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Uh oh. It seems The Man Who Fell to Earth somehow got an R rating in 1976. That's a potentially horrifying sign. Anyway, we start off with a bad CGI temple which I'm pretty sure was not originally in the film, and is a logo for the sound remastering on the DVD. Plus there's the Dolby logo and all. Ah, here's the real opening credits. Red squiggle font on black. Interior: We are in a trashcan full of fire! Actually I think we're just in some really unintelligible space launch stock footage. This is some grainy grainy film, although the rest of the movie looks fine. Selective remastering thanks to weird laws about modifying stock footage or what?
Anyway, here's David Bowie very awkwardly decending from the top of a hill now, and proving that dressing in all black doesn't always make you look cool. Mainly it's the hooded trench coat in broad daylight bit that hurts it. He's all wandering about in filmed on location land, reminding me how 70's movies really have this bleak samey visual quality I just can't stand. Also, being a regular contributor to www.videogamelookalikes.com I find myself compelled to ponder what videogame character has this particular look going on. I think it's only a one-way phenomenon though. David Bowie Is In Every Game, but not all Bowie Incarnations have a game doppleganger. Anyway, he's done wandering and is now pawning a ring. Much like a savvy player in an old school console RPG, he knows that any useless junk in your inventory should immediately be sold.
Then he goes over and drinks some river water, and counts a big ol' stack of hundred dollar bills. Then he continues drinking river water, to the accompaniment of some REALLY ominous music. Now he's being introduced to someone with funky lenses, and has some appropriate dress sense. Everyone loves a cool hat. He's also very mumbly. This movie thusfar is coming off rather incoherent honestly. OK, I guess he had a bunch of other loot he pawned, in order to get this GIANT WAD of money in order to hire a really good patent lawyer, so he can become a billionaire with the patents on crazy futuretech. OK, that's pretty coherent, and we can't have hat! Cut to a random flashback of the lawyer's dad or something? We're just kinda randomly showing some college and blaring some music that kinda sounds like it's just going "IT IS THE SEV-EN-TIES! IT IS THE SEV-EN-TIES! IT IS THE SEV-EN-TIES!" Both in that it's all bwow-bwow guitars, and that the bwow-bwows kinda resemble those words. And now here's some kabuki! And now here's a random POV shot of some girl taking her shirt off to boobs-by-para- oh no, she has a bra and is just trying to murder this random guy with her shirt? Or maybe it's - Ah. I was right. Boobs.
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So... now we've got these two random people having sex in the middle of a kabuki play. David Bowie who is present for this is rather Weirded Out and wanders off. Sadly, the cameraman doesn't follow him, and we stick with these two while they marvel at color photography... or not! Bowie's wandering around and his lawyer is narrating over how they're billionaires now. You know movie, you seem to have a completely coherent plot in here, and it's interesting enough that you can just run with it and not just have this totally random guy staring at the captions in art books for a full minute. I mean, the characters who are actually in the plot are usually NEAR what we're actually getting to see, but the camera keeps looking for anything it can possibly focus on that isn't the movie. "I don't wanna watch Space Bowie make money!" says the camera. "I want to watch Charles Groden get laid at a kabuki show!"
We're actually still on this guy. Well, OK, we keep going back to this guy when anything plot-like starts to happen, and then when I point it out we cut back to plot. This movie is just out to prove me wrong, isn't it. And again, I'm hating the 70's-look this keeps throwing at me. Oh yeah, and Bowie gets severe motion sickness. Can't do more than 30 MPH in a car, elevators make him lose consciousness and get a nosebleed... but he uh, did come from space right? And eventually plans to return there? This doesn't really add up. Oh, and now we're just randomly cutting back and forth between David Bowie recovering and the Charles Groden looking dude having more rather visually explicit sex... and MORE Gro-mance with I think a second person. And... apparently Bowie is picking up their random screaming through his static-y telepathic suitcase. That's the best I can figure from this. Well, either that or all the Charles Groden looking dude scenes are like, representing Bowie's id, and the various fantasies he'd never act on. That would actually make way more sense.
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OK, so now we're just focusing on the elevator attendant who brought Bowie to his room, giving HER an internal monologue as she wanders around. And... we're back to Bowie talking to his lawyer. Oh, maybe she's his personal secretary now. Oh and now we're back to Frelling Groden. Who's pretty much referring to himself AS Frelling Groden. Because that's what he does. He bangs chicks. With the all-powerful charisma that comes in looking like the dad from Beethoven (you know, the movie with the big gross dog), driving a drab boxy blue car, and being a total loser. Maybe that's it. Maybe he's one of those characters who just represents losers like the director and the target audience in a total wish-fulfillment fashion. Because seriously, he has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the plot, despite getting something like 60% of the total screen time. I mean, right now? Bowie's just sitting here playing with a personal battery powered fan, chugging water, and watching his 15 TVs simultaneously. This actually is forwarding the plot some because him drinking water constantly is clearly important, what with the ominous music, and he's totally shutting down his secretaries blatant advances, establishing him as an androgynous weirdo.
