I apologize in advance for this review.
I will be using the words "homo", "retard", and most probably "mongoloid" in the text that follows. I will say things that may appear racist, misogynistic, bigoted and probably misopediastic too (yeah, I had to look it up, too; it's the term for someone who hates children).
Just remember, as we venture into this balanced and reasoned film analysis, that all the offense and indignancy you feel, along with any subsequent hatred you develop for me as a result, are unequivocally and categorically 100% the fault of the makers (or should I say re-makers?) of the new Karate Kid flick.
And we should all hate them for that.
The Re-Make
This is a re-make, so don't tell me it's not fair to compare this with the original. Of course it's fair! It's a re-make, I've seen the original, and this is happening whether you like it or not.
Hell, the movie even encourages the audience to draw comparisons by heavy-handedly shoe-horning several lame-ass homages to its predecessor throughout it's 2 hours and 20 minutes running time.
The playful wink to the audience as an quaint old Chinese guy trims bonsai trees in the background. The chopstick Mr Miyagi, I mean Mr HAN, is holding when we first see him... and there is a fly... and wait, is he going to try to... no! Oh how clever, he hit it with a fly-swat instead! Brilliant!
Movie: Hey, Audience, geddit!? This ISN'T the character you remember from the first film, wink-wink, ha-ha!
Audience: Thanks for that, Movie, and can I just say I think you're totally awesome!
Movie: Shucks, but yeah, you're right, I am.
No, Movie, you're not. Mr Miyagi was what made the first film great! Pat Morita's portrayal of the stoic but ultimately emotionally crippled Karate teacher was pitch-perfect, right down to the little bits of sweat on his forehead and glimmers of moisture in his eyes.
I also enjoyed some of the documentaries Pat made under the name David Suzuki.
Jackie Chan plays the character in an entirely different way -- which is fine and probably the right choice -- but he doesn't really DO anything with his own portrayal. He's a natural comedian, but does he choose to make Miyagi... sorry, I mean HAN... overtly funnier and play to his acting strength? No, he keeps the movie pretty much devoid of humour, and makes his character bland an uninteresting for too much of the film.
And while the basic story is pretty much the same as the original, there are stupid little differences. Let's have a look at a few, just to give you a taste...
(And I guess some of these will be spoilers, so mind your sensitive eyes)
The main character is a black kid who moves from Detroit to China, and the teacher is a Chinese Kung Fu Master instead of an Okinawan Karate Master.
Instead of the iconic lines "wax-on wax-off", "paint-the-fence" and "sand-the-floor", we get... oh God it's ridiculous... "take off the jacket, hang the jacket, put the jacket back on". See, coz the kid in this one has a habit of never hanging his jacket up, and... oh screw it, I won't explain. It's just really dumb.
Instead of a group of maybe 16-year olds scuffling and doing Karate on each other, you've got a bunch of 12 year old kids doing Martix-style Kung Fu on wires, complete with slow-motion, shakey-cam, fast zoom and other MTV effects. You would think that makes the action superior to the first film, but it doesn't. It just makes it look silly. And in parts it's even perversely brutal. These kids are 12, how does it make sense that they are trying to break each other's legs and give each other brain damage?
When the kid needs to be healed, this new version has Miyagi, sorry, HAN, actually SET HIM ON FIRE to cure him, instead of clapping, rubbing hands together and massaging the wounded area.
Oh and they changed the ending. Instead of the original crane move that allowed our hero to win his final match, the finishing move in this one -- and you'll probably think I'm joking but it's true -- is snake charming! Yeah, he hypnotizes his opponent with his eyes, forcing him to mirror his slight head movements... before jumping 6 feet in the air, flipping upside down and kicking him in the face with his broken leg.
Come on retards, if you're going to change things, make them better, more relevent or at least understand the narrative reason they were included in the movie in the first place! Don't shuffle random details around on post-it notes just so you can say you put some creativity into the movie.
