Hold onto your slapsticks or bite your nails with Showmax streaming the Leon Schuster classic 'Mad Buddies' and a new Stephen King thriller.
Hold onto your slapsticks because Leon Schuster is back on Showmax with a stack of the catalogue flicks that made him a household name, and then some.
Mzansi talent leads this week’s lineup of binge-watching as spring arrives and pollen counts instil fear within sinuses.
Best to stay in, laze on the couch and watch Mad Buddies.
This Schuster movie from the early 2000s is as silly as it gets. The humour, judging by the ridiculous giggles from my five- and six-year-olds, is accessible enough to really make for a great family night in.
It’s also a sign of the times. This comes after Showmax cut six Schuster features from its roster in the wake of global political correctness.
Now, with Mr Bones 3 added back into the lineup, the slapstick baton is firmly in hand once more.
A quintessential buddy movie
Mad Buddies is a Grey Hofmeyr co-written and directed picture. It’s a quintessential buddy movie in the tradition of spaghetti greats like Bud Spencer and Terence Hill — incidentally, their whole catalogue of slapstick comedies is available on Amazon Prime Video — and it is hilarious at times.
Other moments, a bit gross and under the belt. But kids love fart humour, and grown-ups can chuckle at it. The film has aged a little, but the jokes are stock standard. It is well worth a watch.
But Mr Bones 3, that’s another story.
Here, the skits, the scenes and the script all try too hard. Schuster’s humour feels forced and whether it was a hard week or the film was simply a yawn is up for debate. I remember the first ten minutes and the last thirty seconds of the credits.
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Well worth a binge is another Stephen King adaptation.
This time Jason Bateman takes the director’s clapperboard, stitching together a superb piece of limited-series tension, suspense and, of course, horror.
The show is called The Outsider. It’s a psychological thriller twisted in a way that only King can author.
It’s Stephen King-twisted
What makes it stand out are the differences when compared to The Institute, another King tale adapted for Showmax.
Both sit firmly in horror-thriller territory, but are treated completely differently.
After watching Bateman’s interpretation of The Outsider, the latter wins hands down; if there was a competition.
The story unfolds in a small-town family somewhere in North-Middle America.
A young boy, Frankie Petersen, is found dead in the woods. His body is mangled. Police investigations point to Petersen’s softball coach Terry Maitland, also played by Bateman.
He’s arrested but had a rock-solid alibi. How can someone be in two places at the same time? While the procedural details unravel in the background, the real drama unfolds front and centre, accelerating as the series progresses.
As the investigation draws closer to its long-tail conclusion, the detectives discover that a supernatural force called El Cuko has been at play.
In true Stephen King fashion, the creature preys on children but really thrives on the misery he causes their families.
Along the way, El Cuko possesses others, shape-shifts into their form… and well, without giving too much away, the rest of the story rolls out like a red carpet. Predictable in direction, perhaps, but irresistible enough to keep you glued.
Ghosts and horror
Ghost stories and horrors are often hit-and-miss affairs. All the material was there to turn The Outsider into a schlock horror blood fest a la Friday the Thirteenth or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead, Bateman and his team, along with superb performances from the cast, created an absolutely thrilling mini-series.
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