You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
L I F E
Not the board game, but the SCI FI space thriller coming to a theater near you.
It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting in the lone theater showing the movie.
My lap is filled with peanut M&M’s and buttered popcorn. I’ve dropped so much crap on my shirt, I look like a sushi chef at Benihanas.
I stare at the final scene. The capsule floats and the astronaut inside screams “No!!!!!”
The camera pulls back revealing the new reality, and the scene fades to black.
The ending demands a L I F E II but honestly, I don’t care how the 1st one ended enough to care about what happens next.
As I gather my senses, the deep thematic music pulsing through the theater intensifies. Why is it so loud? I guess if they play the final credits like a jet engine taking off, it will pulverize my frontal lobe into cinematic hamburger and prevent me from demanding a refund, or at least a knee jerk reaction to this film.
I stand. I am wobbly. I hear buttery, melted M&M’s hit the floor.
I stare at the darkness, the intense music blaring in my ears, and I wonder, WTF?
I watch as the final credits flash across the screen. The audience is numb, pulverized into submission by special effects and loud, music.
“Is that it?” is the collective groan as people begin to collect their belongings and reach for their wallets to see if they were robbed.
I bend my knees slightly, regaining the feeling in my legs. As I wait for my joints to respond to intelligent commands, I see two shadowy figures march down the theater stairs.
“That’s the worst movie ever!,” one teen says aloud to his buddy.
“Right!,” the other kid says, his cell phone illuminated like a white hot spot light of teenage stupid.
And suddenly my mind is filled with doubt. What did I just see?
The worst movie ever?
That’s a monumental statement?
I guess these two embryos never saw MEATBALLS with Bill Murray.
The worst movie ever? Not even close.
Until you’ve seen any of the Quentin Tarantino self indulgent films, hold your vote.
Worst movie ever? Instead of waterboarding, Terrorists should be made to watch PORKYS 2 over and over. By the 3rd showing, they’ll cough up the secrets to the safe house and Osama Bin Laden’s favorite pulled pork recipe.
This LIFE isn’t even as forgettable as LIFE with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence who are in jail for some ridiculous reason.
This movie wasn’t so bad, I think to myself as I walk down the stairs, staring at the white credits slowly rising up the black screen, the music blaring keeping me in suspense, even as I leave the theater.
I wait for the other farm animals to merge into the lone exit at the bottom of the stairs. MOOO.
It’s as this juncture that I decide I was entertained. I liked the actors. Nobody was kicking me incessantly from behind. It was a rainy day and a good way to kill 2 hours.
OK, it was worth the price of a matinee ticket, I decide.
So what did I like? The film making is good. There is attention to detail. I don’t know what life in a space station is like, but the filmmakers do a good job of putting me there, making this setting seem plausible. Astronauts aboard the space station float seamlessly from pod to pod like a bunch of scientific supermen. There is a scene where an astronaut drowns in her own space helmet. It is crazy and intense and suffocating. And the music is the star of the show. It is spooky and suspenseful. The music makes a space creature coming to life more terrifying than it would otherwise appear.
As I exit the theater, I decide that without this terrifying music, the alien would be nothing more than space snot floating in zero gravity. Without the music, gripping me, making me anxious, this sentient Phlegm floating around the capsule would be farcical.
As I push into the lobby, I don’t know what the best part of this film is, but I decide that the worst part of the movie is the best character dies first.
SPOILER ALERT….
Ryan Reynolds is a wise cracking cowboy astronaut who catches a satellite at 18,000 mph and then brings the Mars alien on board. He is the funny guy and fills the room with yuks in the first 30 minutes. The filmmakers kill off a lot of astronauts in this film. They should have rethought who dies when. I would have had no problem killing off the Japanese astronaut early and keeping Reynolds around for Shits and giggles. It would have added some counterbalance to the story, especially when the snot monster was growing in size strength and intelligence.
As I reach the parking lot, I decide that the problem with this film is that it breaks no new ground. It is Alien revisited. Instead of a space lizard trying to get into Sigourney Weaver’s pants, our astronauts fight space snot trying to climb into their noses. Like Alien, the monster starts as a cute tadpole of death, then grows into a gigantic space mutant. So it is with Space Snot. It grows in a petri dish, a little blob of phlegm into a powerful space squid that eventually grows a dinosaur head.
If Sigourney Weaver’s Alien sneezed, you would have L I F E.
Now you get the picture.
The difference between the two films? It’s dramatic.
Ridley Scott’s Alien, from 1979, was powerful and terrifying and ground breaking. Remember the spinning lights in the cold dark ship. The music and sound so piercing, it got into your spine and supercharged your neural net.
No one can hear you scream in space!
That’s a movie poster I’ll never forget!
Sigourney Weaver was hot as hell in her space panties and sleep pod.
L I F E: is less memorable, less terrifying, less space sexy.
Apparently everyone in space can hear you scream.
I see LIFE lasting about 2 weeks in theaters, then perhaps it will become a commercial for Kleenex. When you don’t have time for a runny nose!
ALIEN V LIFE
The story lines are sadly similar: Space snot crushes humans and can slide in and out of air vents and even travel outside the spacecraft even though floating snot needs oxygen to survive. HMMMM?
And like Alien, Space Snot enters the host organisms in a very intrusive way. It pushes its gelatinous, bulbous, mucusy essence down Reynolds throat. His eyes bloat, then turn bright red, and he convulses as zero G blood droplets spill from his nose in pristine balls of plasma that float delicately inside the interior of the sterile lab.
Eventually, the astronauts are forced to abandon ship and find a way from keeping the space snot from reaching Earth. Sound familiar?
Jake Gyllenhall in panties is no Sigourney Weaver.
Was it worth the matinee price of $5.99?
Yes.
Will Space Snot be anything more than a forgettable experience come Monday morning?
Probably not.
Kleenex anyone?
Life’s Crazy™