Absolutely Anything (2015)

I can forgive a lot of things when it comes to movies.  Using an idea that someone else has used isn’t the worst sin you can commit.  When you get down to it, each film has elements of previous stories in it.  What I will judge a movie on is what it adds to the idea.  If you’re going to remake a movie, why should someone watch yours rather than the original?  Absolutely Anything isn’t really a remake of Bruce Almighty, but does have a lot in common.  Both are about men who are given unlimited powers.  Whereas Bruce Nolan gained his powers as a result of challenging God, Neil Clarke gained his as a result of aliens wanting to test humanity.

When several aliens find one of the Voyager probes, they travel to Earth to destroy it, but decide to at least give us a shot at redemption.  One human will be selected randomly and given the ability to do absolutely anything, even if it’s not normally possible.  That one random human is a school teacher named Neil Clarke.  If Neil can use his powers for good, humanity survives.  If he uses the ability for evil, Earth gets roasted.  Oh, and the aliens don’t tell Neil about it at all.  He’s left to figure out he has powers all on his own.  No pressure.

Somehow, Neil manages to figure out about his powers rather quickly.  We’d all like to think that we’d use such powers to better humanity.  Instead, Neil uses them for all manner of random things.  Many of the gags are one-of jokes, usually involving the literalness with which the wishes are rendered.  In one scene, Neil wishes for the body of a great man and is made to look like Albert Einstein.  In another, he destroys his classroom.  When he wishes for everyone to be alive again, long-dead people start coming out of their graves.

Few of them last more than one scene.  He has a friend, Ray, who is interested in a woman that ignores him.  Neil makes the woman worship Ray, leading to a cult.  The cult then proceeds to chase Ray all over town.  Neil also realizes that he can give his dog intelligence and a voice.  This leads to the obligatory embarrassing scenes with love-interest Catherine.

There really isn’t anything new in this movie.  If you’ve seen similar movies, I don’t think you’re going to find any surprises.  Neil gets the powers and eventually realizes how hard it is to use them, even when he does try to help people.  The difference here is that his epiphany comes very late in the movie.  It ends up being a string of situations that Neil fumbles with before feeling regret and maybe getting it somewhat close to right.

Part of the problem is that there’s only so much you can do with such a concept.  You can do what The Greatest American Hero did and have a guy who genuinely wants to help people.  Or you can do what Absolutely Anything did and just use it as a way to string scenes together.  Yes, that’s kind of harsh, but it’s true.  There was some potential here and it seems somewhat wasted.

It’s also worth noting that this was the final movie for Robin Williams, who voiced Neil’s dog.  I didn’t think that Williams was as high strung as he usually was, which by itself is a bit of a waste.  He was a little hyper, like you’d expect a dog to be.  I felt like he didn’t have as much screen time as I would have liked.  It ended up being Simon Pegg’s show.  If you come across this on Netflix, I would recommending holding off on it until you’re absolutely out of other movies.

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Spies Like Us (1985)

The Defense Intelligence Agency has a problem.  They’ve been sending their best spies in to Soviet-controlled Asia, yet all of them are killed before reaching their target.  The DIA’s solution is to send in two of their worst spies as decoys.  Hopefully, this will throw off the enemy long enough for the actual spies to complete their mission.  This is where Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase come in.  They play Austin Millbarge and Emmett Fitz-Hume, respectively.

Millbarge is a code breaker that’s stuck in a basement and will probably never be promoted.  Fitz-Hume is a legacy employee and will probably never be promoted.   Both want to take the foreign service exam, although for different reasons.  Millbarge is smart and driven enough that he might pass, but Fitz-Hume gets both of them kicked out for cheating.  The DIA realizes that they have their decoys.

Millbarge and Fitz-Hume are told just enough that they could believe that they’d be useful.  They’re rushed through basic training.  They’re given just enough details that they know where to go, but not enough to let them complete their given mission.  That much doesn’t even become apparent until they’re in the thick of things.  Hopefully, the Soviets will see the two of them bumbling around and capture them.

This was one of those movies that I sort of remembered watching at some point in the past.  There’s a good reason for this.  The movie was released in 1985 and is dated.  The Soviet Union has since dissolved.   Many of the computers look like something out of a history book.  Even the image of a spy is like something out of the 80s.  It’s a very goofy movie, as you might expect from Aykroyd and Chase.  There’s one scene where Millbarge and Fitz-Hume are talking to a group of doctors, posing as doctors themselves.  Everyone greets each other as doctor. It’s a minute of people just saying, “Doctor,” to each other.

I’ve always wondered what actual spies/operatives even would think of movies like this.  I know it’s supposed to be a comedy.  Accuracy often takes a back seat to comedy.  In that regard, you’re probably going to get some laughs out of the movie.  I’m not sure what those younger than me would think of the movie.  This is something I could see someone my age watching with their kids where the parents laugh and the kids don’t quite get it.  This movie was definitely a product of its time.

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