Go

What is she doing?  Tossing a business card?

What is the 1990s worst contribution to popular culture?  Hammer pants?  R and B hooks in rap songs?  Nu-metal?  My vote goes to rave kids.  Don't be confused: I'm perfectly okay with raves, because I can choose to stay away from them and their drug- and sex-fueled semi-mobile dance parties; raves are kind of like the gypsies of the party scene, squatting wherever they can for the weekend and then skipping to a new home next week.  No, I hate rave kids.  Ugh.  Hands swirling, glo-stick wearing, pacifier-sucking, pill-popping, candy necklaces --- I hate everything superficial about them.  Oh, and dude, I don't care if cotton feels AMAZING when you're rolling on ecstasy, stop licking my shirt.  Surprisingly, the first movie I ever saw about the rave scene was the totally awesome Human Traffic (watch the UK version, if you can find it).  So, when a reader requested that I review Go, another rave-themed film, I watched with cautious optimism.

At it's core, Go is a film about a drug deal gone bad.  And, um, a fairly unconnected trip to Vegas, probably because director Doug Liman was coming off of Swingers.  The story is split into three parts (Ronna's Story, Simon's Story, and Adam & Zack's Story) with an integrated ending. It all revolves around Ronna's (Sarah Polley) misadventures filling in as a drug dealer when her local dealer, Simon (Desmond Askew), leaves for Las Vegas on short notice.  Ronna is in desperate need of cash to avoid eviction, and her joe job at the supermarket isn't going to cut it by tomorrow.  Thankfully, fate intervenes when two dudes, Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), ask her for some ecstasy.  How does she get it?  She goes to her dealer's supplier, Todd (Timothy Olyphant).  Oh, wait...remember how she doesn't have much money?  It turns out that drugs cost money.  Who knew?  Ronna gives Todd what she has and leaves her friend, Claire (Katie Holmes) behind as collateral.  That's okay, though, because Ronna will make some quick cash off of Adam and Zack, and be right back!  Unless they're part of a police drug bust operation, that is.  Ronna is faced with a tough decision.  Does she make the sale and risk going to jail, or should she dump the drugs?  One way is risky, but could make money.  The other is safer, but would leave her without any cash for rent, cash to free Claire, or drugs to sell back to Todd/sell to other people.  Meanwhile, Simon is in Vegas with his buddies and manages to get involved with (in this order):

• explosive diarrhea
• gambling
• three-way tantric sex
• a stolen car
• a stolen gun
• private strip club dance
• a 1970s-style car chase

It sounds like a pretty sweet first trip to Vegas, right?  That's why I couldn't elope to Vegas for my wedding.  Even more meanwhile, Adam and Zack's story tells how these two nice guys could end up being sneaky undercover drug agents, trying to arrest innocent Ronna's all over town.  The short answer is because they love drugs, too.  In the end, all three plots come together with a nice, neat bow on top, and everything is right with the world.  The end.

Man, this movie has a lot of noteworthy actors.  Having Sarah Polley (who is decent enough) as the lead doesn't usually indicate that, but there were a lot of young up-and-kind-of-maybe-comers in this film.  Katie Holmes and her crooked smile make a small appearance.  It's not great work, but I'm not going to pick on someone who presumably has a heart condition.  Seriously, did she have a stroke, or did someone just melt the side of her face?  That broken smile bugs me.  Timothy Olyphant was actually pretty decent, even though it looked like he was doing his best Billy Idol impression throughout.  Desmond Askew is the most likable character in the whole movie, perhaps because his story is the most fun.  Regardless, he overcomes some eye-roll-worthy dialogue early in the film to be the best bit.  Taye Diggs does a pretty solid job as Simon's not-moronic friend; James Duval and Brekin Meyer spent most of their screen time suffering from diarrhea, which is good because Duval is always awful and Meyer's character was a skinny white boy who pretended to be ghetto.  The movie would have been better if those two had died violent deaths, but this isn't a perfect film.  Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf are about as good as you might expect, with both having definite television-actor-level talent and Mohr's amazing ability to seem smug, even when his character tries to be earnest.  I liked to see William Fichtner and Jane Krakowski pop up in this movie; sadly, their parts were poorly written and used mostly for shock value.  Their characters were built up to be one thing, but the joke is that they are something else, completely unrelated to the first thing!  Get it?  It's called wasted script pages, kids.  They're bad.  All in all, the acting is serviceable, with Askew and Olyphant being the stand outs and Meyer and Duval being the fungus in this film's proverbial toilet bowl.

Director Doug Liman does a good job keeping this movie moving, and the pace is probably the best part of this film.  You can argue that the fractured storytelling, quick dialogue, and crime story show that Go stole its style from Pulp Fiction, but left all the drama and compelling characters behind.  And you would be correct.  Still, this movie tries to be clever and the frenetic pace makes most of the plot holes --- if Ronna is seventeen, why does she have her own apartment? --- unnoticeable.  Unfortunately, some of the cuts and edits in this film seem to serve no purpose.  Why do we start the film with Claire talking to Todd the next morning?  Why those two characters?  They are neither the primary plot, nor a linchpin that tied everything together, so it feels like it's just thrown in to make the movie seem mysterious, like they wanted audiences to whisper, "Oh, boy, did you catch all that?  Something must have happened last night for these characters!"  Some of the dialogue is good, some of it is sophomoric, but I will give screenwriter (and frequent Tim Burton collaborator) John August credit for writing a movie meant to be hep with the young folks and have it not feel completely outdated ten years later.  It's nowhere near as great of a script as this movie thinks it is, but it tries.

This really is a busy movie.  It has the attention span of a kid on a sugar rush (or a teen rolling on ecstasy), and a lot happens.  Some of it is dumb.  Why would anyone trust random grocery store customers that want to buy large quantities of drugs for any reason?  Who rips people off with fake drugs and then stays at that party?  If Todd "gives head before [he] gives favors --- and [he] doesn't give head," then why does Simon have his credit card?  If Simon stole the credit card, then why doesn't that ever come up in the story?  And why don't any of the four guys going to Vegas have their own credit card to hold their hotel room?  On the bright side, there is a psychic cat, which was pretty funny.  Unlike most crime and/or drug movies, this film is relatively consequence-free, which cuts the flakier aspects of the film some slack.  It's kind of like a Snackwell's devil's food cake cookie; you know Go isn't going to blow your mind, but it's fun and not that bad for you, so why not enjoy?

Go was a reader request.  Want me to review something?  Maybe I will.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

"They saved the best...for last."  Riiiiight.  That statement isn't correct in any way, shape, or form.  Not only is this not the best Freddy Kreuger movie, it's not even the last.  Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is the sixth installment of the A Nightmare On Elm Street series, and it takes the nightmare-dwelling slasher flick star and propels him into the future...for no particular reason.  No surviving characters pop up in the film, so the placement in the future is completely arbitrary.  Unless, of course, this "ten years later" refers to ten years after someone watching it...which means it is dependent upon viewers to happen.  So, if I was the last person to ever watch this movie, then in ten years, I would be indirectly responsible for the events in this film!  God, that's a depressing thought; I'd sure hate to share the blame for this crap with director Rachael Talalay (who also directed Tank Girl).  The sad thing is that there is an outside possibility that I will be the last person to watch this movie.

So, who wants to hear the plot?  Anyone?  Show of hands?  Yeah, me neither.  While the plot is unimportant here, there are a lot of revelations that add (and detract) from the Freddy mythos.  For instance, we learn that a young Fred Kreuger was still a sociopath; we watch him kill a schoolroom gerbil with a large hammer.  Why was there a large hammer available to young Kreuger?  Um.  Maybe it was "Bring Your Favorite Weapon" day for show-and-tell?  We also see Kreuger teased by kids chanting, "Son of a hundred maniacs!" over and over.  Leave it to the innocence of schoolkids to turn a tragic origin, where a child's father could be any one of the hundred violent inmates in a psychiatric ward that repeatedly raped his mother, a nun, and turn it into a fun little chant!  Kids say the darndest things!  And who told the kids about that, anyway?  Did somebody's parents teach them the joys of taunting rape victims?  Presumably, yes.  Later, as a teen, Freddy takes to self-mutilation as a way to handle (and enjoy) the physical abuse that his adoptive/foster father (played by Alice Cooper) heaps upon him.  Oh, and Freddy murdered his own wife, after she discovered evidence that he was murdering the kids of Elm Street.  Oh, and he did it in front of his heretofore unmentioned young daughter.  Now, from a writing perspective, it's a totally valid idea to create some history for Freddy's character that helps explain why he was so evil, and maybe even make him a little more sympathetic.  A good way to do this would be to show him being tormented as a child in school, or to see him being beaten by the only father he knows.  A bad way to do this is to show him being a sociopath from day one.  I'll give the screenwriters credit for making an effort, even if they totally undercut themselves.

