Yabba Dabba Don't: Viva Rock Vegas Review

For the last few months, I've been planning a trip to Las Vegas for the Memorial Day weekend, and like a kid waiting to go to the amusement park I find myself thinking more and more about that day the closer it nears. I just can't wait. And now, only a few days away from my flight, as I think of Las Vegas, another pair of words also enters my mind. A pair of words inextricably linked to that gambling mecca to such a degree that I'm sure you know them instantly.

Sin City? Nah.

Win Big? C'mon now.

High Roller? Don't be silly.

The Flintstones?

Ding Ding Ding! Jackpot!!!! I mean...it's obvious. They go together like...like...like TNT and a human asshole. Recipe. For. Disaster. But someone had the brilliant idea to mesh Sin City and the Bedrock Bunch and the result was this week's lame-duck comedy, Viva Rock Vegas, which I am suffering through just to prove that I really did earn this vacation (as if two months of Steven Seagal chased down with The Spirit wasn't proof enough).

Normally this is where I would talk about the original Flintstones movie to give you some background, but the last (re:only) time I saw it was when I was eight and it was new in theaters. All I remember is being ecstatic when I had to pee and thusly had an excuse to leave the theater because I was pretty well bored. When you consider that insomnia cures like Indian in the Cupboard and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers positively enthralled me as a child, I think this really says something. So, sidestepping the background I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that Viva Rock Vegas is that most dreaded of beasts: the prequel. Are these ever good? I mean, name a good prequel, please! The only prequels I can even think of are the Star Wars ones and...the less said the better. Of course, this isn't really the first Flintstones prequel lest we forget...

Uh, yeah, on second thought let's forget. Viva Rock Vegas takes us back to a time when Barney and Betty and Fred and Wilma aren't yet married, but by golly those boys are a-tryin'! Boy, I wonder if they'll succee-oh yeah, we already know they did. See, that's the problem with prequels: you know exactly where they're going. Dramatic tension: lost. Admittedly, this isn't the kind of movie that's going to rely on such a thing as tension – after all, it's a comedy and you're just supposed to laugh as the characters do everything you expect them to from the get-go – but still, at least a little bit of uncertainty would be nice so I had something to care about. But we ain't got that here. Don't worry, though, the filmmakers replaced it with something much better:

LET THE LAME PREHISTORIC PUNS BEGIN

Well, I'll give the movie credit for a surprising opening. Rather than plunging us straight into Bedrock, they instead have a spaceship fly out of the studio logo, a spaceship containing that annoying sidekick The Great Gazoo (Alan Cumming) and what appears to be his entire race. After a forced “cutesy” moment where they do indeed see the “Univershell” logo orbiting the planet (ha ha, it is to laugh), one little green man tells Gazoo he's a screw up and will be banished to Earth since there's “almost no civilization to fuck up”. At first I thought I simply misheard “muck up” but the little man very emphatically shouts “quit FUCKING up” a moment later. Wow, and this got a PG rating? Anyway, they lock Gazoo in a capsule and launch his ass to Earth to observe how humans mate. I suppose I can appreciate the effort needed for a wrap-around story, but did we really need one? I mean, come on: Gazoo sucks. He was never funny in the cartoon and there ain't no way no how he's going to be funny here. Not to mention that he and his people are just flat-out visually unappealing: live-action human heads CGI'd onto claymation bodies straight out of Pee Wee's Playhouse or something. Was this movie made in 1986? The California Raisins looked better than this.

Down on Earth, Fred (Mark Addy from The Full Monty if you can believe it) and Barney (Stephen Baldwin?) head to work at the rock quarry (crossing a horrendously fake-looking live dinosaur bridge to get there) and talk about some big test they have coming up. Fred says he'll just cram the morning of the test but, oh ho ho, Barney tells him the test is today! Actually, right now! The test involves Fred piloting a fake-brontosaurus to see how well he can use a beast as a crane. Despite some “comical” mishaps, he winds up passing in the end. And then he kills his proctor by dropping a boulder on the poor man. Meanwhile, Barney gets called in to work on a “backfiring brontosaurus” and you know what that means! DINO-FART! YAY!!!!

Elsewhere in town, a bridal shower presided over by Joan Collins (presumably the old crone is playing herself) is happening at a big ass, fake-looking mansion (can you say “facade”?). The squeaky, annoying bride receives a vacuum cleaner (re: horribly fake-looking dinosaur puppet) from Wilma, who's nowhere to be found. That's because she's off on a balcony staring into a giant matte paintin-er, that is she's looking out over the completely photo-realistic city skyline.

Wilma is played by Nicole Bass-lookalike first class Kristen Thomas, best known as that really manly-looking woman on 3^rd Rock from the Sun. Oh yeah, she's exactly what I think of when I hear the words “Wilma Flintstone”. Good God, she's frightening to look at.

Then again, next to Joan Collins...

So Joan Collins, who I guess is Wilma's mom, comes along to tell Wilma that she should never fraternize with the low-life townies, blah blah. You know where that's going. They head down to the party, where Wilma is laughed out of the place when she suggests the girls all head into Bedrock to go bowling. I'm with the scoffers on this one, myself. Who the fuck bowls for their bridal shower? Bring on the Neanderthal dancers who club you and drag you home by the hair. Alas, the only man to be had at this party is polo-playing stud Chip Rockefeller (what, was "Rock Hudson" too obvious?) (played by Thomas Gibson, aka Greg from Dharma & Greg) riding in astride...Yoshi?

Chip is the obligatory, one-dimensional jerk who wants the fair maiden's hand in marriage, apparently just because. He's an utter cliché, right down to the way he hisses about talking business with Wilma's dad and how he “wants to invest in a certain girl”. Ugh. The other girls try to talk reluctant Wilma into accepting the proposal with some really terrible rich girl jokes like “We'll go shopping together, and play tennis...and browbeat our husbands. Just like our mothers!”. You hear the cymbal crash in the distance, I swear.

That night, and inexplicably on a beach, Fred and Barney talk about their dead-end lives and how the only way to make life worth living is to get women. If you made them women and had them talking about men, this would be decried as sexist pap. As it is, I imagine feminists everwhere nodded their heads in agreement with every word. *steps off soap box* Anyway, this miserably boring scene is made even worse when Gazoo falls out of the sky. The boys are foolish enough to let the annoying bastard out of his capsule so he can start insulting them like a total prick whilst he floats about looking like the worst special effect ever. It's hard to explain in words, but basically imagine if someone moved a cut-out of a character all about in front of pre-recorded footage which is also moving all about, but not in a fashion that even remotely corresponds to the cut-out's movements. It looks like spastic bullshit, and when you couple it with the hokey claymation look of the alien, it's like what would happen if the guy who made Manos: The Hands of Fate discovered optical printing. F-A-K-E.

The next day, I guess (or maybe it's night where the boys are and day where Wilma is at the same time), Wilma is suddenly just in Bedrock and stumbles upon a drive-in diner ("Bronto King", oh ho ho) where she meets car hop waitress Betty (Jane Krakowski, who is so much hotter than she has any right to be in the ridiculous prehistoric get-up). Wilma is reluctant to order anything, since she forgot to bring her money when she ran off from home, and Betty mistakenly assumes she's a “caveless person” who needs some charity, and promptly invites Wilma to stay at her place.

