Atomic Nerds

So y’all have had a chance to go over LabRat’s more cerebral take on the cinematic wet turd Lil’ Jimmy Cameron plopped out to nearly take Best Picture. By popular request (two people), it’s my turn. Let me preface my review with the note that I was across the room from the screen and (thankfully) couldn’t hear every last syllable over the tattoo machines, and the fact that rather than try to absorb the whole showing of “Fern Gully” I frequently had my nose buried in either a tattoo magazine or a book. So no, I didn’t see the whole thing, in all it’s, um, “splendor.”

And thank fucking $deity for small favors.

Let me address one aspect of this movie right off the bat. There is not enough fucking “pretty” in the universe to make this reject from the cutting room worth watching. Period. Full stop. End of story. When I was younger, and had a hormones to brain cell ratio of somewhere around 30k to 1, I thought “pretty enough” could cover just about any sin of stupidity, especially if the girl’s mouth was otherwise occupied. As I’ve aged, however, I came to realize just how idiotic such a position was, and now no matter how pretty she is, as soon as I hear something like “Green Day is such a great band!” I get so turned off that my outie becomes an innie and I can’t even pee for two hours. “Avatar” is so utterly shittastic that were it a person I’d be so turned off that my penis would pack its things and go hang out on a Singapore wharf if I acknowledged its presence with anything even slightly more friendly than twelve hours of hitting it with a shovel.

A friend pointed out to me “But like a lot of whores if you tape its mouth shut so it can’t talk you can just look at how pretty it is.” Sorry, but the problem there is that for at least a second or two, that mouth wasn’t taped, and- DAMMIT COME BACK CAPTAIN WINKY I SWEAR I WAS ABOUT TO START HITTING IT WITH A SHOVEL NO YOU WON’T LIKE THAT WHARF THIS WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING!

That said, let’s move on to some of my other specific issues. Let’s take our hero, Cripple McNolegs. Hi! I lost my legs because gosh, war sure sucks, and everybody is so mean that they expect to be compensated for skills and materials so they won’t just un-fuck my legs by magic. Those cruel assholes expect me to actually do something, so now I’m off to Brazil some really green other planet because my brother got killed because, gosh, war sure sucks, and he got killed there and I’m the only one that could stand (*rimshot*) in for him in this super-high tech program that takes years of training to be a part of because my nerves are the same as his, but it’s ok, I’ll pick everything up without any training or anything ’cause HEY LOOK AT THAT THING OVER THERE WOW!

So our intrepid hero gimps his ass up to a starship and schleps off to the great jungle. Naturally it’s a fairly long ride, so one might think he’d do a little homework and try to figure anything out about the highly advanced and super technical program he’s jumping into. Apparently “Space Penthouse” was a good issue that month though, ’cause fuck learning about stuff, there’s blue titties coming! Rolling out onto Planet White Guilt, he’s given a mask. Because there’s no oxygen or some shit. On a planet covered in plants. I couldn’t hear the official explanation, but I’m sticking with “no oxygen,” because that makes it much funnier when everything keeps catching fire in the fight scenes*. Mask attached, he rolls across the tarmac and sees the giant PlanetFucker Express truck with arrows sticking out of the tires. This is obviously a Huge Deal, because if the best opposition the locals can muster to a mechanized vehicle the size of Rhode Island is some pointy sticks (oh, excuse me. The movie wants to point out that they’re poisoned pointy sticks!), you’re obviously in a great world of shit with no hope of victory.

Blah blah blah, I don’t know what happened next because there was a pretty cool article about this tattoo convention in Columbus, OH. And some guy with a really freakin’ sweet octopus-treasure diver-underwater full back piece. That thing was really gorgeous, I’d like to find a picture of it again some time. The next time I looked up, Cripple McNolegs was talking to the only good thing in this movie. I speak, of course, of Colonel Fuckyeah!. Colonel Fuckyeah! is explaining to Gimpy just how dangerous everything around here is, as evidenced by his scar, which he obtained the first day he got here from the… um… armored power-suit defeating… stuff. Yeah. Nice work getting your armored and armed ass handed to you by the local bunny rabbit, Colonel. Oh well, we’ve established that this movie sucks balls.

