The Little Girls' Show That Could

 

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

2010-

**********

Pros:  Great animation, Great songs, Good humor, Good voice acting, Well-developed characters, Insightful lessons

Cons: Increasingly maniacal fanbase, Declining quality, Lack of diversity in character design

   


THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED DUE TO ITS SUCKING.  WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

A Chick Flick With a Body Count

Equilibrium

2002

D: Kurt Wimmer

**********

Pros: Action, Acting, Cinematography, Dialogue, Score, Well-paced story, Themes, Death scenes

Cons: Some derivative themes, Disappointing final battle

 

      

     Very few movies have inspired such divergent responses between viewers and critics.  This film, despite being extremely successful with test audiences and having gained a strong cult following on video, was savaged by critics.  It was perceived to be a cheap rip-off of The Matrix, and as we all know, critics really care about originality.

This, combined with a limited release, resulted in the movie’s being a box office flop.  Many people bought into the negative hype without having seen it, including myself.  In fact, when I first saw the movie, I prejudged it based on the critical response.   Upon repeated viewings, I grew to love the movie and recognize its strengths.  As a result, I learned to think for myself and not prejudge a movie before I see it.

     Seeing as how Equilibrium takes place in the future, has stylized gunfights with people dodging bullets, people in ankle-length black clothes, and a mathematical term for the title (although it was originally to be called Librium, but there was a copyright issue), it must have been quite tempting to make accusations of plagiarism, but that case is actually pretty weak.  Let’s compare the two movies:

Yeah, right.  They're exactly the same.

Actually, this movie takes its inspiration from dystopian novels like 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.  It certainly borrows elements from them, such as a state-issued drug and the burning of artwork, but the story and characters are distinctive.  In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing elements of a certain setting, as long as you produce a new story, as Equilibrium does.  Otherwise, a lot of great movies would be rip-offs.  Inception would be a rip-off of The Matrix, eXistenZ and Paprika.  Moon would be a rip-off of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The Matrix would be rip-off of freakin’ Johnny Mnemonic.  Hell, any action movie that takes place in New York or LA would be unoriginal for just repeating the setting.  Even the three aforementioned novels were derivative of We.

     This movie has an excellent cast.  The then relatively unknown Christian Bale gives a complex and touching performance as Cleric John Preston.  He does a wonderful job bringing to life a character who awakens to his emotions, struggles with them, and learns to embrace them.  His performance here is what you have to thank for his casting as Batman…or blame, whatever.  I must note at this point that the movie has gained a surprising following amongst women (It's even played on the Lifetime channel sometimes).  This actually makes sense when you think about it.  Bale starts out the movie as a ruthless government-employed killer (he’s a bad boy).  He's tortured by what he has done (he has a troubled past).  He has great romantic chemistry with the passionate Emily Watson, and she teaches him to appreciate his own emotional depth (he’s a project).  At the core, this is a movie about a man getting in touch with his feelings. 

This man.

