Grand Champion

Grand Champion's producers had lots and lots of dirt on Roberts and Willis.'"Grand Champion" is an entertaining adventure that promises to delight audiences of all ages. From its touching story to its charming characters to its upbeat Texas music, there's something for everyone. The adventure begins with the love between a twelve-year old boy, Buddy, and his steer, Hokey Pokey and Buddy's determination to raise Hokey into a "Grand Champion".' -- rottentomatoes.com How could this happen? What was I thinking, renting a G-rated movie in the first place? What rush of uncharacteristic tolerance caused me to overlook my hatred of Joey Lauren Adams and the whole American bowl-cut genre and hand over the cash with a benign smile? I was duped, that's why. Tricked. When the title and synopsis on the DVD case is in Japanese, all the foreign mang has to go on is the cover art and the actors' names. 'Grand Champion' had one of the those wistful pastel drawing covers featuring a cow, and in large bold lettering, 'BRUCE WILLIS' and 'JULIA ROBERTS'. I figured it might be a nice little indie movie the big names were producing to get some street credibility or something. Julia Roberts clocked a total of one minute seven seconds of air time; Bruce Willis sweated it out for maybe two and a bit scenes and a total of three minutes give or take. For the rest of the movie we were treated to Joey Fucking Adams and her library bag drawstring mouth, jutting underbite, grating high-pitched voice and violent wince-inducing Renee Zellwegger squint. You may remember her as the lesbian from Chasing Amy. In a second cunning trick, the movie's producers hired a supporting cast of big-name lookalikes, so I was constantly shouting 'Hey! That cowpoke was Dustin Hoffman!', getting into an argument with the missus and having to rewind to prove that yes, the cowpoke was quite possibly a thinner, older Dustin Hoffman with a lazy eye. The Part is a modern variation of the standard Hollywood Bowl. Here Part shares a lighthearted moment.Regular BNU reader's would be familiar with my love-to-hate relationship with the bowl-cut genre. A decent bowl-cut brat movie gives me a chance to deliver what I fondly imagine to be a witty running commentary for the benefit of my wife, also providing a release for the brimming dam of bitterness deep within my black soul. But I couldn't even laugh at this one. I just watched it saucer-eyed with my mouth slightly open. The movie opens through the doleful dunging of banjo strings and a lyric assuring the audience that we were all born in barns. On a Texas ranch, a cow is giving birth (painlessly, bloodlessly and off camera) to an overweight, pie-faced child with neatly parted hair, checkered shirt and jeans hitched up over his pudgy little body to chest height. No, wait, the boy was helping a ruggedly good-looking and apparently available small-town vet deliver a CALF, sorry. Did you know that some calves are born steers, not boys or girls? Jesus said. Also attending was Part Hair's best friend, Token Fat Black Kid, and his precocious peg-toothed sister, Sister. That's her name, seriously, and it led to some unintentionally amusing lines for Token: 'Ain't no way we're gonna make it in time, Sister!' Part Hair's mum, (Joey Fucking Adams) was also hovering around like a bad stink, tugging her drawstring and squinting. Sister asks Part what he is going to call the calf. 'Hokie Pokie,' he replies in a flash of inspiration, moist lips working. 'Like the song!' she exclaims in over-rehearsed delight and the three start a rousing rendition. All four verses, while forcing the terrified beast's legs around in the straw. Ha ha! See, Hokie is dancing! Clever Hokie! Left foot in! That's not a foot, silly, it's a hoof! Aha ha ha ha! Raspberry lemonade! Despite the joyous occasion, dark clouds gather on the horizon at Okay Ranch. The family is on the bones of its arse, and after mommy has paid off the vet with a vague offer of a home-cooked meal at some unspecified time in the future ('When I git some time off motherin' ya'll come over for a good home cooked meal' says Chasing Amy through her jutting bottom row of fence palings. 'Y'all ever git any time off motherin'?' asks Vet, fondling his hard-on through the pocket of his jeans. 'I'm fixin' to one of these days. You know the sayin' "the outside of animals is good for the inside of kids"? That's a good one.') ??! Enter Sista, hitting her mark with a triumphant little stamp and opening her mouth like Jonathon Joe with a Mouth Like An 'O': 'Mommy, the cow died when she had Hokie, didn't she? Just like daddy.' You were fucking there, weren't you? How could you fail to notice the screams of a dying cow in the final throes of a breach birth? 'Honey, the cow is up giving Daddy and ride all over heaven.' Daddy is dead. Dead! He didn't abandon them for the drink or run off with a slut, and he didn't divorce, and he's not gay. D-E-A-D. 