Special Event: Trojan War

Before we begin, I just want to point out that Trojan War was Will's first foray into the movie business, in September 1997, just before the fifth season of Boy Meets World began to air. His second was a made-for-tv Disney movie called "My Date with the President's Daughter" in 1998, and that one I definitely watched as a kid. I don't remember hating it, but it's probably pretty bad. And for some disgusting, inexplicable twist of cruel fate, I can vividly remember the song they wrote to advertise that movie...

♫ My date! With the President's daaaughter
♫ My date! With the President's daaaugther ohhh yeahh~

The whole movie is on Youtube, and you can hear the song at 7:29 in part 9 of 9. The next two lines in the song are "my date with her, so good, so young" which... I don't think I'm very comfortable with... Here's the link. I know you want it, it's okay to look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um0iVIb8LKU&t=7m29s

The actress playing the President's daughter, Elisabeth Harnois, is exceptionally good looking though. You know who else she played? Missy Robinson in The Last Temptation of Cory, SEASON 3 EPISODE 9.

FULL FUCKIN CIRCLE, BABY. She may very well be the only woman alive who has smooched both Ben Savage and Will Friedle. Well played.

All of what I just wrote happened live. I went to Wikipedia to get the poster for Trojan War, and then all of that unfolded, just as you read it. I can't tell you how cool it is to be able to share that chain of events with people who can appreciate it. Thank you for joining me tonight. Hello, I'm KBM.

But that's not why we're here, is it.

We're here for something far more sinister.

I'm honestly a little scared to start this. As I mentioned in the review of And Then There Was Shawn, this movie was produced for $15 million, but only played in a single movie theatre and was pulled after a week, netting exactly $309 in ticket sales. That is a cataclysmic disaster, I've never heard of such a failure before. I suppose we all have to die eventually... I've got my Sam Adams here, but I just don't think it's gonna be enough. Let's get started then.

Oh good I got the torrent with the dual audio, so I can switch over to the fucking Hindi dub of Trojan War if I need to. I won't, but it's sure nice to know that I can. God, who could have possibly been involved in that project... The Hindi dub of fucking Trojan War, how does that even exist...

You're right, I'm stalling.

Will's character, Brad Kimble, is narrating the opening scene to explain how he's deeply in love with this girl, here,

Brooke Kingsley. Yes that's right, their outfits from the very first scene are the same outfits from the promo poster. So we can already see where that $15 million budget is going.

Absolutely fuckin nowhere. Maybe this whole film was just a money laundering scheme, they just needed to filter out fifteen million dollars so they threw this piece of shit together. I'm stalling again.

To no surprise, that first scene was just Brad's daydream during chemistry. The teacher brings out a jar of condoms for the students to take, since graduation is in a week and I guess that connection made sense to the writers. Like I said, money laundering scheme. Brooke's current boyfriend makes a real douche of himself, and I know I recognize this guy, could he be from Boy Meets World too? SURE ENOUGH, it's Eric Balfour, who played the jock, Tommy, that confronts Griff at the end of Pop Quiz two years before this movie. It's all coming together! The web! The pattern! The truth...

Holy fuck, I am never going to finish this writeup.

Outside, we bear witness to a true miracle.

Jason Marsden and Danny Masterson are in the same movie. The voice of Maximillian Goof is taking notes on dating from Hyde from That 70's Show. 

Read that sentence again. 

I TAKE IT ALL BACK! THIS IS AMAZING. If absolutely nothing else (which seems likely), thank you, Trojan War, for giving us this truly incredible moment.

Brad and his female friend Leah, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, join the men pictured above, who I'm going to be calling Max and Hyde since these characters' names don't matter. Leah thinks Brooke is unworthy of Brad's affection, and then Brooke herself comes up asking Brad to tutor her in biology. For perhaps the only time ever, Will Friedle is playing the "smart" guy. Brad agrees, and then everybody makes some terrible jokes.

At home, (can I write a post without saying that?) Brad is entrusted with his father's Jaguar for the night, and since we've all seen at least one movie in our lives, we know what's going to happen to that car. Leah comes over to help Brad prepare for his big tutoring session, and it's abundantly clear that she has romantic feelings for him (the childhood best friend trope). He's oblivious, though, which is just the most creative male-female dynamic I have ever seen.