Taye Diggs plays Brandt, the film’s Heavy ,with a creepy Cheshire Cat grin, and he does a wonderful job providing antagonistic chemistry with Preston.  As a man who knows how to play the system for his own gain, his cunning and ambition contrast well with Preston's idealism and honesty.  Sean Bean’s role is short, but he has a presence so powerful he deserves second billing.  Angus Macfadyen is effectively unassuming, but subtly evil as the villain.  Sean Pertwee is charismatic as the state’s mouthpiece; his voice sounds so fitting for the propaganda speeches he gives.  William Fichtner is great as the leader of the Resistance, and gives the protagonist insightful advice on how emotions are great, but need to be controlled through individual will.  After all, freedom is nothing without responsibility.  
    Equilibrium has excellent atmosphere, and the visuals are impressive despite a relatively low budget; a credit to the dedication and ingenuity of its crew, especially cinematographer Dion Beebe. These people did a very good job of making places like parking towers seem appropriate settings for this dystopian world.  Camera work is excellent, with an emphasis on symmetry and effective editing.  I like how good the movie looks in spite of its low budget.  Aside from some brief CGI scenery, the movie, particularly the action, is all done practically.  It reminds me of the good old days when people could make great-looking genre movies without 9-figure budgets for celebrities and CGI.  Just good old-fashioned ingenuity with a cast of respected character actors and talented up-and-comers rather than pre-sold stars.  Reminds me of the old 80's movies that made me in love with film in the first place.  I wish they had saved money on the CGI scenery and used matte paintings and miniatures; I don't see enough of either any more. 
     Much of the filming took place in Germany, and the architecture of the Third Reich was used to convey a good impression of state power.  The aesthetic appeal may seem at odds with the anti-artistic attitude of Libria, but it makes sense when you find out the whole thing is run by a hyprocrite who is off the dose himself.  It makes sense he would want to impose his tastes on the world.       I'd like to address a cliche in our movies and culture in general.  Nazi Germany, quite deservingly, is seen as a default vision of evil.  We tend to fetishize the Nazis without realizing what made them evil.  I seriously believe that the main reason we obsess over the Nazis like this, the reason we keep coming back to their aesthetic in movies, is simply because, let's face it, the Nazis had a lot of style.  Those black Hugo Boss SS uniforms look awesome.  Nazi architecture looks awesome.  We don't want to admit it because the Nazis themselves have tainted this aesthetic, so we indulge in this guilty pleasure by putting fictional bad guys in this uniform.  It is actually a bit shallow.  Jackboots and Ancient Indian good luck symbols did not murder 6 million Jews.  It was people who rejected Judeo-Christian and put their trust in the government as the ultimate moral authority that enabled this to happen.  If we fail to realize this, we run the risk of going down that path.  It's a tiresome cliche, but I can forgive Equilibrium for it because it combines this trope with some great scoring, storytelling and cinematography to execute the atmosphere beautifully.  I can forgive a cliche if it's done so damn well.  
     Though the dictatorship in the movie is technically secular, there are also religious visual themes displayed, which may seem like an attack on religion.  Personally, I think that it’s a statement that abuses can come from both the religious and the secular.  In one scene, the protagonist is told by an authority that “it is not the message that is important, but our obedience to it.”  As a Catholic who does not always agree with Church teachings, I identify with the hero’s suppressed frustration from that line.
      The soundtrack by Klaus Badelt effectively sets the tone.  A good mix of techno, metal and classical, it has distinctive melody and provides a constant feeling of tension throughout the movie.  In one scene, a character says, “without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock…ticking.”  Considering that line, it's a appropriate that the score has a unique clockwork motif to it.  The movie also features good use of a “Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, 1^st Movement” (I find it refreshing they did not use “Moonlight Sonata”; it’s great but incredibly played out).  The cinematography beautifully complements the song’s buildup, and the piece is an emotional epiphany for the hero when he hears it.  It’s a good thing it wasn’t playing any Paramore, or else he would have just rejoined the villains in disgust.  

   The movie’s fight scenes are also distinctive, and they are among the best in film.  While the movie’s action style, Gun Kata, is definitely derived from the Gun Fu styles pioneered by filmmakers like John Woo, it develops it further by turning gunplay into a martial art, using the guns’ lines of fire as extensions of the hands.  The custom Cleric Guns even enhance this theme, since they were meant to resemble extended fingers of a hand.  It’s obviously unrealistic, but it’s suggested that the Grammaton Clerics, the elite enforcers who use this tactic, are trained in this method from childhood, giving their proficiency a credibility within the movie’s universe (conversely, some more “realistic” action movies have inexperienced protagonists picking up complex skills in no time at all, something which I do find annoying).  My one complaint about the action is Wimmer's decision to use dust squibs instead of blood squibs because "the MPAA are like bulls; they react to the sight of red."  I'm not sure if this was an unsuccessful shot at a PG-13 or a paranoid attempt to avoid an NC-17, but the fight scenes could have been more visceral otherwise.  This movie simply does does not feel like it deserves its R rating.
         Though there’s little blood, impact is maintained through clever methods, like the shattering of a guard’s visor when he is shot in the face.  Another feature of the movie’s action that is worth noting is its efficiency.  The movie has a rather high body count, but the violence is condensed into short scenes less than a minute in length.  I actually like this for the same reason I generally find trailers more fun to watch than the actual movie.  Whereas a trailer condenses the action into an overwhelming experience complete with rousing music, a movie whose action drags on can get a bit tedious.

      A lot of people criticize this movie for its invincible hero, but I believe this is one of those movies that makes the trope work by putting the hero in a position where his skills are irrelevant throughout most of the movie.  Action scenes in a movie can provide either conflict or catharsis. The latter method works provided there actually is conflict and struggle outside the action.  Preston, after he realizes he is on the wrong side, attempts to lay low and, as a result, has to stand by and let bad things happen.  He struggles to hide his rebellious intentions from Brandt, who mercilessly takes advantage of Preston's position.  Preston knows there are some limits to his combat prowess, and that just killing off the antagonists at any time would be more of a setback to his goals of eventually destroying the evil regime he once worked for, so he has to choose his battles.  There are only a few major fight scenes in the story, and they are well integrated in the story.
     The story begins with a group of Freedom Fighters being raided by the police forces of Libria, the post-apocalyptic dictatorship in which emotion and artwork are all outlawed.  As the mooks pull up the to the hideout, the most awesome police car in the history of science fiction appears, even cooler than the 1986 Ford Taurus squad cars in RoboCop.  I refer, of course to the 1989 Dodge Spirit police car.   

Tetragrammaton: 1, OCP: 0

Perhaps they just blew all their car money pimping out the only 1992 Cadillac Seville in Germany.  Anyway, our protagonist, Cleric John Preston (Christian Bale) arrives on the scene in dispatches the Freedom Fighters in an effectively built-up massacre.  Soon afterwards, he is paired with a new partner, Cleric Brandt (Taye Diggs) and they capture a female freedom fighter named Mary (Emily Watson).  After Preston accidentally goes of a dose of his emotion-deadening drug Prozium, he begins to express reluctance to support the system.  As he becomes increasingly rebellious, he falls in love with Mary, and Brandt becomes more suspicious of him.  What ensues is a tense cat-and-mouse game between Preston and Brandt, who effectively comes off as sadistic and ruthless opponent.   

    At this point I would like to address a common complaint about the movie.  Despite the fact that everyone is supposedly on an emotion-killing drug, the actors still give nuanced performances (in other words, the movie has the opposite problem Twilight does).   The director did explain that Prozium only suppresses extreme emotions, leaving nagging feelings intact along with the personality of each person, hence Preston’s strong sense of duty and Brandt’s cruelty.
     I'm not going to spend to much time defending the movie's relatively absurd premise; that would be folly.  It deals with the outlawing of emotions, but it doesn't really explore that theme all that seriously.  I admit it is a bit flawed, especially since I believe that one of the big problems with society is that people think too much with their emotions to such an extent that they do not allow logic to influence their political stances.  Fortunately, the movie tempers this theme in one scene in which Jurgen tells Preston that emotions need to be controlled.  Politically, the movie doesn't say that much except "totalitarianism is bad."  It's not that complex, but it's good enough to tell a story around.  It's really the story and characters that make people enjoy this movie.  People react to the situation in different ways.  Some, like Brandt, take advantage of the system for their own advancement and use it to satisfy their bloodlust.  Preston, on the other hand, is driven by a sense of duty and he serves the regime faithfully until he sees the light.  Despite his conversion, his core personality trait stays the same: he is an honest idealist throughout the movie.  He was among the most brutal enforcers of tyranny at the beginning of the movie, which reflects my belief that misguided idealists can be the most dangerous people of them all.  However, it is made very clear throughout the story that Preston has always had misgivings about murdering people for Libria, especially after the execution of his wife years before.  If there's one thing I've learned from movies, it's that the premise is not as important as how the characters react to it.  Sci-fi movies tend to have self defeating premises.  Blade Runner is about how people insist on making androids who are similar to humans, making them stronger and smarter than we are, and treating them like dirt (Let's not forget that uncalled for rape scene, either).  Looper is fueled by time travel paradoxes.  The T-800 in Terminator 2 shows personality, tastes and even a sense of humor.  These movies are more about the drama and character rather than just the universe itself.
     More shallow reviewers have made the accusation that he gives up on his beliefs just to save a puppy, displaying that they clearly did not pay the least bit of attention to the movie.  It’s not the reason Preston rebels so much as it is the last straw.  After he goes off the dose, Preston accompanies Brandt on a mission to kill a cell of rebels and they come across a pen of dogs.  When Brandt orders the dogs to be shot, a policeman brutally executes them while pretending that a Walther WA2000 sniper rifle is a shotgun.  Preston manages to save one puppy from the massacre and tries to set it free in secret, only to be caught by a group of mooks who try to kill him.  Preston then defends himself and the puppy in an excellent fight scene.  The crowd goes wild.  Some would say this is shamefully manipulative, but that’s the point the movie has been trying to make by associating forbidden artwork with the ban on emotions.  After all, the puppy actually does make sense in the context of the story so it's well-executed glurge.  Artwork in general is meant to manipulate the emotions; a movie that fails to do so is a bad one.  By including the artwork with emotions in the forbidden material in Libria, the movie makes that statement.  If there is a message in this movie that works, it has to do with aesthetics more than politics.  Wimmer seems to want to criticize people who overthink movies while missing their point. 

