Larry Gaye: Renegade Male Flight Attendant (2015)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex takes in the story of the most punchable face in the history of cinema.

that face begs for a fist

Overview: Larry Gaye is a legend in the airline business, having won the apparently prestigious "Golden Coffee Pot" award five years running. He does the flight attendant thing well, bangs all the ladies, and refuses to settle down. But what's this? Shadowy execs are trying to cut costs by introducing sophisticated, sexy robots to replace flight attendants! Le gasp! Only a Gaye man can stop these sinister she-bots!

heh heh, couldn't resist, there

So, the movie sets in motion a tired old John Henry plot, with Gaye having to try to out-perform the robot and save not only his job, but the jobs of all flight attendants. There's also a limp-dicked attempt to give the movie an emotional core by introducing his bastard son after explaining his own father was always absent in his childhood. This subplot engulfs most of the movie and goes fucking nowhere. Oh, and Gaye lands a plane at the end of the movie, saving everyone because of course he does.

Notable moments/quotes: Random hot chick: "How about breakfast?"
Gayest of Gayes: "Oh, I couldn't possibly." He then throws back the covers of the bed to reveal he's already somehow dressed for work.

Early in the movie, Gaye tries to have an autobiography that he hasn't written yet published. He's soundly rejected. (HEY GUESS WHAT HAPPENS AT THE END OF THE MOVIE GUYZ ITS SO CLEVER)

Publishing exec, to the underling who set up the meeting with Gaye: "You're fired." His assistant whispers in his ear for a moment, then he continues, "Oh, and happy birthday."

Soulless suit who isn't down with the Gaye: "Mr. Gaye, if you held a gun to my head and said 'Be less interested in my book or I will splatter the contents of your skull,' I don't think I could."

Larry Homosexualjokethatthemoviethinksnevergetsold: "What part of Canada you from?"
Obviously Rastafarian cab driver: "Jamaica."

Due to the bungling of a lesser flight attendant, played with heartbreaking effort by Danny Pudi of Community fame, a vase containing the ashes of a passenger's grandfather is spilled all over the aisle. Gaye's solution? A tiny vacuum cleaner that he pulls out of his pocket. I can't make this shit up.

Gaye: "My finely honed senses tell me there's someone on board who's a danger to us all." As tense music blares, the camera ignores several Muslim stereotypes before settling on... this guy.

who is kicked off the plane despite doing nothing. the passengers applaud.

The airline Gaye works for has an amazing motto, which led to the only laugh the movie got out of me. "Federated Airlines: arrive alive on your flight's on us." Calls to mind the brilliance of the Twitter artist formerly known as United Airlanes.

Captain, to Gaye: "That's Captain to you."
"Sorry, Craptain Bryce."

Professor Gaye: "It's ancient history, like the Romanian Empire."

Union rep, to Gaye as heroic music swells: "Will you help save the jobs of everyone here and thousands nationwide?"
Punchable face: "Seems like a hassle. Pass!"

In one scene, we're treated to a live demonstration of the seat buckles, etc. on the plane. In modern day 2015. Yeah, movie... airlines don't really do that anymore. It's all pre-recorded videos now.

 

Gaye, to woman he's about to have sex with in the airplane's bathroom: "Can I get you a drink?"

"Vodka, rocks."

"Yes it does. ...Oh!" The movie then showcases a several minute long bit about Gaye charging her for the vodka. Said woman still want to have sex with him after solely because he's the main character.

Gaye, to old flame: "These tulips should go in water, and these two lips should go on a tour of Mt. April."

Gaye, to trophy woman: "If you know what I mean, maybe we could have sex."

Gaye, after ramming a condiment cart into a robot attendant: "Take that, robot bitch." He then follows up with this gem after she's deactivated: "I said power down all electronic devices."

Gaye lands the plane in L.A. No, not in the airport, in the middle of the city. Unfortunately, they don't go Con Air with this.

