Don't let the title of this post fool you. We're not starting a series and I'm certainly not promising future "Weird Wednesday" reviews. So why did I put that in the title? No reason.
There's also no reason for Rubber but that's the point. Rubber is an absurd comedy with an absurd premise: A tire comes to life and rolls around the california desert killing people with its psychic powers. Sounds like a B-movie, right? Yes, of course it does.
The first dialog in the movie is a monologue talking about something present in lots of well-known movies. Here's a section of it:
"In the Steven Spielberg movie E.T., why is the alien brown? No reason. In Love Story, why do the two characters fall madly in love with each other? No reason. In Oliver Stone's JFK, why is the President suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason. ..."
So that's the philosophy of the movie and it depicts it well. We get to see the tire come to life and explore it's environment, plenty of violence and gore, incompetent police on a tire-hunt, and even a love interest. All of this to a terrific soundtrack. The writer and director, Quentin Dupieux, is also a french electronic artist that uses the name Mr Oizo. The use of sound and music throughout the movie is one of my favorite things about it. Here's a track from the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q75FVXg-dlE
Rubber suffers from several things not least of which is a lack of an appropriate audience. Who is this movie for anyway? B-movie enthusiasts may be turned off by it's lack of traditional camp or schlock and art-house filming style and film buffs may get tired of the one-joke premise and over-the-top gore. Even if you embrace the joke and go along for the ride (like I did), it wears out it's welcome around an hour in. It's actually a plot point in the movie that it's doesn't end when it's "intended" to! At 82 minutes, it isn't especially long either. Granted, some of my favorite parts took place near the end but it had grown old by that point. It may be best watched with unsuspecting friends.
I think this should be regular feature! Is this your week to see bad movies?
ReplyDeleteThat could be fun! Yeah, it sorta was bad movie week.
DeleteThe biggest obstacle to doing weird movie wednesdays is that wednesdays are when Lizzi and I take turns picking a movie to watch together. Maybe I could start a regular weird wednesday feature on a different day of the week.