Tessa 0:00 I've lived my life a quarter mile at a time. This is the nine days of fast and furious. Welcome to the nine days of Fast and Furious monkey off my backlogs first limited series. I'm your host Tessa Swehla and with me as always is Sam Morris. Today we are going to be talking about what is possibly the most appropriately named sequel of all time. Too fast, too furious. But first, let's talk a little bit about holiday spirit. Sam 0:41 So yesterday we were so excited to talk with Colby about his holiday cheer that that Tessa you completely forgot to tell people. I think the most exciting thing about our Christmas which is Tessa 0:56 the most exciting thing about our Christmas is we have a baby Yoda on top of our tree. We actually got another tree we have a small tree and a large tree. And Sam found a plush baby Yoda doll at Target and we figured out a way to put it on top of our large tree we've been looking for a good tree topper for a while. So in all of our all of our holiday pictures now you will see a baby Yoda appearing around the top of our tree because where else does he belong to? Are we still calling him baby Yoda? Isn't he Sam 1:31 in our hearts? He is always baby Yoda and and i think you know that. Tessa 1:36 Let's that that's my holiday spirit for today is the is this wonderful Christmas tree that we actually have right behind us as we're recording with baby Yoda peering over over our shoulders and into our hearts. All right, it is time now for our podcast within a podcast. Sam's holiday cocktail. I really feel like there should be like, like, a jingle bell type. Like, dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun did something. Yeah, something. Something for the for that? I think so. Alright, Sam, tell us about your holiday cocktail for today. What are you drinking right now, Sam 2:20 in this episode of Sam's holiday cocktail, which is not brought to you by Lieber and company, but should be. I'm featuring a another one of their cocktail recipes. This one is called a caramelized, big sour. This is a brandy based cocktail. So what you want to do is you want to take two ounces of brandy and mix that with Well, I have to tell you, their recipe says three fourths of an ounce of lime juice. I'm gonna suggest we kick that down to half an ounce. So half an ounce of lime juice, half an ounce of caramelized fig syrup, and half an ounce of orange liqueur. And you're going to put that in a cocktail shaker, shake it up and pour it in the glass. And then you're going to enjoy it. Tessa 3:13 Do you feel like this cocktail brings the holiday cheer? Sam 3:17 It does with every sip. I feel a little bit more holiday cheer. Tessa 3:22 That glow inside you is Brandy? Not not the spirit of Christmas? Sam 3:27 Yes, yes, this Christmas is brought to you by brandy and baby Yoda. Tessa 3:32 This has been an episode of the podcast within a podcast, Sam's holiday cocktail, which has a one five star rating by Colby Waddell. Now that we have the holiday cheer out of the way we were done with that now. Stupid holiday cheer what is even going on right now, where we're going to get into our discussion of too fast too furious. I would like to point out that too fast too furious is both numeral so the numeral two fast. The numeral two furious, came out in 2003. So two years after the original, the Fast and Furious, Sam, give us a short summary of too fast too furious. Okay, here Sam 4:15 we go. Too fast too furious is set in Miami. We have followed Brian who is now an ex cop to the illegal street racing shenanigans of Miami with his friends hedge and Suki. Not long after the film starts. He gets roped back into a life of not crime, but law enforcement. That's right. He's gonna go undercover with in coordination with the FBI and with customs. And the goal here. We're gonna get we're going to do something a little different. This time we are going after an Argentinian drug lord. And not only that, but he has to work with the inside man. Monica Flint is Brian decides that He will do the job, but only on one condition. He needs a partner. Is it Dom? toretto? No, it is not. In his childhood best friend Roman. We take a quick side trip to Barstow and buy a side trip. Barstow is in California. And then one scene later we're right back in Miami high jinks ensue. We'll get all into it good times. There's your summary. Tessa 5:26 This seems like a really good time to mention once again that the nine days of Fast and Furious much like monkey nights will be spoiler filled spoilerific as it were, we will talk about all parts of this movie including the rather fantastic climactic action sequence Sam 5:46 she gave you that that spoiler reminder after I said high jinks ensue, I'm I'm apologizing if you did not know that high jinks ensued in a fast and furious movie. That is on me. I'm sorry. Tessa 5:57 Wait, wait, wait. Bury the lede Sam. All right. So there's there's a few things that I want to hit on as far as this film discussion. There's a lot of a lot of stuff happens in this film Monica winters? Yes, it is Monica quintus is on this list of things you wanted. phrasing. Sam, how does this this is a sequel and sequels often don't live up to the original. So what did you think just overall about this movie? How does this compare with the original? Sam 6:26 So before I answer that, I want to point out that this is the first podcast that Tessa and I have done by ourselves. We are having the best time here. Like we've already cut out