Tomb Raider (2002)

I can't fucking believe it. I'm out of another motherfucking job, relieved of my duties because Dipshit Suzanne says I "lack team spirit." I'll take her team spirit and shove it up her ass until her lungs bleed. What the fuck does team spirit have to do with restocking Gus the Field Goal Kicking Mule next to What Women Want? Not a God damn thing.

Last week I went down to Colorado Springs for Carl Carlton's "Weekend of Winners," a crock motivational seminar that Dipshit Suzanne roped us all into. So my coworkers and me went down there and got this big folder of shit that mostly turned out to be order forms for more Carl Carlton crap. Dipshit Suzanne thought it would be great if we all used our own money to buyCarlton Dayganizers. Christ, you can see how big a genius Carlton is, he's so fucking smart he crammed "day" and "organized' into one word. And, everyone knows how fucking hectic the day of a video clerk is. I really need a Dayganizer to keep track of when to wake up before Scooter takes another dump on the rug. Oh, and let me check today's schedule to see what time I'm supposed to be at the Tavern. Shit, I better hurry, I'm supposed to be drunk and belligerent in fifteen minutes.

The "Weekend of Winners" started out bad enough when the first "motivational" speaker was the queen of Skank, Tonya Harding. She went on and on about following your dreams, focusing on the future and something about her fingernails. Then she opened the floor to questions, but that was fucking rigged. I wrote down on my card that I wanted to ask about her fake tits and that disgusting sex video, but they didn't pick me, just fuckers with dumb questions about making themselves better people. Who cares? I want to know about those goofy-looking boobs. Then we broke into little cheerleading squads to create inspirational cheers. What the hell? If that's so motivational, why are all the cheerleaders from my high school now fat soccer moms who think the pinnacle of personal achievement is a good parking space at Target, something worth blocking the aisle for forty-fucking minutes to get? Plus, those cheap bastards didn't even give us pom-pons.

Dipshit Suzanne was all fired up for us to do the best cheer at the seminar, and that included a plan to have me hold her over my head by the crotch. I'd rather have my fingers chewed off by monkeys than put them near her nasty skunkbox. In fact, I've always figured she had little sharp teeth all over her pubes anyway. But I played along, for about five minutes. I tried to be a team player until I was told we couldn't shout "Suck our asses because they smell!' even though it rhymes with "First American Video, we love to sell!" That's when I left, because if I didn't leave I was going to punch somebody, and every time I do that I end up getting my ass kicked.

I got in the Galaxie and headed up I-25. By the time I got home there was already a fifteen minute message from Dipshit Suzanne telling me to stay the hell out of First American Video. And that fucking sucks, not because I like working there, but because now I can't get pornos and Alfred Hitchcock movies for free. No more Candy Bottoms, Cary Grant and Kim Novak. Plus, getting fired is always so demoralizing. Yeah, I've been fired enough times that I'm sort of desensitized, like a New York cop feels the sixtieth time he rams a broomstick up an innocent man's ass. Still, it makes me feel more worthless than usual for about a week. Thank God for his greatest gifts - brandy fortified wine and Mrs. Filthy's hidden stash of mad money. They have given me the strength to make it through the week. The only problem is, Tomb Raider was waiting at the end for me, and it was bad enough to send me on another bender.

Don't get me wrong, Tomb Raider is not as painful as the crusty ramrod of Pearl Harbor or The Animal. It's just another big, expensive movie made by people who are a fuckwad more interested in cheating and stealing than actually being creative. But, what should we expect from a movie inspired by a video game made popular by fat computer geeks who control their joysticks with their mouths because one hand's wrapped around their dicks and the other's holding their Mountain Dews?

Angelina Jolie is Lara Croft, big-tittied adventurer. She's also a limey and rich enough to buy and sell my ass a million. In Tomb Raider, her dead father leaves behind a clock that is needed by the Illuminati in their quest to control time and, conveniently, Jolie is the only who can stop them. Along the way, there are several subplots that make about as much sense as one of the Harelip's two a.m. screeds about the government's dwarf conspiracy. There's some horseshit about her wanting to ride the bone pony of a rival tomb raider and some other nonsense about her missing her father. But all of that means about as much as a Tomb Raider game player's chances of getting laid.

What the movie does well is set up some good action and look pretty. Sure, it's stolen from better pictures, but it's stolen well. And I am not above stealing myself, which is why I have such a nice collection of Candy Bottoms videos. The movie jumps from Cambodia to Antarctica and the settings are pretty spectacular. The action starts out well enough, although it always runs out of imagination before the scenes are over. And Jolie is fucking hot again. She pissed me off in Gone in Sixty Seconds because she was about as attractive as Mrs. Filthy having an allergic reaction to shellfish. If I wanted that, I'd buy a pound of rancid crab, not a movie ticket. But in Tomb Raider Jolie's as believably bad ass as the shitty script lets her be. Best of all, her character never ends up relying on a man to save her. That's what those ass-sucks in Hollywood usually do, give us a heroine but make a man save her. So give them credit for at least having the balls to let Jolie take care of herself.

It's weird, considering how pretty the action is, that it's so lifeless. The characters are thrown into what looks like it'll be some shit, but writers Patrick Massettt and John Zinman fail to actually think up any challenges. There are few reversals and Jolie is never in jeopardy. She enters a situation, beats up some people or stone gorillas, then moves on. And, since the villains are so wimpy and poorly drawn, you never even know who exactly she's supposed to be battling. Worst of all, though, not a single scene threatens to free her tits from the overly-confining bra she's forced to wear. Fuck that, what's the point of having big tits if you don't whip them out and beat a villain into unconsciousness with them? Hell, if I had big tits I'd probably beat myself occasionally just to stay in shape.

Jolie and everyone else is given dialog as old and crusty as the ground beef in Safeway's "Super Saver" chest. Her character actually says "It's a secret. If I tell you, I'll have to kill you." What the fuck? Does it require screenwriters or drunken apes to come up with shit that hoary, and if it's the latter where do I sign up? The sad thing is, that's one of the more clever lines. Most of the characters aren't developed enough to say something that witty. Jolie's sidekicks are standard-issue sassy Limey butler and geeky computer whiz. They do and say nothing new. The villains are so underdeveloped I am still not sure why the fuck they were villains or why we're supposed to hate them. Why is it that they are evil for wanting to control time while Jolie is good, just because she wants to control time to visit with her overacting father? And how does this whole time-control thing work?

Which leads me to Tomb Raider's biggest problem: the fucking plot. This thing is a bigger mess than a county fairground portapotty. Jolie is opposed to the Illuminati, then she join forces with them, then she opposes them. All for no reason except that the filmmakers already had their action scenes in mind. I hate movies where the plot follows the action like an obedient dog. A good movie has characters, the characters get into trouble, and certain action must be taken to get them out. A shitty movie has action, and a plot is contrived to justify it, then finally some characters have to be forged to fit into that silly plot. That's how Tomb Raider was made.

The characters have no trouble pinpointing the location of tiny puzzle pieces on massive continents. And like many lazy action films, characters have no trouble jumping from place to place. One minute they're in the Southeast Asia jungle, next they're in Antarctica. It would be just too much fucking work for the screenwriters to explain how. Lazy writers just put their characters wherever they fucking please, sometimes having them enter and leave a room for no reason other than to deliver a corny gag.

It's a bad movie, but probably better than Tomb Raider fans deserve. Two Fingers. So, now that I'm out of work, I'm thinking about starting my own lawn care service. Anybody want me to mow their lawn? I'll do a decent job, just don't get on my ass about when and how often. I'll do it when I'm good and ready because it's an art and I'm a fucking artist.