Tales From the Rec Room

Would it even be a season of TFTRR without super best friend of the show Liz stopping by? Following up on our deep dive into millennial pop divas, we detour into pop star movie vehicle town on the weirdly slow cross-country road trip that is Crossroads . Were critics and audiences way too unfair to this movie or… was it actually kind of bad and we just feel guilty for everything else we put Britne...

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a podcast host. Being a podcast host to me was better than being the president of the United States! Mynty Cicero returns to the podcast to discuss Goodfellas and, more broadly, the legacy of organized crime, the mafia, Martin Scorcese and his gangster movies. We go over the “film bro” persona that has been much discussed over the last 20 years...

No items, Fox only, Final destination. It’s time for our annual video game episode! Bree and video game culture correspondent Ted Raymond – host of Let’s Playmond With Ted Raymond – party (game) like it’s 1999 with a look back at Super Smash Bros and the franchise that followed. We discuss the divisive nerdiness and overcorrection that resulted in Melee’s pivot, the limitations of the cartridge er...

Friend of the show Kelsey Goldman whip out their notebooks full of observations for their triumphant return to the mid-90s. In this fun and introspective episode, we revisit Nickelodeon’s first feature-length movie, Harriet the Spy . We discuss the evolution of the Kid Power genre, the movie’s meditations on the loneliness of childhood – which both of us experienced – Harriet’s iconic style and, o...

Well-rounded multimedia producer and former music journalist Ryan Stephenson Price stops by to continue our journey through the early aughts and to go to where the podcast has never gone before: pop punk! Yellowcard’s violin gimmick didn’t win them a lot of fans with critics, but they were much loved by sort-of-angry teenagers everywhere – and then they sort of went away, and then came back, and t...

Former high school wallflower Helen joins Bree, who really should have been more of a wallflower in high school, to discuss the 1999 novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower . We discuss the pace of change in pop culture from the early to late 90s, how we see ourselves in Charlie, how to communicate deeply internalized feelings in a book versus a movie, how music shapes (or doesn’t shape) your adoles...

Welcome to Season 3, where you can’t sleep at night, because everyone is screaming! We Hate Movies cohost, improviser and former Smash Mouth frontman impersonator Stephen Sajdak joins us to, for some reason, revisit the 2004 attempted Ashton Kutcher reinvention, The Butterfly Effect . We’d say Kutcher’s laughable attempt at a dramatic turn is the most offensive thing about this movie, but man, the...

“You talk about things that are important to me , I’m gonna talk about Danny DeVito in that couch.” You really thought it was going to be a TFTRR special week without Liz? No way. Comms pro and hockey writer Liz shows up to discuss traumatic Christmas traditions, Rashoman-ing your own life, actors getting too pretty for their own good, the newfound stigma of rewatch podcasts and more. What were yo...

“Another sympathetic reaction is watching people above the age of 30 fall on their backs. How is he walking?!” New friend of the show Amber Flannery Field – the only good tour guide in New York City – stops by to discuss Home Alone 2: Lost in New York . Strap the heck in for a discussion on the highly protected institution of the white American boy, the “clean-up” of New York City in the 90s, the...

“Would you buy an NHL game with Steven Lorentz on it?” “I mean… yes?” Shove this up your stocking! Bree and Mike Stephens get surprisingly all up in their feelings for a classic Christmas comfort watch: The Simpsons Season 7’s “Marge Be Not Proud.” We start Freud-raging, discussing the dynamic between mothers and sons, tough love, the lack of 90’s schmaltzy Christmas movies, the pain of Bart, and,...

I’m sorry to defer with you, but you’ve always been in the rec room. Pour yourself a bourbon and advocaat. It’s time to discuss The Shining ! We Hate Movies cohost Eric Szyszka returns to discuss our favourite elevated/elevator horror movie, The Shining . Does the lore around how Kubrick treated Duvall border on disrespectful toward her legacy? What is the actual best Stephen King adaptation? And,...

After a summer of legendary audio issues, Bree and friend of the show Frederick Blichert cap off the season with a playful romp through a home viewing favourite (“favourite” might be generous for Bree), Urban Legend . The movie obviously apes Scream every chance it gets, which might make it the ultimate movie through which to explore the context of late 90’s blockbusters. In the fun of figuring ou...

Climb into the RV and don’t forget to strap in Milhouse! In our first-ever showdown episode, Ted comes back to discuss two of our favourite Simpsons episodes from our rec room eras – and what they say about our childhoods. Ted’s here to discuss the classic boys’ adventure, Lemon of Troy , and reminisces about playground wars, the cliche of boys never growing up, the perfect depiction of an early s...

