TOW "The Crap"
After obtaining a sought-after job, I thought..."HELL, I'm having a night out! And I'm gonna take John and Val out because both times I got a job, I had eaten at their place the night before the interviews---they're lucky charms!" [Also, because of Rosie's passing, I just needed to get out and DO something.] As we were planning the event over IM a few nights back, Val and I agreed on "The Fountain" because we agreed that "it looks hot" and I said, "I'm up for some sci-fi shit."
Shit it was. This movie was totally not what I expected.
WHAT THE PREVIEWS LED ME TO BELIEVE: In a FUTURE time, the world has returned to feudalism [and accordingly, period costume mixed with modern-day] due to previous generations [ie: OUR time] carelessness and abuse of technology and war, and is ruled by a pretty queen in a pretty dress.
Said queen seeks immortality. She hires rough-looking Conquistador-man to lead an expedition to find it for her, resulting in an action-packed, fun-filled, EPIC about life, love, war, death, morals, and even a monkey or two.
WHAT I GOT: A bizarre, overly-artsy, poorly written example of why people shouldn't fuck with nature and play God and try to live forever, complete with jumping plotlines, Moby, birth canals and embryos, redundant imagery, Russ, a cum-spewing tree of life, tai-chi [sp?] for no reason, killer plants, Mayan "lore," trees, a treasure map, and even a monkey or two.
It was just dreadful. It took John, Val, and I a good hour after the movie to talk it down. Here's what we deduced:
Apparently we come into the movie in the "future," where Hugh Jackman is floating in a bubble and floating through space. He is eating the bark off of a dead tree and having flashbacks to the "past" where hears a female voice entreating him to "Finish It." This stirs him and he feels the need to do some tai-kwan-do or some crap like that.
Now we're in the "present" and he is working on removing a tumor from a monkey instead of watching the first snow with his dying wife, his wedding band having mysteriously disappeared from its place at the scrub bowl during the procedure. He returns home to find her on a roof deck gazing at the "Shipoopi Nebula" whilst barefooted in the snow. [This is where we learn of her illness] What follows is an erotically painful scene with Rachel Weiss in the bathtub; Hugh eventually joins her and "coitus" is implied after we learn more of her condition, and I ponder about who would clean up the mess they are making.
We also learn here that she is writing a "manuscript." She hands it to him to read---she has it all written but the last chapter, and wants him to help her write it [can you see where this is going?]. While she sleeps off their lovemaking, he reads the first bits of her "manuscript" [anything that is nicely calligraphied in a bound book with no editing doesn't deserve the title] and we are now transported to what I call "movie C" but is just the novel being realised. It is set in what we know as the 1500s Spain. And we see the obvious parrallels between their lives and the "manuscript;" she is a queen, who refuses to let her country die and he is a handsome Conquistador who is going to find a way to keep her from dying. Along the way they meet a priest who looks like Russ with a treasure map and she commissions the Conquistador to accompany him to the new world in search of this tree of life, deep within the depths of the Mayan Jungle.
Now we're back in the present at a museum where we find a little bit more of Mayan "lore," specifically about how they used to plant trees over their dead in the hopes that the deceased would become part of the tree and live forever. Wifey's tumor has grown too big and now she faints, falling into Hugh's arms. She is not scared of dying, this Izzi [oh, that is her given name in the "present;" in the "manuscript" she's Isabella]. A day or two passes and SURPRISE! She's dead. :D :( A haggard looking Mr. Jackman [who in this movie is named---in chronological?---order: Tomas, Tommy, and Tom] returns home to read more of the novel, and tatoo himself a new wedding ring with the fountain pen and ink she acquired while dying in a hospital bed and gave him to "Finish It"
Instead of "finishing it" he begins to work tirelessly on finding "a cure for the disease of death" [giving us a glimpse of another tumor-ridden monkey---apparently, they're freely roaming the streets---how else could they come by so many so quickly?], finds it, and plants the seed of a magic tree from South America onto her grave one winter's day. We flash forward to the bubble again, and "Tom" admires his handiwork of bands tatooed up and down his arms [like rings on the inside of a tree! GET it?---this is the only reason any of us knew that Moby in PJs was Tommy in the Future] The voice still haunts him until he realizes that to "Finish It" he needs to, most literally, FINISH IT. In his head he dreams up the end to her "manuscript" in which Tomas [pfft] finally drinks the sap of the tree of life---which is, apparently CUM [sadly, I think that was intentional on the director's part *sighs*]---and falls over dead as plants sprout from him.
