Margarita Movies

While it may seem that we only see awful movies with giant explosions, the schedule does not reliably afford us such riches every week.  In tough times, sometimes we’ll have to resort to getting tanked and seeing Oscar bait movies like Invictus.

I understand this may seem fairly controversial, and the very thought of margarita-screening Invictus makes me a racist.  How divisive was this?  Nick AKA ROPER felt so attuned to people that speak English in funny accents that he refused to see the film.  On the flip side of the coin, Dan AKA WILLIAMS showed up to drinks wearing a CROSS COLORS jacket, which is just shy of daishiki on the Blackness scale.  This jacket was 18 years old, which meant if Nick were here he probably would have tried to buy it a drink and then fuck the shit out of it.

If you haven’t heard anything about Invictus, it is based on the true story of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman!) solving all the problems of South Africa by telling Francoise Pienaar (Matt Damon) and the South African rugby team to win the World Cup.  This actually happened so it cannot be in any way be accused of being preposterous.

The film begins shortly after Mandela’s election, and while apartheid has been abolished there is still a lot of racial tension, to say the least.  From Day One, Mandela is integrating like a motherfucker, welcoming white staff onto his crew.  Let it be known that if you see anyone or anything Black in the first half of this movie, they will be partying down with something White by the end.

Mandela watches the South African Springboks get their asses handed to them by the English Roses (these are real team names, folks) and realizes the best way to unify his country is for these white losers to win the Rugby World Cup being held in South Africa that very year.  This is obviously an awesome plan.

To facilitate this run, Mandela comes up with amazing game plans and training regimens, as well as converting a few Black soccer athletes to rugby as secret weapons for the Springboks.  Actually he does none of this.  His plan is mostly to have tea with Matt Damon and say “man, I wish you would win this.  It would be fucking rad.”

Realizing that he has to pass on Mandela’s inspirational tactics onto his squad, Matt Damon teaches them to sing the South African national anthem (no, really) and tricks them into visiting Shawshank Penitentiary, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years.    By the way, I think the world really owes Tim Robbins for getting Mandela to Zihuatenejo.

I’m really starting to check out at this point and mostly trying to figure out what it would look like if Lucius Fox and Jason Bourne started working together in ridiculous clothe- OH HERE WE GO:

Eventually, the movie really leans on the rugby, with the Springboks making a run and eventually facing the juggernaut New Zealand All-Blacks, who are not really All-Black but they are Mostly-Ethnics.  They are led by Jonah Lomu, the kind of freakish athlete that they describe in terms reserved for goddamn Universal Soldiers.  I won’t spoil the match results, but I will say that I have no idea what the hell happened in that rugby match and Clint Eastwood was no fucking help at all.  Mostly people ran about 10 feet and then fell down, unless it was Lomu, who was tackled by the entire population of Johannesburg and parts of Lesotho.

I didn’t loathe Invictus but it was utterly conventional hack work.  For a film that is so steeped in South African tradition, it fails to acknowledge the greatest film in South African film history, LETHAL WEAPON 2.  Would it really have killed them to have some teammate say “the president?  him?  … but he’s blick!”  I would have given the film full marks if that happened.  Hell, if that happened we would have changed our names from Roper, Williams and Lee to Francoise, Mandela and Lomu.

Come to think of it, I am unconvinced that this rugby squad has done more for race relations than Team Margarita!  Where’s the movie about us?!?  Obviously, Morgan Freeman would play me.

The patented SCALE*scale, which doesn’t really work for Oscarbait movies, but whatever:

S - Story:  Predictable, but a true story.  So I give reality a 6.

C - Comedy:  I laughed a lot more than I thought, so also a 6.

A - Awesomeness: The awesomeness is pretty much only in the sports scenes, which aren’t comprehensible.  3.

L - Ladies:  All the ladies look like normal people.  I give reality a 4.  (This probably has a fairly high LAD score, for those who like no-necked bros in Tommy Hilfiger shirts)

E - Et Cetera:  I’ll give +2 to Morgan Freeman’s amazing shirts but -2 for the terrible soundtrack which sounds like Lion King reject tracks.  So overall, a zero.

NEXT WEEK:  AVATAR in LIEMAX 3-D!

- Han