapped balloons. Stinger: The plane plummeting, the dancers screaming. Reflections: We
learned, I forget just how, that this movie was a
cooperative effort between Germany (West Germany, I assume)
and Yugoslavia in the early 1960s. Believe me, I tried like
the dickens to provide a joke about the Marshall Plan --
that this was how our U.S. tax money was being used by the
good people of Europe, as they attempted to rebuild their
economies, and such. To all you Marshall Plan fans out
there, I'm sorry.
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