Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (ZZZZzzzzz)
Director: George Lucas
Bug rating out of five: 1
So, just how bad is George Lucas's long-awaited fourthquel-prequel?
Just how big a letdown is it after all the hype and multinational fastfood
outlet promotion?
Well, imagine this. You've been invited over to an inner-city motel room
for what you believe is going to be an extended afternoon of hot, unbridled
passion with the McPherson sisters. That's right: Elle and baby sister Mimi,
the whalewatcher, have phoned out of the blue and asked you over.
You can't believe your luck as you stand outside their luxury accommodation.
You've got the plastic sheeting tucked under your left arm and the big tub
of lotion in your backpack is all ready to be popped into the microwave
while the sisters slip into nothing more comfortable.
The excitement is almost uncontrollable, and then it happens: your knock
at the door is answered by ..... Bronwyn Bishop and Amanda Vanstone.
Sure, you still go inside and the afternoon's not a total waste, but it'd
be a letdown of seriously major proportions, would it not?
Still not quite getting the idea? Perhaps the analogy was a little bloke-oriented.
Here's one for the women folk.
Imagine this. You've been invited over to an inner-city motel room for what
you believe is going to be an extended afternoon of hot, unbridled passion
with an anonymous yet famous movie star. His manager who called out of the
blue won't tell you who it is.
You can't believe your luck as you stand outside his luxury accommodation.
You've got on some fresh lippie, a nice bottle of chardonnay is tucked under
your left arm and your half-read novel, the latest rippingly good yarn from
Elizabeth George, is clasped in your other hand. You hope you won't get
a lot of time to read it.
The excitement is almost uncontrollable, and then it happens: your knock
at the door is answered by ..... Hugh Grant.
Vomitsville!
Does all this help to explain what an absolute letdown and disappointment
Star Bores: The Fantom Meandering turned out to be? Just what a bum-numbing,
yawn-inspiring, sleep inducing two-hour merchandisingfest it became.
There's going to come a time when George Lucas will emerge from McScrooge
mode and stop wallowing in the zillions that Star Bores: FM is raking in
– courtesy of the goodwill generated by his earlier space westerns,
the relentless plugs by Dirty Digger's newspaper empire (and all others)
and every McKFCizzlers outlet in the world.
At that time, he's going to sit down and work out where to go next with
his nine-instalment goldmine.
So The Bug proudly offers a few suggested changes, George old boy, from
what you offered in Star Bores: FM.
How about?
. a script that's got some meat to it.
. human actors who can, or who are allowed to, act.
. laser-light fights that are well choreographed.
. space battle scenes that are actually exciting and fresh;
. no moppet faced cutsey-pie child non-actor; and most important of all.....
. no Jar Jar Binks!
Just in case there is any person left in the known universe who has not
yet seen Star Bores: FM, Jar Jar Binks is the movie's comedy throughline.
Who - or what - is Jar Jar Binks?
Imagine the lovechild of a fierce, shortlived tryst between Daffy Duck,
Mr Ed, Michael Holding, Bobcat Goldthwait and Chris Tucker.
This animated monstrosity throws in his indecipherable one-liners throughout
the movie. When they fall flat, as always, he resorts to slapstick, such
as the side-splitting, thigh-slapping, extra strength Kimbies-drenching
moment when he slips in a pile of horseshit on the dusty streets of the
isolated planet of Tatoonie.
Why Tatoonie? Whynotie?
Jar Jar Binks is on Tatoonie for a very sound reason.
It's the home of Jabba the Hutt, and George Lucas has warehouse after warehouse
full of left-over Jabba the Hutt figures from the earlier movies (Personally,
I find this hard to believe, considering my three sons had dozens of milkcrates
full of Jabba the Hutts in the early 80s).
Movies are big business, and you've got to clear the shelves. So Tatoonie
is where our Jedi masters, Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice
Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) dutifully fly to for spaceship repairs after
rescuing the Queen of Naboo (Natalie Portman).
While on Tatoonie, Qui-Gon frees Anakin Skywalker (the future Mr D. Vader)
from slavery and the Queen of Naboo cuddles up close to Anakin with apparent
paedophilia in mind.
Not foremost in mind, though, because her beloved Naboo (a blend of Turkey
and the Cairns hinterland) is under threat from the evil Trade Federation,
which seems to have the Jedi Council's measure.
