ALSO, IN ADDITION TO MY REGULAR WRITINGS HERE AND MY NEWS REPORTING DUTIES AT BADMOVIES.NET, I'VE ALSO BEGUN DOING BAD MOVIE REVIEWS OF NEW VIDEO/DVD RELEASES EVERY NOW AND THEN FOR CREATURE-CORNER.COM, STARTING WITH A SHORTER VERSION OF MY FANGS REVIEW WHICH YOU CAN READ BY CLICKING HERE. TO READ MY REVIEW OF THE POOL, A NEW EURO-SLASHER, CLICK HERE. TO READ MY REVIEW OF A NEW AUSTRALIAN VAMPIRE ACTION MOVIE CALLED REIGN IN DARKNESS, CLICK HERE. AND TO READ MY REVIEW OF THE GIANT SCORPION MONSTER MOVIE TAIL STING, CLICK HERE. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR MORE IN THE FUTURE.

"Take that, you dinosaur!" - As declared by an American naval officer in GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN

Did you see SCARY MOVIE? Remember that scene with the young black woman in the movie theater talking back to the screen and then chatting on her cell phone thus annoying everyone there to the point that they kill her before the killer can? The gag pokes fun at the stereotype of African-Americans having this nasty habit of being very obnoxious in movie theaters. For me, the stereotype came true on April 26th during a showing of JASON X. I found myself in the theater with the SCARY MOVIE chick times three. I’ve experienced fifteen year old MST3K wannabes who think yelling vulgar comments back at the screen makes them clever, but this one was the first time I can honestly say I experienced a racial stereotype come to life. From the moment they walked into the theater, they started talking and didn’t stop until it was over. During the scenes in which Jason was on the prowl, they would yell things along the line of “Run!” and “Oooooh, you’re gonna die!” and “You so stupid!” among other unwanted comments. When they first find the frozen Jason, one of the characters utters the line, “What the hell is that?” to which one of these young ladies, surely thinking she’s the next Whoopi Goldberg, loudly responded with the witty retort of “Jason!” Some of the stuff they yelled made no sense. When Jason hurled a metal pole impaling someone, I distinctly heard one of these ladies yell, “Oooooh, AT&T!” I have no clue what that meant. Do you? The topper for me was when one of the ladies’ cellular phone rang and she actually got up and left the theater to talk. I actually sat there wondering if she left to be courteous to the audience of if it was, more likely, a case of her not wanting the sound of the movie to interrupt her conversation. People, I don’t care what race, religion, age, or ethnicity you are and no matter how bad the movie might be, if there are other people in the theater, SHUT THE HELL UP!!! If you’re alone with your friends in the theater, quip away. If you’re in your living room watching a video, be my guest. If you’re at NOWFF, it’s all part of the show. If you are in a theater with other people, SHUT THE HELL UP!!! Nobody paid full price to hear your lame ass attempts at being the star of the show! If I wanted the audio commentary, I’d buy the freakin’ DVD!

THE LOST EPISODE: ARTIFICIAL CHEESE

Lame.
Mediocre.
Uninspired.
Unimaginative.
KULL THE CONQUEROR 2.
This generation’s RED SONJA.
Like a really bad episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

I’m still trying to come up with exactly the right words to sum up my feelings on THE SCORPION KING, but everything I listed applies. This movie had been on my bad movie radar for well over a year now. For starters, the law of averages goes against any movie starring a professional wrestler. Add to that the fact that it reportedly bombed during test screenings. Extensive re-shoots were done to try and salvage (or "enhance" if you buy the studio line) the movie. Then, for the last month or so, word of mouth on the movie turned relatively positive. People kept calling it cheesy fun. Go in, turn your brain off, and have good time. Suddenly, I found myself wondering if the movie that has been the butt of many of my jokes for the past year would end up making me eat my words. Well, the only thing I ate was my popcorn. I went in, turned off my brain, and still didn’t have a good time. I’ve read pre-screening reviews lately saying it’s not that bad. Well, then, I pose this one question: What exactly qualifies as “that bad” these days?