Jackie Chan says to the kid -- after he has just revealed that playing with a jacket for 2 weeks has made him an awesome kung fu fighter -- "Everything is Kung Fu!". If I was the kid, I wouldn't have been able to resist ripping a fart and saying "really? Was that fart Kung Fu, Han? It sure doesn't smell like Kung Fu to me, it smells like shit... oh wait that's the smell of what's coming out of your mouth right now!" Then I'd kick him in the balls and storm out of his homo garden.
Speaking of which, who even CARES if "Everything is Kung Fu"? This is the Karate Kid, what the fuck is Kung Fu doing in this movie anyway!? Just call it the Kung Fu Kid, as previously planned, and stop trying to milk goodwill from the previous film, you disgusting marketing sharks!
The Cast
Let's not kid ourselves... Jackie Chan is the reason we even consider seeing this movie, right? And despite the criticisms I have of him above, he was ok in this film. He even managed to pull of a dramatic scene which could well have been quite silly if done badly.
But that's old Jackie-boy, how bad could he be? What about the rest of the cast?
Well, Jaden Smith completely fails to bring any life whatsoever to his character.
Just in case you didn't know, he is the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, who -- no, really!? -- happen to be the producers of this movie! I guess he must have gotten the role on merit and... then... SUGGESTED his folks as possible producers, right? Oooh yah, that's how it went DOWN, for sure!
Anyway, he was pretty good as Will Smith's kid in "The Pursuit of Happyness," but he kinda had a free pass on account of being so young. And you know how most young kids, are, like, crap, right?
But surely he'd be channeling the charisma and star quality of his superstar father in every scene now that he's a bit old? No, not at all. He cries in one scene, but the rest of the time he wanders around the movie, tired and listless. Sometimes he speaks so quietly you can't hear him. It seems to be he has this slight misconception that being cool means you have to appear not to care about anything.
Plus, he is WAY too androgynous for my taste. He has a girl's eyelashes and lips, and those long dreads aren't doing him any favours. He better not eat too much hormone-treated chicken, because if he grows tits, some dude is going to fuck him.
It all adds to the disturbing homo-paedo-erotic subtext that seems to permeate the film. And if you think I'm imagining it, re-watch that scene where Han and Dre's hands are tied together with bamboo poles and their shadows are dancing gracefully on the wall. The whole thing rings of freakish Kamasutra diagrams to me.
Either way, his scrawny, unprepared body does nothing to convince me he could fight a real Kung Fu tough-guy. Can we get a couple of push-ups out of you before you star in your first action film, Jaden? No? Daddy says you're fine the way you are? OK, just go watch Spongebob then.
Who else do we have? Oh the girlfriend, played by newcomer Wenwen Han. I mean putting aside the pointlessness of having a romantic sub-plot in a movie featuring 12 year olds, this girl slouched around the entire film grinning like a retard and muttering in incomprehensible broken English. I know it's harsh to criticize her for not having good English, but there are 1.3 BILLION people in China, and almost half of those have gotta be female! Was this spastic, blinking, fence post of a girl really the best they could do?
Although, I can imagine, if they were re-making the original Gremlins, she'd be a shoe-in for the role of Spike. As a Gremlin. Not not the cute, furry thing.
Of course, what is a Karate Kid movie without it's bullying, mean-spirited antagonist? Well I think the casting director may have a problem recognizing congenital birth defects, because for this role they chose the poor mongoloid boy, Zhenwei Wang. And he's not one of the happy-looking ones who wants to hug everyone, either. He's an evil mongoloid.
His Kung Fu is pretty effective, considering he probably has one of those weird bended pinky-fingers and stumpy legs, but his acting is wooden and simply way to evil. I didn't really understand why he picked a fight with our title character in the first place, and then at the end, when he tries to act magnanimous after losing to Daniel... sorry, I mean DRE... well the actor hasn't earned the moment and it comes across completely disingenuous.