Later, Brooke snubs her boyfriend in favor of being tutored, which proceeds exactly how you would expect.

Brooke is played by Marley Shelton, who has had a lot of work since this movie but nothing amazing. She was on an episode of Mad Men though, which seems to be a recurring theme.

Will Friedle --> Marley Shelton --> Mad Men
Rider Strong --> Larisa Oleynik --> Mad Men
Ben Savage --> Linda Cardellini --> Mad Men
And that Arthur guy from Stormy Weather (3x16) is on Mad Men as well.
You can't make this stuff up, folks. But then, maybe I'm the only one who cares.

(Beginning beer number 2, the Budweiser Black Crown. I've got a thing for amber lager right now)

I just put on the Hindi dub for a little bit, it actually sounds pretty professional. I'm sorry, I can't let that go, it's too funny.

Brooke gets a call from her douchey boyfriend who wants her to join him at a party. He gives her the whole "you're pretty why do you need to study" thing, which upsets her. Brooke actually seems like a sympathetic character at this point. I'll be honest, this movie is not even that bad yet. Every joke is a flop and JLH hasn't quite learned how to act yet, but the actors are great and the dialogue (except the jokes) is good too. This could be a lot worse.

Anyway, Brooke and Brad start to get intimate, but our boy doesn't have a condom (take notes, Prom-ises Prom-ises) so he runs out to get one. I'm assuming this is the part where the movie becomes insufferable, what I like to refer to as "antics".

What the hell is on her ceiling?

The next scene is Brad trying to find and then trying to buy condoms at some supermarket and I actually laughed at a joke, but mostly because Will's delivery is so perfect. He left his wallet in his car though, and we see somebody stealing his (dad's) car just as he exits. So he has no car and no money to buy the condoms. Honestly I would just steal the condoms at this point. Brad files a police report, and calls Leah to pick him up (since he doesn't remember Brooke's phone number). He says he'll meet her half way and hops on a bus, the driver of which is Brian from The Breakfast Club.

He is also crazy.

Brad doesn't have money for the fare, so Brian from The Breakfast Club essentially kidnaps him and starts road-rage-ing around town. This gag quickly wears out any slight bit of humor it may have had (thanks to the comedic chops of two skilled actors) and eventually Brad (I almost write "Eric" every single time) gets dropped off in the middle of shadyscaryville. He wanders into a predominantly Hispanic bar and ends up dancing with an older woman who thinks he looks like Hasselhoff on Baywatch. I swear, every show and movie in the 90's was required by law to reference Baywatch at least once. Boy Meets World sure as hell followed that law.

Danny Trejo is in this scene, by the way.

This cast is honestly unbelievable.

There was apparently a cash prize for... dancing... really well..? So now Brad's up 100 bucks, but we're only 30 minutes in, so what's gonna happen? Is he gonna drop it down a storm drain? Get mugged? I'll be surprised if it's neither of those.

(Beer number 3. And some leftover pizza.)

Fearing for his life, Brad breaks out of the bathroom window and runs away, into a shadyscary alleyway. A Jag just like his father's drives up and the thugs inside the car decide to take Brad on their thuggy adventures. It's pretty fucking stupid. Brad and the thugs start to bond when he compliments the graffiti they did at his high school. But when the thugs learn that their graffiti got cleaned up by the janitor, they decide to take action.

Let's be honest, Harley, Frankie, and Joey could totally take these guys.

These guys take Brad to his high school and do some more tagging and then ditch him. Don't worry it's all very well explained. Brad breaks into the school to get a condom from that jar his chem teacher put out earlier,so he's up a hundred bucks and now a condom. Pretty successful night so far. Until the janitor attacks him with a firehose.

I'm not shirking you on the details here, that's what happened. Somehow the janitor thinks that completely destroying the school is worth catching this intruder. Who does he think is going to have to clean this up? Next the janitor attacks Brad with a mop, but Brad is able to defeat him using a metal bucket. Yeah you read that right. It may sound exciting, and I would make a gif if it were actually exciting, but it it's not, I promise.

It cuts to Brad walking down the street where he is quickly found by some people from the bar (not including Danny Trejo, unfortunately). He runs away and manages to find Leah in her car, who somehow hasn't reached their meeting point yet. She drives him back to Brooke's, and she's really not happy about it.

