Pain and Gain, Michael Bay’s “Point Break with bodybuilders” movie (which is actually based on a true story) starring Mark Wahlberg and The Rock, hits April 26th, and just screened at CinemaCon yesterday to, um, reviews. The big question is, does Michael Bay still remember how to shoot human beings after three straight movies about robots? The good news is, he never did!

Here’s a new clip, which in just 42 seconds manages to lay out the Michael Bay blueprint for a scene. His secret? Every minor character is just one over-the-top, skin-deep gimmick, which then becomes both comic relief and plot point. In this case, it’s a gun store clerk who turns out to be a huge Stryper fan. The Rock and the boys tell him they’re cops, and he doesn’t believe them, but The Rock sees a Stryper sticker on the register and tells the clerk that they’re actually doing security for Stryper. Pretty soon he and the clerk are singing Stryper together right there in the gun store and everything works out okay! Haha, hilarious! Good thing the Stryper sticker didn’t turn out to be from another clerk, or any number of other infinite, more interesting possibilities!

Anyway, here’s the early word on the movie, from what I can gather from my Twitter follows:

Michael bay’s $25 million pain and gain is an impeccably crafted noisy soulless depressing enterprise. Dumb male demo.#cinemacon

— Anne Thompson (@akstanwyck) April 16, 2013

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Michael Bay’s “Point Break with bodybuilders” movie, Pain and Gain, starring Mahky Mahk and The Rock, has a new red-band trailer out which you can watch below. It’s everything you’d expect from a Michael Bay movie: beautifully-shot, borderline pornographic scenery where everyone’s either a buff hero, a hot chick, or a shrill caricature. Guess which one Ken Jeong is! Ahh, the world of Michael Bay, where you can’t have so much as a bank teller or bus driver without him being an asinine attempt at comic relief. I fully believe Michael Bay moves through life instantly, silently categorizing everyone he meets. “Slut. Clown. Slut. Clown. Clown. Slut. Slut. Slut. Clown. Slut. Clown. Slut. Clown. Clown. Clown. Clown. Slut. Clown. Slut. Slut. Slut. Clown...”

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“Hold on, neither of you is a baller or a playboy.”

After being pushed back nearly an entire year, G.I. Joe: Retaliation finally hits theaters on March 27, and it goes without saying that the problem with this sequel is that it doesn’t have nearly enough Channing Tatum. Paramount officials tried to say the film was delayed because they wanted to add 3D and whatever, but we all know it’s because nobody wanted to watch C-Tates get killed off in the film’s opening minutes, like he’s some kind of Steven Seagal in Executive Decision.

Whether or not C-Tate’s life has been spared so he can make a return in G.I. Joe 3: Hey Cobra, Do U Like Deez? isn’t known, but he apparently doesn’t die and people like that better. And the mad love for C-Tates shows in one of the two new Retaliation clips released this week, as the first features The Rock… I’m sorry, Dwayne Johnson pumping his troops up with some Jay-Z. But yo playboy, Errbody knows C-Tates B down wit Nas, holla atcha Illmatic, son.

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Anyone will tell you, writing scripts is hard. Then when you’re done, getting anyone to read it is even harder. That’s why the real movers and shakers of Hollywood just bypass the process altogether and get movies greenlit based on board games or breakfast cereals. And today we’ve entered an even braver, newer world, now that New Line is developing a project based on a one-frame illustration (pictured below). Basically, The Rock’s former assistant was stoned trolling DeviantArt one night, found an illustration he liked, brought it to The Rock and the director of Journey 2, they got it in production at New Line, and bingo bango, some screenwriter now has the worst job since the guy who had to write Bazooka Joe.

The picture in question was drawn by Alex Panagopoulos, a Greek software engineer turned fantasy artist.

Very typical of the Greek economy.

It features a little girl asleep in bed while a small brown teddy bear — brandishing a laughably small wooden sword and shield — holds an enormous, fanged monster at bay. And in the fashion of a motivational poster, a caption reads “Teddy Bears: Protecting innocent children from monsters under the bed since 1902.” (The teddy bear was invented in 1902 by Morris Michtom, who was inspired by a political cartoon featuring President Theodore Roosevelt and a bear he refused to shoot.)

Speaking of which, when are we getting a Teddy Roosevelt movie? That guy busted trusts, shot Spaniards on horse back, rode moose across rivers, and gave an 80-minute speech after getting shot in the chest with a .38 from point-blank range. Teddy Roosevelt makes Abe Lincoln look like a doddering eunuch.

Oh right, I suppose you want to see the picture.

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Aftah da jump, Mahky Mahk an his shawt little fackin’ t-rex ahms stahs in the new trailah fa Pain & Gain, from that directah wit the queah haiyah who makes the transfawmahs movies. Back in the days when he was still busy beatin up awriental shawpkeepahs, befahr his brothah gawt famous from his queah music, we always told Mahky he should be a bawdy buildah. “Mahky,” me and guinea Mike usta tell ‘em, “the amount of muscle you could pack on those shawt little ahms a yoahs, you could be a regulah Lou Ferrigner!” But he nevah listened, just wanted ta sing his rap sawngs and take pictahs with his hands down his undahpants. Shuwah, he’s a famous movie stah now, but wit the right trainin, he coulda been the white Rawnie Coleman. Now hereey is, doin’ a bawdybuildin movie with the Rawk, and awl I can think is “I toldya so. Me an Guinea Mike, we fackin’ toldya so, Mahky.”

I heard Mahky Mahk woulda stawpped nine eleven, except his ahms were too shawt ta unbuckle his seat belt. Woulda prawbly just sat theyah, drinkin chawklit flavahed mass gainah from an extra lawng strawr.

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