I could go on... the gang of Kung Fu bullies... one of them looks like he is 4 years old... the evil Kung Fu Master... I'd rather stare into the laser of my PC's mouse for 4 hours than watch him... the girlfriend's stern father... simply, idiotic -- one minute he bans his daughter from coming to Dre's tournament, then the next he's claiming she's going because their family always keep their word.
The whole movie is full of holes, inconsistencies, misfires and bad acting.
Conclusion
Well, add my voice to the chorus of the anti-re-make capaigners, because this one has really taken the wind out of my sails. It seems that re-makes never manage to improve on or even equal their predecessors, and I'm old enough to not need the glossy Hollywood updates.
I wish they'd just go back to ripping off the best Asian movies... there must be a few more good ones lying around just waiting for plagiarization!? How about Audition, or The Host? I'd love to see a watered-down, sanitized version of those pitched at six year olds.
Sorry, what movie were we talking about again? Oh yeah Karate Kid. Damn, for a moment there it was mercifully fading from my memory, like that bad nightmare I had featuring Mariah Carey and Drew Carey as a perverse swinging couple a-la Eyes Wide Shut, who have a weird half-pengiune/half-midget son that has shark's teeth in its beak and no genitals.
One more of those and I'll need a shrink.
Anyhoo, I'm a optimist, so if there's anything good that has come from watching Karate Kid 2010, other than learning the word misopediastic, is that it has inspired me to keep on living at least another 10 years.
Because by then, Jackie Chan will be too old to beat me in a fight, and I'll be able to hunt him down and kick his wrinkled old ass for making this steaming pile of turtle turds that dares to call itself a movie!
1.5 stars, for Jackie Chan convincingly crying.
How did we end up here!? I feel like turning my couch on its head, pulling my collector-edition Terminator II magnets off the fridge and popping them like grapes, then doing an upper decker in my own toilet.
I mean, us movie fans have already got so much to worry about... Avatar's absence of story in favour of spectacle... the decline of "Independent" films since the release of Napolean Dynamite made quirky into commercial... the repeated rapes of the Terminator, Alien and Predator franchises... and the very fact that Ridley Scott's still allowed to make movies.
But not Iron Man II! It was so obvious what made the first one great; surely all we needed to do was sit around and look forward to Iron Man II?
I guess I'm just mad. Mad at Jon Favreau; mad at Paramount; mad at the world. When I read about the rushed release date of Iron Man II, Jon Favreau's concerns about story, casting problems, I didn't want to believe that it would affect the film.
It did.
Sequelitis
On the face of it, Iron Man II has all the same ingredients that the first one did. But there's something missing here.
It's like when Grandma treats the family to her famous beef stew, but uses expired prune juice instead of cooking sherry because she drank it all the previous evening while watching McGuyver and listening to Barry Manilow records.
It seems like it shouldn't matter. Everyone at the table's gonna eat it and keep their stupid traps shut and be polite. But, damnit, that stew just isn't grandma's beef stew, and everyone at the table knows it!
Iron Man II might have been great on paper. But it just doesn't have the magic of its predecessor, doesn't have the charm, doesn't have the... I dunno, pizzaz!?
The Acting
Downey Jr. mumbles his way through this outing sounding like an alcoholic version of the Swedish Chef. Honestly, I couldn't understand what he was saying half the time. He seems to have pushed the fast-talking charismatic genius guy act so far that he's become completely incomprehensible.
Or maybe the boom guy was asleep, I dunno.
Either way, somewhere along the line Downey Jr's charisma glands misfired, leaving us with that disconnected feeling you get when an actor reprises a classic cool-guy role after 25 years and doesn't pull it off properly -- because now he's an irrelevant, drooling invalid.
And don't get me started on Don Cheadle! I mean, when he's out of the War Machine suit, he just goddamn stands there like a putz!
I can only remember one moment where he talks and I was interested in what he was saying, and that was mainly because of the hypnotic way his nostrils were flaring as he spoke.
