The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven

Directed by: Lawrence Lanoff
Written by: Sam Rappaport and Khara Bromiley

This movie is a veritable melting pot of plagiarism--from the title, which sounds like a rare collaboration between Chaim Potok and Edgar Allen Poe, to the star, Carmen Electra, who sounds like a Bizet opera of a Eugene O’Neill play. Get ready to spend the next 87 minutes of your life squinting into a Déjà Vu-master.

This rip-off of The Crow starts with a rip-off of Star Wars, as a block of scrolling text entitled "Episode One: Renewed Hope" informs us that "Good" (embodied by big-breasted women with pubic hair sculpted like topiary) will do battle with "Evil" (represented by the statutes against copyright infringement).

Playboy Playmate Shauna Sand is digging up an ancient tribal talisman that will endow her with superhuman powers. True to the legend, the necklace grants Shauna the highly photogenic ability to counter-rotate her breasts while running; but before she can use her new power to fight crime, she’s killed by an evil redneck named Cole.

Shauna’s death forces her estranged sister Carmen Electra to return to their ancestral home, Knott’s Berry Farm. She immediately picks a fight with her wizened Native American dad, Popi, and is reunited with her true love, Henry, a Sheriff’s Deputy who makes Barney Fife look like Buford Pusser.

Popi presents Carmen with the super-powered tribal necklace. Shauna’s ghost appears, dressed in gravity-defying post-mortem lingerie from the Victoria’s Sepulchre collection, and announces that Carmen has been chosen to combat evil.

Her first act as a mystical, crime-fighting superheroine is to wash the dishes with her tongue. But this is only the beginning of her metamorphosis. The necklace has endowed Carmen with the power to make her hair really poofy, which she uses to lure Barney into a sex scene with her body double.

Meanwhile, Cole, the murderous redneck is holed up in a shack with two other mentally challenged crackers. They’ve got a big ol’ still and, like most gun-toting hillbillies, are using it to make Windex. Hopped up on cleaning fluid, Cole takes a personal inventory and resolves to reconcile with his former lover Nora, the current trailer mate of Deputy Fife. When Barney objects, Nora beats him up and leaves him bleeding and dazed on the ground. Then Cole urinates on him, which excites Nora so much that she and Cole have implied sex in a pickup truck.

They dump Barney in Carmen’s yard, after first taking him to the face-painting booth at the Iowa State Fair and getting him airbrushed like a raccoon. Shauna, the Victoria’s Shroud model, shows up to remind Carmen that "you have the power," which inspires Carmen to wave her hands and make Barney’s face paint disappear. So, apparently, the talisman has also endowed her with the power of cold cream.

Popi starts doing voiceovers, and informs us that Carmen’s "powers were growing faster than her understanding." But then, so were her toenails.

Meanwhile, the Windex bootleggers are shooting trees, when Carmen suddenly shows up and takes a bullet in the arm (thereby demonstrating her fast-growing power to attract gunfire).

She runs away, and the rednecks chase her into a night scene as Carmen reveals her awesome power of Bad Continuity. The Chosen One flails ineffectually at her tormentors with a shovel until they shoot her, thereby demonstrating her power to die stupidly. Then Cole shoots and kills Nora, because he’s too embarrassed to break up with her again.

Later that night, the two women are raised from the dead by the power of Carmen’s accessories. Nora has turned into The Wolf, a creature whose evil lupine nature is betrayed by her predatory bloodlust, and her tendency to curl up on the rug and lick her own genitals.

Finally, Carmen dons her superheroine costume: a silver lamé jumpsuit with see-through knee-high boots. Her ensemble is topped off by a stainless steel catcher’s mask with vertical blades that curve far enough past her chin that the first time she looks down, she’ll give herself a tracheotomy. This creates an almost unbearable air of tension, as the viewer waits for Carmen’s enemies to cry out, "Hey, your shoe’s untied!"

The Wolf arrives in her costume (which, in keeping with the plot, is assembled from other peoples’ cast-offs: Elvira’s dress, Audrey Hepburn’s cocktail gloves from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger mask).