My thoughts: I think this had the potential to be a good movie. No, really. The script is hokey but serviceable, and some of the bits sound like they'd be good on paper. Unfortunately, the soulless performance of Mark Fuerstein as Larry Gaye makes every joke that could have been funny fall flat. He's trying a little too hard to be Vince Vaughn here, and boy does it show. All the lines are delivered with that irritating "I'm always smarmy and in control even when I'm being a fucking idiot" swagger that less talented actors think means instant funny. The script, meanwhile, keeps trying to treat Gaye as a talented everyman, but Fuerstein insists on playing him like an unstoppable ace. It's infuriating to watch one man's performance torpedo a movie and suck it dry of all comedy, but such is life.

However, I'm not absolving the script of all blame here. There are three main plotlines here: 

1) The robot flight attendants threatening jobs

2) Gaye sort of wanting to get back with the one woman he almost settled down with

3) Gaye's connection with his young son

If you muttered to yourself, "Only one of those things sounds funny," you've hit the problem on the head. When the movie focuses on item 1, it manages for some broad "comedy" and "parody" if I'm being extremely loose with those words' meanings. Unfortunately, the movie spends the lion's share of its agonizing 99 minute runtime on the latter two plotlines in some kind of attempt to give it a family-friendly throughline and emotional core. However (and I didn't realize this when I watched it because it seems so tame) this movie received an R rating. Maybe I've just become jaded, but the odd sexual bit aside, this feels like a PG or PG-13 movie at best. It's written that way as well, what with the emphasis on having the wild and crazy Gaye settle down at the end of the movie to give a better life for his son and not be absent like his own father was for him. 

Even in that "aww" moment, the movie can't resist a cheap gag: through the power of

Gaye meets his estranged father at a book singing for the autobiography he wrote about being a flight attendant. Gaye is thrilled and assumes his father's there to come back into his life; meanwhile, the father flees and drives away while an oblivious Gaye waxes nostalgic about all the fond memories he has. It's a weird moment where even the movie isn't sure if it wants it to be heartfelt or funny. And, to me, that sums up the whole experience. This is a movie that's rated R but clearly wants to be PG, headlined by an actor who wants to be a swaggering renegade but ends up being a punching bag with one-liners. There's definitely some comedy to be extracted here from how wrong everything feels, but mostly this just left me scratching my head.

whoa wait that's Jason Alexander what the fuck

 Case in point, Larry Gaypanic loses the John Henryesque contest against the robot flight attendant. These robots seem to have been programmed to do their jobs flawlessly, without any human error. However, they have a major flaw that's revealed at the movie's climax: they interfere with airplane radar and comms by their mere presence, complicating everyone's attempts to land the plane after it runs out of gas.

I'm sorry, what?! The movie expects me to believe that robots specifically designed to function on airplanes as flight attendants wouldn't have been tested so that this exact thing wouldn't happen?! I mean, for fuck's sake, they have wi-fi on planes now! To have a movie set in the modern day where an airplane-specific product comes with this crippling flaw is such a stupid plot twist it defies any suspension of disbelief. Realistically, even if this highly specific issue would come up, the company would fix the interference problem and they'd go on using the robots. However, in this movie's world, having this problem one time is enough for the airline to say, "Nah, forget all those no-doubt highly expensive robots we bought." It's not even like the flight is some kind of special test of the robots, as no announcement or special notice is taken by the crew or the passengers until the plot demands that Our Ye Olde Gaye Savioure be able to save us from the terrors of modern technology. It's this kind of ham-fisted anti-intellectual bullshit (never mind what an amazing feat it would be to replace a flight attendant with a robot that could accurately respond to any of the millions of issues passengers might have) in movies that perpetuates America glorifying the adequate and the average. What ever happened to the arrogant but lofty idea of American exceptionalism? What happened to valuing bright people, instead of shitting on them for being different? In this movie's case, it's clearly that the writers, directors, etc knew they lacked intelligence and sucked at their jobs, so they took their chance to shit over all those successful people who had brains.

I just wish Danny Pudi hadn't been caught up in this. Or that Nic Cage was playing the main character. This kind of mediocrity and bad writing would be right up Cage's alley; he could have transformed this movie from forgettable to legendary. As it is, this movie will die in obscurity and I regret any small role I've had in immortalizing this movie. It's shit and belongs with shit.

"Don't be like me. Try to save your career after this. I'm done for."

I give this movie a Nic Cage Arrives in Las Vegas out of five. Encourage me to calm my tits on Facebook and by throwing more money at my unemployed face.