Then, in the "future" Tom rises to the top of the bubble and forms himself a new, smaller bubble and rises into the Shipoopi Nebula which is depicted as a birth canal, and in retreat the bubble looks like an ovum. As this happens, the tree in the big bubble sprouts to life.
You're probably only slightly less confused than we were at this point. The whole point? TREES! TREES LIVE FOREVER!!!! IMMORTALITY IS TREES! And also something about life and death being an intertwined cycle, but TREES! TREES ON MY SKIRT, TREE TATOOS, TREES TO EAT, TREES THAT SPEW CUM, GET THEM WHILE THEY'RE HOT!
We've decided to host a great "The Fountain" themed party. Everyone is gonna come dressed up as a character from the movie. John's gonna be Moby-Tom, I'm gonna be Queen Isabella with the trees on my skirt, Val is gonna be the-running-in-a-red-dress-Izzi-from-the-present-in-a-flashback-from-the-future-which-is-never-explained. And to use John's phrases, we're gonna serve "Cum-filled 'Tree of Life' Cookies" and "Cancerrific Tastey Treats." A good time will be had by all, I'm sure.
Overall, I rate this movie as a D with two ladybugs out of five.
It wasn't all bad. "We do like to have the fun."
We made the best of a bad situation; I took my bra off and waved it over my head in the middle of the theater, a "Giggle Loop" occured, I yelled about Jimmy Smitts in the dead-quiet theatre, and John army-crawled into it after we met Fat Peter Jackson in the lobby---it was good.
Other highlights of the night:
1) Making the people in the 48 Hours video store think we were drunk. We went in innocently checking for cheap movies when John spotted something he didn't like. In true John fashion, he changed out one of the words in the title for "Crap" [ie: Field of Crap instead of Field of Dreams]. We all got silly and walked down all the isles just changing the names of the titles of all the movies---even the ones we liked---to Crap. Favorites included: Failure to Crap, Desperate Crap, and Final Crap [it's a trilogy!]. Then we just left the store without buying anything or talking to anyone.
2) I WON THE GAME OF LIFE! I played the blue-haired lady in the white car. I got a job as a Travel Agent with a $100,000 salary. Eventually I got married to Dick Van Dyke/Jake Gyllenhaal [that's what the avatar looked like] and we had a daughter, Emma. We moved into a lovely Dutch Colonial home---which flooded, but fortunately, I had insurance---and I did get to play some games along the way ["Watch out for that skunk! Don't get greedy!"] and took my dear, sweet time rolling into retirement. :D
3) Running through the movie parking lot with my pashmina held high up over my head, catching the wind, and John running behind me, losing his pants.
Shit it was. This movie was totally not what I expected.
WHAT THE PREVIEWS LED ME TO BELIEVE: In a FUTURE time, the world has returned to feudalism [and accordingly, period costume mixed with modern-day] due to previous generations [ie: OUR time] carelessness and abuse of technology and war, and is ruled by a pretty queen in a pretty dress.
Said queen seeks immortality. She hires rough-looking Conquistador-man to lead an expedition to find it for her, resulting in an action-packed, fun-filled, EPIC about life, love, war, death, morals, and even a monkey or two.
WHAT I GOT: A bizarre, overly-artsy, poorly written example of why people shouldn't fuck with nature and play God and try to live forever, complete with jumping plotlines, Moby, birth canals and embryos, redundant imagery, Russ, a cum-spewing tree of life, tai-chi [sp?] for no reason, killer plants, Mayan "lore," trees, a treasure map, and even a monkey or two.
It was just dreadful. It took John, Val, and I a good hour after the movie to talk it down. Here's what we deduced:
Apparently we come into the movie in the "future," where Hugh Jackman is floating in a bubble and floating through space. He is eating the bark off of a dead tree and having flashbacks to the "past" where hears a female voice entreating him to "Finish It." This stirs him and he feels the need to do some tai-kwan-do or some crap like that.
Now we're in the "present" and he is working on removing a tumor from a monkey instead of watching the first snow with his dying wife, his wedding band having mysteriously disappeared from its place at the scrub bowl during the procedure. He returns home to find her on a roof deck gazing at the "Shipoopi Nebula" whilst barefooted in the snow. [This is where we learn of her illness] What follows is an erotically painful scene with Rachel Weiss in the bathtub; Hugh eventually joins her and "coitus" is implied after we learn more of her condition, and I ponder about who would clean up the mess they are making.
