I'll Point the Finger at the Writers
This weekend's review: Zotz!
I’m always a bit curious about movies that have exclamation points in their titles, generally wondering why the crew felt compelled to add punctuation to the title and if it’ll ultimately make sense that they did so. In the case of Zotz!, it also had the draw of being a comedy, and I was hoping for wacky shenanigans. In the end, while I do think the use of the exclamation point was justified, I felt there was a distinct lack of shenanigans.
The hero of the story is Professor Jonathan Jones (Tom Poston), an eccentric professor of ancient languages. One day, Jones’ niece Cynthia (Zeme North) receives a gift from her boyfriend, an archeologist; an ancient coin he found during his expedition. Noticing there’s writing on it, Jones translates it, and due to a series of coincidences, calls on the god Zotz and gains magical powers for as long as he has the coin in his possession. When he points his finger at something, it doubles over in pain; when he says the word “Zotz!” the thing he’s looking at starts moving in slow motion until he looks away; and when he does both together, he causes whatever he’s pointing at to explode. His attempts to show this power off to the staff don’t go as planned, so he goes to the Pentagon in the hope of weaponizing himself. This also doesn’t meet with success, though it does draw attention from a different branch of government. Or rather, a different government that was kind of important in the 1960’s…
While the movie has a lot of potential for humor, I feel like both the script and the filmmakers made all the wrong choices. To begin with, they set up expectations for the power of Zotz that they fail to deliver on. The movie opens with a cute little moment where we see the Columbia logo (the woman holding the torch) and the director sitting in his chair next to her. Then he points his finger at her and says “Zotz!”, at which point the woman comes to life and asks “Zotz? What’s that?” Then you get the opening credits, which are full of cartoony drawings featuring animals doing human things and which change whenever a finger appears on the screen. The natural assumption, therefore, is that the magic powers will include things like bringing inanimate objects to life. It gets even more complicated at the moment when Jones activates the powers of the coin; just as he finishes reading out the inscription on it, lightning flashes and rain starts coming down. So he goes to close up all the windows of the house and finds a naked woman (Julia Meade) outside. Again, this feels like a setup where Jones accidentally brought Zotz to life, and the rest of the movie is going to involve him trying to control a god. But instead, the woman turns out to be a new professor, Virginia Fenster, and she got struck by lightning that did no damage whatsoever except ripping her clothes off. It serves no purpose except to give Jones and Fenster a meet-cute and show more of how Jones is socially awkward-other than one later scene where they allude to it later, it never comes up again. It feels like a missed opportunity, made doubly so when the powers of Zotz turn out to be much more minor than the opening credits made it seem. Those opening bits are a lot of fun, but I think they needed to be part of a different movie to avoid creating expectations.
Another problem is that the humor and the plot both rely too much on a combination of Admiral Plot Device and the Idiot Plot. Specifically, Jones is dumb only when the situation calls for it. For example, he learns very quickly that he has to have the coin on his person in order to use his powers, and makes plans to show his powers to the rest of the faculty at a big dinner party. While he’s dressing for it, Cynthia comes in and takes the coin (it is hers, after all) to wear on her bracelet while she goes out on a date. This of course leads to Jones making a fool of himself at the party, which is not only painful for those of us who hate cringe comedy and people getting humiliated, but really shouldn’t have happened. I’m pretty sure almost all of us make sure we have our essential items (keys, phone, wallet, etc.) on us when we’re going somewhere, and therefore you’d think Jones would have double and triple checked that he had the coin with him before he left the house. I’d make an exception if he fit the “absent minded professor” trope, but he doesn’t, and thus the scenario feels contrived. Similarly, he has trouble convincing anyone in the Pentagon to take him seriously, although they keep forwarding him up the chain of command when he points his finger at them (always accidentally). So when he’s finally in front of the general and gets a chance to try to prove what he’s capable of, does he point his finger at the general, or slow down the golf ball we’ve seen the general playing with, or make the golf ball explode? No, he points his finger at an airplane out the window, and doesn’t check to see if the general is watching (he isn’t). I’m sure we’re supposed to ascribe this to Jones being awkward and not picking up on social cues, but surely there was some way to make the plot progress the way the writers wanted without making it feel like Jones is overlooking the obvious. We want to be amused, not annoyed.