The dastardly TradeFed has placed a trade blockade on poor little Naboo.
Boo, hoo! This blockade is in place despite the Jedis have these purple,
blue and green laser lights that go "dvoom" and knock people senseless
from a considerable distance. Top ordnance, that, as Ritchie might say.
The reason for the blockade is never made clear as Naboo's GNP and intergalactic
market share doesn't seem all that vital. Still, it gives George Lucas's
computer nerds at Industrial Light and Moneymaking much scope in portraying
Naboo' Arabian-styled capital city and Binksies' home town, a massive underwater
city strategically placed to exploit a fine line in marine monster merchandising.
While the TradeFed's evil forces have enough detection devices to uncover
Underwater Binksworld and force our amphibian friends to flee into bush,
they can't find them as they wait patiently, by the big brown tree, 25 yards
in, three to the right, you can't miss it, until our Jedi knights come to
their rescue.
The stage is set for the big finale – a set-piece battle scene that
is an absolute triumph!
What an exciting new range of robot, spaceship and monster figurines! And
how beautifully they complement the recylced Hutt and those beloved droids,
R2-D2 six milkcrates full, and his wonderful sidekick C-3P0, batteries not
included.
- Don Gordon-Brown
The Mummy (M)
Director: Stephen Sommers
Bug rating out of five: 3
The Mummy delivers what it promises – Freaky Egyptian
Evil-Shit on big-screen BerserkoVision.
But this alone would not have been enough to impress; this production
contains an odd charm which welds everything together seamlessly.
The story so far....
1719 B.C., and in the Egyptian city of Thebes, the king done found his high-priest
Imhotep mussin' with his good thang. She suicides, naughty Imhotep is sentenced
to an eternity of mummified get-this-india deep beneath the city of Hamunaptra.
Fast track to 1923, and 'dashing legionnaire' Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser,
having the time of his life) and comrade Beni (Kevin O'Connor as a fine,
oily weasel) stumble upon the ruins of Hamunaptra while in the midst of
a battle.
Some years later, imprisoned and awaiting execution, Mister Rick learns
his knowledge of the city's whereabouts may save his life, and teams up
with brother-sister pair 'Evelyn' (Rachel Weisz) and 'Jonathan' (John Hannah)
in a search for the legendary riches rumoured to lie beneath the sands.
But you guessed it, old mate Beni is simultaneously guiding an expedition
of loot-hungry Yankees to the same spot.
What happens next? Do they disturb the corpse and awaken the Ancient Freaky
Evil? Are hired natives reduced to smoking rib-cages by acid booby-traps?
Do Rick and Evelyn get it on? Well, you'll just have to see fer yerself.
Needless to say, the entire cast have a ball being menaced by a swiftly
re-composing 3000-year old fucker and his bag of shit-your-pants tricks;
one favourite being the flesh-eating scarab-beetles which burrow under the
skin and seek the brain.
Tipping its hat heavily at Raiders but still cutting a likeable groove of
its own, The Mummy is a wonderful marriage of charm and effect – the
charm from a good cast doing everything right, the effects courtesy of Industrial
Light and Magic, sparing nothing in the "F-a-arrk!"category.
Highlights include the sandstorm-with-a-face chasing our biplaning heroes
across the desert, the ongoing reconstruction of the evil-dude and generally
just the whole shebang.
See it on a big screen if possible; most impressive for its action-adventure
genre.
And what's the moral of the story: The love of mummy is the root of all
evil.
- Ewan Yamates
Austin Powers - The Spy Who Shagged Me
Director - Jay Roach
Bug rating out of five: 4
First things first - Jay Roach? Didn't he run for NORML at some stage?
Methinks Mr. Myers is having us on...
Apparently, however, Mr Roach is real, and not just another character
made flesh by Mike Myers in this ripsnorter of a piss-yourselfathon.
For while it may be that Roach is the pilot, the phenomenal Myers is the
afterburner.
Forget the plot - with nods from the cast to the audience we're assured
that we should just sit back and enjoy - and give in to some of the most
inspired idiocy since Jerry Lewis. For my money, only Jim Carrey can match
Myers for making us laugh at rank buffoonery.
