Cooler Than Homework #006 – Can of Worms & Kids Saving the Day

Nicole Sweeney 0:18
Hello and welcome to Cooler Than Homework, a Disney Channel Original media podcast. I’m Nicole Sweeney and the most recent can I opened was a can of tomato soup.

Matthew Gaydos 0:28
I’m Matthew Gaydos and the most recent can I opened was a can of Diet Coke because I’m quote unquote quitting soda.

Marines Alvarez 0:36
My name is Marines and the most recent can I opened was a can of White Claw, the drink of the youth.

Matthew Gaydos 0:43
Youths who are 21 or older.

Ceri Riley 0:46
And I’m Ceri Riley and the most recent can I opened was probably olives.

Nicole Sweeney 0:51
What a dinner party, you guys. This dinner party makes about as much sense as this week’s movie, which is Can of Worms and Mari Good luck telling us the plot of this movie.

Marines Alvarez 1:06
Thank you. [clears throat] Okay, um, at the start of this movie, there’s like a windstorm of emotions. And this teen boy, Mike Pillsbury, is like rigging up a satellite, like really upset and he’s going to send a rescue message to outer space. And it basically says that he doesn’t belong on earth and it totally sucks. From there we flashback two weeks and Mike is entertaining his friend Nick and Nick’s little brother, Jay with a story about a war between two alien races that result in a baby alien being sent to Earth to live amongst the humans. It’s, you know, representative of him, you see because he feels like an alien. Do you have a picture of who Mike Pillsbury is yet because… that’s pretty much what you need to know. Mike is also on the football team, but he’s very bad at it. He’s like, run in the wrong direction with the ball kind of bad at it. And at this particular game, he gets badly injured, and he hallucinates seeing an alien embarrassing him in front of the team. He wants to quit football but his dad is like no, because something something about teamwork, but mostly I got the vibe that it was like about his dad’s repressed dreams.

Nicole Sweeney 2:27
Yes. 100%

Marines Alvarez 2:29
Okay.

Matthew Gaydos 2:29
Yeah, “you can do anything son, as long as it’s football. Remember, you can do absolutely anything, as long as it’s football.”

Marines Alvarez 2:40
“Technology? That’s going nowhere! Football!” Yeah, that– that was the general vibe. At school Mike plays a joke on a popular boy who is actually good at football, Scott Schreiber. And because of this Erica Christiansen recruits Mike to help with the Halloween dance decorations and make it high tech. They work pretty closely together and I wish I could describe what the end product is like but I– I don’t– I don’t understand what the the decorations for the dance actually were.

Ceri Riley 3:11
There were like swinging things from the ceiling and every time that werewolf swung down I was like how is that not hitting a child? Until it actually did hit a child. Animatronic hellscape is maybe the theme.

Matthew Gaydos 3:22
Yeah, there were like a weird centerpiece that would spin around slowly-ish that had projectors and cameras and lights going on it. And this was like the the the piece of the dance that like, “Everyone look at my creation. It’s got flashy balls.”

Ceri Riley 3:38
Yeah, so much better than orange streamers or whatever she was worried about.

Matthew Gaydos 3:43
Which they also did hang

Marines Alvarez 3:45
To be clear. The night of the dance, Scott basically decides to take his revenge on Mike by sabotaging the decor, the animatronic hellscape, and actually starts a small fire in the process, which seemed really not cool and dangerous. Mike is mortified by all of this and he runs away. So that’s when we see we like make it to the point where we were at the beginning of the movie where Mike is sending his SOS to space. The morning after the SOS, an alien who looks like a dog and talks through a translator shows up to tell Mike that he’s here to help get him off the planet. Time is limited because others skeevy aliens are coming, but the dog is a good alien and we know this because he’s in the form of a dog.

Nicole Sweeney 4:32
Right. An evil alien can’t be a dog.

Marines Alvarez 4:35
It’s against galactic law.

Nicole Sweeney 4:36
Yes, 100%

Marines Alvarez 4:37
I just made that up, but I’m sure it’s true.

Matthew Gaydos 4:40
I mean, the intergalactic police I’m sure I agree with you. They see the dog and they’re like, “aw, that’s a good boy.”

Marines Alvarez 4:47
Sure enough, after Mike gets back home, he finds like a bulbous snotty colored alien, called the Bomb. And this is a lawyer. Not a good alien. He’s offering to represent Mike in a lawsuit against earth for living in substandard living conditions. In the middle of this Mike gets a call from Erica Christians, Caitlin, but he’s distracted by the Bomb who’s also like eating random things, and I don’t know there’s like lots of gas jokes, and I hate it. I hate it so much. Caitlin is upset that Mike isn’t paying attention to her on the phone call and then the bomb is mad because Mike doesn’t want to sue Earth. Mike tries to tell his buddy Nick all about the aliens, but Nick obviously thinks he’s crazy. The next time that Barnabas shows up, Mike mentions the Bomb to Barnabas and he gets the great honor of saying the title of the movie as he explains that Mike opened a can of worms when he sent out his SOS. It signaled to the universe that Earth had the advanced technology for that communication and thus was no longer eligible for the protection afforded primitive life. Mike tries to explaiin that lightning struck his satellite and he doesn’t actually know how the SOS worked. but uh, still can of worms, opened. At this point, Mike is like fine, I’ll leave Earth forever and go be a space loner. Which, you know, sounds familiar. We’re not doing this on purpose.

Nicole Sweeney 6:19
I feel like we are getting a lot of understanding now of, I don’t know, why we are like this.

Marines Alvarez 6:27
We’re not like… you think that this podcast is like influencing this but it was actually the DCOMs that influenced you first.