Carmen begins the explosive climax by walking into a western saloon and uttering her now-famous battle-cry, "Hello, Scumbag!" This inspires The Wolf to promptly kick her ass. Fortunately, Barney arrives in the nick of time to save her. He bursts through the door, cocks his shotgun, and declares, "It’s over!" Then somebody shoots him and he falls over.

Popi pops back up to tell us that Carmen must call upon "her most formidable power--the power to transform time and space." She uses it to transport herself and her nemesis to the set of a Warrant video, where the two of them have a fierce nipple-jutting contest. (Carmen wins by a millimeter.)

Carmen is now The Raven, The Chosen One, and asks Deputy Fife to join her in her crusade against evil. As they drive into the sunset, they consider new sidekick names for him. Pigeon Boy, perhaps? Maybe The Bleeder. How about Easily Maimed Man . . .?

**********

So, The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven. A perfect example of the old story formula: "Boy meets girl, Girl fights girl; Boy whimpers in the corner."

As this movie demonstrates, ancient sexist stereotypes are no longer appropriate in today’s modern world. It’s now acceptable for the woman to get into drunken bar fights with lowlife lingerie models, while it’s fine for the man to break his heel and fall down. However, it’s not acceptable for him to borrow your new dress without asking, since he’ll inevitably bleed on it, smear face paint on it, or get urinated on while wearing it. Now, here are a few more tips on how you can cast off the chains of traditional romance and turn your relationship into a progressive 21st-century union of equals:

1. Decide on a gender-neutral term to use when referring to each other. Good examples include "life partner" and "significant other." Also, to assist in pair bonding, come up with gender-neutral superhero names for each other. For your dynamic duo, avoid sexist appellations like "Batman" and "Catwoman," or "Boob Babe" and "Power Penis." Instead, follow our movie role models and choose more enlightened titles like "The Raven" and "The Lemming," or "The Falcon" and "The Snowperson." Or how about "Consumer Advocate" and "Director of Homeland Security "? (Although "Thigh Master" and "Buns of Steel" are sexier, while being equally non-sexist.)
2. Don’t try to make your partner conform to traditional gender roles. Men should be able to cry when they feel sad, giggle when they’re feeling silly, and pout after they get beat up by the Wal-Mart greeter. And women should feel free to act assertively, use strong language like "scumbag," and get into knockout, drag-down fights while wearing skimpy outfits that make their breasts poke out.
3. Avoid gendered terminology like "henpecked," "nancy boy," "lacks balls," and "girly man," even when talking about Henry, the hero of this movie.
4. Take turns paying for things like meals, movies, and hookers. And whoever uses the last of the Aqua Net should buy some more.
5. Make sure any sexual acts are performed only with the explicit consent of both partners. Cole should have asked Henry if it was okay before he urinated on him.

We hope this discussion has helped you think of ways to increase the political correctitude of your own relationship, and has convinced you to never make another movie starring a Baywatch chick.

But what if you don’t have any supernatural powers, but only the power of…Music. And pretty bad music, at that. Well, our next movie shows how women can empower themselves through lip-synching, semi-naked clogging and public sex. So, be prepared to do it for yourselves, sisters, (with the help of a hunky boyfriend, of course), because next week we will get Coyote Uglified.

Zardoz (by scottc)

Zardoz (1974)

Directed by: John Boorman (at his most Boorish)

Written by: John Boorman

Zardoz begins in a style reminiscent of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, except instead of a pair of crimson lips superimposed on a black screen, we see the head of a fey Brit, who has drawn facial hair on himself with an eyebrow pencil and donned an Egyptian-style head-dress made from a periwinkle dishcloth. This is “Zardoz” (of the Tumbridge Wells Zardozes) and he’s here to explain things so we don’t get confused.

Like Criswell, he informs us that what we are about to see are future events, that will affect us in the future, while his towel-draped head bounces from one side of the screen to the other, like the cursor in Pong. Zardoz confesses that he’s a “fake god” with a “fake mustache,” but assures us that the boredom we’re about to experience will be genuine.

The credits roll, and “ZARDOZ” appears in a strange, dramatic font (I think it’s Xanadu Bold Condensed) followed by the most chilling words in the film: “Written, Directed, and Produced by John Boorman.” Yes, John’s reward for the success of his previous film, Deliverance, was a bag of peyote buttons and carte blanche to film the subsequent hallucinations. The resulting motion picture was largely deemed a failure by those members of the audience who were not concurrently hosting a large amount of psilocybin in their cerebrospinal fluid, but fortunately, Boorman redeemed himself with his next effort, Exorcist II: The Heretic.

The future gets off to a goofy start when a giant paper-mâché bust of Santa Claus screaming like a howler monkey hovers over the English Midlands, while cavalry soldiers wearing nothing but Angry Santa masks and scarlet hot pants ride around below, the wan light reflecting from their white, hairless, Poppin Fresh-like thighs.

The Giant Screaming Santa Head lands and we learn that this is Zardoz, god and motivational speaker. Zardoz reads the minutes of the last meeting, recounting how it raised the Hot Pants Men from brutality and taught them the sacred catechism (“Who wears short shorts? We wear short shorts!”) so that they might go forth and slaughter everybody who had the decency to wear slacks. To accomplish this, Zardoz reminds them, “I gave you the gift of the gun. The gun is good. The penis is bad. The penis shoots seeds [and occasionally kidney stones] and makes new life.” So auteur Boorman’s vision of the future comprises a society of hot pants-wearing Santa fans who worship the head of Andrea Dworkin.

Anyway, the service ends with the traditional admonition to “go forth and kill!” Then Zardoz suffers a painful attack of acid reflux and vomits guns, just like Hobo Kelly’s toy machine if her mid-60’s syndicated kids’ show had been sponsored by the National Rifle Association rather than Milton Bradley and Bosco.

Zardoz lifts off, and suddenly a topless Sean Connery fills the frame, sporting a French braid, Harry Reems’ mustache from Sensuous Vixens, and enough armpit hair to knit a Cowichan jersey. He looks around at his masked compatriots with a perplexed, irritated expression that seems to say, “What the hell? Boorman told me I’d be playing King Arthur. This looks like a bloody nudist camp on Guy Fawkes Day.” Then he turns toward us, points a revolver, and shoots the cameraman. Alas, he’s not getting out of the film that easily…

To be continued…

Zardoz 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Our story so far: Sean realizes he’s about to spend an entire movie wearing a French braid and a diaper, so he shoots the cameraman and makes a break for the car. But it’s parked on the far side of the catering tent, and before he can reach it…

…director John Boorman foils Sean’s escape by cutting to a scene of Zardoz, the Giant Screaming Santa Head floating serenely through the clouds, as it belts out an aria in its surprisingly lovely mezzo soprano voice.

Inside the head, we see a huge mound of sawdust. Apparently, when he’s not defending the Second Amendment and preaching against the penis, Zardoz likes to relax with a little decorative woodworking. But wait! It turns out the sawdust was only there so that Sean could emerge dramatically from the pile (also so that they’d be prepared in the event the audience suddenly barfs). As Sean rises, we can see that he’s dressed like the other pro-gun/anti-penis types (let’s call them The Cheneys), except he has spurned hot pants in favor of a pair of pleather Depends, and he’s accessorized his ensemble with hip waders and crossed bandoliers, creating a look that’s sort of And a River Runs Through It meets the Frito Bandito.

Sean looks around the interior of the head, sees a bunch of naked English people in man-sized Shake ‘N Bake bags, then spies the guy with the blue tea towel on his head, who tells Sean, “Without me, you’re nothing!” (so apparently he’s Cubby Broccoli). Sean promptly shoots him right between the towel, and he falls out of Zardoz’s mouth and plunges screaming to his death. (Well, we’re later told he falls a thousand feet to his death, although at this particular moment he appears to be thinking his Happy Thoughts because he just sort of hovers there in his pajamas like one of the Darling children.)

