B Movie Haiku Reviews – Single White Female 2 / Road House 2 / Zapped Again

Total Box Office = US $20.

Last week I put forth the case for the existence of B-Movies and their value to society, especially guys with spare time on their hands. I knew that I need to acknowledge the B genre, and I promised to myself some time ago that regardless of how old, worthless, obscure, pointless, well-known, good or crappy the film was if I decided to watch it I would review it.

With all that said most B Movies are hardly sought out by punters unless they have cult value, in 5 minutes at the DVD shop you can safely grab half a dozen from the shelf and know that they will probably be as good – or bad as the next half dozen.

So me describing them in any sort of detail seems redundant. But I, like most movie-consumers will continue to trawl through for the undiscovered gems that appear with diminishing frequency as Hollywood tests and filters out almost anything creative in the desperate hunt for mainstream acceptance – and by that I really mean profit.

So thinking to myself that if I watch them I might as well review them, but at the same time acknowledging my 900 words breathlessly describing Mighty Ducks 3 is hardly dragging in readers from all over the globe, I have decided to keep things brief.

And what could be more brief than a Haiku – the Japanese poetry technique that only demands brevity and uniformity of the creator?

Thanks to Wikipedia I learned that a true Japanese Haiku consists of 17 “moras”, which are similar but not the same as syllables, and usually contains a reference to a season. In true Western form I will keep what suits my purposes and conveniently ignore what doesn’t so out go the seasons and in come the syllables!

The format foes 7 / 5 / 7, meaning three lines containing 7, 5 and 7 syllables respectively. Also from Wikipedia:

“Some haiku poets are concerned with their haiku being expressed in one breath and the extent to which their haiku focus on “showing” as opposed to “telling”. This is the genius of haiku using an economy of words to paint a multi-tiered painting, without “telling all”. Or as Matsuo Bash? puts it, “The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.”

Cheers Matso, my challenge is to purvey my thoughts on each film as succinctly as possible, telling you enough – but not too much. These will strive to be as faithful to the Japanese haiku format as possible – they will just have far more swear words than usual.

First up it needs to be said:

These are my first hai-kus

No doubt they suck bad

Sor-ry jap-an-ese peo-ple

And without further ado I would like to introduce to the world B Movie Haiku Reviews.

Single White Female 2

First off the bat, a sequel to a decidedly average 90s effort that was released to universal “meh” and scarcely warranted a follow-up. In the interest of lazy cash-ins we got one anyway, I guess these must be cheap to make.

Plot Overview

Two skanks fall out o-ver job

A third gives shel-ter

But is this real-ly safe-ty?

The action

Bad film hopes to tit-ill-ate

Fake t and a

Side-boob and pan-ties for all

In summation

An aw-ful co-py of first

La-zy and un-in-pired

Chicks are-nt ev-en that hot

Final Rating – 2.5 / 10. Hated every second of this one. If I wanted to watch two vacuous bints fighting over a job I’d watch reality TV. My forehead got a workout with all the eye-rolling I did as things became ever more ludicrous.

Road House 2

In true B Movie style, when you make a mediocre formula movie and the damn thing becomes a cult classic, go back to the well. Jonathan Schaech plays a cop who abruptly becomes embroiled in a battle for his Uncle’s bar when local criminals decide it is a key in their drug related activities.

Plot Overview

Sta-mos lite in Sway-ze role

Takes o-ver fam bar

Quick fists, light-ning zip-per

The action

Bad guys look like boy band jokes

Fake wanna-be thugs

Chick hot, but no nud-it-y

In summation

Fights brief, al-ways stunt dou-ble

By the num-bers stuff

Be-yond me why they both-ered

Final Rating – 5 / 10. What can you expect when the lead is a guy who lives off the scraps of other B Movie actors steps into a franchise that was pretty awful to begin with? Bonus points for having the balls to include a Busey.

Zapped Again

A sequel to a film I never heard of – never a good sign.

Plot Overview

Mag-ic juice gives nerd pow-ers

He makes the right choice

Us-es it to re-move clothes

The action

Lead guy act-ual-ly has flair

Stran-gely like-a-ble

He can’t make this junk work though

In Summation

Stan-dard jocks vs nerds sex romp

No laughs, few-er clothes

But not a boob job in sight

Final Rating – 4.5 / 10. I love it when filmmakers come up with bizarre reasons to expose supple female flesh in the name of “art”. This is pretty lousy but the inexplicable self-confidence of the lead guy and the lightness of the material make it bearable-ish…

So that’s the first issue of B-Movie Haiku Reviews. I tend to watch a lot of films, and a fair proportion of those are shitty B-Movies, so as they accumulate I’ll bust out one of these every now and then.

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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