     Some people criticize Preston as an invincible Superman who’s not identifiable, the audience identifies with him because he struggles with his own beliefs and is constantly put in positions where his combat skills are irrelevant.  He may be an excellent fighter, but he often is compelled to stand by and watch as terrible things happen.  This is because, unlike Brandt, he doesn't know how to play the game; he's pragmatic enough to realize that he has to, but he's not duplicitous enough to succeed fully at it, which makes him relatable.  He feels helpless many times in the movie as he tries to conform to the state and stay out of trouble.  He questions the morality of his own actions, just like everyone does.  When we finally get to see him kick ass, it's cathartic to watch.  We don’t want to see him get in a pseudosuspenseful delay during an action scene after all he’s been through, and we don’t see that.  That is why this movie resonates with people.  Watching a fight scene in which the protagonist conquers without a scratch is fun, but Equilibrium is one of the few movies that genuinely makes such scenes work for the story by finding a way to make vulnerability (albeit not physical vulnerability) drive the overall story.  So you see, kids, it does meet numbers 1, 6 and 16 of Pixar's Rules of Storytelling.  Even though it's usually good to have suspense in action, sometimes it's refreshing to have a movie that says, "Who are we kidding?  You know the good guy's going to win.  Let's just enjoy watching him kick ass."  Besides, I didn't hear those people complaining when this happened in Iron Man.  Make no mistake, Equilibrium is primarily a wish fulfillment movie through and through, and it's a damn well-executed one in my opinion.

     The movie draws to a close from this scene after it is revealed that Cleric Preston switched his gun with Brandt, making it look like he was the one in the Puppy Fight.  It may seem like the switch occurred in a scene after the shootout, resulting in a huge plothole.  The actual switch is subtle, occurring in a much earlier scene where he hands Brandt his gun.  Often, not all of the audience sees it.  It still doesn’t account for the fact that Preston used two guns in the shootout or the fact that Brandt doesn't seem to notice that his gun has Preston's name on it the whole time.  Equilibrium does have discrepancies, but so do most movies, and for reasons I already made clear, I don’t count plotholes as a con in movies as long as the movie succeeds in engaging me.  After all, how many inconsistencies were in The Dark Knight?

And that's just in the first scene.

    
      I’ll leave the movie’s ending up to you to watch, but one of my favorite aspects of this film is the presence of excellent death scenes.  The first occurs early in the movie with Preston’s first partner (Sean Bean) who is revealed to be a rebel and killed by Preston himself.  This is one of my favorite death scenes of all time.  Before he dies, Partridge eloquently quotes “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats, in a startlingly effective use of classic literature in science fiction (Khan would be proud).  He then makes a defiant stand to Preston, who shoots him after attempting to convince him to come peacefully.  It’s such a well done scene: the tense music, the well-timed cinematography, Preston’s palpable reluctance to kill his partner, Partridge’s unflinching glare…it all comes together into perfection that you can’t help but appreciate.

Or you could just nitpick at how they obviously didn't use the actual actor for gunshot, whatever.

On a minor note, Wimmer chose the Beretta because the open topped slide might eject the cartridge straight up onto the camera lens (despite his apparent gun love, he did not seem to know what an extractor was).  Fortunately, this wasn't the case; such a cheesy gimmick would have messed up an excellent death scene.  The movie further proves its willingness to make us cry by killing Preston’s love interest.  Preston attempts to save Mary from execution, but only makes it in time to watch her die.  The scene is beautifully shot and heartbreaking.  Afterwards we appreciate our hero’s vulnerability as he finally breaks down and cries.

     Not all the deaths are sad, however.  Brandt’s death is probably the most effective villain death I’ve seen.  Sure, some might find it anticlimactic that he doesn’t put up a fight, but that’s what makes it so great.  Brandt was such scum, and his constant psychological torture of Preston was so effectively hateful, that he did not deserve a fair fight.  Preston’s efficient sword strokes give him the humiliation he so dearly deserved.  We also should have seen it coming; Brandt spends most of the movie wearing gray, the color of a less experienced Grammaton Cleric.  It is a bit cheesy, however, how Brandt’s face got cut off.  In fact, the wound looked more disfiguring than fatal; logically he should have been blinded and screaming incoherently.  Oh, well.   Unfortunately, when it's time for Preston to fight the Big Bad, the only person whose combat skills match his own, it's a disappointment.  The final fight with DuPont goes by too fast and it should have been the one with some suspense.  Although Wimmer is awesome when it comes to stylized action, he has yet to show a knack for personal one-on-one showdowns.

    So, that’s Equilibrium.  It may not have all the political and social intelligence it thinks it has, but it succeeds as a story.  It’s on of my favorite movies and the reason why a film’s Rotten Tomatoes rating holds no sway for me.  If there's any movie that inspired me to write about movies, because I apparently can't trust other people with the task.  The DVD also features an insightful and fun commentary by Kurt Wimmer and Lucas Foster (I especially enjoyed the gun show joke in it). 

 FAVORITE QUOTES

FATHER:  In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out.  Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel.