Myers reprises the hilarious role of Dr. Evil, this time complete with his
own knee-high clone he names 'Mini-Me'.
Enter the players - sassy Felicity Shagwell, glamour/action woman-child;
'Fat Bastard', horrendously obese Scots spy (Myers again, beneath a sea
of latex); Rob Lowe as a young 'Number 2; and a cameo performance by Messrs
Bacharach and Costello in a 60s swinging London cafe scene.
Whaddaya need to know? It's basically a spoof of every spy film ever done,
done better than anyone's ever done it.
I don't know about you, but if you have ever dug James Bond and you don't
get your money's worth of belly laughs out of this movie, it might be time
to see a proctologist about that prickly obstruction...
The strength of this effort lies in its creator knowing the boudaries within
which he is operating. Only once or twice does the flow momentarily descend
to Naked Gun-style goofiness, but by the time you wonder what the editor
was thinking, you're already back in Powersville.
One other questionable point was the character of Fat Bastard; although
he definitely rakes in his share of laughs, one has the feeling that he
was perhaps tacked onto the proceedings at some stage.
That he was squandered somewhat is perhaps explained by Myers' statement
that the original screenplay was devoid of Dr. Evil, and that Fat Bastard
was to be elevated to Chief Baddy status; however he changed his mind, and
thus F.B. was relegated to second-string assassin. This may explain the
loose end I felt he represented.
Anyway, that's just nit-picking. Myers definitely walks away with the Peter
Sellers Award for Best Gooning of 99, and although we're only halfway through
the year, this better-than-the-original sequel will be hard to beat.
- Ewan Yamates
Blast from the Past
Director: Hugh Wilson
Bug rating out of 5: 3.5
Just when you thought the storyline about someone living out of their time
and place has been milked to death, along comes a Blast from the Past.
Flavour of the month Brendan Fraser is Adam Webber, a 35-year-old
child-man, locked in the mores, fashions and beliefs of the early 60s but
unleashed on grimy, pulsating 90s Los Angeles.
Adam has been born in – and confined to – an underground nuclear
fallout shelter since the 60s when another American president had his own
particular crisis involving a Cuban missile.
Convinced the world has been wiped out by a nuclear holocaust (the crash
of a military plane on their house explains their folly), the Webbers –
wacky scientist Calvin (Christopher Walken), apple-pie mom Helen (Sissy
Spacek) and our naive young hero – wait for the 35 year half-life of
radiation contamination to pass.
Adam is educated in science, languages and the Domino theory by his paranoid
"better dead than Red" father, while the tippling, bored- shitless
mother passes on the social skills; dancing, manners, that sort of stuff.
He is shaped in turn by reruns of Jackie Gleeson's The Honeymooners
and the hits of Perry Como.
After the 35 years have past, Adam is sent up to forage for food supplies
and possible survivors (if need be, to find a mate to ensure the survival
of the species) and this is when most of the fun of Blast from the Past
starts.
He meets a street-wise young woman (Alicia Silverstone) – no, there's
no prize for guessing her first name – and her flatmate, Troy, who's
so nice and considerate he must be gay, surely? And he is.
Fraser does a pretty good job in a young Tom Hanks sort of way as he marvels
at the blueness of the sky and the Pacific Ocean and the blackness of a
passing negro. Fraser's task is to appear wide-eyed innocent and man-on-a-vital-mission
at the same time, and it could have been done badly.
Silverstone watches on in disbelief at his antics, managing to look firstly
innocent, then sluttish and finally confused all in the one shot. She does
this over and over again, presumably at director Hugh Wilson's insistence,
until she gets it just right.
Screenwriters Bill Kelly and Wilson have a lot of fun comparing 60s and
90s America and I suspect you don't have to have lived through the 60s to
go along and enjoy the ride, made all the more pleasant by a soundtrack
with a great eclectic mix of tastes.
Among the giggles is a pulsating sequence in a retro 60s nightclub where
a couple of long-legged dancers take a shine to our sweet young boy from
outa town, much to Silverstone's growing annoyance.
Blast from the Past is typical of those movies where you go along
not expecting too much – the trailer is insipid – and end up more
than pleasantly surprised.
And the careers of Fraser and Silverstone can only benefit from watching
two old pros – Walken and Spacek – breeze through their roles.
- Don Gordon-Brown