Nicole Sweeney 6:35
Yes.

Marines Alvarez 6:36
Out of order.

Matthew Gaydos 6:37
This is not the space that I want to haunt.

Nicole Sweeney 6:40
So we’re clear, yeah.

Matthew Gaydos 6:41
If these are the aliens that are out there, no, thank you.

I’m imagine you spend your whole like life dreaming of going into space and then what you see is this snot monster lawyer with human teeth.

Marines Alvarez 6:56
First, Mike wants to make things right with Kaitlyn. Unfortunately, another alien shows up, the Loafer alien. He’s like an agent who wants to represent Mike for optioned TV rights to his life story as an immigrant. Mike turns him down too, but Caitlin’s really mad because it looks like Mike just disappeared. Back at Mike’s Nick sees with his own eyes when multiple aliens show up to yell offers at Mike, including a floating head with some like fishy qualities. And she really just wants to party.

Nicole Sweeney 7:28
Yeah, she is the best one by far.

Marines Alvarez 7:30
Yeah, I mean, the dog.

Nicole Sweeney 7:31
Yeah, yeah, the dog, other than the dog.

Marines Alvarez 7:33
Later that night, Caitlin also shows up and sees the whole alien thing is the truth. All of the aliens themselves are scared away as they realize that if a Thoad is coming, I keep wanting to say Toad, because he is in fact a giant toad. But he’s called a Thoad, very unique. Barnabas is on hand to explain that this is bad news because Thoads collect specimens. Little Brother Jay arrives unexpectedly and gets captured by the Thoad. In order to rescue him they need to lure the Thoad back. And Mike thinks of a plan because if the Thoad is attracted to perfect things, he knows just the perfect teen boy who can actually play football, Scott Shrieber. Scott is at first hesitant to be bait, but then Mike is like I dare you and he’s like fine. Scott works as bait and the Thoad shows back up and captures Scott. And then Mike, Caitlin, Nick and Barnabas all jump through the portal after them. In the zoo prison, Mike comes across a creature that he described in one of his stories. And like we’re not sure how Mike could have known that this creature was real. And I don’t know if it matters in the end, but I guess we’ll get to that, but Mike promises to free him. The Thoad first shows up looking like a slimy car salesman, but then he takes his true form as, yes, a giant toad. The kids manage to outsmart the Thoad and trap him in a cage, stealing the key he wears around his neck. And by key it’s just like really– like a glowy rock. And Mike isn’t sure how to use it at first, but then he looks lovingly and deeply into the alien eyes of that one alien he somehow knew about and all of a sudden he knows how to move the rock in front of the cage windows in a specific movement in order to open it. He frees his friends and all of the other aliens and they head back through the portal for home. The Thoad has escaped, though, and follows them back also. Barnabas calls alien 911 but the line is busy, so they all just came to stand there, and then the Thoad gets his tongue wrapped around Mike’s ankle, and it’s dragging him toward the portal slowly. I don’t know it’s just a stretch of a few minutes where I don’t understand why anything is happening. At the very last minute, alien police show up and arrest the Thoad. In the end, we find Mike at a football game. Barnabas finds him one last time to once again offer a ride to space, but Mike says he thinks he’ll stick around Earth. He’s learned a valuable lesson, but he still sucks at football. The end.

Nicole Sweeney 10:10
So that’s this movie. And now it’s time for Matt to tell us where this cast is now?

Matthew Gaydos 10:16
Uh, yeah, there’s some weird twists and turns in this Where Are They Now segment but as far as I can tell, nobody’s dead. So Whoo. It’s all– it was also funny because usually I find like a helpful article when researching this segment that’s “where the cast of Xenon is now,” but apparently no one cares about Can of Worms because I could not find like anything about this movie, anything about some of the actors…

Ceri Riley 10:44
You can write this listicle, Matt, this is what you’re saying, like, get that– get those clicks.

Matthew Gaydos 10:49
To be fair, it’s not that interesting. And I couldn’t find some of them at all. So maybe that’s the reason there’s not an article already. So starting off with our star Mike Pillsbury, played by Michael Shulman. He’s still acting, mostly in like little independent films that he seems to be part of the funding for like they’re sort of like kickstarted crowdsource things. And he’s also just been in random stuff here in there. But he has a private Instagram, so who knows? Continuing on to someone that will maybe some of us are more familiar with, Erica Christiansen who plays Caitlin the love interest slash head cheerleader in this movie. You might know her best from Swim Fan or the TV show Parenthood. Recently, she’s in a Lifetime movie called you haven’t to hold. I assume some of you here on this podcast with me right now are familiar with Erica Christiansen.

Nicole Sweeney 11:41
Yes.

Marines Alvarez 11:42
Swim Fan.

Nicole Sweeney 11:43
Yes. Swim Fan. Also watched Parenthood. You have named my Erica Christiansen reference.

Ceri Riley 11:50
Continuing on the theme, I have no idea who she is.

Matthew Gaydos 11:53
All right. Not surprising.

Marines Alvarez 11:55
Except for now, I want you to watch Swim Fan.

Ceri Riley 11:57
Yes.

Okay.

Matthew Gaydos 11:58
Yeah, it’s– it’s… I don’t know that it holds up. But…

Marines Alvarez 12:01
No.

Nicole Sweeney 12:02
No, no it doesn’t. We did it. We did a Reel Bad episode about it. It was like one of the early earlier Reel Bad episodes I believe, and no, it doesn’t. But I don’t care.

Ceri Riley 12:12
She a mermaid? Is that why it’s called Swim Fan?

