Cooler Than Homework #010 – Genius & Leading Double Lives

Nicole Sweeney 0:18
Hello and welcome to Cooler Than Homework, a Disney Channel Original Movie podcast. I am Nicole Sweeney and the most embarrassing thing that I have ever done to impress a crush is take up smoking. So… I win, but go ahead and introduce yourselves!

Matthew Gaydos 0:34
Yeah, mine is gonna pale in comparison. I’m Matthew Gaydos and a junior high to impress a girl I bought a book of all the guitar chords for Christina Aguilera his first album and I tried to learn to play all of them to impress her, and I failed.

Nicole Sweeney 0:50
Oh, that’s so cute though!

Marines Alvarez 0:52
Wait, you failed to learn them or you failed to impress her?

Matthew Gaydos 0:55
Actually failed to learn them, still dated her. So that worked out!

Nicole Sweeney 1:01
No, but you failed at the really important thing, which was the learning.

Marines Alvarez 1:06
My name is Marines and the most embarrassing thing I did to impress a crash was pretend for like a summer that I was into zombie films and watch a shit ton of like arthouse zombie films. Ugh, what a time.

Ceri Riley 1:21
And I’m Ceri Riley and the most embarrassing thing I’ve done to impress a crush was dye easter eggs to look like Pokemon and– this is so very specific– and then just text to the picture and be like, look what I did. In high school Ceri thought that would be like the coolest thing like, oh, I was so bored, look what I did in my free time.

Matthew Gaydos 1:48
I thought you were gonna say you dyed eggs together to like try and impress him.

Ceri Riley 1:53
Nope!

Nicole Sweeney 1:53
No.

Matthew Gaydos 1:54
No.

Ceri Riley 1:54
No, I just decorated them all very intensely in my own home.

Nicole Sweeney 1:59
You also didn’t like bring them to him. You said you sent him pictures.

Ceri Riley 2:04
Yep.

Nicole Sweeney 2:06
Well this week, we are talking about Genius. And Mari is going to tell us what happened

Marines Alvarez 2:13
In this movie a 13 year old because these are all movies about 13 year olds, a 13 year old named Charlie Boyle is a he’s a hockey lover who is also a genius. And near the beginning of the movie, he– we’re told that he’s going to college early, and he’s been admitted to a lot of schools but decides to attend a college in Wisconsin so he can work with a scientist he admires, a Dr. Krickstein. Krickstein’s area of work is gravity, I guess, and he’s trying to defy it. And that’s as good as my explanation of that is going to get: defying gravity, I think. The real selling point for Charlie is that Krickstein’s lab is located underneath the hockey rink, so it’s hella convenient for all of our plot-life. Charlie makes a bad impression on the hockey team once he gets to Northern, mostly because the hockey team is annoyed with Krickstein and how his experiments disrupt their practice. Turns out that the star hockey player is also his roommate and he’s a jerk to Charlie. Charlie complains to Dr. Krickstein about not having any friends, and Krickstein’s advice is basically that a good scientist doesn’t repeat the same experiment and expect different results. So later when Charlie meets a girl out on the rink, and he’s immediately taken with her, instead of introducing himself as Charlie, he tells this girl Claire that his name is Chaz Anthony, and he goes to the same Junior high as she does. Rolling right along with that plan, Charlie enrolls himself into the junior high and takes on this bad boy image to gain friends and impress Claire. The middle portion of this movies just a lot of Charlie trying to balance his double lives. So he’s teaching a physics class on campus, which Mike the hockey player disrupts and then he’s disrupting classes of his own at the junior high and he’s helping Krickstein defy gravity, I think. Charlie also convinces Claire to tutor him in an effort to get closer to her. The double life shit hits the fan, when Charlie science teacher arranges a field trip to Northern to meet the young genius Charlie Boyle. It’s all last minute and no one has permission slips, which is honestly the least of this movie’s worries, but I wanted to point that out anyway. Charlie hatches up a ridiculous plan to paint himself purple and pretend to have been in a lab accident so no one from the junior high will recognize him and it works, I guess. Mike makes amends with Charlie asking him to please tutor him so he has a bright future and Charlie decides to forgive him. And then it’s hockey playoffs time. The Northern team is facing off against a team that is known for cheating. I don’t know a lot about hockey, but it seems to me that slamming into people is kind of of the point?

Matthew Gaydos 4:36
Well, slamming into the ref is not the point.

Marines Alvarez 5:01
Yeah. Okay, that’s fair.

Ceri Riley 5:03
I was looking forward to Matt clarifying what hockey was real and not, so.

Matthew Gaydos 5:09
Well, you can’t slam into the ref to distract from then just a viciously attacking a guy who doesn’t have the puck. Those are most of those things are against the rules.

Marines Alvarez 5:18
Okay, so it was indeed cheating.

Matthew Gaydos 5:20
Yes.

Marines Alvarez 5:21
Okay, well, they decided to cheat back I guess. We’ll get to that. First, Charlie decides not to attend the game since half the people up there know that him as Chaz and the other half know him as Charlie. He works on his particle accelerator instead, but then get so distracted by the sounds of the hockey game. So he decides to sneak up there for look but accidentally leaves the particle accelerator on. Up at the game he spotted by his junior high friends, and the dean sees him and brings him down to the team box. And then Claire is there. She’s the coach’s daughter and Claire sees him and her dad is like, that’s not Chaz Anthony, that’s Charlie Boyle. And so Claire puts everything together and realizes that Charlie’s been fooling her this whole time. Northern is winning the game, but the particle accelerator overheats and ends up cracking the ice and disrupting the game. So everyone is mad at Charlie for being a liar and for costing them the chance to win the game and for putting coach Addison’s game on the line. Claire never wants to see Charlie again and refuses to take his calls and doesn’t accept his grand gesture when he uses the school’s PA system to apologize. Meanwhile, Charlie and Krickstein have isolated at gravitron and split it, using the split grab a time to control the movements of another object. Charlie decides to use this scientific breakthrough to help the Northern team win against the cheating team with some of that cheating I was talking about. So Charlie appeals to his junior high friends for help and they eventually give in. Charlie and his classmates get microchips on the opposing team skates and set up in the lab to control those skates with microchips on their own skates. Krickstein finds them and is upset is serious science being used this way, so Charlie gives a speech on the basis of friendship. And Krickstein is like, I don’t know about that and he leaves. Charlie and Claire use the microchip skates to control the opposing players. And then Krickstein shows up again with a chip of his own to control a third player. So he’s in on the plan, but he’s a bad skater, so he just kind of crashes into an electrical box. And that electricity is the missing link they needed to reverse something and their particle accelerator works and gravity is disrupted in the lab and they’re all floating, they all start floating. And then the players they are controlling on the ice also start floating. The Northern team wins. Coach Addison keeps his job and Charlie and Claire kiss. We end the movie with Charlie and his age appropriate friends setting up for a game of ice hockey. The Northern team shows up, thanks Charlie for what he did, and asked to join in on the game. The End.

