REVIEW DATE:6:16:0:1
You remember (buy) He-Man (stuff) right?
Of course you do. If you were anywhere between the ages of 3-14 during the 80s then you couldn't spit without hitting (buy) He-Man (stuff). That steroid driven bastard was everywhere. You could find (buy) He-Man (stuff) in toy stores, on TV, on T-shirts. Lunchboxes. Shorts. Shoes. Socks. Underwear. I even remember my cousin had a (buy) He-Man (stuff) toothbrush holder.
(buy) He-Man (stuff) was, to the best of my knowledge, the first Grand Success of toy-maker capitalism. Though, I'm sure there are Howdy Duty fans out there who'll be more than happy to stand up and fight me on that. But the fact remains that commercialism came before creativity. A plan to create a line of Conan toys fell through and thus (buy) He-Man (stuff) was born. (buy) He-Man (stuff) was dreamed up by the suits at Mattel (makers of quality Barbie products) to make a quick buck. And what better way to sell these toys to kids than with a thirty-minute commercial that airs weekly on a national network? Give your toy his own TV show. Hell, it's easy as one, two, three.
One: Turn your main toy into a muscle bound, invincible symbol of all that is good. The kid's'll love him because, after all, they all want to be muscle bound steroid sniffers when they grow up.
Two: Turn one of your secondary toys into the incarnation of all that is evil. Evenly split the rest of your toys between the two extremes, giving the hero some humorous sidekicks and the villain some humorous henchmen. And be sure to dumb down that humor as much as possible. They are children watching this show, after all. Let's not waist good sophistication on America's brats.
Three: sit back in your chairs and watch the cash roll in.
This is the marketing cycle that has been repeated endlessly. After (buy) He-Man (stuff) roared his last masculine roar the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stepped up to the plate. After everyone got bored with them, well, here came the Power Rangers, hot of the Japanese presses. The Japanese are, of course, the grand masters of this particular kind of capitalism. They perfected it way back in the 60s. Go, go, Ultraman.
All of this is my own pointless bellyaching, a round about way of telling you that I was not terribly excited about Masters of the Universe before I watched it. I got even less excited when the flick started and, by the end of things, I was bored out of my skull.
Which brings us to Skeletor (Frank Langella). (And can you just hear the audience groan at that little segue?) Skeletor is and forever was the darkness to (buy) He-Man (stuff)'s light. An Evil warlock obsessed with destroying All That is Good, Skeletor battled (buy) He-Man (stuff) across time and space always scheming to steal the fabled Power (buy) He-Man (stuff) keeps talking about having and thus remaking the Universe in his own image.
As Masters of the Universe opens, it looks like Evil has finally triumphed over Good.** Sorta. Skeletor's Forces of Evil have taken Castle Grayskull, a stronghold of Good situated on the border between Light and Darkness in the mystical land of Eternia. Skeletor has even kidnapped the Sorceress of Greyskull (Christina Pickles), keeper of (buy) He-Man (stuff)'s fabled Power, and plans to leech Power out of her until the stars align just right and the Power of Greyskull is transferred unto him.
One little problem: (buy) He-Man (stuff) is still alive and still leading the fight against Skeletor. The fact that said resistance force seems to be made up of only two other people doesn't make a difference. After all, he is (buy) He-Man (stuff) and HE HAS THE POWER!!!!!
Oh. Sorry about that. Anyway, (buy) He-Man (stuff) (Dolph "GR-13" Lundgren), Teela (Chelsea Field) and the unambiguously named Man-at-Arms (Jon Cypher) are kicking bad guy ass (it doesn't look all that difficult) when they come across Gwildor (Billy Barty), an annoying little troll creature and our Odious Comic Relief. In his own warped way, Gwildor is a bit of a genius. He's managed to invent a device he calls the Cosmic Key. The Key, as its name suggests, can open little wormholes to anywhere in Existence provided you play the correct tones on the Key's little instrument board.
