I hate all these summer movies. They're so samey, so repetitive, so much like last summer's, and the summer before that.
I've got a great idea for a summer movie, one that will shake up the tired clichés of the megaplex, and really get people excited about film again. Ready? Here we go! So there's this young boy, or maybe a young girl, I haven't decided, and he (definitely he) grows up on a farm in Kansas with loving parents, until they're horribly killed by aliens while she's out hoeing the beet field.
Our protagonist (eh, maybe it's a girl) grows up in the alien-fighting underground, battling the sinister forces of the Sinistaar (that's the aliens) with a rag-tag group of misfits, including his former high school pottery instructor, a cardcounter from Las Vegas, an autistic savant NBA player, and their pet sheep.
They're driven underground by the Sinistaar, where the mole people rescue them, but the mole people don't want to fight the aliens, even though their giant digging machines and radar-targeted spud guns could change the course of the war.
The protagonist (a guy?) saves a baby mole-person from a rampaging mutant carrot, and with the aid of a rousing speech, the mole people are at last convinced to help.
They tunnel back to the surface and are greeted by Danny Devito (playing himself) who is now the leader of the resistance.
The protagonist challenges the alien leader, Leedaar, to single combat, but Danny Devito knocks him out and takes his place.
Amazingly, Danny Devito beats the aliens in a no-holds barred jai alai tournament for the fate of the world. This scene will need plenty of dramatic slomo. Sadly, the pet sheep is killed by an errant ball. The protagonist sheds a single tear.
Danny Devito is declared president of Earth, and integrates the mole people into the economy, getting them jobs at Costco.
Protagonist (a girl, I'm sure this time) heads home to Kansas to take up a quiet life of farming, when she's suddenly run off the road by a mysterious cloaked figure in a beet truck.
One by one, the beetscented masked figure begins killing her friends using methods that are certainly ironic, but only marginally practical. This culminates in the scene in which the guidance counsellor is ripped apart by two giant robots representing alternative career paths, in flower arranging or forensic accounting. Finally the hero unmasks the beet-truckdriving serial killer, only to see the face of his (yes, it's a guy) father! Then he pulls that mask off to reveal the vile metal countenance of a Sinistaar revengebot! Then he smashes that and finds it's piloted by the son of the mutant carrot. Then he eats the carrot.
Tired out from all of this, our hero attends a movie. It's Hamlet, shown in its entirety, except that the play within the play has been replaced by a performance of Last Year at Marienbad, performed by six-year-olds, in Flemish, with no subtitles.
The entire movie plays during this movie, complete with the sound of the theatre patrons near the protagonist, and the loud guy whose cellphone rings during the grave digger scene, and he has a long conversation with his friends about which steak house they want to meet at, while people try to shush him.
Finally, the hero decides she wants to settle down, and she meets a nice guy but they have a misunderstanding about a canoe and a can of Nutella, and finally it's all sorted out, but when they kiss she looks shocked, and pulls off his mask, and it's a revengebot again, and she beats it to death with the hoe she was using in the beet field when her parents died.
Fin. Matthew Claxton reports for the Langley Advance.