The fatal error of the movie is obvious, simple, and inexcusable. It knows that it’s cheesy, but it doesn’t revel in it’s own cheese. Every time the cheese kicks in, the movie pulls back and puts a straight face back on. It wants to have its cheesecake and eat it too. In doing so, it fail on two levels. It fails at being a compelling sword and sandal action-adventure movie or a campy sword and sandal action-adventure movie. Shows like Hercules & Xena succeeded on a weekly basis doing exactly the same thing THE SCORPION KING does only with better writing, characters you actually give a damn about, some truly inspired action scenes, more camp value, and a genuine sense of goofy fun.

Let me put it this way. Do you know that stuff they sell at the supermarket that alot of people who are on diets or for medical reasons buy that can be found on the aisle with the seasons that looks like this yellow/orange flakes in a small bottle with a label billing it as an alternative to cheese? You sprinkle it on your food in place of actual cheese. It doesn't look like cheese. It doesn't smell like cheese. It sorta tastes like cheese, but it doesn't nor does it have the same texture to it as actual cheese. It's a cheese substitute. That's what THE SCORPION KING is! It's a cheese substitute! It wants you to think its cheese, but it’s just not the same as the real thing. GODZILLA 2000 is cheese! KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE is cheese! MEGIDDO is cheese! BEASTMASTER is cheese! THE SCORPION KING wants to be cheese without actually being real 100% cheese. If you're going to be cheese, be cheese! Don't be afraid to go over the top! Be willing to walk the fine line teetering on the edge of absurdity! For Christ's sake, use some imagination and don't restrain yourself! BE CHEESE!!!

Now let’s be honest for a second, SCORPION KING is less a movie anyway than a mass marketed screen test for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to see if he can open a movie. You just know the people at Universal Studios are thinking, “If he can open this crap sandwich, he can open just about anything!” Well, Rock didn’t fail the screen test, but I’d still give him a grade you wouldn’t be proud to post on the refrigerator. To be fair, his acting is no worse than many of the alleged thespians cough Chris Klein cough Tara Reid cough that Hollywood puts sells us as movie stars. In comparison to other wrestlers turned actors, his acting chops seem to be on the same level as “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s in THEY LIVE. Heck, he’s Laurence Olivier compared to Hulk Hogan, who couldn’t even convincingly play the role of a wrestler clearly based on himself in the movie NO HOLDS BARRED. Although, he and Hogan do share one bad acting trait, they both have a tendency to do this bug-eyed thing when attempting to convey building rage. During on of those scenes, I honestly thought his eyes were going to pop out and fly at the camera.

Now to be perfectly honest, I was nauseated by all the hype surrounding The Rock in the weeks leading up to this film’s release. The media was relentlessly proclaiming him the next Ah-nuld and Hollywood’s next big thing. I remember seeing one entertainment reporter asking him something along the lines of, “Word on the street is that you’re the next Ah-nuld. How does that make you feel?” What street is that anyway because I must be on the next block? The only people I’ve heard buzzing about The Rock being the next big movie star are either on WWE programming or on shows like Entertainment Tonight, the latter simply parroting what’s been instructed to them to say by Hollywood publicists. Maybe The Rock will become the next big thing, but can’t we at least wait until he earns his movie stardom rather than having it issued to him via press release? Yes, Rock does a better job in his first starring role than Howie Long did in FIRESTORM or Brian “The Boz” Bosworth did in STONE COLD, but that’s not exactly high praise, now is it?

One of the biggest problems with this movie is that the title role of doesn’t allow for The Rock to be The Rock, but rather muffles most of his charisma compounded with the fact that Rock plays the character all wrong. For starters, the character he’s playing should be an antihero. Mathayas is an assassin for hire, trained from birth to be a perfect killer. He should come across as a real hard ass with a “don’t f*** with me” aura, but still likable. More “Stone Cold” Steve Austin than The Rock, yet The Rock plays him as a really swell guy who happens to be a killer for hire who saves the day while flashing a million dollar smile. Granted the writers, director, and producers are just as much to blame for this as the star, but still. The Rock is essentially playing Kevin Sorbo playing Hercules.