Nicole Sweeney 8:07
So that’s that movie. Matt, where is this cast now?

Matthew Gaydos 8:11
Well, I mean, to be fair, most of this cast is pretty boring. No offense to anyone in the cast of this movie, but looking up what they’re up to now, almost everyone in this movie is just acting like a lot of DCOM actors are when you look them up. They’re just kind of in everything. They’re in lots of TV shows and TV movies. Not a lot of them are in like big things of note. So this is maybe a shorter segment than it has been in the past this week, but I feel like I pulled out the four most interesting people from the cast. Again, sorry to Equipment Manager, but you were in Jason X, and that’s about it so I didn’t go deep on who you were. So starting off with Mike the jock in this film. He is played by a man named Yannick Bisson, who I wanted to bring up mostly because like Sarah from Smart House, he’s apparently a big deal in Canada but not in America. He is Canadian. He’s from Quebec, I believe and is on the show called Murdoch Mysteries, which is a seems to have been on forever. Like it just is like a 10, 15 year old show that he is the star of. He is Murdoch. And yeah, I don’t again, we’ve had nice Canadian listeners, tweet us about these shows that apparently are Canadian staples. So please, if you’re out there watching Murdoch Mysteries, let us know. Do you know Yannick Bisson And is he like a big deal in your country?

Ceri Riley 9:43
Yeah, is it good? I I’m really into detective shows right now. So after I’m done with Elementary, should I watch Murdoch Mysteries?

Matthew Gaydos 9:50
Yeah, I picture him is like sort of like the Jared Padelecki of Canada.

Marines Alvarez 10:01
Amazing.

Nicole Sweeney 10:02
I love that.

Matthew Gaydos 10:03
Yes. If it’s true, please tell me like a percentage of truth. Like that’s 80% accurate. If it’s any less than like, 60 I don’t want to hear it.

Nicole Sweeney 10:11
I don’t want to know. I’m not interested.

Matthew Gaydos 10:13
Next up on the list is Charles Fleischer, who plays Dr. Krickstein, who I mean, really, he’s been an actor. He’s been a musician. He’s been a stand up comedian, but most famously, he is the voice of Roger Rabbit.

All 10:29
Oooh!

Matthew Gaydos 10:29
Yeah, and there’s like a few moments in this movie where you kind of if you go in knowing that you can kind of hear it, but his voice is not one to one enough with Roger Rabbit that you would necessarily pick up on that

Nicole Sweeney 10:41
But he’s also just like, been in everything. I looked him up to figure out why I went like why I recognized his face and I was like, it just seems like he’s a classic that guy from that thing. Like he’s just all over the place.

Matthew Gaydos 10:54
Yeah, he’s been in Zodiac and Back to the Future Part Two and Nightmare on Elm Street. Like he’s been on Mozart in the Jungle more recently. He was in the like the Polar Express. He’s- yeah, he’s just been around either doing voices or being that guy in a lot of things. Yeah, I was excited because I saw his name pop up in the credits. I was like it’s Roger Rabbit. So honestly, I was expecting a little bit more like wackiness from him that I did not get unfortunately.

Nicole Sweeney 11:22
Yeah, yeah, that’s if you if you expected that man to be Roger Rabbit, I understand why that would be sorely disappointing.

Matthew Gaydos 11:29
Yeah, he was more just like a man named Roger.

Marines Alvarez 11:34
Totally different things.

Matthew Gaydos 11:36
Yeah. Next up, we have I guess, arguably after Roger Rabbit, the one out of the cast who has done the best professionally and it’s Emmy Rossum, who plays Claire. People probably know her from starring in Phantom of the Opera or The Day After Tomorrow or Shameless more recently. And I yeah, she’s another one of those people who has just existed for a long time now since like being a sort of child star and then popping up in things here and there. And I know she also does music. I am less familiar with her musical side outside of watching Phantom of the Opera.

Marines Alvarez 12:09
I also had that moment where it’s like I she does music, and I was a little bit late joining the call right now, because I fell into the rabbit hole of like watching her music videos until I found the one that I specifically remember watching or seeing a lot. I didn’t know if they played it on MTV or if I was just obsessed at some point with Emmy Rossum, I have no idea, but her music is familiar to me.

Matthew Gaydos 12:35
That’s how I am with remembering from time to time that Brie Larson had a pop star career. Going back and watching those music videos and I’m like, oh, that was like a whole other time. And like, they were like, they’re in my brain, I remember the songs, but I never followed that trajectory of like, that’s the same Brie Larson.

Nicole Sweeney 12:54
Yeah, it’s a thing where it feels like a separate person in terms of the way that you have followed their career.

Matthew Gaydos 12:59
Yeah, like I did not keep tabs on Brie Larson and what she was up to in between pop star and like–

Nicole Sweeney 13:05
Captain Marvel?

Matthew Gaydos 13:06
Scott Pilgrim, I guess.

Nicole Sweeney 13:07
Oh yeah!

Matthew Gaydos 13:07
Yeah.

