Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Pugsley Crew. Reviews, a podcast about films, whether they're good films, bad films, just. Okay, we'll give them a watch because we like watching films. Tefla, cocaine shark. Cause that's shit.
Today we have coo 9000 with us. How you doing, dude?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: I'm doing well. How you doing?
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. Just chilling. Had a sandwich for dinner today that was tasty, actually. Had a cheese roll with a, with a Peter's pasty and a packet of discus.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Oh, you can't beat the classics.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: You mean after much, man.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Ah, not much, just the regular.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Playing games, watching films, doing reviews, doing a playthrough of XCOM enemy unknown. Or is it XCOM two?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Oh, enemy within, which is the add on pack to enemy unknown into.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that was close enough.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Been putting it on TikTok.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I just wanted an idea for little videos to put up and stuff you could do if you got a sore throat or couldn't be bothered to, you know, do too much.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's totally fair. I need to actually start doing more stuff outside of podcasts. I need to get back to doing reviews, I need to get back to streaming. It's just time.
I'm always tired.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Today's film is a film that I'd never heard of. It was suggested by Kerr. Any reason why you suggest the film?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Because of Wil Wheaton.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Will Wheaton. That's fair enough. The film is rent a pow.
Uh, I believe it's some sort of like thriller, horror, psychological thing. Yeah, pretty interesting, actually.
Um, basically the film is about a man who is really rather lonely. Really rather lonely. Just, just really lonely. Yeah, basically he's looking after his mother, who has dementia, though he hasn't really got much of a life.
He's trying to find a girlfriend through video dating, which for those who are, you know, Internet, doing Internet dating and stuff, it's a similar kind of thing. Uh, but it was back in the eighties and people would, uh, nineties, people would basically talk to a camera. People would then watch the tape and then they'd get in contact if they liked the person on the tape.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I I never did that. I've never done Internet dating or anything like that because I don't want to. But, um, so he is like looking at different people and he's watching one video and he skips it, and he's watching, he skips and he comes to another one and she's like, I just want someone who I can connect with who does this and that. And then she goes, oh, they can't live in their mother's basement. And then he's just knocked it out because he's living in his mother's basement, obviously because he's looking after his mother. It's a bit different to just someone who doesn't want to leave. Like, it's a very different thing. Like, you know, but people are people. So he goes to record a new video of himself. It's been six months since the last one. Gonna record a new one. And he goes this really nice heartfelt video about being a caregiver, wanting someone to care for and I mean, else he can care for and care for him and all this stuff. And it's a really nice heartfelt video. Then the guys, like, whose film is like, oh, yeah, can you do it 30 seconds? Like, but you know, the videos I've seen longer than that.
And he's like, yeah, women get longer, the men get less time because, you know, there's so many of them, so many men on. Yeah. Compared to women. Fair enough.
And then he does a third 2nd video to replace the first one. And there's just a train wreck of a thing that, like, I want a woman to care for. He's just like, the way he comes across is like really fucking weird and daft. Whereas, you know, it wasn't like on the first recordings because he's trying to somehow get the same points across in a much shorter space of time.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Just comes out as, like I said, a train wreck.
And he only when he's leaving after doing the video and stuff, he finds a video called Rent a pal. So he takes that home, sticks the rent a pal video in.
It's like he starts speaking back to the video. The video is basically a video of someone who wants to just your friend kind of thing. And they'll talk to you and you'll talk to them, but basically if you're lonely, at least you've got someone to talk to.
But, like, he knocks it off quite quickly because, like, he's in the middle of speaking and he'll, like interrupt him. So it's like he couldn't really care what he wanted off his chest then.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: So he knocks it off, he goes, deals with his mother, comes back down and then somehow the video's back on and it's like, says something to him which he jumps a fucking mile. I don't think he at the time was like, oh, I knocked that off. He just knocked it off again.
