20150527: Comedy Review--Tank Girl

Tank Girl

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Tank Girl
2. IMDb: Users rated this 5.2/10 (22,760 votes)
3. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 based on 674,429 ratings.
4. Rotten Tomatoes:
   38% of critics liked it of 37 critical reviews posted
   64% of viewers liked it, based on 49,400 ratings.
   Critics Consensus: While unconventional, Tank Girl isn't particularly clever or engaging, and none of the script's copious one-liners have any real zing.


5. Status: Released
6. Release date: 1995-03-31
7. Production Companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
8. Tagline: In 2033, justice rides a tank and wears lip gloss.


9. Budget:  25,000,000 USD
10. Revenue: 6,600,000 USD
11. Runtime: 98 minutes.
12. Genres: Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Science Fiction


13. Directed by: Rachel Talalay; written by Tedi Sarafian


14. Starring: Lori Petty as Rebecca (Tank Girl), Ice-T as T-Saint, Naomi Watts as Jet Girl, Malcolm McDowell as Kesslee, Iggy Pop as Rat Face, Don Harvey as Sgt. Small, Jeff Kober as Booga, Reg E. Cathey as Deetee, Scott Coffey as Donner, Ann Cusack as Sub Girl


15. TMDb overview: Based on the British cult comic-strip, our tank-riding anti-heroine fights a mega-corporation, which controls the world's water supply.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Set in post apocalyptic Earth, circa 2033, well after a moderate sized comet impacted the planet.  It has not rained for 11 years, the film says.  This is a politics-of-scarcity environment, with the most rare commodity being water, the next being public and private security.  The law of the jungle has replaced rule of law.


2. The protagonist is Tank Girl, who survives by finding water by whatever means and by helping guard the compound where she lives.  The compound is breached early on.  Her boyfriend is killed, and her tween female friend Sam is abducted to be sent to a house of prostitution.  Tank Girl is enslaved.


3. Tank Girl breaks free, of course, and acquires friends Jet Girl and Sub Girl during the film.  Her main goals are survival, which includes obtaining water, and taking on Water and Power, which is a monopoly that no one likes, and are the folks who enslaved her.


4. So, do {Tank, Jet, Sub} Girls find allies to make a dent against Water and Power?  Do they finally end the sub-plot of Sam being in danger?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: You will likely either love or despise this one.
2. Three stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 The intro, credits, and long (hardly bearable) intertitles were done with comic strip style art with minimal animation.  Woof.  Ugly.  The live action parts, by and large, were done beautifully.


2. Sound: 6/10 The music is loud and not all that relevant to anything.  Good luck with that.  The dialog was comprehensible with some sort of normal volume setting, but then the intrusive music was so loud I would have to adjust the volume down.  Then the dialog was not audible.  So I turned on subtitles in Netflix.  Sigh.  The musical production of Cole Porter's 'Let's Fall in Love' was just horrible.


3. Acting: 6/10 I liked Malcolm McDowell in his role.  I usually like Naomi Watts no matter what, but not this time.  Lori Petty was, as always, Lori Petty.  That was just great for this role.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 The attempts at humour are many and are easily recognizable, just not funny.  I might have given this film full marks if had just been funny.  The film's plot, such as it was, was done archipelago style.  That is, an island scene here, followed by those terrible intertitles and overly loud music, then another island.  The whole sort of lurches toward coherence, and sort of makes it.