Well, I would give them credit, but then they decided that, when Freddy was about to be burned alive, he was approached by Dream Demons who promised Freddy eternal life and the ability to continue being evil in exchange for...um...well, nothing.  Demons: not driving as hard of bargains as you might expect.

Another good idea stems from the fact that no returning characters, aside from Freddy himself, are in this film.  This allows the writers to show a Springwood, Ohio (where Elm Street is) where Freddy has run amok, killing every child but one in the town.  This, reasonably, drives the parents crazy.  However, nobody outside of Springwood seems to know about the tragedy of the town.  Not very realistic, but this is a movie with a recurring nightmare man, so I'll let that pass.  This means that nobody knows about Freddy or how to defeat him, which leads to a novel concept: if you grab Freddy in your dream and wake up, you can bring him into the waking world with you. Outside of dreams, Freddy doesn't have power, so he can die.  Although, if you fail to kill him, can Freddy return to dreams?  I don't see why not.  And Freddy still has a lot of dream powers in the real world, for some unknown reason, including physical transformations, healing, and more.  But a pipe bomb?  That'll kill him.  Seriously.  So...plot holes?  Got 'em right here! 

Freddy's ultimate plan in the film is to manipulate events so that his daughter will return to Springwood.  Once there, Freddy will hop inside her and...control her?  Or live in her subconscious?  Or what?  That's left a little fuzzy.  Regardless, she will act as a transport for Freddy, so he can find children of different towns and create new Elm Streets.  After all, he cackles, "Every town has an Elm Street!  MWA HAHAHAHA!"  Why couldn't Freddy leave Springwood?  Isn't he demon-powered?  Well, yes, but Dream Demons aren't allowed to cross the street without holding the hands of a grown-up.  What?  I can't make up dumb rules, too?  Why does Freddy need to establish more Elm Streets?  He hasn't been limited to Elm Street since Nightmare Part 2! 

This Nightmare has only three kills in it, so there's not a lot to distract from the plot.  On the plus side, one of the deaths shows a head exploding.  Anther has a young Brekin Meyer (mediocre actor and co-creator of the excellent Robot Chicken show) being controlled by Freddy, as Freddy plays a Nintendo-style game console.  Brekin's death isn't noteworthy, really, but Freddy does manage to fit in a Nintendo Power Glove joke, which I rather enjoyed.  There are a few cameos that are noteworthy, too, aside from Alice Cooper.  Being the "final" Freddy movie, Johnny Depp made an appearance, since the first Nightmare was his first movie.  Also, Tom Arnold and his then-wife, Roseanne, popped up as Springwood residents; Roseanne impresses as an obnoxious woman with a loud mouth, showcasing the acting chops of a bar of soap.  Former James Bond villain Yaphet Kotto also has a small role in the movie, but he's basically a plot device, so he didn't add much.

Overall, this is a bad, bad, movie.  It's not as bad as part 5, though.  It sure isn't good, either, but there are some bright spots.  The poor plot manages to make the smart choice to ignore continuity with the preceding films, which allows viewers insight into Kreuger's character.  Not great insight, but more than ever before.  I'll be honest, if it wasn't for the Dream Demons, I would say these character insights weren't terrible.  Yes, this movie has a bunch of characters that you don't care about.  Yes, this movie has a movie monster that is not scary at all, but instead aims at being allegedly funny.  But the saving grace for the film is Freddy himself.  Robert Englund is not a great actor, but you can tell that he loves every second of every scene of every Nightmare.  If this was, indeed, The Final Nightmare, I will admit that he had a pretty good performance in a film otherwise devoid of anything approaching acting.  So, that's one star for Englund, one star for a moderately creative (if terrible) character history for Freddy, and one star for a Nintendo Power Glove joke.