Nicole Sweeney 12:16
No, it’s like a stalker… she’s not a mermaid. It’s wholly unrelated to this podcast.

Ceri Riley 12:24
I just– okay. It’s just like blue and she’s in a pool. And there’s a guy, so I was like, she must be a mermaid. I don’t know.

Matthew Gaydos 12:35
The first part of all of that was right.

Ceri Riley 12:37
Yeah.

Matthew Gaydos 12:38
The last part is very, very wrong.

Nicole Sweeney 12:40
I like where your plot guessing head is at these days, though.

Marines Alvarez 12:43
I feel like we’ve ruined Ceri a little bit.

Nicole Sweeney 12:45
Yes.

Ceri Riley 12:46
Yeah, I can’t take any movie seriously now.

Matthew Gaydos 12:49
So, next on the list, we have Andrew Ducote. I’m probably pronouncing that incorrectly, but that is Nick’s little brother Jay, the one who gets abducted. To me, he’s the most fascinating one out of all of these somehow, because he ended up being Peter Pan at Disneyland for a while.

Ceri Riley 13:07
Oh, cool.

Nicole Sweeney 13:08
He was like a, like a viral one too right? Like one of the Peter Pan’s that people shared a lot of videos and clips of and stuff.

Matthew Gaydos 13:16
Yeah. And he had like a– an Instagram and like Facebook and like a fan following that everyone knew this specific Peter Pan, and I think he aged out of the role. So now he has like a family vlog and cute Instagram with his babies. And he actually married the woman who used to be Wendy at Disneyland.

Marines Alvarez 13:36
Oh, no, stop it.

Nicole Sweeney 13:37
Oh, that’s very cute. I love that.

Matthew Gaydos 13:39
Right?

Marines Alvarez 13:39
It’s too cute. I can’t.

Matthew Gaydos 13:42
They are still very cute and very into Disney and all that. So I highly recommend checking out his Instagram for cute Disney baby things.

Nicole Sweeney 13:50
Matt, I am so fascinated by what this project has to be doing to your Instagram recommendations like what the Instagram algorithm thinks of you. I just– I have so many questions.

Matthew Gaydos 14:03
I mean, to be fair, it’s probably not that different than what I was doing before. This is kind of what my life is.

Nicole Sweeney 14:10
There’s a reason that this was your assignment.

Matthew Gaydos 14:12
Yeah, that’s just what I do. So then next would be his older brother Nick, played by Adam Wiley, who we have seen before on this podcast. He played Gilbert in Under Wraps.

Ceri Riley 14:25
Oh, I was like this kid looks familiar, but I don’t know why. Is it just like because all small children in these movies look the same. No. It was not.

Matthew Gaydos 14:36
No, he definitely had a growth spurt so he looks a little bit different. But it is our favorite little Gilbert from under wraps. And as I mentioned in the Under Wraps episode, he is also still acting. He was in Gilmore Girls, and to keep the weird, accidental theme going, he was recently the voice of Peter Pan in the TV show Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

Ceri Riley 14:55
This is delightful.

Matthew Gaydos 14:57
Right?

Nicole Sweeney 14:58
I’m already having more fun with this Where Are They Now segment than I did with any of watching this movie.

Matthew Gaydos 15:05
Yeah, can we just talk– keep talking about Peter Pan and the ways that this cast can be involved in Peter Pan projects in the future.

Nicole Sweeney 15:12
We are now going to make this episode about Peter Pan. Goodbye.

Matthew Gaydos 15:18
Unfortunately, that will be the last Peter Pan reference I have for you.

Nicole Sweeney 15:22
Dang it!

Matthew Gaydos 15:23
I lumped the mom and dad actors together for this because they’re both similar to a lot of the parents in a lot of these DCOMs, still acting, still in an episode of every single show your parents have ever watched that has an NCIS/CSI sort of title. So we move on to the little sister Jill Pillsbury. Pillsbury is just the worst last name to give tese people. And they say it like 1000 times in the movie, which I just hate. But anyways, Jill Pillsbury is played by Brighton Hertford, and she was in the Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, she’s just like one of the bunk mates at the camp and she was also on a VHS tape that I owned as a kid called You’re Invited to Mary Kate and Ashley’s Sleep Over Party.

Nicole Sweeney 16:05
Oh my God! Yes.

Matthew Gaydos 16:07
Yeah, I’m glad I’m not alone in knowing the– like, knowing that that VHS tape existed,

Nicole Sweeney 16:12
Yes, yes, there was– there was a whole collection of wonderful Mary Kate and Ashley VHS tapes.

Matthew Gaydos 16:18
Oh, yes, the Olsen and Olsen Mystery Agency especially. Look out for my next podcast all about those. She’s still acting here and there in a bunch of different things. And like her older brother in this film, also has private social media accounts. So I don’t know what she’s up to. We have the jock, who is apparently not only the best at football, but also super smart at computers and everything else– the perfect human. Marcus Turner plays Scott Schreiber in this film. He was in Air Bud: Golden Receiver and an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? and a few other things, but as far as I can tell, he kind of dropped off the map after this movie. So I don’t know if he just got old enough that he stopped being a kid actor or something but Can of Worms is the last thing Marcus Turner did in acting. And as far as I could tell, like, he’s not like, still doing it. He– I couldn’t find him anywhere on the internet. So if you’re out there, Marcus Turner, hit us up.

Marines Alvarez 17:15
Especially if you have a Peter Pan story.

Ceri Riley 17:17
He went to Neverland, actually, which is why we can’t find him. He’s still a child somewhere far, far away.

