MITCH’S MOVIE MASH: IF ‘THE TAXI DRIVER’S WIFE’ WERE A COMEDY I WOULD HAVE CRIED INTO MY POPCORN

Gorko Entertainment Editor Mitchell Kennedy dissects the new Warned You Brothers film, The Taxi Driver’s Wife, featuring Taxi Tommy and his lovely but careworn wife Tammy.

SPOILER ALERTS: YES, MITCHELL DESCRIBES ENTIRE MOVIE INCLUDING ALL THE TWISTS

TRIGGER WARNINGS: TAXIS MOVING IN SLOW MOTION THROUGH THE NIGHT; SPACE INVADERS; CHA-CHA

Almost before the opening titles had slid out of sight, like a taxi through the sleeping streets of Los Angeles, @Todd and I had grown impatient with the main character Tommy, the husband of this movie’s eponymous wife: played with absolute disgruntlement by Toddy Blue of Two’s A Show and TV’s Riddle Me Randy fame, Tommy is quite simply the world’s biggest jerk on wheels, weaving in and out of traffic, honking at an old lady, splashing a newspaper stand with a puddle, rigging the meter, shouting at a child, and getting chocolate ice cream all over his own upholstery and mustard-colored uniform.

Ampersat Todd said that Taxi Tommy probably rolls dogs, and I would not be surprised in the least.

Fortunately for any dogs in his world, after verbally abusing his wife Tammy (played here to perfection by Wilma Burns, of She’s On Fire Is She Not On Fire) on the steps of their shabby bungalow, Tommy gets into a mysterious accident after seeing some flashing lights. Temporarily blinded, he drives his car off a ramp and rolls it over and over and over, and is rushed to the hospital where he remains in a coma. Strangely enough, at the same moment on the other side of town his best friend Chet Baskins has the same accident, and is rushed to the same emergency ward!

It is aliens, I told @Todd, and I was correct: the flashing lights were extraterrestrials manifesting themselves inside our atmosphere, and taking possession of Chet and Tommy. When Tommy and Chet wake up, after many anxious bedside scenes involving their wives and some nurses (not as hot as it sounds), they have green eyes, but nobody seemed to notice that little detail, just me and my dog.

Needless to say, the taxi driving does not improve.

Tammy discovers she is pregnant with twins. Bobby Baskins, Chet’s wife, played capably by the thrice-Emmy-nominated Shirley Perkins, announces that SHE is also pregnant with twins! Yep, I knew immediately that neither set of babies was going to come out through the cha-cha.

I won’t tell you the end, except to say that Chet dies in a gas station explosion, his wife Bobby commits suicide after a truly distubring ultrasound shows her something she can’t even describe, Tammy kills Tommy in self-defense when he tries to eat her (literally eat her, nam nam) in the kitchen, and Tammy is left a widow with two not quite natural children, which is to say, space alien spawn, in matching little sports coats.

Yes, Ampersat Todd barked, a sequel is definitely lurking in the wings, like ET babies with sharp teeth.

I did not like this movie and would never recommend it to anyone I consider a friend. On the other hand, if you are my neighbors Daryl and Luz, I will gladly pay for your tickets out of my own pocket as long as you promise to stay away the entire evening.

One puppy out of five.

Photo by Lexi Anderson on Unsplash

ABOUT MITCHELL KENNEDY

Mitchell Kennedy (M.F.A. Film Studies 1984, Leonard University) is the Gorko entertainment editor. He writes the weekly film column Mitch’s Movie Mash with his puppy Ampersat Todd.