Ow, My Balls!
December 18, 2007
Many of you may not be aware of the existence of a film called “Idiocracy”. It was strangled at birth by Fox, who sent it on a straight-to-video trajectory even though, with direction from Mike Judge, it is a minor act of genius. You should take the opportunity to see it if at all possible. It is a story of a man that gets accidentally gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up in 500 years’ time, finding himself to be the most intelligent man on a planet inhabited by morons. I won’t spoil it any further for you (you really should watch it for yourselves), but there is one part of the film in which one of the main characters is watching the most successful TV show of the era – a show called “Ow, My Balls!”, in which a poor unfortunate gets catapulted from one testicle-endangering situation to another with absolutely no plot whatsoever in the middle of it. It’s meant to be, of course, a satire of the dumbing-down of our media culture (though Judge actually goes further than this, suggesting that the whole of America will breed intelligence out of its gene pool altogether within 500 years), but I was reminded of it over the weekend when I happened to catch the trailer for a new movie called “Balls Of Fury”. From what I can gather (which wasn’t very much – I was attempting to gouge my eyes out with two tea spoons within about five seconds of the trailer starting), it’s some sort of comedy with elements of kung-fu thrown in (and, did I dream this or did I just have one tequila too many on Saturday night, but what the hell was Christopher Walken there dressed as Fu Manchu? Another Hollywood idol forever soiled…), but even the thirty seconds that I did manage to see seemed to indicate that this may be the single, most imbecilic film that has ever been made.
The weekend was rescued (and saying this sort of thing always surprises me) by Lindsay Lohan. We watched a lot of films on Sunday, and she inadvertently starred in a double bill in my living room, cavorting aimlessly but reasonably amusingly with Jamie Lee Curtis in “Freaky Friday”, and then bitching to brilliant effect in the effortlessly wonderful “Mean Girls”. “Freaky Friday” has taken on a strange, cult place in my head, but this place is reserved for the 1976 original, starring Barbara Allen and Jodie Foster, rather than the remake. I chanced upon the original when the remake was released in 2003 when ITV put it on in the Saturday afternoon “Television For Turning You Brain Into Mashed Potato” spot and, after about five minutes of thinking that it may be the worst film that I have ever seen, it became one of my favourites. More importantly, though, on Sunday we watched “Mean Girls” again. If you’re going to take my advice and watch “Idiocracy”, do yourselves a favour and grab a copy of “Mean Girls” while you’re about it. Any film that introduces the phrase “army of skanks” into the lexicon is obviously worthy of your attention.
In the film, Lohan’s character goes undercover to upset the top dogs in the social circle at an American school and unwittingly and becomes one of them, which eventually causes her own downfall. I couldn’t help but think that there is a small echo of Lohan’s actual life going on here. Lindsay Lohan, the former Disney girl who is pretty but relatively limited in the scope of her actual talent (she’s comfortably outshone by Jamie Lee Curtis in “Freaky Friday”, for example), seems to be marketing herself as an actress/model/dancer. Isn’t it delicious, this irony? One might think that, somewhere down the line during the months of recording that “Mean Girls” must have taken, she would have learnt something about the dangers inherent in starting to believe your own hype. Apparently not, though. She remains determined to be a “Triple Threat”, though the talk in Hollywood is that she is, at least for now, as good as unemployable. Mind you, she has probably earned enough at twenty-one years of age to never have to work again. How far into the future was “Idiocracy” set?
Yeah, I saw Idiocracy a while ago and was surprised that it was so good and yet so obscure. However, seems to be well on its way to becoming a cult favourite, I keep hearing about it everywhere. So there is hope for mankind.