What would you do for a Klondike Bar?

There's an air of inevitability that descends upon “Cheap Thrills” right around the film's 15 minute mark. The four major characters are all in on the action, the tone has become more and more malicious, and the realization that things will not end well for leads Pat Healy and Ethan Embry has struck down with the force of an iron shillelagh.

Yet the “Cheap Thrills'” ominously obvious aura does little to detract from the viewing experience; what truly matters in this tight 90-minute feature is the journey toward a bloody and merciless conclusion with a remarkable final shot.

Before all the carnage can strike, “Cheap Thrills” starts off with Healy's Craig – a devoted father and husband (Amanda Fuller plays his wife) – pulling an eviction notice off his door in the morning and losing his low-paying job at an auto shop that afternoon. The night doesn’t exactly kick off in a promising fashion either, as his attempt to have a beer or two to drown out the misery is stunted by a chance and awkward encounter with his old high-school friend Vince, played by a bulked up Embry.

A brief bit of reminiscing between the two is interrupted by the introduction of Violet and Colin (Sara Paxton and David Koechner), who are celebrating the former's birthday with a night on the town. The encounter starts off friendly enough for the quartet – a few drinks, some effective drugs and a little sexual titillation – although things start to become squiffy once Koechner offers Healy and Embry cash to complete a few impish shenanigans.

The challenges start innocently enough – fifty bucks goes to the first guy to down a shot, a few dollars more is granted for the man who can get a girl to slap him in the face – but the innocence falls away as the night progresses and the dollar amount increases. As the money begins to creep toward a $250,000 grand prize, the insanity, the tension and the violence that comes from playing a wicked game with barely a wisp of regulation increases as well.

Click here to see the film's trailer 

As Koechner spins it, the dares he offers to Healy and Embry are similar in spirit to those television shows where people do crazy and gross things for cash (see “Fear Factor”). The difference between that and “Cheap Thrills,” and the reason why the latter is far more interesting than a show like “Fear Factor” could ever dream to be, is that subtle increase in grotesque extremism. It's easy to mock people for lying in a box of snakes for $50,000, but building up to grand challenges with minor bets reveals how easily one can fall into those trappings.

One thing the filmmakers do very well throughout the course of the film is provide a glimmer of logic behind Healy and Embry's decisions. If you can get $100 for a slap in the face, why not aim higher and receive $500 for punching a bouncer in the face? All of those dollars accumulate bit by bit and until it covers that rent check to keep your family at home for at least a month.

At least, that's how it starts, but the filmmakers cleverly abandon any sense of nobility behind whoring your pride for money to reveal the real reasons these two men, who are free to leave whenever they like, keep punishing themselves – there's greed, of course, and whatever semblance of pride left after some particularly wicked tricks tossed in for good measure.

But the most honest reason, and the one that explains why Koechner and Paxton would pick these two schmucks for their sadistic version of “Trading Places,” is the feelings of resentment they feel toward the other. As “Cheap Thrills” spirals down a rabbit hole lined by avarice and pain, it becomes clear why the friendship Healy and Embry's shared fell asunder, and it outlines how little long-time bonds matter when pitted against their own machismo.

Kind of scary stuff to think about, but “Cheap Thrills” balances out the philosophical darkness with some wicked black comedy that escalates alongside the dares; one of the funniest moments of the film coming seconds after the most stomach wrenching.

Even with a hint of humor, “Cheap Thrills” is not a film meant for the weak of heart and stomach, but anyone with a bit of vinegar in his or her blood will appreciate the quick jaunt through the swamp of morality.

Rating: Four out of Five Stars

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Target audience: Fans of thrillers and dark comedies, as well as any “Can't Hardly Wait” devotees wondering what happened to Ethan Embry.

Take the whole family?: I'm going to go with no on this one.

Theater or Netflix?: Considering the dearth of theaters showing it in the Valley, you might as well wait for the Netflix or Red Box release.

What of the performances?: Pretty solid across the board, although the true highlight is David Koechner, who uses his bulk and bombastic persona push Embry and Pat Healy well beyond their natural breaking point. Some may like their version of Old Scratch to be suave, smooth and subtle, but a loud and effervescent devil can be just as effective.

Watch this as well?: People with the stomach for these kinds of films should check out “Funny Games” – either the American or German version will suffice – or take a trip back in the archives to watch “Marathon Man.” It's never safe.

Rating: NR

Run time: 88 minutes

Genre: Comedy/Thriller

More Muppets? Excellent

Gonzo, Miss Piggy, Kermit the Frog, Floyd, Walter and Scooter in a scene from "Muppets Most Wanted." Photo by: Jay Maidment. ©2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Movie franchises have a plethora of options on how to transition from one film to the next. Some jump forward in time and refer back to the events previously shown, while others, like “Halloween II,” start the action immediately after the conclusion of the first film.

“Muppets Most Wanted” follows the “Halloween” route, but does so in the most Muppet way imaginable: the beloved quasi-puppets sing a rather catchy tune explicitly stating that, yes, this is indeed a sequel. The song warns the audience it should expect keep its expectations for this sequel fairly low (then again, as Bunsen Honeydew points out, this is technically the seventh Muppets film) because the Muppets have no idea what to do next.

It's a refreshingly honest way to start a sequel, although the song is wrong on one point: “Muppets Most Wanted” does not suffer from a case of diminishing returns. Rather, it's actually a bit better than the very good “Muppets” and something of a return to form for America's felt-made friends.

“Muppets Most Wanted” starts with the Muppets’ full roster – Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, Scooter, Rowlf, Swedish Chef, new member Walter, et al – figuring out how to follow up the popular TV comeback special from the previous film. A subtle suggestion from new manager Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais), leads the characters to take the show on the road and tour Western Europe.

Unfortunately for the naïve Muppets – common sense has never been their strong suit – Gervais' last name is, of course, his main character trait, and the trip is actually a cover for an elaborate series of museum heists. Gervais, aka the lemur, is not alone in committing the nefarious capers; he's technically the (unwilling) sidekick for the world’s most dangerous frog and explosives aficionado Constantine.

Because it's a plot necessity, Constantine doubles as the doppelganger for poor Kermit, who gets tossed into a Gulag in Siberia (headed by top guard Tina Fey) in a case of mistaken identity. As Kermit freezes alongside criminals like Ray Liotta and Danny Trejo, Ty Burrell's Interpol agent/French stereotype Jean Pierre Napoleon teams up with Muppet/CIA agent Sam the Eagle to track down the thieves before they commit their grand heist. Everything comes to a head in a London wedding ceremony gone wrong, including a rather poor performance of the world's worst usher, Usher.

“Muppets Most Wanted’s” plot is rather silly and befitting of a rather silly film, although that’s actually high praise for a franchise grounded in the goofy and the absurd. There's no logical reason for Usher to attend a wedding in London between a frog and a pig, nor does it make any sense for Diddy to play dice on a train with anthropomorphic puppets on the way to Dublin. And how the heck did Danny Trejo – who is indeed referred to as Danny Trejo – end up in a Russian gulag in the first place?

The reason falls back to one thing the Muppets have historically excelled at: throwing as many bizarre concepts at the wall as possible and making most of them stick effortlessly. Many of those odd ideas are very old fashion at heart. As the Muppets thrive on humor that's all sorts of cheesy and hacky – hell, Fozzy's entire persona is based on those ridiculous Borscht Belt comics from the '50s (at least he has good enough taste to stay away from those “take my wife” jokes). But while those jokes would induce multiple eye rolls in just about any other context, they work for the Muppets, and “Muppets Most Wanted” by extension.  

They succeed due to a hard-to-replicate blend of sincerity and self-deprecation rooted in meta humor. Yes, the jokes are lame, but the Muppets are just as aware of that as the audience, and they express that awareness without the traces of irony that usually accompany it.

In short, everything the Muppets do is done in good fun, and the ability to rope celebrities into their child-friendly shenanigans is the proverbial icing on the cake. Everyone, including Usher, Lady Gaga, Salma Hayek, the brilliant Tom Hiddleston and a dancing Christoph Waltz, is having a blast, and the energy zips right off the screen and infects the audience.

While “Muppets Most Wanted” does sag a bit in the middle – it about 10 minutes of tightening – the slew of well-played references (the Swedish Chef doing “The Seventh Seal” just killed me) and catchy songs by composer/Flight of the Conchords member Bret McKenzie help compensate for the dip. What results is a film filled with cheese and absurdity that also happens to be a wicked good family film; exactly what a Muppets' movie should be.

Rating: Four out of Five Stars

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Target audience: Multiple generations of Muppet fanatics – it's stunning that this franchise is going on 60 years now – and families.

Take the whole family?: Some moderate fart humor aside, there's nothing to that would force a family to keep the kids at home. Take the young ones and have fun.

Theater or Netflix?: Hit up the theater if you want, but I'm dying to do a mega marathon with the previous films (well, at least up to “Christmas Carol”).

How do you take your Muppets?: The Muppets come in many flavors – original, “Sesame Street,” Fraggle and Otter, among others – across every medium (including the excellent 3D show at Disney World), but my favorite is “Muppet Babies.” While it does stray away from the puppetry, the show is friendly and smart and loaded with pop culture references ranging from “Star Wars” to “Indiana Jones” to “Dracula.” In hindsight, I'm certain “Muppet Babies,” “Ren & Stimpy” and “The Simpsons” combined to lay the groundwork for my sense of humor.

