The Gamer's Wife: The Rise of Cobra
This weekend I went to three terrible movies.
Why?
-So you wouldn't have to.
It all started Saturday afternoon with Gamer, the near-future action flick where people use hi-tech mind control to make convicts battle for fame, prize money, and THEIR LIVES.
It sounded awful. But I couldn't NOT see a movie with a title like "GAMER"!
(NOTE: Despite the title, do NOT see a movie called Gamers which is TERRIBLE, and not to be confused with the brilliant and entertaining The Gamers by the Dead Gentlemen. So it looks like I just told you to break my rule. But trust me, you will thank me for doing so. Unless you think the idea of wanking horses is funny. In which case, get off my blog.)
ANYWAY.
GAMER (which I went to see so you wouldn't have to, remember?) is cut super fast and all the shots are ultra-desaturated and high contrast and there's gun-fire and explosions and boobs and techno-rock and Gerard Butler says almost nothing because he's too busy brooding about his wife who has to be a hooker in the less-shooty-more-rapey version of mind control reality and if THAT wasn't bad enough someone took their kid away and guess who it turns out to be none other than the big bad guy Michael C. Hall who seems to be doing a really weird impersonation of a tweaked out Alabama-born Ashton Kutcher but luckily for Gerard there's a militant group called the Humanz get it with a Z and they want to free people from the mind control or at least they want to free Gerard Butler so he can kick some ass and shoot some things and then punch a bunch of guys in the face all to the tune of Sammy Davis Jr singing I've Got You Under My Skin.
The movie feels like it was cut by a 14-year-old boy with a bad methamphetamine habit, it's all Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOBS! Boom! Boom! *moment of poignant solitude* BOOM! BOOBS! BOOM! BOOBS! BOOM!
By the time it was over, I needed something to bring me down.
And that's when I decided to see...
The Time Traveler's Wife is based on a best-selling book and therefore it makes no sense.
Eric Bana plays a guy named ...I dunno. Eric Bana? This is how much I already care or remember. I bet if I read it, I would care a lot more.
Eric has a problem: He travels through time at inappropriate moments. And, to make it even MORE inappropriate, he travels NAKED. It's six-parts Slaughterhouse Five, two-parts Terminator and one-part The Notebook.
Unfortunately none of those are the good parts.
Eric has another problem: Eric is in love. In love with... Well, I dunno WHAT her name is, but it turns out she's some chick called Rachel McAdams. Which is about as fictional a name as whatever the author wrote in the original book.
Rachel's in love with Eric, too. Why is she in love with Eric? Because he has been secretly visiting her in the garden since she was SIX YEARS OLD. NAKED.
But don't worry, it's not creepy. Well, I'm sure in the book it's not creepy. I'm sure in the book they devote a good 700 pages to how wholesome and innocent and not-at-all-weird-that-some-40-year-old-dude-mysteriously-appears-naked-in-the-bushes it all is.
But the whole movie is about Fate and how you can't change Fate no matter how hard you try and there are No Choices, Only What Happens To Us.
This is either the basis for a personal Zen-like reawakening or some seriously depressing shit.
In any case, it's the major flaw in the movie. They never bother to explain WHY the two of them should be together or why they should stay together. They don't love specific things about each other, they are simply IN LOVE.
Which, in my opinion, is lazy writing.
Lazy book, lazy movie.
No, I needed a movie with some ambition! I needed a movie that would grab its thin, treadworn premise with both hands like the reins of a proud Arabian horse and ride that stallion mercilessly off the cliffs of believability and into the yawning chasm of entertainment oblivion!
I needed G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
This movie is based off a toy line based off a cartoon based off a comic book. It's like I've fallen into the mirror-universe of summer blockbusters!
In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (a title that is one double-entendre away from slapping you in the face with its tumescent testosterone-soaked manliness) the evil mastermind with his obligatory foreign accent:
- BUILDS ultra-powerful warhead.
- STEALS ultra-powerful warhead.
- TESTS ultra-powerful warhead.
- DEPLOYS ultra-powerful warhead.
- And is foiled.
Yeah, yeah, there's a subplot about rival ninjas, and former lovers, and how Marlon Wayans can't ever get laid (Why's it always gotta be the brothers?) and how Dennis Quaid is THE SHIT even though all he does is TALK REAL LOUD and stab people with his eyes.
Ignore all that. Don't worry, if it's important, they'll have a flashback.
In the meantime, sit back, chow some popcorn and be grateful that Channing Tatum is not being mind-controlled, he's just naturally that wooden, and even though Sienna Miller loves him BECAUSE THEY ARE IN LOVE, she also kicks ass in that tight leather bodysuit.
And then, once the secret undersea fortress has been destroyed in a 170 million-dollar burst of CGI ice and meticulously-rendered flames, will you finally realize that:
No matter how awful it is, everything is going to be alright.
-Tom, who didn't even bring up how GAMER repeatedly misused the term "ping" when they really meant "latency" or how time-traveling is apparently a GENETIC disorder. Nope, nope. All I have to say to that is: GO JOES!
However, I had not heard of "Gamers" until you mentioned it. And now, after visiting the Gamers web site, I am feeling an urge to purchase their dvd. How bad can the movie be? People said "Hawk the Slayer" was bad, and I liked it.
Would you consider reviewing "Gamers", too, and maybe save me even more money?
I don't think the idea of wanking horses is funny, by the way. Unless, perhaps, it was done tastefully and with puppets.
Evidently mere 'boobs' as subject matter isn't kinky enough to warrant a dvd in this modern age; boobs must be massive, on fire or Asian.
What a world.
Also, I'm guessing in the actual book, Ron Livingston's character is more than a footnote.
Eric Bana to Ron Livingston:
"You don't know this right now, but you and I are going to be BEST FRIENDS."
*poof*
Eric Bana disappears.
Ron Livingston's character doesn't show up again for 45 minutes.
Why do I get the feeling that all of this is just fodder for the Co-DM's to unleash Return to the Revenge of the Isle of Adventure, or the Gamer Traveler's Life: The Rise of Chupacabra?
I hadn't heard of this movie otherwise. We weren't sure whether it was an American film or if some actors were just knocking something out that nobody would see and getting paid in Euros.
See also http://www.ultimategame-lefilm.com/