Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a film that’s difficult to put into a genre. Its central story is, at first glance, a romance. A great deal of the dialog is comedic. But how many romantic comedies do you know where the conflicts are resolved through kung-fu matches? And how many kung-fu battles have you seen in a movie that include running scores, power-ups and visible sound effects? The term “something for everybody” gets bandied about a great deal, but Scott Pilgrim just might fit that bill. The problem with having so many of these elements in a film, however, is that some elements don’t get as much time as they should.

That isn’t to say this movie is bad. This movie is far from bad. This movie, in fact, is very good, and you should go see it if you haven’t already.

Scott Pilgrim. Age: 22. Rating: Awesome.

Based on the acclaimed series of graphic novels by Brian Lee O’Malley, the eponymous Scott Pilgrim is a Canadian bass player who’s unashamedly between jobs, dating a high schooler and mooching off of his gay roommate Wallace, who tolerates Scott because it’s fun to watch him squirm when discomforting things happen to him. Scott’s precious little life takes an unexpected turn when a mysterious girl named Ramona Flowers skates through his dreams. Drawn to Ramona’s mature and world-weary personality, Scott encounters more than he bargained for when he is attacked by Ramona’s evil exes. Like Mega Man needing to defeat a series of Robot Masters to restore order in the world, Scott Pilgrim needs to defeat a series of super-powered individuals to get what he wants. Luckily, despite being a slacker and a dweeb, Scott’s also the best fighter in the province. As for what he wants, let’s take a look at Scott as he’s depicted in the film.

Let me make this perfectly clear: if you pass up on this movie because you don’t like Michael Cera, you are making a mistake. It’s not that I don’t understand where the ire against Cera comes from. Previously, in romantic comedies, he’s cast in the role of the screenwriter’s projection of the ‘right guy’ for the girl. You know what I mean, the sensitive, quiet, intelligent and otherwise marginalized young man who’s so much better for the girl than the large, attractive, macho jerks she tends to date – a Marty Stu, if you will. Now, while Ramona has dated some jerks, and Scott is somewhat sensitive and quiet… he’s also, himself, a jerk. He knows he’s sensitive but he uses that sensitivity to milk those around him for sympathy. His intelligence is applied to remaining as free from responsibility as possible. He exists in a personal space that I think a lot of young men of my generation, including myself, have at one point or another: the militant refusal to grow up. In a way, the ‘final boss’ in the story is the kind of person Scott could become if he’s not careful – a pretentious, self-centered, smirking and completely slimy hipster douchebag.

+2 versus critics.

Meeting Ramona (very well played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) doesn’t just change Scott’s life because he has to fight to the death in order to date her. The message she conveys to Scott and, by extension, those of us in the audience who live or have lived in that aforementioned Neverland in our heads, is as necessary as it is harsh. “You’re not Peter Pan. You have to grow up. You need to get over yourself. If you can stop being self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing you can let the good things about yourself shine through and speak for themselves; otherwise, you’re going to turn into something you hate.” Ramona also presents us with a personification of the sort of things we deal with when we get to know somebody. Their past, the people they’ve loved and lost, the mistakes they’ve made that haunt them; this ‘baggage’ doesn’t just sit around. It’s active and nearly constant, trying to keep us out of the moment and pulling us back into the past. While ultimately the battle Scott needs to have is with himself for his own sake, he also needs to be willing to fight past Ramona’s baggage in order to be a part of her future.

Now, when you get right down to it, all of this unsubtle metaphorical self-examination occurs under a surface of retro gaming references, genuinely funny comedy, a slew of callbacks to the graphic novels and some really memorable performances. Kieran Culkin’s come out of nowhere to own the role of Wallace, Scott’s smirking roommate who acts as something of a mentor. The League of Evil Exes seems to have come to life directly from O’Malley’s pages, and Chris Evans and Brandon Routh in particular seem to be having a great deal of fun in their roles, which I found quite amusing personally as I tend to think of them as Captain America and Superman, respectively. And I will admit, when the dual cameo shows up at the end of Scott’s fight with a particular evil ex, I went into full fanboy mode. I’ll say nothing more for fear of spoilers.

