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 Movie
Reviews by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas)
THIS WEEK'S GUEST REVIEWER
- WILLIAM HAGUE, LEADER OF THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY
May
4, 2001
Good day to you, my American friends! My old chum Phil Gramm
is visiting me in England this week, but unfortunately we
had one too many pints of Yorkshire ale last night and he's
feeling a little under the weather this morning. But what
luck! He brought this week's movies with him on video cassette,
and he's asked me to review them for him. Considering that
we have a general election coming up in Britain next month,
and that Tony Blair is going to win, and that I'm probably
going to lose my job, I was more than happy to oblige. Anything
that might raise my profile a bit and get me out of this pickle.
So Phil, thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak to
my American friends. Tally Ho!
The
Mummy Returns
Starring Brendan Fraser and Some American
Professional Wrestler
I must say, I think you did a tip top job electing
George W. Bush. In fact, his "compassionate conservatism"
is something which I've been incorporating into my own election
campaign. It's funny though - nobody over here seems to be
particularly keen on it. In fact, the pollsters are predicting
that we Tories are going to lose by an even bigger margin
than we did in 1997. Which was the biggest landslide in over
a century. But you Americans are too clever to fall for all
that socialist claptrap that Blair's always going on about
aren't you?
Which brings me to the movie. Now the British public may
call The Mummy Returns a pointless, overblown, overdone
piece of American rubbish, but I think they would be jumping
to the wrong conclusion. After all, we have a lot to learn
from you when it comes to making fortunes from cinematic spectaculars.
Not that I'm not proud of the British film industry. Oh no.
I certainly don't think that Notting Hill could have
been improved with the addition of epic desert battles and
thousands of reanimated mummified corpses bent on death and
destruction.
No, I think The Mummy Returns is a film that America
should be very proud of. If it makes millions of dollars,
who cares about the quality? Why, it's the very basis of your
wonderfully robust economy for goodness sake. Ah, it makes
me yearn for the good old days when Margaret Thatcher ruled
the land with an iron fist.
So I give The Mummy Returns four flags - not for its
disgracefully poor quality, but because it is a shining example
of first-class capitalism.
 Four
Flags out of Five
Eureka
Starring Yakusho Koji, Miyazaki Aoi
and Miyazaki Masaru
More bobbies on the beat. More doctors in the
hospitals. More teachers in the schools. That's what you'll
get if I'm elected Prime Minister. Honestly. So if you're
tired of Tony Blair and his Clintonesque policies, tell an
ex-pat friend to cast an absentee ballot for me, William Hague,
and the Conservative Party. God knows we need your help. And
it could make all the difference - like when all those people
filled out their overseas ballot applications incorrectly,
but got a second chance when those two Republican chaps helpfully
fixed them all. You know. Like that.
And it certainly looks like they need more bobbies on the
beat and doctors in the hospitals in Tokyo, which is where
Eureka is set. This movie follows the lives of three
Japanese folks after they are the only survivors of a bus
hijack. Now, under my version of "compassionate conservatism"
these people would be sent straight to hospital for psychiatric
testing and given a thorough course of treatment for post-traumatic
stress disorder. That is, they would if they were English.
Otherwise we'd kick their asylum-seeking, National-Health-Service-stealing
immigrant arses all the way back to Japanland.
Two
Flags out of Five
The
Center of the World
Starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker
Now in England we're not afraid of breasts.
I'll even go so far as to admit that I like breasts myself.
But if there is one thing we do NOT like it is SLEAZE. There
have been a lot of sleaze accusations against the government
recently, but I must make one thing clear. While the Conservative
Party may fall desperately short in many policy areas, we
have always been, and will always be, far, far better at sleaze
than any Labour government could ever hope to be. Not that
we like sleaze of course. But if we're going to be bragging
about all of our achievements and accomplishments (which we
will be in the election campaign) then I think that the public
should know where we stand on sleaze. It's deplorable. But
we're really, really good at it.
Which is why this movie put me on a bit of a sticky wicket,
as it were. It's about a millionaire computer programmer and
a stripper who spend three days experimenting on the edge
of sexual ecstasy. Now it's one thing to practice sleaze,
but it's another thing to make a movie about it. Distateful,
I say. But on the other hand you have a lot of breasts, which
is never a bad thing in any decent film. So I give The
Center Of The World one flag. What the breasts giveth,
the sleaze taketh away.
One
Flag out of Five
New
On Video
Miss
Congeniality
This film is not just crass, it's practically vulgar.
Superman
Special Edition
A little too much Yankee flag-waving for my taste I'm afraid.
The
Emperor's New Groove
We used to have an empire you know. Get over it!
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