The Departed vs. The Retarded (or, Obligatory Departed Post)

See The Departed. If blog surfing is getting in the way of you seeing this film, smash your computer and go see this film. It cannot be hyped enough.

I had a feeling The Departed would beat The Retarded Employee of the Month. But I at least thought this Costcomedy would be #2 on the charts. It ranked #4, which is not bad for an awful film but an undoubted disappointment for the Dane Cook hype machine.

In the end, this means MySpace popularity does not always translate into meatspace success. Sure Dane Cook's Retaliation reached #4 on Billboard, the first comedy album to do so since A Wild and Crazy Guy. But this success was akin to Bright Eyes's fleeting chart reign. After Oberst burst onto the scene, he was on every magazine cover. A month down the road everyone forgot him.

Same with Dane. Just because his fans came out in droves doesn't mean the SuFinomenon was immune to a backlash. Between accusations of joke stealing, the failure of Tourgasm and making creepy asides as host of the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice awards, it became more clear that Cook had a premature tourgasm.

But the real reason for the failure becomes more apparent when we look at #6. Jackass 2 has Johnny Knoxville, who was also in the box office flop Dukes of Hazzard. So was Jessica Simpson. Jessica Simpson is in Employee of the Dumb as well. No matter how much I direct my bile at Dane Crook, at least he paid his dues on stage and is a self-made man. Jessica Simpson is:

a) the only pop icon I still loathe (Britney even redeemed herself with that tinkly piano ballad she did back when)

b) the worst actress in recorded history (if she did a film with Andre 3000, the film projector would gulp an expectorant and try to vomit the film out if its insides)

c) Donald Rumsfeld's butt buddy

Indeed, I must conclude that this film's failure coincides perfectly with the fall of the Republican party. Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson represent the anti-intellectual spirit that held Bush afloat all these years. Now that more and more people who get their news from the web realize that HeadOn is just a placebo made of wax, they are also getting hip to the fact that Hollywood has been touting generic homeopathic garbage as if it were the best medicine.

Back to The Departed. Need one more reason to see this film? Try this one: it's funnier than anything in the Employee of the Month trailer. Between Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin, The Departed will give you at least two funny Bostonians in place of one unfunny meathead from Hackachussets.