So here’s a picture of Sex Bob-Omb instead.

It’s not a perfect movie. Condensing six novel-length parts of a narrative into a two-hour movie means things are going to get trimmed, watered and reduced down. A few of the characters are robbed of some of their development, and even Scott’s growth towards the end is somewhat truncated compared to how it occurs in the books. Now, the books were still in production when the film started shooting, so the last third overall is different from the source material. However, I think a lot of the people who still didn’t feel any sympathy whatsoever towards Scott at the end might have been buoyed up by some of those missing experiences. Not that Scott or any protagonist necessarily needs to be 100% sympathetic in order to carry a story – in fact, Scott’s jerkass behavior in the beginning and middle of the movie drives home his need to get over himself all the more, and holds up that rather uncomfortable mirror to those of us who’ve been there.

In spite of its flaws, I really liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Director Edgar Wright, the man who brought us Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, really makes the visuals pop off of the screen and worked with O’Malley to ensure the characters that do get developed do so in a well-paced arc that shows their complexity and their humanity. There’s a lot of great music throughout the movie, the visual style is a quirky flavor of awesome, the dialog is smart and the fights all have a great deal of energy. The video game rules by which Scott Pilgrim’s Toronto operates go unexplained but, really, we don’t need to understand why Scott has a Pee Bar or where he stashes all of those coins after a fight. When the ex leaves him more than 2.40 Canadian, that is.

Reversal!!

Stuff I Liked: I’ve yet to see an Edgar Wright film I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. Michael Cera acquits himself well with a very faithful and very good Scott Pilgrim. The messages in this movie are necessary to our generation and rather clearly conveyed under all the trappings of indie rock and 8-bit kung fu.
Stuff I Didn’t Like: A lot of the characters – Kim Pine, Stephen Stills, Envy Adams and Stacey Pilgrim, to name just a few – feel a little underdeveloped. The metaphors aren’t terribly subtle. I expected Scott to have a little more smirking self-confidence at first to more closely follow his arc in the books, but this is a minor quibble. And I really didn’t like how people went to see The Expendables or Eat, Pray, Love instead of this film. America, I am disappoint.
Stuff I Loved: The music. The fights. The fact that Toronto is actually playing Toronto instead of standing in for America. Ramona, Wallace, Knives and the League of Evil Exes. The playful, retro and refreshing visual aesthetic. This exchange:

Young Neil: “What’re you doing?”
Scott: “Getting a life.”

Bottom Line: Go see this movie. I plan on buying it on DVD when it comes out. Brian Lee O’Malley, Edgar Wright, this great cast and a hard-working crew have labored to produce something fresh, original and fun while other studios churn out the cinematic equivalent of a corner convenience store hot dog. You know, the ones that have been sitting under heating lamps for at least four hours? Ew. See Scott Pilgrim vs. The World instead of the other stuff that’s out there. Trust me. You will not be disappointed.

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Originality, even when it’s forced, is a rare and wonderful thing these days. Sometimes it comes about due to the constraints of budget or equipment. Sometimes the expectations or demands of a client or superior change. However it happens, if a production can manage to recover, even if it goes in an entirely new direction, the result is usually at least interesting, if not decent. The Emperor’s New Groove is more than decent, being an atypical Disney movie and, in my humble opinion, one of their most fun.