Nicole Sweeney 13:09
Scott Pilgrim to me feels collapse with pop star. There’s like pop star and Scott Pilgrim Brie Larson. And then there’s like a gap and then there’s like now Brie Larson

Matthew Gaydos 13:18
That– Yeah, that makes sense. Because also she is singing in Scott Pilgrim, so it’d be very easy to like, go from one to the next. But yeah, I yeah, Emmy Rossum is someone who I only know her voice singing voice because of Phantom of the Opera. But I know she can sing very well. And last, but certainly not least, we have the star of this film, Charlie slash Chaz played by Trevor Morgan, who I recognized as the kid from Jurassic Park 3, who is like lost on the island and the whole reason that movie exists is they have to go save him. But he’s also in the Sixth Sense and The Patriot and that was it like his he had a swing of like big films that he was in and then kind of wasn’t in anything big anymore. And now he is 32, he lives in Chicago. He seems to be running his own film production company making indie films. He seems to like wrestling. So what I’m saying is I think we’re destined to be best friends and he just doesn’t know it yet.

Ceri Riley 14:19
So when he listens to this podcast, reach out to Matt, your new best friend.

Matthew Gaydos 14:23
Yes.

Nicole Sweeney 14:24
After Katey Sagal sends it to him.

Ceri Riley 14:26
Yes!

Matthew Gaydos 14:27
Yeah, call up Katie. Let her know. Hey, send this over to Trevor. At the next DCOM meeting that you guys have.

Marines Alvarez 14:36
We all know you’re having them so don’t even pretend.

Matthew Gaydos 14:40
Yeah. But yeah, that is the cast of Genius, at least the most interesting ones and what they are doing now.

Nicole Sweeney 14:48
Okay, so Genius. First things first and nostalgia check. Do you remember watching this movie as a kid?

Matthew Gaydos 14:55
No.

Marines Alvarez 14:56
Yes, I definitely did. And multiple times.

Nicole Sweeney 14:59
I have no recollection of ever seeing this movie before last night.

Ceri Riley 15:03
And as usual, definitely no.

Nicole Sweeney 15:06
Okay, so this is new to three out of four of us this week. So that’s exciting. Did you guys like this movie?

Wait before anybody says anything–

Matthew Gaydos 15:16
I hated it so much!

Marines Alvarez 15:16
Stop, No wait!

Matthew Gaydos 15:19
Sorry to cut you off!

Marines Alvarez 15:20
Wait, Before anybody says anything, I mean, you already did. But listen before you guys hate on this movie, I just have to get this out there that this is the first DCOM that I watched as a child and then as an adult that I feel betrayed by. I feel betrayed by my own memory of ever liking this. I just want it to be known that while I watched this so much when I was whatever age I was, I watched it again this morning and it was not good. It was not good.

Nicole Sweeney 15:56
Yes.

Matthew Gaydos 15:56
It’s so bad in so many ways. It’s so so bad.

Nicole Sweeney 16:00
I was into it in the beginning. I was really charmed by it. I actually took a handful of notes at the beginning and then I stopped because I was just like sad and disappointed in the second half. But in the very beginning, I was into it if only because I was very charmed by this kid. Like I think the Trevor Morgan did a good job as a sort of child actor also, Emmy Rossum was already clearly very talented, like the child actors did as like a, you know, solid job, but more than that, I don’t know, like there was something charming about him in the beginning, like when his dad comes in and he’s like, Oh, do you decide to, you know, skip dinner to mope, and he’s like, I took a minute to feel sorry for people in war torn countries, but like he didn’t even know what he was doing. He’s like, still working and he just sort of off-handedly says it. I found something charming about him. I liked that his dad clearly was genuinely super supportive of him and it wasn’t like a weird, you know, pressuring manipulative situation. I’m currently in the middle of reading Everything I Never Told You. So that’s like in the back of my brain while I watched this. It’s like the dad was cool and supportive. It’s like the first half hour of this I found incredibly charming, but basically from around the time he gets to the university forward, it it falls apart.

Matthew Gaydos 17:11
I can point to the exact moment I turned on this film, like I, I know the exact line where I went, nope I’m out, I’m done! This is it’s, it’s gonna make me it’s like, it’s gonna make me cringe so hard. I’m gonna implode into a ball of second hand embarrassment, because it’s the moment when he meets Emmy Rossum when she’s ice skating, and he’s trying to be cool. And she asks him where he goes to school and he says “where do you go to school?” And she says it and he goes, “well, there’s your answer,” and he slicked back his hair. And I just, I had to like pause the movie and just take a breath because it was so cringy.

Nicole Sweeney 17:54
This one is big with secondhand embarrassment.

Marines Alvarez 17:56
For sure.

Matthew Gaydos 17:57
Yeah.

Nicole Sweeney 17:57
If second hand embarrassment is a struggle of years, there’s a lot In this movie.

Ceri Riley 18:01
I think it’s so interesting that you were on board with him in the beginning of the movie, and maybe this is very pretentious of me, but one of the first lines he ever says when he puts that little machine on his dad’s ice rink, he said, instead of saying covalent bonds, he says coh-va-lent.

Nicole Sweeney 18:16
Oh… my God, Ceri.

Ceri Riley 18:17
And I am…I cannot. I was like, this kid is delivering so much dialogue so quickly, and I know the script supervisor is just like, it’s fine. He’s doing great as a child, but I heard that and I was like, this kid is no genius!

Nicole Sweeney 18:37
Ceri! Ceri!

Ceri Riley 18:37
Everything is shattered. And then he said something about that hockey puck. He was like, I’ve got a graphite poly-meer, instead of a polymer and I was like, no! You did two science words wrong in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Nicole Sweeney 18:52
He said it correct later, though, which–

Ceri Riley 18:54
He did say it correct later, but there was just that what like those, if they filmed those first couple scenes first in the movie, he was still learning his pronunciation of these words.

Nicole Sweeney 19:04
Oh my God, Ceri. I love this. I am so delighted. I actually also wrote down polymers because again in the beginning when I was like super on board because my first thought was this is like a go to for people who don’t really know science they’re like, okay, you’re gonna like write this nerdy character. It reminded me of the ABC Family show Greek because the the sort of like lead nerdy kid and that like that’s what he goes to school for, as he’s like, really into polymers. It’s just a thing he just says all the time. It’s like never really tied to anything meaningful. It’s just like, this is the thing that you know about him: polymers.

Ceri Riley 19:45
Yes, I can complain about the science of this movie. So what is this kid into? He’s making graphite polymers. So that’s material science. He’s in a particle physics because he has a particle accelerator. Don’t get me started on the gravity thing. And this professor who like welcomes in a child and is like howdy partner. You’re my research partner now I’ve been here for 13 years. The dancing skeleton? That’s electrical engineering. What is this kid doing?