Anyway, the Giant Santa godhead and its precious cargo of boil-in-the-bag nudists lands at “the Vortex,” an impregnable, futuristic 17th century village where everyone dresses like Flemish peasants but talks like they’re on Space: 1999. Sean wanders around the place and gets successively terrorized by flour, hydroponic Brussels sprouts, and a jack-in-the-box. Fortunately, he finds a talking ring that explains everything in the movie, even when you don’t want it to (Sean: “What is it?” Ring: “Flower.” Sean: “Purpose?” Ring: “Decorative.”) This is a pretty cool gadget, and I wish I’d had one when the Netflix envelope first arrived. (Me: “What is it?” Ring: “Zardoz.” Me: “Purpose?” Ring: “To give self-indulgent crap a bad name.”)

A plain-looking woman appears. Like the other residents of the Vortex, she is an immortal, possesses deadly psionic powers, and is very very boring. Unlike the other “Eternals,” she also apparently thought Scarlett Johansson’s costume from Girl with a Pearl Earring would make the perfect fashion statement if you just accessorized it with a hat made from a Handi-Wipe and dyed the whole thing orange.

Anyway, Orangina mentally bitch-slaps Sean, then places him in a Mylar pup tent decorated with Playboy centerfolds, and we get to watch home movies of Sean riding around with a bunch of other guys sporting Pampers and porn ‘staches, shooting dress extras in the back and forcing themselves on women trapped in gill nets.

The raping and killing doesn’t bother blank-faced Eternal Charlotte Rampling, but she is so traumatized by Sean’s graphic memories of forced wheat farming that she can only speak in words beginning with the letter Q. “Quench it,” she advises. “Quell it.”

Orangina wants to keep Sean, but there’s a no-pet policy in the Vortex, so the Homeowners Association has to take a vote. A male Eternal named “Friend” with prenaturally poofy hair takes a liking to Sean and promises to feed him and pick up after he does his business. The condo board agrees to let Sean live on a trial basis, but insists that in order to prevent him from digging up the flower beds, he has to be crated every night.

The next morning, Friend appears dressed in a skirt and a low cut macramé halter top, his hair wildly teased, and proceeds to methodically beat the half-naked Sean with a bullwhip in a scene that’s totally free of any homosexual undertones.

The rest of the Eternals sit down to lunch, where they pass a green baguette around the table and ritually sniff it, while Sean hauls Friend around in a rickshaw as he delivers oddly-hued baked goods to the Apathetics – a group dressed like late Renaissance Walloons who stand motionless and stare into space all day, slack-jawed and drooling. Friend explains that these are the sole survivors of a Zardoz test screening in La Jolla.

Tomorrow — Episode III: Pants!

Zardoz, Pt. 3: The Zardozening (by scottc)

And now, the thrilling conclusion to ZARDOZ!


Sean attends Charlotte’s PowerPoint slide show on The Lost Art of the Erection. Apparently, the Eternals can conquer death and construct giant flying heads, but they can’t figure out how the peepee works. Charlotte, as part of her Show ‘N Tell segment, makes Sean watch Cinemax in an effort to put a Lincoln Log in his Huggies, but it doesn’t have the desired effect. However, just when her presentation is circling the drain, the Soundtrack from Fantasia arrives to give Sean a huge pulsating boner, which is symbolized by a cutaway to a llama.

These events may be unrelated, but the next day at lunch, an embittered Friend decides he doesn’t want to sniff the baguette. The other Eternals respond to this mutiny by humming like a model train transformer while Carrot Top does a sinister jazz hands routine.

Sean decides he’s had enough up this and climbs a hill so he can do mime in peace. Despite presenting a killer “trapped in the invisible box” routine, he sustains a critical drubbing, so he heads to the Sizzler to blow off steam and gets badly mauled by a group of elderly patrons who don’t appreciate him gadding about in a diaper while they’re trying to enjoy the Early Bird Special.

Then Charlotte and Sean fight over a poncho and Sean goes blind, but Princess Leia suddenly appears and performs Lasik on him, then warns him that his strength will inevitably fail, and when it does, he should eat some spinach.