The story is set in an ambiguously ancient Mezzo-American empire, whose current head honcho, Kuzco, is something of a spoiled selfish jerk. The teenaged tyrant is looking to build his new summer home (complete with water slide) on the hilltop currently occupied by a small peasant village. His plans distract him from the machinations of his ancient witch of an advisor, Yzma, who conspires with her large and somewhat ADHD-afflicted handyman Kronk to poison Kuzco and usurp his empire. Unfortunately for Yzma, Kronk grabs the wrong vial and instead of dying, Kuzco is turned into a llama. The polymorphed potentate is dumped on a cart belonging to Pacha, leader of the village scheduled for destruction. In order to get back to his palace and regain his throne, Kuzco needs to work with Pacha, who will only help the emperor if he agrees to build ‘Kuzcotopia’ somewhere else. Hilarity ensues.

Originally, this was going to be a far more typical Disney musical, called Kingdom of the Sun. They had a Prince & the Pauper storyline, Sting was lined up to do the songs, everything was going swimmingly. The production began to suffer, however, when the team tried to find ways to make the story more original. Test screenings didn’t go well, and the two directors assigned to the project by Michael Eisner ended up working on two different films, with one leaning towards drama while the other aimed for comedy. When the more drama-minded director left the production, Eisner threatened to shut down the production entirely. While the animators were assigned to a Fantasia sequence, the writers and remaining director gave the film a serious overhaul. The result was The Emperor’s New Groove.

Think of the jaguars as very angry investors. But what the hell do they know?

Opting for an entirely comedic experience, the movie plays a lot more like something out of Warner Brothers than Disney. There’s no romance save the relationship between Pacha and his very pregnant wife, all but one of the in-movie songs were cut (which made Sting very upset), and the typical Disney cute animal very spitefully tries to get Kuzco eaten by a pack of hungry jaguars. A particularly Looney Tunes moment is in the third act when Yzma and Kronk are in a dark room, and all we can see are their eyes in an entirely black space. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.

One of the most brilliant decisions made was to cast David Spade as Kuzco. His performances in the various comedies he’s been a part of over the last decade or so have been somewhat hit and miss. Emperor’s New Groove is the former. Spade is very good at being a shallow jerkass, and channeling that into the shallow-as-a-thimble Kuzco is a stroke of genius. The small ensemble cast is, in fact, effective on all sides. John Goodman’s Pacha is very charming and endearing, Patrick Warburton launched a great voice acting career due to his turn as Kronk, and Yzma wouldn’t be anywhere near as enjoyable or the jokes to which she’s subjected as funny if her voice wasn’t coming out of former Catwoman Eartha Kitt.

One might even say she was “purrfect” for the role.

Combining this great voice work with some of Disney’s finer hand-drawn animations and quite a few lampshades being hung on the typical fare from the studio creates a very funny movie that still manages to be endearing in places. We see an actual friendship develop, the characters are memorable, the story moves a great clip and none of the jokes overstay their welcomes. In terms of both comedy and animation, this movie does everything it needs to do right not just right but very well.

Even if you don’t have kids, I’m willing to bet you’ll find The Emperor’s New Groove an amusing and refreshingly quirky romp from Disney’s animation studio. It fits well in just about any Netflix queue, whether you’re a fan of comedies in general or need a change of pace. It’s always interesting to see, over the course of a narrative, a complete jerkass grow and change into… well, a slightly more tolerable jerk. Which is part of the reason Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, in my opinion, works as well as it does.

…What? You haven’t seen that yet, either? Why are you still sitting there?

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

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You should never be afraid to seize an opportunity when it appears. The next big idea that changes your life may come out of somebody else being a dick. You may walk into a room without any intention of meeting somebody new, and the next thing you know you’re taking wedding vows. It’s the old adage of never looking a gift horse in the mouth. So with that in mind, here’s a review of a movie I found by the side of the road.

From Paris with Love begins by introducing us to James Reece, an intelligent and methodical assistant to the American ambassador to France. He’s got a cushy apartment, a beautiful girlfriend, the works. However, he’s also a low-level field operative for the CIA, which is what he’s really passionate about. He’s just itching for his chance to prove himself and be a real boy agent, but the assignment his handlers give him doesn’t just involve a dangerous plot undertaken by some mysterious terrorists to… do something… but an equally dangerous partner: sarcastic, trigger-happy, go-for-broke professional crazy gunman Charlie Wax.

