The Late Nite Landfill: "How to Go Out on a Date in Queens"

I suppose one could criticize this blog for the fact that I only watch the trailers for the movies I feature, and not the movies themselves. One could ask, “How accurate can The Phantom of the Landfill’s opinion be if he’s never watched the movie he’s slagging?”

That criticism may be valid... up to a point.

Let’s face it, we’re at the mercy of WABC-TV Channel 7’s late night movie programmers. All I’m doing is reporting on what they plan to broadcast next. And the fact is, we’re dealing with three kinds of movies here.

• Films made expressly for the direct-to-video or direct-to-cable markets (or both). These are the films you see in Blockbuster that make you say, “Wow, I’ve never heard of this one before,” even though you recognize the actors on the DVD case. These movies almost always fall within a certain range of quality, with “decent-enough time waster B-movie” being the highest accolade; although you’re more likely to get C to F grade movies with bad acting, bad directing and no budgets.
• Independent movies made by novice directors. These films are almost always very earnest. The director is usually also the writer, and believes wholeheartedly in the material. Usually because no one else has raised any objections (he’s either surrounded by supportive types that are either inexperienced in good writing and direction or others who know something’s wrong but don’t want to hurt the director’s feelings – in either case, “yes men.”) Because the films are already shot, produced, and most importantly paid for, they are desirable to the same direct-to-video/direct-to-cable distributors mentioned above as instant content they can provide their customers without expending production costs.
• Films made for the Lifetime Channel. We can argue the relative merits of these but there’s no point. I’m a guy and these just don’t appeal to me (with apologies to those guys who do enjoy them) beyond their value as over-the-top camp ripe for ridicule.

The other local affiliate stations run lots of movies, too – some good, some bad, but at least they’re movies you’ve heard of before with Warner Brothers, MGM and Universal logos in front of them. On the other hand, when you tune to Channel 7 late at night on the weekends and see a “DEJ Productions” or “First Look Studios” logo, you can safely assume you’re in for some prime-grade schlock of the Late Nite Landfill variety.

Which all leads up to my following statement: I cannot watch the trailer for Sunday night’s movie, “How to Go Out on a Date in Queens” without saying afterwards, “This looks like a dog from snout to tail.” It just does. I’m sorry. It’s a lot of “been there, done that” cutesy romantic comedy stuff mixed with sex comedy drivel and the curse of the indy movie, the “ensemble cast filled with broad, eccentric characters.” It looks like it has absolutely no center, nothing to unify it, just random snippets of people’s allegedly “comic” relationships. If you can actually relate to the loser characters depicted in this trailer, I feel sorry for you.

Onto the stars: Jason Alexander, who will forever be known as George Costanza from “Seinfeld” heads this cast. Alexander is one of those guys who will always give his all in any role. The problem arises when the script and direction are not up to his level. Instead of elevating weak material, the opposite effect seems to happen with Alexander – his presence makes it all the more glaring how flimsy other elements of the project are.

Rob Estes is one of those “he reminds me of…” guys. In this case, he reminds me of Sam Rockwell and David Arquette.

Last but not least, it’s hard to tell what Ron Perlman’s role is from watching this trailer. When he’s not playing reluctant-demons-turned-superheroes, he’s usually cast as a bad guy, a detective or both. Watching his quick clip in the trailer (don’t blink or you’ll miss it), I couldn’t help but imagine a comic book thought balloon above his head reading, “Just one day’s work and I get to bail this set!”

View the trailer here: