I read somewhere that muscle
cars are the ultimate juvenile male metaphor, where the stick shift controls
the whole badass machine. And the ass-kicking-est muscle car of them all has to
be the 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge, which is front and centre in the new out-there,
raunchy, cock-driven teenage movie
Sex Drive
, opening Friday at the Village 8.
Ian is an 18-year-old virgin
that spends too much time on the internet and works as a mascot for a suburban
Chicago mall donut-shop — a loser by even the most generous teen movie
standards. He meets Ms. Tasty, a Tennessee hottie, online and she agrees to
screw him, or at least she agrees to screw his online identity — a
Photoshopped bodybuilder who claims to drive the fabled ’69 Judge which he
doesn’t technically own.
Ian’s flubby buddy, who slays
it with the ladies due to his overstated Herculean confidence, talks him into
stealing his brother’s prized car and along with Felicia, Ian’s best
friend-girl, they peel off on a roadtrip full of weird sexual situations and
literal bathroom humour, topped with a nice love lesson. And it’s actually
pretty awesome, if you’re the kind of person who thinks 14-inch rubber penises
are funny (and really, how can they not be?).
First time director Sean
Anders pulls this off, partially through solid acting. Seth Green as an Amish
auto mechanic, wise beyond his stereotype, steals most scenes.
Sex Drive
is no
Superbad
, but it’s not that super bad either. And if you’re a bit immature,
male, and can remember who Jean Claude Van Dam is, it’s actually pretty good.
Keeping with the teenage boy
demographic, the Village 8 is bringing in the hyper-action film
Max Payne
starring Mark Wahlberg. Director John Moore (
Behind
Enemy Lines, The Omen
remake)
delivers a moody shoot-em-up set in a world that’s half fantasy, half grim
reality and totally style-driven. Expect a lot of fancy set décor, slow motion
jump-shooting, and people yelling at each other in the pouring rain. Wahlberg
is decent, and leggy co-star Olga Kurylenko give us a taste of what to expect
from her in the new Bond flick
Quantum of Solace
which opens next month. Mila Kunis also gives a
great, if short, performance. Kunis, who was awesome in
Forgetting Sarah
Marshall
, totally flips the script
with this and goes in an entirely different direction. She’s an actress to keep
an eye on.
It’s getting to the point
where making a movie based on a video game character is comparable to doing one
about a comic book character — the built-in fan base is huge, and
fanatical. Mark Wahlberg keeps saying he was impressed with the script of
Max
Payne
, a revenge flick, but more
likely it was the paycheck. Honestly though, you don’t walk into a video-game
movie looking for a discourse on character, not even Angelina Jolie can pull
that off in the Tomb Raider movies. Instead, you go in looking for the three
F’s — Firepower, Flesh (both bullet-ridden and supple female varieties)
and ‘F#ck yeah!’ Does
Max Payne
deliver?
Sure. It’s forgettable, but fun to watch.
The last new flick this week
is the Canadian-made
Passchendaele
,
directed by Paul Gross (
Men with Brooms.)
It’s a love-story/drama set in1917 WWI and the brutally savage trench
battles on the plains of Belgium — a conflict that killed over 5,000
Canadians and wounded more than twice that many. Gross has crafted a war
picture that doesn’t glamorize or sensationalize the story but rather focuses
on old-time values like valor, patriotism and true love in dark and desperate
times. A film like this will register with the older audiences but I think it will
be even more valuable for younger viewers, those accustomed to televised wars,
internet porn and video games could use a bit of the somber history lesson
Passchendaele
offers. War blows.