BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (23 OF 100)

"Gymkata" (1985), Dir: Robert Clouse

$8.5 Million in Budget vs. $5,730,596 in Gross

The title alone gives you a pretty good idea what Gymkata is about. I rented it having seen it reviewed by Red Letter Media and was wondering how a ninja/gymnast movie would hold up. I was pleasantly surprised with most of it, and absolutely terrified with some. That's right. I said terrified. All in all, most of what Gymkata offered were a lot of surprises I did not expect, making it a very worthwhile bad movie.

The plot is surprisingly complicated. While watching Gymkata, I almost found it almost impossible to know what was happening. I knew there was a deadly game involved, but wasn't sure why the main character Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) had any interested. Turns out Johnathon Cabot is a gymnastics champ whose father at one time took part in this deadly game and lost, losing his life as well. The game itself is an endurance test held in a fictional country called Parmistan (which will come up again later), where the contestants avoid obstacles and run from Parmistanian warriors bent on killing them. If a contestant wins, he is granted one wish of his choosing.

So early in the movie, our hero Johnathon is approached by the SIA (Special Intelligence Agency) about entering the tournament so that if he wins, they can use his one wish to set up a satellite monitoring station for the Star Wars Program... Yep. That is what they want to do with his only wish. What assholes. Also, this is also the only non-animated movie I've ever seen where wishes are actually part of the plot-line. But Johnathon also has his own reasons for entering the tournament. If Johnathon wins the game, he will be honoring his father and accomplishing what he could not... Wow. So yes, a lot going on, but is anyone really watching it for the plot? No. So let's see some more Gymkata.

The star Kurt Thomas was an actual Olympic Gymnastics winner. So for an unassuming, nimble little white-boy, he's got some sweet moves and manages to execute them with noticably more grace than JCVD (which takes a bit of the grit out of it). The action sequences in the movie, though low-budget, are competently made. You watch them, ooh'ing and ah'ing as Kurt Thomas gracefully kicks some ass. Is Kurt convincing in that sense? Very much so. Is he an action star? No. No, not at all. It's hard to take an action hero series who oddly looks a lot like Wayne Gretzky and dresses like... well, like a dork. I mean seriously, would you be able to take JCVD seriously if he wore a Christmas sweater? So agility is no question. Kurt does a good job kicking ass, especially in the scene where he fights an entire village using only a pummel horse... But as far as be imtidating, well...

Kurt's presence aside, the location of the movie was the most off-putting thing about it. Fictional countries seem to only work in Perfect Strangers or children's cartoons. I refer you to Genosha in X-Men. But when you create one for a movie, you're fall subject to some problems, such as race, ethnicity, culture, etc. Little things. And yet, when you create a country that doesn't have any of those (minus barbaric gaming), you get the great Parmistan, a country named after a cheese-topping, populated by lazy-eyed extras, and decorated with a mix of Russian, Amish, Islamic, Scottish, and Asian stereotypes. It's pretty much a case of "The East" for those of you not familiar with Orientalism. Simply put: in North America's eyes, whatever isn't the west is the east. (Better examples of this can be found in the Italian Sword & Sandal Films, more specifically involving the dance sequences.)

Another strange aspect of the setting is that the characters need to make it through "The Village of the Crazies," a village populated with deadly lunatics. It's a fifteen minute sequence near the end of the film and is as strange and terrifying as anything David Lynch has ever made. John is forced to do battle with maniac after maniac, each with their own brand of psychotic. I guess mental health is a bit of a grey area in the Parmistanian government. The Village of the Crazies might not be a sequence many will enjoy, but I thought it gave the movie a bit of edge from being just another generically bad action film.

 

Gymkata is a lot of fun and worth seeing for some decent action and a good string of laughs.

For your viewing displeasure, the "Village of The Crazies" sequence in full.