Okay, so I love movies. I love all kinds of movies, even craptastic movies that make everyone else want a brain enema to forget. I like foreign films with bizarre plots (The Bride with White Hair), I like films with mindless violence (The Big Hit), I like films with subject matter that is hard to watch (Requiem for a Dream). Hell, I even like movies starring J.Lo! It is hard to find something that sucks enough that I can't make fun of it.
I did not like Pathfinder.
For those who have never heard of it, it is a Karl Urban movie about a kid left behind during a Viking raid on the North American coast 600 years or so before Columbus. Kind of a stupid premise, considering that the Vikings wouldn't have taken a ten-year-old on a long sea voyage from Iceland anyhow. But I'm willing to forgive.
The story was one that has been told about a billion times in some form or another. Boy grows up, caught between the world he was born into and the world he finds himself in. Like Tarzan. Actually, exactly like Tarzan. Okay, now imagine the apes are just Iroquois in fur coats and the humans are all psychopathic homicidal maniacs. Oh, and Jane is a monkey. Wait. She's on the Native American side, which in the Tarzan analogy makes her the ape side. I don't want to get some angry letter from AIM about a stupid blog or have people get confused and think it's some kind of interspecies erotica. Fucko.
Here's another problem with the movie. No one has a name. There are no names used in the entire film and YOU DON'T EVEN NOTICE. I have a problem with that. If I am watching a movie and I can't be bothered to care what a character's name is, there is something wrong. So since I don't know what the names were supposed to be, I will go with Tarzan and Jane.
So, Tarzan learns that after twenty years, his people are coming back to rape and pillage some more. So he and Jane and his mute Indian sidekick (we'll call him Cheetah) decide that they don't need to take shit from some horned-hat-wearing honkies and they want to kick some ass and take some names (but there were no names!!!). Unfortunately, they prove to kind of suck at ass-kicking and Jane's dad has to come in. Still, some Vikings die just from the sheer novelty.
Tarzan's friends decide, unbeknownst to him, to go help him...and run headlong into a trap he had devised for the Vikings. I couldn't help it. I thought it was hysterical. So there's Bri and I, two pint-sized sexpots out on a night on the town, laughing maniacally at people on spikes. They weren't even DESERVING people on spikes. They were supposed to be characters we were sympathetic towards. Not us. No. We have no souls. Or at least that's what the other two people in the theater thought, I'm sure.
But all of this is plot stuff. I could forgive a bad plot and relatively bad acting. Now we come to the crux of the matter. The one really important thing that will elevate a movie from crap to craptastic: the sex scene.
IT DOESN'T HAVE ONE!!!!
I am a liberated, educated, break-through-the-glass-ceiling feminist kind of gal. When I am yelling "Show us yer tits!" at the screen, there is a problem. Some gratuitous nudity on the part of Moon Bloodgood would have been mucho appreciated and I also wouldn't have minded seeing Karl Urban's naked ass. Or even some topless Indian women running from a randy Viking before taking a battleaxe to the face. I'm not picky! No nudity, whatsoever.
Oh! And that reminds me. Costuming decisions. They gave Karl a loincloth and some chaps to run around in. They tease you with flashes of half a buttcheek just to let you know he's bare-balling it. I will have to check with my Canadian friend but I'm pretty sure that real Indians would put pants on, and not try free-wheeling during a Nova Scotian winter. What's the Ojibwa word for frozen nutsack? Anybody?
So, to recap: there's no sex, no real gore, no nudity, and bad dialogue. Characters were one-dimensional, predictable, and not really likeable. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give this one a 3 and that's only because it was still better than Silent Hill.
I did not like Pathfinder.
For those who have never heard of it, it is a Karl Urban movie about a kid left behind during a Viking raid on the North American coast 600 years or so before Columbus. Kind of a stupid premise, considering that the Vikings wouldn't have taken a ten-year-old on a long sea voyage from Iceland anyhow. But I'm willing to forgive.
The story was one that has been told about a billion times in some form or another. Boy grows up, caught between the world he was born into and the world he finds himself in. Like Tarzan. Actually, exactly like Tarzan. Okay, now imagine the apes are just Iroquois in fur coats and the humans are all psychopathic homicidal maniacs. Oh, and Jane is a monkey. Wait. She's on the Native American side, which in the Tarzan analogy makes her the ape side. I don't want to get some angry letter from AIM about a stupid blog or have people get confused and think it's some kind of interspecies erotica. Fucko.
Here's another problem with the movie. No one has a name. There are no names used in the entire film and YOU DON'T EVEN NOTICE. I have a problem with that. If I am watching a movie and I can't be bothered to care what a character's name is, there is something wrong. So since I don't know what the names were supposed to be, I will go with Tarzan and Jane.
So, Tarzan learns that after twenty years, his people are coming back to rape and pillage some more. So he and Jane and his mute Indian sidekick (we'll call him Cheetah) decide that they don't need to take shit from some horned-hat-wearing honkies and they want to kick some ass and take some names (but there were no names!!!). Unfortunately, they prove to kind of suck at ass-kicking and Jane's dad has to come in. Still, some Vikings die just from the sheer novelty.
Tarzan's friends decide, unbeknownst to him, to go help him...and run headlong into a trap he had devised for the Vikings. I couldn't help it. I thought it was hysterical. So there's Bri and I, two pint-sized sexpots out on a night on the town, laughing maniacally at people on spikes. They weren't even DESERVING people on spikes. They were supposed to be characters we were sympathetic towards. Not us. No. We have no souls. Or at least that's what the other two people in the theater thought, I'm sure.
But all of this is plot stuff. I could forgive a bad plot and relatively bad acting. Now we come to the crux of the matter. The one really important thing that will elevate a movie from crap to craptastic: the sex scene.
IT DOESN'T HAVE ONE!!!!
I am a liberated, educated, break-through-the-glass-ceiling feminist kind of gal. When I am yelling "Show us yer tits!" at the screen, there is a problem. Some gratuitous nudity on the part of Moon Bloodgood would have been mucho appreciated and I also wouldn't have minded seeing Karl Urban's naked ass. Or even some topless Indian women running from a randy Viking before taking a battleaxe to the face. I'm not picky! No nudity, whatsoever.
Oh! And that reminds me. Costuming decisions. They gave Karl a loincloth and some chaps to run around in. They tease you with flashes of half a buttcheek just to let you know he's bare-balling it. I will have to check with my Canadian friend but I'm pretty sure that real Indians would put pants on, and not try free-wheeling during a Nova Scotian winter. What's the Ojibwa word for frozen nutsack? Anybody?
So, to recap: there's no sex, no real gore, no nudity, and bad dialogue. Characters were one-dimensional, predictable, and not really likeable. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give this one a 3 and that's only because it was still better than Silent Hill.
Wow, for one of your earliest reviews, this one didn't suck...much.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely....