Repo! A Musical Review (Repo the Genetic Opera, 2008 review)

Due to the fact that this is a musical, I’m going to do a lyrical review. That’s right, get ready for something different!

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Starring: Anthony Stewart Head, Alexa Vega, Sarah Brightman

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963194/

Darren Lynn Bousman, creator of the better SAW sequels, made this film

Which is kind of like saying that the better half of a horse’s ass was in charge

It’s really silly and really over the top by large.

And if I had a choice I’d rather watch Dr. Horrible again, or any other musical in the world.

But since I’m not that lucky I guess I’ll keep trucking

And give this thing a whirl.

The film starts off blaring like the sirens uncaring

Without any subtlety they launch into song with this guy

Who looks like The Crow, without much to show

For why we should care about his ridiculous shiny hair.

Oh pish posh! It's a Tim Burton tea party!
I might as well put it out there now,
It's no better than anything he's been a part of.

Apparently we’re in a world that uses cheap-ass comic panels for a trite backstory

And it's quite gory, but that doesn't mean it's got any class.

There’s some stuff about humans falling prey to organ failure, what a plot device!

And this demented Newt Gingrich sells them new organs at a price:

If they can’t pay their taxes then he sends a guy to cut them up again!

Oh how I hope this isn’t what he has in store if in 2012 he wins…

Political jokes might be passe,
But I can't help it, what can I say?
He looks too much like him
For me not to take a stab or two at my whim.

Then we get some girl who’s outside for the first time in a while

Running around a graveyard, because that’s the best place for a child

And she meets the Crow-lite, who sings some unmemorable tunes

Which do nothing but attract the police – you buffoon!

And instead of trying to hide, like a sane person would,

He just screams louder and louder; would probably wake the dead if he could!

Dude, you’re doing it wrong; you’re not supposed to scream when you’re being chased

That will just alert the cops to your whereabouts. You think you’re some kind of ace?

How retarded are you; were you dropped on your head? But hey!

I guess I shouldn’t expect much from a guy who looks like he was rejected from KISS, killed himself and then was resurrected from the dead!

Then the girl is taken home where we see that her father is Giles from Buffy.

Oh how lovely.

He’s too good an actor for so silly a flick

How did they even get him to sign on for this?

Did they give him a really big check?
Did they beg and insist,
Until they pushed him to a boiling point like a time bomb ticking?

Apparently the daughter is surprised she saw dead bodies

In a graveyard…truly he has not educated her spotlessly at all.

"Hey, don't go outside."
"Okay, I'll obey you and never lie!"
Seriously, that would be unrealistic.
The movie's got teenage rebellion right in my eyes.

He sings some songs about his dead wife,

Who he had to kill because she was poisoned

The lyrics are crap, but hey, compared to the SAW movies it deserves at least a clap.

Giles keeps his daughter locked up because he’s actually the REPO Man

Who cuts out peoples’ organs if they don’t pay their taxes!

Character motivations? Consistency in actions? What are those?
You can tell lots of weed was what these writers chose.

Wait, what?

This is a real plot thread? Not a farce?

He takes too much enjoyment in this by far

For such an otherwise passive character,

This writing makes no sense

I am filled with no suspense.

So Newt Gingrich is dying and one of his crazy children will have to take the throne

Will it be the Leatherface ripoff? The neurotic Jim Carrey?

Or Paris Hilton? That last one is not a joke – it really is her!

How could a film sink so low? My brain hurts!

She plays a character addicted to plastic surgery

What a fitting fit, what a perfect stupid story!

Am I really going to go so low
As to make a Paris Hilton and political joke
In the same review? I don't know.
(PS, I feel sorry for those guys in the rear,
I'm not sure this is what they had planned for their careers!)

These characters, they’re really grating

They sing about brains and blood and copulating

With all the grace of a box of rocks.

Bill Moseley plays one, always a stock

Who can never ever play anyone who isn’t a stark mad raving lunatic.

The other guy wears peoples’ skins over his face, and boasts about getting laid.

It’s almost like this movie is a TCM 2 reunion! Oh, what a dreadful proposition!

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was not good at all.
I hope these idiots realize that Bill Moseley's not a star
And his character in that movie will not get him far
Please, oh please, don't go down that road!

But Gingrich has some brains, he doesn’t trust any of them even a grain

And so he picks Giles’s daughter Shiloh, whose mother was his ex-lover

Who Giles stole away from her, so he poisoned her and killed her

And made Giles think it was his own fault…gee, this is sounding like a soap opera.

And what am I supposed to do

With all the random singing in this?

I know it’s a musical but the songs have no flow and no sense

And they just sing at random whenever they want

I’ve seen more coherence from random bums on the street.

So then Gingrich entices Shiloh to come out with him

Where they partake in ridiculous song and dance

Like something you’d see on a drugged out Vaudeville show.

It’s really kind of boorish, just a little corny

There’s no rhyme to these songs so why should I rhyme in this?

Paris Hilton threatens to sing and she’s already singing when she says that

Does anyone who made this have any brains?

I think not.

Then we see this guy again:

I think they forgot about this guy,
It's really quite a shame.
His character had no purpose
Who will take the blame?

Did you forget he was in the movie yet?

I almost did…

So then we get this lady who sings for their silly carnivals

Because she was too stupid to read between the lines

When they offered her a cure for blindness!

There would be no story if these characters were even a little ornery

And just once did the smart thing and read the fine print. What a sham!

And she was Shiloh’s mother’s best friend, which makes her Shiloh’s godmother

Oh what a coinky-dink! Does everyone in this film know everyone else?

So of course Blind Mag (that’s her name indeed) goes to the house

And breaks the careful illusion that her father put up

Which really could have happened any time…and hey, here’s a drinking game!

Have a shot every time someone in this film mentions Shiloh’s mom!

That’d have you in a coma by the time the dawn came.

Sarah Brightman sings well
But can she save this sinking ship?
It's too early to tell, but she's got more makeup on her lips than most actresses wear in a lifetime.

So Giles gets mad and won’t tell Shiloh why he can’t help Mag.

And she sings about how she’s a teenage rebel at seventeen years long

After which he hits her, which I would do too if any child of mine

Ever sung such a poor and terrible song!

Gingrich wants Giles to help him kill Mag because she wants to break contract

And because I guess we don’t have enough stories in this movie already,

Seriously, it feels like it’s going to overflow any second!

There’s another overblown opera that night and Shiloh’s invited

Gingrich is plotting to kill her father too, because he won’t kill Mag

The whole thing is so convoluted even the actors have no idea what’s going on!

But it’s OK; we have more ear-raping, eye-gouging fun to engage in!

No literally…eye gouging.

Eyes, gouged out.
I guess Brightman was tired and really wanted out.
Can't blame her at all for that, she's done enough
Getting through this flick must have been tough.

After that Giles is captured, and on stage they pretend it’s part of the act.

Giles reveals that he made Shiloh sick on purpose,

Poisoning her blood so he could keep her to himself.

What a shitty parent! I think he deserves what he gets!

In a Hamlet-esque ending everyone dies,

Gingrich has a heart attack and never again will he rise.

Giles lies dying in his own blood

And they try to portray him as a noble father doing what he could.

NO! I shout, NO! He’s an awful father, no matter his intention.

He deserves nothing but scorn and lifelong detention.

But I guess we need some kind of heartwarming final scene,

For afterwards we get nothing but the reveal that the bad guys took over; how obscene!

And more sequels could result now! Oh, I don’t want to be sober.

Phew! That was tougher than I thought. Okay, I might as well expound on this rambling thing before people lynch me, because I do know a lot of people enjoy this film. I actually did not hate Repo! The Genetic Opera. It was silly as hell and some parts of it were pretty bad, but overall the dramatic arc was halfway decent, and in the mode of Sin City and Sucker Punch it was pretty OK. Some of the singing was truly excellent, especially Anthony Head’s and Sarah Brightman’s, which should be no surprise. Paul Sorvino was excellent too and young Alexa Vega was damn good herself.

But the bad is just as prominent. The songs aren’t catchy at all and they’re forced so awkwardly into this thing that it just becomes downright embarrassing to watch. Like one scene they’re in this limo and Paul Sorvino’s character is singing about how he got the daughter into the limo – you really need a song for that? I mean, they sing everything! They sing when they’re just making casual greetings and pointless banter, and segue into normal talking without any rhyme or reason to it! It’s completely haphazard and all over the place. And some of the visuals are just awful. I mean really awful. Like the bowels of Hot Topic, Spencer’s and the Goth kids from South Park spewed out their worst possible creation ever and it actually made a movie – that would still be more dignified than this movie sometimes.

So some parts are good, some parts are bad, and the whole thing just comes out kind of jumbled and directionless. It’s really not for me and I don’t enjoy it too much, but I guess I can see how people would. So with that said, this is the perfect Valentine’s Day movie.

Wait, what?

Review: Ed Wood (1994)

Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie

"I just want to tell stories. The things that interest me."

-Ed Wood

You know, I don’t get Tim Burton. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his much lauded The Nightmare Before Christmas opus, but the ones I have seen recently are all messed up, quality wise. He puts out a great movie like Batman, then the awful pile of hack that was Batman Returns. These days he puts out dreck like Sweeney Todd and then entertaining flicks like Alice in Wonderland, defying all expectations. I hate some elements of his style, but even I can’t deny the power of some of his best films. Like Ed Wood. Yup, that’s all you’re gonna get for a segueway.

Ed Wood is just masterful. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a film like this…oh wait, it was when I watched The Big Lebowski a few days ago; scratch that. But this is still a very accomplished and well done flick. It’s about the life of Edward D. Wood Jr., one of the worst film directors of all time, and it chronicles his journey to attaining that wonderful honor. It’s even shot in all black and white, just like films back in Ed’s time were! Guess who the lead actor is?

a)     Nic Cage

b)     Dennis Hopper

c)     Johnny Depp

d)    Keanu Reeves

If you guessed “c”…well, duh! It’s a Tim Burton movie! But he does a very good job as our energetic, quirky director, even cross-dressing on camera. Yes, that’s right. Johnny Depp cross dresses; you have to see it to believe it. His acting here is really good though, capturing an innocence that is usual for the characters Burton has him play, but also a certain subtlety that seems to escape both of them in their later days. I think my favorite, though, is Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. He really does a spectacular job, channeling all the hopelessness of an old washed up celebrity and making him totally likable and amiable. Just watch the first scene where Ed is over at his house, where they watch the old re-run of one of Lugosi’s films on the Vampira show. He starts doing this thing with his hand that apparently, all vampires have to do to seduce women. And the look on his face when the trick-or-treater isn’t scared by his Dracula get up is priceless. This is the best character in the film by far, but that isn’t saying much, as the others are all still very good, too.

Jeffrey Jones as Criswell is hilarious with his stoic expression and calm tone. Bill Murray as “Bunny” is a smaller role, but every scene he’s in, you can tell he’s having fun, and you will be laughing along with him. Sarah Jessica Parker as Delores is pretty damn solid, too, and she shows a wide range of emotions and moods that are just hysterical combined with Wood’s happy-go-lucky act. And Lisa Marie as Vampira is priceless…hell, I could go on listing every member of this cast; it’s really phenomenal. What a great cast.

The story chronicles the haphazard adventures of the making of three of Wood’s much storied films, from the ‘true to life’ story of Glen or Glenda, in which he turned a contract from a porn studio to put out a sex-change movie into a rambling, incoherent mess of his own personal demons, to the making of Bride of the Monster, where he and his crew stole materials from a bigger studio but did not actually have the equipment to make them work right, and finally to Plan 9 From Outer Space, which…well, I’ll go into it later. With every quickly-filmed scene, every messy execution and every mistake, Wood just repeats the words “That was perfect!” and moves on, eager to keep filming. He just loves telling stories, and he doesn’t care how sloppy he gets. “Nobody will notice that,” he says indignantly, shooing off any criticism. What’s going on in his head? I don’t know. But that good natured smile and those wild eyes are poised to succeed no matter how bad he ends up sucking. He’s just unstoppable, even when the rest of the world hates him.

This movie is mostly pretty funny, but I have to admit it gets pretty sad at times, too, like when Bela is committed to the rehab center, and spends his first night awake, screaming his head off. And his final scene out in the yard, being filmed staggering around and smelling flowers…well, just try and watch that scene and tell me you weren’t touched.

But he passed away, as he did in real life, before the filming of Plan 9 ever started, and life went on. How does Ed deal with it? Just like in real life, he hires some guy who looks nothing like him to walk around with a cape in front of his face, obscuring the fact that it isn’t really him. Some of Ed Wood’s best scenes occur in this last segment, the filming of the infamous crown jewel of B movies, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and that’s quite a feat. I think the scene where they all get baptized is my favorite in the entire film. And Ed’s explosion in front of the Baptist sponsors is classic, his voice hitting a squealy high that is really funny.

“Do you know anything about the art of filmmaking?” asks one of the Baptists, to which Ed replies, “I would hope so!”

That pretty much sums up the entire movie right there. Ed Wood is a vivid, hilarious, witty and extremely clever look at a very strange man. I haven’t seen all of Tim Burton’s movies yet, but of the ones I have seen, this one is the best, by far and wide. And that’s saying a lot, considering how much I loved Batman. Ed Wood encapsulates a number of things that make film so great – artful, stylish directing, comedy that goes between subtle and overt, great acting and casting choices and it’s just all around entertaining as hell. What more could you want? Go see this movie; especially if you like Burton’s later, more over the top work. It’s worth a viewing by anyone.