The Eternals trap Sean in one of those inflatable Jolly Jumpers and start beating him to death, but he confounds them at the last possible second by throwing a handful of Gold Medal flour in their general direction and escaping! Then he runs back to the top of the hill and violently vogues. When this doesn’t seem to help, he goes to hang with the Apathetics since at least Boorman didn’t give them any dialogue. Unfortunately, the catatonic women magically awaken when they taste his underarm perspiration. This inspires a tepid lesbian makeout scene, but it doesn’t last, and suddenly all the apathetic Flemish chicks are moaning and licking Sean, so he frantically eats his spinach, then runs a 10K while an angry posse with severe erectile dysfunction gives chase.

Eventually, he’s saved by the elderly Sizzler patrons, who make him wear Miss Haversham’s wedding dress while they wander around with Roman candles as the Apathetics, still hopped up on Sean sweat, hump on the lawn ornaments.

Orangina realizes that, although the members of the Vortex possess the sum of all knowledge, Sean is a physically superior mutant who can pop a chubby at will, so he wins. She figures that, if you can’t lick ‘em, then…well, lick ‘em, and tells Sean, “We will touch-teach you, and you will give us your seed.” Sean agrees to this bargain, but adds, “Um…I’m gonna need a magazine.”

So Princess Leia gets naked and speaks Swedish while math problems are flashed on her skin by the Eternal AV Club’s Kenner Give-A-Show! Projector. Then suddenly everybody is nude and covered in algorithms and speaking Albanian and nattering on about Ethelred the Unready and the Gadsen Purchase as Sean crams for his midterms. Finally, Sean’s apotheosis reaches a climax as a girl with staticky hair sells him a large cubic zirconium.

Sean absorbs the sum of all human knowledge, and promptly realizes that he looks ridiculous in this diaper, so he goes and puts on some gauchos. Charlotte sneaks up behind Sean with a huge knife, but she’s so moved by his attempt at pants that she instantly falls in love.

Then Sean sneaks into the Mormon Tabernacle, which doesn’t look at all like I thought it would – a lot more labyrinths, bleeding mirrors, and interpretive dance recitals by disembodied heads than you’d expect. Meanwhile, the Flemish peasants break into the workroom on Project Runway and vandalize some dress forms.

Sean tells Orangina and Charlotte, “Stay close to me. Inside my aura,” then sticks out his hand, which causes the film to reverse (but not, thankfully, to the beginning). Then the Santa Head Hot Pants People ride in waving their guns. Suddenly, the screen is filled with men and women staggering around shouting “kill me! KILL me!” Since we’ve never seen most of these people before, I can only conclude that they’re members of the film crew who have finally snapped. Meanwhile, Sean and Charlotte run off and hide in Injun Joe’s cave.

Suddenly, she’s nude and giving birth. Then Sean and Charlotte are sitting on a rock in the cave, and staring expressionlessly at the viewer just like American Gothic, except they’re both topless and she’s and nursing a baby. Then, we dissolve and they age a bit – the kid is about 5 years old now – but they’re still sitting on the rock, although now they’re dressed in forest green, Napoleonic-era greatcoats. Another dissolve. They’re still there, still modeling the coats, and the kid is about ten. Another dissolve. Nobody’s moved. The kid is about 18 and sporting long, unkempt hair and a rawhide loincloth like Tarzan. He looks at over Sean with an expression that plainly says, “Um, Dad? Can we get up off this rock now?” Sean doesn’t respond, so the kid pulls one of those “You guys are so bogus! I am so OUT of here!” faces, and stalks off camera.

Now that the kid is no longer sitting between them, Sean and Charlotte join hands, and continue to decay in their overcoats. Through a series of painfully slow, yet hilarious dissolves, they rot into skeletons. Then the connective tissue decomposes, and at last they’re a big, disorganized pile of bones, and the camera pans up to Sean’s rusted gun hanging on the wall of the cave, beside two handprints that were apparently created using the science of Kirlian photography. Bet you didn’t see THAT coming, did you?!

Oh. Um. The End.