FATHER:  Libria, I congratulate you.  At last, peace reigns in the heart of Man.  At last, war is but a word whose meaning fades from our understanding.  At last, we are whole.  Librians, there is a disease in the heart of Man.  Its symptom is hate.  Its symptom is anger.  Its symptom is rage.  Its symptom is war.  The disease is human emotion, but, Libria, I congratulate you, for there is a cure for this disease.  At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion, we have suppressed its abysmal lows.  And you as a society have embraced this cure: Prozium.  And now we are at peace with ourselves, and Humankind is one.  War is gone.  Hate, a memory.  We are our own conscience now, and it is this conscience that guides us to rate EC-10 for emotional content all those things that might tempt us to feel again and destroy them.  Librians!  You have won!  Against all odds and your own natures, you have survived!   

PARTRIDGE:  You always knew.  [reading Yeats] “But I, being poor, have only my dreams.  I have spread my dreams under your feet.  Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”  I assume you dream, Preston?

PRESTON:  I’ll do what I can to see they go easy on you.

PARTRIDGE:  We both know, they never go easy.

PRESTON:  Then I’m sorry.

PARTRIDGE:  No you’re not.  You don’t even know the meaning.  It’s just a vestigial word for a feeling you’ve never felt.  Don’t you see, Preston?  It’s gone.  Everything that makes us what we are, traded away…

PRESTON: There’s no war.  No murder.

PARTRIDGE:  What is it you think we do?

PRESTON:  No.  You’ve been with me.  You’ve seen how it can be…the jealousy…the rage…

PARTRIDGE: A heavy cost.  I pay it gladly.  [reaches for his gun.  Preston brandishes his.]

PRESTON:  Don’t…

MARY: Why are you alive?

PRESTON: I’m alive.  I live…to safeguard the continuity of this great society.  To serve Libria.

MARY: It’s circular.  You exist to continue your existence.  What’s the point?

PRESTON: What’s the point of your existence?

MARY: To feel.  'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it.  But it's as vital as breath.  And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock... ticking.

DuPONT: You must understand, Preston, that while you, and even I, may not always agree with it, it is not the message that is important, but our obedience to it.  Father’s will.  Call it faith.  You have it, I assume.

PRESTON: [clenches fist] Yes, sir.

SWEEPER CAPTAIN: What?.....Aw, shit!  SHOOTHIM,SHOOTHIM,SHOOTHIM!

JURGEN: You know, I was like you, but the first thing you learn about emotion is that it has its price, a complete paradox.  But without restraint…without control, emotion is chaos.

PRESTON: But how is that diff…

JURGEN: The difference being is that when we want to feel, we can.  It’s just that some of us..some of us have to forego that luxury so the rest can have it.  Some very few of us have force ourselves not to feel.  Like me.  Like you.

POLYGRAPH ADMINISTRATOR:  A control question.  More of a riddle, actually.  How would you say would be the easiest way to take a weapon away from a Grammaton Cleric?

BRANDT: You ask him for it.

DuPONT: And you, Preston, the supposed savior of the resistance, are now its destroyer, and, along with them, you've given me yourself... calmly... coolly... entirely without incident.

PRESTON: No…[polygraph machine flatlines]

POLYGRAPH OPERATOR: Oh…shit!

PRESTON…not without incident. [fight scene ensues]

DuPONT: Wait!  Wait!  Look at me.  Look at me.  I'm life.  I live... I, I breathe... I feel.  Now that you know it... can you really take it?  Is it really worth the price?

PRESTON: I pay it gladly.

My Nostalgia Goggles Must Be Broken...

Tiny Toon Adventures

1990-2

**********

Pros: Good animation, Nostalgia value

Cons: Unfunny, Preachy

    

     When I was a kid, I loved this show.  It was one of the shows that I watched religiously in the early 90’s.  When it came time for me to revisit these cartoons as an adult, I found that many of them were actually better and smarter than I remember (Batman: The Animated Series, Talespin).  Others, while not great, were still fun and the nostalgia value was enough to make me like them (Transformers, GI Joe), so when I Netflixed Tiny Toons, I thought I would feel like a kid again.  Problem was…I didn’t laugh at it.  It just isn’t funny.  In fact, aside from the episode where Baby Plucky gets potty-trained, I don’t really remember much from the show’s run I’d find funny as an adult.

     This cartoon was the first collaboration between Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. in the Animation Renaissance of the 90’s, and it did have some production value.  You can tell because the animation is very good.  The characters look good, they move fluidly and they’re expressive.  If there’s one thing I miss about the 90’s is that we had standards in cartoon artwork back then.  Even the bad cartoons at least looked good.

      Unlike subsequent Spielberg/Warner Bros. cartoons, such as the subversive and snarky Animaniacs and the absurdist Freakazoid, this cartoon doesn’t really have anything to offer in terms of humor. 