There are other, minor annoyances as well. The inscription on the coin seemed to suggest that these powers only worked on living things, but that quickly gets contradicted. There seems to be a subplot developing about Cynthia dating other men while her archaeologist boyfriend is out of town, but other than the date where she’s wearing the coin, nothing ever comes of it. After spending most of the movie being a health nut and being opposed to things like alcohol, Jones gets drunk, but this doesn’t lead to anything except for him making a few snide comments at dinner. A sequence involving the slow-mo powers goes on far too long, made worse by the fact that it happens during the climax. And the movie ends on a weirdly patriotic note. Sure, the location of the ending was set up earlier in the movie and I don’t mind patriotism, but it didn’t feel like it belonged in this particular movie. Then again, the movie was a bit all over the place as it was, so I suppose in that sense it wasn’t too out of the ordinary.
While I don’t think I’d recommend this movie, I’ll also admit it’s not as bad as my review probably makes it seem. It’s got a lighthearted tone, the acting is decent, and some of the elements are fun when the movie is avoiding the pitfalls I described. The problem is, the pitfalls outweigh the positives, and thus make it memorable for the wrong reasons. Better to leave this one alone and look for other movies that feature unexpected powers. There seem to be a pretty large number of them, after all.
CAT ALERT: Not only does a cat named Hercules make an appearance in one scene (where he is unfortunately manhandled and put in an undignified position), but the opening credits feature a bunch of little cartoon sketches, two of which involve cats. Of course, one of them involves a mouse firing a tank shell at a cat, which doesn’t even come close to happening in the movie and could therefore count as false advertising. Though given my love of cats, I’m fine with it being false in this case.
I’m always a bit curious about movies that have exclamation points in their titles, generally wondering why the crew felt compelled to add punctuation to the title and if it’ll ultimately make sense that they did so. In the case of Zotz!, it also had the draw of being a comedy, and I was hoping for wacky shenanigans. In the end, while I do think the use of the exclamation point was justified, I felt there was a distinct lack of shenanigans.
The hero of the story is Professor Jonathan Jones (Tom Poston), an eccentric professor of ancient languages. One day, Jones’ niece Cynthia (Zeme North) receives a gift from her boyfriend, an archeologist; an ancient coin he found during his expedition. Noticing there’s writing on it, Jones translates it, and due to a series of coincidences, calls on the god Zotz and gains magical powers for as long as he has the coin in his possession. When he points his finger at something, it doubles over in pain; when he says the word “Zotz!” the thing he’s looking at starts moving in slow motion until he looks away; and when he does both together, he causes whatever he’s pointing at to explode. His attempts to show this power off to the staff don’t go as planned, so he goes to the Pentagon in the hope of weaponizing himself. This also doesn’t meet with success, though it does draw attention from a different branch of government. Or rather, a different government that was kind of important in the 1960’s…
While the movie has a lot of potential for humor, I feel like both the script and the filmmakers made all the wrong choices. To begin with, they set up expectations for the power of Zotz that they fail to deliver on. The movie opens with a cute little moment where we see the Columbia logo (the woman holding the torch) and the director sitting in his chair next to her. Then he points his finger at her and says “Zotz!”, at which point the woman comes to life and asks “Zotz? What’s that?” Then you get the opening credits, which are full of cartoony drawings featuring animals doing human things and which change whenever a finger appears on the screen. The natural assumption, therefore, is that the magic powers will include things like bringing inanimate objects to life. It gets even more complicated at the moment when Jones activates the powers of the coin; just as he finishes reading out the inscription on it, lightning flashes and rain starts coming down. So he goes to close up all the windows of the house and finds a naked woman (Julia Meade) outside. Again, this feels like a setup where Jones accidentally brought Zotz to life, and the rest of the movie is going to involve him trying to control a god. But instead, the woman turns out to be a new professor, Virginia Fenster, and she got struck by lightning that did no damage whatsoever except ripping her clothes off. It serves no purpose except to give Jones and Fenster a meet-cute and show more of how Jones is socially awkward-other than one later scene where they allude to it later, it never comes up again. It feels like a missed opportunity, made doubly so when the powers of Zotz turn out to be much more minor than the opening credits made it seem. Those opening bits are a lot of fun, but I think they needed to be part of a different movie to avoid creating expectations.
