Syp

Road Lawyers and Other Briefs (1990) — What we have here is a failure to excommunicate

“And lawyers shall inherit the earth.”

Justin’s rating: Guilty of innocence! Just my luck.

Justin’s review: Do you ever get that secret little thrill of stumbling across some weird little movie that’s so obscure that you’re pretty sure the entire historical viewership counts in the double digits, yourself included? Because I’m pretty sure that 1990 wasn’t the summer of Road Lawyers and Other Briefs, and nobody was talking about it at the Oscars next year.

Honestly, even though I watched this, I don’t think I could prove that this exists. There’s so little out there about this odd Australian anthology, including which AIP studio it sprang from, that all I could find was that the first story was entered into a film festival in ’89. That was good enough to attach three other short tales, none of which fit together thematically.

“Road Lawyers” is a — what else? — Mad Max parody where leather-clad attorneys putter around the wasteland in office chairs looking for their next clients and hit of caffeine. Truly, stop-motion effects were never as underwhelming as they are here. I guess there’s some humor in seeing legal characters, including a crazed judge, transplanted into this genre. But the silly outfits are going to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting, because this is a one-joke premise with nothing else to back it up.

Our hero Mild Milt is on a nonsensical quest to find his client in this bizarro world, which takes him through cobwebbed offices, a disturbing cafe, and an encounter with “the bar.” As in, the one you have to pass.

Like the rest of these stories, if you vibe with the punny humor, you could find yourself amused.* I don’t quite get the nonstop references linking lawyers to coffee, but I did get a couple chuckles out of our hero flinging pencils as his primary weapon and business fashion shredded into outland gear. It’s mildly clever as a parody.

Next up is “Escape from Heaven,” where a recently killed judgmental nun ends up in purgatory, which looks a lot like a sheriff’s jail block. Everyone there’s trying to escape their long sentence and get into heaven early, so the nun breaks out with a serial escapee, which isn’t too hard since the guards are elderly women (for some reason). Eventually, she ends up having it out with God and admitted into Heck. It’s a real place, look it up.

It’s actually a pretty great idea for a story, especially with the heavy Catholic angle, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a full-length version of this with a bigger budget. It’s a little bit of a jailbreak, a little bit of a road trip, and a little bit of a fantasy flick all rolled into one.

Then there’s “Radar Men on the Moon,” which took those old Commander Cody serials and redubbed it. It’s not exactly MST3K, not even close, and feels like it was shoehorned in here because (a) public domain,  (b) they needed 15 more minutes to make this a motion picture, and (c) it was easier and cheaper than actually filming new content.

Finally, “Hairline” chronicles the descent of a man into baldhood. Maybe it’s a difference of years, but being bald doesn’t seem as big a deal today as it was in the hair helmet era. Just shave and look cool and tough.

Anyway, after a lot of nightmares/daydreams about his hair struggle, this guy decides to get a toupee. And so he does. But he doesn’t like it and is more secure without it. The end.

Road Lawyers has germs of good ideas but isn’t able to execute them to the level you’d hope. It’s a sketch show stitched together into an anthology that doesn’t flow well between one story and the next. And the fact that it’s quite short — 80 minutes — points to its lack of deep content.

*It probably helps if you’re 11 years old and probably a boy.

Intermission!

  • Those are gigantic cups of coffee
  • “We are going to sue… ourselves.”
  • If your poison bubbles, it’s not exactly subtle
  • Hey, it’s an Atari 2600 joystick
  • Book of Java 2037 AD
  • It’s pretty easy to fling pencils completely through someone’s arm
  • “Sign in. Sign in.”
  • Memo: My death. Ahhhhhhhhhh
  • Things are paid for with “law minutes”
  • “Disbar him!”
  • Death by crucifix
  • The Archangel Marge
  • That’s a very small knife, I thought you were from Australia!
  • If you’re a woman and run too much, your ovaries will shake loose and fall out
  • Haha it’s literally limbo
  • Heaven has an awful warbly soundtrack… and is full of bingo
  • God had to put his beard on
  • “Abandon Bob Hope, all ye who enter here.”
  • “ALL RIGHT! …I think I can handle it.”
  • “Finish her off!”
  • “Make sure she’s not sitting next to an emergency exit.”
  • Oh man, remember those old airplane headphones? The big plasticky ones? This one does!
  • STAY TUNED FOR EXCITING CREDIT SEQUENCES

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