Worst of all, every scene in which he’s on-screen with Michael Clarke Duncan, he gets upstaged. Now a lot of action movie stars have been known to have an actor playing a sidekick steal the movie from them, but when the star is a big black he-man and he gets upstaged by another big black he-man, well, that’s says a lot about somebody’s star power or lack thereof. There’s a scene early in the film where Duncan’s character, a king without a tribe, makes a guy bow before him by squeezing his hand so hard that the guy falls to his knees before him and follows it up with the line, “If I’m not a king, then why are you bowing before me?” Jesus, that’s the kind of stuff Mathayus should have been doing! Put Michael Clarke Duncan in the lead role with him playing a black Conan and give the film the kind of attitude he conveyed in that scene and you’d probably have one hell of a film. Based on his few scenes in this film, which amount to little more than a cameo, I thoroughly believe Mr. Duncan could be the next Ah-nuld. In Dwayne Johnson’s defense, not even casting Russell Crowe as THE SCORPION KING could save this turkey.

Aside from Michael Clarke Duncan, the rest of the cast is essentially dead weight especially the comic relief sidekick. Every corny action movie like this is pretty much required to have a cowardly, comedic sidekick. In what has to be a lame in-joke, the horse thief who becomes our hero’s comedic sidekick is actually billed in the credits as “Comedic Sidekick.” Unfortunately, he’s the most painfully unfunny, annoying as hell comedic sidekick since Marlon Wayans soiled the screen in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: THE MOVIE. At least Wayans character got killed in that movie. I wanted this guy killed off so bad I was ready to charge the screen. This character was the walking, breathing equivalent of nails on the chalkboard. Honestly, there is no strong enough connotation of the word “hate” to accurately describe my hatred for the “Comedic Sidekick!”

As for Kelly Hu, let me sum up her sorceress/love interest role in the film like this. In the first act, she wears clothes that accentuate her bosom. In the middle act, her attire accentuates her legs. In the final act, her clothing accentuates her abdomen. Why her butt never came into play remains unknown. She spends the entire movie dressed like she’s about to pose for an issue of Maxim B.C and is simply there to provide window dressing and to kiss The Rock and that’s about it. She’s basically the same character that Tia Carrera played in KULL THE CONQUEROR only she doesn’t turn out to be the real villain and has even less to do. Now that I think about it, she’s really more of a prop than a character.

Then there’s the villain who neither exudes a sense of menace whatsoever nor even a hint of a caustic wit. He doesn’t even provide some hammy overacting ala Jeremy Irons in D&D or Michael York in MEGIDDO. He’s just an evil guy with a really bad haircut. Every now and then, he sneers at someone or or kills somebody just to remind us that he’s the bad guy. Except for the occasional throat cutting, he's about as evil as the Kobra Kai's coach in THE KARATE KID. And when The Rock finally finishes him off, it’s less a case of good triumphing against all odds to defeat evil than it is a case of the hero lucking out that the bad guy decided to do something really, really stupid that left him vulnerable. It’s said that a hero is only as great as the villain he opposes. If that saying is true, then it’s conclusive proof as to how mediocre a hero THE SCORPION KING is.

Oh, there was also a nutty professor who helps out by re-inventing gunpowder in one of those wonderful plot conveniences that could only happen in a movie as woeful as this. I can’t help but to be reminded of the scene in ED WOOD when the rich hick producing BRIDE OF THE MONSTER tells Ed that the film has to end with a big explosion even though it makes no sense. Well, this professor exists for the sole purpose of reproducing the Chinese formula for gunpowder just to make sure the film’s final act culminates in one of those humongous balls of fire that all the kids love. Ugh! And the film also tossed in a few villainous henchmen and assorted good guys who are along for the ride, but none of them serve any real purpose other than to fight or die or both. What am I saying? Nobody in this movie has any real purpose! I’m positive more attention to detail was paid to making certain that Miss Hu’s hair stayed strategically in place over her breasts during certain scenes than was ever paid to the actual script during the writing process.

