“It’s a BIM mark! You can stick it anywhere!”

Drake’s rating: Alphie’s a real drag. Someone should go all John Belushi on his acoustic guitar.

Drake’s review: OK, we’ve been dancing around this one for too long. In the reviews and on the podcasts, we here at Mutant Reviewers have engaged in some in-depth exploration of Cannon Films both good and bad. We’ve talked ninjas of every stripe, masters of the universes, runaway trains, and everything in between. But somehow we haven’t talked about the weirdest, most incomprehensible Cannon flick of them all, and it’s time to rectify that.

Now, look, it’s entirely possible that this flick just lost its way at some point in the production. I’m perfectly willing to believe that a humble screenwriter named Menahem Golan created his screenplay with only the best of intentions. It’s possible that he took that screenplay to a producer, also named Menahem Golan, and Golan the producer saw that the script had real possibilities and greenlit the production with the OK from Cannon head honcho Menahem Golan. And then Cannon head Golan hired a director with the coincidental name of Menahem Golan, and director Golan went insane with the power he was given and turned screenwriter Golan’s simple script into an overblown mess that had audiences literally pelting theater screens with free vinyl copies of the soundtrack mere minutes into the runtime.

A simpler explanation is that writer/producer/director/studio owner Menahem Golan really had no business at all making a musical, and The Apple proves it. Because this flick is a mess.

Ostensibly a morality play that reframes Adam and Eve as musicians Alphie and Bibi, The Apple decides that the root of all evil is that dreaded corporate empire known as the music label, and that the label’s wicked, tempting ways lead not only to debauchery but to a seemingly global musical dictatorship as well.

And, granted, quite a few music companies are pretty much neck-deep in their own brand of evilness. That wasn’t exactly a hot take even back in 1980. But a movie producer trying to call them out on their wicked ways is just a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black. Worse, the bacchanalia that’s portrayed here is so banal that it quickly becomes tedious. Writhing bodies engaged in a dance routine? Bob Fosse had been choreographing better, and sexier, scenes for years. Casual drug use? I saw worse in college. And high school. A fully-clothed orgy? Oh, my, get the smelling salts.

Golan wants the audience to buy into Boogalow International Music as the Big Bad in the worst way, and that’s how he goes about it: in the worst way. BIM isn’t so much the epitome of corporate evil as just another company looking to make a buck at the expense of their employees. They wheel, they deal, they sign talent to exploit their skills, and they manipulate events to their advantage. It’s just another day in Office Space.

Now grafting the story of Adam and Eve onto the “Gee whiz! Corporations are EVIL, amirite?” narrative might have been at least moderately interesting if it had been done with any finesse. But this is Menahem Golan sitting behind the camera.* The man directed Enter the Ninja and Over the Top. Finesse was just not his strong suit.

So instead the driving storyline is a heavy-handed fable that rejects every possible attempt at narrative originality in favor of staying on a stubborn course of uninspired mediocrity that’s obvious to everyone in the audience within the first 10 minutes. Which is probably about the time those vinyl LPs were taken out of their colorful cardboard sleeves and flung like frisbees at the screen back in 1980. They even use a giant apple to seal Bibi’s deal with BMI. It’s hard to get more obvious than that.

So is this a bad movie? Yes. Is it a laughable morality tale wrapped up in late 1970’s spandex and glitter and shoved in the audience’s face like an unwanted kiss under your office’s ill-advised holiday mistletoe? Yes. Do I recommend that all of you out there see this movie at some point? YES! OBVIOUSLY, YES!

Look, you’re reading a review of this flick here at Mutant Reviewers Movies DOT com, right? No one forced you to come here** and read the many, many reviews on-site that deal with cult movies of all shapes and sizes, right? That right there is why you all need to see The Apple at least once. You are this movie’s natural audience, because you seek out the weird and the wild, and The Apple is a weird, wild mess of a movie that deserves to be seen by those who will appreciate its distinctive peculiarities. The idea of it being good or bad is practically irrelevant, simply because The Apple is a movie that you’re never going to forget.

But when you do catch this cultiest of cult flicks, just promise you’ll refrain from throwing things at the screen. I don’t want to be responsible for broken monitors and TVs.

*And the typewriter. And the executive’s desk.

**Unless Justin’s going door-to-door again.

Intermission!

• We’re opening with what looks like a halftime show for a Rollerball event.
• Alphie plays acoustic guitar soft rock because of course.
• He also rejects alcohol at the BIM party because he’s an annoying twerp.
• But Bibi accepts a glass of champagne! She has doomed us all!
• “First you sell it, then you make it. That’s marketing.” That’s also the way Cannon made a bunch of their movies.
• There’s a song literally called “Speed.” Golan’s trying to tell us something.
• Alphie’s literally groping his landlady. I told you he was an annoying twerp.
• Bibi’s been fully BIM’d.
• Gotta stop everything for the BIM exercise hour. This is like an alternate Earth where Richard Simmons became a dictator.
• Alphie has now fallen in with a group of displaced hippies and flower children. His annoying twerpdom has reached insufferable levels.
• Mr. Topps? Is he here to hand out bubble gum and trading cards?
• No, he’s evidently ascending to the heavens in a spiritual Rolls Royce. This movie, man.