Deadly Doll's Choice: And God Spoke (1993)

So often in life, it's always Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, but for this month's movie swap, Emily and I have turned that all around. It's about to get all Jan, Jan, Jan. Quite accidentally on both our parts, we each chose a movie that featured everyone's flea powder allergic Brady, Eve Plumb in my case and Jennifer Cox, who played Jan in the Brady movie, for the Doll. In a way, they couldn't have been more different films, but they had more in common than just the middle child of Carol and Mike. For my pick, I chose the action farce Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, a delightfully silly film starring Kevin Sorbo as the titular character. Head on over to The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense to find out if Emily thought the Poolboy's waters were just fine or if it went off the deep end. For her choice, Emily picked a mockumentary from 1993 of Biblical proportions, ...And God Spoke. So in this beginning, let me say that this film might not movie heaven and Earth, but I saw it... And it was good...well, pretty good.

Michael Riley and Stephen Rappaport star as director Clive Walton and producer Marvin Handleman, a film making duo responsible for such cinematic greats as Nude Ninjas, Dial 'S' for Sex, and The Airport (not to be confused with Airport). Now they've set their sites on the movie adaptation to end all movie adaptations, the complete Bible. Never mind the fact that the script is 2000 pages, never mind that the film makers have no particular religious leanings. and certainly never mind accuracy. As the film progresses, everything goes wrong on the set as the production spins out of control. From the cinematographer that thinks he's making high art to the craft services person with his themed food and the actress playing Eve whose body is home to a chest to toe snake tattoo,

And God Spoke is chock full of quirky characters and zany antics.  The problem is that And God Spoke desperately wants to be cut from the same cloth as Best in Show and Spinal Tap, but where the characters in those films feel bizarre, yet realistic, those performances in And God Spoke were far less subtle and had a tendency to feel Ike hey were trying too hard. And God Spoke does get a leg up in a couple of departments. With a cast of mostly unknown actors, it was easier to accept the primary cast in their roles even when they went too broad. Mixing these actors with the occasional cameo from Even Plumb, Chris Kattan, or, in my favorite scene, Andy Dick and Lou Ferrigno as Abel and Cain, gives the film a real low rent Hollywood feeling. As much as I loved Cain and Abel's fight, the best moments in this film, for my money, come from classic comedian Soupy Sales. Not only does he get to play Moses, complete with plastic commandments and a 6pack of Coke, but he riffs though his entire screen theme with a series of off-the-cuff remarks that I really enjoyed.

At the film’s end (spoiler alert), the financial disaster of the movie gets a second life as a midnight movie, and I think that this might have highlighted my biggest problem with the film. Instead of a mockumentary about the making of And God Spoke, I wanted to see the film within the film, And God Spoke. As the film's production values plummeted, stunt casting continued, and stock footage assembled, all I could think about is what a wonderfully funny time it would be to check out that flick. And God Spoke is a decent fast paced comedy, but it falls short of doing to many things as well as easily comparable films. It doesn't do Hollywood as well as The Player, the unwinding of a film shoot like Living in Oblivion, or the single camera mockumentary style like Waiting for Guffman.

That being said, I did like And God Spoke enough, and if you enjoy the mockumentary style, as I do, then this film will be a fun watch. While it certainly isn't the top choice in the genre, gags like the over-sized Noah's Arc or the debate over how many apostles thee were are sure to amuse. Now that I got through that slice of heavenly film selected by Emily, go and check out what she said about Poolboy: Drowning out the Fury. Next month the Deadly Doll and The Lightning Bug will be meeting up for some fun in Baltimore so I'm sure we'll come up with something completely divine to celebrate the occasion!

Bugg Rating