Matthew Gaydos 17:25
Still looking like he’s maybe a little too old to be in the grade that these other kids are in?

Ceri Riley 17:29
Yeah.

Matthew Gaydos 17:30
But that’s cool. Whenever they do that with a bully in a children’s film, I’m just like, he looks like he could easily beat up that kid and go to jail for a long time because of it.

Nicole Sweeney 17:39
Yes.

Matthew Gaydos 17:39
And last but certainly not least in this Where Are They Now cast list is the voice of Barnabas, the alien dog, who is Malcolm McDowell, star of A Clockwork Orange and many, many other films. He’s a Golden Globe nominee most recently in Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle. And he has like 14 films currently in some stage of production. So he’s still out there. You’ve probably seen him in something if it’s not A Clockwork Orange, it’s something else. But yeah, it’s it’s very weird that he is the voice of that alien dog.

Ceri Riley 18:14
They needed a real actor.

Matthew Gaydos 18:15
Yeah, they had to give this movie some cred.

Nicole Sweeney 18:20
Now it is time to talk about this movie. First things first nostalgia check. Do you remember watching this as a kid?

Marines Alvarez 18:29
No.

Matthew Gaydos 18:29
No.

Nicole Sweeney 18:30
No.

Ceri Riley 18:31
And unsurprisingly, no.

Nicole Sweeney 18:34
Hmm, this is interesting. Also, at a certain point, like I’m maybe going to stop saying “as a kid.” Like Ceri will still have been a kid, but her answer is always no. I don’t know.

Marines Alvarez 18:48
“Technically, I was 18 so ha ha ha.”

Nicole Sweeney 18:53
Did you like this movie? I guess we’ve kind of already teased our answer to this question. But did you like this movie?

Matthew Gaydos 19:00
No.

Marines Alvarez 19:02
No.

Ceri Riley 19:03
I almost forgot to watch this movie, and I wish that I had forgotten to watch this movie. Because it was so offensive to my eyeballs. And I like it is my least favorite movie that we’ve watched for this podcast by far. And I will never unsee some of the things like the hamburger eating scene and I never want that in my brain. I don’t want any part of it, but it’s there, gooey, sticky stuck in there, gross.

Matthew Gaydos 19:32
Yeah, hard same. I– when Mari was doing the plot breakdown, and you got to that scene where you were talking about where you kind of checked out, where the cop is coming, but they’re on hold and there’s a tongue happening. I actually fell asleep at that same moment. So, like I was watching this in bed like late last night and I suddenly realized I was like, I’m dozing off, I should rewind and like, figure out where I was and I rewatched that scene and I was like, hh, that’s why I fell asleep. It’s so boring and terrible.

Nicole Sweeney 20:03
And that’s like the big climactic, you know, conclusion.

Marines Alvarez 20:07
I tried to like not leave this for the last minute– I mean, not like by leaps and bounds. I was watching it yesterday, like yesterday night, and I got to the scene with like the farting lawyer alien blob and I was like, nope, can’t. I mean, I know I have to by tomorrow, but I’m not going to do this one second sooner than I actually have to. And I had to like stop watching and, I don’t know, be kind to myself. I was just not enjoying myself at all. There was like, nothing funny or like charming and the plot was weird. And Mike Pillsbury, they kept saying it like the name was awful, but also the kid actor. Again, not my favorite thing to do to pick on kid actors, but it was something so like whiny and charmless about the character. And I just was not having any fun. And then all the aliens looked weird. And there wasn’t like, certain amount of like that like gross out humor that is attached to like having weird looking aliens that is not my favorite. So big no.

Nicole Sweeney 21:08
Yeah. I think the fact that Mike Pillsbury, there was nothing to like about him, uh, sort of a problem. I mean, I don’t know. like, conceptually, the idea of this kid who, who’s like biggest personality trait is that he tells a lot of stories should be something that’s my jam. So it’s upsetting to me that they failed so terribly at this concept. But also, like, I just didn’t care about him at all. So it made the whole viewing experience that much harder. And it sucks too, because I like I don’t– part of what I love about this project is the idea of you know, watching all these kids movies and trying to come at them from the perspective of, you know, okay, I am a kid, like, have this sort of joyful experience. But there were just so many things about this movie that felt calibrated to, like forced me tune out.

Matthew Gaydos 22:00
I wrote down the word insufferable while watching this. You all have mentioned already that he’s completely unlikable. He’s pretty dumb, and makes the worst choices at like every single turn, so I don’t, I don’t like you said, I don’t know where the fun is supposed to be had in this movie. I don’t– there’s not really many jokes, like, I think a lot of DCOMs have is like, even if they’re not well written or well told, there’s at least some funny zingers here and there, and this doesn’t even try to do that. And yeah, I just kept forgetting scenes that had happened like by the time we got to that scene from the opening of the movie that we were like flashing back to, I had forgotten that we saw that already. And I was like, Oh, right, we’re like catching up to the.. okay, whatever.

Nicole Sweeney 22:48
And the thing about the jokes to like at a certain point we are going to get to the handful of DCOMs that are more like you know, very special message kind of movies and like there are some but this isn’t that either, right like this feels like it should be one of the kind of joke heavy movies and and it isn’t, and I don’t really know what it’s supposed to be if not that.

Marines Alvarez 23:14
if this isn’t a joke, what is it?

Ceri Riley 23:18
It feels to me like it was the trash can for all of their bad ideas that they are squished into one movie in the way that Mike is a super– he thinks he’s an alien number one, personality trait number one. Personality trait number two, he’s like ridiculously good at computers and technology to the extent that he’s building like satellites, and in his free time, like solders of cummerbund for himself. And number three is forced to play football, and like, runs around and is athletic and shows up to practices because his dad drags him and his like, shows up to enough that he can play in the games. Wild. What does this kid do? And it’s an every, every characters kind of like that. It’s like, what do you do? Everything.

