Archive for September, 2011
Snarky Cinema: “The Omega Man” or “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Never Let Certain People Pick The Movie Ever Again, Ever”
When I wrote most of this, I was sitting comfortably in a lecture hall auditorium with a stomach full of liquid nitrogen ice cream. This is good, because if I were watching this movie on an empty stomach I would be mildly irritated instead of mildly amused. I take it back. This movie is squarely in “so bad it’s hysterical” territory.
As near as I can tell, The Omega Man (1971, directed by Boris Sagal) is the old man’s version of I Am Legend. (They are actually based off of the same book, so this isn’t me being snarky so much as factual.) The heroes of both movies are named Robert Neville. (One of them is played by Will Smith. I would much rather watch Will Smith run around shirtless for two hours than 48 year old Charlton Heston.) I’m sure it has some deep insightful message into the human condition and all that stuff, but I can’t see past the albino zombie mutants (one of whom wandered from the set of this movie to The Princess Bride), glistening Charlton Heston, and narmy narms of narm.
Good old Chuck was 48 at the time this movie was made. While I understand that when he was younger he was quite the handsome fellow I just want to point out that what we will generously call a six pack covered with flab, fur, and whatever bodily fluid it is that Heston seems to secrete all the time is not nearly as attractive as the director of this movie seemed to think it was, given the number of Heston’s shirtless scenes.
The hands down best part of this movie is the music. And by “best” I mean I sincerely questioned the appropriateness of showing this movie to a roomful of people because the first track in the movie is rather heavy on the cheesy 70’s saxophone that has come to be associated with a certain genre of film that is generally not shown in polite company. This was the background music to car/motorcycle chases, the montage of end of the world stuff, Charlie attempting and succeeding in getting into the pants of a younger woman (oh wait, it made sense then), Charlie killing people, etc. I mean, I really don’t think that the music director actually knew what the movie was supposed to be about and only had the title “The Omega Man” to go off of when scoring the thing.
The acting is either hammy or bad, which is fine because the movie is a lot funnier that way. I am actually pretty sure that they didn’t intend for everyone to find it as funny as they do, but that’s neither here nor there.
Okay, so the plot basically goes that Russia and China got in a pissing contest and ended up missing the toilet bowl entirely and hit the rest of the world with biological weapons. Nearly everybody died except Charlton Heston, who was working on a cure and injected himself with the experimental vaccine, and other people, who are infected but resistant. The older infected turn into albino mutant light-and-technology-hating guys while the younger infected ostracize them (which is fair, because the albinos have a tendency to try and kill them) and live out in the middle of nowhere and, in the case of one guy, refuse to put on their shirts. Charlton Heston runs around killing the albinos (who, for some reason, lose pigment in their hair when they turn, which is not how hair pigment works.) One day, Charlie runs into the other survivors, takes up a whirlwind romance (with LOTS of sax music and lots of other stuff that also begins with an “s” and ends with an “x”) with a sassy black woman, cures her brother of the plague, and then dies. Oh yeah, there maybe should be a spoiler alert in there somewhere.
I’m gonna be honest, if you’re watching this movie for the plot then you are watching the wrong movie. Also, biochemistry does not work in any way, shape, or form it is shown in this movie. At one point a member of our audience (who actually wasn’t me, in case you were wondering) pointed out that Major Robert Neville, a military grade scientist with a PhD, failed to balance a centrifuge. In the movie, this didn’t matter. In real life, it would cause the centrifuge to wobble around on a tabletop until it fell off. This movie was so unrealistic.
There is a lot of social commentary that can be touched upon in the post-apocalyptic genre of film. I’m pretty sure they were trying to make some observations on the state of humanity because this movie included the future president of the NRA watching videos of Woodstock while talking to a statue and a bunch of political strawman mutants, which is the kind of thing I generally associate with poor political and social commentary in post-apocalyptic movies. The thing is, the mutants are far too comical to be scary or taken seriously (they spend the movie cackling and running around in black robes while pronouncing solemn judgments of doom and condemning technology and being ridiculously hypocritical), and at times Charlie is just so over the top absurd that the movie just comes off as farcical rather than thoughtful or thought-provoking.
Questions I Have:
-How do all of these buildings still have power? Society collapsed like two years ago, and the only generator is in Charlie’s house…
-Seriously, what is Charlton Heston excreting? I mean, does he have a special gland or something? Also, why does he bleed red paint? And since he is a scientist/doctor and can therefore be expected to know how to give himself an injection properly, why does he inject himself in an artery? Also, inserting a needle a millimeter beneath the skin of the arm does not result in high pressure blood spurts. That is scientifically inaccurate.
-At one point, the albino zombie mutant guys condemn Heston for using “the tools of the wheel.” Did these guys just forget that they built and were operating a freaking catapult not five hours earlier?
-Does anybody else find the albino black guy mildly racist?
-At one point a little girl asks Charlie “Are you God?” I wanted him to say “No, but I am Moses.” That’s not really a question, but it was funny because it was a stupidly pretentious thing to throw in the movie.
-Why is the movie rated PG? I’m pretty sure they had an “R” rating in 1971, and this movie kind of merits one, even by today’s standards.
4/10, with a +1 situational bonus because I was watching it with friends (I imagine this movie is considerably less funny when you watch it alone). This isn’t a good movie, it is only really barely a funny movie, and I would not watch it again unless it was with a crowd of people on sugar highs. So there’s your judgment.
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