watching movies one cup at a time

Tank Girl is based on a popular underground comic by future Gorillaz visual artist Jamie Hewlett. It was indie and gritty and nothing like a Hollywood flick at all. So why did it then get made into a Hollywood flick? I doubt anyone was eager to see this turned into a live-action mess. Probably this movie was trying to ride the wave of “cyberpunk” cool that existed in the mid-90s as the internet was growing in popularity and fears of the end of the millenium was closing in. There were several similar “cyber-future” flicks around this time and they all sucked. It wasn’t until The Matrix that someone actually got it right.

Lori Petty is good as Tank Girl and she is pretty cute most of the time. But the story is a farce, the action is silly, and the “mutant kangaroos” are way stupid. It all feels so forced and pointless. It should have been animated if made at all, skip it.

John Carpenter’s attempt at political commentary is pretty ham-fisted. Not going for subtlety, he creates a world where everything is going to hell fast and weird skinless aliens are the cause. And they just happen to be brainwashing all of us through sublimal messages behind everything. Messages like “Obey” “Submit” and “Marry and procreate.” And with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in the lead role, you know this is going to be more like Die Hard than All The President’s Men. For what it is, it’s not bad. It does provide a way to criticize Ronald Reagan’s Yuppie Utopia of the ’80s and feed into a million conspiracy theories about how this government is controlling us. Aliens? More like the ruling class. I think it’s a little optimistic to pin this on aliens and not the evil nature of men. They don’t need an alien to dupe them into manipulating the masses. But it’s a simple, kinda fun movie. And since we are being manipulated anyway, anyone drawing attention to it is a good thing.