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avortac4's Replies
Network (1976) is a different movie with different message, but this movie is _STILL_ a rip-off of that movie. It has almost identical parts, it uses 'media' in a very similar way, but it just tells a different, much more watered-down, non-poignant non-story with the typical hollywood romance crap with that premise.
Basically it rips off that movie, then it rips it apart to little pieces and then craps on those pieces and tries to make a 'romance story' out of it. Urgh, talk about vomit-inducing.
Eddie Murphy can be ridiculously funny and entertaining, and absolutely fun to watch.
Too bad he's not ANY of that in this movie.
I think this movie has low rating because it's a shítty movie, a bad rip-off of a much better movie, a 'vehicle for Murphy' - a comedian, whose repetitive schtick had lost its novelty a long time ago.
A bad movie = low rating.
Makes sense to me.
Murphy is a really fun and funny comedian with powerful screen presence, and he deserves to be rich and famous, but this movie proves that he can also be pretty gosh-darned AWFUL, unfunny and his stuff can look TIRED and awfully obsolete to look at.
It's like.."we've seen all this before, why are you still doing this and nothing new?"
It's not the worst movie I have ever seen, and the trash I have seen during the last couple of years is SO horrendous, I had to reinvent my whole scale just to do justice to the level of crap that now I know exists, so this movie is not that bad - but the problem is, it's not that GOOD, either.
It's a bit too vague, a bit too plodding, a bit too predictable, and a bit too 'mysterious' for its own good, while being too boring to be this 'mysterious'.
I won't believe for a second that someone like Murphy can be 'God'. Morgan Freeman, sure (though why does God always have to be BLACK? WHy can't he just be 'universal', as in no-gender, no-race 'everything' with no discernable shape, and definitely not some bipedal form-imprisoned entity!)
A human being has no penis.
The temporary male BODY that a human being might be using or living in can have a penis.
So in a way, you could say that men don't really have penises. It's a loaner in any case, it's not really part of them any more than a car stereo is part of them.
You can be weird if you want, it's ok. It's better to be weird than to be a conformist people-pleaser that is well-adjusted to a thoroughly sick world.
This movie is sort of nasty and boring more than funny. It has some interesting and funny moments, but for the most part, it's a simp that's betrayed by an evil hag - very realistic, happens a lot in real life.
In my opinion, this movie doesn't work on any level. The only good thing about it is that it has some great 1980s atmosphere, and that's about it.
Chevy Chase did many kinds of things, from great classics, like Fletch to mediocre 'I don't know what to think about it' unfunny things like 'Memoirs of an Invisible Man' (or was it 'the'?), that's based on a really badly-written waiting room trash novel, to this kind of attempts to cash-in on his fame.
The best Chevy Chase movie has to be 'National Lampoon's Vacation', of course. THAT movie just works, especially because it's funny. This one doesn't, and isn't.
How is this a classic?
It has got Martin Short, who I think is a bit of a comedy genius (watch Innerspace to know what I mean), and that Russell whatever, but other than that, in my opinion, this movie doesn't really work.
It has the 'bumbling fool father' (WHY IS THIS ALWAYS THE STEREOTYPE?! Didn't Chevy Chase play this kind of role enough? Do we need Martin Short to do this, too? I know a 'competent dad' is not as funny, but it WOULD be funny because it would be so shockingly unexpected at this point!) character that's not funny, it has the 'captain Ron-character' that..
..frankly, this movie doesn't clearly define, or know what to do with. Some times he seems just crazy and irresponsible psychopath, other times he seems competent and trustworthy, and so forth and so on. His character fluctuates way too much, it's hard to know what to think of him.
He's not like Mr. Bean or someone you can instantly understand, he just keeps being all kinds of different things, which is just frustrating to watch if something.
This movie I watched ONCE, and never afterwards, as it's just slow, boring, cringy and predictable. Nothing much happens that you can't predict, and whatever little there is, is just boring and uninteresting. Someone clearly wanted to do a 'Vacation movie with a boat', but it just doesn't work, and the worst thing is, it's never very funny at all.
The only memorable part is the 'guerrilla vs. gorilla' thing, which I tried to once explain to someone japanese, and they were relieved to hear that even native speakers can have trouble distinquishing between the pronunciation of those words.
You can have as much realism as you want when it comes to war, wound visuals, things of horror, mental illnesses and whatnot.