Despite the show's own self-assessment.

There’s  a lot of slapstick, but not particularly funny slapstick.  Tiny Toons merely lampshades and apes classic cartoon tropes rather than innovating in physical humor, even if some of the slapstick is well timed.  Dialogue is mostly dependent on lame puns and lame sitcom-style comebacks.  Like many lazily written shows, it is preoccupied with referential humor, and these jokes come in three types:

-Hackneyed references to Early 20^th Century pop culture that made you hate classic movies before you even heard of them.  The same unrecognizably exaggerated vocal impressions of actors that are used over and over and over again.

- Obvious references to contemporary pop culture that just seem dated in retrospect--

-References to famous highbrow works of art “improved” with sight gags.

I must admit, one of these references produced one of my all-time biggest nostalgic nightmare moments.  Realizing that the existential terror of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven would be lost on younger viewers, the writers apparently decided to scare the crap out of children by having Lenore’s ghost fly out the grave and freaking attack them.

When I was a kid, I wished there was a Lacuna Inc. around to erase my memory of this.

     Obviously, the show is an homage to Looney Tunes, using its well-recognized characters as teachers in a Toon College that is attended by characters that are younger, less interesting versions of the Looney Tunes cast.  Most of them are, anyway.  Buster Bunny is nothing like the nonchalant trickster Bugs; he’s mostly just a bland protagonist who is a mouthpiece for the creators.  Babs Bunny is an impression artist who is responsible for much of the annoying references I mentioned above.  Although these characters are not canonically related to the Looney Tunes characters, I always surmised they were actually their lovechildren.  I’ve always found it odd how these characters are supposed to be college-aged, and yet they are significantly shorter than their adult counterparts.  If not for the body shapes of the female characters, I would have guessed they were prepubescent children.

     Even worse than the lame humor was the preachiness.  Tiny Toons certainly did have an agenda.  This show had at least one episode that told me to be a vegetarian, and heaven only knows how many times it tried to manipulate me into the Church of Environmentalism.  I remember one episode where Buster and Babs fought an evil mogul with a giant scorpion-shaped robot that cut down trees to make wooden elevator buttons (Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a wooden elevator button).  Even more baffling, the machine would make one button from every tree, and just burn the rest of the thing (that doesn’t even make sense from a greedy straw capitalist perspective!).  Ironically, I liked the episode as a kid, but that was only because I thought the big scorpion robot looked cool, so yeah, good job guys.  Politics should generally be left out of children’s shows.  Most of the time, a child’s parents will have indoctrinated him or her enough so that a contrary opinion on a cartoon is just as annoying them as it is to an adult.

     Tiny Toons did sometimes tackle serious, but uncontroversial, topics.  In order to address the pressing issue of alcohol abuse among middle class children, the show made the infamously banned episode “One Beer,” which is unintentionally hilarious in its depiction of alcohol.  It only aired once, but I was lucky enough to catch that show when it did.  I know that when you’re discouraging alcohol abuse to an audience that should avoid drinking altogether, saying that alcohol isn’t evil and that it should be treated with respect isn’t the most appropriate message, but this cartoon took it a bit far.  Buster, Hampton and Plucky become incoherently drunk high after one sip, ONE SIP, of beer…not hard liquor, just BEER.  You can’t help but laugh at a show for depicting alcohol as having addictive properties that put crystal meth to shame.

Before you know it, alcohol will turn you into a homeless person.

They then hijack the squad car of the most incompetent policemen ever and take a joy ride in it.

Dude, we left it a long time ago.

They drive past a “Road Out” sign and after an admittedly funny exchange, they crash into the gorge below, killing themselves. 

I must say, seeing them rise up to Heaven as cartoon angels detracts from the visceral impact.  Just a tad.

The show ends with the trio taking off the angel costumes on set, revealing that they weren’t killed off for real.  This may redeem the episode, because it may be one of the few genuinely tongue-in-cheek moments in the show.  A group of writers made to write an anti-alcohol episode barf out a ridiculously manipulative piece of junk and then make it a show-within-show in subtle rebellion.  After all, moral guardians during the 90’s had this odd idea that children’s shows that did not force a message were failing in their obligations.  This episode's possible joke might be good meta-humor, but that would seem hypocritical coming from a show that had no qualms about preaching about other subjects.  Luckily, the Spielberg/WB team would redeem itself by satirizing this kind of pressure later on.

     So that’s Tiny Toon Adventures.  I know this review will probably inspire some nasty-grams from my peers, but this is my opinion.  I won’t say the cartoon doesn’t have its moments, but I mostly think it’s boring.  It may have failed to turn me into a tree-hugging herbivore, but the show, among many others, did feature “funny” inflation/expansion gags all throughout.  Even as a kid, I never saw the comic value of such scenes, but I won’t deny they had an effect on me.  