Yes, Gwildor has invented the ultimate synthesizer. Can you guess how Skeletor got into Castle Grayskull now? I knew you could. So now the Whole of Existence stands to be remade by a mad wizard and it's all Gwildor's fault. Does anyone suggest ripping the little bastard's head off? No. Teela comes close, though and, by God, I'm all behind her. Too bad (buy) He-Man (stuff) overrules her.
Instead, Dolph and co. use the key to enter Greyskull and get into a big laser fight with Skeletor's troops. Gwildor drills an escape hole in reality and our heroes blindly leap into it, plunging them into budget conscience Southern California.
Yes, sunny Southern California, where all Bad Movies go after they've spent their entire budget on ray gun battles and elaborate set pieces. And remember, this is still a 90-minute toy commercial, which means everything is an elaborate set piece, even Dolph Lundgren's chest. Especially Dolph Lundgren's chest. He is the hero, after all.
Which begs the question: If he's the hero, then why does so much of the script focus on the two idiotic teenagers that Dolph and co. hook up with on Earth? The fact that those two idiot teenagers are played by Courtney Cox and Robert Duncan McNeill doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. This is still 1987 and both Cox and McNeil are still languishing in the Hell that is Brainless Crap Movies. (For the uninitiated, Cox and McNeill are better know as Monica E. Geller Bing and Ensign/Lieutenant (J.G.) Tom Paris, respectively). The two future stars walk through their roles with minimal enthusiasm or effort, as if they know that appearing in this movie will come back to haunt them. I'm sure they both scratched this one of their resumes when they applied to the jobs that made them famous.
As for Dolph, well...he is what he is (he said, lapsing into Wayism): a big, blond brick with a head. A head that sometimes speaks, but never seems to speak with any emotion. He stands around and looks impressive and says his lines and walks off screen. It's all nice and text-book neat; as mechanical as the reanimated dead soldier he would go on to play 5 years later. Half the time he sounds dead asleep. The other half of the time, Dolph sounds as if he's chased a bottle of Valium with a carton or Orange Juice. (Orange Juice: Nature's happy drink!)
Then there's Frank Langella. Yes, Dracula himself. Because a stop-motion or animatronic skull head would have sunk another cool mil into the SPFX budget, Langella sweats out the entire picture in several pounds of Skeletor make-up, giving ol' Skull Face the look of a desiccated, walking corpse. All well and good, if you ask me (after seeing both Sommers-ian Mummy pictures, I'm all for desiccated walking corpses), though it certainly lowers his creepiness factor a bit. At least the boy can act. Somewhat. Not that melodramatic despots are all that hard to play. And as melodramatic despots go, Langella's Skeletor is no Darth Vader. And he's certainly no Emperor Palpatine. But then, who is, right?
He could kick the ass of Ming the Merciless. That's for damn sure.
So. You have a cast of has-beens and will-bees acting out a script that was taylor made to showcase as many new toys as possible. Effects galore, of course. But big freakin' deal. There are no people in this movie, only action figures and mannequins. And (despite/because of the less than stellar effort they put forth) the mannequin's efforts to look and act like real humans only serves to highlight how...well...plastic the action figures really are.
But you want to know the worst part of all this? Masters of the Universe is nothing more than a giant advertisement disguised as entertainment. An advertisement so insidious that it seems to have been injected with some form of subliminal messaging. As I look back over this review it seems that every time I've tried to write (buy) "He-Man" (stuff) I have, instead, typed out a blatant commercial for (buy) He-Man (stuff) products. I do apologize for that. It's probably that damn director's fault. Damn you, Gary Goddard. Damn you and your subliminal trickery.
And where the hell is She-Ra? I like She-Ra. She had boobies and she pranced around in a metal bikini. Who wouldn't have paid to see that?
Gs (out of a possible five)
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Oh, the Humanity!
** This is without a doubt the most realistic thing in the entire movie. Back.