Podcast Review: The Flop House

Another podcast about bad movies, interesting!

The Flop House

The Gist

Making fun of bad movies is the goal of The Flop House. Since 2007 The Flop House has made it a habit of poking fun at one bad movie a week, and also providing recommendations for actual good movies every week in the recommendation segment. The hosts of The Flop House are Stuart Wellington, Dan McCoy, and Elliott Kalan. Every couple of weeks the podcast puts out an episode around an hour in length.

Episodes Listened To

#131: Marmaduke
#132: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
#133: Bullet to the Head

My Thoughts

There sure are a lot of film related podcasts about bad movies, aren’t there? The Flop House is but the next in a long line of film related podcasts that choose to have a laugh at the expense of the less desirable films that are released on an almost daily basis. There’s no point in me rehashing the argument I’ve made in the past about bad movie podcasts. The deciding factor when it comes to such a comedy podcast is that it’s either funny or it isn’t. There’s no other real factor that matters when it comes to a podcast that is devoted almost exclusively to trying to be funny.

Sadly, The Flop House isn’t funny. As with all forms of comedy it comes down to taste, and the approach that The Flop House took to making fun of bad movies never clicked for me. I wasn’t laughing, I wasn’t having fun, and maybe I’m mistaken but I think those are two important factors when it comes to a comedy based film related podcast.

A major reason for my lack of laughter while listening to The Flop House can be found in the plot driven approach of the podcast. They don’t so much as crack jokes about a movie as they give a blow by blow of the plot and explain why it’s funny to them. Sure, this leads to some tangents that don’t center around the plot, but the majority of the time plot description is the order of the day for The Flop House. I loathe plot description, because as I am wont to say, if I wanted to know the plot of the movie I would watch the actual movie. I find plot description to be a giant waste of time and thus I was really bored while listening to The Flop House.

I don’t have anything negative to say about the hosts or production values of The Flop House. The hosts seemed like nice enough guys. They displayed a decent amount of cinematic knowledge, and they had a level of camaraderie between them that was easy to hear. The production values were those of a well made podcast, no more and no less.

The problem is I don’t have anything positive to say about The Flop House. I couldn’t get into the podcast, and no matter how much the hosts tried I didn’t find their banter or approach funny. At one point one host started doing a Sylvester Stallone impression, and all I could think of was Silva & Gold. I would much rather have been listening to that podcast than The Flop House. When a podcast fails to capture you to the point where you’re thinking of other podcasts you’d rather be listening to, that’s an easy vote to unsubscribe from me.

The Bottom Line

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Cheers,
Bill

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