So I thought it was pretty interesting in that respect.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: It's like, it's like a realistic film, isn't it? It's not stupid stuff or supernatural. It's normal situations and normal problems and a person who's suffering from loneliness, which, you know, most people will at some point in their life. So it's some of it's very relatable.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
By the time the film finished, I was, me and the missus were talking about her and we're like, is it the fact that Andy was somehow interacting with him properly? Because at some point in the film he's like talking about this woman that he was having sex with and he starts going, Dave, Dave. And that's the name of the guy. So was. So I. And then he's like, he makes a noise and his mother's standing by going, oh, my God, you're masturbating. You dirty bastard. Frank. That's it. Because that was the name of her husband. Uh, which obviously she forgets that is, is dead because she's dementia.
So, like certain points of the film where things happen that I'm thinking, is Andy somehow really some living kind of being or is it Dave have got to the point where he just lost it and is imagining Andy to be actually real?
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And it doesn't really tell you, does it? So it leaves it completely open to your interpretation what way it lies.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I wasn't sure. I kind of liked the ambiguity. Ambiguity. But at the same time, I would, I wouldn't have minded a definitive answer, especially considering he buys it another tape, rent pile tape. He's speaking to Andy. Andy's like, oh, we can do this stuff. And it's like, well, it wouldn't be.
It would be.
I don't know. It's as if he knew the stuff that had happened previously. It's like when he accidentally turns the tv on when he's with a woman because he finally does eventually get a woman to go back to his place and she starts rubbing his leg and the tv actually knocks on. Andy's looking at the tv, like, from the tv, really fucking, like pissed off at Dave and the woman. And then obviously, like, comes in his pants before anything happens and Andy bursts. Are laughing.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: So it's like, things like that makes me think.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: That bit made me laugh.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Things like that made me think, oh, clearly. Andy's living, breathing thing. And then other times I'm thinking, is it coincidental certain things happen? And because of Dave's state of mind that gets worse throughout the film, he's perceiving it. And then we are seeing kind of what he's seeing to, to feel like that Andy is alive when he actually isn't.
That makes sense.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's ultimately how I took it, was that he's fell off the deep end and we're seeing what he sees. But it isn't concrete. I took it that way. But you could take it the other way that the tape sort of possessed or in some other way has life.
And I think either way of seeing it got its own scare factor.
Because you know what's scarier? The fact that there could be something that could influence you in such a way, or the fact that people are so susceptible through loneliness to go that crazy that they see and hear what's not there.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's the thing that shows him for a while.
Like, he watches it little by little. Then there's kind of like a montage like bit where he seems like he's just repeatedly watching the same thing. But he meets a woman, goes on a date with her. That's Lisa, I think her name is.
So he goes on a date with her and he goes, well, and they were gonna meet up the next day. But he goes back to tell, oh, it's great.
We really hit it off. And then Andy's like, yeah, but you've only gone on one date. And we had plans tomorrow. Like, did we? He's like, yeah, we were going to play cards. And it's like, again, it's that point of, is he imagining Andy having this conversation with him or is Andy actually having this conversation?
And I think that's pretty cool. I think Wil Wheaton played a good.
Not what seems like an average guy, but comes across as somewhat creepy.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Like when he sits down to have a chat with Dave at the start and they talk about parents. Like, my mother spanked me so hard one time that I was sick all over the floor. It's no wonder I didn't become some kind of psychopath or something.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: And that's played a few times. And I'm thinking to myself, huh, what's going on here? Then he's Andy, gonna start killing people. But one of the things I did find weird in the film is every so often will wheaton Andy, in a certain scene, he takes a photo of him and Dave.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: That photo is somehow on the mantelpiece or on another, in another photo frame from the perspective of Andy taking the photo.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Which makes no sense at all.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: It doesn't. So this is what I'm saying it's like, is he just imagining these things or what? How does it work?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: No, I mean, I think you could definitely get a sequel out of this film and explain it more.
I'd tune in for a part two.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I would.
I wonder if it would lose some of the mystery, though, if you kind of explain it too much. That's the problem.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I suppose that's a potential risk, isn't it, that maybe the unknown helps it?
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's like Star wars in the Force and Midi chlorians and stuff. Kind of ruins it.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: With dragon Ball and SL for Super Saiyans, it's like kind of ruins a that masses.
