The Movie: The Blog
Magic Puppy, formerly known as A Magic Puppy, A Halloween Puppy, and The Great Halloween Puppy Adventure, is now streaming with its new dog, poster, and tagline. This Halloween, unleash the IMPAWSIBLE with Eric Roberts.
Magic Puppy is written by the same person who wrote A Talking Cat!?! I could have used a bunch of sarcastic quotation marks there, but I didn’t.
The scene starts with Chris sulking by the pool. The pool he is afraid of. In fact, he’s dipping his tootsies in the pool. This kid isn’t afraid of swimming at all! It’s all some sort of…act. Not that I’d go so far as to say there is acting in A Talking Cat!?!
Chris was just inside tutoring Frannie. Now he is alone outside. I assume Frannie is still inside, since A Talking Cat!?! wouldn’t waste an opportunity to drain 30 seconds of your life away with an “I’m leaving now oh goodbye then see you later” scene.
Then Duffy, the talking cat, starts talking to Chris. Chris says “did you just…” and that’s as surprised as he gets that a cat is talking to him. He delivers the line (half a line) like he got the wrong candy bar from a vending machine. Then he chows down on the Mounds bar like it’s what he wanted all along.
Duffy spends his “can only talk once” rule commiserating over his shared dislike for water. Chris then drops a bombshell on us! He doesn’t know what to tell his dad!
Chris! Your dad will accept you no matter who you love! Wait, no. That’s not it. He’s worried that his dad won’t love him since he doesn’t know how to swim. What? What is this nonsense? How long have you lived in this damn house, Chris? I think he knows. A father always knows. That you can’t swim.
Duffy drops some knowledge on us. If you can talk to a cat, you can talk to your dad. Is this not about swimming? I mean, we know Chris despises his father. His constant eye rolling is a big tip-off. If it isn’t about swimming, then maybe Chris should have transitioned the conversation a little more gradually. Duffy might not be able to follow. Just because a cat can talk doesn’t mean it suddenly grew a giant brain too.
Time for another jarring turn in the conversation. Duffy is advising Chris to never squander an opportunity. Which comes out of nowhere. This is the perfect time for Chris to change the conversation AGAIN and ask if Frannie likes him. To which Duffy responds by getting up and walking away. In silence.
Because Chris is stuck in a bear trap, he can not move the 2 miles per hour required to follow Duffy. Also, Chris must have cataracts because he loses sight of Duffy two seconds after he starts walking away. Also, Chris is dumb and everyone is dumb and this music is dumb.
And Mounds bars are dumb.
David Attenborough could have saved A Talking Cat!?! If he had played Duffy, the talking cat, instead of Eric Roberts, his awestruck delivery would have made every line important. Especially the lines where Duffy is talking about nature and beeping machines.
But, alas, we are stuck with Eric Roberts. Luckily, horrible Tina is going to say “a talking cat” too! Right now! In this scene!
Tina is a horrible person who is too smart for business college and Trent is a big dummy. Yet smart ol’ Tina accuses big dumb Trent of perpetrating a hoax. She thinks Trent made Duffy talk. So who is the real dummy here? The answer is everyone in this movie. And everyone watching this movie.
Tina delivers the titular line “A Talking Cat!?!” followed by “That’s just stupid. That’s the best you could come up with?” Quick tip, Andrew Helm (writer of A Talking Cat!?!). Don’t write that thing that you just wrote. David Attenborough wouldn’t say “Hummingbirds jewelled messengers? That’s just stupid.” If the audience wasn’t thinking A Talking Cat!?! was stupid before, there are now.
Obviously, they were thinking it was stupid before now.
Anywho, Trent is super confused by Tina’s accusations. He’s trying to mend a fence here. He can’t mend and be yelled at, at the same time. Also, sleeping and dreaming are tough for Trent too. He needs to do them both separately.
Tina storms inside, where mommy Susan accuses her of scaring the cat away by slamming doors. No doors were slammed. Susan is simply a terrible mother and will lie to make her children feel bad. Tina continues to storm all the way to her room.
And now, to further cement the idea that Tina is just as dumb as everyone else, we are treated to the lengthy “reading is hard” scene. The Little Spanish Flea and timecode in the clip below were added by me, of course. A little Spanish flea? That’s just stupid!
Here it is, folks! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Duffy, the talking cat from A Talking Cat!?! is finally going to talk!?! Are you ready for it?
I don’t think you’re ready for it. Maybe if Tina talks to some unknown party on the phone for a bit, that will prepare your weak hearts and soft minds for the incredible revelation of a cat who can talk.
During the course of Tina’s conversation, she says “I know” nine different times. Sounds like she’s married, AM I RIGHT FELLAS!?! Internet high five.
