Bottom Feeders: Runningball

I once met someone who told me he loved any movie where a big strong guy has to babysit a kid, that it just cracked him up.  If you ever wonder why bad movies keep getting made it’s because people like that actually exist.  For every ten or so of us that like good movies, there’s a least four or five that like shitty ones and since they’re stupid, its way easier to get them to spend money.  Just like any group, dumb people need their champions – someone who will stand up for them and say “I will give you what you want!”  Well, Mark Neveldine and Bryan Taylor are those champions.

They have been giving stupid people the stupid shit they deserve for years now.  In 2006 they released Crank, which could be described as “balls to the wall,” and followed it with Crank 2: High Voltage, which could be described as “balls.”  The big difference is that although both films are just fodder for the shit-throwing, dry-humping monkey in us all, Crank actually managed to do it with at least the thinnest veneer of faux-intelligence.  It was a big dumb action movie, but it had a clever excuse for being stupid.  Crank 2 was a hot mess of bad decisions, blatant racism and overall wankery.  It was terrible, but I’m sure some people figured they were just in a sophomore slump.  Because they’re stupid.  I can’t stress that enough.

That brings us to today’s true Bottom Feeders contestant: Gamer.  After High Voltage Neveldine/Taylor decided they’d try and get smart again with an epic, violent sci-fi story.  Instead, this movie is the moment it becomes clear that these aren’t clever people who just coasted for a movie, they’re two guys who ran out of clever after exactly one movie.  Gamer takes the same shape as Crank by attempting to justify its violent, slutty agenda through clever plot devices, but fails on every level to distract us from how pandering it is or make to us do anything other than not give a shit.  Their final product is just an inbred mess of stolen sci-fi themes.

Not every movie is going to be completely original, or really original at all, but normally when you start your pitch as “It’s Rollerball meets Running Man,” you go on to talk about how you’re going to put your own unique spin on those themes instead of drooling on yourself while some coked-up, hotshot young executive that still skateboards cuts you massive check.  Unfortunately if you’re already successful you don’t really have to explain why you’re making a movie that’s basically a mash-up of two other really similar movies.  Although, there is one sort of original scene.  I won’t go into too much detail because as usual, I can just let Wikipedia do all the hard work for me.  Here’s a description of the climactic final confrontation.  Pay special attention to how goddamn retarded it is all over the place:

Upon learning that Castle has adopted his daughter, Tillman infiltrates his mansion. Castle leads him to a room with a large basketball court and, after a song-and-dance number, using mind-controlled Slayer warriors as backup dancers, reveals that the nanites in his brain allow him to control others infested by the technology.

You see that?  That’s only like 5 minutes of the movie.  So aside from being the most original scene it’s also the dumbest.  I guess I kind of see why they just borrowed from other people after all…not that their pirated ideas are actually any better.  It’s pretty easy to flesh out ideas that you didn’t have to go through the trouble of thinking up in the first place, but you need to take a break from your rollerblading and camera smashing bullshit first.  Instead we get a movie with a serious case of Pokemon syndrome.

If you’ve ever played a Pokemon game or seen the TV show, you realize pretty quickly that everything in those peoples’ lives revolves around their stupid magic pets.  If you talk to a stranger they tell you how much they love Pokemon.  If you go to the hospital they only treat Pokemon.  If someone opens a store it’s so you can buy more slave balls for your Pokemon.  Gamer is exactly like that.  All anyone gives a fuck about is Kane and his dumb fucking video game.  We never see so much as a glimpse of this world that doesn’t directly involves Slayers.  The key to creating an interesting sci-fi world is giving it depth and making it feel real.  You want to show the viewer a lot of interesting concepts and ideas about the future without actually shoving them in their face, not think of one idea and shove it as us extra hard.  Gamer literally failed harder at this than a video game designed to sell trading cards to children.

Whatever else you can say about them, Neveldine/Taylor movies are interestingly directed.  Take note that this is still different than being well-directed.  Direction is sort of like prose in that it can actually make something easier or more interesting to digest while still being completely retarded.  Saying the direction of Gamer is good because it’s “frenetic” and “intense” is like saying the prose of twilight is good because it’s “dark” and “brooding.”  In both cases you’re just using nice-sounding adjectives to cover the fact that they have no fucking clue what they’re doing.  Neveldine/Taylor have the balls and the lack of inhibition to try a lot of different techniques with cameras, but don’t have the common sense or skill to figure out which ones are actually good or to edit them together in any sort of sane fashion.  A lot of the action scenes do draw you in until you realize they’re basically just a bunch of shaky-cam footage and dutch angles thrown together like shy, fat kids at a summer camp dance.  When that exact same shit is going on while people are playing fucking table hockey, you can pretty much chalk up any clever directing to pure accident.  If you gave a five year old a camera and told him to fuck around in the backyard he would have literally the exact same percentage of amazing shots and terrible footage that this movie has.

The worst part about watching their movies is realizing that Neveldine/Taylor do have talent.  Every movie they make has at least a few moments that are deceptively clever and even though their camera shenanigans are often retarded, I won’t blame them for trying something different – I’ll only ever mock them for doing it poorly.  I feel like if they ever decided to really give a shit and try to make a great movie they could.  Unfortunately, we will never know because that just won’t happen.  Their next project is Marvel Studios’ Ghost Rider sequel, which I will swear to God right now is going to be worst sequel since World War II.  They are going to be the idiot’s champion until the day they die.  They’ll make as many Cranks and Ghost riders and Running Man rip-offs as they can and I’m sure they’ll enjoy the shit out of every minute of it.  Ultimately, their complete lack of standards or sanity saves Gamer from being the worst just as much as it stops it from being the best…or good.

What you should watch instead: The 2002 remake of Rollerball.  Just to prepare, because it’s going to be featured here sooner or later.

 

Am I right or am I right?  Email all opinions, in the form of a yes or no answer, to [email protected] and explain yourself before you cause pain to yourself.  Or, follow me on Twitter @Dan_Tompkins.  You can shout at me there and as a bonus, I will amuse you.