Watch this as well?: Aside from the previous Muppet films, this would be a good time to introduce the kids to “Labyrinth.” David Bowie plus Muppet characters plus musical numbers adds up to an awesome experience. (Chuck in a little “Princess Bride” and you have an awesome rainy-day diversion.)

Rating: PG

Run time: 112 minutes

Genre: Comedy

What’s in the bag? It doesn’t really matter

Inside “The Bag Man’s” titular bag and requisite MacGuffin is a human head that once belonged to John Cusack’s fiancée. Robert De Niro killed her well before the events in the film occur. His reasons for murdering this poor woman, stuffing her head in a bag and forcing Cusack to protect said bag from all sorts of potential thieves are encapsulated by this one simple phrase: because why not.

Because why not is an exceptional way of summarizing the logic for the events that take place in “The Bag Man.” Why doesn't Cusack look in the bag himself despite how many people try to kill him for it? Because why not. Why does De Niro have a hotel rigged with explosions? Because why not. Why would the characters drive around a metropolitan area in a vehicle linked to multiple homicides and a building explosion? Because why not. Why does De Niro hire Rebecca Da Costa to mess with Cusack's head? Because why not. Why does the miscast Rebecca Da Costa have second billing in this banal slice of disaster? Because why not.

Many, many other questions popped as time slogged by, but I would have known what I was getting into had I checked the film's IMDB page prior to sitting through almost two hours of nonsense. A quick glimpse at writer/director David Grovic's entry reveals a schmuck with no writing or directing credits and very small acting roles in two films, although one of them did have Rebecca Da Costa as the female lead. Grovic's writing partner, Paul Conway, has a few writing and acting roles under his belt, including second billing on a film he wrote, “L.A., I Hate You,” that also happens to feature Rebecca Da Costa (so there’s one question answered).

Continuing down the rabbit hole, “The Bag Man's” premise comes from a different screenplay by James Russo, best known for his role as Mikey Tandino in “Beverley Hills Cop.” Russo does have a slew of acting roles under his belt and one other writing credit, although the fact that “The Bag Man” is based on Russo's “original screenplay” indicates a lack of involvement on his end. It's also a rather disconcerting tidbit because who the hell adapts a film from a different screenplay instead of rewriting the one that already exists?

Again, all of this was available before I sat down to watch this thing, and yet I sided with my naïveté and partook in 148 minutes of faux-intellectual crap. “The Bag Man” is the kind of film that tries really, really hard to craft a Lynchian atmosphere without understanding what that entails beyond the casting of a slightly creepy little person. It's the kind of film whose clever repartee between characters includes the line “you don't know Jack” uttered by a character whose name is, yes, Jack. It's the kind of film that just chucks ideas, ones that don’t qualify as half-baked, against the proverbial wall while hoping and praying something is interpreted as smart and befitting old school film noir. Alas, the blind hog didn't stumble upon a nut this time.

“The Bag Man” is a leaden, stiff, undereducated, boring, dry, insulting, painful, ponderous, pretentious, lazy, miserable movie. It's a really bad movie, and not even in a manner that at least offers a little entertainment as seen in films like “Showgirls,” “The Room,” “Troll 2” and “The Wicker Man” (the Nicolas Cage version). No, “The Bag Man” is an abjectly awful film with no redeeming qualities despite the presence of a stable of actors – Cusack, De Niro and Crispin Glover – who are overqualified for their roles.

No one, however, can escape the vortex of suck that is “The Bag Man.” This thing strips away Cusack's charisma and energy, dulls Crispin's inherent and dangerous oddity, and brings out the worst in De Niro. His performance is a potent blend of overacting and insouciance – otherwise known as pay-me mode – he’ll pull out in films “Rock & Bullwinkle” and the “Focker” films.

All of that is an explanation for why I opted against inserting a token spoiler alert before revealing the film’s big twist. The answer, quite simply, is that I don't feel as if I ruined anyone's viewing experience by revealing the twist, as it's difficult to spoil something that lacks value. Which reminds me, “The Bag Man” ends with Cusack and Da Costa riding off into the sunset $5 million, because, again, why not.

Rating: One-half out of Five Stars 

Ask Away
Target audience: I wish I had an answer.

Take the whole family?: That “R” rating is well earned given how many people Lloyd Dobler kills in less than two hours.

Theater or Netflix?: Don't touch it with a 10-foot pole; read a good book or go for a walk instead.

Anything else you want to insult?: A shout out goes to whoever approved the movie poster. I hate to judge a film by its cover, but a poorly designed poster is a good indicator for a wretched film.

Watch this instead?: Just go rent/stream “Grosse Pointe Blank”: it's charming, clever and features John Cusack shooting many people, albeit in a more logical manner.

Rating: R

Run time: 108 minutes (One hour and 48 minutes)

Genre: Suspense