Categories
Television

The show isn’t great, but it’s great fun to watch Mike Myers!!

Mike Myers is the secret star of the summer in The Gong Show

A woman who plays the harmonica with a tarantula in her mouth. A guy performs the piano standing on his head. A couple spit bananas into each other’s mouths.

And that’s just in the first 15 minutes of the premiere of the rebooted The Gong Show. Talent shows are a dime a dozen nowadays, but there was only one uber un-talent show, and it ran on NBC in the 1970s.

The Gong Show was conceived long before YouTube, but the concept’s well suited for the bite-sized, Carpool-Karaoke world of social media.

Much of the current ’70s game-show revival, which includes Battle of the Network Stars and The $100,000 Pyramid, is bland enough to evoke a U.S. president of the era, Gerald Ford.

However, in the case of The Gong ShowThe Gong Show — airing Thursdays on ABC and Citytv — there is some spice: It comes in the form of host Tommy Maitland, who uses the Queen and the Union Jack as backdrops, just in case you don’t grasp that he’s British.

Unlike the manic original show’s host Chuck Barris, Maitland, whose favourite line is “Who’s a cheeky monkey?” is butter smooth. His jokes are all Graham Norton — full of sexual innuendo and saucy side-glances. “I haven’t had this much fun since Dolly Parton showed me how she keeps her guitar picks warm,” he says smugly.

The only similarity to Barris, who died in March, is that on occasion Maitland will wear a hat — in this case that of a matador. Barris wore an endless array of different hats, all pulled so low over his eyes, which became part of the character of the show.

“Turn on your telly and turn off your brain,” Maitland reminds today’s audiences, as he presides over a trio of fellow comic performers who serve as the judges; in the premiere, it was Will Arnett, Ken Jeong and Zach Galifianakis.

The premise remains simple. Unlike America’s Got Talent or The Voice, or any of the other variety shows that now populate the airwaves, there’s no hunt for future stars here — quite the opposite. The show instead finds amateurs who are truly awful and sees who can complete a performance before someone sounds the gong to put a stop to them.

The winner, or loser if you like, picks up a $2,000 cheque, about equivalent to the $500.32 that Barris offered four decades ago, if you factor in inflation.

So far the new version lacks legendary returning “talent” like Gene Gene The Dancing Machine or Murray Langston, who performed as The Unknown Comic with a bag over his head. In fact, the most remarkable act on The Gong Show is not any of the competitors.

The true talent is Maitland himself, who happens to be the alter ego of a completely unrecognizable Mike Myers.

The show credits give no hint who the host really is, and many viewers likely have no clue. But beneath the prosthetics, which likely take most of the day to put on, is a demonstration of one actor’s impressive, full-on crazy dedication to his craft.

The Canadian comedic star is known for creating characters that become rooted in our culture. Lovable slacker Wayne from Wayne’s World, in a basement modelled after his own in his beloved Scarborough, comes to mind, as do swinging ’60s super secret agent Austin Powers, and the Scots-tinged voice of animated ogre Shrek.

But Tommy Maitland is something else. Myers’ characters typically leap from the screen, — as the purple-trousered Austin Powers would say, “yeah, baby!” But this time he dials back on Maitland, understanding that a game show host is a cipher, not the attraction. In doing so he inhabits the world of a British show host so completely that the character is entirely believable.

The joke is so elaborate that the ABC News release about the show has a fictional biography for the host. It seems that Arnett had become friends with Maitland after meeting him at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Dying to work with the comic, he pitched The Gong Show.

Still, at times it feels like Myers is channelling Mrs. Doubtfire in a tuxedo. And he can’t escape his Myers-isms completely, particularly when he says “it blows” with that cheeky-monkey grin.

Why he decided to host a summer filler of a game show is a head-scratcher. But at this stage in life, Myers has nothing to prove — though he has been away from the spotlight since 2008’s wretched comedy The Love Guru, he certainly doesn’t need another paycheque.

He is playing not for a greater audience, but for his fellow comics. Or mostly himself. And he is likely snickering mightily underneath that prosthetic mask.

It’s unlikely the show will last. So catch it while you can before Myers gets bored. It’s not quite Roger Federer in his twilight years winning Wimbledon, but seeing the gifted performer go full-on Col. Kurtz in this comedic heart of darkness — where is he taking this? — is special, even if he doesn’t always hit the mark.

