So You Think That Was Good Do You?

Hello and welcome to another episode of So You Think That Was Good Do You, a podcast
where we take a look back at the films from your childhood and question the absurdity
of their universes.
My name is Evan and as always I'm joined by Sam and Karl. How tall are you boys? It's
kind of related to the movie.
Oh very good. You've thrown us off. You've also, you've thrown us off by, I'm editing
this one and I can feel how much that clipped your microphone when you blasted out that
hello.
I really mean to moderate myself.
Every week you practice but you practice very quietly and then scream as soon as we start.
Because it's, you have to get yourself, get the adrenaline, yes, in the moment for it
and I know what Evan I've got to be and it's that Evan, the one who's all the way up there.
As a short king I guess my answer will be five foot ten.
Sam, we're about the same height right? Six foot one, six foot two, you a bit taller?
Absolutely towering over it, over Karl at five foot eleven.
Stumpy Karl?
Yeah but that's not about my height. That's not why they call me Stumpy Karl.
Well well if you haven't guessed, and I don't know how you would have been able to, this
week we watched 1997's The Borrowers starring the boy from Jumanji, John Goodman and a bunch
of people from Harry Potter. Do you know who all the people are from Harry Potter boys?
There were three.
John Goodman wasn't the boy from Jumanji was he?
Oh well hold on, if there are three, okay I've really stupidly forgotten his name but
the dad borrower.
Yes yes so that is…
He's got a name that just slips right, Jim Broadbent.
Jim Broadbent yes, just the most normal man name ever.
The most normal man name ever is Mark Williams who is the other one. And then the third one's
little Draco Malfoy.
Scott Felton.
Yeah so Mark Williams is Exterminator Jeff, Jim Broadbent is Pod Clock. We'll get onto
the fucking names in this movie, awful.
We'll talk about the names I'm sure.
Tom Felton is the little pea green clock. As always we'll get started with a lovely
plot synop. This is a bad one as well, very confusing.
Children's author Mary Norton's storybook creations, the four-inch tall family of borrowers
who live among humans and co-op their possessions. When a crooked lawyer takes over the lender
family's house, he's got to reckon with the borrowers therein, who launch a campaign
to oust the invader and restore the home to its rightful tenants.
Four inch?
No they were seven inch at least, right?
That's about average actually, yeah that's a terrible one.
Just that first sentence is just so unreadable. Children's author Mary Norton's storybook
creations, the four-inch tall family of borrowers.
Yeah that's, that's painful to, that's painful to listen to.
Well there you go, that's the beginning of the episode for you Sam, you take over
from here I believe.
Didn't go for the AI one then this time.
No I didn't, I've been using it all day as well, I started using it for work, don't
tell my boss.
Yeah I suppose, fuck it, let's fire right into the plot then shall we? We start off
the film with a wonderful five solid minutes of opening credits, they just go on and on.
Yeah.
I don't know if you two noticed, but holy shit.
And not even the pro of there being some sort of footage behind the credits, it is just
black screen, names coming out of you, pictures and logos of movie studios you've never
heard of and certainly don't exist anymore, fucking attack in your eyes.
Initially it's just black background, but it just keeps going and going and going, but
while that is, you know, while we're watching those in the background we've got the human
boy called Pete, and the specification of human boy will become clear shortly.
So Pete has set up this kind of weird Rube Goldberg style trap that is, it's got various
little mechanisms and wheels and spinning things that eventually leads to, I mean I
don't really know what it does, it kind of sets fire to a little toy of his and then
chops a banana in half. It's a really weird contraption.
It has like decapitation, burning in acid, exploding, electrocuting and crushing.
Brutal.
This is early years serial killer stuff.
He's his absolute psychopath stuff.
He gives off this vibe throughout the entire movie. This boy is just the live action version
of Sid from Toy Story.
He is.
It just so happened that before this I watched an interview with Jordan Peele and he was
saying that the only difference between comedy and horror is the music that's playing, and
that's all I could think of whilst this was happening. Because it was very happy, upbeat
music, but he was just planning how to murder the unknown pests in his house.
Normal children.
I think quite a lot of this film, someone could do a good edit of the whole film, colour
grade it a bit, chuck some music on it, and it could be sinister. But while that's happening,
we then see the mum has also been caught by some weird little thrown together mousetrap
that he's made as well. So he's hidden this shit all over the house.
He put it in the tumble dryer.
Why would we can't analyse the thoughts of this little psychopath?
I'm going to come out of the gate earlier and say he wants to catch and fuck his mum,
Sam. That's the kind of kid we're dealing with.
Okay, well, without any other evidence, we'll say that that's what it is.
That's all I need.
But while he's trying to murder unknown pests, he's waylaid because the whole family has
to go on a fun little outing to the lawyer's office to discuss their dead aunt's will and
testament.
And this is like the first time we get to see a little bit of the outside world. And
I really want to know, where are we and what year is it? Because I'm very confused.
I've got the exact same thing written down. When is it and where is it?
Every single car is like a 1950s Morris Minor, every single one. And it seems like an old
English town, but they're all driving on the wrong side of the road for that to be. And
half of them speak in American accents and half of them speak in English accents.
Yeah, there's no continuity with the accents.
Not even within the fucking family. It's just odd.
And when, I don't know if you notice, later on, we sort of zoom out from the street doing
and you get a matte painting of the city in the back. And it's just like a cluster of
eight brick skyscrapers. What is this supposed to be? This dystopian nightmare of a place?
Yeah, you've got your famous American actors in this, you've got your John Goodman, and
then just a plethora of well-known English character actors. You've got Hugh Laurie later
on.
We have American dad, English mum, American child. Just odd.
And then English stowaways? I don't know what to call them.
Yeah, English accented trespassers.
Don't need to assign nationalities to these monsters.
But yeah, what we're talking about, the town, it seems like quite a small town in attitude
and stuff. But when it pans up, it's kind of a heavily industrial...
Yes, everything's very glimmer. It's very reminiscent of James and the Giant Peach,
and you get the sort of city background of that. And it's all very groggy and horrible.
And it looks affluent, but everything's in shades of grey.
Anyway, while we're critiquing the believability of this city, a family of apparently four
inch tall borrowers are climbing out of the wall. So enter the borrowers, we got the dad
Pod, who played by Jimbrel Bent, taking his children Arrietty and P. Green. And if I can
help it, that's the last time I'm going to say those names, because fuck that.
Awful. What are they references to? What is it for? I know this is a book written...
Well, I mean, P. Green and Pod, I understand. I can get those two.
Sure.
Arrietty, I don't know.
No idea. Not a clue.
Merle and Draco. Because this is Tom Felton in his apparently first ever acting role.
Trivia courtesy of Kurt.
How it's not his last, I do not know. Just truly grating, I hated them all. It might
be because they are so little. I feel like I have to sidestep the terminology here so
that people don't think that I hate all little people. That is not the case. This film gave
me nightmares as a child.
The way you said that can definitely be Kurt. Either side.
I don't know, they grossed me out and this was a difficult movie to watch.
We're going to the lawyers, right Sam?