Back on the dark side of town (seriously, did the editor really not notice the glaring continuity error here?), Fred and Barney get ready for bed when Gazoo asks them to start having the sex so he can observe. Barney seems all too willing to oblige...

...but Fred, not so much. Rather than bring the scene to a logical conclusion and then transitioning to the next, the film rather just shows the boys showing up at the drive-in so they can run into the girls (who have finally caught up to the night time) and get this movie over with that much quicker. And for that I can actually be thankful for lack of creativity. But before we get to the schtupping, we have to – for no good reason – have a bit where Fred finds out only he and Barney can see Gazoo, and thusly everyone thinks they're crazy folks talking to thin air. I have no fucking idea why. Anyway, Betty skates on up and Fred hits on her by acting like a drooling moron (no, really, he planned it this way) and IT WORKS AND SHE AGREES TO DATE HIM. And then she sets Barney up with Wilma so we can have that old “switcheroo” problem where everyone's with the wrong person and, oh no, will they ever straighten this out?

Yeah, they will. In fact, they realize the error in the next scene when they all go to a carnival and Barney and Betty chuckle at the ridiculous idea of a “Jurassic Park” ride (boy, that sure was witty) when they all have dinos as pets anyway, and they realize they have complimentary giggles. Really. So the two of them are off and having fun while Fred and Wilma are left alone to- Holy shit, Fred's wearing a digital watch

HELLO?! How do you not catch that? I'm having flashbacks to Charlton Heston's Rolex in The Ten Commandments.

Anyway, Fred and Wilma fall in love over bowling and wind up winning a dinosaur egg as their prize. An egg which soon thereafter hatches Dino, who is the latest in this film's endless barrage of horrible, cheap-looking latex puppets (sometimes a horrible, cheap, latex-looking CGI monstrosity. Or maybe claymation, I really can't be sure). And then it's back to the dark side of town as Fred walks his lady home and gives her a goodnight handshake, at least until Dino fixes things by tripping the two of them up so they can fall into each other's arms and kiss the least romantic kiss ever. And then - I swear to Christ – there's a romantic montage of the two couples set to “You Get What You Give” by The New Radicals, a song not only wildly inappropriate for this movie but one that was also passe and forgotten about by the time it came out.

Gee, that's not...totally nonsensical or anything. This is like the Double Dragon video game popping up in the Double Dragon movie. The movie's universe should have imploded at this impossible self-reference.

Anyway, that night (or on the dark side of town), Joan Collins (having given up completely on the prehistoric gimmick and now just wearing the kind of gaudy outfit she really does anyway) shows up at Betty and Wilma's apartment to drag Wilma home, but she won't go. So momma has to be a bitch and guilt trip Wilma into going by mentioning that dad's birthday is coming up and *sniffle* he might not have many more left, after all. And that's almost certainly true since papa Slaghoople is played by Harvey Korman, who looks positively ancient. Wilma invites Betty and the boys to come along, even though she's afraid they wouldn't like her if they knew she was from a rich family on the hill. Here's an idea: DON'T INVITE THEM THEN. But there they are and she's all nervous, like they “found her out” or something when she actually gave herself away. Fucking stupid.

And so we get a long, tedious scene of everyone discovering just how nice Wilma's house is in a lame duck effort on the movie's part to create tension when Fred decides against proposing marriage since the only ring he can afford looks measly next to the glorious plastic and foam-rubber antiques littering the awfully fake-looking Slaghoople estate. Also, we actually meet papa Slaghoople, who is senile and utterly convinced he's waging a war. I guess that's supposed to be funny. Eventually, Betty winds up telling Wilma off, which sends Wilma off to that balcony to ponder the matte painting again. But then papa shows up to give her her trademark pearl necklace because, oh ho, he thought it was her birthday (I swear I hear that cymbal crash in the distance).

Dinner goes rather uncomfortably, especially when Fred tries to make a toast and Joan Collins and Chip do their damnedest to shame him into shutting up, until Dino shows up (why? Dunno. How? Dunno.). Then it just gets loud and annoying. I love when Dino jumps into Fred's arms and suddenly becomes a puppet with Mark Addy's hand clearly up it's ass. Thems good special effects, they is. Joan Collins gets all mad and tosses the commoners out, prompting Wilma to denounce her family and run away with Fred and the gang because they're nice and mama's a bitch. Chip follows after and randomly invites everyone to Rock Vegas (Look out, it's the point of the whole damn movie!) to see the grand opening of his newest casino, to be celebrated with a concert by “Mick Jagged and the Stones”. Oh ho ho my, will the witty plays-on-words ever, um, begin?

So slam, bam, thank you ma'am we just immediately find ourselves in Rock Vegas, where a ten billion year-old Ann-Margaret, reprising her role of Ann Margrock from the cartoon, regales us with a wheezy gasbag rendition of “Viva Rock Vegas”, a not-so-subtle reference to the movie Viva Las Vegas, in which Ann-Margaret co-starred with Elvis. Seriously, I haven't heard anyone sound this in need of an oxygen tank since Orson Welles literally recorded the voice of Unicron for the cartoon Transformers movie from his death bed. So anyway, the gang have a goofy good time while Chip watches on thanks to surveillance cameras (?) and schemes to break Fred and Wilma up. A-Doi! We finally find out why (I guess “because” wasn't good enough for the first time ever): turns out Chip is actually near destitute and has been borrowing money from the mafia, and now they want it back. Wilma is loaded, and Chip intends to marry her and rob her parents blind to pay his debts. Gazoo watches all of this (he's been in most of the last few scenes, actually, though not doing much) and just finds it entertaining.

Speaking of Gazoo, he finally does something decent, believe it or not. Fred has been hitting it big at the craps tables, and Gazoo points out how funny it is that Fred rolls all winners in Chip's casino. Like some kind of...plot or something. But no, plot could never factor into the Flintstones, could it? Fred won't listen, of course, and soon Chip shows up and talks Fred into playing on the high roller tables. Even dopey old Barney can see the risks, but luckily he's easily distracted by food and Chip's showgirl hench-girlfriend and wanders off. But, oh dear, Betty spots Barney with the showgirl and seeks comfort in the arms of Mick Jagged (Alan Cumming, again). I've never seen a hammier Mick Jagger impersonation, but then again how else would you play it, really. The performance is awful, is the point. Mick, like his real-life counterpart, wastes no time talking the lovely lady into coming to his room. As for Fred, he just keeps on winning until Wilma gets fed up with his cash obsession. THAT'S when Chip calls off the fix so Fred can lose. Well if Wilma already got angry, why's Fred need to lose? Just to rub salt in the wound? Wow, Chip is almost becoming an actual character. Of course, Wilma likes Fred better when he's poor, so really this is all destined to backfire.