like half an hour worth of material here. It's not as good. It's not as good. Tessa 6:43 Why isn't it as good? What was good about the first one that's missing in the second one besides Vin Diesel? Sam 6:50 California? Michelle Rodriguez jordanna Brewster Okay, that might be that might be the list. Tessa 6:59 Are you a diehard general fan? Is that why this film sucks? Sam 7:02 I am a diehard jaw rule fan. ludicrous. It now I can't even do that. I like ludicrous. Anyway. So in general is fine. It's not as good. And it's not as good not just because of the cast. But as somebody who enjoys GOOD BAD action movies. You know, we're not talking about high art here. We're talking about things blowing up and fun stuff happening. And that happens in too fast, too furious. But what makes a bad action movie, a good bad action movie, such as the ones we'll be watching later this month, is there's there's a cohesiveness in terms of character. You want more than things blowing up? You don't want an intricate plot in an action movie. Don't do that. You cannot recover from an intricately plotted action movie. Who do you think you are Mission Impossible. Outside of that, you got to have characters who go well together that you care about that you root for. I don't think bad acting work is done in this movie. It's just not a good ensemble that I care about. There are characters I want to see again. But just because I like the individual characters. It doesn't mean they go well together. Tessa 8:17 Yeah, I feel like especially Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, who of course, as we've mentioned, does not come back in this sequel. Vin Diesel actually was offered $25 million to come back for this film, but passed along with the director Rob Cohen from the first film because he wanted to film Chronicles of Riddick and I believe his exact way he said an interview since then, where was that instead of making like a godfather to style sequel, he felt like the script was more of like a dumb 80s action movie where the same characters were in it, but it had nothing to do with the plot of the first one. It was just sort of transported to Miami It was about a completely as a completely different feel to it. I felt like this movie was less authentic than the first one and I know that that's kind of a buzzy word to say, I don't mean like it's authentic street racing or whatever. It just didn't have like that, that that magic chemistry between these. I didn't believe these people. Were actually these characters, if that makes sense. like Paul Walker we pointed out is kind of the Brian is kind of a bland character to begin with. And while Tyrese Gibson is doing his best and while ludicrous is of course doing his best as well, I just I didn't buy that these characters that they just seemed over the top. They seemed like they weren't actually they didn't have the chemistry that Vin Diesel kind of brought to this whole crew. I didn't I didn't see it as a crew. Maybe that's what I'm thinking. Sam 9:47 I think that and this will this will segue nicely into something else we wanted to talk about. immediately before we recorded this podcast. We actually watched another movie in between too fast too furious and recording this podcast. We just watched Roger Moore's first Bond film, Live and Let Die, which is a true fascists. It is a terrible movie, Unknown Speaker 10:13 despite having one of the best bond theme songs. Sam 10:16 Yes. Chicken potpie great theme song. So I guess we're doing a James Bond podcast within a podcast. Now, live in Lodi is terrible for many, many reasons, the least of which probably is the fact that it diverts strongly from the original Ian Fleming novel, which I really, I really liked those novels as problematic as they are, but Live and Let Die is just all kinds of bad things. It's It's It's cultural appropriation, it's straight up racism. It's I don't like Roger Moore as James Bond, but that's a personal thing. And I understand that but the one of the biggest sins that this movie has, and it has many, there's nothing there. It's it's there's no real plot. It's just a bunch of things that happen strung together. And what I'll say about too fast, too furious, is that it has a plot. It's at least better than Live and Let Die which a lot of people like I don't know why, please tell me I should like this movie. But too fast too furious actually has something going for it in terms of story. And like I said, it's appropriate to talk about that because this movie in terms of plot goes away from the first movie and toward more of a James Bond style. Tessa 11:34 Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And it's not just because the the villain of the film for Rohan is clearly a Bond villain knockoff like he is clearly supposed to be like a Blofeld Doctor No type villain. I mean, he even like tortures a dude with a rat. Like at one point like he has this giant house in Miami. That's like surrounded by swimming pools. He has these elaborate plans. He's like this drug kingpin. Although I didn't realize that for half the film, this film doesn't do a very good job of explaining exactly why this is a bad dude. We're just supposed to know that he's a bad dude. Because he's a bad dude, I guess. But I also really got some Bond girl vibes off of Eva Mendez who plays agent Monica Flint is in the she's an undercover cop or not a cop really. I mean, she's an undercover customs agent. And she's been you know, deep undercover