I never like it when an original actor is replaced for a sequel. It's always wrong. The studio should have just paid Terrence Howard whatever he wanted, or put up with his difficult temper on set, or whatever it was. The actor IS the character, either bring them back or omit the character completely.
Having said that, I wouldn't have minded if it had been Gwyneth "hunch-backed skeletal waif" Paltrow who was replaced. I mean if there was ever an actor born to play a live-action version of Montgomery Burns, it's her. When she's on-screen speaking, I sometimes imagine I can see little bits of AIDS on her lips.
OK, Mickey Rourke was pretty awesome. And Vanko/Whiplash made a pretty cool character.
But I couldn't help thinking... all this technology in the palm of his hands... an infinite power source, millions of possibilities for advanced Tony-Stark-killing weaponry... and this guy creates a couple of lightning whips? A little too much Indiana Jones, as a kid, hey Vanko, you jackass?
Yeah, the whips look kinda cool, but they are hardly an effective weapon against Iron Man, who, last I saw, has nuclear rockets and massive lasers shooting out of every orifice that counts.
The Story
The first 30 minutes or so of the film, you don't even see Stark in the Iron Man suit. People in my cinema were yawning, checking their watches and murmuring restlessly, waiting for the movie to start. One guy even called his mum to discuss Uncle Larry's bowel problems, it was that boring.
How could Favreau et al have let this happen? One of the freedoms of sequels is that you don't need to waste time introducing the characters. We already know them and love them. You can get straight into the good stuff. Why start with a massive talk-fest? With stuff about companies and court cases? We're here to see people blown to shit with big fuck-off lasers!
And then there's the character motivation. More specifically, the logic of the relationship between Stark and Rhodes. Throughout the movie, Rhodes is playing for the wrong team, screwing Stark at every turn and vaguely apologising for it. He undermines Stark's Expo, steals an Iron Man suit and gives it to the bad guys, and even destroy's Stark's house just because he got a bit drunk at his birthday party.
Bafflingly (in the bits where I could understand what Stark was saying) he appeared to unconditionally forgive Rhodes for each and every count of anal rapage, and continued to consider him a close friend.
I know they eventually had to end up working together to defeat the baddies, but you can't disregard character motivation altogether!
The final climactic action scene was so banal and pointless that I actually I considered getting out my mobile phone and re-watching that video of the monkey picking it's own asshole, smelling it's finger and then falling off the log.
I mean, they could have sent 1000 of those drones. We've already seen that you can pull their stupid little heads off with your bare hands in Vanko's lab, so how threatening could they possibly be?
Predictably, the two Iron Men pick them off as easily as light sabers slashing through droids, despite starting off without the high ground. Imagine if they'd actually got to higher ground! The finale would have been a two second laser display, resembling an intro to a David Copperfield show.
And then, suddenly, Vanko turns up, is killed by simply crossing the streams and the credits are rolling. Wha!? That's it!?
Conclusion
Oh Iron Man II, how I wanted to love you. I had a little bit of love in my heart reserved just for you, I did.
Now I'm going to have to find a new outlet for that love. Like rubbing up against women in business suits on the subway.
I hope you're happy, because the violated business women won't be.
2.5 stars, for being almost good enough.
Seeing Nic Cage in a lead for any movie is a roll of the dice really. Do you know what I mean when I say a movie is bad in a good way? Right I can assume you're nodding at the screen so I can also assume that you know what I mean when I say this movie this movie was not like that. Remember Con Air? The Rock? Snake Eyes? Yeah well this isn't even on par with frikkin' Snake Eyes.
The Story
We're supposed to believe that going to Bangkok changed the whole course of Joe's (Cage) existence. Why? Kong, his sidekick/errand boy is a little smart-mouth dickhole who refers to him as a 'duck fucker' in the beginning. Entertaining? Yes. Endearing? No. He does stay relatively loyal though to his credit. Just because this ballbag Kong endorses some politician it reverses Joe's whole justification process for taking people out? He kills his assistant in the beginning of this movie and he seemed like a nicer dude than this Kong fucker.
