Fresh Horses

Only a movie so ridiculously terrible as Fresh Horses could inspire a blog of this nature: Hans Goober (the boy reviewer) and McLady (the girl reviewer) will subject themselves to the worst that the cinematic world has to offer, so that their faithful readership does not have to. We, the Gluttons for Punishment, set out on this noble enterprise to spare your eyes, ears--indeed, your very souls--from the torture that movies like this inflict. And I (Ms. McLady) truly feel that, no matter how many movies of this type we review, "Fresh Horses" will always hold a special, dark place in our hearts.

Hans:
First of all a synopsis of the (ahem) film -- Fresh Horses centers around Matt Larkin (Andrew MCarthy), a wealthy, newly-engaged college kid who's got the world by the balls and Jewel nolastname (Molly Ringwald) the bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks who drinks bourbon at 10 AM, talks openly about her step-father's abuse, and admits she "doesn't mind" when guys spit on her -- all in the first scene! Well, you know where this one goes. Larkin meets Jewel, leaves his fiancé, and the two move into an abandoned railway shack together and live happily ever after...except for the fact that she is crazy, married, and may or may not be 16 years old. Details, details.

So with that out of the way, here are the things I learned from Fresh Horses.

1.) Andrew McCarthy Does Not Know How to Knock: We all know young Mr. McCarthy from such cinematic wonders as Teen Angst 1, Teen Angst Too, and Teen Angst 3: The Reckoning...with Misgivings. In these movies, Andy has always played the very polite, very affable, very bland All-American kid. Not in Fresh Horses though, no sir. No he does much to change (read: contaminate) his image in this film by jamming Molly Ringwall against buttress, sleeping in a hobo hut, and generally walking into wherever the fuck he pleases. A random house in the country? A sauntering seems appropriate. Ben Stiller trying to get busy with some chick? I believe I'll breeze in and grab a seat. Four o'clock in the morning and you don't know who I am? Enter me, Andrew Fuckin' McCarthy -- there, now we can be friends.
All told, McCarthy b-and-e's his way into no less than 10 different places throughout the course of the movie, including, at the movie's end, Viggo Mortensen's place where he proceeds to further express his devil-may-care attitude by laying waste to one of Viggo's prized carved soap-animals. "This elephant looks like a horse, duechebag...[beheads soap-animal...How you like me know, Morty? Thought I was just some fresh-faced preppy, didn't you? Think again, bitch -- I've turned gangsta. Come on, Molly, let's go break into the governor's mansion and watch Spader out-act me in Pretty in Pink."

2.) The Sun Never Shines in Chicago: According to David Nusair of "Reel Film Reviews" part of what makes Fresh Horses so difficult to watch is that "so much time is wasted just on shots of Mcarthy wandering around Chicago looking forlorn, that eventually you just wish he'd do something already." I agree with Nusair's assessment, although it seems difficult to live in Chicago and not be forlorn since apparently Chicago is the dampest, clammiest, most depressing city on the fucking planet. Seattle can suck a dick, because the rain never, ever stops in Chicago. At one point, McCarthy and Stiller have a heart-to-heart outside, in the rain (of course) without either even wearing a rain jacket or having an umbrella. Apparently, growing up in Chicago causes you to evolve a water-tight shield that you maintain around your person at all times. I seem to remember watching day-games played at Wrigley Field with brilliant sunshine shimmering down upon the Cubbies, but I guess that was just the peyote talking. Remind me never to go to Chicago: I don't think I would make it a week without blowing my brains out.

3.) Molly Ringwald Has Never Been South of the Mason-Dixon: On many levels, one has to truly love Molly Ringwald: she has the emotional range of a coma patient and she looks like a cross between the two Tiffanies -- Tiffany the singer and Tiffany the Bride of Chucky -- but I'll be damned if she wasn't the female star of every teen comedy between the years of 1984 and 1989. (McLady would like to interject here that her appetite for Molly Ringwald movies is nearly insatiable, and it is this devotion that renders her incapable of agreement here. Except about the accent thing--that was ridiculous. Okay, continue.) Her status as teen queen was imminently doomed though when, in the same year that The Breakfast Club came out, St. Elmo's Fire was also released causing adolescent boys the world over to look at Demi Moore and say, "Ohhhhhhhhh...so that's what hotness looks like." By 1990, Ringwald would be the night-shift manager at The Great Steak and Potato Co. in Paris, Texas, working alongside Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. In 1988 though, the year of "Money for Nothing," Bush v. Dole, and Fresh Horses, Moll was still riding high. Her agent had approached her a year earlier with a daring new script, one that would challenge her as a thespian, offer a breakaway from the cookie-cutter roles she was known for, and, most significantly, would require the use of a Southern accent. I imagine the conversation between her and director David Anspaugh on the first day of shooting went something like this:

Anspaugh: Can you do a Southern accent?

Ringwald: Of course. Be bop a doop, y'all. I dunno nutin bout nutin. Hee-haw, poot poot poot.

Anspaugh: Perfect.

And thus the magic began. But where should the writer's place the hometown of such a country-fried coquette? Such wonderful towns emerge as immediate contenders: Whiskeydick, Arkansas; Devilcrotch, Georgia; Rape, North Carolina. So where did the writer's choose? Of course, that last bastion of the confederacy, Florida. Yes, Florida, land of Cuban refugees and geriatric Jews. Nothing says white-trash redneck like Florida. That is, of course, if by white-trash you mean Buick-wielding, and by redneck you mean a 150-year-old New Yorker in Robert Evans glasses. But certainly Molly Ringwald -- that treasure of theatrical talent, that apotheosis of affected ability -- could make us a believer! Only problem is that her Southern accent sounds like a retarded Scarlett O'Hara: "I tayell you wuat, I ain't ne'er gone be hungry no more...[guffaw...hic!]." I literally left this movie longing for James van der Beek's backwater gargle in Varsity Blues: "I don't want yer liiiiiiiiiffffeeee." I believe it, Jimmy! Please, show me the way to go home. Oh, and Molly Ringwald wants a ride. She's been drinking Everclear and Gatorade with Paul Gleason down at the loading dock.

Here's endeth the lesson.