by Lindy West
(Cut to the interior of the Jurassic Park gift shop. Foolish humans and your ridiculous dinosaur thermoses.)
Richard Attenborough is making a speech about fleas. He just wanted to make something that wasn’t an illusion, you know? “I wanted to show them something that wasn’t an illusion. Something that was real. Something they could see and touch.” And get dismembered by.
Off in the jungle somewhere, in grave danger of being seen and touched, the boy-child calls the girl-child a “nerd” and she goes, “I’m a hacker! I am not a computer nerd—I prefer to be called a hacker.” Then the boy-child gets fried on an electric fence and Dr. Grant dubs him “Big Tim, the Human Piece of Toast”—which also, coincidentally, is my stripper name. What are the odds.
Samuel L. Jackson decides that he needs to go reset the main power switch to fix all the crap that Newman fucked up. I think you know what that means. It’s HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS NUMBER TWO.
When Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t come back from his butt mission, Laura Dern decides it’s time to hold on to her butt and go find him. She and Richard Attenborough have this exchange:
Richard Attenborough: It ought to be me, really, going.
Laura Dern: Why?
Richard Attenborough: Well, I’m a…and you’re a…
Laura Dern: We can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back.
ROAST HIM, DERN.
While Laura Dern runs to the switchy-hut (I am literally an engineer), the hunter man attempts to give her cover from the marauding velociraptors. It’s the perfect job for him, seeing as he is the world’s number-one expert on how to not get eaten by velociraptors. He immediately gets eaten by velociraptors.
Over the walkie-talkie, Richard Attenborough gives Laura Dern instructions: “You’ve got to pump up the primer handle in order to get the charge. It’s large, flat, and gray. Like my penis.”
Laura Dern manages to get the power back on, but not before being attacked by a raptor and snuggled by Samuel L. Jackson’s dismembered arm.
Hey, hey, Samuel L. Jackson, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE HELD ON TO YOUR ARM.
Meanwhile, the raptors are chasing the kids around the kitchen (you guys, Alejandro has to clean all that up!), and they would have gotten so eaten if they hadn’t come across science’s number-one most effective dinosaur avoidance tool: the ladle. (Laura Dern never goes anywhere without her dump gloves and seventeen ladles.)
Everyone is almost safe, but they just need to fix the computer so they can lock the raptors out. The hacker child runs over to help. Fortunately, it is a UNIX system (and/or Microsoft Entertainment Pack Fuji Golf), and she knows this.
Blah blah blah run from the raptors some more, and then OH SHIT, T. REX COMES IN AND SAVES THE DAY AND EATS THE RAPTORS AND IT IS RIGHTEOUS AS HELL. Keep this metaphor with you always—it is very useful when you have more than one problem at once. Sometimes you have to let the T. rex fight the raptors.
RATING: 10/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
No Toucan Will Ever Make ME Have Sex!
Welcome to Africa! It’s the crack of dawn, and some motherfucker is singing REALLY FUCKING LOUD. I don’t speak Zulu, but I believe the lyrics roughly translate to “WAKE UP, ANIMALS, IT’S TIME FOR A BABY LION’S BIRTHDAY AND NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR HANGOVER.”
Rhino is like, “Whut.” Antelopes are like, “Whut.” Meerkats are like, “Is this guy GD serious.” Cheetah is like, “Let me walk up this hill for a better view of you waking me up.” Birds are like, “Yo, really?” Mom giraffe is like, “YES, you have to go to the birthday party. It’s my boss’s kid.” Baby giraffe is like, “BUT WHAT KIND OF PSYCHO HAS THEIR BIRTHDAY PARTY AT 5:00 A.M.!?!?” Leaf-cutter ants are like, “Sorry, man, couldn’t get the day off.” Elephants are cool; they love a party.
They all gather around this big rock with a lion at the top. The lion is named Mufasa. This krazy baboon climbs up there and hugs Mufasa like they are old bros, which probably would not happen. Then this woman-lion is like, “Look over here, baboon, I’ve got a baby!” And baboon is like, “JACKPOT!” So the baboon rubs some jam on the baby and then throws dirt in its face, and then he dangles the baby off the edge of the rock with some Michael Jackson blanket-head realness. You know, LIKE THE WILD ANIMALS DO IN AFRICA.