Well, at the moment, I just wanted to say, so the borrowers are climbing out of the wherever
they are, the wall, the little mouse hole in the wall, because they need to steal a
battery. I don't know why Pod decides to bring his kids out for this, but they immediately
fuck off at the freezer and head inside to steal some ice cream and the girl, Arrietty,
gets locked in there. Cut to the lawyer's office.
I have a point of contention about how the borrowers are introduced, because their weight,
their strength, and how they operate confuses me because he throws a little pin up onto
the milk jug and he somehow pulls himself up onto that table with that jug falling over.
So that establishes their light. Yeah. They've got the bones of a bird, hollow. That's fine.
We can leave that there for now.
Secondly, he checks his watch to see what time it is because the humans run on the schedule.
So they have the technology and ingenuity to make a tiny watch for himself, but everything
else they have to borrow. They can't make anything else apart from tiny time telling
device.
Does that mean they go to the lawyers every day? It's lawyer visiting time. We've got
half an hour.
This is their, yeah, this is their window. They can do stuff. The daily visit.
Okay. Yes. The lawyer's office.
Shady fucking lawyer.
Do we, do we own the house yet? No? Okay. I'll be back next Tuesday.
Well, yeah, they do get to the lawyer. Osius P. Potter, AKA the lawyer, AKA John Goodman.
I mean, Jesus Christ, what an amazing character, but he is very obviously, very suspiciously
claiming that, oh, there wasn't any will. There was no will left. And because your aunt
didn't leave a will, that means your house is mine.
Yeah, this is what I didn't get. So if you don't have a will, your lawyer gets your house
in this world.
Yeah, I don't think that's how that works.
No.
Although this is set in a fake weird fantasy world. So maybe that's how it works in this
place.
Do you want to hear the worst joke ever conceived that just popped up in my head?
If there's no will, there's no way, but that's your house.
That's not even your joke who says that in the, in the movie.
Yeah, but it's taken, lifted from the scene.
Oh God.
This is the level that you're working at, is the writer of The Borrowers.
This movie that you hated, well, apparently that's your level of humour.
What my entire personality is based on.
Oh shit. Okay. No, I just recorded that without thinking about it then. Sorry boys.
The other thing that I like about this is that his plan, since he's managed to steal
effectively the house from them, his plan is to bulldoze it and use the land to build
an apartment complex, which must be a very small apartment complex in the middle of a
residential area. And in his mind, if he accomplishes that, then he'll be able to take over the
rest of the city.
Yeah, tenuous. He wanted to get 16 people in the space where there was previously one.
I thought they were going to do more with that model house that he showed them, because
that was borrower size. I thought that that would be linked in some way, but no, it was
just something they made for the movie.
That would have been a great way to tie up the end of the film.
Live here!
Yeah, good point. But no, they don't. That's, that's it. That's his evil plan. He's explained
it to them. And that's that. They have no recourse. They've got to go home, pack up
and fuck off.
Yeah, eviction times in this world are in hours, not days like anywhere else.
Yeah.
Can't find the will, so.
So there's the way out.
That's a great joke.
Thank you. So they head back and we see them. I didn't get either of their names, but the
mum and dad human.
Oh, it doesn't matter. Yeah.
No, it doesn't. You see mum and dad human walk back in the door.
I got their names for one reason. And that's because they are Mr and Mrs Lender. And they're
called the Borrowers. And I'm so clever.
Yeah, but they're not important. And also they're two people who, who look like they
should, they're people who almost look famous, but I don't know where I'm going with this.
It's hard, very hard to describe. You have to watch the movie and see that this almost
looks like Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie from Stuart Little, but then just like the discount
versions of that.
They're Geena Davis-ish.
I was hoping Sam would cut that. Now he's got to keep it in for that joke.
Yeah.
I don't think he does. It's nowhere, there's no will, there's no way.
So we're just cutting the first 10 minutes of his podcast.
Hello and welcome. But yeah, so they're back, they're back home. Humans are back. They walk
in the door. And so Draco has fucked off back home under the floorboards and Pod is trying
to get Arrietty out the freezer. So he pushes down the button of the toaster so that it
springs back up and flings him over to the ice machine.
Has he been stood on it for about three to four minutes?
Yeah, he's been stood on it for god's sake.
As soon as there's toaster bolts I will be over there.
But they, the humans walk back in the room as he does this. And let's remember, four
inches tall, that's, that's pretty big.
Sizable.
We can all agree that's pretty large.
Quite large, yeah. I mean, we learn, like, rules of borrowers, very, like, the first
time we're introduced to these characters and the first two are borrowers are never
seen and borrowers are never heard. And he is seen and heard instantly.
Because they, yeah, he turns around as the toaster pops and watches a small man fly across
the room into his fridge.
Yeah.
He lands on the little-
And climb up the ice dispenser.
Yeah, well, he doesn't climb, he fucking force jumps up there.
He does. He did a bit of parkour across the kitchen earlier, so we just believe that that's
okay. They're good at climbing. So he breaks the first rule, he's seen, and catapults
himself across. So him and Ariete are stuck in the ice machine now.
Well, I-
I don't know how they get out.
We never find out.
This is the first instance where their physiology doesn't make sense to me. These people have
the bones of birds, as we've established, and he's holding up what is the equivalent
to him as a rock fall. And he's completely fine. He wedges his little toothpick in there,
but that's not holding it either.
So after they've escaped, somehow, his little toothpick thing gives way, comes out, along
with all the ice, and the mum finds it and kind of questions it. No one questions the
massive ice cream tub attached to the kitchen aid that they used as an elevator that must
still be there.
Yes, and all the pieces of string hanging about. I think that's why-
All the dental floss all over the kitchen, yeah.
They establish Pete as the, like, an inventor, as the trapmaker at the beginning. I don't
think really that's anything to do with catching the borrowers, that's to explain a way, oh,
sometimes the borrowers leave things about that look like they could have been made by
a kid.
Yeah, the random bullshit.
And also, every 90s movie has to have an inventor in, so it fills that quota.
It was after Flubber, so they had to have an inventor.
Would you like a piece of nothing trivia?
Fucking please.
The boy who plays Pete plays Pete in this and Peter in Jumanji, and those are his only
famous roles. There you go.
I did see that he was the guy from Jumanji, I'd forgotten that he was called Peter in
that.
His career kind of petered out after that.
Oh, oh my god. Okay, I'm going to keep saying useless stuff, pal, and you're going to keep
saying good jokes.
You're holding this pod together at the moment.
So my role is just to set Carl up. Nice. 39 episodes in, and I finally know my place.
And speaking of stupid pods, the borrowers get back.
Oh my god, I've done it again.
They get back home under the floorboards. They're fine. They manage to escape.
Oh, for now.
Draco is now just chilling in a chair and eating a marshmallow that's bigger than his
head. It's enormous. I mean, they must do all right for food.
And they must have diabetes.
You know, I was going to say it later. I'm going to say it now. All we see them eat this
entire time is sugar. He eats a marshmallow here. The mum serves up dinner in a minute,
which is just a raisin with some cereal, which is better, but still basically sugar. And
then later on, Pete gives them some dolly mixture, which for those who aren't familiar
is sugar compressed into a shape.