So Fred loses everything and finds himself massively in debt to Chip, who says he'll forgive it all if Fred just leaves Bedrock forever and gives Wilma over. Fred isn't down with that so Chip steals Wilma's pearls from the vault, plants them on Fred and pulls the theft alarm so all the guests, including Wilma, will be in the lobby to witness Fred being caught with the pearls. But not before a bunch of other people admit to other crimes, including one guy fessing up to poisoning all the dinosaurs to drive them to extinction. Heavy. Anyway, Chip asks Fred to empty his pockets and he obliges, revealing the necklace. Of course, if he was willing to empty the pockets, that seems to me at least evidence if not proof that he didn't know they were there. I mean, what thief just gives himself away? Why would anyone believe he really did it? I don't get this movie cliché no matter how many times I see it. Security drags Fred off to jail and, hey, why not collar Barney while we're at it? Why? Because!

Although the jail cell is fitted with bars so widely-spaced you could drive a car through them, the boys are just hopelessly trapped. Gazoo shows up and even though he's only supposed to observe, Fred and Barney try to talk him into helping by doing a crying act. But then Barney just, ya know, walks out of the cell to get some tissues and it dawns on everyone that prehistoric prison operates on the honor system, and these dopes have no honor. They bust loose, steal some showgirl outfits and sneak into the casino. After being spotted by security, the boys take refuge in what turns out to be Mick and Betty's room and since Mick is a boring twat, Betty sure is glad to see Barney again. And when Barney lets it spill that the showgirl he was with was Chip's girlfriend, Betty realizes that – A-Doi! - if they tell Wilma Chip has a girlfriend, she won't marry him. And just for good measure Barney El Kabong's Mick (complete with the actual Quick Draw McGraw El Kabong sound effect) so Fred can go on stage with The Stones and sing a love song to Wilma. And then he proposes marriage and she says yes. What happened to the girlfriend?! So they get married and the wedding party (including William Hanna and Joseph Barbara themselves, on hand to witness the tragic death of their franchise) celebrates by singing the Flintstones theme song. Again, the universe ought to implode from the impossibility of it all.

“Death” is the operative term in that last sentence, because this whole movie feels funereal. The closing song and dance number is downright nihilistic, the attempted faux-gaiety being no match for the embarrassment and despair in everyone's eyes. There is no hope or meaning here, only suffering and, indeed, death. Viva Rock Vegas is a wretched film; from the scatter-brained plotting and heartless jokes to the ugly, fake-looking sets and hurried, sub-par special effects, this is one of the hokiest and cheapest-looking movies to reach theaters in recent years. Frankly, it looks like a Direct-to-Video title that got to the big screen only by mix-up (and since it's released by ever-inept Universal Studios, mix-up is far more likely than you might first think). There's probably a multi-million dollar big-budget flick that wound up DTV in this movie's place. Regardless, I refuse to believe that anyone intended for Viva Rock Vegas to wind up in cineplexes the world over. Back when Sony Cinemas were around and this kind of tripe would have been distributed to them by Cannon Films or TriMark? Sure. But in the year 2000, no way.

Viva Rock Vegas would barely pass as one of those Interactive Movie rides at a theme park. It's a total disaster as a feature film. It's not the worst thing I've ever reviewed*, and it certainly wouldn't come close to a Top Ten Worst list (or even Top Twenty or Thirty), but for the typical moviegoer, this would be the kind of thing you'd ask for a refund for. It's dreadful. Mark Addy is passable as Fred and Jane Krakowski is cute as Betty, but Kristen Thomas and in particular Stephen Baldwin are just the pits. They cannot act, never have been able to, and never will be able to. But even with that said, they sink to new lows of bad here. Thomas is as far from Wilma Flintstone as you can get; she's not nice, she's not pretty, she's not a good spouse and she's not attractive in any way. She's hammy and broad and not the least bit amusing. Baldwin is the death of thespianism. You've never seen a more grating Barney Rubble impersonation in your life. The voice is nails on a chalkboard, the mannerisms are equivalent to one of those mechanical cymbal-banging monkey toys, and the overall effect is sheer hateability. I loathed the man for every second he was on screen. His nomination for Worst Supporting Actor at the Razzie Awards was well-earned (though I will not dispute his loss to Barry Pepper from Battlefield Earth).

[*Granted: that may be only because I go out of my way to find truly horrible films that go way beyond the pale]

The sets are, frankly, an embarrassment to the art of production design. They tried really hard to emulate the look of the cartoon, but the problem is that everything looks like the plastic and foam-rubber it's made from rather than looking like actual rocks. They couldn't even be bothered to put real boulders in the freaking backgrounds (they opted for papier mache instead). The dinosaurs look terrible too, a combination of hokey puppets and pathetic CGI that don't live up to the standards of Sesame Street muppets let alone a theatrical film. I'd believe Kermit T. Frog was real before I'd buy into Dino or the Brontosaurus cranes.

This movie was clearly meant for the littlest of kids, but even they would be bored by it and I wouldn't take my kid to a movie with instances of the word “Fuck” anyway. How'd they get that past the censors, and what were they even thinking? This movie isn't totally appropriate for kids and it's too dumb for adults, so who's the true audience then? Looking at the receipts, no one.

I'm Redunbeck, and I'm off to the real Las Vegas to drink away the bad memories.

It's a Snoozer. Literally: Dream Lover Review

This may well be either the shortest or longest review I've ever written. Shortest because of the utter lack of anything happening in this week's film or longest because of my angry ranting at the filmmakers for producing something so Godawful dull and boring. Either way, I have a feeling this will be a record-setting entry in Redunbeck Reviews.

The film at hand is the 1986 somnambulation thriller Dream Lover, which I'm sure you've never heard of. If I said “Kristy McNichol art house movie”, you may understand why this is so. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Kristy McNichol; she's the cutest damn thing I think I've ever seen and given a good script and director she could turn in one hell of a performance (see the long-lost, but recently discovered White Dog for proof of that, believe me). But come on: Kristy McNichol art house? Who wants to see this beautiful girl just sitting around talking about theoretical bullshit and staring ponderously into the empty space of a room while the director gets a hard-on from thinking he's making something to rival the contemplative masterpieces of Ingmar Bergman? Blech. But that's ultimately what we've got here, a film that thinks it's art when it's really just a plotless snoozer with some visual references to Cries & Whispers, a film I cannot believe I have sullied by naming it on a blog such as mine. Sorry, Ingmar.

This film is so dull that I seriously wonder what it is I think I have to say, but then again I got so angry the first time I saw it that I literally began chucking things at my television screen, so maybe there's hope after all. Hope for you, anyway. Nothing but despair for me.

OK, I know I don't normally discuss DVD covers here, but I have to mention this one:


Who the fuck is that woman on the cover? She isn't Kristy McNichol, that's for sure. The shadow on the left, sure. That's Kristy, I recognize the frizzy “I'm scary now” look because she seemed to do that a lot for some reason. But the chick on the right...I have no clue. She's not anywhere to be found except here.

Anyway, there's not much point in discussing anything related to the DVD since the cocksucker doesn't work in my computer. It's a DVD-R, part of Warner Brothers' new budget line called the Archive Collection. DVD-Rs don't playback on PC, so I had to go and REBUY this movie as a video-on-demand download so I could watch it on the computer to write this. But it turns out I can't take screencaps off the VOD, so now I'm piss-boiling mad and I haven't even started the movie yet. God damn motherfucking Dream Lover! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

So the film opens with Kathy (Kristy McNichol) lying in bed and dreaming about attending an opera where she and her date are the only attendees. They literally just sit there and watch the off-screen stage for a minute or two while the credits role by. And I must note one of these credits. This film was lensed by none other than Sven Nykvist, Oscar-winning collaborator of Ingmar Bergman on literally dozens of films. Dream Lover's hack director, Alan J. Pakula, really must have thought he was making something to rival Bergman. He even steals the fade to red effect from the aforementioned Cries & Whispers. Fuck you, buddy! You're not even close. God that pisses me off. Why waste someone as talented as Nykvist? And Sven, why'd you take this pap on? I mean, I know Ingmar had retired by now but wasn't Liv Ullman directing something she could have used you for? Why fly over to the States to shoot crap like this? Christ.

Also, I should note that this sequence takes place in deafening silence, as if the soundtrack were actually emitting a noise-cancelling signal to silence your very thoughts. This is pin-drop quiet and given how still the characters are you could easily think you had the film on pause. So after this literal nothing-happening credit sequence we see Kathy playing flute in her music improv class and then getting an offer from her instructor, Kevin or Bill or something (doesn't matter), to play with his band in New York. Only problem is Kathy will have to break off the vacation to Japan her father wanted to take her on. At the opera (no, that dream wasn't foreshadowing anything, this movie is just uncreative is all), Kathy tells a little white lie to her father Ben (Paul Shenar, from not much of anything), that it's a master class she wants to go to. Their friends encourage Ben to say yes but he just says “I'm sure she'll do whatever suits her” which is code for “I will kill this bitch if she doesn't go to Japan and she knows it”, I think. The movie seems to think so to, as the next scene is Ben's friends driving home, the wife flat-out saying that she blames Ben for his wife's death. But just forget this ever happened because these people are never seen again and Ben's wife is never mentioned again.

STOP! Creepy Time! There's something fundamentally wrong with cutting to Kathy and her father in bed together with Kathy NIBBLING HIS EAR. What the fuck?! And when Kathy says she'll go to Japan after all, they peck each other on the lips. Ewwwwwwwww. This ain't right. And it's all pointless as Ben changes his mind and cancels the trip a couple of minutes later. Why was it even in the script, then? It didn't affect anything, it created zero dramatic tension...it just happened and then they move on. Utterly useless. And then it's dream time again as Kathy nods off and has one of her recurring nightmares, where in she walks down a long ass hallway, opens a big door, gets frightened by what she sees and then leaps out a window. There's an inexplicable costume change in there somewhere, I don't know why. The symbolism (I assume that's what it is) is lost on me.

So Kathy moves into her NYC apartment and on her first day there she's rather shocked when a strange man walks right in. Apparently he's the boyfriend of the previous renter and and since he didn't know she had moved out (helluva chick he's got), he just let himself in since the door was open. Rather than just apologizing and leaving, this awkward man makes a goof of himself trying to convince Kathy he's nice and not at all weird, which is pretty much a fail as he knocks shit over as she shuffles him to the door. Later that night, after totally bringing the house down with her electric flute (?!) at a club, Kathy and her instructor guy (Kevin, I think...?) head back to her place for an even more awkward moment: while the two of them are cleaning up some mugs he broke with a failed juggling act, Kevin moves in to kiss Kathy and gets within a fraction of an inch of her lips, but then randomly backs off. And then they just stare at each other for a good thirty seconds before coming together for a mutual kiss. The best part of this is the way Kathy keeps shifting her eyes from Kevin's eyes to his lips, back and forth and back and forth, like she's trying to figure out what this strange, lip-based human custom is. It's like she didn't realize you could do this with someone who isn't your fucking dad. And then they, erm, make beautiful music together. And afterward, they shake hands. Swear to God. She boots him out (Daddy's coming over today!) and they shake on it like they just cut a business deal or something.

During a nap, Kathy has the hallway dream again but this time the door has something nice to show her, a living recreation of that famous Sunday in the Park painting (the one Cameron stares at in Ferris Bueller). She likes it so much she walks right on in and joins the fun. Back in the waking world, that creepy dude from earlier is back and standing outside Kathy's bedroom shaking his keys like he's trying to call his dog for a car ride or something. The director sees fit to linger on this forfuckingever. Why, I don't know. Kathy wakes up and heads out into the kitchen to make a cup of hot milk. Creepy dude pops up, tackles her to the ground and then...shakes the keys in front of her. He says his girlfriend gave them to him and I guess that's supposed to explain how he got in. If only Kathy hadn't been shown locking the chain lock before all this happened. I could drive a semi through that plot hole. Anyway, they stare at each other for a long time, creepy guy asks where his girlfriend went and threatens to shove a frayed lamp cord up Kathy's hoo-hah as torture, they have a fight, she throws the scalding milk at him (misses, but he just acts like he got burned because there are no retakes in Dream Lover, by God), and finally Kathy buries a knife in the guy's back and kills him.

As the cops question Kathy about the incident, Ben shows up and takes her aside to tell her that she absolutely must lie about what happened (specifically, to say “everything went black” and she can't remember what happened) because if she says what really happened, they'll send her to the chair. Seriously, he says she was in the wrong here. Um...last time I checked here in the states you have the right to kill any strange person you see inside your home. They don't even have to touch you; if they're in your house without an invitation, you can murderize them real good and you're legally in the right. It's called self-defense. So, the point is this whole scene is nonsense. I mean, they even read Kathy her rights.

After five solid minutes of literally nothing happening, Kathy relives her ordeal in a nightmare. And then, later that same day, she relives it again during a nap. This bitch does nothing but sleep and jam on the electric flute and sadly that flute is not coming back for the rest of the film. She goes to a doctor who says barbiturates would help, but also that she can't have any. Nyah nyah nyah! A despondent Kathy goes home for a soothing bath and – For God's sake! She falls asleep again!! Is she narcoleptic? She has the nightmare again, which inspires her to go this sleep center her doctor mentioned. Only problem is it turns out to be a research facility, not a treatment center. Lucky for her, scientist Michael (Ben Masters, best known for his utterly hilarious drunkard character Julian Crane on world's wackiest soap opera Passions [how I miss it]) takes an interest in her and, after showing her around his wacky underground laboratory, offers to do a brain scan on her while she snoozes and he even teaches her some wacky trick to wake herself up before the dream gets scary.