The Island (by scottc)

The Island (2005)
Directed by Michael Bay
Written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen and Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Story by Caspian Tredwell-Owen

We should probably dispose of the most contentious issue up front. Some have charged that this film is nothing more than a shameless rip-off of an obscure 1979 horror movie called Parts: The Clonus Horror, which featured Peter Graves and the relief Darren from Bewitched, and starred that guy who played the Gene Shalit-looking fireman on Emergency! And while one must concede that The Island does seem to recycle the premise and every major plot point of the earlier film, recent events have shown that plagiarism is a conservative value, so this fact only seems to strengthen its cred.

We open on a sleek, high-tech yacht. Scarlett Johansson is standing in the bow, wearing a filmy white gown and a long, gossamer scarf that’s whipping around in the wind like a Water Wiggle. As we pull out, we see Ewan McGregor parading about the deck in a skintight, futuristic Union suit, while Scarlett ineffectually attempts to outwit her own scarf. The huge head of smirking middle-aged man suddenly appears in the sky and tries to sell us a Caribbean cruise package. Cut back to the boat, where Ewan has fallen overboard into the churning sea, and is playing Marco Polo with the Blue Man Group.

Just as he drowns, Ewan wakes up in his tiny and extremely white bedroom, where a thousand gallons of water is rapidly draining from his mattress. The viewer assumes that the previous sequence symbolized a violent bed-wetting, but apparently not, since Ewan goes into the bathroom and we get to spend precious screen time watching him take a lengthy whizz. But hey, director Bay has over two hours and fifteen minutes to kill, so why not linger over our hero’s entire morning routine? French cineastes still talk about the austere beauty of the flossing sequence.

Ewan lives in the Mall of Contaminated America, with a bunch of clones who think they’re the survivors of an ecological catastrophe, and who gad about in matching track suits like those elderly couples who lead “active lifestyles” at leisure villages in Coral Gables. He apparently lives on the 3000th floor, since the ride down to the food court takes so long that instead of playing Muzak, the elevator screens Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” starring Michael Clarke Duncan. Except in this version, he doesn’t get stoned to death to promote local crop yield, but instead wins a ticket to Fantasy Island, the last unpolluted spot on Earth.

Unlike the similar mall in Logan’s Run, the inhabitants of this installation don’t spend their days getting plastic surgery, committing ritual suicide, or teleporting into strangers’ living rooms for a bout of anonymous sex and caftan modeling. Instead, they take yoga and tai chi, swim and play tennis, all with their cloned hair.

While there are sinister, black-clad guards who gently chide people if they get out of line, the complex seems to be ruled entirely by lunch ladies, who imperiously deny Ewan’s request for bacon. But Scarlett suddenly appears and wins Ewan’s heart by coaxing the luncheonfuhrer to add some fried swine flesh to her bowl of Purina Clone Chow.

Ewan thanks Scarlett, but alas, he’s a close talker, and there are rules against proximity to girls (apparently, the plague that wiped out all life on Earth was cooties). He gets sent to the Principal’s office, where Sean Bean gives him a stern talking to, and a test which involves strapping Ewan into a Lay-Z-Boy and shoving tiny robots into his tear ducts. The results indicate that Ewan has an aptitude for working with the public, indicating his suitability for careers in the Retail sector, Airline Hospitality, or Rock Stupid Action Movies. Then he leaves and walks down a long hall.

Turns out that Ewan has pretty much the same job that Robert Duvall had in THX1138, except without the good drugs. For that, he must go to Steve Buscemi, a construction foreman who pours booze into Ewan during their clandestine rendezvous, presumably because he’s one of those guys who think it’s funny to get his girlfriend’s Pomeranian drunk on malt liquor.

Steve goes to fix the plumbing in the Maternity Ward, and we get to watch the birth of a clone, which turns out to involve pretty much the same process as preparing a Boil-in-the-Bag entrée, except with less MSG and more placenta. The important thing is, we get to see a gooey, naked, middle-aged man yanked out of a Ziplock sandwich bag.

Meanwhile, Ewan, still loitering around the construction site, catches a butterfly and places it tenderly in a matchbox, in a moment that would be every bit as poignant and lyrical as the last scene of All Quiet on the Western Front, if only someone would shoot him.

