Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

Let’s jump right in…

The girl’s walkabout almost instantaneously shows us why this was a bad idea as she is immediately accosted by not one but TWO evil Joe Piscopos. Is no one safe from this multiplicitous terror!?!

Thus we come to lesson two. Don’t talk to strangers. But what constitutes a stranger per sé? According to this movie a stranger is someone who is very obviously evil. Comically evil. They are inexplicably dirty all over, they dress like a 1950’s greaser, and they drive a pristine classic car that produces a myriad of malfunctioning mechanical noises added in post-production. So long as your kid looks for these tell-tale signs, they should be able to avoid getting inadvertently coerced into a ransom plot where they have to be rescued by their pet horses.

When done well, the “bumbling antagonists” trope, so often featured in films in this vein, can be a hilarious part of the film. Harry and Marv in Home Alone were great! They were smart and even a bit relatable and not ridiculously stupid. It’s like Krusty the Clown says “The pie gag is only funny when the sap’s got dignity!” Also, they weren’t evil.

Yes, Pesci and Stern were playing burglars as Harry and Marv in Home Alone. They were up-to-no-good ne’er-do-wells. But they weren’t kidnapping children and never meant anyone bodily harm until Harry was so pissed with Kevin’s childish but deadly machinations, his only course of action was to bite his little fingers off. We’ve all been there at some point with our own children. Like I said, these guys are relatable.

But Zike and Spider, both played by Joe Piscopo, were not just no-good do-badders down on their luck and making poor career choices. This dastardly duo purposefully stomped on flowers and proclaimed how much they hated beautiful vistas. They’re like a couple of players from the evil hockey team opposite the Mighty Ducks if they’d grown up and were still being directed by their evil coach… also, one of them had developed a horrendous gastrointestinal problem. All this served as a means to instill them as the bad guys because the fact they were trying to lure school kids into their vehicle wasn’t enough to impart that knowledge. But these aspects also served as the comic relief which was difficult to reconcile considering THEY WERE TRYING TO LURE SCHOOL KIDS INTO THEIR CAR!!!

I don’t mean to downplay the severity of their heinous act but at least their end game was for financial gain and nothing more monstrous. Still, the fact they were using children in their ransom scheme kind of tainted the criminals’ humorous behavior. Thank God the children were eventually saved by their talking horses.

Oh, did I fail to mention that? Yes, this film features talking animals because it was the 90’s. Unfortunately they didn’t talk to humans which would have made this film 0.01% more interesting. Even more unfortunate is the fact that nothing the horses said to each other was remotely interesting either. In fact, everytime they started talking to each other I had forgotten it was one of those kinds of movies and was completely shocked whenever it happened.

Spoiler alert here as if it mattered to anyone.

So the talking horses intervene, one of the Joe Piscopoes shoots a horse and claims it was an accident thus proving he’s not THAT evil. The horse lives after a harrowing scene at an operating theater because that’s where they perform horse surgeries. The Piscopoes are arrested and the girl’s mother gets to live on blissfully free from the benefits of professional counseling. The end.

Ironically, the real life Joe Piscopo did get away with a big bag of money for doing this movie. I wonder if he held the dollar-sign-emblazoned bags aloft whilst laughing maniacally and driving his classic car into the sun… I mean, into the sunset. 

Wait, he could have sold that car for a chunk of change. He might have been sad to part with it but that would’ve been better than kidnapping! I guess throw it onto the pile of reasons why we know this guy was gratuitously evil.

Was this film enjoyably bad? No, not really. There’s better “talking animal/home alone” knockoffs that ARE enjoyably bad. Seeing Joe play both parts was amusing albeit I had to appreciate his performance in retrospect because frankly I didn’t realize they were both him until I later researched the film. Is this a testament to Mr. Piscopo’s acting talent? Maybe HE should have been in Face/Off opposite John Travolta instead of that other guy… you know who I mean… Jimmy Fallon.