While Tina is saying “I know” a bunch, Duffy thinks to himself that he either “really likes the look of [Tina’s] beeping machine” or “really like for [Tina] to look at your beeping machine.” It doesn’t really matter what he says in the same way that it doesn’t matter what someone says in their sleep. Remember, it’s always dangerous to wake Eric Roberts.
And then, even though you had steadied yourself for it, you are consumed by the blackest black you have ever seen. Hopefully, you are watching A Talking Cat!?! on a plasma screen so you can really feel the depth of hell that is Duffy’s mouth.
Duffy’s mouth is where dreams and wishes go to die. It’s less a mouth and more a rip in time and space. Something that threatens to consume the very structure of the universe we know. Eyes will melt. Atoms will be torn apart. Warranties will expire. Duffy’s mouth comes from an unknowable place and it’s best not to look directly at it.
Also, if you’re looking for a band name, Duffy’s Mouth is pretty good.
What words come out of Duffy’s sadness rip? “Read your beeping machine.” A beeping machine being a computer. Because we can’t expect a talking cat to know the word “computer.”
Tina is appropriately confused. A cat just talked. She has a lot of questions like “why” and “who” and “how.” Duffy rebuts her questions by continuing to insist she reads her beeping machine.
We know this scene is ridiculous. But it’s even more ridiculous than you think.
Scientifically speaking, a teenage girl is always 43.2 seconds away from looking at her computer. That’s a fact I just made up. So Tina is bound to look at her computer very soon. Duffy’s insistence that Tina looks at her computer is actually keeping Tina from looking at her computer. It’s like quantum physics. You’re changing the outcome by inserting yourself into it.
In trying to help Tina, Duffy is actually doing more damage. Duffy is a horrible cat.
Oh man, there is so much more scene to go over, and the only things that have really been said are “I know” and “read your beeping machine.” We’ll get to the logistics of a talking cat and more horrible Susan next time.
The next scene in our journey through A Talking Cat!?! starts with Chris opening the front door…wait a second. How did Chris get downstairs? I didn’t see him go down the stairs after he went up. The director can’t leave simple minded people like us to make assumptions about getting from one place to another.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, Chris comes through the front door with phone girl, who he is going to tutor. Boy, I hope they have a conversation about how he got downstairs from upstairs or I’m going to be totally lost.
Tutored phone girl (Tina or Frannie or something) starts by complementing Chris’s house. Because she’s poor. We didn’t cover that earlier, but she can’t pay Chris much for tutoring because she’s poor. And dumb. So she gawks at his house.
Chris says “follow me, we’ll go outside” and leads Girl outside. Lucky for us, they show all 10 seconds of “going outside” action so we don’t get confused, like with that whole upstairs/downstairs thing. Damn, that’s going to bug me. I wonder what happened.
More compliments about the house. Then Chris ushers Girl past their study table to stand in the middle of his patio. Why wouldn’t you stop at the place you’re going to? Because we need to establish another subplot.
But before we get to that, Girl sees Duffy (the talking cat who hasn’t talked yet). “Is that your cat,” she asks? Chris says “no” like she’s stupid for even asking. Without missing a beat, because she is dumb and poor(?), Girl says she likes cats. This causes the lecherous sound of Eric Roberts’s voice to say “cats like you too.”
Oh, right. There are multiple subplots with Girl. Number one, she has trouble “reading…books.” Her words. But she’s also in honors classes. So she’s actually dumb? She’s acting dumb? She wants to get close to Chris? She’s a gold digger? It never becomes clear. But there is one thing that’s very clear.
Girl states she doesn’t read. Multiple times. In different ways. But maybe they can make tutoring fun! How? Chris can tell her about the books while she swims in his pool.
And now, the Pandora’s Box of swimming has been opened. From here on out, Girl will never stop talking about swimming. She is very concerned about the pool going to waste. Because you can waste a pool?
This conversation about swimming makes Chris very uncomfortable, so he grabs Girl’s summer reading list and runs away. He doesn’t stop at their study table to take a look at the reading list. Oh no. He runs and hides in his room, leaving Girl alone on the patio.
Wait a second. Isn’t Chris’s room upstairs? Oh God, how did he GET there? C’mon, movie! Either show all the stairs or none of the stairs!
Now it’s time for the scene you’ve all been waiting for. The “Phil cleans off the table” scene. Oh, it’s going to be so good! Action. Suspense. Drama. Comedy. This is will have it all.
So Phil heads to the table and…oh no! A distracting meow! Stay on target, Phil! The table! The table! Yes, good. Spray it a bit. That’s how you clean a table. Get in there! What is that, lemon scent? Nice choice. A real clean smell.
No! Don’t go over to the cat! Table, Phil! Table! How is it going to get clean? You don’t want to embarrass your son in front of whats-her-name, do you? Tina or something. I don’t remember. He only said her name twice and it was in scenes where she wasn’t present. It’s probably not important.