Since Kathy can pass into a coma at the drop of a hat, and since Michael coincidentally has jammies in her size, they decide to do all this crap right away. But first Kathy needs Michael to soothe her to sleep with her old childhood bed time ritual, which involves Michael drawing a “magic circle” in the air and reciting a silly poem. Ooooooo-kkkk... Michael's trick works and Kathy wakes up before the bad parts happen and then, just for fun, the two of them pore over the five miles of paper from the polygraph recording of Kathy's sleep. Also, somewhere in between Kathy waking up and Kathy coming out of the bedroom, a full day seems to pass as Michael talks about all this happening last night. It was broad daylight when they went down there in the first place. My plot hole semi keeps on truckin'. Michael gives a science lesson about how your brain is sending signals to your body while you dream, and how some chemical paralyzes your muscles so you don't sleepwalk, and how some people don't have that chemical so they do sleepwalk, and how he randomly intuited that Kathy might be one of those people, and how his test results show that she actually is one of those people, a little bit, not enough to actually walk around but enough to move about in bed, blah blah blah blah blah. This is the part of the movie where the writer seems to be trying to put you to sleep so you can sleepwalk out of the theater and sleeptalk the box office into giving you a refund, but not before you sleepslaughter the projectionist and commit sleeparson on the fucking print of this fucking movie. Good God, shut up and do something! No, don't play a tape of your sleepwalking cat! Fuck this is boring!

The point of this bullshit is...well, OK there is no point (seriously, I'm not just saying that to make a joke. There's no point), but Michael does mention a drug he concocted that cancels the paralysis chemical and turns test subjects like his cat into sleepwalkers. Why would you invent that? I mean, what purpose does it serve? Shouldn't you invent the opposite drug so people who naturally sleepwalk can be cured? What good does it do to make people into sleepwalkers other than to give you something to laugh at as they bump into shit and mumble about nonsense? Who funded this research, anyway? It couldn't possibly serve any practical purpose.

That night, Kathy has the nightmare again and this time she attacks Kevin in her sleep, thinking he's the attacker. She goes to Michael and he has her sleep with the brain scan deal again, but this time he tells her how to change the dream when it gets too scary rather than waking up. She plans to just run out the door when the bad guy shows up but when this actually goes into motion, she runs out the door and sees the creepy, shadowy knife-wielding image of herself we saw on the DVD cover earlier. And then she stabs herself and in reality she runs around and attacks Michael. And when she wakes up they just recount the attack again. Seriously, fifty percent of this movie is made up of replays of that one scene and people talking about that one scene. The monotony is excruciating. Finally, they try the experiment again and this time the door reveals that lovely painting.

So the next day Kathy tells her dad she can't go to Japan...again (she has a record deal in London that you really don't care about, trust me) and then heads home to find Kevin boinking another woman in their bed. Rather than, you know, flipping out she just heads off to say goodbye to Michael, who's all excited because he tried the sleepwalking drug on himself. Well, he's excited for a moment anyway, but he winds up deflated when he reviews the tape and realizes he only tossed and turned and never actually sleepwalked. Worse yet he doesn't even remember the dream because he didn't wake up right away or some bullshit. Kathy offers to wake him up after his next dream and – woo hoo – it's time for more science crap. Michael can't make this sleepwalking shit work and decides that his dreams, whatever they are, aren't powerful enough. But aren't we lucky that Kathy's nightmares are so potent? So they trade places and Kathy takes the drug and once again she has the nightmare, only this time it takes place in the lab and with Michael in place of the attacker. This part of the movie is utterly insufferable. It goes on for fucking days with dream Michael molesting Kathy and real Michael watching Kathy sleepwalk and inappropriately sexy music playing on the soundtrack... Ugh. Really, nothing is fucking happening, at least not anything of consequence. This is where I started hucking things at my television because it's just awful.

Kathy finally wakes up and quite rightly asks Michael why he didn't wake her sooner and he has no answer because he's a totally uncaring creep who knows full well he just exploited a human being for his research. Kathy leaves in a huff and later on Michael notices that he forgot to give her the anti-sleepwalking serum. Wait, you have that?! Why aren't you sharing that with the world?!?! You selfish asshole! So now Kathy's liable to just go around sleepwalking every time she sleeps and since she takes a nap every five minutes, I suppose that's bad news. Michael heads over to Kathy's place to give her the drug, but she's already on her flight to London. Soon enough, it's nap time again (Good grief, my Grandmother can stay awake longer than this chick) and Kathy sleepstabs Kevin with a plastic knife. Luckily he, and everyone else on board, is asleep and the act goes unnoticed.

In London, Kathy sleepwalks the hallway dream in the hotel, much to the confusion of an onlooking guest who catches her when she makes the swan dive. Waking up in the man's arms, Kathy realizes that she didn't get the second drug and is rather upset when she can't reach Michael on the phone. But that's only because he's flying to London already. Kathy tries to call her father only for his secretary to tell her he's already in London. She goes to him and tells him all about what's been going on, and Dad's answer is to get her some barbiturates and drug her all to hell. Yeah, that's the ticket! While pops is away, Kathy wanders around his hotel room hiding all the sharp implements and closing the windows but (dun dun DUN) she misses a butter knife sitting on the table! So what, she's going to kill someone with a butter knife? You'd have better luck trying to cut them with a balloon. Kathy goes down for another nap (seriously, seek help) and has a pleasant dream about being a little girl again, which she acts out in sleepwalking. Dad comes back and knocks on the door since apparently she has locked him out. This somehow changes her dream to the hallway dream, during which she grabs the butter knife, which she hides in her pocket. Letting her father in, finally, she dreams that he's the apartment attacker and, of course, she whips that butter knife out and stabs him. And she actually draws blood with A BUTTER KNIFE. Kathy dashes out onto the balcony (the top of a castle tower in her dream...don't ask) and perches precariously on the edge just as Michael arrives. He can't get into her room and has to resort to going through a neighboring suite and climbing from balcony to balcony to get to her. Kathy gets to the swan dive part of her dream and leaps from the balcony. In the dream, she goes splat but in reality Michael catches her, she wakes up, the writer runs out of ideas, and the movie just stops.

The Unfathomable Badness of The Spirit

The Spirit is nothing less than a blight on my very soul that cannot be removed or in any way repaired or improved. I have never before walked out of a movie knowing with absolute certainty that I had just stared directly into the death of cinema. But there I was for two embarrassing hours feeling like Dave in 2001: a Space Odyssey as he rides into the black hole: seeing things so terrible they make your mind snap and hearing a chorus of wails and screams – the sound of the human spirit itself being irreparably crushed. The trek to my car afterward was a long, cold, dark journey of the soul as I tried not to shake and sob so hard as I realized what I had just been through. And then I began to seethe.

And then I got really, really pissed off.

Part of me is convinced that there simply are no words for this movie. I could write a book and illustrate it with hundreds and hundreds of frames from the movie and you still wouldn't understand if you hadn't seen it. The Spirit is a place where sight and sound converge in a way that no one has ever experienced before and, hopefully, never will again. Nothing in the history of motion pictures, dating all the way back to nickelodeons in the 1880s, has ever been so uniquely horrible. Trying to describe the experience of The Spirit in words is like trying to explain the new color you just invented to someone who has never seen it. Good luck, pal.

Ed Wood is no longer the punchline of bad movie jokes. Frank Miller has stolen the throne in the kingdom of cinematic shittiness and he will reign in perpetuity. Not even the worst of Wood's output – Glen or Glenda, Plan 9 from Outer Space, or even those weird softcore horror pornos from the 70's – is anywhere near as inept as The Spirit. It is a rare thing indeed to be be able to say you've witnessed the birth and implosion of a career in the span of but one movie, but Frank Miller has given us all the ability to see this phenomenon which henceforth will be known as The Miller Effect.

