Bill Diehl
Hey whore,
how's the whoring?
Rush Hour 2 is "Hilarious. Better than
the first!"
The Others "Sizzles with Suspense, shocks
and surprises!"
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©2001 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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This week:
Rush Hour 2
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Filthy says:
"A can of racist corn." |
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The efficient, heartless Rush Hour 2 is the old buddy
cop cliché out of juice and running on fucking fumes.
It's the kind of flick that makes me wonder who made it and are
they as ashamed of themselves as they should be. Probably not,
because they can say "It made money," and that's all
they care about. The makers are the sort of people who, if they
hadn't been lucky enough to land cushy Hollywood gigs, would
be pumping Amway or some other MLM product where the whole goal
is to make fucking money at the expense of friendships and self-respect..
Really, shit like Rush Hour 2 is not about you or me
laughing, or being entertained, or storytelling, or even remembering
what the fuck we just saw. It's a piece of shit that the grassfuckers
in Hollywood can't even believe is good, but believe they can
sell.
Rush Hour 2's plot has the easy job of stringing together
predetermined action sequences, and yet it manages to do it in
a way that suggests the main characters are all retarded and
incapable of making an obvious or correct choice--ever. Honestly,
these fatty meatheads would be dead in the real world, or a script
resembling reality. Most of the action occurs because Chris Tucker's
character does things so fucking stupid it sets the NAACP 50
years. It's a $20 million dollar routine that white audiences
are supposed to laugh at because this indiscreet, loud-mouthed
black man mugs and moons like Amos'n'Andy. A black man as dumb
and loud as this in the real world would be sent out for burgers
and later found dead in a bathroom stall, choking on his own
underwear.
There is an important rule at work in this movie: screenwriters
cannot write characters smarter than themselves. A corollary
is: lazy screenwriters don't even try. They just populate their
worlds with props and shills who can push forward formulaic plots.
A final corollary is: bad white screenwriters are deathly afraid
to write an intelligent black man.
I won't bother detailing about the bottom-feeding plot; it
doesn't deserve it. In, hong Kong, Tucker and Chan stumble across
a gang counterfeiting a "superbill," a $100 phony so
good most banks can't recognize it. Wherever the two of them
go, first Hong Kong and then, conveniently, Las Vegas, they stumble
upon obvious clues that several police forces can't seem to figure
get. It's another crappy script where the explanation from scene
to scene asks the viewer to believe that every fucking character
is so stupid he spells out everything. It's the kind of movie
where bad guys show their faces and then run away to generate
chas scenes, where a normal person would hide right from the
beginning. It's got yet another shitty loose-gun scramble, a
sutffy U.S. officer-in-charge who gets his comeuppance, lots
of people flying through windows.
All of the "comedy" is supposed to come from Chan
and Tucker's culture-clash bickering. It's all just a rehash
of the Lockhorns comic strip, only now the Lockhorns are racist
assholes. The audience gets to hear grade-school-playground kneeslappers
such as "All Asians look the same," "Asians have
small dicks," "Asians eat dogs," and "Nobody
can understand that crazy Chinese accent." Let's not forget
the zany Tucker-mispronouncing-the Chinese-language-and-saying-something-slightly-naughty"
joke . It's so nice, they repeat it ten or twelve times. And
when the screenwriters run out of that "A" material,
they repeat themselves with the compulsiveness of a retard who
had his pen stolen at lunch. The jokes are almost entirely based
on the assumption that other cultures are "crazy" and
we Americans are the only sane people. Ha ha.
Did the writers think they were being funny or did they think
"I wish I was dead?"
Chan and Tucker have no chemistry, just a string of racist
insults to hurl. Insulting people is a staple of my existence.
But when doing it to someone you love there has to be at least
a strand of humanity, or some evidence that you don't really
mean it. You have to show that you aren't just saying anything
because you have no real understanding. But that level of subtlety
requires the intellect of an unemployed gas-jockeys. Apparently
these smug Hollywood pricks aren't that sharp.
But Rush Hour 2's cultural-clash shit isn't what makes
it offensive. The fact that those LA assholes are trying to sell
such stale gags is. And if Tucker talked to me the way he talked
to Chan, I'd lose my patience and shit in his car while he wasn't
looking. Even my drunk friends are less annoying. He has one
speed and it's slightly faster, louder and more needy than Robin
Williams. I can hardly wait until he gets enough clout to start
making his "pet" dramatic projects.
Chan's in a constant state of confusion, lost by the heavy
exposition he's asked to barf up and the ridiculous nonsense
around him. His fight sequences are decent, but you'll see him
do a hell of a lot better with a rental of Super Cop.
The biggest disappointment is the presence of the incredibly
beautiful Zhang Ziyi. Why would she waste her time with this
crap when she could be doing girl-on-girl porn? That's all I
want. And if not porn, then how about a movie where she isn't
asked to be a dull, speechless villain who only snarls and has
a double come in to do the stunts? Who the fuck is managing her
career, some agent who wasn't bright enough to be a writer?
One Fucking Finger for the latest can of generic Hollywood
crap. Don't buy it, don't buy into it, and don't let your neighbors
try to rope you in. It's a fucking scam.
Want
to tell Filthy something?
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