However, hollyweird will _NEVER_, ever dare show realism, when it comes to anything to do with 'men vs. women'-dynamic in real life.
They will never show 'villains do realistic things to women', they will never show realistic 'pair-bonding' or 'mating dynamic', they will NEVER reveal what women's psyche is really like, they won't talk about hypergamy, PUAs or show someone seduce a woman and show a woman be dependent on a man.
There is a narrative they will never break with realism or truth. When it comes to bodily mutiliation and blood spurts, they can be as realistic as possible. But how alphas approach women and how women react to high-status men, that's something you will never see.
Not that I condone or want to see rRRRpe on screen, but I am often frustrated about the 'soft villains' that treat every and any woman like a precious flower - just watch the ridiculous cartoon movie 'Commando' from the 1980s and realize what ACTUAL villans would've done to that daughter, how a woman would ACTUALLY have behaved instead of firing a rocket launcher on a public street.. TWICE!
If you watch some prank videos, you can learn a lot about how women react. There are these pranks, where someone dresses up as a monster and then goes scaring women on the streets. ALL he does is a small sound, like a grunt, and a TINY body movement towards the woman.
EVERY SINGLE WOMAN SCREAMS LIKE THEIR HEAD IS BEING CUT OFF!
Most men barely make a sound, even if they get a bit startled, some instinctively protect the women.
Yet, gender is a social construction, woman can't be defined, there are zillion genders and women are stronger than men.
Women are easily scared - a spider can make them go crazy. This is never shown in movies, where women are always Mary Sues that have no flaws and are afraid of nothing.
Watch those prank videos.. you'll see.
"Fundamentally, Cynthia Rothrock is mediocre actress anyway. She is OK in the low budget chop socky movies she used to make, but not for major movies like this."
You are basically correct. She's nothing to type home about, but she can be enjoyable in some not-so-serious romps, AS LONG as there's ACTUAL eye candy in there as well.
I mean, if she and her short-haired dogface and enormous áss macho in some movie a bit, it's not too bad, as you know the stunts are done by actual HongKongians, and there will be ACTUALLY good Kung-Fu actresses in the movie.
If she's the ONLY 'star' in the movie... I'll pass.
I have NEVER heard of any man being 'afraid of being overshadowed by a woman' - men don't CARE about these 'gender issues' the same way fema-fascist nuts always PROJECT they would. What man would ever care who you cast as the female leads? I mean, can you imagine regular men thinking this way? I sure can't!
The only 'men' I can imagine even thinking this way are some kind of hypersensitive, fragile-ego decorator high-pithced feminine metrosexual-looking .. well, let's say it, idiot GAYtards. Why would it matter if it's a woman or not?
Women might be scared to be overshadowed by a 'mere man', but men hold women on pedestal, so this doesn't even make any sense. The only way it would make sense if men felt contempt for women JUST because they're women, but obviously this doesn't happen.
The only reason why many men might feel contempt or disgust of women, is their BEHAVIOUR these days, which is a completely different story than what you are peddling, fking fema-fascist BSmonger.
"..as would be male co-stars did not want to get overshadowed by a woman. "
What are you talking about? How feministic an explanation can you come up with..?
Who cares about 'overshadowing' - you think Cynthia Rothrock could've overshadowed Arnold damn Schwartzenegger, even with her áss being almost as big as Arnold's biceps?
I am so glad they chose someone visually pleasing and with a good body instead of that stupid hack that doesn't even do her own stunts, but yet tries to act like touch feminist with that dogface of hers. The only reason she was allowed to be in all those Hong Kong movies was that she was a rare foreigner that could do a bit of Kung-Fu (she has nothing on Michelle Yeoh or Cynthia Khan, though, especially when it comes to screen presence), and because she's a woman (I guess some sort of affirmative action happens even in Asia).
I never had much respect for her, nothing she does on screen has ever been all that impressive. She's like a mediocre beatboxer; you can listen to that for awhile, but then you go back to the better ones and forget about the mediocre ones.
Sometimes her female macho BS is unbearably cringy to watch - the actual Hong Kong Kung-Fu actresses, like Moon Lee, are so much more interesting to look at, and they, with their SLIM bodies without gigantit butt, can do actual, proper, exciting and interesting Kung-Fu, and sing, too! (Just watch Moon Lee's performance in the 'Killer Angels' movie, if I remember correctly - brilliant 1980s energy!).
Cynthia is SO 'meh', I can't believe your stupid, misandristic 'men are egomonsters'-explanation for a second. There's NO WAY any man would object that way, and there's NO WAY anyone would listen to men even if they did. Why would they worry about being 'overshadowed'??
Where do you get this crap, did you go to some short-blue-haired-Karen meeting or what?
It's not like casting directors ask the 'male would-be co-stars' whether the APPROVE their casting choices!
Not really.
It's more a case of 'The Running Man being a USELESS rip-off of Total Recall AND Robocop AND some other movies, without successfully being even nearly as good as any of them'.
'The Running Man' is not well-enough done to be watchable - it's a useless movie that shouldn't exist. When you can watch Total Recall and Robocop, WHAT can you possibly get out of watching 'The Running Man'? That movie offers NOTHING that the better movies it tries to rip off do not do much better.
How is she a Karen? What is rude or crazy about her? She's really Quaid anyway, so your point is very weird and moot.
Karens want to talk to your manager and have a specific hairstyle; this MAN (wearing a hagsuit) doesn't really fit into any Karen description.
That whole 'Melina image' thing is contradictory on multiple levels.
First, we see Melina in Quaid's DREAM before he ever goes to Total Rekall or whatever the place's name was.
This hints 'it was all real'.
Then we see her in the menu, and this hints 'it was all fake'.
I mean, does Quaid select that type of a woman because of his dream, because it actually happened and then the system just happened to generate EXACTLY her, or does he remember dreaming about her because he's programmed to remember a woman like that and is retroactively remembering the dream according to the specifications?
This movie doesn't take a stance either way, and blurs the waters for both explanations, so you can never just say 'it was all fake' or 'it was all real' without being able to be questioned heavily on your stance. This is a bit annoying thing about the movie.
However, I think he was lobotomized, because of the FADE TO WHITE at the end AND what Quaid says JUST before it happens..
"If that was the intent, they did a poor job. There are too many scenes of action happening away from Quaid, things he wouldn't be aware of."
No, they didn't.
I mean, this movie does give REASONS to believe in either conclusion. It does fade to WHITE at the end, and everything the doc says DOES COME TRUE - even 'walls of reality come crashing down' IMMEDIATELY when the doc is shot.
I mean, you can't take ONE thing and make your conclusion based on that, when this movie has SO MANY THINGS for both explanations. This movie does not make a clear-cut case for EITHER solution.
I like to think the Lobotomy theory is the correct one, it's more poignant and satisfying that way.
However, BOTH explanations are _CONTRADICTED_ in the movie, so you can't just take a stance and stick with it without realizing there are things that contradict that stance. In THIS way, this movie is a bit poorly made, because it tries to have its cake and eat it, too. But it's not a clear-cut case, the way you ignorantly seem to think.
He's not a vegetable, he was LOBOTOMIZED. There's a difference.
In any case, yes, he did get lobotomized.
Also, no, he didn't get lobotomized.
The movie doesn't take a strong stance either way, but it hints at both possibilities a lot - while still contradicting itself and both possibilities enough that it can't really be said to be either possibility. In a way, this movie is worse than Schrödinger's cat.
So to answer you question; EVERYONE.
Which would you rather have, a vivid memory of you eating oatmeal in a dark room yesterday, or a vivid memory of you wildly adventuring in all kinds of glorious worlds, suited to your tastes, doing exciting things and practicing activities you always wanted to do or love to do, with the kind of people that you would really love a lot, and who would love you?
I mean, it's a no-brainer, OF COURSE you would want the latter implanted to you rather than just whatever you would otherwise have, why wouldn't you? It's an insane question. There's NO argument against the memory implant (if it's safe), but there's gotta be a zillion arguments for it.
Your question is as insane as asking 'who would ever want to have a functional holodeck to use every day'. It's like.. what.. who wouldn't?! If you can have a DREAM EXPERIENCE, but make it feel AS REAL AS IF YOU EXPERIENCED IT, why the heck would you not want it??
Doing the most fantastic thing in real life doesn't last, it will become just a memory. So implanting that memory would basically be the same thing as doing it, except that you didn't do it, but your brain would never know it.