I'm looking at you, too, Garfield.

Happy Valentine's Day

It's time to celebrate a holiday dedicated to Valentine, a Christian saint who bravely sacrificed his life for his faith so that people can say his holiday was invented by greeting card companies.

 Also, I tried to do a search for him on deviantART, and all I'm getting is some anime character.

I Might Actually Try This.

"Hey, Y'all!  Watch THIS!"

Gunplay and Bad Politics

 

Shoot’em Up
2007 

D: Mike Davis 

**********

Pros: Amazing action scenes, Some good songs

Cons: Hamfisted anti-gun message, Sexism, Crude humor, Unlikeable protagonist, Lazy scoring

     There are many movies which I hated.  Many movies have made me wonder what possessed me to go see them.  This movie, on the other hand, made me feel cheated.  I cannot think of a movie that lied so blatantly about what it was about as Shoot’em Up did.    After having been led to believe that this was simply a fun action-comedy, I ended up sitting through what turned out to be a rabid anti-gun diatribe.  I know that you can’t give away a movie’s plot, but if you’re going to tackle a serious political issue, you’re obligated to let people know before they pay money to see that movie.

     The movie begins innocently enough.  Smith (Clive Owen) comes to the rescue of a pregnant woman who is being pursued by a gang led by Hertz (Paul Giamatti, who is far too good an actor to be in this movie).  In the ensuing gunfight, the woman gives birth while Smith fends off the baddies, the casings from his gun bouncing off her pregnant belly in a disturbingly fetishistic way. 

Screenshot of Clive Owen performing an impromptu childbirth in a much better movie

     After childbirth, the woman is subsequently killed by the villains (gee, it’s almost as if she died after fulfilling her purpose in life), forcing Smith to locate a lactating hooker in order to feed the infant.  Hey kids, let’s try and figure out who plays this character!  Let’s see, hmmm…the character is undeveloped…she’s mostly there for fanservice…she’s in a really bad movie…hmm…could it be?  YES, YOU’RE RIGHT!  SHE IS PLAYED BY MONICA BELUCCI! 

You win a car!

     Unfortunately, Hertz comes to the conclusion that the baby needs milk through bafflingly disgusting means (he realizes it when helping himself to the dead mother’s breast milk), and miraculously tracks down the very same hooker.  Bullet-riddled hijinks and abysmally sophomoric humor ensue.  The whole movie is set to an annoying and lazy rock “score,” but a few enjoyable songs appear (Motley Crue’s "Kickstart My Heart" is good, and Paul Oakenfold’s "Switch On" makes for a great car chase song).  The pursuit continues until halfway through the movie, when we find out that the whole plot is based on a conspiracy by an evil gun manufacturer to murder a batch of babies (of which this one is the sole survivor) bred specifically to provide bone marrow to a dying anti-gun politician (I must say it is rather ironic that it is the conservative strawman from whom infants need to be defended).  This is political demonization at its worst.  You might say that I should ignore this and enjoy the film, but the film wouldn’t let me.  Once the anti-gun Aesop is made apparent, it is continuously rubbed in the face of the audience and cannot be escaped.  It’s hard to just turn my brain off and have fun when a message is constantly being crammed down my throat.  The movie attempts to discredit gun owners’ cause by claiming that the reason guns appeal to people is so that “pussies” can pretend they’re tough, a perversion of a legitimate pro-gun argument.  Guns do provide weak people with strength, but that is not a bad thing; they enable many who would be at the disadvantage of in a fight to defend themselves from those who would take advantage of them.  Attempting to shame gun owners by appealing to their sense of manliness completely misses the point of why they believe in the 2nd Amendment.  It has nothing to do with being "macho."  In fact, machoness for its own sake is a terrible ideology to base a society on (just look at Sparta).   Having guns may not make you seem more genuinely masculine, but that's not the point.  Our country was built on reason, freedom and equality, and the 2nd Amendment is one of the many things meant to even the playing field so that we don't live in a world where might makes right.  Apparently, liberals do support Social Darwinism.

