June 6, 2008, - 4:53 pm
Weekend Box Office: Silly “Zohan,” Awful “Foot Fist,” Anti-War “SOP”‘s Unintended Insights, Whitewashed “Stuck”
By Debbie Schlussel
The only new movie I semi-recommend, with strong reservations, this weekend, is “Stuck.” I did not review “Kung Fu Panda,” as the only screening took place on the Jewish Sabbath. Sorry.
* “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan“: Read my complete review. What could have been funny is actually the worst of standard Adam Sandler fare. Vulgar, disgusting, politically correct, and a waste of time. Not funny. Again, read my complete review.
FOUR MARXES
* “Stuck“: I will post a full review column on this movie, Monday. It’s based on the true story of Chante Mallard, the woman who hit a homeless man with her car and let him die. The movie, starring Mena Suvari, has a much better ending and pay-off for the dreadfulness, than the real-life version. And the ending makes it all worth it. It’s like a low-budget Steven King thriller.
While the movie was well-done and shows the inhumanity of those who follow the hip-hop gangsta lifestyle (and have no respect for human life), the biggest objection I have is that the movie’s been whitewashed. In the real story, the killer is a Black racist woman. But here, she’s been turned into a White woman to be PC and ignore that Black-on-White racism is an important issue, which can often be fatal. Again, stay tuned for my column, Monday.
ONE MARX (PC whitewashing)
* “The Foot Fist Way“: This was one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen. A mean, selfish martial arts teacher at a strip mall teaches kids martial arts and constantly swears at them and says depraved sexual things to them in what seems like an early 1980s setting. Every character is in cheesy 1980s clothing, hairstyles, and make-up (blue eye-shadow). His wife is cheating on him and they split. Meanwhile he has a conflict with his nemesis a famous martial arts champ. Who cares?
This cheesy movie with no plot looks like a bad porn movie with no porn. It’s that bad. Will Farrell saw this movie which has been around a while and decided to spread this garbage onto the big screen. So horrid, I walked out.
FOUR MARXES
* “Standard Operating Procedure“: SOP is a POS. Yet another awful, anti-American anti-War movie. This one–a “documentary”–is about Abu Ghraib, and tries its darndest to make America look like a torturing, barbaric, inhumane country. But even this likely bomb fails at that goal. And it puts the truth to a lot of the lies about the level of so-called “torture” at Abu Ghraib.
One soldier, Roman Krol, tells about how he was sentenced to several months in prison for throwing a nerf ball at a prisoner and spilling some water on someone. This is torture? “People laugh at that,” he says about his sentence for nothing. Not sure how we win a war with this kind of overreaction to child’s play against prisoners.
Another soldier, Jeremy Sivits, was sentenced to a year in prison, when he was actually trying to save a prisoners hands from cuffs that were too tight.
We also learn that the famous photo of an Iraqi with a bag over his heads and wires hanging from him was not what it seemed. The wires were fake, not hooked up to anything. And the man–nicknamed “Gilligan” by soldiers–was accused of killing two American military Criminal Investigation Division agents with box cutters. Sounds like we were too nice to him.
And by the way, the soldiers who put him in this position with the wires, etc., were determined by U.S. authorities to have engaged in proper treatment of him. We were never told any of this by CBS’ “60 Minutes II” and Seymour Hirsch, who broke the Abu Ghraib story.
Interviews with people like Lynndie England don’t make the case against America’s war efforts and military, the intended goal of the movie. She blames Abu Ghraib on her being a female. She says that the women in the military are pressured to impress the men. Is this what Gloria Steinem is spewing these days?
The obnoxious former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski buck-passes throughout the movie. But she was in charge, and has now built a lucrative career blaming Israel and America and speaking at Arab and Muslim dinners and gatherings. Good riddance.
Finally, there’s an annoying lesbian soldier who keeps writing letters to her “wife.” What ever happend to “don’t ask, don’t tell”? She told, and she was a great candidate for ejection from our armed forces if there ever was one. She sounds like a valley girl and is a complete idiot. She let an old man die, while she took photos of herself giving the thumbs up with him.
She was the only soldier who made the uncompelling case this movie tries, however desperately, to tell. That some soldiers are idiots and inhuman with no heart. This one out of hundreds of thousands.
Case not made.
THREE MARXES
Did you read Stephen Hunter’s review of Zohan in the WaPo?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/05/AR2008060501322.html
laneh on June 6, 2008 at 8:14 pm