for over a year. And there's all these like suspicions like how she flipped like she's clearly sleeping with him. Which by the way, the constant like slut shaming from Tyrese, Gibson's character Rome throughout this whole movie where he's like, she's sleeping with him. Like, come on. Like, just okay, like you've been to prison. At the very beginning of the film. You were in like a car Derby with an ankle monitor like don't don't like slut shame this person, but she gives me some real Bond girl vibes. Like she's got like, the really like revealing clothing but she's with the villain, but she's kind of seduced away from the villain by Paul Walker's character. So this this movie clearly is riffing on bond while still trying to be a car movie, which I think ultimately doesn't work. Sam 13:16 So Tessa, let me ask you. So you've just talked a little bit about Eva Mendez? Who would you rather see pop up later in the franchise? If you could only choose one. Would you rather see Eva Mendez. Or Devin? Okey? Tessa 13:32 See, I think that's the other problem. There can only be one woman to two women in each franchise, which is of course the problem with the bond franchise to Devin ioki. Hands down. She is way more interesting. I think as a character. I like Eva Mendez a lot. I had totally forgotten she was in training day before I watched this in which she is married to an undercover cop. So I thought that was interesting. But Devin Aoki, who plays the character of Suki Who's this female drag racer and we see her in a race at the very beginning. She comes in second I believe in the race. She's She's always dry. She's driving this great pink car. She has this like squad of all female. I don't know what they're called pit pit crew are they called pit crews when they're drag racing? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. But they're all like helping her like with her pink car. She has this awesome like screen in her car that has her name on it. She like takes the jump because at the very beginning they do a very speed like thing in the race where they were ludicrous. This character lifts part of the highway and so they like, you know, careen past it and Paul Walker goes past it. The second driver goes off of it but then crashes but that Suki sticks the landing. And so it's this great moment where the Oh Paul Walker wins because he's the male lead and we're all supposed to be invested in him. Suki is the only other person that finishes and I like her a lot. she's sort of relegated to girlfriend. status for the rest of the film, but I still would really love to see her race again. Sam 15:04 So that that race at the beginning is actually I enjoyed that a lot because the other two racers, along with Brian and Devin are played by great, great just really enjoyable actors that I love seeing on my TV, Amaury Nolasco and Michael ealy, neither of whose characters finish the race. Of course, there can only be one you know, woman character who continues through but we can have as many men characters as we want to so so would you like to see ludicrous continuing with the series? Would you like to see Tyrese Gibson, continuing with the series, I can neither confirm nor deny if any one of them shows up again. But how do you feel about these characters? Tessa 15:48 I thought that these characters were the best part of this film, especially that first race, the first race felt like the first movie to me. And that I think went really well. It was really after that opening first rate sequence that this movie started to go downhill. I really actually enjoy ludicrous in this role. He has more of a role than then some of the other similar characters did in the first film, which I really enjoy. He seems to just run the might not not run than Miami racing, but like, he's just kind of like in he's one of those people that's like in everything, right? Like, we see him running like bokkeum bullying and like, these these races, he's like the go to guy if you want to go need to do something. He's like that guy who's in charge of vice, right? Like in this city, which Miami is, of course, the city of vice. So I think ludicrous does a good job. I will give you the first fast fact. Sam 16:45 Oh fast, Tessa 16:46 because it's relevant here. Best bad, fast fat. So in the first opening sequence, when Devin yoky is racing, and she is behind. Again, I don't know anything about racing, but she's behind one of the other cars, and she's trying to get past him but he's blocking her and she she yells at him. That's actually the title of a ludicrous song. Sam 17:12 By the way, Unknown Speaker 17:13 so there you go. Fast fact. Sam 17:16 That's the second time Tessa has made me do work to keep this a clean podcast. Nine days Fast and Furious is the time where Tesla swears a lot. All right, so now I know there's one more thing that you really care about in this episode, Tessa and this is a call back to the righteous gemstones. Danny McBride national treasure, came up with this term. Nobody has ever used it before he did in that show. Tessa there were some definite car pranks. Tell us about the car pranks. Tessa 17:53 Car pranks is one of my favorite parts of the righteous gemstones. And I think it's just appropriate to call them car pranks while watching this movie. That's all I could think of. I will say that you can see yet I mentioned in the last episode that it is really difficult from the first movie to see how we got from just sort of this very