Now I know what some of you are saying right now. “This is Frank Miller's second movie! Sin City was first!” Yeah, well, fuck you because you are wrong. While Miller was graced with a co-director credit for Sin City, he had zilch to do with directing it. He was a consultant, there only to verify that the visuals of the film reflected the style of his comic book. Robert Rodriguez is just a huge geek who got a hard-on from the thought of people thinking he actually shared the lens with a comic legend like Frank Miller. We can, then, blame Rodriguez for unleashing this scourge upon us because it sure didn't take long for that credit to go to Frank's head and make him think of himself as an auteur. What's weird is that Miller didn't bother adapting one of his own books, choosing instead to dredge up a largely forgotten about character from the Golden Age of Comic Books back in the fucking forties, a detective from a cheerily colorful universe of Dick Tracy-ish crime bustin'. The Spirit comic is the exact tonal opposite of Miller's hopelessly self-aware, self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing hard boiled noir garbage. What's the deal, Frank? Did you know how clueless you were and figured you should just ruin someone else's beloved stories rather than unleashing yourself on yourself? Or did you think you could apply that faux-gritty, Rorschach blot-looking style of yours to anything and give it The Miller Touch? Did you trick yourself into thinking you were actually elevating The Spirit by completely altering it all the way down to the very DNA level?

Whatever it was you were thinking, if it wasn't “Hey I bet I can totally fuck up and forever shame myself”, you were hopelessly wrong. Because you did just that: you forever branded yourself with the deepest shame by producing an unprecedented turd. I think it no mere coincidence that distributor Lionsgate saw stocks take a free-fall a week after The Spirit hit the cinemas.

The Spirit is pretty much a self-reviewing film with the way it's opening credits start over a flat-line heart monitor. It's dead on arrival, alright. Up in his pretentiously stylized belfry, The Spirit, clad in fashionable boxer shorts and Zorro mask, gets a phone call informing him of something big going down down by the river involving the mysterious Octopus, a hard-to-catch criminal. It is here that the movie commits a fatal flaw of bad moviemaking: referencing better movies. The Spirit's answer to the phone call is simply “I'm on my way”, the catch phrase and movie tagline of DICK TRACY, which was made into a masterful film by Warren Beatty back in 1990. When I saw The Spirit in theaters and heard that line, I considered leaving and stopping to snatch up Beatty's film from the video store along the way. I want to do that now! Bad move, Frank.

Throwing on his all-black suit and bright red low-rez CGI tie and looking NOTHING LIKE THE COMIC BOOK COUNTERPART, The Spirit goes jumping from rooftop to rooftop and running all over and climbing shit and WHY DON'T YOU GET A CAR?! And at what point did you step in a puddle of radioactive semen?

God, these visual effects make no sense AND they suck. This shit looked hokey in Sin City, but it looks downright amateurish in The Spirit. There's a laughable bit here where Spirit runs along some power lines, which would have been cool oif he wasn't clearly a CGI silhouette. It looks like one of those Office 97 clip art men being pushed across the screen. The animation is so stiff it's barely animation at all.

And to make it all ever worse, Spirit starts doing this cheap Max Payne knock-off “noir” voice over with needlessly complex and obtuse language that means nothing. And since alleged “Actor” Gabriel Macht insists on half-whispering, it's hard to decipher some of it, too. God, two minutes in and I already hate this movie! And oh God, this Macht guy. Horrible. I will try so very hard to find words to capture this performance on the page, but forgive me if the task turns out to be to herculean for anyone short of Yahweh himself. Anyway, after doing all kinds of acrobatic bullshit, Spirit realizes “Oh shit, I don't have time for this!” (direct quote) and decides to go save some screaming woman from danger. He does so...I think (the whole thing is shown as silhouettes on a wall, but it's fucking night time, so how are we supposed to make this shit out?!)... and in the process gets a knife stuck in him. No worries, he casually pulls it out and then stares blankly like a mindless tool as he tries, and fails, to think of some way to explain this to the baffled woman. And then he distracts her by tossing the knife (Ooh, shiny! Women can't resist shiny!!!) and runs.

Down by the river, informant Dusty is surprised when a nubile woman, the poorly named Sand Serif (Eva Mendez), rises out of the water and director Frank Miller magically transports him from dry land to the middle of the water in just one ham-handed edit. Gun shots ring out just as Spirit and Leibowitz, a cop who's car he commandeered, arrive on the scene. As Dusty tell his tale in that wheezy “I'm a-dyin'” way, a flashback reveals that Sand is innocent and a mystery shooter took out Dusty. Sand dives to the bottom as said shooter keeps gunning for her. She arrives on bottom to retrieve a pair of treasure chests from her partner, and winds up with only one of the chests as she makes her escape. The mystery shooter takes the other. When they reach the surface, Sand's partner says that they're dealing with the Octopus here.

Oh, alright. This could be interesting. Fans of the comic book know that The Octopus was never shown except for his gloved hands, so that means that Frank Miller could give the character pretty much any look he wanted. Wonder what he came up with.

A drag queen. Of course. You fucking moron. It's like Frank had just seen Pink Flamingos and said “Hey, that Divine character looks real menacing and evil. Let's go with that!”. I apologize to Divine for tying her to something this bad. She was so much more talented than anyone we're gonna see in this turd.

Anyway, upon reaching the surface, The Octopus (poor, poor Samuel L. Jackson) spots the Spirit and initiates what is, without question, the single worst fight scene I have ever seen. It's a drag queen and a guy in a Zorro get-up reaching into hammerspace - that other plane of existence that exists just off-screen in cartoons, where the characters can reach to grab giant hammers and other objects – and bringing back random items such as severed heads, kitchen sinks, and at one point a seven-foot long pipe wrench, with which to bash each other as they make lame puns. It's an opus of jaw-dropping badness. The humor is so shallow that if it was a puddle you could stand in it and not get your feet wet. You cannot grasp the awfulness of this scene by merely reading about it. My dreams are haunted by Sam Jackson hitting me with a commode and bellowing “Come on! TOILETS ARE FUNNYYYYYY!” This is what most movies would call a “gag take”, the cast just fucking around with some props to amuse themselves while the lighting guy fiddles around or what have you. In The Spirit, that's good enough to make the final cut.

Fuck it, I need alcohol to get through this one. Some might find it uncouth to drink a Sam Adams at 4 AM. I deem it necessary. They wind up stumbling and mumbling like drunks anyway (“You talkin' ca-razyyyyyyyy talk, Octopus!”) so I can say it all ties in together.

Spirit collapses from his injuries and wakes up in the arms of Dr. Helen (someone or other), the lovely and lonely woman who loves him. She begs him to go to the hospital but he's the Goddamn Batman-er, I mean he's the Spirit, and he has bad guys to beat up. And yes, that is how he describes his job. “I beat up bad guys”. Woo hoo, so scary. Our old pal Dusty finally dies, and in doing so reveals a locket hidden in his hand. Spirit takes it, prompting an angry speech from Police Chief I Can't Believe It's Not Bob Hoskins (Not Bob Hoskins), who is also afflicted with the Max Payne syndrome and talks like a character out of His Girl Friday for no good reason.