Matthew Gaydos 24:02
And it goes nowhere, every one of those as you just listed, never like matters.

Marines Alvarez 24:08
Like, is he an alien? I don’t know. He recognized no other alien he wasn’t supposed to know about. But then it’s just like, doesn’t matter. And nobody adresses it. I don’t know, he just choose to stay on earth.

Matthew Gaydos 24:18
He has these traits that we have been told multiple times, that he’s great at telling stories, he’s great with tech. And neither one of those really help the plot or help him in the plot at all. Like his only two traits don’t help him. He ends up just like randomly learning how to use a stone and that solves everything.

Ceri Riley 24:40
Yes, and I think they had potential, maybe if they wanted to lean into it, like here’s this nerdy kid who is forced into playing football, and then they teased the love story with like, oh, you’ll never be with that cheerleader. And so maybe she’ll end up being a sensitive– I hated it all. I just want deeply unlikable in my notes about this generic football cheerleader story and both of these characters.

Nicole Sweeney 25:07
Yeah, I think it’s back to Matt’s point about how, you know, none of those things actually go anywhere. It feels like if they had, you know, whittled down a little bit, like made it about, like, he tells the story about this alien, and then, you know, because it turns out that like, he was an alien, or whatever, it could have made any of those things work better. But instead, it’s just this weird mishmash of, of, you know, random ideas. Ceri said some, garbage garbage pile of ideas.

Marines Alvarez 25:34
It’s like the that old like advice about you know, fashion like, before you leave the house take off one accessory. They needed that in terms of like characteristics for each of their characters, plots, and even characters, like you don’t need the the best friend and the like best friend’s little brother and the mean sister, like, for nothing. All of those characters could have literally been combined into one with no difference made to this movie, so it just needed to take a bunch of the parts that it had and chuck them straight into the trashcan.

Matthew Gaydos 26:08
The bully even had a best friend character who we had to pay attention to for some reason.

Nicole Sweeney 26:14
I will say of all of those additional characters, the best friends little brother is– is my favorite. Don’t get rid of him. You can keep him, in part because I think he plays into what is the the thing that I wish that this movie had been more of? And like, I don’t know, the best part of this, potentially, is the earnestness of that little kid. I think that for me, the reason I defaulted to him telling stories as like his one personality trait, even though, yes, he did, in fact, have a handful of others, none of which had anything to do with each other, but like that one, that idea that he was just really committed to being this super imaginative kid, like there’s something there in that idea– creative type equivalent of like Brink, you know, but, but this is the better movie that I am wishing that I had watched.

Ceri Riley 27:07
Yeah.And I think that could have been a really lovely story where he’s, like, insisting that he’s an alien. But really, he’s just a weird kid. And the arc of the movie is have accepting that he is, in fact, just a weird kid. And he’s not actually adopted, but he because of his weirdness, he’s able to communicate with aliens when everyone else brushes them off, or something like that.

Nicole Sweeney 27:29
Right, and yeah, and like that story is almost there like this, like it’s not, that’s not completely unrelated to the thing that they did, but also, they were throwing too many other things in there for that story to actually, you know, come out.

Marines Alvarez 27:44
I think we’ve mentioned that like, you know, the, the main characters kind of like unlikable and insufferable. And I think part of that, too, is like I wanted to feel for him, because I wouldn’t even saythat there was I mean, I guess he got bullied a little bit, but I don’t know. It was weird because he was doing weird things like he was running in the opposite direction with the ball and he was like fighting back and pulling pranks. So it was like a little bit of give and take anyways, that’s not the point. The point is that like, he kept feeling like temper tantrum-y, like something would go wrong and he would like run away and stomp his feet and like send the alien SOS. And so it was really hard to be like, aw, poor kid, because of the way that he was throwing these tantrums and he wasn’t necessarily dealing with things or trying to make them better. He was just, you know, like, “that’s it. I quit Earth.”

Matthew Gaydos 28:35
Well, and he also bullied the bully first kind of like, he did the big computer joke thing where he put his face on a pig and so the bully got back at him by setting his thing on fire and then he asked to leave Earth. And like you said, I was fully on the side of like, well, it’s kind of seems even now like you embarrassed him. He embarrassed you. You’re good. You don’t have to leave Earth.

Ceri Riley 29:03
I have one last and huge complaint about Can of Worms and it has to do with the poster that you made me all look at or you all made me look at last week.

Matthew Gaydos 29:14
We made you.

Ceri Riley 29:14
Yes. After I did my whole guess. There’s this horrifying creature with human teeth and eye socks and loafers and he wasn’t even a major character. This is my big complaint. He was annoying one. And just like a media agent, generic part of this like bad aliens coming to visit Earth thing. Two, not even the big bad of the movie so I was waiting for this horrifying creature to either be Mike’s sidekick throughout the movie or like the main villain like he’ll have to take down this agent alien. But he didn’t even matter and he’s just on the poster because it looks weird. I hate it.

Nicole Sweeney 29:53
But I love this rewrite of the movie where this alien talent agent is actually the villain. I don’t know what that plot is. But I love it.

Ceri Riley 30:03
Yeah, I mean, it makes more sense of the poster. Why not put the giant lizard frog man? I guess they didn’t want to reveal that he was actually a lizard frog. Toad.

Marines Alvarez 30:13
So when we first heard the Thoad, we’d be like what is he?

