My Giant
- Alex
We're kicking off "Bad Movie Week" here at SP.com with a review of the 1998 phenomenon entitled "My Giant". It stars Billy Crystal and
Gheorghe Muresan. You've all heard of Billy Crystal. If you haven't, you're probably in the wrong place right now. You may not know Gheorghe
by sight, but I'll bet you've seen him somewhere. Perhaps one of his Snickers commericals... they're fantastic. One starts out with him
saying "Do you want to smell like me?", the other ends with him yelling "Don't look at me!" to a group of clearly terrorized 4 year olds.
Very high comedy. Or perhaps you know him through his short NBA career, or perhaps you're enough of a Craig Kilborn freak to know that he's a
Gheorghe Muresan freak from back in his ESPN days. In any case, unless you've got a story like mine, you probably don't know Gheorghe due to
"My Giant".
My story (and I'm sticking to this) is that I saw this movie in the theaters only because it was 95 degrees out and the apartment
we were living in had no air conditioning. So Jake and I decided to go see this for a buck in the cheap theater... and it somehow also ended
up being my first date with Skidder. Yes, I took a date out with Jake. Amazingly enough, she even went out with me again after that. Hah.
The best thing I can say about this movie is that it brings back memories of one of the funniest in-theater moments I've had. Unfortunately, it
happened during the pre-film slides. They flashed one up for one of the "Honey, I shrunk the kids" sequels, and Jake just went off. I didn't realize
anyone could hate Rick Moranis that much. Unfortunately for Jake, he ended the marvelous diatribe with "I mean, who the %#%@ would want to father
his children, anyway?!" Now, if you've met Jake, you know he's loud. At this point, the whole theater (which is oddly full) is looking at us, and
I manage to undertone before laughing my ass off... "Well... he would." At which point Jake proceeds to laugh even louder, and the whole
theater hates us. Does this tell you how memorable the movie itself is?
So... flash forward to two days ago. I'm in Best Buy, and I see this DVD on clearance for $4. I think, erroneously, that it's a good deal and the
movie was pretty decent. Bzzzzt! Within moments of starting the movie, I remember how good it's not. How it's basically impossible to understand
more than every third sentence from Gheorghe. How it's not a very good story. BUT... even with all that, it's worth a few giggles. It'd make a
great MST3K episode... and to be honest, I do recall having a good time mocking it in the theater w/ Jake and Skid. But it's not a good movie of
its own accord. We did have a rather awesome poster from this movie up in our kitchen for the longest time. I don't know what happened to it.
Quickly, then, a plot summary. Crystal is a Hollywood agent who finds Muresan in Romania and tries to use him to revive his flagging career.
Muresan just wants to go to America to find a girl he kissed as a child. Hijinks ensue, and Crystal ends up using his ex-wife to stand in
for Muresan's old flame to spare his feelings before reuniting him with his parents in a dramatic finale. Seriously folks, I tried to pay attention enough to write something better
than this... I just couldn't do it. Don't see this movie unless you're forced to.
I'd give it a Trent rating... but it's not fair to Trent. Unless he makes me go see that dragon movie... then all bets are off. :)
In other news...
A couple weeks back, Matty and I were watching a Cubs game out of boredom, when the announcers mentioned that coming up soon was something called
"Moises Alou Celebriduck Day". Our response to this was shocked calm wonderment.
"Cel-eb-ri-...duck?!"
We both had theories... but as it turns out none were as good as the real thing. So for today, I'll leave you with two pictures. One (and this
is priceless) is of Gilligan holding an Allen Iverson Celebriduck. The second is of the Babe Ruth Celebriduck, so you can get a better idea of what
exactly they are.
Amazing, isn't it? And I thought beanie babies were bad... I'll be muttering about celebriducks for weeks... Have a nice night folks.
7-03-2002