By the time this movie was reaching its climax, I was bored out my mind and wishing I had just stayed home and watched CONAN THE DESTROYER again. Might as well have because THE SCORPION KING is merely a Dino De Laurentiis movie with a Joel Silver budget. $60 million budget? I guess matte paintings are more expensive than I thought because the money sure as hell isn't on-screen anywhere that I looked.

For the record, one of the four screenwriters whose name is attached to this film and I would suspect was responsible for most of the bad re-writes is a chap by the name of William Osbourne. Looking him up on IMDB I come to find that his biggest writing credits include STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT, DR. JECKYLL & MS. HYDE, & GHOST IN THE MACHINE. Good grief, doesn't California have "3 Strikes" laws in effect? Perhaps Hollywood should try adopting them to. The fact that this guy still gets a paycheck is a crime unto itself! As I said earlier, the most talented actors in Hollywood couldn’t have done anything with this material let alone a pro wrestler turned novice actor.

I can't finish this review without briefly mentioning the one thing that really did give the giggles. I know this is a fantasy adventure film and has no pretenses of being historically accurate, but I couldn't help but be amused by how racially and ethnically diverse ancient Egypt appeared to be. Looking around I saw Anglo-Saxons, blacks, a black Samoan, Polynesian, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Germanic, and British, but only a small minority that actually looked like they came from the region of Northern Africa or the Middle East. Also, I know the Egyptians were way ahead of their time, but I wasn't aware they also invented the breast implant.

As for Dwayne Johnson being the new Arnold Schwarzenegger, no matter how much this movie grosses, he’s still nothing more than the current Jean-Claude Van Damme in search of a worthwhile action vehicle. Better luck next time. He should be thankful he's getting one. THE SCORPION KING is the kind of film that tends to do huge business on video because most people don’t want to spend the money to see it in the theater and many of those who did will rent it again simply because they will have forgotten that they’ve already seen it. You know, I think I finally came up with the right words to describe THE SCORPION KING.

Instantly forgettable.

Which brings us back to JASON X. The 10th installment in the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise has been sitting on the shelf at New Line Cinema for almost two years. That’s usually a sign of a very bad movie. Take the teen comedy THE NEW GUY and 50’s gang thriller DEUCES WILD for example. They were collecting dust on studio shelves for ages. In the case of JASON X, it seemed it was more of a case of the studio not knowing when the right time to release the film was. That explanation seems plausible because the film reportedly did well during test screenings. Internet reviews were talking about how fun and campy it was and about how it didn’t take itself to seriously. “A hysterical self-parody” was one of the blurbs. For the first time in my life, I was actually anticipating seeing a FRIDAY THE 13TH film. Finally, JASON X was scheduled for April 26th. I was stoked to see it. As I’ve said, I got a need for cheese and I’d been looking forward to this one for over about a year and a half. In the week leading up to the flick’s opening, those positive reviews touting the new slasher sequel as a great big cheese ball of fun turned negative - very negative. As the lights dimmed, I was feeling cautiously optimistic hoping for a great romp. By the time the movie was over, I came to the realization that movies like this really do inspire real-life violence because I was ready to go on a rampage.

As JASON X opens, the hockey masked killer is currently being held at a super double dog dare secret research facility where a sexy female scientist has him prepped to be cryogenically frozen because he’s just too dangerous and perhaps sometime in the future scientists will have developed a way to make undead psycho slashers more docile I guess. Cue the entrance of an arrogant government scientist who stops the procedure because he wants to transport Jason to another research facility for further study because our title killer possesses the unique power to regenerate dead tissue. Ironically, the producers of this franchise also have the power to regenerate dead material, but that’s a whole other rant. They argue, but it’s pointless anyway because Jason has already gotten loose and begun killing indiscriminately.

Our sexy female scientist lead, through a cat & mouse game that I really don’t feel like going into details about, traps Jason, machete in hand, in the cryo chamber. Jason, being the consummate professional, still manages to gut her with the machete through the cryo chamber door. This causes the cryo chamber to leak, thus causing the room and the sexy female scientist to freeze along with him. The research facility was going into lockdown during this whole sequence. We then fast forward to the year 2453 where a ragtag group of nubile research undergrads unlock the facility and discover the frozen killer and victim. Apparently, as best as I can figure, nobody ever bothered to return to this government installation after the film’s opening sequence. EVER!!! Apparently government research facilities are disposable and when one is no longer in use, it is instantly discarded and completely forgotten about forever.

As I said, it’s now the 25th century. We aren’t given a lot of info about the future, but mankind now lives on Earth 2 because Earth 1 has become an ecological wasteland. The how and why is never explained, but I’m guessing we’re to blame. People now travel around the galaxy in clunky spaceships. Cyborgs exist, but female cyborgs don’t have nipples. Nanotechnology can regenerate human tissue and laying on a bed of flashing lights can heal potentially fatal wounds by means also never explained. Like I said, very little about the future is explained, but here’s some stuff I was able to deduce on my own.

In the future, everyone under the age of 30 is very good looking and dresses like they’re at the MTV Video Music Awards except for the young military-type grunts who are good looking but dress in futuristic fatigues and the females have less feminine hairstyles. Engineers, technicians, pilots, teachers, and security guards who are over the age of 30 are either fat slobs, hayseeds, bodyguard types, or look like they should be playing the principal on Saved By The Bell. In the future, the ACLU has become so powerful that security cameras no longer exist. In the future, you will be able to download shareware online that will turn your docile scientific cyborgs into S&M clad, wise cracking Terminatress. In the future, we'll have discovered alien lifeforms, but apparently it’s not considered noteworthy aside from being placed in a display jar. In the future, the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation is now reality and has become the Nintendo of the future. In the future, firearm technology is essentially the same as it was in 1980s Golan-Globus movies. Umm…that’s about it. Not exactly Futurama, is it?

So, getting back to what passes for an actual plot, they bring the frozen duo back to their vessel where the cast of teen models resurrect the sexy female scientist after which the professor briefly explains what happened to her before heading back to his quarters to make arrangements to sell the frozen Jasoncicle for profit. Apparently, just as some people these days collect serial killer trading cards, there are people in the future willing to pay big bucks for their frozen corpses. The professor then celebrates his big money find by engaging in some kinky shenanigans with one of his nubile students who spends the entire movie in a dress that would really accentuate her breasts if she actually had any.

The rest of the ships crew just go about their business that mainly consists of sex, video games, and various other menial tasks. There’s a scientist who is sort of a low-rent 25th century version of Friends’ Chandler who seems a little too hung up on his fembot. Frozen Jason rests on a slab in one of the labs where he’s being studied by a nubile female science major who looks like 7 OF 9 at a Britney Spears concert. The sexy female scientist from the past, upon finding out that Jason has been brought on board, informs everyone that Jason is an unstoppable, zombie, psycho slasher from Hell and that even though he’s frozen, he’s still alive, or would that be undead, and once he thaws out he could wake up and go on one of his rampages. That scene was, of course, Jason’s cue to wake up and go on a rampage. When the credits began to roll, it became apparent that this one scene is really the only reason they bothered to include a character from our time. There are no “fish out of water” scenes. There are no scenes where she reflects on the life she left behind. There isn’t even a scene where she does something nobody in the future would have thought of to thwart Jason. Other than being from our time, she’s no different from any other character in the flick.

Upon waking, Jason immediately commits his first futurekill by dunking the science nymph’s head in a sink of liquid nitrogen and then shatters her face on the counter. If I wanted to nitpick, I’d ask how he knew of the chemical properties of liquid nitrogen in relation to killing a human being, but that’s neither here nor there. Fortunately, one of the victim’s scientific instruments is a humongous blade. So after this one somewhat creative kill, Jason spends the rest of the movie doing his usual hacking and slashing with a machete thus reducing the whole Jason in space concept to be just more of the same old, same old. Oh wait, I forgot that the enormous knife is curved and has some strange markings on it so I guess it’s really a “machete of the future!” Whatever. Its at this point that JASON X goes on autopilot and basically becomes a lame hybrid of a standard FRIDAY THE 13TH movie crossed with a bad ALIEN rip-off. Worse than that, this whole long middle stretch of the film is boring as hell.

Fortunately, in the final act, JASON X appears as if it will finally embrace its cheese. The female robot gets reprogrammed to be a female terminator who kicks Jason’s ass, but, for a silly reason that involves that nanotechnology I spoke of earlier, he gets recreated as a cyborg that looks like something that will be main eventing WWE pay-per-views in the year 2099. Actually, somebody online commented that he looked a lot like Lord Zedd from Power Rangers and, thinking back, there is definitely a resemblence. The “Uber-Jason” as its billed in the credits is actually quite neat looking, but other than the fact that he’s now bulletproof and his super strength has been upgraded to Incredible Hulk strength, there isn’t much difference between this new and improved psycho slasher and his raggedy old self. Once again, an idea with lots of potential isn’t capitalized on.

However, there is one scene in the movie, albeit very brief, that is absolutely hysterical. It involves Jason being lured into the holodeck where he’s momentarily distracted by a recreation of Camp Crystal Lake in which two females, who would be typical victims in any of the previous films, declare their love for pot smoking and premarital sex and then climb into their sleeping awaiting their deaths at the hands of the Jasonator. When the movie cuts back to this scene moments later, Jason is actually clubbing one of the holo-girls to death with the sleeping bad containing the other girl. Now that’s the kind of self-parody I was hoping there would be much more of in this film. Sadly, this brief moment of hilarity doesn’t come until the film’s last 10 minutes. And yes, the film does end with the threat of yet another sequel.

JASON X suffers from the same fatal error that killed THE SCORPION KING. If you’re going to be cheese, be cheese! Don’t waste time on scenes in which heavily armed grunts run around darkened corridors only to get picked off one by one or scenes where someone hears a noise and calls out someone else’s name asking if its them. Did they actually think they were building suspense? The phrase “scary FRIDAY THE 13TH movie” is as big an oxymoron as the phrase “funny Pauley Shore film” or “intelligent” Michael Bay movie." It’s Jason in space for crying out loud! Have fun from step one. BE CHEESE!!! Think of all the possibilities that one could have done with the Jason in space concept. Instead of all these good-looking stock characters in stock situations spouting inane one-liners, why not have made the ship’s crew a parody of the Star Trek characters. Oh wait, that would have required imagination. Imagine how funny it may have been to see Jason trying desperately to kill the holographic doctor, but instead we get a sci-fi slasher movie that has about as much wit and creativity as an episode of Baywatch Nights during its second season when it tried to go the X-Files route. The tagline for this JASON X was “Evil Get An Upgrade.” I guess by upgrade, they meant that they still made a typical FRIDAY THE 13TH flick, but replaced the summer camp with a futuristic starship. Personally, I think the a far more appropriate tagline would have been, “In Space, No One Can Hear You Demand Your Money Back!”

One final note on JASON X, the sexy female scientist is played by Lexa Doig and Lisa Ryder plays the cyborg. Both of these actresses are cast members on Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. For those that don’t know, Andromeda is the Star Trek clone starring Kevin Sorbo. Recently, the rather dimwitted muscle man got rid of some of the shows writers because they were making him think too much. The show’s writing wasn’t exactly on the level of Harlan Ellison to begin with, yet he still wanted something a little less cerebral and a little more Hercules. I’m guessing Kevin Sorbo probably loved THE SCORPION KING and JASON X.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE CHEESE, THEN BE CHEESE!!! How many times must I shout that from the rooftops? Having read some glowing reviews online for both of these stinkers I’m coming to the conclusion that movies nowadays could just feature someone on-screen for 90 minutes dangling their car keys at the camera and a sizeable portion of the audience would leave happy. Hey, there would be something shiny accompanied by noise and the action would be non-stop. That seems to be all some people need to be entertained. If you think I’m being overly judgmental, here's an actual quote I found on a website that will remain nameless that was posting reader reviews of THE SCORPION KING. No punchline can make this quote any funnier than it already is.

"I loved the movie immensely! Now I know what you (the readers) may say, "You're just being biased because the star is a WWF wrestler." Completely untrue. I should know because when you work for Blockbuster Video, you've got to know movies."

Well, since experiencing the mediocrity of THE SCORPION KING and the agony of JASON X, I have seen other films of better quality. Let’s start with SPIDER-MAN. I’m not going to say much about this film other than I enjoyed the hell out of it despite its numerous flaws. Yes, the organic webshooters suck and the Green Goblin looks like the Goblin Power Ranger, but overall, I can’t complain too much. At least it captured the spirit of the comic book, something that can’t be said for the overwhelming majority of comic-to-film adaptations. Flaws and all, SPIDER-MAN is still the only movie in a long time that I’ve paid to see more than once at the theater and that includes LORD OF THE RINGS and MEGIDDO.

And since you're still reading, I may as well give you my thoughts on STAR WARS EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES which is another movie that is greatly flawed, even more so than SPIDER-MAN, but I would still put in the thumbs up category if only for the film’s final 45 minutes. Granted, there was an excessive amout of bland exposition prior to those 45 minutes, but compared to the dreadful PHANTOM MENACE, AOTC is a friggin’ masterpiece. But even though I loved the last 45 minutes of the film, especially the arena battle with the three monsters and Yoda going all CROUCHING JEDI, HIDDEN DRAGON on Christopher Lee, I still have some serious complaints that I simply must talk about.

Let's begin with the love story at the center of the film that has already been slammed by virtually everyone in the free world. Well then, what’s one more? For starters, why exactly are Anakin and Padme in love with one another? Supposedly, they haven’t seen or communicated with each other since the end of the last movie, which was set 10 years earlier. Okay, I can understand Anakin having a crush on her and still pining for her all these years later, but what’s her excuse for suddenly acting like a 13 year old girl meeting her favorite Backstreet Boy. I’ve heard some STAR WARS fans claim that they’ve been in love with one another since they first met. Well, he was about 9 and she was about 17. When a 9 year old has the hots for a 17 year old, it’s called puppy love. When a 17 year old has the hots for a 9 year old, it’s called pedophilia! The truth is that the film’s love story is so poorly written that it basically comes down to being just two shallow good-lookin’ people in love with the other’s good looks while reciting really bad dialogue. Natalie Portman may be Luke and Leia’s mom, but I suspect that in Episode 3 it will be revealed that Padme is actually a droid, which will be Lucas’ way of explaining away Portman’s robotic performance. And I still have a hard time buying that Hayden Christensen’s Anakin will one day become the embodiment of all that is evil in the universe. He comes across as a whiny teenager who looks like a member of the intergalactic boy band N’Sith and delivers his dialogue with only slightly more enthusiasm than Miss Portman. They just have zero screen chemistry, which is even more amazing because the two were pretty hot and heavy behind the scenes while making the film. Guess they left it all in the trailer. And in that one scene where the two lovebirds are frolicking on the grassy hillside, was I the only one who had to bite his tongue to keep from singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music?”

As I mentioned before, Christopher Lee is in the film playing the evil Count Dooku. Let me say that name again – Count Dooku. His name is Count Dooku? Dooku? Yes, Dooku! We’ve gone from having Darth Vader, Darth Maul, and Darth Sidious, to having the evil jedi turned sith named Count Dooku. Dooku is not exactly the most menacing name in the universe, now is it? Granted he has the sith alias of Lord Tyrannus, but still, Dooku is the name that is spoken over and over again. Adolf Hitler was possibly the most evil person in the history of mankind, but would he still seem as ominous if his name was Adolf Goober?

Speaking of bad names, the much maligned, and rightly so, ATTACK OF THE CLONES proves especially lame since it’s not even accurate to the actual events of the film. If you’ve seen the film, you know what I mean. I know George Lucas is going for retro sci-fi titles, but this one was especially weak. Perhaps the next one will be titled STAR WARS EPISODE 3: IT CAME FROM THE DARKSIDE? Or how about STAR WARS EPISODE 3: I MARRIED A SITH FROM OUTER SPACE?

Oh, a quick spoiler about Episode 3. In episode 3, Jar Jar Binks and that four-armed alien cook are going to mate and have a kid. Ironically, their love child will grow up to become Admiral Akbar. Think about it.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE
KING KONG LIVES