Alas, no one does. In fact, it’s now nearly 30 minutes into the film, and all we’ve seen so far are people walking down halls, a mild scolding, and a conspiracy to defraud a lunch lady of bacon. I don’t mean to come off the Philistine, but there were more gunfights and action sequences in The Red Balloon.

Anyway, the work day is through. Now comes Product Placement Time! Grab a tall frosty Aquafina and head on over to the X-Box Pavilion, where it’s Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Clones as a holographic Ewan and Scarlett literally knock each other’s teeth out. Finally, some action! Except we have to cut away from that after about ten seconds because Bay has some more scenes of people walking down halls.

Ewan and Scarlett go to some sort of Clone Danceteria, where everyone sits on couches and watches high definition videos of sunfish while sipping fruit juice and making awkward conversation. It’s either the dullest disco on the planet, or they’ve wandered into a Whit Stillman film. Anyway, Scarlett wins the lottery and she and Ewan limply clasp each other’s forearms in celebration. But this tepid embrace sets off a “proximity alert,” so evidently the installation is run by nuns from a Catholic high school.

That night, Ewan releases the butterfly and follows it to General Hospital, where he skulks around and watches one of the clones give birth. But the instant the baby clears her vulva, the mother is given a lethal injection, which suggests that in the future, HMOs will finally get tough about curtailing the length of hospital stays.

Meanwhile, Michael Clarke Duncan is in the OR having his liver involuntarily harvested, which means that he won’t be going to the Island, but will instead wake up in a tub full of ice in a hotel in Mexico. He doesn’t seem to care for this prospect, so he gets up in the middle of the operation and runs screaming down the halls. The guards shoot tiny grappling hooks into his calves, which is technically not an action sequence, but it’s still an improvement over watching people walk down halls while getting nothing shot into their calves.

Finally — okay, this time for real — we get some action, as Ewan grabs Scarlett and they run around the steam plant where they shot the end of Highlander. (Admittedly, running isn’t much, but it’s still more exciting them watching them take their spinning class.) Scarlet is naturally skeptical about Ewan’s story. Fortunately, by the most random coincidence ever, they fall through a hole in the floor and right into the boil-in-the-bag nursery, where Caribbean Vacation Sales Guy is on the PA system, tediously explaining the plot to the Ziplocked clones.

Scarlett is thunderstruck. After all, she’s a four-year old clone who has spent her entire existence sealed in an artificial environment and fed a constant diet of false information. To accept the truth, she must reject everything she has ever believed. Fortunately, the producers didn’t cast George W. Bush as the ingénue, because she actually makes the adjustment, and we’re free to get on with our movie.

Principal Bean hires mercenary Djimon Hounsou from Blackwater — sorry, Blackhawk Security — to hunt down his truant merchandise. Meanwhile, the merchandise pops out of the top of a derelict missile silo in the middle of the desert. They head to a biker bar, where Ewan bursts into a filthy toilet stall and interrupts Steve in mid-defecation. Now, no offense to Steve Buscemi, who I think is a very entertaining actor, and who I’ve almost forgiven for aiding and abetting Bay in making Armageddon. But — and again, no disrespect intended — if you find it necessary to make Steve Buscemi unappealing, you really don’t have to work. This. Hard. First of all, he’s standing next to Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. Contrast is working in your favor. Give him some dorky glasses or a pair of high-water pants and Mission Accomplished! It really isn’t necessary to get his metabolic ejecta involved. Thank you.

Steve takes the two runaways home and explains that they’re clones who were cultured to provide spare parts for their super-rich sponsors, and then thrown away. This is probably the part that conservatives read as a slippery slope argument against stem cell research. To me it felt more like an allegory about the balance of power between the Bush Pioneers and anyone below the Federal poverty line. Well, less of an allegory and more of a documentary. Which probably explains Bay’s uncharacteristically restrained tone in the first half of the film; Harvest of Shame didn’t have that many car stunts either.

