Snarking the Movie: Gleaming the Cube

Remember when I said that when it comes to movies, where Fighting Nun sees schlocky and tacky I see awesome? Well no where is that more evident than when we watched Gleaming the Cube together this weekend. Fighting Nun couldn't suspend his disbelief for a second where as my suspension of disbelief was still hung up on Al Lucero's hair. Steven Bauer might be the first actor to have ever uttered "I know what I'm supposed to be doing in this scene, but what is my hair supposed to be doing in this scene? Also, my chest hair forgot its lines." I swear, if Steven Bauer had been less busy getting his hair to emote and more busy actually, you know, acting instead of scenery chewing, this movie would've been alot different. At the last scene Fighting Nun and I were all MST3K'ing the ending solely based on the fact that Bauer's hair had a better on-screen presence than he did. And when Christian Slater's squinty-eyed nasally thing is a more nuanced performance than your "Look at me and my manly hairy chest" thing, you need to hand over your SAG card post-haste.

And it's not that I don't get the whole squinty Christian Slater thing, because I do, well I did. Part of the reason I still sit through the crapulesence of Gleaming the Cube is nostalgia for those bygone days before Christian pulled a Tyson on his girlfriends ear. Well that and the Perlick (Yabo!!!). Oh, and Tony Hawk's hair. Tony Hawk's hair is worth the price of admission, plus some. I mean, the hair plus the visor. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the ninth wonder of the world.

So, yes the movie, but awesomely bad, in that way in which most eighties movies were awesomely bad. But it's at its best as snark material, as drinking game material. Every time they make the blue screen blatantly obvious, drink. Every time Christian Slater does the squinty thing, drink. Every time Steven Bauer tried to put his chest hair into the lime light, drink. If you don't find the utter hi-larity, the sheer tackiness of it all, you'll cry, or try to wipe it from your memory as much as possible. Like Fighting Nun.