And now, as promised: the magic of Miracle Keith and his review of Smallville's Absolute Justice, edited only to break things up into more paragraphs:
MiracleKeith here, kids. Alright…I noticed that my last bit was farted out at the tail-end of the show…kind of like the island of misfit bits…I get it…it wasn’t really that good and I apologize.
I also caught on to Ry the Last Man’s comment about my “shtick” (and just as a side note, gentiles shouldn’t use Yiddish words in casual conversation..it’s like saying “some of my best friends are kikes”…you can ask all three of the Jews in Minnesota, they’ll all give the same answer. Silly Gentiles, shticks are for yids!
OK, so since Ryan is so tired of my “shticklach”, this week I’ll change it up a bit by switching to review mode. I need to rant about this abomination called “Smallville: Absolute Justice”, which contained 1) no scenes taking place in Smallville, 2) no justice.
Before I begin in earnest, I should say that yes, it’s great that the WB network is even attempting to pull off this superhero fan’s orgy of delights; it’s been over 25 years since that horrible Justice League TV movie that I watched with a much younger person’s eye for quality, and even then I knew that I was watching a silly, cut-rate show that had no story, no plot and community theater grade acting. It’s nearly impossible to make all those goofy-ass DC Golden Age heroes look good in live action format, so all due kudos to the WB for even trying to pull it off with a relatively big budget and some serious promotion.
And yet, all this sound and fury signified NOTHING. Let’s begin with the appearance of the first hero, who needlessly scares the hell out of totally sexless, network-friendly peroxide blonde Chloe in the first segment. This guy was supposed to be the Star-Spangled Kid? First of all, the actor looked like some ex-surfer/beach bum that they pulled off of Sunset Boulevard at the last minute before filming. He had no desperation, no urgency, nothing.
Then Chloe is stuffed in a dumpster before a gigantic fight breaks out (which apparently they didn’t have the budget to show?), but if Icicle is so intent on destroying the newly-formed league of heroes, and he somehow knows that the Star-Spangled Kid is going to be exactly in that location at that time, then how does he NOT know that Chloe is sitting in the dumpster right next to where they fought?
The next segment boggles the mind, as it contains so much poorly hidden sexual innuendo that it makes the whole affair seem even cheaper and sleazier than it actually was. So, this other little peroxide blonde, whose eyes are a little bigger than her face giving her an alarming owl-like presence, shows up at the hospital crying about how her daddy is dead.
If this wasn’t Freudian enough, this little orphan girl becomes obsessed with possessing her daddy’s giant, long, stiff, gleaming rod which shoots out this white stuff from one end. She then ends up dressing in ultra short-shorts a skin-tight halter top, and a domino mask, calling herself Star-Girl. She gets caught stealing the big rod by the equally wooden, younger surfer boy from the “I Have Cheekbones Therefore I Act” school of acting, the Green Arrow.
The Green Arrow questions Star Girl’s love of the long, stiff rod, and eventually, Star-Girl, Green Arrow and Super-dud Tom Welling (who had an executive producer credit, ‘nuff said), who is dressed up like a Goth Superman from the dépêche mode school of superheroes. We also see for the first time Hawkman, who seems to be way more concerned with his rugged beard and his sneering-is-acting performance, and the man who will become Dr. Fate.
This performance is the most curious, since it seems to veer between incoherent babbling meant to be conveyed as madness, which is the WORST possible way to convey madness – hasn’t anybody watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? – and an inexplicable lucidity that takes him out of babbling mode and into a sort of solemn moping mode that totally goes against the babbling insane guy thing.
Dr. Fate’s costume looks awful in live action, and the power to see the future is not really a crime-fighting superpower, by the way. Notice that the Oracle at Delphi is only a plot device, not the protagonist!! It is eventually revealed that there was a Justice Society of America operating secretly in the ‘70s, all of whom were arrested for an unrevealed reason. My problem is this: if these are truly “super” heroes, how did they get arrested?!?!? Couldn’t Green Lantern just bend the fucking bars with some giant green plier thingys?
No matter…introductions are made, a prickly relationship forms between Green Arrow and Hawkman, which consists of witty, cerebral zingers like – Hawkman: “Nice aim” Green Arrow: “Nice headgear”..this is one of the smarter exchanges. With dialogue like this, how can we lose? Superhero movies are the best!
The next phenomenal dialogue takes place in another long, talky and unnecessary scene between Chloe and Star Girl, the Battle of the Bottle Blondes, if you will. In this scene, we learn that Star Girl rilly, rilly wants Chloe to make the JLA quarters more like the old JSA HQ…”I mean, don’t you want a place to talk, to eat dinner? Some place more like…home” Awwww, talk about female empowerment. She kicks ass and does interior decorating tips too!
The so-called “plot” thickens when we learn that Icicle is not only trying to avenge his now-paralyzed father, but he’s also trying to impress a very large, very plastic-surgeried Pam Grier. Pam Grier?!? Believe me, I’m a fan of any triple-D cup woman I see on TV (there’s not nearly enough of ‘em), but Pam Grier seemed to be either phoning it in or trying really hard to force some kind of “tough attitude” by smiling with only one half of her mouth during the entire scene.
Of course, Ms. Grier looked like DeNiro when compared to the idiot they had playing Icicle. I’m sorry, but whining, squinting and gelling your peroxided hair into a mini-mohawk do NOT equal scary nor evil. A superhero movie is only as good as its villain, and this one was doomed from the moment they cast this hack. There are a lot of lame close-ups synched with “doom music”, lots of weird references to Checkmate and a hilariously bad black actor playing J’onn J’onnz, who seems like he just completed some modeling class and skipped the acting module.
The one surprising moment comes late in the game, with Dr. Fate meeting a grisly end and Icicle donning the mask of Fate. It doesn’t amount to much, as he mistakenly enters the lair of the JSA/JLA by himself (of course…why not fight a crowd of superheroes with untested powers..it HAS to work!), and is defeated when Hawkman knocks off his helmet (?). Get it? Neither do I.
Pam Grier reveals that Icicle has been working for the Suicide Squad and murders Icicle, and it ends with Green Arrow and Hawkman as friends and Martian Manhunter liking cookies. Great job, WB…you could have produced a JLA/JSA movie independent of that whole Smallville show and saved yourself a lot of bad acting, peroxide bills and embarrassment, but what the hell does a Jew from the Detroit suburbs know about anything anyways?
No comments:
Post a Comment