Matthew Gaydos 20:16
Ceri, I have to ask, are you mad that he turned down MIT?

Ceri Riley 20:21
No, ’cause this kid’s a chump! Wild to me like, and also just like his Harvard rejection letter fluttering down. That’s the other thing if he got into MIT if we’re going to be factual about this, he would have gotten a silver tube because that is a classic I think admission strategy before you get your letter of admittance, you get like the silver tube to celebrate and there’s like confetti and balloons and a puzzle usually. Ugh. Ugh. The accuracy of this movie. And then the yeah, the particle physics guy when he– this is the last thing I’ll say. When particle physics guy was on stage, and like talking to the children about his research or about random things, the– that moment that broke me was when I heard something about like, and if you swap out the thymine for the euracil, which is biology, he’s talking about DNA which has nothing to do with physics or inspiring these kids. And it’s just like, exasperated by this whole movie and the the very notion of a gravitron or whatever they call that fake particle, fake particle with this fake floating children.

Nicole Sweeney 21:37
I would love a commentary track with you just yelling at this movie for an hour and a half.

Ceri Riley 21:45
It riled me up so much. And then the second hand embarrassment thing to. Ugh, unwatchable.

Matthew Gaydos 21:54
I don’t know that you had said whether or not you liked it yet. I–

Ceri Riley 21:58
No! I ranked it last. It’s below Can of Worms–

Marines Alvarez 22:01
No, no! Stop Ceri.

Nicole Sweeney 22:02
Woooow. Ceri!

Ceri Riley 22:02
–because it made me mad and uncomfortable.

Nicole Sweeney 22:06
Below Can of Worms?!

Ceri Riley 22:08
It’s below those weird mean alien.

Marines Alvarez 22:11
Stop Ceri. I think you need some time to think about this.

Ceri Riley 22:17
I’m in my feelings about it and I won’t take it back.

Marines Alvarez 22:22
With some distance you’ll remember those human teeth in the alien face and everything will look a little different.

Ceri Riley 22:27
I thought about it and then I thought about those two bouncy balls as they repel like they jerked around this boy and his scientist, weird, creepy man mento and I like dislike those ball more than I dislike the human teeth.

Nicole Sweeney 22:44
Wow.

Marines Alvarez 22:44
That’s strong.

Nicole Sweeney 22:45
That’s intesnse.

Marines Alvarez 22:45
Those are fighting words. I will tell you that this has nothing to do with like the science aspect of it, but there was a little bit of like, it also brought me out of the story just his interaction with the other quote unquote college students. Especially that one guy Mike and how he was like terrorizing his class. I never had an experience like that in college. Maybe there are college students out there like that, but that felt very like juvenile, high school. And then I mean, you see him go back and do the exact same things in a junior high setting and there it fit. So for him to be pulling that from like this college class he’s teaching, I was just like, ugh, stop, please.

Nicole Sweeney 23:26
And also the the fact that this room full of, you know, whatever, like 19 year olds is like, yes, let’s bully an 11 year or 13 year old like that, like that– the fact that everyone in the room was on board with that idea is nonsense to me.

Ceri Riley 23:40
And the fact that this child is teaching a class. TA-ing I would believe if he was like assisting, but you just hand over a physics class to a child who is carrying a bunch of textbooks, who has no teaching experience, no teaching degree, has never taught a thing before! We’ve never seen him teach. He just sits there does hockey physics.

Matthew Gaydos 24:02
He also doesn’t go to class ever. We don’t see him like he doesn’t attend to this college. He’s not really helping on the research. He teaches class twice and then decides you know what I’m going to be a junior high student so he just like he’s not upholding his end of the bargain but yet they don’t kick him out of school for any reason.

Nicole Sweeney 24:18
In fact hearing you lay it out like that– so setting aside the the nonsense of them giving this teaching position to this kid in the first place, it actually sounds like a like a really exploitative scenario. He’s not taking any classes. Like the whole jam is it’s full, like all paid for or whatever, but like he is not getting anything. Like–

Matthew Gaydos 24:39
Yeah.

Nicole Sweeney 24:39
–it seems like the school has found a way to hire a professor in exchange for what? Room and board.

Matthew Gaydos 24:47
Also publicity.

Nicole Sweeney 24:49
That’s seems fucked up. Yeah!

Matthew Gaydos 24:51
This Dean, who is my favorite character in the entire movie, the dean. I love him so much. He’s definitely from a different movie. Like, I don’t feel like they gave him the rest of the script. They just give him his lines and like, go be funny. And he’s like, got it. So he is amazing. He’s like completely 100% like nofilter with everyone he’s always talking to, which is great, but he’s very into like the press and like the reception and how people are going to view his school. So I’m kind of on board with this like exploitative thing. Have we hired this little boy because it’ll be great headlines for the school, not because this little boy is actually going to get a good college education,

Nicole Sweeney 25:31
Right because he’s literally not getting an education. We are asking him to do work and we are getting publicity. Yeah, it’s super fucked up.

Matthew Gaydos 25:38
Man, we found the seedy underbelly of this film.

Marines Alvarez 25:40
Exactly! This is actually the story of this like poor little dude who’s getting exploited. And I mean, the fact that he shows up and he’s like, I’m gonna have a state of the art whatever, and he goes into a dingy basement and he’s like oh no.

Matthew Gaydos 25:53
Yeah. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Marines Alvarez 25:58
That’s the true story here.

Ceri Riley 25:59
They did give him the fanciest dorm room I’ve ever seen in any college. It’s so large. It’s spacious. They got a bedroom and a living room in it but still exploitative. I just want to complain. I’m sorry, I’m feel like a grump heading into this podcast recording.

Nicole Sweeney 26:17
I am very here for all of your nerd rage.

Matthew Gaydos 26:22
I don’t have the nerd rage for this film. I have like the filmmaker rage when it comes to this film.

Nicole Sweeney 26:27
Sure, yes.

