THE CHRONICLES
OF RIDDICK
****DISCLAIMER****
These reviews are for entertainment purposes only. Not
even Michael Moore can uncover the real truth behind the meaning of these reviews.
For one, I won’t grant him an interview. And two, I can’t understand a word he
says when his mouth is filled with Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Vin Diesel has been hitting the
theaters these past few years with more hard hitting action packed movies than
one could think of. Look at the impressive resume of work! XXX, Fast & The Furious, Pitch Black and his latest Chronicles of
Riddick. But it wasn’t always so easy for the man who used to make his own
films before being discovered. Using my contacts deep within the bowels of Hollywood,
I have managed to uncover the top rejected movie titles submitted by Vinny himself to the studios:
- A Tisket, A Tasket,
My Biceps In A Basket.
- Balderoni
- Die-Sel My Favorite Jeans
- Vin-Dicated, Vin-Dictive and
Vin-Dipolicious
- Blood,
Sweat, And My Foot Up Your Ass
- Open
Up And Say Diesel
- Pissed
off? Me Too.
- The
Passion Of The Bench Press
- Pork
Chops And Applesauce
- Gay Is
A Four Letter Word For Fag. And I’m Neither.
Our ‘Pump It Up’ movie this week is The Chronicles of Riddick (a.k.a The Diesel Strikes Back) starring Vin Diesel as
Riddick, the escaped prisoner from the horror/sci-fi
action film Pitch Black. Since this is a sequel, Vin
cannot be expected to carry this movie all by himself. He also needs the
incredible star power of Thandie Newton,
Karl Urban, Alexa Davalos,
Keith David and Colm Feore.
That’s right people. Colm
Feore. So don’t go stepping into the
theater thinking that Vin is going to be the only guy
on screen for the whole two hours. No way. With this international co-star
grouping of mega-Hollywood home run hitters, you’re in for a star studded
acting treat the likes of which you’ve never seen. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to
mention that Judi Dench
is in it. That’s right, Oscar winner Judi
Dench.
Unfortunately, she’s only going to be on screen for nine minutes instead of
ten, thus immediately disqualifying her for another Oscar
nomination. Shame. She so deserved the last one.
For those of you unfamiliar
with 2000’s Pitch Black, here’s a refresher. Richard
B. Riddick is a prisoner
being transported to another cell. He escapes, kills monsters, and blasts off
the planet. Five years later in Chronicles, he’s a man with a price on his head
being chased by every scallywag bounty hunter with a muscle shirt, facial hair
and the appearance that they just crawled out from underneath their neighbor’s
’78 Nova. I swear to God, no one in this movie showers. It’s disgusting. This
sets up the most basic of plots that turns into a movie with at least seventy
five different subplots. Ready? The
Necromongers are a race of beings intent on taking over the universe, one
quarter mile at a time. Seems like a simple premise for a sci-fi movie, right?
Well, when you throw in Riddick being hunted by another race of bounty hunters,
putting his shades on and off 15,000 times during the movie, Judi Dench as an Elemental from a race of beings on the verge of
being wiped out, Thandie Newton looking bored,
Riddick finding out what race he actually is, why the Lord of the JackOLanterns hates said race and fears Riddick, why
Riddick ends up in a prison on a planet that’s half freezing cold and half
scorching sun, Riddick running into the girl from Pitch Black who changes her
name, running across a planet to get back on a ship of Necrophilias, to finally
facing the head of the NecroDecepticons and you’ve
got yourself two hours of headache my friend. Two freaking hours of you sitting
in your seat and scratching your head. There are times when I hate science
fiction. Now, the film is easy enough to follow, but its sequence of
unnecessary events makes you want to kill yourself. Why writers insist on
having basic premises being bogged down by too much happening on screen is
beyond me. I’ve seen it happen a million times. And it kills movies.
The problem with Chronicles is it’s a movie that’s too big for
its own good. Putting the character of Riddick in the middle of such a battle
seemed too large for him to handle. The Riddick character gets lost in a sea of
special effects and a decibel level that rivals the bombing of Iraq.
One of the nice things about Pitch Black is the intimacy in which we get to
know the character of Riddick. But in this sequel, any chance of that is
drowned out by thrusting him in something too large for the character to
handle. How could I compare it to something you’d understand...? I know. It
would be like a normal penis being introduced to Star Jones’ vagina. As far as
a good set action sequence goes, I can’t remember the last one I’ve seen in a
movie that caused me to tense up. Chronicles just has its share of fight scenes
and explosions. And once Vin Diesel breaks out the clotheslines, body slams and
suplexes, you know the movie has turned into a giant turd.
It also shows Riddick running along a planet’s surface behind the freezing
shade of the nightfall, but just in front of the 700 degree sunrise. Now, if
you thought the scene in The Mummy Returns when Brendan
Fraser was outrunning the sunlight before he gets into the
temple was stupid, well then, wait… actually that was the stupidest scene ever
filmed.
But I cannot put the blame on Vin
Diesel for this mess. See, I actually like ‘ol Vinny. I think he’s got some decent acting chops, he’s very
intelligent, seems like a cool guy. Heck, he even has his own video game production
company. I don’t think he intends to choose bad roles, I just think the end
product winds up making him look bad when it shouldn’t. I could also say the
same thing for Ben Affleck.
However, Ben Affleck is a no
talent hack. The writing and directing in Chronicles was just such a mess, that
no matter who would have been the star, they would have been drowned in this
sea of suck. David Twohy
isn’t a bad director. His work on Pitch Black was fine. But I think with the
mentality that Hollywood has of
bigger is better, that it is really killing franchises before they even start. That, and the script got way out of hand. The Wheat brothers
who wrote Pitch Black just got stupid on this one. Can you believe the guys who
wrote Ewoks: The Battle For Endor and Nightmare on Elm Street 4 botched this one up?
The score for Chronicles was fantastic and Composer Graeme Revell
has a history with scoring sci-fi films like Dune, Red Planet and Titan A.E.
The sets and special effects were also done very well and prove that the
dressing alone can sometimes be the best part of your salad. Then again, Vin
Diesel did produce the movie, so maybe I can blame the whole thing on him. Big stupid ass.
Riddick is as Riddick does. Don’t
expect anything to make sense, follow a reasonable request of coherency or even
be that entertaining. But as movie goers, we’re used to that. Heaven forbid Hollywood
take the time to actually edit a movie that we can follow. Oh well. I can’t
talk. I must have written the word Riddick 500 times during the course of this
review. I’d rather be that guy then the guy who wrote The Battle For Endor. I hate Ewoks.
My Rating:
- Full Price
- Matinee
- Wait For DVD/Video
- Wait For Cable
- Wait For Pitch Black 3: Halle Berry
Exposes All