Tank Girl.

Review #2516: Tank Girl.

Cast: 

Lori Petty (Tank Girl), Ice-T (T-Saint), Naomi Watts (Jet Girl), Malcolm McDowell (Kesslee), Don Harvey (Sgt. Small), Jeff Kober (Booga), Reg E. Cathey (Deetee), Scott Coffey (Donner), Stacy Linn Ramsower (Sam), Ann Cusack (Sub Girl), Brian Wimmer (Richard), Iggy Pop (Rat Face), Ann Magnuson (The Madam), Dawn Robinson (Model), Billy L. Sullivan (Max), James Hong (Che'tsai), Charles Lucia (Capt. Derouche), with Harlan Clark (Additional Ripper), Doug Jones (Ripper), Ata Scanlan (Additional Ripper), Alvarez Wortham (Additional Ripper), and Roz Witt (Dr. Nikita) Directed by Rachel Talalay (#1144 - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare)

Review: 

"It’s such an iconic image. I think all strong women react in the same way to this outspoken crazed female icon. I was such a punk warrior. When I went in to pitch it – I mean, all you had to do was show the image. And when we sent the script out, the cover page was a comic book page. Even now when I talk to people who design for video games they say that there’s never a pitch for a female character that doesn’t include an image from Tank Girl. She’s the tough, punk warrior woman. She’s the icon of that. And every tough, interesting woman I know wants to be her."

I will admit that I had vaguely heard of this movie for years but was just lazy to see it (I first heard of this movie from the Nostalgia Critic* many years ago). Apparently, Rachel Talalay was given a Tank Girl comic to read by her stepdaughter when shooting her first film with Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). Tank Girl first appeared in print in 1988 in Deadline (a British comic magazine) that was developed by Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett; you might be interested to know that Hewlett, whose drawings were extracted for use in the title sequence of the film, later moved into a place with Blur's Damon Albarn that led to them being involved with the virtual band Gorillaz in 1998*. Talalay (the unpaid production assistant-turned-accountant-turned-producer-turned-director) got interested in doing a movie and found the Deadline publisher was already trying to find a studio. Eventually, MGM/United Artists became involved with doing the film (Talalay apparently rejected an offer from Disney, believing that they would not allow the amount of violence/sexual references required). Talalay then picked Catherine Hardwicke to be the production designer, while Tedi Sarafian wrote the screenplay. Made on a budget of $25 million in New Mexico and Arizona (mostly in an abandoned open-pit mine), there were considerable edits made by the studio that ranged from a "naked Ripper suit", edits to the torture scene, edits to one role in particular, and, naturally, the original ending where Tank Girl burps as it starts to rain. The animated sequences (as done by Mike Smith) were put in because they didn't have the money to do the action sequences (apparently the tank wasn't particularly fast). Martin and Hewlett did not like the finished product, believing in a subsequent interview that nobody could really make a successful movie of the character (as for Tank Girl, it went through a hiatus before returning for an on-and-off basis since 2007). Talalay and Petty were proud enough of the film that they did a live viewing party of the film in 2020.

Imagine: it's the year 2033 and all the water is gone. It's a freewheeling, bratty, odd little movie...and I can't help but like it. It's strange too, because a good chunk of the critiques of the film could just as easily be spun around for people (like me, only I probably won't go into detail about feminism, because, well, good luck with that*) that praise the film as a zany and free-spirited mess. There is a certain type of charm that appeals to me for most of its 104-minute runtime in its energy that is infectious. Apparently, the production team did not expect to get the services of Stan Winston but go figure, they were so enthusiastic that they cut their usual rates in half to meet the budget for the Rippers you see on screen: articulated ears and tails activated remotely and, well, no puppetry. Suffice to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but hey, half man/kangaroo, I can roll with it for a movie that likes to lurk in a offbeat wasteland (your milage may vary over how it would've gone if the film had not been edited down to, uh, take out the prosthetic penis). Petty (cast after consideration to go with Emily Lloyd) is delightfully loony enough to make for an entertaining antihero, one who has their own kinks and interests that could turn anything to make a crack at. Far be it from a movie that asks about power or the circumstances of what a wasteland looks like, you just get an unruly movie that has time to have a music interlude of "Let's Do It". Evidently, McDowell had a few decent memories making the movie, and, yes, this seems right up his alley to play a villain that loves water so much that he stabs people with a device that sucks the water right out of their body. How could one not enjoy him here? The rest of the cast roll along with causal engagement with a movie that moves to its own beat, for better or worse. As a whole, Tank Girl is the kind of movie that clicked enough for me to have fun with, although I can understand where it didn't exactly rock the world back in 1995. Offbeat and anarchic in ways that can be off-putting to those with less patience

 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*For a time, the Critic was my jam alongside Cinemassacre. And The Cinema Snob, eventually. 