      I must also talk about the hypocrisy concerning this message.  It makes no sense to have actors playing with automatic weapons on set and filming violent action scenes, then turning around and lecturing us about how bad guns are.  Not only is there a lot of gunplay in this movie, the way the firearms are filmed can legitimately be called gunporn.  Of course, the filmmakers inevitably make the claim that they are merely satirizing the fetishistic portrayal of firearms, and this is a pet peeve of mine.  And, no, don't tell me I "don't understand satire."  That's just a cop-out for lazy writers who cannot handle the art form intelligently.  There is good satire and bad satire.  When you set out to satirize or discredit a trope, you make jokes about it; you show why it’s ridiculous.   You do not simply revel in the trope and then turn around and say that you were making fun of it.  Satire doesn’t work that way.  Oddly enough, it can be argued that in the far superior Children of Men there is a subtle anti-gun message: Clive Owen’s character does not use a gun once, and this is a much less hypocritical approach that actually enhances the movie’s tension. 

      Suffice to say, the “good guys” end up beating the eeeevil gun company and saving the day.  I use the term “good guys” loosely here; they’re certainly not very sympathetic.  Smith is about as annoying as a 90’s antihero can get.  His only character traits are bitter cynicism and wangst.  He spends most of the movie vanquishing antagonists while reciting the increasingly bitchy and annoying mantra: “Do you know what I f---ing hate?”  The movie attempts to give him some development with a brief revelation about his past that is merely tacked on.  In fact, I actually found Paul Giamatti’s villain more sympathetic.  His frustration at Smith's opposition gives him the lovability of a cartoon antagonist, and his phone conversations with his wife reveal that he loves his family (albeit in a twisted way).  That’s more than what the protagonists have going for them.  When a character’s primary motivation throughout a movie is infanticide and he’s the most likable character, that movie has problems.  As for Monica Belluci…well, she’s a lactating hooker.  That’s all you really need to know about her.

     About as offensive as the anti-gun message is the movie’s treatment of women.  As I mentioned before, owning a gun can prevent those at a physical disadvantage in a violent situation from becoming victims, and that includes women.  So I guess it’s only natural that one of the most anti-gun movies I've seen is also one of the most misogynistic.  Just like in some tasteless midnight movie, women are gleefully killed in order to entertain people who have a very twisted definition of escapist entertainment.  In the most enraging scene in the movie, Smith grabs a mother and publicly spanks her for “beating” (actually, spanking) her naughty child, who applauds the scene as much as the audience is expected to.  I can only think of the disturbing sexual implications of spanking a grown woman and be disgusted by the mild rape scene happening before my eyes.  I have heard that the actress in question was actually looking forward to being sexually assaulted by Clive Owen…sigh…you go girl.  Now let’s review the roles that women play in this movie:

Mike Davis loves women.

     What partially surprised me is that despite the movie’s simplistic characterization, crude humor and stylized action, the critical community seemed to embrace it.  It’s kind of odd how such a normally stodgy demographic would enjoy such a movie.  Funny how Roger Ebert, who had previously played the role of butthurt moral guardian when he panned good edgy movies like Fight Club and Team America: World Police, still thought it proper to give this thing a positive review.  I thought critics were the guardians of cinema’s integrity as an art form, and there’s no way they would praise a completely shallow travesty of a film just because they agreed with it on gun control, now would they?

Why, the very idea!

     I despise this abortion of a movie.  I hate it with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  It makes my blood boil, but I can hardly find anyone who feels the same way about this movie I do.  Virtually every negative review of this movie I have read ignores the movie's true flaws and criticizes the action scenes because its writer apparently doesn't understand the concept of fun.  Make no mistake, the one good thing about this movie is the action.  It's visceral, wonderfully inventive and sublimely unrealistic, just the way I like it.  In fact, if you were to judge the movie by its gunfights alone, it’s one of the best action movies I have ever seen; up there with Hard Boiled and Equilibrium.  Although this is probably my least favorite movie of all time, I recommend watching it just for those scenes…although preferably in a language you don’t understand.  This actually makes the movie even more frustrating for me; why would they waste such good action on such a terrible movie?  I know that Mike Davis made this live-action cartoon in a childish sense of fun, but it would have been nice if he had left the political commentary to the grown-ups.          


ONLY GOOD QUOTE FROM MOVIE

SMITH: [spotting a henchman with a pony tail in the middle of the a gunfight] You know what I hate?
BABY FACTORY: No!
SMITH: I hate these forty-year-old jackholes wearing pony-tails.  That pony tail doesn't make you look hip, young, or cool.

The only man who ever made a pony tail look cool.

Bought a Car

The hand-me-down, candy red Ford Explorer Sport was a good car, but it just wasn't me.  I also wanted a car bought with my money that I earned.
I got myself a new car: a silver 2001 Buick LeSabre Custom with leather and side airbags.  I know what the snobby "car enthusiasts" think of such a machine, but I actually believe that this is a beautiful car.  It performs quite well, and so far I am quite happy with it.  Here are some pics.

Nice building, nice car.

It has the lines of a lady

Harvey Earl Sir Mix-a-Lot was here.  Also note NRA sticker