Meanwhile, this kiss-ass toucan goes to visit another lion named Scar, Mufasa’s no-good brother, who’s just chilling in a cave nursing his wasting disease. The toucan’s mad at Scar for missing the baby-dangling jam ceremony. Scar eats the toucan. Luckily, Mufasa comes into the cave and is like, “Do not eat my toucan, please; I need him for blathering and ineffectual childcare.” Scar’s like, “FINE,” and spits him out.
The baby lion is named Simba. Mufasa takes him up to the top of this rock and is like, “See everything? That’s yours.” Because someday Simba will succeed Mufasa as king…of…Africa?
I don’t really understand how this form of government works. First of all, they leave out the part where Mufasa just FUCKS ALL THE LADY LIONS. Because that is definitely part of the deal. But second of all, what are Mufasa’s administrative responsibilities? And why should the zebras and the antelopes trust him to look out for their best interests!?!?! If, once per day, Barack Obama killed and ate three of my cousins, I’m not sure I’d have stayed a registered Dem through the whole administration.1
Oh, but don’t worry. Mufasa has some bullshit explanation for why it’s okay to eat their constituents: “Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass.” Yeah, um, you sure the antelopes are cool with that? I mean…the elephants and the zebras also become the grass. Couldn’t one of them be king, seeing as they’ve never killed and eaten a single one of their subjects? I just feel like the grass to murder ratio is a little off in your leogarchy.
Anyhoo, Simba goes running back to Uncle Scar (remember when you were too young to know which uncles were creepy?) all braggin’ about how he’s going to be king of Pride Rock someday. This is a sore spot for Scar, who really, really wants to be the king because he LOVES LION BUREAUCRACY, I guess. So then he decides to just murder Simba and resume his position as Mufasa’s number two. Say what you will about Scar, but when the dude has an idea, he commits. Simba isn’t just a baby, he’s a KITTEN. Can you imagine if there was a kitten that was also your nephew? The only thing less murderable than that would be if, like, the knowledge of how to make chocolate chip cookies only existed in the mind of a mini-horse that was also your grandma.
So anyway, Scar tells Simba about this really cool forbidden elephant graveyard (kind of a misnomer—really more of an “elephant just-lay-down-and-die-wherever-yard”), so Simba asks his best friend, Nala, if she wants to “GO TO THE WATER HOLE” [WINK]. Nala’s mom is like, “Fine, but take that wet blanket toucan along.” On the way, wet blanket toucan casually mentions that Simba and Nala are in an arranged marriage and are definitely going to do penis-in-vagina someday. Reeling from the news, Simba sings one of the film’s most popular songs: “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King (So I Can Make a Law that Says NO TOUCAN CAN EVER MAKE ME HAVE SEX).”
Then the toucan accidentally flies into a rhino’s asshole and the kids ditch him.
At the elephant graveyard, the kids start playing around on the bones (dood, those are people’s moms!) and are cornered by Scar’s three hench-hyenas. The hyenas are about to eat them until Mufasa shows up and bites the hyenas until they go away. I guess nobody explained to Mufasa that when a hyena eats a baby lion, the hyena turns into grass, and then the antelopes eat the grass!
The circle of life is way more complicated when everyone can talk.
Mufasa’s like, “Simba, I am very disappointed in you,” and Simba’s like, “I was just trying to be brave like you!” and Mufasa’s like, “Oh, I can’t stay mad at you (for violating all the laws of our nation and placing yourself and Nala in mortal peril and desecrating Jeff’s grandma’s grave and almost making Scar the fucking king!),” and then best
ows upon Simba the royal noogie.
No offense, Mufasa, but that went really quickly from punishment to noogie. Like, you need to have some follow-through here, man! If you don’t want your kid to turn into a weird bug-eating recluse who lives with a warthog, you’ve got to enforce some rules. Real question. Does Mufasa actually exhibit any genuine parenting skills, besides having a deep voice?
Back at the cave, Scar hops out of his iron lung for a sec to be like, “WTF is you guys’s problem? You were supposed to eat my nephew,” and the hyenas are like, “Well, yeah, we were going to, but…” Then Scar sings the “Kill Mufasa” song, and it’s probably the most boring part of the movie, including the part where Rafiki is just doodling in his magic tree.