Ceri Riley 30:17
Yeah, what even… what could he be? Garbage.

Matthew Gaydos 30:21
I agree with your gripe about the poster, because also going into this knowing nothing really about it, I was waiting for some sort of turn or to be revealed that he was important or that I don’t know that there was gonna be some level of play on the worms and there wasn’t

Nicole Sweeney 30:41
Nope.

Matthew Gaydos 30:42
So that whole poster is just very deceiving from title to featured monster. I’m guessing it’s just because he looks maybe the most wormy.

Ceri Riley 30:51
Yeah, those eye stocks do look like worms.

Matthew Gaydos 30:55
Ugh, he grabbed him for so long. It was weird.

Marines Alvarez 31:00
Okay, speaking of gross, I also got some gross out feelings when he was like, Barnabas was like, will you give me a scratch? And then he was like, yeah, scratching him and he was like making like mmhmm noises. I hated that whole sequence a lot.

Matthew Gaydos 31:13
I was picturing Malcolm McDowell like in the recording studio having to do those noises. And was even more creeped out than just the idea of him scratching an alien man dog.

Nicole Sweeney 31:22
I wrote my only notes were two lines of dialogue one of which was him saying “there’s something to be said for the right kind of personal contact.”

Matthew Gaydos 31:32
Yeah!

Nicole Sweeney 31:33
During that scratch and I was like that’s, that’s a choice that an adult human wrote.

Matthew Gaydos 31:38
As like the closing line of the movie!

Nicole Sweeney 31:39
Yes.

Ceri Riley 31:41
I also– one of my few notes is “I really hate the lips.” And I think I was referring to, of the many horrifying lips, like the mouth translation device that Barnabas was wearing around his neck.

Nicole Sweeney 31:53
Mmm.

Marines Alvarez 31:53
Yeah.

Matthew Gaydos 31:53
Oh, yeah.

Ceri Riley 31:53
And like, the squishing. [makes disgusted sounds]

Nicole Sweeney 31:57
I love though, that for this movie, you’re like, “oh, which set of lips was I referring to when I took the note I really hate the lips?”

Matthew Gaydos 32:04
Is it the bone lips? Is it the two-faced alien that only has one usable face? Is it the fish lady’s lips?

Nicole Sweeney 32:14
So because the tagline of this movie is “who’s got time to be a teenager when you have to save the world?” we– and we did not enjoy this movie– we are going to now shift to discussing some other examples of stories where kids save the day that we did enjoy, that we would rather have been watching than can of worms.

Matthew Gaydos 32:35
I have so many just gripes with the description of like the tagline because I– that sounds like a different movie.

Nicole Sweeney 32:41
Yes.

Ceri Riley 32:42
Mmhmm. Yeah, at what point was the world in danger?

Matthew Gaydos 32:46
Like– like at the very, very end of this movie, they say that the Thoad will like keep coming back and taking more people, which I guess is kind of ending the world.

Nicole Sweeney 32:54
Well, also in theory, it’s the idea like it’s… [deep sigh] I hate when this happens…

Nicole, you are defending the movie.

….like when we’re on a podcast or whatever and people are having their their gripes about a thing that we all dislike, but then I’m like, okay, but there is a reason for this, and I’m going to explain it. Which in this context is to say like the the dog alien was talking about how Earth is like, currently has sort of a protected class as being not that intelligent and so if it loses that protected class, then it’s exposed to all sorts of ambiguous alien threats. And so that, to me, seems like that was the big threat. How clearly articulated that was in the moviem ugh, but I feel it does feel like the earth was in danger.

Matthew Gaydos 33:45
Yes. And the only thing that saved it was an accident.

Marines Alvarez 33:48
We’re not even going to get to the group discussion topic, because this is just reminding me of more gripes and the fact that like, who has time to save the– or be a teenager when you have to save the world. Like, bitch, you put the world in danger. This is all you. You better make it time because otherwise the world wouldn’t be in danger.

Matthew Gaydos 34:06
right? Like if this was the chosen one alien story where we did find out he was actually an alien. And because of that his existence, but this planet in danger and his like, in a very Superman type of way, the bad guys from his home planet come to earth to seek him out and decide, oh, we could take this place over pretty easily, but he has to rise up and protect them. Like that would make sense then that the world is in danger and he’s the only one who can save it. But in this case, he put the world in danger and accidentally saves it. But on that note, some maybe better movies about kids saving the world. I was definitely thinking a little bit sci-fi-y here just because of the the material we have to work with. And one that I think maybe I don’t know, I like this movie lot and I think it kind of flew under a lot of people’s radar is meet the Robinsons, which is a Disney animated film. And I don’t know it’s not necessarily saving the entire world. But it’s definitely a sort of time travel-y save your world kind of story and it’s much more charming, the characters are much more likable. And seeing kids who are smart, who actually have to figure things out and solve problems to save the world is much more interesting than watching kids who stumble around, talk to ugly aliens and just, I don’t know, don’t do much of anything.

Ceri Riley 35:38
I’ve actually seen this movie and I really liked it too. Yeah, it’s so fun. And all the side characters that they introduced are like quirky family members who don’t always have a big role in the plot, but they’re like, ah, this is a cool, weird future cousin. I love it.

Matthew Gaydos 35:51
Yes, the introduction scene specifically of all of those family members, like you get like a five minute sequence where everyone’s like, introduced one, one. and it’s the first time I ever watched this movie, I was in college, and still laughed my ass off through that entire scene.