Not everyone has to be in on the joke. And Mike Myers, it seems, is perfectly fine with that.

Categories
Movies

I watched DUNKIRK, and then I went right back in and watched it again. What a tremendous film!!

Box office report: Dunkirk marches past Girls Trip and Valerian

Christopher Nolan is back on top of the box office. The writer-director’s World War II epic Dunkirk earned an estimated $50.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its first weekend of release, easily outpacing fellow newcomers Girls Trip and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

After heading into the weekend with strong reviews and early Oscar buzz, Dunkirk has resonated with moviegoers as well, garnering an A-minus CinemaScore that bodes well for the film’s long-term prospects. The Warner Bros. film, which cost about $100 million to make, is getting a boost from IMAX screenings, which account for $11.7 million of the domestic opening. Dunkirk is also set to add an estimated $55.4 million overseas this weekend.

Featuring an ensemble cast that includes Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, newcomer Fionn Whitehead, and pop idol Harry Styles, Dunkirk chronicles the desperate evacuation of some 400,000 Allied troops from the titular French seaport. The film’s $50.5 million haul represents the best opening for a WWII movie in several years, surpassing Allied (which debuted to $12.7 million), Unbroken ($30.6 million), and Fury ($23.7 million). For Nolan, Dunkirk is his fourth-biggest opening as a director, behind The Dark Knight Rises ($160.9 million), The Dark Knight ($158.4), and Inception ($62.8 million).

Coming in second place with a strong showing this weekend is Universal’s Girls Trip with an estimated $30.4 million. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee and made for a reported $19 million, the R-rated film earned an A-plus CinemaScore and looks to be the first bona fide live-action comedy hit of the year, in the wake of underperformers such as Snatched, Baywatch, CHiPs, and Rough Night.

Girls Trip stars Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Queen Latifah as lifelong friends who travel to New Orleans for a wild weekend.

Faring less well at the multiplex is this weekend’s third new release, the sci-fi adventure Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Director Luc Besson’s film lands in fifth place with an estimated $17 million, behind the holdovers Spider-Man: Homecoming and War for the Planet of the Apes.

Based on the French comic series Valérian and Laureline, the movie stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as two space-faring special agents on a mission to save the universe. Though it’s cut from the same colorfully futuristic cloth as Besson’s cult favorite The Fifth Element, Valerian has received mixed reviews, and moviegoers gave it a B-minus CinemaScore.

That’s not great news for the EuropaCorp film (released domestically by STX), which cost about $150 million to produce and is the most expensive French movie ever made. On the other hand, many of Besson’s previous films have performed well overseas, and Valerian could follow suit. (It opens in France on July 26). According to EuropaCorp, 90 percent of Valerian‘s budget was covered with foreign pre-sales, equity financing, and tax subsidies.

Although Fox’s War for the Planet of the Apes is on pace to edge out Valerian in its second weekend, its estimated haul of $20.4 million represents a steep 64 percent drop. It’s the latest franchise sequel to experience such a decline, joining movies like Transformers: The Last Knight (down 62 percent its second weekend) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (65 percent).

Outside the weekend top five, Wonder Woman brought in an estimated $4.6 million, pushing its domestic total to $389 million. That would officially make it the highest-grossing movie of the summer, eclipsing Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($387.2 million). With Dunkirk and Wonder Woman‘s weekend tallies, Warner Bros. is also set to cross the $1 billion mark at the domestic box office for 2017, a feat the studio will have pulled off 17 years in a row.

On the specialty front, Gillian Robespierre’s comedy Landline — which reunited the filmmaker with Obvious Child star Jenny Slate — is poised to gross an estimated $52,336 across four locations, for a solid per-theater average of $13,084. The French film The Midwife, starring Catherine Deneuve, is headed for an estimated $20,250 across three locations, for a per-theater average of $6,750.

Per ComScore, overall box office is down .7 percent from the same frame from last year. Check out the July 21-23 figures below.

1. Dunkirk — $50.5 million
2. Girls Trip — $30.4 million
3. Spider-Man: Homecoming — $22 million
4. War for the Planet of the Apes — $20.4
5. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets — $17 million
6. Despicable Me 3 — $12.7 million
7. Baby Driver — $6 million
8. The Big Sick — $ 5 million
9. Wonder Woman — $4.6 million
10. Wish Upon — $2.5 million