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I should have just bashed my knee with a mallet for a few hours.
Yes, I was really drunk while watching Battlefield Earth, but it still wasn't totally without pain. It being a Friday night that I was guaranteed to spend pretty much alone, I scanned the movie channels for something totally devoid of thought so I could kill some time. Suddenly, there she was. HBO was showing John Travolta's misguided and piss poor opus.
Maybe I should clarify that I wasn't going to drink last night. I had no reason to. But seeing this movie on television, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to take it sober. You see, last night was not my first experience with Battlefield Earth. Two weeks ago, it was on HBO initially for me. I sat down in a rather morose mood, and managed to watch the first twenty minutes of it before a lady friend called me. I spent my time much more effectively in her company, smoking an entire pack of cigarettes in the grass behind my apartment building. This would make more sense than it already does if you knew her.
Anyway, since then I had this burning desire to see this movie straight through. No no…not just straight through. Straight through really drunk. So this "review" is not really a review of the movie specifically. Instead it's more of a "review" of the entire night and how the movie affected me throughout it.
The movie started at 11.45 at night, and I found out about it at around nine. I had less than three hours to get really really drunk before it started. So I started out nicely with whiskey cokes, getting comfortably numb in about an hour. That's when my roommate came home with a bottle of Midori. I then had one of the sweetest girl drinks of my life, and I hope to have many more Midori sours in the future.
Although the Midori was rather low in alcoholic content, that pushed me from numb to slightly tipsy. By around 11pm I'd moved back to the cheap whiskey, mixing each drink successively stronger until the movie started.
That's when things started to get interesting. You see, at this point I was really blasted. I was also pretty dehydrated. I started asking for water, and my roommate tried to push a bottle on me with clear liquid in it. I was distrusting, and asked him where he got it. When he said "from your lady friend Cari", I knew he was screwing with me. That "water" was vodka, and he blatantly tried to hurt me. So I called her and told on him.
She promised she'd beat him up for me when she gets back. I am very grateful to have her around. She'd never let me get hurt…and right now I'm wishing I were sober so I could write this and have it make more sense. Ah well, I have other people to be sane for me. And yes, I love you all. I can't speak without slurring, but I can type and dammit, I will type my love.
Anyway, I'd been watching the movie for a while, and even through my alcoholic haze I just knew this movie wasn't any good. For one thing, director Christiansen has this annoying habit of constant slow motion. Every goddamn second things just went slooooooooooow. Also, Christiansen seems to know good camera techniques, but he doesn't know why they're to be used. As a result, the entire thing seems to be a jumbled mess.
I didn't let any of this get to me, nor did I let bother me the fact that every cut has a wipe. They bug me when Lucas does them, and they bug me more when Christiansen does them. I was really bad off.
At about the point where Johnny Goodboy Tyler learns the Psychlo language, I decided I was hungry. I don't know why, but for some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to go into the bedroom first. I made it into the door, then fell on the floor laughing. I tried to get up, only to fall again. Finally standing up, I made it over to the kitchen and made a hot dog.
After the hot dog was three more drinks. By then the film was at the point where the humans start rebelling. I thought, "well gee, I'd like to see this but I need to use the bathroom." So I stood up, planning to be back in a minute. Stumbling over to the bathroom. I adjusted my pants for what promised to be a very numb piss.
I didn't piss. I stood there with my pants undone, throwing up. I felt like I was in Evil Dead. My vomit was just disgusting…even more so than normal. Black bile and hot dog chunks will not get you laid.
I went back to the movie after I was done. My roommate informed me it took me twenty minutes to vomit, and I clearly would not believe him. But lo and behold! The humans had captured John Travolta, blown up the absurdly monikered "home office" of the Psychlo's home world, and Johnny had saved the day.
Whoopdy shit. Even when I was more drunk than I'd been in a long time, I could see this movie for what it was. I tremble to think of what it would have been like if I was sober.
By the end of the movie, I found myself drunkenly complaining. No, I wasn't complaining about how bad the movie was. It was really bad…but it wasn't as bad as I was hoping it would be. See, I was looking for something abysmally bad, and instead I got something that was flat and without any sense of credibility. Would a jet really survive a thousand years? Can dialogue as lame as this movie's really be written by someone who claims to be a screenwriter? I truly wish they'd tried to throw L. Ron Hubbard's ridiculous scientology nonsense into the movie just so I could have something to really hate. Instead I'm left with deflated expectations. It's kinda like falling in love and finding out that it won't work out, but that discovery isn't really defeating. It's like a kind and rational explanation about why it wouldn't work. That's what Battlefield Earth is. It is such a confused mess you really don't have anything to grab onto. You know it won't be good, so you're hoping it'll be so bad you can tear it to shreds. But you can't. There's nothing there at all.
That's pretty much what Wild Wild West is too.
So I hit the booze really hard. So I did it alone. So what? What else am I going to do on a Friday night? I'm not proud of it, but desperate times and all that…
Jesus, I need a companion. Am I alone in my firm belief that I am a sad individual?
I'm going to leave you with this thought, and I ask that one of you give me a hug, a kiss, and tell me it's going to be OK. It's not my life that's scaring me…although it does. It's this movie.
I love you all, but more importantly, I love your bodies.