Omni's Random Video Noise

Dog, Ice Cream, KFC, Kissing, REREREREREREbound sex.

Alright, well, right off the bat let me just say that this movie is nowhere near as unpleasant as Juno and frankly, the poster is incredibly misleading. It looks like it's going to be millennial comedy drek, but it's not, it's a legit drama.

Now, if you know me, I'm pretty harsh when it comes to dramas because they're contingent upon realistic and engaging characters and a consistent compelling narrative.

How does it do here? Eeeeeggghhhh~ I don't get it.

The premise, which takes more than my standard 15 minute "SELL ME" window to properly establish the direction of the story is: Furiosa hasn't matured past high school and in the face of a struggling writing career she picks up on a message that approximately says, "BTDubs, your Ex had a baby" and decides to go back to the suburbs to take back her high school crush.

The BIGGEST **** up Young Adult manages to miss right off the bat is keeping Furiosa at arm's length throughout the movie, particularly at start. A detached sense of silent observation helps to establish that while we're following this character, we're not meant to be rooting for her, which is good because she's massively ****ed in the head which Patton Oswalt is helpfully around to point out in favor of the audience's sanity.

I've thrown around the term "Monogamy Syndrome" a few times in these reviews and let me just say that while it is deeply rooted problem I have with narratives involving marriage, it does not strictly apply here.

Monogamy Syndrome is when characters act irrationally for no other reason than because they can't accept someone being in a relationship with more than one person. It would apply here IF the driving conflict was purely with Buddy and his family, that they're closing ranks around themselves but that's not what this is. This is Furiosa being a selfish bitch.


She's completely deluded herself into believing that Buddy is unhappy and wants her back and in that spirit she urges him to leave his wife and new baby to go back to the city with her where she wastes away in a dark messy apartment writing horrible YA novels.

They probably weren't intended to sound horrible, but they're the very kind of self-obsessed **** I hate reading when I'm looking for new books with female protagonists. Oswalt makes a laser-guided "vampire" joke in this regard.

Really the whole movie is build up to the obvious letdown and I thought the movie was pretty boring, if admittedly well paced. A bright spot comes into view when the horrendously cringey and awkward dialog like "I used to sleep in his t-shirts and boxers" gives way to an upset at a "Baby Naming Ceremony" (which is total ********, no one does that) where Furiosa flips her **** at Buddy's wife and it comes clear that she had a miscarriage with Buddy's first baby and she was only invited out of pity and concern for her assumed mental illness.

Wow. That's... that's pretty sucky.

She finds her way back to Patton's character who's been established to be more level-headed if equally entrenched in the past and REBOUND SEX I HATE THAT.

I don't get this ****. What's this phenomenon where peoples' negative emotions get them REALLY HORNY??? I don't get this. What is this? Does this happen? Why would this happen? Why do you want to have CRY SEX?? You know what really turns me on is when my partner has just been EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED, that's hot ****, yo.

You think you've bagged the best with crazy sex, but you've never had SAD SEX. Murder her puppy and you'll make her drip like Niagara Falls.

LUBE IT UP WITH HER TEARS- It's ****in' stupid. So what, is... is she and Oswalt a thing now? That'd be kinda cute.

NO? Instead she has a breakfast table conversation with his sister who just feeds her ******* ego?

"Yeah, all these suburbian peoples aren't really livin' they all might as well DIE, **** all of them."


"I know, right? So take me with you?"

Ice Cream, Milk, Sausage, Dog, Goldfish, and Grace.

I took a huge crack at Jet Li for his acting ability, but I take it back here. Unleashed, or perhaps better titled, Danny the Dog, is an mild departure from Jet Li's normal fair of martial arts-centric narratives to a straight up Hollywood drama.

Jet plays and emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped man who's been fiercely conditioned by Bob Hoskins to kill on behalf of his criminal organization. Along the way, Jet, or Danny, is distracted by a fascination for pianos and meets Blind Morgan Freeman playing Blind Morgan Freeman who's just as charming as Blind Morgan Freeman ought to be.

Eventually Danny's distractions lend themselves to conflict with Gangster Bob and Danny cuts himself loose after a car crash seemingly kills his "owner". He returns to Blind Morgan Freeman and his daughter in-law where we see him gradually soften up, begin to seriously socialize, and have the life he never had.

Naturally Gangster Bob returns to wreck ****, but not before the "damage is done" and Danny too independent to be ordered around.


People are obviously going to be inclined to call foul or "contrived" at the idea of a man being subservient to violence, but you gotta realize, this is fairly plausible conditioning. Take a kid, as young as can be taught, deprive him of traditional education and social interaction, then BEAT INTO HIM this one rule with extreme negative reinforcement.

It can work, and just as it can work it can fail, as it does here.

The story is emotionally charged, very well-paced, and truly my biggest gripe is just the vegan stuff which is well in the background most of the time.

The fights are really what could have sent this over the edge for me, nothing really stands far apart from the rest and the rest is pretty bog standard fair that only brushes with martial arts. This is much more a story movie, which perhaps confines it unhelpfully between two genres, neither of which it's particularly exceptional in.

As it is though, as a combination of the two, I think it's [Pretty Good]. A solid story with some solid actors playing solid characters with a touch of karmic justice in the end.

Good stuff.

Ummm, 'scuse me, you're honor, but Goldfish, Doves, Steak, Lobster, Fishing, Dairy, Horses, Marriage, Milk, relevance?

This time Chan's an attorney and I don't know! ...I don't know how he knows martial arts if he's an attorney, he's an attorney and he's inexplicably ripped and can pound goons by the dozen. I DON'T KNOW.

Most of the movie is dominated by Chan being recruited by the Big Bad to secure him a victory so he and Sammo Hung chat up the claimant and the prosecution so they can win. Cheesy 80s comedy romance develops. Yuen Biao hangs around to cause ****-tons of trouble.

Is Chan supposed to be a good guy here? Why did he agree to plant wiretaps on innocent people to begin with? What even provoked him to check out the defense who're pumping narcotic waste into this woman's $10,000,000,000 FISH POND???

That must be the most ******* amazing fish pond in existence and it's never shown onscreen ONCE. Great.


There are couple fights in the movie, but they're mostly forgettable. The boat fight, while still paling next to the boat fight in Gorgeous is decent, but the fight everyone seems to remember is the showdown with the Big Bad at the end with Benny the Jet.

It's a decent fight, although honestly I don't like Benny anywhere near as much as I like the Big Bad who's a weasily glasses-wearing business-type who attacks Jackie anytime his back is turned and as soon as Jackie turns on him he runs away puffing like a madman.

Sammo stabs him in the neck with drugs poison which naturally lets him overact to death.

Benny's weird, I think it's the eyeliner. I can't think of any reason for him to wear the eyeliner. He looks like a regular overweight cubicle worker... with eyeliner. It's weird.

This is the first of two big screen fights between Jackie Chan and Benny The Jet, the second being Wheels on Meals. Which I'm not looking forward to.