Fake Movie Reviews: Google Cars

The movie review below is based upon people from a true story that never happened. No animals were injured in the making of this movie review.

Daniel Grant Newton reviews, from Hollywood... well, not Hollywood, but a place like Hollywood.

"Like" of course is a relative term.

So loosely with the same general feel as Hollywood. But not really.

Well, the location of this review and Hollywood both have breathable air. Sort of.

So Daniel Grant Newton reviews from a place not not unlike Hollywood with sort of breathable air.

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With an eclectic cast and blockbuster-style CGI, Peter Jackson's new movie Google Cars was an epic fail, blemishing a career of box office blitzers. Sort of like a pair of really nice brogues stepping in fresh King Kong poo.

Jeff Goldblum's performance of the psychotic computer hacker was both chilling and a heated performance. Unfortunately his lines were lukewarm, and the reasoning behind his distaste for society was temperate. Seeing such a great actor go to waste on a poor role left me both cold, and hot-headed, not knowing how to judge the temperature.

Kind of like sticking one foot in cold water and one foot in hot water, then sticking both feet in a bucket of temperate water and then trying to judge the temperature of the water. Or like reading this blog and trying to decide whether its genius and spontaneous, or rubbish incarnate and should really be edited. It's genius and spontaneous for those not sure.

Stephen Hawking's debut acting performance as the President of the United States was looked forward to by physics nerds alike, but in the end left much to be desired. He delivered his lines in a flat, monotone manner, with no hint of expression or intonation. Did not match the emotion that oozed from him in his tirade regarding the treatment of singing sensation Rebecca Black.

Chuck Norris played the hero of the film and was awesome. He was chosen to play this role after everyone else in contention mysteriously died from repeated roundhouse kicks to the head.  

Chuck Norris and some other guy.

Truly Norris' performance was brilliant, genius, inspired, loved, amazing, jaw-dropping fantastic, and I'm not just saying that because he has a fist poised to smash my head into pieces. He literally saved the film like Walker Texas Ranger saves the day.

Getting Lisa Simpson to play the romantic role for Chuck Norris here was a strange choice which turned out to be a master stroke, a work of art. At times her overacting was a little cartoonish, but since she is a cartoon character it is a little harsh on her to criticise her for that. It's like saying Steve Martin's performance in (insert movie) was very white.

It was good however to see her break out from her character in The Simpsons which has held her career back by typecasting her as a little yellow four-fingered girl. 

The Simpson's Hollywood Star ... didn't realise the MTV reality show Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson and Nick Whoever did so well.

 

A much more real performance was given by the real human actor Jaden Smith, playing Chuck Norris' son. Previously known as the 'Karate Kid', it is likely he'll be more known as 'boy who got stuck in hacked Google car' after this performance.

I was literally on the edge of my seat with his performance. Mainly because after coming back from the toilet during the movie I found someone had spilt most of their iced coffee on it whilst I was away.

In conclusion, the movie did not match the hype... and there was no hype surrounding the movie - so that says something! If I could create a time machine to go back and stop this movie from ever being made I would. Wait a second. Here's the missing piece for my time machine, the flux capacitor.

1/2 a star for the actual movie. 5 stars around my head from Chuck Norris' furry of punches. So overall I'm giving it 5 and a 1/2 stars out of 5.

Google Car Movie

I started reading this news release:

Google is driving head first into more controversy after revealing it has been testing its innovative hands-free car technology on California's roads.

It wasn't talking about keeping hands off the phone or the GPS. Alarmingly, it was testing cars driven with hands off the steering wheel.

Road safety experts were raising questions about the robot-driven cars after Google revealed it has logged more than 225,000km around the state – almost all of them on auto-pilot.

Now my first thoughts were that this would be handy (excuse the pun). I've always thought my hands got in the way when driving.

But then my mind switched to the next logical conclusion... car hacking.

Imagine this...

A computer hacker (played by Jeff Goldblum) is hacking cars across the USA and driving them at high speeds into symbolic structures, killing the passengers.

People are indescrimately being killed every hour on the hour, and the hacker states this will continue unless a large sum of money be transferred into an offshore account.

But the president (played by Antonio Banderas or Catherine Zeta-Jones or Stephen Hawking, or some other representative of a demographic who has not been president - a plot ploy to highlight to the audience that this event happens in the future) does not negotiate with terrorists, or bad drivers. The president will not bend on this hard line despite the insistance of their vice president (played by Jason Alexander).

Naturally, there are no records of the computer hacker, because they all have been deleted. And the country is on their knees.

So they turn to a "loose canon" computer genius (played by either Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman or Chuck Norris) fired by Google for objecting to the cars and "holding the company back" with his proposed safe guards.

This loose canon is the only guy who has the ability to hack past the hacker and into the computer network controlling the cars. The President calls the "loose canon" in despite his disregard for authority, and being labelled as "dangerous" by Jason Alexander's character.

It takes a lot to bring him in as he has lost the will to live, lost touch with society, and hasn't touched a computer since he was fired from Google. But when the president comes into his apartment, this loose canon's patrioism kicks in and he nervously starts cleaning up all the takeaway boxes readying himself to be taken to the White House by Airforce 1.

"I'm going to the White House," he excitedly squeals to the audience's amusement. This moment is then quoted by movie goers for a few years, and becomes to Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman or Chuck Norris, what "I'll be back" is to Arnie.

(Extra Fact: "I'll be back" is the exact opposite of what Arnie's wife said to Arnie. Snap!)

Then of course we find out he is the sole parent of a boy (played by Haley Joel Osment or Jaden Smith) and that his son has been trapped in his son's friend's mother's car.

We also discover that the computer hacking terrorist will drive the car off a bridge if he tries to stop him. But with 24 hours before the hacker will pull the plug on the country's electronic cars, our hero realises the hacker will kill his son anyway - and never planned to release him... in fact, the amount of oxygen in the car is being used up and he is only a few hours to override that car.

Plus he is being tortured with the Country and Western station on the radio. No kid should go through that!

The "loose canon" computer hacker (played by either Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman or Chuck Norris) then brings in an IT woman he once loved but broke up badly with to help him (played by Jessica Alba, Jessica Mauboy, Jessica Simpson, O.J. Simpson or Lisa Simpson).

This woman is the only one who can help him pull off this operation in that amount of time, even though they hate each other.

Inevitably sparks fly, but before they do, they pointlessly bicker quite a bit and suspend the obvious more pressing concern that the US is about to overrun by a mad computer hacking terrorist.

The audience then are left to wonder if these characters really do cut the time of task when they work together, or whether bringing in this IT woman was more of a cheap ploy by the script writer to add romance and character development into an action driven blockbuster.

Anyway, the IT woman then says something corny like "well, you could've at least called me in that time." And he says something corny like "I wanted to, every day since our break up. But I had this late power bill you see, and..."

Then they save the day, they capture the bad guy terrorist by trapping him in his get away car, the IT woman becomes the adopted mother to the boy of the loose canon, as well as the loose canon's girlfriend.

And the movie misses out on an Academy Award, but gets an above average rating on Rotton Tomatoes. And Jessica Mauboy makes a song with Jessica Alba and Jessica Simpson and Lisa Simpson that goes platinum.

It's almost too easy!

I don't know about you, but that was the logical progression for me when I discovered Google was making cars that drive themselves. Stay tuned (and subscribe to this beautiful blog) for more logical progressions.