In what sounds like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, Joe’s Apartment is about a guy who lives in an apartment with a bunch of singing and dancing cockroaches. Now, you may ask how the hell you could make a full film from that premise, but the guys from MTV pulled it off as their first feature-length film.
Based on one of the channel\'s most popular between-video bumpers (back when they played videos, that is), Joe’s Apartment has both an undeniable charm and the kind of real-life cartoon feel that may remind you of Home Alone, Raising Arizona, or even Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
The fat kid from Stand By Me stars as the hapless Joe, just off the bus from Iowa, looking for a New York City apartment for a hundred bucks a month. He lucks into a rent-controlled apartment when an old woman dies at his feet. Little does he know about the sinister plans afoot to remove all the tenants so that a cross-dressing Senator (played by Robert Vaughn, Plymale & Associates\' \"Tell them you mean business!\" spokesman) can build a maximum-security prison. Joe’s 40,000 new antennaed roommates not only come to his rescue, but they also help him win the girl of his dreams.
One of the best parts of this movie is picking out the cameos. Tim Blake Nelson, Dave Chappelle, and Law & Order’s B.D. Wong take on the Alvin and the Chipmunks-sounding cockroaches. And the roaches have the Marlon Brando of all cartoon voices, Billy West (Ren & Stimpy, Futurama), leading them as Ralph the Roach. Add to that list appearances by Pepa (of Salt-N-Pepa), Bam Bam Bigelow, Don Ho, and Moby, and you have the strangest mix of \"star\" power since... well, I don’t know of anything even close to that, so there you go. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of strangeness.
What I do know is that Joe\'s Apartment is a fun flick, and if all cockroaches are this talented, I can’t wait to be infested!
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