*I used to know someone in college who dug them. The friendship didn't last at all, but at least Gorillaz is pretty decent.

*There was a discussion in a book, once, about talking about what cult films were "feminist" that called this film a "real feminist cult film" while labeling films by Kathryn Bigelow and Catherine Hardwicke as "too masculine", which honestly sounds like sour grapes more than anything.

Evidently, there was a mockumentary for the film, if you love it that much: Tank Girl Documentary 1995

Accepted.

Review #1264: Accepted.

Cast: 
Justin Long (Bartleby Gaines), Jonah Hill (Sherman Schrader III), Adam Herschman (Glen), Columbus Short (Darryl "Hands" Holloway), Maria Thayer (Rory Thayer), Lewis Black (Ben Lewis), Blake Lively (Monica Moreland), Mark Derwin (Jack Gaines), Ann Cusack (Diane Gaines), Hannah Marks (Lizzie Gaines), Robin Lord Taylor (Abernathy Darwin Dunlap), and Anthony Heald (Dean Richard Van Horne) Directed by Steve Pink.

Review: 
Do you remember your path to college? The acceptance letters, the campus visits, et cetera, et cetera. Of course some of us didn't actually do these things, much like how not everyone simply just went to the college they wanted (or went at all). But I don't think I ever thought to make my own university to make up for previous failures, really. Whether one is big on their college lives or not, I'm sure we can all agree that this is a rather lame comedy that wastes its premise with inconsistent humor. Inevitably, one would probably make a comparison to Animal House (1978) because one really can just use that as the measuring stick for college comedies involving ridiculous stunts, preppy adversaries and people who look at least a decade too old to be in college (minus Lively, though). Actually, why stop there, why not just make a comparison to American Pie (1999) with its crude nature with a young cast? At least one thing can be said about that film - it wasn't completely predictable and it actually did something with its rating (R-rated, as opposed to being PG-13 like this is, which even bleeps out a curse word at the end). What is there to be expected from a fake university named the South Harmon Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T, get it, hardy har har so clever) that came out of an old mental hospital? These characters are more generic than soda simply named Tasty Soda, right down to the bad guys with the truly compelling goal of wanting to raze the aptly named fake university to make a...gateway to make their college more prestigious. Gee, and the only way to stop the plan is to try and fight their case for education accreditation in front of the state board. Really, this should be like one of those choose your own adventure things, where you don't know the obvious decision (or joke) from the get-go. 

But enough about the shaky foundation, how are the actors when it comes to actually trying to make laughs. Is a guy in a hot dog costume imploring people to ask him about his frankfurter (obvious word change from me because I felt like it) really amusing? No? Too bad, it doesn't get that much better from there. Black seems able with a grouchy curmudgeon role, at least, since he actually seems to be trying to say something interesting in his cynicism about the system. Maybe he actually would've been a better lead than Long (no guesses allowed over who thought Bartleby was a clever character name), who doesn't seem as persuasive with generating laughs as opposed to just making smirks. I never really seem to ever care about his scheme, which honestly could've just been some cheesy drama more than anything. Hill is fine, making more of a presence than Herschman, Short, and Thayer combined. How? Ask yourself this: can you remember any interesting "funny" moment with that particular trio as opposed to Hill? Welp, there's your answer. Lively is here and there, having as much chemistry with Long as a bag of hammers. Some people are just destined to be stars, it just so happens some get to be in a lame one to accompany their earlier work. This whole review can really summed up by me just sighing and looking at the run-time every ten minutes, wondering if I should check on my phone or make a doodle. On the whole, this is just a mediocre comedy movie, bland enough to have three writers attached to it (Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Mark Perez) but not smart enough to really make an involving winner that matters more than just its 92 minute run-time. Not every comedy needs to be a smart one, but I'll be darned if one has to suffer through a lame one when there is always a better choice somewhere else that doesn't waste my time as much as the next viewer.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.