Dammit! Phil quit cleaning. Duffy, the talking cat, ruined everything. Sorry, everyone. The table is a lost cause. We’ll have to travel to where this scene takes us.
Phil starts talking to a talking cat, and I know what you’re thinking. “Well, it’s a talking cat. It’s going to talk back.” WRONG! Obviously YOU aren’t the writer of Death Racers starring the Insane Clown Posse. Or, maybe you are. Hello if you’re reading this, Andrew Helm. Sorry for all the sentence fragments. I’m writing on a blog.
Anywho, Duffy isn’t about to start talking because…we don’t know yet. Sure, we hear Duffy’s inner monologue. And, sure, he’s responding to Phil’s conversation with his inner monologue. But Phil can’t hear him.
Duffy silently argues with Phil over the proper pronunciation of “Duffy,” each of them saying it correctly each time. Even if Phil could hear Duffy, it would be a pointless argument because there is nothing to argue about because they’re both saying it correctly.
I have a feeling that most of the cat’s inner monologue was improvised. And improvised poorly. They stuck Eric Roberts in a booth with a monitor, microphone, and nerve toxin and told him to comment on things as if he were the cat. “Who told you to stop scratching?” “I should probably follow him (cat doesn’t move), but…there’s nothing better than a cat nap.”
Oh, by the way. Fun fact. Duffy doesn’t remember his first owner. Because he is a cat and he will eat your face after you die. That’s how much owners mean to cats.
And now, the scene is over. With no new information gained, no table cleaned, and no talking cat. A Talking Cat!?!, ladies and gentlemen.
Your movie is about A Talking Cat!?! How about you find a trainable cat! Or, failing that, a cat that will drink milk without throwing…what…tuna in there? Clay? What is that?
Fine. You have to use a laser pointer to corral the cat. The editor should have taken out the shots where the laser pointer is visible.
But the script calls for a cat to drink milk, I guess. And if there is no milk, the director walks. It’d be the end of the world if it was eating tuna from a bowl. It has to be milk!
Get another cat! Any cat would better. You picked the worst cat! Why did you pick this cat?
It should be pointed out that the talking cat in A Talking Cat!?! hasn’t talked yet. We’ve heard its thoughts about beeping machines, yes. It sniffed some shoes, sure. But its mouth hasn’t opened to speak yet. There’s a reason for that, which we’ll get to when the talking actually happens.
Until then, we are treated to the voice of Eric Roberts at it floats blissfully over beautiful shots of nature, like this one.
Oh, sorry. That was a sewer culvert. Ummm, well. There are some waterfalls and palm trees in the movie too. But also, a sewer culvert.
As we gaze at the beauty of the culvert, Duffy (the talking cat) explains that he is a “human whisperer” and it’s his job to bring people together at just the right time.
Why? How? Shush. You and your stupid questions. I bet you’re that kind of person who was disappointed by the end of Lost.
Me too.
Let me lay out our playing pieces so far. We have a father and son who hate each other/run a murder hotel. We have another terrible family filled with horrible people. And we have a cat that is going to bring all this hate and spite together under one roof.
Maybe this is a kids movie after all.
A Talking Cat!?!, a movie about a talking cat, opens with the voice of Eric Roberts. Golden Globe and Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts. Brother of Julia Roberts Eric Roberts. You see, Eric Roberts is the voice of our titular talking cat.
The first thing you’ll notice about A Talking Cat!?! is the sound quality. Or, rather, the lack of sound quality. Eric Roberts sounds like he has been awake for three days straight and is recording his voice over into a tin can in an echoey cave with only one sleeping bear to use as sound dampening.
I wouldn’t say Eric Roberts phoned in his voice work. It would be more appropriate to say he mumbled it into a quarter full bottle of gin while someone struggled to get him into his pajamas.
Did I mention A Talking Cat!?! is a family film?
What are the audience’s eyes treated to during this voice-over catastrophe? Shots of nature and a cat walking and rolling around in it.
I know what you’re thinking. “Aric (that’s me), I shut my eyes for a few seconds and didn’t see all the nature and all of the cat walking around in nature.” DON’T WORRY! You will see the same shots used over and over throughout the film. Why are you worried about that, anyway?
And now, the content of the voice-over. Eric Roberts is our Puck. The talking cat is a mischievous nymph that leads us by the hand through our story. And what a story!
You see, aside from being our Puckish narrator, the talking cat has the attitude of a reincarnated Andy Rooney. He (or she, I guess) complains about technology and how we’re always looking at our “beeping machines.”
So A Talking Cat!?! is going to be a story about becoming less reliant on technology? NO! I don’t even know what this movie is about and I’ve watched it. We’ll get into that later. But for now, a drunken cat is wandering through the woods while complaining directly to the audience about technology until the opening credits roll.