Charlie Wax, or at the very least John Travolta, tries pretty damn hard to save this movie. He provides a lot of the guilty-pleasure charm audiences might get from seeing a complete douchebag be the hero of the story. And pairing him up with Johnathan Rhys-Meyers’ somewhat officious and eager-to-please Reece seems like the stuff of buddy-cop movie legends. But where Sherlock Holmes got it right in making the buddies equals, Reece is pretty much the straight man and punching bag for Wax’s antics. It’s completely lopsided, with Travolta swiping most of this movie away from pretty much everybody else in it. And it isn’t like Travolta is so much better than everybody else: he’s just good enough to be mostly watchable while everybody around him struggles to be mediocre.

Label on can: May contain bullets.
Label on Travolta: May contain ham.

Part of the reason a movie like Flash Gordon remains such a fan favorite is because there’s a whole lot of ham in it. Same goes for a few of the Star Trek films, including the latest one. And John Travolta’s definitely hamming things up here. In fact, rumors abound that Charlie Wax is hammy even by the standards of Travolta, and this is the gentleman responsible for the decidedly unsafe-for-vegetarians-and-Xenu-loyalists Battlefield Earth. But I was willing to overlook that, and the fact that he smuggled his gun Mrs. Jones into France in a rather improbable manner, because it seemed to be going in a relatively fun direction. It was after Wax asked for a ‘royale with cheese’ that I realized what was bothering me about From Paris With Love.

This is a shameless action cash-in flick. Like the beefy, roided-out, too-dumb-to-live juggernaut of this years’ summer, The Expendables, From Paris With Love is pandering to the folks heading to the movie theater to get something relatively bland and familiar. Thankfully, it was only in theaters for 5 weeks, and in DVD sales it came in behind Shutter Island. But its existence is still kind of sad. It’s cookie-cutter action scenes, lackluster dialog and flimsy premise combine to make it a cavalcade of mediocrity. I couldn’t even bring myself to say I hated this movie, it just kind of made me nauseous.

“Ready to drop this bomb on the box office when you are, pretty boy.

The disc I found stopped working about halfway through the movie. “Good,” I said to myself, “I can stop watching this because I know how it ends.” Reece will discover his idyllic Parisian life was actually more dangerous than he thought it was, he’ll have to do something like kill his boss or try to talk his girlfriend out of being evil, and he’ll end up being Wax’s partner at the end in such a way that’ll promise a sequel. Looking at plot synopses on the Internets I can see I wasn’t far off my prediction. I should’ve written it down and sealed it in an envelope. In any event, there really isn’t much more to say about this lackluster, tasteless and pandering waste of time.

From Paris With Love was co-written by Luc Besson, the genius behind The Fifth Element and Leon (or The Professional if you prefer). Its director was Pierre Morel, who brought us the surprisingly good Taken. What the hell happened, guys? How did your writing and directing chops come together to make something less than fantastic? I don’t know. In a way, I don’t think I want to. It probably involves wine, baguettes and at least one very unfortunate mime.

I realize this week’s review is a bit short and I apologize for that, but even if the DVD I rescued from the sidewalk hadn’t crapped out, there wouldn’t be much more to say. Even reviewing From Paris with Love, like watching the movie itself, is wasting your time, and you really should be doing something better with yourself. Like going to see Inception. Or listening to the Classholes Podcast. Or playing with a stray dog. Or putting Michael Bay through a wood chipper.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

When I cross-posted yesterday’s review on the Escapist, a couple of people pointed out that the card game in that abyssmal movie was grossly misrepresented. Fair enough. Despite the fact that breaking the flow of the game to explain what a card is and does is actually something that happens all the time in actual collectible card games, I will concede I was perhaps a bit too harsh when I referred to the card game of Yu-Gi-Oh! as brain damaged.

