Please, Sink This ‘Battleship’
I believe in fully and candidly correcting all errors of fact that occur in this column, which isn’t all that difficult since this column rarely contains any facts.
However, last week in this space, I mistakenly called the new John Travolta movie, “Battleship Earth.” The actual name of the movie is “Battlefield Earth.”
I should have known better than to use the word “Battleship.” I had seen the ads for this movie, in which John Travolta looks like an evil Smurf with extremely long nose-hairs, and I should have realized that the movie is not about the valiant sailors of the USS Missouri. The U.S. Navy has liberalized its facial-hair policies, but not that much.
This mistake deeply offended hundreds of fans of this exciting sci-fi epic, although I’m only guessing about that. Not a single fan actually called. Still, it is my policy to correct all mistakes, whether anyone cares or not, and in fact I believe that American journalism should police itself more stringently. I believe writers should be severely punished for their mistakes.
So I have punished myself by going to see “Battlefield Earth.”
I admit, I was also curious to see why movie critics are saying this film “may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century,” when there are 991/2 years worth of bad movies still to come. Something that bad must be fun, right?
Sure, and 30-to-life on the rock pile is a barrel of laughs, too. Not since “Howard the Duck” have I endured quite so much pain in a movie theater. At one point, I dozed off and when I woke up I had a panic attack. I thought I was somehow watching a movie version of “Cats.”
Except these cats were even scarier than the Andrew Lloyd Webber cats. They had bad teeth, grotesque whiskers and long greasy manes, and I was afraid any moment that they might start singing “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer.” Maybe this was some kind of “dark” version of “Cats,” something called “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Hairball.”
Actually “Hairball” would have been more entertaining than “Battlefield Galactica,” or whatever this thing is called. Like most action movies, this movie has an obsession with explosions rendered in exquisite THX (Throbbing Headache X-tra) Sound. However, this movie also has another gimmick: breaking glass. We see showers of broken glass, cascades of broken glass, virtual Speedy Auto Glass repair shops full of broken glass. The director apparently believes that shards of flying glass are intrinsically beautiful, so he renders them in poetic slo-mo, especially during the big climax in which the evil Psychlo’s giant glass dome is blown apart in a veritable rain of pane.
The evil Psychlos are an advanced race from another planet, but they have apparently not grasped the concept of “safety glass.”
The Psychlos have obviously not grasped the concept of dentistry, either, and I was particularly sensitive to this subject having just been to the dentist, where I was informed for the 87th time that I really should floss once a day. These lectures have never broken my resolve to be floss-free, but after watching John Travolta attempting to grin vivaciously through four black and rotting teeth, I am seriously thinking of buying myself about 50 yards of Waxed Mint.
The teeth, I admit, were fascinating, but the same could not be said for the narrative. This is one of those movies in which a strict adherence to logic is not considered vital. In one scene, a band of mananimals (humans) pops out of the forest to save our hero, Johnnie. He then explains to them that he is starting a rebellion against the evil Psychlos, and they immediately shout, “We’re with you!”
I love what happens next: They run back into the forest.
We’re behind you all the way! Bye now!
My other favorite part is when the man-animals discover a fleet of Harrier jets that are in pretty good shape considering that they missed their last maintenance check by 500 years. The man-animals have no trouble figuring out how to fly Harrier jets in battle formation, which just goes to prove that whittling spears out of willow sticks for five centuries is good training for flying advanced vertical takeoff fighter-bombers.
As for the plot, just think “Planet of the Apes.” A hairy race of creatures with bad breath (I am extrapolating here) has taken over Earth and oppressed the humans. Except in “Planet of the Apes,” there was little in the way of breaking glass and the apes were kind of cute, like big stuffed animals. The Psychlos are not cute enough to be stuffed animals, unless someone comes up with a new line called Beany Rabies.
So, once again, please accept my sincere apologies over my mistake. If I ever call it “Battleship Earth” again, please grant me a more merciful punishment. Just keel-haul me under the USS Missouri.