If you like this movie, you're an idiot.
Since this movie is on, well, at least twice a week, I finally got around to watching the end of it the other day (watching more than fifteen minutes of it gives me severe stomach cramps) and it's the worst ending to a movie....probably ever.
1) Where to begin.....okay, when Jamal wakes up, he's been in the water for like ten minutes. That's what his friend says. Ten minutes, in a crowded place. Nobody, not even his friend, thought to get his ass out of the water? Sure didn't look that deep.
2) Jamal isn't wet. He was in the water for ten minuts, and there's no droplets of water in his hair -the way droplets of water frequently kind of stand out on african american hair and curly hair in general- and his clothes are not visibly wet.
3) How long does it take this guy to wake up? He spends at least two minutes asking his friend where the castle is and where Vicki ("my bun" he calls her?) is. Maybe it's me but when i wake up from an odd medieval dream or fantasy, and I see familiar things like friends or a workplace, I'm gonna know pretty quick where I am and that what happened wasn't real.
4) "There's no honor in that, man." Jamal's line to his buddy when he decides it's time to file a suit for an accident in the work place because of Jamal's fall. This is the cornerstone of bad movies -the over message that they beat you over the head with. He then tells his boss about what "courage" is, a point that's even brought up again when he teachest he kid to hang in tight against the pitching machine. Little note, but I don't really get how one sentence helps this kid, obviously scared, hang in there and smoke the ball on his very next try.
5) Nicki/Vicki- THe girl, the aunt of the batting cage kid -a batting cage at a Medieval theme park, huh?- looks just like Vicki, and her name is Nicki, and she says he seems familiar, as if what happens in the movie is real. But when the Queen is knighting him, she suddenly says "Clear" and then next we know, she's the paramedic reviving Jamal. This little crossover says to me that the entire thing was a dream. If it was a dream, even if he'd seen this girl around and now suddenly actually talked to her, there is no *beep* way that this girl would recognize him from HIS dream! It's really just absurd.
6) The King when Jamal is talking to him. Jamal is speaking like a black guy in the 21st century. "You hooked a brother up, man. She saw the medallion and she knew i was down with somebody cool, you know what i'm saying?" some *beep* like that. the king nods and smiles and he obviously don't know what this guy's talking about, or at least he shouldn't. You would think that at some point, considering he isn't sure if he'll ever go home, that he'd try to blend in. But nope, modern american slang through the whole movie. The films big, running joke, the cross of cultures.
7) The Gladiator scene at the end is awful. Awful. It's the worst scene in film history. It looks horribly fake, and the lions don't look in scale with Lawrence. I think this scene should have just not happened if theyw ere going to be so careless in constructing it that they don't seem to care one way or the other what it looks like. It's just a tack-on, and it really could disappear and nobody'd care.
8) Sir Skywalker. Okay, why? Remember Back to the Future III when Marty tells people his name is Eastwood.....Clint Eastwood. Makes sense. He's a kid from the 80s and when he thinks about a western, that's the generational icon, Sergio Leonne movies, The Man with No Name and all of that. What does *beep* Star Wars have to do with the middle ages? At least in Back to the Future, there are several references TO Eastwood and his films. Here, this all just seems to come directly out of nowhere. What about Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner or some other Robin Hood-related crap. Something....anything really. Arthur maybe!!!!
I'm gonna stop because my fingers hurt. This movie is horrible. If you like it, your'e an idiot, and that's not true of many movies. If you like this movie, you're an idiot and I hope you don't ever have children because they'll be idiots too because only an idiot would sleep with you, thus enabling your idiot children to be born.
"You can disappear here without even knowing it."
---Bret Easton Ellis
Less Than Zero