Matthew Gaydos 26:27
So all of my issues are more so in the second half of the film with like story beats and the way they try to make things make sense in this film, but it just completely falls apart. And there’s lots of things that are sort of setup and don’t go anywhere. Like you mentioned in your plot synopsis, when he first shows up to the school, the practice is like disrupted and the lights are flickering because they’re all like Dr. Krickstein’s old experiments always, messing up our hockey and we only see that when they say that the one time, and there’s like, he never disrupts a practice ever again, even though they’re constantly working down in the lab, so I’m like, okay, he doesn’t actually seem to be that like much of a problem for you. So why is that part of the story? And then there’s things of like just even looking at the hockey scene of like, people easily could have died in that scene if you tried to think about it too hard of like, that kid could have just like fallen out of the sky face first onto the ice, died, and apparently nobody cares that cha– like characters can fly in this movie. It’s not a big deal. Because a few people notice and then just stop looking at him. And they’re like, oh, let’s let’s pay attention to the hockey game. That’s more important.

Ceri Riley 27:44
Yeah, they like finish the hockey game with three people floating in mid air.

Matthew Gaydos 27:48
Which, again, has to be against goals. This miight be like an Air Bud situation where it’s like not technically in the rules, so you’re not violating anything of like, well, they never said that people couldn’t float, but having like five players on the ice is like part of the game.

Nicole Sweeney 28:05
I also had the same reaction to Mari, which was that it was not entirely clear to me why what the other team was doing was cheating in the first place. But like it’s abundantly clear that the kids are cheating at the end like that, that feels like a no brainer like that is definitely cheating. So, like, I’m not really sure what our takeaway here is, like cheaters always prosper. Like, I just…

Matthew Gaydos 28:29
I also had a problem with the first cheating idea before he had the idea from the movie Flubber he had the other idea, which was just, hey, what if we switch jerseys? And it was like, the biggest reveal in the film at this was a genius idea. And I’m like you invented a Zamboni machine. You made a robot like robotic thing walk around a classroom and yet your genius idea to defeat the bad guys is what if you switch jerseys.

Marines Alvarez 28:59
And then they send out the like equipment manager out there just to get pummeled and we see him once again like for one other second and he’s like completely out of it just and nobody everybody’s, eh, like great idea.

Matthew Gaydos 29:14
But he like invents hockey genius things. He makes the Zamboni machine, he makes the superfast hockey puck, and he makes an extra powerful stick. Like any of those things could have been more helpful to the hockey team then hey switch jerseys.

Ceri Riley 29:25
And after all this like talk about cheating saving the day which is the real moral of the story exploit children and then cheat to save the day, they have is like weird, sentimental moment. This is the beat that felt the most off to me where he– like the professor walks into the room. It’s like “what’s you, what are you doing? This is where I draw the line because I’m about science,” and then Chaz, the boy says “you could solve all the mysteries in the world, but what about friends?” And it’s just– I started laughing because nothing to that point, I guess, they built in that he betrayed his friends and he was trying to be popular, and he was trying to figure out the scientific formula for getting friends, but that being the moral of the story, and then the professor dude coming back in on rollerblades– wild to me,

Matthew Gaydos 30:18
it’s also what makes that moment particularly weird and I think what makes this movie feel kind of off from other DCOMs is that he does not have any friends at the beginning of this, that he is sort of betraying or trying to follow in with or anything like that. He is like a lone wolf, he’s a completely on his own type of character. So we don’t see him sort of like turning his back on his dad or somebody that we’ve established an emotional connection to. We just see him meet two groups of people and pretend to be like two types of people. And so we don’t really care about why he’s doing what he’s doing. And then just makes us not respect the reasons he thinks he’s doing it.

Marines Alvarez 31:01
At the end of the day to like the lesson that like you probably shouldn’t lie to people is there but also if you want to win friends you should just be a bad person. You should be disruptive and uh slick back your hair a lot because it works. Like there’s there’s nothing to, I don’t know, contradict the notion that if you are a little shit you will gain friends in junior high. That– that is proven.

Nicole Sweeney 31:25
They try to bake in a little bit of pushback from me Rossum but even that is so fleeting as to be meaningless. Like the her push back on him being the worst is very very minimal and ultimately like she agrees to tutor him, like it’s not it doesn’t– it seems like that is where they wanted to sort of turn it on its head and say see like you’re not you can’t get the this girl that you really want by like being an asshole and like actually, you know you as you actually are would have gotten the girl but like they they didn’t really follow through with that and so yes the the final lesson was just like be a little shit this is how you’ll be popular.

Marines Alvarez 32:09
Don’t get caught.

Matthew Gaydos 32:10
I think they usually try to like hide that a little better in these DCOMs. Like they try to make it so that the guy doesn’t know the girl is actually secretly like him so he pretends to be cool because he thinks she’s the cool girl but in this it’s it’s laid out pretty early on that she is like in the Honor Society, she’s kind of a nerd, she’s really into sciencey things, so he should just immediately go “oh, wait a minute. I’m those things. Like you would like the real me. They’re like I don’t have to pretend any of this.” But it doesn’t do that. Everyone is dumb. And I don’t– I just don’t like it you guys.

Nicole Sweeney 32:48
Yep. In conclusion movie bad.

Matthew Gaydos 32:51
It’s bad.

Marines Alvarez 32:52
Emmy Rossum is great.

Ceri Riley 32:53
Yeah, Emmy Rossum is great. Does she know actually know how to skate?

Nicole Sweeney 32:57
I don’t know. I would believe that she did.

Matthew Gaydos 32:59
Yeah.

Marines Alvarez 33:00
She was definitely the one on the rollerblades when they were like doing the rollerblading stuff she was– That was definitely her.

Ceri Riley 33:06
And I know there are some scenes where she was like doing very basic figure skating. I think that was definitely her too like picking one leg– I don’t know. She’s just very beautiful and talented.

Marines Alvarez 33:15
Yes.

Matthew Gaydos 33:17
Hard agree.

Ceri Riley 33:18
So emmy Rossum is the only thing that I like about the movie. Everything else: garbage.

Marines Alvarez 33:22
Her whole little speech about seeing her mom figure skating in the heavens opening up and she’s a ballerina. Beautiful. Yeah. And then, and then the little Charlie kid spoke and I was like, you ruined it. Go away.

