Once upon a time, actors could make awful, terrible movies that went straight to the $1 VHS bins at fine gas stations everywhere, and not worry that anyone besides bored suburban stoners would ever know about it. Why they made these terrible movies is not known. Maybe they looked better on paper; more likely, it had to do with how much they owed their coke dealer. The point is: They could make them, cash their checks, and go back to Oscar-grubbing by playing ugly retarded serial killers, or whatever.
But now, thanks to the miracle of the internet and the persistence of muck-rakey bloggers, these terrible movies — or at least their trailers — can now be preserved forever and shared to all. Much thanks to Videogum for digging up the trailer for Tiptoes, a movie that Gary Oldman and Kate Beckinsale probably prayed no one would ever find out about. (Matthew “Naked Stoned Bongos” McConaughey has no shame, he probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass.)
We knew about dwarves in 2003, right? It was only six years ago! So why is this movie acting like the normal reaction is to flee screaming from them, and the world is in desperate need of a PSA to let us all know that Dwarves Are People, Too? Don’t Look Now was made before I was born, no one really thinks they’re all stabby maniacs anymore. Come on!
There are many, many questions raised by this trailer: Are we really supposed to believe Beckinsale is Jewish? Why is the announcer so unbearably smug, like the movie won a dozen Oscars? What the hell is up with the way McConaughey is dancing at 1:23?
But the most puzzling question has to be: It looks like they got every dwarf in America to be in this movie, including Peter Dinklage and The Man From Another Place and a blonde woman I’m pretty sure is a porn star. SO WHY DIDN’T THEY GET ONE OF THE ACTUAL DWARVES TO PLAY THE MAIN PART??? Instead they have Gary Oldman walking around on his knees, in what is described as “The role of a lifetime”.
Well, that phrase isn’t necessarily complimentary. “The most soul-blightingly humiliating role of a lifetime!”