DJ: Well, well, well, look at what we have here... Another weekly edition of the “Spoiler Warning Summer Movie Series.” This hooligan has been posting its clickety clack on the interwebs every week lately, and I think it's time it learned some manners! But, who am I to judge? Anyway, I'm D.J. Kirkbride, and I'm here with Dustin Grovemiller, and we both took precious time out of our lives to watch The Hollywood Knights so that we could babble about it for your reading pleasure.

Dustin: It was very precious to me. Very.

DJ: Before I go get all irate over this, did you find enough plot information in there to compose a synopsis?

Dustin: Well, that's pretty easily accomplished in that it's a movie without tremendous depth. The Hollywood Knights -- not the title, that's The Hollywood Knights -- are a "car club" comprised of teenage kids living in Beverly Hills (that's where you want to be). The movie follows the action of Halloween night 1965, when the Knights are fully engaged in retribution against the Beverly Hills somethin' or other upstanding adults association for shutting down their hangout, Tubby's Drive-In. Amidst this agenda, they're doing the usual harassment of cops, hazing pledges, getting laid, and… well, this is life before widespread television, that's for sure. There are some more allegedly deep side stories to go with this, but they seem to be an afterthought, and we'll get to them shortly.

DJ: Yeah, this movie is like three -- well, two and a half -- lame movies rolled into one incredibly lame movie. First, you have the Porky's wannabe hijinks of a supposedly young Robert Wuhl (who has apparently always looked like he was vaguely forty-ish) sexually harassing and creeping out girls with his friends and farting for fun…

Dustin: See, I equated it more to a poor man's American Graffiti.

DJ: Maybe it really wants to be American Graffiti but with the lowest common denominator tits and ass hijinks of Porky's. Anyway, another part of the flick is Tony Danza and a young (and hot but not as hot as she is now oddly enough) Michelle Pfeiffer doing some shitty teen drama about their relationship... And, finally, was that Rick Springfield having his last night of freedom before 'Nam?

Dustin: I spent most of the movie thinking he was a young Dermot Mulroney.

DJ: Quick research tells me it was a guy named Gary Graham, but focus… did they really have a poignant 'Nam story in this fart flick?

Dustin: No, it was more the looming specter of Vietnam sort of thing. I think it was mean to cast the hijinks into some kind of relief. Like an "enjoy these inappropriately-labeled innocent times while you can."

DJ: Yeah, but it's all so disjointed. The stories seem barely connected except for the occasional scene where players from both and a half stories interact, and those cause me to wonder why the hell Tony and Dermot Springfield would ever hang out with that obnoxious Robert Wuhl.

Dustin: Well, they DON'T... I think the only time that they're on screen together is at the very end.

DJ: They hang out at the same drive in, and there are a couple of parts where Tony gets wistful about The Hollywood Knights and all that... It's just terrible. Two and a half terrible stories rolled into one, and none of them fit together.

Dustin: Danza and Graham's characters are kind of like the elder statesmen of the Knights, whereas Wuhl's character is, well, the fun, popular pain in the ass,

DJ: Yeah, except Wuhl looks like he's older than both of them. Poor creepy bastard.

Dustin: This is going to shock you, but I actually kind of liked it. The movie, I mean.

DJ: Oh... my... GOD! Dude, no. Please... no. Was it how Newbomb Turk (Wuhl) could fart “Volare”? Or the flaming shit on doorstep scene? Or how he took pictures of topless girls when they didn't know he was there like a stalker?

Dustin: Well, not so much the specific actions so much as the general principle of the thing. Yeah, the comedy bits were really spastic and not all of them were so spectacular, but this is one of those movies that helped pave the way for the Godless parody movies that became popular in the late 90s and early 00s. Can't you see the connective material between those? It's the same vehicle, just a generation removed. And really, I did guffaw at some of the jokes. Which surprised me, since I am largely humorless.

DJ: No. This isn't a parody. This is some hack writer/director thinking he's making a funny flick about the days of yore. There's no satire in this. And even if there were, then I'd hate it more for spawning shit like Epic Movie (if that's what you're saying). But, no... here's no connective tissue to those. There's hardly even any connective tissue in the movie itself.

Dustin: Well, I was a bit off on citing the parody ones specifically -- comparing it to, say, Scary Movie isn't a correct comparison, but I was thinking more of things that people try to pass of as legitimate movies for teens. I can't name any now, because I never cared enough about them to remember any of them. But I know they were there, much in the same way I once knew there was a nation of people called Carthaginians.

DJ: You mean the American Pie movies?

Dustin: Ah! Ah! Yes, that's more like what I'm talking about.

DJ: That's more apt. But still, those movies seemed more... competent than this one. At least little. And they were mildly funny at certain points.

Dustin: Well, I--

DJ: Dustin!!! You enjoyed sitting through this movie? Are you okay? What's going on? Seriously. I'm your friend. I want you to be well.

Dustin: This one missed the mark, and I will admit by a lot. But having said that, I didn't mind watching it (unlike a certain Annie Hall debacle a few weeks ago). I'd never seen it, and it had a "there's nothing else on Saturday afternoon" kind of feel to it. Aside from the prodigious amounts of sexual elements, tits, ass, and beaver that you'd never see on network television. I'm not going to go out of my way to see it AGAIN, but it wasn't terrible to suffer through once.

DJ: … You... YOU JUST SAID YOU PREFERRED WATCING HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS TO OSCAR WINNING CLASSIC ANNIE HALL!!! I just... whoa... I just... I'm feeling woozy. Is it booze o'clock yet? I need to sit down. Where are my burritos? Dustin, sweet, simple, Dustin... you're giving me the vapors.

Dustin: Oh, and we forgot to mention that Fran Drescher is in this, too! Horrible oversight on our parts.

DJ: Yay. The fucking Nanny. Woot. Who gives a fuck? First she hates Newbomb, then she wants to "get it on" (but he has a 'splosion in his old man pants before he can even get over to her in the van), and yet, at the end they're a couple or something!

Dustin: Man, I've just totally broken you, haven't I?

DJ: My soul is crushed. CRUSHED!!!

Dustin: Do we need to wrap this up? So you can go get some air or something?

DJ: There's not enough smog free air in LA for what I need. I thought we'd be together in bashing this filmic turd, and you just threw my world into a tailspin. Damn you, DGrove!

Dustin: Sometimes, you need to have some junk food. That's really my only defense.

DJ: There's junk food... and then there's picking up a piece of half chewed, gnarled baloney off the sidewalk and eating it.

Dustin: It's not like we know what it was like to be a teen in 1965 -- this COULD be gospel truth for all we know. We don't know shit aside from Rubik's Cubes and Punky Brewster.

DJ: Dustin. I... I gotta go. I'll, um... well... I'm sure we'll talk later. I just... I can't look at you right now. I need to be alone.