Matthew Gaydos 33:38
Even the moments where she’s like talking about when we find out that the hockey coach is her dad, like in that moment, I don’t know, she’s playing that moment very, very well, which matches up really great with at the end when she’s realizing Charlie’s in the box there and her dad’s just like kind of casually saying this, like, oh, yeah that’s, Charlie Boyle and just the realization on her face is one of those great acting moments regardless of like kid actor, adult actor, like you just see all of her thought process without her saying anything, which is not typically how these DCOMs are acted. Usually it’s like I have to say all of my emotions out loud so you understand how I’m feeling. And she is like too good for that sort of thing.

Ceri Riley 34:22
Yeah, Emmy Rossum was too good for this movie.

Nicole Sweeney 34:24
Yes.

Ceri Riley 34:25
In conclusion.

Nicole Sweeney 34:26
Yes.

Matthew Gaydos 34:27
Ugh, I just thought of another thing that bugged me. Again, just like those small things that they set up and don’t go anywhere. When he was having his moment of switching back and forth between purple Charlie and Chaz, when he was trying to be like the horribly burned whatever that storyline part was he– there was a moment where he first has to switch back to Chaz and he has a little bit like purple on his forehead and I was like, oh, someone’s gonna see the purple, probably Claire, and go I think you might be the other guy. But there’s no–

Nicole Sweeney 35:03
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Matthew Gaydos 35:04
–that doesn’t happen. And there’s not a moment between like him deciding to be Chaz and the reveal of him being Chazz that anyone suspects anything. Like, the doctor is in on it and he knows everything, but I wish there was more there of people starting to think more about him and asking questions that he has to like try and come up with better lies for because he’s very bad at lying, but no one calls him out enough for him to actually get caught.

Nicole Sweeney 35:34
This week’s group discussion topic is double lives in fiction. So this one clearly didn’t work for us. Are there any other examples of stories that feature double lives that maybe maybe did maybe did land a little better, or other examples that suck, you know?

Matthew Gaydos 35:54
My example of one of my favorite movies that I think I can sort of, I guess defend the double life choice and the lies a little bit more because the reasons the guy is doing it feel a little bit more genuine and sweet. And that is Mrs. Doubtfire.

Ceri Riley 36:10
I’ve never seen it.

Matthew Gaydos 36:11
Oh, interesting.

Nicole Sweeney 36:12
Oh, I mean, not surprising, but surprising.

Matthew Gaydos 36:15
Yes. Well, for the uninitiated, in the film, Robin Williams plays sort of like, not deadbeat dad necessarily, but he’s wants to be friends with his kids and he’s not good at the dad stuff. So he ends up getting divorce and so to be around his kids more, he dresses up like an old Scottish woman to become their nanny. And so he lives this double life as a Scottish old nanny for his children and then also his normal dad duties on the weekends.

Ceri Riley 36:43
Weird.

Marines Alvarez 36:43
Have you watched that movie recently, Matt?

Matthew Gaydos 36:46
Um, mmm, few years ago, maybe.

Marines Alvarez 36:48
I watch this movie all the time growing up and yes, absolutely enjoyed it. We so watch the crap out of it. I watched it the same like a couple years ago, you know as an adult, and, um it hit differently man.

Matthew Gaydos 37:02
Oh, it definitely hits differently yeah.

Marines Alvarez 37:03
I feel like I had a lot more sympathy for Robin Williams’ character like growing up and I was like really upset with Sally Field like just let him be a cool dad and then watching it back I was like oh man I see. I see, what was actually happening here.

Matthew Gaydos 37:19
Yes, no it’s much it’s much easier to be on Sally Field’s side as an adult watching that and I totally agree. I think watching it now you, you definitely see why they got divorced and see that he should have stepped up and been a better husband and dad. I think the reason for me that it works better as a double life story then genius does which I mean to be fair, it’d be hard– it’s a low bar to pass, is that you get the feeling throughout Mrs. Doubtfire that he’s doing this for, like, quote unquote, the right reasons even though he’s not going about things in the best way. He’s doing these things because he wants to spend more time with his kids. Even though the Court has said you can’t spend time with your kids. Like that’s like we say that you’re breaking the law if you do, that he decides to figure out a way to break the law and spend time with his kids. And it’s again, sweet but also yss, he is a man child who deserves to be divorced probably.

Marines Alvarez 38:16
Well, I guess the thing with like double life stories to is like how believable is it that they’re leading this life and that like nobody else notices, so with like Charlie it did hit that portion where he like walks out with like purple on his face and you’re like, honestly, no one’s gonna notice this? Whereas in Mrs. Doubtfire like I don’t think that I would have noticed that that was Robin Williams. He’s got like full prostetics on right? And so you’re like I belive you!

Matthew Gaydos 38:40
Right, very elaborate.

Marines Alvarez 38:41
Right and he’s got the– he does the voices obviously since it is super elaborate and I think that for me, you know, like growing up Superman was one of my favorite superheroes but if you like Superman at all, or really any sort of superhero double life thing, it’s the constant like how does nobody notice, but especially with Clark Kent and Superman because all that separates them is the glasses and there is no amount of ever trying to explain this in any iteration where I feel satisfied, even as a Superman fan but yeah, I love me some Clark Kent Superman duality.

Nicole Sweeney 39:18
Also like literally what group of friends where some people wear glasses and some people don’t hasn’t sat around and been like your put my glasses on like.. I don’t understand the idea that nobody– like even if even if I buy you at like step one that your face looks radically different with a pair of glasses I just– what?

Ceri Riley 39:44
That’s the same thing for me with like The Incredibles. Instead of glasses it’s just that like little mask that they put on, but this is a very large man who looks like Mr. Incredible but with that little black mask, his identity, hidden.

Marines Alvarez 39:59
Total secret.

Ceri Riley 40:00
Yeah,

Matthew Gaydos 40:01
I feel like they kind of played with that in Genius to like the whole Charlie/Chaz. Like he takes off his glasses to become Chaz.

Nicole Sweeney 40:07
Right.

Matthew Gaydos 40:07
So there could have been a moment where you had sort of like his hair down and his glasses on that he could have been like, oh, no, I’m Charlie Boyle. I’m definitely not that Chaz guy you’ve seen before.

