quote of the day (August 19, 2008)

When we promised you gymnastics and karate in yesterday's quote, a giant roar went up from across the land, "GYMKATA!"

Okay, it was more of a muttered grumble from the couple of readers who could pick Gymkata out of a lineup. (here's a fun game to play! see if you are one of those readers!)

One of these guys will flip you, for real. Another one of these guys will flip you with 2 1/2 twists, sticking the dismount with a karate kick right to your junk.


Anyway, we're a little short-handed on this one, because even though Gymkata is widely-held to be one of the most fun of all the really awful movies, we have actually never seen it. This will soon be rectified at next Tuesday evening's Yahoo! fantasy football draft, where this stellar movie will be on in the background.

I've just discovered that Robert Clouse, the director of Gymkata, also directed such classics as Black-Belt Jones and Jackie Chan's ridiculous The Big Brawl.

To give you some of the plot overview, I'm going to quote from an online review at the website Mutant Reviewers from Hell:

"Before minute 12 hits, we meet our gymnast hero (1984 Olympic gold-medalist Kurt Thomas) who is recruited by someone in the US government to infiltrate Parmistan and gain their trust so that the US can build a missile detection station within their borders. Only, Parmistan has yet to modernize past medicinal leeches and court jesters, and they make every visitor to their country play in a deadly game called — are you ready? — The Game, which pretty much kills every contestant. This does dampen tourism, you understand. So Jonathan agrees to this stupid mission because… well, this guy kind of came to his door, and his dad got killed in Parmistan, so he really had no choice. Then Jonathan goes through a goofy training montage of walking on his hands and fighting blindfolded. Then he meets a mostly-silent princess who keeps racking him in the groin and drawing knives on him, and he seduces her with backflips. They make out.

That's all by minute 12. I kid you not."

He goes onto fight his way through The Game, after going through his training montage. The best part of the movie, apparently, comes about when our mulleted hero is surrounded by some local psychos. When it seemed hopeless, luckily Jonathan comes across the village pommel horse and proceeds to work them but good:

(be forewarned, if you are drinking something, swallow before viewing)

(As Eric Cartman would say, I'm being totally seriously. This is amazing.)

Let's see Yang Wei do that!

Wow. And it's only a Tuesday. What the hell are we going to do for the rest of the week...maybe we'll stick with Clouse's other hits and do some quotes from Black Belt Jones and The Big Brawl...you should be so lucky...