…it’s time to gush about a movie.

Now, normally, I don’t gush about movies. Movies are passive entertainment, and normally, I don’t gush about passive entertainment. There are a few exceptions; The Matrix, for example, is not so much “passive entertainment” to me so much as “holy scripture,” which I pay homage to in some of my LiveJournal icons…but I digress.

In any event, last weekend, while I was down visiting Shelly in Tallahasse, the time seemed right for some passive entertainment. She and slouchinphysics had wanted to see some comedy or other about some kind of comedic thing involving comedy, which escapes me at the moment, but through a fortuitous combination of good (or bad, depending upon your viewpoint) timing and the fact that Shelly still had a great deal of homework to do instead, we instead saw Shoot ‘Em Up.

Which is a comedy.

A comedy with a really, really, really high body count.

I have not had this much fun at a movie since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Take everything that is excessive and over-the-top about the entire action/adventure genre, throw in some references to old school Looney Tunes, and crank the knob up to 11. Even one of the trailers for the movie is R-rated:

This trailer gives you a very good sense of what the movie’s like. Take what you see here and make it an hour and twenty minutes long, and you have the movie, in a nutshell.

The reviews of this movie have been mostly lukewarm (or worse), with reviewers, who clearly belong in aforementioned nutshell, complaining that the movie lacks a sense of humor. To which I say, did we watch the same film? Were the reviewers addled on crystal meth and Mad Dog 20/20? Do these folks not recognize humor unless it’s accompanied by a laugh track and a cute yapping dog? For fuck’s sake, the villain’s name is Mister Hertz! I could not stop laughing through this entire flick; it’s so loopily, zanily, recklessly over the top that anyone who takes it seriously…well, deserves to.

I mean, c’mon. Clive Owen quotes Bugs Bunny and then kills someone with a carrot. You can’t get enough of that for my entertainment dollar! And when the camera pulls back at the end of the skydiving scene, it’s just absolutely priceless.

zensidhe, datan0de, if you guys haven’t seen this movie yet, you really need to.