Nicole Sweeney 36:08
I think your point about how if this movie had done the chosen one thing and like he was, you know, in a actually an alien and that sort of thing? Yes, that is one of many ways that Can of Worms could have been improved. For me most of the examples that came to mind of you know, better uses of this better instances where you have a child or teenager responsible saving the world. And you’re like, I don’t understand why the adults can’t save the world. It’s usually because there are some sort of Chosen One conceit kind of built into it. And like we all agree that it would be better if the adults could do this, but like the adults can’t because you know, magic because whatever. And so the first example that came to mind, for me was Avatar: The Last Airbender, and because they do grapple with the fact that Aang is like I am a child, like I can’t do this, I can’t, you know, how am I supposed to be the one to save the world. And that is part of what’s going on in that story is this sense of, you know, I, this small child will now have to save everyone. And in addition to the actual story itself dealing with the fact that the world is being saved by a child, it’s ultimately part of the finale too. It’s like, it’s baked into the resolution in a way that you know, he’s different than previous avatars, for reasons that are, you know, partially about just like him in general as a person, but I think you could argue for reasons that have to do with the fact that he is still very young.

Marines Alvarez 37:37
I– I have an example of one that I used to read a lot as a kid, and I don’t know it. I’m already making excuses for it. It’s not excuses for it– I just know, like, I’ve revisited it as an adult and they’re still very near and dear to me, but I understand why other people don’t like them. But it’s The Chronicles of Narnia, they were my favorite books growing up. For any sort of media where like, you have to get the parents out of the way so the kids can have adventure and save the world, there are bad ways, and good ways to do it. But I think that the Chronicles of Narnia, it starts by saying that basically like you know, there’s a war going on in these children basically have to leave the city and go to the countryside to be safe. And so that moves– it removes the parents in a way that your heart is already going out to the kids. And then they’re in this old, dusty, musty kind of living in this place. And they find an old wardrobe, which is a portal to another world. So it felt very like natural to you’re not constantly asking, Where are the parents? Because you know, the parents are in a war. And the that idea of like, Why are the kids saving the world where you have, you know, in this case, in Can of Worms, it’s like our worlds, but with aliens– in Narnia. It’s like a whole fantasy world. So the idea that this land were like, there are creatures that are speaking to you, and the lion is the big hero, these children step in, and they save the world and it feels like a little more natural than, you know, anything else that you see. So. And yeah, I love those books. And I’m sorry about all of the Jesus allegory for anybody listening.

Ceri Riley 39:12
The movie that came into mind, quickest for me is kind of like a mix of Nicole’s and Mari’s, which I think is interesting, because I love Pokemon. And I grew up with it. And the way it gets rid of parents is it’s like, once you turn, I think 11 or 10, I think 10– once you turn 10, you go off on your own, you become a Pokemon trainer, and you wander the world by yourself with your Pokemon companion and your parents just let you and I thought that was the coolest thing. I would like to go fight adults with my– my pocket monster and just like wander across the land. Because yes, as a 10 year old, I am smart and capable. And specifically, Pokemon the Movie 2000, which came out in, I think 2000, which is what makes sense, at least in the United States, it was very good the main character Ash, who’s like the chosen one side note, after 22 years of being on TV, he’s finally accomplished his goal of defeating the Pokemon League.

Matthew Gaydos 40:13
Good job, Ash.

Ceri Riley 40:14
He’s still 10 years old. But congratulations. Anyway, the the premise of this movie is that there’s like a collector who’s capturing these legendary birds that represent different elements. And so he like captures the Firebird, and then that sets off an environmental crisis because the balance of the world is out of order. And he’s doing so in order to summon like this extreme legendary bird named Lugia who’s like, I don’t know, in control of more stuff. All I really remember from this movie is that there was a line in this prophecy about how like if the balance is upset the world– the world will turn to ash. And it’s revealed that that’s like the prophecy of the world turning into Ash Ketchum, the main character in the series. And in 2000, six year old me, my mind was blown, you could use a double meaning like that, and not only say, the world is going to turn to ash and disintegrate but to Ash, this hero. It opened my mind to what you could do with writing what you could do with media. It shook my world and, and he saves the world a lot in his many journeys. I could talk about Pokemon forever, but I’ve already talked too much. So, that’s it.

Matthew Gaydos 41:24
I wanted to add another film real quick that I think is a very good recent example of the sort of thing of a young kid thrown into a situation that he’s not prepared for, and ultimately could end the world. And that is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is not only a great film, but also a great sort of kid having to save the world story.

Nicole Sweeney 41:46
It also has kind of good built in reasons for why it’s him. You know, it’s like, it’s just random chance that that he happens to be the one who gets bit by the spider. But I like also he’s at a school where he’s only home on the weekends. So that also helps kind of helps the story, have parents who are who care and who are good parents, but are just out of the way enough for him to be able to, you know, have his many misadventures.

Matthew Gaydos 42:16
And it’s a perfect film in every way. So if you haven’t seen it, go watch it.

Nicole Sweeney 42:21
Literally every frame of that movie is, could be a poster that I would want on my wall.

Matthew Gaydos 42:26
I have gone through that movie, not entirely frame by frame. But sections of that movie, I have sat and just gone through frame by frame on my blu ray player, and just looked at the intricacies and all the little jokes that they sneak in that are like one frame jokes. And it’s just so, so good.

Nicole Sweeney 42:45
And now it’s time for us to discuss the lessons that we learned from this movie. Matt, what did you learn from can of worms.

Matthew Gaydos 42:56
I learned that by having a Xanga page in high school, I was also pretty much broadcasting all of my angst out into space.