Review: Batman Returns (1992)

Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103776/

“If you ever had an iota of a human feeling, take me instead.”

“I don’t. So no!”

-Max Schrek and The Penguin, respectively

You remember the first Batman movie in 1989, with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson? It was a great movie, wasn’t it? I love the subtle wit, I love the classic, romantic styled action and direction, and I love the dark, seedy style of the whole thing. It was an all time classic. So what would you do if somehow, the same people who made the first one came back to stomp all over it, break it into a million pieces, urinate on it and then set it on fire? Well, we still wouldn’t have as big a disappointment as the colossal fuckery of the sequel, Batman Returns.

I mean good god. What happened, Tim Burton? What went so wrong in only a few years between these sequels? The contrast between them is like night and frigging day. Where the first one was elegant and graceful, this one stumbles around like a drunken lout. Where the first one was serious and treated the viewers with dignity, this movie is just annoying and godawfully horrendous in every way. You know what this is like? It’s like that annoying friend who you used to have in elementary or middle school, who you and the rest of your friends put up with because you felt sorry for them. It’s the friend that would come over and poke you repeatedly, eat all your food and talk about shit that nobody cared about, and generally bring down the mood. That’s Batman Returns.

This aborted abomination of cinema is just so painful that it’s hard to put into words. It starts out okay, with a family in the early or mid 1900s abandoning what we can infer is the child that will grow up to be the Penguin. It then flashes forward 33 years, because that’s not a weird and random number, into Christmas time in Gotham. Christopher Walken is playing a businessman named Max Schrek, who apparently only has one mode of emotional discourse: stoic, brusque businessman. His secretary named Selena Kyle is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and this is the movie’s first huge shitstopping moment, because honestly I cannot think of a worse movie character short of Mila Kunis in American Psycho II and Gary Oldman in Hannibal. But we’ll get to that later…I know you’re looking forward to it.

Outside, Walken gives a speech about why he’s glad to be in Gotham and a bunch of other boring shit, and then the town is attacked by annoying multi-colored circus rejects. Yes, not even 20 minutes in and the movie lost me. They jump around a lot and cause a lot of chaos over the movie’s overly bombastic and irritating soundtrack, and it’s more like something you’d see on a pre-school animated TV show than a Batman movie. And look at Gotham; it looks like a fucking snow globe or something. This isn’t the Tim Burton who delivered the stylish and classy Batman world of the first film. This is the Tim Burton who all the Hot Topic kids worship like a deity. Absolutely no substance and quite a lot of meaningless faux-gothic melodrama. Yergh.

And then we cut to Michael Keaton reprising his role as Bruce Wayne, and…he looks so damn bored that I’m surprised he even took this role. This isn’t the Michael Keaton that delivered the subtle, charming and secretive Bruce Wayne performance in the first movie; this is the Michael Keaton who stumbled like a zombie through White Noise. Ugh. He goes and stops everything and saves Selena Kyle, who is grateful…and we don’t see him again for at least a half hour. I am dead serious. The next thirty-odd minutes are filled up with Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny Devito. Good fucking god. A Batman movie without Batman. It’s as stupid as it sounds.

Oh yeah, Danny Devito is in this movie too! And he’s as annoying as nails on a chalkboard – literally; just listen to that godawful voice. Apparently he kidnapped Christopher Walken to get him to help him out in the real world, and he blackmails Walken into agreeing. And…oh, fuck, he’s annoying. I mean, couldn’t you have at least tried to make him intimidating or villainous? Just watching this fat, ugly blob stumble around the set makes me want to put a boot through the screen. His voice is like audible AIDS; goddamn, shut the hell up! He wants Walken to help him find out his birth parents. He does that, gaining popular support when people start to find out his life-of-the-underdog story, but it blows WAAAAY out of proportion when he is actually positioned to become the new mayor of Gotham. I’m sorry, what? Seriously? That thing? Even in the most liberal bleeding-heart places in the world, there is NO WAY that someone who looked and talked like that could ever gain popular support in such a short amount of time. I mean, it was seriously like less than three days. What were the writers smoking when they made this up? And he’s ALWAYS. ON. SCREEN. They’re going for a similar thing like they did in the first film with the Joker getting most of the spotlight, but here it doesn’t work because someone apparently instructed DeVito to chew up the scenery with as much gusto as he could manage. He’s always snarling and showing his teeth and being over-dramatic, and he just doesn’t work at all. He's about as charming as an abusive redneck inbred father who wandered onto the set at random.