Steve drives the clones to the train station so they can take the mag-lev bullet monorail to LA, which eliminates the suspense about whether Al Gore won the 2012 election. Unfortunately, the mercenaries shoot Steve while he’s buying Ewan a Map to the Stars Homes, triggering a bunch more running. Our mimeographed heroes finally make it to the train, and we can see that Scarlett is deeply traumatized by Steve’s murder. “What’s wrong with these people?” she gasps. “They killed him!” FYI, she says this about ten seconds after she repeatedly nail-gunned a guy to a door.

Then there’s more running and shouting. The clones climb onto a tractor-trailer, and the mercs follow them onto the freeway, where Ewan releases the load. Huge truck axles pour off the trailer, smashing into traffic and causing cars to crash, flip and burn. Dozens of innocent commuters are killed, or so badly maimed that they have to cash in their clones. So Ewan managed to kill some of his friends back at the installation, too. Little Miss What’s Wrong With These People surveys the horrific carnage and chirps, “Good job!”

Ewan hijacks a flying motorcycle, and we get to enjoy that whole speeders-through-the-Forest-of-Endor thing again (with the same sound effects, too), until he crashes into a skyscraper, and we get more scenes of people walking down halls — except this time it’s spiced up by the sight of Ewan plowing into office workers at high speed, killing them on impact and sending their ISO9000 Quality mugs and TPS reports flying. Finally Scarlett and Ewan crash through the opposite side of the building and fall 70 floors, which doesn’t kill them, although it does reduce their resale value.

They hook up with Ewan’s sponsor, who’s a Scottish boat designer with a cirrhotic liver. Sponsor Ewan pretends he wants to help; instead, he and Ewan wind up in a warehouse where he holds a gun to his clone’s head while the two of them scream and swear at each other in a scene that’s sort of like watching the Olsen Twins in Reservoir Dogs. Fortunately, Djimon arrives and pwns the original.

Ewan goes back to his sponsor’s house, where Scarlett has apparently unscrambled the Playboy Channel and learned about sex, because she orders him to open his mouth, then jumps him. Considering that he’s 3 years old and she’s 4, I think this technically makes them both pedophiles, and the whole thing feels coming upon a sex scene in the middle of Rugrats.

Meanwhile, back at the installation, Principal Bean declares that Ewan has broken Ape Law by growing a soul, so he decides to recall the late model clones. Which means that all the hall-walking dullards we grew to barely tolerate during the first half of the film are going to die!

The guards start the massacre by going through the prenatal warehouse and slashing open the uterine Hefty bags, killing hundreds of unborn clones. I guess I should feel bad, but I once had a power failure right after I got home from the market, and lost a whole box of Bagel Bites, three Budget Gourmet entrees, and a brand new tub of Cool Whip Free, so cry me a friggin’ river.

Ewan flies back to the installation posing as his sponsor, while Scarlett lures the mercenaries to Venice Beach. After watching the guy juggle bowling balls on stilts, and getting their ears pierced, the mercs capture and return her to General Hospital.

Meanwhile, the installation guards put all the factory second clones with the slightly irregular souls in a chamber, which they fill with gas. I can’t shake the feeling that Bay is attempting to draw some sort of parallel here, but it’s just too subtle for me.

Then Ewan has a fight with Principal Bean, and it doesn’t go very well. “I brought you into this world,” Mr. Bean shouts as he throttles Ewan, “And I can take you out of it!” Fortunately, just then Bill Cosby serves the principal with a cease and desist order for stealing his act.

Countless white-clad clones pour from the tip of the missile silo in what I’m sure isn’t meant to be a visual metaphor of any kind. They commence to roam in a mighty herd across the prairie, while Enya-like music warbles on the soundtrack. Ewan and Scarlett survey their work with expressions which seem to say, “We’ve just released a lot of deeply stupid people on the world.” On the bright side, they’re in Arizona, so they can vote for John McCain.

As for me, I found myself with a deep and profound yearning that Bay’s vision of the future come to pass, because I drank so much in order to get through this film that I destroyed my liver, and I’m willing to pay Boromir for a spare.

Druids (by ScottC)

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