Watchmen

Watchmen (2009, Legendary Pictures/DC Comics)
Review

Lets start off with a quick plot synopsis, shall we? This movie is about a Gigantic Blue Penis with super powers, played by a digitally enhanced Billy Crudup. The Enormous Trouser Snake acquires its powers when It and the man attached to It are zapped in a molecule rearranging chamber, or whatever. The Whopping One-Eyed Monster, the naked man attached to it, and a band of misfit, masked superheros (all clothed except for Laurie Jupiter, played by Malin Åkerman, at times) form a group called the Watchmen. The viewer learns all and more this through numerous and exhaustive flashbacks to all, and I mean all, of the characters' pasts. In one such episode, the Gargantuan Pork Sword opens a can of whoopass in the Vietnam War, ensuring an American victory and 5 terms as President of the United States for Richard Nixon.

The other, far less powerful, Watchmen gain their powers hereditarily through superhero breeding, or whatever. Their powers mainly consist of superhuman strength and the ability to beat people up. The main plot line takes place in 1985, where someone wants to blow up millions of people using the power of the Towering Blue Meat Musket...or something like that.

Seeing as this movie is far too long to get any sort of adequate plot setup down, lets just move onto the review. The action sequences are fun, fast-paced and brutal. I'm talking about compound fractures and a dude who unwillingly takes a shower in fryer oil, ouch. There's lots and lots of character development via the aforementioned flashbacks. These serve a dual purpose: gives all of us Watchmen n00bs a clue while providing the fanboy virgins, who love the franchise, some extra content to admire in repeated IMAX viewings. These scenes happen so frequently, one could say, that they are trying to shove the character development down your throat. But you know what they try to shove down your throat more than that? The main focus of the film...

Yup. You guess it. It's onscreen constantly. It's impossible to ignore, impossible to miss. I am not kidding. At first, you are just kinda like, "okay...Massive, Blue Man Meat...hmmmm...that was weird, but w/e, lmao." But after a while, there comes a time when you are thinking to yourself, "there is nooooo way they are gonna show that Thang again, for it will turn whatever they were trying to do with this movie into a huge joke." Then they show the Monumental Pump-action Custard Chucker 723 more times. How this Colossal Blue-Veined Yogurt Slinger kept escaping the cutting room floor is inconceivable. See, they were really, really trying hard to make this film into a commentary on the savagery of human nature. Even if the filmmakers had given Watchmen a plot that didn't induce five confusing yawns a minute, even if they made the uber-bummer cataclysm make one fucking shred of sense, even if they had thought this thing out start-to-finish, even if they had made the best movie ever in the history of ever, it would all go for naught. Because there is a Big, Hulking, Blue, Crotch Mongoose in your face during 80% of the fucking movie!

If you found any of this vulgar, you might want to not see Watchmen - AKA Uncle Throbby and the Unmasked Members (UK alternate title).

More to come...

Welcome to No Horseshit Movies

Hello all! Thank you for choosing No Horseshit Movies. I know how it goes, you wake up one day with a general sense of excitement about seeing a new movie. Perhaps it is just new to you. You maybe want to rent it or catch it down at the $1.50 theatre, where the floor is like fly paper and the seats look like Jackson Pollack paintings (except the stains on the seats have a little more artistic merit). But I digress... So, you want to see (insert name of film here) and some yahoo on a popular search site or local news paper tells you it sucks ass through a straw.

This can be a bit disheartening. You wonder how something that looks so awesome from the previews can be getting so torn to shreds by the same guy who, twelve years ago, told you the showy epic Titanic was the greatest thing since indoor toilets. Ah, I can explain this in one simple word: out of touch.

A lot of these critics reviewed The Wizard of Oz when it came out in 1939. They probably liked it, and gave it favorable reviews. Shit, I might have given it a favorable review. But, of course, I didn't because my parents wouldn't be born until a number of years after its release. Point is, movies have changed a lot: what Gene Shallot's mummified corpse likes is not necessarily going to coincide with what, say, a internet-savvy 20-something is going to like.
[As a side note, I actually have nothing against Gene, he's like the great grandfather I never knew.]

So here is where we can all get a realistic view of what is good and bad about movies today. Will the latest $90 million action flick live up to the hype, or is Hollywood gonna drop a deuce the size of Spiderman 3 and smear it all over your eyeballs? Find out here. I am going to try to get reviews of some "now on DVD" stuff up ASAP to get the blog rolling. What good would a review blog be if it didn't have the "In theatres now" junk? So, we'll have plenty of that too. Maybe I'll even do The Wizard of Oz when I get a chance for the 11 of you who haven't seen it yet. One thing this blog will sorely be lacking, which can be found at other film review blogs and sites all over the net: horseshit!

Later,