We also learn here that she is writing a "manuscript." She hands it to him to read---she has it all written but the last chapter, and wants him to help her write it [can you see where this is going?]. While she sleeps off their lovemaking, he reads the first bits of her "manuscript" [anything that is nicely calligraphied in a bound book with no editing doesn't deserve the title] and we are now transported to what I call "movie C" but is just the novel being realised. It is set in what we know as the 1500s Spain. And we see the obvious parrallels between their lives and the "manuscript;" she is a queen, who refuses to let her country die and he is a handsome Conquistador who is going to find a way to keep her from dying. Along the way they meet a priest who looks like Russ with a treasure map and she commissions the Conquistador to accompany him to the new world in search of this tree of life, deep within the depths of the Mayan Jungle.
Now we're back in the present at a museum where we find a little bit more of Mayan "lore," specifically about how they used to plant trees over their dead in the hopes that the deceased would become part of the tree and live forever. Wifey's tumor has grown too big and now she faints, falling into Hugh's arms. She is not scared of dying, this Izzi [oh, that is her given name in the "present;" in the "manuscript" she's Isabella]. A day or two passes and SURPRISE! She's dead. :D :( A haggard looking Mr. Jackman [who in this movie is named---in chronological?---order: Tomas, Tommy, and Tom] returns home to read more of the novel, and tatoo himself a new wedding ring with the fountain pen and ink she acquired while dying in a hospital bed and gave him to "Finish It"
Instead of "finishing it" he begins to work tirelessly on finding "a cure for the disease of death" [giving us a glimpse of another tumor-ridden monkey---apparently, they're freely roaming the streets---how else could they come by so many so quickly?], finds it, and plants the seed of a magic tree from South America onto her grave one winter's day. We flash forward to the bubble again, and "Tom" admires his handiwork of bands tatooed up and down his arms [like rings on the inside of a tree! GET it?---this is the only reason any of us knew that Moby in PJs was Tommy in the Future] The voice still haunts him until he realizes that to "Finish It" he needs to, most literally, FINISH IT. In his head he dreams up the end to her "manuscript" in which Tomas [pfft] finally drinks the sap of the tree of life---which is, apparently CUM [sadly, I think that was intentional on the director's part *sighs*]---and falls over dead as plants sprout from him.
Then, in the "future" Tom rises to the top of the bubble and forms himself a new, smaller bubble and rises into the Shipoopi Nebula which is depicted as a birth canal, and in retreat the bubble looks like an ovum. As this happens, the tree in the big bubble sprouts to life.
You're probably only slightly less confused than we were at this point. The whole point? TREES! TREES LIVE FOREVER!!!! IMMORTALITY IS TREES! And also something about life and death being an intertwined cycle, but TREES! TREES ON MY SKIRT, TREE TATOOS, TREES TO EAT, TREES THAT SPEW CUM, GET THEM WHILE THEY'RE HOT!
We've decided to host a great "The Fountain" themed party. Everyone is gonna come dressed up as a character from the movie. John's gonna be Moby-Tom, I'm gonna be Queen Isabella with the trees on my skirt, Val is gonna be the-running-in-a-red-dress-Izzi-from-the-present-in-a-flashback-from-the-future-which-is-never-explained. And to use John's phrases, we're gonna serve "Cum-filled 'Tree of Life' Cookies" and "Cancerrific Tastey Treats." A good time will be had by all, I'm sure.
Overall, I rate this movie as a D with two ladybugs out of five.
It wasn't all bad. "We do like to have the fun."
We made the best of a bad situation; I took my bra off and waved it over my head in the middle of the theater, a "Giggle Loop" occured, I yelled about Jimmy Smitts in the dead-quiet theatre, and John army-crawled into it after we met Fat Peter Jackson in the lobby---it was good.
Other highlights of the night:
1) Making the people in the 48 Hours video store think we were drunk. We went in innocently checking for cheap movies when John spotted something he didn't like. In true John fashion, he changed out one of the words in the title for "Crap" [ie: Field of Crap instead of Field of Dreams]. We all got silly and walked down all the isles just changing the names of the titles of all the movies---even the ones we liked---to Crap. Favorites included: Failure to Crap, Desperate Crap, and Final Crap [it's a trilogy!]. Then we just left the store without buying anything or talking to anyone.
2) I WON THE GAME OF LIFE! I played the blue-haired lady in the white car. I got a job as a Travel Agent with a $100,000 salary. Eventually I got married to Dick Van Dyke/Jake Gyllenhaal [that's what the avatar looked like] and we had a daughter, Emma. We moved into a lovely Dutch Colonial home---which flooded, but fortunately, I had insurance---and I did get to play some games along the way ["Watch out for that skunk! Don't get greedy!"] and took my dear, sweet time rolling into retirement. :D
3) Running through the movie parking lot with my pashmina held high up over my head, catching the wind, and John running behind me, losing his pants.