As for the deaf mute but cute girl he picks up in the pharmacy? Come on, man. You can do better than that Cagey boy. To this minute I can't rationalize the pairing of these two. Romance had no place in this story especially when it is this weak. It was as tedious and soft as watching paint dry on a baby's ass. Not that I would I would ever paint a baby's ass. What kind of freak do you people take me for?
To be honest there's not much of a story and I was extremely disappointed that the grittiness of Bangkok was not represented at all within the storyline. I haven't seen the original version but I can assume from watching this movie that it's just another example of a crappy hollywood (not going to capital the 'h' as they don't deserve it in this case) adaptaion. It could have been way edgier and wasn't. Cage just does not do a good anti-hero for me. Bad Pang brothers.. Go sit in the corner.
The Action
I haven't seen the 99 version the Pang Brothers made but I can only assume it was better than this pissy hollywood remake. There is nothing original here. A little slo-mo here a bit a double hand-gun action there.. It borrows slightly from John Woo but I imagine even the great man himself would chortle quite audibly if he were to read that.
The other thing is that no amount of slo-mo in this film can cover up for he fact that Cage is obviously out of shape in this movie. He's just not atheltic. We know that about him. He mopes around the whole time looking completely spent. They should have spent that money getting Tony Jaa - then they may have had a winner on their hands. Not much dialog they would have had to dub in and the action would have been 20 times better even if Tony was only half at his best.
Bangkok
I love it in Bangkok. I have to admit that the short bits of footage they filmed inside the Caribbean Club are accurate and represent a Bangkok bar fairly accurately. It's just a shame that the scumbags in Bangkok were not. They look gay at best. Especially the fool with blonde hair - I was pleasantly surprised to see him exploded in half with a grenade nearing the end of the film, even if I have no idea where our anti-hero Joe pulled it from. His bunghole maybe? It's dark in that scene so maybe he actually did that. Luckily the pin was not dislodged before he needed to use it..
The Ending
I'm not that hard to entertain when it comes to action. This movie - albeit shithouse - was a pass for me in regards to the action. It was no 'Die Hard' or 'Starship Troopers' but it wasn't as bad as 'The Marine' (John Cena) or anything Dolph Lundgren has been in either. Until the conclusion of the movie.
Let me set it up for you. The hero has rescued his errand boy Kong and his girlfriend. He then caps the driver of the enemy leader Surat's Mercedes Benz with what i assume is his second last round of ammunition. Surat cowers in the back seat and peaks outside the door of the car to see Joe in customary action-stance at the end of the alley. Before he can get his head back inside the door and grab the discarded pistol on the floor of the car Joe is at the door climbing into the back seat with Surat looking the same way he started the movie. Completely tired and physically spent. All the commotion in the back seat has enabled the dead guy in the front to depress the accelerator (while DEAD! The guy is dead but he is still acting as the driver) of the Benz enough so the car begins to move in a straight line forward to where everyone is waiting for our anti-hero to shed the anti and become just plain hero. Kong, the cops, everyone.
Then it dawns on Joe. The cops here probably aren't gonna be too happy with me here. What if I give Surat a big hug, press our heads together and use my last round of ammo to finish us both off. Yeah - that's it. Suicide plus job complete. Make sense so..
Did he feel so bad about killing people for money that the guilt finally got to him? Maybe they just had no more script. Or maybe, just maybe.. Cage saw a preview of the final edit of this film..
I went to see Alice in Wonderland because, to be honest, my expectations were so low that I figured it would have to pleasantly surprise me. Well, that, and my girlfriend wanted to see it. The relationship is new and I'm a bit whipped, so I didn't insist on seeing Hot Tub Time Machine like I really wanted.
I love it when people quote their favourite directors. It’s inevitable that a few names pop up – Spielberg for one. But really, if you’d come from outer space and sat down to watch Spielberg’s last 5 films – would you really put him on top of your list? You’re more likely to vomit in your hands and then punch your new host for suggesting them to you – having just used half of the air supply from your home planet.
