Gotcha

Just in case you thought the USA was the only country in the world capable of making brain-dead movie spoofs (EPIC MOVIE or MEET THE SPARTANS, anyone?), here we have GOTCHA! an absolutely awful comedy all the way from Indonesia. My previous experience of Indonesian cinema has been the brilliant films they made in the 1980s – whether the extravaganza of a Barry Prima fight flick or the insanity of LADY TERMINATOR. GOTCHA! is a sadly derivative film that, despite an Asian flavour, fails to impact any of that country's culture. It's an utterly run-of-the-mill high school comedy that could easily have been set in any country. Even the stereotypes are the same: there's the romantic lead, the sweet girlfriend, the nerd, and the chubby idiot. In a way I'm glad I couldn't understand the dialogue, as I have no doubt the script is entirely run of the mill; the acting's awful, too.

So what's the subject up for spoofing here? Well, in the film's only bit of novelty, it's the 'Asian ghost story' sub-genre of cinema. Yes, the ghosts from RING, THE GRUDGE and other assorted Japanese horrors turn up, leading to LOTS of wannabe-funny moments where the characters end up running away from them, sometimes with the film sped up – I thought audiences tired of that in the 1930s? Sadly the film is repetitive in the extreme, each so-called scare is EXACTLY the same as the last, and you end up just wading through endless dross until the anticlimax finish, where it looks like the film just ran out. Add to this stupid music, toilet humour, and the most ill-conceived MATRIX spoof ever – guys, you made this SEVEN YEARS after THE MATRIX – a little late, surely! – and you have a film that nobody could ever want to sit through.