I’ve played a few CCGs in my day. Magic: the Gathering, NetRunner, Vampire the Masquerade (remember when it was called Jyhad?), World of Warcraft, and even Dragonball Z. I know how these things work. It’s really, really difficult to make it interesting to someone viewing it from the outside with no interest in the game, and since Yu-Gi-Oh! never got my attention as a game, it sure wasn’t doing itself any favors in movie form.

However, that’s a subjective point of view. And some of the folks who have, with probably somewhat good intentions, brought up the merits of the game, are also viewing the work subjectively. Sometimes, if one remains in a subjective point of view, things like tentative references to other works, flimsy dialogue or plot contrivance can get past the radar since the subject is enamored with what’s been depicted in the work.

My goal in yesterday’s post, and in pretty much every IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! feature, is to do my utmost to remain objective. For the most part, there are things in a work that are going to make it good or bad for people as individuals. My mother isn’t a fan of gratuitous violence or excessive use of the F-bomb. So a movie like Pulp Fiction isn’t something she’s going to watch. However, that film does have objective merits that a good film should have: interesting characters, well-written dialogue, a good soundtrack and thoughtful direction. I and other critics might declare it “good”, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to see it. Car magazines might say an Aston Martin is a good car, but I’m not going to buy one. Mostly because I can’t afford it.

On the other hand, Avatar has, as objective merits, technical brilliance, a unique aesthetic, sweeping battle sequences and a decent performance here and there. However, it has a story that is at some times simplistic and others clearly drawing from other sources, as well as supporting characters that are somewhat shallow one-dimensional straw men for corporate greed, indigenous antagonism or American belligerence. From a subjective point of view, it’s difficult for me to forgive the story flaws and character problems because I’ve been working very hard to avoid those very things in my own works. Someone who isn’t neck deep in writing speculative fiction might be able to overlook those difficulties and judge the film as good based on its visuals and the composition of its action. And, really, I can’t say I’d fault anyone for that.

Being critical and attempting to see these things from an objective point of view is as much an exercise for my own work as it is inspiration from Confused Matthew or MovieBob. If I can take a step back from my work as a writer, view the objective merits of that work and make the changes necessary to correct any flaws I see, the work will be better for it. The catch is not to overlook flaws that exist just because I can’t bear to pull the trigger or see flaws where there are none because, let’s face it, we are all our own worst critics.

And if I keep editing instead of writing, this stuff I’ve written will never see the light of day.

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There is a difference, in my mind, between a request and a challenge. A request is somebody asking an artist to do something for a personal reason – they have a particular subject they want exalted, or a pet peeve they’re dying to see run into the ground. A challenge, on the other hand, is a sharing of misery. When I did my review of Rise: Blood Hunter, that was a request. What happened last night was the result of a challenge, issued during the Classholes Anonymous podcast a couple weeks ago. If you missed it, go click the ad in the sidebar of my blog. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

The gauntlet was clearly thrown. And I, like a moron, took it up, apparently just to repeatedly punch myself in the face.

I should have taken Black Eagle’s advice to find the abridged version. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie doesn’t even get off to a good start. The opening narration, about an ancient ‘shadow game’ between Anubis, god of the underworld, and some nameless pharoah is redundant, dry and utter nonsense. “Not even eternity lasts forever.” Um, yes, it does. That’s the definition of eternity. Oh, and isn’t it a great sign when a kid’s movie begins with a scene of people being horribly buried alive?

Anyway, we cut to this little pipsqueak Yugi trying to solve this unsolvable Millenium Puzzle, an ancient Egyptian artifact that apparently hangs around your neck despite the fact it looks like it weight about five hundred pounds. When he solves it, he apparently becomes or is inhabited by the soul of the pharoah. I’m not entirely sure what the deal is, there. I have the feeling that if I’d suffered through the first few seasons of the horribly dubbed TV series I might have more of a clue, but I only have information from the movie to go on. And the movie doesn’t say shit about how this transformation of his actually works. Also, whenever the pharoah takes over Yugi’s body, he suddenly transforms from a shrimpy little kid into a tall young man with a much deeper voice and angrier hair. And nobody comments on the strangeness of this whatsoever.

