Heart Full of Joy

Yesterday was one of the happiest days of my life. I'm talking mile-wide smiling, giddily laughing, unendingly full-to-capacity with unmitigated joy happy. Why?

I finally, finally got to purchase two of the most gleefully, wonderfully, lovably awful (and among my all-time favorite cult classics) movies ever made: Mannequin and the sequel/quasi-remake Mannequin on the Move. These movies fucking suck to an absurdly awesome degree. I can't help but giggle at every one of the copious flaws in each of them...it's a great time, really. For years I got by with just the occasional TV broadcast, but as time went by those broadcasts became few and far between and then I just quit TV altogether. So to find these movies on DVD was like finding a stockpile of gold bricks as far as I'm concerned.

You wanna know the best part, though? They were free. God bless "Buy Two, Get One Free" sales, though I will admit I would have gladly paid the Fifteen dollar price tag at B&N to own this set.

I cannot begin to describe just how much I love these shamefully bad cinematic disasters, but then again all I have to say is "Movies about guys with sexual statue fetishes and how rad that can be" and I think I've made some kind of point. I mean, yeah, you can make the argument that said statues are possessed by living spirits of actual people, but let's get down to facts: at the end of the day, these movies depict men falling in love with department store mannequins; wooden icons created to model clothing. IS THAT NOT THE BEST CONCEPT YOU EVER HEARD OF FOR A ROMANTIC COMEDY?! And they made TWO of them! It's twice the awesomeness!

And there's that theme song. That unforgettable (whether that be for the right or wrong reasons is up to the individual listener) power ballad performed by none other than Starship, AKA the former members of 60's rock icon Jefferson Airplane, titled "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now!". The ear-shattering synth line, the overwrought vocals, and by the god the horrible lipsynching in the music video...This is the song just awful enough to be the theme of movies as bad as Mannequin and Mannequin on the Move.



And I want you to keep something in mind as you listen to that: "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" was nominated for an Oscar. Seriously. Further proof that the Oscars just ain't worth your time.

It's a great time to be a bad movie lover. It really is.