Your host is likely then to dress you up a like a woman and take you to see the new Martin Scorsese film – Shutter Island, as way of an apology. On the way he’d be explaining to you that this guy made Goodfellas – the greatest gangster film ever made, and a slew of amazing other films including Taxi Driver, Casino and Raging Bull! But due to the alien vomit burning into his skin and the imminent fear of death through alien death ray – he’d forget to tell you that these films were written by two amazing screenplay artists, Nikolas Pillegi and Paul Schrader – and that when Scorsese is left to conjure up magic on his own… he sucks more than the time your finger punched through the toilet paper and you got pink eye.
Nothing illustrates this point better than Shutter Island.
The story?
Two detectives, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffaelo travel to a psychiatric hospital on a hostile island to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates/patients. They question the staff, the warden, the doctors, etc. trying to piece together what has happened, and, low and behold, nothing is quite what it seems. In fact, nothing makes sense, and the more they dig the more peculiar things become. Sounds intriguing, right? Well, kind of – but the more you watch the more answers are left unanswered and the more lost you become as to what the fuck is really going on: Leo’s character is somehow intricately involved with the strangeness, are the doctors conducting tests on the subjects or aren’t they, is his new detective buddy really who he says he is??
I like a bit of mystery – I like my curiosity to be ignited, but that interest has to be founded on something that makes sense, or could possibly make sense. The guy who wrote this wrote Alexander. Nuff said. He’s also penning James Cameron’s Battle Angel according to IMDB. My only hope is that Jim sends him to the bottom of the Atlantic in one of his subs and it implodes.
Anyway, I won’t go far as to say I hated it, yet… there was enough there that made me not walk out. The whole story was building to a point where, one way or another, we’d be able to make sense of the whole mess and --
-- HE WAS A PATIENT ON THE ISLAND LIVING OUT AN INTRICATE PLAN DESIGNED BY THE DOCTOR TO CURE HIM ONCE AND FOR ALL BECAUSE HIS WIFE KILLED HIS KIDS AND HE WENT INSANE!!!
Now… you may be annoyed at the choice I just made. But if you’re risking annihilation from an alien species on the strength of our film culture, I’ve really got your best interests at heart. Take the little guy to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, or something with a bit of substance. Please don’t support this movie. It’s lazy, derivative and honestly - boring. You get a buzz at the end because finally everything makes sense, and there’s a temptation to applaud the film-makers – but it’s just a trick. Remember when you were eight and you couldn’t think of a cool way to end your story so you wrote – “And then I woke up!” This is just like that.
2 stars. (one because Leonardo is actually pretty good despite everything, another because it has the most ridiculous music cues EVER that it’s actually funny – you’ll know what I mean if you ever watch it)
First up let me say, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to my fellow reviewers, whatever readership we may have on PCL, and to the general movie-going public. I'm sorry because... oh God, can I even say this?
I liked Bitch Slap!
I downloaded it for free, and I watched it for cleavage. I admit it, I'm a tasteless fiend!
But I watched Jennifer's Body for the same reason and came out hating it, so could there be something more to this one? Perhaps some depth? Something more than just pretty faces and slow-motion cleavage?
The answer is probably no... but it's a question worth exploring.
The Acting
Despite Bitch-Slap's central premise of being a parody of 70s sexploitation films, it doesn't always play that way. The bimbos chosen for the main actresses have... ahem... yes, impressive cleavages... or is that cleavii? Either way, they have all the attributes of those seductress types of the golden era of 70s exploitation... and yet their acting is pretty convincing.
They play it at just the right pitch to make sure the audience has a fun time with the movie, never getting too upset when a character is slashed with a bladed yo-yo, impaled on a samurai sword, or just punched in the face with a hand that's sporting some nasty rings and well-manicured nails!
Trust me, I was sober at the start of this film, and those girls were acting!