The world has been taken over by this obsession with a collectible card game called Duel Monsters. It’s kind of like Magic: The Gathering, except that this game suffers from a problem of having its brain missing. Every single person who plays it doesn’t just carry a deck with them, they wear this retarded-looking gizmo on their arm. At all times. Now, if this were Hell’s Kitchen and these kids were carrying switchblades, I’d understand that. It’s a rough neighborhood. But, come on, you don’t have bags to carry this crap in? Are you that paranoid that a duel is going to break out at any moment? And while we’re on the subject of the gizmos, which are unnamed, if they project holographic images of the cards’ monsters and spells, the only way the images could do physical damage to the players – which apparently they do, judging by Yugi’s vocalizations when he is, among other things, brutally backstabbed (in a kid’s movie!) – is if they have the old Star Trek problem of the safeties being disabled. Or not having safties. What a great little toy for kids, huh? A card game where you can summon monsters to savagely beat your friends half to death during lunch hour. The PTA’s going to love it.

“Prepare to duel! FOR YOUR LUNCH MONEY!”

So the opening of the film and the premise for its battles are utter bullshit. The battles themselves should look cool at least, right? WRONG. Not only do the creatures in these duels look lackluster and almost entirely interchangable, as well as having needlessly complicated and similar names, the duelists make it a point to stop in the middle of their duels to explain what the card is and what it does. And this happens with every card. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Watching people play a CCG is boring enough as it is, but when this sort of crap is done every time a new card is played, complete with overly dramatic gestures and voice acting that is absolutely gut-wrenching in its amateur dramatics elocution, I have to believe the only adolescent audience really chomping at the bit to see this in theaters rode the short bus to school. Back when they had short buses.

When we’re not being thrown against the walls of our intelligence by this aggressive assault of stupid, the movie dumps exposition on the screen through the mouths of its characters with such utter blandness that I found myself almost wishing to be back in the middle of a duel. Not only is the exposition stupid, it contains perhaps the worst Egyptology lesson ever. Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have super-powerful baddies resolving their conflicts through mundane games. Puzzle Quest proves that. But I couldn’t help but feel sorry for poor Anubis. The god of the afterlife who judged the souls of the dead, to my recollection, never set a plot in motion to bring about the utter destruction of the world. And I know this is probably a case of the dub making an already flimsy premise even more stupid, but if those cards Yugi has represent Egyptian gods, I’d love to find the part in the Book fo the Dead that refers to Slifer the Sky Dragon.

So apparently Egyptian gods actually look like this.

Or… like this. I guess.

So far we’ve got a shitty plot, shitty battles, shitty animation and shitty mythology. Let’s see if we can find anything to even partially redeem this. At one point, the character of Kaiba climbs into a vehicle that I can only describe as a robot dragon. I have no idea where Kaiba got the resources to put this thing together, but it looks pretty badass. At first. Then the music comes in. Remember some of the incidental music from Transformers: The Movie? And I’m talking about the 80′s version, here, not Michael Bay’s somewhat bland explosionfest. The incidental songs were typical 80′s fare, but at least they were tolerable to listen to. This little song that plays while Kaiba flies up to see the fabulous Max Pegasus sounds like it was banged out by garage-dwelling wannabes that are trying way too hard to be Nickleback. If their aspirations begin and end with wanting to emulate the most unpleasant form of what can only tentatively be considered rock music, mission accomplished, I guess.

