Ever have it when you need to write skript for movie, but tings are going slow so you invite Count and Big Bird to your place for drinks but you do too many jagermeister shots and one of girlz Count bring wit him slip roofie into your beer chaser and you wake up next morning wit no pants, no wallet, but finished skript you wrote in drunken, drug-addled, three hour stupor? No? Well, monster suspekt screenwriter of Spawn VERY familiar wit dis scenario – or someting close to it – becuz it next to impossible to write a skript so convoluted in a fully conscious state.
Movie begin wit narrator delivering preamble to help make complikated movie slightly less baffling. Den, we introduced to our hero, Al Simmons, who work for CIA-like agency A-6. Well, not exactly hero becuz he have no problem killing room full of innocent air traffic controllers in very first scene! Anyhoo, anti-hero Al want to quit de biz but his boss, Jason (played by gravely voice Martin Sheen) send him on one final op. Of course, it be a set-up. Boss Jason conspire wit some clown (No, seriously. A real clown) and double-cross Al wit help of sexy assassin Priest. Jason burnt, den blown up for good meazure.
Al wake up in some Gothik city dressed like burn victim hobo. Somehow, he find his way back to his house (#364 bus out of Rat City go right to suburbia!) and make several unpleasant diskoveries: 1. Five years have passed. 2. His best friend get wit his wife. 3. His wife no longer recognize him – and find him kinda gross.
Luckily, he meet up wit some clown (No, seriously. A real clown!) who explain everyting.
Al died, sent to Hell, met BAD CG devil, and agreed to lead his army in exchange for chance to see his wife again. He get new name…SPAWN! Admittedly, cooler den Al.
Spawn want REVENGE! So, like practically every comic book villain in movie history, he crash some high falootin’ party. He shot at. He eskape – but not before killing Priest who says someting like: “You don’t have the guts” before getting shot. Monster’s question is: Why in de world would she tink he WOULDN’T shoot?
Spawn get away. Outside, he get into argument wit some clown (No, seriously. A real clown!) in middle of street in full view of cops who obviously have more important tings to worry about.
At dis point, you can be excused for asking: WTF (What the Fudgee-o?) is going on? What de hell is Spawn supposed to be doing? Leading devil’s army? Okay, so where de army at?
Instead, Spawn diskover new powerz. Learn to control his armor. Go back to Rat City and make new friends: milquetoast guy wit hat and, of course, an adorable street urchin.
Spawn stalk his wife. Follows her to place where she is giving speech. For some reazon, she leaves daughter all alone in gymnasium. Oh, wait. Monster know de reazon. So dat Spawn can find her and have nice chat. Some clown show up (No, seriously. A REAL clown!) dressed up as cheerleader. He prance around and sing. Further undermining any hope dat dis be a movie anyone going to take seriously, clown also fart green gas, pull out and study his skidmark underwear, and eat maggot pizza. Ho ho ho. Screenwriter must have had all sort of fun spinning dese ideas wit his son’s daycare class.
Spawn finally get as tired of dis clown as audience and de two fight. Clown transform into…another BAD CG monster.
Dey fight! Violator win! Dey go back to Spawn’s place. Dey fight some more! Wit help of milquetoast hat man, Spawn take unmemorable trip to Hell, defeat clown/Violator by cutting off his head, AND beat up Jason for good meazure.
Movie end wit narrator summing up what we already know, holding threat of potenshul sekwel over our heads.
VERDICT: Dis one had potenshul to be dark, smart, and creepy but, instead, turn out to be silly, stupid, and confusing. Was clown supposed to be scary? Or intentionally lame?
RATING: 2.5 chocolate chippee cookies.
Next week’s movie – Steel starring noted thespian Shaquille O’Neal:
Oof.
Blade/Blade II?
——
De-baffling narration is an immature reaction to script notes.
I’m not sure what my feelings are about narration in general. It seems like if I wanted to listen to a story, I could get a book on tape.
Sometimes, it seems like narration adds something to the movie or it’s like watching the movie with a friend who’s polite enough to only throw in his punchy commentary when it wouldn’t be talking over the movie or spoiling anything. I can roll with that. It’s a hybrid style of storytelling, I suppose.
