Unsolicited Movie Review: Saved!

I missed the first ten minutes of Saved! waiting in the concessions line at the Metreon. When have concessions taken this long? It's like I was Yasser Arafat and the workers were a collective Sharon, or vice versa. Movement was slow, painstakingly slow. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the concessions workers to be leaping around and catching air -- for minimum wage, it's not worth it. But damn it, prove to me that one of your feet ever leaves the ground. Someone bring Scatman Caruthers back from the goddamn grave to teach these kids how to put some tap into their step. Caruthers zombie, where are you when I need you? We need to hang out sometime. One condition: no killing. We cool?

Saved!, a comedy about life at American Eagle Christian High School, hits all the necessary targets, but does so in very fleeting and superficial ways. Take, for instance, the subject of "speaking in tongues," which is merely a throwaway gag in the movie.

One of the more interesting and weird experiences I had as a kid going to church was when a specialist in ancient biblical languages came to speak to our group of Sunday school kids. The idea put forth was that certain living individuals are imbued with the power to channel a long lost language that existed around the time events in the Bible are described. This was another sign that God, who could give a damn about ostentatious displays like turning tobacco into marijuana or blowing up Antarctica, was up in the cut. So there we were, asked to ramble non-sensical things out of our mouths in the hope that someone's nonsense turned out to make divine sense. Where was this episode of The Wonder Years?

I should have told the tongue specialist that she was barking up the wrong tree. If she really wanted get some good tongue, she should have driven over to Ruthless Records in Los Angeles, home of NWA, and asked to speak to labelmates MC J.B., Baby D, and Sassy C, the three members of J.J. Fad. J.J. Fad had a hit in the 80's with Supersonic, a song that reached #31 in the Billboard 200, but more importantly, channeled a language not spoken since Chaka roamed the Land of the Lost.

Exhibit A, from Supersonic:

Listen here.

Transcript:
"A sama lama lama lama doo ma see ma nama lama doo ma lama nama see ma
Na ma lama doo ma lama see ma lama see ma doo ma humma, yeah (Yeah)
That's it (That's it)"

Case closed. Who needs the parting of seas or when you have this?

Movie rating: 5.1

Caruthers zombie, take us out.

Posted by rok at June 23, 2004 12:26 PM