Bad/Awesome Flixxx Review: The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)

"Nonsense! What kind of a dodo do you take me for? Human hair grows only half an inch a month, no more." - Teacher

"Quiet! Or I'll put you in the net!" - Sergio

"I found out that you've been kicked out of two schools, that you've faked famous paintings, and that you've changed your name and appearance four times. AND you claim to be Rembrandt's great-great-great-great grandson." - Principal

I swore up and down for years to myself that I had dreamed this movie and that it didn't exist. Only after hearing someone talk about it, and knowing the plot in my head, but not knowing how this other person could possibly have known about this made up dream story I knew, did I realize that this was an actual film and not a little kid imagination type thing that happened to me every once in a while. Sometimes shit DID happen that couldn't have been real. This time it was. A real French Canadian film about a kid who's hair falls out and then he talks to some drunk ghosts who tell him to spread peanut butter on his head and then his hair won't stop growing. Sounds like a crazy dream story right? Behold, THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION!!!

So there's this artist. He has a couple kids, a boy and a girl. His wife's father died and she bailed on him to Australia to deal with it for what must be a good little bit, because the girl is trying to cook and act grown up and she's belittling her brother and trying to give advice to her father. The dude is frustrated with his new paintings (which are sick by the way) and basically hangs out all day in his attic. The kids are making due but are quirky and have problems. The boy, Michael has a friend Connie (who may or may not be Data from THE GOONIES) who's always getting him into hijinks. Upon heading to school one morning, they come up on this old mansion that burned down. Connie dares Michael to go in, and he does only to be scared shitless by these homeless ghosts who used to live in the mansion but burned up in the fire. He got scared so bad that all his hair falls out. 
So he completely freaks out cause he knows that everyone's going to make fun of him as school. He puts on a wig and then plays in a soccer game. During the game he gets in a row with another kid who pulls off his wig and he has one of those bad freakouts where he runs away crying with glue on his head and everyone's laughing at him in slow motion. What, that never happened to you? So later that night some ghosts visit him and give him a recipe for hair growth because he was nice and gave them his lunch money while they were panhandling. While making this concoction which is primarily made of peanut butter, his dad and sister come in and bust him and throw it out thinking that he's sleepwalking. The next night the ghosts come back and give him another chance to make the mixture, warning him not to use to much, because this shit is supposed to be VERY POTENT. 

So Michael's hair starts growing immediately. By the next morning its a full head of hair, and then a few hours later its super long. His teacher's get pissed because its distracting the other students and Connie makes Michael tell him what made it grow so fast. So the next day it turns out Connie whipped himself up a batch and applied it to his pubes to make it look like he was going through puberty. Pretty soon hair is growing out of the bottom of his trousers. Finally everyone as school gets sick of the distractions and they are expelled. After searching for something to stop the growth (a "solution" if you will, although I think the solution the title is speaking of is the mixture with the pb itself...) Connie figures out that yelling at the hair stops it from growing. Then there's the whole side story about their weird ass art teacher. 
 

Their art teacher is this dude named "The Signor". He's mean and he yells at his students. After getting fired from the school, he starts kidnapping kids. Once he gets a shitload of them including Michael, he puts them to work turning the hair into magic paintbrushes. Turns out the Signor is Michael's dad's art dealer's brother. The paintbrushes are so powerful they can paint whatever comes out of the users imaginations. But Connie and Michael's sister found out where the Signor kept the kids and they come to the rescue. I don't want to give away the ending, but its pretty clever and you can find this guy easy enough online to watch if you really want to. Enjoy!  

Wednesday, May 21, 2014