Super agente speciale

(r#40)

TV 3, a "quality" TV channel here in Sweden, recently decided to have a bottom 100-marathon and showed BOTH Gigli and this turkey during the same night. Now, I don't know any of TV3's producers personally, but it seems to me like they're torturing us rather than entertaining us. Simon Sez is a "comedy" so offensively stupid, it makes the Scary Movie series look like Bergman films. It seems to have been written by six year olds, for six year olds, but the foul language and violence would be too much for kids, so what was the target demographic, anyway? Oh right, idiots.

Dennis Rodman, professional basketball player (which is always a good sign) stars as Simon, a secret agent of some kind. He takes part in a kidnapping gone wrong. I won't waste any more time explaining the plot because it couldn't have taken more than a few seconds to write it. Simon is accompanied on his mission by annoying white sidekick Nick Miranda (played by excruciatingly unfunny Dane Cook), who desperately wants to be Jim Carrey, and a sexy Emma Sjöberg.

This is not a good movie. It's over-flooded by dumb action, hilariously retarded lines, and annoying characters. My favourite is the English/French/something villain Jérôme Pradon who wants to blow up the Eiffel Tower ("Why? Because it's big and it's beautiful and I'm tired of looking at it!"). Best line since "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn". Seriously.

Even the special effects suck. Avoid! And TV3, how about a Coleman Francis marathon next Sunday?

Seeing a movie like "Simon Sez" is like going to the circus as a kid. For one and a half long hours you rub your eyes, not quite believing what you're seeing. It's amazing somehow, but you never quite believe it. Maybe that's not the best comparison, but can you tell me an event which makes you as speechless as such a movie?

To call it a movie seems to be wrong anyway. It's a 90-minutes crazy, absolute over-the-top Rodman-"thing" with no sense at all.

Usually I start with the story, but how could I do so with the total lack of one here? It pretends to be about some villain getting some kind of disc for some kind of weapon and to say this is more than you get from the film. Rodman plays a agent for Interpol it is said, although I'm not quite sure these are Interpol's working methods. Let's get this straight. Rodman is an agent in a french town with two monks as companions. They all live in a cellar under a church and have more crime to fight than the CIA in the whole US. Their gadgets include a CGI-fly, which can be directed in any direction and delivers an excellent view, a super-motorcycle which can drive up walls and ceilings and a lot of weapons.

The two monks are obviously insane, as they sing and dance and laugh all the time very madly. One is fat, the other black. Your turn to make something of this.

Rodman's other companion is another lunatic named Nick. He appears suddenly and stays without reason or explanation. Even more unreasonable is that Rodman lets him stay. Looking at this guy talking and 'acting' (sorry, but I got no other word for it), makes you wonder if there was a director who actually filmed him. In his first 10 minutes of screen time he impersonates three animals so unconvincingly and hilariously, that it's hard enough for itself. But seeing him 'doing the raptor' for about 30 seconds is just painful.

There is also a woman which half of the movie fights against Rodman and the rest fights and sleeps with him at the same time. Where she comes from and who she remains a mystery.

We also have a villain, so mad, it would be an understatement to call him a caricature. He always smiles, makes little jokes only he laughs about and gets scared the first time when his car is blocked by a sheep's herd. And he has maybe the first computer ever, which has not only a little animation looking like him, but this one can also talk for itself and change visually in order of the things happening around it. When the villain gets electrocuted, the animation gets to. Amazing.

Which leaves us with a bunch of actors who laugh, dance and make crazy noises all the time, no story and the most unrealistic action sequences since Moses went through the Red Sea. Rodman lets himself fall down a long column, while he holds himself onto it with his legs, because he needs his arms for shooting. As I said, he also drives with his motorcycle up a wall and along the ceiling in a tunnel. And I can't forget the most hilarious sex-scene ever filmed, involving Rodman and his girlfriend/enemy, a strobo-light and a see-through bed.

Movies like this leave me kind of exhausted. I'm a fan of bad movies, but bad movies are only enjoyable if they take themselves seriously. "Simon Sez" tries to be both a comedy and an action-flick and fails desperately at both. The classic bad movie "Double Team" was funny because van Damme was so damn serious all the time (not to mention Mickey Rourke). Rodman playing crazy was just an addition to the serious stuff and made this film perfectly bad. But here everybody just plays crazy. It's "Batman & Robin" mixed with "Double Team" on drugs. And when you succeed in watching the movie in full length without running away, you can be sure to feel as crazy as the whole crew must have felt to make this film. So, in a way you're get in contact with the filmmaker's emotions. There are just aren't enough emotional movies out there. Here's a new one. Who wants to cry anyway when you just as well can become crazy?

I had the opportunity to watch this on cable. And man, it is bad.

The most laughable must be the camera work. It manages to be the second worst camera work I've ever seen in my life (the worst being in "Venni, vidi e m'arrapaho", a film that I believe to be from the screwiest corners of hell itself). As soon as the movie had some action -- say, somebody jumped on a chair -- the cameramen went frantic. I kept vomiting during the car chase scenes, and that's pretty bad if you consider that they were driving at 10 mph with a bored frown on their faces.

Then ugh... the acting. Not one performance even came close to being decent. The script... was there even a script? It looked like there was no story and they came up with (bad) ideas while shooting. And some scenes were so idiotic I wonder how a sane brain would came up with them. I mean, at one point Nick, the "good friend" of Simon Sez, has a gun in his hand, and loses it because he is making fun of the "bad girl" by playing a tyrannosaur. This is the kind of comedy that you don't laugh at because it's funny, you laugh at it because it's so unredeemable and idiotic you literally can't believe it. By the way, him being a tyrannosaur was as believable as Rodman being an ex-CIA agent. Hell, they even managed to make the French Coast look somewhat small and crappy!

Oh well... 1/10

Some films are so poor that and unintentionally amusing that they become quite enjoyable (the usual straight to video nonsense starring the likes of james belushi, jean-claude van damme etc.) However, one occasionally comes across a film which is so poor that any enjoyment one might have been able from the poor script, poor acting, poor continuity and the sense of "i can't believe they are taking this seriously" is eroded within the first half hour. Simon Sez breaks records on this note. After 2 minutes, i thought i was about to watch an enjoyable, if predictable, action/comedy with pretty poor acting. after 5 mins, i realised that i had found a film even worse than Carnosaur. After 10 minutes, a reverse triple summersault in the pike position out of my window 12th floor window seemed preferable to siting though the rest of this rubbish. Saving graces: sealed windows, i didn't rent the film but watched it on cable...though i am tempted to unsubscribe after this, and, finally, this "film" got my mind back on doing some out of work reading on the financial markets. a dry topic at the best of times, but compared to Rodman, Sjoberg and that clown of a sidekick in this "film", it was humorous, witty and left me feeling refreshed.

So, for those of you who have read the above and ca see that i am still sitting on the fence regarding this film. i shall be explicit: DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM. IF GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN PAINFUL TOOTH EXTRACTION AND THIS MASTERPIECE, GO TO THE DENTIST. DENTAL PAIN GOES GOES AWAY PRETTY QUICKLY, THIS MAY WARP YOU FOR LIFE!

I can't find anything good to say about this movie. The acting is poor; the plot seems to have a mind of its own (like a 2-year-old's); the fighting scenes are some of the worst I've ever seen in a movie. They're so unrealistic, it's more like watching a cartoon. Dennis Rodman does seem to try, sometimes. Most of the time, he's just trying, unsuccessfully, to be cool. Half of the characters in this thing seem to be there for comic relief. Seriously, half of them. It's that stupid. Don't pay money to see this movie. And don't EVEN consider buying it.