pared down drag racing movie to the the movie. Again, I don't know which one this is. But the movie whose trailer featured a car jumping from one building into another building. It's really hard for me to see where we get from that the first movie to that movie. This starts to answer that question. We don't have anything as outrageous as the The second thing that I mentioned in this movie, but we have the very glimmers of that. We have a scene near the end where Paul Walker. I keep calling him Paul Walker, I should really call him by Brian and Rome, who again played by Tyrese Gibson, who I did not like as much as Vin Diesel. I'm just going to put that out there anyway. They are trying to play varone and the cops against each other because they just want to make it out of this alive. And so they're involved in this incredible high speed car chase with customs and they go into a garage and they basically have what I'm going to call a car flashmob where all these cars come out and it's all these razors from the beginning of the movie there's probably like over 100 cars in this scene, and they're all just like scatter and and they throw off the the cops off of the trail this way. That was a really cool scene especially because the there's some there's some camera work that's done that makes you think that the cops have re picked up their trail but it turns out while they were in the garage, they switched cars, and tasia and Suki are actually driving the cars that they were driving at the beginning. So I thought that was really cool. I love that the the dude who Varun sends to kill them. who's sitting in like the passenger seat with Brian. Like you can tell he hates Brian still but he's Sort of respects his game at this point like he's like, Man, I've got to kill you but you're cool man. Sam 20:06 See when you mentioned car pranks, like yeah, that is undoubtedly a car prank but I was not thinking of that. That's what you were thinking. I thought you were thinking about a certain trick pulled with a half empty bottle of nos. We have homemade ejector seats car prank Tessa 20:25 and it's like a bond car prank. Yeah, like there's a there they are like we we're gonna have to get rid of our company and then you see this whole scene where there's a half bottle of nos put under the the car seat and it's only Roman who does this actually but he pulls out like this little button like this little this little button he's like what's that and he like presses it and the dude goes flying out the car into the into the swamp that was pretty cool. Sam 20:50 And then of course the the the joke with with Paul Walker Paul Walker pulls a Raiders of the Lost Ark tries to do his trick doesn't work. And it just kicks the guy out the door. Tessa Swehla had a question for you. We are invoking James Bond for a third time and Live and Let Die which we just watched which one's cooler driving a car into a boat. Which happens in too fast too furious. Or what happens in living Let Die driving a boat into a car. Tessa 21:25 Oh clearly driving the car onto the boat. Clearly driving the car onto the boat is way cooler than anything that happens in Live and Let Die. I'm just gonna say that right now. Yeah, that that is the climax of the movie. I mean, I don't know I the climax of the movie is pretty simple. I think the only interesting thing about it is how he like drives the boat off of the the pier onto onto the boat, which I think is really cool. Other than that, it's not that interesting. It's pretty much the the same climax that you would get in any action movie. That's the only cool part is this done Sam 22:00 in our comprehensive, Fast and Furious rankings because of course, we have to do the FF rankings. We're gonna rank Fast and Furious. The Fast and the Furious number one and two fast two furious in the number two slot. Tessa 22:18 Yeah, I think if I were to sum up my feelings about this film, the change in tone that john Singleton moves towards is just it's too goofy. And I don't mean that in a I know these movies are gonna get goofy eventually sort of way. I mean, he's trying too hard to be Top Gun, I think which he said he credited as a influence on this film. All right, I am going to read off Some fast facts I've already given you one for free. So here's some fast facts and I look these up and Sam does not know what these are. So here's your reactions in real time to Sam finding this stuff out about too fast, too furious. So there were two scripts for this film. When they originally proposed it, one with Vin Diesel and one without, as I mentioned earlier, Vin Diesel passed on this film. And so they went with the one that was without Vin Diesel but universal did officially have two different scripts in production for this film, before it started Sam 23:12 two fast two furious two scripts. Tessa 23:15 fastback number two while this movie was filming on one side of Cape Florida State Park in Key Biscayne, Michael Bay was actually filming bad boys to on the other side of the park. Fast fact, nothing, nothing for you. Unknown Speaker 23:31 I knew that. Tessa 23:32 You knew that one. All right, let's see if I can find ones that you don't know. All right, fast. Fact number three. There is a scene in this film that we didn't even talk about a race in this film, where Barone asks, he sort of is auditioning these different drivers to see you know which one is the best. And so he asks a group of drivers to go fetch a package for him from an impound lot. And