The Cleavage
It was masterful sexploitation technique how they chose to keep every girl in a skimpy outfit, but still with their own style. We've got the masculine but sexy crime boss, in her waistcoat and pants... the sexy sporty girl in the tank top, with her boobs threatening to pop out at any point, almost in direct synchronisation with her rising anger... and the sweet innocent stripper with the heart of gold... which, incidentally, is the colour of her very tight-fitting dress!
Oh, and did I mention that all the outfits are low-cut? Yes, yes, I think I did.
For the fan boys like me, yes, there are slow-motion shots of girls getting out of cars, throwing water on each other, and... ok, even a lesbian sex scene or two. There isn't a lot of nudity, but who needs it when two hot girls are kissing each other on the mouth?
For the rest of you... sigh... I guess you're gonna need a story!
The Story
Listen people, I've seen Grindhouse, ok? I've even seen a lot of the original grindhouse-style movies when I was a kid. I love them, but I loved the ones with a good story, or unqiue central idea, the most.
Bitch-Slap is obviously trying to emulate the "genius" of Tarantino and Rodriguez! Genius in Tarantino's case of having a story the consists mostly of babbling, irrelevant dialogue and a 70-minute story that takes 28 minutes to reach it's first interesting scene.
And genius in Rodriguez's case is a story so steeped in repulsive gore that you barely notice if there's a story. But Rodders, Bobby, Roberto... please, don't make a joke of a Rose McGowan sex scene ever again. Just show it. Pretending it's a reel error, when I'm watching it on DVD, is just LAME! And it would never happen in a real exploitation film!
It's ok, Bobberino, I still love you for the rest of the movie... but Tarantino, you've got a lot of talking to do... but please keep it shorter than you managed with your banal Death Proof character-dialogue!
OK, sorry, what was I reviewing again?
Oh yeah, Bitch Slap! The story was pretty good, for a movie of this type. I enjoyed the non-chronological-flashback storytelling, and, although I saw the final twist coming a mile off, I was completely rooting for it, so I didn't mind when it came true.
The point is, the story had enough twists and turns to keep me awake, even when I finished my first bottle of red wine two thirds of the way through. Can 't say the same for 2012, which I fell asleep watching almost completely sober last night. The only reason it didn't form the basis of my next hateful review is because I was unable to finish it... and ethically, I can't review a movie I never fininshed... but if I ever do, you better watch your asses, you Emmer-rich bastards!
Conclusion
Listen, I'm not gonna tell you Bitch Slap was high-culture, or intellectual fodder for the more contemplative film-goer. It wasn't that and it wasn't meant to be that.
But it really did deliver what it promised to deliver. Lots of action, gore, and, yes, cleavage.
If there's any lesson to be learnt from all this, it is that a little bit of fun, self aware humor, and unapologetic sexuality can make a movie more enjoyable than it would probably be in the hands of our contemporary greats; directors such as Speilberg or Nolan.
And really, what's so wrong with that?
(3.5 stars, the highest ever rating on PCL so far! 0.5 points for each of the lead actress's breasts, and an extra 0.5 points for being better than it should have in other areas)
P.S. I apologise profusely to Sammy, who is very concerned with the credibility and integrity of this site... but when cleavage wins you over, it wins you over... I'm sure he'll come up with a caning review of "The Hurt Locker" or the critically adored "Precious" to get us right back on track!
:/
Gentleman, thank you very much for allowing me to pitch my idea for a new computer-animated movie called "9".
My name is Shane Acker, and this is really an amazing opportunity for me... I mean, my first feature film! Wow! I'm actually pretty nervous, hehe, sweaty palms and all that, but bear with me, coz this movie's gonna be great!
OK, so what is 9 about? Umm, well it's an amazing story of death, resurrection and man vs. machine, but with a twist! Haha! Yes, this isn't your average man vs. machine movie because man has already LOST that war and the machines have already won! I knew I'd get you with that, it's surprising, isn't it!?