After watching last week’s offering, Roommate and I immediately jumped onto IMDB to seek other cinematic masterpieces by the writer/director of Frozen.
I’m not sure why? We might have been drinking at that point.
Anyway, that was what lead us to acquire this week’s offering, Spiral. Here is the thing about Spiral–we really hoped it would be as awesomely bad as Frozen was and we were already excited to cast the new Barrowman and Chubs. (Like choosing the Barrowman in each movie, we had decided that each movie had a Chubs, and it was up to us to suss out who it was.) We had high hopes because this one had actual actors in it! That kid from Chuck! Amber Tamblyn! It would be hilariously bad!
Or not.
You’ll have to bear with me for this review–I honestly have no idea what was happening at any given point. It was SO BORING. SO RIDICULOUS. SO WHIMSICAL.
The Chubs of this movie is the protagonist. It starts off with him having a fit and calling the Chuck Kid in the middle of the night. The Chuck Kid tells him to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. (The Chuck Kid is the Barrowman of this movie.) The next day, we follow Chubs to work, where he is a telemarketer for an insurance firm. ChuckKid is is supervisor and only friend and his co-workers include The Wolf (a nickname in reference to the wolves in Frozen) and ~*Whimsy Girl*~, Amber Tamblyn, whose nickname is in reference to the two summaries on IMDB that refer to her character as Chubs’ ~*Whimsical Coworker*~. Ugh. The Whimsy. But pretty much, Chubs sucks at his job and The Wolf likes to rub it in every day.
Roommate: “He looks up, the wolf’s over there. He’s like, ‘*taptaptap* I just sold 17 policies.'”
Me: “‘Hey, you want to go skiing this weekend?'”
So, apparently Chubs’ life sucks, his only friend is ChuckKid, and everyone at work makes fun of him. ChuckKid gives him a ride home from work in the rain and possibly sexually molests him in the car.
Me: “I forgot he was Barrowman! Of course he was sexually assaulting him in there.”
Roommate: “Hello best friend! How’s your penis?”
The next day at work, ~*Whimsy Girl*~ sits down next to Chubs on his lonely lunch bench and starts talking at him. Like, a lot. I don’t think he even acknowledges her. This repeats the next day, after a confusing night of Chubs going home and being scared of a glowing closet in his apartment?
Roommate: “What’s in there? Is it just like a closet he doesn’t go in?”
Me: “It’s Barrowman’s love den.”
~*Whimsy Girl*~ is sad because she’s a shitty telemarketer and afraid to be fired. She cries and shit. Chubs just kind of ignores her, but when he’s leaving that night (in the rain, again) she magically appears with an umbrella and walks him home, spouting ~*whimsy*~ the entire way. This was the point when we started begging Chubs to kill her.
Me: “I would rather be in Barrowman’s car, with him touching my dick.”
Roommate: “I would rather have Barrowman’s dick up my ass and not even come.”
Roommate: “Oh god, is she still out there being whimsical?”
Me: “I can’t wait til he eviscerates her.”
Roommate: “I hope he kills her and eats her flesh.”
The days within the movie blur together in a horrible mush of this girl’s ~*Whimsy*~. Chubs is an artist and we see some suspicious scenes of him looking at sketches of other girls and throwing out all these paintings of other girls that it’s hinted that he’s known and painted. We continue to hate ~*Whimsy Girl*~ with the passion of a thousand suns, to the point where our entire sense of self has been challenged and changed by the fervor of our intense hatred for her.
Me: “I would rather watch Barrowman fuck that dude.”
Roommate: “I hate her so much, I would rather watch actualfax Barrowman fucking.”
Roommate: “Amber Tamblyn, I hate you so much right now that I would rather watch Barrowman’s dick.”
ChuckKid takes Chubs to a record store where Chubs is looking for a jazz record. NOT a “smooth jazz” record because that’s TOTALLY DIFFERENT and Chubs is totes offended that ChuckKid doesn’t recognize that.
ChuckKid: “What about this one?”
Chubs: “No.”
Roommate: “That’s your penis.”
ChuckKid: “You barely even looked at it!”
Chubs has these rules about the sketches he’s started doing of ~*Whimsy Girl*~. She’s not allowed to look at the next poses he has planned. Or even ask about them. Or acknowledge them at all. She’s all ~*whimsical*~ about it and stops asking him. There’s a bit where ChuckKid and Chubs play basketball and visit a cemetery. Or something.
Roommate: “He’s like, ‘These are the other girls I’ve painted. These four tombstones.'”
ChuckKid: “Are you asking me if your old man is going to hell?”
Roommate: “What did he do? Was it interesting? Did he touch you in your no-no place, Chuck?”
At this point, we were willing to latch onto anything that made this movie even the least bit interesting. Anything. The movie just gave us more ~*Whimsy Girl.*~
Me: “I never thought there would be someone who could make me want to rather spend time with Barrowman than them. Then I met this girl.”
Then, ChuckKid has a party where The Wolf and ChuckKid are social and play video games and Chubs sits there awkwardly with his pack lunch (?) until ~*Whimsy Girl*~ finds him in a corner and they go off to paint. But this is the NAKED painting. FINALLY the movie might get interesting!
