So I stood in line at Blockbuster for a good twenty minutes in order to rent Battlefield Earth. Yes, I knew it was supposed to be bad. I just wanted to see whether it was that bad.
Have you seen this movie? Personally, I've always thought dreadlocks looked kind of cool. But not hanging out of your nose. Were those things supposed to make John Travolta look scary? To paraphrase Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, I didn't know whether to be afraid of him or offer him a Kleenex.
And another thing: when exactly is John Travolta's career going to stop riding the success of Pulp Fiction?
I have an idea. I wonder if he and Julia Roberts would agree to be in a movie about two actors who forget how to act at the pinnacles of their careers. That would be a real test of their acting ability. The first half of the movie, that is. But those two are so bad that I don't think they could even act like bad actors.
Now, Tomb Raider on the other hand. Tomb Raider is a movie that you couldn't possibly write a review of without taking notes. Partly because it has one of those plots which consists of "shit happens", and partly of course because Angelina Jolie is in the movie and she might fall into water at any minute. The last thing that I need is to be in the middle of writing about the secret society of the Illuminati and how some broken piece of plaster needs to be reunited with its other half, while an Angelina Jolie character is coping with the dilemma of dealing with a wet T-shirt.
That doesn't happen until the end, by the way, and it's quite disappointing. I guess I should have expected a female 007 to own a waterproof shirt but I didn't. There is a nice useless shot of Jolie exiting a shower early on in the movie, however. Just remember, the movie is rated PG-13 (mostly so daddy doesn't get caught in any embarrassing situations with his kids), so don't expect to see more than two-thirds of her chest.
I thought it was kind of curious that Tomb Raider, as stated on the Yahoo! page, is: "Rated PG-13 for action violence and some sensuality."
"Some sensuality" gets you a PG-13?
I think this means that even if you put Angelina Jolie in a snowsuit and buried her six feet under the ground, while a bunch of animated Muppets sung about flowers and rainbows, you still couldn't get your movie a PG rating. If you want a PG rating for your movie, you better not even have Angelina Jolie in the same goddamn theater where your movie is playing.
Signing off,
JR
