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Al Gore reviews 'Quantum of Solace'
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I'm baaaaack! Yes, after five long years I, Al Gore, am back to reviewing movies again. To get up to speed on my movie reviewing career, check out this explanation of how I got into the movie review business along with my very first review of a flick, "2001: A Space Odyssey."
So why am I writing movie reviews again? Because my Global Warming shtick is going absolutely nowhere. The only reason why I started it in the first place was so that I could be nominated for president without having to actually run followed by being declared president by acclamation. Unfortunately one Barack Obama ruined my plans. And speaking of Obama, why am I not now the outgoing president handing over the keys to the White House to him? I'll tell you why: LOUSY TENNESSEE TRAILER TRASH!!!
Yeah, Florida kept me from becoming president by just 537 stinkin' votes but I'm not obsessed over that fact any more even though I wake up almost every night screaming "537 LOUSY MISERABLE STINKIN' VOTES!!!" But guess what? I could still have been elected president if my own state of Tennessee had voted for me. In fact, I thought that Tennessee was such a slam dunk that I took it for granted when I tried to toss a couple of rednecks out of a trailer on one of my properties in that state in the summer of 2000. Miserable trailer trash who had the nerve to complain about the plumbing. Toilet backs up? Tough luck! Get the hell off my property NOW!!! Well, the bad publicity caused by that attempted eviction lost me enough votes to lose my VERY OWN STATE! Yeah, trailer trash Tennessee rednecks also haunt my sleep along with those 537 lousy stinkin' Florida votes.
So as a sort of a consolation prize I won a Nobel prize and an Oscar for my "Inconvenient Truth" movie. You want to know an "Inconvenient Truth?" An Oscar and a Nobel prize don't even come close to compensating me for not becoming president and the MOST POWERFUL PERSON ON THE PLANET!!! Agggghh! Agggghh! AGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!
Okay, calm down, Al. Act professional as you renew your Al Gore At The Movies series of reviews. Try not to dwell on the fact that being a movie reviewer still doesn't compensate you for your incredible loss. And in my pathetic attempt to put bad memories behind me, I now announce the first of my renewed movie reviews: "Quantum of Solace" starring Daniel Craig as James Bond.
First off what the hell does that title even mean? I hear "Quantum of Solace" and I think "Quantum of Physics" or "Quantum of Leap." Actually "Quantum Leap" was a really great TV show...at least until Sam lept into a monkey. In fact, I wish I had a Quantum Leap into the Al Gore of the summer of 2000. Then I would have slapped myself across the face and told me not to be such a shmuck and wait until the day after the election to toss those worthless rednecks out of my trailer. That one "Quantum Leap" alone would have spared me the fate of becoming a movie reviewer but enough with fantasy, back to the the latest Bond flick.
"Quantum of Solace" is a completely inappropriate title for a James Bond movie. All it does is make the public scratch their heads and go, "Wha..?" And after watching the movie, I feel like scratching my own head while exclaiming "Wha..?" Supposedly this is a movie about a super secret Quantum organization that has spies everywhere. The plot is so secret that it is impossible to decipher. All I now is that it had some great chase scenes via car, on foot, boat, and plane. For what purpose, I'm not exactly sure.
Speaking of chase scenes, I do have one big complaint about the foot chase scene. Although it wasn't quite as good as the chase scene in Craig's previous Bond outing in "Casino Royale," it did have its moments. However, here is my beef. Both chase scenes were completely unrealistic. Remember those spectacular 30 plus foot leaps by both Bond and the chasee? In real life both of them would have broken their legs in the first such jump yet they accomplished these bone jarring leaps many times in both movies. At the very least they would have gotten severely sprained ankles. Try replicating those high jumps for yourself should you doubt your might-have-been president. Oh, and don't try and sue me for damages since the judge will throw your case out of court due to terminal stupidity on your part.
Another gripe I have about the latest pair of Bond flicks starring Daniel Craig is that he is too working class. Not quite as lowly as those trailer trash I attempted to evict but not even close to the relatively sophisticated Sean Connery James Bond. If you actually read the Ian Fleming Bond novels, you will see that his character is something of a snob, wearing only the finest clothes and dining in the best restaurants. In fact, he even looked done on people whom he would consider uncouth slobs of which Daniel Craig would be one. Yeah, Craig is great on action but where is the suave sophistication for which Bond is known? Remember that introduction to James Bond in "Dr. No?" We don't even see his face while winning money from that hot chick, Sylvia Trench, at the casino table until she asks his name. "Bond, James Bond" he answered in one of the most famous movie lines of all time. Somehow I don't think the Daniel Craig Bond could have pulled it off.