Another problem is that the humor and the plot both rely too much on a combination of Admiral Plot Device and the Idiot Plot. Specifically, Jones is dumb only when the situation calls for it. For example, he learns very quickly that he has to have the coin on his person in order to use his powers, and makes plans to show his powers to the rest of the faculty at a big dinner party. While he’s dressing for it, Cynthia comes in and takes the coin (it is hers, after all) to wear on her bracelet while she goes out on a date. This of course leads to Jones making a fool of himself at the party, which is not only painful for those of us who hate cringe comedy and people getting humiliated, but really shouldn’t have happened. I’m pretty sure almost all of us make sure we have our essential items (keys, phone, wallet, etc.) on us when we’re going somewhere, and therefore you’d think Jones would have double and triple checked that he had the coin with him before he left the house. I’d make an exception if he fit the “absent minded professor” trope, but he doesn’t, and thus the scenario feels contrived. Similarly, he has trouble convincing anyone in the Pentagon to take him seriously, although they keep forwarding him up the chain of command when he points his finger at them (always accidentally). So when he’s finally in front of the general and gets a chance to try to prove what he’s capable of, does he point his finger at the general, or slow down the golf ball we’ve seen the general playing with, or make the golf ball explode? No, he points his finger at an airplane out the window, and doesn’t check to see if the general is watching (he isn’t). I’m sure we’re supposed to ascribe this to Jones being awkward and not picking up on social cues, but surely there was some way to make the plot progress the way the writers wanted without making it feel like Jones is overlooking the obvious. We want to be amused, not annoyed.
There are other, minor annoyances as well. The inscription on the coin seemed to suggest that these powers only worked on living things, but that quickly gets contradicted. There seems to be a subplot developing about Cynthia dating other men while her archaeologist boyfriend is out of town, but other than the date where she’s wearing the coin, nothing ever comes of it. After spending most of the movie being a health nut and being opposed to things like alcohol, Jones gets drunk, but this doesn’t lead to anything except for him making a few snide comments at dinner. A sequence involving the slow-mo powers goes on far too long, made worse by the fact that it happens during the climax. And the movie ends on a weirdly patriotic note. Sure, the location of the ending was set up earlier in the movie and I don’t mind patriotism, but it didn’t feel like it belonged in this particular movie. Then again, the movie was a bit all over the place as it was, so I suppose in that sense it wasn’t too out of the ordinary.
While I don’t think I’d recommend this movie, I’ll also admit it’s not as bad as my review probably makes it seem. It’s got a lighthearted tone, the acting is decent, and some of the elements are fun when the movie is avoiding the pitfalls I described. The problem is, the pitfalls outweigh the positives, and thus make it memorable for the wrong reasons. Better to leave this one alone and look for other movies that feature unexpected powers. There seem to be a pretty large number of them, after all.
CAT ALERT: Not only does a cat named Hercules make an appearance in one scene (where he is unfortunately manhandled and put in an undignified position), but the opening credits feature a bunch of little cartoon sketches, two of which involve cats. Of course, one of them involves a mouse firing a tank shell at a cat, which doesn’t even come close to happening in the movie and could therefore count as false advertising. Though given my love of cats, I’m fine with it being false in this case.