Welcome to the Jay Mohr Cinematic Universe, where your favourite comedy legends are apparently in mortal danger. Friend of the show Mikey “The Mouth” Stephens, having been heavily bribed and plied with favours and snacks, comes to discuss the infantile attempt at a mafia spoof, 1998’s Mafia! (also known as Jane Austen’s Mafia! , for some reason). Does this movie kind of work? (Mike says no, Bree s...

Well, after last week’s miserable slog through Family Guy , we’ve come to a nice palate cleanser with… oh, American Beauty ? Okay. Well, our old pal Mynt showed up to discuss American Beauty , a movie that was considered such a masterpiece in 1999 that it cleaned up at the Oscars and, less than two decades later became almost universally regarded as a joke, mostly because of the you-know-who of it...

Well, they can’t all be winners. Bree and sitcom retrospective expert José look back at the first three season of adult comedy “bad boi” Family Guy – the adult animation juggernaut accused of being everything from a Simpsons clone to one of America’s “worst TV shows for primetime viewing.” The show gained cult status thanks to the DVD box sets that littered many a rec room (hey, that’s the name of...

Miss the Euro Cup yet? That’s okay, because we’re taking a European adventure of our own! Bree welcomes returning guest and We Hate Movies host Andrwe Jupin to discuss the 2004 teen sex comedy, Eurotrip . We follow three-and-a-half nobodies around Europe as we discuss the pervasive early-aughts depictions of teen sex and partying (why do all high school students have easy access to kegs? Why are t...

Bree reunites with TFTRR video game expert and digital journalist Ted Raymond to talk about the time Mom and Dad (a.k.a. Nintendo and Square) got divorced, and the honour student they made before that happened: Super Mario RPG . We discuss RPG history and the meteoric, early-90s rise of everyone’s favourite plumber, get really, really nerdy about the vaudevillian nature of Super Mario RPG , share...

It’s the John C. Reilly appreciation hour as Bree and best friend of the show Liz dive into 2007’s Walk Hard ! How did such a silly movie manage to have such an impact – temporarily killing the musical biopic genre and the superspoof genre? Does this movie somehow work as a serious movie? How did this movie managed to get such a stacked cast, and will we ever see another movie like this again? Spe...

We close out the week with Bree’s all-time fave, 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – and our good friend, Rachel Kellogg, has joined us! Yes, Dunst is a supporting player here, but she might be the most tragic supporting actor of all time. We discuss the timelessness of this movie, whether or not this movie is hopeful about love, how Dunst herself influenced the popular character analys...

Brr, it’s cold in here! Bree and Liz head on down to Rancho Carne to revisit Bring It On . We talk about how this movie permeated schoolyard culture, how it taught all us dorky white people about cultural appropriation, how well this would work as a 21st century Netflix series, and how this movie respects its teen audience. Plus, is there a male equivalent of the Bechdel test? Because this movie d...

We’re off to Minnesota for this episode of Home for the HoliDunst! Kelsey Goldman stops by to discuss this cult classic – why does it appeal to queer people so much? Is there a universe in which the Will Sasso stuff has aged well? What is the magic sparkle dust that makes this movie so amazing and has allowed it to go from a critical and commercial flop to a total cult classic? We discuss it all –...

Let’s take a trip back to 2004 against the backdrop of a whole lot of bad stuff happening in the world, but a great time at the air-conditioned cinema. Patrick Hamilton stops by to talk Spider-Man 2 , one of Dunst’s last significant blockbuster movies. Does Dunst elevate Mary-Jane from being a really hot redhead? Is it hard to write a Spider-Man screenplay? Is this the last time emo will ever make...

Happy HoliDunst, everyone! Welcome to five days of continuous podcasts about our favourite Kirsten Dunst movies. On the first day, Bree and Mike Stephens take a stroll through the toy aisle and into a simpler time – a time when we were weirdly casual about guns, bomb threats and abject cruelty. Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers was famously panned, but as Bree and Mike look back at this movie, they find...

Happy Halloween! Bree is joined by her old friend Jason Edwards on this special occasion to discuss a spooky, scary… video game? In 2000, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask took players by surprise and alienated a generation of Zelda fans. Or did it? While Majora’s Mask was certainly a departure from the familiar formula due to its altered structure, uncanny valley characters and, of course, its h...