What did you think of the film altogether then? Because I actually rather enjoyed this. I thought it was a pretty good film. And considering that's such a small cast, I think there's like Dave, who you see prominently through the film. His mother, who I did not need to see naked.
Will Wheaton, who you see a lot. Then there's the woman, the receptionist woman who out. Who you see occasionally when he goes to that video place, the camera guy once or twice, and then Lisa. I think that's about it. But mostly it's just mainly Andy David and the mother.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those films that essentially, I'd say you could do as a stage play. It's that low end cast, that low in places. There's not a lot of sort of sets to speak of. You know, there's. His basement is upstairs, the rental shop and the occasional bar or whatever they're at.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Must be quite a low cost film, really. It's probably the most expensive thing. And it would have been Wil Wheaton. And I don't think he's exactly, you know, Nicolas Cage.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Probably not.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: I do now. I do like him, though. I mean, most people just see him as that guy that was a annoying Wesley Crusher on Star Trek the Next Generation. But in truth, I never found him that annoying on next generation.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: But then, honestly, see, I remember watching quite a lot of next generation when I was younger, but honestly, I just don't remember it all that much.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: I think it was one of things where he's a kid and he's supposed to be a genius and he saved the day on nearly a weekly basis, so people are annoyed by it, but it didn't annoy me that much because, you know, I just. Yeah, Einstein would have been a kid once, so, you know, I mean, you're gonna have small kids.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
I remember him being in there, but I don't remember him much. Like if that makes sense, he was.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Just there for Patrick Stewart to say, shut up, Wesley. A lot to, and to cock block Patrick Stewart from getting some against McFadden.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: That's why people don't like him.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
You know though, there was an actual video like this in the eighties. I think it was called rent a friend.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Oh, was it?
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd love to see the original video. I wonder whether you can find it on YouTube or anything.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: No such a thing existed.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think this basically is based off somebody.
Oh yes, you can. On YouTube you can find videos of the renter friend, a video released in 1986 for lonely people.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: I am.
That's crazy. I did not know they did an actual rent a friend video back in the day. That's mad.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Well, I guess it just shows done it. People have always been lonely.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
Masturbate to porn.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Well, yeah, exactly.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Misses just looked at me dirty and shook her head.
You child. She's thinking grow.
Yeah, I just, I genuinely didn't know they were so rendered. I wonder if it's based on like some sort of a thing that may have happened back then.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Well, you've got to think, aren't you, that everything that's existed, somebody's got crazy off of and done something stupid. So maybe somebody did get too invested.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Well, I don't know.
So I really, actually, I did really enjoy this. I thought it was actually rather fun. Like, I think, again, looking at the information, I think it's got like a six odd rate on Internet movie database. Not that the Internet movie database is like the be all and end all of reviews, but it seems to be like people seem to think it sort of, you know, okay, but all right.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Not amazing sort of thing.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: But I thought it was really interesting. Like, I rather enjoyed how it all played out. It was fun. It was not fun. Haha. Fun like, but it was fun in the sense of it was quite interesting to see the progression of David as well as Wil Wheaton and stuff, which to be honest, must have been difficult for.
Quite difficult to do because you'd have to act to a tv screen and they just listen to a thing play and then act. No, he's not acting against someone. It's kind of like when you saw stuff from more recent films. Well, this is a recent film, actually, like films where they use a lot of CGI characters and stuff and they literally talk to nothing or a ball on a stick. Yeah, it's like it must be quite difficult to do, actually. Interacting with another person.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: I suppose they could do it, though. Where will Wheaton's in one room.
And they're like beaming it to the tv.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Bit like a, you know, Skype call type situation. So then he'd be able to react if they could both see each other somehow. That's how I'd get around it. But whether they did or not, I don't know.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: No, I have no idea. One thing I didn't know is, is the more further throughout the film, it seemed like Andy was getting a bit like miffed at certain things.
Which could have been the way Dave was perceiving things. But every time that was happening, notice he'd have to start messing with the tracking. As if like the video was getting like screwed up.
Don't know. Tracking is a thing that used to be on VHS's. Well, the VHS player and you like, the picture would go funny and a bit of like snowy fuzz on and you'd have to turn. Tune the track into. Me was a pain in the ass. DVD's were easier for that in that respect.
