8th
We Kind Of Wish It Was Conan O’Brien, Honestly
A day after watching Conan the Barbarian, my eyes feel exhausted. I could blame the fact that we watched Conan the Barbarian in Real 3D. However, my current theory is that my eyes were the first to witness how awful the movie is, so the film’s effects on my eyes will last the longest. And there is no equivalent of alcohol for my eyes to deaden the pain.
Can you smell what Conan is cookin’??
The day started off well enough. We met at Little Town, an establishment across the street from the Belmont Lounge, where we had steeled ourselves to watch Cowboys & Aliens last time. Little Town had some distinct advantages over the Belmont Lounge:
- Bar stools instead of couches that consume all who would sit in them;
- Waitresses who are pleasing to look at, even if they did condescend to BMAC;
- The view.
Is there, like, a gym… or a school or something near here?
In fact, the view available at Little Town deserves more than a bullet. While BMAC and I were late to the drinking, the Monster and PB were on time. PB was drinking at the bar, but PB only has dumbphone technology. (Someone Warren Ellis this guy immediately.) While PB was drinking alone at the bar, the Monster was waiting outside, anger and confusion slowly growing wondering if he had been stood up, mitigated only by the steady stream of young flesh parading past on 15th Street. And there’s nothing the Monster loves more than young flesh….except booze! Note: so much booze was consumed by Team Martini that we drank the bar out of not one but TWO brands of gin.
Hells yeah.
BMAC and I went ahead to get seats while the Monster and PB upgraded their tickets to 3D, causing BMAC and I to miss the greatest event of the day: PB vs. the escalator vs. his mandals. Drunkenly missing the basket of 3D glasses on the first go, PB rashly leaned over the (moving!) escalator railing to grab a pair, trapping his mandal in a riser, nearly losing a limb for the privilege of sitting through Conan the Barbarian.
Newly-minted mojito-drinking, shorts-wearing hippie Lamb failed to mention in his review of Cowboys & Aliens that during the trailers to that film, we — by which I mean “I” — had driven away the pair of gents who foolishly sat in front of us.
I mention this to provide context. We – by which I again mean “I” – drove our second consecutive couple away before the start of movie. Honestly, if you can’t take loud pleasure in the idea of Ghost Rider’s Napalm Piss-stream, what can’t you take pleasure in? Apparently the irritating hipster one row ahead of us is incapable of pleasure, because he let us know that he was not inclined to join in. Despite BMAC’s diplomatic effort to make clear that we would be quiet during the actual film, the Decemberists and their girlfriend didn’t make it past the emergency Caesarian section that opened the film.
C’mon honey, let’s leave.
Let’s boil my disdain for Conan the Barbarian to its purest criticism: it was the worst piece of videogame moviemaking I’ve seen in a long time, primarily because I don’t watch many movies these days. Suffice it to say that the Monster and I both fell asleep during the middle of the movie.
The best I can recall in between snores is that the film started out with some sort of Cimmerian easter egg race that was broken up by Magua from Last of the Mohicans. Conan, being an avid easter egg racer, killed the fuck out of Magua and his cronies, busted some Cimmerian tweens up, and won the race. Bloody for sure, even if most of the blood was CGI. Laame! Anyway, the Cimmerians are eventually attacked by, I don’t know, the entire Iroquois nation and a bunch of other people including somebody who seemed to be named Invader Zim. Alas, Cimmeria! By Crom! Something happens to Conan at some point, I guess? His dad is played by Ron Pearlman, who seems to have grown his hair so long that it merged with his rough-hewn fur coat, so you know, that’s kinda cool. Anyway, Invader Zim is looking for some kind of crazy magic mask that the Cimmerians are hiding, and, shocker! He finds it. And then he kills Hairy Hellboy using this totally fiendish Rube Goldberg setup that results in Conan, Sr., pouring molten steel all over himself, and I don’t know, goes away or something. Oh yeah, he has this creepy witch daughter who grows up to be Rose McGowan, which honestly just shows you what happens when you let your daughter get boned by Marilyn Manson.
Kill it! Kill it with fire!!
FASTFORWARD 15 YEARS! And suddenly Conan is played by Dave Navarro AS Khal Drogo AS Conan of Cimmeria! Who has an African-Cimmerian buddy played, apparently, by Theo Huxtable. Twist! Grown boy Conan has a hate-on for slavers, so when he and Malcolm Jamal Warrior find some, Conan concocts a cockamamie scheme to set them free, setting in motion his Holmesian discovery that Invader Zim is alive and well, but not for long if Conan has anything to say about it!
So, tits and ass, a bunch of blood, some totally ludicrous sex scenes, more ludicrous fight scenes, and we learn that Invader Zim has, for some reason, not used his crazy Lovecraft mask to bring about the end of the world over the last 15 years. But now he is going to. Go figure.
Naturally Conan is against this, and thus begins a series of fights and chase scenes that make little sense except to tease the audience with a very convincing body double of Rachel Nichols. And Castle Greyskull somehow figured into this. Still not sure why. We were briefly enthralled by Invader Zim’s sailing ship that was dragged on wheels across the Hyborean wastes but completely confused when there was no payoff putting the ship in the water. Honestly?
Robbed by a body double again. You’d think we’d learn!
BMAC was so outraged at this lack of payoff that when we were in the men’s room after the show, he ranted about it loudly, prompting a guy who BMAC insists was Leon Black from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to proclaim his own review: “This version needed more titties. Arnold’s version had titties.”
C – Comedy: Almost entirely unintentional, an even then there were more lamentations than chuckles. Conan torturing the noseless guy was funny, I guess. 2.
L – Ladies: After Malcolm Jamal Warrior and Conan freed the slaves by starting a rockslide (wait, aren’t the slaves chained up, and thus unable to get away from the rocks rolling down the hill?), there were a lot of bare breasts on the slave girls. That was nice. Rachel Nicholl’s likely body double in that sex scene had nice breasts too. 6.
A – Action: The fight scenes definitely had energy until the climactic duel between Invader Zim and Conan, which was dull. At least there was not much distractingly noticeable CGI. 5.
S – Story: A simple revenge tale dragged out with side adventures and bewildering jumps in geography. The Arnold version had a more elegantly crafted story. 4.
S – Something Else: Fuck you, tattooed hipster. Fuck you, 3D movie making my eyes hurt a day after viewing. But the view from Little Town was quite pleasant. 7.
- Wrong
