Sunday, September 7, 2014

Review of HEAVY METAL 2000




Animation, Fantasy. Violence. Released 2000 

A hoarse narrator states that in the depths of space lies a green crystal. It is an artifact from the ancient and cruel race, the ARAKACIANS, long since destroyed, and will lead the finder to the Fountain of Immortality. There's a catch: whoever touches it will go crazy. TYLER, a miner on an asteroid, finds the crystal and, not having heard the narrator, picks it up and becomes stark, raving bonkers. He kills his partner and takes over the spaceship.

First stop is the planet EDEN, whose inhabitants have H2O-475, the immortality fluid, inside them (but not enough to make them immortal). This makes them young and beautiful. KERRIE is an example. We meet her in the shower in the first of all too few completely gratuitous tit-shots. Tyler and his men kill almost all of the Edenites to drain this wonderful fluid for their use, but Kerrie is spared. Tyler has other plans for her--snicker, snicker. Also, Kerrie's sister, JULIE, survives the carnage, and vows revenge.

Julie follows Tyler to a bar in NEO CALCUTTA, and a vicious fight erupts, much to the dismay of the bar's owner. At the end, Tyler is near death, but--oh no--he swigs some of the H2O-475 he stole from Eden, and is miraculously restored to perfect health. How can Julie kill him? She follows him to the planet of OROBORIS, where the well of immortality lies. There, she meets a stone man, ZEEK, and an Obi-wan like figure, Odin. But will they be able to stop Tyler from getting to the well and then enslaving the galaxy?

Some of the jokes are truly puerile. When Julie is about to land on Neo Calcutta, she is given approach coordinates of A-N-U-S-6-3-7-0, and later, a visa number U-R-F-U-K-D-8-8-1. Also, the film has a lot of Star-Wars imagery, which is sort of funny.

There is a significant moral question that could have been discussed. Tyler was probably a normal guy before he touched the crystal, and he had no reason to suspect its powers. So should he be held responsible for his horrendous actions afterwards or is he innocent? However, this is not a movie to delve into deep philosophical issues.

This is a sequel to HEAVY METAL, and those who liked the original will probably like this. It has the same crude animation, one theme instead of several short episodes, much less eroticism (though the armor Julie wears at the end is really hot), and somewhat less humor. Still, it is an amusing film and should get your pulse up to a job. I give it +++.

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