Oh, and can we PLEASE stop having exterior shots? They're just really really unpleasant to look at, especially when you're trying to make them look beautiful... and now the secretary is randomly calling him in while she's taking a bath, and she doesn't even have the sense to have censoring bubbles. OK, seriously? This whole thing is starting to remind me of an H-Game or something. Everything looks terrible, we're mostly showing stuff from the perspective of a total loser, and every girl who shows up ends up naked almost immediately. And... now we cut to a flashback of space where people are wandering the desert wearing diving gear and plastic wrap clothing. This is going to turn out to be one of those things where someone comes to earth just to get their hands on our precious precious water isn't it. Because they somehow ran out. Despite the fact that it doesn't really work that way. And the more important fact that there are just big ol' gigantic wads of water all over space that nobody's doing anything with. I know water seems like the obvious choice because we have a lot of it, but we have a lot of it because it is crazy crazy common to have. Ours is kind of special because it's liquid, but that's not the water's fault, that's the planet's position relative to the sun and rotation, which aren't portable. Here, just start using trees. Trees are totally something you can run out of, that you can't find on planets that don't have life, and losing them is pretty much a similar thing.
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Oh, and the movie is totally tripping out right now. Bowie's using some sort of time travel car or seeing into the past or something to freak out 1800's people and have a trippy reverse film flashback on how he apparently did the whole splashdown thing in this lake, pretty much just wearing his space plastic wrap. And now he's finally ready to switch his company over to using spaceships to export water back home I guess. Also, I don't want to jynx it but we've been pretty Groden free for a - DAGNABIT! By the way, you know what's bafflingly missing from this movie? David Bowie music! I mean, there's a lot of background music. There's a lot of background music that totally doesn't fit the scene even, but none of it is by the weirdo musician who's staring in the movie. I mean, that was kind of expected here wasn't it? Labyrinth had David Bowie singing in it. Venture Bros. at least has a lot of contextualizing of lyrics. What the heck movie? Fulfill your implied promises!
OK... naked David Bowie. Uh... I don't know who you promised THAT to, but it wasn't me. This movie is really way way more porn-like than I was expecting. Particularly because I was expecting, you know, NONE and all. I suppose I can't object TOO much to having David Bowie's package tossed up on screen, because hey, Labyrinth had the creepy tights and all, but then on the other hand, Labyrinth HAD the creepy tights. This movie lacks the protection to one's delicate sensibilities those tights provide. Anyway, having given his secretary her mercy lay, he pretty much tells her to get the hell out and we spend the next several minutes with him just watching his wall of TVs. Oh hey, it's a full 16 now it seems, proper 4x4 grid. And... now the movie appears to be taking a nap. People are sleeping, people are going for nice quiet boat rides... oh hey, here's Bowie and Groden actually interacting! I'm amazed! So... I guess he isn't his id. Just the director's.
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You'd figure there'd be some big important scene here having spent so much time building up how these two meet but... no, that was just a bit of awkward small talk. RANDOM HOEDOWN MUSIC! Which transitions us into more dead air, and oh hey, there's another flashback to desert planet and Bowie's meatloaf space cottage. And seriously. If you ever end up with a time machine and use it to go back in time to get good masters of Star Wars to use to make DVDs and first editions of various awesome sci-fi stories, make it a short clip. It was an ugly ugly decade.
Incidentally, the movie has become excessively tedious at this point. To the extent that I am only half-paying-attention and getting distracted by someone linking to a 4chan debate on whether a cat or level 1 commoner would win in an over-optimized D&D fight. Not missing a whole lot though. Bowie's rustic cabin has been arbitrarily infused with as much Japan as possible in 1976, which means we've still got all the wood panelling and nasty floral print wallpaper, but also random tori gates and kimonos. Oh, and apparently it's like, an unforgivable insult to serve slightly overdone cookies on Bowieworld, because he just EPICALLY knocked that tray out of Secretary's hands. Then he wandered into the bathroom, stripped naked in front of a full length miror, played with himself a bit, and finally removed his wig and contact lenses, to reveal that he's bald and has cat eyes. Because that's so much weirder than having one green eye, one blue eye, and crazy blond-and-red hair. Apparently it is, because Secretary freaks out and we get a close-up of her wetting herself in fear. Ah, pleasant thanks for sharing that movie. He also apparently removed his genetalia, giving himself some sort of Ken Crotch. And... now here's an extreme close-up on Secretary's crotch as she strips naked. Yeah, this movie is a real class act. Anyway, the level 1 commoner wins, because there's some crazy feat in some obscure book you can take to get damage reduction against the cat. I'm really not a fan of this sort of discussion since even if you just restrict yourself to official WotC splat books, the sheer volume of terribly written and clearly un-play-tested, or even proofread rules just suck all the fun out of it. It always just comes down to "so hey, if you interpret this vague wording here in a way that clearly is not intended and doesn't actually even work if you pay attention to the exact wording, you can get infinite everything at level 1!" Beats discussing what's on screen right now though!