Covered in sugar.
Covered in sugar. It's the only thing they eat is just sugar. So where do they get tiny
little insulin injections? Do they have to steal those from clinics? I don't know.
Now we're slowly building the physiology of these. They must produce more to cope with
the sugar.
Oh, bloody hell. But I will also mention at this point, because this is our first look
inside the borrower, you know, quote unquote, the borrower house. I want to say, serious
point, the props that they use to build this are amazing.
Yes. Yeah. The saving grace of this movie is the effects, the practical effects to make
these actors look small. Awesome. The sets and the props really, really good stuff. Impressive.
It just, it just all fits together. It works really well. So props to them.
Can I be stopped?
But mum decides to vacuum, which is, as we find out outside of the normal schedule and
which causes a bit of chaos for them.
Yes. And either that's the strongest Hoover in the world, or these truly are bird bone
monsters, because they get sucked to the ceiling.
Yeah. In whatever world this is, the Hoovers are powerful. There's another time later where
they use one that almost sucks them from halfway across the room. And like my Hoover can't
pick up hair off the floor. Where can I buy one of these?
Well, all those skyscrapers in the matte painting of the city are owned by big Hoover, Sam.
That's who runs this world.
It's because they're all German made. I'll explain later.
Do you have to explain that one for me? I think you do.
Oh no, I'll explain later.
Oh, okay.
Is that going to come, that's going to come, that's going to come back up later. Okay.
What a set up.
Well, let's hurry on so that we can get to Carl's, what I'm sure is going to be a wonderful
theory. We, yeah, so same scene. We also get a little nugget of lore, which is that there
used to be loads of borrower families in the house apparently. But there's an implication
that we don't want to say why they left.
We have a murderous child in the house, so we can start making assumptions now that those
traps may have been put into use. But yeah, we had the over mantles, the furnaces and
the rafters.
Yes.
So why do the clocks live in the floor then?
I mean, also that that's confusing, but does this house have a furnace?
Well, that's why the furnaces had to leave.
So it's also explained here why borrowers want to stay away from humans because the
dad is adamant that they squish, they squash borrowers at first sight. And the boy kind
of, I don't know if he's met the God yet. He's not, is he?
Not yet, no.
Okay.
Yes. But this is where some weird thing is being built in the background where surely
at some point humans knew about borrowers. And to give the borrowers this kind of legacy
of being afraid of beans, as they called them in this movie, which I fucking hate, that
there must have been some sort of genocide or slavery of the borrowers in some way, or
just sports fighting.
There must have been a genocide.
Well, if they were, you'd get them all together, you'd make them fight for fun. You wouldn't
even get all your mates around on a Friday night, you'd all bet on the little borrowers.
There is something like that going on in the background. I was speaking to Carl before
I watched the second half of the movie, because I had to split it into two, about how this
reminds me of Stuart Little in a big way, where there's this, and here comes the word
I used, Carl, dichotomy between humans and this sort of subclass species that's still
in the movie.
They're sort of unknown, a sort of semi-mythological whatever they are.
The only difference between this and that is that in this that people are surprised
by the borrowers, but everybody's absolutely fine with seeing a little rat boy in the orphanage
in Stuart Little. But yes, that's just my theory for this. And maybe we'll build as
we go throughout.
Yeah. And what they, I mean, obviously they survive, they subsist by stealing from humans
and gaslighting them. They should really call themselves the gaslighters.
Oh, we'll bring this back. I'm only borrowing it.
Yeah. I'll bring this battery back when it's dead.
Yeah. Is this a thing we can just get out of the way now? They don't fucking borrow
anything.
And they make you think that you've lost it. So Sam, that's it, I think, for this episode.
If we were to replace the borrowers with another name for this movie, another title, the gaslighters
is perfect. Yeah, that's good.
That's yeah, that's an option. We'll see if anything else.
Yeah, we'll see how we go.
So taking inspiration from Karate Kid, we cut ahead to nighttime and Arrietty is going
to bed, being put to bed, but she's too bored to go to bed in her own words. So she grabs
a little birthday candle stub and heads up to Pete's room to sneak through the wall and
watch TV. And he's watching really old TV. This kind of cements that this is set in the
vague past.
This is another thing, yeah, that added to the when is this set question that keeps coming
up. All his toys are old toys. He's watching a black and white TV.
But the TV is in his room. He's got a TV in his bedroom, but it's an old black and white
box.
I think I can't prove this in any way, because I've not done any research. Why would I? It's
probably an effort to make the movie feel timeless in a way, so you can't connect it
to any one time. So, you know, you can always watch it and feel like it's a classic and
it's relevant to you now. It doesn't achieve it. But a movie I recommend people watch that
does that really well is It Follows. Have either of you seen that?
Rings a Bell, but I don't think I've seen it.
It's a horror movie. It's a creature that's invisible to everyone else, only you can see
it and it's always following you. And if it catches you, it kills you. The only way you
can pass it on is by having sex with someone. And then it follows them until it kills them
and comes back to you. But it's a movie that you can't really tell when it's based. They've
got these weird flip phones that were never really made. It's like 80s synthetic music,
but all the clothing is quite modern. It's good.
I mean, my theory was that they set it vaguely in the past because they didn't want to pay
for the rights to any of the movies or TV shows that you would be watching. Just use
old clips that have, you know, gone public.
Yeah, but my thing too.
Also yours.
Well, we're on the topic of this little monstrosity, moving through the walls into Pete's room,
almost called him Alan. This is a point of contention for me. She gets on a little tape
measure and she flicks the switch. So she flies up. We've established they've got bird
bones and weigh nothing. And we all know how hard those tape measures hit the container.
She should be a little fucking blood drop on the ceiling, not safely at the top of the
elevator.
That's your point of contention. Not that she lit the candle on a live wire whilst holding
the metal wire.
Yes, that also bothered me. Also, how do you explain to the insurance people that your
house is burnt down because of a tiny person living in your walls, but holding an open
flame to your house made of wood, as all American houses are? If this is based in America, who
knows?
Or English.
Yeah.
All the buildings in the background are brick and all of the walls that we see are made
of wood.
Yeah.
The skyscrapers made of brick are sickening. Disgusting to look at.
They are disgusting.
Awful.
But we'll come to them.
Anyway, getting back to it. She's on top of his cupboard now with all of his toys, watching
the TV, but she accidentally knocked one of them off. So his head whips around. He's been
hunting God knows how long, for years.
And now he's caught scent of her.
And now he gets the feeling that there's one there. So he climbs up on top, looks like
he's on top of the cupboard, but somehow he doesn't see it. And he backs off. So she thinking
that she's safe now, I guess, goes to retrieve the little candle stub. Absolutely don't.
You don't need to.
That would not have given you away. If I looked up on a shelf and found that my brain wouldn't
go tiny people in the house.
I mean, you realise we're talking about a boy who creates machines to capture tiny people
in the house.
Yeah, he's already killed five families.
Exactly. But anyway, so she heads back out to grab a little candle stub. And obviously
he catches her, slams a tin over her, gets her like a spider with a bit of card and a
tin. And finally, after however long he's been chasing and getting gas lit by this little
borrower, he's caught one. So he drops her into a glass and just has a perfectly civil
conversation with her.