Me: “I could forgive her if she showed her tits.”
Unfortunately, there was no tit showing. No matter how much I begged for it. Instead, Chubs paints ~*Whimsy Girl*~ and they have an emotional conversation about Chubs’ dad, I think? Or something. Whatever, at the end of it, she takes off her clothes and there’s not even a fade-to-black. It just suddenly flicks to the morning after. All of these HOURS of boredom and we didn’t even get a sex scene. It was tragic.
Chubs leaves ~*Whimsy Girl*~ in bed and goes to make breakfast. All he has is peanut butter and apples.
Chubs: “All I have is peanut butter. Oh, I have apples too!”
Roommate: “Oh my god, he’s you!”
Me: “Oh god, if I ever turn into that…”
Roommate: “Don’t worry. If that happens I’ll show up and touch you in the no-no place.”
While Chubs is making breakfast, ~*Whimsy Girl*~ looks through his cabinets and finds sketchbooks filled with other girls in the exact same poses he’s had her in. The last page on each one is ripped out and that’s the page she’s up to. She panics and hides the books and tries to act all normal, but there’s a distinct lack of her usual ~*whimsy*~, thank god. The next day, Chubs is all cheerful and shit at work and tells ChuckKid that he wants to invite ~*Whimsy Girl*~ to the Christmas dinner that they apparently have together. This might be the point where I hypothesized that ~*Whimsy Girl*~ was his Tyler Durden. Actually, I think I made that prediction at the very beginning. Anyway, ChuckKid is all, “You do this every year, Chubs! It’s not healthy! You’re just going to be sad and let down again! Let’s fuck in my office, it will make you feel better!”
I might have made that last bit up.
Anyway, Chubs insists and the next scene is awkward Christmas dinner with ChuckKid, his unnamed ladyfriend, and Chubs waiting for ~*Whimsy Girl*~. When ChuckKid convinces Chubs that she’s not coming, he goes back to his apartment. I took a bathroom break at that point. I had finished the bottle of wine and, tragically, it hadn’t made the movie any better. I needed to switch to Scotch. When I got back, Roommate filled me in on what I missed.
Roommate: “I told Chubs to jack off on the painting cause at least that would be interesting. Instead he answered the door and fucking whimsy girl was there.”
I think they fought or something? I was pretty drunk by that point, but if they DID fight, it wasn’t an interesting fight. Chubs dragged her into the glowy closet of Barrowman’s Love Den. Or something. Anyway, whatever, the next morning Chubs shows up at work and goes to find ChuckKid in his office, sobbing about how he killed this girl.
Roommate: “It’s amazing that I’m so bored by this that I ship it. I just want the Chuck kid to hold him down and fuck him.”
ChuckKid tearfully explains to Chubs that he didn’t really kill anyone and then informs the audience that Chubs’ dad killed some chick and ever since, Chubs has made up these girls, drawn them, painted based on his sketches, then destroyed the paintings and come into work sobbing about how he killed a girl. But ChuckKid stuck by him out of deep love or something. I don’t even know, guys, we were just so shocked that something INTERESTING had finally happened. Also, that I so called that ~*Whimsy Girl*~ was Chubs’ Tyler Durden.
Roommate: “Oh my god, this movie is like Fight Club except fucking boring!”
Me: “Oh my god, Chuck kid is so emotionally invested in this!”
Roommate: “Oh my god, fuck him, Chubs!”
ChuckKid sends Chubs to wash the “paint” off of his hands, at which point The Wolf comes into ChuckKid’s office. They lament about how tragic Chubs is, and then The Wolf is like, “By the way, one of my sales girls is missing. Her name is ~*Whimsy Girl*~ and she’s been out since yesterday and her mom is worried.”
DUN DUN DUN. The movie literally waited until the last line to be at all interesting and deliver all twists. At this point, we were drunk and outraged that there was a legitimately interesting movie hidden in all the boringness. We wanted to watch the movie from ChuckKid’s point of view where he watches Chubs fall into this obsession with what he thinks is an imaginary girl only to have that revelation at the end. We wanted something more Fight Club esque. Hell, we wanted ANYTHING instead of that. We would watch actualfax Barrowman porn than watch that again.
Me: “I thought the scotch would make it better!”
Me: “Quick! We need to be taking these names in the credits down! We have a lot of hate mail to write tonight.”
Roommate: “I feel like we should watch Shark Attack 3 to feel better about ourselves.”
This movie shook the very foundations of my faith in myself. Previous to this, my worst nightmare was being stuck next to Barrowman on a flight with no book/Kindle/iPod/computer, forced to talk to him. (Well, second worst nightmare. Worst nightmare is still Barrowman fuck-or-die.) Now, given the choice between watching this movie or talking to Barrowman on a flight, I’d have to think about it.
Me: Would there be alcohol?
Roommate: Yes, but he gets it too, and the more he drinks, the handsier he gets.
Even with that qualifier, I still don’t know which one I would pick.
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