So another couple pages of magazine go by, and Gimpy is being introduced to the science team, here to study the smurfs for…um… reasons. Totally reasons. So many reasons they’re coming out Sigourney Weaver’s military-hating ass rapid fire. Now, with an incredibly complicated program designed to put one person’s mind into the universe’s most expensive fursuit, you might think there’d be some training involved. Or maybe some theory. Explanation? Anything? Nope! Jump your ass into this gel-couch and shut up! Seriously, the next six or seven hours of the movie consists of “Why the fuck would we bother to actually explain anything to you? You’re just a dumb marine (driving an insanely complicated and expensive system on a totally unfamiliar planet where there is no reasonable expectation you would be able to tell the difference between a rock and the grand unified theory of everything written in glow-paint across Dita Von Teese’s boobs while she sang “Camptown Races” with a sparker sticking out of her ass), so we’ll just call you stupid and expect you to pick it up as you go! Moron!” Seriously. The scientists don’t tell him shit from shine-ola, so naturally he gets all cross threaded with everything and hies off into the great no-condescending-scientists-around. And rather than just do something sensible, like un-plug him from the magic couch and ask “Hey, where the fuck did you lose our really expensive body?” they just let him fumble around and get attacked by just about everything, including the local dingos. Which he makes a pretty good attempt at fending off with fire, that he magically got to stay lit in the oxygen free atmosphere.

Of course he doesn’t quite manage to get all the dingos himself, so we’re introduced to Smurfette. Who thinks killing anything is totally sucky no matter what, ever, always. And speaks English after hearing about six words of it. I think she plugged her hair into Bablefish while she was apologizing to the last dingo she killed. She then proceeds to treat him like the flaming moron he is. And rather than explaining stuff, since he is obviously of the Doesn’t Get Jack Shit persuasion, you guessed it! “Hey, dipshit! You’re a dipshit!”

Sadly, since Cripple McNolegs is the hero, he picks everything up anyway.

Anyway, Gimpy starts bouncing back and forth between Smurfette and the scientists. Smurfette seems oddly nonplussed at how he keeps going comatose for hours on end, only to dramatically gasp back to life and for some reason yell “You’ve got mail!” after every one of his oddly frequent “naps.” Colonel Fuckyeah!, in his best Gargamel impression, tries to get Gimpy to spill the beans on where the Smurf Village is so he can finally get those smurfberries in exchange for a fresh pair of legs. I tuned out for a while because things were just so damn stupid that the notion of people watching this horseshit and somehow actually liking it was making my bile creep up my throat at an alarming rate.

Looking back in a while later, Gimpy apparently hit level 60, and was going for his flying mount. Which we’re told will try to kill him. As any sensible creature is wont to do. It tries to kill him, he sadly lives, he hair-fucks the dragon thing’s hair, and then the ebil military industrial complex decides “Hey, these dumb fucks just have bows and arrows, and we’ve got space ships!” and steps up the pace of getting the shit they want. Gimpy and Smurfette knock usb ports, and then in his post-driver-installation nap a bulldozer the size of Nebraska almost runs them over. Smurfette finally notices that he tends to be unconscious a lot and shakes him around and finally he comes to, yells “You’ve got mail!” and whacks the camera on Nebraska with a rock, which totally takes the whole thing out of commission. Gimpy and Smurfette go back to warn the drum circle that some dudes with technology and gear so far outclassing the village’s that the only sensible response is to fill their loincloths with whatever passes for terror-crap on Brazil Future Green Glass Land, and then Cripple gets the vapors and goes limp. Again.

Col. Fuckyeah! by some strange gift of perception, like “looking at fucking anything around him” notices the severely asymmetric nature of the engagement that is about to occur, and promptly uses his vastly, wildly, loin-cloth-fillingly superior technology to blow the ever-loving holy fuck out of the tree of life the smurfs have such blue boners for. I think it’s their USB hub or something, my brain refused to process the “explanation” in self defense. This crashes their primitive Warcraft gold-selling organization, oh god Cripple is evil let’s smash his head with a rock (Yes! Let’s!), etc, etc.

Meanwhile the scientists and a gunship pilot that I can’t decide whether she looks like Linda Hamilton from “Terminator 2″ or John Leguizamo from “Land of the Dead” decide that was a pretty dick move and prepare to go native. I think there was a plan involving a big centerfuge and methyl blue. Again, don’t care either way. So what do they do to fight the injustice of the natives having all their shit destroyed or stolen? They steal all the super-fuck expensive computer gear and lab equipment that lets the fursuits work, along with a gunship.

