FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974)

Making eye contact with a naked man in a bubble bath, touching random men as they urinate in a bowling alley restroom, playing grab ass with your buddy in a children’s playground. These are all fun weekend activities, but it’s also a small snippet of what police detectives James Caan and Alan Arkin are up to when they are assigned to protect a high-ranking criminal from unknown assassins. You’d think that squirreling the target away in a secluded location would be a wiser course of action, but no, these two psychopaths go on a no holds barred rampage all across San Francisco like they’re in the fucking Purge!

Cold-blooded murder, sexual assault, driving a car at high speed through a marching band in a parade, assaulting people left and right, driving their car into an occupied apartment, multiple counts of theft, dozens of vehicles damaged or destroyed, looking at pornographic magazines around children, firing guns in public, jumping a moving train with a car, assaulting a man in order to steal his motorcycle, having a car illegally towed, no seat belts ever, assaulting a drunk guy with a metal pipe, murdering a guy in a dentist office, randomly accusing your wife of cheating instead of simply having a conversation with her…I could brush all of this bad behavior aside in the name of (poorly written and dated) comedy, but the racial and gay slurs were just too goddamn much. Life is short, and I don’t have time to waste on that weak-minded bullshit.

Homophobic and racist behavior aside, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN isn’t funny, entertaining or worth watching. Yet somehow it ended up being one of the bigger box office hits of 1974, so what the fuck do I know. I’m glad I watched it, just for the learning experience, but I’ll never watch this stinker again. Skip it.

ALIEN NATION (1988)

Buddy cop movies were all the rage in the 1980’s.  Back in 1988, the police couldn’t even throw an innocent minority (then plant drugs on them and falsely accuse them of a crime) without hitting an aspiring screenwriter trying to come up with a fresh take on the already over-saturated genre. At the same time, alien films are always popular, so, it’s not surprising that somebody decided to mash-up the two genres. Unfortunately, that endlessly promising mash-up idea ended up being the tremendously average ALIEN NATION.

The story, two LAPD homicide detectives (one alien, one human) conducting a murder investigation, has potential to be interesting, but it's not.  Not even close.  First off, the murder itself isn't very intriguing: the victim was shot to death during a botched convenience store robbery.  Yawn.  Secondly, there's very little backstory about the aliens or their technology: they were originally slave laborers on their home planet, they escaped and landed on Earth three years ago.  So, has mankind used the technology found on that spaceship to advance our own technology in the last three years?  Damn sure doesn't look like it.  Is the home planet still there?  Is there anybody hunting these migrants?  Thirdly, the aliens are boring!  They literally look just like humans except with a spotty bald head.  They act like humans, dress like humans, do all kinds of normal human stuff.  I mean the only real differences are they like different foods, their organs are arranged differently and they hate salt water because it is like an acid and will melt them.  Which brings us to the next subject...the big reveal is if the aliens take this certain alien drug it will give them above average strength to the point they have to be shot like 15 times to die.  Okay whatever, but they are still susceptible to salt water, so why not just fight the roided out aliens with salt water guns in addition to high-powered automatic rifles?  It's not like the drug turns them bulletproof or something!  I don't know, maybe I'm just overthinking the entire thing because I was so goddamn bored.

Average acting, unimaginative story, underutilized Los Angeles setting, boring action scenes, lame chase scene, hammy dialogue, zero nudity, zero blood, zero gore, heavy-handed message that goes nowhere, disappointing ending.  As far as eunuchly amazeballs buddy cop / immigration allegory films go, ALIEN NATION is a solid 5/10.  It's just entertaining enough to keep you watching the entire film and just disappointing enough that once the movie is over, you wish you had taken a power nap instead.  Skip it.

If you need me, I'll be in my room writing a fan fiction story about Dirty Harry being teamed up with Willie from V and Willie doing Freddy Krueger cosplay on the weekends.

Part 2 - Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994)
Part 3 - Alien Nation: Body and Soul (1995)
Part 4 - Alien Nation: Millennium (1996)
Part 5 - Alien Nation: The Enemy Within (1996)
Part 6 - Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy (1997)