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Ah, we're done being naked and slimy now, and here's the meatloaf space hut again. Apparently it's actually a monorail! It's also this movie's sole source of joy. I'm honestly tempted to just post this thing with six shots of the meatloaf space hut monorail and call it a day. Oh, and apparently Bowie never had a space ship, prior to the one he's building now. He just kinda like... jumped to Earth or something. Or just sat on a big pile of explosives and blasted himself on over. So... the title turns out to be surprisingly literal. Oh, and here's some reporters getting into how his bio is all "FRANCE! WE COME FROM FRANCE!" except with England. And... now here's two lawyery types putting on sparkly gold motorcycle helmets and roughing up Lawyer... who really hasn't been seen up to this point. It's kind of like the second to last episode of Death Note (SECOND TO LAST I SAY! I'm not acknowledging that fugue state epilogue) except it's all gaudy.
So... thy toss him out the window, which takes two attempts because it's a pretty thick window. And... now we're just straight up cutting to porn. Here's two naked people getting out of a pool and making out, and I don't recall ever seeing them before now. You know what movie? At this point? Frell you. You're clearly no longer trying to have a narrative. You're just arbitrarily cutting to totally random nudity and haven't attempted to advance the plot in any way for like, the last hour. Give me one good reason to keep watching you. Just one. Come on. I'll settle for just another Meatorail scene. Or Secretary killing herself maybe. SOMETHING! I'm just going to go back to the min-maxing thread! I'm warning you!
... OK. Apparently Bowie is now getting a boob job? He's on an operating table, and someone's taking a scalpel to his nipple. There hasn't been any sort of plot point of people realizing he's an alien or anything... and now he's fine in a chair watching the one giant TV he's cut back to. And... here's some doctors coming in. Are we jumping into a flashback? This movie is ENTIRELY too vague and incoherent. NOW HERE ARE SOME PHALLIC OBJECTS! Seriously, he's just pointing a gun at the crotch of a girl who's massaging a banana. Oh and he shoots her in the face. Turns out it's loaded with blanks though and... now we have another shockingly explicit sex scene which is full of examples of how the people who made this movie QUITE CLEARLY don't know how blanks actually work. Thankfully someone on set did though or else this girl would be dead. Or David Bowie, depending on the order they filmed these bits. OK, if you stick a gun in someone's ears and pull the trigger? That will kill them even if it's just loaded with blanks. Heck, an actor was rather famously killed once by being shot with a blank in the chest at reasonably close range.
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By the way, we've gone into happy romance land, and it feels like I've been watching this movie for an eternity. How the heck long is this anyway? We are way way over 90 minutes... 2 hours 19 minutes. Wonderful. Because clearly the sheer epic scope of this could not be contained to something reasonable. HEY! MEATORAIL! Why can't this movie have just been about you? Oh, and did I mention how after he finally met the main character, Groden just totally fell out of the movie completely? Yeah, that went absolutely NOWHERE. Ack! I summoned him again!
So... stuff continues to not happen. A lot. For a while. I think the movie actually ended a long time ago, and someone just accidentally spliced in everything that was on the cutting room floor before the end credits. We don't even have known characters wandering around doing nothing at this point. Just more random dudes we've never seen before. YES! It's over! It's mercifully over! There wasn't an ending or anything. It just finally stopped. This, honestly, really helps that accidental scrapped footage argument. He doesn't go back to his home planet. He doesn't really decide not to go back to his home planet, the movie just plain stops after a whole lot of mind-numbing non-scenes in a row. The closest thing it had to an ending was all that gun sex like, half an hour ago. Ugh. That was truly a miserable miserable experience. I honestly can say the ONLY reason anyone should ever watch this is if you really really really want to see David Bowie's junk flapping around... and even then I'm sure there's other ways you can get that which don't require you to be bored out of your skull for 2 hours first. Why was I not warned? Seriously. This movie is way over my acceptable nudity quotient and there was no payoff beyond the meatloaf monorail. I'd probably have been better off if I'd rented Flesh Gordon. Which, by all accounts, is a real honest to goodness porn movie, which, due to some general insanity on behalf of everyone involved, is also a fantastic pulp sci-fi cheeseball. Come to think of it, I wonder if there's actually an edited for prudes version of that floating around anywhere, or if that's something people only do for the joke of ending up with 10 second long movies.