The other half of this movie’s debilitating cancer is Michelle Pfeiffer, who gives honestly one of the most grating, painful performances I’ve ever had to sit through, in anything. So she plays a wimpy, passive secretary who wants a man in her life but is too nerdy to get one. Her house is filled with weird shit like a neon sign for her room and a dollhouse mounted on a table by her window, and she has cats, and phone calls that advertise ways for her to ‘become a better woman.’ She goes back to the office one night and discovers the conspiracy behind the whole thing, right before Christopher Walken throws her out a window. But does that stop her from getting up, painting everything in her house black and stitching together a costume out of garbage bags to go fight crime? Fuck no! That would be plausible!

…no, seriously. No explanation for how she survived the fall and was actually able to walk around? Nothing? Okay then. This character is just so weird and annoying that it’s hard to really describe. It’s really disgusting to watch her be all awkward and kooky before her accident, and it’s annoying to watch her as Catwoman after when all she does is croon in that ultra-silky voice that might as well be a parody of movie women in general. There’s just no subtlety or class to her. Painting her house black? Could you possibly get any more over the top silly? That goes for the whole movie really. It’s a very blunt, obvious film, and the bright colors and goofy characters make it really hard to take seriously even for one minute.

The next fifteen or twenty minutes are mostly filler. We get to see her return to work with an entirely new personality and flirt with Bruce Wayne when he comes to visit, and we get to see Walken dressed like fucking Beetlejuice and talking about mostly nothing, with that damn bug-eyed look all the damn time. Selena Kyle dresses up as Catwoman and gets into a fight with Batman, but only after doing cartwheels through a museum..ugh. And Batman actually gets thwarted by a POODLE. A goddamned poodle! I couldn’t make this up if I tried. So sad that it’s actually funny again. And we see that Batman is not above tampering with the sound system at the Penguin’s rally for mayor and playing tapes that reveal him for the wad of ass that he really is. Can you believe that the townspeople actually throw tomatoes at him? I really hate this movie…but let us continue. He retreats to the sewer where he reveals that his next plan is to…kidnap the first born children in Gotham and murder them all? Sheesh, where the hell did that come from, movie? Pretty extreme about-face turn there, don’t you think? It’s like, “Oh, I can’t become the mayor! What to do, what to do…hey, I think I’ll KILL ALL THE LITTLE CHILDREN.” It’s so out of nowhere and random. It’s practically ad-libbing it, for Pete’s sake.

Or as I like to call it, horrible, heinous writing.

So Bruce goes to Walken’s party where he wants to find Selena Kyle. They dance and trade flirts for a bit until she starts laughing like a hyena at the suggestion that she’s here for Walken. Then she pulls out a gun from under her dress and says that killing him will solve all of the city’s problems. It certainly wouldn’t solve all of this movie’s, though. They start to walk out when the floor explodes and miraculously doesn’t harm anyone that severely! The Penguin comes out riding his fearsome yellow rubber ducky float – yes, I’m serious about that – and announces in a truly hammy and embarrassing moment that he is taking Walken’s son away, oh no! Walken persuades him to take him instead, so he does.

What happens next is…just so flat out weird that it’s hard to believe what you’re watching. Brace yourselves: Batman saves the kids and sends a message through the Penguin’s pet monkey (???). The Penguin starts to rally his army of pet penguins to go marching through the streets of Gotham as Alfred informs Batman what’s going on. Apparently the penguins are marching to the center of the city with rockets strapped to them to blow up the city and kill thousands of people. So…they’re suicide bomber penguins. Will somebody please kill me now?

They stop the penguin-bombs very easily, the Penguin rides around in his giant rubber duck on wheels (….ugh) and Batman confronts the Penguin, who delivers this wonderful gem of a line as he holds up his umbrella gun: “But when it all comes down to it…who’s holding the umbrella?” Batman gives him a look that’s a mix of confusion and reprimanding, which I believe should be the universal reaction to this whole movie. He thwarts the Penguin, has a showdown with Catwoman who is trying to kill Christopher Walken, and the whole thing ends rather tragically with a nice, white winter backdrop as Bruce and Alfred ride off into the night.

Phew. Boy, this was annoying. I mean, the crowning failure of this whole thing was the fact that the last ten minutes were actually pretty good. Finally we got to see some dark, intriguing story and some shots that weren’t filled with Danny DeVito squawking and over-acting like a moron and Michelle Pfeiffer doing cartwheels and over-acting like a moron. The movie really seemed to get its act together for the final climax of the whole thing, but it’s really not worth sitting through two hours of awful crap to get to it. If the climax is a golden egg, the one hour and fifty minutes that come before it are like wading through a mine of shit to get there. I know I’m in the minority when I say this, but Batman Returns really sucks. And that’s all there is to it. Avoid, avoid, avoid!