Scar lures Simba to this ravine and has the hyenas kick off a wildebeest stampede. I feel like here’s how long a baby lion could outrun a wildebeest stampede: “Oh no, it’s a st—”
Instead, Simba climbs a little tree and waits for Mufasa to come rescue him. But as soon as he’s pulled to safety, Scar throws Mufasa off this cliff like a total dildo and he gets squished by wildebeests!!! And then Simba is all down in the dust cloud like, “Daaaaaaaad!”
Dad? Are you my dad?
NOPE, WILDEBEEST. CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP.
Scar tells Simba that it’s his fault Mufasa died and everyone’s going to be mad at him, so he needs to “run away and never return.” And Simba’s like, “That seems reasonable.” And then Scar is like, “Okay, new government. Hyenas are lions now.”
Simba wanders out into the desert and is about to become a buzzard’s snack when he’s rescued by Timon and Pumbaa, a pair of confirmed bachelors who only care about two things: denial and bugs. They’re like, “Listen, kid. We know that you just witnessed your father’s murder and snuggled with his corpse and then were framed by your uncle and subsequently became a homeless youth and were almost eaten alive by vultures as you wandered in the desert, but you should have a positive attitude! Similarly, Pumbaa farts a lot, but you don’t see him moping around. WHAT’S A-MOTTO WITH YOU????”
Also, Timon is just constantly sticking his entire forearm into Pumbaa’s nostril.
Simba grows into an adult, lovin’ life, somehow eating enough bugs to sustain an entire lion, until one day when this other lion shows up. Oh, shit! It’s Nala! And she’s a hottie with a naughty body! And she’s like, “Simba! You’re the king!” and Timon and Pumbaa are like, “WHAT IS A MONARCHY WE ARE ANIMALS.”
As Simba and Nala erotically lap water from a stagnant bog, their eyes meet and it’s LIIIIIOOOOON ROOOOOOMAAAAAANCE!!!!!
Nala tries to convince Simba to come back to the Pridelands and fix all the shit that Scar douched, but he’s like, “Nah,” and she’s like, “K.” Timon and Pumbaa are all, “YAAAAASSS!!! BACHELORZ 4 LYFE! MGTOW!” and Simba gets ready to kick back and eat bugs until death.
Then Rafiki the krazy baboon shows up and tells Simba that his dad is still alive—which, I don’t know how many of you have a dead dad, but it’s a pretty fraught issue—and then when Simba gets all excited, he just points to Simba’s fucking reflection in a pond and gives a speech about how dead people live forever in our hearts. Yeah, I know my dead relatives live on inside me, but fuck you, man! That’s really not the same as being able to hug your dad! This is emotional monkey abuse!!
Luckily for Rafiki, who is about to get punched in his fucking tooth, Ghost Mufasa picks that exact moment to show up in the sky and lecture Simba like a dick. “Simba,” he says, “you’re a fuckup. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the circle of life. Stop eating bugs, you loser. Remember who you are. You are my son and the one true king.” Then he goes back up to lion heaven to play two-on-two basketball with Confucius, Anne Frank, and James Gandolfini.
Simba decides to go challenge Scar and reclaim his throne. After running across the entire Sahara, I guess, he gets to the Pridelands where Scar has somehow managed to dry up all the water with his shitty attitude. Despite being a diabolical mastermind, Scar immediately admits to killing Mufasa for no reason, undermining 100 percent of his leverage against Simba. Simba dumps him off a cliff, while Pumbaa kills all the hyenas for fat-shaming him.
Then all the water comes back to the Pridelands, due to physics.
So, the moral of The Lion King, I guess, is don’t push your older brother into a wildebeest stampede because someday your nephew might throw you in a hyena-infested fire? Also, the sky is full of dead lions. Being alive is a fright.
RATING: 7/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
Footnotes
1 Hahaha, this joke was funny during the Obama administration, when it was written, but is less funny during the Donald “Inject Disinfectant” Trump administration! Hahahaha, I long for the sweet relief of a lion’s jaws closing upon my head!
Look at Your Little
Punk British Ass
I was always fascinated as a kid when an old movie star or musician would die and my parents would get sad—it was a window into their lives before I existed, and not just their lives but a whole world of lives, a breathing cultural atmosphere, a past that was as real as my present even though I couldn’t feel it. These people I lived with and thought I knew had intense relationships with a galaxy of celebrities whose names meant nothing to me. They had crushes on them, they went on first dates to their movies, they saved up to buy their records and cried to their songs, and then, like, thirty years later, Lana Turner would die and I’d say, “Who?” and my dad would shake his head and say, “Oh, she was terrific.” She was???? What else do you love that I don’t know about!? Who are you really, sir?
I realized today that someday Jackie Chan will die (probably? I mean, maybe not?) and my kids will be like, “Who?” and I’ll try to explain about Rush Hour and Chris Tucker and how when I was a kid Jackie Chan was not just famous but UBIQUITOUS, and they’ll shrug and file it away under “old celebrity” just like I did with my parents—as though Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker belong in the same folder as, say, Hulk Hogan and Dustin Diamond. I need you to understand the subtle striations of my culture, children! Those who do not know Dustin Diamond are doomed to repeat him!
It’s particularly galling to think about Rush Hour going into the memory hole because Rush Hour is the definition of STILL HOLDS UP. WOW, RUSH HOUR IS STILL SO FUCKING FUNNY EVEN IN 2020. The Fugitive is the only good movie, but so is Rush Hour.
Actually, I can’t say that Rush Hour is perfect because director Brett Ratner is a known sex creep who has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by at least nine women, and also the ONE AND ONLY female character in the movie (other than “sexy crime waitress” and “kidnapped child”) is sexually harassed literally every time she is on-screen, plus every time Jackie Chan says a punch line the score plays a gong. Whether or not to watch Rush Hour is the kind of sticky post-#MeToo judgment call we now have to make all the time, and there’s no map other than your own personal instincts and comfort zone. Unfortunately, due to the indefatigable vileness of men throughout history, sexual exploitation and abuse of power have pervaded all of our art and media, and everything is tainted and fucked!
If you feel gross renting Rush Hour and having a portion of your money filter back to Brett Ratner, you definitely should not watch it. Don’t make yourself feel gross!! Take care of yourself! If you do want to watch it, here are some ideas: 1) take the money you spent on renting Rush Hour and send double that to an organization that helps survivors of sexual violence; 2) borrow the DVD from your cousin, then send some money to an organization that helps survivors of sexual violence anyway; 3) illegally download it and then send a taunting letter to Brett Ratner; 4) remember that lots of dedicated, brilliant cast and crew members and other professionals who are not accused of multiple rapes also worked extremely hard on Rush Hour; 5) remember that absolutely nothing great about Rush Hour is great because of Brett Ratner. You can say, “Lindy, you have no way of knowing that; you have not worked on a set with Brett Ratner,” b
ut I know that Brett Ratner didn’t make Chris Tucker funny and Jackie Chan charming! Sorry!
People always accuse feminists of taking the fun out of everything, but can you see how it is actually Brett Ratner who did that?????
Okay, anyway, we open on the last day of British rule in Hong Kong, and Jackie Chan is beating up an entire crime syndicate on a ship because they stole five thousand years of Chinese artifacts and Jackie Chan loves artifacts! He’s trying to bring down the mysterious and mega-deadly crime boss Juntao, but all he finds is a henchman (Ken Leung, UNDERAPPRECIATED) who manages to escape in a lil boat. Jackie Chan is upset but still excited he got the art back. It’s nice when people kick other people in the head in defense of art!!!
Jackie Chan’s boss, Mr. Han, the Chinese consul, is having a dinner party to celebrate his family’s big move to Los Angeles, and his friend Tom Wilkinson is toasting him warmly. I’m sorry, but if there’s a British guy in a suit who talks in the first five minutes of your movie, he’s the villain! If it’s Tom Wilkinson, you’re fucked.
Jackie Chan informs Mr. Han that Juntao and the henchman got away, but he did save the art. They decide to call that a win!
Jackie Chan says goodbye to Mr. Han’s little daughter, Soo Yung, his best student, and tells her to make sure she practices her kicks and eye gouges. “Don’t worry,” he says, “America is a very friendly place.” SOB!!!
Meanwhile, in America, Chris Tucker is friendlily buying some C-4 out of the trunk of Chris Penn’s car. Man, everything in the ’90s was about C-4! I heard the word C-4 more times while writing Shit, Actually than I’d heard it in the last twenty years. But less times than I heard it in the month of April 1998 alone!