Col. Fuckyeah! is not amused.

Col. Fuckyeah! proceeds to have the only actually cool moment in the whole movie, opts to protect his base and its equipment and personnel from renegades and thieves, takes a deep breath, and storms out in to the oxygen-free zone to rain fire on the hippies in his midst. He even goes so far as to switch from a semi-suitable assault rifle to his regular sidearm after he runs it out of ammo delivering well placed (but largely ineffective) hits on target. Luckily, we get one round into Sigourney Weaver. Who of course still won’t shut the fuck up for at least another three hours.

So despite being surrounded by their own dead, the smurfs try to reboot Sigourney. It thankfully fails, and this is enough to spur Cripple into raising an army. He scrapes up the extra gold for epic flying, and goes off to hair-fuck the really big and shiny sky dragon, and we prepare for Little Big Horn. Because when your best weapon is a sharp stick launched at moderate velocity, the best plan is always to hurl yourself at the guys with armored power suits, spaceships, guns, missiles, explosives, flubber, flying machines, computers that make your hair look like a bricked iphone, rubber band launchers, more guns, synthetic materials a million times stronger than your vines and leaves, Lady Gaga recordings, napalm, agent orange, DDT, and a betamax copy of the Star Wars Christmas special. Most brilliant tactician since Lord Rust.

Now for the part leading up the the Ultimate Climactic Battle, I want you all to watch something for comparison. Go watch “South Park,” season 9, episode 2, “Die Hippy, Die.” If you can tell me with a straight face that those marines reading off the size of the oncoming horde does not sound exactly like Cartman tracking the size of the hippy drum-circles and jam-band music festival, then remind me never to play poker with you, ’cause you’re one hell of a liar.

All sorts of shit goes on to blow up, lots of stuff catches fire in the crazy no-oxygen atmosphere, and Col. Fuckyeah! gets his Final Epic Battle against Cripple McNolegs’ fursuit. Col. Fuckyeah! not being half as retarded as everyone and everything else in this movie, makes an attempt to smash Gimpy while he’s in his magic mind-link couch rather than fighting the bigass smurf with a pointy stick from safe inside his armored, armed, very powerful suit of mechanized armor. Sadly, the fight goes about like you’d expect, with Col. Fuckyeah! once again eschewing the necessity of atmosphere in favor of sheer ass-whuppery at one point, and the hero of the movie… er, technically the bad guy but I think we’re well past sympathizing with the actual “hero,” dies dramatically. As one minor gripe at this point (yes, I know, compared to the rest?) Col. Fuckyeah! did waste his final chance. Smurfette and Gimpy were all kinds of fubar’d in front of the power suit while Col. Fuckyeah! was dying. Col. Fuckyeah! was in a giant suit of power-mech. Col. Fuckyeah! *could* have used gravity to die on top of his foes, and spare us from the inevitable Avatar 2 (plot synopsis: the smurfs open a casino and sell cigarettes tax free), but instead he goes over sideways. Oh well, he made a pretty good effort at killing the dipshits, we’ll give him that.

So our victorious smurfs decide that they’re once again opposed to killing, instead of being surprisingly good at it for being armed only with sticks and sympathetic wildlife, and rather than see their foes (the ones determined to kill them at all costs, remember) slaughtered as would be sensible, they pack them up into their starships (of which the engine exhaust alone should be more than enough to take out any smurf-village you can find) and tell them to soar up out of bow-and-arrow range and you’d better be nice once you get there! No dropping nuclear bombs or asteroids on us, you gotta promise! Swiper no swiping! Oh, and Gimpy gets his legs back after they find a new USB hub to plug into, but seriously, who gives a shit?

Given the explicit “These are native Americans!” all over this movie, I suspect the part that happened right after the credits started rolling, is that the military industrial complex just took off, hovered around 200′ up, and kicked out a couple cases of whiskey and some funny-smelling blankets, and then came back in a week and just got all their minerals anyway. At least I’m going to tell myself that’s what happened. It’s either that or I have to catch a flight to Singapore.

*I really and truly do not give a shit what the “real” explanation is. My way is funnier, and if you feel the need to explain How It Really Was in the comments, I’m going to edit whatever you post to my own amusement. So there.

Posted media slaves, Ranting |