Nicole Sweeney 40:18
The Mrs. Doubtfire example is a really interesting one, because, like Mari said, it is something where I feel like I could be put into that situation, and I’m like, yes, I understand how everyone is, is confused by this. But I feel like in general, it mostly only works when there’s something really outlandish, or fantastical, or at where like, as an audience member, you have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief just for the premise. So like, Superman, you know, the existence of Superman in and of itself asks you to suspend a lot of disbelief in the first place, so the additional sort of added on thing of like, oh, and by the way, nobody notices that Superman is Clark Kent like is, is whatever. Like that’s fine as an additional ask

Marines Alvarez 41:03
Is it whatever? Is it?!

Nicole Sweeney 41:08
But I– well yeah, I don’t know. Your mileage may vary, I guess. I think it depends on you know, each adaptation how how it leans on your willingness to accept this. My personal favorite example of a, you know, double lives in, in media is also an incredibly outlandish like it makes a big ask in the first place and that is Chuck, the NBC show, which if you are not familiar with it, Chuck Bartowski is, he’s the main character. He was super smart in school, and then his life basically falls apart for like reasons that don’t really make sense. But he like he gets accused of cheating, I believe. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen the show. He gets accused of cheating and he gets kicked out of school. And then he goes from like having this really bright and wonderful future ahead of him to kind of being sort of floundering and lost and he’s working at a fictional Best Buy. It’s basically Best Buy. At the beginning of the show, he gets an email from his old college roommate who was part of how he got kicked out of school. So this is like, used to be his best friend, and now he’s like his enemy. And they haven’t talked in years. He gets a message from him. He opens it, and contained in this message is him learning all of these government secrets. It’s like a, like, a flash of images appear very, very quickly, and then now he just has like a government supercomputer living in his head. So like premise is fundamentally outlandish from the jump. And then two spies get assigned to be his handlers and he has to sort of live this double life as a spy. He has to continue living his life as Chuck at the Best Buy, while also being a spy. I think part of why this works also is that it doesn’t have the built in encounters like nobody– people are not encountering him in both settings, you know, so he like he’s never forced to meet somebody and be like, No, I’m not Chuck, your brother, I’m um spy man, or whatever.

Matthew Gaydos 43:05
Chuck Spyman.

Nicole Sweeney 43:10
Yeah. I don’t know. So they, they they managed to, to make that sort of piece of it work, I think really, really well. And also, it’s just I don’t know, it’s just a really charming show.

Ceri Riley 43:18
I love this show. And I also like how over the course of the seasons, like he has best friend at the Buy More Best Buy knockoff thing is named Morgan, and he gets a little bit suspicious of Chuck and then eventually like gets roped into the spy business too. Like, once he discovers Chuck secret, like he just becomes a part of the secret if I’m remembering correctly. And so they handle it really well, too. They handle like this double identity thing that when his friends and family question it, he has to provide answers in some way.

Nicole Sweeney 43:50
Right.

Marines Alvarez 43:50
I think spy ones are really interesting, too. I thought I thought as I was putting this together, like I really like spy things, but what I really like is lady spies. I thought for a second Nicole, you were gonna say The Americans, because that is something that you not made me watch, but you kind of made me watch and was like a spy show as well, but I loved The Americans. And that has its own kind of you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit, but in other ways, like not that I ever was like, these people can’t be spies. It was more like when are they sleeping? And things like that.

Nicole Sweeney 44:29
Yes. The, yeah, that show is not fundamentally outlandish in the way that like Chuck is but the real thing the real way in which that show constrains my willingness to be like, okay, I’m here for it is when the fuck do these people sleep. These people– like that the hours in their day do not make sense. However, I yes, that is actually my favorite one. I literally did not even think about it because we are coming off of the campiness of Genius.

Marines Alvarez 45:01
Right.

Nicole Sweeney 45:02
So like my head was going in a in a like an incredibly comedic direction so it didn’t even occur to me that– I refuse to accept that the Americans and Genius can even exist in the same like bucket. Because the Americans is a perfect television show. It is flawless. And yeah. Genius is a fucking mess. That show is super fascinating because it is ostensibly a spy show or like it appears to be a spy show at first but really what it is, is a like marriage and family drama. And it is those things because it is interrogating the impact of the double life on a marriage and on a family. Like that’s that is fundamentally what that show is about. And it’s wonderful.

Ceri Riley 45:48
This talk of non-comedic double life stories reminded me of one of my favorites I haven’t watched a little while, Hannibal the TV series which is polar opposite in tone. It’s like psychological horror, essentially created by Bryan Fuller, who I really love, and it’s visually, really beautiful and definitely horror, but it’s about a FBI Special Investigator named Will Graham, who, like demonstrates some sociopathic tendencies himself, but it’s also like very self aware of it and very self critical of it and becomes an FBI consultant, as well as Dr. Hannibal Lecter who is a forensic psychiatrist who is simultaneously like consulting with the FBI on these serial killer cases but is himself a serial killer which you know as the audience but they don’t know in the show, because they show him like scenes of him cooking very beautiful meals that you know involve human beings but it’s still like, “damn that food looks good.” And then you have to self reflect about how he is cooking humans, but it’s like a crime drama which is what drew me to the show initially, but it is also a very intense look at what a human connection and human relationships and can you be different than your family what like draws people to each other in either romantic senses or in friendship senses, or there’s this whole sub-fandom of shipping Will and Hannibal, which is like very dark, but these murder husbands became a big part of my heart. They’re very both evil in some ways, or like, you can see the ways in which like, Will could be pushed to be evil, but he chooses to be good and the ways that Hannibal could be good, but chooses to be evil. Anyway, very, very complicated. Very dark, but it’s a good show.

Matthew Gaydos 47:42
You’re right, though, about the dinner scenes like it is hard to watch those scenes and not get hungry. And then you remember, “oh, right. No, no, no, no, no, that’s that’s that’s human. That’s that’s just a person.”

Nicole Sweeney 47:54
That’s people. So…

Matthew Gaydos 47:55
Yeah. That’s Trevor from scene one.

