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| Tonight I saw what is perhaps one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time. It's called "Stealth". The setup: Three hotshot pilots for some sort of special military program are stunned when they get a new wingman; a plane flown by artificial intelligence named "EDI". I can't remember what that stands for, but the acronym is a lucky coincidence because it allows everyone to call it "Eddy". Which is the most memorable name in the movie; I don't even know what the other character were called. Let's just call them White Guy, Black Guy and White Girl. Then there's the grizzled commanding officer who authorizes the new plane before it can be tested. Three guesses as to his true intentions. This movie probably contained every single movie cliche you've ever thought of. There are so many cliches that the cliches began to contradict the other cliches - it's like they were in such a rush to jam in every single scene they had seen in another movie, they forgot to check to see whether or not it would make sense. The dialog is painful and almost completely expository. People actually say shit like: Black Guy: [looks at the computer case] "Wait, I've seen this. This is a 'Quantum Processor', isn't it?" White Guy: "You mean the one with fifty terabits of memory?" Black Guy: "That's the one!" I almost want to stop here - I want to halt his post and leave it up to you. Think of every cliche you possibly can. It's in this movie. You've got your computerized plane (who has a voice just like HAL 9000, of course). Do you think the plane works just as planned and remains in control of the humans? Don't make me laugh. It's beyond me why Jamie Foxx would have wanted to take the role of token black guy in this movie, after appearing in two major dramatic roles. Yes, the classic movie law stating that The Brother Always Dies sure isn't broken here. If only I could get worked up a bit more about such a thin stereotype. In one scene, after the grizzled commanding officer orders his men to study up on the new plane so theycan understand it better, we get a montage showing each pilot studying in his room. Jamie Foxx is shown reading his laptop topless, dancing to rap music and spinning a basketball on his finger. I'm not joking. Ok, he's black. We get it. Just after that scene, White Guy visits White Girl in her room. She has a clothesline there, with bras hanging off it. He stands up and a bra hits him in the face. "Pardon my C-cup", she says. Ahh, romance. Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, White Girl's plane goes down. She ejects. "Where is she" they ask, back at mission command. "North Korea", the dude sitting at the computer intones gravely. She parachutes down into a forest. She makes her way to a small korean village, filled with rustic farming peasants, doing laundry by the river (because that's what North Korea's like you know). She hides from these peasants behind a boulder with her gun drawn. A small girl walks up, sees her. She makes the "shh" motion, but the little girl screams - the way we've seen this scene played out millions of times before. The peasants hear the scream and run away in fear. Next scene: three military helicopters land in the village and soliders with guns leap out. I guess these poor peasants had an emergency "call the army" phone, even if they didn't have washing machines. Meanwhile, White Guy and Eddy are both sent to Secret Evil Military Base in Alaska ("It's not listed, but I assure you it exists"), where the soldiers there try to kill White Guy. I assume because they think he'll tell people that Eddy is out of control, although he never says so. There, they bring in the original programmer who worked on Eddy (his computer is literally a random jumble of mathematical symbols). He looks at the screen and exclaims "Eddy! You've begun to... to feel!" I could go on. I could tell you that the computerized plane likes to download songs from the internet. "How many songs?" White Guy asks. "All of them". Handy that, out of all these songs that the plane magically downloads from the internet and inexplicably listens to at random times...that the songs it listens to happen to be contemporary pop hits! Hey, now we've got a soundtrack! I could tell you that the grizzled commanding officer sends the three pilots on R+R only hours after they arrive. "But we just got here" says White Guy. "Take it when you can get it". They go to Thailand for no reason whatsoever. Completely pointless. White guy takes pictures of White girl in a bikini by a waterfall. Black Guy meets a thai girl and, presumeably has sex with her although the movie is PG-13 so of course it doesn't show this. I could tell you that the grizzled commanding officer locks himself in his office and kills himself when they come to arrest him. Wow! Shocking! Haven't seen that before! I could tell you that Eddy eventually "learns the value of human life", turns good and sacrifices itself by flying into a North Korean helicopter before the North Koreans can kill White Girl. Why it had to fly into the helicopter when it has guns, who knows. I could tell you that White Guy flies from Alaska to North Korea in fifteen minutes, to the exact spot where White Girl is running. North Korea's pretty small I'm thinking. But honestly, you've seen all those scenes before, and many others of equally mind-blowing stupidity. What you probably haven't seen before, is hundreds and hundreds of things blowin' up real good, one after the other, in only one hundred and twenty minutes. But believe me, you sure aren't missing much. |
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Believe me, the review is better than the movie. Not because the review is particularly good either.
It might be a fun movie to mock with friends while it's on at a party and everyone's drunk. But it's not even in the So Bad Its Good category. It's just bad.
It might be a fun movie to mock with friends while it's on at a party and everyone's drunk. But it's not even in the So Bad Its Good category. It's just bad.
DEC 5, 2005 09:38 AM