Last month was all about happiness and joy. It was about love. The kind of love only a bad movie fan can have for a bad movie. Last month was a love letter to a film called GOLDEN BAT. This month, alas, there will be no love. There's will be no joy. That's because the two movies I'm reviewing this month brought be no happiness. Both movies, reboots, of films not all the good to begin with. The latter, I found to be a bundle of mediocrity, an uninspired retread of a franchise that has already retreaded itself a dozen times over. But first, a bile-inducing screed aimed squarely at a motion picture that should not exist and what does exist should have never been allowed to sully a multiplex movie screen. I vow happier times for next month. I vow to be in a better, more jocular mood with whatever I choose to write about next month. For now, though, a one-on-one battle between pop culture icons that ends with me taking on the role of big breasted blonde that torches them both. Flame on!

 

CHUN-LI VS. JASON

 

Yet another reason why I've always preferred Tekken

Given the harsh economic times we're living in, given people are getting laid off while major corporations go begging for federal bailouts, given all the talk that it's going to get worse before it gets better, to know that some production companies spent millions of dollars to make a motion picture as indefensibly awful as STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI disgusts me. Every single producer of this movie needs to be hauled before Congress - not to answer questions, but to be publicly flogged. I'm all in favor of my tax dollars being used to give a good Singapore caning to the people that wasted millions on a motion picture this offensively bad. Better yet, turn it into a road show. Have the producers travel around the country locked up in stocks outside of theaters showing the movie so that everyone, especially the people that just sat through their money pit, can let them know what they really think of how they chose to spend their millions. I noticed a good number of the producers' names were Japanese. Japanese businessmen have committed seppuku for lesser disgraces than this.

I wasn't even aware anyone still cared about STREET FIGHTER to begin with. I don't think I've played a STREET FIGHTER game in well over a decade. Is STREET FIGHTER really still popular enough to warrant another feature film?

The answer to that question is moot anyway since STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI has next to nothing to do with the minimal storylines that course through the veins of the video games. No Ken. No Ryu. No Guile. No Sagat. No Blanco. Only five characters from the game appear in the movie: Chun-Li, Bison, Balrog, Gen, and Vega (for about two minutes). No tournament fighting. Hardly any street fighting at all. And what fighting scenes there are are subpar by today's standards and certainly nothing that you couldn't see done better in a decade old rerun of Xena, Warrior Princess.

They've stripped the villain of the game, General M. Bison, of his militaristic dictator aesthetic. "Bison", as he is simply referred to now, has now been transformed into an Irish Anglo-Saxon with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a goatee who dresses at all times like a metrosexual corporate crime lord. I mean... WHAT THE HELL?!?! We've gone from Raul Julia's Doctor Doom version of Bison to Neal McDonough playing Bison like little more than an eviler version of the same bad guy he played in the WALKING TALL remake. One of the only things that kept me from walking out on this godforsaken movie was sticking around to see if they'd ever put McDonough in Bison's video game military uniform or if he really would fight the final battle with Chun-Li still dressed like a guy attending a Beverly Hills cocktail party. During that fight I wanted to yell out, "METROSEXUAL KOMBAT!!!"

"What? What? Don't blame me. I'm just doing what they paid me to do."

I hated the Jean-Claude Van Damme STREET FIGHTER movie. Hated it with a passion! Terrible movie. It speaks volumes that STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI actually made me long for it. As asinine juvenile as I found the Van Damme version, at least it was colorful, at least it had a smidgen of enthusiasm coursing through its veins, at least it embraced its cartoonish aspect. That BATMAN BEGINS/DARK KNIGHT mentality of applying fantastical characters to a serious real world setting while still wanting to give certain characters supernatural abilities does not work in a movie based on a video game. Morons.

Remember the first time you watched HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING and just sat there in awe that anybody could make a motion picture so stunningly bad, head scratching bewilderment as to how anyone of sober mind could have read the script and thought it was a movie worth making, the overwhelming disbelief that the movie you're watching somehow got willed into existence? That’s the sensation that swept over me watching this epic fail. Only difference being that for HIGHLANDER 2's entire cavalcade of faults, boredom was not one of its sins. There's no such mirth to be found in the unwavering weariness of STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI. Dry as a bone and stiff as a corpse, it was like this movie was daring audiences to leave.

STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI... No exaggeration here. One of the worst movies I've ever paid to see in a theater. If not for the name marquee value of the STREET FIGHTER property I seriously doubt this movie would have ever made it to theaters. That it made it into the public eye at all is hard to fathom. The only existing print of this movie should have been banished to the same abyss as Roger Corman's FANTASTIC FOUR. The only way Chun-Li's legend could ever be legendary is if the film had been deemed unreleasable and never seen the light of day.

Chun-Li is a concert pianist living in Hong Kong. Someone thought it would be a good idea to let Chun-Li voiceover narrate her own legend. Bad idea. We see flashbacks to Chun-Li as a child and a teen, a young Chinese girl who eventually grows up into lead actress Kristin Kreuk, somehow becoming less Chinese looking in the process. Smallville's Lana Lang was a poor casting decision for a myriad of reasons.

Miss Kreuk gives a potentially career killing non-performance as Chun-Li. No way in hell she's ever going to topline a motion picture again that wasn't made for television after this. An expressionless voice; a constant wide-eyed vacant stare her only facial expression; she had this perpetual look about her as if she mistakenly thought she was starring in an interactive staring contest. There's a scene where she sets about to seduce a villainous lesbian henchwoman on a nightclub dance floor in order to lure her into the restroom for a beatdown; the dance scene is supposed to be sexy but thanks to Kreuk's blank slate facials it looks more like a poor attempt at staging an erotic made-you-blink competition. Her acting is terrible. She seems to confuse gymnastics with martial arts. How on earth did this young lady land the lead role?

Kung Fu Cosplay Pole Dancing - the new strip club sensation sweeping Asia

Chun-Li witnessed her Chinese father get abducted by the evil Bison as a teenager. Bison has been using Chun-Li's father's contacts and influence in the world of business to expand his Shadaloo criminal underworld. How this works, especially when you consider we're talking about a man being given the OLDBOY treatment, is anybody's guess. Just make some phone calls on my behalf for the next decade while I keep you locked in this room?

Her American mother having since died of cancer, Chun-Li's yearns to use the wushu skills her father taught her to help the defenseless and downtrodden by occasionally transforming into Kristin Kreuk's martial arts double to perform some kung fu that's all shot in such tight close-ups you can't comprehend most of what's going on. A chance street encounter will send her in search of Gen, leader of the Order of the Web, an Asian brotherhood of vigilantes that appeared to consist entirely of him and an old lady that runs an antique store. First, she has to give up her life of luxury and live on the streets like... Did you see BATMAN BEGINS? The writer of this movie sure did.

Robin Shou, who you may remember as the star of the MORTAL KOMBAT movies and practically nothing since, once again finds himself cast in a video game movie as master Gen, looking older with a few hairs from Gandalf's ass glued to his face. One training session consisting of her blindfolded as he hurls marbles at her and a seated meditation session where he teaches her to conjure a ball of light in her lap is apparently all one needs to prepare themselves for a life of supreme vigilance. Calgon is a greater Chinese secret than the mystical fighting arts of the orient. I know I was wishing Calgon would take me away from this movie.

Master Gen will then get blown up with a rocket launcher fired by Balrog (Michael Clark Duncan in a black muscle shirt, possibly the only character that looks and acts his part properly) only to return fine and dandy a short while later with no explanation as to why he's fine and dandy.

Logic? Screw logic! The script can't even follow its own logic. The plot is initially about saving Chun-Li's dad from Bison's clutches. Two-thirds in the point changes to this nonsensical gobbledygook about Bison having a daughter that he transferred every ounce of his humanity into when she was born enabling him to function without a conscience and only now that she's a teenager does he deem her his only weakness, which is why he's bringing her to Bangkok to kill her, but as soon as she arrives his only thought is protecting her, going so far as to threaten to kill his own guards if they don't keep her safe. It all makes so little sense it gives gibberish a bad name. One of the worst written big screen movies I've ever seen.

I do believe I've seen this porno before.

The guy who wrote this movie is a fellow named Justin Marks, a Hollywood screenwriter who's been getting a lot of pub lately on various geek movie sites because his name keeps popping up attached to write live-action movie versions of VOLTRON and MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. If STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI is typical of his writing talents, allow me to quote Alec Baldwin in THE DEPARTED, "World needs plenty of bartenders." I'm not entirely convinced he actually wrote this movie. I think he just found a leftover screenplay for an old Golan-Globus martial arts movie that never got produced, changed five character names to that from the STREET FIGHTER games, and passed it off as his own original work. Good lord. He even rips off a major plot point from ROBOCOP 3. ROBOCOP 3, people!

Then there's the stuff that he includes in the script that has nothing to do with the game and hardly anything to do with the plot. I'm talking about PATHFINDER's Moon Bloodgood (her actual name even though it sounds like it should be a STREET FIGHTER character) and "whatever happened to..." Chris Klein as a sexy Asian anti-organized crime policewoman and an Interpol agent investigating Shadaloo, respectively. Neither of them do any street fighting. Bloodgood never even gets to shoot anybody. They spend most of their considerable screen time sitting around talking about the Shadaloo case while flirting with one another. It's as if you have these two acting in a big screen version of the show Silk Stalkings that keeps intruding into the proceedings of the STREET FIGHTER movie you're supposed to be watching.

It doesn't help Kreuk's cause that Moon Bloodgood's organized crime fighting sexpot conveys more personality and sex appeal in every scene she's in than Kreuk. She's also about as Chinese as Kreuk, so why not have cast Bloodgood as Chun-Li instead? God forbid the title character possesses a drop of screen presence.

God forbid anyone in the cast dare ham it up more than Chris Klein either. Something is seriously, seriously wrong with a movie when Chris Klein gives the most charismatic performance. Dressed in black with a cocky swagger about him, over-enunciating nearly every syllable, Klein is channeling Matthew McConaughey with just a hint of Keanu. He is the sole provider of anything even remotely resembling entertainment value and even then the bemusement of his scenery chewing is fleeting at best.

Between this and DOOM, Andrzej Bartkowiak has now made a hell of a case that maybe Uwe Boll isn't the worst director of video game based movies after all. Not one of Uwe Boll's video game movies was as dreadful as this. Think about that. If nothing else Boll can be counted on for moments of so bad it's goodness. Bartkowiak has made a cheap, ugly, lifeless film that looks like a b-movie that would have been released 20-years ago. You'll find more polished straight-to-DVD movies these days than this steaming turd.

I went into STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI with no expectation of seeing a good movie. I went in hoping for either a not very good yet entertaining b-level martial arts movie or, better yet, a wildly laughable bad movie experience. I got neither. Anyone who ever tells you this movie is genuinely entertaining should be considered clinically insane. Anyone who ever tells you this movie is so bad it's funny was most likely intoxicated or stoned at the time they saw it. If I see another movie worse than STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI before the end of 2009, this is gonna be a crappy year.

Please, don't let my review make it sound like I'm selling you on how bad the movie is so that you'll want to see just how bad it is for yourself. You don't need to - ever. Nobody does. There is no novelty to this movie's badness. It's not funny bad. It's leaden bad. It's 97-minutes of deadweight. Most definitely a train wreck; just not one that warrants your need to slow down to get a better look at the wreckage.

MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION...

A better movie than STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI

HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING...

A better movie than STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI

DOUBLE DRAGON...

A better movie than STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI

BATTLEFIELD EARTH...

A better movie than STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI

I could keep going. I think you already get the point. This is a bland, boring, generic, nearly every part miscast, incompetently written, ineptly acted, pathetically directed - the very epitome of an utterly worthless motion picture. If I were grading this movie on a letter scale I'd give it a "G" just because giving it an "F" would be to give it too much credit. On second thought, I'll give it an "F" alright. The "F" stands for...

FUCK THIS MOVIE!

Platinum Dunes presents FRIDAY THE 13TH: THIS TIME IT REALLY IS A NEW BEGINNING

From the Michael Bay owned production company hellbent to remake every popular horror movie made prior to 1985 comes FRIDAY THE 13TH. They've boldly chosen to take the well worn franchise in a new direction: backwards. To be fair, once you've done a sequel set in futurisitic outer space there really is nowhere to go but back in time. All Platinum Dunes did with their brand spanking new FRIDAY THE 13TH remake/reboot/reimagining/recycling is take the premises of the first three films of the franchise and smash them up into one 90-minute movie directed by a guy who seems like he'd be much happier if he spent the rest of his career just making Mountain Dew commercials. Under normal circumstances that would seem like a whole lot of material crammed into a film but keep in mind we are talking about FRIDAY THE 13TH movies. Let's recap those first three films.

Part 1: Teens go to a summer camp. An angry mother seeking revenge for the drowning death of her retarded, deformed little boy Jason kills them.

Platinum Dunes managed to squeeze all this into their opening credits sequence.

Part 2: More teens go to a summer camp. A fully grown Jason with a sack on his head seeking revenge for the death of his mother kills them.

Platinum Dunes condensed this down to about a ten minute sequence after the opening credits but before the actual title card appears.

Part 3: Yet more teens go to a summer camp. Jason gets a hockey mask and kills them. This time in 3-D!

No 3-D this time around. Besides, the MY BLOODY VALENTINE remake already went that route the month prior and with far more success than both the original FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3-D or this re-whatever.

So, yeah, that's pretty much all the material JASON GETS A DO OVER: THE FIRST FRIDAY mines. Generic to a fault, if you've seen those previous entries in the series all of this will look very familiar. Everything about this new FRIDAY THE 13TH should look familiar because you have seen it all before. Many times before. About a dozen times before. There's nothing new brought to the table and only the production values have improved. They've taken the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise and given it a 21st century spit shine - nothing more, nothing less. The veneer may be glossier but it's still just the same damn movie regurgitated many times over. I think a major problem with FRIDAY THE 13TH going back to basics is that in the quarter century since the original the premise of attractive teens/college students going out into the woods for some drinking, drugging, and debauchery only to get mutilated by a masked maniac has become the standard formula for not only the franchise but the genre as well, the ultimate slasher movie cliche. Platinum Dunes have taken the franchise back to its roots but those roots have been co-opted by so many similar films since, including its own various sequels, that not only are they just doing the same generic things over again, they're also doing same generic things over again that even every FRIDAY THE 13TH wannabe that's come along in the quarter century since have done. I didn't expect them to reinvent the wheel but I did expect them to breath new life into the series and not just add a new coat of paint on a used clunker and insist it's a brand new car. Even old Godzilla movies occasionally mixed things up story-wise. Rag all you want on JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, JASON GOES TO HELL, and JASON X (and believe me, I could quite easily), but at least those entries tried to spice up the same old, same old. They oversimplified the formula to such a degree and presented such a Cliff Notes version of the first few films, if this new film were a book it would be titled FRIDAY THE 13TH FOR DUMMIES.

"Who wants to die a horrifying death?"
"We do!"

One thing I never thought I'd ever find myself saying, I rather miss the subtlety of the older films. That's right. I just dared to use the world subtlety in regards to FRIDAY THE 13TH films. The originals tried to build a sense of dread with a little tinkling of ivories, the trademark "ki ki ki ma ma ma" sound that warned us of Jason's presense - barely used at all this time around. That's way more subtle than the pounding music that accompanies Jason's appearances in the new film that are only slightly less bombastic than the score heralding Godzilla's arrival in Tokyo. It's like a WWE wrestler making an appearance; all we needed was a giant Jason-Tron screen in the background playing an entrance video to go along with the thrashing music while a color commentator in a cowboy hat starts yelling, "By gawd, he's a hoss! This is gonna be one hell of a slobberknocker!"

Even more annoying was Platinum Dunes taking the constant excessively loud crashing sound that accompanies cheap jump scares to an obnoxious new level. I've written in the past about how loud noise jump scares in modern horror movies are like having someone sneak up behind you with a blown up paper bag and popping it behind your head. The first time you do it everyone gets a laugh out of it. By the tenth time you've done it the person you're doing it to is going to punch you very hard in the face. In this case, replace the paper bag with someone sneaking up behind you and firing a shotgun right behind your head. That shotgun is going to be lodged up the guy's rectum by the fifth time.

Jump scares now occur to the sound of what sounds like a massive explosion. Jason's standing behind someone. BOOM! A dog jumps out. BOOM! A door slams. KABOOM! If you know an ex-soldier that suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, for God's sake, do not take them to see this film just for this reason alone. How can any person not get rattled when it sounds like Hiroshima is getting atom bombed again every time the director wants to scare you. That's much easier than having to work at it.

The opening credits feature Mrs. Voorhees getting beheaded just like at the end of the original. All of her killing stemmed from deranged revenge for the drowning death of her son Jason due to camp counselor incompetence. But Jason is alive and just watched mommy get beheaded. Why is he alive and why didn't she know he was still alive? And if this movie is set 20+ years later, what has he been doing all that time out in the woods? Movies like this don't expect you to ask such questions because that would require them to come up with impossible answers.

I do have to give the filmmakers mad props for perhaps the most ironic and unfortunate opening credit I think I've ever seen. Moments after the opening credits decapitation of Mrs. Voorhees we're shown the name of the film's cinematographer. His name: Daniel Pearl. The same name as that of the American journalist kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan by Islamic terrorists. Talk about one-in-a-million bad timing!

The next ten minutes have some horny backpackers making camp in the vicinity of the old, now closed down Camp Crystal Lake while in search of a marijuana patch growing in the area.

Let me pause for a moment. Pot smoking has always been an aspect of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series but never to the degree this installment takes it. This FRIDAY THE 13TH appeared to be shooting for High Times magazine's "2009 movie of the year" award. It could have been retitled CHEECH & CHONG'S HACKED TO PIECES. About half the characters are massive potheads and even when they weren't smoking pot or talking about wanting to smoke weed they were trying sell it to others or looking for this marijuana crop in the woods around Camp Crystal Lake so they could cultivate and sell it for a small fortune. Makes you wonder if Jason planted this marijuana crop since he sure was awfully protective of it. His first appearance comes when someone eyeballs those pot plants with intent to steal. A bit later some white trash mechanic successfully makes off with some and Jason follows the guy a considerable distance back to his garage just to slash his throat. Jason's always been a buzzkill but the thought never before crossed my mind that he could secretly be a homicidal pot farmer? Is that why Jason initially wears that sack on his head; no pockets, so he keeps the sack over his ugly mug until time to fill it with the magic herb to take back to his underground lair? He clearly doesn't deal it on the side so it would have to be for his own personal use, perhaps for use to treat that lazy eye of his. Although if that was the case, shouldn't the herb make him far more mellow than he is? Me, personally, I prefer to think Jason is straight edge; he certainly uses plenty of them on his victims.

Darkman is pissed.

Derek Mears as the latest incarnation of social conservative icon Jason Voorhees can definitely walk the walk and stalk the stalk but even with his giant ready-to-do-battle-with-Conan broad sword they call a machete, his Jason just didn't register much for me. This Jason is the old school retarded manchild with a serious chip on his shoulder, not the Jasonator killing machine of the post JASON LIVES era. Watching the new adventures of Jason of Scar Command I've come to the realization that I prefer my Jason undead and killing in an over-the-top manner with a hint of comedic irony more than that of the old school angry deformed retard that kills with little ingenuity. Probably why I consider FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 6: JASON LIVES to be the best film in the franchise.

The way I see it, as this franchise progressed, Jason Voorhees went from being a mere mad slasher to a conceptual artist of carnage, a true creative tour-de-force in the life snuffing department, the DaVinci, if you will, of death, decapitation, and dismemberment. If there's one area where I was sure Platinum Dunes would come shining through it would be with the death scenes. Yet much to my shock, to my immense dissatisfaction, there's a deficit of creativity in the killing department. Their Jason kills with little imagination, little irony, little enthusiasm. Efficient killing, yes, but not very entertaining. This Jason corners a guy in a shed full of countless instruments of deaths just waiting to be used in a gruesomely inventive manner and all the writers could come up with was having him slowly jamming a screwdriver into the guy's jaw, and even then only because the victim tried to stab him with it first. So many missed opportunities. Slashed throats and multiple machete chops to the skull just don't impress like they used to. Trying to make Jason a scary methodical murderer again just doesn't fly with me.

Anyway, those backpackers make camp for the night. One goes off with his iPod in search of the pot plants and gets introduced to Jason's iMachete. Terribe joke there on my part. Jason's such a cutthroat he's clearly a Microsoft Zune kind of guy. Two decide to have sex in their tent while the other two decide to go exploring the nearby abandoned Camp Crystal Lake, source of local legend in the twenty years since Mrs. Voorhees went on her killing spree. Sackheaded Jason kills the hell out of them. For a few brief minutes this remake works. Too bad the moment the title card appears just as Jason is about the slam his machete into the forehead of the last unfortunate young female, I could have called it a night and missed nothing.

The formula now starts over again as the next group of college age wastrels arrive for their timely slaughtering. You got the rich blonde douchebag, another douchebag, two blonde bimbos, and a pair of Harold & Kumar minority stoners. This time, though, the dopers brought their own stash, not that it makes them any safer from incurring Jason's special brand of "This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs, this is your brain on drugs splattered across the back wall of a cabin" anti-drugging. Jason really does take the concept of "scared straight" to a whole new level.

Here's where I have a major problem. EXTREME MAKEOVER: JASON EDITION takes Jason's murderous intent a bit too seriously given just about every one of his next set of potential victims are anything but. Platinum Dunes seemed to want their cake and eat it too; a stupid stoner slasher flick that still had some actual pretense of being a heartstopping horror movie. Sorry, FRIDAY THE 13TH is a series that's well beyond that point. That ship has long since sailed. In fact, that ship sank on the way to Manhattan in Part 8. Sometimes you just can't go home again.

Our new assortment of Gap ad approved victims are a shallow lot even by the low, low, low, low standards of FRIDAY THE 13TH motion pictures. The screenwriters couldn't even come up with much of anything for them to do while they await their turn to fill a body bag, even more so than the walking bag fillers from many of the previous entries. They actually managed to be dumber than the typical FRIDAY THE 13TH slayees too, something I didn't even think was possible.

The lone voice of humanity in this group is a cute redhead played by Danielle Pannabaker. She just wrapped up a run on the CBS series Shark that starred James Woods, so you know she already has experience dealing with a lunatic that wields a long instrument best used for stabbing slutty women. Her character is in one of those relationships where she's so sweet and he's such a rich douchebag you wonder how they ever got together in the first place. It should come as no wonder that she takes an immediate liking to scruffy, non-rich, non-douchebag, motorcycle-riding newcomer played by Jared Padelecki of the CW Network hit show Supernatural, searching for the sister from the pre-title sequence gone missing.

Still no worse than the treatment Padelecki no doubt gets from most of the obsessed female fans he has to put up with at Supernatural conventions

Kind of amusing that a horror remake that opened a month earlier and starred one of the brothers on Supernatural managed to outdo the horror remake named after a specific day that opened on that specific day starring the other brother on Supernatural that opened one day before the day that other specific day titled horror film is set. Feeling dizzy after that last sentence? I am. What a weird world we live in. MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D might have had a sucky plot and one-dimensional characters but at least it had an actual plot and solid character actors to fill out the supporting roles, and the kills, though just a variety of different means by which to kill another human being with a pick axe still showed more inventiveness and the added gimmick of 3-D enhanced those kills. Frankly, it was just more fun.

The rich douchebag, because he is a rich douchebag, takes an immediate disliking to this scruffy guy committing the grievous sin of trying to post missing persons flyers in the vicinity of a hateful child of privilege. I'm shocked they didn't end this scene by having the rich douchebag walk outside and kick a puppy for looking at him cockeyed. I mean the way this rich douchebag boyfriend is portrayed as being so completely superficial and repellently obnoxious even when there's no reason for him to be so, the way his sweet, seemingly well grounded girlfriend has clearly tired of his assholish attitude and takes an instantaneous liking to the new guy in town with the soulful eyes, for a moment I thought I was watching some sort of KARATE KID knock-off instead. This is the rich douchebag character from every single Eighties teen comedy transplanted into a 21st century slasher movie. I'm telling you right now if Jason hadn't shown up to kill everyone, the way this movie was playing out, I'm pretty convinced it would have ended with Jared Padelecki and the rich douchebag boyfriend having to ski the K-12.

But I do have to say I agree with the rich douchebag character in one respect, that one girl he cheated on his girlfriend with, her breasts were indeed spectacular. Let the record show the man knows his perfect nipple placement.

For the record, that rich douchebag is played by a guy named Travis Van Winkle. Mark that name in your mental rolodex because I am positive he is the second coming of Ted McGinley. Expect to see him in a movie angrily screaming "Nerds!" sooner rather later.

Going back to talking fatal machete whacks to the noggin, Padelecki's sister, the one that went missing in the opening sequence, it seemed fairly obvious that she took a machete to the skull. The film cuts to the title card right as Jason's swinging for the fences and it's hard to imagine he managed to pull back on that swing at the last split second. We learn later she's alive. How? She's being held captive in his series of underground tunnels - and in remarkably good shape for someone who does not appears to have been fed, given water, or allowed to use the rest room for about six weeks - because Jason seems to have gotten confused into thinking she's his mother, or reminds him enough of his mother than every single time he stares at her he goes timid, all because she bares a slight resemblance to the photo of his dead mother in the locket even though she looks nothing like the Mrs. Voorhees from the opening credits sequence and despite the fact that he keeps his mom's rotting decapitated head in a cubby hole inside his cabin. I know Jason is supposed to be retarded but has he ever been this retarded?

Since we're on the subject of retarded, his underground lair has electricity? How? Did Jason also take Gilligan hostage and has him down there riding that bamboo stationary bike the Professor built to generate electricity through the friction of peddling?

Also retarded: the ending. Geez, what an awful ending. If you have an opportunity to dump a hulking homicidal maniac in a woodchipper you dump the hulking homicidal maniac in the woodchipper and be done with him. You damn sure don't take the time to put him in a body bag, drive his body back to the lake he calls home, and dump him in. But then had they not done so the film wouldn't have been able to work in the obvious final jump scare and leave room open for the inevitable sequel.

Only way that ending would have not sucked would have been if the speedboat (Jason kills the guy driving the speedboat with an arrow to the head early on, the guy slumps dead over the controls and we never see what becomes of it after it conks a topless waterskiier in the head) came roaring from out of nowhere and rammed into Jason right after he exploded forth from beneath the pier. That would have been sweet.

The release of this film has led to all manner of headache-inducing flame wars online between those that loved it and those that loathed it. I am befuddled by the vitriol on both sides. I don't see how anyone could get that passionate about this film one way or another. It's simply the same damn thing all over again.

To read fanboys practically crapping their pants in joy over how awesome this movie is only further solidifies my belief that slasher movie fans are the single most easily pleased movie fanbase there is outside of porn. Don't anyone get offended by that statement either; if you're a hardcore FRIDAY THE 13TH fan you clearly don't have the most discerning of taste to begin with. There's nothing more obnoxious now than seeing people who liked this new film trying to play the elitist card against those that didn't, an asinine tactic given nobody going to watch a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie not paid to do so is going because they're looking to have a good dumb time. The most common argument I've heard against detractors is, "It's a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie. What did you expect?" My answer: a better FRIDAY THE 13TH movie.

Likewise, to see so many fanboys online up in arms railing mightily about how offensively bad this new film is, that's also comically absurd when you consider the track record of the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise. I didn't like the movie at all, thought it was bland and generic and seriously lacking in the fun department, but I'd still rank it higher than several other films in the series. Was this FRIDAY THE 13TH really worse than PART 2 or PART 3 or PART 5 or JASON MEETS THE HIDDEN: THE FINAL FRIDAY UNTIL THE NEXT ONE? Heck, it's not even the worst horror movie released so far this year by Platinum Dunes. Have we all already forgotten THE UNBORN? I'm also willing to believe the haters will soften their extremely negative stance most likely around the time Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 2 opens later this year.

I once had to have a colonoscopy; they didn't use enough anesthesia to knock me out and it was still a more enjoyable experience than watching Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake. Hey, I was alert enough to watch the camera maneuver through the insides of my bowels so not only was I medically numbed to the pain, it was still more fascinating than whatever the hell that crap Zombie slapped on the screen.

I'd also be more than willing to bet a good deal of those cheering this new FRIDAY THE 13TH are going to watch this film again somewhere down the road and come to realize it really isn't anywhere near as entertaining as they thought it was the first time around - the "ID4 Effect" as I call it. That's happened with me twice in recent years upon a second viewing SNAKES ON A PLANE and Peter Jackson's KING KONG.

ESPN's Candid Camera show hosted by Patrick Roy was short-lived

At the Academy Awards this past year Hugh Jackman did a musical number saluting the return of the musical to box office prominence. The weekend prior FRIDAY THE 13TH broke box office records. Where was the Oscars' musical salute to the slasher movie? Every last one of the movies nominated for best picture could have benefited from the inclusion of Jason Voorhees. Work with me here.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON: The backwards aging Benjamin Button gets a job as a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake. He was the only survivor.

THE READER: Jason takes Kate Winslet captive, keeping her naked in a bath tub, just because she looks so much like his dead mother. She reads to him to calm his frazzled nerves. Guilt over her duplicity in the Holocaust leads her to manipulate Jason into going on a Nazi slashing massacre liberating a nearby concentration camp.

MILK: Hacking and slashing his way down the streets of San Francisco, Jason is spotted by newly elected city councilman Harvey Milk. Milk takes Jason in and they immediately become lovers. The two break-up after Milk realizes Jason's habit of committing mass murder is bad for his political career. Following Milk's murder, Jason then murders assassin Dan White by shoving a Twinkie down his throat and a machete up his rectum.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: The penalty for getting a question wrong on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? proves to be quite severe. There's a reason why the game calls those help options "life lines".

FROST/JASON: David Frost scores the first ever sitdown interview with Jason Voorhees. Frost grills him about his drowning, his mother, and his psychopathic ways as Jason just sits there silently, motionless, grasping his machete. Frost finally offers a fearful Jason a glass of water that sends him into a terror-filled rage. Frost gets decapitated. The interview scores the highest ratings in the history of broadcast television.

Tell me you wouldn't want to see those Oscar caliber movies. Bet you would have tuned into the Oscars if they had. Oh, the Oscars... I'm still bummed the show didn't end with the cast and crew of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE on stage accepting Best Picture only to get interrupted by Clint Eastwood aiming a rifle at them and demanding they, "Get off my stage."

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. I'll stick with FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 6: JASON LIVES, thank you very much. You can have your Platinum Dunes remake and its inevitable sequels.

My advice to all: if you're looking for a really entertaining movie right now that involves teens, sex, drugs, and an unstoppable bad ass killer who eliminates everyone standing in his way, go see TAKEN instead.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE STREET FIGHTER