Elsewhere, Octopus heads for his lair with one of his goons in tow and now is as good a time as any to discuss said goons. Octopus has an army of clones who work for him as henchmen, all named things like Ethos and Pathos and Logos, etc. They are all fucking retards and incredibly annoying. Imagine an even dumber George “The Animal” Steele with a lisp and a “follow you like a puppy” complex and you basically have these guys. They make me want to suicide so badly. Thankfully, Octopus shoots the one in this scene, but there's plenty more left. This is also a good time to discuss a rather bizarre running gag in the film: the Octopus' obsession with eggs. Half of this guy's dialogue is related to eggs for never-explained reasons. He just keeps bring them up, like when Pathos says he'll go to the hospital for his broken arms and Octopus says “Everyone would know that an evil genius like me couldn't afford medical insurance for employees. That's egg on my face. I don't...like...EGG!...ON MY FACE!” Every other scene has this shit going on. I can only assume Frank Miller saw Funny Games and thought the whole egg theme was just brilliant.

Spirit looks inside the locket he took, and which Dusty grabbed from Sand's neck earlier on, and sees pictures of Sand and himself from when they were kids. Flashback time~! A young Spirit, real name Denny Colt, has pawned his bike to buy the locket for Sand, his one and only beloved, but just before he gives it to her she spots some serious bling in a passing car and, being a woman in a Frank Miller product, she's instantly infatuated with SHINY! OOH, SHINY!!! SHINYSHINYSHINY! Ya know, like real women are, all obsessed with material things and crushing boyhood dreams. Christ, Frank... The DVD chapter is even called “Something Shiny”. Of course, I have to wonder why some rich woman drove through a low-class neighborhood hanging her gloved and diamond-bedecked hand out the car window. Other than to give Frank Miller an excuse to be a piece of shit.

Young Denny offers Sand the less-shiny locket he bought her and while she excepts it, she makes sure to make Denny understand that this doesn't make her his girl. Yes, I think we can all see why Denny loves her. It's so...obvious?

This...this is what defines my entire existence.

The two do eventually kiss and all that cutesy kid shit, but then things go wrong in a sequence that I will never understand. Denny's washed-up boxer uncle Pete gets into some kid of trouble with a mugger and Sand's dad, a beat cop, steps in to help but accidentally gets shot in the process. Dumb old Pete thinks it was his fault and blows his own brains out on the spot. Sand and Denny show up and Sand gets mad about Pete and tells a TV news crew that she hates cops and then she and Denny wander into an alley and she starts complaining about wanting money and jewels and dresses and...way to care about your dad dying, bitch. Jesus Christ, the depth of Frank Miller's woman hate is unfathomable. And it's indecipherable. I mean really, she's mad that Pete died and she hates her cop dad? What the fuck does that even...AHHHHH! And then she wanders off into the night and Denny never saw her again.

Back in the present, in his secret underground sewer dojo (???) Octopus has a meeting with the Thos' and his henchwoman Silken Floss, played by the incomparable Scarlett Johansson. Incomparably terrible, that is. She makes Gabriel Macht look like fucking De Niro by comparison at every turn. Again, here's a performance you have to see and hear to understand fully. Her woodenness, lack of effort and obvious contempt for the material she is reading are so incredible. Did Frank Miller even bother directing her at all, I wonder? She seems like she's been left on her own to do whatever and she just can't think of anything to do. Not that I have time to ponder that right now, because the scene we're in is another one like the fight scene – it makes no. Fucking. Sense. Octopus is dressed like a samurai in this dojo of his and when he opens his treasure chest he finds Jason's Golden Fleece. This is bad because he actually wanted the contents of the other treasure chest: The Blood of Heracles. How two mythical objects like this came to exist and then found their way to the bottom of a muddy river in Central City, USA, is never explained. It just makes no sense. Somehow or other, the Blood of Heracles is supposed to give anyone who drinks it (ewwww) God-like powers, and that would help Octopus conquer the world.

But since he has the Golden Fleece instead, he knows Sand Serif must have the blood. Enraged by this turn of events, Octopus turns into a cartoon and kills the Thos'.

I loudly shouted “WHY!?” in the theater when this happened. No one had an answer. And then Silken and Octopus discuss the situation as the background morphs into a cliché Japanese “Rising Sun” image. What sense does that make? I don't get it. This scene...my God. If it's on youtube...just watch it.

Elsewhere, Sand Serif has a meeting with the art...related person...who was supposed to find her the Golden Fleece. Or, as Sand calls it, “The shiny thing to end all shiny things”. Also, she randomly photocopies her own ass for no reason. Except so she can ogle it, because I guess she's a secret narcissistic lesbian or something. You know, like all women are. Anyway, she knows the art dealer/stealer guy sold her out to Octopus and takes all his money or something and then gives the options to either kill himself or see his life ruined when Sand sends photos of him getting close with a teenage girl to the news. He takes the first choice. Wow, harsh.

Over at the hospital, Spirit is getting checked out by Dr. Helen, who tells him he needs some bed rest. Spirit tells her she's the one who needs bed rest because she looks like a dog. Mind you, she looks perfectly fine, but she's a woman in Miller-dom, so she can be insulted at will. Of course, Helen is so charmed by the way Spirit treats her like dirt that she gives in completely to his sexual advances, even begging for them. But then Not Bob Hoskins and his cutey rookie bust in to remind Helen that she “looks like Hell”. Mind you, Not Bob Hoskins is Helen's dad. And he very angrily told her she looks like Hell. Lovely. And to cap off Helen's woe, Spirit can't help but hit on Officer Morgenstern, the rookie who's tagging along.

I...Wow. Just wow. The misogyny is just overpowering. The two-timing, skirt-chasing piece of shit is our hero and the hard-working doctor woman is a dog who looks like Hell and gets crapped on by every man she meets. Whatcha trying to say, Frank?

As Spirit, Morgenstern, and Not Bob Hoskins walk down the street, Spirit nonchalantly stops a mugger, delivers an impromptu TV PSA about dental hygiene, and hits on a news anchorwoman all in under a minute. Whatever. The point of this scene seems to be just to say “Sand Serif” a lot as the three discuss her returning to Central City, which apparently is like a crime or something. I guess the Central City Anti-Tourism Board stepped in when they saw money show up in the toll booth for the first time in fifteen years. Turns out that Sand sent the art dealer's money to the police force as an “anonymous” donation, but they tracked it to his office and found his corpse. And the tell-tale ass photocopy. I can at least say that this scene doesn't suck, but it is boring. The only really good thing here is that the actress playing Morgenstern is both cute and plucky and she's actually entertaining to watch. And she gets to be intelligent, too!

You know, I'm starting to question the significance of the Octopus to this movie. Our next scene is with him and, again, it's just plain damn silly and does nothing to establish his villainy. He's in a lab looking at a fucked-up Thos clone that's just a foot with a head (?) while Silken Floss complains of falling profits from their drug dealing or something else that doesn't matter anyway. This scene is pointless.

