After a long hiatus from writing articles, I found a bunch of stuff that went unreleased for one reason or another. Sometimes it was because it was meant for a project that never got off the ground, sometimes it was because I didn’t think it lived up to what I was trying to achieve. In any case, it was great to have new material to post in between podcasts. Some have been posted before, others wait to be published later.
This one couldn’t wait. This was meant to be a video review when I was throwing that idea around, and I just never adapted it into a proper review. After starting October with a movie I liked, I thought it best to post something about a movie I hated. This one goes beyond hate though. To this day, I still believe this film went out of it’s way to insult me and everyone who watched it.
No pictures, no silly captions, just words, and my seething hatred for ‘Rubber’.
There was a time when I heavily considered doing video reviews, like so many others here on Manic Expression. I even shot some footage once. While there was nothing technically bad with what I shot, I wasn’t happy with it. It wasn’t different enough and even though I commanded a presence (at least, I thought I did), I was far from camera ready. Maybe I jumped into the game too soon after not filming anything for so long, maybe what I had simply wasn’t that good, either way it was too overwhelming to continue. This led to the birth of ‘What Did I Just Watch?’ and the decline of my interest in making video reviews. I’ll never say never, but podcasting has been a comfortable format for me.
What that left me with were a few scripts. One was a reworked version of my older article ‘Why King, Why?’ (which I may put up if there’s enough of a difference between the two), the other was something I saved specifically to launch the video series. It’s the movie I have the greatest opinions about, and the greatest hatred for: RUBBER.
So here it is, the review I held onto for waaaaaaaaay to goddamn long.
Let me tell you a little story. A faery tale if you will. Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a basement. Day after day, he would watch a new movie to help him unwind from the long hours at work. Once the movie was done, the man would curl up in bed and sleep deeply, with dreams of gumdrops, or whatever these fuck these stories put in.
The only problem was that the man had a taste for really shitty horror movies. They were his guilty pleasure. Each time he saw a new movie, he risked seeing something terrible. Since he’d seen plenty of bad movies before, the man didn’t worry and kept up his habit.
Then one day, the man was tempted by a movie called Rubber. ‘A movie about a killer tire with psychic powers that stalks a woman? I’m in!’ the man said as he pressed the magic button and started the movie. Once it was over…once it was over…
It raped me! It took my brain and it fucked it until it bled! I’ve never felt this angry, confused, saddened and repulsed by a movie before. When it was over, and my IQ climbed enough points so that I could remember how to speak, I yelled “What the fuck did I just watch?!?â€
Rubber was written and directed by Quentin Dep…dieu…Quentin DouchePig, who is primarily a musician, but since he had a photography hobby since he was 12, he made the mistake every freshman Hipster college chick makes and thought he had talent.
DogPunch’s main goal with this movie was to make an ‘absurdist thriller’, which I consider strike two, right after him being French. Strike three came when I realized that the majority of this 84 minute movie is the tire rolling around. That’s it. This is what the killer tire does with itself. Ir rolls around, doing nothing, while DuckPant’s terrible electronica music makes shitty scenes just that much more unbearable.
Remember how I said that the plot revolves around this tire stalking a woman? It does do that, but I guess it stopped giving a shit about her before the movie had the decency to roll credits, because it eventually gives up and watches TV. Want to know what else this sinister tire has in store for this little Motel? It goes swimming. Just falls right into the pool and sinks.
So the movie’s boring, big deal, right? Plenty of movies are boring. No need to over react. Oh just wait. The boredom isn’t the big ‘fuck you’ this movie gives its audience, it just makes it worse.
Let’s meet the audience of this movie. Yup, it’s supposed to be a movie within a movie, except that the movie within the movie is clearly real. It also can, and does, cause harm to those who are supposed to be watching it. I’m sure there’s an idea here, but all I see are a bunch of idiots who can be convinced to go out into the middle of the desert, without food or water, to watch a movie that murders it’s audience. They make it clear that everyone brought out to see the movie is killed, which means that these dumbasses had no recommendation from anyone, they just trusted some creepy motherfucker with a greasy comb over that looks like something out of a goddamn Hanna-Barbara cartoon.
Their blatant lack of intelligence and reasoning aside, it’s obvious that Quentin DonkeyPunch meant for these people to represent the modern movie going audience. Normally, when making an observation, I try not to use the word ‘obvious’. But DirtPlucker is about as subtle as a bag of broken glass dragged along someone’s ballsack.
I want to recap things one more time before I put the big fuck you cherry on top of the garbage cake. We have a bunch of characters and events that are completely absurd, yet there’s deeper meanings underneath most of what’s going on. In between these moments, we have to put up with boredom in it’d purist form. What’s worse than a boring, pretentious movie? How about one that completely destroys it’s own premise?
This ‘No Reason’ speech happens in the first five minutes of the movie. It didn’t even get started and it already fucked itself up. I had to show this part at the end, because when I saw it in the beginning, I got really tripped up over what I was watching. Forget how boring the movie is, forget that it’s deliberately absurd, this one speech renders everything Quentin DickPuller wanted this movie to be completely moot.
The very premise of what this asshole is saying is wrong. He lists off a bunch of plot points that have no reason to them, yet every single one of them does, in fact, have a reason. Including his brilliant observation that we can’t see the air around us. This little factoid could be settled with an 8th graders science book. When you say shit like that, it’s not deep, complex thought, it’s fucking ignorance.
What is the point of the speech is deliberately misleading? Wouldn’t that set things straight? No…not at all. Much of the movie does relies on this idea of ‘no reason’, yet when things start getting all deep and shit, it puts the premise aside to do whatever the fuck it wants. It feels like this whole ‘no reason’ bullshit is just a bandaide that Quentin DungPillow can put over scenes that didn’t work the way he wanted.
This was the first time I ever had to wonder if I was watching the movie correctly. I wasn’t sure when I should and shouldn’t actively think. If I saw something that seemed important, I’d be reminded that I wasn’t supposed to think about it, yet when I stopped pick out the details I felt like I was missing something. I was so beaten by doubt and boredom that when the movie ended, I needed a few minutes to remind myself that I’m not some dumb schmuck. If I can understand the plots of David Lynch movies, then it can only be Quentin DampPussy’s failure as a filmmaker that was fucking me up.
In the end, even the movie gets sick of itself. An elaborate plan goes into motion to destroy the tire, yet our hero cockbag, decides the better course of action is to say ‘fuck it’ and just shoot the damn thing. Then, just because DillPaws didn’t think we hated him enough, the tire resurrects as a tricycle and rides away.
This man, this ass slurping dickatee, is still making movies. We need to stop him. He should be considered a terrorist and a national threat. I’m pretty sure showing prisoner Rubber, along with waterboarding, was banned as an interrogation technique at Guantanamo Bay. This movie changed my life the same way a Priest changes an Altar boy’s. If I never see it again, it’ll be too soon.