'Now, TV hour is over, and although it's broad daylight and you're nine years old, I want you to climb up in the attic and get into bed with your 12-year-old brother and talk stiltedly about how Hokie is going to win the Big Texas Show!' As I say, mouth open. Saucer eyes. Matt Dillon and family. Their prize-winning steer is also black.Now, for the diabolical twist! The neighbouring ranch is owned by Matt Dillon from Something About Mary, and he is rich and evil. He has a blond harpy wife who will stop at nothing to see her son win Best Junior Steer at the county fair, and with a cow no less. But they are cheating! A henchman with scraggly hair is feeding and grooming their cow and their spoilt rich son does nothing, even though it's a competition supposed to be for juniors! And it's a handsome black cow too! Even worse things happen. Chasing Amy's family is, as I say, very poor. We can see this because she drives a rusting old truck that she can luckily fix herself by rolling up her sleeves and pasting a spot of grease on her forehead. At the supermarket, the cashier won't accept Amy's cheque, but luckily Vet is in the queue and he secretly motions to her that he will pay and Amy doesn't see. Outside, he offers Amy some more free vet services and a free ride to the Big Texas Show. Being a woman with the dreams of her firstborn nearest to heart, and a speck of grease on her forehead, she declines the offer but asks for any spare empty drink cans he may have. She perhaps wisely doesn't mention the Vet's solve-everything offer to Part, but instead sends him into the rolling fields of Texas to fill a hessian bag with Coke cans. Token of course helps. Token has no cow or farm but he spends most of the movie being bossed around by Part, either because he has been taking notes from Vet on the gentle art of seduction, or he's black and that's what black kids do in Texas. Alas, despite finding an astonishly large amount of cans for a town with a population of 30 (half of whom apparently work at its main hub of industry, the aluminium can recycling depot), they fall well short of their Big Texas Show goal. Even with the years that elapsed while the calf grew to the 300kg monster it is today, it just isn't easy scraping together the money required to drive a few hours to a neighbouring town. The next morning the children awake to find an enormous pile of cans in their back garden. Who could it have been?! Was Token up all night working his pudgy little fingers to the bone? But despite all his hard work, Vet is scoring no points with Part. 'Do you like Vet?' asks Sista. 'No. He's not daddy.' Well, in a state of high excitement, the Hayseeds were off to Big Texas! With a 300kg bovine standing awkwardly in the tray of a two-ton truck. Don't worry, police don't pull over Christians. Despite Amy telling Token with extremely unconvincing sympathy 'You can't come. It's too expensive. Sorry.' the night before, who should pop up out of the tray to peer through the rear window mid-way through the journey? Token! And you're only a little bit trampled! 'Your mom is gonna tan your hide when she finds out!' squints Amy, working her library bag till the string in her lip is thrumming at breaking point. 'She can't. It's already tanned!' he guffaws without a shred of irony, capering from cheek to cheek at being allowed to sit in the cabin with the white folk. Everybody roars. The show... the Show! At this point the DVD player reads 45 minutes and there is already the glimmer of a climax on the horizon. No sign of Bruce or Julia, but the compere and cattle judge is apparently Sam Elliot, who didn't need to change out of his Big Lebowski narrator's clothes, and later on we see Dennis Hopper playing a henchman in the pay of the evil neighbours. Before hitting the hay, the Evils and Hayseeds engage in a little mandatory tension-heightening phyche-outs. Matt Dillon, quite generously I would have thought under the circumstances, offers the family use of his air-conditioned cow-trailer for the night, but full of haught and righteousness, Amy bats away the barb, insisting her family will be camping out. For the kids, though, a night on the cold, cowshit-caked trayback proves well worth it when Amy entertains them for nine seconds by putting a feed bucket on her head and stumbling around before curtly ordering all to bed. Amy and Part face up to some difficult choices: new car or plasma?That night Charlton Heston snoops around the cattle stalls but despite his suspicious behavior, nothing transpires plot-wise. Still, 20 seconds on a Charlton Heston lookalike is 20 seconds closer to one hour 38. Before taking to the rink (?) with Hokie Pokie next day, Amy offers a few words of advice to Part, grasping him fiercely by the shoulders and giving him a close-quarters squint. 'It doesn't matter if you win or lose...' she meows ... 'Until you lose! I know, I know!' interrupts Part with a forced laugh. 