Spirit finds Sand in a hotel and tries to arrest her but instead they wind up in one of those “masked man trying to let on his secret identity” deals as Spirit tries to make Sand realize he's Denny, but she just does the old “He's dead! You're dead!” thing and accidentally shoves Spirit right out a window. What a lightweight wuss he must be. Luckily, his cape catches on a gargoyle on the way down so he can hang there and be insulted by none-too-impressed pedestrians down below. Oh yeah, make your hero out as a tool and someone the people hate. This is like when Jimmy's name gets booed at Video Armageddon in The Wizard. Why would you do that? Anyway, since his cape can't hold – and since a glass elevator of women who need to be hit on is going by – Spirit resorts to using his belt as a lasso to swing himself to safety. Too bad his pants fall down and reveal his boxers.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, he takes a cell phone call from Morgenstern, who tells him one of Octopus' goons was found dead and covered in industrial salt. And after getting to safety, he starts narrating out loud like a crazy person on a subway car as he tells the Octopus he's coming for him. You talkin' ca-razyyyyy talk, Spirit. As he heads off to an industrial salt plant Spirit dispatches of some Thos' and then runs into Silken. And being a womanizing asshole, he immediately gets all kissey-kissey and gets an injection of knockout juice for his stupidity.

And now, Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, Children of All Ages. The. Worst. Scene. Evarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!! Spirit wakes up tied to a chair and is as bewildered as the rest of us when Octopus walks in...

Dressed as a Nazi. This is where I again outright shouted “WHYYYYYYYY?!” And no one had an answer. And again, this Octopus scene is totally worthless, as his grand speech about death is interrupted by a phone call (record-scratch on the soundtrack and everything). Even Spirit can't tolerate this scene, “Man I am getting old just listening to you”. The sheer buffoonery of the Octopus is so...so... God damn stupid! Anyway, Spirit manages to get Octopus to get to the point, which is explaining why the two of them are so invulnerable. Flashback to Officer Denny Colt's death, gunned down with jizz bullets in the grand Frank Miller tradition, after which Octopus used his body as the test subject for an immortality serum. It worked, and Denny rose from his grave days later reborn as unstoppable crime fighter The Spirit. And Not Bob Hoskins is shown to be fully aware of who and what Spirit is, but that really doesn't matter much to the plot so I wonder why they bother with it. Octopus shot himself up too, and here we are. And now Octopus wants the Blood so he can do the God thing...yadda yadda. And then the scene goes from stupid to despicable when Octopus feeds an adorable kitten a botched batch of serum just so they can watch the creature melt and run down a drain. For the first time, Spirit actually wins me over as he vows to avenge the cat.

Spirit gets his chance quickly as Octopus' Parisian belly-dancing henchwoman Plaster, of Paris (Paz Vega) frees him from his bindings after...what else...remembering the time they fucked. Spirit gives Octopus a whoopin' and then he and Plaster head topside where they kiss all random-like until Plaster runs a sword through Spirit's gut and leaves him to die as she dances right on out of the movie. Yeah, that character was necessary. Spirit stumbles down to the docks and falls into the river, where he finally embraces Angel of Death Lorelei, a specter who's been haunting him at every near-death experience in the movie but who's role is so limited (she just says “You're so close” or “You're almost mine” and nothing else) she's hardly worth mentioning. I don't even care who played her and you can't tell since the wonky effects obstruct the view of her face. As he dies, Spirit sees ol' Sand flash before his eyes and he decides to keep on living for Christ knows what reason (she's a whore!), much to the chagrin of Lorelei. This is quite literally where the movie dies, as indicated by the flatline:

After collapsing on the beach, Spirit wakes up in Helen's hospital and jumps out of bed after being clinically dead for three hours. His first thought? He wants a new tie. Secondly, he wants the Octopus dead. Elsewhere, Sand and Silken meet up to exchange treasures (scene underscored with raunchy softcore porno music because dey is pretee gurlz and Frank like pretee gurlz). And of course, the women have to act dumb as they talk about how fabulous they look and how fun it is to be naughty with the guns and whatnot. Ugh. Not Bob Hoskins and Morgenstern are spying on the deal, Morgenstern armed with the most recockulous cannon I've ever seen. Things go awry during the exchange as the Thos clone on hand starts shooting and Octopus pops out of Silken's truck. But then, oho, The Spirit shows up...and gets gunned down. The coppers rush in guns a-blazin' and airships a-flyin'. This bit is just the worst kind of comedy because it makes everyone look so god damn ridiculous. Octopus and the Thos' whip out their guns and just start waving them around and firing into the air at the choppahs and they look so silly doing so. Like spastics.

Morgenstern puts that cannon to good use finally and blows the Octopus up something good, even if it only takes one of his arms off. Not Bob Hoskins steps in to finish the job with several bullets to the head, but Octopus just bends over and shakes them out. And then he goes to drink the blood, but spends too long howling “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” into the heavens, allowing Sand time enough to shoot the vase and spill the blood. Spirit, who was wearing a kevlar vest it turns out, runs up and shoves a grenade into Octopus' gut, bellowing “Let's Die!”, which is the best bad hero phrase this side of “The Good Guys Always Win, Even in the Eighties”. Sand has other ideas, though, as she covers herself and Spirit with the Golden Fleece (why is a fleece that big? Was it actually the Golden Comforter?), and they survive the blast. Spirit returns Sand's locket (aw) and the kiss (aww) right in front of Helen (oh). Spirit and Sand say their goodbyes and then Spirit has the audacity to go over to Helen and tell her he loves her and she just accepts it, I guess. Elsewhere, Silken finds Octopus' finger crawling across the ground and declares she's starting over! Finally (finally) the movie ends with Spirit vowing to always protect his city because he is...it's Spirit.

Thank God that's over. This movie is SHIT. It's unadulterated, putrid, festering SHIT. The Spirit is stupid, unfunny, undramatic, ugly-ass looking, sad-sack ass directed, barely-acted shit. Everything is wrong with this movie. It can't decide if it's serious or satire, but either way it is definitely malicious towards both Spirit-creator Will Eisner and the movie-going public. Every frame of this movie reeks with contempt for anyone who would watch it and condescension towards anyone who would like it. This movie is aimed at the lowest common denominator, the people too dense to know the movie they like is openly mocking them for doing so. It's quite clear that Frank Miller's game plan here was “Eh, I'll just do whatthefuckever because all the idiots out there will buy it for my name and suck my cock 'cuz I Am a Geen-Yussss!”. Yeah, well we all saw past the bullshit, Frank. The Spirit bombed like Nagasaki and made Miller look like the joke he is. The reviews were universally savaging and audiences were pathetically small (less than twenty people per screening on average, by my math). Were it not for the record-setting disaster of Delgo around the same time, The Spirit would have gone down as the new slang word for Box Office failure.

Plain and simple, this movie does not deserve anyone's money. It is to my eternal shame and embarrassment that I not only saw it twice but actually paid for the dishonor both times. And when I count the hours I have spent viewing it, writing about it, and thinking about it, I see that my life is almost a day shorter and that makes me sad.

In closing, there are but four words to sum up The Spirit:

Frank Miller: Epic Fail.