Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a movie that starts with "Z" that Stomp Tokyo hasn't touched?
Actually, its pretty easy, my video stores just suck. In fact, though it may not be physically possible, most of them both suck and blow. And this one . . . does neither. It simply . . . exists. Zoo Radio isn't bad enough to make a splash in B movie waters and isn't good enough to make . . . anything else. I've personally never heard of this movie. If you have, well, tell me how right I am.
Zoo Radio is the charming, touching story of one 3 fingered midget on his quest to play the violin. Er, no, wait, that's something else. Something playing at Sundance, no doubt. Pretentious. artsy-artsy punks. Who the hell are they to say anything that has a giant monster has no "artistic merit"? If I ever get my hands on them, I'll . . .
Huh? Oh, right, Zoo Radio. Okay. Back on track. This little Zoo is the story of two brothers, Burt (Cloyde Howard) and John (Jeffrey Culver) Powell. Both own radio stations in Los Angeles. When their dear old dad kicks the can, Daddy decides to put on a little competition between his boys. Whoever's radio station has the most add spots running at the end of the year not only gets Pop's fortune but both stations as well.
It'll be a fair, honest competition, right? Right. Not if you want this to be a comedy. So, we know John, being evil, will use every dastardly deed he can think of to sabotage his dear brother's station.
And Burt . . . well, Burt's kind of tied up learning how to put and keep his fish, Jack, alive at the same time. It's a pretty stupid running gag, but every movie needs one.
Into the mix drives Billy Day (John Martin), a hotshot, impression spewing joke machine. If he weren't so central to the plot he might be the Odious Comic Relief. Day comes in and spends most of the movie doing his comedy thing. An early montage shows him doing his best voices to amuse the crowd with some nice scenes of LA life cut in. It's probably the only good sequence in the entire 90-minuet enterprise.
So there's your set up. Not much is it? But then, comedies don't really need genetic diversity, they just need good writers. Unfortunately, Zoo Radio was written by Jesse Welles. Waiter, can I please have some comedy with my comedy? Sure, there is comedy, but it comes at a rate much like William Shatner's speech pattern. You'll . . . have . . . long . . . pauses . . . fallowedby . . . shortburstsofcomedy. And . . . bytheway . . . it's . . . notatoupee.
If you can stand those pauses well then . . . you're still in trouble. Sure, Day's crap is funny . . . for awhile. Then it gets old. The other characters . . . if they disserve that title . . . really aren't funny at all. The best of them are characters . . . the worst are Odious Comic Relief. Probably picked up off the street by the casting director. We have our slob, Otto (Ron E. Dickinson); Billy's second banana, Frank (Doug Mears); and Angie (Jennifer Dorian), Burt's something-or-other and Frank's something-or-other (the movie doesn't go into that to much).
Then of course there are the other people who don't really matter much to the plot. The b-list characters. Of course there's not really much distinction. It's mentioned that Frank once knew Billy. The 5 Ws of the matter are never discussed. Not once in the entire damn show do we get any background on Day, Frank, or anybody else, which brings up our favorite friends: characters without character.
So, we've got characters who have no character, a story as flat as Kansas, acting that's not quite good enough to be stagebound I don't think I'd ever recommend Zoo Radio to anyone. Unless director Jay Roach offers me a cut of the money he's made off of Austin Powers.
Gs (out of a possible five)
MOCK O' METER
