Fermented Mare's Milk

Confession: I envy the foreign language voice-over man. Envy and love him. He is a king among the ranks of forgotten talent needed to make a quality movie. We've all cheered on the Best Boy or the Grip. Those cheers are cliche by this point, as tired as Lewinski jokes! Now is the time to cheer the man who puts his brilliant monotone stamp on everything I see on Russian television. For he is a great man. And, as far as I can tell, there's only one of him.

I think we can all agree that it takes a fair amount of talent and an enviable degree of patience to translate a film's every line of dialogue into not only another language, but a distinct monotone as well. It is especially remarkable on lesser-known films. When we see any of the Star Wars movies or anything with Jean-Claude van Damme (trust me: HUGE here...last night we a had a double feature on two separate channels - four times the van Damme! four times the ham-fisted, round-housing fun!), there is a separate voice actor for each character...or at least they take the time to have one of the men talk in falsetto for any of the little kids' parts (sadly, not kidding). But not so much with the less-huge films, the ones that come on and we say, "Huh, I vaguely remember this being on HBO when I was eight, but I thought that that one actress from Charles in Charge or whatever was in it...Huh, guess not." When it's one of those films, there's usually just one guy doing all the voice-work. And that's when it gets fun. And confusing as hell. It's hard enough to follow along when your Russian is on par with a four year old and you only know two tenses and three cases, but when every single character in the film sounds exactly the same and there isn't even a pause between separate characters speaking, well, you can imagine. Sometimes we get lucky and there's a bit of lag-time between the over-dub and the English. This allows for about a third of the movie to be in English, which turns out to be just enough to be confusing. Cinderella Man was like that. For a while I thought Russell Crowe and Paul Giamotti were going to make out and the movie was going to be a lot better, but I was eventually proved wrong and it turned out that it was, in fact, just a shlocky boxing movie made by Ron Howard that will likely earn itself an undeserved Best Picture nod. Damn.

But last night (when we allowed ourselves to be pulled away from the glory that is a van Damme-a-thon) we were rewarded with the greatest moment in over-dub history. Initially, my hopes for such brilliance were not high. We were, afterall, watching Scary Movie 3. (Before you judge me, keep the following in mind: my pop culture intake these days is, at best, anemic. Not long ago I said in all seriousness that I was willing to watch a Rob Schneider marathon. And I meant it. So long as I could watch the movies in English and not feel like watching them was akin to taking a test.) Scary Movie 3, if you're not familiar with it, is among the more obscure, subtle comedies favored by the more world-weary and socially-tortured suburban twelve year-olds and had been likened by some critics (or, well, this critic) as "a slightly less intelligent Hot Shots Part Deux, but without the crucial underpinnings of the later Police Academy outings that really made HSPD hold up as a favorite among more discerning potheads." It is a broad slapstick without any intent in its making other to make us laugh, moving through one blockbuster spoof to the next faster than an SNL table read. (To cement this point, in case we had somehow missed it, the movie casts Leslie Nielsen as the US president. 'Nuff said.)

But where the movie really took off, over-dub-wise, was during the 8 Mile-ripping rap battle spoof, which pits one of the main characters against Fat Joe . I haven't the slightest idea if any of this is even in the ballpark of funny in English or if the rhymes are worth listening to (even if just for laugh factor). But in Russian! Holy Sweet Valley High is it good in Russian. While the movie was "good enough" to warrant more than one voice-actor, it didn't have the pull for more than one for each of our two standardized sexes. So all of the male parts were done by the same familiar droning star of Moscow's Dubwood, Mr. Monotonous Russian Guy. Trust me when I tell you that this made the rap battle straight genius. Some highlights:

English: Awwwwwwwww yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah!
Russian: Da.

English: Y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah...
Russian: D-D-D-D-Da.

English: [something that I think sounded as though it included the words whack and I'm gonna make you my bitch]
Russian: Plo-ha [bad]...something something Jeena [something something wife...(which, well, yikes!)]

There were other brilliant moments, but I was too busy laughing at them to write them down or even effectively remember them. At some point Fat Joe says something really fast (I couldn't hear it under the Russian) that actually made the voice-over guy stutter. Cross-cultural entertainment doesn't get much better than this. Especially when coupled with four (4!) Jean-Claude van Damme movies in one night. I mean, can you imagine? I need a nap just from thinking about it.


(On a side note: I just spent a little bit trying to find a still photo of the rap battle from Scary Movie 3 without luck. The majority of the pictures that seem to be online from the movie involve either Pam Anderson's breasts or Jenny McCarthy's severed head. So that's nice.)