Also, you had to constantly, when you finish a film, rewind it, because supposedly it damages the tape if you don't. I don't understand why, but it's supposedly.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: I've never believed that. I've always thought that's something that parents and rental shops told you just to try and, you know.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't understand why you would, though. Because if it's all.
If all the tape is on the left side at the start, everything is there, ready to go forward. Right. How would that be any different if everything was on the right side when it needs to be remarked, I think it's just so people didn't have to rewind it.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: To stick it on. So let's watch a film like I rewind. It's gonna take ten minutes. I'll press play then. Obviously as things progressed, rewinding got faster.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And I suppose if you don't use them very much for a while, they can stop working as well.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: I know you used to be able to watch a film so much that you killed it on vhs.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Yeah. One thing I liked was David's mother near the right. If we skip loads of the film and go, like, near the end, David's mother is cutting out stuff and sticking things down and he's cutting. She's cutting this stuff and he's not really paying attention. And he goes downstairs, talk to Andy about something, and he notes the tape is gone. And he's going, Andy where you hiding? Kind of thing. And I was like, what the fuck?
And then he goes upstairs. Notice his mother has cut up the tape.
That's what she was saying. She's like cutting up. She's like, this isn't sticking. And he goes fucking beep shit. Like, you've taken everything from me. And smashes around the face with the actual broken vhs which cuts her face and stuff. And then he goes and buys another copy. And then that's when he sticks and plays in. He's like, oh, we could play a game. And he's like, what are you thinking? And then he goes and chucks his mother down the stairs. So again, it's like David has completely lost the plot. Oh. And he's really good at convincing people to do things without doing anything. That makes sense.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I mean, it does make you think, though, if it is that Andy's sentient and he's obviously in every tape, there could be people everywhere doing stuff.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: That's sort of scarier than the one guy being nuts.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. But that's the thing. It's like when he was watching the tape and he was sitting there having a wank and he was going, oh, David, David. And then you go. And then he's like, bang. And all of a sudden his mother's standing next to him. So it's like it comes across as he knew his mother was there. Because then as soon as that, he started pissing himself laughing.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it did, didn't it? Yeah, like he wanted him to get caught.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: It's a bit of a strange one, but I rather enjoyed it. And I think it's definitely one that I would recommend to people to give it a try. Because it's interesting, even if it's not the most.
I know, exciting film in the world or anything like, it is actually a very interesting film. No, it kind of can connect with a lot of people as well. With loneliness now. Just, you know, don't kill in your mother at the end.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: No, I'd recommend it.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Yeah. You got anything to add about this film? About what you like, dislike, that sort of thing?
[00:23:00] Speaker B: The only criticism I've got, really, is a pacing one. I do think it could have been a bit shorter.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: See, that's the thing. I didn't realize it was on for as long as it was. It's like hour and 40 odd minutes and I didn't realize it was on for that long. Yeah, for me it was. The pacing wasn't too bad. Whereas the last film I watched.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Compared to that the pacing's amazing.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: That was an hour and ten minutes long, and it felt like it was on for, like, three times longer than this.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Fuck you, cocaine shark. I'll never get that time back, but, yeah, this is definitely worth watching. For those who haven't seen it, check it out. For those who've watched it and are listening now, just hit us up on, like, well, I'm on blue sky, not Twitter, so hit me up on blue. On blue sky and just be like, yo, pads, I like this film. Well, I didn't like this film. Let me know what you think.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be great to hear from people.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: It would be. It would be. Uh, is there any final thoughts you'd like to add before we jet off?
[00:24:09] Speaker B: No, I think that's about it.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Um, that is going to be us, then. We will be back in a few weeks, as always. Well, I say as always, as usual, but, yeah, check out rent a pal if you haven't. And I will see you all very soon. Bye bye.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Latest taters. Bye.
[00:24:37] Speaker C: Yeah. Someone who is kind, gentle, caring, who will remind me that everything is going to be okay. And someone that will be there for me no matter what.
Oh, and he can't live in his parents basement.