And while we’re on the subject of Kaiba, how the hell can he afford to build a highly complicated dome where he can test his deck against a simulations of Yugi’s? I know, I know, seasons of television in two countries, dubs suck compared to subs, online wikis, slashfics, derpy derpy doo. I am watching a movie, here, and am judging the movie based solely on what it provides its audience in terms of explanations and clarifications, i.e. none. Like Yugi’s inexplicable dual souls or the ways the holograms beat the crap out of the players, Kaiba’s fortune and resources go unexplained. We’re left with a hell of a lot more questions than answers. Why is Kaiba’s coat always billowing? If Kaiba’s really this interested in beating Yugi, why isn’t he doing it in a tournament setting where Yugi can be publically humiliated, instead of this private setting where he can cheat as much as he wants since there’s no oversight? And if Kaiba did win, who’d believe him? Couldn’t he at least have televised the event? Is anyone going to bother explaining the rules of this brain-damaged game? Why doesn’t Yugi’s grandfather have the hairstyle of an adult? And if this is a kid’s movie, what’s with all the fan service?

“Mommy? Why do my pants feel so tight?”

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the plot goes from nearly non-existent to completely incomprehensible. In the final act, Yugi’s soul is sucked into this magical MacGuffin and forced to navigate an MC Escher painting. While the pharoah in Yugi’s much more adult body gets its ass kicked by Kaiba’s dickish cheating and topdecking, Yugi and his pals have to fight mummies. Apparently they’re not going to survive until the girl among them jumps in, saying that as long as they’re together, they can prevail. As if a lesson on the Power of Friendship wasn’t enough, they apparently drew a symbol while their hands were joined at some point in time before the movie that gives them super-powers. A reference to something incidental from the television series is, in a film, still a deus ex machina, and still sucks.

So the big climax happens when Anubis manages to manifest himself as a retarded-looking pro wrestler guy with super-powerful monsters and the ability to MAKE THE MONSTERS REAL! Wait. If the monsters weren’t real before, why did Yugi act like he was getting stabbed for real when he got stabbed by that creepy-ass clown? Anyway, an ass-pull happens, Anubis is destroyed or banished or sent to his room or whatever. Point is, the movie ended. And all of those questions I brought up? Never answered. Not a single one.

I know, Yugi. I know. It hurts me too.

Watching Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie is an experience in cinematic torture. It’s bland, stupid, ill-conceieved and shamelessly pandering all at the same time. American children frothing at the mouth for the next obsessive collection of things on which their parents will spend money just to shut them up might have been entertained. But I’m more and more of the opinion that American children, by and large, have yet to unlock their higher brain functions. Maybe the school system is holding them back, maybe they’re eating too much fast food, maybe there’s too much exposure to things like Twilight and Halo and Justin Beiber, but it’s a moot point. I’m not here to discuss those matters, I’m here to review a movie. And this movie sucks. It’s atrocious. It was shat out by a studio looking milk more dollars out of impressionable youths who will stampede to the stores to pick up the awesome cards they saw on-screen. Here’s where I pick up my walking stick and shake it at these bunch of brain-dead drooling perpetual disappointments.

Back in MY day, when Magic: the Gathering was the only card game in town, we didn’t need a TV series or a shitty movie to get us to buy the cards. You know why? That game is good. There’s balance (more or less), clear rules (for the most part), fantastic card art (until anything potentially satanic gets edited out)… okay, it’s not a great game, but my point is people picked up the game, played it, and bought more cards to play more on the merits of the game itself. The card game born out of Yu-Gi-Oh is, as far as I can tell, every bit a product of the show and, if this film is any indication, it’s completely and utterly worthless. Do not go anywhere near this title. The series, the movie, the game, the other merchandise which includes those retarded things you wear on your arm because tables just aren’t cool enough – it’s all designed to make you stupid. It feeds on your intelligence. Avoid it at all costs. My deepest hope is that, since little to nothing has been said or heard about this franchise for years, it’s finally on its way to the same yawning abyss that has claimed Beyblades and those absolutely craptastic Go-Bots.

As for my “friends” Kona Kona and Chan… well, there’s a reason they put friendly fire in Alien Swarm, ya bastards.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.