Brooke isn't answering her door, I think there's loud music playing? It's unclear if it's just movie-background-music or if it's coming from inside. Either way, Brad decides to climb a tree to get to her window on the second floor. Alright, I'm gonna try to explain this the best that I can. Brad is an idiot, so he decides to hold the condom with his teeth as he's climbing, rather than keep it in his pocket, and then he sneezes the condom out of his mouth and out into the street where it falls down a storm drain.

Well I was half right about the storm drain. Fuck you, for a wild guess that is close enough, dammit. Meanwhile the janitor is telling the police about the incident from earlier.

Metal bucket? Surprisingly effective. This is the same cop that filed the police report with Brad earlier, so that's probably relevant. And the graffiti in the background is the thugs made just now. Brad added the nipples himself, and it kind of looks like Brooke, which might be important later. ...I'm using "important" in a very relative sense.

Through some mechanism that we do not observe, Brad falls through a window into Brooke's house, where he finds a note explaining that she went to that party her boyfriend wanted her to go to. Makes sense. The cops show up in response to the break-in, in perhaps the fastest response time ever, so Brad decides to run away. Once again, the same cop is on the scene.

God, this is the epitome of antics, how is there another half hour of this shit? I'm so done..

(Beer number 4, and a third slice of pizza.)

Brad steals a golf cart from a country club (where his parents happen to be) and drives it into a dumpset, you know, normal shit. And it cuts to Leah with Max and Hyde, getting ready to go to that same party that I've mentioned a couple times already.

Alright, yeah, I'm getting tipsy. I am such a lightweight.

I need to pee.

Max and Hyde are seriously the best thing about this movie. If I ever become stupid rich, I'm going to produce a buddy comedy with Marsden and Masterson.

Do I seriously have the hiccups?! Am I a fucking cartoon character?! Jesus Christ... Okay, anyway, a homeless guy that we saw earlier but I didn't mention it finds Eric in the dumpster, and sells him some new clothes... Somehow... I don't... Guys, come on, gimme a break here. Eric pays for his new clothes with that $100 he won earlier. Brian from The Breakfast Club pulls up in his bus again, and this time Brad's got the money for a ride. Brad cusses him out for that shit he pulled earlier, and it's refreshingly funny to hear Will Friedle using profanity. Profanity is funny, at least, I think I so, that's why I use it, so this is a rare treat.

Brad arrives at that party, thanks to the bus driver, but then he remembers that he still doesn't have a condom. So he tries to buy some from literally Kathy Griffin at a nearby convenience store.

This cast. Seriously.

He doesn't have enough money left over from buying his new clothes though. Fortunately for him, the same thugs he met earlier show up to rob the store, and his old pals get him the condoms. They're really just philanthropists, at heart, honestly. Of course, it's not that simple, since the same cop we've seen the entire movie is once again able to pull off the world's fastest response time. The thugs pretend to take Brad hostage, and he plays along, so the police let them make their escape. The thugs want to go to "the party", which I guess Brad mentioned earlier, I honestly don't remember, so that's where they're headed now, followed by like fifty police cars and a helicopter.

Back at the party, Leah decides to leave. I have no idea why she even decided to go in the first place, but Max and Hyde are staying so they can try to get laid.

Please leave a comment if you are as moved by this as I am. This is the kind of shit you dream about... Marsden and Masterson... it's too perfect.

The car chase proceeds right past the party house, and a fucking sniper shoots out one of the thugs' tires. It fades in at the police station where Eric is doing a montage of recounting his experiences that night, and hey, it's pretty funny, I guess. Since he is, in fact, innocent in all this business, The Cop gives him a phone call and a condom. 

Okay, first of all, it's night time, and second,

WHAAAAAAAAAATTTTT?!!??!?

WHAAAAAAAAAAAA

Wow, okay, well, that happened. I guess uh, *cough* I guess we just have to live with that, fuckin, Horatio Caine thing.

Brad uses his phone call to call Leah, I guess she made it home already? Otherwise Brad would have been fucked. Whatever. Back at the party, Brooke's douchey boyfriend swears revenge on Brad, while Max and Hyde make another attempt at getting laid. 

