It's been a good five years since I've done anything like that, and 2026 was no exception. However, I did decide, at a bare minimum, to recognize the first of April with a themed movie.
I considered Pierrot le Fou, a probable classic that I haven't seen yet, which would also continue my Godard education on the heels of Nouvelle Vague. But I recalled that the film isn't really translated as "Pierre the Fool," but rather, "Crazy Pete" -- which is how I have seen this title listed in at least one place. I thought I actually wrote about that silly translation on this blog, but I couldn't find it just now when looking for it.
Besides, this particular Wednesday was sort of like a Thursday night, since we are on the cusp of a four-day Easter weekend here in Australia. Thursday through Saturday nights, even when they are honorary Thursdays, are for less challenging fare, or at least nothing in a foreign language.
So I made the pretty on-the-nose choice of watching a movie called April Fool's Day.
It actually struck me as notable that I have reached the age of nearly 52 and a half years and I have not yet seen a movie with the title April Fool's Day. I had two to choose from on Amazon Prime, with plenty of other exact title matches on IMDB. I opted for the 2008 one over the 1986 one.
I thought it was pretty funny that the poster above, actually a DVD cover, advertises this as an "unrated" version. This would be the ultimate example of "unrated" being a literal designation of not having gone before a ratings board, the suggestion of extra titillation a total red herring. The rated version, which is what I presumably saw, contained neither much gore at all, nor any nudity. Does the unrated version have one random tit in it? Possibly, but doubtful.
Anyway, this wasn't good, but it ended up being less bad than I initially thought.
It's basically your run-of-the-mill horror (though comedy is also a listed genre) in which a group of friends get steadily picked off. I had hoped the April Fool's Day theme would be a bit more firmly established or fleshed out than it is, but what are you going to do.
There's a "twist" of sorts in this film, and I did guess it about ten minutes before it happened. If you really care about not having an 18-year-old movie starring nobody you've ever heard of (more on that in a moment), I'll issue a perfunctory SPOILER ALERT before continuing.
It turns out that the deaths of most of these characters are an elaborate ruse used to fool one of them into confessing her role in the (accidental, and real) death of one of their friends on the previous April Fool's Day. There's even a bit of a twist beyond that, though I don't have to reveal that one. I was kind of hoping the friend who died a year earlier would also emerge as actually not dead, but that didn't happen. Anyway, even though I guessed it, it made it a bit more interesting than it had been.
I also enjoyed that the film was at least aware of its own modest means. One of the characters in the film is an actress, and another character speaks dismissively about the film she's appearing in: "Is there even anyone famous in that movie?" Of course, there's no one famous in April Fool's Day either -- and the film knows this, to its credit. I kept looking for some familiar face, maybe a person just starting out who turned into at least a familiar character actor, but I came up empty. (I did look it up later because there was one name from the cast that I recognized, even though I didn't know where I knew her from. Turns out Scout Taylor-Compton played Laurie Strode in both of Rob Zombie's Halloween movies, though I certainly did not make that connection when I was watching.)
So not a terrible way to spend April Fool's Day -- but I still wish I had the energy to punk someone, like I used to, instead.
