Repo Chick

This film was terrible. I ended up skipping parts of it just to get it over with and see if it was supposed to have an ending for it. I think I would of had more fun goring my eyes out with pins. There was no plot, and I've seen better films recored on a green screen than this.

Everything just looked fake...you could tell when they were filming toys then just adding the actors in later. For a film thats only a few years old, I would expect much better. Glad I didn't spend money to see this. Personally, I can't see how anyone would enjoy this film, especially in this day and age when films are expected to be good quality with an interesting plot.

I *really* wanted to like this movie. In the short period from 1984 to 1987, Alex Cox gave us the Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell, and Walker (yes, I even liked Walker!). He's sort of foundered ever since, and I was hoping this might be his redemption. I was destined to be very disappointed.

First there's the filming technique. It's done almost entirely on green screen, and then set against backgrounds mostly made of models, many of them literally model train sets. This all seemed naggingly familiar, then hit it hit me: the great Alex Cox had ripped off Thomas the Tank Engine! I guess this was supposed to be surreal and artsy, but it just looked cheap and stupid. Reportedly, he did this to stay below the $200k threshold of the Screen Actors Guild. The thing is, Repo Man was filmed for $160k and (even correcting for inflation) looks about 20 times more professional than this movie.

Although this isn't really a sequel, he puts in a number of the people from the original, but this mostly reminds you that they haven't worked much since. There are also some fairly big name actors, like Patricia Arquette, Karen Black, Chloe Webb, and Miguel Sandoval, and they're completely wasted - with the arguable exception of Sandoval, who does a fairly decent job. It shot in 10 days, using what appears to be a rough draft of a concept for a script. It appears they also did it Ed Wood style, always using the first take.

The plot is a weird mix of heavy handed social commentary and a desperate attempt to capture the quirky magic of Repo man, and it fails at both. Because it's trying so hard, it also fall short in the "so bad it's good" category.

Finally, the music, or lack of it. The iconic soundtrack was the magic pixie dust that turned Repo Man into a timeless gem, and a good soundtrack could even have saved this, at least at some level. However, what little music there is is clearly designed to *remind* us of the original, without stepping on any copyrights or paying any musicians. In the end, that was the last nail in the coffin.

I suppose if you're an Alex Cox fan, you have no choice but to watch this movie, but don't say you weren't warned.

Oh dear lord... That is essentially all that is needed to describe this abysmal train wreck of a movie.

But I will be a bit more thorough. This movie was phenomenally bad on every level. I managed to endure maybe 15 minutes of laughable green screen, pointless characters, an utter lack of interesting storyline and horrible props - they used toy cars for the love of...

This movie was a massive swing and a miss from writer and director Alex Cox. And "Repo Chick" failed to appeal to me on any level. With that, I have absolutely no intention of returning to watch the rest of this 2009 movie, ever.

I wonder how they got the likes of Xander Berkeley, Karen Black, Frances Bay, to name but a few to appear in a movie such as this. Didn't they read the script? Or was there now script, and director Alex Cox just made things up as the movie was being filmed? It sure felt that way.

My rating of "Repo Chick" is a meager one out of ten stars. This movie is definitely in the top 5 of worst movies I have ever had the misfortune of stumbling upon. Trust me, there is no need for you to waste your time, money or effort on "Repo Chick".

I am a big fan of Alex Cox the movie connoisseur, the long time presenter of the Moviedrome series on British television dedicated to cult and obscure films. Each film he would introduce cult classic and give us an interesting insight on the night's film. Cox showed passion, intelligence and a respect for some of the actors and directors of cultish cinema.

Alex Cox the film director has always fallen short. He showed promise with his first feature with Repo Man, a flawed cult film itself. However films such as Walker or Straight to Hell showed us an uneven even an overindulgent filmmaker playing by his own rules.

By the early 1990s it was clear Cox was no longer welcome by the big film studios as he was heading south making Spanish language cinema in Mexico whereas director's such as Robert Rodriguez were heading the other direction.

In Repo Chick, Cox revisits the themes from Repo Man but turns it into satire on celebrity culture, banking crisis and corrupt politics.

A dispossessed heiress joins the Repo business. She ends up on a trip on a train which gets hijacked by terrorists who want to outlaw golf.

The movie is filmed entirely on Green Screen with some use of animation. The CGI can look off putting and also shows its low budget origins. It certainly is not a mainstream film even though Cox got the BBC to be a co-producer of the movie. Its uneven, unfocused but it has a charm and some well known actors, although it does confirm that Cox's best days as a director are well behind him.

In the not too distant future of an alternate reality, a Paris Hilton-like celebrity cut off from her fortune discovers she has a knack for the repossession business after joining a firm which not only has cars in its holding yard but also factories, cruise ships and what might be a nuclear power plant. Enticed by a million dollar bounty on a vintage train, she ends up in the middle of a terrorist plot to force the President of the United States to outlaw golf and become a vegan.

This movie isn't so much a "Repo Man" sequel as it is a remake taken to ridiculous extremes at the expense of things like plot, character development and cinematography. It's loaded with references and parallels to "Repo Man" and at least 8 actors from the original (not including Cox) appear here as well. I got a big kick out of this, but it will obviously be lost on anyone who isn't a "Repo Man" fan and won't appeal to many of those who are, so we have a movie that by design has been made primarily for the benefit of a small subset of the small cult following of the original.

The movie is unique, however, in the way it creates the fantasy world in which the action takes place. A surreal environment is produced by being filmed entirely in green screen with the floors and backgrounds added later. Although the opening scenes are made to look almost realistic, the movie increasingly uses obvious toy models and cartoon animations as it progresses. Most of the film's entertainment value comes from accepting this alternate reality as a place which is at least possible in our imaginations even if completely implausible in the real world.

The point of the movie, of course, isn't the thin, absurd plot but the satire which gets leveled at many aspects of modern society. I would assume that the shallow and fictitious nature of the environment created in the film is supposed to represent those same qualities in the targets being satirized. Topics such as celebrity culture, heartless corporations, liberal activists and homeland security all get the Cox treatment. Unfortunately, it's done without the depth, coherence and brilliantly insightful dialog found throughout "Repo Man". Although I very much appreciate all the things Cox was trying to do, I would still find it hard to recommend this movie without attaching numerous qualifications to such a recommendation.