But if the movie needs narration to fix something, it needs a lot more than narration.
Cookie, I think you were too kind in your review. Rather than the result of an evening of writing while hopped up on goof-balls, I feel like the movie was more like the result of some script that was vomited up from the depths of a crappily rendered Hell. What an incomprehensible mess. Breathtakingly bad. Profoundly awful. Horribly stupid.
Was the clown supposed to be some kind of riff on the much more entertaining Beetlejuice? Sorry, not working. And yes, the obligatory fancy party crash – what is it with that? Is that some kind of bad writing trademark, or what?
And the nonsensical plot begs a bunch of questions naturally, such as why would parent have such an obviously creepy clown at a kid’s party? Plus:
Why does the Devil need someone like Spawn to lead his army anyway? Could he not just pick someone already there without making some kind of shaky deal? I mean, there must be more than a few people there who would do it just for kicks. I mean, it’s HELL after all! Satan is a dumbass. And lame. And totally not scary. Plus, at the end Satan threatens Spawn with death. Uh, he’s already DEAD and in Hell – how much worse can it get?
Based on the evil A-6 guy’s fancy background graphic, it would appear that the virus will overtake the entire planet (although he does say at the same time that’s appearing that it will wipe out “half the globe”). What’s the point of that? If it wipes out everyone, or even half of everyone, what’s the point in being powerful if there’s no one to be powerful over?
Did the clown in monster form remind anyone else of the bad gremlins from Gremlins II? I half expected him to don glasses and start speaking in a faux-British accent.
I will admit from now on, whenever I think of something that has been unceremoniously spat up from Hell, I’ll think of this movie. So, mission accomplished, I guess?
McFarlane should’ve stuck to writing/drawing Spidey stories!
…on the other hand he is still making money off of Spawn
For what it’s worth (nsfw):
http://celebs.icanhascheezburger.com/2012/06/20/funny-celebrity-pictures-announcement-from-gary-oldman/#comments
Saw that Spawn movie way back when. It was less than memorable.
I, too, couldn’t figure out if Al was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy. And by the end of the film I still didn’t know. In the first scene he enters the control tower, karate kicks the guard and THEN shoots everyone else. Why not just enter the room shooting? Then he uses his high-tech 3D glasses to pinpoint just the baddies getting off the plane and then fires MISSILES at them and is then surprised when some civilians are caught in the explosion!
And then we meet Al’s boss Martin Sheen. I know Martin’s career hadn’t been going so great back then but this is a sign of desperation. I guess big name movie actors hadn’t made the transition to better paying TV gigs by the late ’90s.
Oh, the clown! What’s the deal with the clown? I he the lovechild of The Penguin and The Riddler from Batman Returns?
I didn’t mind the CGI version of the clown. It wasn’t too bad by 1997 standards (although I think a lot of the closeup shots were actually animatronics). But the CGI Hell and Devil were just atrocious! Like something a 15 year old kid would do on his PC in his spare time. It has all the hallmarks of a dwindling budget and a looming deadline. “Hey guys, we’ve got three weeks of post production left and we haven’t even started work on the devil yet.” “No problem! My son has done this great design for his heavy metal band. We can just use that!”
I’m trying to come up with something positive to say about this movie. Something that will render the 90 minutes I spent watching this thing worthwhile. The best I can come up with is that Spawn’s armour was kinda cool and reasonably well done.
Hey Joe, your “Super Movie Of The Week” calendar above jumps from “Mystery Men” to “X-Men”. Has it all got too much for Cookie Monster? I see that we’ve already skipped several Darkman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sequels. Probably a good thing, IMHO! But I was looking forward to reading Cookie’s review of Blade.
JeffW: It’s about 150 kids ( plus parents/guardians), so it could be worse. My hubby’s plan is to finish writing the website to a point and turn the content over to other volunteers. Then he can work on rewrites and repair as needed. He’s been working on the site since December. Which seriously cut into the “Honey do list”. I wasn’t prepared for negative feedback on something so trivial as pictures though! He said he wasn’t surprised because he’s done sites before. I’ll remember your FB idea and use if I have too. 😉
Deni: I’m glad Lauren and the baby are well. Good luck with those mosquitoes! At my mom’s house (further in the woods than I), she has problems with chiggers and seed ticks. My hubby went from the car to the house and still got four seed ticks. We have to bath in Deep Woods bug spray to walk around outside. Those chiggers find a way in unless you literally bathe in the stuff! There is no way I could move back into the country!
I’ve never heard of Spawn. it looks like a good Saturday afternoon movie (napping potential).
Das: I’ll take anything below 95F and be glad 🙂 .
That’s it! I am never throwing a rootin’ tootin’ high falutin’ Fancy Party. I will therefore be safe from super-evil super-villains. Yes?
@ Mr. Cookie – Clowns are ALWAYS scary! Never forget that.
@ cat4444 – 😆
@ Joe – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEto1-ZTbd4
Interesting, no? 🙂
das
Owie ow ow~~~ Cookie, thanks for watching this one, don’t think I could have from your very telling review. Guess there are a lot of bad movies out there I am glad not to have seen… You are a true hero for being the “Watcher” for us all. Give yourself a dozen chocolate chippies with 3 scoops of ice cream(fav flav) on the top or side, whichever you prefer, put it on my tab. You deserve it, and will probably again. thanks for the review. Is Joe taking you with him to the con, maybe to watch movies on PPV in the room? Remember,,room service…
Have a great day!!
Deni: good luck with Riley!
Ouch Joe, sounds like someone up there is punishing you with bad movies lol.
Can’t remember the last time you’ve rated one above 3 stars.
Tam Dixon – When it comes to temperatures, I am very hard to please. A long time ago I determined that 68 was the perfect temperature, and nothing less – or more – will do! 😉
@ JeffW – Wait. You were posting while camping?? “Oh, Jeffrey”…(there really needs to be a head-shakin’ no-no-no smiley here. ;)). You’re supposed to go camping to slow down a little and escape from technology, not to bring it along with you! Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you went to Hawaii for a week, and spent the entire time in your room, watching re-runs of Magnum P.I..
🙂
das
PS: To better appreciate “Oh, Jeffrey”, you can go to youtube and search for the ‘Most Embarrassing Surprise Party Ever’ (from the Brit tv show, Coupling) posted by fabio40. I don’t want to post it directly here because there is partial male nudity. It is one of the most hilarious things ever done in a sitcom.
As usual cookie monster got it right on the nose. My biggest thing was, why in the world would anyone choose this guy as their general? The story started breaking down for me right there. A pity, because this was a movie I had had high hopes for. Anyways, back to work…
Fantastic work Cookie Monster(no, really!). Although this has been one of my favorite reviews, I truly, truly can’t wait for next week’s review!! Epic is a word that comes to mind…
@Das:
In my defense, it was 105F outside (not counting the heat index which was more like 115F). I’m just glad I wasn’t “tenting it”. The camper has A/C, microwave and gas ovens, TV’s (the kids have their own TV in the bunk room), and a full bath (shower and toilet). We’re not exactly roughing it. A friend of the family calls it “condo-camping”. 😀
So, given the heat outside (and not wanting to die of heat-stroke), I stayed inside. At that point, I had a choice of watching TV (not really an option), playing a card game (Barb wasn’t interested), reading (of which I already had done a bit of), or visiting Joe’s Blog (with all of his wonderful commentators, such as yourself 😉 ) and posting a comment. Seemed like an easy decision. Reading Joe’s blog IS my winding down and relaxing!
Further in my defense, when the heat broke on Saturday, I went hiking, played carpet-ball with the kids, held snakes, played air-hockey and assisted my daughter in rock-climbing.
We thought about doing some horseback riding, but after the heatwave, we thought we give the poor creatures a break. Swimming was also not appealing due to the dead fish (pikes) floating in the lake water from the heat.
Unfortunately, campfires were also out of the question due to the drought here in the Midwest.
All that aside, I still enjoyed myself and for the most part, relaxed.
On the YouTube link, I’ll check it out later this evening; I’ve got my kids sitting around me right now.