Another thing that Craig has trouble pulling off is the Connery Bond's effortlessness. Most of the time the Connery Bond beats the crap out of the villains with a quick flick of the wrist followed by a witty remark. The Craig Bond works up way too much sweat and gets all red in the face in his fight scenes. Sorry but one of the appeals of James Bond is too make things seem easy. Okay, the Connery Bond did break out in a bit of a sweat in "Goldfinger" when his talleywhacker was about to be burned off by a laser beam but can you blame him?
"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"
Yeah, there was a similar scene in "Casino Royale" where the bad guy kept slamming the Craig Bond's balls with a knotted rope but it just didn't have the same impact (pun intended) as the "Goldfinger" laser beam scene. I mean here is the Craig Bond dialogue from that scene:
"AGGGGH!!! OOOOH!!! NO! NO! NO! OWWWWW!!!"
Another gripe I have about the Craig Bond is the on screen shtooping. Usually, the Connery Bond would boff an average of three superhot chicks in a typical flick. In "Casino Royale" the Craig Bond boffed only two chicks but in "Quantum of Solace" that low number plunged to just one gratuitous boff that showed basically nothing. Plus he didn't even get to boff the really hot leading Bond Girl, Olga Kurylenko, as Camille. One of the payoffs to being James Bond is that he gets to boff the main Bond Girl. Sorry, but it didn't happen in "Quantum of Solace." Yes, there is a growing shortage of boffing in the latest Bond flicks. Therefore I would urge Congress to temporarily quit dealing with the economic crises and look into legislating a minimum of three boffs per Bond movie. If life were fair and I was the outgoing president instead of the inconvenient truth of being a lowly movie reviewer, I would have signed an executive order mandating those Bond boffs.
As for the villains in "Quantum of Solace." No big deal. Just your run of the mill sleazebags. Dominic Greene as a French sleazebag and General Medrano as a Bolivian sleazebag. Not only was the Bolivian general a real sleazoid but he was a sexual sadist as well. This could be explained by a little-known fact. In 1925, Captain Ernst Roehm, leader of Adolf Hitler's Stormtroopers, left Germany for Bolivia to assume a position as military advisor in that country for the next five years. For the homosexual Roehm it was like paradise since he later bragged that he "buggered" every cadet in the Bolivian army. How he pulled it off, I'm not sure but perhaps he explained that bending over and grabbing your ankles with El Jefe right behind you is part of German military training.
"Y no olvide bajar sus pantalones."
"Está seguro que éste es parte de nuestro entrenamiento militar, mi jefe?
"Por supuesto, mi amigo."
Although General Medrano was too young to have been buggered by Ernst Roehm himself, perhaps this buggering became a Bolivian military tradition. That might have explained why Medrano ended up so twisted. And I still am waiting for the History Channel to broadcast this little known history about Roehm in Bolivia. Keep checking your TV schedule to see if the History Channel will be broadcasting "Ernst Roehm's Bolivian Buggery."
Speaking of Bolivia, that was the scene of the movie's ultimate skullduggery. See, Dominic Green promised to put the possibly buggered General Metrano in charge of the country in exchange for a "worthless" dry desert. I put "worthless" in quotes because most of the viewers, including a certain Nobel prize winner, figured there had to be either oil or diamonds or something like that buried in the desert. Well, the payoff was so incredible that I am going to have to put a spoiler alert right here. So read no further unless you don't want to waste your money finding out what it was.
SPOILER ALERT ......................................... SPOILER ALERT
Okay, so what was under the desert that was so valuable? It turned out that Dominic's organization dammed up water to form an underground lake. So what? Well, in the other Bond movies, the villains would seek something like world domination or attempt to nuke Fort Knox like in "Goldfinger" so as to make the gold there radioactive thus raising the value of Goldfinger's stash of the stuff. However, in "Quantum of Solace," the big payoff was an increase in Bolivian utility bills. I kid you not. All that high tech cloak and dagger stuff revolved around an attempt to raise water prices for Bolivians. That was IT. Yawn! How pathetic to even involve James Bond in a plot to increase Bolivian water bills. You might as well have Bond try to destroy a plot to corner the Indiana bean sprout market.
How low has Bond movie villainy fallen when it gets so mundane as to revolve around water bills! That plus the dearth of healthy shtooping plus a disappointing Bond in the form of Daniel Craig forces me to give a relatively low rating to this movie. Therefore on my ballot chad rating scale of 1 to 10 chads with 10 chads being best, I give "Quantum of Solace" only 6 chads. The action scenes weren't half bad but the motivation for all that action was absolutely pathetic. Bolivian water bills. Give me a friggin' break!
This is Al Gore returning with his reviews so keep checking me out for more in this "Al Gore At The Movies" series.