so they race each other across the the highways of Miami. There's this great scene where a I believe it's a Corvette again, I don't know cars, but there is a Corvette I believe, or no Mustang I'm sorry, that gets crushed by a truck by a large semi truck. He tries to do the thing where he like scoots under the truck, but then he gets crushed by it. That was planned. However, there's a scene after the truck rolls over the car where another car crashes into the busting that was completely unplanned. The driver was okay but they decided to go ahead and include that in the film because it's a car movie with crashes. Fast Fact number four. One of the other interesting things about the release order a fast and furious is that x men films and fast films often debuted in the same year. So x two and fast two fast two furious actually came out in the same year 2003 they were up against each other. The other contender for the part of Rome, who was played by tech skips in the other contender for Roman Do you want to guess who he was? Unknown Speaker 25:04 I got no Tessa 25:05 50 cent. We almost we almost had ludicrous and 50 cent in the same movie. Fast Fact number six. This was the last Fast and Furious movie to be released on VHS. Sam 25:15 So this is the last Fast and Furious movie that you can watch on those TV VCR combos that they were stealing in the first movie. Tessa 25:23 That's true. That's absolutely true. Fast. Fact number seven. This actually is continuing a tradition that we talked about from the first film, Devin Aoki did not have a driver's license or any driving experience before filming this film joining Michelle Rodriguez and giordana Brewster from the first film, Sam 25:42 hollywood people are just like us, they don't have driver's licenses. No, wait, that's nothing. Tessa 25:47 I just think it's interesting. They keep hiring. They kept hiring women that don't have any driving experience to be race driver. All right. And then my last fast fact and I noticed this and Sam laughed at me, because I just got so excited in the scene where Barone is torturing the crooked cop with a rat in a bucket. The crooked cop is played by Mark Boone Jr, who you may recognize from as another crooked cop from Batman Begins. That's where I recognized him from. Sam 26:19 You heard it here first. Tessa who has never seen a saw film is a connoisseur of torture in films, Tessa 26:28 I guess torture and action films maybe. Anyway, Sam Do you want to read off the furious stats? Those are some fast facts and now we want some furious stats. Sam 26:38 Okay furious stats the budget for this film 76 million so we've increased quite a bit. Now the opening weekend domestic was just under 50.5 so it did not make its budget back domestically in the first week. That is a hard thing to do for a blockbuster but the first movie did it not to worry though the total box office for too fast too furious was $236 million the weekend It was released it did top the box office all the movies from the previous week move down one slot those movies are Finding Nemo Bruce Almighty The Italian Job and a little movie I like to call the Matrix Reloaded which was at one time in the top five of the box office why I don't know we here at the nine days of Fast Furious are keeping track of the number of times family is invoked and the number of coronal moments there are. Unfortunately there are none of both of these in too fast too furious. So we are now at a series total of two mentions a family and to Corona moments. Although Brian and Roman our family. Tessa 27:54 This movie also gave us our favorite headcanon with James remar, who plays the customs agent, the head customs customs agent in this film, those of you who are listening who are Dexter fans might recognize James remar as Harry Dexter's stepfather who teaches him how to be a responsible ethical serial killer, whatever it is you want to talk about with Dexter. So are it's funny that he's a customs agent and he's in Miami. So we definitely came up with the headcanon that after he spectacularly fails. In this particular film, he transferred to homicide. And that's how he met Dexter and became Dexter, stepfather. I think is a pretty good headcanon All right, guys. It's time to scatter. Join us tomorrow for the next installment of the nine days of fast and furious. We'll be moving from Miami to Japan in the Fast and the Furious colon, Tokyo Drift. Over the next seven days we have more guests and lots more holiday spirit lined up. You better watch out You better not cry. You better not pout because Jason Statham and the rock are taking over for Santa this Christmas Eve. Watch along with us. tweet at us, email us. Let us know all of your Fast and Furious thoughts. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at monkey backlog and email us at monkey off my backlog@gmail.com You can find Sam on twitter at Sam underscore Morris nine and on letterbox at Archie Leach nine and you can find me on Twitter at suela. Tessa Swehla is spelled sw EH la. You can find me on letterbox under the same name. Also check out our regular weekly episodes of Monkey off my backlog as well as our newest series monkey nights. Our special holiday theme song is Scott Holmes version of jingle bells and can be found on Scott Holmes music.com. Find the podcast on Spotify, Amazon podcasts, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts It's all about family. See you next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai