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Trinadtsat_Tomitsu
Reviews
Batman & Robin (1997)
The good and the bad
I'm going to do something different with this review. Let's go through the movie together, and list the good and the bad.
The good: "I'm afraid you'll have to die." That was just... funny. A lot of it is just funny, but not funny enough to justify sitting through the thing. Umm, yeah... that's about it.
The bad: Butt shots. Robin's suit looks too much like Batman. He's supposed to be the opposite of Batman, which is why he was so brightly colored. "Try and bring this one back in one piece" wtf? How many has he destroyed? It's not like they can just make another one just like that. Bat-shaped paraphernalia all over the place. Having a bat emblem over that little screen thing just doesn't make sense. It's kind of like what they parodied in Spaceballs with "Spaceballs the toilet paper" or "Spaceballs the flamethrower". Not every tool needs a bat-emblem on it. The police are right out of an Austin Powers movie. Robin made a Robin-signal shaped hole in the wall when he blew through. Yeah right. The hockey team from hell. Yes, both Robin's remark and the "team" itself. The ice skates. Stupid idea, but also, they would've had to have been in their feet. The ice age didn't kill the dinosaurs. The soundtrack is right out of an Austin Powers movie too. So is that rocket. All it needs is two ball-shaped fuel tanks. Those surfs wouldn't give enough wind resistance to slow one to a safe velocity in a fall. Why would Freeze send the rocket back to Gotham and destroy it? Just because he's... EVIL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!! The water glowing red when Batman heats it up. Because contrary to popular belief, water really does glow when heated. Uma's acting sucks, especially as Pamela Eisley. Horribly. I would never have guessed Bane was a Batman villain outside of this movie, let alone intelligent. He was just a big lug in this. Batman's reaction to Robin accidentally getting himself frozen. Alfred not telling Bruce he's dying. Alfred's not that stupid, and he most certainly trusts him enough. Nah, Uma's acting sucks as Ivy too. Her lines really suck. Everyone's lines really suck. Random black girl in Freeze's secret volcano lair. Really, what's the point of some random girl saying how hot she is between the legs for Freeze? Half hour into it and still no good lines. One or two funny lines (even though they were supposed to be taken seriously), but no good lines. "I don't suppose they have fax machines on elephants... tee hee" Blonde Batgirl. Why would a reporter ask Bruce about his relationship in front of millions of people? They're introducing a telescope, not gossiping over a $3.50 breakfast at Denny's. Everything else. I'd finish this but I seem to be having a hard time finishing this movie and keeping my dinner down at the same time.
Scary Movie (2000)
Should've gone straight to video
I find the fact that this movie is so highly acclaimed is an unfortunate indicator of the collective IQ of 75-90% of the human population under 30 (hint: it's the same number as the rating I gave this film). I'm sure there were one or two funny things, but hell if I can remember. The matrix parody where Cindy freezes in mid-air is done extremely poorly. A lot of things they parodied have already been parodied better, and many of them are the kind of things that only need to be parodied once.
For instance, they parodize a zoom-in shot by accidentally going too far and bashing Cindy in the head with the camera. This was already done in Spaceballs, and it was done better. When Dark Helmet got hit with the camera, he fell to the ground unconscious and they went on to the next scene. In this atrocity, Cindy just backs up and fakely says "OW!" like the stupid brown-haired blonde she is. Some people may say the fact that the "OW" was fake was funny. It was not. Bad acting is not equal to comedy. Plus, she gets hit by the actual lens, which at this point looks like it must be the size of a TV screen, and obviously doesn't have that shroud around the front of the lens. But all that aside, the parody was done in Spaceballs. We get the point. Don't turn a funny thing like this into something that gets thrown into all parodies just as a cheap way to increase the lulz factor.
A good indicator of how funny someone is, is whether or not they can think of real jokes without having to resort to blatant and profane references to sex and drugs. The sexual innuendo was old before they even started it. I can just imagine some bozo behind a desk saying, "hey, I can't come up with any real jokes so let's just have the guy say 'LOL I WAS HOPING TO HAVE MY BALLS LICKED'". Yeah, that's good comedy right there. "Stop sticking your dick in the vacuum cleaner"? Wtf? As if that joke wasn't lame enough, two shots later they've got to show Doofus walking around the house with a vacuum cleaner hose and a hardon. The drug jokes aren't much better. "Lunch isn't a subject." "It is when you've got the munchies!" How is this even remotely funny? Because it's an obscure reference to the fact that the character is on cannabis? Please. His acting is an all too obvious indicator that he smokes more weed than your local police chief, and even if it wasn't, the joke is just not funny. Someone needs to realize that just because a joke has blatant references to sex and/or drugs does not make it remotely funny. And the shots of partially naked male actors, well that's just disgusting. Go back to your fraternity, you're a disgrace to real men.
If this movie wasn't bad enough, they've got to make not one, not two, but three sequels. Come on! Three movies is the limit in almost all cases, the only exceptions being ongoing series like Star Trek and Star Wars, and series that focus on one "ultra-hero" like James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Columbo. Even the Godfather, which was a series, was still only three movies, with no conceivable reason to make a fourth. They knew when to quit. The Terminator? Terminated, after three. The way they left it, I see no reason for them to make a forth. But Scary Movie's got to pass that three movie barrier, even though there's not enough content unique to the series to even be able to carry through so many movies. Why? It's not like the cast qualifies as an ultra-hero, because they lack character development and - no brainer for "ultra-hero" here - HEROISM. If the movies were simply better I could understand three. But without adding a lot to the movies as a series, even if they were good movies to start with there'd be no reason to break the trilogy barrier.
If they were good movies I could understand three. They're not. Two was already pushing it, but I could understand them wanting a second hit after the crack high the first movie seemed to produce. For some inane reason, though, people just keep lapping these movies up like antifreeze in a dog's bowl, and the producers keep selling out by laying more of these cables on the collective intelligence (or lack thereof) of society.
Kidô senshi Gandamu: Gyakushû no Shâ (1988)
Good movie, but victim of Bandai Entertainment R1 release.
The movie itself is great. It's based on the novel, Beltorchika's Children, with several major differences. I would've liked to have seen it more accurate to the novel. The biggest difference is that in the novel, Amuro's girlfriend was Beltorchika (the same girl from Zeta Gundam), and she was pregnant with Amuro's child. Unlike Chan, Beltorchika survived the novel. Bandai did not want Amuro having kids, especially out of wedlock, and they did not want Amuro married, because the fan-girls wouldn't like it. Aside from that, Amuro's Hi-Nu Gundam was also cut out, to save time. I don't know much about the rest of the differences, but I would still say this is a very good movie.
The American release, however, is trash. There's no swearing at all, things are translated wrong ("ikimasu" does not translate to "let's do it!"), and "Sieg Zeon" is translated "Hail Zeon" in both the subs and the dub. With a cataclysmic war resulting in over a billion deaths in the original series and many many more in series following, it's nice to know Bandai will be there to save the day, making sure that nobody gets hurt, or at least in the American version. Blah.