Look Who's Talking
1989
Amy Heckerling
Close your eyes. Picture it. You are here. It's the biggest night of the year for the film industry. The lights are dimmed. A hush spreads over the crowd. The curtain slowly rises. Open your eyes. Smile. It's time. It's time for the Fourth Annual Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.
By the end of the night, all your dreams will come true. Only the best of the best are awarded here, in this sacred space. That means that this year's top prize winner for Favorite Movie is certainly the most worthy of the award. Driving Miss Daisy? Hell no! Go fuck yourself. Miss Daisy's been slimed. Nah, we're talking about Look Who's Talking. It's the greatest film of the year. The kids have spoken. As they say: out of the mouth of babes.
Or, rather, in this case, out of the mouth of baby, singular. That baby voiced by grown adult man Bruce Willis.
Dave Coulier is our host tonight. You oughta know him as the Full House guy. He's on stage, greeting everyone, telling them to get ready for a fun night. He's got his finger resting on the Slime Button, and I gotta say, that Dave Coulier has some twitchy fingers.
You are Kirstie Alley. You just hopped onto one of the most popular sitcoms in television history. You're an everyday woman. You're a heartthrob. You're making the transition to romantic comedy leading lady with panache. In 32 years you're going to die a laughingstock, defeated by the potent combination of vaccines and the woke mob. But that's in the distant future. Tonight, you're getting defeated by Lea Thompson for her role in Back to the Future II. It's all good. You're starring in Look Who's Talking. You know you did a great job. You know this film is worthy of accolades. You see award presenter Brook Theiss (star of the great 1988 film A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) slowly open the envelope. She announces the winner. Look Who's Talking. You jump out of your seat. You hug director Amy Heckerling. You start to walk toward the stage. You get to the podium, and then: you are slimed.
Vaccines don't work for slime.
Somewhere in the audience, John Travolta is smiling. This is a big comeback for him. The 1980s were rough for our boy. Not much to speak of in terms of box office hits. The one with the talking baby, though? Mega-hit. Almost 300 mil brought in against a 7.5-mil budget? Aces. We're back, baby. And the cherry on top is being here, in the bright lights, the fame and superstardom at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. So what if Michael J. Fox won for Favorite Actor and he, John, wasn't even nominated? Better to stay seated, give the Scientologists less reason to be upset. The Scientologists don't believe in sliming. Oh, but do you think the kids care about that? No, the kids lust for slime. They need to see the biggest stars slimed. A debt needs to be paid in full. The cameras pan from Alley, who is slimed, into the audience, and they find Travolta, sitting at a table in the back, legs crossed, smirking and unaware. Dave Coulier flips the switch. Slime, oh glorious slime, pours down on John Travolta for what seems like hours. If you think this is torture, though, you just wait till tonight, back at Scientology HQ. The waterboarding punishment there is going to make this sliming feel like a pleasant dip in a warm bath. You don't let yourself get slimed. Ever. L. Ron Hubbard would never allow it.
You can't see Bruce Willis, but he's providing childlike commentary anyway. Something like, "Ooh, daddy just got slimed, that looks like it hurt!"
George Segal is closing his eyes and trying to pretend like he's back at the 1966 Academy Awards, when he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and he keeps his eyes shut tight for as long as he can, but he can't close his eyes forever, you know. When he opens them, all he sees is green. Because, you see, he has been slimed.
They're all slimed. Everyone from the cast and crew of the best film of 1989. Slime comes for everyone, eventually. It came for all three Favorite TV Actor nominees, Fred Savage and Johnny Depp and winner Kirk Cameron, all of them a different shade of creep, all of them—slimed. It came for Favorite Male Musician nominee Bobby Brown, who went home and slimed Whitney Houston in response. It came for Favorite Male Athlete Michael Jordan, who would chase that high six years later when he attempts to win Favorite Movie Actor as well, and acts so poorly in Space Jam that the movie is completely shut out from the Kids' Choice Awards—talk about getting fucking SLIMED. And the slime comes for all the movies from the Never Seen It list that make appearances in this vaunted list of nominees over the years. For the only other Never Seen It movie that has ever won the Blimp Trophy for Favorite Movie, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call—yes, they were slimed. For the other three movies that were nominated for the award over the years, including Ace Ventura, The Avengers, and, incredibly, preposterously, Boyz n the Hood, we can safely say that they were all slimed.
And you, too. The reader of this blog post. You will be slimed. Maybe not now, maybe not next week, or next month, or next year. Maybe you'll be on your deathbed, barely able to speak, and you'll hold your great-granddaughter's hand and you'll look up toward the heaven to ask your god to finally take you away, and at that moment of reckoning, all you'll see is slime. See it, and then smell it, and then feel it, and then taste it. They say it tastes like oatmeal. You'll have to let me know, when it happens. Because it will happen. Just like it happened to the cast and crew of this stupid fucking romantic comedy. You will be slimed. It is your punishment for reading this equally stupid blog post. The slime will collect what is owed to it. You are due for a sliming. Just you wait. Just you wait.
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: We will pick up again in the new year with Major League, and even though that 1989 film was completely shut out from this very same Kids' Choice Awards ceremony, I will resist the temptation to metaphorically slime Charlie Sheen, and will commit to writing a regular blog post about the film.
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