The Set Up:
As a group of 90’s children, we have collectively missed the short era of time where Scott “Carrot Top” Thompson was a thing. We had all seen what Carrot Top had become, but we think it is safe to say that who he is now is completely divorced from who he was when he got his start. We thought it was time to see what all the fuss was about, and what better place to start than Chairman of the Board, the theatrical debut for Carrot Top as well as his final film in a lead role. After watching the movie, we understood why he was never hired as a lead actor again. It takes a very special type of actor to say both “hello” and “goodbye” to their movie career over the course of a single film, and Carrot Top is that type of actor.
The Food:
What better way to celebrate a man becoming Chairman of the Board than to create a steakhouse-style dinner in his honor? There is a certain decadence that comes with a highly-rated steakhouse, and since we thought that would be the kind of place a Chairman of the Board would eat, it just made sense. We couldn’t just do steak though; no, we had to go all the way. We gorged ourselves on the richest foods available to properly put ourselves in the shoes of Carrot Top, the Chairman of the Board.
We started with lobster macaroni and cheese, which was, quite frankly, absolutely delicious. We used gruyere, Beecher’s Flagship Cheddar, and brie in the sauce and spread Panko breadcrumbs over the top. Top it all off with a carrot and you’re good to go. It was quite the experience, having never cooked lobster and each of us trying to remember when or if we had ever had lobster before. We remedied that pretty quickly as we chowed down on the rich macaroni and cheese. It’s not a meal we’ll soon forget.
For the main course, we had a delicious ribeye steak that we picked up from a local butcher (hey, Rain Shadow!). With steak this good all you need to do is salt it, nothing else. No oil, no pepper, no lemon, just salt. You don’t want to ruin good meat by over seasoning it; the flavor of the meat should stand on its own. We firmly believe Carrot Top would only use salt to season his steaks, so it was thematic as well.
We served the steak rare along with lightly grilled asparagus topped with freshly-grated parmesan cheese and creamy garlic mashed potatoes. The final step was adding the carrot on top, an often overlooked garnish but an integral part to this particular meal.
For dessert, we had an exquisite, three-layer, raspberry chocolate cake. It wasn’t even anyone’s birthday, and we still made a cake. With three layers. That’s how dedicated we are to this blog. It was extremely decadent, rich, and paired nicely with heirloom carrots on top. What a way to close out this meal.
The Drinks:
We thought a classic dry martini would be perfect for the theme. Ben had his dirty, Andre had his clean, and Leanna had one sip before she decided that she wasn’t really a martini person. She stuck to wine for the night. Not pictured: heirloom carrot garnish.
The Rules:
After watching the trailer for the movie, we thought the following rules would be appropriate:
- Whenever there is a zany sound effect, drink.
- Whenever there is injury-related slapstick humor, drink.
- Whenever a woman is made to be the butt of a joke, drink.
Number 1 ended up being incredibly dangerous. So. Many. Stupid. Sound effects. The trailer didn’t show 2 or 3 happening, but we got the impression that Chairman of the Board was the kind of movie that relys on that manner of humor for some cheap laughs, so we added them in. Unfortunately, we were right, and we groaned every time we had to drink for them, which happened to be pretty frequently.
The Movie:
We open with a scene of Carrot Top, in the womb, messing with a chemistry set. He causes an explosion, shoots out of his mother, through the wall, and into the hands of a surprised midwife in the next room over. It was like a scene out of the Looney Toons or something. Apparently we are supposed to believe that Carrot Top has been an inventor all his life (and then some). Instead, the audience is left with the sense that they’ve made a huge mistake by sitting down to watch this movie.
Cut to Carrot Top’s adult life. His house is full of his “inventions,” like a Slurpee™ cup with a forehead heater attached to it “so you don’t get brain freeze!” or body paint that glows in the dark (foreshadowing!). Carrot Top’s landlord was about as amused with his inventions as we were, and tells Edison – yes, that is Carrot Top’s character’s name – he has to come up with the rent money by the end of the month or else he will be evicted. Fun piece of trivia for you: Thomas Edison actually rolls in his grave every time Chairman of the Board is played.
So you don’t get brain freeze!
In the next few minutes, Edison makes friends with a Cool Old Dude and goes surfing with him. A few minutes later Cool Old Dude is dead, leaving Carrot Top with 45% of his company. Apparently he made a quick stop by his lawyers office to change his will, but the movie kind of glosses over that point. However, we found ourselves wondering if the first thing we would do after meeting Carrot Top would be to write him into our will. The answer was a unanimous “no.”
Anyway, Cool Old Dude’s shares make Edison Chairman of the Board, the second worst business decision of all time. The worst business decision of all time was, of course, the decision to let Carrot Top create and star in a movie. Maybe we could forgive the Cool Old Dude if he had no remaining kin, but he had a nephew who was actually an executive at the company.
Edison proceeds to mass produce the stupidest inventions without testing them at all, while the nephew secretly plots Edison’s demise. Edison gets lucky for about half an hour until the company gets sued over a TV dinner (that is both a TV and a dinner, crazy I know) that was causing people to glow in the dark. It’s pretty clear to the audience what is going on here but it takes Edison way to long to figure it out.
This is the class-action lawsuit commercial they ran on TV. We found it to be much more attention-grabbing than your typical class-action lawsuit commercial. Lawyers, take note.
Fortunately, Edison was able to prove the evil nephew stole his glow-in-the-dark body paint idea and used it to fake the lawsuit. Edison gets the girl. Oh yeah, we forgot to mention there was a girl. There was no electricity between her and Edison for the whole movie, so it kind of came out of nowhere at the end. You can add that to the list movies that have women as a prize for the lead male actor.
And that’s the movie! We were honestly surprised it had a 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, because that meant 6 out of 100 people who saw the movie actually liked it.
The Scores:
Andre: 0/10 would not recommend. This was the worst movie I’ve seen in my entire life. There were times I felt sick to my stomach watching this movie because it was so bad.
Leanna: I give it a D-. If it weren’t for the quality red wine I was sipping (thanks, Ben) throughout the movie, I probably wouldn’t have made it. Then again, I’m going to reserve that F for Nic Cage and Vampire’s Kiss, and despite the misogynistic humor throughout the movie, a woman did ultimately end up in charge of the company, so there was that. I guess.
Ben: 5%. Well, if I were to place this on the guilt meter it would be pretty close to Vampire’s Kiss. Don’t get me wrong, Vampire’s Kiss is still a whole lot worse, but I was definitely feeling some guilt and regret the next morning. I have to remind myself that this is what we set out to do, to watch bad movies.