This kind of thing COULD become the 'drug of the future', if there's a dystopia, where poor people can't eat enough and such (hmm.. surely such poverty is just fiction, right.. RIGHT??), so they get some cheap memory implants of eating gourmet meals, so at least they can dupe themselves into thinking they are regularly having luxurious meals, while only eating a rat and a half every week.
I mean, that could make for an interesting story if all the psychological implications are taken into account.
I would probably still not take any memory implants, as I like to keep things real, and I don't believe in hedonism, but spiritual cultivation through pain, misery, suffering and paying your karmic debts. Trying to escape your karma would just backfire somehow anyway (as we can see from this movie).
You have not throught it through.
What are experiences in life? Memories. Everything becomes a memory, even you writing your ignorant and downright thoughtless post.
Why is nostalgy such a powerful, big thing? I think the word originally meant something like 'pain from homesickness' or something along those lines.
Why do people cry about the past, yearn for the good, old times? Because they REMEMBER them.
This movie's premise is that it doesn't matter if it's a REAL memory or a FAKE memory, it will be just as powerful to you, and you can remember it just as fondly. You are shaped and cultivated by your experiences and the people you meet - but if you don't have opportunity to do this 'for real', and the fake memories are just as convincing, what would it matter if you ACTUALLY did it or if it's just faked, as long as you EXPERIENCE (the key word here) it as powerfully and nostalgically?
As EVERYTHING you do becomes 'just a memory' - you can't hold on to anything, everything becomes basically sand between your fingers and falls down to abyss of oblivion - memories are THE things to get, when you want to experience something.
What difference does it make if you go to a holodeck to experience a great trip and then come back and remember it fondly for the rest of your life, OR that same memory is just IMPLANTED into you, so you can remember it just as fondly and powerfully, when the end result is the same anyway?
I wonder if you forgot your post, or if it comes back to haunting you as a memory.. wouldn't YOU like to have it be revealed that it never really happened, it was all just a memory implant?
The MAIN thing about all of this is that it doesn't REALLY matter if it's 'implanted memories' or 'holodeck' or 'The Construct' (like in 'The Matrix').
What matters is that there's a macguffin that can give the user a 'great virtual experience'.
The only reason it matters here, is that the story is built around the 'memory' thing.
You do realize it's a CARTOON, and the story is FICTIONAL, don't you? No one killed anything / anyone!
Because it's fictional, it's imaginary. In imagination, you can do anything you want (basically), so NOTHING stops you from 'bringing your favorite character back to life' - or just make-believing it has been alive all this time.
In any case, if you really get PISSED OFF about someone writing something FICTIONAL about a CARTOON CHARACTEr, there is something wrong with you, no offence.
"I saw this on my 12th birthday."
"..on my 13th birthday."
Why do some people say it this way, instead of 'when I turned [number]'?
Do you realize you are probably wrong, when you say it this way?
Think about it. How old were you when you were born? Your FIRST birthday, you are 0 years old. Your SECOND birthday, you are 1 years old. Well, 'one year old'.
So 12th birthday, you are 11 years old. Did you mean this? If so, never mind. I bet 100 euros that you didn't, though. You probably meant 'the day you turned 12 years old', so please either stop using this way or at least use it correctly.
Of course on your thirteenth birthday, you would turn twelve. Yes, that's right, you were 12 years old on your 13th birthday, if you are being truthful about it. If you meant 'when you turned 13 years old', you made a horrible, horrible mistake here, or lied.
In any case, perhaps you used it correctly and you DID mean you were 12 years old on your 13th birthday, in which case, never mind this post.
Did you mean SEXUAL ASSAULT?
Wow, it's very easy to type it out, why censor something you obviously wanted to say? I mean, if you want to use some words, have the guts to USE THOSE WORDS. If you don't want to use those words, choose some other words. Don't be a chicken and do a cop-out to please the unpleasable by stupidly CENSORING yourself, holy cow. Is this a new trend, where people try to out-stupidify each other?
In any case, what the hell is sexual about that situation? Nothing! It was just a flex of the Matrix-powers the agents have, and a way to SHUT UP Neo, so he can't call anyone. Why are you insanely reading something sexual into it?
Of course now you can claim you never SAID it, because you used asterisks, so you could have said anything, blahblah.. so are you censoring yourself to chicken out even more, by creating an artificial plausible deniability?
Nothing makes me angrier than dishonest, slimy, sneaky, hypocritical cretins, except turdy snakes, like you.