All the fun little facts, boys. The toy she knocks over is apparently the exact same toy
from The Indian in the Cupboard, which is about toys coming to life, turning to little
people. And then when he puts her in that glass jar, it's on top of a book of Gulliver's
Travels.
I didn't catch that.
Trivia.
Those are good facts. A lot more people know about The Indian in the Cupboard than I previously
thought.
It's a very good movie.
People talk about it quite a lot on Twitter. I'd never heard of it until you mentioned
it for this podcast.
You vetoed us doing it.
Well, we can do it at some point now, I think. We've got our footing.
So Pete has finally caught this prey that he's been chasing after. And Arrietty immediately
crumbles over the complete lack of pressure and hands over not only her family, but our
entire family tree and friends and everyone. Fortunately, his reaction is, oh, well, we're
moving. Do you need a hand? Should we take you?
Well, because you framed it in that way, Sam. You made it sound like you wanted to help
them to get to a new house. But all he's thinking really is, hmm, I'd like to keep this. I'd
better take it to the new house with me. That's all. He's not trying to help. He just wants
to stall them at the new one.
To set up more traps. To make sure that he's got something to hunt.
How will he get hard otherwise?
Maybe that's it. Maybe it's like a cat that catches a little shrew.
Just play with it.
Just toys with it a bit and then lets it go broken and battered.
Go on, run again.
But he does let her go. And she goes back to our family and spends about 10, 15 seconds
convincing them until they're on board as well. And the next thing you know, the morning
after they found out that they're evicted, the moving van is all loaded up and they're
ready to go.
Yeah, I don't get this truck. His parents don't seem not well off. Yes, they're losing
the house. But because it's been stolen by this bank guy. But the truck they've got has
got a huge hole in the floor.
Honestly.
I know it's just a contrivance to put the borrowers at risk.
Upkeeper vehicles in the 1950s slash 90s was apparently not very good. When is this movie
set?
Why has this van got a hole in the floor?
Why is every car a Morris Minor?
I don't think we I don't think we see the hole in the base of the van until the ironing
board falls over, which incidentally also absolutely annihilates the little like plastic
plastic container that they're in. So I don't know, this thing's made of lead or something.
Maybe it just punches right through.
World's strongest hovers, world's heaviest ironing boards. We're going to construct this
world in our heads as we go. World's lightest monsters and a lot of dog shit as we're about
to find out.
So Pete has got them into this little plastic container ready to move. And yeah, loads them
up into the back with some dolly mixtures to eat. Then he gets into the front with his
parents. It sits three so he's...
It's a 10 minute drive. It's not like they were driving to a new city.
Yeah, it's one mile.
They didn't need feeding. What is the metabolism on these little things? Like a hamster, they'll
be dead if we don't feed them in between setting off and getting the fucking sugar shakes.
It's a one mile trip and yeah, he gives them some snacks and a walkie talkie so that he
can check in on them on this 10 minute trip. A walkie talkie, which he sits directly next
to his mum, holds it up and just talks at full volume into. And presumably, like walkie
talkies emit sound. She can hear them talking back. It's not just her son having a toy that
he talks into with his imaginary friends.
They sound like adults.
This grown man you're talking to, so...
Yes!
There's a grown man he's talking to. What? Who are you talking to? Oh, it's just the
man in the back of the van. But the ironing board does fall over, punches a hole right
through the floor of the van and Arrietty and Draco fall out. Draco's straight into a
big old swirly pile of shit.
Why?
Who's that for?
Why?
It was before this started that Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis both turned it down because
of the crude humour. And I was watching the start of it going, it doesn't seem that crude.
And then, yeah, that happened. I was like, okay, that's what they meant.
Well, this was a bit crude, but well, oh, it goes downhill.
It should be fully described because he lands in the dog shit. And then there's this moment
where you're afraid he's going to be hit by the wheel of the van. But it's one of those
split wheels.
From how you've been talking, I don't think you're afraid that he's going to be squished.
I feel like he's going for it.
Of course he was. Yes. I would have stomped them all already. You kidding me? Yeah. It
goes over him and it pushes the shit up around him until he forms like a Greek statue of
shit within it.
And we've got to assume that he reeks of dog shit for the rest of the film.
I'll tell you already, stanker shit, the horrible little things.
They haven't got a little shower down there, I think.
I don't like them, if you can't tell.
No, I can tell.
However old I am, it's like styrofoam to me. Scraping teeth.
Oh, okay. Interesting comparison to use, but I get it. I get it. Horrible squeaky little
things.
Too light.
Hollow bones.
That's probably where we get the technology for lighter ironing boards is from when these
borrowers are fucking operated on.
Our trucks are safe.
Is this before hollow ironing boards, but after plastic walkie talkies? We're narrowing
it down.
So the humans head on to their new house, ignoring their mental son.
We don't have to call them the humans.
We do.
I don't know what to call them.
Because borrowers are not humans.
The lenders and the borrowers.
Okay, fine. So the lenders head to the new house while the borrower kids go back into
the old one, along with, we find out, Potter, the evil lawyer. So he's, so Potter heads
into the house that's now his, and he's tapping his way along the wall because he knows that
there's a hollow spot where the will is. And as he's doing it, he's recounting in full
the conversation that he had with her where she revealed to him that she hid the will
in the walls.
Not just recounting, with voices.
Doing the voice.
As we learned in the Karate Kid, the best way to deliver exposition on a character's
history, background, backstory, is to have them role play it in front of you. Yes.
So yeah, he re-enacts the conversation, doing the voices and everything.
He's knocking along on the wall. He finds his hollow spot. He breaks in with a hammer.
He finds a safe in the wall. Opens said safe with a stethoscope. And then whips out his
fucking flip phone. When is this set?
I did not see the flip phone.
I didn't catch the flip phone.
I don't even think flip phones existed when this movie came out.
Is this the first flip phone?
I don't know. There were no flip phones in 1997.
Was it one of the big black ones with the little flippy bit on the bottom?
Little silver thing. Little silver thing. They predicted the Motorola, whatever it was.
The Razor.
Thank you.
The Razor. Oh God. Flashbacks.
So he's retrieved the will and he's used his, well, as you know, he doesn't get the Razor
out just yet. He's got the will and he's trying to burn it, but his light is not working.
So he's heading off to get some matches. And while he leaves the will on the mantelpiece,
Arrietty and Draco, understanding the plan, understanding what's going on in full, head
out, grab it and pull it into the vents in the wall, which he obviously sees. I mean,
how were they hoping that that would go down? Of course he sees them.
They hide behind the will, like that's less conspicuous.
So at this point, after this has happened, we cut back to Pete who realises that, oh,
he doesn't realise, he speaks to the parents in the back of the van, little borrower parents,
and they find out that the kids fell out back at the old house. So he hops on his bike and
heads back.
And this is, you mentioned it before, Ev, this is where we first see the city or town
and we zoom up and every single house is identical. Everything is red brick. We can see in the
distance a bunch of full red brick skyscrapers and three or four zeppelins.
Oh, now I see the connection to earlier.
Where the fuck is this?
I didn't, I didn't catch the zeppelins.
I did not either, but everything is so great. That's a key knife.
Yeah. There's everything about the way everything is a symmetrical town. All the cars are the
exact same car. And then the zeppelins that are in the air. It just makes me think of...
Am I connected? Do you want someone to connect the docks for you so you don't sound like
a man?
But you know what I mean though? Like the Volkswagen is...
Yeah, this is Germany won the war.
The car of the people in the... Yeah, this is where my brain is starting to go.
Now that you're saying it, in a short while we are introduced to Hugh Laura as a policeman.
As a policeman...
Not yet. We will get there. I've got... We'll get there.
Oh, okay. Okay. So he heads back. Yeah. Pete heads back to the house where Potter has now
called in exterminated Jeff. He's pulled up some floorboards. He's seen the little borrower
house under the floorboards and he's calling in exterminated Jeff off the TV.
It's not exterminated Jeff. He's... He says...
Go on.
Well, he says extermination is my middle name. So it's exterminator extermination Jeff, right?
Very good.
Oh, shit.
Also...
What about exterminating, don't they? Does it remind you of...
Oh.
Maybe. We'll get there. But I'll hear nothing bad said about Mark Williams.
I love his part. He shows up straight away, immediately dressed as a cross between the
Ghostbusters and some guy in an ice cream bar.
An ice cream man, yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah. He's got his weird... I mean, it's a Ghostbuster gun kind of thing, which he smashes
into the wall and spaffs out some burning goop, which I guess he's gonna fill the house
with.
It looks like kind of like insulation would be. And if you want to get the will out of
the wall, which Potter definitely does, that's the last thing you do, wouldn't it?
No, he doesn't. He just wants it destroyed, doesn't he? So that's fine for him.
He does.
Of course.
But what I'm thinking... What I was thinking more is, what if you don't want the whole
building knocked down? Now it's just full of weird goop in the walls. I mean, surely
those gaps in the walls were for a reason. God, just have it all now full of this weird
cement.
Unfortunately, that doesn't matter because he is just going to bulldoze the entire house
to build his apartment complex for some reason.
Well, yeah, but not to ruin the film for everyone. The lenders do get this house back and are
now living with this hazard inside the wall.
They've always had hazards in the walls.
Yeah, they've got to deal with this. And we see, it's like, it makes some progress. We
see it like pushing out of the vents and stuff. I don't know how houses are built, but that
can't be good.
Can I add to the little theory we were building earlier? Because I was genuinely starting
to get this idea that, is this a world where America joined with Germany in the war then?
Is that why everything's so Americanized?
Is this okay?
Because as Pete is riding back on his bike, places have slightly Americanized names. What
you'd think as a normal pub in England would be called the old red line or something. It's
called the Sleepy U, just the letter U, Motel. It's not a fucking word we use.
No, Motel is not a word we do here.
There's something going on in this world. And it's weirdly deep for a kid's movie about
tiny people.
I'll run with it, yeah.
No, I like it.
It is.
There's more than enough evidence so far. And if you factor in the bird bones too, now
we've really got something going.
Little Nazi bird bones.
Oh, there's the name of the movie!
Quick boys, write these down.
Okay, back to the film. Jeff is... exterminator, extermination... Jeff is, yeah, blasting his
goop into the wall. And he's kind of gone into a... and he's gone into kind of a trance-like
K hole, which he cannot be woken from because Putter's trying to get his attention. So he
grabs him on the shoulder and shakes him trying to, I don't know, get him to stop or to give
some feedback. And his response is to spin around and kind of, for a long time, bukkake
blast him with burning foam in the face, which kind of puffs up and hardens and he rips it
off and gets the moustache with it. No reason for that, just...
It was just a bit of a gag, wasn't it? Yeah, that's what a lot of the shit in this movie
is going to be. There's a whole sequence on Showwall, glance over later, but all the stuff
in the dairy factory and all of that is just goop humour. As if they haven't fucking killed
that joke in this movie already.
So the borrowers have escaped, the borrowers kids have escaped at this point and they've
headed upstairs and they're looking down on the two that are down there who see them and
head up and start smashing apart the wall to get at Arietty and Draco. And they're kind
of guessing, just smashing their way through the wall, trying to grab them. They smash
in, they managed to get Draco, whip him out and chuck him into a light bulb, which he's
grabbing onto. So Arietty kind of loops round, drops that tape measure from before and gets
him to grab onto it, pulls him up into the ceiling and they managed to finally escape.
I want to hit something here because I really enjoyed Mark Williams's performance as Exterminator
Extermination Jeff. How he seemed equally as astounded and interested in the existence
of borrowers when he's staring at the little bag that he hooked off Draco with the hammer.
But then he's like also just absolutely fine with torturing and killing them because as
soon as Potter says, are you just going to stand there and do something while he's looking
in amazement of this little tiny bag? His mind just sort of snaps straight away to pointing
at the light bulb, like, why haven't we just considered this right away? Let's burn the
little prick. And then he just, we just melted the cunt. Yeah. He's amazing. But yeah. Oh
yeah. In reference in episodes that never came out. Yeah. It's just very funny to me,
but then indicative of what I was saying earlier, like it's almost second nature for humans
to want to kill these little things for some reason. Give me more on that. There's the
better movie. Tell me why they're so disgusting other than the reasons in my brain that I
know it.
It was filmed to analyse why the superior humans of this nonspecific country want to
exterminate the inferior race.
Well, yeah, since Carl is able to think on a higher level than me, now I know why.
Yeah.
Well, don't worry. More evidence to come.
I will say what, since you mentioned it. Yeah. Mark Williams' character in this really reminded
me of his character from 101 Dalmatians, which he played alongside Hugh Laurie, who is also
in this movie.
Speaking of.
Speaking of Hugh Laurie.
What a segue.
Just very quickly before we get to him, the borrowers escape, the kids escape out the roof
and Jeff and Potter head outside because Jeff has got his secret weapon that he's going
to show, which turns out as the hands down number one worst running gag in the film.
He opens the back of his van and we see Mr. Smelly, the farting dog. That's the extent
of the joke.
That's it?
That's it.
Yeah.
This dog eats a lot of cheese, so he farts a lot and it's like a bloodhound. He'll sniff
out the borrowers. Why you would need that as a pescat, I suppose, to find pests around
a house.
Except usually you're hired to go to the house where pests are. So usually the dog must just
go, yep, they are here like they say.
Yeah, you probably don't need a bloodhound once you're in the house where the pests are.
Usually people don't go, I think the pests got out of the house, so can you track them
down across the city?
Can you chase them down?
The mouse got out, but I want it hunted down. Unless that's the kind of sick world we live
in, in this crazy, crazy world, whenever, wherever it is.
I think we probably do. Where there's an exterminator who's particularly adept and has a dog that's
particularly adept at going into houses and finding the hidden occupants living under
the floorboards, maybe there's more to it.
I guess we know what happened to the rafters. Pretty extensive diary they kept.
And frankly, we shouldn't dig more into that.
Moving on!
Moving on to what we've all been waiting for, which is both Potter and Geoff now get confronted
by Hugh Laurie, the local policeman who sticks his nose into everybody's business.
We do need to talk about Hugh Laurie.
The uniform.
The uniform, yeah. First of all, whenever the fuck this is, he's wearing a wired head
piece in his ear, which I found odd at first. And then I was like, oh, that's a very military
style cap he's wearing with the plastic brim. And it's black. That's odd. Are those knee
high leather black boots? Is that a submachine gun? With a bullet belt and a pistol.
He's got a fucking submachine gun.
What is going on?
I thought you were just running with the jokes.
No, he's got a submachine gun, a pistol, a full fucking Gestapo uniform. I don't know.
Is there a skull on the badge on his cap?
Unfortunately it just says police.
Really? Not the bad guy.
Yeah, he's a very nice bloke other than that. Other than the big Nazi look.
I was so proud of myself when I noticed the weird earpiece. It's like, oh, that's a hint
at something. Is that a fucking machine gun?
This world is fascinating. And I want to know more about it. The level to which they built
up a world we never see.
It's on purpose. There's no way all of these things are accidents.
All of them. There's one too many things.
Borrowers are a definite allegory for some thing when you consider all the other things
going on. It's fun though.
Other than those huge allegories embedded within this movie, other than that, it's just
poo and fart jokes, which is such a strange combination.
I feel like they must have finished the movie and it was just full of references to Nazis
and someone just went, it's meant to be a kid's movie. You're going to have to go and
add some stuff. And they just went off cheese, poo and farts, I guess it is then.
Yeah. So Hugh Laurie, he does confront them, but he doesn't really do anything. He just,
he leaves and heads off. Pete and the borrower adults just about get to the house in time
to realize that everyone else has left and is now tracking across town to get to the
new house. So the kids, the borrower kids are heading there. Potter and Jeff are giving
chase. So we cut back to them and see that they've, they've made what we can assume is
a decent distance. They seem to be in the middle of town. Draco manages to slip and
fold again down a drain pipe, straight into a little milk bottle that's lying on the floor.
Arrietty is on a one hour escort mission. The most useless NPC walking next to her.
So annoying. Yeah. Walks, walks faster than she walks, runs slower than she runs.
Runs into enemies. No health bar. Absolute nightmare.
T Green has died. Mission failed. Yeah. And, um, but before they can, before they can pick
him up, Hugh Laurie returns again. He's barely left and he's right back again and he's gone
and picked up some face cream for Potter and then kind of hunted him down across the town.
They know everything that's going on in this big brother watch town. I'm sure they're surveilling
the entire town. I'm convinced this movie was trying to say more to me when he, he brought
him this cream said it's really good for burns. I use it all the time. What does that mean?
That means something. What's he burning? That does mean something. Bugging me. And the,
this has gone back a bit, but the reason he was called over, he said that someone had
reported a disturbance at the house, but they're just like knocking through the walls and stuff.
It's nothing too big. Even that is quite. Everyone ratting out everyone just in case,
just that they like, they're like in line with the regime. That's what's going on here.
I'm surprised they didn't ask them for their papers. I'm going to watch this movie again,
you know, with this in mind. Yeah. Just to piece this together a little bit more. Yeah.
But yeah, while he's interrogating them, checking their papers and handing over the cream, the
milkman shows up, perfect timing, picks up the bottle containing Draco, stows him in
the milk float. And so they head off, they chase after the milk float. Arrietty goes
down the drain as well, following him. And then she meets Spud Spiller, which is just
a grim name. Who must just represent le resistance. The underground, literally. Absolutely. Yeah.
Oh my God. Yeah. He is the resistance. And he takes her down into the underground railroad.
The Underground Railroad. The Underground Roller Skate. Which is a roller skate with
an aerosol on top that he flies around town on. Yeah. Yeah. And he knows that they're
heading to the dairy. Yeah. And we see the milk cart heading towards the dairy as well.
And on the side of that dairy, it says double Dutch dairies, 1999. When the fuck is this
movie set? It came out in 97. Why does it say 1999 on it? What happened in this world?
Unless they thought that a lot of shit was going to go down in the next two years. But
there are flip phones. Bit odd to have a dairy in the middle of a city. Not this city, mate.
That's fully standard. Every other house is a dairy. There's a possibility that everything
outside this city is now just the wasteland. So cows have to be within the city confines.
Well, I was going to say, I mean, if I can throw in my incredibly shit joke, we see all
the milk, but we don't see Dachau. Oh, that's so good. Should we just call it? Should we
just call it there? Should we just quit? Anyway, everyone converges on the dairy. I don't know
what this episode is. This is fucked. Everyone converges on the dairy. Draco's now on a conveyor
belt. No one's seen that there's a small child inside one of these bowls. So he's on the
conveyor belt and the two borrower kids, Arietty and Spud, are chasing after him and trying
to get him out. So Potter gets in there as well and locks the door. And his plan is to
stand at the end of the conveyor belt and smash each bottle one by one as they slowly
head towards him. So they see that this is happening. And they lasso their way kind of
away from him towards a lever that is kind of a convenient hook to get away from him.
He sees what they're doing. He doesn't care. He keeps smashing bowls.
No, no, he does. He sees, he cares. And he starts smashing bottles quicker. But the conveyor
belt is going no faster. So it makes no difference at all.
Yeah, it's not doing anything different. It's just that, yeah, smashing them faster as if
that's going to speed things up somehow. As if each bottle is waiting for him to smash
it to move along.
Obviously it doesn't. They swing away. They manage to get hooked onto the lever. The camera
pans out a little bit and we see that the lever is labeled just cheese. So they pull
it down and the cheese pipe that's hovering directly over Potter blasts him with molten
cheese whiz. What?
The cheese pipe that cheeses onto the floor like you do.
I don't know what this place is. When we entered, I thought this is just where milk bottles
went to be cleaned before they're reused for more milk. Where you'd imagine they'd go to
a farm or where the farmers hand over milk to the company.
There are no farms anymore. Also.
What is the milk then?
Weird thing about this world is that I'm pretty certain the voiceovers that you hear as the
milk cart arrives in this dairy are all in Dutch, which is weird for, sorry, it's normal
for a place called double Dutch dairies, but it's still fucking weird.
They only hire Dutch people? Do they force them to speak Dutch?
Everyone lives in this one final city now.
There are three mutant cows who produce two milk, one does cheese.
Yeah, that was another thing that bugged me.
Oh, that's horrible.
Very American, like in cheese, wasn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the stuff that gets left out and solidified into the Americans
cheese singles.
They call it cheese whiz.
Oh, cheese whiz is the liquid stuff in the can, isn't it?
It's the stuff in the can. They call it cheese whiz in the film, which, I mean, I don't,
we don't have that over here, so I don't really know what the consistency is, but I'm going
to assume this is an accurate representation of it.
Like it's a whipped cream can that you spray out of, but it's a bit thicker than that.
Sure. Okay. Which tracks with what we see?
It's the primary food ingredient for this culture now, other than sweets.
A big bowl of sweets at the end of the day, and you cover it in cheese and those are your
two food groups.
That's the food pyramid.
And then you watch your neighbours out the window.
Sweets are delivered by Zeppelin.
You only get sweets if you've ratted out a neighbour this month.
So Draco is still, Draco's still in the same bottle. Nothing's happened there. So he's
drowned in milk.
You mentioned food khaki earlier, to be fair.
Second instance.
Too khaki.
Oh nice.
And then the cap goes on and he gets taken into a different room. Meanwhile, by the way,
we're getting the finale of the Mr. Smelly storyline, which is he just gets distracted
and starts eating an entire vat of cheese and he's left to it. That's all we see.
See that thing from earlier was important.
It's yeah, completely pointless.
To be fair, you're not going to share the sweets you get from ratting out your neighbours
with your dog, so the dog only gets cheese.
The dog only gets the cheese, yeah. But the borrower parents, pardon whatever the wife's
name is.
Never learn it.
So they swing up, they zipline over and save Draco just by smashing the bottle that he's
in. Simple enough. But then Potter manages to catch all of them together. So he manages
to catch all of them and instead of just killing them there and then, he gathers them up, sellotapes
them to the cheese trough where all the cheese gets blasted into.
Trays that get delivered to the households.
It's just, it's a single trough that runs all the way through the streets of the town.
You get a ladle full in the morning.
Cheese gets to our street. That's why they were sad about moving. It was much further
from the dairy, that house.
It's flowing. Yeah, once by the time the cheese gets to you at that part of town.
God, it'll be near lunchtime by the time we get our cheese.
It's absolutely filthy.
Oh, God. So he sellotapes them to the cheese trough, to the cheese gutter. He doesn't pull
the lever. He sets a timer. And then he heads off to town hall because he's got the will.
He's got what he wants. Now there's a way.
That's a great job.
He leaves and Pete flies in to save the day just before the timer goes off and these miniature
people get blasted with the cheese cannon. I can't believe the shit that's coming out
of my mouth, by the way.
Just before, just before the time it goes off, he manages to divert the flow of cheese
whiz away from the family.
People are now going to have to not eat for a day or two because of all that wasted cheese
whiz.
I mean, yeah, they're all gonna, by the way, this is middle of the day and no one is working
in this dairy.
There is no, everything is automated in this dairy.
It's all automated.
In fact, the only engineering flaw in this dairy is that they built two cheese pipes,
one that goes into a trough, but you need it. And the other one that just empties onto
the floor.
We see four jobs in this world, lawyer, receptionist, policeman, and milk driver.
Exterminator.
Oh, and I suppose there is also exterminator. I'm pretty sure that's the only professions
that exist in this world. It's all you need.
But anyway, so now everyone's escaped. Everyone is heading to the town hall because that's
where Potter's going. He wants to go to the demolition department.
Did you notice who else is at the town hall just guarding the door? Just Hitler.
Was it?
There's a man who is the fucking spit of Hitler just stood guarding that shitty hall door.
So are you talking about the guy who's standing outside who tries to block Jeff the exterminator
from getting in?
Yeah.
He's dressed very. Yeah. It's kind of a strangely Germanic looking building compared to everything
else we've seen in this world. And yeah, Hitler's there. But then as we go inside the building,
everyone's still wearing these weird, wearing these weird gray military style uniforms.
Like the women are wearing like the weird military style hats and stuff. It's all very
odd.
Yeah. She has like a gray sort of power suit on with big shoulders.
One thing I wanted to point out, speaking of the entrance, so Potter manages to get
in fine. They try, this guard tries to stop Jeff because presumably, you know, this is
a fine establishment and you're an exterminator. We can't let someone like you in. You've just
let a guy in who is coated in cheese.
White red covered in cheese.
Well, it's like, that's a sign of wealth in this world. Yeah. Like in our world, we'd
order a lovely sexy lady covered in sushi, but they've only got sweets and cheese. So
you get a big man covered in cheese to come up and you all suck it out of his suit.
This man must be loaded. He's wasting his cheese rations on just pouring it on his head.
This guy can bathe in his cheese.
This one is covered in a month's worth of cheese for a small family.
So here he speaks to the receptionist asking for directions to...
To the demolition department or whatever the equivalent should be.
So oddly, because everything else you've said so far tracks for me in this movie, this bit
is the biggest curveball. Why is this woman doing a Jim Carrey impression? It's very Ace
Ventura.
Is that what she's doing?
Yes. She's doing these big movements and she's trying to do his voice for sure. I wish I
could play a little clip for you here, but I didn't take it. It's so odd.
The actress is Ruby Wax, who was quite famous about 20 years ago in England. And she was
like that, to be fair, just all the time.
Oh, okay. I did not recognise her.
So yeah, like you said, this receptionist, Ruby Wax the receptionist, because he's such
a dickhead, she gives Potter these convoluted directions that send him all over the building.
And then the good guys chasing after him, she gives very straightforward instructions,
get into the lift, head to the top floor, straight in front of you.
So they are able to head him off, set up a little trap that he springs and sends him
into a supply closet, which they then lock. And the borrower family descends onto him,
ties him up, gets him good tape, like electrical tape all round his head, locks him up, grabs
the will. He just breaks free.
And now they have a way.
Immediately. Very easily.
Great joke.
Well that's the thing. They don't have a way because he breaks very immediately, very,
very gently, tenderly takes them off each shoulder, scoops them up and yeah, just delicately
places them on the floor. Again, you're trying to kill them.
Pop their head like a spot. It would take you less than a second.
So easy. Their bones are hollow. Right now, they're all in his hands. He could squash
them like a packet of crisps. So easy.
He's got cheese whiz to lick off those fingers in a bit. Can't go wasting that.
But he puts them under like an upturned bin and again grabs a vacuum cleaner with the
power of a hurricane and starts bringing it across the floor to them.
Because they're German made.
Well yeah, powerful engines. He pulls it across the floor to them and it looks like their
time is up until the fucking borrower army descends. The resistance is here.
They are dressed like the SAS coming down those ropes from the ceiling.
The first ones up. So a few borrowers come down from the ceiling fan and tie him up Gulliver's
travel style. There's the call back to earlier. And then the rest of the borrowers, hundreds
of them flock in wielding pitchforks and dressed in rags like a peasant mob.
The resistance is everyone.
They're fighting the aristocracy, aren't they?
Yeah. I think there are two important things to note here. Number one, this supply closet
is full of something that's called pure Manila toilet paper. When Manila paper is the stuff
that you get given to draw on when you're in nursery class.
It's the stuff that yellow envelopes is made out of.
Yeah. You do not want to be wiping with that when all you eat is cheese whiz and sweets.
God. Imagine the paper cuts.
Question number two, all borrowers are ginger.
Oh, well, I have a point about this. Well, they're inbred, aren't they? Because not only
are they ginger. No, no, no. I'm not drawing that comparison. They also look fucked up
when they take their masks off and it's his mates from when he was younger and they all
lived in that same house. The one guy's face who is dust bunny is the same as that guy
from the Goonies. What's his name?
Sloth. This is an actual actor you're talking about.
Well bad luck for that guy. He's a monster. As is this character he plays.
In this universe are gingers the subjugated people then? I haven't seen a ginger human
in this. That's true.
Well there's Mr. Weasley who plays the exterminator, but his head is shaved, but he is naturally
ginger, but they wanted him to look less inbred for this.
Yeah, are we saying that this is a world where all the gingers were subjugated and they had
to inbreed until they just started shrinking? Smaller and smaller because of all the recessive
dunes. All the recessive dunes compounding until they ended up four feet, four inches
tall.
You're the biologist. Does that sound possible to you?
That's 100% possible.
There you go.
I wrote a line here.
Our greatest movie theory yet.
I want to share it with you. This is what a species looks like when a gene pool is less
of a pool and more of a drop.
Oh, that's good.
I just want to say, I do not think that redheads are inbred. I was referring to that one guy
who I definitely thought was wearing prosthetics. I'm sorry if that is your real face.
Sorry about the face in the words of Hugh Laurie.
There was a cream for that.
The army is here.
Somehow Spillar has returned, even though he was dropped in a burning oil.
We saw a puff of smoke go up as he was dropped in there, but he got away somehow. Pod is
lifted up on a platform and he gives a speech to the army that's around him and to Potter.
And then as soon as they see the door handle turning, the door opening, they're gone in
a flash.
Instantly, the entire room's cleared, the ropes, the strings are off him and they've
vanished with superhuman speed.
For the third time, Hugh Laurie's back.
The Gestapo's here to serve justice.
They've now got evidence, very weak evidence, but evidence that he has been committing.
The boy pulls it out of his pocket and hands it to the police officer and that's all he
needs.
Sorry, the Gestapo officer.
And that is just the single odor he needed to put this rich guy in prison.
That's the only thing they needed.
He's, I mean, this guy has just been faced with a miniature army, so he's broken.
Yeah, he is.
I mean, psychologically destroyed.
He's just babbling at this point.
When you consider like what happens to people in dystopian worlds like this, I don't think
Pete's the good guy for going to get the police, to be fair.
No, he's not.
This guy's dead or he's going away forever.
This guy's, he's going into room 101.
He is, he's either getting re-indoctrinated or he's lining up, isn't he?
Maybe that's why next time we see him in the after credits, there's just nothing there
anymore.
Maybe that process has begun.
So cutting past all of the, you know, they moved to the, they moved back into the old
house.
The family are no longer social pariahs, don't know why they were before, but they're not
anymore.
They got friends around, happy ending, I guess.
And then we, like you say, we get a during credits scene where we see Potter in the police
station and he's explaining in kind of stuttered wording what's happened to him to the best
of his ability.
And he's got an entire room of police officers, Gestapo, howling in his face with laughter
at every word he's saying.
I guess that's what we take to be justice.
Yeah, we've, we're supposed to be happy that this guy's been caught, but it's not framed
in any sort of way that makes you feel good.
It's pretty horrible.
Yeah.
This whole thing has been horrible.
Thank you, Sam.
And that's just the end.
That's it.
Yes.
And now it just ends.
Isn't everything good again?
Well then shall we, I've written bad trivia there and that is not right.
And that's how I get it wrong every time.
Do you have any bad reviews for us, Sam?
I'll drop a couple of bad reviews on you.
A couple of people who weren't too fond of it, got two stars from the Delaware, said
my favourite part was when the guy said, say cheese to the bad guy and the bad guy got
covered in cheese.
And then the bad guy slipped and fell in the cheese.
Then he got up and he said cheese, which yeah, is one of many very weak jokes.
Yes.
And that whole thing relies on there being a camera in the scene and there is not other
than the one we are watching through, but yeah.
Oh, this is a totalitarian society.
There are plenty of cameras in there.
Everything's being monitored.
And the other one is left by a picture of an apple, two of the half stars said, I remember
we were reading The Borrowers in Primary School as a class and I threw up all over the book.
That's it.
That's the end of the review.
Just going back to what you said about cameras being in the dairy, I just want to get out
big udders watching and we can move on.
And on that note.
Thank you, Sam.
Excellent stuff.
I was just going to say, well, they took what that boy did to that book and just made a
movie out of it.
And that'll lead us nicely into this next section.
Basically.
Sam, so you think that was good, do you?
Honestly, I'm not even sure whether I do.
I think, I do think that this is an iconic film and I think that like the acting's really
good.
I think the casting, the cast is really good.
And I quite liked like, you know, even Tom Felton and the other kids, I thought they
did a good job.
And I think the special effects, like we said earlier, we've done really well.
All the sets and stuff are amazing, but fuck all happened.
Like realistically, I know we've spoken for a long time and we've said a lot of stuff.
A lot of scenes happened, but nothing happened.
In a film about an entire society of miniature people hiding in walls, the best they could
get is they move house.
It's such a mundane plot when it could have been, I feel like it could have been done
a lot better.
So I think it was all right.
Do I didn't, although now that I'm saying all this, I think the, um, the dark subplot
of whatever alternate reality, alternate history this is, makes it a lot better.
I agree.
I agree.
What about you, mate?
I'll say, I think I enjoyed looking around the movie more than I enjoyed watching the
movie itself.
I found myself just scanning the background for more stuff to corroborate my theory.
So I had a lot of fun doing that, but yeah, what goes on in the movie, not really much
at all.
So I'm going to say, I don't think it was good, do I, but I urge everyone to go watch
it and see what else they can spot that backs up this weird dystopian totalitarian thing
going on.
Absolutely.
Quite fun.
Just dig through.
Awesome.
And I'm tempted to rewatch it, even though I know that I won't enjoy it.
I completely agree.
You've given me a new perspective on this cause I missed all this the first time.
I hated this movie when I was a kid for obvious reasons.
I do not like the tiny little monsters in it.
It freaked me out now and it's still at then and it does now, but it's better than I remembered
it being.
The acting does, the actors in it do elevate it a bit for me.
Hugh Laurie, Mark Williams, you're the British classics.
I will watch this again because of what you've presented here, Carl.
I think that'll be an interesting rewatch, but I don't think it was good.
Nothing big happens in this movie.
There's no real plot other than moving from place A to place B. There's way too much time
in the dairy and no reason ever to have gone to a dairy in this.
I didn't get all the cheese stuff other than the fucking fantastic material it's given
us.
The dog, the weird little people.
No, I don't like it.
No, fuck this movie.
Yeah.
Squish them.
I didn't expect my tepid take on it to be the highest praise it got, but there you go.
But I also recommend that people watch it because the new spin on it is far better than
the actual movie is.
I say that because that must be what the movie is trying to tell people.
That's not all there by accident, like we said.
That is there.
At least one person who worked on this film intentionally put some shit in.
There's no way they got a prop machine gun without someone having an ulterior motive.
Yeah, great stuff.
Oh, wow.
Is that us done?
That's it.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you all for listening and thank you boys for joining me.
Please leave us a five star review on Apple or GoodPods and follow us over on Twitter
at So You Think Pod.
Join us again next week when we'll have struggled through a cinematic spit in the face that
is Eragon 2006.
Until then, it's only borrowing if you ever give it back, you disgusting fucking monsters.
And goodbye.
You gaslighter.
Goodbye.