'Thanks mum!' and he rushes off, fat arse bursting from his sky-high trousers. Of course, Hokie wins. At this point, I am wondering what kind of monetary reward one might expect when one has just taken out Best Junior Steer at the Big Texas Show. Why, a fully-paid college scholarship, of course! And a big blue flag! A country music band pipes up and delivers the movies promised quotient of upbeat Texas music, but not before Sista commandeers the stage to lead the audience (can a cow judging competition really attract a stadium-sized crowd?) in another rendition (just two verses this time) or Hokey Pokey. Where the fuck is Charlton Heston and his deer gun? Later, the country singer stops past Part's stall. Part is sitting all alone on a milking stool in the straw, and the country star sidles up so his crotch is staring Part in the face through skin-tight black jeans. He smiles, laying a hand gently on his shoulder and says softly, 'Hello there young fella. My name's George Straight' at which point I choked and spat out a large mouthful of Twining's Earl Grey. By now I was shifting around on the lounge and waiting for a jaunty fiddle to start up and the credits to roll. But wait... what of Julia and Bruce? I confess to being so caught up in the excitement of the Big Texas Show I forgot to mention Julia's extra-bold font performance. Here it is in full: Julia Roberts, ticket collector/booth operator of some kind: 'Name?' Sister: 'Sister, Buddy and Hokie Pokie. You're pregnant. Is it a boy or a girl?' Julia Roberts: ' Well... what do you think?' Sister: 'Hmmmm... I think it's a girl.' Julia Roberts: 'I'll let you know.' Pardon? An anonymous ticket clerk will make a special effort to track down some little girl she has never met to inform her of her new baby's gender? Well, okay, sure. This is Big Texas. Now the movie hits the high gears. Part now has to go through the agony of deciding whether to auction Hokie Pokie and use the money to pay for his sister's education, or keep Hokie pokie for his own self. Out comes the bottom lip and a deep crinkle furrows his brow. Amy the Lesbian folds him in his arms while dollar signs float happily around her like magical snowflakes in June. 'What ever you like to do, I'll love,' she lies, and Benjamin Franklin waltzes dreamily through the air with George Straight. 'Well,' says Part. 'I've decided to take up crack cocaine, and I'm in love with my sister, Sister.' Sam Elliot reappears, again showing his versatility by playing auctioneer. Hokie Pokie fetches US$750,000. Now, I am no expert on livestock prices, but I am fairly certain you could not only buy a cow for that amount, but it's saddle, grass, ranch and a handleful of magic beans for that amount. But hey, Bruce Willis bought it, and he's the head of Bramford Industries, you know, he made his fortune in industry. So, the Hayseeds make preparations to head home... but shock! Token and Part hand over the halter to Bramford when a group of young toughs -- including, as fortune would have it, a former winner of the coveted Junior Steer pennant -- stop past the stall to cruelly inform Part that his beloved pet would comprise the main dish at Bramfords annual barbecue that very afternoon! And no, don't bother trying to figure out how much per steak it's gonna work out to be! Part: 'Do you think they were telling the truth?' Token: 'Hmmm. I didn't grow up on a farm like you, where the natural cycle of life and death on the land is a harsh everyday reality, but I have a funny feeling. I think you should stick your finger through the bottom of this matchbox, go over to the Bramford henchman guarding the cattle truck, and pretend you have found a severed finger. He will grab his walky talky, yell 'We have a 46-76!' and run off, stumbling comically not once but twice, and we can reclaim Hokie and then take her home. I also think there should be some kind of convenient plot twist whereby if you don't arrive home in time, the pennant for Best Junior Steer will automatically be awarded to the runner up, ie our nemisis Evil Junior. This will also allow his crazed parents to try to track us down as we walk the 400km back to your ranch, leading a 300kg cow. There should also be a local TV news reporter regularly offering live television updates, a helicopter, a lear jet, and Dustin Hoffman on a horse. The straggly-haired henchman should also variously be trampled by a herd of cattle, roll his car, and be bitched out over the phone by his boss.' Okay, so Token didn't say all that, but that's how it worked out, at least from what I could tell at 4x fast foward. In the end, Bruce Willis flies to the boy's ranch just as they complete their epic five-minute o' film trek. Trek highlight: Token: 'I'm hungry.' Part, blithely: 'Don't worry. Just have another one of your chocolate bars.' (Read: 'You're so weak and fat you have to carry around your own stash of private snacks, but you don't hear stoic old me complaining. Also, why is it necessary to offer logistical explaination about so petty a detail when this whole movie was written by a magical tree elf in magical land? Please'.) Bruce says Part can keep the cow, because when he was a boy he also had a pet cow called Poncho. So moved by the boy's resemblence to his younger self that Bruce insists the Hayseeds also keep the three quarters of a million, despite Amy's snaggle-toothed protestation 'But Mr Bramford we simply can't...' And that, my friends, was that. Cow safely back in ranch? Check. Sack of cash? Check. Family relationships strengthed? Oh, sure. New romance kindled? Wait... oh, you won't believe it, but here comes vet! He's smiling like Jesus and tousling Part's part! Nooo! Amy and Vet are kissing and it's sunset at the ranch and ha ha ha! Part and Token are mimicing them and everyone is roaring with laughter, all thought of Part's father issues forgotten. Quick, let's cut to this shot of a Texas plain with sunset lighting up the sky. Ohhhhh, America. Let's never fight again.