Ceri Riley 47:59
Yeah! It’s even worse when they show you like Hannibal killing the person and then, like flip to the other side of his double life where he has classical music playing in the background and he’s like Mads Mickelson is one a very handsome man and two very talented and so he could do like the flipping the egg trick that hibachi chefs do or he like, makes cookie look very beautiful. This double life provided me with great stress for a lot of watching the show.

Matthew Gaydos 48:29
Yeah, that’s the ones that really get me as far as like being hard to watch because of stress are things sort of like Dexter or Mad Men or Breaking Bad these like anti hero, actually the bad guy kind of things where you’re just like, your life’s gonna unravel if like one person finds out the thing you’re doing.

Nicole Sweeney 48:49
The Americans is also definitely that, but it’s good.

Marines Alvarez 48:55
I know I brought up this darker tone of the double life but did anyone watch Family Matters

Matthew Gaydos 49:00
Yes.

Nicole Sweeney 49:00
Yes?

Marines Alvarez 49:00
Steve Urkel as Stefan Urkel.

Matthew Gaydos 49:03
Yes.

Marines Alvarez 49:04
Anybody? The Original… The original double life.

Matthew Gaydos 49:11
This is an interesting one because everybody knows.

Nicole Sweeney 49:13
Right.

Matthew Gaydos 49:14
Which is a weird or double life of like, this guy goes into essentially like a porta potty machine looks like a TARDIS, but really, he goes in as a super nerd Steve Urkel and just comes out cooler, which I kind of thought from the poster is what Genius was going to be. Like I thought this genius was going to turn himself into a cooler boy, but he didn’t.

Nicole Sweeney 49:36
I also thought it was going to be like a sciency thing or that he was like that somehow the machine was going to play into it and he was gonna like split himself.

Matthew Gaydos 49:43
Yep, I thought that too!

Nicole Sweeney 49:45
Like I was I was convinced it was a cloning story.

Marines Alvarez 49:48
Nope.

Nicole Sweeney 49:48
So the whole time Ceri was doing her plot synopsis, I was like, she’s getting this so wrong ’cause it’s clearly a cloning story.

Matthew Gaydos 49:53
Well, ’cause on the poster, there’s two of them. Like there’s two versions of him on the poster, so you do think that at some point, he’s either going to turn into the other one or there’s going to be a second one. But yeah, Family Matters is like that where he goes into that box and suddenly he becomes cool and different people are in love with him when he’s Stefan than are in love with him when he’s Steve .It’s messed up

Marines Alvarez 50:16
It’s the same person!

Matthew Gaydos 50:18
Like he dates two different people when he’s in and out of character.

Marines Alvarez 50:23
Amazing.

Nicole Sweeney 50:25
And now it is time for us to discuss the lessons that we learned from Genius.

Matthew Gaydos 50:31
Ugh, um… this movie is, this is not a lot to learn from it, but I’m going to say the lesson I learned is that if you’ve invented a miracle Zamboni machine that can literally be used by every ice rink in the world, maybe just sell that idea and become a billionaire.

Marines Alvarez 50:51
The lesson I learned is that scientific breakthroughs mean nothing if you don’t have friends.

Ceri Riley 50:59
I learned that figure skating is good and I would have rather watched an hour and a half of figure skating then this whole movie.

Nicole Sweeney 51:08
And I learned the lesson that this movie clearly wanted me to learn, which is that cheaters always prosper.

And now it is time for Ceri to guess the plot of the next movie. Next time on Cooler Than Homework, we are watching Don’t Look Under the Bed.

Ceri Riley 51:25
Oh boy. This is the point in the podcast– I know we haven’t watched too many, but we’ve watched like 10 and so I don’t know whether to start recycling plots or not. My first thought was Monsters Inc. And so I will try my best to not describe that but I think it is about a boy who is always been afraid of monsters. This has to be a supernatural one. I will not believe it if this is realistic. Because I don’t want a creepy man to be living under a boy’s bed. So, it is a boy who has always been afraid of monsters and is kind of a loner. He has friends, but they all tease him for being afraid, but it turns out that he actually has a real life monster living under his bed and his parents don’t believe him. His friends didn’t believe him. And when he turns 13, the magic witching age, the monster can leave his bedroom, maybe. And so he’s now being haunted by this monster around in the world, but no one else can see it except for him. And what he needs to learn as a part of this movie is how to face his fears. The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song is playing in my head now. He needs to learn to face his fears, run with scissors. And, like accept that the monster is really just trying to be his friend the whole time. The meaning of all these movies is friendship. He needs to instead of running away from this monster he needs to actually sit down, have a conversation with him and then realize that the monster too is lonely and that they can be buddy neighbors. And I guess I kind of already did the movie but give me the tagline and I’ll see if I have to make any revisions to it.

Nicole Sweeney 53:20
The taglis is “This Halloween whatever you do dot dot dot” and Then Don’t Look Under the Bed.

Ceri Riley 53:25
Oh, it was a Halloween movie. Okay, I’m, I’m feeling more confident about the supernatural element. Now, I will revise it because it says whatever you do, this seems like a generic warning instead of just one kid. So our protagonist is one kid who has this monster who is now following him around, but he realizes that all his friends also have monsters. So even though he was the scaredy kid on when they all on this Halloween day, so instead of it being this 13th birthday on Halloween, a monster– like a designated monster for each of these kids crawls out from their beds and like targets all their teen insecurities and then they have to learn together to like conquer them.

Nicole Sweeney 54:10
Join us next time and find out if that is even remotely correct. If you are enjoying this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would tell your friends, leave us a review, whatever. We would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Did you love Genius? Do you feel attacked? There will be a post dedicated to this episode up at snarksquad.com/DCOM or you can find us all on twitter @DCOMsquad. I am @SweeneySays.

Matthew Gaydos 54:35
I am at @MatthewGaydos.

Marines Alvarez 54:37
You can find me @mynameismarines.

Ceri Riley 54:39
And I’m @ceriley.

Nicole Sweeney 54:41
This podcast is produced by the four of us, edited by me, transcribed by Mari, and our theme music is by Stefan Chin. Thank you for listening, and we will see you all again next time with Don’t Look Under the Bed.

[OUTTAKE] Mmm, sorry. I like got embarrassed, getting ready to say it. Like full body flush. Anyway, to start that over.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai