Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I promise I like normal things too

And now, to prove that I am not actually mentally incompetant, I will tell you about a movie in which Sherilyn Fenn gets her limbs amputated that I did not like.  This movie is called Boxing Helena, and I actually never figured out what the boxing referred to, because he puts her in a little legless throne after he eventually gets around to torso-ing her, not a box.  I think I initially confused it with an episode of X-Files where they find the mother of an incestous family being kept under the bed in a box because she doesn't have arms or legs.  Man, I loved X-Files.

Anyway, Houseboy saw this movie shortly after it came out, because he had a little high school crush on Sherilyn Fenn and was probably in hog heaven for the first 45 minutes or so, which mostly consist of creepy surgeon dude watching her be naked with other guys.  Interspersed with saxophone-music-filled closeups of one of those marble statues with no arms and a parrot beating its wings against its cage walls.   That's what they call symbolism people.  And foreshadowing.  

Because later, she'll get hit by a car and have her leg crushed, and surgeon guy will get to cut off her legs and tend to her in bed while she throws things at him until he unceremoniously cuts of her arms too.  And I do mean unceremoniously.  Because we don't even get to see the surgery, folks.  I know, right?  Why watch a movie about a creepy dude cutting off body parts if there is no blood?  We don't even get to see the stumps: he dresses her in these flowy nightgown-like dresses and sets her on a throne where she continues to yell at and belittle him, just like his mother.  Oh yeah, that's the other theme: his mommy was not nice to him and walked around without a shirt on a lot.  

There is exactly ONE worthwhile scene in this entire movie, and that's when she is dramatically revealed for the first time with neither legs nor arms, in her little throne, set on a table and surrounded by funereal flowers.  The camera pans back as she begins to laugh.  And then laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.  It's very creepy.  Unfortunately, the movie  continues for about an hour after that.  

Once again, if you have any intention of watching this movie, on account of thinking it sounds good even after my description above, I would recommend that you read no further, because I'm about to tell you how it ends.  Just as Dr. Awesome finally gets Helena to submit to a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, and they're about to get all naked, her boyfriend finds them and raises holy hell, knocking out the doctor, who then wakes up in the hospital and realizes that it was all a dream.  I'm not flipping kidding.  Apparently somewhere along the way the writer decided to let a 4th grader finish the script for him, because not only do find out that it was all a dream, we are treated to about 20 minutes of explanation of exactly how it was a dream.  You see, when Helena was hit by the car, she was taken to the hospital, not back into the doctor's creepy old house.  And it turns out that all the parts where he pared her down until she was a loving torso were part of the dream.  But the parts where she had sex with other guys were not a dream.  Get it?  

So, yeah.  Get this from Netflix.  Because it's so bad it's bad. 



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