jürgen fauth’s muckworld

A punchy B-picture, high on testosterone and a Hollywood megabudget, featuring pleasantly absurd giant robots that turn into cars. The boy-hero’s teenage crush is an improbable babe (Megan Fox) sprung from the pages of a glossy magazine, and because this is a Michael Bay movie, the fights are ridiculously overblown.

Now, I have nothing against popcorn flicks aimed at the thirteen-year-old in all of us, but I can’t stand propaganda. Transformers wallows in the questionable rhetoric of heroism and sacrifice, and the shots of fighter jets taking off at dawn and military helicopters swooping over downtown L.A. just need the superimposed tagline “Army of One” to be turned into recruiting ads. When Shia LaBeouf gets his orders and is told “You are a soldier now,” the fun is all but ruined for this pacifist. With John Turturro as anti-alien G-Man.

Transformers. Michael Bay, 2007. **

• David Byrne agrees
• Rotten Tomatoes

My review of Grindhouse is up.

In short: come for Planet Terror (****), get the hell out before Death Proof (*)

Grindhouse. Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie, 2007. **

• Grindhouse on RT
• Grindhouse Photo Gallery

How did we end up seeing this movie about a teenage secret agent saving the world from Mickey Rourke? It’s a long story, but it’s my blog, so I might as well tell it. It involves a severely sprained ankle, ridiculously oversold showings of The Departed at both 34th and 42nd Streets, and time to kill before the NYFF closing night party. All in all, we claimed three sets of free tickets before I simply couldn’t walk any further.

Turns out Stormbreaker was no dumber than a regular James Bond movie, and the cast–Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, Alicia Silverstone, Rourke–was obviously having a splendid time. And to think that I’d never even heard of it before my ankle gave out!

Stormbreaker. Geoffrey Sax, 2006. **

[tags]film, 2 stars, james bond, alicia silverstone, mickey rourke, bill nighy, ewan mcgregor, explosions, action, teenagers[/tags]

Fuckin’ awful. Misguided, unfunny, overlong. Let’s count the ways in which this movie blew:

1. There aren’t any jokes. Well, maybe one genuine joke every fifteen minutes. The rest of the “hilarity” is supposed to come from a) knowing winks about genre conventions (ie, the “montage” montage ) But just pointing out that you know about conventions doesn’t make it funny yet. b) cursing. Big fucking whoop. c) juxtaposing puppets with violence and sex. None of this is actually funny. I snickered when they blew up the pyramids, and the “AIDS” musical number was slightly humorous, but that was about it.

2. It’s offensive right-wing crap. Yeah, I know Parker/Stone’s bread and butter is “being offensive.” They probably think it’s “extreme satire.” But it’s not satire unless you actually have a point. If I understood this movie correctly (we fastforwarded the second half) then the real villians are actors (F.A.G.s, get it?) and the likes of Michael Moore because they’re pussies and it takes balls to deal with terrorist assholes. Well, isn’t that what the President has been saying all along? So either Parker/Stone are a bunch of neocon dickweeds who are happily making Rove’s propaganda for him (Moore as suicide bomber…?), or they’re just profoundly misguided. Either way, they should stay the hell away from political satire.

I found the way the real-life actors were treated and dispatched especially offensive. It’s admirable, in fact, that Sean Penn went to Iraq–so where’s the joke in having him repeat that? Janine Garofalo is a courageous citizen, actress or not, and to blow the top of her head off for laughs is simply vicious.

If I’d paid any money whatsoever for this movie, I’d be genuinely upset… but I suppose Parker/Stone would count that as a victory because they “pushed my buttons.” Yeah whatever. The sad truth is that if it weren’t for the button-pushing, they wouldn’t know how to make anything that’s not utterly, devastatingly boring.

And now I’m deleting whatever South Park I had left on the DVR.

Team America: World Police. Trey Parker, 2004. *