I seriously can't get enough of this. They are an amazing team. Their jokes aren't even particularly funny, there's just so much emotion on my part, seeing these two together.

Leah drops Brad back at the party, and she's about to leave, but some fuckin monster truck has blocked her in, so it looks like she's staying. The Hispanics from the bar have somehow found their way to the party, and now the woman Brad danced with earlier thinks that Max and Hyde look like "Chandler and Ross from friends" (they don't) so I imagine this threesome happened some point.

The guy on the left is her brother, by the way. I uh.. I don't know why he's here.

Brad finds Brooke at the party, and she takes him upstairs to make THE MAGIC happen, at which point we learn that she's really only interested in a one night stand, and that she intends to keep dating her douchey boyfriend. I don't know, she was a genuinely sympathetic character earlier, I think we were supposed to like her, and now we're supposed to immediately abandon it. But I guess that's the same way Brad is feeling, so we're sort of in his shoes, but I might be giving the writers way too much credit.

Either way, Brad backs out and explains that he wants his first time to be with someone "who's like his best friend". It's literally the worst scene you've ever seen in your life, but I've come this far and I'm four beers in, so let's power on through:

It just plays a bunch of clips of JLH that we've seen throughout the movie, and then Brad bails back downstairs, looking for Leah, but instead he finds Brooke's douchey boyfriend, who's still out for blood.

I'm not gonna flair this one up, I'm just gonna call it like I see it. Brad is about to get his face punched in by Douchey Boyfriend, when he spies a dog outside the front door. This dog chased Brad earlier in the movie when he ran from the police at Brooke's place. Now the dog runs in and starts chewing on Douchey Boyfriend's crotch. Just... chewin away.

You're right, it's not funny, it's fucking stupid and it makes me angry. I don't really understand how this movie was written. Some of the dialogue is really witty, and there are some genuinely funny moments, and then other times, like this, it's just HAHA HIS DICK HURTS. I'm very confused about the writing process for this movie. Like, one of out of four guys in the writing room was actually funny. Maybe the funny parts were just due to Will exerting his influence. We'll never know.

That guy in the picture was also in Six Feet Under, if you've seen that. It's a good show.

Brad finds Leah outside and they kiss. I think it's supposed to mirror that first scene, the dream sequence, but I sure as hell ain't goin back to check. They kiss some more and then the credits roll.

After the credits, Brad's parents see what's become of their Jaguar as a tow truck brings it back.

So let's pull out the Shitty 90's Coming-Of-Age Movie Checklist.

Sexy blonde the protagonist never actually gets with? Checky check.
Humble side character that the protag does end up with? Super check
Slapstick and/or guys getting hit in the balls? Very check
Protag destroys his dad's car? Checkaroo
Likeable sidekick characters that don't matter? You know that's a check.
Entire movie could have been solved with cell phones? ChuchuchuchuchuCHECK.

I could go on, but it's totally by the numbers, no risks taken whatsoever. That being said, it's absolutely not the worst movie I've ever seen. Look at the fucking cast again. Friedle, JLH, Masterson, Marsden, DANNY TREJO, Kathy Griffin, Brian from The Breakfast Club, I mean how did this even happen? If you had read that cast to me, I would have watched this in a heartbeat. They all ended up really successful, but somehow they all got together and made this stupid ass movie.

Is it bad? Yeah, it's bad. Obviously it's bad. But it could have been so much worse. Honestly, if you're anything like me, I think you should actually try to get your hands on this movie, just because it's always a treat to watch Will Friedle, and Marsden/Masterson are awesome together. Anyone else on the earth, though, stay as far away from this movie as they can. You're supposed to get cheap thrills from the "aww he was so close!" moments that litter the entire script, but since none of us are thirteen, it doesn't land at all.

I don't know what to say. Obviously it's a piece of shit, but for a piece of shit it's not that bad. If they had done any real advertising for this movie, they absolutely could have made more money. I mean, it's not Adam Sandler bad, not even close. And it's definitely better than My Date With The President's Daughter.

How the hell do you end something like this? Thanks for reading? I'm sorry I did this to you? I hope you enjoyed some part of this?




...Forgive me?

When was the last time I started drinking this early... I'm a victim, you see! A VICTIM!

One more time, MASTERSON AND MARSDEN! WOOOOOOOO