Marines Alvarez 43:11
I learned that if somebody calls you and it’s an important phone call, and there’s something distracting in your room, like a farting lawyer alien, like maybe just say I’ll call you back later, and call that person back at a convenient time instead of just staying on the phone and not paying attention.

Ceri Riley 43:29
I learned that no matter what persuasive techniques using an argument you have to end with because I dare you, and then you’ll win.

Nicole Sweeney 43:39
Those are all very good. But I’m going to end with like an earnest one, which is the I think one of the few lessons the movie wanted you to learn and like a lesson that I– my life would have been better if I had learned it as an actual child. And that is that it’s okay to do things even if you’re bad at them, like being bad at something isn’t the the reason that you have to stop doing a thing. I don’t know. Maybe he should have stopped playing football. That’s a little bit of a reach. But that’s that’s my lesson.

Ceri Riley 44:07
That’s a very good lesson. Current me needs to hear that.

Nicole Sweeney 44:10
Yes. This is me giving everyone permission to do things that like maybe you suck at but you enjoy for other reasons. And also, the only way you will ever be good at them is to keep doing them. And now it is time for everybody’s favorite part of the show: Ceri guesses the plot of the next movie. Next time on cooler than homework, we will be watching The Thirteenth Year.

Ceri Riley 44:37
Oh boy. So, I’ll start bold because how else would we start this segment? The Thirteenth Year is obviously about a girl who’s coming of age and– and by that I mean turning 13. And the moment she turns 13, a wizard from the forest appears in her house because what would the witching age be without actual magic. And she learns that she is the Princess of a woodland kingdom and is now at the age of 13 forced to actually rule it because she’s no longer a child. And…. I don’t know she like undergo some forest transformations. She learns from the animals. She learns how to speak to animals maybe. She learns the ways of the for– she’s like from a city. She’s a city girl. She is like New York City or whatever the equivalent they could get in filming this LA, New York. I don’t know what other–Chicago.

Nicole Sweeney 45:45
Cities!

Matthew Gaydos 45:48
Heard of ’em?

Ceri Riley 45:49
Yeah. And she she hates nature. Maybe that’s it maybe like her mom is kind of crunchy. Like a likes camping and stuff and she’s rebelled her whole life. And now she has to realize like she has to learn how to create– weave a hammock and suspend it from a tree and she has learned to fish and communicate. And she like makes friends with some gnomes or something like that. And like learns to rule this kingdom. And then I guess I’m this is sort of like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She finds a way to merge her forest identity and her human girl identity and tagline so that I can figure out how the story wraps up.

Matthew Gaydos 46:30
Good luck!

Nicole Sweeney 46:31
As useless as the title was your tagline: Cody is not just growing up. He’s growing fins.

Ceri Riley 46:39
Oh, no! I started strong, but incorrectly. So rewind. Cody is now the main character of this movie. Turns 13 See, the problem is.. Were we even recording this? Yes, because we’re talking about Swim Fan. Now. I’m just thinking a mermaid. Is Cody a mermaid?

Matthew Gaydos 47:03
We don’t answer questions in this segment, Ceri.

Ceri Riley 47:05
I know! Well now, okay. Growing fins…?

Marines Alvarez 47:10
Go with your heart, Ceri.

Ceri Riley 47:12
Yeah, okay, so now revised that whole story. I might go mermaids because mermaids are my heart right now. So Cody turns 13 and then he realizes he’s the prince of the mer people and he has to go to Atlantis. And he gets like abducted and dragged underwater and then realizes– maybe he’s been afraid of water his whole life. Maybe he’s not a swimmer. He’s like whatever the equivalent of a city to a woods person is for like a land-locked person. He lives in a mountain.

Matthew Gaydos 47:42
He lives in Tempe, Arizona.

Ceri Riley 47:45
He’s from like Denver or something way above sea level, and he gets kidnapped and dragged down to the ocean and has to– he like finds out that his real father wasn’t this like mountaineer man, it was actually a merman who came to shore and converted into a human body just long enough to impregnate a woman and then disappear to the sea again. And then he has to reconcile his half Merman, half land man destiny. At the light of the full moon when he turns into a merman he returns to the kingdom to govern it and otherwise on land, he’s an environmental activist trying to clean up the oceans because he sees all his fish friends dying.That is it.

Nicole Sweeney 48:30
I love that movie. I can’t wait to watch that.

Matthew Gaydos 48:34
Fun fact. This is a little teaser for the Thirteenth Year episode, there’s like an uncredited first time ever on screen role for Kristen Stewart.

Nicole Sweeney 48:42
What?

Matthew Gaydos 48:42
Yep.

Ceri Riley 48:42
She’s a mermaid.

Nicole Sweeney 48:45
I cannot wait to see Kristen Stewart. Help Cody in his career as an environmental justice advocate or, I don’t know, be queen of the mermaids with him. Unclear we’re going to find out when we watch the 13th year. Thank you all for listening to Cooler Than Homework. If you are enjoying this podcast, we would love it if you could tell your friends or rate and review us. We would also love to hear all of your thoughts about this episode or about Can of Worms. Are you a big Can of Worms fan? Do you feel that we did this movie dirty? Let us know. There will be a post dedicated to this episode up at snarksquad.com/DCOM or you can find us all on Twitter. I am @SweeneySays.

Matthew Gaydos 49:25
I am @MatthewGaydos.

Marines Alvarez 49:26
You can find me @mynameismarines.

Ceri Riley 49:28
And I’m @ceriley.

Nicole Sweeney 49:30
Thank you as always to Stefan Chin for theme music that is playing us out and we will see you all again in two weeks with The Thirteenth Year.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai